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ghosttotheparty · 10 months

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spill my guts

also on ao3 cw: dub con possibly (they're both high but v into it); nonexplicit sex

It’s midnight.

The sky is dark, spotted with stars that shine clearly above the dark town, and the treetops of the woods cover the Harrington home, windows dark except Steve’s bedroom, dimly glowing from the golden lamps on either side of his bed. But Steve and Eddie aren’t on the bed; they barely ever are, preferring the floor and the worn rug even during long movie nights with the others.

The others aren’t here tonight. It’s just them and the lamps and the stars that they can’t see from inside the house. And the weed. Of course.

There’s often weed involved when it’s just the two of them. Not always. But it’s nice. It helps with the pain. And the nightmares.

Eddie doesn’t sell anymore. Steve gets it from some guys in town, and he brings it around whenever he knows it’s just him and Eddie, waving it in the air as if to taunt Eddie even though Eddie is usually already grinning brightly before he walks through the door. They share, pass joints back and forth and pretend neither of them is thinking about how their lips are touching the same paper, damp with their shared saliva. Heads get cloudy as the air between them gets smokey, and they both long silently. Usually in Steve’s living room, often in his bedroom (also on the floor), and occasionally in Eddie’s bedroom in his and Wayne’s new apartment. But it doesn’t feel as secure there, not when the apartment is above one of the more popular coffee shops in the center of town, and the smell of weed is very distinct, especially when people know Eddie is nearby.

Sometimes they don’t smoke weed. Sometimes it’s pills or powder, just for fun, just for the thrill of it without the fear of monsters and blood. Sometimes it’s booze, and then painkillers and a pitcher of water the next day. Sometimes it’s nothing of the sort. Movies, or spinning records and bickering about each other’s music taste, and then dancing and laughter. Hair flying in the air around them, eyes shining and stomachs aching from laughing so hard. Sometimes it’s tears and heavy breaths, whispers of safety and security and soft I’m right heres after nightmares and the fear of the dark.

Right now, though.

It’s weed.

Neither of them has ever been particularly fond of the smell of weed. Sometimes Eddie bakes brownies to avoid it. He always wears Steve’s mom’s frilly apron, which makes Steve laugh every time. He looks ridiculous, but somehow less ridiculous than she does when she wears it. (Wore it. She hasn’t been here in ages.)

But Steve doesn’t mind it when he’s high enough. And Eddie is kind of used to it. It used to linger on all his belongings in the trailer, on his blankets and clothes and the fabric of the sofa in the living room.

The smell lingers a little in Steve’s room too, especially because tonight they’ve neglected to open his window to air the room out. The air is hazy, hot and humid (because they also left the heat on; Eddie was cold when he arrived.), and they both feel heavy as they laugh at something. Neither of them knows what exactly they’re laughing at, but it doesn’t really matter. Every little thing seems to set them off all over again; Eddie snorts at one point and claps a hand over his face, and Steve falls against him, giggling with his eyes squeezed shut. And then Steve’s head falls back and hits the post of his bed, and another laugh bursts out of Eddie.

They feel stupid here together, laughing at everything and nothing, passing Eddie’s bong back and forth, blowing smoke into each other’s faces. Falling against each other, into each other, legs locked as they sprawl across the ground like tired cats in a sunbeam. When they lay down, their hair catches on the worn carpet of Steve’s bedroom, and the strands tangle together, the colors barely differentiable in the dim light of the lamps.

And Eddie always likes to look at him, but he can’t stop himself when he’s high like this. He lets his head fall to the side of the bed, rolling to look at Steve. To gaze at him. And Steve looks back. They’re both still smiling, laughing, and Steve is beautiful. His eyes are shining and squinting under his smile, and his cheeks are rosy, and his hair is messy, and Eddie can feel himself falling in love.

He already knew he was. He’s known for a while.

He’s kept it under wraps, of course. Can’t risk losing this because of that.

But the wraps seem to unravel as he looks at him.

