#the briefings SHOULD be briefer

[ranticore]

If I hadn’t already done so and been given an OCD diagnosis, reading STBH/TVM and relating as hard as I do to Islin could’ve been the thing that made me realize I should start therapy. Because even if I couldn’t put a name to it, I feel like you drove home how miserable it is being Like That…. at least for the people around you if you won’t work on it for your own sake. So good job???

Yep i put a lot of work into my portrayals there. so what i wanted to show with Islin is like. ok sure he might be annoying to live with (you might not think you'd feel that way but let's say you don't wanna humour him), and his behaviours might be frustrating, but he has to live with that 24/7, he doesn't get a break like the ppl around him do, so he has it much worse. genuinely when describing his chapters to one of my friends in the early days of considering posting the book for others to read, i said "i feel like this will be annoying to read, but that's the point, it's by design. but i don't know if people would find that enjoyable or entertaining" and my friend said "it will reach the people it's supposed to reach". so there ya go

(anon's other ask & more in depth stuff under the cut)

One of the main impetuses for writing Islin's arc specifically was a kind of exploration of how supportive friendship can't actually cure someone.. you can't Power Of Friendship your way out of a hole that your friends - inadvertently, with all the best wishes and love and empathy in the world - are partially responsible for putting you in. If your friend comes to you for reassurance, and you hate seeing him in distress, your instinct will always be to reassure him and offer what comfort you can. But this has a legitimising effect on obsessions - because, in the mechanics of ocd, a compulsion is the behaviour which eases the stress of an obsession. The alleviation of stress is brief and only gets briefer the more the compulsion behaviour takes place. I know you know this, anon, but just for other ppl who don't - seeking reassurance, in this case, is a compulsion. so it turns into a feedback loop. that is why having someone go "shut the fuck up that's so fucking stupid" can help you break that loop, but (without pre-negotiation, which can be done) your friends who don't understand the mechanism of your mental illness probably won't go that route.

now u might go wait a second, félix would absolutely tell him to shut the fuck up, and he would, but his attempt to reassure his friend is to debate him on it - a theological debate or whatever else the obsession is about. "shut the fuck up that's so fucking stupid, god doesn't think xyz about you" is still legitimising the obsession by taking it at face value. you will never be able to debate or intellectualise your way out of it

[whateverisbeautiful]

Part of the epic reunion in TWOL was driven by after almost 8 years apart, Rick nor Michonne moved on and the yearning for their soulmate persisted despite all the barriers. Are there scenarios that you could imagine where both experiment with intimacy or a different type of connection and still find their way back to one another? I’m not imagining a love triangle but something like Siddiq and Michonne having a brief moment (instead of what played out with him and Rosita) deeper than great friendship ? Other thoughts?

Thank you for asking. 😊 While I think there isn't much that could stop Rick and Michonne from finding their way back to each other, I can't imagine a scenario where they try to briefly experiment with intimacy with other people. And I am super super glad that they didn’t enter into anything romantic with anyone else. To me, Rick and Michonne not moving on with anyone else in any way was the absolute right choice for those characters.

By spending all those years yearning only for each other, it really hammered home how profound Rick and Michonne’s connection is. To the point that even when they had to seriously consider that they may never see each other again they still wanted to spend the rest of their life committed to and in love with one another. I love that they both waited for each other for years and operated every day like they were still actively married.  

It also feels so full circle that both of them stayed so loyal to each other after their experiences with their past partners. They were let down immensely by Mike and Lori while they were away for a far briefer time. Michonne went on a run and Mike couldn’t keep their son alive when she was away. And Rick was in a coma for a few months and Lori had already fallen for and got pregnant by Shane. So it means a lot that now, even with their prolonged distance, Rick and Michonne get to see just how special they are to their partner and how loyal their partner wants to be to them, even when the time spent apart is not just a run or a few months, but nearly a decade.

I have pictured a scenario where during the post-Rick era of TWD, Judith asks Michonne if she’d ever date or let a new man in and she basically tells Judith that the few years with her dad were better than a lifetime with anyone else. I feel like that was both Rick and Michonne’s mentality. 

But while I would not have wanted to watch either Rick or Michonne explore new romantic relationships even if brief, it would have been interesting to see others take an interest in them. Because as beautiful as they are inside and out it’s just realistic that people would be interested in them, even tho they'd all get turned down. I think more men should have and would have tried to pursue Michonne during those six or seven years. And I just know that around the CRM, Rick was known as the hot man who doesn't talk to anybody. In TOWL, I did want to see how both Michonne and Rick would react to some guy in the CRM hitting on Dana.

Overall tho I’m just really grateful for how TOWL confirmed that what Richonne has is no ordinary love. I think they both knew any connection with someone new would greatly pale in comparison to what they found with each other because Rick and Michonne’s irreplaceable connection really is the epitome of deeply intertwined soulmates.

[lovebugism]

I need the next part to the costumer’s always right like yesterday. The roller coaster this story is sending me through is insane. :’)))))

THE CUSTOMER'S ALWAYS RIGHT | family vacation

summary: the gang takes a brief break from the chaos of hawkins and spends a weekend at lake lemon. you and eddie find that it's difficult to be in love and babysit at the same time. (10k)

pairing: virgin!eddie munson / f!reader

tags: experienced!reader, idiots in love (road trip edition), newly established relationship, r's nickname is peach, eddie wants to kiss you but the kids think it's gross :(, the fluffiest chapter yet i dare say, steve in his babysitter era, the gangs all here! TW probable typos, very brief mentions of abusive relationships, briefer mentions of b*lly h*rgrove, talks of sexual/romantic insecurities

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 ˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗

It’s t-minus seven minutes until spring break, and you’re spending it with Steve The Hair Harrington.

The parking lot of Hawkins High is relatively empty, filled only with vacant cars and whipping wind that carries the scent of mowed grass and blue skies — the promise of a soon summer. Without your friends and other strangers to fill the quiet with their resounding laughter and booming voices, the strip of concrete is sleepy and silent.

You and Steve turn it all to velvet.

On the hood of his Beamer, you sit with your chins tilted to the sky. Puffy white clouds glide eastward against a blanket of sapphire, and the two of you try to make shapes out of them. Giving meaning to globs of disfigured marshmallows in the sky is a lost art, if you had anything to say about it.

“Aw, that one looks like a heart!” you awe, feeling like a child again as you point to the pretty cloud for Steve to see.

He doesn’t find as much joy in the mundane as you seem to. He only agreed to do it because you asked so nicely — “Wanna watch the clouds with me, Stevie?” you’d said, followed by a drawn-out “Please?” when he initially denied you. 

Besides, it was a pretty alright way to pass the time. Steve always said he lacked the organ that produced patience in other people; seven minutes tend to go by like seven hours for him. Especially when there’s nothing to do but make things out of a bunch of clouds that don’t look like anything to begin with. It’s like a test with no wrong answers that he’s failing somehow anyway.

The boy follows your finger and squints at the sky. “I don’t know. Looks sorta like a penis to me.”

“Steve!” you scold, shoving him with a halfhearted hand. Your brows pinch in horror like he’s just tainted your innocent fun.

His face twists in confusion. “What?”

“That’s obviously a heart.”

“No,” Steve insists like a bickering older sibling. Despite his initial lack of enthusiasm, he presses his shoulder into yours and points his own finger toward the vaguely shaped penis-heart cloud. “That’s the tip right there, see? And those are the balls,” he explains, somewhat crass, as he traces the rounded top of the heart you’d identified. 

He scoffs like he can’t believe you can’t see it. “I mean, seriously, Peach. You should see it more clearly than I do.”

“Why?” you challenge with a squint.

Steve only rolls his eyes in response. He knows where this is going. You’ll never pass up the chance to take the piss out of him.

“Because I’m a slut?” you continue, obviously joking, but with a perfected look of offense twisting your features. “Is that it, Steve Harrington? You think I’m a disgusting wh—”

“Alright! That’s enough.”

A giggle spills from your mouth at his scolding. As funny as it is to mock him, it always feels a little rewarding to know he doesn’t find it as amusing as you do — or the rest of Hawkins, for that matter.

He huffs, impatient and irritable. “God, you’re so annoying…”

“I know,” you lilt with a too sweet smile as you tilt your head to your shoulder. 

The fleeting thought that you can’t wait to annoy him on your weekend getaway passes the plane of your mind, and you remember to ask— “Wait, you packed your shit, right? ‘Cause we definitely aren’t going to make it to Lake Lemon before dark if we have to spend three hours helping you pack your hair products, Stevie.”

“Yes, I packed my shit. Mom.”

Your brows raise, not believing him. He’s rarely ever so responsible on the first go around. Not without a little push from someone — you mainly, Robin on occasion, and his parents whenever they care enough to check on him.

“So you have enough socks and underwear to last until Monday?”

“Yes.”

“And you brought the booze?”

“Yep,” he nods, popping the p. “The alcohol was the first thing I packed, actually.”

“And you have your toothbrush and deodorant and shower stuff?”

He opens his rosy mouth to answer in the affirmative but shuts it again, quickly like a fish. His brows furrow and his lips jut softly out as he thinks to himself. “…Shit,” he answers without really answering.

“At least that’s sorta stuff you can buy on the way there,” you tell him, giggling. “Won’t have to drive three hours back from Lake Lemon for your Farah Fawcett hairspray— ‘cause I absolutely know you would, so there’s no use in arguing with me.”

He doesn’t

Instead, he fiddles with the silver Zippo in his right hand and changes the subject. “Speaking of Lake Lemon,” he singsongs, his sheepish gaze flitting between the lighter and you. “It’s not, like, super weird that I invited Nancy, is it?”

Your brows furrow. An awkward giggle tumbles from your mouth. “No?”

“It’s just— you invited Max and her friends, and I figured Eddie was coming too because, you know, you’re…” His face screws up as he tries to think of the right word. You lean in closer to him, an anticipatory smile on your lips. “Canoodling or whatever. And I just didn’t want Nancy to be left out of the loop. That’s all.”

“And why would that be weird?”

“Well, because— I don’t know, okay? I just wasn’t sure if you guys have spoken since… everything.”

He says it like it was an armageddon or something similarly catastrophic that changed the course of the history of the world. Maybe not the world — just yours. His, too, in a way.

For a while, it ruined you. The thought of never being truly loved ate you alive and left hardly more than bones and strips of flesh in its wake. You found Billy after it spat you out, and god, you thought you were finally becoming whole again. Really, though, you were just holding onto the absence in your heart as though it were another life. 

Then everything from before just kept on ruining you.

But now you’ve got Eddie.

And Eddie kisses you even though you taste like heartache. Eddie makes you feel like your lips shouldn’t be anywhere except his mouth. Eddie is the golden sunlight that streams in through an open window, and you stand amid the flaxen streams — safe and warm and whole again.

Now, you exist in two places — where you stand now and wherever Eddie may be. You don’t belong to the past anymore. Tragedy isn’t your religion anymore. Instead, you pick your teeth with the shards of bone agony left behind and find new faith in the crooks of Eddie’s body.

The everything from before stops feeling so heavy. It’s still cold at times, but in the spring sort of way. Now you love so hard you could weep.

“That was a long time ago, Steve,” you assure him, smiling. He’s almost surprised by its sincerity. “We’ve all moved on since then. It’s not weird, okay? I promise.”

“Okay…” the boy wavers, nodding with a grin that doesn’t meet his eyes.

You wonder if he just doesn’t believe you. Or if he hasn’t entirely moved on.

The bell rings. It’s harsh and shrill, even from where the two of you sit across the parking lot. The muddled voices of a sea of teenagers come muffled at first before breaking into an all-out swell of a thousand incoherent conversations. Kids flood through the front doors in packs.

Steve’s kids, namely.

Dustin is the first of them. His voice is distinct as he migrates through the masses to where your car is parked next to Steve’s on the other side of the lot.

“This is gonna be the best spring break ever!” he shouts, smiling with a mouthful of braces.

It makes you smile, too. How could you not? This curly-headed boy is practically sunshine incarnate.

Steve, who’s gotten too used to the yelling to find it as cute as you do, only rolls his eyes in return. His sneaker-clad feet scuff against the concrete when he descends from the hood of his car. 

“Alright. Take it down a few notches, okay?” the boy grouses, waving his hands in front of him. “I’m not driving three hours to Lake Lemon with your hyper ass in the back the whole way.”

Dustin’s grin fades into an unimpressed deadpan when two of Steve’s fingers tap the blue brim of his Thinking Cap. 

“Well, I’m riding with Eddie, so...” the younger boy trails off, flashing his middle finger and a sugary sweet smile.

Steve’s brows pinch, almost in offense. “Wait— then, who’s all going with who?”

“Me, Lucas, and Max are going with Eddie and Peach. And Mike and El are riding with you and Robin.”

“Oh, great. I get the lovebirds,” Steve monotones, hands rising and falling at his sides in exasperation.

