#i am just struggling not to go on hiatus

[ronearoundblindly]

alright, I mean this is the nicest way possible, and please believe me when I say this is not to discourage anyone's enjoyment of other content on this site, but...

Should I do some sort of celebration/challenge thing that does not involve dark themes??

I know it's not just me, I know there's a few of us who would at least like a better balance, but I do want people to participate. I want stuff to share that I actually got to read thoroughly instead of skip huge chunks or just reblog without reading because I can't take the triggers. I'm so, so, so tired of half-assing my participation for my own mental health.

anyway. thanks for reading.

EDIT: If you feel something you wrote recently, long ago, or read fits this criteria, please please please feel free to send me a link in ask or DM.

[thebayclans]

A drawing of exit glacier that I was going to use in the stonestar story but decided not to finish it, this is an interpretation of how it may have looked a few hundred years ago when the glacier was less receded

[seventh-district]

so uh. that 2.2 Special Program, huh

[m4niackkyun]

Hi. (Announcement in the tags)

[anoptimisticadventurer]

.

[savagegood]

@shinjiroatae1126: To all my fans, today was a very special day for me. For years, I struggled to accept a part of myself...But now, after all I have been through, I finally have the courage to open up to you about something. I am a gay man. It has taken me a long time to be able to say I am gay. I could not even say it to myself. However, I’ve come to realize it is better, both for me, and for the people I care about, including my fans, to live life authentically than to live a life never accepting who I truly am. I hope people who are struggling with the same feeling will find courage and know they are not alone.

ps, he’s released a new song, “into the light”, which you can watch here. part of the proceeds from the single will go to lgbtq+ organisations

@shinjiroatae1126: July 26th, 2023 was a big day for me. I finally gathered the courage to come out to the public as a gay man. I am grateful to have received media coverage from multiple platforms both within Japan and overseas.

To be honest, I was extremely anxious before all of this happened. However, I've been pleasantly surprised to discover the overwhelming amount of positive feedback pouring in from both my fans and people who have come across the news about me. It's heartwarming to see that my story is being acknowledged from all around the world, and this brings me immense joy. Although they may be baby steps, I sense that this world is gradually moving into the light. Yesterday, I made an announcement about resuming my career as an artist. I also released a new song titled “Into The Light”. The music video for the song is also on YouTube now. This song is packed with the emotions and thoughts leading up to this point, including my decision to come out. Living with anxieties and struggles is not limited to just LGBTQ+ individuals. I hope this song can be a source of encouragement for anyone carrying such emotions. I've aimed for it to become a song that can uplift those with similar feelings. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to Pride House Tokyo, Japan’s first permanent LGBTQ+ center, and ReBit, an organization providing resources and support for LGBTQ+ youth. I hope this song will touch many hearts.🙏🌈

At first, there was total silence. Then, there were shrieks, wild applause, weeping and shouts of “I love you!”

Fans of Shinjiro Atae, a J-pop idol who has been on a nearly two-year performance hiatus, had come to hear him talk about “the challenge of my life.” Standing onstage in a dark auditorium in front of 2,000 fans in central Tokyo on Wednesday night, he revealed something he has kept hidden for most of his life: He is gay.

“I respect you and believe you deserve to hear this directly from me,” he said, reading from a letter he had prepared. “For years, I struggled to accept a part of myself. But now, after all I have been through, I finally have the courage to open up to you about something. I am a gay man.”

Such an announcement is extremely unusual in conservative Japan, the only G7 country that has not legalized same-sex unions. Earlier this summer, the Japanese Parliament passed an L.G.B.T.Q rights bill but it had been watered down by the political right, stating that there “should be no unfair discrimination” against gay and transgender people.

In making a public declaration, the 34-year-old Mr. Atae, who spent two decades performing with AAA, a hit Japanese pop group, before embarking on a solo career, said he wanted his fans to know his true self. He also hopes to comfort those who might be grappling with anxieties about their sexuality.

“I don’t want people to struggle like me,” he said.

AAA debuted in 2005, with Mr. Atae, the youngest member, forgoing high school. He performed mostly as a dancer, and began appearing in TV series and movies.

His sexuality perplexed him. “It was a time when on TV, comedians would say two men kissing was gross,” he said. If anyone asked if he had a girlfriend, he just said he was too busy working.

Activists said they could not recall an instance when a Japanese pop star of his stature had publicly declared they were gay, because of anxieties about losing fans or sponsors.

“I think he has decided to come out in order to change Japan,” said Gon Matsunaka, a director and adviser to Pride House Tokyo, a support center for the gay and transgender community.

The decision to open up about his sexuality, he said, evolved over seven years of living in Los Angeles, where he saw how freely gay couples could show affection in public and built an extensive support network.

“Everyone was so open,” he said. “People would talk about their vulnerabilities. In Japan, people think it’s best not to talk about those things.”

Mr. Atae’s decision, he said, was not political.  All he wanted, he said, was to “normalize” being gay. Coming out, he knew, would likely draw criticism. “Whatever you do, there will be haters,” he said. “I can only focus on the people I might be helping.”

[mdsbabygirl]

“I'M YOUR BIGGEST FAN AND I'LL FOLLOW YOU UNTIL YOU LOVE ME”

HANMA SHUJI X F!READER

Synopsis: you didn't think that rejecting your biggest fan Hanma Shuji could spiral into him kidnapping you and making you his.

Wc: 4k

Cw: reader is a famous influencer, vulgar language, heavy smut, dark contents: kidnapping, drug use, violence, mentions of stalking, degradation, Hanma is a psycho yandere, uses of pet names (doll/ sweetheart/doll face), hard sex, spanking, clit play, nipple play, fingering, missionary, doggy, creampie, etc...

Note: this is my first time writing smut after a long hiatus so feel free to give advice!

"Wake up .. wake up doll face!" You faintly heard a man's voice say, as you struggled to open your eyes. Your body felt extremely heavy and tired, to the point that even breathing was way too exhausting.

You felt a few nudges on your shoulder that managed to stir you awake from your drugged state, finally getting the strength to open your eyes and blink a few times to adjust your vision to the lighting. "Took you long enough to wake up, pretty doll!" You heard the same voice say, chuckling.

You turned your head to look at the source of the sound and you finally saw him..Your kidnapper.. A tall, muscular man with raven-black hair adorned with blonde streaks,  amber-flecked eyes that seemed to penetrate your very soul, chiseled hands, covered in black ink tattoos, sat on a chair beside you..   

You attempt to move but find yourself incapacitated, wrists chained to the bed. Disoriented and confused, you mumblingly ask, "Where am I?" Hearing an unnerving metallic click, you look down to find your wrists bound.

you start to get anxious, nervously pulling your arm, trying to free yourself from the restraints your kidnapper had put on you... Hanma chuckled, finding your reaction rather silly and cute.

His hand reached to grab your wrist, stopping your movements, "ah ah! You're gonna hurt yourself if you keep doing that!" He cooed, leaning in to press a gentle kiss to your wrist, as if trying to soothe the pain.

you scowled looking at this deranged man pretending to care for you after kidnapping you.. "GET AWAY FROM ME!" You shouted, desperately trying to put some distance between the both of you, but to no avail..

he giggled, shaking his head, as his hand grabbed a strand of your silky hair and swirled it around his slender finger. "When will you learn that you can't get away from me, hm? Why did you have to make me go to such lengths to make you understand it?" He asked , leaning his head forward  making you face the other way.

He clicked his tongue,  grabbing your chin w his punishment tattooed hand, forcefully making you look at him.. "doll face.. why won't you just accept it? You're mine..you've always been mine, and you always will!" He added, a sly grin appearing on his face, as he caressed your soft cheek. "YOU'RE A SICK MAN! WHO TF EVEN ARE YOU TO SAY SUCH THINGS TO ME?" You yelled at him, tears welling up in your eyes, as the overwhelming emotions of fear and rage collided within you.

Hanma's eyebrows shot up, feeling a bit startled from your reaction. Did his doll face really forget him that easily? Was his love not enough for you to remember him?

"You hurt me sweetheart! You really do!" He said, his psycho smile replaced by a small pout, as his grip on your face tightened, "how could you forget me so easily?!" He asked in disbelief,"thinking I've done so much for you! supported you when no one had, sent you gifts, gave you the attention you deserved, even confessed my love for you!" He nervously listed, recounting his numerous attempts of showing you his twisted affection, amid sadness, denial and a tinge of anger.

Horror washes over you as your mind is racing, finally connecting the dots.. your kidnapper.. he.. he was your stalker!! Past memories came rushing through your brain, images of him sitting at the back of all your social events, the numerous spam likes and comments left on all your posts, the myriad of calls and dms he'd send, all those suspicious love letters and expensive gifts at your doorstep, and yesterday's sick love confession at your latest event, made you recognize your capturer's true identity.

That twisted grin of his made its way back to his features, a sinful glint in his eyes, "I see you finally remember me now doll face!" He spoke, his voice tinged with deranged delight as he took a strand of your soft hair and swirled it around his slender finger. "You look so gorgeous, doll" he cooed, tilting his head as he admired your helpless state, his eyes brimming with wicked affection. He leaned down to press a small kiss to the corner of your mouth, a strangely gentle gesture that clashed with his twisted actions.

He leaned back in his chair and opened the nightstand drawer, pulling out a pack of your favorite snacks. He opened it and took a piece out, chuckling as he recalled overhearing you mention them to a friend when he'd been following you around.

"you know, I gotta admit you really have good taste doll! This snack is very delicious!" He said cheerfully, biting it before he brought the rest to your mouth, and asked w a smile on his face "you hungry?" You looked at him in shock, how could he act so calmly as if he didn't just deprive you of your freedom, treating you with such kindness that betrayed his twisted actions?

You glared at Hanma with pure hate and disgust, wondering how a person can be so sick to their core. "I'm not hungry!" You retort, your voice laced with rage as you look down at the mattress... "Are you sure?" He asks again, pressing the piece of food to your lips "you might need some energy for later!" He said, his voice tinged with sin as his eyes twinkled in lust..

your mind raced with the possible implications of his words, anxiety and fear washing over you, making your body quiver "I said I don't want any!" You reply sternly, looking away from him.

Hanma sighed, putting down the pack of snacks, before he pulled out a small vial from his pocket and twisted the cap off. "IG we'll start right away then!" He spoke, an emotionless expression plastered on his face as he harshly grabbed your face, forcing your mouth open, and pouring in that clear liquid before he quickly muffled your mouth and nose, forcing you to swallow the potent aphrodisiac.

Tears started rolling down your cheeks, as you felt the drug go down your throat and into your system, fogging your mind and making you more vulnerable than you already were. "What.. what did you give me?" You sobbed uncontrollably, unable to move and think straight. "Hmm? Oh it's just something to make you feel good!" He replied, his voice tinged with greed as his tatted hands grabbed your breasts, groping them, making you gasp loudly.

"It shouldn't take long before the effects start showing up!" He added, a sly grin appearing on his face.

His head quickly found its way to the crook of your neck, biting the soft flesh so that it left a purplish mark. He chuckled lowly, "you belong to me now! I can finally do you as I please" he spoke in a sultry tone, his breath feeling hot against your feverish skin.

You tried to push him away but the drug had already weakened your body, reducing you to putty in his hands.. your intoxicated state made you enjoy his teasing , betraying your want for escape.

He laughed at you, mocking your miserable attempts of getting away from him, "you're so pathetic, sweetheart! Just accept it!" He spoke teasingly,  as he lifted his head to meet yours, his lips ghosting over yours, "just admit that you crave me as much as I crave you!" He added, this time w a huskier tone, before your lips met in a tender, lingering kiss.

The touch of your mouths sent a shiver down your spine, a mix of fear and arousal washing over you. Hanma's lips were soft and gentle, yet firm and commanding. His tongue seeked entrance in your hot mouth, brushing over your lower lip, making you gasp softly and slightly pull away.

His hand swiftly grabbed the nape of your neck, tangling into your hair and keeping you in place. "Don't try to fight it y/n.. just kiss me!" He whispered lowly, his seductive voice sending a jolt of tingles to your core that made the wet spot on your panties get bigger and bigger. Your drugged body obeyed to his lustful requests, opening your mouth for him, eagerly welcoming his tongue in, to which he grinned proudly.

Your tongues met, dancing a slow, sensual tango. Hanma's other hand cradled your face, pulling you closer, as your kiss deepened, feeling the intensity building between you, the raw, primal need that drove you both.

His kisses trailed down your neck, his teeth grazing your skin in a delicate, erotic way. You let out soft moans, your body trembling under his touch. The line between captor and captive blurred, as the intensity of your connection grew.

He planted kisses on your soft skin, leaving behind love bites and hickeys in a mixture of red and purple marks. Each time he applied too much pressure with a bite or suck, he always soothed the pain by licking and gently kissing the spot. After all, he didn't want to cause his precious doll any real pain - he loved you too dearly.

Hanma lifted his gaze, his cock throbbing from the sight of your flushed state, panting heavily.So He  took this as a sign to proceed with his twisted plans. His tatted hands quickly made their way to your body, pulling down the straps of your dress and exposing your chest to his lust filled eyes..

Your cheeks blushed even more as you felt his large hands knead your breasts, your nipples already perked up from the drug. "Damn doll face! Your nipples hardened already?" He mocked you, his chuckles echoing through the room.

You felt humiliated, not only were you at the mercy of your psycho stalker, but that damn aphrodisiac was making his twisted actions feel incredibly pleasurable..

you panted, as his long fingers toyed with your nipples, pinching and squeezing them as he pleased.. "oh come on sweetheart, can't you give ne some better reactions?" He inquired, taking your left nipple between his thumb and index finger, twisting it hard just to get a reaction outta you.. that surely made you moan loudly, which made him laugh.. "that's what I wanna hear doll face!" He said as he kept groping your tits, his dick getting harder and harder by each passing second.

your moans were filling the room, and your body was growing hotter w each passing second, your panties soaking up further.

