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#and frankly we were robbed
fruitbythefoot7 · 1 year
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sibling bonding 💞
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sunroseofthewood · 1 year
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What if you were a questionably ethical scientist and I was a scientist attracted to war criminals and we were both girls
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blockgamepirate · 18 days
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The piglin thing really is my biggest problem with the movie (and Legends too ftr)
Like it doesn't look like it's gonna be good in general either, but I'd probably be more amused than annoyed
But interpreting the piglins as evil is just such bad vibes, it's a bad narrative. Intentional or not, it frankly feels like an excuse to kill them and plunder their homes because they have valuables we (players) want
Sorry but we're the bad guys here, we're the ones invading their lands and their homes and stealing their shit. That's bad guy behaviour. The piglins aren't invading the overworld to kill and rob everybody, it's the other way around. This is literally just projecting
(And yes, this is pretty much how colonialism worked too: invade a land, rob everything you can carry, then villainise the locals when they get mad at you and try to chase you out, then use that to justify killing them and taking over the land, and finally you transform the land to fit your purposes and call it progress)
I mean it's kinda unfortunate that the game very much encourages this kind of behaviour. Like I'm not canceling Minecraft or anything but it's worth thinking about. You literally can't barter for the netherite template, you either rob the piglins or you don't get one, so the game incentivises you to become a robber, and then you justify yourself by claiming that it's okay because the piglins are trying to kill you (for invading their home and robbing them) and they were probably just being greedy anyway (not like you, you're just entitled to own everything of course)
idk, I don't wanna be a killjoy because raiding bastions is actually really fun. I'm just saying, if you're gonna be a bad guy just accept that you're the bad guy, don't try to shift the blame
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torscrawls · 21 days
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A Ghost by Any Other Name
Danny tries to discreetly combat the ghosts suddenly showing up in Gotham without anyone finding out his secret, find out exactly why the ghosts have decided to follow him like lost ducklings after his narrow escape from his hometown, keep under the radar of both the Bats and his parents, not melt any more than he already has, and not worry his new and innocent friend Tim. Who knew that running away from home would be this stressful?
Wordcount: 1,620
Chapter 1/10
Can be read on AO3!
This fic has art from the wonderful and talented Luca!
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Tim was just exiting his favorite coffee-shop when he was suddenly tackled by a shouting woman. “My baby! There you are!”
He watched his innocent cup of quintuple-shot espresso sail through the air and splatter across the sidewalk at the same time as he registered her muscular arms and the clear press of several weapons strapped to her body. Not a normal civilian then.
Right. Priorities.
The woman kept her strangle-hold on him as she continued, “Thank goodness you finally managed to get away from that terrible ghost!”
Tim twisted to get his attacker off him. Then he noticed that he wasn’t held in any of the multitude of restraining holds that he had been trained to escape. No, it was something a lot stranger than that. It was a hug.
“I think you have the wrong person,” he managed to get out as he tried to ease her off him, finally registering her earlier words and mentally readjusting the scenario towards a case of misunderstanding rather than an attack. Hopefully. It wouldn’t be the first time a villain took a roundabout way of getting to him, even if he had to say a hug was quite a nice way of going about it.
And that was the moment he noticed the frankly ridiculously big man bounding towards them with a wide smile and tears streaming down his face. He wasn’t slowing down. Oh shit.
He patted the woman on the back to get her attention since she seemed completely unaware of their impending doom. “Um…”
She only squeezed him harder and said, “God! It’s been so long! We were so worried!”
Tim’s bad feeling turned into dread. “… We?”
Then the man slammed into both of them with a wail of, “Danno!” 
The air rushed out of Tim as he was squashed between the two strangers. He might have been robbed of his morning coffee but he couldn’t deny that he was wide awake by now. Cass would be proud, and laugh her ass off. Tim vowed to never let her know about this.
After what felt like an eternity and what was surely a few cracked ribs, the woman disentangled herself from the hug with practiced ease that would put Catwoman to shame. She somehow managed to get the man to let Tim go and after a few seconds of struggling to breathe, Tim managed to wheeze out, “What's a Danno?!”
Then he was staring down the barrel of a gun. He tried to quell his instinct to kick it out of the woman’s hands, but it was the middle of the morning rush, and they were standing on a fairly well trafficked sidewalk, where even if people were smart enough to give the gun-wielding-maniacs—ergo, possible villains—a wide berth, it didn't mean they weren't staring.
Tim slowly raised his hands in a disarming gesture as he thought of a way to get out of this. So far they hadn’t made any demands. They also hadn’t harmed him (except his coffee and his wounded pride). Tim just wished he knew what this was about. So far he had been hugged twice, then had a gun aimed at his face. A gun that glowed green, emitted a worryingly high-pitched whine, and was very clearly home-made. Wonderful.
As Tim looked between the woman and the man he noted how both of their expressions had gone from relief and love to cold and hateful in the blink of an eye. He tensed, ready to disarm her, no matter the people around them. He refused to get himself shot before lunch.
The woman’s hands were steady—even though Tim noted that one of her hands were wrapped in bandages, and how both she and the man looked like they hadn’t slept in days—and her voice was flat as she said, “Phantom might still be overshadowing him.”
Tim frowned as both of them looked intensely into his eyes and after a few tense seconds the woman gave a satisfied nod. “The ghost is gone. You're safe now.”
She lowered the gun but Tim’s frown only deepened. “Ghost? What ghost?” 
The man and woman exchanged looks which only served to confuse him even more. 
“Honey,” the woman said in a soft voice, holstering her gun before placing a hand on Tim’s arm. He shook her off. “Honey, you were kidnapped by Phantom. It overshadowed you. You’ve been missing for a long time! That's probably why you can't remember anything.”
The man nodded along. “We’ve followed you to several cities. You must be exhausted!”
They seemed genuinely distraught by what they were saying but that didn't change the fact that they were absolutely insane.
Tim shook his head. “Look, you’re clearly confused. I’m not—”
He didn’t get to finish before the big man patted Tim on the shoulder with enough force to make him stumble. “Come on, now. It’s time to go home!”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Tim bit out, his patience running out. He was almost certainly late to his meeting by now, he didn’t have his coffee, and these two seemed allergic to making any kind of sense. “Who the fuck even are you?”
“Language young man!” The woman with the gun admonished him at the same time as the hulking man shook his head with a disapproving, “Is that any way to address your folks?” 
“My what?!”
These people were absolutely crazy. He already had one unstable parent which was more than enough, thank you very much. He had to get away from them. He took a few steps backwards. The big man stepped with him.
“Son. We know you must be scared, but—” 
“Why would you think I'm your son?!” And what kind of parents would be so ready to pull a gun on their child?
The man slammed a meaty fist into his other hand. “Is this something Phantom put you up to? Oh, when I get my hands on that ghost I’ll—”
The woman grabbed Tim’s arm in a startlingly strong grip. “Are you sure you’re okay, honey? Did that pesky ghost mess with your head?”
“I’m not your son!” Tim exclaimed with increasing desperation. He slapped her hand away. “And stop touching me!”
At this she paused, wide eyes fixed on him, before they narrowed sharply.
The man’s eyes fixed on the side of his neck as he slowly said, “What happened to your scar…?”
The woman finally drew back from him. “Daniel would never hit—”
“Wait a minute…” the man said as he pointed an accusatory finger at Tim. “You're not Daniel!”
Tim groaned as he dragged a hand through his hair. “That's what I've been saying the whole time!”
“Oh!” The woman tilted her head with a calculating look in her eyes that made a shiver of discomfort crawl up Tim’s spine. “But you really do look similar. You both have dark hair and blue eyes.”
Tim waited for more attributes that he shared with this mysterious Daniel, but nothing else came. That was why they had mistaken him for their son? His hair and eye color? …Shouldn’t they be a bit more familiar with what their own son looked like?
The man rubbed at his shin. “Did we have another son?”
“Ha!” the woman laughed, “Of course not, honey. We wouldn’t forget that!”
Tim wasn’t so sure, but he didn’t want to risk starting another argument with these people. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder and awkwardly said, “So, I have to get going. It was… interesting meeting you.”
“Yes! Right! We need to keep looking!” The man straightened up and then screamed at the sky, “Don’t worry, son! We’re coming for you!”
Tim winced, both at the volume and at tomorrow’s headlines which he could already see in his mind’s eye. ‘Wayne Enterprise’s young CEO Tim Wayne caught roughhousing in the streets’. His family would not let him live this down for weeks.
“So sorry for the inconvenience,” the woman said as she lowered goggles over her eyes and took out what looked like some sort of tracking device from somewhere on her jumpsuit. She didn’t sound sorry at all. She continued under her breath, “Phantom should still be in the city… We won't let it get away again.”
And Tim was fairly certain that they should be more focused on finding their apparently missing son than hunting down some ghost, but who was he to judge? And he really didn’t want to get involved in this situation any more than he already had.
The man didn’t even try to apologize as he, once again, slapped Tim on the shoulder with enough force to make him stagger. “It was nice meeting you, young man! And remember; the only good ghost is a dead one!”
“Aren’t all ghosts dead…?”
That made the man boom out a laugh loud enough to make Tim wince. “I like your humor! If you ever get into any trouble with the undead just give us a call!”
Tim didn’t even know their names, but didn’t have time to ask before the woman exclaimed something about a reading and they both took off down the street on a run.
Whoever their missing son was, Tim hoped he stayed far away from them.
His eyes landed on his spilled coffee and Tim heaved a sigh as he turned back towards the coffee-shop. He would have to call in late, but he refused to face any more of this day without caffeine. 
He had more important things to focus on than Bruce getting some competition in the adoption-department. Oh, well. He probably wouldn't see them again.
At least he could console himself with the fact that ghosts aren't real.
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marvel-ous-m · 3 months
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✨ The Planets and the Fates (and All the Stars) Aligned ✨
WC: 4264 | Rating: T | Tags: Platonic Stobin, Famous!Eddie Munson/Guidance Counselor!Steve Harrington, Meet-Cute, Platonic HellCheer, Buckingham Mentioned | AO3 Link
Happiest of birthdays to the one and only @hairstevington !! You are such an inspiration and I'm truly honored to call you a friend. I hope that today is all you want it to be and more. Getting to know you through STWG has been one of the highlights of my year, and I will always have Sharkboy and Lavagirl to thank for that. <3 Taylor Lautner and his impact are frankly unmatched. 
Without further ado, I hope you enjoy this very silly little platonic Stobin adventure, featuring Steddie and Buckingham Meet-Cutes
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“Robin, do you seriously think that it’s a good idea to empty out our savings accounts so that we can fly across the country for a film screening?” Steve took a bite of his cereal and raised his eyebrows at her. They were seated on opposite sides of their thrifted dining room table, Steve eating cereal as a late-night dinner while Robin sat with him, splitting her time between scrolling TikTok on her phone and teaching herself how to cross stitch. It was her latest hyperfixation craft, and based on how long her craft kicks usually lasted, she’d be retiring this one in a week or so. 
Well, it was nice while it lasted. 
“I just got an advertisement for the Seattle International Film Festival, and the ad specifically showed me a clip of our movie, Steve!”
Steve hummed, taking another bite of his cereal. “Don’t you think it’s a little strange to call it ‘our movie’? We were extras, Rob, we were in it for a few seconds, if that.” 
Robin let out a huff of annoyance, then turned her phone to face Steve. It was playing the TikTok she had described on loop, depicting a few split-second scenes from the various movies that would be shown at the festival. The scene that had been chosen from ‘their’ movie, Please Turn the Lights Off, was the ‘hotel lobby’ scene. Steve and Robin had portrayed rabid fans alongside a hundred other extras in that scene, screaming about the arrival of up-and-coming rockstar Robert “Bobby” Star to the hotel. They were, however, not visible in the split-second clip that Robin was now shoving in his face.
Apparently, Please Turn the Lights Off was a movie about overconsumption and parasocial relationships. Robin had found out as much a few months ago when the trailer dropped, and she’d gushed about how absolutely outstanding it looked. Steve wanted to see the movie, yeah, but he wasn’t exactly sold on the idea of dropping two paychecks to fly across the country to do that. 
“It’ll be fun, Steve! It can be an adventure. How many other times are we going to get the opportunity to say that we attended a movie premiere for a film that we were in?” Robin pleaded with him, her eyes going wide and her lips forming a pout. 
Steve huffed out a soft laugh, shaking his head. “Look, Birdie, I love you, you know that- but no matter what you say, you’re not convincing me.” 
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“Steve, do you have the hotel information? I have to call the Uber, and for some reason I can’t find the details on my phone.” Robin grumbled out her question as she scrolled through her emails, oblivious to Steve’s struggling with their bags at baggage claim. 
Why had he agreed to do this again? 
“I forwarded you the email two weeks ago, Robs. We’re booked at the DoubleTree- the one here next to the airport, not the one downtown.” 
Robin hummed, then let out a soft, “Aha!” when she found the booking. “Thanks, Stevie.”
Steve gave a half-hearted “You’re welcome” in response, dragging Robin’s luggage over to where she was standing. 
“Okay, I booked the Uber, I think we need to go… upstairs? No, downstairs. Yeah, we need to go downstairs and across the street in the next two minutes.” Robin shot Steve a blinding smile, then began to walk in the direction of the rideshare pickup, leaving Steve to handle the bags. 
The things he did for Robin Buckley.
Finding the Uber wasn’t too difficult when all was said and done. Thankfully, the driver had been willing to wait for an extra few minutes while Steve and Robin navigated the twists and turns of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. The drive to their hotel ended up being pretty short, too. 
Once they got checked in, dragged the luggage upstairs, and arrived at their room, Steve was ready to fall over. Robin, however, seemed like she was ready to do the exact opposite.
“We should go downtown! Grab some drinks, explore the city- I heard that you can actually go up in the space needle. Isn’t that, like crazy? Oh, and it rotates!”
Steve dropped their bags by the bed, let out an exhausted groan, then fell onto the bed face-first. His response to Robin was muffled by the pillow he had fallen onto. “I am not going anywhere until it’s time for us to leave for the screening event tomorrow. I’m so tired.” 
Robin huffed and flopped onto the mattress next to him, poking his arm. “Come on. It wasn’t that bad! We just had to leave our apartment at, like, 4:30am? That’s only two hours earlier than you usually wake up, I don’t know why you’re being such a baby about it.” 
Steve sighed, rolling over onto his back. He gave Robin an unimpressed look. “If you’re still awake in an hour, even after I’ve turned off all the lights and put on Lo-fi, we can explore downtown.” 
Robin grinned. “Deal.” 
Low and behold, she fell asleep before Steve did. 
Yeah, he kinda knew that would happen. 
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“I should have gone with the other outfit, right? This top doesn’t go with the pants. Do you think the top goes with the pants? Steve, I can’t go to our cinematic debut in an outfit that clashes.” Robin groaned, tugging at the sleeve of her button-up shirt as they walked into the venue. 
Steve wrapped an arm around her shoulders and shot Robin a reassuring smile. “You look great, Robs. You’re overthinking it because you’re nervous, the outfit doesn’t clash at all.”
“Are you sure? You’re not just saying that?” Robin frowned down at her clothes- a green button up shirt tucked into black slacks with a gray suit vest over top of it. “It’s not, like… too dull?” 
“Nah, it’s nice! You look great. It’s a good shade of green, it really compliments your eyes.” Steve pulled his phone out of his pocket as he spoke. They were approaching the ticket reader, and he wanted to have it ready for the scanner. 
Robin brushed her hands down her shirt to try and flatten out a few wrinkles, then let out a resigned sigh. “Alright. Thanks, dingus. For what it’s worth, your outfit is perfect.” 
The person staffing the ticket counter scanned the two digital tickets on Steve’s phone, then waved them through. Steve kept his phone out as he navigated to their seats in the theater. “Really? I sorta felt like the pink shirt was a bold choice, but I had to pay homage to the pink streak in my hair from when we were filming this. Plus, y’know, pink and black- classic color combo.”
“May the pink streak of hair and the bet that she represents always live on in infamy.” Robin replied, dramatically lamenting the loss of the pink and the return of his natural hair color.
“I’m still in shock that somehow you knew Tommy Hagan had a crush on me in highschool before I did.” Steve pocketed his phone as they reached their seats, ushering Robin into the already almost-full row they had arrived at. He took the seat on the aisle and glanced around the theater for a moment, eyes widening when he realized how many people were present. 
“Yeah, well, I’m still shocked that you never realized how many people were head over heels for you back then. Still, I’m glad it only took three shots for Tommy to make a move, I did not want to see Tommy Hagan more drunk than that, and I really didn’t want to take over laundry duty for a month. Laundry duty sucks.”
Steve gave a distracted hum. “I find it calming.”
“I don’t know how. First you have to sort dirty clothes, which, like, ew. Then you have to use different soaps, and god forbid you mess up the point at which you put the soap in, then you have to wait around…” Steve allowed Robin’s rambling to serve as background noise as he continued to look around the room. Did all of these people work on the film? A few people in the back of the theater looked really excited, which was sort of weird. It’s not like anyone important would be showing up to this thing, right? 
The lights in the theater dimmed, and Robin quieted next to him, then slapped a hand against his arm. “Steve! Oh my god, it’s starting!” She hissed out her excitement in a whisper, and Steve couldn’t help but smile at her enthusiasm. 
His expression turned into an open-mouthed gape when the director walked onto the stage in front of the movie screen, joined by the leads in the movie- Eddie Munson and Tammy Thompson. 
“What the fuck?”
