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“Fuck, Eds. Sorry.”
Steve freezes as soon as he realizes what he’s done.
“Fuck, I didn’t mean, I’m so fuckin’ sorry—“
“Nah,” Eddie’s hand catches Steve’s where he’s already pulled it back, like scalded from a stovetop; leads Steve’s palm to his lips and kisses slow, relaxed-like in a way none of this adds up to, should allow, and then he fucking…he leads steves hand back to where it’d been, where it’d slipped by too close by pure fucking accident,, he hadn’t meant too, and he’s so fucking careful but Eddie’s leading his hand, cradled gentle and close, right back down to the scene of the crime.
Pressing Steve’s hand to the skin at his hip.
“Nah,” Eddie breathes out slow keeps holding Steve right there, right fucking there; “it’s okay.”
“Ed’s—“ Steve’s voice is sharp, a little, more for shock, and he cuts himself off as his fingers twitch under Eddie’s touch, still not…not sure.
Because Steve had grazed Eddie’s hip one time, like, early days, and the man had fucking jumped three feet off the bed and spent the rest of the night with his side pressed to the mattress or, very memorably and so fucking regrettably, with one hand not-at-all casually covering the space while the other tried to do damage control, distract Steve well enough to forget that one of those gorgeous goddamn sets of fingers wasn’t mapping the shape of him, burying in his hair and tugging sinfully, teasing the waist of his pants with the tantalizing maybe-tonight-maybe-tonight dip of fingers when this was brand new, when they’d only scratched the surface of wanting, when the lines weren’t drawn just yet so in reality Steve should have been hoping for maybe-not-tonight because while his dick was more than ready, his heart was always foolish, and far too ready but Eddie’s palm rested the heel against the fly of Steve’s jeans, and yeah just the one hand—all the whole avoiding Steve’s left hip like a learned response.
So forgive him if, even months later now where he’s learned to never touch, never look, never tease or lick or taste the stretch of Eddie’s skin at the jut of his left hip, like: forgive Steve if he’s suddenly a little hesitant to just…forget that.
Even if it’s Eddie saying that he can.
Steve turns, and Eddie whines a little at the loss of contact, whines some more when it’s Steve leaning heavy on his left hip, an open secret everyone knows in theory, but they don’t know without reading it for themselves.
The date you’ll meet your soulmate’s a thing that appears as kinda like…kinda just an oddly-colorful splotch on the skin until you get closer, until the letters and numbers resolve into something legible, something you can pay attention to, look out for. The timeline’s always different. There are always little exceptions, tiny quirks.
But it’s always a thing that shows up on your left fucking hip.
“I did that,” Eddie breathes, mournful with his tone as but as with his eyes; moves to splay his fingers close on the sheets near where Steve leans his weight against his datemark; “didn’t I?”
“Eds, it’s not,” Steve shakes his head because…yeah, he started hiding it like this because of Eddie, because Eddie wanted his ignored and Steve could meet him, match him; but it wasn’t like Steve was flaunting his. Like he ever had.
A guy can have more than one motivation for cultivating a reputation of pleasing his partner; so what if one of those motivations was keeping said partner’s focus solely on their own skillful unraveling, with enough downtime in the after for Steve to slip his pants back on, no one the wiser?
So it is Eddie, for Eddie, but he’s not the start of the inclination. Even if he was, though.
Steve would do a hell of a lot more for Eddie Munson, just to make him happy.
“I’ve never looked, y’know,” Eddie’s playing with the ends of his hair, now, not hiding—yet—but his voice dips, half talking to himself, maybe mostly to himself because the tone is vicious, hateful and he doesn’t talk to Steve that way, and it breaks Steve’s heart every time Eddie thinks it’s okay to speak to the man Steve loves like aching that way instead: “selfish, fucking selfish.”
And Steve, because he loves to aching and then some, he shifts and reaches, cups Eddie’s cheeks and kisses him because while he doesn’t have all the details-never needed them if Eddie didn’t want to, wasn’t ready, wasn’t ever ready to explain, he could give this, that wasn’t a fucking question; but while Steve may not know all the details?
There’s an…outline. The suggestion of a picture, there. Steve can guess a lot of it.
The words that spill out of Eddie’s lips, pressed where they are against Steve’s, wet and loose and maybe a little salty for a few stray tears: the words that come shore up some of the guessing.
“Didn’t want to know when it’d happen, when I’d,” Eddie’s voice cracks and he surges into Steve’s lips immediately, like he can save the pieces there and he can; he can always; “when I’d have to let go.”
The last part, though; those last words make for more guessing.
“I don’t want to let you go, Stevie,” Eddie whispers, and the tears are audible in it all, now; “I was selfish, I am and I,” he tries to swallow and more chokes, wobbly and pitchy and he’s drawing Steve’s hand purposefully down to the space on his hip that’s been off limits since the first: his datemark, and whatever it is about it that breaks him open like this.
“I don’t even have memories before mine was Struck, okay?” And Steve can barely breathe; understands so much more because a struck-mark means one of two things: your soulmate rejected you, rejected the process and severed the bond, or your soulmate was, they’d, they were dea—
And Eddie’s talking about something too fucking early for the first possibility to even be an option.
