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Eddie has hay in his hair again.
Steve smiles to himself, Eddie was leaning against the wooden beam holding the ceiling up, picking strands of hay and straw out of his curly hair, pants hanging low on his hips and dark bruises littering his collar bones. Steve left them there. He grins again sitting up letting his legs dangle over the edge of the bed
Eddie moves towards him, positioning himself between the prince’s legs and ruffling his already messy hair. Steve pushes him away with a soft chuckle, Eddie drops a kiss to his hairline before turning and leaving the room, his rings catching the soft morning light and sending beams of light around the small room.
Steve can see the palace through the bedroom window, he stands and walks to the window pulling the heavy curtain over it to hide the image. He turns back around to find Eddie leading against the wooden beam again. Fuck he’s beautiful
“You look beautiful” he says, walking towards the sailor, tucking himself into the others chest hands snaking around his waist. He feels Eddie chuckle as he wraps his arms around Steve
“You’re not too bad yourself your highness” he whispers in response, his voice low and croaky with sleep. Steve pulls away frowning at him
“Don’t call me that. And don’t be an asshole.”
Eddie laughs again, pushing Steve back into the bed climbing on top of him
“I wasn’t being an asshole; I was complimenting you. What, you can't take a compliment?”
“You were complimenting me like an asshole.” Steve mutters, letting out a puff of air as Eddie starts to kiss down his neck
“I have to get dressed” he breaths, making no move to push Eddie off
“Oh, now that’s just disappointing, I prefer to look at you shirtless” Steve snickers, letting his hands wander to Eddie’s hair, tugging on it lightly
“Eddie, I have to get dressed”
“Of course, your highness”
This time Steve did push him off, standing with a huff he started to grab his clothes from the floor, pulling them on
“You promised you wouldn’t call me that.” He mumbles, he hears Eddie sigh “You know how I feel about it.”
Suddenly large warm hands cup his face and he’s staring into Eddie’s large doe eyes, filled with sincerity and love, it still takes his breath away
“I’m sorry. I was just joking around.” His thumb swipes over Steve’s cheek he wants to lean into the hand, fall into Eddie’s arms instead he pulls away, grabbing his coat
“Your highness. What, like I’m above you?” He mimics bitterly
Eddie can’t stop the small scoff that exits his lips, glancing down at himself as he pulls his own shirt on, trying to dust the crud off of it, not looking at Steve as he replies, “Hate to remind you, sweetheart, but… coronation next week says you sort of are.”
“You’re not doing great with the pillow talk today Eds, I have to say.”
“Aw, c’mon, don’t be mean.” Eddie smiles, relieved to see that Steve is smiling back at him, albeit somewhat timid like he isn’t properly certain he wants to be smiling.
Eddie walks towards Steve again, like a moth to the flame he can’t stay away. Steve’s eyes trace Eddie’s features.
They make him ache. He loves this man so much
“Just a few minutes ago you loved my dirty talk.” Eddie can’t help but joke, Steve grins, properly grins, and drops his head into Eddie’s shoulder, mumbling into his neck
“Don’t get cocky. It’s not cute.” Eddie laughs into Steve’s hair
After a beat Steve speaks “I should go”
“You don’t have to,” Eddie replies in a voice just as low, tilting his head to see if he can coax Steve’s eyes up to his
After doing this so many months, Eddie knows that Steve has a harder time saying no when their eyes meet. Maybe it’s something about the desperation in his own. Maybe it provokes guilt in Steve. And maybe Eddie should feel selfish for doing that, but he can’t say he does.
Steve exhales through his nose, the tips of his fingers touching Eddie’s collar. “I do, though.” he pulls away, putting distance between the pair. They stand in silence until Eddie breaks it, Eddie can’t do silence
“I’m taking Mary out tomorrow afternoon, why don’t you come with me” Steve sighed and looked away, scratching at the back of his neck uncomfortably
“I have a fitting tomorrow,”
“Ah.” Eddie forces a smile. “Getting fancy new drapes for coronation then?”
“A king has to look his best,” Steve replies bluntly. The words sound manufactured, as though they are ones he’s learned to recite after so long hearing them ring in his head.
Eddie keeps his smile on. “You already do.”
Steve blushed and the incredulous smile he flashed Eddie with is more stunning than any sunlight or gemstone could ever be. He teases through a breathy laugh, “Really? I look my best? I look post-fuck, Eddie.”
“Exactly,” Eddie replies, beaming, “that’s my favourite look for you. Y’know, I think you should go to Coronation naked. Now that’s your best damn look.”
It earns him a precious laugh and pride bubbles up in his stomach as a result. He loves being able to make Steve laugh. He thinks that, maybe, if he makes Steve laugh, it’ll be enough to make him stick around. Maybe just for one more kiss. Maybe just a moment of intimacy from him to help him last the next few days without it.
