#like it’s just a fact of him now that he’s come to terms with. like the hallucinations.

[honeyryewhiskey]

when dean falls in love

or, all the little details that run through dean's mind when he's falling in love. and all the fears and self-doubt that come crashing down on him. warnings ! a pinch of angst | mostly feel good | kissing | confessions | dean admiring reader | dean's internal struggles | reader being patient | sam third wheeling j's note ! this is my apology for that sad one i posted last night. also, i had little baby 26-year-old dean in mind for this one. enjoy <3 5k words

Few rules exist in Dean’s life—most are made to be bent, broken, or ignored altogether. But you?

You’re the exception. You’re the rule he refuses to cross.

You are entirely off-limits.

Not that you seem to care. You crashed into the Winchesters' world like a wildfire, all sharp eyes and steady hands, showing up guns blazing in the middle of a nasty hunt. There was no slow introduction, no time for cautious trust. One minute, it was just another night, another hunt—then suddenly, there you were, standing in the wreckage, breathing heavily, covered in blood that wasn’t yours.

Dean should’ve known to let go right then and there—you were too good to be true. But he didn’t. Instead, you stuck to the corners of his mind like sugar between his teeth, sweet and relentless. Your energy, raw and electric, burned through everything around you. You invaded his thoughts, wrapped around his mind like a constant hum.

You were the kind of girl who made a man forget his own damn rules.

At first, Dean tells himself this newfound trio is temporary.

You’re a lone wolf, and the Winchesters don’t do long-term attachments. But somehow, you weave yourself into their lives like you’ve always belonged.

You slip into the passenger seat of the Impala without waiting for an invitation, kicking your feet up on the dash just to piss him off. You steal fries off his plate like it’s second nature, smirking when he glares at you but never stopping. You roll your eyes at his bravado, call him out when he’s being an ass, and yet—when it matters—you’re always there. Ready to fight. Ready to bleed for this life, for them.

For him.

Dean tells himself he doesn’t notice the little things. The way you hum along to his rock tapes like you’ve known them forever, how your hands—so much softer than he deserves—patch him up without hesitation. The way you meet his teasing with just as much fire, never backing down.

None of it means anything.

Because it can’t.

Not when he’s always been too rough, too jagged around the edges to hold onto something as good as you. Somewhere around his twentieth birthday, he made peace with the fact that he was cursed—fated to be nothing more than a soldier, a brother, a blade meant for war.

Being anything else, wanting anything more—wanting you—would only end in tragedy.

But then he catches Sam talking to you in hushed voices over coffee in the morning, like you’re family. As if every diner table and wobbly motel kitchenette was always meant to sit the three of you. He watches you clean his gun without being asked, like it’s second nature now. He hears your voice on the other end of his phone at 3 a.m., always answering when he calls, asking if he’s okay after a rough hunt. 

And just like that, you’re in. You’re a part of them.

A part of him.

And that? That’s the most dangerous thing of all.

Dean doesn’t know when it happened—when the lines started to blur, when the rule he swore by turned into something fragile, something breakable.

Maybe it’s the way you slip so effortlessly into their lives, settling into the spaces he didn’t even realize were empty—mediating brotherly arguments like you were always meant to be their missing piece. Maybe it’s the sound of your laughter, bright and unshaken, slicing through the heaviness of a bad hunt. Or maybe it’s the way you look at him, like he’s something more than the scars, more than the sharp edges—like he’s worth seeing at all.

Or maybe it’s the small moments like this.

The diner is warm, buzzing with the quiet hum of conversation, the clatter of silverware against plates. Sam’s focus is his laptop, half-listening to whatever you’re saying as you flip through the menu, sitting beside Dean, debating tonight’s meal. Dean’s trying to keep up, trying to ground himself in the normalcy of it all.

And then, without a second thought, you reach for his jacket.

It’s been draped over the back of the booth since he sat down, familiar and worn, carrying the weight of long nights and too many miles. And you just take it, slipping your arms through the sleeves, tugging the collar up like it belongs to you.

Dean’s fingers tighten around the menu.

It’s nothing new—he’s handed it over a dozen times before, thrown it around your shoulders without a second thought on cold nights. But this? This is different. You didn’t ask. Didn’t even hesitate. You just did it, like it was instinct, like it was yours.

He clears his throat, trying to force down the feeling clawing its way up his chest. “Comfy?”

You hum, settling into the fabric, your fingers curling into the sleeves. “Mmhmm.” Your voice is light, easy. “You always run so warm. Thought I’d steal a little of that.”

Dean swallows hard, his mouth suddenly dry. Prying his eyes off of you, he tries again to look like he’s reading the menu. Scanning the small font, even though he’s already decided on a burger and fries like he always gets. 

Across from him, Sam sighs, clicking at his keyboard. “You guys do realize you act like a couple, right?”

Dean shoots him a glare. “Shut up.”

Your laugh falls out sweet and quiet, the sound pressing against his heart with a persistence to make it move faster. Your boot nudges Dean’s under the table, and he takes it as an excuse to look at you again. “You jealous, Sammy? Want me to steal your jacket next?”

Dean barely hears the response. He watches as you burrow further into his jacket, your nose dipping beneath the collar. Then, with that same mischievous glint in your eye that always spells trouble for him, you lift the collar to make a show of taking a slow, exaggerated sniff.

His brows press down, lashes forming a tight squint around his eyes as he braces himself, “What the hell are you doing?”

Your lips twitch like you’re holding back a laugh. “One thing about this old jacket, though,” you muse, taking another thoughtful inhale. “There’s this metallicy smell… buried under all that cologne you drown this poor leather in.”

Dean scoffs, shifting in his seat and turning his head to save himself from letting you see the pink creeping up his cheeks. “I do not drown it in cologne.”

Sam doesn’t even look up from his laptop, but his chuckle doesn’t help ease Dean’s embarrassment. “You kinda do.”

Dean’s head shoots up, tilting slightly as he glares at his brother. You’re already grinning, undeterred, your fingers lazily tracing the worn seam of the sleeve. “It’s faint, but it’s there. Like… gunpowder. And whiskey, I would assume. And maybe a little bit of blood?” Your teasing gaze flicks up to meet his, “What have you been getting into, Winchester?”

Dean should play it cool. Shrug it off. But he can feel his ears burning red and hot from that little teasing smile on your lips and his brain is a few steps behind, caught somewhere between you’re too damn close and when did this get so hard to ignore?

He leans back, arms crossing over his chest. His mind makes quick work to steady buzzing nerves, “Dunno what to tell ya, sweetheart,” he sighs, jaw popping as he finds his barings, “That jacket’s seen more action than you have.”

You feign offense, pressing a hand to your chest. “Wow. First, you over-season your leather, and now you’re just slinging insults?” You shake your head, dramatic as ever. “I thought we had something special, D.”

Dean rolls his eyes, but the corner of his mouth twitches. “Yeah, yeah. You done sniffin’ my jacket, or should I be concerned?”

You huff, settling back against the booth so that your arms brush against each other when you shrug. “I dunno. Might need another whiff.”

Dean points a warning finger at you, his smile breaks his attempt at stoicism, and all it does is make you grin wider.

Sam lets out another long-suffering sigh, shutting his laptop with a little more force than necessary. “I’m concerned. And I’m officially done with this conversation.”

You smirk, smug as ever, but Dean? Dean’s just trying to pretend he’s not completely, stupidly gone for you.

The rest of dinner passes in easy conversation—at least, for you. Dean is quieter than usual, letting you and Sam fill the space between bites of food and stolen fries. He tries to focus on anything else—the chipped laminate of the table, the hum of the old diner lights, the way his fingers tap absently against the side of his glass.

Mostly, he tries not to look at you.

Not when you lean forward, chin propped in your palm, laughing at something Sam says. Not when you nudge his boot under the table, stealing the last bite of his pie with a satisfied little smirk. Not when you adjust the lapels of his leather jacket like it’s yours now, like it belongs to you the way he does.

By the time the check hits the table, he’s still got too many thoughts in his head, and none of them are ones he should be having.

Outside, the night air is crisp, the motel’s flickering vacancy sign glowing just across the lot. Sam mutters something about research and trudges off toward their shared room, leaving the two of you lingering by the diner’s door.

Dean shoves his hands into his pockets, suddenly hyper-aware of how quiet it is. You shift on your feet, then tilt your head toward the motel.

“What’s it gonna be tonight, D?” Your voice is soft, slipping into the quiet like it belongs there. “You sticking around for a bit, or heading to bed?”

Dean exhales, shaking his head. “Gotta make sure you get in safe.”

Your laugh rings through the empty parking lot, light and easy, curling around him like warmth against the cool night air. And despite only wearing a flannel, despite the late hour and the breeze whispering through the lot, he feels nothing but warm.

“Ah, yes,” you tease between giggles, nudging his arm. “My knight in shining armor, always keeping me safe.”

The short walk across the lot is quiet but never empty—the kind of silence that lingers in the spaces between you, comfortable and charged all at once.

At your door, you unlock it with a flick of your wrist, pushing it open before leaning lazily against the frame. The dim motel light catches the amusement in your eyes as you glance back at him.

“See?” You gesture to the empty room with a grin. “All’s quiet on the western front.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He waves you off, stepping inside without a second thought, the door clicking shut behind him.

You move past him with easy familiarity, shuffling through your things while Dean leans against the dresser, arms crossed over his chest. He watches as you slip into your usual routine—kicking off your shoes, pulling your hair back, stifling a yawn with the sleeve of your sweater. His jacket, draped over the chair beside your bed, stays untouched. He doesn’t move to take it. If he’s honest, he kind of hopes you’ll sleep in it. Let it take on your scent instead of his.

When you return from the bathroom, fresh-faced and sighing contentedly, you crawl onto the bed and sit cross-legged, flipping absentmindedly through an old paperback—the one you grabbed from the library when you were supposed to be researching.

“You gonna tell me what’s got you so deep in thought tonight?” you break into the silence without looking up, voice soft but knowing.

Dean huffs, tipping his head back. He’s trying to find something other than you to look at, he’s gotta stop watching you so often. “I’m always deep in thought.”

You snort, “yeah, okay. Sure.”

Your eyes flicker over him, he’s always following you into your room like a stray pup, like he doesn’t know where else to go. He lingers in your space, but is careful to maintain a set distance. At first you thought he was trying to claim you as another notch on his bedpost, but all that ever happened on these nights were quiet talks until your eyes grew too heavy to keep open. And by morning, you’d be alone, tucked beneath the blankets like someone made sure they were pulled around you just right.

You watch him for a beat, noting the familiar tension winding through his shoulders. “Seriously, though. You were kinda out of it at dinner.”

Dean hesitates, glancing away like he can pretend he didn’t hear you. His eyes settle on the peeling motel wallpaper, tracing the cracks like they hold some kind of answer. He hadn’t planned on sticking around this late—not when his head is already full of you. Not when it’s dangerous for the sanctity his carefully drawn lines to be near you like this, feeling the way he does.

But neither of you move. You, cross-legged on the bed, book in hand. Him, still leaning against the dresser, pretending he has somewhere else to be.

He should make an excuse, crack a joke, steer this conversation somewhere safer. But your voice, soft and steady, tugs at something in him. And instead of fighting it, he lets himself lean in.

“You ever think about what happens when we stop?”

Your fingers still against the worn pages of your book. “Stop what?”

“This.” He gestures vaguely, like that explains everything. “The hunting, the moving around. All of it.”

Your brows furrow slightly as you consider his words, the weight of them pressing down in a way you don’t want to acknowledge. This life—it’s far from glamorous, but it’s all you’ve got. Stepping away from it is a thought you buried long ago, a fantasy that never had a chance. You shrug, pushing the thought aside. “I don’t know,” you say quietly. “Never really let myself think about it too much.”

Dean exhales a heavy breath, eyes dropping to the floor like the weight of your words is sinking in. “Yeah.”

A beat of quiet settles between you. It’s not uncomfortable, but there’s a weight to it that presses against Dean’s chest, making the space feel tighter than it is. You can feel his tension, like he’s holding something back, but he doesn’t look up.

Then, you shift, breaking the silence with an easy gesture—a pat to the empty space beside you on the bed. “Don’t just trail off on me, D. Sit down. Tell me more.”

Dean hesitates for a split second. This is a bad idea. It’s an invisible line he’s been toeing for too damn long, one he’s tried not to cross—never sit on the bed, never get too close when we’re alone. But then again, it’s you. You’re looking at him like you care, soft and patient, as if whatever’s inside his head actually matters.

And just like that, he gives in. One little exception, just for tonight.

With a quiet sigh, he pushes off the dresser, settling beside you on the bed. He stretches his legs out, but the small mattress makes it impossible to keep any real distance. His legs brush against yours, and his arm brushes yours too. He hopes to hell you don’t see the flush creeping up his neck.

If you notice, you don’t mention it. There’s no teasing, no playful smile—just the quiet comfort of your presence beside him. You don’t push, don’t pry. You just sit there, calm and steady, waiting for him to speak.

“I dunno,” he mutters, “just been thinkin’ lately. About what it all looks like when it’s over. If it ever is.”

You tilt your head, studying him. “And?”

Dean swallows, debating how much to say. How much to admit.

“And… I don’t see much of anything.” He exhales sharply, shaking his head. “Spent my whole life doing this, I don’t see an ending where I’m not dying at the hands of this. Y’know, going down in the fight.”

You’re quiet for a moment, then—so softly he almost doesn’t notice—you shift closer, your arm snaking its way around his. You’re snuggled right up next to him, watching with careful eyes.

“There will always be monsters to hunt,” you murmur, your voice soft yet steady in the dim room. “But you don’t have to be a warrior forever, D. There will always be hunters, too. Doesn’t mean you have to be one.”

Dean chuckles, but it’s a hollow sound, more an exhale than a laugh. His gaze drifts toward the bedspread, unable to meet yours. "Yeah, well... I don't know if I could just walk away." His words come out quieter, like he’s unsure if he’s talking to you or to himself.

You turn slightly toward him, noticing the tension still coiled in his shoulders. The quiet settles deeper now, heavier with each passing moment, but he doesn’t seem to notice the distance between your words.

“What’s got you thinking about all of this?” you keep your voice light, though there’s a weight to it.

Dean rubs the back of his neck, his thoughts at war with the words he wants to say. "I can’t have the things I want, not really," he finally admits, the confession slipping out before he can second-guess it. His gaze drifts to the side, and his fingertips come up almost absentmindedly, dragging across your temple, pushing stray hairs back into their place.

“This life," he continues, barely above a whisper, "it consumes all the good things in my life."

“Not true,” your voice is firm but gentle, like you’re trying to remind him of something he can’t see.

He doesn’t answer immediately, just quirks a skeptical brow at you.

“You have your brother,” you continue, “and you’ve got me. Nothing in this universe can take us from you.”

Dean’s breath catches, and for the briefest moment, he wonders if you understand just how much weight those words hold. He swallows, trying to hold it together, but he can’t ignore the ache that creeps up his spine. He gives a small, almost rueful chuckle, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. "What makes you so sure?"

You meet his gaze with a steady confidence. "Because I know you wouldn’t let it."

His hand lingers by your face, his thumb brushing softly against the warmth of your cheek. There’s an electricity in the touch, something that feels too close and yet too natural. He can feel the way his pulse quickens, how much his body wants to close that last inch of space between you. But he doesn’t.

You don’t push him. You just watch him, like you’re waiting for him to decide whether to take the step—or to retreat.

Dean’s breath catches in his throat, and his eyes drop to your lips for a moment before meeting yours again, like he’s trying to reconcile the gravity of what he’s feeling. His voice drops to almost a whisper, his words thick with something raw. “You have no idea how right you are, little miss.”

Your hand comes up, curling over his with a quiet, deliberate touch. The softness of your skin against his makes it almost impossible for him to remember the times he’s watched you move through the world—handling a gun with precision or a blade like it’s second nature. Most of you makes him forget, really, about everything that doesn’t involve you in this moment.

Your warmth, your softness, it makes him lose himself in daydreams of a version of you—one that doesn’t belong to this life. A version where you’d lean into that gentleness, the part of you that exists outside the hunts and the danger, in a life far away from the chaos that haunts him.

You shift, sitting up, still keeping your gaze on him, and it makes something in his chest tighten. The determined strain in your features catches his attention immediately. It’s the same look you get when you're deep into a lore book, your brow furrowed with that little scowl—like something has piqued your interest, and you won’t rest until you’ve unraveled it completely.

“Dean, there’s more to this than you’re letting on.”

He shakes his head, trying to brush it off with a quick, dismissive shrug, his lips pouting up into his best attempt at nonchalance. “Nope. That’s pretty much it.”

You let out an exasperated huff, and Dean can tell you’re seeing straight through him. It’s not enough to deflect you. What he doesn’t expect, though, is the rough shove to his shoulder. It makes him blink in surprise, but before he can recover, your fingers press right back into the tension of his muscles he’s been trying to ignore all night.

“You’re as stiff as a board,” you point out, your fingers digging in a little harder. “Something’s bothering you.”

His breath comes out shakier now, and for a moment, his whole body feels like it’s been wound too tight. You can feel it, he knows you can. There’s no denying it now, but the words feel too heavy in his throat. He wants to argue, to brush it off again, but something in the way you’re watching him shifts. It’s not just curiosity anymore—it’s concern. And maybe, just maybe, a part of him wants to let you in.

But damn if it doesn’t feel like a risk.

Dean shifts uncomfortably, trying to pull away, but the pressure of your fingers is a subtle anchor, keeping him there. His gaze flits to the floor, anywhere but your eyes, because once he looks at you, he knows he won’t be able to hide.

"I told you, it's nothing," he mutters, his voice rougher than usual, the words escaping before he can stop them. He tries to push himself up, but the weight of your stare presses him back down.

You don’t buy it. You never do.

"No, Dean," you start softly, the concern clear in your voice, "I know you better than that. Something’s been eating at you for a while, and you’re not gonna keep dodging it."

His chest tightens, his heart racing in his ribcage. Every part of him wants to throw up some wall, some excuse. Something to keep you from seeing the rawness of what’s inside. The vulnerability he’s been running from his entire life.

