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hitlikehammers · 2 months

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whole wide world

rating: t ♥️ cw: criminal-levels of softness, rockstar!Eddie, teacher! Steve, gooey-clingy-heart-eyes Eddie needs his Stevie ♥️ tags: established relationship, rockstar!eddie, teacher!steve, rockstar husbands, amateur musicals, steve needs to stop using a ladder unsupervised because nothing bad happened this time but eddie is concerned that is the love of his life, soul-deep love, slice of life, softness

for @steddielovemonth day thirteen: Love is showing up when someone doesn’t ask ❤️ (@steddieas-shegoes)

look who's back, just like every other day, it's the rockstar husbands from je ne regrette rien being their codependent, desperately-in-love selves again! ♥️

“Goddamnit,” Steve curses the staple gun, the dry-rotted wood he’s trying to use it on, the acrylic-covered tarp masquerading as a backdrop leaving little crackle-dust everywhere every single time it fucking falls because the wood’s shit, the staples are shit, his co-advisor’s kid’s sick with the flu, the kids are in the band room rehearsing the opening number and Steve really cannot fucking believe he got roped into this to begin with, actually, like, how the fuck did the middle school guidance-counselor-slash-study-hall-monitor get conned into helping with the high school drama club, just because one of his JV soccer players landed the lead and bemoaned loudly enough during laps how they didn’t know if they’d be able to make the performance even work, because the choir teacher’s on maternity leave and the band director’s kind of a dick, and the needed more help—

Steve only is even in the high school for the goddamn athletics office. For, y’know, the equipments for the athletes.

Yet: here he is. Standing on a rusty fucking ladder that probably needs a spotter, to be honest, and if Steve’s admitting that then yeah, it definitely needs someone holding the goddamn thing, but here he is, already two hours after the final bell, trying to stick a painting of mattressesin a stack that only vaguely looks like mattresses so thank god that’s in the show title—

The ladder wobbles a little when he tries to catch the tarp-thing again but he can’t reach far enough without risking a long way down to a very hard stage floor, so the backdrop’s sacrificed back to the ground—a-fucking-gain—as he shifts his weight to steady the steps and it’s a close thing, he’s about ninety-seven percent sure he’s aimed the teetering feet of it back to solid ground okay but he glances around quick just in case, tries to figure if there’s anything he can grab for and let the ladder go on its own if need-be, and—

“That’s fucking dangerous, big boy,” a deep, and deeply unexpected, voice trails up from the floor, clipped with stress, with fear because Steve fucking knows that voice, and the ladder’s suddenly fully steady so he can turn and look and—

“Gonna give me a goddamn stroke or something, finding you up on one of these all by your lonesome,” Eddie’s staring up at him, and the words could be teasing, and Steve thinks maybe they intend to be, but: those eyes are too big. There’s a pulse Steve can count in that throat, even from seven-feet-up.

So he does what any man in love with his husband would do in the face of said-husband in fear, and for him: Steve climbs down careful, but quick, with Eddie’s hands scrambling to make sure of the ‘careful’ part as soon as he can reach, and then he turns, and then he lands on solid ground again to pull Eddie in and thank every colleague of his he’d been cursing in his mind for leaving him alone to do all this shit, because alone is the reason he gets to kiss his lover hard, and full; wrap around him and let him squeeze Steve to the point where it aches, where it creaks in his bones, like proof.

Lets Eddie attach his lips to suck a bruise, possessive and needy and protective all at once along his throat, and yeah:

Exactly like proof.

“What are you doing here?” Steve asks when they pull apart just the slightest bit, because he wasn’t expecting Eddie to be home until probably close-on to midnight, let alone at the school well before five.

“Thought you could maybe use an extra set of hands,” Eddie shrugs like it’s a casual thing, showing up just to help out when he’s on a press cycle, and it’s evident even in his attire that that’s the case, if you know what to look for: more chains from his jeans, thicker soles on his boots just flirting with being platforms, at least two rings on every finger—save just one.

