#and they’re both fighting in my brain about how to keep alive | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

your-local-hoemie · 1 year

Text

ꕥ Genshin Impact ꕥ boyfriend headcanons, Inazuma edition~ part one.

This is a two part one cuz there’s a lot of characters and my brain only lets me write so many in one go >_<

I’m currently in the process of preparing to move in the next few months and hopefully starting a mortician apprenticeship so I’m exciteeddddd

Summary: Just head-canons about the Inazuma hotties :p

Warnings: Fluff, swearing, maybe a tiny bit suggestive, Gn!Reader, established relationship, not proof-read.

Characters: Heizou, Kazuha, Thoma.

Heizou~

Oh no. Suddenly I’m a criminal.

I sure hope no hot, flirty, pretty detectives come looking for me >:)

We all know how, um, Suggestive this man is.

He’s absolutely not subtle about his feelings towards you.

Always giving you little compliments followed by a wink.

He somehow manages to know exactly how to turn you into a giggling puddle within the first 20 minutes of hanging out.

Takes you on surprisingly? Very romantic dates!

His favourite is to bring you on a picnic under the Sakura’s or a quiet night with you both wrapped up in a blanket reading crime novels or cases he wants to share with you!

He doesn’t get jealous often.

Man has a EGO.

But on the rare occasion that he does, you can bet your ass that he’s going to be snarky as all fuck.

Not to you of course.

No no-

He’ll probably be overly clingy and flirty with you!

More than usual-

But the offending person will quickly get the idea that they’re on the receiving side of his wrath.

Might outright call them stupid hfkvjfod.

He’s into fishnets.

I’m sorry (I’m not) but he wears them too much for me to not believe this man would break the second he see’s you wearing them~

Also handcuffs ;)

I don’t think he’s the type to be overly protective of you.

Don’t get him wrong, he does worry!

He just know you’re capable of handling yourself in fights!

If you come back hurt, it’ll depend on the severity of how much he’ll worry.

If it’s just a few scrapes a bruises, he’ll likely patch you up while scolding you to be more careful!

“Man alive Y/N? *sigh* my occupation is ‘detective’ you know. Not doctor. Let’s try and keep it that way, hmm?”

But if it’s more serious then prepared to be babied hdhsjd

You won’t be allowed to do anything until he’s satisfied that you’ve recovered!

He’ll bring you the best food he can get his hands on in Inazuma along with cute plushies and will even work from your teapot instead of the office which makes him surprisingly more efficient-

If you ever get insecure about yourself then buckle up-

He’s prepared to give you his entire analysis on how he thinks you’re better than Celestia herself.

My guy has facts, evidence and probably a bulletin board to prove that to you!

He might be a little scared to say the special three words (aka “I love you”) at first but it doesn’t stay that way for long!

All it took was him seeing you, face first in a case file looking all disgruntled and frustrated with your nose scrunched up and his mouth spoke faster than what his brain could think.

He won’t say it all the time but he tells you at least once a day <333

He can’t bare the thought of you not knowing how much you mean to him, no matter how stubborn he is!

Kazuha~

I think I’ve made it obvious in my previous posts how pretty I think this boy is.

Like??????? Hello?????

God he would cHERISH YOU!!!

Definitely a little awkward at first but I head-canon that he’s actually really flirty!

He’s just super good at keeping it subtle enough that no one else notices shdufufuejjrifkAAAAAA

When he first started getting feelings for you Beidou referred to him as a literal love sick puppy.

He’s often sit on the end of the Crux (idk what ship parts are called) and write poems and haikus while looking up at the stars and blushing violently while thinking about you.

He definitely didn’t escape the crew’s teasing whenever he’d follow you around and seemed more giggly than usual!

Beidou was actually the one who got kinda tired of watching him run in circles so she set ya’ll up on a date without telling either of you-

Definitely said some cute poem when confessing!

“Like captured water, You hold me in your cupped hands. I flow on your palm.”

Haikus are confusing man wtf.

He definitely isn’t one for being kept in one place but it’s impossible not to notice how much longer he seems to stay around you!

And when feels the time is right for travelling again, he’ll often ask you to accompany him!

He’ll always bring you back a souvenir if you’re too busy to go with him!

Always tells you how it reminds him of you too!

Like he’ll bring back a red/pink sea shell and explain how the colour reminds him of when you blush or laugh so much your cheeks turn red.

He is protective of you but not overly.

He’ll voice his concerns about any dangerous commissions or quests you take on but if you’re insistent then instead of stopping you, he’ll accompany you!

He’s such a sweet, quiet boy so it comes to a big surprise the first time he protects you.

Actually raises his voice and shouts for you to get to safety (like when he shouted for that one dude to stop hiding)

Obviously he apologises after and explains he just wanted you to move so you didn’t get hurt :(

Completely random but I head-canon that he’s close to Yoimiya and every year for your birthday, he’ll bring you to Inazuma and take you to a really beautiful spot then set off fireworks that he planned with her!

And if you don’t like fireworks then he’ll still take you to a beautiful spot with a picnic and just watch the sunset with you~

Thoma~

Pretty boy, good boy.

House wife, even.

He doesn’t believe he deserves you :(

Reassure this boyo.

He fell head over heels from the very first moment!

Every time you talked he’d get so flustered and stutter on every other word hdjjddjd!

Ayaka obviously knew what was going on and you did as well!

The both of you made out a plan on how you would confess to him and when you did-

Oh boy-

He almost started crying ududieifjck

Hugged you so tight for like a solid 3 minutes!

Ever since then, he always picks a flower from the tea house where you both made it official and brings it home to you!!

He’s a good cook so you can bet your lucky ass that you’ll have breakfast in bed on his days off!!

He’d also help fix your clothes if they get ripped during fights!

Ayato would definitely find the situation amusing so don’t be surprised when thoma suddenly gets the day off~

He does get very easily flustered so pda would probably be kept to the minimum unless you want the poor boy melting into a blushing puddle.

He’s not overly protective of you but he does worry himself into a stupor!

Like he won’t stop you going out on commissions but the second he see’s a scratch or a bruise, it’s out with the first aid and a stern lesson on how to patch yourself up!

He’s even made a personal travel first aid bag for you!!

At night when you’re laying in bed, there’s absolutely nothing he loves more than telling you about his day or listen to your stories while you play with his hair!

You’ve both become somewhat unintentionally popular!

Not to mention the people who are just a tiiiiny bit jealous that you’re the lucky one and not them.

Which you totally don’t relish in, just a little~

He can’t help it!!

He just loves talking about you and how happy you make him! Obviously people are gonna talk about how cute y’all are :p

He’s banned you from playing the pot game.

No one really knows how but you managed to give everyone who played it a stomach ache for a solid week.

Boy also insisted on teaching you how to play chess!!

He totally hasn’t let you win a handful of times just because he couldn’t bare to see how sad you looked when you lost

he also just wanted the table to stay in one piece-

This man refuses to go to work or to bed without giving you a good morning or goodnight kiss!

He adores how cute you are when he reminds you that he loves you even if it’s in a simple gesture!!

Ya’ll, I haven’t slept for three days and the hat man is starting to morph into cyno.

Yes I’m totally fine :3

202 notes · View notes

inairbinad · 1 year

Text

Steve's Got a Date with a Vampire!

part one of seven | 4.9k | AO3 Now Complete!

Where Eddie wakes up a little bit different, Steve is obsessed, and Dustin gets his Meddling Kids Platinum Badge™. I know I posted a couple teasers from the last chapter of this over the weekend, but friendly reminder that this is primarily an idiots to lovers fic, and they take their sweet ass time getting there. Warnings: None for this part, except the obvious mentions of blood.

Steve didn’t ever really leave Eddie’s bedside, while he was sleeping. The only breaks he took were to shower or go visit Max down the hall. Most nights he stayed past visiting hours, the nursing staff having long given up on trying to stop him falling asleep in an uncomfortable hospital chair—oftentimes with Lucas's head resting on his shoulder.

One of those nights, with Steve already leveled with exhaustion and barely holding his own head up, Robin came in to sit with him.

“Steve,” she all but whispered.

“I’m okay, Rob,” he said automatically. “Just gonna rest my eyes for a bit, then I’ll drive you home.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Robin said, sounding fondly annoyed. “Nancy’s gonna drive me. But—don’t you think you should go home and get some rest?” she tried.

They’d had this conversation every day for the last three, now. Steve hadn’t yet relented.

“I’m just gonna worry if I go home,” he said honestly. “I won’t sleep. At least here I know they’re both still breathing.”

Eddie had made strides in that regard, at least; they’d extubated him earlier that day. There still weren’t any signs of him waking up, though, and there was no change at all with Max.

Robin sighed, apparently having expected that answer. She was quiet for a minute, as they both listened to the slow beep of Eddie’s heart monitor.

“Can I ask you something?” Robin asked, voice still low. “And you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, to be clear.”

Steve had an idea of what was coming next and let it happen anyway.

“Sure,” he said.

“This,” she started, gesturing towards Steve slumped in his chair, “is more than just guilt, isn’t it?”

Of course Robin knew. She always went on about how she couldn’t read social cues very well, but Steve couldn’t ever get anything past her. Maybe it was their “telepathic brain thing” that Dustin always complained about them doing. Sometimes it weirded Steve out a little, but right now he was just grateful for it. For Robin.

“No,” he said. His voice sounded small. “It’s hardly guilt at all, really.”

Robin just made little humming noise to herself. Steve took that to mean she wanted him to keep going.

“I mean, I wish we’d done things differently, obviously” Steve said, laughing bitterly so that he wouldn’t cry instead. He’d go back and do things over a thousand times not to end up here again. “I wish I’d stayed with him and Dustin, maybe. Or dealt with Jason when we’d had the chance…” he trailed off, thinking of Max down the hall, Lucas’s swollen face, and the way Erica jumped at every loud noise now. “I’d do a lot differently—or I wouldn’t do it at all. But I blame Vecna more than I blame myself, believe it or not.”

He couldn’t quite figure out what Robin was thinking, or what the look she was giving him meant. Her eyes were soft, a little sad, but also something else.

“I just,” Steve started, but he didn’t know how to say it out loud. Except he knew Robin was waiting for him to, and that she’d be proud of him if he did. The promise of that propelled Steve forward. “I can’t lose him, Robin. Not when I just got him.”

Steve didn’t think he had Eddie, not really. He just knew how Eddie’s teasing grin made his insides warm. How whichever pet name for Steve fell out of his lips at any given moment made him almost forget the apocalypse they were fighting together. Steve didn’t need to have Eddie as his own, he thought. He just needed to know he was alive, that Steve had more days ahead of Eddie invading his personal space, and leaving Steve breathless when he left his scent of smoke and something spicy in his wake.

“You won’t,” Robin said, something steely in her voice now as she grabbed Steve's hand and squeezed. “Neither of them are going anywhere. Not if I can help it.”

Steve did his best to believe her.