But still, you watch him, waiting, your eyes steady and unwavering.

"Come on, just let it out," you press, your hand moving to his shoulder again, your touch gentle now but insistent. “You don’t have to carry it all by yourself, you know?”

He swallows hard, his jaw tightening, hands suddenly restless at his sides. The fight inside him is crumbling, piece by piece, until he's barely holding on to whatever's left. His voice comes out strained, almost desperate.

“Please, just drop it,” he grinds out, his eyes briefly meeting yours before flicking away again, helplessly. “I’m fine. You don’t... you don’t need to know all of it.”

You sit forward, leaning in just a little, your hand still gently gripping his arm as you search his face. The determination in your gaze doesn’t waver, but there’s something softer there now, almost like a plea. “Dean—”

He jerks back slightly, suddenly standing up with a bit too much force, the air between you thickening with a tension that’s making it harder for him to breathe. He takes a few steps away, running a hand through his hair, his back turned to you as he tries to calm the storm rising inside.

"I can’t do this," he mutters, his voice low, rougher now, like it’s been dragged over gravel. His shoulders still tense with the weight of the world pressing down on him.

You’re silent for a beat, and he knows it’s because you’re giving him space. But he also knows you won’t stop until you get him to say what he’s been holding back.

He exhales sharply, his hands trembling as he clenches them into fists, his back still turned, fighting a battle he knows he’s losing. "God, I don’t want to talk about this." His voice cracks slightly as he says it, and he hates how much it betrays him.

His eyes flick to you then, and there's a crack in the armor—a vulnerability that’s almost painful to see. He looks at you, but he’s not sure he can bear the weight of your gaze anymore. Not when all he wants to do is keep you safe from the wreckage inside him.

His body is coiled tight, but his chest feels like it’s going to implode. He wants to walk away. He wants to escape from the weight of this conversation, from the way you're looking at him like you’re waiting for him to finally crack open and spill it all out.

But when he finally turns back to face you fully, all he sees is that unflinching patience, that quiet insistence that you’re not going to let him go until he finally says what he’s been hiding for so long. It makes him want to burn every rule he’s built for himself.

"You don't get it," he spats roughly, eyes flicking to the floor. "I can’t just... say it. It’s part of me, it’s who I am, this thing that I can’t get away from."

You rise to your feet, crossing the room in one smooth motion. There’s no anger in your steps—just a calm resolve that cuts through the tension between you like a knife.

"I'm not an idiot, Dean," you peek up at him, unfamilarly timid as you cross this uncharted territory. "I see the way you look at me. Hell, at first I thought I was imagining things but I can see it’s eating you alive. And I—” your words cut off in your own shock at the confession, the sincerity in your expression making his knees weak, “I can’t bear to see you like this.” 

Your hands reach up tentatively, like you’re scared he’ll tear himself away again. But he stills, letting your warm hands press into either side of his jaw, “you’re my rock, alright?” your words trail into a soft laugh, easing the tension of your own truth. “I don’t wanna live in a world where I’m not by your side, because you make life worth the fight to stay alive. But you can’t just keep me in the dark, I have to know what you’re feeling.” 

His breath catches in his throat, the weight of your words hitting him harder than he expected. The realization that you know, that you’ve seen through all his defenses, makes everything inside him ache.

"I don’t know what you want from me," it comes out sounding like a plea, still looking for an excuse to retreat into himself.

"I want you to stop hiding from me." Your words are simple, but they strike right at the heart of the matter. "I want you to stop pretending like you can’t have the one thing you want most."

His throat tightens, and he shakes his head, trying to dismiss it. "I don’t get it," he mumbles, though his eyes are locked on yours, searching for the reprieve he still doesn’t believe he’ll find. "I don’t... I’m not fit for this."

"I’m not either, D. I’m just asking you to let it happen." You’re so close now, he can feel the warmth of your body, the soft pressure of your fingers against his jaw. Your gaze doesn’t break, it never wavers.

And that’s when it hits him. He’s been afraid of this—afraid of the way you make him feel like he can finally breathe, like all of his pain and avoidance can cease in your presence. he’s been holding himself together with tattered shreds for so long, and you’re the only thing that’s strong enough to pull him out of the mess he’s made of himself. 

And letting that security live in someone else terrifies him more than any monster he’s faced. 

“I’m not perfect,” he admits quietly, his words like gravel in his throat. “I’m broken, and I’m scared as hell, but god, if you only knew how much I want—”

You stop him with a soft kiss, the sweetest touch of your lips to his. It's gentle, almost hesitant, but it shatters something inside him, enough to freeze him in place. The weight of everything unspoken presses in, and for the first time, it feels like the walls he's built around himself might finally crumble in your hands.

The chains of his tightly kept composure snap at the delicate pressure of your lips, and without thinking, his arms wrap around you, pulling you closer. His hands find purchase at your waist, holding you as if you were the only thing that kept him grounded. The kiss deepens, desperate, as if he's trying to kiss away the years of holding back, the silent fear of letting you see the real him, the uncertainty of if you’d stay with him in the wreckage.

When you finally pull back, your lips linger just above his, breaths mingling. Your voice is a soft whisper, but it cuts through the tension like a thread being pulled taut. “Then say it, Dean. Tell me what you want.”

His heart beats in his chest, loud and frantic, as his walls come crashing down, piece by piece. He can’t think straight with you in his arms, all of his steely armor melts at your touch. And for the first time in what feels like forever, he lets go of some of those fears.

His eyes are nearly consumed by his pupils as he takes in the sight of you slightly out of breath, lips wet and a little more pink. From his doing, from his touch—it makes every broken rule worth the trouble.

“I've fallen for you, Sweetheart,” he breathes, his voice is raw, shaky, but it's honest, every word carrying the weight of what he’s been holding back. “I want to keep falling for you, love and all that crap. And I’m terrified of it, but I can’t keep hiding this from you.”

Your thumb brushes over his cheek, the gesture soft, but nevertheless, grounding. A quiet smile tugs at the corner of your lips, and your eyes hold nothing but certainty. “You’ll never have to hide any part of yourself, Dean. I’ve been here all along, with nothing but love. Just been waiting for you to see that.”

tags <3 @titsout4jackles @floralscented @deansbeer @snowluvvie @dulcescorderitas @bluemerakis

[catiuskaa]

HEURES D’ABSENCE.

come to bed (study me instead).

sum. felix knows you have to study, but… he smells so nice too… ok, hear me out… what if, instead, he helps you... review your research material?

wc: 4.3k

cw: sun & moon metaphors, felix is so down bad, minsung is mentioned, they’re so silly, sir kink? (not explored), kisses, kisses, kisses, oral (m.rec), soft yet unprotected piv sex (don’t!), and that’s all, folks!

scent. (♡) the perfume saga.

[🔹★💤 ★🔹]

The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light and infrared radiation with 10% at ultraviolet energies. It is by far the most important source of energy for life on Earth. The Sun has been an object of veneration in many cultures. It has been a central subject for astronomical research since antiquity.

It's kind of an obvious statement, I know, but Felix resembles it quite well, with a couple of exceptions. You know for a fact that he too is by far your most important source of energy for life on Earth. Still, even if Felix can’t help but giggle every time you compare him to the massive star —reason why now his friends call him Sunny, too— he doesn’t feel like he can compare.

He hopes he never gets heated to incandescence. He isn’t sure if any culture venerates him, but he’s quite sure to say that the chances are quite low. He also hopes no one calls him a ‘yellow dwarf.’ But ultimately, he knows he isn’t that massive star that the Earth orbits around because, if he were, he’d probably have a bright, nuclear solution to his silly recent troubles.

But Felix groans. He isn’t as observant as he’d like to be. Moreover, when he does eventually see it, somehow it is always a bit too late.

Hogging the blankets and hugging a pillow, he sinks his head into it again. He’s been turning in bed for what feels like hours because he can’t help but notice it now. He can’t help but wonder how it could escalate to such an extent right under his nose.

Felix blinks, sleepy, but not quite enough to fall asleep.

But hogging the blankets isn’t his thing. He feels hot, so he pushes the bedsheets off of him, just for his arms to feel cold, to which he mumbles a curse and grabs the blanket again. This is bugging him. A lot. Like, sure, it was happening under his nose, but his nose wasn’t even that big. It keeps going for a while: hot, cold, hot, cold.

It’s unfair, or so he feels. It’s gotta be, he grimaces, as he covers himself top to bottom with the stupid blanket, and sticks his foot out. Weirdly, that scares him, so he groans and finally surrenders.

Ladies and gents, it only took Felix a week to figure out and acknowledge: it’s getting harder to sleep without you by his side. The excuse his body gives him is another, however, so he rises from his bed and heads out.

If you hear the faint sounds the wood makes with each of his steps as he goes from his room to the kitchen, he does not know. Felix just stares at your room’s door in your shared apartment, and there’s not even a shy move. Nothing what-so-ever. Not even the slightest gust of wind that moves it.

Felix sighs, the hair in his arms spiky as he opens the fridge and a shiver rushes while he grabs a bottle of water, chugging it as if the answer to his troubles is at the end. Somehow, he never reaches it. He swallows, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, feeling the cold remnants of it quickly fade away down his throat.

That refreshes him, but the light from the fridge killed every ounce of sleepiness in his eyes. He leans his elbows on the kitchen counter, passing his hands through his hair.

It’s a struggle for him, and maybe he comes to terms with it just because it’s late at night for him. Because this is as pathetic as it sounds: you have been locked up in your room on a day-to-day basis because of your exams, and even if Felix understands, cooks you breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and checks on you when it’s late just to move your sleepy body from your desk to your bed, not seeing you aside from that is getting harder and harder.

Mhhm. Damn right. Pathetic, he knows. His roommate Minho—a poor guy stuck living in a flat with a lovey-dovey couple— had laughed one day so hard that they kicked them both out of the university’s library.

“I mean, sure I might miss Jisung like that whenever he has exams, but if I lived with him?” Minho scoffs as they both get out of the library. He feels bad for the blond boy though, so he sighs, patting his back. “Maybe you guys should talk this out, Sunny. C’mon, let’s get some hot coffee.”

Minho was in Jisung's apartment tonight, so Felix couldn’t go and bother him as he usually did. The only light in the flat was the one that escapes from the underside of your door. Like a moth, he gets closer, surrendering again. He sighs as he steps towards your room. Only then, he stops.

He doesn’t want to bother you. It may sound like a stupid excuse that he makes for himself, but ultimately it’s the only truth he knows. However, he grins, thinking that chances are you’ve probably fallen asleep on the desk again, your room smelling like paper, ink, and noodles. He can lie to himself and say that he was only going to tuck you into bed like usual. And so, taking the doorknob in his hand, and breathes out before opening it.

…until, well. You’re not asleep.

The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It orbits at an average distance of 384,400 km (238,900 mi), about 30 times the diameter of Earth. Tidal forces between Earth and the Moon have synchronized the Moon's orbital period (lunar month) with its rotation period (lunar day) at 29.5 Earth days, causing the same side of the Moon to always face Earth. The Moon's gravitational pull is the main driver of Earth's tides.

Maybe that is why as soon as the door is open, his heart dances in his chest. Maybe your gravitational pull is insignificant compared to that of the actual grey satellite, but Felix doesn’t have it in him to care when all he wants is to melt by your side. ‘You’re awake,’ he wants to say, but he shrugs it off. That’s a stupid sentence, even for him to say at three am. It is a fact that you barely sleep and that only worsens during exams week.

Nonetheless, he doesn’t let himself dwell on how not creative his mind turns out to be in the worst moments, not while your eyes hold his. It’s then when he sees through the midst of tired, sleepy confusion in the colour of your eyes that the hours of absence, of longing, of craving, crash against you almost as strongly as they crash against him. The sun and the moon on a collision course—fiery and untouchable, yet destined to shatter the sky when they finally meet.

There are no words —no other worlds: a star, and a satellite— as he stares at you, as you sit on the floor, against the edge of your bed, your room a mess and your desk a battleground that, by the looks of it, Felix can’t help but think you’re not having the upper hand in this war you’re fighting against piles of printed put PDFs. You want to stand up and hug him as if you haven’t seen him in months, but you don’t know your right foot from your left, your mind baffled and your heart swooning as soon as the dim light of your desk lets you see some of his darkest freckles, even as far away as he stands.

And somehow, he understands, meeting you halfway. Maybe he doesn’t, but you don’t have it in you to give a damn. Not when he’s back at your side.

It’d be foolish if he tried it right away, and maybe it’s because he knows you so well, but you appreciate that he doesn’t immediately urge you to go back to bed. Felix wouldn’t know if you had been in bed to begin with, but nevertheless, he sits with you against it, the only sound in the room being the ruffle the bedsheets make as he pulls at them to settle them back on the bed, and the sound of your computer’s fan, setting the mood just right.

You would’ve made that joke out loud, but you don’t have the energy. Not when all of your remaining energy goes to pay attention to the very much welcomed presence next to you, when he cradles your face with the palm of his hand, and every bit of hopelessness of your coloured eyes hits him, unrestrained.

“My misty moon.”

It’s a whisper, one that makes your heart sink. You missed that silly nickname so much, and it’s almost ridiculous –you have seen him during the week, but still, it doesn’t feel the same.

His arm slithers its way to your waist, scooching himself closer to you. You blink, noticing your eyes are teary.

Misty, ha. So funny.

Maybe you missed him that much, because it cracks a smile out of you. You don’t dare to doubt that you did. Maybe it’s because you’re stressed because of all the sheer amount of work you still have left to do —just the thought of it makes the room spin.

He hugs you tighter. Felix doesn’t know what to do. He pulls you closer. No, closer. His soft hands move to your thigh and pick you up, sitting you on his lap. He’s never seen you look so fragile.

It was silly. It was you who had asked him to let you be while exams lasted, because you concentrated better alone. The environment chaotic, sure, because you hadn’t had a dinner before two am that wasn’t noodles in like, a week,  but still, even when you were roommates, he knew better than to approach you during exams. You had always made it clear: you just worked like that. He didn’t get it, but he also knows he’d do whatever you need. It hurt his soft little heart to see you push yourself so hard, but in the end, it always paid off.

But you had been missing him so much. So, so, so much you almost were convinced it couldn’t be normal. That you shouldn’t be. You had barely been together for a year, even if you had lived as roommates for longer. Was that even allowed? To miss someone so vividly when they are in the room next to you?

His chest feels warm against you. Oh, you missed him. Your chest gnaws at the feeling, your own heart hating you —despising you, even— from keeping it away from the warmth of this sun for so long —a little over a week— because, how could you be so cruel, your heart whines, teary and all smiley now.

You nuzzle your head in the crook of his neck, and he chuckles softly.

“You’re tickling me, moonmuffin.”

His- his voice? His laugh? Surely he’s got to be trying to murder you in cold blood and cuddles. What else could he be attempting when he feels so soft and so warm and so kissable and so… Felix.

“You smell nice,” you mumble instead, excusing yourself as you attempt to break each and every law of physics you may or may not remember as you move and fail to get even closer to him.

“What?” he giggles again, his hands traveling to thread your hair.

His fingers through your scalp feel so nice you sigh and melt against him. You agree with your heart: how dare you take this away for a week? You should be imprisoned and sentenced to mandatory cuddles for the rest of your life. Yeah. Life-sentence cuddles. You brush your nose slightly over his collarbone. You’re lucky you even remember what you had been saying.

“Not my fault. You smell nice.”

You should peach the idea. Life sentence cuddles for not having cuddles before. For attempting to even succeed in not having cuddles for a week. That? That’s fucking crazy.

“Mooncakes. How about we get you to bed, mmh?”

Maybe two life sentences. ‘Damn. You’re really sleep deprived’, a voice in your head tells you, but you ignore it, loving the thought of cuddles and Felix for life. Wait, no, even better: Felix’s cuddles for life. That way you didn’t need to worry about not having two lives. You could just cuddle. With Felix.

Meanwhile, Felix doesn’t even struggle when his hand passes behind your knees and holds your back, carefully standing up and getting you in bed, and quickly reaching for the blanket to tuck you in.

“What are you mumbling about,” he smiles, stroking your cheek.

His touch feels softer than all the blankets in your apartment combined. Like cotton and clouds, soft, mushy, effervescent. A-blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kind of deal. Which is a very big deal, because there is no way in hell Felix even tries to leave. You have been sentenced to cuddles for life, and the law is the law.

“Oh no, mister,” you blink, smiling softly. “You don’t get to leave now.”

His eyes are like crescent moons while you look at him as if he was crazy. As if the mere thought of him trying to leave was mindboggling, along with downright impossible. Fat chance you were going to let him go past that door tonight. Or ever, your heart snickers, rubbing hands like birdman, almost menacingly.

“The bed is cold,” he teases.

“Warm it up, Sunny.”

Your reply comes faster than he anticipated despite how sleepy you look, and Felix can’t help but smile. He missed how that nickname sounded in your voice, even if it was layered below sleepiness. “Smartass,” he grins, but he tries to keep his promise. Just in case. He wouldn’t want you to be pissed off at him in the morning. “You should sleep.”

“Haha. As if.”

Your hands travel and link behind his head, keeping him an inch from your face. You’re making this too hard for poor, weak, little Felix, but he bites his lip. His voice turns even softer, a whisper against your lips.

“But I’ll just keep you awake.”

Your eyes trail down to his lips, and he’s so close to losing it. “Somehow I still don’t see the issue,” you mumble.

His nose strokes yours as he can’t help but giggle. “You’re so gonna get all moony about it tomorrow.”

“What does that even mean,” you scrunch your nose, much to his amusement.

Felix just laughs, shaking his head sheepishly.

“We should sleep.”

“Right.”

“You’ll be mad at me if you feel tired tomorrow.”

Now that makes you giggle, letting out a sound much like a lie detector would. A strange meeh that, had he not been as tired as he was, Felix would’ve rolled his eyes at.

“Wrong.”

He sighs, the smile on his face not faltering for a millisecond. “You’re making this too hard.”

You blink at him innocently, and Felix indulges again. Maybe because it’s late, but honestly, his mind is too tired to make up an excuse as to why he lowers his head and kisses your temple.