One has a ring, and a carefully-preserved and repeatedly-reinforced bread-bag tie: both serving the same purpose in very different points in their lives.

Point being: Eddie was wading through photoshoots and magazine spreads and radio spots and every fucking thing, and no matter how high he’s raising his eyebrow in a clear calling out of how he found Steve atop a shaky ladder as being obvious evidence of having use of an extra set of hands, the fact remains:

“But you’ve got the interview—“ the big ass interview with that shock-jock guy Steve kinda hates, but that’s a big fucking deal, and was the precise reason Steve wasn’t lamenting giving up his afternoon and evening to the at-least-halfway-to-lost-cause of the not-even-an-actual-full-fledged-theatre department: he wasn’t going to have Eddie home before bed anyway.

And yet: here stands the man.

“The boys have got it,” Eddie shrugs, like he actually doesn’t give a shit, and that’s…he does give a shit, he had sounded excited about it last night when they’d talked about their plans for the week over dinner, when Steve had bemoaned the travesty of this fucking production of Once Upon A Boxspring or whatever, and Eddie’d told him he was pretty sure he was going to be able to say fuck on the show even if they’d edit it, like he wouldn’t get in trouble, and he’d looked like a kid in a goddamn candy shop about it so yeah: Steve thinks he kinda did give a shit.

But he’s…not there.

“Gareth’s been itching to take the reins after he won out the final track list,” Eddie offers as explanation; “cocky bastard.”

And they collaborate on all the writing, music and lyrics, they’re not even the slightest bit competitive about it which would be hard to believe if all you saw of the members of Corroded Coffin were their goddamn shenanigans during a campaign; but the one think in their music that they docompete over?

Whose title-idea gets the opener on a given album. And Gareth did end up scooping them all when the execs came back with a shuffle. Steve had watched it unfold in real time; he doesn’t think he’s ever heard a grown man crow like Gareth had, and he is married to Edward fucking Munson.

So that’s saying something.

“Eds,” Steve tries to prod a little at the point of it all though, because Eddie’s got press, and this is a high school, and probably Eddie could get to the studio in time to catch the end of whatever, it’s prerecorded, he knows that much, they could squeeze a live interview in so they could probably do Eddie at the end and just shuffle it around, right, it’s easy, and that’s so much more important than this because this:

“Eds, it’s just a—“

“It’s the spring musical, baby,” Eddie says like he’s announcing the arrival of the president, of the Queen of England, then his eyes soften a little as he flicks at one of the real mattresses that will, presumably, be props for the actors if the show’s title isn’t a fucking lie: “you know that’s where my DM throne had its humble origins, before I elevated it to greatness?”

Steve did know that, not least because they’d smuggled Eddie in to DM a few special sessions before the gremlins graduated, and he’d taken his seat with regal aplomb every time, and Steve had learned that yeah, they used the random storage room that was mostly drama shit for Hellfire.

And the way he’d learned that was by sucking Eddie off hidden by some very ratty but very conveniently poofy ballgowns from a production of Cinderella.

“I missed you.”

Steve turns to him and blinks; Eddie’s eyes are on the mattress, his stance almost a little shy.

“You saw me this morning,” Steve doesn’t ask, exactly, but he…he’s not sure he’s following, is the thing.

“I was,” Eddie sighs, and flops to sit down on the mattress which, thankfully, is a mattress and gives a little, bounces under him.

“I was just feeling, I dunno,” he gives a shrug that fades into something like a shiver, and then Eddie’s arms come around too hug around his middle as he ducks his chin and, oh no.

None of that.

“I thought about you being, you know, you,” and Eddie gets to gesture at the mess of the stage only halfway before Steve’s catching his hand, lacing their fingers and pulling Eddie back up to standing, then back into Steve’s arms here he leans heavy, sighs deeper this time; relief instead of something shallow.

