#monsdasarah

[ihni]

Harringrove for Ukraine-commission for @monsdasarah, who wanted a prom scenario kinda like this. I hope you like it! <3

Look at these two boys looking stylish as fuck in their 80s prom suits. (Also yes, Billy went out and got one that matched Steve’s bowtie, because of course he did.) (Also also, he looks great in teal and he knows it.)

[steviespanties]

Imagine Steve gifting Billy a mixtape and the first three songs are Billy's favorite songs but then it's 5 minutes of Steve moaning and very obvious fapping sounds.. and then it's just music again, until maybe 4-5 tracks later, it's another round of Steve's moans...

sdfgHJHJ pLEASE, Billy’s so excited when Steve hands him the mixtape. Is even more excited when he tells him to listen that evening on his headphones. And at first, he’s just enjoying the music, headbanging a bit more carefully because of the headphones and feeling so happy about Steve knowing all his favorite tracks- the ones he’s sung to while they were driving around, the ones he puts on his own mixtapes and listens to until they wear out- a nd then instead of the next song, he hears a familiar, low moan. 

It’s a little grainy, but the moment he recognizes he’s listening to Steve’s voice, he flushes hot all over. Turns the volume up high enough to hear the slick sounds of lube and a hand moving in a languid rhythm over slick skin. Little “ah, ah, ah” groans as Steve sounds like he’s getting closer to coming, just for the sound of his lube-slick hand on his dick to cease. A drawn out “ffuck”, like Steve stopped just in time before getting off.

The volume of the next song almost blows out Billy’s eardrums. He’s on his bed, has his pants immediately shoved down and his own leaking dick in hand and only spit and his own precome to ease the way. As Metallica plays, he stifles his own moans and thinks of Steve recording himself for him. Getting off while thinking of Billy.

He’s almost tempted to wind back the tape, but the music is too good and his brain is too occupied with thinking about Steve and touching himself.

And then the music is off again and Steve’s voice, more frantic and desperate than before is back in his ears. Moaning Billy’s name as he brings himself to the brink over and over, voice getting hoarse and Billy’s dick twitching hot and hard in his hand. He swipes over his wet tip, spreads precome under the head as more pulses out. Thinks about Steve on his lap, edging himself with his eyes closed, moaning and whining-

Mötley Crüe comes on and Billy laughs. Comes hard and fast with little upwards thrusts of his hips to the thought of how fucked out Steve must be by the end of the tape. And there’s a whole second half waiting for him.

[platypanthewriter]

Hook Possum 1/4

Art by @monsdasarah​ for Harringrove Big Bang!

Steve had told the manager of Camp Butternut Springs every year of his life that the mildewed, papier-mache-masked, six-foot-tall opossum mascot was terrifying.  The mask was chipped and patched, fixed with different colors of gray over the mangy glued-on fur.  Its long, stained rat tail had drug through the red camp dirt for decades, and by the summer of 85, the dirty thing looked like it had been dyed with blood.

Hook Possum looked more like a zombie than a possum, with its mesh eyes staring in their ragged, uneven sockets, its lovingly molded teeth half broken off and stained with grime.  Inexplicably—but later, retroactively, mythologized by a ton of camp folklore—it had a hook hand off a pirate costume, gleaming in the sun.

Every goddamn year the goddamn manager had the goddamn Hook Possum outfit on some poor camp counsellor, out greeting campers—the goddamn moron—and every fucking goddamn year one of the already-homesick and worried new campers burst into sobs at first sight of the horrifying thing.  Steve wondered whether the manager was actually in the huge, blank-eyed Hook Possum costume this year, like a prick, because it was even bigger than usual—as tall as Steve, with its ripped ratty ears, and broad-shouldered in a way Steve suspected wasn’t padding.

The hook hand didn’t exactly help.

Steve grabbed the first wailing child he saw around the waist, then two more, and stomped over to the damn possum.  “Here, look, Hook Possum’s not scary,” he said, and they all screamed, because it was so clearly a lie.  

Hook Possum, somewhat to his credit, dropped to a crouch, his shoulders hunched, and Steve thought maybe it wasn’t the manager, just some poor camp counsellor that got roped in, because the manager probably would have roared like a lion—just for fun—and the kids would have wet themselves all over Steve’s lap.  

“Hook Possum just lives here!” Steve told the screaming infants he was holding.  “If you get scared at night,” Steve shouted over their desperate wailing and struggles, “—away from home?  Hook Possum is here to keep you safe.  Right?”

Whoever was playing Hook Possum flinched, and its creepy head jerked around to look at him.

“HELP!” shrieked the kid under his arm, his voice nasal, because he was holding his nose against Hook Possum’s fug of mildew and B.O.

“Nobody has ever yet been murdered by Hook Possum,” Steve gritted out.  “Right?!” he prompted the moron in the mascot suit again, nudging a fur-suited leg with his shoe.  “Hook Possum is like a...camp guardian!  Right?”

Hook Possum stared at his face, which was chilling—after Steve’s first visit to Camp Butternut Springs, Hook Possum had featured in every one of Steve’s childhood nightmares, and the costume was even worse after nearly two decades of wear—but Steve was as tall as the thing now, and he set his jaw.  

“Hook Possum is friendly, right,” he growled, and Hook Possum gave a jerky nod, making a weird choking noise, like maybe it had already eaten a couple of kids.

“Y-ye-ahssss,” the thing hissed, and Steve was tempted to push the whole mess, including the person inside, under a bus.  “Safe as houses,” said the possum, just as strangled-sounding, but it was better than staring silently, so Steve grinned ruefully at the kids, who were quieting as they realized they weren’t murdered—not yet, anyway.  

“You’ll get used to Hook Possum,” he said cheerfully.  “We all do.  Eventually.” 

It had occurred to Steve one night when he was fourteen, and firmly over his terror of Hook Possum, that the perfect cover for an actual serial killer would be a terrifying full-body costume everyone was trying to ignore.  He and Tommy had followed the costume around every time it had someone in it, looking for suspicious behavior.  Years later, he’d donned it himself, and for the first time in his life didn’t fear getting murdered by Hook Possum.  He only worried he might die of heatstroke in padded fur boots, gloves, and a bodysuit in July in Indiana, except for a few startling glimpses of himself in the mirror over the sinks.  

His suggestion every week in the suggestion box was still ‘burn the Hook Possum costume and bury the ashes under a rock’, though, because he was a rational human being who understood what needed to be done.

When he’d talked Robin into applying with him at the camp instead of the video store, he’d snuck the costume on and leaned into her cabin.  She’d screamed satisfyingly, and nearly killed him with an oar.  She’d argued for burying the ashes of Hook Possum in seven different locations around the US, lest it rise again, and they’d put that in the suggestion box, to no response whatsoever.

 It was pretty obvious the current Hook Possum wasn’t used to the cheerful voice necessary to offset its...everything, so Steve did his best.  “Are you guys telling me you’re afraid of possums?” he teased, and the littlest kid, a girl, reached out and lightly batted its nose.  The smell of cigarettes wafted up.  

“I’m afraid,” said the boy, thickly, and Steve nodded slowly, feeling nothing but respect for a smart child.

“Hook Possum protects you guys,” he told them, sitting them on their feet.  “From whatever, you know, else.”

“What could be out there,” the scared boy whispered, his eyes widening, “—that’s worse than—”

“...yeah,” said Hook Possum, in a weird squeaky voice like a Disney mouse.  “Yeah, that’s what I’m here for, I’m here to protect you guys from...nightmares?” he suggested, glancing at Steve, who shrugged, nodding, because it was a pretty good idea.

“You’re soft,” said the littlest kid, grabbing one of the other snifflers by the wrist, and shoving it into Hook Possum’s fur.

“You stink,” said the boy, and Steve elbowed him.

“I’m a possum,” hissed Hook Possum, and the kid nodded.  

“That makes sense.”

Steve muffled his laughter, but he was pretty sure the possum heard, because his crooked, whiskery mask jerked up, and his terrifying mesh eyes stared into Steve’s soul.  He smelled like long winters in a damp shed, and cigarettes, and B.O.— because it was worn every year in the summer in Indiana—but the smallest kids were gathering around and asking questions about possums, and Steve had to call upon his knowledge from years past, and explain things like how possums were too awesome to get ticks.  

Hook Possum listened intently—or maybe just glared at him, smoke drifting from its eye mesh—until Steve was a little annoyed, and mentioned that mother possums carried babies around on their backs.  That was probably way too mean, because the whole horde of children grabbed hold of Hook Possum’s every appendage, and he flailed his hook only once before vanishing in the giggling pile.  

“Here, here, no—” Steve yelped, unable to watch a human being consumed by piranha, and he reached into the laughing, yelping pile and hauled Hook Possum up by the arm, dusting him off.  Two small children dangled from his other arm, and one had him around the neck.  “You have to be nice to Hook Possum!” Steve told them.  “Who’s he gonna stay up protecting, huh?  The kids who’re nice to him, or the little, uh, cusses that knee him in the...shins?”

“...the nice ones,” came a small, grumbly voice from one of the criers, and “Probably the nice ones,” from a little girl who sighed heavily, and another kid just said, “Fine.”  The dude in the possum suit just panted against Steve’s shoulder for a second, and Steve let him, familiar with getting dogpiled by small children with weaponized knees.  

“...jesus,” came a faint whisper from in the possum suit, and Steve pinched him, even though he was grimacing with sympathy.  He lifted the kids off Hook Possum—once the littlest ones had decided he was safe, they tried to drag him around and show everyone how brave they were—and the human in the suit tried to wipe his face, or something, and smacked his hook-hand into the head of his costume.  He sighed, and Steve squeezed his shoulder, and patted his back, ushering the kids away.

“What are you doing here,” Hook Possum wheezed, as Steve pushed him back to sit on one of the picnic table benches.  “What are you doing here,” he repeated, sounding bewildered.

“My dad owns the place,” Steve said in a low voice, as the littlest boy ran back to the buses, screaming about how he’d met Hook Possum, and Robin and Nancy looked over, resigned.  “That’s why it pays so well.  We went to him and told him he could have a staff that would work hard, or he could have three underpaid girls who want it on their resume for becoming teachers, and the second week they’d all have nervous breakdowns.  Why, do...do I know you?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at the blank mesh eyes, and trying to place the weird squeaky voice.

Hook Possum nodded slowly, but Steve was pretty sure he was still staring.  Maybe it was just the mesh eyes.  “...oh,” he said quietly.  “Your...dad.  Owns...it.”

“Yep,” Steve said, shrugging.  “I mean, he owns the company that owns a bunch of camps, you know, but—anyway, you’ve never been a counselor before, right?  I can show you around, if you want.  What’s your name?  How d’you know me?”

Hook Possum stared at him some more, and then said, even higher, like Mickey Mouse, “He’s, like, the owner’s boss?” he asked weakly.  “...name’s Hook Possum.”

“What the fuck,” Steve muttered, staring back into the mesh eyes, but then he saw Robin’s arm fly up as she was consumed in a wave of children, and he clapped Hook Possum on the shoulder and ran off.  

 He saw the guy later, too, still in the costume, even though it was July in Indiana.  He was talking to Max Mayfield, so Steve wandered over.  “You need some help getting out of that?” he offered, because nobody would stay in a horrible hot stinking furry sweat bag by choice.

“No,” said Hook Possum, too quickly, and Max groaned into her hands.  

“Uh,” said Steve, who was starting to wonder if they’d found some possum-obsessed weirdo for a counselor.  “You must...really like possums.”

Max burst into giggles, laughing harder than Steve had ever seen her, and Hook Possum’s long face swung to look at her, then at Steve, then back at her, and then he stomped away.  Because the costume had big, dirty, saggy fur paw-booties, he had to lift his feet high, like a cartoon, and Steve started snickering too.

Hook Possum hunched his shoulders, and scuttled around the edge of one of the cabins, out of sight.  

“Oh my god,” Max cackled.  “He’s finally found his true identity!  Trash rat.”

“Is...is that...Billy,” Steve asked, the thought of Billy Hargrove, camp counselor, hauling off and punching kids, or murdering them, suddenly much less funny.  “What—isn’t he back in Hawkins?!  How’d he get here?!”

“Uh, no!  No, no,” Max said quickly, grimacing and waving her hands.  “Definitely, um, not, no.  It’s, ah, he lives on my street.  He’s, um, saving money to move out.”

“Oh,” Steve said, relieved.  

“The pay’s really good here,” Max explained, too fast.  “—and, uh, mmmm...hiiiis dad’s kinda shitty, so he needs money to get out of his house.”

“Well, he should be able to,” Steve told her, giving her two thumbs-up so she’d make a face.  “We’re practically all seniors, that’s what a lot of us are doing, that or paying for college.”

“...yeah,” Max sighed.  “He can...move away.  Finally.”

“Sounds like you’ll miss him,” Steve said, grinning at her, “—he the brother you never had?”

“...yeah, he um.  He sort of is,” she said, swallowing, and Steve patted her shoulder gingerly.  

“Uh,” he said cautiously, “Um, you...you know you can always give me a call, right?”

“Thought you had kind of a problem with my family,” she sighed, and he shook his head.  

“I’ve got no problem with you.”

“...yeah, that’s what we thought,” Max muttered, maybe, and Steve frowned at her.  “Go away,” she told him, sighing, “It’s fine.”

 They got everybody sorted into cabins, and Steve saw Hook Possum ducking into a bunk in the counselor’s cabin.  He stared for a long moment, watching the enormous possum negotiate its tail and its creepy, vacant-eyed mask and lie down on the lower bunk.

“It’s hot as Satan’s asshole in here,” he groaned.

“...what are you doing,” Steve hissed.  “They cannot be paying you enough to stay in that thing.  There is not enough money in the world to stay in that thing for more than a couple hours.”

“Ah, fuck,” said Hook Possum, sitting up and smacking his head on the upper bunk.  “Shit fuck,” he groaned, “—I can’t see in this thing—”

“Then take it off,” Steve told him, sitting next to him on the bunk and reaching in to feel for the ties behind the guy’s neck, but Hook Possum grabbed Steve’s hand, scrambling back.  

“No!  No, uh,” he stopped, then tried again.  “I need the money,” he said softly.  “I need it—”

“Okay, okay, did you agree to some—some massive bonus bullshit to keep this damn costume on?  Because you’re gonna die of heatstroke in there,” Steve told him.  “I don’t care how much he offered you, you can’t wear that thing all summer—”

“No, I did, I agreed to—to bonus bullshit to keep the damn costume on,” Hook Possum whispered, the fingers in his paw-glove squeezing Steve’s arm, hard.  “I can’t take it off.  He’s—he’s giving me a huge bonus.”

“Fuck,” Steve breathed.  “You’re gonna die in there, I’m not kidding.  You can stay in the shade, or—and we can bring you ice, lots of ice, you could try an ice pack on your neck—”

“I need this job,” the guy said, and Steve nodded, letting him go.

“Okay, okay.  We’ll figure this out, but if the manager comes out, I’m kneeing him in the balls, because—”

“No!  I need the money,” Hook Possum hissed, the weird cartoony voice even odder in a serious conversation.  

“Jesus,” Steve said, sighing.  “Okay.  I’m gonna check in with you, alright?  If you start to keel over, I’m taking it off, we’ll figure out something to tell the manager.”

“Don’t take it off,” said Hook Possum, like he was the last soldier holding the line, and Steve got caught up in it, like a moron.  

“I’m not leaving you in there,” he said, like the trenches were getting shelled.  “I’m not letting anyone die in a possum costume,” he said, to remind himself they weren’t at D-Day.  Hook Possum sighed, his shoulders slumping as he growled.  “And you can’t sleep in that thing, jesus,” Steve said,  “At least change at night.”

“You’d—somebody’d see me,” Hook Possum said, and Steve shook him, a little.  

“We aren’t possum spies, nobody’s gonna tell.”

“How do I know you’re not possum spies,” Hook Possum hissed back, and Steve started snickering.

“Okay, okay, um, curtain?  What about a curtain, we’ll just staple it up here and nobody’ll see your, uh, late night transformation.”

“Oh,” said Hook Possum, snickering a little, like he did realize how ridiculous it all was, and looking around.  “That...might work.”

“Gonna transform out of your outfit like a shitty Cinderella,” Steve sighed, and Hook Possum laughed harder.  “You’re gonna have to shower in the dead of night,” Steve told him.  “I’ll let everybody know it’s just, y’know, just our resident possum.  Creeping around.”  He started laughing again, and Hook Possum elbowed him.  “How are you gonna eat?”

“Shouldn’t be feeding the wildlife in the cafeteria anyway,” Hook Possum pointed out.  “There are signs everywhere.”

“...you know you’re a human, right,” Steve told him, trying not to giggle.

Hook Possum shook with laughter against him.  “I’ll just climb into a trash can and knock it over at three am.  It’s the way of my people.”

“Oh my god,” Steve wheezed.  “I’m gonna get in trouble for feeding the wildlife and letting a possum nest in here, aren’t I?  I’ll sneak you burgers, I promise.”

