Steve, Gareth and Chrissy are cousins AU (sad edition) [prologue] [part 1] [part 2] [part 3] [part 4] [part 5] [Part 6] [Part 7] [Final Part]
Steve climbs into the back of Nancy's car with Dustin, trying his best to play off his mood as having slept poorly in the Wheeler's basement, instead of the guilt and sorrow churning inside him. He had been hoping to be able to make excuses to go home for a bit today, away from the group, so he could go to Chrissy's funeral.
Doesn't seem like that will be happening. Not unless he tells them the truth. They're going to the Creel house and Steve can't let them ago without him. Can't let them walk into potential danger if he's not there.
Because Chrissy's already dead. He can't change that. But he can try his damnedest to make sure there's no one else. So, it's more important to him to be there with the living, than at a funeral. Chrissy would agree.
Chrissy would understand.
Right?
Gareth sits through Chrissy's funeral and notes that Steve's not there. No one from the Harrington household is. He doesn't know what to feel about that. All his sorrow has been spent on Chrissy, so all he feels for Steve is anger. What the fuck is more important to Steve right now than being here? For his family. For Chrissy. For him.
He sits next to Jason even though his mom left a spot next to her available for him. He's not suddenly Jason's best friend, but he was told they plan to continue their search immediately after the funeral, and if he sat next to his mom, she wouldn't let him go.
This is how he finds himself at Reefer Ricks, long past the mandated curfew with just Jason, Andy, and Patrick. The others having slowly dropped off the search the closer to night it got.
"Hey," Gareth calls out to Jason before entering the house, "I'm going to go check if Eddie's van is hidden where he usually parks it when he comes out here."
Jason pauses on his way through the door. He looks over his shoulder and gives a nod, "yeah, smart thinking. There should be a flashlight in the back of the car."
Gareth nods back and heads back to the car. It doesn't take long to find the flashlight and soon he's walking down the road. It's not a long walk, about fifteen minutes away is a cluster of trees that Eddie parks at when he comes to get more goods from Rick. Gareth (and their other friends) spent plenty of afternoons waiting in the van for Eddie to return from his 'job', as it were. It does keep the van out of sight of any road, though.
The van is there, and Gareth doesn't like what he sees. The driver side door is open, so he approaches slowly. "Eddie? You in there, Eddie?" he gets no response. He shines the flashlight through the back door's window, smooshing his face against the glass to look in. Once he's sure it's empty of anything, he approaches the open door and examines the front.
The keys are still in the ignition. Door left open and keys still in the ignition paints a story Gareth isn't sure he wants to read. That makes worry curl inside his body. He can't think of a single thing that would make Eddie abandon the van this quickly, too... scared? Worried? to bother to even close the drive door. He climbs in to try and start it but it won't. With the door left open for over 72 hours, the battery is dead.
He pockets the keys and locks up the van. If worse comes to worst, he can return the keys to Wayne.
He's almost back to the house when he hears shouting. He starts running, following the noise, and quickly finds Jason and Patrick on the shore, pulling their shoes off. His gaze flicks out to the lake and catches the sight of what can only be Eddie trying to get the motor of a motorboat started.
Well. Shit.
He doesn't think much more beyond that. He's just acting. He steps on the heels of his shoes to get out of them as quickly as possible and dives into the water. He's only seconds behind Patrick and Jason into the water, slowing to keep pace with them at first.
Gareth grew up in the Harrington swimming pool just like Steve had. Chrissy had. He's never been so glad for that as he is now, as he quits trying to pace himself and takes off, leaving Jason and Patrick behind.
Eddie's swinging the oar around wildly, as if they would stop any of them. He falters in his swinging when his eyes land on Gareth and he breathes out his name, "Gareth?"
One final stroke and Gareth can reach out of the water and grab the side of the boat. He doesn't haul himself aboard, but does haul himself high enough to look up at Eddie. "The police say you did it. Did you?"
Hurt flashes across Eddie's face but he answers, "No."
Gareth nods once, a decision made. Before he can respond though, Jason's caught up and Eddie is turning in the boat to wave the oar uselessly at him.
Clinging to the side of the boat gives Gareth a clear view of Patrick, who has stopped swimming. Jason and Eddie shout at each other as Gareth watches Patrick being to rise out of the water. "What the fucking shit!?"
Gareth doesn't know if Jason turns to look, he's too busy staring, wide-eyed and slack-jawed.
"Don't look," Eddie says and the boat jostles as Eddie moves suddenly, dropping to his knees in the boat and throwing his hands up to block Gareth's view.
"What the fuck-" Gareth cuts himself off when he hears the snapping of bones. Jason is yelling and Gareth panics, pushes back from the boat, which makes Eddie lean more to block his eyesight, causing Eddie to fall out of the boat. On instinct, Gareth dives for him, the month and month spent in Steve's pool, hearing about pool safety kicking in.
Eddie doesn't really need rescuing, but he doesn't fight Gareth during the rescue. Patrick is no longer in the air when they breach the surface, and Jason is swimming back the way they came. Eddie flops himself back into the boat, then helps Gareth in as well.
They don't speak again until they've reached the other shore, in which case they just sit in the boat, soaked through, panting at each other as the adrenaline fades.
"What the fuck was that!?" Gareth doesn't shriek. He doesn't.
Eddie suddenly looks very severe and grim when he says, "that's what killed Chrissy."
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Jessamine's design has always intrigued me. the stark, full black suit and tall collar are pretty obvious status symbols. black was for the longest time an incredibly expensive colour of fabric due to how difficult it was to achieve proper rich blackness during the dyeing process and the collar, while most likely just a trend in Dunwall fashion inspired by the 1890s high collars can be read as lace, especially in some concept art, which is hard to care for and needs to be starched to hell and back to keep nice and stiff for a collar like that
but what I find a lot more curious about this is that the clothes appear very much inspired by Spanish renaissance fashion
which, honestly, would make sense with the real world inspiration. 19th century was obsessed with the past, with the romanticized medieval and renaissance times, and it was quite common to see fashion inspired by times long past (I mean, just look at Worth. the man invented haute couture and there is so much influence of medieval and Elisabethan fashion in his designs). it was also a thing for rich families to just kinda... invest in recreations of historical pieces of clothing and LARP in them.
Jessamine's clothes, in particular, reminded me of Spanish court dresses. especially of the portraits of Anne of Austria and Elisabeth of Valois
obsessed with those slit sleeves. too bad Jessamine didn't go the extra mile to have the sleeves hang long and heavy around her arms but they were more form fitting
there is also something to be said about the tall white (possibly starched lace) collar and the style of clasps used on her clothes
the mini cape thing she has on top is more similar to the style of capes worn by men in renaissance, but yeah, of course she reminded me of a Spanish princess when this is one of the most given example portraits for this style
I wonder if this was an intentional choice on the designer's side or if they were just inspired by the revivalism present in 19th century fashion. what really makes me consider that though is that one of her earlier designs has those sleeves much, Much more pronounced and obvious
oh the things that could have been...
still, it makes me wonder: if this was intentional, what does this tell us about Jessamine, and the history of the Isles themselves?
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