“I really should leave,” Steve says, doing up the final button on his shirt. Before he can escape though, Eddie catches him by the arm.
Steve lets out a small gasp, starting to wonder, “Wh—” but doesn’t get to finish as Eddie uses long fingers to pluck a single piece of hay from his hair. They stand frozen for a moment before Eddie lets him go without a word Steve turns and walks away, walks away like he always does.
Steve can’t believe he still feels hurt by it
----------
Robin is fastening the last of the rope to the mast when Eddie steps aboard
“Morning,” he chirps.
“It isn’t funny anymore,” comes her immediate reply.
He replies over his shoulder, feigning innocence as he stepped into the captain’s quarters, “What’s not funny?”
“Him,” Robin returns. Her tone clipped as she followed him
He pretends not to understand, mulling over the maps spread out around the table. “Who?”
Robbin scoffs flopping onto the chair “You’re gonna act dumb? Really? Not a good look Ed’s.”
He shrugged smirking down at her from across the table “maybe I am dumb”
“I covered your meeting this morning at the palace. You were with the prince weren’t you
Eddie hums a reply, he looks down at the map in front of him instead of at Robins pained expression
“Those meetings are bullshit; we both know it”
“You can’t keep doing this.”
Eddie’s expression hardens. “I don’t remember you birthing me, Mother.”
“It was alright there for a month Ed’s.” She stands placing her hands on the map in front of him. “When you and he were just playing around and he’d come by for inspection or the two of you would sneak off to the barn for a few hours and I’d turn my back and pretend I didn’t know but—It’s not funny anymore, you have to know that.”
“It’s the same as it’s always been,” is what Eddie says instead of saying what he wanted to say. I love him.
“Coronation is this month.” Her voice drips with pity
Eddie bites, “I know it is.”
“Fucking around with the prince is one thing,” She jabs a finger into his chest, forcing him to look up at her. “Fucking the king? You can’t Eddie.”
“It’s just a casual thing, Rob,” He argues, looking down as he scuffs his boots against the wood, “I can cut it off tomorrow.”
He could end this whole thing with Steve any time he wants. Any time he wanted to, he could tell Steve to stop coming over. To stop sneaking aboard in the middle of the night or creeping into the barn as the sun starts to peak in the morning. He could tell Steve to leave any time he wants to.
He just hasn’t wanted to yet.
“End it. I’m trying to help you here and you know it.” Robin says, straightening her jacket she turns and starts to walk out of the room. Eddie’s voice stops her
“Thank you…for looking out for me” she doesn’t turn back, instead pausing in the doorway for a moment before pulling the door shut behind her, leaving Eddie with his own thoughts
----------
Eddie lasts 12 hours before he’s clambering up the side of the palace again, knocking on Steve’s window, smiling as the soon to be king lets him in. He grins kissing the other boy senseless. The stumble back onto the bed, Eddies knees either side of Steve’s hips, kissing down his neck. Steve’s husky voice whispers, “I missed you” and Eddie becomes as weak as it’s possible for a man to become.
Eddie is laying out on Steve’s sheets, his curly hair splayed out around him like a halo, pale skin shimmering against the dark fabric.
He can’t believe how lucky he is to be able to see this.
Eddie looks over with a smile, he reaches out to brush away some stray curls off Steve’s forehead with his fingers, purposefully bumping into Steve’s nose with his knuckles to make him sniff and giggle.
He murmurs, keeping his voice trapped in the space between them that no one else in the world is allowed to broach, “I think you’re pretty.”
Steve grins bashfully, cheeks pink as he rolls his head to the side to gaze up at Eddie, doe eyes taking everything it. He replies, squirming closer to Eddie in the bed, pulling at the covers to hide more bare skin, “I think you’re pretty too.”
Eddie always melts when his words are whispered like that. When they’re small and innocent, Steve looks far younger than he’s meant to. How is this man meant to be a king come next week? He’s younger than Eddie is. And he speaks in soft phrases and touches with such care. He stands at the front of Eddie’s ship and smiles through face fulls of sea spray and he still giggles while sneaking into Eddies hayloft. Eddie doesn’t want politics to ruin this man. He doesn’t want anything to ruin him. What Steve has made of himself is pristine. How could Eddie ever bear to lose him? He doesn’t think he can.
Which is why it hurts so much to say, “I can’t keep sneaking in here Stevie”
Steve’s kind smile drops, and stoniness replaces it. He responds in a tired tone that’s as smooth and as sharp as a shard of glass might be, “Must we talk practicalities?”
Eddie hates when Steve uses that technique with him. He knows it’s the one Steve uses with servants. He can’t help how his brow draws in and he pulls back from Steve a few inches to say, “Yes, your highness, I’m afraid we must.”
