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#my mom do have a fix work schedule now so we could do 7-3-11 instead since my dad is home 4pm max

platypanthewriter · 3 years

Text

Strangest Chapter 11

chapter 1/chapter 2/chapter 3/chapter 4/chapter 5/chapter 6/chapter 7/chapter 8/chapter 9/chapter 10/ .../Chapter 12

(But really I’d recommend reading it on Ao3 under peterqpan, scrolling through it on Tumblr sounds crazymaking. Thanks so much @tbehartoo and @perfectfestivalalienfish!)

After the accidentally-romantic reveal of Steve’s ceramic monstrosity, Billy was distracted in gym, until Steve leaned in to whisper “Can’t believe you’re ignoring my balls, Hargrove.”

“Believe me, I’m not,” Billy muttered back, his jaw working. He stumbled back into their gym teacher, his eyes fixed on Steve’s mouth, and Steve grinned at him, and licked his lips.

The next time they passed each other, Steve leaned to whisper “What kinda attention am I gonna get for a good present, Hargrove?”

“I dunno, I haven’t seen one yet,” Billy hissed back, and then, “Don’t diss Denise, asshole. I’ll pound your ass into— jesus christ,” he spun on his heel, neck flushed, and stomped off directly through the melee around the basketball hoop, elbowing his way to the locker rooms. By the time Steve got there, Billy was showered and clothed, leaning to talk to Tommy as Steve ducked into the showers.

When he got out, Billy was lying on his back on the bench, eyeing the water running down Steve’s legs, and Steve wanted to kiss him. He firmed his lips and determination, and decided to stay after school to work on a better Valentine’s Day present—Denise had been a joke, he ranted in his head, he could do better if he was trying—

Steve told Eleven this, when she popped up at his elbow in the locker room—right after he shrieked, scrambling for a towel. She surveyed the locker room with narrowed eyes, and more of the highschool boys screamed than would admit to it later, covering their dicks. As most of the class dove behind lockers, she allowed Steve to fling Billy’s towel over her head and shove her back towards the door. “So...if you’re busy, we can borrow Billy, right?” she asked, through the towel.

Billy was laughing his ass off, since he’d had pants on already, and his junk wasn’t vulnerable to the critical eye of a middle-school girl. “No cats,” he called over.

“You can keep him,” Steve muttered, shoving her out the door. When he stalked back in, Billy grinned at him, pointedly rubbing his thumb along his own inner elbow, where the Sharpie heart was, with the messy H+H.

Steve felt his cheeks heat. “Shut up.”

“Be honest about your feeblings, Harrington,” Billy whispered back, staggering as Steve thudded their shoulders together, yanking his jeans up over his briefs.

“Here?! I think we’d get expelled,” Steve whispered back, and Billy licked his lips, snickering.

“I’m your favorite,” Billy breathed in his ear, and Steve swiveled to face his locker, eyes wide as he popped a boner. Not now, he told his dick, straining against his pants, later, just wait until after school, I’ll get my fingers in his hair and pull him close, and when his knees start to get noodly with my mouth on his neck, we can fuck on the kitchen floor—

“Harrington,” Billy repeated, elbowing him, and Steve cleared his throat, rubbing his face. His cheeks were hot.

“Yeah, yes, I’m here,” he swallowed, “—here, right here.”

Billy squinted at him, halfway into a sweatshirt, so his biceps flexed against the fabric, and his chest and abs gleamed in the florescent lights of the locker room. He zipped it up. “...you sure?”

“Very very here, at school,” Steve muttered, staring into his locker again. “Very here where I can’t, uh. What?”

“You like me as much as Tommy, right,” Billy cocked his head, leaning in to murmur, “—what if I hit him, you gonna throw me out, or—”

“Wait, what?” Steve kept his eyes on Billy’s face, listening, instead of tracking the trickle of water from his wet hair down his neck and along his collarbone. “What’s going on?”

“He’s, uh,” Billy leaned back against the lockers, surveying the room with a too-wide grin. “—he’s thinking one of us is gonna spread it around I—I let him—we screwed, y’know. Says he’s not like me, he’s—he says he’s gonna tell everyone I’m a fag, that’s why I’m sniffing around Steve Harrington—”

“Christ.”

“I’m gonna feed him his own molars.” Billy rolled his shoulders. “Before he gets me drug behind some redneck meathead’s truck—”

“Holy shit,” Steve breathed, wanting to spin his bat around his hand. He took a deep breath. “Okay, okay,” he whispered. “Okay, we can’t—we can’t kill him, we—we can’t murder him, Hargrove, we can’t. We can’t—we can’t just—just murder him, even if—”

“Jesus,” Billy whispered, glancing around. “Ssh!”

“We—we’d probably get caught,” Steve told Billy, grabbing his hands and squeezing them. “We’d—we’d get caught, mustard, uh, mustard pie, we’d—we’d definitely go to jail, we can’t kill him.”

“I didn’t say murder,” Billy hissed back, wide-eyed. “I said I was gonna punch his face, Harrington—”

“Okay,” Steve nodded, squeezing Billy’s hands so hard he winced. “Okay. Okay, god damn it. Damn, damn, damn damn it—”

“Holy helicopters,” Billy muttered, straight-faced, and Steve choked on a snort, and started coughing.

“Oh my god I love you,” he groaned into his hand, ignoring Billy suddenly closer, warm against his side. “Okay. Okay, wait, no.” Steve yanked his shirt on, got some of it in his mouth, and Billy yanked it down, leaning in.

Billy slid his hand up Steve’s side, hot and callused, and Steve shoved it down and away, trying to refocus his brain on Billy’s words. “I need to do something,” Billy hissed. “He’s gonna tell everybody I’m queer, your majesty.” His eyes were red. “You don’t need to—none of that shit’s gonna get on you—”

“No, jussec.” Steve set his shoulders, did a mental check of his anatomy, and decided he could turn around without everybody knowing he got hard when Billy Hargrove growled in his ear. “It’s—just—just a—just hold off, okay. I’ll—I won’t kill him. I’ll talk to him.”

“Talk to him?! Harrington,” Billy growled, grabbing his wrist, and Steve held still, feeling his bones grind together. They were starting to draw attention, so he asked the guy across the bench about his new shoes, and found out way more about Adidas Micropacers than he’d ever wanted to know, but the conversation kept going when he backed out. Billy let go of his wrist, but leaned close. “Your majesty. Whaddaya mean talk to him, talk to me, come on,” he said under his breath.

“I’ll handle it,” Steve whispered back, nodding and grinning at another kid showing off his sneakers. He watched Tommy fixing his hair, and tried to remember his past friend’s class schedule.

“Just a little worried about getting lynched, probably by the people in this room,” Billy hissed, as Steve started to walk away.

Steve bit his lips, turning back to pretend to check inside his locker. “Look. Dickhead,” he tried, and Billy covered a snort, swallowing. Steve tried to grin confidently. “Trespasser. Wait a sec, just—just wait a minute, let me—let me try something. We can’t kill him,” Steve sighed, and Billy’s jaw clenched.

“I wasn’t trying to kill him,” he hissed back.

“You beat him up, he’ll just get mad! Besides, you start throwing punches, they’ll call your dad—get him down here—”

Billy shrugged. His hands shook, and he clenched them in fists, laughing. “Win some, lose some—at least you won’t go to jail, Jesus H. Christ—”

“No, no—I—I, uh, you won’t, uh, he won’t, okay, babe, Ha-Hargrove, just—just gimme a minute, I—I’m not—if this doesn’t work we—I—I’ll hold him down. We’ll just kill him. You can—you can use my bat.”

Billy snorted, side-eyeing him. “...good use for it.” He rubbed his face, and nodded, tilting backto lean against the lockers. His knuckles were white on his forearms again, his nails digging into the sleeves of Steve’s sweatshirt against the hearts Steve had drawn up his arm. “As you fucking command, my leige. I hope your plan’s better than ‘murder’.”

Steve rolled his eyes, and jogged out of the locker room after Tommy, dropping an arm around his shoulders.

“Hey there,” Tommy grinned at him, his gaze dropping to Steve’s mouth and back up in a way Steve remembered, but hadn’t really registered before.

Steve smiled—it was easier to smile around Tommy than it was to remember what Tommy was like, and always had been—and tried to decide how to start.

“Hargrove get all shook up and remember who your real friends are?” Tommy elbowed Steve, then hailed Carol out of the crowd.

“He’s a friend,” Steve tried.

“Bet he didn’t tell you about the other night,” Tommy glanced up sideways, his jaw clenched, “—when we tried to get you to party.”

“He doesn’t remember most of it,” Steve blurted, and his stomach sank at Tommy’s widening grin. “Look, I know what happened, and, uh—”

“I bet you don’t,” Tommy hissed, glancing around. Carol came out of her class, but saw them and leaned against the wall, disentangling an earring from her hair. Tommy jerked away from Steve to walk backwards towards her. “Bet he didn’t tell you who he wanted to fuck.”

“He—he said—”

“Hate to break it to you,” Tommy’s voice rose, “—Billy Hargrove wants y—”

“I still talk to Carol’s sister,” Steve hissed at him. “Remember? She had a story about a party you guys left. When I was visiting my mom in Boston.”

“What?” Tommy stopped in the middle of the hallway, staring at him.

“Remember finding the keys in a backhoe? And a joyride?” Steve narrowed his eyes, as Tommy snorted a laugh. Steve lowered his voice. “—I know what happened with Billy, okay—”

Tommy’s freckles stood out as he paled. “No, you—you wouldn’t be—he lied,” he laughed shakily. “He must’ve, he’s a fucking liar— ”

“What?! He—he didn’t have to,” Steve raised his eyebrows, “—he called me, I picked him up. I was in there while you assholes were in the shower—”

Tommy’s breath caught, and his eyes got shiny, and Steve knew that look—from Billy smashing a plate in his face at the Byers’, but also from years of knowing Tommy, and he waved his hands, open palmed.

“I don’t care! I don’t care, I don’t care, but don’t—don’t try and—don’t say it was all Hargrove’s fault, it wasn’t—”

“You don’t...care,” Tommy took a deep breath, shoulders relaxing, then punched Steve’s arm. “The fuck do you mean, you don’t care, you moron, you still don’t get what I—why the hell did he call you, didn’t he kick your ass? You his bitch now?” he hissed, and Steve bit his lips.

“Yeah. No, I’m not—” Steve felt his cheeks warming, and cleared his throat. “He—he did that,” Steve kept nodding, running his fingers through his hair, “—he did, he beat me up. Yeah. So did you, asswipe. But. Um, if—if you try and—and tell everyone he—that he’s—”

“He’s a goddamn—”

Steve cut him off, clenching his fists. “If you tell people he did something to— to you, if you—if you say it’s—if you say it was all Billy, I—I won’t keep your secrets. Anymore.”

“...what,” Tommy choked.

“Any of them,” Steve emphasized, flailing his hands. “I know some shit. They try you now, you might get tried as an adult. You could go to actual prison, dude.”

“I will end you,” Tommy hissed, sputtering with rage, “I will end you and your fag friend—you—”

Steve flinched, but held his ground. “Bullshit. I won’t—I won’t say anything unless you...do,” he frowned, thinking through it, “—but...I think—I think between you, and Hargrove, and me,” he swallowed, “—I think—I think I’m who people will listen to here at school. If you—if you try to tell them. That. And—and you know Sheriff Hopper will hear me out, when I tell him who took the backhoe. Took it for a spin when they were putting in the new parking lot. You crashed the backhoe into the sheriff station that night, remember? I can’t—don’t quite remember how many thousands of dollars in damage that was, d’you?”

