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kairoscelrosis · 4 years ago

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Ocean Eyes - A Leonard “Bones” McCoy x Reader Fic

Series: Star Trek TOS

Pairings: Leonard “Bones” McCoy x Reader, Implied Spirk

Characters: Reader, Leonard “Bones” McCoy, James T Kirk, Spock, Montgomery Scotty, Nyota Uhura

Trigger Warnings: No triggers apply.

Word Count: 5,202 words

Author’s Note:

This is my first fic! It has a small amount of fluff, but its mainly full of a plot revolving around the two mentioned relationships.

You can also find this fic on Wattpad.

Summary:

Y/N is confused about her feelings for Dr. McCoy. When Spock and Kirk come to know, they devise a fantabulous plan to bring both of them together.

I was lying down on my bed in a darkened room. Thoughts wandered, but always stopped on one thing. Rather, on one person. It’s weird. I had always liked him a lot – platonically, of course. This was different. “What the hell?”, I said out loud. But that didn’t help the storm raging in my mind. My alarm beeped. 1530 hours. “Damn.” I huffed, got changed, and left for the Bridge. My eight-hour shift was about to begin.

______________________________________________________________

On the bridge

“Captain.”, I said in a confident, but tired voice. “Lieutenant Y/L/N reporting for Beta Shift.”

“Yes, Lieutenant.” Kirk replied without looking towards me. “Please report to Mr. Spock for this shift’s agenda. You will be taking over from him for the Beta shift.”

I walked over to Mr. Spock’s science station. “Commander Spock. Lieutenant Y/L/N reporting.” His head bobbed in a small greeting.

Spock and I had known each other since my academy days when he was my professor for most subjects. He was my role model and mentor, and I wanted to follow in his footsteps. He was also my closest friend on the ship.

After briefing me with the progress he had made on the current star charting assignment and about his inferences on the nearby nebula, Spock walked over to Kirk, and whispered something. Kirk nodded and said, “Please continue with our research assignments. Mr. Sulu, you have the conn. I’ll be in my quarters.”

______________________________________________________________

Spock’s POV

After filling in Y/N, I walked over to the Captain and quietly said, “Captain, I would like to speak with you.” He nodded, gave his usual orders, and both of us left the bridge for his quarters.

Once in the sanctuary of his quarters, the Captain turned to me, and asked, “What is it, Mr. Spock? You seem concerned.”

I replied in the affirmative, and said, “My concern is for Lieutenant Y/L/N, sir. She seems to be ‘out of her elements’, as would be expressed in Terran colloquial.”

The Captain offered a small, though rueful smile at this. “I agree with you Mr. Spock. She is not one of the outspoken ones, but she does seem a bit… subdued. Perhaps we should ask her what the problem is?”

“Perhaps. Though I have another suggestion sir. We are going to take a short shore leave on Star Base 12 in a few hours. Why not relieve Lieutenant Y/L/N early from her Beta shift so that she can recuperate and make the most out of this shore leave?”

“Yes Mr. Spock. An excellent idea. Anyhow, we take shore leaves only once in a blue moon, so why not allow her to rest a bit before going back out into the dark. I believe we will establish orbit around Star Base 12 by 1800 hours. I myself will relieve her at 1830 hours. Thank you for bringing this to my notice Mr. Spock.”

“My pleasure.”

______________________________________________________________

A few hours later…

Y/N’s POV

After several attempts to refuse an early shore leave and in complete denial of any need of this favour, I had finally beamed down onto Star Base 12.

Along with Scotty.

You might wonder why I was accompanied by the Chief Engineer. That was because of my resistance to go down. Kirk had asked Scotty to accompany me so that I did not sneak back onto the ship. I sighed inwardly.

Wanting to make the most of this time, I asked Scotty to come along with me to a street market. I loved the vibe of street markets – the dim lights, the muffled voices, walking around – it was the perfect ambience to relax.

“Hey Scotty! Come on!” I turned and called to Scotty, who was dragging his feet like a bored teenager. “Ach lass! I didn’t know that I’d have to babysit ya today. I wanted to go to the bar.” He moaned.

“Okay, okay, Lieutenant Commander Scott. Lieutenant Y/L/N will not hold you for long. Come, roam around with me for a while, and then we’ll both go to the bar.”

His face lit up like that of a child on Christmas morning. After that, there was a certain bounce in his step, not stalling anymore.

While scanning the stalls, I saw a small, wooden stringed instrument which piqued my interest. Picking it up gingerly, I held it in my hands. It felt right.

“Ah lass! What are ya doing with a ukulele?”

“You know the name of this instrument?” The shopkeeper asked, visibly surprised.

“Yes of course! My gran used to play this really well. She got it as an heirloom from her mother, who got it from her mother.”

I strummed the strings of the ukulele tentatively. A beautiful sound, though not very melodious, emerged.

“Can I buy this? It’s beautiful.”

The shopkeeper smiled, “You have really good taste. I can see you play this beautifully. That will be ten credits. If you want, I can teach this to you as well.” Her offer seemed genuine.

“Thank you so much!”

______________________________________________________________

At the bar

I let an evil grin emerge. Scotty had his head down. I had known his weakness, and now I had the chance to escape.

Well, escape is a strong word, but I had been forced to come down – so it was justified.

I had just drunk a glass of iced tea, not preferring to be hungover the next morning. I had never really liked drinking anyway.

As I was sneaking out of the bar, I saw HIM coming in. My heart immediately jumped into my mouth, beating like crazy. I hid behind the table where an employee was granting entry to the guests. He gave me a weird look but did nothing about me being there.

Once certain that HE was gone, I brushed my clothes, held my head high and started to walk towards the door, when I heard someone call me, and I froze.

“Y/N? Whatcha doin’ here? I thought ya didn’t drink.” The southern drawl rolling smoothly off his tongue.

“H-Hey Doc. Yeah, I don’t drink. I was just giving Scotty some company. I’m going back to my room now.”

“’Kay, great! Have a nice evening.” He sauntered away to where Scotty lay knocked out.

This was getting harder day by day.

______________________________________________________________

The next morning

I was back in my quarters on the Enterprise. Last night had been great, though I won’t admit this to anyone.

After encountering Bones at the bar, I had gone to the shopkeeper who had sold me the ukulele, and I sat there till late at night, learning the basics. I picked up the chords pretty quickly and was onto my first song by midnight. The street shops were open till 2 in the morning, and the shopkeeper seemed keen on teaching me, so I figured why not learn as much as I could.

She told me she had many copies (yes, actual paper copies!) of songs. She called them scores or sheet music. She gave me all the copies of scores she possessed, and I was so grateful!

Rand smuggled me back onto the ship by manning the transporter. She was going down in a while and didn’t mind disobeying Kirk.

The clock flashed 0800 hours as I was snapped out of my thoughts about the previous night. I wanted to utilize the rest of my shore leave efficiently. I got up, showered, and walked to the replicator. When nothing came out even after swiping the card multiple times, I let a sigh out and decided that I’d have to go to the mess.

I swaggered along the deserted decks and corridors of the ship, making no effort to conceal myself. Most people were down on the planet, including the two I wanted to avoid.

Walking into the mess, I ordered popcorn (weird choice, I know) and sat down. Spock, who had entered the mess just after me, slid into the seat opposite me, both of us falling into a comfortable silence. We often had our breakfast together. I was one of the people closest to Spock.

Putting down the Vulcan equivalent of an apple, Spock looked at me and asked, “How are you Y/N? You seemed extremely sombre yesterday. That is unlike you.”

The corner of my mouth lifted slightly at his concern. “I am fine.” I replied. “I guess the work got to me. Yesterday was a nice break.” So much for not telling anyone, I thought, amused. “I don’t think Kirk thought of relieving me early yesterday. Someone else was behind that move.” I gave a teasing grin. Spock’s eyes crinkled in a semblance of a grin.

Once done with our respective meals, I said, “Come to my quarters tonight, Spock. I’ll tell you about my evening and you can tell me about yours. Maybe I’ll even play you something. Bring your lyre as well. I wanna hear you play it.”

Spock bobbed his head, confirming that he’d be there.

______________________________________________________________

That evening

I heard knocking at the door. “Come in.” Spock walked in with his Vulcan lyre in hand. I gave him a smile.

Though my quarters were small, I had made enough space for us to sit comfortably, without invading each other’s space. He sat down on the straight backed, cushioned seat which he preferred, and I pulled my desk chair to sit on.

We talked about the events of last night, me reciting everything other than the event when I ran into the Doc (that incident was kept to myself for the time being). Spock told how he had done some work in the science lab, read a book, and practiced playing the lyre (though he didn’t need any).

“You said that you were going to play for me?” It was more a request than a question. “Yeah.”, I replied. “I bought this old Terran stringed instrument called the ukulele yesterday, and the lady who sold it to me taught me how to read sheet music and also helped me play my first song. It’s “Ocean Eyes” by Billie Eilish from 2016. I’ve heard it before. You wanna hear it?”

Spock lifted his eyebrows in classic Spock fashion, essaying his agreement.

I rarely sang, but when I did, it was only in the privacy of my own quarters. Spock had heard me sing, though not very often.

I started strumming, trying to pick the beat from where I had to start the vocal.

I've been watchin' you for some time Can't stop starin' at those ocean eyes Burning cities and napalm skies Fifteen flares inside those ocean eyes Your ocean eyes.

No fair You really know how to make me cry When you gimme those ocean eyes I'm scared I've never fallen fro…

I faltered. Spock nodded, his eyes intently watching, eyebrow perked. I could see something glint in his eyes but didn’t understand what it was. I resumed the strumming.

I've never fallen from quite this high Fallin' into your ocean eyes Those ocean eyes.

I've been walkin' through a world gone blind Can't stop thinkin' of your diamond mind Careful creature made friends with time He left her lonely with a diamond mind And those ocean eyes.

No fair You really know how to make me cry When you gimme those ocean eyes I'm scared I've never fallen from quite this high Fallin' into your ocean eyes Those ocean eyes.

I had been nervous, not because it was my first time playing this song in front of somebody (because I knew Spock would never disregard the importance of beginning, and subsequently growing as a person), but because this song reminded me of a certain someone. If Spock connected the dots, I don’t know what his reaction would be, and whether he would tell McCoy or Jim.

There was silence for a moment. Spock opened his mouth to say something, but then, his communicator beeped. Flipping it open, he said, “Spock here.”

Kirk’s voice cracked through. “Mr. Spock. I request you to please report to my quarters. I have an urgent matter to discuss with you.”

Spock looked at me, that glint still there. I nodded my assent and picked up his lyre from my bed and handed it to him, as he stood from his chair to leave.

I mouthed, “See you later”, and then the door shut.

Lying down on my bed, I decided that it would be best to go to sleep.

But sleep just wouldn’t come.

______________________________________________________________

Spock’s POV

I had had a nice evening with Y/N, though the lyrics of her song still perplexed me. I was reminded of someone by those lyrics, but I can’t seem to determine whom. My brain was “short-circuiting”, as Jim would say, but I was not able to put a finger on who the song pointed to. I had known Y/N long enough to know that this wasn’t just “nothing”, though that’s what she wanted me to believe.

I didn’t know what to make of Jim’s call either. He had planned to stay ashore for at least 12 more hours, but he now was aboard the ship. Though Jim’s words had been authoritative, his tone was friendly and indicated that this had nothing to do with the ship.

I knocked on the door of Jim’s quarters, and heard a small “Come in”. When I walked in, Jim was seated at his desk, his hands intertwined into a tent. “A ‘deep in thought’ position” I thought.

“Jim. Is something troubling you?” Jim looked up and gestured me to sit down. I complied. “No Spock, nothing is troubling me. It’s just, I think I know now why Y/N has been so quiet.”

I gave him a quizzical look.

“Spock, I believe you were with Y/N when I called you?” I nodded. I couldn’t understand where this was going.

“What were you doing?” One of my eyebrows lifted in confusion. Why was Jim asking that?

“Jim, I don’t think you should ask that. I think, on Earth, this is called snooping. Though you are a good friend of Y/N’s, it is my moral responsibility not to tell you anything about what she told or did in confidence.”

Jim’s eyes expressed the same warmth as his smile when I said that. “True gentleman you are, Mr. Spock. Okay, I’ll tell you why I asked that question.” My eyebrows perched higher, indicating my interest.

“I was going to Y/N’s chamber to admonish her for not following her Captain’s orders.”

My expression moved from interested to inquiring.

“I had ordered Y/N to stay on the planet for the entirety of the shore leave. However, when I went to her room at the lodging, she wasn’t there. She had told McCoy that she would be in her room. I knew where she would be – in her quarters, aboard the Enterprise. I walked to her quarters, mock-fuming, and was about to knock, when I heard her start singing.”

I opened my mouth to rebuke Jim for eavesdropping, when he interrupted, “I know Spock, but I had no intention to eavesdrop. I was just drawn to her voice and that song. I love that song.”

“Ocean Eyes by Billie Eilish?”

“Yeah, that one. I was surprised that you didn’t hear me standing outside, what with your enhanced hearing.”

I paused for a moment before I spoke, staring past Jim’s shoulder, my eyes resting on his laurels. “I had been thinking about something.”

______________________________________________________________

Jim’s POV

Spock had apparently zoned out. That was a first.

“I think I can guess what you were thinking about.”

Spock’s eyebrows flew up. “Do you?” he enquired.

“Yes Spock, I think I do. And I think you do too, now. You have arrived at a conclusion, and I would like you to share it with me.”

Spock seemed to hesitate for a moment, but then turned to face me. “I think this has something to do with Dr. McCoy.” My smile turned into a grin. Spock was REALLY smart with this stuff for a person who swore by logic. Spock took this as a confirmation that he was correct.

“I assume I am correct. However, I do not fully understand.”, he remarked.

“My dear Spock, I was surprised that you inferred this much.” If Spock’s brows could go higher, they would have. “It is my hypothesis that Y/N likes Dr. McCoy, but she is in denial.” Spock’s face expressed a mixture of distaste and bewilderment. I chuckled.

“I have known Y/N since our academy days. She is slightly younger than me, but she was always a prodigy. Always top of the class. Not just with marks or grades, but with her work ethic as well. She has never been in a relationship; she never felt the need to be in one. Now, she reminds me a lot of someone I know. Maybe that’s why both of them are such good friends.” I looked at Spock. His face radiated a hint of pride.

I continued. “And now, she is faced by this overwhelming feeling, one I doubt she ever felt before. And she is uncertain, how to act on this feeling, or whether to act at all.”

Realization dawned on Spock’s visage. Then, it was replaced by dubiousness and even a hint of distaste. “But why Dr. McCoy?” he asked. I let out a hearty laugh. Everyone knew of the friendly banter between him and McCoy.

“No Jim, I am serious. I care for Y/N deeply, though not in a romantic sense. If the doctor did anything to hurt her, I would disapprove.”

By “disapprove” I knew Spock would go on a killing spree. And the first would be Bones. I grinned inwardly. This was starting to get interesting, and I now had a chance to tease Spock.

“Isn’t disapproval a human emotion?” I tried (and failed) to keep the smirk off my face.

Spock looked at me dead in the eyes. My stomach suddenly became a bottomless pit. With an intense gaze, he whispered, “Yes.”

______________________________________________________________

Bones’ POV

I was on my way to the Transporter Room when Uhura said that she had a message from Joanna. Her messages really made my day. I asked her to transfer the message to the intercom in the Transporter Room.

I walked into the transporter room, which seemed to be deserted. “Never mind”, I thought. I would have preferred to listen to the message alone, so I didn’t mind. I switched on the intercom and confirmed that I had reached the Transporter Room.

Immediately, Joanna’s message started playing.

“Hey Papa!”, her sweet voice chirped. I smiled. “I was a few light years away from Earth, so decided that why not spend my holiday on our home planet. I went to Georgia and checked on our house and the farm. Everything is in place. I am off to India to spend a week or two. I have a month before I join the Farragut as their nurse trainee. I am really excited! Tell me if the Enterprise’s schedule matches with the Farragut’s, so that we can meet soon. Love you and meet you soon!”

“Wow”, I breathed. “What an exciting young lady.” I thanked Uhura, and then typed up my message on my PADD and sent it to her. I still like sending her emails, though they were considered ancient. “Hmm.” I hummed. “Forever the sensualist.”

______________________________________________________________

Later that evening

I was trying to find the bar where Scotty had asked me to join him, when I caught a glimpse of Y/N coming out of a bar. I had heard that she had been accompanied by Scotty onto the surface, so I started walking towards her. I heard some laughter and turned to look in the direction of the commotion. Seeing nothing of significance, I faced again towards my destination, searching for Y/N, but she had disappeared. “Weird”, I mumbled.

I stepped into the foyer and was about to enter the bar when I turned around, wondering where Y/N had gone. And there she was! I called out her name and made small talk. Then we both went our separate ways.

I spotted Scotty and hurried towards his seat. “Got started without me, huh?”, I teased. Scotty, who had had is head down, lifted it and slurred, “Why are yer cheeks red, eh McCoy? Had a swig on the ship, huh?” I knitted my eyebrows together. I hadn’t been drinking. I dismissed it to be the cold.

______________________________________________________________

A few hours later

A blinding light flashed in my eyes. “Who’s it? What’re you doin’?” I caught a glimpse of a blue shirt. It reminded me of someone.

“Y/N?”

“Bones why do you have to drink so much? You always get hungover and start hallucinating. Then I have to take care of you. Dammit, I’m a Starship captain, not a doctor.”

“Ah Jimmy boy. Take me home now, will ya?”

______________________________________________________________

The next morning

I woke up with a splitting headache. When I opened my eyes and looked around that I realized I was not in my quarters. Hell, I wasn’t even on the Enterprise.

“Shit.” I cursed softly.

“Finally, you are up, huh? I really think you could’ve given Sleeping Beauty a run for the money.”

I huffed. I knew that voice well. Maybe too well. And I knew what that meant. “I’m sorry Jim. Just got flown away with the drinking last night. I don’t even remember you picking me up.”

“I think we should stop booking an extra room for you. You always end up crashing in mine during shore leaves.”, Jim remarked sarcastically, getting up from the reading chair and putting down his PADD.

“Drink this. You’ll feel better.” He handed me a glass of lemonade.

“What, you’re gonna use my own hacks against me?”

“Shut up and drink it.”

I accepted the glass and started taking sips from it.

“You know, you said something last night which made me think a lot.”

“Well, that’s new.” I remarked with a smirk.

Jim feigned annoyance, then continued. “You know, when I came to pick you up last night, I was wearing a blue shirt.”

“Mh-hm”

“And when you saw me, you said, ‘Y/N?’. Were you expecting her or something?”

“Hmm. I don’t remember saying that actually. Maybe that was because I saw her last night before going into the bar. She was hiding from somebody, I guess. And I was surprised to even see her at a bar – she doesn’t drink, you know.”

Jim nodded. “Do you know where she went?”

“She said she was going to her room.” I said, matter-of-factly.

“’Kay.”

______________________________________________________________

That evening

Jim had left for the Enterprise – he had some work onboard. I decided that I’d roam around the markets for a while. I never was a fan of shopping, but Christine always asked me to take small memorabilia from each planet I visited for Joanna. She seemed to like it – so I didn’t mind too much.

Hands tucked behind my back, I strolled through the stalls. I came across a shop selling ancient art prints. There were abstract paintings, movie poster recreations and the like. I picked up a print of warm toned abstract art and a recreation of the Titanic poster for Joanna. Suddenly, a small necklace and bracelet caught my eye. It didn’t seem to have any lustre, but it had an aura that I was drawn to. Entranced, I asked what it was.

“It is Vokaya – a rare Vulcan jewel.” The shopkeeper said. He was Vulcan as well. So much for being in a green-hobgoblin-free zone. But really, I was mesmerised by this ornament, and ended up buying it.

Walking back to my room, I huffed. I had never been an impulsive buyer. Thinking about the peculiar feeling that had filled me, I walked down the corridor and entered my room.

And collided with someone standing straight like a rod.

I groaned. I knew who this was.

______________________________________________________________

Y/N’s POV

The next morning

I finally got out of my bed – I had barely gotten any sleep. I kept tossing and turning, thinking about my encounter with Bones last night and Spock’s reaction to me singing that song. He must have figured it out by now.

“Well – how bad can the situation get?” I murmured.

Before I could go into the washroom to get ready for the day, I heard a knock on the door.

“Come in.”

In stormed Jim Kirk – his expression unreadable.

“Captain? What happened? Is everything alright?”

“Jim, please; I’m off duty.” Sitting down on the chair where Spock had sat last night, he said, “Calm down Y/N. Nothing’s wrong. Can’t a friend come to talk to another friend when everyone else is on shore leave?” He flashed that “I am charming” smile. I rolled my eyes.

“Sit down Jim. Let me get dressed. Then we can have breakfast together in the mess.”

Jim shook his head. “I think we should eat in my quarters.”

That was new. Why did Jim want to have breakfast alone? “Okay…” I said, sounding hesitant.

Jim gave me a smile, a genuine one. “Don’t worry, Y/N. Really. It’s nothing.”

Knowing Jim for so many years had made one thing clear:

When he said, “It’s nothing.”, there really WAS something.

______________________________________________________________

Jim’s POV

When I entered Y/N’s quarters, she looked a mess. She had always been an extremely graceful and likeable person – after all, we both were nerds. But today, there was something off. She had eyebags beneath her eyes, and her tired demeanour indicated that she hadn’t gotten much sleep.

But I could not bail out on Spock’s plan. So, it would have to do.

Spock had come up with something which was very unlike Spock – but the man never failed to surprise me. We had done what we had to do with McCoy. It hadn’t been easy, because he would not sleep at night, and kept protesting when he woke up. But we had managed.

He was in his quarters, unaware what was happening. We had brought him aboard forcefully. He won’t sit there for long. We had to hurry.

“Hey, Jim. Let’s go.”

I snapped my head in the direction of the voice.

“After you”

As the door slid open, a small voice came through.

“I am sorry Y/N.”

And then, Y/N slumped unconscious.