Immediately, Steve is out of bed.
The feathery blanket goes with him, dragging it onto the floor and holding it up to his chest. His freckle-dappled shoulders are open to the eye but the rest of him is covered in the comfortable fabric like it’s the only shield he has to protect him against the whole world.
That whole world being Eddie.
He says, strained and venomous, a copperhead through the weeds towards a horse’s unsuspecting foal, “You know I hate it when you call me that.”
Eddie sits up in the bed, the remaining sheets pooling around his waist. He can’t keep his voice from snapping back, “And you know it’s what I’m supposed to call you. Don’t act like we’re outside of the world. You need to start fucking thinking about this. Seriously. We don't have time to pretend we're not running out of it.”
He gestures a hand between them, eyes begging. He’s always pleading in some way when he looks at Steve.
“You knew there was an end date. This is it. We can’t keep doing this..”
He lets out a tired sigh, his shoulders slumping.
All so quickly, in only a few moments, the fight has drained from him. He doesn’t want to yell. He doesn’t want to fight.
How could he waste precious time on a silly thing like that? He doesn’t want to do much of anything but cry.
He murmurs, gesturing his head towards himself, “Get back in bed, please.”
Steve hovers in the middle of the room with the covers wrapped around him. He adjusts them nervously, sending a glimpse from Eddie to the door back to Eddie again. His eyes are swimming with tears.
“Eddie”
“Please…come here”
A reluctant sigh leaves him as he shuffles back over and climbs onto the mattress.
Eddie opens his arms to beckon him closer.
Steve crawls into his arms. And Eddie grips him with a fierceness he’s never learned from anyone before. He thinks he’s never ever been taught by anyone to love somebody like this, so badly that it tears him open and drips his blood onto the bedspread.
No one needed to teach him to love someone like he loves Steve. This is as natural as anything else. To hold Steve is to finally be able to breathe after twenty-odd years of gasping for air.
He instinctively pets down Steve’s hair, carding through tangled curls and closing his eyes. He lets out a long, suffering exhale that makes Steve’s head rise and fall with his bare chest. A small sob escapes the future king’s lips, Eddies heart shatters.
“Can’t we just have this?” he whispers, tears dropping onto Eddies skin. Eddie doesn’t reply, he doesn’t know what to say. Steve tries again, even more wounded, like a boot is already half-pressed into his ribs, “Please, Eddie, can’t we just have this?”
And Eddie wants to say yes. More than anything he wants to hold Steve close and forget about the rest of it. Why should coronation week matter? Can’t it just be them? Can’t they wrap themselves in worn-out sheets and forget about the world that exists outside this room?
Eddie pets Steve’s hair back, wiping a tear from the others cheek, “I wish we could.”
Steve closes his eyes; his breathing comes out shaky against Eddie’s skin. He says, as soft as he can, “I don’t want to—I don’t want for this—I don’t want.”
As if that’s all he can conjure on the subject.
Eddie continues to pet through his hair. He wonders in a kind voice, “You don’t want to what?”
The laugh that forces itself from Steve’s throat is hollow. He answers, “I don’t want to be king; I don’t want to leave this behind. I don’t want to leave you.”
Even when they both know he should. He should have left so long ago. But here he is. And Eddie never wants him to.
He’s still trying to think of something to say when Steve speaks again, his mouth still against Eddie’s chest so every word is spoken with a sigh against Eddie’s skin. Eddie can feel every part of him. If only he could dip his fingers into Steve's body and feel his heart beating in his palm.
“You’re the only person who calls me Steve.” His hand slips up to touch Eddie’s arm, smoothing up to his shoulder.
Eddie doesn’t say a word. He merely listens.
“And I just—Eddie, I need this," Steve whispers. "To be away from it all. From everyone. From the your highness bullshit and the responsibilities and the… the fucking coronation week—I don’t want to be better than anyone.” He lets out a faint sound that resembles a hiccup. “I don’t want to be king.”
Eddies breath is shaky, barley holding back tears himself
He admits into Steve’s hair, “I don’t want you to leave either.”
Steve grips his arm with the fierceness of a man who has lost centuries' worth of people. Like there’s no way he can be so young. Because a young person shouldn’t want to hold so tight to someone to keep from losing them.
Eddie kisses his hair again, slipping his hand from Steve’s hair to the back of his neck to give a faint, fond squeeze. Then he brushes his palm over Steve’s warm back, feeling over the freckles on Steve’s shoulders, constellations more artfully crafted than the ones that lace the heavens, and he says, “But you have to know, I—We can’t do this.”
Steve sounds pitiful. “Why not?”
“Because I’m just—” Eddie sighs— “I'm a bastard child, Steve. My mother was a maid, my father was some passer through in the dark. I was born on palace grounds. I run errands for the palace in a rundown ship and sleep in a barn when I’m on land. I’m not exactly made to sit beside a throne.”