He hears how your breath hitches, and that makes him as giddy as the first time.

“You know, I read something off the pages on the floor last night,” Felix chuckles, stroking your nose with his as you blink and blush.

“Oh?” You smile, cheekily interested.

“Oh,” he teases you. “So, philosophy major, what’s all that with kisses and their meanings?”

“Oh my god,” you laugh, the thought of taking the spare pillow on your bed and hitting him with it getting tempting.

Felix’s hands play with the ends of your hair as it rests against the pillow below your head, a mindless action that he only stops to cradle your face and press against your cheeks teasingly.

“My cute fluffy moon. A philosophy romantic.”

“Enough,” you whine, laughing. His heart does a little dance every time he gets a chuckle out of you, and this time, a win is a win. “Fine, I’ll tell you about it.”

“You know, I’m actually a visual learner?”

Felix bites his tongue when your eyebrows raise. Even he knew that was fairly smooth, which is only acknowledged when you roll your eyes.

“So, technicalities aside, because I refuse to tell the intro again or even read it within the next ten hours,” you state, making him laugh as you continue talking, “the human species has many types of kissing. And all of them have different underlining meanings.”

The look in his brown eyes remains expecting, however, so it seems that short explanation won’t do to make the suddenly-turned Professor Felix happy. Or so he makes it seem, by how he fakes pushing non-existent glasses further the bridge of his nose.

“That seems like an interesting research,” he starts, pushing the non-existent glasses again. “I see,” he snorts, because it’s late, it’s a lame joke, and he’s trying to get you to give him the kisses he’s been missing all week —and he may be close to getting some, which he celebrates silently.

“Any examples, perchance?”

And just why the hell would you refuse?

“Of course, sir,” it’s just because of his formal tone, but something in the air shifts. Maybe just the dust that gets bored and changes direction in the air, but Felix’s eyes also do something you can’t quite place. But your mind goes up to the files, seeing if you understand the topic you are researching.

“How about we do it this way— you say a body part, and I tell you its meaning?”

Oh, fuck yeah. Felix can’t believe he’s getting it this easily. He could die right now, filled with the cheeky malice of getting a plan executed successfully, but he ain’t dying without those kisses.

He ponders carefully but decides to start easy. “A kiss on the cheek?”

As your hands softly move to cradle his face, the feeling of your soft lips against his skin, soft soft soft, so soft he can’t think of a better adjective to describe it nor another by any chance, the gentle and tender press of your kiss triggers the butterflies that linger around in his system ever since he’d started liking you.

“Depending on the culture, a kiss on the cheek indicates affection or tries to portray a sense of welcoming,” you state in a calming voice filled with sleepiness that’s slowly starting to wear off.

“Forehead.” Felix grins, feeling his cheeks heat up when your hands move his head so you can reach from where you are lying down underneath him and shortly peck him.

“A deep wish for protection, with underlying affection. A way to express one’s desire for the other’s well-being.”

“I uh… may be running out of ideas,” Felix chuckles sheepishly. But please don’t stop. I don’t want you to stop. Ever.

He shuts up his heart as you start speaking. “I’ll take the microphone from here, then,” you laugh.

And Felix smiles widely as he starts being pampered to death in the form of kisses. A kiss on his earlobe, “to provoke arousal.” A kiss on his hands, “to greet with respect.” A tiny peck on his nose,  “to express care.” A slightly longer kiss on his lips, “love,” you continue as you smile at him.

Had he been standing, Felix would’ve swooned by now. He doesn’t know how his arms haven’t surrendered and finally refused to hold his weight over you, but there he remains, over you, legs tangled underneath the bedsheets, with the only light in the room —your desk light— lighting not only his face, but also his eyes as they shine brighter after every kiss.

“Now, as you so obviously know, as a thorough expert in the matter,” you joke, happy to make him laugh, “other, different kisses may share meaning with these.”

“I see. Go on, then.”

It only takes another “Of course, sir,” and there it goes again. The tension in the room spikes up, like the hair in your arms whenever you look at the mess your room is in during exams.

But you’re having fun. And you smile. “A kiss on the lips indicates love, as I stated prior,” you snicker, kissing him on the lips again, maybe to make a point, maybe because after all these kisses he’s starting to taste like the most delicious thing you could take to your mouth.

Blame the tension for that, your heart grins at you, pushing you from behind to keep going. And there you go.

“There’s also what is called French kissing.” You swear you can see the exact moment where your desk light rats him out, allowing you to see how his pupils darken when instead of lifting your head to reach him, you finally link your arms behind his head and pull him down towards you, kissing him on the lips again, deeply this time, nibbling on his lips and taking advantage of the moment he smiles to slide your tongue in.

Felix isn’t just on cloud nine. He’s on cloud nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine. He’s never been so high in the sky, and even if it is currently past midnight, had he been the actual, real Sun, not only would he be shining as much as he is now, but also make tomorrow the day with the clearest blue skies.

None of you can tell who is it that starts deepening the kiss. None of you can tell who’s the first that starts panting and gasping while both his and your hands start to map the other’s body, as if they’ve lost something and were sure the other one had it hidden somewhere.

You, however, are sure that there’s no such thing as a good night kiss anymore, because, with Felix’s knee between your thighs and his tongue in your mouth, you’re so not going to allow this alluring man who you’ve been dreaming about since the exams week started to leave you just like that.

To hell with tomorrow’s exam.

Felix, the poor boy, can’t read your mind. Maybe that’s why he gasps so heavily he lets out a moan when you roll him to his back and kiss him again before he can catch his breath. Maybe it's why he keeps letting out moans when he notices you smiling as you kiss him, your hands trailing up below his shirt.

“T-that tickles,” he smiles, panting, as your fingers trail faintly over his skin, making him feel goosebumps.

It doesn’t tickle anymore when it’s your lips that follow his happy trail, down, down, down. He takes off his shirt as if it’s burning, and if he’s honest with himself, he can’t think of a time when he has wanted this as desperately as he does now.

There’s no doubt in his mind that in your darkened eyes the same thought lingers on your head, while they stare deeply into his own, almost in a way capturing his soul, the sensation as effervescent yet not as pleasurable as the one that travels from his dick to his whole body as your hand closes around it. God, if Felix loves that sensation. He was so drunk once that he remembers thinking that if he could marry it, he probably would’ve. Somewhere in Las Vegas, too.

His head falls limp against the pillows with a thud, his hand threading into your hair as pretty little moans leave past his lips, following the sticky sweet sounds your mouth starts to make as you attempt to take him in, hollowing your cheeks and leaving your hand at the base to make up for what you can’t fit.

“F-fuck, baby, that’s so good…” he lets out over and over,” so good, baby, so good,” he almost mewls, “missed you s’much, fuck…”

He lets out a groan as he moves your head away, because he could bet money that he was a beat way from bursting, and he wouldn’t lose. Even then, losing the opportunity to fuck you for all the times he sighed pathetically this week, missing you when you were just next door, is much, much worse.

Felix’s soft hands travel, stroking every square inch of surface he can at a time, passing your thighs, your stretch marks and your hip dips —ones he has been a devout worshiper for God knows how long, dedicating entire nights (and days, if it had been only for him) to the both of them— bending to press soft kisses from your tummy up to your cleavage, his hands playing with your nipples just to hear your whines as he helps you lean your back down softly on the bed.

Felix whispers soft and tender nothings in your ear, mixed with silly sentences just because he’s missed having you below him so stupidly, stupidly because you’ve missed him just as much. He too kisses you everywhere after he slides in, only because he’s pretty sure that if he starts moving right away, he might not last as long as he wants.

Your cheek, your forehead, your temple, on the palm of your hand before linking his fingers with it, on your nose just so he can smile at you when you scrunch it.

“Sunny, don’t tease,” you pout cutely, moving your hips.

Finally, Felix giggles as he dives for your lips deeply. And when he kisses you, you smile, reeling in the feeling of his lips against your lips.

A solar eclipse.

[🔹★💤 ★🔹]

~kats, who’s genuinely tweaking bc why do i feel like this wouldn’t work if i hadn’t sneaked astronomical stuff in it?

catiuskaa, february 2025 ©

I AM??? SO SORRY?? I HAVEN'T POSTED IN?? SO LONG?? MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR??? LIKE ??'?'?'?' I MISSED SO MUCH??

[hitlikehammers]

strongly worded letter 💌

or: Eddie Munson’s long, weird road out of (the) hell(-side down) ☠️ and into love💗

rating: t ♥️ tags: post-S4, steve’s one-man search-and-rescue for eddie’s not-dead body, falling in love, fluff in surprising places, eddie’s chaotic internal monologue, alphabet magnets🧲 for the win ♥️

for @steddielovemonth day four: "I had not intended to love him. [...] He made me love him without looking at me." —Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

To the external, uninitiated observer, Eddie is well aware his take on all of this will 100% appear both unhinged and as least vaguely self-destructive, bordering on suicidal.

But here’s the thing: if Eddie had been truly suicidal, the million times he could have just stood and let the mobs take him—bigots or mutant bats or a lichy-ballsac that made people float—he wouldn’t have even bothered fighting. Maybe he was questionably attached to self-preservation, but actively wanting to pack it in? Even the thought of sparing his poor uncle his bullshit—finally—hadn’t been a sweet enough deal. Nope: Eddie is selfishly attached to the whole living thing.

Which is why he is begging for it to be understood, in no uncertain terms:

He’d rather know for sure that he was dead in the endless, silent grey hellscape he’s been left in, than wandering in this half-formless, half-collapsing nothing-burger version of the town he grudgingly called home, unsure where he stands on the mortality-scale either way.

—

Here’s the deal.

Vents? Foolishly overlooked.

Epic concert? Rocked, no notes.

Bat-chow? Do no recommend.

Henderson sobbing? Recommend even less.

Being tagged as a corpse? Perfectly fine if that’s what you are; dead weight in an apocalypse simply cannot be justified.

The issue is when you’re tagged as a corpse, and you…aren’t one.

So you’re left behind.

Which brings Eddie to:

Meeting what they’ve been calling a demogorgon this whole time but that resembles no such thing, those goddamn lying liars: not fucking cool.

Having…enough demobat saliva or venom or poison or whatever, probably, where the misleading-as-fuck demogorgon sniffs at you like a dog with her puppies instead of eating you with those fucking petal teeth?

Neutral. Probably wouldn’t order it again.

Getting licked all over by said Petal Teeth, all lioness-grooming-its-young style? Disgusting.

Disgusting.

Figuring out demogorgon saliva has some kinda magical mystical healing properties and you’re basically just covered in fairly-smooth scar tissue now that looks months old rather than hours, and plus you got a bath out of it so most of the dried blood’s gone too?

Fine, okay, he’d leave a tip for service.

But now Eddie is as alive as he can think to test being—and he’s been running all the monster-category tests and he doesn’t pass for vampire, zombie, or any various other undead creatures, he’s hungry but mostly for like, Chicken McNuggets, and—

Stuck. He’s stuck here.

And he thinks they must have won, the Party that is, because nothing’s really happening except…things are falling apart, like rotting in slow motion.

Which is a concern. But. Cool, if it means they did in fact make the motherfucker pay.

But that also means nobody has any reason to be strolling back in to fight demons anymore, and come across his not-so-dead ass. Plus also, the place is probably going to keep crumbling—if a master of a realm is axed, the realm doesn’t typically survive. Mordor fell apparent when Barad-dûr came down. And he…

He did agree to go into Mordor.

Well, fuck him.

—

He mostly wanders around and pokes at random shit, collects some books, ignores the fact that the reality he’s looting is on borrowed time.

He doesn’t know if it’s healthier to deal with that part head on or keep pretending it’s not there, but he honestly could not give a fuck.

Because it’s just him. Save the demogorgon who gave him a tongue bath, he’s seen nothing living. Sometimes there’s a stray screech but it’s too distant to even guess where he’d find whatever made it, stumble upon whatever caused it. There’s not even a breeze to move the decaying trees.

There is nothing.

And it’s starting to drive him fucking insane. He might lose it before the reality caves in on him, actually, just for the sheer…void of it all.

He’s on the edge of that—losing it entirely—when he hears it, sees it.

Who the fuck took that magazine, it’s like three years old, only kept it for the tips on…

And then an echo, like a projection in the air, and it’s fleeting and its faint but where that voice what pretty unmistakable already, the coif of chestnut and the peek of a polo collar, and the seizing in Eddie pulse for both together—it’s almost more undeniable.

That’s fucking Harrington.

—

The vision is, seconds. At most.

But it shifts Eddie’s priorities entirely.

He starts the day—he’s guessing it’s the start of the day, it’s always fucking grey here but he’s just going off of when he’s hungry so—but he looks for cereal in one of these decrepit houses and eats it out of the box as he tries to get his bearings.

Tries also to remember all the weird shit the kids used to say before Eddie knew they were making any of it up.

Context clues give him that this is Hawkins. 1983 or thereabouts—makes sense for the magazine.

But what makes more sense, and is more helpful: Steve had bitched the magazine was moved.

And Eddie’s definitely the one who had it in his hand when he heard said bitching.

So there’s still some connection. Hope’s not totally lost.

Mostly, maybe. But not totally.

—

He decides to go back to Harrington’s and just wait until he goes there to sleep so he can tail him, have some sense of how he can try and make contact from his own side, let someone know he’s still here.

It takes forever; Eddie wonders just how different time runs, here, save that when he finally hears something, the vision is clearer in the air, ghostly but more complete.

And Steve looks fucking wrecked.

Like he hasn’t slept in days, like he’s about to fucking cry, like he—

He’s still the most beautiful guy Eddie’s seen in person, if this counts as in-person, but like—that was never not-true.

“Rob, I don’t know! I just, I just feel like—“

“I will handcuff you to your bed.”

Eddie tries to feel excited that whatever’s happening is strong enough that two voices come through, that Robin’s here, she’s safe too—

But he’s more invested in what’s causing the shouting.

”I know how to pick a fucking lock, Jesus,” and Eddie doesn’t not think about the lock he’s worn more than once around Steve at his belt, nope, he does not—

”The gates are closed, Steve. It’s over.”

Well. Fuck.

There goes the hope thing.

”Not all of them. Not totally.”

Or maybe not.

”Steve, I will hunt you down, I will dog your steps, I will follow you every single moment if you think I am leaving big you even consider going back to—”

“I love you, Robs, but you still can’t drive. Think you’ll beat me on your Schwinn?”

“I will slash your tires.”

“Sorry, birdie, got AAA to save me.”

And that’s all Eddie gets, but…

It almost feels like he’s got one single snowball’s chance in hell, here. Still. Just one, true, but.

If he’s learned anything the last few days, it’s that Steve Harrington’s maybe the most reliable snowball he could ask for.

His chest is all tingly about it, even—fucking traitor.

—

Eddie doesn’t even really have to follow where Steve goes next. In that he knows exactly where it is, just not why the fuck Steve wants to be there.

Especially since even the lack of evidence in ‘83’s version of the trailer still makes him look up at the ceiling and feel like he’s gonna puke.

”Oh sure Mister Munson sir, I just want to borrow your dead nephew’s cassettes, that are definitely in the trailer the fed have locked down to be sent to Area 51 or wherever, just in case he’s not entirelydead in another dimension, and he can hear me because I’m definitely not losing my fucking mind, and definitely not because being called ‘Big Boy’ didn’t fuck with my head more than mutant bats ever did…”

Steve’s frankly endearing muttering, and that last bit especially, distract Eddie enough from the fact that Steve is actively rummaging through his room.

Through his room, Jesus, Eddie moves because he even clocks that lunging at Steve here won’t do shit there to stop the questionable literature Steve’s already sifting through.

At least Steve can’t see him blush across planes of existence. Hopefully.

“Oh,” and Steve sounds shocked, but then looks…gutted?

”One more for the ‘you suck’ column,” and Eddie decides right then that he fucking does not approve of that tone, at all; ”not like I had a chance, definitely not his type…”

“But my type’s the paladin who protects everyone and needs a faithful bard to tend his wound and keep his bed!” Eddie blurts out into the nothing on his side of the divide.

“My type’s been you since fucking junior year!”

Because Junior-Eddie was admittedly much more lust-driven. Let that be said.

Now-Eddie’s equally if not more invested in the heart of a man.

And Steve Harrington, even remotely thinking that he isn’t Eddie’s type?

Maybe Eddie really is dead. And this is hell.

—

”Why do I need them?”

Eddie’s got a new box of cereal—Kix, could definitely be better—and has now trailed Steve to what looks like…the edge of town, which, who lives there…

”Nah, kid, nothing bad. Just want to see something. Promise.”

One of the kids. Maybe this is where the Byerses are, now, if they were right and they’d been on their way back? Because Eddie knows where the rest of them live, and this ain’t it.

Theresa are footsteps in one direction, and Steve wanders in the other, where Eddie sees a girl with a buzz cut he doesn’t know, but who stares Steve down in a way that…Eddie can kinda guess.

They’d all alluded to the super powered kiddo more than once.

”Can you look? Like, just to see if he’s—”

Eddie’s neck turns fast when he turns back in to the conversation, less for the words and more for how timid, how cowed Steve sounds and he…

Eddie just wants, more than anything really, to be able to reach out and touch. To comfort. To do…

Something.

”…would not feel him even if he was there. The connection is gone. The Upside Down is dead.”

And Steve deflates, and Eddie…Eddie remembers the lights didn’t they have to be emotionally unstable, kinda, to make the lights flicker, to let someone know they’re there, and Eddie’s definitely there because—

Not fucking all of it, not yet, Eddie wants to scream; or maybe yes all of it but I’m still fucking here.

Also: that man is 100% my type and I want a fucking shot, I want my snowball’s chance in hell, I want to bite him and call him sweetheart like I mean it and I want, I want, I want—

Also that.

Steve leaves with some…fucking magnets.

And the lights didn’t do jack shit.

—

Eddie spends most of that night playing with magnets.

Well, not at first.

First, he tries yelling, sobbing, focusing like a Force-user, really anything he could think of to get Steve’s lights to flicker. No such luck.

