JOSEPH QUINN For Esquire Singapore

Eddie Munson: Conditions

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Summary: Fluff. Female reader expresses her conditions for marriage.

“I just have one condition if you ever wanna marry me,” you say one day draped over Eddie’s side. Your fingertips dance across the tattoo on his chest.

“And what’s that sweetheart?” He asks.

“If you wanna marry me, I don’t want a traditional ring. I want it tattooed,” you pause, “I think it makes it more meaningful because with a tattoo it’s a deeper promise to be together forever. Ya know since you can’t exactly remove a tattoo as easily as a ring. I know it’s kinda silly.”

You look away from his gaze, your eyes instead focusing on your fingers still tracing his tattoo.

“It’s not silly sweetheart,” he murmurs. He tilts your chin to bring your attention back to his eyes. “I think it’s pretty metal actually.”

You smile and press a light kiss to his lips.

*Time change to the future*

You sit in a tattoo parlor with Eddie next to you.

“You ready for this wifey?” He asks.

“Of course! No cold feet?”

“Never!” He wraps an arm around your shoulder.

“We’re ready for you two.”

You clutch Eddie’s hand as the artist begins his needle work.

“I love it!” You exclaim holding both his hand and yours close to your face to admire the ink work in the sunlight. “I’m finally forever yours, bound to you and you to me for eternity through a manner of ink.”

His hands caresses your face, momentarily distracting you from the tattooed rings.

His thumb gently brushes over your lips.

“All mine,” he admires. “For eternity.”

Joseph Quinn at the opening for Tokyo Comic Con

Y/n : Did you have to stab them?

Bucky: You weren’t there. You didn’t hear what they said to me.

Y/n : What did they say?

Bucky: "What are you going to do, stab me?"

Y/n : That’s fair.

Steve had always wanted a dog. He wanted to cuddle on the couch, tug of war with old socks, and play catch in the yard. Most of all, he wanted a friend that would love him unconditionally.

So when he and Eddie got their first rundown house on the edge of Hawkins, he wanted to get a dog. They had a yard, savings in the bank, and plenty of time to spare between Eddie’s gigs and Steve’s school. He wanted a dog.

Eddie, though, wanted a cat. He was never a huge dog-lover. He didn’t really like the way dogs seemed so attached to their humans, they were too needy. He wanted a cat that kept to itself 23 hours of the day before finding its favorite person for minimal scritches and pets before disappearing once again to be a cat.

They were at an impasse. Neither one was backing down and after a two day silence streak, they reached a compromise. They would get a dog. Eddie could be reasoned with on the condition that they got a golden retriever because if he got a dog, you better believe it was going to be Steve’s twin.

With his acceptance, Steve brought home a puppy and named her Cinnamon. In a need to wreak havoc however, Eddie called her Van Halen and she only ever answered to that.

Years later when Van Halen was fully trained, Steve got his revenge. Eddie brought home a cat named Ozzy and Steve saw his chance. He called her exclusively Cuddlebug and from then on, she only answered to that.

It was so much worth it, seeing the grimace and full-body sigh Eddie took whenever he called her name. He learned the hard way that Steve holds a mean grudge (and usually gets payback in unexpected ways).

I'm just gonna go cry in the corner now...

Steve carries Eddie’s body through the gate, blood soaking his clothes where silent tears fail to wash it away. It feels like Eddie’s blood is going to seep into is body and stay there under his skin like a tattoo. A reminder for all eternity that happy endings were only ever an invention by people who didn’t know anything about life.

“He’s losing so much blood,” Robin keeps wheezing behind him, breathless with the weight of it all, and Steve wants to say something, wants to comfort her that it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t hurt him, he won’t need the blood anymore. But the words get stuck in his throat as more tears fall.

Eddie’s hand is cold in his, and it will forever haunt him. Still, he’s not ready to let go when they reach the remnants of the trailer, when his knees give out and he collapses onto the soiled mattress. But whatever stains they were, they’re history now underneath all that blood.

History is the thing with the bloodstained beds and lost, abandoned homes, is it not? History is the part where everything gets ripped from you and you’re meant to keep standing. Keep fighting.

