#or maybe neil told them the news before he was able to really process everything

[foxstens]

do you think some part of kevin realized that riko's life was effectively over as soon as andrew broke his arm

[sylvie-writes]

Chain of Events

word count: 2500

pairing: andy barber x female reader

warnings: cheating, age gap, some profanity.

request: can i request a andy barber x fem!reader where the reader is his asisstant and his secret mistress (in mid 20s) which she always stick by his side and help him through jacob's trail. after the trail he divorced w laurie and they got marry and have a baby girl please!! thank you!!

a/n: sorry for the wait! i hope you enjoy lovely! ngl this really fueled my love for andy. 

please excuse any mistakes!

It wasn’t something you were proud of. Something that had started off as a night with a few innocent drinks paved the way for a never ending cycle. At times you felt dirty and awful, yet that didn’t stop you from going to see him every other night. Even when you had the slightest feeling that Laurie had a hunch, it didn’t stop you. Especially when things got dark for Andy, you were the one to hold him close and not his wife. It felt so right although extremely wrong all at the same time. 

༻﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡༺

Currently, you were sitting in your apartment bed, spending your Friday night a bit differently than most. Rain gushed from the sky and rhythmically hit your bedroom window which you were spaced out on, many thoughts running through your mind and a glass of wine occasionally hitting your lips. Using your free hand you softly ran your fingers through the mop of hair that belonged to Andy who was passed out in your lap. His breathing was even and it did your heart good to see him so peaceful for once. Just two hours ago, he called you, sounding so broken and vulnerable which was out of the ordinary for Andy. The minute you answered the door, he flung himself at you and held you tight, whispering repeatedly “don’t leave me, please.” 

It absolutely tore you to pieces to hear him say that and you were quick to reassure him that it wasn’t even possible. You then lead him to the bedroom to ask what had happened. 

“Is everything alright? Talk to me, Andy.” You placed a set of his pajamas into his hands but not without a pleading look in your eyes when meeting his own sullen ones.

“Laurie’s adamant it’s him, but (y/n)-” Placing a finger on his lips, you hushed him. 

“I know, I know. You just have to ignore it okay? Laurie is just,” Pausing, you chose your next words wisely, “having a hard time with it all. Everyone copes differently.” 

He sadly nodded before standing to kiss your forehead and make his way to the bathroom to get changed and cleaned up a bit. 

The two of you continued to chat about Jacob’s trial once Andy returned from the bathroom, and he confided in you in many ways more than one. You’d never seen Andy so open, even with yourself, and clearly it helped him quite a bit as he was now relaxed. 

Time had flown and amongst your thoughts, one stood out to you in particular. When would Laurie start to question where he was? Andy always had some bullshit excuse ready to give her and would then tell you that it would be alright. Normally, before you had time to truly convince yourself, Andy’s lips would be on yours or his hands would caress you gently and you’d melt into him as did your cares. Except for now. 

The two had just gotten into a huge fight and you were sure Andy hadn’t even thought twice about telling her where he was going. Even if he did, Laurie would surely be on the lookout for his return. 

Carefully reaching over to your nightstand, you grabbed your phone to check the time and noticed that it was getting late. 

“Andy? My love, when do you have to go home?” You leaned down to whisper to the sleeping man who groaned in return. 

You repeated his name once more, this time slightly shaking his shoulder to which he rolled onto his back, a goofy grin on his lips as he looked up at you. “Well hello, honey.” 

From Andy’s point of view, you peered down at him like a disappointed mother but with a faint smile upon her lips at her child’s goofiness. 

“Nice of you to join me, sleeping beauty. I was wondering what time you had to get home. It’s starting to rain more heavily and Laurie-”

Andy sat up and turned himself so he’d be sitting shoulder to shoulder with you. Silently, he took your empty wine glass from your hand, leaning to place it on your nightstand. As he did so, he didn’t let go of your wrist, which he brought to his lips when he returned to face you. 

Murmuring against your wrist, he started to place soft and delicate kisses to the smooth skin there. “Don’t worry about it. I told her I’d be back tomorrow morning.” 

“But Andy, she knows you don’t have anywhere to stay.” You didn’t want to exactly say “Hey! Andy, you have no friends and your wife knows that!” but it was implied in a kinder way. Andy picked up on this, clearly deflecting when he just nodded in response and started to place more kisses up your forearm. 

Letting out a frustrated “hmph,” you let Andy carry on before he victoriously smiled at you.

༻﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡༺

The vicious cycle went on throughout the course of Jacob’s trial as things between Andy and his wife got worse. Even though they both lived under the same roof, slept in the same bed, and put on a facade for Jacob, they were practically separated. One night Andy drunkenly showed up on your doorstep, confessing how he had come home to find Laurie with another man. In a fit of rage he let the cat out of the bag that he had been seeing you. Funny how things work. 

You knew they were both wrong, so instead of shaming either one of them, you just let Andy cling to you for comfort. When Andy was drunk, he was like a big child and if the circumstances were different, you’d been laughing, but rather you soothingly rubbed his back and listened as that’s all he needed. Someone who would just listen.

At three in the morning, he most definitely needed you as well when you found his head in the bowl of the toilet and not sleepily nestled in your neck. (Which was ironic as the two of you would be switching places very soon.)

Christmas came quick and along with it, many miracles, one being that Jacob was not convicted.

Just as Andy was in a rush to tell you the news, Laurie was even faster to serve the divorce papers to him. In a relationship, you and your partner are supposed to be able to push through tough times without breaking. With that being said, Andy and Laurie mutually agreed that they had failed and it was time they both quit lying to themselves. It was time for real happiness. 

༻﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡༺

“(y/n) meet me at our favorite restaurant in thirty minutes.”

You were working on some case files for Neil, despite your hatred for him, and tried to tell Andy that you were busy at the moment. He didn’t listen but continued to insist that you meet him there. His tone wasn’t demanding, but it was...excited? Surely, Andy had been excited over things in his life, but you’d never actually heard the usually emotionless man speak with such ardor. 

Setting down the case files, you rushed to put on some real pants and a blouse, but nothing too fancy or flashy as you had no idea what was about to happen. 

When you arrived at the restaurant, Andy happily flagged you over. He wore the biggest smile ever and you were borderline concerned. What could have him this happy? Was he getting back with Laurie? As much as you wanted them to be a functioning family, you weren’t sure if you could deal with such heartbreak because Andy really did feel like the one. 

Ever the gentleman, Andy pulled out your chair and handed you a small bouquet as you sat in the wooden seat. Before he walked away, the man planted a smack of a kiss on your lips and hurried back to his seat since he saw the waiter out of the corner of his eye. As the waiter approached, you were just sitting there, the most shocked expression on your face as it settled within you what Andy had just done. Long ago when this whole fiasco began, you and Andy always kept it professional when out in public because so many people knew him and word could get out easily that he was cheating. 

The minute the waiter left, you were quick to chastise Andy who just laughed as if it were the funniest thing in the world which left you a bit angered. 

Since the restaurant was quiet, you extended yourself across the table so Andy could hear your harsh muttering. 

“Do you realize what you just did, Barber?!” Andy shook his head in a content manner and at this point steam was about to emerge from your ears. Before all hell could break loose and you go ballistic, Andy cut in to explain. 

“Jacob, he’s a free man!” Andy looked at you with an awaiting smile and your face immediately softened, but for only a second as that didn’t explain why he was parading your relationship out like this. Didn’t he know what he was risking, not only for himself, but you.

Your counterpart noticed the sudden change of expression on your face and continued, “But among other things, I meant to tell you that Laurie and I got divorced recently.” 

“Oh hon, I am so sorry.” Reaching across the table, you comfortingly ran your thumb over the back of his hand, but he just shook his head in detest.

“No no, it’s not a bad thing because it just opened the gateway for this,” Andy pulled his hand away and went to dig in his coat pocket. You thought to yourself, no he couldn’t be-

“(y/n), I’m gonna make this short, but sweet. You mean the world to me and I could spend all night listing off why I love you, but that will never do justice, so instead, I ask that you make me the happiest man alive, and marry me?” 

His cliche, yet utterly adorable speech could make a person’s heart melt and instantly say yes, but you’ve always been a thinker, and maybe Andy had accounted for that a bit in his proposal. 

“Andrew! You just got divorced!” In a semi-whisper slash hiss, you bent over so only he could hear, hiding your words from the prying onlookers as if you had top secret info spilling from your lips. 

“I know, but, (y/n), you are the one.” He looked a bit awkward being on his knee for so long and the ring box still patiently in hand as you processed his question. Nonetheless, Andy continued to hopefully smile at you, ignoring all of the whispers, until you excitedly replied “yes” just a mere second later, though it felt like ages for him. 

This proposal was definitely gonna be a story for generations. 

༻﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡༺

You and Andy settled for a simple courthouse wedding with just your parents in attendance as witnesses. The two of you were never really used to flaunting your relationship, and even though you could now, it just wasn’t ideal. Besides, you had bigger things to worry about.

For example, when just a few weeks after your short-lived honeymoon, you noticed some changes and came to the conclusion that you were pregnant. 

One night, you casually brought up the idea of more kids to Andy to test the waters. 

“Hey love, you awake?”

Andy lifted his eyes from his book, no longer looking as if he was asleep. He nodded his head and set the book aside giving you his full attention. 

“What’s up, gorgeous?”

“I was thinking… what if we were to have a kid. Would you be opposed to that?”

The reaction on Andy’s face was most definitely not the one in mind and he looked as if you had asked him the most appalling question on earth. 

“(y/n), I love kids,” He chuckled a bit, “I thought I made that clear, you know, by being a dad and all.” 

His lame attempt at making a “joke” eased your nerves and you just came straightforward with the gold. 

“Andy, I think I am pregnant.” 

And faster than a predator can pounce, Andy was on you in seconds, his arms hugging you close as he whispered words of excitement. 

༻﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡༺

Nine months later and that statement was very true as you held a bundle of joy in your arms. Your hours numb in pain couldn't even be compared to the gift that was before you. Andy could hardly keep his hands off your stomach for the past few months and he never failed to speak to your daughter as if she was actually there. Now that her presence was finally in the world, Andy was yet to look away from her small figure and his smile hadn’t withered the slightest. 

The nurse had stepped out a few minutes ago, giving both you and Andy some time and privacy with your newborn. Even though drowsiness overcame your body, you visibly forced yourself awake just to absorb all the time you could with her. Little ones grow up in a flash and you weren't going to miss a second if it was up to you.

Andy joined you in the hospital bed when you silently invited him in with a soft pat to the crinkly sheets. Once he snuggled up against your side, you carefully passed the little baby who was about to have her first contact with her father. 

As Andy played with her mini hands, you sleepily rested your head on his broad shoulder, watching the two and already figuring out that they’d be lifelong friends. 

“They always say with age comes wiseness, but darlin’, your momma gives that phrase a run for its money.”

You giggled at your husband’s words and propped up the little darling the smallest bit so she could “see” you and her dad. 

“Don’t listen to Daddy, munchkin. The grey in his beard says otherwise.” 

“Hey! I’m not that old, I was still able to knock-” Backhanding Andy’s leg caused him to dramatically cut his sentence short. There were plenty of years for him to taint your daughter’s innocence.

 As you observed the two, you noticed Andy gazed at her as if she hung the moon and stars for him, a familiar look he often gave you. Possibly from the lack of energy or just being enamored with the interaction, a sweet tear slipped from your own eye. Upon closer inspection, one could see that a subtle tear fell from the man beside you.

If Andrew Stephen Barber had known all those years ago he’d be here with a second chance at life, he would’ve never even waited another second to be with you. It’s funny how life can send you down the most twisted paths, yet have you come out with the most precious of gifts. 

 taglist: @memissbee @tricereads @buckybarnesthehotshot @bval-1 @tonystankschild @just-one-ordinary-fangirl @turtoix @kelbabyblue @jakiki94 @aubreeskailynn @calirindo @lady-elena-adeline @siriuslyslyslytherin @sushiinmidnight @patzammit @iwik3it​

a/n: what did you guys think? it feels like ages since i’ve written anything, and I am sure you can tell haha

if you are new here, check out my masterlist at the top of my blog for more Andy Barber (and Chris Evans characters) writing. I’d link it but tumblr always tag blocks me :( 

[hargrove-mayfields]

this was requested by @deardmvz ! based off of this lovely post!!

Billy is released from the hospital a few months after he’s out of that place, having been dragged back to his own world a bloody mess by a group of government men in hazmat suits.

They said he was lucky to have spent as long as he did in a toxic environment and come out of it only needing a weekly breath treatment and a couple of bandages. But he knows it wasn’t luck.

Because if there was such a thing as lucky, Billy Hargrove was not it.

Rather, it was because he’d learned how to give the monsters over there what for. Didn’t hide and come whimpering at the first signs of rescue, begging for their protection like everyone was expecting him to after dealing with monsters and breathing polluted air for six months.

Six months. He couldn’t believe that. To him, on the other side, it had felt more like years.

But he’d stumbled out of that place all the same, dripping axe still gripped tight in hand, in case this was his mind giving up, in case his hell wasn’t really coming to an end after all, and in the end, he was tougher, more resilient, unafraid.

But the doctors didn’t really believe that, did they?

As soon as he was given the clear in the emergency room, onced over for physical injuries he’d thankfully avoided and the doctors having given him something that made him cough up most of the gross stuff that’d been collecting in his lungs, he was sent straight to the psych ward.

Because he could kill as many monsters as he wanted, and he could spend months as a survivor, doing what nobody before him had been able to without super powers, but he was never going to be able to shake the isolation, the uncertainty of everyday he spent over there. Not without help.

The upside down was a no man’s land, he didn’t have the time of day to think about what he’d done, who he’d lost, what had happened to him. But the moment he’s free of it, he’s back to reality.

Back to being the kid down on Cherry, with years of baggage to carry even before all this interdimensional bull that he’d never worked through. With a sister who thought he was dead, and a father who probably wouldn’t care less whether or not he was.

They see all of that, so he pushes them away, refusing every attempt the nurses make at helping him. He doesn’t want their help anyways, he doesn’t want to be in the hospital anymore, and he sure as all hell doesn’t want to be a part of some government conspiracy.

But with enough personal questions and screenings, they’re able to, a couple of weeks into the program, coax it out of him, working him up to the breaking point and the following outpouring of guilt.

Pushing him to admit things about himself he’d never had to look in the face until that hard shell he’d had to build up to protect himself from monsters of all kinds since he was just a kid dissolved away, and he was left a sobbing mess in a support group, going on and on about having chased his mother away, how he was working on chasing his little sister away.

About the way he treated his peers and the way he let others treat him. About Heather Holloway and everyone else and how he’d killed them.

Straight away they get him in to see somebody, something he doesn’t really like the sound of at first, but they say they’re willing to release him from the psych ward if he agrees to go regularly, so it’s worth a shot.

That is, until he realizes he has nowhere to go except back to his house. 5280 Cherry Lane, where Neil Hargrove, the very first monster he’d ever had to fight, would be waiting for him.

He tries to get out of it, to go back to who he was before he’d let all this stuff get to him, but it doesn’t last. He’ll bark out nasty things at the nurses and refuse to cooperate when they get to trying to evaluate his head again, but there’s no bite behind it, and he can’t keep it up.

That seemingly infinite well of hatred and pain had been drained by his time on the other side, until he just didn’t have it in him to be angry all the time anymore.

Billy tucks his tail and goes to the shrink, signs the release papers at the hospital and goes straight to that first appointment like he isn’t terrified of what will happen the minute they let him go home for the first time in forever.

Some part of him knows it’s no different than what he’d already been dealing with in intensive care, but there’s still something about being out there on his own, shooed away from what had become his sanctuary after escaping just to have some government approved doctor tell him he’s mentally unwell, that doesn’t sit right with him, and he walks out of that office even more nervous, more jittery to return than before, but he can’t avoid it forever.

The house isn’t too far from downtown where the office is, so he just walks home. He thinks of stopping at a payphone and call ahead, to let them know he’ll be coming home, but he hasn’t exactly been carrying pocket change with him, and he thinks it might be better if they’re not expecting him anyways.

It’s bitter cold outside, a dusting of snow on the ground making him walk slow over slippery sidewalks, unused to the conditions, but it’s the most fresh air he’s gotten in a long time, out in the kind of cold he can appreciate.

Over there, it was a clammy kind of cold, the type that clung to his skin and seeped into his bone, like he was under water. But this is different, the sun shining overhead taking off some of the bite, a cross wind that blew his hair back in his face and made the tip of his nose go numb.

By the time he reaches the door, he still doesn’t know exactly what he’ll say. How does one go about breaking the news to their family that they aren’t really dead?

The general idea is this: ring the doorbell, hope against hope that Neil isn’t afraid of zombies, appeal to his inner anti-government conspiracy theorist, and pray that he’ll buy it for long enough not to shoot him dead and maybe let him inside.

First step goes smoothly, and he’s ready to move on to blocking punches in the case of a kinemortophobic, but when the door is yanked open, it’s not his dad, and the rest of the plan goes out the window. It’s Max that answers, and before he has time to even process that, she wraps her arms around his torso in a hug tight enough to knock the wind out of him.

He doesn’t know what to do, this wasn’t what he’d been anticipating, so he kind of just, awkwardly pats her back and tries to ask her if he can come in, but all she does is squeeze him tighter.

Susan peers around a corner in the house, “Max, who was at the…” They lock eyes, and she trails off, a mix of relief and apprehension and maybe something like fear on her face. “Bring him inside, dear.”

Max pulls away and lets him in, wiping at stray tears with her sleeve pulled up over her hand. She waits for Billy to sit on the couch, and sits down right next to him, pressing into his side. “Where were you? We watched you die.“

“Wasn't me.” He eyes Susan, trying to communicate to Max that this was top secret, don’t tell your step-mom immediately after leaving a government facility information, but Susan chimes in.

“She told me everything. After what happened she was too upset to remember her agreement. We both signed the NDA.”

And for a second that pisses him off. Not at Max and Susan, but the agents who knew what was happening and still had the nerve to bring them in to threaten them without even bothering to mention he was still alive.

Right now that’s the part he tries to focus on. That he was still alive, and had better things to worry about than what he couldn’t change. “It was a clone. A fail safe made by the shadow in case your merry band killed me. When he died, I was trapped.”

“In the upside down?” Max’s eyes were wide as could be, the color drained from her cheeks. “But-but that almost killed Will and he was only there for like, a week.”

“Do I look like a scrawny twelve year old kid?”

“Muscles can’t protect you from toxic air, jerk.”

Susan’s looks frantic in that way she used to around Billy’s dad, who is notably not present, as she scolds, “That’s enough, Max. He’s been through a lot to get here, let’s let him ask some questions.”

It wasn’t like Billy really minded Max’s questions, he was sure he’d have quite a few himself if it was Max who had come back from the presumed grave, but he did have one of his own sitting heavy at the front of his mind. “Where’s Neil? He get his work schedule changed or something?”

“He’s gone.” Max deadpans.

At her tone, Billy feels his stomach drop, his heart stutter. “He died?”

“Heavens no. We got a divorce three months after we buried you, or what we thought was you.” Susan looks at Max tired, remorseful. “He was never the same without you.”

Things had been close to boiling over even before everything, he worried who had filled his shoes. He nods towards Max. “How bad was he?”

“Better and worse. He never laid a finger on us, but he was…”

An overdramatized shiver runs through Max as she finished her mother’s sentence, “Creepy.”

Susan nodded in agreement and explained, “So nice, so reserved, it was like we were constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“And he’s not coming back?”

“Why should he? He didn’t even tell us where he was going.” Max scoffs, missing the implication of what he asked. Seeing her still be so clueless made Billy infinitely grateful that Susan had finally given his old man the boot, even if that meant he was somewhere in the middle now.

He figures that was something he was willing to deal with if it meant Max was okay, and Neil wasn’t anywhere near her. Now he just needed to know if Susan would be expecting him to go find his dad on his own and move in with him.

He doesn’t mean to let as much tension into his voice as he does when he asks, “So what’s all this mean for me?”

“What else? You are never leaving me again, asshole.”

So it was settled, and judging from the look Susan gave him, she agreed with Max’s answer. Which was, overwhelming, to say the least.

Not that Neil had exactly been a family man, but the fact that they were willing to accept him back into their home without him around was more than Billy knew how to process just yet.

His room had already been converted into a storage space as Neil had been moving out, dragging everything that had never been unpacked in the first place out into the one space he viewed as disposable.

They thought he was dead, he couldn’t have expected them to keep his room the way he left it, and though it did sting a little when he found out half of his stuff was missing, either taken by Neil or thrown out in the process, it was soothed by Max giving him a box of all the things she knew were the most important to him, having snuck in and gone through his belongings herself.

Billy decides to let Susan keep her little storage room, it had been too drafty in there to make for a decent bedroom anyhow, so he moves into the carpeted corner of the basement, which he notices is finished now.

Before, the ceiling had been wide open, half built wooden slats coated in years of dust and cobwebs, a single exposed light bulb offering the only source of light. Now it looked like an actual room, and it made him feel something tight in his chest.

Because Neil had retiled and painted the upstairs bathroom when his first wife left him, and he had finished the basement when he thought his son had too.

Billy doesn’t know how he’s supposed to feel about his dad anymore. He’d been dreading the moment he would have to walk through the doors of his own house out of fear and hatred of that man, but learning he wasn’t even there, he almost missed him.

Almost. But then he thought about the way Susan and Max were now, so distinctly different in the comfort they exhibited in their own space, no longer having to constantly cower in fear of the overbearing head of the house, the person he’s free to be now that Neil isn’t around, and suddenly he’s not so remorseful.

Though he does catch Susan once, standing in the kitchen one morning and crying over an old photo of her and Neil.

He’s pretty sure, from the glimpse that he gets, that it’s from the first church registry photoshoot they did as the Hargrove-Mayfields, when the photographer had mindlessly said something like “now just mom and dad,” making both him and Max gag, which made Susan cry after it was over.

That night had been her first taste of the real Neil Hargrove when Billy got a beating in the parking lot. He still remembers the horrified look on her pale face as she told him it was alright when he apologized, snotty nose and bruises on his skin.

He knew the feeling was the same for her, torn between the man they needed Neil to be and the man he had actually been to them, so he pretended not to see her tears. Silently, she agreed to do the same, and ignore the way he sometimes sat in Neil’s chair with a glazed over look in his eye, or sighed and trained his gaze to the floor when he passed the family photos still hanging in the hallway.

It takes a long while for the three of them to settle. Max is a constant ball of excitement, reminding Billy so many times a day that she’s happy to have her brother back that he might just cry about it once he’s alone, and Susan and him are nervous 24/7, pinballing off one another as they try and fail to forget the ghosts of the house.