Tommy stepped closer, laughing. “And what, you’re gonna sell me out for the queer? Shouldn’t you be thinking about what I could do...Pussington?” Tommy growled, and Steve blinked at him, then snorted a laugh.

“I’ve fought scarier shit than you, Tommy Hagen,” he hissed. “I could walk over and use the pay phone right now. Call the police here. Don’t drop the soap when you get sent to prison , right? Because Billy’s the one who’s queer.”

“God, you’re dumb,” Tommy sneered, but he was staring at Steve’s face, wet-eyed. “You don’t even make sense. I can just see you on the witness stand.”

“Oh, you want me to do it?” Steve asked, setting his shoulders to turn away.

Tommy yelled “Fuck you, no!”, and Steve turned back to see him glaring, fists clenched. “I’ll leave your boyfriend alone,” he hissed.

Steve nodded, his jaw hurting as his teeth ground together, and he shoved by, walking as fast as he could back to the locker room.

Billy was still there, lying along a bench, and Steve wished everyone else had left, so he could crawl up between Billy’s knees, and flop on his chest. He kicked out and nudged Billy’s shoulder, instead. “You ready yet?”

“You gonna hold him down for me to punch?” Billy asked, without opening his eyes.

“No, I, uh.” Steve crouched down to whisper, hugging his knees. “I told him I know way too much shit about him for him to go mouthing off.”

“...you blackmailed him?!” Billy turned his head to stare over.

“Noooo,” Steve considered, “—yeah? I guess?”

“Is anybody looking?” Billy whispered back.

Steve frowned around, then shook his head, and Billy grabbed him by the nape of his neck and yanked him into a deep, soft kiss. Steve flailed his hands, teetering on the balls of his feet, then dropped to a kneel, and slid his thumb along Billy’s cheek.

Billy pulled back, licking his lips, and sat up. “Shit,” he rolled his shoulders, “I can’t really owe you more...everything.”

“...you don’t owe me anything,” Steve huffed a laugh, grimacing at a sudden memory of the way the world had wobbled around him, after days awake. How he’d heard Billy’s yelling from outside while he was lying on the floor of the shower, hoping the hot water would bake him to sleep. “My—my brain’s busted too. You…” he laughed, shaking his head.

“I what?” Billy kept his voice low, but they were drowned out anyway by some guys in the other corner having a pushup contest.

Steve cleared his throat, feeling the edges of the tile dig into his knees, and breathing in the stale smell of gym clothes, and towels that never quite dried. “You saved me. Too. I couldn’t—”

“How the hell—”

“I can’t sleep,” Steve snorted, shrugging, and keeping his eyes on the floor. “And then you showed up. Couldn’t—I wasn’t—eating, a lot, just because I couldn’t—I was so goddamn tired. I don’t know, it...”

Billy was quiet for a long few seconds, but when Steve risked a glance up, he had that expressionless face he got when something reminded him of his dad.

“Sorry—sorry, I’m—”

Billy shoved him, and Steve caught himself against a locker, laughing, and a little off-balance. Billy crossed his arms. “You’re not being dumb, if that’s what you’re gonna say.”

“Just making us miss lunch,” Steve tried, feeling something relax between his shoulders. He brushed himself off, getting to his feet, and let Billy drag him down to sit on the bench. Billy mouthed up under Steve’s ear, kissing open-mouthed up his neck. “Hope nobody’s looking,” Steve told him, leaning into it.

“They’re all being morons behind like five rows of lockers,” Billy whispered back, sliding an arm around Steve’s shoulders, and grabbing at Steve’s jeans with the other. “Lemme cheer you up,” he breathed against Steve’s jaw, biting along it, and Steve nearly choked on his own spit as Billy yanked his fly open and reached into his briefs, releasing the pressure on Steve’s suddenly shatteringly hard cock, and sliding a callused thumb over the wet slit in the tip. “They’re going to lunch,” Billy whispered. “No reason they’d come over here.”

“Christ,” Steve muttered, muffling his gasps against Billy’s sweatshirted shoulder, and clenching his fingers in the fabric. “Le-let me get you—” he whispered, sliding his hand down Billy’s stomach.

“Not the one crying in the locker room, Stevie,” Billy laughed, pushing the tight circle of his thumb and forefinger over Steve’s dick. Steve rolled his head against Billy’s shoulder, trying not to make a noise, and squirmed closer, his brain whiting out things like reciprocation, or witnesses, or dignity, as he faintly registered his own voice begging when Billy took his hand away for a second, returning it wetter. “Go ahead, they left,” Billy whispered in his ear, squeezing him closer until Steve was half in his lap.

“Prettiest trespasser,” Steve realized he was mumbling, along with even more nonsensical things like “—pie, sweet—sweet pie, mustard asshole pie—”, “fuck, fuck, fuck,” and, when Billy pulled away to lick his hand again, in an attempt to be more complimentary, “—nighty—knightliest nighty knight—”—but Billy’s hand was firm and a little rough against his hot skin, and Billy’s shoulders were shaking with laughter, so Steve didn’t care. He went still with a grunt, breathing smoke, cologne, and Billy, and just lay there, feeling sweat trickle down the back of his neck.

“There is so much wrong with you,” Billy muttered against his temple. “Knighty-knight? Seriously?”

“My hero,” Steve mumbled, opening one eye to assess the damage. Billy’d caught the mess in a paper towel. “...you planned that,” he realized, laughing.

“Malice aforethought,” Billy said, and Steve blinked muzzily. “Premeditation. First degree handjobbing. That’d just get me expelled, though, probably, your dirty talk’s gonna get you shot.”

“Mmm,” Steve hummed. “He called me ‘Pussington,’ he muttered. “Tommy. Sounds like ‘Puss in Boots’ more than—”

Billy cackled against his neck, then pulled him closer, and Steve felt his face heat. He let himself take a deep breath, curling a little against Billy, and Billy waited, and didn’t mention the time, or their stomachs growling.

After what seemed like hours, but not long enough, Steve pulled away, clenching his fingers on the bench and laughing. “Shit,” he said, looking at the lockers to avoid looking at Billy, after clinging to him like a koala. His breathing was even, which was a relief, even if he felt a little...shaky, threatening his oldest friend with jail. Because I’ve got so many, he thought, laughing again, and Billy leaned forward to frown into his face.

“Harrington,” he whispered. “D’I break you?”

Steve started giggling, and couldn’t stop.

Billy hung around, hunched in Steve’s sweatshirt, for the rest of the day. He was leaning across from Steve’s locker after third period, but vanished when Steve turned around. He was at the drinking fountain outside the open door of geometry, and Steve missed half the lesson, watching him bend over the faucet, and watching the stream of water fill his mouth and run off his chin.

Just when Steve thought he was free, in Typing 1, he glanced out the window and realized Billy Hargrove was sunning himself outside along the top of Steve’s parent’s BMW, sweatshirt unbuttoned, his tanning-bed-tan shining as his hair ruffled in the breeze.

Steve muffled his laughter, squeezing his thighs together as his dick woke up again. “Go back to sleep,” he growled at it, under his breath. Nancy shot him a glance, then looked out the window, and choked on a snort.

“What’s he doing?” she whispered, her elbow brushing his as she clacked away at the electric typewriter.

Being beautiful, Steve didn’t say. “Messing with me,” he muttered, which was equally true. “He hasn’t left me alone since El showed him, uh,” he squinted, trying to remember. “Nadine?”

“Denise!” Nancy muffled another snort, snickering. “Oh, lord, Steve, it’s so hideous.”

“He likes it!” Steve hissed back, feeling his cheeks heat. “He has awful taste!”

“He doesn’t,” she said, shooting a grin over, and his lungs clenched at the fondness in it even as she hissed, “Keep typing, why don’t you.”

He set his jaw, and pounded out All work and no play makes Steve a dull boy, one-fingered. “How’s Jonathan,” he asked petulantly.

“Oh, Steve,” she sighed. “Now you’ve got, uh, Billy, I can’t—listen, this goes no farther,” she angled her body towards him, dropping her voice to nearly inaudible.

“What?!” he whispered back, and she glanced around, holding her finger over her mouth.

“Ssh! Steve, I can’t tell anyone—things. I would have told Barb—”

Steve nodded, wincing.

She covered her mouth, looking around the extremely loud typing class. Her voice was nearly drowned out by the clacking keys, and Steve leaned closer. “Steve, when he’s about to come, he looks like he’s going to sneeze. He makes all these faces, Steve—”

Steve whooped with laughter, tears springing to his eyes, and nearly fell out of his seat as Nancy smacked his arm and shoulder, giggling herself.

“Shut up, shut up!” she hissed. “Don’t tell anyone!”

“I—I won’t,” he gasped, wiping his eyes. “Jesus. Who the hell would I even—”

“Like Tommy?” she hissed, raising her eyebrows, and he cleared his throat.

“Actually,” he said, tearing out the page he’d ruined, and typing away at his assignment with two fingers, “—Tommy, uh, he said he’d. Um, d’you remember when somebody took a joyride on the backhoe at the sheriff’s station?”

She snorted, glancing over. “...everybody remembers that, they had to redo half the road.”

“Yeah, uh, Tommy kinda...found out about Billy, he said he’d tell, just, everyone—”

“Found out Billy what?!” Nancy stared at the side of his head. “That he beat you up, or—?”

“Everybody keeps saying that, I got some hits in—” he grumbled, feeling his face heat.

“Wait, what? He found out about—” she lowered her voice to a hiss, glancing around, “—found out about you and Billy?”

Steve opened his mouth, and just breathed, then bit his lips. He couldn’t...quite...tell Nancy about Billy’s wild King Kong banana orgy, after what had happened in the locker room—and he wasn’t sure whether the sudden urge to hit something was directed at Tommy, for the bruises he’d left, or Billy, for getting bored and supplementing his sex-diet with jungle fruit, or the world at large, for making him keep a secret for somebody as awful as Tommy Hagen. “Uh, about—about, um, Billy. He—I, uh, I think he was kinda...drunk, and he’s—he’s—”

“He’s what, Steve?!” she whispered back, wide-eyed.

“He’s kind of gay,” Steve hissed back, through gritted teeth. “He was kinda gay at Tommy Hagen.”

“Oh my god, Steve,” she dropped her voice even lower, and reached over to squeeze his wrist. “He has to be careful.”

“He said he’d tell everyone—Tommy said,” Steve tried to explain, feeling like he was picking his way across a trapped floor, as he tried to avoid saying what Billy’d actually done. Tiptoing across the temple tiles like Indiana Jones, doing his best to keep the world from falling away around him. Not that Nancy’d say anything, he thought, but he remembered Billy’s shaking hands. I gotta get used to remembering what are my secrets to tell. “I, uh. Told him I’d tell Hopper it was him. Tommy. Joyriding in the backhoe. He spills about Billy, he’ll have to pay for all that. He’s not gonna—I won’t be telling him...things. Tommy.”

“That’s…” Nancy trailed off, and he narrowed his eyes at her, suspecting she was trying not to say “wonderful news”.

“I know, jesus,” he hissed at her, whacking at the typewriter keys with more force. “He’s bullshit, I get it, we were both—”

“No, uh,” she bit her lips, thumping her stack of typed pages to straighten them. “That’s not—it’s just, I mean. Yeah, he probably wasn’t a great friend. But now we both lost our best friends—” she flailed her arms, and he ducked, “—in this whole mess of bullshit. It—it sucks balls.”

He grinned at her, and she set her jaw. “It’s not funny, Steve. And—and don’t—don’t tell Dustin. Or Billy,” she narrowed her eyes. “You better not tell anyone! Jonathan’s never dated before, I’ll—it’s not his fault, Steve, he’s trying— ”

“How could you make me keep this secret,” he leaned his face in his hand, shoulders shaking with snickers.