A deep, feminine, and familiar voice pierces the jumbled sounds of the forming crowd. “It’s better than suffering two hours in Eddie’s van,” Robin quips with a rouge-tinted smirk as she appears from the horde alongside the boy himself. The two walk side-by-side with duffle bags slung over their shoulders.

Eddie Munson fakes a pout and nudges the girl with a leather-clad shoulder. “Rude.”

A beam breaks out on your face at the sight of the boy, like sunshine to rain clouds. You hop down from Steve’s hood and rush to him without thinking. He nearly topples over at the force you launch yourself at him with. His arms wrap around you to keep you pressed against him. 

His laugh fans against your cheek. “Well, hello to you, too, sweetheart.”

Your nose nestles into his umber curls as you embrace him. He smells like cigarette smoke and floral hair detangler — familiar like a house you’ve lived in all your life.

“How’d it go?” you ask once you’ve pulled back from him. Not enough to let him go, of course, just enough to see the smile he looks at you with.

His grin widens and his chocolate eyes swim with a boyish excitement that makes your chest swell. “C plus, baby,” he singsongs lowly. “Ms. O’Donnell thinks if I can pass the final, I might actually graduate.”

“That’s amazing, Eds!” you beam, laughing in pure mirth as your hands reach for his glowing cheeks. “I’m so proud of you!”

You smack the most innocent of pecks upon his rosy mouth.

Robin groans from where she’s planted herself at Steve’s side. “God, I am so glad you graduated already. I could not suffer this for eight hours every day.”

You roll your eyes at her dramatics, then look back to Eddie with a quieter smile. “I’m so proud of you,” you repeat, just for him to hear.

He tilts his head to his shoulder, somehow both shy and smug at the same time. “Thanks, babe.”

The rest of the kids file out shortly after. Max comes first — the redheaded raincloud she always is — and Lucas follows later with Mike at his side. The former boy sports a bright green letterman jacket, while the latter wears an obviously unwashed Hellfire Club tee.

The seven of you crowd around Steve’s Beamer, anxious to leave the parking lot and the rest of Hawkins behind — even if it’s only for a few days. 

“Alright,” the oldest boy announces as he claps his hands together. “Everybody ready to go?”

“I have to drop by my place to get my bag,” you tell him.

He squints his honey eyes at you. “You were just bitching about me not packing, and you don’t even have your bag?”

“I have to drop my car off anyway, dork.”

“Hey,” Eddie interjects with furrowed brows. The arm around your shoulder tightens. “Turn down the dirty talk, okay? There are kids present.” 

With pale arms crossed over her chest — always on the defensive, just in case — Max tucks a rogue piece of auburn hair behind her ear and turns to you. “My mom packed some of my stuff this morning,” she tells you and doesn’t explain anything further.

It’s not like she has to, anyway. 

Her sneakers sit by your door every night, and her jacket gets hung up with yours. Her spare clothes now sit in a folded-up pile by the couch, and you wash her laundry along with yours and Eddie’s. Your tiny apartment, which certainly wasn’t built for three bodies and a cat, has become more of a home to her than the one on Cherry Lane ever was.

No one else needs to know that, though.

“I’ll swing by and get it on the way,” you promise.

She nods with a tightlipped, barely there smile. You take it as a silent thank you.

When no one else comments about a missing bag or any other hiccup that might give Steve an aneurysm, Dustin grins. “Alright, gang,” he beams, clapping and rubbing his hands together. “Divide and conquer.”

“Wait, wait, wait—” Steve protests when everyone starts to split up.

Dustin, Max, and Lucas are already headed toward Eddie’s van. The former’s hand stills on the handle at his words. Robin, who’s already rounded the maroon Beamer for the passenger side, hears him but ducks into the seat anyway.

“Wheeler. Where’s your sister.”

“Uh, the newspaper… I think,” he answers with the practiced ambiguity of a teenage boy. He shrugs. “There’s some stuff she has to care of. She said she’d drive up when she got done.”

Steve huffs, feigning exasperation to cover his bleeding heart. “Why am I the only one ever ready for these things?”

“You’re not,” you tease with a laugh. “You forgot to pack, like, the most important shit a person is supposed to pack.”

“Yeah, well, no one asked you, Peach,” Steve squints in the place of any actual response.

“Wow. Great comeback, Harrington.”

“Bite me—”

“Jesus Christ,” Eddie grumbles at the bickering. It’s harmless banter more than anything — a couple of venomous-sounding words coming from sincere smiles. The boy tightens his grip on you and leads you toward his van. “Stop flirting.”

 ˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗

It feels strange, being back on Cherry Lane.

You haven’t been here since the last code black a while ago. You never had a reason to be. You weren’t exactly looking for one, either. But now, here you are, standing on the doorstep of the guy who broke your heart and ringing his goddamn doorbell. 

A sickeningly familiar feeling knots the pit of your stomach. It’s like you’re walking back into the war he put you through, even though you’re still cleaning the bloodshed off your hands — just like you did every time you took him back, over and over and over again.

You’re grateful that it’s Max’s mom opening the door and not her brother. More so that she’s already got the duffle bag in hand, so you don’t have to come inside. 

The white of the canvas tote has gone brown with time. The pink strap of it is faded and missing a couple of sequins. The girl’s name is written on the front in hand-drawn block letters, doodled all over with the finesse of someone much younger than she is now.

“Hi,” you smile, just to be polite. It shakes at the edges.

Susan smiles back, tightlipped and pink-mouthed. “Hey,” she mutters kindly back as she steps onto the porch with you. The screen door clangs shut behind her. She tucks an amber strand of hair behind her ear with her free hand when a spring breeze rolls through.

She looks a lot like Max. Freckled face, strong jaw, pouted mouth. She’s pretty in the way her daughter is pretty, too — effortlessly so, without even trying to be. 

Even in baggy jeans and frizzy hair, something about Susan is still so beautiful. It’s not even the simple kind of beauty, either. It’s the kind that forces you to stand in wonder of it, unworthy but unable to look away. It’s the kind of beauty that seems almost sad — like a bright flame snuffed down to only embers.

You don’t need to question whose boot crushed her spirit.

“I think everything’s in here,” the mother explains as she hands the bag over. “I packed her a few extra clothes just in case— oh, and tell her that her Stuffy’s in there, too.”

“Stuffy?” you echo with furrowed brows and a curious smile.

“It’s a stuffed rabbit her dad got her when she was born. She’ll probably hate me for putting it in there, but I know she still sleeps with it sometimes, so…”

You realize, then, that so much of what you learn about Max hardly comes from the girl herself. She’s too closed off most of the time. If you really want to know her, you have to care enough to look. But even then, it takes a sort of X-ray vision.

You know when she’s fighting with Billy again, not because she ever tells you, but because she’s got a Kate Bush tape in her walkman. If it’s a particularly bad fight — the red and orange kind — you know it because Running Up That Hill is playing at full volume.

You can tell when she’s lying when she can’t look you in the eye. You can tell she’s happy when stars twinkle in the ocean blue of them. 

When she can’t stand physical affection, it’s because she’s had a particularly shitty day — but when she’s touching you, it means she’s excited about something or another.

You know her dad bought her the skateboard she rides like a baby blue Cadillac because she patches it up with duct tape instead of buying a new one. Their identical initials — M.M + M.M — are carved into the bottom, too, though faded with time.

And you always assumed she slept with a stuffed animal because she sleeps with her arms crossed like she’s used to holding something in them. You’ll often find her on your couch in the smallest hours of the morning, using Bowie as a replacement for a piece of her childhood.

God, you love learning new things about Max Mayfield.

Especially the things she’d rather die than tell you.

“Okay,” you nod with a terribly fought-back grin. “I’ll let her know.” 

“And you’ll be back on Monday, right?”

“Yeah. Probably sometime early. I’ll call you.”

Susan nods despite still looking a little apprehensive about the whole. She crosses her arms over her chest. Her manicured nails fidget against the oversized flannel she wears. 

“Can you ask her to come over when she gets back?” the mother wonders with a grimace like it’s much to ask. Her brows pinch and her anxiety-bitten mouth forms a tight line. “I know she probably won’t want to — and I don’t blame her, but…” she huffs and runs a hand through her hair, pushing back her bushy auburn bangs. “If you could maybe give her a little push, that’d be great.”

“I’ll, uh… I’ll try,” you promise with a wavering grin.

Both of you know that Max is too stubborn for any sort of push — the big or the small variety. You also know she’s too terrified of Cherry Lane to come back to it just yet. 

“And just, you know, look out for her while she’s gone, okay?”

“Of course.”

Susan scoffs, shaking her head at herself like she’s just stuck her foot in her mouth. “That was— That was stupid of me. You’ve been watching over her this whole time. I shouldn’t have… I’m sorry.”

You smile, more sincerely this time. A look of sympathy melts your features. You find the woman’s supposed blunder more beguiling than offensive.

“It’s fine. I get it.”

“I know you probably think I’m a terrible mom—”

“Not at all,” you argue, meeting her sheepish grin with a look stern in its kindness. “I think you’re a person in a situation that’s hard to get out of. I know... I know what that’s like.”

The both of you share smiles of understanding that only two people who’ve weathered similar circumstances can muster. The snuffed-out embers, deep black rainclouds, and the like.

“Remind her to call me when she gets there,” Susan pleas, tilting her head to her shoulder. “I know she’ll forget otherwise.”

“I’ll tell her,” you promise.

Because you do know that. Max often needs to be reminded of most things — not because she refuses to do them, but because her mind has a way of distracting her. Her consciousness seems to float every which way, making it much more difficult to focus. Sometimes you think she lives in her head more than in her own house. 

You wonder if that’s how her mom is surviving Cherry Lane and the Hargroves. 

God knows that’s how you did it.

 ˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗

Eddie’s van is already parked in your apartment complex, right by the stairs that lead to your door.

It’s more strange for it not to be there these days. You expect it, in fact — in the same way you expect your house to feel like your house. It’s comforting because it’s familiar. When Eddie’s not there, it’s like something is out of place. Missing. And even though you can’t quite tell what, you can feel it. 

When Eddie’s not there, it’s not home.

He and the small group of kids he chauffeured fill your tiny apartment with their bustling bodies and animated conversation. It’s hardly more than muddled cross-talk, though. They all make comments over one another, each louder than the one that came before it, in attempts to be heard. 

It’s all muffled until you open the door. 

It practically slaps you in the face right after.

Max is cradling Bowie on the sofa. Just behind her, you can see Lucas and Dustin in the kitchen. They laugh over themselves at a joke you hadn’t heard. Eddie must’ve been the one to tell it because he’s got this proud grin on his face as he turns on his heel to meet you at the door.

“Make yourselves at home, I guess,” you singsong to him — like your full apartment doesn’t make your heart feel a thousand times fuller.

When you spend enough time shutting yourself out from the rest of the world, you forget what it’s like to be in it. Eddie’s reminding you all over again. Max, too. And all of their strange little friends you’re starting to learn more about.

“Sorry,” he apologizes not-so-sincerely. His umber curls bunch at his shoulder as he tilts his head and scrunches his nose. “Had to take a whiz.”

“I was just teasing,” you giggle.

You smack a kiss to his cheek and head to your bedroom for your bag, dropping Max’s at her feet along the way. “Dustin wants to know if he can have some snacks,” the redhead tells you as you walk by her.

“Shut up, Max!” the curly-haired boy calls from the kitchen.

“Of course,” you answer. “Take everything. I don’t care.”

Eddie laughs as he follows you down the hallway. “Do not say that, sweetheart. Because he will take everything.”

Two bags wait for you on the edge of your mattress — a rucksack complete with clothes and bathing suits and spare shoes at the bottom, and a tote full of toiletries. Neither is completely full, but you’ve checked them a million times to know they weren’t lacking anything, either. 

If there was anything you were, it was an efficient packer. 

Well, maybe slut first. Then human being second. And then maybe Eddie Spaghetti enthusiast third. But efficient packer was a close fourth.

You strap one bag over your shoulder and curl the other in the crook of your elbow. “Well, I don’t want him to be hungry. This drive is gonna be hell enough as it is. That’s exactly why I made us sandwiches, so make fun of me all you want—” Your absentminded rambles are halted when you spin on your heel and find Eddie’s mouth on yours.

His fingers grip the sides of your shoulders as he ducks down to kiss you. His rosy mouth engulfs your own and you freeze, shocked by the sudden affection. You melt into him a moment later with a sigh against his cupid’s bow. Eddie’s smile curls against your lips accordingly.

It’s certainly not a peck, but it’s not obscene enough to be described as anything more. It’s innocent and passionate, as most of his kisses tend to be. He uses them to say words he can’t voice out loud. — sort of like his ringed fingers do when they strum his guitar. Eddie kisses you like music.

Your eyes flutter slowly open when he pulls away from you. “What was that for?”

“Because I know I’m not gonna be able to kiss you for a while,” the boy grieves with a sad, crooked grin. His wide palms rub the sides of your arm up and down. “And I’m a little afraid I might die.”

