#he’s starting the road to indy next year

[indycarnocontext]

[littlechivalry]

I love the idea of our Hawkins teens going to a showing of a Rocky Horror so much so please join me in this:

Eddie's driving. He's excited, loves that he gets to 'pop their cherry.' He pulls up to Harrington house expecting to see Steve and Robin posted up outside in full Brad and Janet regalia.

Eddie of course is dressed as Eddie and of course he thought about Frank but that might be too much. Steve is cool but is he cool? Eddie hopes but he's not an idiot.

Instead of proper Midwestern church clothes he finds Robin standing out front in a raggedy black suit, her hair greased down while Vicki (and yes Eddie had had his suspicions) is next to her dressed as a maid with her own bright red hair teased out to heaven.

"Riff Raff? Magenta? I didn't expect to see you two here."

Vicki laughs but Robin gives him a look that makes a shiver run up his back.

"So where's Steve? Decided to stay home?"

The last syllable barely leaves his lips when the door opens and - - -

LEGS. Fishnet stocking LEGS. Tap pants and a bustier and a shining tail coat and a top hat and a blinding grin and LEGS.

"Columbia?"

Steve laughs and dances down the steps and he's wearing tap shoes too? Eddie may not survive this.

Robin laughs at him but Vicki pats his shoulder in commiseration.

The drive to Indy is filled with jokes and conversation and music and Eddie is paying attention to the conversation. And he is paying attention to the road. But

LEGS

They get to the theater and get their props and their seats. A few songs in Steve begs off to go to the bathroom. Does Eddie watch him go? Of course. Can he actually see him very well in the darkened theater? No. But it's the principle of the thing.

Then the music starts up for the Time Warp and Eddie is on his feet along with everyone else in the theater. There are performers on stage dancing along with the movie, a long line of tuxedo clad strangers when suddenly a figure goes flying across the stage and Eddie can hear Robin and Vicki whooping but he is frozen.

It's Steve. Tapping. It's a perfect recreation of Columbia's dance routine and when the other boy finally comes to a stop, gasping, on a chair at the corner of the stage Eddie finds his voice screaming louder than he has at any concert he's ever been to.

A few minutes later Steve makes his way back to his seat and Robin lunges past Eddie to throw herself at him. Eddie can make out that she's talking but not what she's saying.

They make it through the rest of the show and it's amazing. Eddie's second favorite moment may be when Steve and Robin wrapped their arms around him during "Eddie" wailing out fake sobs.

They sing and shout themselves hoarse. The ride home is quiet but in the best possible way. Robin and Vicki are as good as sleeping in the back of the van and Steve is leaning against the window, humming along with the radio.

"Hey," Eddie says softly. "Where did you learn to dance like that?"

Steve smiles but it's barely a shadow of his usual smile and it fades fast. "When I was little my mom still gave half a shit about being seen as a good mother so she put me in dance classes. It didn't last too long. My dad didn't like it and after a while it became more important for her to be seen as a good wife so I was taken out and put into every sport."

Eddie doesn't say anything. Can't say anything.

"I really liked it though? I can't play music and I'm not much of a singer but I really like dancing. Robin had to put up with me practicing this almost constantly for the past few weeks. I thought she was gonna kill me."

"So you learned this for tonight?"

Steve turned to face Eddie and smiles. "I learned it for you, man. Thought you would get a kick out of it."

The small ember of Eddie's crush on Steve had initially been lit years ago in high school. He had banked it carefully, couldn't bear to let it go cold but too worried about losing Steve as a friend to let it flare bright.

"You learned it for me?" Eddie's stomach feels warm

"Yeah," Steve says, smiling. "Every Eddie needs a Columbia, right?"

Steve is laughing at him and that only makes Eddie feel warmer. Steve. His crush, Steve. Steve did this for him.

"Yeah," Eddie says. "Yeah, he does."

"Thought so," Steve says, turning back to the window.

Eddie drives them back to Hawkins in a silence full of potential.

[pinkie-quinns]

(posting some old twitter threads here for posterity's sake)

rocker eddie actor steve fame au p1 | p2 p3 p4 p5 interlude p6

Steve follows Eddie out to LA. Indiana’s home, sure, but Eddie’s got dreams bigger than the both of them. And Steve loves him, wants to be there with him the whole way through.

He does odd jobs to pass the time, nannies a lot, works on sets. Extra work pays the best, quick easy cash, so he dances to click tracks in cut scenes of teen shows and pays for their groceries. 

A producer on one of the bigger jobs picks him out on set, tells him he has a good screen presence. He gives him a contact for a proper agent. Steve books the third thing he tries out for.

It's a small role on a pilot that hasn't been picked up yet. He's excited but doesn't think much of it. Mostly he’s just happy for the paycheck. Corroded Coffin's really struggling to break through. They just got dropped from their tiny indie label and Eddie's really bummed.

And Steve uses some of the money from his big, SAG-approved paycheck to try to cheer Eddie up. Make him feel better about the whole thing. But it does the opposite. Eddie keeps acting resentful. 

It only gets worse when Steve's show does get picked up.

Turns out he tested really well with audiences. So the writers rewrote him into the main cast, extended his two episode arc into the whole season. And Steve's really grateful for it, figures they both should be. Eddie's not really working and they need the money.

Corroded coffin is still labelless and basically broken up by the time the show comes out. 

It's a smash hit. Steve's character is a fan favourite. Overnight, he finds himself within the throes of fame. He gets a manager and a PR team and a personal assistant.

He's away from home a lot, doing the media circuit to promote the show. People start prodding into his personal life. His manager, his team, and the network all advise him to appear single and available. 

Eddie makes it easy for him. He leaves without saying a word.

Years down the road, Steve is settled into his fame. He's done a couple movies (some hits, most misses). His show is heading into its final season. He's dated a lot, mostly other celebrities.

Then he walks into a CVS on Venice & sees a name he's been trying to forget for 7 years.

Right on the cover of NME. Eddie had gone to London, apparently. Finally broke through there. Was releasing his debut album later this month. 

At least that's what Steve could tell from looking at it. He doesn’t buy the magazine. He hops into his car and drives til he’s out of gas.

He used to do that back in Indiana. When everything got too loud. Used to do that with Eddie, once they finally got their shit together. Just drive until the tank is near empty & then pull up to some blinking gas station. Head home.

Steve strands himself in Santa Barbara instead.

He sleepwalks through the next few months. The town is buzzing around the impending arrival of Eddie Munson. His album, Penitence, debuted to solid numbers & has only been gaining traction since. He's promoted it in London, New York, done Glastonbury & the late festival circuit.

It's gotten to the point where it's big enough that its hit single is even terrorizing Steve's local grocery store. He knows the first three notes really well. Knows cause that's his cue to leave. 

He hasn't listened to the album. He hasn't read any of the interviews.

In his head it's a good kind of revenge. Eddie left without a trace. Steve should respect his wishes, right? That's what Eddie wanted so badly that he couldn't even call. 

He should respect that too, be staying dead instead of haunting every busboard like a poltergeist.

But he's Eddie so of course he doesn't. So instead Steve spends all his free time thinking about when he'll inevitably run into him. Will it be the VMA afterparty? Will it be the CBS lot? Will it be the whole foods he keeps running into Michelle Pfeiffer at? (Probably not that)

In the end, it's a knock at his door.

Eddie came straight from the airport. Big duffel at his feet. He looks a decade older but his eyes are the same. He doesn't say I'm sorry, or I fucked up. Doesn't get down on his knees & beg. He just asks:

"Did you listen to the album?"

There's a part of Steve that wants to throw a fit. Be big and loud and start lobbing things at Eddie. He'd seen a movie star do that on set once. Over a PA bringing him the wrong brand of flavored water. But he's not Wahlberg, so he invites Eddie inside. 

And they sit and listen to Penitence.

It's an apology. A long one. Fifteen tracks though Eddie always used to be a real asshole about albums that were longer than twelve. 

And it covers everything. All the regret and resentment and the ego that clouded him when fame happened for Steve and not for him. When Steve didn't even want it. It's sorry over and over and over again. It's I fucked up and please take me back. It's ego death. It's disgust and guilt and self-flagellation. 

And when it's over, it dawns on Steve, who feels just as heartbroken as ever, that it's not enough.

[pretty-little-mind33]

Dave Lizewski x fem!reader

Summary: You're having a bad day and you and Dave share earbuds on the bus.

Prompt: grumpy x sunshine

Warnings: dave and reader are seniors in high school (18), swearing

DAVE LIZEWSKI MASTERLIST

BLURB MASTERLIST

You were never one to ask for help. No, help was for losers who didn't have the mental ability to deal with their own problems. However, you couldn't understand why the moment you prop your heavy backpack onto your knees and see you've forgotten your headphones at home, you feel tears well up in your eyes. 

You wipe them away quickly, deepening your frown as your hands tighten around your backpack. 

Screw this. 

"Hi," an all too familiar voice whispers from next to you. You look up. He's standing beside the empty seat next to yours, that stupidly handsome-looking smile painted across his lips. He points to the seat and then nods his head as a question. Your eyes widen. 

He wants to sit. 

You debate turning him down. Telling him no. But, you know the moment you open your mouth, all the tears you'd been keeping inside from your more-than-shitty day would spill out, and crying in front of Dave Lizewski would be more than humiliating. 

You nod and turn your head to look out the window. 

Dave sits down and shifts around in his backpack for a moment until he produces a pair of earbuds. He clears his throat. "If you want we can share—"

You turn to look at him, frowning at him. The threat of tears is replaced by confusion. "What?"

Dave's cheeks turn red and he holds up the earbuds in his hand. "I know you always listen to music on the bus," he rambles and his throat closes as embarrassment takes over, "I- I don't mean that in a weird way—I haven't been stalking you or anything I've just never seen you without them—we've taken the same bus since freshman year, I j-just—" his words die as he realizes he's dug himself a hole. 

You look him over, narrowing your eyes. Dave is in your English class. He's a sweet boy, unlike most of the knuckleheads in your class. He's also handsome in a way you like—he doesn't show off.

He's like a god-damned golden retriever.

"That's sweet, if not a little weird, Lizewski," you pause drop your backpack onto the floor and smile at him weakly. "But I'm okay. I don't need your help."

"Are you sure?"

You frown, now annoyed that he's questioning you. "Yes, I am sure."

Dave quirks his brow and chews on his bottom lip. "Oh, okay, well, if you want to share just ask."

He turns away, putting in the earbuds in his ears. A few minutes go by, and the bus bumps on the road. You can faintly hear Dave's music from his iPod and you lean in closer. 

Fuck, maybe you do need some form of entertainment. Dave senses this and he turns his head, handing you one of the earbuds with such a kind look. 

Ew, you think as your stomach fills with warmth and butterflies. 

Still, you take one of the earbuds and move closer to him. Once the music fills your ears, some indie-rock band you've never heard of begins to play and you can't help but smile when you sense Dave moving his head around to the music. You look at him and your smile only widens. 

Dave turns to look at you, sensing your walls breaking and he starts to mouth the lyrics, making a show. He doesn't care that other students are also on this bus. All he cares about is you and making that beautiful smile he sees less than he'd like come out.

tags: @earth-elemental18, @lqrlei

[lovelytsunoda]

life in the fast lane // miles teller

summary: the life and times of trailblazing indycar driver y/n y/l/n, and her celebrity husband, miles teller. in the weeks leading up to the indy 500, the pair have a very special announcement that will alter lives forever.

pairing: miles teller x andretti driver! reader

author's note: its hard to write an smau about a man with no public instagram account lemme tell you that real quick-

y/ny/l/nteller just posted!

indianapolis, indiana.

liked by josefnewgarden, monicabarbaro, valkilmerofficial and 4,578 others

y/n/y/l/nteller indiana never felt like home to me until i had you on the open road.

indy tests start monday, and we are officially one month out from the five-hundred. let's do this, indiana!

see all comments

valkilmer you got this kiddo! we're all rooting for you!

-> ynylnteller 🥺🫶🏻 love ya Val!

kyle_kirkwood i have known your husband for four years now and he still looks awkward in every single photo that gets taken of him at the track. how does he do it?

user babe come home, the children miss you?

-> y/n/yl/nteller miles and i don't have any kids (yet)

ashleynewgarden shocked we got through that dinner without josef and miles singing beyoncé at the karaoke bar

-> josefnewgarden that happened ONCE. I wish miles had social media so he could help me defend these accusations

-> y/n/y/l/nteller take it up with the hubby, not me

user does she look like she’s out on a bit of weight?

-> user it’s probably muscle lmao she’s an athlete bud

patriciooward most photogenic couple in the paddock!

monicbarbaro booking my flights rn

-> ynylnteller girls weekend here we come!

y/ny/l/nteller just updated her story!

ynylnteller just posted!

liked by reesewitherspoon, coltonherta, glenpowell and 5,145 others

ynylnteller god I’m going to miss all of this

*this caption was deleted*

ynylnteller days like these 🫶🏻

see all comment

user did anyone see the original caption?!? where is my girl going!

stingrayrobb thanks for making my nieces day so special! she looks up to you so much and she spent all day talking about how awesome you were. thank you and god bless!

-> ynylnteller your niece was an angel, it was my pleasure!

coltonherta your straight line speed this morning was absolutely incredible. are we thinking an andretti 1-2 is in the cards this weekend?

-> ynylnteller absolutley! let’s get it!

glenpowell everyone is talking about straight line speed and I’m just amazed that you can balance on the tires like that-

-> ynylnteller it took five years of practice to be this good glenn

ynylnteller just posted!

liked by monicabarbaro, katherineracing, scottdixon and 4,653 others

ynylnteller as much as it pains me to say it, the todays Indy 500 will be the end of my 2024 season. while I’m upset that this season is coming to an end prematurely, I am also beyond excited. if the pictures above didn’t give it completely away (and my husband was able to keep his mouth shut all weekend), I am beyond overjoyed to announce that miles and I are having a baby! we tried to keep it under wraps for as long as we could, but as of the next race, baby teller would be too big for me to race without hurting them or myself,

while I won’t be on the track itself for the rest of the season, I couldn’t give this place up if I tried. Instead, my car will be driven by the amazing callum_ilott and I will be joining my bestie jameshinchcliffe in the commentary box.

when I was little, I only had one dream: to be a race car driver. but as I got older that dream began to change, and I realized all of that meant nothing if I didn’t have anybody to share it with. I wanted a family.

We are so excited for this new chapter in our lives.

Lots of love,

Miles and YN Teller xx

see all comments

scottdixon I’m so happy for you, darling! that baby is going to be so loved and so cherished. please pass my congratulations on to miles as well!

-> ynylnteller none of this would have been possible without you, so you’re the real hero here!

user mother is going to be a real mother now!

valkilmer congratulations yn! if you and miles ever need anything at all, you know where to find me (or mercedes and jack)

-> ynylnteller thank you val!! ❤️

glenpowell I am going to be the best godfather this kid has ever had

-> ynylnteller first of all who said you were the godfather?

-> coltonherta yeah it’s gonna be me actually

-> ynylnteller actually it’s going to be neither of you

-> coltonherta but why? I’m already a great uncle?

-> glenpowell yeah so am I!

-> ynylnteller everybody be quiet or we’re making Val the godfather -Miles

-> coltonherta you’d pick the old man over us?!?

-> ynylnteller he *is* less annoying

ashleynewgarden so pleased for you both! this will be your next great adventure! kota is looking forward to having another little buddy to hang out with 🫶🏻

callum_ilott I promise to take good care of the car! rest up and relax over the next nine months, god knows you might never sleep again

user miles is becoming a dilf!!! miles teller is becoming a dilf!!!

TAGS:

@magnummagnussen @libraryofloveletters @cartierre @lorarri @diorcharles @httpiastri @sidcrosbyspuck @thatsdemko @userlando

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

reading update: October 2024

hello, ahoy, and welcome to my October reading recap.

I made a real effort to focus on spooOOOoooky books this month, in the name of the season; you may even recall that I started early and read some spooky stories at the tail end of September. (read Carmen Maria Machado's comic The Low, Low Woods, btw.)

I've never been great at sticking to a theme but I think it helped that what gets classified as "horror" can vary greatly, so I never really got bored of the genre. I did get disappointed more than once by how Not Spooky some of these books turned out to be, but that's a totally different question.

right at the end of the month you'll notice a couple of outliers with Caped Crusade and Luster, which happened entirely because I was out of library books and on the road for a conference, so I was reading what I could get my hands on! I've been working on rereading Caped Crusade on and off for a couple months and I bought Luster at a cool indie bookstore in the town I was visiting and then inhaled most of it on the way home.