And Eddie isn’t even thinking as he reaches out to touch him; he feels far away even under Eddie’s fingertips, soft like he��s made of a dream. Eddie traces a line over his warm cheek, connects two moles like he’s connecting stars in the sky, putting together constellations that no one has named yet.

Eddie would recognize the pattern of Steve’s moles if they were in the sky. If he looked up in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, if he could see every star in the universe. He’d find Steve’s skin, his left cheek and his chest and his back.

Eddie blinks, his fingertips lingering on the two moles on his cheek. Hiding them behind his finger. Uncovering them. Looking like he’s expecting them to start glowing. And he realizes neither of them has said anything in a long while, and neither of them is laughing anymore. Steve is just looking back at him, eyes shining beautifully, smiling even though his mouth isn’t smiling.

“What are you thinking?” Steve asks quietly, whispering like he’s going to wake something up. Like if he speaks too loudly, the sun will rise too soon, and they’ll run out of time.

“I don’t know,” Eddie breathes. He can’t pull his hand away, still touching Steve’s face. Steve is still letting him, and even in Eddie’s cloud-filled mind, he can’t help but think that he needs to savour this before Steve makes him stop. Before Steve decides that Eddie is weird, creepy. “Just…”

His eyes blearily find Steve’s neck. Trace lines between his moles. Recognize the stars. And Steve’s skin looks so fucking warm it’s like he has the sun under it all, like his blood cells are glowing and heating him from the inside out. Eddie’s fingers move on their own accord, like he has no control over them, and he thinks maybe they got a little too high tonight, but Steve doesn’t protest and his expression doesn’t change as Eddie’s hand slips to his neck and presses against his pulse. Eddie likes Steve’s pulse. He thinks maybe it’s a weird thing to like about someone, but it’s beautiful. Like a song coming from the Earth’s core.

“I think…” Eddie says softly, eyes trained on Steve’s throat because he can’t stop thinking about biting it in the least weird way possible. “...If I was, like, cursed. To, like, lose all memories,” he says choppily, words finding their out of his mouth before he can run them through his head. Before he can get a gist of what they actually sound like. “And then I was just… sent into the world without direction. I would look for you.”

Steve blinks at him, confusion shining in his eyes as his lips twitch into a smile.

“But if you lost all your memories you wouldn’t remember me,” he whispers.

Eddie loves it when he whispers. His voice is always low, but during nights like this, it’s like Steve fucking knows how his whispers affect Eddie. They get right under his skin, creep along his veins and the contours of his muscles until they find the crown of his head, and they fall down his spine like it’s a waterfall. They make him shiver.

“I’d still look for you,” he whispers back, eyes locked on Steve’s. It didn’t take him long after Everything to realize his eyes are greenish. Hazel. Specked with gold and diamonds. His hand finally falls because he wasn’t actually trying to hold it up and his body seems to forget what it’s doing. It lands on the ground between them, and Steve glances at it slowly. Then he looks back at Eddie, and he seems to get it.

“And I’d find you,” Eddie adds.

Steve hums quietly.

“What if I was… on the other side of the world?” he asks softly. “Or something. Far away.”

Eddie doesn’t think about it. He has his answer.

“I’d still find you. Nothing could stop me.”

Steve’s eyes are shining more now like he’s going to cry. Eddie didn’t want to make him cry. But fuck, he’s still so pretty.

“What if…” Steve pauses, blinking slowly at Eddie for a moment, eyes glistening. “What if I didn’t exist?”

Eddie’s eyebrows furrow for a split second as the question turns over in his head. It doesn’t make any sense. Like a math problem that’s missing too many variables to be solved. Eddie blinks at him.

“That’s… not possible,” he says. Whispers.

Now it’s Steve’s turn to look perplexed.

“What do you mean?”

Their faces are so close now, resting against the side of the bed. Knees bent toward the ceiling and the stars they can’t see, hands resting on the carpet that’s worn thin enough to see the shapes of the floorboards under it. Fingers centimeters from touching. Eddie can feel his warmth.

