hitlikehammers' Hobbit-Birthday Fic-Giving Fest: UPDATE (finally)

So the originally planned and schedule posts for my HOBBIT-STYLE BIRTHDAY MONTH PROMPT FEST did, in fact, fail miserably, and they were pre-schedule for a reason: that being I knew I was going to be gone at least a month or more (it's been more, and will continue to be more after this post goes up).

ANYWAY: I've finally had a second to breathe a little and have reformatted and rescheduled the remaining fics. They will go up starting this week. THIS time I learned my lesson and while I won't be around to keep watch and check? I have someone making sure they WORK, unlike last time, and keeping me updated on any messages or questions or requests or what-have-you.

So: finally—it really IS time to start collecting your gifts!

A few housekeeping notes:

✨permanent tag list: @pearynice @hbyrde36 @slashify @finntheehumaneater @wxrmland @dreamwatch @perseus-notjackson @estrellami-1 @bookworm0690 @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @nerdyglassescheeseychick @swimmingbirdrunningrock @goodolefashionedloverboi @sanctumdemunson

✨WIP WEEKEND🫠

I think I’m missing a good number of tags but @hbyrde36 was the most recent so if you also tagged me? You’re equally as amazing and I’m equally as grateful to you as I am her so please do keep tagging. This past week has just been a clusterfuck.

As always, the rules:

Pick a WIP, I write at least three sentences on it; if it’s a ✨secret✨ I’ll write for it and also add another random fic (unless you have a specific second choice…actually know what? I’m instituting a NEW rule for ME which is you can pick another WIP if the one you do pick it SECRET)

Here’s an abbreviated list:

Totally no-pressure tags (and keeping in mind you can and should feel encouraged to substitute writing projects in for something else you love!): @hbyrde36 (seems fair to tag you back, no? 😇), @vthx, @sidekick-hero, @bookworm0690 (more amazing knitting, maybe? 🖤), @tinytalkingtina, @spectrum-spectre, @estrellami-1, @sanctumdemunson, @yesdangerpls, @eriquin, @firefly-party (we both need to work through the sick, so I figured I’d invite you to the sick-party 🖤)

And YOU, whoever wants to play 🖤

Here’s a little sample of 🍸to start:

(not your average) morning after ☀️💛

or: Steve survives getting locked in a room with Eddie Munson at that infamous Halloween party in 1984 for Seven Minutes in Heaven—

…THIS IS THE MORNING AFTER 🛌

rating: m♥️ tags: s2 era, alternate meeting, that ONE HALLOWEEN PARTY (you know which one), steve meets eddie immediately after nancy does her drunken bullshit thing, following some weird truth-or-dare/seven-minutes-in-heaven first kissing 💋 they maybe then escape said horrible party, and then maybe end up waking up in bed together the next morning 🤷, fluff, humor, boys being boys, wayne munson cameo featuring horrible attempts at dad jokes ☕️ tom cruise cameo 😎🤭 NO climbing out of windows (like a ninja🥷) required this time, getting together (for at least the night BUT 📞steve has his own line y’know) ♥️

sequel to (not your average) seven minutes (tumblr // ao3), from this series, for @steddielovemonth Day Nine— "There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness." - Friedrich Nietzsche

It’s not that Steve specifically planned on notspending the night.

Not that he specifically planned much at all about how last night shook out, start to frankly-kinda-shocking finish, but.

The point is he hadn’t planned to stay here past sun-up.

Like…in this bed. This bed-that’s-not-his.

It’s just that, one: he almost never does, like, ever. Stay, that is. Half his upper body strength is probably thanks to making sure not to fall on his ass into the manicured bushes as he climbs out of windows in the middle of the night—he thinks it’s part of what keeps his reputation as decent as it’s stayed: orgasm plus clean escape from the parents, both guaranteed.

But then also, and not insignificantly, there’s point number two: he’d walked home with Eddie Munson—Eddie, The Freak, fucking Munson—on the promise of his uncle working the graveyard shift and never noticing a thing. Whatever ended up counting as ‘a thing’. And Steve: he’d still been nursing the sharper edges of the cracks in his heart over what Nancy had said and done, but also?

