#he was supposed to come to the fucking midwest

[samscorch]

WHY IS MY NIBBLY IN FUCKING UTAH????

[mossycobblestonewrites]

DC X DP FIC,, THING

Based in the Allegheny AU from this post.

Danny had a plan. It was not a good plan, in fact, he was pretty sure this was the worst plan he could have come up with. You see, he knows others have tried this, and he knows that they failed. But Danny's different, okay? He's got the panache, the oomph, the moxie - he's a dumb teenager, and he's leaving. He's taking Sam, and Tucker, and Vlad, and Ellie - fuck, Ellie - and he's leaving. It's going to work. It has to work.

He's stayed up for two weeks straight, coming up with ideas and strategies with Tucker. He's prepped with Sam, leaving her in charge of all the physical prep involved. He's told Vlad to pack up and be ready.

Tonight's the night. Tonight they were going out through the Southside woods - the ones with the least amount of agent traffic and the most danger. It was the only way (Tuck had run the numbers.) Originally, they weren't supposed to leave until next week, but the GiW had come far to close to wait any longer.

He almost got caught - Danny had almost got captured. They couldn't wait any longer. So Danny took his designated bag, strapping it against his back. He took Ellie's hand, and he snuck them off to the designated meeting place. Sam was the only one there when they arrived, chouching in a shroud of darkness over the additional run bags. It only took a few minutes for Tucker and Vlad to join them.

"We must go, I tried to lose them but I may still have been followed." With that, they took off into the woods.

~~~

There was a buzzing sound that had only gotten worse through the years. It was driving Clark insane - he had to find it. Noone else in the league (besides Bruce) had really believed him, pushing it off as electrical wires and such. And yeah, Clark could hear those - but this was different! This was worse! It was somewhere between high pitched and warbling and it was just constant.

Clark was going to find that noise. He was going to do it tonight even if it took until the sunrise. He didn't need sleep! It's not like he would be getting any with the ringing in his ears!

What used to be a simple one pitched hum turned into a three pitched wail (sometimes four) and it was going to be what made Superman evil. Superman couldn't be evil, so finding the source it was! Clark had managed to narrow down the general location, Americas, Midwest, isolated, ending in Illinois, but when he looked for it in a map nothing came up. There was literally nothing there, not even from salitlites. Maybe it was a natural phenomenon? (He hoped not)

He followed that god awful noise till he reached something that surprised him. A full fledged settlement, one that didn't show up on anything he had every seen before. The town was in a black out, the only light being that of a spinning spotlight in the center. He didn't know what to make of it.

Clark could hear the footfalls of patrolling men - soldiers, ones with guns of some kind. He could hear the resting hearts and breathes of the residents. He could hear the small group making a break for it in the woods.

Why was a small group fleeing?

[oneforthemunny]

the original mafia!eddie blurb. how he and reader met <3

mafia!eddie munson who started moving weight with rick in hawkins like his dad did before. he swore he’d never be like him, be apart of this after what happened to his mother, but everyone’s gotta make a living some how. and rick’s boys are starting to supply to the majority of the midwest, chicago being their main route of business. bringing up far too much money to turn down. no one thinks to look in the middle of nowhere indiana. no one even knows about hawkins. it’s the perfect set up, eddie couldn’t refuse.

“it’s in your blood, boy,” wayne tells him, and from then on, his name is said with a hint of fear.

he’s laundering with the big names of the game, paying off hopper and anyone else who might be a threat. rick’s moved to another city, securing the route while eddie stays in hawkins, ensuring everything gets where it’s supposed to.

he’s the top dog, no one fucks with him. everyone knows but no one wants trouble, so they pretend they don’t know out of fear of one of his boys paying them a visit.

you’re new to town, nancy wheeler’s college roommate come to hawkins for a job at the bank here. eddie comes in one day, all black button down that’s left open, inked skin, and gold necklaces.

“hi, there sweet thing,” he purrs over the counter at you. most would cower under his stare. not you. “charles around?”

“do you have an appointment?” you ask, lifting a brow.

eddie smirks. “nah, baby, I don’t need an appointment. tell him eddie’s here to see him.”

you blink, unfazed by his slinky smile, narrowed eyes. “you can’t see mr. harrington without an appointment.” you give him an unimpressed look. “if you’d like to make an appointment, I can set one up for you-“

“-sweetheart, you must be new here.” eddie’s teeth grit slightly. “I know you’re new here, I’d remember a face like yours.” you blush gently under his grin. “me and charles go way back. I don’t need an appointment to see him.”

“eddie, was it?” you raised a brow. “I’m just doing my job. mr.harrington said no one was to come in without an appointment and as much as I would love to believe you two are old friends, I can’t just let you back there without an appointment.” you huffed, lips pursing in annoyance.

eddie’s eyes were trained on the burgundy gloss of your lips, how juicy they looked. his tongue tan over his bottom lip, fingers tapping against the desk. anyone else, he would’ve flashed his glock on his hip or walked back there ignoring her. but he’d play her little game, if for no other reason than to speak to her longer.

joyce stuttered out your name, a horrified look on her face when you turned, brows furrowed in confusion. “I-I’m so sorry, eddie, she-she’s new here. she doesn’t know yet-“

“-that’s alright.” eddie smirked, looking over at you. “she’s just doing her job. real good at it too. better than the last one.”

joyce let out a nervous laugh, glaring at you when she ushered him back. “she’s not from here.” she whispered to eddie, leading him down the hallway towards charles’ office.

“I know.” eddie grinned salacious.

“I’ll make sure she knows. I’m so sorry about this again.” joyce rambled.

eddie waved her off. “don’t worry about it. don’t go gettin’ her in trouble either. she was just doing her job.” eddie gave her a smile, but his glare was threatening. joyce nodded, watching his disappear behind the door with the frosted window.

when he returned, stopping by your desk, you turned, posture straight and attentive, a little tense. he could tell joyce told you something, what he wasn’t sure.

you assumed he was back to boast, brag and make you apologize for dare doubting him- for doing your job. instead, he stood, palms flat against the counter.

“I need to make an appointment.” eddie purred slowly. “I’ll be back in three days to see charles again. he got anything then?”

you faltered for a moment, looking down at your book, you flipped through the pages of the calendar, scanning a red, manicured nail down the pages- eddie wanted to groan. “how about at one o’clock? after lunch?” you suggested.

eddie smirked. “works perfect for me, angel.”

you penciled it in, already knowing his first and last name without him telling you. so joyce had filled you in.

“I gotta make an appointment with you too?” eddie asked, leaning against the counter. “or can I just ask you out?”

you blushed, surprised. you bit back a smile, looking down at the book to hide your heated cheeks. “that depends,” you quipped, leaning forward. “where you gonna take me?”

eddie rolled his tongue over his front teeth, smirking. “what time you get off? six?” he asked, you nodded. “I’ll pick you up then. take you anywhere you wanna go.”

“anywhere?” you repeated.

“anywhere.” eddie nodded. “wherever you want.”

you twisted your lips. “I’ve got expensive taste. that gonna be a problem?” you listed a brow.

eddie laughed. “not at all, baby.” he winked at you. “see you at six. I’ll be out front.”

your heart fluttered, gnawing at your lip.

six o’clock rolled around, too slow for your liking, and there he was. black, sleek, mercedes with a dark tint that had to be illegal. he opened the door for you, a gorgeous, obnoxiously large bouquet of flowers in the front for you.

he took you to novo dolce, an obnoxiously expensive italian restaurant downtown- your choice. you didn’t know that’s where eddie did most of his deals in the back rooms, and that are his heart only beat harder for you.

he pulled your chair out, opened the doors, ordered you an expensive glass of wine- more expensive than you would’ve ever ordered on a first date, but he let you pick your own entree. he listened to you talk about your hometown, your life before hawkins, how you met nancy and how will got you the job at the bank. you asked about him too, but his answers were short, ominous. it made you only more curious.

he held the door open for you, your hands wrapping around his waist to pull him close to you. you tasted the bourbon he’d drank on his tongue, leaving your head spinning, pulling him in for more and more, until he had you pressed against the cool metal of the car, his tongue exploring every inch of your mouth, hands gripping your hips.

you knew he’d be bad for you, by the way your heart raced when his ring clad hand gripped your thigh, pinky skimming closer and closer up your leg towards your heated core. it made your squirm. you knew he wasn’t good, your better judgements told you to run, but how could you? when he looked this good, talked so sweet, and tasted like heaven.

[pricegouge]

Fatted Rabbit Part Three on AO3

Contents

Bearshifter!Price x reader | explicit

It wasn't supposed to be like this, of course. You could blame poor planning, a shit build, worse luck, but the fact of the matter remains that you're just not supposed to be here yet. Hard to plan for a winter you weren't supposed to see.

If there's one thing you've come to firmly believe over the last few months, it's that if you frown too long at a forecast, the forecast eventually frowns back. Another fucking night below freezing. It's not the biggest deal - at this point you can even manage it without a heat source - but your joints already ache at the thought. Something about the high altitude, cold temps, and humidity that gets trapped in the Wrangler after a full night with the windows up is the perfect storm to have you hobbling around the next day like your dear departed Gran.

It wasn't supposed to be like this, of course. You could blame poor planning, a shit build, worse luck, but the fact of the matter remains that you're just not supposed to be here yet. Hard to plan for a winter you weren't supposed to see.

The plan had been to stay put until May, head north when you were well and truly sure the biting cold had been chased off. You should have known your fucking ex would ruin even the relative safety of that plan - had in fact resolved yourself to weather whatever storm he threw at you without complaint as you got your ducks in a row - but after the shit show he'd pulled on his birthday, you'd known staying with him another couple of months was more likely to land you in a grave than successfully escaping in the dead of night as per your perfectly laid plan.

So you'd run. And you'd run fucking hard. It was tempting to stop off somewhere in the Midwest, but ultimately you'd scared yourself off settling for longer than a night anywhere within a two state radius of Phil. And once you were north of the fortieth, the siren song of national forests and undisturbed parking kept drawing you up and up until you were finally at your original destination anyway.

Impatient, stupid. You know winter doesn't relent its stranglehold overnight.

You sigh, weighing your options, limited though they were. John had been kind enough to let you belly up to his bar for most of the evening (and that was… something you were going to have to address in the cold light of day) but the worst was yet to come and you needed a game plan. You could drive out to the closest twenty four hour superstore and wander around until they realized you weren't going to purchase anything more than peanut butter. You could save gas by going to the gym, which had the added benefit of a hot shower. The night clerk there had definitely figured out you were homeless by now. It was fine, she was chill, but you suspected she may have blabbed. Ideally, you'd sleep in the Jeep for the first leg of the night, spend the coldest hours on the treadmill, then return to the Jeep and sleep on through until mid-morning. However, the gym manager had been keeping watch lately to make sure you didn't loiter in the parking lot for too long. You never thought you'd miss the craziness of the city, but you can't deny the anonymity had its appeal. Back in Dallas, you could park for any number of hours and the only person whose business it was was the meter maid. Here, streets and parking lots were mostly deserted, and a Jeep with a privacy screen was pretty inconspicuous. It made it difficult on nights like this, when you wanted to be close to some sort of twenty four hour shop when the coldest hours of the night came around.

You decide on the superstore, given you'd gotten ready at the gym earlier. It was unlikely the same employees were there, but that owner could take a gander at your check in times if he wanted and you'd like to deny him the satisfaction of spotting you there twice in one day.

You head west along the main drag, sighing in longing at all the help wanted signs. Some seasonal work is exactly what you need, but jobs require background checks, and background checks set off pings around all your former domiciles, and Phil has his dirty little fingers in all sorts of dirty little pies. You just need time for it all to blow over. Eventually he'd get sick of the hunt - or find a new victim, more like - and then you'd be free. The thought made you a little sick. Not for the first time, you wished you'd found a charge that stuck to him, or maybe a bullet to lodge in his skull; but Phil made friends with cops like it was his job (it kind of was), and ultimately, you just weren't built right for murder. So instead, you'd scrimped and saved over the course of three years, slowly reorganizing your life to exclude him. You weren't well off by any means, and you'd intended to be able to save for a few months longer, but provided you don't blow your fuel budget in the first few months because you're the idiot who decided to test a Montana spring, you should be set 'til the end of the year. And that's with the move down south come fall.

If it comes to that. You're still hoping to try your luck in a few months, put feelers out to see if Phil is still actively searching for you. You'd rather stay up north if possible. You've had enough southern summers to last you a lifetime, and while you'd talked a big game to John, this nomad lifestyle you've found yourself stuck in isn't feasible.

Fuckin' John. You feel for the coaster surreptitiously as you pull into a parking space in a quiet far corner of the lot. All your planning and you hadn't accounted for John. Really, you hadn't accounted for any love interests. When you'd left Dallas, the possibility of what you'd do if someone had caught your fancy had been so fucking far from your mind it would have been laughable if it wasn't so fucking sad. After a man like Phil, there was no 'rebound' phase, no 'get back on the horse' phase, no 'someday, two and a half kids from now, this'll just be another shitty ex' phase. There was just run, survive, and heal; and then maybe someday, years and years down the road, some better version of you could maybe consider getting fitted for a proper saddle.

So why, then, did the massive, intimidatingly handsome (and generally slightly intimidating) man refuse to leave your mind?

When you'd first run into him on the trail he'd scared the piss out of you. You'd become rather timid over the years and didn't appreciate being snuck up on - not that he'd been trying, mind, but a deep gruff voice calling out to you in the woods was probably enough to set anyone on edge, let alone someone with your history. When you realized the stranger was some ridiculously attractive Englishman, you'd been even more wary. Men with pretty blue eyes and good, straight noses had never in your life bode well, a lesson you'd made an exception for exactly once and it had blown up in your face.

But when he came close, you saw nothing but warmth in his eyes and kindness in his smile. He was quick, funny in a slightly (but not annoyingly overt) self-deprecating way you didn't usually expect from people who looked like him.