“You…” Eddie exhales, pausing. Thinking. He forgets that Steve doesn’t witness his own existence the way other people do. The way Eddie does. Something he wonders if anyone thinks of him the way he thinks of Steve. If he’d be able to tell. “You’re fucking everywhere, Stevie.”

Steve blinks at him again.

“Everywhere how?” he breathes. Listening like Eddie is telling him a story, like he’s recounting some fairy tale about whimsy and magic.

“Even if you… Even if you weren’t you you’d still…” He exhales again, shifting a little closer, turning his body slightly to face him more. Steve’s eyes look like they’re about to fall shut. “Even if you weren’t— if you weren’t human or something, you… I’d find you everywhere. I’d find… your eyes in the trees, and your smile in the sun, and your laughter in the wind, and your sould is— is at the center of the fucking Earth, and—” He cuts off because his eyes are suddenly stinging and his throat feels tight and he can’t really breathe, but he can’t stop talking.

“And I’m so fucking high right now, but Steve, I— I think I love you.”

And he’s crying now, tears spilling down his cheeks. On one side they fall straight down his face, over his jaw and down his neck. On the other, they soak into the blanket they’re resting on, darkening the fabric. Steve’s lips are parted as if in awe, like Eddie is something amazing, something incredible when he’s really just a crying, desperate mess, high out of his mind, high enough that he really just confessed his love—

And Steve is kissing him.

Eddie’s eyes close. His tears are getting on Steve’s face. Their lips are chapped. Eddie’s heart is beating too fast. His ass is sore from sitting on the floor. Steve’s hair is falling in their faces and it tickles.

Eddie gasps when Steve pulls away.

Both their eyes are wide, staring at each other in shock, but Eddie isn’t breathing. Steve’s hand is touching his face, his palm warm as it presses to Eddie’s cheek, fingers tucked behind his ear, fitting just right.

Steve exhales. Moves a little closer. Pulls so gently that Eddie barely feels it but is helpless as he falls forward enough that their foreheads touch. And Steve’s voice does that thing again where it crawls under Eddie’s skin as he whispers to him.

“I think I love you too.”

Eddie’s eyes close.

More tears slip down his cheeks and he can’t stop, hands trembling as the words turn over his in his head like earlier, except now they don’t tumble out of order and become rough and confused. They find their way, smoothed down by the edges of Eddie’s skull like glass in the sea.

And then he’s sobbing. Eyes squeezing shut, shoulders shaking, breaths sharp, and Steve is kissing him again even though he can’t reciprocate, so gentle and soft and careful that Eddie fucking aches with it. Steve’s lips press to his over and over and over again, kissing and kissing and kissing, patient and kind and sweet.

His hands are warm even though the fabric of Eddie’s clothes as he touches his waist, fingers spreading over his waist and pulling so he’s moving Eddie to his lap. Eddie can’t see through his tears but it doesn’t seem to matter as Steve touches his face, wipes his tears away tenderly, holds his cheeks and presses their foreheads together and whispers something Eddie can’t hear but he can feel.

His arms find their way around Steve’s neck, and he still feels so far away, and Eddie can’t wait until the high dies down so he can feel him. He closes his eyes, exhaling as Steve’s arms wrap around his waist and tug him closer so their chests press together.

All of his muscles ache. He lets out a soft noise that he’s never made before, and Steve hums back, a hand pressing into the small of his back firmly like he owns him, and Eddie keens. He buries his face in Steve’s neck, squeezes his eyes shut, and he takes a deep breath. Steve smells faintly like the cologne he always wears, the one that comes in the dark bottle he keeps on top of his dresser. Masculine and earthy and so Steve that Eddie can’t imagine him using any other cologne. But he also smells like weed. (The whole room does. Probably the whole apartment at this point.)

Eddie squeezes Steve, legs tight around his hips. Steve groans weakly, and one of his hands slips under Eddie’s shirt to slide across his skin. He’s so fucking warm.