He thinks about leaving for a while, moving in somewhere all on his own, but his therapist tells him it’d only make things worse now, to lose his support system. Besides, he didn’t have a penny to his name, so it wasn’t like he had much of a choice but to just suck it up and stay with the Mayfields.

In the meantime, he gets himself a job working stock at Melvald’s. They had an open position after Mrs. Byers skipped town, and he thinks they would’ve hired just about anybody to try to get back on their feet after the now demolished mall almost put them out of business, even zombie boy 2.0. His boss is understanding enough, doesn’t say a word when he has to go into the back and have a panic attack when a grieving family member comes in.

They tell him that’s what’s best for him, getting out there and doing something, even if it’s not the something he would ideally be doing at this point in his life. It had never been his intention to stay in Hawkins after graduating, he wanted to go to college back in his home town, but he had to admit it was growing on him some, and setting up roots there was supposed to be good. Maybe that was just the fact he wasn’t allowed to leave talking though.

The guy they’re sending him to, he thinks is somewhat of a quack. His advice is shaky at best, and he treats Billy like some kid, giving him tasks and a reward system more fit for Holly Wheeler than an eighteen year old with enough trauma for the whole town.

So even though he does cooperate, does everything last thing the guy asks of him, he doesn’t particularly feel the need to go beyond that, face the deeper set issues his therapist doesn’t even know about.

Billy’s lack of cooperation makes the whole thing more complicated, gives him less that his therapist can tell him to work on, so he asks him just to talk to Susan.

They’re closer now than ever before, far beyond all the tension and avoidance and misplaced resentment, but they still don’t really talk about any more than what’s necessary. Things like, how was your day, could you help me with this, are you okay, but nothing substantial.

It should be easy, they’d been living under the same roof since he was twelve, so they should have plenty to talk about, it just never seems like the right time, though he has been thinking about it a lot, the way he treats her despite how much she’s done for him.

He doesn’t really have a plan to bring it up, he’s fully prepared to go back to another appointment the next week reporting no dice, but there’s one morning where the clock keeps ticking and the both of them are still wide awake in the living room, like a stalemate of who’ll give in to sleep first.

They both look like they need it, Susan’s hair is frazzled, the bags under her eyes as dark as the coffee she drinks. Billy knows he’s not looking so hot either. He doesn’t remember the last time he could go to sleep without his subconscious taking him back to that place, so he doesn’t even try anymore, just waits until he gets so exhausted he’ll pass out into a dreamless sleep.

He doesn’t know what it is that compels him to say anything, because it’s not awkward or even tense silence really, but he does, his tired voice cutting into the quiet.

“I dunno how to make it up to you.” He’s looking down at his hands, at the barely there scars that still litter the skin there. He thinks for a moment about how much worse it could’ve been, before looking to her. “I mean, I’d get it, if you didn’t want me around.”

Susan looks back at him, not having expected him to say anything really, let alone something so heavy. “What’s this about, Billy?”

“M’not even your kid, Sus. I just- I dunno. Why’d you let me back in?”

She looks baffled. “Should I not have?”

“I’m an adult. don’t need to be moochin’ off my ex-stepmom.” He feels like he had the very first time he ever met her, scared to look her in the eyes, only this time for an entirely different reason. “M’not your burden to carry.”

“Honey, you’re not mooching. You go to work, you help around the house, you help me with Max. That’s more than I could ask for.” She hesitates, unsure of how wide his boundaries are, then adds, “And, maybe you aren’t my son by any stretch of the imagination, but you will always be Max’s brother.”

He had been expecting something about his dad, always had some suspicion that he’d forced a dependent on Susan after he left, but the total opposite seems to be true, and that makes a lump rise in his throat.

In the absence of a response, Susan continues, “If there was one thing you could do for me though, I know you lie to your therapist. Don’t.”

He doesn’t have it in him to fight it, has enough sense about him to know she’s right. All he can manage is a breathless, “Okay.”

She pats him on the shoulder gentle as can be, and stands up from the couch. He doesn’t look up as she retreats to her bedroom, afraid the tears that had welled up in his eyes would spill over if he did.

When he hears her door close softly is when he lets the tears fall. It’s still a lot for him, to have someone be so casual in looking out for him in that way he still hadn’t quite grasped was possible.

The very next day Billy fesses up, and to his surprise, they don’t immediately cart him off when they hear he’s been faking. That had been his biggest fear, with the power that these people held. They’d threatened to lock him up if he ever ran his mouth, so he didn’t know what to expect.

He did feel stupid though, opening the damn for the same guy who gave him stickers for taking his meds about all the things he’d bottled up. But it works to get him into a better program than what they had him doing before, and he realized he’d had it backwards.

The fear of what they were going to do to him kept them from doing anything at all, and it gave Billy a deep sense of relief, that he’d finally broken free of that.

So instead of being assigned things like brushing his teeth or going outside for five minutes a day, which was decent advice, but completely irrelevant to what he needed, now his therapist had started telling him things like throwing out the razor blade he’d been saving for a rainy day, dumping the last of the nonprescription pills he kept in his night stand.

The more he did, the more complicated they got, until he was told that, in exchange for completing his tasks, he would only have to visit the office once or twice a week instead of every day. His last assignment before that could happen was to make amends with his past.

The most obvious thing the doc wanted him to do was forgive his parents, but Billy didn’t know where to even begin on that one, or really, if he had or hadn’t already done as much, so he went with the other way first, apologizing to everyone he had, or felt he had hurt.

He started at the cemetery. Max came with him and held his hand as he broke down graveside, begging his repentance for all the people who’d died last July. Talking to their survivors was strictly out of the question, they still thought he was the hero that tried to save as many as he could and was killed in action, not the one responsible.

That had been the story spread it the public by the people who had known all along he wasn’t really dead, monitoring his activity on the other side while they turned murderer into martyr. The more time he spent in the shrink's office, the less sure he was that even he knew what side he was on.

Apologizing to the living proves to be easier. He starts with the Sinclair kid at one of the weekly nerd meetings Max holds at their house, now that it’s safe, pulling him aside for a few to say his piece, which, judging from his reaction, Max had already done most of the heavy lifting for him.

When they came back he got fixed with a glare from the unfamiliar little girl that was always around these days, and he realized he and Lucas had that in common, a weapon of a little sister.

Next came minor inconveniences, people like Tommy who he used as a punching bag just because they were friends. Most of them blew the whole thing off, they were in high school when it happened, didn’t understand the moral dilemma of it all, and everyone but maybe one kid who he might’ve punched a little too hard when a fight broke out after football practice forgave him.

Last on his list, the one person standing in the way of what was supposedly the next step of his healing process, was Harrington.

Steve’d had his own fall from grace, and Billy fell much, much harder than he had, so it could be the easiest apology he has to do, but there were reasons it might be the hardest too. He didn’t think he deserved forgiveness for the way he’d treated Steve, which he’d never even apologized for in the first place, and it seemed like a cheap shot to be doing it now, more than a whole year after beating his face in.

He tracks him down at work, rifling through shelves lined with tapes he wasn’t interested in until he had the guts to approach the counter and ask Steve to follow him outside. The bastard doesn’t even look suspicious, doesn’t hesitate in giving him his warmest smile and inviting him behind the counter instead with a, “What’s on your mind, man?

It should be awkward, uncomfortable at the very least, they're having a conversation that should be happening anywhere but in two folding chairs behind the counter at Family Video, and yet, Billy feels none of that unpleasantry, just a conviviality he’d never expect to have with Steve Harrington, of all people. T the one apology he’d expected to be turned down is accepted with a simple, “It’s okay, Billy.”

That’s what made him different. He wasn’t like Tommy, who’d told him to forget anything ever happened, or Susan, who was adamant that it wasn’t his fault; Steve actually forgave him without ignoring what he did, and that, that was what this was about.

He finds himself frequenting the video store on his off days, trying to make friends with the one person other than Max he felt like he could trust, who trusted him, and from there it turned to swinging by Steve’s place after work, going out on the weekends together, falling head over heels in love.

That last part Billy tries to deny, tries to rationalize that maybe he’s just clinging to something constant after so long in isolation, but the longer he spends around Steve, the more he knows there’s no way around it. Billy was so gone for him and his stupid hair and his stupid laugh and his stupid little family video vest.

There’s a while where he tries to distance himself a little, feeling guilty about crushing on the only person to extend the olive branch back after he got out, but then Steve starts showing up at his door, and Max would hide a guilty smile behind her hand.

Once summer hits, just a few short weeks shy of the anniversary of when the shadow got Billy, Susan and Max get more and more careful around him, like they don’t want to set him off, and he gets that. Sometimes Max or one of her little friends would mention something that had happened last July, a sort of ‘hey, remember when we,’ and he would get a little, off.

Never violent, never cruel, never the Billy he had been before, just, reserved.

He thinks they’re afraid he’s going to snap. That they’ve gotten the wrong impression from all this recovery stuff. The very last thing he wants is for Max to think just he’s a shmooze, faking being better to get on her good side.

But they’re not. They’re just want to give him his space, after everything, and he knows he’s got to get out of his head about it.

For now though, when he’s afraid he might break his promise, he takes off, but it depends on what kind of day it is where he’ll go. Sometimes it’s the pool, at the picnic table on the other side of the fence, or to the cemetery again, making the rounds between all of the markers, the ones he put there, or even to visit the totaled Camaro, sold to a junker and kept in the corner of some private property, his blood still on the seats.

Once, he’d made the mistake of going to the steelworks, just to sit on a railroad tie outside of the place for hours, having a panic attack alone as he tried and failed to forget bad memories, bruised ribs, falling fast, losing control.

None of those were particularly healthy places for him to be spending his free time, so per therapist recommendation, he starts finding better spots to hang out, places that weren’t just a way to retraumatize himself.

The problem is that in Hawkins, there isn’t anywhere really to go unless he wanted to spend all day in a dingy old diner or in half abandoned shops downtown. He liked taking Max to the drive-in on the outskirts, but the point is he needs somewhere to go away from his step-family.

When Steve finds out about his new assignment, the rides to and from work and quick drop ins just to say hello turn into days off spent at the quarry together, nights spent in front of Steve’s huge TV set.

One day after a double shift at Melvald’s, they end up out back by the pool. The air conditioning in Steve’s old house was not the best when it came to humidity, and Billy doesn’t like to be too hot. Something about the feeling is too familiar, too much like being on the floor of the sauna, sweating bullets and pleading for his life.

Heat is also one of the many things that triggers coughing fits, making him hack up his lungs from the months he spent without clean air to breath, so Steve’s ushering him outside to dip their feet in the pool and get out of the stuffy old house before he gets sick.

The smell of chlorine wading off of the pool isn’t all that much better. The strong chemicals make his nose and his throat and his whole chest burn like fire. Just the smell of it is enough that he has to try to remember that that hasn't been his reality for almost a year now, that he isn’t in the storage room at the pool downing bottles of poison.

It doesn’t bother him so much though, because the bad stuff, that’s all in the past now, isn’t it?

He tries instead to focus on the good things, on the breeze that they do get in the beating down sun and the way it carries cool air off the surface of the pool, offering more relief from the heat than they could get inside Steve’s inferno of a mansion, and on feeling the sunshine warming his skin again, the cold water and the smooth liner against his calves submerged in the pool. He even tries to focus on Steve, leaning all his weight back on his hands outstretched behind him, sitting so close to Billy their knees bump in the water every time Steve kicks his legs out.

And quite frankly, it’s not particularly hard, paying attention Steve with the way he’s practically glowing in the summer sun. As much as winter was his season, his forever pale skin and how he could rock a sweater didn’t even hold a candle to the way he looks now.

Maybe he is wearing preppy khaki shorts and a sun visor, but the way his back freckles in the summer, the skin on his cheeks and his shoulders flushing from the heat, his long hair sticking to the back of his neck with sweat, it’s a sight that makes Billy's heart pitta-pat.

Still, as nice of a view as Steve makes for, nothing can distract him from the nagging feeling that has Billy on edge. That sense that his flesh will start burning if he stays out here too long, that he’ll lose control of his body. That he’ll hurt Steve.

If Steve’s old nail bat propped against the pool shed, or their newer method of self defense, a machete from the hardware store purchased after Billy's last panic attack, hidden underneath of the chairs, offer any indication, the feeling may be mutual.

Despite the aviators perched on Billy’s nose, Steve must notice that distant look in his eye, because he offers Billy a quaint smile and, using one hand to stand up, he announces, “Be right back, gonna go get us some stuff.”

Billy nods and vaguely wonders what ‘some stuff’ means before turning his attention back to his surroundings. Back to following his therapists advice and watching the ripples in the pristinely kept water, listening to the rustle of untrimmed grass when a breeze comes through, bumble bees in the neighbors yard, anything at all that might stop his mind from wandering.

He’s almost feeling grounded again when he feels a chill run down the back of his neck. Goose pimples fan out across his skin, a deep seated cold to contrast the heat. He knows the feeling well, he’d gone through six grueling months using it as his only advantage over the monsters out to get him.

Some rational part of his mind tells him it’s just a bead of sweat rolling down his back, a loose strand of hair from the messy bun Max had put in his hair that morning brushing against his skin, the fact that his legs are still submerged in the 70 degree water, but he isn’t feeling rational after that, and he feels panic setting in again.

He wants to go run and tell Steve, wants to grab something to defend himself, but he can’t, he’s just, frozen to the spot.

The feeling is gone as quickly as it came, but everything else feels different now.

The pool water feels sticky and warm, almost like it’s sucking him in. The cement surrounding it feels rougher against his palms, and so hot to the touch. He’s scared to even blink, afraid that on the other side of that calm darkness, he’s in that hell again, and this has all been some delusion.

There’s a bang from behind him, and he’s on his feet, heart racing a thousand miles a minute. He’s just short of reaching for the machete under the chair when he notices it’s just Steve.

He’s standing by the sliding door, having pushed it open with his knee so far that the glass hit off the other door, and balancing way too much. Feeling like his legs are going to give out from under him and bringing one hand absently to his chest, Billy breathes out, “Damn it, Harrington.”

“Sorry.” There's a sheepish smile on his face, which has gone pinker than even the sunburn with a hint of embarrassment. He has a bulky radio balanced on his hip, a glass of something in each hand, and a deck of cards tucked under his chin. “A little help?”

Hurrying up the steps, Billy takes the radio before Steve can drop it and smash it to bits on the concrete. Steve takes the opportunity to explain himself, “I made lemonade, my gramma's recipe, and I thought we could use something to do.”

Maybe it’s reckless, maybe it’s the exact opposite of what he should do, but he puts the radio on the table and lets Steve distract him from that creeping feeling with mundanities.

It’s almost funny, how getting out of the house for him used to mean partying and sneaking out to wreak drunken havoc on the town. Now it meant sipping lemonade and playing double solitaire and go-fish with the fallen King poolside, like he was in some retirement community or something.

The only thing that kept him from feeling too ridiculous was the radio, which was playing a decent selection of rock music, not too much of the glitzy stuff he pretended not to like or the poppy stuff Steve definitely did.

Once the sun went down, the smallest bit of orange and pink sky disappearing behind the thick trees, and all the breeze had died out, they moved away from the pool's edge to the plastic chairs, pushing two together and sitting cross legged so they were facing one another. The night air was thick with the smell of a burning citronella candle and chlorine.

The cards had been long ago abandoned, both of them favoring just being in each other’s company, swapping stories of how bad work had sucked that day, and things like plans for the week. Billy sort of just likes having an excuse to look at Steve all night.

It’s more calm than Billy’s had in a long while since coming back, and he almost get to appreciate it before the chill comes back, this time accompanied by the distant rustling of leaves.

He could’ve pretended it was just a critter moving around or the trees settling, but then they hear the unmistakable sound of a monster's trill further out in the woods, and there’s no longer any doubt about it.

Steve freezes, looks to Billy with eyes as wide as saucers and, slowly as can be, reaches blindly behind himself until his hand closes around the base of the wooden bat, which had been moved closer as night fell.

He rises to his feet, stopping cold when the chair creaks as his weight lifts off it, trying to make as little noise as possible, an action mostly pointless with the radio still on. It’s too late anyways, they’d already been seen. Billy could feel it.

“Stay here. I’m just going to check it out.”

“No way, out of the two of us, I’m the only one who’s ever killed one of those things.” Steve looks like he wants to argue, wants to be noble and brave like he has to be for everyone else, so Billy tells him sternly, “I’m coming with you.”

And maybe Steve doesn’t refuse his help, but he isn’t looking at Billy either. His gaze, empty and exhausted, is trained on the trees, searching for signs of the monsters they’re both used to handling on their own. He leans into Billy’s side as they start into the woods, and he can feel him shaking.

The leaves and twigs all along the ground that crunch under their tennis shoes as they move deeper into the woods sound impossibly loud, drawing enough attention to their location that this was guaranteed not to be a surprise attack.

Billy would’ve preferred it that way, they were easier to kill if they weren’t expecting a fight, but he supposed he should just be grateful that they’d found them before they could make their way into Steve’s backyard and take them by surprise.

They reach a clearing and he gets a dreadful feeling like his entire body has been dipped in ice water, and he knows they're right in the middle of a swarm. Instinctively, he puts his arm out across Steve’s chest. “Stop.”

“What?” Billy doesn’t respond, but as Steve’s eyes adjust, he notices them too. About six or seven demodogs, behind trees and bushes, hiding from their prey. He whispers harshly right into Billy’s ear, “Do you think they see us?”

“No shit.”

“Then what the hell are they doing?”

“Waiting for their chance. But we’re not gonna give it to them.” He digs the heels of his Chuck’s into the dirt, grip tightening on the machete. He glances over at Steve and tries not to think too hard about the apprehension written across his features, “You ready for a fight?”

Steve pales, like he was never expecting it to get that far, but they were about thirty feet, maybe further, into the woods already, they wouldn’t be able to book it back to Steve’s house in enough time. The damn things were much too fast. He swallows hard, whispers, “How do I kill one?”

“Aim for the base of its skull. Never let it get your weapon in its mouth. Always pay attention to your surroundings.” His voice is quiet, but stern, trying not to let any fear slip into his tone that might make the other boy more afraid. He was the experienced one, if he were to let it show that he was scared, Steve might go running for the hills. “And Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“Plant your goddamned feet.” Steve nods, furrows his brows and tries to force a breathy chuckle at the call back, but he barely manages a huff, and Billy can tell he’s terrified.

They don’t have time to think about it though, in the middle of a swarm he can’t let him dwell on it for too long, so he turns his attention off of Steve, and whistles, shouts “Hey, assholes! Come and get us!”

There’s a breathless second where the dogs don’t move an inch, he can tell Steve is about to say something that could’ve gotten the both of them killed so he cuts him off, “Get ready, Harrington.” One of the demodogs, he’s guessing the leader of the freakish pack based on the sheer size of it, shrieks, the cue for the others to start charging them.

These ones are fast, probably faster than even he’s used to, and he doesn’t like how close the first one gets to Steve before he brings his bat down it, so he pulls him closer by the back of his shirt, presses their backs together so there’s less room for a surprise.

The big one comes after Billy, the bigger threat of the two. The sense works as a two way street, if he can tell where they are, they can tell where he is, and they don’t like that.

It only takes him a few swings to get it stumbling, two more to finish it off, but in the time it takes him to kill the one, he loses track of where Steve is. Frantically he looks around, taking note of the location of the dogs, until he finds him in the dark a few feet off from where he is, swinging his bat at the runt over and over, making sure it was good and dead.

And Billy would be impressed, except for there was another dog charging him, just a few seconds off from closing its teeth around Steve’s arm on the backswing. It’s too close for him to try to kill it, so he kicks it, making it hiss and tumble across the muddy ground.

Steve looks over at him, blood spattered on his face and fear in his eyes. Billy wishes he could stop and appreciate the close call, but it’ll come back, and there’s another charging from the other side, so he settles for shouting, “Just remember what I told you and you’ll be alright!”

With the biggest out of the way it’s easy pickings, Billy takes out the next one that tries him quick, but another catches him off guard, clamps it’s teeth down hard on the machete, lodging it in its mouth. It gets cut bad, but not enough to really do much damage to it. If he lets go, he’s defenseless, if he doesn’t, he’s going to lose his arm.

That’s a call he’s almost willing to make, wrenching his weapon free at the risk of getting himself bit, but he doesn’t have to, because Steve takes it for him, running over from somewhere and bringing the bat down hard on the back of its head.

It would be too distracting to thank him, so he just nods his way and turns back to the last two dogs still alive, Steve taking the one that was still hiding and leaving the other for him.

At this point, he’s feeling pretty confident, one dog on its own is nothing much to worry about, and it seems it knows it too, because it stops a few feet off, daring him to come at it first. He takes his own advice and plants his feet in the dirt, daring it right back.

It charges him, and he stabs it straight through its head. It was a weak one, a last line of defense they didn’t expect to need, and it hisses out it’s final breath after only one go.

Billy hears the one Steve went after scampering off too, judging from the uneven drag of its weight across the forest floor, hurt badly enough it won’t last long.

He tries to feel for any others, but they don’t travel in packs that big, not without an order to follow. He rolls his shoulders and relaxes his stance, but he doesn’t dare dream of letting go of the machete yet. Even as it drips sticky slime and gore in thick drops onto the ground, even if it feels so heavy in his hands, also splattered with gooey blood.

There’s a moment of disturbing calm, the bodies of maimed demodogs scattered all around them as Billy tries to remind himself that they’re in his world this time, instead of him in theirs. He closes his eyes to shut out the panic and just listens.

Listens for gentle reminders that he’s in the real world. The sound of the katydids in the trees. A stray breeze rustling the leaves, dry from the relentless heat. The distant scratch of tires on pavement. Softly bubbling water from the jets in Steve’s pool.

He notices that the radio is still going, making the whole thing feel somehow more eerie, as if interdimensional monsters lurking in the neighborhood wasn’t bad enough on its own. Like when a car goes off the road, still playing a reckless teenager's final anthem. Billy wonders what song he’d like to be playing when he died. Maybe some Misfits.

But he isn’t dead, not yet anyhow, and that’s not the music that’s drifting out to where he’s still standing stock still in the woods, waiting for reality to hit him.

REO Speedwagon with Can’t Fight This Feeling carries softly out to their location, probably one of the lamest songs to fight monsters to if you were to ask Billy.

I can't fight this feeling any longer

And yet I'm still afraid to let it flow

What started out as friendship has grown stronger

I only wish I had the strength to let it show

Though he’s got to admit, it’s not a horrible song for this thing he has going with Steve. After that close call of the dogs stalking so close to his house, Billy doesn’t think he has it in him to let the chance to bring it up with Steve slide through his fingers again. He’d never forgive himself.

I tell myself that I can't hold out forever

I said there is no reason for my fear

“Harrington.” When he opens his eyes again Steve isn’t there, and for a second he’s got to fear the worst. To wonder, if the dogs aren’t the only thing he’ll find dead. “Steve?”