History, right now, looks a lot like a future unwritten, with Eddie’s hand in his, cold and unfeeling.

Steve still doesn’t say a word.

The world has larger problems than his failed attempts at grief. Ripped apart at its seams, wilting and rotting and overcome with death and decay, Hawkins needs Steve Harrington to once again show a strength he shouldn’t have to possess.

He helps. Donates clothes, offers his home, his kitchen, his bedrooms to everyone in need. Donates his time, his smile, his thoughts to the people who have the fortune and the privilege to think nothing of him.

Funerals are a daily occasion — with or without the bodies — and so Steve doesn’t even think about it when Dustin approaches him about Eddie.

“He shouldn’t be put on public display like that,” Dustin says and Steve marvels, for a second, that he still has his voice. “He deserves more than a freakshow, and they’re so busy, but they said they could… They could come and—and prepare him. The body. Bring him over. Have a proper service for him, those who knew, those who cared about. Could we do it at your place? Please?”

His eyes sting as he nods and pulls Dustin into a hug that leaves his shirt wet. It’s fine. All his clothes have the memory of tear stains on them, and tear stains are better than blood; a kinder version of history.

It’s a week after… a week since… It’s been a week, when they finally have the funeral for Eddie. Steve doesn’t mean to be there, he shouldn’t be, he can’t be, not when he still scrubs at his skin where Eddie’s blood used to be and he wants to get it out of there because he knows it’s inside him, he knows it’s in there; he knows because he’s hurting all over. Everything, everything hurts. And he can’t wash it away, the memory, the stains, the part where past and future became history and present became nothing but pain. He can’t—

He can’t.

Eddie refused to run and it’s all Steve wants to do anymore. It’s not fair. It’s not.

He shuts himself away from the world in his room and tries to scratch it away, the memory of the blood. He wants to scream and to shout and to talk and to apologise, but he can’t, because there are no words.

And then Dustin is talking, and Steve stops tearing at his skin to listen. He can’t hear the words but he can hear the pain, he can hear the way Dustin is stronger than him, always has been, and he opens the door. Slips down the stairs slowly until he sees it. The open coffin with Eddie’s body, his hair glowing in the light of the afternoon sun.

“He was the coolest, kindest, bravest guy I know,” Dustin says, but Steve doesn’t want to hear it, so he stops listening as he reaches the foot of the stairs and keeps walking, closer to Eddie, always closer, always so, so close.

And he misses the touch, misses those dark brown eyes that were so kind, and he wants to see them again. They’re closed. They shouldn’t be closed; the world has to see. Has to see the kindness in those eyes, the beauty, the wonderful things they’d think of.

Silence falls around him but Steve doesn’t care, doesn’t really notice; not when those eyes are closed, not when he reaches out to open them as a way to right all the wrongs in the world now.

But then his eyes fall to Eddie’s bare throat, and everything is wrong once more, no chance to right it, because—

“Where’s his pick? He needs-Eddie needs his plectrum to play. He can’t play without his pick, he can’t— The bats will get him, please, you have to… He needs his pick.”

And Steve falls apart as he finds his words again, words that rip into his very soul, tearing at the fabric of the world itself and turning it upside down. There are hands on his shoulders, trying to pull him away from the coffin, but he clings to it even as his knees start to give out while sobs wreck through his body.

“It’s okay, boy,” someone tells him, and Steve falls back into Hoppers chest, strong arms holding him up instead of pulling him away from Eddie. “It’s okay.”

He’s shaking his head, vision blurry now, and maybe there’s a bit of irony in the way that Steve and Eddie will both have had their last visions of each other be blurred with tears.

“It’s not, it’s not okay,” he insists, trying to shake off the hands holding him up. He wants to fall apart; wants to break; wants to be gone. Don’t hold me together, let me shatter. “You— You all wanted me to talk. You wanted me to!”

He’s gasping for breath again, hiccuping through the tears and the words and the weakness.

“I’m talking. Eddie, I love you. I wanna love you, and now I’m gonna, forever, but I don’t want the sad kind of forever. I want… Please, please he needs his pick, he can’t play without it.”