So then Eddie makes a side quest, after having dutifully made certain not to leave Steve’s side for…however many days.

He pops to Melvald’s because of anyone’s got kiddie alphabet magnets, it’s gotta be them.

And score. Definitely not the worst thing Eddie’s stolen. Plus this place is on the way out. Not really relevant, here, if he cared.

Which he fervently does not.

And proves by grabbing two fifths of tequila on the way out. Hah.

He finds Steve passed out on top of his comforter, plaid monstrosity that it is, and he tries very hard to brush his hair back—nothing.

And then Eddie…somehow that’s the straw that breaks the pack-mule’s back. Something in him just fucking snaps.

Because he distinctly remembers this whole fiasco being tied to the labs owned by the fucking Department of Energy, right?

And they can’t even keep the electrical connection between dimensions working?

That’s…that’s unacceptable.

He’s gonna…he’s gonna file a fucking complaint. He’s gonna show up at a picket line. He’s gonna write a strongly worded letter. He’s…

Actually, he’s got all night if the way Steve’s sprawled says anything for how long he’s gonna stay conked out. And he’s also got these handy alphabet magnets.

Letter it is.

—

”What the fuck?”

d3ar 3nergy d3pt he4d i ju5+ wan+ed to te11 th15 guy i w4n+ t0 b1+3 him but n00 y0u c4nt e73n d0 +h4t i h8 u

Eddie trips over some empty bottles, the answer of how they got there pounding in his head real quick—oh, hey, hangovers do transcend dimensions, seems suspicious—but yeah, okay, he does remember getting creative with the abundance of math magnets in the poorly-labeled alphabet pack last night, misleading to lead on letters by default on the packaging. He does recall being very convinced a sideways ‘7’ was a passable ‘V’. But.

He’s not looking at his side of things. He’s looking at Steve’s.

And so is Steve.

And then Steve—who Eddie wants to bite but also kiss and maybe just hold in his arms chest to chest to feel his warmth because when his control broke last night it conveniently knocked him upside the head with the clear realization of that fact that Steve Harrington?

Is doing all this shit for him. On the hope of a maybe.

And Steve Harrington had been disappointed not to have found his lookalike in Eddie’s porn rags.

And Eddie wrote a letter to the fucking DoE in magnets about it, and Steve can see it, stuck to his fridge in 1986 as clear as Eddie slapped it there in 1983.

”…Eddie?”

Steve’s voice is so small and so fearful to be wrong. His chest is heaving, he’s scared.

Eddie scrambles for the magnets left on the floor and smacks them violently to the refrigerator door in record time, prays to everything he doesn’t believe in that Steve can feel his relief spelled out in the bulky primary colors:

h3y 61g b0y v3

And goddamnit, when Steve falls to the floor with his jaw dropped loose, Eddie is 100% sold:

A ‘V’ turned on its side absolutely makes the bottom half of a heart for the three to butt-up to.

—

“Got these to play so if you were there, and couldhear me, you could find your way, if,” and Steve, Steve has been talking to Eddie since they both woke up and found those magnets, even if they haven’t been able to replicate anything, not the letter nor the faulty lighting trick Eddie’d complains about on the fridge in the first place: it could just be a fluke. Steve has no reason to believe Eddie’s alive, that Eddie did that, that Steve didn’t sleepwalk into sleep-spelling, that Eddie even alive in some form would be following his every move.

Of course he is, but. Steve can’t know.

It’s all on faith. For Eddie.

And fuck is Eddie’s heart doesn’t go playing ping pong with his ribs for how much it hits him, how wide and warm it swells in his chest like hope, only second to affection, to want, to—

“Vecna’s not gone, but he’s like, one step from it. I don’t know he can get you but,” Steve taps to the Walkman, to the headphone he gets on just one ear so he can hear and also so someone else—so Eddie—can hear Megadeath as Steve bustles around his house, packing a duffle that reminds Eddie of when they were peeping to storm the castle—

That’s what Steve’s doing. That, that’s what Steve is doing right now.

“I just,” Steve heaves a deep breath, hands on his hips before one pinches between his eyes; “I felt like you were still there, I can’t explain it,” and Eddie’s shaken to his core right now in the best possible way so when he blurts out in a croon:

“Power of loooove, Stevie!”

He can’t be blamed for that. He can’t. He’s…

This man is going down into hell, has not grantee of what Eddie knows in it being largely innocuous, now, save…undead Vecna lurking somewhere, so weak he’s not even noticed.

“But we know music works though, so.”

Steve’s still narrating his plan; Eddie is just staring. Wants to…wants so fucking bad to touch.

“We have to wait for night, for me to get down there. They’re shitty with security on the graveyard shift.” Then Steve’s smirking, and fuck, he’s so pretty.

”Plus Robin sleeps like the dead, she won’t have a chance to notice what I’m doing even on the off chance word got out.”

And the fact that Steve is willing to defy his own platonic soulmate for Eddie—barely knows him in terms of days and hours but at least, if it’s the same as Eddie’s realising more and more that he feels, and unshakable too: it’s like his soul knows Steve, and that cannot care a lick for how time runs, it’s bigger than that.

There’s too much of a sense of potential, a crackling possibility just being in his proximity, even with the distance of other goddamn dimensions—there’s too much swirling in Eddie already for it to mean nothing.

Plus, like: flip the script. Steve is risking everything on a whim, for him.

It cannot be nothing.

“I’m hoping you’re where we left you, which,” and Steve’s voice catches, he pauses, looks around like he’s hoping Eddie might pop into the visible spectrum, so he can see and know, but then he just looks up at the ceiling like—oh, fuck, like it’ll make sure no tears fall out and:

“I can’t fucking tell you how sorry—“ Steve starts to say be Eddie can’t bear watching like this, strides over in an instant and grabs Steve’s hand.

And Steve stills.

And Eddie can feel his pulse in his wrist.

“Is that you?” Steve barely breathes, stares now at his arm where…Eddie can only see the kind of glimmering overlap that means two things are happening in the same place on different planes, he’s grown used to that. But.

If Steve can feel him, if there are moments here that are probably limited where Eddie can prove some little tiny bit that he’s here and he’s listen and he’s with Steve—

He pulls Steve’s hand and drags him into the kind of full body hug he’s been aching for for…fuck.

Too fucking long.

“Eddie,” Steve sighs out, and Eddie can’t help himself. He runs hands through Steve’s hair, and holy fuck: Steve leans in.

Steve feels it enough to lean in.

“It feels like I’ve been falling for a ghost, man.”

Steve says it on a whisper, like he’s still not sold entirely, or else maybe afraid to break a spell. Eddie gets that second part.

“But I guess it kinda started before that, so maybe it’s not as fucking crazy,” Steve laughs a little wet with it and…Eddie has to, because what if he never gets another chance, and hell—if he does, how can he deprive them both the chance to know whatever the sensation will be, like this?

Eddie’s not up to risk never knowing what a cross-dimensional lip lock feels like, okay?

So he doesn’t.

“Please don’t be a ghost,” Steve breathes out and fuck, Eddie can’t taste it but he can feel the way the air moves and it’s, it is; ”I think if you are, I’ll live the rest of my life trying to make it work anyway, I,” and Steve doesn’t get to finish because Eddie pushes in again, and Steve’s as good as his reputation and then some, on wholly separate planes of being.

Eddie cannot fucking wait to feel it flesh to flesh.

“I fall fast, man, but this is kinda insane,” Steve pants, arms out awkward with any indication where to hold. He’s adorable.

He’s delectable.

“But you did say you wanted to bite me, assuming you were talking about me,” Steve smirks but then his eyes go wide:

“Oh, shit, are you a vampire?”

And Eddie has no idea how long he’s been down here alone, surrounding by the silence and the darkness and just the projection level overlay of Steve when he’s lucky, but Jesus H. Christ—

“Is that you laughing?” Steve chokes on his own kinda-giggle as he braces against an unseen and unseeable force barrelling into him: of course it’s Eddie.

Of course he’s fucking cackling.

Because however long it’s been, he definitely hasn’t laughed at any point at all in that span of time—and fuck if he didn’t need it.

—

Steve slips down the last burbling gate not without effort, not without lava-hot road rash no doubt fucking with his already not-yet-healed stomach.

When he’s tackled, thrown straight to the ground, weight pinning him to the ground that’s more dry, more deadened than Steve remembers from just days ago: when his back hits the ground—none of it matters.

“It was me laughing.”

And then Eddie’s mouth is on his—it’s the echo he was afraid he’d imagined that morning, just like the hand on his wrist, just like the laughter wrapped around him.

“You’re an even better kisser in person, holy shit, even your fucking glowing reputation shortchanged you.”

And Steve’s kinda breathless, not just for getting smooshed to the dirt; but then Eddie’s kissing him again, and breathing seems really kind low on Steve’s list of giving a shit.

“You are so my type it’s not even funny,” Eddie says, before diving back into kiss with a bruising kind of force, an unmistakable kind of intent; “I think my type has fully migrated to include kinda just you.”

And Steve’s heartbeat kinda stutters at that because…that’s new.

No one’s ever…well.

It’s just new.

“You weren’t wrong to leave me behind, you don’t ever have to apologize,” and then he’s kissing along Steve’s jaw, and it’s Steve’s laughter now, the tickle of dirty curls dragging at his stubble; “you got out, you’re safe, you’re here,” and Eddie sounds almost overcome with feeling, with relief, and then in the end, bubbling with joy. And somehow Steve can tell it’s not because Steve’s here to save him, bring him home.

It’s just because Steve’s here and that, that is—

Steve’s heartbeat’s just gonna do that tripping thing for the foreseeable future he thinks, at this point. Probably.

“I was trying to convince myself otherwise, because I didn’t think there could ever be a shot in hell but I was falling before it all fell apart, too,” Eddie says in a rush, leaning again to kiss the corners of Steve’s lips, like talking is just an inconvenient interruption to better ways of using his mouth and given how goddamn much Eddie Munson’s always talked, that fucking says something:

“And ever since, it’s felt like I was falling in love through a movie screen,” and he cups Steve’s face to angle it just so as he breathes, those eyes endless and glistening; “could see but never reach, until,” and then he’s kissing him straight on the lips again, a full-frontal assault, tongue seeking teeth, looking for the depths of his goddamn soul of something.

Steve isn’t even embarrassed for how he arches up, how he fucking moans. No one could ever feel this and do anything less.

Like: fucking impossible.

“I liked your letter to the editor,” Steve gasps when Eddie breaks apart and concedes to needing air, presses kisses up and down Steve’s throat while he regroups.

“Oh, shit,” Eddie’s face pops back up—dirt smears and ruddy and in need of a shower but on the whole in way better shape than Steve last remembers having to walk away from, and fuck, fuck—he’s never walking away from it again; “can we send that to the Post? No edits, I want my numbers intact, let them try to figure it out like Zodiac.”

Steve snorts, because god he really is half in love with this nerd, and he’s not a ghost, he’s sold and his chest is heaving into Steve’s and he’s grinning wills and he’s here and they’re here and this is realand—

He yells when the sting clamps through his much-less-extensive uniform of his Members Only jacket despite the weather—it’s freezing, but like, the gates were just cracks, he had to move like a ninja!

Just not a bite-proof ninja, apparently.

“You know, I should have expected that,” Steve deadpans, but his smile gives him away as Eddie pulls his mouth back from the stretch of Steve’s neck that runs to his shoulder, where honestly Steve thinks Eddie punctured the coat in the process. Fucking feral gremlin.

Steve really wants to keep him. Like, indefinitely.

“You really, really should have,” Eddie agrees, beaming like the sun when there’s only dark around them, making it all feel so warm in the chill.

“Honestly should have expect nothing less,” Eddie’s smile curls a little dangerous as he leans in again, apparently satisfied with having caught his breath enough as he mouths wet against Steve’s lips:

“Big boy.”

And then, again: he pounces.

♥️

also on ao3💫

✨permanent tag list: OPEN (lmk if you want to be added/removed): @ajeff855 @askitwithflours @awkwardgravity1 @bookworm0690 @bumblebeecuttlefishes @captain--low @depressed-freak13 @dragoon-ze-great @dreamercec @dreamwatch @dreamy-jeans137 @estrellami-1 @goodolefashionedloverboi @grtwdsmwhr @gunsknivesandplaid @hiei-harringtonmunson @hbyrde36 @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @kimsnooks @live-laugh-love-dietrich @mensch-anthropos-human @nerdyglassescheeseychick @notaqueenakhaleesi @ollyxar @pearynice @perseus-notjackson @pretend-theres-a-name-here

divider credit here

[harryspurpleloofah]

Bunny (H.S)

Summary: Harry is explaining the terms and conditions to a man who wants to borrow money from him when Y/N walks in after having dealt with a man who had the balls to lie to Harry. Soon all the men leave Harry and Y/N alone.

TW: Harry’s drinking and smoking a lot, no graphic detail but mentions of blood alluding to injury, swearing, smut, riding, safe sex ☂️ , bit of fluff at the end, he’s not the nicest guy but he’s not a bad guy.

The bar was quiet, soaked in low golden light, the scent of whiskey and cigar smoke thick in the air. Outside, rain painted streaks down the windows, but inside, the world belonged to Harry Styles.

He sat in his usual booth..private, secluded, untouchable. One arm rested along the back of the leather seat, his fingers idly tracing the rim of the whiskey glass in his other hand. Across from him, the man sat stiff and uneasy, shoulders curled inward like he was trying to make himself smaller.

"You want money," Harry murmured, not a question—just a fact. His voice was smooth, slow, deliberate. A man with all the time in the world. "And you came to me because the banks won’t touch you, and every other poor bastard you’ve begged from knows you’re not worth the risk." The man swallowed hard.

Harry finally lifted his gaze, green eyes locking onto the man like a predator sizing up its prey. "That’s what you are, yeah? A fucking risk." He tilted his head, tapping one ringed finger against his glass. "But me? I’m a generous man. I don’t turn people away. I help them."

Relief flickered across the man’s face, just for a second. Harry smirked. They always made that mistake.

"You’ll take what I give you," he continued, voice never rising, never wavering. "And in two weeks, you’ll return it to me, plus fifty percent." He took a slow sip of whiskey, savoring the burn before setting the glass down with a soft clink. "Fail to pay on time, and the interest doubles. Another week? Triples."

The man shifted in his seat, his breath hitching. His mind was working a mile a minute, clearly calculating, panicking. "But…what if something happens? What if I can’t come up with it?"

Harry leaned forward just a fraction, his eyes sharp as blades. "You don’t want to ask questions, mate. You want answers. And here they are." He looked the man over, letting the weight of his words settle in like heavy stones. "You will pay. One way or another. Because I don’t give second chances. I don’t give fuckin' excuses."

The man’s voice cracked. "What…What happens if I don’t? What really happens?"

Harry’s smirk never faltered, but something cold flashed in his gaze. "You still don’t get it, do you?" He took another sip of his drink, casually, as if the conversation didn’t matter at all. "If you can’t pay in cash, you’ll pay in other ways."

The man leaned in, desperate, his voice growing more frantic. "Other ways? What do you mean by that? What are you gonna take from me? I—I have nothing to give!"

Harry studied him for a moment, eyes narrowing as the man flinched at his own words. "You really think I care about what you have?" Harry chuckled softly, the sound low and cruel. "I’ll take what’s mine. If I want something, I’ll have it. Whether it’s your money, your time, your freedom—or something you care about even more."

The man’s face went pale. "Something I care about? What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Harry leaned in, his voice dropping to a whisper, laced with cold venom. "It means when you owe me, I own you. You’ll do whatever I say, whenever I say it. If you can’t pay me, then you’ll pay with your life. And I don’t mean that as a threat—I mean it as a promise."

The man froze. Sweat started to bead on his forehead, but his mouth was dry, speechless.

Harry’s gaze never left him. He was patient, almost too patient, watching the man’s face twist with fear, confusion, and then realization.

"So what’s it gonna be?" Harry asked, voice almost bored now, as if the man’s decision was the least interesting thing in the world. "You pay, and we move on. Or you don’t, and I come to collect." He flicked his fingers dismissively. "Your choice."

The man sputtered, his chest rising and falling rapidly as panic settled in. He reached for the pen with shaking hands, still questioning, still uncertain. "But…what if I can’t get it??"

Harry’s eyes gleamed with a dangerous light. "Then you’ll understand exactly what I meant."

He let the silence hang, the tension so thick it was suffocating. The man barely had time to blink before Harry continued.

"Either way, you’ll pay," he repeated, voice calm as ever. "And trust me, you’ll wish you paid sooner. You’ll wish you never asked me for a penny. But by then, it’ll be too late."

The man flinched at his name. His hand grabbed the pen with trembling fingers, the weight of the moment sinking in. His mind was racing, but his body had no choice but to obey.

Harry sat back, watching, eyes cold and unblinking, as the man scrawled his name on the paper. Harry’s gaze moved to the contract, then back up to the man, his lips curling into a small, satisfied smile.

"Good. We’re done here," Harry said, voice cutting through the tension like a knife.

The man stood up too quickly, still shaking. Harry didn’t move, not even a muscle, as the man backed away, his eyes locked on Harry, still wide with fear.

Harry’s voice followed him as he stumbled toward the door.

"I’ll be seeing you soon. And next time…don’t be late."

Soon, the door to the bar creaked open, the sharp click of heels against the hardwood floor cutting through the heavy atmosphere. The usual hum of low chatter and clinking glasses seemed to hush for a moment, as if the room recognized her presence before even her figure entered fully. A woman stepped inside—Y/N.

She was a vision. A black dress clung to her like it was made for her body, the fabric smooth and sleek, catching the dim light as she moved. It wasn’t overly flashy, but it fit her like a glove, with an effortless sophistication that said she owned whatever room she walked into. The kind of dress you could wear anywhere, but still make everyone turn their heads.

Her legs were encased in sleek black leather boots. The duffel bag slung over her shoulder gave her an air of casual chaos, the leather creased under the weight of whatever she had carried with her. Her ringed fingers, now smudged with a deep crimson, brushed absently through her hair.