ANYWAY. to the books!

And Then I Woke Up (Malcolm Devlin, 2022) - this is a novella with an interesting spin on the zombie story, where the "zombies" are actually people who have started suffering hallucinations that fill them with paranoia and force them see other people as monsters. so, like, there were never any REAL monsters, but a woman looked at her young son and saw him as a cannibalistic monster, so she killed him. so who's the real monster? it's very deep. this story's explanation for this is "the narrative," an idea so strong that it simply seems to take hold of anyone who's around a sufficiently charismatic ringleader who drives them to join in their delusions and kill innocents who don't share their worldview. it's not a super subtle zombie metaphor, but I guess very few zombie metaphors are. it's fine.

Through the Woods (Emily Carroll, 2014) - I truly wholeheartedly wish I had more to say about this but it's just a very charming creepy collection of comics. my favorite was the one that was the scariest, involving humans getting taken over by body-snatching worm monsters, but on the whole it was a very minor creepy factor. the art's great the whole way through.

Happy Medium (Sarah Adler, 2024) - Happy Medium is October's romance novel as picked by my patreonites, and I will admit: my hopes were not high going in. a conwoman posing as a psychic clashing with a skeptical hottie goat farmer didn't ping me as a great mix, but honestly? HONESTLY? it kind of served. there was a much more well-rounded emotional core to this book than I often encounter in my romance novels; at risk of sounding like a cornball it genuinely had a lot of heart. the conwoman is actually extremely charming, I was rooting for her in a big way, and her emotional journey goes so far beyond just falling in love with the goat farmer. I'll happily claim Happy Medium as my #1 romance of the year unless a challenger arises in the next two months, but it's not looking likely.

The Ones That Got Away (Stephen Graham Jones, 2010) - this is a collection of Graham's short stories that was published long before he became a huge name in horror with books like The Only Good Indians and My Heart Is a Chainsaw. and as much as I hate to say it, I think I personally prefer his longer form fiction. none of these short stories were bad, per se, and they're incredibly stylized and polished, but I think I like Jones' work a lot more when it has time to simmer out. I may have also been biased by the fact that I was desperately seeking something scary to read, because while Jones plays with some pretty narsty concepts, the horror tends not to hit until a last page reveal that recontextualizes everything that's come before. which is cool! but not scaring me as much as I wish it was.

The Salt Grows Heavy (Cassandra Khaw, 2023) - a lot of people told me I should read this because it stars a killer mermaid and a plague doctor, which are two aesthetic archetypes I love, and I will give this to Cassandra Khaw: I liked this a lot more than their other book, Nothing But Blackened Teeth. which is clearing a very low bar, since I didn't really like that book at all, but I do think Salt is genuinely a pretty marked improvement. the prose is still kind of torturously overwrought in many places and I desperately wish that Khaw would put the thesaurus away, but there's like. a Concept here. the core is fun.

Tell Me I'm Worthless (Alison Rumfitt, 2021) - this book is by far the scariest I read, because the horror is hatred and bigotry and a fucked up, evil house that brings out the very worst of everyone who steps inside of it. this book gets so fucked up and bloody and downright nasty in its exploration of the characters and the underlying bigotries that turn them against each other and drive them apart. I don't want to spoil anything, but the book follows a white trans woman named Alice and her mixed race, cis ex-girlfriend Ila. in the past Alice and Ila entered the evil house with their friend Hannah; that ended with Hannah dead and missing and Alice and Ila both scarred and traumatized, each certain that they were raped by the other. so that's what this book is like! not a lighthearted undertaking, but one that I could. not. put. down.

A Sunny Place for Shady People (Mariana Enríquez, trans. Megan McDowell 2024) - what is there to say? Enríquez is my short story queens, and her new release absolutely lived up to the precedent set for me by The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, which was originally published in 2009 but not translated into English until 2021. this collection is sooo aptly named, because many of the stories are obsessed with the terror of places: hotels haunted by memories, neighborhoods filled with ghosts, junkyards where bodies are hidden, towns abandoned and taken over by something sinister. also, completely detached from the quality of the writing, this book has one of the most striking covers I've encountered this year. the screaming yellow cover and bold purple text looked SO COOL under the purple string lights in my bedroom, which was a little +1 to my mood every time I saw it :)

Thirst (Marina Yuszczuk, trans. Heather Cleary 2024) - I think if I had to pick a favorite book from my spooktober reading, Thirst would edge Tell Me I'm Worthless out by just a hair, because I'm just SUCH a sucker for a modern gothic. this novel is split into two chunks. the first is narrated by a vampire (hinted to be one of Dracula's infamous brides) who flees the Old World and crosses the sea to find safety in a young Buenos Aires, where she struggles to figure out how to slake her thirst and escape from loneliness while avoiding detection in a modernizing world. ultimately she seals herself away in a crypt to escape the relentless pace of change around her, and that's when our perspective shifts. here we join a modern woman with a young son, an ex husband, and a dying mother, who's struggling under the pressure of grief as she watches her mother waste away. she ends up accidentally reawakening the vampire from the first half of the book, and you can imagine things get weirder from there. honestly, for me, the part of this book that's most brilliant is the latter half and it's deep meditation on grief, but the historical portion of the book also plays the vampire gothic to the hilt. delicious!

The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture (Glen Weldon, 2016) - this is a really fun piece of pop culture history, tracking how Batman came to be DC's little #1 it boy alongside the developing prominence of nerds and fandom as a cultural force to be reckoned with. as I said above, this was a reread for me, because I wanted to circle back now that I've actually read most of the major comic events discussed in the book. Weldon weaves between Batman in comics, TV, and movies to examine on how one portrayal influences another - for instance: the goofy '66 TV series saw a huge backlash in comics, which went way dark to reinforce a grim and serious Batman for 'real' fans who objected to the show making Batman a joke to much of the normie population - and I think that's a really neat lineage to trace. while I think Weldon is sometimes a bit too transparent with his own disdain for certain adaptations, he overall has an extremely levelheaded approach to Batfandom and a conversationally informative approach that I really enjoy. of particular note is the fact that Weldon is himself a gay man, making him one of the only writers I trust to talk about why he personally dislikes Joel Schmacher's movies without getting homophobic about it.

Luster (Raven Leilani, 2020) - this book!!! this was one of three novels recommended to me by Bonnie at Snowbound Books, and Bonnie if you are on this website I owe you my LIFE because you were 100% correct. I was obsessed from the very first line and it only gets better from there; Leilani's prose is painting a searing, witty Sistine Chapel to render her protagonist's miserable life in vivid color and detail. the short version is that our 23 year old hot mess finds herself jobless and homeless and ends up moving in with her married boyfriend who's 23 years her senior, where she forms a powerfully weird connection with his rage-filled wife and develops a bond with the couple's nerdy adopted daughter, as the two of them are the only Black women in the excessively white neighborhood. (spoiler alert: she also realizes that her married boyfriend is a fucking loser.) it's a simple enough premise but the execution is bananas in its flair. I couldn't believe this is Leilani's first and so far only novel; if she ever drops another I'll drag myself through barbed wire to get my hands on it.

Juniper & Thorn (Ava Reid, 2022) - I first became aware of this novel via twitter thread of Reid's that made its way to tumblr, in which Reid bemoaned being harangued by readers who were shocked that her dark fairy tale retelling had, you know, dark shit in it. having now read the book, I have to say: these people are fucking pussies. going into this book I was under the impression that there was full on-page father/daughter rape happening, which is actually NOT the case, so you can breathe easy if incest is a hard no for you. what's actually here is a wizard dad who's emotionally abusive, non-incestuous sexual abuse in the backstories of the main character and her love interest, some moderately explicit consensual sex, some bulimia, and [spoiler alert!] admittedly a lot more cannibalism than expected. it's not a lighthearted romp but it's also like, come on. come on. grow up. in terms of the actual book, rather than its controversy, I didn't LOVE it but I'm still compelled enough by the world building (particularly Jewish author Reid's Hueli people, who are a fairly obvious stand-in for Jews down to people claiming that they have horns and using phrenology to prove the have an unfair advantage at making money) that I'm going to check out Reid's earlier novel, The Wolf and the Woodsman, a novel set in the same world. it felt a little repetitive in places and the characters were largely pretty predictable, both of which may be a byproduct of trying to encapsulate the vibe of a classic fairy tale, but I had a good time reading it.

[ladykailitha]

Royal Pain Part 26

Hello, and we have got to the end of the massive arc that culminated the last four chapters.

I also wrote this part before 24 and 25 because I couldn't figure out how to write Eddie having a hard time on tour, but the aftermath flowed from my fingers.

Also as a reminder this story is finished, I'm just posting on a regular schedule. This story is the longest fanfic I've ever written. Topping out at 58165 it's definitely longer than 50K fic I wrote for NaNoWriMo last year (Sandman, never finished or published.)

Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6 Pt 7 Pt 8 Pt 9 Pt 10 Pt 11 Pt 12 Pt 13 Pt 14 Pt 15 Pt 16 Pt 17 Pt 18 Pt 19 Pt 20 Pt 21 Meta Pt 22 Pt 23 Pt 24 Pt 25

****

“You’ve been sitting on that sofa for an entire week,” Wayne growled. “Steve has called three times, your bandmates at least a dozen times each. Hell, boy Miranda has been calling concerned. So want to tell me what’s fucking got you so twisted?”

“I was given a choice out there on the road,” Eddie said, twisting his rings around his fingers. “Stay in Indy and play small time gigs for the rest of my adult life or go to LA and get an album and the chance at super stardom.”

Wayne sat down next him. “Sounds like a big decision to make.”

Eddie leapt to his feet. “That’s the problem. That’s what makes me so angry how fucking easy the choice is.”

Wayne cocked his head to the side. “Sounds like you’ve got a lot on your plate again, boy. Start talking.”

Eddie started pacing back and forth. “As much as I loved playing for so many people, I didn’t like that I could only connect with a handful of them and not even the good kind.” He rubbed his chin angrily. “I didn’t like how tired we all were. It was set up, sound check, play, break down and move on to the next fucking town. And that wasn’t including all the parties, interviews, and all that other shit.”

“That does sound exhausting, Ed.”

“I didn’t like how easy it was for them to tell me to drop Gareth as drummer just because he had trouble adjusting to the increased volume. The price of fame they said. Like it was so simple to throw away almost two decades of friendship for the sake of adoring crowds and hearing our music on the radio.”

“Oh, darlin’,” Wayne said softly. “They didn’t...”

“Oh they absolutely did,” Eddie raged. “I didn’t like how they thought that because me and Steve’s relationship was new that I would be able to find someone better. Someone who liked metal, someone who would be down for the ride.”

Wayne furrowed his brow. “That doesn’t sound like good advice.”

Eddie grabbed his hair pulled at it frustration. “The last straw was when they offered to let their tattooist to finish my back tattoo, because while my artist was good, theirs was better.”

He stopped abruptly and turned to face Wayne. “I picked Steve to do my tattoo on my back because he was the only one I trusted to make it meaningful. To understand the symbolism of making something of yourself when everyone is rooting against you. I made the decision before I fell in love with him and now that we’re a couple– and for them to just dismiss him like that? It made me so angry.”

“So what’s the problem? What’s got you so twisted around the bend?”

Eddie took a deep breath and let it out slow. “I’m fucking furious because I always thought that when fame and fortune came knocking I would throw open that door and march right through it. But now? Given the choice? I’m slamming the door in its face and walking away.”

Hot tears ran down his face. “And I don’t know why.”

He dropped to his knees and began to sob.

Wayne stood up and put his arms around his nephew’s shoulders, gently pulling him to his chest.

“Did that band you were traveling with say that?” he whispered into Eddie’s curls. “Because if they did, I swear to god I will burn every record and CD you have of theirs. Don’t think I won’t. I’ll delete them off your phone too.”

Eddie chuckled weakly. “No, no. They were kind. It was everyone else we met. Agents, managers, roadies, groupies, the people around Metallica every day.”

Wayne nodded.

“I was just constantly bombarded with hateful messages and the constant running at one hundred percent...” he whimpered. “I don’t want to do it.”

“Have you told your band that?” Wayne asked.

Eddie shook his head. “I don’t dare to. I was the one that was gung ho about the touring and everything. How do I tell them I don’t want to leave the comfort of Indianapolis and home?”

“Kinda like that,” Jeff said from the doorway. His arms were crossed and he was leaning against the frame. Peaking around him was Miranda with a concerned look on her face.

Eddie scrambled to his feet and wrapped his arms around his waist. “I’m sorry I’ve been a brat.”

Jeff took three giant steps forward and hugged him fiercely. “You’re not being a brat. You’re scared and trying to figure it all out on your own, but you don’t have to, okay? We’ve all been worried sick about you. But Steve especially. I’ll call all the boys down for a chat and you call Steve, okay?”

Eddie nodded.

He dialed the number he knew by heart.

“Baby?” he asked, unsure of the reaction he was going to get. He deserved to be yelled at. Cursed at. Broken up with. He’d hurt Steve the most with this little temper tantrum he’d been having.

“Eds?” Steve breathed. “Sunshine, are you okay? Wayne said you hadn’t been eating well or sleeping much. Say the word and I’ll be there in a heartbeat.”

Eddie’s lip began to quiver and tears spilled out of his eyes. “I need you. More than anything.”

“I’m on my way,” Steve said fiercely.

Eddie looked over at Jeff.

“Tell Steve Brian will swing by and pick him up.”

Eddie nodded and relayed the message back to Steve.

“I’ll be at my apartment,” Steve said. “I’ll have Robin arrange my schedule, don’t you worry about thing, baby.”

“Mm’k.”

“I love you, Eds.”

Eddie closed his eyes and breathed in the warmth of that simple phrase. “Love you, too, pretty boy. Come quick.”

“I promise.”

*

Steve piled into Brian’s car. It was the newest, having bought it right before they got picked up by Metallica. He had finally saved up enough money to replace his beater.

Gareth and Gethin in the backseat. Gethin had come up to Indy to watch his twin’s apartment while he was gone and just ended up staying. He was currently looking for a job so that he could move in with Gareth full time.

At least that what they said on the trip down. The twins and Brian were intent on filling the air with talk and Steve let them. He let them fill him in on the tour and everything that had been going on since they’d left.

Steve couldn’t be for certain, but it sounded like that touring hadn’t been fun for anyone. Even after a week of rest, he could still make out the circles under their eyes and how hunched over they were with just sheer exhaustion.

A feeling Steve felt all too well.

Gethin was pressed against his twin’s side and was rubbing his neck soothingly.

Steve looked at Brian.

His face was set, hard and unflinching. He was going to make the drive to Hawkins as fast as he could and still avoid the cops.

Steve was grateful Brian was driving because he didn’t think he would have made the distinction to avoid breaking the law. He would have gunned it and flipped off any cop that tried to catch him.

After awhile, Steve was getting the oddest feeling that Brian was used to speeding down this stretch of highway because there were points where he would slow down for a few miles and then speed right back up.

Soon enough they were pulling up to Wayne’s trailer and piling out the car.

*

Eddie sat on the sofa with Jeff and Miranda on either side of him, just hugging him.

Wayne was busying himself in the kitchen, getting ready to feed the hoard that was about to descend on his home.

The door opened up and Brian, Gareth, and Gethin all stumbled through the entryway. Eddie was on his feet in an instant, Jeff and Miranda not far behind.

And then the trio at the door parted and there stood Steve. Looking just as tired and worn as Eddie felt.

“Stevie?” Eddie asked, taking a step toward him uncertainly.

Steve threw open his arms and Eddie ran straight into them. They wrapped their arms around each other and just sobbed.

“I’m here, Eds,” Steve murmured into Eddie’s neck. “I’m here. I love you so much.”

Eddie lifted his head and kissed him hard. “I love you, too. I regret leaving you behind, sweetheart. It nearly killed me. Every song I wrote was about you. About missing you. I don’t even want to leave you ever again, I can’t.”

The silence that followed that statement was deafening.

Steve led Eddie back over to couch and sat them both down. “Tell us everything, babe.”

And so Eddie did. He told them everything. Everything he had told Wayne, everything that had been weighing on his mind since they started touring. It all just came out in a flood.

They all listened patiently.

“Why didn’t you tell us you felt like that while we were on the road?” Gareth asked. “I knew what they were saying about me, but I also knew you guys wouldn’t drop me. If you had me about that I would have been able to reassure you that I’m not going anywhere, okay?”

