#me: shrug emoji

[dreamsteddie]

Steve and Eddie who kind of flop in life and end up poor, living in a trailer in a different small town living quiet lives of no import.

The kids, Robin, Nancy, and Johnathan all seem to take the small handful of opportunities offered to them by the government in the aftermath of the Upsidedown to take off and make something of their lives. They're off writing headlines, making news, and living their lives to the best of their abilities, but Steve and Eddie find themselves stuck.

Steve stayed in Hawkins until the kids graduated and left for college. By then Nancy, Johnathan, and Robin are all in their second or third years of college. John and Nancy have their own apartment in New York together and don't reach out all that often, only seeing the rest of the Hawkins crew on Holidays and some vacations. Robin is flourishing at an all-women's college in Maine and has a partner and a cat and plans for graduate school brewing. She's always saying Steve can come out and join her whenever he's ready, but when the time comes it feels like he would just be trying to insert himself in the middle of a life he doesn't know how to fit into, so he turns to Eddie instead.

Eddie is permanently disabled in a number of ways following the events of season four. He struggles with chronic pain, has breathing issues due to the loss of part of his right lung, and lost enough muscle mass in his left leg that walking will never be easy or done without the use of a walker or arm bar crutches. The doctors said he recovered as well as he could have. The kids said he would get better with time. Wayne said it didn't matter if he never got better, he could do anything he set his mind to.

Steve is the only person who tells him the truth.

Steve tells him that it sucks. Tells him that it will probably always hurt. Doesn't give him false hope when he's trying to grieve the loss of the life he wanted to live. The goals he wanted to reach. When he falls deeper and deeper into himself, stuck in the muck of depression, Steve is the only person he lets in. The kids try their best but their lives are moving fast, and taking care of someone like Eddie is exhausting, no matter what they try to say. Eventually, everyone but Dustin gives up on reaching out, the younger boy showing up every Sunday to try and get Eddie out of the house. He always leaves disappointed.

When Steve asks him if he wants to use what's left of their partly government payouts and Steve's equally meager Family Video savings to buy a truly shitty trailer in a town an hour and a half south of Hawkins in the fall of 1990, it feels like the first boon he's been given in almost five years. He'll never be who he could have been if he had ignored Chrissy that day in 86', but he's always thought maybe he could be more than a ghost between Wayne's walls if he could just get out of this god-forsaken town full of people who know too much and too little of what's happened to him.

They get the trailer, pack what little they have, let Wayne hug them close, and leave.

Steve has already transferred to their new town's Family Video, moving up to claim the dubious honor of being the opening manager. Mostly he just unlocks the door, signs into the computer, and makes sure nothing catches fire. Eddie hoped that moving would miraculously make him fit to enter back into the world, but he spends most of his days with a blanket on the front porch, watching people pass by. He does, though, finally accept that he needs to apply for disability to help Steve keep the lights on and the water hot. That last little bit of hope that he could be what he used to be dies, but he's learning to be content with what he does have. He starts taking a walk, just ten minutes around the loop of the trailer park saying hi and trading polite nods with his fellow residents. He's not ok, but he's starting to build a new community of people not too different from himself.

The new trailer only has one bedroom. Eddie sleeps on a fold-out mattress in the living room. It had been a major argument when they first moved in with Steve insisting that Eddie needed the bed. Eddie argued that it wasn't fair for him to take the room when Steve was the one working 40 hours a week to keep them afloat. In the end, Eddie was the more stubborn of the two. It helps that Eddie has absolutely no qualms about crawling into bed with Steve on the nights when the couch bed really won't cut it for his aching body. Steve never questions it, just shuffles over a little and lets the other man in.

Steve doesn't question a lot of stuff.

He doesn't question when all their effects are shared between them with no effort to distinguish between yours and mine, Eddie's and Steve's. He doesn't question it four months in when Eddie starts to get his feet under him and decides to take up cooking, always trying his best to have everything done just as Steve walks through the door. He doesn't question when a good chunk of Eddie's first disability check goes to buying Steve a sturdy, if not very fashionable, new watch for his birthday since his old one went bust almost a year ago.

He doesn't question it when Eddie holds his hand for the first time under the stars hanging above their front porch.

He doesn't question it when Eddie introduces him to one of his new neighbor friends with a hand resting comfortably on his lower back

He doesn't question it when Eddie starts sleeping in the bedroom every night.

Or makes him box mix cupcakes for Valentine's Day.

Or kisses him for the first time on the couch that's never a bed unless they want to spend the day binge-watching bargain bin films.

Because really, isn't this how it was always going to go? Wasn't this exactly what Steve was asking for when he asked Eddie to skip town with him?

Isn't this what Eddie was hoping for when he said yes?

[thecmaly]

adoptbduction

-

more windbreaker comics

[waveoftheocean]

"i can see it in his eyes" 🥰

[valtsv]

i genuinely straight up dont really think about my own gender anymore it means fuck all to me. i just inhabit a body. its perceived gender at any given moment is irrelevant as long as im having fun doing my thing.

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

ive described my culinary diet like raccoons that live in a michelin starred restaurants' dumpster before but its just legit Like That.

