#American Teenager is about Hawkins

[corroded-hellfire]

Just a Spark - Eddie Munson x Reader

A Collaboration with my beloved kindred spirit @munson-blurbs🤍

Summary: Eddie takes his sons to watch fireworks at Lover's Lake for the Fourth of July. But when he notices you there with some friends, including some male friends, he can't help but be jealous.

Note: Thank you to my dearest @joejoequinnquinn for loving jealous!eddie as much as I do and for coming up with this lovely idea! I still find it funny that it's a Fourth of July fic and you do not live in the US, lol. I hope you all enjoy and happy 4th of July to my fellow Americans 💙

Warnings: older!eddie, dad!eddie, babysitter!reader, eddie being jealous hehe

Words: 3.9k

[As You Wish masterlist]

It wasn’t often that Hawkins held activities that appealed to the whole town. The haunted houses around Halloween only appealed to the teenagers, the winter wonderlands at Christmas only mattered to young children, and the Thanksgiving Parade was something that everyone swears they got dragged along to against their will. Fourth of July in Hawkins was the one day a year that could be counted on to bring people of all ages out to Lover’s Lake for sunshine in the afternoon and fireworks at night. 

Kids would splash and swim together in the shallow area of the lake while their parents watched from picnic blankets spread out not too far away. Teens and college students would come with their friends, the college kids drinking beer out in the open while the teenagers had to hide sips behind a tree or behind a friend’s back. 

It was a tradition in the Munson household to grill up some hamburgers and bring them down to eat at the lake while they watched the fireworks. This particular year things seem to be off-track, though. Brittany had left the house early in the afternoon to run a few errands and pick up some charcoal for the grill so that Eddie could cook the hamburgers. After being gone far too long for just saying she was heading to a few stores, the phone rings and Brittany gives Eddie some sob story about how she ran into her sister who’s having a crisis and she needs to stay with her for a while. Eddie just sighed as he hung up, thinking to himself that at least Brittany wasn’t dumb enough to say it had something to do with work when banks are closed because it’s a national holiday. The only problem—because going out with his boys without his wife was certainly not a problem—he ran into now was that he didn’t have time to run out and get charcoal and make the burgers before they were going to leave for the lake. 

Improvising, Eddie swings through a Burger King drive-through on the way, making sure the three of them would still keep their tradition intact as much as possible. The boys don’t seem to mind the differences between this year and last, maybe just glad to have a chance to hang out with their dad while they did something as cool as watch fireworks. 

Eddie pulls his truck into the already-crowded parking lot and grabs the bag of fast food. As he and the boys get out, people walk by carrying coolers, picnic baskets, and a few types of inner tubes to use in the water. There are tons of people there—which Eddie expected. He takes Luke’s hand into his own and instructs Ryan to grab onto Luke’s other so they don’t lose anyone. 

“Eddie!” A familiar voice calls out and has Eddie whipping around to spot its owner. He quickly sees the Sinclairs; Lucas is waving with his left hand to get Eddie’s attention, with Tiffany on his right hip. 

Eddie nudges the boys. “Look who’s here!” Their eyes widen when they notice Uncle Lucas—who Eddie swears is his younger son’s namesake and certainly isn’t Luke Skywalker—along with Aunt Max and their baby. They practically pull Eddie across the lot to them. 

Clapping Lucas’s hand and pulling him in for a modified bro-hug so he doesn’t crash into Tiffany, Eddie offers his long-time friend a grin. “How have you guys been?” he asks as he gives Max a hug. 

“Good. Tired.” Max says with a laugh. “Tiffany slept through the night for about three days before she started teething.”

“Aww, poor thing,” Eddie coos, chuckling when Tiffany proves her mother’s point by grabbing Eddie’s finger and gnawing on it. “Don’t worry, it doesn’t last as long as it seems,” he reassures the new parents. 

“We’re just headed out,” Lucas explains, kissing his daughter’s cheek. “It’s this little lady’s bedtime, and we’ve gotta get home before the fireworks start.”

“We have no idea how she’ll react to them, and we’re not about to conduct that experiment in public,” Max chimes in, making Eddie laugh again. “But we’ll see you at Ryan’s birthday party next week!”

The Munsons and Sinclairs part with goodbyes and more hugs before Eddie and the boys head towards the lake. 

“I wanna sit near the water!” Luke insists, and Eddie winces at his high-pitched whine. 

“Think we might get a better view of the fireworks if we sit up a little higher.” It’s the truth; plus, he won’t have to worry about Luke flinging himself into the cesspool that Hawkins calls a lake. 

They find a shady spot right under a tree, and Eddie lays out three beach towels so they won’t have to sit in the dirt. He passes out the parchment-wrapped burgers and little bags of fries and sits back with a sigh. This is what he’d always wanted—family traditions with his boys. If only…

“Has anyone seen my sunscreen?”

Eddie freezes mid-bite, only remembering that he has a burger in his hand when his arm starts to ache from being in one position too long. He chews and swallows as though nothing happened, but his mind is racing. 

It can’t be, he thinks. He’s almost certain that this is all in his imagination—God knows he can’t get you out of his head—until he hears someone say your name. 

Just one look, Eddie convinces himself. A quick peek so I can see that it’s not actually her; just someone who sounds like her and has the same name…

His stomach flip-flops when he glances over and sees you in a low-cut red tank top and cutoff denim shorts. Oh, shit, it’s her. And she looks really, really good. He takes a deep breath, trying to gather his scrambled thoughts. He wishes he had a six-pack; a cold beer can always calm his jangled nerves. Okay, I can’t let the boys see. Once that happens, she’ll come over here and—

Eddie’s anxious thought is disrupted by the sight of one of the three guys you’re with applying sunscreen to the back of your neck. He’s got long, light brown hair—though not as long or luscious as his own, Eddie notes wryly. 

Long Hair spends far too much time massaging the lotion into your skin. Calm down, Buffalo Bill. She doesn’t need that much sun protection. 

The only other girl there plucks the lotion bottle from Long Hair’s hands, much to Eddie’s relief, and Eddie turns his attention back to his boys. “You guys ready for the fireworks?” He tries to keep the enthusiasm in his voice. “Sun’s setting, so they’ll be starting soon.”

Ryan nods, chewing on a fry. “I wonder what colors they’ll have,” he muses. 

“Well, I wonder what would happen if I sat on a firework!” Luke pipes up with a mouthful of burger. “Like, would I fly into the sky? Or would it blow up in my butt?”

Eddie laughs loudly. “My money’s on the second one, little man.”

Your laughter floats over to Eddie on the breeze blowing off of the lake. He mentally berates himself, thinking of how he should be enjoying this family tradition with his boys and not be wondering if any of those guys you’re with are your boyfriend or if you’re sleeping with any of them or if…

“Daddy, what’s wrong?”

“Hmm?” Eddie looks up at Ryan’s worried face and frowns. “What do you mean?”

“Your lip,” Ryan says, pointing at the bottom half of his father’s face. “You were chewing on it, and it started bleeding.”

“Silly me,” Eddie says with a forced chuckle. He grabs one of the napkins from the Burger King bag and dabs at his lower lip. Luke has shifted to watch a game of volleyball happening on a court that someone set up and it gives Eddie the opportunity to scoot closer between his boys, so his back is to you and your friends. Maybe now he’ll be able to focus. 

It works for a while. The three of them finish their burgers and Luke is immediately complaining that he’s still hungry. Eddie tells the five-year-old he has to wait and tries to play a game with them to distract his youngest son from his rumbling tummy before the fireworks start. 

“Simon says put your hands on your head. Simon says give your brother a high five,” Eddie instructs as the boys eagerly await the next command. “Simon says stand up. Sit back down. Ah! I didn’t say ‘Simon says!’”

“I win!” Ryan cheers as Luke sprawls out on his beach towel with a groan. The familiar twinkling tune of an ice cream truck approaching has him bolting up, though. 

“Ice cream?” Luke stands up and balances on his tippy toes to get a better view at the parking lot. When his suspicions are confirmed, he hops up and down. “Ice cream! Daddy, can we get some? Pleeeeease?”

“Okay, okay,” Eddie says as if it’s a hardship for him to indulge his boys when in reality he’d already planned on getting ice cream for them at some point tonight. “Get me some too, okay?”

“Cookies and cream?” Ryan asks, citing his dad’s favorite flavor.

“Atta boy,” Eddie says, handing him a ten-dollar bill. Luke starts to walk away and towards the truck, but Eddie stops him with an, “ah-ah-ah. It’s crowded here. I don’t want you to lose each other so hold your brother’s hand.” When Luke opens his mouth to respond, a frown creasing his forehead and his nose wrinkling up, Eddie halts the whining before it even happens. “Hold your brother’s hand.”

“Fine,” Luke huffs and offers his hand to Ryan in the most limp, unenthusiastic manner possible. 

The two walk off and Eddie adjusts his position so he can keep an eye on his sons as they snake their way through the crowd and over to the ice cream truck that already has a line of a few kids in front of it. But from this new angle, Eddie can also see you out of the corner of his eye. A breath rushes out of him as if he’d been holding it since his eyes were last on you. Seeing you makes Eddie calmer and more tense at the same time. As always, your presence brings him comfort and happiness. But you’re with a bunch of guys your own age and the jealousy monster is rearing its ugly head like nobody’s business. Eddie looks down at his lap and his eye catches on his wedding ring, glinting in the fading sun.

“You’re a fucking hypocrite, Munson,” Eddie mumbles to himself. 

Unable to not look in your direction—I swear to God she’s got something magnetic about her, he thinks—Eddie sees you gazing out over the lake. You raise your hand above your eyes to shield them from the bright, falling sun and look around the whole area where people have settled in to have fun. Eddie’s just about to look away, not wanting to risk being caught staring at you if you spot him, when he sees one of your guy friends walking over to you. It’s not Long Hair from before. This guy is shorter and as muscly as the other guy was scrawny. Eddie can hear him calling your name, but you must be too caught up in your thoughts to hear him. Muscles reaches out and touches your arm to get your attention. As if seeing him just touching you isn’t bad enough, Eddie watches as you turn around to face Muscles, but the guy still doesn’t take his hand off of you. The tanned, muscular hand is slowly moving down your arm and a knot grows in Eddie’s stomach. If this asshole takes your hand, Eddie feels like he might throw up the burger he’s barely started digesting. 

Luckily, you move to walk back towards your group of friends before Muscles’s hand could reach yours. Eddie feels twenty pounds lighter. He turns back to look towards the parking lot and sees his sons approaching, Ryan holding an ice cream in each hand, and Luke holding one and holding onto the back of Ryan’s red t-shirt with the other hand. By the way his youngest son is rolling his eyes as they approach, Eddie realizes it was Ryan’s idea that Luke holds on to him. 

Ryan hands Eddie his scoop of cookies and cream, plopping back down to enjoy the mint chip cone he’d bought for himself. 

“DAD! OH MY GOD, DAD!!” Luke shouts, and Eddie nearly drops his cone. 

“What? What’s wrong?”

Luke points down towards the left. “Look at that doggy! He’s so cute!” Sure enough, a middle-aged couple is walking a golden retriever along the lake. Both boys sit up a bit straighter and watch as the owners toss a tennis ball into the water and the dog eagerly paddles after it. 

As Eddie’s heart rate steadies to a normal pace—seriously, he’s going to have to talk with Luke about using his “emergency voice” when it is not an emergency—he finds his gaze drifting back to you. He’s just in time to see Long Hair take the baseball cap from his own head and put it on top of yours. Eddie silently wills you to take it off, chuck it into the lake, set it on fire…but he’s utterly disappointed when you adjust it to your head and wear it proudly. 

Would she wear something of mine if I gave it to her? He silently wonders. He’s so engrossed in whatever flirtatious games you’re playing that he barely hears his older son trying to get his attention. 

“Daddy, your ice cream is leaking over the cone. Daddy! It’s getting runny and gonna drip! Daddy?”

“And whaddya keep looking that way for? The lake is that way!” Luke chimes in, face covered in cotton candy ice cream. 

“Y-Yeah, sorry, guys,” Eddie mumbles, but he keeps his gaze locked on you. A blonde guy wearing a puka shell necklace like he’s on Hawaii Five-0 points to a beach volleyball net that’s just been vacated, and you and your friends follow him. 

It’s two versus two; Muscles is serving as a referee for this game. You and Puka Shell are on a team, and Long Hair and the only other girl in your group stand on the other side of the net. You serve, the girl returns it, Puka Shell lobbies it to you, and you spike it back, surprising yourself. 

Eddie clenches his fist until he feels the ice cream cone begin to break when your teammate wraps his arms around you in a hug. Jesus H. Christ, whatever happened to high-fives? But he knows that he’d envy any little touch these guys got from you. 

He tries to distract himself, asking Ryan if he’s excited for his birthday, but he’s only half-listening. 

“What do you want for a gift?” he asks, raising his eyebrows when his sons look at him curiously. “What?”

“I just said I wanted a new Lego set,” Ryan says. He’s not annoyed, just confused. “Are you feeling okay, Daddy?”

“Maybe he has scurvy,” Luke suggests, “like the pirates in that movie we watched.”

“‘M fine,” Eddie reassures them. It takes a second for him to register what Luke’s suggested. “Did you just say I had scurvy?”

There’s no time for Luke to elaborate—not that Eddie necessarily wants him to—before your joyous squeal filters through the air. It seems as though you and Puka Shell won the game, because he’s twirling you around triumphantly. 

Does she want him picking her up? Touching her? Eddie’s inner monologue runs wild. Okay, she’s laughing and smiling, so that’s good. She’s fine with it; yeah, so that’s fine. Everything’s fine. We’re all fine here. She’s with her friends, I’m a married man here with my kids, and that’s all there is to it. 

The whistle and boom of the first firework lighting the sky is a welcome distraction. Ryan lets out a gasp as he stares in awe of the red shooting through the dark sky. Luke scoots backwards and plops himself in Eddie’s lap. He leans against Eddie’s chest and lays his head back on his shoulder as he becomes engrossed in the spectacle. It’s been a while since Luke’s sat in his lap like this, so it brings a smile to Eddie’s face. 

Mixtures of red, white, and blue fireworks crackle through the air, occasionally making shapes other than the usual spherical pattern that shimmies down. Eddie looks over at Ryan, who has a bright grin on his face. The red firework currently popping off leaves a scarlet shadow behind on his older son’s face. Beyond Ryan, Eddie glimpses a view of you watching the fireworks. You’re still with your friends, but you’re sitting a little bit in front of them with your legs crossed and your elbows resting on your knees. There’s a peaceful joy on your face and it makes Eddie’s heart give a few thumps harder than usual. Your friends behind you are talking but you couldn’t seem to care less about what they’re saying. You’re solely focused on the show in the sky. Eddie looks back at his kids and sees them just as mesmerized by the bursting colors. Luke snuggles back against his chest and Eddie is filled with warmth. He wraps his arms loosely around Luke and rests his head against his son’s smaller one as he looks up and joins in watching the celebration. 

By the time the fireworks are done, Eddie’s pretty sure his hearing is damaged. Didn’t I used to play in a metal band? Jesus, I’m getting old. Luke springs up from his dad’s lap and Ryan stands up and stretches his arms out over his head, releasing a long yawn. 

“How was that?” Eddie asks as he collects the beach towels they had been sitting on.

“So cool!” Luke says, jumping as if to emphasize his point. 

“I like the ones that make the fizzy noises as they go out,” Ryan says as he picks up the empty Burger King bag and balls it up in his hands. 

“My favorite are the ones that go pheeeeew,” Luke attempts to mimic the whistle, “then BANG!”

“What about you, Daddy?” Ryan asks. 

“Hmm,” Eddie hums as he considers the question. “The ones that were shaped like circles. They looked pretty cool. Okay, now come on and take my hands, guys. It’s gonna be like a stampede getting out of here.” Eddie tucks the towels under one arm and offers a hand to each son. 

They only make it about five steps before Luke is groaning. “It’s going to take forever to—hey! Look!”

Both Eddie and Ryan turn their heads to look in the direction that Luke is pointing. Eddie’s heart stalls in his chest. Luke’s grinning from ear to ear as he notices you walking with your friends. Ryan gives a gasp of delight when his eyes land on you as well. 

“I’m gonna go say hi!” Luke exclaims, and he’s already halfway to you before Eddie can even open his mouth. 

“Luke, I—ugh, shit.” Eddie mumbles the last part under his breath as he leads Ryan by the hand over to you and your friends. Luke is already in your arms by the time they get there. 

“And then the red one went higher than all the others! And I think it had the loudest boom, too,” Luke is saying. You look up and the brightest smile lights up your face as you see Eddie and Ryan standing there. 

“Hey, strangers,” you greet and Ryan dives in for a hug. You chuckle and wrap your arms around him too. 

Long Hair is standing to the side, slightly closer to Eddie than he is to you, and the rest of your friends are behind you. He gives a small chuckle at the intensity of the hugs the kids give you before turning to Eddie and saying, “You want a hug, too?”

You jab Long Hair in the ribs with your elbow, but that only makes him chuckle more and wrap an arm around you to pull you back against him. This time, Eddie notices, you don’t have the same enthusiastic grin that you had earlier in the evening. It takes everything in his power not to pry you from his arms. 

“I’ll see you guys on Monday, yeah?” you ask the Munson men, desperate to fill the silence. 

“Usual time and place,” Eddie says. The words would usually be accompanied by a wink or a smirk, but something about being around these college guys is grating on his nerves and it’s the closest he’s felt to being intimidated since he was a senior in high school—the first time. 

