#BEAT HAPPENING 1985

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

"THIS IS THE ALBUM THAT SENT A SHOCKWAVE OF EMPOWERMENT THROUGH THE NATION'S CULTURAL UNDERGROUND."

PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on the 2001 CD repress of "Beat Happening," the debut album by American indie rock band BEAT HAPPENING, self-released in November 1985 by the band's own K Records. The album was released as a compilation of material originally released on the first Beat Happening album, their first 45, their "Three Tea Breakfast" cassette, the "Let's Together", "Let's Kiss" and "Let's Sea" compilation cassettes, combined with a few previously unavailable recordings.

MINI-OVERVIEW: "This is the album that sent a shockwave of empowerment through the nation's cultural underground. In 1985, Olympia, Washington band BEAT HAPPENING released their eponymous debut of lo-fi pop songs on K Records and challenged every conception held about music. At the center of the group was the enigmatic Calvin Johnson and his revolutionary vision of artistic creation. His foresight and industriousness allowed him to recruit to the K Records roster other free-spirited artists like BECK, MODEST MOUSE, and BUILT TO SPILL long before they gained widespread acclaim."

-- BRYAN C. PARKER (author), "33 1/3 -- Beat Happening" by BEAT HAPPENING

Sources: www.discogs.com/release/3547757 & https://shop.theheartworm.com/products/beat-happening-beat-happening-33-1-3.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

MDZS x Brazil (1985)

(Yes. Real movie dialogue)

[mymelodic-chapel]

Beat Happening- Beat Happening (Twee Pop, Slacker Rock, Jangle Pop) Released: November 1985 [K Records] Producer(s): Greg Sage

[laswells-ashtray]

One day, John finally finds out where his mother is buried. It's the day he finds out that his mother actually was buried. He never knew if she was cremated or if they'd destined her to an eternity in the soil.

He considers tearing up the address of the cemetery and never going, forgetting it ever happened. But he doesn't, we wants to see her just once.

So, he goes. He walks into the cemetery with flowers he picked up after a long mental battle over what to pick. Eventually, he realises that it doesn't matter anyway. He doesn't know what she liked, he never will. She's dead.

And he lays them by her graves and then stands. He just stands. Mary Price. 1961-1985. He's older than her, older than she ever got to be. No-one can tell him he looks like her now because they'll never know. Not that it ever mattered, John was his father through and through. He knew it, as did everyone else growing up.

He doesn't stay long, doesn't see the point. What use does a stranger have at the poor woman's grave. So, he leaves. Heads to the nearest bar and gets himself positively fucking obliterated. Like his dad would've.

He's not sure what bullshit he has to have sent or what calls he had to have made to be dragged out the bar by none other than Simon Riley. Talk about dead fucking parents with that one. If he would even talk at all.

Maybe John's crying, he isn't sure. He thinks he's mumbling to himself. His father would beat him bloody with a belt whenever he caught John doing that, clearly not hard enough if it's still a drunken instinct. His face is pressed against the glass window of the passenger seat, and for a split second, he hopes another care flies right into the passenger side. Meeting his mother for the first time doesn't seem like such a bad idea. Simon still hasn't said a fucking word.

But then he's back in his room, how he got there he has no clue. His face is smashed against his pillow, his shoes are being pulled off, and he wants someone. He just doesn't know who. In the back of his mind, he wonders if this was how his father felt before he died. Lying on his back on the living room floor and drinking himself into a stupor before asphyxiating on his own vomit. He knows Simon would never let him choke. He isn't sure if that comforts him or not.

The next morning when he wakes up with no memory of the night before and a Russian worriedly running his hands through John's hair, he thinks nothing of it because he's too busy trying to keep the vomit that's rising in his throat from hitting his pillow.

When the paperwork he had planned for the day appears on his desk with a signature that looks like an S.R, he doesn't think twice.

He doesn't go back to his mother's grave.

[grogwrites]

Drag - O.P. 81

Chapter 1: Opportunity of a Lifetime

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Summary: Street Racer vs F1 Driver, a connection that’s undeniable, and the opportunity of a lifetime.

Pairing: Oscar Piastri x Female OC

CW: swearing, and OC is lowkey an F1 hater at the beginning lmao also I’ve never raced before so there may be inaccuracies with the street racing in the beginning. I’m doing my best ✋

A/N: AHHHHHH IM SO EXCITED FOR THIS ONE I HOPE YOU GUYS ENJOY Divider is by @saradika-graphics

Word Count: 2.4k

*DISCLAIMER: I do not know any of the people in this fanfiction personally, these are all just the works of my imagination.

Josie didn’t remember how she got into racing. Racing just sort of happened to her. Her mom would blame “bad influences” from school, but she knew she was chasing something more—a feeling. A feeling that was unnamed, and undecided. Though, that could be anything considering she didn’t feel at all anymore.

But as she sat in the seat of some stranger’s duped up Monte Carlo, speeding down I-15, her heart swelled. She looked in her side mirror, watching her opponents disappear into the night. A laugh escaped her lips as she applied more pressure to the gas pedal, attempting to go even faster, and attempting to push the car to its limit. It wasn’t her car—none of them were. But she never crashed, never slid, never faltered…her technique was perfect. 

Nothing beat the thrill of racing—the high speeds, the late nights, the adrenaline of trying to not get caught. Street racing wasn’t legal by any means in the US, but perhaps that was what fueled her to continue doing it: the chase. 

In a swift movement, Josie stepped on the breaks, drifting the car around the apex of the corner she was approaching. As she entered the off-ramp of the interstate, she was quick to slow her pace again—not that it would’ve mattered too much. Vegas was quiet at this time of evening. Not an officer in sight, or another living soul besides the other racers. 

She came to a stop at a red light. In her rearview mirror, she watched as the others caught up to her. She rolled down the two front windows, leaning back in her seat as one car pulled up beside her. 

“There’s no way you beat us in that piece of shit.” 

Josie watched as the man carded a hand through his hair frustratedly. 

“I mean, it’s a Monte Carlo,” he continued, clearly upset by the fact that he lost. “1985. They aren’t even fast by racing standards.”

“It’s a good car,” she leaned forward, patting the dash with her hand. “You just have to know it’s strengths and weaknesses to drive it well.” 

“That car has zero strengths,” he laughed shallowly. “I spent years modding the hell out of that thing, and it’s still garbage.” 

“Clearly it’s not,” she smirked, looking forward again. “I just think you’re not a good driver.”

“Oh yeah?” He scoffed. “And what makes a good driver?” 

She shrugged. “Confidence.”

Before he could respond, the light turned green. Josie quickly accelerated, losing sight of him once again. She felt the breeze sweep through her hair as she weaved through the quiet streets of the city. She let her arm dip out of the window next to her, feeling the cool air push against her skin. 

The drive back to the garage was always one she dreaded. It meant the night was over—the racing was finished. If there was some world where she could race for the rest of her life, she’d take it in a heartbeat. She envied those who had the luxury, but it was one that was always out of reach for her. Perhaps it always would be. After all, nobody living on the line of poverty ever made it into professional motorsports overnight. 

No, that only happened in movies. 

•

“Hot or iced?” 

The customer, deadpanned, stared back at her as if she had just asked them the most complicated question in the world. 

“Uhhhh,” they glanced up at the menu again, before looking back towards her. “Iced?” 

They didn’t sound very sure in their answer, but she didn’t feel like pushing the matter further. She quickly typed the order in as the customer paid. While they walked away, she felt her shoulders sink in relief. 

Only thirty more minutes and she could go home. 

She glanced up at the TV that hung on the wall across the room. The coffee shop she worked in usually played all kinds of different channels, but this weekend, it was all Formula 1. 

As a Vegas native, she grew to resent when it was race week. Which seemed ironic, given her usual nighttime activities. But to her, F1 was a joke. All privileged, rich men who essentially paid their way to their seats. She knew in her gut that, if given the chance, she could out-drive any of them. It didn’t matter, though, because that would never happen. 

“Last year, Lewis Hamilton got coffee from here.”

Josie looked over her shoulder to find her coworker, Maggie, watching the TV with her. 

“He was so nice,” Maggie beamed, meeting her gaze. “He gave us a great review, too.”

“Too bad he can’t win another championship to save his life,” Josie mumbled. “I mean, he needs to retire at this point. Same with the other old guy.”

“Alonso?”

“Sure, whatever,” she waved Maggie off as she began to untie her apron. “They’re both too slow. Going slow doesn’t win you anything.” 

“Going slow doesn’t matter for most of them,” Maggie commented. “Think about the money most of them contribute to the teams—the sponsors. If any of them were let go, then that team also loses money going towards the car. Depending on the driver, that can cost you a good car, too.” 

“Every car can be a good car if they try,” Josie quipped, letting the apron hang from around her neck. “I’ve driven shitty cars—ones that don’t even compare to what shitty is by their definition. What they have is privilege. They’ll find any excuse to whine.” 

“I guess so,” Maggie lazily shrugged. “I just think you’re jaded, though.” 

“Jaded,” she echoed. “Yeah, something like that.”

The two of them turned their focus to the TV once more. One of the McLaren drivers was on the screen, talking about his hopes for the championships. Josie watched as he fidgeted with his hat, while answering each question. He was soft spoken—gentle. Her eyes wandered to the bottom of the screen, where his name flashed across on a banner. 

Oscar Piastri #81

McLaren, Australia

“They’re expecting him to win his first Driver’s Championship this season,” Maggie spoke up again. “If anyone on the grid has talent of any kind, it’s him.”

Josie couldn’t help but laugh at her coworker’s remark. Him? Talent? The guy could barely speak loud enough for the microphone to understand him. He hadn’t sat still for the entirety of the interview, either. 

“You know what, I’ll take your word for it,” she lifted the apron off from around her neck, then hung it on the wall beside them. “Have a good shift, Maggie. I’ll see you later.”

•

“Well, well, well—look what the cat dragged in.”

Josie tossed her things into a small locker in the garage as Blake made his way over to her. Blake was the founder of their racing league…if you could even call it a league. She met him five years ago in some dual-enrollment college classes during high school. They hardly got along, but their one common ground was racing. They tolerated each other, because Josie brought profit into his garage. She never got a cut, but she could care less—after all, she wasn’t there for the money. She was there to do what she loved most: race. She was damn good at it, too. 

“Always a pleasure,” she grumbled before hoisting herself up on the countertop beside the lockers. “What’s on the agenda tonight? Any takers?”

“One,” Blake hesitated momentarily, like he was unsure of what to say next. “But, uh, things are gonna have to operate a bit differently tonight.”

“What do you mean?” Josie furrowed her eyebrows at him. 

“They’re not with any street racing league,” Blake explained. “I don’t entirely know how they found us, but they’re willing to keep the league a secret—under one condition.” 

Josie’s stomach turned. They only raced against other street racing leagues in Vegas. If Blake is allowing outsiders, it could pose a huge risk to their operation being shut down—or even them going to jail. As her heart pounded in her chest, she hopped off the countertop. 

“What is that condition?” She asked tentatively. 

“They want a fair race,” Blake continued. “That means both drivers in the same car, on the same route. Not too different from how we do it, but there’s a catch,” he took a breath, “they want to race the F1 circuit.” 

Josie didn’t mean to laugh at his statement, but surely he had to be joking. How the hell would they get inside of that place? But beyond that, how were they to get two vehicles inside of there as well? 

“I’m assuming you know how to pull this off?” She scoffed. “Blake, that’s insane. Look, we’re already taking a risk trusting some outsiders, but now you want to break into an F1 track for them?”

“They claim they know how to get in without getting us in trouble,” he threw his palms up in defense. “Besides, they’re offering to pay both of us pretty decent money to do this.”

“I don’t care about the money,” Josie replied, her tone cold. “I care about losing the only thing that makes me happy because of your greedy ass decision. How do we know this isn’t a trap?”

“It’s not.”

Josie and Blake turned their heads towards the two gentlemen making their way into the garage. She recognized one of them as the other McLaren driver, though she couldn’t remember his name. The person with him, however, was unfamiliar. Blake stepped forward, extending a hand towards the driver. 

“Lando, good to meet you,” Blake said. They shook hands. “This is my driver, Josie Reyes.”

“Thunderbird,” Lando grinned, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his joggers. His gaze lingered over to her. “I’ve heard about you.” 

Thunderbird. A horrible nickname given to her by some of the other street racers—one that was reminiscent of a past she was trying to forget. She didn’t budge as the Brit extended a hand towards her. 

