#and the words just do not compute | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mkstrigidae · 16 days

Text

APWH preview snippet!

Since I'm actively trying to work on getting the next few chapters out, I thought I'd share a little future scene with some hints of Jonsa with all you lovely people! This bit is from like, a few chapters in the future bc it's the in-between that's giving me fits right now :) (Fair warning: this is unedited and subject to change! That being said, it's such a fun scene that I can't imagine ever nixing it :D)

“Does he even know that they have to avoid the press?”

“For the last time-“ Sam sighed, sounding completely exasperated, “Dickon knows what they can and can’t do- he’s got enough practice not being photographed from when our dad was the secretary. Not to mention spending time around you when that exposé on your crazy grandfather came out two years ago.”

“I just-“ Jon sighed, blowing a stray curl out of his face. “You didn’t see how freaked out she was when the press caught us at that performance in White Harbor. I thought she was going to have a full-blown panic attack.”

He was immediately derailed by Gilly plopping little Sam down in his lap and shoving a bottle into his hands.

“What’s this all about?” he raised a brow, adjusting the baby on his lap, allowing him to latch onto the cuff of his flannel shirt and start gnawing at the fabric. “You going somewhere?”

Gilly shot him a withering look, but he saw the amusement in her eyes.

“I-“ she gestured, imperiously, “Have not had time by myself to shower all week-“

“Sorry, love.” Sam winced, looking up from his pile of paperwork. “I can take a break from these-“

“Not your fault, Sam.” she waved him off. “You warned me about this conference at the beginning of the summer.” a grin played at the corners of her mouth. “Besides, it works out well- Jon needs a distraction right now from the fact that Sansa’s on a date with your extremely hot and conventionally attractive brother.”

“Hey!” Sam looked wounded, and Gilly rolled her eyes, pressing a kiss to his forehead.

“You know you’re my favorite Tarly.” she wrinkled her nose. “How long have you been working on this presentation? You smell like the baby spit up on you.”

“Guess I’m next in line for showers.” Sam said, mournfully. “Unless-“

“Nope- I need my own time right now, Samwell. Did you even hear what I said about why Jon’s bent out of shape?”

Jon had known Gilly since Sam and she had met up north while the two of them were in college. Sometimes, it was hard to reconcile the timid, scared girl she had been with the woman who was currently devoting all of her remaining energy to busting his balls.

“Don’t tell me you’re worried about Sansa with my brother.” Sam snorted, shotgunning another cup of coffee next to him the way Jon was used to seeing undergrads do with jaeger shots. “I mean, this is Dickon we’re talking about. Used to bring wounded animals home to take care of them Dickon? The same guy who cried when we had movie night and Gilly and Rhae wanted to go see ‘Love, Simon’?” He shook his head. “Look, as far as guys she could be out on a date with right now go, Dickon’s kind of the best case scenario. She’ll have a nice time, and he’ll be a perfect gentleman.”

Jon blinked at him, silently turning to look up at Gilly, who rolled her eyes and sighed.

“You’re hopeless, sweetie.” she kissed him on the forehead again, wrinkling her nose. “He’s not worried that things will go wrong- he’s worried they’ll go a little too well.”

“You’ve been spending way too much time around my sister.” Jon muttered, narrowly avoiding little Sam’s grasping reach for his glasses, managing to get the baby to latch onto the bottle before he destroyed any more of Jon’s eyewear. “You even sounded like her just then.”

Sam blinked for a second, his head whipping between Jon and Gilly.“You’re jealous?” He asked, incredulously. “Of Dickon? Wait- you like Sansa?”

“Got there in the end.” Gilly sighed, affectionately patting him on the shoulder before going to shower, leaving Jon and Sam behind with four cups of coffee, one baby, and approximately five brain cells total between the two of them.

“You like her.” Sam repeated, like it was a giant revelation.

“What are we- in middle school?” Jon hissed, immediately turning his head down to smile and make faces at little Sam while he fed him, before glaring up at big Sam again. “I don’t- I mean-“

Sam was just shaking his head.“Of course you do.” he laughed. “Should have guessed- red hair and a damsel in distress? You were doomed from the outset.”

“Shut up.” Jon muttered, flushing. “It’s not like that.”

“Then why are you worrying about Dickon for fu-“ Sam glanced nervously at the baby, “-god’s sake? When Gill was meeting my family for the first time, I remember you told her not to worry- that my brother was ‘one of the best guys you know’ and ‘practically a golden retriever’.”