The manicured nails, sharp and polished, seemed at odds with the mess she’d made of herself..yet it all added to her untouchable charm. One ring on her fourth finger, a perfect fit. But not just any ring. Her wedding ring.

She didn’t flinch at the looks thrown her way, nor the subtle tension in the air. Her eyes scanned the room for just a second, flicking over the unfamiliar faces, but it was Harry she was after. And Harry was already watching her, the faintest glint of a smile tugging at his lips as she approached.

Y/N’s walk was slow, almost languid, but every step was deliberate, purposeful. The man across from Harry still looked like he was about to cry watched her with wide, confused eyes. Harry’s presence, usually commanding enough to make most people tremble, suddenly seemed to pale in comparison to hers.

She slid into the booth beside Harry with the ease of someone who owned everything including him and knew it. The world moved around her, but she didn’t even flinch. Not when the man’s gaze followed her, not when the men glanced in her direction.

She didn’t speak at first, just reached for the cigarette hanging from Harry’s lips and pulled it from between them. A sharp inhale, deep and unbothered, as the smoke curled lazily from her mouth.

"I can see you’ve been busy," she said casually, her voice smooth but sharp like velvet. She didn’t need to ask; she already knew exactly what Harry had been doing, who he'd been speaking to, and the weight of the deal he'd just made. The power dynamic didn’t change for her. She'd been in this world far too long to be impressed by men like him or the way Harry ran his affairs.

Harry turned his head, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Not busy enough," he answered, his voice low, heavy with a layer of satisfaction. "But I’m happy now that you’re here..."

Y/N flicked the cigarette to the ashtray with a practiced motion, eyes never leaving his. "You finished with him?" She nodded toward the man, who was still frozen, looking as though he might explode from nerves.

Harry glanced over at the man and then back to her, his expression unreadable. "We’re done. He knows what happens if he doesn’t get it together."

Y/N didn’t need to hear the rest. She'd seen the power Harry wielded, and she'd felt it countless times before. The deal was done, and the man’s fate had been sealed long before the pen hit the paper.

She slouched comfortably in the booth, her duffel bag now resting by her side as her body language turned laid back, like she’d been here a thousand times before. She crossed her legs, the hem of her dress shifting as her black boots clicked softly against the wood beneath her, and leaned in slightly toward Harry. "Good," she purred, her fingers grazing over his hand with a casual touch. "I don’t like waiting."

Harry’s lips curved into a knowing smile, the air between them charged with a dangerous kind of intimacy. He wasn’t just the one in control of the room, she had his attention, just as she always did.

The man, still standing awkwardly by the table, cleared his throat. But before he could speak, Y/N raised an eyebrow, her voice cutting through the tension like a blade.

"Do yourself a favor, mate," she said, voice silk-smooth but dripping with warning. "And leave. Before we make you regret sticking around any longer."

He quickly turned and left, his footsteps loud in the otherwise silent room, but neither Harry nor Y/N paid him any mind.

“What have you been up to, bunny?”, Harry gently asked her, taking her hand in his.

“I was dealing with that misogynistic prick. Brad. You know the forty grand he borrowed from you, baby?”

Harry nods, lighting himself another cigarette as she continues, “he spent at least half of them gambling and he other paying his lawyer to defend him against his wife who he hasn’t paid child support to in fucking years.”

Harry rolled his eyes, “got the money, love?”

She gestured to the bag. One of his men picked it up to look inside before nodding at Harry and putting it down. She turns to him.

Harry didn’t acknowledge her right away. He took his time.

One slow drag of his cigarette, one long sip of whiskey, his gaze lingering on the bloodstained curve of her knuckles before flicking back to the amber liquid in his glass.

Y/N smirked, kicking off her heels beneath the table before shifting to press herself closer, one leg crossing over the other, the sleek fabric of her dress riding up just enough to catch his attention.

Still, he didn’t look. Not yet.

"Busy today?" she murmured, tilting her head slightly as her fingers ghosted over the sleeve of his jacket, light and teasing.

Harry exhaled slowly, smoke curling between them.

"Should be," he muttered.

Y/N hummed, leaning in just enough that her perfume wrapped around him, something sweet and heady and utterly distracting. "Then why aren’t you?"

Harry finally turned his head.

That knowing little smirk, the subtle gleam in her eyes, the kind that told him she was enjoying this. Enjoying the fact that she could sit there, still stained from the night’s work, and have his full fucking attention without even trying.

She reached forward, plucking the cigarette from his lips, taking a slow drag before exhaling..deliberately close to his mouth.

Harry’s jaw tightened.

"You’re playing with me, Bunny," he muttered.

Y/N smirked around the cigarette, tapping the ash into his ashtray before leaning in again….closer this time.

"You always say that," she whispered, her breath warm against his jaw.

Harry’s fingers twitched against the glass in his hand. His men were still watching. He could feel them, their presence lingering, their gazes sharp, their patience thinning. And so was his.

A voice broke the silence. "Boss, we should—"

Everything stopped. Harry didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Didn’t even breathe.

But the air shifted. Something deep, impossibly lethal crept into his stillness, into the slow way he exhaled through his nose, like he was considering violence. His gaze flicked..just slightly.

One sharp, silent warning. The man froze. The others did, too. Because that look? They knew that look. That was the look a man gave right before he made an example out of someone. A thick, suffocating pause stretched between them.

"Out."

Not loud. Not a yell. Just low, cold, final.

The kind of command you didn’t hesitate to follow. And yet, one of them did. Just for a second. Just long enough for a flicker of hesitation to cross his face, for his weight to shift like he was thinking of saying something else. And then, he actually fucking spoke.

"Boss," the newbie said carefully, clearing his throat. "We should be focusing on business."

Silence.

Y/N raised a brow, but didn’t turn her head. She could feel Harry’s stillness beside her.

The newbie swallowed but kept going—fucking idiot.

"We've got clients to meet. Money to collect. Work to do." His voice had a hint of confidence now, like he actually thought he was making sense. "No offense, but...this isn’t important."

Y/N barely held back a smirk.

Not because he was right. But because he was about to learn something very important.

Harry finally turned his head..

"You new?"

The newbie shifted. "Y-yeah. I mean, I’ve been here a couple of months but—"

"Long enough to know how things work?"

"Of course, boss, I—"

"Good." Harry nodded once. "Then you should know better."

The confidence in the newbie’s face flickered. "I—I wasn’t trying to—"

"You were," Harry said smoothly, tapping his cigarette against the ashtray. "You thought I wasn’t paying attention. Thought you’d remind me of my responsibilities." He flicked his gaze back up, slow and sharp. "Thought you had something to say about my wife."

"You think I don’t know how to handle business?" His voice was smooth, almost amused. "Think I’ve forgotten how things run around here?"

The newbie hesitated. "I—I didn’t mean—"

Harry tapped the ash from his cigarette, barely sparing him a glance. "Let me remind you of something."

He leaned back, stretching his arm along the back of the booth, his other hand rolling the glass between his fingers. "I got married while running six schemes across three countries. While laundering more money than you’ll ever see. While dealing with eight clients, two shipments, and an overdue loan breathing down my fucking neck."

His gaze lifted finally locking onto the newbie.

"And all of them," he said slowly, "were handled. All of them were done and dusted. And every single one of them knew better than to call me the second my bedroom door closed."

"You wanna know why?" he murmured, swirling his drink. "Because they knew what was best for them."

Harry took another slow sip of whiskey before setting the glass down. "You got something else to say?"

The newbie shook his head. Hard.

Harry smirked, flicking his wrist toward the door. "Then get the fuck out." The door closed without a second more.

The door clicked shut behind Harry’s men, and the room fell into a thick, dangerous silence.

The second she saw they were gone, she swung her leg over his lap, straddling him with the same ease as a predator. No hesitation.

Harry didn’t blink. He didn’t move. He simply watched her, his hands resting at his sides, calm but ready.

Y/N took his cigarette from his lips without asking, the edges of her fingers grazing his skin as she crushed it in the tray beside them. Her gaze locked on his, playful, daring.

“It’s not good for you, baby,” she said, her voice dripping with mock sweetness.

Harry’s jaw twitched, but he didn’t respond. His eyes, however, were dark with something that had her breath catching in her throat. He leaned forward just a fraction, lips curling as he licked them slowly.

“Neither are you, bunny,” he shot back, his voice low and rough.

Y/N smirked and took his glass from the table, bringing it to her lips. She sipped it slowly, her eyes never leaving his as she set it back down with a soft clink.

“Neither is that,” she teased, running her hand down his chest like she owned him, like she knew he was already on the edge of losing it.

His hands twitched at his sides, fingers flexing, but he didn’t speak yet.

“Thought they’d never leave,” she murmured, her voice shifting to more sultry. “Missed you.”

Harry’s eyes narrowed, and he reached out, grabbing her wrist in one swift motion, pulling her closer until their bodies were flush, his lips brushing her ear.

“You missed me, huh?” His voice was laced with something dark. She unbuckled his belt and freed his cock from his boxers. She dug through her purse for a second, finding a condom and sliding it on before she looked back up at him.

“I’m not in the mood for foreplay ok?”

“Whatever you say, bunny.”

Y/N raised an eyebrow, biting back a smile as she felt the heat building between them. Without another word, she moved, sliding herself down onto him. Slowly. Intentionally.

The second she sank down, she gasped, the feeling of him filling her sending a jolt of heat through her body. She was about to say something when his lips found her neck, his teeth scraping lightly against her skin, “what?”

“Don’t play coy with me,” Harry muttered, his voice strained as he gripped her waist tighter, pushing her down on him. "I’m the one who’s been waiting all night for this."

His fingers dug into her skin, pulling her into him as he moved his lips to hers, kissing her with ferocious urgency. There was no softness, no gentle teasing. This was about power, about claiming. “Bunny, come on let me have my fun.”

“I don’t need you to remind me who’s in charge,” she whispered, a dark laugh in her voice. “I already know.”

Y/N didn’t wait. She rode him good, her nails raking over his chest.

She reached up, her fingers grazing his chest with a tease before making quick work of his shirt. Her hands pulled at the collar, unbuttoning it with slow movements. The anticipation was thick, like every button that came undone added a layer to the building tension between them.

She soon managed it and slipped it off his shoulders, leaving him almost glowing in the dim light of the booth, his tattoos visible.

His hand shot up to her hair, threading his fingers through the soft strands, his grip tightening as he pulled her closer to him. His other hand found her waist, pulling her against him. He ran his fingers through her hair again, this time a little rougher, as his lips crashed against hers with ferocity.

“Fuck, Y/N.”

A while passes. It was going great but she was getting tired.

She bit her lip, trying to keep her focus, but she couldn’t deny it—she was feeling the strain in her legs, the ache in her pelvis. Harry’s hands were still gripping her waist, guiding her movements with firm, but slow control, and it was starting to feel a bit too controlled for her liking. She wanted more. She needed more.

She gave one last slow roll of her hips before she stopped, leaning forward to rest her hands on his chest for support, breathing heavily.

“You’re starting to look a little tired, baby,” Harry teased, his lips curling into a smirk as his hands tightened around her waist. “Should I do all the work now?”

Y/N shot him a playful look, her chest rising and falling with her quick breaths, but she didn’t argue. She was too exhausted, her legs aching with the effort. She wanted him to take control, to make her feel like she couldn’t breathe without him.

Without warning, Harry’s hands gripped her hips and flipped her onto her back, his body covering hers in an instant. She gasped, startled by the sudden change in position, but her surprise was quickly replaced by anticipation. His eyes darkened with desire, a wicked smirk tugging at his lips.

“You wanted me to do all the work?” he growled, his voice thick with need. “Well, here we are.”

Before she could respond, Harry slammed into her, his pace hard and fast as he took control of the situation. His hands were on her hips, keeping her in place as he moved above her, each thrust deep and precise. Y/N’s body arched beneath him, her hands gripping the sheets as she tried to keep her composure.

“Tell me how it feels, Bunny,” he murmured in her ear, his lips brushing against her neck as he continued to thrust into her. “You wanted me to take over, didn’t you?”

She could only moan in response, her head falling back into the pillows as his pace quickened, the tension in her body building again. She reached up, trying to grip his arms, but he was too far gone, too deep inside her for her to do anything but just look at him.

Harry leaned down, his lips pressing against her ear as he thrust harder. “I told you, didn’t I? Don’t ever forget who’s in charge here.”

Y/N’s nails dug into his skin as she writhed beneath him, her moans filling the space between their heated breaths. She could feel the hard length of his cock driving into her, each thrust sending ripples of pleasure through her core. Her voice grew louder, her words slurred with desire.

“Harry…oh, Harry…” she pleaded, her hips rising to meet his as if in defiance of gravity, trying to match his fervor.

Harry’s own breathing grew ragged as he intensified his pace. His hands roamed her body, one gripping her hair as he pulled her head back for a deeper kiss, the other sliding over her curves, exploring every sensitive spot with expert precision. His eyes darkened as he whispered, “You’re mine, Bunny. Let me have you—completely.”

Every thrust built upon the last, a symphony of heat and desire, until soon both of them were lost in a haze of sensation. The room seemed to disappear around them, leaving only the raw, unfiltered need that surged between their entwined bodies. Their rhythm quickened, and the air grew thick with the scent of sweat and desire as they edged closer to the peak of their passion.

“Cum for me,” Harry rasped, his voice rough with command and need, as he pounded into her with all the force of his desire. “Cum for me, Bunny—let it all out.”

Y/N’s response was immediate and explosive. Her body tensed, every muscle contracting as waves of pleasure crashed over her. Her cries mingled with his as she surrendered to the overwhelming release, her hands clutching at the sheets as she came undone beneath him. Harry’s own high wasn’t far behind; his pace surged as he reached his breaking point, his own release joining hers in a torrential, shared moment of ecstasy.

They came together, every thrust, every kiss, every whispered command melding into one singular, unforgettable explosion of passion. For that one, electrified moment, nothing existed except the two of them.

When the storm finally subsided, they lay tangled together on the soft couch, their breaths gradually returning to normal. Harry’s hand still rested in Y/N’s hair, stroking it gently as if to remind her that, even in the aftermath of their intensity, he remained her unwavering, dominant force.

Y/N lay there, her chest rising and falling in rhythm with her breath, her body still trembling from the release. Harry’s eyes softened as he looked down at her, his fingers gently brushing a strand of hair away from her sweaty forehead. He could see the flush still creeping along her skin, the way her lips were slightly parted as she caught her breath

“You alright?” he asked, his voice low and soft, the usual dominance replaced by concern. He ran a hand over her body, almost as if checking if she was still there, still whole after the intensity of it all. His thumb traced the curve of her waist, and then he leaned in to place a tender kiss on her temple.

Y/N smiled, still catching her breath, but the warmth in her eyes told him she was more than okay. She nodded, reaching up to touch his face. Her fingers grazed his jawline, tracing the roughness of his stubble. “I’m good,” she said, her voice still breathy but soft.

Later that night they were in their shared king bed. He took her hands, now perfectly clean and lathered with handcream but he remembered the blood, “bunny?”

“Mm?”

“Maybe…we should go back to me handling the physical side of things..”

She looked up, “what? But I love helping you. I love doing this, we never hurt anyone for no reason you know that.”

“I’m aware love, I’m the boss remember? But I’m worried about you not our morals. What if something happens to you?”

“Couldn’t I say the same for you?”

“Well…”

“I guess we both have to be careful from now on. For each other.”

“Fair enough I guess.”

“Deal?”

“Deal, bunny.”

“Maybe….

[apomaro-mellow]

Govt gets kas!eddie 7

Part 6

Robin looked at Steve strangely as they sat in his car, waiting for Erica and Dustin to finish up their business in the library.

"Aren't you hot?", she asked, eyeing the hoodie. It was almost June, why was he so bundled up?

"No", Steve lied.

"Well you look hot", Robin said. He wasn't quite sweating yet. Just a light sheen. "You know if you pass out from heatstroke I'm not lugging your ass around, right?"

Steve snorted. "You won't, but Dustin will. You remember the joyride Max took a couple years back?"

"Damn, you're right", Robin remembered that story. She couldn't imagine getting your shit rocked and then waking up to a bunch of kids driving your car. Well one kid. While the others yelled at each other. Then she realized she was being diverted and was about to ask directly about the hoodie when Dustin and Erica rushed back out.

"We got it! Drive!", Dustin shouted, despite the fact no one was chasing them.

Steve peeled out either way. Time was of the essence when it came to this stuff, as he had come to learn. That's why every single moment of calm felt precious. All the more so once Steve learned he was carrying...something. Like other creatures of the Upside Down, Eddie wasn't fond of sunlight. So he stayed in during the day. The moment they got back to the house, Eddie was on him, arms wrapped around his torso like he'd just been off to battle and not just a recon mission to the library.

Thanks to the AC, Steve was no longer dying. But he didn't dare to take off the hoodie while it was still daylight. Coming to terms with being pregnant came surprisingly easy. It was the fact that he was growing...well...fast. And that meant telling others sooner rather than later. And that meant he and Eddie would have to come out.

Somehow, Steve thought just saying he'd been infected by spores would have been less scandalous than the idea of Eddie impregnating him. But he didn't want to lie to everyone. And technically it wasn't a lie. He just hadn't told anyone. Hopper still gave them looks when Eddie's touches lingered too long but Steve could handle one person not approving. Especially since Wayne had already set him straight. Robin would be on board with most of it. He just didn't know how she'd react to the pregnant part.

And the others....

Steve was so lost in thought, he hadn't realized the conversation was pointed at him until Eddie's hold tightened on him, his large hand holding his belly protectively while he growled into his ear.

"No."

"No? Whaddya mean no?", Mike demanded.

"It's not safe", Eddie said.

Steve got his head back in the game. Right. The plan. The plan to defeat Vecna and the Upside Down once and for all. They had a map of Hawkins strewn about the dining room table and several little baubles to represent themselves. Just like before, Steve was supposed to be on the team that attacked Vecna's physical body.

"What do you mean it's not safe? None of this is safe", Erica said.

"We're all risking our lives, Eddie. This isn't anything new", Nancy said.