______________________________________________________________

A few hours later

Bones POV

Spock and Jim had been acting weird. Like, they have always been slightly off their hooks, but today, there was an air of urgency about them.

That is extremely discomforting with Spock, because usually he is the patient one preventing Jim from running around like a headless chicken.

I was pacing around my quarters. I had been asked to stay inside until called. “Captain’s orders.”, Jim had said.

I huffed. Did he really think I was going to listen to him? It had been a while since they had left, and I decided to get some work done.

Before I could decide what was the agenda for today, my intercom whistled. “McCoy here.”

“Uhura here.” Her voice was strained. “Doctor, please hurry to the Bridge. There is an emergency. Y/N has fainted.” Cursing under my breath, I picked up my medical kit and rushed out of the door.

The doors of the turbolift slid open and I walked out, worried what had happened. I looked around but there was no one. Perplexed, I scanned the bridge for any signs of hastened evacuation. My eyes landed on a head poking from the Captain’s chair.

I walked to the chair and turned it around. Y/N was slumped unconscious in it. I took her pulse, but it was really faint. I took out a hypo and filled it with cordrazine. This was risky material, but it would wake Y/N up for sure. The hypo hissed as it pressed it into her forearm, and she stirred.

______________________________________________________________

Y/N’s POV

My head was throbbing. My eyes fluttered, but they won’t open. “Too bright”, I mumbled. Someone standing next to me said, “Computer, dim the lights.” The voice mumbled something, then stopped. My eyes opened, and then focussed on the person kneeling beside me. “Doctor?” I said, voice cracking.

“Yeah Y/N. What happened? Why did you faint? Why are you sitting in the Captain’s chair? Do you remember anything?”

I looked around, a bewildered look covering my face. I didn’t remember coming to the bridge. “I don’t know Doc… I don’t even remember coming to the bridge…” McCoy got up quickly and started examining me with his tricorder.

“No signs of mental trauma. Are you sure you don’t remember coming here?” I nodded. Looking around, I now noticed that the lighting was pinkish. “Hey Doc… why is the lighting here pink?” I failed to keep the smile off my face.

He chuckled. “I don’t know. When you woke up, I ordered the computer to dim the lights. It did, but the lights also became pink.”

Suddenly, it hit me. “Oh my God. I just remembered. This has something to do with Jim. And Spock. Jim had come to my quarters to invite me for breakfast. When I was about to walk out, somebody said, ‘I am sorry Y/N.’, and then I fainted.”

McCoy’s eyes had grown wide. He seemed angry. “Come on. Let’s find the two devils.”

I tried getting up but stumbled. McCoy held my forearm and held me up. Then he stopped. “Y/N. There’s a piece of paper stuck to your back.” Confused, I asked him to remove it. “It won’t come off.”

“What does it say?”

“Um… It says, ‘I’ve been watching you for some time; Can’t stop staring at those ocean eyes.’”

I froze. I turned around to face McCoy and opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out.

I couldn’t decipher the expression on his face, but I could see the gears turning in his mind. Would he be angry? Or upset? I half expected him to just shrug and walk away, when surprisingly he held my hand and kissed it.

I tilted my head like a confused squirrel, giving him a look of *almost* disbelief.

He chuckled, “Yeah I get it now. But before we get all sweet, I really wanna hunt down both the red-blooded and the green-blooded devils. They are not going to get away with this.”

I looked into his eyes, for the first time today.

And I felt myself sinking deep into the ocean of his eyes.

______________________________________________________________

Epilogue

Spock’s POV

We had watched the events on the bridge as they took place trough the security cameras. By we, I mean Jim, I and Uhura.

Uhura was laughing so hard that she was on the verge of choking. Jim was bursting with laughter and happiness, his cheeks red. The sight made me want to smile broadly.

“Oh my God Spock, you really are a genius. This was the cleverest shipping of two people ever!”

I tilted my head, asking him what “shipping” meant.

“Never mind. Let’s go now. Otherwise, Bones will hypo the lives out of us. And Y/N adding to the party is not going to be beneficial.”

He gripped my hand and lead the way, running through the corridors of our beloved ship.

And I didn’t mind being by his side one bit.

#leonard mccoy #bones mccoy #spock #jim kirk #james t kirk #tos #star trek #st:tos #nyota uhura #uhura #bones x reader #implied spirk #jim x spock

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sevensided · 4 years ago

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Fathers in Stranger Things

This recent conversation about family acceptance in ST has made me think a lot about fathers in the show. I believe that a central theme in the story is acceptance. Acceptance of the supernatural, acceptance of differences, acceptance of one another. This dovetails into other key themes - forgiveness, friendship, and love - but in the context of parents and, specifically, Mike and Will, I think acceptance is an interesting way to think about how fathers or father figures play in their eventual relationship.

Every father on the show is an absent figure. This is for two reasons: to illustrate how much more hands-off raising children was in the 80s; and to highlight the role mothers play in the development of our characters. This also links into broader, structural themes, such as heterosexuality, patriarchy, and gender roles. On a simple level, the fathers are absent because it is the mothers who do the child rearing. This absence, however, also reveals the lack of paternal support in the lives of our core characters, and as a result, the supplementation of father figures. This dovetails into a theme that carries throughout the show - that of found families - but when it comes to Mike and Will’s development, together and separately, this relates importantly to how they will come to see themselves as young, probably gay, men.

Fathers

To start, I’ll briefly overview the main fathers of the series. We can largely group them as absent but harmless, or absent and harmful.

Ted Wheeler is an apathetic feature in Mike’s life. He is typically involved in scenes that underscore the domestic discord of the Wheeler household, and his role is primarily to show how unhappy Karen is in their marriage, and how his children do not connect with him. While there are some indications that he cares for his children, these are not carried through onscreen and, for the most part, Ted does not participate in raising Nancy or Mike.

Lucas’ father, Mr Sinclair, is presented once in association with his wife, Mrs Sinclair. Their breakfast table scene is used to show the dynamic of the Sinclair household, and for Lucas to ask his parents abstract advice on how to win Max back after their argument. Mr Sinclair makes some period-typical comments that are intended to be funny, but they also indicate that Lucas was brought up in a fairly stereotypical atmosphere (to paraphrase: “What do you do if mom’s mad at you?” / “Yes, what do you do?” / “Your mother is never wrong”). You could go all galaxy brain and say this is a nod to Joyce Byers - who spends a lot of the show trying to prove she’s right - but as this is the sole scene that features Lucas’ parents, it is our only insight into their familial dynamic, and therefore our only frame of reference as to how Lucas is raised.

Dustin’s father is not mentioned in canon and it appears he was raised in a single-parent household. With no evidence to the contrary, we can go ahead and assume that Dustin’s only meaningful parental relationship is to his mother, with whom he has a strong bond.

Lonnie Byers is an undesirable and unreliable father who left Joyce and his sons before canon. When he does reappear in S01, he is proved yet again to be a grifter looking to take advantage of Will’s disappearance and assumed death. It it subtly indicated that Lonnie was abusive to Jonathan (“You’ve gotten stronger”) and, it’s possible, to Joyce or Will too. He is certainly proved to be homophobic (“Lonnie used to call him a qu**r, said he was a f*g” / “Is he?”). Lonnie may be entirely physically absent, yet his impact on Will resonates through the story, and in a figurative sense, he is very much present.

Steve’s father is, similarly to Ted, indicated to be a work-focused man who is rarely around the Harrington household. In S01 he goes on a work trip and is accompanied by his wife (“My mom doesn’t trust him” / “Probably a good thing”) which indicates he may have been unfaithful to Mrs Harrington in the past. He is a very literal absence in Steve’s life yet appears off-screen as a forceful presence (“My dad is a grade-A asshole”) that shapes Steve’s life, culminating in S03 with Steve’s job at the mall.

The biological father of Billy and Max’s step-father, Mr Hargrove, is an abusive, sexist, and dangerous man, whose impact on Billy is so severe that it renders him vulnerable to possession by the Mind Flayer and eventually results in Billy’s death. When El goes into Billy’s memories in the S03 finale, we see how Mr Hargrove used sports to bully and antagonize his son into performative masculinity, and how he often resorted to physical violence against Billy and his late mother. Our other insight into Mr Hargrove’s paternal presence is through Max, whose behaviour indicates that while she is, possibly, partly protected by her mother, she is not protected from Billy, who takes his anger with his father out on her. Max is cagey about the full impact of Mr Hargrove, but is it subtle and sufficient enough to show that he is among the most dangerous male characters in the series so far, and his onscreen absence, like Lonnie, resonates figuratively in the lives of our characters.

The final father figure to discuss is Dr Brenner. Brenner is cold and remote in that he is the PI of a government-funded underground project modeled on MK Ultra, and thus treats Eleven like the scientific subject she is. Brenner’s acts of care are only figured as manipulation tactics (such as talking quietly yet firmly to El, carrying her from the solitary confinement cell when she kills the guard, allowing her a toy lion) and cannot in good conscience be considered parental kindness. Brenner’s power over El is so potent that Kali draws on their shared memory of Brenner in S02 to capitalise on El’s powers. El perceives Brenner as a father (“Papa”). Like Lonnie and Mr Hargrove, Brenner’s absence lingers and retains a hold over El.

As we can see, you have absent but harmful figures like Dr Brenner, Lonnie, and Mr Hargrove, and absent but harmless figures like Ted, Dustin’s father, Mr Sinclair, and even, to an extent, Mr Harrington. This rough categorisation helps us see that the show’s fathers are painted into a conspicuous binary that reflects the expectations placed on our characters as they learn to become men. Are they jocks or nerds? Straight or gay? In the world of Reaganite Hawkins, society is bookended by the normal and acceptable, or the abnormal and unacceptable. In this context, fathers - and to a larger extent, masculinity - either exist passively or aggressively, and both impact our characters either overtly (Billy and Will) or subliminally (Mike and Lucas).

Father figures

The characters above stand in stark contrast to the father figures presented in the series. These include Hopper, Bob, Mr Clarke, and Steve. Quite by chance, they each represent different elements of masculinity and different figures of power in the lives of our main cast.

Mr Clarke, for example, is representative of institutional power (a teacher) and has a strong influence over the Party in encouraging their curiosity and natural interest in science and the world around them. He is not typically masculine - he is a nerd - but he gently guides the Party through school and is shown to care for them.

Bob is representative of a found father figure in that he steps into the Byers’ life in no permanent sense (“This is not a normal family” / “But it could be”), but his respect of Joyce’s boundaries nevertheless sees him exercise a positive influence over Will (Jonathan, by Bob’s own admission, is harder to crack - understandable, given Jonathan’s past with Lonnie and, possibly, other men Joyce has occasionally had in her life). Bob’s absence - his death - is palpable, and leaves a lasting impression on Joyce, who is arguably in mourning for a good part of S03. In a similar vein, you can also make the argument that Jonathan is a father figure to Will (but that deserves its own post).

Steve represents more of a big brother role to the rest of the Party, but it is possible to see Steve as a father figure to Dustin, particularly over the course of S02. Steve drives Dustin to the dance, gives him advice on girls (a stereotypical “dad talk”), protects him, and supports him. In S03 their relationship has shifted into more of a friendship, but that does not take away from their initial dynamic that had a paternal undertone to it.

These are all examples of father figures. But the most important example of this is Hopper, and it is because he subverts this mold. Aside from the obvious link to El, in that he raises her from S02 and even becomes her “father” (Jane Hopper), it is not Hopper’s absence as a father that is important, but the absence of his daughter. Hopper is therefore an inverted male character. The absence (death) of his daughter stands in binary to the Party’s biological fathers, who are otherwise the absent ones. In contrast, Hopper is very present. Hopper is a father in the literal sense, but he is a father figure to Mike and Will: Mike, through his relationship with El and in the absence of Ted (Hopper gives Mike the “dad talk” in S03); and Will through Hopper’s relationship with Joyce. Hopper’s absent daughter is substituted most clearly by El. But in an abstract way, he also fits that role with Mike and Will too. In sum, Hopper’s absence as a biological father is redeemed when he becomes a father figure to other characters. He is therefore neither harmful or harmless, and can be seen as an outlier - but that is deliberate. It is deliberate because he and Joyce are the only parents/parental figures who know and understand the supernatural in Hawkins. I suspect that by the end of the series, Karen may be drawn into the fold too.

Mothers

I mentioned at the start that the absence of fathers highlights the role that mothers play in the series. This is best understood - and perhaps only understood - with direct reference to Karen Wheeler and Joyce Byers. Karen and Joyce have huge roles to play in how Mike and Will will come to understand themselves. They do this in spite of the male absence in Mike and Will’s lives, because a central theme of the ST story is love, especially maternal love.

Karen Wheeler is introduced as a typical housewife whose role it is to care for her children - Nancy, Mike, and Holly - and take care of the Wheelers’ home. She is in an unhappy marriage with Ted, and is unhappy enough to consider having an affair with Billy in S03. It is her sense of duty that prevents her from carrying this out. Karen is repeatedly shown to reach out to her children and frequently offers emotional support (most potently in S01-2, S03 being the sole exception [“It’s hard to keep track. You know what it’s like - summer!”]). Despite their rebuffs Karen does not give up trying to support her children. She is occasionally successful (Mike comes to her for comfort once per season, and she and Nancy are shown to have a tumultuous but altogether strong relationship, culminating in the S03 kitchen speech scene) yet, arguably, Mike and Nancy’s willfulness and growing up is a point of frustration and another source of unhappiness. While it will blow over - they are both teenagers - in the context of the show their rejection of her emotional support further reinforces her isolation. It is important to note that while Mike does crumble and come to her for comfort, this happens only in times of duress (Will’s disappearance, Will moving away). In other words, Mike does not rely on his mother for emotional support but she is still his mother, and when he does come to her it is during Mike’s emotional high points. These are always linked to Will. This directly ties Mike’s emotional development as it relates to Will to the maternal support given by his mother.

Joyce Byers is, as we all know, the resident PFLAG rep. Her relationship with Will is a central element of the story, and it is strengthened not despite Lonnie’s absence but in spite of it. It is moot to think of how Joyce and Will would have developed if Lonnie had stayed in canon, because Joyce is repeatedly shown to be driven by the love for her children. What is essential to understand about Joyce is that she is an atypical parent. She is a single working class mother whose brushes with normality (e.g. Bob) are taken away by the supernatural. As mentioned before, this further highlights the thematic divide between normality/abnormality and visible/invisible that are staples to the plot. In other words, Joyce has not found her “normal”, because Will has not yet found his normal. Until that happens, her happiness is at stake, partly because it is tied to the happiness of her children, but because Will’s overarching influence over the supernatural elements in the story is inextricably tied to his sense of belonging. Joyce, unlike Karen, has already won her child’s trust and support. Will’s story, therefore, is linked more closely to the absence of his father, whereas for Mike, it is not the absence of his father that is to be overcome, but his aversion to connecting with Karen.

Mike and Will

Taken together, I believe that when it comes to Mike and Will and their respective sexuality, it is not the fathers that will figure in their coming out, but their mothers. The show plays on the absence of fathers and places them in opposition to the presence of mothers. It is maternal love that guides Mike and Will, and it is maternal love that will protect them. This concept is only subverted by El and Hopper’s relationship, for it is El’s mother and Hopper’s daughter who is absent, therefore implying that they are contradictions, or inversions, of the show’s presentation of the familial.

Mike’s relationship with Ted is not a model. Aside from Ted’s general apathy towards his children - he demonstrably leaves the discipline and care of their children to Karen, as evidenced by every family scene in which Karen makes the decisions and Ted remains silent - he appears to have given up in connecting with Mike as his son. I mentioned before how Mr Hargrove used sports to coerce Billy into performative masculinity; the same can be said of Will, who disliked it when Lonnie took him to baseball games, and even destroys Castle Byers with a baseball bat. In contrast, Mike’s baseball bat (picked up in S01 by Nancy, who pretends to be practicing for the softball team) is in the garage, indicating it is not used, if it ever was. Arguably, Mike’s insistent and forceful personality might have bowled the passive Ted over, but Ted’s disconnect to his son is also evidenced in S01 when Ted jokes, “Our son, with a girl?” I have discussed here how this line was a blatant reference to Mike’s “nerd” status. As S03 has proved, the Duffers rely on 80s tropes to sublimate existing themes in their story. With nerds typically understood in 80s cultural discourse as sexually and romantically inexperienced social loners, Ted’s comment betrays three things: how he perceives his son; the failed expectations for his son; and how the audience is meant to understand Mike as a character. Ted does not feature in Mike’s upbringing, and I think this is deliberate for two reasons: to underscore how traditional Mike’s upbringing is; and to foreshadow that it will not be Ted’s opinion of Mike that matters in the end. It will be Karen’s.

Will’s relationship with Lonnie is, as presented onscreen in canon, non-existent. It only plays out off-screen and we have not yet seen Will and Lonnie interact in person. Regardless of where you stand with the theory that Lonnie’s abuse manifested in Will to become the Mind Flayer (I personally agree with it), Lonnie’s eventual presence in the show will be a critical moment and, likely, the climax of the entire series. As addressed above, Lonnie is indicated to be homophobic, if not abusive, to Will in the past. I won’t touch on the abuse as that is largely hearsay at the point of writing this post, however the homophobic language is canon and therefore has a bearing on how we are expected to interpret Will and his relationship to 1) other boys/men, and 2) his sexuality. Both Mike and Will have no meaningful relationship with their fathers. Yet, while Mike’s father is absent and harmless, Lonnie is absent and very much harmful. Thus, the lasting influence of his absence is made more potent by the power of Will’s memories/imagination. Having been subjected to direct homophobic bullying, Will’s sexual identity is tied very much to his relationships with older men, with Jonathan, Bob, and to an extent, Mr Clarke, as positive representations of masculinity, and Lonnie on the other end of the spectrum. To Will, Lonnie may be physically absent but he is figuratively present. As such, it will not be Lonnie’s reaction to Will’s sexuality that is important. It will be Will’s overcoming of Lonnie’s hold over him that will be the defining moment in his character arc.

Parental absence is key to Mike and Will’s development together and individually. Both Mike and Will have to overcome their absent fathers in different ways. The key to this will be breaking free of the societal expectations placed on them, drawing strength in maternal love, and, crucially, finding love and acceptance with each other. The defining point is that despite surface-level indications to the contrary, it is not the fathers who are important: it is the mothers.

#stranger things meta #stranger things theory #byler #mike wheeler #will byers #*#meta

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joealwyndaily · 5 years ago

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Joe Alwyn — Red Magazine (Jan 2020) interview

You’d think that a back-to-back Hollywood movie career and a megastar girlfriend might have changed Joe Alwyn, but he’s quick to assure Nathalie Whittle that his feet remain firmly on the ground.

“So you didn’t see the part where the aliens attack?” asks Joe Alwyn, a playful smirk on his face. He’s referring to his latest film, Harriet, which I had a sneak preview of the previous day, although the fire evacuation (false alarm) meant I missed the ending. The biographical drama tells the story of Harriet Tubman (played by Cynthia Erivo), the historic abolitionist who escaped slavery and led hundreds of others to freedom. Alwyn plays her insufferably cruel and capricious slave master Gideon Brodess. He is, of course, joking about the aliens. At least, I hope he is. Today, we’re tucked away in the corner of a dimly lit bar at London’s Covent Garden Hotel. It’s the sort of drizzly afternoon that might dampen the moods of most, but not Alwyn. He appears cheery and at ease, sporting country casuals: a grey mohair jumper, blue jeans, and brown boots along with an unkempt beard; perhaps an attempt to disguise the boyish good looks he’s become known for. He stops to interrupt me only once with a look of alarm: he’s forgotten to offer me something to eat or drink. I can have anything I want, he assures me.

At 28, Alwyn has had the sort of career trajectory that most aspiring actors wistfully dream about for years, even decades. His education included a degree in English literature and drama at the University of Bristol, followed by a BA in acting at London’s Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. But within two weeks of his graduate showcase, Alwyn received a life-changing phone call. He refers to it as the thing “I owe everything to.”

“I’d just signed with an agent and I was kind of pinching myself, you know, how surreal is that?” he says. “She sent me a portion of the script for a film, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, that Ang Lee was directing. I’d grown up watching his films — Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi — so I couldn’t believe I was even going to do a tape for someone like that. I got my dad to film me in a scene in my bedroom and some mates to film me during a lunch break. The next thing I know, Ang wants to meet me in New York.” Cue a series of auditions and screen tests that led to Alwyn bagging the title role in his first big-budget Hollywood film. He was just 24. “It was so much so fast that I didn’t really compute what was going on,” he concedes. “Before that I was just a poor student who barely understood how people got auditions, let alone landed jobs.” Did he have any jobs before that? I ask. “I did have this one job in London,” he says wryly. “Do you know that frozen yogurt place, Snog?” I’m struggling to picture Alwyn serving up frozen delights. He’s laughing now. Was it a good gig? “Exceptional!” More laughter follows. “I mean, I was paid some money! Then I worked in a menswear shop. I did what I could to make some extra cash.”

A far cry from a frozen-yogurt counter, doors started opening to bigger and better opportunities as soon as Billy Lynn hit cinemas. The next script Alwyn read was Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite (released in 2019), in which he secured a small but riotous role as young baron Samuel Masham alongside acting greats Olivia Colman and Emma Stone. “Putting on giant wigs and running around in make-up and chasing Emma Stone through the forest — what more could you want?” he laughs. The film earned widespread critical acclaim, receiving seven BAFTAs and a record 10 British Independent Film awards.

Having further honed his craft in subsequent films Mary Queen of Scots and gay-conversion therapy drama Boy Erased, Alwyn is about to enter into unknown territory. This Christmas, he’ll play Bob Cratchit in his first-ever TV drama, BBC One’s A Christmas Carol; a “darker, twisted, less glossy” version of the Charles Dickens classic. He’s “feeling good about it,” but I’m curious as to how he’s approached this change of scenery. Was he not nervous? “Oh, very. I tried to watch other people. It’s the second time I’ve worked with Guy Pearce [who plays Scrooge] and I asked him a lot of stuff, which probably annoyed him. I watched the way he works and the questions he asked on set when he was approaching a scene.”