Every suckle, every flick of his tongue on your hard nub, every twist of his long fingers, sent a jolt of pleasure cursing through you, making you arch your back into his mouth, to which he grinned in satisfaction. He finally got you.

You instinctively started grinding your hips on the mattress, desperately looking for some friction to ease the tension you were feeling between your pretty legs.

Hanma quickly caught up to your actions, stopping his ministrations before he grabbed your hip, tightly squeezing the flesh to make you stop your movements "what are you doing?" He asked in a stern way, almost as if he was mad you were so needy for him.

"I.. I..nothing!" You managed to mumble, your mind way too fogged from the potent drug to even form a coherent sentence, the only thought in your lust filled mind was getting off to him.. quick.

"Nothing? Looked like you were being a needy little slut grinding like that on my bed" He replied in a low degrading tone.

Your breath hitched as you felt a sharp sting on your skin and a slapping sound echoed through the walls... Did he just spank you? You were too high to even comprehend what wicked things he was doing to you, but that sharp pain surely did feel pleasurable.

A high pitched moan left your plush lips, as you felt another spank on your hip, making your body jolt. Hanma quickly grabbed you by the face again looking at your hazed state. He chuckled lowly as he admired all his hard work, adoring the girl he so much longer for.

Your teary eyes met his greedy ones, needy gaze falling on his grinning face, mentally begging him to fuck you already, to completely ravish you  until there was nothing left... His sick smile widened further, as his pants became impossibly tighter, his dick aching for some kind of attention.

"Hanma.. please fuck me! Please fuck me already I can't take it anymore!" You whine, eagerly taking his hand and putting it between your legs, making him feel the pool of wetness dripping out of your needy pussy.. 

Your action took him a bit by surprise, although he wasn't the least bit bothered, he was actually very pleased. "Aww, my little dolly whore wants my attention hmm?" He cooed, the fingers of his sin tatted hand lightly grazing your clothed cunt, teasing you on purpose, just for the fun of seeing you buckle your hips into his touch.

"Please Hanma.. I need you! Please!" You cry out, begging for him to take you then and there, to ruin you like the good little slut you are. He chuckled, who thought those damn aphrodisiacs were so useful? He thought to himself before he ripped the nightgown from your body, leaving you almost bare In front of him, if it wasn't for your soaked panties that he quickly ripped off  too. "Now we're Talking!" He said in a sultry voice, as he admired your naked body before him, so beautiful, so gorgeous, all for him to enjoy..

he always had this reaction when he saw you naked, it's almost as if it was his first time—which obviously wasn't he saw you naked before many times but you never knew you had hidden cameras in your house— seeing you so vulnerable like this, made his cock throb in anticipation and his mind flood with the images of him pumping his hard dick in and out of you until you couldn't think walk anymore.

He pushed you onto the bed, falling on your back, as you looked at his undressing form, the sight of his toned chest and abs sending tingles of excitement to your throbbing clit.. you breathed shakily, reaching out to touch his chest but unable to do so from the chains that restrained you..

Hanma laughed at your actions, finding them cute, "look at you! You're so far gone you're willing to touch your kidnapper! Such a horny slut I got here!" He spoke mockingly, leaning in to press his lips onto yours, capturing them in a fiery kiss, full of lust. Your mouth greedily welcomed his tongue in, your wet muscle swirling around his and engaging in a sinful dance that sent shivers down both of your spines.

He pulled away looking at you intensely "if I take that chain off of your hand, do you promise me you'll be a good girl and obey everything I say?" He whispered lowly, his gaze so intense he could burn holes into your skull..

You eagerly nodded, feeling excited about the idea of being freed—partially— from his restraints.

He smirked, quickly opening the locks on your chains and letting your hand fall beside you. Before you could even think about moving it, you felt both of your wrists get held over your head, restricting your movements once again. You gasp at the sudden action, looking at a grinning Hanma who simply said "well... At least my hands won't hurt as much as the chains!" Before he leaned in close, his lips meeting yours in a forceful kiss, stealing your breath, and asserting his control.

The taste of your lips, slick with saliva, only fueled his desire. Hanma's free hand traveled down your body, his fingertips finding your moist, quivering entrance. Gently, but assertively, he began to stroke you, your moans muffled by his own mouth.

As his fingers danced against your throbbing clit, your hips instinctively bucked, craving more. Hanma broke the kiss for a moment, whispering in your ear, "You're going to enjoy every second of this, no matter how it started."

He kissed your neck, biting down softly, sending shivers down your spine. The kidnapper continued to tease you, his thumb flicking back and forth against your swollen clit. You squirmed under his touch, yearning for more.

He slid one finger inside you, curling it, before adding another. The stretch of his long fingers making you gasp loudly,  arching your back , and fluttering your eyelids shut as you felt pleasure curse through your body, sending sparks of pure Bliss through your nerves. He began to finger you in earnest, his touch firm and precise.

As your orgasm neared, Hanma suddenly removed his fingers, leaving you wanting and confused. His voice, a smug whisper in your ear, told you, "No, darling, you won't cum on my fingers. You'll cum on my dick."

He quickly repositioned himself, his erect cock sliding into your slick, waiting entrance. The sudden intrusion caused you to gasp, but it wasn't in discomfort. Hanma began to move, his powerful thrusts matching the intensity of your desires.

As he rammed into you, your moans grew louder, a crescendo of your arousal. You could feel the edge of your climax, and with each thrust, Hanma's cock brushed against that gummy spot inside you, teasing you even further.

In a frenzy, he grabbed you by the jaw, and your lips met in a fierce, passionate kiss. Your eyes fluttered shut as you reached the precipice of an earth-shattering orgasm. Just as it crested, Hanma held you even tighter, forcing you to endure the pleasure without release.

"Not yet," he growled into your ear. "I'll let you cum when I'm ready.."

Your kidnapper continued to ravage you, his need for control in every movement, every thrust. Your body quivered, the tight knot in your stomach threatening to burst, as Hanma held you on the edge, denying your release.

It was too much, way too much! The pleasure was way too intense you couldn't stop yourself from cumming, your arousal juices oozing out of your abused hole, squeezing around his throbbing length making him reach his climax too, involuntarily forcing him to join you in your twisted pleasure, and to spill his thick semen inside you, pumping you full of his cum—just like he imagined — even tho he explicitly told you not to do so, yet..

You felt his thrusts become faster than before, his moans louder and filthier echoing through the walls of the room, "unghh.. ahhh shit, fuck! Fuck you, you little slut! I told you not to fucking make me cum didn't I?" He shouted at you in between moans, his fucked out state preventing him from fully focusing on you—which is considered good luck— and scold you further.

His pace became even harsher than before, his thrusts hitting so deep inside you you think he could bruise your cervix. He didn't care if he was overstimulating himself, he didn't want this to end, he wanted.. no he needed to keep going..

You felt a painful spank on your butt, followed by a harsh thrust that made you scream so loud, then another spank followed by yet another hard thrust of his, "you filthy little slut, how dare you disobey me?" Thrust. "Answer me!" Thrust. "Who gave you permission to cum?" Spank.

You cried out, feeling so overwhelmed by the intense feelings you were experiencing, taunting pleasure mixed with blissful pain.. a powerful combo that made your body shake uncontrollably, and scream so erotically loud, even the sluttiest pornstars would be jealous of you..

"No one" he growled, "no one gave you permission to be a lil bitch and cum unannounced on my dick!" He spat out, "I'm gonna have to punish you!" He said huskily before he pulled out, and flipped your weak body, so that your perky butt was on full display for him. "Now doll face, I'm gonna teach you what being a little slut does to pretty girls like you ok?" He spoke in a stern tone, his punishment tattooed hand harshly slapping your already reddened skin..

you whined, your body jolting from the intensity of his slap.. it hurt.. it hurt so much but it felt so goddamn good in that blissful state of yours. His large palm made contact once more with your freshly bruised skin, the slapping sound echoing through the walls.

You tried getting away from his harsh touch, gathering all the strength left in your weak quivering body, to crawl away from Hanma, but he was quicker than you, stronger than you. He forcefully grabbed you by the hips, and shoved his cock back inside your slippery hole, the sudden fullness making you scream, gasping for air.

"That's what happens when.. unghh.. pretty dolls don't obey their masters" he muttered through gritted teeth, trying his best not to moan as loud as you,  the endless squeezes of your overstimulated cunt feeling so heavenly on his throbbing cock.

His rhythm was harsh; deep thrusts hitting all the way up your cervix, his hard length rearranging your insides as it pleases. His tatted hands were tightly gripping the flesh of your hips, bruising it with how much he was squeezing.

He still didn't recover from the earth shattering orgasm he just had, which made him more sensitive than he wanted to be. Hanma wanted this sinful  moment to last forever, he needed to have you under him, moaning like a slut as you got your pussy pounded by him. That's the only thing he'd need.. he craved you for so long and thinking he finally got you like this felt like a dream he never wanted to wake up from.

Hanma pounded into you with animalistic fury. Your bodies collided in a ferocious, primal dance, as your ass bounced with each of his thrusts, already raw and bruised from the countless spanks.

His tatted hands gripped your waist, his fingers digging into your flesh, leaving dark imprints as he ravaged you. Sweat beaded on his brow, and his grunts grew louder and more frenzied.

Finally, he could hold back no longer. With a deep, guttural groan, he unleashed his hot, thick cum inside you, filling her completely. His seed spilled into you, an endless fountain of his desire, as his cock pulsed with each powerful thrust.

Hanma continued to ravage you, his relentless pace forcing you to the very edge of  endurance. When he finally collapsed against you, panting heavily, your body shook with spent, trembling pleasure.

Slowly, he pulled out, gathering the sticky remnants of his lustful passion with his long, slender fingers. He then presented his prize to you, smearing the cum across your lips. In a possessive whisper, he said, "I'm gonna have so much fun with you, my little cumslut!"

With that, he pulled you to your feet, your legs wobbly and unsteady. He guided you to a nearby chair and, with a wicked grin, said, "Now, you can clean up your mess, doll face" watching you with a predatory glee as he imagined how he'd push his throbbing length up your tight throat.

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

©2024ᴍᴅꜱʙᴀʙʏɢɪʀʟ, ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ᴄᴏᴘʏ ᴏʀ ᴛʀᴀɴꜱʟᴀᴛᴇ ᴍʏ ᴡᴏʀᴋ ᴡɪᴛʜᴏᴜᴛ ᴍʏ ᴘᴇʀᴍɪꜱꜱɪᴏɴ

[vxiphoid]

SERENE SHENANIGANS

❨ summary ❩ twst › waking them up to tell them stories that don’t make sense

tags ✧ fluff, crack, savanaclaw boys, defo not proofread its like 7 am, cursing but nothing out of the ordinary, ooc(?), ruggie calls you a little shit like once (affectionate), jack is whipped for you

amanuensis’ message ⊹ I LITERALLY LOVE DOING THIS??? my friends hate me for it. but anyways hiii im back after like my month hiatus, how are thy sleeplings?😋 mb guys writers block has been really kicking my ass, i was spitting blanks on paper… i’m gonna hopefully post another pastry emporium soon for scarabia so stay tuned for that‼️

⌜ 300+ e/chara ⌟

♫ sunset boulevard - hohyun

twst masterlist

LEONA KINGSCHOLAR

— “leona… pspsps….”

— he hums gruffly when his name was called the first time, only opening his eye thinking you called him a second time when it was really just noise that you would make to get the attention of a house cat. he instantly pins his ears back. how dare you. “hmm?”

— “so i took our snail for a walk and i had accidentally left my feet here to wash the dishes because the grass was blue.”

— huh? you could see him trying to process everything you just said as you explained, his lips parting and eyebrows furrowing. it took everything in you not to laugh. he does one of those blinks, the really delayed ones, one eye opens before the other…

— he’s half asleep too so the confusion is just adding up altogether. if chicken scratch wasn’t a writing term, this is literally it in words. its like the books back at home he picks up to read (derogatory) its, what, 4 am? dont do this to him😭

— you’ve never seen him so expressive💀 this definitely makes his eye and ear twitch at the same time. what type of fucked up fever dream is this?? its usually a blessing seeing you as the first thing he wakes up to, not when you wake him up with some bull strung up in a sentence with your beady eyes staring at him while he sleeps. he loves you, yes, but what does he even say to this…

— “what…”

— your forehead met with his chest as you struggled not to laugh at the uncharacteristic break in leona’s voice. how many cups of coffee did you drink? he asks you to repeat yourself even though it kinda a mind mush decision so you did and by the end of it, he looks absolutely restless.

— “that’s… yes. that’s great, herbivore. can we go to bed now?”

— you note that leona is surprisingly patient when half asleep

┏━━━━━━ ━ ─ ╴⋯ ⟢

JACK HOWL

— deep sleeper. tug his ear. though he practically springs up before your hand makes contact, giving himself whiplash.

— “jack?”

— almost instantly relaxes when he realizes its you, tail wagging subtly☹️ “hi, baby. s’something wrong?”

— “hiii, do you remember a year ahead ago when i had to go to the dentist to get my spine fixed and the cats were barking at the flying dogs because the sky was in the water?”

— bro feels like he just had a stroke💀 he’s blinking rapidly, rubbing nose bridge as you explain. he really wants to understand, he does, but wtf did you just say??? it was the innocent “hi” before you unapologetically bashed his head in with the entire dictionary. its so ridiculous he couldn’t help but laugh.

— “jack, this is serious.” even as you told him that, your voice was not steady at all which made his shoulders shake violently in silent laughter.

— “im listening, i swear. tell me one more time?” yk his ass is not listening. he pulls you into his lap while his thumbs idly rubbed your sides, responding to your stories with “uh-huh” and “yeah?” with a lovesick smile on his face.