“I had to tell someone,” she hissed. “He closes one eye, Steve! I can’t—”

Steve nearly fell out of his seat laughing, and she elbowed him over and over until he started to feel bruised.

“Shut up,” she muttered, wiping her own eyes as she tried to stop giggling. “Jesus.”

“Holy crap, what have you told him about me,” Steve hissed back, still laughing, but shuddering a little at the thought.

“Nothing! I’m dating him, I’m not going to compare and contrast, Steve, god. But—but you’ve—you’re—” she narrowed her eyes through the window at Billy, who’d finally huddled against the cold and zipped up the sweatshirt. “—you—”

“We’re—we’re friends. Uh. Just friends, now,” he supplied, the words feeling odd, and a little sad in his mouth. She hummed, frowning at her typewriter, and he glanced at Billy, thinking he might not have ever gotten to know him, if Nancy hadn’t lost her shit at that party. It was a weird thought, and Steve stared out the window, thinking of his house empty of Billy’s shoes, beer cans, lingering cigarette smoke, and the warm weight pressed against his back when he least expected it. No more slow kisses up his neck when he was stuck in his own head.

Nancy nudged him, and he pulled himself back from watching Billy tug at his earring.

“I meant, uh, we—me and you, we get to be friends now,” he tried, and she bit back a smile. “We can talk about boys now,” he pushed further, wrinkling his nose. “If...if you want? I, uh. I think I might be better at picking boyfriends than being one.”

“Maybe you needed the practise run,” Nancy followed his gaze so both of them were watching Billy, who’d given up on pin-up poses, and was trying to keep his textbook, binder, and pile of flashcards from blowing around in the January wind. “I think...I think maybe we both needed the practise run. But—I have to tell someone besides Barb, you know?”

“Yeah. Wait. What?” he turned his frown back to her.

She took a shaky sigh, digging into her backpack. She tossed a sandwich baggie of goldfish crackers on the desk between them, and then pulled out a composition book. She held it, white-knuckled, for a long second, then shoved it at him.

Steve accepted it—after digging for a handful of goldfish crackers—and opened the first page, propping it on his knee. In capital letters, it just said “I MISS YOU”.

“I—I sort of—tell Barb everything,” Nancy bit her lips, taking a slow breath through her nose. Her eyes shone. “It’s—it’s like this huge letter about everything I couldn’t—after she—there’s so much I want to tell her, Steve, so much has happened—”

“Uh,” he stared at it, reluctant to turn the page, and Nancy grabbed it back.

“Shut up,” she muttered. “I know it’s dumb.”

“N-no,” he blurted. “No, it’s not, it’s not dumb.” He wondered whether he should remind her about their assignment, but hers looked finished. I can finish mine later, he promised himself. “Uh, sorry I—it’s not dumb, I just don’t—when you’re sad I just—I don’t know what to—how can I, uh—”

She laughed, swallowing, and closed her eyes. “I—I thought I’d just—fill this. Write until I use all the pages, and the—and the margins, and the inside covers—” she made a soft, horrible gulping sound, and Steve’s nails dug into his palms with the urge to grab her, like he would have if they’d still been dating, and squeeze her thin shoulders. “I—I thought maybe I’d—feel better. Once—Once I say. Everything. Tell her everything. And then bury it. I—we—there wasn’t a body, I couldn’t bring her back to bury— I couldn’t even say what I wanted at her funeral—I can bury my bullshit letter instead— ”

“We can do that,” he said quickly, glad the typewriters were loud enough to drown them out. “We—we can say, uh, we can say—say things, write her letters? Find—find a nice spot? Bury, um, bury things, letters?”

“She didn’t have any other friends,” Nancy stared ahead, her eyes shining.

“I can write her a letter,” were the words that fell out of his mouth, like he could even remember more of Barbra Holland than a vague shape at Nancy’s elbow. “I can—I can thank her for being a good friend, anyway. To, um, you. To my friend Nancy?”

“Sh-she—she really was,” Nancy’s shoulders shook with a sob, and for the first and probably the last time, Steve wished Jonathan Byers was around to do— something, whatever it was he did that made Nancy less sad. Maybe it was worth the awful sex.

In the heat of the moment, Steve felt he’d easily trade his skill at orgasms with whatever made Nancy stop— stop looking so pinched around the eyes, and start teasing him again over Billy Hargrove.

She took a shaky breath, pressing her face to the back of her hand. “I—I was—I was nervous coming to your house, the—that night, the night she—in your—in your pool —to the party, your party, and she wanted to have my back—”

If Jonathan Byers couldn’t show up, Steve wished Billy would, remembering him explaining things to Will and El in IHOP, until Will relaxed, and smiled, and got brave enough to ask questions. “I—I’ll have your back,” Steve tried. “Now. I will. Um, she, uh, we can thank her for having your back. We can—”

He tried to remember what people did at funerals other than wear scratchy suits as Nancy nodded, rubbing her eyes with her fingers, then rubbing her wet face with her wrists. He clenched his fingers harder in his jeans. “Uh, flowers? We can—I’ll get flowers, did she have a favorite song? I have a boombox. I have batteries for it, I can get batteries for it—um, Billy, Billy will have a good idea,” he trailed off, trying to think what it could be, with Billy outside, instead of by Steve’s elbow where he belonged. “He’ll have a good idea, he’ll—he always has a good idea—”

Nancy snorted, smiling at him, but her eyes were red. Her voice was high and shaky. “Ye-yeah. Thank you. Thanks. Y-you’ll be a good best friend, Steve.”

Out the window, Billy was holding his textbook and homework, his pencil poised, but he was staring at them.

He met them in the hall outside typing class, leaning against the bank of lockers. His gaze flicked from Steve’s face, to Nancy’s, then dropped to their hands. Steve scooted away from her, then reached through the press of people and prodded her shoulder with two fingers. He beckoned her to follow him over to Billy.

“Harrington,” Billy crossed his arms, watching them. His cheeks and lips were pink with cold, and Steve wanted to kiss them, brush the melted snowflakes out of Billy’s hair, and rub the muscles of Billy’s arms through the sleeves of Steve’s own borrowed sweatshirt, feeling his boyfriend shiver, and hugging him close. Billy’s voice was flat as he said, “Wheeler,” and Steve jumped, jarred from his fantasy.

Steve opened his mouth to tell Billy that Nancy had practically admitted he was better in bed than Jonathan, and then stopped and thought for once, about how that would hit Billy’s brain. He lowered his voice. “Remember I told you about Barb, uh, Barbra Holland, Nancy’s friend, the monsters got her?”

“...I guess,” Billy had his gaze fixed on Nancy’s face, eyes narrowed.

“She wants to hold a funeral,” Steve started, but Billy’s glare didn’t shift. “Nancy does, uh, and I’m going, because I knew her, and Jonathan didn’t, because he’s not cool, and he makes these faces when—”

“Don’t you dare,” Nancy hissed.

“Wait, what,” Billy glanced at Steve, still keeping a wary eye on Nancy.

“Probably her boyfriend will still be there, because she’ll be sad, but I’m her friend so I’m going too—” Steve babbled, hoping someone else would talk.

“What,” Billy said flatly.

“Help,” Steve hissed, widening his eyes. “Help us, um.”

Nancy started snickering for no reason, and Billy’s frown darkened. “He panicked when I started to cry,” she snorted, rubbing her eyes. “He wants you to fix it.”

“What?!” Billy snorted, coughing.

“What do people do at funerals,” Steve hissed, glancing at Nancy again, and she snorted wetly, covered her nose, and dug in her backpack before yanking out a kleenex and blowing hard.

“Sexy,” Billy muttered, and Steve elbowed him. Billy glanced between them again, raising his eyebrows. “That’s what all that cozy whispering was about?”

Steve made a face. “Also she had goldfish crackers?”

“We were just talking,” Nancy said, laughing and wiping her eyes again “—and then I lost my shit. Sorry.”

“She had a whole cow about how much better I am at picking boyfriends than she is,” Steve waggled his eyebrows. Nancy elbowed him, and Billy’s snorted, his eyes narrowed as he glanced between them.

“Thought you were dumping my ass and leaving me with Denise.”

Steve shook his head, holding his hands up. “We know she makes weird faces.”

“It’s not her fault she has thirty-nine eyes!” Billy laughed, hugging himself in Steve’s sweatshirt. Steve wished he could hug his boyfriend, right there in the highschool hallway, but had to settle for his sweatshirt doing it. Billy didn’t seem to notice as Steve reached out, then yanked his hands back and stuck them in his pockets. Billy was still grinning about his awful gift. He leaned in, digging his chin into Steve’s shoulder and whispering, “Ask your buddy Dustin why his pockets are full of googly eyes, seems questionable to me—”

“Steve and I were talking about boys,” Nancy snorted, then sniffled, rubbing her nose and rummaging in her purse until she found another kleenex.

“Swapping stories,” Steve grinned, watching Billy’s head cock warily. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “My boy’s always sexy. He just melts against me. Like pizza cheese, y’know, in Little Caesar’s ads, it sort of—it sort of droops—”

Billy went as glowing red as the tail lights on his Camaro, and growled, as Nancy leaned into the lockers in a gale of laughter.

“Shut the hell up, Harrington,” Billy muttered, rubbing his face.

“Sexy Little Caesar’s boyfriend?!” Nancy wheezed. “Steve, that’s not sexy at all—”

“Or on lasagna. Or Velveeta, it’s—it’s all fluid, you know,” said Steve, trying to explain. “Um, ‘hot, fresh, and ready to go?’” he suggested, relying on Pizza Hut for his words, but they both turned away, Nancy pounding her fist on a locker, cackling and wiping tears, and Billy stomping off down the hall. Steve glared at Nancy. “Don’t you tell anyone either.”

“Oh no,” Nancy gasped. “I—I’m telling Barb. Oh my god, she’d have loved that. She kept telling me you were a moron—”

“Hey!” Steve pointed a finger at her. “She—she may be—she shouldn’t have said it!”

“I won’t tell anyone else you described your boyfriend as sexy mozzarella,” she snickered, blowing her nose. “But I am telling her that, aloud, at her funeral. Oh my god, I needed that. You better go find him.”

“Everyone likes pizza!” Steve yelled, stomping away after Billy.

As he walked around the corner, Billy grabbed him around the waist from behind and lifted him. Steve yelled and swore, wriggling and laughing. He tried to squirm enough to make Billy drop him, kicking wildly, then finally made a big show of bending his upper body over Billy’s arms to kick his leg up and retie his shoe, while Billy staggered and swore, leaning away to balance his weight and shaking with laughter. Finally, Billy sat him on his feet in an empty hallway, spun him around, and stuck his thumb in the fly of Steve’s pants, pressing close and panting in his ear.

Steve looked back the way they came and saw a girl from his class: Robin Buckley. She was staring.

Billy felt him freeze, and pulled back, eyes narrowed. “What?” When he started to look around, Steve panicked and grabbed his head, wanting to save some unrelated girl from being fed her own molars. He pressed their lips together, humming as Billy huffed a laugh.

Crisis somewhat averted, Steve told himself sternly to track her down later, before letting himself lean into Billy again. He rubbed his thumb over Billy’s moustache, pressing into its scratchiness, and licking into Billy’s hot mouth, then pushed him back, taking deep breaths through his nose. “Christ, gonna come in my pants,” he whispered, laughing.

“That’s fine,” Billy’s grin widened.

“It’s not! It’s not fine, it’s grody—” Steve panted, pushing back at Billy’s hands and shoulders as his boyfriend tried to wriggle closer, like an octopus.

“Come on my tongue,” Billy whispered.

