The sound of a promise

Steph makes a few aborted sounds in her throat before slapping her hand against her mouth while Eddie pounds into her. Her muffled sounds make him look up and notice that she's silencing herself and his hips still. 

She blinks up at him, confused at his sudden stillness.

"Does it not feel good?" he asks with a slight pout to his lips.

She shakes her head immediately.

"It does," she croaks out before slapping the hand back over her mouth. Eddie frowns.

"Then I want to hear it. Please."

She shakes her head again, but it's small and hesitant this time. She spreads her fingers, not ready to take the hand away, but wanting to be heard.

"I can't control my voice, you know..." She makes a vague gesture to her mouth, her neck, and the vocal cords beneath. "Like this. There's only so much estrogen can do."

For @stevieweek : Sports

I love preppy ethereal goddess Stevie, but the other part of Steve's character is very much the big beefy barbarian jock archetype and I think we need more of the best of both worlds (p.s. fuck yeah buff trans women)

🐙 Second Mate 🐙

Written for day 3 of @stevieweek | Rating: E | WC: 4,911 | Tags: Monster fucking, tentacles, kidnapping (that sounds bad it's okay I swear there's a happy ending!) Octocreature Eddie Munson, fem Steve Harrington See ao3 for the full list of tags and the complete fic!

Snippet below!

Stevie Harrington had always believed in soulmates,that there was someone out there for everyone, but by the time Robin Buckley had come along Stevie's heart had been trampled on so much that she was half ready to give up on her search.

Despite not getting along at first, Robin managed to fit into her world in a way no one else had. There weren't sparks there, but the first time Robin called them soulmates Stevie didn't even question it.

Who said all soulmates had to be romantic, anyway?

Stevie was more than okay with it being the two of them for the rest of their lives. Knowing who her soulmate was took the pressure off of her, and her dating life turned into something she was able to enjoy again since she wasn't hunting for the perfect person. Just… someone she could have fun with, who could make her laugh.

Someone who would love her, soulmate or not.

The singles cruise was Robin's idea. She'd been broken up with Vicki for almost two months, and Stevie hadn't seen anyone seriously in even longer than that. They could meet people, hook up for a night or two. And worst case scenario, they would've at least gotten a vacation out of it.

"What's the worst thing that can happen, a hangover?" Robin had asked.

She should've known better to put that question out into the world, though, because their second night on the ship, while Stevie stood watching the waves below, something worse than a hangover did happen.

One second she was watching the water, the next something was grabbing her around her waist. She barely had time to scream before she was pulled over the side, into the depths below.

Frigid water soaked her clothes, her hair, filled her lungs and burned her sinuses. It was so dark she couldn't even see her hands in front of her face. She pulled at the thing around her waist, but it was too strong. There was no use.

Not that she had long to try, either, before two more of the things were wrapping around her wrists, another around her legs.

There was something glowing in the water. Stevie was trying to hold on, praying that this thing would be what saved her. Maybe she was going closer to the surface again after all, and that was the searchlight trying to find her.

It wasn't the surface, though. Stevie fought to stay awake as she was pulled closer to the source of the light.

The last thing she could make out before the world went dark was two rows of small, sharp teeth set in a pale face.

Divider credit

Long Haul

Written for day 2 of @stevieweek | Companion piece to Wallpaper Rating: G | WC: 1,150 | Tags: Eddie Munson POV, Coming out, MTF Steve Harrington ao3 | Divider credit

If Steve and Robin both have to be there to break this big news to Eddie he knows it must be something really bad.

That's how it always goes, bad news. He's told to sit down and listen while the grownups talk at him. Not to him, no, he didn't get anyone actually trying to talk to him until Wayne.

Still, Eddie tries not to look like he's ready to throw up while Steve and Robin stand in front of the couch. The way their hands are clasped together, and with how straight and tense they're standing, Eddie can't help but think of the fucked up twins from The Shining.

The thought makes him laugh, but the laughter only heightens his anxiety– which is then heightened even more when Robin shoots a Look at him that he can't quite figure out.

"Stevie… sweetheart, I can't read your mind. If this is bad news, I'd really rather you just tell me." Eddie shifts uncomfortably. The fingers of his right hand fidget with one of the rings on his left, spinning it around and around. "I can take it, whatever it is."