'Cause I feel so secure when we're together

You give my life direction, you make everything so clear

“M’here, Bill.” He's leaning against a tree, his bat still held close at his side, looking winded, but alright, from what Billy can tell at least. “Just needed to, to catch my breath.”

And even as I wander, I'm keeping you in sight

You're a candle in the window on a cold, dark winter's night

And I'm getting closer than I ever thought I might

“You scared me, asshole.” Billy gathers his courage, rides the wave of adrenaline to take a step closer, until he’s hovering right in front of him, dangerously close, to say, “Listen Steve, there's something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and after this I just, I can't fight it anymore.”

He gets the memo, half-lidded eyes focusing on Billys lips, making him flick his tongue across them on instinct, tasting remnants of strawberry chapstick and lemonade dulled by the scent of copper. “Then don't fight it.”

And I can't fight this feeling anymore

I've forgotten what I started fighting for

It's time to bring this ship into the shore

And throw away the oars, forever

Their weapons are tossed to the ground before Billy closes the small gap that was left between them, ignoring all the muck and goo and blood splattered on their clothes and their skin to cup the side of Steve’s face, kiss him as soft and as sweet as he knows how after a fight like that.

'Cause I can't fight this feeling anymore

I've forgotten what I started fighting for

And if I have to crawl upon the floor, come crashing through your door

Baby, I can't fight this feeling anymore

Steve pulls away too soon, a soft gasp escaping his lips as he leans forward, forcing his weight onto Billy. The magic of the moment comes crashing down, when he notices how dreadfully pale Steve is, even in the darkness of the woods, untouched by street lamps or moon light.

“What’s wrong with you?”

Through gritted teeth, he mumbles into Billy’s shirt, “I think one got me.”

“Jesus, you're telling me this now?” He helps him lean back against the tree again, feeling he has the right to fret over him after a first kiss. “Where at?”

“My leg.” He says it so casual, Billy’s expecting nothing more than a nick, a last attempt at a scratch from a dying dog, but it’s bad.

Skin and muscle are torn through in a gash probably five inches long on Steve’s leg, deep enough he swears he can almost see bone. It’s already bruised dark, deep purple and black under all the blood, and bent just a little, like the bone had been cracked, but not quite broken.

Billy has to fight the urge to wince, to gag, to let any sort of panic over the severity of the bite show, because he knows Steve hasn’t seen it yet, that he’s maybe even in shock right now. The moment he let it show how bad he thought it was, Steve could pass out on him. Or worse.

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“Thought we were having a moment.”

“Well I’d like to have at least a few more, if you wouldn’t mind.” He sighs, but he drops the attitude. Stressed as he may be, Steve needs him level headed right now. “Can you walk?”

“Sure, yeah.” Something about the way his voice sounds like he’s struggling for air makes Billy not believe him, but he offers him his arm to let him test his weight anyways. It doesn’t go well, “Son of a mother bitch!”

“Yeah, I’m gonna take that as a no.” Billy figures it’d be better just to come back for their weapons later than to wait around for a second attack with an injured Steve, or to get sliced to ribbons carrying them and Steve back to the house. Because that’s what he’s going to have to do, from the looks of it.

He bends down and lets Steve wrap his arms loosely around the back of his neck, and hooks his hands under his knees to lift him. With his leg off the ground, he’s guessing Steve must catch a glimpse of how badly it’s torn up, because he throws his head back and mutters an “Oh shit.” to the stars.

Billy wishes his voice sounded more certain when he assures him, “You’ll be alright, just don’t look at it.”

There’s blood dripping from Steve’s leg on the grass, all on the concrete steps from the backyard that lead into Steve’s house and then the hardwood floors. Billy tries not to think about how they’re leaving behind a trail that would lead the monster straight to them.

They’d killed the dogs though, so he tries his damndest to believe that his biggest worry right now would be not being able to get the stains out before Mr. and Mrs. Harrington got back.

“Where do you keep the first aid around here?”

“Upstairs bathroom, third door on the right.”

Billy frowns. Trying to get him up the stairs was going to be awkward, the space between the wall and the banister so narrow, and Steve’s legs so long. The only way he can keep from dragging his wound against anything, which he’s almost positive would kill Steve at this point, is to turn sideways.

It feels like it takes forever to get up the steps and walk down the upstairs hallway, dodging side tables and potted plants until they reach the bathroom.

Even once they get there, Billy winces, taking in the tall, but thin door frame. “M’not fitting through here with you, Stevie. Gonna have to let you down.”

“Okay.” His jaw tightens, like he knows it’s gonna be hell to put pressure back on his leg, and Billy thinks about how he’d rather knock out the entire wall than have to watch Steve hurt himself.

But slowly, with Billy’s help, he gets his good foot back on the ground, and his arms unwrap themselves from the back of his neck. Billy keeps one hand holding tight on his hip, to keep him from toppling over while standing on one leg.

“Let me go in first, okay?” Turning around so they’re facing each other, he gives Steve both of his hands and kicks the half opened door the rest of they way open to reveal the dark bathroom behind him. He gets Steve to use the doorframe as a brace long enough that he can turn the light on, then gives him his hand again.

Steve takes the first step, hopping on one foot and making barely any progress. A steely look crosses his face, like he’s already decided what he’s about to do, and he lets his other foot down to the ground.

“That’s it, Stevie, just like that,” Billy mutters little encouragements under his breath, tries anything to keep Steve from thinking about walking on a broken leg. “Keep it coming, baby, just a few more steps.”

The closest thing to the door is a double tiered wooden shelf with magazines and towels on it, so Billy pushes the towels onto the floor with one hand and helps Steve sit down on it with the other.

Maybe it’s the wallpaper, but his complexion looks ghastly, all green and grey where he should be flushed and lively. Before he starts getting everything together, Billy puts his hand on Steve’s shoulder. “You good?”

It was a stupid question, Steve scoffs and says, his voice strained, “No.”

“At least you’re honest.”

Steve groans and stares up at the ceiling, ignoring his leg and the puddle of blood spreading on the tiled floor. “Shouldn’t I be at the hospital right now?”

“Normally, I would say yes,” Billy crouches down by the sink, digging in the cabinets underneath it for the first aid and a rag, “But closest hospital to us is the general hospital, and they’re not going to be thinking about demodog infections. They’ll put a cast on this thing and kill you.”

“Oh.” A poor choice of words, because Steve whispers, “I’m not gonna die, am I?”

“Not if you let me take care of you.”

He soaks through three wash rags with blood before the bleeding slows down enough that Billy can clean it, and slowly the shocked state of mind he was in starts to wear off. At least, judging from the way he’s gripping the edge of the shelf he’s sitting on so hard his knuckles turn white, it’s starting to hurt him pretty bad.

But Steve stays agonizingly quiet as Billy works anyways, hardly even wincing, despite the obvious amount of pain he’s in. Billy clicks his tongue, “I know you’re holding back on me, Steve.”

“You’re one to talk.” He’s defensive, borderline hysterical. “Mister pretending to be tough just because you’ve been through this once.”

“Next time I’ll just let the dogs get you, then.”

Ignoring Billy's rudeness, Steve mutters, “It just hurts so fucking bad.” A tear he’d been trying to hold back slips past, running a track through the dirt and blood that had gotten on his face.

“I’ll get some pain meds in you in a minute, just need you to be alert for this.” 

He swallows thickly, like he’s scared. “Ready for what?”

“Well, you’re gonna need stitches.” 

“Do you even know how?” 

He didn’t. The most he’d ever sewn was a tiny hole in a jacket sleeve, but he didn’t feel it wise to tell him that. “I think it’s pretty self-explanatory.” 

“No way. Absolutely not.” Steve grabs his hand tight to emphasize his point. “You are not coming anywhere near me with a needle.” 

“Look, the alternative is it gets infected and you lose the leg. Or, you know, since nobody has ever survived a bite, your life.” He’s not trying to be snappy, but the more blood Steve loses, the more nervous he’s getting about wasting time arguing.

“Man, could you cut back on being an asshole for like, five minutes.” Billy rolls his eyes and tries to reach for Steve’s leg again, but he pulls away from his touch, blinking real slow like he made himself dizzy or he’s getting sick, before he tacks onto the end, “I’m wounded.” 

“I know, I'm just trying to help you, Stevie. Please.” 

Sighing and running his fingers through his hair, he puffs his cheeks out with a sigh and gives in with Billy’s pleading. “Whatever, just, get it over with quick.” 

He goes back to not saying anything, biting his tongue while Billy tries to do a decent patch up. It looks somehow even gnarlier than before, with crooked and sloppy sutures, but it stops the bleeding for long enough that Billy can wrap it as tight as he can with some gauze and an ace bandage.

He sits back on the balls of his feet, and takes note of how they were definitely going to have to go to the government hospital where he’d been treated in the morning. Steve’s quiet so he asks, “Steve?” 

“M’good.” He assures halfheartedly, leaning forward to hold his head in his hands. “Doin’ just peachy fucking keen.” 

They stay upstairs, Billy completely unwilling to try to get Steve back down to the main living room on a busted leg. He'd have to worry about showering and getting the stains that’re all over the Harrington’s floors off later, right now he was just worried about making sure Steve made it through. 

There’s a second living room, a foyer, Steve calls it, at the end of the hall, so he takes him in there, lets him sprawl out on the couch while he goes to get a phone and something for Steve to take from the first floor. 

He snatches up the rotary off the coffee table, and goes digging in the medicine cabinet for pain killers. Near the back is a bottle of Vicodin, thank god for Mrs. Harrington’s many ailments and her equally surplus supply of pain pills. 

Before making his way back up to Steve, he remembers to make sure to lock the sliding doors. Not that it would do much to really stop a demodog, but it’s the thought that counts. He decides to tack a blanket up to block the glass too, in hopes that it might make their scent at least a little harder to track. 

Steve is hesitant to take his mother’s prescription, afraid of the side effects, but then he tries to drag his leg up from the floor to prop it on the coffee table so he can get more comfortable, and his mind changes right quick. He almost convinces Billy to let him take more.

Next is letting somebody know. Part of him wishes they could just sweep this whole thing under the rug and forget it, but this was a small town. The woods behind Steve’s house stretched all the way to the now empty Byers’ residence, to the Wheeler's, and from there to Hop’s cabin. 

Keeping this a secret would cost lives, that he could be sure of. One measly pack of demodogs weak enough to be taken out by the two of them was guaranteed not to be the last. This was the start of another battle, and they needed as many people as possible to be ready for it.

He sits down with the phone next to Steve on his own cushion, careful not to jostle the couch too much. “Do you know Hop’s number?” 

“Just give it here.” 

Billy watches Steve dial the number, not a fan of how instinctual an action it seems to be, and as he barely gets a word in edgewise over Hopper on the other end of the line. When he get the chance to breaks the news, the call is over almost immediately, Hop getting ready to warn everyone else. He hangs up with tears in his eyes and a defeated posture. 

The instant the phone is discarded on the side table, Steve tells him, his voice thick with tears and exhaustion and pain, “I don’t wanna do this again, Bill.” He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes and shakes his head. “Just, last time, we were so close to losing Hopper, losing you, and I just- I can’t do it.”

“Hey. Look at me, Steve. It's not gonna be like last time. You got me now.” Steve does look over at him, his eyes wide, but he only cries harder. 

Not knowing what else to do, Billy tosses an arm over his shoulder and pulls him close, and Steve leans into his touch, but there’s a deep frown on his face. Billy thinks his heart breaks clean in two as he insists, in a voice so worn, so dejected, “That’s just one more thing for me to lose.” 

“I say it’s one more person looking out for you.” His heart fluttering in his chest, he prays the kiss in the woods wasn’t a heat of the moment thing, and presses another to the side of Steve’s head. 

As best he can with his leg up on the coffee table, Steve settles up against Billy's side, sighing heavy through his nose. 

Long enough passes that he thinks Steve’s fallen asleep, the pain meds would hopefully knock him out soon, but then he breaks the silence with a quiet, so gentle Billy almost doesn’t hear it, “Will you?”

“Will I what?” 

“Look out for me?” The way he says it, it’s almost like he’s embarrassed to ask, so unable to believe that somebody would care about him instead of the other way around. 

“‘Course.” Billy smiles despite the way seeing Steve so broken makes him feel, lets the fingers on one hand trail lazily up and down Steve’s arm in a way he hopes is comforting. “Even as I wander, I'm keeping you in sight, remember?” 

Steve rolls his eyes, but he presses himself somehow even closer to Billy and sighs a little laugh, sniffling. “God, you're never gonna let that go, are you?” 

“Hey, I’d rather remember our first kiss as being to REO Speedwagon, which is super lame by the way, than with you bleeding out in the woods, so.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” Steve sits up a little straighter so he can look him in the face. There’s still some sadness in his expression, but there’s a hint of a smile too, and Billy will take that as a win any day. Teasingly, Steve says, “Maybe you’ll like the second one better.”

“We’ll just have to see won’t we?” He leans in, but it’s Steve who initiates the kiss this time, leading with more heat behind it than before. He tangles his hands in Billy's hair, deepening the kiss with the press of his tongue against Billy’s. 

The angle isn’t very comfortable, a crook forming in Steve’s neck to reach Billy, and they pull apart for a breath. Face flushed beet red, Steve whispers, “Hey, Billy?” 

Billy hums in response, too flustered to get his words in order, “Hm?” 

“REO Speedwagon isn’t that bad.” 

[iamtheprotagoneil]

im sure youve talked about this before but the fact that the protagonist had to say goodbye to neil twice - one we see in the movie, and the other in the future when he sends him back for the sator mission - AND the fact that when he sends neil to help the protagonist in the past the future!protagonist KNOWS he is essentially sending neil to his death....... it is all just very ouch

yeah, i probably have mentioned it once or twice, but you know what i haven’t talked about? the fact that maybe, the goodbye they got in the movie was the only one.

listen, i’ve talked lots about how sad the protagonist (in the future) would be when he had to send neil on this mission that would be his last. i’ve also talked lots about how sad neil would be to leave the protagonist behind to go to the past and save the world (and the protagonist’s life in the process). however, i don’t think i’ve ever talked about how, perhaps, they never got to do that. i’ve never talked about how, maybe, the protagonist never got to send neil away, and neil never got to say goodbye before he had to leave for the past.

So, let’s consider: The Protagonist died before it was time to send Neil away for the Sator mission.

It’s not too out of the left field, right? They lead a very dangerous life. Death was always around the corner, just standing in the shadow, waiting for them to make a mistake – for their luck to finally run out – so it could come out and pounce. And what if it did, when it was still much too soon?

Perhaps, it went down like this: in a flash, so fast that none of them had the time to react. One moment The Protagonist was there, and the next, in just a blink of an eye, he was on the ground, unmoving. Perhaps, it was a gunshot, a sharp/blunt object struck just at the right angle, that delivered the fatal blow and brought him down quick.

Neil was on him in an instant, abandoning his position in order to run over to his Protagonist. Neil tried shake him awake but he was unresponsive; the mask on his face – covered in dust and blood – did a very good job of obscuring his features. Neil couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or not. Neil kept calling his name, kept trying to rouse him to consciousness but nothing happened.

Still, they were in an active battle field. A teammate pulled Neil up by the arm, practically dragging him away from The Protagonist’s body and into the escape vehicle. Neil sat where he was placed in the backseat, feeling so numb and detached from the situation that he thought it might have been a dream. It must have been a dream, because this couldn’t be happening. The Protagonist couldn’t be gone. He was the mastermind, after all; the one who held all the information about the past, the present, the future. He couldn’t just be gone because—Neil just couldn’t wrap his head around it.

Back at the base, Neil got angry. He started going off at the person who had pulled him away, screaming about how could they just leave their teammate behind like that. They would let him, seeing the desperation behind Neil’s eyes. They’ve all heard the rumors about The Protagonist and Neil – didn’t need confirmation to know it was true because they witnessed it pretty much every day – so they knew what he was going through.

Finally, Neil’s anger ran dry. He choked, came to a sudden standstill as the gravity of situation struck him once again, no way to deny it. They wouldn’t be able to help him if they brought him back, and they needed to get out quick. They couldn’t risk the rest of the team for just one person. Neil knew all this, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.

He apologized to the teammate, who nodded and told him to go home and get some rest. Neil obeyed, grateful for the instructions because everything was so chaotic right now, in his mind, he wouldn’t have known what to do if left to his own devices. So Neil left, took their his car and returned home, the place he shared used to share with The Protagonist.

It was empty, expectedly, when he walked through the door, and the dread in his stomach grew, grew, and grew with all the intentions to eat him alive. He laid himself down the bed, unable to hold back tears because fuck, he just witnessed the love of his life died in front of him. He’d just seen it; it was all too real and not at the same time. He ran the scene back in mind, seeing himself in third person and thought of it as a stimulation only – something that he could return to and change. But, what’s happened, happened. It would always go down like that, Neil knew this. Neil had lived this life for so many years now, it was ingrained in his brain, but god, it was still such a painful truth to swallow.

 Or, maybe, it went like this: Neil got to The Protagonist just as the wound was inflicted, catching him on the way down. The Protagonist looked up at Neil, trying to come up with words but the wound took all of his breath away and Neil wept, begged for him to stay, don’t go just yet, they could get help, please. (You’re going to die in your best friend’s arms...)

 Or, possibly, it went like this: They managed to get The Protagonist back to home base. The wound wasn’t a fatal blow, and there might be a chance. Neil got to him just in time to stop the open wound from bleeding, pressing his hand to it as he barked orders for his team to call in the cavalry.

They got out of there, but barely, with The Protagonist on a stretcher, holding onto his life by the skin of his teeth. Neil’s eyes never left him, as the medics worked on him. It killed him not to come over and touch, to check for himself that The Protagonist was fine, would be fine, that he was going to get through this. But, he didn’t want to get in the way; he knew despite his medical trainings, he was still no experts compared to the ones who were working their asses out to keep his Protagonist alive right now.

But, the medics’ expressions were grim. They didn’t say anything, and the air in the escape vehicle was thick and suffocating. No one spoke; no one made a move. Most of them were still trying to catch their breath, while the rest was just like Neil, biting their nails and hoping for The Protagonist’s survival. They might not be as close to the man as Neil was, but he was still their boss – their teammate – and it was never a good feeling to see one of them go down.

When they finally return to base, they wheeled The Protagonist off into the operating room. Neil could do nothing but stand on the other side of the glass panel and watch, hands clenched in fists, thoughts running a marathon in his mind – all screaming, praying, begging for this to not be the end. But, that’s just not how this story goes (this time around). No, in this one, the medics came out with bad news to give, and Neil’s entire world crumbled.

 Or, it could also go like this: Neil didn’t go on that mission with The Protagonist and he only got to hear about it after the fact. He’d only get the chance to react to the news of it. The cup of coffee he was holding in his hand got dropped to the ground, and Neil’s was entirely unbothered by it. He wasn’t even aware, despite the deafening sound of glass breaking on hard wood.

“No,” he said, because it wasn’t true. He wouldn’t accept it. But, the look on the messenger’s face was serious, apologetic, and Neil felt like he couldn’t breathe, felt like all the air had been knocked out from his chest. It felt like all the light in Neil’s life had been put out, and he was drowned in darkness, and kept on drowning, sinking down, down, and down.

 It would take him a while – a long while – to recover. He went on more missions than he should, just to have something to occupy his time and, more importantly, mind. His superiors – the people who have now taken over The Protagonist’s place – would bench him but his results never faltered. He was trained by the best of them, after all, so how could they ever doubt him?

Then, later, when the time finally came, Neil would receive a file from his handler. His heart would jump as he opened it up and found The Protagonist’s handwriting, a note specified who this particular file should be delivered to and when. Neil would trace his fingers over it, to feel some residue of The Protagonist against his skin, then bite his lip until it bled, and read on.

Inside the file included the details of the mission he could not turn down – his very last one. He wasn’t going to turn it down, anyway, even if he could. There was nothing left for him in his present; in this timeline where The Protagonist was no longer. (What was a story without a protagonist, anyway?)

So, Neil accepted the mission in stride, knowing the he would never come back to this time again. He walked into the turnstile with determination in his eyes and shoulders squared, his team right by his side. The tenet team stationed in the past greeted them as they walked out; mission brief ready to fire off the moment every one of them settled.

 Meeting The Protagonist again was like having cold water poured over Neil’s head. It was unforgiving, devastating and a relief all the same. Like coming home to find the place all different, not yours any more, but some remnants of when it was were still there; you could feel it in your bones, but it wasn’t yours to claim.

At the opera house, Neil didn’t have the chance – couldn’t risk it – to stop and really take The Protagonist in, but there was no denying that it was him. Then, later, at the yacht club in Mumbai, Neil watched The Protagonist strut in with that same confident swagger Neil had missed so much. Neil’s heart did a tumble, a cartwheel, then crashed and burned at the bottom of his stomach.

It hurt like hell to see the love of your life again, after months of pushing aside the grief you should have taken the time to acknowledge if not process. It was like coming home again, knowing that this home wasn’t yours anymore. He was The Protagonist but he wasn’t Neil’s Protagonist. His face looked the same, if younger. His voice still sent a thrill down Neil’s vein, but left his mouth without any affection. His smile still made Neil’s heart flutter endlessly, still made Neil wanted to taste under his lips, but Neil knew he couldn’t. All the same, but so different, so far out of reach.

It hurt, too, to know what was waiting for The Protagonist – this Protagonist – in the future. Neil looked at him, and saw what was, essentially, a dead man walking. Still, Neil knew he couldn’t say anything, couldn’t warn him about the fate reality that was waiting for him in the distant future. Neil could say it was because of that goddamn ignorance policy, but honestly, he was just a coward.

The end of The Protagonist might have been written in stone, but so was his middle – the part where he met, recruited, befriended, then fell in love with Neil. Neil didn’t want to lose that; too much of a coward to think about what life would have been like if The Protagonist hadn’t approached him when he did; hadn’t done all the things with Neil like he did.

So, Neil took his cowardice and turned it into fuel. Made it the one thing that kept him going through this entire mission. What’s happened, happened. It wasn’t an excuse to do nothing, he told himself.

Then, he told The Protagonist as well, repeating it aloud like a mantra. He knew what was waiting for him once that chopper landed and he inverted, for the last time. It wasn’t hard to guess based on the pained expression on The Protagonist’s face.

So, Neil said goodbye to this Protagonist like he never did get the chance to his own. He said it was the end of a beautiful friendship because it was beautiful, and for him, with this Protagonist, friendship was all they shared. Home, but not Neil’s, yet. He promised The Protagonist as much, “We’ll get up to some stuff. You’ll love it,” because Neil knew he would. Neil had lived it with him, after all.