“Well, we better make the last one count then, huh?” you tease, grinning as you curl your free arm around his waist.

The boy beams.

He kisses you breathless a second later.

After one last look through your apartment and several goodbye kisses to your begrudging cat, you lock up and head downstairs again. Steve pulls in, then, with one more passenger than he had before. 

El Hopper sits in his backseat. You’re almost sure she’s never been outside of Hawkins before, but you know for certain she’s never been without her dad.

Jim was less than willing to let her go. Cabin in the woods, no parental supervision, all alone with her boyfriend? It’s quite literally a recipe for disaster. But he trusted you to look after her just like you trusted him to check in on Bowie (though, according to him, the comparison wasn’t at all the same). 

You told him not to worry. That he should be more concerned about booking a flight to California and stopping Joyce from moving across the country. You told him he needs to convince her to stay before she’s in too deep to listen.

“…How the hell am I supposed to do that?” he’d groused across the table at Enzo’s.

“I don’t know,” you shrugged. “You did it for me before. You could do it again.”

His iceberg resolve nearly melts. “Alright, don’t get cute. I already said El could go. You don’t have to keep trying to win me over.”

Steve gathers the now nine of you in the parking lot. You form a measly half-circle around him, neither of you particularly caring about his assured rant but allowing him to get it out of his system anyway. 

“Okay, every pay attention, alright? This is serious. I’m responsible for you little shits — if something happens to you, that’s on me. So, listen up—”

Eddie lingers just behind you, warm and reassuring. The leather-clad arms he’s crossed over his chest brush against your back when he leans closer to you. His breath fans against your jaw as he whispers in your ear. “All he needs is a fanny pack and some sandals. Then he’d be in real dad mode.”

“Eddie,” Steve scolds, unsmiling. “I’m talking to you.”

You swallow down your laughter.

“Dustin, Lucas, and Max — you’re riding with Eddie and Peach. Mike and El, you’re with me and Robin. And no canoodling in the backseat, understand? That’s an order.”

The raven-haired boy chuckles as the girl tucks her smile behind his arm. She embraces the lanky limb most ardently. “Canoodling?” Mike echoes in a scoff.

Steve, unimpressed and totally serious, only glares. “I swear to god, I’ll tell Hopper, alright? If you wanna make out, wait until we get there.” He points a stern finger in the boy’s direction, then turns his attention to the rest of the group. 

“We’re taking 870 to avoid city traffic which means it’s gonna take us a little longer to get there. There’s a rest stop at one of the exits, so we can fuel up and use the bathroom and get something to eat. So don’t ask when we’re stopping, ‘cause we’re not, Henderson.”

Dustin raises his middle finger in response.

“See?” you lilt quietly to Eddie. “This is why I brought sandwiches…”

The boy huffs. “Yeah. I probably should’ve listened to you when you said he’d be all… like this.”

“You know I’m never wrong,” you tease. 

A sly smile tugs at your lips. It takes everything in him not to kiss it.

“—And Eddie, drive the speed limit, okay? It’s not the Indy 300.”

“Indy 500, dingus,” Robin corrects. She leans coolly against his car, sneaker propped up against the backseat door as she picks at her chipping maroon-colored nails. 

Steve rolls his eyes, but doesn’t divert his tirade. 

“If you get pulled over, it’ll just make the drive take longer, and we’ll miss the check-in time, alright? Peach paid half, so if she isn’t there on time, we don’t get the keys, and we’re living like bums in the woods for three days.”

“Yes, sir,” Eddie singsongs, obviously insincere, as his arms wrap around your shoulders. He embraces you loosely at the neck and presses his cheek into your temple. “Get Peach there in one piece,” he reiterates. “I think I can do that.”

Steve huffs. His unsmiling honey eyes flit to you. He points to Eddie and talks to you like he isn’t standing behind you. “Keep him on a leash, alright? No way I’m going the whole weekend like this.”

“Ooh. A leash?” the wild-haired boy lilts with a mischievous grin. His lips brush your ear as he murmurs something only you can hear. “I like that sound of that.”

“I’m sure you do, perv,” you joke in response. Your elbow digs into his ribcage, jabbing him softly to part from him. He rubs at his side as you head towards his van. You call to the rest of the group on the way: “We should head out now before Steve loses his mind.”

Eddie’s shoes scuff the pavement as he follows behind you. “I, for one, would love to see that.”

“Good thing we have all weekend, then, huh?” Max deadpans with a playful glint in the blue of her eye.

“I heard that!”

 ˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗

The first half-hour of the drive goes by like nothing.

You’re a bit embarrassed to know you spent its entirety gazing so longingly at the boy in the driver’s seat. 

It was only supposed to be a glance — a small peek at his profile and his ringed fingers thrumming against the worn pleather of his steering wheel before turning away again and grinning to yourself like a schoolgirl at how cute he was. Now you’re nearly halfway-halfway into the drive, and you spent it all ogling.

You’re not sure what was so beguiling about Eddie nodding his head to The Cure or what was so attractive about his pale hands drumming to the beat and the way his metal rings glimmered beneath the setting sun. You only knew that you couldn’t look away from any of it.

“This is stranger than I thought…” he sings to himself, not exactly trying to sound great but not sounding bad either. You can only hear him if you watch his pink mouth croon each word. You do a terrible job of pretending not to be staring at him. “Six different ways inside my heart…”

Dustin pokes his head between the front seats so suddenly it makes you jolt. 

His round face conceals your view of Eddie as he sets his elbows beside the headrests.“Can I have one of those sandwiches you were talking about earlier?” he asks.

“We’ve only been driving for forty minutes!” Eddie laughs.

“I’m hungry,” the boy argues with his brows pinched together. “Sue me.”

“Of course, you can,” you lilt quietly as you reach for the clear Tupperware at your feet. 

You don’t miss the taunting look Dustin gives the boy next to him in return or the hand Eddie pushes against the younger boy’s cheek to force him backward.

You sit the container of napkin-wrapped sandwiches on your lap. You only packed two of each kind. All are labeled in scribbled sharpie. “Okay, I made PB&J, turkey and cheese, and cucumber and lemon—”

“Cucumber and lemon?” Eddie echoes, features flooded with horror. His wide-eyed gaze flits between you and the near-empty interstate ahead of him. “What the hell kinda monstrosity is that?”

“It’s cucumber, cream cheese, and lemon juice, and it’s actually very good, Eddie Munson.”

Dustin requests the peanut butter and jelly, Lucas takes the turkey, and Max wants the cucumber and lemon — the said monstrosity you made because you knew she liked them. You hand them their sandwiches, and they settle again in the back of the van — amid the plethora of blankets and pillows Eddie had tucked away.

You turn to the pretty boy in the driver’s seat. “Which one do you want, Eds?”

“Whatever you’re having,” he shrugs. “‘M not picky.”

He grimaces when you hand him your half of the cucumber and lemon — because, of course, you remembered to cut them into triangles.

You watch the boy take a rather begrudging bite of the sandwich. His cheek juts out as he chews through it, and you don’t know why it makes you smile, only that you’re beaming directly at him. His face is emotionless in that his features are filled with so much of it you can’t tell what he’s trying to express. 

There’s a slight furrow to his brows, a scrunch to his nose, and a glint to his eye. He manages to look disgusted, inquisitive, and pleased all at once.

Your smile widens when he takes another bite.

You fight the urge to tell him, ‘I told you so,’ and instead lean over the center console to smack a kiss to his cheek.

Lucas and Dustin gag through their mouthfuls simultaneously. 

They share a look after — a boyish glance of excitement, as though to say, ‘I can’t believe how in sync we are.’ It quickly turns into a game of who can make the most realistic retching noise, quieted by a single look from Max. It’s not a glare on her freckled face but a scrunched scowl of disgust as she slips the headphones of her walkman back on.

The two boys’ laughter fades all at once.

The van goes quiet again.

You shut your eyes and focus on the faint sound of Eddie’s humming. His hand is wide and warm when it settles on your knee. His thumb drums softly to the beat on the outside of your thigh.

We’re on the road to nowhere, come on inside—

The cerulean sky turns into varying shades of lilac and orange-gold. The highway to Lake Lemon is long and merciless. Two hours feel like two days when you’ve got nothing to do but sit. 

Eddie, with his hands and mind sufficiently occupied, seems to be less of a victim of the unrelenting pavement. He’s slumped against the ragged pleather seat, still humming to the low radio.

Lucas and Dustin spent several minutes arguing about who was taking which blanket and whose legs got to go where. Now, however, they snooze with their backs against the van and their shoulders pressing into each other’s — heads back, mouths open, eyes fluttered shut.

Max is a lot of the same. She sits across from the boys, tucked into the corner of the wall and the driver’s seat. There’s a pillow behind her back and a blanket thrown over her lap. Her eyes are shut, but you can tell she isn’t sleeping. Her head sways in time with the song spilling from her headphones.

And you, with your feet kicked up on the dash and your gaze pointed in the direction of the setting sun, are bored out of your mind.

Eddie squeezes your thigh. “I think we’re about fifteen miles away from the stop.”

“Fucking finally,” you huff. You rest your head against the seat to look over at the boy beside you. “My ass is killing me.”

“Well, I would be happy togive you a massage at the rest stop, babe.”

Your eyes widen as you shift to glance at the back of the van. You’re relieved to see none of the kids paying attention. You swat at Eddie while he winces at himself. It’s been quiet for so long; he forgot they were still back there.

“Sorry,” he whispers, to you and to the sleeping kids who hadn’t heard a word.

“I have a feeling I’m gonna have my hands full with you on this trip, Munson.”

“I could very easily turn that into a sex joke—”

“Eddie.”

“—But I won’t,” the boy concludes. His head tilts to look at you. “See? You didn’t let me finish.”

“I don’t think they would’ve heard, anyway. They’re totally knocked out.”

“That after-school nap is no joke, sweetheart. I mean, seriously, I don’t know what I’m gonna do when I graduate.”

“You can still nap, Eds,” you counter, giggling.

“Yeah, but it’s not the same.”

You concede with the shake of your head. “Sure.”

“Do you think I’ll miss high school when I’m gone? You know, as the graduated one?”

Your brows furrow. “You’re asking me if I think the freak of Hawkins High is gonna miss getting bullied five days out of the week?”

“But I won’t have Hellfire. And I’ll probably lose clients, too — ‘cause, you know, I won’t be able to deal at school like I usually do,” Eddie explains, growing suddenly somber about the whole thing. “I’ve been in school since I was five, you know? I’ve been going to Hawkins High for six years. And change is… gross.”

The whimsical existentialism of high school seniors makes you sigh in reminiscence. 

“You’ll be okay, Eddie Spaghetti,” you assure him, squeezing his hand on your thigh. “It isn’t so bad. I promise.”

“Do you miss high school at all?”

“Hell no,” you answer without thinking.

A laugh sputters from his mouth at the swiftness of your reply. “Not even a little bit?”

“A negative amount, actually.”

“I thought you liked school!” he argues.

“No one likes school.”

“You were good at it!”

“I was okay. And that’s only because I had this weird complex about getting good grades.”

High school for you, at its core, was all about approval. You weren’t sporty, so you had to be smart. You had to be noticed in some way so you weren’t suffocated by being invisible. Maybe if you had gotten therapy for all that before you turned fourteen, you wouldn’t be the way you are now.

“Do you think we would’ve dated? You know, if we knew each other back then?” Eddie asks you out of the blue. The faintest hint of a smile tugs at his pink lips. “Like… Would you have liked me?”

You grin softly to yourself as you think sincerely about his inquiry. 

You don’t think you would’ve felt too differently than you do now — head over heels with no hope in sight. But your heart was different back then, tender and unbroken. God, Eddie Munson would’ve been the best thing for you back then.

“Teenage me would’ve loved you. And you would’ve hated me.”

That makes him scoff. “No way.”

“You shouldn’t sound so sure, babe. I was a mess back then.”

“I would’ve liked you for the same reason I like you now.”

You shoot him an arched brow to egg him on, but he doesn’t move to explain any further. It leaves you wondering — why he would’ve liked you back then, why he likes you now. You don’t have an answer for either. 

You figure it doesn’t matter, anyway. Eddie Munson likes you, and you’re grateful beyond comprehension that you can say it with so much certainty. Never with anyone else have you been more sure of where you stand.

“I think you would’ve been good for me,” you confess, focusing on the pine trees that whip by instead of the boy beside you. Your fingers absentmindedly begin to fidget with his own, entwining and weaving with his without you ever noticing. “‘Cause you do this thing where you, like, understand me better than anyone ever has before.”

Eddie chuckles, then shrugs to humor you. “Yeah, we’re just soulmates. No big deal.”

“And I think I would’ve saved myself a world of heartbreak if I’d found you first instead of—”

You cut yourself off. 

Eddie turns to you, expecting to see you saddened by the sudden change of conversation. He’s surprised to find you smiling.