“There’s no time, I gave you to El!” Steve hissed, holding his forearms up defensively. “She’ll show up again! You agreed! You’re hers and Max’s today!” His shoulderblades thudded against the lockers.

“When do I get my reward for following orders, your majesty,” Billy whispered, pulling Steve’s forearms close, so he could kiss along the soft inner side.

“Sometimes knights have duties,” Steve whispered back. “For the, uh, the kingdom.”

“And I’m your best knight,” Billy snorted, running his hands up Steve’s sides. “Gotta help the civilians. Do my quests, make you proud.”

“Mmmn,” Steve lost his train of thought, leaning into Billy’s chest, and sliding his arms around his neck. “Best knight.”

“Now Tommy’s been, what,” Billy laughed against his mouth, hugging him until Steve’s muscles went loose, and his bones felt like they’d creak. “Unshielded?”

“Dis-sworded?” Steve supplied muzzily, into another pause between kissing, his brain narrowing its world to Billy’s tongue. “God, love you, mustard...dipshit...cupcake,” he mumbled, then frowned, coming back to earth as Billy’s shoulders shook with laughter. “Shut up, dickhead. Wait, Tommy wasn’t ever my knight.”

“Thought he beat up Jonathan Byers for you,” Billy whispered, sliding both arms around Steve’s waist again, and lifting him off the ground.

“No,” Steve mumbled, half-listening as he tried to clamp his legs around Billy’s waist, but missed distractedly as he ran his hands up Billy’s neck, cupping the back of his head and licking into his mouth.

Billy pulled back to talk, and Steve huffed. “But he tried to get you over to his house. That time. With Carol,” Billy panted, searching Steve’s face.

Steve kicked, gasping as his lungs got squashed. “Holy shit,” he wheezed, laughing. “You—you’re—are you jealous?”

“No,” Billy whispered, suddenly interested in kissing again.

Steve pulled back from Billy’s mouth after just one more kiss. “Are you jealous of Tommy and Nancy,” he whispered, beaming.

“Fuck you,” Billy mumbled, biting gently up his neck.

Steve let his eyes close, forgetting about Robin, and El, and the extremely public hallway they were standing in. His face was so hot it felt tingly, and Billy’s arms were strong and gentle, holding him up. The world started to spin, a little, and he kicked his feet back, crossing them against his butt to curve his whole body against Billy’s.

“Can’t—can’t breathe, Knight,” he had to admit, finally, and Billy sat him back on his feet.

“As you wish, my King,” he whispered back, stepping back to look Steve over—he grinned as he assessed the tightness of Steve’s pants like an asshole, then leaned in again for one more close-mouthed kiss.

Steve laughed, unable to stop smiling. “You’re jealous. Want me all to yourself.”

“Nah,” Billy rubbed his thumb up Steve’s cheek, and yanked his head around by the earlobe. Steve yelled, flailing. “I can just get another one,” Billy whispered. “King Harringtons. On sale today. K-Mart Special.”

“No you can’t,” Steve grabbed Billy’s shirt, spinning him to smack up against a locker, and leaning close again for a messy kiss. He could feel Billy breathing against his chest. “You’re jealous. You—you’d—” Steve trailed off, watching Billy bare his teeth. “You—what the hell are you pissed for,” he whispered. “You went off and screwed Tommy, don’t be pissed at me —”

“I’m not jealous,” Billy snarled back. “I’m the only one who even pays attention to you, aren’t I, and I could get somebody else in—in a heartbeat—”

Steve took a sharp breath, wondering why he had to go and push things. “Right, yeah,” he said, slamming his hand into the locker next to Billy, who flinched. “Shit,” Steve groaned, stepping back. “Sorry, shit. The hell was I thinking. I’m too goddamn clingy, right? You’re just trying—trying to—” he stepped back a few steps and smacked another locker across the hall—the bang was satisfying—and Billy grabbed his wrist, digging his thumb in bruisingly tight.

“You gonna start hitting?” he asked, smiling his widest. “You don’t get to do that.”

“I hit the locker,” Steve hissed, yanking his arm, and Billy stepped closer.

“You don’t get to hit me,” Billy whispered, and Steve winced at the feel of fingernails. “You—you can’t pull that shit, Harrington.”

“I wasn’t gonna,” Steve tried to yank away again, feeling worse. “Screw you, I hit a locker —”

“After all that shit you said,” Billy said evenly, his smile and his eyes wide the way they went when he might do anything. “I’m a person, remember?”

“I remember,” Steve swallowed again against the burning in his throat and eyes, planting his feet to try and squirm away. “I wasn’t—”

“You change your mind?” Billy asked softly, and Steve did want to hit him, then.

“Let me go,” he hissed. “I wasn’t going to hit you, christ. I was hitting the fucking locker.” Billy let go and stepped back, and Steve spun to slam his fist into the locker again. His little finger was starting to go numb, and he wondered how other people—really awful people, some of them, like Billy’s dad—found people that loved them and trusted them and paid attention. He inhaled, and it made kind of a wet gasping noise. “Jesus,” he whispered. “Just—just g-go home.”

“Screw you,” Billy muttered, and Steve opened his mouth to growl back, when his gaze caught on Billy’s nails digging into his sleeve over where Steve had drawn the hearts.

“Fucking— stop ,” he hissed, grabbing Billy’s fingers, and forcing them to unbend. They were cold. “You’re gonna give yourself bruises. Stop it, dickhead— quit—”

“Quit what,” Billy snarled back, and Steve stared down at the hand he’d grabbed, then let go and stomped across the hall to kick somebody else’s locker.

“Screw you,” Steve muttered. “Fine, go the hell home.” He hunched his shoulders as Billy stepped closer, and banged his fist on the locker he’d just kicked. “Piss off.”

“The hell do you want me to say,” Billy asked, and Steve shut his eyes, and banged the locker again.

“Nothing,” Steve hissed. “I don’t want you to say anything, I—you can—you can go to hell—” Billy came up behind him, and Steve squeezed his eyes shut. They were stinging. He felt a touch on his arm, and flinched into the lockers, swallowing a few times to clear his throat of the bullshit trying to climb out of it. “It’s fine,” he forced out. “Just. Piss off. Go home. I’ll—I’ll get myself—together.” He opened his eyes, parting his lips in a smile, to see Billy standing close, frowning, so Steve was sandwiched between him and the lockers.

“Wha—” Billy started, and Steve smacked a hand over Billy’s mouth, then sidestepped, laughing.

He took a few steps down the hall before he managed to stop himself. “Just go,” he said, realizing he had his hands up between he and Billy, and lowering them. “It’s fine, it’s nothing, jesus—”

“What in the hell—” Billy stepped closer again, and Steve didn’t lunge to cover his mouth, or cover his own ears, or run away.

He kept smiling. “Max and El are probably looking for you.”

“...no,” Billy said, holding his hands out. “Come here, Harrington.”

“What,” Steve laughed, his sinuses burning as his vision went a little blurry. He blinked his eyes clear as Billy’s glare went thunderous.

“I’m not gonna chase you down, get your ass over here.”

“Why?” Steve asked, crossing his arms, uncrossing them, and touching his hair. It was fine. He thought fixedly about the project he was gonna start in ceramics. Probably it was dumb to make Billy something nice. Something with Steve’s feeblings just emblazoned over it. “Just go, jesus.”

“Harrington—” Billy sighed, and Steve’s stomach clenched.

“Sorry,” he grated out. “Sorry, I’ll get it together—” he cut off, raising his arms defensively as Billy walked close enough to grab him by the front of his pants and yank him in for a kiss. His hands were warm and gentle cradling Steve’s face, and Steve let himself be pulled in. “What—” he whispered, but Billy cut him off, tilting Steve’s head to get deeper into his mouth. “Mmf,” Steve tried next, slowly lowering his hands to where his sweatshirt stretched over Billy’s biceps.

“Two for flinching,” Billy told him, kissing him again. “Ssh,” Billy whispered, glancing around, and then pushing them both—slowly, and mostly by kissing Steve—across the hall again and into the bathroom. He stopped to check under the doors, and then grabbed Steve’s hand, and yanked him into the biggest stall. “Okay,” he said, “—go on.”

“...want me to try giving a blow job?” Steve asked, rubbing his eyes. “I mean. You let me jack you off, I wanna—”

Billy opened his mouth, cocked his head, and narrowed his eyes. “Shut up. Shit, that’s not —I’m not supposed to —to try and blow you when you’re pissed —what the fuck, Harrington—”

“I’m just trying to change the subject,” Steve gritted out. “You like blow jobs. Everybody likes blow jobs—”

“I mean,” Billy snorted, slowly nudging Steve against the wall, “—dicks like ‘em—”

“Everybody does, it’s just not called a blow job always,” Steve argued, feeling smart, as Billy kissed him again. It felt like Billy was laughing.

“S’ true—” Steve muttered, and Billy laughed harder, and yanked him closer, so Steve’s head was pressed against Billy’s shoulder, and Steve’s body was squeezed in Billy’s arms.

“Shut up, jesus,” he whispered, his earring tickling Steve’s neck. “What’s your problem.”

The thing was, Steve thought, there wasn’t one. He was freaking out for no reason—he knew his bullshit annoyed people, and everything Billy’d said was true. “Sorry,” he breathed. It was easier, in the heat of Billy squishing him against the wall.

“What do you want me to—”

“Nothing,” Steve cut him off. “Christ. Jesus. I’m gonna do better this time, and shut the hell up before I—”

“What,” Billy whispered, and Steve shook his head, smiling, and didn’t say before I ruin everything.

Billy pulled back, his jaw clenched. “I’ll get it out of you.” Steve choked on a laugh, clenching his fingers on Billy’s arms, and Billy stared into his eyes, thinking. “I could do what you did,” he whispered. “Get you so horny you’re dripping and then make you talk.”

“Oh shit, no,” Steve snickered harder, shaking his head. “No, don’t. I wouldn’t even—I wouldn’t be able to think enough.”

“That’s kind of the point,” Billy said against his mouth, and Steve’s heart started pounding.

“No, no, don’t, I really—I can’t even—” Steve tried to squirm away, every breath of Billy’s resonating with his dick. “I can’t tell you if I can’t make words!”

“Mmm,” Billy hummed thoughtfully, leaning in for another kiss. “You really want to hear I’m jealous of—of Tommy? That what you want me to say?”

“You’re not, though,” Steve shrugged.

“...Nancy, then,” Billy cleared his throat. “I keep waiting to hear you say you’re—that—that I’m not—that you took a better offer.”

“Fuck you,” Steve told him, sighing. “What the hell am I gonna do when you two actually talk and you—you start talking— elves or something and forget all about me.”

“...you’re jealous of me talking to Nancy Wheeler,” Billy said, with the vague tone of someone reading an incomprehensible line in English class.

“You’re both perfect,” Steve told him, grabbing him close, and Billy started laughing so hard he staggered.

“Oh my god, you are so fucking dumb,” he wheezed, and Steve licked his lips, pressed them to Billy’s neck, and blew to make the loudest fart noise he could. Billy yelped, shoving weakly at him, and Steve did it again. Finally, Billy got his hands over Steve’s mouth, and used his body weight to hold them there while he rubbed tears off onto his arms. “If you think I’m perfect you’re blind and stupid. Holy jesus,” he whispered.

It wasn’t that funny, Steve thought indignantly. “You’re perfect. You —you’re—you are. Sometimes. Most of the time! You —you’re better, you don’t—”

Billy kept snickering, like an asshole. “You’d run off with your queen in a second, your majesty,” he whispered, grinning. “She’ll whistle one day. She’ll just — crook her finger, and you’ll go.”