“How did you find us?” She demanded. 

“You beat my friend in a race last night,” Lando cleared his throat as his hand moved back into his pocket. “In his Monte Carlo. I figured I needed to come and witness your driving myself.”

Josie’s eyes flickered between Lando and the gentleman next to him. He was older than all three of them. Quiet, and stagnant. He was dressed nicely: clean, pressed slacks with a black pullover. His grey hair was styled back in a pompadour fashion. 

“Who are you?” She asked. 

“Graeme,” the man replied flatly. “Just here for business. I’m with Formula 1.” 

“He’s the team principal for Cadillac next year,” Lando explained further, clearly sensing the tension in the room. “He’s in Vegas for ‘talent-seeking’ purposes.” 

“Why is he here with you?” Josie crossed her arms over her chest. “Don’t you drive for McLaren?”

“Like I said, he’s talent-seeking.” Lando paused for a moment. His eyes scanned Josie, as if he were sizing her up—seeing her worth. “I heard you’re undefeated in street racing around here?”

She was, but he didn’t have any business knowing that. Neither did Graeme. Whatever reasoning brought them here didn’t grant them the right to knowing about their league—or about her. She knew Blake didn’t care, though. All he cared about was the money, which they probably paid him a lot of it to be here right now. Blake didn’t usually give up information so easily. 

“That’s need-to-know,” Josie stated. “Why do you want to race me? Don’t you have bigger concerns right now? Like, I don’t know, winning a championship?”

“Josie—“

“You could get us into a lot of trouble,” she continued, talking over Blake’s poor plea to stop. “You could get in trouble, too. What could you possibly gain from this?” 

“All I want is one race,” Lando explained slowly. His voice softer, calmer. A stark contrast to hers. “I just want to have some fun. Graeme, on the other hand, wants to see you drive.”

Josie sat in silence for a moment, absorbing the driver’s words. Why would a team principal want to see a street racer drive? It seemed too good to be true, like maybe there was a catch of some kind. Proving her talent to Cadillac would be one thing, but she was a nobody. She had nothing to offer them other than her capabilities. No monetary value, no status to her name, no famous family members of any kind…just Josie. 

“What would we be driving?” Her tone wavered cautiously. She didn’t want them thinking she was sold just yet, because she wasn’t. But she also didn’t want to give up the opportunity to drive tonight. 

“Have you ever driven an F1 car before, Josie?” 

“No fucking way,” Blake spoke before she could. “An F1 car? You’re joking.”

“Hardly,” now Graeme chimed in. “I’ve received special permission for us to have the McLaren cars and the circuit this evening.”

“Yes!” Blake exclaimed as he laughed in disbelief. Josie shot him a quick look of warning. He cleared his throat. “Sorry, no. She hasn’t driven an F1 car before. But yes, we will totally do so tonight.”

“So I don’t have a say in this?” Josie shoved Blake, turning to face him. “I don’t think this is a good idea—“

“You have the opportunity of a lifetime, Jo,” Blake argued quietly, grabbing ahold of her wrist. “Are you going to seriously throw that away right now?” 

Josie could see an unfamiliar glimmer in Blake’s eyes. 

He was genuinely looking out for her. 

Despite all the years of constant bickering and tolerating each other, Blake was truly the only person who understood her love for racing—because he felt it, too. And, despite the wall she had up right now, he saw right through her. She wanted to drive that car, and he knew that. 

The opportunity of a lifetime. 

Josie’s gaze flickered between the three men in the garage. As Blake loosened the hold on her wrist, Josie felt something shift inside of her. Perhaps it was gut instinct, or perhaps they had successfully convinced her to drive. Whatever it was, her next words spilled out before she could think twice.

“Fine. I’ll race you.”

•

copy-write disclaimer: None of my writing is available for reposting on other platforms. Reblogs, likes, and comments are appreciated.

Taglist is OPEN: @ezzi-ln4 @annaswrites00 @frankiejo04 @dreadity @whiteghostlyclouds @namelessmoons-corner @mashmashi @taetae-armyyyyy

[clioerato]

Stranger Things TimeTrevel Fix It AU [1]

(No serious, just fun. I need Steve "I'll take care of everything important now" Harrington.

If you take this idea for a fic, please send me a link. Questions and requests are welcome.

Part [1] | [2] | ... ) )

Indiana. Hawkins. 1985. The Wheeler House. The kitchen smelled like toast and impending doom. Steve was talking fast — oxygen-deprived, syllables colliding like he was afraid to forget anything before it got out.

"Look, bottom line? If we don’t stop this now, it’s all going to shit. Not just Hawkins — the whole damn world. El can’t close the gate again. Max…" he hesitated, eyes darting sideways, "we can still save her. We can save everyone.It’s… it’s full-on Apocalypse out there, and I really hope you never get to see it."

"And we’re just supposed to… believe you?" Mike squinted. "That you’re Steve Harrington from the future?" "No. I’m asking you to shut up for ten minutes and listen." "Oh yeah. That’s definitely Steve," Max muttered. Dustin snorted quietly.

"But why now?" Dustin asked, eyes wide. It was still hard to accept — even with all the weird evidence — that the Steve sitting in front of them was from 1998. Well. His consciousness was. The rest stayed back in ‘98. Still.

"You’re wondering why I didn’t come back earlier?" "Yeah. Before all this. The Upside Down is already open. If you’d come sooner, maybe none of this would’ve happened." Steve winced, visibly.

"You’re right," he said. "But I can’t do this alone. I don’t have El’s powers. I can’t be everywhere at once. And right now — this is the earliest point where we’re all here, and you guys aren’t twelve anymore. We actually canstop this. I need Robin. And… him."

Robin, perched on the kitchen counter with a cup of coffee, leaned toward the phone. "I called. He should be here soon."

"Who’s he?" Mike snapped. "Not your business, we’re time-traveling," Robin waved him off.

A car pulled into the driveway. Steve bolted for the door.

----

Robin never just called Eddie. And definitely never asked him to come over “ASAP.” He climbed the porch steps and raised a fist to knock —

— when the door to the Wheeler house flew open.

Steve “King” Harrington stood in the doorway. Shirtless. Eyes full of hope and… possibly manic determination.

"Harrington?" Eddie asked, cautiously. "Are you… you? Where’s Robin?"

Steve stepped in. Too close. "Eddie, listen. I don’t have time, okay? I know I should’ve done this differently. Like, I don’t know, dinner at a diner, soft lighting, a mixtape. Screw that. I’ve been through Hell. I need to say this now."

"Say what? Are you okay?" "I know you’ve had a thing for me since ‘83—"

Silence. Eddie blinked.

What the actual f— Robin wouldn’t. She wouldn’t lure him into some jock trap just to get him beaten up again. But the house was pretty isolated. Not much of a getaway route.

Panic started buzzing in his skull —

Until Steve added: "…You’re gonna be my boyfriend."

"…WHAT?" Eddie croaked.

"We start dating today." Steve nodded, more confident now. "You weren’t seeing anyone in ‘85, right? You told me—"

"Wait, wait, wait." Eddie raised both hands like fending off a swarm of invisible bees. "What the hell, man? I told you? We’ve never talked! Ever!" He looked at the house, then back at Steve. "You… I… WHAT?!"

"Once I fix the Hawkins paranormal mess, I’m gonna help you finish school. Then we move to San Francisco,"Steve added with a wink that should’ve been illegal.

"…San what?" "San Francisco," Steve repeated calmly, as if this was the most logical part of the entire fever dream. "Comic shop. Or maybe records. Depends what you’re into this time around. We’ll get a cat. Whatever you want."

One beat. Two. Three. "Am I dead?" Eddie whispered. "Is this the Hawkins’s heaven version?"

He noticed Steve twitch slightly. Weird. Not weirder than the rest, but still.

From inside, Dustin’s voice rang out: "Steve! Maybe explain the consciousness thing? And El?"

"No time! He’ll think I’m nuts!" Steve yelled over his shoulder. "Eddie, breathe."

Eddie tried. Inhale. Exhale. Deeper. Didn’t help.

"Everything already sounds nuts! You—" he jabbed a finger at Steve, "—you’re hot, popular, very heterosexual — or so I thought — prom king of Hawkins freaking High, and you just stormed out of the Wheeler house shirtless to declare that you and I — me, Eddie ‘The Freak’ Munson — are now dating?? In front of a bunch of kids, Robin, and Nancy Wheeler?!"

"Correct." "…and we’re moving to San Francisco?" "Yup." "…with a cat?" "We’ll name him Merlin."

Eddie blinked again. "I knew I shouldn’t have eaten those weird mushrooms in April."

From inside: "Is he okay?" — Dustin. "Not yet!" — Steve. "I CAN HEAR YOU!" — Eddie.

He grabbed his head.

"Harrington, this is the weirdest day of my life. And I have seen some shit. I��sell some shit."

[gowns]

if you liked the barbie movie but felt there was something... missing, i can recommend these movies

the brady bunch movie (1995) (what happens when characters from an artificial world end up in the modern day "real world"?)

the muppets (2011) (same question! and a playful advertisement for a media institution which re-invigorated interest in the brand. "am i a man, or am i a muppet? or a muppet of a man?")

the wiz (1978) (what does it mean to be "real"? what are you willing to risk to be real? also: real sets, real props, real song & dance numbers!)

gold diggers of 1933 (1933) (busby berkeley musical; you haven't seen true mind-blowing opulence in sets, costumes, and hundreds of people dancing at the same time til you see this)

but i'm a cheerleader! (1999) camp queer classic, lots & lots of pink & natasha lyonne)

watermelon woman (1996) (what does it take to succeed as a creative woman in a world that denies your humanity? what archetypes define you in film history? and can you acknowledge that and subvert that at the same time?)

desert hearts (1985) (a woman breaks out of the status quo and falls into a lesbian love affair in the desert <3)

gas food lodging (1992) (mother-daughter relationship stuff!! girls becoming teens and feeling disconnected from who they were as children -- but who are they now? and how can they find new common ground with their mom?)

enchanted (2007) (honestly super similar beats to the barbie movie except with more clear stakes!)

the tales of hoffmann (1951) (weird musical w/ a few stories, including man who falls in love with a human-sized doll! and great gowns, beautiful gowns)

pee wee's big adventure (1985) (you ever just want to have some fun and ride around on a cute little bike in a cute little outfit but everyone is against you for some reason?)

[dduane]

Hi! Possibly a bit of a weird question for you, but I'm trying to collect all of YW in hardbacks before my old omnibus finally gives out, and I was wondering - do you know if books 1-4 ever got published in hardback with the Harcourt black base/white text cover art? So many websites use blank placeholders that I can't tell if what I'm searching for even exists!

It’s not weird at all. I get occasional inquiries (especially from librarians) about how to get their hands on complete hardcover sets of the Young Wizards books.

Let's make this simpler from the start by establishing that in the forty-plus year history of the series, there has never been a unified hardcover edition of all the YW books, from any of their publishers... mostly because there've been too many publishers over that stretch of time.

Let's take the books in order, as far as possible, and you'll see what happened.

The books' first home was at Delacorte Press, an imprint of Dell Publishing. So You Want To Be A Wizard was published in hardcover in 1983, the Deep Wizardry hc in 1985, and the High Wizardry hc in 1990, with these covers. (The art, respectively, by David Wiesner, Darrell Sweet, and Neal McPheeters.)

All of these editions are now difficult to find in good condition, especially SYWTBAW—which as a first book in a series by a new/untried author, perhaps understandably had a very small print run and was mostly sold to libraries. (The run might have been as small as 1500 copies. It's hard to tell now, as this wasn't data that was shared with authors in those days.) As a result, most copies of the Delacorte SYWTBAW hc are either very beat up, or (if signed and/or in good condition) relatively expensive. The Delacorte DW and HW hardcovers are a little easier to find, but not that much.

In the early 1990s there was a change in publishing direction at Dell shortly after HW came out. The publisher's interest had pivoted toward wanting more bestselling authors; so they jettisoned many then-new or midlist authors so as to be able to pay the best-selling authors more. (In this particular micro-bonfire of the vanities, Dell's stupidity in throwing Jane Yolen overboard, FFS, astounds me to this day.) So though the books continued to be published as paperbacks at other Dell imprints (Laurel-Leaf, Yearling) through the mid-1990s, that was the end of the Dell hardcovers.

The next hardcover publication was therefore in 1990, from GuildAmerica / SF Book Club. Support Your Local Wizard contains SYWTBAW, DW and HW, and was a Book Club bestseller: it sold a quarter million copies and set a record as their most popular new-member-requested book that lasted until they went out of business. As a result, there are a lot of these books around.

Also in plentiful supply is The Young Wizards, which SFBC Fantasy published in 2001. (NB that a lot of sources list this as being a 1984 book, which is incorrect. As it also contains, besides the first three, A Wizard Abroad and The Wizard's Dilemma, this makes it impossible to have been published any sooner than 2001.)

Anyway, after that, things get a bit simpler. In the mid 1990s the series was picked up by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt / Harcourt Trade Publishers' new YA imprint Magic Carpet Books, which began republishing earlier works. Possibly the oddest of these was a small-format (mmpb-sized) hc of SYWTBAW, which turns up here and there used. (I really need to ask Jane some time what the heck the thinking was on this book...)

...Anyway. A Wizard Abroad had until then been published only in the UK (in a mass-market mmpb from Transworld/Corgi); its first hardcover came out from the SF Book Club/GuildAmerica in 1993, Dell having passed on acquiring it. (The cover on this one was done by the fabulous David Cherry, artist and brother of my old colleague C. J. Cherryh.) Harcourt did another of the unusual small-format hardcovers, this time of AWAb, in 1997—testing the waters, I think. Then, when that sold strongly, they went straight to full-size hardcovers with The Wizard's Dilemma (with art from then until now being done by Cliff Nielsen) and have stayed with that format since.

Harcourt also did a lovely 25th anniversary hardcover edition of So You Want To Be A Wizard in 2003, which is easy to find inexpensively. I strongly suspect this republication trend would have continued with Deep Wizardry and High Wizardry when their respective anniversaries came around. But unfortunately the Magic Carpet program wound down soon afterwards, and the most recent hc volumes have been published simply as HMH, with no apparent interest at the publisher in going back to fill the holes in the hardcover backlist.

...So you can see, you've got kind of a mixed bag to deal with in terms of what you want. Availability has also been something of an issue, as the books are considered pretty deep backlist by Harcourt's current owner (HarperCollins), and warehouse supplies of some books in the series have been iffy.

So. The simplest I can make things for you is to help you avoid dealing with large corporate warehouses (because when some of these hc editions were preparing to go out of print, whenever possible I bought up the remaining stock to spare it from being pulped). Signed Books Direct—by which I mean the Ikea shelves out back in our boot room—has ample mint-condition supplies of many of the Harcourt hardcovers (though not Games Wizards Play, unfortunately: we've run out of those). Ignore the site’s front page inventory, which needs to be updated. Instead, just drop an email to the SBD email address and query me about what you're looking for.

HTH!

[word-wytch]

Don't Stand So Close To Me — Chapter 13

Eddie x Teacher!Reader

Chapter 13/? 8.4k. Series Masterlist

✏︎ Catalyst — an agent that provokes or speeds significant change or action.

✏︎ Series Summary: Forced to move back home to Hawkins after your fiancé cheats on you, you begin to fall in love again with an audacious 20 year old metalhead, only there’s one problem — he’s still in high school and you’re his English teacher.

While you struggle starting over in a place you never thought you would return, Eddie struggles feeling stuck in a place he can’t manage to leave — until you offer to help him. Of all the lessons learned, the most important are the ones you teach each other.

✏︎ Series CW: forbidden romance, slow burn, true love, smut (18+ mdni), internal conflict, student-teacher relationship, 10 year age gap, mutual pining, sexual tension, emotions, drama, angst, character development, happy ending :)

Chapter warnings: angst, drama, implied partner abuse, harm to fantasy creature 

Monday, December 9th 1985

Eddie propped his cheek against his knuckles as he watched you from the back of the classroom, just like he did every day. You were radiant on this one, brimming with excitement as you lectured on your favorite subject.

“We’re still in the planning phase for our short stories, but now that you all have a general idea of what you want to write about, I want you to start putting together an outline,” you prompted.

His eyes traced down the back of your blouse to where it met the waistline of your trousers. His hands still itched to hold you there. Burned was a better word now. He watched your hand scratch words onto the board with a nub of chalk, following the bend and curve of your fingers as they formed letters. 

The past three weeks had been much of the same. You and him, behind the big desk every Monday and Wednesday after school. You; trying to focus on his schoolwork. Him; trying to focus on you. You; letting him get away with it. 

There was plenty of studying happening too. In between studying the curve of your lips, the hue of your laugh, and the bones of your knuckles under his thumb, there were shining moments were something would click and he would solve an equation. Perhaps it was something to do with memory association or whatever textbook word you used to describe the psychology of learning, but something about the way you presented things made it easier for him to absorb. Perhaps it was your gentle patience, or your intuition. Knowing when to press forward and when to back off. Knowing how to show something differently than he’d been taught. Maybe it was just sweeter coming from your lips instead of Ms. O’Donnell’s. 

Eddie shifted in his desk as you clicked the end of your sentence against the board with a flourish. Stretching against the confines of the tiny chair, he hunched over the slab wood barely big enough to fit his notebook, and picked up his own chewed utensil to copy what you’d written. Maybe it was the bulk of his jacket, thicker and warmer with padding for winter, but suddenly he felt claustrophobic.

You whipped around brightly to face the class. “Alright, who remembers what three things inform character action?”

The question was met with restless silence. A cough. A sniffle.

With a defeated sigh, you turned back around to scratch desires, fears, and misbeliefs onto the board.

Glancing out the window at the pale grey sky and naked trees, Eddie counted on his fingers the number of months until there would be leaves on them again. 

Five. 

He just knew it would be an agonizing winter. One that dragged on and on, long after the groundhog saw its shadow. Huffing, he stared down at his beat up spiral notebook, blue lines blurring in his tired vision. The pen went slack in his hand. He closed his eyes and listened to your voice.

“I know these are short stories, but in the end something should have changed internally or interpersonally for your characters as a result of the plot. Remember, the plot is what happens, the story is how it affects the characters,” you said, jotting down the last bit.

It took on a different tone in front of the class. More rigid and professional, louder so it carried to the back of the room. It lacked the warmth and softness that it held when he was next to you. He imagined, for a sweet moment, how it would sound even closer; against the shell of his ear as you breathed a sigh beneath him. The gentle feather of your lips as they traveled south, just below his ear, where his jaw met his neck. In the playground of his mind, he could show you what a man he really was. Here, his hands were free to wander wherever they wanted; dip into the valleys of your clavicles, over the hills of your breasts, around the bend of your waist, the peaks of your hips, the mound of your—

A snicker broke his reverie. When he opened his eyes, Jason’s were already on him. 

“Taking a nap, Munson?” he mouthed mockingly.

Eddie rolled his eyes and seethed as he glared down at his notebook again. He shifted against the back of the hard plastic chair, against the tight cage of the desk. Finding no relief, he huffed and stared blankly ahead at the chalkboard, at the beige concrete wall, at the big desk, and then—at you. The gap had never been more enormous. An ocean of desks, a gaping chasm between where he was and where he wanted to be.

He must have looked downright pitiful, because the look you returned brimmed with a soft concern. In the two seconds he held you, Eddie released a deep sigh. Then you were back to the board.

“L-let’s start by highlighting the main point of each scene,” you said quickly, turning as you cleared your throat. Eddie caught your hand dart behind your neck before it fell promptly to your side. “Basically, why a scene exists and what it needs to accomplish. Does it provide information about the characters or move the story forward? Remember, these are short stories, so we want to make each scene really count.”

Eddie gripped the chewed pen and dutifully copied what you wrote. He knew he could have asked you later, had you explain it all again, given him tips, and pointers, and strategies, even helped him with his outline. But he wanted you to see that he was trying. He wanted you to see that he cared. He was always bad at school. Bad at paying attention. Bad at turning in assignments. Bad at following rules and keeping his mouth shut. 

He wanted to be good for you. 

When the bell rang, chair legs screeched against tile, notebooks crinkled, zippers ripped open and shut in a frenzied cacophony. Eddie hung back until the room filtered out. Until the only person left was you. Slinging his backpack over his shoulder, he padded up the long isle of desks until he reached yours. A standard routine.

“Hey,” he said, just like every other day. Just to savor another couple seconds in your presence, alone.

You looked up at him from the mess on your desk as you did countless times before, same tired smile, same soft eyes, same response. “Hey.”

Eddie rocked back and forth on his heels, holding your gaze for a little too long. “I’ll—uh, I’ll see you later, yeah?”

Your face grew bright and warm, a glint of summer against the pale, grey sky. “Yeah, see you later, Eddie.” 

There it was, the thing he really came for — his name. He sighed a smile and gave a single nod, turning slowly toward the door. 

______

By the time he made it to chemistry class, Eddie was ready for a nap. Maybe it was the pizza that sat like a rock in the pit of his stomach. Maybe it was the fact that, yet again, he had stayed up entirely too late, lost in your world. 

But he couldn’t just stop, not when Cybelle was being attacked by a ferocious fenfink — like a weasel, only much larger. Sharper claws, bigger teeth, and fatally attracted to something Cybelle had on her person. They were packing up camp in the morning when it happened. Perhaps it had been drawn to the smell of sweet Myrnish breakfast cakes, or the herbs stuffed inside Cybelle’s mask, or perhaps it was her gold amulet that sparkled in the glow of the fire. In hindsight, they really should have picked up a sword in Fenwood. Not that Lazarus had ever swung one. Not that he would trust himself to when the beast was grappling with the neckline of Cybelle’s coat as she struggled to fling it off her. Too much movement. Too many opportunities to miss. Instead, Lazarus had done the only thing he could manage to do in a panic, which is to grab the animal’s back and try to pry it off. 

The path through the boglands was narrow with small allowance for a camp site. On either side lay deep, murky water spotted with mounds of moss and pale, petrified trees. The fenfink didn’t give up easy. It tore at her silk with its claws, sniffing and growling at her crescent moon mask as Lazarus tugged at its furry body. As Cybelle’s boots threatened stumble back over the berm of the trail and into the wet abyss, Lazarus tugged as hard as he could, but the animal snatched a lifeline; a shiny gold chain that glimmered in the pale blue light of the early morning. 

It bent Cybelle forward at the neck. Time froze as her golden promise, his future, dangled in the space between them. Her hands fumbled at the animal’s rear claws to unlatch them from her abdomen. Eyes desperate, mask askew, Lazarus knew what he had to do. One good yank and the chain would break. She would be free, and he could hurl the beast into the bog to buy them time.  He knew it could be done, in theory. What would become of the treasure, however, would be left entirely to fate. 

In the glittering twinkle, he saw his cottage, his garden, his full size bed, his curtains billowing in the salty air. It swayed and skirted across the taught chain, dangling dangerously close to the edge of the murky water.

With a strangled cry, Cybelle worked the claws free of her dress, and he was left with a split second to decide. The golden tether winked in the fire’s glow. Fear flickered in her umber eyes. With a firm, decided tug, Lazarus broke the chain. Time slowed to a halt as the glimmering treasure launched upward with the force of it all. Cybelle stumbled back over the berm, grasping desperately at the air. It followed the arc that she took, hovering just out of reach. She just about bumped it with her fingertip, but the cold, wet shock at her back knocked the wind out of her.

Lazarus watched his dreams tumble into the water, helpless to stop it. As he grappled with the snarling beast, his eyes caught the last golden glimmer of hope before it plunked beneath the inky surface of the bog. He pivoted quickly, launching the creature in a heartbroken rage, and it flailed in the air before its headfirst collision with a tree scattered the birds for miles.

A wet, sobbing cough from the other side of path sent him scrambling toward it. Cybelle was a mess. Clambering on her knees, waist deep in a peaty, black filth that soaked through her gold coat. Her hands raked desperately, blindly, at the thick decay beneath the murky water. 

Lazarus stumbled over the mossy ledge and into the bog, extending his hand, but she could not meet his eyes.

“I-I can find it,” she choked, sucking what little breath she could muster as the soaked fabric clung to her face. “It-it is somewhere here… I heard it.” 

His heart sunk deeper than the treasure. “Please, Cybelle,” he pleaded. 

“I can find it,” she insisted weakly, and another desperate grasp beneath the water sent her tumbling further down. 

He dove in after her then, sinking deep into the muck to grab her by the waist before she slipped beneath the surface. Cybelle was persistent, twisting in his arms as sobs shook her tiny body. He simply gripped her tighter, drawing her toward his chest and out of the water. Her struggles paled to his strength.