“Why,” Hook Possum laughed, edging away.  “It’s not your problem, Harrington—”

“Hey, Max likes you, you’re part of the weirdo family we got going on,” Steve said, clapping the guy’s shoulder, and the possum mask swung towards him again.

“...does she?” he asked, snorting softly.

“She does,” Steve confirmed.  “She said.”  Hook Possum stared like a creepy puppet, and Steve was unable to resist reaching up and patting the dusty, greasy fur between the costume ears.  “You’re one of us, now.”

“...once you feed wildlife, it can create a dependency,” Hook Possum said, batting Steve’s hand away, but he was laughing audibly now.  “I read that in a flyer.”

“I can’t believe they handed a possum a flyer about possums,” Steve said, and Hook Possum snorted.

“Right?  Like who the fuck deals with wildlife by handing them flyers, what a moron.”

“I didn’t know possums could read,” Steve said, and Hook Possum kicked at him, completely missing.  “What a smart possum you are.”

“Fuck you, if I could see in this thing—” 

“Oooo, you gonna murder me with your little—your plastic pirate hook hand?” Steve asked, and Hook Possum laughed harder, letting himself fall sideways to curl up on the bunk.  

“Fuck you,” he mumbled again, wheezing with laughter.

Steve wondered who he was—whether he’d defended Max from Billy, or just showed her some skateboard tricks.  Whether he was younger, maybe—Steve didn’t know most of the freshmen—and what he’d look like in about ten minutes when he gave up on the incredibly stupid idea of living in a possum suit for the whole damn summer.

 Steve got hauled into setting up the welcome dinner, sitting the tables out, and putting cleanish rocks on the stacks of napkins to keep them from blowing away.  Hook Possum was useless at it—he nearly dropped the plates, and then bumped into a table because he couldn’t see, almost overturning it, and finally Steve put both hands on his furry possum shoulders and walked him over to a group of smaller kids who were milling around, bored by the orientation speech.

As he wandered by later, he heard Hook Possum telling them “Possum Facts.”

“Possums are gonna be the next police dogs,” he was saying, as Steve stared over.  “They’re gonna yell ‘Fly, my pretties!’ and the perp will be overwhelmed by possums.”

“That’s good,” said one solemn little kid, softly.  “I’m afraid of dogs.”

“Hook Possum is here to protect us,” said another one.  “You can find him if you’re scared of dogs.”

The first kid nodded, wide-eyed, and Hook Possum stared at one, then the other.  “...uh, yeeeah,” he said, slowly.  “Sure.”

“He’ll fight the dogs, Robin said,” said the first kid, and Hook Possum’s mask jerked towards her.  

“Wait, what?!” he hissed, and Steve ducked away, smothering snickers.

 Dinner was uneventful, as usual, in that there was so much chaos Steve was deadened to it, automatically reaching in to stop Dustin from using his spoon to catapult peas at Erica Sinclair and starting WWIII.   

He snuck off when he saw Hook Possum tiptoeing away like a stealthy cartoon.  “D’you need me to feed the wildlife?” he asked, and Hook Possum yelped, spinning around, so his tail whipped Steve in the legs.  

“Holy shit,” he panted, in his weird squeaky voice.

“Sorry, forgot you were a possum on the edge, man,” Steve told him, clapping a hand to his shoulder, and Hook Possum started laughing again, cigarette smoke trailing out of the eyeholes of his mask.  Steve watched it.  “...you have no idea how fucking creepy that looks,” he said.  “It’s eerie.”

“Creepier than my big blank eyes?” Hook Possum asked, and Steve wished he could see the expression of the person in the suit—whether it was resigned, or entertained, or what.  

“D’you want me to get you some food?” Steve asked.  “I can’t see you using the tongs, or like...seeing the buffet very well.”

“Also, I’m filthy,” Hook Possum said, raising a dusty paw.  

“That too,” Steve agreed.

“...I can get something later,” Hook Possum said, laughing a little.  

“You still have to eat, man,” Steve told him.  “And drink some water, at least.”

“What’s going on back here,” came Max’s voice, and they both swiveled.  She had a tray in her hands, and her eyes narrowed.

“Harrington was offering to feed the wildlife,” said Hook Possum, and she snorted.

“You’re a camp counselor, set a good example,” she hissed, waving Steve away.  “Didn’t you see the flyers, Steve?  You can’t feed possums.”

“Everyone saw the flyers, they even gave them to him,” Steve said, pointing.  “Possums probably can’t even read.”

“I barely can, in this,” Hook Possum admitted.  “I had to hold it up over my eyeholes.”

“Hrm,” said Max.  “Okay, Steve, go away, Nancy said to tell you you’re on dishes.”

Steve sighed, and left them to it.

 When he was done, he found an old tatty camp flag in the storage shed, half faded and ripped—he remembered somebody getting in trouble, in years past, for leaving it up all winter—and nailed it up over Hook Possum’s bunk with pruny fingers from the suds in the cooking tent.  He put a hook where the grommet could lift it away, in case Hook Possum’s struggles with his mask caught on the fabric, and then stepped back to look at his handiwork just as Robin wandered in.  

“That’s...really something,” she said, raising his eyebrows.  “We all get one of those?”

“No, it’s for the possum guy,” Steve told her, hooking the flag’s bottom corner up to show that the bunk was slightly easier to climb into.  “He’s like...contracted to wear the damn thing 24/7.  He gets a bonus or something.”

“That’s bullshit.  He’s gonna die of heatstroke,” Robin said, and Steve nodded, shrugging.

“That’s what I said.  Anyway, I told him I’d hide the bunk so he didn’t have to, like, lie there in the costume all night.”

“Playing possum,” she snorted, and Steve grinned, imagining the dude in full possum array, sprawled on his back like roadkill.  

“Sexy,” he snorted, and she waggled her eyebrows.

PART ONE | TWO | THREE | FOUR

[eddie-munsons-guitar86]

If you get this, answer with 3 random facts about yourself and send it to the last 7 blogs in your notifications, anonymously or not! Let's get to know the person behind the blog!

1. I have 2 dogs

2. I play drums

3. I like sonic mozzarella sticks

[rascheln]

☕ Steve and Dustin's friendship

Eyy thank you!!😊💗

Talking just about the show itself, but I think they’re a great combo. Putting Steve, coded as a jock/popular kid, together with Dustin, a nerdy smartass, was a great choice for contrast and an unusual friendship. Since both Dustin and Steve don’t have siblings (as far as we know), giving Steve the chance to act like a big brother to him- and for Dustin to have someone around who is/was popular and actually treats him with respect, instead of bullying him? Yea, I really think they’re very sweet!

That said, I do wish the show hadn’t used them as a comedic duo so much. Though that’s probably part of my overall issues with s3. These two have a lot of great potential for a type of found-family bonding and having more serious talks as friends who’ve gone through some rough stuff.

(send me a ��️ and a topic and i’ll talk about how i feel about it)

[catharrington]

The Gobbler II: the witching hour by @harringrovetrashrat

Click here to see the amazing art by @monsdasarah

Steve wasn’t counting the days until the full moon. He wasn’t.

Fine, he was. He was thinking about Billy at pretty much every chance he got. Because, while the blow job had been fucking mind blowing, Billy was… Billy had insisted on them hanging out some, going over rules and such, as well as sharing emergency information should anything happen while Billy wasn’t in control. And Billy was funny. He was smart. He was an asshole.

Check, check, check. Each box for Steve’s Horny/Falling Deeply in Love list had been checked and Steve was struggling.

He could deal with Billy being hot, a lot of people were hot, and Steve could get over that. Hell, he’d thought Robin was hot until she very kindly turned him down. But the problem was that Billy wasn’t just hot. Steve liked him. Liked him, liked him. Third grade schoolyard liked him.

Because while Billy was snarky and rude and a total dick when he wanted to be, Steve could tell he had a good heart. He saw it in the care Billy took with him regarding everything with The Gobbler. Saw it when Billy mentioned his sister and his eyes softened, even if he called her a shitbird. Hell, Steve watched Billy step over an ant hill instead of on it and his knees went weak.

He was fucked and he knew it.

((For the Harringrove Big Bang 2021 @harringrovebigbang 🖤 oh my gosh this group was so fun to work with and so easy to work with as well. Thank y’all for inspiring me with the amazing art and fic!!! Please do yourself a favor and read this adorable fic about the Gobbler my new favorite stranger things character 🥰🥰))

[harringrovetrashrat]

The Gobbler II: The Witching Hour

Harringrove Big Bang 2021 is here!!! A huge thanks to @harringrovebigbang for organizing this!  Also a huge thanks to my team, @monsdasarah and @catharrington, who did the art and moodboard, respectively.

But without further ado, here we go.  The Gobbler II.  Time to get cracky.

Steve wasn’t counting the days until the full moon. He wasn’t.

Fine, he was. He was thinking about Billy at pretty much every chance he got. Because, while the blow job had been fucking mind blowing, Billy was… Billy had insisted on them hanging out some, going over rules and such, as well as sharing emergency information should anything happen while Billy wasn’t in control. And Billy was funny. He was smart. He was an asshole.

Check, check, check. Each box for Steve’s Horny/Falling Deeply in Love list had been checked and Steve was struggling. He could deal with Billy being hot, a lot of people were hot, and Steve could get over that. Hell, he’d thought Robin was hot until she very kindly turned him down. But the problem was that Billy wasn’t just hot. Steve liked him. Liked him, liked him. Third grade schoolyard liked him. Because while Billy was snarky and rude and a total dick when he wanted to be, Steve could tell he had a good heart. He saw it in the care Billy took with him regarding everything with The Gobbler. Saw it when Billy mentioned his sister and his eyes softened, even if he called her a shitbird. Hell, Steve watched Billy step over an ant hill instead of on it and his knees went weak.

He was fucked and he knew it.

“I still don’t know,” Robin said, brow furrowed with worry. Steve was finishing up the garlands she needed, weaving together the hay and wheat so flowers could be intertwined safely without fear of them falling out. He sighed and set down the garland before stretching out his fingers.

“Robin--”

“I know, I know,” she said, cutting him off with a sigh as she paced back and forth in the living room while he worked. “But I don’t fucking trust him! And while I’m glad you won’t be traversing the woods--” She cut herself off, eyes narrowing. “You’re both staying inside, yeah? You’re not planning on going looking for it are you?” Steve rolled his eyes.

“We aren’t going to look for The Gobbler in the woods. We won’t even look at the woods.” Steve felt bad, just a bit, when Robin visibly calmed from the reaffirmation, though she did continue to pace. He knew she was just worried about him, but still. He did know what he was doing. Mostly. Enough. Steve stood and wiped off his hands before halting her movements by pulling her into a hug. “I know you’re worried,” he mumbled into her hair. He pulled back, giving her a smile. “But seriously. It’s gonna be okay. I know you don’t trust him, but do you trust me?” Robin scoffed, rolling her eyes a little with a small, fond smile. “Actually, don’t answer that.”

“I was gonna say,” she replied with a smirk. “You don’t exactly have the best track record.” She let out a sigh, enough nervous energy finally leaving her body for her to plop onto the couch. “But I get it. I know you won’t let him do anything you don’t like, but I just… Something is… off.” She shook her head as Steve looked away, choosing to go back to finishing the garland instead of responding. Robin was right, and while Steve wasn’t a bad liar by any means, she knew him too well. Robin looked. She listened. She saw his nervous tics and heard the words he didn’t say. So instead, he said nothing and finished the garland as she checked through her notebook and made sure everything was accounted for.

By the time Steve finished, Robin was done packing up the rest of her things.

“Hope tonight goes well,” Steve said, giving her another quick, firm hug as they stood in the doorway. He pulled back, grinning wide. “Say hi to Heather for me,” he said sweetly, getting a shove from Robin as her face turned red.

“Oh my god,” she groaned. “Shut up!” Still, she smiled, and gave Steve a softer, more playful shove. “Have a good night. Don’t stink up the house with your boy fumes.” Steve snorted and shook his head.

“Billy and I both smell great, thank you.” Robin rolled her eyes and headed out, hopping onto her bike and waving one last time as she rode off. Steve waved until he could no longer see her, sighing happily as he went back in the house. It was only a moment however before he kicked it into overdrive. Steve ran to the living room, shoving everything away. He wanted things to be clean and ready, anything breakable moved out of the way. He had no idea how the night was going to pan out, no idea if Billy would even go for him again. How did the curse even work? Would he need a different dick every month? Would their plan even work?

Steve decided that he didn’t care. That they would figure it out. That he would figure this out, no matter what. Billy acted cool and unbothered, but it was obvious that this curse made him… Unhappy wasn’t the right word, but neither was disgusted. Uncomfortable, maybe? Steve could work it out later; right now, he needed to focus on getting the house Gobbler proofed.

Steve was up and out of his seat in record time when he heard the doorbell ring. He had to stop himself in the entryway and take a few deep breaths. It was probably weird how excited he was. How much he wanted this. But, Steve had a crush, a big one, and he was known to have poor judgement when he was into someone. Steve ran his hand through his hair before finally opening the door.

“I was wondering if you were gonna stand there forever or let me in,” Billy joked as he stepped into the house and brushed Steve’s shoulder with his. Steve flushed as he remembered the stained glass window in the front door, where Billy probably saw him run up and stop. He swallowed his embarrassment and followed Billy to the living room. While he had been over a few times, they usually had met up at Billy’s place. Robin’s distrust of Billy made him nervous, put him on edge, so he didn’t like coming to Steve’s often. Which sucked. But today Billy was here. He was here and he was standing in Steve’s living room, looking around with a small smile. “You and Buckley decorate like fucking grandmas,” he said, turning to give Steve a teasing smile, tongue caught between his teeth. It made Steve’s heart stutter.

Yeah, he was royally fucked. This was probably the worst idea he’d ever had.

He was still gonna do it.

“You should do an open mic, really, with all those zingers,” Steve replied. Billy cackled and Steve smirked back. “C’mon. We can come back down here to order pizza and put on something, but I, uh,” he faltered, turning a little red. “I figure you can put your bag in my room?” His nerves made it sound like a question, but he wasn’t the only one feeling a little funny about it, since Billy also went red. He blushed down his neck and Steve wondered how far down it went. To his collarbone? His nips? Steve cleared his throat and gestured to the stairs, leading Billy up silently.

“It’s a nice house,” Billy said quietly, breaking through the tension. “Grandma accents aside.” Steve snorted and opened the door to his room, suddenly anxious for Billy to like it. He had plants on plants, pots on every shelf, every nook, every cranny. Herbs lined his window sill, along with a few succulents. Steve loved plants. Loved the energy they brought. His parents had hated how he had loved to be in the dirt, to feel the magic of earth and nurse it, keep it thriving and strong. They were white magic users, full of spectacle and grace. Steve, well, wasn’t.

The rest of his room was somewhat bland, lots of greens and blues, the wood of his bed frame and desk a nice light brown. Billy looked around, eyes a little wide, setting his bag on Steve’s made bed. His room was cluttered, but organized, and Billy seemed amused at all the little knick knacks Steve had.

“Wow,” Billy breathed. “I don’t know why but I expected more plaid.”

“I don’t know whether to take offense to that or not,” Steve replied with a grin. Billy shrugged, his smile easy going.

“Your choice.” Billy went to the window, looking out at the garden in the backyard. “I’m gonna assume you’re the one who did the garden too?” Steve joined him by the window, looking down.

“Kind of. I do a lot of the gardening, but Robin helps a lot. We like to have native species of plants, and I hate nettles, so she’s the one who deals with them.” It was nice, talking to Billy. He seemed genuinely curious to know Steve and he hadn’t had anyone this interested in him since school, when he still reaped the benefits that came from his last name.

“Native species?” Billy asked, turning to Steve.

“Oh, I could go on for hours, you don’t want--” Steve began, face flushing.

“Dude,” Billy said, huffing slightly as he turned to face Steve more. “I like hearing what you have to say, okay? You don’t gotta censor yourself for me.” And there it was. The soft nougaty bit of Billy Hargrove that made Steve feel soft and squishy and seen.

“Well, why don’t we order the pizza and then we can talk?” Steve asked. He wanted to get out of his room before he shoved Billy onto the bed here and now. Steve had an inkling that Billy felt the same, but he was incredibly nervous that he was just reading too much into the situation. So instead of facing his feelings like an adult, Steve turned and headed downstairs, hearing Billy’s heavier footsteps behind him. He grabbed the phone out of the cradle, punching in the phone number for the best pizza place in town. “What do you like on your pizza?”

“Pineapple and onion. I can do ham or no ham.” Billy said it casually, like he hadn’t just spouted out the most disgusting combo Steve had ever heard.

“Oh, dude, I dunno. That’s crossing a damn line--” Steve began, aghast at the idea of pineapple on pizza, much less paired with onion.

“It’s good!” Billy protested with a pout. “Listen, order a medium one and then whatever your dainty tastebuds want. You’re gonna try it and I know you’re gonna like it.” Steve gave him a blank look, unimpressed and unconvinced. Billy just crossed his arms and raised a brow, tilting his head. Steve sighed and when Benny picked up the phone, he ordered.