Two people who will definitely be watching Alwyn’s TV debut are his mother, a psychotherapist, and his father, a documentary-maker. “They’d better be watching!” he laughs. Born in London’s Tufnell Park, Alwyn recalls being given stacks of videos every birthday and “watching them to death, until the tapes burned up.” One of his favourites was The Mask of Zorro. In fact, he was so obsessed with it that he and his best friend took up fencing lessons at a local community centre in Crouch End, where, by chance, he was spotted by a local casting agent for the hit British romcom Love Actually. She asked him to audition for the role of Sam; he breaks into a wide smile when I ask what he remembers of it. “I didn’t know much about what the film was; I was most excited about the fact I got the day off school! But I remember being in a room with Richard Curtis and Hugh Grant reading scenes, many of which didn’t make it into the film. And I left the audition thinking, ‘I really recognize that guy from somewhere’.”

Alwyn didn’t get the part. Instead, he forgot about acting for a while, with the exception of summer holidays, where his parents would send him and his older brother off to “some drama camp as a way of preoccupying us.” He explains that when he later realized he wanted to act on a serious level, he kept it a secret. Was it because he was worried how his parents would react to a somewhat precarious career choice? “Well, it meant putting myself out there in a performative way, and that wasn’t necessarily something I did or was used to doing. It felt like it should be quite a ‘look at me’ job, and that wasn’t really how I felt growing up. I wasn’t a painfully introverted kid, but I wasn’t a particularly extroverted one, either. So maybe I was self-conscious about the idea of saying to people, ‘Look, I can do this’.”

He credits drama school with giving him “permission” to go for it. “Plus my parents were great about it. They’re both freelance themselves, so while they recognize the perils, they also couldn’t say to me, ‘We can follow what we want, but you can’t’. There wasn’t a boundary, which helped a lot.”

I wonder if it’s been difficult acclimatizing to the level of fame that’s come as result of his roles. “There have definitely been changes that have taken some getting used to, whether it’s sitting down and doing an interview or someone recognizing you,” he says. “There are things that have changed in my life, but I still very much feel like the same person. It probably helps that I’ve been hanging out with the same friends literally every day since I was 12 years old. Maybe it’s when those things change that people change, I don’t know.”

It’s fair to say that the level of interest in Alwyn has, in part, been heightened by the fact that, in his spare time he plays the role of Mr. Taylor Swift. The pair reportedly met in late 2016 and became in item shortly afterwards. I’ve been warned ahead of our meeting that Alwyn “doesn’t talk about that”, and he’s keen to justify his stance in person. “I feel like my private life is private and everyone is entitled to that.” he says. “I’ve read stories recently about people like Ben Stokes and Gareth Thomas, which are a gross invasion of their privacy and of their lives. It’s disgusting. That’s not journalism, that’s just invasive.”

It must be tough, I suggest, being in a relationship that is surrounded by so much scrutiny. “I just don’t read the headlines,” he says. “I really don’t, because I can guarantee 99% of them are made up. So I ignore it.” Recent rumours suggest the pair are engaged, and are owed in part to one of Swift’s latest songs, Lover (’My hearts been borrowed and yours has been blue. All’s well that ends well to end up with you’), as well as a piece of string tied around Swift’s finger in a Vogue cover shoot. According to die-hard fans, this means something. But to Alwyn, it’s clear it means nothing at all. Is he never tempted to respond to the mistruths, to shut them down? “No, because it’s just pointless,” he sighs. “It won’t change anything. I just don’t pay any attention. I have my life and it’s kind of separate to all that stuff.”

I’m curious as to how much time he gets to simply enjoy the success he’s experiencing. “There’s lots of time not working, I wish there was less in a way!” he laughs. “I go to the pub, play football, go to gigs, watch TV (he’s just finished season three of True Detective), pretty normal things. There’s no ‘secret life’. But ultimately, I worry about finding the next job; that’s the truth. In the midst of everything, there’s always that feeling of ‘I’m never going to work again’. It’s a cliche, but you can’t just sit there waiting for the phone to ring. You have to try and take control. You’re at the mercy of the things you seek out — the directors and the connections — so I try to be on top of that as I can and read what I’m sent and be discerning. I try to pick wisely and follow up on people and leads that I’m interested in.”

Is there an end point he wants to get to, where he’ll feel like he’s made it? “Things have certainly shifted in my twenties,” he says. “Success to me now is doing things that make me happy and that make me feel fulfilled, doing what I want to do and being on the right track. Not in terms of being on a results-based track, but just doing something I love.” He pauses and smiles. “That sounds a bit sentimental, doesn’t it?”

#joe alwyn #interview #red magazine #there's one paragraph i could do without but otherwise this is great

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bethhxrmon · 4 years ago

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do flowers exist at night? -chapter five

Chapter Five: Steve Harrington and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Night

Pairing: Steve Harrington x OC

Chapter Summary: Once everyone is at the Byers’ household, many issues start to make sense. With everyone working together, the Upside Down may finally be defeated.

Word Count: 3.9k

Warnings: Swearing, inaccurate dialogue, Billy is the actual worst if you like him then you’re probably not gonna vibe with this chapter, violence

A/N: The only real joke in this chapter is the title. Enough said. Anywho, I hope you’re enjoying the fic and if you are, it would be awesome of you to let me know by leaving feedback for me! You can find the other chapters here.

~*~*~*~

Perhaps the only thing worse than the monsters was realizing that Steve didn't have a chance with Nancy. Obviously, Annie wasn't going to say that out loud. Not when she could tell from Steve's pacing that he already knew. It took a lot to not say anything to Nancy, but there were more important things than this and if she was going to say anything, Annie was sure it could wait.

What they were going to do about all of this was beyond her. She had a million questions, but she didn't ask a single one. Every time she almost did, she was reminded of how her dad was when he got stressed, which was almost all the time. At the time, it seemed like anything she did would annoy him. There was always something on her mind and there was a time when she would have said every single thing that popped in her head. Except, one day the man got so annoyed that he snapped and told her to shut up.

As that circled her mind, she sat off to the side in the kitchen of the Byers' house, trying to process everything on her own. She had been so close to dying. All of them had. What would have happened if she had? Would anyone aside from her mom care? There were so many things she wanted to do, but she hadn't. It could have been too late and there was nothing she could have done.

A hand on her shoulder made her jump, but she relaxed upon realizing it was just Steve, "Sorry... um, how're you holding up?"

"I'm fine," she said, tugging her flannel around herself, "Are you okay?"

He arched an eyebrow, "Also fine."

"Steve-"

"Don't... you don't have to tell me."

"I wasn't gonna say anything about that," she said, though she stopped when she heard Mike starting to talk about Bob Newby.

While she never got a chance to meet the guy, the idea of anyone being eaten alive by those monsters was horrific. It was something straight out of the horror novels she read to pass the time. Something only highlighted when Dustin started to compare all of this to Dungeons and Dragons. The demodogs, as he called them, were all supposed to be part of some sort of hive mind. A Mind Flayer was supposedly the one in control. Annie knew nothing about the game, but she supposed there could be points made.

Those points finally drew the conclusion that they needed to trap Will somewhere he didn't recognize. That way he wouldn't be able to spy and figure out where they were. The shed ended up being the perfect place.

Annie was focused on helping Max tape up pieces of cardboard together. That was easy and menial enough. Besides, she felt like she had to make herself scarce so Steve could talk to Nancy. Well, it was more like she didn't want Nancy thinking any of those dumb rumors were true. It was obviously over between them. Why Nancy didn't say anything about that to Steve was beyond her. There wasn't time to think about that. They needed to get the shed ready before Will woke up.

Soon enough, it was back to just a waiting game. One that made Annie want to crawl out of her skin. It reminded her of when she was waiting to find out which of her parents got full custody not even a month ago. A decision that she didn’t think would ever make her happy regardless of who ended up with her.

She sat on the couch, staring off into space as Steve swung his bat around.

"Your swing is fine, you know. It's checking your blind spots that you'd wanna look out for," she said.

He looked over, "What?"

"Like earlier... you weren't checking your surroundings."

"Why do I need to do that when I've got you saving my ass?"

She smiled a bit despite herself, "Because maybe I'll slip up."

"Hey," he sat next to her, "Don't think like that. We're gonna be fine."

Annie gave him a look, "I'm not one of the kids, Steve, I know this might not end well."

"Well with that thinking it won't," he commented.

She shook her head, "Sorry, um I just didn't expect to almost die like this. I mean, I always expected some weird shit to happen in Seattle or New York. Inter-dimensional monsters in a small town wasn't what I expected to be the wake-up call."

"For what?"

"That death's inevitable and I've spent the last few months just being miserable and alone," she let out a small laugh, "It just- it seriously sucks like you wouldn't believe."

The lights started to flicker like crazy. Annie was quick to grab her pitchfork from the corner of the room. This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening. For a moment she was so sure that the room was going to turn into the Upside Down. She all but shrank into herself until the lights went normal again. Everyone was fine. Will didn't know where they were.

A few minutes later and they figured out Will was still communicating through Morse Code. Annie watched as the message was written out in front of them.

"Close gate," they all said together, trying to figure out what it could mean.

Suddenly, the phone started ringing and it wouldn't stop until Nancy pulled it out and threw it to the ground. A sense of dread overcame the room.

"Do you think he heard that?" Max asked.

Steve shook his head, "Phone ringing... that could be anywhere."

However, the screeching in the distance was enough to show that Will somehow knew exactly where they were. The demodogs were going to come back and there was no choice but to fight them. Sure, this time there were more people who could fight than Steve and herself, but there was an army of those monsters and they all knew it.

This was futile, but Annie wasn't about to say that and neither was anyone else. Instead they all stood, and she clutched her pitchfork tighter than ever before. The screaming came from all over and Annie kept an eye on the windows she could see.

A demodog burst in through the window, causing all of them to scream. Only, it was dead. Something had to have killed it, which only caused more questions to circle through Annie's head. She was ready to fight whatever came through that front door as it unlocked and opened. Only, she found herself putting down her weapon when she realized it was just a girl. Someone who couldn't have been any older than the kids she was helping to take care of.

Some things started to piece together in Annie's head as Mike rushed up to the girl, he called her Eleven. It seemed that the girl Steve talked about the night before wasn't dead after all. Though, from how Mike was going up to Hopper, she was pretty there was more to what was going on.

For the pair having moved to another room, she could hear Mike yelling pretty well. She stared at the floor, trying to not think about all the times she could hear her parents fight in that small, New York apartment. Instead, she just watched as the other kids reunited with Eleven.

"So, how'd you find out about all this?" Nancy asked, ripping her from her thoughts, "I mean, Steve obviously told you, yeah?"

Annie nodded slowly, "Yep..."

"That's funny, because when I wanted to tell Barb's parents about all this, he wasn't on board," she said, looking her over.

She shrugged, "Well, was their house flip-flopping dimensions as well, or were you just trying to satiate your own guilt?"

"Wait, what're you talking about?"

"I found out about this shit because I ended up telling Steve about how I was seeing things in my house. He got me out, and we were looking for you, actually. He wanted to apologize to you," she sighed, giving a tight-lipped smile, "And it turns out, he wasn't the one who needed to apologize. I'm new, but I'm not blind."

Nancy's eyes widened a bit before she walked outside. Perhaps it was a little bit much for Annie to say, but she wasn't about to play into whatever Nancy was trying to do. How was she supposed to feel sympathy for someone who so clearly hurt her only friend in this town?

Not that any of it mattered because everyone was talking about splitting up. Joyce and Jonathan were going to take Will to get rid of the part of him that was the Mind Flayer. Meanwhile, Hopper and Eleven were going to go back to the lab and close the gate. That left what was supposed to be her, Steve, and Nancy taking care of the kids. Something that was sure to go very well. Still, Annie wasn't about to go with either of the other two groups. She had no interest in putting herself back in danger and having yet another near-death experience. The ones she had already were more than enough.

Annie stayed in the house, knowing that all she and the kids could do was try to clean up the house. There was a broken window, and it did leave the house feeling cold. Before they did that, though, she went out with the kids to watch as they said goodbye to Eleven.

Steve cleared his throat, "So, uh, it's just gonna be us babysitting."

"Oh? What happened?"

"I let her go. She's helping Jonathan and Mrs. Byers," he sighed, "It was never gonna work. You knew that, though. Sorry I dragged you into all this over her."

Annie turned and looked up at him, "Hey, if it wasn't for you, I could be stuck in that Upside Down crap right now and things would be a lot worse. And, for what it's worth, you've been a good friend too."

"Thanks."

Just like that, it was the two of them with the kids. What they were going to do in the meantime was beyond her. Probably just more sitting around and being prepared for the worst. The kids had their walkies, so if anything happened, she was sure they would find out.

Dustin was wrapping the dead demodog in a quilt, "Hey, can I get a little help here?"

"Um, what're you doing?" Annie asked.

He huffed, "We gotta preserve this. One of you needs to hold this so I can get it into the fridge so we can keep the body from decomposing.

Annie looked at Steve, "You know, if you take this, you get to be the best babysitter. I'll just be mediocre at my job."

"Seriously?" Steve sighed, though it didn't take long for him to relent and just pick up the dead demodog.

While they worried about taking care of that, Annie decided to help Max and Lucas clean up the broken glass. A simple task to keep her from thinking about what was going on. Mike kept pacing until Lucas said something. Sure, she could understand where the kid was coming from, but it was so much safer for all of them this way. None of them had powers, Eleven clearly did.

Steve walked up to them, "Look, the coach makes a play and bottom line, you've gotta do it."

"This isn't a stupid sports game!" Mike snapped, "Anyways, we're not in the game, we're on the bench."

He nodded, "Yeah... right. Right, and the point is, yep, we're on the bench and there's nothing we can do."

"I could offer a cool theater analogy," Annie said, getting ignored.

"Wait, but the demodogs are a hive mind, they were called away earlier," Dustin pointed out.

That was when the kids started to get an idea that quickly spiraled. Annie looked at Steve like they were crazy. Because they were. If they all died, then what?

She shook her head, "Wait, um, you guys?"

"We could go in here and burn it-"

"Yeah, that's a no," Steve said, holding the dish towel "We promised to keep you shitheads safe so we're gonna stay here on the bench and wait for the starting team to do their job, understand?"

Mike scoffed, "This isn't a stupid sports game!"

"I said, does everybody understand that?!" he gestured with the towel, “I need a yes.”

A car engine was heard in the distance and Max ran to see what was going on. All Annie needed to hear was that it was her brother before realizing that perhaps this wasn't the safest option after all. There was a certain look of concern on her face, and Steve looked at her.

"Hey, I'm gonna take care of this, okay? You just need to stay here and make sure the kids don't do anything stupid. And I mean it this time, I don't trust him seeing you involved with all this," Steve insisted.

Annie opened her mouth to argue, but could only bring herself to nod. If she couldn't even defend herself to that guy a day ago, what good would she be now? And maybe Steve really would fix all this. There was a lot he had done already. They were going to be fine. Nothing was going to happen to the kids, especially Max.

So she watched the best she could through the front door window. That meant she wasn't paying attention to the kids like she should have been. It looked like it was getting intense between the two guys. She reached into her pocket for her switchblade. While she was sure Steve could handle this, she wanted to be ready just in case. Then, Billy pointed at the window and she deflated.

She glared at the kids, "What part about keeping your heads down did you dumbasses not get?!"

There wasn't more time for her to yell because she watched Steve get shoved to the ground and kicked. Her eyes widened and she held tightly to the closed knife in her hand. The door swung open and she moved to get in front of him. She couldn't let the kids get hurt.

"Ah, Harrington's bitch," he shoved her into an end table, "And Lucas Sinclair."

It took a lot to not cry out in pain, but she didn't want the kids to worry about her. She could still move, but hitting the corner of the table made her back ache. And for a moment, all she could do was watch as Billy went right for Lucas. Right as she moved to get up, Steve rushed in and was quick to help her up.

A part of Annie wanted to just go up to Billy and punch him until he was a pulp, but she knew she couldn't do that. Steve would have a chance, though. She let him confront Billy and she stood in front of the kids, fumbling to get her knife open. Though, with Steve getting in a few good hits, Annie felt like he could do it. Until she saw Billy pick up the plate.

"Steve, the plate!" she screamed but it was too late and Billy bashed the plate over his head, causing him to stumble back.

It only got worse from there and all Annie could do was watch in horror as Steve fell to the ground, obviously passed out. Billy started to throw more punches. She had no choice, she had to do something. Steve was dead otherwise. If she could take on those demodogs, surely she could take on some asshole who was beating up her best friend.

In a quick move, she ran up behind Billy and pressed the switchblade to Billy's neck, "Get the fuck off of him!"

He got off of Steve but only to thrash against her to fight for the knife. It was happening in such a blur and she wasn't strong enough to get the upper hand again. She first felt something cut into her cheek and then her back was against the floor. All she could do was scream and try to sink into the floor further.

"You know, I've been waiting for something like this for a few days now," Billy murmured, tossing the knife aside.

Annie kept her eyes shut, unable to say anything as she felt his mouth on her neck. If she could just make herself smaller or do something. There was something hard against her thigh and she tried to slide out, but there wasn't any give. She couldn't do anything. For all she knew, Steve was dead and she wasn't any better off. A stench of cigarette smoke and musk was all she could smell and it made her feel like gagging.

Then, Billy made a confused noise and there was suddenly less pressure on top of her. She opened one eye, realizing no one was on top of her. Max was screaming something, but it wasn't registering. All she could hear was a ringing of sorts. What did register was that Steve was only a few feet away and she crawled over to him.

His face was covered in blood and was already swelling. Still caught up in everything, she tried shaking him.

"Steve? Steve, come on, I need you to wake up for me," she whispered, looking for any signs that he was going to wake up, "Please, I can't do this shit alone, I really need you right now."

Dustin slowly approached her, sitting on the other side of Steve, "Annie, he's just passed out. He's still breathing, see?"

Sure enough, she could see his chest rising and falling, "Right... yeah... you're right, sorry."

"It's okay, we just need you to drive us where we tell you to," he said.

Annie's eyes widened, "We're not going anywhere!"

"Do you really wanna stay here where Billy is? Come on, if you stay calm about this, we can bring Steve along," Dustin replied.

That was all the convincing Annie needed in that moment. Getting the kids and Steve as far away from Billy as possible was the goal. Dustin put a few band-aids onto Steve to try and make her feel better. He offered her one for the cut on her cheek, but she didn't take it. Instead, she took the car keys to Billy's Camaro.

No, she had never driven before in her life, but how hard could it be? She watched Steve do enough of it. Surely she could figure this out on the fly. When she turned the key, the engine roared to life. She just needed to go from park to drive. Except the car was moving without her pushing anything.

"What the fuck, why's this thing moving?!" she exclaimed.

Max looked at her, "Have you ever driven before?"

"No."

"Get the brake, put it back in park. I'll do it," Max insisted.

It didn't take more than that for Annie to be in the backseat so she could be right there with Steve. He had been hit so hard and a part of her worried he wasn't going to wake up. How was she supposed to do all this without him? They were supposed to be co-babysitters. She didn't have a clue about taking care of these kids. Hell, she was letting one of them drive. That wasn’t a hallmark of good babysitting.

She held an ice pack to Steve's head and she felt him stir.

"Nancy?" he murmured, looking at Mike.

Annie breathed a sigh of relief, letting Dustin explain everything. All that mattered was that Steve was awake, probably not completely okay, but he was awake nonetheless.

Then he looked up at her, "Wait. If you're not driving then..."

Steve was soon screaming for Max to stop driving. It didn't help the situation and soon enough they were all screaming and yelling at each other. Though, they somehow made it to the spot in question just fine.

She took the time to help Steve get out of the car, "So uh, I know we said we wouldn't let them go here, but maybe it's better here? Like it's away from... it might not be a bad idea, yeah?"

"You're bleeding," he said before noticing what the kids were doing, "No! We're absolutely not doing this!"

Dustin walked up to them, "Steve, I know you're upset but a party member requires assistance. Now, you told Nance you'd keep us safe, so just do that."

The kid handed Steve his bat and Annie her pitchfork. They were really going to do this. A knot of nausea was in her stomach.

A pair of goggles, some gloves, and a bandanna later; Annie was at the back of the group, making sure none of the kids fell behind while Steve took the front. It was simple. Set the place on fire and get out fast. She could do this. If Steve could handle this, so could she.

They were walking through the tunnels, and Annie was already familiar with the vines and whatever it was floating in the air. Dustin stood back and as she tried to get him to move forward, something sprayed at him. As horrific as it was to watch, the kid was back up and with the group.

Another few minutes and they found the hub that they all needed to drench in gasoline. That was also the easy part. She still kept an eye out, though. Those demodogs could be anywhere for all she knew.

She was crouched alongside all of them as Steve threw his lighter to the ground. For a moment, she just stared as it was all enveloped in bright flames. It took Dustin tugging her to realize they needed to go and she trailed behind. Meaning she was right there when Mike fell down.

"It's okay, you're fine, kid," she said, using the pitchfork to cut the vines.

That didn't stop a demodog from running up and growling as the group came back for them. She stood in front of all them, but Dustin moved in front. They all cried out in protest until Steve got them to quiet down. Her gloved hand reached for Steve's for just a moment before she focused on holding her pitchfork.

Thankfully, somehow a candy bar was all they needed to get through. That didn't stop the other demodogs from knowing where to find them. It was a race to get the kids up one by one. The last one up was Dustin who only made it up because she and Steve forced him up. At least the kids made it out.

Deep down, Annie knew that getting out of this was impossible. She was sure Steve knew that too, but they had gone through too much to not fight this last time. Her grip was tight on her pitchfork and her eyes glanced up to him.

"Thanks, for everything," she said as the monsters ran.

What she hadn't prepared for was the stampede to ignore her and Steve. He had to hold onto her so she didn't get thrown into them. The monsters passed and she blinked as hard as she could so she wouldn't cry.

Steve made her go up first and he came out soon after. The car lights started to flash brighter than she thought possible and then they went dark again. Right after that, the hole in the ground closed. All she could do was stand, watching as it all came to an end.