Eddie’s breath is hot on the side of Steve’s neck as they clutch at one another, fingertips digging and pressing into soft skin, leaving bruises and crescent moons in their paths, and when Steve chokes out his name, slurred and weak but here and desperate, Eddie can only open his mouth against his skin. And Steve’s hand finds the back of Eddie’s head, fingers pushing into his already-tangled curls, catching knots and pulling too hard to feel good as Eddie traces his veins with his tongue.

Eddie’s tears mix with his drool on Steve’s bare skin. He can’t stop crying. Not when Steve keeps whispering to him, all these sweet words, calling Eddie all these sweet names like baby and honey and his name. Not when Steve keeps kissing him like this: soft and tender and loving. Like Eddie deserves it.

And Steve stays like this when Eddie comes, when his vision goes white for a few moments, when he falls lax against Steve’s body, their skin tacky with each other’s sweat.

When Eddie comes back to himself, he still feels high. Steve still looks high. Red-rimmed eyes, cheeks flushed with warmth, hair wild from Eddie’s hands. Except his lips are red and swollen from kisses and his neck is spotted with red and purple bruises from Eddie’s mouth, and he’s so beautiful Eddie’s chest hurts. And he’s glad that he doesn’t have to go looking for Steve in this universe. He’s glad that Steve is right in front of him, arms and legs wrapped around his tired body, firm in spite of the weed, that Steve is smiling and leaning in to kiss him once more.

♡ buy me a coffee ♡ taglist: @estrellami-1 @theplantscientist (comment to be added)

#guess whos back babey #idk what this writing style is but i needed this out of my system before i worked on other stuff #will be posting a preview of my next long fic soon hopefully #steddie #steddie one shot #steve harrington #steve harrington one shot #eddie munson #eddie munson one shot #steve x eddie

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lesmislettersdaily · 1 year

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Vague Flashes On The Horizon

Volume 1: Fantine; Book 5: The Descent; Chapter 5: Vague Flashes On The Horizon

Little by little, and in the course of time, all this opposition subsided. There had at first been exercised against M. Madeleine, in virtue of a sort of law which all those who rise must submit to, blackening and calumnies; then they grew to be nothing more than ill-nature, then merely malicious remarks, then even this entirely disappeared; respect became complete, unanimous, cordial, and towards 1821 the moment arrived when the word “Monsieur le Maire” was pronounced at M. sur M. with almost the same accent as “Monseigneur the Bishop” had been pronounced in Digne in 1815. People came from a distance of ten leagues around to consult M. Madeleine. He put an end to differences, he prevented lawsuits, he reconciled enemies. Every one took him for the judge, and with good reason. It seemed as though he had for a soul the book of the natural law. It was like an epidemic of veneration, which in the course of six or seven years gradually took possession of the whole district.

One single man in the town, in the arrondissement, absolutely escaped this contagion, and, whatever Father Madeleine did, remained his opponent as though a sort of incorruptible and imperturbable instinct kept him on the alert and uneasy. It seems, in fact, as though there existed in certain men a veritable bestial instinct, though pure and upright, like all instincts, which creates antipathies and sympathies, which fatally separates one nature from another nature, which does not hesitate, which feels no disquiet, which does not hold its peace, and which never belies itself, clear in its obscurity, infallible, imperious, intractable, stubborn to all counsels of the intelligence and to all the dissolvents of reason, and which, in whatever manner destinies are arranged, secretly warns the man-dog of the presence of the man-cat, and the man-fox of the presence of the man-lion.

It frequently happened that when M. Madeleine was passing along a street, calm, affectionate, surrounded by the blessings of all, a man of lofty stature, clad in an iron-gray frock-coat, armed with a heavy cane, and wearing a battered hat, turned round abruptly behind him, and followed him with his eyes until he disappeared, with folded arms and a slow shake of the head, and his upper lip raised in company with his lower to his nose, a sort of significant grimace which might be translated by: “What is that man, after all? I certainly have seen him somewhere. In any case, I am not his dupe.”

