#but I am also very curious

[blujayonthewing]

does anyone have any idea what these harpoon looking aglet type things I found at the thrift store are? the metal's relatively strong for how thin they are, and they're not sharp

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

[twinstxrs]

so much happened in this whole episode but i’m still on fig infiltrating ruben’s dream, making it look like the place where his friend was murdered, and then disguising herself as kipperlilly & repeatedly saying different variants of “somebody needs to take the fall for this, and it’s not going to be me. it’s going to be you.” while adaine as the elven oracle shows up next to her. can you imagine waking up from that, the idea of a horrible truth being pinned on you by your friend to save her own skin while the personification of fate and destiny stands there, almost as a promise that this is GOING to happen to you. we don’t even know if this kid is guilty. my god.

[doctorsiren]

Consider: I repackage another ace attorney au (split phoenix au) into mp100 for the sillies

[spocks-kaathyra]

thoughts about the Cardassian writing system

I've thinking about the Cardassian script as shown on screen and in beta canon and such and like. Is it just me or would it be very difficult to write by hand?? Like.

I traced some of this image for a recent drawing I did and like. The varying line thicknesses?? The little rectangular holes?? It's not at all intuitive to write by hand. Even if you imagine, like, a different writing implement—I suppose a chisel-tip pen would work better—it still seems like it wasn't meant to be handwritten. Which has a few possible explanations.

Like, maybe it's just a fancy font for computers, and handwritten text looks a little different. Times New Roman isn't very easily written by hand either, right? Maybe the line thickness differences are just decorative, and it's totally possible to convey the same orthographic information with the two line thicknesses of a chisel-tip pen, or with no variation in line thickness at all.

A more interesting explanation, though, and the one I thought of first, is that this writing system was never designed to be handwritten. This is a writing system developed in Cardassia's digital age. Maybe the original Cardassian script didn’t digitize well, so they invented a new one specifically for digital use? Like, when they invented coding, they realized that their writing system didn’t work very well for that purpose. I know next to nothing about coding, but I cannot imagine doing it using Chinese characters. So maybe they came up with a new writing system that worked well for that purpose, and when computer use became widespread, they stuck with it. 

Or maybe the script was invented for political reasons! Maybe Cardassia was already fairly technologically advanced when the Cardassian Union was formed, and, to reinforce a cohesive national identity, they developed a new standardized national writing system. Like, y'know, the First Emperor of Qin standardizing hanzi when he unified China, or that Korean king inventing hangul. Except that at this point in Cardassian history, all official records were digital and typing was a lot more common than handwriting, so the new script was designed to be typed and not written. Of course, this reform would be slower to reach the more rural parts of Cardassia, and even in a technologically advanced society, there are people who don't have access to that technology. But I imagine the government would be big on infrastructure and education, and would make sure all good Cardassian citizens become literate. And old regional scripts would stop being taught in schools and be phased out of digital use and all the kids would grow up learning the digital script.

Which is good for the totalitarian government! Imagine you can only write digitally. On computers. That the government can monitor. If you, like, write a physical letter and send it to someone, then it's possible for the contents to stay totally private. But if you send an email, it can be very easily intercepted. Especially if the government is controlling which computers can be manufactured and sold, and what software is in widespread use, etc. 

AND. Historical documents are now only readable for scholars. Remember that Korean king that invented hangul? Before him, Korea used to use Chinese characters too. And don't get me wrong, hangul is a genius writing system! It fits the Korean language so much better than Chinese characters did! It increased literacy at incredible rates! But by switching writing systems, they broke that historical link. The average literate Chinese person can read texts that are thousands of years old. The average literate Korean person can't. They'd have to specifically study that field, learn a whole new writing system. So with the new generation of Cardassian youths unable to read historical texts, it's much easier for the government to revise history. The primary source documents are in a script that most people can't read. You just trust the translation they teach you in school. In ASIT it's literally a crucial plot point that the Cardassian government revised history! Wouldn't it make it soooo much easier for them if only very few people can actually read the historical accounts of what happened.

I guess I am thinking of this like Chinese characters. Like, all the different Chinese "dialects" being written with hanzi, even though otherwise they could barely be considered the same language. And even non-Sinitic languages that historically adopted hanzi, like Japanese and Korean and Vietnamese. Which worked because hanzi is a logography—it encodes meaning, not sound, so the same word in different languages can be written the same. It didn’t work well! Nowadays, Japanese has made significant modifications and Korean has invented a new writing system entirely and Vietnamese has adapted a different foreign writing system, because while hanzi could write their languages, it didn’t do a very good job at it. But the Cardassian government probably cares more about assimilation and national unity than making things easier for speakers of minority languages. So, Cardassia used to have different cultures with different languages, like the Hebitians, and maybe instead of the Union forcing everyone to start speaking the same language, they just made everyone use the same writing system. Though that does seem less likely than them enforcing a standard language like the Federation does. Maybe they enforce a standard language, and invent the new writing system to increase literacy for people who are newly learning it.

And I can imagine it being a kind of purely digital language for some people? Like if you’re living on a colonized planet lightyears away from Cardassia Prime and you never have to speak Cardassian, but your computer’s interface is in Cardassian and if you go online then everyone there uses Cardassian. Like people irl who participate in the anglophone internet but don’t really use English in person because they don’t live in an anglophone country. Except if English were a logographic writing system that you could use to write your own language. And you can’t handwrite it, if for whatever reason you wanted to. Almost a similar idea to a liturgical language? Like, it’s only used in specific contexts and not really in daily life. In daily life you’d still speak your own language, and maybe even handwrite it when needed. I think old writing systems would survive even closer to the imperial core (does it make sense to call it that?), though the government would discourage it. I imagine there’d be a revival movement after the Fire, not only because of the cultural shift away from the old totalitarian Cardassia, but because people realize the importance of having a written communication system that doesn’t rely on everyone having a padd and electricity and wifi.

[snuggles-and-struggles]

Self shippers...a questions for you. Did you like. Choose who you "liked" or was it more like a curse being placed upon you

And also who is your Main self shipping guy (<- gender neutral)

[noa-nightingale]

Despite, well, everything - I am still really excited about the new content. I want to see what it looks like when they don't have to change it for sponsors or youtube. I hope it gets a lot more unhinged. I hope it will be a lot more creatively fulfilling for them. I hope they have success with WatcherTV. I really hope things will turn out okay.

[hoshinasblade]

im about to sleep so you know what comes next... hoshina smut idea 💡

the defense force combat uniform is a body suit right, so just imagine hoshina wearing it and getting a boner... and you coming to his rescue by dry humping him in his office - he'd have to be sitting on his swivel chair, and you on top of him. he can't moan out loud in fear that the other officers would hear him, but it's not like he has the strength to ask you to stop. so he lets you rub your clothed pussy against him, promising himself he'll punish you later tonight - imagine how hot hoshina looks like coming undone beneath you and his dick isn't even inside you yet.

😩😩😩

[ghost-proofbaby]

so scarlet (it was maroon)

in which eddie gets everything he dreamed of - except you. based off of "maroon" by taylor swift.

→ warnings: smut, severe angst, hurt/no comfort, 18+ minors dni

→ pairings: rockstar!eddie x fem!reader

→ wc: 11.3k+

→ a/n: don't mind me, just trying to see if tumblr will let me finally post this. this is cross-posted from ao3 (and wattpad)

ao3

"When the morning came, we were cleaning incense off your vinyl shelf 'cause we lost track of time again. Laughing with my feet in your lap, like you were my closest friend"

“You’re fucking with me,” Eddie sits up to stare at you, lit joint still dangling between his ringed fingers and the last of his latest hit lingering in a ghost of white smoke on his lips. 

“I’m not,” you laugh at his reaction, tilting your head forward just enough for where you were sprawled out on his bed to get a better view of him, “I’m scared to take cold medicine now.” 

“There’s no way you got high off of the recommended dose!” he cackles, shaking his head in disbelief, a hand coming down on your shin to ground himself. You watch his shoulders shake with laughter, how his curls come down to curtain around his reddening cheeks and his reddening eyes, how his doe eyes are pinched shut and crinkled in the corners.

A map of a million lifetimes, branching out from the corner of those eyes. A million lifetimes, a million possibilities, a million futures. And every single one of them begins and ends with Eddie. 

If you stare for too long, you’re going to say something you regret in your high, so you sit up as he had in order to snatch back the joint, “Stop babysitting. Aren’t you the one who’s always chastising me on ‘puff, puff, pass’?” 

He feigns offense, mouth wide open and face scrunched up adorably so, as you take a delicate hit. The smoke enters your mouth quickly, wasting no time as it barrels down your throat and curls into every crevice of your lungs. Your chest aches slightly at the intrusion. 

His eyes never leave yours. He watches the glaze continue to intensify over them as you slowly exhale. His thumb begins to trace gentle arches over the bare skin of your leg as his warm palm shifts upward, inching until it’s over your knee and resting on your thigh. “You’re fucking ridiculous.” 

“Learned from the best.” 

“That you did, sweetheart. That you did.” 

He holds his free hand back out for the joint, and your fingertips brush as you return it to him. 

“So what? Was it better than this kind of high?” he teases before bringing it to his lips. They’re pursed in preparation, and you only lose your concentration for a moment before remembering to answer him.

“I dunno, Munson. You’ve got some good shit here but… Dayquil might be giving you a run for your money,” you mock, tilting your head and leaning in closer to him. He’s grinning again, looking up through shy lashes before he takes his hit. 

This time he doesn’t exhale immediately into the cloudy air of the room. Instead, he takes you off guard as he shifts on the bed and pulls you closer. Soon enough he has you in his lap, draping one arm around your waist as he takes the hand not holding the joint and gingerly grabs your jaw. 

You already know the drill. You’re familiar with the process of his shotguns as his fingers tap your cheeks and you let your mouth fall slightly open, leaning to meet him halfway. He still doesn’t exhale, not until his lips have grazed over yours lightly, teasing before he finally seals the two of you together. The kiss is messy, as it always is with him; your tongue can’t differentiate between the taste of him and the taste of the smoke as he presses the kiss deeper. You’re not even sure you breathed in enough to capture any of it, but none of it feels like a waste as he’s biting your bottom lip, hands pulling your hips impossibly close. The joint is eventually discarded on one of the ashtrays on his bedside tables as you lose yourselves into each other. His nose presses itself into flat against yours between hot breaths. 