When the pizzas arrived (pineapple and onion for Billy, while Steve got the olives and green peppers), Billy sat Steve down on the couch, handed him a slice, and sat on the coffee table, staring intently. Steve eyed the pizza, then Billy, then the pizza again.

“Trust me,” Billy said. “It’s good.” Steve sighed and rolled his eyes dramatically before daintily going in for a bite. “That’s a fucking nibble, get some of all of it, asshole.” Steve shot Billy an exasperated look, but he did take a real bite. And… Fuck. That smug asshole was right. The acidity and tart sweetness of the pineapple paired well with the sweet onion and the acidity of the tomato sauce. It was savory and sweet, with some good crunch, and Steve couldn’t help his surprised groan, staring at the pizza in shock. Billy made a choked noise and Steve looked at him, eyes wide.

“It is good,” Steve replied, taking another bite. Billy’s face was flushed, but Steve didn’t pay much attention, snarfing up his slice quickly.

“Told you,” Billy said, grin wide and proud. “It’s good shit. I know my food, dude.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve said through his mouthful of pizza. “You win this one, Blue.” At that, Billy paused, giving Steve a confused but curious look.

“Blue?” Steve blushed and realized he’d never actually said that nickname out loud before. Not in real life, at least.

“Yeah, uh, like your uh, your eyes,” Steve stammered out. Billy looked at him, silent, looking torn about something. Finally, his face settled and he snorted, shaking his head.

“Should I call you Brown?” Billy asked, snatching up a slice for himself. Steve fake gagged.

“Oh god no, please don’t.”

“Sure thing, Brown Eyes.”

“Billy, I literally said--”

“You said not to call you Brown. This is different.” Steve groaned while Billy smirked around the string of cheese connecting his lips to the pizza. They continued to joke around while they ate, Billy flinging the olives off his slices, like they had personally offended him. Eventually though, it was starting to get dark. Steve could see the tension and stress building inside Billy as the night went forward, inching closer and closer to the peak of the moon.

“Do you know when it’ll happen?” Steve asked. The pizza boxes had been broken down and put into the compost bin, all the leftovers wrapped in foil and put away. The sun had set and the only light in the house was from the multiple lamps Steve had. Billy had been subdued for the last hour, getting lost in his head. Steve knew because he did the same thing. “Just, like, is it a set time or does it depend on the season?”

“9 PM,” Billy replied softly, his earlier mirth replaced with concern and anxiety. “You don’t have to do this. You really don’t.” They’d had this talk multiple times, but Steve could see the weight on Billy’s shoulders. He knew how it felt to feel like a burden, so he reached out and took Billy’s hand.

“Maybe we met in some weird ways, but you’re my friend.” Billy looked at him, eyes shining a bit. “I wanna help you with this, and if we have a way to keep you inside and distracted all night? Why wouldn’t we?”

“But--”

“You aren’t forcing me into anything, Billy. This is a choice I am making. Clear headed and sure.” Billy visibly relaxed, sagging a little. Steve kept hold of Billy’s hand, giving it a squeeze. “You wanna go up to my room?” Billy went red at that, flushing down his neck again.

“Yeah.” They walked up in relative silence, tension creeping again, but this time it was different. Steve felt electricity on his skin, felt heat curl in his belly. Billy sat on the edge of Steve’s bed, already looking out of it. “You can strip and leave your clothes on the dresser if you want,” Steve suggested. Billy just nodded, standing up. He stripped slowly, turning his back to Steve like they weren’t about to have sex. Still, Steve let Billy have his privacy. He did catch a glimpse of Billy’s ass, toned and tight, and he licked his lips, mouth suddenly dry and sticky.

“Thank you,” Billy whispered, and if it hadn’t been so quiet in the room, Steve wasn’t sure he would have heard him. Steve nodded, reaching behind him to find Billy’s hand and squeeze. There was a sharp intake of breath and a squeeze back. Looking back at the clock on his nightstand it said 8:59. Steve very suddenly was hit with the vivid memory of his torn jeans last time, and he scrambled to get out of his clothes.

“Shit!” Steve hissed. “God damn it!” He was nearly tripping out of his pants when he heard a low growl start from behind him. He paused, hairs standing on end in anticipation. He knew it was Billy but there was something so different about the timber of the noise. Steve turned to look behind him and Billy was standing there, head hung, hair gone limp, staring at Steve from under his brow. It sent a shiver through Steve, right to his dick. “Hey there,” he said, voice shaky. The Gobbler staggered forward, looking out of depth in these surroundings.

“Schm...eat…?” Steve let out a puff of breath, nervous laughter bubbling in his throat.

“Schmeat,” Steve replied with a nod. It was like flipping a switch. One moment, he was Billy, nervous and and ansty, the next, he was The Gobbler. It showed in the way he seemed to have a singular drive, a singular purpose. The way he heard Steve’s confirmation and everything else seemed to leave The Gobbler’s mind except getting Steve laid out. Strong arms hoisted him up and Steve let out a small squeak of air. “The bed! Put me on the bed!” He said, since The Gobbler was eyeing the window. He landed on the mattress with an oof, looking up as The Gobbler crawled on top of him. It was quick, a blink and he was above Steve.

“Schmeat. Hole.” Steve’s brows shot up.

“Hole? I thought you just sucked?” Did Billy-- The Gobbler wanna fuck him? Like, he definitely wasn’t against that, but he thought Billy had mentioned it was more an oral craving that anything else. The Gobbler growled again, moving down to nose at Steve’s balls. “Oh, shit,” Steve gasped. That was fast. He could feel drool dripping onto his groin and, while he was already getting hard, the process went a little quicker at the feeling.

“Hole,” The Gobbler repeated, more insistent this time.

“Okay?” Steve replied, because he really didn’t--

And then he was suddenly flipped over, face down, ass up, with his cheeks spread, saliva dripping down his crack.

“Oh,” Steve gasped. That’s what he meant. The warm spit cooled in the air of the room, sending a shudder up Steve’s spine. He grunted, arching his back a little. “Fuck yeah,” he breathed out. It ended in a choked off stutter when he felt a wet, hot tongue drag itself over his hole. He could feel the rumble as The Gobbler growled once again, this one less aggressive and more lustful. “That all big guy?” Steve teased, honestly a little desperate to feel more. “C’mon, go at--” Steve cried out when he felt lips against his hole, sucking the skin. “Ohmygodohmygod,” Steve chanted, suddenly painfully erect. He hadn’t been expecting that at all and holy shit did it feel good.

Steve’s reactions were paid no mind as The Gobbler pressed his face into Steve’s ass, a low moan rumbling from his chest. He was salivating, spit already dribbling down Steve’s taint to his balls. He sucked at Steve’s hole, leaving a hickey just to the right of it. Steve keened, dick already starting to leak. Apparently, they weren’t wasting any time today. The Gobbler slurped up his drool, lapping at Steve’s hole, which was already starting to look red and puffy. Steve gripped the sheets, holding on for the ride as The Gobbler’s tongue started making long broad strokes up his crack. Each lick was hot and wet and left Steve shaking. He could feel sweat beading at his temples and on his back. There was a grunt and Steve’s hips were shifted, ass tilted up more. The sting of the burn from the mustache grazing across his skin paired so perfectly with the soft velvet of the tongue soothing over it. Steve’s mind was already fogging over, eyes going a little hazy.

“Shit,” he murmured into his pillow, each stroke of the tongue pulling tiny gasps and moans from him. The sounds alone drove him wild and Steve wished he could grab his dick and stroke, but honestly he had no idea if he would be allowed. Wondered too if he could cum just from this. It was looking quite likely. Especially as The Gobbler started wiggling his tongue inside him, licking into his hole desperately. Steve was loosening up, but apparently it wasn’t enough, seeing as there was a whine from behind him and a nose pushing even harder into his crack. The wiggling was teasing and light, a steady pressure that was driving Steve a little mad. He pushed back, a whimper escaping his lips and fuck, there. He could feel the tongue wiggle in just a little farther as he pushed back, getting another moan from behind him. “Yeah, yeah, fuck,” Steve moaned, starting to steadily roll his hips back against The Gobbler’s face. The hands on his cheeks gripped a little tighter, maybe even enough to bruise. Steve selfishly hoped so.

The Gobbler began to fuck Steve with his tongue, each thrust opening Steve up more and more. He could feel spit dribbling down his crack, down his balls, dripping onto the sheets. His dick was hard, so fucking hard, and Steve tilted his head to look down. There were tiny globs and strings of pre coming from his cock, leaving a small growing stain on the sheets as well. Steve was definitely gonna have to do some laundry after this.

With harsh, heavy breaths, The Gobbler finally pulled back. Already Steve had a poor sense of time, and with his brain steadily melting into a pile of warm, blissed out goo, he had no idea how long The Gobbler had been eating his ass. Like it was his last meal and he was a starving man. Steve couldn’t help the desperate whine that escaped his throat, or the way his ass pushed back, seeking that hot tongue. He jerked when there was cool air blown onto his hole. The Gobbler switched between blowing on the cooling spit dripping down Steve’s taint and his now red and loose asshole. It made Steve shake, made his thighs tremble as sounds were pulled out from deep inside his chest ah, ah, ah. It had him gritting his teeth and clutching the sheets so tightly his knuckles were white. Teeth grazed along the meat of his ass, gently nipping at the skin and making Steve jerk forward with each light sting of teeth. The Gobbler started to suck, marking up Steve’s ass with his mouth like he didn’t know any other way to do it.

Not that Steve was complaining. Like, at all. His ass was probably gonna give him plenty of trouble tomorrow, but he couldn’t find the energy to care. Not when this felt so good. He gasped, sweat dripping down his face and onto the pillow below him as The Gobbler dove in again. Steve’s hands twisted in the sheets, moans practically leaking from his throat at the tongue wiggling it’s way into his asshole again. He was so loose, and just from his tongue. Even the thought made him shudder as more precome leaked from his dick, adding to the stain already spreading on the sheets. When The Gobbler pulled away for air, Steve could feel his asshole flutter, desperate for something to fill it again. He actually yelled when suddenly there was a finger pushing into him. It paused, hesitant, and Steve pushed back against it, hips moving as he fucked himself. A glob of spit slid down his crack and the finger pushed it inside him.

“Oh god,” Steve cried out, feeling his balls start to tighten. “Oh god, oh god, oh god--” And suddenly a hand clamped around the base of his dick, keeping him from cumming. Steve whined, loud and long, starting to turn over and push himself up.

“Mine!” The Gobbler snarled and pressed against his back, pushing him down into the mattress. Steve inhaled sharply as his finger shoved in farther, curling it up as he pulled it out.

“Fuck!” Steve screamed, unable to cum but feeling so fucking desperate. “B-Billy! Please!” He didn’t even really register that he’d called him Billy. Didn’t feel the desperation in the way the second finger pushed in, a little early. But Steve just made a low sound of pleasure, relishing in the burn of the stretch. It was the perfect amount to accentuate the pleasure without overpowering it.

The Gobbler panted into Steve’s ear and he could feel the drool dripping down onto the junction of his neck and shoulder. It shouldn’t have been so hot. Steve shuddered, feeling The Gobbler’s erection grazing against his ass cheek. He wanted it at least between his cheeks if it wasn’t gonna go inside. But The Gobbler didn’t even seem concerned with his own erection, just with touching Steve. He mouthed at Steve’s neck and between his shoulder blades, fingering Steve slowly. The tenderness of the kisses and the changed pace altered the feeling completely, and suddenly it was intimate. The pads of The Gobbler’s fingers massaged his prostate and Steve’s back arched. His hair was nearly wet with sweat, the whole room reeking of musk and sex. Goosebumps pebbled his skin as a shock went through him, the world focused to the sheets below him and Billy, The Gobbler, pressed up close behind him. The Gobbler took his fingers out slowly, pulling back. Steve whined, arm reaching out behind him. But instead, hands grabbed his hips and helped turn him over.

Hair splayed out around him, sheets mussed and wrinkled from being twisted and wrenched tight in his fists, Steve lay there, gazing up at The Gobbler. He hovered above him, hair draping down and shadowing his face. Still, his eyes shone bright, staring into Steve’s so intensely it made his dick leak. It was angry and red, throbbing as it bobbed, nothing giving him enough satisfaction to come. The Gobbler grinned, ducking down to suck one of Steve’s nipples into his mouth. Steve arched into it, hand gripping the back of his head. The Gobbler groaned, low and rumbling, hips rolling and his hard cock smeared pre along the vee of Steve’s hips. Steve was mush. Utter mush. His face was flushed and his eyes were glazed as The Gobbler went down, down, down and finally took Steve’s aching dick into his mouth. With one hard, wet suck, The Gobbler’s head bobbing only one time, Steve came with a shout that stuttered into silence. He came so hard his vision went white for a second. The Gobbler swallowed around him, drool mixed with jizz leaking from the corners of his mouth as he humped the sheets, fast and ruthless. Steve’s toes curled and his legs spasmed, knees tightening around The Gobbler’s ribs.

There was a loud slurp and a smack as The Gobbler pulled off Steve’s dick, letting it flop onto his groin, wet, shiny and softening. He swallowed audibly, letting out a moan as he came into the sheets, damp with sweat and drool. Steve watched him through half lidded eyes, watching as Billy blinked away the remains of The Gobbler. Steve smiled as his favorite pair of blue eyes turned to him, staring at him in awe. He wasn’t sure what other emotions he was seeing; he was too tired to discern much.

“You have got one hell of a tongue,” Steve slurred out. Billy continued to stare at him, eyes wide.

“You… You said my name,” he stammered out. Steve blinked at him, honestly drained and finding it hard to figure out just what Billy meant. And then, as sleep overtook him, it clicked. Fuck.

Steve woke up with a jolt and a sharp inhale. He blinked, looking out his window where the sky was still dark. He sat up, already starting to feel how sore his ass was. Billy must have gone ham on the biting and stubble rubbing, because he felt kinda raw. A good raw though, something that made him smile a bit at each tiny twing.

Then Steve remembered that he had actually shown his whole ass by moaning Billy’s name and a chill went down his spine. Billy wasn’t in the room, wasn’t on the bed, but Steve saw that his jeans were still on the floor, and it made him relax a bit. He got up, tossing on an old shirt and some sweats, before making his way downstairs quietly. The clock read 4:45, so Steve had definitely conked out deeply after he came. Billy wasn’t in the kitchen, but when Steve went into the living room, he saw Billy sitting by the window in the large armchair. He was resting his chin on his fist, just staring at the forest behind the house, lost in his thoughts. He had a glass of water on the table next to him, and didn’t look upset, so Steve took that as a good sign to start. He was quiet as he walked closer, pausing when Billy sighed heavily.

“I can hear you thinking from there, Steve,” Billy said quietly, without any heat.

“Sorry,” Steve replied on reflex. He sat down on the couch, watching as Billy continued to gaze out the window. “I--”

“Why did you say my name,” Billy asked, voice quiet and unsure. Steve looked down at his hands, pulling and tugging at each other as he wrung them together. He didn’t know quite what to say. It would have been weird to call out Gobbler, but he knew what Billy meant. In fact, was kinda shocked he even remembered.

“I… I mean, it won’t change my answer either way, and I don’t mean it as like-- Fuck,” Steve grumbled, rubbing his forehead with his hand. “How do you remember that? I thought--”

“I get… Bits. Not everything. I’m able to remember small things and feelings and small clips, but mostly it’s hazy. I can’t piece it all together. But,” Billy took a breath, deep and bracing. “I didn’t imagine that part, did I?” His voice was calm and unannoyed, but Steve still felt his stomach wriggling around inside him.

“No. You didn’t. I… Billy, I’m selfish,” Steve began, words coming out on a shaky breath. But this needed to be said. And he needed to apologize. “The first time this happened I mean… I hadn’t gotten laid in ages and you were hot and so it worked out. But this… time I--”

“Steve--” Billy said, voice laced with hurt and curiosity.

“Please,” Steve got out, cutting Billy off. “Let me. Let me say it all and then we can. We can talk.” Steve sniffed, rubbing his sweaty palms on his thighs. “This past month getting to know you has been so incredible. You’re a smart guy, just enough of an asshole, and you… You listen to me. And you care. The first thing you were concerned about last month was me, even though you’re under a spell forced to do a bunch of weird shit! Me! You were concerned about me!” Steve could feel Billy watching him, but eye contact would make his throat close up and maybe make him vomit, so he kept them at the table. “I know we don’t know each other super well -- I mean, it’s only been a month -- but I… You’re an interesting person and I fucking like you. I like you so much, Billy. All of you. Seriously.” Steve let out a long breath, closing his eyes to focus on getting the lump in his throat small enough that he could talk. “You need someone to help you and I… I’m too selfish to say no, even though I should because you--”

“Fucking christ, Steve,” Billy said, voice closer than it should be. Steve’s head snapped up and Billy was across the coffee table, leaning forward and bracing himself as he gazed at Steve. He didn’t look mad, didn’t look annoyed. Looked more fond than anything else and Steve felt his stomach do flips that were more along the neutral vein than flips that felt like he was about to start weeping. “You gotta let me get a word in.” Steve looked away again, apology ready to tumble from his lips, but Billy’s hand came and tilted his chin up, making him lose all ability to form thoughts, much less words. “Just to, yanno, condense all that, you said my name because you… you wanted it to be me?” Steve nodded, feeling his cheeks heat up. But when Billy smiled, relieved and excited and hopeful… It was so bright and overwhelming, Steve’s heart started fluttering, all of his insides squirming in joy and delight. “I’ve been so fucking worried. Because I really thought you were just… Humoring me. That this was you feeling like you maybe had to, or just to get some dick while you could--”

“I would never--” Steve began, horrified at the idea of using this against Billy.