“Bye!” both boys call and wave at you before walking away with their dad. You wave in return, but it looks pitiful compared to their enthusiastic ones. 

As soon as they’re out of earshot, you pull out of your friend's arm and spin around to face him. “Peter, do you ever shut up?”

“Calm down,” Peter says, exhaling a sound that’s a mixture of a laugh and a scoff. “This guy’s old enough to be your dad.”

Tony smirks and rests a muscled arm on Paul’s shoulder. “Maybe she’s into the whole ‘daddy’ thing.”

The eye roll you give them is involuntary. “You guys are assholes!” 

Turning on your flip flop heel, you spin in the other direction and jog a bit until you catch up with Eddie and the boys. 

“Hey! Where are you going?” Paul asks.

A soft, gentle hand lands on Eddie’s shoulder and he looks back to see you offering him an apologetic smile. 

“I’m sorry if my friends were weird…and I’m sorry if I’m making this weirder.”

Eddie’s entire demeanor changes; despite having to watch you flirt with those douchebags—and then being mocked by them—he can’t help but soften towards you. “Nah, Sweetheart, you’re good. Be safe tonight, okay?” Be safe? Seriously, Munson? What are you, her grandpa?

You don’t seem to notice the way he bites his tongue, trying to quell the surge of embarrassment. “I always am,” you say reassuringly. “See you Monday?”

Eddie nods as you turn around to head back to your friends, utterly oblivious to the way your natural beauty outshines the brightest firework tonight. You’re everything he could ever want, but you’re young and gorgeous with a million better prospects than an old married man. 

He takes one last look at you before he brings the boys to the car. The passenger seat is empty, and he wears a sad smile when he thinks about you sitting there, excitedly chatting with him and the kids about the evening. Eddie would rest his hand on your thigh while he drives back home, and once Ryan and Luke are sound asleep, you and Eddie could make some fireworks of your own. 

Shaking his head, Eddie pulls out from the parking spot and braces himself for the holiday traffic. He grumbles some swear words under his breath, flicking on the radio to the first station that doesn’t have commercials. 

“…say I’m not so tough, just because I’m in love with an uptown girl.”

He leans back in his seat and taps out the rhythm on the steering wheel. Funny, he’s never really been a Billy Joel fan, but something about this song reminds him of—

“Dad! Luke’s looking at me!”

“He looked at me first!”

“Both of you close your eyes,” Eddie orders. He can’t see whether or not they listened, but the squabbling stopped, so he’ll consider it a victory. 

“Uptown girl, she’s my uptown girl…”

[419jhat]

Steddie Addams Family Crossover

- in which Steve is an Addams who can see ghosts and Eddie is a vampire

I never finished this but maybe I should? 👀

It began when Dante Basilio Harrington di Aleramici attended the marriage of his best friend Gomez into the American Addams clan. It was at that wedding where Dante caught the eyes of the oldest Addams daughter, Macabra, and the rest was history. Stephano Addams Harrington di Aleramici was born a perfectly unlucky thirteen years later, on an unfortunately sunny August morning, with light brown hair and hazel eyes that were delightfully abnormal for an Addams child. The Addams loved abnormalities, and Steve was absolutely full of them.

While he was excellent at traditional sports like fencing, knife-throwing, equestrian, and dancing, he’d never enjoyed the arts like communing with the dead or casting curses for his enemies. He was awful at seeing into the future and summoning creatures from the beyond, and other than the usual Addams ability to heal fast, he couldn’t regrow missing parts like his father could. Even stranger, he flourished in public schooling, loved to spend time with other children, and was often invited to spend time in other people’s homes. They’d never worried, though. As far as they were concerned, he was just a little different; a growing boy who needed space.

So, when they bought a beautifully boring vacation home in Hawkins, Indiana, that was what they gave him. But three weeks of strange behavior in suburbia hadn’t been enough. When it was time for the family to return, Stephano decided to stay, and Steve Harrington was born. He enrolled in a school, joined sports that didn’t end with a battle to the death, and hosted parties without any blood sacrifices. They didn’t understand it one bit. But he was happy, so they nodded their heads and offered to send him fancy beers for his keg contest, whatever that was. (He’d refused. Apparently, it had to be cheap beer.) They returned to their mansion in Massachusetts, happy to let Steve live his life. After all, he was just a crystal ball away and he had his ancestors haunting over him. He’d be fine.

Meanwhile, Steve was content in normality. As an Addams or an Aleramici, he was the odd one out. His parents delighted in his abnormalities, insisting it was simply Addams tradition to be strange, but the thing was, Steve wasn’t strange. Not outside of their family. As an Aleramici, he was the guy who didn’t participate in traditions like summoning the dead for love advice with a fantasy creature. As an Addams, he was the guy who didn’t have a collection of human bones in his bedroom or a criminal record. As a Harrington, he was the star of the town. King Steve, they’d called him. He was the guy who people lifted onto their shoulders after the championship game. He was the guy people clapped on the back when they left a party, even if it wasn’t at his house. He was the guy girls talked about when they wanted a date to prom. He was the guy normal people compared their kids to. An example of success.

And then Nancy Wheeler entered his life and he wasn’t that guy anymore.

Steve was, in the end, an Addams. It was inevitable that weird found him even after he’d tried to escape it. His reign as King of Normal ended the second the demogorgon tried to eat his face off. Sure, he’d held on for a little bit. He’d driven Nancy to tears trying to ignore the craziness of Hawkins and savor his time as an ordinary teenage boy. He’d tried to pretend it hadn’t happened, as if the idea of another dimension was a new concept that just broke his brain to think about. The problem there was that normal was new for Steve. Parallel dimensions and flesh-eating monsters were new for Nancy. He’d maybe underestimated the shock it would bring to her. He was still getting a hang of what exactly wasn’t normal for normal people.

After their inevitable breakup, he’d tried to do the normal thing and get back together. That’s what he was supposed to do, right? That’s what guys in his position did in movies. Of course, since Steve’s life was destined to attract the supernatural, this only meant that his reputation fell even further when Billie Hargrove smashed his face in, and he was somehow demoted to the town babysitter. Something about hanging out with nerdy children and dropping his friends for the girl who’d dumped him was not normal at all, and even worse, he found himself spending more time than ever trying to be normal, just like when he was a kid. Except this time, it wasn’t Addams/Aleramici Normal, it was Everyone Else’s Normal, which somehow didn’t come naturally to him anymore.

What was he supposed to do when the person he’d wanted to be turned out to be someone he didn’t want to be at all? When he looked back on his attempts to fit in and could only think about how he’d ignored Nancy for his own gain and called Jonathan a queer because that’s what normal people said to be mean. He could have turned around and ignored it. He could have sold the house and packed up for a different boring town. But he didn’t want to leave his terrified group of weirdos, even if it meant he had to be weird with them. And as it turned out, being weird wasn’t so bad when you had people to be weird with. Suddenly, his family kind of made sense.

Robin had been the beginning of the end. Meeting Robin had been like meeting the other half of his soul. Someone who just got him without needing to ask questions. He was sure his mother would call them soulmates if they talked to her in person. He’d never felt so at ease to be himself around someone before. While he still floundered with normality around everyone else and failed to get any dates in result, he felt completely free with Robin, as if he could just be Steve, nothing more and nothing less. Which is why befriending Robin shook him up so badly. The kids had hobbies that freaked out their parents and Nancy was for some reason seen as too much by a lot of the guys in town, and he could understand all of that. But Robin couldn’t help that liking girls was seen as weird in a bad way.

And that was what got him- weird in a bad way.

Because weird in a bad way had been how he’d felt when he couldn’t summon a demon for his nonna and when he failed to tell apart poisonous mushrooms for his after-school mycology exam. Weird in a bad way made him think about how he’d been embarrassed when his mom came to parent-teacher conferences. How his cousins had made fun of him for being so interested in playing with animals rather than dismembering them for potions. But even with all those feelings and his years pushing to be somewhere he fit in, he’d never realized that some people didn’t have a choice. Some people couldn’t just turn it off like he’d been trying to.

So, after he’d had his face smashed in again and made his best friend in the whole world while fighting a giant spider creature made of dead bodies that his dad would have loved to see, he’d finally started to come around. And when the world broke apart for the fourth time and he babbled to Nancy about the American Dream nonsense he’d been imaging for himself since he was twelve, he realized with a bit of embarrassment that he didn’t even want that anymore. That he was quite literally just talking because he felt like they were having a moment and it seemed like he was supposed to, not because he wanted to.

And then there was Eddie.

---

When Steve looked out at the grey clouds brewing over Hawkins and the strange soot falling from the sky, he knew he that it was time to talk to his grandmother. He hadn’t talked to Belladonna Harrington in a good four months, partially because he’d been so busy pretending it wasn’t a thing he could do. But with the world literally split apart and Max unable to wake up and Eddie dead and half their strange group unreachable in California, it kind of felt ridiculous not to.

So, with Dustin and Lucas tucked away in the guest room and Erica and Nancy in the master bedroom and Robin keeping watch on an unresponsive Max in his room, Steve pulled down the little foldout ladder in the garage that led to the attic and made his way to a little alcove with pictures of relatives. Belladonna had died young, but apparently she loved being dead so nobody in the family was particularly sad about it. She’d been a fashionable woman and her picture showed it well. Seeing that this was one of Steve’s few talents, he didn’t actually need the picture to do this. But he did need the privacy of the attic he didn’t want to freak anyone out.

He sat down on the bare floor and closed his eyes. This didn’t need any preparation, but he hadn’t done it in a while. Something in him was always terrified his few skills would suddenly vanish. He rolled his shoulders and neck and finally, he whispered, “Belladonna.”

There was a pulse of energy- the light in the garage beneath him flickered, and then there she was, in a shiny black dress and a silver fur coat hanging off her shoulders, all sharp angles and long limbs. She held a pipe in her hand, which she took a drag from and then blew the smoke in his face. Yeah, he’d deserved that.

“I haven’t heard from you in two years, Stephano,” she said.

“We spoke during Christmas, Grandmama,” Steve sighed, avoiding her eyes.

“I’ve been dead for only forty years and my family has already forgotten me!”

Death had not eased her love for drama.

“I didn’t forget you, I just-”

“Nobody loves me!” she wailed, clutching a hand to her chest.

“Of course we love you-”

“Three daughters, two sons, seventeen grandchildren and five great-grandchildren and not one calls me unless they need something!”

“That’s not true-”

“Oh, then this was just a social call? Did you wish to tell me about your relationship with the Nancy girl? Did you mess up again?”

Steve didn’t say anything because she was right, he had messed up with Nancy again, and he also was only calling because he needed her insight. She blew more smoke in his face, and he let it go because he was one of the few in the family who she could do it to. She’d told him once that being intangible was the only bad part of haunting the world as a ghost. Apparently it felt like moving through water that wasn’t wet. Steve couldn’t really wrap his mind around that.

“See? I knew it. Well? What is it you need, my love?” she asked, dramatically sinking onto a box of Christmas decorations, and crossing one leg over the other. Steve bit back a smile. This wasn’t a smiling situation.

“One of my friends is horribly injured, another is dead, and this town is merging with the parallel dimension it’s connected to. I was hoping you’d know what to do.”

Belladonna took another drag from her pipe and nodded, probably because she’d been watching the whole time even if he hadn’t summoned her. She already knew most of it.

“Well, your uncle was always good at mending things. He and a few others are still at the house after celebrating the Spring Equinox with your parents. That little girl could probably use their help. And your father’s collection of books may have something about handling parallel dimensions. But as for the last one- are you sure?”

“Am I sure about what?”

She turned to look him straight in the eyes and he could feel the power behind her look, that she wasn’t actually looking at him, but at something beyond him.

“Are you sure he’s dead?” she asked.

And yes, Steve had been sure. He’d held Eddie in his arms as his body went limp and stiff, and a bit of him went with him, sad that he couldn’t explore the feelings that had sprouted during their attempt at saving the world. But when your undead grandmother questioned something, you started to question it too. So, Steve drove out to the trailer park and followed his grandmother’s translucent form through some woods as she led him to “the spot where the energy is,” whatever that meant, which turned out to be a random patch of dirt. A normal person would probably have started asking questions, but Steve knew his grandmother was waiting for something from the way she stared down at the dead leaves beneath their feet, so he waited too. He squatted on his heels, his bat in one hand and the radio in another.

“Whatever happened to your fencing lessons? That weapon is so gauche,” Belladonna said.

Steve didn’t answer. They’d had this argument already. Instead, he dropped the radio and reached his hand out expectantly. She handed him the pipe and he took a drag and then coughed like it was the first time he’d smoked. She took it back with a judgmental look.

“It’s not my fault you smoke literal tar,” he complained around the smoke slipping from his lips.

“I taught you better. It is your fault,” she said, tossing her perfectly curled hair to the side. Steve had missed this. Now that he had it, he didn’t know why he’d ever let it go.

“I missed you, Bella,” he said.

“Hush, it’s happening,” she said.

Steve looked back down at the earth. Nothing seemed different. He didn’t feel anything weird, either. He looked up at Belladonna, who was staring down as if she could. He turned back to the leaves.

BAM!

A pale hand burst through the earth, black fingernails sharp and dangerous, followed by a forearm and then an elbow and then a shoulder, and finally, a head. Eddie Munson was covered in dirt and blood and stared back at Steve with bright red eyes. Somehow, the look was hot.

“Steve!?” Eddie yelped.

“Holy shit,” Steve said.

Belladonna vanished with a laugh.

[punkeropercyjackson]

Danny Fenton was such a weak ass protagonist,he was all quips and 'boys will be boys' with the occasional drama llama that happened like twice a season for 8 minutes meanwhile:

Percy Jackson was an autistic kid who felt worthless at 12 already and became suicidal at 16 but was also a bully beater and took direct action against the gods and did activism in the greco-roman myths world by helping out the less privileged sectors of it and is STILL an anarchist in current canon like in the 1st book

Zak Saturday was a black softboy on a show about cryptids and his love interest was a muslim girl that was potrayed as just minor puppy love instead of cosmic soulmates

Kim Possible was a perfect prep but also a girls girl instead of a pick me and a legit superhero even with all the silliness in her plots

Juniper Lee was a brownskin half chinese girl who was as cool and dorky as white male protagonists with her usual character beats do instead of a stereotype

Virgil Hawkins was deadass the FIRST EVER BLACK SUPERHERO CARTOON PROTAGONIST and such a sweet gentle boy but still had major attitude and they didn't soften up african-american experiences at all

Alex from Totally Spies was the baby of her same age team instead of the mom and wasn't masculanized at all and had just as much depth as the other girls

Ichigo Kurosaki was a goth punk traumatized teenage boy of color who actually acted like one instead of just an edgy douchebag and was obsessed with Orihime for being a pastel autistic kindhearted weirdgirl and treated her like the princess she is 24/7 and said fuck the Soul Society's cop ass over and over again and STUCK BY IT

Aang was a tibetan who's show adressed the cleansing the irl ones go through in it's TITLE ALONE and he was potrayed as a ray of hope for his optimism and gender noncormity instead of ridiculed for them and wasn't a fence sitter like wack ass westernizers in the fandom think he is because literally the only reason he didn't Ozai is that homeboy was not only a buddhist but THE LAST SURVIVING IN-UNIVERSE ONE

And you expect to me to care about Danny's boring deadass.Hell Jake Long is just him but not white and with real character development and lore and that's why i'll never fw Danny,boys of color and girls and especially girls of color and actual outcasts did what he did but infinity times better and i don't celebrate his mediocrity because they gave me standards.Danny Phantom was never a good show,he was just 14 and you haven't shut the fuck up since

[lucassinclaer]

INVERSE

Rating: Gen Relationship: Erica Sinclair & Lucas Sinclair Notes: Post-Season 4, Erica Sinclair centric

“Erica,” says her mom, says her dad, says Lucas, and Erica doesn’t know how to say that it hasn’t occurred to her for a second to do things any other way.

READ ON AO3 HERE

this is a fill for my stranger things fic bingo square 'erica sinclair' - (if you wanna participate in the bingo, check out my pinned post!!)

“Erica!” says her music teacher and Erica doesn’t know why she sounds so surprised.

It’s not like she said anything that wasn’t true. She never does.

“Erica!” says Auntie Patrice and pulls her back by her collar.

Erica’s always thought that honesty is the good thing, the right thing, the thing other people would appreciate.

“Erica!” says Tanya on the playground.

She’s eleven and then she’s twelve and somewhere along the way it’s all changed. Her name become an exclamation she doesn’t get.

“Erica,” says her mom, says her dad, says Lucas, and Erica doesn’t know how to say that it hasn’t occurred to her for a second to do things any other way.

•

Here’s the thing: she isn’t trying to be rude.

Sure, she doesn’t care super care if she is, but it’s pretty much never her goal. Besides, shouldn’t it all be based on truth? Truth, justice, the American way. Erica can’t be the only one who pays attention to this stuff.

Sometimes it bugs her friends and they fight. They always make up in the end, but the days they don’t talk still suck.

She’s good in school, so her teachers don’t complain too much but when they have the time they tell her to be careful about running her mouth. Those days suck, too.

Her mom tells her, though – at night when she tucks Erica into bed even though she’s getting way too old for that – that she shouldn’t be anyone but who she is. That she shouldn’t let the world make her into someone else. (Erica doesn’t totally get it. How would that even work? There’s nothing in the world that she’d allow to change her, she’s sure. She doesn’t know where she’d begin.)