“We can’t-” you pull back, a trail of saliva chasing you before Eddie follows, capturing you in another kiss that you pull back from, “The joint-” another interruption with another desperate kiss, “The incense-”

“The incense will be fine, baby,” he insists, pouting slightly, “It’s not going to burn the house down.” 

He kisses you once more, wasting no time to fall backwards into his pillows and dragging you with him. For a moment, you’re straddling him, hovering over him, but he quickly turns and presses your back into his sheets before he’s rolling over on top of you, caging you in. You don’t mind it. You never mind him taking up your space, your breath, your mind. 

A hand comes up to rest on your neck as you take a moment to press both hands into his chest, forcing distance. His eyes snap wide open, and they’re shining like a dozen moons at once, even with his pupils blown out. 

“And if it does? It if does burn down the house?” you whisper, hands beginning to wander, one finding its way up and around the back of his neck, toying with the curls in its path. The other smooths over his shoulder, prepared to pull him back in impossibly close even without an answer. 

He’s looking down at you with all the love in all of Hawkins, in all of the world, as he smirks and answers, “Then I say let it burn.” 

"And I chose you, the one I was dancing with in New York, no shoes. Looked up at the sky and it was maroon."

Within a year of graduation, Eddie had made it very clear he wanted to get out of Hawkins. Corroded Coffin had been slowly but surely crawling their way to popularity outside of Hawkins, and when the moment was right, he came to you with an offer you couldn’t refuse. 

“Come with me. Move to New York. I know, it’s insane, but-”

“Yes.” 

“Yeah?”

“Absolutely. Was it ever really a question, Eddie?”

He was it for you, and so when he’d been prepared to beg you on his knees to move with him, it had been a no-brainer. You packed up all your belongings without second-thoughts, said goodbye to the town that never really deserved either of you, and started your life in a big city. 

The apartment was small and impossibly cramped, but the first night you two arrived, it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter if it was in the dingier part of town, or that you two were going to be penniless the next several months as you barely scraped by with rent. The moment you walked into that one-bedroom apartment, you knew it was yours, and you knew with certainty then that you had done it - you had escaped the bleary town and come out the other side. 

“Holy shit,” he sighs as he places down one of the last few boxes you’d brought with you amongst one of the several piles littering the living room. You’re sitting on top of one particularly sturdy stack of boxes, the top one serving as a seat most likely filled with your books from home. 

“Yeah,” you breath, looking around, completely stunned, “Holy shit.” 

Eddie turns in a full circle, almost as if he was drinking it all in, before he faces you once more. His face is a blank slate only for a second before the serendipity and sudden gaiety takes over his features. He’s unexpectedly running in your direction, arms wrapping around you and lifting you off the boxes as you squeal, swinging you around effortlessly. 

“We fucking did it!” he cheers over your giggles. When he finally finishes spinning you, letting your sock-clad feet find stability on the hardwood floors, he still doesn’t let you go. He only pulls you into his chest tighter, “We did it. We’re in New fucking York.” 

You smile brightly, pressing your cheek painfully against his t-shirt, nodding as you echo, “We did it.” 

The moment pauses as he pulls away as suddenly as he had picked you up, still radiating happiness.

“Hold on, wait here. I’ve got an idea.” 

He jogs over to one of the stacks of boxes at the entrance of the kitchen as you just laugh, “Not like I’ve got anywhere to run off to, Munson.” 

“You better not!” he calls over his shoulder, digging for whatever his brilliant idea was. 

You disobey him indirectly by wandering across the living room, steps slow and careful as you approach the large window offering a lackluster view. All you could see, for the most part, was the large brickwall of the neighboring apartment building. It was old and faded, scattered marks of paints from clear graffiti at random intervals. The city had clearly tried to wash away the few remnants of whatever art the random city vigilantes had covered it with, but the reminders of what once was remained. A nod to the fact that sometimes, no matter how hard you try to wash away things, their legacy lingers stubbornly. 

You don’t even hear Eddie setting up one of his old boomboxes with a favorite mixtape of the two of yours until it begins to play from the speakers, probably a bit more loud than you should have if you were attempting to be considerate neighbors. 

But neither of you cared. 

When you turn, you find Eddie approaching you steadily to the beat of the song playing. He takes a step with each beat, swaying his hips in clear exaggeration. 

He’s only several paces from you when he holds out a hand, grinning like a fool as he says, “Dance with me, sweetheart.” 

You take it, immediately. There’s not a trace of hesitation as you let the boy who held the sun in your eyes drag you across the barren living room, not even dancing to the beat but growing dizzy with love regardless. You let your own happiness mingle with his. As he spins you for the hundredth time, dipping you low and dramatically, you imagine that this is it - this is as good as it could possibly get. Because you’re with your boy, and you two are dancing to your own beat as the mixtape ends, and there couldn’t possibly be a more perfect person than him. 

He brings you back up to him as he stands up straight, and not a word is passed as lips crash together. An eager kiss, all teeth and revelations and silent promises of forever. It’s saccharine sweet as his tongue passes over your lips, begging for more closeness. Your chests are so tightly pressed together that with each breath he gasps in, you’re forced to exhale. 

“I love you,” he mutters, pulling back momentarily and staring into your eyes. His arms cradle you so carefully, as if scared that when he lets go, you’ll completely disappear from him, “I love you so goddamn much, it hurts. I can’t believe this is real.” 

“It’s real, so you better believe it, rockstar,” you reassure him, “Now shut up and kiss me.” 

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” he mutters, already so close to you that his lips brush against yours before he’s back on you, hot and heavy. 

You’re not sure how exactly it happens, or who first starts encouraging the steps taken towards the hallway, but you end up with your back against the wall as Eddie leans completely into you. You both feel drunk on each other, giddy on your current reality. After a particularly harsh tug on his hair, in sync with a yearning squeeze on your hip, he whispers ‘jump’ into your kiss. Hands find the back of your thighs, molding them into his knuckles as he carries you into the bedroom. 

The room is only filled with a few artifacts: boxes of both of your clothes, Eddie’s prized guitar propped up in one of the corners, and a mattress on the floor only covered in a comforter and no sheets yet. The afternoon light is golden as it flutters in through the open window, the sounds of the city muted by your breaths. 

He’s impossibly gentle as he lowers the two of you down onto the mattress, careful as he lets you unwrap your legs and flop back. Even with his carefulness, you find your own eagerness causing your movements to be too rough, bouncing back slightly and bumping noses with him. You both take a break to laugh. 

“Careful, you klutz,” he warns, balancing himself up on his forearms as he looks down at you in adoration. You don’t respond, instead lifting yourself to capture his lips in yours, pulling him down. Your teeth clash with his as you both continue to giggle into the open-mouthed kiss. 

He gives in, hands roaming as they slip below your tattered shirt you’d worn for the occasion of moving. His warm hands find home on your chest, squeezing softly and thumbs flicking your already pebbled nipples in order to pull gasps from you. He lets his head drop to your neck, his messy curls tickling your nose as he presses wet kisses down your jugular. Each kiss is in sync with the heavy beating of your heart. 

He stops when his path leads him down to your collarbone, sucking and nipping before releasing blooming skin to glance up at your face, twisted in euphoria. “This is real, isn’t it?”

His voice is so soft, you almost don’t hear him. But you look down at him, a boy made of contradictions - of sunshine and moonlight, of passionate and tender actions - and can only smile in serenity. 

“Yeah, it is.” 

It’s the only encouragement he needs to continue his worship, leaving no patch of supple skin unkissed. 

"The burgundy on my t-shirt when you splashed your wine into me, and how the blood rushed into my cheeks. So scarlett, it was maroon."

It could have been hours later or days when you’d finally tired yourselves out. It took an impossible amount of willpower, but eventually, you two had untangled yourselves from each other, leaving the warmth of your comforter to continue unpacking.

Or rather, you were unpacking. Eddie had taken to stretching out on the bed, back propped up on the bare wall behind him with his guitar in his lap, strumming mindlessly as he watched you begin to pull your clothes from one of the boxes. You took your time, smoothing out any wrinkles that had formed during the move, focused as you hung your shirts on hangers and put them away into their home in your new shared closet. 

Eddie pauses whatever song he had been practicing when he catches sight of a particular shirt you pull from the box. 

It’s a white t-shirt. Nothing impressive, but what piques his interest is the splotch of once-red-now-maroon painting the center of the fabric. It’s faded, feathered at the edges, but he knows the story behind that stain all too well.

“You really kept that shirt? Even after I ruined it?” he chuckles, shifting his guitar off his lap, scooting towards the edge of the bed. 

You hold it up, laughing as well, taking in the stain that refused to wash out, “Yeah. Sentimental value or whatever,” you tease, looking down at him. You take his breath away like this, in nothing but his Judas Priest shirt that barely reaches your thighs, nothing but underwear on underneath, hair in tangles from your previous activities. But you’re glowing, a glow that he’s been lucky enough to witness on multiple occasions, and it takes everything in him to keep his hands to himself, “Never really wear it, though. Guess I should get rid of it, huh?” 

“No,” he answers you far too quickly, “Never. Keep it forever. We can frame it, hang it in the hallway.” 

You know he’s not serious, but the thought still makes you smile. You’d never really get rid of it, far too attached to the memories it held, even two years later.

Another Harrington party. Another sea of almost-adults getting far too drunk, far too rowdy. You’d been to your fair share of them, but they never really got easier.

There’s an excitement in the air you can’t place. Maybe it was from graduation, still nearly six months away but on the horizon nevertheless. Or maybe it was simply from the holiday - Halloween. Whatever it was, it buzzed through the air and across your chilled skin. 

Your costume was last minute. A half-assed attempt at a pirate costume. It had been thrown together with things you could already find in your closet, for the most part - one of your more flowy white t-shirts, black jeans you’d taken scissors to the knees of in an act of temporary rebellion, heavy boots originally bought for hiking. The only real clues as to what you were had been aiming to disguise yourself as were the cheap eyepatch and doltish pirate hat you’d bought when shopping with your friends for the occasion. But you’d long forgone your eyepatch as the alcohol impaired your vision well enough without the loss of use in one of your eyes. 

The hat was a cheap velvet-texture, deep maroon in color and an extravagant black feather barely holding on by the factory glue used to secure it. 