Their endings might not have aligned, but there would always be a beginning for them. In the past, in the future, all the same. They would meet again, unofficially, officially; in this life, in the next one; it didn’t matter. Their lives were intertwined, threads in red color braided together by reality itself.

Neil took comfort in that and smiled when he promised to see The Protagonist at the beginning. For now, though, he walked with resolution in his eyes and shoulders relaxed, finally processing his grief. Acceptance was the last step, and he took it in stride as he walked into the turnstile and returned to the hypocenter, all ready to finally return home, the one that was his; to reunite with his Protagonist once again.

[dumpsterd1va]

continuation of my neil and andrew finding a kitten on the road AU. more under the cut!

It turns out kittens aren’t very good at following directions. The little monster had peed and pooped in Andrew’s sweatshirt nest. She didn’t puke per se, but whatever she coughed up smelled just as bad, if not worse. Or maybe it was the combination of excrement that was making Andrew dizzy. It had been better on the freeway when the speed they were going at was enough to keep the air circulating, but here in the city everything was stagnant. He couldn’t even bury his nose in his sleeve because in his rush to get out on the road this morning, he hadn’t bothered changing out of the black tank top he always slept in. He was grateful he’d at least had the presence of mind to put on his armbands.

Andrew tugged at the fabric cocooning his forearms as he grumbled, “You are a menace,” to his ungrateful passenger who only emitted a high-pitched whine in response. “Yeah, yeah, I’m miserable too. Tough shit.”

As if he could hear him, Neil turned back around and waved. Andrew could’ve sworn he was laughing too, the bastard. Thankfully, the next turn was their last one as they pulled into a parking lot.

His car was barely in park when Andrew jumped out and approached Neil. “You’re getting the sack of shit out of the car.”

Neil was shaking his hair out when Andrew reached him, setting his helmet down on the seat. He ran his fingers through his hair and grinned. “Had a little accident, did we?”

“Not little. Not me. Go.”

“Fine, fine. Didn’t clock you as a squeamish one.”

Andrew would take any insult Neil threw at him as long as he didn’t have to touch the mess in his car. He was going to have to throw all those clothes away. This was already turning out to be more trouble than it was worth.

“Fuck, you’re a little stinker aren’t you?” Andrew heard Neil grumble as he pulled the soiled heap and its maker from the car. He was holding the kitten like a football in the crook of his arm but the sweatshirts he held out in front of him like they were poisonous. Andrew was pretty sure they were.

“You can toss those.”

Neil grimaced. “Smart move.”

They walked alongside each other into the clinic. It was surprisingly busy, but Andrew supposed animals were good at being an inconvenience, no matter the hour.

When they made their way up to the front desk, Neil leaned on the counter and said to the receptionist, “Hey, I called earlier. Neil Josten?”

Barely glancing up, the receptionist nodded. “Found a stray?” Neil nodded. “Someone will be with you shortly.” His eyes flicked up to Andrew. “Will he be joining you?”

Neil started and darted his eyes over to Andrew who didn’t react. “Uh, yeah he will be.”

“Name?”

“Andrew Minyard,” Andrew answered before Neil could process that he didn’t know his name yet. The receptionist dismissed them and they sat down with their shared burden.

Neil broke the silence first. “We didn’t introduce ourselves, huh?” He stuck his free hand out. “I’m Neil.”

“You’re crazy if you think I’m touching that hand.”

Rolling his eyes, Neil retorted, “They were your clothes.”

“They were covered in something that was definitely not mine.”

With a sigh, Neil dumped the kitten into Andrew’s lap before going over to the hand sanitizer dispenser in the corner. He locked eyes with Andrew and dispensed several pumps of the liquid into his hands before making a big show of rubbing his hands together.

When he sat back down and offered his hand again, Andrew took it.

“Andrew.”

They settled into their chairs and Neil’s fingers lazily ran through the kitten’s fur. He had to lean towards Andrew to do it, giving Andrew the perfect view of his curls. They danced in the sunlight and reflected impossible shades of sunset red and honey gold.

“So,” Neil began. “Any reason you were out on the road so early in the morning?”

It took Andrew a second for him to realize Neil was talking to him. “No reason.”

Neil hummed. “Same here. Sometimes I just need to get away.”

Andrew’s eyes fell to the scars lining Neil’s face that made him seem at once stronger and more delicate. His thoughts wandered to the scars that marred his own arms, hidden under his armbands, and the lengths he went to try to escape the thoughts that made them. He wondered if Neil was trying to do the same, but something told him Neil had a different kind of demon lurking over his shoulder.

“Neil?”

The side door leading to the rest of the clinic swung open and a tall woman stepped out. Neil glanced up at the sound of his name and gestured for Andrew to follow him.

“Hey Abby,” Neil greeted. “Thanks for letting us come in on such short notice.”

Abby smiled. “No need for that. You’re doing us a favor. Come in.”

They followed Abby to a small room and on the way she explained that she would be examining the kitten for fleas, worms, or other kinds of lesions. Her hands moved at an impressive speed but the kitten still made her discomfort quite clear.

“Well,” Abby said at last. “Nothing looks out of the ordinary, but she needs to put on more weight before we can put her up for adoption. We’ll probably keep her quarantined for a while, give her a good bath, and do a more thorough examination. She’s surprisingly clean for where you found her, so she probably wasn’t there for very long. She got lucky.”

“Wouldn’t call that luck,” Andrew mumbled.

Abby’s gaze fell on Andrew and she smiled that same pleasant smile. “I meant she’s lucky you found her. It’s Andrew, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, thank you Andrew. You helped save a life today.” She scratched the kitten’s belly. “Are you considering adopting her?”

Andrew recalled his bold words out on the highway when Neil wouldn’t shut up and shrugged. “Maybe.” At the look Neil gave him, he clarified, “I’ve never had a pet before.”

Neil hid a smirk behind his fist but Abby didn’t seem to notice. She nodded. “Fair enough. Cats are great for first time pet owners, but they’re still a lot of responsibility. Think about it while she’s holed up in here for a few days and if you have any questions, you can always call in and ask for me or even talk to Neil. He’s had Sir for years so he’s a regular cat whisperer.”

Andrew’s eyes flicked over to Neil who arched an eyebrow at him as if to say, “That’s news to me,” triggering a ghost of a smile to flicker across Andrew’s face.

Oh this was bad.

Andrew pushed off the wall he was leaning against and headed for the door without another word. Neil trailed behind him and Andrew could feel those annoyingly blue eyes boring a hole into the back of his head.

“What?” he hissed when they finally exited the shelter.

To his credit, Neil didn’t flinch at Andrew’s tone. “Are you really going to adopt her?”

“I said I didn’t know, didn’t I?”

“There’s no reason to be scared.”

Andrew blinked. “Excuse me?”

Neil tilted his head. “That’s why you’re hesitating right? You’re afraid you won’t be able to take care of her.”

“Fuck off. The little asshole making my clothes her personal toilet made me have second thoughts.”

“I already told you I think you’ll make a great cat mom,” Neil continued, undeterred. “You should take her. I’ll help you buy all the stuff you’ll need.”

“Really tempting offer, but no.”

“C’mon, one trip to PetSmart and you can wash your hands of me forever and have a cute kitten instead.”

Andrew stopped in his tracks and glared at Neil. “Why do you care?”

Infuriatingly, Neil looked confused. “Because you do.” Andrew wanted to punch him. “And I want to make sure she has a good home.”

“Then you take her.”

“I will if you won’t.” His mouth twitched into a half smile. “But I have a feeling I won’t need to.”

When they stopped in front of their respective vehicles, Andrew leaned his head back and groaned. Snapping his fingers, he grumbled, “Give me your phone.”

Andrew almost threw the phone Neil handed to him onto the asphalt but instead he punched in his number and called.

Tossing the phone back to Neil, he picked up his phone and said as calmly as he could into the receiver, “As soon as Abby gives the okay, we meet here. We get the cat, buy the shit, then you leave me alone. Got it?”

Neil was fully smiling now. “Has anyone ever told you you’re kind of dramatic?”

Abruptly hanging up on someone standing right in front of him was not nearly as satisfying as Andrew wanted it to be, but he settled for getting into his car, rolling down the window, and flipping Neil the bird.

“Drama queen,” Neil called back, still grinning.

“Mouthy bastard,” Andrew muttered as he rolled up the window.

“Heard that.”

Then, it was Andrew’s turn to smile. “Good.”

[hunnywrites]

Arcade Dreams: Chapter Sixteen

Summary: There’s a new girl working at the Palace Arcade and Hawkins’ Family Video. Billy can’t stand her, and the feeling is mutual. No matter what everyone else seems to think.

Pairing: Billy Hargrove/OFC

A/N: We’re gonna see good ol’ Brian Jean in this chapter! Here’s a bit of fun fluff because the next chapter is gonna be rough :)

Working at the Hawkins public pool really wasn’t that bad of a job. It was at this awkward point in time between Christmas break and the weather finally becoming warm, so there really weren’t too many people around aside from the occasional swim class. Teddi had been able to take on her own class finally. Every Saturday morning she taught a group of five year olds the basics, albeit not with the same instant success as Billy. 

Her class had ended about half an hour before. A few of the kids were still splashing around in the shallow end while they waited for their parents to pick them up, and Teddi was perched up in the lifeguard’s chair waiting for her shift to come to an end. Then she could swing by her house and change, rent some movies from the video store and head over to Billy’s to help him with Max’s sleepover. All in all a pretty laid back day.

She noticed Brian Jean walking in. She ignored him. He was just there to pick up his brother, and he’d be out of her hair once again. Teddi didn’t feel any real resentment towards Brian. She hadn’t even wanted to go on that date in the first place. If anything she was more annoyed with Cheryl for ditching Billy to screw around with Brian. She didn’t really like Brian though. It was easy to see now that his whole nice guy act was just that: an act. 

Teddi supposed Billy was a bit guilty of the same thing. He’d put on the charm whenever a cute girl was around. But the way Brian did it was a bit more...sinister somehow. Billy wasn’t really as unassuming as Brian was. Or maybe she was just mad that she hadn’t been able to see through it herself. She didn’t know. Billy was more upset than she had been about the whole thing. Once they got back to school Billy was nearly constantly trying to pick at Brian to get on his last nerve.

“I’m supposed to let him fuck with you and get away with it?” he had asked. “It’ll be fine, Ted. He’s a soccer player. I’m not afraid of him.” but it was more than that. Teddi didn’t want to Billy to solve all his (or her) problems with his fists. If he’d gotten in trouble for fighting it would’ve been a lot more than just being sent to detention where he could sneak out and no one would be any the wiser. He’d get suspended. And that would mean Neil finding out. And Teddi was not gonna be responsible for Billy having to deal with Neil over something so pointless. 

Eventually he let it go after she had to actually forbid him from doing anything. Of course not after he keyed Brian’s car while they were in the parking lot after school waiting for Max. While Teddi definitely didn’t approve of it, she had to admit it had been pretty funny. 

Unfortunately Brian still seemed pretty interested in her regardless of her attempts to ignore him. He was honestly starting to make her feel a little uneasy. He was just sitting there on the bleachers looking at her. God, just take your brother and go, freak, she thought. Teddi turned slightly in her seat in an attempt to get rid of the creepy feeling she had. She could maybe call Freddy over and tell him what had happened. He’d definitely kick Brian out. But that seemed so silly. She would just ignore him.

She let out a loud sigh of relief when she saw Katie headed her way. “Happy to see me?” she asked Teddi with a laugh. 

Teddi climbed down from her chair. “You have no idea. I gotta get outta here. I’ll see ya later, Katie!” she threw a wave over her shoulder and nearly bolted for the locker room. She made quick work of changing. She could grab a quick shower at home. Whatever it took to make sure she could get out before Brian could corner her again.

Unfortunately that plan didn’t work out. “Uh, hey Teddi…” Teddi rolled her eyes, but didn’t stop as she walked past Brian. He followed after her. “C’mon, Teddi. Can I just talk to you for a second?” he asked.

“Fuck off, Brian.”

“I’m sorry about the party, okay? I was a dick. Can’t you give me another chance? Maybe we can get together for Valentine’s Day or something.” he offered. 

Teddi stopped and turned towards Brian before she let out a heavy sigh. “Look, I know this might be hard for your tiny brain to process, but I’m not interested. I was never interested. I was just being nice. And you rewarded me by screwing my friend’s date and abandoning me. So, no. I don’t want to do anything for Valentine’s Day. I don’t want anything to do with you at all. So leave. Me. Alone.” 

When Teddi said that Brian was dumb, she meant it. He was clearly incapable of reading very obvious signs. As Teddi turned once again to leave, Brian grabbed her by the arm. “I’m not done talking to you!” He pleaded. 

Teddi wasn’t a violent person. She really wasn’t. She’d told Billy time and time again that violence wasn’t the answer. If anything this was her father’s fault. Brian grabbing her arm with the amount of force that he had sent a jolt of fear through her. It triggered her fight or flight senses immediately. But Brian wasn’t her father. She could fight back. So Teddi whirled around and sent her fist flying upwards towards Brian’s nose with as much force as she could manage. There was a sickeningly satisfying crack. 

Brian let out a yowl and his hands flew up to his nose. “You bitch! You broke my nose!” 

Teddi couldn’t help but let out a laugh. She pressed her lips together and covered her mouth to keep herself quiet. “I told you to leave me alone.” she said with a shrug and a smile. She didn’t care that everyone at the pool had seen. He deserved it. A few of the moms were watching in shock as Brian dabbed at his bloody nose, groaning and moaning to himself. Katie was stifling her laughter up on her chair and Freddy was at a loss of what to do. Teddi took that as her sign to leave. 

She held her composure until she was safely in her van. “Jesus Christ.” she muttered, shaking her fist rapidly to try and get ring of the stinging feeling in her knuckles. The skin was red and irritated and she was sure that it would probably bruise. As bad as she may have felt for hitting Brian, she couldn’t lie and say it hadn’t felt a little nice. It would definitely get him off of her back from now on. 

She just had to hope that she wouldn’t lose her job over it. 

---

“Max, do you have to listen to that shit so loud?” Billy asked, shoving her bedroom door open. Neil and Susan had left about an hour before. Now Max and El were jumping on her bed, hair brushes in hand as they sang along to Total Eclipse of the Heart. He wanted to blow his brains out. 

The pair stopped jumping almost simultaneously and looked at him. “What’s wrong with Bonnie Tyler?” Max asked.

El grinned. “Probably reminds him of Teddi.” she teased, her and Max falling into a fit of laughter.

Billy let out a groan. “Just turn it off. Or I’ll turn it off.” he warned, turning and stomping back down the hall towards the living room. The stereo shut off and the sounds of the two giggling girls quickly following after him filled the house. 

“When’s she coming over anyways?” Max asked. “Did she get the movies? Did she say what she got? Is this like a date or something? We can go hang out in my room if it is.” 

Billy ran a frustrated hand over his face. He didn’t think there was anything in the world more annoying than teenage girls. “I don’t know, Max. She just said that she’d be here after work. And it’s not a date. Can you two shut up with that already?” the two looked at each other and giggled almost as if they had shared some joke telepathically. 

It was starting to get dark out. Teddi probably should’ve been there a few hours ago. He figured that it probably had something to do with what happened at the pool. Freddy had called him a little earlier to tell him. “Dude, you will not believe what happened. Teddi totally decked Brian Jean!”

Billy had only felt proud for someone that wasn’t himself twice in his life. The first was Max. He worked hard to make sure Max had a thick skin.That she wouldn’t take shit from anyone. And sometimes he thought it could be a little too thick. But that night at the Byers’ after he’d woken up back at home with bits and pieces of the night’s events coming back to him he could help but feel a little proud of the way she had stood up to him to protect her friends. He could have gone without her threatening to turn his dick into mush, but he was still proud. 

He was definitely proud of Teddi. She was always so passive when it came to...well, anyone that wasn’t him. Always avoiding confrontation. And he understood it. It was an easier route to take at home. But when Freddy called him to say that Teddi had broken Brian’s nose he felt a huge wave of pride. 

The doorbell rang, and Max jumped up to answer the door. Teddi was finally here. She had bags from Melvald’s and Hawkins Family Video hanging on her arm and she was balancing three pizza boxes in her hands. “Hey, Maxamillion! The party’s here!” Billy got up to help her with the pizzas as she handed the bags to Max. “There’s our movies and some candy. Mrs. Byers told me to tell you guys she said hi.” 

Max and El both made quick work of dumping the bag of candy onto the floor in front of the tv as Billy and Teddi went into the kitchen. “So,” Billy began with a smirk. “How was work?” 

Teddi froze for a brief moment. “...It was fine.” she said with a shrug. 

Billy set the pizzas on the counter, leaning against it and grinning over at her. “Really? Nothing interesting happened?”

Teddi’s eyes narrowed and she crossed her arms. “...What do you know?” 

“Everything. Freddy called me about twenty minutes ago,” Teddi groaned. “Is that why you wanted me to stay away from Brian? You wanted to handle it yourself?” he asked in a teasing tone. 

“No,” Teddi sighed. Billy watched as she fidgeted nervously in front of him. “I was just gonna ignore him, but then he grabbed me and...I don’t know. I think I might be wound a little tighter than I’ve realized.”

Billy held his hands up. “Wait, wait. He grabbed you? What do you mean he grabbed you?” the next time Billy saw Brian he’d have a hell of a lot more than a broken nose. 

“I thought Freddy told you everything?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Apparently not. Why the hell would he grab you?”

Teddi let out another loud sigh and hopped up onto the counter. Her legs swung back and forth slowly as she picked at the hole in the knee of her jeans. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. He kept trying to ask me out so he could make up for the party. Something about Valentine’s Day,” Billy let out a snort and rolled his eyes. “But I told him I didn’t want to and he wasn’t taking fuck off for an answer…” she covered her face with her hands and let out a loud groan. “I just wish I hadn’t decked him in front of everyone.”

Billy scoffed. “I wish you had done a lot more than that. Too bad I wasn’t there to see it, though. I bet it was pretty hot.” he smirked.

Teddi bit down on her lip to keep herself from smiling. “You’re a bad influence, Hargrove.” 

“You know it, Baby.” he grinned. 

Teddi’s cheeks flushed a little before she hopped down from the counter and walked over to the pizzas. “I’m starving. I got a cheese for the girls and I got us two pepperonis since you put away food like a bottomless pit.” she teased. 

Billy held up an arm, flexing and patting his bicep. He relished the way Teddi’s blush grew deeper. “Gotta feed the machine.” 

She laughed. “The machine? Do you ever hear yourself? Oh, who am I kidding? I bet you love to hear yourself talk.” she giggled, sticking her tongue out at him and grabbing a slice of pizza. 

His response was cut off by Max poking her head into the kitchen. “Can you guys stop flirting for two seconds so we can watch the movies? This is so boring.” 

“Max…” Billy began.

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Shut up, Max.” she said in a mocking tone before disappearing into the living room. Teddi only smiled at Billy before she piled two more slices of pizza onto her plate and followed Max. 

“Alright, so since El isn’t a big horror fan I picked up Midnight Madness and Splash,” Teddi announced. “And don’t even think about complaining, Hargrove. It’s three against one. Ladies night means we watch Splash.”

Billy groaned loudly and dramatically as he flopped down onto the couch. He’d rather tear his own eyes out than watch some chick flick. He’d sat through a few on dates, but it was a small price to pay to get to feel up whatever girl he’d taken out that week in the theater. And that definitely wasn’t gonna be happening with Teddi. Especially with the gruesome twosome around.

If he was honest El was probably his favorite out of Max’s friends. He still didn’t trust Lucas completely and Mike and Dustin annoyed the shit out of him. The Byers kid was okay. But there was something about him that gave Billy the creeps. El was quiet for the most part. She didn’t talk back like Mike always was (even though he was constantly trying to weasel rides all around town from him) and she wasn’t always babbling incessantly about all that weird nerd shit they all liked.

Still, Billy would’ve preferred it if the two of them weren’t there so he could try to put the moves on Teddi. Yeah, like that would work anyways, he thought bitterly. If all his flirting so far hadn’t worked, he definitely doubted that whole yawn and stretch trick would work on her like it did the other girls. So instead he crossed his arms firmly across his chest and pouted. He only moved to light up a smoke halfway through Midnight Madness.

That hadn’t been such a bad movie. He’d gotten a few laughs. He’d also caught Teddi watching him a few times whenever she knew a funny scene was coming up to see if he’d laugh or not. She almost looked proud each time he did. Like she had his approval. 

Splash however...was a nightmare. God did he hate it. But he wasn’t surprised Teddi had picked it out. Some idiot finds a mermaid and falls in love with her. It had Weird Girl written all over it. They were about halfway through the movie when he finally complained. “This movie sucks,” he spat, a cigarette between his teeth. He lit it and tossed his lighter onto the coffee table. “You can’t even see anything! What’s the point of having her topless the whole damn movie if they’re gonna just cover her up?” 

Teddi scoffed and gave his arm a soft shove. “Of course she’s not naked! There’s impressionable eyes in the room.” she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Billy grumbled loudly. 

Max turned to face the two of them with a smirk. “Yeah, Billy. Save your nudie movies for when it’s just the two of you.” she and El fell into a fit of giggles. Billy glared at the back of Max’s head. He grabbed a handful of the popcorn Teddi had made in between the two movies at threw it at the back of his step sister’s head. She only laughed. 

He glanced over at Teddi. She was trying not to laugh herself. But her cheeks were flushed. She patted Billy on the shoulder. “It’s almost over,” she promised. There had only been about a half hour left. To Billy it had felt like ages. Max cracking jokes about how John Candy’s character was gonna be Billy in about twenty years definitely didn’t help either. When it was finally over Teddi stretched and fell back into the couch. Her head lolled over to look at Billy. The corner of his lips turned upwards. She smiled back at him. 

“...I should get home,” she sighed. “I told my mom I was working an extra shift at the arcade. I don’t want her getting suspicious.”

Max and El whirled around. “What? You just got here!” Max complained. 

“Max has board games!” El argued. 

Teddi let out a whine like groan and scrunched up her nose. “Believe me girls, if I could sleep over I would. Maybe next time, okay? I’ll bring more chick flicks.” she grinned over at Billy. He rolled his eyes. 

“How ‘bout you guys clean all this shit up, huh? And tell Teddi thank you for the movies.” God, he thought with a hint of disgust, I sound like Neil. Max and El both said their thank yous, hugging Teddi before running off into the kitchen with the remnants of popcorn and pizza. 

Teddi returned both tapes to their cases and smiled over at Billy. “You gonna be able to handle them on your own?”

“Maybe...maybe I’ll sneak some nighttime cough syrup into their Cokes,” Teddi shot him a look and he waved a hand at her. “I’m kidding...thanks for this. Coming over and all.” he shifted nervously, his hands in his pockets. 