Jon could tell that Sam, who could not raise one eyebrow without the other, was desperately trying to do just that.

“I don’t know.” He muttered, moving little Sam to his shoulder to start burping him. “Look- I’m attracted to her, alright? It’s a fu- er, a giant disaster that I’m gonna ignore for the rest of my life.”

“Seriously?”

“Stop trying to do that with your eyebrows.” Jon complained. “It’s giving me motion sickness. And yes, seriously. I’m not even going to consider that- it’s just a stupid crush. Besides,” he sighed, rubbing little Sam’s back comfortingly, “Robb’s already dealing with enough right now with this whole Sansa situation- can’t imagine telling him I think his sister’s attractive while he’s being forced to suddenly confront all of his guilt and self loathing every time he looks at her.”

“That whole bro code thing of never dating your friend’s sisters never really made sense to me.” Sam shook his head, gulping down more coffee. “I mean, I’d be thrilled if you decided to date Talla, because I know you’d be good to her.”

“Yeah, don't think she'd quite go for that, mate.” Jon snorted, standing to bounce little Sam around gently. He was just grateful Sam hadn’t said anything else about Robb.

“Eh, wouldn’t count you out completely.” Sam shrugged, smirking. “With that hair, you’re pretty enough to be a girl- maybe that’d be enough for her.”

“You are so lucky i’m holding the baby.” Jon muttered, still bouncing little Sam, who picked that moment to spit up spectacularly down Jon’s back.

“Well, that’s three of us who’re gonna need showers now.” Sam grinned, looking thrilled as all get out that it hadn’t been him. “Wow- his aim is getting better.”

“I’m going to remind him of this when he’s a sulky teenager.” Jon grumbled, wiping spit-up off his shoulder as best he could. “Look- no gossiping with Rhae about this, please. She thinks she’s such a good clandestine agent that she doesn’t always realize that Robb is better at sniffing out her plots than she thinks.”

“Alright-“ Sam sighed, looking back down at the massive stack of paperwork in front of him. “I make no promises for Gill, though.”

“Gilly could give some of my Uncle’s colleagues at the WIA a run for their money when it comes to withstanding interrogation.” Jon snorted.

“Probably true.”

“Where did your brother take Sansa?” Still holding onto a now much happier baby with one hand, he reached down the other to take a gulp of his own coffee.

“He said something about going out towards the Tyrell Estate.” Sam shrugged. “They probably drove out there to see the gardens- he’s said it’s a good road to take his bike out on.”

Jon promptly spat out his entire sip of coffee, staining the front of his shirt as well as the back, and frightening little Sam enough that he started to cry.

“He took her on his motorcycle?”

Gilly picked that moment to reappear, completely clean and with wet hair, blinking at the scene in front of her.

Sam, who couldn’t seem to stop laughing, was desperately trying to calm down the baby, who had started wailing, while Jon’s entire front was covered in coffee and his entire back was covered in baby vomit. Not that he seemed to notice, as his face was white and he was making a series of angry looking hand gestures at her husband.

“I really can’t leave you three alone for five minutes, can I?” she sighed. “Do I even want to know?”

#my writing #my wips #writing wips #just APWH things #jonsa #fanfiction wip #God bless Gilly like for real #YES Sansa is on a date with someone else here #muscleman golden retriever McAttractiveness #Aka dickon tarly #unsurprisingly jon is not having a great time about it!#in fairness to sansa the plotline directly preceding this and kicking off her doing some traveling was pretty rough on her #so our poor girl really deserves a giant muscley golden retriever with a motorcycle #and to just have a good time with someone who isn't wrapped up in all the stark drama/disaster/mess etc.#jon can deal with it rn bc it's really a 'you snooze you lose' kind of situation #sam's usually quicker on the draw but he's very sleep deprived here #and working on some stuff for a pathology conference #not at all going to be relevant nope no sir #writing sam and jon interacting vs jon and robb is so fascinating #they're both jon's besties but there's a very different dynamic to the two relationships #in fairness Robb has like SO much complex childhood trauma and is kind of seriously going through it right now #but his scenes with jon always have this sort of darker edge to them #like an 'i've known you my entire life and know everything about you for better or worse' type deal- deeper but darker #it's more akin to a sibling relationship? but also not? they are both going thru it #my headcanon is that anytime jon starts getting too gloomy and angsty gilly just straight up shoves the baby at him #and then waits like twenty minutes #Gilly: 'it's free babysitting!'#generally it works pretty well #jon's like '404 error does not compute' as soon as sam says the word 'motorcycle'#also when sam says 'the secretary' he means randyll tarly was the secretary of defense

31 notes · View notes

manofthepipis · 1 month

Note

Random question that’s answer is probably very obvious, but I’ll ask it just in case:

What kind of magic does each Addison specialize in, and what do they visually look like? I remember them being used in the big Spamton NEO fight in the last few chapters, but I was wondering if it could be a bit clarified?