“Whoa,” you marvel with wide eyes. “I don’t know how we got there. Sorry, that got… way too deep.”

Eddie twists his wrists so he can hold your hand back. His metal rings press into the sides of your fingers as they intertwine with yours. He smiles briefly at you. The road takes too much of his attention to gaze at you the way he’d like to. 

“It’s okay. Let’s not think about any of that now, yeah? Let’s just have fun.”

You nod.

“I’d love to, but suffering through these conversations is making it real hard,” Max monotones from the backseat, eyes still shut.

“You’re supposed to be sleeping,” you joke.

“I’d love to, but being surrounded by lovebirds is, like, the least cozy thing ever.”

Lucas and Dustin snore a loud, synchronized snore in response. Lovebirds, indeed.

 ˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗

There’s only one working sink at the gas station. It sputters cold water before hesitantly dripping the warmer kind. Robin jams the soap machine like an absolute maniac — and when she gets more strawberry-scented liquid than she bargained for, she smears some onto your palm. The two of you stand side-by-side, fingers occasionally bumping into the other’s as you wash your hands.

“How’s driving with Steve?” you ask her with a knowing grin. 

“The worst,” she answers with a groan, just as dramatically as you imagined she might. “He’s acting like a total dad, obviously. But he’s letting me man that radio, so that’s a plus.”

“Ah, so it’s less Bruce Springsteen and more The Runaways this time?”

Robin’s ocean eyes go wide at the reminder. The last trip where Steve was in charge of the radio, it took two weeks to get “Born in the U.S.A.” out of her head. She shivers at the memory. 

“Yes. Thank god,” she huffs and turns off the faucet. You pump the lever at the paper towel dispenser and hand a napkin over to her. “How’s driving with Eddie?”

The teasingly lilted name doesn’t go unnoticed by you.

“Why’d you say his name like that?” you giggle.

She squints. “You know exactly why.”

You do.

“It’s fine, I guess,” you shrug instead of telling her you’ve spent the entire drive staring at him. You still haven’t yet decided which is prettier — the pink and purple sunset or the way Eddie looks beneath it. “He’s not driving like a total maniac with the kids in the car, so… It’s not too bad.”

You open the door with your shoulder. 

“You haven’t heard from Billy, have you?” Robin asks as she walks out ahead of you.

Your eyes widen at the sound of the boy’s name. The realization that you’re not the only one who shudders at the mention of him is equally daunting. You look over your shoulder and towards Max’s stall, where she’d walked in a few minutes after the both of you. You shut the door behind you and wonder if she heard.

“No. I haven’t,” you answer, then plead. “And can we please not talk about him? Especially not in front of Max?”

“Well, tell that to Stevie because he won’t stop asking me?”

Your brows pinch. “Why?”

Robin makes a vague ‘I don’t know’ sound as she shrugs. She roams the snack aisle and eyes the vibrantly colored chip bags. “He probably doesn’t want to bother you about it. And also, he probably thinks you wouldn’t tell him if you did hear from him.”

“I wouldn’t,” you scoff.

“See,” Robin drawls with her head tilted to her shoulder. “That’s the problem!”

“Well, considering the last time I told Steve about Billy, he almost died, I think I’m doing him a favor.”

“…Touché.”

“I haven’t heard from him, okay? And I’m not going to because we’re gonna be three hours away from Hawkins all weekend.”

“Unless he’s stalking you,” Robin argues mindlessly. When her own words dawn on her, she gasps and looks at you with her features gaping in horror. “Oh, my god. What if he goes all Jason Voorhees and starts slaughtering us one by one—”

“Robin!” you shout, unsure of whether or not you should laugh.

“I’m just saying! That guy is crazy, okay? We should not put that maniac shit past him,” the girl agonizes. She walks a few short steps over to you and holds onto your arms with a grip most desperate. Her eyes are wide and pleading as she stares at you. You feel a bit like she’s looking into your soul. “Just please promise me you and Eddie won’t have sex while we’re on vacation.” 

Instead of telling her that most certainly won’t be a problem, you’re left surprised at her out-of-the-blue words. “What?”

“The couple having sex is always the first to die in the movies!” 

“Robin. I love you,” you remind her with your hands over her jacket-clad arms. “But you’re insane.”

She sighs with exasperation when you turn away from her. You hear her mutter under her breath behind you: “Looks like I’m gonna be the girl that gets killed ‘cause no one listened to her about the crazy serial killer dude…”

You get Eddie food at the connected McDonald’s, even though he told you he wasn’t hungry.

 “Those sandwiches are too good to waste, Peach,” he’d said right before pressing a kiss to your cheek. You think he just didn’t want you spending money on him when he was too busy getting gas to catch you. You do it anyway. ‘Cause you love him and everything.

“We talked about this!” Eddie grouses when you meet him at the pump. He taps the nozzle against the van a few times, getting every last drop he can before sticking it back into the stand. “I was really lookin’ forward to that PB&J, sweetheart.”

You smile before popping a fry into your mouth. “Want me to drive?”

“No. I’m good. Probably gonna sleep like a baby when we get there, though,” he tells you, half-joking as he stretches out his tired back. The bottom of his thrifted Stars Wars tee rises to reveal a sliver of his stomach. He catches you looking and grins. “And when I do, I expect to be held like one in compensation.”

You know he’s joking, but you nod anyway. The sack of burgers gets squished between your bodies when he takes you in his arms, palms wide along your waist. 

“Happily,” you grin, already leaning in for a kiss. The tip of his nose smushes against the side of yours when your lips meet. It’s longer than a peck. Softer than one too. He tastes sweet, like lemons.

You hear the kids coming back before you see them. Their chattering melds with the scuffs of their shoes. You and Eddie part from one another, thinking you might’ve gotten away with your fleeting touches before any of them could see. A chorus of groans tells you otherwise.

“See?” Eddie protests with his brows raised, hidden behind his curly bangs. “This is what I was talking about!”

You shake your head with a sympathetic smile. “We’ll be there soon, Eddie Spaghetti,” you promise. The “I’m gonna kiss you silly when we get there” goes unsaid. 

He hears it, though.

 ˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗

Soon, as it turns out, was actually another hour. It’s full of huffy teenagers, and ‘are we there yet?’s, and Eddie trying not to lose his sanity between it all. You do your best to keep his mind off of the never-ending highway, but hand-holding and mindless conversations only go so far. By hour three-and-a-half of the relentless drive, the trek was beginning to show on you too.

Lake Lemon was worth it, though. 

The view of sparkling water beneath a velvet purple sky made you forget about your aching back and the extra twenty minutes Eddie spent trying to find the place (and getting lost in the process). The cabin was a quaint two-story thing, wedged between lake and forest. It was old, which meant it was cheap, but it wasn’t any less beautiful. And, for a couple of kids who rarely get the chance to get out of Hawkins, it might as well be Heaven on Earth.

“This place is massive!” Dustin marvels.

It’s not that big, really. It’s certainly not bigger than the Harrington home — which you know he frequents from time to time. You think it may be just because of the wide-open kitchen connecting to the living room and the spiral staircase leading to the second floor.

“Alright,” Steve huffs from behind the group of you as he drops Max’s duffle with a low thud. No one volunteered him to get the bags, but he didn’t object to doing it either. “I think that’s all of ‘em. If you little shits make a mess when you unpack, you better clean up after yourselves. I’m not your maid.”

“Sorry, Stevie. I can’t hear you over this view,” Robin lilts from the other side of the house. She stands at the sliding glass door in the kitchen. Just outside of it is the lake. The water looks black in the night, shining beneath a set of twinkling stars.

“Can me and El take the bedroom upstairs?” Mike asks you, far nicer than he’d ever ask Steve. El hangs on his arm. You’ve got a feeling she’ll stay there all weekend.

He told you recently that he was trying to grow his hair out to look more like Eddie. Now you can’t look at him without smiling. He’s not nearly as intimidating as his structured features make him seem.

“Well, I don’t want Hopper to kill me, so there’s no way I’m giving you guys the master bedroom,” you laugh, tilting your head down to your shoulder. You meet the teenager’s identical pout with a shrug. “But if you wanna share one of the bunks, knock yourselves out. What I don’t know, I can’t tell Hop, so…”

“But shouldn’t the couples get the bigger bedrooms?” Mike argues.

Steve materializes behind your shoulder. “You kids are taking the bunks, alright? That’s final.”

Mike scowls. “You guys are no fun, you know that?”

“You’ll survive,” the older boy deadpans with the roll of his eyes. “Peach and Robin can take one room, Nance can take the other when she gets here. I’ll take the couch and…” Steve trails off and looks over at Eddie. He winces. “I think there might be a spare tent outside for you, Munson.”

Eddie scoffs out a laugh. “Dick…”

“Everyone say ‘thank you, Steve’s dad,” Robin singsongs as she walks back to the living room for her rucksack. Despite her obviously joking tone, everyone else choruses ‘thanks, Steve’s dad!’ in return as they scramble for their bags.

Steve huffs behind you. Sure, his dad put the downpayment on the place, but he didn’t need to be reminded of that. Besides, he paid for everything else.

You turn on your heel to face him, arms crossed over your chest as you smile up at him. “Thank you, Steve,” you lilt in the same too sweet tone as everyone else.

“You don’t have to think me,” the boy scoffs. “You paid for half.”

“Not nearly half.”

“Well, you made up for it by booking the cabin. You did all the work I was too lazy to do, so—”

“So call it even and stop flirting,” Eddie monotones as he slings your bags and his bag over his arm and shoulder.

You roll your eyes with a smile, canting your head to look over at the darker-haired boy. “Wanna go unpack?” you ask.

“If it’ll stop you and Harrington from making out, yeah.”

“Those jokes stopped being funny the first time you told them, Munson,” Steve grouses.

You walk to Eddie and take the hand dangling at his side. You trail behind him as he leads you up the wooden, unusually coiled staircase. 

“Is this what rich people do when they build houses?” he comments. “’Cause this feels really dumb and unnecessary.”

“I assume you know a lot about those things,” you joke drily.

“Rude.”

At the top of the stairs, and for the first time alone, you smack a kiss to his mouth.

There are four doors to choose from on the second story — one is the bathroom, the other a storage closet. 

Of the two bedrooms, you and Eddie pick the door at the very end of the carpeted hall on the right. It’s got a better view of the lake and is on the furthest side of the house — in that, it’s not just above the kids’ room. In that, maybe it’ll be quiet enough for the two of you to pretend that you’re just here by yourselves for a moment or two.

The walls are made of slatted wood, and the slanted ceiling is painted a deep green. There’s a stone fireplace and a dresser with a small television on one side of the room, and a balcony overlooking the lake to the other. It’s not huge but isn’t small either — the perfect size for a girl who loves being close to her boy and a boy who loves to let her. 

Neither of you bothers unpacking. You make a silent agreement to live out of your bags for the next couple of days to save the pain of having to pack all over again when it’s time to go. Rather than spend the next half hour hunching your aching packs to organize clothes into drawers, you spend it flopping into bed beside one another. 

Like muscle memory, you take the right side and Eddie takes the left. “It’s the side closest to the door, anyway,” he tells you. “And men always take that side. For some reason.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s to defend their wives in case someone breaks in,” you say, giggling.

“Well, that’s dumb. What if they come in from the window?”

“…I don’t know how you haven’t graduated yet, Eds. You’re a genius.”

Now, Eddie lies on his stomach with his face smushed into the pillow. Fatigue radiates from him like steam. You smooth a mindless hand up and down his back. Between dealing, going to school, and driving three hours across the state, you know he’s drained.

“What time is it?” he mumbles into the cushion.

You look over at the clock on the nightstand and then back at him. “Almost ten.”

“I’m so exhausted I think I could peel my skin off…”

You exhale sharply through your nose. “I don’t think that’s exhaustion, Eddie Spaghetti.”

His head perks up. His button eyes go wide and hopeful as he looks at you, almost shy. “Wanna hold me?” he murmurs, still half into the pillow in case you reject him and he has to hide again.

“I’m offended you’re even asking me that,” you scoff. “That answer’s always gonna be yes, Eddie Munson.”

You roll onto your back. Eddie squirms against the mattress until he’s close enough to lay his head on your chest. His curls tickle your neck and jaw. Your arms wrap around each other, holding one another like you haven’t spent several hours squished into a van together. 

The moments you should be tired of each other, your love just seems to get bigger. 

You don’t know if you’ve ever experienced that before, or if it’s the first time it’s ever happened in the history of the whole world. The butterflies in your stomach make both feel equally true.

“Did you have a good day?” Eddie mumbles into the t-shirt you’d just changed into. He’s obviously tired, but he doesn’t want to quit talking to you.

“The best,” you sigh, content and finally still. One hand curls into his hair. You scratch softly at his scalp. “And it’s gonna be even better tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Eddie nods. He doesn’t know if that’s totally true, but he’s found that’s a lot like what your relationship is like — perfect and getting better all the time. So he figures you must be right.