“I know,” Billy replied gently, brushing his thumb over Steve’s cheekbone. “I know. It’s happened enough before I was worried I was being swayed into some false sense of security, but,” Billy let out a huffy laugh, smile going soft, “But this is just you. You’re just like this.”

“Like what?” Steve asked, unable to raise his voice above a whisper as he looked at Billy. Took in everything about him in the soft light of the moon. There was a shift in the air, something beautiful and new coming into fruition. Magic fluttered around them, Steve could feel it, bright and eager. It made the house feel warmer, feel fuller, and Steve’s breaths started coming in a little heavier. It took more energy to pull it in, but it was filling and exciting, making his skin tingle and thrum. His fingers itched to run over Billy’s skin. Which, come to think of it, he could do.

“Kind. Good. Silly.” Billy listed, pupils dilating as he moved around the coffee table, hand never leaving Steve’s face. Steve was grateful, unsure he could handle the feeling of loss if Billy had stopped touching him. As Billy sat, Steve’s hand came to settle at the small of Billy’s back, fire sparking in his gut and heart as their skin touched. Billy’s breath came in shaky, stuttering, and Steve leaned closer, their foreheads touching. “When you’re as hot as I am,” and some of the tensions eased at that, a snort escaping Steve before he could stop it, the magic shifting from something waiting for a spark to something more grounded. The feeling of hearth and home. “Yeah yeah,” Billy replied with a grin, “I know, I know. But really. People… Don’t see the person behind the abs.” It was silly, but Steve understood what he meant. Understood the struggle of people not just being blind to the person inside the body, but refusing to look beyond what they saw. “So thank you. For not being like everyone else.” Billy kissed him then and--

Steve was a witch, had been born into magic and felt it thrumming inside him. He’d been open to magic all his life, had felt the shift in magic during the change of the seasons, had done spells that had filled the room with power. Steve had seen amazing feats and more, but this kiss sent something through him. Something strong and vibrant and like nothing he’d ever felt. A crashing wave of signals and comments from the Earth and the magic within. He was overwhelmed with everything that coursed through him from the chaste kiss, hand pressing Billy closer as he tilted his head, mouth opening slowly. The kiss wasn’t hurried. It wasn’t hot and heavy. But it made Steve’s skin prickle with goosebumps, made his heart race and his lungs squeeze. He pressed closer, feeling Billy’s hand drop from his cheek to his shoulder, thumb brushing over his collar bone. It was a languid kiss, drawn out between a drag of the tongue, a light bite, the shared breaths between them.

When Billy finally pulled back, Steve knew his cheeks were flushed and he was panting just a little. It would have been embarrassing if Billy wasn’t also blushing, all the way down to his chest.

“I think,” Steve said, trying to catch his breath. “I think that we should go on a real date.” Billy’s laugh was bright in response, his head falling to rest at the junction of Steve’s neck and shoulder.

“Of course,” he breathed out. “Of course that’s what you’d say first.” Before Steve could even pretend to be offended, Billy kissed his neck, soft and sweet, his mustache dragging along Steve’s skin just a bit. “I’d love that. I’d love that a lot. But maybe we should get some sleep first, Brown Eyes.” Steve could feel the energy draining out of Billy now that the air had been cleared, and sleep started to tug at him as well. Even as he rolled his eyes at Billy’s simple nickname. However, he would have been lying had he said it didn’t thrill him and make his insides flutter.

“I think that’s a good idea,” Steve said in agreement. They moved together, hands still grabbing gently at each other, both of them unable to separate for long, if at all. It was like the truth had magnetized them and they just couldn’t fight the need to connect. They fell into the bed, smiling and warm and excited, ready for what this change would do for them.

As much as Steve wanted a languid morning filled with slow kisses and gentle touches in the lazy morning sun, Billy had places to be. Specifically, helping his sister Max.

“She’s moving in with her boyfriend, finally,” Billy replied when Steve asked, mouth full of egg and toast. It should have been gross, but Steve only found it endearing. “I won’t say I think it’s their best idea, but they’re at least keeping separate rooms. I know Max needs her own space.” Steve nodded, using the corner of his toast to burst the yolk of his fried egg.

“It’s good of you to help out,” Steve said, dipping his toast into the yolk as he cut through the egg with the edge of his fork.

“More like it’s required because I missed helping her move into her last place. Not like I was fucking sick or anything.” He set down his fork, plate already clean, before downing the coffee in the mug before him. “Sorry to eat and go, I would really rather stay here and--”

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Steve said with a chuckle. He was also eager to talk more about them, but promises made were promises kept. “We have plenty of time, yeah? I mean, you can always come back here later,” Steve purred, thrilling a bit when Billy’s cheeks flushed.

“Don’t tempt me or I won’t leave,” Billy said, standing and leaning down to cup Steve’s cheek, kissing him lightly.

“That a promise?” They were distracted by the door opening, separating slowly. Robin came in as Billy was leaving the kitchen, both of them awkwardly giving the other space while pretending they weren’t doing just that. “How’d it go?”

“We’ll see this winter,” Robin replied, snatching the last bit of his egg between her fingers and quickly shoving it into her mouth.

“Hey!”

“Snooze you lose, dingus,” she said with a grin. “Last night go...okay? Anything happen?” She searched his eyes for any hint of deception and, for once, Steve wasn’t really worried about what she’d find.

“Kind of?” Steve said, mouth tugging into a smile. Robin furrowed her brow. “Nothing bad, seriously, all good things.”

“Steve?” Billy asked, knocking on the door frame. Steve stood and went over, leaning in close. “I gotta head out, but I’ll text you later, okay?”

“Sounds good, Blue,” Steve replied. Billy just smiled, eyes darting to Robin for a moment before he ducked in for a kiss.

“Catch ya later, Brown Eyes,” Billy replied as he headed out the door. Steve rolle dhis eyes, but really couldn’t help the smile on his face. Billy left with a wave and wink, disappearing into his car, and leaving Steve feeling smitten on the doorstep. He watched Billy’s car go, jumping when Robin’s voice came from right behind him.

“So that’s what happened, huh?” She asked, voice lightly amused. Steve blushed and shut the door, turning to give her a sheepish look.

“I did say it wasn’t bad.” When Robin didn’t reply with a quip, Steve paused, smile freezing on his face. “Rob?”

“I’m happy for you, Steve, really, I am,” she said, and Steve could hear the ‘but…’ coming from a mile away. “But I still think you need to be careful.”

“Robin, please--”

“It’s not about me trusting him this time.” Steve looked up at that, curious. “It’s because… Steve. I’ve only seen you this smitten with one other person in my life, and that was Nancy.” That. That made Steve freeze. He’d loved Nancy fiercely, too fiercely, and had been utterly smashed when she’d broken it off. Had been depressed for months. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Oh.” Steve wasn’t sure how to respond. Because he didn’t think he was that attached yet. Even if the idea of never talking to Billy again made it hard to breathe and made his lungs tighten and made his eyes water--

Oh fuck, Steve thought.

[harringrovebigbang]

The Project Team Masterlist

Project 1

TeenCaterpillar  - writing MonsdaSarah (twitter) - art Catharrington (ao3 / twitter) - moodboard

Project 2

peterqpan (tumblr) - writing Faevorite-main-blog (ao3) - art

Project 3

The_BookDragon (tumblr) - writing jujub-doesart (ao3) - art wingedbears (twitter) - moodboard draculcid (ao3 / twitter) - playlist

Project 4

The_BookDragon (tumblr) - writing Cavahn (twitter) - art

Project 5

inachusorpheus (twitter / instagram) - writing Catharrington (ao3 / twitter) - moodboard shewritesdirty (ao3)  - playlist

Project 7

Pondermoniums (ao3) - writing opaldraws (ao3) - art

Project 8

peterqpan (tumblr) - writing draculcid (ao3 / twitter) - playlist

Project 9

ej_writer (tumblr) - writing monochromegee (ao3)  - art shewritesdirty (ao3)  - playlist  - moodboard

Project 10

HeckinaHandbasket (twitter / instagram / ao3) - writing sasha-uria (twitter / instagram) - art shewritesdirty (ao3)  - moodboard

Project 11

rascheln (ao3) - writing sasha-uria (twitter / instagram) - art memes-saved-me (ao3) - moodboard

Project 12

edith-moonshadow (ao3) - writing HeckinaHandbasket (twitter / instagram / ao3) - art

Project 13

fluffmonsterc3 - writing Simplelittleartist (instagram) - art

Project 14

imperfectabstraction - writing blackmoonspell - art

Project 15

celoica (ao3) - writing peachesnplummet (twitter) - art

Project 16

boltplumart (ao3 / twitter) - writing avalonlights (twitter / instagram) - art

Project 17

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Project 18 

hoppnhorn (ao3) - writing ichigata (twitter) - art

Project 19

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Project 20

dulcepericulum (keziahrain) - writing juu-riin (twitter) - art

Project 21

Dee_in_between - writing foksydoodle (twitter) - art

Project 22

ohmybgosh (ao3) - writing Catharrington (ao3 / twitter) - moodboard shewritesdirty (ao3)  - playlist

Project 23

peterqpan (tumblr) - writing MonsdaSarah (twitter) - art

Project 24

paperbodiesamongthestars (ao3) - writing thedogsled (ao3 / twitter) - art peachesnplummet (twitter) - moodboard

Project 25

peachypunk - writing blackmoonspell - art Catharrington (ao3 / twitter) - moodboard

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Project 27

Catharrington (ao3 / twitter) - writing draculcid (ao3 / twitter) - moodboard harringrovess (twitter) - playlist

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Project 29

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Project 30

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Project 31

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Project 32

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Project 33

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Project 38

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Project 39

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((Please let us know if there are any incorrect and/or dead links so that we may fix them!))

[merry-andrews]

Answer 17 question and tag 17 people:

Thank you for tagging me @gottaread2 🤗💕

Nickname; name's Mariam but my brother calls me 'Merry'. My friends call me 'Marigold' or 'Maryjane' sometimes.

Zodiac: Capricorn

Height: 163 cm! Yup, in this house we say our heights in cm cus it's easier this way.

Hogwart house: um..what?! Sorry but not a fan of Harry Potter so I skip this question! :)

Last thing I googled: RDR2 soundtracks.

Dream job: being a pirate!! Though these days I only want to have a little house some quiet place and maybe two or three children with a lazy cat too and spend my days drawing different flowers and watching sunset while sipping on my evening coffee...yup. that's it.

Wearing: uhh...adidas t-shirt with comfy pants (has flower shapes on it and also is my fave pants too!)

Song stuck in my head: Sleepwalking by The Chain Gang of 1974 (my fave GTAV song).

Lucky number:9 and 3.

Favourite author: wait... authors on Ao3 or..? Well, I have my faves on AO3 and also is my most favourite author's John Esteinbeck.

Favourite instrument: harp and accordion

Aesthetic: hmm...guess I'm kinda so into 'west aesthetic' these days?

God these question are getting annoying! How many so?!? I feel like I answered many many many of them..

Favourite song: Mr. Kitty- after dark.

Favourite animal noise: w-what?! Fave what??! *sigh* um....cat noises? I guess. Like when they purrrr..

Random: an interesting thing about myself you mean? Hmm...I uh...can speak in three different languages.

Tag: @artemis099 @castiel-saved-me-from-myself @happyhammy @lazydayattheloft @proud-hobbit @monsdasarah @shitillregretlater @real-fanta-sea @standfornothing1776 @esperata

I also chose randomly between my dear followers too: @kaaate @crazycat1606 @keepingtimetimetime @sunflowerroland @ryan-philips @archer-atlas @splat-dragon

(You don't have to play this game if you don't want to)

I wish I could tag all you amazing people but if you're seeing this post, please, consider yourself tagged. Love you all🤗💗💕💗

[ihni]

That DnD comic made me laugh so hard while sitting in the tub! All the water is gone, but I'm still sitting here and laugh! This is how happy your drawings make me!

This made my day! :D Oh man there’s few things better than knowing I’ve made someone laugh. That would be, maybe, knowing I made someone laugh IN THE BATH! XD Thank you!

(Also, credit for the dialogue goes to @platypanthewriter of course)

[silentlylovingyourwork]

Tagged by @monsdasarah 

from here (I couldn’t get the second one to work)

tagging anyone who wants to try

[platypanthewriter]

Hook Possum 3/4

Art by @monsdasarah​ for Harringrove Big Bang!

PART ONE | TWO

The next morning, Steve did the First Aid class.  “Hook Possum here has offered to help—” he began.

“What?!” Hook Possum hissed, as the kids shoved him forward, laughing, and Steve paced around like a drill sergeant.  

He’d always liked teaching first aid.  “Attention up here, everybody!” he shouted, grinning.  “Who knows when to yell for help?  You?” he pointed to a wide-eyed kid who shook his head.  “We call ‘em the Big Bs,” Steve told the kids, crossing his arms.  “Bleeding, breathing, barf, burns, bones, and bites.”

“Barf,” giggled a little girl.

“If anything is happening like that—bleeding, anything wrong with someone’s breathing, you see barf—” Steve paused, gratified to see Hook Possum miming a gouting wound, gasping for air, and puking his guts up.  “—if anybody gets burned—” Hook Possum grasped his hooked paw, frowned at it, and yelled “My paw got burned off!”, and everybody laughed uproariously.  

“If anything happens to anyone’s bones—” Steve went on, and got to see Hook Possum clutching at his leg, “—or if anyone or anything’s teeth breath somebody's skin—” he ignored Hook Possum yelling about vampires, trying to keep a straight face.  “If any of the Big Bs happen, you need an adult, okay?  We’re gonna need to take a look at it, and maybe take that kid to the doctor.”

“Okaaaaay,” the kids chorused, most of them looking faintly rebellious.  

“A lot of it we can handle here, though,” Steve told them, and several brightened.  “Lemme show you all your way around a first aid kit.”  

Steve demonstrated how to bandage a possum, diagnose a possum with heatstroke, splint a possum’s tail, and he pretended to give him a shot with the new epi-pen, in case of bee allergies.  At the end, he let all the kids play with the gauze bandages he’d used, and a box of band-aids.

Hook Possum didn’t look any less uncanny with his face covered in Scooby Doo and Sesame Street band-aids.  It almost made him worse, somehow, because your eyes caught on the cartoony band-aids first, and then processed the mangy, vacant-eyed, toothy head.  

The possum did look hilarious all trussed up in bandages, and one little girl tried so hard to make a sling, she wrapped the bandage around his neck and pulled, and Hook Possum gagged, twitched, and slumped onto the picnic table Steve had been using for demonstrations.  

“If you can’t help them, you gotta at least hide the body,” Steve told everyone, his cheeks hurting with how wide he was grinning.  “What’s the campsite rule?”

“Leave it cleaner than you found it,” they chorused, watching Hook Possum’s twitching legs in the air.  

“We could tie some rocks to him and dump him in the lake,” a very small girl in pink ruffled overalls suggested, and the kids around her edged away.

“Now, hang on,” Steve told them.  “Remember a possum is actually unconscious if it’s ‘playing dead’.  It makes an awful smell, but if you leave it alone, sometimes they’ll wake up and wander off.  We should probably leave Hook Possum alone for a while.”

Around then, Robin called for lunch, and the kids started to wander off.

“Don’t you dare leave me tied up,” Hook Possum hissed, and Steve patted his shoulder, and told him to stay there.  While the kids were straggling into the mess tent, Steve ran and got the old camp camera, and took about five pictures of Hook Possum trussed like a turkey.  “You utter asshole,” he hissed flatly, but he was laughing, Steve could tell.

After lunch, there was a mud flats exploration party, and the kids all ran off with buckets.  Steve got Hook Possum some cool water, and closed his eyes politely as the mask was removed.  

“When you gonna let me look?” he asked, laughing.  “It’s not like I’m gonna tell anybody.  You gonna keep this up for weeks?”

“...I need the bonus,” Hook Possum muttered.

“Yeah, I know,” Steve told him, “—but you’ve got the mask off already, what difference does it make if I see you?  There’s nobody else around!”

“Leave it alone, Harrington,” Hook Possum growled, and Steve felt the picnic bench shift.  When he called out, and then dared open his eyes, several minutes later, Hook Possum was gone.

After that, Steve didn’t ask.  He encountered Hook Possum a few times in the showers—late in the Indiana night, when it felt like every breath was clingingly hot, and only the shower stalls were cool.  

“Don’t turn the light on,” Hook Possum always hissed, and Steve snorted a laugh, shaking his head.  