“What? Oh, yeah, I’m really surprised that Tammy Thompson’s manager put her in all Gucci for this event, it’s not really her style. Still, you have to admit, it’s a look.” Robin muttered next to him. Steve honestly had no clue what she was even talking about. 
Instead, his eyes were glued on Eddie Munson. “You didn’t tell me that the people were gonna be here.” Steve whispered absently, his eyes raking over Eddie’s outfit. Whoever his manager was knew how to style him, that’s for sure. His hair was all curls, styled perfectly to frame his face, and he was dressed in a floral-print black suit. He was wearing a maroon button-up underneath all the black, and the whole look made Steve… well, it made him feel some things. 
“People? What people? Oh, shit, do you mean the actors? Steve, Stevie, light of my life, that is common sense, I fear. It’s a movie premiere, the cast is gonna show up. Didn’t you see all the goth-y teens waiting outside? They’re all here to meet Eddie at the meet and greet after.” Robin put her hand on Steve’s knee as she spoke, and Steve swallowed down the sudden bout of anxiety churning in his stomach. 
The cast was here. Eddie fucking Munson was here. There was a meet and greet that was going to be happening. This whole movie premiere thing was actually a big deal, and the movie was starting, and Steve was about to see how much he actually made it into said movie. He was about to see his name on the credits at the end of the film and- holy shit, wow. Okay, he could see why Robin actually wanted to attend this thing now. 
“..and, well, that’s why I felt motivated to make this movie. Eddie, Tammy, and the rest of the cast and crew really brought life to this story. I hope that you enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed creating it! Without further ado, here is Please Turn the Lights Off.” The Director finished his welcome then stepped off the stage with Eddie and Tammy, and Steve’s attention shifted from Eddie Munson to the screen that flickered to life. 
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The movie was good. 
Like, really good. 
Like, made-Steve-cry-at-the-end, good. That’s a hard thing to accomplish. He didn’t even cry when he watched Coco. It was a close thing, yeah, but still, his point stands. He’s not quick to get emotional at movies. 
“Wow. That was wild, that scene at the end with Bobby and his manager really killed me.” Robin began speaking the second the lights came up, loud enough that Steve could still hear her over the thundering applause from the rest of the audience. “I think I spotted us in three different scenes, Steve! How cool is that? They even got our faces at one point, isn’t that awesome?”
“Yeah, that’s- that’s really cool, Robs.” In truth, Steve had mostly forgotten to look for himself in the scenes with extras as he watched the movie. He did spot his face in the one instance where it had been shown, but the other two scenes that he and Robin apparently made it into, the two that she just mentioned? Steve had no idea what she was talking about. 
The director got back on stage to say a few words, then encouraged people to line up near the stage if they wanted to do a meet and greet with the cast members. Fans crowded to the front of the room in seconds, while others slowly made their way out of the theater. Steve and Robin stayed in their seats. 
“We should line up to do the meet and greet, yeah?” Robin nudged Steve’s arm, a teasing smile on her face. “I can meet Tammy, you can meet Eddie.” Her smile grew wider, and Steve groaned. 
“Robin, he’s nice to look at, yeah, but he’s also one of the biggest up-and-coming stars in Hollywood right now. I’ll feel like… I don’t know, like a lovesick fangirl going up to him and saying hi.” 
Robin shrugged at that, standing and pulling Steve up with her. “I mean, yeah, but that’s not really a bad thing, y’know? That’s why they’re here, they’re expecting that. Just, I don’t know, tell him that the scene of him having a breakdown in the bathroom made you cry, I’m sure he’ll be honored.” 
Steve allowed Robin to pull him along, but gave her a deadpan, “I’m not telling him that,” followed by a glare when she glanced back at him. 
“Well, you should tell him something. Looks like we’ll have a lot of time to figure out what that something is, seeing as we’re last in the line of at least a hundred people right now.” 
Steve grimaced at the length of the meet and greet line. It was long, yeah, and it looked like it ended with them, seeing as the theater was otherwise empty aside from those already in line ahead of them, hoping to meet the stars of the movie. 
It took almost an hour to finally reach the cast. They were lined up along the side of the stage, and each took a few seconds to sign a poster of the film that was included in the price of the ticket while chatting with the fans. Eddie was at the end of the line, next to Tammy. 
Given that Steve and Robin were the final audience members in the line, the cast began to disperse as soon as they were done signing their posters and chatting with them. By the time they reached Eddie and Tammy, the rest of the cast had left in the theater, and the theater employees had started to clean up the venue for the next showing that evening. 
Robin went straight to Tammy and immediately started gushing about her outfit. Tammy signed the poster and met Robin’s excitement with a pasted-on smile. Steve grimaced at Tammy’s rather obvious insincerity and made his way to Eddie, handing over the poster with silent anxiety. 
“Hey!” Eddie greeted him with a smile and looked down to sign the poster, then did a double take, eyes going wide when he saw Steve’s face. “Wait- do I know you?” 
“What?” Steve squeaked, eyes going wide. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “No! I mean, not really? I mean, probably not, I just- uh. I was in the movie, for, like, a second. I was an extra. You could see my face in the crowd in the scene where you were playing the outdoor show, and I guess I was in other scenes too, but… uh, I don’t know which ones. I got kind of distracted and forgot to look for myself in the movie.”
“Huh.” Eddie squinted at Steve for a moment, then his eyes lit up in recognition. “Oh yeah! You’re pink hair dude!” 
Steve couldn’t help the way his mouth dropped open in shock. “You remember that?”
“Yeah man, of course. You’ve got a hard face to forget.” Eddie winked, and Steve felt his cheeks flush. 
“Oh, uh- thanks? I guess?”
“What happened to the pink streak, anyway?” Eddie frowned as he looked at Steve’s hair, presumably searching for the now-absent color. 
“My friend Robin and I made a bet, and she had me get it after I lost. I had to dye it back to brown because I started a new job and-” Steve glanced Robin’s way, and was surprised to see her chatting with someone who was decidedly not Tammy. No, now she was talking to a blonde woman in stilettos and a power suit, who seemed charmed by Robin’s rambling. 
“-uh, and, anyways, sorry. I didn’t mean to, like, talk your ear off or anything-” Steve was suddenly very aware that Eddie was the only cast member left in the theater, and that he was probably only here because Steve wouldn’t stop talking. 
“No need to apologize! I’m having a good time chatting with you- trust me, I wouldn’t stick around if I wasn’t.” Eddie smirked. “So, you had to dye it back for work? What do you do?” 
Steve’s anxiety calmed at Eddie’s reassurance, and was practically gone by the time Eddie was asking about his job. “Oh, I’m a guidance counselor at a middle school back in New York. It’s really rewarding to get to help so many kids. Middle school is a tough time, y’know? I just like getting to be there for them, being an adult that they can talk to about all the complicated stuff in their lives.” 
Eddie’s eyes grew wide. “New York? You’re from New York? Did you fly all the way out here for this?” 
“Uh, yeah? It was my friend Robin’s idea. She’s over there.” Steve pointed to where Robin was standing with the mystery blonde woman, and Eddie’s lips quirked into a knowing smile. 
“Huh. Looks like your friend found my friend. That’s my manager, Chris.” Eddie chuckled under his breath. “Knowing her, they’ll probably be talking for a while- which is great, because that means we can chat a little longer. So, let me get this straight. You flew all the way across the country for a movie screening, for a film that you were an extra in, just… for what? The heck of it?” 
Steve crossed his arms, growing a bit defensive at Eddie’s tone. “Yeah? I mean, Robin and I, we pick up odd jobs. She’s an art teacher at my school and we really don’t have much to do during the summer months. She’s the one who got us the extra gig when the movie was filming last summer. About a month ago she saw the advertisement for this and was like, ‘when else are we going to get to a movie premiere for a movie we were in’, and I was pretty against it, but eventually she pushed me into it and- look, I know it’s stupid, but-” 
“I don’t think it’s stupid.” Eddie cut Steve off. “I think it’s really nice, actually. It’s cute.”
“Oh.” Steve swallowed down the rest of his words and tucked his hands into his pockets. 
“Yeah, like, I did something similar for the first movie I was in. I think I had… one line, maybe two? I got so excited that I took a road trip to see the premiere down in Austin. I slept in my van and showed up probably reeking of weed, but it was a special moment for me. Granted, I planned on getting into showbiz for most of my life. Even though that doesn’t exactly seem like that’s your end goal, something like this can still be pretty special.” 
Steve ducked his head to hide the blush that was slowly making its way up to the top of his ears. “Yeah, I suppose so.” 
Eddie nudged his elbow against Steve’s, then gave him a delighted smile when their eyes met. “So, New York? What area are you in?” 
“Hm? Oh, we’re in Albany, but given how much Robin loves traveling to the city, we should really just move out there.” Steve chuckled, shaking his head in amusement as he thought of the countless weekend trips to the city that they had taken.
“Ah, yeah- the city’s fun. I’ve got a place in Greenwich, actually. It’s not home, that’ll always be in Tennessee with my Uncle Wayne, but I’d say it’s the next closest thing.” He brought a hand up to his hair and began to fiddle nervously with one of the strands. “So, is it just you and Robin, then? No other roommates or, um… partners?” 
Steve shook his head, oblivious to the intent behind Eddie’s question. “Nope, just us! Robs and I moved out to New York a few years ago, and we’ve seen a few people here and there, but nothing permanent- and, honestly, nothing for a while. Robin would rather go to shows in the city than sit through awkward first dates back home, and I can’t exactly blame her, y’know? First dates suck.” Steve registered the words he said after he said them, and felt himself go red in embarrassment. He really needed to get over his whole ‘oversharing-when-nervous’ thing. 
Eddie smirked, amused, and opened his mouth to respond. Before he could, he was interrupted by Chrissy, who made her way over to them with Robin trailing behind her. “Hey guys, not to break this up, but Eds- we’ve really gotta get going. Your flight to LA leaves in two hours.” 
Eddie glanced at his watch, then gave Steve an apologetic look. “Shit, yeah, we really need to head out.” He looked down at the poster, still gripped in his other hand, and huffed out a laugh. “Damn, all that talking and I never signed this for you! Here, let me jussst-” Eddie manifested a sharpie from his pocket and scrawled his signature onto the glossy print. 
Eddie handed the poster back, his smirk having turned slightly nervous. Steve’s fingers brushed against Eddie’s when he took the poster back, and Steve bit his lip to hide the smitten smile that he knew was starting to creep onto his face. 
“I’ll, uh, catch you later.” Eddie muttered with a blush, then stepped away to join Chrissy, who led him toward the back entrance to the theater. 
Steve glanced down at the movie poster in his hand as Eddie and Chrissy walked away. His eyes grew wide when he saw what Eddie had scrawled there. 
Eddie Munson
Let’s meet up in NY, pretty boy. I’ll make sure the first date doesn’t suck ;)
315-555-2595 
Holy shit. 
Eddie Munson just gave Steve his personal cell phone number. 
Eddie Munson just called him pretty.
Eddie Munson just asked him on a date.
“Oh my god, Steve. Chrissy is, like, the best. She gave me her number! I’m sort of freaking out, I don’t know if I’ll ever meet anyone as beautiful as her ever again.” Robin sidled up next to him, her eyes still glued to the retreating celebrity and his manager. 
Steve rolled up the poster and tucked it under his arm for safekeeping. At the same time, he decided to let his shock over getting asked out by Eddie take a backseat. He could tell Robin later, and she could help him figure out what to do next. For now, he’d much rather hear about Robin’s interaction with Eddie’s manager. “Let’s go grab a bite, Robs. You can tell me all about Chris while we’re out.” 
Robin grinned and wrapped her arm around Steve’s waist. “Okay! Hey- do you still hate me for making you come all the way out here for the movie screening?” The question was clearly made in jest, and Steve couldn’t help the giggle that escaped him in response.
“Hate you? Nah, I don’t hate you. Maybe ‘despise’ is a better word choice?” 
“Steven Marie Harrington, take that back!”
“Loathe? Detest?”
“I’m never speaking to you again.” Robin could barely speak through her laughter as she pushed Steve away. 
“Nooo, whatever will I do?” Steve deadpanned his response, and earned himself another shove from Robin. 
Steve let out an exaggerated oomph, then wrapped his arm around her shoulders, letting his tone shift into something far more sincere. “Thanks for convincing me to come out here, Robs. It was worth the trip.” 
“Yeah? Good. I’m glad you feel that way.” They exited the front entrance of the theater and crossed the street. As far as Steve knew, they didn’t have a destination in mind, but he figured a restaurant would pop up sooner or later. “Anyways, since you’re so grateful, I fully expect to be the officiant at your wedding with Eddie.” 
Steve choked on the air he was breathing and doubled over with laughter, which sent Robin into a fit of giggles. She hadn’t even seen what Eddie wrote on his poster, but she always knew what was going on in his head, didn’t she? 
“As if, Robin. Even if, in some strange turn of events, I did for some reason marry Eddie Munson, you wouldn’t officiate. Knowing you, you’d be in tears the whole time, and I’d much rather you be my maid of honor in that case so you don’t have to try and talk through your crying. My mind is made, and no matter what you say, you’re not convincing me.” 
Three years later, Robin Buckley served as officiant of Steve and Eddie’s wedding- and yeah, she used a lot of tissues, but Steve couldn’t think of anyone better to perform the ceremony than his best friend, the person who helped him meet Eddie in the first place. 
Besides, as far as Steve was concerned, Robin Buckley would always get her way.
175 notes · View notes
serasvictoria · 1 year
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Title: The Hair
Pairing: Steve Harrington x Fem!Reader
Summary: Steve returns from a roadtrip with Eddie with longer hair than usual and it really, really works for you.
Word Count: 8849
Content warning: 18+ only. Minors dni. Smut. Oral sex (f receiving). Vaginal fingering. Hair pulling (that one's a given). Swearing. Teasing. Overstimulation. Masturbation (m receiving). Nicknames (not a Y/N in sight). Reader is kinda shy at times, because you know… Steve.
Notes: This fic has been based entirely on those pictures of Joe in Finalmente L'Alba. You know the ones that I’m talking about.
Beta read by @adrille88 ❤️ Any remaining mistakes are mine.
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Robin’s cackle could be heard throughout the room. One hour in and she still thought that it was the funniest thing that she had ever seen.
“Yeah, Robs, I know.” Even though you couldn’t see Steve’s face from this angle, you could tell that he was rolling his eyes. “Very funny.”
“I can’t help it.” She collapses into another fit of giggles and slumps into Vickie’s side. “It’s just so long.”
And it was. Steve’s hair had gotten significantly longer during his time away and it had been the first thing that everyone present had commented on when they saw him during this little “welcome back” celebration.
Steve and Eddie had gone on a road trip when the latter had finally graduated, a small celebration for the boy who had ventured past state lines only once before when he had gone to Chicago, and they’d been gone for almost three months.
They kept in touch through postcards, most of which were stuck to Robin and Chrissy’s fridge with some of the ugliest kitschy magnets that you had ever seen, but none of the hastily scribbled messages on the cards ever mentioned anything about Steve’s current hair situation.
“Getting a haircut wasn’t that important,” Steve sighed, “but Jesus, I’ll get it done tomorrow if you keep acting like this.”
A harsh noise, a gasp of alarm, escapes from your lips and you don’t even notice that you’ve done it until you see that several eyes are on you. You try to save face by shrugging and turning your head away from Steve’s luscious locks, but when Eddie sniggers loudly you know that you had failed to make your small outburst look like it was nothing.
“Okay,” Robin says, eyebrows arched with obvious amusement. “Yeah, I guess you could do that, Stevie, but maybe hold off on it for a while? It might grow on me.”
“As long as you stop pulling my hair,” he mumbles under his breath, “it stopped being funny about an hour ago.”
“Yeah, to you,” Robin counters. “But not to me.”
Her hand reaches for his hair again, already grinning, not being particularly subtle about her intentions. Steve jerks away from her and suddenly they’re caught in something that would look like a minor scuffle to outsiders, but everyone that’s present knows that it’s more akin to a playful round of roughhousing between siblings.
“Careful, careful!” Chrissy calls out when they narrowly miss the second hand coffee table, almost spilling the drinks and snacks all over the floor. “It’s not like we can replace stuff if you guys break it.”
“Yeah, you ruffians, break it up.” Eddie materializes between the duo, coming to Chrissy’s rescue and making a T-shape with his hands to signify a time-out. Robin still manages to reach around him to give one final yank on Steve’s hair. “Fuck’s sake, Buckley. Don’t break the serious sanctity of the time-out.”
Robin barks out a laugh. “Oh, is that what it was? Thought that was the T of… the T of…”
While Robin was grappling to come up with a word that began with the letter T that could be applied to the current situation, you slipped into the small kitchen.
Maybe you would do better if you gave yourself a little time out from Steve’s, quite frankly mesmerizing, long hair.
It has been a few years since you had been this preoccupied with his hair. It was the main topic of conversation in high school after all, a source of desire and yes, envy for some, as well. Because a boy with hair that great? There were many girls that would have killed to have the same amount of volume and texture.
You were safely tucked into the desire camp however. How could you not be? Steve was gorgeous.
Is gorgeous.
There‘s no denying the fact that that stupid teenage crush that you had on him is still present. The only difference now is that your long friendship with Vickie has brought you a lot closer to Steve than you had ever been before.
When you hear movement behind you, you think that it’s her at first, coming to find you to gush about something funny that Robin had done or said in private, but when you hear someone who is distinctly male clear their throat instead, you realize that you have no such luck.
“What are you hiding out in here for?”