Silence settles within the four walls of the small bedroom. It feels soft like cotton candy, a blanket that’s been tossed over the both of you. You think you could stay like this all night — holding each other and never saying a word. 

Eddie, however, has never met a quiet he doesn’t want to break.

“…Wanna fool around?” he jokes out of the blue.

“With kids downstairs and Robin right next door?” you laugh. “I think I’m good.”

“I’d be quiet,” he promises, leaning his chin on the swell of your breast to look at you.

“You don’t know how to be quiet, Munson. Besides, we shouldn’t fool around while we’re here anyway…”

The boy’s brows furrow at the teasing lilt in your tone. A smile curls at his lips. “…Why?”

“‘Cause Robin said those are the first people to die in scary movies.”

“She’s not wrong,” Eddie offers with a laugh. “I mean, she’s crazy, but she’s right.”

You sigh, smiling. “That’s Robin Buckley for you… She’s a total dork.” 

“Guess that’s why you guys get along so well, then, huh?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie singsongs, too cute for his own good. “I just think everyone made a mistake calling you the slut of Hawkins, you know? Like calling me the freak is spot on, but you? You’re totally the dork.”

You snort. “Right…”

“Peach, The Cute,” Eddie lilts like he’s testing it on for size.

“Yeah? Is that what my name would be in your game?”

“Peach, The Adorable,” he continues. “Peach, The Precious, even.”

“Munson, The Annoying,” you croon in the same tone he’d used, though obviously joking and obviously not doing the best job as him. “Eddie, The Guy That’s About To Sleep Outside Tonight.”

Eddie beams. “See? You just proved my point. You’re too adorable for your own good, sweetheart.”

“Yeah?” you hum as he moves off your chest and onto the pillow you’re lying on.

He props his head on his arm and nods. “So cute it makes my chest hurt a little bit.”

“I’m sorry,” you apologize with a soft grin that says otherwise.

“’S okay,” he assures with a softer smile and a twinkle in the chocolate of his eye. His hand rises and toys with the fraying hem of your shirt. “Do you remember what we were talking about in the van earlier? About, like… knowing each other in high school?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I’m really glad we weren’t friends back then.”

Your heart wants to break, but you don’t let it. You don’t know what this boy is going to tell you next, but you’ve got a feeling it’s going to kill you and bring you back to life again. “Why?”

“‘Cause I don’t think you would’ve let me get to know you. Like, know you, know you.” 

Not the way everyone else knows you, he wants to say.

“That’s not true,” you reject just because you feel like you should. Both of you know he’s right.

To put it simply, you would’ve loved to fuck Eddie Munson back in high school. Back then, he was just the weirdo who sold the cheapest weed — not the sweetheart you’ve gotten to know him as now. And the two of you would’ve had sex, and it would’ve been fine, but it wouldn’t have meant anything to either of you. 

Sex is just sex until you decide to give it meaning.

And for you — and for a really, really long time — it didn’t mean shit. It was just a dumb way to pass the time when you ran out of words to say. A cheap way to get the validation you’d really been looking for the whole time. Intimacy stopped meaning something because no one touched you the way Eddie touched you.

He makes you feel held. Wanted. Loved. 

You didn’t know either of those things existed when you were seventeen.

But you’ve found them now, in your old dealer who used to give you free weed for helping him study. You’re glad you meant him when you did — after heartache chewed you up and spat you out, left you soaking wet and shivering.

Eddie came to you like a warm blanket and a home-cooked meal. You wouldn’t have been able to appreciate him before now.

“Well, thanks for letting me know you anyway, sweetheart,” Eddie says with a lopsided smile.

Something about it is so strangely tender. More intimate than a thousand I love you’s.

You smile. “Thanks for letting me know you, too, Eddie Spaghetti.”

[visceral-reject]

SILENT NIGHTS

A/N: hello ghoulies resident mom over this blog, aka Mod888, and I’d like to thoroughly apologize for our lack of posting. My health hasn’t been the best as of late and with schooling piling up on both of us, we thought we should take a break in order to push out content we’re both happy with! Please enjoy and forgive me as this is it’s been a while. ~ Mod888

CW: HABIT an Evan are dicks ngl, sub!afab!reader, reader isn’t ,human (ngl this might be a second part to Forelsket), choking, spanking, slight bondage, spit kink, slight size kink

his hand was cold as it crept up your throat, the calloused fingers mapping out your jugular with light touches, a stark contrast to the hand buried in your hair, scratching at your scalp with blunt nails. It would almost be comforting if not for your current…position. Your knees would surely be aching and bruised in the morning, but you couldn’t, more akin to wouldn’t complain, not like you could with Evan’s cold hand now clamped over your lips.

“ you know, I think I like you better when you’re quiet bun. It’s so much better when you’re not running that bratty fucking mouth. “ Evan, or what was masquerading around New Jersey as him, gave a loose grin as he worked his fingers into your scalp. Some might wonder why you stayed, and the answer was simple really. Evan dicked you down better than anyone else.

you fought against biting his finger, you really did. it was honestly a sad sight, you beneath Evan with one hand wrapped around your throat almost daring you to move without his word to. The image the mirror reflected had you rubbing your thighs together, aching for the least bit of friction. Evan laughed, a sharp, mocking sound from his chest. He knew you liked this, you liked him taking your breath away, like the way his hands looked wrapped around your pretty throat that’d been marked seven ways to Sunday with hickies and bite marks. You liked everything he gave to you. The hand around your throat retreated, not without protest from you, though you found your pouting cut short as Evan worked you upon the bed by your head; gentler tugs as stalked around your body. There was a brief moment after your body hit the plush blanket below, and an even briefer moment before your hazy min could register Evan’s body atop of your’s. His chapped lips pressed against your neck as his calloused hands found their home grazing your legs.

“ I know baby, I know how bad you wan’ it right? “ Evan purred into your neck, his breath tickled. He was right about you wanting it, wanting him. You nodded as best as you could, shifting and squirming beneath him. Against you sopping core, you could feel the bulge of his cock. Evan’s shallow thrusts against you made it so much harder to stay quiet, your whines and moans making your lover laugh against your throat. “ Oh baby you’re being so good, tired of being a goddamn brat now that you fucking want something huh? “ you keened as Evan’s hand made it’s way towards your cunt. Evan chuckled as he continued his assault on you delicate neck, before rising to click his tongue. “ Oh no baby, if you want something you have to ask you know that! “ he bellowed. You, deprived of what you ached so badly for whined. Well, cried actually, fat tears welled in your eyes as you blabbered, yet your begging fell upon deaf ears as Evan continued to drag his fingers against your slit, reminding you he’d never willingly give anyone anything, and that included you.

A/N: This is lazy and rushed. I’m sleepy and dealing with family right now so please excuse this horrid thing.

[o-wyrmlight]

I haven't worked on A Toast to the Pigs very much.

There's a couple of reasons for that: Writers' block from not knowing how to proceed; the exhaustion and burnout of keeping up with the weekly updates; impostor's syndrome for how I write Kim's perspective; the fact that I haven't really read through what I've published of Toast for a good, long while; the hyperfixation I've had for Disco Elysium kind of fading to a certain extent; the prevalent issues that I've noticed in my writing style that I really, really want to work on improving. And don't even try to tell me that there aren't any. I know there are some rather egregious issues.

All of those combined makes it difficult to make me want to touch Toast in the first place, and there's a certain degree of shame that comes with that knowledge. And when I do want to work on Toast, I have such a hard time getting into the mindset of when I worked on it to such an extreme that it practically monopolized my time, just because it's been so long since I last touched it.

I recently tried re-reading it and I couldn't help how, despite how proud I was, something in my chest just kept periodically cringing, and I do know why: It could have been so much shorter. So much briefer. It's no wonder that it monopolized so much of my time in the weeks and months that I'd been publishing it; it's no wonder that I got so burnt out from it. 144,000 words over 15 chapters is not a normal, sustainable pace to keep, and there's so much excess fat and prose that could've been cut down to trim it up and make it neater. Not to say that I'm going to go back and cut down the already-published chapters, but currently, that's the big issue that I see with my writing: I need to learn to keep it brief, and I need to learn to identify what parts of the story would benefit from extrapolation and which parts won't.

I do want to finish Toast--very, very badly. I want to have a finished multi-chapter fic under my belt for once instead of leaving it not even half-finished. I'm just having such a difficult time nudging my brain in the direction to actually work on newer chapters. I've lost a lot of threads that I need to pick up and untangle, especially if I want to come out of it with something that's consistent and good. I know it's fanfiction--we do this for fun, we're all having fun here--but I want it to be good and cohesive, because that's just what I enjoy.

I love that people are still able to read it and love it even if they don't think that it'll ever be updated again. I love the comments that I've gotten so far and I love all of the fanart that I've gotten, too. I don't like this shame of leaving things abandoned, even if I can still appreciate the joy that old fandoms gave me for the time that I participated in them. I appreciate the story, I appreciate the fandom, and I appreciate you. I really want Toast to be a story that we can all be proud of.

So I'll keep working on Toast. I have Chapter 16 finished--more or less, in my old writing style, and I'm undecided if there are a couple of characterization changes that I want to make with it. So far, it's the only one that's 'done'. I'm undecided if I should keep it unpublished until I finish Day 2--as I said I wouldn't start updating until Day 2 was completely finished--or if I should dedicate my time to finishing the rest of Day 2 first. I'll probably drop a poll in a few days, see what y'all's opinion of the matter is.

Despite how exhausting it was to keep up with, having a schedule really did help me focus and push me to put my best foot forward to keep up with updates. Whenever I do start updating Toast again, I'll probably extend those deadlines to once every fortnight (every other week). I can't guarantee that regular updates will be anytime soon, but, well. It is what it is.

In the meantime, I'll be working on a Wattpad cover to crosspost A Toast to the Pigs, because that's something I've really been wanting to do for the past couple of months for some reason. I'll see you then.

[warningsine]

Fifty years on, the wounds left in Chilean society by the coup of 11 September 1973 are still very much open. Justice is a long way from being served, secrets remain untold, and the bodies of many of the victims are yet to be found.

Last Wednesday, the government announced a new national initiative to find the remains of 1,162 Chileans who vanished under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and remain unaccounted for. In most cases, the best their families can hope for are fragments or traces of DNA.

After ousting a democratically elected socialist, Salvador Allende, Pinochet rounded up opponents, social activists and students in Santiago’s national stadium and other makeshift detention centres, where nearly 30,000 were tortured and more than 2,200 were executed.

Allende’s body was pulled out of the bombed wreckage of the presidential palace, La Moneda. He is generally thought to have killed himself rather than be captured by soldiers loyal to Pinochet, the armed forces commander he had appointed a few weeks earlier.

Almost 1,500 others simply disappeared, and since the end of the junta in 1990, only 307 have been identified and their remains returned to their families. Anticipating the reckoning to come, Pinochet had ordered the bodies of the executed to be dug up and dumped at sea, or into the crater of a volcano. Investigators now hope that modern technology might help pinpoint massacre and temporary burial sites that might still yield vestiges of the dead.

Ariel Dorfman had been working as a cultural and press adviser in La Moneda, and was lucky to survive. Most of Allende’s staff were executed in the first days after the coup.

“This was a tragedy for Chile, for Latin America and for the world, because we were trying to open a way to a more just, radical society without violence,” Dorfman, a novelist, playwright and academic, told the Observer.

Trials are under way in a last-gasp effort at accountability before the perpetrators die of old age. On Monday, seven former soldiers aged between 73 and 85 were finally jailed after the criminal chamber of the Chilean supreme court upheld their convictions for the murder of Victor Jara, a celebrated folk singer and Allende supporter who was tortured and then shot 44 times.

Many of the details of the 1973 coup and the ensuing dictatorship remain unknown. Pinochet and the junta were efficient when it came to destroying evidence and the US has been grudging in declassifying its own records, which have emerged in a dribble over the years. Under pressure from Chile’s current president, Gabriel Boric – a 37-year-old former student activist – and from progressive Washington Democrats such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the US has declassified two new documents: presidential intelligence briefings given to Richard Nixon on the day of the coup and three days earlier.

It was hard to understand why they had been withheld for so long. They confirmed what had already been generally established: that the CIA had not directly stage-managed the 11 September coup. The presidential daily brief for 8 September contains reports of a plot by naval officers, but adds: “There is no evidence of a tri-service coup plan.”

“Should hotheads in the navy act in the belief they will automatically receive support from the other services, they could find themselves isolated,” the intelligence briefer told Nixon.

Even on the day of the coup itself, Nixon was told that, although some army units appeared to have joined the effort, “they may still lack an effectively coordinated plan that would capitalise on the widespread civilian opposition”.

Jack Devine, who was serving as a CIA clandestine officer in Chile in 1973, was eating lunch in an Italian restaurant in Santiago on 9 September when he got a message to call home. It was his wife, who told him a coup was coming.