“Please,” she whimpered, stamping his white linen shoulders with muddy hands. “I can—I can…” she could barely catch a breath, silk crescent now crooked and blackened with peat. 

With both arms clasped tightly around her back, Lazarus shushed her. “It’s gone, Cybelle.” He could not hide the mourning in his voice.

She shut her eyes with a defeated grimace and went limp. Tears burned her lash line as she sobbed against his chest. They opened when she felt a finger brush behind her ear. Gingerly, slowly, Lazarus hooked his fingers through the loop of her mask, eyes darting back and forth between hers in a wordless request for permission. Her stillness granted it, and with that, he peeled it away.

In the pale blue light of the early morning, waist deep in muck and mire, Lazarus saw Cybelle. Not for the first time ever, but for the first time like this. Raw, and ragged, and inches apart. She inhaled deeply, freely, and for the first time when she breathed out, there were no barriers between them. They stood there a moment in a captivated stillness with nothing but the hum of frogs and song of birds.

Cybelle was the one to break the silence. “We might as well turn around then,” she wavered bitterly. “I have…” her breath hitched, “nothing to offer you.”

Lazarus sighed, shaking his head as he raked in her soft features. “Your company,” he began, “is enough.”

Cybelle shut her eyes, blinking tears over her lashes to streak trails through her the dirt on her cheeks, and for the first time, her muddy arms drew around his waist, and she embraced him.

Eddie pressed his heated forehead to the cool slate of the lab table and shifted his stool back against the floor with a loud screech. Images of fenfinks, and pendants, and bog mire danced behind his eyelids. He could hear the weary exhaustion in Mr. Westfield’s voice. He didn’t even need to look up to know he was leaning against his desk and running his hand through his thinning hairline as he’d done a hundred times before at the top of sixth period.

“Alright, so today we’re going to be creating magnesium oxide. Magnesium plus oxygen. Get it?” The question was answered with sleepy eyes and a few stray sniffles. Mr. Westfield sighed. “Right. Since the school can’t afford enough bunsen burners for all of you, this week you’ll be splitting up into pairs.”

The room came alive, eyes meeting eyes as claims flew across the room. Eddie peeked over his arms at the table in front of him. Tina was practically falling out of her stool as she reached for Chrissy on the other side of the room with grabby hands. 

Mr. Westfield looked thoroughly unamused by the commotion. “I’ll be assigning them.”

The classroom groaned almost unanimously. 

“Hate to be a party pooper,” he started, his tone indicating quite the opposite, “but you’re here to learn, not to chit-chat. Ok, let’s see here…” Mr. Westfield adjusted his glasses on his nose as he scanned down the list of names in his attendance book. 

A restless silence fell over the room as the students awaited their fate. 

“Looks like we have an even number, excellent. Tina, you’ll be with Bobby.”

Eddie could see Tina’s eyes roll through the back of her head. 

Mr. Westfield peered up from his glasses. “Don’t act so excited. Ok, then we’ll have Ricky and Carmen, Sally and Janae…” he went down the list of names, checking them off and scribbling them on the side of the sheet to keep track.

Eddie sat up and glanced around the room as pairs were made, mentally checking off classmates as their names were called, ears perked and primed to hear his own. As the ones who remained dwindled and dwindled down to only two, his pulse quickened. 

“Ok and then that just leaves Ms. Cunningham,” he punctuated with his pen, “and Mr. Munson.”

Fuck.

Eddie turned his head slowly, reluctantly, toward the other side of the room where Chrissy Cunningham sat, and was met with a soft, coy smile. He swallowed and whipped his head to face forward. 

Un-fucking believable. If there was a God, which Eddie sincerely doubted, he sure had a twisted sense of humor.

Since their brief confrontation in the hallway following Tina’s Halloween party, Chrissy had, to his honest surprise, respected his wishes and kept her distance. It never stopped her from looking though. Stares, he would discover, were something you could feel. Burning into his temple from behind the curtain of his hair in class, heating the back of his neck at his locker as her perfume wafted up the hall. It was almost a daily occurrence. 

As the classroom rearranged itself in a cacophony of screeching stools and shuffling backpacks,  Eddie remained planted right were he was, thumbing at the bent spiral of his notebook, mind racing as his eyes glazed over. It was less than a minute before he smelled that familiar perfume and heard the stool next to him scoot against the floor.

“Hey,” came a voice like powdered sugar. 

Eddie looked up from his notebook with a slow hesitance. “Hey.”

“I…grabbed you some safety glasses and an apron,” she said, setting the items on the counter.

Silently lamenting the idea of spending the remaining hour wearing them, he gave a single nod and thanked her.

The room bustled with chatter as Mr. Westfield came around to dole out the bunsen burners, crucibles, scales, and other small tools. “You got a hair tie, Munson?” he asked.

Eddie patted himself down and feigned disappointment. “Fresh out I’m afraid.” 

“I’ve got one,” Chrissy interjected, rolling a powder blue scrunchie from her wrist to swing from the curve of her finger.

Eddie stared at it a second as it dangled in the space between them before snatching it. “Thanks,” he conceded. As he twisted the satin band around his curls to form a low ponytail, he could feel the heat from her gaze. It lingered as he put on his goggles, even as he tied the ribbons of the stiff apron behind his back. 

Wayne, perceptive as ever, had been right all those years ago outside the auditorium. He did, at eleven, have a crush on Chrissy Cunningham, but there were only so many times a person could ignore him before he got the memo. Before he figured out he wasn’t worth their time. It wasn’t the first time it happened. In fact, Eddie had become so accustomed to getting looked through instead of at that he’d made it a lifestyle to stand out. To talk loud, and dress loud, and play loud. To bite back, and shirk rules, and cause a scene. And over the course of a year he barely remembered, he’d left whatever feelings he might have had for her exactly where they belonged; in the graveyard with everything else he would rather forget.

But for some reason this year was different. He wasn’t sure what switch flipped that caused her to suddenly see him. Maybe it was because she was tired of her meathead boyfriend and needed a distraction. Maybe it was because he looked especially dangerous this year. Maybe it was because he’d been held back so many times that he’d become more forbidden than ever; an odd and tempting fascination. 

Eleven year old Eddie would have been elated. Twenty year old Eddie was, to put it simply, annoyed. 

Mr. Westfield returned to the front of the classroom to give instruction, and Eddie tried his best to follow along with the handout. 

The room sparked to life with the hiss of gas and the whump of it igniting from all corners. As the tall flame dance in front of him, Eddie tried to ignore the little voice in the back of his head that tempted him to dangle the sleeve of his flannel a little too close so he could escape to the nurse’s office. Freshman Eddie wouldn’t have thought twice.

Chrissy turned on the scale between them and set the empty clay crucible on top of it as instructed. She leaned in to record the weight and copied it onto her worksheet. Eddie did the same. According to the worksheet, the next step was to add the magnesium and weigh it again. 

“Make sure the coil isn’t too tight,” advised Mr. Westfield, “you’re gonna want to leave room for air.”

Eddie picked up the clay triangle, doing his best to stay focused on the task, and set it on the metal ring above the flame as demonstrated. 

“I think the ring is too high,” said Chrissy, leaning in to twist the clamp loose enough to lower it. “It’s gotta be like, in the blue part of the flame I think.” Her arm grazed his as she reached into his bubble, and suddenly he was back on that couch, feeling the her phantom fingers on the pins of his vest again, gold halo crooked, lips ghosting cherry alcohol. Eddie shot his gaze forward.

“Ok, now place the crucible in the center of the triangle,” Mr. Westfield instructed.

Eddie grabbed hold of the metal tongs and used them to pinch the pale clay vessel. Chrissy leaned closer as he lowered it to rest above the flame. 

Then they would wait. In the waiting, the classroom grew louder. Tina stood by her stool, arms crossed, eyes cast sideways in annoyance as Mr. Westfield came over to address the lack of flame coming out of her bunsen burner. 

Eddie sat there in tense silence, eyes fixed forward as the flame licked the crucible with its blue heat.

“You know, this definitely beats equations,” Chrissy remarked with a soft chuckle.

He couldn’t really argue with that. Eddie didn’t say that though, instead he just nodded quietly. 

“Say um,” Chrissy thumbed at the gummy eraser of her pencil, “Jason hasn’t given you any trouble, has he?”

Resentment rose up from the graveyard. “Define trouble,” he groused.

Chrissy sighed. “He can be a real asshole sometimes,” she admitted, to his surprise.

Eddie took a deep breath. It was vivid — the way she stumbled off that couch. How she nearly tripped over her own shoes. How Jason barked at her. The crazed look in his eyes. The fear in hers. “Sometimes?” he bit back.

Chrissy toyed at the hem of her skirt. “He’s not all bad.”

He wasn’t sure if it was the inflection of her voice, or the way her eyes cast down in shameful denial, but it transported him — all the way back to that small kitchen table, feet dangling from the chair as the red wax in his hand filled in the flame from a dragon’s mouth. He could see his mother in the kitchen doorway, her finger coiled tightly around the telephone cord, uttering the same words to a concerned voice on the other end. 

Eddie hardened his lips and shook his head bitterly. “Yeah, well, doesn’t make him good.” 

“Alright folks, listen up,” Mr. Westfield called out, drawing the attention of the class. “Next you’ll add the oxygen by lifting the lid to let some air in.”  

With a sudden, determined movement, Chrissy reached across him to grab the tongs, bracing herself against the slate table. She gave them a few clicks before pinching the handle to lift the small, clay lid. A reaction occurred; blinding and white, igniting the gap between crucible and lid in a flickering flare.

They jumped back in unison. 

“Try not to stare,” advised Mr. Westfield with monotone enthusiasm. “You could damage your eyes.”

Timely advice. Eddie blinked the white dots that clung to his vision away, and a smile caught him by surprise, betraying his steely resolve. 

Chrissy caught it, and her sea green eyes found his from across the bunsen burner as she lowered the lid again. “That was awesome,” she whispered wildly.

It was kind of cool, he had to admit. He would take playing with fire over staring numbly at numbers on a page any day. Eddie peered over the rim of his plastic safety glasses and offered a tentative smile. 

The heating continued, allowing for air every once in a while until finally there was no more reaction. There wasn’t much to say. Eddie removed the crucible from the burner. Chrissy added water from the pipette until the contents formed a paste. Eddie returned the crucible to the heat. The water evaporated. In the silence of their cooperation, in the passing of tools and scribbling of notes, Eddie wondered how long it would be before Chrissy came to her own conclusions. If she would ever figure out that even though Jason wasn’t all bad, she could do so much better. 

Not with him, but on her own.

Clutching the crucible in the tongs, Chrissy set it on the scale for the final time. They both copied the weight onto their worksheets — different than when they started.

With five minutes to the bell, the cleanup was frenzied; a clammer of equipment hastily returned to shelves and boxes backdropped against the hissing water of half a dozen sinks. Even Mr. Westfield had given up on volume control in favor of tidiness. Eddie rid himself of the dreaded apron and goggles just in time for the bell to ring, and with that he snatched his backpack from the floor and followed the flow of his classmates out the door. 

It wasn’t until he made it to the hallway that he remembered. Reaching back behind his neck, he felt it; ruffled satin. The owner was only a few feet ahead, ponytail swaying in ruffled white cotton as she walked. 

“Chrissy!” 

Her footsteps slowed, eyes brimming with a coy mischief that shot dread down his spine when turned against traffic to face him.

______

“Outlines are due on Friday,” you called to your class as you wiped down the board, a cloud of chalk dusted the air as you swiped the soft eraser over the letters. Like the wave of a magic wand, the bell had turned your practically snoring class into an eruption of noise. Before you could hear a pin drop, now you had to shout. With two periods left in the day, you wondered how many more times you would answer the same question. How many more times you would ask one only to be met with coughs and tired eyes.

Your feet hurt. Even the boots you had chosen for comfort and practicality were causing an ache in the soles of them, the hard heel putting too much pressure on your own. The lukewarm coffee you’d savored during fifth period had long since run its course through you. Glancing up at the clock, you realized you had about five minutes to take care of business or be forced to suffer for the duration of seventh period as well. Setting down the eraser, the decision was easy.

Your tired feet clicked down the crowded hallway with a sense of urgency that seemed to evade the rest of traffic. Scent pockets of perfume, mint gum, cigarettes, and body odors wafted through the air as you hurried past the rows of slamming lockers, dodging a pair of students overcome with the temptation to roughhouse, one grabbing the other by the backpack and yanking, sprinting ahead so his friend couldn’t catch him. You sighed, voice too tired to conjure discipline. 