So, despite the chidings her mother doles out, Erica knows that she wants her daughter to be herself.

It’s a good thing, too, because Erica really likes being Erica.

•

The swelling of Lucas’ face still hasn’t gone down. Mom and dad fret over it, but the whole of Hawkins has been plunged into chaos and it’s easy to say that he and Erica and Max were in an accident when the quake hit. It’s not even that much of a lie.

Erica does most of the deflecting because her brother can’t be trusted these days. Not that she can blame him – although she still tries to give him grief. Can’t give up on everything normal.

But Max looks awful in that hospital bed, still and horrible. She’s meant to be her brother’s girlfriend who’s much too cool for him, on her skateboard, moving and teasing and fitting in at their house where she likes to watch TV. At least she used to before she stopped coming around. (Lucas never talked about that, at least not to her which makes sense. He still got those pathetic mooning eyes when she came up, though, so Erica knows it wasn’t his choice to break up. And he had hope the whole time. She could tell. He still has hope now and there’s something warm about it that Erica doesn’t know how to name.)

Yeah, Erica really hates that hospital room. It smells terrible, looks worse and there’s always some machine beeping in the background.

But there’s nowhere else to be. Lucas spends every possible moment in that room. The others come to visit when they can. They can only spare so many party members. Sometimes Max’s mother’s there but more often than not it’s just them, Max and Erica and Lucas.

A sick inverse of Saturday mornings spent on the couch where Lucas pretended not to be interested in her cartoons. Where Max would pretend like she didn’t enjoy her mother’s valiant efforts to feed her. Being a teenager involves a lot of pretending, Erica’s learned. It seems beyond exhausting.

Now it’s them playing checkers over Max’s hospital bed, commentating the whole way, before Lucas gets out Tolkien. They finished up The Talisman two days ago.

Today he hesitates. Doesn’t open his stupid Hobbit book and launches into reading.

There’s a heavy silence and when he speaks his voice is all torn up.

“I didn’t save her.” His fingers scratch at the cover, but his eyes are glued to Max’s still, waxy face. “We promised her we wouldn’t miss our shot but we didn’t—” He makes a choking sound like a sob.

There’s a twist in Erica’s chest, sour or like a burn.

“When she wakes up… I don’t know how she could forgive me.”

It’s the rawest Erica thinks she’s ever seen him. It’s unsettling and makes the biting feeling behind her ribs worse. She doesn’t want this to happen. Lucas is the big brother and big brothers aren’t supposed to fall apart.

They can be poked and prodded and provoked and they’ll yell and take their He-Man dolls back and they’ll lie for their sisters about the stain on the good carpet once threatened.

This isn’t right.

The helplessness in his eyes is contagious. It crawls up her arms, immobilizing her inch by inch. If Lucas doesn’t know what to do in this room, how is she supposed to know what to do in this room?

Her brother is broken in this moment, much like Hawkins. They have the same scars. Like he was torn apart with it.

So, she tells him the only thing she ever tells anyone: the truth.

“Well, that’s stupid.”

His head shoots up. He frowns but he doesn’t say anything. He’s listening to her, Erica realizes, like she has an answer he wants to hear.

Everything gets so weird when the world ends.

“That’s what Max would say, and you know it. Stop being stupid.” She’s standing on the opposite side of the bed from where he’s sitting. They bring their own water bottles because the hospital is overflowing still and can’t spare the glasses. Erica puts her bottle (pink to Lucas’ green, mom bought them together) back into their backpack. “You did everything you could. I don’t know how you guys survived ‘til high school. We all knew the risk. Max was never gonna let other people take the fall. It was a dangerous plan, but who else was gonna do anything?”

It's bitter in the back of her throat. She’d looked at the group of them, in that van, before they got to Creel House, and she’d felt cold inside. Everyone they had, everyone willing to fight, had looked so young. Unqualified. Inexperienced.

Child endangerment, she’d told Dustin and Robin an eternity ago. That’s all this town really is now. The evidence lies with them right here in this room.

There’s still something in her that’s constricted. Those words were all she had. She doesn’t know what she’ll do if Lucas pushes back, if it’s not enough.

Slowly, she tears her eyes away from the lonely backpack by the side of Max’s bed.

Lucas has the tiniest smile on his face.

“Erica,” he says, and it sounds like thank you.

[leasstories]

Timeless

Eddie Munson x fem!reader

No trigger warning, just fluff.

WC ≈ 1.5K

Based on Timeless by Taylor Swift

January 1987,

You’ve been walking in the streets of Indianapolis when an antique shop comes into view. You enter the shop and stop at the counter where thousands of old photos are on display. Most of them are photos of couples from different period of times. The sign says: ‘Photos, 25 cents each”. All of those old photos make you think of your relationship with your boyfriend, Eddie. 

The first photo you came across was a black and white photo of a bride in the ‘30s, it made you think of how much you would love to be Eddie’s bride, it makes you imagine what your dream wedding with the love of your life would look like. You think about how you would definitely marry Eddie in a heartbeat. It makes you daydream about how he might propose and about how, if one day he does, your gonna throw yourself at him.

You then saw the photo of school lovers laughing on the porch of their first house. It reminds you of the day you and Eddie moved in together. After the events of the Upside Down, Eddie and you didn’t lose a second, seeing Eddie battling for life in the hospital made you realize that your love for him is the kind of love you find only once in a lifetime. Eddie got out of the hospital in May 1986, with the financial compensation that the state gave the both of you, you bought a small trailer at Hawkins trailer’s park. You officially moved in together in June 1986 and have been living together ever since. You were the one nursing his wounds, you are the one who is here for him, in the middle of the night when he wakes up from a nightmare. You know that you’ll be here for him for as long as he allows you to be. Eddie is for you, the kind of love that you don’t put down, you cling to it for as long as you can. Even if Eddie despises conformity, you and Eddie are High School Sweetheart, you met in school and started dating during his second senior year. And this photo reminded you of that, it reminded you of how Eddie and you, are the American Teenage love story. Your first date was in a shitty drive in, your first kiss behind the bleachers and your first ‘I love you’ in the confines of Eddie’s bedroom. You first moved in together before graduating, and almost a year later, your shared trailer feels more like home than your respective childhood homes. 

You came across photos of couples in 1944, photos of women reading letters from their beloved who left to fight for the war, and at that moment, you realized that even if you met Eddie at that time, and were one of those women, you would have been waiting for him. 

At some point you spotted a photo of a teenage couple holding hands, on their way to a dance, the date said 1958. You took the photo in your hands and smiled. You feel like time stopped and remember the first time you saw Eddie. You remember that you were in Junior High and you were already intrigued by this little boy. You remember that, despite his buzzcut at the time, the first thing you thought of him was that he was pretty. Eddie and you were two grades apart, but from the moment you saw him to the moment he left Junior High, you kept admiring from afar. Then, you went to High School and your fascination turned into warmth into the pit of your stomach. During Eddie’s first senior year (and your Sophomore year), you finally realized that you had a crush on Eddie. Then you had the courage to join Hellfire. When Eddie said “hello” is when you story started. You didn’t have any hopes of being Eddie’s girlfriend. Eddie didn’t seem to date, but you took the opportunity to get to know him and spend time with him. And once you got to know him, you became head over heels, Eddie wasn’t only a good looking guy, deep down, he was also a real sweetheart.  You knew that there will never be anyone else than Eddie. Your heart belonged to him the minute he said “Hello” when you approached him to join the Hellfire Club. All of these memories, all of your story with Eddie, you are so scared to forget it all. 

You got out of your trip down the memory lane and came upon an old book, covered in cobwebs. When you open the book and start reading it, you realize that it is the story of a romance torn apart by fate. This story is your worse nightmare and reminds you that you almost lost Eddie in March of last year, it reminds you that fate almost teared you apart. It’s a story taking place a century ago. The couple fell in love just like you did with Eddie, they were teenage sweethearts too, the man died for the woman the same way Eddie almost died to protect you. And you know that you would die for him in the same way, Eddie is the most important person of your life. 

All of those pictures and stories made you realize that if you were forced to marry another man, your heart would still be Eddie’s. You would hide from your husband and read Eddie’s love letters every single nights. You would end up running away, leaving your life behind. Eddie still would be yours. You believe that the two of you were supposed to find each other and that in any lifetime, Eddie would be yours and you would be his. 

Times does affect your body, it’s scientific, but you know it won’t touch your soul, it won’t change your love for Eddie. In 50 years, you still see yourself love Eddie. Eddie’s always going to be yours and you are always going to be his. You know your love is timeless. You know that when you’ll be old and gray, you’ll keep loving him. You know you’ll have a cardboard full of photos laying in front of you. Photos of the life that Eddie and you have made. 

As those photos and this book made you think of Eddie, you went back on the streets and searched for a call box. As soon as you find it, you put all of your cents in the machine and dial your trailer’s phone number. 

“You’ve reached Eddie Munson, what can I do for ya?” Eddie asks.

“Baby!” You say, excited and out of breath.

“Sweets, where are you? Is everything okay?” Eddie asks, concerned.

“Yeah, yeah everything okay. I was just missing you.” You say softly.

“I miss you too, where are you?” Eddie asks again. “Still in Indianapolis?”

“Yes. Eddie I came across an antique shop and there were so many photos of couples. And it’s so hard to explain, but I saw us on those photos instead. It made me realize that somehow, I know that you and I would have found each other, even in another life. Even if we met in 1944 and you were headed off to fight in the war, you still would’ve been mine. I would have read your love letters every nights, praying that you’d be coming home all right. I would’ve impatiently waited for your return and then you would’ve proposed and we would have married each other once the war was over.” 

“You’re so cheesy” Eddie says, you can hear the smile in his voice. “But I also believe that we are timeless, that no matter what we would have found each other. Don’t say anyone I said this but I believe we are two halves of the same soul an that no matter what, we were destined to find each other.”

“And now who’s the cheesy one” You say smiling from ear to ear.  You can hear the bip of the call box indicating that your calling time is almost over.

“Eddie, I have to hang up but I love you, so much. See you tonight.”

A few days after this phone conversation, Eddie proposed to you. He wrote an acoustic song (which is really rare for Eddie) inspired by your phone call, a song telling you how much he loves you and how you and Eddie would have found each other in any other lifetimes. And in the cardboard you made, where you gathered all of your photos with Eddie, you added your engagement photo. A photo of you, arm wrapped around Eddie’s neck your body pressed tight against Eddie’s, tears of happiness rolling down your cheeks. You and Eddie both know it’s only the beginning and that in a few decades from now, the cardboard will be filled with memories, because you are meant for each others. 

In every scenarios, every period of time you could have been living in, you imagine your heart belonging to Eddie. You and Eddie, your love story, really is timeless. 

Taglist: @abellmunsonmovie

[jbaileyfansite]

Interview with Jonathan Bailey and Matt Bomer from GQ Hype

Filled with cozy, Hemingwayesque signifiers of midcentury masculinity (think: taxidermy and artfully-tattered boxing gloves), the restaurant seemed perfect for a breezy, late-autumn hang in the West Village.

But there’s one problem: Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey have burgers on their minds. And while this place boasts a surplus of dead animals nailed to the wall, it somehow only serves snacks and salads in the afternoon. And as Bomer points out, Corner Bistro—a pub that, in his opinion, serves some of the best burgers in town—is just a six-minute walk away.

The British-born Bailey—who, in his black sweater, floppy beanie and overstuffed backpack, looks more like a backpacker who just rolled out of his hostel rather than one of the streaming era’s top heartthrobs—waxes rhapsodic about In-N-Out, the California burger institution, which he recently tried for the first time.

He asks the suave, Old Hollywood-handsome Bomer, who spends most of his time in L.A. with his husband and three teenage sons, where In-N-Out falls on his personal burger index. “Our boys are really good judges of burgers,” Bomer says, and for them, In-N-Out is up there—but so is the burger at Corner Bistro. And how can we send Bailey—the Viscount of Bridgerton himself—back to London without tasting New York’s best?

Our location, midway between Stonewall Inn and Julius, two of New York’s most historic gay bars, is apt. The project we’re here to talk about—the epic new Showtime series Fellow Travelers, in which the pair star—tips its hat to the legendary 1969 riots that happened in Stonewall, but goes even further, telling the story of gay liberation in the second half of the twentieth century.

Part epic love story, part political thriller, Fellow Travelers begins in 1950s Washington, D.C., with an illicit affair between the strapping Hawkins “Hawk” Fuller (Bomer), a State Department official savvy to the ways of power, and the earnest, energetic Timothy “Tim” Laughlin (Bailey), the kind of wide-eyed idealist who goes to D.C. wanting to change the world. When they first meet, Tim is a conservative Catholic boy; his passionate, intensely erotic affair with Hawk both liberates him and throws him off his path.

Through the decades-spanning run of their relationship, the series takes us from the Lavender Scare of the 1950s—when a McCarthy-era policy that institutionalized homophobia expelled many “sexual deviants” from government, resulting at one point in a suicide a day—to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.

The series is based on the Thomas Mallon novel of the same name. But where Mallon’s book generally focuses on the 1950s and the explosive romance between Hawk and Tim, the series expands the Fellow Travelers universe to reach through the decades and cover the Vietnam War protests of the '60s and the White Night riots of 1979.

“It's been taught that LGBTQIA+ history begins at Stonewall,” says Jelani Alladin, the actor who plays queer Black journalist Marcus Hooks in the series. “It’s a kind of false narrative. Queer people have been around taking a stand for themselves since the beginning of time.”

It feels like a disservice to call a series so sexy and so compelling as educational. But Fellow Travelers does serve as an important history lesson for younger generations who may not fully understand the battles fought before their time. “It was a really dark period in American history that obviously we're not taught in school,” says executive producer Robbie Rogers, who prior to his work in film and TV was the soccer player who became the first openly gay man to compete in a North American professional sports league. “We're not taught LGBT history.”

When the first episode of the series came out in late October, a viral clip showcasing Bailey and Bomer in a particularly kinky sex scene had Gay Twitter shuddering with excitement. In the scene, Bailey’s Tim uses his power as a sub to persuade Bomer’s Hawk to take him to an important D.C. party. “I’m your boy, right?” he tells Hawk. “Your boy wants to go to the party.” In surely one of this year’s hottest scenes on film or TV, we see Bailey hungrily suck on Bomer’s toes and gamely attempt to put his foot in his mouth. Earlier in the series, Hawk gives Tim the name “Skippy” after thoroughly dominating him in bed, a gesture of affection as much as of ownership.

Sex is a powerful, world-shifting force in Fellow Travelers, but it’s also a Trojan horse. While the early episodes bristle with erotic energy, every exchange between Bomer and Bailey is about power as much as it is about sex. And the further you go into Travelers, the more you realize what’s really at stake when these two hit the sack.

“Even in the ‘50s, they had joy,” Travelers creator and writer Ron Nyswaner, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Philadelphia, says. “You might be struggling, but that doesn't mean every moment of your life you're a victim of oppression. Behind closed doors they had a life—it's just that at any moment, the police could come through those doors and ruin that life.”

That unapologetic approach to queer desire is still pretty revolutionary in a big-budget prestige series on a major network. Gone are the days when gay characters were allowed to exist onscreen as long as they adhered to respectability politics. In Fellow Travelers, the queer characters are allowed passionate, unapologetically freaky pleasures.

“There's no shame attached to that,” Bailey says. “And I do think Matt's character detonates something in Tim. It's a gift to meet someone [who does the] radical act of helping you feel less shame and understand that intimacy that can be explored in so many different ways.”

Religion is a big theme in Fellow Travelers. Hawk is bound by covenant to his wife; Tim struggles with Catholic guilt. And like many queer people, Bomer and Bailey themselves have both had to negotiate religion within their queer identities.

“It took me a long time to dismantle it and to question what I was being told,” Bailey says. “Religion is interesting because it’s the voice of the shame but also [a source of] relief. There was this person that I could speak to—and I definitely did have that full conversation with a higher power. But the contradiction is brutal. To really lean into that as a gay kid who's not born into a gay family, you see both sides of what religion can provide, which is scathing judgment—as I felt it looking back—but also a real space for catharsis and nourishment.”

Bomer says he has an individualized approach to religion: “It's something that I've found for myself over years and years of exploration. It's just highly personal that way.” Bomer is proud to have raised his kids in a truly intersectional environment. “They go to an Episcopal school, but they're in school with Muslim kids, with Jewish kids,” he says. “We gave them that experience and then let them find their own way from there.”

On the way to Corner Bistro, Bomer gives Bailey a capsule tour of gay West Village. “That’s an iconic lesbian bar,” he says, pointing out Cubbyhole on West 12th street. Later, he asks if we’ve ever been to Fire Island. “You can have any experience you want there,” Bomer tells me, when I confess my anxiety around Speedos. “It's not just one thing.”

These streets bring up certain memories for Bomer. He tells us about coming up as an actor in New York in the early 2000s, at one point living in “a renovated crackhouse in Brooklyn.” Later, he worked two jobs to afford a one-bedroom apartment he split with a fellow aspiring actor—none other than Lee Pace, the famous, and famously tall (6′ 5″, if you don’t know), actor and Internet Boyfriend who Bomer has known since high school. “I’ll tell you how long I've known Lee Pace,” he says. “I’ve known him since he was shorter than me, when he was 14 and I was 15.”

As gay men are wont to do, trust that the group veered off-topic to talk about vocally-prodigious divas. Bomer has just seen the Broadway production of David Byrne’s Here Lies Love, which tells the story of the rise and fall of Imelda Marcos, the wife of the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. And when he finds out that I grew up in the Philippines, he tells me how much he loves Lea Salonga, the Tony-winning Filipino Broadway star who appears in the production.