And then he’s on the floor, sobbing, and the words are gone again. Robin, Dustin and Hopper go down with him, but even they can’t put him together now.

“Steve,” Dustin says, voice hoarse with the weight of his own tears. “It’s here, see? I’ve got his pick, it’s safe. Do you wanna give it to him? Make sure he has it forever?”

He does. But he can’t bring himself to let go. Wayne comes up and places a scratched up piece of plastic on Eddie’s chest.

“He used to leave ‘em all ‘round the trailer. I always keep ‘em with me the days. Found this one under the couch before we… He’ll have it now, see? He can play again, our boy can play again.”

Steve falls apart until he doesn’t remember what piece of himself goes where. But it’s fine. Eddie will play again.

@thefreakandthehair technically you didn’t do this, but you sure didn’t discourage me from writing this (inspired by the My Girl funeral scene)

could I request modern!steve surprising reader at college? maybe she has been super homesick and it’s all fluffy?

Steve frowned at the maps on his phone, ‘cause the estimated time told him the journey would take three hours, but he was certain he could do it in less. Two and a half, maybe, if he didn’t stop. He grinned as the group chat pinged with notifications, Robin asking you if you were still planning on staying in tonight.

He breathed a sigh of relief when you replied with a ‘yeah, too tired to leave the dorm.’ How was he supposed to surprise you if you weren’t there to open the door for him? So the rest of your friends sent messages back, saying how they missed you as much as you missed them, how they hoped exams weren’t stressing you too much and would you be home soon?

Steve knew your exams were taking a toll on you, he could hear it in your voice when you called each night, cheek pressed to the pillow and voice soft with sleep and longing. When it got particularly bad, he could hear you get a little watery, words splintering in the middle when you told him you really just wished he was there to give you a hug.

So Steve was gonna do just that. Drive two and a half (three) hours to your college to wrap you up in his arms in the hug he so desperately wanted to give you. Robin was the one who convinced him to surprise you, who told him the sneaking around and white lies would be worth it.

‘Cause Steve had already had to reject your call by the time he reached the outskirts of Hawkins and it pained him. You knew he was off, why wouldn’t he take your call? His phone pinged through with a message from you.

‘Missing you ♥️’

Steve stepped on the accelerator a little harder.

He did in fact make it sooner than his sat nav told him, a smug feeling of pride mixing with anticipation and nerves in his stomach. It wasn’t like he rarely got to see you, no, you came home all the time, the train ride back to Hawkins even faster than the drive but exams had you holed up in either your dorm room or the library most weekends this month. Steve parked his car in the lot, felt his stomach flip when he saw your bedroom window from the sidewalk, cracked open for some autumn air, curtains tangling in the breeze. If he squinted enough, he could just make out the photo frame on the sill, the one he knew held a photo of you and him last vacation, you on his lap in front of a campfire at the cabin at Sugar Creek, taken by Jonathan.

He counted the doors to yours, each footstep echoing almost too loudly in the narrow corridor, blurred with the sounds of too many different spotify playlists, chatter and someone yelling about a grade they got. Steve sucked in a breath before he knocked on your door, your name along with your two roommates written in red pen on the whiteboard pinned to the wood. He hoped they’d gotten Nancy’s Instagram message, that they knew the plan and would let you open the door.

Sure enough, you were the one behind it when it swung open, the movement making the hair falling over his eyes lift and he grinned at the sight of you, rucksack over one shoulder, a bunch of peonies in one hand.

“Surprise,” Steve managed, the last syllable knocked out of him in a soft oomph, as you launched yourself at him, pink petals crushed between you both, your arms around his neck and he laughed as he held you to him, your toes barely on the ground at the exuberance of it all.

You were crying, he could feel them on his neck, where you’d buried your face and sniffed. “Happy tears, I hope,” Steve murmured, letting his bag and the flowers drop to the hallway carpet so he could hug you a little better.

You nodded, making a small sound, a watery pleased noise that made Steve laugh even more.