Like, does Click’s magic just look like a Cursor, or is it more complex?

(Also, sorry if the question’s worded weirdly, I didn’t really know how to phrase it)

it's all good! i honestly had to go back to even remember what id written for that chapter just to regain my thoughts on their attacks lol

so i thoughtd id put a fun spin on some different types of advertising as if the addisons were enemies in the deltarune universe! their attacks are meant to be visualized in the deltarune fighting format, with bullets relating to their forms of advertising.

Clicks has a variation of cursors, based on clickable product advertisements that show up on webpages, whether that be pointer fingers or simple arrows, Banner has banner ads (which i imagined like literal fabric banners with some sort of advertising on them), Survey has poll-based advertising, which can be bullets of "most likely-least likely" (or whatever poll options they summon) being used as attacks, Sponsor is those ads that shows you sponsored items that pop up first in your search engine, and he doubles as sponsor ads in internet videos, the attacks being video shields or computerized reinterpretations of random items he's had lightners search in the past. Spam's used to be mail projectiles, but he doesn't use them anymore, with the exception of being Neo.

Like if you were in the game and had to fight an army of these particular addisons, you'd be met with a deltarune-style battle of cursors, banners, polling options, and random items from the light world's town. Maybe some coupons here and there. It'd be the reverse of spamton's battle, in where you actually have to buy things to spare them.

#hopefully that helps- wished i had a visual but doodling and art takes longer than just describing it #survey's- to clarify- is similar to queen's attack of the random texted words in the berdly&queen battle #and i didn't do much with sponsor in the fic in that time bc there was already a lot going on but that's what i had in mind for them #asks #fanfic #their attacks all take on a holographic appearance and have their addison color #because they're all programs in a computer #they all also have the ability to summon holo-pop up ads #except spamton- if he does it ends up being glitched. like the ones in the trash zone (which i headcanon to be his)#and he can't de-spawn them on his own bc he has a very loose control on his abilities

22 notes · View notes

crybaby-bkg · 9 months

Text

as you sit in the empty practice room, you mutter to yourself as your fingers fly over the keys of the piano. you hum the rhythm of the piece your instructor has so kindly gifted you, clicking your tongue to keep up with the melody. on the outside, you're sure you look insane, all hunched over, eyes damn near touching the sheet music, fingers flying madly over the keys.

and then - you fuck up. on the same part you always fuck up on. groaning in frustration, you rest your hands on the keys, the piano emitting a funny sound, body deflating. you perk up though when you hear a chuckle to the left of you.

"It's not that hard once you break it down," a singsongy voice carries over to you, your back straightening as your head whips over to find the culprit that snuck up on you.

lo and behold, its gojo satoru - the music departments gifted prodigal student that is miles ahead of everyone. and just your luck, his focus is the piano (alongside the harp, violin, snare drum, and a multitude of other instruments you don't care to list anymore).

"Yeah, cause nothing's ever hard for you." you sneer at him, eyes squinted in his direction. gojo feigns a pained expression, hand over his heart as his bottom lip pouts. insufferable, you think to yourself, this man is.

"You don't think I put in the work like the rest of you guys?" gojo bemoans, back straightening as he makes his way over to you. you try to take up the whole bench, but he only moves you over with his hip and a faint, "scooch."

"Why would you? You are the gifted one." your voice is airy, holds a level of sarcasm that barely conceals the truth of your words. gojo only smiles lightly, head tilted back as he rests his hands over the keys. doesn't even warm up, doesn't even look at the music before he starts playing the section of the piece you have the most difficulty with.

and gods, do you want to be mad at him, for intruding on your solo practice time, for coming in so late, for showing you how it's done. but its hard to, when his body sways with the melody, when his pink lips barely part. his fingers fly so effortlessly against the keys, long and thin and pale, and you can see the faint scratch on the back of one of them that you gave him when he wouldn't stop putting his arm around your shoulders.

you want to hate him so bad. but its hard to, when he brings your hand up to play with his, when he knocks his shoulder against your own, when he hums the harmony, when he smiles at you.

