thursday, august 10
day 4: last minute confession (@benthan-week-forever)
Benji sat in front of his laptop, tears streaming down his face.
He had just heard Ethan confess his love for him over the coms - and then the line went dead. Dead. Like Ethan, he thought.
The blonde was beside himself with grief.
He tried and tried and tried to get a hold of the other one, but there was no response. Benji was consumed with worry and fear, not knowing what had happened to the man he loved.
As he sat there, lost in his thoughts, memories of Ethan flooded his mind. He remembered the way the brunette looked at him, the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand. He realized how much he loved Ethan, and how much he wanted to spend the rest of his life with him.
Benji sat there for what felt like hours, waiting for any news about his partner..
Finally, the coms line crackled to life, and Ethan's voice came through.
"Benji, are you there?" he said, his voice rough.
Benji was overjoyed to hear his voice, bursting into tears once again.
"Ethan, I thought you were dead," he said, his voice choked with emotion.
"I'm okay, Benji," Ethan replied, "I made it out alive, thanks to you."
196 notes
·
View notes
Steve's kindness is, like all self-taught one, a mirage of borrowed expressions, a collage of habits picked from people he loved, a bit stilled but eager and well-meaning, sometimes a bit chopped at the sides, a growing want to let the good feelings out in front of the right people.
Eddie liked to sometimes watch him and find all the signs of other people in him, try to match them up to right people.
He would watch and think - this is Nancy's stubbornness to never give up on people and Dustin's loyalty, he would see him trying to give advice to Dustin and see Johnathan's akward pep-talks to Will. The way he would always try to have snacks for the kids screamed both Joyce's and Mrs. Henderson motherly kindness. His willingness to sit in silence, a steady presence, when somebody needed it shined with Will's warmth. How he fights for the people he cares about, letting his meaness be a defense for them all, a barier and a shield similar to Max's snark.
And whenever he found himself to be the matching person? It made him feel loved, so fucking loved and seen that he would choke on it.
Eddie sometimes would make a game out of it, to found the matching puzzle whenever Steve's kindness shone (and it was a lot of the time). It was always someone from the party and he would always find himself with a strange fond warmth whenever he realized who it was. And usually he was good at it, it wasn't really hard when he loved and knew all those people too
There were exceptions though. The first one was Robin and it wasn't for the lack of Eddie's knowledge and love for her and moreso because of the whole RobinandSteve being always so SteveandRobin, never really separate. Whatever was Steve's was also Robin's, their clothes, habits or sometimes even their smiles shone in the same way. They were mismatched in a funny melted together sort of way, his kindness was her and hers was his and it was hard to difference between the two when even they didn't know where one ended and the other began, they traded traits like they traded clothes, wore them bright pink socks with yellow soft sweater, a joke to cheer you up with a soft you can tell me anything in the same breath.
He didn't really knew whose kindness it was the innate one that must have been deep within Steve before he let it shine or Robin's. He didn't think it would really matter anyway, they would trade it between themselves like shiny cards anyway.
The other one was a smile. An unique one, one that Eddie swore he saw somewhere before and that lacked the freckles and a missing teeth except noone in the party had these two traits, at least not as Eddie knew them and he could never find that one puzzle. It was boyish and full of mischief, usually with a starry reflection in Steve's eyes.
The last one was a lift in his tone, the way he would make his voice honey-like sweet when he tells Robin her new haircut suits her or El's new shirt brought out her eyes. The intonation always made Eddie think of bubble gum and sugared summers.
He couldn't place the last two to nobody. At least not until Steve told him about Tommy Hagan and Carol Perkins.
Obviously Eddie knew about them, but Stevie didn't talk about how they are. But how they used to be.
"Sweet." he said while passing the joint they shared laying on Eddie's bed, pressed from shoulders to their ankles. "Carol used to be sweet, warm with the naive love only kids hold" Steve's eyes were looking out the window of Eddie's room, as if he could see the young version of them just outside playing childlish games. "and Tommy used to be wild. But not like bad wild, more like he was always chasing trouble, adventure. Like kids do."
And Eddie couldn't see it, not with how the world twisted them into different people, cruel. More cold, all sharp teeth and autumn's rain.
Except he could, he could in Steve's special smile and the sound of his voice, he could see it and he could see the love that Steve Harrington had for them.
"They're douchebags now," he said when Eddie voiced it out loud "but I did loved them once, sometimes I feel like I've never stopped, they just... Grew out of my love, grew into something I couldn't."
It should be strange, to love something someone isn't anymore, but to Eddie it just spoke of the way Steve Harrington threw himself into love, how he never really stopped loving and caring. It was admirable, it was so lovable and it was so Steve-like. Earnest in the sweetest way.
It made sense that Steve Harrington would love people even through his expression of it.
346 notes
·
View notes
priest: i don't, ah, quite know what to say to you. if you are in such terrible danger, why are you taking it all so calmly?
constantine: hmh! i dunno, father. i had a bloke beaten to a pulp earlier this evening. that sound calm to you?
priest: you did what...?
constantine: i must've been off me bleedin' rocker. i've never done anything like it before in me life, y'know?
constantine: but there's header gets his guts blown out, and george is stickin' his head in the noose, and helen gets ... jesus, then friggin' sarah bites me head off — ! everything's coming to bits in me hands and it's so easy to just see red and now, shit, they could've killed the tosser for all i know!
and now i'm just like the bastards i've hated all me life! kill him! fire him! close them down! piss all over him! screw you, i can do whatever i want! i so much as blink and you're dead, pal! i'm in charge!!
...
constantine: 'scuse me, father. i'm always like this when i don't get me own way.
— hellblazer #81, "rake at the gates of hell pt. 4"
babygirl you are just....so, sooooo offputting. (and grieving, and guilty, and terrified, but yeah: offputting.)
anyway, it's issues like this one that remind me why i kind of hesitate over some of the retcons in the recent spurrier runs, like the one with him now having opened dream's pouch of sand and stolen some before they even met. because like, it's easy enough to look at john constantine now — with 70 years of worst possible choices and unresolved trauma crystallizing underneath his skin to cover up all the soft, hopeful bits where he's used to getting hit — and assign him arbiter of ill intentions, magus of wasted potential, saint of shit choices, but man . . . he was new to this, once. he was still new to this 80 issues in.
80 issues in, and he's not used to losing friends yet; he even has time enough between catastrophes to grieve each individual one. still has enough left to live for at this stage to necessitate running and hiding, instead of bodily throwing himself at the problem like he learns to later, or sitting apathetically by to do nothing except smoke and watch the world fall apart when he finally gives up. fuck, he still apologizes.
and you're telling me this guy, this soppy wet cat motherfucker hiding from the devil in a church basement, so guilty over not knowing what happened to the guy that he paid people (paid chas, so chas could pay people) to attack that the bottle he's holding in this scene isn't even his second or third........this guy's past, more innocent self lied right to the face of DREAM OF THE ENDLESS and got away with it?
hm. i just don't know about all that.
20 notes
·
View notes