He also smelled absurdly, disarmingly, distractingly good.

You couldn't even really pinpoint what it was. There was pine and loam, which shouldn't have been considering the sad, wet state of things; a dark, smokey scent like expensive tobacco; something toasty and rich which you've since realized is probably the smell of his distillery; and above all that, or perhaps the sum of all those parts, a homey scent you wanted to bury your face in - like a well-loved quilt.

In the days that followed your little run-in, you'd tried to convince yourself John had only been so charming because he was trying to drum up some business. You reminded yourself that you couldn't really afford a fancy stiff drink right now anyway. And more importantly, you scolded yourself to just leave it the hell alone. What was your end goal here? A quick romp? What are you gonna do, take him back to the Jeep? A spring fling? You could barely stand to touch yourself right now, how were you going to casually tell someone why you need a joint to loosen up and no sudden moves every time you fuck?

A real relationship? Christ.

Still, John was on your mind like an early aughts summer bop. You'd even tried hoofing it a little further north just to avoid the temptation but the area up there was less developed, which made your life far too difficult, needing access to amenities like 'roofs' and 'running water'. Besides, you didn't really want to leave Columbia Falls. After driving all over God's green earth, this was the first place you could see spending a good, happy summer. And you'd even seen a bear! You loved bears. It was kinda scary, sure, but it was also a hell of a motivator to secure your food properly and remember to carry your damn bear spray when you went hiking, damnit.

So, you'd made your way back, and you'd told yourself to just cool it already, and everything had been fine for a few days until you'd parked the Jeep in Columbia Falls, a hair downwind of some fancy whiskey bar and you'd smelled it like some sort of frickin' bloodhound and suddenly you remembered there was a charming man in there who made for decent company and also it was a bit cold out on the street.

John's overt flirting had been unexpected. You'd figured he was just angling for a good tip and had been willing to let him, but when he caught you stealing food off his plate like a fucking Disneyland squirrel and only responded by helping you take more, you'd started to doubt your initial assessment a bit.

The coaster itself is pale, a classic design with high contrast. John's blocky lettering follows the outer edge. You'd thought the woman next to you was going to clap and cheer when he'd handed it off. You shouldn't even be considering texting him. Part of you thinks this is some school girl's crush on the first exceedingly handsome man to ever look your way (not that Phil was unattractive, just not really your type) - that months from now you'll pull your head out of your ass and realize you were blind sided by handsome, masculine eyebrows and basic human decency and you'll be embarrassed to admit you'd fallen for it. Fresh off an abusive relationship, no less.

But a larger, perhaps much more desperate part of you was convinced this was a route worth exploring.

You sigh and tuck the coaster into your visor for now, start busying yourself with the privacy screens. However you decide to proceed, it would be buck-wild to do it right this moment anyway. You may be a notoriously impulsive person, but this could be one of them there baby steps to betterment you're always hearing about.

There's never much sleep to be had in parking lots. The privacy screens help to block out the bright lamps, sure, but they combine to create a perfect IMAX shadow theater where any movement outside projects onto the screens around you. You're in a quiet corner of the lot, but it's not exactly deserted. Occasionally people shuffle past and it always raises your hackles to see a perfectly human silhouette standing right next to you. As long as you keep your lights out, they can't see you - but you also can't really see them and it usually makes your breathing run shallow until they clear out. Still, you manage to catch a fitful few hours before the humidity and cold combine to make your chest hurt too much to stay put so you pack an inconspicuous purse with some dirty dishes and washing supplies and head inside.

The bathroom is cold, and the water is scalding as you try to maneuver a bowl around the tiny sink. It feels good on your joints but leaves your skin feeling too tight, so you make sure to sample some lotion as you wander around. Godbless underpaid retail workers, who do not seem to give a singular fuck what their frequent homeless shopper does while trying to dodge the cold. You stay respectful, stick to sampling designated tester bottles and dishes, and never leave a mess for them and they strike up friendly conversation if they're not otherwise occupied. No such luck tonight which is a bummer because you could use some incentive to stay on your feet, but that's okay. You spend some time tidying a particularly messy T-shirt display, grab your peanut butter, and go.

You charge your phone on the drive back to West Glacier. You don't really need to, as it's only been turned on maybe twice in the last week, but it's probably best to be safe. You refuse to acknowledge the coaster tucked neatly into the visor above your head.

***

There is a grunting noise coming from the passenger side of the Jeep. It's still a little early. Around nine AM if the light spilling through the privacy screen can be believed. You're not certain because you don't want to crawl around in search of your phone and alert whoever or whatever is outside to your presence in the process. It's been about ten minutes of this - small snuffling, grunting sounds moving back and forth on the wooded side of the car. As you've laid there, you've managed to convince yourself by turns that it was one, just a raccoon; two, your actual imagination; three, Phill in the flesh come to torment you; and four, just some other campers stretching their legs. You're debating the benefits of taking a small peek around the screen to soothe your mind when a deep, animalistic groan is the only warning you receive before the whole cab is rocked on its shocks in a way you've definitely experienced before.

"No fucking way!" You exclaim and tear your blind back only to be greeted by the massive, furry chest of a frankly unreasonably large grizzly.

You should be fucking terrified. You're definitely not.

"You again!?" You ask, a laugh bubbling in your chest.

The bear backs up enough that it can duck its head toward your window, its huge golden eye gleaming as it looks directly at you. It huffs, quiet now that it's been caught, and lowers itself back to the ground, head bobbing as it sways in place a bit.

"This your favorite parking lot or something, big guy?" It's the same spot where you first saw it. Maybe the bins aren't cleaned out often enough?

Of course, the bear does not respond. It sits on the ground with a low cow like sound and just looks at you for a moment. This is probably the right time for panic to set in, seeing as this very large predator with zero natural aversion to humans has approached your car twice now, but you suppose begging sweetly for scraps is better than outright attacking your car. Besides, it's so fucking cool.

You lower the screens, trying to get an unobstructed view. The bear watches you curiously but makes no move other than an idle scratch of its own belly. Not for the first time in your life, you find it massively unfair that evolution designed something so goddamn hug shaped and then gave it the approachability of Charles Manson.

It belatedly occurs to you that you may want to remember this and you scramble to the console to grab your phone. It takes a minute to power on, but the bear just continues to sit and watch you, almost expectantly. It cocks its head and huffs when you finally snap your pic, then stands and lumbers in a big circle when you snap a few more. It's huffing becomes slightly agitated and you can't help but tease it rhetorically:

"What? Prefer your solitude?" The bear moos. "Well don't worry, I don't have anyone to show anyway." A small huff, breath steaming in the morning air. It continues to move in a slow circle. You watch it for a little bit but your body is quickly catching up with the fact that you've slept in a cold, cramped space for a few hours and nature is calling. "Don't suppose you're gonna clear out so I can pee, eh?"

The bear takes a step back, cocks its head as if inviting you to try your luck.

You chuckle as you climb into the driver's seat, ferreting your keys out of the hideaway within the seat cushion. "No thanks, big guy. Not quite that stupid. Also, you should know I'm not gonna feed you. So, much as I enjoy your company, maybe find a new Jeep to frisk down?"

Of course, it only continues to stare at you. As you pull out and drive off, it stands to watch you leave and you're struck again by how fucking huge it is. You've never seen a grizzly in person so you guess it's like seeing a moose for the first time. One thing to hear about how massive they are, another to see it in the flesh and realize your imagination is quite limited.

After finding a good place to do your morning ablutions without the threat of mauling, you climb back into the Jeep and take a minute to flip through the photos you took. You want to share them with someone because it's so fucking cool that you shared a morning with a bear, but you hadn't been lying when you'd said you didn't have anyone to send it to, anyway. No social media for obvious reasons, no real friends because Phil had driven wedges between you and all your loved ones long ago. You kept meaning to reach out, but shame and fear of Phil having done so first keeps you away. Your mom, maybe, but you and her had never been close, and randomly sending her cool pictures in an effort to share your life with her would probably make her more concerned for your safety than finding out you'd been in an abusive relationship and were resorting to homelessness had seemed to.

In the visor above you, the coaster hangs like the least assuming sword of Damocles imaginable. And you've got a feelin' someone's gonna be cuttin' the thread.

Next>>

[rosewaterandivy]

Everyone But You - a Life as We Know It au

Ch. 2 - I've Got That Lefty Curse

previous | masterlist | next

Summary: hey, you know what a funeral is decidedly not for? gettin' your dick wet. | OR eddie munson's no good, very bad lay. Pairing: e.m. x f!oc w.c.: 4.9K warnings: NSFW / MDNI, immersive second person narration w/ a name and background but no physical description mentioned, grief, character death, funeral, jason carver mention, badly repressed emotions, poor emotional regulation skills, bathroom antics inspired by the moves of Paris Geller and that one scene from Catch & Release tagging: @powderblueblood for coming up with Eddie's nickname for the rover 😘

The garage door trundles open as Eddie twirls the keys in a flourish. You squint behind your sunglasses, bringing your phone closer to avoid the sun’s glare as you triple-check the directions to CPS.

“You’ve gotta be shitting me.” Eddie grouses as the car comes into view. It’s big, some kind of SUV, a Range Rover apparently, if his grumbling is to go by, one that is impeccably clean.

“What’s the problem?” You walk toward the car as it chirps to unlock, “Keys,” You point to his outstretched hand, “Driver,” You point to him and finally gesture to the car, “Vehicle.”

He scoffs and rolls his eyes, “Right, sure. Lemme drive this car that’s worth more than my life, that’ll go real swell!” He choruses in false cheer before his face falls, “Yeah, no. Think fast,” He lobs the keys toward you which you step to avoid, and the pair of you watch as they rattle to the floor.

“Well shit, Sherlock, y’know you’re supposed to catch things as they’re thrown at you.”

You roll your lips between your teeth and raise a brow, “I don’t drive.”

“Riiiight,” Eddie says, scooping down to collect the keys. “Of course you don’t, your majesty. Wouldn’t want to sully ourselves with something so pedestrian.” He yanks the driver’s side door open and hauls himself inside.

Settled in the passenger seat, you buckle your seatbelt and pair your phone to the bluetooth in the car. Eddie adjusts the seat and mirror before deciding on a Sirius station for the fifteen minute journey to downtown.

“For the record,” He says, pulling out onto the residential street, “I have a driver’s license, not a boating one. This thing is a goddamn behemoth.”

The car lurches forward as he navigates toward the stop sign at the end of the block, the seatbelt seizes against your chest, jerking you backward into the seat.

“Munson, sort your shit out! There’s going to be an actual baby whose well-being we’re responsible for in here, you know.”

He kisses his teeth and huffs in exasperation, “Sorryyy, I can’t figure out the damn clutch on the S.S. Fuck The Planet, princess. Jesus H. Christ.” 

You make a mental note to have the insurance policy switched over and update the title on the cars as well. Swiping over to the notes app, you tap out a reminder and add a trip to the grocery store for good measure. The list is titled: HOW TO SURVIVE IN HAWKINS and has such gems as: whole foods - where?, research moving co.’s NYC, check out brownstone, contact attorney & set up will, utilities & electric??, and baby books!!!

While you prepped for the impending arrival of Zoë and a prolonged stay in the Midwest, Eddie prattled through the house like Jacob Marley’s ghost shuffling from one vacant room to the next. He’d sent something off to his agent and editor via email about pushing the deadline back for his current novel, and had thrown his duffle in one of the spare bedrooms upstairs, the one furthest from Chrissy and Jason’s room, naturally.

You’d settled in a room close to the nursery and across the way from Eddie. The guest bath was conveniently at the end of the hall just before the staircase. Neither of you bothered unpacking after Max left, just threw your bags upstairs and scrambled to the garage to pick up Zoë as soon as possible.

The ride smooths out, eventually, Eddie seeming to get a hang of the clutch or whatever it was, and soon enough you’re being escorted back to the caseworker’s office at CPS. 

She instructs you to sign the form with your intention of temporary custody just until the court can set a date with the judge to award full custody. Until that time, a caseworker would be checking up on Zoë and your care of her, the findings of which would be presented to the judge at a later date.

“And if you’ll sign here as well, Mr. Munson.” 

Eddie scribbles off his disaster of a signature just as Zoe is brought in.

“Oh,” You sigh, relieved as you rise from the chair. “There she is.” You adjust the strap of your tote on your shoulder and leave the room, gently taking her from a woman with a nod of thanks. Keeping your voice soft and low, you greet Zoë. “Hi, sweetheart. Hi sweet girl!”

It’s rare that Eddie ever hears you like this, voice pitched just so as not to hint at any sadness you may be grappling with currently. And Zoë, she looks so pink and cute— footsie pajamas decorated in little hearts. 

“Oh, honey. It’s so good to see you.” You brush back her downy blonde hair just as she begins to fuss, blue eyes falling to Eddie, who is rendered speechless in the office. He sniffs to clear any welling tears and quietly thanks the caseworker before joining you in the waiting room.

“I know, I know,” You soothe, rocking her back and forth, watching as Eddie steps beside you. 

Zoë continues her soft cries, not nearing meltdown territory yet, but rather expressing her confusion or discomfort. Eddie’s hand cards through her wisps of blonde hair as you turn and say, “Hey, look. Hey, look – it’s Uncle Eddie!” Which seems to placate her somewhat, as chubby arm reaches toward him.

Lifting her from your hip, you continue to narrate: “Wanna go see him? Good, he’s right here.” And place her squarely against his chest, his hands coming to grip her sides as she tucks herself against him, little fingers gripping the worn fabric of his shirt.

You watch as he holds his goddaughter, her soft cries falling away to nothing as she nuzzles into his neck. “Okay,” You breathe, “We should really get her home.”

The car seat, however, proves difficult. Eddie has grimaced and groused his way through various belt to lock combinations, determining all of them to be useless.

“Who designed this thing, a fuckin’ Space X engineer?”

Leaning against the car with Zoë, you decide fifteen minutes is more than enough time for Eddie to dick around with the car seat. “Shove over Elon, this is getting ridiculous.” 

