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“I’m getting fat,” Steve says sourly as he stands shirtless in front of their bedroom mirror, poking at his midsection with a finger and a frown.
Eddie sits in bed with his guitar and looks up from where he plucks the strings. “So?” He asks.
“What do you mean, ‘so?’ First these ugly scars and now this.”
Eddie can’t stand it when Steve talks down to himself, even for a second. He sets the guitar on the mattress and moves to sit on the edge. “C’mere,”
“No,” Steve shakes his head once, his eyes still locked onto his reflection. “I don’t want a pep talk right now.”
“That’s too bad. Come, Steve, let me look at you.”
Eddie has a plan prepared in case he needs to fight and console a stubborn boyfriend, but Steve’s shoulders drop and he pouts all the way to the bed across the short distance between them.
Eddie spreads his knees and pulls Steve in with the hands he places around his waist. Steve doesn’t hold him in return like he usually does, but he finally looks back with sad brown eyes. Eddie gazes up at him with his chin to Steve’s abdomen. “Can’t have anyone talking about my baby like that, can we?”
“It’s true, though.”
Eddie leans back an inch or so as though to check, but really he just adores Steve’s body, every mole, hair, and scar. The same smile that appears whenever he gets to admire Steve stretches across Eddie’s face, and yeah, it is true. Steve started filling out a couple years after everything with Vecna, once things remained peaceful and his mind started being kinder to him. He started focusing on community college and stopped working out as much, and now he’s got a soft belly that he tries to hide under his waistband, sweet love handles, thicker arms and thighs, and squishier pecs. Eddie loves every inch, and he places tender kisses on all of his favorite spots, ignoring the way Steve rolls his eyes above him.
It’s also true that the scars have remained intense. The man nearly got eaten by demobats for fuck’s sake, and evidence of that isn’t just going to disappear. The gouges sink deeply into his otherwise smooth skin, cut into the flesh of his stomach and sides. They’re shades darker than the rest of him, pink and ridged and sometimes they still give him phantom pains. They’re stark, insistent when they make their presence known, but never ugly. They’re proof that Steve lived, when he was a few unlucky moments away from a gruesome fate.
“Yeah, it’s true, but nothing about you is ugly, Steve. Not one bit.”
“Most people would disagree,” Steve mutters, “I used to be handsome; everyone called me pretty boy.”
Eddie frowns. He must be lacking in reminding Steve just how much he adores him, and vows to tell him every day if he has to. “When have we ever cared what other people think of us?” He looks around the room with his eyes narrowed. “Who’re these ‘other people’? I don’t see them.”
The look on Steve’s face tells him that that’s the wrong approach.
“Hey, sweetheart,” He says, his voice softer now, “You are handsome, my pretty boy. Beautiful, gorgeous, ravishing, every fucking word under the sun describes you. You always have been, you are now, and you always will be, okay?”
Steve says nothing, and Eddie places his lover’s arms around his own neck with a never ending desire for closeness. “Did someone say something to you?”
“Couple of the kids, Mike and Erica…” He admits.
Those little shits never know when to keep their mouths shut. “I’ll talk to them,”
“No, don’t,” Steve argues, “I’m an adult and they like to bully me, I can take it.”
“I know you are, but they’re old enough to keep their observations to themselves by now. You wanna know what I think?”
Steve lifts a shoulder dismissively. “Never stopped you either way,”
Eddie nips on the skin under his belly button in retaliation, pulling a tiny intake of breath from above. “You’re right. I love this body, all of it. It’s here in my arms, right where it’s supposed to be, and I won’t hear a bad word about it. I love having more of you to hang onto,” He says this like a prayer, allowing his hands to memorize all the curves that make up Steve Harrington.
Steve fiddles with Eddie’s hair behind his back. “You don’t think I’m…letting myself go?”
“No, baby,” He emphasizes with a squeeze of Steve’s hips, “If anything, this is you living. I remember for a while there you got so skinny, couldn’t eat more than once a day. And maybe running for your life all the time keeps the pounds off, but it’s not worth it, not at all.”
Steve’s features soften. “You don’t think I should lose it?”
Eddie presses a few more kisses into his stomach, making a point not to avoid the fat or the scars. “No, unless it happens naturally. Let’s do a little brain exercise, okay? Come sit on my lap, lemme hold you.”
Steve obliges with a small smile, wrapping his legs around Eddie’s waist when he settles further onto the covers. “Okay,”
“Tell me a few things in your life that make you happy, make you feel safe.”
Eddie has to resist the urge to kiss him before he speaks, thinking it over. “Living with you, being with you, obviously. Going to school with Robin, even though I hate studying. Hanging out with the kids and making sure they’re alright. Going to dinner at the Byers’, listening to Dustin talk about what he’s gonna do in college. That good?”
Eddie gives him a single peck on the lips. “Perfect. We live the good life now, don’t we? Nightmares and anxiety are better, no more supernatural shit to deal with. Things are okay now, right?”
“Yeah,” Steve says.
“Then that means that this,” Eddie runs his hands all over Steve’s torso, as much as he can with their closeness, “Is your happy body, your peace body. This is how you look when you get good food and sleep instead of saving the world all the time. You’re not letting yourself go, Steve, you’re letting yourself live. That make sense?”
Steve watches him with the most gentle gaze, his eyes shining in the morning light. He leans his forehead against Eddie’s, who can’t stop grinning for the life of him. “Still think I’m sexy?” Steve whispers.
Eddie moves down to kiss that special spot below his jaw. “Honey, the day I stop thinking you’re sexy is the day I’m no longer on earth.”
Steve pulls him close and runs one hand down Eddie’s spine. “You’re too good to me.”
“Keep me around and I’ll find ways to be even better.”
Steve pulls him back to kiss him deeply, tenderly, in the way only seasoned lovers do. “Keep hanging onto me and I’ll never let you go.”
“Sounds like a deal to me.”