———

On the seventh morning of Eddie’s hospital stay, Steve dragged himself into Eddie’s room like usual. Coffee didn’t really do much to quell his exhaustion these days, but he sipped on some anyway as he got to his new routine. He played one of Eddie’s cassettes—quietly, as he’d gotten plenty of dirty looks from the nurses for being too loud before—humming along as he pulled a chair up next to Eddie’s bed. He was so still, Steve couldn’t help reaching out to thread his fingers around Eddie’s wrist, just to feel his pulse still beating away.

This time it stuttered under Steve’s touch. That was new. Steve looked at Eddie’s face, confused. He looked peaceful, like this. His skin was still cool to the touch, but his breathing was even, pulse slow and now jumpy. Was that a good sign?

“Hey, Munson,” Steve said, settling in. He let his grip around Eddie’s wrist loosen, leaving his hand to cover Eddie’s own instead. “It’s been seven days in here, now. Three since you’ve been breathing on your own again. Max is still asleep, too. I wish I had better news. Dustin misses you. I miss you,” Steve sighed and tried to think of something cheerful to share.

“The press does seem to be buying the government’s alternate serial killer theory, since it’s simpler than ’Satan did it,’ I guess. Wayne said the police are working on closing the case against you, so that’s a relief, at least.” Steve dropped his head into his free hand. What good was clearing Eddie’s name if he wouldn’t wake up to see it himself?

“I was wondering why I wasn’t handcuffed to the bed,” a surprisingly smooth and awake voice said above him.

Steve’s head snapped up so fast his neck cracked. Eddie was looking down at him already, his brown eyes darker, somehow. But they were open, bright, and alive. Steve felt his mouth stretch into a wide grin. He didn’t know what to say for what felt like a long time, just smiling stupidly at Eddie.

“Disappointed by that?” Steve finally replied, then immediately felt like kicking himself. Here Eddie was, waking up from a coma, and Steve couldn’t even figure out how to say something normal. Something like, how are you feeling or can I get you some water, sprang to mind too late. But apparently all Steve’s stupid little brain could manage was something not-so-vaguely flirtatious under Eddie’s gaze.

But Eddie didn’t seem to mind. In fact, if Steve wasn’t totally deluding himself, it seemed like Eddie liked it. He didn’t blush, but he looked flustered. Hungry. Steve let that revelation settle deep into his bones, warm and pooling like syrup.

Then he got his shit together.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, squeezing Eddie’s hand. He was still cold. Eddie’s gaze flicked down to Steve’s neck and back. If Steve hadn’t been analyzing Eddie’s every move—for any sign that he might break, might fall back into a coma, might leave again—he’d have probably missed it.

“Starving,” was all Eddie said with a devilish grin.

Steve watched, somewhat dazed, as Eddie let the doctors marvel over his recovery for about forty-five minutes before checking himself out against medical advice. His bites had already scarred over, completely healed in somewhat miraculous fashion. The doctor’s seemed mildly concerned about Eddie’s circulation, given how much blood he’d lost and how slow his pulse still was. But all of his tests were normal, had been for days now. He didn’t seem to have any muscle atrophy, no loss of brain function. He was just Eddie.

So Steve didn’t argue when Eddie asked him to drive him home as soon as possible. Steve wheeled Eddie down the hall to visit Max before he took him back to the motel where Wayne was staying. Eddie had complained loudly about the wheelchair, only relenting when Steve gently laid a hand on his shoulder and said, “Humor me.”

They sat with Max for a while, sobering Steve’s giddiness at Eddie’s complete turnaround. But Steve knew if anyone had the strength in them to do the same, it was Max Mayfield.

No one was here visiting yet—it was still early by anyone but Steve’s standards. So they took their time talking to her, Eddie giving her the daily update like Steve had done for him. He gave Steve a knowing grin as he said, “We all miss you, Red.”

Steve was too busy looking at his feet in embarrassment, so he didn’t notice Eddie hopping out of his wheelchair at lightning speed.

Then Eddie was in his space again, quicker than Steve had time to even account for. Eddie turned into Steve’s neck and whispered, “Cover for me, Stevie.”

Then he dipped down the hallway and into the stairwell.

Steve fumbled to recover for a minute, wondering what on earth had just happened. He looked to Max’s sleeping face as if maybe she’d know. Steve imagined her usual lazy shrug and his heart ached.

Sure enough, a minute later one of the younger nurses came looking for Eddie with discharge paperwork. Bewildered as he was, Steve could handle this part. He leaned against the door frame next to her and grinned.

“I think he went back to his room for something,” Steve said, before putting on the most convincing show of fake flirting he could muster. It still wasn’t his best—Steve was mostly still thinking of Eddie whispering into his neck and ear—but it worked well enough to distract her. Steve was actually surprised to see her face fall when he brushed her off for Eddie’s return.

Take that, Robin, he thought, picturing her damned tally board. Steve thought this whole endeavor probably warranted a point in the ‘You Rule’ column, but he didn’t care much. He was too busy watching Eddie saunter over to his side with his now-zipped jacket suspiciously full looking, and his grin bright.

“Let’s blow this popsicle stand, shall we?”

Steve was too busy caught up in the thrill of Eddie—alive, probably healthy as Steve had ever seen him, laughing breathlessly as they made their escape to Steve’s car—to even ask what he’d been covering for. He wondered if they’d just robbed the hospital pharmacy.

Eddie seemed to wilt a bit once they got outside and the sun peeked out from behind a cloud overhead, hitting him straight in the face.

“Shit,” he mumbled to himself, ducking back into the shade by the doors. “Didn’t think of that.”

“What?” Steve asked, offering his sunglasses over. Eddie accepted them with a grateful smile, then took a tentative step back into the sunshine.

“It’s nothing,” he said, seeming to relax a little once the sunglasses were on. Steve couldn’t help but notice they looked good on him. “Help me to the car, would you?”

So Steve did, offering Eddie an arm to lean on as they made their way through the parking lot. Steve eyed him carefully, but didn’t ask questions.

Well, at least not until they got into the beemer. That’s when Eddie immediately pulled something out of his jacket—was that donated blood?—then tore into the bag and sucked its contents down like, well, water.

Then Steve had questions. The first of which being a hearty, “The fuck?”

Eddie drained the bag and let his head fall back to rest on the seat, exposing the column of his neck. Steve swallowed, cursing his brain to pay attention to what the hell was happening instead of being a slut for once. Eddie lolled his head to look at Steve and gave him a gleaming, bloody smile.

“So, funny story,” he paused. If Steve had to guess it must’ve been for dramatic effect. “I think I’m a vampire.”

———

Admittedly, the whole vampire revelation made Steve a little anxious in a what-in-the-Vecna-fuckery sort of way, but he didn’t trust Eddie any less over it. Just because he was on the slithering asshole’s radar, Steve didn’t understand why he’d have to worry about Eddie being mind-controlled by Vecna anymore that he did for Max or Will. The whole vampire bit was admittedly a curveball, but so was the rest of Steve’s life at this point.

All the same, Eddie himself had insisted that they give it a few days before letting him around the kids, to be sure. Dustin only gave it twenty-four hours before calling a “family meeting” and inviting everyone over to Steve’s. Steve had not been consulted, but what else was new?

So there he sat, Eddie sandwiched between himself and Robin on his couch, while Mike, Lucas, and Dustin took turns pacing in front of them.

The kids eventually devolved into having a rapid-fire debate about some dude called Kas—who apparently destroyed things? Steve wasn’t sure it really mattered. Dustin kept yelling something about Kas and betrayal, whatever that meant, but Mike was countering with something about evil and alignments. Steve guessed it wasn’t about any dark desires from a chiropractor.

Eddie had finally had enough of their bickering and whistled for them to shut up.

“Look, kiddos. I want a Vecna-free brain just as much as you guys. Well, more than you guys do,” he paused to fiddle with his rings. Steve wondered if they weren’t real silver, or if that was just a myth. Then he realized he’d thought all vampire-related things were myths up until yesterday. He shook himself out of his thoughts as Eddie continued. “If he is secretly hanging out in the ol’ noggin, I can’t tell. But don’t you all keep telling me about a girl with mind-reading abilities? Think she could suss him out?”

The room went silent, blessedly, for maybe one-and-a-half seconds.

“Genius!” Dustin exclaimed.

“Where’s El?" Mike asked Lucas at the same time.

“Will that work?” Lucas questioned over everyone else.

“One at a time, Jesus,” Steve cut in, rubbing his eyes. When he stopped, Eddie was looking at him with some emotion Steve couldn’t quite interpret. He stopped trying and turned back to the kids, who stood there staring at him like they were waiting for assignments. Steve sighed, and pointed at Mike. “You first, Wheeler.”

Mike turned to Lucas. “Was El still at the hospital when you left?”

She spent most of her time with either Hopper or Max these days, so it was a fair assumption.

“She was,” Lucas confirmed. “Is that something you think she can do?”

“Probably,” Mike shrugged.

“Definitely,” Will amended, speaking up for the first time in a while.

And so that’s how Steve ended up going to get El so she could “do a proper seance” on Eddie’s brain, as he’d put it.

“I don’t feel him,” El said about an hour later. “Your mind is strange.”

Robin failed to hide her snickering behind her hand.

“Believe me, kid, I know,” Eddie agreed with a grin.

With everyone more relaxed after that, Eddie regaled the kids with his tale of evading tipping off the nurses to his being awake while he pieced together that he’d woken up not quite…human.

“So I played dead,” Eddie told them and flopped on the floor like a sack of dead weight, letting his tongue loll out of his mouth and everything. Steve watched the hem of Eddie’s shirt ride up just far enough to give him a glimpse of the worst of his scarring. They already seemed to have faded again since the day before. “And hoped like hell I wouldn’t eat anyone before I could figure out how to get down to the blood bank. Then Stevie came to my rescue.” He flashed Steve an exaggerated wink and whisked himself back to his feet as he told everyone how waking up felt.

Eddie apparently had a lot of weird dreams while he was still under, too. When Dustin asked, Eddie explained how most were like watching his body turn cold, like steel—or dreams about blood. He recounted waking up and being overwhelmed by feeling almost everything around him, of being able to hear the heartbeat of the patient in the next room over before the monitor even registered it with a beep.

As an added bonus, Eddie also enjoyed showing off the fangs.

Steve had to work to control his face every time Eddie popped those out. Steve thought the fangs should be freaking him out, but they didn’t in the slightest. To the point where Steve thought maybe there was something wrong with his fight or flight response after one-too-many trips to a different dimension. A normal person would be scared, not inexplicably turned on by the thought of them sinking into the flesh of their neck.

In the interest of not exposing himself as a lovestruck idiot to absolutely everyone in the room—Robin absolutely already knew, based on the looks she’d been shooting him all afternoon—Steve excused himself to the patio for a smoke break. He didn’t usually smoke much anymore, unless he was drinking, largely due to Robin’s incessant nagging about it. But Steve was pretty sure if he had to keep his blossoming crush on his friend the vampire in check, he’d need a lot more nicotine to distract himself.