Eddie just growled again. "Not safe for-"

"Eddie!", Steve cut him off, afraid of him saying too much. "It's okay. I'll be careful. We'll be careful. Besides, I'm not the one that nearly died last time", he said, poking Eddie in the chest.

Eddie at least had the decency to look ashamed at that. And so once again, Steve would be on the front lines. It was fine. They had Eddie now. And just like before, El would attack from that weird mindscape. There were other lines of assault. They had more people on the ground. They could cover more bases. Steve could be a part of it still. He should be a part of it.

He'd wear sweaters and hoodies just until it was all over. That was the plan anyway. To grin and bear it. And he did. Even as his belly grew. He might be worried about how quickly this was all going if it was a normal pregnancy. But, well, this was anything but normal. During the day, he hid it to the best of his ability.

At night, he lifted the thin shirt he wore so that Eddie could put his ear to his stomach. They smiled as they felt the little something wiggling inside of him.

"We should think of a name", Steve whispered, stroking Eddie's hair.

"Names", Eddie corrected.

"What?"

"More than one. There's more than one", Eddie said, kissing Steve in three places on his belly.

Three....

Three?!

"Three....", Steve said, more to himself than to Eddie. His hand moved, trying to feel them. One moved, pressing against his hand, like they knew he was reaching out to them.

"They feel you", Eddie said, moving up so that he was face to face with Steve. "And they love you."

Steve felt the sting of tears in the back of his eyes. Probably just hormones but still-

"I love them too."

Eddie smiled. "They know."

There was a little flutter in his stomach (his womb?) and Steve really wanted to cry now. He sniffled a little. "I promise I'll be careful, Eddie. I promise. For all of us."

Eddie didn't say anything in response. He just made a little sound and nuzzled Steve's neck. They'd both be careful. Because things were different now. Now Eddie had the strength to rip apart anyone that dared to threaten Steve.

Part 8 (final?) coming soon

Taglist

@estrellami-1 @gloomysoup @bxnghy @gutterflower77 @v3lv3tf0x

@tinyplanet95 @thedragonsaunt @stripey82 @ajeff855 @bumblebeecuttlefishes

@ellietheasexylibrarian @gregre369 @geekymagicalpotato @live-laugh-love-dietrich @mugloversonly

@reverseteehee @stedestielfrattficlover

[shmisky]

Of course you guys would vote for the hardest meta to write! 😭 ✨

Okay, let’s go! Teen Stans + “suffocating,” an attempt to understand the issues of their relationship from teen Ford’s point of view and the reason(s) for their separation. This is going to be long, but hopefully all the pictures and gifs make it an easier reading! There’s just so much to unpack...

It’s a sad subject in and of itself, but I did my best to wrap it all with a happier stancesty note! So trust the process! 🩷

I don’t think I need to point out, to most stancest shippers, where the word “suffocating” comes from. It was a very memorable scene, if nothing else, since a lot of people hated Ford for it.

[x]

I think it’s so obvious that Ford was projecting and actually talking about his and Stan’s relationship here that I won’t even attempt to prove that, hahah.

Now, is this Ford... A) talking about his true feelings regarding his and Stan’s relationship when he was young, even before the science fair incident, or B) lying to himself, as he presumably started to do ever since (but only after) the science fair incident?

First, I’d like to invite you to actually listen to Ford’s voice/watch his mannerisms as he says this, here (timestamped). The thing is that... he doesn’t sound very bitter! He doesn’t sound like he’s throwing shade at Stan. Instead, he sounds and looks—pay attention to his eyebrows—like he’s genuinely puzzled. Does Dipper... really think he’s not meant for something more? Why! He’s so brilliant, with so much potential! Just like Ford when he was younger! The poor boy must be really attached to his sister...

Second, I’d like to invite you to not be so harsh on Ford, as he says that it, nor she is suffocating—the relationship Dipper has with the girl, not the girl herself. Not that Ford can’t be mean! He can be terribly mean, sometimes, especially out of spite. But the man has some limits. He wouldn’t say this about his twelve-year-old niece.

Another thing to be taken into consideration is that Ford was convinced Mabel would be fine, since she had a magnetic personality. This is a trait he very likely also attributes to Stan! In TBoB, for example, he was convinced of Stan’s ability to make the waitress laugh. There’s a lot of evidence for the fact that Ford had no idea of how badly Stan was faring and/or would fare without him, due to the idealized version of Stan Pines in his head.

That said, here is the behind-the-scenes commentary on Dipper and Mabel vs. the Future:

Alex Hirsch: Ford offers Dipper [an] apprenticeship because Ford sees Dipper as somebody who’s special like himself. And that’s Ford’s great flaw, that arrogance. He believes there are special people and everyone else.

Jason Ritter: And that you can be held back by your siblings, maybe.

Alex Hirsch: Yeah, he believes that attachments are actually weaknesses.

It has been said before Alex is too harsh on Ford, hahah. Perhaps he is. But that’s something also made canon in J3 in many, many excerpts, and stated by Ford himself quite plainly here:

“I thought being a great man meant being alone.”

When did he start developing this mindset, though? Before or after the science fair?

I think some of you might have read the (in)famous TVInsider 2016 interview in which Alex states Ford saw his brother as a “bumbling leech” (ouch!) his “entire life.”

In terms of Stan and his brother’s conflict, we always wanted a moment where Ford saw that he was wrong. Ford’s spent an entire life imagining himself as this lone solitary hero and imagining his brother as this bumbling leech. From a narrative point of view, for Ford to see Stan be the hero finally lets Ford see the true side of his brother that he’s been too blinded by pride to see.

Now, an important fact is that—I think many people fail to grasp this—Ford looking down on Stan doesn’t mean Ford not loving Stan. My boy can and will multitask!

And, of course, “entire life” didn’t actually mean Ford’s entire life! It was definitely an exaggeration on Alex’s part, meant to convey that for most of Ford’s life, presumably from late teen years old to the current age, Ford looked down on his brother.

We know for sure that baby Ford never looked down on Stan, and in fact defended him from the Sibling Brothers in the last Lost Legends comic!

But one thing we also see is how baby Ford already shares, to a certain extent, adult Ford’s ambition:

Another trait, equally important, early on: the tendency to think he was special and/or different from everyone else, for better or for worse. Like one of the very first things Stan told us in his childhood retelling in AToTS, “As if his abnormally high IQ wasn’t enough, he also had a rare birth defect: six fingers on each hand. Which might have explained his obsession with sci-fi mystery weirdness.”

As he grows up, he also grows, understandably, very proud of his accomplishments. In Stan’s words, “Ford’s brains seemed to get more impressive every year.”

He grows to embrace the “freak” part of him more and more, both ashamed and proud of not fitting in. Like Bill so gently phrased it in TBoB: “The ego of a king. The insecurity of a circus freak.”

But what does this mean for his relationship with Stan?

I think the first thing we have to know is that Stan is Ford’s identical twin, something that is heavily alluded to in canon and confirmed by Word of God. The first comment from Alex regarding this matter that I could find was this tweet from 2015. Then it was further confirmed in the DVD commentaries.

Why is this even important? Twins of the same gender, especially identical aka monozygotic twins, tend to struggle with identity issues. Not only the same birthday, but the same face—that without having to share even a name.

The second thing is that they only ever had each other. I talk more about their codependency here.

Again, I borrow Alex’s words when asked about Shermie’s role in the family as Stan and Ford’s brother in a 2023 interview:

In terms of Shermie, I remember asking Rob or somebody at some point, like, “Would Shermie be here, logically? Do we have to see him?” I don’t really wanna see him. I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in Stan and Ford being—sort of having only each other and then losing each other because of their different life paths.

The best example we have of this in the show is probably Stan’s line in AToTS, “Those bullies may have been right about us not making many friends, but when push comes to shove, you only really need one.” Stan not only acknowledges their dynamic, but sounds very content with it.

Was Ford content with it, tough? That’s... more complicated.

Like we’ve established, these two were identical twins (unlike Dipper and Mabel, fraternal and of different genders) and only had each other (again, unlike Dipper and Mabel), which not only exacerbated their codependency but also their identity issues. They were used to being two halves of a whole. It’s very telling that in AToTS, “the Pines twins” are both called to the principal’s office, even though only Ford should have been called. They were seen as a single entity.

And don’t get me wrong, Ford has always loved Stan so much. Perhaps part of him even enjoyed the fact his brother trusted and leaned on him so much, depended on him both emotionally and to... get a passing grade.

But for some reason, even before the science fair... things still grew quite awkward. From Stan’s Land Before Swine commentary (DVD extras):

Anyway, cut to high school, the guy’s never kissed a girl, prom is coming up, and he asked me for advice. “Stanley, I know things have been a little weird between you and me with college, but can you talk to me about girls?”

The interesting thing here, to me, is that Ford... straight up recognized the “weirdness” between them to Stan’s face! And the fact Ford felt the need to mention it, as if he couldn’t simply ask his own twin brother for advice about girls without making a sort of acknowledgement first! These brothers once told each other everything! How did things get to this point?

But wait... Stan says “prom is coming up”... The same prom at which they laughed together and shared a moment of camaraderie after Stan threw punch at himself to share Ford’s humiliation.

Which to me points to the fact it was something gradual, happening little by little, hand in hand with the sweetest moments in their teen years. It’s truly like this song in my (locked) stancest playlist:

Two birds on a wire

One tries to fly away

And the other watches him close from that wire

He says he wants to as well

But he is a liar

Imagine you’re Ford Pines. You know you are special. You’re both a genius and a freak. You are always praised by adults around you, by teachers, and finally, by your very difficult to please father. This starts to go to your head. You cling desperately to the “genius” part of your identity, so you can be more than a bullied freak. You grow even more ambitious. You can see a future for yourself.

You have a twin brother. You love him more than life itself. But everyone talks, and... aren’t they right, somewhat? Just a little bit right? Stanley isn’t a genius, like you are. That’s a fact. Stanley also doesn’t have ambition, like you have. Stanley isn’t a freak, like you are. It doesn’t mean Stanley isn’t cool! But you are... different from him...

And yet, despite all that, he’s your identical twin brother! You can only ever be one half of a duo. A single entity. Even your name, you share with him. He doesn’t seem bothered by that, but you are. Can’t you just be Ford, for once, no Stan? (Ironically, you miss the fact that your brother was always more under your shadow than you ever were under his.)

You start to think that the Stan O’ War isn’t anything more than a beautiful, but ultimately childish, dream. It isn’t very realistic, is it? You could be so much more than that. You could actually make a difference. You could prove everyone wrong about ever calling you a freak. You try to breach the subject with Stanley, but all he wants to talk about is this damn boat. And you care about it too, of course you do, but... Doesn’t he care about anything else?

I can see, so easily, the influence of other people on Ford slowly (and subconsciously) growing, even though his love for Stan didn’t diminish. I can see him noticing the mismatch between his ambition and Stan’s ambition, his academic achievements and Stan’s academic achievements... or lack thereof. Again, this is the teenage version of the little boy getting starry-eyed about seeing his own face in the papers. Except now, the possibility of Stan being there with him... doesn’t seem as likely.

I can see, also very easily, Ford having some intrusive thoughts, then immediate guilt over them. For example, after someone mocks Stan for his grades, Ford comforts him while thinking, “but yeah, maybe Stanley could really put more effort in—wait, what? He’s my best friend! I can’t think like that about him!”

Stan’s narration: “The future was looking bright... for both of us.” Oh, Stan... Ford’s smile looks painfully awkward.

Just notice the difference between Ford’s posture and body language there and here in college!Ford’s picture (and, again, look at Ford’s eyebrows, but also the way he leans in Stan’s direction):

It’s important to remember that this, too—the scene in which Ford smiles awkwardly—was before West Coast Tech.

But now, with West Coast Tech, he finally has something solid. Something tangible. A real way to make a name for himself. And he loves it. Now this is the face of true happiness, hahah!

He manages to win even the approval of his famously “not impressed” father!

But...

He’s visibly very upset by having his brother insulted like that, and he didn’t know Stan was on the other side of the door overhearing their whole conversation. But he also doesn’t defend his brother, like Stan likely would have, and Stan doesn’t see Ford’s facial expression, here. He just hears silence from him.

And then... Oh boy, the swingset talk.

“Joke’s on them if they think you wanna go to some stuffy college on the other side of the country,” Stan says, then proceeds to boast about their future adventures, only to end it all with a painful expression that shows he doesn’t believe what he is saying. He knows what Ford is truly going to choose.

Stan asks him what would happen if the college board was impressed with his experiment. “Well then, I guess you better come visit me on the other side of the country!” Which indicates he clearly didn’t expect Stan to come with him, either.

Then The Accident happens, and Ford reacts accordingly.

[x] [x] [x]

I’ve mentioned this on another post, but it’s fascinating to me that Ford knew what would cause Stan to do something like sabotage his machine. He doesn’t accuse his brother of feeling jealous of his success! Oh no, that’s not your typical sibling drama of competitiveness, nor lack of communication. Instead, he accuses Stan of sabotaging his machine so Ford would stay with him! And, while it had been just an accident... He’s right about Stan’s feelings.

We know Stan’s feelings about this. He says, with all the letters: “Without Ford, I was just half of a dynamic duo. I couldn’t make it without him. And now, thanks to that dumb college, I was gonna lose my brother forever.” I know the “forever” was perhaps Stan being a bit melodramatic (understandable considering his distress) but it also shows us he didn’t expect their relationship to go back to normal, or for the college to be just one passing fancy. He knew it would be just the start of his brother’s career.

And perhaps this is the last thing you’d expect me to bring up at this point, but...

Do you remember this episode? Little Gift Shop of Horrors?

We talk about Ford projecting on Dipper about a relationship being “suffocating,” but Stan was doing some impressive amount of projecting here too, hah, considering that he was more likely than not making up all the stories.

Just. This entire conversation:

Stan couldn’t be more unsubtle if he tried. And of course, Waddles chooses Mabel, his favorite person in the world. We know whose “favorite person” Stan wants to be...

I bet you would’ve liked for Ford to jump into your arms, Stan!

But again, back to Ford.

Yay, Ford is free of his suffocating relationship with Stan! Free to do things like looking at pictures of Stan with yearning! Writing that he misses Stan in code while yearning! Staring at the Gravity Falls’ lake with yearning because it reminds him of Stan! The last one in particular is very amusing to me because to study anomalies was basically Ford’s dream job and he loved Gravity Falls and... and yet! (You might want to read this for the full extent of Ford’s clownery.)

Free, too, to actively attempt replacing Stan with Fiddleford, Bill, and then Dipper! Because, again, he yearns!

Yeah, I know... Ford is quite confusing. What does he want? Everything and nothing, at the same time?

And now I need you to bear 🐻 with me and read this entire excerpt of the 2023 interview, most important parts highlighted in bold by yours truly:

Ford was very much us building backwards. The same way you know a black hole is there by the light warped around it, it’s like, you know the damage someone’s family has done to them by all of their weird tics and behaviors. So who is the character who would result in Stan being this hurt and needy and mad and also longing?

And so we came up with this guy who kinda seemed too perfect. And is distant. He’s aloof, and distant, and he’s too perfect. And it’s like, “oh! I think he’s also aloof and distant from himself.”

I think he is, uh, deeply deeply hiding from his real feelings about things, because at some point early on, he decided that he could run from hurt by achievement and by creation, and has dug that hole so deep that he has no relationships. He doesn’t have friendships, he doesn’t have romantic relationships, he is someone trapped in a tower of his own mind and estranged.

(Alexa, play Oh No! by Marina and the Diamonds. Love using old memes.)

The stancest fandom has had for some time (as early as it existed!) a very interesting theory that Ford’s romantic feelings for Stan were the cause of Ford’s “suffocation.” And while I do subscribe to this theory myself—I mean, if you read the excerpt above as a shipper, especially my highlighted parts, it is extremely validating of this interpretation—I prefer to not disregard the other reasons why Ford might have felt this way, either! To me, for a better understanding of Ford, even cesty Ford, you have to put all the puzzle pieces together. Identity issues, an explosive mix of ego and self-loathing, growing ambition, and only then, as the cherry on top: Ford’ incestuous tendencies. You have the perfect dessert! Or a recipe for disaster...

My headcanon might even read as a bit contradictory, I know. Teen Ford growing more in love with Stan and growing to look down on Stan? At the same time? But this is Stanford Pines, you guys. A walking contradiction. The man is basically made of conflicting feelings. Cognitive dissonance is his hobby.

We know Ford has always loved Stan very deeply—and yearned for his company just as badly—through his entire adult life. So what, exactly, changed in old Ford for him to invite Stan to sail away together again, post-Weirdmaggedon?

Well.

First, he spent forty (40) years separated from Stan, and then almost lost him forever (or at least their relationship), from a certain point of view. Have you ever heard that saying that you only know the value of something or someone after you lose it? Teen Ford had never lost Stan, and didn’t know how much he would miss him. (Alexa, play Let Her Go by Passenger...)

On that same note, all those years separated allowed him to develop a personality and identity of his own, and a very defined and strong one at that. (Yes, poor Stan meanwhile spent that time pretending to be Ford. Ironic.) The Stan twins have also managed to be competent at what was once their weak spot, something they relied fully on their brother for. Stan has managed to learn and understand complex physics to fix the portal. Ford, on the other hand (and we’re focusing more on his feelings, here), has definitely learned how to defend himself physically.

Second, Ford was severely humbled by the narrative. He thought he would get to be the hero, when the hero was actually his brother. “Stanley Pines was the man who saved the world, not me.” His pride was a great barrier between him and Stan. And on what regards his self-loathing and subsequent thirst for external validation, he has learned to seek love in the right places! His family. Stan.

Stan, who always loved him unconditionally, who never considered him a freak in the first place. Stan, who is now his priority, above his scientific ambition.

And finally, third—the incestuous feelings headcanon. Why repress, Ford? Jump Stan! 😌 💋 That is something they can... resolve between themselves, if you catch my drift. They have all the time in the world stuck together, just the two of them, on a small boat.

Have I finished yapping? No, not yet, not quite. I need to wrap things up with another excerpt from the 2023 interview, aka my favorite interview ever:

[...] and it’s always sweet to see them come together again, because they’re so full of themselves, but they are also both so damaged they desperately need each other.