— eventually holds your face and starts pressing heart squeezing, fluffy kisses all over your face which truly made you more tired then you were. you honestly start forgetting what and where the story was going.

— jack only pauses his kissing attack to respond when you take a small break but even then he doesn’t pull away fully, he’s just speaking against your skin

— “—and the duck had my arm while i was taking it on a walk because gran tammy was in a flying shopping cart.”

— “oh wow. and then?”

— he’s listening but he’s not, mostly because he’s like two seconds away from dreamland and his brain isn’t registering half the shit you’re saying. he wants to see how many stories you can jumble up.

— “yeah, i think it’s bedtime for us…”

┏━━━━━━ ━ ─ ╴⋯ ⟢

RUGGIE BUCCHI

— omfg he wakes up like a mom. like yk how you would barely touch them and they would gasp like they were just given cpr?? he wakes up like that.

— and you’re just standing there awkwardly 👁️👁️

— takes a quick look around before looking at you. “what happened? is it time to wake up leona already?” you shake your head and ruggie flops back, an arm draped over his eyes. “you scared me… come, lay down with me?” he held his free arm out for you and you did take your place cozied up against his side. to your surprise, you did actually scare the living shit out of him from how fast his heart was racing.

— “ruggie, yk i just found out you’re related to turtles, right? and i had to take uncle bobby to the vet to get a dna test because the fish drowned in air.”

— slow roblox turn towards you but instead its his head as he cranes it down to stare at you. you can practically hear the gears in his head turning and you literally could not look at him or you’d blow your cover.🧍🏾

— “i’m sorry,, what the fuck??”

— he’s genuinely confused, asking you questions about your story while his brain tries to put together the pieces. each question he asks, the more its harder to speak in full sentences other than wheezes

— “what are you laughing at, ya little shit? explain this to me!”

— “i’m trying!”

— and you are😭 its like when you have to explain the family tree really slow bc you cant say, “my father’s girlfriend’s son” without him like ???? and you’re trying to explain it to him slowly, eventually forgetting what you said in the first place…

— “…and the fish drowned in air.”

— “yes.”

— “sweetheart, you still haven’t explained how i’m related to turtles—”

[asgardian--angels]

Izzy Discourse Masterpost

Hey all, given the amount of awful splintering and wank happening in ofmd fandom rn regarding Izzy's death, including the flat-out immature and unacceptable harassment of David Jenkins and Co, I wanted to just make this one all-encompassing post to address the various grievances and complaints I've seen (almost entirely on Twitter). If I've missed anything, please feel free to add on. I'm putting most of this under a read-more for length.

Please be aware, I say all of this as an Izzy fan. I've loved his character since season 1, and while I was sad to see him go, I completely understand and support David & Co's reasons for concluding his arc, and I think it was done respectfully in a way fitting to his character. So let's break down some of the takes I've seen. I am not referencing specific posts or people here, I just want to address the general themes that I keep seeing about why some people are upset.

Izzy's death served no narrative purpose.

Look, this is one that I'm sure fans will debate for the rest of the hiatus. It's completely within your right to disagree with this writing choice, but Izzy's death did serve a narrative purpose in the story that David Jenkins is telling - and he has spoken to this end in several interviews already. I can only summarize here, and fans may find other perspectives in time as well. What we need to remember is that Our Flag Means Death is, at the end of the day, Ed and Stede's love story. That has been made abundantly, explicitly clear. The show has been fantastic at fleshing out the other supporting characters, but that's what they are - supporting characters. They often have their own subplots but ultimately the narrative seeks to move Ed and Stede's story forward and they are tools to spur Ed and Stede's growth or mirror their struggles. Izzy has been a wonderfully complex, multifaceted character but we must remember that all characters are vessels through which stories are told, lessons are imparted, and metaphors are established. He's not a real person who 'deserves' any particular fate. David said he's always intended for Izzy to die at the end of his arc.

Firstly, Izzy (now canonically, through his own dying words) represents part of Blackbeard. He enabled and encouraged Ed's darker side, they were mutually toxic forces to each other. Ed is attempting to cope with and move on from this phase of his life, and like Stede in season 1, set out a free man, unshackled by expectations and loose ends of those he's hurt and been hurt by (though we realize this is an ongoing process that takes time). This lovely gifset sums it up nicely, with Izzy being the Mary parallel, and making s2 mirror s1. Blackbeard is both Ed and Izzy; Ed cannot be free of Blackbeard while Izzy is in his life, and when Izzy is gone he will never truly be Blackbeard again. They are each other's rotting leg!! Yet, they love each other - and David has said that for Ed, this has developed into a mentor and father relationship, and where Ed has previously despised his father figures (his actual father, Hornigold) he does not want to lose Izzy. This time, Izzy brings out Ed, not Blackbeard - and that's where we get the callback to 'there he is', bringing their impact on each other full circle, freeing Ed, getting approval of sorts that he never had, to be soft, to be loved (and there are parallels to Zheng and Auntie here as well that others have made) from that force that drove him to stay in line all this time. David has said in multiple interviews now that he was going for the idea of the mentor/father figure dying and the hero living on and trying to do justice to them.

From Izzy's side, Izzy cannot be free while Edward remains either (Mary cannot find peace while Stede remains). The scar never truly healed, the leg will always be a reminder. At this point the argument becomes 'yes, but why did he have to die? Why not just sail off with the crew of the Revenge?' David has stated that he feels they've done everything they can with, and for, Izzy; he's come leagues from season 1, he's found community, he's found hope, he's found new parts of himself, and he's made good memories. He's found worth outside of what he can be to others. That's more than most pirates could hope for. Where would his character go from there, when the Golden Age of Piracy he belongs to has burned to the ground? Would he stay around and whittle on the Revenge? If he were a real person, yes, that would be lovely, and he'd deserve all the quiet peaceful happiness in the world. But as I explain several points below, he's not interested in being a captain. He's not up for the hard physical labor of regular crew, and he's extremely overqualified for that besides. He has served his narrative purpose, and symbolically, to enter a new age, everything must go. He's connected to the old age of piracy, to the Republic of Pirates, that is now demolished. To him, fighting for what he believes in, for the family he's found, bringing down an army of British twats in the process, is how he should go. It's a pirate's death, and as Izzy's said, he's a pirate - unlike Blackbeard who's succeeding in breaking away from piracy, Izzy never wanted to stop being a pirate, throughout his arc. To me, that's why Izzy remains trapped in the narrative, trapped in history, whereas Ed and Stede will escape history. They leave piracy, and canon, behind, while Izzy was content to remain a pirate and face a pirate's fate.

Burying him on land, right next to Ed and Stede's beach house, shows that his sacrifice was not in vain - they start this new life together, thanks to Izzy's mentorship, his role in their lives that sometimes for worse, sometimes for better, made their love what it was and made their breakaway possible. The new age is built on the foundations of the old age, and is stronger for it.

As we're well aware by now, David tweeted that there's no version of ofmd without Izzy. Whether that's literal or not, symbolically it's true. Izzy's arc of growth affected everyone on the Revenge. Jim fondly remembered fighting for a time when life meant something on that ship; the crew helped give Izzy new meaning in life, and he helped them in return. When he dies, they mourn and have a funeral; that wouldn't have happened under Blackbeard's watch in episode 2. His life meant something to them. He influenced Ed and Stede immensely, and they will take that with them. As David's said, they're all a family, and Izzy was a part of that family, and his loss unites them and brings them closer to continue to fight for that family they've built. It's a tragic, sudden death of someone they've all grown to care for, and that steels their reserve to keep the torch lit. They literally sail off into the sunset to hunt down Ricky to avenge Izzy; he will always be a part of this show. And, of course, with the brief appearance of seagull Buttons, the door is left open for anything.

If this was The Izzy Show, then sure, we'd be content to see him simply engaged in shenanigans every episode. But the plot, and therefore the characters, need to keep moving forward, and Izzy got his growth and development. He got what he needed for his character to have closure, and he served his symbolic narrative purpose in Ed's (and Stede's) story. You may have your own ideas and perspectives, and that's great - that's what fandom is for. But we cannot say his death was pointless when David Jenkins and the writers clearly had a well-defined motive for pushing the narrative in this direction. I actually think the narrative around Ed and Izzy is the most well-developed in the entire show. I for one am so happy we got such an interesting and complex character, and had the brilliant Con O'Neill to portray him.

Izzy's growth & healing arc was rendered pointless by his death.

As this post so eloquently puts it, it's pretty bleak to have the outlook that taking steps to heal and find meaning in life is worthless if it's later lost. Seeking happiness and self-actualization is worthwhile for its own sake; no one knows what's down the road, and we all die eventually. Find meaning in life now. Would you rather have had Izzy not miss with his bullet in ep2? He was given the chance to experience joy, freedom, and hope for the first time in potentially a long time, and when he died he did so with those happy memories. As mentioned, Izzy's death was decided long beforehand given the narrative, and the point of storytelling is to make you feel emotions. We were given impetus to connect and relate to Izzy's character through his process of healing, so when he did die, we felt it keenly. That's how stories work actually! We felt what Ed felt. It moved us. It's not a bad thing that Izzy's arc made him more likeable to fans before his death. It's not a bad thing to lose a beloved character - guess what, it happens constantly in stories - and it's not bad to grieve over it either, but to say that it made his journey pointless is just not true. People saying that Con must be upset that they snatched his character away from him after getting to develop him so much - again I say, would you rather him have died in ep 2 before he had the chance to grow? Or how about in s1, when the crew tried to mutiny? How'd you feel when Stede killed him in his dream, in the very first scene of the season? I think Con's probably glad for the opportunity to have explored this character so much in season 2. Ask him if he thinks it was pointless.

Killing off Izzy was bad for queer rep/burying your gays/"Izzy was the queer heart of the show"

I'm putting 'bury your gays' on the top shelf so people can't use it when it doesn't actually apply. Most of the main cast of characters in this show are queer, and it's a show about pirates with a good amount of violence. Ergo, chances are a queer character will die in the course of Things Happening In Stories. Izzy didn't die because he was queer, and he wasn't the token queer rep. Please turn your attention to the boatloads (literally) of queer characters that are happy and thriving (how about the LuPete wedding immediately afterwards??). As for Izzy being the "queer heart of the show," this is literally the Ed and Stede show. You know, the two queer leads whose queer love the show revolves around, per David Jenkins himself. I'm glad folks connected with and derived joy from Izzy's growth and especially his performance in Calypso's birthday, but he is not the main character of the show. The queer heart of the show is in fact, the entire show, all of their characters and the community & found family they create aboard the Revenge. Not to mention the fan community as well. Izzy was never carrying the show's representation on his back, and frankly that's an absurdly wild take to have (esp when he spent most of s1 actively working against the main queer relationships in the show, attempting to maintain the oppressive status quo of pirate society).

It was bad and irresponsible to have a suicidal character die

Are we forgetting the entire first half of the season where Ed, who was suicidal, kept trying to passively kill himself because he felt he was an unlovable monster, only to be shown that he is in fact loved unconditionally and it gives him the strength to fight for life and triumph against his own self-doubt? The show has spent quite a lot of effort telling viewers that despite feeling damaged or broken you are worthy of love and that you are loved even if it may be hard to see it when you're in a bad place. That you don't need to be fully healed to deserve love and care, and that love and support will help you along your journey. It's incredibly wild to disregard this major plot point and fundamental message of s2 to try and spin this the opposite way for Izzy's character.

Secondly, where are people getting 'Izzy is suicidal' from? Are we going back all the way to episode 2, when he's at his lowest point and fails at his suicide attempt, only to be figuratively reborn after removing the metaphorical rotten leg? By the time of the finale he's shown to be in a good place, thanks to the arc of healing and growth he's gotten, through the support of the Revenge crew and his 'breakup' with Blackbeard allowing him to find his own way in life, realizing he doesn't need a purpose to have value and enjoying his time on the Revenge and the bonds he's made with Stede and the crew. He is, in the words of Ivan, "the most open and available I've ever seen him" by the finale. To take episode 2 as evidence he's suicidal is to erase his whole season of growth, which is an ironic thing to do in the context of these arguments. There's no canon evidence Izzy Hands was suicidal post-'Fun and Games'.

As for 'irresponsible,' once again I say, David Jenkins is not your therapist, he's not 'Dad,' and has no responsibility to tell his story any other way than he intended to tell it. Please find media that gives you what you want or need, and if the death of a fictional character causes you this much distress please seek help. I mean this kindly but seriously.

Killing off Izzy was ableist/bad for disability rep.

I point once again to the rest of the characters, several of which are disabled in varied ways. There are literally multiple other amputee characters specifically. It's not good storytelling to wholly avoid killing off any character that is disabled/queer/poc/female or [insert marginalized group here], especially when a) it makes sense narratively, and b) there's plenty of representation of these groups in the media in question. The answer isn't making such characters invincible and immortal, it's increasing the number of these characters in shows so it's not devastating when some do die in the course of natural storytelling.

OFMD was my comfort show/safe space show, now it's ruined for me

I am not trying to be insensitive here when I say that's a problem that is yours and nobody else's. David Jenkins created this show with a three-season vision and a story in mind, and he is telling that story to the best of his ability the way he wants to. It's already been said that he and the crew did not anticipate the fandom becoming as large and passionate as it has. The plot of the show was never intended to be 'fan service,' and it's ironic that there were people complaining this season that there's been too many fanservice tropes, up until David and the rest of the writers room made a narrative decision they did not like, then the complaints changed to not coddling the fans enough.