“Would not,” said Steve, automatically, but he considered. “I don’t…” He narrowed his eyes at the wall of the bathroom stall, where someone had written that the principal worshipped Satin. He thought about how his plans had always included Nancy, and how hers never seemed to include him.

What would it be like, he wondered, if she knocked on my door. ‘Follow me to the city,’ she’d say. ‘You can hold down the apartment, I can go to college. Someday I’ll have an important job— which was where it fell apart, because it would be something like war journalism, and she’d always be gone. He sighed, imagining the Dear Steve letter. ‘Dear Steve, I’ve gone to expose nuclear testing on smuggled baby alligators in Belgium, and...found love.’ Steve shook his head. “No. No, it’s —no. ”

“Whaddaya mean no,” Billy laughed. “You just sat there and imagined it.”

“Yeah, imagined it blowing up in my face. I want to —” Steve stopped, looking away from Billy’s eyes and down, until Billy started jerking Steve’s head up and around, trying to meet his eyes again. Steve laughed, and bit his lip.

“What d’you want, Harrington?” Billy asked.

“...wanna wait and see if you send me letters,” Steve told him, shrugging. “I —I guess. Once you leave.”

“Oh, I’m gonna,” Billy’s breath caught, and he pressed his hands to Steve’s cheeks, squishing them. “But you’re lying to both of us if you think you wouldn’t drop me—”

“Billy,” Steve said, muffledly through the fishface Billy was giving him, and grabbing Billy’s hands as he startled. “Billy Hargrove. I—I’d pick you.”

“Don’t bullshit me—”

“Pay attention,” Steve hissed. “Hargrove. Fuckface...trespasser. I’d pick you.” Billy shook his head, smirking, and Steve grabbed it by the curls, pressing their foreheads together to hold Billy’s gaze. “If I have to watch somebody leave, I’d still want you.”

“Shit,” Billy said hoarsely, trying to laugh. “I’ll come back, I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t leave leave, you—you can’t get rid of me if you—if you don’t tell me to go.”

“Like I would,” Steve snorted. “If —if Nancy just—just walked in here, I mean, not here here,” he paused, his eyes focusing on the wall of the men’s bathroom, “—but y’know, if—if she said she’d changed, she—she wanted me back…”

“You’d go,” Billy shrugged.

“No, Nancy can’t—she doesn’t want—this.”

“She’s got shitty taste, then,” Billy growled, and Steve laughed, leaning to bury his face under Billy’s ear.

“No, I mean—she doesn’t want—” he sighed. “She sure doesn’t wanna drag me to the bathroom and grill me on what’s wrong. She’s got—things to do. Important stuff.”

“Her loss,” Billy shrugged, and Steve snorted wetly. Billy’s breaths sounded as catchy and uneven as his did, he realized, and squeezed him closer.

“Promise I wouldn’t go,” he mumbled.

“Promise Denise,” Billy hissed, growling over Steve’s bursting into semi-hysterical giggles. “Denise needs both her dads,” Billy whispered, his eyes brimming as Steve laughed and cried.

“You’re so weird,” he whispered. “So fucking glad you —not the rest of it—but I’m, uh. I’m so goddamn glad you ended up at my house.”

“You brought me home in a trunk,” Billy told him, sniffling, and frowning down to yank at Steve’s belt buckle.

“What if I hadn’t,” Steve asked, watching Billy fumble. “Maybe—maybe something else. Maybe you’d have kissed me in the locker room. Always trying to shove me around in there—why you always trying to jump me in bathrooms, you’re so — ”

“Maybe you’d have kissed me somewhere, fucking...Pussington,” Billy growled, undoing Steve’s belt, and laughing as the denim over Steve’s dick twitched against his hands. He ran his fingers up and down Steve’s fly.

“Jesus,” Steve whispered.

“Fuck me,” Billy whispered back. “I want this monster in me.”

“...you called it fun-size,” Steve hissed back, and Billy started giggling again, burying his face in Steve’s neck. “We’re in a bathroom, the floor is sticky —”

“I don’t wanna wait,” Billy told him, kissing him so enthusiastically Steve’s head thudded back against the wall. “You—you said—want me over Wheeler —”

“I know what I said,” Steve said, trying to sound strict, but he couldn’t help grinning. “ Want me to blow you? You always—”

“No, fuck my ass,” Billy ordered, leaning close, so Steve could feel the hard line of Billy’s cock pressing against his.

“...there’s no—it’ll hurt, knight, it—”

“Who cares,” Billy whispered, yanking the buttons open on Steve’s fly.

“Me!” Steve hissed, grabbing his wrists. “I care! Christ!”

“S’my ass,” Billy argued, looking pouty, and Steve snorted.

“S’my dick, wouldn’t feel good for me either—”

“Coward,” Billy said, frowning down. “Okay, okay—” he yanked at his own pants, hopping on one foot, and Steve started sniggering. He grabbed Billy’s face and pulled him in for a kiss, nearly knocking them both over when Billy tripped over the leg of his pants. “MMPH,” Billy yelped. “Shit. Okay. Just—uh, just—”

His face felt hot against Steve’s hands, and he realized the red was creeping clear down Billy’s chest where the sweatshirt hung open. “What?” Steve asked, his eyes lingering on Billy’s briefs, where a wet stain was spreading where the elastic strained over his cock.

“I’m gonna turn around,” Billy muttered, “—and—”

“No—” Steve repeated, running his hands along the elastic band of Billy’s Fruit of the Looms. “No, seriously, I’m not—”

“I’ll squeeze my legs together,” said Billy, with gritted teeth, his face flaming hot.

“Holy shit,” Steve whispered, his hips bucking against Billy’s hip as he turned around. “What—is—is that any good for you—”

“Just fuck me,” Billy hissed, bracing his hands against the wall, and Steve stepped close behind him, reaching down to yank his skivvies down, and then push Billy’s down over the warm muscley roundness of his ass. Billy yanked until his dick was freed, then braced himself again, and Steve buried his face in Billy’s shoulder, taking a deep breath.

“Can’t see how this is good for you,” he whispered against Billy’s neck, feeling him shiver.

“It’s not unless you get moving,” Billy snarled, then choked out a gasp as Steve slid his hand around to grab him by the cock.

“Just...between your thighs, then,” Steve whispered, rubbing some pre-come around the top of his dick, then frowning down, and licking his hand just in case.

“Come on,” Billy whispered. “Come on, come on, do me.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Steve nodded pointlessly, aimed, and pressed into the tight space between Billy’s muscled thighs. “Oh god, that’s good,” he mumbled against Billy’s shoulder, and he laughed.

“Shut up and move,” Billy muttered, since Steve was mostly clinging and muttering bullshit endearments.

“God,” Steve whispered, reaching around again. “Don’t fall, b-babe, uh, cookie.”

“Billy whe-when we’re fucking,” Billy told him, groaning as Steve tried to steady himself between his hips smacking Billy’s butt, his dick sandwiched in the heat of Billy’s thighs—it was slippery enough, he thought, flushing almost as red as Billy was—and dragging his fist up and down Billy’s dick.

“Billy,” Steve said against his ear, and Billy swallowed a moan, letting his head fall forward to thunk against the wall. “Billy Hargrove.”

“Nng,” Billy grunted.

“L-love you, Billy Hargrove,” Steve told him, and he whined, his shoulders flinching forward. Steve kissed the place where his shoulder joined his neck, feeling him shudder. “Love you, Billy.”

Billy came all over his fingers, and Steve started laughing, because of course Billy’s legs bent, and of course they collapsed to the floor of the highschool bathroom.

Steve let them tip sideways, pulling Billy close to slow their fall and ignoring the weird chemical smell as his jaw smushed against the tiles. Billy was swearing under his breath, squirming around, and Steve summoned enough brain to scoot back. “Ssh,” he whispered, snickering, with tears in his eyes. “Don’t break my dick.”

“Where you going, asshole,” Billy hissed, rolling over to lay half on top of Steve’s chest. He grabbed Steve’s cock, stroking it, and Steve bucked up against him, muttering just...noises, really.

He came to himself panting against Billy’s shoulder. “Mmnm,” he said, wondering whether they could just sleep on the floor, and wash their faces for class the next morning.

“...you really jealous?” Billy asked, at the ceiling, like he’d been thinking a while.

Steve groaned, tucking hair out of his eyes.

“Y’know I’d...fucking kill them—anyone—and step on their corpses to get to you,” Billy told the ceiling, and Steve started laughing again.

“S’not a bit creepy,” he said, his voice weirdly deep in his ears.

“Not sure wanting to kill Tommy Hagen is creepy at all,” Billy commented, rolling his head for a kiss. “I mean, that’s normal, right, anybody would—”

“Think I’ve got toilet paper stuck to my leg,” Steve whispered.

“I guess you wouldn’t know normal if it bit you on the ass,” Billy told him, and Steve hefted himself up the couple of inches for another kiss.

“Means I get you, though,” he mumbled, dropping to rest his face on Billy’s chest again. It went from warm to hot, and Steve grinned, rubbing his face in chest hair and muscle.

“Shut up, you’re such a freak,” Billy muttered, and pressed more kisses to Steve’s hair. “Tommy Hagen, seriously? You’re jealous of Tommy Hagen? That’s you being a moron.”

“Mmn,” Steve was sort of listening, so he politely made a noise.

“Just went over to Carol’s ‘cause I broke your door,” Billy said. “Thought you’d be pissed. Thought you’d—” he took a slow breath, swallowing. “An-anyway, I didn’t think you’d just...pick me up. Carry me on your back. Thought I’d have to, uh, bribe my way back in.”

“...you saying you got me a present?” Steve asked, waking up a little, and Billy squeezed him.

“I’m saying I didn’t care where I went, jesus. Could have been the gas station. Not running around on you with Exxon, either.”

You might, Steve thought, snorting, but he scooted closer. His shoes squeaked against the wet tile by the toilet. “We’re gonna stink,” he sighed.

“You saying you wanna go shower together?” Billy breathed against Steve’s temple, and Steve started sniggering.

“I mean, yeah,” he whispered back, grinning so hard his cheeks felt tired. “But probably we should like...go. You’re making your sister wait. And El.”

“And they’re important to my liege,” Billy groaned.

“They’re kinda violent when they’re pissed off,” Steve whispered back, and Billy started snickering into Steve’s hair. Steve grinned up at the dripping cracks in the ceiling, letting his eyes fall shut. “ I’ll—just—just take the car. Take it. Get the girls, whatever they want. I need to—better present. Than Denise.”

“No present’s better than Denise,” Billy’s grin went smirky, but he saluted Steve’s eyeroll, and once they managed to get upright, sauntered off with his hands in the pockets of Steve’s stolen sweatshirt.

Steve adjusted himself in his jeans, wishing he wasn’t quite so...sticky, and walked a bit awkwardly off to his locker, when he was grabbed for the second time that day.

“What?!” Robin flailed her arms, hissing. “What was that?!”

“There you are,” Steve hissed, then stopped dead, realizing he hadn’t thought up any kind of plan. “...nothing?” he answered, like a genius, smoothing his hair where Billy’d run his fingers through it. “Uh, what? What was...what.”

She stared at him. “I saw you, dingus.”

“No, you didn’t. Saw what?”

“How are you alive, you are so dumb,” she muttered, spinning away, then back. “That was—you were—” she clasped her hands together, taking a deep breath through her nose, and started to snicker. “You—that’s your cover? ‘What was what?’ You—that’s what you’re gonna say?”

Steve’s high from Billy’s kisses was gone, and he was trying not to imagine Billy’s reaction to someone seeing them. His stomach clenched. “Look, don’t, nothing—nothing was—your—it’s none of your business, jesus.”