Your eyes go wide as saucers when you turn to face him and Steve actually holds his hands up in an attempt to look less threatening, making you aware of the fact that you must look terrified.
“N-nothing.” Your reaction was more down to being in extremely close vicinity to him, because of the size of the kitchen. There was barely any space between you already and he was only standing in the doorway. “It was just… a bit crowded?” You frown, because that wasn’t the word that you were looking for. “I mean, that’s not exactly what I-“
“Rowdy?” Steve offers up helpfully.
“Yes!” Your exclamation makes you cover your mouth with your hand, shocking yourself with your small outburst, and when Steve laughs, you can feel your cheeks heat up from the potential embarrassment. “But a fun rowdy? If that makes sense?”
“A bit,” he admits. “That’s just what me and Robin are like. We bring it out in each other I guess and the hair definitely doesn’t help.”
“N-no,” you stutter as your attention is brought to his hair once more and you can’t help but bite your bottom lip as you stare. “It’s definitely distracting.” You try to stop there, really you do, but you still end up blurting out, “In a good way.”
Groaning softly, you attempt to cover your entire face with your hand. If the ground could swallow you up right this instance that would be great. Naturally, that doesn’t happen, but when you peek through your fingers, you see that Steve hasn’t left. He’s merely standing there, arms crossed in front of his chest and his head is tilted to the side, his brow pensive as if he’s deep in thought.
Clearing your throat, you shake your head as if you could shake off the awkwardness from moments before. Your eyes dart to Steve’s hair again and his gaze turns more curious when he notices.
“Okay,” he finally says with raised eyebrows. “Interesting.”
“What is?”
“You,” he counters swiftly and you can see his brow furrow. He looks like he wants to slap himself. “I mean, your response. It’s pretty telling, you know.” Getting called out on your obvious attraction to him wasn’t something that you had been expecting, yet here you were, and Steve doesn’t look disgusted. If anything, he almost looks more interested. “And don’t try to deny it, I’m not an idiot.”
“Never thought you were.”
Sometimes people liked to point out Steve’s lack of intelligence, even back in high school because he didn’t really excel academically. The prevailing image of him being a dumb jock was ridiculous anyway. His grades were alright. Not top of the class, but he wasn’t at the bottom either.
They were above average most of the time, but when his grades dropped after Nancy broke up with him, everyone seemed to treat it as confirmation of what people had been saying behind his back all along. He still managed to pick himself up when exams rolled along, but it hadn’t helped sway opinion much.
It was an opinion that you did not share however.
Steve was smart. The information that interested him was just different. A conversation that he had with Lucas Sinclair on sports earlier only confirmed it.
Batting averages rolled off his tongue like they were nothing, even going as far as remembering what Wade Boggs’ average was back in ‘82. Name a Major League player and Steve would know exactly why he was better or worse than another player.
Same thing for basketball and ice hockey. You had even overheard him talking about volleyball once. Technically, it was women’s beach volleyball, but it still counted.
The only sports that Steve didn’t seem to care for were soccer and lacrosse. You highly suspected that the only reason that he didn’t like lacrosse was because his dad used to play it in college, apparently. That was a nice little piece of information that you had gained from Robin in Steve’s absence.
“True,” he smiles. “Don’t recall you ever saying anything about that.”
How he would know that was anybody’s guess, seeing how you must have been nothing more than another face in the school hallways, but you don’t question it. For a couple of seconds you even find yourself believing that he would have noticed you, however impossible that may seem.
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Steve,” you smile back. The awkwardness has finally settled. Maybe you can actually be normal around him for once. “Anyway.” You turn back to the cans and bottles on the counter and make a sweeping gesture with your arm. “What’s your poison?”
“Think I’ll have-“
Steve treats your question as permission to step into the kitchen. Your breath catches in your throat, when he leans in closer, making you turn the front of your body to the counter. 
He eagerly takes advantage of this and puts his hand on your lower back. You feel his hand slide down, can feel his fingers flex as they settle right above the curve of your ass. His face comes into view next to you and he keeps his eyes on yours as his right hand reaches towards the cans blindly.
“-this one.”
“Apple Slice?” Tearing his eyes away from your face to look at the can that he was holding, his expression flashes to one of brief disappointment, which makes you snort in obvious amusement. He was clearly going for one of the cans of Blue Ribbon behind it, but that was not what he ended up with. You stifle a laugh and add, “Wow. Didn’t know you liked that stuff.”
“Why? What’s wrong with it?” Steve opens the can and takes a sip, deciding to stick with his (accidental) choice. If it wasn’t for the fact that his nose crinkled in disgust, you might even have believed him. “I drink it all the time.”
“Sure you do.” You take the can of beer that he had his eye on and hold it out to him. “I’ll trade you.”
“Nah, I’ll pass.” He leans against the counter right next to where you’re standing. “I love this stuff, everybody knows that.”
“Sure they do,” you laugh. “That’s why you’ve been drinking it all night.”
“How would you even know what I’ve been drinking? You been keeping an eye on me?”
“What?” Your cheeks suddenly feel so hot that you swear that they’ve just caught fire. You hold the can against your cheek in the hopes of cooling yourself down, but the can’s lukewarm so it doesn’t help one bit. “No! Wh-why would I- I was just assuming, okay?”
The implication of his words were to poke fun at you, but you panicked all the same. You know what you wanted it to be, but there was no chance in hell that Steve Harrington was flirting with you.
No way. Impossible.
“Relax,” he replies, his voice softer suddenly as if he was doing his utmost not to spook you. “I was joking.”
You breathe a sigh of relief when he confirms it, calm setting in once more. Who knew that talking to Steve could have this effect on you. You would have liked to have been able to display a much cooler aura, but that persona seemed to have jumped out of you and ran for the hills the second that Steve came closer to you.
Not that you had ever been like that at all, but still.
“Do you want this or not?” you blurt out and you hold the can up just in case he thought that you were offering up something else. “Last chance.”
“Fine.” Steve takes it this time, your fingers brushing together when he trades cans with you. “But only because you were desperate.”
“I’m not-“ When Steve stifles a laugh, you turn your head in the opposite direction and find yourself staring at a grocery list that’s hanging on the old fridge. “Not funny.”
“Oh, come on. I couldn’t help myself, you’re real cute when you’re flustered.” You turn your entire body away from him, but you’re only doing it to hide your growing smile from him. “Seriously? You’re not talking to me?” You shake your head and he lets out a soft groan. “I was willing to give you my best puppy dog eyes, too.”
“Y-you were?”
“She speaks! But yes, I was.” You chew on your bottom lip to stop yourself from saying anything, because you don’t want to seem too eager. “In fact, I’m still going to do it. I think that you’ve earned it.”
When you finally turn around to face him once more, you’re subjected to the full force of his hazel eyes (looking every bit like he’d gotten private lessons from doe-eyed Eddie Munson), and his bottom lip is pushed out into a pout. He looks silly and adorable all at once.
“You look ridiculous,” you giggle. “Stop doing that.”
“No way,” he says with a smirk. “I can keep this up all night if I have to.”
“Really?” The prospect of being subjected to it all night makes your heart swell about three sizes inside your chest. “I’d like to see you try.”
Steve bats his eyelashes in quick succession a couple of times until you’re laughing and you swat at his chest in an attempt to make him stop. He instantly makes a grab for your hand and keeps it pressed against his sternum.
The distance between the two of you closes somewhat, but Steve still leaves some space on the off chance that you might want to pull away.
It’s quite possibly the last thing on your mind.
The only thing that you’re thinking of is what Steve’s hair would feel like if you ran your fingers through it and if you’d get a chance to-
“Oh.” Chrissy’s voice pulls you out of the trance that Steve has put you under and you take a step away from him immediately. “I’m not interrupting, am I?”
“No,” you blurt out.
“Yes,” Steve says at the same time.
“I’d offer to leave, but I live here,” Chrissy giggles melodically. “Give me a sec and I’ll get out of your hair though,” she adds with a wink in your direction.
“Oh no, you don’t have to…” You’re suddenly embarrassed that Chrissy might think that something was happening (it was but you didn’t quite want to believe it just yet). The idea of the former cheerleader offering to leave what was essentially her shared kitchen was too much to bear. “I should- erm-“ Your eyes fall on Steve, who looks more amused than anything else. “Talk to you later.”
When you leave to rejoin your friends in the neighboring living room, you can just about make out another one of Chrissy’s amused giggles and Steve’s hushed apology, but you don’t stick around to hear what he’s apologizing for.
The pair enters the living room a few short minutes later, Steve’s eyes immediately find you before Dustin Henderson almost rugby tackles him and pulls him into a conversation that he had been having with Eddie.
Over the following hours whenever you would hazard a glance in Steve’s direction, you would find that he was looking at you already and he flashes you the sad puppy dog eyes without fail every single time. Whenever he makes you laugh, a smug smile materializes on his handsome face, as if he just achieved something grand.
You don’t find yourself alone with Steve again though, making you think that the small moment that you had before had passed and entirely ignoring that it was more down to yourself ensuring that there was no opportunity for him to get you alone. You were in no mood to make yourself look like a fool any further.
The hours tick by until it’s almost twelve midnight and as if on cue, Robin started yawning loudly and exaggeratedly, to make sure that everyone knew that she was getting tired.
All talk then turns to who had come by car and who could drop who off.
Somehow, in the discussion that followed it, it had been decided that you would ride with Steve. How this decision had been made was a mystery to you since you lived nowhere near him and lived only a few blocks from Nancy Wheeler, but when you tried to bring that up, you were told that there was no more room in Nancy’s car. Apparently.
The little glances that several people shared was something that you failed to notice entirely, but if you had noticed you might have figured out that the entire thing had been orchestrated very carefully by your friends, by Vickie and Robin in particular.
There was no amount of planning that could get you in the passenger seat next to Steve though, because Dustin had called shotgun from the moment that he had insisted that he ride with Steve’s car (and had dragged a bewildered Lucas along with him).
When you got in the backseat next to Lucas, you breathed a little sigh of relief that you were not sitting in the front with Steve however, half-knowing that you would end up being a stiff mess for the entire ride. The back was safer, darker, and above all, a little bit further away from Steve.
The rest of the ride is pleasant. Dustin keeps talking about everything and nothing to fill Steve in about what he missed while he was away, even though he must have heard most of it this evening already.
They act more like siblings than anything else, though if you had to be honest, you had seen Steve act similarly towards some of the other teenagers that were present which had only endeared him to you further.
When Lucas is dropped off first, he and Steve make promises to watch a football game together soon, and he drops Dustin off not long after. Similar promises are made, but they’re more of the ‘give us a ride to the arcade’ kind than anything else.
As soon as Dustin closes the door behind him, you’re shifting in the backseat, thinking it would be too odd to keep sitting there all alone. You can be brave for a short while, you’d only be in the car for a few minutes after all.
As soon as you’re moving to open the door, your hand jerks away from the handle when Steve starts driving again.
“Steve!” His eyes find yours in the rearview mirror, not so much saying ‘what?’ with his mouth, but with his eyes instead. “I was going to sit up front.”
“You don’t have to,” he answers simply.
“You’ll look like my driver like this,” you grumble slightly. “It’ll look weird.”
“Really? You’re worried about that?” Steve chuckles and you don’t really notice that he just took the wrong turn. “There’s hardly anyone around right now.”
“You don’t know that.” You lean forward in your seat, your hand coming down to rest on his chair, your fingers close to his shoulder. “There’s this old guy on my street that’s always keeping ta- hey. This isn’t the way to my house.”
“Just taking a little detour,” Steve grins, not willing to divulge any more than that.
The road that he’s currently on takes you out of town and he looks at your face out of the corner of his eye, catches how your eyes widen significantly when you realize where he’s taking you.
“To Lover’s Lake?”
Saying it out loud sounded insane.
Steve Harrington appeared to be taking you to Lover’s Lake.
You.
“Been there before?” It was a question that he knew he shouldn’t ask, but it was out of his mouth before he noticed it. “You don’t have t-“
“Once,” you reply honestly. You catch the little flash of jealousy in his eyes before the streetlights fade out completely and the car hits the dirt road. “With Pete Tanner.”
“No way,” Steve says with a slight mocking laugh. “He’s such a dick.”
“Tell me about it,” you scoff. “He spent about half an hour groping me and assuring me that he knew what he was doing, which he didn't, I might add! I gave him a handjob just to get him to stop. It was a disaster.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Yeah, it was awful.” The experience had been so off putting that you had turned down every other offer of ‘hanging out’ there that you had gotten after it. This was your first time going back there in two years. “He tried to get me to go with him again the next week, but I shot him down so bad that he never talked to me again.”
“Well, unlike him, I do know what I’m doing.”
Steve didn’t even have to elaborate on that, the stories that floated around about him were pretty positive in regards to that aspect after all. It kind of stopped when his star dropped in his last year of high school, but it had done nothing to diminish his reputation. If you wanted to have a good time, Steve was your man.
“I know, Steve,” you say finally, your voice softer and decidedly more shy.
“You do?”
“Girls talk,” you clarify, even if he must have known where you had gotten it from. “It’s not just guys that talk about their conquests, the girls do, too. I’ve heard plenty of stories about you before.” You fidget with the hemline of your shirt just to have a reason to avert your eyes. “So. I know.”
“You don’t,” he chuckles. “You really don’t, but you’ll find out soon enough.”
You know that he’s right, because no amount of gossip would be able to prepare you for, well… him. 
“And for the record, I don’t talk so whatever happens here tonight stays between you and me.” When he cuts the engine, you look out the window to see that he had already parked the car near the shore of the lake. Steve unclasps his safety belt, turns in his seat and fully faces you. “Now, I’m going to get into the backseat with you and then I’m going to kiss you, because I’ve wanted to do that for a while.”
“For how long?”
“How long am I going to kiss you for? As long as you’ll let me.”
“Damn,” you say under your breath and you can feel your body temperature rising in anticipation. “B-but I meant, how long have you wanted to kiss me for?”
Steve doesn’t answer your question immediately. Instead he switches the car radio on and turns the dial until he finds a radio station that’s to his liking. As soon as the sounds of soft rock start playing, he gets out of the front seat and opens the door that Lucas got out of a couple of minutes previous. He slides in next to you just as Roxy Music’s Avalon starts playing.
“A while,” he says simply whilst closing the door behind him. “You think I never noticed you or something?”
“I’m not exactly-“ You gesture with your hand and try your best to avoid saying the names of any of his exes, who you definitely don’t resemble in any way. “You know.”
“No, I don’t know.” He moves in closer until his thigh is pressing into yours. His left hand moves towards your face and you close your eyes when his fingertips skim over your jaw. “You’re pretty.” He says it very matter of factly, as if you should have been aware of it before he told you. “Thought you were pretty in high school, too.”
“Really?” You open your eyes and when you see that his face is a lot closer than you were expecting it to be, you jerk away and inadvertently knock the back of your head against the window. “Ow.”
“Christ, you’re like a baby deer,” he says with a laugh. “So skittish.”
“Sorry.” You rub the back of your skull automatically, but it doesn’t hurt much. “I can’t help it. I blame you.”
“What did I do?” He leans back against the seats, making his long hair flop over his forehead and partially covering his eyes. “I’m just trying to make out with the pretty girl that’s been making eyes at me all night.”
“Said I was sorry,” you whisper.
You don’t think that Steve has ever looked more gorgeous to you than he does in this exact moment and it’s scrambling your brain. You can feel your cheeks burn and your first reaction is to hide your face behind your hands. Your fingers are parted, however, so you can still see Steve’s face.
“No you’re not.”
“I am.” His fingers encircle your wrists and he slowly but gently pulls your hands away from your face. “Sorry.”
“What are you apologizing for?” He brings your hands up to his mouth and your breath hitches when he presses his lips to the tips of your fingers. “Huh?”
“For being like this. For not being… confident.”
“You think you need to say sorry for that?” His mouth drags down over your digits towards your palms and you swear you can feel his tongue darting out against your skin. “It’s a fucking turn-on.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“I’m not usually- not li-“ He presses a light kiss to your wrist and it makes your stomach flip. The rest of the sentence comes out with a slight groan. “I’m never this bad.”
“You were confident enough earlier.”
“This is different.”
And it was. Being in a car with Steve and there being no possibility of anyone interrupting you changes things significantly. Earlier in the kitchen, there were no expectations, it was just some gentle back-and-forth flirting, you know that now, as you tried to get a feel for one another.
There were definitely expectations now, a chance of things going much further than before, and it was filling your stomach with butterflies and your brain with cotton wool. Being this close to Steve was making it hard to have any coherent thoughts whatsoever.
“Different how?” He looks up at you then, pausing his trail of kisses. You can feel his thumbs on your wrists, making soothing circular motions while you try to find your words.
“I didn’t think that we were… you know… going to do anything.”
“What else do people do at Lover’s Lake?”
“I don’t know!” That was a lie, because you did know. Everyone in town knew what happened at Lover’s Lake and Skull Rock. Maybe if you had lived under a rock these last few years, you could have been completely ignorant to it, but you knew. “Maybe you wanted to take me stargazing.”
“Baby, I want to make you see stars, but I wasn’t planning on taking you outside.”
“Oh my god,” you gasp. “That’s the kinda thing that’s-“
“Making you shy?” He laughs then, knowing full well how to get you flustered. “You thought I didn’t know that? You’re one of the only girls that would blush and giggle whenever I subjected you to my whole ‘ocean of flavor’ bullshit at Scoops.”
“No way was I the only one.” Other girls giggled and twirled their hair at him, too. You saw them ahead of you in line and  found yourself unfairly hating the girls that were confident enough to write their phone numbers on a napkin so they could slide it over to him. “No way.”
