Dive into your creative stream
Fandom: Stranger Things
Characters: Steve/Eddie
Summary: Steve tries to confess to Eddie that he likes being tickled.
Words: 900
It was almost poetic, the way the sun spilled into the room that July afternoon and lit Steve up where he sat on Eddie’s bed, nearly like a spotlight. He truly did feel exposed, trying to figure out what to do with his hands, where to rest his gaze. Eddie wasn’t the worst audience - in fact he sat there patiently, kindness in his very bones - but despite how many times Steve had rehearsed this speech he still found the words stumbling over his tongue and refusing to come out right.
“I just-” He paused, swallowed, restarted. “Maybe you’ve noticed that, uh-” Inhaled, restarted. “You know this thing you do.” His only full sentence made almost no sense.
“Thing?” Eddie, bless him, did his very best to not smile, although his struggle was very visible to Steve who would love to put his attention anywhere but on his confession.
“You know.” There were many things Eddie did, Harrington. “How you- torment me?”
“With tickles?” It wasn’t necessarily a miracle that Eddie could figure it out just from that, since Steve always said he liked tormenting him after he’d reduced him to an incoherent mess. “Sure.”
“It, uh-” Made him so fucking happy he was putting himself through the torture of saying it aloud just so Eddie never took his protests seriously enough and stopped doing it? He couldn’t say that. No way.
“It what?” Eddie tilted his head at him now, curiosity laced in the way he batted his eyelashes, in the way he raised his eyebrows. “Am I doing it too much?”
“No, no.” Truth was he probably was, but Steve, being an addict, needed it even more. “I- is it hot in here or is it just me?”
Eddie reached out and grabbed the hem of Steve’s shirt, fingertips nudging his neck and making him recoil ever so slightly, but all Eddie did was pull at it. “Maybe go for a tank top. I can lend you one.”
“It’s okay,” Steve said, because he knew that if he allowed Eddie to get up and walk away he would never try to speak of this again. “I, uh. Well. You know. How you torment me?”
“Yes, we’ve established that I’m terrible for tickling you,” he said with a laugh. “I can stop.”
“No.” The word had left his mouth much too quickly for Steve to register it was even forming on his tongue.
Eddie raised an eyebrow. “No?”
“Uhm.” What the fuck was he supposed to say now? “I just-”
“Do you like it or somethin’?”
Steve’s heart skipped a beat and he looked away. He could lie. He could say no. Say he simply enjoyed the intimacy of it all. Say he enjoyed laughing. But while all of it was true it missed the key part of it all: that he liked it, period. Liked the whole experience of it.
“I do.”
He wasn’t sure what he expected Eddie to do. To ask questions, to get up and leave, to call him gross. All he knew was that he didn’t expect him to let out a low laugh, reach out to gently squeeze his knee and say, “I know, I’m just messing with you.” But he did do exactly that.
“What.” Steve’s word was barely a question at this point. “You mean to tell me I’ve been sitting here trying to confess like a moron and you already knew?”
“You make me sound mean when you put it that way.” Eddie shrugged. “But yes. Of course I knew. Why do you think I keep doing it?”
“God, I hate you so much.”
“Awe, but you were just confiding in me. Of course you don’t hate me.”
“Stop grinning at me.”
“I can’t help it when you’re so endearing.” Eddie tried to pinch Steve’s cheek, but he slapped his hand away. “You don’t want me to touch you? You don’t want me to tickle your belly to pieces right this second?”
“Shut up.”
“Pin you down and make you say out loud how much you like it?”
“Oh my god, you wouldn’t.”
“Watch you blush and stutter.”
“Eddie, I swear to god.”
Eddie softened, reaching out to run his hand over Steve’s hair. “I wouldn’t do anything you didn’t want me to. And thank you for telling me. You know I’m just messing with you.”
“You love teasing me,” Steve mumbled, leaning into the touch. “So mean.”
“I enjoy flustering you, I do admit.” He moved his hand down, cupping Steve’s cheek. “And I won’t tickle you until you ask me to.”
“Oh my god, you are mean.”
“I would call it considerate.” Eddie trailed his hand down further, fingertip moving from his throat to his chest to his ribs to his belly. “Just say when.”
Of course Steve said when, quietly, awkwardly, breathlessly, and Eddie had him pinned immediately, fingers curling over his skin and not stopping. Steve started begging for mercy out of habit, but he knew he would die if Eddie stopped now. Luckily for him Eddie must’ve realized it, for he merely used his other hand to squeeze at his thigh, over and over and over until Steve nearly bucked him off the bed. “Fuck!” he cried, and Eddie laughed as well, purring out a “Yeah?” which had Steve blushing to his roots.
He wouldn’t have it any other way.