Teddi shrugged. “It’s no problem. They’re fun kids. Plus I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I really enjoyed forcing you to watch Splash,” she laughed. Billy let out a short laugh. “I’ll see ya...probably tomorrow.” she said, her laugh a bit more awkward this time. Billy nodded and followed her to the front door. He opened it for her and gave an awkward wave.

“Later, Larsson.” 

“Later, Hargrove.” she grinned, turning and making her way to the curb where her van was parked. Billy shut the door after her van disappeared down the street. El and Max were watching him from the hallway.

“Oh, Teddi I love you!” Max said in a deeper voice that Billy assumed was supposed to sound like him. She grabbed El by the shoulders. El laughed and matched Max’s movements. 

“Kiss me Teddi!” she repeated in the same ridiculous tone before they fell into another fit of giggles.

Billy rolled his eyes and glares at the two girls. “Isn’t it time you little assholes go to bed?”

Max raised an eyebrow. “It’s ten o’clock, grandpa. Shouldn’t you be in bed?” She asked, taking El by the hand and pulling her down the hall to her room. He could still hear their laughter and he let out a groan, falling down onto the couch. He flipped on the TV and mindlessly flipped through the channels. He hated sleepovers. 

[trashyazeohane]

First time making gif in a looooong time, so yeah, sorry for shitty quality (maybe I’ll try to improve it, if I have time...)

It’s happening immediately after Five shots too many. Ugh I know what is happening after, but I can’t put it into words…

Part 1 can he found here!

Adult!Maxvid!AU - Part 6 (eeeyyyy back on the track):

Ughhh

Ughhhhhh

UGHHHHHHHH

Max wanted to kill himself. He went back to his dorm after that night and just… laid down on the bed and stared with eyes wide open at the ceiling. And he did it for few hours straight.

Until Nikki popped in – during the evening or pretty early night. She just burst through the door, without knocking, like she almost always did.

“Hey, fucktard, why weren’t you picking up your phone?!” She shouted, opening the door so hard it hit the opposite wall. And then she simply stopped near the doorway. “Max, are you in here?”

The male lifted his head and peeked at the bright light coming from the open door and a dark silhouette.

“Kill me, Nik.” He mumbled hoarsely.

“Oh, shit you look like death.” The girl murmured, but stepped inside and shut the door. “Should I switch on the light?”

Max shook his head. It was still throbbing – a faint sound, maybe even a sensation, drumming at the back of his mind. But he was in no mood to get up and take painkillers. He was in no mood to do anything. He deserved it.

“O-kay?” Nikki moved and sat on the chair near the desk. She turned on the desk lamp nevertheless, but bent it, so the light wasn’t directed right at Max. “Okay, in the light you look even worse. Bad night?”

Bad night? That was the best night Max had in his entire life!

But the outcomes…

Max didn’t answer, only laid on his bed and stared at the ceiling.

So anyway Nikki stayed in the room for few hours, just sitting there and surfing the internet on her phone. All this time Max was just laying on the bed and stared at nothing in particular. After some time she dozed off on the chair.

Max at some time also fell asleep, but woke up in the middle of the night. He stood up from the bed, grabbed Nikki and put her on his bed and he himself went to sleep on the chair.

“Wake up sleepyhead!!!”

Max literally fell down from the chair as Nikki gave him quite a big slap on the back of his head

“What the fuck Nikki!?!”

“No more being gloomy!!!”

“I’ll be as gloomy as I want!”

Another hit.

“Do you want to kill me?!”

“Then tell me what is bothering you!?”

And Max just closed his mouth. He sat more comfortably on the floor and straightened his clothes. Yuck, did he seriously still not change them? He was glad that he had taken a shower at David’s.

David… fuck…

Can he even tell Nikki the truth? Or would David prefer to keep it a secret? He had said forget, forget, forget. Easier said than fucking done! How did David even expect Max to do it!?!?!

“Max?”

What should he do!? He should accept David’s plead, but in the same time he knew he won’t be able to do so! How can he simply forget it? He didn’t want to forget it! That was the problem!!

“Nikki, I messed up…”

“What? What did you mess up?”

“Everything.”

Can he tell her? Or should he keep that night secret between them?

However Max wasn’t sure he would be able to keep this secret around Nikki and Neil. He had tried keeping his crush on David secret and it had blown into his face.

But no, David probably wouldn’t want other people to know this.

“What do you mean by everything?”

So he probably shouldn’t tell Nikki. Yeah, the less people know, the better. It was better this way, it was better this way…

“You really look like someone died.” Nikki said, flopping in front of him on the pillow.  Soon after her mouth turned into a mischievous smirk. “What? Did you have sex with David and he told you afterwards that it was a mistake?”

Max hid his face in his hands.

“I’m not hearing you shouting ‘fuck you, Nikki’ like you’re supposed to~”

Max wanted to die.

“Max, come on, I’m still waiting~”

Nope, he was done.

“Max?”

Max wanted to die.

“Oh my god, is that true?” There was Nikki, right in front of him, prying his hands away. “Max, is that true?”

Max didn’t want to answer. Or no – he felt like by answering he would betray something, or someone.

So he only exhaled slowly through his nose with arms slumping down in the process.

“Oh my god, so it is true!”

“For the record, I didn’t utter a word.”

“But Max, that’s amazing. Wow, dude, I never actually thought that you would manage to do it. I always imagined you as this lonely one-sided love-sick person till the day you die!”

Please, just kill him.

“Nikki…”

“What?”

“No… just… no…”

“What do you mea-… Oh…”

“Yeah.”

“Max, I’m so so sorry–”

“It’s okay.”

“… Doesn’t look like it is…”

Max wanted to be left alone. He knew he had work and homework to do for his Uni, but damn, it will be hard to get back on track. But now he wanted to sit here, on this fucking floor, for an hour or so more.

But then suddenly Nikki sat next to Max and wrapped her hands around him.

“What are you doing?”

“Cheering you up? I think? I don’t know, I never practiced it. Does it work?”

“No.” But Max still didn’t push her away.

So they stayed like that for a bit. Then Nikki started to talk about random shit to get Max to at least focus on something else. And after few minutes it kinda started working. The guilt and sadness were still roaming around in his head, but Max knew he had other things to do.

Nikki ordered him to wash himself and then she took him for lunch.

Max in the meantime checked his phone. He was kinda afraid to do so, but he had to do it in the end.

Zero messages from David.

During the lunch Max kinda wanted to write to him to check if he was feeling any better, but he was actually terrified to do so. Especially as the memories were still so vivid inside his head. Then he wanted to write to David when he started learning and then when he did his homework. All this time the phone was lying next to Max, taunting him, whispering soft, empty promises.

Was David doing okay? What was he doing right now? Was he thinking about that night as hard as Max did? Or did he discard those memories – or the lack of them – immediately after Max had left? Maybe he already moved on? Maybe he was back to his normal self?

Or maybe not? Maybe he was beating himself up? Maybe he was thinking about the situation between them over and over again?

Both options were scary and horrifying.

Should he message David? Damn, he wanted to. His heart begged him to do so. With his whole soul he needed to. But no… not now… Maybe… maybe later on…

Back to David -> (idk why but I prefer to write from Max’s point of view)

He woke up on Sunday more over feeling okay. He still had a stomachache but he could live through the day. Gwen was messaging him non-stop when she had found out he had been hungover. He loved her, but damn, he was tired of her asking why and with whom he had drunk…

The day passed normal yet David still felt skittish. He jumped whenever he received new message and he always picked up his phone with loudly beating heart.

But still zero messages from Max. He really tried not to feel sad about it, but couldn’t help it.

He managed to catch up a little with his work and then fell asleep, checking the phone one more time.

David woke up on Monday and quickly checked the phone, feeling weirdly warm all over his body. He had a feeling he had a dream, and for few blissful seconds after waking up he could still remember it, but it quickly dissolved into nothingness after he blinked.

Zero messages from Max. David’s stomach dropped hard. Did he scare Max somehow? He was so stupid. Stupid, stupid, useless, stupid, stupid, useless, stupid, stupid…

David tried to live through the day like he had used to, before the night, but… everything felt different. It was the same, yet not. Everyone around him acted normal, nothing changed, however everything was still weirdly off.

In the evening, when he checked his phone and hoped for a new messages, he had to bit his bottom lip when he found none.

Was it weird to hope that Max would message him again? David also could message the teen, but he found his own fingers unresponsive to the impulses and needs.

Why couldn’t he do that? His heart beated strangely loud inside his chest, pumping the blood through his veins with brute force. He was… terrified?

Terrified? Of what?

Few days passed like that. With his mood dropping down with every passing hour without a new message on his phone from Max. The kids noticed it and asked why he was so gloomy. He had to say that he wasn’t feeling well. Which kinda was true.

So the full week passed… and then another one…

David was on the verge of breaking down. He fucked up and didn’t know how to repair what he had done.

He wasn’t even sleeping well lately. Add his insomnia to this and he basically lived without sleeping at all.

“David?”

“Gwen, can I come over?”

“Uh, yeah, sure. W-wait? Something happened? You sound-“

“Terrible? I’ll tell you later…”

“I was going to say like shit, but that works too. Should I make some hot cocoa?”

“Yes, please…”

And with that David walked out of his house.

Few kilometers away at the campus ->

“Okay, Max… you look like hell after cocaine…” Neil said, staring at him with raised eyebrows. Max knew he looked like shit, but he couldn’t muster himself to look and feel better.

“He is like that for at least two weeks.” Nikki next to him added, looking at the nerd of the infamous trio.

“Okay…” Neil murmured, clasping his hands together. “Have you tried turning him off and on again?”

“Vodka doesn’t work if that’s what you’re asking about.”

“It didn’t work? Okay, so the situation is bad…”

Seriously. That was true. Nikki had tried helping Max by getting him drunk during the last weekend. But the only thing it had brought Max had been more pain filled with memories of that night and taste of vodka on David’s tongue. So yeah, that plan had backfired hard…

He hadn’t talked with David for two weeks and he was pretty sure that the ‘forgetting’ David had meant wasn’t supposed to look like that. But, fuck, Max couldn’t so simply forget about that night and about his feelings for David.

He had tried. He had tried for few days (years even)… and it brought him this – Nikki calling Neil for help.

“Okay, should we like… maybe zap him with a stun gun?” Neil proposed, tapping his chin.

“Crowbar to the back of his head?” Nikki glanced at Max – still curled on the bed, staring blankly at his phone.

“We want to help him, not kill him…”

“I mean… kinda the same thing…”

Max groaned while listening to his friends. He knew they cared. He knew they only wanted to help. But their ideas were ridiculous. Although the crowbar wasn’t maybe such a bad idea. This way he wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences of his actions at all.

And never see David again. God, he was so sappy, but damn, he didn’t want that.

To be perfectly honest Max simply missed the man. He missed his stupid, adorable smile, his weird, fluffy mood, his optimistic attitude – David whole. In just few months David had become his friend – a close one – and Max fucked it bad. Now he was afraid that maybe if he wrote, their relationship wouldn’t be the same. Fuck, of course, it wouldn’t be the same, but ugh…

Max was scared.

“What exactly happened two weeks ago?” Neil asked, sitting down next to Max.

Nikki looked between Neil and Max, deciding to finally stare longer at the latter one while biting the inside of her cheek.

“I… I shouldn’t be the one to tell you…”

Neil blinked and then looked back at Max, who grumbled something under his breath and ducked further under the blanket wrapped around his body.

“Is this about David?”

What the fuck?

“H-how?” Max stuttered.

“I mean it sounded like the most possible option here, so I gave it a shot.” Neil tilted his head. “And hit a jackpot.”

Max groaned under his nose. Great. Should he tell Neil the truth? Nikki somehow miraculously had found out by herself, so Max hadn’t told her per se, but Neil…

“Okay, if you don’t tell me, I can always call him and ask…” Neil said and boom! he was taking his phone out.

“H-how do you have his phone number?” Max asked with the fear creeping into his bones.

“He gave it to me when we went out drinking? Together with other campers? Duuh?” Neil was already scrolling through a contact list. “Okay, so I just need to…”

Max slapped Neil’s hand and the phone clattered to the ground.

“Dude…”

“Fuck, didn’t mean to hit it so hard.” Max grumbled and leaned to lift the phone from the floor, hoping that the screen wasn’t cracked.

“I fucking hope so!” Neil almost shrieked, taking the phone from Max’s hand. “Now I really need some good explanations…”

Max huffed. Was he really going to do it? To be honest, he simply was tired of bottling everything up. He was tired of reliving the memories over and over, always with the bitter ending. He was tired of missing David. He was tired of pretending. He was tired of not knowing what to do.

So he told them what exactly had happened that night.

This is the end for now. Bruh it took me way to looong to finish this one D:<. In the next one there will be David’s and Max’s confrontation!

[aion-rsa]

Edgar Wright Brings the Sparks Brothers Story to the Mainstream in New Documentary

https://ift.tt/3j138d8

With the advent of the internet, it’s become easier for musicians to infiltrate the mainstream. That band you loved when you were in high school but no one else in town heard of? You know, the one that was your hidden secret only shared with your closest friends? Now you can give out a streaming link to their music or get their permission to use that song you love on YouTube. Everyone knows them. Especially if they’ve been recording since 1970, had 25 studio albums, and are still playing to this day. So how come you probably don’t know about Sparks? Filmmaker Edgar Wright certainly wonders why.

The seemingly mysterious brothers Ronald and Russell Mael have been riding the waves of the popular music scene, receiving critical praise every decade, but still have somehow stayed under the pop culture radar. Wright, the director behind classics like Shaun of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, wants to change that.

With his new documentary, The Sparks Brothers, which is having its premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, Wright shines a light on the entire career of the brilliant world of Ron and Russ Mael. This includes work on their new musical Annette, which stars Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard, and is directed by Leos Catax. We had the opportunity to sit down with Ron, Russ, and Edgar to discuss just what makes the story of Sparks, so special. 

Was there a relationship between Edgar Wright and Sparks before this project started?

Edgar Wright: I had been a fan for a long time. Before making the documentary, Sparks was so enigmatic that I wasn’t really sure where they lived or whether they were from planet Earth. But then one day, I think it was in 2015, I was in Los Angeles writing Baby Driver in an office on the lot in West Hollywood, and my friend Michael Bacall[co-writer of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World] was in the office with me, and we were talking about Sparks.

I’d become by this point, as a lot of Spark fans are, like a full-on evangelist. Like if you’re talking about music, at some point I’d turn the conversation around to Sparks. And [Bacall] knew one Sparks song, “All You Ever Think About is Sex.” So I said, “Oh wow, listen to this.” So we ended up listening to a ton of albums. Then I thought, “I wonder if Sparks are on Twitter?” So I found a Sparks account and then I saw, “Sparks follows you,” and I was like, “Oh my God!”

So I followed them back, but I wasn’t already following them, so clearly not that big a Sparks fan. [Laughs] By fault I messaged them and said, “Hey I’m like a really big fan I saw you following me. Is this really the band?” Then Russell replied and said, “Yeah, this is Russell.” And I said, “Oh, usually bands have a PR person who runs their account.” And he said, “Not us.” So the funny thing is after having known and loved this band for decades, it’s just a funny thing I’m talking to them, and they’re also like only 20 minutes drive away from me. 

Within 24 hours, I was having breakfast at Russell’s house with Ron and Russell, and that’s when we met for the first time. I think at that breakfast you told me about Annette. Maybe it was in kind of in the works. When we first met there wasn’t any sort of talk of a project necessarily; I was just meeting them as a fan.

But then, I saw them live a couple of times and I sort of got it into my head that the thing that was stopping Sparks from being as big as they should be, was there was no overview. It started to kind of annoy me as I watched documentaries, and sometimes I felt like, “But, why isn’t there a documentary about Sparks?” And I said this enough times to enough people that it kind of came to a head at a Sparks gig in 2017 where I was standing in the VIP balcony.

Me and Phil Lord had gone to see Sparks together. And I said the same thing to Phil. I said, “You know what, Sparks really need a documentary about them. I think that would really push them over the edge. You could tell the context of them and explain to people how they were sort of the originators of most of these genres.”

And Phil said, “You should make the movie!” And I was like, “Ah,okay, I will!” So then I mentioned it to Ron and Russell after the gig, and as soon as I said it out loud that I want to do a documentary about you guys–it’s not something that you can promise and then take back. So here we are in 2021 with the finished film.

Ron Mael: Before meeting Edgar, we were huge fans of his films. So it wasn’t like we had to Google “Edgar Wright” to find out who this guy was that was coming to breakfast the next morning. So it was just an easy relationship to further. It just worked out so well because it’s a mutual admiration society.

Russ Mael: To embark on a documentary, you really have to have a dedication and a focus, and just stamina to do a project like this. In a certain way it’s a little different even than a feature film where there’s no parameters. The story can continue forever, sort of. Where do you stop, where do you start? It’s kind of this nebulous amount of material, a vast amount of material, and there’s no real ground rules.

To be able to hone in all of those things about a band with a 25-album history and then entertain on something as vast an array of a subject matter as that[is tough]. You have to have that real focus and stamina to want to do that. So we were really ecstatic when it was Edgar, who’s not only our friend but to be doing this film, which we thought could be something amazing, and it is. We’re just just ecstatic with the results. 

Edgar, you want to introduce Sparks further into the mainstream, but very early on in the film, Ron and Russ mention that maybe they’re a little worried about having people know too much about you. As the process went along, was it easier just to let out all these stories?

Russ: Initially we discussed with Edgar that part of the appeal we think for people that are really aware of the band is that there isn’t that much personal information out there, or that that everything that that they know about the band is via our music and via the image they have of the band via the album covers and seeing us on TV.

To unveil too much of that information that is more personal stuff, the question was, “Does that lessen the aura that people might think of the band having?” It was discussed what would be a good kind of division. How much you should share with the public and how much can still be held back from revealing. We think there was a really good separation in the amount of what was said and what was not said about the band.

Edgar: I just want to say I think all of those things just add to the legend… Because the music is just so imaginative and far reaching, seeing the more normal things about you–as a fan–I find that even more impressive. It doesn’t go the other way where it’s like, “Oh that boring.” It’s more along the lines of “my God, this is where all of this came from? These guys?” I find that mind blowing. 

Ron: I mean it’s not all that damaging to our image to be seen in football uniforms [in high school] you know. [Laughs] So it just kind of adds to the incongruity of the whole situation.

Read more

Culture

When Paul McCartney Braved the Set of Roger Corman’s The Masque of the Red Death

By Tony Sokol

Movies

Anya Taylor-Joy on Last Night in Soho, Edgar Wright, and Emma’s Voice

By David Crow

Edgar, you’ve called your films Trojan Horses. You bring people in, thinking it will be one thing and then it turned out to be something else. For Ron and Russ, does it almost feel like you’re tricking people in the same way? You present this beat that people can dance to, but then you listen to the lyrics and all of a sudden this whole new level.

Russ: That was one of the things that we were really happy with in the documentary, that the lyrics were treated as a really big portion of the film. Not many documentaries that deal with pop bands will do that. We were really happy that the lyrics were seen as having big importance within the film. It’s not only discussing the music or the image of the band. We don’t see too many documentaries where they actually speak specifically about lyrics within songs.

Having someone like Neil Gaiman talking about the lyrics of Sparks or even Flea waxing so eloquently about Sparks lyrics was really important for us that that side was treated so well within the film. I think that that makes it so much richer than just discussing the music. We don’t know of many documentaries that really have delved that deeply into the lyrical side of bands.

You also covered so much. There’s only two albums that were not covered in their entirety in the film.

Edgar: I think that things like [the album] The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman, we didn’t have time to get into. I think we do cover all of them, because I feel like it was something where it became a thing that once you’d started doing this, it has to be that comprehensive. You see this with recent documentaries. I really liked, for example, the Bee Gees documentary, however I was kind of a bit bummed when they didn’t cover the Sergeant Pepper movie, at all. I was like, “Ah, I want to hear that story!”

In a way, with Sparks it was something where the misses are as interesting as the hits. And the reasons things don’t connect, that’s an important part of the story. You can’t have the ups without the downs. Most music documentaries are like, “Hey we’re the Beatles and we’re flying high and then we split up.” Like the Rolling Stones documentary goes up to the start of the ‘70s and then just stops [Laughs]. With Sparks, you have to, you have to draw the whole graph, and the downs, the misses are as important as the heights, and also some of the best stories.

So once we had started doing it, it was a case where I can’t just skip over something, I have to tell the whole story. When you get the opportunity to do it as a fan it’s like, I can’t not tell the whole story, and I’d be kicking myself if there was something that was missed and people said I wanted to hear about Introducing Sparks. But we cover it, so it’s ok.

I hate putting genre labels on stuff, I hate boxing things in, but if anybody talks about Sparks music, it’s always going to be Pop or it’s going to be Synth Pop. Do you feel that your music kind of gets mislabeled here and there? 

Ron: Well, whenever it is labeled, I think it’s mislabeled in a certain sense. We’re really happy about the documentary covering all those periods, so we aren’t just that glam rock band Sparks. It’s much, much more than that. Through all those periods, we never label ourselves as any of those things. It’s always been other people. I mean no offense to journalists, but journalists have to kind of find a slot for you and we always felt that we were in a certain way, operating outside of all of those things.

It just seems to minimize the music when you put those kind of labels on anything. Whether it’s self serving or something else, we felt our music was more important and timeless in a certain sense than that.

That also goes back to the point that there are misses here and there, but it seems that you guys had the availability to do what you wanted to do, pretty much your whole career. Nobody ever said, “You can’t do that.”

Russ: That’s the one thing that we’re still proud of. We’re not masochists and we obviously enjoy having commercial success when it comes around, but when it does come around, it’s not been us doing something different than we’ve always done; it’s just been the circumstances surrounding it that have made certain albums or songs become more visible.

That vision that was there from day one and when Todd Rundgren first took a stab at Sparks… [he was] the only person that took a chance on Sparks. In the beginning, the sensibility that we had then is the same sensibility that we have now, and we would never want to water down that sensibility in search of something that may be more widespread commercially. It would probably fail anyway, if we even had the ability to figure out what that is that’s commercial. Especially nowadays where everything is so fractured in the whole music area.

No one knows what that surefire thing is. That feeling that maybe if you do that kind of music and you’re going to be huge on Tik Tok or that sort of thing. So we’re just proud that we’ve stuck to our vision, and people have congregated towards it at various times in bigger ways than the other. But now in the end, we’re just happy that what we’re doing [what] feels as vital as it did from day one.

Edgar, music plays such a large part in your films, but we haven’t heard any Sparks music in your films yet. Will Last Night in Soho feature some Spark songs?

Edgar: No [Laughs]. I will say there was one time I tried to use a Sparks song in one of my films. I tried to use “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us” in Hot Fuzz. But here’s the thing, and this is a credit to Ron and Russell, their music is not easy to use as wallpaper audio, because it’s so vivid, not just in terms of the songs but the lyrics are so evocative.