“I won’t, dude,” he always said, and they’d talk, some, in neighboring stalls, just letting the water wash away the sweaty heat of the night.  

Hook Possum was moving to the west coast, he said, and Steve felt a pang at that, the same as he’d seen in Max.  “It cools off at night there,” he said dryly, and Steve just bit his lips together, nodding.

“Hard to argue with,” he admitted.  “Uh, when...when are you leaving?”

“As soon as I pack after camp,” Hook Possum said, a little muffled, like he was washing his face.  “Why stick around Hawkins.”

“Oh,” Steve said, nodding again.  He couldn’t really think of anything to say, so he focused on scrubbing the sap off his toes from the conifer right by their cabin.  

 Every night, the Hook Possum stories got more in-depth.  “One full moon, a girl and her boyfriend drove out to this very campground and parked,” Robin began, as some of the kids said ‘why?’ and others said ‘ew!’.  “He was driving,” she said, leaning in, so the light of the campfire lit her face from underneath, “—and even though it was past midnight, and she asked and asked to go home, he wouldn’t start the car.”

Some of the kids looked unimpressed, but some of them were listening avidly.  

“He looked at her,” Robin said, “—and he smiled, and he said ‘Nobody knows I brought you here.’”

“He’s gonna sink her in the lake, with rocks,” said the tiny girl in the ruffled pink overalls.

Robin high-fived her, and then leaned in again.  “The boyfriend grabbed her arm and twisted it around, and whispered, ‘Nobody knows where you are’, and the girl screamed, because her arm felt like it would break.  ‘You know what I want,’ he said.”

Steve knew his cue, and he reached down behind the log he was sitting on to scrape the fire poker along the hatchet they’d used to cut kindling, making a long, metallic scrape.  A couple of kids shrieked, looking around.  

“Just then!” Robin shouted, standing up, and more kids yelled, “—the two heard a ripping, metallic noise on the roof of the car.  The boyfriend was so angry he shook the girl, and then yelled ‘What the hell is that?!’, but she didn’t know.” 

Steve scraped the poker on the hatchet again, angling it for a sharper, higher-pitched noise.  

“Something scraped along the door, and the girl screamed again, because she was already so afraid.  She’d been thinking of opening the door and running into the woods, but as something scraped the door again—”

Steve scraped them together as loud as he could, having practiced with Robin beforehand, and everyone yelped and winced.  Even Robin’s eye twitched at the awful noise.  

“—the girl begged her boyfriend not to get out of the car.”

“But he did,” whispered one of the kids, eyes wide.

“He did.  He left her there.  Once he got out, though, the noise didn’t come again, and she sat, listening, and crying.  She heard him scream, the way she had, when the bones of her arm creaked in his grip.”

The kids were rapt, and El met her cue with a branch-shuddering wind, making the whole clearing full of campers shriek.  

“Did she get out of the car?!” Pink Overalls asked, urgently, and Robin shook her head.  

“She heard branches break, and then, crashing through the underbrush.  It might have been more screams, or it might have been the wind.  The girl curled in her coat, staring at the blackness through the windows, and when she felt another thud against the car, and—” Steve scraped the hatchet with the poker again, long and grating, and a kid moaned.  Robin lowered her voice, and the kids leaned closer to hear.  “Heard another noise, like something scratching to get in, the girl locked the doors.”

Robin waited several beats, her face darker and more red as the fire burned down to coals.  “In the morning, the girl woke to find her boyfriend pinned to the driver’s side door with a massive hook through his hand.  He was whimpering, staring into the forest, and he didn’t respond to her voice.  His hair was white.”

“Hook Possum,” gasped Pink Overalls, and everyone turned to stare.

“Hey, he got what was coming,” Hook Possum said.

 That night, predictably, a bunch of kids came looking for Hook Possum.  “There are floating lights,” one squeaked, pointing, and Steve bit back a laugh, remembering seeing the marsh gas and fireflies as a kid.  “It’s Hook Possum,” he whispered, but the kid shook his head, pointing.  

“No, he’s right here.”

Steve considered.  “It’s weird telling stories about you when you’re around,” he told the furry bulk at his elbow, glaring.

“Well, sorry,” Hook Possum shot back.  “There aren’t a lot of jobs a possum can get, Harrington.”

“We always said the lights were Hook Possum,” Steve said, shrugging.  “Searching for the one who wronged him.  The reason he can’t move on.  He never sleeps.”

“Euuugh,” said one of the kids, shuddering.  “He does sleep, though!  I’ve seen his bunk.”

“Yeah, we know he’s really a...person,” said a small voice in the dark, shakily.  “In-in a costume.”

“Mostly a person,” said another little voice.

“Yeah, we know you’re mostly a person,” said another one.  “E-except at night.”

“Hang on, now,” Hook Possum hissed, but Steve elbowed him.  

“Hook Possum won’t let anything happen to you,” he told them.

 One evening when the sunset was particularly fine, and Steve was for once off dish duty, Hook Possum was down sitting on the dock, his legs splashing in the lake.  The back of the costume was untied—except for the neck, since it hadn’t fallen off—and through the long slit in the back, Steve could see skin.  In the golden light of sunset, Hook Possum didn’t even look too terrifying, from the back, his plastic fur shining 

Steve pressed down a nearly-overwhelming urge to slide his fingers between the folds of polyester fur and let his fingertips brush over Hook Possum’s shoulder blades.  

“You’re getting all wet,” Steve said, dropping to sit on his hands, and Hook Possum snorted.

“Possums dry,” he said, kicking his feet in the water, and Steve realized, seeing a pale flash, that he didn’t have shoes on, and stared down, his heart thumping at every flash of ankle.

“...hey,” Steve said, like a genius, leaning to thump their shoulders together, and Hook Possum laughed.  Off in the woods, there was another grinding noise, a mechanical roar, and a horrible high-pitched whinny that made Steve’s teeth clench.

“...sounds like somebody needs a new fan belt,” Hook Possum said, leaning against his side, and Steve stretched, yawning, and reached an arm around his shoulders, feeling Hook Possum laugh.  “...what’s over that way?” Hook Possum asked, letting himself slump a little into Steve’s side.

“What?” Steve breathed, thinking about the little line of Hook Possum’s back showing through the back, and how it would feel to slide his thumb in there, up and down, feeling the bumps along Hook Possum’s spine.

Hook Possum laughed.  He sounded a little breathless.  “Uh, I just—what—what’s over there, where the um, where the engine noises?  Are coming from?”

“Oh,” Steve said, blinking.  “Uh, nothing.”  He frowned, thinking about it.  “Nothing’s supposed to be that direction, there’s no road.  It’s prairie, y’know, park lands.”  

“How come I keep hearing shit from over there, then,” Hook Possum mumbled, without lifting his masked head from Steve’s shoulder.

“...dunno,” Steve sighed, giving in to temptation, and sliding his thumb inside the gap at the back of the Hook Possum costume.  Hook Possum shivered, tensing, and Steve just rubbed a slow circle with his thumb until Hook Possum relaxed with a sigh.  They sat, splashing their feet, until Steve sighed.  “...I should probably go check it out, huh.”

“...mmmn,” Hook Possum said.  “...probably.  Since you kinda...own the damn park.”  He pulled away, sitting up straight, and Steve let his arm fall away.  “Keep forgetting your dad owns the damn place,” Hook Possum muttered.

“I mean, it doesn’t really matter,” Steve told him, hoping it didn’t.

“Yeah, like you couldn’t talk to him and get us all fired,” Hook Possum laughed, touching his mask, and Steve grimaced.

“I wouldn’t get you fired,” he groaned.  “Why in the hell would I get you fired?”  

“How the hell should I know,” Hook Possum growled, clambering back up onto the dock.  

 The next day, Steve led friendship bracelet making.  He always did, because he’d been going to camp so long he was really, really good at friendship bracelets.  

“What color you want yours?” he called over to Hook Possum, as a matter of course, and Hook Possum stared at him, smoke swirling from his eyeholes.  “...you’re gonna set yourself on fire,” Steve told him, laying out the embroidery thread.  “Pick out some colors.”

“...you’re making me a friendship bracelet?” Hook Possum asked, warily.

“Well, yeah,” Steve told him, shrugging.  “What colors you want?”

“...uh,” Hook Possum said.  “Possum colors?”

“The hell are those,” Steve asked, snorting a laugh.  “I’m not stomping it in the dirt.”

Hook Possum swung a leg over the bench opposite Steve, and leaned his horrible mask in his hands to pore over the color selection.  “...how many should I pick?” he muttered, his voice deeper than his usual fake squeaky hiss, and Steve bit back a smile.  

“Probably, uh, three to like...five,” he said, shrugging.  He’d started a pink, green, and orange candy-striped one for Pink Overalls, and he pinned it to the knee of his jeans to work on while Hook Possum considered.  

Finally, he reached his plastic-clawed paw and pushed a grayish blue forward towards Steve, and then a darker blue, and then hesitated between the other colors, and pulled back.  

“...white?” Steve suggested.  “It’d still be a blue bracelet, but it’d show up.”

“White,” Hook Possum said, nodding.  “Possum colors,” he announced.

Steve found himself grinning, again, the way he always was lately.  His cheeks were tired and it was only eleven in the morning.  

He got distracted helping the kids with theirs—Pink Overalls wanted to make one for Bell Witch Mirror kid, and so on—so it wasn’t until after dinner, when he snuck back to their cabin with a tray of spaghetti, that he managed to work on it.  He slid the tray onto Hook Possum’s bunk, hitching up the flag curtain so the guy wouldn’t sit on it by accident, and then dropped into his bunk.  He looped the cut embroidery thread around his toe, frowning up intently at the ceiling of his bunk as he wove the strands.  

Hook Possum wandered in shortly after.  “Where’d you go?” he asked, leaning in.  “You okay?”  He stared for a long second, and then asked, “...is that my bracelet?”

“Yep,” Steve told him, his fingers dextrous after the long day of reminding himself of the patterns.  

“...it’s almost dark in here,” Hook Possum said, nearly a whisper, and Steve laughed.  

“I been making these so long I could do it in the dark,” he said.  “You better eat, if you’re gonna go sit around the fire.”

“I think I can miss a night of Hook Possum stories,” Hook Possum said.  “I’m gonna grab a shower first.”

Steve nodded, only half paying attention, because it was getting dark, and he had to keep up the rhythm or turn on the light to find it again.  

When Hook Possum returned, Steve was half done, carefully not looking over as the human who wore the possum suit sat just out of sight, leaning against Steve’s bunk, and ate the spaghetti Steve had brought him.  The dim battery lantern Steve had set behind his bunk lit them both yellowy from the back, so even if he’d looked over, he couldn’t have seen much of Hook Possum’s face.

“How are you even doing that,” Hook Possum asked, and the bunk creaked as he sat next to Steve, warm and damp from the shower, smelling of soap and the pine trail back to the cabin.  His curls—he had curls, Steve thought dazedly—tickled Steve’s shoulder, as he reached up to run his fingers over the dimly-lit, smooth-woven thread in Steve’s fingers.  

“...practice,” Steve said, his throat weirdly tight.

The head against his nodded, and Steve could feel stubble against his cheek.  Hook Possum’s body was heavy against his, his hairy legs a little itchy, and Steve wanted to roll over and explore, slide his fingers all over Hook Possum’s body.

“What do I do with it,” Hook Possum said, and Steve’s fingers paused.  “I just mean, uh,” the guy said quickly, “—there are rules, right?  Like I’m not supposed to...take it off?”

“...what, you’ve never had a friendship bracelet?” Steve asked, laughing, and felt the head against his shake.

“Nah,” he said, dryly.  “Never been to a summer camp before, either.  I was the kinda kid that’d get in trouble.”

“There’s always one every year and you think ‘I’m gonna have to pull that kid out of a toilet or something’,” Steve told him, sighing.  “We figure it out.  Haven’t lost a camper yet.”

“I wear it until it falls off?” Hook Possum asked, his voice rumbling against Steve’s shoulder.  Steve could barely move his right arm, but he didn’t ask Hook Possum to move.

“Yeah.  It’ll just wash with you in the shower,” Steve told him, grinning.  “Some kids take theirs off to make them last longer, though.”

“What about when it does fall off?” Hook Possum breathed in his ear.  “You gonna make me another one?”

Steve felt his face heat, because Hook Possum was being weird and intense about a friendship bracelet, of all things.  “...you saying I make a faulty product?”

“I’m asking if you’ll...work here next year,” Hook Possum muttered, sighing into Steve’s shoulder.  “If it falls off.”

“The hell do you care,” Steve laughed, his stomach twisting.  “You’re moving to Oregon or somewhere.”

“...California,” Hook Possum sighed.

“You saying you’ll give me your address?” Steve asked, nearly forgetting himself and sitting up to look over.  He shut his eyes tightly, his heart pounding.  “So—so I can mail you a friendship bracelet?”  Hook Possum was quiet, his fingers tight on Steve’s wrist.  “...you saying you’d...come back to see me?” Steve ventured, and Hook Possum snorted a laugh, so Steve tried to backtrack.  “Yeah, no, not for a friendship bracelet,” Steve laughed.  It felt forced.  “That’d be pretty dumb.”

Hook Possum’s hand ran slowly up Steve’s arm to his face, and Steve waited, his blood thudding through his veins, his eyes clenched so tight shut he saw lights, feeling Hook Possum’s fingers touch his cheek.  

Hook Possum’s thumb stroked over his jaw, and Steve trembled with the effort of holding still.  He wanted to yank Hook Possum closer, or—or roll on top of him, or something, and the gentle sensation of Hook Possum’s hesitant breath on his lips made him want to scream.

After endless seconds, Hook Possum shoved away, thudding to the floor of the cabin and stomping over to prop the little shuttered window open and lean out.  He gasped for air, taking ragged breaths, and Steve felt just the same, like he’d been running.  

He opened his eyes and stared up at his foot on the roof of the bunk, and the inches of bracelet dangling between his toes.  “You can tell Max when it falls to pieces,” he said, with a weird rasp in his voice.  “If you want another one.  I can—I can get you another one.”

“You’re gonna keep making me friendship bracelets,” Hook Possum said, half a groan, and Steve could just see the dark shapes of him leaning his head into his arms.

“Well, you seemed worried about it,” Steve told him, grinning.  “Don’t want my possum getting lonely.”

“Jesus H. Christ,” Hook Possum muttered.

 Hook Possum actually tried not to smoke too much around the kids, but every night, he’d wander out and have a cigarette on the steps of the cabin when the air inside was hot and close.  Steve awakened vaguely to the sound of his voice talking to one of the kids, and then fell back asleep.  

When the pounding at the door started, he jerked awake with the other counselors, mumbling and smacking their heads on the wooden bunk frames.  The cabin door opened, and Steve recognized the voice of Pink Overalls.  “Hook Possum went off in the woods to see what the lights were,” she sobbed.  “He hasn’t come back.  It’s been four hours!”  

She thrust a glow-in-the-dark watch face into Steve’s face, and he blinked blearily at it.  It was a quarter after five in the morning.  

“Shit,” he muttered, rubbing his face.

“He could be in the lake,” she sobbed.  “With rocks.”

“I’ll go get him,” Steve told her, stumbling out of bed.

“We’ll all go get him,” Robin said, clicking something in the dark, then smacking it.  Her flashlight lit up the cabin.  “Wake up the other counselors, tell them they’re on breakfast duty.”

“Oh-okay,” Pink Overalls sniffled, and slammed out.  

Steve found another flashlight, and he and the other counselors tromped through the grasslands, squinting through the occasional tree cover until Steve was pretty sure they were in the right area.  His foot caught on a low patch of smooth mud and then grass, and he frowned down at what looked like tire tracks.

“Holy fuck,” Robin whispered, grabbing him, and waving her flashlight around.  “Jesus.”  

“Wait,” Steve said, holding his own flashlight still on the plants they’d been tromping through.  “Is—is that—”

“Marijuana,” Robin snickered.  “Somebody’s got a good crop back here.  I need to find some really big trash bags, stat.”

“Hook Possum first,” Steve reminded her, shuddering at the thought that he’d stumbled into drug dealers out here.  The thought of their faces as Hook Possum lurched out of the darkness was hilarious, but they could have hit him with anything, Steve thought, walking along the tire tracks, and then jogging.  They might have had guns, even.

There was a loud crash and yelling ahead, and he ran.  

“He’s in the shed!” yelled one of the other counselors, brandishing her heavy flashlight at an unfamiliar guy in a t-shirt who looked stoned as hell, and Steve ran by, looking for a shed.  His flashlight slid over it, and he stumbled to a stop, trying to remember the place.  An old fire season ranger hut, he thought, yanking on the locked door, and then pressing his face to the glass.  

“Hook Possum!” he yelled, and got back an “I’m fine, jesus.”  Steve threw his shoulder against the door and it gave instantly, dropping him on his hands and knees inside.

“My hero,” Hook Possum said, as Steve scrambled to his feet, swinging the flashlight around until it caught on the furry shape.  His hands and feet were tied, then handcuffed to a rolling office chair.  

