#eventual OT3

[drbtinglecannon]

Anyone else here think about Laios/Shuro/Kabru or is it just me

[drowninginships]

Okay hear me out: ot3 where Shepard and Simon are equally fascinated with Baz's vampirism and are constantly testing out different stereotypes and legends on him to see what's real, and they spend all their alone time together just talking about how much they love Baz.

[fumifooms]

Namalin

Namari x Falin

Easy short rarepair spotlight post for prosperity~ This one I didn’t think of on my own for once, I don’t know if it’s just I forgot the decided-on ship name or what but I remember seeing really nice art and a couple posts about it that I can’t find again 💔 Namalin warrior you are out there and not forgotten ty for making me see the light

I like that Namari’s critical of Falin! I have a whole character analysis on Falin if you’re interested, but it’s generally well noticed that people around Falin idealize her a lot. Laios, Marcille and Toshiro all put her on a pedestral of ultimate goodness in the world, a saintess if nothing short of perfection. Sounds like Chilchuck felt sort of creeped out by her vibes, uncomfortable because he couldn’t read her, so unlike Namari it seems he preferred steering clear of her rather than debate opposed ideologies like he usually does. Makes sense if unlike Namari his issue is with her cryptic aura rather than the stances she does show. "… The dungeon is no place for soft hearts" my ultimate namalin scene <333 It’s fun because while this scene is there to show us a lot of things, mostly to establish Falin’s characters better as it’s the first flashback of her we get, the conflict in it is more than anything else Falin vs Namari in how they contrast and clash and approach situations differently. Namari wants security in swift effective violence and thinks Falin too soft for her own good when she prefers a pacifist approach and promotes compassion even for the "undeserving" in Namari’s eyes. Falin steps between the battle ready Namari and the ghost, fearless. Falin effortlessly gently exorcises the ghost without one step back, quickly. Falin proves someone wrong. Falin proves someone wrong.

I love thinking of Namari being surprised when she learns new aspects of Falin. I like Falin having the power to shape people’s views on her. With Falin ships the most fun part for me is usually that point where Falin/the relationship becomes a clean slate: the person realizes they haven’t been seeing all of her, realizes there’s more of her they hadn’t noticed or that she hadn’t shown, that there’s change, a shift in the views on each other and the dynamic a bit.

Namari often feels like an external view looking in to me… I need to make a proper analysis on her but like. I made a lamari post once (analytic more than personally invested rip sorry) and I go with the same Namari take here, I think she’s someone who tends to have an outsider view on people and relationships if that makes sense, she’s a coworker before anything else and she’s content staying at a distance, she’s not objective per se but she tries to keep feelings out of her choices and how she sees people (her lil arc on not staying to save Falin despite the existing camaderie but in the end asking to work for the Flokes more because she wants to stay with them). She’s serious no nonsense on the job but friendly off the job and likes having casual friends, but she’s not… She doesn’t really feel connected to the group. She’s so focused on doing her job, even if she does get impulsive and passionate and too assertive for her bosses’ tastes, so focused on working her reputation and life from the ground up that that professionalism and attitude limits her social life. It doesn’t help that her reputation makes her widely judged, so she probably enters social spaces on the derensive. The closest person she was to pre-canon as far as we knew was Chilchuck and even they have a very "coworker I get along with" dynamic more than friends, with a similar sense of boundaries, humor and world view. Also like canon says a few time, the party didn’t really try to get to know each other well pre-canon, didn’t hang out after work often no one knew where Marcille was from and no one thought that was weird (also how no one had the instinct to ask about Senshi’s past) etc, the notable exception is we’re shown Namari and Chilchuck hitting taverns together and having a grand time. Everyone’s fine with things as they are, they get along decent even if not everyone considers each other friends exactly. Where I’m getting at is that to me, it feels like she tries keeping emotional distance. Emotional distance from people in general being something which in my interpretation of Falin is also present, which would make it a theme and common thread interesting to explore imo. But yes like, Namari looking at Falin, and how everyone treats her, and being more skeptical, seeing her for what she is a little more, maybe even uncharitable. "Why is everyone treating her like she’s all that? She’s gentle sure but seems like a doormat to me" and then one day she comes running up with her mace ready to cave in someone’s face to protect Laios. So yeah… Keeping her distance but one day Falin offering her some gentleness that feels very too personal for someone who’s not used to being genuine and simply showing that they care… Them talking a bit which leaves her stumped and mindblown in a quiet way when Falin defies her expectations. Namari growing on Falin when she stays and decides to open herself up more, or when Falin ends up reading her really well like she’s shown to do with her parents and Marcille’s worries. She’s very attuned to worrying and why and when different people do it especially when it comes to when they worry for others, perhaps because she does a lot of that too, so I think she’d nail down how Namari does care for the rest of the party and it’d make Namari feel seen both in a warm validating way and in a scared naked way.

We see in the tentacles chapter that she’s someone’s who’s very protective and looks out for her peers in a tough love way. She’s overbearing but it’s because she wants everyone to have the best chances. I like that she’s very confrontational and somewhat pushy and rude, but it’s tough love, it’s protective care: asserting herself to better protect and defend. The opposite of Falin’s type of care, quiet and self-sacrificial devotion. They’re barbarian x healer but they’re also bodyguard x bodyguard in their attitude and role. … What I want for them is slow burn slice of life of being coworkers and slowly getting to know each other better, pretty fluffy, but god, put this way they’d have the potential to be such a hot layered mess of insanely mutually devoted codependence… Falin taking a hit for Namari and Namari being scarred by it forever, lots of arguments about it, my god.

I like that she’s the fighter to Falin’s healer. I looove thinking of scenes of Falin healing Namari, necessitating touch and like, a moment of slowing down and sitting together in silence, too intimate, the perfect opportunity to connect that neither truly want to take until one day they do. I love how onesided I imagine the relationship would be at first. Again, as per my interpretation of Falin, I think Namari would have all these little observations and opinions on Falin meanwhile Falin really doesn’t think of Namari much at first. So Namari thinks a lot about Falin and thinks she’s got her pinned down but hasn’t (not that she’s fully wrong, she’d have credit and confront Falin on some of her flaws like the doormat thing), while Falin is very passive about Namari and doesn’t think deeply about her or anything but she read Namari’s insecurities and logic well. Not unlike how Laios was the one who seemed to understand Namari’s way of care the best in the party in the tentacles episode, and how he was very understanding of her choice and reasons. In Falin’s case it’s more like, the objectivity of passivity… She cares about Namari less than Laios who generally seeks to form bonds, so her lack of investment allows her a neutral perspective. In that way another parallel with Namari that I’m drawing, except Namari lets feelings from her opinions seeps in more… Onesided beef my beloved. I’m going insane save me this post was a mistake. I think Falin takes the crumbs of friendship and love where she can without expecting or asking for anything more than what’s offered, and I think her relationship with Namari (or anyone really) would start out the way it did with Marcille: the other takes the initiative and they end up spending time together, Falin is friendly but unattached until the bond gets gradually and wordlessly strenghtened through regularly spending moments together. So! I think Namari would need to take a lot of the first steps, which since again she’s confrontational & argumentative and doesn’t hold herself back on that front that could spark a lot of conversations I think. Ooor since Falin cares about Namari less than Laios and Marcille she allows herself to be bolder herself lol. Or also circumstances force them to spend time together like dungeon party getting separated shenanigans.

I think their personalities match cutely, I think falin would try to protect namari like she does others but also Namari simply doesn’t need protection, just support. And I think they’re complementary in that way that Namari’s friendly but also won’t sugarcoat things, and I think if she takes an interest in Falin it could go from there and she could develop some understanding of her and idk like an intrigued crush….

Namari wants stability & security & to, like, not be judged and rejected and exiled lol, to find her nest her pack the place where she feels good and wanted in. I think having a fitting partner would help in that (similarly to how the found family with the Flokes seemed to. Oh another parallel, Falin’s top priority is protecting Laios her brother and what Namari are a family figure) and I think Falin would fulfill that cozy protection and that warm ‘being seen and not judged’ feeling. But also Namari would run up to her and yell about her trying to sacrifice herself ever.