Eddie flushed with embarrassment. “I didn’t know how to bring it up, it was so vile, man.”

Jeff gave his hand a squeeze. “Well, I think that you did a bang up job telling us now and that’s what really matters.”

“Someone offered to ship me out to LA and record an album,” Eddie finally admitted. “Not the band, just me. I told him that I wouldn’t go without you guys and he laughed in my face. Told me to cut the dead weight and be a star.” He dragged his hands over his face.

“But there were other offers. Good ones. Ones that included the band, well most of it, anyway. Always under the proviso that Gareth be replaced either on tour or all together. They didn’t want to make any accommodations for him even though there is a drummer with one god damn arm!”

“So the options are,” Brian said, “stay in Indy doing what we’ve been doing, only better because of the money we got for doing this tour. Go to LA without Gareth. Go to LA with Gareth but only as a studio musician and take some person we don’t know on tour with us. Does that sound about right?”

Just then Gareth’s phone went off. He looked at it with a frown. It wasn’t a number recognized so he let it go to voicemail. He pulled it up after the notification popped up.

He listened to message with wide eyes. “Hey guys, I think we have another option.” And he played the message so everyone could hear.

“Hey, Mr Hughes,” the tinny voice said through the speaker. “This is Murray Bauman, I’m music producer, we spoke in Las Vegas. I think I have the perfect deal for you boys. You were telling me that touring was really hard on you and that if there was an option you wouldn’t do that. I know you weren’t speaking for all your band, but I could tell that they would do anything for you, all four of you being such good friends.

“So the reason for this call is that I own a small music company in Bloomington and boy do I have a deal for you all. You would make a record through us, we would sell and distribute the record, keeping a portion of the sales, of course. But you wouldn’t have to tour. You have a steady gig as I understand it. If your fans want to see you play, they’ll know where to find you.

“But give me a call, we’ll hash out the details. My phone number is 555-555-2080...” and then message beeped, signaling the end of the voicemail.

Eddie looked down at the phone and then back up at Gareth. “Oh.”

Gareth grinned. “We don’t even have to take his offer, but I vote we listen to it. Brian can bring Cecil.”

Brian nodded. “He’s only got a semester left of law school, but I’ll have him brush up on his contract law to be on the safe side.”

Jeff raised his hand. “All in favor of hearing Mr Bauman out raise your hand?”

Eddie, Brian, and Gareth’s hands shot up.

“Sounds good,” Jeff said. “You call him back and set it up and if it doesn’t work out we can vote again.”

Brian shook his head. “Nah. I think if it doesn’t work, we stick to Nightmare Holes. We took a swing at it and if it’s a miss then we tried. I thought I wanted the touring and everything that came with stardom, but like Eddie I learned I wanted the romanticized version of it. I’ll be happy playing in front of our friends for the rest of our lives.”

The rest of the band nodded.

Soon everyone getting up to go back to Indy, but Steve stayed behind, he would go back up with Eddie in the morning. They had things to discuss that went deeper then the band.

****

Part 27 Part 28 Epilogue

I told you I would fix it.

Also a little BTS, the reason in my head for why things went wrong on tour but immediately righted itself when Eddie and Steve met up again? Steve still has Eddie's lucky pick. ;)

Tag List: @spectrum-spectre @estrellami-1 @zerokrox-blog @artiststarme @swimmingbirdrunningrock @gregre369 @pyrohonk ​@bookworm0690 @chaosgremlinmunson @goodolefashionedloverboi @chaoticlovingdreamer @maya-custodios-dionach @messrs-weasley @val-from-lawrence @plyerice27 @thedragonsaunt @sapphirecobalt-1 @a-little-unsteddie @i-must-potato @danili666 @carlyv @rozzieroos @wonderland-girl143-blog @itsall-taken @justforthedead89 @emly03 @aizawa-emma @yikes-a-bee @redfreckledwolf @thesuninyaface @bookbinderbitch @archermightbegay @littlewildflowerkitten @scheodingers-muppet @hallucinatedjosten @ellietheasexylibrarian @anne-bennett-cosplayer @cinnamon-mushroomabomination @bestwifehaver @xxfiction-is-my-realityxx @oldwitcheshat @nightmareglitter @tinyplanet95 @novelnovella @jonesn4coffee @slowandsteddie @awkwardgravity1 @steaddie-on

[louisupdates]

The Habit He Can’t Break 4/4

IQ 123 | Gordon Masson | 9.11.2023

If I Could Fly

With the production traveling to Australia, in early 2024, before shifting to Latin America, Andy Lovell at Freight Minds is gearing up to become involved with Tomlinson once again.

“We did the Central and South America dates on the tour last year, and onto Mexico,” says Lovell. “It was very challenging back then as we were still coming back from Covid, and various systems and infrastructure were in pieces. But it all went well in the end, as we kept an eye on things and worked on it every day to make sure we had solutions to everything that was thrown our way.”

Lovell continues, “Things on this tour kick in early next year for us. Historically, Australian services were quite reliable, as we could use any number of airlines. But post-pandemic, the number of long-haul flights still aren’t as frequent as they were. As a result, the production is being reverse engineered with the budget being worked out before we can see what we can afford to take as freight, and then we try to plan accordingly.”

“Similarly, in Central and South America there are still just a fraction of the flights operating, compared to pre-Covid, so that makes it very challenging. If there aren’t the flights to handle the gear, then you have to start looking at chartering aircraft, or alter your schedule, and that can become very expensive, very fast.”

With everyone working on the artist’s behalf to make sure the tour remains on track, being able to call on such experienced production experts is paying off on a daily basis.

Sherwood notes, “There are a few back-to-back shows over long distances that occasionally mean we don’t arrive at the next venue until 11 AM, rather than 6 AM. But we’ve never failed anywhere to open the doors on time, so we know we’re capable of getting things done, even if we have a late start at mid-day.”

Such dilemmas are not lost on agent Rowland. “It’s not so much the routing, it’s more like the timings, because Louis does have two support acts, so the shows start at 7 o’clock, and then when we’re done, we need to load out to get to the next show in good time for loading in the next morning and soundchecks, etc.”

Nevertheless, Sherwood admits that he loves the trickier venues and schedules. “Because I’m a dinosaur, I relish anything that makes things difficult or awkward for us on the production side of things,” he says. “I think everyone on the crew looks forward to challenges in finding the solutions to problems.”

Common People

Having amassed millions of fans through his association with One Direction, Tomlinson very much has a ‘pay it forward’ attitude to music and is building a reputation as a champion for emerging talent, wherever he performs.

“He’s a great advocate for alternative music,” says manager Vines. “Louis realizes he’s in an incredibly privileged position in terms of what he can create in terms of awareness. He loves alternative music and indie music, and he understands how hard it is for that music to be heard. But we have this amazing platform where we can put these bands in front of these audiences as a showcase that allows them to build these authentic new audiences. It’s a huge part of his love of music, wanting to help younger bands.”

Rowland agrees. “He took an act called Andrew Cushin - a very new artist – on the road in America with him as a support, and he’s doing the same for Europe. Louis is a fan and is championing his career.”

Indeed, Tomlinson’s A&R skills have knock-on effects for his agent, too. “He asked me to confirm the Australian band Pacific Avenue as support for his Australian tour last year. The music was great, and they didn’t have an agent, so now I’m representing them,” says Rowland.

Perfect Now

As the European tour speeds towards its conclusion, agent Rowland is enjoying every minute of it.

“It’s incredible – they’ve really stepped things up,” she says, fresh from seeing the show in Athens and Paris. “They’ve got six hanging LED screens on the stage, and the whole production just looks polished and professional.”

And Rowland is especially excited about next year’s Latin America dates, which will deliver her first stadium shows as an agent. 

“The return to Latin America is going to be huge – Louis is playing arenas and stadiums in South America and Mexico 15 shows across 11 countries,” she says. 

Vines is similarly enthused. Harking back to the Covid situation, when the show would go on sale, sell out, be postponed, and then re-scheduled in a bigger venue, Vines says, “For example, in Chile, originally the show was scheduled at a 5,000-cap, half-capacity arena in Santiago. And what we ended up doing with three nights at 10,000-cap in that same venue.”

Vines contends that Tomlinson’s work ethic is outstanding. “He loves his fans, and he loves performing for them, it’s as simple as that,” he says. “He just loves being on the road and seeing how the songs connect live. In fact, the second album was very much written with the tour and live shows in mind – ‘This song could work live,’ ‘This one will open the set,’ ‘This is the one we can do for the encore.’”

Fearless

Another element to Tomlinson’s psyche has been his decision to visit places off the usual tour circuit.

“Louis has a real desire to perform to fans in markets that are often overlooked,” says Rowland.

Manager Vines explains that while the Covid-delayed first tour allowed them to upgrade venues pretty much everywhere, “On this tour, we are a bit more competent on venue sizes, but we still speculate a little bit in different territories. In Europe, for example, we’ve gone into the Baltics in a number of different places to test the markets there, while in America, we’re looking at A and B markets, but also tertiary market as well – we go to places where people just don’t tour in America, just to see what the reaction is. That was something that very much interested Louis - to play in front of people who don’t normally have gigs in their town. So there’s been a lot of experimentation on the tour in terms of where we go and what room to play.”

That concept is something that Vines has employed before. “I manage a band called Hurts, who were pretty much overlooked by the British radio system, and we have spent 15 years building a business outside of the UK. And that was built on going to play at those places where people didn’t normally go. They built to multiple arena level in Russia, for instance.”

“If you can build fanbases in lots of different places, you have festivals that you can play every summer, as well as touring those places. It allows you to have more consistency over a number of years, by having more opportunities.”

Such a strategy found a convert in Tomlinson. Vines tells IQ, “Louis also is extremely fan-focused in everything that he does. He comes at it from a perspective of ‘I want to take the show to them,’ meaning he’s always more willing to take the risky option to try something out.”

And the result? “It’s a combination,” concludes Vines. “There have been a couple of places where we now understand why tours don’t go there. But there are more places where it’s worked incredibly well. For example, we enjoyed incredibly good sales in Budapest. And overall, it’s allowing us to get a clearer idea, globally, of where the demand is, which will help us when we go into the next tour cycle.”

1/4, 2/4, 3/4

[salamandergoo]

This was written in snippets on a discord server, thought I’d clean it up and slap it here! Haven’t been able to stop thinking about roadie Steve 💕 There’s a lil bit of spice in here, just to keep things fun :)

Steve, after everything that happens, doesn’t really know what he wants to do. Working at Family Video is… fine, but Robin is finished with her gap year and now she’s getting acceptance letters and scholarship offers from colleges and trying to decide where to go.

She keeps asking him if he’ll be okay and Steve tells her to go because he’s excited for her! She’s excited too! And yeah, they’ve had nights where she stays over with him and they cry about how they won’t get to be attached at the hip, but they can’t stay in Hawkins, it’s not realistic. They’ll never be… okay, if they stay.

She goes off to college and absolutely loves it, she thrives there, and they’re in constant touch, but Steve feels like he’s lost a part of himself. His platonic soulmate, the woman he’s so used to just… being there, is gone. So when he’s invited to a Corroded Coffin gig, he jumps in, thinking that if nothing else, it’ll be a solid distraction from his wallowing.

They’ve played a few cities in Indiana, a frontman accused of satanic murders is pretty great for their image surprisingly enough, they’re just waiting for Gareth to finish school before they jump in fully. The show is pretty local, just barely outside of Hawkins city limits, but it’s refreshing for Steve to be… somewhere else, just for a night. And the gig is fun! Steve can’t hear the words to the songs too well, can’t keep up with the music so great, but he can feel it in his chest. And he loves the energy of it.

Partway through, something goes wrong with one of the amps and they’re trying to get it fixed. Steve offers to give them a hand, and in just a few minutes and some tinkering he has it working again. And the pats on the back from the guys and the bright smile from Eddie sparks something in Steve.

The next day, he finds himself in the library, checking out books on electrical equipment and instruments and anything he can think of, and starts reading up. By the time Gareth graduates and CC has a few shows set up, Steve comes along. He’s able to handle any technical difficulty they come across, he’s the guy making sure it all goes smoothly.

And suddenly they’re recording their first album and blowing up and Steve is their go to guy for live shows, he’s the first person on their payroll. For awhile, he’s the only one, he runs everything that isn’t playing music, but eventually, a few more hands are needed.

Eddie makes it clear that Steve is in charge, naturally trusting him to be the head of the road team.

The band is doing great and soon enough they’ve upgraded from Eddie’s van and Jeff’s station wagon to an actual tour bus. Eddie is so amped about it and it’s hard not to let his energy be infectious.

Of course, driving across hours of plains dims some of the excitement, but Eddie and Steve start to come up with… interesting ways to pass the time. Ever since they left Hawkins, Steve’s eyes have been wandering a bit. Turns out metal heads are his type, who could’ve guessed?

At first it was making out in an alley in Indy with a girl who had shaved hair and piercings shoving him against the wall and making him beg to eat her out. Then it was the boy in a leather jacket in the mosh pit in the middle of summer, sweat slick skin covered in ink and a gentle hand but commanding voice in a motel room. And then it was his own fantasies, covering his mouth as he touched himself in a shared hotel room bathroom thinking about Eddie, who else?

So there’s an ongoing game of gay chicken and Eddie hasn’t been quiet about his own conquests along the way. It’s little things, Steve shifting a little closer to Eddie on the bus, a hand on the thigh that creeps upwards, whispering in hushed tones just a little too close.

It finally snaps in California, a sold out show attended by Argyle and Jonathan (who moved back out west a few months after the world didn’t end). They’re slipped a few “party favors” before heading off to a motel for the night, a reprieve from the rumbling, uncomfortable mattresses on the bus. One of the rooms only has one bed because of a booking issue and before anyone can complain, Eddie snatches the key and declares that “Stevie’s with me”.

So the band splits up to go to the rooms, Eddie has to wait while Steve inspects the bed closely to make sure there’s nothing gross, and then they settle in, still sticky with sweat and buzzing with adrenaline. Eddie lights a joint and teases Steve a little with the way he groans and sighs as he takes a hit, but Steve gives as good as he gets

He straddles Eddie’s lap and asks to shotgun in this pretty, lilting voice, cocking his head in a way that makes his eyes, sparkling with mischief, catch the light just so. And Eddie isn’t going to deny a pretty boy on his lap, not when he’s seen Steve in those tight jeans. He takes another hit and tugs him in by the shirt collar, breathing out the thick smoke into Steve’s waiting, parted lips. And Eddie is treated to the sight of thick eyelashes fanned against freckles cheeks, the expanse of pale skin on Steve’s neck as he tilts his head back to avoid blowing the smoke back in Eddie’s face.

And Eddie can only restrain himself so much as he leans in and kisses the faded scar that cuts across Steve’s adams apple. Steve licks his lips and is looking at Eddie’s mouth when he opens his eyes and something between them snaps. He leans in and whispers, “kick me if I’m misreading this” before kissing Eddie on the lips. It’s firm, but not messy, charged and searching. Eddie has to take a second to remember how to move his limbs, holding Steve tight around the waist, careful not to bump the lit joint against his shirt.

He kisses back, but it’s not enough, he needs more, wants to ride out the low thrum of the coming high with Steve. He pulls back just long enough to take another hit and lifts a hand to cup Steve’s jaw. He breathes the smoke out, letting his tongue trace Steve’s lip as he takes it. Steve holds the smoke like a fucking expert, tangling his tongue with Eddie’s as he lets the smoke back out from the corner of his mouth. Eddie distantly wonders if he looks like a dragon like that, a thought that has him giggling. And then it’s really hitting him that he’s 1) a rockstar 2) making out with his high school crush Steve Harrington and 3) absolutely rock hard.

Judging by the pleased expression on Steve’s face when they part for air and the way he grinds his hips down slow and teasing, he definitely noticed that last part.

[jokeroutsubs]

On their travels through regional and European stages, the Slovenian sensation stopped by in Rijeka, putting on a concert spectacle for the Rijeka audience in the sold out Pogon Kulture.

Huge international hype, triggered by the recognisable song “Carpe Diem”, threw this Slovenian indie rock five into a demanding concert tempo which has resulted in several European mini tours, confirming the growing popularity of the band outside of their country’s borders.

Despite their dense schedule of sold out concerts, just before the sound check, we caught the members of the band, frontman Bojan Cvjetićanin and guitarist Kris Guštin, and talked with them more about all current events and changes that will follow in the upcoming time period.