Tag List (let me know if you want to be added!): @dungeons-and-demodogs @jxnehxpper @ilovebucketbarnes

#steve harrington #steve harrington x original character #steve harrington x oc #stranger things #stranger things fic #stranger things 3 #stranger things 2 #stranger things fanfic #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things x original character #stranger things x oc #steve harrington angst #stranger things angst #dfean?

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noramoya · 4 years ago

Text

CHRIS LACY, In The Violet Reality. AUGUST 29th 2020.

“Yes, you read that right. There’s a difference between “greatest” and “best.” Merriam-Webster defines “greatest” as “remarkable in magnitude, degree, or effectiveness.” They also define “best” as “one’s maximum effort.”

With that said, it makes perfect sense to say Thriller is Michael Jackson’s “greatest” for changing the way we hear and see music. Smooth Criminal is his “best” because we see the King of Pop at the peak of his powers. Some of you agree with me. Others might think I’ve got one brain cell running laps in my head. (If you’re in that second group, hear me out.)

PASSING THE TORCH:

“Michael grew up a huge fan of Old Hollywood movies and Broadway theater. During his Grammy Legend speech in 1993, he said, “I remember [when Janet and I] were little, I used to ask her to be Ginger Rogers while I was Fred Astaire.”

After moonwalking into history books on Motown 25, Jackson got a phone call the next day, from his childhood hero. (“Oh, come on,” was his first reaction.) “You’re a hell of a mover. Man, you really put them on their asses last night,” Astaire told the future King of Pop. “It was the greatest compliment I had ever received in my life,” Jackson gushed, “and the only one I had ever wanted to believe.”

Shortly before Astaire passed away from pneumonia in June 1987, he said, “I didn’t want to leave this world before meeting my successor. Thank you, Michael.” It was as if Smooth Criminal was the short film he was born to make”.

A MASTER AT WORK:

“As a song, “Smooth Criminal” is an epic crime drama that steals a page from Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. An unknown man breaks into a woman’s apartment. We don’t know why he’s there or if she will live to tell about it. On paper, that might sound like Michael’s character is a peeping Tom. But what does that make us, the audience? We’re listening to him — watching them!

He attacks each verse with a gruff rasp, spitting out words like shrapnel, and his soaring falsetto weeps over the chaos below. (“Annie, are you OK? / Will you tell us that you’re OK? / There’s a sign in the window / That he struck you — a crescendo, Annie!”) One of the fascinating parts of Michael’s work was the way he turned his torture into music that made the whole world dance. With ghostly keyboard swells and spidery basslines, “Smooth Criminal” sweeps you into its clutches before pouring its dark charms on the dance floor and casually tossing a lit match. On a filmmaking level, Smooth Criminal is a nine-minute highlight reel from the first frame to the last. I mean, what’s not to love?

•MJ flicks a coin across Club ‘30s into a neon–lit jukebox. ��He showcases a dance style, inspired by ‘The Band Wagon’ (1953) and Looney Tunes animation. •MJ shoots a thug with a revolver through a brick wall near the staircase ! •His supersonic spin on the bar room table before the window shatters... •MJ makes jaws drop around the globe with an anti-gravity gangster lean ! •He unloads a Tommy gun on Mr. Big’s troops who are hot on his heels.

We’re watching a master at work. Yet all we wanna do is line him up against Thriller and make sure he loses. Why can’t people realize that you can enjoy one without tearing down the other ?! While MJ was a fierce competitor, he knew how stacked the deck was. “You can always say, ‘Aw, forget Thriller,’” he wrote in his 1988 book, Moonwalk. “But no one ever will.”

EMBRACE DEBATE:

You’re still not convinced, huh? OK then, let’s do this ! “Without Thriller, there’s no Smooth Criminal”. If that’s the case, then there’s no Thriller without Billie Jean, Beat It, or anything else he did before that. Are we celebrating which came first, or which did it the best? “People are still playing ‘Thriller’ every Halloween because of Mike.”

As a song, I agree it’s a must-hear every October. Here’s the thing, though: Some forget that Quincy Jones asked Rod Temperton to write “Thriller.” Some of Michael’s critics believed Jones and his “killer Q posse” of collaborators were the driving force behind ‘Off the Wall’ and ‘Thriller’. Please don’t get me wrong: They deserve endless praise for taking our favorite hits to the next level. At the same time, Michael was more than a “song-and-dance man.” “Smooth Criminal” proves that his pen game could spark head-bobbing and hip-shaking motions of approval. “All that moaning and groaning in the middle of Smooth Criminal is weird”... I felt the same way until I realized he and the Club 30’s patrons are mourning for Annie. Music and dance were Michael’s release from emotional prisons. Take ‘Black or White’s “Panther Dance”, for example. He took a bold chance with his Art, grieving with victims of racism and prejudice. But the reality of being black was too much for TV, so he made a “shortened version” of the film. “Yeah, well, Thriller made it into the Library of Congress. That’s how influential it was.” True, and Smooth Criminal is the centerpiece of his 1988 feature film, Moonwalker, and a Sega video game of the same name. But the influence doesn’t end there. “Michael always said, and not just to me, that Smooth Criminal was his favorite piece,” longtime choreographer Vincent Paterson shared in a 2013 interview with Clash. “To me, Michael saying it’s his favorite piece is kind of evidenced by so many things that originated in Smooth Criminal, you know: the band around the arm, that kind of hat, the white coat. He took on that persona of the Smooth Criminal character and carried it on for almost the rest of his life.”

FINAL THOUGHTS:

“Life has taught me there’s no such thing as war between the humble and the humble. Civil debates aim to progress ideas and not rush to conclude that one side is right, and the other is wrong... If you love blockbuster pop, you can and should love them both. At the same time, Art should always be examined, re-examined, and challenged.

•Thriller is the greatest piece of musical theater ever made for a pop song. Bar none.

•Smooth Criminal is the ultimate Michael Jackson spectacle. It’s one of the many reasons why the King of Pop will never lose his crown.”

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reddielibrary · 6 years ago

Photo

Til Death My Love

prompt: Murder Mystery AU

written by: Shannon | @richiefuckfacetozier

Art by @slashpalooza

word count: 2,319

*click title to read on AO3

Characters:

Butler Richworth - Richie

Mrs. White - Patty

Miss Scarlet - Audra

Mrs. Beaver - Beverly

Professor Plum - Mike

Colonel Bird - Stanley

Mr. Spaghetti - Eddie

Revered Hay - Ben

Mr. Boddy - Bill

Richworth heard the door ring and he was off to collect the last member of the night. There were to be 7 guests for Mr. Bill Boddy’s feast. He opened the wooden door to reveal a short, brown-haired man, “Mr. Spaghetti.” he greeted with a slight bow.

“Richie...I mean Richworth.”

Richworth took a moment to admire the blue suit Mr. Spaghetti wore, he looked uncomfortable in the outfit even though it fit him perfectly. There was a pink colored pocket square that Richworth plucked out quickly. “Hey!” Mr. Spaghetti reached for the small cloth. Richworth grabbed his wrist to bring it toward his mouth for a chaste kiss. He glanced up at the red face of Mr. Spaghetti, who gulped visibly as his mouth parted a little.

Richworth let go and straightened up, “The other guests are already here and in the dining room.” Richworth led the way toward the decorative room. There were plates, silverware, and glasses set up for a 3-course meal. A meal they would never get to enjoy.

“Why are we all here?” Miss Scarlet said in frustration to Richworth the second they entered the room. “Some of us have jobs you know.”

“What job would you have that involves working evenings?” asked Colonel Bird.

Mrs. White leaned toward the Colonel, “I think we can all guess exactly what kind of job she has.”

A look of pure loathing flashed across the beautiful face of Miss Scarlet. She flipped her red hair dramatically, “At least I have a job, better than being a widow with several husbands, who all seemed to mysteriously kick the bucket.”

Mrs. White stood up, “I will not sit here and be insulted by some harlot!”

“Oh sit down and shut up for god’s sake.” Mrs. Beaver took a long drag of her cigarette and blew out smoke rings. Her short straight red bob was in complete contrast to Miss Scarlet’s long curly hair. Freckles scattered around her skin like dust, more than one person in the room considered how they practically represent the souls of past victims who’ve crossed her. “You are disrupting my calming aura.”

“Don’t disrupt the aura,” said Professor Plum in his low voice. He wore a green tweed suit that accented his dark skin perfectly. His brown eyes were trained on the red wine sloshing around in his glass. “Wouldn’t want to upset that.”

Mrs. Beaver glanced across the table at him. The red pointy glasses she wore were on the tip of her nose so her eyes focused on him unnervingly. “If you have something to say, then say it, Professor Plum.”

“There’s no real science behind aura’s and you know it.” He stated, swishing his red wine and sipping it. “You bring your own positive or negative energy. No one is controlling it for you.”

She opened her mouth to argue just as Richworth rang a mini gong. The sound vibrated through the room quieting the group instantly.

“Now that we have gathered, Mr. Boddy would like to greet you all.” A smile spread over his face like he knew something they didn’t, which in all likelihood he knew everything they didn’t.

A man with slicked-back dark red hair entered the room. Everyone let out some noise of anger, surprise, or horror. There stood Mr. Bill Boddy wearing a designer suit and holding a briefcase attached to his arm with handcuffs.

“You!” Miss Scarlet rose to her feet. “Why are we here?!”

“All will be explained, me dear,” Bill said in a quiet firmness. “For now, please sit.”

She stood her ground a moment longer before the calming touch of Reverend Hay was placed on her elbow. Miss Scarlet looked at him and without saying a word, she sat back down. He patted her hand lightly then returned it to his lap.

“Richworth, please tell our guests why they are here.” said Mr. Boddy, taking a seat at the head of the table.

Richworth started at the head and slowly walked around as he said, “Reverend Hay, Miss Scarlet, Professor Plum…” He continued to the other side of the table, “Miss White, Colonel Bird, Mrs. Beaver, and Mr. Spaghetti.”

Richworth stopped beside Mr. Spaghetti placing a hand on his shoulder. The man stiffened in surprise then calmed down. “As you all know, Mr. Boddy here has been blackmailing each of you for months.” This news was met with tight lips, glares, and a bitter smirk from Mrs. Beaver. “In his briefcase is all the evidence on each of you, the only copies of the evidence. Mr. Boddy plans on giving these over to the police which could incriminate everyone seated at this table. IF you don’t do exactly as he tells you…” Richworth took a pause here, then removed his hand from Mr. Spaghetti, “Or you can reach under your chairs…”

Bill Boddy glanced at Richworth, “What is the meaning of this?” All the guests started reaching under their chairs and pulling out different weapons - knife, gun, wrench, rope, candlestick, lead pipe, metal trophy.

“Everyone has a weapon capable of killing Mr. Bill Boddy. Now's your chance to take back your lives.” At these words, the lights went out. The sound of weapons being dropped or thrown, a gunshot noise, a thud, then nothing.

The lights flickered back on and there was Bill Boddy’s body limp on the ground. Miss Scarlett let out a scream.

Richie bent down to check his pulse, then slowly rose. “One of you is the killer,” Richie pointed to the body of Bill as he looked out toward the sea of guilty suspects. “I suggest you figure it out because I called the police earlier.”

“You what?!” Mrs. White screeched.

“How dare you! What exactly do you do?” Professor Plum accused.

“I am the butler,” Richworth replied lazily, “I buttle if you will.”

“Why…” Mr. Spaghtti asked weakly, eyes trained on the body. “Why would you give us weapons then call the police?”

“Because I wanted him dead and knew you all would get the job done. Now, how shall we figure this out folks?”

-40 minutes later -

“Come on, Mr. Spaghetti! They are coming for us!” Richie gripped his hand. Their feet were loud on the wooden floors as they ran down the hallway together.

“Richie wait!” Eddie wheezed uncomfortably. “I can’t run.”

Without letting go but slowing down significantly he said, “I’m not Richie, I’m Richworth your secret lover and accomplice.”

“No seriously, Richie, I can’t fucking breathe.” He let go and they both stopped. Richie placed his hands on Eddie’s shoulders. “You ok Mr. Spaghetti?”

“I hate that Bill…” he took a deep breath, “Gave me Mr. Spaghett in his murder mystery.”

Richie laughed, “At least your name isn’t a play on your father’s: Richworth...Wentworth...kill me. There’s a reason dad didn’t want me to be junior. Terrible name.” He stared at Eddie with unease. “Didn’t mean to overwork you.”

Eddie waved a hand dismissively, “Don’t worry. It’s been super fun tonight. I didn’t think I’d be quiet about being the murderer for as long as I did. But of course, you got it out of me.”

“My card said I’d assist the murderer but didn’t tell me who it was just that I had to protect my love who was being blackmailed, who would be wearing a pink handkerchief.” Richie looked around as he heard the noise of people coming after them. “Quick! Hide!”

“We need to get back to the dining room. They won’t expect us to go back to the scene of the crime.” Eddie suggested still clutching his chest.”

“They think I’m the killer, I should just sacrifice myself.” He said in complete seriousness. This was a game but Eddie had no doubt Richie would do this in a real situation.

Eddie launched himself at Richie and kissed him fiercely. They were like lovers who truly had killed someone together, this was the last kiss before they were separated for life. Richie pushed him up against the door off the side of the hallway. He reached behind Eddie and opened the door, they stumbled into the small closet. Their mouths barely parting, deepening with each uncertain moment.

Eddie’s hands went down Richie’s chest, feeling the silkiness of the rented butler suit. He smirked into the kiss laughing a little.

Richie broke the kiss asking, “What are you laughing at spaghetti head?”

“I buttle if you will. I think the whole room was two seconds away from bursting into laughter when you said that. This group has never had to be so serious for so long.”

“The roleplay has been the best part.”

“You are so natural. Bev too, I was legit scared of her at the dinner table.”

“DID ANYONE SEE WHERE RICHWORTH WENT?!” Came the yell of Mike.

They both held their breaths and remained completely still. Eddie’s heart was beating frantically. If the others found them, they would know they were working together. That couldn't happen.

Footsteps stopped right outside the door. “We should just keep running down the hall then start checking rooms." Came Patty's voice. "He has to be here somewhere.”

“Maybe Eddie tricked him into following him like he said he would.” Beverly suggested. At this Richie’s body tensed and he looked down. Eddie shook his head, eyes meeting steadily and mouthed ‘I tricked them’. Richie hugged him closer.

“Well,” Stanley’s annoyed and out of breath voice broke through, “Let’s go onward then.” Their footsteps trampled down the hallway, allowing Richie and Eddie to relax.

“I’m playing double agent my dear Richworth.” he said pleadingly, flowing back into character. “I would never betray you.”

“I know my love,” Richie bent his head to kiss Eddie chastely. “Let’s go.”

The two held hands as they quietly hurried in the opposite direction of their pursuers. They took the steps of the stairs two at a time and ran toward the dining room. When they entered the room, Bill was sitting in a chair smiling at them excitedly.

“How’s the dead life, Billy?” Richie asked with a smirk. He raised his hand and zipped his lip. “Oh right, once you’re dead you can no longer talk. Right, Mr. Spaghetti?” There was no answer. “Eddie?”

Richie turned around to see Ben holding a knife to Eddie’s throat. “Reverend Hay...put down the knife.”

“You two were in it together.” Ben said in a shaky voice.

“Not very godly of you to kill a man.” Richie stepped forward. Ben brought the knife closer to Eddie’s throat. “Put it down.”

“No! WE ARE IN THE DINING ROOM!” Ben screamed. “They are going to come and you two will be taken into custody.”

“I can’t let that happen.”

“Richworth,” Eddie shook his head. “Go, while you can.”

Richie’s eyes stayed trained on the knife. “I’m not leaving you.” His eyes flickered to the gun still on the table. “Til death my love.” He picked up the gun and aimed it at Ben’s head. “Lay down the knife.”

Ben let go of Eddie, who immediately ran behind Richie.

“You wouldn’t kill a man of god.” Ben sobbed.

“I’m an atheist.” Richie pulled the trigger, the noise of a gun went off and Ben hit the ground dramatically.

Richie stared at his body for a minute before Eddie took the gun from him. “You were so brave,” he whispered laying a kiss on his lips slowly. “I can’t believe you killed for me.”

“I would do anything for you.” Richie responded leaning down to kiss him longer.

“I know you would.” Eddie took a step back a slow smile forming on his face. Except there was nothing sweet about it, the grin was a victorious one.

“Mr. Spaghetti?”

“Til death my love.” Eddie raised his arm and pulled the trigger. Richie fell to the ground.

The rest of the group entered the room, gasping and yelling.

“Richworth killed the Revered and Mr. Boddy. The murder is dead.” Eddie said to the room. Everyone cheered and hugged each other.

“And that’s the end of the game!” Bill said excitedly.

Richie rose from the ground quickly. “You little bastard! You lied to me!”

Eddie began to laugh, his laughter filled the room.

“What are you talking about Rich?” Beverly asked in confusion.

He frowned at the still giggling man, “Eddie was the fucking killer! He played triple agent!”

“That’s what my card said to DO! I had to trick you and kill you in order to win!”

“I was supposed to protect you from all weapons...oh my god. Damn it, Bill.” Richie turned on him. “Couldn’t have given me a little more of a tip there?”

“You let your guard down.” Bill shrugged. “But holy shit the final showdown was awesome.”

“I wish we could’ve seen it!” Audra went over to Bill and kissed his cheek. “Great writing hun.”

“Can we please do this every weekend?” said Patty with excitement.

“I couldn’t handle this every weekend. Far too stressful” Stanley groaned. “Maybe in a couple months.”

“Such a grump.” Patty poked his stomach playfully.

“Does that mean we all lost?!” Mike asked in annoyance. “Since our objective was to figure out the murderer.”

Bill grinned. “Correct. You are all a bunch of losers. Except for Eddie!”

“What else is new,” Ben grumbled. “Richie fucking killed me. I’ll never forgive you, man.”

“Awww,” Beverly went over to Ben and gave him a hug. “Poor baby.” She teased as the room laughed.

“Well,” Eddie nodded toward the door. “Shall we go check out this giant house we rented for the weekend?” The group agreed and left the room.

“Can’t believe you killed me,” Richie complained. “You got to be such a badass.”

Eddie laughed, “I’m always a badass.”

#reddie #reddielibrary #prompt fill #writing team #halloween event

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themikewheelers · 6 years ago

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I didn't start watching the show until after season 2 was released, so I'm wondering, how accurate did the fan theories about season 2 end up being? Was there any major theory that ended up being totally off-base, or did people manage to guess what would happen pretty accurately?

There were a LOT of wild theories tbh. There were some rlly good ones too. I remember a rlly popular one was that after someone leaked some set pictures of Millie filming the scene where El gets off the bus in Chicago, a lot of ppl started theorizing that Eleven was hiding out there with some friends Hopper had there or smth (Now we know that “the city” Hop used to live in was New York, but we didn’t know that pre-s2 so ppl figured it might be Chicago and he had an old apartment there or smth). There were also a LOT of theories centered around the tunnels, bc that was some of the only plot hints we had going in to the season. People caught on pretty quickly after the trailer came out that the drawings in the Byers house were a map of the tunnels, and stuff spiraled from there. I remember one theory I personally believed was that the tunnels were what Will used in the Upside Down to get around and hide from the Demogorgon. Another big theory was that the red cloud that the Mind Flayer appeared in in Will’s visions was going to be an actual physical storm coming to Hawkins, which came p much from the few shots of it in trailers alongside the fact that the show originally released some fake episode titles when they announced s2, and one of them was “The Storm”. The old title for “The Lost Sister” was actually “The Lost Brother” and a LOT of theories came from that, ranging from pretty accurate like it being another experiment, to completely off base, like one I remember was it being about a 4th Wheeler sibling (Mike’s twin) who died (p much just came from the fact that Mike has a bunk bed). OH and if you remember the DnD scene at the end of season 1, aka everything with the proud princess, the lost knight, and the weird flowers in the cave? Everyone was CONVINCED those were supposed to be clues for season 2. Literally 99% of s2 theories mentioned those 3 things, and in the end they were complete red herrings. I’m still bitter about that, and if u ask any blog who was here pre-s2, chances are they are too. A lot of theories also came from Dragon’s Lair, as the Duffers hinted a lot that there would be symbolism in the game. Now we know that “symbolism” was rlly nothing more than foreshadowing that Lucas would end up with Max and not Dustin (”Princess Daphne is still mine!”) but for a long time we thought it was PLOT foreshadowing. And lemme tell you anon, I personally did SO MUCH research on that game and watched the gameplay so many times making theories. The plot of the game is about a knight rescuing a missing princess from a dragon, and a lot of us thought that was going to foreshadowing for Mike saving El from whatever was the reason she was still missing. For a LONG time ppl thought El was going to be in the Upside Down for a full year. If you read any pre-s2 fics, there’s a good chance that’s going to be referenced, bc for so long we didn’t have ANY clue where she could be so we just assumed she was stuck in the Upside Down as a default. It wasn’t until a year after the show came out that it was confirmed she’d been out of the Upside Down since the beginning. So yeah for a long time there were a LOT of theories about the kids doing a rescue mission to the Upside Down. Another theory that came from Dragon’s Lair was that Dustin was going to die, bc his character dies in Dragon’s Lair and people thought that would be similar foreshadowing to how in s1 Will’s DnD character was taken by the Demogorgon, then that’s what happened in real life. Speaking of character deaths, a LOT of people thought Steve or Hopper were gonna die. There wasn’t rlly explanation behind it, but everyone kinda agreed, their character arcs as of the end of s1 were set up well if the show wanted to kill one of them off. Another big plot theory that I remember was that the Upside Down would be spreading to the real world, bc the tag line for season 2 was “The World Is Turning Upside Down” and people connected it back to Mr Clarke’s line about how the gate could swallow everyone up whole. That theory KINDA became true and the gate was spreading in s2, but it wasn’t the plot of the season or anything, and it wasn’t near as serious in reality as people theorized it to be. There were a also LOT of theories about Will too, and a lot of them were some variation of Will having powers. Oh and since one of the episode titles is “The Spy” there were a lot of theories about who the spy was, the most common ones I remember were Max, Billy, Bob, and Hopper. The first 3 bc they were the newbies (no pun intended on Bob’s end) and Hopper bc we kinda knew he had some connection going on with the lab, but didn’t know the nature or what was going on or anything. OHMYGOD and how could I forget the Thessalhydra. The FREAKING Thessalhydra. Another DnD related theory that I spent HOURS of my life dedicated to researching only for it to amount to NOTHING. The Thessalhydra is another DnD monster, and it was also mentioned in the campaign at the end of season 1, and everyone was convinced that would be the new monster from s2. There weren’t a lot of theories about the Mind Flayer going into season 2 just because we didn’t know enough to even have theories, but almost every theory that did exist assumed that the shadow monster was the Thessalhydra coming to Hawkins following the Demogorgons defeat. Another one I remember is since we got shots of Joyce, Hop, and Bob wearing scrubs in the trailer, people thought they were going undercover in a hospital to either 1) kidnap Will out of it or 2) steal medical files.