Except Eddie slid out of the patio door to join him. Steve offered him one from his own pack wordlessly. Eddie accepted with a toothy—but thankfully fang-free—grin.

“Do these do anything for you anymore?” Steve asked, suddenly curious.

“Not really,” Eddie shrugged. “I just wouldn’t know what to do with my hands if I quit. Or for an excuse to leave the room when I’m uncomfortable.”

Steve huffed out a nervous laugh, unsure if that was meant to be Eddie calling him out. Unwilling to really find out, Steve stayed quiet and stared up at the few stars that were starting to show themselves.

“Are you sure you wanna let me drive them home?” Eddie asked after a minute, staring determinedly at his shoes. Steve didn’t know what the hell to make of that question.

“I’m not your mother, Munson,” he tried for a lighter tone.

“True,” Eddie smirked, “but you’re kind of theirs, though.”

Fair, Steve thought. But he still wasn’t sure what Eddie was actually getting at. “What’s this about?”

Eddie sighed and stubbed out his cigarette with a frustrated flourish. “I guess I’m asking if you’re sure you trust me to be around them. By myself. When I’m like…this.”

Steve almost laughed, but managed to hold it in once he saw that Eddie was being serious. He was tucking into himself like a pill bug, like he was expecting the fear and revulsion to finally come rolling off of Steve in waves.

Steve had wondered if it was a delayed reaction on his part, as well, and if eventually he’d be disgusted or freaked out by the whole situation. So far those feelings showed no threat of surfacing, and Steve didn’t really think that they would, either.

Instead, all he felt was relief. He was relieved that Eddie was still alive. Or, well, kind of alive. He never really mastered the logistics of all the vampire movies Robin has made him watch. And really, after all of the Upside Down creatures that had tried to eat them over the years, Eddie seemed positively tame.

Most importantly, he seemed like himself.

So, gently, Steve reached his hand across the empty expanse between them and laid it on Eddie’s forearm. Eddie’s eyes snapped up to meet his own.

“I trust you,” Steve said, putting every ounce of sincerity he could muster into the look they shared. Eddie seemed to believe it, because after a moment he deflated, melting back to lean against the house. “And more importantly, so do they,” Steve added, jerking his head back towards the kids inside.

“Your trust is pretty important to me, too, Harrington,” Eddie admitted with an almost shy smile.

Steve sucked whatever he could out of the last dregs of his cigarette and prayed for the strength to survive being a total goner for Eddie Munson.

———

Max seemed to be improving physically, but there were still no signs of her waking up anytime soon. The longer she slept, and the more things deteriorated in town, the more everyone wanted to find Vecna and finish the job.

Soon enough they all coalesced around a plan to end the Upside Down nonsense once and for all. With El and Will back in town, and Eddie’s newfound enhanced abilities of his own, it didn’t take much. Especially once they realized their old friends the demobats were now more inclined to follow Eddie’s lead than “Old Slitherfuck,” as he called Vecna.

One spring night they snuck into the Upside Down one last time and ended things for good. Max woke up in Lucas’s arms the moment Vecna was done and dusted, and El closed the gates for what they all hoped was the final time.

And now? Well. Now everyone was trying to get back to normal. Or as normal as they could be when they had to figure out ways to steal blood for the vampire in their friend group.

So on they went, trying to settle into yet another new set of skin. Eddie was still wary of himself, Steve could tell, but he never withdrew into isolation or tried to convince everyone they were better off without him.

Which was good, because everyone wanted Eddie around that much more.

Dustin wanted nothing more than to test his abilities, and did test whatever Eddie would let him get away with. Robin asked if they could have vampire movie nights, or if Eddie would find that insensitive (he heartily agreed to it). Nancy had a million questions like the good reporter she was, and she and Dustin often piggybacked off each other’s ideas. Mike tended to go between staring at Eddie in awe and wondering if maybe his sexuality was just “people with superpowers.”

Or at least that’s what Steve and Robin assumed when no one else was listening (and Robin wasn’t pointing out Steve’s own crush on a certain vampire).

Steve was just doing his best to cope. He was getting used to the whole “Eddie Munson is now an undead vampire” situation. Really, he was.

Was he sometimes inexplicably a little bit jealous that he apparently didn’t get enough demobat venom to also be turned? Jealous that he wasn’t the one with superhuman strength and outright awe from the kids at his mere existence? If he was, Steve wasn’t willing to admit it out loud. Because he knew where the jealousy was really coming from, and he certainly wasn’t going to admit how attractive he found Eddie’s new set of pearly whites, no matter how many times Robin tried to get him to.

With everyone’s support (and curiosity), it didn’t take very long for Eddie to finally relish his adaptation into an immortal being either. They’d determined that the sun was hard on him—it made him feel sluggish and itchy, “like Kryptonite"—but he didn’t burst into flame under its rays. Usually he just wore sunglasses and carried around an umbrella like an old-timey gentlewoman who didn’t want to accidentally gain a freckle.

Eddie had been a night-owl before, anyway, so nothing much had really changed there either. Silver didn’t hurt him, mirrors still worked on him, and garlic only made him sneeze. No one was willing to check if a wooden stake would do anything, and Eddie seemed as glad of that as Steve was. Other than the commanding an army of bats, invulnerability, and the obvious diet changes, Eddie didn’t seem all that different.

It was driving Steve wild.

The simplest of flirtatious remarks sent him into a tailspin most days. And Eddie was full of flirtatious remarks by default. The more Steve let on that the flirting flustered him, the more elaborate Eddie got with it.

Eddie’s retelling of his and Steve’s escape from the hospital became more embellished, as well. Steve didn’t exactly know what had happened before he’d arrived to visit that morning, but he was pretty sure it didn’t involve a ravenous Eddie hanging upside down from the hospital ceiling to avoid being caught out of bed while he looked for the blood bank, like Eddie claimed.

Once, he was regaling Will and Dustin with his harrowing journey down into the basement on the “hunt for blood,” as he stood on top of the coffee table in Steve’s living room. (Steve did not have it in him to object to this, a bit of a double standard that Robin mocked him mercilessly over.) Steve was only half paying attention—he’d been there, thank you very much, he remembered what actually happened—from the kitchen while dumping a bag of chips into a bowl.

He perked up though when Eddie said, “Steve was pitifully flirting with a nurse for my benefit—“

“Hey!” Steve protested as he made his way back to the living room. He shoved the bowl into Eddie’s chest and flopped on the sofa next to Will. “She was into it.”

“I could tell your heart wasn’t in it, sweetheart,” Eddie said, and shot Steve a wink. It was so simple, barely even a blip on anyone else's radar, but it had Steve feeling heated through.

Steve tried not to melt into the floor as Will gave him a sideways glance. He did his best to ignore it. The last thing he needed was for someone other than Robin to needle him about his ridiculous behavior.

That particular desire was quickly snuffed out by one Dustin Henderson, though.

———

One day in May, Dustin cornered Steve on their way out of the Henderson house.

“Do you have a problem with Eddie?” Dustin asked him, point blank in his hallway. Steve was suddenly very grateful that Claudia was not at home at the moment.

“No?” Steve couldn’t help but let it become a question. Dustin narrowed his eyes.

“Well, it seems like you do. All you ever do is stare at him, you barely talk, you act like you’re going to jump out of your skin if he even looks at you. Are you afraid of him or something?” Dustin’s face softened, like he was trying not to be quite as harsh as usual. There was still a fierceness there, though, that Steve knew was just born of protectiveness over Eddie.

“No,” Steve replied without hesitation. “Even though you might think that’s a perfectly reasonable reaction to have to our friend the newborn vampire, I’m not afraid of him.”

“Well that’s just it!” Dustin half-yelled, throwing his hands in the air. He just barely missed clipping Steve’s nose. “He’s our friend, but you’re back to treating him like some kind of freak. So if you’re not afraid of him, I’d like to know why you’re being a dick.”

Steve flinched. Dustin wasn’t outright saying it, but he got the implication all the same; you’re acting like King Steve again.

He so violently wanted to reject the accusation that he considered telling Dustin the truth.

It wasn’t like Dustin didn’t accept queer people. He knew about Robin now—thank god—and practically mooned over her for weeks with how cool he found it. Steve was pretty sure Dustin wouldn’t react any differently to finding out he was also a member of the fruit basket, as Robin had dubbed them.

Steve took in the sheer disappointment on Dustin’s face and sighed. He retreated into the living room and plopped on the couch, restlessly running his hands through his hair. Tews came up to him and rubbed her cheek against his pant leg. He gratefully scratched her ears.

Steve knew if he just admitted to the jealousy, Dustin would feel better, but wouldn’t entirely lose that kicked-puppy look. ‘I just want my dads to get along,’ he’d taken to whining whenever he felt like Steve and Eddie weren’t bonding to his specifications. Steve tried not to spontaneously combust each time any of the kids referred to him and Eddie as such.

Fuck it, Steve thought. He knew Dustin would latch on to his confession like Dart with a Three Musketeers, and Steve dreaded the conclusions he’d jump to. But he couldn’t stand to disappoint the kid. He took a deep breath in as Dustin sat beside him. For once, he’d kept his mouth shut instead of berating Steve into submission. He waited patiently, quiet.

“I’m not afraid of him,” Steve said again. “I don’t think he’s a freak. I’m not turning back into King Steve.” He gave Dustin a pained look, who had the grace to look a bit sheepish in response. “I like him, okay?”

“You don’t seem like you—“

“No, Dust,” Steve interrupted. He held Dustin’s gaze this time, hoping he’d connect the dots without too much explanation on Steve’s part. “I like him. I stare and barely talk and tense up because he makes me nervous. But in the butterflies in your stomach kind of way, not the oh god he’s going to kill us all in our sleep kind of way.”

Dustin stayed silent, but his eyes were wide as saucers. Steve wondered if he should give himself a pat on the back for rendering Dustin Henderson speechless for possibly the first time ever.

“You okay?” Steve asked instead, picking at his pant leg. Steve was nearly certain Dustin wouldn’t care that he was bisexual, sure. But he couldn’t help but worry that Dustin still wouldn’t approve—that Steve wouldn’t be good enough, not for Eddie, not in Dustin’s eyes.

Dustin had a knack for surprising Steve, though.

“This is amazing,” he said, eyes practically fucking sparkling with delight.

[PART TWO]

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #fanfic #stranger things #vampire!eddie #dani's drafts #steve's got a date

147 notes · View notes

useramor · 2 years

Text

it's you, it's you, it's all for you (everything i do) word count: 1.1k

eddie asks about buck's coma dream, 6x11 coda (also the title is from video games by lana del rey because they're playing a video game in this sdlfgjh okay enjoy)

“So,” Eddie says after they’ve both died in the video game. Christopher got it recently and already completed the entire game — a magical quest one that ends with them fighting off an evil wizard that turns into a dragon. Very Maleficent, if you ask Buck.

“So?” Buck echoes, looking over at him. They’re sitting on the floor, backs resting against the couch. Eddie looked at him curiously when he plopped onto the ground, but a couch feels like a little bit of a sore subject at the moment.