“What?!” she cackled, her eyes widening. “Christ. You’re just gonna make out at school and ignore it when—what if—what if your pal Tommy sees you? He’s gonna—”

“I blackmailed him,” Steve folded his arms, leaning back against the locker. “I have dirt on him, he’s not gonna squeal—”

“You what?!” she squealed herself, leaning one arm to steady herself against the locker as she sniggered so hard she shook. “Have you been watching gangster movies?”

“Shut up! You didn’t see anything—”

“I sure did,” she made a face, shuddering. “Believe me, I would not have imagined you and Hargrove playing tonsil hockey, but it’s a nightmare I’ll take to the grave—”

“Shut up,” he hissed, swallowing. His throat felt dry. “I—you can’t tell anyone. I’ll say you’re lying. You’ll be that liar girl, I’ll—”

“God, I don’t want to remember it, let alone describe it,” she pretended to gag, melodramatically doubling over with her fingers in her throat. “Gag me, Steve. Gag me with a spoon.”

Steve wrinkled his nose. “Great. Don’t tell anyone, and we’ll stay the hell away from each other.” He remembered wondering how people in his classes would react to finding out he was maybe-sort-of-gay, and he kind of wanted to punch her in the face. “Or I—I’ll get gay cooties on you.”

She turned to stare. “I don’t care about that, dipshit, I care I almost saw two entire penises when I was just trying to leave class. Here I thought I’d go to my grave without getting close to one of those—” she stuck her tongue out, flapping her hand at the wrist, her voice distorted by the face she was making, “—gross floppy baby injectors, and there they were—”

“What,” he stopped, arms up in a flail, but still. “Wait. What?”

“I’m not going to tell anyone, Steve Harrington,” she told him, rolling her eyes. “Besides, somebody else is going to figure you out, like, instantly, nothing to do with me.” She turned to stalk away, then spun on her heel to face him again. “But what the hell is wrong with you?! You don’t even—can’t you make some excuse and get the keys to the gym equipment room?! You can’t make out during class, when people aren’t wandering around?! Instead you’re sucking face right after the bell rings? I had to tell two different people there was a sewage leak down that hall, dumbass.”

Steve blinked at her. “Th—that’s a good idea. I didn’t—thanks, man.”

“I didn’t want them to have to see the gross sight I had to,” she narrowed her eyes at him. “Can’t you tell people you’re study buddies or something? Before I have to see more of Billy Hargrove’s hard-on in his jeans,” she shuddered, and Steve laughed.

“Somebody doesn’t think he’s hot?”

She took a deep breath, her eyes flicking to his face. “Yeah...no. Why would I.”

“I mean, he is,” he shrugged. “Anyway, thanks. Really. I got, uh, threatened today, kind of. I thought—thanks.”

She stilled. “You what,” she asked, her voice weirdly raspy.

“Uh, somebody figured us out, said he’d, y’know, tell everyone. I know.” Steve rolled his shoulders uncomfortably.

“What the shit,” she whispered. “And you—you’re—the same day?! You just—”

“Look, shut up, I’m not used to it yet,” he hissed back. “I forget he’s a secret, okay?!”

“You moron,” she whispered. “What’d you—are you—”

“I blackmailed him, uh, the guy, Tommy,” Steve whispered back, weirdly proud. “He won’t tell anyone.”

“Jesus, what a prick.” She took a deep breath, and blew through her cheeks. “Tommy Goddamn Hagen, huh. Good thing I wasn’t gonna tell anybody anyway.”

“Phew,” he laughed, grinning at her. “I wasn’t—I can’t even—was just, y’know, going to ask you not to, like, tell. Everyone.” He shrugged. Robin narrowed her eyes at him, watching as he kicked at the linoleum. His shoe squeaked. “Thanks for being cool,” he told her, feeling a little bit warm knowing there were people at school that wouldn’t treat him like he had leprosy. “I guess not everybody’s going to hate me.”

“Jesus,” she whispered, rubbing her face. “I—shut up, okay, I wasn’t—I’m not that—”

“It’s just nice,” Steve shrugged. “Bil—I, uh, I didn’t know how, um, I guess it can get pretty bad, it’s nice to—”

“Yes!” Robin hissed. “Yes, it can! Oh my god, shut up. Why are you—you don’t know me!”

“I do now,” Steve told her, grinning, but he watched her clench her hands in frustration, and recognized someone who wished he’d leave. “Sorry. Thanks. Sorry,” he smiled automatically, and turned away.

“Ugh,” she groaned.

“Thanks,” he called over his shoulder again. “I’m glad it was you!”

“Auuuugh,” she yelled after him. “Stop talking about it, you moron! Somebody could hear you!”

He couldn’t resist turning to face her, walking backwards down the hall and stage-whispering, “Now I know it’s safe to tell you, we can talk about boys.”

“I don’t want to talk about boys!” Robin screamed, soft and wheezily in the back of her throat.

“You know you want to,” Steve whisper-shouted back, waggling his eyebrows, and she smacked her own face. “Nancy and I are friends now,” he told her, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Gonna have all the gossip, right here, don’t change that channel!”

“Nancy Wheeler doesn’t have gossip,” she hissed back, “Nancy Wheeler has—she has flashcards, shut up, dipshit—”

“We’re gonna do all those—those things that—makeovers,” he said, unable to think of anything else. “Sleepovers. Talking about boyfriends.”

“Kill me first,” Robin replied, through gritted teeth. “I will puke, I swear to god.”

“I have all the locker room dirt on everybody,” Steve said, clapping his hands together as he realized. “I know how big—”

“Eugh!” she actually shouted over him. “Gross! I do not want to know! I don’t want to know what Tommy Hagen’s dick is like, holy shit!”

“Yeah, I kinda wish I didn’t either,” Steve said, reflecting, but Robin was on a tear.

“I don’t want to—I don’t even—I wouldn’t think Billy Hargrove was hot unless his name was spelled with an -ie,” she said through clenched teeth, and he mouthed the letters, frowning into space. “Like. If he was named Wilhelmina, Steve.”

“That’s an awful name,” he turned to frown at her doubtfully. “And—and it’s for girls, I think.”

“The penny drops,” she said crisply, which made no sense, but he ignored that, turning her disgust in his head against her insistence she didn’t have a problem with his gay cooties.

“You’re a lesbian,” he whispered, pointing, and she clapped her hand to her face. Steve thought. “I thought I was the only one at school! We were. The only queer people, at school. There’s, uh, there’s a kid, but he’s a middle-schooler. And Barbra Holland, maybe? She and Nancy watched some weird movies.”

“How do you know what kind of...ugh, y’know what, I’m going home,” Robin sighed. “Try not to get expelled, I guess?”

“I won’t tell anyone,” he said quickly, feeling the urge to lift his hand to pinky-swear. He snickered. “We should have a secret handshake.”

“You better not tell anyone,” she hissed back, but she looked relieved too, and they stood there for long awkward seconds before she spun and stomped off. “I still don’t like you!” she shouted back, and he bit back a grin.

Once he’d talked to the ceramics teacher, he sat down with his headphones and the potter’s wheel, trying to dig his fingers into the heavy wetness of the clay enough to bring up a thin edge, but not so much they went through. About the point it started to look like a deep cat dish instead of an ashtray, he realized there were knees facing his, and he shook his head to knock his headphones down to his shoulders, instead of getting clay on them.

The lovely and intelligent Nancy Wheeler had her chin on her hands, and her elbows on her knees, watching him spin the clay.

“Hi,” he said, suddenly wanting to fix his hair, and clenching his hands so he didn’t put streaks of clay in it.

“What’s that gonna be?”

“...I dunno,” he said, which was a lie, probably. “I might screw it up.” Which was true.

“I think I see it,” she cocked her head as he used his fingertips to draw it up taller, “—with Billy. I thought you might—need help, y’know. Sorry.”

“What?!” He blinked at her, letting the wheel slow to a stop.

“I see it now. He was freaking out, when you just—ran out of the library, that time. Mike said he’s been really good to Will, and Eleven. I mean, if he pulls any shit with you we should absolutely tie him to train tracks. But.”

“That’s very...evil of you.” Steve stared at her, wide-eyed.

She rolled her eyes, and waved a hand. “His dad too, obviously.”

Steve snorted, choking. “Obviously.” He pulled his clay cylinder up a little taller and thinner, his face warm. The clay had lines where he’d pressed too hard, almost giving it segments. “...argh, this is my third try, and it’s still not straight.”

“...neither are you,” she replied, levelly, and he nearly smashed it, flailing.

“Nancy,” he growled at her, and she shrugged, watching him wet his hands and try to even it out.

She followed him around as he sliced it off the wheel with wire, took it to a table, and sculpted a handle. When he got to rolling more clay out, and cutting a little plaque to press letters into, she came and leaned over his shoulder, and he flushed as he inhaled her shampoo. “...that looks good, actually,” she murmured in his ear, and he winced away. She wandered back around the table to drop onto the stool across from him.

“‘Actually’?!” he muttered, and she snorted. “Sorry I was a shitty boyfriend,” he told the little letters he was painstakingly carving.

“Mm.” She shrugged. “I mean, I was kinda shitty, too, there at the end.”

He opened his mouth, automatically, to tell her she was perfect and amazing, then shut it again. He bit his lips, frowning down, then blew air through his cheeks, and carefully peeled up the little clay plaque shape to press on the crosshatched side of his cylinder.

“We’re getting better at it,” she said, looking it over, and then reached across and prodded his shoulder. “That’s sweet, Steve.”

“Eugh,” he sighed, leaning his face on the table. “Hope he thinks so.”

She groaned. “He liked Denise, Steve.”

“How come everybody knows my dumb vase’s name,” he mumbled into his arms, and she laughed.

“I hear everything. Little bird told me you might need a ride.”

Steve lifted his head, frowning at her. “...what?”

“He took your car, right?”

“I think Eleven took him,” Steve defended Billy, and Nancy grinned at him, nudging his elbow.

“Yeah, in your car.”

“Who knows where they’ll end up,” Steve sighed. He tried not to think about kissing Billy Hargrove in the bathroom at the IHOP. “Uh, she keeps making him take her for waffles.” Billy’d flinched back when he walked in the IHOP bathroom, he thought, leaning his face in his arms again. How did I not stop and think about that.

Nancy got up and leaned against the table. “And it’s snowing again, so you need a ride. Thanks, Nancy. You’re such a good friend, Nancy.”

He looked up, and quailed under the weight of her raised eyebrows. “Thanks. Who’s the little bird?”

“Billy,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Or rather, he was asking how long Max and Eleven needed, and Eleven asked what I was doing after school.”

“Sorry,” Steve snickered, imagining Billy’s expression. “I could’ve walked.”

She shrugged. “I’m still here.”

Once he finished, and put his Valentine’s Day present to Billy on a rack to dry, they wandered out to Nancy’s mom’s car. As she checked the mirrors, and put on her seatbelt, Steve took a deep breath, couldn’t decide what to say, and sat there with his cheeks inflated like a chipmunk’s, squinting at the dashboard.

“...what are you doing,” she laughed.

“I, um. You know Robin Buckley?”

Nancy frowned at him, then at the rearview mirror to back out of the parking spot. “Yeeeah?”

“She, uh, she saw me and Billy. Earlier.”

“So?”

“Uh, we were, uh, she knows.” He leaned around to shove his bag in the back seat.

“...need me to go —talk to her?” Nancy asked, in a low voice, and Steve scrambled back up, wondering why he knew so many people willing to commit murder in his name.