As for theories that were accurate, there was a surprising lot. Honestly in reality a LOT of stuff that happened in season 2 was stuff ppl either theorized about, but their theories went WAY more in depth & went beyond what actually happened, or it was smth ppl figured was too obvious to be true. So honestly in the end we definitely OVER-theorized a lot for s2. El and Hop was one of them. Hopper hiding El in a secret cabin in the woods was one of those things that everybody in the fandom thought about, but most of us thought it was too predictable to be true (especially because one of those original episode titles was literally “The Secret Cabin”). Everyone pretty much assumed that Dustin’s pollywog was really the slug Will threw up, and there were even a lot of theories about it being a baby Demogorgon (though I don’t think ANYONE anticipated the demodogs). Or like I mentioned before, a lot of theories about El going to Chicago, but none of them were even CLOSE to what really happened. Kali’s original name in the show was Roman, and they kept her SUPER secretive. When the final trailer of the show came out, they included a shot of the gang wearing masks, and I remember someone was able to figure out that one of them was Roman/Kali, and that’s rlly all we knew about her going in. I actually remember someone sent me an ask back then thinking that the girl next to her might be El in a mask too, and I specifically remember looking at that picture thinking “Nah that’s not her” bc I mean, no one expected anything like episode 7. They had announced there was going to be an independent episode, and I remember our theories ranged everywhere from a musical episode to flashbacks of the year between 1 and 2 to a whole episode dedicated to Terry and MKUltra. But at no point did anyone come even close to figuring out the truth. There’s a lot of smaller details ppl anticipated too, like the Stancy breakup or Bob’s death, and even a good chunk of the plot honestly, even if no one rlly theorized the exacts, the whole kinda premise and concepts we had brought up a lot before and we had loosely figured it out. But there was also so much stuff no one ever thought of before, like the Demodogs or everything with ep7 or the lab shutting down or Will getting possessed.

All in all honestly we did a pretty good job. Everything we COULD figure out based on the information we had we did for the most part, to the point where honestly this time around the show is being WAY more secretive in s3 because they don’t want us to figure stuff out again. Like I said before, honestly we over-theorized, we took all the information we had and definitely overthought everything a LOT and ended up going a lot more intense with it than what ultimately happened in the show lmao

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nervyghost · 7 years ago

Text

Written for @littlekiwifrog as a part of their “IT turned good AU.” If you haven’t checked it out yet, I highly suggest you check it out! Without further ado, here’s the first written installment of the comic! Feedback is appreciated and applied! Hope you enjoy!

The paper boat bobbed dangerously in the gutter, the heavy rainfall pummeling the already wobbling craft as it raced through the torrent of rainwater. Georgie Denburough chased after it without hesitation, his green galoshes sloshing through the puddles collecting in the street and spraying water in every direction. He hardly cared about the weather, his face sporting a wide grin as he tore down the muddy street, weaving between parked cars with ease. The sound of rain on their windshields had to be one of his favorites.

His yellow hood fell over his brown eyes that glimmered with a childish delight. Rain dripped onto his face, but it was the last thing on his mind, his gaze fixated on the paper boat speeding out of his reach. He scrubbed at his face to try and clear his vision, his legs pumping as the boat continued to pick up speed, the paraffin coating causing the water to bead on the smooth paper. He was so absorbed in watching the boat, in fact, that he failed to notice that he was sprinting head-on at a traffic sign that blocked a good portion of the road until it was too late for him to stop. His head collided with it first, his legs sprawling out from beneath him and leaving him to stare up at the imposing white and orange striped beam. He couldn’t hold back a glare as fat raindrops splattered across his cheeks. “Stupid.” He grumbled crossly, pushing himself to his feet and trying to ignore the stinging pain in his knees. His jeans were soaked through now, water running through his fingers and plastering his hair to his head. He looked up through the rain just in time to see his boat begin careening dangerously close to one of the entrances to the sewer.

He scrambled to get to his feet and hurtled forward, powerless to do anything but watch as the boat began to tip into the opening. His heart froze in his chest. “NO!” But it was too late. The boat swung back and forth as if waving at him before toppling into the inky blackness that made up the sewer.

He dashed over to it and peered over the edge, hoping against all hopes that it had managed to get stuck against the barrage of water. His boat, however, wasn’t what he saw when he leaned forward on his knees, not caring about the huge puddle forming around him.

A pair of piercing blue eyes gleamed in the darkness. He staggered back a few feet and fell back as a rasping voice began to echo from the depths of the sewer.

“Hiya Georgie!” It piped up. A face slowly came into the light, beginning with a bright red nose before revealing the white and red striped cheeks and wild orange hair of- a clown? Georgie blinked, his racing heart slowly beginning to calm itself as he gazed at the odd apparition. “This yours?” His vision slowly drifted down to the clown’s gloved hand, the white fingers clutching-

“Hey, my boat! You caught it!” The clown grinned widely, its two buck teeth protruding in a jagged fashion from between its lips.

“Sure did!” It replied with a grin that stretched just a little too wide to be considered normal. Georgie didn’t take note of it, deciding to ignore the tightness that found his gut as the clown offered him the boat. Before it could open its mouth to speak once more, a thought surfaced in Georgie’s mind.

“What kind of a clown are you?” He could’ve sworn the clown’s eyes flashed with a yellow light that lit the water pouring into the sewer. Once he blinked, the light was gone, replaced with the inviting blue irises that seemed so harmless and friendly.

“Only the best!” It proclaimed proudly, its wild hair seeming to bounce along with it. “Name’s Pennywise! The dancing clown!” The smell of popcorn seemed to resonate from the grating when it said that. Georgie leaned closer.

“M'name’s Georgie!” He proclaimed, his brain still struggling to process what exactly he was seeing.“So, what are you doing in the sewer, then?” It propped its head upon one of its hands and used the other to trace lazy circles in the growing puddles. Georgie finally got a view of the clown’s rumpled costume, the dusty and somewhat ruffled collar making it look like his head was just one size too big for his body. Once again, Georgie chose to ignore the hungry, predatory look in its eyes.

“Storm blew me away!” It proclaimed sadly, continuing to twiddle the fingers of its right hand in the rushing water. “Blew the whole circus away! All the rides, and popcorn, and balloons-“

"Balloons?” Georgie chimed in excitedly, inching closer to the odd clown.

“Well!” The clown leaned forward and began to gesture with its left hand, tipping its head slightly to the right. “Can’t have a circus without balloons, can we?” Georgie had to say that he agreed. “But y'see, I’ve been down here all alone, with no one to-"

The noise of radio static suddenly crunched through the air, jarring Georgie away from the sewer and his new friend. Bill’s voice was heavy with static, but it was still unmistakably his.

"Georgie, Mom says dinner’s almost ready, over!” He looked down at the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt and grinned widely. He was quick in tugging it out of his belt loop and pressing it to his ear.

“Comming, over!” He was about to leave when a sound from the sewer caught his ear.

“Y-You’re not leaving without your boat, are you?” Georgie’s gaze fell to the name of the paper creation in the corner, the words: SS GEORGIE nearly obscured by the clown’s white-clad thumb. “Bill’s gonna kill you…” He furrowed his brow and thought for a moment, waving his hand dismissively before standing.

“You can keep her! Bill and me can make another one!” The clown’s expression turned somewhat bitter at his words. “Maybe she can keep you company so you won’t be so lonely down there.” He added as an afterthought. The clown cocked its head like a dog as he waved goodbye. “Bye, Mr. Penny!” He walked through the rain with one hand gripping his walkie-talkie, hardly feeling the cold breeze that whipped through the air. “Bill! I met a funny clown in the sewer, over!” He hummed happily as he waited for his older brother to reply, making an extra effort to splash in the huge puddles on his way back, determined not to let a minute of puddle-jumping get away from him.

“What?” There was a pause for a minute before- “J-Just get home, Georgie, over!”

“I’m coming, over!” Georgie responded before stuffing both of his hands deep into the pockets of his rain slicker. He chanced a glance over his shoulder back at the sewer grate. He could’ve sworn a pair of yellow eyes tracked his every movement from under the cover of darkness. But, like before, once he blinked, they were gone.

“BILLY! I’M HOME!” He hollered upon slamming the door open, ditching his soaking boots and slicker in a messy heap in the boot room. Bill looked down at him from atop the stairs, his face still slightly red from the fever that had rendered him useless.

“Juh-Georgie, you shouldn’t y-yell!” Bill cautioned, striding down from his bedroom and wiping at his half-lidded eyes. “Mom d-doesn’t like it when you s-s-slam the door either!” His brown hair was the very picture of a bedhead, his nose more than a little bit red from sniffing. His expression softened and within a few seconds, he was standing beside his brother. “How’d she sail?” He questioned.

“Great!” Georgie affirmed. “You’d have loved it, Bill!” Bill ruffled his hair affectionately.

“D-Did she sur-survive her maiden voyage?” He asked. Georgie’s mood deflated like one of the balloons Mr. Penny had talked about.

“I gave her to the clown in the sewer.” He admitted sheepishly. Bill sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of his nose, his eyes sliding closed before opening, half-lidded and skeptical.

“An-Another one of your imaginary friends?” He questioned tiredly, his fingers moving to massage his temples. Georgie shook his head no.

“Penny isn’t imaginary, Bill!“ He searched his brother’s face for some spark of belief. Bill raised his eyebrows. "I saw him!” He insisted. “For real!” His older brother snorted his contempt.

"Right.” Georgie wanted so badly to argue. He wanted to drag Bill out to meet his new friend, but a little voice inside told him not to. So, he swallowed his anger and stalked to the dinner table, prompting a sharp cry from his mother at seeing the purpling bruise on his forehead. Even as he scrubbed himself off and held the ice pack to his head (which really wasn’t that bad) he couldn’t help but think about the clown. He knew Penny had been real, he just knew.

He just had to prove it.

Penny could hardly believe he’d let the stupid kid slip away. He tugged on his fiery hair and curled up tighter against the concrete wall with a snarl of noise. His long legs splayed beneath him, one foot dipping into the murky water beneath him. He didn’t care. He clutched the boat to his chest and traced the lettering with a clawed finger, the gloves of his disguise long since discarded.

He extended his hands and let the small vessel hang in the air, his eyes wide and glowing with their natural yellow hue. It was pathetic, really, that a simple boat would cause him such a headache. It floated above his outstretched fingers without bobbing, the water running off of it hitting the disgusting gunk below with small splashes of sound. He watched with a dull interest.

He’d unfolded it, refolded it, and still, he failed to see anything remotely… special about the SS Georgie. It was simply a lost paper boat drenched in paraffin. That was all. But somehow, it seemed different. Like it was so much more than that. The kid had given it to him without so much as screaming. It would’ve been so easy for him to have reached up and dragged the little brat as he kicked and screamed into his lair. One quick bite would’ve done it, the kid wouldn’t’ve been able to get out of his grip. He would’ve squirmed, thrashed, screamed, bled. Lifeblood would spill into the jaws of whatever form he took, and then he’d snap his head back and finish-

No.

He stopped his train of thought and jolted upright as if he’d been shocked.

Where the hell did that come from?

The boat fell back to his hands and he banged his head on the wall, causing him to let out a sharp gasp. His heart hammered against his ribs, an emotion he had tried to stifle bursting in his chest.

Fear.

But… What was he afraid of? Georgie? No. That- That wasn’t right. Georgie was just a kid. He’d killed… oh, he’d killed… how many kids? Hundreds. Georgie was nothing new. His gaze fell upon the boat once more and he ran his fingers over it again. The boat? Once again, he felt that he was wrong, but if that was true, what was he scared of?

The boat was a gift.

Why was that thought so daunting?

Why did it seem so impossible?

His clawed hands shook profusely against the paper, the boat fluttering in his grasp. He wanted to throw it. He wanted to watch it fall into the water and to never see the thrice-damned thing again.

He snaked his arm back and felt his elbow pop at the unnatural angle, his face splitting into a wide grin in response to the slick noise. His hand brushed up against the wall and he pitched it forward, but as he watched the boat plummet, he suddenly felt so very alone. A yellow flash lit his face and the boat froze in the air, inches above the disgusting slime that tried to pass for water.

His shoulders heaved with ragged breaths, the ruffled collar of his costume bouncing in time with his movements. The boat drifted close to his head and he fell back with a sigh, crossing his arms against his chest and letting his legs sprawl out in the air.

It was pathetic, really.

One stupid little human boy reducing a monster to an emotional mess, but here it was. That, of course, is when it clicked.

Georgie wasn’t afraid. Georgie had honestly cared for Its safety and had thought that It was- what was the word? Oh yeah. Georgie had thought he was lonely, which was ridiculous. Georgie’s voice continued to ring in his head, making him seeth with an anger so petty, it infuriated him all the more.

He scowled at the boat and tugged at his flaming hair, lips puckering in a sideways frown. Oh, this new child was confusing. He head ached just thinking about the kid.

“Stupid.” He spat, actually spat, drool dribbling down his chin. He wiped it off in disgust and began to stalk off down the tunnel, snatching the paper boat roughly from the air as he did so.

It’d just have to work a little harder at scaring this one, that was all.

Nothing more.

#@littlekiwifrog #IT 2017 #Fanfiction #turned good AU #Nice!Pennywise #my writing #Neutral!Pennywise

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sceawere · 7 years ago

Text

incentive | luca changretta

[part one: risk] [part two: understanding]

“I should go” you whispered, dipping your head into Lucas shoulder.

You were still both sprawled out in front of the fire, blanket pulled up around you both. Luca rolled his neck where it was lying over his forearm, tucked behind his head. He had his other in your hair, rolling strands through his fingers. You pushed up from where you lay beside his chest and rested on your elbows, watching his face.

“Stay”

“No” you laughed. He rolled from his back to his side, laying kisses against your neck.

“I’ll be a perfect gentleman”

“Like you’re being now?” you argued, and he hummed. You moved your head down to block his access, and rubbed your nose against his lightly “No”

“No – you don’t want me to be a gentleman or- “

“Nice try. No, I’m not staying” you replied, pulling your head back to make better eye contact with him.

He kept staring back at you with that stupid smirk of his.

“You’re not making me stay!” you pointed out after a minute.

“I’m not doing anything” he shrugged.

“No?”

“No”

“Good. Then I’ll go” you said, not moving a muscle.

“Go ahead” he motioned with his arm. He dropped it back to his side with a thud, smirking at you all the while “Whenever you’re ready”

“In my own time” you replied, and he laughed, his head turning when the phone on the desk rang “or maybe not”

He sighed, rose from the floor, and headed towards it. You wrapped the blanket around yourself, the loss of contact leeching heat from you. You shuffled after him, picking your dress and coat up from the back of the chairs you’d moved in front of the other fire, and headed for the bathroom.

You could hear a muffled conversation as you changed, rolling your stockings up and tucking them into your coat pocket. Your shoes were still damp, and you decided to just carry them out, having only to walk from the lobby to the car, and then only around the corner to the car Polly would send to the pub you’d supposedly spent the night in. You’d walked the full-length home in bare feet before, so it was nothing out of the ordinary.

Luca was mumbling in Italian when you exited, and he threw a look over his shoulder, finishing the conversation before hanging up.

“I left your shirt on the…rack thing” you pointed behind you and he nodded, tilting your chin back to kiss you again.

“Last chance” he whispered, and you rolled your eyes.

“My mother will wonder where I am, Mr Changretta” you smiled up, and he stepped back.

“Yeah, better not piss off Polly, huh?”

“No, no, no, no. Not a good idea” you pulled your coat on, and looped your shoes up. He followed you over to the door, leaning his shoulder into the side.

“When am I gonna see you again?” he asked, and you leaned into the other door, rolling your lips into your teeth as you thought.

“I don’t know. Depends…” you lifted your head and gave a little shrug.

“Depends on who gets killed between now and then, huh?”

“Yeah” you replied, sadly.

“Yeah” he stepped away from the door, and opened it for you.

“Goodnight, Miss Gray”

“Goodnight, Luca”

There were men stood around the steps in front of the hospital when you pulled up the next morning, your brow creasing as you scanned across them. Tommy’s men, for sure, dotted about the street in a way they hadn’t been in the days previous.

You stepped out of the car, thanking the man Tommy had assigned to drive you and Polly about now you were basically banned from using any other kind of transport. Your steps increased in pace, turning to frantic strides as you progressed through the hospital. You noticed more and more men you recognised the closer you got to Michaels room. Your brother. He had to be alright. Not your brother. You had a deal.

You pushed a man aside as he tried to step and block your path, and moved through the heavy wooden doors that led to Michael’s private ward. You saw blood on the glass, turning and pausing once you were through. Blood streaked the walls, starting at head height, and you let out a noise of shock. Your hand rose, your thumb pressing into your lips as you walked slowly down the corridor. The lock on the door was shot through, and you didn’t want to step into the view of the windows in case you caught sight of something inside the room you didn’t want to see.

It was only when you heard his voice that you managed to surge forward, pushing the door out of the way, and shocking the men inside. Tommy jumped up, pointing the gun at you.

“It’s me! It’s me!” you shouted, arms raised. He sighed, shooting you a look, and you surged towards Michael. He was slumped on the bed and you crouched before him.

“What happened?” you asked, wiping a hand over his cheek.

“Luca Changretta” he replied, lifting his head to meet eyes with you. They were rattled still, wide and unsettled. Your heart dropped and so did your body, settling onto the bed next to him in shock.

“Where the hell have you been?” Tommy asked, pacing back over to the door, and looking out into the short hallway.

“I…I was up late, I slept in” you replied, absentminded “He came here?”

You raised your eyes to Tommy.

“They got to the nurse. She took my gun, knocked me down” Michael said behind you, and you let your eyes wander over the room “They killed the guard and they walked right in”

“What did he…” you ran eyes over Michael again, confused.

“Put a gun to my head…” he paused, licking his lips, and you saw the hesitation “they heard Tommy coming though, they rushed. It misfired, they…they left before he got here”

You nodded, knowing it was bullshit. What the hell was Luca thinking?

“They checked you over? You didn’t tear anything or…?”

He winced, motioning to his side.

“Pulled a couple of stitches, bled a little. It’s fine. I’m fine” he swallowed again, and you knew it was bullshit.

“You’re not to go out at night anymore” Tommy commanded, and you swung your head to argue “Don’t start”

“Tommy…they won’t come for me”

“We don’t know that”

“He promised no civilians” you reminded, but the whisper in your mind said: he promised not to go after your brother, either.

“He got a man into my house. They got to someone in Artillery. They got someone in the hospital. They can get anyone, anywhere, any fucking time. So, you’re not going out at night anymore. You’re not going anywhere without a guard. You’re going to go back to Watery Lane, and wait there”

“Until this is over?” you spat back.

“Until this is over”

“What if it’s never over? What if this is it? Forever. Tit for tat, on and on, and on. Forever”

“Don’t fucking argue with me” he sighed, setting his gun back into his holster.

“My brother could have died today!” you replied, and he stepped over, grabbing either side of your face.

“Which is why you need to listen to me and do what you’re told. I am trying to keep you safe, so listen!”

You stared at him, breaths flowing deep in your chest.

“I’m staying here” you replied, resolute.

“You’re not fucking staying here” he whispered back, and you raised your brows, eyes moving from one to the other of his.

“I’m staying here. With my brother. They won’t hit the same place twice. At least tonight”

“Tommy, let her stay. You know what she’s like”

“Shut up, Mikey” you pulled Tommy’s hands from your face, spinning your head to your brother. He gave a little smile and you dropped your malice, sliding off the edge of the bed.

“I need the loo”

You used the exit through the nurses’ room, not wanting to step passed the bloody wall again. Once you got to the toilets, you leaned against the sink, taking deep breaths.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck” you whispered into the crisp air. You lifted your head, eyeing yourself in the mirror, before bottling it, and dipping your head again.

“He spared me” Michael explained, moving his eyes to Polly. You stood by the window, looking down at the men milling about the street below “He said ‘tell your mum that we have a deal’. What deal?”

You turned your head slightly, eyeing Polly. She looked to you, and then away.

“What deal did you make with Luca Changretta?”

“A deal to spare your life” Polly explained, and you licked your lips, bobbing your head. You listened to them sparring, trying to fade into the background.

“We don’t do that to our own” you heard him say, and you sighed as you reached forward and pulled the window back shut. The street disappeared behind frosted glass, and you turned your back to it, leaning against the sill.

Polly stood from where she had leaned onto the table, throwing you a look, before taking another long drag.

“You knew about this?” Michael asked, turning to you. You hesitated, but relented.

“I knew” you admitted.

“You looked Tommy in the eye today and- “

“So did you. You looked Tommy in the eye and you lied about what Luca said” you reminded him, and he shook his head “besides, he’s looked us in the eye a thousand times. He looked us all in the eye and then sent you to the gallows. I sat in that empty house for months, terrified. So Tommy can fuck off if he expects me to sit tight and pretty while he gets more of us killed”

He huffed, trying to process.

“I found a way to save my family” you explained.