“My first fucking tattoo, hell,” Eddie sniffles and sneers and neither sentiment really lands, it’s more just…devastating. “Thought about covering it up, soon as anyone would let me into a parlor. Tried to stick-and-poke it, so I couldn’t tell what it was anymore but I couldn’t even get past a single little dot, like a full inch away,” he presses Steve’s hand closer, the skin so smooth and so fucking warm; “made my,” Eddie’s voice cracks then, and sounds almost like it bleeds around the last wet whimpers that fall forth:
“Made my heart hurt.”
Steve can only imagine; his own situation’s not the same but it’s not so removed, but he doesn’t want the man in his arms to feel like Steve has been left feeling too many times in his life, that hollowness that’s only possible for the fact of a promise unkept, the unique sort of tearing feeling straight at the center of your chest. Over and fucking over again.
“But either way, it always makes my fucking heart hurt,” and Steve gets it, shoved away or in your face it still fucking hurts and he wants to say something, wants to scream, wants to mourn both for Eddie but also for himself because Eddie is the first fucking person whose made the tearing dull, sometimes almost like it’s gone entirely. Eddie is a goddamn miracle and maybe it was different when your soulmate was gone versus lost, but if Steve couldn’t be the same for him, if he—
“But it was a whole new hurt when there was you, you understand?” Steve freezes, scared for half a second where is own heart stills, less hurt and more empty, nothing there to pump until Eddie reaches for Steve’s chin and lifts his gaze, stares utter devotion and maybe a little disbelief straight into Steve’s veins just with a look that full.
“Because I met you and oh Jesus, all I wanted was forever as soon as anything was even hinted at being on the table, like I wanted a lifetime of ten course meals when all you’d done was set out an empty plate,” Eddie laughs, too wet still and too self deprecating and so Steve reaches, strokes his jaw without ever even thinking of moving his hand where it’s still clutched to Eddie side, to Eddie’s Mark; “before you probably even considered letting me kiss you, I would have throw myself on top of you and never moved again, just to pin you to my world and my life and just,” Eddie licks his lips and there’s a hint of a smile that dares to breach the cloud cover.
“You made my heart kinda,” and oh, yeah, a smile: “sing.”
And Steve just strokes Eddie’s cheekbone for a couple seconds, and Eddie just leans into it, and maybe they’re both listening to a song between them, for all the aching.
“You do make my heart sing. Every day. But then I think about your, when it, how long…”
Oh.
Oh, Eddie thinks they’re on a deadline. That Steve’s waiting for something that’s not…him.
How fucking absurd.
“I’ve never looked at yours, I swear,” Eddie’s going on, while Steve’s left reeling a little; “even before you started hiding it like I do and I’m sorry, I’m sorry I made you feel like you had to, I’m sorry I let me being fucked up like this bleed on to you,” he pauses to catch his breath and Steve just wants to kiss him, wants to reassure him, wants to tell him that he wants all the million course meals, wants Eddie to tie them together so they can never fly apart, wants—
“My mom, y’know,” Eddie’s chewing his bottom lip with a shrug that reads wholly as a lie, an attempt to lighten something that’s too real, too heavy for that; “she said I was born with it bright, that it was only as a kid that it went dark—“
Wait.
“Dark, how?”
Because dead soulmates, or the ones who reject the whole shebang: those don’t make for dark soulmarks. They make something almost unseeable. Like a scar that’s had your whole life to heal.
Which is probably why Steve doesn’t think before he asks:
“Can I see it?”
He regrets it immediately, afraid to have pushed too far but Eddie doesn’t hesitate, he gives this one last thing hidden between them willingly, and Steve might be blinded by a growing sense of maybe in his chest but he’s not so fucking gone as to miss the weight of it, of what the immediate move to share and to give means for them, for what they are and what they have, regardless of anything else.
Steve looks, though; traces the deep blue lines, like the darkest ballpoint pen.
“That’s not Struck,” Steve murmurs before flicking his eyes up to Eddie’s. “That’s Unmatched.”
Eddie frowns, eyes wide, jaw a little dropped.
“When you cross paths with someone, maybe even meet,” Steve tries to explain, isn’t sure he manages for shit; “but you don’t get a chance to…” he’d interlock his fingers on both hands if it didn’t mean giving up touching Eddie’s hip, his very much-not-struck-Mark; he can’t do that, so he settles for crossing his fingers: “to connect.”
Eddie barely moves; only the violent working of his throat around a swallow gives him away as still present; that and the drumbeat pulse Steve can only just catch the edge of where his fingers rest.
“It’s actually pretty common, in kids, y’know,” Steve takes to filling the silence with meaningless facts, sets a rhythm for his rambling to match the way his thumb takes to stroking Eddie’s Mark. “Ones who meet when they’re still tiny. Can’t comprehend it yet. Can’t decide and can’t be…together together. They say it’s why some friendships last longer than they maybe should, through school,” Steve sometimes wished he’d had that excuse, given the ‘friendships’ in his teens that’d more than outlasted their lifespans. “I mean, if a handful of kindergartners get datemarks for the first day of classes, then they’ll maybe just stay friends with a bunch of random people they started school with, just in case one of them is their person, when the time comes—“
“They’re not,” Eddie interrupts him, his voice so goddamn small; more cracks in Steve’s heart just to hear it; “they’re not dead?”