We ask Bailey if he’s familiar with her. “Do I know Lea Salonga?” he asks. “She was Fantine!” he retorts, referring to her role in Les Misérables in Concert: The 25th Anniversary.

From there, we fall into a Filipino diva rabbit hole, talking about former Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger (currently appearing in a well-received West End production of Sunset Boulevard that Bomer tells Bailey they must catch together), Mutya Buena of the Sugababes (an iconic U.K. girl group that Bailey and I separately saw live recently), and Darren Criss (who Bomer directed on The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story—technically a straight male, but one who earns diva status for his formidable vocals and the dance he did in a red speedo on Versace).

As we near the pub, a thirty-something woman walking hand in hand with her man does a hilariously convincing impression of the Distracted Boyfriend meme at the sight of Neal Caffrey and Anthony Bridgerton casually strolling through West 4th Street.

“Her neck!” Bailey says, audibly concerned.

In Corner Bistro, with sandwiches and coffees in hand (Bailey decides on a classic burger and a grilled chicken sandwich), we settle down in a cozy booth and talk about the points in their careers where Fellow Travelers found the actors, the hard-won representation Hollywood’s queer community has been fighting for for decades, and the LGBTQ+ talents of color they’d like to support on their own projects.

Bomer, of course, has been famous since the early 2010s, when he became a star on the series White Collar, and along with Neil Patrick Harris, proved that openly gay actors could become leading men. Since then, he’s conquered Broadway (The Boys in the Band), won a slew of awards (Golden Globe and Critic's Choice trophies for The Normal Heart) and become a producer and director.

In the past, Bomer has discussed the way doors closed on him even as he was being celebrated for being an out gay actor. When asked about that now, he says, “I choose just to never look back in anger about anything. Ultimately, my career is a lot richer because I decided to be open with who I am.”

“It’s a wave of progress that Matt's been surfing and is at the front of,” says Bailey. “And it's been a real honor to be able to get on my boogie board next to him.”

Before he became a global star mid-pandemic playing the grumpy, furry-chested Anthony Bridgerton on the Netflix juggernaut Bridgerton, Bailey was an award-winning actor in both the West End and British television. Huge fame didn’t find Bailey until his early 30s, so when it did, he had a clear idea of what he wanted to accomplish with his platform.

“I feel the responsibility immeasurably,” Bailey says. “I get it when people are saying you create a chair and bring people [to the table].” He talks about the connection between the civil rights movement and the queer liberation. “The Black queens are the ones who really started to fight,” he says. “It's amazing to feel politically activated. And if there's any project to do that, it's going to be Fellow Travelers. It will change the way I see myself in and the world I live in.”

The intersectionality makes the story Travelers is trying to tell even richer—most of all in Alladin’s scene-stealing portrayal of the conflicted Marcus Hooks, a pioneering Black journalist who pushes against segregation as he grapples with his own sexuality. “When I look at older men today, I'm like, You guys have endured so much,” Aladdin says. “From the Second World War all the way through to the AIDS crisis, it was nonstop life crisis after life crisis. To have been able to survive through all that, there needs to be a real, solid weight on the feet of [these characters].”

Part of the pleasure of watching Fellow Travelers is picking up on the cinematic references hidden in each scene. Hawk and Tim’s first interactions evoke the forbidden affair in David Lean’s 1945 classic Brief Encounter. When Hawk’s family settles in suburbia, the show evokes the Technicolor repression of the great Douglas Sirk melodramas. When Hawk and Tim run through the beaches of Fire Island in the ‘70s, that iconic image of Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr kissing on the beach in From Here to Eternity may flicker in your mind. And in some ways, the series plays like a gayer, hornier The Way We Were—an epic love story tossed on the tides of political change. (In this version, of course, the Barbra Streisand character is an eager foot-licking sub and Redford’s Hubbell Gardiner is a daddy with a pit fetish.) Fellow Travelers allows us to imagine an alternate timeline where queer love has always gotten as much screen time as cinema’s great heterosexual romances, giving other kinds of stories the chance at celluloid immortality too.

In the book, Hawk is described as being more handsome than Gregory Peck. But seeing Bomer in period-appropriate clothing, the Old Hollywood leading man I thought of was Montgomery Clift, the talented and ultimately tragic gay actor who starred in classics like Red River and A Place in the Sun. For a time in the mid 2010s, Bomer was attached to star in a Montgomery Clift biopic for HBO, to be directed by the great gay director Ira Sachs. “Ira is a genius,” Bomer says. “[But] I think that ship may have sailed.”

Still, when I press him about doing it in the future, he lights up. “You know, I’m [now] the same age Monty was when he passed away,” Bomer says. “I always thought it'd be really interesting to do a play about the last night of his life, when he's watching one of his old movies on TV. And he had this man who lived with him and took care of him for the last chapter of his life.There's an interesting play in there somewhere…. Maybe Liz Taylor swings by.”

What’s changed since the mid 2010s is that a lot of Hollywood’s current gatekeepers are queer people who were fighting from the bottom a decade ago. “It's the people, the gatekeepers who are now going, ‘We are going to make this [queer] story,’” Bailey says. “This narrative that gay people have to be closeted in order [for a project] to be commercial and in order for things to be interesting to people—it's been dismantled. But it's slow because it's not just straight people who think that—I think everyone believed that in the system of Hollywood.”

Nyswaner, who has been working in Hollywood since the early ‘80s, has seen that shift up close. “When I grew up in the ‘60s and early ‘70s, I never heard the word ‘homosexual’ spoken aloud,” he says. “There was no conversation that I ever had with anybody about homosexuality. It was not just bad, it was the unspeakable thing—that's how terrified people were of us.”

And while he agrees that, in some ways, it feels like the LGBTQ+ community is once again losing ground on some rights, Nyswaner refuses to accept that there hasn’t been change. “Sometimes I hear people say, ‘Well, we haven't gotten anywhere.’ And I'm here to say, ‘Oh, yes, we have.’ Because actually you can turn on the television and find gay characters.”

Fellow Travelers is the culmination of a dream for a number of the men involved in the series.

“When I met Ron, he was talking about how he thinks about this as his lifelong legacy project,” Bailey says. “And I just said to him, ‘Whoever ends up going on this journey with you, I think it'll be the same [for them] probably.’”

“In some ways, Fellow Travelers is a span of my life,” Ron Nyswaner says. “I was an infant in the McCarthy era. And then I came out of the closet in 1978 and just danced and did cocaine and had multiple sexual partners—we didn't know what was coming, which was the AIDS crisis.” Nyswaner was nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar in 1993 for Philadelphia, the landmark drama about an AIDS patient who sues his employers for AIDS discrimination. In a way, the historical span of Fellow Travelers gives the battles fought in Philadelphia their context.

Rogers remembers being a closeted soccer player in the late 2000s, watching Tom Ford’s A Single Man and hoping one day to be able to find love and take control of his own narrative. And Bailey recalls, post-Bridgerton, realizing that he could suddenly write his own destiny and vowing to seek out “a sweeping gay love story.”

Bomer, meanwhile, says—laughing, but seemingly dead serious—that it’s his goal to play a queer character from every decade of the 20th century. “A queer Decalogue,” he says, referencing the Krzysztof Kieślowski classic.

Bomer’s next project might just help him do that. He’s currently producing a Steven Soderbergh film on Lawrence v. Texas, the case that overturned the sodomy laws in Texas in 2003 but started in the 90s.

There are many more stories to tell. And as our interview winds down, Bomer and Bailey start spitballing dream projects.

We talk about All of Us Strangers director Andrew Haigh, who’s revered for his portraits of gay intimacy. “Andrew Haigh has been a special filmmaker for years,” Bailey says. “I think [his film] Weekend informed actually how I approached the sex scenes in [Fellow Travelers].”

“I’d love to play Jessica Fletcher's queer grandson who moves back to Cabot Cove,” Bomer says, referencing Angela Lansbury’s iconic role in Murder, She Wrote. “He's inherited her house and he finds an old journal in her library, and it's a case she never saw and he takes up her mantle.”

And moments before the restaurant speakers suddenly start blaring George Michael’s “Freedom ’90,” Bailey comes in with a killer pitch: “I’m obsessed with the Sacred Band of Thebes, an army of 300 gay lovers in [ancient] Greece. They partnered in pairs, this gay army, and they overthrew a Spartan army… I want to do that as a comedy.”

“Oh hell yes!” Bomer says.

“Just get all the queer actors together,” Bailey says, laughing.

“Lee Pace, everyone,” Bomer says.

“Where would we film it?” Bailey asks.

“Mykonos?” Bomer suggests.

“Flaming Saddles, down the road,” Bailey counters with a chuckle, referring to a gay bar in midtown.

“Oil us up and let’s go!” Bomer says.

Source

[thegayhimbo]

Stranger Things "Deliver Me From Evil" Review

If you haven't yet, be sure to check out my other Stranger Things Reviews! Like, Reblog, and let me know what your thoughts are, as well as any theories you might have for Season 5!

Stranger Things Reviews/Theories

Stranger Things The First Shadow

Stranger Things Comics/Graphic Novels:

Stranger Things Six

Stranger Things Halloween Special

Stranger Things The Other Side

Stranger Things Zombie Boys

Stranger Things The Bully

Stranger Things Winter Special

Stranger Things Tomb of Ybwen

Stranger Things Into The Fire

Stranger Things Science Camp

Stranger Things “The Game Master” and “Erica’s Quest”

Stranger Things and Dungeons and Dragons

Stranger Things Kamchatka

Stranger Things Erica The Great

Stranger Things “Creature Feature” and “Summer Special”

Stranger Things Tales From Hawkins

Stranger Things x Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Crossover

Stranger Things The Voyage

Stranger Things Tie-In Books:

Stranger Things Suspicious Minds

Stranger Things Runaway Max (Part 1 of 3)

Stranger Things Runaway Max (Part 2 of 3)

Stranger Things Runaway Max (Part 3 of 3)

Stranger Things Darkness On The Edge Of Town (Part 1 of 3)

Stranger Things Darkness On The Edge Of Town (Part 2 of 3)

Stranger Things Darkness On The Edge Of Town (Part 3 of 3)

Stranger Things Rebel Robin Book and Podcast (Part 1 of 2)

Stranger Things Rebel Robin Book and Podcast (Part 2 of 2)

Stranger Things Hawkins Horrors Review

Stranger Things Flight Of Icarus

Stranger Things Lucas On The Line

Stranger Things Episode Reviews:

The Vanishing of Will Byers (Part 1 of 2)

The Vanishing of Will Byers (Part 2 of 2)

Synopsis: While delivering pizzas on a dark night in Lenora, California, Argyle and Jonathan exchange creepy stories...........

Observations:

I wasn't aware this comic came out last May. If I had known, I would have reviewed it then before I saw The First Shadow. Ah, well. Better late than never!

For a short released on Free Comic Book Day, this was a nice quick read, and a fun story centered on Jonathan and Argyle. It has a similar premise to Halloween Special and Hawkins Horrors in that it focuses on scary urban legends, but the main differences here are 1.) They're told from Argyle's perspective, 2.) There's a strong comedic tone to these stories as opposed to just playing them for straight horror, and 3.) The stories Argyle tells are tied to his Mexican heritage, and ones he likely grew up listening to from his family.

Take his first tale for example: As an 8 year old boy, he attended his cousin's birthday party, and at one point encountered a monster called a Chupacabra:

In Latin American folklore, the Chupacabra is a creature known for sucking the blood out of animals, and having a reptilian, alien-like form (though some people claim it also has some similarities to a kangaroo). Its name means "goat sucker" in Spanish, and it's often considered to be of the same species as vampires.

Naturally, Argyle freaks out at seeing the creature, and attacks it with a baseball bat (similar to what Steve Harrington did to the Demogorgon in S1)................only for it to be revealed that it was never there to begin with, and that he ended up smashing his cousin's pinata with the bat:

Then we get another story from Argyle about his first crush (Suzie Q) whom he skips class with so they can make out in the janitor's closet........only to conveniently encounter La Llorona:

Just like with the Chupacabra, La Llorona also comes from Latin American folklore, and is a vengeful ghost who drowned her children in a fit of rage after her husband cheated on her, and now haunts watery areas (lakes, rivers, etc), unable to move on to the next life, forever wailing over her dead children. In some versions of the tale, she also goes after those who are unfaithful, still clearly sore over what happened to her.

Funny enough, the first time I ever learned about the legend was from watching the pilot episode of Supernatural:

But just like with Chupacabra, La Llorona was never really there, and instead a teacher named Miss Downers shows up, catching Argyle and Suzie Q ditching class, and punishing Argyle as a result:

The final story occurs around the time Argyle gets hired at Surfer Boy Pizza, where he encounters yet another monster, this time known as the Quetzalcoatl:

Quetzalcoatl (also known as "The Feathered Serpent") is a deity in Aztec culture, whose role varied, from being the God of vegetation and wind, to even being a symbol of death and resurrection, and also contributing to the creation of humanity. Like with most Gods, the mythology surrounding him was constantly evolving, with different stories analyzing his exploits and role in the universe.

It is weird and hilarious that an all-powerful God would randomly show up to scare the daylights out of Argyle after he just finished his job interview.........and you can already put together what actually happened during this scene:

With all 3 of these stories, it's pretty clear the monsters Argyle claims to encounter aren't really there, and are more symbolic of Argyle's feelings in the moment: His disinterest (and possible jealousy) with his cousin's birthday party leads to his "encounter" with the Chubacabra and destroying his cousin's pinata. His romantic interest in Suzie Q and her later "unfaithfulness" after she rats him out to Miss Downers having parallels to La Llorona's legend, and even his new job as a pizza delivery boy reflecting the mythology of Quetzalcoatl who brought maize (corn) to humans. It's ambiguous if Argyle just has an overactive imagination, or if he's tripping balls and hallucinating in these stories, but the main theme seems to be that he's constantly getting into trouble while taking it in stride. It's probably a big factor in why he was so willing to accept Jonathan, Will, and Mike's explanation in S4 about the Upside Down.

Jonathan is with Argyle in his van as he tells these stories, and while he doesn't go into specific details about the horrors he faced in Hawkins, he does allude to them in a somber tone (something Argyle takes note of):

It works as a nice contrast to Argyle's lighthearted tales, and a way of showing that, despite having moved to Lenora, Jonathan is still haunted by the monsters of the Upside Down and the fear that they will return one day (which sadly happens in S4).

It's nice to finally get a comic that focuses on Jonathan and Argyle and the friendship they shared during their time together. Argyle was a standout in both the Lenora storyline (which was one of my least favorite arcs on the show) and S4 as a whole. While he did serve as comic relief, there was a surprising amount of depth and insight to Argyle (such as pinpointing the problems with Jonathan keeping secrets from Nancy, being savvy enough to follow Colonel Sullivan's trail to El, and even providing El with the salt-bath she would use for remote-traveling in order to save Max from Vecna) that made him a lot smarter than he appeared on the surface.

Those moments alone allowed me to appreciate him.........which is why I wasn't happy when Eduardo Franco announced back in January that he hadn't gotten a call from the Duffer Brothers for S5, which likely means his character won't be returning:

I am hoping I'm wrong about this, and that they're deliberately misleading fans about Argyle not coming back to prevent spoilers about the last season. I even speculated on the idea that Eduardo has an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement), which is why he might be cagey about production details. There's nothing, for instance, to suggest that the Duffer Brothers couldn't have called him several weeks or months after this interview, and he's simply keeping quiet about that for the sake of the show. There's also the possibility of the Duffer Brothers reading the room over fans reacting to Argyle's absence (which was pretty negative) and making the changes necessary to give him an important role in the story.

It's also possible to argue that since Argyle lives in Lenora and S5 will take place exclusively in Hawkins between 1987 and 1988 (a whole year or two after S4), there isn't any logical way to keep Argyle in the show, and I can understand that perspective to some degree. However, it still doesn't change how it comes off as the Duffer Brothers wasting the potential of yet another character (*cough* Kali/Eight from S2 *cough*), and nuking a friendship between Argyle and Jonathan in the process that fans reacted positively towards and wanted to see more of. Argyle was good for Jonathan in that he allowed Jonathan to be more open and relaxed than he ever was in Hawkins (even while introducing Jonathan to Purple Palm Tree Delight to achieve that), and was genuinely supportive of Jonathan through his issues.

Not many friends would be willing to drive halfway across the United States and put themselves in constant danger the way Argyle did. He was a loyal companion, and he absolutely deserves to be part of the Party, and have a role in taking down Vecna and the Mind Flayer.

As for Jonathan.............I've seen a growing chorus of fans who've complained about his character and story being shoved into the background with each passing season, and I have a hard time refuting that claim. Season 1 was where he arguably has the most relevance to the show, from his motivation to find Will when he disappeared, to his growing feelings for Nancy and how that brought him into conflict with Steve. However, ever since Season 2 when he finally got together with Nancy and helped her get Hawkins Lab shut down, it feels like the writers have lost interest in Jonathan, and either reduced him to a side-character in other people's storylines (i.e. Nancy dealing with sexism in the workplace in S3, or Will dealing with his feelings for Mike in S4) or have given him arcs that come off as inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.

I make no secret I wasn't a fan of Jonathan's arc in S4. While he did get a few chuckles from me when he was stoned, I wasn't impressed with other aspects, from him ditching Nancy during Spring Break, to keeping her in the dark about not applying for Emerson College (which was the school they were both supposed to attend). I know fans have analyzed Jonathan's behavior to the moon and back, and I get what the Duffer Brothers were trying to go for with Jonathan's indecisiveness and his fear of creating a relationship with Nancy that would echo the horror show that was Lonnie and Joyce's marriage, but it was still frustrating to sit through, and in comparison to many of the other arcs that season (Vecna, Hopper escaping Russia, Dr. Brenner's return, etc), this felt like small potatoes, and a conflict that could be easily resolved if Jonathan sat down with Nancy and talked it over with her.

I am somewhat curious where they're going with this. Since the last season takes place a year or two after the events of S4, it makes me wonder if Jonathan will have already come clean to Nancy about Emerson by the time S5 starts, or if he'll still be keeping that secret from her. I really hope it's the former because I have zero interest in sitting through multiple episodes where Jonathan continues to lie to Nancy until she eventually finds out about it.

Adding on to this, I'm not thrilled that they brought back the Nancy/Jonathan/Steve love triangle in S4, and that the marketing for S5 is focusing exclusively on that:

In a season where we're likely going to see multiple characters die and have a final gruesome battle between Hawkins and the Upside Down, this comes off as superfluous. The "love triangle" should have been over and done with by S2, and I'm not going to be thrilled if Jonathan and Steve's interactions in Season 5 consist of them duking it out over Nancy. All 3 characters deserve better than that. 😒

I want to be clear that I still like Jonathan as a character, and I'm still rooting for Jancy despite everything. All that I want for Jonathan at this point is to have a decent storyline, and be given more focus in the final season. I remember having similar criticisms of Lucas's role in S3 at the time, and expressing how I wanted Lucas to have an arc of his own for Season 4. The Duffer Brothers must've heard that (or at the very least gotten feedback from fans about it) because Lucas got one in S4 that not only was engaging and helped further his character development, but was also one of the highlights of that season.

By the same token, I hope Jonathan gets that treatment, with an arc where he's at the front and center that helps further his character development. One thing that gives me hope that they might do this is a behind-the-scenes Tweet from S5's production, revealing that there will be a flashback episode in "Sorcerer" (Episode 4 of Season 5) focusing on Jonathan when he was 13, as well as Will and Mike when they were 8 years old:

My hope is that the flashback gives more insight into Jonathan's past and mindset. I'm sure there will be a focus on Mike and Will and their relationship, but I would like to see more revealed about Jonathan as well. I hope that he become more open and trusting with people (aside from his immediate family, Argyle, and Nancy) and eventually realizes he doesn't have to worry about turning into Lonnie or continuing to act as a co-parent to Will, and can start living his own life without feeling like he has to limit himself.

On top of that, I also want Jonathan to have some kind of confrontation with Vecna where he dishes out some much-needed payback after the hell Vecna has put Will and his family through.

Overall, this was a delightful short comic that I wish had been longer. It's currently free on Kindle if you wish to check it out! :)

[museumgiftshoperaser]

ok ok so... AU where Gareth is Steve’s younger brother??

Because Steve has ‘only child’ written all over him, but I think it would be fascinating if he had a sibling, especially a younger one.  Gareth is the black sheep of the family, likes the wrong sort of music, hangs out with the weird kids, plays that game all the news stations are saying is satanic. He’s three years younger than Steve, just a bit too much for them to ever be close, but really it’s their parents who drive a wedge between them. Steve’s their golden child. Good at sports, dating that Wheeler girl their parents love. He’s the poster boy for the all american teenager. In the eyes of their parents, Steve can do no wrong. Gareth stays out after his curfew? Grounded for two weeks. Steve throws a party when his parents are gone? Just don’t do it again, okay?  Needless to say the Harrington boys don’t really get along. Gareth is pissed that Steve gets away with everything. That their parents seem to actually like him, parade him around in front of their friends, keep his sports throphies on a shelf in the living room. When Gareth won a contest in middle school for a short story he wrote his parents didn’t even bat an eye. He keeps the little plaque he got for it in the bottom of his sock drawer, embarrased that he even cares. Within the walls of their house, Gareth doesn’t even get to be himself without feeling judged.  Steve on the other hand can’t help but envy his little brother. He’d never mention it of course, if anyone asks he can’t stand the little twerp. But it’s hard to miss that Gareth actually knows who he is. He has an opinion for himself and doesn’t seem to care how their parents feel about that. Steve can barely pick a shirt without worrying if their mother would approve. Gareth has friends who clearly care about him, a group of self proclaimed freaks who all clearly hate Steve. He has hobbies he actually likes and ideals he cares about.  So yeah... Steve’s kinda jealous sometimes.  Especially after Nancy breaks his heart. When he doesn’t get into college and his parents approval runs dry. When he can’t make it through a family dinner without questions about whatever happened to his potential. All the years of trying to impress their parents weren’t even worth it. And now the little brats he babysits have started high school and they won’t shut up about how cool his little brother is.

When both Steve’s status and his mental health start to slip, Gareth can’t help but feel a little bit bad. People don’t respect his older brother the way they used to and their parents no longer give a fuck about either of them. Good thing Gareth has years worth of experience being an outcast and a friend group that’s more than a little curious to find out whatever happened to the King of Hawkins High...

[ymaohoh]

Yankee Candle Baby - Fic

Eddie wants to buy something nice for Chrissy. Candles are romantic, right?  Oneshot (See at the end for notes)

Word count: 3,730

Chapter: 1/1.

No trigger warnings. No real plot. Just fluff and lust. 

Also on Archive of Our Own.

--

Oh yeah. He was most definitely out of his comfort zone. He was so far out of the zone that he felt like he was standing on a sinking ship surrounded by menacing hungry sharks. 

The mall. The fucking mall. On this perfectly fine Saturday he was here of all places. 

The small town of Hawkins boasted exactly one mall which meant it was unfortunately one of the busier places to be at the weekends, though at this precise time of the day he was thankful to see most of the shoppers were old folks, and noisy kids. His peers (and he used this term very loosely) would likely show up later when it was time to…God knows…go to the movies? Get a burger? Hit the arcade? Whatever it was the average American teenager did at the weekend with their friends or dates. As if he gave a flying fuck. 

No, he hoped he wouldn’t run into anyone he knew. Not because he cared about their opinion - he was Eddie Munson, after all, have you met him? - but because he wanted to get this over and done with as quickly as humanly possible. He was on a secret D&D quest with one singular (but important) purpose...and as soon as he found his holy grail he would race back to his beat-up van and get the hell out of here. 

His leather boots scuffed on the linoleum floor (decorated with some bright nonsense pattern) as he walked forwards reluctantly into what he considered the jaws of hell. Eddie was not typically a morning person and it seemed too early in the day for the overly bright lights that lined the walls or the music blasting out of stores that he could only assume people who hung here found ‘cool’ and ‘trendy’. He ignored the posters that lined the windows advertising whatever shit was for sale inside and kept his eyes open for one specific store. 

Harrington said it would be right at the end of the first floor by the food court…and here…finally. Here it was. The walls to the store were painted bubblegum pink and unsurprisingly the patrons inside were all teenage girls wearing pastels and preppy makeup. 

Hell was apparently the cover of Teen Beat or Just Seventeen, the magazines that he often found rolled up in this van nowadays. 

Eddie looked at the bright and cheery store in question with something akin to repulsion (could he seriously hear Robert Palmer being played on the stereo behind the counter?) before taking a deep breath and plummeting inside before he could change his mind. 

Addicted to love? Apparently he fucking was because it was the only reason he was here. The only reason he’d step inside a capitalist cesspit that was so intense and cheery and uncomfortable to him. The object of said addiction? 

A tiny cheerleader who looked at him like he was her God-damned hero. 

Chrissy was everything to him, even though they’d only technically been a couple  (or ‘going steady’ as she reminded him) for a month now. Honestly? It felt longer. It felt like she’d always been a part of his life from the moment he first laid eyes on her neat strawberry-blonde ponytail. If you asked him if he could remember a time before her he’d draw a blank. He’d had a life without her, sure, but damn if he could remember much about it. He didn’t really want to. She’d woken him up like he was Snow White and she was the prince and life was now all singing cartoon birds, rainbows and sunsets. She was like the fucking sun itself. 

Best of all? She was his. All his. They navigated through the highschool gossip, the stares, the outright rude comments that made him want to ball his fists like how the hell did that loser pull someone like her? Is she crazy? To be fair, it wasn’t a stupid question. He’d asked himself the same thing over and over. They’d laughed when hearing the suggestions of blackmail and magic and he’d fallen a bit in love with her when she admitted there could be magic at play. 

If he thought it would make her smile (and seriously her smile always had the power to totally pierce through his chest like an arrow) then he would most gladly step into whatever hellish landscape needed. He’d move mountains for her. Battle demons. All that cliche romantic stuff. 

Shit, he couldn’t wait to see her smile again. Maybe he was addicted. 

Later on today she was coming to his trailer and they’d be all alone as his uncle was working a night shift at the plant. They’d arranged it so casually yesterday when he drove her home from school - ‘I’ll be there after I finish my chem homework, okay? Maybe six…seven?’ ‘Sure thing. Come round whenever’ - but despite the casual tone he really wanted to do something extra nice for her. He had an idea about making her dinner and setting it up all fancy on the table with the forks and spoons and whatever lined up in the so-called right places. Hell, he’d even bought some wine for them both and Harrington said it was a good bottle (for under $5).

He wouldn’t call Harrington a friend exactly, but he wasn’t a stranger either. He was also one of the only guys he sort of hung around with who actually had experience with women. Eddie would die if any of the kids found out about this (though really they knew how soft Eddie was for Chrissy. It was almost nauseating to be in the same room as them). Harrington has also recommended getting candles. 

Girl’s love them, he’d said confidently. He’d pieced everything together immediately when he ran into Eddie at the store buying fancy healthy ingredients and wine. Eddie was a beer guy usually - wine had to only mean he was trying to impress someone. Trust me, man. There’s a new place in the mall that all the girls talk about. Sounds seriously lame but if you’re going with Chrissy the queen Cunningham then you better up your game. No offense.  

So here he was. Like he said, he’d do anything for Chrissy. Even if it meant stepping out of his comfort zone and doing something different. 

Just like when she surprised him last Tuesday by showing up at The Hideout to hear his band for the first time. She’d looked so out of place in her floral dress beside the regulars who stuck to black and ripped denim as a rule, but she’d cheered loudly (his own personal cheerleader) and it made him feel like the luckiest son of a bitch in the world. She really was a fucking gem. 

“Hi. Can I help you?”

A friendly voice came out of nowhere and he looked up to see a salesgirl eyeing him curiously. He couldn’t blame her for looking at him in that way. Next to the other customers he stood out like a sore thumb in his jeans and leather jacket. Still, he had a reputation of bravado to uphold and he wasn’t the kind of shitty person who was rude to staff. Her name badge said ‘Becky’ in a tiny purple font. She looked to be around Chrissy’s age. 

Becky, you’re going to be my best friend right now. 

“You sure can. Candles? Word on the street is you sell them.”

She smiled and led him to the back of the store past all the scented bath crap, the bright cushions with tassels, the art-deco type figurines, and other trendy kitschy items that teenage girls seemed to adore having in their bedrooms. She led him to a counter at the back which was full of the promised candles. Several heads turned in surprise as he moved around but they soon went back to whatever little item that so fascinated them. 

Ah shit. 

“This is the only brand we sell as it’s the most popular. Is there one you have specifically in mind or do you need help picking one out?”

She was assuming he’d been sent here by his girlfriend (or sister or mom) to collect something on their behalf because they were tied up somewhere else. In which case he’d know exactly what it was he needed. How many boyfriends (or brothers or dads) had been in the same pitiful position as he was now? Becky probably spotted it right away which is why she was being so helpful. Golden star for Becky, he thought. 

(He did love the term boyfriend though. Chrissy’s boyfriend. Chrissy’s boyfriend who would run errands for her. Ah, bliss). 

He fixed her with a smile, saying honestly… “I haven’t got a clue, Becky. Honestly. I’m just trying to find something nice for my girlfriend.”

(His girlfriend. His girlfriend Chrissy. The person who braided his favourite bandana into her hair, marking her as such). 

“Well that’s adorable,” Becky commented. The smile she wore now seemed far more genuine. “In that case let me help. What does your girlfriend use them for? Reading? Putting on during a bath? General ambience?”

Dude. Do not think of Chrissy in a bath. Not Chrissy in a bath wet with water and soap and…

“I’m fixing her dinner tonight,” he explained, turning to more pure and wholesome thoughts. “So something for that? I thought it might look…nice?”

This was hell. Absolute hell. 

Still, two girls who were standing by all the bath crap nearby let out little sighs at his stilted phrasing. Becky looked pretty impressed too. Wow, was he nailing this? And was it just him or did his voice get softer when he spoke about anything to do with Chrissy? 

“I’d go with a pillar candle then, for sure. You can place it in the middle of the table,” Becky suggested. She waved towards the right side of the display. “What’s her favourite smell?”

“Uh…well, she likes loads of things…”

And this was the trickiest bit. He didn’t know. Chrissy liked all sorts of smells and tastes. He’d noticed her happy sigh when she smelled the football field after the grass was freshly cut, and she said she liked the smell of ‘new books’. How could they make candles out of that? 

“I see. Well, maybe test some? See which ones remind you the most of her. I need to go and help that customer over there, but I’ll be by the counter if you need anything else, okay?”

“Sure…thanks.”

This wasn’t going to be so quick and easy as he’d hoped. 

Who the hell needed so many candles? Why were there so many sizes? What the hell was Home for Holidays? He managed to stifle a sigh. He focused on the taller candles to the right where Becky had waved, agreeing that they were probably best suited for his purpose (and would last longer - you know, if he and Chrissy forgot all about them in a daze of frantic making out). Wait - was his home at serious risk of burning down tonight? 

It was a herculean effort to drag his mind away from Chrissy’s spectacular lips and back to the mission at hand. Really. He should be awarded some prize for this. 

Right. Maybe focus on scent like Becky said? That was the whole point of candles now the lightbulb made them otherwise obsolete, right? He scanned the labels. What smell would Chrissy like? 

Using his keen powers of logic and intellect (sharpened recently with Chrissy’s tutorage) he noted that the candles seemed to be arranged in a specific order. The ones on the top shelf sounded like flowery ones. 

Lavender? French Lavender? Lilac Blossoms? Lily of the Valley? He held the latter up to his nose but yanked it away quickly. No way. It smelled like something his grandmother would buy. From what very limited information Chrissy offered about her batshit family they seemed to uphold ‘good old-fashioned conservative values’ like most of middle America and Chrissy herself unknowingly still toed some traditional ideals (though she’d hate any comparison to her crusty bitch of a mother). For example, she was the one who wanted to ‘go steady’ and go on ‘dates’. She also made them wait for date three before…well, what she would very cutely describe as ‘PG stuff’ stuff. As for Eddie? Hell, from day one he’d wanted to throw her over his shoulder cave man style and fuck her on the floor of his van (where she’d first gloriously uttered the perfect words ‘yes, Eddie, I like like you too’) . 

Floral smells seemed to go hand in hand with those traditional ideals…yet Chrissy was showing day by day she didn’t want to be held back by that crap any longer. It started with baby steps - hell, dating him a biggie - but who knew what the future held? Chrissie wanted to go to college after graduation and instead of writing ‘baby-maker extraordinaire’ on her applications (as her family wanted) she confessed to wanting more. Maybe teaching? Maybe social work? She had the brains, for sure. His Chrissy was a Fourth of July sparkler, burning bright and sparkling. She could be whatever she wanted to be. She could have both a career and a family if she wanted because she admitted she did like kids (though the idea of Chrissy holding another little Chrissy in her arms made him feel things he never thought possible). With a fond smile he placed the candle back and moved along. 

White fig, Sicilian Lemon, Sea Salt and Sage, Sage and Citrus, Olive and Thyme. The next shelf seemed to hold the candles that smelled like food. Which was bizarre when he really thought about it. He sampled them each. After all, he was buying a candle to go with dinner so didn’t it make sense for it to be food related? 

He quite liked the citrus smell but he smiled when he saw the label for Thyme. He thought about the first time (ha) they’d cooked together at his trailer a few weeks back, back before they were dating. They’d still been at that bullshit flirty-but-not stage, both too scared of admitting their real feelings in case they ruined the tentative and unexpected friendship they both secretly cherished. Dinner hadn’t been anything special - they’d been hanging out watching a movie with accidental (or not in his case) brushing of limbs and secret glances to her legs (she’d been wearing her cheerleader skirt, for crying out loud - he was not made of stone) - when they’d grown hungry and started fixing some pasta. Chrissy had been awkward when it came to food back then and it was something he’d picked up on right away. She would always make excuses not to eat in front of him but her growling stomach had on this occasion betrayed her big time. He’d heated up the pasta and asked her to pass the thyme to stir into the tomato sauce and she’d eventually admitted to not having a clue what that herb was. He’d been so careful to show not even the teensiest amount of surprise in his eyes, and instead patiently showed her how to use it in cooking. It was apparent that Chrissy only ate the same things day after day and it was all bland and unseasoned. 

Less calories, right? 

Since then she’d come along leaps and bounds with her eating, though it was still something present in the back of her mind like a cobweb they couldn’t quite dust away. Though he worried about the future - what would his dumbass do while Chrissy excelled? - one thing he knew for certain was right after graduation (maybe while still wearing those dorky robes) he would bundle Chrissy into his van and drive her far away from the influence of her asshole mother. If she let him he would dedicate his life to feeding and caring for her like she deserved. He hoped she’d be game. 