The look Steve gives Robin drops a bowling ball right into the center of Eddie's chest. Steve has tears in his eyes, and he's shaking, and fuck . This is very fucking bad.

Eddie wracks his brain, tries to think back on what he said or did. Maybe there was something he didn't do that he was supposed to do and now Steve is dumping him over it. Really, it was only a matter of time. Steve is good, so fucking good, and Eddie never deserved him in the first place.

And of course Robin's going to be here for it, because Steve dumping him as a boyfriend means Robin is dumping him as a friend. They're a package deal, you don't get one without the other.

"Eddie!" Robin's voice breaks through his mental spiraling.

Eddie clears his throat, drops his hands between his knees again and looks at the two of them. "Sorry. Sorry, yes. I'm here."

"Did you hear… any of that?" Robin asks.

Eddie flushes, opens his mouth, digs for anything that one of them might have said.

Steve takes pity on him, and Eddie is graced with one of those patient smiles. It’s that soft smile that got him through the hell that was physical therapy. "We're making him nervous, Rob."

"You're nervous, too," Robin reminds him. Still, she gives Steve's hand a squeeze before stepping to the side. It's one on one instead of two on one, which does help the knot in Eddie's chest loosen a bit.

"I can take it, Stevie," Eddie says with a small smile. "Whatever it is, just… lay it on me."

Steve glances at Robin, then back at Eddie. His hands have that fine tremor to them again, so he wraps his arms around himself and tucks his fists against his sides.

"I've been thinking… and I've talked to Rob, and… I don't… I'm not…" Steve stops, has to take a few slow breaths.

This is it, the death blow. The last glimpse of the sun before it gets snuffed out, removed from Eddie's life forever. Eddie wants to close his eyes so he doesn't have to watch, but if this is his last sunrise he doesn't want to miss a second of it, either.

"Eddie, I'm not… I'm not a boy." Steve shifts on his feet and swallows loud enough for Eddie to hear it. "I don't want to be a boy anymore. I think— no, I know I am — I'm a girl."

Eddie can only blink up at him while Steve explains it, explains lip gloss and nail polish and old girlfriends. She talks about how she's given this a lot of thought, really, and if Eddie doesn't want to be with her anymore she understands.

Eddie's listening, really he is, but the relief is so instantaneous that he can't help but start laughing, quietly at first and then louder.

Steve stops talking and looks at Eddie like he's lost his mind. "What? What is it?"

"No, no, baby, I'm sorry. I'm not laughing at you." Eddie rubs both hands over his eyes, wiping away unshed tears. "I promise, this isn't about you." He reaches out for Steve's hand and pulls her around the coffee table to sit down on his lap.

"Why are you laughing?" Steve asks. The hurt in her eyes has Eddie sobering up immediately.

"I thought you were breaking up with me." Eddie brings a hand up to tuck Steve's hair behind her ear. "I thought that was why you brought the reinforcements. Maybe you were afraid I would lose the rest of my mind or somethin'."

"What?" Steve shakes her head and touches the jagged scar on Eddie’s jaw. "Why would I be breaking up with you? I love you, Eddie."

Eddie catches Steve's hand, pulls it to his lips to kiss over her knuckles. "Because you're the best person on the goddamn planet, and I don't deserve you."

"Eddie—"

"I'm serious, Stevie." Eddie wraps an arm around her waist to pull her that much closer. "You're amazing. You're smart— don't try to deny it, I've seen that beautiful brain of yours in action." He gently, so fucking gently, taps in the middle of her forehead to emphasize his point. "You're funny, you're so goddamn brave. You have the biggest heart in the world." He cups Steve's cheek, and she leans into the touch. "You're the best thing that's ever happened to me, and I still can't believe how lucky I am."

Steve's lower lip trembles just a little, and Eddie can't help but brush his thumb over it. "Even now?" she asks. Eddie hates the uncertainty in her voice. Steve Harrington isn't ever uncertain, unless it's about D&D or Lord of the Rings or some other nerdy shit that the kids try to throw at her.

"Are you kidding?" Eddie brings his other hand up, to hold her face between his palms. "Yesterday morning I woke up with the most gorgeous guy in Hawkins in my bed, and tonight I get to go to sleep with the most beautiful girl. That's… amazing ." He shakes his head and brings their foreheads together. "I love you, Stevie. No matter what you do, no matter what you change, I'm in it for the long haul. You're it for me, baby."