Seamlessly, you set Zoë in the car seat and buckle her in. “See?” You ask, a taunting lilt to your voice, “Was that so difficult?”

“Well, that’s because I eliminated all other possibilities, so obviously you—”

“Shut it, Munson. And drive.”

You’re nearly back to Loch Nora when a cop lights up behind the rover. “Really, today? C’mon man!” Eddie pulls off to the side of the road, going for his wallet before stopping short. “Oh, shit.”

“Oh shit? What do you mean oh shit?!” You whisper frantically, “This isn’t really on ‘oh shit’ type of moment, if you hadn’t noticed!”

“God, would you shut up for, like, two seconds so I can think?!”

“Please, let’s not pretend you think.”

An intentional elbow jabs into his ribs with enough force for him to hiss. He’s about to snarl something not fit for tiny ears back at you when two raps on the window shocks you both into silence.

Eddie reluctantly rolls down the window with a pained smile. 

“Morning officer, what seems to be the problem?”

There’s a pause before a bellowing laugh. “Munson!? Well, of all the gin joints in all the world—”

Eddie’s face flushes pink, “Uh, right. Hi there, Hop.” He clears his throat, “How are… things.”

“Bout to ask you the same thing, kid.” He pockets his aviator glasses and leans against the door, propping one arm to rest on the roof. “D’you know you rolled through that light down on Main before turning onto Pinebow?”

“Uh, no. Sorry, must’ve been distracted.”

“I’ll say,” The officer peers into the car, gaze falling on you. “Morning ma’am. Mind getting me the registration from the glove box?”

“I, uh,” You supply, uselessly. Eddie leans over to do it himself before you can ask what a registration would even look like. Your eyes dart back to Zoë still sleeping soundly. 

“I need to level with you Hop,” Eddie says, handing the paper over to him. “This is not my car, this is not my beautiful wife, and my license is expired.”

“It is!?” You ask, furious. How could he be so irresponsible? There is a child riding in the backseat! Before you can rip him a new asshole, the officer chuckles.

“Can’t say I’m surprised Ed. Shame about the wife bit though.” He reads the registration and passes it back to Eddie. “But considering the circumstances … I’ll let this one slide.”

“The circumstances?” You prompt, wondering how the hell a traffic cop would know about Chrissy and Jason’s accident.

“My condolences,” He says with a frown and furrowed brow, as if the very idea of their absence unsettles him. “It’s a small town, I’m sure everyone’ll know by day’s end.”

Hop puts his glasses back on and steps back from the vehicle. He nods to you with a small smile, before his eyes narrow on Eddie. “You need to get this taken care of, Munson.” Slapping the roof of the car, he turns on his heel and walks back to the cruiser, “See you Friday!”

Eddie waves him off and pulls back onto the road. Offering positively zero explanations as to why this man you’d never met before today would be showing up to the house later this week.

“Munson, why does that cop think he's coming by the house later?”

“Hmm, oh, Hop? He’s not just a cop, he’s the Sheriff.” 

As if that made it any better.

“Do I want to know why you’re friendly with the boys in blue, er, khaki? Thought you were the commander and chief of ACAB.”

“That,” He says, punching the button to open the garage as the house comes back into view, “Is a story for another time. But for now, just chalk it up to the fact that Hawkins is a verrrry small town, princess.”

By Friday, your bags still remain unpacked by the door to the guest room. It would be so easy to call a car, book a flight and just leave, like it had never happened in the first place.

You’re pretty sure that’s what Munson is expecting you to do. He doesn’t trust you, nor you him. How can you? It’s not like you were ever friends. And it’s not like you’ve seen him in that way since—

A soft knock from the door has you turning to find him holding Zoë in the crook of his arm. She’s smiling and sleepy, fresh from her bath. One that had left you positively drenched, prompting a hasty retreat to find a change of clothes.

“They’re, uh, driving up now.” Eddie mumbles, and though he hasn’t said it, hasn’t complained one bit, you can see how exhausted he is. Essentially dead on your feet from your first night with Zoë. 

She’d cried and wailed all night, or so it felt, and you were sure you’d wake up to a noise complaint or violation of the HOA’s quiet hours or some such shit. Eddie had volunteered to stay with her that night, elected to sleep on the couch in the nursery because he’s “slept on worse.”

He’s said it as if he didn’t already have dark circles under his eyes, as if they hadn’t been awake for over 24 hours, and you want to refute it, to say you can keep the baby monitor on you instead, but the look in Eddie’s eyes tells you this isn’t just about staying the night with Zoë. 

It’s that he wants to make sure Chrissy’s daughter is safe, to protect her daughter in the way he wasn’t able to protect his best friend last night.

“Could you just sleep in—” You tilt your head toward Chrissy and Jason’s room, it’s closer to the nursery anyway. But you don’t get to finish your thought before he’s swept in to the room and settled Zoë in her crib for the night. The conversation effectively over.

“Right,” You say, peeling off the door frame to leave, “Forget I asked.”

But that was last night, and you’d be remiss to say that you’d made it much longer on your own. The room was far too quiet, the sheets too stiff, and you couldn’t find your sound machine to save your life.

It’s two o’clock when you stumble into the nursery, nearly tripping over Eddie’s prone leg because he’s too tall for the small couch, but he doesn’t wake. You make yourself comfortable on the plush white rug, the one Chrissy had sworn felt like a cloud and rest your head on the pillow you’d snuck in from the guest room.

Maybe it’s the white noise machine looped to Zoë’s crib, or maybe it’s the proximity of being close to her that brings a sense of calm that’s enough to lull you into sleep. And maybe, it’s the soft snores and snuffles that fall from the tangle of limbs precariously close to slipping off of the couch.

Regardless, you and Eddie had somewhat survived your first day as guardians. Had struggled through feedings and diaper changes, nap time, and seemingly endless loads of laundry. You’d read Chrissy’s parenting books and ordered more to be delivered tomorrow. Eddie had returned victorious from a Target run and you’d each set about slapping sticky notes and scribbling furiously on a huge tear away calendar— you’d even assigned colors: you were purple, Eddie was neon green, Zoë was pink, naturally.

Max, Eddie’s friend and the estate attorney, had apparently rallied the troops for a family dinner for that evening. You and Eddie were to do nothing, under strict instructions from someone named Nancy to relax and focus on Zoë. You could hear the front door opening as people made their way inside for dinner. 

Gently, Eddie passes Zoë off to you and helps you wrap the sling around your torso. After watching several tutorials on YouTube, you felt confident that everyone would feel more comfortable this way. Plus, your arms were killing you— who knew carrying a baby around could be so tiring?

Once downstairs, introductions are made. Eddie names off everyone in attendance as they stare at you like a new exhibit at the MoMa, or maybe the zoo is more accurate. Immediately, you can see that you don’t belong. Everyone is dressed down casually in jeans and t-shirts, their shoes kicked off by the door.

Whereas you, on the other hand, announce your presence with the click-clack of your heels on the floorboards. Swan into rooms with impeccable posture and sport dresses never more than a season old, unless they’re archival vintage, of course. A bold lip and manicured nails, not a hair out of place.

To the assembled people of Hawkins, you sure cut the figure of a Stepford wife.

“Hi,” A voice pipes up from the man to your right, “I’m Ste—”

A metallic clang sounds out, muffling whatever he had to say. Quickly followed by an exasperated, “Oh, goddamit!”

You smile at him, “The pleasure is all mine. Dean, you said it was?” 

“I, uh,” He stammers out, unable to land his gaze anywhere on your person.

“Right,” You say primly, hearing more cursing from the kitchen, “If you’ll excuse me.”

And, of course, the source of the cacophony is none other than Munson himself. He’s got the hood fan going on the stovetop, and there’s smoke pluming from the oven. Company has been here all of ten minutes and he’s already going to burn the house down.

You grab the sheet pan he’s using to dissipate the smoke from the alarms on the ceiling and narrowly avoid smacking him upside the head.

“I never took you for an arsonist, but hey, there’s a first time for everything.”

He coughs into his shoulder, his hand waving through the air uselessly. But before you can tell him to shove over and let you handle things, people stream into the kitchen. Eddie is shuffled from the stove by a kind woman named Joyce, only to be pulled away by an older man, his uncle Wayne, while Hopper takes over in the kitchen.

Windows are opened by Max and Lucas, allowing the smoke to dissipate. And eventually, Joyce offers to take Zoë and put her to bed after her dinner of mashed peas and carrots. Begrudgingly you let her, dropping a kiss to her downy blonde curls before she’s whisked away.

Dinner is nice as is the company, even if conversation is a bit stilted and awkward given the circumstances. You don’t say much and no one expects you to, but every so often Wayne will catch you gaze and offer a small smile. It’s easy to appreciate his silence, to see it as a comfort because god knows his nephew is normally anything but.

You’re on your second glass of wine for the evening, listening to Robin as she details the various hijinks of what she refers to as the Scoops Troop. But she keeps mentioning someone named Steve and you have half a mind to ask her who that could possibly be. Dean, for all his lack of being mentioned in these stories, laughs along good-naturedly.

It’s when you yawn for the second time in five minutes, that Eddie suggests: “Hey, you should go up and get some sleep.”

You scowl, confused and pleasantly buzzed but stand up all the same. “Fine, but no promises, Munson.”

It had been decided that you’d give the eulogy for the service today. Eddie sits with Zoë in his lap – she's dozing off and you’re thankful – and when Eddie stares up at you, you can feel your heart in your throat. Initially, it seemed that Eddie would deliver the eulogy, this was, after all, his hometown and this church was full of people he’d known most of his life.

But when he’d come to you two nights ago after Zoë had finally fallen asleep, shaking like a leaf with crescent hollows beneath his eyes that the moon would envy, and he’d said in a voice so broken and empty: “I just can’t do it. Please don’t make me.”

And so you didn’t.

Halfway through, while the crowd is chuckling sadly, politely, at your anecdotes about Chrissy and Jason. Things are going well until Zoë begins to hiccup and throws a tantrum. Ellie, Chrissy’s mom, scoops her up into her arms easily and carries her out of the church. Over her shoulder, Zoë’s arms stretch out toward the front of the church, her face crumpled as she cries for her mommy and daddy.

Me too baby girl, me too.

You force yourself to look back at Eddie, and his eyes meet yours. It's a moment of understanding that goes straight to your gut and steals the breath from your lungs; Chrissy wasn’t ever coming back.

The wake is held at the house, a tasteful catered affair courtesy of Jason’s parents. Everyone thought it best for Zoë to be in a familiar setting to try and stick to her routine. People mill about downstairs stopping every so often to shake your hand and offer their condolences, thoughts and prayers, or claim that their hearts are with you during this difficult time.

It’s all you can do not to scream as you hold Zoë like a life raft. So, instead of snapping something at someone’s handsy uncle who has had you cornered for the last five minutes or so, you talk to Chrissy in your head.

What were you thinking Chris? This wasn’t the plan at all, in fact, you’ve jumped the gun by about sixty-odd years y’know. If you care to recall, we said we’d outlive our husbands and buy a place on the Cape. Descend into spinsterhood in style, and then haunt the shit out of that property, as is our right.

Ellie checks in on you with a soft touch to the arm, ushering pervy uncle toward the hors d’oeuvres. Small miracles. You can feel the tears gathering on your lashes, and you know that your tolerance for these platitudes is quickly dwindling. You haven’t seen Eddie since he fed and changed Zoë an hour or so ago.

He’s been distant since that night, the one where you’d refused him and drawn your line in the sand.

Catching sight of Robin, you tell her that Zoë is going for her nap and she promises to make your excuses. She latches on to that guy she seems permanently attached to, (Dean, you wanna say?) and they begin to spread the word in an attempt to clear everyone out.

You take the stairs slowly, not wanting to shift the dozing girl in your arms too much, as you step onto the second floor landing. Turning into the nursery, you set her down on the changing table and rid her of her funeral dress.

No little girl should ever have one, much less be given the opportunity to wear it.

Back in her comfy pjs, you sit on the rocking chair and kick off your heels. Zoë nuzzles against your neck as you hum softly. Sooner than you’d anticipated, the rhythmic rocking to and fro has eased her into sleep. Rising as gently as you’re able, you lay her down in the crib, turn on her sound machine, and step out of the room with baby monitor in hand.

Downstairs, you can hear rumblings of conversation overridden by a male voice: “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here!” 

Chuckling, you duck into the guest bathroom before any of the hangers on can spot you as they take their leave. Back hitting the door, you allow yourself a moment or two to breathe. Surrounded by people all day on what has arguably been the worst day of your life to date. Smoothing down the skirt of your dress, you pull the shower curtain aside and step into the basin of the bathtub. Once settled, you draw the curtain closed again and let your head rest against the tile wall.

“Why did you leave me alone like this, Chrissy?” You say, voice ricocheting off the bathroom tiles. “You know I can’t handle anything without you.”

Not two minutes later, and someone comes barreling in. Huh, guess you never did lock that door. 

Before you can alert them of your presence, a high-pitched giggle sounds out followed by the scuffling of feet. The door is shut, and the lock is thrown as the giggle turns into a high, breathy gasp. They sound closer now, if the wet sounds of tongues battling for dominance is anything to go by.

Rearing back, you sink into the corner of the tub and will it all to go away. The noxious, ringing laughter continues unabated only punctuated by the sounds of a belt buckle clinking against the sink, a zipper being pulled down.

If you were so inclined (which you are decidedly not), you could simply turn your head to the left and feast your eyes on the shadow sexual escapades of one—

“Oh, Eddie.”

For fuck’s sake! As if this day could get any worse.

But, oh wait, it does.

“Sock it to me!” 

Biting the heel of your hand to quell the rising laughter, your eyes blow wide at her litany of ‘sock it to me’s’ – it’s as if that’s the only thing her poorly wired brain will allow her to say mid-coitus. Eddie’s laughter, understandable given the circumstances, devolves into an attempt to shush his conquest from what has got to be the most unimaginative dirty talk you’ve had the misfortune to be privy to.