“Tommy is family”

“Is he?” you snarked “cos I’ve been living under Polly’s roof for a decade and he still treats me like a stray that wandered in five minutes ago. If we’re family, he should start acting like it”

You folded your arms again, meeting Polly’s eyes.

“I picked the side that saves my family. If Tommy has to fall for the rest of you, so be it” you whispered, eyes tracing the tiles below your feet.

Polly stubbed out her cigarette, pulling her coat off the back of the chair.

“I have to get back, I promised I’d help Linda with Charlie and Billy. She doesn’t like being in the house alone and Arthurs…being Arthur” she explained, moving to plant a kiss on your cheek. You moved to give her a hug, whispering to her.

“Have you heard from Luca?”

“No, have you?”

“No…I don’t understand” you whispered, brows furrowed as you both pulled back. She ran a hand over your hair.

“Stay with your brother, leave the business to me” you nodded, and she planted another kiss to your cheek. She said goodbye to Michael, and left.

You moved to the table when she closed the door, sitting opposite him.

“Why didn’t you tell Tommy what Luca said?” you kept your voice low.

“To save mum” he explained, taking a deep breath “did you know or are you helping?”

You lifted your eyes to him, crossing your legs and rocking one foot nervously.

“Honestly, Michael, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing”

He laughed, in spite of the circumstances, and you joined him, shaking your head in exasperation.

“You should put it on the agenda for the next board meeting. ‘I propose we change the official motto to: ‘Shelby Co. Ltd: Where no-one knows what the fuck they’re doing’. How about that?”

You both laughed, settling into the silence.

“He didn’t tell me he was going to do this” you defended yourself “He knew, and he carried on like…”

“Carried on like what?” Michael probed, and you shut your eyes. The silence stretched out between you both, as you examined and dissected every word, every look from last night. Had you missed it? The phone call came into memory and you opened your eyes, the realisation hitting you.

“Are you sleeping with him?” he asked, and you flung your head up, staring him down.

“No” you spat back, blood boiling. You didn’t know why you were so outraged by the insinuation. It wasn’t far from the truth. You had spent the night before in his arms, half naked in his hotel suite. Pretending like he wasn’t a murderer. Pretending like you weren’t about to be one too.

“No, I’m just…dancing too close to the fire, I think” you whispered out.

“You’re doing all this to keep me safe. Whose keeping you safe?” he asked.

You woke up to the shrill song of the phone in the nurse’s station across the room. You shuffled and turned in the cot they’d brought in for you, letting the first call ring off. The second came shortly after and you sighed, pushing yourself up onto the cool tiles.

“Answer the fucking thing!” Michael grumbled out, face squashed into his own pillow.

“You’ve got legs!” you shouted back, dodging the pillow when it came your way.

“I’m recovering” you heard him mutter, as he shoved his face back down into the covers. You stepped into the little room, bringing the receiver up to your ear.

“Good morning, mother”

It was either her, Tommy, or someone who worked for your mum or Tommy. So you went with the more obvious option.

“Are you alright?” she asked, frantic.

“Mum, yeah, we’re fine” you pushed onto your toes, watching the lump that was your brother under his covers “Michael’s snoring for England. Why, what’s happening?”

“I heard from Luca” she lowered her tone and you realised she must be calling from the office and not the house.

“And?” you whispered back. She hesitated, and you held your breath, realising it wasn’t good.

“I was right. We’re out of our league. And I’ve brought you into it. I’m so sorry”

“Mum…” you rubbed a hand over your sleepy face “I’m a grown woman, alright? You haven’t made a decision for me since- “

“We need to get Michael out the hospital. Tommy’s right, it isn’t safe” she interrupted, and you could hear her getting more and more worked up. You reached to push the doors closed as softly as possible.

“No where’s safe” you reminded her “but he needs to be around the doctors until he’s back to his fighting weight. Mum, I need you to calm down and think this through”

You were used to these calming chats, over the last year you’d got exceptionally good at them.

“He’s going to kill him if I don’t give him Tommy” she admitted, and you sobered up.

“What did he say?”

“He said yesterday was about proving he could get to him. Proving he could…if I don’t follow through, he’s going to…” she trailed off, and you scowled, knowing she was crying.

“Mum…” you sighed, listening to the low sobs through the phone “let me speak to him”

“No!” she snapped through the phone “you have to stay away from him. I was wrong. I should have never let you- “

“Mother! Did he threaten me?”

“No”

“Then…let me speak to him. We’d be foolish to waste…whatever the hell is-listen, I’m going to go see him. Have a car sent to the library, I’ll be there- “you tilted to look at the clock on the wall “by half 12, no later, alright. If I don’t turn up, then you go to Tommy, and you tell him I stormed off because I was upset about Michael, alright? You don’t tell him anything else, you stick to the plan. You tell him…”

You braced a hand against the doorframe, leaning your forehead against it.

“We stick to the plan, alright? If this all goes to shit, we get Michael, and we go to Australia, like we planned, yeah? Six months from now, we’re either running this place or laughing about how I’m burnt red as a tomato, okay?”

She laughed down the phone, the tears still in her throat. You gave a sad smile, trying to hold back your own tears. The door in the other room opened, and a nurse came in with breakfast.

“Listen, I have to go, but…I want you to know. You’re my mum. If it wasn’t for you, I’d probably be dead already. I’m not ever going to blame you for trying to do the best for us” you stepped back, crossing your arm over your chest and playing with the phone cord “even when you do batshit stuff”

“You watch your language with me” she said, and you smiled.

“Half 12” you reminded her.

“Half 12” she replied.

You put the phone down, opening the door again, and swiping up your coat. You shoved your feet into your shoes, grabbing a piece of toast from the table.

“Where you off in a hurry?” Michael asked, voice thick with sleep as he rolled the covers back with a grimace.

You threw down the cup of tea you’d drained, reaching for another piece of toast to shove in your mouth on the way out.

“I need to have a few words with our new friend about what it means to be a gentleman”

“Matteo, you’ve been lovely, so I’m going to be a lady about this. Please move out of my fucking way”

He sighed, but didn’t reply, standing between you and the door. You tried to lunge to the side, and he threw his arm out, wrapping it around your waist. He turned you, so your back was flush to his front, and bent to whisper in your air.

“Sweetheart, you’ve been lovely, so I’m going to be a gentleman about this”

You threw back your elbow into his gut, and he grunted, then swore. You wriggled from his loosened grasp, and barged your shoulder into the doorway.

“I liked you better when you were nervous all the time!” he shouted as you slammed the door in his face. You turned and looked into the empty room.

You stepped forward, tried the antechamber, and sighed. Luca was nowhere to be seen.

“This is unexpected” you turned at the sound of his voice, startled. You rolled your eyes as you noticed the bathroom door ajar, shuffling when he emerged. He was doing his shirt up and you averted your eyes, trying to stay level headed and focused on the matter at hand.

“So was your little goodwill trip to my brother’s bedside. I appreciate it, I really do – but maybe next time, flowers?” you snarked. He finished his collar, flipping it up as he reached for the tie that was laid out on the end of the bed.

“This a personal visit or a business trip?” he asked, eyes set to his folding fingers “just to clarify”

He folded his collar down, meeting eyes with you.

“Don’t do that. Don’t be glib about my brother’s life. I’m not nearly in the mood for it”

“I rang the house last night, no-one answered” he explained, and you shrugged, confused as to his point “I wanted to check on you. I tried the office, they said they hadn’t seen you all day”

“Aww, were you worried for me? Good”

He gave a glib smirk, licking his lip as he moved over to the desk. He messed with his cuffs, and you followed him over, keeping a distance.

“Where were you?” he asked.

“Why do you think you have a right to know that?” you shot back.

“Because I care about your safety” he reeled off, as though it was nothing.

“You care about my safety?” you repeated.

“Yes” he hissed, rolling his eyes up to you.

“How did you know I wouldn’t be in the hospital with him?”

“Wouldn’t have changed anything” he replied, opening letters that were placed on his desk.

“You shot a guard in the face” you spat back.

“Yeah, he was in my way” he explained, and you scoffed, looking around in disbelief.

“Jesus Christ” you muttered to yourself “You care about my safety”

“Yeah, I care…” he wiped a hand over his face “I care about you”

“If you cared about me, you wouldn’t do this. This isn’t the plan, Luca”

“No, this is the job” he said.

“This isn’t…this isn’t the job. What a fucking- “you swallowed, shaking your head. You stepped to the desk, tapping the surface with your finger “We had a deal! The deal was, you stay the hell away from Michael, and Arthur and Finn, and you go for Tommy, and Tommy alone. What were you even thinking?”

“I was thinking I’d give your mother an incentive to finish her end of the bargain” he looked up and you widened your eyes at him.

“God, if that’s your idea of ‘providing a little incentive’, I’d hate to see you outright threaten someone, Luca. I truly appreciate your restraint!” you snarked.

“Anything for you, doll” he threw right back.

You scoffed, stepping back. You did a little pace, out into the room and back.

“I was at the hospital”

“When?”

“When you rang. You couldn’t get hold of me, because I slept on the floor next to my brother last night. I lay in the dark, listening to his breathing, because I was scared to leave in case he wasn’t there when I got back”

He looked up, folding a letter, and dropping it to pick up the next. He had the good grace to look even a touch guilty. His voice was more measured when he replied.

“I’d prefer you to- “

“I’d prefer you to keep your opinions to yourself for at least the next…foreseeable future, actually. Considering you just threatened to kill my brother and terrified my mother for no fucking reason”

“I had every reason” he argued, scowling, slapping a letter down on the desk.

“He’s my brother!” you shouted, and Luca threw the papers to the desk.

“And what about my brother?” he shouted back, breathing deep and quick. You swallowed, and dipped your head, the memory coming back to you “Hmm?”

“That’s not the same, that’s different” you argued. Now it was your turn to look guilty, and his to scoff.

“Yeah, it’s different” he spat, shuffling the papers back into a pile.

“Michael had nothing to do with that. Michael wasn’t there, he didn’t help, he didn’t have anything to do with your dad and brother”

“You said it yourself, he’s Tommy new right-hand man. Mentoring him to take his place. He might not have pulled the trigger, but he works side by side with the men who did. One day it’ll be someone else’s father, someone else’s brother” he waved his arm about, before lowering his voice, and walking behind the desk again “I’m doing the world a fucking favour”

You watched Luca move about, turning his back to you to look out the window.

“So do I” you reminded him.

“Hmm?”

“You said ‘he works side by side’ with the men who killed your family. Well, so do I”

His head turned to his shoulder, waited for a few moments, and turned back to the window.

“So do you” he agreed.

“So, why am I not a fair target?”

“Cos you’re working with me”

“Right. Yeah. Like Polly? Polly who made you agree not to hurt her son? The son whose head you just put a gun to and scared the shit out of him?”

“It’s business”

“It’s business” you repeated, the words sour in your mouth.

“Yeah, it’s business! You can’t handle it, you need to find some other place to be” he turned around and sat in the chair, rolling his thumb over his lips.

“You know, I think that’s a good idea” you whispered, stepping back. You ignored his call after you, slamming the door to the suite, and barged passed Matteo. You got halfway down the corridor, before another flood of hot blood rolled through you, and you turned. Matteo was already in the room, and you stopped in the doorway.

“Stay the fuck away from my family. I think you forget that I came to you for their sake. If I’m willing to do that, to betray Tommy, and risk losing everything, to risk death by working with his enemies…what the hell else do you think I’m capable of when someone threatens them, hmm?”

Matteo tried to look invisible, stood between the two of you, with his head bowed. Luca sat in his chair, staring your down. He had his arm up on the rest, and his hand rolled open and closed, the rosary at his wrist curling with each movement.

“Don’t underestimate me” you reminded him, and stepped away from the door.

#peaky blinders #peaky blinders fic #peaky blinders imagine #luca changretta #|writing

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donotgogentlyintothatgoodnight · 7 years ago

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Stranger Places (a stranger things tale) chapter six: eclipse of the heart

Description: Everything changes when Dustin finds his mother’s lifeless body, but he is quickly reminded that he still has family when his older sister comes home. Though she is not the company he wants, can he learn to live with her? Can she readjust to life in Hawkins?

“Come on, Lucas!” Max shouted. “He’s right there. You can totally get him!”

“I’m trying!” He told her, as he moved the joy stick and jammed his finger viciously down on the buttons. But it was too late. The screen read in big letters “GAME OVER.”

“Damn it!” Lucas yelled. “This game sucks!”

“Maybe its just you that sucks,” Max teased, pinching his arm. Lucas rolled his eyes. “Who’s next?” he asked.

“Dustin, you want to give it a try?” Will asked him.

“That’s okay,” He told them. “I’m gonna go play Dragon’s Lair. You guys keep trying though.”

They shrugged and he headed away.

“Wait up!” Dustin paused. He turned to find Mike behind him. “Galaga’s stupid,” he told him. Dustin smiled.

Dustin put in a quarter and the opening music started. Dustin began moving his character, making him run, jump, and swing his sword.

“So how’s it at Steve’s?” Mike asked.

“Okay,” Dustin answers. “He wakes up way too early though. The dude’s a freak.”

“Better than Hopper’s?”

“At least in sleeping arrangements. I have a bed in a room now,” He told him.

“What a luxury,” another voice says. The two look over to the right of them, to find a girl around the same age as them playing Star Wars. “Me and my sister share a room and a bed,” she says, not looking away from the screen.

“I’m sorry?” Dustin tells her, confused as of why she was telling them this.

“Don’t apologize,” she told him. “Just be grateful for having what you have.”

“Who are you?” Mike asked the girl with the short black bob.

She logged her name into the top score board. “A mystery,” she answered, waving her hands in the air. She giggled and skipped away. When she was out of sight, Dustin and Mike shuffled over to the other game. the new score read as “K-ME”

“Kay-me?” Dustin tried to decipher what she had put in. Mike nudged him, pointing at the screen. “Kimmy.”

“Oh,” he replied.

Mike chuckled. “I think she liked you.”

“No. Why?” Dustin asked, confused.

Mike shrugged. “Just a feeling. Lets get back to Dragon’s Lair.”

Dustin searched around for her from his spot, but she really had disappeared. If he did have a chance with her, it was long gone.

Dustin and Steve sat in front of the T.V while they ate pizza. Steve had rented Evil Dead, hoping it would cheer Dustin up after having to go back to school.

“How was your day?” Steve asked.

“Mrs. Gonzales is making me see her every week now.”

“Sheesh,” Steve replied. “Sorry, dude.”

Dustin shrugged. “The party and I also went to the arcade after school for a little bit. I met a girl there.”

Steve laughed. “That’s great! whats her name?”

“Kimmy, I think.”

Steve nodded. “Cool, when are you seeing her again?”

Dustin paused. “I’m not. I didn’t get her phone number. She just kinda said I was lucky to have a bedroom to myself and left.”

Steve raised his eyebrow at him.

“Don’t ask. It confused me too.” He told him. “How was your day?” Dustin asked, switching the conversation over to Steve.

“Good. Practice went well for the most part,” he told him, leaving out the part where Billy and a few of the boys talked about Jackie like a piece of meat.

Dustin nodded, taking another bite of his pizza.

“I, uh,” Steve began. “I ran into Jackie today too.”

“So?” Dustin replied, with a mouth full of cheese and bread.

“I think she had a pretty rough day.”

Dustin seemed unfazed by the statement.

“Some girls were bothering her today,” Steve added, thinking it would make Dustin a little more sympathetic, but it didn’t. Instead, all he said was, “Girls are weird.”

Steve sighed. “Yeah, but that’s besides the point. I think she could use a friend.”

Dustin let out a huff. “If I say I’ll go visit her Thursday after school, will you stop talking during the movie?”

“That depends,” Steve told him. “Do you mean it?”

“Yes, now watch Ash kick the shit out of this demon thing.”

Steve smiled, proud of himself and grabbed the last slice of pizza.

When Thursday did roll around, Jackie decided that she had spent enough time hiding from her problems and came back to school. Steve noticed her standing at her locker, grabbing a few of her belongings from there, before heading out to start her day outside of classes. He started walking over but stopped when he saw another person strut up to her. Billy Hargrove.

“Hey! There you are, good lookin’,” Billy greeted her. “I missed you.”

She looked around her. “Oh, you’re actually talking to me?” she played dumb.

Billy threw her one of his signature smiles. “Jackie right?”

“Friends call me Jackie,” she told him. “You can call me Jacqueline.”

“Can you believe her?” Steve overheard a girl say to her friend. “Freaking Billy Hargrove and she’s acting like he’s repulsive.”

He is, Steve thought.

“Alright then, Jacqueline,” he said, “How about you and me get together some time? I can show you around town?”

She laughed, “Thanks but I know my way around town.”

“Then how about a movie?”

She closed her locker and looked him in the eyes with a smile. “How about no?” And with that, she left him standing there, feeling defeated and irritated by her locker. Steve couldn’t help but smile at the way Jackie shot Hargrove down though. She was tougher than she looked.

Jackie went out through the front exit and started walking to her mother’s car. She had decided to start using it since she had finally found the keys for it and it was way too cold to keep walking home.

“Jacqueline,” she heard her name being called in a familiar voice. She turned around to see Dustin running up to the car. Her heart jumped and a smile spread across her face. “Dustin!” she said excitedly. “ How are you? Do you need something? Do you need a ride to Steve’s or the arcade or somewhere?”

“Actually,” he began and let out a shiver. “Shit, its cold out.”

She took off the scarf she was wearing and handed it to him. He stared at it for a moment, recognizing it. “You went in my room?” he questioned her, irritated.

“Only for a second. I needed something warm,” she explained herself. “What were you going to say though.”

Dustin sighed. “I, uh, was wondering,” he started. “Would you wanna hang out today?”

She smiled. “Ah, Dusty-”

“Dustin,” he corrected her.

“Sorry. Dustin, I can’t today. I start my job at Cindy’s.”

Dustin was sort of relieved to hear this. He really wasn’t ready to hang out with her yet.

“What about saturday?” she asked him.

“Saturday, me and the guys are running a dnd campaign.”

“Oh,” she said, disappointed. “Well maybe-”

“Dustin! You wont believe what just happened to Jeremy Davidson!” Lucas yelled at him, with Mike and Will behind him.

“Yeah!” Mike began. “The kid’s crazy! He got like twenty jello packets and just decided to start throwing them down the hall so he could slide down them, and Mr. Anderson slipped on one, breaking his nose! He just got four week suspension!”

“His excuse was that it was for a science experiment!” Will added.

“What are you doing out here anyway?” Lucas asked, but then noticed the teenager Dustin was talking to. They all stared up at Jackie. Jackie felt nervous, like there was something on her face that was gross they weren’t telling her about.

“Um, Hi guys?”

The boys smiled. “Jackie!” The boys attacked her knocking her over, back pack and all. She laughed.

“Geez, guys!” Dustin said irritated.

“When did you get back?” Mike asked.

“Saturday.”

“Where have you been?” Will chimed in.

“Just away,” she said with a giggle.

“We missed you!” Lucas told her. “The original Dungeon Master!”

“Oh my god!” Mike exclaimed. “You have to lead our campaign saturday! Like old times.”

“Maybe, that would be cool!” she told them, happy that they still remembered her.

“We can all go over to your house!” Lucas added. “We have two new party members though that were going to join us.”

“Sounds like a blast!” she added.

Dustin rolled his eyes and started walking towards Steve’s car. The last thing he wanted was for Jackie to be hanging out with his friends. Why couldn’t she make her own?

“Why aren’t you with the rest of the shitheads?” Steve teased.

“They’re busy,” Dustin said aggravated. “Let’s just go.”

“I thought you were hanging out with Jack-”

“She’s busy today,” he cut Steve off. “Let’s go.”

You would’ve thought that Cindy’s diner was actually ran by Cindy. But it’s Cindy’s grandson, Nicholas, that actually manages and runs the place since Cindy has since moved to St. Augustine, Florida since opening up the quaint diner. Jackie followed around Cindy’s great-granddaughter, Beatrice for her first training shift. Beatrice was funny; she had the biggest hair in Hawkins, wore bright orange lipstick with blue eye shadow, and a know-it-all attitude that the customers loved. Jackie spent her five hour shift following Beatrice around, taking orders, learning where everything was, food running, and pulling the hem of her uniform’s skirt down. By the time it was time to leave, it was 10:30 pm and she was exhausted from the day.

“You did a good job today,” Beatrice told her. “I think you could actually be on the floor by yourself next shift.”

Jackie smiled at the promise of making tips. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Beatrice told her. “I’ll let pops know.”

Jackie smiled. “Thanks. Is it alright if I use the telephone?”

“Have at it, kid,” Beatrice told her, throwing on her down coat.

Jackie dialed the Harrington’s house. It rang a few times before the machine picked it up. Then the beep came, indicating Jackie to start her message. “Hi, This is Jacqueline Henderson, Dustin’s sisters. Was just trying to reach Dustin, but I guess you all are out for the night.” Jacqueline paused, she twirled the phone cord around her finger. “Anyway, Dustin, if you’re listening, I’m sorry about today. I love you.” She hung the phone up and began dialing another number. This time someone picked up. “Hello?”

“Hey. Jonathan?”

“Yes?” the other line said.

“It’s Jackie,” she told him. “Do you want to hang out?”

“Look,” Jonathan said, pointing up at the night sky. “There’s Mars.”

Jackie laughed, taking a sip of her milkshake. “That’s not Mars,” She told him, pointing in the opposite direction. “That’s Mars. See, it’s red.”

“Okay, Galileo,” He teased her.

“And over there is the constellation Perseus,” she drew out with her index finger.

Jonathan took a few fries, popping them into his mouth. “Oh, I see it.”

“yeah?”

“No,” he told her, laughing. She gave him a shove. Going to the lake at night was Jonathan and Jackie’s favorite past time. They’d usually bring cards, or his radio. If they were feeling adventurous, a ouija board. But tonight, they just brought milkshakes, burgers, fries, and each other. “What do you think is out there?” He asked her.

“I don’t know,” she told him. “The universe is so vast and inconceivably big that anything is possible. It’s possible there’s some form of space whale out there swimming in nothingness with all its space whale friends. It’s also possible that it’s just us. Which scares the shit out of me.”