“Okay, maybe not, but you were definitely the cutest one. You could barely look me in the eye and then Vickie would have to order for you instead. It was cute as hell.” You burst out laughing at his confession. “You okay now?”
“Yeah. I’m okay.”
“Good, ‘cause I’m going to kiss you silly now.” A small affirmative noise in the back of your throat is all that you manage to offer in terms of a reply when Steve leans in closer. He pauses when he’s close enough for you to feel his warm breath on your face. “Still okay?” You nod, but he’s not letting you off the hook that easily. “With words please.”
“I-I am,” you stutter, “I’m great.”
“You sure? Because you don’t look it,” he grins mischievously. He swipes a finger from the top of your spine up to your hairline. You could feel the heat there before, where some wisps of hair had stuck to your skin, and now he can feel it too. “You coming down with somethin’?”
The only thing that you manage to do is huff in annoyance, words of disagreement already on your tongue, threatening to spill out. There’s not much chance for them to do so, because he takes the opportunity to kiss you now.
It’s a light peck. Just to get things started. No more, no less. But you let out a content sigh all the same. It makes Steve smile again, the ease with which he can read you amusing him to no end.
You whine in displeasure, already impatient that Steve’s making you wait for more.
“Relax, baby,” he breathes against your parted lips, “I was only teasing.”
He starts kissing you in earnest a split second later. And boy, can Steve Harrington kiss.
You had heard the stories, plenty of them, all of them overheard as other girls tried to outdo their friends, but none of their descriptions lived up to the real thing.
Feeling his lips on yours is making you tingle, as if electricity is coursing through him and it’s literally making sparks fly whenever he kisses you. When you feel his hand on your neck, his thumb on the corner of your jaw and his pinkie on your collar bone, it makes your skin prickle there, too.
His tongue swipes over the crease of your mouth and he does it again when you don’t grant him access quickly enough. It makes you feel better that Steve is just as impatient as you seem to be.
When his tongue finally delves into your mouth, you find that he tastes like the beer that he had earlier, but more surprising are the citrus undertones, the ones that are also sticking to his skin whenever you breathe in deeply through your nose. You can practically feel the oranges explode on your lips and the juices penetrate your mouth.
You wonder how much of that is down to your imagination or if Steve does indeed taste faintly of ripe oranges.
He’s blissfully unaware as to what’s going through your mind as your tongues slide over each other. All that he knows is that he wants more than what you’re offering him right now.
Your lips part and he presses his forehead against yours. You’re breathing heavily and you swallow hard enough for him to hear it. Your exhales intermingle with the hot air that’s coming from him, you feel it curl over your lips and spread outward over your cheeks.
Steve nudges the tip of his nose against yours and you both huff a laugh. You wrap your arms around his neck, clinging to him like he’s a lifeline. He says nothing about it, but merely keeps looking at you and waits for your breathing to even out.
“Hey,” he finally says, “you still okay?”
“Perfect.” You tilt your chin up until your lips touch again and you murmur against his mouth, “You got me all lightheaded.”
“From a kiss?” When you nod, he chuckles softly. “That’s nothing.”
You’re a little bit more prepared when he dives back in again, your lips crashing back into each other as he hits you full force. You can’t get enough of him and it feels like the feeling is very much mutual.
Confidence floods back into you, all because you’re with him right now, because he seems to have picked you. He noticed you, well before this night apparently, and it was making you more bold, more powerful.
You start pushing back a bit, your teeth nipping at his lips, your tongue pushing into his mouth until you have him going all breathless instead. You can feel him shudder when you press your hand against his stomach, the muscles twitching under your palm.
Not wanting to be outdone, Steve takes back control a little by putting his hands on your hips and sliding them to the back until he’s grabbing two handfuls of your ass. You squeak when he lifts you up from the seat, making you plant your hands against the roof of the car, head tilting backwards and opening up your neck which he immediately latches on to with his lips.
“Ah.” Your head is spinning, already drunk on him and the way that he’s leaving gentle kisses on the column of your throat definitely isn’t helping. When he starts sucking on your pulse point, you moan his name, “Steve.”
“Right there?” You heave a sigh when he does it again and soon he’s putting more suction on your skin as if he’s trying to mark you. “You like that?”
“Yeah,” you breathe out. “Yeah, I like it.”
“Thought so,” he says in between open mouthed kisses. “Love those noises you’re making, baby. You gonna make more of them for me?”
“If you want me to.”
“I want you to.”
“Wouldn’t be able to stop anyway,” you pant in reply. “Fuck, Steve.”
“Like that,” he says, voice sounding needy and heated. “Just like that.”
Nothing but a string of whines tumble from your lips as Steve continues his assault on your neck, but his mouth keeps moving down lower until it hits the collar of your shirt. He pulls it down as far as it can go so he can lick the dip above your sternum before veering outward to the parts of your collarbones that he managed to uncover.
Your hips are grinding against nothing at all, desperately needing some kind of friction, hoping that Steve will take the hint since his hands are still on your ass and nothing seems to be able to make them move.
When they finally shift, you breathe a sigh of relief, because you can finally feel his long fingers on the front of your body, gliding up your torso until they’re touching the underwire of your bra… where they then come to a complete standstill again.
The constant teasing is really starting to get to you. You’re so ridiculously hot for the guy that you swear you’ll scorch your way from the leather upholstery all the way down to the chassis.
It would appear that Steve is able to tell that you’re seconds away from reaching your limit however.
Your back is pushed against the door until there’s nothing left for you to do but sit in the seat sideways facing him. Steve follows you and soon he’s sitting on his knees between your parted legs. His hands are on your knees and he slides them down the inside of your denim clad thighs, fingers dancing over the inside seam, down towards where you’re searing hot for him.
Your hips push up instinctively, only to feel his digits move upwards to your hips, missing where you wanted to feel them the most completely.
“Ah, ah,” he tuts, “not yet.”
When you pout, he chuckles and you highly suspect that he likes seeing you like that a little bit too much, seeing how something like this has happened a couple of times already.
Sweet merciful release comes when he finally slides his hands under your shirt and cups your breasts through the rather plain white bra that you’re wearing. He pulls the cotton cups down and you arch your back into his palms when you feel his warm skin against yours.
“Baby, could you-“ Before he could finish his sentence, you were already leaning forward, grabbing the bottom of your shirt, pulling it over your head and tossing it into the front seat. “Someone’s eager,” he grins as he gets his first view at your (almost) bare chest. “So fuckin’ pretty.”
You grab at his shoulders, tugging on his shirt, but he surges forward to smash his lips into yours first before whipping his shirt off with the same level of eagerness as you had taken off yours. His shirt joins yours in the front, hanging over the steering wheel.
Your hand shakes slightly when you reach for him, the palm of your hand connecting with his bare chest. You had seen him like this plenty of times when he was still the swim team captain, like so many other girls that came to cheer him on during high school, but you had never thought that you would be able to touch him like this.
There’s barely enough time for you to run your hand from his clavicle down to the top of his jeans before he kisses you hungrily again. He barely allows you time to breathe and every time that your lips part, you’re taking in large gulps of air, almost forgetting to breathe entirely if it wasn’t for your burning lungs alerting you to the fact that air was desperately needed.
“Steve,” you whine when his chest hair rubs against your hardened nipples.
“I know, baby,” he replies and before you know it, his hands are on your jeans, undoing the button and tugging them down your legs. Your underwear comes along with them, but you could care less. When he realizes that your lower half is bare, his eyes widen a fraction, barely visible from the faint green glow of his car stereo. “Let me look at you. All of you.”
Taking the hint, you reach around your back to take your bra off and playfully throw it right at him. He brushes it off the leather seat and it slides down to the floor, where you think you’ll leave it when he drops you off at the end of the night, just to give him something to remember you by.
You put your hands on your knees and slowly start pulling your legs apart, baring yourself to him completely. Steve’s eyes drop to the apex of your thighs, his hunger for you plain to see on his face, even in the mostly dark car.
One leg slips off the bench and you push the other one up, hooking your ankle over the headrest. You sigh, contented and warmed by his gaze, and your hands glide over your thighs, until they come to a stop on the lower part of your belly.
“Well, fuck,” Steve finally growls. “Pretty as a picture.”
Rushing forward, he’s on top of you in a flash, lips smashed together and his hands massaging your tits. His hips undulate against yours, the zipper of his fly catching your clit until you’re gasping and sighing into his mouth. You wrap your legs around his hips, the balls of your feet digging into his ass, pulling him closer into you until you’re sure that you must have soaked through the thick fabric of his jeans.
It’s embarrassing how fast you come like this, with his pants still on, but when Steve leans his forehead against yours so you can just make out his winning smile, you know that this was probably his intention all along.
His lips hit the corner of your mouth, then your chin, and then he starts kissing a trail down your body that’s still glowing until you feel his tongue circling one of your nipples before he takes it into his mouth and sucks on it.
Your hands shoot to the back of his head, your fingers tangling through the strands of his hair, and making sure he stays right where he is. He obliges, not moving until you pull him to your other breast, where he does the exact same thing.
Steve moves back and forth like this for a while until you can feel his fingers touching your clit which makes you pull on his hair harder than you had intended.
But it doesn’t seem to be nearly hard enough for Steve.
“Come on, baby. Pull,” he husks against your skin. You twist your fingers through the thick strands and do as he asks, but it’s still not good enough. “That’s all you got? Harder.”
Grabbing a handful of his hair, you pull so hard that his cheek knocks into one of your breasts. You can feel the corner of his mouth that’s pressed against your skin curl up into a smile, obviously pleased. It makes you repeat the motion, only this time you pull him to the side until his chin is resting on your sternum.
“You want to guide me?” His hands slip underneath your thighs before you even manage to nod, fingers digging into your flesh. “Do it. I dare you.”
“Think that I won’t?”
“Oh no, I know you will,” he grins.
“You want me to tell you what to do?”
“You could. I might even listen.” Despite what he says, it’s painstakingly clear that he will do whatever you tell him to do. “Just figured that it would be more fun if you’d just yank on my hair until my lips are on your pussy.”
Shifting your hand to the top of his head, you push him down. His tongue darts out of his mouth and the tip of it touches your heated skin, creating a path as he’s on his way down.
When you can feel his breath hit your mound, you stop, just to see what he would do. Steve doesn’t move, but simply hovers above you, completely still and waiting for you to guide him the last few inches.
The last push is rough, your impatience showing once more, and now he’s completely level with your cunt. Whenever he exhales through his nose, you can feel it hitting your center and since his breath is a lot cooler than the heat that’s burning between your thighs, he makes you squirm with every outward breath.
The wait is agonizing and since he wanted you to be his guide, you briefly wonder whether you should just grab a handful of his hair and push his face down, but he takes you completely by surprise by spitting on you instead.
The loud moan that bursts from your lips surprises you both. You can feel his saliva dripping down and mixing with your own fluids.
“You like that?” He breathes against your thigh when he hazards a glance to look up at your face.  “Feel good?”
“Yeah,” you moan, “real good. Don’t stop, Steve.”
“I won’t.” He licks a stripe from your entrance to your clit with the flat of his tongue and your hips jerk upwards to chase his mouth when his tongue stops making contact with you. “I’ll give you what you want. Promise.”
“Counting on it.”
Steve practically dives in and devours you. His tongue hits all the right places, the tip of his nose making contact with your swollen clit whenever his mouth dips further down.
What he can do with his mouth is damn near sinful. He’s so good at eating you out that he has reduced you to nothing but sharp yelps and loud mewls in a matter of seconds.
He’s licking up every drop of your juices like a man starved, like you’re the never-ending dessert of a three course dinner, something that keeps regenerating and keeps making him hungry for more.
The pads of two of his fingers prod at your entrance, applying the slightest amount of pressure, just to make you aware of what he’s about to do, which provides a sharp contrast to the speed with which his tongue is batting at your clit.
“Please, Steve,” you cry out, begging already. “Need it so bad.”
There’s no reply, save from the slow slide of his fingers into your entrance. Your walls constrict them instantly, sucking them in deeper. Your back arches, pushing yourself away from the door, until his free hand presses down on your stomach to make sure you can’t move.
Since you can’t do much else, you grab at his hair and yank harder than before, until he moans against you and rams his fingers into you as far as they can go. He curls them up against your sweet spot until you’re gasping for air, jolts of electricity coursing from your cunt throughout your body. You can feel it all the way down to the tips of your curling toes.
“Oh, Steve,” you gasp when he covers your clit with his lips and sucks. Your thighs clench together, gripping his head between them. It makes him moan loudly and the added vibrations are what ultimately push you over the edge. “Ohgodohgodohhhh- Steve!”
Your climax hits you so suddenly that it’s almost as if Steve’s car just got hit by a truck and you’re seconds away from smashing straight through the windshield. You’re not, of course, but Steve makes you come so hard that it’s almost too easy to imagine.
Despite the fact that he’s just given you an earth-shattering climax, he’s still going, but you barely notice at first. You’re practically floating, soaring all the way up in seventh heaven, miles above the car, completely elsewhere as the aftershocks still pulsate through your body.
The muscles in your thighs are still shaking, Steve can feel them clench and unclench under his tight grip as he keeps them wide open. Your stomach keeps tightening as the waves of pleasure keep coming, your brain all fuzzy like you’ve just spent most of your evening getting high.
By the time that your head’s finally clear, in the process of shaking off the indescribable buzz, you become aware of what he’s doing, what he's still doing.
The sounds of pleasure quickly change to overstimulated whines instead. You try to push him away, but your muscles are made of jelly and he only proceeds to grip your thighs tighter, keeping them apart with so much force that you fear you’ll have neat little bruises where his fingers were digging into your flesh come morning.
The more noise you make, literally begging him to stop now because “you can’t” does nothing to stop him. If anything, it only makes him go at you harder, pushing his tongue as far into your quivering channel as he can, until you’re crying his name.
“Steve, Steve, Steveeeeee…”
Your voice breaks and you start keening, your fingers attempting to push him away and keep him right where he is at the same time. You swear that you can feel him smile against your abused pussy, but you’re so out of it that you can’t be entirely sure.
Steve manages to pull another climax out of you, tears it out of you kicking and screaming, dragging it out onto the surface after he had been digging deep for it, knowing full well that you had another one left in you.
This time, he lets you go and you crumple into the door, chest heaving and your brow covered in a sheen of sweat. You’re past speech, your throat dry as parchment because you couldn’t stop chanting his name as Steve made your insides burn hotter than a forest fire.
Through blurry vision, you can just about make out that Steve sits down next to you, but you can feel one of his hands on your ankle, fingers lightly wrapped around it and his thumb making the same circular motions as earlier while you come down from your high.
When you look up, the roof of the car appears to be swimming with stars. You can still see them behind your eyelids when you squeeze your eyes shut. Steve gave you a climax of such epic proportions that you don’t even have to tilt your head back to be able to look out the window to see the clear sky, which would no doubt be dotted with very real twinkling stars.
Steve had no idea that it was one of your favorite things to do on a cloudless night. He actually brought the night sky into the car, just like he said he would, and it made you smile to yourself.
“What are you smiling about?” Upon hearing his voice, you stop looking up and you blink a few times to clear your vision before you look at him. “Hm?”
“Nothing,” you reply, because admitting to what had happened seemed silly somehow.
“Didn’t look like nothing.” You can tell that he wants to press on so you sit up, press yourself against his side, lean your head against his shoulder and rest your hand on his hip. “Don’t want to talk, huh?”
“Don’t think I could if I wanted to,” you admit.
“That good?”
“Steve, I think that the words ‘you rocked my world’ don’t even do it justice, even if that’s exactly what happened.”
“Cheesy,” he laughs and you can feel his lips on the crown of your head. “Good thing that I like cheesy.”
The two of you sit like this for a short while and you listen to his steady breathing. You desperately want to repay the favor, want to make Steve see the same stars as you did, and he seems to sense it.
“You don’t have to do anything,” he says in a low voice, “so quit breaking your pretty little head over it.”
“I know,” you reply. “But I want to.”
“Okay.”
His answer is short and simple, making it perfectly clear that there are no expectations. He’d take you home if you asked him to, but you would much rather stay here. You don’t want to go anywhere else just yet.
You start out slow, by kissing his upper arm and then his shoulder. Moving to sit on your knees for better access, your lips move from his neck until you’re peppering kisses all along his jaw. Steve doesn’t move, he merely watches you and lets you do whatever you want.
Reaching for his jaw, you turn his head in your direction so you can kiss him full on the lips. He plays along perfectly, allowing you to give him languid kisses, with his eyes wide open so he can keep following your every move.
Your hand moves from his neck down over his chest, skimming over his skin, until your fingers reach the top of his jeans. You pop the button with ease, pull down the zip, and before he knows it, you’ve slipped your hand inside so you can palm his length over his boxer shorts.
“I was going to tell you to take as long as you need, but if you keep touching me like that-” His sentence ends abruptly and with a sharp hiss, all because you squeezed him a little. “Don’t do that.”
“Sorry,” you giggle and proceed to do it once more. You can feel his cock growing more firm against your palm. “Couldn’t help it.”
“Oh really?” he says, knowing you were teasing. You laugh again and this time he manhandles you until you’re laying underneath him. You eagerly pull his jeans down until they’re pulled underneath his ass. Your eyes drift down to his boxers and you can literally see him straining away against the cotton fabric. “I think that this is going to be a long night, honey.”
“Oh no.” Reaching for him one more time, you find him hard as a rock. There’s only one final cloth barrier between you now and soon that too will be gone. “Whatever shall I do?”