When she finally reaches her peak (“Yeah! That’s so good!”), you’ve already mentally catalogued the ways in which you could have a) killed yourself in the interim, b) killed Eddie, and c) killed this poor woman, in all likelihood saving her from a life of mediocre sex at funerals.

“Thanks.”

Well, at least she’s polite.

“Uh, you’re welcome.”

Eddie sounds embarrassed, voice tight and you can imagine he’s doing that thing where he drums his fingers against his thigh, impatiently waiting for this all to be over. His lips are probably tucked between his teeth while she washes her hands, eyes anywhere but on her.

There’s the sound of the door being unlocked and the throw away line of “Call me,” and with that, she’s gone.

The sink runs again, Eddie muttering to himself under his breath, and for the briefest of seconds when you dramatically pull the shower curtain open, you could’ve sworn you saw something akin to regret (or was it disgust?) as he looked at himself in the mirror.

“Fuck!” 

He jumps back, startled at your Houdini-esque appearance. All too calmly, you step out from the bathtub, gaze fixed on him all the while. You pluck the joint from his fingers and stow it in your pocket. 

And you haven’t launched into him yet, so maybe this isn’t the verbal crucifixion that Eddie thinks it’ll be. There’s a curl to his lips that says he’s going to be a problem, that he’s going to make a joke out of this, as if he hadn’t buried his best friend earlier today and then gone and screwed a cater waiter in the bathroom of her house during the wake.

“Well, well, well, if it isn't my Lady Disdain,” He drawls, arms loosely crossed against his chest, “Are you yet living?”

It is only in deference to Zoë that you don’t go scorched earth on his ass right then and there. There’s a soft squawk from your other pocket where the baby monitor is as she likely rolls over in her sleep.

“I am only going to say this once, Munson, so you better get it through that abomination you call a skull.”

Briefly, someone attempts to enter the bathroom, the door nudging open only to be forcefully shut as you, in an impressive feat of balance, slam one Manolo Blahnik clad heel against the door and shove it closed.

“Occupied!”

You wait a beat or two, leg slotted against the door to be sure that whomever was on the opposite side did not attempt further entry. 

If only your yoga instructor could see you now.

Releasing your hold on the door, you flip the lock and take measured steps back to Eddie who is now crowded back against the pedestal sink.

“Did ya have some fun? Get you rocks off? Add another notch to the bedpost?” You seethe, and he knows better than to interrupt when you’re like this. “What a fitting way to send off Chrissy, huh? By defiling her home because you lack something called self-restraint.”

“Hey, that’s not—”

“What, is that not accurate Munson? Because from where I was sitting, it sounded like you couldn’t wait bust your nut into the next woman who batted her lashes at you, who maybe, juuuust maybe,” You take one step closer, a mere breath away from him. “Suffers from an undiagnosed brain injury and lowers herself to slum it with the likes of you.”

“Tell me how you really feel, sweetheart,” He sneers, “All those years of therapy seem to be doin’ wonders for your self-esteem. Because you’re too high and mighty to count yourself one of the crowd, right?”

“You have no right—”

“I have no right? Are you kidding me? I'm not the one who shuts down at the first opportunity, who would rather run away than stay here and deal with this!"

"It's not like I’ve left! I'm here, aren't I?"

"How the fuck am I supposed to know that?" He demands. "We are not just playing house here! And you can’t pretend that we’re not partners in this. If you’re so scared, why didn't you say anything?”

You storm toward the door, unlocking it as you turn the knob to leave. To get away from him and his pitying looks, his judgment.

"Because I don't need you!"

Eddie’s hand covers yours, “Maybe I need you!" He snaps, almost shouting. "Maybe I need you to work with me instead of against me. Maybe I need you to stop doubting yourself, because there's already so much to worry about and I can't help worrying about you. Maybe I need you to stop being so damn independent and self-absorbed. Maybe I need you to realize that you're not the only person here who lost a best friend."

The heartbreak on his face is so painfully clear that you can feel it in your chest; you can't believe you didn't noticed it before.

The door creaks open.

"Hey, are you guys – oh, sorry."

You turn from Eddie to see Robin on the stairs, hesitating. You clear your throat and blink away any tears, as you step through the door. "Can I help you?"

"I didn't mean to interrupt."

"You're not interrupting," You say, turning toward her and smoothing down your dress.

"Okaaaay." She looks doubtful. "Everyone’s cleared out, leftovers are in the fridge. I checked on Zo and she’s still zonked out."

You nod, “Thanks, for everything.”

“Happy to help.”

You wait until her footsteps fade away, and the front door shuts. Gritting your teeth, you watch as Eddie steps away from you and avoids making eye contact, your jaw clenched tightly enough to hurt.

There's something empty and aching at the base of your throat, and no matter how much you swallow, it won't go away.

[lskisms]

YOU, AT LEAST, WERE BUILT TO GO, J. MILLER

. . . which is why you are able to be loved

synopsis — joel is getting older, he is getting frail, and you, still in your youth, have to come to terms with it. you just have to do so much sooner than you thought when he’s hurt during your attempt to escape the university of eastern colorado.

genres &&. warnings — angst, hurt/comfort, (post) apocalypse &&. canon compliant, spoilers for ep. 6 “kin” and ep. 7 “left behind,” contemplation of death, canon-typical violence (wound, gore, blood, wound care), age-gap (reader is in their mid-late 20s).

word count — 3.2k

note from r — title comes from the poem “elegy for my innocence” by steven dunn. i suppose i need to introduce myself a little: i’m rhi, i’m 22, and i’m in my second to last semester of college where i’m majoring in english. obvi, a big fan of the last of us, but also resident evil (which is what i’ve based my account aesthetic on, courtesy of my beloved leon s. kennedy). my ask box is open for people who want to send in asks and things. i’m really looking forward to writing for my fellow joel miller lovers.

if your parents were still alive, if they were around to see the life you’ve carved for yourself over the last few months, you’re certain your dad would want to smack the shit out of you and your mother would disown you from the family faster than you could blink.

you can hear the chastising now: a man old enough to be your father? are you joking? what the fuck is wrong with you? this is not what we meant when we told you we wanted you to start a family. 

and you can’t fault them really. you are almost twenty years his senior, having been just a young child when the cordyceps outbreak decimated the world. if the world had stayed normal, if none of this had ever happened, you’d probably have a dead end corporate job that has you wanting to drop off the face of the earth at the end of every grueling day, married and going home to a man complacent and yielding in every aspect, never too sure of himself to assert any kind of dominance, stuck in his own dead end job that keeps you comfortable just enough.

but the world isn’t normal and it hasn’t been since 2003. and there’s nothing you can do about it. you feel like a child again, wholly the depiction of the angsty teen in dramas and romcoms, as you tell the ghosts of your parents that the heart wants what it wants and i can’t help that i fell in love with a man going starlight gray at his temples. it is wholly melodramatic, something that you would have seen in any number of teen dramas written by out-of-touch, old white men.

joel miller came into your life like a lone crimson leaf during the fall, sometime during your first few months at the boston quarantine zone. it wasn’t like he’d meant to because everything that man did and does is deliberate; he’d simply waltzed across your line of vision as you’d walked back to your apartment after a long day of doing menial chores, the new world equivalent of that mental-health-issue inducing corporate job that the older people of the zone talked about.

you’d heard of him, of course: joel miller, flown in from somewhere down south, a menace to anyone who crossed his path prior to his arrival in boston, a brother somewhere out in the midwest who had taken off and joined the fireflies. he was decidedly unapproachable, gruff and mean and stubborn. most people were more scared of him than they were of fedra for the simple fact that he was more deadly with his two bare hands than any fedra idiot (sorry, “soldier”) with a gun.

he wasn’t a person who you intended to mess around with, no matter how handsome you’d thought he was when you saw him that first time. but then you’d started hanging around with tess, one of very few people who had any kind of stable-enough connection with him and that had led to you meeting and hanging around with him too. tess invited you to go on runs with them, sneaking out of the zone at night to stretch your legs and look for supplies that fedra definitely had and refused to give up. she’d preached your capabilities to joel and, stubborn as he was, he’d allowed you to keep coming with them after the first time because you proved to be spry enough for things that he and tess had grown a little too old for: you were useful to him and that filled you with a kind of thrilling gratification.

by the time marlene had tasked your little trio with getting ellie out of the city, you were a year deep into your entanglement with joel where you did all the recreational talking and he was the one who made the deals with the fireflies, the fedra goons he had in his pocket, the people who had things to trade. it was a balance that worked well for you: joel was well-versed in persuasion when he wanted to be and you were seemingly the only person who could draw out the rare ghost of a smile or a laugh from him.

it was supposed to be a quick job, one that joel had insisted you sit out but you’d refused. just a quick round trip tpe thing, that’s what you’d said to him. we’ll be out and back before anybody even realizes we’re gone. 

that had gone belly-up, of course, because anything that involved the fireflies had at least a 99% chance of not turning out the way anyone planned. and when you’d left the museum, you were down a friend and up a whole ton of miles. joel had tried to convince you again to leave, but once more you’d refused. tess died for us, joel. i’m in this until the end because i’m making sure her sacrifice wasn’t for nothing.

and he’d let you stay. even months after that discussion, you think that he must feel at least a tiny bit grateful that you’d argued with him over it, that you’d fought to tag along. you’re an extra set of eyes, of hands, someone capable of taking over when he needs a break, which is hardly ever because he’s still as ornery as always, but knowing that there’s someone there who can must be nice enough.

and you’re glad he’d given in for once in his life because he’s dying beneath your hands and you’re not sure what to do. he’s going sallow and gray on the concrete floor of this ransacked house, breathing raspy and eyes slipping between you and some far-off point above him. joel is dying and for the first time ever since entering his life, you’re useless.

“joel, stay awake, please,” you beg, clutching at his hand as you kneel beside him. “ellie, you have to stop the bleeding.”

“i’m trying,” the young girl snaps. when she looks up, all you see is a girl who is reliving a loss, a deer caught in headlights, frenzied and terrified. her hands press the cloth harder over joel’s stomach in an attempt to staunch the blood flow and the man groans.

“leave,” he mumbles and your head snaps to look at him. he cannot possibly be saying this right now, not after everything you’ve been through. “leave. head north, go back to jackson. find tommy.”

“like hell we will,” you reply, trying to channel as much of his stubbornness as you can. you’d rather give up and drop dead right now than leave him to die alone in some fucking house in colorado. “we’re gonna fix this, joel. we’re not leaving, i’m not leaving.”

he’s slipping again, eyes glazing over. you can tell he wants to fight with you, but he’s losing the energy for it. for any of it. ellie stills and then tosses his jacket over him in a bid to keep him warm. she fixes you with a look, his look that says stay with him, so you nod solemnly, brushing his hair back from his forehead. you hear her footsteps on the stairs and only when the door shuts behind her do you finally let yourself break, weeping openly over joel’s chest, rising and falling so, so shallowly.

falling in love with this man has been something beautiful, some kind of phoenix rising from the ashes of a long-dead world. over the last few months, you have come to learn the feel of his knuckles brushing against yours, the warmth of his chest against your back when you share a sleeping bag, the sound of his soft breaths as you’ve trekked through miles upon miles of woods and abandoned highways. you have come to appreciate those things, facets of him that only you are privy to, the only person to know the weight of his arm over your waist and feel of his breath against your shoulder.

but in doing so, in reveling in the knowledge that you are the sole person to experience these hidden away pieces of joel miller, you’ve forgotten just how much older he is than you are. that misty gray at his temples and in his beard have been so permanent, you’ve started to believe that he’s always looked like this, that it’s not a marker of his age. you’ve forgotten that he is older and growing frailer by the day, conveniently forgotten how his heart stutters and how his knees act up after hours and miles of walking.

you had always known, of course, that joel would eventually leave you, but not this soon. and not like this.

maybe it’s your fault for putting him on a pedestal: the great, unstoppable joel miller. in your mind, he’s untouchable, some formidable opponent who people fear because he’s strong and knows his way around a fight. it shouldn’t be a chunk of a broken baseball bat that ends his life because it’s not fair, none of this is fair. you’ve been a fool for thinking that the three of you, your unlikely little family, would make it out of this unscathed, for believing that you could live a life like bill and frank’s after this all was over: fulfilling, safe, and the closest resemblance of before.

“god,” you whimper out, still brushing your fingers through his salt and pepper hair. “how could you even consider telling us to leave you here, joel?”

he gazes up at you, blinks slowly, the smallest signs of life that tell you he’s listening and wanting to fight you back about it.

“y’can’t leave me alone here, old man.” a short, wet laugh. “we’ve got so much left to do. i can’t get ellie back to jackson without you. i can’t do anything without you.”

he shakes his head in response and narrows those dark eyes of his just a bit. you read it for what it is: don’t you start talkin’ about yourself like that. he’s always been hard on you for not believing in yourself and your abilities, and it makes you laugh again.

“i mean really, joel. first man i’ve ever loved and you’re telling me to leave you here to die alone in fucking colorado.” you shake your head, looking away to try to blink back tears. “i can’t- i can’t just go. i need you alive.”

you can’t even stop yourself from babbling through the tears, brushing his hair back and wiping away his own tears. even though you should be desensitized to death and loss, you’ve always been particularly sensitive. but you’re young and this is your first love, your only shot at it, and he’s bleeding out on a cold floor because you were too focused on everything else that you hadn’t been able to stop him from getting hurt.

“ain’t your fault,” joel rasps out, eyes shining in the dull winter light. you realize you voiced that, a placing of responsibility that you’d meant for yourself and yourself only. “don’t do that.”

you stare at him and you know what’s going through that head of his. all kinds of thoughts that he wants to voice out loud: it’s not your fault and you were doing the best you could in the situation and this was going to happen sooner or later. damn pessimistic realist, always focusing on the worst possible outcomes than entertaining any kind of optimism.