This person, grave with a gravity which was almost menacing, was one of those men who, even when only seen by a rapid glimpse, arrest the spectator’s attention.

His name was Javert, and he belonged to the police.

At M. sur M. he exercised the unpleasant but useful functions of an inspector. He had not seen Madeleine’s beginnings. Javert owed the post which he occupied to the protection of M. Chabouillet, the secretary of the Minister of State, Comte Anglès, then prefect of police at Paris. When Javert arrived at M. sur M. the fortune of the great manufacturer was already made, and Father Madeleine had become Monsieur Madeleine.

Certain police officers have a peculiar physiognomy, which is complicated with an air of baseness mingled with an air of authority. Javert possessed this physiognomy minus the baseness.

It is our conviction that if souls were visible to the eyes, we should be able to see distinctly that strange thing that each one individual of the human race corresponds to some one of the species of the animal creation; and we could easily recognize this truth, hardly perceived by the thinker, that from the oyster to the eagle, from the pig to the tiger, all animals exist in man, and that each one of them is in a man. Sometimes even several of them at a time.

Animals are nothing else than the figures of our virtues and our vices, straying before our eyes, the visible phantoms of our souls. God shows them to us in order to induce us to reflect. Only since animals are mere shadows, God has not made them capable of education in the full sense of the word; what is the use? On the contrary, our souls being realities and having a goal which is appropriate to them, God has bestowed on them intelligence; that is to say, the possibility of education. Social education, when well done, can always draw from a soul, of whatever sort it may be, the utility which it contains.

This, be it said, is of course from the restricted point of view of the terrestrial life which is apparent, and without prejudging the profound question of the anterior or ulterior personality of the beings which are not man. The visible I in nowise authorizes the thinker to deny the latent I. Having made this reservation, let us pass on.

Now, if the reader will admit, for a moment, with us, that in every man there is one of the animal species of creation, it will be easy for us to say what there was in Police Officer Javert.

The peasants of Asturias are convinced that in every litter of wolves there is one dog, which is killed by the mother because, otherwise, as he grew up, he would devour the other little ones.

Give to this dog-son of a wolf a human face, and the result will be Javert.

Javert had been born in prison, of a fortune-teller, whose husband was in the galleys. As he grew up, he thought that he was outside the pale of society, and he despaired of ever re-entering it. He observed that society unpardoningly excludes two classes of men,—those who attack it and those who guard it; he had no choice except between these two classes; at the same time, he was conscious of an indescribable foundation of rigidity, regularity, and probity, complicated with an inexpressible hatred for the race of bohemians whence he was sprung. He entered the police; he succeeded there. At forty years of age he was an inspector.

During his youth he had been employed in the convict establishments of the South.

Before proceeding further, let us come to an understanding as to the words, “human face,” which we have just applied to Javert.

The human face of Javert consisted of a flat nose, with two deep nostrils, towards which enormous whiskers ascended on his cheeks. One felt ill at ease when he saw these two forests and these two caverns for the first time. When Javert laughed,—and his laugh was rare and terrible,—his thin lips parted and revealed to view not only his teeth, but his gums, and around his nose there formed a flattened and savage fold, as on the muzzle of a wild beast. Javert, serious, was a watchdog; when he laughed, he was a tiger. As for the rest, he had very little skull and a great deal of jaw; his hair concealed his forehead and fell over his eyebrows; between his eyes there was a permanent, central frown, like an imprint of wrath; his gaze was obscure; his mouth pursed up and terrible; his air that of ferocious command.