Another fun thread to explore: post-canon guilt for not having gone to save her. Sure, they weren’t close, but they had some nice memories, didn’t they? Namari cares, and it stings despite herself when it feels like people think she doesn’t. Oh it wasn’t a lost cause after all, oh it’d have worked out, oh I could have stayed loyal and it wouldn’t have compromised myself in the end. Wanting to apologize to Falin, or just ahnging out with her and sharing a moment after she wakes up. And tangent but that’s interesting to think about… Narratively, I think the purpose of Namari and Toshiro in the story, beyond strenghtening the theme of "seek to understand what is different from you and promote unity despite them" and fleshing the cast and worldbuilding, is Toshiro’s purpose was being a foil & tool in Laios’ arc (trouble connecting with people) while Namari’s was being and a foil & tool in Marcille’s arc (standing up for ideals without being out of touch with harsh realities and needs). They are the conflict that push our protagonists to grow— and they explore different ways of dealing with a situation or topic, different ways of growing into themselves on that end: Laios needing to listen to others more and Toshiro needing to focus on voicing himself more to be able to connect, Marcille needing to learn ideals sometimes cost too much and Namari needing to internalize that ideals are sometimes worth risks (not only to be able to find a reasonable but fulfilling life balance, but also to get in touch with their compassion: Namari restricts her own too much and Marcille is too harsh on people she deems to be breaking values, like Namari not risking her life and career for a friend with no promise of success, or even like how Namari is harsh on Falin’s way of doing things : too gentle, too soft, too idealistic) (similarly to Chilchuck’s arc with Marcille too, and he also plays a hand in advancing that arc in the Namari chapters). We are getting far from namalin sorry ummm preview for future analyses like Toshiro’s contrasting approach to grief and accepting loss.

More post-canon namalin! Thinking about a timeline where… Namari is fond of Falin finding herself and going off to do her thing. "Finally!" she thinks. If she’s still for hire, maybe Falin would want her to come along, either as guide or bodyguard <3, she knows Namari has a lot of good avice on a lot of things to give, plus they’ve worked together before. She hires Namari and they travel for a bit. Travel would do Namari good too I think, even if her end goal is to settle and I think Falin’s would be too eventually. Seeing sights that light her wonder for the world and going places where people don’t know her story, don’t recognize her face or her name. Them, feeling free. Finding a companionship that feels uplifting instead of stifling or charged. Namari having been too in her head about reputation and social games and money that they hit the roads and spend time in nature and it’s like, woah. I’ve been living in a small world with made up rules.

Ahh yes romance, Namari and Falin kissing after 3 years of not really knowing each other despite seeing each other every day then 2 months of wanting to spend more and more time together until they’re an inseparable duo! Workwives. I want them to stand next to each other during campire time and Namari cracks little jokes and Namari laughs. I want Namari to gift Falin a bug caught in amber and for it to be their wedding/promised to each other thing.

TLDR

Rowdy but levelheaded barbarian x gentle healer that will also cave your face in with a mace I like it…… They’re an interesting duo of mixed stuff. Protection being your purpose and what you’re worth for, literally being a meat shield (Laios, Tansu), finding your individuality recognized and validated through a growing bond with the other. Sticking around as a love language. Also bug immortalized in amber and it being beautiful.

Nevermind this wasn’t short. Um! Anyways.

[sergeant-angels-trashcan]

okayyy???? i JUST found out that apparently Gaz was a cop that Price ran into on a mission and was like "hmm. cool. now you're special forces" and????????????

Kyle "I was just here to be a cop" Garrick and Kate "I was just here to be a bridesmaid" Bishop are ABSOLUTELY ride-or-die for each other. They pinkie swear on everything. They are best friends. They are secretly pining for each other. They kiss each other on the cheek all the time and still don't get it. They are so badass. They're both terrified of spiders.

[unfinishedslurs]

welcome to eden

this is a love letter. inspired by this song

As soon as Steve picks up the phone, she knows she’s making a mistake.

“Rob?”

“No,” she says instead of hanging up like she should. 

“Nancy?” He sounds more alert now, and she can picture him standing up straighter, calling to attention at the sound of her voice. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?” 

“Not really,” she sniffs, hating herself for it. “I—can we talk?”

He’ll say no. He’ll say no, because it’s one in the morning and he was probably asleep before the phone rang and she shouldn’t be asking to talk years after she broke his heart and didn’t even remember—

“Of course,” he says, and Nancy could kick herself. “Over the phone?”

“No. Not over the phone. I’m sorry, it can wait, you can go back to bed.”

She hears him huff a laugh, even though there’s nothing funny about any of it. “I wasn’t in bed,” he assures her. “Am I picking you up?”

Tears spring anew to her eyes. “If that’s okay.”

“Works for me,” he says. “See you soon.”

“See you,” she echoes, and hangs up. 

She spends the time it takes pacing quietly in front of the front door, berating herself for using him like this. But she needs to talk to him, and the sooner it’s over with the better. 

Headlights cut through the window way too soon, and she nearly throws herself out the door. 

She gives him a look when she opens the car door, telling him she knows how many traffic laws he must have broken to get here this quick. He just grins in return, ready to point out the felony in her closet. 

“Where are we going?” He asks, and her heart clenches. He’s so good. He’s so good, and she couldn’t-can’t love him like he wants. She has to tell him. 

Tonight probably wasn’t the best night for this conversation, but her skin feels like it’s peeling off and the faster she says something the quicker it will be over with and she can go back to how it was before. Back when she didn’t have anyone to talk to, because Robin might never speak to her again after she breaks her best friend's heart for the second time. 

Just rip the bandaid off, Nance. 

“I don’t know,” she says instead. Maybe she’s a coward. “A field? Somewhere I can see the stars.”

“I can do that.”

The drive goes by in silence, Nancy staring stubbornly out the window. She can feel Steve periodically checking on her, and she knows he wants to know why she called. She can’t open her mouth to say it in the suffocating enclosure of the car. She rolls down a window. 

They get to a field almost out of Hawkins, and the car is barely in park before she’s climbing out, going around to sit on the hood. Steve cuts the engine and follows. 

She still doesn’t say anything. She called him to have a talk, why can’t she just open her stupid mouth—

“Nancy?” Steve asks, gentle in a way that used to make her melt. She pulls her legs to her chest, feeling vulnerable. “What’s wrong?”

“Jonathan and I broke up,” she finally gets out. 

“Oh shit.” He looks genuinely surprised. “That sucks, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, it was never going to be forever.” Except she’d thought otherwise. She thought they were Nancy and Jonathan, the two of them against the world. She hunches her shoulders. “We never talk anymore, and he was pulling away from me, and he was lying to me for months-“ she shakes her head, clearing the anger she feels at that. “It doesn’t matter. I’m starting to realize there’s things I need to work on, too. A lot to work on, actually.”

“I don’t know what that could be,” he says, flashing her a smile filled with boyish, roguish charm. “You’re already the best person I know.”

She sniffs, and suddenly she’s crying into her knees, shoulders shaking. He freezes beside her, before wrapping an arm around her and pulling her into his side. She leans in for a second, chasing the comfort, before remembering what she came here to do and ripping away violently. 

“Fuck,” she whispers. “Fuck, I’m so sorry. I don’t—I can’t—this isn’t what I—“

“Hey,” he soothes. “Slow down. Let it out.”

She wipes her eyes, suddenly furious. “I don’t want to date you,” she says, finally looking him in the eyes. “I don’t—I’m sorry for calling you. I just remembered how much better you used to make me feel, but then I realized that’s like…really shitty of me.”

“Why?” He asks, as if Nancy didn’t come out here to break his heart again. “I want to make you feel better. I like knowing I can make you feel better.”

“I don’t want to lead you on,” she says, mouth screwing up. “That’s why I called you out here. And I know it’s shitty of me—“

“Nancy, you’re not leading me on. I…I don’t want to date you either.”

That stops her in her tracks. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh,” he echoes quietly. “I—don’t take this the wrong way, okay, ‘cause I know I’m gonna sound like an asshole saying it, but, uh, I can’t do that again. And even outside of that, I don’t like you that way anymore. Uh, sorry.”