Steve rubs his nose against Eddie’s chest again. His eyes are closed but a tear is still able to drip out and hit Eddie’s skin.
“How can you compare yourself to a stupid crown?” Steve speaks again, a little firmer, “Why can’t you sit beside a thrown? Who cares what anyone was made for? What was I made for?”
He props himself up on Eddie’s chest, holding his gaze. His eyes are comparable to the sun now rather than the moon, heat swirling in them. He looks dangerous. Eddie admires the flame he can turn into. The way he can burst into fire and burn so brightly.
Eddie has always thought it. Steve always sets off a glimmer.
“What, because I was born in a different crib I matter more?” Steve scoffs. “How’s that fair?”
Eddie smiles sadly at him. “no one said it was fair. Sometimes things aren’t fair. They’re just how things are.”
“Well things are fucking stupid,” Steve decides, scowling.
Eddie’s grimaces, he cups Steve’s cheek in his hand, thumbing at the dampness beneath his eye. Steve leans into the touch, squishing his cheek against Eddie’s palm and squeezing his eyes shut. A tiny whimper tugs up from the back of his throat.
He whispers, pressing a chaste kiss to the base of Eddie’s palm, “Go with me.”
Eddie raises his brows. “Go where?”
Steve looks up through damp eyelashes. “Anywhere. Just away from here.”
Eddie’s eyes widen in alarm, and he gasps out quietly, “What?”
“If it’s you or a crown,” Steve replies, skin christened by the moon through the window, “I’d smash all the jewels on that damn thing by hand.”
Eddie can’t keep himself from making a hoarse sound in response. “Steve—”
“I’m serious, please.” Steve’s eyes draw over him. “I won’t leave if you don’t want to but… but Eddie if you wanted to leave, we could. You and me. We could take the Mary, sail away—” He lets out a bright laugh— “Eddie we could go anywhere and I wouldn’t have to wear a crown. I could be your Steve”
Eddie stays quiet for a few minutes. He flutters his eyelids. His throat and his chest feel tight like a boot is coming down on him.
He says, his voice cracking despite his effort to keep it steady, “I should leave. I…I think it’s time for me to go”
Steve’s face drains. “What?”
“I should leave,” Eddie repeats.
He has to do the right thing here. He has to. They can’t keep doing this. He’s infected Steve’s mind. He’s made Steve want to leave everything but him. It should be the opposite. How could he have done that? How could he have ruined Steve to such an extent? Why didn’t he stop this when he should have?
He starts to squirm his way out from beneath Steve and says again, syllables stressed, fear in his voice, “Please, your highness, you should leave.”
Steve sits back on the bed, staring in absolute stunned, terrified silence for several more moments before he makes a small, choked-off sound and murmurs, “Eddie—Ed, please don't call me that. I’m serious. For you, I—”
“Darling…” Eddie says in a timid voice, moving to the window as he pulls his shirt back on. Steve stares at him. He swallows turning away and climbing out the window.
----------
Eddie doesn’t see Steve for the rest of the week. He keeps himself busy. It shouldn’t surprise him that, on the eve of Coronation, he finds Steve in the captain’s quarters aboard his ship. Holding the crown in his lap with two hands.
Maybe he isn't surprised at all.
Maybe the pain in his chest is just relief.
Steve's eyes are big and shadowed by the darkness.
Eddie shuts the door behind him and breathes, “Steve.”
Steve says, “I’m sorry, I know you don’t want me here, but I have to—”
“Steve.” Eddie ends up at the edge of the bed between Steve’s legs where he cups his cheeks with both hands the second Steve looks up at him, brushes his thumbs over Steve’s cheekbones, and kisses him, kisses him harshly, it’s a desperate and emotional kiss, the crown falls from Steve’s hands and clatters to the floor, Eddie pulls away which prompts the most wrecked sound from the back of Steve’s throat. Eddie presses their foreheads together.
All Steve says is, "please."
He doesn’t need to voice the rest. Eddie feels the unsaid, whispered words against his skin. The echoes of past touch beneath his clothes, still lingering.
Please, come with me. You’re the only one who calls me Steve. I don’t want to be king. Please, Eddie, please.
He murmurs, lips moving up to touch Steve’s forehead, “I’m sorry for calling you that.”
Steve shakes his head. “Don’t be.”
“C’mon.” Eddie bobs his head, reaching for Steve’s hand to twist their fingers together. Steve’s hands are cold and rigid. “The sun rises in a few hours. We should get a head start before they realize their prince is missing.”
Steve looks up through damp lashes, shock in his eyes
“Eddie…”
“we can go anywhere can’t we?”
“anywhere”
“then lets go”