As you picked up on that strange, familiar scent of the approaching science lab, your eyes, like a magnet, were drawn to a familiar silhouette, standing just outside the door. You would have recognized him anywhere, picked him out of a crowd of thousands. Flutters bloomed in your chest. His long, dark curls bounced as he shook them out with his hand, like he was scratching the back of his head. 

It was enchanting; the way he did just about anything. The way he moved, his sharp elbows and quick hands, the bright timbre of his voice, how his energy could shift on a dime from a soft breeze to a ripping gust. 

The past three weeks had been much of the same. Conversations that strayed from educational to casual. Lingering glances. Secret touches. Stolen moments. Never speaking the truth of your heart. Never offering more than your hand. 

The flow of students swept you forward, and as you passed, a figure emerged from behind where his shoulders obscured. In the seconds that slowed to a crawl, your eyes gathered volumes. 

Strawberry blonde, petite, clutching a book to her soft, white cardigan. Sparkling eyes under soft blue shadow, cocked head, fluttering lashes, a smile bright enough to draw a moth.

Craning your neck back as traffic surged, you searched for his eyes.

Eddie didn’t see you.

You blinked, hard, and snapped your gaze forward over the sea of students as your heart leapt into your throat. 

It was fine. 

Click.

It was nothing.

Click.

He’s allowed to talk to people. 

Click.

He didn’t see you.

Click.

Of course not, it’s crowded.

Click.

It burned, like the image was seared into your retinas. Her clean, white sneaker coyly toeing at the tile. Teeth that teased at plump, pink lips. Heavy lidded eyes. Arched back. Delicate fingers curled around a textbook spine. You tried to blink it away.

It was fine. It was nothing.

You rounded the corner for the faculty bathroom, relieved to find it empty, and shut yourself inside. The tried old light bathed the room in a yellow wash. You locked the door and stood there for a moment, heart racing, chest heaving in the quiet reprieve from the bells, lockers, and voices. Space for your thoughts to grow louder as you went about your business.

Why shouldn’t he talk to some girl? There was nothing wrong with that. In the glimpse that you caught of his face, it was lacking in distinct expression. Listening. Nothing worth noting. It was hers that really stuck with you. Her rosy cheeks and perky ponytail. The way she batted her eyes and licked her lips like she wanted to make a meal out of him.

Eddie Munson; summer wind. Tall and roguish, charming and animated, full of surprises. It was shocking he was single. Downright unbelievable that no other woman in this entire school would harbor any feelings. There had to be at least a handful that cast shy gazes as they passed him in the hallway. At least a few that floated curious whispers across lunch tables. In the dark corners of your imagination you had always figured, you’d just never seen it. And now the image wouldn’t leave you. Sticky. Clinging like you’d stepped in gum. 

You met your tired eyes in the mirror above the sink. Timeless, it mocked, as the whisper of lines became canyons. 

On the other side of the door was sea of young women. Free to talk and gawk and get into the sort of trouble he surely had a taste for. The kind of trouble you only had the freedom to imagine. How long before the novelty of you wore off? Before his restless hands sought something more? Something he could grasp in broad daylight? Someone who could keep his stride, share a milkshake or a bucket of popcorn?

You cast your welling eyes downward, turned on the water, wet your hands, and pumped the soap.

It started subtle, last spring. Started with the way he looked at you; a flame that dimmed to embers over months of dinners spent alone, plates gone cold, beds left empty, leaving you with nothing but to wonder how he looked at her. 

Time moves quickly for young men. You of all people would know it. Like a wildfire; hungry and insatiable, devouring everything in its path. It renders promises of meaning, leaves the past in charred remains. It surges ever forward, seeking fuel. 

It left behind an ice in you. Stalling over the sink as the world surged on outside, you felt it seize your chest again.

Eddie Munson; wildfire. Twenty years old. Restless. Reckless. He wasn’t your boyfriend. You weren’t an item. You were nothing.

The water was scalding. Bubbles erupted as you worked up a lather. Scrubbing your knuckles, your palms, the space between your fingers where his had nestled once. 

No. You weren’t nothing. 

The bell had you flinching; a loud and shrill summons back to your post, your place, your duty. 

You were his teacher.

Pinballs. Louder than the shrieking bell. Louder than ever before. You didn’t dare meet your eyes again, frightened of what sort of monster would stare back.

What am I doing? 

You turned off the water and paused, hands weeping over the sink. 

It was foolish, to play with fire. It was foolish just about anywhere, but here the walls were made of tinder, the desks of charcoal. His fingers like matches, striking you with every touch. But oh, how you craved the heat. Close enough to thaw you; the ice deep in your chest, weeping as it melted, pooling in your lap, making puddles on the floor.

Droplets fell to the tile as you turned to grab a paper towel. It soaked through, blooming dark, wet patches as the brown paper blotted up the dampness.

You shook your head bitterly. No. You certainly weren’t nothing. You were a phase. A passing fancy. An odd fascination. You would never make it to May. You’d be lucky if you made it to January without losing his interest entirely.

You crumpled the soggy paper in your fists and threw it in the trash. Blinking back tears, you pressed your hand to the door and took one deep, final breath as you prepared to face the world again — to put on your mask and perform in front of twenty pairs of judging eyes.

The gap was enormous. Cavernous and treacherous. He deserved someone he could be with in public. Someone he could take to a park or a movie. Someone he could go to fucking prom with. 

With a ragged exhale, you pressed open the door.  

He deserved someone his own age. 

The hall was a flurry of slamming lockers, a scattering of the few straggling students who rushed to find their classrooms. The wind cooled your heated face as you marched, one foot in front of the other, to your post. Shoulders back, deep breaths, sore feet making echos off the polished tile. 

He’d get tired of you too.

Click.

Click.

They always do.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Click.

The hall stretched on like an Escher drawing, twisting and distorting in your vision as you neared your classroom door. Tears threatened your lashes, and you huffed them away with a determined shrug of your shoulders.

As your fingers grazed the cold metal handle, you caught your own eyes in the glass. Sad and droopy, welling with longing and resentment. On the other side you could already hear the commotion, the questions, the stares, the awkward silence. The bell rang again — a final warning. 

With a heavy sigh, you turned the handle.

______

Eddie twisted the ridged dial of his locker in his fingers, left and right until he heard a click. Popping the door open and slinging his backpack forward on his shoulder, he unloaded three weighty textbooks into the dark, cluttered enclosure. He grabbed his thick, leather coat, tucked it under his arm, and slammed the door shut. 

In the absence of the books, and of the dimming noise as it filtered out through the front doors and into the parking lot, he felt another weight lift in him. In a matter of minutes, the mindless chatter, the tried scenery of this dull prison, the days worth of stares that clung to him like glue would fall away as he passed the threshold of your door. 

With every step he took, Eddie felt lighter. The slamming lockers didn’t phase him, the weird looks from freshmen went right through him, even the shoulder check from a jock coming around the corner glanced right off. In a million years he never would have expected to feel relieved to stay after school, or a pep in his step as he approached a classroom, but in a million years he never expected to find you behind the big desk. 

He could feel the warmth already as he approached your open door. Hear your laughter at his stupid jokes, feel the heat of your arm graze his, catch your hand, and you, by surprise. But when he turned into threshold, knuckles raising out of habit to rap against it, he was met with a different scene.

You didn’t look up. Not even when tapped his knuckles to the wood in a shave-and-a-haircut—two-bits pattern. Head cast down over a sea of papers, you looked like you were drowning. He padded slowly toward the big desk, face dropping as he noticed another detail: the wooden folding chair—his chair—sat empty and open. Across from you.

Eddie dropped his backpack to the floor with a heavy thump, making his presence known. “Hey,” he started, tentative and cautious. 

It wasn’t until he was practically towering over you that you finally looked up at him, face heavy, expressionless, tired. “Hey,” you stated plainly.

Eddie craned his head and searched your eyes. “You ok?”

You blinked and swallowed. “Yeah, everything’s fine.” 

He stood like this a moment, vision locked with yours, dark eyes roving, searching. When you offered nothing more, he simply nodded once, strolled around to the front of your desk, grabbed the back of the chair with a determined slap, and dragged it around to where it belonged — beside you. 

He took his place in it; draping his coat over the back of it like always, creaking the wood with his weight as he plunked himself down.

You resumed wading through the sea, heavy gaze cast over it. 

Eddie toyed with a pencil on your desk, tapping the eraser to the wood as his eyes bored a hole into the side of your head. You just kept on roving, shoulders tense, lips worried. He could have been invisible, watching you from a hole in a poster, or a crack in the wall. You offered him the same level of attention. “Something’s wrong,” he confronted, unable to take the frigid silence for a moment longer.

You sighed and set your pen down. “I’m sorry, it’s just…” your hand worried the back of your neck, “…a lot, this time of year, work wise.” Your eyes met his only for a second before casting downward again at the pages. “Here, let me clear this up.” Your hands busied themselves with the mess, shuffling the paper into a clumsy, hurried pile.

“No—no, it’s…it’s ok.” He scooted his chair closer, feeling so useless all of a sudden, burdensome, like his presence added to your task load. He wanted to help, to alleviate the tension, but his hands simply fumbled in his lap as you collected the clutter with your chalk dusted knuckles. As you tapped the pile of papers against the desk in haste to form a semblance of a pile, his hand gained a mind of its own. 

As if possessed by its own separate consciousness, an impulse deep and thrumming with the need to soothe, it took up refuge in the place between your shoulders; warm and firm, drawing slow, caring circles at your blouse. 

You froze, papers stiff against the surface, gaze straight ahead. His hand followed suit, freezing, twitching, arm locked in its extension.

“Y-you should—” you stuttered, blinking wildly as you found your breath. “Why don’t you go grab your schoolwork?” you asked with a curtness that startled him.

Eddie lurched his hand away like you were a hot stove. “I—I’m sorry I just… w-wanted to help. I’m sorry.” His mind became a whirlpool, swirling with worry as his stomach did backflips. He fumbled with the zipper on his backpack.

“No—no, Eddie, I’m… I’m sorry,” you lamented. 

He’d never seen your face so fraught. Like you’d stepped on a cat’s tail, chased it through the house with apologies. 

“It’s not your fault, it’s…” You swallowed, breaking his gaze. You couldn’t finish the sentence. You didn’t need to. 

Mine.

He was losing you. 

He should have expected it by now. What could he possibly offer you anyway? His hand? A few stolen moments? Some flirty comments to make you feel good about yourself for a second or two? 

He wondered when the other shoe would drop. When you would open your eyes and see this for what it really was — that you were a grown ass woman with a college degree and a real career, and he was twenty years old repeating his senior year of high school for the third fucking time, selling drugs to teenagers, and oh, your student for fuck’s sake. 

It wasn’t lost on him; that he was playing tee-ball in a big league stadium. He stared into the crumpled contents of his backpack with a deep, shaking breath, and pulled out his notebook. It fell from his hand with a dejected slap against the big desk; juvenile amidst the tidy assortment of office supplies. The spiral was bent and crumpled, the cover worn soft from abuse. He sat there a moment and stared at it as the heavy silence swallowed you both. 

Your lips hardened to a bitter line, eyes cast down over the evidence of your position. Over the evidence of his. You wouldn’t look at him, like you were afraid to. Finally, after a suffocating minute, you spoke — frigidly professional. “What do you want to work on today?” 

The question sent a hot rage coursing through him. So that was it, then? Business as usual? Pretending like nothing happened? That none of this was real? Eddie sat back in his seat and boiled with a gaze so intense it could have burned right through you. He wouldn’t give you the satisfaction of an answer. Not until you gave him enough respect to look him in the eyes when you asked the question.

You just sat there, frozen, shoulders locked, eyes cast down at the big desk for an agonizing moment that stretched well past the point of comfort. His gaze was unrelenting, fueled by stubborn indignation. You felt it. He knew you did, because when you finally did submit your eyes to him, you flinched. 

He almost felt bad for it. For causing you to shrink so small, to look so fragile, like how you did when you’d relinquished a fragment of your past, when the impulse to soothe you drove him to your hand. The impulse rose again, as did some annoyance by it; the grip you had on him, even in his most determined anger. 

“What?” you choked out, barely above a whisper.

You knew damn well what. The audacity to ask sent heat coursing through his veins again, but the look in your eyes, like cornered prey, quelled the fire enough to sigh his way to a level-headed response. “You’re acting different,” he said simply. 

