A Gem Beyond Counting by teddywesworl

Rating: Explicit

13,728 words, 1/1 chapters

Archive Warning: No Warnings

Tags: Post-Canon, Eddie Munson Lives, Gay Eddie Munson, Bisexual Steve Harrington, Bottom Eddie Munson, Top Steve Harrington, Service Top Steve Harrington, Fix-It, Mutual Pining, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, Fuck Or Die, Sex Pollen, sex pollen as a metaphor for touch/intimacy starvation y’know?, Blow Jobs, Anal Sex, Dubious Consent, insofar as any sex pollen fic is dubcon by nature, The Upside Down (Stranger Things), Monster Eddie Munson, but I wouldn’t say this is a monsterfucking fic he’s just like a little off, Navel-Gazing

Summary:

Thanks for the rec!

This rec is a part of Theme Weekend. The theme this weekend is Love Confessions.

Know a fic that deserves extra love? Submit through our asks or the submission box!

Less than 10% of US anti-LGBTQ bills have become law

49 anti-LGBTQ state bills passed in the US in 2024. Despite this, advocates successfully defeated 91% of the proposed bills, showcasing effective strategies like community-level education, deep canvassing, and amplifying trans stories, Uncloseted Media reports.

Personal conversations and humanizing trans individuals have proven crucial in changing perspectives and influencing lawmakers.

Advocacy groups have also focused on delaying harmful legislation, with tactics like filibustering and packing legislative hearings with pro-trans constituents.

Even when bills pass, provisions and lawsuits have been used to mitigate their impact. This reflects the importance of allyship, training, and mental health support for those fighting these battles.

More here: Advocates Beat 91% of Last Year's Anti-LGBTQ Bills. How?

Photo: simpson33

WIP Weekend

Thanks for the tags @fkinkindagauche and @cloudsurfing42!

Rules: Send me an emoji in an ask, and I'll write 3-5 sentences and/or paragraphs from that WIP. No limits to the amount of emojis you can request, please feel free to send multiple!

Chipping away at these WIPs:

🐶 B.A.D. D.O.G. (sequel to the college AU puppy play Stomeddie/Stommie fic is coming along! Rewrote a few things and much happier for it haha.

🧜‍♂️ Participating in the STMonsterCalendar Mermay Bingo event! So far almost completed 1 out of 4 fics for this. (Feel free to request a SFW or NSFW fic snippet)

🏴‍☠️ Argh Me Matey (now called Eddierotica): "Eddie writes the world's worst erotica about characters who are just poorly disguised versions of himself and Steve. They're not dating." the fic has brought me so much joy while writing. Now planned to feature the following genres: pirates, vampires, prince/stable boy/also cowboys, and aliens

Tagging a few folks to join in (and the ST writing server) @strangerthingswritersguild @runninriot @kikidoesfanfic @dreamwatch @helpimstuckposting @griefabyss69 @little-annie @queenie-ofthe-void @hbyrde36 @pearynice

Enjoy a SFW snippet from one of the 🧜‍♂️ fics below the cut!

Rules: Send me an emoji in an ask, and I'll write & share 3 sentences for that WIP!

🍸 - S____ N__

😈 - N____ T______ & D________

🏕 Midsummer Nights (Ch 5)

👻 Fuggi Regal Fantasima (Ch4)

🌊 Caught in the Undertow (Ch 10 - final! 😱)

From Fuggi Regal Fantasima:

“I, um…” Eddie cleared his throat, slipping through the cracked open door and into the room, but still hovered an awkward distance away from Steve and the bed, eyeing it cautiously. “I don’t—uh—I didn’t really like the way we left things earlier.”

Steve snorted, giving him half an eye roll. “I wasn’t a big fan either.”

“I’m sorry, okay?” Eddie pleaded, taking a few slow steps closer. “But you know I'm right. I mean, this whole thing is ridiculous anyway. Don’t we have bigger, much more important things to worry about than having stupid crushes on each other?!”

By the end of his speech Eddie was practically shouting, and Steve had to stifle a grin. He could tell it was taking all of Eddie’s self control not to stamp his feet.

“I don't recall actually admitting—”Steve began, but was quickly cut off.

“Harrington—” Eddie growled, glaring with all the fierceness of an especially adorable house cat as he crossed his arms over his chest. 