Your friends had long since abandoned you. One of them went off with a jock who had caught their eye, the other getting dragged into a very serious game of beer pong. It hadn’t bothered you too much - it had left you to your own devices, nursing a cup of whatever punch had been spiked in a dark corner of the kitchen. You watched your classmates trail in and out for their own dose of alcohol without much interest. Until he walked in. 

He was glued to the side of the host himself, Steve Harrington. You overheard a couple of scolding sentences coming from Steve’s lips, something about ‘cutting him off’ and how he needed to ‘compose himself’. It was entertaining, at the least, to watch the boy fumble with himself. 

“C’mon, you’ve got to have more whiskey around here somewhere, pretty boy!” he whined, leaning into Steve as he lost his balance momentarily. 

“No, Eddie! I mean it, you’re cut off! Now stay here or so help me God-” Steve appeared irritated, but was far more patient than you would have been as he carefully guided his friend to lean on the counter across the room from you. He left the room in a hurry, and you snickered under your breath as the predictable happened right before your eyes - once Eddie was left alone, he immediately began to pilfer for more alcohol. 

It takes him a second, to your amusement, before he reappeared from the lower cabinets he had crouched in front of, letting out a loud ‘Aha!’ with a bottle of red wine in hand. He wasted no time in digging through multiple drawers as if it were his own house before he found a corkscrew, and the entire time, your eyes continuously flickered to the entrance of the entrance, waiting until Steve returned and would catch his friend red-handed (literally). 

He never did, though. Eddie has enough time to begin struggling with the cork, curses and mutters falling from his lips as you watched on. You’re only pulled from your watchful gaze when you hear a loud pop, and hear a triumphant ‘Fuck yeah!’ from the boy. 

Maybe you thought you should intervene, considering you were clearly not as far gone as Eddie, but you weren’t quick enough. You’d walked up behind him, about to announce yourself and stop him, when he turned suddenly, a red cup in hand that was nearly overflowing with red wine. 

Eddie hadn’t expected you to be so close, hadn’t even realized he wasn’t alone in the kitchen. Immediately, the cup collided with your chest and the red wine sloshed down the front of your shirt. 

You gasped, jumping back slightly, as he cursed, “Oh, shit! Fuck, I’m so sorry.” 

Wide, brown eyes found yours, looking sincere in their apology. 

He looked around before grabbing a random kitchen towel, unfortunately also a starch white, and began to try and dab at your shirt clumsily. 

“No, no, it’s okay,” you insisted as you felt your cheeks begin to burn. He continued to attempt to rectify the matter, clearly panicked. You have to eventually grab his wrists, pulling him and the now-ruined towel away. He looked back up.

It was almost like slow motion. His eyes met yours and you felt time stop. Your fingers stay pressed into his wrist, feeling the beat of his pulse, for far longer than necessary. 

“It’s fine,” you said once more, finally prying your grip from him. You might have been a little too drunk to care, and you’re sure that sober you would be disappointed in the comfortable t-shirt now being collateral damage, but for now, it didn’t matter. 

“I had no clue you were there. I’m- Fuck, I’m drunk. I’m an idiot. Sorry,” he slurred, looking down at you. 

You shrugged, playing it off, “Shoulda announced myself sooner. Don’t be sorry, it’s a problem for sober me.”

You really had liked that shirt. It was a shame. 

“You know, if you really wanted more alcohol, they still have punch left,” you jabbed a thumb over your shoulder, in the direction of the crystal bowl on the counter you had just been leaning on.

Eddie’s face scrunched up in disgust immediately, “Ew, God no. That shit’s way too sweet.” 

You bit your lip to fight laughter, “And wine is any better?” 

“It can be, when shared with someone as pretty as yourself,” he has a shameless, flirty grin on his features, raising his eyebrows suggestively at you. You broke, laughing softly and shaking your head. 

He had a point. The punch wasn’t very good. 

“Alright, then, mister ‘you’re cut off’. I suppose I’ll join you in your antics,” you turned to the sink, dumping the remnants of your punch before turning back to him and reaching for the bottle of wine he still held. 

His hand flew out of reach, tsking immediately, “Nope. Allow me.”

It wasn’t a good idea, but you let him take your now-empty cup regardless. He put it down on the counter and focused intently on filling it, nearly emptying the wine bottle as he topped it off just as full as his own had been. 

“Jesus, you’d make a shitty bartender. You’re definitely overpouring right now.” 

“Hush,” is all he replied as he finished the task at hand, setting down the empty bottle once he poured the last few drops into his own cup, attempting to make up for what was now soaking your shirt. It had started to dry, becoming cold and uncomfortably sticky, but you were too distracted with the boy in front of you to care. “M’lady,” he finally handed back the cup, looking far too proud of himself for not making another mess. 

“Thank you,” you teased, giving a messy and exaggerated bow, careful to not spill the wine. 

Once your glass is back in your own hand, his began to fumble into the pockets of the leather jacket he wore. It led to him spilling some more of his wine onto his own shirt this time, and you considered how lucky he was that he was wearing black. 

“Here,” you gave him no choice as you gingerly took the cup from his hand, freeing him up to find whatever it was he was so desperate to find in his pockets. You take the moment to glance over his costume: he was wearing black jeans, a black t-shirt, and a black leather jacket. On his face, a pair of small, circular sunglasses were perched haph-hazardly on his nose, the lenses a barely opaque red. You noted the obnoxiously long necklace swinging against his chest, a large silver cross at the end, “What are you even supposed to be dressed up as?” 

He yanked a pack of cigarettes successfully from his pocket, grinning like a fool, “Ozzy Osbourne. Duh.”

“Duh,” you mimicked, handing him back his cup of wine before turning more serious,“From Black Sabbath, right?” 

His eyes lit up. “You know Sabbath?” 

“A little bit,” you shrugged, but that was enough for Eddie. 

He slung an arm around your shoulders, cheesy grin and all, as he rattled the pack of cigarettes against your ear. “Say, you smoke?”

You didn’t, but for him, you did. “Yeah, yeah. I could use some fresh air anyways. Lead the way, rockstar.” 

"When the silence came, we were shaking, blind and hazy. How the hell did we lose sight of us again?"

“Eddie, you have to call them back and tell them you’ll do it!”

“No! I can’t!”

“You can and you will.”

The fight had started over Eddie’s casual mention of a phone call he’d had earlier that day. It had been six months of New York, of bliss, of living in a pattern of waiting. Every day, you were both waiting; waiting for the next show Corroded Coffin would book, waiting for the next chance he’d have to send off yet another demo to another record label, waiting for the shimmers of what could be his big break. It had been comfortable while it lasted - the two of you were still wrapping your head around having your own routine. Of having something that’s yours. 

The phone call today was the end of that waiting game. 

The management of a slightly larger band, extending an offer to Corroded Coffin - they wanted them to be the opener for their next tour. It wasn’t an overly large one, it hardly spanned over three months and most of the venues were painfully small compared to what you believed Eddie should be playing, but it was an offer. Gigs, travel paid for, an opportunity for exposure right at his fingertips.

He had told them no. 

“I’d have to leave. I’d be on the fucking west coast until December. I’d miss your birthday!” Eddie continues to argue. The two of you were standing in your living room, finally filling out. Shelves had collected framed photos, small knick-knacks that partially came from you and partially came from Eddie. You finally had a couch. It wasn’t a nice one, but it was a couch and it was yours. Something that belonged to both of you.

“You’d be playing shows! Selling merch! Gaining fans! This is your chance. Who cares if you’re not here for my birthday? We can celebrate over the phone, who cares?” your voice was breaking from frustration, not understanding how Eddie isn’t more excited. Instead of the joy you had expected to find on his face when he revealed the news to you, all you could see was fear. He was petrified. You finally drop your voice, taking on a soothing tone as you step in front of your boyfriend, taking his face in shaking hands, “Eddie, I’ll have other birthdays. But this? If you don’t do this… there might not be other tours.”

You could feel tears building up, some from exasperation, but most for the boy in front of you. This was his chance. He was your entire world, and you couldn’t let it pass him by. 

He has tears mirroring in his own eyes, searching your face frantically, “I… I don’t want to be away from you. Not right now, not when we’re just figuring all this shit out.” 

“I’m not going anywhere,” you tearily laugh, “Where would I even run off to, huh? No, stop this bullshit - don’t be an idiot. You go pick up that phone right now and tell that band they have an opener, and a damn good one at that. Right now.” 

He’s frozen, leaning his cheeks into your touch, eyes fluttering closed. He just wants to live in this moment. He doesn’t want to think about the enormity of the decision in his hands - he just wants to stay here, in your arms, in the space you two had come to call home. 

When your thumb swipes one of his escaped tears from his cheek, he caves. His voice is a ghost of a whisper. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah, I’ll go call them. But- But when I get back, we’re celebrating the hell out of your birthday, do you understand me? Fuck Christmas, Jesus has had, like, thousands of birthdays. When I get back, all I care about is you.” 

You believe him. You believe him with your entire being, never once worrying about him missing something as trivial as the celebration. 

“We sure will. Now go on, rockstar. Catch your big break.” 

He finally smiles for the first time since he broke the news.

At the moment, all you saw was a world full of beginnings for your boy. This was it, the moment you’d been waiting for, and you couldn’t have been happier for him. The rose-colored glasses never gave you the chance to see it was the beginning for the two of you - the beginning of the end. 

"Carnations you had thought were roses, that's us. I feel you, no matter what."

“I miss you.”

Those three months couldn’t have dragged on slower if they tried. But Eddie kept good on his word; every night, like clockwork, he called you. The two of you would take about anything and everything: he’d tell you about the latest crowd that included people who seemed to actually enjoy Corroded Coffin’s set, you’d tell him about the takeout you had for dinner after nearly burning your shared kitchen down, he’d mention the names of cities you could only dream of visiting, and you’d indulge him in theatrically stories of your latest customers from Hell at the small dinner you waitressed at. 

“I know you do. I miss you too, Eds,” you sigh over the line, curled up on his side of the bed, even though it had finally stopped smelling like him. Long gone were the scents of late night cigarettes and woodsy cologne, replaced by a nauseating sweetness of your own shampoo and perfume. You hated it, but you’d never let him know that. Not when he seemed to actually be so happy. His breakdown over the offer seemed to fickle now, as it was clear he was enjoying himself. He was living out his dream. Something neither of you had fully processed yet. 

“Hey, just two more weeks, right?” you whisper, eyes staring into the shadows across the room. Two more weeks. Fourteen days, and he was all yours once more.

It was your birthday. And it had been the most lonesome to date - a few coworkers had convinced you to go out for drinks after closing up the diner, but the entire time, you had just been anxious to get home and prepare for your phone call with Eddie. Just as the two of you had said, you had committed to somewhat celebrating over the phone. 

“Do me a favor. Go into the kitchen real quick,” his voice instructs over the line, and you perk up slightly. 

“What? Why?” 

“Just trust me, sweetheart.”

You do as he asks, making your way out of the bedroom and down the hall. The apartment is dark, and a bit cold, but you don’t pay it any mind as you make your way to the kitchen. 

“Okay, I’m in the kitchen. Now what?” 

“The drawer to the left of the fridge. Open it.”

“Our junk drawer?”

“Yes, the junk drawer,” his tone is teasing, never growing irritated with your endless questions, “Open it.”

You hadn’t really touched the drawer since Eddie left, normally only discarded random pens and junk mail filling it. But you're shocked when you find the drawer more organized than you remember it - and in the center of it is a pack of candles.

“Candles?” you ask softly, a smile playing at your lips as your free hand reaches down to grasp the package. You flip it around in your palm, heart warming at the notion, but still feeling confused, “Babe, I appreciate it, I really do, but I don’t exactly have a cake, or even a cupcake, to put these in. 

“You don’t? Damn it. If only I had thought of that,” he hums in a teasing tone, making you lower the hot phone from your ear and glare down at his caller id that illuminates the screen, “Well. What a shame. Hey, do you know the time by chance?” 

“Munson, I’m gonna kick your ass,” you mutter, turning to look at the clock over your oven, “It’s 7:59. What’s your game here?” 

He doesn’t answer, leaving you further puzzled, instead mumbling what sounds like to himself, “Three, two-”

“Why are you counting down?”

“One.” 

A loud knock echoes through the apartment, causing you to jump. 

“Okay, what the fuck is going on?” you hiss over the line, gripping the candles impossibly tight. 

“Go answer the door.”

“If you’re on the other side of it, I’m kicking you straight in the-”

“It’s not,” he interrupts, “I wish it was, sweetheart. It’s not. But just trust me, yeah? One last surprise, promise.”

You grumble your entire way to the door, still holding the package of candles as you stop in front of your front door. You pause, taking a deep breath. 

“That doesn’t sound like you’re opening the door.”

“Give me a second. Jesus, for all I know, you hired a hitman and I’m about to be brutally murdered when I open this door,” you bite back, and you can hear his guffawing laughter over the line. Your chest burns, wishing you could hear it in person instead, imaging the glee on his face in the moment. 

“Not a hitman. That’s for after we have life insurance, baby,” he drawls, and you finally muster the nerve to reach out and twist the knob. You swear you can hear chattering on the other side of the door. 

It takes you some struggling as you refuse to let go of the candles, but when you finally swing the door open, you gasp. 

There in the threshold stands your friends from Hawkins. Robin Buckley, Steve Harrington, Nancy Wheeler, and Johnathan Byers. It’s clear that Nancy and Steve are mid-argument when you open the door, but Robin stands there, proudly showcasing a birthday cake in front of her, shit-eating grin on her face. 

“Surprise!” she yells, capturing the attention of the rest of the gang that you and Eddie had left behind. Everyone faces you now, beaming, as you immediately go teary-eyed. 

“Oh my God,” you gasp out, dropping the phone and candles to the floor, in shock. Steve steps in first, chuckling as he pulls you into a hug. It’s only then that you notice the bouquet in one of his hands, cellophane crinkling from how tightly he’s holding you. He shuffles the two of you out of the way just enough so that everyone else can enter. 

“Your face! God, Munson was right, that was so worth it!” Robin barks as she steps up to the kitchen table and sits down the cake. She’s the next to hug you, yanking you out of Steve’s grasp and nearly crushing you, “Happy birthday,” she whispers happily into your ear, swaying the two of you as she continues to embrace you. You catch sight of Steve over her shoulder, wearing a look of amusement, chuckling and shaking his head. 

Jonathan is the one with half a mind to pick up your abandoned phone and candles at the sound of muffled yelling over the line. He wastes no time, putting Eddie on speaker.

“Hellooo? World’s best boyfriend here, remember me? Wow. Can’t believe you’ve already forgotten me. Guess I’ll go fuck myself.” 

You laugh as Robin finally lets you go, reaching up to swipe away the tears of jubilation.

Nancy rolls her eyes. “She’s in shock. Give her a second, Munson.” 

Jonathan continues to hold your phone as you’re passed into Nancy’s arms and then his. Each whisper their own soft ‘happy birthday’, rubbing your back gently until your focus is back on the phone.

“Edward Munson-”

“Ah! There she is! She lives! And remembers me!”

“Fuck off,” you half-sob, half-laugh. It may not have been as good as him standing there, on your doorstep and embracing you, but it was damn good, “You’re so dead when you get home.” 

“Dead? Wow. Weeks of planning only to meet my demise,” he sighs dramatically, “I suppose it’s a good way to go. At the hands of the most beautiful girl I’ve ever laid eyes on. Beat that, Harrington.” 

“Way to stay humble,” Steve chimes at the mention of his name, still grinning. He suddenly remembers the flowers in hand, suddenly thrusting them in your direction as he says, “From Eddie, by the way. He told me if we didn’t get you flowers, he’d castrate me.”

“And I meant it! That’s still on the table if you guys don’t make this her best damn birthday ever.” 

“I’m sure he would,” you sniffle, reaching out and gripping the flowers. Your heart cracks slightly, not knowing how to tell him that despite how absolutely endearing the surprise had been, it’d be impossible for them to make this your best birthday.

He wasn’t here. It could only make the top of the list if he were here. 

You feel no resentment, though, as you bring the flowers to your nose, smiling until your cheeks ache. “Red carnations. Pretty,” you hum, lost in the moment. 

There’s a beat of silence before Eddie’s voice rings out across the room.

“Carnations? Harrington, I said red roses. You’re a dead man walking.”

"And I lost you, the one I was dancing with in New York, no shoes. Looked up at the sky and it was maroon." 

Once Eddie returns home, it’s just as he promises - he almost doesn’t even make it through the door when his lips find yours at 3 AM, his suitcase thrown off somewhere to the side of your entryway. He’s too busy to care about anything else but you at the moment. 

“Fuck,” he gasps between kisses, “I fucking missed you. God, I missed you.” 

You’re silent as you nod in agreement against him, just eager to feel his touch once more. You’d waited three months too long for this moment, ever since he first left through that door for the tour. 

“Needy, baby?” he teases, just as breathless as you are when the two of you finally pull apart, him kicking the door shut behind him. Your hands are grabbing weakly at the lapels of his jacket, too eager to be embarrassed, “God, always so needy for me. Just how I fucking like you.” 

He’s always talkative, even during sex, but you have no patience for it tonight. “Shut up.”

“Aw, now that’s no way to greet your boyfriend you missed, is it, baby?” he eggs you on, looking down at you and your swollen lips with a wicked grin. 

You open your mouth to snark back, but he refuses to give you the chance before he’s picking you up, lifting you up and throwing you over his shoulder.

“Eddie!” you shriek, but laughter laces the protest. Your hands grip the back of his t-shirt as he begins to walk down the hallway, and you start to kick your feet out of defiance, but a sharp smack sounds through the quiet apartment as he playfully slaps your ass, putting an end to the kicks.

“Yeah, you better warm up those vocal chords,” he chuckles. The moment you’re back in your bedroom, he’s quick to toss you onto the mattress, finally mounted on a frame. The comforter flares around you, your head sinking into a pillow as Eddie is quick to remove his jacket and shirt, climbing up the bed between your legs, “Gonna have you chanting my name like a goddamn prayer, sweetheart.” 

He removes your pajamas as he has a thousand times before, but it still doesn’t feel fast enough. You find yourself squirming, trying to help him pull off the flannel pants and t-shirt you’d stolen from his side of the closet, but he stops all movements immediately.

He shakes his head, hovering above you, his hair like a curtain around the two of you as your top lip brushes his bottom one and his mint breath fans over your face. “Slow it down for me, yeah? Wanna enjoy this,” he murmurs. 

You obey, stilling below him save for your chest, rising and falling rapidly with waiting breaths. He finally dips down, his pick necklace tickling your collarbones as his mouth covers yours. 

A culmination of three long months is spent into the kiss. All the restless nights, long phone calls, endless yearning. You can tell that he had missed you, longed for you, just as much as you had him. 

It’s languid, the way your body reacts to each of his touches. As far as it was concerned, no time had passed. He does as he had said, taking his time, savoring each kiss he presses down your throat and over your breasts. He’s memorizing each crevice of you, every soft curve he’d dreamt of for 91 days. 

Your squirming resumes when his hot breath reaches your navel, but he doesn’t scold you, bringing his hands to your hips and pressing them down into the mattress. “Let me show you just how much I missed you. Let me take care of you, baby.” 

He’s enjoying it, the sound of your whines a better soundtrack than any of the music that had damaged his eardrums during the tour. His fingers dance over your bare skin, skimming right over the band of your underwear and tracing lines down your thighs. It’s agonizing - the waiting is terrible. 

Terribly worth it, as it turns out.

When he finally decides to speed up his teasing, bringing a finger to brush across your clothed slit, you gasp. Your hands twist into the sheets at each side of you, but he isn’t having it. 

“Now that’s not where those belong,” he mumbles, a hot breath over your panties sending shivers down your spine. He’s quick - his fingers suddenly hook into the waistband, and he’s pulling them down and off over your ankles with an eagerness finally matching your own. He throws them aimlessly to the bedroom floor, joining the rest of your discarded clothes recklessly. Neither of you care - you won’t be needing them the rest of the night. 

He settles into the mattress, a leg thrown over each of his shoulders before he grabs your hands and guides them to tangle into his hair. He’s still taking his time, sucking his way up your inner thighs and leaving flowering bruises in his wake. Once he reaches where you want him to most, where you’re aching for him so pitifully, he pauses.

