#i have pictures of Tommy the fish lemme know if you want to see him...he was a good boy also hella chaotic for a fish if ima be honest

[vineyl]

It seems almost embarrassing that C!Tommy's birthday is the same day as America's birthday...

Also i think it's Barbara's birthday from genshin. Lotta people to celebrate lmao

[platypanthewriter]

Cthulian Stargazing

Day 6 for the Harringrove April Prompts!  Steve’s dad is an evil cultist, but Steve’s just there to run errands.

The folks at the Hawkins Lab were just too newfangled, from what Steve’s dad said.  It was no wonder the monster had gotten out—you had to tie down your sacrifices for one thing, and draw containment pentagrams, for another, or actual Hell would break loose.  

Steve basically agreed, having attended the seminars—mostly to lurk around and eat free bagels—and having heard the “Whoopsie, I smeared it—” from somebody dipping a paintbrush into a bunch of blood in a jar.  That tended to be followed by the lashing of a huge tentacle, and the flapping of robes as the screaming, incompetent novice was scooped into what his dad called the “Nether Dimension.”

Given his grade in Geometry, Steve wanted nothing to do with anything that required diagramming, so he stayed politely back fetching bottled water, or grabbing strewn pages of spells as they scattered in a fell and poisonous wind.  He tried to ignore the occasional pained shrieking—they’d all assembled to summon Elder Gods, after all, and even if all thirteen hooded figures hoped the tentacles snagged somebody else’s ankle, it stood to reason it had to grab somebody.  They couldn’t always count on somebody answering their “Revenge!  Wanted: Willing Sacrifice to Demonic Powers” ads, after all, no matter how many times Steve’s dad had him change the font to be more eye catching.

It was a summer job, was all, until the day they brought in Billy Hargrove. 

“He was poking around the Steelworks,” one of the hooded figures said.  “Fell through a portal.”

Billy squirmed in the duct tape they’d cocooned him in, spluttering and growling around his gag, and Steve winced behind his mask.  “Uh, ah,” he whispered to his father.  “He hasn’t signed the waiver, has he?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” his father hissed back.  “As if anyone would look for him here.”

The other twelve’s robes fluttered as they bounced in excited agreement, and Billy gave a muffled yell, kicking like a beached trout.  

“Um,” Steve said, grimacing, and wishing his father wasn’t evil.  He envied Tommy Hagen, who had a normal dad, who sold tires.  “Uhhhh, what if he’s been, like, drinking Everclear?  He could...poison it?  Or something?”

“Don’t be an imbecile,” his father shot back.  “Cthulhu’s not going to get indigestion.”  

“I should get the duct tape off him, at least,” Steve tried.  “It, um.  Might be like eating sticky peanut butter, you know?”  To that, his dad agreed, patting his shoulder approvingly.

 Billy thrashed like a homicidal mermaid some more, snarling as Steve drug him into the bathroom by his ankles.  “They’re mostly at the sacrificial site,” Steve whispered, tearing the duct tape away from Billy’s denim-carpeted hide.  “There’s just me and my dad and his dad here, lemme get a look outside before you—” try to sneak away, he’d meant to say, but Billy beaned him from behind as he peered out the bathroom door, clonking Steve’s head into the wall, and Steve didn’t even get the chance to say “Wait until my dad isn’t right outside.”

Billy shrieked insults as they drug him into the elevator, and Steve groaned, rubbing the back of his head, and sighed heavily.  He staggered over to the altar—his father’s sect didn’t believe in bookshelves, only altars—and poked at the books with a rubber glove he’d found in the janitor’s closet.  He was fairly sure they were written on human skin, in blood, and he wasn’t touching that, so he flipped through clumsily with the huge yellow rubber gloves until he found a familiar diagram.  He fished his cell phone out and took pictures of the text, and then sighed again, and called Nancy.  

 She stared around at everything, asking “Wait, a what now, a cult?!” as Steve shrugged, grimaced, and rubbed the back of his head.  At his embarrassed silence, she shook herself—still side-eyeing him—and had him help her steal bags of flour from the cafeteria, rig up molotov cocktails with the liquor in his dad’s office, and blow every window of his dad’s building out in explosions of fire.

“Are you gonna be okay,” she asked, staring at him still, as they stood in the parking lot, and ashes fell around them like snow.

“Just a couple things left to do,” he said, sighing, as they listened to the fire trucks approach.  “Can, uh, can you talk to Hopper?  I have to go, um, they’re, y’know, sacrificing somebody.”

“Holy shit,” she breathed, nodding, and shoving him towards his car, and he coughed his way through the smoke.  With the light of the burning building, it was harder to see how the stars were aligned overhead, bright and ominous.

 He parked a ways away from the hill with the sacrificial altar, and pulled on his robe and mask.  He could hear high-pitched screaming, and he grimaced as he climbed, and elbowed his way through the circle of chanting cultists.