“Little brat,” he groans right before you finally push his boxers down. You finally look down, curious, and your eyes nearly roll out of your skull when you catch sight of his cock. Your hand moves slowly, tentative, until your fingers touch his velvety shaft. “A very long night,” he promises with a soft moan.
“I sure hope so,” you whisper back. “I could stay out all night.”
“Tempting,” Steve replies. He holds himself up with his arm and it makes his long hair hang in your face like a curtain.
It makes a grin appear on your lips, making you think back to how this started, with you looking at his long hair across the room and trying to stop yourself from staring. You can’t stop looking at it now, at those silky strands and how they sway back and forth, tickling your face, clinging to your damp forehead, and you don’t know if you could ever stop staring.
You don’t want to stop staring. Not for tonight at least. And for however long he’ll allow you to keep looking at him after this night…
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The Raven Boys Rizz Ranked
6. That one cray guy who tried to seduce his crush by kidnapping his crushes little brother and stuffing him into a car which is suprisingly not effective. Heard he died which is kinda awkies.
5. In almost dead last is ironically everyone’s favourite evader of death. You guessed right! Gansey boy!!! Reading through his first interaction with Blue was so painful I almost permanently died. However, credit were credit is due because he did somehow get with her at the end but he is just lucky Blue is deadsexual.
4. Ronan - bless his heart he tried but fuck is he embarrassing to watch sometimes. I’m not even going to detail all of the second hand embarrassment I had watching him flirt. But hey at least he didn’t call his crush a prostitute and then try and set them up with his bestie because of his saviour complex and crippling lack of self worth. Also his lil gifts were so sweet like A+ for effort.
3. The bisexual king himself Adam Parrish who could pull anybody in Henrietta with complete and utter ease. His only downfall is being kinda creepy being possessed by a forest and all but you know what some people find that hot (not me of course …). ALSO CAN WE TALK ABOUT ADAM IN A LEATHER JACKET BECAUSE WE DON’T TALK ABOUT THAT ENOUGH. Also you know the line in call down the hawk where he was like I need to take off your clothes!!! Damn he is kind of being robbed at 3rd.
2. My husband and everyone’s favourite man whore DECLAN TADHG LYNCH. My boy pulled 3 Ashley’s is a row and the goddess that is Jordan and he had me giggling at every single turn. Nothing is more seductive than a plain white guy with stomach issues and an art kink. Everyone hated you because they weren’t you and that’s why all of the bitches who slut shamed him *cough*Gansey*cough*Adam*cough*Ronan *cough* are ranked lower than him. Also his murder spree in Greywaren is the sexiest scene ever written, you cannot argue me on this. PSA: before anyone comes with for me for putting him above Adam just remember there is textual evidence of Adam literally learning to flirt off of Declan after observing him in trb. HE WAS THE TRENDSETTER.
1. Noah - Sometimes being creepy and dead can have it’s benefits. He saw his opportunity to kiss Blue and he fucking ran with it. He really said I know someone you could kiss 🤭 and I admire that confidence which I firmly believe makes him extremely deserving of 1st place. The ability to pull bitches whilst literally decomposing is quite frankly unbeatable.
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rafaelsilvasource · 2 days
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Husbands (we love typing that as much as you love reading it) T.K. (Ronen Rubinstein) and Carlos (Rafael L. Silva) are coming into the fifth and final season of 9-1-1: Lone Star (premiering Monday, September 23 on Fox) already dealing with the unsolved murder of the latter’s father. But there’s more drama to come.
Carlos’ obsession with that investigation is going to put their marriage to the test. T.K.’s half-brother, Jonah, is coming to Austin (which is sure to affect Rob Lowe‘s Owen as well). Below, co-showrunner Rashad Raisani previews that and more that’s ahead for the fan-favorite couple.
Carlos is investigating his father’s death. What can you preview about that investigation? That’s also going to involve Campbell (Parker Young), right?
The way we’ve been talking about Campbell and Carlos is that they’re like two brothers, the big brother and the little brother. Carlos comes along, and in Campbell’s mind, he got kind of a free pass because of who his dad, Gabriel Reyes, was, the legend, and to go to the front of the line and become a Texas Ranger. The first episode is about these two brothers both fighting for daddy’s love and daddy being Chief Bridges, their boss. But what’s gonna happen is they learn to respect each other and they’re gonna discover that they’re so much better when they work as a team and they really complement each other brilliantly, not just as investigators, but as characters and frankly to me, as actors. I think just they have a wonderful dynamic that only gets richer as the season goes forward.
Carlos’s father’s murder is a thing that Carlos is not giving that up. It is the central driving force in Carlos’ life. And there’s no way we’re going to end the series without giving that poor guy some answers. So there will be some answers at the end of the day on that.
The season description says that T.K. and Carlos’ marriage is put to the test because Carlos becomes obsessed with solving his father’s murder. What can you tease about how we see that play out and how tough things are gonna get in the middle of that for them? I do have faith that they’re gonna be okay by the end.
A big part for me about their marriage was I really wanted to treat it like a real marriage, and by that, I mean that even though these guys are so wonderful to each other and they’re so handsome, life isn’t perfect no matter who you are and everybody has real struggles that affect even great relationships. And the true strength of a relationship isn’t the absence of challenges and problems, it’s how you grapple with them and encounter them and if they make your relationship stronger or weaker.
And so for Carlos, this burden of his dad’s murder is going to sit there and take up a lot of oxygen in the room and T.K., who is an incredibly supportive husband, is gonna try and be patient and graceful and allow Carlos to have that space. But at a certain point, he’s got to advocate for them to have a future together, and that’s part of what you were talking about with Jonah. I like to think that little boy, in some ways, represents the future of their relationship and Gabriel’s murder represents the past of their relationship, and there’s gonna be a tension between those two things and that’s gonna be their central dynamic this year, is that one person is struggling to get answers in the past and the other person is struggling to move on and build a future, which I think is a very relatable human experience.
All of this makes me think about kids, and that has been a bit of an issue for them in the past. How does that come into play?
I think that’s another pressure point because Carlos was very upfront with T.K. about, “Hey, I’m not ready to have kids and I don’t know if I ever will be,” and then now that his dad’s been murdered, in his headspace, that’s the last thing that he’s got the bandwidth or the emotional energy to deal with. But like I said, T.K. is feeling like life is happening right now, like we don’t get moments back, and especially as a first responder, they see that you can’t take anything for granted. And circumstances are going to align that are going to [lead to] a situation where T.K. is like, I know that you were uncomfortable with taking this next step as a father, but I feel like it’s something powerful that I need to do, and to make that a crisis point for them as well.
I hope that the audience can see the argument from both of their points of view and just go, “S**t, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what I would do either.” That’s what I hope because I feel like people have real problems that aren’t so simple as to say, well, he’s right, he’s wrong, whatever. We just wanted to put them through that.
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faintfill · 2 months
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hug we were robbed from
based off this one
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anyways not meant to be ship art but if u want it to be it can be
also capcom was way too worried about people only seeing them as platonic. ashley deserved her hugs and frankly so did leon ☹️
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n3ptoonz · 8 months
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Okay but like the whole save a horse ride a cowboy thing… for Arthur?
'Snake on a Train'
THANKS FOR 300+!!🖤🖤❤️❤️
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Pairing: Arthur Morgan/F!Reader
Fandom: Red Dead Redemption II
Warnings/tags: Smut; Explicit, i'm writing this like i'm from the old west bear with me it's really fun, post chapter 6 MEANING he's alive and DOES NOT have TB. never caught it. we live in delusion round these parts. dialogue driven y'all know me i love me some interaction, implied breeding knk, cowgirl, barely proofread writers block is fucking me up
fr tho read this in a southern accent shit is kinda funny i had way too much fun LMAO
i got so many arthur requests then realized i used THIS theme so i'm using this ask i hope those who sent in will find this!!
Word count: 2300
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Never trust a "runaway" O'Driscoll ever again. You was on the run now, away from those freaks and needed a proper escape at least for the time being. Why you chose to not accept Arthur's offer of joining the gang was beyond you. You knew each other well in Blackwater before they had to leave, he suggested you join since you'd be a great addition and trustworthy, but you declined. Later on you were picked up by a "runaway", he sold you out and now you're high tailing it to the nearest escape.
You stumbled across a particularly high end looking train that looked like it was headed west--aka opposite way from this shit. Your initial intent wasn't to rob it, yet. You just needed a quick getaway from this madness. Quick and sneaky you were getting into the back past a few guards. You found an abandoned ticket under a seat and stuffed it in your pocket, walking around until you found an empty cart that looked quite fancy.
You kept your head on a swivel and constantly looked out the window for any suspicious activities when somebody barged in. You quickly stood up and drew your revolver when you realized who you laid your eyes on.
"...Arthur?" you said. His eyes adjusted from the sun reflecting off the window when he heard his name escape from your lips, recognizing your voice almost immediately.
"What are you doin' here?" you both inquired in unison.
"Put your damn gun down I ain't here to rob you." he said sitting down on one of the two seat chairs covered in leather. You slid it back into the holster with curious eyes still on him. Just how long had it been? Why was he here?
"You normally waltz into carts that aren't yours?"
"Ain't that what you did?"
...he had a point.
"Maybe, but I had a reason."
"You sayin' I'd hop onto a nearby train for no reason?"
"I ain't seen or heard from you in almost a decade, Arthur. I don't know what I know anymore. Where's the rest of Blackwater's finest?"
Arthur just leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. There was a deadpan look in his eyes as he recalled everything that went down in the last two weeks. All the betrayals and chaos started to montage in his mind all over again; how he was this close to death, but managed to escape somehow.
"Dead, on their own, or all the above. Remember John? I helped him and his folks get out. The others...well I don't rightly know where they are. And quite frankly I don't care."
You sat in front of him as you processed his words. What's understood don't need to be said, and you knew this well.
"Is that why you're here?" you asked. It felt like a question with an obvious answer but you honestly just wanted a confirmation. It wasn't like him to just run off, at least from when you last seen him.
"In so many words, I guess. Although I didn't expect to see a woman of your caliber running away from your bullshit either. I'd like to know too, if you don't mind."
"Oh hush that up." you waved his comment off dismissively, "I was sold out."
"Well I'll be. You know I always wondered what you were doing or who you decided to hang with if not us. Who in their right mind would sell out one of Blackwater's most wanted?"
In your time together you always had a playful relationship, but you could tell in his tone there was slight bitterness or sarcasm. Truth be told he started to feel some type of way when he realized you declined him just to end up with some other gang that clearly didn't give a damn about you.
"Watch yourself." you warned, your tone half serious half playful.
"What? You didn't want to be around folk who had your best interest that's fine. I won't say I told you so."
"When the hell did you tell me so?"
"The day before we left." he answered without hesitation. "The night we spent together? Ring any bells?"
Damn. You tried to forget that night since the day he had to leave and you too shortly after. You didn't want to remember all the fun you had. You didn't want to remember his hearty laugh at your stupid jokes. Hell...you didn't even want to remember just how good he treated you. He treated you like a lady, unlike most of the men you came across. All it took was one heated kiss, and you both were hooked. But also knew it couldn't be given both your circumstances.
When he offered for you to join you wanted to jump at the opportunity. So why didn't you? Because, well, you loved the man. You thought your own feelings would hinder the morale of the group somehow and break it apart, and you wouldn't dare that be on you. Plus you couldn't really tell where he stood. He's a guy who treated most people with respect despite how he grew up.
Back then he mentioned how people like them were hard to come by and that most gangs were either just downright pieces of shit or cultish. So he in fact did tell you so, and you tried to forget that as soon as possible. Didn't want any sort of thoughts of him clouding your mind or else you'd go crazy.
The only reason you two didn't get intimate that night is because he respected you and your boundaries. He still does. He didn't want it to feel like he was grasping on to the nearest thing to fuck with and then dip. That's not the kind of man he was nor will he ever be.
"What does that night have to do with why I'm here now?" you tried so hard to seem like it didn't completely take over your thoughts, but this is Arthur Morgan for christ sake. He's damn good at reading people.
"It can mean just about anything, sweetheart, but I know it meant something to you just as much as it did to me." he said. The tone of his voice sounded a bit like he was trying to convince himself that was the case. If it wasn't, he wouldn't know what to do.
You sat back in your seat but that didn't take away the feeling of his gaze pouring into your soul. "It did." you said looking down at your hands
"Then why decline? Was it me? I know it's not my lifestyle because we lived the same way."
"I didn't want to get in the way, alright? I knew you'd be gone often and would be out for days at a time while I worried if you'd come back in one piece. I've been there and done that. Wasn't doing that again."
Arthur leaned back up in his seat and ran his hand over his face, sighing. He didn't want to come off so strong, but he felt real feelings for you and didn't know how to process it properly. The woman who's been on his mind since the day the gang left Blackwater sat in front of him and he felt like a lost puppy all over again.
"Okay." he said softly, "Was I on your mind at all?" he continued looking down, mumbling under his breath but you still heard him.
"Everyday since." you said standing up. He slowly looked up at you with those pearly blues that never failed to capture you. He was just so relieved that it wasn't just him. That it wasn't one-sided. Grabbing his hand you pulled him up to meet your eyes--like he wasn't visibly looking down at you.
"I thought about you so damn much I guess I had to distract myself by running with some undercover O'Driscolls. I figured out who they was too late and voila, lawmen breaking down my door."
Arthur shortly chuckled upon hearing you explain more of your situation. To him it was unbelievable, and he never thought he'd hear that name ever again especially after seeing Colm swing.
"This evening is full of surprises. How do I know this isn't some big scheme to take me down once and for all?" he said while wrapping his arms snug around your waist and his voice grew more rugged and deep. Oh how he missed this. What this is, who knows, and who cares?
"I don't need some big scheme to take you down." you said placing your hands on his biceps, squeezing just a little bit. He smirked at this action and pulled you closer.
"That so?"
You hummed in agreement, and it didn't take long for you two to finally lock lips together after a bit of playful murmuring here and there. And just like that, you both were taken back to that night. That heated kiss you shared was the absolute highlight of your lives, and you intended to relive that again and more.
It's like you never left but kissed like it's been forever. He ran his cold palm up your back to hold you while the other unbuttoned your pants. Even after almost ten years, he didn't miss a beat. He still got it. Are we surprised? You followed his lead and kept one arm around his neck while the other attempted to pull him free.
His hands were quick and nimble like yours, so next thing you know your pants are on the ground and you're sitting comfortably in his lap. You was now clad in a loose collar shirt and underwear and his shirt remained unbuttoned at the collar. Your mouths never stopped dancing throughout this whole process too.
Arthur just kept groaning into your mouth at every subtle grind on his thigh. This was only the second time of you two getting together like this, yet it feels way more than that. That same drunk feeling from the night made its return and wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.
You pulled back so you both could catch your breath, holding his face and running your thumbs over his stubble that was soon to becoming a full beard.
"I missed you...so damn much." you said in a tone just above a whisper.
"I can't imagine more than I have..." he replied while toying with the hem of your underwear. "Would you give this old outlaw the honor of... having you? All to myself?" he asked, looking deep into your eyes. You could feel him fully hard and his hands trembling a bit, but he still wants to hear it from you. One part is confirmation, but the other? He would easily gain satisfaction from knowing you want to give yourself to him.
"Well...I've saved a horse...and I plan on riding a cowboy," you whispered and smiled against his lips before leaning back in. Arthur chuckled into the kiss, wasting zero time pulling them panties to the side and slide right on in.
Your breath hitched as you eased on down his thick shaft. "That's my girl." he whispered, right next to your ear so he could physically feel you clench against him from his praises. You gripped his shoulders as your eyes closed shut, expelling light whimpers here and there as you set a place. He placed his hand on your back once again to encourage you, feeling a little smug at your struggle to keep up.
Best believe you weren't no bitch though; you swallowed thickly and kept on riding him. The ambience of the train was quickly fading as you two became lost in your own desire.
Were you expecting your orgasm to approach so quickly? Honestly, it made sense. Arthur knew all the right things to say and touched all the right places that churn your butter.
He was also nearing the end, and yet he had such a genuine smile on his face. He grunted with every time you sank back down into his lap and this meant he simply could not be happier. He's been dreaming of this moment forever, and finally. Finally, the woman of his dreams is having the time of her life because of him.
To keep yourself grounded you pulled his head up to rest your forehead on his, "Please, cum inside me," you begged. Your climax was seconds away from hitting you and you wanted to reach bliss at the same time.
You ain't have to tell him even once with how quickly he followed suit. Your hips slammed right back down into his lap as you both tried to stifle your cries of pleasure, still mindful of other passengers.
After you both calmed down in each other's arms, you cleaned yourselves up and plopped back down onto the two person couch you had just gotten intimate on. You held his bicep and laid your head on his shoulder with a content smile on your face. His the very same.
"You sure know how to get down for someone I ain't seen in a long time." he said playfully, looking down at you.
"Who said I ain't got none in a long time?" you replied a little too fast for his liking, looking up and seeing his expression comedically fall to a straight one. "I'm just messing, I wouldn't dare risk having anybody else's kids but yours." you continued casually before shutting your eyes. You had to stop yourself from laughing at the sound of his heart rate getting faster through his chest.
He chuckled, looking out the window at the scenery become painted with the pinks and yellows of the sunset passing by.
"You are something else."
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"Femme fatale" - Nikolai Lantsov x Reader
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[suggestive themes but nothing explicit]
SUMMARY: When you reveal how you won the suspiciously heavy bag of coins, Nikolai is overwhelmed with anger at the thought of you being intimate with another man. The thing is, he's never told you how he feels about you... until now.
WORDCOUNT: ~ 1.7k
<I cried on national TV today, I am anything but fine lmao>
>>Grishaverse-inspired playlist<<
The bag thuds loudly as you drop it on the nautical maps scattered on Sturmhond’s desk. Tolya, Tamar and the privateer in question suddenly fall silent, their excited chattering put to a halt. Three pairs of eyes glance once at you, once at the big leather pouch.
“Did you rob a bank on your way here?” Nikolai asks. Although framed as a joke, his voice reveals that he’s not exactly discarding this possibility.
“I know that look.” Tolya gives you a half-smile, crossing his arms on his chest. Even if he wasn’t a Heartrender, he’d still be proficient at reading people. “She ripped someone off.”
You shrug and wave your hand in dismissal. “Some whaler, roughly the size of a small elephant, was very eager to spend the night with me. At first I wanted to rip his face off but then I realized that I saw a ship docking around the same time we did, so the whalers must have just gotten their wages. I offered the man that if he can win against me in cards, I’ll let him do whatever he wants to me. He got so excited he didn’t notice the stack of aces up my sleeve.”
Tamar nods her head in acknowledgement. The small smile on her lips betrays a sense of proudness. “Beat him at his own game. I respect that.” It was your and Tamar’s thing - the whole crew probably knows that most commonly known methods of cheating were invented by either of you.
“Thank you very much,” you say as you take back the bag. “But I doubt this is anywhere near close enough to get Hyram to take the nightwatch for me, so I’ll be off.”
“Come on, sister,” Tolya taps Tamar’s arm, “we have things to do as well.”
When your hand pushes down the door handle, you hear Nikiolai calling out your name in a rush. “Stay for a moment,” he asks in a strangely anxious voice. You give the twins a questioning look but they only shrug in response - their previous conversation with their captain never once involved even a mere mention of you.
The door closes with a thud behind Tolya and Tamar. What used to be a lighthearted, friendly atmosphere suddenly turns absolutely uncomfortable and tense. You furrow your eyebrows studying Nikolai’s expression. He looks… angry. Slowly, you stroll towards his desk again but the closer you are to him, the more uneasy you’re feeling. Standing maybe a meter or two away from the table, you suddenly find yourself unable to move forwards as though some force is separating you two.
Nikolai sighs. He shakes his head and looks at you with a fiery glint to his eye. "Are you out of your mind?!"
The sudden loss of composure renders you speechless. "I beg your pardon?" Part of you realizes that this conversation is not going to end quickly, so you drop the bag on the floor next to your leg. Besides, the pouch filled with coins does weigh quite a lot.
"What if you lost?” His voice cuts the tense air like treacherous blades. Those bright eyes aren’t any softer. This outburst is already surprising but considering the details of his appearance, this is already a tempered version of the fury residing in his viscera. “Have you any idea what…” he cuts himself off and sighs again. Nikolai closes his eyes, rubs his face and only then resumes talking. “What could have happened to you?"
"What's up, boss?" you nod upwards at him with furrowed eyebrows. "This isn't the first time I'm conning people out of their money through frankly reckless wagers."
"This is different,” he drones his words.
"How so?” you bite back. His inexplicable irritation is rubbing off on you. “I knew I was going to win. Even if I didn't, by some chance, I would have fought them."
"By yourself?” his voice raises again. You’ve never seen him like this before, only further convincing you that something serious must have broken his patience. But considering your history of relatively legal enrichment, it seems unlikely that it’s this little bet that had set him off. “With whalers that make Tolya look like a spud?”
It’s like dancing. Except he’s clumsy for a man of his agility and keeps stepping on your toes. And just like guests do on weddings, the two of you are pirouetting around the main attraction, naively thinking that the other person will miraculously be enlightened. The orchestra is playing the music and yet the dancing guests refuse to tell each other the name of the song.
"Come on, talk to me,” you coax him impatiently. This… dancing is tiring and there’s still quite a few things you need to do before the crew goes to sleep. “Say the quiet part out loud."
Nikolai hangs his head. You see his shoulders slowly raise and fall - he’s taking a deep breath, calming himself down. He walks around the desk and sits on its edge, leveling his eyes with yours. Something about his expression is changed like Nikolai has discarded the anger in place of defeat or compliance; like the steam that urged him to fight simply run out, returning the level-headed captain to you.
His eyes meticulously study the right-hand side of the room, along with the leather pouch, before he looks at you. "Can I be embarrassingly honest with you?"
You vaguely open your arms in a welcoming manner. "I'm all ears, captain."
Nikolai stares at you with a newfound intensity. The words almost escape him but he forces them back down his throat when he presses his lips tightly together. You see his hands grip the edge of the desk he’s sitting on as though he’s looking for something to ground him or just an outlet for his clearly turbulent emotions. Finally, Nikolai speaks but his voice is uncharacteristically low and somber: "The thought of another man having you makes me want to break this ship into pieces."
A strange tightness in your chest and throat; suffocating warmth sets your tired muscles on fire, its flames temptingly brushing against your starved skin. Then, a moment of defiance and doubt - how can you know he’s serious? That he’s not just saying this to keep you close in case he grows bored or frustrated one day? Privateers, pirates, corsairs, you’re all cut from the same cloth; hungry, money-grabbing, opportunist cloth.
"Another?" you ask. Hopefully Nikolai remains oblivious to the effect his words had on you. "You're making it sound like there's already a man I should be spending my nights with."
"There certainly is a man foolish enough to give everything away for the chance at your affection."
"If he's so desperate,” you begin thoughtfully, your voice low, “why has he never said a word?"
"I'm afraid he might just lose his sanity if you tell him no."
Perhaps it’s your own corporeality or the undisputable vulnerability in his words that makes you forget the distrust and defiance you felt towards this consuming notion. Suddenly, the tension that prevented you from coming closer has disappeared if not shifted to be located behind you, dissuading you from leaving the room. The nervous, thrilling atmosphere is nudging you forward, towards the man sitting a mere meter or two away from you, his eyes boring into you with anticipation. Some devious voice in the back of your head notices the romance in the dim candlelight and steady rocking of the boat traveling the seas.
Your legs, betraying your will, push you towards Nikolai. He straightens his back noticing you walking in his direction, suddenly his muscles flexing and creating tension. No matter how one wishes to look at it, he appears ready, prepared to take action.
"Well,” you shrug slightly, “unless he asks, how can he know it's going to be a no?"
"Better safe than sorry, I suppose,” he answers quietly as though the lack of space between the two of you is pushing down his chest, squashing juvenile vitality out of him.
A breathy chuckle leaves your lips. You shake your head in amusement at the atypical uncertainty. "Said the famous privateer Sturmhond, known for his utter lack of bravado."
Then, like you had lifted a curse that clouded the blue sky above his head, Nikolai furrows his eyebrows in a confused expression. "Yes, that doesn't really sound like me, does it?"
"Not in the slightest.” You answer. His lips curve into a smile and you find yourself wallowing in relief at the familiarity of his easy-going, up-beat attitude. “This makes me think that the mysterious admirer simply can not be you."
"When did you become a detective?” he jokes. Whether it’s your lack of straightforward rejection or the fact that you’re steadily getting closer to him, Nikolai’s humor is only improving. “Amuse me. What would I have done?"
"I think…” your voice trails off as you fiddle with the hem of his frock coat, “that you would say something smooth and suave, then have me however you want. And I’d come crawling back every night."
In a quite unprofessional manner, if either of you even thought about that aspect at the moment, his hands slide up your thighs and hips only to rest on the curve of your waist. Then, Nikolai forcibly pulls you closer to him. First you yelp in surprise but soon you hear yourself gasping as his leg brushes against your groin.
A low chuckle leaves his mouth. "That sounds like a yes to me."
You can’t stop yourself from cradling his face, threading your eager fingers through his golden locks. Nikolai’s hot, ragged breath grazes your cheeks when you lean in. His lips are slightly apart, silently begging you to let him indulge in the sweet release of carnal desire. You lean closer to his ear, your voice comes out nearly as a growl:
"I'd say yes even if it's going to be the last thing I'm going to say."
His lips feverishly kiss your jaw and neck. A stifled moan escapes your lips and you swear you can hear Nikolai snickering.
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pseudophan · 7 months
Text
some post wad weekend thoughts...
i just wrote all this on the plane and haven't read it through so apologies for any mistakes
first of all, this weekend was incredible. i usually just kinda sit at home doing not much of anything, and this was a much needed break to actually have some fun. london in general always lifts my spirits but i suppose that danisnotonfire guy contributed a little as well.
guys i think i've met more people the past few days than i otherwise have in years. like. holy shit. i started listing people but i'm petrified i'll forget someone so i chickened out, sorry about that. but you all know who you are. i've met friends i've had for years, people i used to know but haven't spoken to in what feels like a decade, newer friends, and a frankly baffling amount of people i didn't know yet but who told me they've followed me for ages. like holy fuck you guys lmao what the hell??? and i mean did the reaction ever get old no of course it didn't. bad for my ego i'm sure but totally worth it. there's something very amusing and incredibly surreal about being chronically lame in most aspects of life and then suddenly finding yourself in an environment where you're kinda cool???? SO fucking fun oh my god, but also i do kinda feel like i've tricked you all? but hey i'll happily let you keep believing i'm cool, that is more than fine with me.
most importantly though everyone was SO lovely. like i said i don't think i've spoken to this many people in such a short amount of time in years and every single person i talked to was awesome. guys did you know phannies are kind of great... don't tell anyone but, lowkey... everyone is so funny and cool and absolutely insane but in a good way (shoutout everyone left at the gates until the very end, we should probably get some help).
and then lastly of course, mr howell himself. i talk about this a lot i feel like but fuck me that man was born to perform. whether you think he's actually funny or not, nobody can argue he doesn't absolutely thrive on a stage. he plays off the audience so well and he's so very obviously having the time of his fucking life. i'd already seen the show twice before this, and i didn't think anything would top the previous london show but man... the first night he came back out after the show having clearly been tearing up backstage, apologising for being an inconsistent absent parent, and i can't lie the "i had daddy issues and THEN i subscribed to dan howell" got me cause yeah no literally dude, you nailed it, exactly, well done. i think something about doing this show again, his magnum opus as he considers it, now after the dapg return was very special to him. he seems genuinely surprised that so many of us were ready to just jump back in like nothing happened, i don't think he was expecting so many people to still be waiting and it's... man. he comes off so grateful for us all and it's so fucking sweet. and then on the last night, i think that was my favourite, when the show ended and he got the standing ovation and people throwing him flowers.. he was so HAPPY. and clearly overwhelmed with emotion which, i gotta say, there is something honestly kinda funny about daniel howell standing in front of you trying not to cry. like no by all means dude go ahead, please, you've made me cry an endless amount of times it's only fair.
ugh. i'm proud of him or whatever. dick. and i'm proud of our ridiculous fucking community. i'm not sure what 14 year old nora would say if you'd told me i'd still be kicking it in the phandom a decade on, but at almost 25 (fml) i'm so so happy to be here still. you know, we get a bad rep, but i genuinely think as far as fanbases go we're pretty solid. and i love you all so much.
i believe i will have to rob a bank or something because the next time dan and/or phil do a tour i think i'll have to just show up at every date like i'm sorry but this was too good of a high we need to do it again immediately
anyway. back to work 💪
(by which i mean giffing dan and phil. i am still very much unemployed. fr though i'm two whole videos behind this has never happened i feel weird. who am i)
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genericpuff · 11 months
Text
The Mishandling of LO’s S3 Mi(n)season Hiatus - Part 3 1/2
Here we go, Part 3 of my analysis of the current FP episodes - a three-parter episode set leading up to the midseason finale of LO.
Part 1
Part 2
Truth is, I had actually forgotten a lot of the weird (and very stupid) shit that happened in this episode, that I thought Episodes 251 and 252 had already offered up the worst that this three parter set could dish out. Boy, was I wrong, because when I went back to check out Episode 253, I was reminded of a reality that my brain had wiped out in an attempt to protect my withering psyche-
I also forgot just how long this episode is. It's so long that I frankly can't even fit it all into this post, so this is gonna be part 3 1/2.
Anyways, let's just get on with it. This is the final stop on our trip into absolute nonsense.
CAUTION: THIS IS PART 3 OF A 3 PART SERIES IN WHICH I WILL BE SPOILING MUCH OF EPISODES 251-253. THIS WILL BE A LONG POST. BRACE YOURSELF.
Well, it's the midseason finale, and what better way to open it up than with the final title card-
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Typo and all. It wouldn't be an LO episode without one. Granted, IIRC this typo has been edited out, but the version of the screenshots I have from it feature it in all its original unedited glory. So enjoy that.
And yes, just like the last two times, the title itself only applies to the final cliffhanger, which is an absolute doozy especially for those who were there to experience it in real time.
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This is already a bit of a wild opening compared to the last two episodes, but it's quickly revealed that this is laying the foundation for the prophecy that Psyche gave to Apollo back in Episode 252. In true LO fashion, the story can't actually be linear in any regard, we're always segmented from pieces of information at a time. Loyal fans will call this a "writing style", I call it Rachel just trying to get another 70 cents out of me.
That said, I will say the art here is fairly decent, but I think that just goes to show that LO's one of worst features these days - ironically enough - is its coloring. What began as its strongest feature has now become one of its biggest weaknesses due to the sheer laziness in its rendering and the colors become more and more saturated into the grotesque over time. So at this point, you pretty much have to rob these characters of their colors to make them look decent, and of course at that point it just further highlights Rachel's same-face problems. She definitely tried to make them look distinguishable here, at least, with Hestia and Poseidon being the most unique.
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Now, this isn't the first time that we've heard of this herb being referenced - it was stated by Hades that Hera was the one to originally poison Kronos with the herb after gaining his trust - but to see it suddenly just pop up and play a role again out of nowhere already gives me a bad feeling in my stomach. It feels like yet another plot device - especially when presented in this type of format - that Rachel is suddenly using to try and seem "unique" in her writing, much like the strange narration we got back during the "Run For Your Life" sequence. It's just once again LO lacking any specific identity, it's always trying to be a million other things at once.
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I will say, much of this in and of itself is panel filler. Why? Because the location of the herb doesn't matter. You'll see what I mean in a moment, but the mentioning of Anthedon plays no role here, it's just yet another obligatory "see, I know how to Google things!" lip service moment from Rachel "self-proclaimed folklorist" Smythe.
Anyways, Eros is perplexed by this but Psyche immediately catches on, knowing right away that Apollo is going for Zeus. And this is where we get yet another one of the dumbest sequences in this comic.
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(see what I mean that the location of the herb doesn't matter? Because Apollo already got it and laced it into the cupcake).
Now, first of all, the fact that Eros and Psyche believe Kassandra's prophecy is already hilarious in and of itself, because ... well, because it literally defeats the point of her establishing it as a curse in the previous episode. Unless it only works on mortals? It never stated as such, so we literally just have to go with it and pretend not to notice that.
But most of all, of course LO had to play this off as some joke. Like, "hahaha how awkward! I've already eaten the cupcake!" and he still doesn't seem to really be in shock. Zeus has seen what this herb has done to gods before him, and yet his reaction to this is akin to a dad getting upset that he stepped LEGO's that he asked his kid 20 times to pick up off the floor. The whole "record scratch" style formatting of this followed by Zeus' lack of reaction just really makes me not care about any of this, because clearly the story doesn't care either.
But we don't see who he makes these calls to because the comic, of course, can't spend any longer than 10 panels on a single scene, so we cut to Hades and Persephone.
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Again, I don't know what the point was of having Hera relay this information to Persephone for her to relay to Hades, aside from the fact that Rachel needed to act smart with Therapy Speak that didn't even apply to Hera's situation (as we talked about in the last part). They gotta make Persephone the center of everyone's world though, so it's Persephone who's delivering this info and trying to come up with the solution.
Hades, though, wants to focus on his wife's birthday the commemoration of spring.
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SIR. THE WOMAN YOU WERE IN AN AFFAIR WITH SINCE BEFORE YOUR WIFE WAS BORN IS CURRENTLY GRAPPLING WITH YOUR FATHER WHO ABUSED HER AND IS NOW HAUNTING HER. THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR FLUFFY ROMANCE TIME. THERE IS A CHILD BEING HELD CAPTIVE IN TARTARUS AND LITERALLY NO ONE SEEMS TO CARE.
Anyways, apparently (for some reason) Hades is the one who has to go meet Demeter out front. Even though Hades has literally NOTHING to do with this ceremony, it's not his domain, but Persephone literally says "yep, that's correct" when he asks if he needs to go out to meet Demeter.
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This just feels like such a pointless conversation and I don't get what the point of this exact exchange is. Again, this isn't Hades' domain, so I don't see why he needs to be the one to go meet with Demeter.
But then, of course, to make matters worse, this man has the absolute audacity to pretend like he's never done anything wrong to Demeter. As if she should be obligated to be cool with sharing a bench with this man who literally terrorized her for years and then essentially groomed her daughter.
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I hate him so fucking much and I can't believe we're supposed to be rooting for him. He has not undergone ANY of the character development necessary for me to want to care about him.
Anyways, Hades has a seat with Demeter, and the conversation is very brief before Hades says that he has a gift for her. And what is it, exactly?
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Oh great, Hades. Sure wish you would have had this consideration hundreds of years ago. I fail to see what good this does for her now because it doesn't change the fact that he still cost her the role of Queen of the Mortal Realm and treated her like shit for hundreds of years. This comes across as such a shallow and empty "apology" because it's barely even a "gift", rather something she was OWED back then that he didn't want to hand over for his own selfish reasons. He still comes out the winner here because he's gotten to spend thousands of years being a rich slave-driving oligarch while Demeter has had to maintain the Mortal Realm on her own even without the glory of having a title.
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I especially detest this "twist" because it's less of a twist and Rachel finally accepting the fact she couldn't come up with anything better than what her fans had to come up with for her. If this had been the fact the whole time, we would have seen it established back when we first got those flashbacks showing Hades being a total prick to her over the volcanoes. Instead, Rachel dragged it out for weeks and weeks until finally dumping this "twist" that her fans had been talking about all that time. This is yet another one of those "Rachel used her fanbase to come up with her ideas" moments. I know that that seems a little mean and presumptuous, but the fact of the matter is that the writing in this story is such an absolute mess that you just know Rachel's writing by the seat of her pants and has to rely on her audience's headcanons to actually fill in the gaps of her story. Most of the time when people commend her for the "great storytelling" in LO, what they're referring to are things they came up with entirely on their own because of how easy it is to just make assumptions about LO's storyline. Rachel benefits off the story being as vague as possible because then her fanbase will fill in the gaps with their own assumptions and give her all the credit for an idea they came up with.
By the way, to the "self-proclaimed folklorist" who wrote this, the volcanoes were really just entrances into the Underworld. Hades did not own them. They were owned by Hephaestus. And I would argue that the volcanoes were only seen as "entrances" into the Underworld because, fun fact - if you jump into a volcano, you die!
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Hades frames his reasoning as feeling like Demeter was pushing him out of the Mortal Realm, but this makes no sense because none of that is on her. He claims that he felt like an "outsider" but the reality is that he made himself that way. He resigned himself to being King of the Underworld, he ate the pomegranate and made the deal with Erebus, and even he stated that he could still actually leave the Underworld, just not for long periods of time. So he was the only one keeping himself away from the Mortal Realm, not Demeter. We even see that in the VHS tape flashbacks where Hades stumbles onto Demeter's property and she lets him sleep it off in her home. So this whole sob story about how he felt "pushed out" by Demeter is such a bad take from someone who's routinely known to make himself out to be the victim. Because Hades can't have an actual reputation for a reason, no, this is a "retelling" told by someone who got all their Greek myth info off Tumblr circa 2016 and the front page of Google, so Hades has to be the misunderstood uwu sad underdog. Even though he routinely does things that reinforce the reputation he has within the comic, like being a slave driver, abusing lower class nymphs, and grooming teenagers.
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Minthe showing up for a split second in the background is the best this comic has been since S2. We stan our girl Minthe, fucking run girl, do what Persephone couldn't do. She's the real hero of this story (。・∀・)ノ゙
And honestly, I'm sorry, but Demeter really SHOULDN'T be taking the high ground on this. She has more than enough reason to be upset. For a comic that tries to celebrate feminism and holding abusive men accountable, it sure is willing to make the women - often victims of the men - the real villains who have to "do better". Except for Persephone of course. Persephone is married into the system now, she doesn't have to "do better", she's a "boss babe" for being abusive and petty and undeserving of her status because she's the self-insert Y/N character.
So the ceremony for commencing Spring begins. I gotta say, for the final major scene of the mi(n)season finale, the art is severely underwhelming. You can really tell the difference between S3 and S1 art here, there's barely anything extra done to make this scene even half as impactful as the most basic of scenes from S1.
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Like, it's fine, but it still feels so half-baked and rushed to attempt to replicate the kind of art that's been gone from the series for years now. The full sequence itself is actually quite lengthy, with a lot of nymph hands just moving around and playing instruments, but it's about as bland as any other panel, so it makes the sequence itself feel dragged out and boring.
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This is about as pretty as the sequence gets and it's still not even as good as the original Dread Queen transformation. There's barely any rendering in the skin, and they couldn't even be bothered to make the hands look normal. It's like it's trying so hard to be "original LO" but is fundamentally missing the point of what made the original LO so captivating.
But oh noooo, looks like Persephone did a bad!
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Are they actually gonna give her some kind of flaw? Are we gonna FINALLY gonna find out what she traded to Erebus?
No. We're just gonna make her the cause of winter.
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Spaghettios.
And that's where I'm leaving this review for now because, as mentioned in the beginning, this episode is a LOT longer than I remember it being. There's still a whole ass segment with Apollo that we need to cover and I don't want to leave it out but I also don't want to do it entirely in text format and I've hit that pesky image limit. So I'll be posting that second part as soon as I can!
That said, I really can't stand this "subversion" by making Persephone the reason for winter.
First of all, because this is a common problem in a lot of H x P "retellings", as many of them fundamentally miss the point of why Persephone is the "Goddess of Spring".
Persephone was not born the "Goddess of Spring". She was born Kore (Κόρη), a maiden born from Demeter. It wasn't until after she was taken by Hades that Demeter, in her grief, took away the harvest and created winter. It was the return of Persephone every six months that brought about the spring, hence, she earned the name, "Goddess of Spring". What these retellings COMPLETELY MISUNDERSTAND is that the gods aren't 'born' with their titles, they're granted these titles by the mortals who comprehend them and write of them as harbingers of their respective elements, stories, and messages. Zeus wasn't "born" the God of the Sky and Heavens, he was granted that title after he overthrew Kronos and took the Heavens for himself. Hades wasn't "born" the God of the Underworld and the Dead, he was granted that title after he became the ruler of the domain of death.
Where these retellings really fuck up is constantly trying to "subvert" the H x P myth in an attempt to romanticize it, thus undoing the point of why Persephone is called "The Goddess of Spring". A Touch of Darkness also made this mistake by putting a "twist" on Persephone's character by having her start out as someone who couldn't make things grow. But if she sucks at making things grow, then why is she still referred to as The Goddess of Spring? In LO, Hades is referred to as "Grandpa Winter" and the seasons already seem to exist as we saw in this episode through the ceremony, so why has she been called "The Goddess of Spring" this whole time?
But I also can't stand this "subversion" because it fundamentally misunderstands the very myth it's trying to "retell". By giving Persephone the "curse" of creating winter, it further robs Demeter of her own agency in this story, more than it already has. It wasn't enough to make Demeter a helicopter mom, it wasn't enough to drive an actual rift between her and her daughter, they had to take away Demeter's entire role in the story and the creation of the seasons and give it to Persephone.
And this is, surprisingly enough, NOT the first time the comic has done this. There are many traits associated with different gods that have been given to Persephone and Hades. The volcanoes belong to Hades rather than Hephaestus, Persephone is "more beautiful than Aphrodite", Thanatos' and Psyche's butterfly symbolism is given to both Hades and Persephone, Aphrodite's symbolism of roses is given to Persephone, the list goes on. Every single plotline has to involve Persephone as the hero, and every single attribute that's commonly associated with other gods has to be granted to H x P in some way to make them better and more interesting than every other cast member in the comic, and yet they still come across as vapid and boring protagonists with nothing to show for themselves.
So to give the ONE thing from the source material that made LO what it is, it comes across as so unbearably cruel.
But then again, we should have seen this coming. After all, Rachel does not cite this as a retelling of The Hymn to Demeter. She simply refers to it as its more unofficial name: The Taking of Persephone.
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Look, I get it, the story is meant to be told from Persephone's POV (or at least through the lens of her being the main character) so I can understand why Rachel may have chosen to reword this to make it more clear. But it's really depressing that she went to such an extent with making it about Persephone that she had to rob one of the most integral character of her moment and retribution. Especially when one of the only books in her cited "research" that's primarily about Persephone is, shocked, The Hymn to Demeter, which is listed at the very bottom of every "research" list you can find in LO's history.
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LO should have just stayed as self-indulgent fluff. This isn't "subversion", this isn't a "twist", it's just yet another item on the list of making Persephone the most Important One of all. Even when it attempts to be a 'flaw', it fails tremendously by acting as yet another aspect of her being a Mary Sue, because her 'flaw' has come at the cost of another character's story, identity, and strengths. What was originally a tale of grief, retribution, and standing up against a patriarchal system, has now been warped into a consequence of a muddied plot that doesn't have anywhere left to go. For a story that claims to be "feminist", it has ironically missed the original point of its source material entirely, and completely robbed itself of the feminine strength it could have had if it hadn't tried to be "subversive".
I don't really have anything much more to say than that. I could leave it here for good, but we do still have that extra segment to talk about that covers the actual final cliffhanger in this episode, so... we'll see you on the other side.
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all-pacas · 2 months
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ok so in s1, chase meets a nun, right? and he Reacts to her. house pulls him aside and theorizes that chase is Very Catholic, which chase doesn't confirm but also doesn't correct. because, you know. it's true.
later, when he is alone in a clean room with the nun, he tells her he went to seminary for a year. no one else. it's not one of house's guesses.
in s2e1, cameron is trying to rally the guys to her side re: death row guy, and she calls on chase: shouldn't someone who went to seminary be against the death penalty?
partially it's because it's the first episode of the season and the writers are trying to establish who everyone is. foreman Knows About Crime. cameron is So Compassionate. chase is Very Catholic but a-ok with murder. but the problem is that while the audience knows he went to seminary………the characters actually don't. he didn't tell anyone but that nun.
so…………how and when did that come out????
what on earth prompted chase to bring that up
i mean, house probably did a background check and figured it out and mentioned it for two weeks straight just to make chase miserable, but frankly we were robbed of everyone's reactions to that specific news
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guywrestlingaddiction · 5 months
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Double Team (brief) Triumph: Stinger v Cage Thunder & Lightning Rod (bgeast.com)
We all love an underdog story, but I think deep down what we truly love is a story where our stunningly gorgeous underdog thinks he out muscles two supervillains, only to get humiliated in the end.
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Stinger v Cage Thunder & Lightning Rod (bgeast.com)
SPOILER ALERT: I highly recommend viewing this match in its entirety before reading this post.  
The Backstory
Our hero enters the ring sporting the optimism of a champ with a simple demand - he will take both villains on but wants to ensure that just one bad guy in the ring at a time.  Yeah, good luck buddy with your opponents fighting fair and all.  
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Ladies and gentlemen, our strapping, lean hero versus two muscled heels.
And it's a fair(ish) fight at first with only one villain in the ring at a time.  Frankly, there doesn't even seem to be a reason to fight dirty when you're two badass villains against one hero.  
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Stretch out our hero and show off that ripped torso.
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Cage Thunder checking to make sure those abs aren't painted on.  Yup they are rock solid, at least for now that is. 
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But sooner rather than later they both cheat and gang up on our hero, and why do they cheat? Say it with me now, simply because they can!
The Double Team
A double team on its own would be bad enough but now our hero is unmasked and is robbed of his dignity.  Reese's red, flushed face simply cannot contain the pain and embarrassment he feels.
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Not content with mere victory, our villains need to humiliate the young Stinger/Reese.  Holds are applied longer than they need to and that smooth body is manhandled more than necessary, all of this to prove a point; they do it simply because they can.  
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The Triumph
Despite overwhelming odds, our hero overcomes his opponents not through skill or strength but by exploiting their major flaw - their hubris.  You see, Reese has been studying them and knows these guys want him bad, so bad in fact they'll let their guard down at an opportune moment...
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I mean look at the chest on Reese, they man may be lithe but he's got some power behind him. 
Our hero celebrates his impossible victory against two legendary heels, but no sooner does he proclaim that good has overcome evil when trouble starts brewing underfoot.  You see our hero has his own flaws and is equally susceptible to hubris as the poor guy gets cocky while tasting his triumph. 
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Reese: How do you like that? Two on one and I still kicked both of your ass'?!
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It should come as no surprise that in the end, little Reese Wells aka the Stinger, could not hold back both supervillains.  One supervillain is tough enough but two is impossible, especially not when both were enraged with defeat.  With the 'official' match over, Cage Thunder and Lightning Rod unleash their full heel mode, all over poor Reese. 
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And with that the match is over.  Now I'm sure we all like to think of ourselves as good and just, but our bad guys know us better than that. They know exactly where our true emotions stand and knew that this ending is what we really wanted all along. 
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water-loos · 1 month
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Bad Idea, Right ?
“I know we’re done, I know we’re through, but, God, when I look at you…”
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player!mean!steve harrington x fem!reader
series masterlist ; next chapter
cw: college au, MILD EMETOPHOBIA WARNING (mentions of gagging/pretending to vomit), vulgar language smut (p in v, creampie, unprotected sex), hate sex, arguing
wc: 5k
a/n: guys please be nice this is my first time writing full on smut
It was easy to change the code for your apartment building. It was easier to sit closer to the front of the class and start participating more as sort of a Steve repellent. Even deleting his number was a piece of cake after a couple of weeks.
What wasn’t easy, was going out.
Despite it being summer when all of the college kids normally went home to their hometowns, your group of friends that lived in your building chose to move to the city permanently and stay for the summer, all in the name of partying and being drunk in public. It had seemed fun at first, and you had been excited at one point.
Then, your friend Eddie said something in a casual conversation that ruined your entire summer.
“Yeah, by the way, Steve’s still holed up at his place. His roommate works 24/7 and doesn’t really do much, so he’s kind of been stuck. I think we should invite him to come out with us tomorrow,” He had suggested innocently, the situation between the two of you was kept so well under wraps that everyone but Alexandra had been kept in the dark. “What d’ya think?”
Well, Alexandra and her girlfriend, Robin. Who was Steve’s best friend. And had apparently been giving him hell about the way he treated you.
Eddie still sat beside you on the couch, sweet and clueless. You gulped before answering. “That’s fine. The more the merrier, right?”
“See! That’s what I told him, but he was all like “Well I don’t know you’d have to ask, you can’t just invite me to someone else’s plans”, which I think is a stupid mindset,” He gave a dramatic and frankly spot-on impression of Steve that almost made you laugh. “I’ll just tell him he should come.”
“Did you tell him who’s coming? Or just that it’s mystery plans?” Robin chirped in from the kitchen, shooting you a knowing look from over the back of Eddie’s head. “You know how he is with knowing everyone who’s at a function.”
“I did not, actually,” Eddie realized and whipped out his phone, flipping it open and clicking through his contacts to find his message thread with Steve. “I’ll text him right now. I don’t think he’s doing anything.”
You watched the screen diligently from where you were sitting, pixelated text bubbles popping up.
i just talked to everybody and they said you’re good to come out with us saturday
Who’s going?
rob, alex, nance, sean, jared, and alex’s roommate
You bit your thumbnail as you watched a typing bubble pop up, disappear, and then reappear for the next minute.
“He’s taking forever.”
“He always takes forever!” Robin called from the kitchen as Alex walked out from her room.
“What’s all the shouting for?” She grumbled, clinging onto Robin.
“I’m trying to get Steve to tell me if he’s coming out with us on Saturday,” Eddie explains and sends a few question marks in the message thread. “He keeps typing, and stopping, and typing again.”
Alex whips around and shoots you a wide-eyed glance. Eddie’s too enthralled in his phone to see you shoot one back.
I just realized I have a work thing that night.
Sorry.
“He says he has a work thing. He’s no fun,” Eddie sighs, shuts his phone, and tosses it onto the coffee table.
Your stomach churns and guilt fills your veins. When you cut Steve off, you didn’t want it to stop him from hanging out with everyone else. You’d rather not go and let him have fun instead.
Your phone vibrated in your pocket, indicating you had received a text. Your blood ran cold at the possibility that Steve could be the one texting you, and you immediately handed Eddie the remote that was in your lap in favor of scrambling to open your messages.
You couldn’t help but deflate a little when you saw it was just Robin, asking you if you were alright.
u ok?
yeah, i’m fine rob, but can you do me a favor?
sure
what’s up
can you text steve and ask him if he’d consider going out with you guys if i don’t go
what
no i’m not doing that
u don’t have to do that
he’ll be fine
can you just do it? please? i don’t even want to go that badly
i’ll buy you food
please?
fine
but i don’t think U should have to not go out with UR friends bc he’s uncomfy
You clicked your phone closed and settled into your seat on the couch, trying to focus on whatever horror movie Eddie had put on. Your phone buzzed not even five minutes after you had closed it, prompting you to open it again.
This time, it was an unknown number.
Your heart just about stopped.
Why do you want me to go out with everyone on Saturday so badly?
because i feel bad for being the reason you won’t go
so i’ll not go so you can, eddie really wants you to go
What if I just don’t want to go at all?
i want to make my friends happy, steve
robin and eddie and alex love you, and everyone else will love you
i want them to have a good time and they will if you go
please just go, for their sake
I have a better idea.
Don’t go out with them, and come here.
You pause and consider it. It couldn’t be that bad if you did go over. You could bring the six-pack that was in the back of your fridge that you hadn’t had the heart to toss yet, and you two could watch a movie like before. As much as it was easy to separate yourself from him, from everything, you still laid in bed and cried almost every night because your comforter still held the smell of his cologne no matter how many times you washed it. You still had one of his zip-ups, and you kept it right on your bedside table. The Altoids tin with his last cigarette still rattled in your purse.
Your phone buzzed twice in your hand.
DONT DO IT. DO NOT. ISWEAR TO FUCKING GOD
don’t listen to him
You lifted your head to see Robin and Alex standing behind you, glaring. Alex made a motion of slicing her neck.
That was enough to make you snap your phone closed and go back to pretending to watch the movie.
But it couldn’t be that bad.
Right?
———————
Saturday rolled around, and you had pulled out all of the stops. You blew out your hair, shaved your entire body, and even picked out your favorite pair of jeans that hugged your body just right.
Everything was perfect.
Your friends stood in your apartment, bottles of liquor covered your island, and music was bumping. It was a good pregame, and the energy was high.
“Alright! Let’s get this show on the road people!” Eddie cheered, a shooter between his pointer finger and thumb. “One last shot and then we leave.”
Jared, who had been standing ahead of where you sat on the couch, turned to help you up. The smile that was on his lips faded quickly, and his face fell into a concerned expression in the blink of an eye. “Are you good?”
Step one was complete.
You shook your head slowly and opened your eyes, trying to look as helpless as you could. “I’m really dizzy. I don’t think I should have smoked that cigarette.”
“Oh, shit, Alex?” Jared turned and called for your roommate, who rushed over quickly. The chains that hung from her shorts jingled as she rounded the couch and bent before you. “I think they’re gonna be sick.”
“Babe, I told you not to smoke with Eddie,” She tutted, lips between her teeth.
Before she could say anything else, you jumped up from the couch and rushed to the bathroom with your hand over your mouth, slamming the door behind you.
Step two.
You sat down on the floor next to the toilet and pretended to gag, doing your best to have the sounds you were making reverberate and sound realistic.
You kept it up for a couple of minutes before groaning loudly and flushing, which Alex took as an okay to knock on the door.
“You okay?”
“No. Just go without me.”
“Are you sure? We can just do a night in—“
“It’s fine, Alex,” You croaked. “I’ll be fine. You guys go out and tell me all about it tomorrow. I just want to chill out for a while.”
“Okay, babe. Call me if you need anything,” She agreed quicker than you thought she would, and you could hear her walk away from the door.
Step three.
You waited the ten minutes it took for everyone to get out the door, listening diligently for the faint sounds of their overly loud drunken voices to disappear. You left the bathroom as soon as you heard the door close, and you watched from the crack in your curtains as they pranced down the street and around the corner.
That’s when you grabbed your bag, Steve’s zip-up, his six-pack of beer, sprayed one last drop of perfume and left your apartment.
———————
One tumultuous twenty-minute drive later, you stood in front of his apartment, tossing your hair with your free hand as you debated on knocking.
This was such a bad idea.
But it was fine because you were just returning the last of his things. You were going to give him his things and maybe one more piece of your mind, and then you’d leave and cry in bed. It was a foolproof plan.
So you decide to knock, two raps of the knocker. You adjusted your posture one more time and crossed your arms. It would be fine. It’s a quick trip.
Step four.
Then, the door opened. Steve Harrington stood there, smiling at you with a look that could send someone to their knees. His shoulder leaned against the doorframe, and he matched your posture. It made your heart ache.
“There you are, pretty,” He quipped, letting his eyes drag slowly over your frame. You hadn’t changed, and the strong A/C that escaped the open door rose goosebumps over the sliver of stomach that showed above your jeans and the swell of your tits that was exposed over your favorite going-out top. “Almost thought you wouldn’t come.”
You tried your best to roll your eyes and pushed past him into his apartment, arms still crossed. “I’m just here to drop off your shit. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
“You dressed up just to bring over my things?” He shut the door behind you and followed you into the kitchen, where you set down all of his stuff. “Sure.”
“Did it ever occur to you that I might have plans after this? I don’t sit alone in my apartment like you do.”
“Oh, is that why Eddie called me?” He rounded the counter to stand in front of you, hands bracing either side of the counter outside of your hips. “Rambling about how I should ditch the work thing and come party because his favorite friend got sick after one cigarette?”
Shit.
He stepped closer once he saw your expression drop, one of his knees wedging between yours.
“I think we both know why you’re here, sweetheart.”
“You’re the one who texted me. Don’t act like this is my idea,” You said, voice wavering so slightly that you weren’t sure that he’d catch on.
“Oh, baby,” He tutted, reaching up to tuck your hair behind your ear and letting his hand trail down your neck. “I’m just feeling like the luckiest guy in the world, getting to be the one you get all prettied up for.”
You folded the second he pulled you closer, connecting your lips. It was like you were putty in his hands, and you were molded just for him. His hand almost gripped the back of your neck as your hands landed on the sides of his waist, anchoring him to you. The kiss was hot and hard like you were taking your first drink of water after walking through a desert. his other hand was quick to grasp your ass, pulling on it slightly as he groaned into the kiss.
“Wearing my favorite goddamn jeans,” He murmured into your lips, letting his hand smack your left ass cheek a little bit. “Just f’me.”
“Not for you,” You grumbled back but grabbed the front of his shirt and let your leg hook around his hip as he pressed you into the edge of the island. “Never for you.”
He chuckled and took one quick movement to set you atop the counter, letting you look down at him as his hands smoothed up your thighs. “I don’t think telling yourself that makes it any more true.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Aren’t you going to do that for me?”
You knocked his hip with your leg moderately hard, catching his attention. “I’ll walk out right now. This is the last time I’m ever dealing with your shit. I’m serious.”
He just blinked at you, eyes glazed over. But not with a realization that this was the end of you two. That’d be too easy.
That stupid smirk that haunted your dreams popped up on his lips seconds later.
“You’re so fucking hot when you hate me.”
He let his hand slip into the crease of your hips and thighs and all but smashed his lips into yours, groaning a little when your hands reached up to tug at his grown-out strands of hair. He was quick to pull you closer then, your legs wrapping around his hips as he leaned you across the counter. His lips started a burning and sloppy descent down your neck, his hands greedily grabbing at what he could of your ass. He nudged you further and further off the counter as you pulled him closer with both of your legs, and he was practically holding you soundly around his waist.
“You’re not fucking me on top of a counter, Harrington,” You breathed, a little less weight behind your words. “My back still hurts from your stupid car.”
“She’s not stupid,” He huffs against your neck and steps away from the counter, hosting you higher on his hips. “But have it your way.”
You scoff as he references his car as a ‘she’, but the annoyance doesn’t last long as he quickly turns the corner after the kitchen, goes into the first door on the right, and all but tosses you onto his bed. It’s huge and the comforter almost puffs out around you as he closes the door and locks it quietly. He wheeled around at light speed after that, as you positioned yourself, knees up and posed, the chunky heels of your boots digging into his navy sheets. You pulled in your shoulders and pushed out your chest, arms locked behind you.
The second you cocked your head at him, he froze, and you swore that he short-circuited.
“You just going to stand there and gawk at me?” You raised an eyebrow and watched his cheeks grow pink in the dim light of his bedside lamp. “Commit me to memory while you can.”
He was quick to step forward then, a surprisingly gentle hand reaching for your ankle. You watched silently as he slowly pulled down the zipper of one boot, slid it off, and placed it quietly on the shag rug beside the bed. He did the same for the other boot before kissing up the length of your calf and knee over your jeans, alternating legs. You let your arms drop to your elbows, entranced as he lowered your knees and made his way up your thighs, surprisingly tender as he almost worshipped your legs. The nature of it all made your chest tight, those feelings you swore to keep at bay swelling to the surface.
Once he reached your navel, he didn’t waste time letting his fingers grasp the edge of your top, pushing it up as he pressed gentle pecks all over the expanse of your stomach. His head didn’t rise as you carefully lifted your shirt over your head and let it drop to the floor. His pace quickened then as his kisses turned to love bites, his teeth sharp and his lips soothing. Your breath hitched as his hand skirted around your back and unclipped your bra with nimble fingers. He pushed the straps down your shoulders as you slipped them off one by one, the lace material dropping beside your top.
He left larger hickeys on the swell of your breasts and sternum as he trailed back down, fingers already popping the button of your jeans and skirting along the seam between your legs. You preened in response and lifted your hips, urging him to push the tight jeans over your plush hips already. This needed to be quick before the facade you’d built in the last twenty-four hours started to crack.
“Please.”
You whispered the word so softly that you almost didn’t know if he’d hear it, but it was like a switch flipped the second it left your lips. Your jeans were flying off your legs, white lace panties dragged with them. You were next, his hands moving to your calves and pulling you toward the edge of the bed, your legs dangling off the edge. The boy did nothing but drag a hand down the side of your now naked frame, smirk, and slowly lower to his knees between your legs. The sight alone made your core gush, clenching around air.
You were quick to scramble to your elbows, watching him retrace his earlier steps across the expanse of your legs, leaving tender kisses and gentle nips across your skin as he inched closer and closer to the apex of your thighs. He slowed even more, then, simply looking at your cunt, unmoving.
“Stop teasing me,” You huffed, leaning your head back for a moment. “You’ve seen me a million goddamn times.”
“You said to commit you to memory,” He replied nonchalantly. A finger came out of nowhere and circled your clit as he rested his head on the plush of your thigh. “That’s exactly what I’m doing.”
You whined softly, heartbeat quickening. “Do it faster, then.”
“You that eager to get in and out of here?” He scoffed, adjusting so that his thumb kept a slow, torturous pace on your clit, while the middle finger of his other hand began to circle your entrance, teasing delicately. You whined in response, more pissed off than anything.
“What do you think?” You huffed, attempting to shift your hips closer to him and urge his finger inside of you, but Steve simply moved his arm to bracket across your hips and hold you in place. “I didn’t come here to spend the night. Now, could you please just fucking touch me?”
You saw a flash of something in his eyes, something you’d never seen before, before his mouth was on you. His arms moved to loop around your thighs as he buried himself in your pussy, tongue running figure eights from your clit to your weeping entrance so harshly that you almost shouted. You moaned softly over and over as he almost ravished you, lewd wet noises ringing through his echoey bedroom. You had almost forgotten how good he was in bed, and how he was obsessed with eating you out. It was always his favorite part of your nightly routine. It might be yours too.
Your heart ached the second you thought about how you had missed him, and you squeezed your eyes shut to wave those thoughts away. You tried to focus on the pleasure building up as an orgasm crept up on you, your moans turning into soft gasps.
“Fuck,” Your elbows ached behind you as you let yourself fall back onto the bed, hands twisting into the sheets below you. His arms kept your hips locked in place as you tried to squirm and give yourself a little more friction against his tongue. His pace had turned slow, but not any less passionate as he took his sweet time switching between sucking on your clit and dipping his tongue around and into your entrance. “Don’t stop, if you stop I’ll lose my shit—“
All of a sudden, two fingers were slipping into you and curling against your g-spot, making you squeak and writhe in place as the feeling of your orgasm slammed your senses. Your breathing turned erratic as he lapped up your cum and helped you ride out the high, your head elbows falling out from underneath you.
“That’s one way to get you to shut up,” He snorted, standing from his kneeling position. His hair wasn’t as wild as it normally was after he spent time between your thighs— the sight of him looking like he’d got ready two minutes ago made your heart ache. But, you were somehow glad you managed to keep your hands off of him. It meant you still had your self-control.
“You’re such a dick,” You scoff, chest heaving as you pushed yourself up onto your hands. You watched his eyes follow the way your tits jiggled as you did so, and rolled yours. “You planning on fucking me, or are we done here? I could still make it to the bar if I catch a cab.”
His face stayed stagnant and slightly flushed, but his eyes managed to widen ever so slightly. “You weren’t kidding.”
Jackpot.
“What made you think I was kidding?” You laughed slightly, even though you felt sick. You sat up fully then, closing your legs and crossing your arms with as much confidence as you could muster. “Look, Steve. I came here for two things: to drop off the last of your stuff, and to get off. It’s not that deep. If you want to jack off on your own time that’s perfectly—“
He was flinging his shirt off and rushing to unbuckle his belt in the middle of your sentence, and was on top of you before you could say “Fine”. He pushed your back onto the bed and his lips latched onto yours in a bruising kiss, one hand manhandling your chin as the other held him up beside your head. His hips pressed your legs apart once more, the rough fabric of his jeans giving your still-sensitive clit some much-needed friction as he rocked with the kiss.
“You think I’m going to choose not to fuck you when you’re sitting right in front of me?” He mumbled against your lips and rocked his hips again. “With a pussy like yours? Not a fucking chance.”
Your hand slipped down to palm over his bulge and gripped him through his pants suddenly, a small gasp falling from his lips as he pulled away from the kiss. “I liked this so much better when you didn’t open your fucking mouth.”
Before he could bite back, your deft fingers made quick work of popping the button of his jeans, then pulling down the zipper in record time. His other arm came down beside your head to hold him up as he watched you between your bodies, your ring-clad fingers pushing his jeans and boxers down enough for his dick to spring free. You tried your best to not openly moan at the familiar sight of him after so long and gave him a couple strokes as your other hand continued to push his jeans and boxers down further.
“You still on the pill?” He huffed, pupils blown wide as he looked up at you. That confident man that had just made you cum in two minutes flat was long gone, and you were left with a puddle of a boy, ready to do whatever you asked. “Please say yes. Need to feel you.”
You gulped at the sight and continued to feed into this confident facade you were putting on. “I have no reason to not be on it.”
He blinked, his eyes flashing with that emotion you couldn’t place again before he kissed you deeply once more. You took the opportunity to shift your hips and guide his tip toward your entrance, tapping his side to signal he could push in. He did so as slowly as possible, his cheeks pink as he pulled away and looked between your bodies, watching you stretch around his length. “Fuck. I’ve missed this.”
Your throat grew tight as he bottomed out, your hands landing on the bed, just outside of where he braced himself on his forearms. You adjusted quickly to his size, which you had forgotten about, but then, all of those emotions you had been trying to desperately push aside started to arise. Your eyes pricked with tears, and you tried your best to close your eyes and pretend you weren’t about to cry during this.
“Move, please,” You whispered, trying your best to keep your voice even. “C’mon, Steve. Do what you do best.”
He didn’t react to the jab and rolled his hips, barely pulling out. Just how you liked him— grinding inside of you like you were one. It made your tears come on faster, your eyes squeezed shut as you willed yourself to get it together. Your moans grew watery and quiet, your throat thick with emotion as he rutted into you, his hair finally flopping down toward your face. He stayed like that for a brief moment before reaching for your legs and urging them higher on his hips, giving him more space to pull out and ram back into you.
The pleasure you were feeling was almost blinding, but no matter how much you willed yourself not to let your tears fall, you could feel droplets leaking from the outer corners of your eyes with every harsh thrush and whine that fell from your lips. Your chest hurt with your feelings as you felt another orgasm rapidly approaching, your fingers twisting again in Steve’s bedsheets once more.
Then he stopped. He stopped at the end of a particularly hard thrust, his tip pressing against your g-spot, making you squirm and finally open your eyes to look at him in surprise.
“Are you crying? What’s wrong?” His voice was soft, eyes searching your face with concern. “D’you need me to stop?”
“I’m fine, keep going,” You huffed, squeezing your eyes shut again. “Don’t worry about me, just keep doing what you’re doing.”
“Am I hurting you? What’s going on—“
“Please, god, just keep going, Steve!” You exclaimed, voice breaking. “Come on. Please.”
“You promise you’re okay?” He asked again, voice almost a whisper. One of his hands came up to brush your wild hair away from your face. “Promise me and I’ll keep going.”
“I promise,” You squirmed, letting out a whimper as you did so. “Please, Steve.”
With your promise, he was pulling out and quickening his pace, his hips all but slamming in and out of you as you moaned beneath him, eyes closed once more as you willed your orgasm to come any faster. With one sharp thrust, and one more press against your g-spot, you were cumming so suddenly that you swore your saw stars, and Steve followed seconds later. Your moans mingled as his body weight came down on top of you, a grounding weight as you both recovered from your climaxes.
Your tears only got worse when you felt him try to wrap his arms around you and roll the two of you over, but you kept your back on his bed and gently pushed away his arm with a shake of your head. The look in his eyes, that emotion you had seen in his eyes returning, made you feel sick as you sat up in bed. It took you a moment to gain the strength to swing your legs over the side of the bed and rise to your feet.
You ignored his piercing gaze as you wiped the tears from your face, collected your clothes from around the room, and let yourself into his en-suite bathroom. You tried to ignore the sound of him rising from bed as you cleaned his cum from between your legs and redressed yourself, trying your best to keep your composure until you at the very least got to your car.
He knocked on the door just as you finished fixing your hair, your hands gripping on the edge of his marble countertop.
“Can we talk? Please?” He asked at the door. “You can’t just leave after that. I want to make sure you’re okay.”
With one last deep breath, you opened the door and pushed past him. “That’s exactly what I’ll be doing. I have no reason to stay.”
“But you never left after before,” He huffed, blocking the doorway momentarily.
“That’s because I wanted to be around you, Steve,” You bit back.
“Obviously you wanted to be around me ten minutes ago when you were in my bed,” A scoff left his lips as you pushed past again into the hallway of his apartment. You bristled at his words, wheeling around on your heel.
“I came here to fuck, Steve. I didn’t come here to be around you,” You said evenly, your eyes boring into his. “You gave me an opportunity, and I took it. That’s all this is. That’s all it ever was, right?”
“It’s not like that—“
“You don’t get to be butthurt when you get a taste of your own medicine. I’m leaving, and you can go fuck yourself from now on,” You turned back around and reached for your thumb, where the last piece of Steve in your life laid. A gold signet ring with his initials carved into it in ornate cursive, perfectly sized for his ring finger, and your thumb. You pulled it off with ease, tossed it onto the counter, grabbed your keys that had fallen out of your pocket earlier, and headed for the door.
“So this is it?” He asked from the far side of the kitchen, his arms crossed over his chest. “This is the last time I’m seeing you.”
“Whatever this is was over months ago, Steve,” You snorted and opened the door, soaring one last glance over your shoulder at his shirtless frame. “You need to get over it.”
———————
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