You swallowed, breaking his gaze like you’d been caught. It would be insulting to deny it. He could see the gears turning over in your head, the thoughts forming careful words behind your eyes, but in the end, all you could muster was, “I’m sorry.” 

It was a weak admission. It answered nothing, really, other than confirming his suspicions. But it was something. He wanted to press, to poke, to pry, and get to the bottom of what caused this shift in you, but in the silence of the classroom, with floors that echoed and walls that listened, words like “you won’t let me touch you,” seemed too far too direct, far too pointed. In the end, it was your eyes that said the most; welling like pools with all the words he knew would pierce the ever thinning veil, poke holes in your shared secrets, make them monstrous and real.

In the end, your eyes just tugged him forward, made him soft and pliant until all he could muster was decency. “It’s…” he sighed, raking his hand through his hair, “it’s fine.” Soft as he intended it, he couldn’t hide the broken edge.

There was little relief in sigh you gave, heavy and ragged. Your fingers grazed the curled, beaten corner of his notebook with a caring reverence that made him wish that he was paper. 

He wondered how much longer it could go on like this, before you craved something more than he could offer. Before you tired of secret touches and passing glances. Before some hot-shot with a convertible saw you at a bar somewhere and swept you away. The crushing realization hung heavy in the space between you, the gap more cavernous than ever.

Eddie twisted his rings in his lap, fingers burning. It was a miracle you’d let him touch you to begin with. But you did, and he had, and by god, he refused to go back. He couldn’t, he wouldn’t. Not when you’d let him into your world, given him more than he ever thought possible — a sliver of hope. For you. For himself.

When the silence became too much for him to bear, he broke it with your name.

Your first name.

Bitter grief melted to soft shock as your lips parted, eyes widened. At last, he had your full attention. 

With a deep breath, he started. “I don’t… know what happened. If it’s something I did o-or something someone said, or, fuck,” he ran hand through his hair, exasperated, words trailing off into nothing. 

“Eddie,” you started, eyes softening deeper; into sympathy, into pity. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Then why won’t you look at me?” he snapped, but the quiver in his voice betrayed him. 

You swallowed, shaking your head, but before you could give an answer he didn’t want to hear, he continued.

“I know, it—it’s ludicrous, this whole thing. To think that I—” he breathed a bitter laugh, “that you,” he glanced at the door. 

But instead of shutting him down with the ugly truth, you leaned closer, like your whole world hinged on him. He saw it then, hope, glimmering like a golden treasure in the tremble of your lips, in the pinching of your brow, in the welling of your eyes that threatened to spill over.

“I know,” you whispered, like it caused you pain. 

Slowly, Eddie raised his hand to rest on top of his notebook, a fractional distance from yours. Close enough to feel your heat, to catch the subtle tremble of your knuckles. So transfixed by the curve of your delicate fingers beside the broad, ruddy angles of his, that had he not dared to draw his eyes away, he might have missed the tear that pinched through your lashes when you closed them.

Slowly, bravely, he inched his pinky forward. Just close enough to graze yours. It was a phantom of a touch, but you didn’t pull away. In fact, when he looked up, he was surprised to see a whisper of a smile. A sad, soft thing, like it was breaking through layers to surface. Emboldened, he raised his pinky, ever so slightly, to gently stroke yours. The gesture was small and silly, but enough to earn a puff of laughter through the smile that cracked the gloom upon your features.

It opened up a narrow passage, and he entered with the boldest thing that he had ever said.

Maybe it was the fact that he was too stubborn, or perhaps too stupid for his own good, but the sheer audacity of what came out of his mouth next surprised even himself. “Um, my band is playing at the Hideout tomorrow—a-and—” he swallowed, gaining composure as he raised his eyes to your level with conviction. “I want you to come.” 

It was all he could offer. An experience. 

Your jaw dropped. 

“I think—I-Iwant you to see some of the new stuff we’ve been working on. I think you’d like it,” he peddled on.

“Oh, Eddie I—” you shook your head. “I don’t know, I mean—”

He doubled down, brows level and serious. “We—we don’t have to come together. Hell, bring a friend, bring several. It doesn’t have to be a big deal if we don’t make it a big deal. People go to bars all the time.”

As you worried your lips in your teeth, he could see the scales tipping back and forth, weighing the odds and risks against the want. “Oh god, I don’t know.”

“You’re allowed to exist in public. You don’t just like… fold your arms and retreat into the walls here at night,” he laughed.

It snapped a chuckle out of you, like sunlight peeking through the clouds. “Oh yeah? Tell that to the students I run into at the grocery store,” you quipped. Then, as quickly as the sunlight came, the clouds were back. You surveyed the room and dropped your eyes in pensive worry. 

Eddie stroked his pinky over yours, slowly, sweetly. “Please?”

You gave him a look, one that threatened resistance but hiding just beneath it, surrender.

“It doesn’t have to be a big deal,” he persuaded, “just me on stage, and you in the audience cheering with your girlfriends or whatever, well, hopefully cheering. I mean ‘Hand of Doom’ is still a crapshoot sometimes but,” he breathed a laugh. 

With a chuckling shake of your head, your resolve crumbled like sand in front of his eyes. 

“You can boo us too, wouldn’t be the first time. We’ve got tough skin.”

You rolled your eyes and laughed. “I’m not gonna boo you.”

A wicked grin cracked like lightning across his face. “Not gonna, you mean you’ll come then?” 

You sighed, deep and heavy, shifting the scales back and forth.

Eddie tipped his head and raised his eyebrows. “You know you want to.”

“Of course I want to,” you deadpanned.

His umber eyes glimmered, wild and auspicious. “Well then, do what you want,” he said, sitting back in his seat like the decision was easy.

Want. A shelved, forgotten thing, like something you’d lost in the move. Something you’d tucked away long before that. Left to grow stale inside a box, in the back of a closet, in a place you barely remembered. 

It sat beside you now, loud and unignorable, with lips that begged and eyes that pleaded. And you, in all your years of practiced discipline, could no longer deny it. 

Eddie Munson; wildfire. Restless, frenetic, warm, and compelling. 

With a dignified sigh, and a verdant conviction that peeked through the ash, you turned to him at last, and surrendered.

______

A/N: So begins the craziest week in the whole story. Two words: Donkey Kong. 😈

The next chapter might take me a little longer than usual just because it's a moment we've all been waiting for and I want to make sure it's absolutely perfect.

Also, I've been featured on a PODCAST so if you want to hear me talk about this story and specifically the appeal of reader insert fics, check it out HERE!

✨ As always, nothing encourages me to continue writing this story more than hearing from you. Seriously, please give me your thoughts, your theories, your keyboard smashes. Hit up my inbox, my DMs, whatever suits your fancy.

Taglist: @mermaidsandcats29 @toxicjayhoo @ooo-protean-ooo @jadequeen88 @storiesbyrhi @wroteclassicaly @kissmyacdc @mantorokk-writes @loveshotzz @trashmouth-richie @big-ope-vibes @carolmunson @wordscomehither @munson-blurbs @blueywrites @alottanothing @bebe07011 @latenighttalkingwithgrapejuice @idkidknemore @alizztor @godcreatoreli @ethereal27cereal @munsonsgirl71 @alienthings @eddiemunsonsbitcch @emxxblog @siriusmuggle @sidthedollface2 @dollalicia @lma1986 @catherinnn @eddiemunson4life420 @readsalot73 @ruby-dragon @ladylilylost @3rriberri @princess-eddie @nightless @eddieswifu @thew0rldsastage @chaoticgood-munson @hanahkatexo @eddiemunsonsbedroom @beep-beep-sherlock @averagemisfit03 @vintagehellfire @haylaansmi @sllooney @lunaladybug734 @callingmrsbarnes

[cc-tinslebee]

Gojo and Nanami's class years adopting orphaned teens as a canon event (the playlist)

a playlist inspired by Gojo & Megumi, Nanami & Yuji, Geto & Nanako/Mimiko, and my own au of Shoko & Junpei (they are NOT beating the adoption allegations)

listen on spotify!

Harpy Hare - Yaelokre she can't keep them all safe / they will die and be afraid / mother, tell me so I say / Harpy Hare, where have you buried all your children?

Mama's Boy - Dominic Fike half of my heart is in your chest, I’m not a mama’s boy

Mama - My Chemical Romance mama, we’re meant for the flies / and right now, they’re building a coffin your size

Taking What's Not Yours - TV Girl you know where to find me / and I know where to look

Reflections - The Neighbourhood I see my reflection in your eyes (I sold my soul for you, I know you see it too)

Devil’s Advocate - The Neighbourhood I’m the devil’s advocate / you don’t know the half of it / good luck tryna manage it / if a god is a dog and a man is a fraud, then I’m a lost cause

I Bet On Losing Dogs - Mitski I know they’re losing and I’ll pay for my place by the ring / where I’ll be looking in their eyes when they’re down

everything i wanted - Billie Eilish as long as I’m here, no one can hurt you / don’t wanna lie here, but you can learn to

This Night Has Opened My Eyes - The Smiths a shoeless child on a swing / reminds you of your own again / she took away your troubles / oh, but then again she left pain

New Person, Same Mistakes - Tame Impala feel like a brand new person (but you’ll make the same old mistakes)

The Archer - Taylor Swift screaming, who could ever leave me, darling? / and who could stay? / you could stay

If We Have Each Other - Alec Benjamin if we have each other, then we’ll both be fine / I will be your mother, and I’ll hold your hand / you should know I’ll be there for you

Beautiful Boy - John Lennon the monster’s gone / he’s on the run and your daddy’s here

1985 - Bo Burnham my dad was happier than I am / if I could be anyone, dead or alive / I would wanna be my dad in 1985

The Future - Bo Burnham is it gonna end? (Yeah) / When? (Never) / It’s just another day of hanging with my daughter / and I’m living in the future

United in Grief - Kendrick Lamar I hope you find some peace of mind in this lifetime (tell them, tell them the truth)

Daddy Issues - The Neighbourhood go ahead and cry, little boy / you know that your daddy did too / you know what your mama went through

Cinnamon Girl - Lana Del Ray there’s things I wanna talk about / but better not to give / but if you hold me without hurting me / you’ll be the first who ever did

Euphoria - Kendrick Lamar y’all think all my life is rap? / that’s hoe shit, I got a son to raise, but I can see you don’t know nothin’ ‘bout that

She Knows - J. Cole, Cults, Amber Coffman bad things happen to the people you love / and you find yourself praying up to heaven above / but honestly I’ve never had much sympathy / ‘cause those bad things, I always saw them coming for me

Almost (Sweet Music) - Hozier I got some colour back / she thinks so, too / I laugh like me again / she laughs like you

I Hear a Symphony - Cody Fry I used to hear a simple song / that was until you came along / now in its place is something new / I hear it when I look at you

Duvet - bôa I am hurting / I have lost it all

[boasamishipper]

i wasnt a hardcore ted lasso enjoyer i watched p casually can u remind me what happened in 2x04 and/or explain why it needs to be disavowed /genq

on a 1977 episode of the hit tv show happy days, the fonz (played by henry winkler) travels to LA with the gang and, when his bravery is challenged, water-skis in swim trunks and his trademark leather jacket while jumping over a live shark. the show went on for another 7 years, but in 1985, radio personality jon hein used this moment to coin the expression jumping the shark - that is, a clear moment when a creative work has "exhausted its core intent and is introducing new ideas that are discordant with or an extreme exaggeration of its original theme or purpose."

when ted lasso premiered in 2020, it was warm, witty, and winsome - the balm many needed after the exhaustion and cruelty of the covid-19 pandemic and the last four years of the trump administration. the show was quickly renewed for a second season, the fourth episode of which was their christmas special. said episode focused on the afc richmond found family and ted and rebecca doing good deeds and ended with everyone singing christmas songs outside the higgins' house, at which point one of the higgins boys sees santa's sleigh flying across the sky.

that episode, to me, marks the exact moment where the show jumped the shark.

from that episode onward, the show became less grounded in reality. the writers downplayed or ignored heavier plotlines with massive implications (sam accused the nigerian government of corruption in a press conference and lost the team a major sponsor in dubai air...and then faced no consequences whatsoever personally or professionally) in favor of elevating silly scenes that did nothing to move the plot forward (ex. the majority of 'beard after hours', the afc richmond team's plotline in the infamous amsterdam episode, the scene where the team tied strings around each other's dicks and practiced that way). the heavier themes that the writers did attempt to tackle (racism and homophobia in british football, sexism, etc.) were done clumsily, with the in-world implication that such systemic issues were the result of a few bad apples and could be solved with teamwork and togetherness.

s1 of ted lasso was so good because for all its focus on kindness and warm fuzzy feelings, the show was still grounded in reality. it still had stakes. the threat of richmond getting relegated was tangible. the consequences of people's actions were real. s2's focus on whether or not the team would get promoted to the premier league was what saved it, but once the team returned to the premier league in s3, all was lost. what was the show's goal that season? to beat west ham? to beat rupert? to get one over on nate? to win the whole damn thing? even characters in universe didn't seem to know. s3 was as aimless and disjointed as it was bloated, with episodes regularly clocking in at over an hour. the show had, very obviously, run out of things to say, and did its best to hide that fact behind season-long mysteries (what did the psychic's prediction mean??) and scenes in the locker room written with all the grace and charm of a 1990s after-school special.

s3 was shut out at the emmys, and didn't make a splash with audiences or critics. and despite the change of setting (ted's coaching the women's team now!), if the writers don't abandon the aimless bloat and exaggerated saccharine that permeated the show from 2x04 onward in favor of real stakes and real character growth and tipping the scales back in favor of realism, s4 will likely go the same way.