We as viewers can derive joy from this show, it can be a comfort to us, it can be important to us. But it was not designed specifically for that purpose, therefore it cannot fail in that respect. We do not have the right to harass writers for not steering the ship in the direction we want - it's their work of art, and we can choose to either come along for the ride or not. It's rare to see creators actually given the chance to tell their story the way they intend (budget cuts aside), so let him do that. He should not cater to fans, or cave and change the story to appease us. Respect his right to create his art, and remember you have the right to create your own. That's what fanfiction is for - write fix-its to your heart's content, but keep these realms separate. David Jenkins and Co hold zero, and I mean zero, responsibility to you. He could not please everyone no matter what he did, it would be fruitless to try, and it would certainly compromise the quality of the story he set out to tell.

You are absolutely allowed to dislike choices made in any show. Curate your media experience. If this show no longer brings you joy, stop watching. But it was never David's purpose nor responsibility to juggle the mental health of millions of fans. Trying to put that on him will only make him less enthusiastic about interacting with fans or continuing to make this show. This isn't rocket science. You're responsible for yourself, not this guy you call 'Dad' that you've developed a parasocial-therapist relationship with.

Izzy should have become captain of the Revenge.

Really?? Firstly, we did actually get that already in s1. He was tyrannical and the crew mutinied. But even if you think 'well after his character arc he'd be better suited to it,' it goes against the point of this arc. He's found value in not having a distinct role or purpose on the ship, decoupling his worth from the job he's expected to perform. He's found his place amongst the crew, not commanding it. There's no narrative reason to put him in charge when he's expressed no further interest in slotting himself back into a role full of pressure and expectations.

Con O'Neill was only told halfway through filming, it's cruel to just kill off the character he loves so much.

Guys, he's an actor. More than that, an actor with a theater background. I think he's used to characters dying. You don't need to look out for him. Con and David spoke one on one about it at length so they were on the same page, and David even said that Con took it well. I'm sure Con had input, just as other members of the cast have influenced their characters' stories, costumes, backstories, etc. Do you really think David Jenkins hurt Con's feelings or something? The writers (remember, it's not just David, it's a whole team of hard-working people coming up with these ideas) gave Con such a chance to shine this season, really developing Izzy beyond what he was given in s1 and letting Con show off his full acting range. Why are you only focusing on the destination rather than the journey? Sure, Con's probably sad to see Izzy go, but please do not project your distress onto him or try and accuse David & Co of being 'cruel' to their cast. That's really ridiculous. It's constantly evident how close they all are.

More importantly, do you actually, seriously think that Con O'Neill would want fans to harass each other or the writers over his character? The man who preaches being kind above all? There is no better way to make an actor uncomfortable about a show and its fanbase than to start treating fictional characters like they're more important than real people. He would not want you to bully people over Izzy Hands, and it's mind-boggling that some of you have convinced yourself otherwise.

Lastly, I just want to talk about the fact that some people are holding OFMD to absurdly high expectations.

Our Flag Means Death has been a pioneer series for its diverse representation, earnest storytelling, and themes of hope, community, and love. It's fine to discuss aspects of the show with a critical eye, but so much of the discourse has truly felt like folks are trying to find fault in a show that is leagues ahead of the average tv series that we still enjoy. How many fan favorites are killed off all the time? How many plotlines are scrapped, or drawn out without closure, or contradicted the very next season? How many shows are indifferent or actively hostile towards their fanbase? How many have any queer characters, or actually do bury them? The bar's so low, and OFMD has risen above to give us so much. Some are holding the show to astronomical expectations, waiting for it to fall from the pedestal it's been placed on. If something you don't like happens in the show, it's not suddenly ruined or demoted to being ~just as bad as those other shows~. Give them some breathing room, have some perspective on how progressive the show is, and that perfection is impossible, especially meeting every single viewer's idea of it. This is basically a repeat of the recent Good Omens drama, with an absurd number of people harassing Neil Gaiman for breaking up Aziraphale and Crowley and leaving the second of three acts on a very predictable cliffhanger. Let stories be told, let them unfold as they may, and you are free to leave anytime. It's so wonderful that more queer love stories are becoming popular and even mainstream, but let's not shoot ourselves in the foot by tearing them down when they don't go exactly the way you want it, which often seems to mean no drama, no character deaths, and therefore no conflict or even plot!

Just, please be civil human beings, and while this seems to be a difficult thing for so many fandoms to do, just keep your fan opinions in the fan space. Never bring your grievances to the writers, never bully them and persecute them for telling a story that you opted into viewing. That's something that goes entirely against everything this show, and this cast and crew, have imparted onto us - the importance of kindness, support, community, and love. I'll say it again because it bears repeating: the fate of a fictional character is never more important than how you treat real people. Just be kind in real life, which includes the internet. Thanks.

Now please, let's work together to ensure we get a season 3. There's so much more story to be told, and if you want to see Izzy back, whether that's as flashbacks, as a ghost haunting the inn, or in the gravy basket, we'll need more episodes! #RenewAsACrew

[221bug]

I am struggling to see how Sherlock and Co would do a final problem situation bc there’s no way John is going to sit down and make a disclaimer like “hey everyone trigger warnings for this episode, Sherlock dies.” And also edit it all together. So either it has to be a John is uploading parts live as they happen, which would break the whole structure of the show, or we just get hints throughout the regular episode and then an announcement and hiatus. Or they just won’t do it at all and continue making silly little case episodes.

At the end of the day Goalhanger is a business and the podcast is less than a year old and doing well so it wouldn’t make sense for them to be away long.

[storiesforallfandoms]

icdiwabh ~ joseph quinn

word count: 3688

request?: no

description: after finding out that her recently broken up with ex is already in a new relationship, she puts on a happy face for the public. but she can't do the same with him

pairing: joseph quinn x female!reader

warnings: swearing, angsty angst, rpf, use of y/n

based on this song

masterlist (one, two, three)

To give her credit, my best friend and guitarist, Chloe, tried her best to keep me from looking at my phone before our show. And it was working. I didn't even think anything of it, just that we were goofing off before a show as usual.

And then my phone chimed with a text from my mom. She always sent me a good luck text before a show. I unlocked my phone to respond, then saw that my social media notifications were blowing up more than usual.

I shouldn't have looked, but you know what they say about curiosity and the cat.

I opened Twitter to see I was being mentioned a lot. Mainly in replies to other tweets, and most of the tweets were along the lines of, "What happened to @(Y/U/N)?" I clicked on one to see what that context was, and was brought to a tweet from Pop Crave.

"Joseph Quinn photographed on a date with Doja Cat," followed by various photos of my ex-boyfriend getting cozy with another woman.

I felt my heart drop and break into millions of pieces.

I know what you're thinking: why would seeing my ex moving on hurt so much? It's not like we were together. We were both free to see whoever we wanted now. But there were a few reasons this news was upsetting; for one, we had only broken up three months ago, which apparently is around the time when these pictures were taken. Second, Joseph had broken up with me due to the fact that I was a singer, which meant we didn't get to spend as much time together as either of us would've wanted. I understood at the time. I mean, of course the break up still hurt, but I kind of knew it was coming when things between us had felt different the last month or so of our relationship.

Then there was the biggest reason: Doja was the woman he told me not to worry about.

I am not joking.

Joseph and I were together when the whole Doja versus Noah stuff happened online. We both laughed about it at the time, and i had jokingly asked Joseph, "Should I worry about you getting stolen away by Doja Cat?" He had wrapped me in his arms, kissed me, and said of course not.

Obviously, that had changed.

Chloe found me just as the tears started to fall. She was quick to hug me and whisper comforting words.

"Sweetheart, I'm so sorry," she said. "But we have to get to the stage."

Performing was the last thing on my mind, but I had thousands of fans waiting for me. I couldn't let them down just because I was heartbroken.

I followed Chloe to take my place. I wiped the tears from my eyes, hoping my face wasn't too red or puffy. Our backstage crew passed me my microphone as the countdown for the show to start started in my earpiece. I took a deep, calming breath, pushing everything out of my mind. As the blinding stage lights hit me, I put on my best show smile.

~~~~~~

The next few weeks were tough. I had to go on a full social media hiatus, meaning I deleted all social media apps from my phone to keep myself from seeing any more updates on Joseph and Doja. Chloe took up posting on my accounts so no one suspected anything. We had already decided the best course of action was to ignore the questions and comments, and to pretend like the news didn't even hurt me.

But it did. It hurt me more than any words could ever describe. Having to go on stage two to three nights a week and sing the love songs I wrote about him made it even harder. I struggled to keep it together on stage sometimes. I saved the emotions for when I'd get back to the hotel or the tour bus. Then I'd be able to cry until my eyes hurt and were too heavy to stay awake.

Some nights were sleepless, though. On those nights, I'd usually just lay awake or try to use one of the streaming services on my phone to distract myself. One night, I found myself too hungry to be distracted. My stomach was rumbling enough that I could hardly hear the show I was watching. After some quick Googling, I found a 24 hour diner that seemed like it would be slow enough for me to go without being recgonized.

I pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a baggy hoodie with the hood up to cover my face. I put my phone and my hotel room key in my pocket, and left to make my way to the diner.

As I expected, there weren't many people there. Maybe one table with two young ladies sat there, plus the workers. I kept my hood up anyways as I ordered, just in case. The host who took my order did look at me like he may have known who I was, but he didn't say anything.

My plan was to get my food and take it back to the hotel to eat it. But that plan was quickly changed when a familiar British voice said, "(Y/N)?"

I froze. There was no way he was actually here. It had to be a figment of my imagination. A hallucination made up by my misery over the breakup and his quick moving on.

But when I looked up, there he was. He was also in a hoodie and sweatpants, but was doing less to hide his identity. Actually, nothing to hide his identity. I couldn't help but glance around to make sure no one was looking at us or there was no paparazzi that had followed him and started snapping photos.

"How did you know it was me?" I asked, then realized it was a stupid question and winced at myself.

"That's...um...my hoodie."

I looked down and realized that he was right. I hadn't even noticed that I had it, even when I packed it for the tour.

"I was wondering where it went," he said with a little smile.

"Here it is," I said, lamely flourishing my hands. "I'd offer to give it back, but I'm not wearing anything underneath."

I saw him swallow at my comment. I thought I saw a tinge of pink creeping onto his cheeks, but I figured it must've been the lighting or something. There was no way I could still make him blush when he obviously had no feelings for me anymore.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"I'm in town shooting the Fantastic Four movie," he explained. "I just finished a late shoot, so I stopped in for something to eat. What are you doing here?"

"I had a show tonight. I couldn't sleep, and I'm hungry. So..." I did my lame flourish again.

"Oh yes. The post-show adrenaline."

I ground my teeth to keep from saying anything. The weeks of sadness and misery suddenly vanished and became anger. I was angry at him for reminding me that he knew me so well. That we had shared memories on sleepless nights like this. I was also angry that he didn't think our breakup and his quick moving on would be the cause of my sleeplessness. Did he think I didn't know? Or just that I'd be okay with him and his new girlfriend mere weeks after our two year long relationship ended?

I just shrugged in response.

My order was called and I quickly grabbed it. I turned to give Joseph a wave as a goodbye. I needed to get out of there and get back to my hotel room to wallow in my dispair.

But it seemed Joseph had other plans, as he stopped me before I could leave. "Do you want to sit? Maybe...catch up?"

"Is that a good idea?" I asked.

"I don't see why it wouldn't be."

"You don't want your new girlfriend to see paparazzi photos of you with your ex."

There, it was finally out. No more tiptoeing around the topic.

It seemed to have its desired effect as Joseph was now awkwardly shuffling. He rubbed the back of his neck, which was now undoubtably turning pink. "So, you've heard."

"Of course I heard!" I snapped. I glanced around again, realizing I was raising my voice. "Your pictures are everywhere, and I'm being tagged in them cause we never told everyone we had broken up."

"I'm sorry you had to find out that way."

I scoffed. "How else was I going to find out? Were you going to call me and tell me you were dating the girl you said wasn't a threat to our relationship?"

He sighed. Before he could say anything else, they called that another order was ready, and evidently it was his. It was also packed in a to go bag, so he clearly had no intentions of staying either. With any luck, he'd drop this stupid idea of sitting down for a "catch up" and let me leave to deal with all the emptions I was feeling.

But of course, luck was not on my side.

Joseph grabbed his food and turned back to me. "Just...sit with me for 15 minutes at least. Let me explain."

Even though I very much wanted an explanation, I said, "You don't have to explain anything."

"Just...please, (Y/N)."

And that's how I found myself sat in a booth that was tucked away, in the middle of the night with my ex-boyfriend.

It was a bad idea, and I knew that. Besides the fact that I definitely should not be sitting down with the ex that I had been in shambles over for weeks, it was also a bad idea publicity wise. Joseph wasn't trying to hide himself. Anyone could see us and snap a picture, or call paparazzi to make a quick buck. Even with me trying to hide myself, someone would eventually put the pieces together to realize it was me. Then we'd have a whole new shit show on our hands.

I opened my food and started to eat. There was no point in letting it go cold and completely ruin my night. Joseph wasn't as quick to do the same. He was watching me. When I realized he wasn't eating, I made a gesture for him to start talking.

"Is there anything specific you want to know?" he asked.

Well, that was a stupid question. There was a lot I wanted to know. So much so that I knew we'd be here way longer than 15 minutes if I asked it all.

I decided to ask him the most prominent question on my mind: "Did you leave me for her?"

He seemed stunned by my question. "No! No, of course I didn't. Why would you think that?"

I gave him a look. "Come on, Joseph. We both know why I'd think that."

He shuffled in his seat. "It's not like that."

"Then explain it. That's the whole reason I'm sat here."

So he did. He told me he met Doja (he used her real name, which made my stomach churn) at her concert. He had gone with a few friends, and when she found out he was there she brought them backstage to meet her. He swore it was all casual at first, that they were just friendly and were making light of the situation between her and Noah. When things started changing, he swore it was just a rebound thing.

"I never meant for it to become anything more," he insisted. "I was still so hurt. I just wanted something that would take my mind off of the pain."

I couldn't hold back the scoff that escaped my lips. "What?"

"Oh, nothing," I said. "I'm just so sorry to hear that you were hurting."

"What, you don't think our breakup was hard for me?"

"Weirdly enough, no, I didn't think you took things hard when you dumped me."

Joseph sighed. "It wasn't - "

"And you know what else?" I cut him off. "You told me you found it hard for us to be together because of our professions. And, honestly, I understood! If you weren't away filming, I was away touring. If you weren't doing press for a movie or show, I was doing press for an album. It wasn't easy, and while I was willing to go through those strifes for us, I did understand how it could be too difficult for you. But then you turned around, not even a month after you dumped me, and started dating another singer."

He was quiet. He couldn't even meet my eye.

I felt a lump forming in my throat, and my voice cracked as I said, "If you didn't love me anymore, you could've just said that."

He looked up at me quickly. "That's not - "

He was cut off again. Not by me this time, but by his phone. Someone was calling him. When I looked at the screen, I saw her name. It felt like a knife directly through my heart.

I packed my food and stood. Joseph looked like he was going to say something, but I put a hand up to stop him. "Answer your girlfriend, Joseph."

He didn't try to stop me when I left this time.