and in a twisted turn of events, you start to think of your parents, long gone and relegated solely to memory, buried somewhere between atlanta and boston: an optimistic dad and an overwhelmingly realistic mother, so far on opposite ends of a spectrum that they complemented each other perfectly. your dad, ever the poet, had stolen poetry collections from every bookstore he’d came across during your treks from settlement to settlement. his favorite poem, by far, was about the death of a person’s innocence, something always meant to die eventually, perpetually blushing and always coming back a little less pristine each time.

you remember it now as you’re holding joel’s hand with your own, pressing his knuckles against the soft plush of your cheek. you, at least, were built to go, you hear your father’s voice say in your head, which is why you are able to be loved. you haven’t thought about this poem in years, not since you lost him to a runner somewhere in south carolina, but it feels sickening that you’re recalling it now as you’re watching your first and only love die under your hands.

and yet, somehow, it feels comforting, the idea that to be human is to know that one day, a loved one will die, but to know that is to cherish them better, to love them harder. you’re not at all okay with joel dying because you’ve had so little time to love him, but it helps you to cherish those few late nights more, to revel in the memory of his warmth enveloping you on particularly cold nights.

you can let me go. joel’s dark eyes are going glossy again and you smile knowingly at him, still crying. he’s not dead yet and there’s a possibility that he’ll make it out of this alive, the outcome that you’re praying to every god that has ever existed for. you can let me go; it won’t be easy, but you can do it.

ellie’s feet as loud on the old wood stairs as she comes barreling through the door and down the stairwell. she looks rabid as she all but throws herself onto the floor beside joel, ripping the tan coat back and pulling the soaked cloth away. joel’s wound is still gushing blood, a sure sign that he’s well on his way to death, but when ellie makes eye contact with you, you know for sure she’s found something to help. she holds up a needle and spool of thread; she must have torn the entire house apart looking for her hail mary and she found it, she fucking found it. she stares at you, eyes wide and face red, breathing hard, waiting for your go ahead.

when you finally nod at her, fresh tears in your eyes, you look down at joel. his fingers curl around your palm tighter and he’s staring back, his eyes wide. you laugh tearfully, totally and entirely stunned that ellie had actually found a way to help.

“you’re gonna be okay,” you weep, pressing his hand to your forehead, letting your tears drip into your lap. “you’re gonna be okay, joel. just hang on.”

the next few minutes crawl by cruelly, joel surely leaving bruises on your hand from gripping yours too hard, too tight, but you can’t even care because when his hand finally goes slack, ellie is done. her handiwork isn’t so bad and the bleeding has stopped for the most part. when you sigh, it feels like the weight of the world leaves your shoulders, a degree of relief you’ve never felt in your life.

joel, stubborn as always, is fighting unconsciousness as you turn to look back at him and you know it’s because he knows he’s not entirely out of the woods yet. there’s still bleeding to stop, a potential infection to fight, medicine you need to find to keep him safe and healthy, but this has to be good enough for now. it has to be because he’s joel miller and he’s mucked it through gunshot wounds and temporary deafness and all kinds of other shit the world has thrown at him. 

ellie, clearly emotionally gone, stands, her dark eyes empty and her face void of everything save for exhaustion. without even looking at you, she turns towards the stairs and says to nobody, “going for a walk. i need a break.”

her footsteps echo in the stairwell and then creak overhead before she disappears out the front door, leaving you in an empty house with joel and the horse in the garage. you look back to joel, still holding his hand. his face, always so devoid of anything minus annoyance and anger, looks so relieved right now and it makes you want to cry again, but you’re shit out of saline. you lay his hand down beside him before you tuck his winter coat back over him, up to the chin.

there’s not much that you can say, no thoughts come to mind. nothing more than i love you, but you want to save those for when he’s safely out of the thick of this. as true as they are, it’s not the right time, but you’re sure he knows. he must when he scoots his hand out from under the coat and nudges it against your thigh, some gesture that you can’t decode, but that you understand as i’m still here, like he’s able to read your mind. you smile at him softly.

i’ll tell him when this is all over, you reason with yourself as you move to lay beside him, exhaustion finally overtaking you. wherever we end up after ellie is safe with the fireflies, i’ll tell him and he’ll say it back and we’ll be okay.

he can’t turn onto his side, but he turns his head to face you, looking every bit the age of fifty. his eyes are tired and the crinkles of his skin run deep, his cheeks and chin dusted gray. this close, you can see every pock mark, the dip of skin at his temple from some long-forgotten cut, the deep scar that mars the space between his eyebrows. his defenses are down and he looks his age, for the first time in a long time because it’s so easy to forget how old he is when he’s doing the things he does to protect you and ellie.

you scoot in as far as you’ll allow yourself, knees knocking against his legs and your head pillowed on the arm underneath you. you raise a hand and rest it on his cheek, a touch he immediately leans into, like your palm was made to caress his skin. as far as you care, it was. he tilts his head towards you and you find yourself doing the same, foreheads touching. this is one of the small gestures joel allows you on most days, but right now, it feels more monumental than that. like always, it’s a moment shared singularly between the two of you, but it carries so much more weight because he gazes at you with so much more softness and love than he’s ever let himself show before and it reminds you that underneath all that rough exterior, he is a man capable of gentle touches and adoration, no matter how many times the world and himself have tried to beat it out of him.

as his breathing slows, but deepens (a sure sign that ellie has mended the problem for now), you move your arm to rest on his torso, hand pressed into the sturdy spot just above his heart. the beat is steady, solid, a reminder that he’s okay. he was built to go, but now more than ever, you feel he was also built to be yours, to be loved by you. and you’ll make sure he makes it through this, no matter the cost.

(c) lskisms, 2023. do not repost, translate, or otherwise plagiarize my work. the only official versions of my work are available on tumblr and ao3 under the name lskisms.

[prongsfish]

*blinks* headcanons *blinks*

okay. i am almost a month late to this ask hi @ethanmilo ... sorry about that... and i will be using it to give the barty hcs you asked for over a month before this but the ask expired... sorry about that again... my bad time is scary

but yes barty headcanons. these may end up leaning into bartylus territory because i am So obsessed with them right now but i have no idea what i'm going to write yet so we'll see HAHA

(jumping back here after writing this, most of these are lighthearted but some do get a bit more serious/dark, nothing out of character for what you see scrolling on maraurders tumblr but i just don't want people to be shocked by the tone shift)

he doesn't take day-to-day school life seriously and fucks around in most of the classes he doesn't skip altogether BUT his competitiveness is not to be underestimated. he's barely in class and he never pays attention but he gets away with it because he's so smart that when he started school he was already suuper advanced. he just kept working on his own and so was always way ahead of whatever he was supposed to be learning, so he's super annoying and disruptive during classes but when it comes time to it he's still at the top of all his classes. he and reg are always warring for the number one spot and they're a nightmare to be around during exams because they are SO competitive

he'd give himself those shitty stick and poke tattoos at like age fourteen, if you've seen the videos of kids on tiktok with the ugliest shoddiest tattoos you've ever seen you know what i mean... i just found this image on pinterest and this is Exactly the sort of shit he'd have. i think he'd have always been constantly drawing on his work and skin with a quill/pen and he does not fear permanence. the moment he found a way to give himself tattoos he was doing it.

the absolute biggest shit stirrer you've ever met, everything he does is always in the hopes of pissing someone off. he will lie, he will argue, he will push and shove his way into a confrontation and when someone eventually breaks his nose he just starts laughing

he knows Everyone. he has connections to everyone in whatever city he's in, he constantly "knows a guy" and every time it's the most absurd story that his friends have never heard a single word of but it's 100% true. his lore is infinite. and people expect it to be limited to just where he lives but no, he could go to a whole new country and still be being stopped every 5 minutes by some old friend who's thrilled to see him

related to the above, he is that Coolest Fucking uncle. he's awful with kids but god damn it if he doesn't have the most legendary stories to tell luna as often as she could ever want!!

he knows a shit ton of languages. he started learning them because he was bored and it eventually it just became a Thing and he's fluent in like 4 or 5 but can hold a decent conversation in upwards of 10 others too

he looks like he smells bad. he wouldn't smell bad when he was younger, still too used to certain privileges of his class, but the further he strayed from his father and family, especially into young adulthood, i think he would start to—unless regulus was in his life, in which case he'd better smell like fucking roses if he ever wanted to be seen anywhere even Near him in public

i heavily associate him with nu metal and post industrial music but i also think that when he was younger he would've been suuper into all those whiny indie rock bands that normal people call midwest emo, music nerds crucify you for calling midwest emo, and i have no clue what to call. he'd totally have his own band inspired by them too, and he totally has the voice for it—the voice that's objectively terrible but works perfectly for that style of music

he doesn't talk about how he feels like ever but those close to him have worked out ways to get him what he needs when he needs it. he refuses to ask for help but his friends know him well enough that they don't need him to ask, they can pick up his question in far fewer words, and even though it's still hard for him to even imply that he needs help it's a lot easier when he can talk around the issue rather than having to actually using his words. his friends know that it'd be better if he Did use his words but they also know that if they tried to stop letting him get away with not asking properly he'd just stop trying to ask at all

his favourite film genres are horror and action, the gorier the better. he loooooves all the saw films

he's super messy, his room is a fucking NIGHTMARE. shit EVERYWHERE. clothes strewn all around, dishes stacked in several tall piles, three different rubbish bins that are each around 70% full from the times he's been forced to "clean up" and eventually gotten bored/distracted. regulus despises it and refuses to go anywhere near his room meanwhile evan is so excited because every time he goes into barty's room he discovers a new species of mould. sometimes when he's really lucky barty will kick over a pile of clothes to find something and like eight cockroaches scurry out (evan immediately rushes to grab as many of them as possible before they disappear and then takes them home)

by the time he was a preteen he'd given up on the idea that his father would ever be proud of him, had flipped to doing everything in his power to anger him further, entirely stopped caring about the consequences because if his father would hate him no matter what he did why not make it reflect badly back on him, since he cared so much about his public image as a politician. he never intended to leave though, because he couldn't bear the thought of leaving his mother with him. that was until he pushed too far with his dad, got too sucked into the lifestyles of others who'd given up just like him, fell too deeply into the depression and the anger and the violence, until he crossed a line and his mother was looking at him like she was disappointed, too. he realised that he was trying so hard to stay for his mother but staying was making him a worse person and it wasn't worth it anymore if she could no longer see what he was doing as a sacrifice, and only as surface level "badness". he hated leaving his mother more than he hated his dad but in the end staying was only making things worse for the both of them

he uses humour and stupidity as a defence mechanism, and while he does find it fun to do ridiculous and reckless things he also does it because it gives him a role to fill. he can't stand being genuine because he's terrified of rejection, so he'd rather lean into all the superficial judgements made about him. if when someone shuffles away from him in public transport he bares his teeth at them and when someone expects him to be stupid he purposefully misunderstands a simple concept, then nobody actually knows him and nobody can hurt him in a way that matters. the person they insult isn't actually him so they can't possibly get to him

he is VERY judgemental and he and regulus can spend hours talking shit about anyone from lifelong classmates to complete strangers. it surprises everyone that he actually gets along with remus really well, but it's because remus has a more judge-y side that he hides when with anyone but regulus and, apparently, barty

he and dorcas are the gay man and lesbian best friends duo and people have probably mistaken them as a couple before, which they'd both be mortified by. "have they seen us?!?!"

okay i'm forcing myself to end it there because i have an essay draft to finish and a substantial amount of french homework to do in the next like 4-5 hours (nobody is allowed to say shit about my sleep schedule i don't want to hear it HAHAHA) and i've already been writing this for WELL over an hour so i really should stop giving myself ways to procrastinate, i hope these were enough to make up even slightly for the very long wait <//3 ah barty crouch jr, the one and only love of my life... i would be utterly terrified of you in real life but i would also be very attracted to you from a safe distance which is basically the highest form of compliment i can possibly give a person

[sitkowski]

taste the wreckage (justin morrow x f!reader for ao3userfeistycadavers [stepsiblings au])

the last of my prompts, in which @ao3userfeistycadavers came to me with an idea and some brain worms, and this is what came out of it. this is my first time writing something like this, so i hope this lived up to what you were looking for! (10/10 would write again).

cw: 18+ MDNI ⚠️ this is a STEPBROTHER/STEPSIBLING FIC! everyone is of age. warnings for (other than the obvious) oral fixation, dry humping, oral sex (f receiving), masturbation, voyeurism, finger sucking.

word count: 1.7k

title comes from "pussy sugar" by kittie. divider by @saradika-graphics

⇉ masterpost || taglist signups

You arrive home at an ungodly hour, let yourself in through the basement. You’re not expecting your step brother to be asleep on the couch. He’s supposed to be touring across the midwest with his band. Creeping past him, you make your way down the hall to the bedroom that used to be yours, pushing the door closed. You wallow, you mope. You’d been together for almost two years, and somehow thought the relationship was going further than this . You manage to get something that resembles sleep, and when you drag yourself out of the room later on in the day, Justin is still there so you didn’t imagine him.

“You look like shit.” he says and if you didn’t know any better, he almost sounds concerned. Which is valid because you guys have had that kind of relationship where you can be mean to each other, but others can’t be mean to you. It’s been that way ever since your parents got married. “No, seriously, this isn’t your normal look. You look extra shitty. What’s up?”

“Don’t you have a boyband to be touring with? Why are you even home?” it’s not your best insult, even you can admit that.

“I asked you first. Don’t be a dick.”

“If you must know, my boyfriend broke up with me.”

You almost expect him to say something mean, but he just kind of stares at you. You steal his cup of coffee and he doesn’t even notice.

“What did you do?” he asks.

“What?” You glare at him, insulted that he’d think that you’re the reason the douchebag broke up with you. “How is this automatically my fucking fault?”

He snatches his cup back, “No, you idiot, what did you do to him after he broke up with you? You just let him get away with that shit?”