Those sharp parts had already—shocking to him, he wants to make that really clear—kinda started to sand their way back into a regular shape, fewer broken pieces to cobble together. He’d clambered loud and laughing out of that bedroom, and he had certainly not had enough to drink to justify it as anything other than wholly honest, and just…fuck, you know?

Which, Steve wants it written down somewhere in the universe that he hadn’t come back with Eddie to fuck. He hadn’t even come back to smoke. He hadn’t…really had much in mind save getting the fuck away from that godforsaken party, and to not lose the…the feeling of being not-so-heartbroken after getting stuck in that fucking room, shoved there by the people who honestly maybe never hadbeen his friends, but if Steve dwells on that right now he’ll get caught up in maybe never having had any friends, ever.

Not an ideal place to land while in someone else’s bed. Mostly naked.

Almost…entirely naked, actually.

Steve Gets Everyone Out of the 🦇Upside Down🕸️ as the Gates Close except himself 🫠

or: can Steve Harrington learn to stop sacrificing himself/giving his boyfriend a fucking aneurysm? (ANSWER: no.)

rating: t ♥️ tags: post-s4/Final Battle, established relationship, steve and his endless self-sacrificing, steve gets stuck in the upside down 🥺, eddie goes after his man come hell and/or high water ⚔️, idiot4idiot, true love, romance, softness, happy ending♥️

for @steddielovemonth day twenty: “For the two of us, home isn't a place. It is a person. And we are finally home.” ― Stephanie Perkins, Anna and the French Kiss

It’s a no-brainer. Like: it’s just a fucking given.

This is literally the only way things could ever have shaken out.

Eddie’s breathless—like, the kind of breathless where his lungs feel close to collapsing, on fire and self-immolating, ready for collapse as the foundations burn through and he can’t get any air, his vision’s tunneling at the edges and getting fuzzy in the middle: he’s frantic and he’s running faster than he thought he was even capable of and he’s not sure how much longer his body’s going to be up for cooperating but it’s not gonna matter either way because this is how it shakes out, this was always how the story went and how ends if need be, because Eddie will kill himself over getting where he’s headed before he lets his body fail him in completing the task at hand:

The only thing that matters.

Because again—obvious, no question—as Steve had watched them all get to their feet after climbing through the gate for the last time, actually—finally—the last fucking time, and his eyes had shifted to the impossible width of the closing-searing crevice that’d just taken off some of Nancy’s curls, it’d grown so razor-thin; as he’d made eye contact with Eddie while avoiding doing the same with Robin which was the best way to make sure they both knew what he was about to do, about to let happen; as Robin screamed and Nancy shouted and the kids started in at a pitch Eddie’d never heard before because no one could imagine a world without Steve Harrington, Jesus fuck, what the hell, even, how can the earth fucking turn without Steve Harrington—but in those moments: again.

There was never any question.

Eddie had read the truth of loss and apology, and then no-fucking-apology-at-all in Steve’s gaze because Steve Harrington would and was always going to give himself for the rest of them. Always.

It’s who he is. It’s who Eddie loves.

Even if it fucking kills him.

The moment the gate had closed, though, and Steve was lost, out of sight, and Robin wailed as much as she screeched over what could be done, because something had to be able to be done—

The moment he couldn’t see Steve anymore, the moment his Stevie was gone: of course Eddie’s heart had fucking stopped.

But from there, the rest of his body took over as his brain maybe died a little without enough oxygen, without a real pulse, without a rhythm pumping any help its way, at least not with any meaning. Because where was no meaning, now that Steve was—

The rest of him knew that, though. Muscle memory: find Steve. Go to Steve. Be with Steve, in all things.

Always.