You can’t just have Sparks in the background, not easily. So I tried it and it didn’t quite work. It would have been better in a Baby Driver style, where I design the scene to go with the song, but I was trying it after the fact.

There were bits that were great but… I remember putting on the scene, it was actually in the scene where Simon Pegg is fighting Timothy Dalton in the model village, “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us.” However, there was a point where, as a fan, I’d be watching the scene and I’d start listening to the song [and think] maybe that doesn’t work? Because now I’m distracted by the song in a given way. So I think that’s the thing, I haven’t used [a Sparks song] yet but I would say that’s because Sparks can’t just be on in the background.

Ron: One reason why there aren’t a lot of cover songs of Sparks is because other musicians hear them and they think that version is so stylistically entwined with the song itself, just the way that it actually is done that there is no way for them to do an alternate interpretation of it.

Edgar: You’ve done some of the best Sparks covers yourself. Some of the songs on Plagiarism, there’s a couple of them that are better than the original. Maybe ”Pulling Rabbits Out of a Hat” and “Change,” I think those are superior to the original version.

We will also soon see your feature film Annette. I know you had the issue with not being able to get your other film off the ground, back in the ‘80s with Tim Burton. But is it a case of actually being happier that you can have a project like this come out now, with the availability of social media and star power can help bring a bigger notice to it?

Russell: Well, we’re happy that in the end, it’s going to be happening; the release of Annette and having two films this year. I mean, having a documentary by Edgar Wright, that would have been enough. But having the other film that we’ve worked on for eight years finally see the light of day, and potentially be of interest to a lot of people with Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard and directed by Leos Carax… having those elements kind took on another level from when we first had written and first envisioned it eight years ago when it was potentially going to be just the next Sparks album.

Then it took on a whole new life as a movie and then it escalated once Adam got involved. In a way, just having it happen now, maybe it’s part of the whole saga of Sparks? It never rains, but it pours. That’s going to be the situation for 2021. Now we have two films, who would have thought?

Edgar: It’s not too late for Tim Burton to go into production on Mai, The Psychic Girl in 2021 as well. 

Russ: That’s right!

Edgar: Then you get the hat trick.

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from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/39vtMb5

[ii-thiscat-ii]

The prompt asked for Dipper talking to Discworld’s Death.

I liked that prompt. Discworld’s Death is a great character, and I’d love to see anyone taking a crack at it. Unfortunately, if you say the personification of death as a character, I don’t think of Discworld’s Death, I think Death of the Endless. Neil Gaiman’s Sandman’s Death. If only because, if there was something like a person to pick you up and brush you off after you died, I’d want it to be her.

So you get her instead, I’m afraid.

On Ao3

“It doesn’t really work like that, here.”

The young woman smiled. She had a kind smile. That was the first thing he noticed about her.

Her skin was pale, but not quite paper white. Her hair fell in long, messy black curls, but not truly pitch. When she shrugged in response to him, her black tank top and the silver ankh on a string around her neck shifted at the movement. Her dark, gothic eyeliner was carefully hand drawn on, a little spiral in the corner of her right eye.

She was beautiful, in a very human way. The very picture of life.

Her eyes were ancient.

“I know,” she said. “That’s why I came here. When you’re everywhere, all the time, it can be hard to get a vacation, you know? Sometimes you just want to jump universe.”

He found himself nodding before he had even fully processed the statement. It was hard to disagree with someone with a smile like hers.

For a second, he turned away. If he looked at her for too long, it got hard to focus on anything besides her eyes, beside that casual warmth she shared so easily.

He looked out over the city instead. They had a good view from where they sat, at the ledge of one of the uppermost floors of a skyscraper.

Below them, thousands of people passed by every minute, milling around like ants on the street. Anyone with good enough eyes, or a pair of binoculars, would be able to see them sitting there. Him, with his wings splayed out behind him and his ankles crossed over the ledge, and her, with one foot dangling and her hands and chin resting on the other knee.

They would see a demon and a reckless human girl.

He took a deep breath to taste the power in the air, and knew that they were wrong.

“Is it better?” he asked. “Where you come from? Less messy?”

She hummed. He looked at her and she smiled as if she had known him his whole life.

“Not really,” she said. “There are always the outliers, the ones that fall through the cracks, the ones that don’t get all the way through and the ones that refuse to go at all. At least here, it’s no one’s responsibility. It’s just something that happens.”

“So…” he said, leaning on his hands and looking down at the street directly below. “If something goes wrong like that, over there, it’s your responsibility?”

“Something like that.” She leaned back against the steel behind them, face upturned and eyes closed against the breeze. “No one is infallible, but I try. The ones that are prevented from leaving can be difficult, at times. I don’t always try too hard, though.” She opened one eye and glanced at him, smile playful at her lips. “They all go in the end.”

He swung his feet back and forth and smiled back at her. His mouthful of sharp teeth, which would make near any human flinch, did not phase her in the least.

A dropping of pigeons flew by, dozens of wings beating out of tune, heading for a perch in some other place. The two of them watched in silence as the city was so undeniably alive around them.

“Everyone?” he asked.

She smiled. It was soft and quiet and exactly what he needed it to be. “Nothing lasts forever, Dipper.”

He had never told her his name. Maybe he should have been surprised that she knew.

The smile was always there. Every time he looked at her, she was smiling, and every time, it felt new, as if every kindness he had ever known wanted a chance to express itself through it.

A part of him wanted to be scared of her. He had never felt more at home sitting beside a stranger.

“Sometimes it feels that way, though,” he said. He folded his hands in his lap and looked at them rather than her. “I’ve been around for a long time already.”

“Lots of people have been around for a long time,” she said.

He shot her a quick, angry look, and her next smile was an apology.

“I’ll be around for longer,” he complained.

She looked at him.

He looked into her eyes and could not look away. She looked young, physically. The way she dressed, the way she moved and spoke all screamed young adult, but her eyes caught his and he was glad he did not need to breathe, because they took his breath away. Ancient was the wrong word for them.

Endless.

“Someone has to be here to put the chairs on the tables and turn off the light as they leave,” she said. “I can’t be here to do that for you.”

She looked away, out over the city, and he could breathe again.

She continued without turning back to him. “You’re not the only one,” she said. “There are others that live at least as long as you will.”

He looked down at his hands and swallowed. It had been a long time since the last time he felt this small. “…It’s a matter of scale,” he muttered. “I still live at human speed, you know.”

She sighed beside him, and then she scooted over and bumped her shoulder to his. Her smile was friendly, as she leaned down slightly to look at his face, and her eyes were not quite as terrible anymore as they met his.

“Hey,” she said. “It’ll come. Don’t worry.”

“I’m worrying,” he said, but he smiled as he said it. A small, wry smile, but a smile nonetheless. “What’ll happen to me before then? How many people will I hurt?”

“There’s been quite a few already, hasn’t there?” she said, and she said it as a joke. “Do you remember them?”

“What, all of them?” he asked, and now he was really smiling, if only at the absurdity of the idea. “Hell no. There’s way too many, even if I don’t count California.”

“I guess there is,” she laughed. “It wouldn’t be very healthy of you to dwell on, in any case.”

He paused in wonder at her laughter for a moment. She made it seem so easy. “Do you think I should?” he asked. “Do you think I owe them that, after what I did to them?”

She shrugged. “Not my department.” The next smile she sent him made it sound like there was a joke there, just between the two of them. “And even if it was, I’m on vacation.”

“I see,” he said, grinning.

It was getting harder to worry about it all. There was so much life to her; there was no room to wallow in misery when she was around to smile at him.

“Well!” He pushed up until he had both feet on the ledge, and stood up. “You can’t spend your whole vacation watching pigeons from hundreds of feet in the air! You don’t have forever in this universe, so why don’t I show you around?” He offered her a hand.

She smiled at him, a wide and joyful grin, and grabbed his hand to pull herself up. “That sounds just peachy,” she said. “Where do we go first? I’ve always wanted to see what kind of fast food they sell on the streets of a city with this many species in it.”

He laughed, at her priorities and at the unapologetic joy of it. Her hand in his was a promise of something that could not be his for a long time yet, no matter how he longed for it, but he ignored it. They had bigger things to focus on, like pigeons, corn dogs on street corners and kind smiles.

Now, they had a universe to see. Everything else could wait.

[c-valentino]

Lighter Next To Your Coffee Mug XV.I

A/N: This chapter is a little heavier on Andrew's side, including the requested insight into his last encounter with Neil in front of the apartment building. Enjoy the ride.

The lyrics are from one of my favorite songs. Ella Walker's voice is simply beautiful! Go check her out ;)

I’ve spent too long lying, And now I’m trying to hurt you. But you’ve seen me bare, You’ve seen me covered up Maybe I’m not scared What you’re thinking of You’ve seen me here And held me miles away, Underneath my skin Is all you’ll see today.

Wildes - Bare

   15.1

   He was in every sense undeniably, irrevocably and thoroughly fucked. Andrew took a moment to admit the fact to himself, inhaling it with the smoke of yet another cigarette before watching it drift lazily towards the ceiling. He sat on his sofa, head and upper arms resting on the back, legs comfortably spread, thoughts sharp but skipping through all his options. It was way past midnight. Neil left hours ago, had escaped, had run away –from him, again. He could have kept him here, of course, but he had decided to let him run. It had been a gut decision, and so far it seemed the right choice. Neil wasn’t out of his reach and he had things to consider, new information to process and moves to plan.

  ‘You got it backwards… Kevin knows me… I can’t let him find me.’ Everything about that had screamed truth at him at that moment. The moment he had mentioned Riko Moriyama he had seen the recognition on Neil’s face, the fear, so much like the way the name made Kevin flinch. Not his, then, not Riko’s. He had been wrong. Who are you? Where have you been? How are you involved? What do you want from me? Questions with no answers. So intriguing.

  He could ask Kevin. Simple as that. Dig up a past Neil wanted to bury. The man obviously hadn’t dug deep enough, was still trying to throw more dirt on top. You could see it under his fingernails if you looked closely enough. Maybe he would have to ask Kevin. Andrew didn’t particularly want to though. This was his puzzle. Now that he was reasonably sure that Neil was no threat to Kevin he could take his time with the whole matter and take it apart piece by piece.

  These were the facts: Neil’s name wasn’t Neil Josten. He was the same young man they had wanted to meet back in Millport; an Exy player who had gotten the attention of none other than Kevin Day with his undeniable ability to spot raw talent from a mile away. Neil was working as a prostitute and had given up his Exy career. Someone was searching for him.

  Things that were almost certain at this point: Neil’s obsession with Exy was real, probably to the same degree as Kevin’s. Kevin had known Neil Josten before they had flown out to Millport but hadn’t recognized the young man. Which made it likely that they had met as kids –which meant Evermore, which would explain why Riko Moriyama had left an impression.

  So… a raven fledgling that had fled the nest? How likely was that? The Moriyamas guarded their secrets well; he would need insider information to confirm that idea –Kevin, maybe Moreau.

  Andrew accepted it as his working theory for the time being. But that only took care of Neil’s past. He could entertain that thought and bring it to the present: Neil had fled the raven’s nest, but had continued to play Exy during school until they had spotted him at Millport High. He ran away again, from Kevin that time, and quit Exy. For whatever reason, he ended up as a prostitute and was pursuing that trade for over a year now in this city. Roland had introduced Neil to him because they had briefly talked about him looking for a suitable partner to confront his issues with. But that was such a huge fucking coincidence that Andrew couldn’t really wrap his mind around it.

  And there was another problem, maybe the biggest of all. Somewhere along the way he had developed feelings for Neil. He needed to accept that and add it to his fact list. Reading the file he had gotten from Allison, noticing the discrepancies in Neil’s past, the lack of information, the secrets, his connection to Millport, and his false assumption that Riko had his hands in the whole matter to get back at Kevin had clouded his judgment. He had felt betrayed, had feared being the instrument of his friend’s downfall, the friend whom he promised to protect. It had turned his feelings for Neil into something twisted and ugly, had made him lash out and attack the man. And now, it turned out, at least part of it had been a misunderstanding. Oh, how he hated that word but here it was. A real, fucking undeniable misunderstanding.

  Say it, Minyard, he told himself. You’ve made a mistake. You’ve managed to push away the only guy who got remotely close to you in years.

  And why? Because he wouldn’t accept the fact that he could find someone to get close to. That maybe he wasn’t too damaged after all. Neil had been willing; there was no denying it. He wasn’t blind. He had wanted to see it as part of an act though, a scheme. But maybe it wasn’t. And truth be told he didn’t fool himself. He didn’t think of it as true love. But it had been something –on both sides. Exy fanboyism or simple physical attraction –or not? What about the whole asexual thing? Maybe another lie…– But there had been something on Neil’s side. Phone calls, texting, an unexpected visit in the middle of the night… Neil had been reaching out to him. It could have been a trap. Could have. Probability: 40:60 –not good enough. He needed to know. Fucking Neil Josten or whatever his name really was and his obnoxious habit of lying. How could he be interested in a pathological liar of all people?

  And now he had ruined it. How beautiful it had been though… Revealing Neil’s true colors, his rage, his violent streak, his simmering temper that could conflagrate in seconds… it had been captivating. Very much like Kevin, there was an entirely different man hidden below a layer of choking fear, and Andrew wanted to see everything part of him. Worth it, he decided, pushing Neil had been worth it. To see that, he could not bring himself to regret it. He couldn’t let him go. Maybe he would not be able to repair the damage that had been done between them, but Andrew needed to see Neil again at least one more time.

  Outside the window of his living room the sky shifted colors. The city was about to wake. Time to go.

   The streets were pleasantly empty this early. The black car took him once more into that godforsaken neighborhood Neil had chosen to live in. He parked the car across the street and leaned back in his seat. This wouldn’t go down easy; there was no way it would. He needed to decide how to play this. He could admit that he had been wrong –at least partially. Apologies were not his thing. Or he could deflect the blame and turn it back on Neil and make him swallow the guilt. That one would be easier, he thought, but it was also the cowardly way out.

  While he was still thinking about it Andrew saw a shadow crossing the street, a fast one. He turned his head and realized it was Neil, but it was already too late. The man raised his racquet and smashed in the window between them. The pieces scattered, raining down on him inside the car, on to the street around Neil’s feet.

  “Stay away from me! Or the next time, it will be you I break!” Oh, he was furious and it looked good on him. Neil reached into his pocket and threw the money Andrew had given him back into the car. How amusing. Neil might not know it, but it was the fact that it always came down to money that had reminded Andrew that he was dealing with a hooker when he was with Neil. It hadn’t been a gentle reminder; it had been a warning sign. ‘Yours, as long as you pay for it’ and ‘someone else’s every other night’. He had accepted it most of the time. There had been moments when he had pushed against those boundaries, the times when he had asked Neil to stop seeing other clients. His refusal had always been as much relief as a sore spot. He had chosen a hooker because he couldn’t imagine having a normal relationship. He had asked his hooker to step outside of that role because he wanted more anyway. Not the whole thing, he still would have been paying for Neil after all, but something more. And Neil had hated every single moment he had been reminded of their standings. Hilarious.

  “Now fuck off!” He turned around, thinking that his little outrage had scared his pursuer enough. Why he would think that was beyond Andrew. Neil hadn’t even touched him, hadn’t even used that racquet –interesting choice of a weapon really– to hurt him, after he had drawn a knife during their last encounter. Disappointing. Truth be told, he had expected a little more from the man. After all, they were past drawing first blood by now. The rules had changed. But still, he liked that wild fury on Neil’s face. Don’t tell me you are holding back for my sake, he scoffed inwardly. Oh, Neil. Don’t make that mistake. Maybe the guy needed a reminder of whom he was playing with.

  Andrew got out of his car, left the door open and reached Neil before the man could vanish back inside. All the guy managed was to turn around and face him, racquet raised to defend himself, eyes widening, ready to fight. Better. Dammit, he would regret losing this one. It would cost him. Andrew grabbed the racquet with both hands and shoved Neil back against the wall, knocked the wind out of him and used his chance to kiss him, hard. He knew better than to expect Neil’s lips yielding to his right now. This was a little too close to crossing the line. Forcing himself onto someone in this way wasn’t his thing. It left a sour taste in his mouth that had nothing to do with the man in front of him. It stung. The heat died, the thrill vanished and Andrew swallowed anger –directed at himself most of all. Neil was beyond furious by now, ready to fight back, and he would have gladly obliged him in any other situation but that ill-advised kiss had hit home. What are you doing?

  Realization hit hard and Andrew shut his excitement down, closed the door on it and threw the key away. I’m not going to be like them. He shoved Neil again, harder than he had intended to, saw the pain register on that face he liked to watch more closely than any other. He let go and turned around, took three long steps back to his car, got in, started the engine, and stepped onto the gas until the Maserati roared angrily and sped down the alley.

     The day after the whole team flew out to Las Vegas for another big event. The timing was less than ideal, but he had no way of getting out of it this time. One night gambling and celebrating at the casino and then they’d catch the next flight back home the following evening. He hated flying. It wasn’t just his fear of heights; it was the buzzing airports, the never-ending standing in line, the endless security checks. Leaving his knives behind always felt like a mistake. Having people in such close proximity for the better part of the day, maybe even having them patting him down because something –he couldn’t tell what, he had made sure not to carry anything made of metal on his body– had set the scanners off and his eye had twitched in annoyance. The security guy had him marked the moment it had happened. And then rinse and repeat on the way back. A nightmare.

  His team had been there, of course, loud and full of energy, excited for the trip. ‘Vegas Baby!’ they had hooted more than once on their way to the airport. Andrew didn’t care about Vegas. Kevin and Allison took turns watching him, pretending otherwise and then pretending not to notice that he had caught on to their little ploy. All in all it had been two needlessly exhausting days. His mind had been preoccupied but there was a good chance no one had noticed. His team was used to his silent treatment, even more so when they were flying somewhere. Kevin might have noticed but hadn’t commented on it. He had been busy with the press most of all.

   His duffle bag made it onto his bed, thrown with more force than strictly necessary, a meager outlet for his growing frustration. His apartment felt cold somehow, even though the temperature was regulated constantly. Andrew undressed on his way into the bathroom, his clothes leaving a trail in his wake, and took a shower. He had plans tonight. They couldn’t wait any longer. Neil had his respite and it was about time to remind him that the hunt was coming to an end. Andrew had used the last two days to evaluate the situation again and again. His conclusion: he couldn’t just let the man go. He wanted to solve this puzzle and catch the rabbit. Letting Neil simply vanish again was out of the question.

  The water was too hot but he ignored it. At least it dealt with the unpleasant feeling of cold and lingering exhaustion in his limbs. Andrew imagined how Neil had always taken showers before he went out to meet with someone, remembered the smell of the man’s body wash and shampoo, the taste of his clean skin, the feeling of his soft yet unruly hair.

  ‘It’s just daydreaming. I’m sure you do it too.’ Of course he did. Having a close to perfect memory had its advantages and this was one of them.

  ‘You have to promise me to delete the file afterwards.’ Sure thing. He had committed it to memory the moment he saw it. Agreeing to Neil’s terms had been easy. His internal replay count was getting worryingly high.

  ‘What are you really thinking of?’ ‘You.’ Followed by a gasp as Neil had come undone, looking straight into the camera, at him. Andrew’s breath hitched. He leaned his forearm against the cool tiles, supporting his head as he shifted his weight forward, letting the water soak his hair and hit his shoulders.

  ‘Andrew, I’m so close.’ His moan echoed inside the bathroom with no one but him to hear it. ‘Andrew? Andrew. Andrew! Andrew.’ He let the shiver run down through his body, let the feeling of his knees going weak pass over him and let it all be washed away by the hot spray of the shower, before he turned around and leaned back against the wall, eyes closed.

     His plans had gone astray when he had driven by Neil’s apartment twice that night. The place had been dark, leading to the conclusion that Neil was out, possibly with another client. Being not too worried about it, Andrew had decided to kill some time at Eden’s. Maybe asking Roland a few questions would be a good idea. But their conversation took a different turn as Roland looked at him knowingly from behind the bar and greeted him with one of his specials and a disappointed: “I had really hoped it would work out between you two.” There had been no doubt whatsoever who they were talking about, and Andrew switched gears and leaned lazily against the bar.

  “Oh?” He feigned disinterest.

  “Well, yeah, why wouldn’t I? You think I’d begrudge you any kind of pleasure? You wound me, Andrew.” Andrew just waved him off, not in the mood for theatrics at the moment.

  “He’s been here, then?” Facts, that’s what he’d come for.

  “Came to say goodbye,” Roland nodded. “You know, I really liked that kid. He was a good customer too.”

  “I’m sure,” Andrew agreed. Gone, Neil was gone. “Did he tell you where he went?”

  “No. Just told me it was his last night in town and he wouldn’t spend it at home. Thought you might know the details.”

  “‘fraid not,” he mumbled into his drink and took a sip. Roland looked disappointed again.

  “Sorry to hear that,” the bartender told him, and Andrew had the feeling he meant the whole situation, not just Neil’s sudden goodbye. The older man mixed them two shooters and placed them onto the polished bar between them. “On the house. To the kid, wherever he might be.” The Exy player took one and huffed in wry humor. It was the first of many shots that night and definitely not his last spiked drink either.

  Good thing he had left the Maserati at home before he came to Eden’s. Andrew could barely remember talking to the cabby and giving him his address, paying him (he made sure that had happened and wasn’t just some memory from another night… some drugs and him didn’t mix well, and he didn’t need more trouble), and finally stumbling into his dark, empty apartment. The sofa was closer than the bed, so that was where he ended up, asking himself when had been the last time he was so intoxicated that he surely would regret it the next morning. I’m acting like Kevin, he thought and found his morbid sense of humor, starting to laugh. Even in his own ears it sounded wrong. He’s gone. You let him get away. Neil had managed to hide for years. How likely was it to find him again now?

  Morning practice was a physical impossibility and for someone like him that meant something. His coach wasn’t amused of course, but Andrew sounded wrecked enough on the phone to make a sick call believable. Maybe Mathews wouldn’t buy it completely, but he would give him the benefit of the doubt. Kevin wouldn’t. He’d show up sooner or later, making accusations, bringing their supposed-to-be unspoken agreement up, wanting to know why Andrew hadn’t come over instead. He would have to dodge Kevin for a little while. His first step was to turn his phone off. That was an easy task again, now that he knew he couldn’t expect unforeseeable calls and texts from Neil. His next step was his search for some painkillers and downing them with two tall glasses of water. What followed were three more hours of much needed sleep.