He repeats his earlier words, “God, I’ve missed you.”

He takes you by surprise as he dives right in, tongue flattening and licking a long stride up, starting at your entrance. His nose bumps over your clit before his tongue begins to dance circles, painting a secret language between the two of you over the sensitive bundle of nerves. One of his hands joins him, middle finger circling your entrance slowly before he presses in. He sets a pace quickly, pumping the finger a few times, tongue working magic, before he adds a second one. They curl with intention, pressing into the spongy spot of your walls that he knew like the back of his hand. It’s the exact spot that makes your back arch off the bed.

He pulls back his mouth, fingers continuing to pump and curl vigorously as he looks up at you dreamily. He eases one of his arms over your hips, pressing down, holding you in place. 

He’s a dream. A goddamn dream. He’s finally here, looking up at you, grinning like a Devil as he watches you unravel at his hand. 

“So pretty. Always so, so beautiful, but especially like this,” he says more to himself, but you hear him, a moan falling from your lips. His mouth returns to you, lips latching onto your clit, sucking harshly. 

“Fuck,” you breathe into the still air of your apartment room, not caring if the neighbors hear but your chest too heavy to grow much louder, head fuzzy and all-consumed by him, “Eddie.”

He was right. His name falls from your mouth in pants, chanting to him as if he were your God. 

It only spurs him on, fingers working expertly as he alternates between sucking and lapping at your clit. You can hear how wet you are for him, how close you are before the knot forms in your abdomen. 

“Oh my God- Oh, fuck. Right there,” your hips buck involuntarily into his face, and he loosens his grip on your hips, letting you, “I’m gonna…G-Gonna…”

“Gonna cum for me, pretty girl?” he encourages, fingers curling harshly, “Cum on my face, baby. Do it.”

He puts his tongue back to work, You force your eyes open to catch sight of him, buried in your pussy, admiring how pretty he looked from this angle. The sight of his tousled curls, twisted tightly in your grip as you yank mercilessly, is all it takes for you to finally come undone. 

A broken prayer, repeated over and over as a warmth rushes over you. Your vision goes white, eyes tightly screwed shut, toes curling and thighs clenching over his ears. It doesn’t phase him, continuing his assault until he’s sure you’ve come down. You have to tug on his hair, more intentional this time, to pull him away from you due to how sensitive you grow. 

He rises, letting your legs fall limply against the mattress as he wears a boyish grin on his slick lips. Slowly, he makes his way up to you, back to the virtues of patience as he takes his time to finally kiss you. You can taste yourself on his tongue, a bitter sort of sweetness, as he cradles your face. 

“You good?” he gently asks against your lips. You can barely move, nodding lethargically.

“So good,” you croak, a smile breaking out. Your eyes crack open to see him looking down at you with pure adoration, “I missed you.”

You start to run your hand down his chest, reaching the zipper of his jeans before his hand stops you.

“No, not yet. We’ve got plenty of time for that. Just wanna hold you right now, baby,” he nearly pleads. You can’t deny him, not with his eyes shining like that, so you allow him to fall into place on his side of the bed before you curl up against his bare torso. 

The two of you stay that way for what feels like hours, his arms wrapped around you as he traces out constellations on your bare shoulder blades. Just outside of your solace, a bubble you’ve trapped yourselves in, you can hear the faint call of the city. Honks from cars on the street, shouts from pedestrians, the occasional siren. It’s all background noise to this moment. 

“I have something for you,” he suddenly whispers as you teeter on the edge of sleep. You hum in response, lifting your head lazily. He pats you gently, signaling for you to let him stand before he walks to his discarded jacket by the door. When he returns to your side, he's gripping a small, white box, tied with a scarlet ribbon. 

“A gift?” you ask, excitement helping wake you up as you sit up quickly, “For me?”

“For you,” he affirms, taking a seat beside you. Your knees bump as your hands fumble to take the box from him. A soft glow from one of the restaurants on your street floods between the curtains and into the room, a soft neon pink illuminating your features as you carefully unravel the red ribbon. 

As the silk falls, you hardly can contain your excitement before lifting the lid off the box. 

A necklace. 

Your eyes trace over it, already fawning with appreciation for your boy, but then you catch sight of exactly what the necklace is. 

“Your mom’s ring?” you can’t hide the emotion that shakes the timbre of your voice. It cracks into a million pieces. 

At the end of the delicate silver chain, sits his mother’s ring. The one you hadn’t even noticed missing from his barren right hand. 

“Happy birthday,” he whispers, pulling you in and pressing his lips into your temple. You’re still too stunned, too overcome with a million and one feelings all at once.

“Eddie… I- I can’t… this is-”

“I want you to have it. I think she’d want you to have it, too,” he insists, taking the box from your grasp and lifting the necklace from its cotton cushion, “I know it’s not a lot, but I just… I wanted to get you something that let you know how important you are to me. Something for you to always have as a reminder that I’ll come back to you. You’re it for me, sweetheart. This is- this is real to me. The kind of real that lasts forever.” 

You can tell he’s growing emotional, too, as his feather light touch brushes your hair to the side, bringing the necklace up around your neck and clasping it securely. When the ring falls to its new home at the base of your neck, cool against your skin, you can feel tears falling. He’s quick to swipe them away, his own watery irises peering into yours. 

“You’re everything to me,” he says this with vindication. With such assuredness it terrifies you, burrows into your bones and claims you. 

In this moment, you know he has forever stained you. There was no washing this mark he has left you off - there would forever be a piece of your heart occupied by the brown-eyed boy in front of you. 

All you can do is lean forward, hands gingerly threading through his bangs as you push them back to plant a kiss on his forehead. A crimson blush spreads across his cheeks and neck at the act of tenderness. 

When you pull back, he immediately lifts his fingers to the necklace he’s just gifted you, fingers careful but determined as they tug you back to him, kissing you with everything in him. He pours his soul, his body, and his heart into it. 

“I love you,” you exhale against his swollen lips. 

“And I love you.” 

You believe him, because he believes himself. That’s the thing about endings - no one sees them coming. 

"The mark they saw on my collarbone, the rust that grew between telephones, the lips I used to call home. So scarlet, it was maroon."

The next year proves you right. After that tour, Corroded Coffin became a phenomenon. A record deal falls into the boys’ laps quickly, multiple one-off shows selling out locally before the news finally comes that they are officially in the position to record their debut album. 

The two of you celebrate with cheap wine, but it’s as sweet as champagne in your contentment. 

The recording of the album is brutal. Night after night, you attempt to wait up on Eddie, eventually falling victim to drowsiness before he would wake you with his arrival from the studio in the early hours of the morning. You never minded, only happy for his warmth as he crawled right into bed with you, collapsing into you and letting the world melt away. 

Long gone are the days of struggling paycheck-to-paycheck as the boys’ can hardly keep up with printing enough shirts for their shows, merchandise selling out in the handfuls. 

You catch sight of a young girl wearing one of their shirts one day in the grocery store, and can’t help the flood of pride that overtakes your chest. Your boyfriend, your Eddie, was finally having all of his dreams come to fruition; the world was finally seeing him as the rockstar you’d nominated him as since that first night. 

You can tell that it’s tiring. Eddie is exhausted by the time the album is finished, but you can also sense the satisfaction he felt at finally completing it. When the first demo arrived, he wasted no time in electing you to be the first to listen to it. It was an entire ordeal - the two of you ordered your favorite take-out, curling up on your couch and pressing together as the same boombox that had played that mixtape on your first night in your home now plays his songs. 

Your reaction was exactly as he had expected, as he had hoped for. 

You had always been his number one cheerleader through it all. With each new song, you were gushing to him with admiration and reverence. Pointing out lyrics that tugged particularly taut on your heartstrings, praising the guitar solos and vocals he’d worked tirelessly to perfect. You don’t leave a single stone left unturned, claiming this was your new favorite album.

“Careful, sweetheart. You’re really stroking my ego here,” he warns, but his smile shines as brightly as your own. 

“Eddie, this is… this is… it’s fucking incredible!” you cheer, completely at a loss for words. You weren’t exaggerating - to hear all of his hard work paying off, to have watched him grow from covering Metallica in a stuffy garage to this left you starstruck. You were in absolute awe. 

He blushes, playing with his hair and bringing it up to hide his emotional reaction. 

The album could fail. It could become nothing more than a whisper in the night, but the fact that you liked it was all that mattered to him. 

You look at him earnestly, taking his cheeks in your warm and soothing palms, “I’m so fucking proud of you, Eds.”

And you were. You continued to be. The album was a hit. 

It climbed the charts with ease, just as you expected. Local alternative stations played it on loop. You were sure to hear it at least once during taxi rides, and had even heard it playing softly over the speakers at the gas station on the corner by your apartment complex. Eddie had been with you, and took pleasure in getting to inform the cashier that it was his song playing, his band was on the radio. 

It was New York, so the cashier couldn’t have cared less, but it made you glow with pride. 

But with a hit album came a new slew of responsibilities for the band, including a headlining tour.

The night that the band’s manager called Eddie, informing him they were set to start planning the tour, he’d run into the room, so frantic you were worried something bad had happened. 

“Holy shit!” he yells, causing you to shush him once you recovered from the scare he’d caused you. He ignores you, grabbing you off the bed, lifting you up and spinning you, just like the very first night, “Holy shit! We’re going on tour! A headlining tour! I’m going to be a goddamn rockstar!”

Once you process his news, you become just as animated in his arms, “What? No fucking way!”

“Yes fucking way!”

“Oh my God!”

“I know!”

You hear banging on the wall from the neighbors, probably shouting at the two of you to quiet down, but neither of you can contain your excitement.

“I’m going to be a goddamn rockstar, baby,” he laughs deliriously, placing you back down so that you’re face-to-face with him, “A rockstar.” 

“You’ve always been a rockstar, pretty boy,” you giggle, cheeks sore with elation, “The rest of the world is just finally getting the memo.”

The planning takes a while. Part of you is grateful, selfishly drinking in and enjoying the time you have left with him before you’re sure he’ll have to leave for an extended period. The names of cities you had never had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with once again enter conversations, talks of how far and wide the band would travel becoming Eddie’s favorite topic. 

You’re proud of him, you really are. But reality seeps its way into the crevices. 