So when he got where he was going, and felt a violent lurch behind his ribs when he saw the glow still there—barely, but there—his heart didn’t start straight up again, not yet, but that lurch was enough: he knew it was barely a step from suicide, but there wasn’t any question in how he dropped down to the hard-packed ground that’s got worrying crevices in it, now, but nothing too deep—nothing like the tax extracted from their own world in the aftermath of tearing every last vestige of Henry to shreds small enough to grind into dust and burn anyway, just to be sure.

But that’s all peripheral—the world here could be caving in actively upon him, breaking ribs left and right as pieces tumbled and knocked him sideways: no fucking problem.

He knows where he needs to go—it’s farther than it would have been, but if it weren’t farther, then he wouldn’t be here anyway. If Eddie had been able to fit through the gaping apocalyptic maw in the ground he’d started at, electric crimson and terrifying as a rule, then he’d have been able to reach down and draw someone up through it the opposite way, too, and then they, he, Steve—

He runs, now. His body’s still mostly running the show but his heart’s been inspired back to fighting, maybe with the momentum of the fall, the swift landing and the immediate takeoff: he’s on his mission. He’s close. He can feel that he’s close, there’s a fluttery feeling under his ribs because it knows it’s close to things being put back to rights, its meaning and reason to keep pumping after everything, after fucking everything—the hands that didn’t just coax it back to rhythm the first time they ended up here together but demanded, slammed and pressed and broke ribs and left bruises and fought like hell: hands that tended him even at his lowest point, the darkest days, and embraced him when he could have done anything but, held on and hadn’t yet let go—

Eddie’s heart keeps pounding, relentlessly pushing forward, because like fucking hell he’s letting go.

Ever.

The wasteland looks familiar—impossibly given how it’s been distorted by the fight but Eddie knows it, Eddie feels it, the cracking of lightning and the bitter stench of ichor like ozone where it strikes and burns: his heart shivers.

He sees an outline silhouetted when a red bolt splits the sky. He can’t tell if it moves.

His pulse stutters—it will have come back online here for nothing if that outline of everything Eddie values in this world, in every world, doesn’t fucking move.

His body wrenches back the reins and everything in him burns as his feet shrink the distance—and fuck if he doesn’t collapse of his own volition when he gets to his destination, when then silhouette is before him—when it’s more than an outline in the dark.

It’s a body. He falls down upon a body.

steddie ✨soulmarks✨ except that they spell out your soulmate’s last words 💔

(‘make him pay’ = epically lame iteration of this heartbreaking phenomenon)

rating: m ♥️ tags: mid-s4 final battle, canon divergence, eddie says the soulmate words on steve’s skin that double as his last words, steve is having absolutely none of that, canon fix-it, romance, steve stays with eddie to prevent his untimely demise, dustin henderson: surprisingly good with molotov cocktails, happy ending ♥️

for @steddielovemonth day twenty five: “He is half of my soul, as the poets say.” ― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

Steve hears it, nods even and makes to step away—he hears it, but like, it takes a second to sink in.

But once it’s all sunk in, saturated in his cells, his bones?

“Change of plans,” he calls out, and gives a total of no shits if anyone has an objections.

“Henderson.”

Dustin perks up; he might have been playing tough about rolling his eyes over not being a hero but he’s predictable—he likes being important enough to get singled out.

“You think you can hit a target with a flaming bottle while a vine, or a tail, might be trying to strangle you?”

Steve wouldn’t have even had to look to know Dustin’s up for it—suspicion, confusion, those too of course but at least not outright resistance because, again.

Predictable.

He does look at Dustin anyway, though.

Mainly because he knows he won’t find such easy acceptance in any of the other faces gathered around, but like…

Here’s the thing.

From the minute he learned about soulmates as a kid, Steve knew not only that he wanted one—of course he did—but that he was absolutely going to get one. Didn’t matter that they were rare as hell, didn’t matter that every year fewer matches were reported: nope. Steve Harrington had a soulmate, and he was going to find them.

When he eventually found out the tragedy of it all, the reason people were celebrating fewer instances of soulmates finding one another, Steve’s feelings on the matter didn’t change. At all.