She tries not to sag at the overwhelming relief she feels at that. 

“Are you sure?” She studies him closely, trying to see if he’s saying this for her sake or if he means it. “Back in the Upside-Down, and when we were fighting Venca, it seemed…”

He grimaces, and Nancy thinks if it wasn’t dark she’d see the beginning of an embarrassed flush on his ears. “I…may have been feeling things,” he admits. “I was testing the waters, I guess. I started feeling nostalgic, and you were there, and everyone was encouraging me, and it all just ended up in this weird…feelings soup. Sorry.”

“You said you wanted to have six kids with me,” Nancy reminds him. “And travel the country in a Winnebago.”

He groans, covering his face with his hands. “I am,” he says, “so sorry. I don’t know why I said that. That had to be so weird for you.”

“It was kind of sweet?” She tries, not letting her relief show. Not yet. 

“We haven’t been together in years, and I decided to tell you I used to dream about you having my babies. How do you deal with me?”

“Well it helps to know you were dropped on your head. Puts everything in perspective.”

“Yeah, yeah, yuk it up.” He looks at her, really looks at her, and she tries not to fidget under his gaze. Too earnest, too caring for someone who doesn’t deserve it. He’s always tried so hard. To woo her, to be a better person, to keep back the vicious streak she still sees in him. “I meant it, when I said I loved you,” he tells her gently, no sign of that cruelty that had him painting her as a whore for the whole town to see. “Back then, I mean. I just wanted you to know that.”

She wants to cry. “I know. I’m sorry I couldn’t say it back.”

“It’s okay,” he says like he means it. He leans back against the windshield, looking at the sky. After a moment, she copies him. 

They watch the stars together, and the air feels clearer. 

“Where do we go from here?” She asks, afraid of the answer. 

“What do you mean?”

“What happens with us now?”

“Well,” he says gingerly, like he’s testing the waters. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard you’re a pretty kickass friend.”

Friends. She doesn’t know that she and Steve have ever been friends, not properly. Even after the apologies they made to each other, she doesn’t know that she could call what they had friendship. It wasn’t substantial on its own, needing Jonathan as the barrier between them. When it fell, so did they. 

“I haven’t had a friend in a while,” she admits. “Robin is kind of a novelty for me. She’s amazing.”

It’s funny, in a way. She was so jealous of Robin, of how close she was with Steve in a way Nancy wasn’t. She’d thought, at first, that it was because they were so clearly dating. After Robin told her they weren’t, she realized how badly she’d just wanted friends. She missed hanging out with Steve, missed his laugh and his squint and his bitchy attitude. She’d hoped that eventually they’d get to that point, was sure they were almost there before Starcourt. In a way, she’d been jealous of Robin for stealing Steve. She knew it was ridiculous. Steve had found a friend, a real friend who hadn’t cheated on him or slept with his girlfriend. She couldn’t begrudge him that. 

She just missed him. 

“She is, isn’t she?” Steve grins, but sobers up quickly. “I didn’t really think about that. How lonely you must be, since…”

She’s already shaking her head. “It’s not your fault. I didn’t reach out.” 

“I didn’t exactly reach out either.”

They fall silent again, at a loss for words. Barb’s death, as always, the canyon between them. 

Finally Nancy huffs. “It’s both of our faults,” she declares, “or neither of our faults. I don’t know. I just missed you.”

“Well shit, Nance, I missed you too,” he says, touched. 

“I’ve heard you’re a pretty kickass friend too, you know,” she says, glancing at him. He smiles. 

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, Nancy Wheeler, I would be honored to be friends with you,” he says, and sticks out his hand to shake, like they’re meeting for the first time. 

She stares at him, and starts laughing. “You’re an idiot, Steve Harrington.”

She shakes his hand. 

Max has always felt like a mirror. One Nancy wanted to smash, pull her out of the shards of her reflective grief and hug. Stroke her hair the way she wanted someone to do for her and say you’ll get through this. So Max could hear it from someone who knows. 

Except Nancy doesn’t know anything. Still drowns in her guilt, the ball and chain dragging her into the depths. She can’t help when she’s still such a mess, three years later. 

Her hands clench when Mike says Max is pulling away from Lucas. She wishes she could look her in the eye and tell her you don’t have to be me. You can be better. 

She’s Mike’s friend. They barely know each other outside of a quick hello as they cross paths or fighting monsters. Max has enough on her plate, she doesn’t need her friend’s weird older sister butting in to tell her how to mourn the right way. 

Nancy just hopes she’s getting out of bed. Remembering to eat. Brushing her teeth. She had more cavities in the year after Barb died than she’d ever had in her life, and she knows Max doesn’t have insurance. 

Now, sitting next to Max’s hospital bed, Nancy wishes she’d reached out. 

With school back comes studying, and with studying comes Eddie Munson, in all his super-senior glory. Nancy is going to get him a diploma if it kills her. 

He laughs when she tells him so. “Shit, Wheeler,” he says. “The day something manages to get you is the day this shithole goes down for good.”

Robin turns down her offer to form a study group. “I’m pretty sure if I joined, I’d just distract Eddie, and let him distract me, and we’d end up throwing things at each other until you killed us. Sorry. Steve’s going to help me study for finals, though!”

She looks at Steve, eyebrow raised. She’s pretty sure it’s fair to be dubious, since she was the reason Steve passed his finals in the first place. 

“I’m her rubber duck,” he says as an explanation, and she nods in understanding. 

Her mom isn’t about to let her study alone with a boy in her room, though, and especially not a boy like Eddie, so she drags him to the library three times a week. He complains, he bitches, he tells her he doesn’t care about his fucking history class anymore. She just hands him a Rubik’s Cube she found to keep his hands busy as she quizzes him. 

Three sessions in, he slowly puts a worksheet down and screams into his hands. 

“Stop that!” She kicks him in the shin. “If you get me kicked out of the library I’m never forgiving you.”

“I can’t do it,” he says, staring up at the ceiling. “I’m so fucking stupid, Nancy. I can’t even get past question two. Is this torture? Did I die and go to hell? That would be fitting, wouldn’t it? Doomed to repeat high school for the rest of eternity?”

“Stupid” her ass. She knows what kind of work goes into those campaigns of his, has absently flipped through his annotated fantasy novels and left feeling as if she’d seen the story anew. Plus, she went and made a tape of everyone’s favorite songs, just in case, and she knew damn well how quickly he’d taught himself to play the song he did in the Upside-Down. “Stupid” and “Eddie Munson” don’t belong in the same sentence, much less belong in the same space in his brain. She hates Hawkins High just a little bit more for it. “Stop being dramatic. What are you stuck on?”

“Fucking nothing! I can’t focus, it’s driving me fucking insane. I keep trying, I swear, but it’s like I can’t even read anymore! This always happens, I swear to God it’s killing me more than the fucking demobats ever did.”

“Don’t joke about that,” she snaps. “You’re smart, Eddie, you know that. You just need to try.”

His face twists, and she realizes that was the wrong thing to say. 

“Oh, thank you, Miss Wheeler, why haven’t I thought of that? Sorry for wasting your time, I’ll get out of your perfect hair now—“

“Sit down,” she protests as he gathers up his stuff. “Eddie, I’ll help you work through the problem, okay? Just sit down, please.”

“No, Nancy!” He swings around, eyes wild. “It’s what everyone always says. Just sit still, stop doodling, be quiet, pay attention, try fucking harder…I tried, okay! I’ve been trying, I tried for fifteen fucking years, and I can’t do it! I might as well just drop out and get it over with. I’m fucking sick of this.”

“Okay!” She feels herself getting riled up. “You want to fail so bad, fine! I’m not your keeper, do whatever you want.”

“I will!”

“Fine!”

“Fine!”

They stare at each other, not moving. Finally Eddie storms off in a huff, flinging open the library door in a grand gesture she pretends not to see. There’s a sinking feeling in her stomach, but she can ignore it. 

She pretends not to notice when he comes slinking back five minutes later, shuffling his feet. 

“Sorry.”

“For what?” She asks primly, going over her notes. 

“Nancy, please.”

She sighs. “I’m sorry too. I’m just…frustrated.”