Steve yanked at the cuffs, tugging at the ropes around Hook Possum’s ankles, and being generally ineffective, when Robin stormed in.  “There’s a phone,” she panted.  “I’m calling the police.  Get him out of here, they’re trying to fight us, or something.  I had to brain one with my flashlight.”

The sound of a sputtering engine came up the road, and Robin yelled “Fuck, more of them?!” before running to the phone.  

Steve gave up on the cuffs and ropes, and rolled Billy out of the shed and along the muddy tire tracks in the office chair.  They trundled quickly away from the noise, and then the chair nearly overbalanced, and Steve nearly tripped over Hook Possum’s tail and took them both down, so he slowed.  His heart was pounding.  “Are you okay,” he panted.

“I’m fine,” Hook Possum grunted, squirming in the cuffs.

“Lemme get your mask off,” Steve said, stopping.  “Did they hit you?”

“I’m okay!” Hook Possum yelped, nearly overbalancing as he tried to duck away.  “Leave it on!”

“Look, if you need money that much, I can give you some, lemme check your head—” Steve offered, checking the mask for cracks.  “Did they—”

“They threw a goddamn tarp over me and I couldn’t find my way out in this thing,” Hook Possum said bitterly.  “I’m fine.”

“O-okay,” Steve said.  “...okay, okay, okay…”  He took a slow, shuddery breath, squeezing Hook Possum’s shoulders as he pushed him along in the chair.  It rattled across the uneven ground.  “What were you even doing?!  Wandering off alone in that thing?!”

“Had to see who was trespassing on your grounds, lord and master.”

“Fuck you,” Steve hissed.

“This might be the most undignified thing I’ve ever done,” Hook Possum growled.  “Trussed up in a rolling office chair.”  

“It’s handy,” Steve told him, catching the guy’s weight again as the ground tilted the chair.  

“We’re never talking about this again,” Hook Possum said.  “Ever.”

“I’m rescuing you,” Steve told him, grinning, as his heart rate started to slow.  “Like a princess.”

“Shut up,” Hook Possum growled.

“Princess Possum,” Steve sighed happily.  

“So you’re my Prince Charming?” Hook Possum snarled.  “You gonna kiss me and uncurse me, or what?!”

Steve opened his mouth, and then closed it.  “...uh,” he said.

“A real Prince Charming doesn’t just grab random possums,” said Hook Possum, his voice entertainingly uneven from the bouncing of the chair.  “Help!  Help!  I’m being oppressed!”

“Shut up,” Steve laughed, giggly with relief that his...his Hook Possum wasn’t bleeding out from a head wound, or tied to rocks, sinking in the lake.  “Just a little longer.  I’ll get you back safe.”

Pink Overalls threw her arms around Hook Possum when Steve pushed him back into camp, muddier even than usual.  She sobbed about ropes and murder victims, and Steve sawed at the ropes with the bread knife, until they frayed, and cut, and Hook Possum was free to stand—one paw still handcuffed to the office chair.  

When Robin got back, exhausted but elated, and carrying three mysterious trash bags, she got the hatchet.  Steve held the chair across from Hook Possum’s wrist over the wood chopping stump, and Robin smashed the chain between the two cuffs until one came loose, and the chair fell away.  “The police will have to talk to you,” Steve told him, sliding his finger inside the cuff, and along Hook Possum’s human wrist.  “They can take it off.”

“...yeah,” Hook Possum whispered, holding very still.

“I knew he’d save you,” said Pink Overalls, crying with relief. 

PART ONE | TWO | THREE | FOUR

[merry-andrews]

Tag game

Thank you @castiel-saved-me-from-myself for tagging me!..can remember @gottaread2 once tagged me too..sorry,I've been busy..

Ok I'll answer 20 questions and then I'll tag 20 followers that I chose randomly

Name:Mariam

Nickname:Merryandrew,Merry,Mary,and..everything starts with 'Merry'

Zodiac:capricorn!

Height:163 cm!!!!yes I work with cm!

Languages:Persian,Arabic,English

Nationality:Iranian

Favourite flower:sunflower!!🌻

Favourite season:summer!!!!

Favourite color:orange!!

Favourite animal:hmmmmm.....cat?

Favourite fictional character:all DC's characters but my only,the most favourite one is Roman Sionis(Batman's villains)

Coffee,tea,hot chocolate:of course I'll take hot chocolate!woah!

Dog or cat:CAT!!

Average sleep:..is it a question so?hmm..depends?sometimes only 3 hours sometimes more than 10 hours..?

Dream trip:to Boston!!!! God I have a very lovely friend over there and I want to meet her so!

Blog established:um..two years ago?

Random fact:depends on what you want to know about me so and I'm open to answer questions about myself,though my friends always call me 'enigma' so..

Tagging: @pan-edgy @mic-ki-ewicz @chocolatereviewninja @aeon-flux-1987 @theblackmaskclub (wow I have a Roman's fan here too??) @jaseekadarkblade2020 @angeleyes351 @dontknowyoufam @lesbspn @joonie-chan @grissthevampirequeen @beewitchwrites

@blackbirdsmiles63

@monsdasarah @agata233-550 @real-fanta-sea @theothersanta @edwardsquery @fancyhomeillustrationnickel (you all are amazing people and I love you!thank you for following me💗)

[ihni]

monsdasarah

  I’m gonna consider myself tagged by @zayacv...

Ok, how did you make the nurses laugh?

THANK YOU for that totally unprompted question, lol

Well, I was gonna take an X-ray, with that kind of contrast liquid in the bloodstream through an IV? So after I’d gotten that thing, they told me to walk around for a while, to spread it out apparently? So I did. And after a few minutes, they told me to lie down on the bench thingy (the one that goes into the donut-shaped X-ray machine).

Mind you, my pants were around my knees here, because they can’t X-ray metal and they were taking pictures of my torso. So imagine that, a 37 year old somewhat flubby pale Swede with her pants down, unshaved legs and other places (because it’s winter, okay, and also feminism), lying on a narrow bench like a beached dolphin in a slide.

And then, one nurse says, with a straight face, “Okay, and now turn over. Four times.”

And I was like “what.”

And apparently she wasn’t kidding? She wanted me to turn over, like I was playing a washing machine, four times. Now, I am not ATHLETIC. The bench was NARROW. I had my pants down and my boots on and I had to have looked like a seal in drag or something. But I did, and AS I did I couldn’t help picturing the sight I must make. So I started giggling. Hysterically. Then laughing. Deep belly-laughs, that didn’t exactly make the whole “turning over” thing easier.

So I was laughing, THEY were laughing, I was COMMENtiNG, they were laughing even more ... it was a mess.

And THEN, when I finally laid down again, after those four turns ... she wiped her tears and said “good, now do some situps”, and I LOST IT.

I was like “DO I LOOK LIKE A PERSON WHO CAN DO SITUPS? I JUST DRANK LIKE ONE LITRE OF WATER!” (because one was supposed to drink a lot prior to the thingy) and off we went again, all three of us. Couldn’t stop! The one nurse in the room behind the glass window was crying, and her face was so red, and every time I tried to calm down she laughed even more and then I laughed even more too and ... well.

Let’s just say it took a couple of minutes for us all to calm down.

But it was fun. The most fun I’ve had in a hospital, like, ever.

[platypanthewriter]

Hook Possum 2/4

Art by @monsdasarah​ for Harringrove Big Bang!

CHAPTER ONE

After dinner, Jonathan Byers got out his guitar, and started teaching them camp songs.  Steve resigned himself to weeks of Kum-ba-ya stuck in his head, but they heard a weird grinding, crunching noise in the distance, and Robin whispered “I think that came from the cemetery,” just to freak everyone out.

“The cemetery?!” a boy yelped, and Jonathan started playing The Bell Witch, because he was just as awful as Robin was.

 “Little Betsy, the age of 12/Living in a dream, the first one to scream,” he sang, and Steve groaned into his hands.

“Invisible hands/Leaving their mark in the dark

Night after night/The Bell Witch attacked and attacked

Torturing Betsy/Until a circle was held in candle light.”

 The littlest kids started climbing right up on Hook Possum.  The air filled with stories of the Bell Witch, and how she could travel, she could be anywhere, and how the bathrooms at Camp Butternut Springs were always cold.  

“They’re haunted,” Robin said, and Steve elbowed her, growling.

The bathrooms were always cold, because they were poured cement set in the hill, and the cabins warmer, because they were up the hill where they got some sun, and built of wood.  Steve tried to explain it every year, but every year the kids all started running around and shrieking about the goddamn Bell Witch.  The littlest kids asked Hook Possum to go with them to the toilets as it got dark.

Even Robin ‘Oh, that’s haunted’ Buckley took mercy, and didn’t tell them the local ghost stories.  Yet, anyway, Steve thought.  A small mercy. 

When Steve found a kid crying outside the bathrooms after playing the mirror game—they stared in and said I hate the Bell Witch, over and over, watching until their faces looked creepy and distorted in the low, flickering light—Steve sat down on the ground and patted his little sobbing shoulder, and sighed.

“Look,” he said, “—there’s only one ghost around here, Hook Possum.  Hook Possum is the ghost of possums who get hit by reckless drivers.  The Bell Witch isn’t here, because of Hook Possum, okay?”

“I s-saw s-something,” the kid wailed, clinging to Steve’s arm, and Steve pulled his sobbing hanger-on back to the fire.

“Hook Possum’s our local cryptid,” Dustin was saying, and then he had to explain to the younger kids what a cryptid was.  “Like Bigfoot,” he said, “—or the Loch Ness Monster.  Or the Pope Lick Goat Man.”

“...the what?!” Hook Possum asked, startled, and Dustin’s chest swelled with excitement as his grin widened.  

“The Pope Lick Goat Man,” Dustin breathed, “—was originally a farmer, who sacrificed his goats and who knows what else to Satan.”

“Dustin,” Steve sighed, as the story brought more kids around the fire.  

“He was reborn as a twisted goat man,” Dustin said over him, because Dustin wouldn’t have any frantic children banging on the door of his cabin at two am.  Dustin continued with relish.  “He lives under the train trestles of Pope Lick Creek, mimicking the voices of dead loved ones to lure people into the path of the train.  There have been so many deaths it’s illegal to go near there,” Dustin whispered, to his rapt audience of a bunch of children who were definitely gonna be too scared to go to the toilets that night, and they’d probably wet their beds.

“Dustin, come on,” Steve groaned.

“The trestle is over 750 feet long, and it’s a 90 foot drop,” Will Byers added, and Steve smacked his face into his hands, because he hadn’t expected that epic betrayal.  

“When the train comes, there’s nowhere to go,” Dustin continued, with relish.  “It’s said he’s so terrifying people leap to their deaths at the sight of him, even if there’s no oncoming train.  Ninety feet down into Pope Lick Creek.  That’s like jumping off an eight-story building.”

The kids gasped, and Steve pinched the bridge of his nose as Robin stepped in, grinning evilly.

“He’s been known to jump down from the trestle himself, to attack cars underneath with an axe,” she said.

“Augh!” squeaked one little boy, and the kid Steve had rescued from the Bell Witch mirror game clung tighter to Hook Possum, sniffling.

“Hook Possum has a hook,” Robin told the squeaking kid, once Steve elbowed her hard in the gut, again.  The kid did not look reassured.  “—and the Goat Man lives in Kentucky, over a hundred miles away.”

“Hook Possum jumps on cars too,” Dustin said cheerfully, and Hook Possum said “Wait, what,” again, as Dustin climbed up on one of the logs around the fire, holding his finger like a hook.

“Hook Possum is the vengeful spirit of possums killed by reckless drivers,” Robin explained—far from helping—and started telling tales of drivers stopping to pick up hitchhikers that turned into massive, man-sized hissing possums in the passenger seat of their car.

“One account is weirder, because the guy was super drunk,” she whispered, leaning in, and the kids listened, riveted.  “He picked up a hitchhiker, but when he looked in the backseat, it was just a coat around a fleet of possums,” she said with relish.  “They climbed all over him, scratching and biting—”

“I’m a ghost story?” asked Hook Possum, and Steve spun in place to see him half-shadowed in the light of the fire, the flames glinting off his molded teeth, his empty mesh eyes skull-like.

“Uh,” he said, giving an involuntary shudder.  “Yeah.  Didn’t you know?”

“Don’t let anything get me,” the kid Steve had rescued from the bathroom sobbed, throwing both arms around Hook Possum, and Hook Possum patted their hair.  

“I want real ghost stories,” said one of the kids around the fire, and Hook Possum breathed “You don’t think I’m real, kid?” with a little possum-y hiss in his voice, his silvery plastic hook reflecting the firelight, and the kid yelped.  “I’m scarier than anything else out there,” he growled, and Steve, in all honesty, had to agree.  The kid blinked huge eyes, and Hook Possum patted their head again, clumsily, nearly poking them in the eye as they giggled.  

Steve groaned, smiling, and wondered if Hook Possum knew what he was letting himself in for.  

That night, he patrolled by a cabin of boys talking about two travellers whose car was attacked by metallic thumps, and sure enough, the kids who’d been playing the mirror game and scaring the shit out of themselves all came and banged on the counsellor cabin door shrieking that they’d seen red lights in the woods, and demanded Hook Possum, who ended up costuming back up in the dark.  

Steve helped tie the costume at the back of his neck, and Hook Possum lurched by him to listen to them wail.  Steve could hear his confused growling from inside, and wandered out after a while to help.  

They spent a weird three-quarters of an hour standing in the humid night heat, making up stories about Hook Possum, and Steve maybe, sleepily, told everyone his limited stock of possum facts three or four times.  They eat ticks, the kids started reciting along with him.  Their body temperature is too high to carry fleas.  Steve could feel Hook Possum laughing against his shoulder.  

“Can you sleep hanging from your tail?” one asked, and Hook Possum shook his creepy paper-mache head, shoulders slumped like maybe he really wanted to.  

Steve patted his back.  “Possums can’t actually do that,” he said, grateful to be reminded of a possum fact he’d forgotten.  “They can use it to climb, though.”

“You are not helping,” Hook Possum hissed, as the kids started clamoring for him to climb a tree.  

“Sorry,” Steve whispered back, thinking fast.  “Uh, possums carry their young on their backs—” he started, and stopped, because that was obviously the wrong thing to say, and Hook Possum yelled as he got dog-piled to the ground.  

“Harrington,” he hissed from the ground, and for a second it sounded so familiar Steve paused, frowning vaguely at the lake, until Hook Possum’s yells threatened to wake the whole camp, and Steve had to pick up the top-most flailing child and threaten to throw them all in the water.  

“Go back to bed, all of you,” Hook Possum growled, and one of them hugged him.  

“Will you walk me to the cabin?” she asked softly, and he sighed, staring—maybe—at Steve.  

“Come on, might as well,” Steve told him, and Hook Possum snarled, but let the little girl grab his hook.  He then stumbled off the step edge of the boardwalk around the cabin, flailing his arms, and Steve grabbed him by one gross fursuited paw, clicking his flashlight on.  Since the little girl had the other one, and the whole horde of them trotted along surrounding Hook Possum, which made it slightly less weird to hold hands with him.

On the way back, Hook Possum was still unsteady, even without a kid yanking on him.  Steve tried to keep the flashlight pointed squarely where the guy could see it, but he kept tripping over stuff he couldn’t see in the mask, so Steve kept holding his hand, leaning close to whisper ‘there’s a root in the path,’ and ‘step up here,’ and feeling like he was escorting a drunk date home from a party.  

“...didn’t know you were into possums, Harrington,” Hook Possum muttered, laughing a little, and Steve snickered, thinking of the lines he and Robin had decided on if any kids wanted to talk about—about awkward things, like girls kissing girls.  He hoped they didn’t—he hoped they all talked to Robin, who seemed much more qualified, but he’d practiced saying ‘I’m honored you trusted me’ in the mirror.

“I’m trusting you with my secret possum...thing,” he said, snorting a laugh.  “Aren’t you honored.”

“More nervous,” Hook Possum whispered back, stumbling again.  “Don’t take advantage of me out here, Harrington.  I’ll play dead, I swear to god.  I’ll hiss and bite you.”

“I’d treat you right,” Steve told him, grinning.  “Get you ticks to eat or whatever.  And carrion.”

“Oh, okay then.  Gee.  Thanks, man,” Hook Possum laughed, making a gagging noise.

“Eat your ticks, they’re good for you,” Steve commanded, and felt Hook Possum laughing harder.

When they got back to the cabin—finally—everybody else was trying to sleep, so Steve turned Hook Possum around by the shoulders in the dark, taking the hook, and feeling along under the awful mask to untie the suit.  He helped lift the creepy mask—the face of it felt warm and damp with breath, and Steve shuddered—and then he tugged on the paws as Hook Possum struggled to extricate himself.

“...you don’t have to help,” he said, but he sounded tired, and Steve squeezed his warm naked shoulder.  

“I don’t mind,” he said, and one of the other guys hucked a pillow at them, groaning.

“Get a room,” he mumbled sleepily.

“G’night, Possum,” Steve whispered, snickering again, and Hook Possum shoved him, but Steve was sure he heard a muffled laugh.