The words that appear to signal your match being the last words they’re meant to speak, before they die?

Fuck that.

They said you got the words the year it’d happen, first day. No sense of when, just before the year was over. So, like, it was super simple. Steve would just find them, protect them, make sure they say something else as soon as possible to negate the…the curse of it, save them, and then ride into the sunset. Easy.

And actually, he thought it was pretty fucking stupid that people really bought into the whole thing being, like, a guaranteed recipe for heartbreak. If even Steve could figure out how to navigate the rules that easily.

By high school, he learns that people have tried—which is reassuring, that everyone through all the ages wasn’t that stupid or unimaginative, or so easily resigned to the worst—and they’d failed.

All of them, apparently.

Allegedly.

That part is more of a bummer. But Steve Harrington has known he’d find his soulmate his entire life. And he will. So while now he knows he’s up against almost impossible odds, if the stories are to be believed?

He spends high school practicing. Knowing none of these girls are his forever but learning the long way what works and what doesn’t, how to treat someone with care, how to please someone without question. He gets his reputation: Casanova, but not for keeps. He’s good with that.

By the time the Upside Down had entered his world, it was both the worst thing, and the bestthing. Because alternate dimensions were impossible.

Yet here they were.

And what else had he always been told was impossible?

So it could—would—be possible, too.

Steve wasn’t sure he realized how thin of a thread his hope had been hanging on until it rebuilds in chainlinks the more he sees of the impossible, the more he knows again with all of him that when the time comes, he’ll save them.

Make Him Pay was a weird mark to find on his skin in the early hours of 1986, but it meant that he was right. He had a soulmate.

And he had a whole year to find them. And save them. And ask if they’d like a forever, too.

And how fucking lucky, that it barely takes two months.

Impending apocalypse aside, of course. But those were just details. Practically routine, at this point.

the one where eddie blinks one day and wonders how he could be so blind as to only just be realizing his best-friend-roommate-sworn-in-blood-fucking-soulmate (or close enough) has been his whole heart, this whole time ♥️

(but what if he’s made his sweetheart wait too long? 🥺)

(that’s more a me thought than a thought in the fic though; trust the tags 💕)

rating: t ♥️ tags: post s4, feelings realizations♥️, but they were roommates!, (and maybe never just roommates), love confessions, oblivious!eddie Munson, fluff, softness✨, 💕so domestic💕, idiot4man-who-conveniently-loves-his-idiot♥️ let me EMPHASISE SOFTNESS, okay?!?!???

for @steddielovemonth day twenty-seven: “Well, it seems to me that the best relationships - the ones that last - are frequently the ones that are rooted in friendship. You know, one day you look at the person and you see something more than you did the night before. Like a switch has been flicked somewhere. And the person who was just a friend is... suddenly the only person you can ever imagine yourself with.” ― Gillian Anderson

Eddie’s doing what he realizes he does most weekend afternoons. Most evenings in general, even.

They get home from work, or for Steve sometimes it’s school, working on his course load part-time at the community college. They make dinner, bring it home sometimes, order delivery if the budget’s landing in their favor—it hadn’t for a while once they moved, got out of Hawkins and went to Indy as soon as they could once Robin got into school there, but they’re levelling back out, and they’ve got a little flexibility left even as they set aside some of every pay check for trips back home, the possible need to move when Robin graduates because she wants a master’s either in Boston or Chicago, maybe Philadelphia. San Francisco was floated once or twice, too—they plan for all contingencies.

And who the fuck would have seen that coming: Eddie Munson. Planning. Considering a budget. Sticking to a budget. Working a fully legal job with a W-2 and everything. Making his half of the rent.