He looked away from this shelf. They still had some work to do in this area. 

He liked Candy Cane Lane, Cranberry Twist, French Vanilla, Pink Grapefruit…He smelled them appreciatively even though they were very sickly sweet. He liked his coffee black but he knew Chrissy preferred hers laden with sugar and cream (now she actually let herself indulge more). 

Chrissy was sweetness personified in human form really. All sweet smiles and warm skin and caresses. She was popular for her looks, her kindness, her cheery nature. She also had the glorious ability to look past the dark parts of life (and in people) and see the goodness and the light. It was a trait that Eddie simply didn’t have and he marvelled whenever he was privileged enough to see it swell inside her. No matter how many times life seemed to try and beat it out of her, Chrissy was a God-damned angel who got right back on her feet and was unapologetically kind and sweet and dazzling. Eddie knew he would do anything in his power to keep that flame inside of her bright and fucking destroy anyone who tried to take advantage or smother it. 

(Was he an attack dog now? A bull terrier? Why not. She already held his metaphoric leash. Where she went, he went gladly). 

Chrissy had looked at him - him, Eddie, the guy who was all swagger and sarcasm and enjoyed guts and gore. The person who was labelled a freak, an outcast, a junior delinquent - and seen someone she wanted to be with. Her sweet pretty smile seemed to shine on him and say you’re my person and you are good and you are mine.  

Hell, he was going to ravish her later on. 

Strawberry  

Oh yes. We have a winner. This would be the part where quiz show lights went off and heaps of cash fell from the ceiling. 

He didn’t need to sample this candle because he knew right away this was the one which reminded him the most of Chrissy Cunningham. 

Of her fucking perfect little mouth. 

Chrissy had a habit of wearing lipgloss and it tended to be of the fruity variety which was A-OK with him as long as he was the one tasting it. He’d drown himself in buckets of strawberries if it meant he could once more brush his tongue against that soft velvet cupid bow. The rush he got from kissing Chrissy was better than any illicit high, and he knew as soon as he’d sampled just a little bit that it was game over. He was hooked for life. Chrissy was now in his veins - channelling through his body - and keeping his small insignificant heart beating. 

Their first kiss hadn’t been planned but it was fucking spectacular all the same. So were their other firsts. All of them etched into his memory forever. He might casually use the word fucking to describe what they were doing nearly every single night in his trailer, but they both knew it ran much deeper than that. They were hooked on each other. Couldn’t get enough of each other. It made them frantic and careless at times. Though she swore him to secrecy (blushing as she did so because of course good girls would never) he would never tell another soul about the times they’d frantically fucked in the back of his van, or on the bench in the woods where they re-met. They’d even fucked hurriedly behind The Hideout and the image of him lifting Chrissy against the brick wall with her long legs wrapped around his waist, was something he thought about a lot. He remembered how her pretty lips looked when she came for him. 

And before that when they first uttered the word fuck infront of him. They’d been sitting on the lawn with their friends at the time, and everyone had cheered at Chrissy Cunningham saying a bad word. He’d whistled and cheered too, though it was incredibly hot and a base instinct deep down wanted to grab her like he was some savage neanderthal and have her there on the field. He was pretty sure she knew that too because there was a coy twist to her smile. 

Ding ding ding. We’ve found the candle. He picked it up and went to pay Becky. 

“Nice choice,” she said as she popped it in a paper bag. 

“Yeah. Chrissy is…” Chrissy was a lot of things. He settled on, “She tastes like strawberries.”

Becky’s cheeks flamed at his words and she couldn’t stop herself from giggling. Instead of feeling embarrassed, Eddie felt pretty proud of himself overall. He’d battled the demon that was the mall, found a sidekick of sorts in Becky, and retrieved the holy grail that would please the beautiful princess. Not a bad campaign really. “Chrissy Cunningham, you mean?”

Christ. They knew her here too? He gave her a stiff nod. Was she going to start coming out with the usual crap he heard in the corridors about not being good enough? 

But no. Becky only gave him the bag. “Lucky girl.”

“Nah, I'm the lucky one.”

----

A/N: This is my first attempt at writing for the couple, so apologies for any errors or mishaps with the setting or characteristics. It’s a learning curve. I was not alive during the 80’s so I did rely on a trusty search engine for a few parts. I actually searched for ‘Yankee Candles which are now obsolete’ (apparently they started in the 60’s - who knew?) and the ones listed above are the search results. Pretty sure some of them have come back into circulation though. The store Eddie so bravely ventured into is essentially an 80’s Oliver Bonas. 

I’m also not from the US though I tried using some of the lingo. I think I actually wrote the word mum but it looked so out of place for this world. I can’t bring myself to swap the spell check over though so you still get plenty of u’s in unlikely places (or likely - eh). 

I really enjoyed writing this. It came very naturally. I’ve posted some prompts on my page which I’ll make my way through but give me a shout if you’ve got any requests. 

Toodles x

[bizaar]

Cruel Summer - Part 4

First - Previous - Next

pairings: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

summary: After breaking up, you and Eddie do your best to soldier on with your lives, but you slowly begin to discover that there is a stronger line of connection keeping you together than just history…

word count: 5k

warnings: angst, mentions of Starcourt Mall deaths, as always, so sorry if I forgot anything!

A.N.: babysitter!reader part 4 - the timeline is a little wonky regarding the Starcourt events, but time is a manmade concept and therefore doesn't exist so you'll have to forgive me! the return of Uncle Wayne, MVP and still the #1 dad figure

You spent the rest of the summer hanging out with Dustin, Lucas, Max, and Mike, for lack of anything better to do while you waited out the ticking clock counting down to school starting again. You told yourself you were just trying to help fill the gap that Will had left in their lives after the Byers’s big move to California, all the while fully aware of and ignoring the way you were trying to fill the gaping, Eddie-shaped hole in you with all the nonsense that went with the Party’s teenage boyhood — plus Max, who still kept you at a healthy distance, despite having known her for the better part of two years now.

You don’t hold it against her, she’s got enough on her plate dealing with the implosion of her family in the wake of her brother’s death. Billy was an asshole and you had not enjoyed a single moment you'd ever had the misfortune of spending in his presence, but it didn’t make it any less shocking to hear he’d died in the fire that destroyed the Starcourt mall, along with countless others, along with a friend you’d known since childhood.

It leaves you a little more than shell-shocked, thinking about the weeks you'd spent with her while you were trying to ignore the way Eddie was avoiding you in the weeks leading to the breakup. Thinking about how much time you'd spent in and around the Mall.

Your old group of friends had not been so fond of Eddie, in fact, they’d outright hated him, and had unsuccessfully tried to warn you against him when began to show interest in you. When their warnings about steering clear of the freak fell on deaf ears (how could you resist the way he’d smiled at you in those first moments, so boyish and shy, stumbling over his words and making an absolute fool of himself?) they’d decided to give you a bullshit ultimatum to try and save you— him or them.

Of course, you’d chosen Eddie outright, much to their outrage. It had seemed like the right move at the time, despite the social suicide you committed in doing so. You didn’t care about lost popularity, you would have gone to hell and back for Eddie, and your so-called friends would never understand that, so they'd cast you away like yesterday's trash, along with any social standing you'd held at Hawkins High. You didn't care — being popular was exhausting, and you much preferred the life you led with the so-called freak... that is until not even he wanted you.

Eddie's sudden absence from your life did not go unnoticed, and when he disappeared, one of the kinder girls from the old guard reached out — for pity or old times sake you could not tell— but suddenly you were spending days at the public pool and nights at the Starcourt Mall. It was shades of your life before Eddie, spending the summer like the average American teenager and silently wondering where the hell your stupid boyfriend was.

Your friend died the night the Starcourt Mall burned to the ground. She'd begged you to come out with her that night, and you'd declined, partially because you had absolutely no interest in third-wheeling with her and Billy Hargrove, but mostly because you were too caught up stressing about what Eddie's problem was and why exactly he was ignoring you.

If you’d gone with her that night, you might be dead too. 

You attended the funeral, where you were ignored by the rest of your old friend group — the joys of social pariah-ism— you could hardly make yourself care, much too caught on the jagged edge of thinking very hard about your own mortality. You think about your family, about Dustin and the Party, about all the people you care about and all the people who care about you. You think about Eddie, too, of course, and you wonder bitterly whether he would even go to your funeral if you’d died while he was so busy avoiding you. You can’t say.

Eddie hates funerals.

In the end, it doesn’t matter, because you didn’t go with her that night and you didn’t die, so you don’t have to worry about whether or not your shithead ex-boyfriend would come to your funeral. 

The final weeks of summer come and go, and you manage to stop thinking about your breakup and your mortality long enough to throw your weight into helping to prepare your gaggle of children for the looming threat of High School. You spend full afternoons in the Wheeler’s basement, walking the Party through what they can expect as freshmen like you’re running an incredibly intense session of D&D. You do your very best to channel that same gravitas you’d seen in other examples of Dungeon Mastering (watching Eddie) affecting your “serious babysitter” voice and laying down anything and everything they will need to know.

The effort is something akin to herding kittens as everyone is far too distracted with their own nonsense. Dustin only wants to talk about everything that has changed since you graduated High School and continually – annoyingly– asks if you are okay (you assure him time and again that you are fine but still, he insists on asking), you can't tell if Mike misses Will or his weird little girlfriend more and spends hours upon hours moping pathetically, and Max and Lucas are so busy breaking up and getting back together that you're fairly certain they haven't heard a word you've said over the course of the long hours you've spent lecturing them.

It is extremely annoying, but you can't deny that you're thankful for the distraction, considering it is very hard not to think about Eddie all the time when he is everywhere you look.

Not physically, of course, you haven’t seen him since that terrible night, but he is always there, scorched into every inch of this town, clinging to you wherever you go like an inky black shadow that you cannot wash away no matter how hard you try – and you have tried.

You are so goddamn thankful when the first cool breezes of autumn begin to blow, bringing with them a rush of change that would have normally been enough to send a thick slurry of panic rushing through your veins.

They hit one right after the other, with enough force to give you whiplash.

First the breakup, of course, then the end to your adventures in babysitting – you were strangely okay with the way that long era of your life had been ushered into its final chapter, if not a little embarrassed about the way you’d sat blubbering on the Henderson’s couch when Dustin broke the news.

He was right, fourteen was too old for a babysitter, and at the end of the day, you were happy to let him cut the apron strings, even if you couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that you’d been fired.

Next came your friend’s funeral, followed very quickly by your family’s sudden announcement that they would be leaving Hawkins for upstate New York, where a shiny new promotion awaited your father. You, in turn, shocked them by insisting you would not be joining them, and while your parents put up a fight, there was ultimately nothing they could do to change your mind.

Your childhood home went to market, and as such, you were forced to clean out your room, which meant you were forced to address the box of all the things that reminded you of Eddie that had been sitting in the back of your closet since August.

You ended up leaving it on his porch in the middle of the night in a fit of moody pique, and you told yourself you didn’t care what he did with any of it. Part of you hoped he would just burn it all, and that it would allow you to be done with each other once and for all.

You'd had to let yourself hate Eddie just a little bit just so that you could finally try to start healing, and you'd been surprised by how easy it was to get there.

You’re not over him. You don’t know if you’ll ever be over him, but what you do know is you can’t condemn yourself to wasting away over something so silly as adolescent heartbreak, like some kind of fragile Victorian heroine.

You’ve got other shit to worry about besides the fact that Eddie Munson doesn’t love you anymore … and yet you still spend far too much time thinking about the way he’d pulled away from you that night, how he couldn’t look at you when he broke your heart – fucking coward.

Could be worse. You tell yourself, You could be dead.

It doesn’t make you feel any better. Your lease on your icebox apartment was approved the same day you went to ask after the “help wanted” sign in the window of the diner formerly known as Benny’s.

They hired you on the spot.

It feels a little bit like admitting defeat, considering how you’ve always sworn you’d rather jump off a bridge than willingly submit yourself to the slow death that is customer service, but you didn’t apply anywhere for college, so it’s not like you had a lot of other options.

To his credit, Dustin had tried his hardest to get you a job at Family Video alongside Robin and Steve, but it had been an exercise in attempting to move heaven and Earth.

You are not on good terms with the manager, because Eddie is not on good terms with him.

Keith used to run Hellfire, back in the day, and from what you understand he’d had a hard time letting it go when he’d graduated. You don’t know all the sordid little details, you only know it was extremely awkward while you and Eddie were dating, and it hasn’t gotten any better now that you’ve broken up.

It was bad enough having Keith stare daggers at you from the various dark corners of the Arcade when you would chaperone Dustin and the rest, but then it became a Herculean feat just to try and rent a video.

There’s no shame quite like having to beg on your hands and knees just to be allowed to rent some campy horror movie you’re really only planning to put on as background noise while Keith just stares back at you from behind his cold dead eyes.

It’s not your fault he doesn’t like Eddie, but he’d decided it was your problem. Guys like Keith never let go of a grudge, and regardless of your relationship status, you would be forever branded as the mistress of the enemy, so no Family Video for you.

It’s for the best. Robin is nice, but you don’t really know how to interact with Steve, particularly now that he’s supposedly turned over a new leaf. You guess he’s fine, considering he actually lets you rent videos without putting up a fight, but he was entirely unpleasant in school, particularly when Eddie came into the mix, so you don’t trust Steve by default, regardless of the way Dustin worships the ground he walks on.

As far as you’re concerned: once a mean girl, always a mean girl.

Despite how work keeps you busy and how you don’t babysit anymore, you still see Dustin as often as always. You have a standing invitation to join the Hendersons for dinner any night of the week – you go over on Wednesdays. Claudia, as she’d insisted you call her now —you still can’t shake how strange that feels — always makes too much food and sends you home with a Tupperware of leftovers, because she’s worried you aren’t eating enough.

Dustin talks about school and his new friends, and whatever news he has from California, and he tries and tries and tries to get you to come and meet said new friends because he’s worried you are isolating yourself.

While you appreciate the sentiment, you just don’t have time – someone always needs you to cover a shift, and no matter how many hours you work your paycheck doesn’t seem to get any bigger, and your bills don’t get any smaller.

So far, being an adult is far less fun and freeing than had always been advertised, and you're starting to feel like you've been sold a bill of false goods.

It’s December, and one of the first punishingly cold days of the season when you find yourself bored at work, standing in the corridor between the front of house and the kitchen, trying to warm your hands and talking to a coworker.

There are an infinite number of things you’d rather be doing than listening to a grown woman bitch about her kids, but the heating at the diner is on the fritz, and the only real respite from the chill is the salamander, where food goes to die under the heat of the lamps. You tell yourself it’s better than standing around, listening to the same old Christmas music, shivering under the itchy cotton dress that is your uniform, so there you stand, hands extended, zoning out, nodding periodically, pretending to commiserate.

She’s going on and on about how she’s dreading the holiday break because school days are the only time she gets to herself anymore and you’re biting your tongue to stop yourself from asking why she didn’t think to use a condom.

Her kids are elementary-aged and apparently singularly evil, and you kick yourself as you suddenly remember how you’d oh-so-casually mentioned in your first week of employment that you used to be a babysitter.

You’d just been trying to get to know people, to make new friends at work, and now you hate yourself for daring to be so genial. Serves you right. You can practically feel the question bubbling up between you.

She’s laying it on thick, hinting at her desperate need for someone to watch them “just for a few hours on nights and weekends,” (as if you even had the time for that) and you’re biting the inside of your cheek until you taste blood, praying to anyone who might happen to be listening that she doesn’t ask you to babysit her demon children.

Like divine intervention, the bell of the front door chimes – Thank you, God, Tiamat, Ozzy Osbourne … whoever! – and you take it as your window of opportunity to offer an apologetic smile and bolt into the dining room. Cold be damned, you will not condemn yourself to nights and weekends being tormented by screaming brats.

The spike of adrenaline that cuts through your midsection freezes you to the spot as you realize who has just walked in through the door. There stands Wayne Munson, shrugging out of his winter coat and sliding into the empty booth nearest to the front door.

You notice each other at the same moment, and he freezes, like a deer in headlights. Embarrassingly, the pad of paper you’d fished from your apron pocket in anticipation of taking an order slips from your fingers and clatters to the floor. Your heart has dropped into your stomach and the blood is roaring in your ears so ubiquitously that you can no longer hear the tinny din of Jingle Bell Rock playing over the radio.

Before you realize what you’re doing, you’re scanning the frosted windows in a panic, looking for that familiar mop of dark curly hair, following behind. You know if you see him you’re probably going to turn around and run right out the back door and never come back.

It takes all of your limited brain power to convince yourself that Eddie is not about to walk through that door. You know perfectly well that he won’t set foot in this diner. It’s part of the reason you applied here, being one of the few places in town where you knew you would be safe from a chance encounter – his mother used to work here… before she died.

The silence in the diner is deafening. It feels like a very long time before you manage to come back to yourself enough to pick up the pad of paper, square your shoulders, and approach the table.

“Hiya, Wayne,” you say, hoping you sound somewhere halfway to cheerful. Your voice cracks. “Sorry about that I–” you were about to say you didn’t recognize him, but suddenly you can’t bring yourself to lie, and now you’re silently working your mouth, gaping like a fish out of water. “I…I don’t know.” You shake your head and try to laugh about it. It sounds strange and robotic, “Sorry.”

He gives you a craggy smile and dismisses the notion with a gesture that is so entirely Eddie, you suddenly can’t breathe.

