#max is not her real name....but does it matter

[trashytracktales]

PLSSSS part 2 to this time tomorrow but it’s a year or so later and he’s dealt with his grief and guilt and happily ever after pls

Same time yesterday | MV³³

𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗧 𝟮 𝗢𝗙 𝗧𝗛𝗜𝗦 𝗧𝗜𝗠𝗘 𝗧𝗢𝗠𝗢𝗥𝗥𝗢𝗪

*can’t be read as a standalone.

✦ summary ──── It’s been eleven months since she left, and her absence haunted every aspect of Max’s life.

✦ pairing ──── Max Verstappen x she/her reader

✦ rating ──── explicit

✦ warnings ──── 18+, mature/sexual content, descriptive language, feelings of unworthiness, emotional angst, isolation, themes of guilt, grief and self-doubt, panic attack with descriptions of physical symptoms, struggles with self-worth, insecurity and personal trauma, healing through intimacy, smut, fingering & oral ─ (f)receiving, unprotected sex, pet names, praise, multiple orgasms, overstimulation.

✦ word count ──── 8.5k

✦ date ──── Jun. 12, 2025

✦ a/n ──── This is not very I don’t do part 2s of me, but the amount of people requesting it made me feel guilty, so here we are. YOU WIN (ILY) 🙄. All jokes aside, writing this healed something in me. Goodnight 🤍✨

MAX DIDN’T EXPECT her to actually leave.

In his stubbornness, he hoped that he’d find her back in his apartment once he returned from work a week later, when her mind would clear up and the adrenaline of the breakup would be long gone. But when that didn’t happen, and he came back to an empty place, he slowly began to panic. On the inside, of course. Because Max is the kind of person who rarely ever displays his feelings out in the open, and when he does it, it’s usually his ruthless side that comes out. He would never admit in front of anyone that he has weaknesses. The only time he’s ever done it was in front of the mirror, in those mornings when everything became too heavy to carry for a pair of shoulders already weighed by the burdens of the past.

He did not expect her to leave.

Not after everything they’d said to each other, not after the way she’d touched his face the night she walked out, and the way her lips lingered on his cheek like a goodbye she didn’t want to make real. Not after she whispered that he knew where to find her. That she was still willing to give them a chance, but this time, they as a whole had a price. And he needed to cover it in its entirety.

When her absence has finally caught up to him, Max got angry.

Not at her, but at the hole she left behind. At himself for not begging her to stay, even though that goes against everything he is as a person. At the way grief still had its claws in his chest even when he thought he’d buried it deep enough to allow himself to love again.

She said she understood. She acted like she did for so long. But then she left. She promised she wasn’t asking for more than he could give, and then she still walked away when he couldn’t give it fast enough. It felt like betrayal to Max, twisted and misplaced, but real.

After that, he threw himself into work like he always did: training, simulation, back-to-back race weekends. Late nights at the gym, longer ones behind the wheel. But no matter how many laps he ran, no matter how fast he drove, he couldn’t outpace the noise inside his own head. At times, it felt as if it tried to deafen him completely. And sometimes, there were so many voices in there that they overlapped and he had the impression that he could go mad.

It got worse when doubts started creeping in.

What if he’d ruined something good once again?

What if she was right, and he never actually moved on, not from grief, not from guilt, not from his dead wife?

He couldn’t trust himself anymore. The same instincts that made him a four-time World Champion now betrayed him on track. He second-guessed overtakes, overcorrected in turns, and crashed into his rivals on purpose.

The paddock noticed it, so did the press. Max Verstappen didn’t make mistakes, until he did. And the worst part of all: he stopped caring.

His despair was subtle at first. It bled in during the long flights, in the lonely hotel rooms, and in the silence after a shitty race. He tried texting her a couple of times, but it was always short, dry, and empty. She responded kindly, as usual, but never let it go further. Though Max hated it, he respected that, because he respected her, even if he thought it was bullshit. All of it.

It wasn’t until one particularly sleepless night, many months after she left, that the loneliness finally did what the anger couldn’t: it made his mind quiet. It made him sit with himself and be brutally honest. Realistically, he realized that no trauma will ever completely heal. A shadow of guilt will always follow him, no matter who he ends up becoming, what he achieves in his career and who’s going to be there with him.

That night, Max stood in front of the mirror, the ring on his finger slightly sparkling in the bathroom light. It somehow looked dull, like it, too, got tired from being worn by a man who didn’t know how to let go. Only this time, he didn’t see his wife. Instead, he saw the woman who stayed even when he didn’t have the words to explain himself, the one who kissed him like she was pouring pieces of herself into the cracks of him, the one who left not to hurt him out of spite, but to save them both. Or at least try.

And he understood that the ring didn’t remind him of grief anymore. It reminded him of who managed to give it a whole another meaning. It reminded him of what he stood to lose if he didn’t start choosing life instead of loss. And just like that, still panicking on the inside, he figured a new way of feeling the pain and owning it without hurting so much.

Max’s fingers trembled, but he took it off. He took. The damn ring. Off.

And something about the silence cracked open the moment he did it. At first, it was a strange numbness, like his skin and limbs and even his thoughts didn’t belong to him. Then the trembling turned into tremors. His hands shook so badly that the ring slipped from his palm, clinking against the sink like a warning. He had a tiny impulse to put it back, but he didn’t. His breath hitched, chest rising in short bursts that couldn’t catch enough air. The walls of the room seemed to press in, tighter and tighter, so he gripped the edge of the sink until his knuckles turned white. His heart thudded violently between his lungs, and he could hear it.

Then his knees gave out, and he collapsed to the cold tile floor, curled onto his side, eyes wide and unfocused as his mind raced with fear — am I dying? Is this how it ends? All alone…

He didn’t call anyone. He didn’t move, because he couldn’t. He just lay there, whispering to himself that he deserved this. That maybe this was part of it: the punishment, the penance, the cost of finally letting go. But he’d chosen grief so long, it felt wrong to be free of it. And, ultimately, he ended up convincing himself it was better that way, but every time he looked at the empty space on his finger, he wondered how long she’d wait. If she was still waiting at all.

He couldn’t stand the thought of her saying no after that, so he never texted her again.

IT’S A RANDOM Tuesday when Max is in the pet aisle, squinting at a row of identical cat food cans, wearing an old Red Bull hoodie from the early 2010s. The hood is up, casting a shadow over his face, a subtle shield against the world.

He isn’t expecting anything. Maybe a fan or two who may recognize him. But not her. However, the second she walks through the automatic doors, pushing her cart slowly, head tilted like she’s scanning the shelves for something specific, he sees her. Her hair is a little shorter now. Her coat swings open as she walks, and she’s humming softly to herself, unaware.

Until she turns, and her eyes meet his. Time doesn’t stop, but it does slow, just enough for Max’s chest to go tight. And they both realize it at the same time: they’re going to have to choose. Quickly. A nod and a half-smile, play it off like strangers passing in the middle of something ordinary.

Or talk.

Max does it before she gets the chance to. He doesn’t even glance at the shelves again. His hand reaches out and grabs two random cans of cat food, the labels facing the wrong way, something he wouldn’t normally touch. But it’s not about the cat food anymore.

It’s about how she notices the way Max squeezes the cans in his hands, and how his left hand, in particular, molds around the circular container, making her heart stop for a beat.

“Your hand’s all naked,” her mouth talks without her permission the moment he gets close enough for him to hear her; the fact that it’s the first thing she tells him doesn’t come as a suprise for either of them.

Max smiles a little, the kind that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Uh, yeah,” he says quietly, looking down at it like he hadn’t realized it himself until now. “It’s been for a while.”

They stand there, hands full of domestic normalcy, bodies not quite knowing what to do next.

“Hi,” her lips curl slightly into something that isn’t quite a smile, but not quite neutral either.

“Hi,” he echoes, voice a little raspier than he’d like. “Didn’t expect to see you here,” adds Max, glancing around like maybe the store has changed since he last looked.

“Yeah, well,” she shrugs, looking anywhere but at him.

There’s too much unsaid between them to make small talk feel right. Too many memories that exist in kitchens and beds and mornings with whispers and kisses. And yet they try.

“You look good,” Max says, his eyes flicking up and down, unsure of where to land. “Shorter hair suits you.”

She nods. “Thanks. You look…,” her voice trails off, checking him out from head to toe in order to find something nice to connect with, but when she can’t do that, she chooses to be honest instead. “Tired.”

Max smiles, but looks defeated as he does. “Not sleeping much.”

“Work?”

He hesitates. “And everything else.”

They both look like they want to leave but can’t quite make their feet move. It feels like there’s too much air between them, and yet, too many things have already been said, cried out, and broken open like bones that never healed right. Max can feel it rising in his throat. It’s bitter and sweet all at once. The fucking guilt. The longing. It’s her, actually. Right here, in front of him again, after eleven months and three days of not seeing her. Of only surviving her through old texts and ghost limbs.

His fingers twitch around the cans.

She’s standing like she’s braced for impact, but her eyes finally land all over him: his face, the hoodie she actually wore a few times before when she was waiting for him to come back home, his hand, his left hand. His bare left hand.

“This is weird, right?” Max finally asks, his voice sounding like he hasn’t spoken a single word for weeks.

She lets out a sigh. “A little, yeah,” she agrees, nodding.

And still, neither of them moves.

“You know, I almost didn’t come in,” she admits, fingers curling tighter around her cart. “I was parked outside for, like, ten minutes just sitting there. Because I realized this is your neighborhood and I’d risk seeing you,” she adds quickly.

Max feels his heart racing again before he even understands it. His throat goes dry, and when he speaks, he sounds hurt. “You didn’t want to see me?”

She blinks, startled, like she hadn’t expected the question to come out that way. “No,” she breathes. “No, Max, that’s not what I meant.”

He holds her gaze, and this close, he can see the sheen of emotion swimming in her eyes. There’s no anger in there anymore. Just, maybe, a little ache.

“It’s nice to see you,” she says. “I did want to see you so badly that I almost turned the car around, because I wasn’t sure if I could handle it.”

Max’s chest caves inward, his brows drawn together like the weight of all those lost months just landed right between his ribs. “Well, I think you’re handling it very well,” he jokes, but she doesn’t laugh, which makes his smile fade a little, not knowing if he crossed a line he shouldn’t have.

She looks down for a moment, biting at her kower lip, then back up. “I think you do, too.”

They both go quiet again, surrounded by fluorescent lights and grocery store music and the quiet chatter of other people, but none of it registers. The world has narrowed down to just them in the shortest time, like it always did. Knowing someone so intimately does that to a space, no matter how big or small.

Max rubs the back of his neck, like he’s trying to release the tension lodged there. “Listen, I don’t want to do this here. In front of the cat food and the Goldfish treats.”

His words earn the smallest smile from her, just for a second. “And what is this, exactly?”

He stops, looking around in order to get his thoughts together. “If you’re not busy, I was about to order a pizza for dinner,” Max hesitates, then adds quickly, “I swear, I just want to talk. I just…” he runs a hand over his jaw. “I haven’t been able to say anything that matters in a long time, and I want to. I owe you.”

She swallows, wary. “You don’t owe me anything, Max. Not anymore.”

He shakes his head. “I owe you my time.”

He sees the way her brow furrows, confusion flickering across her face, and Max knows she doesn’t understand what he means by that. And he can’t quite tell her that he means all the months he spent with her while only giving her a fraction of himself, because the most part was still buried in grief, clinging to a past he couldn’t change. He means the smiles she gave him that he didn’t return fast enough, the quiet ways she showed up for him while he kept one foot in a world that no longer existed. He means every second he spent being afraid to choose them, and every moment he let that fear win. What he owes her is his precious time, the kind that’s undivided, intentional, and fully present.

The time he should’ve been spending loving her without hesitation. Without conditions.

The time he still hopes to give, if she’ll let him.

THE MOMENT HE turns the key in the lock and nudges the door open, the apartment comes alive with a flurry of soft meows and pattering paws. Jimmy is the first to appear, coming out from the hallway with the usual cheeky air, followed by Sassy, who practically chirps in recognition when she sees that her owner is not alone.

The girl barely has time to step out of her shoes before the cats are circling her feet, tails high, meowing as if they’ve been abandoned for weeks. They don’t hesitate, don’t even sniff to confirm, yet the purring starts instantly, the kind of sound they only made when she used to come home late and curl up with them on the couch. Both cats cling to her like she’s their mother, like home walked back through the door after years of waiting.

Max watches it all unfold, frozen, with the cans stacked on top of the other still in hand.

“Fuckin’ assholes,” he complains under his breath, shutting the door behind him. “The only reason I even left the apartment was because they wouldn’t shut up about being hungry. And now they won’t even look at me,” adds Max, a little irritated.

She looks up with a smirk and gently takes the cans from his hand. “Allow me,” she says with a mock bow, brushing past him on her way to the kitchen with the ease of someone who still remembers exactly where everything is.

Max leans against the wall, arms crossed, watching her open the cabinets to pull out the tiny cat dishes they once picked together at a pet store in Italy. Her movements are fluid, the muscle memory guiding her every gesture; the clink of the spoon against the dish, and the way she splits the food evenly, as if it still matters that Sassy used to pout when Jimmy got more.

The remembering. That’s what gets to him every single time. The way it all looks like she wasn’t away for months. The way his own pets remember her scent and presence — more than that, they crave it. And they’re not the only ones, he figures.

Eventually, Max leaves her to it and goes to order the food he promised, knowing that he will be ignored anyway, at least until the cats eat and get bored of playing. The pizza arrives just as she finishes washing her hands, and they settle on the couch like they’ve done a hundred times before, the box open between them, the cats finally dozing at their feet.

For a moment, the quiet sets peacefully around them and it almost feels like they never fell apart at all. Their legs don’t touch, but the distance isn’t as wide as it used to be. Between bites, their eyes meet, without causing unnecessary tension, just a bittersweet quiet wrapped in intimacy. He watches the way she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, and she catches the way he still wipes his fingers on his thighs, like always.

Finishing his second slice, Max finally decides to disturb the peace. “Thanks for giving them some attention,” he says, pointing at the cats that are now back in their donut beds. “They’ve been such jerks lately.”

She glances at the cats, her gaze softening. “You know they treat you like you treat them.”

He rolls his eyes, but the corners of his mouth lift. “I’ve been nothing but an endless fountain of joy around them since you left, so I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Her smile falters the second his sarcasm slips out. And suddenly, the guilt wraps around her ribs like a vice, because she had no idea just how lonely it must have been. She tried to imagine it a few times, sure, but the truth is always harsher.

“Back at the store,” she begins, a little hesitant, “You said it’s been a while since you took it off.”

Max takes a moment before he nods, not immediately meeting her gaze. “Yeah, I did.”

“Why didn’t you tell me when you… you know,” she says, gesturing at his hand. “I thought that was our agreement.”

He swallows, running his fingers over his jaw, which he often does when he’s struggling to think of the right thing to say. “And say what? Thank you for waiting, I’m ready to finally offer you more than the bare minimum?” he says in a sarcastic tone, shaded by a trace of anger. “You deserve better.”

She doesn’t speak right away. Just watches him with those eyes that always made him feel seen. Like she could read the gaps between his words, without needing anything else but him.

The girl shrugs. “That would’ve been a start,” she says casually, taking the pizza box and putting it on the coffee table in front of them.

Max almost flinches at the thought. It tastes so wrong in his mouth, because he doesn’t want to act as if the time they spent together was just a draft. He wants what they had and what they were. The laughter in the kitchen. Her voice humming in the bathroom. The weight of her body curling toward his in the middle of the night when she thought he was asleep. The way she used to look at him like he wasn’t broken beyond repair.

“I don’t want a start,” he insists. “I want what we left behind.”

Her brows lift slightly, her expression unreadable, but her lips part like she’s about to speak. He beats her to it.

“It’s been fucking awful,” the words come out unfiltered. “Missing you, I mean,” he explains, like the thought has been sitting on his brain for months, maybe since the second she walked out of his life. “Not just in passing. Every day.”

His hand moves without thinking, crossing a distance far greater than the space between them, and when his calloused fingers curl gently around hers, all those months of pain fade somewhere into a distant past. Her skin is just as he remembers, warm and soft like silk. The touch is tender, Max’s thumb brushing the back of her hand like he’s reminding himself that she’s real, and not just a figment of his twisted imagination.

He doesn’t want to go beyond the invisible line they’ve both drawn, but when she squeezes him gently, it’s more than a confirmation. It’s her equally strong desire to return to their own normalcy. And after that, it takes almost nothing, maybe just a look and the smallest shift in the air, and he pulls her in his lap.

Her legs straddle him, fitting there with maddening ease. Her hands wrap around the back of his neck, fingertips threading into his hair, playing with it absentmindedly like it’s second nature.

The sudden closeness forces him to breathe in sharply, inhaling her scent that fans across his lips.

“Max...” she whispers, her face tilting toward his, eyes dropping to his mouth as if kissing him is inevitable.

But he can’t have that. What good thing has ever come so easily in his life? Twice.

Max’s hand presses against her waist to push her away, and his head turns as a response. At that, she stills in his arms, eyes searching his face.

“Liefje?” she whispers again, hurt and confused.

He shakes his head, still avoiding to look at her. “I can’t.”

She frowns. “Why?”

Finally, Max’s eyes flick to hers as he swallows the lump in his throat. The blue in them is dark and faded, and it scares her a little. They’re glassy, full of things he’s never been good at saying out loud. “Because I don’t... I don’t deserve it,” he says, quiet like a confession passed through gritted teeth.

Her hands slide from his neck to either side of his face, forcing him to keep his gaze on her.

“Look at me,” she demands when he tries to look away again, but it sounds almost pleading. She can feel the way his muscles are tense beneath her, how hard he’s trying to stay composed. “You think I’d be here if I didn’t want to?” she asks.

His mouth opens, shuts, then opens again, “How could you possibly still want this?”

Her thumbs brush along his cheekbones, pressing closer, her nose brushing his. “Because you want this,” she replies simply. “I left because I thought you didn’t want us, and that hurt the most.”

Max flinches, “I did,” he nods, “Want us.”

“The ring on your finger told a different story at the time,” she smiles, a trace of sadness shadowing her face.

“I’m sorry,” it’s all he says.

She tilts his chin slightly, kissing the corner of his mouth, careful. She understands that, after all, this is their dynamic. She’ll always have to wait for him, one way or another. Do everything at Max’s pace. It may not be ideal, but it has worked in the past, when the tallest walls separated them.

He lets out a trembling breath, arms circling her waist to bring her closer.

“Please,” she whispers, “Let me kiss you.”

This time, his lips crash into hers with a desperate need. Her attempt was soft, but there’s nothing gentle in the way needs her. It’s heat and hunger and all the months of silence and aching compressed into one kiss. His fingers move to cup her face, and he groans against her mouth, finally letting go.

She shifts as the kiss deepens, slowing down until it becomes worshipful.

“I missed you,” he says again.

She smiles through the ache in her chest. “Yeah, I can tell.”

Her hips move unconsciously, but it’s enough for Max to catch her meaning. The girl slides forward and presses down right where he’s already hard beneath her. The friction hits hard between them, and they both still for a moment. Max breathes in through his teeth, and a silent gasp stutters out, all distance suddenly dissolved.

She traces down the curve of his neck, over his collarbones and lower, palms gliding across the fabric of his hoodie. It’s soft and worn, but it hides too much for her liking. So she hooks her fingers underneath it, pushing up, and Max doesn’t stop her. He lifts his arms, helps her peel it off, and the warmth of his skin underneath makes her breath catch in her throat. The muscles of his torso flex as he breathes, tight and lean, built by years of control and discipline.

But right now, he’s giving her none of that control. He just looks at her like he’s ready to rip his heart out and give it to her on a silver platter. With a smile on his face.

Her blouse is next, coming off in a smooth motion. And then, before she can say anything more, he shifts quickly underneath her. In a blink of an eye, he has her on her back, stretched out along the couch, his body poised above hers.

She barely has time to register the change in position before his mouth is back on hers, as possessive as it used to be, like the last kiss wasn’t nearly enough. Max’s lips trail down over her jaw and neck, leaving heat in his wake. Patient, he kisses along the edge of her bra, then he looks up at her. His pupils are blown wide, but there’s still that sliver of restraint behind them.

“Can I?” he asks, a tiny smile blooming in the corner of his mouth, because he already knows the answer.

She nods. “Yes.”

Swiftly, he unclasps her bra and slips it away, tossing it somewhere behind him. His hands slide down her sides as his mouth drops to her chest, breathing her in deeply. The first touch of his tongue on her nipple makes her inhale sharply, her hands flying to his back, gripping and squeezing. Max groans quietly against her skin when she arches up into him, and his hands weld themselves to her thighs to encourage her to wrap her legs around his waist. After that, he changes his position just slightly and grinds down into her, swallowing her whimpers with his mouth still latched onto her breast.

She closes her eyes, allowing herself to feel everything, all at once. His mouth moves from one nipple to the other, teasing, sucking, and she pulls him closer and closer by the shoulders, as if she can’t get enough of his weight. His presence. Him.

“Can you stay like this for a sec?” she asks in a trembling voice, the emotion evident in every word. She keeps him pressed down against her with her arms locked around his shoulders before Max can even process. “Just stay here, please.”

He lifts his head to search for her eyes, but doesn’t say anything. Then, he kisses between her breasts, and rests his forehead there, listening to her heartbeat decrease in intensity with each passing second. His weight is warm and secure around her, his breathing slowing, too. She brushes his hair back with one hand, and the other strokes his spine.

“I missed you, too,” she finally says. “So much it started making me sick.”

Max’s eyes flutter closed, but he’s content to just listen, offering her the space to speak her mind.

“I had to buy a weighted blanket,” she chuckles shyly. “I couldn’t sleep, either. My anxiety was so bad I felt like I was floating out of my skin.”

Max blinks, then slowly pushes up on his forearms to look at her fully. There’s concern etched into every inch of his face, and he sounds stern when he speaks again, “You never told me it got that bad.”

She shrugs, trying to brush it off. “Didn’t want to make you feel worse. You already blame yourself for everything else.”

His jaw tightens, fingers twitching against her ribs. “That’s for me to worry, right? You should’ve told me.”

With a small sigh, she shakes her head as if it doesn’t even matter anymore. “I’m telling you now.”

Her words settle into the air between them like a sudden change in gravity, and it makes Max still completely. It takes him a second to process what she’s said, and not just the meaning, but the weight of it. That she hurt too. That while he was spiraling in silence, buried in self-loathing and racing to outrun emotions he couldn’t face, she was also falling apart as quietly.

His forehead presses against hers, but this time, the tension in his shoulders give away the war he carries in his mind, the guilt and regret in his soul, the anger, and the fear that he might still mess this up. He chokes on a breath, the kind of harsh inhale you take before something breaks and can’t be stopped.

She can feel him slowly but surely detaching, so she doesn’t hesitate to bring him back to the present moment with her. She kisses him all over, not just his lips. A sweet series of soft, scattered kisses along his cheek, his temple, his nose. His shoulders. His collarbones. She kisses him as if that would cure him of all his guilt, insecurities and self-hatred.

Max lets out a broken laugh, unexpected yet warm, as she keeps going, clumsier now. “That’s how you used to kiss Sassy when you stepped on her paws,” he reminds her. “You didn’t break me, baby,” he assures her. “It’s not your fault.”

The words hang there, heavy with understanding, because he can see she feels guilty, as if his pain is somehow hers to fix. Even now. His heart cracks at the thought of her carrying that weight, but it also warms at her tenderness and the quiet way she’s trying to make everything stop hurting. For both of them.

He sighs. “Maybe we should just finish the food, hm?” Max offers, his tone laced with hesitation, trying to give her an out, without putting too much pressure.

She shakes her head instead, then stares at him for a second. While continuing to maintain eye contact, her hand moves down between them with purpose. The metallic sound of his zipper being undone slices through the air like a whip in an empty room, and Max’s body responds instantly, looking like he’s suddenly struggling to breathe, as she pushes his pants lower over his hips.

“I’m hungry for something else,” she says, smirking at him.

The last of their clothes disappear in a blur of heat and touch, the space between them closing until it’s completely gone, and not a speck of dust can seep in. Their bodies press together, skin on skin, making Max curse under his breath, his hands roaming her waist, thighs, and ribs, remembering the shape of her all over again. After taking the ring off, he convinced himself that being alone and deprived of her entirely was the new punishment. But now, he’s surprised to find out that no amount of penance could ever be worth losing her again.

She gasps when his lips catch her off guard, kissing her deeply, hand sliding south, slipping between silk folds already wet with want.

“Shit,” he whispers through gritted teeth, barely able to contain himself. “I forgot how soaked you get from a little nipple play.”

She moans faintly into his mouth, hips lifting with ease toward his touch. His fingers stroke through her slowly, savoring her sounds, while his middle finger presses in. Just the tip, to test her patience and give her all the time in the world to open up for him.

As if he’s under a spell, Max watches her face, completely transfixed. “I swear you’re trying to kill me,” he praises her deliriously, pushing his finger deeper. “You missed this, didn’t you?”

“Mhm,” she hums, her nails digging lightly into his back, leaving faint love scratches behind.

At that, he smiles a little smug, and starts pumping his finger with much purpose. He’s on a mission now, intending to relearn every twitch and tiny flinch, because for some reason, making her come like this has become his new life’s purpose. And the fact that she’s obscenely wet, encourages him to keep going, gliding his finger in effortlessly, the slick noises echoing between them like he’s already halfway inside her with his cock instead.

“I fucking missed it, too,” he admits, voice cracking at the way he feels her clenching around him. Every time his finger strokes against that soft, spongy spot inside, her thighs lock around his wrist like Max is her puppeteer, hips canting up, chasing more. “There it is,” he says with satisfaction.

Without pulling away, he eases in another finger, curling them with surgical precision, dragging against that same spot until she’s shaking. Her tiny gasps turns into broken moans, high and breathless, her palms squeezing his shoulders harder. Max starts scissoring them in the way he knows it’ll make her see stars, stretching her open, happy to watch her squirm and melt because of him.

“Want me to keep going until you can’t think straight?”

She tries to answer, but all that comes out is just another pathetic whimper. Her slick coats his knuckles, dripping down his palm, earning a low hum from Max while driving his fingers faster.

“So tight and desperate,” he says mostly to himself. “Let me see you,” his thumb finds her clit, rubbing delicious circles as his fingers keep fucking up into her, stretching her sweetly.

Her reaction is immediate: her whole body jerks, thighs quivering as her pussy fights to hold him in, harder than before.

“Max,” she tries to warn him in a shaky voice.

He doesn’t even hesitate. Instead, he pulls his fingers out and dives in on instinct, burying his face between her thighs like a man starved. His tongue replaces where his fingers had just been, fucking into her with messy, greedy strokes. Max grips her thighs, making sure to groan loudly into her, wanting her to hear exactly how much he’s enjoying this. She keens, hands flying to his hair as he eats her out with a kind of reckless devotion that leaves her gasping for air.

Her orgasm crashes over her with an unexpected loud cry. Her hips arch off the couch, body convulsing as she soaks his face, a warm flood dripping down his chin and onto the cushion beneath him. Max agrees satisfied, like he lives for this, licking her through it until she’s shuddering and whimpering and very much not thinking straight, trying to push him away from overstimulation.

He pulls back with a glossy mouth, chin dripping, and eyes blown wide. That clear blue has finally returned, contrasting beautifully against the bright pink of his flushed face. His hair is a mess, and he’s breathing hard like he just came. She wishes she could paint him like that, but she knows that no brush would ever do justice to the beauty she sees in him.

“My god, Max,” she laughs, still breathless, reaching up to pull him toward her. She wipes his chin with her palm, eyes half-lidded, before tugging him in for a kiss, tasting herself on his tongue. “You’re such a show-off.”

He smirks, resting his forehead to hers. “Well, I am a professional.”

“Oh yeah?” she teases, brushing her fingers through his hair. “Did they add that as part of your pre-race routine?”

Max shrugs with a deceptively serious expression on his face. “Helps with focus. And finger control.”

The girl chuckles. “You’re disgusting.”

“You’re perfect,” he replies quickly, leaning in to finish their kiss.

His lips are soft and plumped, and they give her the second she needs to breathe before the air shifts. Max’s hand cups her cheek, and when he looks at her, his voice drops, eyes filled with a tamed concern.

“You okay?” he asks, the kind of okay that means are you still with me?

It’s the care behind his voice that gets to her. The one that she only saw a couple of times in him, when Max really let her see the purest version of him. The version that’s not on any screen, nor the version that walks out the door everyday to go to work. This Max is too soft, afraid, and weak. Or so people would say if they’d know.

She finds it hard to speak, instead, she reaches down, fingers curling around his cock. She nudges the thick head through her folds, dragging it up and down in maddening passes, not letting him in, just coating it in the mess he made of her. It’s a sweet tease, a challenge, and a bit of revenge from her side, that gets the expected reaction out of him: Max whines, and his hips twitch in anticipation.

But before she can do it again, he bucks forward just enough to slip between her lips. Not inside. Just there. Nestled. Pressed. Bothering.

“Shit,” she gasps at the drag of his cock against her folds. Is too much already, yet not enough, her body betraying her before she can play it cool.

Max laughs at her failed attempt, dragging himself up her slit again, slow and sticky. “What do you think you’re doing, schatje?”

She moans, frustrated. “Nothing.”

He keeps going, rubbing himself through her wetness, teasing her entrance, but never pushing in. After all, she just showed him how to, didn’t she? It’s punishment for both of them, his cock is throbbing, coated in her, and every pass just winds them tighter.

“You feel that?” asks Max in a quiet whisper. “That’s how much you want me,” he continues, finally pushing in. The stretch is sweet, tight and wet and warm, and the moment he’s fully inside, everything goes still. He lets out a relieved sigh, his head dropping to her shoulder, “And this is how much I want you.”

Perfection in just the right amount. Being inside her like this shuts his brain off and, soon enough, the silence inside his skull becomes addictive.

The first thrust feels like coming home.

The second thrust brings all the memories back.

The third thrust makes her eyes roll, her hands clutching at his arms, hips trying to chase every retreat he makes.

Max has to grip her tighter to keep her in place, and gently pushes her thighs apart wider. He watches the way she spreads, how easily she welcomes him, and it lights something heavy in him, but also devastatingly tender. It pushes him to slide in again and again, deeper and deeper, and the sound she lets out has the power to knock the breath out of his lungs.

It’s not difficult to find their rhythm. That perfect pace that makes it feel less like fucking and more like a love language only they understand. Every push and pull is a new promise. Every moan, a certainty that they will keep those promises this time. As the pleasure builds, they understand it’s more than that. It’s healing. With every stroke and every breathless sound between them, they’re stitching something back together. Something they thorned and fractured because they didn’t know better, now is slowly mending, making them stronger than they’ve ever been.

Max fucks her like he’s never going to get another chance to be this whole again. Like this is the last time it’ll ever hurt, and the first time they’re finally allowed to live. Their bodies slap together, the sounds echoing like music against the walls; it’s hot, thirsty, a song made by them, just for them. He keeps her open, holding her thighs in place because he wants to see all of it. The way she takes him. The way she glistens for him. The way she gives herself so fully, without flinching. And if she can do that — if she can give him this —, then maybe he’s not broken beyond repair.

He fucks into her harder, hips slamming and claiming. It’s like his darkest side cracked open and poured out all the ugly through need, hope, love, all tangled in sweat and skin and moans and and and.

“Fuck, Max. Yes, you feel so good,” her praise makes him sob, hips jerking like he’s being praised for something holy.

He leans down to kiss her, but they’re both too far gone. It ends up being just open mouths, shared breath, moans between lips that can’t quite meet, not with how their bodies are still colliding, over and over.

“Mine,” Max spits out breathless, as he feels her start to tighten around his cock, fluttering repeatedly like her body is begging to fall apart with him.

Her hands curl around his biceps in order to be able to meet his thrusts halfway, nails digging in. “All yours,” she wails.

He shifts her legs higher around his waist, his hand sliding beneath her knee to angle her just right, and when he thrusts again, her whole body jolts. “Right there?” he asks, watching her eyes closing shut, her mouth falling open. “Ja, that’s it. That’s how my baby needs it.”

Her entire body shakes with pleasure, panting with every thrust as he drives into her with a need that’s no longer just physical. It’s every moment he missed her, every second he hated himself for letting her walk away, instead of ripping that ring off his hand, finger and all.

Max’s voice breaks against her skin, “You have any idea what you did to me for eleven months?”

She nods, arms wrapping around his neck.

“Of course you do,” Max smiles into her neck, maintaining the pace, sweat dripping from his brow as her walls spasm around him, pulling him deeper. “You know I jerked off to the thought of you every night,” he continues, the confession nearly unraveling him. “Couldn’t touch anyone else because your pretty face was everywhere I looked.”

Her fingers slide into his hair, pulling gently. “My good boy,” she purrs, and the sound he makes in response is feral, like it strips him down to his most basic instinct.

Max cries out, thrusts faltering for a second before he slams into her harder. “Say that again,” he demands in a pleading voice.

“You’re my good boy,” she whispers, then kisses his cheek, smiling as he loses himself a little more. “You always were.”

The words wreck him. He breathes wetly into her neck, almost embarrassed by how much he needs to hear it, and how much he actually craves being her good boy. Beneath his though exterior, there’s always been a constant need to belong to someone entirely. Not out of weakness, but out of a desire to be seen and chosen. To be loved, treasured, and protected like he mattered. Because as a kid, those things came rarely, if ever. And though Max learned to survive without them, part of him never stopped longing for that kind of love. The kind he once found and lost, the kind he almost recklessly pushed away. The kind she gave him, without asking for anything but his love in return.

“I didn’t let anyone else touch me, either,” she continues, breathless but determined to let him know, her fingers now tracing down his spine. “Told every guy that hit on me I had a boyfriend waiting for me at home. Did I lie, Maxie?”

He moans louder, his body surging forward like something inside him just snapped. His thrusts grow rougher, driven by the need to prove her right. To remind her that she is, indeed, his, and no one else can ever make her feel this way.

“No,” replies Max. “You’re mine,” he pants, “My little kitten, ja?”

She laughs, half-sob, half-moan, body shaking as she clings to him.

Somehow, his lips find her breast again, latching onto her nipple like it’s instinct. He sucks on it a little rough, making her head bury further into the couch cushion with a soft whimper. She’s obsessed with The Feel of Max — his weight, the way he pushes into her and how his skin presses into hers, the sound of his breath against her chest. Every cell in her body burns for him, a deep fire that’s been waiting to reignite since the moment she did one of the hardest things: removing herself from her heart, because she had to choose herself for once.

His left hand reaches for hers blindly, pulling her out of the dreamy state she’s fell into. Max threads their fingers together and pins them above her head against the cushions. Tears prick at the corners of her eyes as she clutches his hand tighter, her stomach flipping with emotion. Her eyes fly open, not from surprise but from the intensity of it and how light it is. It’s impossible not to feel the difference; that tiny missing weight that used to sit there like a wall between them.

Max notices the shift in how she exhales, in the way her body clings to his. He doesn’t ask, but he knows.

“I see you,” he says. “I fucking see you, baby.”

She sobs out a sigh, something between a moan and an overwhelmed yes.

“You feel so good. So good, my love,” repeats Max again and again, like he can’t say it enough. “I’m never letting anything come between us, I swear.”

His honesty is poured into every thrust, every kiss against her jaw, her mouth, her neck and shoulder. Everything she needed to hear, he’s saying now, as if he finally realizes that she’s been waiting. And he knows she believes him. He feels it. Feels it in the way her walls flutter around his length faster, needier. Sees how her hips lift to meet his and how her chest expandes rapidly.

Her stomach coils tight, pleasure rising sharp inside her, “Max, if you don’t shut up,” she cries, “I’m gonna fucking come all ov—”

He laughs softly against her lips, silencing her, but he doesn’t stop. “Make a mess for me then,” he encourages her, thumb brushing her cheek. “I’ve got you.”

He does. He always did.

With Max’s name on her tongue, his hand in hers, and every part of her clinging to him like gravity isn’t ever going to be enough again, she lets go. Her climax sends him spiraling, soaking everything, from the couch to his thighs and cock, with the kind of release that leaves no question how much she needed him. He wraps one arm around her waist in order to keep himself present as he shoves in deep one last time and stills, body shaking.

“Fuuuck,” Max chokes, forehead falling to her collarbone.

His cock throbs as he empties himself into her, her body welcoming every drop from him. His heart is hammering against her ribs, and he needs to breathe her in a few times before lifting his head, eyes glazed as they drop to where their bodies are still connected.

The sight nearly makes him come again.

Her thighs are trembling, spread wide, their slick mixed with his cum, smeared across her skin and his cock and the ruined couch. It’s absolute chaos, and he’s never seen anything more beautiful.

Satisfied, he collapses onto her fully, letting his weight sink into her just like he knows she needs. The girl sighs, breath tickling his temple, her hands finding his arms, scratching soft patterns along his skin. Goosebumps rise in waves, but Max doesn’t move. He just melts into her, letting her touch soothe him.

Her body acts before her brain has time to process. Gently, she lifts his hand and presses her lips to each knuckle. One by one. Then soft pad beneath his thumb. His palm, and the faint scar across it. She remembers how he caught the knife by the blade that night, and all the blood that spilled into the sink.

“Come home,” he whispers, voice cracking from the effort of saying it aloud. “Please.”

When there’s no answer, Max’s hands grip her waist, but he can’t find the strength to get up and look at her.

“Please,” he repeats. “I want to cook for you. Fight with you over stupid shit. Watch you fall asleep on this couch again. Just… let me love you right, baby.”

She closes her eyes, breathing in deeply. Max’s scent clings to her skin, to her hair, to the air around them, and that mix of sweat and sex drives her insane. It’s in the crook of her neck, on the inside of her thighs, behind her knees, soaked into her very inhale and exhale. It’s impossible to tell where she ends and he begins.

“What did you do with the ring?”

Max stills. Not the soft kind of stillness that comes from rest after sex, but the rigid kind, where his muscles lock and his breath stops short, like her words caught him mid-step somewhere deep inside himself. And unfortunately, she feels it in the way his touch pauses, not pulling away, but no longer moving forward either.

Her heart sinks into her stomach.

She hadn’t meant it to feel like an ambush, or a test she didn’t even want the answer to in the first place. But the silence stretches just long enough that fear creeps in. And her mind is relentless, thoughts flying around, mean and uninvited: It still means something to him. Maybe more than you ever will.

But then Max’s voice cuts through all that, pushing all the dark clouds aside.

“I gave it back to her,” he says. “Took it to her grave and—”

“I’m sorry,” she cuts him off, fighting the tears in her eyes. She reaches to cradles his face in her hand, thumb sweeping gently across his cheek. His skin is warm beneath her touch, his stubble coarse. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t—”

It’s his turn to interrupt her this time. “It’s okay,” Max assures her. “You were right. I needed to let it go if I wanted to be here. With you. It’s just… I am sorry it took so long.”

“No,” the girl shakes her head. “We can’t get mad at time for doing its thing,” she says gently.

Max’s jaw clenches. He doesn’t realize how badly he needed to hear that until it lands in him, like puzzle pieces falling into place. His eyes drift, settling on the digital clock glowing faintly on the wall. At the same time yesterday, he was lying in a cold bed, silence drilling through his ears louder than anything else. Swallowed whole by a grief so dark it didn’t even feel like sadness anymore. It was just a big hole of nothing.

A day later, he’s pressed against her, inside her, held by her. Breathing the same air as her.

Even though she didn’t say yes yet, even though he still has troubles sleeping, he’s content with the fact that the clock has reset itself for him. And for the first time since he got that call, he’s at peace.

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁ MASTERLIST . ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁

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© trashy track tales, 2025

[hitlikehammers]

Rockstar!Eddie Leaves What He Had With Steve Behind in Hawkins 💔 to Chase His Dreams 🎸

(so why is it that he’s back in Steve’s bed Hawkins every couple months for ‘very pressing reasons’ that are straining Steve’s heart honestly anything but? 🫤❤️‍🩹🥺)

NOTE: this was originally a fill from @eddiemunsonbingo AGES ago, and I’m only bringing it over here NOW because something for the @steddielovemonth is going to be posted soon that is a standalone in its universe, but also very much a sequel to it ♥️

Steve really does try not to think about it in terms of…time.

Maybe that’s foolish. It’s mostly denial. Lots of it isn’t reliable anyway: the score his body keeps isn’t accurate, war-time left over from too many near-misses with a fucking alternate dimension but the popping in his joints and the ringing in his ears and the white hair he pulled out of his scalp and stared blankly at in the sink for a good twenty minutes: those are real things, but they don’t chart the passage of days, of hours, months and fucking years with any real meaning.

It’s been four years. Roughly. Depending on what the start point is. Whether it’s that Spring Break. Whether it’s the first winter. Or the spring after, when Robin begged him to go with her—there’s still time. She still begs, because they still talk given the thread inside them stays tied unbreakable to one another, oblivious to miles between. Maybe it’s measuring from the graduations, the kids—only Erica’s left at Hawkins High, now, though Steve gets calls from the whole bunch of them, Eleven the most, which was maybe surprising, then it’s a good split between Dustin and Will, another surprise. Max calls enough but her calls are calls, with a weight most of the others lack. Lucas’s calls aren’t super frequent but always long, mostly because he talks around the point forever, whatever the point happens to be. Even Mike usually ends up on the other end of the line once a month. It’s…that could be where the time starts from.

Or it could be the summer, that first summer. The one that taught Steve what it was to have a heart just to fucking break it.

Could be that. Impossible to say.

(It’s been 3 years, 7 months, and 14 days. Steve had only counted in retrospect, in the wreckage left behind, because while he’d known there was a deadline in it, to it all, he’d thought he could be enough. That he could change a mind. He’d thought…

Foolish things. Bullshit. Didn’t matter. Could be any fucking date.)

But since the point's come up, and it’s front of Steve’s mind, his least favorite (most favorite) place to find it: he hadn’t expected it. Robin liked to say she saw the signs but. Steve hadn’t watched it happen in slow motion because there wasn’t a single goddamn slow thing about it. Which was…for whatever it was worth, Steve knew falling fast and hard and with everything he was had maybe failed him every time, thus far, but at least he knows that for him?

That means it’s real. He’s all in. He might not be met equal on the other side of the equation—hadn’t been yet, maybe wouldn’t be ever, but he wasn’t having any luck trying to fucking change that fact so, learning to work with what he had was the best he could do. And he had love. He’d never been able to name it to himself so far: not before, and certainly never since. But.

Figuring out the sexuality thing had been a not-bathroom-but-definitely-floor talk on the shitty Family Video carpet sometime around November of ‘85. Slow days, idle comments, and Robin’s suspiciously-but-reliably-gentle-when-the-need-was-dire hand to his shoulder to say no, no: actually wanting to kiss people of any gender wasn’t really…the default Steve had always expected it had to be. How could anyone look at, say, Harrison Ford and not think, oh yeah, I would at least suck his face?

Turned out probably at least half the people on the planet. As in the straight guys and the lesbians. Steve had spent the majority of three days on that disgusting fucking carpet, open to close, popping up to ask Robin if she was sure because what about—

She was sure. And eventually, through a couple of needs for deep breathing and a handful of assurances that it was okay to cry—he appreciated that, but he kept the crying to his room after these long-ass shifts and if Robin stayed for some of those times, that was because she was half his head, half his heart, and she knew what he was going to do sometimes before he did.

They did end up on the floor of his bathroom, a clean one for once, at one point. Maybe because they both held to tradition. Maybe because Steve had largely come to terms with the mindfuck of yet another piece of his world, his self unravelling and rewriting itself, and thought the vodka in his dad’s liquor cabinet was a good way to celebrate. The label was entirely in Russian and Robin had been practicing on hers, said she was pretty sure it was the good shit.

Sometimes you can drink enough of the best shit on an empty stomach, though, and still spew the whole of it up.

Steve sometimes does think he drinks his dad’s best liquor that way on purpose, though. Delightful going down and yeah, it sucks to chuck it up but. The idea that it’s ultimately wasted feels…right.

Anyway: Steve had settled with it all by New Year's, and while he’d hosted the rugrats who could only blabber about their latest campaign with their epic DM, and he’d kissed Robin when the clock turned, well. It felt like a new start, a fresh page.

Something that had the chance at being a good thing.

And nothing much happened in the two-and-a-half-months that followed save for finally catching a glimpse of the D&D god who ran their little club while he was idling in his car to pick up the shitheads, this legendary DM who did not make Steve jealous one tiny bit and who was cool and was edgy and was so fuckin’ cool, Steve, did we tell you got cool he is?! and Steve had said language as monotone as he could before he squinted as out came all the metal and the ink and he’d said your club president dude is Eddie goddamn Munson and he should have kept his mouth shut because the amount of talking that ensued left him with a headache the size of Montana; but.

That was really all that happened until about…mid-March.

Then Spring Break happened.

It could be argued Eddie and Steve grew close enough to pass the acquaintances benchmark, ended up as at least tentative friends on top of necessary battle mates as early as the Upside Down. Whatever reason Eddie gave, he jumped in after Steve. Whatever speech Steve landed on, he didn’t want Dustin orEddie hurt.

It could be argued Steve wasn’t paying attention and didn’t stop in time and landed in the land of Tentative Friends You Wouldn’t Mind Added Benefits With after the…at least after the way Eddie leaned in close and his lips we so��red and he called Steve big boy and…

Yeah.

When Steve carries what may or may not be Eddie’s still fucking corpse out of the Upside Down—he can’t tell, every time he tries to check again his own heart's too loud, his own breaths too shaky—but by then, they’re family. Bound in blood. Steve would die for him, like the others. He won’t let him die, if he can fucking help it.

Between him and Max, Steve almost crashes, breaks. Steve’s there when Max’s fingers twitch and he laughs with tears in his eyes and hands over hands and tells her he loves her and he’s sorry and he’s there, tries to talk around the letter he opened and resealed without evidence because Steve knows some tricks too, okay, and her words had broken him but now he could live up to what she thought she was leaving behind, could make sure she had every goddamn thing she thought she was giving up in spades, to roll around in in abundance. He was going to take care of her, whatever she needed. Whatever it took.

Her lips had quirked and the doctors called coincidence, don’t get your hopes up but; Steve knew Max. That was all her.

And there were more tears, he let her fucking feel them; he fucking hoped she’d notice, and remember, and give him so much shit.

Eddie takes longer, pulls out of the woods enough to exhale a few days later, and the way Steve slips out to find the hospital chapel, the only goddamn place he won’t be found by anyone he knows, and bawls his goddamn eyes out?

It’s family, and it’s love because it’s family but…it’s been so quick. It’s been intense, and that probably speeds it along but…

Shit. Shit.

That’s when Steve knows he sets a new goddamn record for himself and falls hard and heavy and stupidin, like, a week and change. Jesus Christ.

It’s in the recovery that they build something though. Something that’s not trauma or terror or the threat of imminent death. Steve spends most of his hours between two hospital rooms listening to progress reports and taking notes and the kids gravitate toward Max—Dustin would have been the outlier but Steve knows he’s not ready, and so he gives his own updates just to his brother when he drives him home after visiting hours—but that means Steve’s Eddie’s most common conversation partner. They talk about bullshit. Steve defends a-ha to the last breath he has. Eddie’s rendered speechless for a second and then frantic when challenged to pick his favorite band. Again when it’s his favorite song, from his favorite band. And again when it’s his favorite song of any song, ever at all. Steve's heart swells in the watching. He’s foolish enough to bask in the glittering of Eddie’s eyes when Steve indulges in talking, scene by scene as guided by the master in the bed beside him, about what his opinions on Star Wars really were. And then guided by no one, just invited to share what his opinions are on the last movie he saw and loved: which was Weird Science, the last movie he watched in a theatre because he and Robin had gone to face their fear or some shit after Starcourt and it was easier than he’d expected. Eddie listens, and nods, and asks if they can rent it when he’s out, before making sure to add  but you should really have a new choice like, eight months later, man, you work at a video store.

Steve was mostly just focused on Eddie more than implying, of his own volition, that he wanted to have a movie night.

Eddie’s released before Max, largely for mobility reasons, so they both go to visit her now. Robin’s put on the night shift when they schedule their movie night and Steve immediately moves to reschedule but she says no, she’s seen it, make Eddie suffer this time. So it’s just them.

They sit closer than they have to, on the couch.

And it’s little things that build from there. Max’s physical therapy is a government secret, like some fancy space-age protocol that has real hopes to put her on her feet again so she needs a ride, and while they could take turns, Steve and Eddie just take turns as to which vehicle they hop into to drive her. They stay when she needs them—not when she asks because she’s Max and she never asks—but it ends up three days a week back and forth and during: together.

And a lot of nights, for a movie or a smoke or a nightmare or a pulled stitch before they’re all taken out: together.

And shifts where Steve doesn’t even bother to bring his own lunch because Eddie Munson, unpredictable and wholly forgetful super-super senior—who Nancy and Hopper and most of all Joyce convinced the School would be finishing his final senior year at home save for tests, and only that once he was cleared by his doctors—that Eddie Munson brought Steve something every single time he worked. A burger, a chili dog, chicken fucking nuggets. A PB&J clearly homemade and cut diagonal.

So yeah. It starts out how it does when Steve’s in trouble. But it builds like…Steve’s never known before.

They kiss in May. Maybe so that it’s not their first, and a total cliche, when Steve kisses him for graduation behind the bleachers.

The sleep together after graduation, high on the thrill of it, and that’s maybe a cliche but Steve could not give a shit less.

And then they're EddieandSteve, only to find out they have been for a while; and this is just something a little deeper, a little bit more.

In ways that mean everything.

Looking back, Steve knows Eddie never minced words about his plan to leave Hawkins in the fall. With a mixtape and a prayer if I have to, Stevie-boy, he’d said once even, and Steve had laughed.

He’d fucking laughed.

So he’d known.

But July bleeds into August and Steve…Steve’s in love, okay, for real in a way that he’s never felt before. Right in a way he’s never felt before. He kinda just…overlooks it. Because Eddie seems to be at least on the same wavelength. Touches him first, reaches for him first: wants him. Looks at him with not just desire or attraction but…something no one’s ever looked at Steve with before.

And so he hopes. More than hopes.

But when Eddie starts packing, Steve can’t breathe.

He buys a set of luggage and goes home to start the same, has half of his not-excessive possessions shoved in when he realizes:

He’s not invited. Eddie’s never asked him to come.

Looking back, he’s afraid he wasted too much of those last weeks. Scared of giving too much away, the hurt from so many sides and the heartache that’s already taking root, but also: the way he clings, but tries not to make it obvious.

Fuck; but of course it was gonna be obvious, and how much energy did he waste, how many opportunities slipped by, because Steve was trying not to give away that Eddie leaving—to get away from a town that hated him, to try and make a real go with his music, to be anywhere without Steve so he could live out the dreams that predated Steve, that Steve had no place in—to try not to give away that all of it; it’d fucking destroy him.

Steve doesn’t know, to this day, how he stood and let Eddie kiss him breathless out the driver-side window, how he waved until Eddie was out of sight. He doesn’t know.

Kind of like he doesn’t know how he fucking keeps doing it.

Eddie throws tapes to every radio station with Van Halen or other top-played bands written on the insert in sharpie like that gives nothing away, and sneaks a demo in every underpaid delivery boy’s hands to record executives as he drives to the West Coast, sends Steve postcards what seems like has to be every goddamn day, filled up with his rambling until there’s no space left, has to draw lines around Steve’s address to make it clear where the damn thing’s going lest it get confused. Like they’re SteveandEddie still. Like only…only the things that changed after graduation are gone.

Steve sobs after about a month of it all, grateful and resentful, hateful and still so goddamn full of love it’s sickening. Literally, it makes him feel nauseous. He…

He keeps every postcard.

When one of them comes to say some idiot in San Francisco accidentally played Corroded Coffin on what’s apparently an important station, and Eddie got a letter in response from one of the labels, he says he’s coming back for the boys, they need to be ready. Steve knows he’s not one of the boys, but.

Eddie wouldn’t have told Steve he was coming if it wouldn’t matter to Steve. And maybe Eddie wasn’t in love with him anymore, maybe never was in love with him.

But he’d be lying if he said he thought Eddie didn’t love him. In a different way. A…you-don’t-get-to-come-with-me-but-I’d-still-want-to-see-you-when-I-stop-back kind of way.

And Steve…Steve’s not a fucking monk or anything. But even Robin doesn’t try to push him when he finally just tells her what he feels, lovesick and pathetic as it is:

I gave everything I had to someone else, and it’d be different if I wanted to back, to give again, but…I don’t.

I don’t want it back, not from him. Not if any part of him, wants to keep any part of it.

And because she’s Robin, she knows he means something else when he says ‘it’. And because she’s Robin? She’d push if she thought it was worth it.

She just holds him, and that’s really the best thing he could ask for.

But it becomes a thing. The boys go with Eddie, and they record new shit to impress...whoever. And they do. They come back for Halloween, because Eddie loves it. The label’s dragging its feet, but they’re not deterred, they’re energized. They come back for Thanksgiving because Wayne loves it—except he doesn’t, Steve knows that, Wayne actually hates trying to make a bird and Eddie had lamented more than once that they ended up with lunchmeat cut into cubes one year when Wayne was particularly frustrated with the process. They go out East, and try a few studios in New York. They come back for Christmas.

Eddie spends most of his time with Steve. Steve doesn’t fucking fight that; wants it…like…

There’s nothing to compare how he wants it to. Nothing exists that fits.

Eddie spends most of the time that he spends with Steve, though?

In Steve’s bed.

And here’s the thing: Steve had a decent amount of experience to compare to, but once they’d fallen into a rhythm, got past the awkward bits, the learning curve? Sex with Eddie had been a goddamn revelation. Not just because he was a man—after he’d left, Steve had forced himself to try, and dispelled that possibility quick as hell—and now?

Now, it’s like they never stopped. Every fucking time, it’s like they never stopped.

Steve’s not surprised in the slightest that he remembers every give and tell of Eddie’s body—of course he goddamn does—but that Eddie doesn’t miss a beat in touching, sucking, licking, worshippingSteve’s? That’s insane. That’s…

Unexpected. Every time it’s unexpected and every time Steve’s shown he wasn’t forgotten when he probably should have been. Eddie’s building a life that doesn’t include him.

He’ll only get in the way.

But Steve is selfish and stubborn and maybe it’s often, like almost strangely so, but it’s only a week or two at a go so he tells himself he’s allowed. He tells himself that it felt like making love in the beginning because Steve was in love, and that it still feels exactly the same because Steve…Steve never stopped.

Steve is still just as goddamn in love.

So yeah. Steve sleeps with Eddie and it’s like…it’s like rationed air. He gets a regular taste and he gets to keep breathing.

And it’s okay. Probably more then. Because he gets Eddie—even a little bit. Even just in scraps. When he has Eddie?

He has him, even for moments that were never made to last.

It’s Easter, this time. The band put out their first record in January. It’s doing really well. Eddie’s over the moon. Someone called about a magazine cover for a publication in Cleveland that’s apparently kind of a big deal, Alt..something. Steve will buy every copy in a fucking 100-mile radius. 200 miles. 500—

It’s Easter. Eddie didn’t lament not celebrating it after Spring Break in ‘86 but he’s back every year now. And if it’s just…come to mean something, or maybe did then and circumstances won out against it? Steve will be here. Steve will be comfort and a reprieve or a hot as hell romp with a familiar body, Steve will…

Yeah. Steve will do whatever’s needed. Wanted. Anything.

Pathetic.

But so much better than nothing.

Case in point: they’re both naked, sweat mostly dried, sharing a joint and it’s comfortable. It’s quiet and gentle and put up against sitting alone on a weeknight, not with Eddie?

It’s heaven.

“So when’s the dream happening?”

Steve looks cross-eyed toward his lips; he hasn’t smoked this thing long enough to have heard wrong. He squints up at Eddie, whose chest he’s laid out on, confused. Offers him the smoke but he waves it away.

“The dream?” Steve asks finally, when Eddie doesn’t seem to want to answer on his own.

Eddie looks at him weird. Not weird for its own sake but like: like he’s staring into him, and then like he’s disbelieving, but then also like he’s seeing him for the first time.

That kind of weird.

“Getting the fuck out of here,” Eddie answers like it’s obvious. “White picket fence. Little nuggets.” He spreads his hands as wide as possible without tossing Steve from where he lies. “See the sights.”

And Steve’s response is immediate. Doesn’t even require a thought.

He laughs. Like, ugly-laughs.

“Man,” he shakes his head as he catches his breath, and passes the joint off this time with purpose, not an offer or a choice as he snorts a little; “that’s not the dream.”

When Eddie doesn’t grab the smoke, Steve finally looks up. Eddie…

Eddie looks like what Steve’s always struggled to understand the word ‘poleaxed’ to mean. He thinks it might be this.

He looks…like something stuck him through the gut. Slapped him silly across the face.

“What d’ya mean?” And it’s just three words, one that’s a cheat, and he says it slow enough to take an age.

Steve breathes out, and then, if he’s gonna be honest, and if he has to keep holding the damn thing anyway, decides to take another drag before speaking:

“Figured out what the dream was, inside the dream,” Steve says, wondering if he’ll get away with the vagary; knowing he won’t.

“All we see or seem?” Eddie jokes a little, but it falls flat, his tone eerily kinda…strained but hollow.

“I like poetry.” Steve smiles up at him, soft, and offers the joint again straight to Eddie’s lips. He takes it this time.

“It was about family. It was about stability, not,” Steve shakes his head, stops talking half-assed around the lungful he’s holding, and lets it out slow; “not in a place, fuck, not in a house, but,” a person he doesn’t say, but he hears it in his head; “it was about sharing it.”

And that's it. That’s the simplest, most straightforward truth. Steve doesn’t think there’s anything complicated, or offensive in it. Hard to swallow. Even if he’s come to terms with it. Is mostly at peace with it.

Which is why it’s weird, that Eddie feels suddenly rigid beneath him.

So Steve turns, and braces his hand on Eddie's chest for balance, and frowns when he doesn’t even have to push down to feel the way his heart’s a fucking riot.

“What?” Steve asks, gentle; Eddie’s face is a portrait of conflict, of distress and Steve can’t fucking figure out why, they just came like four times between them and are sharing some very nice Cali weed—they’re nestled close, they’re together, it’s…

Eddie’s quiet, his breath disconcertingly steady for how his pulse pounds, and then he breathes out slow before covering his face:

“I don’t think I can fuck this up any worse than I already have, so,” he mutters, dejected for reasons Steve can’t even guess, then he laughs, humorless, shakes his head:

“Let me try, I guess.”

Steve frowns, uncomprehending, until:

“I’ve been in love with you forever.”

Steve thinks the world stops. His heart does, at least. Suspended. Silent so he doesn’t miss a syllable.

“And I told myself,” Eddie bites at his lip, worries at the bottom swell; “end of that summer, from the very first, I said: don’t ask him to come with you, even if it breaks your heart,” and oh god, oh god after all this time: Steve doesn’t think he’s projecting to hear the genuinely broken heart in those words for just remembering.

“Don’t ask him to settle, you’re not even in the same universe of what he wants,” fuck, what lies Eddie’s saying; did he believe them? Has he always—“what he needs.”

But Eddie is everything he needs, always was, will always be—

“You’ll never have the picket fence. You can’t give him his nuggets. You should never be trusted to park a Winnebago.”

They could have had a shitty studio apartment. They could have had the kids in college. They could have run the BMW until it died, or sold it to put toward a better van for equipment. They could have—

“You’re selfish, Munson, you’re a rat fucking bastard but,” Eddie’s still going, heart still hammering under Steve’s touch even as Eddie swallows hard and fails to smile, looks ill with the attempt like it hurts to try: “you love him too much for that.”

Oh. Oh god.

“It didn’t break my heart, though,” Eddie clears his throat and glances away, to the ceiling, eyes too bright: oh fuck; “broke my goddamn soul,” and a tear falls, and Steve can’t help but wipe it away, and kiss the track. Even just once.

So he does.

“When I saw you again that first time back,” Eddie starts again, voice rougher and shakier as he reaches a hand for Steve’s. “I could have asked the boys to fly out, the execs offered, but,” and this time, the attempt to grin is more successful, like a weight’s lifted from it: “and you smiled at me, it felt like,” and when he shakes his head this time it’s for disbelief, but the kind that comes with awe; “and when we slotted back together like we’d never been apart, it was…”

Eddie’s voice trails, but it cracks at the end—Steve doesn’t know which does more to stop his words.

He’s grateful, relieved, when they come back. He’s powerless but to give when Eddie touches his cheek so gentle and breathes:

“And I had to tell myself again, and again,” he murmurs, stroking Steve’s skin like he’s precious: “you love him too much to take his dream away from him.”

“What did it matter?” Steve can’t help but ask, no malice in it, just the need to understand. “You had your dream, you have—“

They have a contract. They have an album climbing the charts. They’re not just on their way—they’re there. The only next step is to get bigger, and bigger, and—

“Dreams within dreams, wasn’t it?” Eddie murmurs close to Steve’s cheek, where maybe he’s pressing to be close, or maybe he’s hiding a little, so Steve strokes his hair because he can either way and relishes how Eddie leans, melts into it like always. “Inside the dream?”

Steve nods, more to encourage more words. More Eddie.

“Break my dream open and there’s you with me, every step,” Eddie whispers, his lips warm on Steve’s skin. “Break my heart open, same damn thing,” and that causes Steve to shudder, and his heart to pick up now, too. “Both just kinda crumble if you take out the center.”

Steve can’t quite believe what he’s hearing. Wants to. Doesn’t think they’re lies. It’s just, he…

“Those,” Steve tries to speak but his voice cracks; he clears his throat and kicks his lips while he tucks Eddie into his neck, under his chin: “those would be good lyrics.”

“No,” Eddie shakes his head and nuzzles Steve’s throat with the motion and this can’t be happening.

This can’t be happening, can it?

“No, those words were only ever meant just for you.”

And Eddie kisses the pulse point close to his mouth and holds there, like a sentry and a miser, and holy shit.

Holy shit.

“And I don’t know,” Eddie’s saying more, but it’s pitchy, thready, like he’s barely holding the words together at all; “I don’t know if it’s nostalgia, or convenience, or routine,” his voice breaks again and the sob’s in the word when it comes even if it’s not streaming down on his cheeks: “pity,” and no, no, not fucking ever, how—

“I was never your dream then, and I don’t even know if I can be your inside-dream now, and,” Eddie’s rambling, and he does that when he’s desperate, when he’s overwhelmed and overfull with feeling—and Steve knows that. Steve knows that about him.

Steve knows. Better than he knows himself, Steve still knows him.

“I just want the world for you,” Eddie whispers, stroking up and down Steve’s jaw; “my sweetheart. My sunshine,” he smiles so real and soft and Steve melts, like the heart in his chest starts spilling through his ribs, warm and liquid: “you deserve more than the world, more than fuckin’ me and I,” Eddie shakes his head again, more this time like he’s stopping himself, like it’s a defense mechanism and Steve reaches for his cheeks, broad palms on either side to hold him still because…he doesn’t want Eddie to stop.

Ever.

“Did I ruin it?” Eddie breathes, and barely at that, eyes so wide and swimming and oh, god; “did I—"

And Steve can’t help it. He can’t help but kiss him with all he’s got, even if it couldn’t be all Eddie’s worth in all the world. Steve can’t contain all that Eddie’s worth.

But he can give everything, because this is the man who already has it.

“What the hell was I supposed to be to a rockstar?” Steve tries to talk through his own tight throat, his own growing smile, his own threat of tears bubbling close to the surface. “How the fuck was I ever going to measure up, ever do anything but hold you back when you could have—“

“I come back to you, for you,” Eddie answers immediate; it’s not what Steve’s asking but he won’t lie and say he didn’t want to know, at least a little. “The handful of times I’ve tried,” Eddie shakes his head once now, definitive; “I have always left my everything with you.”

The idea that Steve’s spent all this time feeling empty, and hollow, and missing the best of himself where it lived in the man he loved—the idea he was wrong, that they both were so fucking wrong is…insanity.

“I had a bag half packed.”

Steve doesn’t need to explain further. The noise Eddie makes is pure pain.

“Baby,” he nearly croons, falls into Steve somehow closer, wraps him up tighter; “I wanted to kidnap you in the night.”

“I sobbed in my bed after you were out of sight.”

“I pulled over before the town sign, because I couldn’t see the goddamn road.”

And Steve…Steve doesn’t really have a decision to make about what he says next. What dream he wants; always has.

“I never got rid of the luggage.”

And Eddie hears everything he says in those words, because after everything, Eddie Munson knows him, and…yeah.

Steve’s been kissed in a lot of ways before. By this man in particular, even.

But this: if leaving broke Eddie’s soul, if somehow the lack of Steve somehow did that?

This is…this is the body meeting another body, heart to heart and tasting the way a soul slides back in place. It's Eddie’s hands in his hair like hell never let go and he’s happy about the idea; blissful for it, even. It’s—beyond anything Steve’s ever known. So: yeah.

It’s not a decision. It’s just a fucking given.

♥️

🎸also on ao3

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divider credit here

[starset21]

Still Healing |LS18|

Pairing: Lance Stroll x reader

Summery: Lance is hiding worsening wrist pain, driven by pressure to prove he belongs in F1. His girlfriend urges him to stop pushing through the pain for others’ approval. After qualifying, the pain becomes too much, and he seeks help. Told he needs surgery and must sit out the race, Lance finally lets go of pride and accepts support—realizing strength can mean knowing when to stop.

Standard disclaimer: I do not consent to the posting, translating, or publishing of my work to any 3rd party site, the only place it may found is on tumblr or A03 under the same name. This is all fake. It does not reflect real people, real events or their actual actions or relationships. May contain google translated languages.

The motorhome door clicked shut behind him, but the world outside didn’t stop. Even inside the air-conditioned motorhome, the dry Barcelona heat clung to his skin. It was the kind of heat that made the pain worse—dry, tight, suffocating. Lance dropped his race gloves onto the counter, the worn leather thudding softly against the surface. He pressed his back against the cool metal cabinets, tilted his head back, and exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding since FP3 ended.

His wrists were throbbing.

Not in the sharp, screaming way they had in Bahrain the years before when the fractures were fresh and brutal—but in a deep, simmering way. Like something left unresolved. It had been two years since the surgery. Pins and plates, weeks of physiotherapy, quiet mornings filled with ice packs and resistance bands. Everyone else seemed to think he’d healed.

Everyone but her.

“You’re doing it again,” her voice came from behind him.

Soft. Certain. And familiar in the way he both craved and feared.

He didn’t look back. “Doing what?”

“Pretending you're fine.”

He heard her steps. Quiet but firm. Like she knew he’d try to keep pretending. Like she wasn’t going to let him.

“I’m fine,” he muttered.

“Lance.”

“I am.”

He turned now, not with anger, but with frustration he didn’t know where else to put. “It’s manageable.”

She stepped closer, gaze level with his. “You didn’t look very 'manageable' when you dropped your gloves like they were on fire.”

He glanced at the gloves. His hands shook, faint tremors running through his fingers—subtle enough for a camera to miss, but not her.

“Every time you push past this, you make it worse,” she said quietly. “And then you don’t sleep. Or you ice them in the middle of the night.”

He clenched his jaw. “I have to push.”

“Why?”

Lance ran a hand through his hair. “Because no one’s ever going to think I deserve this if I don’t.”

Silence.

And then, softer: “Is that what this is still about? Them?”

He didn’t answer.

“They said it again this morning,” he said finally, voice cracking like gravel. “That I should’ve stayed out after the accident. That I only came back because of my name. That I’m wasting a seat.”

She looked away, jaw tight. He could see the way her fingers curled slightly, the way she always did when she was trying not to lose her cool on his behalf.

“They don’t know you,” she said. “They see your last name and your results and they think they have the whole story.”

“They’re not wrong, though, are they?” he muttered. “I’m not Fernando. I’m not Max or Charles or Lando. And I’m not even close.”

“That doesn’t mean you don’t belong here.”

He laughed under his breath, but there was no humor in it.

“I don’t think they’ll ever give me that. No matter what I do.”

She stepped closer. Now only inches separated them. Her hand hovered over his, but didn’t touch—not yet.

“I’m not asking you to stop fighting,” she said. “Just to stop bleeding for them.”

Lance looked up, startled by her words. There was a rawness in her voice that struck deeper than anything the media had thrown at him.

“You can’t win them over by destroying yourself.”

Her hand finally found his—his dominant one, the one that still held ghost pains even after hours in the sim or a full race distance. Her thumb brushed the underside of his wrist, where the scars had faded but not vanished.

“Do you still get pain on downshifts?” she asked gently.

He hesitated. “Sometimes.”

“Corners?”

He nodded. “Turn 9 had stung worst—sharp, fast, and brutal.”

“And you still won’t tell the team.”

“It’s not bad enough to sit out.”

“Would you say that if someone else on the grid was in your condition?”

He said nothing.

“You fight so hard to prove you're strong,” she whispered, “but you never think strength could look like something else. Like stepping back. Or asking for help.”

Lance stared at their joined hands. Hers was steady. His… less so. She traced one of the small ridges of the surgery scar. “You didn’t have to get back in that car so soon. But you did. Not for them. For you. Because you are a racer. No one can take that from you.”

A lump rose in his throat. He didn’t want to cry. Not here. Not now. But it pressed up like seawater rising behind a dam.

“Why does it still hurt?” he whispered. “Why does it feel like I’ll never be enough?”

She pulled him in then. Slowly, gently. He didn’t resist. Her arms wrapped around his waist, grounding him in the silence.

“You’re enough for me,” she said into his shoulder. “Always have been.”

He let his chin fall to her shoulder, the tension in his body finally giving way. It wasn’t dramatic—just the slow unraveling of someone who hadn’t let go in far too long.

“You don’t have to earn love,” she continued. “Not from me. Not from the team. Not even from the fans who see you for who you are.”

“They’re not many.”

“They’re enough. And the rest don’t matter.”

He pulled back just enough to look at her, eyes glassy but calm.

“I’m tired.”

“I know.”

“And I’m scared that if I slow down, I’ll fall behind.”

“You might,” she said honestly. “But you’ll get back up. And I’ll be right here. Every time.”

He didn’t say thank you. He didn’t need to. It was in the way he touched her face, in the way he leaned his forehead against hers, in the sigh that finally escaped his chest without resistance. Outside, the paddock buzzed on. Engines, comms chatter, camera shutters. The sound of a world that never stopped. But inside, for a few minutes, Lance Stroll let it all go. Let himself be human.

He left her with a nod and one last look—quiet, heavy, full of something unspoken. And then he pulled the fireproofs back over his arms. 

There was a job to do.

So he did it.

Sector one: green.                   Sector two: barely.                                       Sector three… he didn’t remember.

The car twitched out of Turn 9, the wheel kicked, and he gritted his teeth so hard it left a taste of copper on his tongue.

He didn’t say a word over the radio. Just parked it. Unstrapped. Pulled himself out of the car with careful, practiced movements—each one just a second slower than it should’ve been. His gloves had come off slower than usual. His wrists felt locked, like rusted joints in need of oil. His left one trembled slightly. He left before anyone could ask more questions—helmet in one hand, gloves in the other, posture too stiff to pass as casual.

The paddock was sweltering. Summer in Spain. He felt sweat prick beneath his suit even before he hit the corridor outside the media pen. 

He was supposed to give interviews.

He didn’t.

He didn’t go back to the motorhome, either. Instead, he turned toward the paddock medical center. His legs moved without full permission, like instinct had finally kicked in where logic had failed. His throat was tight. His suit stuck to the curve of his back. But he kept walking. He moved like someone who didn’t want to be seen—but wouldn’t have cared if he was. Somewhere along the edge of the paddock, the buzz started to fade. 

He hesitated outside the doors.

The kind of hesitation that wasn't about fear—but about pride. About what it meant to walk into that building and say: I can’t do this. Not like this. 

Then he exhaled and stepped inside.

A nurse looked up from her station. “Mr. Stroll?”

He nodded once, almost apologetically. “My wrists. It’s... bad.”

She stood without hesitation, professional but gentle. “Come with me.”

He followed. Quiet. Numb. The ache in his left wrist had turned sharp, insistent, with every heartbeat. His fingers curled stiffly, reflexive—like his body was trying to protect itself from the inside out. The pain felt personal now. Like betrayal. Or maybe inevitability. She led him to an exam room and helped him out of the top half of his fireproofs, folding the sleeves down with clinical care. When she asked how long it had been hurting like this, he didn’t answer right away.

“Since before Imola,” he muttered eventually. “Spain just… cracked it open.”

He sat still as they prepped the equipment. His name came up on the screen, alongside a faint digital image of his arm in cross-section—white bone, fine metal screws, ghostly shadows of swelling. They ran scans. X-rays. An ultrasound. It didn’t take long. But it felt like forever.

By the time the team doctor stepped into the room, his face already told Lance what he needed to know. “Talk to me,” Lance said, voice low.

The doctor took a breath, then pulled the stool closer. “There’s fluid around the screw sites—both wrists, but the left is worse. We’re also seeing signs of severe inflammation in the tendon sheath. That’s what’s causing the stiffness and nerve pressure. And from the way you're describing the pain, you may have a partial tear forming in the extensor retinaculum.”

Lance stared at the floor. The words came in pieces, each one landing like a stone.

“So… what do we do?”

“We need to go in,” the doctor said carefully. “A minimally invasive procedure. Tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“To drain the fluid. Clean the area. Relieve pressure before we risk permanent nerve damage. You won’t race tomorrow.”

Lance blinked. Once. Twice.

And then his jaw tightened.

“Is it... major?”

“No,” the doctor said gently. “But it’s not optional.”

He didn’t speak.

Just pressed his right hand to the edge of the exam table, as if anchoring himself. 

The doctor waited a moment. Then: “If it helps... you’ve been racing with more damage than most would have let get this far. But we’re at the edge now. If you’d waited another weekend—”

“I get it,” Lance said, sharp but quiet. 

The doctor nodded and stood, giving him space with a murmured, “I’ll let the nurse know to prep for transfer.”

The door clicked shut behind him. For a moment, the sterile white walls closed in. Lance’s hand stayed pressed to the edge of the table, fingers trembling slightly as if trying to hold himself together. His breath caught in his chest—shallow, uneven. The calm he’d forced on himself all weekend suddenly felt fragile, slipping. The silence stretched, a cold weight settling on his shoulders.

Then the door opened again.

Soft footsteps, quicker this time—familiar.

“Lance.”

Her voice broke the quiet like a lifeline.

He looked up, meeting her eyes. The strength he tried to wear cracked, just enough for her to see it.

“I’m going to the hospital,” he said, voice low, almost defeated. “Surgery tonight. No race tomorrow.”

She didn’t hesitate. Her hand reached out before he could stop her, slipping into his. Warm, steady. Real.

“I know,” she whispered, voice thick with something he couldn’t name—relief, fear, love.

He let his head fall back against the wall for a moment, eyes closed. The fight inside him drained away, replaced by a hollow ache. But with her hand holding his, that ache felt a little less alone.

After a heartbeat, she shifted closer and squeezed his fingers gently. “We’ll get through this. Together.”

His gaze found hers again, searching. Not for answers—he didn’t have any—but for permission to be vulnerable. She gave it freely with a quiet promise in her eyes. He squeezed back, just as firmly. Outside the room, the muffled sounds of the paddock carried on—the relentless rhythm of a world that never stopped. But here, in the calm of the medical center, time slowed. Just for a little while.

[suzukiblu]

istg youve awakened something in me w your jaykon agenda and im so here for it

Jaykon is an interesting pairing to me because if Jason had lived, he absolutely WOULD have been Kon's Robin, which, you know, could've gone either real bad or real WELL or real "oh god I regret ever even BREATHING near Metropolis" for Brucie Wayne, lbr. For one thing, Jason would've been . . . what, seventeen-ish when Kon dropped? Give or take. Which means he would likely NOT have been as "obedient" to his DAD as Tim was to his BOSS at FIFteen-ish, because from Jason's point of view that's his fucking DAD and his dad is just being goddamn paranoid and controlling and a total antisocial ASSHOLE again and ANYWAY he's like six months max from going to college and getting himself his own hero identity a la Dick getting Nightwing so fuck it, what's he care!!

( "I NEVER EVEN GOT TO BE A TITAN, B, YOU DON'T GET TO FUCK UP THIS YOUNG JUSTICE THING FOR ME, FUCK OFF. THEY'RE MINE NOW." )

And also, like, that's a very different Bruce, is the Bruce who didn't ever LOSE Jason. So hell, that version of Bruce literally might not've even TRIED to make Jason keep his name to himself in the same exclusively-just-on-HIS-terms "literally I will fucking NEVER let you tell them your name no matter WHAT" way he was acting with Tim, who he also would not let tell his LITERAL FUCKING GIRLFRIEND his name, but HE was totally fine telling her HIMSELF once it was convenient for him. Not even giving Tim PERMISSION to, just doing it HIMSELF without even telling Tim he was GOING to, Bruce Wayne you are the literal worrrrrst jfc--

ANYWAY OFF-TOPIC. Whatever that Bruce's opinion was, I can't help feeling that if JASON-Robin wasn't telling YJ his name or showing them his face at least after the first suicide pact or two, it'd be because HE didn't want to, and that is what he'd SAY to them. And I kinda think Kon would've taken that better than being told "we've been through all this shit together now and Batman is STILL more important than you" over and over and OVER every single time Tim found another excuse to hide his face or showed up in a new mask/disguise/set of glasses/goggles/whatever. Because like, that would be Jason choosing what he wants for himself, not Tim choosing Batman over literally every single member of Young Justice time and again and AGAIN and actually NEVER willingly telling them, they only found out in the end because of some dumb reality-getting-fucked shit selling his ID out accidentally.

I actually think Jason and Kon would have gotten along STUPID-well if they had met under those circumstances and it is SO rich an AU concept that I have literally never seen a single person even touch before. Though also in more canon-accurate land frankly the only understandable reason that I think Jason has Bizarro for his Super-buddy system is because Young Justice is just too insane about each other for Kon to have ever gotten put on a book like Outlaws, hah. Also, like, Kon is obviously not very murder-happy and Superboy has very different moral standards than Red Hood does, also that. But you absolutely COULD do some real interesting shit with Kon's character on a team like that, that's all imma say.

Like Kon is a dude who HAS and KNOWS that he has been convinced to be murder-happy a couple times/timelines before, is all--knows he's psychologically SUSPECTIBLE to being convinced of that--and THAT I think would be a much more interesting moral/ethical dilemma for his character development than "oh god I have Westfield/Luthor DNA so am I genetically DOOMED to be a bad guy??" No, you're not, and you are a grown-ass clone who KNOWS that!! But you are also a grown-ass clone who knows you have the CAPACITY to be a bad guy, and to actively CHOOSE to be a bad guy, to actively JUSTIFY being a bad guy to yourself, and who does NOT necessarily think Jason is wrong about dudes like the Joker never changing and the balance of that and the concept of fucking HARM reduction, if it comes down to it! Black Zero and future!Superman BOTH started out as good guys; that Superman in fact started out as HIS VERSION OF HIM EXACTLY, even! And then the two of them saw enough shit out in the world doing their superhero thing that they changed their minds ABOUT what being "good" even meant or entailed or if it was even possible at all, so if he's here and doing this, and doing this with someone like JASON who keeps KILLING people every time he takes his eyes off him, whether those people are unforgiveable bastards or not, is he gonna change his mind too? Is he gonna start thinking he's figured out what they "figured out"? Is this how "figuring out" that STARTS??

And Knockout saw SOMETHING in him, he knows, and he knows she wasn't wrong because he almost killed her. Because he WOULD'VE killed her, if she'd kept fighting when he'd held her under.

God I could do so, so much with Kon on the Outlaws and with JAYKON on the Outlaws. So, SO much.

But like, Tim Drake exists and I just cannot divorce Kon from his ride-or-die loyalty for his ride-or-die bestie so basically any time I wanna JayKon it up I gotta somehow make it Weird, hahaha.

. . . anyway, someone had something awakened in them or something??

[xfulcrumx]

I cannot stop thinking about Asmodeus, Sarenrae, and Zerxus

Zerxus, in Luis’s own words, is a redemption paladin played to the max. His belief in redemption is so unshaking that he not only believes Asmodeus can be redeemed, but declines Nydas’s salvation and submits to Asmodeus because to do otherwise would be to admit that he himself would be beyond saving if he went down that path. He cannot and will not let go of his faith in redemption and it costs him his soul.

In this way, Zerxus truly was meant to be Sarenrae’s champion. They share an unwavering faith in redemption to the point of fault. But, Zerxus grew up in a culture that scoffed at the Prime Deities. The hubris of that time did not allow for Zerxus to see how the Everlight was the embodiment of his most sacred ideals. It is this hubris that Asmodeus takes advantage of.

Every chance he gets Asmodeus slaughters the followers of Sarenrae. He does this because he cannot allow hope to exist. His domination must be so pure that the thought of an alternative is not an option. The Everlight must be snuffed out, for she represents everything he despises.

Asmodeus, the god of domination, who cannot accept that he could be beneath anyone, even for a second, as they raise a hand to lift him up, sees this perfect redemption paladin and sees a delicious way to prove that Sarenrae is weak. That hope is a flaw to be extorted and crushed. And even better, brings a powerful threat that would have likely fought in Sarenrae’s name under his control.

Everything Asmodeus does is done to hurt Sarenrae specifically. His sister, who showed him mercy and compassion in his very first moment of reality, as he chose to use his power to force a path for his kin. This one, well-intended choice forever cementing his fate as a god known for imposing his violent will, and her fate as a god known to provide safety and light to all who seek it no matter the cost.

Sarenrae will always go back to Asmodeus. Sarenrae will always try to heal him. And he will always push away, more violently each time, for his chosen path /must/ continue. Those were the choices that made them real, they are the center of their very being.

[imagine-docx]

poem bandit.

Summary: You work in the library and keep finding love poems hidden in the pages of the book. You assume it’s a prank until you finally meet the the author of said poems. [college!au]

Warnings: light swearing.

A/N: two pieces in one week? who am i? - amanda 💛

I see her walk the meadow wide,With sunlight dancing at her side.She does not know my name or face,Yet still she holds my heart in place.

I speak no word, I make no sound,Just watch her footsteps grace the ground.A love so close, yet far to roam—She is the dream I call my own.

Was the first of the many poems that you found in art books in the book return.

You started receiving poems about four months ago. Initially, you thought it was just someone working on something and they accidentally left it in a book and returned it. You notified your colleagues that in case someone came looking for it, it would be in the black binder behind the desk.

At some point you deemed it as a prank because you were constantly getting them and the weird part was, the books were only returned when you worked. You brushed it off thinking it was another pateron playing a prank, until it started being left on the desk. 

One night it was just you and Wanda working the library during midterm season, when the poem was left in the book on the check in desk. You were busy reshelving the books and Wanda was in the bathroom so neither of you were able to catch the culprit.

✿　.　˚　. 　 ˚　✿.

You, Wanda, and Nat were walking to the student lounge to grab something to eat after your 10 am Digital Cultures and Social Media class. “Memes as modern mythology,” Nat grumbled, “Who the fuck analyzes memes?”

“Are you still pressed about the assignment?” You asked.

“She didn’t start,” Wanda pointed out.

“Hold on, Ms. Romanoff didn’t start an assignment yet?” You asked in disbelief.

“God forbid a woman has other classes she has to deal with,” Natasha said while taking a sip of coffee.

You opened the door and held it open for Wanda and Nat, “You are the queen of multitasking, I simply don’t believe that you can’t manage time properly.”

“She has new priorities,” Wanda said, wiggling her eyebrows.

“He is not distracting me,” Natasha hissed.

“We never mentioned a he,” You retorted.

The three of you lined up for the hot bar place, “Are you still getting those poems?” Natasha asked, changing the topic.

“You are changing the topic!”

“Nothing is gonna happen with that love life, might as well interrogate the one that seems to have movement,” Natasha said. 

“He keeps leaving poems on the front desk for her,” Wanda chimed.

“It’s not for me,” you shot back.

“You are the only one getting them, it doesn’t happen when I work. Doesn’t happen when Carol works. Doesn’t happen when Peter works. There’s one common denominator,” Wanda argued.

“It’s a prank,” you declared.

“Who the fuck goes through that much writing, and hassle to ensure you get it, and it happens to be a prank. Be fucking for real.” Natasha argued.

“Nat’s right you know? If it was a prank they would do maybe five max. It’s been what? Five months?” Wanda stated

“Four,” you corrected under your breath.

“See! So you do know!” Wanda said in a matter of a fact tone.

“Have you ever tried, I don’t know, checking who checked out the book,” Natasha said to the both of you. You and Wanda looked at each other in disbelief. “You two dimwits didn’t think of this?”

✿　.　˚　. 　 ˚　✿.

You and Wanda were working late at the library again. You both delegated tasks to each other, so the faster you two finish, the faster you two can go back to gossiping. You were putting glue into the spine of a book to fix it. 

“Excuse me?” 

That snapped you out of your concentration, you looked up and your jaw almost dropped. Standing in front of you was the cutest man you’ve ever seen. “Hi,” you smiled, “How can I help you?”

“I was wondering if you could check if there was a book in the library for me?” He asked. 

“Of course,” you jiggled the mouse, “What’s the title?”

“Indigenous Enslavement in U.S. History,” he said, reading the title off his phone.

You typed it in and searched through the system, “This one seems popular, both copies are out.”

“Shit,” he cursed.

“Need it for an assignment?” You asked, looking at him.

“Yeah, I have time though. It’s due in a few weeks, I just wanted a head start.” He said.

“You’re better than me,” you joked, “I would’ve waited until three days before it’s due.”

“You’re better than my roommate, he would wait until the morning of to do it,” he joked.

“One copy comes back on Thursday if you want?” You asked.

“Can I hold it?” He asked.

“Of course, let me grab your name,” you clicked on the field.

“Steve Rogers,” he responded.

“Nice to meet you,” you replied and introduced yourself.

“That’s a beautiful name,” he said.

“Thank my parents for it,” you joked again, “You’ll get an email to come collect it when it gets back in the library.”

“Thank you,” he said with gratitude. 

✿　.　˚　. 　 ˚　✿.

You were in the kitchen making tea, when you felt someone nudge your ribs. “So who was that?” 

“Nothing gets past you, huh?” You asked, pouring a spoonful of sugar into the cup.

“You two totally hit it off,” Wanda said, grabbing her own cup.

“It was someone looking for a book, nothing romantic about that,” you retorted.

“He was making googly eyes at you!” She exclaimed.

“He was probably making googly eyes at Indigenous history,” you said, pouring the hot water into the cup. 

“Are you that dense?” Wanda asked. 

“Wanda, this is a library, where people come to study and find books. Not find love.” You stated, pouring milk into your tea.

“Oh my god, what if he’s the poem bandit?” Wanda exclaimed.

“That’s where your mind went to?” You asked, walking out with Wanda trailing closely behind.

“Give me a valid reason as to why he can’t be the poem bandit?” She asked.

“He was looking for a boo—” You stopped in your tracks.

Wanda looked at you confused, she followed your eyes and looked to where you were staring. There sat another art history book with a piece of paper sticking out. “Poem bandit!”

You slowly put down your cup and hesitated to pick up the book, your photos gently grazed the cover. You picked it up and pulled out the poem.

You walk like morning—soft and slow,Where flowers bloom and robins go.The world feels lighter when you’re near,Like every cloud forgets to fear.

I don’t know when or how or why—Just that you’re sunshine passing by.And though you haven’t seen me yet,My heart writes songs it won’t forget.

Wanda immediately smacked your arm and pushed you to the side, “Move, let me see who checked this out.”

You held the note in your hand and kept rereading it.

Wanda scanned the barcode, “It hasn’t been checked out.”

The two of you looked at each other, dumbfounded.

✿　.　˚　. 　 ˚　✿.

“So you guys found nothing,” Natasha said, throwing down the french fry she was holding.

You and Wanda returned home after 12 am from your shift and grabbed food for the three of you on the way back.

“Nat, the book was last checked out in 2022,” Wanda said, taking a bite of her burger.

“So the man is just in the library, writing poems and leaving,” Natasha said, putting together the pieces.

“I think it’s the blond guy she was talking to today,” Wanda stated.

Natasha shot a look at you, while you were getting up to go to the kitchen. “Who?” she asked.

“Wanda is convinced that a random pateron who was looking for a book is what she calls the poem bandit,” you responded, grabbing napkins from the kitchen.

“How can you be so sure it isn’t him?” Wanda once again interrogated.

“Wanda, not everyone is the poem bandit.” You stated.

✿　.　˚　. 　 ˚　✿.

You, Wanda, and Natasha were in the library. You were sitting in the high chair, Wanda stood leaning against the book return, and Natasha was standing on the other side of the checkout desk. “This was the book,” Wanda said, handing the book to Natasha.

“Can we put the poem bandit behind us?” You asked.

“He is infatuated by you!” Wanda exclaimed, “We have to meet him.”

“You wanna meet the soul that leaves me poems?” You asked.

“He keeps torturing you, of course we want to meet him,” Natasha joked.

“Excuse me?” Someone called out.

You looked up and saw Steve. “Hi Steve.”

“Hi, your book is in. Let me grab it for you.” You smiled, getting up. 

Wanda and Natasha shot looks at each other while you and Steve were exchanging small talk whilst checking out the book.

Steve got the book and bid goodbye to the three of you and going to sit at a table.

“I see where Wanda is coming from,” Natasha laughed.

“God, not you too,” you groaned.

✿　.　˚　. 　 ˚　✿.✿　.　˚　. 　 ˚　✿.

For the week, you were dealing with nonstop teasing from Wanda and Natasha over the poem bandit and Steve.

You were reshelving books when Peter came up, “Could you watch the front for a second? I need to use the washroom,” he shyly asked. 

“Go,” you smiled, “I got you.”

Peter thanked you profusely and ran off to the staff washroom. You looked over to the clock and saw you had about an hour left on your shift. You walked into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water. 

You were looking at your phone and walked out and noticed a figure leaving a book on the desk, “Hey!” you called out.

The person froze, you walked up to the desk, “Steve?” You questioned.

“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath.

“You’re the poem bandit?” You asked.

Steve started stuttering and tripping over his words. With all the random words he was spewing, he finally said a coherent sentence. “I am so sorry. I didn’t think you would find out.”

“Was this entire thing a prank?” You asked.

“No, no no. I just couldn’t bring myself to talk to you.” He said, scratching the back of his neck.

“Why didn’t you come up and try talking to me?” You questioned.

“Do you not read the poems?” He joked, “You’re so outgoing, it’s actually intimidating.”

“But you asked me about the Indigenous history book?”

“Only after one of my friends told me I was a pussy, I couldn’t give him the satisfaction.”

“So you mean the poems?” You asked, once again.

“Every word in it. You caught my eye since the summer, and I couldn’t bring myself to talk to you,” he said sheepishly.

“Your poems were the highlight of my shift,” you said, smiling at him.

His face lit up, “Can I take you out properly this weekend?”

“Of course you can, poem bandit.”

[urautismdiagnosis-wistie]

Dashi Design (and her lore for my au)

DASHIIIIIII she has my life eeee

Dashi is my go getter queen, also the headshot of her is her correct hair texture its just that the total body art is a bit older but yeh :>

Dashi lore for my au under the cut

ONTO THE LORE FOR DASHI IN MY AU 🎉🎉🎉

First of all, let's take a little look at her interests- surfing, photography, going out to cave dive for those photos-

And she does all of this stuff, that alot of people might only do as hobbies, to the max!

Whenever she has any interest she always goes as high as she possibly can-

Her family is kinda rich, like "we have rich person hobbies and have expensive vacations every year 💅" kind of rich. Hence why she was able to get so much support for all her interests at a young age, whether it be surfing or photography competitions and so on.

Anyways she's also got an older brother, (I've named him Dan btw) and he's the eldest

See the thing about him and dashi is that they used to be super close as kids yk? He was the oldest sibgling and big brother and both he and dashi were both similar in alot of ways! They were both super competitive and determined to reach their goals, he also was the one who got her into surfing and taught her a ton of stuff!

They were close kinda like how dashi and koshi are...

The thing is though a big part of his identity was being the golden child and amazing big brother and perfect high achiever son, so when dashi started getting older and developing her like.. whole seperate interests and identity that her brother...

Well they started clashing alot, because well she couldn't play the "little sister" that he could teach so everyone could admire how amazing he was, instead she was having her own achievements that he couldn't have any credit in.

He was the kind of older brother who... well choose to be kinda patronizing to make themselves more masculine and popular... and at a certain point it went from "aw big brother helping teach his lil sister!" To " ur actually talking down on me and I hate that, and whenever i try to bring it up you act like I'm a 5 year old when I'm not. Also I dont need ur bad advice on this, I know what I'm doing and ur just acting like a pro in something u don't know anything about"

Alot of his identity and self worth comes from bragging about *his* achievements

The undermining of her own achievements didn't even just come from him either, alot of her passions and skills were just seen as hobbies for fun and not real jobs. Its why she ended up as primarily a computer specialist, she worked as a meteorologist actually! She would use those advanced machines and systems to track and decipher weather, and even was a co-pilot for the weather researchers... but her parents just kinda saw it as her just "being a weather girl"

Her parents are genuinely very kind and caring, nuturing her interests and always trying to be there for her emotional needs but, but they're very out of touch. The type of people to just... not understand why saying a certain phrase *actually is kinda specist* or *why photography actually matters to helping climate change* or *hey actually you can't just try to feed wild animals food even if they act cute cuz it'll hurt them and no it actually IS really bad for a variety of reasons and-*

That sorta thing...

They do genuinely love and try to support her tho, they just... wanted her to get a real job so she could have a good life :/ they're genuie ly nice folks who love to help people out tho

Regardless though,dashi still wanted to fulfill her passions and dreams and needs,and then she learned about the octonauts

at the time thr octonauts were a VERY experimental and risky organization, but she did research and genuinely believed and wanted to be part of what could possibly be a revolutionary organization for rescue, research, exploration, and conservation-

So she applied in secret.

The thing is though, Dan had found out. Their relationship at the time was strained at best but they were still siblings. But then he snitched.

her parents. Freaked. Out

To say they were concerned about their daughter going out to just- possibly- "die in the middle of the ocean!" Or "be stuck and trapped with strangers in the middle of the ocean!" Or "struggle to ever settle down because you're in the middle of the ocean!" Or "get stranded on an island in the middle of the ocean!" Or "get eaten by a whale and cry because u weren't ever able to get back with ur ex u sarcastically said ud get back with because we kept talking about how amazing he was and how we thought ud get married and how sad that made us and then you'd die in a whale in the middle of the ocean!" Or whatever 🙄

Like girl did get swallowed by a whale but it was chill yall need to calm down 💅 like so what if siphonphores tried to eat her once or if the octopods crashed or nearly crashed several times? Like she handled it yall need to have some faith in ur daughter smh

Anyways needless to say they made the process SO HARD esp since Dan STOLE HER LAPTOP WITH HER FILES because he was "woRriEd foR hIs baby SiStEr trYiNg tO ruuN AwAy🥺🥺🥺" She is a grown woman btw and a highly renowned professional in her career.

anyways she managed to join thr octonauts anyways and her parents did chill at least half a year later once they realized she wasn't gonna die in the ocean and that she was fine not "settling down" for a while, they still DONT understand it but like they were just worried their daughter was going crazy and running away (THANKS FOR ADDING A BUNCH OF DRAMATIC LIES TO CHANGE THE STORY DAN)

Anyways she and Dan don't talk anymore, if u ask either of them about it "they just drifted apart", koshi doesn't really know what all the drama that happened was tbh :/ she just remembered them fighting over a laptop and figures they never really got along 😐👍

Anyways dashi makes it a point to never make koshi feel the way dan made her feel

Also dan ended up becoming a lawyer for businesses if u were interested :/

Dashis parents sound pretty bad here and they def aren't perfect, but they're usually just uninformed and they genuinely do have a "we should help everyone in our community ^v^ " mindset and taught dashi alot about self confidence and etc

If u made it this far then congrats!

Btw she didn't start out as a scientist when she joined the octonauts,its actually something that she added to her skillsets and shellington supported her thru it

I'll have to make a dashington post soon lol and also tall about her relationships with the rest of the octonauts crew

She and peso were the last two octonauts to join

[rockrosethistle]

A list of Nightmare Time episode ideas that I thought of and I think would be cool:

1.) Mr. Chasity has been trying to sell the old Waylon Place for far too long. After trying and failing over and over, he decides to take matters into his own hands by going in himself to see what all the fuss is about. But nothing could have prepared him to meet the real ghosts of Waylon Hall. And boy oh boy do they have shenanigans in store. (The episode would be called 'Unholy Ghost') .

2.) It's been a few months since Hatchetfield was destroyed in that awful 'accident'. Emma and Paul have been living under the aliases Kelly and Ben Bridges. (there can be a joke where Emma doesn't even pretend to care about her alias and Paul cares too much.) They live in Colorado now. Emma's finally started her pot farm, and Paul is working in marketing. For the most part, they have a good life. Only Paul's acting a bit different lately. Emma caught him humming company jingles, tapping his foot to a beat she can't hear. Maybe those spores he inhaled had some effect on him. It's probably nothing, but he's never sung in the shower before...(I don't have a name for this one yet.) .

3.) Max Jägerman is failing remedial algebra. In fact, he's doing so poorly that his dad shells out and hires him a tutor, PJ. (Bryce's nerd from 'Literal Monster.) He reluctantly lets her help him. At first it seems to work and his grades are rising steadily, but as PJ lets her guard down, Max starts to notice some things. Strange symbols scribbled in the margins of her notebook, almost like...jagged smiles? Weird stains on her hands, when she gets too close she smells like roadkill. And there's this white spider that keeps showing up in his room. Sometimes he feels like it's trying to tell him something. Or warn him. Without knowing what he's gotten himself into, Max has to evade getting his soul swallowed by a hungry god of darkness. (The episode is called 'Dirty Dude Soup') .

4.) Charlotte Sweetly is jealous. Her church friend, Carol Davidson, has exactly the kind of life she wants. Charlotte's seen the way her boss talks about his wife, and would give anything for Sam to feel that way about her. One day, Charlotte finally gathers her courage and asks her how she does it. Carol takes pity on her, and decides to reveal an important secret: it's all the product of a ritual, an ancient spell she stumbled upon on a trip to an amusement park. She claims that ever since she did it, her husband can't get enough of her. "I am all he sees. He calls me the apple of his eye." Charlotte doesn't believe her at first, but Carol gave her the instructions, and why the hell not? She tries it. Unfortunately, Charlotte messes up the wording. The spell still works, but not quite as intended. And an all-seeing police officer could be a good thing, but Sam is not a good police officer. (maybe let's call this one 'Omnipocop'. But that's awful to spell so suggestions are welcome) .

5.) While trying to be an assistant, Steph accidentally botches one of Pete's science projects. He forgives her, but she still feels bad even as he assures her it's no big deal, throwing the mix of chemicals out his window just to prove it. What he doesn't know is that the last family that lived in the Spankoffski house buried their dog in the backyard, and Pete's chemical slurry just brought it back to life. On a probably unrelated note, Paul has been trying to ignore the damage he's finding in his apartment. He's been chalking most of the tipped over garbage cans and torn apart cushion up to rats--giant rats?--or maybe a squirrel. But when a decades-old "missing dog" poster shows up on his doorstep, he can't ignore the truth for any longer. (the episode would be called "Patches' Revenge" and I thing it would work because it's just the right amount of weird. It would end with Paul teaming up with the nerds to defeat undead Patches with science.) .

6.) To his utter delight, Miss Holloway finally agreed to go out with Duke on a proper date. Nothing huge, just some ice cream and a walk on the beach. They're both enjoying themselves when Miss Holloway hears something. Duke can't hear it, but he still follows her down the shore to some kind of cave grotto, where she claims the noise is coming from. She tosses a pebble into the water, testing how it might react. A few moments later, the pebble come flying out again. Duke is stunned, but Miss Holloway tosses her ice cream cone. Sure enough, a few moments later is comes flying back, perfectly dry. They've clearly discovered something, and over the next few days, Duke and Miss Holloway experiment and try to learn about the grotto and the water in it. It's too deep to see the bottom, so their tests mostly involve tossing different things to see how they'll react. Little do they know, there was a reason Miss Holloway could hear a noise coming from the cave. There's a reason it drew her in, too. There's something singing to her, something that lives at the bottom of the grotto. And with each thing they feed it, it becomes a little bit stronger...(and then it's called something unassuming like "Wavecrest Cave")

So that's Nightmare Time season four all lined up. Please tell me if you have a good name idea for episodes 2 and 4. Also if anyone wants to use these as writing prompts, be my guest (just tag me so I can read them)

[formulakracing]

✧˖° golden girl & her star boys ✧˖°

hello everyone! ♡

as part of the alkaline series, i felt that this was necessary. i’m going to give a little bit of background on the readers’ relationships with the other drivers on the grid! (i also just love to yap. that’s the real reason!)

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖

✧˖° williams ✧˖°

alex albon — one of her best friends and teammate. basically like her older brother who is constantly giving unwanted advice. they banter and argue CONSTANTLY. however, she deeply appreciates his ability to be 10000% honest with her at all times. she’s definitely cried on his shoulder numerous times.

he was the first person to accept her to the f1 scene with open arms. he is constantly defending her name and likeness to the media. although he won’t admit it directly, he has a deep respect and love (sibling sort of love!) for her. he wouldn’t want anyone else to be driving alongside him at williams.

✧˖° mercedes ✧˖°

lewis hamilton — they are friendly with one another, but not super close. lewis is super friendly and inviting, she is just a little intimidated by him. he has this powerful aura, and since he’s always been one of her role models, she has a hard time approaching him. the conversations they have had, she’s always been grateful for his encouragement and advice.

sometimes he will make fun of her for being so “american.” (lots of yeehaw, stereotypical jokes about the u.s.) she laughs it off though, usually countering back with her witty humor.

george russell — as we know… these two do not get along. he’s polite, but does not necessarily enjoy her bold and brash personality. he thinks that she’s a little “too much” at times, especially with how opinionated she is on social media. lewis has to often remind him that he needs to be friendlier, considering her contract is up at the end of the 2024 season. and he knows toto is scouting for a new driver, so she may be potential option.

begrudgingly, george will sometimes compliment her. it’s not super nice or over the top, but they are compliments!

✧˖° red bull ✧˖°

max verstappen — he adores her! he has a ton of admiration and respect for her, often complimenting her techniques or good laps. they are somewhat close, checking in with one another during breaks. he is also protective of her likeness, often reminding journalists that her gender doesn’t matter. she’s a worthy competitor and an exceptional driver. (since you know, she’s a contender for the champion slot but we won’t address that yet!) they often do interviews together with the other guys!

he thinks her american slang, accent, and mannerisms are cute. he has a slight crush but is also somewhat scared of her. it leaves him feeling confused yet bewildered at times.

sergio perez — the two are friendly. sort of like coworkers who work in different departments but are cordial with one another. since she’s so young, checo thinks that she has a lot to learn. he does offer advice, but not often. he does believe that she is a talented driver and deserves her spot on the grid. he is well aware of max’s little crush and teases him relentlessly for it.

✧˖° mclaren ✧˖°

lando norris — one of the besties! he’ll often ask her to come on to his livestreams with him during breaks or the offseason. they snap one another frequently, often using the weird and funny filters. he loves to hear about her perspective on the f1 world, considering her position as the first american female driver. they’ve met up a few times between races to hang out or he’ll bring her and alex food to the paddock. he knows that she loves peeled apple slices so sometimes he’ll bring some to her the morning of race day.

he is a firm believer that she’s going to be a first female world champion in the next few years.

oscar piastri — another one of the besties! they’re close but not as close as reader & lando. he also enjoys hearing her perspective on everything f1 related. he’ll tag along with lando quite often to bring food, snacks, and drinks to the paddocks or hang outs. one of the first few drivers on the grid to approach and befriend her. (he couldn’t help but notice how anxious she looked, and he wanted to give her some comfort)

✧˖° ferrari ✧˖°

carlos sainz — one of the besties! is very willing to do funny bits for social media with her, no matter what it entails. he enjoys her fiery personality and her ability to stand up for what she believes in. he’ll often join her, lando, oscar, and charles for hangouts between races. sometimes he’ll list her as an emergency contact because he knows how much she’s on her phone. he teaches her spanish from time to time, just the basics so that she can get by when they’re traveling. (although sometimes he’ll tell her the wrong things on purpose, just because it’s hilarious)

charles leclerc — one of the besties! he will often join her and lando on livestreams, especially if they’re sim racing. he’s very competitive with her and tries to beat her in every game possible. he loves when she helps him with english, as he often has troubles with the language. he is fascinated by the idea of texas roadhouse, and wants to go to one with her, carlos, lando, and oscar sometime. additionally, she’s the first one he goes to when he needs help understanding a specific social media trend. or help buying gifts for his girlfriend.

✧˖° aston martin ✧˖°

fernando alonso — endearingly refers to himself as her padre. loves to tease her about anything and everything, in the way a father would to his daughter. they have lengthy discussions over a variety of topics, ranging from opera music to what they had for breakfast that morning. she has a deeply rooted admiration for him, and views him as a role model.

lance stroll — one of the besties, but not as much as lando or oscar. they’re very friendly to one another, lance’s father often asking her if she wants to reconsider williams and join aston martin in 2025. she usually says smiles and says no, much to his father’s dismay.

✧˖° alpine ✧˖°

esteban ocon — the two do not really speak a whole lot, but they’re friendly and polite! like many of the other drivers, he enjoys seeing a new face and getting to know her!

pierre gasly — very friendly with one another! he enjoys having a fresh new face to the grid, and a new perspective that comes along with it. he’ll often taunt her in french, laughing when she gets frustrated that she can’t understand what he’s saying. he’ll compliment her when she has a good lap or a great race. he respects her boldness and how she is not willing to let the press paint her as someone she’s not.

✧˖° haas ✧˖°

nico hulkenberg — they do not really speak, unless it’s at an event or something press related. she does respect his seniority over the younger drivers! additionally, he respects her and wishes her well before races.

kevin magnussen — a similar situation to nico! they do speak to one another from time to time, often chirping greetings in the morning. he does tease her for really only knowing english, telling her that she needs to “hop on that owl app or something.”

✧˖° alphatauri ✧˖°

daniel ricciardo — the mf bestie. this man knows a little too much about her. besides alex, he was one of the first people to welcome her to the grid with open arms. when he was the third driver for redbull in 2023, he found himself bored often. so, he would wander into the williams paddock, searching for her. since they have a very similar sense of humor, they feed off one another, often laughing so hard they have tears in their eyes. they were often attached to the hip throughout 2023, james having to shoo daniel away at times.

during breaks or at night, daniel would often find himself in her williams motorhome, snuggling or eating food together. they would often pair up to do press events, conduct livestreams, special events, or bits together. due to their close nature, rumors and speculation made their rounds across social media.

daniel deeply respects and admires her, finding her unapologetic nature extremely attractive. additionally, he just found her to be his go-to person, for anything. she was his comfort when he found himself missing racing.

at the end of the 2023 season, daniel found himself in a predicament, as he was falling in love with her. however, as time progressed, and as he signed with alphatauri, he realized that their lifestyle would not provide them a happy and stable relationship. so after her win in jeddah, he knew he had to face the facts and tell her how he felt.

things are a little weird now, but he wants to rekindle their friendship, hoping things will return to the way they once were.

yuki tsunoda — since the two have very similar personalities, they often find it hard to be in the same room together for long periods of time. however, they are polite and cordial to one another. they will tease one another at times, and she does follow him on social media.

✧˖° kick sauber ✧˖°

valtteri bottas — they do not really speak. when they do, it’s really only at the beginning of the season for press related events. she does respect his seniority, and loves hearing his stories of his time at mercedes with lewis.

zhou guanyu — they do not really speak. it’s a similar situation like valtteri. they do bond over being relatively new to the f1 world. she also loves the pictures he shares of his cat.

[strictlyquadrilateral]

i made @the-real-seebs watch the first season of ben 10 with me this weekend and i spent the whole time liveblogging her commentary, so with her permission, here is The Experience Of Watching TV With Seebs, featuring spoilers for the first season of ben 10

me: what is it you think you know about ben 10? seebs: there's a guy who turns into a bunch of aliens, and there's 10 of them me: mhm seebs: oh and apparently the gamecube game was pretty fun

seebs: do you ever think about how much easier his life would have been if his parents had named him bineteen?

seebs, re max: this guy has to have a background in dealing with aliens or his behavior makes NO sense me: i don't know why you'd think that

gwen: what are you gonna do about it, tennyson? seebs: one of ten things

seebs, turning to me: so if you're looking for names, may i suggest binety-bine?

seebs: omni...trix? me: yeah, that's what the watch is called seebs: no it's just, if it's -trix then it's a girl watch, like dominatrix

[dr animo shoots the hamster with his mutation device tm] seebs: what i want is for this to happen to an animal and it just gets skinny and hairless and picks up a book. what's it going to do? it's going to develop agriculture

[intermission during which seebs fails to figure out where he knows dee bradley baker's voice from]

seebs: it's incredibly advanced alien technology me: what is? seebs: the watch. because it waits until it's either dramatic or funny to wear off

seebs, looking at ripjaws: that doesn't look like a creature that needs an anglerfish thing, why does it have one? me, firmly: because it looks cool. seebs: ohhhhhhh, that's a good point

seebs, pausing the video: it took me a while. but that is WAY too many satellite dishes for an rv. one is possible at that tech level. but more than three? no.

seebs: why does gwen have the cat? me: on her shirt? seebs: yeah, mae, from that game... me: night in the woods? seebs: yeah!

seebs, muttering to himself: were crescent wrenches common in the 50s?

seebs, during hunted: vilgax would be getting better results if he had only hired one of these guys me: if you had to pick, which one would you hire? seebs, pointing at the still-masked tetrax: probably that one, he seems like the only one focused on the mission

seebs, about a minute later: okay, so i may have made a poor choice in terms of my nominal goals. but he DOES seem to be the most competent

seebs, studying the voice credits: which one is grey matter, and which one is diamondhead? me: seebs. this show is for ten year olds. which one is diamondhead. seebs: the.... purple one? [meaning sixsix]

ben: woah! the freaks are felons! seebs: technically we don't know how much they're stealing, it could still be a misdemeanor. oh, jewelry store. they're felons

seebs, looking at zombozo's crew: these people look so much like batman the animated series villains down on their luck

seebs: wait, go back and go frame by frame, there's writing by his head [we get the image below]

[it seems to be a stray animator note in Korean saying to do whatever with the lightning, visible for like 2 frames a couple times. it is not mentioned in the trivia or errors sections of the episode on the wiki.]

seebs, re hex: somewhere in the world there is the rest of a goth band, just waiting for their frontman to come back : (

[the forever knights appear] seebs: i like that this is clearly just the budget templars

me: they're called the forever knights in every episode but this one seebs, after a pause: not to be confused with forever knight, a canadian tv series about an 800 year old vampire working as a cop me: did you just know that or did you google 'forever knight' on the assumption that there'd be something with that name seebs: the funny thing is, i knew about the show but i didn't remember what it was called. also, i love that you just believed me about the canadian vampire cop show

max: they have plumbing in china, too, you know seebs: his story is getting dumber all the time

seebs: also have you noticed the amount of hardware he has in that vehicle? no one interacts with it but look at all that stuff

[the bug guy from side effects flies off] seebs: unfortunately, he's going to run into his archnemesis: sparrowman

seebs: i used to post on a forum under the name 'ant for hire'. "carrying 25x my own body weight for the highest bidder. please do not slay me because i smell of another hive."

seebs: luckily there are no other insects in the world, so he's powerless now that he's lost his insects [the episode ends] seebs: see?

max: i want to make mount rushmore by nightfall seebs: did you know that in 2005 we didn't know the optimal solution for the traveling salesman problem but we DID know the pessimal solution

max, seeing vilgax: no... it can't be... seebs: is that his old boss?

seebs: i mean, to be fair, aliens have plumbing, too

max, holding a fuckoff huge gun: let's just say I wasn't a normal plumber before I retired seebs: so why are you holding a normal piece of plumbing equipment?

[the rustbucket jumps up to vilgax's ship] me, turning to seebs: do you feel vindicated? seebs: honestly no, this was too obviously coming

[talkdutchtome]

Glitch- chapter nine

pairing . . . max verstappen x reader / mason mount x reader )

summary . . . when mason mount finds out that his assistant has been harbouring feelings for him for years, he makes it clear he doesn't feel the same way. but once he sees her become closer with formula 1 world champion max verstappen, he realises he may have underestimated his feelings towards the girl he has now pushed into the arms of another )

genre . . . angst )

song . . . glitch- taylor swift )

series masterlist . . . available here )

a/n . . . endlessly sorry for how long its been, but i'm back now and we're straight back into tooth rotting fluff <3 )

The dull and familiar sound of the iphone ringtone pulled Y/N abruptly from her nap, she groggily reached for device that woke her so rudely, blinking away the remnants of sleep as she saw Reece's name on the caller ID. 

"Hey, Reece. What's up?" she mumbled, still half-asleep. 

"Hi, Y/N," came Reece's voice, surprisingly serious. "Did you seriously go to Monaco? With Max?" 

Y/N's heart skipped a beat. "Um, yeah," she admitted, unsure where this line of questioning was leading. 

"Are we, like, real friends now? Not just, like, mutual friends through Mason?" Reece's question was direct, leaving no room for evasion. The haziness of her nap now long forgotten.  

Y/N hesitated, caught off guard by the abruptness of the inquiry. "I... I guess so," she replied tentatively. 

Reece didn't mince his words in response. "Does Max know that you and Mason slept together?" 

Y/N could literally feel her heart sink. She wasn't prepared for this confrontation, especially not with Reece, she didn’t even know how he knew about that. 

"I, uh... I don't know what you're talking about," she stammered, attempting to deflect. 

"Cut the bullshit, Y/N," Reece snapped, his usually easygoing demeanor replaced by an uncharacteristic sharpness. 

Y/N's breath caught in her throat. She'd never heard Reece speak like this before, and it rattled her.  

"Okay, fine," she relented, her voice barely above a whisper. "Yes, he knows. He came to visit me that night and he could tell something was up and sussed it out, and we decided I should come to Monaco to give... whatever we have a chance. Away from M- away from distractions." 

There was a heavy silence on the other end of the line, and Y/N braced herself for Reece's response. She couldn't shake the feeling of vulnerability, exposed by Reece's penetrating questions. 

Finally, Reece spoke, his tone softer now. "I understand, Y/N. I hope you figure out what you want." 

As Y/N ended the call, she took a moment to collect herself, the weight of Reece's words settling over her like a heavy blanket. She knew she couldn't evade the consequences of her choices, no matter how much she wished she could. 

The soft knock on the door stirred Y/N from her reverie, and she quickly composed herself before answering. As Max entered, his concern was evident in the furrow of his brow and the gentle tone of his voice. 

"Hey, Y/N. How'd you sleep? Is the room okay for you?" Max inquired, his eyes scanning her face for any sign of distress. 

Y/N managed a small smile, grateful for his consideration. "I slept fine, thank you. And the room is lovely, really," she replied, her voice soft but genuine. 

Max nodded, seemingly satisfied with her response. "Good to hear. So, who were you talking to on the phone earlier?" he asked casually, his curiosity piqued. 

Y/N hesitated for a moment, unsure how much to reveal. "Oh, just Reece," she replied, hoping to brush off the conversation. 

Max arched an eyebrow, sensing her reluctance to elaborate. "What did he want?" he pressed gently, his gaze unwavering. 

Y/N swallowed hard, knowing she couldn't avoid the truth. "He... he was asking if it was true that I came here," she admitted, her voice barely above a whisper. 

Max's expression softened at her words, a flicker of understanding passing between them. "Oh, how did he know that?" he inquired, his tone gentle but probing. 

Y/N closed her eyes briefly, steeling herself for the admission. "Mason," she murmured, the name heavy with unspoken implications. 

The mention of Mason hung in the air like an unwelcome guest, casting a shadow over the room and injecting a palpable tension into the atmosphere. Y/N felt a knot form in her stomach at the mere sound of his name, a stark reminder of the complicated dynamics that had brought her here. 

For Max, the mention of Mason was like stumbling upon a hidden obstacle in an otherwise smooth path. He couldn't ignore the sudden shift in Y/N's demeanor, the subtle tensing of her shoulders and the guarded look in her eyes. It was a reminder of the delicate balance they were navigating, with Mason's presence looming large over their fledgling connection. 

The silence that followed was thick with unspoken words and unresolved emotions, each of them grappling with their own inner turmoil. Y/N struggled to reconcile her lingering feelings for Mason with the growing attraction she felt for Max, while Max found himself grappling with a sense of unease at the thought of his newfound connection being overshadowed by a past that seemed determined to intrude. 

Max sensed the discomfort radiating from Y/N like a tangible force, and he knew he had to act quickly to alleviate the awkwardness that had settled between them like a heavy shroud. With a subtle shift in his demeanor, he gently changed the subject, his voice carrying a note of reassurance as he reminded her of their upcoming dinner reservations. 

"Hey, um, so, about dinner," he began, his tone light and casual, "We've got reservations in about an hour. Thought we could grab a bite to eat and maybe explore the area a bit afterward. What do you think?" 

His words hung in the air, a lifeline tossed amidst the turbulent sea of emotions that threatened to engulf them. Max watched as Y/N's expression softened ever so slightly, a flicker of relief crossing her features at the prospect of shifting their focus away from the uncomfortable topic at hand. 

"Yeah, that sounds good," she replied, the tension in her voice easing as she welcomed the distraction Max offered. "I could use a nice meal right about now." 

Max offered her a warm smile, his eyes reflecting a silent understanding as he nodded in agreement. "Great. I'll let you get ready then. Just give me a shout when you're good to go, yeah?" 

Y/N nodded in response, a grateful smile tugging at the corners of her lips as she watched Max make his way to the door. As he stepped out into the hallway, she couldn't help but feel a sense of gratitude for his intuitive nature, for his ability to sense her discomfort and offer her a much-needed reprieve. 

As they drove to the restaurant, Y/N couldn't help but feel a twinge of intimidation as she took in the sleek interior of Max's car, a luxurious vehicle that spoke volumes about the extravagant lifestyle he led. She couldn't help but wonder what it must be like to live in a world filled with such opulence and grandeur, feeling a bit out of place amidst its lavishness. 

Upon arriving at the restaurant, however, her apprehension began to dissipate as she noticed the quaint charm of the place. It was a cozy little spot, far from the flashy extravagance she had expected, and she found herself feeling more at ease as they entered. 

They were greeted by a sweet, elderly couple who seemed to know Max well, exchanging warm greetings and friendly banter as if he were an old friend. Y/N couldn't help but smile at the genuine affection they showed him, feeling a sense of warmth wash over her as they complimented her appearance. 

"Max, my boy, you've outdone yourself this time! Who's this lovely lady you've brought with you?" the elderly gentleman chuckled, his eyes twinkling mischievously as he teased Max. 

Max chuckled sheepishly, his cheeks tinged with a faint blush as he introduced Y/N to the couple. "This is Y/N, and she's far too good for the likes of me," he joked, though there was a sincerity in his voice that made Y/N's heart skip a beat. 

As they were led to their table, she couldn't help but notice the remnants of a slight blush on Max's cheeks, a sight that caused her heart to flutter with an unexpected surge of affection. Sitting across from him, she found herself captivated by the way his eyes sparkled with a hint of excitement, his smile lighting up the room as they settled in for their meal. 

During dinner, Max and Y/N found themselves immersed in a discussion about their respective childhoods, sharing stories and anecdotes that offered glimpses into their pasts. 

"So, Y/N, tell me about your family," Max prompted, his curiosity piqued as he leaned forward, eager to learn more about her background. 

Y/N's eyes sparkled with fond memories as she began to speak. "Well, I come from a big family," she started, a warm smile gracing her lips. "I have three siblings – two sisters and a brother – and we're all really close. Growing up, our house was always bustling with activity, and there was never a dull moment." 

Max listened intently, captivated by her description of a lively household filled with love and laughter. "That sounds wonderful," he remarked, a hint of admiration in his voice. "What was it like being the oldest?" 

Y/N chuckled, her eyes twinkling with amusement. "It definitely had its challenges," she admitted, "but it also taught me responsibility and the importance of looking out for others. I always felt like I had to set a good example for my siblings, and that's something that's stuck with me throughout my life." 

As their conversation continued, Y/N turned the spotlight on Max, asking him about his own family and upbringing. Max shared stories of his childhood, delving into what it was like to grow up in a very driven household, where he spent so much of his time as a kid karting and preparing for a career in Formula One.  

After their delightful dinner, Max suggested they visit Le Rocher, a spot where they could admire the breathtaking views of Monaco's old town. As they strolled along, Y/N couldn't help but be mesmerized by the picturesque scenery unfolding before her. 

"It's stunning," she breathed, her eyes sweeping over the panoramic vista. 

Max nodded in agreement, a soft smile playing on his lips. "This is one of my favorite places to come when I need a break from the racing world," he confessed. "Here, I can just be Max." 

Y/N listened, soaking in the tranquility of the moment as they shared a quiet conversation, the gentle evening breeze carrying their words away into the night. 

As they reached a particularly scenic spot, Max mentioned Daniel's persistent encouragement to start a jpeg Instagram account like his. "He's always on my case about it," Max chuckled, turning to face Y/N. "But I've been thinking... what do you say we do a little impromptu photoshoot?" 

Y/N's initial hesitation melted away at the sight of Max's infectious enthusiasm. "Sure, why not?" she replied with a grin. 

With Max behind the camera, they embarked on a playful photoshoot, capturing candid moments and genuine smiles against the backdrop of Monaco's twinkling lights. As they laughed and joked together, time seemed to stand still, and Y/N found herself immersed in the simple joy of being in Max's company. 

As the night wore on and the early hours of the morning approached, they reluctantly called an end to their impromptu adventure. But as they made their way back to Max's apartment, the memory of their laughter lingered, a testament to the undeniable connection they shared. And as they bid each other goodnight, Y/N couldn't shake the feeling that perhaps, in each other, they had found something truly special. 

Throughout the week in Monaco, Max and Y/N embarked on a series of adventures that seemed to draw them closer with each passing day. Max took her out on a yacht ride, where they basked in the warmth of the Mediterranean sun and marveled at the azure waters surrounding them. They went swimming and jet skiing, reveling in the exhilaration of the open sea. 

One evening, Max surprised Y/N by cooking dinner for her, showcasing his culinary skills with a delicious meal prepared with care. As they dined together, sharing stories and laughter, it felt like they were in their own little world, untouched by the complexities of reality. 

With each passing moment, the bond between them deepened, and Y/N couldn't help but feel a sense of belonging whenever she was with Max. In his company, she felt understood and cherished, as if being around each other was something that was meant to be. 

Despite the idyllic moments they shared, Y/N couldn't shake the lingering thoughts of Mason and the tangled web of emotions that still tied her to him. But in the midst of their blissful escapades, she found solace in the simple joy of being with Max, relishing the moments they spent together and cherishing the connection they shared. 

As race week descended upon Monaco, the tranquil days spent with Max swiftly transformed into a whirlwind of excitement and anticipation. Y/N marveled at the seamless transition as Max shifted gears from the laid-back companion of the past week to the determined machine ready to conquer the race track. 

She observed Max navigate through a flurry of press events with effortless charm, amazed at how the sweet man she had grown fond of could seamlessly transform into a focused and driven athlete once he stepped into his race car. 

During practice sessions, Y/N stood in Max's garage, taking in the electrifying atmosphere as mechanics buzzed around, fine-tuning the car to perfection. She engaged in conversation with others in the garage, soaking in the insider's view of the Formula One world. 

When it was time for qualifying, Y/N found herself watching alongside Heidi, Daniel's girlfriend, forming a quick rapport with her as they cheered on their respective partners. The tension mounted as Max pushed the limits, eventually securing pole position in a stunning display of skill and determination. 

As Max emerged from the garage, triumphant and exhilarated, he sought out Y/N amidst the jubilant crowd. To her surprise, he pulled her into a spontaneous embrace, planting a kiss on her lips that left her head spinning. Caught off guard by the unexpected display of affection, Y/N could only watch as the cameras flashed around them, capturing the moment for the world to see. 

As Max hurried off to attend to his press obligations, Y/N remained in a daze, still reeling from the unexpected kiss and the flurry of attention that followed. Lost in her thoughts, she barely noticed the bustling activity around her until her phone suddenly rang, jolting her back to reality. 

Glancing at the caller ID, she was immediately brought back down to earth. She could feel sick rise up to her throat, she found herself wanting the ground to come up and swallow her whole.  

Her phone remained ringing, a picture of her and her best friend filling the screen with the one name she didn’t want to see right now. Mason.  

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[frankiejay03]

KONOHA IS NOT A SMALL VILLAGE

Someone else touched up on this but I don’t tag my reblogs so I’ll never find it but like it befuddles me that we cycle through the same ten characters and ten side characters when Konoha is a huge village like just looking at the number of shapeless Shinobi in the war arc like that population has to come from somewhere right?

Like you’re absolutely joking me if absolute max of 50 of this horde of Shinobi are from Konoha (because at the end of the day, there aren’t that many named Konoha Shinobi alive at any given time, not when compared to this picture I mean for real each block here is probably fucking 100 people wide by idk 500 people long)

(The issue here is not the “lack” of named characters cause there are certainly MANY but rather the lack of unnamed characters or the lack of space in canon for unnamed characters you know what I mean? No way Kakashi and co are the only jounins in village. No way Kakashi only had like two teammates in ANBU when really there should be an abundance of people to run missions with and ANBU isn’t genin teams, so long as the job gets done it doesn’t matter if the team members have met before or even know of each other)

And yeah part of what makes KakaObi (and SasuNaru) so devastating is their shared history but imagine KakaObi rivalry as ADULTS, whatever the opposite of meet-cute is, as Shinobi of the same village who haven’t met each other before because do you really know every single person your age in your hometown? A village THAT big, a NINJA village, does not have only one (1) ninja school (imagine living in the bottom left corner of this image, the walk to school must be so long! Idc if you ninja run, what child has the mental capacity to hop over rooftops at 7am??? Certainly not Ino-Shika-Cho!) ((clearly Kishimoto never played simulation games like Cities Skylines or Oxygen Not Included because come on! The population does not meet canon requirements and for it to do so it has to outgrow having only one school for its children!! Also it just needs more children!!!))