"Is this helping you understand that section?" Gojo quietly asks you, mouth turned to your hair, but his body continues playing the piece like its second nature. you try to keep up, pouting a little, face warming when his hand grabs your own to direct you to what key to hit next.

"No, you fuckin' show off." you mutter back, to which gojo only laughs heartily at you. but still, you two play together for what feels like hours. and finally - finally - do you master that section. not because of his help though, you'd never admit it. but gojo puffs his chest proudly the day you perform it in front of everybody, and look to him for reassurance.

#this is very......hmmmm......how do I say....self indulgent...#piano is my fav thing ever when it doesn't piss me off #and I know I wrote about piano teacher bkg before but I like this thought as well #just long fingered satoru playing all the instruments and looking damn near ethereal while he does it #like him playing a harp???? dead on the floor #I love that stupid man with my entire ass and heart #also on who scooch isn't a fuckin word #why is my computer lying to me #—new treat in the streets! 🍫#gojo treats! 🍬

75 notes · View notes

autumngracy · 1 month

Text

Not me creeping up to the wordcount of the fourth longest book ever written

#A Reflection of Starlight #AROS #valvert #fanfic #writing #Hey I switched back to LibreOffice again after setting up my new computer #(RIP my old computer's installation of MS Office 2009)#And also my old computer in general as it is now giving me the blue screen of death upon boot #but ANYWAY #does anybody know how to make LibreOffice stop highlighting formatted areas? BC with Dark Mode it's highlighting white text #which makes it impossible to read my footnote and page numbers #Also I CANNOT believe this program was coded to be so that 'Ignore' and 'Ignore All' options only do so for the CURRENT SESSION ONLY #Like what in god's name???#I spent 3-4 hours reformatting AROS after converting it only to learn that all the 'errors' I told it to ignore just popped back #the second I reopened the document like jesus christ #Why even offer those options if it doesn't do it permanently for that document file #HHHHHHHhhhhhhHHHHHH #I then spent another several hours being forced to change the language formatting to French for all the French bits #JUST so it would stop underlining all of them in red #And there's no way for me to get rid of the underlining on things like cut off bits of dialogue #bc they are NOT proper words and I refuse to add them to my Dictionary (thus polluting it) just to get rid of them #Ugh #So anyway remember years ago how I joked about what if I accidentally wrote a fanfic longer than the source material itself #That being one of the longest books ever written (technically THE longest book ever written #if we're counting the FRENCH version of it and not the English translation #And yeah I know I technically split AROS into 3 books but that was only for reader convenience #It's still one book in my heart #And also because I think it would be REALLY funny to surpass Hugo's wordcount #Which is entirely plausible bc in English it was only about 531k so I only a little over 100k off and I think I can easily make that #with the material I have left to write but is already mostly plotted out

24 notes · View notes

autismserenity · 3 months

Text

Palestinians to platform, part 1

مؤمن الناطور / Moumen Al-Natour

@MoumALnatour

رئيس الشباب الفلسطيني للتنمية / President of Palestinian Youth for Development

Moumen Al-Natour is amazing. Not only does he run a Palestinian youth organization that is doing great work in Gaza, but he's also one of the organizers of the 2019 anti-Hamas protests.

Even to criticize Hamas, in Gaza, means to be interrogated, and potentially jailed, tortured, and/or killed. To actively protest Hamas is many times more dangerous.

To have survived that work and continued doing it? I cannot imagine the emotional strength this dude has.

Here's what Center for Peace Communications (another great organization) has said about him:

So many Palestinians, in or from Palestine, are out there talking about what everyday life in Gaza is like. About Hamas, about Israel, about what they want and what they need, about their struggles and their interests and their families.

My goal, in finding people for you to follow and platform, is to help more voices get out of Gaza after years of suppression, and to help more outsiders (like me) connect with them.

People care SO MUCH about Palestine. But frequently, all there is to share is outrage, semi-accurate news, and more outrage. Frequently, we're not calling for the same things they are. We call for a ceasefire; they demand Hamas return the hostages and surrender. We call for Israel to let aid in; they say Israel is letting the aid in, but it's being stolen, and call for air drops rather than trucks. We call for Israel to stop fighting; they say they hope Israel takes Hamas out first.

We aren't centering their voices and experiences. We aren't lending our reach and our strength to their demands.

I want to make that possible.