You try to think of the last time you’d seen Wayne. June – graduation. He’d brought you flowers and given you a shy hug and you’d felt so stupid craning your neck to look around him, trying to spot the familiar silhouette in the crowd. Eddie wasn’t there and Wayne could only say that he was real sorry about it. No excuses, no explanation, just an apology.

You suddenly wish you were still in the hallway, listening to your coworker complain about her brats.

“Don’t know what you’re sorry for.” Wayne mumbles, “You didn’t do nothin’ wrong.”

You find yourself exhaling slowly through your nose, releasing the breath you hadn’t realized you’d been holding, and feeling a weight lift from your shoulders. It’s an odd relief to hear him dismiss the silent fears you’d been wrestling with since the summer, wallowing in the agony of “what did I do wrong”.

It’s good to know Wayne doesn’t hold anything against you.

Still, you fidget with the pad of paper, picking at the wire spiral holding it together as you search for the right thing to say.

“S-so … um… how’s –”

Don’t say it don’t say it don’t say it – how’s Eddie?

You have to clear your throat to banish the thought.

“How’ve you been?” You stammer, gesturing vaguely.

You could kick yourself for how stupid you sound right now, fumbling around like you were strangers, just because Eddie had decided he didn’t want you anymore, like some old plaything he’d outgrown. You could kick him for that, too.

“Fine. Good.” Wayne says, nodding, “How about you? Ain’t seen you since…” he trails off like he’s realized what he was about to say —ain’t seen you since y’all broke up — obviously. “Well… we heard you’d left town is all.”

We.

“No, just my folks.” you explain, “I rent a place in town.”

His face brightens like he’s relieved to hear it. It makes you feel strange and you half wonder if you are going to regret telling him that later.

“Oh,” Wayne says. “That’s good.”

You nod, too busy fighting the urge to bolt back into the kitchen to wonder what’s so good about it, and admonishing yourself for being so suspicious.

This is the most awkward conversation you’ve had in a very long time and you cannot wait for it to be over.

Of course, it’s then that you remember that you are a waitress and actually have some kind of obligation to do your job.

“You want coffee?” you ask, cringing at how brusque the question sounds.

If your tone is aggressive, Wayne makes no mention of it as he rubs his calloused hands together in an attempt to warm them.

He nods.

“Yes ma’am.”

You turn on your heel, your beat-up old converse squeaking obnoxiously on the tile, and stalk back to the counter. It occurs to you too late you didn’t ask about cream and sugar, but you remind yourself you know Wayne well enough to know he takes his coffee black.

It is yet another piece of intimate information you hadn’t been entirely sure what to do with until this very moment. You wonder briefly how much of this interaction is going to make it back to Eddie.

You can just imagine Wayne rolling up into the trailer that evening – maybe Eddie’s on the couch, maybe he comes out of his room to investigate the sounds of his uncle returning home.

“Hey, Kid—” Wayne will say, “You’ll never guess who I saw today.”

You bitterly hope it ruins his day, knowing you’d stuck around after he’d all but begged you to leave. It’s still so much easier to hate Eddie than feels right.

You return with a mug and pot of coffee, pouring and indulging yourself in a little self-destruction as the steam wafts up and burns your knuckles. It’s just hot enough to feel fantastic on your frigid fingers.

Suddenly, like an intrusive thought, you're caught wondering if Eddie ever got the heating fixed in his van. It had crapped out the year before in the middle of a deep freeze and you'd spent many a day sitting huddled together, trying to keep warm and having very tense conversations about the possibility of whether a space heater would blow up in the back of the van.

“How do you like it?” Wayne asks suddenly, bringing you back to the moment. “Your new place?”

You blink at him, trying simultaneously to ground yourself in the moment and think of the right thing to say before shrugging your shoulders.

“It’s okay.” You mumble, running your thumbnail over the grooves in the plastic handle, “Actually, I kind of hate it..."

You don’t know why you’d said it, only that it felt natural, like complaining to your dad about a grown-up problem he might have a fix for, only Wayne’s not your dad.

He hums, “You got bad neighbors or somethin’?”

“I’ve got leaky pipes.” It feels a little like oversharing, but suddenly you can’t stop the truth from flowing out of your mouth.

Wayne snorts into his mug as he takes a sip of his coffee, leveling you with a sly look from the corner of his eye.

“Don’t we all?”

His eyebrows jump and even though it takes you a moment to process the joke, you shock yourself by laughing out loud. Too loud. The sound of it echoes obnoxiously around the diner, nearly empty as it is at 1:30 on Tuesday afternoon.

It makes you sound like a crazy person, but you’d nearly forgotten about Wayne’s penchant for Dad Jokes.

You can’t remember the last time you’d laughed in a way that wasn’t some stilted thing for someone else’s benefit, to try and convince them you were fine while you were silently holding yourself together, trying not to fly apart at the seams.

It feels good.

“Hey, there she is.” Wayne smiles shyly into the mug, “It’s good to see you again, Sweetheart.”

It’s like a dam breaking as the awkwardness of the moment evaporates and your affection for the man comes rushing back in.

You can feel the corners of your mouth pulling up and you smile at the joke, at the notion that someone is happy to see you, at being reunited with someone you didn’t know you would miss so much.

Suddenly, you’re so pissed at Eddie for being so selfish that you’re half inclined to smash the coffee pot. Wayne had been your friend, a father figure in the absence of interest from your own.

You wonder briefly if he’d let you hug him. Like he’d anticipated the whim, Wayne gestures to the seat opposite him.

“Can you sit and talk a little?” Wayne asks, “I think we owe each other a few rounds of catch up,”

You twist and look around the dining room, at the singular creepy regular perched on his stool at the end of the counter, outstaying his welcome and doing his best not to show how he’s watching you.

It’s a ghost town, and not likely to gain so much as a single customer until school lets out. You tell yourself you can either go back into the hallway and take your chances at refusing to babysit the apparent hellspawn of your coworker, or you can sit and talk with Wayne for a few minutes.

It’s an easy decision to make.

“Mmmm, I don’t know,” You hum, “We’re pretty slammed.”

Wayne smirks as you slide into the booth opposite him.

You spend the better part of an hour with idle chatter, catching up. You do most of the talking, complaining about your apartment and all its problems, your job, how you wished you’d applied anywhere for college, and how expensive it is to live on your own.

Wayne listens, nods, and drinks his coffee, and you don’t talk about Eddie, despite the way you can feel him lingering between the two of you.

It almost feels like getting back to normal and you fool yourself into thinking that if you shut your eyes, you could imagine sitting at the tiny dining table in the living room of the Munson trailer, talking to Wayne about your day while you wait for Eddie.

You can almost pretend he’s still right there, that any moment he’s going to come trotting out of his room, usher you up from the table, and lead you out to the van, though not before bidding Wayne so long, and thanking him for the chat. Sitting there, talking with Wayne, you can almost pretend Eddie still loves you...

Of course, all good things must come to an end, and suddenly the bell chimes as the door swings open announcing the arrival of a gaggle of high schoolers. Their presence shatters the stillness as they file in, laughing and chattering and assaulting you with the golds and greens of the Hawkins Tigers splashed across their letterman jackets and cheer uniforms.

You feel a strange sadness with the way the moment ends so abruptly, and how Eddie’s inky shadow is suddenly gone taking all the air out of the room with it.

Somehow, it's like time here in the diner exists in a vacuum, and after he leaves you’re never going to see Wayne again. Because he belongs to Eddie, and you have no right to breach the post-breakup walls that have been erected.

He got Wayne and the band and all the guys at Hellfire in the divorce, and you got to not die in a mall fire. It doesn’t seem like a fair trade-off: your life for everyone in it?

Once again, foolishly, you are struck by just how badly Eddie had hurt you, and you can’t help but wonder if he knew what he was doing, if he’d gone out of his way to do everything in his power to break your heart.

Still, you can’t bring yourself to damn him, not with Wayne sitting right there — it would feel too much like a betrayal. You were the only two people in the world who saw Eddie for more than what the rumors had made him out to be. You were the only two people in the world who loved him.

You hate yourself for the sharp pang of grief that lances through your chest and try not to think about how much you’re going to miss Wayne when he leaves today — how much you miss Eddie.

It makes you a little misty-eyed.

If he sees it, Wayne pretends not to notice, because he is a gentleman.

You watch the high schoolers file into the large booth on the opposite end of the room and wait to see if your co-worker will come out to take their orders. She does not.

Of course.

“Well, that’s my cue.” You sniff, clearing your throat and scrubbing furiously at your cheeks to try and banish any lingering emotion.

You push up from the booth, contemplating the milkshakes, French fries, and forced pleasantries in your immediate future.

“What do I owe you?” Wayne asks, fishing for his wallet.

You shake your head.

“Coffee’s on the house.” You cut him off before he can protest, "No, you don’t have a say in the matter. My gift to you.”

You start across the floor, towards the far booth where the social elite of Hawkins High have piled in and are talking animatedly about something you’re sure you wouldn’t have been interested in even when you counted yourself among their ranks.

You before Eddie.

You cringe as you come to recognize a few faces in the group and are busy bracing yourself for the impending “hey, didn’t you use to…?” when Wayne calls your name.

You turn on your heel and stare back at him, where he is scratching the back of his neck and averting his gaze. Another gesture that is entirely too Eddie – somehow it’s a little more comforting this time.

“Let me know when you’re free.” Wayne offers, gesturing vaguely, “ I’ll come by and see if we can’t do something about those pipes, and all the other stuff.”

It’s a slow change, but you can feel your face splitting into a grin, warmth blooming in your chest. Wayne Munson, the gentleman handyman.

You nod and watch him get up from the booth, shrugging back into his coat and tipping his hat to you as he makes his way to the door. Suddenly, you are brimming with the possibility of a next time, something almost like the way things used to be.

Not with Eddie, of course. You're fairly certain that you're never going to see Eddie again, and you suppose some small part of you has started to make peace with that, but Wayne is family. It is almost enough to scratch that Munson itch you’ve been feeling since August, no matter how it might leave you feeling afterward.

You decide in an instant that you can stand to hurt your feelings a little bit and indulge yourself in the next best thing.

You can’t stop yourself from calling out,

“Hey, Wayne – same time next week?” You posit, tugging nervously at the sleeve of your dress.

He turns, thinks about it, then smiles.

“Yes ma’am. I’ll be here.”

Taglist: @harrys-tittie @r-a-d-i-0-n-0-w-h-e-r-e @itsrainingbisexualfrogs @thicksexxualtension @ganseysgff @scoopsr0bin @peanutbutter-y-jams @audhd-dragonaut @clilxlx @alexandriaemily20 @averagestudent03 @but-vanessa @cosmictime45 @timelordfreya @forever-war

[crossovershipstournament]

Crossover Ships Tournament Contestants

Alright, after putting it off for a bit (due to real life being busy and also I got lazy), I’ve finally gone through and prepared the list of ships for the tournament! Congrats to the lucky 64, and apologies to anyone else whose ship didn’t make it in. I did appreciate every single entry that followed the rules, though, and all the infodumps made me smile!

Before the list, however, I wanna say that this post and the eventual bracket matchup post are going to double as places to post your propaganda via replies and reblogs (or even asks). Going forward, I will use whatever propaganda people add to the posts/send via asks with permission to add as propaganda on the eventual bracket matches. By adding any sort of replies/tags/etc to any further tournament-related posts, you are consenting to having that propaganda added into the tournament. If you are uncomfortable with this, please state it outright on any posts/asks you might send.

Also the rule about fanart for the ships still remains; if you send/provide fanart, please also provide explicit permission from the original artist or proof that you made it yourself. Otherwise, I will not feel comfortable using it in the tournament.

With all that said, let’s meet our 64 ships for the tournament! Please let me know if anything is misspelled or any information is incorrect:

Bayonetta (Bayonetta)/Palutena (Kid Icarus)

Beastman (Masters of the Universe)/Lifeweaver (Overwatch 2)

Ben Tennyson (Ben 10)/Rex Salazar (Generator Rex)

Chibiusa (Sailor Moon)/Kid Trunks Briefs (Dragon Ball Z)

Damian Wayne (DC Comics)/Marinette Dupain-Cheng (Miraculous Ladybug)

Dib Membrane (Invader Zim)/Dipper Pines (Gravity Falls)

Dimentio (Super Paper Mario)/Jevil (Deltarune)

Ash Williams (Evil Dead)/Crawford Tillinghast (From Beyond)

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III (How To Train Your Dragon)/Jack Frost (Rise of the Guardians)

Isabelle (Animal Crossing)/Wolf O’Donnell (StarFox)

Jake Long (American Dragon: Jake Long)/Juniper Lee (The Life and Times of Juniper Lee)

JD (Heathers the Musical)/Nathan Prescott (Life is Strange)

Jigglypuff (Pokemon)/Kirby (Kirby)

Johnny Bravo (Johnny Bravo)/Samurai Jack (Samurai Jack)

Leonardo Hamato (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)/Yuichi Usagi (Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles)

Michelangelo Hamato (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)/Miles Morales (Marvel)

Reagan Ridley (Inside Job)/Toriel Dreemur (Undertale)

Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera (Ducktales 2017)/Clover Ebi (RWBY)

Gyro Gearloose (Ducktales 2017)/Hazel Rainart (RWBY)

Gandra Dee (Ducktales 2017)/Winter Schnee (RWBY)

Dewey Duck (Ducktales 2017)/Whitley Schnee (RWBY)

Mogar (Xray and Vav)/David (Camp Camp)

Jimmy Neutron (Jimmy Neutron)/Timmy Turner (Fairly Oddparents)

Jane Porter (Tarzan)/Captain Amelia (Treasure Planet)

Max Goof (Disney)/Yakko Warner (Animaniacs)

Huey Duck (Ducktales 2017)/Wakko Warner (Animaniacs)

Dewey Duck (Ducktales 2017)/Silver the Hedgehog (Sonic the Hedgehog)

Wirt (Over the Garden Wall)/Dipper Pines (Gravity Falls)

Webby Vanderquack (Ducktales 2017)/Mabel Pines (Gravity Falls)

Max (Camp Camp)/Phineas Flynn (Phineas and Ferb)

Sora (Kingdom Hearts)/Jim Hawkins (Treasure Planet)

Angus McDonald (The Adventure Zone)/Shigeo Kageyama (Mob) (Mob Psycho 100)

Anne Boonchuy (Amphibia)/Nepeta Leijon (Homestuck)

Applejack (My Little Pony)/Hol Horse (Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders)

Aqua (Kingdom Hearts)/Cinderella (Cinderella)

Commander Peepers (Wander Over Yonder)/Wilt Michaels (Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends)

Ditzy Doo (My Little Pony)/The Doctor (Doctor Who)

Jiminy Cricket (Pinocchio)/Timothy Q. Mouse (Dumbo)

Sam Winchester (Supernatural)/Spencer Reid (Criminal Minds)

Bowser (Super Mario)/Dr. Eggman (Sonic)

Kokichi Ouma (Danganronpa)/Venti (Genshin Impact)

Charlie Bradbury (Supernatural)/Rose Tyler (Doctor Who)

Alex Mercer (Prototype)/Desmond Miles (Assassin’s Creed)

Adrien Agreste aka Chat Noir (Miraculous Ladybug)/Berry Shirayuki aka Mew Berry (Tokyo Mew Mew)

Pinkie Pie (My Little Pony)/Shockwave (Transformers Prime)

Floyd Leech (Twisted Wonderland)/Kanata Shinkai (Ensemble Stars)

Skales (Lego Ninjago)/Starscream (Transformers Prime)

Selina Kyle aka Catwoman (DC Comics)/Loki (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

Phone Guy (Five Nights at Freddy’s)/Wally Franks (Bendy and the Ink Machine)

Megaman (Megaman)/Pit (Kid Icarus)

Merida (Brave)/Rapunzel (Tangled)

Ange Ushiromiya (Umineko no Naku Koro Ni)/Rin Tohsaka (Fate/Stay Night)

Bendy (Bendy and the Ink Machine)/Cuphead (Cuphead)

Luca Paguro (Luca)/Maisie Brumble (The Sea Beast)

Princess Peach (Super Mario)/Samus Aran (Metroid)

Blossom Utonium (Powerpuff Girls)/Dexter (Dexter’s Laboratory)

Daffy Duck (Looney Toons)/Donald Duck (Disney)

Kefer (Egyxos)/Dragon Shiryu (Knights of the Zodiac)

Gaz Membrane (Invader Zim)/Mabel Pines (Gravity Falls)

Gregor (Star Wars the Clone Wars)/Harley Quinn (DC Comics)

Sally “Thorn” McKnight (Scooby Doo Franchise)/Skwisgaar Skwigelf (Metalocalypse)

Astro Tenma (Astro Boy (2009))/Wilbur Robinson (Meet The Robinsons)

Apollo (Percy Jackson)/Clark Kent aka Superman (Superman)

Madoka Kaname (Puella Magi Madoka Magica)/Shinji Ikari (Neon Genesis Evangelion)

[powderblueblood]

this American Mother’s Day for yanks I’m thinking about Lacy calling up Nancy Wheeler the second that the sun rises on the east coast, having not gotten a second of sleep since Frankie Munson turned up on her (their) doorstep.

“Jesus Chr… hello?”

“Pants, you’re an eldest sister. How well versed are you in the art of raising teenagers?”

“Depends. How well armed are you?”