~~~~~~

As I expected, photos of Joseph and I got out. I didn't know to what extent as I still wasn't back on social media. My manager confronted me about it and I explained what had happened. She wasn't upset as I wasn't the one who hadn't been concealing my identity, and she agreed that the best course of action was just to ignore everything until it blew over.

Another two months passed and the tour finally ended. It became easier to perform as the time went on. Not completely easy, and I did have a night or two where I slipped up and got emotional on stage, but eventually I was able to put the meanings of my songs aside and just performed them for my fans. I knew some nights weren't as great as others, but I got through it, and finally I was going to have a break.

Chloe reluctantly agreed to let me have my social media back. I was still hurting a little, but I told her I couldn't isolate myself forever. It just wasn't healthy. Besides, I would need something to keep me occupied while I was home, besides just watching mind numbing reality TV. She finally relented when I told her she could watch me block the words "Joseph Quinn" and "Doja Cat" on all social media so that I wouldn't have to see any posts about them.

I was honestly surprised to find that I didn't want to look up anything to do with them. For a long time, the desire to know about their relationship was eating away at me. There were so many specifics I felt like I needed to know, but I eventually realized that I was just going to hurt myself further if I looked into them. Of course, I didn't completely stop thinking about Joseph. I didn't expect to. We had been together for two years, almost moved in with one another. I thought we were going to get married. You don't just let that go easily. But at least it was getting a little easier to live in a world where he was no longer mine.

On one particularly nice day, I decided to go out on the balcony to read. It was one of those fall days where the sun was out and there was a little heat coming from it, but not enough that it was unbearable. A slight breeze would blow through every so often, just cool enough to keep it tolerable outside. I was laid back in one of my deck chairs, engrossed in my book to a point that I hadn't heard someone approaching.

"Must be an interesting novel."

I jumped at the sound of a voice coming from my driveway below. I bookmarked my page and sat up to see the last person I wanted to be around. "What are you doing here, Joseph?"

"I just got back from filming."

"Good for you."

"I...I was hoping you were home."

"Well, you see that I am. Don't let the gate hit you on the way out."

"(Y/N), can we just talk?"

I stood from my seat and leaned over the balcony railing to look at him. "We said all there was to say in that diner months ago. There's nothing else to be talked about. Besides, do you want more pictures of us to come out? I'm sure Doja wouldn't be happy to see her man making a personal visit to his ex's place."

"We broke up!"

I stopped. "What?"

"Last month. It was all over social media, or so Lupita tells me." He tilted his head. "You didn't hear?"

"I-I blocked yours and Doja's names on social media so I wouldn't have to see any tweets or posts about you."

Joseph looked at me for a moment before barking out a laugh. I couldn't help but put a hand over my face as I laughed as well. Of course, by trying to block him out completely, I had totally missed the one thing I would've wanted to see.

I was a bit reluctant, but eventually I invited Joseph to come up. He knew his way through my place, he had been there enough times. I sat back down on my deck chair and pulled another one closer to me, as he appeared in the glass doorway. He sat down next to me and memories of all the times we had been out here flooded back to me.

"I wasn't done talking that night in the diner," he said. "I still had so much to say, and I have even more to say now."

"I didn't want to hear it," I admitted. "In my mind, after hearing how you and Doja got together, it just made more sense if you had broken up with me because you didn't love me anymore."

He shook his head. "It wasn't that at all. I never stopped loving you."

I was itching to ask him if that meant he still loved me now, but instead I said, "Then why?"

"I broke up with you because I loved you so much," he said. "Because loving you but not getting to spend time with you hurt so much, and I knew there was no way around that. When I started getting more job offers I knew things were just going to get so much busier for me, and that our already very short time together was going to dwindle down more and more, and I hated the thought of that."

"I would've taken a break," I told him.

"I couldn't ask you to do that. You love making music and performing. I could never ask you to stop doing that, or to change that. I thought the best thing for you would be if you could find someone who wasn't as busy, and who'd be able to go on tour with you and be at all your shows. Someone who wouldn't be in a different time zone basically 11 months out of a year and only be able to call you for an hour max every night."

"But what if that's not what I want?" I asked. "Yes, it was hard not to get to see you all the time, but I never would've traded that for anything else. I was so proud of you for all those roles you were getting, and even if I only got to talk to you for a few minutes, I loved getting to hear what you were doing. Because you were achieving your dream, and I got to be there to experience it. I don't want someone who can be with me all the time, I want you."

I hadn't noticed that we were both sat on the edge of our chairs. We were so close we were almost touching. I could smell the familiar scent of his cologne and it was making my heart skip a few beats.

"I should've talked to you instead of deciding just to end things," he said, his voice soft and quiet.

"You should've," I agreed. "And then if you were going to rebound, you shouldn't have done it with the girl you told me not to worry about."

He awkwardly chuckled and rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah, not my finest moment."

I sat back in my chair, although I didn't want to. I wanted to keep being this close to him, or maybe to get closer. "So why did you two breakup anyways?"

"She was nice and all, but she wasn't you."

We sat in silence, letting his words sink in. He was looking at me, almost like he was waiting. Maybe I was waiting, too, to see where that confession was supposed to go. After a few moments, my body moved before my mind could comprehend what was happening. I quickly leaned forward, nearly putting myself on Joseph's lap, and started kissing him. He kissed me back immediately, wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me the rest of the way onto his lap.

"I missed you," he mumbled against my lips.

"I missed you too," I admitted. I pulled away to add, "But don't think you're completely off the hook. You did still hurt me, you know."

"I know I did. I'll spend the rest of my life making up for it if I have to."

I smiled. "I think I like the sound of that."

He smiled back at me and pulled me back in for another kiss. Eventually, my book was abandoned on the balcony, and the large blinds were closed to keep from anyone being able to see the reunion happening inside.

[worth-the-chaos]

Adventures in Babysitting - Steve Harrington x female!reader - Chapter 17

Chapter Summary: After finding out more information about Vecna, you and your friends prepare for the worst, and tensions rise as you mentally prepare for the possibility of a future without you in it.

Content Warning: swearing, general angst, mentions of sex (like nothing graphic or explicit), Jason being a dick, Upside Down scary shit, existential dread

Word Count: 7.7k

Author’s Note: Hey guys! I’m so sorry that this took so long for me to get written! I am home for summer now, so I’m hoping to have some more down time to write, so hopefully the next chapter won’t take so long! I also am curious as to what you guys think I should do with the story regarding the fact that season 5 isn’t out yet…should I go on hiatus until season 5 drops or would you rather me write an ending with season 4?

Message me to be added to the taglist and get updated when the next chapter is posted! I highly recommend this if you want to keep up with the story since I don’t do regular updates!

Series Masterlist | Part 16 | Next Part

***

Steve felt your body go limp as you dropped the makeshift rope, your head lolling backwards as you collapsed towards him. His heart stopped as he swiftly set you down on the floor next to him, pulling back to look at you.

He felt sick to his stomach when he noticed the way your eyes were rolled into the back of your head, and he felt like he was suffocating on the ash that drifted in between the two of you.

“Y/n,” he shook your shoulders, desperation lacing his voice. You didn’t respond, the only indication that you were still there was a slight whimper that escaped your parted lips. He shook you more aggressively and felt like he could vomit at the way your body caved to inertia.

You were somewhere else.

“Y/n, baby—stay with me!” Steve shouted, his voice cracking as fear invaded his tone, “Wake up, y/n! Wake up!”

His eyes were welling with tears and he felt like his legs were going to give out as panic began to fill his chest. He felt like he was drowning. You had always been his lifeline and he felt like he was watching you fade from existence. Blood started to drip from your nose, and he gently wiped it away, breaking down at the sight of it.

“Come on, y/n,” he sobbed as he pulled you closer, trying to shield you from the dangers of this strange world. “I love you, I love you, I love you,” he whispered into your neck as he buried his head there, placing a small kiss against your skin.

He heard arguing above him, and his attention was momentarily pulled back towards the world he was trying desperately to get you back to.

“Madonna, Blondie, Bowie, Beatles—Music! We need music!” Robin’s voice rang out, and he heard the clatter of mixtapes falling to the floor.

“This is music!” Eddie shouted back.

Suddenly, Steve remembered the walkman in your pocket, and his fingers furiously pulled at the ziplock bag. His hands were shaking and he cursed himself as he struggled to get the bag open. He placed the headphones over your ears, hitting play and turning the volume up. He could hear the music faintly playing and watched as your eyes continued their rapid movement side to side underneath your eyelids.

He held his breath, hoping that something—anything—would change, and he thought the world was ending when it didn’t.

But then, suddenly, your eyes shot open as a gasp escaped your lips. You began falling backward and Steve barely had time to wrap his arms around your back to slow your fall, dropping to the floor with you.

You panted and your whole body trembled at the horrors you just witnessed. Vecna—or more accurately Henry Creel’s voice still rang in your ears as you hyperventilated, trying to push the images aside. As you began to settle, another voice filled your consciousness.

“It’s okay, baby. I’m here. I’m right here,” you looked up to see your boyfriend’s big brown eyes staring down at you with concern and love and all the words he still had yet to say to you.

Your terrified expression broke into one of great sadness as tears began to fall down your face while sobs wracked your tired frame.

“Sweetheart,” Steve’s voice was a whisper as he wiped away your tears, neglecting the ones that were falling from his own eyes. He cradled your head in his hands and you melted at his touch. In this moment, it was just the two of you; nothing else mattered and nothing else existed.

You took in the sight of Eddie’s denim vest draped over his shoulders, your eyes drifting to his bare arms and the blood and dirt caked against his skin. “We have to get out of here,” you whispered, your fingers gripping into his bicep.

With that, Steve swiftly stood up, and helped you back onto the makeshift rope. You felt his hand on your ass as he pushed you up, trying to quicken the pace at which you climbed. You saw the way your friends stared at you from the real world, concern lacing their features. As you crossed the threshold between the Upside Down and your world, you felt your stomach drop as the gravity switched directions. Your heart jumped to your throat as you free fell for a moment before hitting the springy mattress with the questionable stains.

You didn’t lie there for long before Robin grabbed your arm, pulling you to your feet and into the tightest hug she’d probably ever given you. You squeezed your eyes shut, trying not to cry at the horrors you’d just witnessed as you held on to her. You released a breath you didn’t even realize you’d been holding as you heard a soft thud behind you, knowing your boyfriend had made it safely out of the hell that you’d just been stuck in for far too long for your liking.

“We can stay at my house tonight,” Max spoke up and you broke away from Robin to face her, “my mom should be gone until tomorrow afternoon so we should be fine.”

And with that, you all quickly made your way over to Max’s under the cover of night. Once you got there, everyone spread out as much as possible in the small home to camp out to sleep and Steve and you curled up together on the floor in the living room.

You shut your eyes tight as you tried to tune out the ticking of a small clock on the living room shelf. You buried your face in the crook of Steve’s neck as you both drifted off into a restless sleep.

***

The next morning everyone gave you a bit of space and no one really talked much, giving you a bit of time to cool down from the events of the night before. When you were finally ready, you all huddled up in the living room and everyone waited with bated breath for you to explain what you saw.

You cleared your throat before you spoke up. “He…showed me things that haven’t happened yet. The most awful things. I saw a dark cloud spreading over Hawkins. Downtown on fire. Dead soldiers. And this…giant creature with…a-a gaping mouth, a-a-and this creature wasn’t alone; there were so many monsters—an army—and they were coming into Hawkins, into our neighborhoods…our homes.”

You could barely get some of the words out, taking a deep breath before you continued. “And then he showed me my parents, and-and you guys and you w-were all….” Your voice trailed off as a lump formed in your throat, unable to say the words, afraid that you would speak it into existence. Tears began streaming down your face and Steve was quick to try and ease your pain.

“Okay, but…he’s just trying to scare you, baby. Right? I mean, it’s not real,” he tried to be the voice of reason, but his tone showed his lack of confidence in the truth he was trying to present. The real truth was that none of you knew what was going on, what would happen next.

“Not yet,” you whispered through teary eyes, “but…but there was something else. He showed me gates. Four gates, spreading across Hawkins. They looked like the one outside Eddie’s trailer, but they didn’t stop growing, and this wasn’t Upside Down Hawkins, this was our Hawkins.”

You looked between your friends, each one’s face twisted with worry and fear. The kids all looked so much older, the weight of the world constantly on their shoulders aging them, causing them to grow up too fast. You pushed the thought down as you continued. “Four chimes. Vecna’s clock always chimes four times. He’s been telling us his plan this whole time.”