The math just doesn’t math

So

Someone please give me bratty genius Kakashi, unchallenged until he meets “genius of hard work” Obito all the way up as a jounin or ANBU, years his senior and determined to maintain his reign of superiority and probably failing spectacularly with added affliction of gay UST to boot

Gay propaganda aside, just imagine the world-building implications. Isolated Uchiha clan further isolated by a school being built near their clan compound, act of malice or not, their kids aren’t welcome around the others anymore. Poor Shinobi children/orphans who live in the same district going to the same school versus rich clan kids going to a different school together. Remember in your hometown when you “graduated” to middle school, kids who didn’t go to your elementary school were icky or annoying or weird or lame? (The correct term here is new or maybe different but children aren’t usually so kind at that age) But ninja elementary school! No canon middle school or higher education of any kind unfortunately but what if they pair kids from different schools into genin teams? Maybe that’s how Kakashi’s team 7 comes to be (Uchiha massacre or not, doesn’t make a difference if the Uchiha have been super isolated what with the police force and their own academy), maybe Neji is somehow worse cause he’s never actually interacted with a non-Hyuga/non-clan kid before. This can apply to Minato’s team 7 as well, prodigy clan heir from fancy clan academy Kakashi paired with the runt of the Uchiha from insular Uchiha academy and idk Rin from whichever school is closest to her civilian house. Like Konoha doesn’t have cars or buses or trains (at this time and I’ve never seen/read boruto no thank you) and there’s not much room for beasts of burden so these children are WALKING EVERYWHERE thank you very much.

Idk rant over, there was someone who explained this conundrum much better than I did but I cannot find their post :P

[cressidagrey]

Speaking of baby Verstappen. Honestly I just want to see Max be Dad Max. To me it doesn’t matter if they have a Boy then Girl, twins, or Girl then Boy, I just hope they have at least one of each. I can totally see that when Belle and Max have a girl that mommy and baby would match. Like say Belle is wearing a patterned dress then the little girl would be wearing a solid color dress that matches one of the colors from Belle’s dress or vice versa in which Belle is wearing a solid color dress that matches a color from baby girl’s patterned dress. Does that make any sense? The pictures below is what I imagined.

Also baby names. I like the use of Emilie/Emilian as middle names is just *chefs kiss*.

Some Dutch baby names I found that looked interesting:

Boys:

Cas or Kas- is derived from Casper or Kasper. (Depends on how you want to spell it)

Roen- is derived from Jeroen.

Girls:

Catharina- a Dutch and Swedish variant of the Greek name Katherine (just realize that the reason this name has been in my head is that the crown princess of Orange is Catharina- Amalia so maybe not this name. Still pretty though!)

Floris- a variation of the French name Florence

Liselotte- a compound name that combines Lise, a diminutive of Elisabeth, and Lotte, associated with Charlotte

Some French baby names I found that looked interesting:

Boys:

Marius

Noé- a variation of Noah

Théo- a variation of Theodore

Girls:

Blanche (I know Belle’s horse was named this, I just really love the name)

Genevèive

Nicolette

Rosalie

Not sure if it’s a Verstappen thing for the boys to have short names while the girls have longer names or not, just something I picked up on. So that is why the boys names are either short or short variations of other names.

Excited for chaos White Horse will bring!

Oh, Belle would actually dress her kids to match her. No question about it whatsoever!

I do really like Theo! I think that could actually work really nicely! Rosalie is my in real life favourite name and is actually on my own baby name list. and Genevieve is one of my options for the baby horse 😂

[themattress]

The Ben 10 sequels: Doomed from the Start

Dwayne McDuffie's series bible for Alien Force (then Hero Generation) opens as such:

First off, a note that we see in this bible that the Highbreed were originally called the DNAliens, and the DNAliens called the Hybrids. The names essentially got swapped in the finished Alien Force. Secondly, note the mission statement of "gather and train a team of other teenage heroes". This was Cartoon Network's core idea for a sequel series...and as we ended up seeing, giving it to Glen Murakami and Dwayne McDuffie didn't end up working out in terms of this concept, since it took a backseat to other stuff and didn't really factor into much aside from the "War of the Worlds" two-parter. Finally, "energy-controlling" Gwen and "matter-absorbing" Kevin is already a huge red flag for the retcons that are to be applied.

Why did "10" become "Ten" all of a sudden?

Also, if it's X-Files and Scooby Doo, it's....not "classic Ben 10"".

Wait, if they're all teenagers, how is Ben passing on knowledge to a "new generation"?

"Character behavior must always be motivated, and actions must always have consequences". What the fuck happened!? Because that's not the show we got!

"DNAngels"???

LOL, these typos.

OK, which is it? Is he a rogue with a heart of gold or is he an unrepentant selfish schemer!?

Also, note that it said he only recently escaped the Null Void. That sure was retconned.

Once again, this "team" plotline was dropped completely in the actual series.

Also, "intergalactic law-enforcement organization". IDK where McDuffie got this from, because in the OS it was quite blatantly a human organization. They had help from aliens sometimes like Xylene and the Sludgepuppies, but otherwise it was entirely Earth-based.

In the actual show, Max "dies" 6 episodes in, we only get 4 episodes dealing with "Plumber's Kids" and Ben does not train them, and the Highbreed and DNAliens don't get quite as many appearances as one might think they would. Well, at the very least it wasn't a formula show.

More mixed messaging: does Ben have to learn leadership, or is he already the perfect leader? Everything else here sounds fine, though. Which is more than I can say for...

Why does Gwen's tomboy phase have to be a "phase" at all? And even if it was, why go so diametrically opposite? I appreciate the stance that femininity is not weakness, but you didn't have to change a pre-existing character so much to hammer that home, nor be so painfully on the nose with "energy found in nature" that is pink colored. And yeah, the absolute gall of saying "there's no such thing as magic on this show", just pissing on what was created in the Original Series, which if this is supposed to be a sequel opens up a massive plothole about all the Hex, Charmcaster and Bezel business that seemed totally unrelated to Anodites.

"The bad boy of her dreams" - GAG ME. And speak of the devil:

Gwevin as imagined by Dwayne McDuffie is the most derivative shit ever. "Bad boy with an upper class rich girl he thought was out of his league".....that's just Grease. It's John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, not Kevin and Gwen as they were established in the OS. Also, McDuffie has him back to human form and changing his powers for no established reason.

And two fallacies here about Kevin's character: that he's "cool as they come" and "really wants to be a cop". NO. Kevin 11, as we saw in the OS, looked cool at first, luring Ben and the viewer in onto his side, but in actuality he was deeply troubled and ultimately pathetic. That was the whole point of this scene. And being a cop is just about the last thing Kevin would want to be given his actual interactions with cops in the show. In Alien Force proper they tried to justify this with his real dad having been a Plumber and Max's partner....except that makes no sense, as Max showed no recognition of Kevin in the OS and Kevin showed no recognition of the Plumbers when dealing with aliens. These Kevins just don't gel together.

So originally it reads like the Highbreed's resolution was meant to be played as much more of a defeat: forcing "impurity" upon them to save their ungrateful species. But of course, in the actual show fucking Reiny shows up and it turns into this abrupt redemption. People bitch about the Diamonds in Steven Universe, but this arguably worse offense came earlier.

Did Dwayne McDuffie not have access to the development of "Ben 10 vs. The Negative Ten" that would be going on around this time? Because that already explained the reason for the Forever Knights' dealings in alien technology: their current king was a former Plumber. This stupid alien dragon story which ends up going nowhere was pointless and made "some of Ben's most formidable enemies" look like idiots, which ended up necessitating yet another retcon to the Forever Knights' backstory with the horrible Sir George and Dagon arc in UA.

And all of these guidelines go crashing out the window in UA! What the Hell?

And there it is! "Tell your story and don't get hung up on either the big arc or the show's mythology." "We don't intend to do sequels to original series episodes". "Shouldn't need the original Ben 10 to enjoy the new Ben 10". "Your pitches should be looking forward, not back". "You're on the right track if you write it like a different TV show". "It's not a superhero show".

Dwayne McDuffie really did not care that he was writing a direct continuation of a previous series and was supposed to be helping to shape a consistent fictional universe. He didn't really give a crap about the Original Series and trying to build off of it. As far as he was concerned, this might as well be the first Ben 10 show. How arrogant can you get!? A big part of why this series and then Omniverse became such a mess is because of this disregard for basic continuity, since writers now had to belatedly insert it long after the fact! If you don't believe me, just look at Dwayne McDuffie's original pitch for Omniverse prior to his death:

After the series was greenlit, McDuffie completed outlines for the premiere two-parter a few weeks before he passed away. This is why his name is still in the premiere two-parter's credits despite it having been radically altered from what he had envisioned. Now, you might think that the above pitch sounds much better than the Omniverse we ended up with. Perhaps it would have been. That's not the point. The point is that why is it just now that McDuffie is proposing a show that directly connects to Ben's adventures as a 10 year-old? Why now have a show where everything from past continuity is central and trying to build a cohesive whole? Why now have a show which has "the evil Kevin 11", plus a shady partner to Ben whom he can't entirely trust which leads to actual friction and drama from their conflicting agendas? Why now make a show to "create an absolutely immersive boys action franchise" and trying to give a stake to all fans, including fans of the OS? Why now map out a "megastory", otherwise known as a Myth Arc? I guess what I'm really trying to ask here is....

...why was all of this not simply done.....in "Ben 10: Hero Generation"?

And that's why the Ben 10 sequels were doomed right from the start. Because they were built on the foundation of Dwayne McDuffie not wanting to really make a sequel, not wanting to actually build off the OS and create a franchise with a consistent, coherent universe. Then, by the time he finally wanted to....he died. And we all know how Omniverse then turned out.

Such a shitshow. Such a trainwreck. Such a goddamn waste.

[nakylvr]

How do u think Sophia would react to T!masc s/o coming out to her? ^^ or do u have more general t!masc s/o x Sophia hcs you’d like to share w us ? :))

i decided to do general hcs along with reader coming out to her 🫶

warnings/tags: fluff, established relationship, transmasc!reader, reader uses he/him pronouns, mentions of dysphoria (1 hc), mentions of transphobia (1 hc), language

coming out to her

obviously sophia is a very very supportive person and girlfriend in general, so when you sit her down and say you want to talk about something, she's a little confused but she doesn't say anything and just lets you talk. once you finish she's grabbing your hands and smiling at you, telling you that it's okay, that she supports you, and that it doesn't change anything about her loving you. she's super quick to switching to whatever name you want to be called and will explain it to the kats if you don't want to deal with coming out again to them, but she won't if you want to. she just wants you to be comfortable with everyone without any worries, so she'll do whatever you want. she won't pressure you into coming out to your friends or the kats if she was the first person you told, telling you that you can take your own time and that it doesn't change anything. that's the one thing she often reiterates in the first weeks, especially when you start telling your friends. she wants you to know that it genuinely doesn't change anything or the way she loves you.

general hcs

• she will be lowkey forcing you to go shopping with her to get you new clothes and such, most likely using her brother as reference so that you don't look a total mess without style, probably maxing out a credit card but she doesn't care

• when you cut your hair she just smiles so wide when she sees it and is immediately taking pictures with you in the mirror when you get home, her hand on your head with a grin on her face and captioning it with "my pretty boy"

• she's very good at making sure you aren't uncomfortable no matter what. like quietly asking if you're okay when out with others or just giving you a look that asks it without her saying anything. if you are but say no, she can immediately tell, and she'll make up some excuse to leave and go back home

• if you start binding or use tape, she will be telling you to take it off after 8 hours, she doesn't care how much you say "its fine" or that you won't get hurt, she'll just stare at you deadpan until you do it. if you tell her that you've kept it on longer she will smack you on your head telling you to not do it again

• sophia goes all out for your birthday, she does every year, so it's not a real surprise when you come home and there's a big setup for you. she gets you so many presents you're not sure how she affords them all, but you aren't complaining. she gets you everything you wanted and more, asking her brothers and friends what else to get you cause she worries

• she will instantly be changing to more masculine petnames and such once you come out to her, they just kinda spill from her mouth before she can think about it, and the first time it happens she thinks she fucked up by your unreadable expression on your face. but the second you smile she feels a lot better, and will definitely use them a lot more just to see you smiling

• sophia is one of the best people to be with when you're feeling really dysphoric, and she can tell just by your actions and mannerisms. she's not a pusher, she first asks if you're okay, and if you tell the truth then she's suggesting that she stays with you for the day. no matter how much you try to convince her that it's fine, she will stay anyways. she does whatever you need, making your comfort food and just laying with you in bed telling you how much she loves and cares about you

• she's your #1 supporter and defender. if she posts you on her socials and you see some not nice comments about you, she can instantly tell you're upset about something and will ask about it. when you tell her what you saw she feels so bad, apologizing to you even though she has no control over it, and that she'll talk to her management about it if they can do anything. she knows people are assholes, and she doesn't want you to see her so-called "fans" trashing on you for being your own person. if this were to happen in person, you might have to hold her back from punching someone in the face, telling her it's fine and that you should just leave

• visiting her family in the philippines for the first time during her birthday, so nervous but she reassures you that they'll love you and you don't have to worry about anything. when you do meet them, it's like they've known you for as long as sophia has with how much she's told them about you. her father was the first one to greet you, and by the end of the trip he's already calling you his son in law which you tell sophia about in near tears and she just feels so happy that you're comfortable with them, especially if you don't have that support with your own family. her brothers get close with you as well, and her mother pulls her aside to say how good you are for her and that she shouldn't let go of you. sophia just replies with "i know, i won't."

• when you start hrt/t she is so excited for you. she literally marks it in her calendar to remember the date every year. if you ask her to do your shot for you, she's hesitant at first, but she'll do it. she's great at it which surprises both of you, and honestly she's just amazed at how much trust you have in her for her to do it for you. she'll do it whenever you ask, whether that's only a few times when you're alternating the position and have to do your arm, or every time if you're freaked out with needles. she'll doesn't mind and won't ever get upset with you when you ask, she'll do it in an instant, always giving you a chaste kiss when she's finished saying she loves you

• she will start stealing your clothes. you don't realize it at first, but when you notice hoodies and sweatpants gone you have a feeling. then you come home one day and she's wearing them and you get a warm feeling in your chest seeing her in your clothes. it doesn't bother you, and it's a little silly how whenever she goes on live and is wearing your clothes fans can immediately tell it's yours by how baggy it is on her and that she wouldn't wear those clothes otherwise

[5five5five5five5five5five]

Pls headcanons of a flirty dolores [human] and five .

Trying to forget "that season".

Denial stage activated.

Pls and thank you.

Good day/night.

OOOHH YES! but first i want to write a human Dolores of my own then we can get to the flirty stuff. * she is in her mid 30's and works as a librarian who LOVES books and is very smart and pretty and perfect.

she is MADDENINGLY in love with the Noir detective novel series " Five "max" Hargreeves and the Umbrella of Time. a long running series about a Old man who turns into a young man some times and solves crime with his dog Mr. pennycrumb. * she hated that when they turned the books into movies, they hired a actor that looked NOTHING like how she sees him in her head. Five looks like how she sees him in her head. she cant pinpoint why it bugs her so much. its just wrong. thats not him??? * one day well sorting books, she no clips into the backroom subways and gets stuck. idk how. s4 logic aka make shit up. but she thinks "what would Five do?" and copy his mapping and travel style. * and then they meet......Jesus my kinnie ass heart melts even thinking about it lol. * "five?!" "Delores?!.....are you..real this time....." "wait how do you know my name??....and yes i am very much real? are YOU?" "how do you know MY name?? and yes??" then they nervously chuckle and tell each other how they know each other. * they get a bit sad that the others Delores and five were not real and five admits he got the better end of the stick by being a cool book character....she didn't deserve to be just a......mannequin. but Delores reassures him that his life needed her and that's what gave it so much value. "and at least you got to physically hold me~ i just had....really embaressing art of you...." *Delores drawing him then she thinks he's not looking. she wishes he was a bit older but her self shipping ass is used to his age "powers" but knows this Five cant turn back. at least he's not 13 Five lol. *he's tried to explain his age situation a few times.... shes so understanding about it and five, for the first time, feels seen....and got does his face get red. she knows he's a old man. she loves him BECAUSE he's actually an old man. ANYWAY TO THE FLIRTY STUFF. MY BRAIN IS JUST ON FIRE WITH HUMAN DELORES. * they CAN NOT stop looking at each other. five feels so stupid being THIS flustered. its not his wife. he knows this. but god....shes so stunning. younger then his Delores but he doesn't mind. * she's taller then him no matter what. she was taller then him when he was old, young doesn't matter. shes a tall women and he loves that about her. *her always behind his shoulder correcting his math. and him huffing and admitting shes right. *she likes to head to him. he likes listening. hearing her voice with none of his own voice fused in is so refreshing. he would read his head in her lap and just relax for once in his life. *them slow dancing and mumbling soft words of comfort to each other. *she loves booping his nose. at first, it bits him because the handler used to but ends up finding it nice. its a trait she would have. *he loves watching her move. dance. walk. talk. shes in front of him. again, their eyes are glued to each other and its hard hard not to. just knowing their loves are real keeps them going. *that art meme of all the lovestruck chibis surrounding a very flustered person. that's Delores if she walked into the deli. imagine all the fives looking over and melting in surprise. crumbling in their seats because they are filled with "i miss my wife,tails" energy. the five we are following for this post has to fight them back and give protective glares well she admits the attention is nice and oh god! so many fives! *when five finds a way to return, he doesn't fucking hide it and want to introduce her to his family so bad. she is worried about ending up in a different timeline. he understands the risk but at this point, he just wants the love of his life. and Shes so starved for adventure that she agrees wholeheartedly.

sorry if this wasn't all flirty themed stuff, i just really wanted to write Delores.