"Fucking sap," Steve says wetly, but she's smiling when she says it, when she leans in to kiss Eddie again.

It's a kiss full of love and hope, that speaks of a future that stretches out in front of them, just waiting for them to decide what they want to do with it.

It's a kiss that has Robin murmuring "Dinguses" under her breath before sneaking out the front door to give them privacy.

Still the One

Eddie is passing through Chicago when they meet again. 

Under the strobing lights at the North End, her pink skirt swirling around her, dances the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen.

With the moles dotting her cheeks, those heavy lidded hazel eyes, she looks an awful lot like–

“Holy hell–Harrington?! Shit, I didn’t recognize you at first. You look–”

Nose crinkling cutely, she lets out a sheepish laugh.

“Pretty different?” 

“...I was gonna say really happy, my lady.”

“I am. Happy, that is. But…I can think of a way you could make me even happier.”

“Name your price.”

“Dance with me?”

Eddie sways closer. All this time–and she’s still the one.

Robin's Guide to the Care and Feeding of Your Newly Adopted Former Mean Girl

Happy @stevieweek everybody! This is Day One: Stobin with none of the bonus prompts, but keep an eye out cause i've got a few more incoming this week.

AO3

On July 4th, 1985, Steven Joseph Harrington died in the Starcourt Mall Fire. 

The story Robin Marie Buckley tells, after two weeks of hospitalization and an additional month in Indianapolis for “personal reasons,” when she returns to her senior year at Hawkins High a full week after the first day of school is one of abject heroism on the part of Steve.

It’s true, even if it isn’t the whole story. Just like it isn’t hard for her to play morose and avoidant, because that’s how she feels. She might know Dustin, but it’s too hard to spend much time with him and she doesn’t want to be the weird friendless senior who only talks to freshmen. She’ll leave that to Eddie Munson, who snatched Steve’s weird little child friends up only a few weeks into the first semester. 

Nancy and Jonathan avoid her as much as she does them, she doesn’t think they know what to do with the new girl in the know. It paints a picture, well she realizes later that it paints a picture, but she doesn’t want to sit at a table and eat her peanut butter and jelly sandwich while Nancy Wheeler’s big beautiful eyes are staring at her like she’s an article that’s half an inch too long and needs to be dissected while Jonathan Byers is also there.

So she drifts through the halls of Hawkins High like a ghost, she’s Cathy on the moors. Avoiding anyone who might try to ask her too many questions about the final days of Steve Harrington and Starcourt Mall.

Until the day she spots a baby blue jeep pulled into the Henderson’s driveway, a tall brunette unloading a single suitcase from the back. She’s got her bike across the road before she can even think of a game plan. A noise that’s almost like a scream erupting from her mouth the entire time she coasts over.

Wallpaper

Written for day 1 of @stevieweek | Prompt: Stobin Rating: G | WC: 1,144 | Tags: MTF Steve Harrington, Coming Out, Robin Buckley's POV ao3 | Divider credit

They’re sitting in the bathroom. Steve’s thigh bumps against Robin’s, and he can’t stop biting on his thumbnail.

It’s a nervous habit, Robin knows, one he only gets when things feel like they might be spiraling out of his control in a major way. Sometimes she’s surprised it’s not something he does more often, but she knows he likes to look nice. Likes for other people to think he looks nice, too. He’d also crudely pointed out once upon a time that “No one wants to be fingered by someone with a bloody hangnail, Robin, Jesus.” It was gross, but now that’s one habit she’s managed to break herself out of, thanks to him.

“Hey.” Robin bumps his leg and watches as he jumps, like he’s forgotten that she’s there. “It’s just me. You know you can talk to me about anything.”

That’s true, too. Steve’s seen every lump (“It’s cancer I swear to god it’s cancer!” “That’s a zit.”) and she’s seen Steve’s right back (“That’s an ingrown hair, dingus, I think you’re supposed to shave in the other direction. Also maybe try it with your eyes open.”) They’ve helped talk each other off of the ledge so many times. When they traded the stomach flu back and forth, it was the two of them taking care of each other for one disgustingly hellacious week.

There’s nothing they can’t talk about, or help each other with. It makes Robin a little nervous that Steve is nervous, but she knows that whatever it is it’ll be fine. It always is.