“Four kills, four gates, end of the world,” Lucas spoke up, elaborating on your explanation.

“If that’s true,” Dustin took over, “he’s only one kill away.”

You felt everyone’s eyes turn to you, and you shrank under their stares, knowing that you were next.

“Try them again, try them again,” Steve looked at Max and she rushed to the phone. Max fingers worried at the cord of the phone before she hung it back up and turned around.

“Rang a few times and then went to busy signal,” she announced.

“Maybe you punched it in wrong, just try again,” Steve pushed, desperation lacing his tone.

“I didn’t punch it in wrong,” Max rolled her eyes.

“Dude I think she knows how to use a phone,” Dustin defended the redhead.

Max dialed again anyway, hanging up the phone with a resounding clang before turning around with a look that screamed I told you so plastered across her face. “Same shit.”

“I told you, Joyce has this telemarketer job. She’s always on the phone, Mike’s always whining about it,” Dustin explained.

“Yeah, but the phone’s been busy for, what, three days now? That’s not Joyce. No way. Something’s wrong,” Max countered.

“Whatever’s happening in Lenora, it’s connected to all of this,” you spoke up. “But Vecna can’t hurt them…not if he’s dead. We have to go back to the Upside Down.”

Steve and Eddie both immediately voiced their disagreement, Steve standing to put his two cents in.

“Woah, woah, woah, let’s think this through,” he put his hands up in a pacifying way trying to calm down your impulsivity.

“What is there to think through?!”

“Y/n, we barely made it out of there in one piece!”

“Yeah, because we weren’t prepared! But this time we will be. We’ll get weapons and protection, we’ll go through the gate, we’ll find his lair, and we’ll kill him.”

“Or he’ll kill us!” Steve yelled back at you. “The only reason you survived is because he wanted you to. He’s not scared of us and I’ll be damned if I let him have a chance to hurt you again. No, not happening.”

He said the words with such finality, but you opened your mouth to argue with him again, anger boiling below the surface. Before you could speak, Robin spoke up.

“We learned something new about Vecna/Henry/One…He’s a number like Eleven, only a sick, evil, male, child-murdering version of her with really bad skin, but-but my point is, he’s super powerful. He could turn us inside out with the snap of his fingers, it is not a fair fight.”

“So why fight fair?” Dustin interjected, “he’s like Eleven but that gives us an upper hand. We know Eleven’s strengths and weaknesses. When El remote-travels, she goes into this sort of trance-like state. I bet the same is true of Vecna. When he attacks his next victim, I bet he’s back in that attic, physical body defenseless.”

“Defenseless? Yeah? What about the army of bats?” Steve gestured to the deep bruising around his neck from his last encounter with Vecna’s very present defenses.

“True. We’ll have to find a way past them. Distract them…somehow,” Henderson replied.

“And, uh, how do we do that exactly?” Eddie looked like he was damn near close to killing the boy.

“No idea. But once they’re gone, he doesn’t stand a chance. It’ll be like slaying sleeping Dracula in his coffin.”

“That all sounds good in theory, but there is no pattern to Vecna’s killings. I mean, at least not one that I can decipher. We don’t know when he’s going to attack next. We don’t even know who he’s going to attack next.” Robin countered.

“Yeah we do,” you spoke up, “I can still feel him. I ditch Kate Bush and I draw his focus back to me.”

“No way in fucking hell!” Steve was quick to cut across the room to approach you. “He’ll kill you!”

“I survived before, I can survive again…I-I just need to keep him busy long enough so that you guys can get into that attic.”

“There’s got to be another way,” Steve pleaded, grabbing your hands in his, his thumbs gently rubbing over the back of your hands.

“Maybe there is,” Dustin spoke up. “Y/n, other than last night—which was clearly just a scare tactic—the last vision you had was in the cemetery, right?”

“Yeah?” Your words came out as a question, not quite following the fast paced turning of the gears in the young genius’s mind.

“Well, then maybe he isn’t after you anymore…I mean, you basically found the antidote. He can’t get to you with that music playing, so maybe you don’t have to be bait at all…maybe he’s moved on to someone else.”

“That’s so highly hypothetical, Dustin. I mean, we’re not in a position where we can operate purely on a hunch!” Robin exclaimed. She wanted nothing more than for it to be true, for you to be safer than you had been, but it was too big a risk to take.

“Think about it! If Vecna was going to kill y/n, why didn’t he just do it last night? They all spent hours in the Upside Down yesterday, and he didn’t even try to get her until the very end to send a message! We’re all so convinced that Vecna isn’t scared of us, but maybe—even to just a small degree—maybe he is.”

“He’s always been two steps ahead of us,” you spoke up, your voice quiet but sure.

“Exactly! And I can’t help but think that he is expecting us to fawn over y/n, trying to keep her safe to prevent the end of the world while he’s just gearing up to cause it somewhere else.”

“I mean, I gotta say, that kind of makes a shit ton of sense,” Eddie supported the boy’s hypothesis.

“But what if we’re wrong?” Steve questioned. “What if we’re wrong and Vecna is still coming for her and she fucking dies? What then?”

“If we don’t do anything, it’s the end of the world either way; it’s just a matter of time,” you replied. You sounded so confident and your words seemed final. He knew you were stubborn enough that once you settled on something, there was no way that you were budging on it. It was something he loved about you—your pure grit, your determination—but he couldn’t help but hate it in this moment.

Eddie had moved across the small living room, pulling a thick phonebook from the highest shelf. He quickly thumbed through it and brushed past you, dropping it down on the table with a satisfying thud.

“Check this out. The War Zone,” he pointed to the bottom left corner of the page, “I’ve been there once. It’s huge…they’ve got everything you need for, uh…well, uh, killing things, basically.”

“Do you think fake Rambo has enough guns there? Is that a grenade? I mean how is any of this even legal?” Robin inquired, critiquing the advertisement in the phonebook.

“Well, lucky for us it is, so…this-this place is just far enough outside of Hawkins. As long as we steer clear of the main roads, we oughta be able to avoid cops and, uh, angry hicks,” Eddie explained.

“If we’re trying to avoid angry hicks, maybe we shouldn’t go to some store called the War Zone,” Erica spoke up.

“Normally, I’d agree with you but we need the weapons so I think it’s worth the risk,” Nancy replied. She sounded tired and you couldn’t help but feel the same. You wished you could just be young adults who had to worry about normal things like figuring out what you wanted to be, what you wanted to do with your lives. Not trying to determine if a calculated risk was going to get you killed.

“Is it worth the time though? It’ll take all day to bike there and back,” Dustin pointed out.

“Who said anything about bikes?” Eddie chimed in.

“You got some car we don’t know about?” Steve questioned.

“It’s not exactly a car, Steve. And it’s not exactly mine, but uh, it’ll do,” Eddie smiled and you knew you were all in for a hectic, chaotic time. “Hey, Red, uh you got a ski mask or a bandanna or something like that?”

And that’s how you all ended up sneaking around the trailer park following Eddie Munson in a Michael Myers mask…which somehow wasn’t the weirdest thing that this group has had to do for the sake of the greater good.

Eddie rounded the corner around an RV and slid open a side window before hoisting himself through it. Steve followed suit and helped pull you through the window, steadying you as you dropped very ungracefully into the vehicle.

Eddie began pulling at wires under the dash and Steve watched him work with a concerned confusion plastered across his face. “Where’d you learn how to do this?”

“Well, while the other dads were teaching their kids how to fish or play ball, my old man was teaching me how to hot-wire. Now, I swore to myself that I wouldn’t wind up like he did, but now I’m wanted for murder, and soon, grand theft auto. So yeah, I’m really living up to that Munson name.”

“Eddie, I’m not sure I love the idea of you driving,” you spoke cautiously as you leaned into Steve’s back to join the conversation happening at the driver’s seat.

“Oh, I’m just starting this sucker. Harrington’s got her, don’t ya big boy?” And just like that, the RV revved to life, and the owners of said RV began banging on the sides of it, screaming at you to get out. You felt bad, like really bad, but you kept reminding yourself it was for the greater good as Eddie and Steve swiftly switched places.

“It’s just a car,” Steve whispered to himself, trying to psych himself up before yelling back to the other passengers of the now stolen vehicle “everybody, hang on to something!”

“Drive, Steve! Drive!” Dustin’s voice rang out and he didn’t have to tell Steve twice, as he put his still bare foot on the gas, taking off out of the trailer park.

“Shit they look pissed,” Lucas pointed out, watching as the RV’s owners tried and failed to run after their vehicle.

“Well, it’s not every day that you lose your house and your car in one fell swoop,” you cringed at how awful your actions were, hoping that you’d somehow be able to return the RV undamaged but that was unlikely given your present predicament.

“Hold on, hold on, hold on!” Steve shouted, making a sharp turn. You nearly would’ve fallen out of your seat if it weren’t for Eddie’s quick reflexes as he grabbed at the collar of your shirt, pulling you back towards him.

What had you gotten yourselves into?

***

Everyone was asleep in the back, catching up from the eventful night that you had the day prior. Naturally, you couldn’t sleep, so you found yourself sitting in the passenger seat next to Steve, and you couldn’t help but feel wistful for the way it all felt so normal. You had fallen into a comfortable silence, until Steve broke it as he spoke up.

“You know, it’s silly, but I…I’ve actually…I always had this dream that I’d have this really big family. I’m talking, like, uh, a full brood of Harringtons, like five, six kids.”

“Six?!” You asked incredulously.

“Yeah, six of ‘em. Three girls, three boys…and-and every summer, I figured all of us Harringtons, we would pack into something like this and just…see the country. You know, the Rockies, Grand Canyon, maybe Yellowstone. And then end up in some beachside town in California, spend a week parked in the sand…learn how to surf or something.”

Your heart was beating a million miles a minute. You and Steve rarely ever talked about the future because everything always felt so precarious. The most you’d ever talked about was wanting to simply have one together. The fact that he’d been day dreaming about a life was almost too much for you to handle. You thought about Vecna and your visions and your headaches and your eyes began welling up with tears at the very real possibility that it would be someone else giving Steve the life that he wanted, the life he deserved.

“That sounds nice,” you whispered through your watery eyes.

“Baby,” Steve noticed your tears, reaching over and putting a hand on your thigh to comfort you. “What’s wrong?” There was a lump in your throat and you couldn’t quite get the words out, so Steve jumped in, trying to make you laugh. “I mean, I guess the six kids part is a bit much—a bit tear inspiring—so maybe I should’ve held that detail back, you know? I’ll work up to it once we already have a few little Harringtons of our own, what do you say?”

If it were under any other circumstances, his effort to make you smile would’ve paid off but instead, it just made you cry harder, considering this future that you were damn near sure you wouldn’t have.

Watching you react like that was sending Steve into a spiral. He wished he could go back and just keep his damn mouth shut because maybe you didn’t want that. Maybe you didn’t want a future like that with him. Hell, maybe you didn’t even want a future with him at all.

He knew that you loved him, but he couldn’t help but wonder if maybe you were falling out of love. You had been through so much together, but this shit was so much fucking worse than what you’d been through before. Maybe you were realizing that he wasn’t the one for you…that he wasn’t enough. There’s nothing like a series of near death experiences to make someone rethink all their life choices.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered, quickly getting up and moving to the back of the RV, needing some space. Robin had been awake and overheard the conversation the two of you had just had, her heart breaking for her best friends. She’d be damned if she let this blip break up her favorite couple, so just like that she gave Eddie a swift kick to the shins.

“Ow! Robin! What the fuck!” He exclaimed, the abrupt wake up something he was not happy about.

“We’re putting out fires okay? I need you to go talk to Steve and keep him from going fucking crazy.” This was a divide and conquer situation.

Eddie noticed the way you sat in the back corner, sniffling and staring out the window. “Trouble in paradise?” He asked.

“Yeah, but under these conditions, I’d hesitate to call it paradise.”

With that, Eddie made his way up to the front of the RV.

“What do you want, Munson?” Steve groaned, gripping the steering wheel tighter as he tried to keep his anger in check.

“Nice to talk to you too, Harrington,” Eddie rolled his eyes.

“I’m sorry, I’m just really not in the mood to fucking chat right now, okay?”

“You need to chill out man.”

Steve stared incredulously at the long haired freak in front of him. “Did you seriously just fucking say that to me? Munson, I’d like you to tell me how the fuck you think I should just chill out. It’s not like I’m barefoot, driving a fucking stolen RV to a store called fucking War Zone, and the world is fucking ending, not to mention my girlfriend is basically fucking dying…oh, and if we end up getting out of this shit storm okay, I think she’s going to dump me anyway…so forgive me for not being fucking chill.”

The words dripped like poison from his lips, but he kept his voice to a seething whisper so as not to upset you further. He could hear your soft sobs from the back of the RV and his heart ached as he tried to figure out where he went wrong.

“What the fuck are you talking about, Harrington?”

“What do you mean?” Steve answered Eddie’s question with a question.

“Like yeah, yeah, yeah, all that shit you listed is, well, pretty fucking shit…but there is no way in hell y/n is going to dump your ass.”

“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Steve rolled his eyes, aggressively flipping on his turn signal as he pulled up to another side street.

“I don’t think you know what the hell you’re talking about, man. I don’t think I’ve ever seen two people as in love as the two of you dipshits are, and considering you’ve faced the end of the fucking world more times than I can count, I’d say that your relationship outlook is pretty fucking solid.”

Steve sighed, debating whether or not he should open up to Munson. He didn’t really like Eddie all that much before all this shit, but he was learning that the metal head wasn’t as terrible as he thought. Besides, half of his hatred was no doubt misplaced jealousy over the fact that you had been tutoring him and spending extra time with him. Despite this, Steve decided to take the calculated risk of being vulnerable.