He woke up hungover afterwards, still on his sofa, still in his disgusting smelling club outfit, groaning and rolling onto his back, one hand covering his eyes. He felt like shit, there was no other way to describe it, through and through, wrecked to the core. In addition to his physical discomforts came the aftermath of overloaded neurotransmitters, which in his case was a little different from a normal functioning brain. You couldn’t get much lower than his continuous state of apathy, but ‘not much’ was still an unpleasant experience.

  It took him most of the day to resemble a normally functioning human being again, even though his brain wasn’t quite up to speed yet. What drove him to get into his car and make the trip across town to Neil’s old apartment again, Andrew couldn’t really say. What induced him to actually get out of his car and break into the young man’s apartment however, was purely his notorious Andrew Minyard curiosity. It seldom knew moral standards or limits. It was like an itch inside his skull that he couldn’t scratch any other way. The need to make sure, to maybe look for clues, to see what was left, couldn’t be ignored any longer.

  The lock didn’t even pretend to present much of a challenge, reminding Andrew of the almost bare apartment Neil had called his home. With so little of value inside, why bother? If you had to be ready to run at any given moment and give everything up, why bother? The door opened almost silently. The moment he sat foot into the dark apartment, Andrew knew something was off. The place wasn’t empty. That alone he could have excused. Neil could have run, leaving everything behind except of his most important possessions. It would have made sense. What didn’t though were the boxes that greeted Andrew in the dark. Someone, most likely Neil, had made an effort and packed up all of the young man’s belongings. Granted, that couldn’t have taken long. There were only four of them, neatly stacked against the wall. He paused and took it all in.

  Andrew had to admit he hadn't seen the attack from behind that swept the feet from under him, tripping him backwards, coming. He hit the floor back first, and felt the air rushing from his lungs. About to roll to the side to get back onto his feet, a racquet above his head made him pause. Getting slow, Minyard, he mocked himself.

  “Give me one good reason not to bash your brains out,” Neil growled. There he was, standing behind him, in nothing but his underwear, aiming his Exy racquet at Andrew’s head. The predator was back again, and Andrew felt another shiver running down his spine. Neil’s bare feet had made no sound when snuck up behind him. He probably had heard him tempering with the lock and hid in the dark bathroom with his racquet. Never before had Andrew Minyard been so pleasantly surprised by being attacked from behind.

  “I’m not here to fight,” the goalkeeper replied, staying down for now, leaning on one elbow.

  “I don’t care. I’m done with you. I should have never agreed to this in the first place.” The man above him was more than a little annoyed by his uninvited guest.

  “I want the truth,” Andrew said and slowly sat up, pushing the racquet aside with his shoulder when Neil refused to move it out of the way. He needed to know. It had been all he could think of those last few days.

  “Too bad we are not playing anymore.” Too bad, he had to agree. “Now get out,” Neil hissed.

“How can I put this? How about… –No.” Neil had made the mistake not to withdraw his weapon of choice, leaving the racquet in Andrew’s reach. So he used it, grabbed it and pulled himself back onto his feet with its help when Neil wouldn’t let go. The scuffle that followed only showed how outmatched Neil was in close combat against the Exy star. He threw some punches, some of which Andrew blocked, some of which he simply took and ignored. He hit back only twice, and both hits were more precisely aimed and had enough force behind them to make them count. The first was aimed at Neil’s gut, the second at his face, knocking his head sideways, splitting his lower lip. Everything else was just holds and shoves, making clear who had the upper hand in this fight. Neil was a sore loser though. When he couldn’t get his racquet back, he aimed a knee at the goalkeeper’s groin, which Andrew saw coming and blocked, but wasn’t amused by. It was a cheap shot. It did, however, give Neil the opportunity he had needed to get free and back onto his feet. He took three steps backwards and swept a hand at his bleeding lower lip, keeping his eyes on the goalkeeper. But where did he think he was going in just his underwear in the middle of the night?

  Andrew stayed where he was. The fight had gotten his blood flowing, but there was no euphoria in his system. He was still suffering the aftermath of the drugs, leaving him feeling strangely hollow and dissatisfied inside. It wasn’t a good mix. It was a dangerous combination for him.

  “Just wait,” he sighed. He was tired of this. He wouldn’t get another chance though. Too bad he had imagined their next encounter differently and now had only himself to blame.

  “Fuck off!” Neil was breathing hard, feeling all the rage Andrew couldn’t find inside himself right now.

  “Ask me,” Andrew told him.

  “Shut up!”

  “Ask me anything,” he raised his voice to meet Neil’s. It felt strange. He rarely got loud. He didn’t need to. People took him seriously from his presence alone.

    “I don’t care!” Neil was so furious by now, he didn't know what he was doing. The old rage was boiling in him, taking him over. Andrew clearly underestimated him. It was a dangerous game for both of them, and the goalkeeper kept pushing him, wouldn’t leave him alone.

  His adrenalin was still high. He had been napping after another sleepless night when he had heard someone stopping in front of his apartment door, followed by the sound of someone messing with his lock. It had taken Neil three seconds to jump off the bed, grab his racquet and hide behind the half open bathroom door in the dark, watching Andrew fucking Minyard breaking into his apartment through the gap between the door and wall.

  “Liar! I know you do!” Why did he have to show his emotions now? Why? For fuck’s sake, why couldn't Andrew stay the fuck away from him? What was he doing looking at him like that, as if this meant something? Was he that crazy? Now of all times, after it was already too late. It was not fair.

  “Why are you doing this?” Neil raged. Tomorrow morning he would have been gone from this city. It had been a mistake to plan this through this time after all. Pack your things, rent a car, arrive somewhere with more than a duffle bag for once… Yeah, right… Because it had only been Minyard who had found out? Only? Because he had thought he could handle the man? Because somewhere below all this crazy bullshit he still cared for this asshole and couldn’t figure out why.

  “Because I want you.” There was anger in Andrew’s voice and something else. Pain? Want me? I know you want me, you idiot, you’ve been paying for me. Captain obvious…

  “Why me? For fucks sake!” Neil kicked one of the boxes, leaving a hole in its side. Don’t look at me like that. 

       “Because you are a nightmare I cannot wake up from.” What a line… Back to the theatrics already, Andrew mocked himself.

  “What the fuck does that even mean,” Neil asked, incomprehension written all over his face. “Are you serious?”

  “I know you don’t get it,” Andrew spat. Because he wouldn’t. How could he? Andrew himself didn't get to terms with it. He wanted this man. There was so precious little in his life he really wanted. It made him so angry, this… obsession with Neil. It went way beyond sex, way beyond his issues. He knew it was already too late for both of them.

  “Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. Who the fuck knows what’s going through your brain.” Well, that stung. It shouldn’t, but it did. And it must have shown on his face because Neil’s expression shifted, and then he said, “Are you in love with me?” and there couldn't have been more disbelief in his tone if he had tried.

  “Yes, I am.” There it was. And saying it made him feel like crap, sitting here on the dusty floor. He hated it. Neil blinked and Andrew waited for him to laugh, to be disgusted, to be creeped out. He knew what he looked like; a crazy stalker who came after his prostitute. Who wouldn't be thrilled by that? 

  “You can’t be serious.” Still disbelieve. Nothing else.

  “I’m not the liar here,” he snapped. This was so fucked up. He knew it. This was a disaster. And the worst part was, he had fucked it up. He had known all along what a stupid idea this was.

  The young man frowned down at him. “No, you are not,” he admitted. Neil’s anger was slowly subsiding again, leaving something like cool detachment in its wake. “You can’t blame me for not realizing it. You have a strange way of showing it.” He crossed his arms over his chest. Andrew said nothing. What could say? It was true. “Is that why you keep following me? Did Roland tell you I was leaving?”

  “He said you were gone.” That man had caused him so much unexpected trouble recently.

  “And you had to make sure?” He didn’t answer but Neil nodded. “Something came up. I was going to leave yesterday. I can’t have you following me around, Andrew. It’s dangerous.”

  “Who are you running from?” Why wouldn’t he just answer him? It was so annoying.

  “Don’t you know?” Confusion again. Neil was so wide open right now, Andrew wondered if he even realized it.

  “I wouldn’t have to ask then, would I?”

  “You didn’t ask Kevin?” Maybe he should have. It was always better to have all the cards in one’s hands, but it also made for a terribly boring game.

  “I’m still not sure he needs to know.” Depending on what they were dealing with here, it could freak Kevin out and that could get ugly. Andrew didn’t particularly feel like playing babysitter for his friend right now. Not more than usual at least. Neil sighed, looked miserable for a moment and leaned back against the wall. He muttered something under his breath Andrew couldn’t quite catch, then raked a hand through his messy hair.

  “You say you like me, but you don’t even know me,” he said then, sighing and sounding more exhausted than anything else. Andrew didn’t miss how ‘love’ had turned into ‘like’ all of the sudden. “Same goes for me. I don’t know you at all, and I thought we agreed on that at the beginning. Now, I know things got messy along the way, and yes, part of it was my fault, I won’t deny that. It was. I got carried away. But pulling that surveillance shit on me went too far. I’m not even talking about what happened back at your apartment. That’s just fucked up. This is stalker material and you now it.”

  Yes, he did know it, and it didn’t even matter that it hadn’t been him who had sent those men after Neil. He had taken that file as soon as it had been in his reach. Allison would come up with some excuses about celebrities having to watch their backs. It was bullshit. Fact was he didn’t even feel particularly guilty about the whole thing. Not enough to apologize at least. He knew it had been wrong, morally, legally, but his moral standards were pretty much chthonic to begin with. Flexible, one might say giving him too much credit, nonexistent others might say. The truth lay somewhere in-between but clearly in the lower spectrum.

  “You like to push my boundaries.” It wasn't a question but Andrew nodded because Neil knew it already. “And you like it when I break my rules for you. You like the advantage it gives you over me.” Power, Neil had wanted to say, Andrew could hear it in his voice, knew exactly what it would sound like.

  “Yes,” he admitted flatly. He needed a cigarette.

  “Do you know it makes me feel like crap? That it makes me hate myself every time I let you,” Neil muttered. No, he hadn’t known. How could he have? Empathy wasn’t exactly his forte. He had gotten better at guessing other people’s feelings over the years. He still didn't much care for them. “Geez.” Neil raked his fingers through his hair again and then turned his head to look at Andrew. “Have you been raped?” He had known it already, Andrew was sure.

  “Yes.” No use denying it, nothing to gain from it. Open cards, Minyard.

  “Fuck,” Neil cursed and Andrew could hear that he had hoped to be wrong about that. “When?” When what? When had been the first time? Or the last? Bee would be so proud, he mocked himself. Spilling everything as if someone had cut him open, as if he was bleeding out.

  “I was seven.” He felt raw and strangely numb at the same time, his apathy mixing with old memories and those feelings everyone always told him he was missing. Maybe feelings were overrated after all. Or maybe this was still the drugs’ aftermath. “Then again, when I was twenty.”

  “Jesus, Andrew,” Neil cursed. If he coughed up any sign of pity now, he might hit him. Andrew didn't know if he would be able to help himself. This was exactly what he hadn't wanted.

  “That’s an interesting choice of words,” he said monotonously. He got up, looked at Neil. “Are we done?” He needed to get out of here. It took Neil a moment to find his voice again.

  “Yes,” he said, frowning and watching him warily. And Andrew left, without another word.

<<Ch14                                                                                                                   Ch15.2>>

[thoughtsfeelingsjustblah]

11/4/2019

Already November! Time flies. It has been a good year though. I’ve felt more social and started making new friends, reconnecting with old friends, planning events and parties. I love to host parties. Would give anything to have a bigger house. This one is a little cramped. VERY cramped when I invite most of my friends over at the same time. lol 

Anyway, i’ve really enjoyed getting back to my social self. When I was my teens, I loved parties, and loved hosting parties even more! I got with Nathan when I was 20 and he wasn’t a partier all that much. I settled down, practically turned into a recluse, and lived that way for about 10 years. I let go of all my party friends, because I was trying to get out of that lifestyle. 

I became the crazy cat lady from being the fun party girl. lol I took in way too many cats than I could honestly take care of. Dogs, too. Got into animal rescue, though I ended up keeping most of them. My house was impossible to keep nice or even clean really, with that many animals. I fell into a depression, which caused me to recluse even more. My bipolar seems to have gotten worse. I was in a rut for years.

My oldest brother died in 2010. I started wanting to get away, to drink and just forget. And that’s what I did. (went really wild as a teenager after my Dad died when I was in my teens. My coping mechanism I suppose. Then, I met Jerry not long after my brother died and we became really close. He was my best friend for 2-3 years, until we tried to date and I realized he was a manipulative, controling, abusive asshole. Then, I started going out even more after that break up. After my Mom died, I didn’t go completely wild. Maybe it was because I was living alone in my clean, comfortable home. More stable. I did meet Mark not long after she passed, and did impulsively go out of town to meet him for the first time, in the middle of the night after I left a bar. lol So, maybe I went a little crazy. Turned out for the best, though.

Birthdays in November... I need to remember to send a card to my cousin Alissa, I always forget. Then, i’m seeing if James is busy next week, it’s his birthday. He’s alone and he did something special for Mark’s birthday. Brought him really nice cupcakes from a bakery. So I really want to do something for him. If he’s not already planned anything, i’ll ask him if there is anyone he’d want to invite. I just found out that Cassie’s birthday falls on Thanksgiving this year, so I need to get her a cake. I hope i’m not leaving anyone out for November birthdays. 

I’ve got to do something about my weight. I  take pictures, from an upper left angle (except most aren’t extreme angles anymore), and I love the way I look. I feel so pretty, from my pictures. But then, I see myself in the mirror and i’m often disappointed. I see myself in a picture someone takes of me, and my day is ruined. I end up in tears and feel huge, ugly, like a freaking monster. I don’t want to feel that way anymore. I know i’d be so much prettier, even with just 50-60 pounds gone. If I lost 100, i’d probably never leave the mirror! lmao No, but I would be happy with pictures people take and my self confidence would be through the roof.

It’s a shame that i’ve wasted all these years being fat and having nearly 0 self esteem. Now, if I lose weight.....i’ll be starting the aging process. About to turn 40. I wasted my youthful, pretty years. 

But HOW am I going to lose this weight? It’s so hard. Some of my health conditions cause weight gain and make it difficult to lose it. Some of my meds do the same thing. I’ve had a couple doctors trying to get me to go off the meds, but I won’t do it. They are my psychiatric meds, and I NEED them! Nope, nope, nope. I’ve been craving soda and drinking way too much of it this past week. That’s not going to help matters. I’m going to have to cut down on soda intake and watch what I eat, a bit more than I  do now. And, I need to get active. Not just for weight loss, for my diabetes too. Really need to start going to swim at the ymca 2-3 mornings per week, at least. And, sometime on most weekends, since it’s the only time Nathan can go. Would also like to starting waking at 6am and go for a walk. The walks will be super short for a while, because at this size it kills my lower back and legs. But, anything is better than nothing. I hope I can get into a better routine.

I’d so love to lose 50 pounds by Summer, when we go back to Wyoming and to the beach. Confidence, I need it back. 

I need to clean this room today, it’s a complete disaster. Trying to get Mark to help me. It will be nice to be able to walk through the room normally. To have my side table cleared and organized. Be able to organize and decorate my makeup table, be able to access and organize my jewelry again! I feel chaotic in my mind when things are out of place. My problem, i’m a perfectionist. I want everything to be perfect. And thats hard to do now that i’m not living alone. So, when it’s not perfect I lack the motivation to clean. Complicated.

I WANT MY HOME 100% ORGANIZED!!!!!

I had all rooms organized a while back. Perfectly. Except the bedroom. But people want to leave stuff laying around and/or put things in the wrong places. Leaving me to have to get up the motivation to do it all over again! Oh, not to mention people leaving trash laying around. My biggest pet peeve! 

I wonder what really happens when you die. People are always saying they will see their loved ones again one day - but how do we really know that? It seems like wishful thinking. Something will tell ourselves to make death feel a little less permanent. I mean, i’d love for it to be true. But noone truly knows. I guess it IS a comfort to tell yourself that. But what if death is just death. Nothingness. You just no longer exist? What if everyone who dies is trapped on Earth for eternity. Purgatory. Or hell....punished for all of our “sins”. Because EVERYONE sins at some point, nobody is perfect.

I wonder the same about God. How do we really know there IS a God? How? We pray, and most of our prayers remain unanswered. Did someone just make up God and Christianity to make themselves and some others feel better? Feel not alone. 

I lean more toward Wicca in my beliefs. But even still, how do we know the Goddess/Gods even exist? I don’t know. Just something I was thinking about.

Speaking of which, I was talking to my brother Neil the other day. We had a great, long conversation. I didn’t want to get off the phone. EVEN during the “Rhonda” part of the conversation (long story, may blog about it another time). lol One thing in our convo that stood out.. He told me that my Mom told him she was a witch. She practiced withcraft a little before I was born. I don’t remember her ever telling me that. She did tell me about a couple witches back in the family bloodline, though. I feel i’m a natural born witch. Strange things have happened, i’m had visions that come true. Dreams and nightmares that later actually happened. I’ve been drawn to witchcraft my entire life. 

I tried Christianity. I really did. But it never felt right. But i’ve hidden my beliefs for years and will probably continue to do so for the most part, living in this area. After talking to a few friends about, i’m surprised to find people accepting of it and some even interested/consider themselves a witch or Wiccan.

I’ve been even more interested in witchcraft and Wicca after meeting another witch. She’s a natural born witch, too, not someone who converted to the religion. We have a strong, spiritual bond. I’ve been embracing my spirituality a bit more lately. I feel like i’m not so alone in my beliefs. 

I like to believe there IS a higher power. I just don’t know exactly what I believe. 

I’m getting tired of blogging at the moment, will be ending this in a second. Still have things running through my mind, just tired of typing. lol I think i’ve been in  mild manic state for quite a while. It’s better than depression at least. Ok, I have a little more to blog about after all. lol

I need to figure out what i’m doing (lawyer or not) and file for disability again. Being married, i’d only get $400.....but there is a lot I can do with $400 that I currently do not have. I’ve been donating plasma to have a little spending cash. And I would probably continue even if I get approved for SSI, it’s a good thing to do, and hey, extra money, ya know? But with $400 a month, I could buy some clothes and decent thing that I want but can’t afford right now. Save what I can save. Have an emergency savings, which I so desperately need.

I was thinking the other day about our neighbors. They are awesome. Danny is a good guy, a good friend. The neighbors on the other side seem like really good people. They even surprised us by mowing our lawn once while we were away. I want to make something. Banana bread, a cake, maybe cookies and give them to both neighbors. Show them that we appreciate them. Good neighbors are a blessing, we are lucky. We have neighbors a couple house down that seem cool, too. They are different. Unique. I guess kinda alternative or punk style. I’m wanting to invite them to one of our get togethers soon.

Not sure if we’ll be having a get together this weekend. If everything goes as planned, Cassie, Dena, Crystal and I will be going to Cherokee NC Saturday. Cassie wants to meet a guy she knows online. It will be fun, if it works out for us to go. :) If we get back in time, may drink a lil Saturday night. Or maybe not. Idk. I think the guys plan to have a friend or two over while we’re gone. Guys night and girls road trip. lol I may see if Cassie would wanna let her brother Matt stay here with the guys, so it’s truly a girls trip. That, and I think it would fun for Matt. He’s young, but that doesn’t matter, they could play video games or just whatever.

Then, Sunday, we (Me, Mark, Nathan, Crystal and Sierra) or making another road trip, to go see my brother. I want to see him, it’s been a while, and at the same time, I want him to meet Crystal. I told him about her, and about the feelings and things, the other day. He was shocked, never had a clue that I was bicurious. lol He’s supportive of it, though. 

Mark’s tried to be supportive too. It’s a little different for him. And we talked, he has been worried that i’d completely fall for her and leave him. That’s not going to happen. It’s not a one or the other kind of situation.

I was cuddly with him in bed yesterday morning, and I asked him if he’d be more ok with it if he was a part of it, if and when it ever turns physical. But he’s only with me. If I ever had an actual threesome, i’d likely lose feelings for him. That;’s what happened with the last time a boyfriend and I had a threesome. That was with two guys, never had a girl/girl/guy threesome. But, I broke up with him right after. I don’t know why my feeling changed. But I do NOT want that to happen with him. He treats me so well, he amazing. What worries me, if he is involved at all, even just participating with me only, will that change my feelings for him, too. I really don’t know. For the most part, my feelings are like a light switch that I have control over. On/off. 

Now let me add.............IF I were to feel comfortable with him being there, Crystal would be the one to make the final decision. It depends on what she’s comfortable with. I still don’t even know how I feel about it. If we go there, I kinda wanted it to be just her and I. I want it to be pure an special. She means a lot to me. With a guy, I like rough and wild sex. But I feel that if I were ever to be with her in that way, i’d want it to be a little different.

Now, that’s IF we ever explore the physical side of things. I am curious about it, and I honestly think i’d better good at it. I’m a very oral person. But I don’t know if it may feel......awkward? I don’t think it would be, as close as we are. I don’t even know how she feels about going there. I don’t know how I feel completely either. I’m thinking I may be comfortable with it at some point. But, at this point, i’m content with the way things are. Spending time together, holding hands, a little kiss here and there. It’s new to me, and new to her, but it feels right. 

If/when we ever do... I think it would be nice to go in together on a nice hotel room. One with a jaccuzi tub would be a nice touch. Flowers on the nightstand, rose petals on the bed, champagne with strawberries, candles, soft music. I want a special, romantic night. And if we get there and we chicken out (lol) on making love, we could still cuddle and enjoy the room, spend time alone. I’d miss Mark for the night, but it would only be one night. I strongly prefer our first time to be just US. As far as after that, still undecided. 

In one way, it would be nice to involve him. It’s one of his fantasies, I believe and truthfully i’ve had threesome fantasies before. Though, with us it wouldn’t be an actual threesome. It would be she and I and him and I. I’m just afraid it will change my feelings somehow. But I feel so close to both of them, it might still feel special with both of them, idk. I don’t want him to feel left out, pushed away. This is just complicated as crap! Oh well, we will figure it out in time. 

I want to plan a romantic hotel night with Mark sometime, too. I’ve been wanting that for so long. I always hoped he would plan something like that for me. I guess i’ll be the one planning it. Would be more special if he did, though. Nathan even offered to pay for the room for us at one point. Which was sweet and surprising. Wish when I was with Nathan he would have done that kind of thing for me more often. I remember getting jacuzzi sweet one time, but i’m pretty sure it was my idea? Not totally sure.