Scoffing, you go in search of your own coffee, not wanting to listen to him. The rest of the house is empty and you trudge up the stairs into the kitchen. He follows you, of course. You can feel his eyes burning into the side of your face as you fill your mug and finally you snap. “What the fuck did you want me to do? Slash his tires? Write a little emo song about him?”

Justin flicks your ear and you hiss, cracking him across the knuckles with the spoon you stirred your coffee with.

“I could kick his ass for you.” he offers and you roll your eyes.

“My hero,” you mutter. “If you leave right now you could probably find him. Don’t be fucking stupid, you’re not gonna go beat him up. I’ll be fine. I just need this weekend to get the fuck over myself.”

“Look, come hang out in my room. We’ll put on some movies, order some food, get high. By the time you go back to school, you won’t even remember him.”

Seeing as how your only other options seem to be hanging out alone in the basement or sitting around to see which one of your parents will arrive home first, you agree. He puts in an order for takeout and you grab a shower because you honestly still feel disgusting after the drive home and sleeping in your clothes. By the time you emerge, the food has already arrived.

Justin puts on a couple of the Saw movies and lets you disassociate. He talks about traps he’d put your ex in, you talk about traps you’d put him in. It’s exactly what you needed. After you eat, he pulls out his weed pen. You think he’ll just pass it over to you after he takes a hit, but he doesn’t. Instead he holds it up to your mouth for you. You blink up at him, not exactly understanding the way he looks from your eyes to your mouth and back again. 

It’s nothing new, you know this. The tension between the two of you, at least over the past few years. You’ve done your best to compartmentalize it, try to keep him in a category marked no. But it’s not as easy as it was when he was just the fifteen year old shithead who moved in with you and your dad. Five years later, he’s still a shithead, but he’s also something else.

Before you know it, it’s well after midnight. You’re stoned and sleepy and you’ve devoured the leftovers. Somehow, Justin’s convinced you to just crash in his bed. You don’t argue as much as you could, slipping beneath the covers next to him. The first thing you notice is the amount of body heat that he puts off, which isn’t actually something new to you. It’s not the first time you’ve fallen asleep together. But when he wraps himself around you, spooning up behind you, it surprises you how easily you relax back into him. 

You shift around, trying to get comfortable, unintentionally pushing back into him. One of his hands clamps down on your hip suddenly, holding you still.

“Don’t.” he hisses, backing away just a little.

“What, I’m just trying to—” you stop short when you realize he might have moved, but he didn’t move far enough, you can still feel him hard against you. “Oh.”

“Just fucking stay still, it’ll go away in a minute.”

You stare at the wall, feel Justin’s breath against the side of your face as he speaks, and you make a choice, because it’s your choice to make. You push back into him, more insistently, rubbing yourself against him. And he obviously makes his own choice too, because he doesn’t try to keep you still again. He grinds into you, heavy body pressing you a little more firmly against the mattress. Neither of you say anything, Scream playing as background noise. Your head is fuzzy, but you want this. Heat pools in your gut, and you squeeze your thighs together.

“Can I do something?” he asks in your ear.

You nod, breathing a little heavier when he moves away from you long enough to pull you onto your back. He doesn’t say anything else, just crawls between your spread thighs. His hands hook beneath the waistband of your shorts and your underwear, pulling them both down at the same time. You kick them away, and it makes you blush the way he’s staring down at you. His eyes meet yours, an oddly vulnerable expression on his face, and you nod, just once.

It’s not anything special at first, you can admit that. His mouth trails up one of your thighs, and you feel the pressure of his lip piercing. You can’t look at him yet, keeping your eyes on the screen just over his shoulder. You know the fact that you don’t feel guilty about this should be alarming to you, but it isn’t. He doesn’t touch you more than this at first, dragging his mouth back and forth, hooking one of your legs over his shoulder, opening you up to him. You squirm at the feeling, hips rocking up impatiently. 

He laughs a little meanly, pulling back so that you finally have to look down at him. “Are you impatient?”

“Are you going to do something more than leave hickeys on my leg? You said you wanted to do something.”

You expect him not to know what he’s doing, most guys don’t. You think he’s going to drag it out a little longer, but then you feel his fingers dragging between your folds, hooking into you and at the same time his other hand presses down on your hip, keeping you pinned down to the mattress. It takes your body a few moments to warm up to the feeling, his fingers are thicker than your own or your ex’s.

The first drag of Justin’s tongue over your clit has you shoving your head back into the pillow and pressing your hand over your mouth. After that, he’s relentless, like a dog with a bone, and you can’t do anything but let him pin your lower half to the bed and make you take it. You grab onto his hair, unsure if you want to yank him away or yank him closer. The moan he lets out against your cunt is very telling and you grind up against his mouth as much as he’ll let you.

When you come, you have to bite the meat of your palm to keep quiet. You won’t praise him for it, instead using your foot to push at his shoulder until he pulls his fingers out of you. He’s still smug, and when you look down at him, you see him sucking his fingers clean, eyes on your face the whole time. He starts to move up your body and then drops down on the mattress beside you, shoving his hand beneath the waistband of his shorts.

“Can I see?” you ask, and he turns his head to look at you. “Dude, you just ate me out, the least you can do is let me see this.”

Justin shoves his shorts down and you decide not to feed into his ego and tell him he’s got a pretty nice cock. Your eyes bounce from watching him drag his hand up and down his shaft to his face, the way his eyelashes flutter. He’s still watching you. An all too loud groan escapes him and you put your hand over his mouth suddenly. His eyes widen, and you press two of your fingers against his bottom lip, Predictably, he sucks those two fingers into his mouth, his hand moving faster as he slides his tongue between your digits. You don’t touch him any more than this.

He’s whiny, and you press your fingers down on his tongue as if that would make him quieter, but it just makes it worse. He comes all over his fist right as Sidney shoots Billy in the head, the noise drowning him out.

For a minute, neither of you move. You pull your fingers away, wiping them on the front of his shirt, and then you crawl to the end of the bed to find the bottom half of your clothes.

“Where are you going?” he asks, still a little breathless.

“To bed,” you yank on your underwear and shorts, not bothering to look back at him. “Thanks.”

You leave the room and quietly make your way back down to the basement as fast as you can.

⇉ taglist: @rumoured-whispers @deathblacksmoke @collapsedglasshouses @ao3userfeistycadavers

@ladyveronikawrites @dominuslunae

[someforeignband]

WIP Wednesday 🪽

why do one when we can have both,,,, :) !! tw: im soft launching some destiel under the cut lmaooo this work is meant to be a sort of dean winchester character study. (non-magic/non-supernatural AU, canon divergence, human Castiel, rural midwest setting)

this is from my small wip I Can’t Let Go (When Something’s Broken) — you can listen to the song it’s based on here.

“He can’t help it— that he lost his mind,” she’d said, like it was all supposed to make sense, like it was supposed to just explain everything. 

It didn’t feel like it explained anything. 

Everything had been a lie. The last eighteen years had been some big, huge, fucking lie.

And, Dean supposes that’s just how it is. The gag is that there isn’t some kind of man behind the curtain. There’s no invisible man. There’s no thing that goes bump in the night. It was all a lie. A delusion. 

It’s all that sad sort of twisted thing that makes the heap of dirty clothes piled up on your desk chair in the corner of your bedroom look like a burglar. 

But, the sun rose.

And now, Dean had to deal with the reality that it was just a pile of laundry on a desk chair. 

The burglar doesn’t exist. 

It’s just a fucking pile of clothes on a chair. 

Dean couldn’t stop thinking about the look on his Nonna’s face when she’d told him, told him about Dad and how he and Sam would have to pack up their clothes and move in. 

And yeah, now he’s laying in a bed with a real mattress and it’s so comfortable, but he still has his fucking shoes on. It’s three meals a day, and it’s starting Senior year in Schuyler, Nebraska with a roof over his head. It’s not having to load a gun and shove it deep in the bottom of your backpack. It’s not turning over your shoulder every three seconds. It’s getting to worry about making friends for the first time, knowing you’re staying put. It’s a hand-knitted blanket, and getting to wear sneakers, not worrying about wearing the tread off of the bottom. 

But—

It was all a pile of laundry. 

Eighteen years for a pile of dirty laundry on a desk chair. 

The box spring in the attic squeaks a lot. It’s weird sleeping without Sam in the room. Most nights thus far, he’s sort of just lied awake and stared at the ceiling. Sometimes, he still forgets to take his shoes off when he gets into bed. 

Force of habit. 

Quietly, even though he doesn’t have to be anymore, Dean toes off his shoes. They’re new and they sort of hurt his ankles, they’re not quite broken in yet. 

“We couldn’t wait to get you both back,” Pap had said when he smoothed Sam’s hair back, kissing his forehead like he was 4 and not 14. He’d kissed Dean’s forehead, too. But, it was forced, Dean knew it. 

His head is so shiny and bald, Dean chuckles quietly to himself, trying to shake off the memory. He doesn’t have to be quiet. Doesn’t have to be careful, or vigilant, or alert. 

The shoes he kicked off hit the floor with a loud thud. Dean can’t help but cringe, the ghost of his breath crawling up and dying in his throat. Quickly, he sucks in air again. He had to break that. 

His socked feet wiggle around under the flannel sheets. It got cold at night here, even in September. Turning on his side, he reluctantly closes his eyes, trying to will sleep to come. 

Sam seemed to be adjusting fine, which Dean was grateful for. He wanted his little brother to be happy. 

“You look so much like your mother, Dean,” Nonna had made a passing comment that night at dinner. It knocked around in Dean’s mind as he lay there, trying to sleep. 

And it was funny, the scariest part of everything wasn’t that it was all a lie. Well—that was a little frightening. But, it was more than that. 

If there wasn’t some boogeyman waiting to jump out after the pair of them, then Dean supposed there wasn’t somebody out there just waiting to save them, either. 

In the corner of his room, his duffel was open, clothes strewn about, piled tall and disorganized on a folding chair which probably once belonged to a desk.

[sappymix1]

↻ FLIP FLOP let it flood let it flood!

↻ FLIP FLOP: send me a scene from one of my fics and I’ll describe or write it from another character’s POV!

the way I did not remember this fic at all and had to read it back Anyway. obvious is to do george's but. here have this

sapnap: [8 ball: your move!] sylvee: ur going to miss the ball drop thats like sacred religious sylvee: sacred religious sylvee: sacred religious sylvee: oh my god sylvee: ill film it and send it to you its okay sylvee: [8 ball: your move!]

A nonstop steam of texts had been buzzing against Sapnap’s thigh for hours, depleting the battery until it was half, then a fourth, and then a tiny orange sliver that looked like citrus and tasted like the soap Dream’s mom bought to sit next to their kitchen sink that one time he didn’t rinse it out of his water bottle well enough before he went to the gym. It was Sapnap’s own fault, really. Except it wasn’t. He had shown up with a partially used up battery to begin with, laying in bed too lazy to pick up his laptop but still wanting to watch a valo stream on his phone right after he had woken up a few hours earlier and not bothering to plug it in on the drive over.

But how was he supposed to know how badly George’s flight would be delayed. Fucking storms over the midwest, taking Sapnap’s evening plans and throwing them against a wall until they shattered into a billion irreparable pieces. Taking all of their plans and wrecking them. A fitting end to a cluster fuck of a year, maybe; George on a plane, Sapnap wasting the end of his phone battery on phone games, Dream doing, well. Sapnap really didn’t know what Dream was doing. Drowning himself in the aforementioned kitchen sink, maybe, as the hours without George slinked past.

Sapnap sighed, slumping down in one of the uncomfortable airport chairs, and he dropped his phone to rest against his stomach. The uneven purple fabric of his shirt pulled around it, as he settled in to wait sans distraction.

Well, sans distraction other than Sylvee sending him an unsteady video of the ball drop on her TV featuring both of her cats and her narrating what they were doing. He liked that one. Even though it had immediately followed him promising that she definitely did not need to film the ball drop for him for a long list of reasons beginning with that he had been planning on coming over primarily to get wasted with his friends, not so much he cared that much about the holiday itself.

It was almost two in the morning when George seemed to just pop into existence in front of him, hovering in front of Sapnap’s bare knees suddenly with a dark backpack slung over his shoulder when he opened his eyes.

Sapnap didn’t jump, but that was mostly just because he had been on the verge of falling asleep. “Hey,” he said. “You didn’t text me.”

George blinked at him, eyes wide. He looked tired. Eye bags heavy, hair all messed up. Then again, it was two in the fucking morning, and he had been in an airport or on planes all day. “Yes I did.”

Sapnap picked up his phone from where it had fallen down along the seat, in between the rough fabric and his thigh. It was dead. “Oh.” He yawned, big and swallowing up his whole body, and when his eyes popped back open, George was yawning too. “Okay.” Sapnap stood up, stretching his shoulders. God, his entire body ached. He shoved his dead phone back into his pocket, rattling around with his keys, and he threw his arm lazily over George’s slumped shoulders. “C’mon. Let’s get you back to your boy.”

[omegalomania]

ive got a one free sincere poetical diatribe coupon that expires this week so im cashing it in on waxing lyrical about my favorite band for a minute cause im stupidly sleep deprived and its gonna be a long night so

the thing is this.

the thing is that maybe there isnt quite magic in this world but theres something to be said for the pure unfettered serendipity of a million little things conspiring to have certain peoples paths cross and the way this can change entire worlds. maybe i dont believe in magic but i believe in the unshakable fucking certainty that a 17 year old joe trohman had when he met a 17 year old patrick stump in a bookstore by sheer chance and listened to his demos and Knowing that he should sing despite patrick not being a singer and not particularly wanting to sing. i believe in the stone cold rock solid belief this kid had in this other kids voice to the point where he dragged his buddy over to his house to prove he had the pipes they needed. i believe in pete wentz hearing patrick stump sing in person for the first time and realizing wait, yeah, actually hes our golden fucking ticket. i believe in the last second just before patrick was about to get on the kit to record the drums for take this to your grave, andy hurley comes swinging in fresh from recording an ep with another band and knocking out every drum part damn near flawlessly. i believe in a band of scrappy dumb punk kids who grew up in the suburbs of the midwest and took over the world and didnt plan for any of it to get as big as it did. i believe in this weird fucking band with their weird fucking idiosyncrasies, this band of four guys who dont look like they should be friends let alone making music together: a heavily tattooed vegan straightedge beefcake drummer, the ambitious visionary bassist with the 50-megawatt grin, the tattoo-sleeved lanky guitarist with an inescapable rock 'n roll bent, the pixie-pale and painfully anxious frontman with the voice of a soul singer.