Diversity wins! The codependency of your gay incestuous ship is mutual! 🥳

After all, like Ford himself said, “I don’t just want someone to come with me, Stanley, I want it to be you.”

[gatheringbones]

[“In the old ideographic language of Vietnam, the word xa, which Westerners translate as “village” or “village community,” had as its roots the Chinese characters signifying “land,” “people,” and “sacred.” These three ideas were joined inseparably, for the Vietnamese religion rested at every point on the particular social and economic system of the village.

Confucian philosophy taught that the sacred bond of the society lay with the mandarin-genie, the representative of the emperor. But the villagers knew that it lay with the spirits of the particular earth of their village. They believed that if a man moved off his land and out of the gates of the village, he left his soul behind him, buried in the earth with the bones of his ancestors. The belief was no mere superstition, but a reflection of the fact that the land formed a complete picture of the village: all of a man’s social and economic relationships appeared there in visual terms, as if inscribed on a map. If a man left his land, he left his own “face,” the social position on which his “personality” depended.

In the nineteenth century the French came, and with their abstraction of money they took away men’s souls — men’s “faces” — and put them in banks.1 They destituted the villages, and though they thought to develop the economy and to put the landless to work for wages in their factories and plantations, their efforts made no impression upon the villagers. What assets the French actually contributed to the country in the form of capital and industrial plants were quite as invisible to the villagers as the villagers’ souls were to the French. At a certain point, therefore, the villagers went into revolt.

Ngo Dinh Diem and his American advisers, however, did not, or could not, learn from the French example. Following the same centralized strategy for modernization, they continued to develop the cities, the army, and the bureaucracy, while leaving the villages to rot. As it merely permitted a few more rural people to come into the modern sector in search of their souls, this new national development constituted little more than a refugee program. For those peasants with enough money and initiative to leave their doomed villages it meant a final, traumatic break with their past. For the nation as a whole it meant the gradual division of the South Vietnamese into two distinct classes or cultures.

Of necessity, the guerrillas began their program of development from the opposite direction. Rather than build an elaborate superstructure of factories and banks (for which they did not have the capital), they built from the base of the country up, beginning among the ruins of the villages and with the dispossessed masses of people. Because the landlords and the soldiers with their foreign airplanes owned the surface of the earth, the guerrillas went underground in both the literal and the metaphorical sense. Settling down among people who lived, like an Orwellian proletariat, outside the sphere of modern technology, they dug tunnels beneath the villages, giving the people a new defensive distance from the powers which reigned outside the village. The earth itself became their protection — the Confucian “face” which the village had lost when, for the last time, its hedges had been torn down. From an economic point of view, their struggle against the Diem regime with its American finances was just as much of an anticolonial war as that fought by the Viet Minh against the French — the difference being that now other Vietnamese had taken up the colonial role.”]

frances fitzgerald, from fire in the lake: the vietnamese and the americans in vietnam, 1972

[chimuelo2005-blog]

Viktor Didn’t Just Want to Live—He Wanted to Be Remembered (And Piltover Took That from Him)

Viktor’s illness in Arcane is one of those things that people talk about, but I feel like they only scratch the surface. Yeah, it’s tragic, yeah, it’s why he pushes Hextech so hard, but the way it actually shapes him. His mindset, his relationships, the way he exists in the world is so much deeper than just “he doesn’t want to die.”

Like, Viktor isn’t just running out of time—he feels it, every second of every day. He doesn’t get the luxury of patience, of hesitation, of slow and careful progress. People frame his desperation as a descent into obsession, but let’s be real; when your body is literally failing you and you’re one of the smartest people alive, of course you’re going to throw yourself into your work. What else is he supposed to do? Accept it? Lie down and die? He’s been sick since childhood, and you can see how that shaped him into someone who refuses to waste even a second.

And that’s why his relationship with Jayce is so painful to watch. Jayce is idealistic. He believes in progress, but in a way that’s manageable, controlled. Jayce is thinking about the future in terms of decades. Viktor? He doesn’t have decades. Every time Jayce hesitates, whether it’s about Hextech, about the ethics of what they’re doing, about the council’s approval, it’s not just frustrating for Viktor, it’s terrifying. Every delay, every “we need more time,” feels like another nail in his coffin. And the real tragedy? Viktor knows Jayce cares. He knows Jayce wants to help. But Jayce has the privilege of time, and Viktor doesn’t. That’s a gap that love and friendship alone can’t fix.

And here’s my hot take: Viktor’s biggest fear isn’t just dying. It’s dying without proving he mattered. His whole life, he’s been seen as weak, as fragile, as someone people pity. Hextech isn’t just about survival for him—it’s about legacy. It’s about making sure that when he’s gone, the world will remember him as something more than a sickly kid from the Undercity. And when you look at it that way, his whole arc stops being a “tragic downfall” and starts looking like the only path that ever made sense for him. Because if the alternative is fading away into nothing? Then yeah, of course he’s going to push further. Of course he’s going to risk everything. Because at least if he goes out, he goes out leaving something behind.

And that’s why the fact that people took Viktor’s name off Hextech is actually one of the most tragic things in the show. Like, Hextech wasn’t just some invention for him, it was his life’s work, his legacy, the thing that was supposed to make sure he was remembered. He built that with Jayce. It was supposed to be the proof that he mattered.

And then the second he wasn’t there to fight for his place in history? They erased him.

They didn’t just take away credit. They took away the one thing that kept him going, the thing that made all of his sacrifices mean something. Hextech was supposed to outlive him, and in a way, that was supposed to be his version of immortality. But now? Now it’s just “Jayce Talis’ great invention,” and Viktor is nothing more than a footnote.

Like, imagine dedicating your entire existence to something, burning yourself down to nothing just to make a mark on the world, only for people to turn around and act like you were never there to begin with. That’s not just tragic—it’s devastating. And the worst part? Viktor probably saw it coming. Because deep down, he always knew he wasn’t the kind of person history remembers.

[sophsicle]

oh my GOD, will Barty's problematic ass ever come to terms with the fact that he is in love or what?? Yes, maybe, legal reasons? I love him but Jesussss

he just genuinely doesn't believe in love

idk how else to say that

like he just cannot comprehend it, and he certainly doesn't see the thing him and evan have as fitting into the soft delicate ooey gooey feeling people usually seem to be referring to when they say "love"

like he does know that he cares about Evan more than anything else in the world, especially now that his father has disowned him

both Evan and Barty at this point in the story have lost everything but each other, so there is nothing they will not do for one another, literally nothing--kill, die, anything in between--neither of them have lines they won't cross or morals they won't sacrifice

and barty knows that, i just don't think he conceptualizes it as love

it's something sicker and uglier and darker

another form of violence

[foundnthestars]

HI. I bring Questions. >:]

How long are Dipper and Stan in the portal for? I remember you saying it somewhere a while ago but I can't remember

Does Mabel ever get sent back home? (Home being Piedmont)

Tell me more abt Ford. Just. Anything about him. How does he come to terms with the fact his identity was stolen for 30 years? And that he can't even ask Stan about it? Does he ever learn about the kids interactions with Bill? How does he feel about the new entries in his journal? Just. Tell me abt Ford.

Are there any characters you haven't introduced yet who will be important later on, canon characters or otherwise?

HI! THANK YOU FOR THESE QUESTIONS COPPER!! i was out of town so i wasn't able to answer these until now but i've literally been thinking about them all weekend!!

I. this is a question i've given a lot of thought, and i think i've settled with a date i'm pretty satisfied with! i think stan and dipper would be in the multiverse a MUCH shorter time than mabel and ford would be in your traditional drifting stars au. that would mainly be because ford knows where to get materials faster than stan or dipper would in the same scenario — i.e. crash site omega. but it'd still take a while because ford will have to figure out a way to pinpoint their exact location in the multiverse rather than just rebuilding the portal as according to its original design.

so, they'll be coming back right around early summer/mid summer 2014. right before mabel and dipper's sophomore year of high school. mabel would have gone through the 8th grade and freshman year without dipper :( so about 2 years overall — just in time for the twins' 15th birthday!

i have so many headcanons about the twins' high school experience post-portal. sheesh. so much angst potential. but dipper would have to get up to speed in time to enroll in school with mabel, and ford would definitely spend a lot of time tutoring dipper to get him ready for 10th grade. (no better person to teach a triangle-averse, traumatized teen trigonometry than a triangle-averse, traumatized old man!! yay for trauma-informed mathematics!)

II. THIS. THIS. THIS. The Parents. They Haunt Me.

i'm a sucker for realism in fics (i mean y'all know how i obsessed over the capacity of stan's hearing aid batteries for weeks and couldn't let it go) so working out the twins' parents' role in this was definitely a struggle. it needed to be realistic while also allowing very vital plot points to happen. like mabel staying in gravity falls, for one thing.

so many drifting stars fics don't really talk about the parents, and trust me, i get it! it's hard to write and enjoy ford and mabel bonding when you have two devastated, grieving, hysterical, protective parents trying to yank one party back to boring old piedmont where nothing ever happens and plot goes to die. but i also didn't want their parents to wind up being two shallow, underdeveloped background characters who couldn't care less about where their sole child ended up.

in my opinion, no reasonable, sane parent would let their daughter stay with an adult who was the sole party responsible when their son went missing. i also couldn't really see two grown adults from some random californian suburb suddenly becoming okay with the idea that their son went through an interdimensional portal, no less still letting their daughter stay there after hearing about it.

the only way i could see a parent letting this happen was if they decided somehow that staying home was somehow worse than all possible risks. sure, great uncle stanford let dipper go missing right under his nose, but at least he's apologetic about it. that 70-something year-old man is running around the woods at night looking for their son (apparently). that lumberjack girl is crying at the mention of him while swearing up and down that she'll protect their daughter with her life. there's a 20 year old kid who keeps shoving photos of their son and daughter on some fishing trip in their face and bringing homemade baked goods and dishes his abuelita made for them to take home with them.

and what's waiting for mabel in piedmont? nothing good. nothing resembling a healthy family environment. it's apparently bad enough that their normally spritely, energetic, kind, allergic-to-lying daughter is running away from home in the middle of the night. the pines parents are Not Okay, and they know mabel won't be okay with them either right now. there's a messy divorce and an alcohol problem sneakily brewing and until they can get their shit sorted out they'll have to trust ford to take after mabel for a while.

that's the focus of the next chapter! and it's coming real soon! a lot more will be delved into (it won't be as clear cut as them just shipping her away to gravity falls for 2 years) but mabel's here to stay! [TTDR: Nope!]

III. ahhh ford. i can tell you many things about ford.

mabel is just constantly, always talking about stan. what shows he watches. what color he begrudgingly admitted he liked best when they were finally able to take off his bandages after the Color Incident. the way he takes his coffee in the morning. it doesn't matter what. she just Keeps. On. Sharing. ford has no idea what to make of it at first. stan sacrificed the entire universe and put his own niece and nephew at risk and stole his identity and entire life. how is he supposed to forgive him for that? (he secretly wants to know more and never, ever interrupts mabel when she starts talking about him. blue's his favorite, too. the color of the sea.)

ford gets really freakishly good at acting like stan. he hates doing it but he knows he has to if he wants to keep their story going. when he has to make trips into town, he puts up with people asking him about the shack and dipper and why he's passed the mr. mystery torch over to soos. even though he hates that his identity has been entirely stripped from him, he has to admit that it's nice to be liked by so many strangers. his view of stan gets pretty warped because of this. he has to reconcile a lot with the stan he thinks knows (a.k.a his anger) and who he really is to those around him.

mabel is entirely responsible for making ford the soft, family man he was always destined to be. that will play a HUGE role in his and stan's reconciliation and the way he'll treat him when they come back :) (there will be no punching or arguing, thank you very much)

he learns about bill and the kids in the next chapter. he feels many things. none of them good. i'll let you guys read that for yourselves. i loveee when fics touch on ford's reaction to dipper's possession and bill's interactions with them, and ford will NOT be pleased to hear about any of this or bill's recent rendezvous in mabel's dreamscape

when he reads the entries in the journal, there's far less of the "i can't believe this kid scribbled over my life's work" than there was in canon. mainly because ford is deeply, palpably guilty that dipper got pulled into the portal HE created. here's a child that revered him and ended up losing a huge chunk of his adolescence because of it. he can't pin the blame on stan forever. not when he reads dipper's entries and sees the potential in a life that might be lost to bill or to the harsh realities of the multiverse. (he spends nights reading them and imagining what could have been if things didn't go so horribly wrong).

IV. yes! more important characters on the way. pacifica is the only one of them who is actually included in tags for now :) take from that what you will and for what that says for the future, hehe. super excited to introduce her and to write her dialogue !

there are also some other canon characters who are not tagged yet, because it'd be too big of a spoiler, but are MAJOR to the plot. super excited for those chapters!!

as for OCs, they are vital for plot progression and world building for a fic of this nature but they will never overshadow canon characters or be inserted in any major way. just a bit of fun world building coming for those guys!! i had a lot of fun writing acksyien for that short bit so expect more wacky side characters for dip and stan to meet!

[paingoes]

(long Paris apologia paragraph ahead sorry)

I love both Delta and Paris, and while Delta is infinitely more likable and I have more in common with Delta re: autism and child abuse, I honestly find Paris to be a more compelling character? (Part of this is because I'm also an alcoholic with complex trauma and I so very rarely see the worst parts of my trauma being represented in a sympathetic light.) I definitely get why people don't like him. he's a violent shithead, a menace to society and himself, not to mention he has the emotional intelligence of a rock.

You mentioned this in a previous post but I think you did a really good job with showing that a lot of Paris' worst qualities (his violent mood swings, his sense of entitlement, his power tripping abusive behavior etc) comes from a place of his own patheticness and refusal to change (especially the times when he breaks down after getting too drunk) and I think that's what allows me to sympathize with and like him more then anything. His childishness in his most monstrous and vulnerable moments really drives home that he's not really suited to the role of all powerful monarch he was raised to be, and who's abuse and status in the empire caused him both to grow up way too fast, while at the same time never allowing him to develop into a healthy adult and that he's in many ways, a kid in a grown person's body who sees himself as doomed to repeat the cycles of his childhood trauma that created him unless he chooses otherwise. (A horrifying and daunting task for someone like him)

Like the scene where he breaks Delta's arm and almost drowns him? It's scary as hell but what stands out to me it despite the horrible violence and long term consequences of his actions, is just how petty and childish his motivations for doing so is (which does not make them any less harmful). he's acting this way because he feels slighted and abandoned by Lorelai. You hurt me I hurt you. This gives me a lot of leeway into both sympathizing with him as someone with similar struggles while also reminding me that he's not the way he is because he's powerful, like he wants you to believe, but a very weak and jaded person who wants to feel powerful and is given the systemic means to. Which doesn't make him less dangerous.

Sorry for the long ask, I'm just very much enjoying your story, especially Paris's "being humbled by life" arc and I'm super excited about what will be in store for both him and Delta next ❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹

oh my godddddd this was such an amazing thing to wake up to. i kind dont even wanna post it i just want to hold onto it forever. this is so sweet.

i dont know if i can respond to all of this right now and i might talk more about the different points you brought up later. but generally i am so pleased with this analysis and im pleased you have gotten this much out of it? im gonna say more under the cut

pretty heavy warnings for child abuse. nothing explicit just discussion of institutional child abuse/complex trauma and how it affects people psychologically.

like i said i could talk about them basically forever but re: childishness and being pathetic. YEAH i mean i think it is very obvious that paris’s growth has been stunted as a result of abuse + neglect. in fact i think that growing up in empire alone is inherently stunting because it is a system very much designed to kill empathy and to breed hunger and greed in people. its a problem with the whole society, cruelty and selfishness are incentivized over developing more complex moral structures and even over developing your own identity.

[ people like lorelai are very much an outlier within Empire, but i think its clear that she is….also pretty immature? she has a lot of love and a desire to do good, which kind of makes up for it, but she is childish in the sense that her parents sheltered her and her own ideas about revolution and utopia are very very idealized. i think this delusional optimism is a good thing for paris tbh and it kinda balances out his own cynicism. but lorelai will need to grow up at some point too. its just her reckoning is allowed to be softer. ]

but paris’s case was particularly bad for a few reasons.

the most obvious is that he was prince and naturally the expectations placed on him were a lot greater and the consequences for not meeting them were a lot harsher.

paris was born with pretty severe ADHD and mood regulation issues and his symptoms only worsened the more that he was punished for them

paris at his core is a genuinely sensitive and intelligent person that understands right from wrong

and i think this alone provides a lot of context for how he is now but it also makes it easier to understand why his childhood was basically torture for him. like yeah exposure to complex trauma will kind of naturally stunt your growth at certain points but you also get the sense that paris’s growth was like. deliberately stunted or that the handicap was self-inflicted. paris acts dumber than he is. its how he makes peace with it. its cool to be a callous idiot because if you have to be a self aware and moral person in this environment you will immediately get one-shotted by guilt.

and for what it’s worth i think delta’s growth was also — obviously — stunted. but in a different way shaped by their respective roles.

it’s legitimately really gross for me to describe it this way but it does feel like one of the goals with delta’s conditioning was to make a forever-child. someone who will do what you say and remain perfectly ignorant and docile and obedient. he can be used but is basically incapable of putting up a fight. martino and simon both speak to delta like he’s a child and that infantilization is to keep him pliant and similarly trapped in that same sense of helplessness he felt when he was little :(

i think delta is very low empathy naturally and actually doesnt have an innate moral compass which is what made him such a perfect candidate for the job. but it also means he is super susceptible to getting someone else’s morals imposed onto him as long as he finds them logical and coherent. his ability to morally reason and his way of interacting with people is obviously very underdeveloped but its more immediately obvious why.

ive said before that i think delta is more emotionally mature than paris but i think maybe this paints an incorrect view of things? i mean. delta is not holding his tongue and regulating his own emotions because he thinks its a mature thing to do. hes doing it because he knows not to speak without permission and that if he ever had an outburst the way paris did, he would be beaten within an inch of his life. so i feel like maybe its wrong to attribute this as one of his virtues. (without totally discounting the fact that delta is very sweet and doing his best.) delta would very much struggle with like. setting boundaries, standing up for himself in any way, communicating his feelings. you can describe paris as childish but i think delta is childlike. in that he’s also suffering the consequences of abuse but his specific conditioning has made him more fawny in a way that reads as sympathetic and virtuous.

basically yeah my point was. they were both stunted at some critical point in their development and are both dealing with the consequences of that. paris was a victim but he was simultaneously groomed to be a perpetrator, versus delta who is mostly victim.

anyway thanks so much wow im gonna print this whole ask out ❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹

[blondphobic]

in celebration of my 1st anniversary as a lads player, i’m sharing my ranking of the current love interests and some random thoughts on them, not that anybody asked or care about

1st place of course comes Rafayel, I wouldn’t be exaggerating saying he’s everything I like in a otome character, he’s SO charismatic, caring, funny, passionate, a switch (jeez who wrote that?), endearing and more, he caught my eye the moment I started playing the game, I adore his dynamic with mc, I’m very fond of flirty banter and they delivered.

he’s so complex and by coincidence I wrote this quite-long-but-not-as-long-as-the-original-draft post yesterday about how people simplify his character’s internal conflict and that he’s much MUCH more than most fans seems to give him credit, I didn’t even know today was gonna be my 1st anniversary, I found out because they sent me celebrative messages, I wrote that just because I fucking love Rafayel. I love you, Rafayel!