Especially when his mom recently bought the largest, ugliest, most uncomfortable sofa Buck’s ever sat on. It’s an eyesore. And it is, unfortunately, taking up half his loft.

It feels kind of pointed. Like the universe is trying really hard to tell him something. He figures he better figure it out soon, because he doesn’t feel like getting struck by lightning or something.

Again.

Point is, Buck wants a comfortable couch. It doesn’t have to be huge, or have reclining seats, or anything, but it needs to feel right. He needs to sit on it and feel like he’s home. Like he can relax and shed some of the pressures of the day.

It might be a lot to put on a couch, but Buck’s willing to wait.

So, basically, they’re on the floor.

“What was I like? In your dream? I mean, I was in it, right?”

“Kind of?” Buck tilts his head, scrunching his nose as he looks at it. “I don’t think you’re gonna like what my subconscious came up with.”

Eddie shrugs, leaning against the couch, head tilted slightly. He’s very pretty, Buck’s been noticing. Not that there has ever been a moment where he thought Eddie was unattractive, but it’s been a kind of new discovery to realize the small smile on his face as he waits for Buck to move on makes his heart swoop.

It’s not a new feeling, either, just one he wasn’t ready to look at, yet. He’s still not quite there, if he’s being honest with himself.

It’s just—

Eddie’s couch fits him, Eddie, and Chris pretty comfortably. Buck’s spent an awful lot of nights (and a lot of awful nights) sleeping on this couch. And it’s not like Buck’s ready to put this couch in his loft or move into Eddie’s house so he can sit on this couch all the time, but. Maybe soon he’ll be okay with…sitting on it, or something.

And he thinks Eddie might grab some beers from the fridge and sit beside him.

“I still wanna know,” Eddie says, low and soft, quiet under the repetitive tune of the video game still playing on the TV.

“Okay,” Buck says. “Well, I didn’t see you.”

“You saw everyone else but you didn’t see me? I thought we were best friends,” he teases.

“We are. You were alive in it. Chim mentioned you.”

“Your subconscious puts Chimney over me?”

I think my subconscious knew that if I saw you and you weren’t the Eddie sitting in front of me, I wouldn’t know how to cope, he thinks, but keeps the words to himself. Rolls his eyes fondly and mumbles a “shut up,” instead.

“No, seriously. Here I’ve been considering you my friend, bringing my son to see you in the hospital — sneaking him into the ICU, by the way, because he wouldn’t leave the hospital without seeing you—”

“Really?” Buck asks, and he hates the awe in his voice. He hates the way, even after all this time, he doesn’t know how to trust that people want him around. Not fully, anyway.

Eddie catches onto it. Of course he does.

“Buck, of course. Chris needed you to come back. We all did.”

Buck hears the silent I needed you to come back. He doesn’t point it out.

He swallows around a tightness in his throat.

“Oh,” he whispers. Eddie snorts, looking at him fondly.

“Yeah. Oh.”

“You didn’t have Chris. In my dream,” Buck blurts.

“Your parents fought for custody and won. You—I didn’t know you. In the dream. Or, you didn’t know me, but, hell, it’s my brain, right? So I knew. I knew you fought like hell to keep him, but your hours in the end—Eddie, I hope you know I don’t think I, like, am the reason you have Chris. You’re the best dad I know, okay? I know you would do anything in the world for him, I was just living in my worst case scenario, and—”

“I didn’t have you,” he says simply. “I would do anything for my son, obviously, but without the right help, without Carla, I can only imagine the kind of hell my parents would’ve given me.”

Eddie’s looking at him so gently that Buck would trip over the feelings he’s spilling onto the floor if he weren’t sitting down.

“You’re not wrong to assume our lives would kind of suck without you, Buck.”

“My life sucked without you. You were the first person I thought of, when I woke up in that dream. You and Christopher,” he admits softly, his words washing over them like a blanket. Eddie scoots closer. Buck can’t tell if the action is intentional or not, he just knows that from one second to the other there’s a new, unmistakable warmth along his side.

“Yeah?” Eddie asks, like he can’t believe Buck. Like he can’t believe he got lucky enough to have him sit here and admit that Eddie and Chris were the first tethers, his first pulls back home.

“Yeah. Always. Fought to come home, y’know.” Buck hopes it comes off casually. Hopes it comes off like his heart isn’t lodged in his throat, like maybe the 118 is his home, but Eddie seems to get it, anyway.

Eddie knocks their shoulders together, and it’s a quiet promise. They both know, he’s pretty sure. They both know they’ve got something going, something good, something with a couch and a house and a family. A love Buck doesn’t have to die to experience.

But it’s not the right time. Close. Just hovering around the corner. Buck can be patient for once in his life; Eddie’s worth everything.

He picks up his controller, silently asking if he wants to go again.

Eddie nods, but his finger hovers over the play button. His brown eyes are warm and dark when they land on Buck’s, and it takes mental effort to remember he needs to keep breathing when Eddie smiles at him — soft and fond and flushed a peachy pink.

“For the record,” he says, clearing his throat like the words don’t know how to come out. “I always fight to come home to you, too.”

Buck’s character dies three times in a row, the words home to you on an endless loop in his mind.

Yeah, he thinks. Knows, really. Soon.

#bia fic but it's NOT on ao3 this time tho i will probably post it on there later hsdflkjgh #bia.fic #buddie #buddie fic #911 spoilers

319 notes · View notes

meeks-just-wants-to-scroll · 11 days

Note

I have no idea why my brain came up with this but seeing your newest art made me just think of rdr1 John having to the fight the evil Micah+Bill+Javier polycule as a boss instead of just Bill or Javier ☠☠☠

I love that idea and I also thought about it while making F of a Feather art.

To amuse the idea, I imagine bill and Javier split off on their own when they usually would at the end of Chapter 6. They don’t want to stick around because neither really has it out for Arthur, not even Bill (who at this point is with Javier on “holy shit? Dutch is actually a bad person?? This can’t be?”).

Micah tho wants to get his last laugh at Arthur regardless of what ending it is.

Once Micah is done with his Arthur murder (with both eyes or one less eye), he ends up finding Javier and Bill who coincidentally had set up a small camp with the few things they had from the abandoned camp. Knowing sticking together is their best bet, they stay as a triad (that comes with all the good and bad dynamics amongst them).

Javier keeps up moral in the few ways he can. He would play guitar but that’s gone. He also is the main provider when it comes to food. Micah can have his preferences, but when it’s fish or starvation, Micah begrudgingly finds a silver lining to eating fish. Bill too can hunt, he isn’t as effective at it.

Javier is also a tad shell shocked after Dutch revealed his true nature… they all are a little stunned. They need a moment to think about this and stare at the horizon in silence.

Bill is the muscle of the group and doesn’t need to be very clever when he has Javier and Micah putting their brains together. Not that Bill is an idiot but he is good at following commands.

He is also the space heater for cold nights. Like previous mentioned, he can hunt. He goes for deer and just explodes them meaning pelts is a no go to make money. Bill can at least intimidate. He also makes for a good guard since he is pretty alert and doesn’t mind standing or sitting and minding his own business as long as he gets to be involved in other missions.

Micah is the pseudo leader (the others like to think they’re equally as much leaders as Micah). He has the cunning to be considered the diplomat of the three (tho that is a stretch), he’s the one who gets them the most money with stagecoach robberies and the sort.

His willingness to kill was discouraged at first, especially by Javier, who had a period of black and white judgement after the Dutch Situation where he was convinced them murdering anymore people made them just as two faced as Dutch. That statement crumbled little by little as the three of them became more willing to kill if it kept them alive.

I do think Micah is unable to go without expanding their group and forming his little gang as seen in the epilogue. I’m sure the structure is akin to canon, what with there being a higher rank of people close to Micah and then the goons who are just disposable man power.

Dutch isn’t there so… I suppose Micah wouldn’t be shot and killed. Javier and Bill certainly aren’t going to kill him. That would make for an unsatisfactory end to the in game epilogue but eh. Basically Micah and John have their gun fight because they must settle the score.

I feel like both reach a stalemate; Sadie has Micah at gunpoint, Bill had Sadie at gunpoint, and Javier had John at gunpoint. No one wants the other dead, really. Javier especially tells John how he would have sided with him if things were different.

They come to an agreement that results in John and Sadie being escorted off the mountain to Charles who is fairly confused why John and Sadie are being kindly helped off the mountain by the gang leaders they swore to kill.

It’s not a happy ending, or even a great ending, but it’s something. The triad’s gang is killed until it’s just the three of them and based off of Micah’s age, it’s evident he likely won’t be rebuilding a whole new gang any time soon.

For RDR1 I can’t decide if it would be much the same (the triad broke up and are individually plucked off by John) or if it would be like what you said of John being up against three antagonists in one group. Either way it would be pretty neat in my opinion.

Sigh, I love toxic old men Yaoi.

#rdr2 #asks #ask #answer #meek’s headcanons #Meeks rambles #fags of a feather #John MARSTON #javier esquella #javier escuella #rdr2 spoilers #spoilers #spoilers rdr2 #bill Williamson #bill rdr2 #rdr2 bill #micah bell

12 notes · View notes

sardar106 · 24 days

Text

I decided that I have thoughts about @emberunderscore's Epic AU so you get them too— (also go check it out if you haven’t already! It’s so good and I eat it up) He already shared many of their thoughts but I'm gonna share some of my Wisdom Saga ones (mostly as the first two one aren’t and the third is debatable—) Also we do be ignoring the god relations in Greek Myths. We close our eyes and ears at them and let them leave our minds. They don’t exist in this AU unless said otherwise

also a bit of a long post so cut

the first “line” is what happens in Epic and the second is how my brain connects it to Fable

- Zeus basically forcing Odysseus to kill the infant - Fable being the lead of arguably all of Icarus' murders

- Zeus making Odysseus imagine Penelope floating towards him in the sky with her hand out and singing a part of Suffering - Fable keeping on reminding Icarus why they’re here. giving them a reason to let the rest of his crew die which goes to

- Zeus being the cause of Odysseus getting to Calypso's island - Fable isolating Icarus then getting to coworkers time

- In Love In Paradise, we get the time dive. Athena seeing the much prominent things that happened to Ody for the past 10 years - Remember the memory Rae had before waking up in s3? Yeah. Similar but now Enderian is good and with a very older Icarus

- Calypso saying "open arms" triggering Odysseus's memory of Polities, Eurylochus, then dead mom times, causing his breakdown - Ven saying something to trigger Athena happy times, Broter argument(s), and sad Isla time. also causing a breakdown

- Ember already talked about this one but— Ody ready to jump from the ledge to the flowing water. If all he’s gonna do the rest of his life is stay on the island, why bother staying alive? The only reason he’s fought monsters and sacrifice his friends is to get to Penelope. He can’t do that now. He can’t go see her. At least he’ll see Polities, Eurylochus, his crew, and his mom? At least he’ll see them…. - Oh, Icarus and your ability to just fall and fall every time. You fell both metaphorically and physically. And yeah— read it again but as Ic. (with the other characters being respective to their role) it’s literally just them.

- Ares being mad that Ody didn’t fight Scylla. I know it’s supposed to be cus he wants death and all that but - Netherum being mad that Ic didn’t fight to protect the ones he cares about. He fought the cyclops and the sirens. why not fight back and sacrifice six of his crew instead.

(we kindly ignore that he would be calling Oscar pathetic and weak and that they accepted cus she said he’ll make everybody bleed) also this is an exception with Netherum and Soul cus they’re Ares and Aphrodite who are married too

- Athena doing everything in her power to save Odysseus - Enderian sacrificing herself to save Rae's life (I care that it's Icarus and not Rae in this AU)

I shared the idea of Zeus being Fable and not Epros. and since they had Hera as Kinaxus cus Zeus was Epros, their possession there was removed as it doesn’t make much sense. which got to Hera being Perix. here are the words that were shared but better (or worse, idk—)

- I get the vibe of Hera calling basically everyone “baby”, which means calling Athena that too, but - what if gay cus Perix would be specifically talking to Enderian. we also know that Perix had feelings for her, so—

- and then we get Hera challenging Athena so she can save Ody. saying “Try harder” and “You can do better than that” to her - I don’t know why, but this gives me them but before Caspian prison times, or even before the resets & the war of the realms. even though Enderian would’ve most likely not tolerated any of it

#fable smp #not my au #i just wanted to share em thoughts

10 notes · View notes

musicalmoritz · 15 days

Note

Do you have any Kousano headcanons?

YAYYYYYY FINALLY A BSD SHIP ASK :D SAPPHIC BSD SPECIFICALLY YES :D

• Okay since BSD isn’t my current hyperfixation this might be tricky BUT I was hyperfixated on it for like half a year not too long ago so I still have loads of info stored up in my brain to be dumped out

• Their first time meeting was when Kouyou was held captive by the Agency during the Guild Arc. They had heard of each other prior to that and being from rival organizations, they went in expecting to be enemies

• Their first impression was a rough one, but there was an underlying thread of chemistry. They matched each other’s banter very well, despite being used to having the final word at their respective organizations. It was a welcomed change

• And they’re both raging lesbians so like…hot lady who is my enemy…many thoughts occur

• It’s very much an enemies AND lovers dynamic, they meet up for secret rendezvous and then fight each other during times of conflict

• The tragic part is that they both like each other, that’s why it’s become an ongoing thing. That’s why they start going on secret dates in disguise, although they both claim to not enjoy it

• In another life they would’ve been soulmates, but their conflicting ideologies and rival positions force them to be enemies (because I like to make things overly romantic, sue me)

• They have a lot of insignificant things in common- favorite desserts, favorite books, etc. Those are important, but they’re also similar personality-wise and with their backstories

• I imagine Yosano dates around a lot and this makes Kouyou insanely jealous. They aren’t official so she technically can’t have a problem with it but it still gets under her skin

• So Yosano’s like “hey if you want to be exclusive just say that, there are no rules to this secret relationship thing” but Kouyou is too stubborn to admit she likes Yosano that much

• Yosano initially takes a very “your trauma is not my business” approach to their differing jobs but as things get more serious she starts to develop a slight savior complex. She goes from being completely unattached to way too attached. She wants to show Kouyou the light the way Ranpo and Fukuzawa did for her

• Speaking of which, there’s only one person who knows about their situationship and that’s Ranpo. He figured it out himself and mentioned it casually to Yosano one day, nearly giving her a heart attack. She knew he would find out eventually but it was very sudden. At least she has someone to vent to when things get especially confusing

• Higuchi and Gin eventually find out too because they catch them at the same lesbian bar

• Pretty soon it becomes an open secret

• I like to imagine there’s a big moment of confrontation between the PM and Kouyou that goes down exactly like the “how long have you been fucking Nate Jacobs?” scene from Euphoria

• Kouyou addresses Yosano as “Doctor” in public and “Akiko” in private

• Kouyou likes to use her mafia money to send Yosano anonymous gifts on a whim. Yosano always knows who they’re from

• Yosano’s favorite physical trait of Kouyou’s is her hair, Kouyou likes Yosano’s sadistic smile

• Speaking of which, Yosano definitely appreciates having a relationship where they get to beat the shit out of each other on occasion. It keeps the spark alive

• But on dates or in settings that are generally more intimate, Yosano is a total gentleman. She def gives all her girls the princess treatment. Kouyou is used to being the one to spoil women so this makes her very flustered

• They had one big fight about Mori and ever since then they made a silent agreement never to bring him up. When things are tense he becomes an elephant in the room

• In traditional “ADA member has a PM-related secret” fashion, Kunikida was the last to find out about their relationship

• This is so completely random but they remind me of Kermit and Miss Piggy. Yosano is Kermit

• Kouyou pretends to be severely injured every time the PM and ADA team up so she has an excuse to see Yosano

• Yosano sends Kouyou pictures of particularly bad crime scenes or injuries at random to jump scare her

• Kouyou likes classical music and Yosano is a metalhead

That’s all I can think of for now, thank you for the ask!!

#kousano #kouyou ozaki #akiko yosano #bsd #bungou stray dogs #headcanons #ship headcanons #ask #ask me anything

8 notes · View notes

witchsickness · 2 years

Text

there is such a thing, steve supposes, as having seen too many monsters. after a while it gets old. you just—you get used to it.

stuff like billy hargrove, grave-muddy and swiss-cheesed and by all means not meant to be alive, fridge-illuminated in his kitchen and slurping mortadella slices like he didn’t die, like, three weeks ago, is ranking pretty low on steve’s shock scale.

‘oh,’ he says, ‘you’re alive.’

hargrove doesn’t exactly face him, but he does sort of growl in acknowledgment of steve’s existence. he also doesn’t stop the fridge raid, so. ‘jesus,’ he slurs, around a mouthful of italian sausage and what steve fears is molding lasagna leftovers, ‘curb your enthusiasm next time.’

‘next time you—come back from the dead?’

‘not my fault you hicks are grave-happy and buried me without checking for a pulse.’

‘oh, we checked,’ steve says, inching closer. three-am lasagna does sound pretty tempting. ‘you were definitely croaked.’

a visible shudder racks hargrove’s form. he looks—taken aback, and way too red-cheeked for a dead boy. that’s one more thing about the horrors they’ve seen. steve forgets, sometimes, how young they’re meant to be.

the fork hargrove has only been half-using clatters to the ground, makes them both jump like banshees are after them. for all they know, right? this is hawkins.

steve feels momentarily triumphant, but it immediately bleeds into guilt. how unfair is that? the asshole he traded high-school punches with saved his life, and now he can’t even gloat guilt-free. with a heavy sigh, he flips the switch. the neon cracks and fizzes and settles, falls mercilessly on hargrove’s blinded ex-corpse. he looks—well, steve’s peripherally watched enough zombie flicks by now to draw the parallels. as long as hargrove’s satiated by mr. harrington’s imported delicacies and leaves steve’s brain alone, they’re good.

he pulls two questionably clean forks out of the dishwasher, hands one to hargrove. that lasagne stopped being edible a week ago, he decides, forking a bite anyway. hargrove flinches when steve leans over his shoulder to assess the rest of the fridge’s contents, but doesn’t pull back. steve doesn’t, either.

‘how’d you get in, anyway?’

hargrove turns around, smirking. he elbow-leans on the counter, crosses a leg over another. the very picture of nonchalance, if you don’t have a clue. steve—knows better. he fights the urge to lick a thumb and wipe the mud off hargrove’s cheek, see if he’s real.

‘window was open, harrington,’ he drawls, chuckling at the way steve allows himself to get caught staring. ‘you should be more careful. never know what’s lurking in the dark.’

steve gives him a look. ‘don’t i?’ he regrets it, instantly. the shadow of shame on hargrove’s face isn’t half as satisfying as it should be, not anymore. ‘locks won’t keep the monsters out, man.’

‘would’ve kept me out, anyway,’ hargrove mumbles. he’s swapped the lasagna for his hangnails, maniacally having a go at them.

‘liar,’ steve tells him, and waits until hargrove’s insulted enough to look at him, ‘nothing would’ve kept you out.’ he gets a laugh, a real one, for his trouble. he bites his cheek and hopes this isn’t a dream.

hargrove tries, ‘your place is close to the cemetery,’ already wincing from the lie.

‘it’s really not. a for effort, though.’ steve takes the tupperwave from him, empties its contents in the trash. ‘look, are you, like, existentially opposed to a bath now? it’s just, the carpet in my room, it’s—it stains, alright? you’ll drag mud all over it, and cleaning it is a nightm—’

‘you gonna carry me to the bathtub, rich boy?’

steve—barely has time to feign offense, before a blood-crusted shirt lands on him. hargrove is standing half-naked in his kitchen. pointedly staring at his earth-stained feet. ‘don’t—don’t move,’ steve groans, ‘i’ll get you some old slippers.’

hargrove’s laugh follows him out of the room. ‘bet you were the type of brat who used to drag strays in all the time. fed them, bathed them, the works,’ he’s saying, which is unfair, and not completely untrue.

the strays usually ended up curled up in bed with him anyway, so.

#harringrove #steve harrington #billy hargrove #my stuff

387 notes · View notes

chocmarss · 2 years

Text

RUBS HAND OVER MY FACE i’m going a little. insane. about Strider Rex, honestly. The irony (?) of him looking no more than 30 when he’s 84 or something compared to canon Rex where he looks like he’s 56 when he’s actually 28. I just. MAN.

Okay, but AU of Rex living longer than normal clones, than normal humans, that the only moment he actually looks like an old man is when he’s 160? 180? Very old, kriffing ancient, or so he’s been told by everyone else.

Something, something the Kaminoans fucked up a whole batch of clones that the moment they hit puberty (9-10 years human years, 18-ish in clone years), they stay super young for decades. DECADES. Reverse engineering but make it sloth pace.

Nala Se, the absolute worst living being to exist, tries to terminate them, but then, that would mean wasting a whole batch of clones and making it look suspicious in all ends because even if she did make up excuses and lies (the clones could probably have failing organs, or thinning blood, or anything that would compromise selling their ‘usefulness’) it’ll just make her look bad. Oh, this batch is sullied? You overlooked a mistake when there are fifty clones in a batch? You could’ve just checked one of them properly? You caused Kamino millions of credits? No, no, they will be a reminder of your negligence, Nala Se, and I will see it that their uses are fulfilled like the rest of them.

So she just makes sure these clones are all put through the hell-like training exercises anyone in their short life would go through that the casualty reports are off the fucking roof. Only 30% of that batch survived, and the rest of the clones come up with all kinds of stories about how that’s the batch that’s cursed, see, because for some fuckdamn reason they’re always getting the short end of the stick. Absolutely no leeway for that batch. They’re stiff like boulders if you ever try talking to them. ‘Think they fried their brains every time the Long Necks decided to make them go through the torture machine.

In the end, 10 graduated out of 50, and they become the best fucking soldiers everyone would ask for. They’re all still painfully human, and when Rex hears that Keeli used his life to fight with his Jedi, he has to sit down.

They keep in touch, and sometimes, a brother who isn’t theirs, who’s not from their little group of survivors, would deliver dreadful news. One by one, they’re dwindling down until their stories are almost legends amongst the Shinies, the other batches who are there to see them fall, and it’s years into the war that Rex could count what was left of them on one hand.

Wilco? Gone too soon. Howzer? Rex lost him somewhere in the beginning of the Empire’s reign. There’s no way of knowing whether or not he’s still alive, but seeing that reports say he was MIA, Rex can take it as a good sign. Last he heard, Howzer’s on his way to be executed on Ryloth before he escaped. Rex hopes he’ll get to see him again.

It’s 15 years after the Empire becomes a stick in everyone else’s asses that Rex accepted he’d be one of the Fucking Weird Ones left. While Wolffe and Gregor look well into middle age, Rex looks like he hasn’t aged a year in his life. He looks twenty-two, is actually twenty-eight, but he feels like he’s the one who’s fifty-six.

“Damn,” one of the snack-sized Rebels —a kid, kriff, and the one with colourful Mando armour isn’t any better too— breathes out. The kid’s eyes whipped between Rex and Wolffe, to Gregor, before going back to Rex. “It’s like your their son or something.”

Wolffe and Gregor fucking howls with laughter while Rex chucks a balled up paper at their way. He threatens them with clanker oil in their drinks, before he says to the kid, “I’m older than both of them.”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Sabine drawls, blaster flipping between her fingers and the Jedi, the one who’s staring at Rex as if he sprouted another head, looks away with resentment in the tightness of his jaw. “You look kinda, I dunno, near my age.”

That sets off both Wolffe and Gregor again, holding onto each other as they laugh and chortle and are bent to their knees that Rex really wants to kick their asses.

“You’re—“ Wolffe manages before he clears his throat, ignoring Rex’s glower. “You’re, what, seventeen?”

“Yeah.”

Gregor snorts, chokes, before he’s hiding his face into Wolffe’s shoulder as the other man nods sagely. “Yeah, you’re not far off.”

Rex has done everything he could in making sure this Rebellion stands, going in and out of Seelos every other month or so to trudge through fire blasters, proton torpedoes, Stormtrooper wayward shots, and to brave through dry planets, drenched planets, sweat-sticking humid ones, and this is the thanks he gets. All because he looks a little younger than he should be.

Rex jabs a finger at Wolffe’s way. “Eat shit.”

“Is that the way to talk to your father, Rex?” Gregor tsks, shaking his head. “Shame on you.”

Rex aims the same finger at him, too. “Screw you. In fact, eat shit.”

So, Rex ages slower than them all, and he gets to see them die. It sucks ass, it sucks ass real bad, because he’s losing everyone he knows, everyone he loves, because he has longevity in his fucking genes while his brothers die too fucking fast. Cursed, they’re all so very cursed, and he hates it, he hates it so much.

He’s watching all of them get old, get sick, get buried or cremated. He watches them fade, and even when they’re all rickety in their joints, Rex has only three white hairs in his entire life.

“You’re still very handsome,” Ahsoka hums, patting one veiny hand on his cheek. The wrinkles at the corner of her eyes are too deep, her eyes as wise, wiser even, than the last time he thought he lost her and found her again, but the smile she gives him is just the same as the ones from all those years ago. “And very young. And yet, you decide to sit with this old lady when you could’ve gotten yourself some adventure.”

She’s pushing ninety years old, and she doesn’t really need a cane unless she’s climbing up hills —which she shouldn’t have to, like ‘Soka, please— standing tall in her library, going through old Jedi archives that have been founded again, along with the ones Luke managed to salvage from the fire he created during his midlife crisis.

Rex tries not to think how he’s gone, too, Leia along with him.

“I think I prefer going through dusty books with you than going any more adventures,” he jokes softly, trapping her hand against his chest with his own, and again, he pushes away the thought at how incredibly thin she feels underneath his touch. “I need a break, after going through all of that three times.”

“If that’s what you want,” She gives him another pat on his cheek with her free hand before she walks away from him, already hauling a couple of old looking books with her. “All I’m saying is how this will get boring very fast, you know.”

“I can do boring,” he tells her, following her to the back room, where she’d preserve the old texts into new books by writing them down, doing it the old fashion way, looking at the smudge or burnt off pieces through a microscope. “I need boring, actually. It’d be good for me.”

“I’m sure,” She’s already opening the books, one hand reaching for her writing apparatus, already absorbed into the text. “Think Kix’s gonna come over soon?”

Another brother trapped by time, found in ice and in guilt and in shame. The first time he saw Rex, Kix hadn’t believed him when he said it had been fifty years since the end of the Clone Wars. He was disoriented, freezing, and when Rex explained how much time had passed, recognition kicked in, and Kix remembered Rex’s condition, saw how different his Captain was compared than last time.

Not much, Kix had said, when he calmed down, eyes heavy. But it’s there, in your face.

Now, after two decades have passed since they found him, Kix looks almost as old as Ahsoka is.

And Rex remains excruciatingly ageless.

“He will,” Rex doesn’t want to think of how soon he’s losing his friends, how he’ll lose them too, like he did with the others. He can’t bring himself to go through that now, now when Ahsoka’s here, wanting the best for him, but letting him get what he wants. “He heard about the cake. He can’t resist it to keep away.”

“He does love his fruitcake,” she mutters, distracted, one weathered finger tracing the lines.

Rex is already helping her with the other book, rewriting what he can read, keeping his gnawing emotions in the cages of his chest as he thinks, not for the first, that it’s better if he lives longer than they all did. He gets to be there for them until the end, he’ll be there to see them off, and that gives him some form of ease.

They don’t have to be alone. Rex is there, and he’ll be there until it’s his time to go.

#slow aging #au #captain rex #commander wolffe #captain gregor #ezra bridger #sabine wren #ahsoka tano #star wars rebels #star wars #the clone wars #marswrites #marsrb

159 notes · View notes

justsome-di · 7 days

Text

The Fairest of All Stars: Chapter 11

Andy didn’t mean to become a pirate captain, but after killing the captain of her ship, she finds herself thrust into the role. Years after the incident, she is fierce and feared and recovering from a tropical fever that wiped out half her crew.

Just as they’re about to dock, they find an injured siren left behind by her choir. Andy, drawn to her, pulls her onto the ship and decides to keep her there until she recovers. But with the Navy hunting for both pirates and sirens, Andy has just made her ship an even bigger target for an iniquitous captain looking for revenge.

Warning for suicidal thoughts and violence. Will contain mature scenes.

Also available for free on Patreon (paid members are five installments ahead and will get exclusive bonus stories) and on AO3. If you enjoy reading Stars please consider leaving a comment on AO3, Patreon, or reblogging these chapters! Follow for more updates!

“Pinkey, you better have a genius plan in that beautiful brain of yours.”

Pinkey was busy looking over the edge of the ship, too absorbed in the unsettled waters to respond to Andy.

“Pinkey,” Andy snapped. "Get it together.”

He looked up finally. His usual carefree and cheery disposition had been replaced with a haggard face and tired eyes. He had clearly been up all night. Most likely working out some sort of plan for the ship.

Andy steeled herself. She needed him more than ever.

“What did you think up?” Andy said.

Pinkey’s gaze went from Andy to Syan to the rest of the crew around him, as if taking in the weight that all of their lives were depending on him. A full dozen men were waiting for him to speak. Andy wished she could have told him not to worry so much. If they died, they died. There was no way to prevent it at this point. It wouldn’t be his fault.

She wished she had the courage to tell him that. It wouldn’t be his fault.

Pinkey squared his shoulders. “It’s not a foolproof plan.”

“I’m not asking it to be.”

There was an eerie silence on the water. Despite being so close to the Navy ship—they could now clearly see the men marching along their deck in their blue suits and silly, stupid white powder wigs.

“Here’s my plan,” Pinkey said. He gestured to Syan. He pressed his hands together like he was praying. “It involves you, Syan. You’re really going to be the reason we get out of this alive—if we do get out of this alive. How many men do you think you can take down?”

All the men stared at Syan. She stared back. Andy wanted to rescue her, and she was ready to jump to her defense. Syan wasn’t their fighting machine, she would have said. They weren’t going to use her as a weapon, ask her to risk her life for them. Andy was going to deflect and ask Pinkey to continue detailing the plan without Syan’s involvement.

But Syan spoke up first.

“None,” she said.

Pinkey’s eyebrows drew together. “None?”

“I think you’ve all been misled.”

“What does that mean?” Tobi asked. Though the question was for Syan, he glared at Andy. “We’ve been misled?

“I’m not the type of siren you’ve heard stories about. I’m not strong. My singing isn’t powerful. I’m sort of… the runt of the litter. I won’t be much help.”

There were groans and swears. Pinkey’s face fell. Joseph closed his eyes and nodded as if he had suspected the whole thing.

“Just our luck we’d get a defective siren,” Tobi said. “And very convenient you kept that from everyone until now.”

“Hey,” Andy snapped. “This isn’t her fault. What was she supposed to do? Tell a ship of strangers that she’s actually weak and vulnerable on top of being injured?”

“I think she got what she wanted from us, and now she’s going to slip away the first chance she gets. I say we hand her over to save our skin.”

To Andy’s relief and shock, everyone turned angry eyes at Tobi. Especially Pinkey.

“Bastard!” Syan spat.

“Tobi,” Andy yelled. “I swear to fucking God, the only reason I’m not killing you right now is because we need bodies against them! You’re fucking useless as anything else. Pinkey, please continue your plan.”

Pinkey continued. “Uh, well, we all need to save our ammunition. No one shoot at long range. Wait until you can guarantee a good shot. Even if that means waiting for them to get on the ship. Even if it means they’re drawing first.

“When we’re out of bullets, switch to swords. Don’t let them corner you. Everyone stays tight together in the middle of our ship. Partner up. Have each other’s backs.”

“If you fuck over one of us, you fuck over all of us,” Andy added. “Put some damage on their men. When they return, we’re going to make sure that everyone knows that they faced us.”

She wasn’t expecting to gear up for such a motivational speech, but there she was. All eyes were on her. Pinkey’s face turned bright, excited.

Especially Syan’s. Her eyes were wide, captivated at seeing Andy’s passion for the first time.

Andy really had been a pretty shit captain for a while. It was time she started acting like she was leading all those men.

“It’s not about coming out alive,” Andy said. “It’s about putting up a fight. We are not going to surrender like some cowards. We are not going to let them think that we’re a weak, meager pirate crew. Their egos are already bloated enough as it is. They don’t need to believe that we buckle under the pressure of their presence alone. We let them know that we’re here for a fight.”

The men cheered. Syan clapped her hands.