 The next morning, everybody was kinda subdued, as usual—the kids that weren’t scared were more homesick than they’d realized, the excited kids hadn’t gotten very much sleep, and the kids that believed in ghosts hadn’t gotten any sleep at all, which was about three-quarters of the camp, thanks to Steve’s best friend Robin “That toilet seat is also haunted” Buckley.  

It was the first really hot day of the summer, so Robin and Steve took everyone canoeing, and the shallows filled with splashing, giggling, and shrieks. Steve trailed his hands in the water, climbing in and out of the canoe at every opportunity to pick kids up so they wouldn’t overturn the boat.  In the middle of the chaos that afternoon, when the kids were mostly too exhausted to row and too full of lunch to swim, but it was too damn hot to want to get out of the water, Hook Possum stalked by, wading straight into the lake, twenty, thirty feet out up to his chin, and just stood there, staring, smoke wafting from his mesh eyes.  

After a few minutes of watching the floating, smoking possum head, Steve stuck his paddle in the water to bring himself to a splashing halt—the kids in the canoe yelped and squealed—and then he shouted paddling orders until they came up alongside the creepy apparition sticking out of the water like a malevolent buoy.

“Ho there,” Steve said, responsibly, “—non-invasive, helpful local wildlife!  Are you in need of assistance?”

Hook Possum coughed, choking, and then growled, shaking his long papier-mache snout.  “Temporary insanity,” he groaned.  “Jesus.  Even the water is warm.”

“Better than sitting in your own sweat,” Steve said cheerfully, having worn the damn thing.  He remembered feeling like a dripping-wet half-rotten kitchen sponge, sitting in a sauna.  

“Kill me,” Hook Possum muttered, sighing, and one of the kids leaned out of the boat and put a baseball cap on him.  

“The shade helps,” she reported, and he sighed, looking even more ridiculous as a bedraggled, haunted possum head, smoke wafting from its empty eye sockets, with a baseball hat over one ear.

“...thanks,” he said, and she nodded, tucking her hair behind her ear, and digging out a tube of sunscreen.  She proceeded to rub it on her ears, nose, and all over the boy next to her, who sighed.

“Uh, just...wave if you...start to drown,” Steve told Hook Possum, wanting to be encouraging, but uncertain how to help someone dying of heatstroke in a horrible old possum mascot costume who was presently up to their neck in a lake.  He couldn’t see any expression on Hook Possum’s face, but he was pretty sure it was the face of someone with nothing to live for.  “Uh.  S’mores tonight?  I think?”

“...I can’t eat in this thing,” Hook Possum groaned, with a plume of eye smoke.

“We can hide in one of the cabins,” Steve told him.  “You can, um, transform.  In there.”

“...like Cinderella?” Hook Possum asked, snorting a laugh, and Steve grimaced.  

“I was thinking more like a werewolf at the full moon,” he said, and Hook Possum’s mask shook with laughter.  “Don’t drown,” Steve told him.  “I mean, if you die, you won’t get the money anyway, so you might as well take the damn thing off.  And I’ll bring you s’mores.  With extra chocolate.  Chocolate is worth it, right?  How d’you like your marshmallows?”

The creepy, lumpy mask turned to him, its mesh eye holes more alarming than ever with the way the sun hit the smoke.  “...you giving me something to live for, Harrington?”

“Don’t die in a possum suit, man, you don’t want that on your gravestone,” Steve said fervently.  “And think about the funeral.  Everybody trying to say nice things and you in that thing.  Have a heart—”

“I think the funeral parlor would probably take it off my body,” said Hook Possum, genuinely laughing, and Steve blinked.

“Oh.  Oh, yeah, they probably would,” he said, nodding.

“Anyway, nobody’d come to my funeral,” Hook Possum said, snickering, and Steve leaned over and smacked his snout.  The water around the canoe splashed a little, and the kids yelped, watching them in exhausted, overheated fascination.

“You’re not a possum,” Steve reminded the guy, who turned his head towards Steve again, probably to stare.  Steve grabbed his painted snout, holding his attention.  “You’re not a real possum.  People would come.  Max would come, and me—”

“...you think?” Hook Possum laughed, and Steve glared.  “Okay, okay, sorry,” he said, sounding like he was grinning.  “I won’t drown.  Hook Possum says no drowning, kids.”

“I used to think Smokey the Bear did that,” said the boy dripping with sunscreen.  “You know, just walked up to you and said ‘don’t start forest fires,’ like that.  This huge bear.  I was terrified.”

“I could just walk up to boaters and say ‘don’t drown,’” Hook Possum snickered.  “Alongside the boats.  Hiss at them.”

“Holy shit,” Steve cackled, letting go of the mask.  “You should.  Do it.  Do it to Robin—her, look, over there—”

Hook Possum turned to look, and then moved silently through the water, his head floating along the surface like a duck gone wrong.  Steve and the kids floated in the water, holding their breaths, until the other boat erupted in shrieks and overturned.

“Oh, he is so getting s’mores,” Steve wheezed, laughing until he could hardly breathe.

 When the kids started to wander towards dinner, Steve found Hook Possum again, hanging onto the dock.  

“You okay, man?” he asked, and Hook Possum nodded silently, so Steve crouched down to have a look.  “You coming in?  It’s cooled off some,” he said, and Hook Possum nodded again, but didn’t move.  “...you need help?” Steve asked, and Hook Possum paused for a second before shaking his head.  

Steve waited, and finally, Hook Possum cleared his throat.  “Fuck off, I can do it, I’m fine.”

He obviously wasn’t.  “You feel sick?” Steve asked, used to the first aid questions after so many summers helping around camp.  “Tired?  Shaky?”

“...just getting...cooled off,” Hook Possum muttered, but he didn’t move.  The lake water was pretty warm, too, and Steve considered it, wondering whether it was even helping.  

“Don’t be an asshole.  You need a shower, some water, and a nap,” he told the stubborn six-foot tall possum clinging to the dock, and it hissed like it was born in the woods.  

“...don’t need a nap,” Hook Possum growled, and Steve laughed.  

“Well, lie down, at least.  You’ve got heatstroke, dude.”

Hook Possum shook his head, so finally Steve jumped in the water next to him, put an arm around him, and pulled him towards shore.  

“What are you doing,” he mumbled, but when he tried to push away he almost fell, so Steve grabbed him tighter.  

“I told you,” Steve sighed.  Hook Possum was staggering, leaning heavily against Steve’s shoulder, and vibrating with tension.  “You’re gonna die in that thing.  You can’t do this all summer.”

“Fuck you,” Hook Possum muttered, tripping as soon as they hit dry ground.

“I’ve got you,” Steve told him, grimacing, because it was probably ungodly humid in the wet fur suit, and he was pretty sure Hook Possum hadn’t taken his mask off to drink any water.  The chatter and occasional yells from the food tent washed over them as Steve took him through camp to the showers.

As soon as they were inside, Hook Possum’s head jerked up.  “Oh fuck no,” he mumbled, pulling away, but Steve held on.  

“You need to get cleaned up and cooled off, and rest up,” he told the scary possum mask.  “Seriously.  You can’t mess with this shit.”

“‘M’fine,” Hook Possum slurred, and Steve shoved him around to untie the suit.  

“I won’t look, jesus, I promise, I’ll close my eyes, okay?  Just lemme help you get this off, and get in the damn shower.”

“...fuck you,” Hook Possum muttered, his shoulders wet and shivery against Steve’s hands.  

With his eyes closed, Steve couldn’t tell whether Hook Possum had the grayish pallor, but he grabbed the moron by the back of the neck and held a hand to his forehead, which was feverishly hot.  

“Get off me,” Hook Possum squeaked, staggering back, and Steve stepped back too, listening to the sounds of sodden fur paws stumbling around.  

“You need me to stay with you?” Steve asked, knowing what the answer would be, but also wary of leaving someone who’d obviously never had heat stroke before.

“I don’t need a fucking babysitter,” Hook Possum snarled, in a deeper register than usual, and it pinged Steve’s brain.  He frowned, standing there trying to think of anyone he knew who was awkward and grouchy but good with kids, and called him Harrington.  “Get out,” Hook Possum said, sounding exhausted.

“I’ll get you some water,” Steve told him.  “Gimme the Hook Possum stuff, I’ll wash it.”

“...it can go in the wash?”  Hook Possum asked, sounding aggrieved, and Steve snorted a laugh.  

“It can go in the washtub,” he said.  “I’ll throw it in and let it dry overnight.”

“Oh,” Hook Possum said weakly, then rallied.  “Thought you were holding out on me.  Secret washing machine in your bunk.  ‘Cause you’re the owner’s son.”

“Yep, just me and the washer, holding each other close,” Steve agreed, rolling his eyes under their lids.  

“You’re into some kinky shit, Harrington,” Hook Possum told him, and Steve felt the gross muddy Hook Possum costume shoved against his arms.  

“Eugh,” he sighed, gathering up the paws and hook.  “You know it.”

“That’s not gonna be dry by tomorrow, is it,” Hook Possum said, woodenly, and Steve wanted to shake him.  

“Look, I can write you an excuse.  Take a sick day.  You can’t get right back in this thing.  It’s fine.”

“...I’ll make it up,” Hook Possum said, in a rush, after a long pause.  “And I’ll find something I can do, so I’m not fucking everybody over wearing this thing—”

“Dude,” Steve sighed.  It felt weird not knowing the guy’s name, but equally weird calling him Hook Possum.  “Relax.  Take a chill pill.  Nobody’s on your ass about this.”  He turned to leave, but Hook Possum started talking again.

“...they make you do all the first aid, or what?” Hook Possum asked, and Steve snorted a laugh at his wariness.

“They teach us all basic first aid,” he said patiently.  “You sure you don’t want me to stay?  Because you sure don’t seem like you want me to leave.”

“Fuck you!” Hook Possum growled, again, rattling at the door of the shower stall like he’d stumbled into it.  

“I’m going, don’t make me explain to Max how you fell and broke your face after I left you in here,” Steve called, heading out, gross stinking wet fur suit in hand.  He dumped the whole thing—except the mask, which he thought might melt, even though it was tempting—into the big wash basin where the kids washed their own clothes, added a ton of soap, and poked it a few times to get the water through the fur.  He found some apples and grapes in the fridge, added some cheese and crackers, and got a plastic cup of water.  He sat it all in his bunk—in case Hook Possum just collapsed in his own—and grabbed the bathrobe he always brought just in case, and Hook Possum’s towel.  

When he knocked at the showers, Hook Possum was silent, so Steve leaned in.  It was dark, but the shower was still running.  “...you alive in there?” he called, and heard Hook Possum laugh.  

“Told you I was fine,” he muttered, burbling with the water hitting his face, and Steve went to lean against the stall door.  

“Oh, sorry, should I put you back in the suit and dump you in the lake?” he asked.  “Or just leave you here to get back to your bunk naked?”  

In the darkness, Hook Possum was just a vague shape, but Steve squinted, trying to make out a face, or something.  “Fuck you,” he said, laughing.  “The hell are you gonna do, carry me in your arms?”

“I could,” Steve told him, always ready for a challenge.  

“Oh, fuck you,” Hook Possum said, laughing harder, and Steve grinned, a little confused.  

“I am the first aid officer, actually,” he bragged, having put himself on the schedule earlier.  “You need me to sweep you across the threshold, I guess that’s what I gotta do.”  There was a muffled grunt and a splashing thud in the stall, and before Steve could think, he had kicked the bottom of the door and jiggled the latch so it popped open, the way he had a zillion times before, when kids crawled under locked stall doors as a prank.  He crouched next to the dark shape in the dim stall as Hook Possum scrambled back.  “You okay?”

“Jesus fuck,” Hook Possum panted in a high voice.  “What in the goddamn are you doing in here.”

“You fell, dipshit,” Steve told him, rolling his eyes.  “Are you okay?”

“Yes!  I am okay!” Hook Possum hissed, wedged in the corner.  “Get the hell out of my shower!”

“Jesus, sorry, didn’t know you were a blushing maiden possum,” Steve told him, holding out a hand to help the guy up, but Hook Possum just groaned into his hands, so Steve shrugged, and left.  The door slammed shut after him and latched.

“Go away,” Hook Possum growled, and Steve snickered.  

“I brought you a towel, and my robe,” he said, and Hook Possum sighed.  “And some water.”

“I’m fine, christ,” Hook Possum muttered.  

“And I got you some grapes and stuff,” Steve told him, halfway out the door.  “In the cabin.  Lot of water in grapes.”

“...I’m okay,” Hook Possum said, after a pause so quiet Steve was wondering if he’d passed out in there.  “Jesus.  I’m not one of your...second graders.”

“No, because then you wouldn’t’ve been wearing that thing, or going without water,” Steve said crisply.  “And I would carry you to your bunk, like a goddamn bride.”

Hook Possum choked on the shower water, somehow, coughing.  

“You’re getting off easy,” Steve told him, his vindication lessened by Hook Possum choking like he was about to die.

“Holy crap,” he panted.

“You’re welcome,” Steve told him.  “I guess.  I hung your gross fur bag out to dry where it’ll get sun.”

“...didn’t even get the full service,” Hook Possum muttered.  It sounded like he was still laughing, exhaustedly.

“What, you want the bridal carry?  Because I’ll do it,” Steve threatened, and Hook Possum said something muffled, like he had his face in his hands.  “I’ll just wait right here, ready to cradle you to my chest,” Steve told him, and Hook Possum groaned, laughing harder.  It was hard to stay mad at him, because he was kind of giggling, in the tired way kids did when they couldn’t stop.  

 He wandered back into the cabin as everybody was singing camp songs, to see a big bony foot sticking out from under the flag covering Hook Possum’s bunk.  It withdrew.

“You awake in there?” Steve asked, grinning.

“...no,” Hook Possum groaned.  “What are you doing here?”

“Brought you some more water,” Steve told him, and after a minute, Hook Possum said “...just set it on the floor.  I’ll drink it, I promise, jesus.”

Steve nodded, and wandered back to the fire. 

PART ONE | TWO | THREE | FOUR

[platypanthewriter]

Hook Possum 4/4

Art by @monsdasarah​ for Harringrove Big Bang!

PART ONE | TWO | THREE

The last night, Robin told one of the weirder bits of Hook Possum lore, staring dead at Steve the whole time.

“Once, long, long time ago,” she began, in a sibilant stage whisper, her flashlight under her chin. “Back when all these trees were still pinecones, a stranger came to the little town you passed driving in, on the highway.” The littlest kids shivered and nodded, scooting closer to the fire. “There wasn’t much going on there then,” Robin went on, grinning evilly, “—and a stranger was exciting. He went to all the dances, and he was handsome, and what do you think happened?” she offered the flashlight to an older girl, who was biting her lips together in glee.

“One of the girls fell in love with him,” she suggested, and Robin smiled.

“Have you never wondered who Hook Possum searches for, with a lantern, in the dead of night,” Robin said, and Steve rubbed his face, feeling it heat.

“...what,” Hook Possum asked, edging closer, and Steve sighed, shaking his head. It’d become habit now to slide his fingers in Hook Possum’s costume at the wrist, between his wrist, the cuff, and the friendship bracelet, and Steve leaned closer. Hook Possum’s hand twitched, but then he relaxed, ducking his head. Steve hoped he was smiling.

“Hook Possum searches for a murderer,” Robin said. “The dancing stranger. Because the night they were to be married, he left Hook Possum buried in a shallow grave.”

“Wait, Hook Possum’s a girl?!” yelled a kid, huge-eyed, and Hook Possum looked around. Steve thought Hook Possum being a possum was more to the point, but nobody else seemed to see a problem.

“It’s just a costume,” said another one. “Hook Possum might be a girl really.”

“That’s right, mom possums carry their young around,” said another one, and a couple kids grabbed Hook Possum’s legs and arm, listening intently.

“Hook Possum came to meet her love, under the yellow poplar in the center of camp,” Robin whispered. “And he buried her there.”

Everybody gasped, and Hook Possum’s mask twitched as he glanced at Steve.

“She’d made a lovely flower crown, and she never got to wear it at her wedding,” Robin said, and Steve’s cheeks heated further. He decided to shift the planks holding her mattress up that night, so she’d fall through in the dead of night. “And that,” Robin intoned, holding the flashlight under her chin, and letting her voice waver creepily, “—is the real reason Hook Possum wanders this earth, alone, with her lantern. She wants to wear her flower crown. She’s looking for her love.”

The kids were all staring at Hook Possum, but as a creepy mass, their eyes followed his arm down to where Steve had his fingers tucked in the cuff and friendship bracelet, and then up again to Steve’s face. “Oh noooo,” he breathed.

“I can make flower crowns,” said Blair Witch Mirror Kid.

“We can have a wedding,” said Sun Safety Girl.

“Tomorrow,” Robin said, her mouth quirked evilly. “We’ll need to get ready.”

“I was at a wedding,” Pink Overalls said. “You throw flowers at people.”

“Before the buses show up,” Robin announced. “We’ll hold a wedding for Hook Possum.”