What starts as the possibility of a brief, three month tour - something the two of you had already faced and defeated triumphantly - quickly turns into six months. And it doesn’t stop there. Six months could become eight, easily, with adding in a few pit stops to radio stations to guarantee continued radio-play. There’s talks of signings, of meet and greets, of music festivals. The more time given to planning, the more time given for the band’s popularity to grow even more. 

The entire thing expands without consideration, lifting Eddie right up with it, right out of your reach. 

The night before he’s set to leave for tour, your anxieties are getting the best of you. You had helped him pack, going over the list of necessities with him three times too many. He had everything he needed, packed tightly into a suitcase - everything except you. 

That night, you sit on your side of your shared bed, watching Eddie pace with excitement. You feel guilty that your own anticipation can’t quite match his. All you can think about is how long he’ll be gone: eight months, two hundred and forty five days. Five thousand, eight hundred and eighty hours. Over three hundred thousand minutes. You’d done the math. 

“Fuck,” he sighs, finally throwing himself down onto the bed beside you, “I still can’t believe this is happening.” 

You can’t bring up your insecurity, your fears, to him. Not when he’s so happy. Not when he’s finally getting everything he’d dreamt about for so long, worked so hard for. No, it would be selfish to share your unease at the time and distance about to spread between the two of you.

Besides, you had done it once before. Not on this scale, of course, but you convinced yourself it would work out all the same. He would call as often as he could. He’d be coming home to you. It would pass - it would work out. 

“It’s real, so you better believe it, rockstar.”

An echo of the past. A time that felt so far away from the two of you now. This time around, as you say them, you don’t feel the same joy coating your tongue. 

Your tone is supportive, so Eddie doesn’t taste any of the disdain. Later that night, as he’s kissing you, hips rolling to meet yours in a sacred promise, fingers intertwined in yours as you pant each other’s names back and forth, he still doesn’t taste it. All he tastes is euphoria. And he brings you right to it with him, over, and over, and over again. 

Euphoria tastes metallic by the end of it. 

He leaves bruises painted up and down your neck, covering your collarbones and chest like an art piece hanging in the Louvre. You can’t help but wonder how long it will take for his marks to fade, for the physical reminder that he was here and in your arms to disappear from your grasp. 

As he makes love to you, it begins to feel like a goodbye, because it is. 

He doesn’t mean for it to happen, but it does. 

The first month follows similarly to how his first tour did. Nightly phone calls, whispered love confessions and discussions of each other’s day. For a moment, you convince yourself that all of your fears and anxieties had been silly. They almost recede from your mind completely, fading with his love marks on your collarbone. 

But then it begins.

Phone calls become less frequent. Every night because every other night, until they’re eventually weekly. At some point, you only have the privilege of hearing his voice over the line monthly. It is a slow burning fire, turning everything you had built with him to ashes. Conversations that once could drag on for hours turn to ten minute discussions that end in him rushing off the phone, someone on the other end of the line demanding his attention more urgently than you did. 

You can’t even fight it. You need him, but they need him more.

You know you’ve lost him when he stops saying he loves you. It’s subtle, you don’t even believe he’s noticed, but one night’s phone call is cut particularly short, and the end arrives.

“Hey, baby, I’m sorry, but they need me for soundcheck,” he says, the line staticky with white noise, making it hard to hear him. 

He’s never felt farther away, and they’re not even on the west coast leg of the tour yet. 

“Oh,” you whisper, disappointment gripping your lungs, “Oh, that’s fine! Go, they need you.”

“Yeah,” he chuckles. You miss hearing that in person, that soft laughter in the shell of your ear over inside jokes and one too many glasses of wine. “Rockstar duties and all. We’ll talk more later?” 

“Of course. Go give ‘em, Hell,” you keep your tone light, but the tears have started to build up across your waterline, “I love you.” 

The line goes dead before you can even finish your sentence. The dial tone echoes back to you, and it doesn’t matter how hard you strain, no words of affection can be deciphered in its deafening ringing. 

That’s when you break.

The flood comes, tears racing down your cheeks as you roll over and clutch the pillow that you’re not even sure was once his. The bed no longer has a clear boundary, a side that belonged to him and a side that belonged to you. It’s all muddled together now. You’re not even sure you’d recognize the smell of his cologne now.

A heart has never broken so quietly. The sobs are there, but no sounds escape your mouth as you whimper. You had always known it would be hard, everyone had warned you, but you had always assumed you could take it, because Eddie would be by your side, hand slotted with yours as it was the two of you against the world. But now you stood in the storm, and the space beside you was eerily empty. It was all a bit much. A gaping hole forms in your chest that night, gory as it bleeds scarlet red for a boy a world away, and you know that there is not a single bandage in the world to heal it.

He doesn’t call back after that, and the hole tears larger. 

There’s a few texts here and there. But none of them ever say the three words you so desperately crave from him. You feel like strangers. 

After two months of radio silence, save for two text messages from him, you’ve made up your mind.

He never calls, so you never tell him. You gather what belongings can be called solely yours, which isn’t many, and you write a letter in your cowardice. You find an apartment on the other side of town. There’s a nice job waiting for you, something that pays better than waitressing. 

You leave your key on the kitchen counter beside a vase with wilted carnations. 

"I wake with your memory over me, that’s a real fucking legacy (it was maroon)."

Six months later, the ache never fades. He calls. When he returns from tour to find an empty apartment, cursive letter calling it quits, he calls. You almost consider changing your number at one point. 

There’s a flood of text messages. Small letters on a shining screen filled with all the words you needed to hear so many months before. All of the things he should have said, now revealed too late. 

You don’t reply, because if you reply, you’ll change your mind.

You tell yourself it’s for the best. That in order for him to achieve what he’d wanted, he couldn’t have someone back home weighing him down. You were a road bump on his path to everything he was destined to be, and this was for the best. 

At some point, he gets the message. You wish he hadn’t, selfishly so, but he does. The phone calls stop. The text messages don’t light up your phone at midnight anymore. You keep up your end of the lease on your once-shared apartment, sending checks to pay your half of the rent until the lease agreement has ended. You have no clue if he moves. Returning to that side of town would simply hurt too much. 

A new normalcy is found. It is a lonely one, but it is one all the same. Sparse phone calls are still exchanged with your friends from Hawkins, but none of them ever bring up Eddie. You’re sure they know, that he had told them, that they had witnessed the aftermath (if there had been any). They were always his friends first, though, and so when the calls dwindle, it doesn’t surprise you. 

It’s a year later when someone mentions his name to you. You had kept up well enough with Corroded Coffin, the last remnants of your past life being something you couldn’t get rid of. You knew they were thriving; they were in the talks of releasing a second album, and going back on tour soon. His name is mentioned when a coworker brings him up. 

They ask you if you want to attend the Corroded Coffin show with them next week. They have a spare ticket and would prefer to not go alone. 

You lie and say you have plans.

But the only plans you have on that bustling night are the ones spent in your apartment. Your one-bedroom apartment is in a nicer part of town, better views out of the window now. When you pull back the curtains, you don’t find a brick wall forever tainted by what once was - you can see the entrance to a music venue that’s sign currently advertises tonight’s show. 

CORRODED COFFIN, ONE NIGHT ONLY - SOLD OUT

You avoid the window at all costs as you get yourself ready for bed that night. Neighbors had already off-handedly warned you it would be a noisy night, claiming you’d feel as if you were at the show yourself based on proximity. On your way home from work, you bought earplugs. 

But the night grows older, a chill in the air as the clock strikes ten, and you can’t help it. You’ve been laying in bed for hours now, earplugs in, only feeling the faint thrumming of intense bass for less than an hour when you finally stand up. You approach the window timidly, scared of what you find. Maybe a ghostly reflection of him, standing in the street, holding up a boombox playing a mixtape of your favorite songs. 

It’s a bitter hopefulness that is full of childish dreams. 

When you stand in your window, curtains pulled back and earplugs finally disregarded on your nightstand, Eddie Munson isn’t standing on the street. All that is there is the neon glow of a red sign that shatters crimson shadows across your cheeks. 

He’s not on the street. He’s too busy on the stage inside, being the rockstar he had always been destined to be. The one he could be now that you had let him go.

All that you see as you look out the window is your own tired reflection, donning nothing but a wine-stained t-shirt and a delicate, silver chain around your neck, a ring you couldn’t bring yourself to return resting heavily between your collarbones. 

"That’s a real fucking legacy to leave."

reblogs, likes, and comments appreciated! <3

[bortmcjorts]

[ID: a drawing of pye from outer wilds, standing with her writing staff. she's wearing an orange nomai space suit without the helmet, and she has a light brown face with curly darker brown fur. end ID]

figuring out how i want to draw the nomai, so here's a pye since i am obsessed with her !!!

[amee-racle-ofmyown]

little hatchling and Feldspar ::]

rambles in the tags as per usual

[oldbutchdaniel]

What does he mean by "and Daniel"? What does he mean by "throughout the years"? What does he mean by that?

(He could've been referring to the books with Daniel, but I'm choosing to think he wasn't).

Also i'd probably disagree a bit with the "kept things" definition but that's beside the point here.

THIS IS SOOOO CRAZY ACTUALLY. throughout the years ..... i'm like dropping hints that my show is going to adapt the devil's minion chapter. or just do some crazy stuff where armand follows daniel around for decades after they first meet. i guess the usual interpretation of a devil's minion chapter in tv verse is that it'd end around 1985 but rather than turning him armand erases his memories. this is huge for me personally because i've been recently imagining a world in which armand maybe does this but continues to see daniel well into the 2000s. it's kind of my take in this imagining that the last time armand sees him is just before they move to dubai but god even imagining a world where armand sees him all the time. armand saw daniel in february of 2020 (valentine's day) and the only reason he didn't see him until 2022 was borders closing. and daniel doesn't remember any of it. crazy possibilities contained within "throughout the years...."

[mutxnts]

i'm genuinely curious since i know a lot of people have different opinions on this!

[lueddegen]

Two very unfortunate (or hilarious) things about the german version of the murderbot diaries is that not only did they manage to translate the title All Systems Red as Systemausfall (eng. system failure) when one future installation turned out to be named System Collapse, they also managed to turn Rogue Protocol into Exit Szenario (no need to translate) right before Exit Strategy came out.