“Don’t let them win before they’ve killed every last one of us. Even if we only fight for five minutes—we make sure they’re a damn good five minutes.”

The men’s faces reddening and their brows sweating in fear, in anticipation, in excitement. If they were all going to their deaths—at least they were going together.

Andy gripped her sword at her side. Her pistol was heavy in her coat pocket. They’d be lucky if they lasted five minutes, but Andy’s watch had broken months ago so there would be no way for her to know.

Pinkey handed Syan a saber. She tightened her hand around the hilt. Her knuckles paled from the force.

“You can still hide—“ Andy began.

“No,” Syan said. “I’m not hiding.”

“The more men, the better,” Pinkey said. He squeezed Syan’s arm. “Remember everything I’ve taught you.”

“You’ve barely taught me anything.”

“Hold on tight and slash,” Pinkey said. “That’s all you need today.”

He looked a bit sad. Andy couldn’t blame him. His instructions were on how to be desperate, how to try to live. It’s how everyone first learned how to wield a sword. Swing it at whoever’s coming toward you. Don’t lose it. Because there are moments where something is better than nothing and that something had to harness brutal, feral energy to make up for lack of technique.

Pinkey took Syan’s wrist and elbow, helping her support the sword.

“Use the weight of the saber to your advantage,” he said. “It’s all going to be in your shoulders. Follow through with your motion with your whole body.”

He guided Syan’s arm in a slow swing. Andy didn’t get jealous this time.

She looked at the rest of her men. They were hyping themselves up. They went through some motions with the swords and checked their guns. Whatever little ammunition and gunpowder they all had left would be used.

And then her eyes settled on Syan. They settled on the sharp angle of her jaw and the curve of her high cheekbones. The chestnut coloring of her complexion. Her long eyelashes that rested on her freckled cheeks as she looked down at Pinkey’s hands wrapped around her arm.

Syan’s skin, when she had first come on board, was gray. It had looked like watery mud from the ocean, ashen and sickly. But it had since brightened in the sun and tanned beautifully. Freckles had popped out over her face and over the tops of her shoulders. They painted her cheeks and nose like a mask for a masquerade ball, just so slightly altering her the appearance that Andy first knew.

Andy would mourn all the lost opportunities with Syan—the things that had never happened. The mornings of sharing a bed, the evenings of pinching Syan’s body and biting her neck, the little things that Andy wouldn’t even know would happen. She mourned the mystery of the future.

Andy leaned against the railing of the deck. Syan looked up, tried hiding a smile, and then looked past Andy.

“Captain,” Syan said, and Andy gave herself half a second to revel in hearing the title coming from lips. “They’re coming.”

Andy looked over her shoulder. She was expecting the men to rush over as soon as they learned that her ship was a sitting duck. No response to the canon, no escalation. The Navy knew that they were fucked, and Andy expected them to take full advantage.

She had expected half the crew to storm her ship and the other half to wait patiently as if they were watching someone squash a spider. She was expecting bloody violence and pressing herself up against her men and holding Syan close to her side, a hand pressed to her waist just to make sure that Syan was the last thing she felt on the earth.

But rather than a violent storm of men that Andy had imagined, there was only one rowboat coming across the water with a handful of men. Their blue uniforms and white wigs were so distinct, Andy could vomit all over them. As the boat drew closer, they turned from dark pinpricks to defined people with swords at their sides and scowls on their faces.

Pinkey checked that his pistol was loaded and silently ushered the crew away from the edge of the boat and to the middle of the deck. There, they stood together, the hot sun beating down on them and the air so stiff Andy thought she would choke on it.

Andy reached out for Syan’s hand and clumsily intertwined their fingers together. Syan’s palm was warm and dry. It was so large and her fingers so long that she could easily cup Andy’s hand in her own—as though Andy’s hand had been made specifically to be the perfect size for Syan’s.

They held each other desperately, discreetly, just like that. Andy felt her fingers going numb, but she only squeezed back harder. If they were to die, they would die with parts of themselves mended together.

It didn’t take long for the rowboat to reach the ship and for all but two men on board to climb their way to the deck.

Andy’s knees went weak. The captain climbed aboard first with his stupid hat and golden buttons on his dark frock coat. He pulled himself around in jerking motions, only using one hand and the other limply flailing at the end of his arm. Once on the deck, his hand rested limp on the hilt of his sword.

The fingers were completely incapable of being used and curled inward toward his palm. Andy couldn’t see from where she stood, but she could imagine a clear scar on his hand. Right in the middle of his palm. It would be thick just like the scars that were on Syan’s legs, heavy on her thighs and trickling down her calves, and pale like sea foam.

“Captain Andrea,” he said. His voice was even, calm, and just as deep as Andy remembered it being. “We meet again. Charmed, I’m sure.”

Andy’s mouth split into a sneering smile. “Captain Bettridge. Always a fucking pleasure to see you.”

#the fairest of all stars #queer writing #sapphic fantasy

5 notes · View notes

pb-dot · 7 months

Text

Past/Current/Next Tag

Don't think I've seen this tag yet, well, before @dyrewrites tagged me in it at any rate.

Rules: Write about three WIPs, past is a WIP you stopped working on/finished; current is a WIP you're currently working on; next is a WIP you want to write

I tag: @bard-coded @lordfenric-writes @stesierra aaaaaand @cat-esper

Past

There'll probably be more work to do on it as I move toward publishing, but for now my work at The Clockwork Boy is done. TCB is a Clockpunk Queer Romance story about Love, Belonging and Revolution. The story follows Jake, a gearcrafter journeyman in a city stuck in a peculiar anarcho-capitalist stasis. Jake's tedious yet stressful life is upended as he (quite literally) runs into 13, a former assassin with a clockwork-powered body who seeks desperate sanctuary from the pursuit of his former employers.

Jake and 13 flee, both from the clockwork assassins and from the local brute squads, until they find themselves under the auspices of a worker's coop known as The Northwest. Their new allies prove vital shelter and help as Jake works to repair 13's clockwork body, but the heat it attracts to the organization has the two questioning whether they need to flee while they can or rise up to fight for their new friends.

A snippet:

“I suppose we should turn in for the night,” Jake said after a while. “I’ve got some gears I’d like to try carving tomorrow, and if you’re not doing anything else, I’d love to see if they fit the way they’re supposed to.” 13 yawned. “That does sound like a good idea.” “Oh, I got loads of those,” “Oh yeah, like?” 13 asked, a slight teasing note in his voice. “For one, I once got the idea to throw away my shitty job and terrible apartment to go chasing after this clockwork cutie. Best career decision I’ve ever made if you ask me.”

Current

My current tormentor obsession maddening descent WIP is a Queer Horror story about Art, Obsession, Madness, and Love. Our protagonist is an obsessive San Francisco art critic by the name of Oscar Skerry. Oscar's obsession centers on the works of one Tomasz Gildebrant, a reclusive artist whose bleak, rough paintings go for exorbitant prices due to their sheer cult appeal. As Oscar follows up on the thread of the urban legend known as Gildebrant Psychosis, how the paintings can provoke behavior in certain viewers that is either disturbingly violent or merely extremely odd, Oscar finds himself invited to Gildebrant's home. Warning bells should ring, but Oscar pays them no heed and wastes no time traveling to the secluded spot in the Carpathian Alps where he meets the artist he sometimes sees in his dreams. Tomasz seems almost too gregarious and welcoming at first, hardly the dark soul Oscar expected at all, but the things that don't quite add up keep piling on. Gildebrant lives alone, so who owns all the shoes that litter his entryway, why does every door in the house lock automatically at midnight, and why does Oscar keep dreaming about colors that don't exist?

This and much more will be revealed in His Impossible Brushstrokes, a standalone novel that asks you to consider what would happen in the opening of Dracula if the titular character and his victim Jonathan Harker fell in love, or if the master the Beast from Beauty and The Beast served was entirely less comprehensible than a magical rose.

Snippet:

At one point that night, I had fallen asleep. I couldn’t be certain it had happened before the gray hours of morning, but I had fallen asleep and I had slept. I knew this because I woke up, which traditionally required one to be asleep at some point. My body was stiff after the strenuous hike the day before, my brain was foggy from the jetlag, and my heart was certainly feeling in need of some sort of maintenance on account of the situation being somewhat confusing. That did, however not change that I was alive, I was in the home of who I considered to be the premier artist of our time, and he seemed genuinely happy to have me here. Granted, he also had some hair-trigger mood changes I’d need to work around and I had conflicting emotions about the whole setup.

In a way, none of this was entirely unexpected, I told myself. Gildebrant considering himself a fan of mine threw me quite a bit, but it was a nice sort of surprise so I wasn’t going to complain about that. The question, however, remained. How were I to proceed. Did I, strictly speaking, have a plan? In a way, I did not. I had wanted to meet Gildebrant, but I had assumed it’d take a long time, that I’d have a lot of time to figure out how to act, what to ask about, and ask for. Then there was the question of Gildebrant’s occasional brusqueness meant I had to be careful.

Some care, I decided as I sat up in bed and scooted my legs off the side of the bed, was perhaps called for. Gildebrant seemed quite comfortable with my company as long as the topic of his art wasn’t brought up, although I would concede that my sample size was rather limited. For now, it would be smart to keep things personal, develop some sort of baseline. If nothing else, it’d allow me to chart out the waters a little, figure out what it was that made this odd artist tick. I could work my way into the more academically valuable stuff later, and if not, securing some autobiographical details would certainly be something I could use in my works. I certainly wasn’t going to bring up xenosemiotics anytime soon, that seemed foolhardy in light of last night.

I haven't yet decided on what my next project should be, but I do have some strong candidates. The Clockwork Guardian, the sequel to The Clockwork Boy, is on there for sure, but I may postpone that if my efforts to publish go nowhere. I also feel like writing more horror, so the socially conscious folk horror Draugr (working title) or the horror-fantasy Monsters, Slayers (working title) might also be good alternatives. I also have a bureaucracy-fairytale procedural with the title Department of Troll Affairs that I might pull the trigger on.

My strongest candidate, though, is the "30s-punk" deconstructionist postapocalyptic fantasy novel The Town Called After. It's about a group of people that, as kids, went on adventures in faraway magical realms. Now, 20 years later they're all adults, and finding themselves longing for the simplicity and potential of those magical adventures. One should, however, be careful what one wishes for, as our heroes find themselves pulled back into the magical realms, only to be told they are all destroyed.

Something incomprehensible shattered the magical realms and the few survivors have bandied together to create the city of After, a ramshackle town and community from salvaged parts of their old world. These survivors now plead for the help of these, the heroes of their legends. Our protagonists seize the task in the hope of reclaiming their lost glory, but find that things aren't as simple as they remember. Politics and corruption suffuse every level of this fledgling society, and crime born both of desperation and greed intertwine and intermingle in a way that makes it nearly impossible to separate one from the other. In addition to these moral qualms and finding out what being a hero even means in such times of toil and hardship, our heroes must uncover the truth of the calamity that shattered the worlds, lest this new home share their fate.