“You’re such a dick,” you choked out on a sob, pulling back to smile at him to show you didn’t mean it. You usually weren’t one for surprises, and your boyfriend knew this, but god, you’d never been so grateful to open the door to the person you least expected. “You didn’t answer my call. Thought you were sick of my whining.”

“Missed you too, babe,” Steve quipped but pushed a thumb to your cheek, pouting at the tear he caught there, your flushed cheeks and wet lashes. “Nah, me? Sick of you? Unheard of. Illegal, actually, to even think of such a thing.”

You sniffed again, lip wobbling and Steve couldn’t stop his grin. “Christ, woman, c’mere.”He pulled you back to him, hand cupping the back of your head so you could cling to his shirt and pretend that you were definitely not crying.

“I missed you,” you told him, words pressed to the skin of his throat, along with a kiss, tear soaked and soft. “A stupid amount.”

You got a proper kiss in response, sticky with fondness, a little salt from you but it was still Steve. It still tasted like home.

…

robin: you need a hobby.

eddie: i have a hobby.

dustin: staring at steve’s face isn’t a hobby.

eddie: you’re right. it’s a profession and i excel at my job.

Steve walks into the Munson trailer like he does every Saturday morning; it’s apart of his and Eddie’s new routine after the Upside Down. They meet up there and have breakfast (or more likely lunch) and just chill together. 

Music was blasting from Eddie’s room, which is pretty normal, but what wasn’t normal was that Steve recognized what was playing. Elton John. Ok, what?

Steve brows furrow as he walks down the short hallway to the source, and pokes his head through Eddie’s open doorway. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t this. 

Sat on the floor with his legs criss-crossed, was Eddie. 

Only that wasn’t the weird part. 

Eddie was wearing a feather boa and those joke glasses with the fake nose and mustache, and he was rummaging through a shoebox. The chorus of the song starts to play, and Eddie is singing along with enthusiasm. “BENNY! Benny! BENNY! Benny! B-b-b-b-b-b-Benny and the JETS!” He was headbanging along now, and Steve’s jaw drops. 

Steve tears his eyes away long enough to look around the room. There were piles of stuff everywhere, more than usual, and the closet looked like it had been ripped apart. 

Eddie is completely absorbed in what he’s doing, so Steve decides to lean on the door frame and see how long it takes for Eddie to notice him. 30 minutes later, Eddie finally looks up, sees Steve, and screams, “What the fuck?!" 

"Me? What the hell happened in here, Eddie?” Steve says in between cackles. Eddie’s face of pure horror is diluted by the Groucho Marx glasses. Oh, Steve is never going to let Eddie live this down. 

Eddie regains his composure and crosses his arms. “I’m… cleaning." 

Steve’s eyebrows shoot up and he takes a very pointed look around the room. Eddie realizes he’s still wearing the stupid glasses and tears them off, throwing them into a seemingly random pile. "it’s a process, Steve." 

"Does this process include gasoline and a lighter?” Eddie levels him with a bored look. The feather boa still around his shoulders isn’t helping at all.

“Hardy har har, you’re hilarious, Steve. I just got a little distracted." 

"When did you start cleaning, Eddie?”  Eddie squints his eyes and looks like he’s thinking, then looks at the light coming through the window. “Sometime around 2am." 

Steve’s eyes widen and he puts his hands on his hips. "2am?! Why would you start cleaning at 2am?" 

Eddie stands up then, feather boa still around his shoulders, and mimics Steve’s stance, squaring his shoulders across from Steve. 

"Because I noticed the shower was dirty." 

Steve runs a hand over his face. "How does the shower being dirty turn into a tornado coming through your bedroom?" 

"Shower was dirty, so I needed to clean it. I needed some gloves and goggles because, let’s be honest, a hazmat suit would’ve been the best choice. So, I went to my room to look for something to use, and I found those glasses,” Eddie says gesturing in the vague direction he threw them, “but then I also found a notebook I lost two years ago. After that it all gets a little fuzzy." 

Steve just stares at him, jaw hanging again. He looks at Eddie for a moment before asking him, "So, is the shower clean?" 

"It is not." 

"Jesus Christ.”