Ala Mushtaha, the son of this imam, evidently said, “On Saturday December 30, our front door was busted down and twenty masked men barged in and took my father, a widely respected and deeply learned imam here in Gaza."

“One dragged him by his head and another grabbed him by his beard. My younger brother tried to intervene and reason with the kidnappers, but they beat him. I have a medical condition that makes it hard for me to breathe, so all I could do was watch as the horror unfolded.

“He wouldn’t preach what Hamas told him to. He refused to tell Gazans that violent resistance and obedience to Hamas, is the best way out of our current hell.”

ok this dude needs his own post honestly, he goes on to say so much intense stuff about their lives.

OMG his dad was actually released!

This is what I'm talking about. This is effective activism. Imagine what all these people could do if they had the entire global pro-Palestinian movement behind them.

Al-Natour posts a fair amount of political commentary.

The "we want to live" hashtag is a callback to the amazing "We Want To Live" protests he co-organized against Hamas, in Gaza in 2019, and again in the summer of 2023. Activist Hamida Howidzy (who will also be getting a separate post) wrote about them in Newsweek recently.

Some things he posts in Arabic and then in English. Some of his posts are in Arabic only. In the thread above, he actually posted a couple more that were just in Arabic, presumably aimed at Arabic-language comments.

What I like about Twitter is that you can whack the "translate post" button and get a pretty decent translation most of the time.

Translation:

"I saw all the responses... What is wrong and forbidden in reuniting the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem through elections in which the people choose who will represent them??!?? Why are all the responses offensive...a collaborator, a traitor, and contain insults that indicate that whoever wrote them needs restructuring?! What prevents us, after ending the war, from returning our choice and choice to the Palestinian people?!+

"Everyone wrote that I opened??!! how did you know???!! Stopping the war is the most important thing now... Whoever sees the condition of the people and feels all this is easy for him does not have humanity, and is not a human being... Whoever, after the destruction of more than 80% of Gaza and the North, and still writing in a way that wants the war to continue while he lives abroad, should reconsider. He accepted to live the same suffering!++"

Note: I copied the "I opened" bit and threw it into Google Translate separately, because that cannot be right. It still insisted that it meant "I opened".... but it gave me the transliterated words, "ani fatah."

Everyone wrote that he's Fatah -- the party that runs the West Bank, the one Hamas violently kicked out of Gaza in 2007-08.

"The end of my speech... I know... whoever is not with you is a traitor and an agent... shameful... by God, by God, by God... there will be an account[ing] for all of this talk... so that you understand the word agent... and the account will be through a government of law... It is clear that there are many who benefit from the poverty and destruction of Gaza, and they must be held accountable according to the law.

"Have mercy on people with your tongues"

The comment on that one is noteworthy:

"Yes, whoever is not with the resistance is indeed a traitor, and those who must be held accountable are the traitors, agents, hypocrites, liars, and racists who slander the resistance and who want to hold it accountable only because it fights the enemy of humanity and defends truth and the oppressed. If you want to apply the law, apply it to yourselves first."

It highlights how much of what we hear in the West is Hamas propaganda. That's a whole other post too. But Hamas claims to be "the resistance," to "defend truth and the oppressed," while arresting people who refuse to preach its propaganda. While jailing and torturing someone 20 times for organizing a protest.

Which are the exact tactics that make it so easy for their propaganda to reach us . And so hard for us to even know that there has been an entire protest movement against Hamas in Gaza, much less to support its activists.

I'll just cut and paste the translations from his most recent thread, above. All emphasis is mine:

"When demonstrations took place in Israel demanding that Netanyahu stop the war and free the hostages, Al Jazeera and Hamas considered it a victory and an achievement, and that the Israeli government was under pressure. But what is striking is that these demonstrations were not suppressed. They were secured. The hostage issue and public pressure were dealt with professionally.

"The demonstrations that took place in Gaza demanding an end to the war and the return of the displaced...they were classified as suspicious [by Al Jazeera etc] ...even though the displaced Israeli lives in a 5-star hotel and has the privileges of the displaced, and when the Palestinian displaced in Gaza receives help, he needs a mediator, and if he wants a tent, he needs leadership intervention, and if he does not have the mediator And the intervention wants to scratch his pocket..+++

"Why did Israel allow demonstrations and look pressured, always trying to contain everything... while we have a displaced person lost, homeless, and no one is trying to contain him, and when he talks, they call him a fifth column???"