“We were sitting up here talking…and-and I just brought up how, in the future, it would be nice to have some kids of our own and pack up into an RV like this and travel the country…and…ugh, and then she just started crying! And, yeah I did say that I want like six kids—“

“Six kids?!”

“Yeah, it’s a lot, but that’s besides the point. And! And I made a joke about it, because yeah it is a fucking lot, but that just made her cry harder and I feel like the only explanation is that maybe she doesn’t fucking want that with me, and she just isn’t ready to rip off the band aid yet. I mean, I know we love each other, but maybe she’s realizing she doesn’t love me like that, you know?”

Eddie sat there quietly for a second considering what his newfound friend just said. I mean, Steve’s thought process did make sense, but Eddie thought back to the conversation you had with him; the one where you told him that you were pretty confident Steve was the one. Eddie swore himself to secrecy, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t put his two cents in.

“Look, there’s no way she doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life with you dude. She is head over fucking heels for you, trust me,” Eddie started out, “Besides, you guys haven’t been officially dating for that long anyway…I don’t see something happening in that short amount of time that would have caused her to change her mind like that. No way, man.”

“I don’t know,” Steve mumbled, and Eddie could tell he was holding something back.

“Spill it, Harrington,” when Steve looked at him hesitantly, Eddie rolled his eyes. “Dude, I’m a wanted man and the whole fucking town hates me. Who am I going to fucking tell? Besides, bro code and all that patriarchal shit.”

Steve looked over his shoulder. You were still locked in a pretty serious and hushed conversation with Robin, so he felt a bit better about the fact that you wouldn’t overhear what he had to say.

“If you tell anyone, I’ll fucking kill you myself, understand?” Eddie nodded, and Steve continued, “okay…we…um, you know how we broke into the high school to find all those files and shit?”

“Yeah…?” Eddie replied, not quite sure where this was going.

“Well, that night, y/n came back to my place to spend the night because she had her first vision and we needed to talk a lot out, and….well, and we had sex.” Steve whispered the last part so quietly it was barely audible.

Eddie stared at him like he was a fucking idiot. “Okay….? And….? You two have been dating for like eight fucking months. You had sex. I don’t get what the big deal is.”

Steve rolled his eyes, trying not to flush with embarrassment about giving Eddie Munson of all people the intimate details of his love life. “We had sex for the first time, okay? So yeah, it’s a pretty big fucking deal,” Steve defended himself.

Eddie looked absolutely dumbfounded. “So you’re saying that you, King Steve, have been dating a girl for eight months and you haven’t fucked her until like a few days ago? I’m sorry man, but I have to call bullshit on that.”

“I swear, dude. Y/n hasn’t really dated anyone before so it was her first time, first time, so we were waiting until she was ready.”

“That had to fucking kill you, man. I’m surprised you waited that long at all,” Eddie tried to hold back a chuckle.

“Hey! Knock it the fuck off, Munson!”

“Was it good?”

“I’ll pull over right now and beat the shit out of you. I’m not fucking joking.”

“Well I am, so you can chill the fuck out,” Eddie laughed. “I still don’t see how this has anything to do with her potentially wanting to dump you.”

“Well, it’s just a change, you know? Like what if she didn’t like it and—and…I don’t know, the spark is gone?”

“Dude, respectfully, that’s surely not the case. There’s probably a shit ton of women in Hawkins who would be lining up just to sleep with you, so there’s no fucking chance that she’s going to break up with you because you’re bad in bed.”

“I did not say that I was worried I was bad in bed; don’t put fucking words in my mouth.”

“What a fragile little ego you’ve got,” Eddie teased, “no dude, but seriously, please don’t worry about it. There’s no way that your little lady isn’t hopelessly in love with you.” Eddie gave Steve a pat on the shoulder before moving back to the back end of the RV.

Meanwhile, Robin was trying desperately to calm you down. Sobs wracked your tired frame as you wiped at the tears that were flowing down your face.

“Y/n, please. What’s wrong?” Robin asked, pulling your hands away from your face so that she could get a good look at you. You took several deep breaths, hiccuping through a few more sobs until you calmed down enough to speak.

“I-it-it’s Steve,” was all you could manage to say before another communication breakdown had you unintelligibly sobbing again.

Robin shook her head, “honey, you have to tell me what’s wrong; I can’t help you otherwise, and I want to help. Please.”

“He’s just so perfect,” you whispered, your eyebrows furrowed together with such a hopelessness that Robin nearly wanted to cry with you. She wasn’t exactly sure what you meant, so she just stayed silent for you to continue. “Like, he was talking about how he wants this future together with all of these kids and-and…and Robin, I want that. I want it so fucking bad, but I don’t think we’re both going to make it to the other side of this.”

Robin’s heart stopped in her chest. “What do you mean, y/n?”

The sympathetic look you shot Robin was enough to kill her. “Robin.”

“No, y/n. What do you mean?”

“I don’t think I’m making it out of this one alive, okay?” You sighed, another tear falling down your cheek that Robin was quick to wipe away. “And…and it’s just hard to hear him talk about a future that he’s going to have to have with someone else…because I want him to have that—I really do, Robin—but I just know it’s not going to be with me.”

“Y/n, you have to let us try. I’m not going to fucking let that happen,” Robin argued as a tear fell down her face, “you and Steve can have all the gross, sticky children you want because our plan is going to work, it has to work, okay?”

You took a deep breath and wiped at your eyes one more time. You didn’t feel confident, but despite that, for your friend, you agreed, the words coming out in a whisper.

“Okay.”

***

As soon as you stepped foot into War Zone, you were immediately overwhelmed. “So much for avoiding angry hicks,” Robin voiced what you all were thinking. The store was packed full of people, and you figured that everyone from Hawkins was probably gearing up for what they thought was the inevitable with an alleged murderer on the loose.

“Let’s be…fast,” Nancy spoke up, and you all split off in different directions to gather the supplies you needed to face Vecna. Not quite ready to face Steve after your breakdown in the van, you sped off to a corner of the store away from him, ducking and weaving between other customers before he could argue.

As he watched you disappear in the crowd, his heart jumped to his throat. He didn’t like the idea of you being out of his sight right now; none of you had any way of knowing what was going to happen, and he liked to keep you close so that he could be there if and when shit hit the fan. The fact that you were still upset was also killing him. You guys usually communicated so well, but this whole Vecna situation was really throwing you off your game. How long would it be before you guys couldn’t communicate at all? How long until you were shells of the people who fell in love, destroyed by grief and pain and tragedy?

Robin pulled him out of his thoughts before he could spiral too much. “How many of these do you think we need?” She asked, holding up a canister of kerosene.

He threw on a jacket he had found in the store, throwing another canister in the cart. “Five or six,” he answered, though in all honesty, who could really be sure?

Steve placed a few more canisters in the cart before noticing that Robin was suddenly very sidetracked. His heart rate picked up for a second, thinking it was due to some sort of threat, but he calmed down a little when he realized that she had spotted Vickie.

“What are you gonna do, Rob? Just stand here and gawk at her?” He asked as a smirk broke out across his features.

“Shut up,” she was quick to respond. Steve’s heart soared as she took a step towards Vickie, but it quickly shattered to the floor when a guy came up behind Vickie, wrapping his arms around her frame. His heart was breaking for his friend as she turned around, running the other way, embarrassed by the hope she’d allowed to grow in her mind.

“Robin! Robin!” Steve called after her, but it was no use.

You stood at the gun counter, rifle in hand, heart pounding as you inspected the firearm. “How much is this?” You asked the man at the counter.

“$120.99, but I’ll throw in twenty rounds of buckshot for ya,” he replied. You were glad you weren’t the only one that was going to have to cover the cost for all of this shit, because you certainly didn’t have the funds for end-of-the-world-apocalypse preparation supplies. You nodded softly at the clerk and he turned to help another customer when you heard a voice that made your stomach drop ring out next to you.

“Hey, can I see this real pretty .375, please?” Jason asked, his hands pressed against the countertop, letterman jacket looking pristine compared to your dirty and disheveled clothes from the hell you’d been through.

“Here you go son,” The clerk handed the gun over the counter and Jason thanked him. You tried to turn away so as not to be recognized, your heart pounding in your ear.

“Y/n,” Jason spoke up, gesturing at you with the pistol, “wouldn’t expect to find you here.”

“Yeah, well, it’s just…scary times,” you used the easy excuse at your disposal. “I’m…really sorry about Chrissy,” you added, and you meant it with every fiber of your being.

“Want my advice?” He took a step closer to you. “Shotguns are not good for much of anything past killing small birds. I mean, they got power, sure, but not much range.” You swallowed back your fear as he took another step closer to you. “And that’s just gonna force you into close-range combat, then someone can just grab that barrel like this and redirect it.“

You jumped as his hand wrapped around the barrel of the shotgun you were holding, inertia carrying you as he jerked the gun towards him.

“You look nervous,” Jason pointed out, his steely gaze not wavering from your eyes.

“Like I said, scary times,” you refused to look away either, meeting his intensity with a burning hatred of your own.

“You…you know Munson,” Jason continued, leaning even closer towards you, if that was even possible. “Physics. You tutor him, right?”

“I did,” you tried to emphasize the past tense nature of that sentiment, hoping that giving him as little as possible would make him let it go.

“He…he here with you, by chance?” You could see the craziness in Jason’s eyes as he said it, and your heart began beating faster. This was a man that had snapped, and you were afraid of what he would do to you and your friends if he knew that you were helping hide Eddie.

“No,” you shook your head, still not breaking eye contact.

“I’m only asking because, after all, he’s in charge of Hellfire, you know?”

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

“What about his friends?” Jason pushed the question, tightening his grip on the shotgun and taking another small step towards you. “They here with you?”

“Would you let go?” You asked in a hushed tone, your expression settling into something fierce and serious. Jason didn’t respond, his eyes still locked onto yours, his stern expression matching your own, so you raised your voice a bit. “Let. Go.”

“What’s going on over here?” A familiar voice rang out behind you and you felt relief flood your veins as you felt a hand at the small of your back. You wanted to roll your eyes as Jason eased up a bit, his grip loosening on the barrel of the gun in your hand. The countless ways a man will not hesitate to disrespect and intimidate a woman astounded you compared to the complete change in demeanor as soon as his actions could be construed as disrespectful of another man. Bro code was a bunch of certified bullshit.

Steve knew Jason better than you did. After all, they played basketball together just the year prior, with Steve being the team captain. Steve looked at Jason quizzically, his eyes practically daring the letterman jacket wearing jock to cause trouble.

“Steve,” Jason’s crazy, out of control expression melting into a polite smile, “nothing’s going on. Just two friends having a chat. Right, y/n?”

Jason’s stare made you feel nauseous, so you moved your head in a small and stiff nod, being agreeable to avoid any further confrontation. Steve could obviously sense the tension and felt his blood boiling at Jason’s clear attempt to intimidate you.

“It’s just, you’re standing awfully close to my girlfriend, and she’s very clearly uncomfortable,” Steve refused to back down.

“My apologies. Store’s quite crowded, is all,” Jason explained, his expression swiftly changing, menace dripping behind his mundane words.

“Certainly still enough room to back the fuck off,” Steve moved between you and Jason. You quickly waved down the clerk to ring you out for your purchase.

“Woah there, Harrington. Being a little defensive, don’t you think?” Jason’s eyes narrowed. “If I was crazy, I’d even go as far as to say you’re hiding something.”

“I don’t have any clue what the fuck you’re talking about,” Steve took a step towards Jason before continuing. “She’s my girlfriend, so I’m just trying to make sure she’s alright.”

“And Chrissy was mine,” Jason shot back, and you watched the way his fists clenched and unclenched. He looked like he was about ready to lose it and you weren’t really too confident in his ability to self regulate right now with everything that was going on.

“Is everything okay between you boys?” The clerk asked after handing you your bag. At this, Steve and Jason took a step away from each other.

“Everything is fine, sir. Thank you for all your help,” Steve spoke up, putting a hand on the small of your back again and moving you in front of him as he began guiding you through the store towards the front.

Before you could get far, Jason spoke up from behind the two of you, putting a hand on Steve’s shoulder to make him stop. “If you know anything, I recommend you tell us because we’ll find out one way or another.”

“Is that a threat?” You questioned, finally finding your voice. You were surprised by the way that it didn’t waver.

“Oh, no” Jason chuckled, “it’s a fucking promise.”

With that, Jason backed away, moving to the other end of War Zone to meet up with the rest of his entourage, and Steve quickly moved the two of you towards the front of the store. Robin, Nancy, Max, and Erica had clearly realized the presence of Jason’s group and were finishing up checking out the rest of your supplies. Nancy finished paying and the five of you swiftly exited the store as fast as you could, all piling back into the RV parked outside.

“Your old friends are here,” Erica announced to Lucas as she boarded the bus.

“Shit!” Lucas exclaimed.

“Let’s go! Let’s go!” Dustin shouted, fear lacing his tone at the thought of what Jason would do if he got his hands on any of them.

“I’m going! I’m going! Sit down!” Steve shouted as he rushed to the driver’s seat, starting the vehicle up and peeling out of the parking lot.

No one talked for a while, everyone still reeling from the close encounter you had just had in the War Zone. Once you were a considerable distance away, Steve spoke up.

“Hey, are you okay?”

“Uh, yeah, I’m fine,” you let out a bit of a chuckle, trying to play it off like you weren’t still a little freaked out from the way Jason was acting.

“Babe, come on,” Steve glanced over at you, “I know you.”

You sighed. “He just seems so unhinged right now. I felt like he was going to try and fucking kill me right in that store. And I’m just…I’m worried about Dustin and Lucas and Eddie. If Jason was that willing to be that aggressive towards me, who knows what he’ll fucking do to them if he gets ahold of them!”

“He’s hot headed, that’s for sure,” Steve agreed with you, “but we’re going to figure it all out, and it’ll be fine.”