“Oh babe,” Steve exhales and makes himself let go of Eddie’s side to draw him full-bodied into an embrace, no space between them so Steve can keep his shaking from doing harm. “No, it’d look different.”
Steve doesn’t keep track of how long Eddie shakes, or how deep the sobs he heaves wrench out of him; Steve only keeps track of Eddie, and holding him so goddamn close they might as well be one person.
Steve would really fucking love it, if they could just…be one person. One single fucking entity.
“How,” Eddie finally hiccoughs a sound like a word before sniffling and trying again; “how’d you know all that?”
It’s innocent, and his eyes are so red and puffy and swollen and wide and still wet and shining and they’re the most beautiful thing in the world.
It’s only half a pause before Steve links Eddie’s hand in his own and reluctantly pulls away.
“What?” Eddie grips back harder, follows immediate like he’s scared, like he needs, and Steve leans to kiss him slow, a reassurance as he squeeze his hand and turns, pulling the blankets back to bare the skin of his left hip for the world to see.
Well: for Eddie to see. But Eddie’s kinda his world, so.
It’s quiet, for a few long moments. Steve doesn’t let go of Eddie’s hand more for his own sake, now, and Eddie leans closer and looks.
“It’s like mine.”
Steve swallows hard.
“Yeah.” That’s why he knows so much. When his parents saw it, it was the first real disappointment he landed in their eyes. They went to experts, specialists. It’s how Steve knew heartbreak earlier than most people would have ever guessed.
“No, no,” Eddie breathing is coming heavy, fast and frantic almost now and Steve’s brow furrows, his chest clenches, he reaches his other hand for Eddie but Eddie’s already in motion, he’s—
“Did you read it?”
It takes Steve a second to clock what Eddie means: the date. The words themselves, not just the color.
He shakes his head, not entirely sure why it should matter, unless—
“Steve,” and Eddie rolls over again to show his Mark and it’s, that’s…
It’s like his.
The same date. Steve hadn’t been more than four. Eddie would have been—
“My mom brought me to a park, for the weekend of my birthday,” Eddie whispers letting Steve reach, trace over Eddie’s Mark like the lines themselves are precious; they are precious. “She let me play with this boy, he was a little younger than me but not by enough that it mattered. He liked the sandbox as much as I did.”
Steve had loved sandboxes. He loved building things that didn’t have to be perfect, or stay flawless. He sometimes thought back to summer days in a sandbox with a nanny who wouldn’t scold him for the mess when they got home, sometimes wondered if the ability to change was, like, foreshadowed for him, like in the books Dustin loves, the ones Eddie’s reads him when Steve’s head hurts too much to try for himself. Like beautiful things could change, could be rebuilt better.
Steve remembers a boy, with bangs that curled. He’d never seen a boy with curly hair before.
No way in fucking hell.
“I want to say the words.”
Eddie’s voice is soft, but sure. And it’s a weird kind of way you test the match of your Marks at the same time as you bind yourself to one another. It’s not even like, a set phrase, a magic spell or some shit. It’s words said with intention, with want and unwavering certainty, about what you have, or could have. Together.
Steve can’t breathe. He nods so hard he thinks his neck hurts, but fuck if he can feel it. His heart’s hammering, the thing it’s jettisoning through his veins is molten and if it isn’t hope, like Steve’s never known before, then he doesn’t fucking know what hope even is.
And Steve’s never really given much thought to what he’d say, for words, because the likelihood of finding your soulmate a second time was tiny. Minuscule. He’d heard all the specialists say very small numbers that even his kid-brain could make sense of as too close to zero, to nothing, to bother trying for.
But Eddie’s eyes are bright, and unblinking, and his hands have gathered both of Steve’s and he’s holding them so goddamn tight between their chests, could damn well break a finger for the way he grips and Steve wouldn’t give two shits, he’d cut off all his fingers if this is what it, what it could be because all he’s wanted was Eddie for what feels like ages, now; the only future he entertains anymore is one where Eddie’s at his side and if fate had somehow decided to be on their side too, he’d make an exception to those dreams of the future to accommodate the addition, him and Eddie and a fate they didn’t need to know wanting and needing and love, goddamnit, so much love but that could, that might just—
“I want my soul to live where yours lives,” Eddie says, strong and sure because of course he thought there was no hope at all, not even almost-zero amounts, and he still knew what he’d say:
“Forever.”
Steve feels the hope-thing surge in veins less like searing and more like flying, and he leans to kiss Eddie full on, hands still clasped and caught between them, and if Steve climbs over Eddie and wraps his thighs around his waist, entangling them, never fucking letting go; if their mouths are occupied consuming one another so enough of one live inside of the other for always, well, like, it makes sense they don’t notice if the blue-pen lines turn star-bright, undeniable even in the dark. They’re kinda too wrapped up in each other to see if happens.
But, point of fact: in the moment?
They don’t really need to.