“I’ve been told I’m pretty frustrating,” he offers. 

“It’s not…”

“It is,” he says, sitting down. “It’s okay. God knows I piss myself off with this shit.”

She studies him, looking over his defeated face like he’s one of her flashcards. “You’re trying your best,” she says, sounding it out. She can’t really make sense of it. After all, trying her best has always been straight A’s, not stopping until she knew everything she needed to and more. 

“It’s not good enough.”

“It will be,” she says. “You’ve got me this time.”

“Listen, I know you’re trying to help—“

“Do you want fries?”

“What?” He blinks at her, shocked, as she starts packing up her things.  

“We’re not getting anywhere today. Sometimes you have to step back, and come back with a clearer head.” Usually she locks her door and cleans her guns, the repetitive motion soothing her mind until she can think again, but she has a feeling that won’t work for Eddie. 

“I usually just give up.”

“I don’t. Get your backpack, we’re going to the diner. Dinner’s on me tonight.”

At the diner, he makes her laugh so hard soda comes out her nose. The next day, they go to the library again. 

After a couple of days, he solves the cube. After three weeks, he nearly kicks her door down rushing to show her the B he got on a test. 

Two months later, he throws his cap into the air and his cane on the ground. Swings her around, both of them laughing. 

“Nancy fucking Wheeler!” He crows. “Achieving the impossible yet again!”

“Eddie, put me down!” She shrieks gleefully as he stumbles. She barely makes it back to solid ground before two more bodies are slamming into them, Steve and Robin whooping in their ears. 

It was weird, to see Steve and Robin effortlessly communicate the way she and Jonathan always had and have it be so unabashedly unromantic. She’d always thought that knowing someone like that was a sign you were meant to be, and they did it while still loudly proclaiming Platonic with a capital P. 

She and Jonathan didn’t do it much anymore. It was like dancing to a song that was always a beat off, syncing for just one moment before stumbling again, unsure that they were still allowed this. 

She’d known him better than anyone, once, and he’d known her the same. Now she wonders if that was ever true. 

“So,” Eddie says, throwing himself onto her bed. “Steve.”

She sits in her desk chair, raising an eyebrow. “What about him?”

“You broke up with Jonathan, right? Are you going to get back with him? I thought you would, but it's been months and neither of you said anything.”

“No,” she says. “No, that’s not what I want. It’s not what either of us want.”

“Really?” He rolls over, eyes searching. “What happened there, anyway? With both your boys. I’m a nosy little asshole, and I wanna hear it from you.”

It makes her laugh, the way he admits to it so freely. He grins wolfishly at her, baring his teeth in a grin. That’s probably why she tells him the truth. 

“I wasn’t okay, when I was with Steve,” she says honestly. “I was distant, grieving…I was a mess, and I stayed with him because I didn’t know what else to do. With Jonathan…I was getting closure, I was healing, and things were good between us. They were so good, but after a while, we just started to…deteriorate. I don’t know if we lost momentum, or if the stress just got to us, but we started fighting more and more,” She traces the desk with a finger, remembering the sour taste of Oliver Twist on her tongue. It was a shitty thing to say. “I thought we’d figured it out, for a little while, but then we just…stopped talking. I think, maybe if we’d talked more, we could have worked it out. But I’m…not upset that we didn’t, you know?”

It’s a different kind of loneliness when your partner won’t talk to you. It was different than grieving, different than not having anyone to talk to at all. Because even when she didn’t have friends, she had Jonathan. And then, slowly, she didn’t anymore. 

“Nancy, you’re one of my best friends, so-”

“Steve is your best friend.”

“Steve is my best best friend,” she agrees. “But he’s also more than that? Like, I think we’re literally soulmates. Platonic with a capital P soulmates, but, like, it feels like more than friendship sometimes? Like sometimes it’s like he can literally feel my bad days even when I haven’t talked to him yet. He told me once he just knows sometimes. It’s like I hit my hip on my desk and he felt it, but emotionally. It’s wild. It’s like the drugs literally combined our minds. Where was I going with this?”

“I don’t know,” she says, slightly bewildered. She wants to ask how they do that, but Robin barrels forward. 

“Right. So outside of mine and Steve’s platonic more-than-friendship, you’re kind of my best friend? And you’re, like, the coolest person I know.”

She blinks. She’s not sure she’s ever been described as cool before. 

After Barb, Nancy tried to cut her own hair. 

Her mom found her in the bathroom, unshed tears in her eyes and hair a mess on the sink and floor. 

She hadn’t laughed, hadn't said oh, honey, your beautiful hair. Just clucked her tongue and took the scissors from her hands. Stepped behind her and took over, took the uneven mess and made it something good, something presentable. 

She didn’t say anything until she was done, setting the scissors on the counter. “Sometimes,” she said, wetting her lips. “Sometimes we need a change, before we can move forward.”

The closer she gets to Emerson, the more she feels like she’s letting someone down. Mike. Max. Jonathan. All the people who have relied on her, all the people who trusted her to fight.

In a strange turn of events, her mom is the only one she doesn’t feel is disappointed in her. Her mom is more excited about college than she is sometimes. Chattering excitedly over dishes about the classes she’s going to take as Nancy dries and smiles and tries not to feel like the ground is being pulled from under her feet.

This is everything she’s ever wanted. Why does it feel so wrong?

She takes Eddie to the gun range, because having a gun in her hands has always made her feel safer. More in control. More like the badass protector she wants to be, than the scared little girl she feels sometimes. 

Eddie stares down the scope of the gun and shoots like he has experience, but doesn’t hit a single bullseye. 

“Your hands are shaking.”

“I’m in a fucking gun range and a bunch of small town hicks were hunting me not too long ago,” he snaps, taking another shot and missing the target completely. He swears and changes the magazine. “Excuse me if I’m a little bit on edge.” 

She hadn’t really thought of it like that. “You didn’t have to come,” she says. “I just thought with everything that’s happened, you should know how to use one. Just in case.”

“I know how to use a gun,” he rolls his eyes. 

“You know how to shoot one.” She looks from him to the target pointedly. “Not the same thing.”

“Deep. I could really feel the judgement there. Tell me, is there anything else wrong with me?”

“There’s security cameras all over this place. We’re not in Hawkins, so there’s no mob coming after you. I’m here, and I do know how to use a gun. No one is going to hurt you here.”

“I know all that.”

“Do you?”

He scowls at her. She looks back unflinchingly. She’s been here plenty of times, and the guys laughed at her until they didn’t anymore. By the time she brought Eddie, all she got was a raised eyebrow and a “boyfriend?” from Hunter at the desk. She didn’t know what was more incriminating, so she just shrugged. 

“You’re kind of a pain in the ass, you know that?”

She rolls her eyes, taking the gun from his hands and lining up a shot. “I’ve heard worse,” she says, thinking about Nancy Dre-ew, and Nancy “the slut” Wheeler, and priss, and shoots. It hits the bullseye. 

So do her next five shots. 

Eddie looks begrudgingly impressed when she reloads and hands the gun back to him. It’s more satisfying than it should be, to realize that while he’d known she had guns he’s never seen her actually shoot before. 

She raises a challenging eyebrow at him, and he huffs around a smile. “All right, all right,” he says good naturedly. “Let’s try this again.”

He does a little better this time around, now that he’s actually trying. He does a little dance when he hits one of the inner rings. 

“Take that!” He crows. “I bet Steve couldn’t do this. In your face, Harrington!”

“He’s much more of a close-combat kind of guy, isn’t he?” Nancy agrees. 

“Oh, yeah, definitely,” he says. “Does he really have a bat with nails?”

She blinks, caught off guard by the fact that Eddie hadn’t seen it. She never registered that he hadn’t used it during Vecna. Something about the fact seems weird somehow, as if it was as integral to Steve as his coiffed hair. “He keeps it in his trunk.”

“You and Byers need to update your Steve manuals. He said it’s under his bed now.”

“Ah,” Nancy says, thinking of all the times she’s slept with her pistol under her pillow. Empty, because she’s not stupid enough to sleep with a loaded gun when her little brother sometimes wakes her up after a nightmare, but the comforting weight of it alone makes it easier. 