Jonathan looked at her. “Why’s that?”

“Because, the universe goes on forever. And we don’t even make up a speck of it. If we’re alone in all of that, what does it matter if we’re here today and gone tomorrow? It’s indifferent of our existence,” She answered truthfully.

“Wow,” Jonathan said. “That’s a bleak way of looking at it.”

“Well, you asked,” she said irritated by his response, lying down on the grass. Jonathan stared at her. He remembered when her features weren’t so angry and sad. When no matter what, there was always a smile on her face. He laid down next to her.

“I like the space whales theory myself,” he told her. She looked at him, then rolled her eyes and let out a slight chuckle.

“Me too,” she agreed.

Jonathan’s face turned serious. “Where did you go?”

Jackie’s eyebrows furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Come on, Jackie,” he told her, exasperated. “You know what I mean. Where did you go? I thought you were dying.”

“I was,” she answered, avoiding eye contact.

“I thought you were dead.”

Jackie’s body tensed at that sentence. She crept a glimpse of his face, that read concern and confusion. The whole town thought she was a ghost and with good reasoning. Jackie took in a deep breath and turned her body to face Jonathan. “I can’t tell you where I’ve been. But I can tell you that I am alive and well and here now with you, Jonathan Byers.”

Jonathan frowned at her. “I wish that were enough.”

She frowned back. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Why can’t you tell me? We were best friends. Aren’t we still?”

“Because of the same reason you can’t tell me about where Will went,” she explained. “Not only would it change things, it would make them worse.”

He looked at the patch of grass between them, plucking random blades. Jackie gave him a soft smile, reaching for his hand. Jonathan, not thinking, jerked his hand away back from hers.

This. This small and insignificant gesture broke Jacqueline’s heart. Jackie sat up, shock and defeat painted across her face.

“Jackie, I’m sorry,” Jonathan tried to explain.

“It’s okay,” Jackie said as if the wind was knocked out of her, avoiding eye contact with the boy next to her.

“It’s just. I didn’t,” He stuttered, as all the wrong words began to take form.

“No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.” She wiped her cheek with the sleeve of her jacket. “Besides, what would Nancy think?”

“Jacqueline,” he said reaching for her arm. But she had already gotten up and began to walk back to her car.

“I’ll see you at school,” She told him, trying to keep her voice as steady as possible.

Don’t ask me why I named the chapter what I named it; I don’t know. Anyway, is anybody really reading? Can you guys tell me what you think about the story? What did you think about the chapter? Is anybody just starting to tune in? Should I keep going? Because its gonna end up being a lengthy one. Yeah. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it. Until next week!

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shenanigans-and-imagines · 7 years ago

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When the Morning Comes

Not my gif

AO3 Link/ Support Me on Ko-fi

Vasquez x Female Reader

Fluff, some angst

Summary: The night before the battle of Rose Creek, you and Vasquez come to terms about how you feel.

Word Count: 1.8K

It was the eve before the battle of Rose Creek. Goodnight had just left town which left Chisolm, Red Harvest, Horne, Billy, Faraday, Vasquez and yourself among the guns hired by Mrs. Cullen to defend the town. It wasn’t so much a strategic set back as an emotional one. It suddenly became apparent that one or more of the odd group of mercenaries you had grown to care about over the last week would be dead the next day. Everyone drank, and made jokes, but the sense of doom held silently over everyone’s heads.

It was almost a relief when Sam suggested everyone try to get some early shut eye. You clamored up to bed, making the proper good nights to everyone before entering your room.

You knew before your body hit the mattress you weren’t going to sleep. Still, you made a valiant effort. You laid down. You closed your eyes and waited, but nothing happened. You rolled to the corner of the bed pressed against the wall and cocooned yourself in the blankets, but that didn’t work either. Eventually you simply gave up. Kicking off the blankets, you put on your coat, and walked out the door of the saloon.

The night air was comfortably cool and the stars shone brightly in the sky as you made your way down the main street. Everything was still and peaceful, a stark contrast to what the morning would bring.

You shook off the thought as best you could.

Not paying attention to where your feet were carrying you, you found yourself standing in the doorway of the stable. Taking pause upon realizing where you were, you contemplated going back to bed, but quickly dismissed the notion. As quietly as you could to walked down the line of pins until you reach your horse, Sally. She was always a deep comfort to you, which you needed more than ever. Much to your surprise, she was standing awake and alert when you reached to her.

“Hey girl,” you said soothingly as you touched your hand to her nose. “Can’t sleep?”

She bobbed her head in response. You smiled a little, petting her gently.

“Yeah, me neither.”

“You’re not planning on running off are you,” a familiar accented voice called.

You turned to see Vasquez enter the stable. From his rumpled shirt and undone vest, you had to guess he was having the same trouble you were.

“No,” you answered shortly. “Are you?”

Vasquez shook his head as he walked further into the stable. He came up beside you, looking appraisingly at Sally.

“May I,” he asked, holding out his hand.

You gave him a quick glance, and silently nodded.

With all the care in the world, he placed his hand on the horse’s neck, stroking her with tender care.

“Good horse,” he commented.

“Ain’t she just,” you smiled proudly. “She don’t spook easy neither. She should be alright for tomorrow.”

“Will you?”

You glanced up at him noting how intently he was staring down at you. It might have been intimidating, if not for the soft look in the corners of his eyes.

“I’m always twitchy before a fight,” you answered honestly. “Once the fighting starts, I don’t really have time to think about it.”

Vasquez nodded his head in understanding, but kept looking at you. You couldn’t deny the feeling you got whenever he looked at you like that. You had seen it off and on since arriving in Rose Creek. It made you a little weak at the knees, like some silly school girl. You would almost be mad at him for making you feel that way, but then he’d just look at you again and all those thoughts went out the window.

His expression shifted suddenly, so fast you almost didn’t spot it before he turned his head away from you and back to Sally.

“I think you should stay behind with Mrs. Cullen tomorrow.”

You blinked away your shock. “What?”

Vasquez ignored your comment. “You’re a good shot. We need you up with the snipers.”

“Emma’s got it covered,” you countered. “Besides, you need at least one sniper on the ground to get the dynamite off, we went over the plan already.”

“Things changed,” he said turning his head to you. “Goody’s not here anymore. You need to be the one in the bell tower.”

You let you hand drop from Sally and turned to fully face Vasquez, arms crossed. “Chisolm already covered that. I’m staying on the ground.”

“Why do you want to be in the thick of all of this?”

“Why don’t you want me to be in the thick of it? Don’t you trust me?”

“I do trust you,” he emphasized fully facing you as well. “That’s why I’d rather you be in the tower.”

“As opposed to having your back on the ground?”

“I can take care of myself.”

“So can I.”

He gave an exaggerated groan, running his hand through his hair. “That’s not the point.”

“Then what is?”

“I…” he stopped. His jaw clench slightly as if forcing the words, he wanted to say back down his throat. A flurry of emotions ran across his face; desperation, fear, understanding, and a few more you couldn’t name before he looked down at his boots.

“I don’t want you to die.”

The statement hung in the air and along with all the things it implied.

You searched your mind for something to say. You hadn’t known each other for long, but you couldn’t deny you had grown to care for Vasquez as he had done for you. You could even say you rather liked the Mexican outlaw with the charming smile and deadly aim. So much so, the image of him lying dead in the street made the threat to your lives all the more real and truly terrifying.

“I don’t want you to die either,” you said along with everything it implied.

Vasquez looked at you, with a surprised look. He opened his mouth to speak before you interrupted.

“But,” you continued, “that doesn’t mean I’m not going to let you do your job. The best chance any of us have on getting out of this is playing our parts, no matter how we feel about it.”

Vasquez stared down at you as if about to protest, but nodded reluctantly. He knew you were right.

“I don’t like it,” he said bitterly.

“I don’t like it much either,” you admitted. “But, on the other hand, I’d rather be on the ground knowing where you are, than in some tower just guessing.”

It took him a second, but he nodded in agreement once again.

A small silence feel between you as you took a moment to look at him. You never understood why he came to Rose Creek. Chisolm promised not to turn him in for a reward, but that didn’t seem like enough. He could have easily shot Chisolm and been on his way, but he decided to join him. He came, and over the past week you saw him grow attached to this odd town he had promised to protect and tomorrow, he might die for it. For strangers.

A small smile appeared on your face.

“You’re a good man Vasquez,” you said softly.

He laughed at that. “I can think of a few people who’d disagree.”

“Just an opinion,” you said with a shrug, “you don’t have to take it as gospel.”

You gave Sally one last pat before walking towards the stable doors. Just as you were about to pass him, Vasquez reached out and took your hand. You turned to him, surprised. He didn’t look at you directly, but kept his gentle hold.

“Stay safe tomorrow,” he said, lightly squeezing your hand as if any sudden movement would break it.

Your cheeks heated slightly at the gesture, but you kept a grip on his hand, not wanting the warmth to leave you just yet.

“Same goes for you,” you said as you returned the pressure.

You noticed a small smile cross his lips causing you to smile as well.

Neither one of you moved. All that could be heard was the light breeze through the rafters and the quite rustle of hay.

Never dropping his hand, you walked to him until you stood barely a foot away from him. Vasquez looked down at you with that same look that made your heart melt.

Tentatively, you reached out with your free hand and cupped his cheek. He met your hand, covering it with his own, stroking his thumb against your knuckles.

You were standing even closer now, your chest just touching his with every intake of breath. All it would take to finally feel his lips on yours would be to lean forward a little.

You wanted to kiss him. Good God you wanted to, but you hesitated, for the same reason you suspect he did.

There was still a fight to be won. One or both of you could be lying dead in the dirt the next morning. All of this, whatever this was, could come to nothing. Neither of you wanted to make any promises only for them to be ripped away the next day. You would wait. You had to.

Carefully, you leaned forward and lightly brushed your lips on his cheek. You closed your eyes, savoring the rough touch while you could.

“Good night,” you said softly.

You pulled away slowly, hoping for the feeling would last as you opened your eyes.

He met your gaze with an intensity which left you rooted to the spot. Keeping eye contact with you, he gently pulled your hand from his cheek and brought the palm to his lips, kissing it tenderly.

You blushed at the touch, silently cursing yourself for doing so.

He pulled your hand away, but held his grip, rubbing his thumb absently across one of your fingers.

“Buenas noches.”

You almost broke right then and there, but you didn’t move. His dark eyes bore into you, spreading their warmth across your body, starting in your chest and moving all the way down to your toes. You could had stayed exactly like that for the rest of your life. His strong coarse hands grasping yours, looking at you like you were the only person in the world who truly mattered. But it couldn’t last.

Slowly, reluctantly, you slipped your hands out of his grip and walked out the stable door.

You didn’t look back. You knew the moment you did, you wouldn’t be able to leave. You needed sleep. You needed focus. You didn’t know what the morning would bring, but you knew one thing; Vasquez would not die, not while you were still breathing.

#vasquez #vasquez x reader #the magnificent seven #mag7 #mag7 imagines #mag 7 #mag 7 imagines #the magnificent seven imagines #vasquez imagines #manuel garcia rulfo

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avengeultrons · 8 years ago

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Title: An Old Friend (Part 3 Back to the Future(Reader x Peter Parker)

Summary: The reader insists on visiting an old friend when they find out they’re not doing well, even if it involves the risk of having their cover blown.

Word Count: 1808

A/N: OKAY THIS ONE... WE’RE PICKIN UP SOME SPEED UGH MY HEART. I hope you guys enjoy this! Peter’s Song. but i totally get 80s teen movie vibes from peterxreader in this one

PART 4

You were perched on the couch, flipping through a textbook on biochemistry that you had convinced Bruce to let you borrow, when you heard Tony and Steve talking in hasty whispers behind you. Unable to help yourself, you perked up and closed your book to listen in. The only whispers you were able to catch from your spot burrowed into the soft cushions of the couch couch was “Peggy Carter” and “not well”.

Your stomach dropped to your feet and you tried to keep from gasping, for you only knew one Peggy Carter and you assumed Steve Rogers only knew one as well. The fact that she could be hurt or not doing well made you squirm and almost want to cry.

“Peggy Carter? Like, the Peggy?” you got to your feet once Steve had left and tried to pry for information, an eyebrow raised at Tony.

His eyes widened and confusion washed over his features, “How do you know who Peggy is?” he looked around anxiously, as if this conversation would blow your whole mission.

You rolled your eyes at him and gave a huff, turning on your heel to make a break for the kitchen, “Really? She’s one of my...my friends. She was around all the time,” you shrugged.

Peggy was a huge part of who you were, she was both a mentor and best friend, so hearing that she wasn't doing well made your stomach twist into knots, “Is she okay? Can I see her? Please?”

Tony sighed and looked down at the countertop while you stared at him with puppy dog eyes, they usually worked, “If I give you the address and let you go, you can't tell anyone. We can't have anyone on the team finding out that you visited Steve’s love from the twentieth century. You have to promise me, Y/N.”

“What are we promising? Oh, h-hi Y/N,” Peter slid his phone into his pocket and dropped a pair of earbuds- you only knew about those after you stared at Bruce’s with curiosity-around his neck and smiled over at you, his cheeks flushed. Tony sighed loudly; every time he saw the two of you in the same room he couldn’t help but think of some 80s teen movie.

“I’m… promising I'll be safe on my trip to visit a friend,” you said quickly, locking eyes with Tony. He shrugged and scribbled an address down onto a sticky note before passing it across the counter to you.

“Oh, fun. Can I come?” Tony’s eyes widened as Peter asked it and he looked over at you with an eyebrow raised. You couldn't exactly say no to Peter and Tony seemed to know that, but he still tried to have a silent argument with you. He finally rolled his eyes at you and sighed while you smiled widely and nodded at Peter.

“Don't do anything stupid!” he called over his shoulder, shaking his head at the two of you, knowing full well that it wouldn't happen.

“So...who are we going to see?” Peter cleared his throat and smiled shyly, his sneakers scuffing along the pavement. Everything was busy and noisy in New York, yet somehow just walking alongside Peter and talking made it all go away.

“An old friend of mine. Her name is Margaret,” you decided to use Peggy’s full name in an attempt to somehow throw him off if he knew anything of her, but you didn't think he had any idea, “What were you listening to?” You quickly changed the subject and watched Peter’s face light up as you gestured to his earbuds.

“Oh...just some old music Aunt May thought I would like. It's pretty good, Billy Idol’s Dancing With Myself, ever heard of it? Wanna listen?” He gave you one of the earbuds and you stuck it into your ear gently. Your eyes widened as loud, bass pumping music filled your ear, a wide smile spreading across your face, “Pretty great, huh?” Peter laughed and bobbed his head to the music, unable to keep from staring at you. For some reason, knowing that you liked his music made him all smiley and giddy. The two of you even started dancing down the street.

“Looks like we’re here,” you said after another few minutes of discovering new tunes. You tried to remember the titles of each, they were songs that you'd have to listen to later.

You found yourself wringing your hands anxiously as you read off her room number to the receptionist, your voice shaky and quiet, “Are you nervous?” Peter whispered as the two of you trudged side by side down the hallway that the receptionist had pointed you to.

“A little,” you said with a shrug, as if it was no big deal even when it really was. You stopped in front of her room number and took a deep, shaky breath and knocked, Peter smiling reassuringly.

“Come in!” Peggy called cheerfully. She sounded both happy and tired at the same time and her voice made your heart race as you pushed the door open.

“Peggy? It’s Y/N,” you said, smiling over at the white haired woman sitting in a chair near the window. She closed her book and turned toward the door apprehensively.

Her eyes softened when she saw you and a small smile spread across her face, “Y/N, how wonderful to see you,” she said, looking between you and Peter with curiosity, “Who’s this?”

“H-hi. I’m Peter,” Peter said nervously, his cheeks flushed pink, “I’m going to… I’ll be in the hall if you need me, Y/N,” he wasn't sure exactly what to do, so he smiled over at you and stepped into the hall, leaving you alone with Peggy.

Peggy gestured for you to join her near the window and you did so nervously, your stomach twisted into knots, “He’s cute,” she said, “Is he your boyfriend?”

“What? No,” you said quickly, your face turning red. You laughed nervously and looked down at your feet while Peggy shook her head at you. She always had a way of asking the embarrassing questions.

“He should be,” she added with a kind, teasing smile that brought back memories of gossiping over colas. She was practically the big sister you never had, before you travelled through time of course

Your nerves seemed to melt away as she said it and you rolled your eyes, your face hot, “Oh, shut up,” you said, which made her laugh her jolly, classic Peggy laugh.

“How are you doing?” she asked you, sounding genuinely curious. You sighed loudly as if to say ‘how much time do you have?’ and relaxed back into your chair before answering.

“As well as you can when you travel forward to another century,” you said with a laugh, “I never knew I'd have to relearn so many things. And only two people know about it.”

She nodded and sipped on a mug of tea, kicking a pair of slippers off swiftly, “How are you doing?” you asked with a small smile.

Peggy rolled her eyes at the question, “Well, they say I'm doing great but,” she huffed and shook her head while you sighed, she didn't even have to finish her sentence, “Enough about that. How is the twenty-first century treating you? It's weird, huh?”

You laughed and nodded in agreement, opening your mouth to respond when Peter stepped into the room with his eyebrows furrowed, “Uh, Peggy? You have another visitor,” he said with a confused glance towards you. You quirked an eyebrow up at him just as Steve Rogers stepped up behind him.

“Y/N, Peter? What are you two doing here?” he looked between you and Peggy with an eyebrow raised. You looked over at her and, with a shrug, opened your mouth to somehow try and conjure up a reply.

“School project,” you said at the same time that Peggy said “We’re friends,”. She looked over at you with her eyes narrowed in confusion and you shrugged, gulping nervously. Your palms became sweaty and you could feel your heartbeat picking up as Steve stared at you with hard eyes.

“Well, which is it?” he crossed his arms, his voice stern. Your cheeks turned pink, you felt like you were in trouble simply for visiting one of your friends, “Aren't you on a break from school?”

“I...Peter we have to go! Ms. Carter, thank you. I'll be in touch!” you called over your shoulder at her. She gave a nod and smiled sheepishly at you.

“Wait, Y/N,” Steve tried to stop you and Peter from leaving, but you slipped out and into the hall before he had the chance, leaving him with a suspicious and confused look on his face.

“Woah, slow down, Y/N. I can't keep up!” Peter ran after you as you tried to speed walk down the hall, your eyes burning with tears. Your heart was beating too fast for comfort as you stepped out onto the sidewalk, “W-what’s wrong? What just happened in there?”

“I'm going to be in so much trouble, Peter,” you said with a sniffle, looking down at the ground while you tried to keep tears from spilling over. You were busted, the future and fate of your mission all rested in Steve’s hands and what he do, “I’m going to have to go back. I won't be able to stay anymore.”

“What? Slow down. Do you really think that Mr. stark would make you go home because Steve found you talking to a friend?” he asked, almost in disbelief that you would think that. When you didn’t respond or look up, Peter came to a halt and placed a hand on your shoulder cautiously until you turned around and faced him, “Wait, you think you’ll actually have to leave, Y/N?”

You nodded and sighed loudly, your stomach twisting into knots and anxiety swelling up inside you. Who knew what Tony would say once he found out that Steve found you, “When he finds out…” you let out a shaky breath and wiped a tear away quickly.

“He won't find out, Y/N,” Peter said, “Promise me you won’t worry until we really have to?”

Your lip quivered as you looked away, “I’ve already broken a promise today, P,” you said quietly. Peter rolled his eyes and took your hand nervously in his as the two of you walked side by side down the sidewalk, “Fine, I promise,” your cheeks turned pink and you smiled sheepishly over at him, watching his own cheeks turn a red color.

For a minute there, you weren't even worried. Even if Howard Stark’s rule was that if someone became suspicious of you, you’d have to go back to the 40s. You didn’t think you’d be able to do that now.

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jaygilbert-blog · 8 years ago

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COFFEE TALK [with Michael Kauffman]

“I’ve worked in music and technology during my career, largely in sales, marketing, and PR roles. I love to connect artists and companies with fans and customers -- and have been doing that in tech (YouTube on the marketing team and at Google via corporate communications), at start-ups like RightsFlow (a rights management and licensing company acquired by Google), and earlier in my career at labels and distribution companies like UMG, Verve, BMG, and Windham Hill.”

Q: What are a few of your favorite “industry moments?”

I loved spending time on the road with artists earlier in my career. While at Windham Hill in the mid-90’s, I joined Keola Beamer, Ledward Kaapana, and a few other Hawaiian slack key guitar icons on a series of dates up the eastern seaboard. It was one of the first times I spent a lot of time with a band who I had limited prior knowledge about. Pre-internet days. Not only did I fall in love with that music, but I got to introduce the band and crew to PA-breakfast-fave scrapple while eating at the Melrose Diner in Philadelphia. While at Verve, we arranged for the amazingly gifted vocalist Al Jarreau (RIP Al) to host the Music Biz Annual Conference Awards Dinner one year concurrent with his new release. Al arrived in San Antonio with a serious bout of the flu, and we didn’t know whether he’d be able to speak, let alone take the stage. But after a few hours of sweating it out, focused rest, home-brewed tea, and a mind-over-matter attitude, Al took the microphone and blew everyone away with his grace, wit, and charm.

I was fortunate during those years at Verve to work with a top-notch sales team (Tony Pellegrino, Jon Vanhala, Lisa Hopkins, Mark Callaghan, Jeff Lusis, Kim Smith, Missy Iredell), self-branded “The Jazz Pack”. We adopted a song-and-dance approach to many of our sales presentations and had a blast singing-while-selling our releases (I like to say that we were the last of the singin’ sales guys). Flashback to Los Angeles in 2001. The Universal Music and Video Distribution Conference was being held at the Century Plaza Hotel, and we were scheduled, along with all the other UMG labels, to present our upcoming releases to our friends at distribution. Instead of a generic video presentation, we opted to host an awards show called “The Tommy’s” (named for our beloved label Chairman Tommy LiPuma, industry icon, producer, and true music maker) packed with curated categories, spoof videos, and actual live performances highlighting our artists and releases.