One of Devine’s sources, a businessman and former naval officer, was leaving the country and had been unable to find the CIA man, so had gone to his house and told Mrs Devine to pass on his tipoff: “The military has decided to move. It is going to happen on September 11.”

Devine told the Observer: “That is the first clear sign that a coup was coming, just a couple of days ahead of time. We were caught by surprise. That’s the first evidence that something was coming. And many of the people still didn’t believe it in Washington and the CIA.”

There is no question, however, that the US had helped set the stage for the military takeover. From the time of Allende’s election on 4 September 1970 at the head of the Popular Unity alliance, the White House, led by Nixon’s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, began plotting to get rid of him.

The CIA planned a putsch the following month, before Allende could even hold his inauguration. US spies found willing officers and supplied them with guns, cash and guarantees of US support for a military government. The plot led to the murder of the commander-in-chief, René Schneider, who had stood by the incoming president, but it fell short of toppling Allende when plotters in the military pulled out.

In a telephone conversation on 23 October, Kissinger told Nixon that there had been “a turn for the worse”.

“The next move should have been a government takeover, but that hasn’t happened,” he said, describing the Chilean military as “a pretty incompetent bunch”.

“They’re out of practice,” Nixon replied.

After the failure of the 1970 coup, Devine said, “Nixon sent out specific instructions to the CIA that there be no more coup plotting.” The US administration focused instead on undermining the Allende government, which had been elected by a slender margin and was facing substantial internal opposition. Washington coordinated with its allies in Latin America to block Chile’s access to international finance, persuaded US companies to leave Chile, manipulated the global price of copper, Chile’s principal export, and helped foment strikes within the country.

The Nixon administration was also quick to throw its support behind the junta. When shocked US diplomats sent reports of the slaughter that had followed the coup, Kissinger told his aides: “I think we should understand our policy – that however unpleasant they act, this government is better for us than Allende was.”

Pinochet found another powerful friend on the world stage when Margaret Thatcher was elected in Britain in 1979. She restored Chile’s export credits and dropped an arms embargo on the regime, selling it jet fighters and training its troops.

A succession of Tory ministers visited Chile, admiring the high economic growth rate and the wholehearted adoption of the absolutist monetary policy extolled by Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago. A group of Chilean economists who had studied there, known as the Chicago Boys, took top positions in Pinochet’s government, and the country became a test case for the policies of privatisation, deregulation and tight control of the money supply. Complicating social factors, such as trade unions and popular resistance, had been taken out of the picture.

“The Chilean coup was a triumph of the anti-communist movement in the United States and Latin America. You can’t get around the fact that it led to the defeat of democratic and progressive governments all over the region,” said John Dinges, who lived through the violent early years of the Pinochet era as one of the few US journalists to remain in the country after the coup.

“There was a youth-oriented revolutionary movement, which was sometimes quite extreme, advocating armed struggle, and that was also physically eliminated. So the violence was successful,” Dinges, the author of two books on the Pinochet regime, said. “More than 80% of the population of Latin America was under rightwing military dictatorships by the end of 1976.”

The Pinochet regime coordinated with fellow military-run governments in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil to eliminate leftwingers and social activists in Operation Condor, a concerted slaughter across the region. It had US support, in the form of technical support, training and military aid, through the Ford, Carter and Reagan administrations, all in the name of fighting communism.

The coup’s lasting legacy around the world has been defined mostly by the international backlash to its shocking cruelty. It galvanised the human rights movement in Europe and the US. In Washington, the US’s involvement shocked politicians such as Senator Frank Church, who oversaw the first congressional hearings on the CIA’s covert activities which ultimately led to constraints on its future operations.

The martyrdom of Allende and his experiment in democratic socialism inspired a generation of leftwing political activists around the world.

The record of the Allende government is complicated. The Popular Unity alliance never commanded a parliamentary majority and was deeply split. Rapid nationalisation and blanket pay rises for workers brought with them mismanagement of state enterprises and hyperinflation. But because it was violently cut short, many different myths grew up around what might have been.

“It became like a Chilean mirror. People read into Chile what they wanted to see,” said Tanya Harmer, associate professor in Latin American international history at the London School of Economics.

“Across the world, the diverse groups on the left learned the lessons they wanted to learn from the coup. Social democrats viewed it as constitutional democracy overthrown, so it was about the rule of law. The more radical left read it as evidence that you could never have a revolution without an armed struggle.”

Dorfman argues the Allende government and its destruction changed the course of progressive politics. “There were lessons to be learned and they have endured: the need for vast coalitions to effect that structural change, and the way in which Chile’s suffering created a consciousness about human rights violations,” said Dorfman, who has written an assessment of the Allende legacy in the New York Review of Books, and a novel about Allende’s death, The Suicide Museum.

Inside Chile, the coup’s legacy is still being fought over. A recent Mori poll found only 42% of Chileans thought it had destroyed democracy, compared with 36% who said it had saved the country from Marxism.

Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive in Washington, who has led the pressure on the US government to declassify its documents on the coup, warned that denialism about the atrocities of the Pinochet era was strengthening, along with the rise of the far right.

“It is a Rosetta Stone for the discussion over the threat of authoritarianism versus the sanctity of democracy,” said Kornbluh, who is the author of a book based on the documents declassified so far, The Pinochet File. “And Chile is having that debate about its past because it’s dealing with this threat right now – and a number of other countries including the US, and countries in Europe, are facing the same issue.

“The coup in Chile was really the repression of a lot of hopes and dreams around the world, and I think that dynamic still resonates and is still relevant today.”

[claudthecat]

✂️Snippet✂️

@ixekizumab was a kind bean and tagged for another snippet. Thankfully, all I ever do is start ideas then wait too long before I finish them, so all I have are snippets...

Working on yet another Remus and Hope Lupin centric one-shot at the mo. Here's 23 year old Remus in his parents' empty house.

This house, the one on the end of the street, was the longest they’d ever lived in one place since he could remember. He knew about the flat, but couldn’t recall it. They’d left and moved into the pokey two-bed when he was freshly three. The house he’d been bitten in. That had lasted less than three years, then a brief stint in Cardiff, an even briefer stint just outside of Manchester, then Aberystwyth, then back to Pontypridd. And they’d been here since he was ten. He’d received his Hogwarts letter to this address. The house they’d lived the longest in, and yet he felt he’d spent the least time in it. Most of the year away at school, then brief snapshots of his own family in the holidays. Cumulatively, it could barely be called a home at all.  He felt too big to be here. Realistically, he couldn’t have grown that much since seventh year - perhaps a few inches, but the ceiling felt too low and the walls too close. He circled the room like a cat cataloguing its territory, brushing his fingers over the two decades out-of-fashion sofa and armchair. Light brown and red floral. The print had failed to register until now - it had been the same sofa in every house, lugged in and out again and again. It had the scuffs and loose threads to show for it. The bookshelf was the same too. Heavy stained oak, with Hope’s records jammed in on the bottom shelves and a mis-match of muggle and wizard fiction and non-fiction on the uppers. The odd trinket here and there. [...] Softened by the thick walls, but still just barely audible, was the ticking of the kitchen clock.  It was those things that felt like home.  The particular resonance of that clock, the same worn records that smelled like his maternal grandparents’ house, the books, trinkets, even the furniture. The house meant very little to him - it was just the place where his parents lived. The things in it, lovingly carried from one dwelling to the next whether by magic or brute strength - those were the things that littered the backdrop of every childhood memory.  Those things were home.  No wonder he held onto things that should have long ago been discarded.

if you wanna share, I'd love to read, @asha10100101010, @lexi-leckstar, @lesbianjeremiah and @melsmoons :) <3

[lunarsilkscreen]

One of the group leaders

Trying to work on [motivation] said "where do you envision yourself if everything works out?"

I didn't want to say "Not Here" while sitting through the third daily briefing that looked a whole lot like one of the yearlies or bi-annuals we got many a time in the Air Force.

I also didn't wanna say "I taught this very class you think is knew knowledge to me!"

I self admitted myself into a VA Psych Ward because I was struggling, and still am, with suicidal ideation.

Exactly what you'd expect from a psych ward used to involuntary court ordered [whatevers] and that was not me.

I have to remind myself; I knew more than Doctors, than the Briefers (hired to give talks on motivation, saving money, and substance abuse) those are not the reasons I am in the trouble I currently find myself in.

I feel abandoned; by my family, my communities, most of *all* the social workers; who seem to recognize *me* from various lifetimes... And know, or at least *should* know; who I am and what I stand for, and *that* person you're describing; you know isn't me.

Talking to do a Doctor about SSRIs and DSRIs and MAOIs and the Nicotine content of tomatoes and they're all just looking down their nose at you like; "Why you trying so hard to convince me you know more than me?"

"I'm Not. That's literally the [Patient Rights and Responsibilities] that you gave to me to read and then interact with *you* about *my* treatment and safety plans."

You ever have a [Salesperson] walk away from *you* because you know how much things cost; and you're not about to give them 10000$ for a 45 minute consultation fee?

They seem adamant on putting me into situations that are not helpful AND will cost me resources and *my own health* in the long run.

You can't tell a doctor they suck at their job and in-depth information about various medications without them thinking; "She's just trying to get free drugs"

Have you ever had an off-the-shelf 20mg weed gummy? A single-serving, buy it at the gas station, dose? That shit is strong enough.

No what I'm asking for; is help with the [suicidal depression], and the [social anxiety] related to this exact interaction!

I do not need stronger drugs; if anything I need weaker drugs in more exacting doses.

"Where do you envision yourself if *everything*..."

"Had worked out, at any point, in the last three years that didn't wind up with me struggling, here, in *this* place?"

I make quips about literally being fired by a sitting a president, and for snapback like "You could've gone to Congress OR The Supreme Court?"

"And you *don't* see how that particular line of reasoning wound me up *here*‽"

They still see being [transgender] as an aesthetic choice; and I'm not gonna lie; part of it is. However; Ain't nobody willing to go through puberty a second time, a know cause of [suicidal ideation] most of all; without the support that is required for somebody to make it through said [second puberty].

I remember the first time I went through puberty; understanding my families difficulties while *they* believed I was completely unaware of the family infighting of money, over child support checks, over me.

I was able to push the [intrusive thoughts] out of mind when I was young; focused on the freedoms being young provided.

Now, I've relapsed into a smoking habit that my parents had/have. Raised in that environment of constant Smokers and Negativity.

I didn't have the habit until those [intrusive thoughts] came back. Thanks [Social Media]!

I'm surrounded by people with [Doctorates] who are worse at their Jobs than an entry level Airmen. Whoa that's a problem for me, because you're about to see A LOT of those military members who are better educated than you and can't seem to make their way through *either*.

My first priority goes against what they say. They're trying to break down my [service before self] while ALREADY projecting onto me my lack of service and [too self oriented].

Id *like* to say "Wow, that's some transphobia!" But it's not. It's a "Soldier-Phobia". Their negative stereotypes around military members are astounding.

In *This* day and age? You're going to treat a literal war-vet like she didn't make a *whole* lot of sacrifices to find herself in one of the worst predicaments a veteran could have?

Sir is thrown around a lot. I hate the way it feels; but for feminism I must change the perception around the word.

They say "Sir" when they afraid; or when they're respectful. And when they don't; they're now [super egotistic] in setting which should be a safe space.

Especially for somebody who came in at the end of their rope and doesn't see a future for themselves; in the communities *you* were free enough to have created. And then just... Wasted that time?

I can't have the life I envision. Someone or something always gets jealous enough to try to take away the whole pie; even after you offer them a slice.

I know how the social programs work; and they're a large contributor to my current anxiety which I *did* identify as [Not Safe].

People don't care who they hurt here...

"this is where I envision myself being.

Right here; on the front-line or the [cutting edge] of life. Because right*here* I can make the most change, maybe not for myself; as it really seems you're an impediment for that; but literally the next person who walks in through your doors.

I wonder if anything I say actually makes it across the air-gap. I wonder if I have to set myself on fire to get a point across. I wonder; About the future of this particular doctor and whom they might hurt in the future; and the [Trolley Problem] runs through my head.

"How many more people will be hurt before someone notices she doesn't know how to do her job effectively?"

I wonder if one life is worth that many more.

You can't say those kinds of things; even in the safe-space meant to talk about those things; because then you might be remembered like one of those school shooters with a manifesto. Or like [David Carradine].

Something's broken here; and it has been for A LONG time. Not just at the federal level; here at the local and interpersonal and community levels.

"here is where I thrive; where work seems trivial, because you know what needs to be done; and I thrive in conflict."

Or I'm just accustomed to it; and therefore it tends to find me where I seem to be at. I'm not sure.

I'm the kind of person. Who takes the middle path, on purpose, because either of the two *normal* paths are too dangerous [for me specifically] or just not adequate.

I have a lot of habits built up over what seems like a long-enough life. I'm already at the point I've internalized ALL the exercises they're trying to teach. Subconsciously learning that I already do; even the things that seem to be new knowledge.