Thinking about Lacy reluctantly taking on the role of ‘mom’ for a kid who never really had one, which is a tough thing to do when you’ve never really had one either. At least, not one that was engaged in acknowledging her beyond being a bauble. Eddie makes this admirable, Herculean effort with the kid that meets pure resistance from Frankie, but Lacy doesn’t quite know where to put herself. Frankie doesn’t know where to put himself either, the both of them edging around each other—Eddie’s strangely kept hours don’t permit him to attend a whole lot of parent/teacher conferences (career criminal problems…), so she’s often on the other end of a disciplinary discussion. Which, what the fuck. Lacy knows it’s not her place. Frankie knows it too. He gets away with a lot at first, but then Lacy finds a footing.

“This something you want your dad to know about? No? Then smarten up, asshole.”

Thinking about how Lacy sees that Frankie’s begging for structure, begging to not feel like a discarded shoe kicked around in an entryway. She makes Friday night dinners mandatory. He hates it, until she purposely sparks a heated debate between him and Eddie about the merit of metal in a changing cultural landscape. He doesn’t immediately disappear to his room after. Even watches an old taped Headbangers Ball with them, keeps his father’s irate fires stoked in a way that makes Lacy muffle her laughter into a throw pillow.

Thinking about Lacy watching Frankie stand by the phone, on hold while someone in some backstage cavern somewhere tries to locate his mother so he can say happy Mother’s Day. He slams the phone down after fifteen minutes of bustling and silence. She says, “Don’t slam that. It’s an antique.” Then lets him drive them for ice cream in Al’s old muscle car she’s been using since she moved back to Hawkins.

“You drive like a grandmother.”

“Sorry, I didn’t get my license issued by Evel Knievel like you and the old man.”

Thinking about Frankie punching a meticulously curated mixtape into the car, telling Lacy that he can’t listen to any more of that CBGB shit.

He says this… he says this… just to go ahead and open with Frank Black anyway. The kid’s got some neck. Just like his father. She can’t help but admire him for it. Just like his father.

[mystargirl-interlude]

𝐀&𝐖

Track Two. American Whore. Pairing: Billy Hargrove X OC

word count: 806

part two:

Being put in the spotlight from an extremely young age ruins your life in the long run.

I was born and raised in Ryazan Russia and When I was four I saw those gorgeous girls on tv gliding across the ice doing jumps and twirls with an Olympic symbol in the back and that's when my love for ice skating started.

My first televised competition was when I was 13.

That adrenaline rush of winning a competition became addicting and I never gave up until I won. Winning is first place, everything else is losing.

watching teenage diary of a girl, wondering what went wrong

By the time I was 15 I had made a name for myself and broke numerous world records and was better than olympic gold medalists. But it all comes to an end when you have to move across the globe to live with your aunt because I needed an education but that isn't even the worst part, the worst part is that it wasn't New York or California it was a small town inside of Indiana where you wouldn't even know existed if it weren't for the street signs. I dont even think this would be any better for my education.

Thankfully I was already very fluent in English and French so I won't have any trouble there but apparently I wasn't the only new person here

As I arrive at the small house I take a look at my surroundings becoming aware of everything around me. Seeing little kids stare at me like they have never seen life outside of Hawkins. 

     Location: Hawkins high school. 

Driving up to the school was the most humiliating thing a human can experience, being one of the two new people in a small town where no doubtingly nothing happens so its no secret everyone is going to be in your business. The other new person is much more interesting than be so the attention wasn't on me for long. I look up hearing a loud engine getting closer and closer and seeing a gorgeous blue Camaro come into view. Now that is the most interesting that has happened in this town.

time skip

Finally I get to the office and am getting my name down when a man with dirty blonde hair and denim on denim walks in. Im not going to deny the fact that he was attractive but it was the fact that he knew he was and he was way too  confident. Thats why I kept my distance. I acknowledged his presence and went back to doing what I was doing.

Billy Hargrove:

Now I was new to this town. I didn't know anyone and I didn't need to. i'm from fucking California for fucks sake. Im not going to say moving to this small town didn't mean shit because it did but I was clearly the most modern person there, I mean ( chuckles). I had everyone here wrapped around my finger and I needed to do was to show up.

As  I walk into the office I see another girl in here clearly very different from everyone else around here. She didn't have goofy fried hair like everyone else; she had long and I mean long hair, it was red and not the ginger red, it was a true red color but obviously dyed. she had a slightly round face, she was thin but had a lot of muscle but not to the point where she looked bulky. But the thing that really got me was she barley even spared a second glance at me when I walked in.

And I'm standing over here wondering where this girl comes from because it clearly isn't from around here (Indiana). I Watched her as the front desk lady, I think her name was Betty or some stupid shit like that, it doesn't matter, checked her in. when she asked for her name thats when I really started listening, but was quickly caught off guard when I heard her heavy accent as she spoke, now very clearly not around here speaking about this country. Her name was Alexandra Trusova, it sounded familiar but I quickly brushed it off. As soon as she was finished and started getting her stuff together I started to fix my hair and adjust my jacket, getting ready to pull my usual lines on her. she started walking towards me and I knew I had this in the bag but as she got closer I could barley get out two words before she brushed past me giving me a dirty look like I just interrupted her day, And I'm standing here thinking to myself who the fuck does this girl think she is?

[a30somethingslookatpopculture]

🍂 Tv Shows That *Feel* Like Fall 🍂

Fall is a time of falling leaves, harvesting pumpkins or corn, brisk chilly mornings, and sweaters! It evokes the coziest of memories. So grab a blanket and cup of your favorite autumn drink and cozy up with one of these shows perfect for the season! Each of these shows give off those fun fall feels. Some even have Fall or Halloween themed episodes that I love to go back to every year! 

In no particular order… 

Gilmore Girls

Comfort watching at its finest! No show embodies that fall feeling quite like Gilmore Girls! It has all those fuzzy Fall feels (and some great wintery ones too, but that’s a discussion for another day). The opening shot alone exhibits vibrant autumnal scenery. Even the theme song gives off all of those nostalgic warm feelings. Autumn in Stars Hollow somehow just feels right. It feels like the perfect small town to enjoy all the fun festivities and colorful people. There’s a great Autumn harvest episode to boot, with all the right sights and food! Even the Thanksgiving episodes are worth the watch. 

Goosebumps

You really cannot go wrong with Goosebumps for spooky season watching. Each episode tells a different chilling tale sure to get you in the Halloween spirit. The Haunted Mask and The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight are must sees for this time of year. It's The Twilight Zone for kids. 

Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Watching Buffy and the Scooby Gang take on all sorts of big bads, what could be better? Whether you’re into vampires, witches, demons of all varieties, experiments gone wrong, and so on…Buffy has it all. With three Halloween episodes and at least one really great Thanksgiving episode, there’s plenty of holiday centric stuff too. 

American Horror Story

Just like Buffy, American Horror Story offers a variety of creepy creatures, death and mayhem. Each season tells one singular story (with the exception of Double Feature which tells two). You can binge through a season in no time, and never have to watch the others if you so choose. I’d suggest most of the seasons, but there’s just something about Coven that feels oh so right. It depicts a coven of witches descended from the original Salem witches. It’s full of history (some real life, might I add) and fun supernatural debauchery. 

Stranger Things

Stranger Things has everything you are looking for wrapped up in an 80s nostalgic bow. Something is just not quite right in Hawkins Indiana, and it’s up to these young small town residents to figure it out. It’s full of the adventure and early childhood friendship that we all often find ourselves a little extra nostalgic for this time of year. There’s a really great Halloween episode, too, that will evoke fond memories for any 80s kid. 

Wednesday

While there are no official Halloween episodes of the show (yet), the whole show gives off those spooky season vibes. The heart of the first season is a supernatural mystery that Wednesday gets wrapped up trying to solve. There’s scary looking creatures, a special school for “gifted” students, and even some throwbacks to the Addams Family movies. Wednesday even dawns a pilgrim outfit again. 

Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina (And/Or Sabrina The Teenage Witch)

Whether you’re looking for something dark or something light-hearted, the world of Sabrina Spellman is full of magic and fun. Her birthday is on Halloween, afterall!  Both shows bring something different to the table but you really cannot go wrong with either one. And there’s plenty of great Halloween episodes between them. 

The Twilight Zone

Another great anthology show. This one tells self-contained stories in each episode -much like Goosebumps of Are You Afraid Of The Dark was for kids. The series includes everything from horror and supernatural, to even science fiction and a little comedy. It has appearances from the who's who of Hollywood at the time. And the theme song is to die-for! Gone are the days of tv hosts introducing you to what you are about to see. And i’d say just about nobody did it better than Rod Serling. And the black and white format adds to the creepiness, I feel. 

(Honorable Mentions: The Munsters/ The Addams Family, Are You Afraid Of The Dark, Supernatural, & Charmed to name a few) 

[lboogie1906]

Yusef Kirriem Hawkins (also spelled as Yusuf Hawkins, March 19, 1973 – August 23, 1989) was a 16-year-old teenager from the neighborhood of East New York in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, who was shot to death on August 23, 1989, in Bensonhurst, a predominantly Italian-American working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn. He, his younger brother, and two friends were attacked by a crowd of 10 to 30 white youths, with at least seven of them wielding baseball bats. One, armed with a handgun, shot him twice in the chest. In 2005, former Gambino crime family member Joseph D’Angelo admitted that the killers were present at his request, meant to serve as protection for his property from an expected racially motivated situation, which instead created the situation.

He had gone to Bensonhurst that night to inquire about a used 1982 Pontiac automobile that was for sale. The group’s attackers had been lying in wait for Black youths who were expected to attend a party at the home of a teenage girl in the neighborhood. Some say the girl had dated one of the killers and/or she had invited Black youths to her neighborhood to taunt the neighborhood boys. He and his friends walked onto the ambushers’ block unaware that residents were waiting to attack any group of Black youths they saw. After his murder, police said that he had not in any way been involved with the neighborhood girl whom the killers believed he was dating.

His death was the third killing of a Black male by white mobs in New York City during the 1980s; the other two victims were Willie Turks, who was killed on June 22, 1982, in Brooklyn, and Michael Griffith, who was killed in Queens on December 20, 1986. The incident uncorked a torrent of racial tension in New York City in the ensuing days and weeks, culminating in a series of protest marches through the neighborhood led by the Reverend Al Sharpton. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[whatstruthgottodowithit]

elvis presley x shy!quiet!reader?

Details

Fandom: American Actor, RPF, Elvis Presley, Elvis Movie RPF

Pairing:  Elvis Presley x Reader

Characters: Elvis Presley, Reader, You

Word Count: 1466 // Rating: Gen

Summary: The rules are reversed for this school dance. Then again Elvis never was one to play by the rules.

Tags/ Warnings: Request, Requested Fic, Flirting, Crushes, High School, Admitting Feelings, Embarrassment, Sadie Hawkins Dance, American High School, Flirting,

Notes:  I try my best but all my reader fics have my smart arse mouth and shy and reserved isn't exactly my wheelhouse but I gave it a go hope it's okay

Tags: @literally-just-elvis-fics @caitlin1996

The halls were abuzz with anticipation. As you walked through them you could see your fellow classmen awash with excitement as they revelled in the news. The school dance had just been announced and it was less than a week away.  You’d probably feel the same as them too if it wasnt for one snag. It was the annual Sadie Hawkins dance, where the guys aren’t doing the asking anymore, meaning that if you wanted a date it was down to you. And that wasnt going to be an easy feat. It wasn’t that you didn't have someone to ask. In fact, you were quite smitten with a boy in your homeroom but you had yet to work up the nerve to speak to him let alone ask him out. 

He was nice, different to the other boys at Humes, but nice all the same. He was tall, a little leaner than most but given how stretched most of the families that sent students to Humes were that didn't surprise you. He had gorgeous light brown hair, slicked back like the other guys you knew but it looked a whole lot better on him you had to admit. And beautiful blue eyes. They’d only met your own a couple of times but each time they had you feared you’d drown in them. He was beautiful. 

You were so lost in your thoughts that as you neared your locker you crashed straight into someone, knocking you backwards though you didn't fall as they caught you before you hit the deck. Looking up you found those beautiful blue eyes shining back at you. The boy you had been thinking about. Elvis. As he straightened you upright your eyes dropped to the floor and your cheeks felt hotter than the sun.

‘Sorry darlin’,’ he said with a southern drawl. You’d hardly heard him speak before now, he kept to himself most of the time, but his voice was intoxicating.

‘It’s okay,’ you said feeling your heart hammering in your chest at about a thousand miles a minute.

‘Nah, it’s not. I could’ve done ya a real injury there,’ he said.

‘It’s fine,’ you said, ‘I wasn’t looking where I was going.’ 

‘So you weren't throwing yourself at me huh?’ he said, his lip curling up in a smirk which deepened as your eyes went wide.

‘What?! No, I mean I-’

‘I’m just kidding with ya,’ he said, ‘Sadie Hawkins dance and everything, seems like the whole schools hopped up today.’

‘Right, sure,’ you said dropping your gaze again which made Elvis rub the back of his neck nervously. 

‘I didn't mean to offend ya, sweetheart,’ he said, ‘I was just jokin’ around.’

‘I know,’ you said, ‘I just. I don’t. You’re very, I mean, Sadie Hawkins of course you'll have girls throwing themselves at you. You’re, I mean, look at you-’

Your words were coming out without order, practically tripping off your tongue without permission. Elvis was watching you amusedly trying to grasp the thread of this conversation though you weren't sure where it began or ended yourself. You noticed a smile as you mentioned girls throwing themselves at him and as you watched it appear you realised you had just inadvertently declared an interest in him. As your words tapered off you longed for the ground to swallow you up. When it didn't you could feel your feet itching to run. Elvis went to speak but you didn't allow him to and instead, you turned on your heel and bolted down the corridor through the masses of teenagers until you were out of his view. 

Fortunately once out of that corridor, you found a safe haven. The girls' toilet. As you ducked inside you ignored the quiet stares of the girls doing their makeup in the mirror and locked yourself in a stall feeling mortified. You had just told Elvis Presley he was cute. Not in so many words granted but enough that he would get the gist. How could you be so stupid! 

He wasn’t overly popular at school. He liked to keep to himself bar a few close friends but that didn't mean the girls didn’t like him. A lot of them saw what you saw in him though you’d never seen him date or go steady with any of them. He certainly wouldn't see anything in you, right? He wasnt going to like a girl who could barely speak to him was he?

So, as you sat on the lid of the toilet seat you couldn't help but feel dejected. And though you knew it was fruitless to do so you cried a little though you knew it was more to do with the embarrassment. 

You spent the rest of your lunch period in the girls' toilets. You didn’t know why as listening to the various girls come in and out talking of their escapades and their securing dates for the dance only made you feel sadder. Still, as the bell rang you decided to not let it bother you any further and headed to class which was biology and unfortunately one you shared with him.

As you got into the classroom you looked up to find him there staring at you. He offered you a small smile which you didn’t return as you rushed to your seat way in front of him and faced forward, determined not to look back at all during the lesson. You could feel eyes on you throughout the lesson and though you tried to focus on what Mr Cassidy was saying you couldn't because your mind kept wandering back to the devilish smile and those bright blue eyes. The only time you paid attention was when you heard movement outside the classroom. You slowly started to pack away your things enough so that when the bell did ring you were out of the room like a horse from the starting post so he had no chance to speak to you. 

Your next lessons dragged on forever but Elvis wasnt present in them meaning you had some respite from your embarrassment. In fact, as the bell rang signalling the end of the day you had even forgotten him altogether and started heading out of the classroom as normal. But waiting outside your English classroom was a tall, handsome, very familiar boy. 

‘Hey,’ he said coming to walk beside you as you attempted to dart passed him, ‘what you’re not going to even say hi to me? I mean you bumped into me-’

‘By accident!’ you hissed looking up at him to find him smirking at you.

‘Knew I could get ya to speak to me,’ he grinned. It was bright and mischievous and it made you wish he spent every moment looking like that. 

‘I think I did plenty speaking before,’ you said. You’d created quite a crowd behind you now as the pair of you slowed down, so Elvis gently grabbed you by the wrist and pulled you off to the side. His touch was like electricity on your skin so much so that you noticed its absence immediately when he dropped it. 

‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,’ he said, ‘but you’ve avoided me like the plague since lunch.’

‘Because I embarrassed myself!’ you said feeling your cheeks getting hotter as you thought of it again.

‘Says who?’ Elvis challenged.

‘Elvis I-’

‘Said you like me,’ he said cockily, ‘hey you’re only human.’

‘Right, so you know you’ve got a million girls ready to ask you to Sadie Hawkins-’

‘Well I don't wanna go with any of them,’ Elvis said his smile going somewhat shy as he looked at you before he added, ‘I wanna go with you.’  

You were still stammering over your words, struggling to process your own thoughts let alone what he said but as the words dawned on you your mouth fell into an O shape which made him smile. 

‘You do?’ you asked.

‘Well yeah,’ he said, ‘I mean if you wanna.’

‘I do,’ you said with a smile, ‘there’s a small problem though.’

‘What?’ he frowned, concern in his deep blue eyes.

‘I’m supposed to ask you to the dance,’ you said, twiddling your necklace around your finger.

‘Details,’ he snorted, ‘now, can I walk you to your bus or are you gonna flee again?’ 

‘Hmm,’ you pretended to ponder as the pair of you started walking down the corridor out to the parking lot where your bus was sure to be waiting for you, ‘I guess someone will have to fend off the millions of girls waiting to ask you.’ 

‘I think they’ll know,’ he said and with that, he threw his arm around your shoulder signalling to the world that you had a date to the dance.