And again, ending up right here in this very instant: stretched across the couch—the one they nabbed from Steve’s house when they decided to move in together as real roommates versus just half living at each other’s houses, and managed to prove could in fact be broken in to the point of relative comfort when it was actually being used—but he’s stretched over it, ankles dangling off the end and head propped on Steve’s thigh where he takes up the far cushion, and today Eddie’s just reading, tomorrow he might work on fitting words to the chords he put down earlier in the week, or he might sketch a little further into one of the campaigns he’s building—not the one for the gremlins back home that he promised to bring and run for them over the holidays, but the one for the group he’s found here, who he likes well enough and whose DM had moved shortly before Steve and Eddie had gotten their apartment, almost like fate. Maybe he’ll do something entirely different tomorrow, who knows.

Like he said: he ends up this way, here like this, at some point just about every day.

He can’t for the life of him understand what makes today different. What makes him breathe in through his nose and out through his mouth with his eyes lifted to Steve mid-breath, and in the clench of his heartbeat he sees it. Nothing feels any different but he understands all at once what it means that it doesn’t.

And that’s makes all the difference.

Because when he opens his mouth on the exhale it’s like his heartbeat pushes up all the things that have lived in him maybe for forever, that he maybe just didn’t add up as two plus two fucking equals—

“I love you.”

—equals…Steve.

Both @firefly-party and @pearynice aggressively forced and intimidated tagged me to try this picrew game—as I told one of them, I would never make one of these things at the prompting of most people, so. Consider yourselves special (or unfortunately cursed, your call really), alongside my thanks 🖤

Anyway, here is a little mini myself:

VERY GENTLE AND AND KIND AND ZERO-PRESSURE TAGS: @vecnuthy @sidekick-hero @thefreakandthehair @starryeyedjanai @vegasol @steddiely @bookworm0690 @anthrobrat @oh-stars @wordynerdygurl

so maybe steve strikes a bargain with unknown eldritch upside down gods in exchange for eddie’s life, what of it? ♥️ the hell else was he supposed to do, don’t even judge him ✨what’s a hades/persephone kinda deal among soon-to-be-more-than-friends, anyway?✨

✨future fic (because somehow steve signed them up to be 💫star-crossed-adjacent guardians of the seasons ❄️☀️ or some shit)

but they’re canny motherfuckers; they can make the arrangement bearable their own

(kind of.)

rating: m ♥️ tags: post-S4, everyone loves, getting together, magical realism✨, established relationship, future fic, of course steve makes a bargain with the eldritch ancient god being things in the upside down to save eddie’s life, what ELSE what he going to do?, don’t even pretend to judge him, eddie and steve become ✨guardians of the seasons✨, it’s a task they definitely make their own, very Persephone coded, fluff, romance, softness, let me repeat that last one: SOFTNESSSSSS ♥️

for @steddielovemonth day twenty-one: “If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets.” ― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“How can you even stand it?” Dustin whines, his leg bouncing frantically as he tries to hide how he’s scanning the edges of the park for any hint; and sign: “If Suze and I—

“You’re missing him hard, aren’t you?”

Eddie asks it from behind his sunglasses—how bright the glare sparkles off the ice is the outward sign that it could be today, that it could possibly happen today; but for Eddie, there’s no need for the kinds of hints that drove Dustin to his door, bouncy and frantic, anything but the impressive computa-chemical-whatever-nerdy-as-fuck-genius-level professional he’s grown into, with his own mini-brood of Hendersons, no: he’s immediately fifteen years old again asking Maybe today, could he maybe come today, is it close enough, like, not on the calendar but sometimes he shows up unexpected, right, so maybe today—

It would be unexpected; it’s late January. Far too early, by rights. But again: Eddie doesn’t need any outward signs.

Ever since it started, ever since the deal was struck with powers beyond their ken, with sense beyond their grasp or even want of it: they’d neither of them wanted sense if it could have cost them the chance at this, it’s just—

It’s hard, still. Easier every year but: hard. Eddie thinks it’ll always be hard. He loves too deep, like this, for even a breath without to be less than a tiny agony.

But fuck if he’d trade it for anything.