Right here is where a single person can make the most change; I've seen it before; hell, even the Christians don't believe it to be true AND THEY'RE THE ONES WHO TAUGHT ME IT *SHOULD*.

I'm motivated by the work.

And sometimes; I bury myself in it, just like smoking--because I need to avoid the [intrusive thoughts]

Because something out there tells me "You might not be able to see it now, but there's *something* to look forward to."

I've been waiting a very long time for that *something* that never comes.

My mind is a mess; even the coding and logic puzzles are starting to not come as easily. I know it's the stress and the anxiety and the lack of social support.

At least I have this, and a personal-foundation that I've had to build by hand, and burn bridges to protect.

My peace of mind is simply this.

But it's lonely here. And I'm tired of it.

[faelune-home]

FFXIVWrite 2024 #20: Duel

(A/n: Oh hey, I finally did another role questline that wasn't the magic one aha. Just a brief one of Estinien having to deal with Landenel the doof.

And I do mean brief, I'm glad I didn't end up close to 2k on one of these again, cos I keep thinking these should be beefier to account for the rewrites and new perspectives, but also...a lot of writing. I'll need to get used to just embracing these briefer interactions, they're still valid for adding dynamics here.

This technically also skips ahead part of the melee quest where they initially try to negociate with the Sahagins being turned, but part of me wanted to get to interacting with the CoH for Estinien enrichment lol. I can always backtrack to the Sahagin moment later.

Word count: 695)

They had their ragtag group of retired mercs ready to begin their respective duties into dealing with the threats of the blasphemy and the Leviathan summoning. Estinien himself had been placed with the blasphemy hunters due to his own skill set, as well as an aside from Fhara and Wheiskaet that the group could do with an extra eye to mind them.

Fhara herself was prepared to join the reconnaissance team until a call from elsewhere meant she had to leave them to it.

As it was then for the main combat force, they were all left waiting for orders. And for Landenel and Brayflox, that meant training.

Brayflox was already an interesting one, having made it clear she was better suited with her explosives, but even she had a stubby little short sword in hand to practise moves and take swipes at a rusted bucket for her practice. Not much Estinien could offer for assistance.

Landenel had already made himself known as a showboater eager to sink his teeth into the action, but for all his boasting of bloodthirst and desiring battle, his jabs against the training dummy betrayed his deterioration. His stance was that of a classically trained Gridanian lancer, but he was slow and sluggish, clearly far too used to manning a station that never saw any real danger.

As though sensing Estinien’s eyes upon him and the mental critique going through his mind, Landenel stood up straight and leaned upon his lance, casting a sharp look at him.

“Something you wish to say, ser? You look like you have much on your mind,” he asked, tone notably barbed.

“Just minding your training, seeing if there’s anything I could offer. If you’re willing to take it,” Estinien said carefully, not wanting to provoke a fight when they were supposed to be allies. Getting injured before they were needed wouldn’t help either.

“Well, if you’re offering, why not a duel?” Landenel smirked, “After all, as you can no doubt tell, I’m rather rusty here. And you’re clearly a veteran that’s stayed on top of his skills.”

“I’d rather not, not yet at least,” Estinien responded, folding his arms, “Better to get you back up to speed before we try anything like that. If you get injured, you won’t be much use to the cause.”

That remark only caused the other's smirk to deepen into a scowl.

“You’re incapable of holding back? Or do you think me so out of practice that I couldn’t hold my own?”

“It's better for you to build up your strength against a peer of similar skill level. Such as Lady Brayflox here,” Estinien countered, gesturing with a nod to the goblin, who had stepped away from her bucket to watch their conversation. She did a little dance upon acknowledgement.

“Pshhhhh… Shkohhh… Yes! Brayflox help Landenel with stamina! Use bang boom sticks to help go zip zap to avoid danger!”

Landenel’s grimace was a picture.

“Absolutely not. I’d be better off hiking all the way back to Gridania and putting in a training request with the Wood Wailers.”

“But you can’t do that because then you betray that you’ve let yourself slip while you were meant to be on guard duty,” Estinien said, already noticing the pinched expression on the other man as he called his character exactly.

“In mine own defence, Camp Tranquil is rather appropriately named,” Landenel grumbled beneath his breath. Estinien ignored his statement and marched up, lighting kicking the supporting lance from under him. It wasn’t enough to send Landenel sprawling to the ground, but it made him stumble, having to catch himself on Estinien’s armour, though he quickly righted himself again, shooting a glare back.

“I wouldn’t duel with you, but I can give you some tips. It’s still up to you to keep up with your training. We need to be ready for the first call to battle, and it could happen a sennight from now or it could happen within the next bell.”

Landenel scowled once more, glare darkening further. Then he nodded stiffly, expression morphing into that cocky smirk once more.

“Then let’s get started. Wouldn't want to be caught unawares.”

[starlit-seadragon]

Day 8 - EC

Tried something a little different with a mostly dialogue-focused piece!

Following the Dragonsong War, Yume and Aymeric decide that, while courtship is an unreasonable course of action at present, writing letters to each other is completely acceptable; they are, after all, still friends.

The moogles of the post system find their correspondence to be quite diverting.

kupo.

My FFXIV Write Masterpost here.

The wooden hatch of Gridania's post-moogle hut slammed open. Startled, the moogles in the room stopped their work and turned towards the disturbance. Through the opening, a breathless moogle sped, skidding across a tabletop and crashing into a pile of mail.

The moogles looked on in apprehension.

From the center of the pile of mail, a furry paw emerged, a single letter clutched within. The wayward moogle's head followed. He brandished the letter like a banner.

"We got another one, kupo!" he cried.

The room erupted into cheers.

A storm swept through, various moogles flying this way and that, shouting over one another to be heard.

"Who has the knife?"

"Over here, kupo!"

"Be careful with that!"

"Grab the kupo nuts!"

"KUPO NUTS!"

All at once, the activity ceased. The moogles had arranged themselves into a loose circle, some floating, others resting atop tables or on piles of mail. The kupo nuts had been passed around, and they ate in contented anticipation as the moogle with the letter opener verrrrrry gently removed the wax seal.

Without damaging the envelope.

As was only proper, they handed it back to the moogle who had brought the letter. Whoever brought in the next part of the story held the grand honor and responsibility of its telling.

The postmoogle cleared his throat excessively.

"Friends, moogles, countrymen. I bring to you now the next installment in the story of two young lovers. What sweet nothings will pass between them this time? Will they ever tell each other how they truly feel? And what--"

"Oh for the love of -- get on with it!"

A kupo nut landed squarely on the reader's head and bounced off. A moogle below caught it and flew to a safe distance to enjoy their spoil.

"Kupopo! Settle down now! The next moogle to interrupt is getting their kupo nuts confiscated, you hear?" The moogle with the knife brandished it to demonstrate their point.

The reader fluffed out his fur in indignation.

"Well I never," he sniffed.

"Please, do continue," encouraged the letter-opener. Murmurs of assent echoed throughout the circle.

The reader cleared his throat again.

And again.

And again.

The letter-opener placed a paw on the reader's shoulder.

"Right," the reader muttered. In a clear voice, he read:

"My dear Aymeric,"

"Ohhh that one never fails to warm my pom," a moogle swooned.

"Hush, we're barely into it!"

"Your kupo nuts!"

Loudly, they shushed each other. The letter-opener pointed at the crowd with intent.

"I am writing to you from the sunlit fields of the peaks of Gyr Abania. There are butterflies here larger than I am, in all the colors of dawn. I hear tell, however, that they are quite toxic, so observing from a distance may prove the wisest course of action. The land is rugged but beautiful, with wide, open fields and sloping paths. Imagine riding a chocobo through it, wind in your hair, the smell of earth all around -- perhaps we could have a race. Have you a favored bird you think could best Tsubasa? I should like to see you try."

A chorus of "ooooooh"s echoed through the moogles.

"Let's see... she's talking about politics... blah blah..." The reader shuffled through the pages, searching. "Oh, here we go. I know that time is brief and that our correspondence is briefer--"

A moogle near the back scoffed. "Brief? Her letter is three pages long!"

"--but I pray you'll allow me a moment to address the moogles... presently reading... this letter..."

An uneasy silence descended.

"...yes, I know you've been reading these letters; the kupo nut crumbs were the least of the clues. While I am used to all of the star prying into my personal affairs, I suspect Aymeric has largely been spared this invasion, at least to the extent that I've had to endure it. As such, I'd consider it a personal favor if you ceased pawing through our correspondence, to say nothing of the sanctity of the post -- which I'm sure I don't need to explain to you."

A whimper sounded. Several paws brushed self-consciously at crumb-laden fur.

"Upon delivery of this letter, you will confess to your prying and formally apologize to Aymeric. Additionally, you will make amends by polishing armor and oiling weapons at the Congregation of Our Knights Most Heavenly. Do not attempt to shirk this duty, for I will know. If you're still tempted, pray ask your cousins in the Churning Mists what happens to those who do not heed me."

"Sh-she's bluffing!" one moogle cried.

"She's not," answered another glumly.

Several moogles shivered violently.

"Shirayume is scary when she's angry, kupo!"

"Why is it always White Mages...?"

Like a heavy raincloud, they sulked, teary and sullen.

"Guess we better get started then," one mumbled. A kupo nut was thrown in their direction.

Grumbling, the moogles resealed the letter, taking great care to brush any errant kupo nut crumbs away.

Hours later, the Congregation floors were covered in crumbs, but their weapons and armor gleamed.

[worthyheir]

@lvscinvs / vaguely plotted starter

It had been several weeks, and while ravens had flown, their returning answers had been brief, and unhelpful. The council was irritated, but that was nothing compared to the annoyance of the King, who was not usually apt to snap at the slightest provocation. Other than this new war in the Stepstones, there was peace throughout the Kingdoms, and council meetings were brief, seeing to the troubles of the smallfolk even briefer. Whatever the fighting had this time that it hadn't before, his uncle was not forthcoming. Granted, Daemon had been in the Stepstones for many years, with two dragons, and while they had a sizeable army, and an obviously sizeable dragon, it was clearly not going in their favor if the tone of the short missives was any indication. He had been convinced by Aemond and the council that one dragon would be enough, that he was the King and should not risk himself in a war they had already won once before. Is it really a victory if they return, stronger than before, more resolute? It had been his suggestion to send his Hand there, despite the fact that that was not his duty, going to war. And it, especially, wasn't the purpose of the King.

Was it not, though? He was not some old, out of sorts man who could not fight. It is that thought that has him immediately storm out of the small council chamber, the room vacant, his arrival before they were set to meet. He would not be at that meeting, already out of the room, unaware if he was even passing the council at the time of his departure. It was reckless, certainly, but he needed more concrete answers than something along the lines of it being handled. They were at risk of losing several thousand men, not to mention their largest and oldest fighting dragon, and the Hand. If he was willing to risk that many, he ought to be willing to risk himself.

It's a long venture, and Vermax has taken many a trip over great distances. But he is still a normal man, King as he is, and is tired by the time they land and he dismounts the dragon's back. The men, of course, bend their knees - he does not wear the crown (who would fly so many miles wearing it?) but he is well known by the soldiers, by the generals, and certainly by the man he sent to lead this charge: his Hand, who is furiously glaring at him as he approaches the makeshift table set up, the camp clearly organized, as he expected. "Issi ao jāre naejot ivestragon nyke aōha kȳvanon kesīr iā issi īlon jāre naejot jikagon naejot aōha tent se argue nūmāzma ñuha presence kesīr?" ('Are you going to tell me about your strategy, or are we going to go to your tent argue about my presence here?'). The question is fair, but he rises it in regards to the men around them, none of whom can understand the language that he and his Uncle share with their forbearers. "Sȳrī?" ('Well?')

[chloristoflora]

He rose, the blanket that had draped his shoulders falling to the earth. He pulled the glove from his hand and let it fall. He walked uncertainly, like a puppet with his strings pulled by an apprentice puppeteer. He reached my father. So tenderly, he set his hand into my father's. Then he leaned down until he lay upon the wolf, his face turned to my father's face. He put his arm across my father's bony back. He drew him close and then set his silver fingers to the wolf.

For a moment, all was still. Then I saw Beloved's fingers stir the soft fur of the wolf's back. The firelit bodies of my father and Beloved softened and merged. I felt something I could not describe. Like the whoosh of air when a door opens, and then closes again, but it was in the Skill-current, and so strong that I saw Nettle flinch at it, too. Briefer than an instant, I saw light striate out from them. A nexus, a node on the path of fate. Then it was finished. Something finally complete, as it should have been.

Their colours dimmed and the wolf's eyes gleamed. It was slow and it was sudden, that they were gone and only the wolf remained. The snarl faded. The wolf's ears pricked and swivelled. His broad head turned slowly. He lifted his muzzle and snuffed the night air. Such eyes he had! They were a darkness full of the brilliance of life. For one brief instant, light caught in them and glowed green. We were all as motionless as if a huge predator faced us. Then, like a wet dog, the wolf shook himself and tiny fragments of stone flew in all directions, as if he had rolled in them.