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

ON HOLIDAY IN THE FAR EAST -- SOAKING IN THE KAWAII VIBES ALL AROUND.

PIC INFO: Spotlight on Calvin Johnson, vocalist of American indie pop/lo-fi music group BEAT HAPPENING, during their mini-stay in Tokyo, c. 1984, during which they recorded their "Tea Tea Breakfast" cassette, a.k.a., the first official release by the group. 📸: Bret? Heather?

"When I was young I thought I was old, I sailed across the sea To Tokyo…"

-- "Youth" (1984) by BEAT HAPPENING

Source: www.pinterest.com/pin/111886371962581017.

[mymelodic-chapel]

Beat Happening- Beat Happening (Twee Pop, Slacker Rock, Jangle Pop) Released: November 1985 [K Records] Producer(s): Greg Sage

[sunny-mercya]

Sounds like a Melody

Apollo x Male Reader

Fandom -> Percy Jackson Series

Requested by -> @r0sep3tal

Masterlist | Part 1 | Related OS | Song

Give me more tragedy, more harmony and fantasy, my dear

Set it alight, we're head over heels in love

1985 was a year, where Apollo truly felt how the burning love he had for you—his husband he adored oh so much, like the stars in the night and the sunrise in the morning—was about to vanish, slowly ever so fading like a distant memory or cloud, into nothing but emptiness.

His heart aches painfully, whenever you wouldn't sleep next to him or didn't wanted to be held in his arms anymore.

All of this started, thousands years and decades ago, with the simple and innocent question of wanting Children.

You and Apollo tried many times, but when it was clear that you couldn't birth any—there had been one success, centuries ago, but Apollo didn't want to risk your fragile health again—and I mind you, the procedure of how god and goddesses giving birth is a complexity of its own—the subject was dropped quickly and you two continued to enjoy the tranquility.

Everything had been fine, till Zeus—no one was surprised—his other siblings and deities, decided to mate with humans (more and more than they had before already) and creating Half-Bloods.

This of course arose questions in you and towards Apollo, because if the other deities could do such—why couldn't he?

So after a long argument with Apollo, who assured you he would never dare to cheat on you and then you explained, that it isn't cheating when you know it from the beginning and give consent—Apollo begrudgingly agreed.

When Camp Half-Blood had been created, albeit a messy concept in the very beginning, you wanted to live in a house with enough space of garden—so that all your children could live there. Though the Children, over the years, never wanted to came or meet you, instantly hating you after they got claimed in Camp.

~~~

It was around midnight when Apollo and you, hand in hand, strolled through the empty streets of Santa Monica—a city you've come to love, when Zeus had announced that the Olymp will be moved to the USA for a scenery change.

Apollo was happy and although this could be the last time he could be with you—before you might plead to Zeus for a divorce—Apollo felt satisfied that he could get you out of the house, you once again begun to detest whenever you passed by the empty—besides the ones with Apollo, you and the handful of children which you cared for (and still do) in the early years of your marriage with Apollo—picture frames.

Apollo had hoped, foolish perhaps even, when he takes you to a nice dinner and a midnight stroll—and maybe to a swim, fully nude, showing you passion once more—that extinguished flame, which cuts through his fated heart—which is filled sorrowful with undying love and adoration for you—so slowly painfully, that there are nights where he had vomited blood, would be burning once more again, for another eternity—so high and mighty, like Greek fire.

When walking along the beach—it has to be another checked move from fate, otherwise Apollo didn't knew how to explain the next happening—passing by the few remaining couples here and there and rolling waves are an tranquility sound to the ears—there comes a song played, from a lonesome forgotten Boombox.

Around the second time, when Alphaville's song; Sounds like a Melody, had been played again—was it the beat? the lyrics? Or the melody itself? Probably all of them together—you grabbed Apollo's hand and moved with him on the sand.

Oh, mighty stars, thought Apollo as he danced with you—body close and sometimes with distance—watching how you were so carefree and joyful again, laughing wholeheartedly and singing along to the song—which is for certain on a loop.

It's like a repeat of the longing memory—during the first night, after you had finally fully recovered, where Apollo danced with you through the clouds—so gently and soft—and when you asked—meek and shy and your voice still hoarse but honey soft—Apollo just who you are exactly (and again) and when Apollo kissed you on the lips, telling you; you're [Name], his love for endless and beyond eternity—the adoration in your eyes, were sun blinding.

And during another night, after the wedding ceremony, where you moaned out Apollos name—the moon and stars being the only witness to such intimacy—full of pleasure and love filled joy—Apollo swore to himself, to never leave you alone and only bath you in a passion the deities alone could do.

Gently you took Apollo's face in your hands, looking him in the eyes. Apollo swore, no he was certain—River Stxy and the stars above sole witness—that the gleam of adoration, you once had in your (e/c) eyes—which sucked him in, like a soft spring breeze—had returned with a new arising spark.

You leaned in, near to your husband, kissing him on the lips—biting on his lower lip to ask for entrance and fighting for a dominance, neither of you wanted to lose—and tumbling down onto the sand.

Apollo had thought, year 1985 would be the final end of the flourishing love between you and him—but it isn't, it's just the beginning of a new chapter with love much stronger than ever.

Ares, Hermes, Aphrodite and Eros had taken somewhere near cover, watching you two dance and turning respectfully away—once Apollo and you passionately devoted to one another.

Ares moved along to the song and Hermes thought, how absolutely graceless and embarrassing his brother looks like—shaking his head to get such unpleasant memory out of his mind.

»See! I told you guys, that song is real magical!« said Ares proudly and albeit a bit too loud.

»Yes, I know. It was me who send such idea to the band after all.«

»Oh hush Eros, important is that [Name] and Apollo have rekindled their love, after all I quite like my brother in law and it would be such a tragic shame if they would be separated«

»Thus why we created such brilliant plan.«

»Actually,« started Hermes, pinching the bridge of his nose and sighed out in annoyance,

»the Fates and Stars would never let it happen anyways that those lovebirds are fading from one another.«

»Hermes, shut up. You're such a mood killer.« grunted Ares.

~~~

Jason always wanted to know the story of how his parents had adopted him. When Jason was little he always thought his Papa had magically conjured him or something and Jason remembers, how you looked at him all confused and questioning yourself for about two hours.

Jason knew how his younger brother Will got adopted—his dad had a heated night with Will's biological mother and once born, she had dropped Will off to his dads—but Jason wanted to know his own story now and so he asked his parents.

It had been in 1994;

Apollo laid on the couch, watching one of those Sitcoms the humans had created and in his humble opinion, he would rather watch Cartoons or cooking shows instead of this—but it's 3 in the morning and Sitcoms are the only shows which are tolerable to watch, besides the Tele-shopping at such hour.

You still hadn't got back from the small grocery shopping you wanted to do hours ago. Apollo wasn't worried, although with the heavy pouring rain and consider your fragile health—yeah, scrap that, Apollo begun to worry about you ever so slightly.

Around five in the morning, Apollo almost fully asleep—drooling just a bit—you did come home, ringing your husband out of dreamland and—when he tiredly dazed open the doors, confused and needed a few minutes to get the current situation—pushing him out of your way, while running towards your bedroom.

»Apollo! I need hot water and milk in separate bowls and ambrosia! Real quick!« you ordered at him from above the stairs.

»What for exactly?«

»Just do as I say! Fucking please!« and Apollo did what you asked him, knowing that when you curse—at him directly—it's a serious matter.

Once upstairs inside the bedroom, with the required things on a tray, Apollo saw for what you needed them.

There, in the middle of the bed—carefully surrounded by the blankets—lay a sickly and blue looking baby, not older than perhaps a few months.

»Where did you get the child?«

»I tell you later. Mix the ambrosia with the milk and then hold the bowl under my palm so I can add my blood to it.«

Apollo had many questions, but was also perplexed at the way you tell him medical instructions when he's the one with such knowledge.

»The baby looks already close to deaths door, if you give him your blood, the chance of him surviving is fatally slim.« Apollo narrowed his eyes at you, wanting to know what or who got in your head to do such decision.

»But there is a chance! And I will take it, if you like it or not. I won't let this baby, when the fates themselves had lead me to him, abandon and die, like how it happens with me. So, by Zeus, help me or fucking leave me alone.«

By now you were crying and Apollo had taken a deep breath, realising you relieving a memory which should be buried too deep to be remembered—and that there's a desperation in your current doing he couldn't decipher.

It had been hours after you have giving the baby, so small and fragile, the mixture of either possible life or death—and gentle cradling him between you and Apollo.

»Would you mind telling me now, where you found him?«

»In a alley, behinds piles of trash, after I finished grocery—oh, the bags are still in the car—and like I couldn't just let him there all by himself, but no one of the humans wanted to help, so I took him here.«

»He's mother probably abandoned him...«

»Her loss. Now the little warrior has two dads, who will cater him in endless love«

And when the first cries came, a sign that the boy had survived, Apollo and you smiled at each other.

»What should be his name, my love?«

»Jason will be his name.«

We need the ecstasy, the jealousy, the comedy of love

The ringing of your laughter, sounds like a melody

[clioerato]

No Upside Down AU Hawkins, 1985

Eddie finds Steve — bruised, bloody, and covered in cuts. He stares at the former King of Hawkins High in total shock and horror, but he can’t not help him. Steve doesn’t say much. Just mutters something about a fight with Billy. Eddie’s not buying it — not when Billy clearly tried to rearrange Steve’s face.

But Eddie figures it’s none of his business. He drives Steve home and, at the last second, decides to stay the night. Because the house is cold and empty. Because Steve is trembling and asks him to. Eddie says yes.

And then things get weird.

Billy shows up in the middle of the night, pounding on the front door and screaming things like “You’re mine, I’m not letting you go” and “You know who you belong to.” Eddie’s like… what the actual hell. Billy is not just angry — he’s obsessed. Unhinged. Raging.

Steve stands in the doorway with a bat like it’s the most normal thing in the world and somehow manages to scare Billy off. Later, Eddie, still processing all this, asks, “How the hell did you get involved with that drug dealer? He’s been totally losing it lately.” And Steve just blinks and says, “Drug dealer?”

Yep.

Billy’s been dealing. For a while now. Only what he’s dealing (and using) isn’t just drugs. It’s… something new. Something big.

Whatever it is, it messes people up. Makes them paranoid, violent. Like kill-your-best-friend-for-dropping-your-bookkind of messed up. Steve starts piecing it together — the mood swings, the rage, the obsession. Sure, Billy always had a temper, but this? This is something else.

Slowly, Steve and Eddie realize: Billy isn’t just a dealer. He’s popular. He’s at the top of the high school food chain. People follow him. People like him. Which means it’s only a matter of time before half the school is tripping on this new drug, and Hawkins High turns into a teenage warzone.

And no, they can’t go to the cops. Steve got into a fight with Billy — the police will write it off as boys being boys. Power struggles. Teen drama. Nothing serious.

No one’s going to believe Eddie. He’s already the town freak.

So Steve’s got a list of problems:

Save Max. Because even in this universe, Steve’s forehead may as well have “Mom #1” tattooed across it in neon. And Billy? Billy already beat Steve half to death — Steve doesn’t want to imagine what he’d do to a kid. So yeah, Steve might have to commit a little casual kidnapping to get Max out of that trailer. Which, legally, looks real bad: eighteen-year-old steals child. Not great.