A series of “flying” gigs

“Our lifestyle has drastically changed in the last few months. For the first time, we’re travelling as a band and encountering new situations that we’ve never dealt with before, new great experiences and new small problems that, of course, come with it.

More or less, logistics on the road are the biggest problem, but we’ve just returned from our third tour this year. We played in Poland, Lithuania, and Czechia, and it was a really great tour that lasted about two weeks,” said Bojan.

Rijeka, as the last concert in the current cycle, marks the end of travelling with a tour bus. After a week of rest, the band will go on a series of “flying gigs”, which includes Skopje, Munich, The Hague, Amsterdam, Madrid, Barcelona, and, of course, Slovenia at the end of the year.

The fact that Joker Out has already won the hearts of the audience is certainly confirmed by the awarding of "Carpe Diem" with a Golden Record in Finland, as well as recognition by the prestigious booking agency Wasserman.

“We have always welcomed people into the team according to some key to enter our circle more or less naturally, and we were lucky when things rose to the point where actually Ryan, our booking agent from Wasserman, got in contact with us because he was at our concert in London.

He liked how things worked and wanted to start working together, so we were more than happy with the fact that a man from abroad was the first to join our team, somebody who first enjoyed our performance and saw a bigger picture and saw himself as a part of it, in maybe an even bigger version, in the next few years,” revealed Bojan.

Käärijä and Let 3

As much as the process of recognition and breakthrough came suddenly, the discography of the band came at a similar pace. From their beginnings in Ljubljana in 2016, they released their first album only five years later, and the second one - less than a year after the first.

The longer process of musical growth, which began in the band’s high school days, dictated the slow pace of searching for their own sound in singles which eventually, with disruptions due to COVID, culminated in their first serious discography steps, and then in the revolution called Eurovision.

Lightning fast popularity has brought a series of strong music acquaintances to the band, of which their close relationship with Käärijä and Let 3 certainly stand out.

“We met Käärijä at a pre-party in Madrid, he was on a similar energy level as us - he didn’t take himself too seriously and we didn’t either. He was quite open-minded and had a positive approach to the whole situation, so we really connected on that level during Eurovision when huge things were happening to everyone, in the form of media pressure and new situations every day, so it suited us all to have each other to share those feelings.

We stayed in regular contact, we even performed together during our Finnish tour. He left literally everything he had scheduled in his calendar and became a part of the band for four days,” Bojan and Kris remembered.

In a way, the Jokers are an even bigger anomaly in a region marked by a certain language barrier towards its western parts. Despite the cultural and genre homogeneity, Joker Out managed to suspend the primacy of “Serbian and Croatian trap folk music”, showing and proving that Slovenian shagadelic rock and roll also has a place in this whole genre cauldron.

There’s nothing like it in the Balkans

The guys therefore confirm that Slovenia has a lot of quality to offer in terms of new artists, and concert events as well, which are richer compared to the rest of the region.

“Before we started with ex-Yugoslavia, there was always the question of if there was space for a band of this type in the Balkans, because we know this genre of music isn’t the most popular right now. Actually, there’s no band like this in the Balkans, maybe just Buč Kesidi, so we didn’t know what to expect in terms of our popularity in these regions.

I think everything went really well, we were surprised how many people were eager to hear a live band, regardless of the language they sing in,” Kris pointed out.

And it seems that the regional (and worldwide) audience welcomes every new Joker Out show with open arms, because they sing along with equal intensity to the melodies in Slovenian, and also in English, which will certainly take over the steering wheel of the band’s creative direction in the coming period.

The same is evident in the fruitful collaboration with Elvis Costello, who was delighted with the single ‘Novi Val’ and earlier this year joined in the English version of the song, ‘New Wave’, and also the latest single ‘Sunny Side of London’ - which leaves little room for doubt about where Joker Out will set up their new creative camp.

“Next year in January we are moving to London, where we plan to absorb new energies in an unfamiliar living space, so we will change our environment in order to create a new album that will be released by the end of October 2024 at the latest.

We will be more in contact with the English language, which on the one hand represents a mental break for us, because we are used to creating music in the Slovenian language, but there will still be all kinds of material - mostly English, but also songs in Slovenian, Serbian, and Croatian,” Bojan and Kris concluded.

Translation by @moonlvster, reviewed by @klamstrakur.

[bruiserwcighted]

◇ hi y'all! lovely to be writing with everyone! now onto introducing peter england, better known as pete dunne! he's a vegan of few words, until he isn't. has a traditional dry sense of humor that is typical of brits, is a total lad outside of the ring. grumpy single dad vibes, doesn't really open up much, but could to the right person?? probably. inside the ring, he's someone who makes the most of the screentime he's given, even if it's something laughable like dressing in peaky blinders garb and being nicknamed butch. he tries to be a good sport about it, but even he has his limits.

name: peter england / pete dunne brand: wwe raw dob: nov 9th, 1993 / 30yo gender: cis male pronouns: he/him orientation: heterosexual status: single / available but emotionally constipated

𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐆𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃

pete was born in sunny (not really) birmingham england and formed his love of wrestling at a very early age. even his training in the trade began a bit sooner than most, starting to learn the very basics of the business at only 12 years old. he paid his dues under silly indie gimmicks, as he was always one to show up and do what was asked of him without complaining. eventually, he began to make a name for himself in the rising scene of britwres, specifically with the stable of british strong style.

he became a fairly decorated performer in his early twenties and had made it to wwe a bit after that, becoming a staple in the ill-fated nxt uk. his life had been nothing but wrestling for so long that when his girlfriend announced her pregnancy, he was scared shitless. his pride never let him admit such a thing, but he had serious doubts he was even cut out to be a dad yet.

the boost in income was certainly helpful for their situation, while the longer trips away from home didn't have quite the same effect. pete and his daughter's mother tried to stick it out for as long as they could, but the distance just made things too difficult. he couldn't help but wonder how many more times he had to look forward to such goodbyes.

the thing about wrestling is that, even when your personal life is crumbling, the machine chugs on whether you're ready for it to or not. all he could really do was pour himself into his job, doing whatever wwe asked of him while also trying his best to be there for his daughter, who is his favorite person in the world.

thankfully, under new leadership, the company has become a much better place and has allowed him way more time to split between wrestling and fatherhood. he's even getting renewed singles opportunities after a period of uncertainty following his new catch republic tag team partner's serious injury. on top of that, he's opened up a wrestling training school with the grizzled young veterans to help pass his knowledge on to the next generation. he can't say for certain what's next, but he'll make sure it's good. probably.

𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒

gymrats: ever since tyler's been off with an injury, pete's road life has become strikingly lonely. the person he'd share rental cars with, hotel rooms with, late night meals talking about their wrestling pipe dreams. I'd love for him to find another travel buddy / person that he can go to the gym with and bro out with 😭

[spiteless-xo]

hi! i love your work on ao3 so much ahh 🩷🩷

what kind of music do you headcannon the characters of tbaw to listen to? i’ve been wondering since the reader/eren car scenes hehe

Ok, so it's taking me a million years to respond to this because I'm making PLAYLISTS and I have to listen to a lot of songs I've never heard before, but I don't wanna leave this unanswered for too long.

Here are some of the vibes that I get when I think of music that these boys would like. It might sound like it, but there are no spoilers here for anything in TBAW, these are just vibes ☠

Music Headcannons - Eren, Jean, Reiner

Jean Kirstein

he's pretentious about his music for sure. typically listens to soft, slow alt/indie songs (but like mainstream indie, if that makes sense lol). he might like some of the top hits rn but he'll never admit it. always has to have the aux because he thinks other people have trash taste in music

arctic monkey, the neighbourhood type vibes

songs about falling in love, bittersweet love, unrequited love, heartbreak

right person, wrong time type of love. if things were different they would be perfect but they're not and it hurts knowing things are going to end

pushing people away because it hurts too much to hold them close

meeting the perfect person while out one night but forgetting to get their name and never seeing them again

playing board games with friends on a weekday night

sitting next to the fire on a cool summer night by the lake and sharing your deepest fears and insecurities

cooking dinner together with a glass of wine and kissing on the countertop

making love on a lazy afternoon and whispering i love you into each other's skin

Eren Jaeger

really similar taste in music to jean but a lot more upbeat, produced, and sexual. he listens to big bootie mixes when he's working out and he has random generic playlists when he's hanging out w girls but when he's on his own or w friends he has a specific vibe

the weekend, tame impala type vibes:

songs about sex, passion, one-night stands, and firey type love

a summer fling that you know would never work out long-term but you think about for the rest of your life

bad boy/i can fix him type love. everyone warns you about him but you just can't stay away

sneaking out to go see him in the middle of the night and coming home just as the sun starts to rise

long drives late at night talking about everything and nothing with his hand on your thigh

showering together and then getting ready in the bathroom for a party or some big event, catching each other's eyes in the reflection of the mirror

going to the beach on a hot summer day, making out and wandering hands, needing to remind yourselves that there are people around before you get carried away

burning hot love that you know is going to shatter your heart but you're having too much fun to care

intense, passionate sex. just needing to feel each other in blind desperation, losing yourselves in the whirlwind of pleasure

Reiner Braun

definitely made a playlist when he was in highschool of all of his favourite songs and hasn't listened to anything else since but somehow still doesn't know who sings what song

red hot chili peppers, simple plan type vibes

songs from when you were kids that make you feel nostalgic for the past, songs that you don't know the name of but you can somehow sing every word, upbeat songs that somehow make you feel sad

reminiscing and romanticizing the past just because things in the present are overwhelming. wishing you could recapture the innocence and obliviousness of youth

hanging out with old friends and talking about people you once knew

long road trips with the windows down, music blasting, and singing along to every song

being woken up at the crack of dawn by someone with way too much energy for this time of day but somehow still feeling excited

being with friends outside and playing lawn games like bocce or cornhole

(crying with your head down late at night at the office, feeling like you're an imposter and you don't deserve the job you have.

still feeling like a kid even though you're legally an adult. never knowing what you're doing but feeling like you're expected to have your life together.)

[seths-rogens]

If I Was Any Closer, I Could Be Lost | E | 8.2k

"I want you to be my best man." Steve is watching him with a bright smile, and all of a sudden Eddie feels like the worst person in the world.

He should say no. He's going to say no. 

"Of course I'll be your best man, Stevie. I'd be honoured."

Shit. Fuck. No. He didn't mean to do that.

Eddie is utterly, completely, absolutely, fucking screwed. 

Or, Steve is getting married to someone else, and Eddie, desperately in love, watches it happen.

taglist: @judasofsuburbia @gothbat99 @flowercrowngods @cheatghost @fastcardotmp3 @simplebtromance @gonzofromspace @i-less-than-three-you @potato-of-the-lord

—————

fic under the cut, or read on ao3!

"I want you to be my best man." Steve is watching him with a bright smile, and all of a sudden Eddie feels like the worst person in the world.

He has to say no. Needs to. There's no way he's surviving a front row seat to Steve Harrington's goddamn wedding.

"What?"

They're at their favourite bar, where Steve and Robin used to work back when they first moved to Indy, sitting in their usual booth in the back corner, right by the bust up jukebox. There's some sports game playing on the TV behind the bar, not basketball or baseball because Steve hasn't glanced over once. Or maybe he's already seen it.

There's a hole in the wall next to the dartboard after a drunken Nancy misjudged her own strength in throwing her dart. There's a drink on the menu named after Argyle (because he sold the owner some of his fancy Californian weed). S & E is carved into the underside of the table they're sitting at - the product of one of Steve's solo closing shifts, a visit from Eddie, and a whole bottle of tequila.

There's a lot of memories in this place. Fitting they would have this conversation here.

"Be my best man, dude." Steve's still smiling. God, he's so pretty.

"What about Robin?"

"Stacey already offered her a place as a bridesmaid. You know how well they get along." Steve's smile turns fond at the thought of his fiancee and best friend's blossoming friendship.

Eddie wonders how the hell he ended up in this situation. How he became close enough with 'King Steve' that he's invited to his wedding, let alone being offered one of the most important roles in it.

They'd grown close after Spring '86. Of course they had, facing down a grotesque, dickless fuckwad who had nothing better to do than further traumatise and kill several teenagers by way of crumpling them up like an empty coke can worked as a real bonding moment.

Plus there was the shared stint in the hospital. Playing chew toy to several hundred alternate dimension demon bats will take a lot out of you, so it seemed. Not to mention the road rash on Steve's back and how all his wounds very nearly ended up infected.

Eddie still thinks it's a miracle he managed to keep going and reassure everyone he was fine. But that's only because he knows he himself acted like a little bitch about it.

So they became friends. First, it was sharing a hospital room, then it was Steve summoning the mighty power of his absent parents to get him off scot-free for an unjust murder accusation.

Then it was late night phone calls when neither of them could sleep, whispering their fears and nightmares down the phoneline to one of the few people who could really, truly understand. Then it became late night drives to the quarry, then a shared joint on Eddie's front porch, until eventually, they were sharing a bed.

Eddie couldn't help falling in love along the way. He really tried not to. But Steve was... well, he was Steve. Selfless and bitchy and just plain good.

Eddie was doomed from the start.

But Eddie never said anything. Couldn't ruin one of his closest friendships with feelings. It's been seven years since Vecna. Steve turned 26 barely two months ago and now he's getting married to a girl he's been dating a little under a year.

And the worst part, Eddie thinks, is that they're perfect for one another.

If any girl would be the one to finally make Steve Harrington an honest man, it would be Stacey Baker. She was tall and slim, with curves in - Eddie assumes - all the right places. Her hair was so long it almost brushed her waist and a shade of blonde most people would only achieve with an $80 salon appointment. She had cheekbones so sharp they could cut, but her face was softened by the beginnings of smile lines around her mouth and the corners of her eyes.

Eddie was used to seeing her in comfy sweaters and t-shirts stolen from Steve's dresser, but on the few occasions he'd seen her dressed up, she'd been stunning.

He can't imagine how she'll look in a wedding dress.

Together Steve and Stacey looked like the poster couple for 'American family values' and Eddie hated it. But he couldn't hate her.

He had wanted to, really wanted to, when Steve first mentioned her, but it only took one meeting to understand why he liked her so much.

Stacey was a breath of fresh air after a storm. Always smiling, always ready to help.

She kept track of Steve's medication and reminded him to put in his hearing aids. She loved him in spite of the scars she would never know the stories behind. She didn't mind the almost codependent friendships Steve had with Robin and Eddie. Didn't mind when he'd get out of bed at 3 am to go make sure Dustin was asleep at home.

And Steve... Well, everyone knows Steve falls fast.

"She's even letting her wear a suit."

Eddie blinks back to himself. "Sorry?"

"Stacey. She's letting Robin wear a suit." Steve shrugs. "Says as long as it fits the colour scheme then it's fine."

"That's great." Eddie picks up his beer, takes a long pull.

"So, will you do it?"

He should say no. He's going to say no.

"Of course I'll be your best man, Stevie. I'd be honoured."

Shit. Fuck. No. He didn't mean to do that.

Eddie is utterly, completely, absolutely, fucking screwed.

Four and a half months later sees Eddie in a hotel room he never would've shelled out for, clenching his fists instead of reaching for the overpriced mini bar and watching Steve attempt to tie his tie in the mirror.

It's lilac, and the suit is a heather grey. Just like Eddie's.

It makes him look even prettier.

Steve fumbles with the tie. "Do you need a hand with that?" Eddie asks, holding back a smirk.

Steve groans. "Yeah. I thought I had it."

Eddie pushes himself up as Steve turns to face him. He takes the ends of the tie in gentle hands and begins to wrap it around itself.

"You nervous?" Eddie focuses on what his hands are doing, instead of doing something stupid like gazing deeply into Steve's stupid gorgeous eyes.

"A little, sure." Steve shrugs, holding his head high so Eddie has the space to work.

“I mean, fuck, man.” Eddie huffs a laugh. “You’re 26 and you’re getting married. That’s insane.”

“Is it? My mom was married to my dad at 18.”

Eddie nods, taking his time because he’s certain this is the last time he’ll ever be close to Steve, to be allowed to linger. “Sure, but with everything we’ve been through. A wedding seems weirdly abnormal. Especially considering our track record.”

Steve frowns. “Abnormal?”

“Yeah. You know, unusual, unorthodox, out of the ordinary.” He tucks the tie through itself.

Steve shakes his head. “No, I know what it means, man, just… are you not, like, happy for me?”

Eddie straightens the tie out, rests his palms just beneath Steve’s shoulders on his chest. “I’m happy for you.”

“You don’t seem like it.” Steve ducks his head. “You’ve been in a bad mood all day and I can’t help but think it’s my fault somehow. Have I done something?”

Eddie’s eyes are wide with the fear that he’s been figured out. “No!” He says, perhaps too quickly. “No, it’s not you. I’ve just got shit going on, y’know? It’s been on my mind.”

Steve’s face doesn’t brighten any.

“Look, how about I promise that for the rest of the day, I’ll be the most cheerful, upbeat version of myself you’ve ever seen.”

A small smile graces Steve’s lips. “And no ranting about metal music and scaring Stacey’s relatives?”

Eddie groans. “Why not?”

Steve gives him a look.

“Ugh, fine. I promise.”

Steve smiles and Eddie’s heart soars. “Good.”

Tie lying flat against his chest, Steve turns back to the mirror, straightening out his suit jacket and fiddling with the buttons. “Do I look okay?”

Eddie looks over his shoulder at the two of them standing together in the mirror. His heart clenches in his chest. “Just as pretty as usual, Harrington. You might even show up the bride.”

Steve chuckles softly, ducking his head with a pretty blush. Eddie wants to feel it under his palm. "Oh, I doubt that."

"Don't sell yourself short. You clean up nice." He bit back what he really wanted to say. You look more beautiful every time I see you. God, you look good in a suit but I want nothing more than to tear it off you. Run away with me.

Steve gave Eddie a once over, from the too polished shine of his shoes to the way he'd pinned his hair up. "You too, Munson."

Steve winks and stalks out of the room. Eddie barely represses a shiver.

It seems like no time at all before they're standing at the altar. Steve holds himself with excited tension. Eddie stands at his side, hands clenched into fists behind his back, Dustin and Lucas beside him.

The bridal march plays over the church's old organ and the bridesmaids start their walk down the aisle. Max and El - bridesmaids at Steve's request - walk together arm in arm. Their lilac dresses are similar but different all the same, fitting to their personalities. Max's cane is wrapped in purple ribbon.

Robin follows, her suit the same shade as the dresses, but tailored to perfection. Her shirt is grey silk and her bow tie matches Steve's own tie.

She squeals as she reaches the altar, pulling Steve into a crushing hug. He buries his head in her neck with a laugh. She meets Eddie's eye over Steve's shoulder and gives him a capital L Look. Eddie ducks away from her gaze.

A few of Stacey's own friends follow after, taking their places at the altar, and then it's time.

Stacey looks stunning in a simple white gown. It drapes almost casually over her shoulders and tapers in at her waist. Her blonde hair sits atop her head in a complicated updo. Steve smiles fondly as she begins to walk towards him.

Everyone watches her. Eddie watches Steve.

The service passes in a haze, the way Steve fumbles reading his vows from a piece of paper gaining 'awws' from the congregation. More than once Eddie feels Robin's eyes on him. He ignores her.

The priest asks if anyone objects to their union. Eddie bites his tongue so hard it bleeds.

Too soon, they're saying "I do" and Eddie holds back tears.

Having to pose in wedding photos is a new kind of torture. To stand so close to Steve and know that he'll never be Eddie's. That he'll probably move far away, start a family, and start vacationing at all the country's questionable tourist traps - after all Steve always wanted six kids and a Winnebago. And Eddie won't be a part of any of it, just a distant memory that Steve will desperately try to forget. A stranger in his goddamn wedding photos.

He'll look at them 50 years down the line and not be able to remember Eddie's name.

It hits him hard at the reception. They're in a nice hotel, an old, rustic building on the outskirts of Muncie, the room they're in is decorated with twinkling fairy lights and flowery centrepieces.

Eddie sits pride of place next to Steve at the head table, Stacey's dad having just finished his speech. Steve is blushing, holding Stacey's hand in a tight grip as she dabs her tears away with a handkerchief.

It's Eddie's turn next. He'd rather go for round two with the demobats.

Steve pats his shoulder as he stands up, accepting the microphone from the hostess.

"What can I say about Steve Harrington?" Eddie plasters on a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. "This man saved my life, quite literally, on more than one occasion. He held me together, carried me on his back and gave me the blood from his body all out of a kindness I wasn't sure I deserved."

Eddie pauses, taking a breath. "Most best man speeches I've heard fall more on the funny side, and I'm sure that's what Stevie here was expecting." He smiles, resting his hand on Steve's shoulder.

He risks a glance, Steve is gazing up at him with fond eyes and a wide smile. Eddie looks away quickly, staring out at the wedding guests.

"But, though it may be out of character, I felt that a little sincerity would go a long way." He takes a breath. "The man sitting right next to me is the only reason I'm standing here today. We've been through hell together, and even have the matching scars to prove it." He hears Steve huff a laugh. "I want nothing but the best for him, and that comes in the form of Stacey, his absolutely stunning bride." He smiles over at Stacey, she flushes, a shy smile gracing her face.

"I've never seen someone understand Steve so well that they almost have Robin beat," Robin whoops from her seat a little ways away, Steve laughs. "I mean, I thought I came close, but it's nothing compared to Stacey. She loves him fully and unconditionally, and I hope they have that for the rest of their lives. Hell, I hope I have a relationship even half as loving as theirs one day."

Eddie raises his glass. "To the bride and groom."

The rest of the wedding guests chorus his words back at him, sipping from their flutes of champagne in toast. Eddie retakes his seat and not a moment later, Steve's hand finds his knee. He squeezes and leans in close to Eddie's ear. "Thanks, man. That was beautiful."

"It was nothing." He says. It was everything, he thinks.

Steve has already been roped into a conversation with Stacey's dad, and Robin is tugging Stacey over to the buffet. Dustin, Mike and Will are comparing outfits while El and Erica gossip across the table. Lucas and Max are leaned in close, heads pressed together and hands tangled on the table between them.

Here, surrounded by friends, by family, Eddie feels utterly and completely alone.

The festivities ramp up after that. The happy couple has their first dance to ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ - cheesy pick, Eddie thinks, but he can’t deny that it springs a year to his eye.

It fades into ‘Dancing in the Dark’ and Steve gains a little bounce in his step. He tugs Dustin and Robin up and spins them both round as Stacey’s little niece runs up to her with open arms. She bounces her against her hip to the music.

Everyone is smiling, warm bright grins that take up their whole faces and light up sparks in their eyes. Eddie thinks he should probably be smiling too, but he can’t help the coiling out of anxiety that spits in his stomach.

He lets Erica drag him up for a dance or too, and they swing each other round to The Human League and The B-52’s, but he bows out as Steve grabs Stacey’s hands to spin her around to Wham!’s Everything She Wants, mouthing the lyrics with a grin on his face.

Eddie grabs two flutes of champagne from a passing waiter and seats himself at a nearby table. He downs the first and holds the second in his hand, swirling the sparkling liquid in slow circles and staring into the little whirlpool it creates. This isn’t his first drink, it’s maybe his fourth or fifth, and he can feel it starting to hit him now, a fuzzy warmth settling over his eyes and in his head. He gives into it like he usually wouldn’t. Figures why not if he’s watching the love of his life dance with the love of his own.

He sits there, watching these people, this family, dance and have fun without him and thinks, they would be okay without me. They don’t need me.

A few songs pass but Eddie doesn’t realise, just keeps staring into the glass. There’s only a drop or two left now, when did that happen?

He’s startled back to the present when a hand enters his field of vision.

A couple scars on the knuckles, one finger slightly too crooked, a wedding band. Eddie looks up and finds Steve smiling softly.

Eddie smiles back, holds back wine drunk tears and grabs his hand. Steve tugs him up and onto the dance floor. Eddie represses a shudder when Steve guides his hands to his waist, and wraps his own around Eddie’s shoulders.

Eddie’s eyes are wide as he stares up at Steve in shock. What’s Stacey going to say about this? He risks a glance but Stacey is preoccupied slow dancing with Robin. They’re giggling about something. Eddie flexes his fingers, clenches his hands in the fabric of Steve’s rented suit jacket.

He realises then what song is playing. Tiffany croons about a love that could’ve been over the shitty hotel sound system.

Steve sways him gently, hands fiddling with the back of Eddie’s shirt collar. They’re pressed almost chest to chest, only a sliver of space between them. It might as well be nothing.

“Every time I get my hopes up

They always seem to fall

Still, could've been is better than

What could never be at all”

Eddie has never been one to relate to the lyrics of pop songs, but all of a sudden it hits much too close to home. He feels his heart in his throat, his stomach in his feet. His breath comes short and his eyes prick with moisture.

He pushes Steve back, just on this side of too firm. Steve stumbles a little but Eddie makes sure he doesn’t fall. “I’m sorry.”

And with that, Eddie leaves a groom that isn’t his standing alone in the middle of a crowded dance floor.

He bursts out into the hallway, hair falling out of its neat updo as he whips his head from side to side, trying to figure out where to go. He picks a direction and sticks with it, striding down a random hallway until he finds an unlocked door.

He pushes it open and finds a room much like the one Steve’s reception is being held in. The lights are low here and the tables lay bare of their white silken covers. Eddie walks over to one of the tall windows and cracks it open. He pulls a crumpled pack of Marlboros out of the pocket of his slacks, and tips one into his hands.

He slips his zippo out of the front pocket of his suit jacket, and runs his thumb over the engraving. The outline of a warlock with ‘86 inscribed in the middle - a gift from Wayne after he finally graduated, third times the charm after all.

He flips it open and tries to light up. It doesn’t spark for a moment, despite how hard he tries. He thinks back to that horror flick he and Steve caught a month or two ago - hadn’t this happened to the protagonist.

Eddie snorts, his life is more a tragedy now, even if it was briefly a horror film.

The flame finally catches and he lights his cigarette, taking a deep draw and holding it until the back of his throat aches. He leans out of the window and watches the smoke curl into the dark of the night.

Behind him the door to the room clicks shut, and smart shoes click across the polished floor. They come to a stop a few feet away, and Eddie feels the hair on the back of his next stand up.

“What was that about?” Steve asks. Eddie lets out a shuddering breath, takes another drag of his cigarette.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t… don’t bullshit me, man.” Steve seems to grit his teeth, to clench out the words as if they’re hard to chew on.

Eddie sighs and stubs out his cigarette on the stone windowsill. He turns around, leaning back and starting down at the floor. “What do you want me to say, Steve?” He glances up, meets Steve’s eye. “I’m not exactly having the best time in there.”

“But we were all having fun together. As a family. You’re part of that, you know you’re part of that so I… I don’t see what the problem is? Have I done something? Is it me?” Steve rambles out, voice quivering almost imperceptibly. He runs a hand through his hair, messing up the way it was perfectly styled.

Eddie ducks his head. Stays silent.

Steve swallows and nods his head with a clenched jaw. “Right. Okay.” He takes a step closer. “Can I fix it?” He whispers, eyes wide and wet.

Eddie sighs, looks anywhere except into Steve's eyes because he knows then he’ll break. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Steve asks, incredulity lacing his tone. “Come on, man. If you tell me what it is, maybe we can work out a solution together.”

“I can’t tell you.”

“You can’t…” Steve trails off. He sounds sad, and Eddie hates that it’s his doing, but he can’t handle it anymore. Can’t watch the man he loves dance with a beautiful woman who he so desperately wishes he could hate. Can't sit around and watch them build a life together when he knows he’ll never have that, not when Steve is spoken for. “When have you ever not been able to tell me something?”

Eddie bites his tongue.

“Fuck, Eddie. I don’t… I don’t know what to do!” Steve is tugging on the roots of his hair again. Eddie wonders if, were it his hands doing the pulling, Steve would moan under his touch. But then again, it’s probably the wrong time to entertain such fantasies. “You’re one of my best friends, man, and I can’t… I can’t handle you being upset with me! I mean, you’ve been weird all day! I thought maybe the party would help raise your spirits a little and yeah, okay, I was wrong, but I can’t fix this if you don’t let me. Like shit, all I did was ask you to dance and you…”

Steve pauses as Eddie looks up, watching his expression morph from one of panic and frenetic energy to a curious look of realisation.

“I asked you to dance.” Eddie nods.

Steve swallows, he’s looking away now, putting the pieces together. His hands are resting on his hips, that signature ‘Mom’ pose the kids love to make fun of so much. “You didn’t bring a date.”

“I didn’t.” Eddie finally speaks up. He knows where this is going. Isn’t ready. Is.

“Why not?” Steve sounds a little choked, like maybe he’s nervous to find out the answer.

Eddie squeezes his hands into fists and releases them. Takes a breath and lets the air leave him shaking. “Because the person I want is already here.”

Steve crumples a little then, a marionette with its strings cut. He smiles, though it seems forced, almost painful. “I’m..?”

Eddie nods, resigned. “Yeah.”

“Fuck.” Steve mutters under his breath before stalking towards Eddie, fast and determined, wrapping a hand around his tie and tugging him into a firm, crushing kiss.

Eddie feels himself freeze, holding his hands up as if he’s going to protect himself.

Steve’s lips are warm and soft beneath his own, they taste like cherries - the balm Eddie knows he’s so fond of, that makes his mouth look so enticing. One of his hands rests on Eddie’s cheek, large fingers spread wide from his jaw all the way to his ear. The other has flattened itself away from Eddie’s tie, now resting above the frantic thud thud thud of his heart.

Steve pulls away with his eyes closed and lips still puckered. He frowns when he comes back to himself.

“I…” He swallows. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t ha—“

Eddie steels himself. Grabs the lapels of Steve’s suit jacket and yanks him back in, swallowing Steve’s surprised squeak with his lips. It melts into a moan and Eddie feels just a little proud of himself.

They pull back again, eyes locked and dark, afraid to break this bubble they’ve created around themselves. Separating them from the party, from the world.

“Why didn’t you stop me?” Steve asks, voice wrecked and quiet. Eddie doesn’t know if the question is for him, or if Steve’s just asking to ask. But he doesn’t have the time to wonder before they’re kissing again.

Eddie doesn’t know who moved first, but their tongues are pressed together and their hands are grappling at jackets. Steve is… vocal. All breathy whimpers and rough groans. It’s music to Eddie’s ears.

He runs his hands through that stupid fucking hair, softer than it probably was in high school, free of the hairspray and gel that kept it big. Steve’s grown since then. He still primps and preens with the best of them, but he isn’t so reliant on Farrah Fawcett now. Steve’s hands play with the hair at the back of Eddie’s neck, tangling and carding through the strands. He gives a gentle tug and Eddie can’t help but gasp.

He feels Steve smirk into the kiss as his hands drift further down, to his shoulders and then his chest. Steve loosens Eddie’s tie and presses a kiss to the base of Eddie’s throat as he undoes the first button of his shirt.

“Steve.” Eddie whispers, voice soft and pained.

Steve pulls back, looks at him through his eyelashes, reverent and dark. “Let me do this for you.” His voice comes out soft. He undoes a few more buttons, staring deep into Eddie’s eyes.

Eddie can’t look away. His shirt is down to his navel now. He nods his head. “Okay.”

Steve smiles, a small, secret thing, and drops carefully to his knees, keeping his gaze locked with Eddie’s. He pulls Eddie’s shirt from his dress slacks, pressing a sweet kiss to the skin beneath his belly button. He rests a hand on Eddie’s belt - he had retired the handcuffs for the night, and some part of him deeply regrets it. “Can I?”

Eddie’s glad Steve had the forethought to wear his contacts. He thinks he’d die if Steve was looking up at him through gold wire frames.

He nods, and Steve makes quick work of his belt buckle. He slowly pulls the pants zipper down, before leaning in and pressing a gentle kiss to Eddie’s cock where it sits, more than half hard, in his briefs.

Eddie inhales sharply, the sensation dull but still ever present. He glances down, sees Steve on his knees before him, has to look away.

Steve sucks at the wet spot forming on Eddie's boxers and Eddie bites back a moan. Steve pulls away, staring up at him, but keeps one hand on him, rubbing slowly through the fabric. "I wanna hear you."

Eddie's hands clench and unclench in the air by his sides, unsure where to put them, what Steve's comfortable with. But that question is answered for him when a gentle hand takes his, presses a kiss to each individual knuckle, and guides his to the top of Steve's head, threading his fingers through his hair. "You don't have to be so gentle with me. I like it a little rough." Steve says, voice light and teasing.

And all of a sudden, Eddie's mind is flooded with the imagery of that statement. Steve face down on a bed, tears streaking his cheeks. Steve's strong hands clenching in white bed sheets. Purple bruises littering his collarbones, his chest, his thighs.

God, those thighs. He imagines them wrapped around his waist, over his shoulders, either side of his head.

He imagines Steve, sweat slicked and quivering beneath him. Writhing and moaning and begging. Imagines a fierce red blush spreading from his cheeks down his neck to his chest as Eddie whispers sweet nothings and dirty talk in his ear. Imagines him wrapped in soft, tight rope, a dark crimson or black to contrast the tan of his skin. Imagines his hands tied to the headboard.

His mind is full to the brim of pictures and possibilities, a million ways he could bring the man before him to ruin.

Eddie clenches his hand in Steve's hair, tugging sharply at the strands. He watches Steve's eyes flutter closed as he gasps. Steve smirks. "That's more like it."

"Shouldn't you be putting that mouth to better use?" Steve's smug look drops away, that pretty red blush Eddie had fantasised about replacing it. Eddie uses his grip on Steve's hair to pull him closer to his crotch.

Steve wets his lips, reaches up and tugs Eddie's briefs down to free his cock. It bounces up, slapping against his stomach and smearing pre against his skin.

Steve wraps a warm hand around it, pumps it up and down. He leans in, pressing a wet, open mouthed kiss to the base and gazing up at Eddie through his eyelashes. He licks a stripe up the underside from base to tip with the flat of his tongue, before suckling on the head.

Eddie loosens his grip, cards his fingers through the soft strands. He smirks. "That's more like it." He says with a mean, teasing lilt. Steve's eyes flutter, rolling back for a moment until Eddie can only see the whites. He tugs again, gentle this time. "C'mon, baby. You know what I want."

He dons that dominant persona like a second skin. He can’t let himself think about how fucking wrong this is, how Steve’s goddamn wife is only a a few rooms away. He knows he’s fucked everything up irreparably, but what the hell? He’s already started, he might as well follow through.

Steve nods, movements stilted under Eddie's grasp. He wraps his lips around the head of his cock, flicking the slit with the tip of his tongue. He bobs his head a little, sucks and laves his tongue over Eddie's skin until the room is filled with nothing save his wet noises and Eddie's own heavy breathing. He moans, his eyes closed, sending vibrations down the length of his shaft.

Eddie bites back a groan, watching Steve’s lips stretched wide and shiny around his cock. When Steve blinks his eyes open, gazing up at Eddie, they’re glossy and wide - a goddamn dream come true.

Steve hollows his cheeks, swirls his tongue around the head of Eddie’s cock before swallowing him down to the hilt and engulfing him in a wet heat.

“Fuck, baby.” Eddie moans, clenching his hand in Steve’s hair to hold him there. He wonders where Steve learned to do this, who’s cock he sucked to get this good. Part of him is jealous it wasn’t him. He wants to ask him the story, knows he never will. “Made for this, weren’t you, Stevie?” Steve whimpers, it’s muffled with his mouth full. “You look so pretty on your knees.”

Steve’s eyes flutter as he tries desperately to keep his gag reflex in check. Eddie pulls him off by his hair, letting his panting breaths echo in the quiet of the room as he tries to catch his breath.

He takes in the mess of the man on his knees before him. Steve’s eyes are watering so much they’re glassy, his lips are swollen and red. Eddie thinks he could cum just from the sight of him.

“Harder?” Steve’s voice is hoarse already, his lips slick and slightly swollen.

Eddie raises a brow. “You’re sure?”

“Wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want it.” Steve leans in close, pulling against Eddie’s grip. He slowly jerks Eddie’s cock in one hand as he presses languid kisses along the length. He presses his free hand against the sizable tent in his slacks. “Take what you want. I’m not made of glass.”

Eddie kicks at the hand he’s grinding against to move it out of the way, takes a step forward and rests his shoe between Steve’s legs, pushed right up against the bulge in his trousers. Steve inhales sharply, staring up at Eddie, dark eyes wide with shock. He shifts, bears his weight down and gives an experimental roll of his hips. A shudder wracks his frame.

“Good?” Eddie smirks. Steve just nods, hips juddering. “Tap my leg if you want me to stop, yeah?” He nods again. “Words, Stevie.”

“Yeah.”

“Better. Now open up.” Steve’s mouth falls open, his tongue lolling out, pink and wet. Eddie bites back a groan at the sight and grips his cock at the base. He rests it on Steve’s tongue for no more than a moment, before sliding it in all the way. He runs his hand through Steve’s hair, then grips it tight, holding him down. “So beautiful.” He murmurs.

Steve moans, the sensation around his cock causing Eddie’s hips to jerk and hit the back of Steve’s throat. Steve chokes, and Eddie starts to pull out.

He doesn’t make it far before Steve is grabbing his ass to pull him in deeper. “Fuck, Stevie. Guess you weren’t lying, huh?”

He thrusts in again as Steve’s nails dig in hard through Eddie’s slacks. He builds up a rhythm, guiding Steve’s head with a hand in his hair, his cock gliding slick and perfect against Steve’s smooth tongue as Steve sucks and whimpers and swirls his tongue. Steve’s hips jerk frantically where they’re pressed against Eddie’s shoe.

It can’t be comfortable, Eddie thinks, but nonetheless he keeps going.

Moonlight spills through the window and casts Steve in a pale glow. He’s more beautiful than ever, down on his knees like he’s at prayer, while sinning so prettily.

Eddie can feel that sizzling heat start to simmer in the bottom of his stomach, frissions of arousal sending sparks all over his body.

It’s perfect. It’s not enough.

If this is the last time Eddie will ever see Steve, ever have him beneath him, be inside him, then he needs more. Needs to be pressed against the strength of his back, needs to feel the warmth of him seeping through his clothes. He needs the intimacy if anything. Needs Steve to know how wanted he is, how this is more than just a quick meaningless fuck.

They’ve already ruined whatever friendship they had, what more could they lose?

“Fuck.” Eddie mutters. He pulls Steve up by his hair, spins him round until his back presses against Eddie’s chest.

“What… what’re you doing?” Steve asks, voice gravel rough. Eddie reaches around, grapples with Steve’s belt buckle until it comes undone. He pushes his slacks and his briefs down, until they hang around Steve’s knees.

“Taking what I want.” Eddie pulls at Steve’s suit jacket, pressing kisses down his jaw, his neck, behind his ear, as he works it down his arms. He tosses it unceremoniously to the side before pressing a flat palm between Steve’s shoulder blades and pushing until his chest lies against a nearby table. That perfect fucking ass is round and bare and presented to Eddie like a goddamn feast.

He wishes he could get his mouth on it, knows he never will.

He brings his hand down against Steve’s right ass cheek, the crack echoing sharp and loud in the quiet of the room. He slots his hand over the reddening welt, takes a handful and squeezes.

“Oh fuck.” Steve lets out a breathy moan, his breath fogging up the wood as one hand reaches out to grasp the opposite edge of the table.

Eddie rucks Steve’s shirt up, rubbing his hands over the harsh scars that cover his back, healed silver with time but still rough to the touch. He trails his hands down Steve’s back, stopping until his thumbs fit perfectly into his dimples of venus. He leans in, kisses down the knobs of his spine, each vertebrae blessed with a press of his lips, before coming to a stop at his tailbone.

“Eddie…” Steve exhales a whine, cheek pressed to the table under him. “Stop fucking teasing and touch me.”

Eddie chuckles softly, nipping at the expanse of skin beneath him with his teeth, sucking a mark. “Oh, baby, I am touching you.”

Steve growls, a rumbling guttural thing, and pushes his hips back, his bare ass pressing against Eddie’s cock. Eddie barely holds back a moan, his hand clenching around Steve’s hip to hold him still.

“I didn’t say you could move, honey.”

Steve inhales sharply at the pet name. “I need more, Eds. Please.”

Please, he says, as if that doesn’t shake Eddie’s entire world to its core. He’s going to be playing that over and over in his head until he fucking dies.

“Since you asked so pretty.” Eddie takes a half step forward, grinds slowly against Steve’s crack, his cock catching against Steve’s hole. “God, the things I’d do to you if I had some lube and a condom.”

Steve lets out a breathy laugh, shuddering as Eddie’s hips keep moving, continuing that slow, steady grind. “I’d let you.”

Eddie grins, runs his hands up and down Steve’s back before stopping at his hips and squeezing gently. “Yeah? You’d let me fuck you right here?”

“Uh huh.” Steve shifts, presses his forehead to the table and rocks back. Eddie digs his fingers into that soft, supple flesh beneath his palms and imagines carving a hole in Steve’s chest, making a home there, living within him. They’d never be apart, nothing could ever separate them.

It’s a sort of possessiveness Eddie can never indulge. But God, how he wishes he could.

Eddie pauses for a moment. Closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. It’s all happening so fast he can barely keep up. He knows he should put a stop to this, walk away before he makes it any worse.

But, well, fuck it, he thinks.

Everything’s already well and truly ruined. Why should he stop now?

“Eddie?” Steve mumbles out against the table, bringing Eddie back to the moment. “Y’okay?”

Eddie’s heart clenches in his chest.

Here is a man laid before him, messy and perfect and everything he has ever dreamed of, and Eddie realises he’s been going about this all wrong.

Some dark, cruel part of him is yelling for him to make this count. To make sure Steve remembers this the next time he lays down with his wife. The next time she undresses him, kisses him, touches him in those intimate places. That part of him says, make it sweet, loving. Make it tender. Make sure he knows it isn’t just sex.

That part is screaming. Ruin him.

“Yeah, sweetheart. I’m okay.” Eddie leans down. Presses a gentle kiss to the side of Steve’s neck as he rocks against the crevice of Steve’s ass. Trails more kisses over his clothed shoulder, down the scarred knobs of his back.

He runs his hands up Steve’s sides, touches him almost reverently. Like something holy. “You’re so beautiful, Steve.”

Steve gasps out a moan, rocks back like he’s not in control. Eddie bites back a groan, rocks forward.

He feels something swinging against his hip, reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a half empty tube of vaseline. He smirks, squeezes some out onto his fingers and warms it up. Eddie reaches down, drags a slick finger over Steve’s hole and presses gently against it. Steve shudders, choking out a whine.

Eddie spreads a little more vaseline between his cheeks. He rubs up against him again, gliding smoother where skin meets skin. “That feel good, baby?”

Steve nods, free hand clenching into a fist against the table.

“Words, honey.”

“Feels good, Eds. So good.” Steve replies breathily. Eddie chuckles. He builds a rhythm grinding forward as Steve pushes back. It’s quiet for a moment or two, save for the sounds of their breathing and Steve’s punched out little groans.

Eddie presses his clean hand against the centre of Steve’s back, keeping him in place, and reaches round with his slick one, wrapping it around Steve’s cock. He strokes slowly once, twice, three times, running his thumb over the head to collect Steve’s pre and spread it back down.

“Fuck, Eddie.” Steve gasps out, hips jerking in his grip. His movements are juddering, like he can’t decide whether to fuck into Eddie’s fist or back against his cock. His cheek is pressed flat against the table, eyes clenched shut.

Eddie keeps his fist just bordering on too loose, keeps moving his hips. He leans close to Steve’s ear. “I want you to feel good, Stevie. Take what you want.”

Steve takes that as his cue, grinding rapidly back and forth, fingertips grasping for purchase against the smooth wood. He gasps and moans, writhing in place.

Eddie curses, rocking his hips against Steve’s heat. “That’s good, baby, you’re doing so good.”

Steve moans, deep and guttural as his movements become frantic. He reaches down, covers Eddie’s hand with his own, tangles their fingers and tightens Eddie’s grip.

“Yeah, fuck, just like that. M’so close.” Steve whines beneath him, trembling as he picks up the pace. His hips move faster, stuttering and jerking as he nears his end.

It’s almost a surprise to watch Steve come. It’s everything and nothing like Eddie expected. He could’ve fantasised for hours, days, years, but nothing his brain would’ve come up with is comparable to seeing the real thing.

Steve loses himself in it, lets the pleasure wash over him like a tidal wave. His eyes clench shut and his mouth falls open in a long moan as he comes undone. His hips keep pushing into the tight wet of Eddie’s fist until he becomes oversensitive.

Finally, he pulls his hand away, rests it on the table.

Eddie pulls away too, takes his own cock in hand as Steve lies there coming down, breaths coming out fast, and takes the sight of him in. The look of him debauched, ravished. The strain of muscles beneath scarred skin. The pink blush on his cheeks. The bitten red of his lips. It doesn’t take much.

“C’mon, Eds. Wanna feel you come.” But that’s what really does it. A few jerks of his hand and Eddie’s coming, streaking white across silver scars.

He falls forward, drapes himself over Steve in a desperate need for closeness. Doesn’t care about the mess he’s surely making of his shirt.

The room is near quiet. Still. And Eddie feels warm save for the sinking in his stomach.

He kinda wants to stay there forever. Knows he has to leave as quickly as he can.

Minutes pass, neither of them make the effort to move.

Eddie pants, pressing his forehead between Steve's shoulder blades. The room is silent save for their synced panting breaths. He pushes himself up slowly, muscles protesting the movement.

Steve remains in place on the table top, cheek pressed against the wood as he catches his breath. His eyes are closed, dark eyelashes fanning over flushed skin, and his forehead is damp with sweat. One of his hands lies curled but loose against the table, the other grips the farthest edge, white knuckled. His shirt is rucked up to his armpits, showing the scarred expanse of his back. His slacks are round his knees, the perfect curve of his ass bare.

He's marked with Eddie's cum. All the way from his hole to the centre of his back. It stands out, pale against the tan of his skin. Eddie's almost tempted to reach out, drag a finger through it.

He doesn't.

Instead, he pulls the lilac pocket square from the breast pocket of his suit jacket and unfolds it. With gentle hands, he wipes his spend from Steve's back. He balls the soiled cloth up and shoves it deep into his pants pocket. He'll bin it later - even if the thought of keeping it does briefly cross his mind.

Steve hums, grateful, pressing his forehead to the cool surface of the table. He flexes the hand that was gripping the edge, trying to get the feeling back.

Eddie turns away, feels like he's seen more than he's rightfully allowed. He tugs his pants up, hands shaking as he clasps his belt. He makes an attempt to tuck in his shirt, but it's creased to shit now, so it doesn't quite lay flat anymore.

He walks back over to the window. Outside, the moon is high and the sky is clear. The ground is dewey, almost sparkling. He thinks it must've rained at some point.

He taps out another cigarette from the packet in his pocket and lights up. Blowing out a plume of smoke, Eddie presses his forehead to the cool glass.

Behind him, he can hear Steve shuffling, tidying himself up. Probably preparing to let Eddie down and run off back to his perfect little wife.

Well fuck that, Eddie's gonna beat him to it.

"We can't do this again." He says, fogging up the glass in front of him as he speaks.

Steve's voice is rough when he replies. "I know."

Eddie knows that tone of voice. He knows it all too well. The one where he says one thing but means another.

He flicks the ash from his cigarette, turns and leans against the wall next to the window. Steve's leaning back against the table they just fucked on, staring down at a scuff on his left shoe.

From this vantage Eddie gets to see the wondrous Steve Harrington in all his post-sex glory. His shirt is all rumpled, much like Eddie's own, his jacket is still in a pile on the floor. His hair is a goddamn mess and, though he's tucked himself away, his slacks still hang open at his hips.

Fucking temptation incarnate.

"Steve." Steve looks up, his eyes are still shiny. "We can't. You're married."

Steve frowns, looking away again. He doesn't seem too happy about that. Taking in the frown lines on Steve's face, Eddie would guess the man is at war with himself. Running through all his options. He bets Steve wishes he could run off and find Robin, talk to her before finishing this conversation.

Unlucky for him, Robin is nowhere to be seen.

Eddie swallows down a lump in his throat. Has to force himself to say something he knows will wreck the both of them. "I think it's best that we don't see each other for a while."

Steve's head whips up so fast, Eddie's surprised he doesn’t give himself whiplash. "What?"

Eddie shrugs, self-deprecating and overly conscious of the mess this all is. "I don't... I never intended to be a homewrecker."

Steve scoffs, folding his arms over his chest. "The home has barely been built, man."

A sharp exhale and Eddie's running his free hand through his hair. "That's so much worse! You've got to see that it's worse, Steve!" He takes a pull from his cigarette and blows the smoke out fast. "I was just gonna keep this shit to myself. I never expected this."

"You did it, though. You let me.”

"I did." Eddie chokes out, voice shaky. "And I shouldn't have. I'm fucking sorry that I did."

Steve nods. He's quiet for a moment, his head ducked and shoulders hunched. When he talks again, it's quiet. "How long then?"

Eddie tilts his head. "What?"

Steve looks up then, fierce eyes burning hard into his own. "How long until I see you again?"

"Oh." Eddie breathes softly. "I'm not sure." He swallows. "I need time to get over you, Stevie."

Steve's gaze has gone cold, frozen over. Eddie knows it isn't personal, he's just trying to protect himself, but it hurts all the same. "Well you should probably go then."

It stings like a shot to the heart. "Right."

He moves to stub out his cigarette, but Steve stops him before he can. "Leave the cigarette." Eddie nods, leaving it resting on the window ledge. He slips a hand into his pocket, thumb rubbing over the engraving on his lighter. He pulls it out, watches how the silver glints in the moonlight, and gently rests it down on the ledge as well.

He can't meet Steve's eye again as he walks out of his life for what he knows will be forever, but he does stop at his side. He leans in, presses a gentle kiss to his cheek. Whispers, "I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry." And rushes out of there.

He stops at the door before he leaves completely. Finds Steve stood at the window, Eddie's cigarette between his lips and dusty suit jacket draped around his shoulders. He flicks open the lighter in his hand, watching the flame flicker.

The last time Eddie Munson sees Steve Harrington, he is gazing out of the window into the moonlight, rumpled from Eddie's hands on his body, and Eddie knows his heart is never going to recover.

[dreqmchic]

𖥔 ࣪ ᥫ᭡ꗃ⋆࣪. I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED THAT NIGHT … A JOO HANA STORY

SUMMARY. in which hana isn’t entirely sure what happened that night, and she’s not sure she wants to recall.

FEATURED. joo hana, jaxon park

WARNINGS. sexual assault, this piece is extremely heavy, so i’d advise against continuing past the read more if this topic is too triggering for you. take care of yourself and i’ll see you in the next piece! 🩵

NOTES. hi! yes this is a repost…i recently made a psa saying that everything i wrote about hana before the revamp is still canon and this is one of the pieces from then, so i’ll be updating until we’re caught up with the CURRENT plot !

Hana doesn’t know how she ended up here, on a tour bus with some indie band she barely even knew. All she knows is that her manager is friends with them and that they seem to have taken a liking to her when they met at the bar. She was there for a drink with Mickey who told her not to come with these guys. However, Hana was a free spirit and it was hard to change her mind once it’s been made.

“So you guys really tour around and stuff?” Hana asked in awe, her mouth agape as she picked up each of their records, examining them.

The leader of the band, Jaxon, nodded, looking back at the girl for a split second before returning his attention back to the road.

“That’s really cool,” Hana smiled. “You know, we didn’t get to go on tour yet. I can’t wait until we do, it’ll be, like, so cool,” she raves.

She really can’t wait for her and the group to start holding concerts. Ever since she became a trainee, she wished to perform for a pool of people that adore her. She wants to be adored. She wants to become the thing she looked up to the most when she was younger. She wants to make her teen years worth it and her younger self proud.

“Your band name...it sounds really hardcore. You sure you’re not a heavy metal band?” Hana questions, receiving nothing but a chuckle from the drummer beside her.

“Kid, you ask a lot of questions,” Jaxon says. His voice is husky and that appeals to Hana. She always appeals to these types of guys. They’re always mysterious, bad boys that you shouldn’t trust but Hana always does.

“I’m sorry, am I bothering you?” She genuinely apologizes.

“No, I like the curious kind.” And curious she was. She was the type of curious that would get her into all types of trouble that she could’ve avoided if she simply minded her business.

“I’m glad,” she bats her eyelashes, blushing ever-so-slightly.

One hand still on the wheel, the other snaking into Hana’s lap, caressing her thigh. She gets a weird feeling in her tummy from that. It makes her flinch a bit but she tries to ease under his touch. For some reason she trusts him even though she knows she shouldn’t. She always goes for the bad boys. The ones like these who probably have a gaggle of girls waiting for him when he gets back home but she just happens to be the one he chooses to be his main. It makes her feel special.

Jaxon leans forward a bit, turning the volume of the radio up and returning it to its spot on Hana’s leg.

“You’re really pretty, y’know that, right?” He says, the bus now coming to a halt in a forest that bores a violently dark shade of green. She hadn’t even realized where they had been going. The thrill had blinded her and his words fogged her mind.

The outliers of her heart fluttered, much like the faint tint of pink blooming in her cheeks. She feels nervous in a strange way. She can feel pressure weighing down on her heart. She hears her own heartbeat and it makes her wonder if they can hear it too. It makes her all the more nervous.

“Thank you,” she shyly replies, looking into her hands that pull at one another. It’s one of her many habits.

Jaxon seemingly gets closer to her face, his breath tickling her cheek with every inch he ventured. Though dark, she discovered every facial feature of his that she wasn’t able to see before. He grins as his hand reaches to the side of her face and cups it and Hana gains the want to move backward. The grip of his fists, however, allows her no room for opposition.

He kisses her lips in an odd fashion before leaning back in and kissing them in a way that feels as if it would leave bruises. Hana winces. The air is simultaneously getting thinner and thicker in a miraculous way and it makes her feel nauseous.

Jaxon’s arms go to her waist and pull her with might into his lap. His hands roam on their own account and things move too fast for Hana. She was panicking and her heart was racing. Frankly, she was scared to say no but she wanted to. She really did.

She pulls away, “Jaxon—” he cuts her off by forcing their lips to meet again. She feels his hands move, picking at her body through and under clothes. She knows that she tells him to stop but he doesn’t. His hands continue to roam and her throat lets out a pitiful shriek and her vision goes a blur.

Everything is blurred when bad things happen to Hana. It’s a reactive response she’s adopted. She usually represses bad memories, letting them fade into the background until one random day in the distant future she remembers it and shrugs it off without care. But this — this was different. This wasn’t just a memory nor something that could ever be repressed. This was something that she simply couldn’t forget and she hated that.

It’s almost like no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t think of anything else. There were no distractions big enough to mask what just happened. There was nothing that could ever make her not recall every moment, play by play, that just went down.

It’s dark and cold and her face is stained with tears and melted makeup. She tried to look pretty today but left a disheveled mess. She feels dirty.

The walk back home is silent save for small cries that slipped through.

She fumbles with her house keys before finally retrieving them from her bag and opening the door. The air is cold when it hits her skin. The air conditioner never got turned off before all the girls went to bed. There’s no noise, nothing save for the blow from the AC. Nobody’s TV is playing, nobody left over sleeping on the couch because they accidentally fell asleep there. It’s like on this specific night, everything is different.

She locks the door behind her.

Hana pulls her shoes off one by one and they drop to the floor, each making a thud when they reach the glossy wooden surface.

She doesn’t bother taking her clothes off or her makeup off. She just goes straight to the second room across the hall. Her body looks lifeless as she plops herself onto the bed and her eyes look empty as though they haven’t a thought behind them. But yet, a single tear slips out as she lies behind the shorter girl.

“Hana?” Mickey turns over slightly to look at her, still half asleep.

Hana says nothing and just buries her face into Mickey’s back. Mickey’s eyes open wider and she flips over on her back to get a better look at her. Hana closes her eyes tightly and winces when she feels Mickey’s gaze fall over her. She doesn’t say anything.

“Hana, are you okay?” Her voice is still thick with sleep but laced with concern.

Hana says nothing again. She nods softly and gets under the thick blanket. Mickey scoots forward so that she can get under the blanket more.

Mickey faces the girl, then getting closer and wrapping her arms around her. Hana buries her face into her chest and they lay there for the rest of the night. They don’t say anything, just both wondering about the same thing.

What happened to Hana that night?

[silverfoxlou]

Behind The Campaign :: Louis Tomlinson

Former One Direction star Louis Tomlinson released his debut album in 2020 through Sony but moved to BMG for his second album, Faith In The Future, in November 2022. Lisa Wilkinson, director of UK marketing (new recordings) at BMG, explains how they looked to reposition him in the market, what learnings were coming from his live success as well as his own festival, why his merchandise strategy directly informed his multi-formatted record release strategy, how they were able to build him without mass radio support, where a wider male audience was targeted this time round, why Twitter remains his most powerful social media platform and how a highly vocal and engaged fanbase was nurtured further and directly involved in the campaign. 

1 Coming to BMG for his second solo album 2 The centrality of merchandise 3 The radio conundrum 4 Targeting a male audience 5 Building his songwriting profile 6 Targeting the press 7 Boosting the digital strategy 8 QR code and interactive community map at his Away From Home festival 9 Twitter as his main platform and setting him up on TikTok 10 Chart battle with Bruce Springsteen and the power of in-stores 11 Stationhead and Tim’s Twitter Listening Party 12 Fan-made Spotify Canvases 13 Documentary and the next steps

1. Coming to BMG for his second solo album

This is his first album with BMG. His debut album, Walls in 2020, was with Syco Music [via Sony]. That was off the back of X Factor with Simon Cowell.

He had done a couple of more commercial singles – one with Steve Aoki [‘Just Hold On’] and one with Bebe Rexha and Digital Farm Animals [‘Back To You’]. They were really successful streaming singles, but that’s not who Louis is. For the boys in One Direction, the ones that have been successful and the songs that have been successful are the ones that have stayed super pop and commercial. Louis did that but it’s just not who he is.

I think he felt, in that structure, that he just wasn’t getting the support to be who he wanted to be. That’s exactly why people come to us. It’s an artist services deal and we’re there to support you and advise you.

You can see from his live business and his merchandise business – and every other thing that Louis does – that there is an incredible fanbase there for him.

When they [Syco] released Walls, they achieved 14,000 units in week one and got to number 4 in Q1 in January 2020. We thought that just didn’t feel reflective of what was happening [around him].

We went and saw him at various venues on his world tour. We went to New York and saw those two shows and we went to Italy and watched his Milan stadium show in front of 30,000 people.

You’re looking and you’re thinking, “Those numbers don’t make any sense. How on Earth did you fumble that?” We were confident that we could do better than that.

He had a signing dinner in October 2021 and then his world tour started in February 2000 [sic], which was the delayed tour [due to the pandemic]. It went all the way through to September, pretty much nonstop.

They sold half a million tickets that year. All the while he’s on tour, he’s still making the album.

‘Out Of My System’ was released as a DSP-focused track before the album. It’s the rockiest and heaviest track on the album. He came straight off stage, went into a vocal booth off the side of the stage [to record it]. Because of the energy, he was so fired up. It was a difficult process because it was creating an album on the road.

He wanted to make an album for live. It was a totally different experience for him. Covid hit just a few months after Walls dropped so the tour was out of the question.

Before we started working on the album campaign, he did a show at Crystal Palace Bowl, which was the first incarnation of his Away From Home festival that he’s created and curated, which is for up-and-coming indie bands.

He gave away 8,000 tickets in August 2021 when we could start doing outdoor things again. I was there and was thinking, “There’s something big going on here.” The fans were so committed and dedicated.

Considering this is someone who hasn’t had real radio support or is seen in celebrity magazines or on social posts, this is a huge phenomenon.

That continued into the tour.

2 The centrality of merchandise

We started on the creative really early and that was a key factor in how successful the album was. We knew early on from discussions with management that his merch business was berserk. We knew what kind of fans he has. With their merch drops during Covid, they played around with the strategy. They got in a really cool design team and they would just do regular drops – limited-edition releases and you’ll never see it again. Everything just sold out constantly.

That informed the whole product strategy.

We knew we had to make product that’s limited in its nature because it encourages demand.

The fans just want it. It’s got to look amazing; it’s got to have Louis looking phenomenal because they just adore him; it’s got to be priced right; and there’s got to be a selection. So it’s more stuff, but less of it.

Instead of treating it like a music product, treat it like merchandise. We absolutely nailed that strategy.

We sold 35,000 records and around 2,500 units were streaming. A good chunk of that was physical album sales. It’s going to inform our strategy for any other albums we do with him.

We did 19 products in the end. We did a standard CD, we did a CD ‘zine which had 82 pages of beautiful content and photos, we had a picture disc vinyl, we did around eight different exclusive retail vinyl albums, we had a splatter vinyl for HMV, we had a colour one for Amazon, we had a clear one for Spotify, we had several more for Urban Outfitters and Target, we had an indie retailers one.

It was a collector thing: how many of the vinyl albums have you managed to get? We did a double deluxe vinyl for D2C. We did cassettes where the artwork joined together when you got all three. They were embossed and glowed in the dark. Louis has Easter eggs that he drops everywhere. The number 28 is like a lucky number, so you see 28 dotted around places. The same with 369 – he uses it in many iterations. If you had a UV light, you’d be able to see ‘3’, ‘6’ and ‘9’ embossed on each cassette.

3 The radio conundrum

We have seen historically that it has been tricky to get radio for him – but not because of any artist proposition issue. It’s just sonically that he wants to do something different to what radio wants to play.

It’s tricky because it falls through the gaps a little bit with what he wants to do. We’ve always looked at it as: let’s just assume there are zero promo opportunities at radio, TV and press. Let’s just take out promo entirely.

What you have got is a global, engaged, fanatical fanbase. You can do more with that than you can with those other things if you don’t have fans.

I would much rather have an artist who’s got an absolutely berserk global fanbase and that gets absolutely no support from traditional media – because you can work with that – than have an artist that’s not really got a particularly big fanbase but radio loves them and TV loves them. What does that matter if you’ve not got the fans?

We did always want to get promo because we would love to be able to expand Louis’ fanbase. But you’ve got to compete against Harry [Styles] and Niall [Horan]. They’re the first people you’ve got to compete against because, to play three One Direction members on the radio, I don’t know if radio stations would. Then you’ve got the sonic battle as well where he wants to keep it pretty raw.

The first single was ‘Bigger Than Me’, which is a big song to sing. It was a good bridge between the last album and this album. It gave the fans what they wanted.

We had really good feedback from radio. They played it to Clara [Amfo, Radio 1] without telling her who it was. She loved it and she did actually play it as one of the hottest tracks of the week. Greg James’s producers said it was brilliant. They absolutely adored it. Matt Edmondson and Mollie King’s team loved it. They thought it was great. But it got blocked at playlist conversations. It was like, Come on!

That was really disappointing because, pre-release, we were getting incredible feedback from producers, but we just couldn’t get it through the playlisting. We’d always planned for it not to go on radio, but if it got on radio that’d be just a brilliant bonus. So it didn’t harm our campaign strategy at all.

He’s too pop for indie stations and he’s too indie for the BBC [Radio 1]. It’s frustrating, but he’s making the music he wants to make and the fans love it. So what do you do?

‘Silver Tongues’ came out just before the album dropped, which was the official second single. That bridged the gap between those two singles. It was much more guitar based. It was up-tempo but it wasn’t too indie.

On the day that the album was released, fans bombarded Greg’s show on the 10 Minute Takeover [on the Radio 1 breakfast show]. And he played it! It was lovely but you could tell it was done like, “OK, I’ve done it now. Go away.” Which is just so sad because his demographic is right in that lane. It’s 18-25.

4 Targeting a male audience

‘Out Of My System’ was released as a DSP track, and that was really to show a different side of what was going to be on the album. It was the hardest one, the rockiest one, the speediest one, it was all about the band. It is one of the best streaming tracks on the album; it has really taken hold.

That was really just to get the male audience because we knew from the analytics we had prior to release that, although his demographics on social media are largely female, wider research that we did with our media teams said that he has a male fanbase. They’re just consumers. If they were to hear him on the radio, they wouldn’t turn it off – that kind of thing – but they’re not necessarily following him on social media. We knew that there was an opportunity there to reach another audience.

5 Building his songwriting profile

We just gave him creative freedom. Louis is really smart. He was the most proficient songwriter within One Direction. He has more songwriting credits than any of the other four members. We know that he’s a talented songwriter so it was just putting him together with people who can give him the confidence, like this album did, to move him out of his comfort zone.

There are some tracks on there that he will say were inspired by people like DMA’s and their album The Glow. ‘All This Time’ and ‘She Is Beauty We Are World Class’ have that slightly more experimental sound to them, which I think took a few people by surprise. He has really incredible writers like David Sneddon, Robert Harvey, George Tizzard and Rick Parkhouse. He has said multiple times in interviews that they gave him the confidence to have fun with it.

I don’t think he expected to get the amount of tracks that he did. It was a big album with 16 tracks. Then we put another three tracks on a digital deluxe edition in week one which shifted another 15,000 units globally.

6 Targeting the press

One of the big wins we had on this campaign was the NME coming on board. They were not interested last time. There was no music press. So one of our key targets on this campaign was to get music press.

We really wanted to get a Rolling Stone cover but the one we wanted to go for Harry was on. So we shifted and we retargeted the NME. We took them to Louis’ Away From Home festival in Malaga [in summer 2022]. He sold it out – 15,000 tickets in 24 hours.

NME did various interviews with Louis for their website and for their socials. They spoke to the bands that were on. It was a real seal of approval. And from that point onwards, we had nothing but great press from NME.

They supported everything – all the singles and we got a four-star review of the album. It was not like we bought it, but it was because we put them in the right place to really see him.

7 Boosting the digital strategy

There were two real strategic decisions that we made at the beginning that affected the outcome: one was the physical product strategy; and the other was the digital marketing strategy. If you don’t have traditional promo, and you’ve got an ardent global fanbase, digital is the most important way of getting your marketing across.

When we first started working with management, they said to us that there were some things that were non-negotiable. Everything should be fair, so we shouldn’t feel like we’re only offering things to fans of a certain demographic or to fans in a certain territory. It’s global. It’s got to be accessible. It’s got to be affordable. And it’s got to be innovative.

They are so good at doing things that break records and break the internet.

They did their livestream in 2020 and Louis sold over 200,000 tickets. It was the most-streamed livestream of a male solo artist during lockdown.

They had quite high expectations of the digital campaign going forward.

We spent quite a long time, about three months, prior to launching trying to figure out how we were going to break the internet.

With #LT369, we trended within about five minutes worldwide of that hashtag going out. When you tweeted the hashtag, it took you to a mini site where a Twitter map was starting to flag where people’s locations were. Over the course of the teaser week, the flags started to fall away but would leave ‘BTM’ which stood for ‘Bigger Than Me’, so we were teasing the single name.

We did a playlist builder and it was generated on socials as a cassette mixtape. You could share it and design your own cover on it. These were just things that really got the fans talking and engaged.

8 QR code and interactive community map at his Away From Home festival

The interactive map was linked to a QR code. We put QR codes around the festival site with absolutely no explanation as to what they were. But the fans notice everything.

We put the track titles from the album in pictures. They were really, really hidden. It took the fans two days [to work it out], but they observe everything.

Everyone started using the QR code. It took them to a website. We hadn’t announced at that point that the album was going to drop or that it was coming. It was a real mystery but that started the chatter going and we started getting trending hashtags for the album.

9 Twitter as his main platform and setting him up on TikTok

Twitter is his biggest platform [with 35.7 million followers]. What’s really interesting about that is that it’s super conversational, and you can see what they’re doing – as opposed to other platforms like Instagram and Facebook. He’s probably one of the only artists that still uses it as their primary platform.

He is really active on Twitter. He will go through bouts where he doesn’t post but then he’ll go on a reply rampage. He just replies randomly to people and does 40 in an hour. The fans go absolutely wild. Twitter was our key platform for launching initiatives and activations

There is a HQ account on TikTok and it crashed part of TikTok when it launched. Management love knowing that they crash things. We “crashed” our D2C site within minutes. There was a queue of 200,000 people in the D2C store at one point within the first hour of launching.

We didn’t technically crash the D2C store but, because of the size of the queue, it shut the storefront down which is what it does, and then forms a queue so that it doesn’t crash. We went on there and could see there were 200,000 people queuing.

10 Chart battle with Bruce Springsteen and the power of in-stores

I don’t think he ever thought he wasn’t getting a number 1 album. We beat Bruce Springsteen, we did it in Q4 and we doubled the numbers that Sony did week one last time [on Walls].

When we were in week one, and we were battling out with Bruce Springsteen, we said that there were an easy 3,000 units there if we put on four Banquet Records shows [at Pryzm in West London] and bundle the album with the tickets.

Every time they put a show on sale, you could see the numbers on the webpage. There were 200,000 people on there, even people who were not in the UK. They were ridiculous numbers.

It was more than Banquet has ever done. We sold out three shows in under a minute.

That was on release week. We had a really solid release week strategy so we knew that we had three shows in the pocket with Banquet.

We had two tracks that had not been released at that point, that weren’t on the album, that weren’t on the deluxe and that hadn’t been released as singles. We created a £4.99 digital album that had another two brand new tracks on it. You could only buy it as an album product and it was a D2C download.

We sold 15,000 of those globally in week one. We sold 6,000 in the UK. We did 3,000 extra records with Banquet in week one via the shows. We did an additional 3,000 with signed product that we put on sale in week one, because there were no other signed products in the market.

The digital super deluxe did 6,000 units. We ran multiple competitions. We gave away a signed guitar with HMV. We did a golden ticket to the tour with Crash Records.

We did a two-day pop up in Camden [North London] and Amazon contributed with signage. We did a one-day one in New York as well. We sold pop-up exclusive merch and we re-sleeved splatter vinyl with a London pop-up sleeve. We did around 2,000 of those. We did the same with the CDs and re-sleeved some CDs with the London pop-up. They were unique and fans could not get it again so they flew out the door. We had 3,000 people show up for it. That was full capacity.

We premiered the video for ‘Silver Tongues’, the second single, at the pop-up. That was the weekend of release but the single, which came out earlier that week, the video dropped on the Saturday.

11 Stationhead and Tim’s Twitter Listening Party

Stationhead is an interesting concept and we’ve done it a few times now. It’s linked to streaming, so every time you play a track within the show, it’s technically streamed by the amount of people that are listening to the show. Louis did one of those and, in terms of Stationhead’s history, it was pretty successful.

We got an email from Tim Burgess’s team saying they wanted to do a Tim’s Twitter Listening Party with Louis. They had such a good rapport and the fans were asking for it.

Beyond the chart units from the streams, it is the noise that it creates online that is more important to us.

It was one of their biggest re-listening streams, which is amazing when you think about the demographic that they have.

12 Fan-made Spotify Canvases

Across socials, we asked people to rework the ‘Bigger Than Me’ artwork. As a way of getting people to go and stream the track, we would change the Canvas semi-regularly so there was a reason for people to go and play it to see if their Canvas was one of the ones that had been selected.

The only downside is Canvases are only seven-seconds long. So if you go and you watch for seven seconds, it’s not your artwork and you come off, it can affect your average listening rate.

We were mindful of that. Our strategy was to do that post-pitching for any real major lists so that they weren’t looking at the data.

He has got really good listening data. It’s around 15 plays per listener which is way over the average. The save rate to libraries is huge and shows that he has really got a good lean-in listenership.

13 Documentary and the next steps

He’s going back on tour. He is back on another world tour from April starting in Asia and then he goes to North America. Then he comes back to Europe, culminating in an O2 show in London this time around in November. He previously did Wembley Arena.

The documentary [All Of Those Voices] premiered on 16th March and then went to worldwide cinemas on 22nd March for a week.

Charlie Lightening made it and went on tour with Louis. He had previously made the Liam Gallagher documentary [As It Was]. Historically he’s done most of Louis’ music videos as well. It was only this time around that we wanted to branch out and see if we could do something a little bit different.

It goes from the band through to his personal life and where he is now. There is a massive focus on the tour. It will blow people away to see what the Louis franchise looks like. This kid has an amazing franchise and most people just don’t have any clue about it.

The recordings business is such a small part of what he does. Obviously it helps to have records out to sell merch and to go on tour. That’s where he really excels.

I’ve never worked on a project where the fans are like they are. You get to see your visions immediately. You get to see the reactions immediately. You get to see the activation work immediately. That is such a buzz.

On most other projects, you launch something and then you have to market it and push it. This was more about pre-strategy, because you know that when you launch something, if you get it right, it’s going to work and you’ll get to see that reaction immediately. That was so much fun. Campaigns like that are rare.

[wildmtthyme]

Chapter 6: Indian Summer.

Warnings: Angst.

Chapter Note: So, I've been sitting here with this chapter kind of written up for weeks now - but work has been absolutely insane. So, I figured I'd just go ahead and send it out. I'm not happy with it but meh, is what t'is, right?

Chapter Characters: Morgan "Indiana" Turner, Simon "Ghost" Riley, John "Bravo 6" Price, Mentions of Stacy, Sam (K9 oc).

Story Synopsis: Ghost and Indiana have been best mates for years, partners on and off the field. And she's loved him for just as long. But she's never let on that she's felt anything more than friendly towards him. That all starts to change when Simon starts seeing someone for longer than a single night. Indie decides she's going to try and get over this annoying crush once and for all. Simon realizes that maybe he's been feeling more for his partner than he thought. Maybe a lot more. Partners to lovers with a sprinkling of smut, some fun and humor, a team that won't leave them alone, and a car that seems to weave it all together.

<- Chapter 5 - Chapter 7 (Coming Soon)

Series Masterlist

The next afternoon, Morgan let out a steady breath as she felt the wind on her face… the dreary countryside would soon give way to the beauty of the coast but not before she’d have to stop for the night. Still… that was a ways out yet. Her bike was loaded down with its saddlebags, her leathers felt comfortable in a way that only years of owning them could provide… and the gently winding road was like a siren in its own right, calling her to leave her worries behind. Her annual trip was cathartic and necessary, no matter what was going on in her life. And yes, there was a pang in her heart over not hearing the added rumble of Simon’s Triumph beside her… but it was necessary. While she knew she’d always love Simon… she was hoping that the time and the miles would help her to fall out of love with him. To not feel her heart skip a beat each time she heard his voice or saw his beautiful honey colored eyes. She was trying… God knew she was fucking trying… but it was hard when he was there all the time. When he was busting into her office with lunches and swinging by every day to pop in while she was working. She blinked away the sting the whole situation brought and forced herself to focus on the road. Nothing else mattered in that moment. That was the thing about riding… it was just you, your bike, and the road. The rest of the world could just fall away.

Simon felt his phone vibrate in his pocket as he sat at the restaurant, listening to Stacy talk about a particularly needy client she’d had that day. He fished it out and checked the screen… and while he felt the sudden and intense, immediate urge to open the text, seeing as it was from Indie… he didn’t. She’d said it herself. He had a girlfriend and he should focus on her. So, that’s what he did.

The next morning, Simon climbed into his truck fighting a yawn… he knew he should probably feel bad about nearly always leaving so early whenever he stayed over at Stacy’s place but he just… didn’t. He’d work on that… add it to the list, right? He hung his phone on the magnetic cradle and the screen lit up, his notifications flashing for a moment… a reminder that he’d received a text last night. He swiped the box open and blinked a few times because… surely, he read that one wrong. Goin’ on leave, be back in 4 weeks. He felt a sudden, sharp pain fly across his chest and he swallowed against a strange tightness in his throat, his brow lowering as his expression turned into something close to angry. He turned his truck on and backed out of Stacy’s drive a little faster than he should have, not that it made much of a difference. The next thing he knew, he was throwing the truck in park and killing the engine in front of Indie’s pebble-side. He felt a strange… odd sort of… panic? He wasn’t sure what the fuck he was feeling, if he was going to be honest as he let himself into her house with the key he had on his keyring. “Indie?!” He barked out… nothing. Not even the jingle of Sam’s tags. He hauled himself up the stairs, taking three at a time before he found himself at the top, her room was basically the attic… and it was only past a barely there door that he was in it. The bed was empty. He charged back down the stairs and through the house, nearly tripped over the threshold as he shouldered the door open into the garage, flicking the light on. The Judge was there, sitting like some kind of strange guard but her bike was gone. He locked up when he left and was sitting in his truck, engine off, for a good five minutes before he tore his phone off the cradle and mashed her contact harder than required because come on, not buttons anymore. He hung up on the voicemail, not trusting himself to leave a message. He was… kind of stunned, really. So… he just went home.

He had just gotten out of the shower when his phone went off and he nearly dove for it, mashing the green icon that glowed beneath the crystal skull he had as her contact photo. “Where are you?” The words just fell out of his mouth, hard and commanding, like they were on a mission. There was a beat, a pause before she spoke. Nearly to Devon. “Specifically.” Another pause. Why? “Because I’ll put in—” No, Simon. She cut him off before he could really get going. He sat down on the edge of his bed and felt… he wasn’t sure. “What the fuck, Indie? Wha…” His word died out as he threw a hand up and let it fall back down. “You just went without me?” For the first time in four years, they weren’t taking this summer bike trip together. He heard her sigh, could hear the quiet wind in the background, knowing she was pulled off alongside the road somewhere… knowing that she was out there alone, he could just picture her sitting on her bike with the phone pulled up to her ear, helmet resting on the seat in front of her. And the thought made him, not angry as he suspected it would have but… actually, kind of sad. He couldn’t help but remember their last face to face conversation. “If this is because I asked about you and Price, I’m sorry. It really isn’t any of my—” That’s not it. “Th…” His voice fell off again as he swallowed against that damned tightness in his throat. “Then what…” He heard her sigh before she spoke. I just needed to get away, clear my head. “About what!” He couldn’t help the way his voice rose up, his hand lifting to push his thumb and index into his eyes to fight off the stupid, irritation that was showing up there. Things, okay! Can’t you just… I just need the time. Can you give me that? Please? He heard a strange… sort of plea in her voice that he’d never heard before and it made him feel… hell, he had no idea! None of this made any damned sense to him! He let out a heavy sigh, bowing his head even though he gave a slight nod. “Yeah, a’ight. Just… just be safe, okay and… n’ let me know where you are every… just keep me updated.” He settled on that. Alright. He heard a strange hesitancy there and something told him that… he’d hardly be hearing from her. He wanted to ask… if it was him? If he’d done something wrong? I need to get back on the road. He frowned but forced himself to bid her goodbye. When the line went dead he sat there for a moment… before he flung his phone across the room like it was a skipping stone, listening as it collided with the drywall, putting a noticeable dent in it just above the baseboard. He wasn’t mad at her. He was just… upset. Upset. He’d never really understood the word before now. Not really. Pissed? Hurt? Angry? Sad? Those things, those emotions he understood. But the generalization of just being ‘upset’? That had eluded him until now. Because his emotions were all over the place about this. But… if she needed the time… he’d back off.

Two weeks later…

Morgan trotted past the open gate of the rental she’d booked for the night, a bright grin on her face as she watched Sam leap out of Price’s truck and race towards her. “Hey, boy!!” She fell down to her knees, the sandy soil pooling around her jeans as she gave the excited shepherd a good scratch, chin lifting to avoid his excited kisses. Hey, love. She was stand back up when she felt John’s arm go around her shoulders, giving her a firm squeeze. “Hey, old man.” He chuckled and she leaned into him, his bag hanging down from his hand as they walked to the cottage, Sam racing happy circles around them. Later, she sat on the back deck that overlooked the beautiful Cornwall coast, nursing a beer as she watched the sunlight fading, chuckling as John fought against the gas grill. Bloody thing. “Extra crispy there, Captain?” He shot her a mock glare. Too many muppets at the dials of this thing over the years is my guess. She smirked as she watched him pick up his glass of freaking wine, while he flipped a burger with the turner in his other hand. If that wasn’t a juxtaposition, she wasn’t sure what was. Sam had tired himself out, running on the grassy lawn that came with the place, and was now sacked out in the grass, lazily biting at bugs. You talk to Simon? The question came flying at her like a damned bug. She winced slightly and felt a streak of guilt fly through her. “A little.” She weathered a look from John. It was the truth though. She’d texted Simon a few times since she’d talked to him on the side of the road. Just locational data though. She didn’t know what else to do… her plan of trying to get over him wasn’t exactly working. She just missed him like crazy. But she gave herself a pass. It had only been a few weeks. She wanted to ask how he was doing but she bit the inside of her cheek a little instead.

They ate passable burgers and drank their drinks at the outdoor table… talked about nonconsequential shit late into the night. John had missed having Indie around and he didn’t hide that fact either. He had taken four days off, plus his weekend to travel with her. In his truck. He wasn’t about to get a bike or anything crazy like that. He was certain Lenore would come down from heaven and smack him upside his head if he did that. As he laid on the couch, listening to the sounds of the waves coming in through the open windows, he couldn’t help but feel conflicted about these two muppets. Simon had been going through the motions at work but he was a mess, even though he didn’t want to admit it. He missed Indiana and her going on this trip without him had hurt him. But John also knew why she needed to get away from him. This whole thing could be solved if they’d just get over their hangups and get together but he also knew that there was a very real possibility that Simon might not actually feel romantic about her. And that would shatter Indie’s heart. And she very well could leave the team if that happened. It was as delicate as a bomb… and Simon had no idea.