[almoststedytimetravel]

I am endlessly fascinated by the existence of the Persona stage plays. Like, I have seen some of the most unhinged shit from those. I have never been able to find the stage plays in full, only in clips and single frames. None of them have any actual Persona's in them. I know there is one instance where Ken goes to summon his because he is drawing his evoker in the clip. But it never reaches the point where he actually uses the evoker because the clip was focused on Jin beating the shit out of Akihiko. I'm not even certain they're completely real and that they're not something I imagined seeing.

[batsplat]

Chad reed on always the entourages creating the drama. I cannot believe that is what caused rosquez downfall but also given the level of Vale's celebrity and the way he carried himself, I can totally believe that it was the entourage (iPad stand I'm looking at you) that brought the end

(about reed's 2020 quotes in this) yeahhh I mean the downfall was caused by a whole bunch of factors, not just any one thing... like all great tragic narratives, it feels inevitable from a global perspective and yet thoroughly preventable in its specifics, with loads of points where you think, 'oh, if things had just gone a little bit differently'... there's this tension in how, in the end, maybe it would've always gone wrong, but a lot had to come together for it to go wrong in quite such a spectacular fashion

reed's definitely correctly identified one of the factors - the entourages, and valentino's entourage specifically. though fwiw, I did cut off the article before reed predicted the marc/fabio rivalry was headed a similar way (this was from 2020, obviously before the arm injury):

for better or for worse, fabio has skipped the villain arc to head straight to the depressed frenchie arc

regardless of whether this rift would have happened or not, the idea that marc would have gotten a new appreciation for the situation valentino found himself in is at least an interesting one. though if anything, the rivalry with fabio would have more closely paralleled valentino's with the other aliens (new talent coming through, but with the previously dominant rider still a regular winner). now is the time marc's learning what it feels like to come back from a prolonged absence from being competitive at the highest level - and of course with a new superstar simultaneously making his debut

so yeah, anyway, tragedy, you can point to all sorts of strains and pressures and tension inherent to professional sport that were exacerbated by the personalities involved and the influence of the media and the passage of time etc etc. but never mind all that, let's get back to entourages! I know you mention everybody's favourite b-list shakespeare villain, but I'm going to basically mostly ignore him because it's well-trodden ground. yeah, it does help to have one guy who's whispering poison into your ear for a prolonged stretch of time before showing up at your motorhome doorstep with a bunch of telemetry and a dream. and yeah, there were people in valentino's entourage definitely encouraging this path to doom. but what I'm also interested in is the flip side - why nobody stopped him

I would like to submit into evidence this passage detailing the thoughts of vale's mechanic alex briggs. now briggs in this excerpt blames two groups for how things went down in 2015:

the yamaha side (specifically the press group) for not talking him down from the ledge before the presser

the crew chief and other assorted italians on the team for being too "yessy" and not standing up to him

let's briefly (for a given value of the word) focus on the first one. if you're a random yamaha pr person and you see the valentino rossi run to a press conference (given he was late) with a bunch of papers in his hands (well, he's not actually holding the papers in those gifs, but presumably somebody's got them), it's probably a tough ask to expect you to hold up the valentino rossi and ask him what exactly he's intending to do with those papers. also, is he really going to back off because you, random yamaha pr person, have asked him to please not accuse the competition of sabotage? added context is that some at yamaha were aware of what valentino thought about the race at phillip island (which we'll get to in a sec), but god knows if the pr people did. unless he confided in anyone on the yamaha side what the plan was, a lot of them would have been blindsided too - which does come back to the problem of how big a deal valentino is and how maybe you're a little more cautious about questioning what he's about to do with those papers than you would be with somebody else. it does feel like perhaps a bit too much to expect for them to have launched some last-minute intervention, or to even know what kind of intervention they could have gone for beyond low-level comedy hijinks to stop him from even getting to that room. why did nobody from yamaha place a banana skin in his path

but we do know that at least some in yamaha were aware of valentino's great big phillip island sabotage theory, because lin jarvis has very helpfully told us as much (from the post-sepang media scrum):

Q: Do you think it was a mistake for Valentino to [provoke?] Marc so much on Thursday with a very personal and hard attack? Jarvis: There are always many different ways of addressing different problems - Valentino chose to do it in that way. Perhaps that is what provoked Marc into being quite aggressive on the track. I really don't know, you need to ask Marc not me about that. Every action has a consequence. That's life. Q: And did you know before that Valentino was going to be so aggressive with Marc in the press conference? Did you know before? Did you discuss with Valentino about this decision or you didn't know until it happened? Jarvis: Personally, I was not aware of that. I was aware of Valentino's opinion of the race in Australia, but I was not aware... but I was not aware that he would - Q: Don't you think because Valentino at the end of the day is an employee of Yamaha he should discuss before with you about such an important decision, to attack a rider of another factory in such a heavy way [...]? Jarvis: You can't control every incident, everything that happens and you know, generally we have a very good [...] relation, connection with our riders, we talk to them before about things before, but anyway I think this is something Valentino felt strongly about and it was his decision and that's it.

note the use of the word "personally", which does leave the door open to others within yamaha (outside of valentino's inner circle) knowing what was going to happen. jarvis, unsurprisingly, comes down pretty firmly on the side of 'well what were we supposed to do'. given that jarvis admits he knew valentino's theory and is hardly a stranger to valentino's modus operandi - after all, he was already team boss at the time of another tense press conference in sepang eleven years prior that took place in the wake of valentino accusing a competitor of messing with him - you do have to wonder whether yamaha could not have tried a little harder to stop valentino. but again, accounting for the power of valentino's status and the power of his character, I'm personally unconvinced yamaha could've done much to convince valentino to change his mind

so then: the italians. a little bit of context - briggs started working with crew chief jerry burgess in 1994 and both of them were on mick doohan's team for all of his five 500cc titles. when doohan's injuries forced his retirement, valentino inherited his championship-winning team upon moving up to 500cc. jb was vale's very first crew chief in the premier class, and him as well as briggs have been working with vale since december 1999. understandably, this is a very tightly-knit group. it is one that made the jump to yamaha with valentino - here's just a quick excerpt (also from oxley's valentino rossi: all his races) about briggs' thoughts on that move:

When Valentino decided to defect to Yamaha, he was determined to have his crew go with him. Only one stayed at HRC. "We first got to know about the Yamaha deal in Portugal, I think [September 2003]," Briggs continues. "I wanted to stay with JB, because I hadn't finished learning what I wanted to learn. "I remember a clandestine meeting in the car park at Phillip Island, about salaries and how everything was going to work. It was really exciting. When I very first started working with Honda the whole group was very much a team. Towards the end we felt like it started to become a bit us and them: the engineers and management, then the mechanics and the riders. They'd sort of got too big for their boots - they'd designed this wonderful bike, so it was like it had nothing to do with us. That made it easier to leave.

and also about the move to yamaha, from the 2020 barker biography of valentino:

But with his trusted crew chief Jerry Burgess and most of his other team members from the Honda garage agreeing to defect with him, Rossi had the crew he needed, not only to win but also to enjoy his racing. It was a heartening display of loyalty and something of a risk for all involved. ‘When I announced to the mechanics that I was going with Valentino they said, “I’m coming too,”’ Burgess later explained. ‘Some of those guys were leaving very secure jobs and taking a big gamble.’

the group also survived the move to ducati (obviously a deeply frustrating two years not just for the guy riding the bike) and the move back to yamaha. but then, valencia 2013, valentino announced his decision to fire jb in a press conference organised for the pair of them. his 2013 season had been deeply frustrating - yes, he had gotten a podium in his first race beating both marc and dani, but after that generally speaking he couldn't come close to matching the other aliens when healthy. he was comfortably the fourth best rider that year, scrapping and clawing his way through midfield battles and having to rely on misfortunes befalling the three title contenders to achieve his podiums and his sole victory at assen. he was considering retiring at the end of the 2014 season once his current contract expired, but wanted to try everything he could to see whether he could be competitive again against the world's very best. and so, he made the decision to roll the dice and get himself a new crew chief, the italian silvano galbusera

now I have to say, personally I have a lot of time for this decision (even if it was maybe not... uh, enacted in the most graceful of manners, given how sudden it was). I come from a sports background where a certain ruthlessness in personnel decisions is encouraged and generally praised - if something isn't working, you should have the courage to make a change, even if it's deeply uncomfortable (including on an interpersonal level). also, while it was a sudden departure, it's not like burgess was that keen on sticking around much longer (again from the same oxley book):

Valentino ended his collaboration very suddenly at the end of 2013. Burgess was shocked but not too much, because he already knew that he was coming to the end of his own career. "When it ended for me I'd already been doing it 30-odd years and I'd told Valentino a few weeks earlier that I wasn't going to sign any more multi-year contracts. I was 60 by then, so I'd go year by year. I'd already signed a contract for 2014, but I would've thought if we hadn't had any more success by then that there wasn't much point in continuing. I felt we would win more races but I was more doubtful about championships. "I'd read enough sporting biographies to know that sportsmen change their coaches towards the end of their careers. It can give them a spike in results but it doesn't change the overall story. Looking back, Valentino's career went on longer than I expected. He enjoyed some success but no more championships and that's what you race for. Of course he was in the unique position of being able to get a factory bike until he retired. He was very special and deserved everything he got."

which, look. again, personal bias, but to me it's reasonable to part ways with somebody who doesn't think any more titles are plausible, because at that point it's just somebody who has a very different view on your career than you do and may well not stick around for much longer anyway. also, at the end of the day, jb was wrong! valentino came extremely close to winning another title, and just because he didn't, doesn't change the fact he could have. if it had rained on the 8th of november 2015 in valencia, we might be having a very different conversation. (or if they hadn't changed the bloody qualifying format post-2012.) honestly, if the 2016 and to a lesser extent the 2017 season had gone just a little differently - a working bike in mugello here and an unbroken leg there - he could have been a genuine title threat in two more seasons. in any case, what it does show is that valentino even at the end of 2013 was still as determined as ever, was ready to engage in what was a huge gamble (given how almost all his success had come with the highly decorated jb) on the off chance he might find what it took to win again. this will not have been an easy decision for valentino. here's a write-up of the presser at valencia, that stresses how uncomfortable the occasion was, how surprising a decision it was to jb, but how publicly at least there was a lack of recriminations (which, to be fair, wouldn't be much fun to do in a shared presser):