i believe theres a special kind of chemistry that only makes sense with the four of them, together. its the guy with the visuals and the words, this bassist who was supposed to be a lawyer or a star soccer player but instead crafts stories from the narratives he crafts in his head. its this guitarist with his love for the interleaving of sounds and ability to seamlessly jump from front-facing to incredibly restrained and his indelible blues-rock momentum. its this singer who never intended to sing but whose soaring, clear tenor is so utterly distinct that he quickly became one of the most iconic and versatile vocalists in the genre, if not in the world of music in general. its this hardcore drummer who pulls everything together and forms the throbbing heartbeat of the band, whose grit-edged metalcore backbone not even the poppiest of all pop choruses can truly file away.

i believe in this: andy hurley's unshakable faith that the band would reform during the hiatus, despite all evidence to the contrary. patrick stump writing the song that would become "miss missing you" for his solo record but then setting it aside because it didnt feel like it was for him, again, despite every indication that for all anyone knew, fall out boy was done for good. pete wentz, moved by a miserable blog post from his split-up bands singer, reaching out and sparking what was unheard of, especially for bands like them - a renaissance, a successful resurgence, and one of the best comebacks any musical act can say theyve had in decades. joe trohman picking up the phone and preparing to tell patrick stump that he wasn't ready to go back and do the band again if he wasn't going to be writing music, only for patrick to take the words out of his mouth and insist that he should be writing more and he was too talented a writer for them not to allow him space for that.

i believe in the little things. i believe in a band that was never expected to last a summer but has become an indelible part of music history, naysayers be damned. i believe in the unique chemistry of four guys who have no monetary or logistical reason to continue doing this thing aside from the fact that they love it so - they love the process of creating with one another, and they love the car crash hearts whose hearts beat in sync with theirs. i believe in joe listening to the first pass of "fake out" exactly once, picking up an acoustic guitar, and walking into record the instrumentation that ultimately pulled the entire song together in one take without thinking twice about it. i believe in andy simply knowing that "heaven, iowa" would make the final cut of the record despite patricks reticence and his not knowing how to make the song something he could say he was proud of. i believe in pete pouring some of his most vulnerable feelings into his, fearful of how well they will be accepted but making that leap nonetheless, only for the crowds to sing every single word back to him.

maybe theres no such thing as magic or fate and maybe theres no point. but i think of stardust. i think of four guys who poured so much love and time into this record and named it for stardust and i think of them as this: fistfuls of cosmic dust who all sprang from the same etiology. i think of them and its a romantic fucking notion but i allow myself this, i entertain the thought that when the cosmos formed and the detonation of planets and the dissolution of comets created that far-flung scatter of so much (for) stardust, that starry residue liberally dotting the broad span of the black, the four of them all came from the same origin point and like magnets ended up snapping together and thats the way theyve stayed. for years. for decades.

what i guess im trying to say is this: when the universe formed we all came from stardust and we will all return to stardust and i cant help but wonder if those four guys all came from the same stardust too.

like i said. its a romantic fucking notion. i believe in the little things though. and you know what they say about believers (never die).

[arrowflier]

Hi, Arrow! It's so great to have you back. For the speedwrites, how about the two of them getting stranded somewhere overnight, because of a flat tire or bad weather. 🚗❤️

Thanks Deena! I was trying to go cutesy and then this happened instead, oops😂

“You also told me you’d be ready when I got home, so whose fault is this again?”

Mickey grimaces.

“Would’ve been if not for your brother.”

“Oh, sure.” Mickey can see the roll of Ian’s eyes reflected in the windshield. “Carl made you stay late at the Alibi.”

“What was I supposed to do? Turn down free drinks?” Mickey scoffs. “Yeah, sure.”

He leans forward, peers past Ian out the driver’s side window. He can’t see much except the rain, coming down sideways now, and the roll of clouds in the distance as lightning flashes through them. Beyond the spread of their weak headlights, he can’t even make out the road.

“You sure you can’t drive in this?” he asks anyway, squinting as if it will help him see through the darkness. “Think I probably could. Just need to—”

“Good for you,” Ian cuts in sharply. “Next time, don’t drink five rounds before we leave and I’ll let you try.”

Mickey subsides. Sits back in his seat, lets his head fall against the headrest. Straightens, undoes his seatbelt, and leans back again.

Ian isn’t moving. His hands are still on the wheel even though he’s already put the car in park, and he’s staring blindly through the windshield.

“Shitty start to our first vacation, huh?” Mickey comments, turning toward him and fidgeting until one leg is half up on the seat. He smiles wryly. “I mean, we’re supposed to be in a cabin right now, smoking it up and fucking in front of the fire—”

“I’m trying, okay Mickey?” Ian snaps, fingers white where they still clutch the wheel, and Mickey stops.

It’s cold in the car. Colder than it was a minute ago, a chill seeping through him as his eyes latch onto Ian’s set jaw. Ian is grinding his teeth, giving the weather outside the chin, and his eyes are—

Oh, fuck. That’s not the good kind of red.

“Hey.” He tries to say it softly, but it rings too loud in the suddenly quiet car. The last of his buzz slips away as he reaches out a hand grips Ian’s wrist. He tries to tug Ian’s arm toward him, but it stays stubbornly where it is.

“What,” Ian asks shortly, and Mickey winces.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “I was just teasing you, man.”

Ian snorts. It sounds wet.

“You’re right though,” he says. There’s a bitter roughness to his tone, like he’s fighting to push the words out of his throat. “This was supposed to be a nice thing, a good thing for us. I worked so hard to set it up, and I—” He breaks off. His fingers flex on the wheel, Mickey’s hand moving with his arm as he finally pulls it back. “And I couldn’t even plan for the fucking weather.”

“Ian,” Mickey says. His hand slides from wrist to knuckles, around to palm. “We live in the fucking midwest. The weather can’t even plan itself.”

That earns him another snort, but it’s lighter this time.

“Was sunny this morning,” he agrees. “Not a cloud in sight.”

“Sneaky fuckers, clouds. Total airheads, too.”

This time he gets an actual laugh, and Ian’s fingers tightening on his.

“Sorry this got fucked up,” Ian says quietly, running a thumb across the back of Mickey’s hand. “But I think we’re gonna be stuck here for a while.”

Thunder booms closer, as if in answer. The rain gets louder, water covering the windshield until all they can see are streaks of light. Then even those are gone as Mickey reaches over Ian with his free hand and turns off the headlights.

“Been stuck in worse places.” He shifts until he’s leaning sideways over the center console, and lays his head on Ian’s tense shoulder. “And with worse company.”

Ian lets his hand be pulled over into Mickey’s lap. The position is awkward, but he twists to press his face into Mickey’s hair.

“Yeah,” he breathes, barely audible over the storm. “Me too.”

[halfadoginatank]

Robin and steve accidentally join the mafia

I couldnt stop thinking about this post by @qprstobin so wrote a lil bit based on an idea in there

It's been about two years since vecna's defeat, and after two years of some of Robin and Steves most awful jobs in chicago. One month into this one and they've finally found peace.

"Okay can we be real here?" Rob waves a slice of pizza as they sit in the store room of the warehouse-like antique shop they work at. "The boss is lovely, I mean seriously! But isn't it weird that we've met his entire family?"

Steve squints at Robin from the couch. "I don't think so? Maybe this is what, like… Italians are supposed to be like."

"Aren't you Italian?"

"Yeah but my family was fucked up. Everyone's so close with Boss it's like, a clan almost." He settles his hands on top of his chest. To be frank it's the best couch he's ever been on.

"I think it's about time we start accepting the fact that they might be like. Mafia." Steve looks at her to continue. But she's too busy eating the last of her pizza, avoiding the crust.

She finishes and hands the crust to steve.

"I mean, the store is practically empty! Barely anyone shops here!" Okay that's true, it's almost like family video but instead of stocking shelves for new movies, their boss Mr. De Luka or one of his 'cousins' will drop off something so they can slap a price tag on it and find a good place to put it.

"Mmm but why would we care? We're not doing anything wrong! Plus are you gonna look Mrs. De Luka in the eyes and say 'oh sorry ma'am' which you know she hates! And go 'we won't come to dinner tonight on account of maybe you being the Italian mob!"

Robin cringes hard. Steve huffs in victory. Mrs. De Luka was a tall and beautiful woman with angular features, a roman nose, and hair the exact same color as Steve's. She was a force to be reckoned with. She may bake some of the best cream cake but she's also steadfast and can settle a table of eight full grown men with just a slap of her hand against it.

"Ugh. That's not fair, saying no to her is impossible, she's like… so incredibly hot."

Steve scrunched up his nose. "Ew robin dont say that she's like a parental figure."

"She's more like a friend's mom!"

"Yeah! My mom!"

Robin points an accusing finger "Ahah! So you admit it. She's practically your mother!"

Steve chokes on the last bite of his pizza crust, he sits up and hammers on his chest. "Jesus Christ, no robin she's not my mother!" He coughs out

Robin throws her hands up "I didn't say that. I said practically! Hell, Angelo calls you cousin!" Steve narrows his eyes… Angelo Ricci is their boss's cousin, actual, biological cousin. Because as Steve and Robin have learned, some of the cousins or aunts or uncles are just unrelated people they call family.

"Should you be calling him by his first name? He's old enough to be your dad."

Robin actually stops and sits back in her chair. "If he was my dad that would be weird." Steve nods.

"Because of Amara?"

"Yes."

Amara Ricci… Steve can still remember the first time they met.

[-]

It had to be at least a week after they were hired. Mr. De Luka thanked them both for being great employees and asked them if they would have dinner with his family. Mr. De Luka wasn't like Keith, and neither was his store. It seemed genuinely family owned, and Mr. De Luka himself was much kinder, and seemed to actually care. Which was novel considering their last boss told one of them if one of them got killed during a stick up, to not sue him because 'he warned us'."

They both took a cab to the house, which wasn't really a house but a manor. It was huge, and Steve thought he had seen huge. Turns out Midwest standards are nothing on city ones. Robin and Steve knocked on the door, that's when they met Mrs De Luka. She was harsh but loving, and most importantly. Insisted on being called Helena, or Ma.

There were so many people in the house, they only set about trying to find their boss and at least get to know his immediate family. Sure enough, halfway into the conversation with the man. Another man walked up to him and clapped him on the back. This man called their boss 'Carlo' and introduced himself, Angelo, his wife Luna, and finally their kids.

Behind them was a girl just about their age maybe a few years older. She was short and had Angelos curly black hair, Luna's tanned skin, and an arched nose that clearly came from Mr. De Luka. Robin lost her breath, and stumbled. She stumbled so hard her shoulder bashed against Steve and he got to witness his best friend make possibly the most hurried introduction ever. Luckily the girl, Amara, just laughed.

Next to him was her brother Dante, who was notably younger. When Steve looked at him he felt a pang in his chest. If he squinted his eyes and tilted his head to the left he almost looked like Dustin. And just about the right age too.

Finally they all sat down for dinner. Robin and Steve sit shoulder to shoulder. Robin across from Amara and him across from Angelo. An older woman sat at the end of the table. Helena's mother, Mrs Ricci, and to her left her husband Mr. Ricci. To say Steve was shocked was.. an understatement, in any dinner parties his family had him attend, there was always a man at the head of the table. Steve likes to think that that's when he started to feel a bit more comfortable.

The dinner went on incredibly long, eating was interrupted by conversations, bickering, and drinking. But it was amazing. By the end of the night, when Mr. De Luka and Angelo walked them out; they were both smiling. exhausted, maybe, but happy. Angelo slapped his shoulder and said 'cousin, come by anytime.' Mr. De Luka had walked back inside at Helena's call so the other man leaned forward. 'you two make my little brother happy, I've not seen it in a while.'

[raw-law]

thank you L for encouraging me to share my dramatic life i think i will occasionally save these stories as i remember them✨

starting off with "how the FUCK did no one catch on that i was autistic" a series of mini stories from like- elementary school.

so when i'm like 6, my mom got custody over me during the school year (we will get into when/why they weren't living together and got divorced in another story) and that meant i had to leave behind my old tiny small-town school where i spent kindergarten. a lot of schools have this like- open house thing where kids can see their new classrooms and such, and i was at this open house, sitting at a desk in my new classroom and not looking at the other things around the room. so obviously the teacher comes up and asks how i'm feeling, and i respond by looking at her VERY seriously and ststing that i was "very concerned" about the upcoming school year. small reminder, i was 6.

around 2nd grade was the time i got SUPER into pokemon. like i was utterly obsessed from the moment i watched a couple episodes on my mom's ipad before bed. i liked many pokemon, but if i had to pick one, i would have picked pikachu. my mom got me a small pikachu plushie as a tooth fairy prize (there's an interesting story there too, believe it or not) like about the size of a hamburger. i LOVED this pikachu plush (and still do) and carried it with me everywhere. i cuddled with it every night. i had a frantic meltdown any time i didn't know where he was. and that was my first comfort object. i kept carrying him with me up until like 6th grade, where i went to only taking him to things like therapy or doctor's appointments because those places are scary, yet i still need to know where he is to feel okay.