Act fast. Billy’s popularity plus brain-melting drugs is a house fire — and it’s spreading. Fast. Steve doesn’t have the luxury of waiting for the cops to connect dots.

He needs Eddie. Because Eddie knows the local drug scene. Because Eddie lives in the same trailer park as Billy. Because Eddie watches people — and no one would suspect him if he starts watching Billy a little closer.

Try to reach Billy. (Not that Steve says this out loud.) Because... there was something between them. Calling it a relationship might be pushing it — Billy is a walking disaster of internalized homophobia and unresolved trauma — but something happened. And now? Billy’s completely lost in a violent swirl of want, hate, jealousy, love, addiction.

Steve can’t go to the cops and say, “I’m being stalked by another guy.” It’s Hawkins, 1985. That’s not how it works.

He’s alone. Still living in that empty house. Billy already broke in once. And who can he talk to? Dustin? What, trauma-dump on a literal child? Nancy? Oh yeah, let’s tell your ex you were kind-of-sort-of sex with Billy Hargrove. Great idea.

So he’s left with Eddie. And Eddie stays. They don’t get along perfectly at first. But over time, they start to understand each other. Steve starts to feel… something. Something warm. Scary. He’s falling. And it terrifies him. Because what if Eddie finds out he’s bi? What if he freaks out and leaves? (Yeah yeah, I’ve read a hundred fics where Eddie’s terrified that Steve will find out he’s gay. I want the reverse. I want Steve watching Eddie glance at Chrissy and thinking, “Damn. I’m screwed.”)

Oh, and throw in a conspiracy theory or two — just for spice. What’s with that weird government-funded science lab on the edge of town? Why are the drugs so experimental? And what the hell is the “Hawkins Upside Down Program – 1986”?

P.S. If you want Steve to have a something like full-blown bisexual crisis, let it be over the fact that he clearly has a type. And that type is drug dealers.

[azulghoul]

Fleur de Douleur . . .

Read more about Fleur here!

⚠️ Content warning for mentions of suicide, cannibalism, murder, etc! Take caution before reading!

Basic Information

Name : Fleurine Blanchet

➺ Alias: Fleur de Douleur

Date of Birth: November 2nd, 1985 (Scorpio)

➺ Date of Death: Early 2005 (19 years old)

Gender: Female

➺ Orientation: Unlabeled

Species: Undead Monster (former human)

Birthplace: Everett, Massachussets

Mental

Personality: On the outside, Fleur is cold, collected, and somewhat deadpan. She doesn’t care about other people's emotions unless it directly benefits or harms her. She believes the majority of humans are annoying and interchangeable, preferring to not interact with them unless she’s hungry or needs something.

➺ Acting like this gives her a sense of power and control in a way, something she was deprived of during most of her life back as a human. Occasionally, she may start conflicts out of boredom, getting a kick out of seeing expressed emotions like fear and disgust. She is also manipulative to her victims to some extent, indulging in power trip after power trip as if to feed her past self what it was deprived of - power.

➺ This is all really a front she puts up to hide how deeply insecure and miserable she really is. She has a fear of most relationships, whether they’d be platonic or romantic, due to the possibility of her being vulnerable or manipulated in those dynamics, so she often pushes those people away by being as unapproachable as possible. She has long forgotten what it's like to be human, so she can be socially awkward or potentially perceived as weird in a way when trying to approach people.

Mental Health: Fleur has a lot of issues but no official diagnosis. her family never prioritized her problems growing up so neither does she.

Likes: Fleur likes gore, particularly human gore, typical of her diet. She craves the life sustenance of humans and needs it to live, and that often comes in the form of their blood and vital organs. She also likes feeling powerful over others. It’s what she was deprived of in her human life and now that she’s a monster - she just can’t get enough! Science is another notable interest, especially biology, the study of life. It’s an interest she’s had as a human and hasn’t quite let go of it. She is also quite interested in what happens after death. And cats. Fleur has a slight soft spot for cats.

Dislikes: Fleur hates people - Beyond her trust issues, she’s quite a social recluse and does not like public spaces. She also hates feeling ‘weak’ compared to anyone since strength over people is what brings her stability, without it, it’s as if everything falls apart.

Hobbies: Fleur enjoys hiding in her basement and trying to distract herself from her soul crushing reality as much as possible, which can include oversleeping, frequently getting lost in thought, reading books or watching tv, etc. Anything that serves as a decent distraction for the time being.

Physical

Appearence: At 4'8" and 170 lbs, this bringer of suffering is notably short and overweight. Her complexion is a deep brown and her black hair is in shoulder length locs.

➺ Her most prominent non-human characteristic are her yellow sclera, her irises drowning in its glow when she feels particulary hungry or enraged. Her teeth are also notably sharp, ideal for piercing human flesh.

➺ In terms of dress, she typically wears baggy, loose fitted clothing, with few accessories besides occasional necklaces or wallet chains. She rarely, if ever, wears skirts, dresses, or clothing of a more feminine, tight fitted, or revealing nature.

Health: Physical health is mostly fine, though tends to worsen when she doesn’t eat enough people. She’s also incredibly sensitive to foods outside of her normal diet of raw meat and flesh, though more on that later.

➺ Fleur has an irregular pulse that either never beats or beats very faintly. However, when feeling strong emotions like fear or excitement, her heartbeat quickens to the pace of a normal human.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths: One notable strength would have to be her intelligence. Fleur was educated prior to her death, and performed well academically. A lot of people underestimate her intelligence due to her short temper and general mannerisms, under the assumption that her irritability makes her inherently stupid when that couldn’t be further from the truth.

➺ It allows her to take further advantage of potential victims because of what they cannot seem to predict. Another quality would have to be her ability to pick up on manipulation tactics. She’s all too familiar - especially as a former victim and a current perpetrator.

Weaknesses: Fleur has extreme trust issues and seems to be sketched out whenever people are even remotely non-hostile towards her. This may be because she’s seemed to never experience a relationship without a power imbalance. She’s known abuse all too well, and this unhealthy way of coping negatively impacts her relationships and leaves her quite lonely.

➺ Of course, she’ll never admit she wants to feel wanted for once - trying to emotionally cut herself off from everyone and reminding herself that humans are all the same - greedy little vermin that are only good in servitude or her stomach.

Abilities: In part to being undead, she can withstand a lot of injuries and situations that would typically kill a normal person. Of course, there are a few exceptions - starvation, decapitation, and disembowelment can each put an end to her lifespan.

➺ Fleur can grow back lost limbs/organs, but there is a bit of a catch - whatever damage occurs on the previous part shows up on the newly formed part. For example, if she loses a finger and it gets burned after it is seperated, then her new finger will have burn scars. How fast this recovery happens depends on severity and how much she’s eaten prior to the injury, ranging from a few hours to several months.

➺ Fleur can psychologically twist her victims into hollow, obedient shells of what they once were, placing deranged and intrusive thoughts into their heads, further making them spiral into mindlessness with desires that are not their own. It’s possible to resist these thoughts or to fight back, but the more fear someone feels, the more susceptible they are to it. This is also reversible, but after a prolonged period of time like over a day, it will become permanent

Drawbacks: Fleur cannot digest human food, and it makes her repulsed and sick. In small quantities it can give her headaches or nausea, but in larger quantities it can render her gravely ill. Symptoms of grave illness may include feverish bodily temperature, frequent vomiting and other digestive issues, whole body weakness and fatigue, temporary loss of hearing or vision, extreme pain in head and stomach, a lot of fever and flu like symptoms. The only human foods she can eat without these effects are raw meat and water.

➺ Fleur’s human diet has a few drawbacks on its own. If she goes too long without eating, she may black out and attack whoever’s closest out of hunger. She may also start feeling sick when she doesn’t eat, occasionally to a debilitating extent. Human flesh also has addictive properties and it may lead her to impulsively binge just to get a quick dopamine rush.

➺ Fleur has hurt herself by accident with her own monstrous attributes on more than one occasion. She also has to file down her teeth from time to time to keep them from cutting her mouth.

➺ Although this has nothing to do with anything supernatural, Fleur also cannot run very fast. She’s used to tackling her victims with her sheer strength and using her manipulation abilities, chasing people is not her strong suit.

Lore and Relationships

Backstory: The 2023 version (5.3k words) can be read here but it's outdated. The rewrite will come sometime in 2025 mayhaps.

Family: Florence's parents were rather strict, limiting her personal freedoms to an extended degree and prioritizing her education. Being the eldest daughter and the second eldest of five, she had frequent responsibilities. Unfortunately, she was rather under-appreciated for her contributions and moments of praise from her parents, or a lot of authority figures in her life, were rare.

➺ Her parents generally seemed to be more biased towards their sons over their daughters. They held higher standards for their sons, expecting them to fulfill these academically successful, overall dominant roles in life, but they received more attention overall.

➺ Because of her parents, she's grown a strong dislike for higher powers and authority figures. She prefers living freely without restrictions on her behavior, how she presents herself, etc.

Significant Other(s): Fleur was essentially friendless throughout her childhood, both her parents’ restrictions and her reserved behavior contributing to this. Florence’s first ‘boyfriend’ was someone who initially asked her out as a joke, viewing her as a complete loser desperate for any and all attention, prioritizing her studies and familial approval over everything else. He used her to do things like chores and homework for him, in exchange for attention. Florence, never being in a healthy relationship before, was essentially devoting herself to him simply because he gave her remotely positive attention.

➺ He behaved terribly to most people around him, his parents being doormats and letting him do anything he wanted, which Fleur envied in a way. He had some degree of power in a way, something she never really had. She absorbed a lot of his terrible traits and habits, idealizing him in a way, many of which she still has today. After her suicide, he felt guilty for contributing to it and he was shunned from her family and the majority of his friends and family, being viewed as irredeemable and terrible in their eyes.

➺ Coming back as a possessed vessel, she convinced him that he didn’t need any of those people anyway, and that she’ll still care about him regardless, despite being completely over him and fallen out of love. He felt as though the only true way of making up for her would be to serve her. Taking advantage of his terrible mental state and making him entirely devoted to her, she got her first taste of power, something she’ll remain covetous for eternally. He spent the rest of his life working for her, killing people off for her as food, sacrificing organs and parts of his body for her to eat, and buying her material things.

Extra Notes

➺ Fleur currently lives in a house belonging to an older couple, both of whom are controlled by her. Her income is whatever money they earn when they work. She hides away in their typically locked basement, and whatever guests they have over are typically unaware she exists.

➺ Fleur rarely uses weapons, relying mainly on telepathically manipulating her victims into killing for her, killing themselves, or letting her kill them. But on occasion, she may use the closest objects to her (ie rocks, knives, etc).

➺ A lot of the clothes Fleur wears were either bought by the people she lives with or were stolen from past victims. She might even kill someone for the sole purpose of stealing their clothes if she likes their fit enough.

➺ Fleur actually has a strong repulsion for romance-related media, whether it would be music, movies, etc. she just can't stand those sorts of topics. She hates the idea of it all, finding it gross and tacky, as well as unfitting for someone like her. It might potentially be out of bitterness that she's never been in a healthy relationship before

➺ Fleur is actually one hell of an ugly crier. Like full on loud shrieking sobs, choking up, puffy eyes, and tears and snot running down her face. She doesn't like the idea of being viewed as weak so it's rare to see her like this unless she's truly terrified beyond comprehension.

➺ 'Fleur' means flower in French. 'De Douleur' means 'from/of pain'. The flower part of her name represents how she blossomed into something new, how she arose from the grave, rising from the dirt (as flowers do). 'From pain' shows *what* caused this sudden change (the pain of her experience). The 'de' part makes it even better due to its double meaning (it can also mean 'of') and being a 'Flower of pain' means she is no longer just someone who suffered, but now a bringer of suffering.

➺ Fleur rarely, if ever, kills children. Not out of any sense of morality or remorse, but because she just finds children annoying and would prefer to avoid the trouble of going near one. Also they're small and don't provide her much nutrients anyway.

➺ Due to being a monster, Fleur has enhanced senses. One of them being smell, allowing her to find her prey easier. Fleur can also literally smell fear off of a person, giving her an indication of how vulnerable they are. But having an enhanced sense of smell isn't always a good thing, since there are things she'd rather not pick up on.

➺ Fleur cannot get new piercings because her body would treat it like a wound due to her healing abilities. A piercing would last for maybe a day at most before her body rejects the piercing and leaves her skin looking untouched, as if she never got it at all. The only exception to this rule are her earlobe piercings because she got them done before she became a monster.