Last month, he posted about pregnancy in wartime. Note the cost of the tent later in this thread! Numerous Palestinians have posted about humanitarian aid getting stolen -- by Hamas, by NGOs, by others -- and sold on the black market. Food and tents especially get mentioned a lot. Everyone mentions the tents are being sold for more than (the equivalent of) $700, even though they were supposed to be free.

I'll leave you with this one for now:

You can read all the posts in this series in my "platform gaza" tag.

#platform gaza #free gaza #the hospital #free palestine #free palestine from hamas #long post #wall of words #please note i specifically said platform gaza and not just platform palestinians #platform the west bank too #don't platform and center palestinians who have never been to palestine on issues that specifically affect people IN PALESTINE #like I'm 3/4 Italian and I'm not gonna tell you about what to do for people in Italy ok #I can give you perspective that you may not have otherwise #but there are multiple really awful orgs that claim to be palestinian-led and are in fact led by people in Canada or Brooklyn #it's extremely ironic that I've seen a lot of people accuse each other of like “sitting at your computer in your apartment in Brooklyn”#to mean being out of your lane and talking about stuff you don't understand in I/P discourse #when in fact the woman who runs within our lifetime is literally in and from brooklyn #that's the org that was caught on video doing a protest march that stopped to scream at cancer patients #about how their hospital was “complicit in genocide”#how was it complicit in genocide you might ask? well i guess memorial sloan kettering cancer center accepted a $400M donation #from “a zionist billionaire” which is a gross antisemitic trope thansks #the “zionist billionaire” hilariously turned out to be a billionaire Protestant #whose “zionism” was... that he's a Harvard grad and he told Harvard it should make a statement about the massacre #so obviously #by accepting a massive donation from some rich white guy who #UNRELATEDLY #thought Oct 7 was bad #the CANCER CENTER #is clearly COMPLICIT in GENOCIDE.#this makes zero sense and is bad activism #and the reason i consider it to be bad activism is specifically that it's not trying to achieve anything

25 notes · View notes

tearlessrain · 6 months

Text

AI people want so badly for everyone who opposes AI to be some kind of elitist gatekeeper holding art out of reach of the masses and like. no. I don't care whether it's real art or not. I care that the databases all scrape from artists without their consent to mimic their styles. stop doing that and find an ethical way to scrape for your database and you'll never hear another complaint from me about it.

#I mean I'll fully own up that I don't like it for other reasons #but there are people who feel the same way about painting digitally and on that front my opinion means jack shit #if you want to make a picture by putting words in a computer then do that just stop scraping shit without permission

43 notes · View notes

lauronk · 4 months

Text

can i make a fic about jellyfish just as long as a fic about plants?

well i'm sure as shit gonna try

#jelly fic #still doesn't have an actual title yet #this one is like tlou with a sprinkling of stardew valley #dance of the moonlight jellies #all these words and there's been mentions of jellies but no actual jellies yet #maybe in another 2k words or so #this one might be out by the weekend #because my weekend plans just fell through bc my partner got the rona again so when i'm not at work i'm stuck at home #wearing a mask at the computer while he is locked in our spare room because i'm showing as negative #tl;dr i have lots of writing time now and i intend to put it to good use #gonna finish jelly fic #gonna work on what the original jelly fic was but now is a fic of its own #gonna work on bus fic part 5 #on the road again (there i go)#gonna do some more brainstorming for bthb #just so many things to do #i'll shut up in the tags now though #night night #the last of us fanfiction #tlou fanfiction #joel and ellie #fanfic struggles

20 notes · View notes

resident-gay-bitch · 1 year

Text

Day Seven of @steddie-week - free space / free space / freedom

find the previous day here :)

Fifty years old, and Eddie was doing this.

He didn’t think he’d ever do this. But here he was, doing this.

He took a deep breath and willed away his goddamn tears, and he felt Dustin pat him on the shoulder as the music picked up and everyone stood.

He looked down at himself, fixing the sleeves of his suit and making sure it was buttoned properly, sweeping the long greying hairs out of his face.

He gave Wayne a very excited smile before turning to face everyone.

He took another shaky breath, so fucking nervous.