Steve couldn't resist copying him, sitting up as he crossed his own arms and pitched his voice as low as possible. “Munson—”

Eddie let out an exasperated sigh, raking a hand roughly over his face before stumbling closer still, falling to his knees next to the bed. “Look, Eddie,” Steve said softly, scooching himself towards the edge of the bed. “If there's one thing I've learned in the last three years, it’s that there’s always going to be something else to worry about. But I’m done waiting to live my life, when I know full well It could end with a snap of Vecna’s disgusting fingers. None of us knows how much time we’ve got left, and if all I have are these stolen moments between world ending catastrophes, then so be it. We’ll deal with Vecna when the time comes, but until then…”

No pressure tags 💜

@steddiehands86 @hairstevington @stellarspecter @vthx @fkinkindagauche

@pearynice @penny00dreadful @sidekick-hero @hitlikehammers @steddiecameraroll

WIP weekend 🎉

Using this to try to force me to make a start on the four prompts on my Steddie bingo card that currently exist only in my brain (we’re not talking about the ones that don’t exist at all yet). The below are the prompts - which I do have intentions for but frankly who knows what's going to come out once I start trying to make words.

Rules: send me an emoji in an ask and I’ll write some quantity of words/sentences (who knows honestly) from that wip.

🔥Hellfire (I know jack all about D&D so this is going to get interesting fast)

🏆 Prize (this is either going to be fluffy af or NOT AT ALL depending on which side my brain's turning over on when I get going)

📼 Family Video (this is … currently porn.)

📞 Phone Sex (this one's … not porn. Currently.)

And just for kicks:

👀 Ask me for something else. Go nuts. I’m feeling whimsical.

(( @strangerthingswritersguild @pearynice @vthx @sourw0lfs @hbyrde36 @devondespresso @goldenprophetwrites @fkinkindagauche @tinytalkingtina))

WIP Weekend

I still have ones from last weekend to attend to also, but we're working up to it, promise. Anyway, anyway, usual rules apply:

*The only except will be if a birthday prompt hits the required number of sentences before completing the emoji amount.

💀you’re on your own, kid (chapter 8) 😈 dance with the devil (chapter 1 rewrite) 🎲 steddie bingo (pick a prompt by clicking!) 💛 steddie birthday prompt (yellow heart) 💙 jayvik birthday prompt (blue heart) 🧡 buckingham birthday prompt (orange heart) ❤️ hellcheer birthday prompt (red heart) 🖤 buddie birthday prompt (black heart)

All I have snippet-wise this week is OC stuff and no one wants that so *fingerguns emoji*

Tags under the cut

WIP Weekend

I don't think I've ever actually participated in one of these. I have a tendency to only work on one project at a time, which makes it kind of boring, only giving people one emoji to choose from. But I'm gonna give it a try this weekend and see how I feel about bouncing around between projects!

Rules: Send me one of the emojis below in an ask, and I'll write 3-5 sentences (or paragraphs if I'm feeling particularly inspired) from that WIP, and then I'll post it. You can request as many as you want!

divider by @/saradika-graphics

Current WIPs to choose from:

🍆Steddie smutpilogue to II Most Wanted

✂️Ronance smutpilogue to II Most Wanted

❓Steddie Big Bang (I won't be able to post the snippet I write for this since we're still under a gag order, but you're welcome to make me write some of it! I'll post a pic of one of my cats for you instead if you choose this.)

⛰️⛰️Twin Peaks Metalsandwich AU

🐙OFMD Izzy seamonster fic for the Fandom Trumps Hate auction, if you're feeling particularly adventurous and want to venture outside of ST

Tagging some people who may or may not want to do this and/or send me an ask: @stellarspecter, @tinytalkingtina, @pearynice, @vthx, @dame-zoom-a-lot, @hbyrde36, @alwaysurvalentine, @talanashta, @cxwzkeys, @jo-harrington, @sourw0lfs, @cloudsurfing42, and anyone else who wants to participate!

Here is a snippet from one of the unposted chapters of II Most Wanted to wet your whistle (CW for discussions of murder, but not very graphic):

Polyam Ships

Semifinals

We're gonna lose, but we can go down yelling!

just a suggestion but if you're writing about "the ancient world" please don't include societies that existed from like 1300 to 1521

AZTECS AND INCAS WERE NOT ANCIENT I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL

The Americas have genuinely ancient histories also!!!! Tell me why you talk about Rome and Greece and Sumer and the Qin Dynasty and Middle Kingdom Egypt but you've never heard of the Moche or Chavín, the Olmec or the Classical Maya city-states, or even Poverty Point or the Hopewell Interaction Network, or maybe the ancient Tsimshian city of Temlaxam????

okay this is gaining notes so I just want to clarifying:

I'm not saying that the Aztec and Inca societies are not fascinating and super important. They are!!!! Please learn about them!!!! And I'm DEFINITELY not saying this to say they are inferior to Eurasian societies--I want people to learn about the societies BEFORE the Aztecs and Incas.