2nd place comes Xavier, I’ve been in a Xav phase recently, I can’t really say why because I actually don’t know, I’m just in a Xavier mood, I like his personality and his interactions with MC, he’s very tender, friendly and sweet, I really like that, the jealousy thing kinda activates my fight or flight but I chose to overlook it since he isn’t my main and another LIs gonna step into the 2nd place next month anyway.

3rd place is Zayne, I almost put him on 2nd because I really really like Zayne but it’s more in a “we’re besties” way, love his personality, he’s very kind and considerate, I unaronically think he’s really funny and he’s such a sweetheart with MC, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ love this guy.

4th place’s Sylus, he was actually 2nd place for some months but somehow ended in 4th here, proving that except for Rafa, my ranking changes constantly, I really appreciate him tho, he’s a very charismatic character. like Zayne he just wouldn’t work for me at long term, he’s too daddy dom archetype for my personal taste, every time he calls MC “kitten” I get the ick.

5th place and surprising no one, comes Caleb for a bunch of reasons (but not the reasons people imagine I would have), not only he just got added to the game and we barely got time to grow attached to him yet but because being honest (and controversial), I find him kinda boring.

I’m not very fond of childhood friends to lovers so this end up influencing my opinion on him, I dislike how this trope relies on fake nostalgia over moments the characters shared together and forget the fact that I, the real person playing the game, wasn’t there and therefore have no emotional connection to this character. He always going “remember when you did that?” “remember how we use to do that?” no, I don’t.

Caleb was on scream for like 5 minutes then fucking exploded now he’s back acting psycho, Infold is giving me zero to none time to build any fondness for him so for me he’s just a rando who’s trying to kidnap me, I get he went through some brainwashing shit but since I don’t know him his betrayal just doesn’t hit like it suppose to hit. I didn’t felt betrayed, I felt disgusted.

also I can’t lie, overprotective men aren’t for me, even before being brainwashed Caleb was already too much for my liking, I already have enough people in my real life who think they know what is best for me more than I do, I don’t need this energy in my silly lil hot men game, if I wake up one day feeling like spending time with a man who’s overprotective to the point of being overbearing I can just hang out with my dad.

that being said I don’t hate him, my heart is forgiven when it come to characters if they’re well-written, Infold made a good job with all of them to this point so there still hope for Caleb, Sylus was lowkey a cunt in the beginning too and everyone seems to have forgotten by now

as a bonus, my expectations to the 6th LI: I want him to be related to Ever but I don’t want him to be a ceo because that would be very boring, there’s nothing sexy about making money by exploiting workers and Sylus kinda already fill the ceo archetype, I would prefer a guy who is/was a scientist working for Ever but he discovered things he didn’t suppose to discover and now wants to leave, something along those lines, we also need a sub character because the girlies who aren’t into the dom daddies are clearly in disadvantage, give us someone even more needy than Rafayel, give us a man who’s so pathetic. He having colored hair would be cool too.

also I want to propose we start referring to the LIs as “the lads” because refereeing to them as “LIs” sounds cold to me and calling them lads is goofy so it’s makes me laugh

[kastlestud]

Remember everyone, they’re the 1% of the world, not just America.

We outnumber them. We can make our voices heard (non violently, of course).

It isn’t hopeless and it never will be.

Fascism doesn’t work in the modern day, it didn’t work out well in the past either (laughs in Mussolini…look him up, it’s funny).

But for these rich (too broad a term, I propose simply calling them ‘Money Hoarders’ from now on as that’s precisely what they are) morons to understand how little they can actually control us, we need to speak up.

The people in charge have proven they don’t care. They’ve proven they value profit over the lives of the people who allowed them to profit (because we could’ve just decided to cease working jobs and they’d be shit out of luck).

The best part is, the ones who’ve chosen the wrong side will be held accountable once this is all over.

After all: the bill always comes due. Maybe not for them. But for their legacy. Just look at Christopher Columbus, he was an idiot then, and now we recognize that simple fact.

The easiest (least bloody) way to end this is early. They won’t need to be Mussolini’d if they lose their reasons for doing this (ie; profits).

Protest like your lives depend on it.

Because they truly do.

[spinchip]

Never the dark 7, 10 [dareth x Cyrus, it's not a pairing I've seen before and it humors me in a good way], and 11?

[ask meme]

YAAAY THANK YOUUU

7: Where did the title come from?

Bury Me Low by 8 Graves! I was listening to this song a LOT when conceptualizing the fic and I feel like the whole thing kinda describes Zane in the fic. In retrospect, I do kinda wish I had named it something smoother, I had a few ideas for what I might change it to (Inside the Dark, Forsaken Dark, and [redacted because i might be using it for another project teehee]) but I do like Never the Dark and I think i'll keep it lol

the funniest thing about this song is that I played it so much I got sick of it and now I wont listen to it

If I die today, it won't be so bad I can escape all the nightmares I've had All of my angry and all of my sad Gone in the blink of an eye I've seen the devil. I've shaken his hand I've seen the evil that dwells in a man For all of my wisdom, I can't understand ...... If I die today, it won’t be so hard Everything scares me, but never the dark

10: Why did you choose this pairing for this particular story?

Polyninja because I love them and the fucked up relationship dynamic post zanedeath called to me.

Pixal/Skylor has always been awesome but I included it here specifically because of how I view their character actions in the three year time skip. Skylor joins the ninja a few month after Zane dies and despite the fact that they don't harbor any ill will towards her, Zanes absence is a fresh wound that it feels like she's trying to step into. It makes everyone bleed. No one is coping well and things get messy and tense between skylor, the ninja, and pixal until Skylor has a mental breakdown and removes herself from the team (trauma response due to the nature of how her father raised her.) Skylor was never part of the team- she's not been there from the beginning, so she's an outsider. And so is Pixal. (Not intentionally of course, but the others share a different kind of grief that the two don't.) Cyrus eventually convinced Pixal to go to therapy where she gets some clarity on things and reaches out to Sky to apologize again for any role she played in the teams tension with her. She invites Skylor over for dinner and they accidentally end up talking for 6 hours- and the rest is history

(Skylor IS on good terms with the ninja btw. they apologized and hashed things out- but she won't rejoin the team for a lot of different reasons.)

Coppershipping my beloved. new-ish in the ficverse! They were starting to be more friendly with eachother after zanedeath, and that progressed post s11. Dareth took his grief at losing Zane as motivation to get in better shape and actually try and train, so he hits the gym and puts on a lot of muscle. takes up boxing. He wants to be able to do more to help if something happens again. He ends up putting his new skills to use protecting Cyrus from something or another and Cyrus asks him to be his bodyguard. They spend a lot of time together and fall in love teeheehee

also, fun fact for you, Dareth handmade all the ninja suits they wear in NTD!

11: What do you like best about this fic?

oh man. Is it bad to say the fact that it's almost finished? I'm just really proud I've been able to stick with it and put in the time and effort. I've got a pretty spotty track record with chaptered work- i lose motivation and drop things a lot, unfortunately. But i'm still dedicated to finishing NTD!

and im really proud of the wordcount! 100k!!!!!!! WAOW

[whetstonefires]

#4 please !

Now see this could be tricky, because generally if I don't get some key elements written down very quickly the idea flows away again and the 'yet' disappears, even if I remember generally what it was about, but I have one this time! I am still just enough plagued by this vision that it's not out of the question I'll go for the capture, but so far nada.

Idea was basically a Jiang family character study by way of modern au. (So tw canonical abuse.) I started from the reflection, in a modern au very high chance the Jiangs are divorced, because being a divorcee wouldn't necessarily ruin Yu Ziyuan in the modern world, as long as she was allowed to control the narrative enough that she didn’t look at fault, so it might be on the table.

Especially because modern views on child abuse are such that while she'd hold back more than she already does in terms of physical chastisement, Jiang Fengmian would also be under less societal pressure to not interfere in her disciplinary system too much, and both these factors mean he’s more likely to put his foot down.

So, concept: Jiang Fengmian, when his son is eight and his daughter thirteen, forces the issue of taking in his best friends' abused orphan child whom he’s just managed to track down in a nightmarish group home, probably leveraging the fact that wherever their money comes from it's mostly his, something he usually doesn't do, but she has always known he could, and been fucked up about it (reasonable) and hated him a little (less so) and hates him so much more now (understandable but still fucked up).

They were obviously still both pressured into this marriage by their families, because I literally cannot imagine them choosing one another of their own free will, and if they did that would be an au in an even more dramatic way than being modern, and no longer work as a character or relationship study as far as I'm concerned. I mean or it’s a cql-based au, but that’s not the version of this toxic marriage I find compelling.

Situation subsequently deteriorates to the point that when the boys are around twelve some outside party observes and is repulsed or otherwise upset by Yu Ziyuan's treatment of Wei Wuxian specifically--she's emotionally abusive to everyone in the family, canonically, and it harms Jiang Cheng significantly more than Wei Wuxian, which I think is also pretty explicit on the page, but she's more openly antagonistic about going after wwx because he's basically a proxy for her husband, whom she doesn't consider to be someone she's capable of harming.

And ofc in a modern family scenario, being abusive to your foster kid is more plainly personal misconduct than being unfair in how you discipline one of your husband's many students, even if it is his favorite. Which means she's very unlikely to chase him around with a whip, but whatever she does do will sting that much more emotionally.

Anyway the outside judgement provokes a more explicit confrontation than the last four years of maneuver and attempting to balance all the competing needs according to two very different standards. And the upshot is that by the time wwx is 13, the Jiangs are divorced. To avoid making a humiliating spectacle of themselves they present a weirdly united front in court and have a very smooth uncontested proceding, although the closed meetings with their respective lawyers involved a lot of vitriol.

Yu Ziyuan, despite having a smallish trust fund and probably a job of some kind, though one that's more prestigious than profitable like uh. Olympic fencing coach. Idk what they make but it's probably not enormous. She and Cangse Sanren probably competed in the same events back in the day.

Anyway she gets a solid chunk of alimony, the house, and primary custody of both her children, although Jiang Yanli is almost 18 at this point so mostly she just gets Jiang Cheng. Everyone thinks Jiang Cheng wants it that way, including sort of Jiang Cheng; he has this idea that if he has his mom to himself they'll finally have a good relationship, even though he's also terrified of being left all alone with her. He's complicated. Families are complicated.

Also she would never have forgiven him if he hadn't concurred that he wanted to stay with his mother because she was the only one On His Side.

Jiang Yanli ofc does not move out right away when she comes of age, in part because her brother needs her, but she probably does go to college, so she's only around part-time.

Jiang Fengmian, meanwhile, keeps most of his financial assets and Wei Wuxian, and gets his kids on the weekends.

So that's all setup for how you have this situation where Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng are entering high school--probably the same school, together, but no longer sharing the commute except maybe Monday mornings--and Wei Wuxian's primary residence is Jiang Cheng's dad's apartment.

It’s really chill. They get a cleaning service in once a week and eat a lot of delivery food, but they do cook at least once a week. The canonical thing where they largely agree about what’s funny and what’s right-or-wrong, and so forth, on the one hand really pops when there’s mostly no external conflict disrupting it, but also probably gains more complexity now that it’s not a thread of positivity fighting for its life against a background of drama. They get to know each other better than they ever had a chance to in canon.

Some of that isn't all that positive, because now they have the space to discover the places where they do actually have the capacity for friction, but both of them are very good at dispersing tension (I do tend to suspect jfm's dad was abusive he sure acts like it), and on the whole it's a good thing.

Jiang Cheng is going to have such a mental health crisis, and Jiang Fengmian is going to handle it so badly. Because of course when his son starts replicating his ex-wife's toxic attitudes and behaviors more now that she has primary custody, he’s going to feel guilty and like it’s His Fault, but he’s going to feel like it’s his fault that Jiang Cheng is growing up to be a shitty abusive person.

And even if he’d never say that the subtext would come through, in the assumptions he made when framing communications and so forth, as in canon, so the thing where Jiang Cheng’s father loves Wei Wuxian more than him, or at any rate likes him better and thinks he’s a better person and prefers his company, would wind up feeding into a self-reinforcing loop.

(Jin Zixuan's nasty public remark about Jiang Fengmian treating Wei Wuxian better than his own children hits Jiang Cheng significantly harder in this scenario, where he's being Tormented by the feeling that all his peers know his dad walked out on him for another son. Wei Wuxian's punch is therefore even more clearly primarily for Jiang Cheng's sake, although Jiang Cheng is probably more inclined to see it as being for his dad's. Jin Zixuan is about halfway between the Jiang kids' ages here, so he's a senior saying this shit to a sophomore.)

So that cycle builds to the point where Jiang Cheng would eventually have one of those rare moments where he resorts to actual violence, because his poisoned feelings are choking him so bad his rationality deserts him.

He’s not going to be nearly as close to actually murdering Wei Wuxian as he was in canon the night the Jiang Sect was massacred, because it’s a less extreme situation, but he still goes for the neck. So Jiang Fengmian is in his home office one Saturday about a year and a half into this new normal, and realizes the boys are fighting. He hears through the wall the accusation you stole my dad. He says to himself, well that’s terrible but interjecting myself into this situation would definitely make it worse.

Then he hears sounds of violence, and then an ominous abrupt silence, and updates that analysis.

And when he opens the door to the boys’ room, Wei Wuxian is being strangled. He’s not really resisting, which is because he’s made the call that that’s way more likely to get Jiang Cheng to snap out of it, and thinks it might make Jiang Cheng feel better to get it out of his system (because he does sort of feel like what Jiang Cheng is going through is all his fault, or at any rate is much worse as a result of decisions made for his sake) and is severely underestimating the dangers of choking, but looks to a third party like he’s already passed out and Jiang Cheng is still at it. Which is to say, it looks like a serious murder attempt on the brink of success.

So that sure made that situation worse!

So yeah that's my idea that I probably won't write but it sure has its teeth in me.

[a-french-coconut]

do you have any lore/backstory for Will Solace?

A little bit, yeah !

First of all, he speaks French fluently in my mind : His last name "Solace" has obvious latin roots so he's not a native speaker but he learnt it at home very young and he practices it regularly with Clarisse, whose last name is definitely French (La Rue).

He got claimed by Apollo after saving a girl during Capture the Flag, and his older siblings immediately loved him.

Before the war, Will was super eager to help Lee out in the infirmary, and got frustrated when Lee made him do minimal work. But then, after both wars, he finds himself doing the same with his younger siblings and he understands why Lee did it. He loves the infirmary and helping people, but it's very time consuming and he wants his baby brothers and sisters to do something else.

His plague powers manifest under the form of little girl named Raz, and he recently came to terms with it and made peace with himself, and finally learn to accept his "dark" side. He's not a big fan on using them to attack monsters but he definitely uses them to heal : if a camper has the flu or something, it's less tiring for him to remove it by tapping into his plague powers than doing it with his healing powers.

I also ship him with Travis Stoll (I don't have a story of how they get together but I will soon, I hope...)

Will is an only child, and after losing so much of his siblings during the wars, he's clingy, especially with his boyfriend. Now, his boyfriend is also clingy due to his fair share of trauma I applied on him so they're two clingy boyfriends (:

Concerning his powers, alongside healing and plague, I know he can manipulate light in canon but I rather give him lie-detecting powers.

He doesn't like when people keep secrets from him, but he won't push you to tell him. However, he will indicate strongly that he doesn't like it. He likes to know everything so he can find a way to fix it, if he can.

Now, I don't remember how Will reacts to Silena's being a traitor but I don't see him forgiving her (explanation : in my headcannon, Silena is the one telling Kronos where the Apollo Cabin is at every battle.) since she's part of the reason so much of his siblings are dead. He doesn't outright insult her like Drew does in public, but he agrees with her to a certain degree : just because she did one last good deed does not mean it erases her past mistakes. In addition, he was on friendly terms with her, but just because he was friend with Clarisse.

I am firm believer of Will and Clarisse friendship : actually I am a firm believer of Will, Clarisse and Travis friendship. Will and Clarisse bonded over French and Will healing her wounds. In return, Clarisse teaches him wrestling and fighting, with Travis who inherited enhanced physical abeilles from his father. With that in mind, Will is not an exceptional fighter but he can defend himself against one or two monsters (I'll admit I was a little peeved at his characterisation in The Sun and The Star where he literally useless in combat. I don't ask for Percy-level of fighting but come on, he's been at Camp for years.)

I don't see him with close to Luke, because Will had his own big brothers, like Lee and Micheal, so his betrayal doesn't affect him very much, except for the fact that some of his siblings deserted with him. Same as Silena, he doesn't forgive him just because he sacrificed himself in the end.

All of those head cannons don't intervene in the same stories but overall, that's all I've got for now (: