damned if i do (give a damn what people say)
It seems Steve Harrington is back off the market
The latest news on the pop star’s love life comes mere weeks after word of a fallout with longtime beau, journalist Nancy Wheeler. While neither party has confirmed the rumors, many of Harrington’s closest friends have hinted at the end of the relationship in interviews and on social media.
One thing everyone failed to mention, however, is that Harrington appears to have moved on and is now dating Corroded Coffin front-man, Eddie Munson.
The two have been friends for years, tracing as far back as the early 2010s, though it’s difficult to put a pin in exactly when they met. Neither are particularly vocal about their personal lives and often change the subject when the other comes up in an interview; a diversion tactic they’ve been playing for years.
Still, the alleged new couple has been spotted around some of Harrington’s favorite Manhattan hot spots several times over the past week.
The rockstar has a bit of an edgier vibe than Harrington’s usual flings; more outspoken and unpredictable than the ‘type’ Steve has typically shown an interest in; at least publicly.
Only time will tell if “Steddie” (so dubbed by the fans in support of the relationship) is true… and if they’ll last.
_____
“I can’t believe they think I’m dating Eddie,” Steve grumbled into the pillow on the floor of his hotel room. With a huff, he turned his head and looked off to the wall on the far side of the room. “I mean, it’s crazy that I can’t go out to dinner with anyone besides you and not be on a date.”
Robin leveled her foot to the center of his back, before shifting her weight onto it, then grinned in satisfaction as Steve groaned and his back popped loudly in several places. “It’s not like it’s that surprising. The tabloids went feral over you and Nancy breaking up after they were convinced you guys were already secretly married.” She shifted her weight back off him, dropping to sit cross-legged beside Steve. “Plus, it’s not that much of a stretch.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Steve asked, pushing himself up until he was sitting with his back against the wall, leg stretched out against Robin’s.
“It means you two have never looked at each other the way friends do. It makes sense that they’re picking that up.” Robin shrugged, brushing off her comment like it wasn’t shattering part of Steve’s bubble.
“We look at each other totally normally!”
The look Robin leveled Steve with had him pushing himself up off the floor and making his way toward the bathroom.
“I don’t have time for this right now, I need to start getting ready, but we don’t do anything normal friends wouldn’t because that’s what we are, Robin!”
“Are you trying to convince yourself of that, or me?” Robin asked and sighed heavily when Steve slammed the bathroom door closed in response.
It was only about five minutes before there was a familiar knock at the door; three in quick succession, followed by two after a short pause.
“I think we need to talk, sweetheart,” was understandable, despite being muffled by the door, before Steve was racing out of the bathroom to beat Robin to undoing the locks and letting Eddie in. “Why didn’t you tell me we’re dating?” Eddie asked through a pout, leaned against the doorframe.
Steve rolled his eyes and moved out of the way, letting Eddie follow him inside, before pointing at Robin. “See! Very much not dating!”
“Well,” Eddie started, teasingly, only to get hit in the face with a pillow from Steve’s bed. “I’m kidding, Steve. It’s not even a bad thing. I mean, they’re actually being really fucking cool about you being bisexual.”
“Being out as bi doesn’t mean that every person, regardless of their gender, is automatically my love interest just because I breathed near them.” Steve snapped, obviously frustrated despite Eddie’s attempts to ease the situation.
“Hey. Don’t get mean. You know what’s not what Eddie meant.” Robin responded. Steve looked back and forth between the two of them for a long moment, before he collapsed, face first, onto his mattress with a loud groan.
“C’mon, there’s no need to meltdown over this. If you want me to, I can post something about catching up with old friends to try to make it go away.” Eddie offered, gently, sitting down on the opposite side of the bed from Steve.
It took a long beat, but Steve eventually lifted his head from his pillows and shrugged. “I don’t want to make you do anything like that. It’s fine. It’ll all work out in the end. I'm just having a weird day, I guess.”
Eddie raised an eyebrow, and when Steve didn’t elaborate, he turned his head to Robin, who shrugged.