“No! No! It’s, uh, it’s fine. She doesn’t like dick. I mean, she likes tits, you know. I mean, she’s like us. Billy and me. She’s queer. She, uh, she won’t tell anybody. Shit! I can’t tell you that, the whole point was—auuuugh,” he groaned, leaning his seat back to add some drama to it. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you that, don’t tell her I told you—”

“Oh!” Nancy blinked. “Is she?! I thought…” She frowned, pulling around a gaggle of freshmen in jerseys wandering through the parking lot.

“What?” Steve tried to get the seat to click back upright, and fell backwards again, his leg kicking up in the air.

“I thought she had a thing for you. She used to glare at us all the time.” Nancy rolled her eyes and groaned, slowing to a top again, and Steve wondered who else was blocking traffic out of the highschool parking lot.

“Did she? Weird.” Steve squinted at the roof of the car, and then remembered something. “Anyway, she won’t say anything. And I need advice. On blow jobs.”

The brakes squawked as Nancy stared over, Nancy opening her mouth to answer, but something banged at the window, and he sat up to see Lucas’ little sister glaring at them.

“Holy shit,” Nancy muttered, groaning. “Just don’t bite it off, you’ll get the hang of it, oh my god—” she hissed, leaning across his legs to roll the window down.

“There’s got to be more to it than that,” Steve muttered back, as Erica Sinclair stuck her face in the car.

“I fell asleep first period and got detention,” she yawned. “Marcenia Lyle Alberga snuck out again last night. Tomika and me were out until four this morning. And I missed the bus, and then I fell asleep in detention again...”

“You...what?” Nancy asked, looking lost. “Who?”

“Her friend’s cat sneaks out,” Steve translated.

“She doesn’t like the old Shireman house,” Erica told them, yanking the handle of Nancy’s car door and yawning again. “Lemme in. I missed the bus, I need a ride.”

“Sorry,” Steve said to Nancy, unable to stop his beaming grin. “She’s, uh, Billy’s kid now, I guess? Can we give her a ride?”

“Billy’s,” Nancy repeated, squinting at him, then Erica, and leaning behind Steve’s seat to unlock the door. Once they were all inside, she asked, “Isn’t the old Shireman place haunted, or something?”

“Yeah, Tommy and Carol and I used to…” Steve trailed off, his brain wandering back to being friends with Tommy Hagen, and getting high to run around screaming and giggling in the “haunted house”. “We used to...go there,” he finished, folding his arms.

“It’s creepy out there,” Erica said, leaning between their seats. “We’re not supposed to go, the floor’s falling in, but Marcenia’s just a kitten.”

“A mean one,” Steve snorted, and Erica snorted.

“She’s a killer. She can’t fight snow, though. I mean, she’d try. ”

Steve snickered, and they ended up explaining the afternoon Billy’d played Great White Hunter to Marcenia the Jungle Cat. He was dying to tell Nancy about El’s confusion over Hopper’s lousy sex talk, and trailed off, thinking it wouldn’t be so bad, really, life with Nancy as a friend.

As Nancy obeyed every traffic law, exactly at the speed limit, Steve saw Robin Buckley under the overhang of the gas station, hopping around as she knocked snow out of one of her shoes. She sighed, pulled it back on with a disgusted expression, hunched her shoulders, and walked on, just as some melting snow toppled off the edge and smacked into the back of her head and down the back of her collar. She yelled and flailed, dropping her bag, and fell on her butt in the snow, then threw her head back and yelled at the sky.

“Wait!” Steve yelled at Nancy, rolling his window down to stick his head out. “Hey! Oy! Robin Barclay!”

“Buckley,” Nancy corrected.

“Buckley!” Steve called, and Robin squinted over out of the pile of snow she’d landed in, her eyes flat with despair.

“What,” she glared over. “Qu-uh. Uh,” she glanced at Nancy, turning red, and her glower darkened. “Steve Harrington?” Ice dripped from the slush on her head down along her ear, and he heard both Nancy and Erica shudder.

“Can we give her a ride?” he asked Nancy, who was shaking her head slowly in bewilderment, eyes wide. “Please?”

“Sure, of course,” she said, turning up the heat and scrambling behind her to unlock the door. Erica scooted to one side.

“This is your fault,” was Robin’s first shivering line after she climbed in. “I missed the bus after, uh, running into you.”

“You’re another one of Steve’s friends?” Erica asked, eyes narrowed consideringly, and Steve yelled “Stop kidnapping my friends! No kidnapping!” back at her as Nancy hit the gas.

“I’m very resistant to being kidnapped,” Robin said, sniffling and shivering.

“Unstoppable force, immovable object,” Erica whispered, studying Robin as they drove.

“No,” Steve told her emphatically.

Robin studied Steve and Nancy. “I thought you two broke up,” she said, exaggeratedly innocent, and glared meaningfully at Steve when he turned around to stare at her.

“We did,” Nancy told her, checking her side mirror. “Steve’s my best friend now. He got a battlefield promotion.”

Robin sat back, nodding, and Steve laughed so hard he choked.

Billy’s car was out of the garage and blocking the drive, for some reason, with Steve’s behind it. Steve frowned at it, then raised his eyebrows at Nancy, who narrowed her eyes at him, then got out of the car and walked around as he disentangled his bag from the seatbelt and slammed the door.

“What,” she hissed. “You were making faces.”

“There’s gotta be more than “don’t bite it off,” he hissed back. “Come on!”

She made an offended gaspy noise, her mouth dropping open. “You’ve had blow jobs!” she squeaked back, flailing her arms. “You know more than me! I don’t even have a dick!”

“How do you not choke?” he asked, thinking hard.

“You just do!” she growled back, her face flaming red. “You’re putting a—a big—a thing down your—where you breathe, Steve, how do you think lungs work—oh my god—”

“Ohhhh,” Steve nodded, and she screamed into her hands.

“If you keep asking me for sex advice I’m gonna suggest you pull your mouth off real loud and sing ‘Pop Goes The Weasel,’” she snarled, and Steve started laughing, blushing nearly as hard as she was at the awkwardness of grilling his ex-girlfriend on blow jobs.

“I know it’s weird,” he laughed, wiping his eyes. “I know, I know, I got nobody else to ask, though, Nance, come on!”

She bit her lips together, glaring, then sighed. ��...try, uh. Try, um, humming,” she squeaked.

“Humming,” he stared.

“Shut up, never mind!” she groaned, hiding her face.

“No, no, no no no!” he ran around to block her as she turned back to the car. “No, go on, tell me! Tell me, tell me!”

She sighed, smiling tensely at him. “God, Steve. You’re so—argh.”

“I am, I am,” he agreed, “—tell me your secrets, teach me, like, cock karate—”

“Oh my god,” she moaned.

“Do I need to wash cars,” he asked, miming circular hand movements, and she shoved him, laughing.

“We were, y’know, listening to music,” she mumbled, flushing even redder, “—and uh, I was um, y’know, kind of—kind of singing, humming—”

“Ew,” Steve said, waving her onward as he tried not to imagine the soundtrack of Jonathan’s approaching penis. “Yeah, go on—”

“It’s-nice-try-it!” she squeaked, all one noise, and ducked by him to dive into the car. He waved, but she bent close around the steering wheel as Erica ran around to take shotgun.

Steve crept in the front door to the caterwauling sounds of a circular saw.

The door to the garage from the kitchen was open, and his parent’s stuff—the stacks of boxed seventies clothes and albums he’d called and asked about, that they’d told him to throw out, that he felt weird throwing out, like there wouldn’t be anything of theirs left in the house if he threw the boxes out—had been pushed off to the side. Billy and Eleven were leaning over a long thin piece of wood trim balanced across the seats of two of the kitchen chairs. Billy had a foot on it, holding it secure across the seats, and Eleven had the saw, which she turned off, and carefully lowered to the floor.

“Angle’s perfect,” Billy told her, thumbing the edge, and she beamed at him. He bent over some more wood, but Steve’s brain was less aware of the wood, and more aware of his boyfriend’s ass in tight jeans.

Steve nearly stepped on Max, watching Billy, then blinked down to realize she was sitting in the doorway with her butt on the kitchen floor and her feet on the stair into the garage, glaring up at him and holding a plastic binder with shiny pages.

“Hey, moron, stop drooling,” she whispered. “It’s nasty.”

“What’re they doing?” he crouched to ask, watching El steeple her fingers thoughtfully at her nose, listening to Billy’s explanation of the different grits of sandpaper.

“He says he broke your door,” Max raised her eyebrows with all the judgement of Steve’s second-grade teacher, and he ducked his head.

“Wasn’t on purpose, he thought I was—I don’t know,” he muttered back at her. “He didn’t mean it.”

“That’s creepy, Steve,” she hissed back, flipping a page, and studying it intently. “He knows what he’s doing.” Through the reflection of the florescent lights of the garage, Steve couldn’t see what she was looking at, but he thought he and Max weren’t quite to the point where he could lean into her space.

“I mean,” Steve squinted, considering, and dropped to sit more comfortably next to her in the doorway, his legs sprawled into the garage. He remembered Billy drunk, throwing beer bottles at his house, and crying over his mom. “I mean, not—not always, not really. He, uh—”

“Don’t give me that shit,” she sighed. “Don’t let him get all, y’know, ‘Sorry, honey, you know I’ve got a temper,’ Steve, jesus. Bet he never breaks his own stuff.”

“Wait, what?” Steve drew his eyes away from Billy, who was smiling down at El marking length on a shorter piece of trim with a steel square. “He doesn’t break my stuff. Except the door. Did he break your stuff?”

She tensed, flipping another page, and holding both sides of the binder with white knuckles. “Maybe. Maybe I’m good at pattern recognition, Steve. He tell you not to make him mad? You being careful?”

Steve stared at the side of her head, then swung to face her, unable to focus while his eyes were full of Billy’s ass. “Max, you okay? Is—is everything okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” she snorted a laugh, rubbing her eyes with her wrist, and flipping another page. She studied it carefully.

“Max, did—did Billy say that to you? Did he—”

“No, he never—he— he says it. To my mom.”

Steve processed for a second, feeling like he was a dysfunctional blender. There were big things floating around out there he was fairly sure he didn’t understand, but he could manage the little pieces, sometimes, blend them into a whole that made sense. “Neil told your mom,” he translated, and Max swallowed, biting her lips together. “Neil...told your mom not to make him mad. Right?”

She shook her head. “He—he didn’t mean—like he gets with Billy. She wouldn’t—he wouldn’t get mad like that— just at Billy, he wouldn’t—he wouldn’t—”

“Billy told you what his mom said,” Steve felt like his engine was grinding, but he kept guessing, since Max kept pausing after each line. Maybe she doesn’t like what she put together, he thought. She’s seeing whether I get the same thing. “That Neil was...that he scared her.”

“Billy said he hit his mom,” Max grated out, and Steve cocked his head, trying to parse the language of the Hargrove siblings.

“Billy said his dad hit his mom,” he suggested, his eyes narrowed in thought, and Max made a weird hiccup noise, muffling it in the cuff of her sweatshirt. She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. Steve bit his lips together, and tried again. “...and his dad told your mom not to make him angry.” Like the Hulk, he thought, imagining Neil Hargrove tearing the house apart.

Max flipped another page, and bent to frown at it from inches away as Steve waited.

“What have you got there?” he finally asked, since apparently the conversation was over, and El and Billy were still busy. Max tipped the binder towards him with a tense smile.

Steve crouched. “...is that...is that Billy’s photo album? That’s Billy, oh jesus. Oh my god.” He muffled his wide-eyed mumbling with his hands, staring at child-Billy’s round cheeks.

“Shut up, he looks like a moron,” Max hissed back, flipping the page, as Billy and Eleven laid out more pieces of wood. “Look at their hair! And he definitely doesn’t want you seeing him in that sweater vest.”