This man was composed of two very simple and two very good sentiments, comparatively; but he rendered them almost bad, by dint of exaggerating them,—respect for authority, hatred of rebellion; and in his eyes, murder, robbery, all crimes, are only forms of rebellion. He enveloped in a blind and profound faith every one who had a function in the state, from the prime minister to the rural policeman. He covered with scorn, aversion, and disgust every one who had once crossed the legal threshold of evil. He was absolute, and admitted no exceptions. On the one hand, he said, “The functionary can make no mistake; the magistrate is never the wrong.” On the other hand, he said, “These men are irremediably lost. Nothing good can come from them.” He fully shared the opinion of those extreme minds which attribute to human law I know not what power of making, or, if the reader will have it so, of authenticating, demons, and who place a Styx at the base of society. He was stoical, serious, austere; a melancholy dreamer, humble and haughty, like fanatics. His glance was like a gimlet, cold and piercing. His whole life hung on these two words: watchfulness and supervision. He had introduced a straight line into what is the most crooked thing in the world; he possessed the conscience of his usefulness, the religion of his functions, and he was a spy as other men are priests. Woe to the man who fell into his hands! He would have arrested his own father, if the latter had escaped from the galleys, and would have denounced his mother, if she had broken her ban. And he would have done it with that sort of inward satisfaction which is conferred by virtue. And, withal, a life of privation, isolation, abnegation, chastity, with never a diversion. It was implacable duty; the police understood, as the Spartans understood Sparta, a pitiless lying in wait, a ferocious honesty, a marble informer, Brutus in Vidocq.

Javert’s whole person was expressive of the man who spies and who withdraws himself from observation. The mystical school of Joseph de Maistre, which at that epoch seasoned with lofty cosmogony those things which were called the ultra newspapers, would not have failed to declare that Javert was a symbol. His brow was not visible; it disappeared beneath his hat: his eyes were not visible, since they were lost under his eyebrows: his chin was not visible, for it was plunged in his cravat: his hands were not visible; they were drawn up in his sleeves: and his cane was not visible; he carried it under his coat. But when the occasion presented itself, there was suddenly seen to emerge from all this shadow, as from an ambuscade, a narrow and angular forehead, a baleful glance, a threatening chin, enormous hands, and a monstrous cudgel.

In his leisure moments, which were far from frequent, he read, although he hated books; this caused him to be not wholly illiterate. This could be recognized by some emphasis in his speech.

As we have said, he had no vices. When he was pleased with himself, he permitted himself a pinch of snuff. Therein lay his connection with humanity.

The reader will have no difficulty in understanding that Javert was the terror of that whole class which the annual statistics of the Ministry of Justice designates under the rubric, Vagrants. The name of Javert routed them by its mere utterance; the face of Javert petrified them at sight.

Such was this formidable man.

Javert was like an eye constantly fixed on M. Madeleine. An eye full of suspicion and conjecture. M. Madeleine had finally perceived the fact; but it seemed to be of no importance to him. He did not even put a question to Javert; he neither sought nor avoided him; he bore that embarrassing and almost oppressive gaze without appearing to notice it. He treated Javert with ease and courtesy, as he did all the rest of the world.

It was divined, from some words which escaped Javert, that he had secretly investigated, with that curiosity which belongs to the race, and into which there enters as much instinct as will, all the anterior traces which Father Madeleine might have left elsewhere. He seemed to know, and he sometimes said in covert words, that some one had gleaned certain information in a certain district about a family which had disappeared. Once he chanced to say, as he was talking to himself, “I think I have him!” Then he remained pensive for three days, and uttered not a word. It seemed that the thread which he thought he held had broken.

Moreover, and this furnishes the necessary corrective for the too absolute sense which certain words might present, there can be nothing really infallible in a human creature, and the peculiarity of instinct is that it can become confused, thrown off the track, and defeated. Otherwise, it would be superior to intelligence, and the beast would be found to be provided with a better light than man.

Javert was evidently somewhat disconcerted by the perfect naturalness and tranquillity of M. Madeleine.

One day, nevertheless, his strange manner appeared to produce an impression on M. Madeleine. It was on the following occasion.

#les mis #les mis letters #volume 1: fantine #book 5: the descent #chapter 5 #guess whos back babey

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