“Is that you, Fletcher?!” Steve’s dad asked, and Steve nodded, waving as he tromped up the hill, his robes flapping in the ominous wind.  “Dammit,” his dad said, “—can’t you ever be on time?”

“Mmnm,” Steve said, not wanting to blow his cover.  They’d gotten Billy into a white shift, and between his curls and his long lashes, he looked the part, except for the smear of blood over his face where he had some of a cultist’s fingers in his teeth.  He had another one by the hair as she tried to cuff his wrist to the table.  

The bitten cultist was the one screaming, and Steve grinned to himself, shaking his head as he surreptitiously checked the diagrams, hiding his phone in his sleeve.  He paced around the blood-drawn circle—his dad had told him long ago that they could use chicken or pork blood, so he was fairly sure the blood wasn’t Billy’s—though it might be the screaming cultist’s, Steve thought with satisfaction, watching red drip off the side of the altar.  

“Allow me,” he said, to the one trying to get her hair loose from Billy’s fist, and she let Steve grab her hair, and yank her loose.  Billy grabbed for his face, and Steve jerked back, glancing up to see the stars pulsing faintly as the chanting heightened, and the circle lit around them.  

He stepped away to Billy’s ankle, glad his dad was too archaic-minded for locks, and fiddled with the clasp.  “This isn’t even done up right,” he said loudly, unhitching it so Billy could move, and then pushing Billy’s foot back down.  Billy’d gone still, his eyes narrowed at Steve’s mask.  “He could have kicked it open,” Steve said, squeezing Billy’s ankle, hard.  “I better check the others,” he said meaningfully, digging his fingers in so Billy couldn’t move, “—so he doesn’t get away.”

Billy must have gotten the message, because he didn’t move, aside from biting down harder.  The cultist’s screams turned to gibbering shrieks, and Steve stepped around to unclasp Billy’s other ankle, as Steve’s dad started to chant.  The circle lit from below, its beam meeting the light of the aligned stars overhead, and Steve ran to shove the bitten cultist away, and unclasp Billy’s cuffed wrist as his body arched, glowing form within, and he yelled FUCK at the top of his lungs.  

“Come on,” Steve hissed, yanking Billy off the table.  He fell in a pile, shuddering, as Steve’s dad yelled, and Steve shoved Billy as hard as he could through the line of cultists—they shouted and grumbled, like a flock of crows—and down the hill, so he fell and rolled.  Steve dropped to a crouch in the confusion to lick the edge of his robe and scrub it hard at the inner circle of blood, and as the line scrubbed away, the ground cracked.  A chasm opened as Steve scrambled back, and he could hear the dude Billy had bitten screaming more as he fell.  The rest of the crowd fell with him, shrieking.

Steve stumbled and fell down the hill, grabbing for the white shift that was all he could see in the shifting, malevolent light of the burning stars, and the red light flickering as tentacles rose from the depths of the earth.  He could hear his dad yelling at him as he staggered away, his arm around Billy, before his dad’s voice suddenly cut off.  

“What the fuck,” Billy was panting, “—what the fuck, what in the fucking fuck—”, which was fair.  He stumbled against Steve, staggering through the woods, probably barefoot, now Steve thought about it.  He grimaced, as the earth shook again, and the roar of the creature they’d summoned blew the leaves up around them.  It had probably hit the outer containment circle, Steve thought, from the way its cries shook the earth.

“Here,” he said, yanking Billy’s arm over his shoulder, and pulling him up onto his back.  “Hang on,” Steve shouted, over the cacophony.

“What the fuck,” Billy yelled into his shoulder, clinging like a koala, and Steve took a few steps under the considerable weight of Billy Hargove, weightlifter, and regretted many of his life decisions.  “The fuck did you do,” Billy shouted, and Steve hefted him up higher, staggering along as the stars burned like suns, lighting their path.  

“Just smudged it some,” Steve hollered back, forcing himself along until he got to his car, and he could tip Billy back into the passenger seat.

“Smudged what,” Billy shouted, nearly overbalancing Steve to stare back at the stars.  “What was that?!” The massive tentacles lashed nearly up to the sky in the flickering, rising greenish light, and Steve shrugged, walked around the car, and climbed in.  He turned the key.  

“Should clear up in a couple hours,” he said hopefully, and Billy stared over at him.  Steve handed over his phone.  “What’s it say?” 

Billy squinted at the photos, his eyes wide and horrified, as Steve flung his mask and robe into the backseat, and hit the gas.  “...looks like the portal will close,” Billy said, and Steve nodded.  

“Okay,” he said, white-knuckling it as the ground shook.  “Okay.”

“Are there more of those assholes?” Billy asked, staring back through the window, and scrubbing his hand against the blood drying on his chin.

“Yeah, there are,” Steve sighed, then bit back a grin, and glanced over.  “...you wanna blow up their headquarters?”

“You had me at ‘blow up,’ Billy said, crossing his legs on the dash, and smirking up at the too-brightly shimmering stars.

He had blood on his teeth.

The other Harringrove April prompts I’ve done