You weren’t so sure that you agreed with him, but you didn’t say anything as he continued driving. He took several backroads until the occasional buildings disappeared, the scenery shifting to rolling hills and open fields. He pulled off into an open field that was shielded enough from the road by the tree line, and you all exited the RV, ready to prep your various weapons.

You sat on a basket, sawing at the barrel of the shotgun you had just purchased as Max and Nancy watched.

“Is this legal?” Max asked.

“Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s a felony,” you replied, continuing to saw without a care in the world of the legal repercussions of your actions. “But it guarantees one thing. I won’t miss.”

Once you were finished, you handed the shotgun to Max, standing up and wiping your hands on your pants, before smiling at her and moving to sit with Steve and Robin.

“I mean, it just doesn’t make sense,” Steve spoke up, holding a funnel as Robin poured kerosene into an empty bottle.

“What doesn’t make sense?” Robin asked.

“That was Dan Shelter. He graduated like two years ago,” Steve went on, and you realized you were clearly missing something.

“So?”

“So, he’s in college, which means he was visiting on spring break. Fast Times was returned, like, I don’t know, a week ago? Right? Unless she’s got some horndog brother we don’t know about which is possible. Or she’s just really into Judge Reinhold?” You finally caught on and realized that this was all about Vickie. Putting two and two together, you figured she must have a boyfriend, putting a total wrench into your plans to land Robin a kick ass girlfriend.

“Steve!” Robin cut him off. “I don’t care, and I don’t understand why you do either with everything that’s going on. Honestly, this feels like a prefect time for that little pull of the rug because in the face of the world ending, the stakes of my love life feel spectacularly low.”

“You deserve to be happy though, Robin,” you spoke up, weighing in on the conversation.

“Not everything has a happy ending,” she reminded the two of you, and your mind flashed back to Steve’s dream of six kids packed into an RV together. You figured now was the right time to speak your mind…after all the world was ending.

“I have this terrible, gnawing feeling that…it might not work out for us this time,” you explained, leaving out the part where you were pretty much 100% confident that it was specifically going to be you that was caught in the crossfire.

“You think we shouldn’t be doing this?” Steve asked, concern flooding his brown eyes.

“I think we’re mad fools, the lot of us…but if we don’t stop him, who will?” You looked out at all of your friends, each of them with their makeshift, modified weapons, and you willed yourself not to cry. “We have to try, right?”

“Yeah,” Steve agreed, his expression stoic. He picked up one of the empty bottles that had yet to be filled with kerosene. “To killing Vecna?” He proposed a toast.

“Slash Henry,” Robin added.

“Slash One,” you finished as each of you picked up bottles of your own to clink together. Your free hand searched for Steve’s as you wrapped your pinky around his, silently making an additional promise to him too.

A promise that you were going to fight like hell to live for the future Steve was dreaming of. A promise to believe that maybe—just maybe—everything was going to be okay.

His pinky tightened around yours, and for a moment, that was all that mattered in the world.

***

a/n: I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter! If you commented or reblogged or even sent an ask about what you thought of it, it would honestly make my whole day! I really enjoy reading your comments and it 1000% motivates me to write more (I also have a list of some ideas for once this story is finished, so stay tuned for that!!!)

taglist:

@season4steve @sassyheroneckgiant @tangledinthegreatxscape @kahhori @palachannie @keeryverse @usaguisenpaisblog @emilieluckwood @sabrinadelreyy @mochminnie @xprloki @kitdjarin1 @kissmxcheek @daemonskitty @bethsvrse @aheadfullofsteverogers @quinnsadilla @chervbs @sheisjoeschateau @goosy-goose @frtfvthg @criesinlies @cycat4077 @kachelleee @killerqueenfan @newyorkangelbaby @spaghetittied @anxfl @huffledor-able541 @mikariell95 @nothergoaway @angie2274

[pastryvroom]

love of your life | mason mount

summary , where the very much mourned couple of the uk football/youtube scence reconnect

note , i am back from hiatus so dont be a dry reader or i’ll make the angstiest fic ever with no happy ending 🤭

yes, i’ll get stressed out if i can’t read you!

[tagged: ethereal, model.company]

❤️ liked by masonmount, gkbarry_, and 1,502,326 others

yourusername i’m so happy to finally to bring you all my skincare brand which has been in the works for 5 years, so please welcome, ethereal beauty! the site is currently in countdown mode and will go live tonight. I have personally spent time with dermatologists so that we can finally bring you a skincare line that is going to heal your skin barrier so that we can create healthy skin from within. This couldn’t have become possible without my team who helped me bring a vision that has always been on pen and paper brought to life. i love you all at ethereal beauty and i can’t wait to see what’s in store for us 🫶🏻💕

user i have y/ns post notifications on and yet mason still beat me to like it 💔

yourbestfriend i’ve never felt so proud of you. i can’t wait for everyone to see the hard work you’ve put into this 🥹🥹

yourusername i love u sm!! thank u for listening to me ramble for days 🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻

benchilwell so proud now lets see if you still know how to party because ive rented out the biggest place

yourusername best get my old dancing shoes out 🫡

user i love the chilly and y/n friendship i still remember when mason introduced the two 😭

user babes are you crying over masonyn again 🤦‍♀️

ksi so free stuff

yourusername deal if free primes in the negotiation 🤝

behzingagram @yourusername good luck he won’t even give it to the sidemen

gkbarry_ im omw with a vodka cranberry that has your name all over it!!

user is this going to be affordable? because id love to support you but im a struggling student at uni

yourusername when me and the team were working close together a big concern of mine was overpricing because i wanted this to be affordable and accessible for everyone, but to make sure we are bringing the best we possibly can we as team have had to price it up at around £15/£20 for more advanced medical products but everything else on the site is pretty affordable 💕

user hopefully this helps my cystic acne because if im going to listen to anyone its going to be a past cystic acne girlie 🥰🥰

model hi yn it was amazing working with you on the shoot!! the range is amazing 💗

yourusername omg hi beautiful!!! i loved having you on the shoot & i look forward to hopefully having you back in the future 👀🫶🏻

[tagged: ethereal, gkbarry_, bestfriend1, bestfriend2]

❤️ liked by masonmount, gkbarry_ and 1,303,201 others

yourusername it was so amazing getting the chance to celebrate something that has been my biggest passion ever with the people i hold most dear in my heart. i would not be who i am or where i am today without you (i need those passion fruit martinis again 🥰)

bestfriend1 we brought the house down with our rendition of girls just wanna have fun 🎤

yourusername nobody held a chance quite literally

benchilwell @yourusername tell me about it you threatened to bite me when i reached for the mic

ksi 🔥🔥

user how did mason let her slip away mother come home pls 🙏🏻

gkbarry_ you looked so sexy let me wife you up x

yourusername come right here then im waiting 🥰

behzingagram you know its a good night when i found faith in the bath tub this morning

user help!?? faith is just like me

bestfriend2 those passionfruit martinis need to come back asap so lethal but so yummy!!

yourusername girls night next week!! we’ll try to make them ourselves can’t say it’ll be successful 😂

bestfriend1 @yourusername that’s what makes it more fun

user omg i need a friendship like theirs rn!!!

user i will never get over how beautiful you are

user OMG SOMEONE TOOK A VIDEO OF MASON AT THE CLUB

user SHUT UP WHERE CAN I FIND IT

user its on twitter so basically its a full 2 minute video of him just staring longingly at yn all night, like whenever she moved his eyes followed her. it wasn’t till chilly slapped him on the back did he stop staring. this man was transfixed i tell you 🥹🥹

user why can’t they just see what’s in front of them 😩😩

[tagged: masonmount]

❤️ liked by benchilwell, declanrice and 3,250,129 others

yourusername be the love of your life

comments on this post have been turned off.

[chimkin-samich]

Hey Guys!

Sorry for the sudden hiatus yall, these past few months have been extremely hectic we attempted to recover from the hell that happened when we visited my family (am now no contact with my mother after having to literally flee her home from the hostilely) when we came back but alas things did not work out that way

We’ve had to give a hand to her parents as well in the mean time due to first her maternal grandmother falling ill and needing surgery, which she had to redo recently since they left a tube in her :( , her paternal grandmother also recently passed so there’s that as well

Then there was also the struggle to get my doc appointments for meds since I have to call and they don’t always answer or just tell me there aren’t no appointments available

Things are slowly settling down luckily but we both got sick recently and are finally getting free of the random cold so hopefully we can get our groove back on with our art and writing cuz we both desperately miss it, firstly tho we’re going to be getting through comms since we’re running behind on those as well, so In the meantime we’ll post any doodles we do in between and the commissions if given permission for them as well

Thank you all for sticking around in the mean time we appreciate y’all and feel free to send asks in the mean time as well for any lore or just goofy questions about the boys and the Aus we have

[phantom-sleuth]

Wanted to make a rec post about a bunch of random sci-fi manga i like and hope that others enjoy as well.

Dead Dead Demons Dededede Destruction:

A story about 2 young women in their day to day lives as a giant alien ship looms over Tokyo. A fair bit of the story focuses modern social political issues in Japan and the mystery surrounding the mothership and the aliens and why they are there.

The series will get two movie adaptations later this year.

Dai Dark:

The story mainly revolves zaha sanko and how a legend exist that if one gets ahold of his bones they will have any wish granted to them, and so sanko needs to search through space in order to find whoever put this curse on him and kill them. The manga is made by Q Hayashida and features a very gritty world with very goofy and fun characters.

Battle Angel Alita/Gunnm:

A story mostly about a cyborg with a sense for battle wanting to fin her origins after crashing on earth. The series has 3 entries so far with the third being on hiatus sadly, the 3 series being Alita battle angel, baa last order and baa mars chronicle. However the series has excellent art a very good story and great action.

It currently has a 1993 anime and a live action movie

20th Century Boys

The story revolves around a group of adults who in their youth created a symbol to represent their friendship which is then used by some malevolent character called friend in the future for his own cult and his goal to take over the world. With most of the story being about trying to recall who he may be and how to stop his plot. Its a VERY story and dialogue heavy series, but its all worth it once everything starts clicking.

it has a short sequel series that contains the ending of the actual series called "21st century boys"

Pluto

Made by the same person as 20th century boys Naoki urasawa, its an adaptation of "the greatest robot on earth" story with its own unique spin. Its about the ongoing murders of the seven most powerful robots on earth. It deals in a lot of stuff about the sentience of the robots and their rights.

It currently has a full anime adaptation on netflix.

Planetes

A lot of the story mainly focuses on the struggles and relationships of the main characters with space mainly being a backdrop. Its a very interpersonal story and i can't really do it justice by just describing it so i recommend reding or watching it yourself.

It also has a full anime adaptation.

10,000 light year binoculars

This one is just a oneshot but i enjoyed it so much that i really had to rec it. Its about an alien girl with binoculars that allow her to spy on a boy on earth from her own planet and wanting to meet him someday. The entire oneshot is in color, the art is great AND its short.

Star tripper: Planetarium Ghost Travel

A very comfy manga that only recently stared to get fantranslated. Its about a guy called 303 going to "ghost planets where most of the inhabitants have gone into a deep sleep and turned into trees.

Heavenly Delusion/Tengoku Daimakyou

And finally Heavenly, it has two concurrent plotlines with the first one being about a boy and a girl going through a post apocalyptic Japan looking for "new heaven", while the second is about a group a kids in a sterile facility wanting to go explore outside the walls of said facility.

It has an anime that covers the first 5 volumes.

And those are all my sci-fi recs for the moment!!! Hope someone finds something new to enjoy of these here. apologies if the writing ain't the best i wrote this at like 3 am.

[inawickedlittletown]

Oh boy. This is the last text post I write tonight. I swear. I just...I have a theory.

First off, Oliver Stark...what the hell is wrong with you? Those interviews...and the IG story he already deleted. eek.

And okay so people saying he wasn't happy with bucktommy and even with working with LFJ...maybe you were all right about that. But I think this is actually deeper.

I think something changed as late as this week.

We know that 8x06 was shot before 8x05 and every interview coming out after 8x04 about both 8x05 and 8x06 (yes the ones from Oliver) had some pro-bucktommy stuff in them. He was vague and he talked about how much he enjoyed those episodes. He said "if Buck and Tommy were ever on a break" and he talked about not knowing if Tommy was his forever partner or something...everything was there's hurdles and things for them to deal with and it just didn't imply break up or that things wouldn't be worked out...

So here's my theory now that I've had time to think about it.

I fully think the break up in 8x06 was written as temporary. I think we weren't going to see Tommy in 8x07 or 8x08 and we were going to be left wondering about Buck's decision on if he wanted Tommy back over the winter hiatus. And Oliver sort of says that too...that Buck will struggle with blocking his number or reaching out type of thing...so maybe we'll see that.

I think the decision was made...and maybe it came from the network...maybe it was the writers and Tim who knows but I think sometime between last episode and this one they decided to shift paths and not go forward with the bucktommy storyline...the romcom. This could even be as a result of the election. It's possible.

LFJ in his interviews comes off like he didn't expect it to end here. But if those interviews were already set before the decision came down then he had to do them and firmly close the door and explain his exit. It's what he was probably told to do. Doesn't change how odd it is for a non-main actor to do an exit interview. Has anyone else ever done one for a side-character?

As for Oliver...I find it very interesting how he went down the line of Buck is free to sleep around. Like it's such an interesting talking point. In no way am I condoning what he said or defending it, but it is a big switch from how he's talked about Buck being bi before...it feels a little like since bucktommy isn't happening Oliver is jumping at the only non-buddie thing for Buck to do. And as a straight white guy why wouldn't he say something like that without a second thought.

So yeah...I think they pulled the plug on bucktommy for one reason or another and that's why the interviews are like that. But narratively...they'll do some hand waving and make Buck decide he actually didn't love Tommy instead of following the threads they've left there.