“Just tell me one thing,” he says, widening his eyes imploringly at her. “Did he look as sexy as I think he did? Byers won’t give me a straight answer.”

It’s a joke, but his cheeks are a little pink. She’s not dumb, she’s seen the looks the two of them share, as if he and Steve were circling each other. Caught in a whirlpool, waiting for the moment the vortex would drag them down and they could finally touch. 

The looks between Eddie and Jonathan, too, that share a certain camaraderie she doesn’t entirely understand and at the same time understands all too well. Steve and Jonathan had always had a strange relationship, too close to not be friendship but not quite there. Surprisingly enough it was better after she and Steve broke up, Jonathan no longer avoiding them and the talk she’d forced the three of them into clearing the air. Sometimes, she’d wake up to Jonathan climbing into her bed, smelling of cigarettes and a hint of something stronger, and he’d tell her it was Steve who drove him there. 

She’s a journalist. It’s her job to notice things. She just wasn’t ready to confront that reality, where the two boys she’d wanted wanted each other as well. But she’s grown since then. 

She also knows that whoever Steve chooses, it won’t be easy. 

“You know,” she says, considering, “when we were dating, Steve never pressed me up against the wall or anything you’d expect from the King.”

Eddie gets this look on his face, caught between confusion and caught out. “…okay? Did you want him to do that or something? Are you trying to ask me to hint to him?”

“No,” she says. “I’m just saying, he never did any of that. It was kind of funny. He always made it so that he was the one pressed against the wall.”

Eddie misses the next five shots entirely, and she laughs at him through it all.

She’s hyper aware of touching other girls now. She didn’t used to be. Even with Robin, who is a lesbian and definitely won’t hate her. Who’s probably gone through the same thing. She can’t help it. 

What if they get the wrong idea? What if someone else sees? What if they can tell, what if they know, what if they hate me?

She hates feeling like this. She doesn’t know why it started, doesn’t know what’s wrong with her. She’s no stranger to casual affection—or at least she didn’t used to be. Why does it make her feel so tense now? It’s been years since she realized she liked girls, shouldn’t this have happened back then?

Deep down, she knows why. The Reagan sign in her front yard. Her dad sitting in his chair, the news always on. “Always that nasty disease, Karen, I swear some people are just asking for it.” She’s always known she could never tell him, but now she knows that if she gets sick he’ll say she deserves it. She doesn’t know what her mother thinks. She’s afraid to find out. 

She’s growing up, and her fear is growing with her. 

Objectively, Nancy knows she and Eddie don’t make sense. 

They’re not cut from the same cloth, like Steve and Robin. They don’t calm each other down, like Jonathan and Argyle. They’re too different, too alike in all the wrong ways, for them to get along. They’re both snappy, a little mean. Eddie’s dramatic enough to get on her nerves, and she’s prim enough to get on his. At their worst, they have earth shattering arguments that end in them not speaking to each other for days. 

When people see them walking down the street together, they whisper about “that nice girl Nancy Wheeler” and “that awful Munson boy.”

It’s not fair, never has been. Nancy hasn’t felt nice for a long time, maybe before Barb ever disappeared. Eddie isn’t always particularly nice either, but the court of public opinion takes it to extremes, twists him into something cruel instead of the kindness he carries under his leather armor. Someone to keep their children away from. It really is a shame, because Eddie loves kids in a way Nancy never has. She can see it in the way he interacts with them, his bright smile fading when a parent comes to drag them away. Even when he’s expecting it, his face falls, just for an instant, before spinning around with a grin that won’t reach his eyes. 

Nancy wants to take him out of here. There’s an offer on the tip of her tongue that she knows he’d refuse.

He’s not her brother, but he’s not…unlike one. It’s almost like talking to an older, flashier Mike. He’s annoying, is what he is. He picks at her, keeps pressing over the littlest things. Tries to get under her skin, succeeds, until she’s on the verge of stabbing him with her pencil. Looks triumphant whenever Robin has to grab her arm to drag her away, rambling an excuse about “some girl thing I totally forgot, yeah it’s an emergency,” while Steve drags him the other way to have bro time. 

“She loves it,” she’d heard Eddie crow delightedly once, when Robin didn’t get her out of hearing range fast enough. “Do you see that fire in her eyes?”

“Do I?” She asked Robin. “Love it?”

“I mean, far be it from me to tell you what you do and don’t like,” Robin answered. “But, uh, as far as I can tell, you totally love it. You look like you’re going to rip him to pieces and enjoy it, and he loves that. I didn’t think you’d be this much of a nightmare together, seriously, like, how are you two at each other’s throats one second and then best friends the next? Steve and I have debated locking you in a bathroom until you get along, but we’re kind of afraid you’ll kill each other.”

So no, Nancy and Eddie don’t get along. They’re kind of a nightmare together. They don’t make sense, and they don’t try to. They have other friends, who they get along with better, that they can seek out. 

But when Eddie knocks on her window, the only surprise is that he could even get there. 

“How?” She hisses, opening the window. He tumbles in, doesn’t even try to play off the utter gracelessness he’s displaying. 

“Wowie, I am never doing that again,” he breathes, flat on his back. “You’re going to have to help me down the stairs when I leave, had to leave my cane at the bottom and I cannot get back down that way.”

She doesn’t even want to know what he had to do to get up on her roof with his bad leg. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m but another lover, nothing but an ant in the face of your unwavering beauty, my queen,” he says, batting his eyes at her. The dramatics don’t hit the way he intends, given that he’s stuck on the floor. He holds a hand out pleadingly, and she rolls her eyes, hauling him up until she can get him to her bed. 

“Never mind.” She puts her hands on her hips, a gesture that is so obviously Steve she removes them immediately. From the glint in Eddie’s eyes, he notices.

She tries not to be jealous. She tries, she swears, but…

Three of the four (five? she doesn’t know what Argyle thinks of her) friends she has are dating each other. Two of them dated her, first. She can’t help but wonder, if she’d known that was an option, if everything would have been different. If she wouldn’t have this aching bitterness between her teeth. 

(Nothing would have changed, she knows. She’d been too desperate for other things. Trying so hard with Steve so her best friend didn’t die for nothing. Staying with Jonathan because he understood her more than anyone else, so maybe they didn’t need to talk. It wouldn’t have helped anything. She still wonders.)

It doesn’t matter. What’s past is past, and she needs to move forward. She can’t stop to think about could-have-beens, because thinking about boys is what got her into this mess in the first place. 

She closes her eyes, taking a shaky breath. That’s not fair. None of this is fair. None of it is fucking fair because Nancy stopped caring about fair when Barb died. 

She needs a drink. She needs a nap. She needs to stop feeling like Atlas with the world on her shoulders. 

She doesn’t do any of that. She calls Robin.

“Barb was my first kiss.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Nancy says, and keeps talking, because Barb is dead and Robin is a lesbian and she’s long forgotten what Barb’s favorite chapstick was back then. “We were seven, and I liked it but I didn’t know if I liked her. But I was convinced I was going to marry her, until my mom told me that girls don’t marry other girls. And I knew she liked girls when she died. She told me when we were fifteen, and I didn’t know the word bisexual but I knew I loved her and that was all that mattered. Not—not like that, not romantic, or maybe it was but it doesn’t matter because she was my best friend and I still love her but she’s gone forever. I loved her.”

She feels Robin lay a tentative hand on her back. 

“I had to look her parents in the eye and pretend. All those fucking NDA’s, I had to pretend there was hope. Pretend she was still missing. It was like everyone forgot about her except for me and them, and they sold their house to find their dead daughter and I wasn’t supposed to say anything and Steve kept reminding me about the fucking NDA’s—“

 “Nancy…”

“It’s my fault,” Nancy says, staring at the water. “I lumped in Steve, because it was easier than being alone. He didn’t know her like I did. She was worried about me. She stayed because she cared, and look where that got her.”

“That’s bullshit!” Robin’s eyes are wide, and she waves her hands around as she talks. “If it’s anyones fault, it’s those—those scientist guys experimenting on El! They knew there was a problem, and they tried to cover it up instead of making sure people were safe. You didn’t know it was dangerous. How were you supposed to know it was going to end up as anything other than normal teenage drama? None of this is supposed to be real, you didn’t know—“

“But I left her,” Nancy cuts in. “I left her alone to go lose my virginity to a boy she didn’t even like—“

“He was your boyfriend, it shouldn’t have mattered if she liked him—“

“It doesn’t matter!” Nancy shouts, and Robin falls silent, mouth still moving. “It doesn’t fucking matter how it happened, because it did and now she’s dead and she’s never coming back and it’s all my fault.”

Nancy is sick of crying. Sick of feeling helpless. Sick of not being able to change the past. 

“It’s not just Barb. I took Fred to the trailer park—he didn’t even want to be there, and now he’s dead. Eddie needs a cane, Max is almost completely blind and might never walk again and it was my plan that put them there. My plan that almost killed them. I’m responsible—“

“Fuck that.”

“Robin…”

“No, you listen to me, Nancy Wheeler,” Robin says, grabbing her by the shoulders. “You are one of the most remarkable people I have ever known. Max would have died without that plan. We all would have died. Venca-slash-Henry-slash-One would have won without that plan, and I am not going to sit here and listen to you blame yourself for saving lives. And-and Fred! Venca had already marked him, you know that. You couldn’t have done anything! And Barb is not your fault, okay? I-I-I know I can’t convince you, but I’ll say it as many times as it takes until you start believing it, because it’s true. You didn’t kill her. You didn’t kill anyone.”

“I killed Bruce,” she says, just to prove Robin wrong. And isn’t that shitty of her, to forget about him until she can use him to prove a point? She’s a fucking awful person.

“I don’t know who Bruce is, but given your track record I highly doubt that.”

“I bashed his head in with a fire extinguisher.”

Robin pauses, and Nancy’s stomach sinks. This is it, she thinks. This is what will convince her, this is what will make her see that I’m wrong, that I’m poison-

“What was he doing?”

“What?”

“Bruce. You had to have a reason for it. What was he doing?”

It’s like Robin doesn’t even care that Nancy just admitted to first degree murder. “He was flayed,” she admits, knowing Robin will take it as proof that she’s right.

“That’s not murder, that’s self defense,” Robin says, just like she knew she would. “Also, if he was flayed he was already dead. Sorry, I’m sticking to your side on this.”

“But I’m less torn up about killing my asshole coworker than I am about anything else. How does that not make me a monster?”

“He was already dead, Nancy!” Robin shakes her. “You’re not beating yourself up over it because you know he was already dead, a-a-and I know you’re using him to try and push me away and I won’t let you.”

“Robin…” she says, tears springing to her eyes. She’s so fucking sick of crying. So sick of the way she never seems to stop anymore. 

“Nancy,” Robin says. “None of us are going to leave you. Stop trying to make us.”

She pulls her into a hug, and Nancy sags into it, boneless. 

There, sandwiched between the sky and the water, Nancy starts to feel like she could forgive herself. 

“Nancy,” Steve says, putting a hand on her shoulder and ducking his chin to look her in the eye. “They won’t be alone.”

Tears well up, unbidden, at the way he seems to understand her now in a way he never did before. 

“I want this,” she insists. 

“I know you do,” he says. “Which is why you’re going to go out there, kick ass, and take names. We’ll be here, okay? We’ll keep an eye on them.”

“I know you will.” She swipes a hand across her eyes. “Can you talk to Holly, too? She gets lonely.”

Steve smiles. He’d always loved Holly, when they were dating. He used to braid her hair sometimes. Asked her about her drawings, her TV shows, listened to her talk with the same attentiveness Nancy’s father had never shown any of them. He’ll be a good dad, someday. To someone else’s children.

“I’ll talk to Holly,” he promises. “Does she still like princesses?”

“Ladybugs,” she says. “It’s ladybugs, now.”

“Ladybugs. I can do that. Black and red, and they’re all ladies. What’s not to like?”

“There are male ladybugs.”

“Wait, seriously?”

She laughs, tearfully, but they’re happy tears. Steve wipes them away gently, and she smiles at him to let him know she’s okay. “You’re an idiot, Steve Harrington.”

“You’re the best person I know, Nancy Wheeler,” he replies, achingly sincere. “You’re gonna have the whole world under your thumb, I just know it. Ever thought of running for President?”

“Can’t be worse than the one we have now,” she says, grimaces as her own joke lands too bitterly to be funny. She sees his jaw tighten before he forces himself to relax. 

“I’d vote for you.”

She grins at him, sharp to punch through the tension she’d made. “I’ll make Eddie my Vice President.”

“Oh, fuck no. You lost me,” he says, and Eddie makes an offended noise from where he’s stealing snacks from the glovebox. Jonathan swats him, and she smiles at him too. He smiles back, tentatively, and wanders to her side. 

“You gonna be okay up there?” He asks quietly. She can hear the guilt in it, still, and she reaches down to squeeze his hand. The one with the scar that matches hers, so their palms line up. It feels full circle, somehow, the three of them together like this. 

“I’ll be okay,” she confirms, and feels the truth of it in her chest. Her boys are here with her, the ones who have been there since the beginning. Eddie’s watching them fondly, munching on a granola bar. Robin is inside somewhere, rambling at her mother. Mike and Holly are probably still bickering over the last cupcake. She loves them so much, all of them. 

“Of course you will,” Steve says. “You’re Nancy fuckin’ Wheeler. Nothing stops you.”

She wants that to be true. She can feel in her bones that it will be. Eighteen has nothing on who she’ll be at thirty. 

She’s Nancy Wheeler, and the world won’t see her coming. 

[suffarustuffaru]

What's your thoughts on emijulisuba

a bunch of my mutuals and pals now are emijulisuba fans who’ve literally converted me and some of my other pals to the Light Side (the beauty of emijulisuba) so id say im a fan !! ive been Slowly Rereading Arc 6 After It’s Been Years And My Poor Memory Has Eroded The Memory (Ironically) Of Arc 6 and lets just say the top things im looking forward to are emijulisuba and shaula 👍

my big stance on shipping is that i Really love looking at every possibility ever—so long as a ship has some neat canon details to work off of (like the possibility narrative foiling!!) then i can like it a lot!! emijulisuba are all characters im super fond of and characters that share common ground with each other and are fond of each other so—id be interested in seeing all the possibilities there 👍 plus i think emilia shipping is a bit underrated. im super curious to see on a deep and serious level how she’d fit with people like julius or reinhard or rem—that sort of thing!

and i think emijulisuba as a dynamic are very sweet. though im sure its not an ot3 for everyone bc similar to smth like reinjulisuba or whatever youd need buildup for it or youd just skip right to established relationship in fancontent but i love their canon dynamic a lot and boy am i a fan of intense pining and Buildup. i love emisuba and julisuba and im intensely curious about how emijuli would work (jock elevator music gf eager to learn new things vs jock nerd bf eagerly infodumping every bit of lore he knows) so!!!! lets just say im a fan 👍👍👍

[byshilane]

22.04.16

There was a not so subtle phase where the only thing that mattered to me was Three Houses and the shipping. So much shipping. Anyway, I'm totally over it now, by which I mean, I'm probably gonna start again when I go back to Golden Deer route probably over Christmas holiday.

[valdomarx]

"You pick which of us you want to end up with." Roy crosses his arms and Jamie nods, approving.

"Well." Keeley stares at the two idiots sat at her dining table, half drunk, covered in bar filth, and bleeding, waiting for her judgement like it's her job to officiate whatever bullshit they've got themselves into now. "Lucky fucking me."

Roy shoots an uncertain glance at Jamie. This was clearly not how either of them had expected this conversation to go.

"You know the only thing sexier than a man so emotionally incompetent he starts a bar fight then turns up at your door in the middle of the night? Two men so emotionally incompetent they start a bar fight and then both turn up at your door in the middle of the night."

Roy shifts in his seat. "That's not-"

"Shut it, Roy," Keeley orders, and he does, mouth snapping closed with an audible click. "I'm talking here."

She turns to Jamie. "Jamie. Sweetheart. I love that we're closer now. I love that you're working on yourself. I loved meeting your mum." Roy is getting antsy so she fixes him with a glare before turning back to Jamie. "But it's been years since we were together, and even then all we did well was fuck. Come on. We've both moved past that and you know it."

Jamie deflates, but doesn't argue. He nods and looks at the table. "I liked having you meet my mum too," he mumbles, and she pats his hand.

"And Roy." She turns to him and he blinks like a deer in the headlights. "We were good together. We really fucking were. But then you dumped me, you fucker, and I got over it. You were there for a much-needed pick-me-up shag when I was low, and I do appreciate that. But in what fucking world did this whole," she gestures expansively, "winning-me-back macho posturing bullshit seem like a good idea?"

Roy inhales. "When you put it like that, I do sound like a bit of a twat, don't I?"

She smiles. "There we go. Some self awareness at last." Roy and Jamie sneak a look at each other and share a self-effacing smile. "What got you so riled up anyway? You're both idiots, we all know that, but you don't usually fight."

Jamie chews his lip. "It was my fault. I was trying to wind Roy up." Roy glances up at that. "I was trying to get his attention, I guess. I know it's dumb but I just want him to-" Jamie pauses and picks at the edge of table, "- to see me. To pay attention to me. To be proud of me."

Roy's brow creases. "You don't need to do shit to get my attention, Jamie. You're already the center of my fucking world, or hadn't you noticed?" Jamie's fingers stop picking and his eyes fly up. "I see you, and I'm proud of you exactly as you are."

Jamie's mouth falls open, just a fraction, and Roy's eyes dance over his face.

Keeley leans back in her chair, fighting to control a smile. "Have you two ever considered -" Both of them shift forward to listen, "- that it's not really me you're after?"

Jamie frowns, and Roy snorts, and Keeley just cranks an eyebrow. A useful move, that one. Jamie looks from her, to Roy, to her, to Roy. Roy looks at the ceiling, then the floor, then the ceiling, then finally at Jamie.

A blush is spreading over Jamie's cheeks, and Roy fidgets in his seat. "Oh," says Jamie, just as Roy says, "Fuck."

"Took your fucking time with that one, boys!" Keeley lets out a joyous peal of laughter. "Now get the fuck out of my house."

[froizetta]

WIP Wednesday (but it's Thursday)

So I told myself I would post this yesterday, but when I left for the evening I realised I hadn't in fact done that. Whoops! But hey, it's only like 4 and a half past midnight on Baker Island, so if you think about it, it basically still counts as Wednesday. Right?

Anyway, this one is the next chunk of my superbatlantern fic, because I thought I might as well just commit and post what's basically the end of chapter 1. (For anyone who hasn't read the preceding parts: part 1 and part 2.)

“You were spying on us,” Bats said in that rough, low growl of his. He didn’t sound happy.

Well, there didn’t seem much point in denying it at this point, huh? “Yeah,” he said.

“Why.”

“Is that really important?” Hal shrugged. “Curiosity, mostly. I sensed a little sexual tension earlier in that meeting, while you two were going at it with each other.” The word choice made Batman’s eyebrow twitch gratifyingly. “I thought maybe you’d come in here to continue what you started, so I decided to check. That’s all.”

Superman went from looking mostly dismayed to a little bewildered. “So you wanted to catch us—what? Having sex? This is the Watchtower, we wouldn’t— Why would you think we’d even do that here?”

Hal felt his eyebrows raise. “What, you mean you haven’t? Ever?” Superman didn’t say anything to that, which to Hal was pretty much as good as an admission. He grinned. “Heh, thought so. I always knew you were less of a boy scout than you let on.”

Superman looked like he wanted to respond to that, but Batman cut him off coolly before he could. “Clark, focus. Hal’s concerning attempts at voyeurism aside—”

“Hey!” Hal objected. “I wasn’t out there trying to jack off or anything, don’t make it weird—”

“Putting that aside,” Bats continued firmly, “we need to deal with the real issue here.”

He turned his ice-blue gaze on Superman, who met it immediately as if by instinct. They did that kind of thing a lot, silently communicating with each other with just a look or a subtle gesture, like they had some kind of freaky, psychic bond. Just like now, where the meaningful glances exchanged above Hal’s head were a whole conversation he couldn’t hear.

…Huh. Hal probably should have figured they were dating a while ago, actually.

After a long few seconds, they seemed to come to an agreement. Superman turned back to address him, stoic and serious. “Hal, we need to know you’re not going to spread this around.”

Hal raised an eyebrow. “Or what? You’re gonna blackmail me? Kick me out of the League? Put my feet in a bucket of cement and drop me into the Atlantic?”

A muscle flexed in Batman’s jaw, the way it always did when he was pissy. “Obviously not.”

“Good,” he said, flashing the ring alongside his signature grin. “Because I’m not feeling super threatened.”

That muscle flexed again and Batman’s hands clenched to fists. Okay, so he was really pissed, huh? “Christ, Jordan, this isn’t the time for your pointless posturing,” he snarled. “Can't you take this seriously, for once in your life—”

“Bruce,” Superman said softly, laying a hand on his shoulder. “It’s gonna be fine, okay? It’s Hal.”

Hal bristled, unsure what the guy meant by that but instinctually convinced that it had to be some kind of dig at his expense. But before he could say anything righteously indignant, Bats just kind of…softened? There wasn’t really another word for it, all that sneering tension seeping out of him in an instant. Bats reached up to squeeze the hand on his shoulder, grateful and reassuring, and it all felt so easily intimate that whatever words were about to come out caught in Hal’s throat.

Hal swallowed. Geez, what was wrong with him? He wasn’t normally like this around Ollie and Dinah, and god knows they weren’t that shy about PDA. And this was barely even that. What about it was weirding him out so much? Just because it was them?

Superman smiled at him, all benevolence and understanding but for the tension around his eyes. “Look, there’s a reason we’ve been keeping our relationship private. We agreed when this started that dating openly would be too complicated and too much risk for our secret identities. And unfortunately, that includes the Justice League. You know how gossip spreads among the superhero community.”

Boy did he. When Carol had dumped him for good, he’d gotten a commiseration text from Booster Gold. Fucking Booster Gold.

“And I don’t want what we do in our private time encroaching on what we do here,” he went on. “We have a leadership position in League together with Diana. The two of us being in a relationship could…complicate things, here.”

“You don’t want that, huh, big guy?” Hal said. “That not a concern your boyfriend shares?”

Batman’s expression remained blank. Superman’s eyes hardened. “Don't try to change the subject, please. This is serious.”

“Clark is right,” Bats said. “Hal, we need explicit verbal confirmation. Will you agree to keep this a secret, or are we going to have a problem?”

Hal shrugged. “Yeah, sure.”

Both of them paused.

“Really,” Batman said, with an edge of suspicion. “Just like that.”

“Yeah, just like that. Why are you acting so surprised? I’m in this game too, I know the drill. I can keep a secret.”

“You wear a flight suit with your name on it under your Lantern uniform.”

“And yet somehow, the general public hasn’t worked it out yet. Go figure.” He felt his lips pull into a sneer. “Look, what do you want from me? I said I won’t blab and I won’t. Am I supposed to sign a pact in blood or something?”

“Shockingly, I wasn’t actually going to suggest that,” Batman said dryly. “But it would certainly be more comforting than just taking it on faith.”

Hal gritted his teeth. “Oh, right. So you don’t trust me, is that it?”

“Bruce,” Superman said, frowning.

Bats just shook his head. “It’s nothing personal. Trust alone is a poor basis for most agreements.”

“So that’s a 'no, I don’t trust you' then? Fuck you too. How many times have I pulled your ass out of the fire by now, Spooky—”

“Fewer times than I’ve done the same for you—”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Superman cut in, face like gentle thunder. “Bruce, we’re asking him for a favor here. Antagonizing him is counterproductive.” Bats just grunted and looked away. “And Hal, you have to understand this is difficult for us. For both of us. We’ve kept this hidden for a long time, from almost everyone in our lives, and you’re the first person to find out like this. I hope you can appreciate the gravity of that.”

Hal scrubbed a hand through his hair, feeling the sudden rush of anger drain out of him. It was honestly hard to stay mad when Superman was using his Nice Reasonable Mediator voice. “Yeah, I… Look, I do get it, okay? I’m not gonna blab, because no matter what either of you think, I’m not that big of an asshole. I don’t go around fucking up other people’s relationships for fun, you know.”

“We know, Hal,” Superman said, reassuringly. Batman was annoyingly silent.

“Cool. Are we done here?”

“We’re done,” Bats said.

Thank god. Hal was feeling shittier and antsier the longer he sat here with these guys.

[manuelmueller]

I'm living for the day When you hold me in the street And you kiss me on the dancefloor

[fenboh]

[onlyshestandsthere]

Title: Entanglement

Chapter: 1/?

Pairing: Kit Tanthalos/Elora Danan/Jade Claymore (eventually)

Tags: Tangled AU, Charming swashbuckler Kit Tanthalos//Naive nerd Elora Danan//Incredibly serious knight Jade Claymore//Eventual OT3//Happy Ending

Summary:

On the run from her past and pursued by a relentless knight hopeful, princess turned swashbuckling rogue Kit Tanthalos comes across a strange tower, and an even stranger girl.

Or, the Tangled AU.

[meyerlansky]

the problem is i simply do not want to discuss gale in this shot but he's In It so any post i make about it is going to get derailed because that's what happens when he's in a shot, any shot, but here goes anyway:

curt and bucky just having their own lil nonverbal conversation about how hard curt's gonna kick bryan's ass. because they live in each other's pockets as much as the bucks do and they have their own little nonverbal language, and because it's gonna be curt doing the fighting. bucky knows it. curt knows it. jack knows it.

[malkaleh]

Kind of inspired by @uncheckedaggression and @tenderbittersweet

The summer heat is the worst it has ever been and it seems to all have been concentrated in the Council Rooms - even the stuffiest of the privy counsellors have shucked their usual robes and doublets for the lightest linen, some even stripped down to their undershirts and breeches alone with the lightest silk or linen over robe that could be gotten away with.

It is driving Henry mad and it is not the force of the heat nor the thick humid air. It is watching his Thomas. Oh, he is not as underdressed perhaps as some of the others and yet, yet Henry is hard put to not want to order everyone in the room to turn their eyes for him, for the vision that Thomas is should be for he and Anne alone.

His white undershirt, embroidered by Anne with a thread that is purple but does not look it, clings to their husband - a glimpse of his chest as the laces have been loosened on both over robe and undershirt.

Glimpses of curls in slightly damp hair, something that Thomas usually does not allow himself and Christ, Henry thinks, I should make it a royal command that he lets his hair grow out. His light breeches - those slim legs and hips that make Henry think of wrapping his arms about Tom’s waist as he was kissing Anne and Henry had watched.

He swears he’s going to have the woman who looked appreciatively when Thomas smiled that morning sent from court.

Men do still look at Anne and it still enrages Henry but at the least, he can make sure they understand that she is his but when it is Thomas, neither he nor Anne can. Neither of them can protect him fully. They cannot claim Thomas, so all Henry can do is watch as they try to take what will never be theirs.

With an effort Henry pulls his attention back to the business of the council, just to see Anne looking especially beautiful in her light gown and fuck, Henry thinks, looking at the way she looks, the way Thomas looks - two dark haired beauties - his star and his moon - the way the fabric clings to Anne’s form, her pretty breasts that he had kissed that morning, Thomas and his lean muscles and the soft curls that had brushed against Henry’s skin.

He cannot bear it.

-

“You really do not see it, do you? Your beauty - the way I would kill anyone who looked at you if I could. For you and Anne both”

[independent-fics]

Ahhh Parker’s little smile hello to Eliot after she drops in in “The (Very) Big Bird Job”.

[starburr]

To put into perspective my messy timeline of how they all got together, I'm just gonna lay out my headcanons for how the Underdogs all sorta fell for one another. Obviously this timeline starts around the movie. Alberto fell first for Luca and while he might have chalked it up to just a crush in his head, it was definitely there slowly forming through their codependency throughout the film. Coming to a head when those feelings of jealousy and his fear of abandonment get in the way, but they eventually reconcile as we see the film go along, eventually culminating in the goodbye at the train station scene. Must have been so hard for him to see Luca off, at least he's got company there while he pursues an education.

Speaking of, Giulia and Luca have been getting to know each other better in Genova as schoolmates. Lessons are more fun together after all. Alberto's been writing to Luca (think post- Ciao Alberto) often, a favorite routine when he's not busy so its going well for the most part. He can't wait to meet him again. The other seafolk is in bliss, he's got friends and something to do. So much more than his previous job of herding goatfish. Giulia doesn't dare squash his excitement for new things, it's cute in a way. He's learning so much with her like he did with Alberto first going to Portorosso! Uh oh, he might have a crush on her. It's not even in the comphet way he just genuinely starts catching feelings for her, its certainly less defined and not as impactful as how he felt realizing Alberto loved him but its steadily growing. Giulia also misses Alberto. A small epiphany in her mind gestates, that maybe he misses them too. She's equal parts guilty and relieved that it looks like they left him behind even if its far from the truth. Guilty, for obvious reasons. And relief, because she somehow knows he would not want anyone else to come back but her and Luca. The heart can only be kept lonely for so long, and once they reunite with Alberto during summer, a group hug is all it takes for Luca to panic internally. Maybe he panics on how to express himself. The two notice him being so quiet and reserved. Giulia offering that maybe he's tired, so the two decide to try and surprise him with a gift or a hangout maybe. Giggles fly through their conversation as they dream up how to cheer up Luca. Maybe a larger serving of gelatto, or perhaps a bigger Vespa so the three of them can all ride together. He definitely wants to be with them, they just don't anticipate to what degree. And so summer flies by with them hanging out, playing, sharing stories, experiencing the coasts. Maybe even swimming out with Giulia after the two seafolk don't want her missing out, venturing into somewhat deeper waters as they zip and zag around her. She feels safe and at home with them despite the depth. It's not long after that Giulia tests the waters to see if she is not reading them wrong, sort of a "Caro" here and there, "ragazzi" enunciated with a more flirty tone. She keeps wading in and out of endearing terms to make sure she's got them, and sure enough they snag on the line. Not that its direct. She just happens to notice their cheeks flush more often at the mention, their hands that are already grasping for one another seem to want to reach out to her too. The thought makes her heart explode with a beautiful intensity. She didn't care that the thoughts weren't normal, maybe she did love them both. There's a bit of denial when Alberto one day asks Luca "Hey, uhm so you like Giulia, I think?" The younger seafolk fires back with a "What, Alberto? Are you hearing yourself? No no, I definitely don't..." Although all thats met with is a deadpan stare, causing Luca to pedal back to admittance. But Alberto isn't jealous somehow, if anything he finds it comforting they both do. Maybe one day they'd tell her. He barely notices Luca trying to gently sneak his hand closer to his own, the stars dotting the night sky as numerous as his distracted thoughts. For now, he's just happy to be around one of the loves in his heart, the first one. A shooting star passes overhead. Its stellar shine prompts Luca to make a quiet wish, his heart swelling.

The frequent trips back and forth throughout the years are fun, but Alberto always misses them dearly. It's not a normal ache, that much he can tell. Its a desperate clawing, the way he'd watch the heavens above with them for so many nights. Like they all searched for the answer of what they had, together. It was like every constellation and dot was seared into their souls, naming them without so much a second glance. It almost offended him they looked to the heavens despite it being right here with them. How could they know so many beautiful things without realizing they themselves were masterpieces? At least in Alberto's eyes they were, and he didn't dare take his eyes off them. A part of him found it strange his affections were for both of them. Never envy, always adoration. Maybe he was scared they'd be together without him, like the rest of the couples he'd see strolling around town. Maybe he'd want to walk with both of them, hand in hand without being judged. Maybe he'd want to whisper so many sweet everythings into their ears. Regardless, the beautiful sight warmed his scales. He would blush furiously, yet quietly. He didn't dare let them know about his feelings. Well, yet... Maybe he would if only he knew they were feeling the same. As they lie beneath the night sky, the moon hangs its pale glow over Portorosso. Now that's amore.