Steve had wondered before then whether the kids had noticed...whatever it was, between him and Hook Possum. Hook Possum sat next to him at the fire, his mask on Steve’s shoulder, Steve’s fingers tucked against his wrist, feeling his heartbeat. Sometimes the kids looked at them for a while, but they never said anything shitty, and Steve wondered if he’d been obvious the whole time, and Robin, Dustin, Max, and El had been running interference.

“We’ll need vows,” said Bell Witch Mirror Game Kid, who needed a shorter nickname, but Steve shrugged, because it was the second-to-last day of camp.

Hook Possum’s mask kept jerking towards Steve, then away, but he didn’t pull his arm away from Steve’s.

The next morning, Hook Possum got drug away from the cabin first thing, while Steve still had his arms wrapped around the post of the bed, snoring with his head under the pillow. When they let Steve come and look, the kids had drug all the chairs so there was an aisle under the trees, and set up an overturned trash can as the altar.

“Because he’s a possum,” said Dustin, grinning.

“Ha, ha,” Steve said dryly. His cheeks hurt from smiling, but he tried to keep a straight face as little kids showed him the flowers they’d picked, and told him they’d used all his possum facts in the vows. “...wow,” Steve said, thinking about ticks and carrion.

“We’re gonna play kazoos,” said Dustin, and Steve turned to see El earnestly putting a kazoo between her lips, accompanied by Max, Lucas, and Nancy’s kid brother, Mitchell. “...oh,” Steve said, wondering whether he was gonna be able to keep from doubling up with laughter when they were mid-possum vow and the kazoos started.

The kazoos started as they walked Hook Possum out, flower crown and all. “I made you a flower crown too,” Bell Witch Mirror Game Boy told Steve, and Steve dropped to a crouch let him put it on his head. He bit his lips as he turned to watch Hook Possum, bedecked in a flower crown and carrying a bouquet.

“There aren’t rings,” Robin whispered. “I got Sesame Street band-aids. Bert and Ernie.” It occurred to Steve suddenly, his cheeks heating at the actual care she’d put into it, that it might be on him, some day, to organize a more serious kind of wedding for her and her...someone. He bit his lip, trying not to think about how silly it all was, with Hook Possum moving away.

At least nearly everyone he knew had been at camp, he thought, watching Hook Possum bump blindly into the chairs, and listening to a bunch of off-tempo children earnestly try to produce ‘Here Comes The Bride’ on kazoo. They sounded like a lot of wet bees, mostly. At least Dustin would know what Steve was talking about, when he mentioned Hook Possum six times a sentence, or turned to grin at him, and then realized he wasn’t there.

Hook Possum drew closer—Pink Overalls had just grabbed his hand, finally, and hauled him along, and Steve wondered why he was having so much trouble seeing. It was drizzly, and gray, but it wasn’t dark. Pink Overalls threw flowers at Steve’s face, then at Hook Possum’s, and stepped back.

Steve wondered, as ever, what she thought was happening.

“Friends and campers gathered here today,” Dustin began, but Steve didn’t really listen to the vows. He’d slid his finger through Hook Possum’s handcuff, and the friendship bracelet, and his hand was shaking a little.

“Are you seriously okay with this,” he breathed, leaning close to Steve’s head. “This—this is—”

“Ssssshhhh,” Dustin groaned. “Where are the rings?”

“We’ll just wrap it around Hook Possum’s paw and he can put it on later,” Robin decided, and Steve wrapped it around Hook Possum’s furry-gloved finger. It felt really... weddingy, when Hook Possum (with Robin’s help) unwrapped the Bert-and-Ernie bandaid and wrapped it around Steve’s finger. Steve took his paw and squeezed it, wondering what he’d agreed to.

“To love and to cherish, so long as you both shall live?” Robin asked, her eyes steady, and Steve kind of wanted to run, dreading Hook Possum laughing.

“...I do,” he whispered.

“I do too,” Steve said quickly, grabbing Hook Possum’s other paw, and squeezing that one too.

“You may kiss the bride,” announced Dustin, and Steve leaned in and smacked a kiss on the mask, listening to the startled laughter of the man inside.

After that, in the first raindrops, Robin sent the kids to get their packed bags. “The buses will be here in twenty minutes!” she yelled, stomping off, and Steve pulled back from hugging Hook Possum as hard as he could.

“I have to take the costume off,” Hook Possum whispered. “It’s starting to rain.”

It hadn’t rained for the whole three weeks of camp, not during the day, and it felt like a sign camp was truly over. Steve nodded, squeezing the dirty old costume paws in his hands, and wondering about the human inside them.

“He said you could kiss the bride,” Hook Possum said in kind of a weird choked voice, standing perfectly still, and Steve froze.

“You...saying I can see you?” he whispered back, as the rain started to penetrate his hair, cold against his head.

“...I’m saying I’m taking it off,” Hook Possum hissed, dragging Steve back towards the cabin. “Don’t look. But, uh. If—if you—he said you could kiss the bride, so—”

“I want to,” Steve told him, panting as they ran. “I want to, I do.”

“Okay,” Hook Possum laughed, kind of unevenly. “Yeah.”

Steve helped him get out of the damn costume for the last time, untying the little cords slowly, and sliding the warm, wet, musty fabric down Hook Possum’s muscular shoulders. As a show of good faith, he opened Robin’s luggage and took out one of her kneesocks, and wrapped it around his eyes. That done, he ran his hands down Hook Possum’s arms to find his bracelet and cuff, and a warm, strong hand to run his fingers over. He did the same on the other side, finding that Hook Possum hadn’t put the band-aid on.

“Lemme do it right,” Steve asked, and Hook Possum stilled. Steve fiddled blindly with the little tabs, but he got it on there, and slid their fingers together. “...they fit nice,” he said softly, and Hook Possum sighed. “Lemme take your mask off,” Steve tried next, and Hook Possum let him, let him slide his hands up over the pulse pounding in Hook Possum’s neck, and lift the mask away, before running his thumb over a stubbly jaw, and sliding his fingers into soft, sweaty curls.

Hook Possum stepped away. “Just let me get my feet out,” he whispered.

Steve stood there with a sock around his head for a long second, feeling stupid, when warm, chapped lips met his. Hook Possum’s breath was shaky.

“...gonna miss you,” Steve told him, as soon as he could draw breath, licking his lips, and Hook Possum made a little grunty whining noise in the back of his throat, and kissed him again. “We’re married now,” Steve told him. “You aren’t gonna run out on me, are you?”

“...this was never real,” Hook Possum said, his voice cracking, and Steve nodded once, his eyes stinging, and walked out. He yanked the sock off his head and blinked up at the rain, then yelped as Hook Possum dragged him back against the side of the cabin, the rain slicking up their hands and faces as they kissed again. “I wish it was real,” Hook Possum whispered.

“Give me your phone number, at least,” Steve whispered, kissing the warm, soft mouth against his. “Your name?!”

“...sorry,” Hook Possum muttered, pulling away. “Don’t look.”

Steve didn’t. He stood there in the rain for five entire minutes. His shoulders shook because of the warm Indiana summer rain, and for no other reason.

“He’ll meet you at the diner,” Max’s voice said, as Steve was paying for a stack of frozen TV dinners at Bradley’s Big Buy, and skateboarded off, without telling Steve when, so he yelled incoherently after her and drove to the diner. He ordered coffee as his TV dinners slowly defrosted in his car, and watched the door, then, finally, when the waitress wouldn’t go away, he ordered pie. It was really good, he thought distractedly, chomping bites of lemon meringue as he stared through the door at the parking lot.

Three hours—and a lot of pie—later, Billy Hargrove pulled up in front, and Steve made a face, wondering if he dared risk running to the bathroom. Billy lingered outside, cleaning his windshield wipers, and checking under the hood, blocking Steve’s view of everyone else who might drive up, and in his annoyance, Steve failed to notice he’d received and finished another refill on his coffee, and the bathroom question was becoming desperate.

He pressed his knees together, glancing at the clock, and gritting his teeth.

Billy glanced in, saw Steve, and stopped, watching him like he still kinda wanted to beat his teeth in, or something. Steve knocked back half a mug of coffee in sheer annoyance, and then glowered down at it, mentally apologizing to his bladder.

The door creaked open, and Steve jerked to attention, nearly knocking his latest empty pie plate off the counter with his elbow, but it was just Billy, slouching, an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth. He was tugging at his cuff, one hand stuffed in his pocket.

“Harrington,” he said, and Steve nodded, trying to see past him through the door. Billy huffed a laugh. “...you got a hot date?” he asked, and Steve nearly said yes, but then thought what it would look like, when a man showed up.

“None of your beeswax,” he said tiredly, wishing Max had said when. “Hey,” he called to the waitress. “How early d’you open in the morning?”

“We’re open five o’clock in the morning to eleven o’clock at night,” she said, and Steve winced, hoping Hook Possum showed up before, like, tomorrow afternoon. He had visions of himself keeping vigil for days, glutting himself on pie, and sleeping in the parking lot.

Billy turned and stalked back out, shaking his head, and Steve decided to risk the bathroom. He sprinted back out to see the parking spot in front empty, and sat back down, opening the pie menu.

“Your friend left,” said the waitress.

“What?!” Steve said, jerking his head around to the door. “Just now?!”

“The boy with the shirt and jacket made of blue jeans,” she said, cocking her head like Billy’s fashion sense was annoying, which to be fair, it was.

“Oh,” Steve said, deflating.

“He came back and asked how long you’d waited. If you’d said anything about who you were waiting for,” she said, eyeing him narrowly, and Steve blinked back at her.

Max’s voice suddenly sounded in his head again. Uh, he lives on my street. She’d sounded hesitant, which was very unlike Max.

He’s the big brother I never had, she’d said, and Steve had assumed that couldn’t be Billy.

You’re the son of the boss’s boss?! He heard again, in Hook Possum’s raspy, high-pitched tones. You could get me fired.

“...Billy,” Steve said aloud.

“Is this some kind of Shop Around The Corner thing? I love that movie.” the waitress asked, as Steve scrambled for his wallet, thinking about Billy’s curls, and how he’d been afraid of Steve seeing him with the mask off, even once they were friends. “Was he supposed to carry a certain book or something? Were you penpals?” she asked idly, leaning on the counter. “You should probably go talk to him, if you can walk, after all that pie.”

“He’s moving to California,” Steve said, shoving a wad of cash at her without bothering to count it, and running out to his car.

“Good luck!” she called after him. “Idiot,” he thought he heard, and his cheeks burned.

When he pulled up to the Hargrove house, it wasn’t lit up. He ran around to Max’s window—he knew where that was, from driving Dustin and Lucas around—and tossed a pinecone at it. After a few thudded into the glass, the blinds shot up, and she glowered out, then glared down at him, yanking the window up. “The hell are you doing here?!” she hissed.

“Billy’s Hook Possum,” Steve stage-whispered back at her, cupping his face. “Isn’t he?”

She frowned harder, glancing over her shoulder. “What are you doing here?!”

“Come let me in,” Steve told her, and she shook her head.

“He’s not home! Did you miss him?! God, you’re such morons—”

“Where’s his room?” Steve hissed back, and she pointed, leaning out.

“He left like an hour ago,” she shot back, waving at the road. “We’d hear his car.”

“Let me in, I’ll wait for him,” Steve whispered up, and she groaned, leaning her head against the wood of the window.

“Fine,” she said, slamming it shut. A few minutes later, the window next to it opened, and Max’s head poked out. “Get up here,” she said. “And be quiet, you’ll get him in trouble, his dad’s watching the ballgame.”

“Okay,” Steve said, gauging the jump to the windowsill.

He wasn’t graceful, but he made it in, kicking off the siding and getting an arm inside. He clambered in with Max’s help, and looked around in the refracted light from the streetlamps. Everything was in boxes. “...when’s he leaving,” Steve asked, his throat tight.

“He was gonna leave today, but I got him to meet you at the diner,” Max growled. “What happened?!”

“He didn’t say anything, he just left,” Steve groaned, his eye catching on something over on the mirrored dresser thingy. He squinted in the dim light, leaning in—and he was right, it was the flower crown Hook Possum had worn for their ‘marriage’. The flowers were wilted, their petals crumbly in his hands, and Steve leaned to smell them, remembering.

He shivered, trying not to laugh, because he was right, Billy Hargrove was Hook Possum, and now everything was even more complicated. Billy Hargrove hates me, Steve thought, bewildered. He HATES me, he nearly beat my face in.

“That’s his car,” Max said, staring at nothing, and then Steve could hear it, through the open window.

“I just need to talk to him,” he said, and she rolled her eyes.

“Yeah, you fucking do,” she muttered, slamming the door on her way out.

Alone in Billy’s room, Steve wandered around, squinting at the couple of posters still on the wall. He found the light switch, and leaned against the wall near it as footsteps came down the hall, and the doorknob turned.

Steve waited until Billy shut the door and wandered over to the window before flipping on the light, and Billy yelled.

“Holy cross eyed jesus, Harrington,” he panted, staring. “What—why—”

“You’re Hook Possum,” Steve said. “Right?”

“What,” Billy said, backing away. He had his arms up like he wanted to fight, but as Steve stepped closer he just flinched back, his head and shoulders thudding against the wall. Steve could see a glint against his denim cuff, and grabbed his wrist, sliding a finger down inside.

“My friendship bracelet,” he said, feeling too relieved for a true smirk. “...and you still haven’t gotten this handcuff off?!” he asked, sliding the clinking metal up Billy’s wrist.

“Looks kinda rad, don’t you think,” Billy whispered, swallowing. “Why’re you here, Harrington?”

“You’re Hook Possum,” Steve said again, running his fingers along the soft skin on the underside of Billy’s wrist, under the cuff and the friendship bracelet.

Billy watched his face, licking his lips, and Steve remembered how it’d felt kissing him. He’d kissed Billy Hargrove, he thought, his brain stumbling to a halt as it reorganized Steve’s memories to fit the new facts.

“What happens now,” Billy asked, and Steve let him go, stepping back as he remembered nothing had actually changed.

“...you’re moving to California,” Steve said, looking around at the boxes. “I—I guess I can send postcards now. Now I know the big secret.” It was almost worse, knowing more about Hook Possum, and having to watch him leave.

“...you’re not pissed,” Billy asked, raising his eyebrows, and Steve considered, and then shook his head.

It was hard to imagine being angry at Hook Possum, even if Hook Possum was Billy Hargrove. “Nah,” Steve said, stalking over to sit on the bed. “Thanks, uh, thanks for meeting me. I guess. I know you didn’t want to see me again.” He’d thought Hook Possum liked him, which was stupid, he realized. “I should go, huh.”

“I didn’t know you’d be there, at the camp,” Billy said, laughing. He sounded tense. “I thought I was getting away from Hawkins.”

Max knew, Steve thought, remembering planning with Dustin and everyone. “Yeah. I figured.”

“You wishing you didn’t know, now?” Billy asked, with another laugh, sitting in the window, and gripping the sill with white knuckles.

“...no,” Steve said, honestly. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it hadn’t been this...wary distance.

“You want your friendship bracelet back?” Billy sneered, and Steve just shook his head, and got up to leave out the door, if Billy was gonna block the window. The eight slices of pie were roiling in his stomach with probably two whole pots of coffee, and he felt like he might throw up. “Harrington, fuck, wait,” Billy growled, pushing himself up to stalk over and hold the door shut. “Why’d you come over here,” he hissed, his low register all Billy Hargrove, who’d beaten Steve unconscious.

“I don’t know,” Steve said, laughing, a little, because Hook Possum had been right. Summer camp wasn’t the real world, and he wasn’t married to a magic possum. He yanked on the doorknob, but Billy leaned his weight against the door, watching his face.

“Do you still want me,” Billy asked, grabbing Steve’s arm.

Steve wanted to get out of the conversation, and he almost dodged the question with a what do you mean, or a I have to go, but Billy’s hand was warm on his skin, and nervously sweaty.

Steve nodded.

Billy made a noise in his throat, kind of a strangled choke, and grabbed him, yanking him into a clumsy kiss, all teeth, because he was laughing. “You’ll make me another friendship bracelet, right,” he said breathlessly, like it was important, and Steve nodded, losing track of what was going on. He ran his finger along Billy’s wrist, and hooked it around the friendship bracelet/cuff accessory, and Billy kissed him again, leaning in. “If—if I’m here, you’ll make me another one.”

“Yeah,” Steve agreed, dizzy with kisses.

“Make us rings,” Billy whispered, smiling so wide his kisses were a little wet against Steve’s cheek, and ear. Steve’s bones creaked from how hard Billy was squeezing him.

“...can’t believe you haven’t taken the handcuff off,” Steve whispered, against Billy’s jaw. “...god, I hope nobody ever asks how we met. Stay out of the trash.”

Billy snorted a laugh, leaning his face into Steve’s neck with a sigh, and then pressing soft kisses up it, so Steve started having wild thoughts about Billy’s mattress, five feet away. “Y’know,” Billy said softly, “I kinda hope they do ask, actually. You ashamed of your magical...haunted possum...girlfriend?”

“God I missed you,” Steve said, snorting a laugh. His vision blurred with tears.