Like for breakfast I ate baloney sandwiches with baloney and mayo I found on sale.... and bread that's a pullman's loaf recipe I modified to be both made from sourdough starter and half whole wheat that takes a full day to go from cold starter to piping fresh bread

[saturnaous]

I don’t like ingo and emmet at all. does anybody wanna hit them with trains together

[princeyam]

sorry no witty comment i have the flu

[kacievvbbbb]

I think what’s so important to me with MiShanks, and honestly all my favorite ships, is that they are friends. Underneath it all they are just two dudes that like spending time together that have fun together whether they are fighting, fucking or just talking. The don’t just love each other they genuinely like the other as well despite all the terse words (mostly on Mihawk’s side). It’s why they can fall into step so seamlessly even after 10 years apart. They’ve known each other forever and they have fun together they always will. I just….

Like what even is the point if Shanks doesn’t look at Mihawk and remeber the boy he was? If Mihawk doesn’t look at Shanks and feel the years wash away like coats of his shoulders. If underneath it all there isn’t just Shanks and Mihawk two people that fucking love each other in all the ways there is to love. Like if they can’t just hang out the I don’t want it

[amanitacurses]

Sparkler

[nicepersondisorder]

the

[kiivg]

.“S’alright, Lad.”.

[barbequebarf]

tell me a story 'bout how u adore me !

[kideternity]

They should let more riders go around on their bikes in normal clothes + helmet

[gloriousmonsters]

ok listen. listen. hear me out. what if Angel was the one to propose the contract

like.... the intensification of heartbreak and guilt when Val tells him 'I own you, or have you forgotten that?' as Angel looks at his signature, the heart he drew next to it. the extra layer in 'what's the worst part of this hell? I can only blame myself'. and above all it plays well with my observation that their contract had to have been composed with some level of input from Angel, because... why on earth/in hell would Val have given him control of his life outside of the studio; and while Val invokes the contract to put Angel back in 'his place', Angel invokes it to remind Valentino that he can defy him. It's actually similar in composition to a kink contract/agreement--if I'm in this specific place, you hold all the power and call the shots; but outside of it, I don't give you that level of control. Angel can straight up tell Val to fuck off in front of a crowd and all Val can do is say he'll make Angel regret it next time he's in the studio (and isn't that an extremely dark variation of the classic kinky romance beat of 'sub misbehaves when they're in public and can get away with it, dom promises they'll pay for it later'?)

so like. all of that about the contract also works if Val proposed it, but I love headcanoning that their relationship was on the rocks around the time it was signed, and one of the factors was Vox coming onto the scene... and so now i'm just thinking about Angel in his peak era of both-sides-ing their relationship problems, knowing his 'commitment issues' (partly real, partly consisting of val's 'you know other men??' issues) are a major cause, furious and disconcerted at someone else drawing so much of Val's attention, wanting to make a stupid desperate Hail Mary pass to save their relationship but devoid of the usual options of 'have kid' or 'impulsively propose marriage' or 'move to a new house that's inevitably haunted' i watch too much horror, going for the option of '...hey do you want to make the kind of binding contract that is accessible to us?'

and surely it's not that stupid! he's only really giving Val a formal version of the power he gives him already, right? Val's his dom and his director and manager, and maybe there's... problems but it's mostly been great for Angel so far, so if having it on (magic eternally binding) paper would make Val happy and make him understand that Angel really wants him, wants them, the risk is toooootally worth it. just, best not to tell Cherri about it she'd definitely think it was insane.

(and when, much later, she learns about the contract and berates him for being an idiot and not telling her when Val brought it up, maybe don't correct her assumption. just keep it to yourself and feel even worse.)

[khrysalisposting]

u know what would go lowkey hard? a wiz villain with the capability of stealing/nullifying the use of magic. or siphoning magic straight from the user for their own gain a la agatha harkness. something nearly indestructible because obviously you can’t use magic against it without losing your ability once it siphons it. something that can master *all* magic that it steals and use it against those who once wielded it.

[fuckedupcleric]

Future Leo seeing his younger self at the age that the key was lost and really getting hit with the fact that he was a child. Even younger than Casey Jr. is. He was a child, and he had only been leader for a few months, a role that he was thrust into when he never asked for it and was never trained for it. He was a child, and he made a mistake that he never could have possibly understood the consequences of. He was a child, and the apocalypse happened, and it was his fault, and he hated and blamed himself for so long, saw the blood of billions of innocents on his hands every day, for years and years, and he dedicated his life to leading a resistance against an impossible enemy, and he lost his home and loved ones and sense of safety and so much that he can't even speak about, and it's all his fault - but he was just a child.

Idk just. Knowing the age you were at vs. coming face to face with your teenage self is not the same. Leo seeing the arrogance and the ignorance and the inexperience. Leo acknowledging that he was in the wrong, that he was reckless and stupid and he could have been so much better - but also truly seeing that he was a child. Those consequences weren't fair. He didn't deserve to learn that lesson the hard way. He was a child.

I like to think that Leo would hug his younger self, at the end of it all. He would tell him that it's okay, and that he's proud of him, and that he doesn't deserve to hate himself over what he did when he didn't know any better.