#writing #writeblr #the clockwork boy #hearts in clockwork #tag game

8 notes · View notes

heliads · 1 year

Text

whole

Nights pass in the Graveyard. Some are more interesting than others.

a/n my unhinged haycon agenda never ends

masterlist

Connor only ever comes for Hayden after dark.

That makes the whole affair seem far more treacherous and explicit than it truly is. In reality, Hayden stays too late in the ComBom trying to find some sign that other AWOLs are out there still alive long enough to run, then Jeevan or someone else will send Connor out to track him down and make him rest.

Connor’s job, then, is only to appear out of the murky darkness of the Graveyard, to stand in the frame of the door and tell Hayden to go to sleep. That’s all it should take, really. Connor doesn’t leave, though. Not when he should.

Instead, on nights like tonight, Connor shows up and closes the door behind him. It never shuts all the way– Connor likes to leave it open just a crack, enough that the ghostly sound of Risa’s piano can make its way inside and turn their rattling communications jet into a music box.

On nights like tonight, Hayden pushes his chair away from the computer with a flourish, and Connor sits on the desk next to him, stretching out on any available surface that isn’t covered in papers or pens. Connor will arch a brow, and ask, late night again? so Hayden can roll his eyes and spit out some bravado about how radio heroes never give up the fight, you know.

Only then, once they’ve both said the established opening lines, can they ever speak to each other like they please. It’s a strange routine, and even though it happens every night, it never fails to disrupt whatever tentative peace Hayden had managed to channel for the evening. Every time Hayden is alone in that small metal room with only Connor and the uneven glow of the fluorescent lighting to keep him company, he can take nothing for granted. Least of all his own irrational heart.

Connor swings his legs back and forth off of the desk. “Listen to anything interesting today?”

Hayden shrugs as casually as he can. “Nothing major. Tons of important people all clamoring for my capture, of course. I’m extremely popular with the parts pirates and unwind camps since I’m such a top tier rebel, you know. I’m basically a hot commodity.”

“I know,” Connor says, laughing once then falling silent. “I know.”

Connor’s eyes are wide and dark in the half-lit shell of the ComBom. Hayden can still hear Risa’s quiet chords echoing across the Graveyard. It makes him insane, a little bit. He wants to shout to anyone who can hear, Unwinds and Juvey-cops, everyone in the world– who cares about the rumors, whatever stories they’ve cooked up about the Akron AWOL and Risa Ward? Hayden’s got Connor right here, and he’s never letting him go. Connor would never let him go.

He turns abruptly to Connor, grasped in the throes of some sort of wild excitement he can barely name, much less explain. “What parts of me would you take if I was divided? My parents preferred to split me in half rather than let either of them have custody. If I was stuck between you and someone else, what pieces of me would you want?”

Connor’s eyes flicker shut briefly with horror. “That’s sick, Hayden. I’m not answering that.”

Hayden reaches across the gulf between them to swat Connor on the shoulder. He’s charged with this strange energy, practically euphoric. “You have to. What parts would you want?”

He moves to strike Connor again, but Connor reacts quickly this time, seizing Hayden’s hand before he can make any more contact. He doesn’t drop it, though, and keeps the fingers firmly interlocked with his own.

“I’d want your eyes,” he says at last. “They’re nice. Also, I know too many parts pirates who take the eyes as trophies. I don’t want to stare down some creep and see you looking back at me out of the face of a monster. If I have your eyes, though, I want your brain, so I know it’s really you who’s looking. And if I have your brain, I need your heart, so you know it’s me. Out of respect to your dedication to your braces, I’d take your teeth. Although I would make sure they took them out before the— before they divided you. No one deserves to die with metal in their mouth.”

Connor takes a wild, desperate breath. The air is charged now, like whatever freak energy was inhabiting Hayden has moved on to engulf Connor as well. They’re both practically vibrating with the need to continue, the urge to keep going until all words are both said and then heard.

“I need your hands too,” Connor continues, squeezing Hayden’s fingers between his, “for radio stuff, you know. Arms for strength. Your lungs and voice box so the transmissions can continue like normal. Then I would ask for legs, and ribs, and hair, and anything else I could get my hands on. I wouldn’t let anything go. Whoever I’m splitting you with can die over it, I don’t care.”

One more deep lungful of air. Connor’s grasp on Hayden’s hand is almost painful, but it’s a good kind of pain, reminding him that he’s still here, that this is real.

“I wouldn’t leave a single piece behind. Not if it was you. I want you, Hayden, and I want you whole.”

Hayden almost chokes on it. “You can’t promise that,” he whispers.

“I can,” Connor asserts, “I can and I will.” He leans back, proud and absolutely sure of himself. “Who would stop me?”

That, of anything, slows the tumultuous rhythm between Hayden’s ribs. There are a lot of things that could stop them. A raid of the Graveyard. Scores of Juvey-cops. The simple truth that neither of them were meant to live long enough to see their twenties. The night is not a good time for confessions, even if they were made with good intentions. When you open up your heart to sweet words, the deadly thoughts can get in as well.

But for now, Hayden is a boy who loves a boy, he is a boy who is loved by a boy like Connor, and he is never, ever going to change that. They’ll get up in the morning and forget about tonight, or maybe they’ll both keep the words they’ve said on loop in their heads just like Hayden always does, but either way, Hayden feels complete. For someone who’s destined to be unwound, that’s pretty much paradise.

unwind tag list: @schroedingers-kater, @locke-writes

14 notes · View notes

notebooknonbinary · 2 years

Text

Byler Week, Day 2: 80s Movies (Peggy Sue Got Married, 1986)

(technically a sequel to this. All you need to know is that Mike and Will can read each other's minds--and they know that they like each other.)

Mike and Will are back in the Upside Down—in Hopper’s cabin. This time, at least, they’re not alone. Outside, Joyce and Hopper are keeping watch so they can get some sleep. Unfortunately, neither one of them can. So they’re just laying beside each other, listening to the faint murmuring of the couple outside.

“Mom and I made up last week,” Mike finally murmurs into the quiet air. He sees Will immediately turn to face him. “Yeah? How did that go?”

“She apologized for putting all the secret keeping on me—aparently Nance really reamed her on that after the fight.”

“Well, good. You deserved to be apologized to.”

Mike hides his smile in the crook of his elbow, wondering if Will can feel how giddy Mike gets when Will defends him. (The answer, he suspects, is yes.)

“Thanks,” he whispers. “Then we watched a movie that came out recently? Honestly, it was kind of stupid—Peggy Sue Was Married? Or something like that—but me and Mom both kind of hated it, so we made fun of it together.” Will snaps his fingers. “Peggy Sue Got Married? El and I watched that one, I liked it until she got back with the cheating husband at the end—”

“—that's why Mom thought it was stupid. I guess she saw that’s where it was going and felt it would have ended better if Peggy decided to go through with the divorce.” Mike is silent for a long moment. He picks at the hangnail on his thumb. “Then she started crying and said that she’s been daydreaming about divorcing my dad.” “Oh, Mike…” “She said she’s held out for our sakes, and honestly I almost picked a fight with her about it. I wish they would divorce.”

Will reaches out and grabs Mike’s hand. “Maybe my Mom can talk to her about it after this is all done with.”

"Maybe."

Mike laces their fingers together, and leans over to press the briefest of kisses to their interlocked fingers.

They’re on the precipice of being in a relationship—having confessed and kissed, and accidentally formed a powers-bond—but unwilling to take that final step of calling each other boyfriends.

If Mike were to lose Will…

He thinks back to the night after Will’s fake body was discovered (easy with Vecna’s recent reminder), those few hours where Mike had well and truly believed Will to be dead. And the hours afterwards where he’d remained terrified of Will slipping through his fingers forever.

He tightens his grip on Will’s hand, scooching just a bit closer to him. Will obligingly curls nearer to him, twinning their free hands together.

They fall asleep like this.

When Mike wakes up, it’s to the kind of crusty eyes he associates with late night crying sessions. He feels off and tired and like there’s too much stuff crowding his brain. He sits up, finding himself in his basement—but it’s also wrong.

It’s not the basement of the past year (messy with so many of his family friends living in it), but nor is it the basement in the Upside Down, cold and damp, but free of Vines.

It’s the basement of four years ago. Warm, filled with toys and Will’s drawings.

When he looks at his hands, they’re tiny and scuffed from falling off his bike last night.

Wait, no, not last night. Four years ago.

Right?

He looks to the corner to see a tiny version of El, awake and fiddling with his old Walkie-Talkie, though nothing but static is coming through. No tiny voice singing. No Will.

Worry turns to painful anxiety and fear.

No no no please no. If, somehow, the following three years were just a dream thought up by a desperate twelve year old wishing that his favorite person were still alive…Mike doesn’t know if he’ll be able to survive that. Not Will, please not Will. A hiccuping sob escapes his chest.

He’s almost certain this isn’t another one of Vecna’s tricks, because things haven’t gone funky and weird like last time. But, he’d almost rather that it is Vecna, just so he can be certain that Will is coming to get him. That Will is still…

He lets out another painful quiet cry, curling in on himself. He hears El take a breath at the noise, but he ignores her.

Then, finally, Will’s mental voice breaks through the silent screaming in his mind. I’m here Mike.

Mike lets out another sob, this time of relief. Are you safe?

He’s hit with a second hand wave of exasperated fondness. As safe as I can be. I don’t think Henry knows we’re here.

Mike sits back and scrubs the tears from his eyes. How are we here?

Some sort of powers thing? Will guesses. Time travel is new. We didn’t even do it like Marty McFly, we had to pull a Peggy Sue.

Mike bites back a laugh. It seems topical, considering their previous conversation. No Delorean for us, I guess.

Now that he’s aware of what’s going on, his mind has untangled a little bit. Somehow Mike can feel the presence of their younger selves, sat at the back of their minds and aware. His younger self has done the mental equivalent of curling around the younger Will like a feral cat, hissing when Mike prods their way, but otherwise calmer than he would expect them to be.

But then, Mike at this age would and did suspend a lot of disbelief in his crusade to get Will back. So older selves from the future probably isn’t too much of a reach.

Speaking of getting Will back, today is the day Joyce made brief contact with Will. If I can shepard the Party to your house, Mike wonders. Do you think we’d be able to get you out early?

A pause.

Yes please.

When I eventually get around to posting this on Ao3 it'll be longer--it's not quite finished, and Mike keeps going off into tangents about found families lolol. But i think this is a good stopping point :)

#bylerweek2023 #Day 2: 80s Movies #byler #mike wheeler #will byers #peggy sue got married aka the movie that popularized one of my fav time travel tropes--even tho the movie itself is kind of stupid imo #and tbh fic's only tangentally related to my choice of movie in that they mental time travel and Talk Shit about said movie #also this could technically fall under soulmates day but for that day i'm just gonna post a chapter of All the Time in the World lololol #i have Not gone to bed yet. My body hurts and i was writing. gonna try and nap for a few hours until the watch party lol

36 notes · View notes