the second comfort object was this pikachu jacket my mom got me from target one day because i begged her to. as soon as i got home, i Immediately put it on and went to watch one of the pokemon movies with it zipped up, hood over my head, my knees to my chest. my mom still has a picture of me from that day. and good god, i wore that jacket EVERY day, carrying little figures around in the pockets, and NO ONE could get it off of me. even in the middle of midwest summer. and as such, it got super ratty and dirty, but i refused to let it get replaced until mom finally just had to do it because it was 'unsalvageable' as she put it. keep in mind, maybe somewhat odd but excuseable behavior for a young child, but i had this jacket up until 7th grade when my mom finally managed to wrestle it away from me and replace it.

i have more similar ones but this ask is getting godawful long, i'm cutting it off now lol.

-rainbow dash

L:

my god.. this is. very amusing.

i feel like any child with an oddly sophisticated vocabulary and an odd obsession with pikachu should automatically be suspected of having the autism™. it's just too on the nose at that point.

i guess i can use this as an excuse to relate and share some weird things i did as a child.

i think i brought up the mancala set i had before in another ask, but i don't know if i properly emphasized how much i really liked that game. because, i think when i was around 7, i met a girl who liked mancala as well, so we would only ever play that each time we saw each other. i wasn't good at talking to other kids my age, so playing together was the only way we could really have conversations. it was just easier to communicate through the game. but then one day, for a reason i can't remember, i got really mad at her halfway through a game, pulled the board to where she couldn't reach, and started playing the game by myself.

she then proceeded to stomp on my foot, say i was stupid, and she refused to play mancala with me ever again.

i'm not sure if that was proof i was autistic, but at the very least i knew it was when i realized i liked girls. so.

i suppose i haven't changed much.

Light:

Um.

I'm very sorry, but I can't relate...I'm very neurotypical, so.

But I did rather enjoy listening to both your life stories. RD, kudos to you for managing to weasel a little of Ryuzaki's back story out of him. I'm very proud of you for that.

And I'd love to hear more of your stories, RD! Feel free to share them anytime, or when you're comfortable too.

[the--blackdahlia]

Worn Out Dreams (Max x Adam)

Title: Worn Out Dreams

Summary: Adam has these nightmares from a while ago. And it's finally time to talk to Max about them.

Warning: Brief language, mentions of death and poisoning

A hug as the lights went out.

Kenny’s face on the screen, like Big Brother, watching him.

Two boots straight to the jaw.

Black umbrella to the head followed by evil laughter.

The clink of cans.

The taste of spoiled Monster.

A dirty tile floor with fading fluorescent lights…

“Adam?”

Adam’s eyes snapped open as he looked at the ceiling. Well, actually, he looked at the person hovering over him. Max. Max was here. They weren’t in the back halls of Reseda. They were in Indianapolis. Dynamite and Rampage. Not PWG.

“Everything okay?” Adam asked, working on getting his breathing under control.

“I’m fine. Are you okay?”

“Y-yeah. Yeah. I’m…I’m gonna go for a walk.” 

Adam threw back the covers and reached for his sweats. Max gently snagged his arm, stopping Adam in his tracks. He was scared to look at Max. Scared to break down when he was supposed to be Mr. Tough, Mr. Bay Bay, Mr. Perfect.

“I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I think you should.”

“Just leave it alone Max.”

“Adam, please. Something is bugging you and…”

“I said leave it alone!”

Max let go of Adam’s arm then, causing Adam to cringe. Why did he always do this to people? 

“Max, I’m sorry, I…”

“I’m going to bed.”

Max crawled back into the bed they had just both been sharing, wrapping himself up in the blanket. Adam hesitated, wanting to go crawl back into bed and hug Max, to tell him he was sorry. But instead, he pulled on his sweats and hoodie and headed out into the hallway, closing the door quietly behind him.

****

Max didn’t think he had fallen asleep, but he must have. The sun was coming in through the sliding door that led to the balcony, blanketing the room in a soft light. Max stretched, feeling the cool sheets on Adam’s side of the bed. Max sighed, laying back against his pillow. Ever since he and Adam got together, Adam had these nightmares. And from talking to a couple of other people (namely Alex and Silver, not that he would EVER admit to talking to them), he found out that the nightmares were nothing new. He would wake up screaming, he’d be breathing heavily until the panic wore off, and then pretending nothing happened.

Max had a few snippets of what had happened to cause the nightmares, but nothing concrete. He didn’t want to pry, since this was an actual relationship and he had never really had anything like this before. But damn, he just wanted to go one night without Adam jolting awake and running away.

He finally decided to get up and go hunt down Adam and see what type of breakfast this podunk excuse for a city had to offer. He stood up and stretched and looked out the balcony door. That’s where he saw Adam sleeping. He had taken the chair from the small writing desk out there. He was folded up into it, legs resting on the balcony railing, arms wrapped around himself as he tried to stay warm. Max wrapped his robe around himself and quietly opened the balcony door.

“Adam?” Max gently touched Adam’s shoulder, making him jump and look around confused before his eyes fell on Max and he relaxed. “What the fuck are you doing out here? You’re going to catch something from this nasty Midwest air.”

“What time is it?”

“Uh, like 9 I think,” Max shrugged. “Shit man, you’re freezing. Come on back inside.”

“You sure you want me to?” Adam asked, standing and groaning as every joint in his body popped and groaned. Just another reminder that he wasn’t in his 20s anymore. Of four birthdays he never got to have, four years of holidays…

“Of course I do,” Max opened the door for him. Adam headed inside, the warmth of the room soaking into his bones. “How about I order us some room service?”

“Yeah. Uh, I’ll pay for it,” Adam set on the edge of the bed. Max rolled his eyes.

“You kidding? I’m gonna bill Tony for all this shit,” Max smirked before going to order the food. An omelet for him and the fluffiest pancakes for Adam. When he finished, he turned to look at Adam, who was staring at his bad in the corner. “You okay?”

“The dreams,” Adam started, taking a deep breath. “They’re from when I died.” Max froze.

“Died?”

“Wow, they didn’t go and brag to everyone?” Adam laughed a little.

“They? They who?”

“Kenny and the Bucks. The dysfunctional sister wives,” Adam looked at Max. “They killed me. Them and a friend that I think is dead too. Can’t even look at a can of Monster without tasting it in my mouth.” Max sat down next to Adam.

“If you don’t want to…”

“No. I need to,” Adam nodded. “I remember every little detail from that night. The type of Monster it was, the water spots on the ceiling tile, and the gear the Bucks were wearing. But then I also have these dreams of being someplace after that. Almost like a…a hell of some sort. One decorated in black and gold, with war games and regality and…fucking Roddy being there.”

“Knew he was a demon,” Max mumbled, making Adam smile some.

“Cutler told me that Malachi taught Kenny how to bring me back. I don’t know why they did it. I missed out on at least four years of my life. Four years that I can’t get back. And I’m just supposed to act like that’s normal…”

“No, you’re not supposed to,” Max told him. “Because it’s not and I don’t expect you to.”

“I just never felt comfortable talking about this. I’m not exactly an easy person to get along with. I’m kinda a scumbag.”

“Yeah well, so am I. And you’re my scumbag as much as I’m yours,” Max smiled. “Plus, I’m fucking a zombie, which is like, super cool.”

“Oh my god,” Adam laughed.

“Oh! I’m so calling you Undertaker now. When it’s time for bed, I’ll make sure you rest. In. Peace.”

“Why do you hate me?” Adam asked, but he had a big smile on his face.

“Hey I hate a lot of people, but I don’t hate you,” Max held his hand. “But I am plotting now on how to make Matt, Nick, Kenny, and Hangman’s lives living hell.”

“Hangman didn’t have anything to do with it though?”

“Well, you said the friend that helped kill you was dead, so Hangman is a proxy.” There was a knock then for the room service. As they finally dug into their food, Max started talking about developing a more powerful Kangaroo Kick to use on them, as well as other moves and traps. Adam just smiled and nodded as he ate.

For the first time in a long time, the hell inside Adam’s mind was quiet, and he could actually enjoy time with the man he loved.

[herblay]

Every song on BRAT and which BNHA character it's about (aka redemption round) (but it's only tangentially about MY fic)

I made a shitty shitty post about which Charli song was which BNHA character. I wish to redeem myself. Bring this in line with my Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess post (tbh this is much more my usual music taste, the Chappell is a departure largely just because I LOVE her voice) and do a character per track. That said, it is about my shitty little fic, the one I'm writing on the Aye Oh Three, (it's called Never So Strong and it's bad but whatever it's Mido but she's a wonderful lesbian because I am gay and I like women) This is also slightly harder than Midwest Princess because uh. Genuinely none of the main characters on BNHA would ever do coke. And it's kind of needed for the vibes. (Wait actually Todoroki would probably do coke once. Just to see what it was all about. Lmao) Tbf even the villains are pretty tame. Like I genuinely don't believe Shigaraki has done coke. He doesn't have that energy.

This is a challenge. A personal goal. Can I make this work for characters who would not know how to cut a line? MAYBE. (also I'm really fucking lazy and piecing together the story I wrote into the order it's supposed to be in is really hard unexpectedly so this is just to give myself a break from that. I don't write chronologically and this makes editing a nightmare)

WITHOUT FURTHER ADO:

360: All Might. I said earlier this was about him, and it is. He's so Julia. He's everywhere, legacy is underrated, he sets the tone, etc. Like come on. The man IS the picture of the modern hero. This is him. He is the fucking icon.

Club classics: Mic. Wait I low-key hope he's tried coke once. Anyway. He's our DJ. He's our music man. And he's got a list of absolutely fucking banger friends. Classic. He is classic, and he would dance to his own shit. Let's fucking go. This works for him. (he's a really fucking minor character in my fic but he's important to me ok)

Sympathy is a knife: Bakugou. COULDN'T EVEN BE HER IF I TRIED. This is him at the start of his arc. The guy is spiraling and me too bestie. The jealousy and the fucking insecurity. Yes. Thank you. Banger. And the lack of just control making you feel helpless. Very yes that.

I might say something stupid: Yogi Toshinori. Yeah that's right. I'm gonna hurt your feelings. He definitely feels like an outsider as himself and not All Might. And that's just how it is. It sucks when you had the world and lose it. And it hurts. "I'm famous but not quite but I'm perfect for the background one foot in a normal life" BYE. "I don't know if I belong here anymore"

Talk talk: Uraraka. I just like her. I could see her being like this about liking someone but not really knowing if it worked. (COUGH MIDO EARLY IN THE STORY COUGH) And well. "I wish you'd just talk to me" because REAL. Besides that though the ~vibe~ of this song is very Uraraka. Light. Fun. Good.

Von dutch: Hawks thinks this is about him and who am I to take that away from him?! He should b in the club and this is for him when he goes to the club! And he does that little dance (what the commission wants) because without it he'd be nameless! (haha what) PUT YOUR HANDS UP

Everything is romantic: A struggle to narrow down but I'm going with All for One but like ironically. Like he's blasting this while he's watching the world burn at his behest. And hey I think he'd be big on the Romantic literature tradition. He's a French lit nerd in my heart so therefore. This. But again know it is not genuine he's just baiting you.

Rewind: Mitsuki Bakugou. I think she probably misses when her bestie Inko wasn't in constant worry hell and when her son wasn't a holy terror sometimes (yes yes save your fucking parenting discourse for somewhere that's NOT my Charli shitpost) and his little tiny bestie wasn't scared and breaking bones 24/7. Wouldn't it be cool to rewind.

So I: Hi this song makes me fucking CRY. BAWL. This is also any One for All successor to their predecessor. Midoriya to All Might, All Might to Nana, etc etc. It's okay to cry. It's okay. The gnawing guilt, the pain, the loss. Yes.

Girl, so confusing: This is Momo Yaoyorozu singing about Midoriya Izuku in my fic specifically and I love it. And they WILL work it out in the remix. (Yes Izuku is so Lorde) (Bite me)

Apple: Todoroki. Which one? Yes. All them kids are getting the fuck away. Like come on you can't tell me Shouto wouldn't be blasting this shit when he tells Endeavor he's not gonna act like his son. All of these kids deserve a banger about an absolutely rotten relationship.

B2b: Dabi and Hawks. Nuff said. I've been over this, I love them as a messy relationship with messy messy vibes. And a club BANGER.

Mean girls: Bubble Girl. I like her. I think she's more important than she is in canon and I want her to be the fucking break-your-boyfriend's-heart girl. She's so fucking cool. (Also a sidekick with a quirk that's objectively not that OP I KNOW she's fucking badass) (I deserved more Nighteye agency shenanigans in canon so I'm giving them to myself damnit)

I think about it all the time: All Might. Thinking about his child. Well, the child he adopted after said child did a fucking stupid thing just to try to save a bully. Iconic. And the fear of running out of time, the fear of losing a career you've worked so hard for? It works. Ty.

365: Brother really none of these characters would do coke. Not one of them. What am I supposed to do here? Well uh. I think I'll give this one to Gran Torino. Because fuck it man, I think he prolly did coke once. And I hope he was fucking BOUNCING off the walls.

BONUS TRACKS REAL QUICK: Hello goodbye is Midoriya Izuku with a little crush and I love it. Yapper, scared, hello hello hello hello hello. Guess is. Wow. None of these characters. I'm. Wow. Uh. Ig Midnight. But like. I love slutpop but IT DOES NOT WORK FOR THIS MANGA. Ig Dabi can have it. He seems like he'd be down to whore around. Send him to the Dare, Hawks is with it. Spring breakers is obviously the League and it's a banger and I support them. Never get invited cause they're such fucking haters, you could change their lives but like let's be so forreal you wouldn't dare. On the news w a DUI stare. I think Toga would eat with this song tbh. I love Toga.

This was fucking hard, I think I'm never doing Charli music for BNHA again, it requires a property where the characters have done coke. Copious amounts of it. And probably ecstasy too. And like. Pro heroes? Cops? Naw. On the other hand do you know what property could fucking KILL with Charli music? Assassination Classroom but they're all older. I know Karma would be doing coke. I know it. Ok that's all xoxo back to getting my fic in order.