“Nancy texted him this morning asking to not talk about her at shows and he’s been in a sour mood about it since.”
“Robin!” Steve groaned, pressing his face back into his pillow miserably.
“Have you been, though?” Eddie asked, confused. “Talking about her, I mean? I thought I was doing a decent job at getting the highlights and I have no memory of you dropping anything profound about you and Nance on any crowds.”
“Not directly,” Steve spoke into his pillow, before turning his head and staring at the wall as he answered. “I made a few comments about my songs. How to get someone back. How to gaslight someone into thinking you love them before letting everything go at the drop of a hat for one of your best friends.”
A silence settled over the room for a moment, before Eddie burst into giggles, which set Robin off. Eventually Steve joined in, turning his attention to the two of them with a heavy sigh.
“I guess I was an asshole about it, huh?”
“I think it’s justifiable.” Eddie offered, to which Robin nodded in agreement as she started toying with Steve’s hair. “If you feel like you’re going to say something about Nancy, you could always say something to me instead. Really confuse the shit out of everyone.” He teased, but Steve beamed.
“Wait, that’s actually a great idea.”
Robin looked apprehensive, holding her hands in the air. “Steve, you remember you just freaked out about this, right? And now you’re going to play into it? Publicly?”
“It’ll be fun. I’m not gonna say anything directly about Eddie. But just. References. And then we can watch the fans lose their shit on TikTok later.” Steve reasoned with a grin, and Eddie smiled back at him.
“I promise to spend the entire show dancing my ass off and singing along. For the bit.” Eddie said, his hand over his heart.
“You do that anyway, you’re just usually backstage.” Robin pointed out, and Eddie rolled his eyes.
“Well, obviously, I have to join you and Dustin in the family tent tonight. Duh.”
“Yes!” Steve agreed with a laugh. “This is going to be so much fun!”
“You’re both psychotic.”
_____
“Indianapolis, you're making me feel awfully special tonight.” Steve bit at his lip as he looked around Lucas Oil Stadium to thousands of people screaming back at him. “This is as close to a hometown show as I really get these days, so thank you for always making sure to remind me how special of a place home is.”
The music started to pick up again, but Steve kept talking. “I kind of spent the last few years coasting by without anyone paying too much attention, but now that I’m back on the road, everyone’s suddenly deeply invested in my life, and it's strange to be back so close to somewhere I called home for so long, in the same position I was in five years ago.” He ran his fingers through his hair, before huffing out a laugh.
“But you guys, you've always been there. Unwavering in a way I will never be able to express my gratitude for.” he paused to glance around the crowd again, grinning as they cheered. “Not many people can say the same, you know?”
“Where is he going with this?” Dustin asked, leaning close to Robin, who shrugged, trying not to have a visible reaction. There were always cameras on them in public like this. Any reaction would be taken out of context and exaggerated.
“Did you see the tabloid rumors about Eddie and Steve?” She replied, and couldn’t help but smile as Dustin’s head whipped back forward to Steve.
“I mean, there’s Robbie, the kids I used to babysit. And, uh…” he trailed off, which Eddie took as his cue to move to the front of the family tent. “Maybe someone else. This one's for you.” Steve said, leaving the “you” ambiguous enough to be open for interpretation.
Eddie, hamming it up, made a heart with his hands, before immediately starting to headbang along to the love song next in the setlist.
_____
In a surprising twist, Dustin managed to wait until the security team had moved them out of the crowd and behind the stage with the crew nearly two hours later before his outburst.
“What the fuck?!” He asked as soon as the were away from the crowd. “Why are you two playing into this? It’s just going to get more headlines and attention on the two of you, which neither of you usually like!”
“But it’s different if it’s on our terms.” Eddie responded, not even looking up from his phone as he answered Dustin.
“Is it, though? Is it really on your terms if it’s not even true?” Dustin sounded exasperated, and while Robin could relate, she was planning on sitting this one out until Eddie shoved his phone into her face.
“It’s already on TikTok. 4 videos in.” He said with a grin as Robin watched Eddie make a hand heart toward the stage before his hair started flopping all over as he sang along. The clip was captioned “steddie is real!!!”
“So you’re proud you’re deceiving fans?” She asked, which made Eddie’s grin fall.
“Don't be so dramatic,” Steve called as he approached from the stage exit. He was covered in sweat and still in his performance clothes, holding a half empty water bottle. “It’s all in good fun. They never need to know if it was real or not.”
“I think you’re downplaying this by a lot. What happens the next time one of you is seen out on a date?” Dustin pressed, and continued despite the way Steve rolled his eyes. “I mean it, an honest to god date. People are going to lose their minds, trying to figure out what broke up Steve and Eddie, when you were never even together in the first place! They’ll turn you against each other, they always do. And if you weren’t dating, isn’t that just as bad of a look?”
“Woah. Henderson. Chill. It’ll be fine, man. You’re WAY overthinking this.” Eddie said, before he grinned at Steve. “Could you see my hand heart from the stage?”
“I could. Did you catch the wink I sent your way at the end of the song?”
“I did, nice touch! I patted my hand over my heart, so maybe that’ll end up on social, too.”
“I’m going to throw myself into the White River.” Dustin groans loudly, to a round of laughs and elbow nudges.
_____
Steve could pinpoint the exact moment things finally felt out of hand two weeks later.
He was getting ready for the show that will wrap up his first weekend at his “home away from home” in 5 years when Eddie texted him about being late to that night’s show.
It shouldn’t have mattered.
Eddie had missed the last two shows in Chicago
It shouldn’t matter.
Eddie’d been there, religiously, at the 4 shows before Chicago on the tour, and 6 others before that when his band wasn’t playing their own concerts. Steve even made 3 trips of his own to Corroded Coffin shows, around his own obligations.
But it still made him frown at his phone for a moment too long. Long enough Robin caught him.
“More headlines about Steddie?” She asked, slipping the phone from his hands before he could stop her. When she read over the message, though, her expression softened. “Oh, Steve, I’m sorry.”
“It’s no big deal.” Steve rushed out, snatching his phone back and shoving it into his pocket. “It’s fine. I’m not upset, there’s no reason to feel sorry. Besides, he just said he’ll be late, he didn’t say he isn’t coming.”
“Would you be upset if he wasn’t coming, then?” Robin asked. Steve glared daggers at her, and sighed when she held her hands in the air, feigning innocence.
“I don’t know.” He mumbled, honestly.
___
The intro tape was just about to start as Steve was making his usual trek toward his starting point, when he heard someone running and calling his name from behind him, rather than out in the crowd. He paused and turned, to see Eddie rushing toward him.
“I’m so sorry, I just wanted you to see that I made it before you went on!” He was out of breath, his hair more wild from running than usual, and Steve…
Well, frankly, Steve was tired of pretending like Eddie wasn’t the hottest person he’d ever seen.
So Steve met Eddie halfway, threw his arms around his neck and pressed their lips together in a move Eddie seemed to have anticipated because he wasted no time returning the favor.
It was only Steve’s cue music that had him breaking away, biting at his lip and grinning at Eddie, who grinned back at him, before using the hands he’d placed on Steve’s waist at some point in the interaction to turn Steve toward the stage.
“Go, before you miss the start of your own show, superstar. I’ll still be here after.” Eddie said.
“Promise?” Steve called over his shoulder as he made his way toward the stage’s catwalk.
“Cross my heart, big boy.” Eddie drew an x over his heart for dramatic effect, then laughed and ran his fingers through his hair as he watched Steve run to make it to his place on time.
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GHOSTS WITH HEARTBEATS
When Jason had been going to Gotham Academy, he had (for a good reputation for the media and to help him catch up on his penmanship, remember he had been on the streets and dropped out of school before getting picked up by Bruce for a while) signed up for a penpal project for 'less privileged people' to write to.
(Although Jason was annoyed the penpal project stayed within the states and only selected a middle of nowhere town, he knew the Richie Rich Elites would never subjugate their 'Heirs' to actual kids in need of learning how to read and write)
But Jason didn't mind his penpal.
Danny Fenton was a riot to talk, err write to in all honestly.
From his dry punny humor (and boy can he give even Dick a run for his money in the pun department but hey using some of them actually got Dick to warm up to him a few missions ago) and death jokes so many death jokes, to his nerdy love for space Jason enjoyed writing to Danny.
Even the short stories he would write about a ghost kid protecting a small town from other ghosts was interesting to read. He really liked the different kinds of ghosts there could be. Granted some seemed very OP like that Clockwork dude.
Jason liked writing to Danny, and even after the penpal project was over they had plans to keep sending letters, maybe even exchange numbers soon...
But then he died by the hands of the Joker.
The letters leaving Wayne Manor may had decreased but the letters being sent never did or at least until a few years ago.
Then Jason somehow returned to the land of the living.
Got taken by the LoA, tossed in the green waters and turned into their Pit Raged weapon for a while before leaving them behind and setting out for his revenge against the Joker and to force B's hand.
And becoming a Crime Boss for a while too. Can't forget that.
Point being with all this going on, the old warm memories of exchanging letters with Danny Fenton was pushed into the back of his mind and forgotten about for a while.
It isn't until one afternoon at Wayne Manor that while roughhousing with Dick, who had Jason in a brotherly headlock as they walked down a hall to one of the sitting rooms, that while Jason had slipped out of Dick's hold had stumbled into a hallway desk that had a few things on the top of it, one of the things being a small box that tumbled off when Jason hit it.
The box lid opened and out of it spilled out a good number of letters.
"Shiii-p, dang it Dick!" Jason said when he looked at the mess he accidentally made and stopped himself from swearing, the place might be named Wayne Manor but everyone knew this was Alfie's domain and no swearing was a rule within his halls.
Dick only laughed and teased only in a way a sibling can do "Hey not my fault your as big as a tank Jaybird! We should get you some caution signals if you keep bumping into things!"
Jason flipped him his favorite finger, thankfully Alfred only knew when they swore thus it did not summon him, and bent down to the letters.
His hands froze when he recognized the hand writing and the address it was sent from.
"From: Danny Fent Nightingale
Amity Park, IL"
To: Jason Todd-Wayne
Gotham City, NJ.
Wayne Manor"
And when Jason opened the letter. He really wasn't expecting what was written inside.
"Jason.
I'm finally leaving Amity Park. I can't be there anymore, not after everything. I'm too tired, and emotionally hurt. Everything is just to much. And I can't keep doing this to myself. My parents still can’t understand there is nothing ‘wrong’ with me or why I refuse to let them take care of Ellie, I refuse to let her live the way Jazz and I did, Jazz has to much on her plate already with her own life and college but she’s been hounding me to reach out to mom and dad, Sam refuses to listen to me when I tell her I want to be more than ‘Phantom’ in Amity Park, and Tucker is so busy trying to get into a good college and job we barely have time to talk nowadays. And don’t get me started on Vlad, that fruitloop’s been breathing down my neck since Ellie’s deaging.
Despite how much of a hellhole you like to call it, I think Gotham might be my, no mine and Ellie’s best bet of living some kind of life, especially now since the whole deaging she had to go through, she needs an ectoplasm rich city as well and since she has no actual papers because she was my clone and I remember you saying Gotham has people who can create new identities and-
I’m rambling again, to letter you again. I really need to stop it.
I can’t keep pretending you’re going to read these.
I know you’ll never read these. You’re gone. I can’t even find you in the Realms no matter where I look.
I’m sorry. For using you as, well, a way to vent my life for last couple of years. I shouldn’t had done it but it helped me.
Believing my friend was still alive and getting my letters I mean.
Again I’m sorry.
This will be my last letter to your ghost, pun unintended.
Goodbye Jason. Wish us luck in your city.
-Danny Fen-Nightingale...."
The sent date on the letter was roughly eight years ago.