Down the aisle pranced a little girl, dressed in a pink fluffy princess dress, with her hair done in buns like Princess Laya’s because that’s what she insisted on. She was eight and a half years old, and Eddie couldn’t believe it. She skipped along in her sparkly red shoes - the ones she coaxed Eddie into buying because “they look just like Dorotheys, Daddy!”, and Eddie still didn’t know how to say no to her. She lit up at the sight of Eddie, bright and smiling, she waved at him very excitedly, almost bursting into a run to get to him. Eddie smiled at her and imitated throwing things out of a basket with a wry smile, and she gasped, stopping dead in her tracks. Eddie couldn’t help but laugh. She reached into her little basket and pulled out a handful of confetti and tossed it into the air, and she continued that as she did her fancy aisle walk towards Eddie.

When she got to him, Eddie dropped to his knee and gave her a little kiss on the cheek, “Good job, Princess.”

“Thanks, daddy.” She beamed, plucking out some confetti and tossed it in the air over Eddie, “Do you like the sparkles Auntie Nancy put on me?”

“Hell yeah, kid, you look so cool.”

She giggled and showed off her sparkly skin some more. Oh, Eddie remembered when they first got her, they were there in the delivery room. They got to name the beautiful girl and everything. Her name was Chrissy, and she channels every bit of the dancer Chrissy used to be.

She closed her eyes, “Do you like my eyeshadow too, daddy?” She asked, flashing the bright blue that she’d picked that stood out strong against her dark skin, “I wanted to be like Robin.”

“Looks beautiful, kiddo.” He winked at her, “Now, go stand over there, where we practised, remember?”

She nodded and kissed Eddie on the cheek, leaving a glossy stain in her wake. She skipped over to where she was supposed to stand, and Nancy, who was in the front row, pointed her from where she’d decided to stand into the actual right place. Eddie chuckled softly.

He stood just in time to see his other kid making their way down the aisle. They got Alice ten years ago, when adoption became a possibility for them. She was six when they got her, standing tall at sixteen now. She’d just buzzed their hair off the other week, after coming out to them as Gender Fluid. It took Steve and Eddie a little while to properly understand what it meant, but…. He was a cool kid, and they embraced it. They looked so cool in the suit he’d picked out for herself, green velvet with patterns she embroidered themself all over it.

Eddie winked at him as she went to meet her sister on the other side of the altar.

And then came Steve. He had his arm looped through Robins, who was giving him away in a lovely silk green dress. Steve looked as handsome as ever, if not more, if that was even possible, dressed in a sweet yellow suit. Eddie blushed very bright, he’d told Steve many years ago that it had quickly become his favourite colour after Steve had tossed that goddamned jumper at his face, and then was wearing that same colour when Eddie woke up in the hospital. Steve looked lovely in yellow, and it matched him so perfectly. It was such a happy colour, full of brightness and positivity, and that’s exactly what Steve had bought into his life. Steve’s wardrobe was primarily yellow these days.

He smiled so brightly at Eddie, his hand reaching to find Robins to squeeze when their eyes fixed on eachother. Eddie had to wipe away a tear. They reached the altar, and Robin kissed Steve on the cheek and shot finger guns and a wink at Eddie before going over to stand with Chrissy and Alice. Steve stepped up to the altar and faced Eddie with a wet smile.

They both couldn’t believe they were here, doing this.

This life, the one they had now, seemed impossible all those years ago, but they stuck together anyway. They stuck together, and now Eddie could give Steve his dream. Now they could have normal, in the most unnormal way possible.

They were so happy.

Marriage for them only became legal two days ago, and in that time, Nancy, Steve, Robin, and their girls had worked double time to set up the perfect impromptu wedding. Eddie offered to help, but they all insisted he didn’t because he and Steve would just distract each other with sappy flirtation, and Chrissy insisted her dad had zero taste. Alice promised that if Eddie could find someone to marry them, he’d pull for some metal to play during the reception.

Eddie asked Wayne… immediately.

They both spent five hours sitting behind Steve's computer, trying to figure out how to get ordained online, because Alice said it was easy. It was not easy. Eddie was old, and Wayne was even older. They’d called Scott over to help at one point, because he was super smart and a scientist, but he couldn’t figure out the computer either.

Alice ended up getting it done in ten minutes for them when she got home.

He called them a bunch of “old fucks”, and the three of them went off on a tanget about “this damn younger generation, they think they know everything! I bet you don’t know how to use a VHS tape.”

Alice didn’t give them a bar of it, the sassy kid they were.

Wayne started his speech, and Eddie took his fiance's shaky hands. They had smiles pinned to their faces the whole time, because how could they not.

“Now, do you have vowels?” Wayne asked.