“Just you doing all this when you don’t even have a horse in the race, y’know?” Eddie muffles into the side of Steve’s neck, burrowed in tight. “And I was supposed to be in the zone about press and shit, and it just,” he shakes his head, which is more like the brush of his lips back and forth against Steve’s skin; “it wasn’t clicking at all, like I posed and did the looks and whatever,” and oh, Steve knows the looks, Steve has about half those looks printed out and framed in various parts of their home or tucked safe inside his wallet, whereas the other half he takes great joy in recreating at random to the chagrin of his darling husband, love of his whole goddamn life.

“Then Jeff asked if I wanted to duck out,” and Eddie smiles up at him, a little sheepish; they both know the boys can see right through Eddie feeling needy, or lovelorn; Steve’s grateful as shit for Eddie’s bandmates, their friends, for knowing when Eddie just needs Steve.

“I didn’t even think twice, just,” Eddie swallows hard, a little, peeking up through lashes and bangs as he exhales:

“Just wanted to see you before the middle of the fucking night.”

And what can Steve do in the face of that, really? He can’t argue it. Wouldn’t ever fucking want to.

“I love you,” he frames Eddie’s face and kiss the bridge of his nose, then soft between his brows as he breathes out with his whole heart: “so goddamn much.”

“Can you promise me you won’t do the,” Eddie tips his head behind them; “the ladder thing, at least not by yourself?” And Eddie’s eyes are so, so big again. “Like, pretty please, don’t do that again?”

“I won’t,” Steve swears it, and kisses him firm to seal the promise: “thanks for coming to the rescue.” Because there was a three percent chance Steve was going to wipe the fuck out from very very high, and he’s have survived it, but he’s not twenty anymore, and it would have fucking sucked, probably for a while.

“Always, baby,” Eddie murmurs, still tight against Steve lips before he straightens a little, and this time he’s framing Steve’s face, but more holding him still in place, emphatic:

“Actually, amendment,” he says seriously, eyes darting between Steve’s a tiny-touch frantic: “next time you need to be on a ladder, you call me first,” he damn-well declares it, rather than asks; “so I can hold it steady.”

“My hero,” Steve breathes against him with a smile, and there’s not even a hint of teasing in it.

“I don’t trust any other hands to catch you, baby,” Eddie tells him, a little too raw; full sincerity bleeding from him all the sudden as he caresses down the cheeks he’s still cupping: “no one else in the whole wide world appreciates what you’re worth.”

“And what’s that, exactly,” Steve scoffs a little, playful where he’s held in Eddie’s arms but Eddie: Eddie’s holding him tight, now, and his heartbeat’s heavy where he’s moving to crush Steve to his chest, and there’s a little wavering pitch of something in his voice when he whispers:

“The whole wide world,” and oh.

That’s the answer.

It’s Steve’s answer, too, to the same exact question, but hearing it said so plain never stops feeling like the ending and remaking of the whole wide world, every time.

So yeah, Steve has to take a minute to swallow through the tightness in his throat, and maybe he does that with his forehead bowed against his husbands so they breathe each other in as a rule just in the course of living in the moment, together—and when the straighten up Steve steals a kiss first, quick but hard, with feeling, before he cracks his neck and sighs, taking in the scene that’s settled around them.

“Help me try and figure this out to hang?” Steve kicks at the tarp-tapestry, and Eddie walks its perimeter critically before frowning up at Steve.

“Think it needs some touch ups,” he pronounces solemnly, and fuck, yeah, all the color-dust from the useless staple-holes and the falling. But his husband’s actually really good with details, and matching colors, and using a brush, and fantasy settings—

“Paint’s in the back,” he says with a lilt of suggestion and Eddie lights up and grabs Steve’s hand to drag him toward the promise of painting, like maybe all he needed really was just…this.

tag list (comment to be added): @pearynice @hbyrde36 @slashify @finntheehumaneater @wxrmland @dreamwatch @perseus-notjackson

♥️

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