However, when they are lumped in with the category of "ancient" alongside Rome/Greece/Mesopotamia/Egypt etc societies from before AD 500, it has the effect of flattening Indigenous American history. This is why people are constantly losing their mind over the fact that "Oxford is older than the Aztec Empire" like okay sure. But Teotihuacan is older than Oxford, it's not like there were no societies in the Americas before the year 1300.

Basically no one seems to have a sense of the true length of Indigenous American presence and history in our own continents. That's why this bothers me.

If you don't refer to The Tudors in England as "The ancient Tudors" or The Renaissance as "The Ancient Renaissance" then it's also inaccurate to say "The Ancient Aztecs/Inca". It's really just so common for people to think that Native American history begins and ends with being colonized (thus, why they see a few decades preceding 1492 as being "ancient" for us)

THANK YOU exactlyyyyyyy this

Part 3 to this

Eddie was completely willing to let bygones be what they were.

He did a shitty thing unintentionally. Steve has been doing shitty things for years with zero consequences. They’re even, right?

It’s not like he’s ever going to see Steve again anyways. He doesn’t throw parties anymore and Eddie doesn’t even have a VCR to warrant going into Family Videos.

So, bygones. As in, bye, gone to the stabbing feeling in his chest when he thinks about what happened for too long.

“Robin Buckley’s being weird.”

Eddie blinks back into the chaotic mess of the art room, “Isn’t she always weird?”

“I mean,” Jeff shrugs. “She been glaring at you the entire class. Did the same thing yesterday, too. I don’t even think she’s blinking.”

Eddie looked over his canvas and, yeah. She’s glaring at him. He turns his frown upside down and gives her a little wave which - “Oh. Oh no.”

“Dude,” Jeff hisses. “She’s coming over here.”

The nervous energy that typically hovers around a Robin is strangely absent when she stops next to his table. It’s a little intimidating. As is her cryptic ass greeting, “It’s been four days. You need to apologize.”

“For what?” He asks and then realizes what this is. “Did Steve Harrington really send his coworker to bully me?”

“I’m more than his coworker,” She scoffs. “And that’s not the point. You need to apologize to him. For-.”

“Apologize for what, not watering my club down to make him comfortable?”

Thats not what happened and Eddie knows it. He knows he crossed a line but he doesn’t understand it and it makes him defensive. He can’t make himself shut up, “You can tell him I’m sorry he can’t take a joke.”

Robin’s eyes narrow and then she turns around, calling across the room, “Mrs Keller, does this paint stain?”

“It’s washable.”

Robin nods once to the teacher and then immediately turns around and flips Eddie’s paint tray into his lap. She grabs the bottle of paint he was using and coats him in blue paint before dropping the bottle on the floor.

Her voice is low and unapologetic even as she grabs a handful of napkins for him, “He doesn’t even want an apology. Do it anyways.”

Eddie is left stunned, as is their deathly quiet class, but Robin just turns to the teacher and declares, “I will accept my detention now.”

Do NOT give in to despair. Yes, the response isn’t always perfect. But the perfect is the enemy of the good.

People are standing up.

Fancast: Aldis Hodge as Tony Stark

#oh my goddddddd #you just never see a poc in that kind of archetype #tony stark is a power fantasy reserved for white men #i’m automatically a million times more interested in rich kind of dickish superheroes when they are poc tbh #because like imagine being a little black boy growing up so so so smart and so so so alone #half your teachers dismissing you when you get bored and restless because you already KNOW all this stuff #and focusing on your disruptive behaviour that results from that combination of boredom and loneliness #you grow up without any real peers because the other kids at your rich fancy private school are all white #and nobody would ever dare say anything but you’re self-conscious anyway #so you deal with it by being as outrageous as possible because then at least you can control why they look at you askance #your dad’s been trying to prove himself to long gone heroes for as long as you can remember #and your mother loves you but she doesn’t always understand you #they die young and you go off the rails and it doesn’t even sting that they all think you’ve proven them right #because you kind of believe it as well #you’ve grown up never seeing a black boy on the television who wasn’t violent #and even when you get straightened out some with help from rhodey there’s a long fucking way to go #but you reach out and you /demand/ respect because you’re angry and you want justice for all your wrongs #the media never really accept you; they’re hungry for more of your misadventures so they can paint you like a villain #I COULD GO ON BUT I DON’T THINK IT’LL FIT IN THE TAGS (via peppermoonchilds)

Tony Stark as a POC is 100 000 times more relevant than white male Tony Stark

I….I don’t think I’ve EVER seen a poc Tony Stark fancast. Wow. I just realized this. Damn. And this is awesome. Co-sign all the way. 