Assassin's Fate, by Robin Hobb (Fitz and the Fool Trilogy #3)

[limelocked]

i still think that the israeli reps statement in the security council was absolutly wilding so im gonna try to sum up the wild parts, i recommend watching the first 42 minutes of statements, i cant recommend watching the next however many minutes where the israeli rep is speaking for Fun but watching it for education is of value

this is mr israel. i will be calling him mr israel because i legitimatly dont know any of these representatives names. also; the israeli holocaust memorial has said that the yellow star of david was a bad call when they made a show of putting it on last meeting okay thats the context

"while hamas must be held fully accountable, there is another body, sadly, that is complicit: the UN"

it is at this time where the wack shit starts, at around 50 minutes in and after 10 minutes of already absolute bullshit, its almost amazing

mr israel says that for years hes warned the council of the briefings they receive, such as from the director general of WHO who opened this meeting, the commissioner general of UNRWA, the under-secretary-general of OCHA, and the UN secretary general, calling them libellous organizations

mr israel claims that these people and/or organizations are lying

"the WHO is the organization that supplies the UN with these so called facts, excuse me, WHO is it that supplies them with these so called facts?"

mr israel claims that the UN doesnt receive information from unbiast third party sources and that all information concerning this situation is coming from hamas and not "international UN employees" on the ground in gaza

the camera cuts to the director general of the world health organization who does not seem particularly happy. this note was included because i think the camera person is the funniest person on earth

mr israel reiterates that all facets of gaza is controlled by hamas*, saying; "every number from the so called ministry of health" is hamas

mr israel continues "many UNRWA workers are themselves members of hamas" and that; "the time has come to bust the myth of UN supplied facts" while putting quotation marks on "facts"

"many ambulance drivers are hamas members, local contributors to international media are hamas members." he then implies that the new york times and reuters photojournalists who reported on the initial october 7th attack were in fact a part of the attack and on hamas' side, something both publications have denied

mr israel puts doubt upon the two briefers of the meeting (the director general of WHO and the director general of the palestinian red crescent), arguing that Dr Tedros of the WHO should have spoken about hamas using hospitals and bases and saying that it is bias that there is no israeli representative from the israeli red cross

"mr jilani why dont you tell the council about the ambulances that hamas abuses for transporting terrorists and weapons, or is this an inconvenient truth that you choose to stay silent about?" note: the camera cuts to the screen mr jilani the director general of the palestinian red crescent is on, he is shaking his head

his statement continues for 10 more minutes but this is the most interesting part and frankly i cant stand listening to the rest of it a second time

* hamas is the government in gaza, this is true, however the health ministry has never contributed false numbers according to several third party enquiries as confirmed when us president joe biden put doubt on the health ministry last month

[lizardrosen]

Hamlet Liveblog 2011, Act 3, Scene 2

In which I share the best parts of my notebook where I went through the whole text of Hamlet, line by line

3.2.1-2 "as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue" - dance with the words and make them your own

3.2.4-6 for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Hamlet wants to be subtle so he tells the Players to do the same (but his plan fails at the subtlety thing, whoops!)

3.2.9-10 "to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise" - here, Shakespeare makes fun of bad actors current Will: I mean in this exact line he's making fun of the audience members, but yes, hamlet spends most of the beginning of this scene making fun of bad actors, that's the literal point. silly past me

3.2.43-64 AKA HAMLET/HORATIO!!! lol, gotta love my enthusiasm here 💚

3.2.43 "Here, sweet lord, at your service" - affection and respect and submission

3.2.49 "Why should the poor be flattered?" - sounds like an insult, but he means it to show that he's sincere - Horatio and his family honor! current Will: honestly, rereading this whole little speech with "that no revenue hast but thy good spirits," and "let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp" Hamlet just seems really rude to everyone and it's so funny that i took this as totally sincere and nice. also i have no clue why i wrote about Horatio's family honor - did i have him briefly confused with Laertes??

3.2.53 "Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice" - SO MUCH SUBTEXT; he couldn't choose to keep his father alive but he could choose in this, and it is Horatio he chose

3.2.62-64 "and I will wear him in my heart's core, ay in my heart of heart, as I do thee" - COULD IT BE ANY MORE CANON?!

3.2.78-9 "If a steal aught the whilst this play is playing, and scape detecting, I will pay the theft" nooo! Horatio, you don't have to take on everyone's burden for yourself! Though that's what he's always done; by the end of it all he's the only one who doesn't pay - with his life, at least, but what he ended up with may be the worst deal, because he can't not-be current Will: it's good to see that i've always had that thought about this line and how he ends up paying for it

3.2.82-120 Hamlet's a punny guy, but cruel

3.2.93 "It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there" - play on Brutus and Capitol; but also a calf is an innocent creature that gets sacrificed, like Polonius treats Ophelia, or Polonius himself ending up dead because of Hamlet

3.2.103-105 country matters=cunt, nothing=vagina, Hamlet=DICK current Will: i'm the funniest person in the world, omg

3.2.125-7 OPHELIA: Will he tell us what this show meant? HAMLET: Ay, or any show that you'll show him: be not you ashamed to show, he'll not shame to tell you what it means. so Stoppard wasn't just making it up! [the Players exhibitionism]

3.2.134-5 "Tis brief my lord" "As woman's love" - She's still trying to hang onto him and correct his behavior, but he just keeps mocking her. Methinks his love is far briefer than hers. Or he's really hurt by her returning the favors. Or he's really talking about Gertrude. Or he's only pretending to be cruel to fit in with perception of him as mad. current Will: these were some really interesting thoughts, but I think now that there's no such thing as "pretending" to be cruel. If you're hurting someone it doesn't matter if you actually mean the things you're saying because they're not in on the joke, so you just are cruel.

3.2.165-6 "A second time I kill my husband dead / When second husband kisses me in bed" - Hamlet says pretty much the same thing in the closet scene

3.2.261-4 Hamlet asks twice if Horatio saw Claudius's guilt and he responds very calmly and patiently

3.2.269-70 "vouchsafe me a word with you" - Guil wants assurance of something, even if it's not his purpose or identity "Sir, a whole history." - Hamlet is so happy his plan worked that he's not even angry at Guil anymore and now they can be friends 3.2.279 "put your discourse into some frame and start not so wildly from my affair" - Guildenstern just wants a frame of reference :( current Will: clearly I was pulling from the tom stoppard characterization of Guil groping for meaning in the dark (and a lot of the notes coming up are just line notes for my ideal staging) but I think it's very interesting that I thought Hamlet was being friendly, because I usually see him play it absolutely disrespectfully

3.2.293-95 "Therefore no more, but to the matter, my mother you say" When he was talking to Guil he had friendly banter, but now he's all business - he knows the best way to hurt each of them "Then thus she says" - Rosencrantz hesitates a bit before he answers because he doesn't understand Hamlet's brusqueness

3.2.303 "My lord, you once did love me" - R is so sad in this scene! He pauses after the first few words in case Hamlet wants to fill the silence, then stumbles forward. Emphasis on "once" like he's waiting for a present tense, and then the end is almost a question

3.2.304 "So I do still, by these pickers and stealers" - maybe grabs his hands and clasps them in a cruel parody of friendship, or kisses him hard and cruel and carnal current Will: wow, I was just determined to give Rosencrantz the worst time, wasn't I? this is tragic and I was correct

3.2.306-7 "You do surely bar the door upon your own liberty if you deny your griefs to your friends" Ros remembers what he said about Denmark being a prison and thinks he's helping. Also, he's coming around to Hamlet's point of view because this trip has been awful

3.2.327-8 "But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony. I have not the skill" - Hamlet should have asked Rosencrantz because he would either know already, or figure it out intuitively

3.2.330 "you would pluck out the heart of my mystery" - he is a mystery to them and has a heart of parts current Will: i really wish I knew what i meant by that last phrase but it sounds cool and poetic!

3.2.339-344 camel - carries burdens for other people; weasel - duplicity and spying and lying; backed - supported or just partially weasel-like (somewhat sincere in whatever they're pretending to be); whale - big and blundering and in the ocean, but not on a boat, so it's free to go where it pleases :)

3.2.351 "Now could I drink hot blood" - Okay, Hamlet, slow down! Bloody revenge is one thing and reveling in it is quite another

3.2.354-5 "Let not ever the soul of Nero enter this firm bosom" he doesn't actually want to kill his mother, but doesn't want her to know this yet

[superbottomsblog]

A Guide to Choosing the Right Undergarments for Boys

Choosing the right underwear for boys is important to their comfort, hygiene, and overall well-being. However, with the plethora of available options, it can be overwhelming for parents to make the right choices. This comprehensive guide will walk you through the factors to consider when selecting boys' undergarments, the styles available, and tips for ensuring a proper fit. By the end, you'll have the knowledge and confidence to make informed decisions that will keep your little ones comfortable and happy.

Comfort is Key

Regarding boys' undergarments, comfort should be your top priority. Look for soft, breathable fabrics like cotton or bamboo blends, providing optimal comfort and better air circulation. Avoid synthetic materials that may cause irritation or discomfort.

Additionally, consider the style of underwear that your child prefers. Some boys may find briefs too constricting, while others may feel more comfortable in boxers or boxer boys' briefs. Let your child try different styles to determine what works best for them.

Size and Fit Matters

Proper sizing is crucial for ensuring comfort and support. Avoid tight or loose underwear, which can lead to discomfort or chafing. Take accurate measurements of your child's waist and refer to manufacturer-size charts to find the right size.

Regarding briefs, ensure that the waistband sits snugly without digging into the skin. The leg openings should comfortably fit boxers and briefers without riding up or bunching. Elastic waistbands should be firm but not overly tight.

Consider the Activity Level

Boys are often active and energetic, so choosing undergarments is important to keep up with their active lifestyle. For sports or physical activities, consider moisture-wicking fabrics that help keep the skin dry and prevent chafing. Look for kids underwear with reinforced seams and stretchy materials that offer flexibility and support.

Quality and Durability

Investing in good-quality undergarments for boys is essential for longevity and durability. Look for well-known brands that are known for their quality craftsmanship. Check for features like double-stitched seams and durable elastic bands that can withstand regular wear and washing.

Hygiene and Care

Teach your child proper hygiene practices and the importance of regularly changing undergarments. Encourage them to wash their undergarments separately, using mild detergents, and avoid using harsh chemicals or fabric softeners that can irritate the skin.

Conclusion

Choosing the proper undergarments for boys involves considering their comfort, size and fit, activity level, quality, and hygiene. By focusing on these aspects, parents can ensure that their boys stay comfortable, supported, and healthy throughout the day. Additionally, SuperBottoms is a brand worth considering when exploring sustainable and eco-friendly options. Superbottoms offers a range of high-quality, reusable cloth diapers and underpants for children, including boys. Their products are made from soft, breathable fabrics that prioritise comfort while being environmentally friendly. By incorporating Superbottoms into your undergarment choices, you can provide your child with comfort and functionality and contribute to a greener, more sustainable future. With this guide and brands like Superbottoms, you can confidently navigate the vast array of options available and make informed choices that promote your child's well-being.

[unspeakable3]

Chapter Eight: The Club

Someone - something - tapped Regulus’s knee beneath the table. He jolted and jerked his head around. Diana was watching the Head Girl talk about their duties but her eyes flickered to Regulus, just briefly. The tapping came again.

As Regulus’s heart tried to beat its way out of his chest, he reached down. His fingertips brushed against something soft, something cool, and he jolted again. Diana made a quiet noise in her throat and withdrew her hand, leaving a crumpled scrap of parchment between Regulus’s fingers.

He brought the parchment to the edge of the table and smoothed it out so he could read it without anyone else seeing it.

I’m sorry.

He swallowed past the tightness in his throat and pulled a short, stubby quill from one of his inner pockets. It was an ugly thing, but convenient: a self-refilling quill that he had once spotted in Scrivenshafts and had carried about his person ever since, just in case an occasion such as this should arise.

Beneath Diana’s words he wrote, as neatly as he could whilst using his hand as a rudimentary writing desk, an even briefer note.

Why?

He passed the note back to Diana. He watched her read it, look back at him, and then glance, deliberately, with a tilt of her head, towards Lupin. He sighed and took the parchment back to add a brief explanation, wishing he found it as easy to admit his faults in speech as he did in writing.

I’m an idiot.

He showed her the parchment again. She gifted him with a smile, but shook her head. Regulus frowned and wrote, quite adamantly, with the brass nib of his quill almost stabbing him through the parchment:

I am. And I’m sorry. Can you forgive me?

She took the parchment from him to add her reply. He almost choked when she reached beneath the table to give his hand a quick, tight squeeze, before leaving the scrap of parchment behind again.

Regulus turned it over; she’d written on the back, this time.

Always.

chapter 8 on ao3 ✨