They’d been lucky. They’d been lucky that Steve had come back on his own to the boathouse that first night. Had talked Eddie down, made sure he wasn’t alone—held him, a stranger at best, a pariah at worst, and never once shamed him, fucking soothed him when he couldn’t fight tears. They’re lucky that the walk through the woods somehow short circuited any remaining shred of sense in him, or maybe shocked it into overdrive as he’d grabbed Steve behind a tree thick enough to hide from either of their compatriots turning around and catching it, catching them when he carefully—those bats hadn’t been kind—but a little bit crazedly pressed Steve against the fragile-rotting bark, where Steve stilled, stared, and then closed the distance between them.

Eddie’d had his taste on his lips right up ‘til the end. Not even his own blood had taken it from him at the last.

He’d felt death, though, like a limbo, a haze rather than a darkness, a liminal fog and he’d screamed, he hadn’t felt quite alone, even before a voice echoed:

“We are freed from him now.”

Eddie’d shouted questions long after his throat started stinging for it, before realizing the echoing voice hadn’t been talking to him; most especially when he’d felt warmth in inexplicable places in the form he’d been walking around in that he wasn’t wholly sure was even really and truly a body, but then—

“You can’t take him.”

Eddie turned, knew it fruitless to try to find the source but it hurt so bad because that voice was absolutely tortured, and it was—

It was Steve.

forgive me if I jump✨

steddie post-s4 established relationship ♥️

~ for @pearynice 💕🎂

🎶 title and concept inspired by this context-less post from Noah Kahan

(which ultimately became this, for reference, which is not so much aligned in terms of inspiration 🫠)

He shoots up at the sound of the flatline; the screaming follows him as he wakes.

By the time Steve’s hand shoots out to the other side of the bed, his pulse is already in his throat—it doesn’t get any calmer for finding it empty, sheets cold under his clammy palm but at the same time: it doesn’t get any worse.

Because it’s gotten less common with time. But to call it uncommon would be wishful thinking. Dishonest.

And there are so many things Steve’s learned in this relationship—not least how nothing that came before it could ever compare, really; or maybe couldn’t really have been called a relationship at all, more than varyingly convenient ways not to be alone—but one of those many things Steve’s learned?

Honesty.

Just…painful, terrifying, vulnerable fucking truthful, ripped out from the center of his fucking chest honesty. Nothing less. And sure, it’s usually messy.

But every single time, it’s more than worth it.

So: finding the other side of the bed empty and cold isn’t as routine anymore, which is progress. But it isn’t unheard of.

So Steve doesn’t wait for his pulse to settle before he swings himself out of bed to go find the warmth that’s missing at his side.

He hangs onto the railing on his way down the stairs, still shaking off the daze of the particular horror that’d visited his dream tonight, and uses the dig of his nails around the grip to coax himself to waking, to shaking the stupor off a little quicker; to focusing on the mission he needs to complete for the sake of his own heart in more ways than one: to find his boyfriend, the better, far-more-precious half of every part of him, and try to fix what he can of what drove Eddie from their bed, and comfort what can’t be fixed straight-out.

But in the same turn: Steve needs to find his boyfriend so that his own heart can stall how it’s trying to tear out of his skin for the way it’s still slamming against his ribs, through his veins. Steve needs to find him, and soak in every form of proof that he’s there, he’s safe, he’s breathing, he’s not dea—

Yeah. Steve needs to find his boyfriend.

LAST LINE

🎬take one

I’ve been tagged multiple times so apologies if I missed any of you lovelies but my thanks to the wonderful @sidekick-hero, @eriquin, @fuctacles, and @vecnuthy (and any/everyone else!) for the tag(s)!

Writing game: post the last line that you wrote and tag someone for every word in the line.

18 words. Fuck, okay.

No-pressure tags (and totally randomised so apologies if you hate these games): @puppy-steve @prettyasadiagram @mensch-anthropos-human @notaqueenakhaleesi @pretend-theres-a-name-here @dreamwatch @goodolefashionedloverboi @theheadlessphilosopher @sanctumdemunson @berenwrites @shrimply-a-menace @slashify @bookworm0690 @miraculousmultifan @lunarmaruna @penny00dreadful @silentastherave @cranberrymoons