(you'll note that the phrasing in the presser about athletes attempting to extend their carrers by changing things up is echoed in what he says in that book interview where he adds that it doesn't change the overall story, again suggesting he didn't really believe valentino would be competitive. he also uses the same phrasing in ANOTHER interview that confirms as much, but I think you get the point.) valentino said at the time, "it was a very difficult decision for me because I have a great history with jeremy. he is not just my chief mechanic. he is like part of my family. my father in racing". this is somebody he'd been working with since age 21, somebody who is not only revered within the paddock for his work with several of the sport's greats but is also a man who valentino obviously has a close personal connection to. meeting for the first time when vale snuck into the honda pit to check out the bike he might ride next season, hitting it off immediately, countless rowdy dinners together, parties, jb and another older colleague sitting back when food fights started, watching valentino grow up, working with him throughout all his big manufacturer switches, all his successes and all his failures... as much as anything else, it's evidence of how strong vale's desire to win was, how determined he continued to be, to make this choice at this stage of his career. and jb was open to the idea (at least publicly) that it might end up being a smart call:

the 'dirtiest' part of the whole affair is how it was actually carried out - it's not great form to tell your crew chief the day before you end up doing a press conference together to announce your choice. for whatever it's worth, this is how valentino justified the timeline:

and lastly, which I think is the most key part, is valentino's belief. because at the end of the day, the only reason why he's doing any of this, and the only reason why what was to come was possible at all, is that he himself still thought that he could challenge for another title - as much as that belief had come under strain:

now what this piece also goes on to say is that nobody believes this will work. nobody believes that firing jb will lead to better results. people expect that this is going to lead to his retirement, quite possibly at the end of 2014. it's worth just remembering sometimes how extraordinary valentino's return to the top of the game post-2013 really was, how it went against how we expect a rider's competitive lifecycle to work, went far beyond the longevity exhibited by any top rider before or since - all while going up against riders who are widely believed to be some of the best to ever do it. valentino beat jorge in both 2014 and 2016, and remains one of two people to outscore prime marc marquez over the course of a season. not to engage in too much rossi prop here, but sepang 2015 can't really be understood without all the frustration that led up to it, to this one golden chance, this miracle that everybody had believed to be impossible (sometimes even valentino). this wasn't supposed to be happening. it was happening. and then, so so close to the finish line, valentino could feel it slipping, slipping, slipping away

but of course, we still don't know whether changing crew chiefs is the key factor that made him competitive again. maybe he just needed a bit longer to get back into the swing of things post-ducati disaster. maybe the bikes just started to suit him better. hey, maybe it was that nifty exercise regime he'd engaged in a wee spot of espionage for so that he could pinch it off his teammate. what we can say, however, is that valentino's choice both tells us a lot about his mindset, as well as (to finally bring us back to the actual point of this post) representing a massive shift in his 'entourage'. this is what briggs is referring to in his quote - the italians. the new crew chief. the people who couldn't stand up to valentino. now obviously, as mentioned above briggs had worked with jb for the better part of twenty years and can hardly be considered a neutral party. here were briggs' feelings on the matter (yeah it's from the same oxley book again, I got it new for eighteen quid which is a very generous price, would recommend):

When JB was out at the end of 2013 it was like losing my mechanic dad. I remember being in the garage when we found out about it. Then they arranged a kind of farewell, a kind of hodgepodge farewell. It was terrible, I didn't like any of it. I was just hiding behind one of the bikes in the garage, crying, going, what's going on here? It didn't seem right to me. I think maybe Valentino thought he would get faster again sooner, but I think it took at least a year to get the taste of the Ducati out of his mouth. I think if he'd stayed with JB we would've won the championship in 2015.

which. look. we don't have time to unpack all that. but. the point is that obviously briggs wasn't exactly a massive fan of the change within valentino's team, and his comments about the 2015 season do have to be read with that in mind. as to whether vale really would have done better in 2015 with jb at his side, your guess is as good as mine. all that being said, a part of me wonders how much losing that grounding presence enabled valentino's late-2015 spiral. maybe not in terms of talking valentino out of the great big fluctuating lap times treachery theory - to state the obvious, valentino got himself involved in plenty of drama during jb's time as a crew chief. jb himself occasionally helped add fuel to the fire in those feuds, like his infamous comment about how he would be able to fix the ducati's issues in 80 seconds that casey still brings up every three business days (the comments were poorly phrased but also somewhat taken out of context, in that jb was talking about a specific set-up problem). he's generally been pretty happy to be forthright about valentino's rivals, for instance this about casey:

My feeling at the time was that Casey probably only had one game plan, and having watched Casey over the years, he doesn't have a plan B. If it doesn't go his way from the outset, it's probably one of the weaknesses that he had through the youth that he had, through the lack of experience that he had. That's not a criticism of him per se, he was still only 22 at the time.

(this is about laguna seca 2008 and how he helped valentino win that race, including in plotting out vale's rather ruthless tactics - which casey was of course not exactly a fan of.) or these. uh. harsh comments about dani from spring 2010:

Q: Is that atmosphere or track knowledge? Is it like the Spanish finding something extra at the racetracks in Spain? JB: Well, therein we show the weakness, don't we? If you can get up on that weekend, on the technical racetracks of Spain, why can't you get up on the technical racetracks like Australia, where the Italians do? Lorenzo is a guy who will and does. Stoner has been able to get up on tracks all over the world. Unfortunately, Dani Pedrosa's into his 6th year in MotoGP, and he's won 8 races, Jorge Lorenzo's two months into his 3rd and he's won 6. It's night and day between those two, is the way I see it. Dani's an extremely fast rider, but a shockingly poor racer. Q: Were you surprised at Jerez [2010] when Pedrosa fought back when Lorenzo passed him? JB: When did Dani fight back? With two laps to go, and he didn't even get close enough to try to come back. Dani has never been a fighter in races, he's a lovely kid, don't get me wrong, but you can see that Lorenzo, having Pedrosa in front of him, it was never going to be the way he was going to finish that race. He was going to finish on the ground or he was going to finish in front of Pedrosa. That's the sort of race that we want, we had that with Biaggi and Valentino, and from history with Schwantz and Rainey. All the good riders have always had somebody they have had to put the target on the back of. It was Doohan and Gardner, and Doohan won that battle hands down, and I think Jorge Lorenzo's going to win this battle [with Pedrosa] hands down.

kind of a dick! so his attitude to valentino being valentino has generally been a) well having enemies is good, actually, with an added slice of b) good luck to his enemies :) - see also this quote (from the barker biography) in the context of the gibernau rivalry:

And that made Rossi even more dangerous, as Jerry Burgess pointed out: ‘Valentino is the sort of rider I wouldn’t want to get angry. He can take you apart on the track.’

so yes, jb is also perfectly brutal in his own right, as you presumably have to be to work alongside valentino so closely for so long. he is, however, also somebody valentino has a massive amount of respect for, somebody who helped turn him into a legend and is responsible for a lot of vale's success - not least, of course, in the pivotal move to yamaha. he was replaced by a man of a far far lesser stature in the sport, one who presumably would have been grateful to valentino for the biggest job he was ever going to get. if briggs is right and there was a shift in valentino in 2015, surrounded as he was by italians (derogatory) who could not stand up to him, who allowed valentino to insist on war and peace on the pit boards, to focus more and more on things that had nothing to do with riding... it would be going a little too far to say that valentino was missing an adult in the room given he was, in fact, in his thirties and should have been capable of being that adult. and who knows what jb would have said or thought or done about the great big childhood hero deception theory. but sepang 2015 was the culmination of a lot of things, including a pressure cooker of a season that grew more and more tense and put more and more stress on everyone involved - perhaps for none more so than valentino. maybe, just maybe, if he'd had somebody around him with fifteen years of experience in handling him, who could have just occasionally told him to knock it off, to concentrate on the racing, to keep things simple (always jb's defining philosophy), to maybe not get so wrapped up in the great big spanish collusion theory...

or maybe it wouldn't have mattered! maybe we're getting cause and effect all wrong here; maybe valentino was deliberately fashioning his entourage into one that was only going to give him positive feedback. maybe he would have just stopped listening to jb, maybe the very decision to fire jb makes it clear he was no longer interested in what jb had to say. it's a tragedy, after all! maybe it was always going to go like this. maybe it was always going to end like this

speaking of entourages, marc's manager played a bit of a cameo role in fanning the flames just a little further (article from marca, 26/10/2015):

alzamora obviously will be somebody valentino is familiar with, having raced him in 125cc and also having just coexisted in the paddock over the years. valentino could of course be lying, but idk, why would he? he's already made his case by this point, and what if alzamora were to contradict him? if it's true and this conversation did happen, you do have to say it's a spectacularly unhelpful intervention from alzamora. even if marc was mad at valentino, why the hell are you telling valentino this AFTER sepang 2015? what's the plan here buddy

^ 1999 world champions: alzamora in 125cc, vale in 250cc and alex criville in 500cc. people think motogp lore is complicated but if you know like, five guys, you're set for about twenty years of drama

which does get to the heart of the matter - a lot of these people have big egos and their own agendas and they love to run their mouths. they like talking a big game and getting involved in things they really shouldn't be getting involved in. is reed right that these people in the riders' entourages 'created the drama'? well, no, I think the two men at the centre of this particular tragedy were plenty capable of doing that themselves. nevertheless, you can point to how professional sports (and motogp in particular) forces you to rely heavily on a small group of people to keep you sane at the centre of the storm, and the risks that can emerge when that small group collectively unmoors itself from reality. you can point to the perils of fame, both in making your reliance on your inner circle so unnegotiable as well as in providing you with the status and power and ego to ignore anyone who might wish to change your mind. you can point to specific figures in this story who managed to incite the conflict between the two of them, as well as how the pressure cooker competitive environment they were operating within helped set up the ultimate catastrophe. you can point to how valentino lacked anyone with the power to stop him - both in the direct sense of forcing him to reconsider and the indirect sense of commanding his respect enough to make him see sense. maybe, just like in 2004, valentino had simply been "looking for an excuse" and he was always headed down this path. or maybe if somebody had just held him back a little that year, kept him focused on his riding, maybe if the right person had intervened at the right time...

maybe, maybe, maybe. that's why it's a tragedy