I wish Nathan had been more affectionate with me back when we were together. I don’t think we would have fallen apart the way we did. (BUT, I wouldn’t have met Mark, so I do believe things happen for a reason). He was never very affectionate, he never caressed my skin, tickled my back or anything unless I asked. And even then, could tell he didn’t want to and would conveniently fall asleep while doing so. lol 

Mark, he’s very affectionate. He’s often wanting to hold my hand or cuddle, or both. Kisses, caresses, often without being asked. He likes to rub my butt..lol Makes me feel wanted. He’s an amazing guy, I love him so much. He’s the only guy i’ve been with who is that affectionate, other than my first fiance when I was 17. I loved how affectionate he was, but he turned into an abusive jerk. Mark, he’s never been abusive toward me, he hardly even gets angry at me, doesn’t yell at me. I hit him at one point, unfortunately, and he didn’t hit me back. We really don’t even fight. We rarely get a little aggravated at each other. And it’s already been 5 years. 

I feel bad about the way things happened with Nathan. I didn’t treat him the way I wished I had. I was pretty good to him, but not good enough. We had our problems. And then his lack of affection made me feel more like we were friends than lovers. I am happy that he’s still in my life, and hope he always will be. But I do wish I could go back and fix a few things. I had a hard time handling emotions and stress, I was not being treated for my bipolar, so that didn’t help. All those animals kept us stressed, that was a huge mistake. 

Mark keeps falling asleep, I wonder why he’s so tired today. Hope he’s not getting sick. I planned to donate today, but I think i’m going to do it Tues an Thurs instead. Need the money though, there is a pretty white floral dress I want, it’ like $22, a good deal. I figure it would be a good dress to wear for Easter. Yes, I tend to plan way ahead. lol But, it’s so pretty. 

I got my black hair dye last night. I and re-doing the underneath black, and maybe put a few streaks throughout. But, my roots are already showing, so i’m probably going to wait until I recolor with red. I got a really light blonde for Sierra’s highlights and burgundy for underneath. If her grandma sees it, she will bitch like she did last time. lol I personally think it looks good! 

Alright, this time i’m really going to go. lol Will blog again soon! :)

  \

[hargrove-mayfields]

A Stake of Holly in Her Heart Pt. 4

Pt 1.   Pt. 2    Pt. 3

Max reads the message written in the Christmas card over and over until her eyes are crossing, then does it some more.

She’s so caught up on that last part, the signature, “mom.” Her mind just can’t process what she’s reading.

Maria Hargrove was Billy’s mother, a woman who Max had never had the pleasure, or displeasure, depending on who you asked, of meeting, being that she was out of the picture years before Max got involved.

According to her ex husband, she was conceited, selfish, sleazy. Ask her son, and he’d say she was quiet, nervous, loving.

Rumor has it that she just up and disappeared one day, leaving everything behind but a packed suitcase and a stolen debit card. Everything including her ten year old son.

Max had never really gotten the full story, only bits and pieces of the truth, but up to this moment she’d been perfectly content with the explanation that she’d gotten too worn out by Neil’s abuse, and cut out everything that had to do with that life they shared.

The card in her hand and the note inside of it might suggest otherwise.

The retelling of events from the abuser abandoned by his victim and the scorned and forgotten child was something that Max always knew would never be the most accurate, and so she knows her perception of the situation might be wrong, but there was still something that was throwing her off.

For one thing, why would a mother who had deliberately left without her son just write to him like nothing was wrong? She supposes that Billy tried to keep guarded a lot of his personal life, and maybe this wasn’t quite as out of the blue as she thought.

But what bothers her more is that the message seems far too simple, too casual to be addressed to a dead boy. Maybe it is surprising for Maria to have sent anything in the first place, but for it to include such a normal interaction? There’s something there that’s rubbing Max the wrong way.

Thinking back, she realizes she can’t actually remember anybody ever mentioning that they’d called Billy’s mother to break the news, and she knows for a fact that she hadn't seen her face, the one immortalized in the photo of her that Billy always kept in his glove box, anywhere among the few guests that had shown up at his funeral. And then she figures it out;

Maria Hargrove doesn’t know her son is dead.

Max’s knees start to shake, so she lowers herself to sit on the stoop. Words can’t come close to describing how she’s feeling, holding in her hands that handwritten sentiment from an isolated mother to her dead son. Not even the tears that run down her cheeks and are dried by the winter wind can express the grief that that little Christmas card triggers in her heavy heart.

Just knowing that there’s someone out there that might care as much about Billy as she does is such a profound thought in her mind. But is it really the same?

Is there any comparison even able to be drawn between the grieving sister of a misunderstood brother, and the woman who’d knowingly left her child with a monster?

Max’s knee jerk reaction is to say no, that any person who would knowingly abandon another who needed them deserves in no way to be affiliated with her and her heartache, but deep down she knows that isn’t completely true.

Even she’s considered it, running away from Neil and Susan and Hawkins and never looking back, but she’s trapped, by school, by her friends, by a cemetery plot. For Maria to actually go through with it, that must’ve been the hardest decision of her life.

And besides, Billy would had to have already forgiven her if he gave her the Cherry address. There’s no way she would’ve gotten it on her own, they hadn’t even told anybody where they were going before they moved.

The whole thing was a lot more complicated than she’d ever expected.

She doesn’t know how long she sits there contemplating it, bright red tear streaks on her freckled cheeks, before her ride eventually shows up, and Max realizes that now more than ever, the last thing she wants is to go to some party.

Not even the idea of being around her loving friends seemed like too attractive an alternative right now, not since she’d stumbled across Billy’s Christmas card, but the way she saw it, she didn’t have a choice.

Bailing now meant she’d have to go back inside and face her parents after she’d already made them angry today, which would do nothing but prove Neil right. She could already imagine the smug look on his stupid drunken face, and so, despite her resignations, she stands to make her way towards the car.

Carefully, she slides the card back into its envelope and puts it into her jacket pocket, or rather the pocket of Billy’s jacket that she saved from being thrown out when they cleaned out his room.

Up until now, she’d been telling herself she only wore it because it was warm, but today she'd done enough reflecting to be able to admit that, more than any other excuse she might make for the sake of appearances, she just missed her brother.

The walk down the sidewalk to Steve Harrington's BMW waiting for her at the curb feels very much like a walk of shame.

Maria’s card burning a hole in her pocket, Max tries to focus on the crunch of ice melt under her boots, the wind whipping the branches of the bare ginkgo trees at the edge of their property, anything at all that might take her mind off the lump in her throat.

When she yanks the door open, she knows it’s a little too hard for an expensive car that isn’t hers, but she slumps down into the passenger seat anyways.

Steve makes a face, she assumes because he’s going to call her on not going for the backseat when they’re supposed to be picking up Dustin too, but then he just keeps staring at her.

Max scowls, “Are you going to take me to the party or what?”

He clears his throat and looks away. “Yeah I just, uh, wanted to ask, you know, if-if you were okay.”

“What do you think?” She spits.

Even though she’s pretty sure he wasn’t asking about the abuse, only curious as to how she’s coping with her brother's death rather than how she’s holding up against Neil’s temper, she tugs her sleeve down anyways, just in case he saw the bruises.

Of course Steve catches it, his eyes flickering down to the denim cuffs pulled over her hands and softening to show something like pity, before he says, “Sorry, I wasn’t-“

But Max doesn’t want his pity, so she shuts him down, clear exhaustion in her tear-thick voice, “Please, just drive.”

Most people would be happy to know there was someone in their corner, but the longer she’s alone in that house, the more others' empathy has come to make her feel smothered.

Because a thousand empty “sorry”s and condolences without feeling wouldn’t change a thing, wouldn’t make the bruises and the man who put them there go away or bring her brother back, they only piled up expectations on her to get better for their sake, so they didn’t have to watch her be all depressing anymore.

For that reason, it felt sort of insulting to her to have others showering her in pointless pity.

“Right, yeah, of course.” He says, but his gaze lingers again on Max’s face for a moment, his eyebrows furrowing in thought as he turns away to start the car.

She rolls her eyes and leans back in her seat, hoping to show him that now is just really not the time for a therapy session from her babysitter.

Max’s subconscious must have disagreed, or maybe the concern on Steve’s face just seemed genuine enough that she buys it, because she feels the tears coming again.

It’s something that feels so incredibly shameful, to turn her head and stare out the window so Steve Harrington can’t see her crying, to even be crying again for what felt like the hundredth time today, but she just can’t stop herself.

She tries to cheer herself up by remembering that she is currently on her way to her friend's house, and that she would soon be celebrating and having fun with the people who care about her, because Christmas is not supposed to feel like this.

But knowing that when all of it was over, Billy won’t be the one there to pick her up in his Camaro, and that she’ll be dropped off back at a home where she isn’t safe, and where they’ll pretend her brother never even existed, the joy of the holiday is drained away entirely.

Her shoulders shake as she stifles her sobs, and there’s no hiding the few sniffles and gasps she can’t hold back. It’s humiliating, especially because she can feel Steve glancing over at her every now and again.

Were she not sure that the moment she opens her mouth she’s going to start ugly sobbing and betray her barely there dignity, she would’ve told him to mind his own. Instead, she just keeps her mouth shut and stares out the window, hoping he’ll leave her alone.

They’re a few minutes away from Dustin’s house when Steve sighs and suddenly makes a dead stop, pulling over against the curb. She looks over at him, and notices his eyes shining in a way that was probably not because of the heater being turned up too high.

“What are you doing?”

He lets his hands drop from the wheel, and turns in his seat to look at Max. “Do you even want to go to this party?”

She doesn’t really know how exactly she’s supposed to answer that. There isn’t time to explain the nuanced version, the internal debate she’s holding between friends or family, invasions of her privacy or a slap to the face, so she settles on, “I don’t know.”

“Then let’s ditch. My friends and I used to go down to Benny’s on Christmas for the pie, we should go.” Steve says, his voice wavering, just a little.

The implication of skipping out on the party to go out with a boy her brothers age, alone, mind you, when he’d already been accused once of being sweet on her, (the assumption was baseless and came from a panicking and very confused Billy, but still) is enough to make Max’s heart drop into her stomach with dread.

There must be a look on her face to match that feeling in her chest, because he specifies, “I promise it’s not weird or anything I just- you shouldn't have to be around all that right now.”

But she’s on the defensive now, and she crosses her arms and says, in her meanest tone of voice she can muster, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that you and I both know they’re going to be nosy.” Judging from the concentration on his face, he knows he has to earn her trust back, and calculates his next words very carefully. “Wouldn’t want them asking any questions about your arm.”

In a way, that only does the opposite by making him seem suspicious, but her interest is piqued. He knows something, and he wants to talk about it without drawing the attention of everyone that’ll be at the Wheeler’s. That doesn’t automatically equal him being a creep, right?

Not when she’s got so much that she doesn’t want them to know either.

Turning it over in her head, she makes the decision that she's got enough that she doesn’t have to bolt, but she’ll still be wary. She's well aware that she has a problem with being too trusting, for years she’d thought Neil wasn’t that bad of a person, but she’s pretty sure Steve’s a little more open about his baggage, and her judge of character isn’t that bad once she gets familiar with somebody.

So she agrees in her own way, looking over to Steve and asking him, “What about Dustin?”

“He’ll be fine, dude. He’s like, super tough.” Steve mocks Mikes tone from when Mike had said the same thing earlier, having overheard through his own walkie that he always left on in case of emergency and putting lots of effort into his stupid teenage boy impression.

For the first time that morning she feels something other than the sting of despair, a small bubble of laughter from her throat and a smile finding its way onto her face as she mumbles, “Whatever.”

Read also on ao3!

[kidsviral-blog]

How My Culture Failed Me After I Was Raped

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/how-my-culture-failed-me-after-i-was-raped/

How My Culture Failed Me After I Was Raped

My rapist came from the same insular Indian-American community at my university as I did. Why did that make it harder for people to believe what happened?

View this image ›

Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed

My rapist and I both ran in the same large circle of first-generation Indian kids who tangentially knew each other at UC Berkeley. Like me, Neil* was one foot in, one foot out of the generally insular Indian scene. I had met Neil earlier in the year through an Indian dorm mate, but got used to running into him at parties, where we’d often joke about being the only two Indians in the room.

My friends didn’t like him much — he gave off a bit of a creepy vibe, and was all too quick to invite freshman Indian girls over to his apartment. Still, we had stopped by to pregame at his apartment once or twice, thanks to his proximity to our dorm and our limited access to alcohol. At the time, I was getting over a rough breakup with someone else in the Indian community. I was still trying to win my ex-boyfriend back but found myself attracted to Neil’s similar discomfort hanging out solely with other Indians. He may have been a little aggressively flirtatious for my taste, but he was proof that it was possible to exist with feet in the monolithic Indian community and outside of it.

But when it came to telling my friends that he raped me, why did my Indian friends find it so hard to believe a fellow Indian could do what Neil did to me?

These things don’t happen to us. First-generation Indian kids are constantly walking a tightrope between our Indian heritage and our American identities. We may not have had to sign up for the arranged marriages of our parents, but we also weren’t allowed to date growing up. We could have our freedom to have a good time in college like our white American counterparts, but the price tag for it was earning a respectable degree that leads to a good job. We played it safe, because we couldn’t afford not to — we are our parents’ children, and our parents sacrificed everything for us to be raised in America. Dating? Sex? Alcohol? Those were all perks — privileges to be enjoyed quietly, and never to be abused.

Even now, nearly nine years later, I’m fighting the urge to explain that I know not all first-generation Indians, people like me who were born stateside to immigrant parents, are as conservative as I like to pretend they are. My own parents, for example, were incredibly liberal compared to most Indian immigrants, and perfectly open to the idea of their daughters dating in high school and college. Everyone’s parents vary in their degrees of traditionalism. Not all Indians. But when it came to sex, I was always the outlier, the harlot. My three closest Indian girlfriends and I all had our various freshman-year entanglements, but I’d had sex with a high school boyfriend, and for that I always felt a little dirtier, a little more judged — a chip on my shoulder I’m willing to admit I likely placed there all on my own.

Being Indian was my entire identity at the start of college, and I quickly immersed myself in the scene as much as possible. As I started to make friends outside of the Indian community, the lingering disconnect between my Indian friends and I felt even more amplified. Maybe there’s no such thing as “a good Indian girl,” but that didn’t take away from the fact that I was still much further away from it than any of my Indian friends. I knew it, they knew it, and the divide was ever present.

When Neil invited me to a party that April, I was hesitant about going. I still wasn’t over my ex-boyfriend Rahul*, a sophomore who had broken up with me after three months because I wasn’t as conservative as he wanted his girlfriend to be — especially not as he ran for student government. Determined to transform into the sweet Indian girlfriend of his dreams, I went as far as to give up drinking in a bid to win him back. For the next part of my plan, I invited Rahul to the party too, figuring he would get a chance to shake hands and kiss babies in advance of the election — while hoping my invite from a cute athletic senior would create the requisite dose of jealousy needed to push us back together.

What I didn’t expect was being roofied, not remembering the rest of the night, and waking up in Neil’s bed covered in bruises.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. I remember snippets of the night. I fully remember insisting no alcohol be in my beverage when Neil offered to pour me a mixed drink — a choice integral to my plan of presenting my best self. I remember a very hazy moment: walking down a hill toward Neil’s apartment, daring him to let me wear his shirt. I was definitely drugged by then, but eight years later I remember that brief moment of flirtation I surely was complicit in. And I remember coming to during the act itself, no idea where I was. Letting it go on for a few more minutes, confused, but not fighting it off either, as I always imagined I’d do if ever trapped in that situation. I remember being in the bathroom looking at my neck, certain it was going to be bruised by the next morning.

Even in this retelling, I’m hesitant to admit what I remember because there’s less culpability in not remembering. Isn’t there? To remember is to admit that there were maybe moments where you could have stopped it sooner.

View this image ›

Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed

I don’t remember how I got home, but it wasn’t that late when I got there. I called my ex-boyfriend, who was convinced my multiple pleas for him to come over were misguided attempts at drunken seduction. He reminded me that it was my choice to not drink for a month, yet here I was wasted on the third day of the self-imposed ban. He had to go do work for the campaign, at 2 a.m. on a Saturday. He hung up.

I don’t remember if my closest female friends, Indian girls who lived in my dorm and had been to Neil’s apartment with me before, came over that night or the next morning. I do know that when two of them took one look at my neck, covered from side to side in a macabre grin of angry purple bruises and bite marks, they knew something had happened that wasn’t supposed to. I told them what I remembered from that evening as best I could, and they were incredibly supportive, especially given that none of us had dealt with anything of this nature before in our eight months of friendship. But it also didn’t stop them from asking, “Are you sure you guys didn’t just accidentally hook up last night?” After all, they had seen mine and Neil’s ill-advised flirtations in the weeks prior. It wasn’t that they didn’t believe the date rape hadn’t occurred; it was that there was a stronger tendency to want to chalk this up to drunken shenanigans. These things don’t happen to us. Neil may have given us an off-vibe from day one, but at the end of the day, he was a good Indian boy, and I was supposed to be a good Indian girl.

Given my friends’ suspicions that there was maybe more to the story than I was letting on, even knowing that my judgment had to have been chemically clouded, I started to question my own recollections. Neil and I had been flirting here and there in the weeks leading up to the party. If I hazily remembered flirting with him on the walk home, who’s to say I didn’t say no when push came to literal shove? Even though I’d never blacked out, and don’t remember drinking at all, did I maybe just get really drunk? I logically knew the answer to all those questions pointed to no, this wasn’t my fault, but if I couldn’t even believe myself entirely, there was no way I was going to be a believable victim.

Even though I had told my friends the majority of what happened, I edited out a few of the parts that I was convinced might give Neil plausible deniability, even to my best friends. That was the first time I sanitized the story. It’s not that it didn’t happen in the parts I was able to recollect, but it was much easier to be a believable victim when I was irrevocably wronged. I dropped the mention of remembering that he gave me a drink at all (even though I do remember Neil being a little too insistent that it was “just Tampico Punch” — a non-alcoholic mixer — “don’t worry”), just to play it safe. I also started to leave out the brief recollections of us walking back from the party. Even after I had sufficiently retold the story multiple times, I still got the sense that there was some disbelief — I had hooked up with someone else during a trip earlier in the school year despite wanting to win my ex back, and there was still that lost high school innocence I’d never be able to undo. But the bruises spoke for themselves, as well as Neil’s texts the afternoon after, trying both to flirt and minimize the night before in the same breath.

Going to campus police was never an option. It’s not that our Indian community wasn’t having sex, but we sure as hell weren’t talking about it. I wasn’t explicitly talked out of wanting to press charges, but it never even came up in the discussion process of how to move forward. I was worried about others in the Indian scene finding out, and the rumor mill dropping the non-consensual aspect of me having had sex (a step Rahul and I hadn’t even taken when we dated). My friends and I all were aware of how it would play out in the Indian community if we blew it up. Not dragging Neil’s name through the mud wasn’t to protect him, it was to protect myself, to not give my circle even more ammunition to render me damaged goods, and question whether my account held up. Neil wasn’t the most popular student in the Indian community, but after my breakup, neither was I, and to duke out who was more believable if the story came out was a battle I wasn’t willing to lose.

Our South Asian campus club was putting on a culture show that night — an ironic event, given that I was convinced I fit into what my culture expected of me even less now than I ever did before — so my friends slathered as much concealer as they could find on my neck to cover the evidence of the previous night, and we all were secretly glad I hadn’t invited my parents to come up to watch the show. Gratefully, none of them brought up the anecdote that they used to make fun of me for the most: that I had picked Berkeley as the college to go to after visiting and watching that same culture show a year prior. Seeing that show as a high school senior was the first time I felt like I had belonged to a community. One year, two and a half hours, and 14 colorful dances later, I never felt more ostracized from it.

Meanwhile, Neil, who was also participating in the show, was continuing to text me. The flirty texts from the morning that had gone unanswered had morphed into worried texts where he tried to downplay the night before, joking around that maybe we both got carried away. When those texts also went ignored, he quickly turned angry, instructing me to keep my mouth shut “for both of our sake.” Dealing with Neil’s angry texts, alongside the stress of being in charge of the opening routine of that night’s show, pushed me to a near breaking point, and I couldn’t stop crying. I was worried about running into him backstage or at that night’s afterparty, just to have another confrontation like the one I was trying to avoid over text.

My friends broke rank and told one Indian upperclassman, a sympathetic junior who was a sexual health education peer at the university health center. She was the first person to believe my story verbatim, no sanitization necessary, even with all the caveats that made me a bad victim. After offering to take me to campus police, and then assuring me that it was OK that I was dead set against going, she deftly handled Neil (a mutual friend of hers at the time, as well) over text message, assuring him that I would absolutely be pressing charges if he didn’t stop threatening me. She later arranged for me to be seen by a doctor, and pointed me toward therapy options to talk through the trauma. I am still forever trying to emulate her grace and compassion when put in similar situations.

Still, I continued to sanitize, even in the years later when I became more comfortable talking about my assault. But I do think that my unwillingness to deal with it in the immediate aftermath only encouraged the suspicions that I was embellishing. One of my own friends went so far as to suggest that I made up the entire thing as a cover for a consensual hookup, because I was unable to hide the bruises from my ex-boyfriend. The Duke lacrosse scandal had played out across the country, and someone unwittingly mentioned to me, “Wow, your Neil story is just like an episode of Law & Order: SVU! Roofied by an athlete; that just screams ripped from the headlines.”

I keep coming back to the phrase “Not all Indians.” I know I’m not alone in my quixotic quest to balance the conservative parts of my Indian upbringing with the realities of living in a modern American culture. But I still feel that I don’t fit the mold of “good Indian girl” with my friends, with my family, with the first-generation Indian community at large. I still sometimes date Indian men and hang out with Indian friends, who truly are wonderful, but more than one has asked me why I have to write about private aspects of my life for career “sport.” Not one has asked if it’s cathartic or something I enjoy, because in our culture, we don’t prop up the sensitive aspects of private lives for any reason — especially ones that come up because we failed to adhere to the good Indian code of ethics in the first place.

When you don’t talk to your kids about sex, how do you talk to them about sexual assault? In our traditional, conservative culture, these things generally don’t come up. Rape rates in India are soaring, but it still reads as an “India problem” — something born out of the old country’s inability to modernize; as distant and antiquated a notion as having a servant, or shaving your hair off on a yearly temple pilgrimage. And sexual assault in America is still seen by immigrants as something that “doesn’t happen to us.” It’s a wholly American epidemic.

I still have a hard time always telling my story in full. The need to sanitize is ever present, just to ensure that people believe me. I know I did nothing wrong, but in being the type of person to depart from my cultural values, I still often feel I did everything wrong. Rape culture and the difficulties victims face in coming forward are incredibly real. The pressure I felt from my own culture in trying to tell my story? Even stronger.

Name has been changed.

update

This story has been edited to remove some details. BF_STATIC.timequeue.push(function () document.getElementById(“update_article_update_time_4512113”).innerHTML = UI.dateFormat.get_formatted_date(‘2014-12-17 16:22:32 -0500’, ‘update’); );

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