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it's silly but the biggest reason why im not into t yet is bc im so afraid of losing my hair. do you have any solutions/tips for it?
first of all, i don’t think it’s silly — it’s natural to be worried when hair loss is talked about by so many people as like…one of the worst results of aging for men. listening to my dad talk about how much he hates balding definitely did not make me feel particularly good about the knowledge that i may very well be joining him someday. i’m not saying the fear is right, because i don’t think hair loss is something awful that we should avoid at all costs, but it’s an understandable fear given the beauty standards we’re working with, and it’s one that a lot of us (myself included) feel.
one thing that’s helped me is just…paying more attention to the guys that i interact with on a daily basis. i’ve learned two things from it: 1) hair loss is super fucking common. i’d say it’s much harder to find an adult man who isn’t balding at all than it is to find one who’s completely bald. and 2) if you forget everything you’ve been told about how bad hair loss is, you’ll realize that quite frankly, every single one of those guys looks totally fucking fine. it doesn’t ruin their appearance and make them ugly, it looks totally natural and isn’t really even something you’d notice if you weren’t looking for it. we put so much weight on it but it’s really just not that big of a deal. i’ll hear my parents talk shit about men in my family who are losing their hair when i didn’t even notice a difference last time i saw them. it’s one of those things (like so many other appearance-related things) that you really only notice at all because you’ve been taught that you’re supposed to care about it.
this isn’t something i’ve done personally, but if you really want to desensitize yourself to the idea of it, embrace the time-honored queer tradition of just shaving your whole damn head! find out what you’d look like without hair, find out how you feel about it and what you can do that makes you feel good about your appearance without hair, test the waters while it’s still a temporary change and not something permanent. that way, it won’t feel like this big scary unknown, and you’ll actually have a frame of reference for your feelings about how you look without hair rather than accepting the societal assumption that you’ll inevitably hate it. if you don’t want to actually shave your head, you could also just fuck around with bald filters or photoshop and see what happens.
oh, and if you’re attracted to men, keep an eye out for guys who are bald or balding and also hot as fuck. in my experience, there’s no insecurity or potential future insecurity that being gay for other men hasn’t helped me with. just off the top of my head, i can think of a couple actors who i think are absolutely fucking gorgeous who have helped me get over my fears about losing my hair. despite what our anti-aging-obsessed world might want you to think, there is no such thing as a physical feature that automatically makes someone less attractive, and while making attractiveness less of a priority in your life is good, it can’t hurt to also give yourself some proof that actually, you might lose your hair and look hot as hell doing it.
basically, entertain the possibility that it won’t be a bad thing at all! whether that’s just because it turns out to be a neutral thing for you or because you end up actually liking it, it’s not an inherently bad thing. i’ve ended up liking a lot of things that were “supposed to” be bad effects of t — i love the weight i’ve gained and the new shape it gives my body, i get a lot of gender euphoria from the fact that my acne is now on parts of my face that i saw a lot of guys in high school get it and i’m not complaining about the scars i get from it either because i’ve always liked the added texture that acne scars give my skin, and so on. i think there’s a lot of joy to be had in the changes we’re taught to fear, once we look past that conditioning and actually explore how we feel about it.
but if it’s something you really don’t want and you just want to improve your chances of not having to deal with it, it’s not like there’s nothing you can do! products like finasteride (oral) and minoxidil (usually topical but i think there might also be oral versions) are pretty commonly used among trans guys, for the purpose of avoiding hair loss and for other reasons, and there are plenty of other anti-hair loss products out there (though i don’t know how effective any one of them might be). if it’s a big enough deal for you, you can just decide that you’ll go off of t if/when you start noticing signs of it, since no longer having higher t levels would stop the process in its tracks. and if you don’t find prevention options that work for you so it ends up happening, you can always explore different hair styles (judging by the pattern of hair loss i see in my family, i suspect that keeping my hair long would make it less obvious if i started losing mine), find your preferred method of covering it when you don’t feel good about it (personally i love a good beanie generally and would probably wear them a lot more if i didn’t have hair to worry about because my main complaint is the way they press my hair onto my neck), or just shave it all off if you don’t like the look of the partial balding but don’t mind a shaved head. the point being — you have options!
at the end of the day, whether you go on t or not, you’re going to see your body change as you age in ways that aren’t always going to be attractive to others or aesthetically pleasing to you. that’s just the reality of having a body. even if you never went on t, you’d get older and you might see your hair thin out even if you don’t bald, you’ll see your skin start to wrinkle and sag in places that used to be smooth, your metabolism might slow or your body fat might start to gather in new places; hell, you might lose your hair for a totally different reason and end up in the same place but without the benefits of having been on t that whole time. life is full of bodily changes like that. transphobes will fearmonger about the permanent changes of testosterone all day long but the truth is, there is no escaping permanent bodily changes. whether or not you go on t, your body now isn’t the same as it will be in 1 or 5 or 10 or 20 or 50 years, just like it isn’t the same as it was at any point in your life before now. our bodies are never supposed to stop growing and aging and changing throughout our lives. there’s no guaranteeing that we’ll love every single change our bodies go through, but that’s okay! there are so many things in life that are more important than the way our bodies look. even if you go on t and lose your hair and don’t like how it looks, your life won’t be ruined; plenty of other things will bring you joy and more than make up for the insecurities.
just think about the gender euphoria and relief from dysphoria that t could give you. would losing your hair be bad enough to outweigh all of that? or is it just the pressure of a society that decided balding is bad that’s making you fear one single change despite how much joy you could have if you let that fear go? only you can decide if going on t is worth the potential downsides for you, but i suspect that for most of us, the benefits of going on t far outweigh the possibility of side effects like hair loss happening down the line.
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“You’ve never had sex before, have you?” you spit the question out before you can help it. Choso’s eyes go wide at that, his eyebrow twitching ever so slightly, before he tries to quickly school his expression to one of indifference. you don’t believe him for a moment though, especially with the way his hands start to tap at the bedsheets beneath him.
“What makes you say that?” he asks you, his voice rough and low. this close, you can see the uncertainty laying there. his hair is still in his signature buns, his fringe covers dark plum eyes that can’t find a single place on your face to settle. they dart from your own gaze to your lips, to your chin where your lipgloss has smeared from kissing him. he squeezes your waist tightly before he places his hands back against the bed, seemingly unsure of what he should do with himself.
“Your mannerisms,” you mutter, head tilted to the side as you start running your finger down the column of his neck. “How unsteady and unsure you are about everything; my body, where your hands should go, how long you should suck on my tongue when you kiss me. You’re so in your head, I figured you’re either nervous because it’s me or because you’ve never done this before.”
“Both.” He answers in a rush of breath, palms finding your waist once more, his eyes a little wider than usual. “My father never taught me anything about sex, and I was too busy taking care of my brothers to really think about it. So this is all,” his voice slowly disappears with every inch of skin you reveal to him, a sly smirk spreading across your face.
“New?” You finish for him, shirt suddenly tossed across the room. He nods with a thick swallow, an obvious struggle to keep looking at your face, scared that he might objectify you and make you uncomfortable, but his look does everything but. “Do you want to fuck me, Choso?”
he groans so loud, you fear he’s cum in his pants already. it sure does feel like it, with how his cock twitches, thick where you rest on top of his pelvis, a wet spot suddenly growing between your legs. you can’t help but rock your hips ever so gently against him, grinning when his eyes fly shut and squeeze, his hands gripping you so tightly that you can’t tell whether or not he wants to stop you or encourage you.
“Do you?” you ask him again when he doesn’t answer, his lip bitten tightly between his teeth. “Do you wanna know what it feels like to be inside me? Feel me cum on your cock? Don’t you wanna fill me up with your cum?”
he seizes you before you can register his speed, his hands quick and fast and tight and pulling everything he can. you can’t help but laugh against his mouth and let him mold himself to your body in every way that he sees fit.
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