The opening song-and-dance number involved us wearing Adidas tear-away track suits worn over tuxedos, doing a bit of choreographed dancing along with a backup crew consisting of the XFL’s LA Xtreme cheerleading squad. It culminated with Tommy himself being led through the curtains of the stage and down to his front-row seat amidst a rousing standing ovation (Tommy’s entrance is ~4:29 in this YouTube videohttps://youtu.be/Y09IwrNHO8Q). Furthermore, there was also an ice sculpture of Tommy, a raucous afterparty, the USC Fighting Trojan Marching Band performing "Tequila", balloons falling from the ceiling, and hundreds of customized Tommy bobbleheads that were presented to all in attendance. I vividly remember Tommy saying to me right before we stepped onto the stage: “Mikey! What's going on here babe?!” Most fun I ever had in a sales presentation. What a cool experience to work with that team and Tommy.

Another highlight happened at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City in early 2014: I spearheaded the music integration at our YouTube on Main Street pop-up experience. It was one of the more stressful planning periods I’ve endured — late nights, intense conversations, negotiations to book acts, and everything in between — but the effort was ultimately rewarded with goose-bump-inducing performances from Damon Albarn (“There’s no way we can fit a string quartet and a large keyboard on that small stage.”), Venus And The Moon (who asked me to rehearse with them in the parking garage), Carina Round, Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion, Sleeping At Last, Matthew Perryman Jones and Kate Tucker (many artists via a Paste partnership — thanks Josh Jackson), and a few roof-raising late-nite DJ sets from Young Guru, Neon Indian, and LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy -- who's agent phoned me on the day of his set to tell me he was stuck in Chicago due to snow. He arrived just in time to walk on the stage and start spinning records! It all came together and was magical. Plus so many other highlights: a post-dinner celebratory “toast” with Cheap Trick in Chicago, dinner in the Sinatra room at Patsy’s in NYC with Jamie Cullum, and of course live experiences like The Subdudes at Tipitina’s in New Orleans.

Q: If you were to make a playlist of the songs that are part of your DNA, the comfort food that you keep coming back to, that never fail to move and inspire you, what would those tracks be?

It would have to be a playlist of playlists… how many songs do I get?

Can I have 20 - 25? I love the Great American Songbook: Frank, Ella, Billie, Dean, Sammy, Tony, Dinah, along with Miles, Coltrane, Bird, Bill Evans, Ben Webster, Basie, and all the jazz masters. Here's a happy hour playlist assembled by Ken Druker, our head of catalog while I was at Verve. He curated this “Jazz Pack Supertunes” compilation for our crew back in the late 90’s: Frank Sinatra & Count Basie - Come Fly With Me Dean Martin - Ain't That A Kick In The Head Buddy Greco - Around The World Bobby Darin - More Sammy Davis, Jr. - Hey There Jack Jones - You'd Better Love Me Count Basie - All Of Me Frank Sinatra - That's Life Eartha Kitt - C'est Si Bon Tom Jones - It's Not Unusual Perez Prado - Mambo No. 8 Wayne Newton - Danke Shoen Bobby Darin - Hello Dolly Frank Sinatra - Fly Me To The Moon Steve Lawrence & Eydie Gorme - This Could Be The Start Of Something Big Buddy Greco - She Loves Me Vic Damone - The Song Is You Al Martino - Speak Softly Love Nino Rota - The Godfather Waltz Dean Martin - Return To Me Johnny Mathis - Chances Are Sammy Davis Jr. - I've Gotta Be Me Frank Sinatra - The Way You Look Tonight Marilyn Monroe - Happy Birthday Mr. President (on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/user/michaeljoel/playlist/1mNOucMihzZ38hMLv2ptNB)

Q: Are there any artists that never really made it, that came across your desk, that you wish people could hear and embrace?

Action Figure Party comes immediately to mind (a group spearheaded by Greg Kirsten, founder of Geggy Tah, who over the past decade has become a Grammy-award winning producer of Sia, Beck, Kelly Clarkson, Ellie Goulding, Pink, the Shins, Tegan and Sara, Lily Allen), signed to Verve at the time by Bud Harner, our ultra-cool A&R rep. “Everybody Ready” now playing: https://youtu.be/Xud_KlHlqr0

Q: Who was your mentor? Why? Early in my career in advertising: Jim Coudal, the creative director at Weber, Cohn & Riley gave me a shot as a copywriter and helped me craft a voice for headlines and copy. Chris Balla and Bob Garbarini at BMG (now Sony) who provided the freedom and the guidelines to teach me how to think about music marketing. Pat Berry, my boss at Windham Hill (now running the Six Degrees label), who taught me pretty much everything I know about sales, much of it based on always framing decisions with what’s best for the artist. Also from the Windham Hill timeframe, Dave Morrell, who spearheaded AAA/non-comm promotion at our High Street imprint, is a dear friend and mentor who taught me how to love stories and to leave people with a smile. Dave has been releasing his memoirs — and they are a hoot! Horse-Doggin’: Volume 1 is available here: https://www.amazon.com/Horse-Doggin-Dave-Morrell-Archives-Vol-ebook/dp/B00IZLEFQ6/ref=la_B00LG1S4P0_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1491231314&sr=1-1 and 1974 - The Promotion Man - Volume 2 is here: https://www.amazon.com/1974-Promotion-York-Morrell-Archives-ebook/dp/B015YV11M0/ref=la_B00IZQHCE8_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1491231441&sr=1-3. Read up. Plus Bob Schneiders at UMVD taught me the ropes as for retail sales when I started at GRP, and also showed me the importance of connection via common passions solidified with personalized outreach. And the host of other sales and marketing execs who guided me through the years: Ben Kline, Pat Monaco, Bob Anderson, Tony Camardo, Linda Finke, Saul Shapiro, Mike Davis, Cliff O'Sullivan, Mark Flaherty, Marc Zimet, Anthony Ellis, Rob Santos, Nell Mulderry, (can't forget you) Jay Gilbert, the Jazz Pack (Jon, Tony, Lisa, Jeff, Mark)... it takes a village obviously.

Patrick Sullivan (CEO / Co-Founder at RightsFlow) mentored me through his leadership to win against the odds through smart-thinking and a tireless work effort, while Scott Sellwood (our Head of Biz Affairs at RightsFlow, and Publisher Relationships at YouTube) inspired me with his brain, musical abilities, and tenacious commitment to finding common sense solutions. And finally Tommy LiPuma, of course, our Chairman at GRP and Verve, who taught me how to pursue quality in music, art, wine and life. A legendary music leader, visionary and Hall of Fame human being with a legacy of music and joy rooted in the artists, colleagues, employees and millions of ears and hearts that he inspired. A few of use traveled to Cleveland last year to celebrate his 80th. So glad we did. It was a night of stellar performances: Diana Krall, Dr. John, Al Jarreau, Leon Russell (RIP)… followed by the afterparty back at the Ritz-Carlton, drinking amazing wine while listening and laughing into the wee small hours to the many, many stories filling the room. Music biz stories for the ages. Tommy stories. So fortunate and thankful. Smart, passionate, creative mentors who rocked my world.

Q: What’s the best part of your job? Helping and listening (to people and to music). Anytime I can generate a creative conversation with an artist, a company or a colleague, and help them think about their audience and how best to share + super-serve + connect, it’s a good day.

That, and getting together with friends and colleagues for lots of happy hours and live music. Ketel martini, up. Ice cold. Olives.

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hellacluttered · 8 years ago

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Smoke (The Seven & Reader)

Requested + plot by anon.

Prompt: “If you kill them, you’d better kill me too, because otherwise I’m going to kill you.”

A/N: thanks again to my new beta reader/ saltmate @coachboom ;)

According to the shop owner who'd told you about it, it had been a very bad situation. The two who had been held hostage inflicted some damage but both were dead drunk (perhaps Faraday and Vasquez, you wondered?), the mountain man had given up his weapons when he saw his friends were captured, the “dandy and the knife man,” as the shop owner put it, came in weapons drawn and killed three before they were forced to give up their weapons on pain of their friends’ death, and all five were captured before the Indian and the bounty hunter, who had apparently both slept outside the town because of the people’s hostility toward them, arrived. All in all it had been quite messy, but the shop owner didn’t think any of your friends had been hurt. You thanked him for the information, told him to speak more respectfully of your friends next time an opportunity arose, bought some ammunition, and got back on the road.

You knew who had organized it. Rumors had been flying through the towns that Nathaniel Burke, a friend of Bogue’s, was planning on taking up his friend’s mission in Rose Creek, which was probably why he would have captured its protectors. Well, he wouldn’t be successful for long, if you had your way.

By nightfall, you were in Burke’s city, and you'd had all day to formulate a plan. It wasn't a complicated one. Your friends had been expecting to meet you that morning, so you figured they knew you'd come after them. They'd be ready.

You knocked on the front door of Burke’s house just as the moon began to rise. It was a big colonial, the white paint fresh, in stark contrast to the mostly small, worn-out houses that filled the rest of the town. Warm light fell in strips through the parted curtains onto the grassy yard, and you could see people inside; you wondered if Burke had a party going on. That would be convenient- an easy way to cause some chaos to cover the breakout.

The door swung open and a kind-faced woman greeted you with a warm smile. “What's your name, dear?”

“I'm not here for the party,” you said. “Please step aside.”

Her eyes widened when they fixed on the pistol in your hand. “Are you-”

“I'm just here for my friends,” you said, and then repeated more firmly, “Please move, ma'am.”

She did so, looking quite frightened, and you slipped past her into the house, hoping you wouldn't regret later that you too-soft heart didn't allow you to knock her out. You were a few steps into the entrance hall, which was thankfully deserted, when a voice called, “Hold up a second there, miss!”

You turned toward the source of the voice, just about to raise your gun, when you saw a well-dressed man whose facial expression didn’t seem to be ill-intentioned, stepping into the entrance hall from a side door. “I’ve been trying to find someone to ask where the bathroom is.”

You bobbed an impromptu curtsey, though the action was unpracticed and you wobbled slightly. If you could stay covert for now, so much the better. “There’s an outhouse out back, sir, down that hall,” you said, pointing down a random hall on the side of the room opposite you.

“Thank you,” he said with a gracious smile, and followed your directions. You quickly considered your options and eventually went through the plain and somewhat hidden door to your right, assuming it led to an area intended for servants rather than guests and it seemed you were right as the hall on the other side was far plainer than the rest of the house. You peeked through the first door leading off it to find it led into a kitchen. You swiftly, quietly closed the door before the men and women working in there noticed you. The next door was a closet, and the third… Steps leading down. Very promising.

You had only descended two or three steps when the sound of Vasquez and Faraday squabbling reached you and you knew you were in the right place. You took a deep breath, planning your actions. There was a good chance whoever were guarding your friends were hired men and didn’t stay in the house regularly, which meant they wouldn’t know the staff, or realize you weren’t one of them… You holstered your gun and finished descending the steps, walking into the cellar as confidently as you could without looking out-of-place. There were your friends, all seven shackled to loops of steel in the walls, guarded by four armed men. As soon as you entered your friends fell silent, except for Sam, who asked Vasquez something you didn’t pay attention to in an attempt to cover their surprise at seeing you. “What’re you doing down here, girl?” one of the guards asked, and you curtseyed again, saying,

“Mr. Burke wanted me to tell you to come up and get some dinner. He’ll be sending new guards down in a few minutes.”

The four shared glances, talking quietly among themselves for a few moments until the one who had talked to you said, “All right, they’ll go; I’ll wait until the new guards get here.” “Yes, sir,” you said. “Can I bring you anything?” You were trying to delay until the other guards left; they were walking slowly.

“Nah,” he said. “You get going now.”

Just then you heard the cellar door close and you whipped out your already-cocked pistol, firing off a single bullet that took the man in his chest and he dropped to his knees without making a single sound.

Faraday whooped and Vasquez kicked him, murmuring, “Shut up, pendejo!” which sobered Faraday up slightly.

“You heard they got us?” Goodnight said sheepishly and you nodded, taking the fallen guard’s keyring off his belt and getting to work unlocking your friends.

“Sounded like you were in quite a fix.”

“We were,” Sam said, rising to grab his gun from the pile of their weapons in the corner as soon as you unfastened his chains. “Keep thinking over it, but I don't think there was a way out without the risks being too great.”

“Well, there seems to be a way out now,” you said, twisting the key in the lock of Red Harvest’s shackles. He thanked you with a nod and sprung lightly to his feet, unlike Faraday, who was next, and rose slowly, complaining of a stiff back.

“How'd you get in here, miss?” Jack asked as you freed Vasquez and then him.

“Sorta just walked in,” you said. “Threatened the lady who let me through the door though, so we should try to get out pretty fast.”

Jack smiled warmly. “You just keep getting better.”

“Thanks, Jack,” you said, smiling back before moving on to Goodnight. Your friends had just finished arming themselves when you heard footsteps pounding down the hall overhead and the cellar door slammed open to be followed by a rush down the stairs, but you were prepared and immediately the group of Burke’s men and your own were stuck in a stalemate, a tense face-off. Opening fire in the small room would result in immediate chaos and no one wanted to be the first one to fire a shot, though the room had filled with the sound of cocking pistols as soon as the door opened.

“You, get out of here.”

You frowned at the man who was talking to you. He had an air of authority and you figured he was in charge of Burke’s men. “Why?”

“Our orders don’t concern you,” he said. “I’m giving you one chance to get out of here.”

You shook your head. “If you kill them, you’d better kill me too, because otherwise I’m going to kill you.” You heard Goodnight’s chuckle of approval from nearby and continued. “But as it is, me and my friends are gonna walk out of here so you…” You tossed the smoke bomb you’d been holding into their midst, pulling the bandana tied around your neck over your nose as the air began to thicken. “...better think of something to tell your boss.”

The room was filled with coughing and shouts, but not a single shot was fired, and you made your way toward where you knew the steps were, batting away some anonymous hands on the way. When you pushed through the doorway, you found that Billy, Goodnight, and Red Harvest had already gotten out, and soon Jack joined you, then the gunfire below started, and Vasquez, Faraday, and Sam emerged, Sam turning to fire another shot at man blundering out through the smoke behind him.

“Our horses are out back; let’s go!” you said, leading the way down the hall, through the door at the end, and out toward the stable.

It was nearly dawn when the group of you finally decided to stop and set up camp, and you were all exhausted, but not so exhausted not to share a drink. “Here’s to our hero of the day,” Goodnight said, raising his flask to you, and the rest joined in with a cheer and some ‘hear hear’s before you drank.

“If we’d’a died in that clammy hole…” Faraday trailed off, shuddering.

“Since when did you start carrying smoke bombs?” Sam asked and you chuckled.

“I used to be wary of explosives, but ever since Rose Creek… They seem like a pretty handy thing to have.” You raised your flask to Faraday, who reciprocated with a nod and a grin.

“They can be,” Sam agreed, flashing you a rare smile.

You moved to lie down, resting your head on your knapsack. “Well, good night everyone. Think I’m gonna get some rest.”

“You deserve it,” said Vasquez, who had set up his blankets next to you earlier. “Thank you for what you did. That was very brave.”

You smiled sleepily. “My pleasure. Good night, Vasquez.”

“Good night.”

#the magnificent seven #mag7 #faraday #vasquez #goodnight robicheaux #billy rocks #sam chisolm #jack horne #red harvest #joshua faraday #mag7 imagine #mag7 scenario

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themikewheelers · 6 years ago

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Hey! Im pretty new to the fandom (since like summer) and i was wondering if there were any crazy fan theories before s2 came out? Like the speculation over s3 has really got me thinking how much people predicted before the show came out last time? I’ve really enjoyed reading your posts so thanks ♥️

Okay so crazy fan theories idk if u mean crazy like, funny, or crazy like INTENSE so I’ll just answer for both lmao. There were a LOT of funny theories before the show came out. I mentioned one of them the other night, which was the El/Mike MORPH theory, but if u didn’t see that post, basically when the first s2 teaser came out there was a shot from the scene of El and Hopper’s fight where El is crying. It was the first look we got of El in s2 so that was the first time we were seeing her curly hair and all that, and also in the shot (which didn’t make the final cut of the show) she was covering her face, so at first we weren’t 100% sure if it was her. Millie and Noah ended up confirming that it was, but a LOT of ppl were still convinced it was Mike, which led to a bunch of ridiculous theories that in s2 El was going to morph into Mike, that they were actually the same person, there would be a body swapping plotline, etc. like there were a lot of variations of it but it can all be p well grouped under the same theory. The main other FUNNY theory coming to mind is my personal favorite, PregNancy. A completely baseless-yet-popular theory that was exactly how it sounds, Pregnant Nancy. It rlly only started bc in the trailer they included the shot of Nancy crying in the Holland’s bathroom, so a lot of people ran with this whole idea that she’s crying cause she just took a pregnancy test and there were a lot of spiraled out theories like whether it was Steve or Jonathan’s baby and all that. Those are the two main comedic theories from s2 that I remember and ppl who were here for them can all remember hauntingly and joke about

As for ACTUAL theories, jeez there were a LOT. There were some rlly good ones too. I remember a rlly popular one was that after someone leaked some set pictures of Millie filming the scene where El gets off the bus in Chicago, a lot of ppl started theorizing that Eleven was hiding out there with some friends Hopper had there or smth (Now we know that “the city” Hop used to live in was New York, but we didn’t know that pre-s2 so ppl figured it might be Chicago and he had an old apartment there or smth). There were also a LOT of theories centered around the tunnels, bc that was some of the only plot hints we had going in to the season. People caught on pretty quickly after the trailer came out that the drawings in the Byers house were a map of the tunnels, and stuff spiraled from there. I remember one theory I personally believed was that the tunnels were what Will used in the Upside Down to get around and hide from the Demogorgon. Another big theory was that the red cloud that the Mind Flayer appeared in in Will’s visions was going to be an actual physical storm coming to Hawkins, which came p much from the few shots of it in trailers alongside the fact that the show originally released some fake episode titles when they announced s2, and one of them was “The Storm”. The old title for “The Lost Sister” was actually “The Lost Brother” and a LOT of theories came from that, ranging from pretty accurate like it being another experiment, to completely off base, like one I remember was it being about a 4th Wheeler sibling (Mike’s twin) who died (p much just came from the fact that Mike has a bunk bed). OH and if you remember the DnD scene at the end of season 1, aka everything with the proud princess, the lost knight, and the weird flowers in the cave? Everyone was CONVINCED those were supposed to be clues for season 2. Literally 99% of s2 theories mentioned those 3 things, and in the end they were complete red herrings. A lot of theories also came from Dragon’s Lair, as the Duffers hinted a lot that there would be symbolism in the game. Now we know that “symbolism” was rlly nothing more than foreshadowing that Lucas would end up with Max and not Dustin (”Princess Daphne is still mine!”) but for a long time we thought it was PLOT foreshadowing. And lemme tell you anon, I personally did SO MUCH research on that game and watched the gameplay so many times making theories. The plot of the game is about a knight rescuing a missing princess from a dragon, and a lot of ppl (me included) thought that was going to foreshadowing for Mike saving El from whatever was the reason she was still missing. For a LONG time ppl thought El was going to be in the Upside Down for a full year. If you read any pre-s2 fics, there’s a good chance that’s going to be referenced, bc for so long we didn’t have ANY clue where she could be so we just assumed she was stuck in the Upside Down as a default. It wasn’t until a year after the show came out that it was confirmed she’d been out of the Upside Down since the beginning. So yeah for a long time there were a LOT of theories about the kids doing a rescue mission to the Upside Down. Another theory that came from Dragon’s Lair was that Dustin was going to die, bc his character dies in Dragon’s Lair and people thought that would be similar foreshadowing to how in s1 Will’s DnD character was taken by the Demogorgon, then that’s what happened in real life. Speaking of character deaths, a LOT of people thought Steve or Hopper were gonna die. There wasn’t rlly explanation behind it, but everyone kinda agreed, their character arcs as of the end of s1 were set up well if the show wanted to kill one of them off. Another big plot theory that I remember was that the Upside Down would be spreading to the real world, bc the tag line for season 2 was “The World Is Turning Upside Down” and people connected it back to Mr Clarke’s line about how the gate could swallow everyone up whole. That theory KINDA became true and the gate was spreading in s2, but it wasn’t the plot of the season or anything, and it wasn’t near as serious in reality as people theorized it to be. There were a also LOT of theories about Will too, and a lot of them were some variation of Will having powers. Oh and since one of the episode titles is “The Spy” there were a lot of theories about who the spy was, the most common ones I remember were Max, Billy, Bob, and Hopper. The first 3 bc they were the newbies (no pun intended on Bob’s end) and Hopper bc we kinda knew he had some connection going on with the lab, but didn’t know the nature or what was going on or anything. OHMYGOD and how could I forget the Thessalhydra. The FREAKING Thessalhydra. Another DnD related theory that I spent HOURS of my life dedicated to researching only for it to amount to NOTHING. The Thessalhydra is another DnD monster, and it was also mentioned in the campaign at the end of season 1, and everyone was convinced that would be the new monster from s2. There weren’t a lot of theories about the Mind Flayer going into season 2 just because we didn’t know enough to even have theories, but almost every theory that did exist assumed that the shadow monster was the Thessalhydra coming to Hawkins following the Demogorgons defeat. Another one I remember is since we got shots of Joyce, Hop, and Bob wearing scrubs in the trailer, people thought they were going undercover in a hospital to either 1) kidnap Will out of it or 2) steal medical files.

All in all honestly we did a pretty good job. Everything we COULD figure out based on the information we had we did for the most part, to the point where honestly this time around the show is being WAY more secretive in s3 because they don’t want us to figure stuff out again. Like I said before, honestly we over-theorized, we took all the information we did and definitely overthought everything a LOT and ended up going a lot more intense with it than what ultimately happened in the show lmao

#this is so long im SORRY #theres so much im forgetting too like this is all off the top of my head #god s2 theories were such a ride i cant wait till we have more s3 info and can rlly start with theories for that

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