“I gave mine to Steve last night.” Eddie said, and Wayne pulled a very dissatisfied face, “Ew, no!”

There was a laugh from the crowd.

“I wrote him a song and performed it, you oaf.”

Steve laughed, “It was very sweet.”

Eddie smiled bashfully, still feeling like the twenty year old he was when Steve first swept him off his goddamn feet and carried him off into the sunset.

“I’ve got some.” Steve muttered and squeezed Eddie’s hand’s as he cleared his throat, “Twenty five years ago to this day, you and I got ‘pretend’ married, as we called it.”

Eddie sniffled as he laughed.

“I gave a very long vow to you then, so… I’m gonna keep this one super short.” Eddie laughed again, oh how he loved this man. Steve smiled, croaky with wet eyes as he shrugged, “I told you, that night that you proposed, the same thing as I’d told Robin earlier in the day, that you couldn’t give me normal. That I’d gone my whole life with this dream of a wife and six kids- but then I met you, and ‘normal’ seemed like the worst fucking idea on the planet. You were… such a fucking weirdo, and you still are, and I love you so much for it, Ed’s.” Steve smiled and shook his head, “Why would I wan’t ‘normal’ when I can have every bizarre day with you? Every morning I wake up and wonder what weird shit was going to happen today, and everytime I am so delightfully surprised by it. I wanted you, and only you, and that’s all that mattered to me.”

Eddie was ugly crying again, and Steve had to wipe away his goddamned tears that were tinted black from his eyeliner.

“I was happy with it being just us, with our silly little fake marriage, for the rest of our lives- because it was real to us. It was more than enough for us.” He smiled, “But then we got Alice, and Chrissy, and we got more than I could have ever asked for… and now I’m here,” He sobbed a little too, “and were getting married for real. And I love you, from the moment you shoved me up against that boathouse wall with a bottle to my neck, to right now, to forever, I love you.”

“I love you too.” Eddie sobbed, and they kissed, even though they weren’t supposed to yet.

They heard Chrissy shout out, “Ew!” and it made them break away with a laugh, and it gave them a strong sense of deja vu to that time in the hospital, when Dustin woke up to the pair of them having a moment.

It fits very nicely in this moment.

“Getting a bit ahead of yourselves there, boys.” Wayne nodded.

They laughed.

“Hey, kiddo.” Wayne looked over to Chrissy and winked, “You got somethin for ya dads?”

Chrissy gasped and looked up at her big sibling who reached into their pocket to hand something to the little girl. She skipped over with the box and handed it to her grandpa with a bright smile, “Happy wedding, dad and daddy!”

They loved this damn kid.

She skipped back over to her spot, and Alice gave her a big hug and smiled up at their dads.

Wayne held open the ring box, and Steve reached in to take the silver band, and Eddie took the gold one. The same bands Eddie had bought twenty seven years ago, they held too much meaning to switch up. Eddie slid the ring onto Steve's finger for a third time, and Steve slipped one onto Eddie’s, and they were holding hands again.

“You already donnit, but ah… you may kiss the groom.” Wayne grinned, and gave Steve a little wink before stepping over beside Eddie’s groomsmen.

Eddie didn’t hesitate before grabbing Steve and giving him the kiss of his life, dipping him just as he’d done at their non-official wedding all those years ago. Chrissy started gagging at the sight again, and Eddie started laughing into Steve's mouth, and they could both hear Alice trying to shut her up.

And when they stood back up, they were married. For real. They had two beautiful kids, and the house Eddie had bought for Steve (which had rendered Steve in tears and then they had some of the best sex of their goddamned lives whilst breaking the place in) that had a garden, and an open kitchen, and four bedrooms, and a study, and the bed they shared every night.

They still had their bad days; day’s Eddie felt so horrible in his skin that he couldn’t be touched, Steve still got migraines that could render him useless for days, and a lot of the time they fought, though, over little things like the dishes or laundry or what time the kids were supposed to be picked up that afternoon, and some days their fights were a little worse. But they were together, and they were happy, and they had a life and a family and a place of their own. They had a home with each other, and that’s all they needed.

They could drag each other to Hell and back, Eddie didn’t care, just as long as they were together.

thank you for joining me on this years steddie week! it is currently 10.30 in the morning and i have not slept because i've been writing the entirety of my steddie week all night. seriously don't know why i do this to myself, anyway.

if you'd like to read my other steddie week submissions you can find them here :)

\/ here's some dodgey art for you to look at \/

85 notes · View notes