“C’mon. We’re sitting on your bathroom floor. I know this is important.”

Steve pulls his thumb away from his mouth and crosses both arms across his chest. It’s then that Robin notices his hands are shaking a little.

“I’ve got something really… really important to talk to you about,” he says. His voice is a low rumble, and there’s a slight tremor, a wetness to it that she’s only heard a few times before.

“Yeah, I gathered that part,” she teases. Her shoulder bumps Steve’s, and then she reaches out to take one of his hands. As soon as their fingers lock Steve lets out a breath that he’s been holding. The tension eases from his shoulders, but only a little.

“I…” Steve clears his throat. His jaw works, and then he swallows hard. “I’ve been thinking, and… I…” He has to swallow again, so Robin tightens her grip and closes her other hand around his fingers, too.

She’s not going anywhere.

“I don’t think… I’m a boy?” A tear trails down his cheek and Steve quickly wipes it away. “I was thinking about all of these girls I’ve been with, and I liked them, but I think there might’ve been more to it? Like… like maybe I wanted some part of them to rub off on me. Like… I feel better when you paint my nails, and I like wearing lipgloss. I– I liked when we got our legs waxed together, and I like…” He bites his lips and brings his thumb back to his mouth to stroke the rough edge against his lip. “I know that all feels like… little stuff maybe, but it’s… I was thinking about it more, and… and I…” His next sigh is shakier, and there are more tears falling now.

Robin holds his hands even tighter and rests her chin against his shoulder. “That’s okay,” she says softly. “You don’t have to be a boy if you don’t want to be.” Her heart nearly breaks when Steve’s lower lip actually wobbles, and then he’s curling into her side.

“I– I don’t want to be,” he says. “I don’t want to be a boy. But I– I don’t want anyone to be mad at me–”

Robin lifts one hand to wipe his face. “No one’s going to be mad at you. No one who matters, anyway.” It’s not like the senior Harringtons have been around for a while now. The Party wasn’t surprised when Will came out, and they all dressed up to go to his first Pride with him. They’ve been okay with Eddie and Steve, and with her and Vicki.

And she knows that it’s not the same, being gay and not feeling like who you are fits who you’re supposed to be. But…

“They’ve faced hell dimensions and fought monsters,” Robin says. Her thumbs stroke over Steve’s knuckles, and she’s moved to sit in front of him instead so their knees knock together. “We almost lost Max, and came even closer to losing Eddie. You being a girl? That should be a piece of cake to them." She rests their foreheads together and brings Steve's hands up to kiss his— her— knuckles.

"What if it's not?" Steve grips Robin all the tighter and bites down on her lower lip. "What if they hate me?"

"Eddie will kick their asses, and then I'll send them packin'. If they won't love you for who you are, then we don't need them in our lives." It's something easier said than done, of course, advice Steve had given when Robin decided it was time to come out to her own parents.

There'd been an adjustment period, but come time for Will's first Pride, her parents were right there beside her.

"I haven't told Eddie yet," Steve says. That tremble is back in her voice, and more tears flow over her cheeks. "What if… what if he says he can't be with me anymore? What if he doesn't love me, Rob? What if he leaves because I'm a— a—" "A freak?" Robin finishes softly. "You, Steve Harrington, are worried your metalhead boyfriend, with his kitchen scratch tattoos and his tabletop speeches, will think that you're a freak?"

Steve blinks, then starts giggling. Quiet at first, then louder, until it's bubbling out of her and she's got her head resting against Robin's shoulder and an arm holding her ribs. "Fuck— you're right. Maybe I wasn't freaky enough before!"

"I walked in on you two once, I think there was more than enough freaky going on in that room." Robin laughs and takes Steve's hands again. The shaking has calmed, and Steve at least doesn't look like she's going to vomit— or worse, faint and get another concussion.

"Will you tell him with me?" Steve asks. "Just in case?"

"You know there's nothing I wouldn't do for you, dingus." Robin pokes lightly at a fleck of turquoise paint on Steve's thumb. "Want me to paint your nails for you again before we go?"

Steve gives another wobbly smile. "I would like that a lot. Thanks, Rob."

"You're welcome, Stevie." Robin stands, tugs Steve to her feet, too, then towards her bedroom. "You know, if you're making big changes, this might be the perfect time to get rid of this ugly fucking wallpaper."