@hipeerpressure

There are probably other actors who pull this off, but Aldis Hodge would carry off this role & no one would ever see Tony Stark as a white man again.

Really tho. He’d take the role and keep it, like Samuel L. Jackson took and kept Nick Fury (who was originally a white southern dude, for people not into marvel comics)

Always trying to bring home wild animals 🤭

Part One

“We are going to get in so much shit for this,” Chris rambles, “if we get fucking caught with this-”

“Chris, stop okay,” Eddie tries again. She’s been working herself up with the same shit for twenty minutes.

“We decided to do this babe,” Robin reminds her.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time!” Chrissy practically wails, “he saved our asses, it just seemed fair!”

“Our asses were in trouble in the first place because of him,” Eddie mumbles under his breath.

Robin Elbows him, “shut up, he said he didn’t know and I believe him. I told you, he’s a good soul.”

Eddie cries out in pain, “ah shitting fuck!” he yells across the bay, reflexively pushing off with a booted foot so his stool rolls away from the danger, his hurt fingers shoved unceremoniously in his mouth to nurse away the sting.

“Whatsit?” Robin sits up in her bunk, fluff of hair sticking up at all angles.

“Nothing. Nothing, sorry, fucking thing shocked me, go back to sleep.”

“Timesit?”

“I dunno,” Eddie looks around vaguely, looking across the untidy bank of tools and control panels he squints at the nearest monitor, “one ish.”

Rewrite an Ending or Two: Chapter Seven

“You like my display?” Vecna steps forward and runs a clawed finger along the vine trapping Andy’s legs. “You took Maxine from me before she could complete it, but don’t worry. She’ll have pride of place.”

“Stay the fuck away from Max,” Steve says. She dives for one of the spider jars and throws it at him, tries to get behind the overturned chairs, give herself a little bit of cover, but Vecna tilts his head like El does, and Steve finds herself pinned to the attic wall. She tries to hunch over, protect herself, but it’s like she’s frozen in place.

Read more on AO3

For those of you saying "But when do they find out about the BABY", this one's for you.

Written for @steddiesportsau.

Read the Coverage

Prompt #1: Friday Night Lights | Word Count: 2771 | Rating: T | CW: Language | Tags: Pre-Steddie, S2 Canon Divergence/Mild AU, Football Player Steve Harrington, Hawkins High School Football, Let It Be Known: Eddie Munson Did Not Sign Up For This Willingly

Also on ao3.

It was only supposed to be an unfairly issued punishment for a bullshit charge of attempted destruction of school property. The old, if you want to mess with the school's footballs so bad, then maybe you should be on the team nonsense that only a smooth-brained coach could cook up.

An ultimatum to either suck it up and accept the forced task of throwing practice passes to the JV losers, or be suspended, all but guaranteeing himself a third senior year. All because Coach Watkins saw Eddie snag a football from one of the asshole jocks, cock his arm, and send it flying into the trees in a nice spiral Uncle Wayne had taught him as a kid. Back before it was quite so blatantly obvious that sports weren't gonna be an interest in his life. 

Now, months later, he's having a helmet shoved on his head mid-game because Carver, the asshole starting quarterback, is being carted off the field. Knee blown out.

Two minutes ago, Eddie was reading a book on the bench. Now, Steve Harrington is pulling Eddie's jersey off his back, shoving a pair of pads into them, before demanding he put his arms up. 

He does, not sure what other option he really has at this point. Harrington yanks the jersey down over his head, settling the pads onto his shoulders, then slides his hands under Eddie's jersey. Eddie hears the click, and feels Steve yank them tight. Too tight. 

They're not really gonna make him play football in an actual game, are they? That's absurd.

"You should've been padded up," Harrington says, and then pats Eddie's thighs. Eddie is wearing his bottom pads, but if he wasn't, would Steve Harrington try to strip his pants off him too? "Why weren't you dressed out?"

"Uh, I don't really play," he starts, but Steve Harrington, the only remaining captain on the field, is too busy dressing him before they have to resume play.