Steve flipped it back and eyed the brown, orange, red, and off-white sweater vest—it was definitely ugly, and his time spent winding yarn for Ms. Williams meant he could accurately peg it as basically a sandwich of two enormous crocheted potholders, one front, one back, with straps sewn on. “Oh, god,” he mumbled through his hand. “Did he, like...make that himself?” He tried not to think about Neil’s fingers digging into Billy’s shoulder in the posed picture, or the way Billy was leaning away, into his mom.

“I think there was an aunt...or a grandma...Maybe we should blow up that picture and stick it on the bulletin board at school,” Max grinned, laughing shakily.

“Look at his fat little cheeks,” Steve whispered. “Oh no, look, he was surfing and he fell in the water.”

“Look how many pictures there are of him dragging his board out of the water,” Max snickered. “Like, one of him actually surfing. He looks like a drowned rat.”

From listening to Billy’s mom, Steve didn’t doubt either that she was as delighted by photos of him falling off surfboards as staying on, or that she ever let him live it down. “His mom calls him her Land Turtle,” he told her, and Max clapped a hand over her mouth, muffling a snicker. “Oh no,” Steve hissed, elbowing her. “Look, Santa photos.”

Max stared at them for a long moment, then looked up at Steve, biting back a huge grin. Her eyes still shone wet, but she looked gleeful. “Steve. Steve,” she whispered in a high voice, drowned out by Billy showing El a box of finishing nails. “Steve,” she wheezed. “He was afraid of Santa. Look. Every picture. Oh my god.”

Billy’s mom looked thin, and paler than she had, and Steve tried to focus on her broad grin. “Those are amazing sweaters,” he whispered back, between his fingers, trying not to crack up aloud over toddler-Billy’s horrified eyes on Santa in every picture. In one, he was tilted sideways, wailing in his red-and-white striped sweater with the knitted green bowtie and matching mustard-yellow knitted overalls.

Suddenly Max yanked the album back to squint close, and Steve waited, then leaned his head down to try and see her face. “Huh,” she said, lifting her head, and pushing the album back toward him. “Leia there on the Halloween page,” she pointed. “His mom—does that—there on her arms, and her neck, do those look like bruises to you?”

Steve, staring at what had to be tiny Billy wedged in an awful R2-D2 costume made mostly of tinfoil, beaming up at the Leia from under—for some reason—a superhero-type mask, had to blink a few times to register Max’s voice. “Wha?”

“Do those look like bruises,” Max hissed. “Billy says he used to hit his mom—”

“Billy hit his mom?” Steve stared at her, then Billy, still stuck in their second conversation about family photos, where four-year-old Billy Hargrove was wearing potholders like they were clothes.

Max shook her head. “No, stupid, he hit Billy’s mom, Neil did. Billy says. Billy says—Billy says she was scared, she thought—there was an insurance thing—” she swallowed, the shine to her eyes no longer delighted. “I’m—I just—he doesn’t deserve him, nobody does, but just ‘cause he hits Billy doesn’t mean he’d hurt—”

Steve listened, really noticing for the first time that Max and Billy never called Neil Hargrove anything—not ‘dad’, or his name, just ‘he’. It was confusing for onlookers, who weren’t always thinking about the man, but Max and Billy always seemed to understand each other.

“I thought I’d check his pictures,” Max closed her eyes, taking a deep breath through her nose, and when she looked back down at the photos, her eyes were drier. “See if—if he was right, and she—she looks—she’s really scared, Steve.”

“I was there when she told Billy,” Steve told Max, who pressed her knuckles to her mouth, making a muffled gulping noise.

“He’s gonna hurt my mom,” she whispered, taking a shaky breath. “Shit, Steve, he’s gonna—he’s gonna hurt my mom, it was true, those are bruises, he’s gonna—”

Steve realized the tools had gone silent, and looked up to see Billy, thin-lipped and pink-cheeked, glancing from the album, to Steve, to Max.

El followed his gaze, frowned hard, and sat the saw down. She walked over, and wedged herself between Max and Steve on the stair into the garage. “What happened?” El asked, sounding like she was doing the psychic equivalent of cracking her knuckles to ready herself for a fight.

Max shook her head, pressing her knuckles to her mouth.

Steve let himself be pushed aside, walking over to put an arm around Billy and kiss his ear. “Just found a picture of my new favorite robot,” he whispered, and Billy snorted, tense against him. “Why was R2-D2 wearing a mask,” Steve asked, and Billy rolled his eyes.

“Shut up, I was like seven, I didn’t know how to make a costume. Why the hell is Max showing you my fatass baby pictures?”

“She, um,” Steve stumbled, divided between wanting to answer, not wanting to admit Max didn’t believe Billy’s warnings, and mostly wanting a time-travel car to go back and pick up the chubby little curly-haired R2-D2 in his terrible tinfoil costume, give him hot chocolate, and keep him the hell away from Neil Hargrove. “You seriously calling R2-D2 fat?”

“What is going on,” asked El, narrowing her eyes at Steve’s arm around Billy, and tucking her own around Max.

“He hurt Billy’s mom, and he hurt Billy, and he’s gonna hurt my mom,” Max said, her voice gravelly with suppressed tears. “He hurts people, and he’s—” she took a few rapid breaths, and bit her lips together until they went white.

Eleven took Max’s hand, turning to face her. “We won’t let him.”

Billy swallowed, his jaw working.

“Hopper,” Steve said, squeezing Billy’s shoulders. “Hopper can—talk to Hopper, El, take Max to tell him—”

“He—he could be doing something—I need to get home,” Max stood, and nearly fell, trying to spin without watching the stair. She staggered, swearing in a high, broken voice.

Eleven caught her by the elbows. “Max,” she said slowly clearly, and Max’s head jerked up to frown at her, as Eleven waved a hand at the milk crates of old records and exploded them. Billy and Steve both yelled, diving for the floor as vinyl shrapnel rained down, and it snowed bits of cardboard. “We won’t let him,” Eleven said, bringing her hand back to squeeze Max’s, then lifting it to wipe a dribble of blood from her nose.

“Holy shit,” Max whispered, wiping her eyes. “Okay. Yeah. We can—we can threaten him, or something.”

“Or something,” El repeated darkly. “I saw a movie where they dropped a house on somebody.”

“C-can you do that?” Max snorted wetly, snickering probably half with stress, and half imagining Neil’s shoes sticking out from under a foundation like he was the Wicked Witch of the East.

El narrowed her eyes. “Do you want me to?”

“Holy shit,” Max started cackling through her tears, stumbling to sit down on the stair to the kitchen.

“Holy shit,” Billy echoed, staring at the mess, as Steve sighed and grabbed the broom. “What the fuck,” he whispered. “Luke fucking Skywalker.”

Steve had mostly forgotten Billy didn’t know about El. Of course that’s how he’d find out about Eleven, he thought, rubbing his face, and scrabbling at his hair. Billy knew every other detail of his stupid life. Of course he couldn’t find out when she lifted a toy spaceship. No, my boyfriend, that I promised to—to tell things—finds out El can move stuff with her mind when she explodes something four feet away and threatens to drop a house on his dad. “Babe,” he tried, turning to Billy. “Hey, dickhead, cupcake.”

Billy was staring at El—or past her, it was hard to tell. His hands were shaking. “You knew about this,” he whispered. “You—you said you wanted me safe, and then you sent me out with a—a fucking dark jedi. Lucky she didn’t explode my skull when I kicked Max under the table. Holy crap.”

“Shit, no, she—she wouldn’t hurt you,” Steve stared at him, then Eleven, who was watching Max take deep, shaky breaths.

“No wonder you wanted to check me over,” Billy whispered, sitting down on one of the chairs he’d been using as a sawhorse. “After you made me take them for waffles. How’d Billy do? She explode my brain?”

“No, no—” Steve argued, his stomach clenching as he remembered fearing exactly that, when Eleven climbed into Billy’s car while Dustin and Max drug him into a classroom for their intervention. He reached out, and Billy flinched, then laughed, baring his teeth.

“Any other big secrets, Steve?”

“No,” Steve shook his head frantically, hoping there weren’t. He couldn’t think of any, but then he’d never even thought to pull Eleven aside, and ask whether he could tell Billy. Some of the vinyl was melted to the floor, and Steve kicked at it.

“Do you want me to come home with you?” Eleven asked Max, and Steve tried to put Billy on hold with his hand and derail that situation.

“Wait, no, Eleven,” he called over. “Remember, I mean, you can’t—nobody can see your powers,” he said, wincing as Billy scrambled away. “They could take you away from Hopper, nobody can—”

She nodded. “It would look like an accident.”

Billy staggered over to sit down against the racks holding Steve’s backstock of marshmallows. “Holy hell fucking balls shit,” he mumbled, taking deep breaths in his steepled hands.

“I still need a ride home,” Max said grimly, and El nodded, taking a deep breath.

“Wait, wait, wait, no,” Steve dropped the broom, waving his hands. “Do you—do you really think you need to do anything, like, tonight?”

“He’s gonna hurt my mom, Steve,” Max hissed, and El nodded, crossing her arms.

“Whoa, whoa,” Steve waved his hands, glancing at Billy. “I mean, hell with Neil Hargrove, but come up with a plan. What if he tells someone about El? Talk to Hopper, think up—come up with a way that doesn’t—I mean, save Max’s mom, but make sure everybody’s safe, okay.”

“Everybody except him,” Max growled.

El considered Steve for a long moment, then nodded. “I will help you,” she told Max, nodding firmly.

“Jesus fucking christ hell,” Billy muttered, shoving past Max and out of the garage. His feet pounded up the stairs.

“I need to go home,” Max told Steve. “I need to tell her.”

“She’s still at work, isn’t she?! Don’t do anything,” Steve ordered the two girls. “Anything, I mean it. I have to—Billy didn’t know, I need to go and—”

“He didn’t know?” El asked, blinking from Steve, to Max, to the ceiling. “Why? You didn’t want Billy to know?”

“I didn’t know if you’d want him to know!” Steve told her, trying not to yell. “Now he’s pissed as hell, I have to go talk to him, just—El. Tell me you’d never hurt Billy. You wouldn’t hurt him.”

Eleven cocked her head, turning to Max. “...what did Billy do?” she asked, and Max gulped a laugh, shaking her head.

“Shit,” Steve rubbed his face. “I have to go talk to him, don’t do anything—”

Max sniffled, rubbing her nose. “You better gimme a ride by five, okay. I—I’ll just have El sh-show me how to use all the power tools. Practice for cutting his head off . Unsupervised with the power tools,” she emphasized casually, like a jackass, and Steve yelled incoherently and ran upstairs. As he turned onto the landing, he heard the slide lock on Billy's door catch, and stopped, one foot still in the air. Gravity happened, and he flailed his arms, put both feet on the ground, and turned to lean over the railing, leaning his face in his hands.

“The hell are you doing, Harrington,” Billy’s voice came through the door.

“What?!” Steve yelped, spinning in place. “Nothing! I forgot. I’m sorry.”

“I could hear you chasing me,” Billy said through the door, sounding amused, in the way he did before he set something on fire. “And the floor is creaking. What now, Harrington?”

“Uh,” Steve mumbled, grimacing. “You want me to fuck off?”

He could hear Billy take a long breath, and blow air out through his cheeks. “...what do you want?”

“I just—” Steve swallowed, dropping to sit on the floor. He took a deep breath to continue. “I just—I’m—shit. I’m so sorry, jesus. I’m—I can’t—I can’t believe I didn’t ask Eleven if I could tell you. I got...I forgot I didn’t tell you everything.”

“All your little shitheads got superpowers?” Billy asked, laughing. “Yeah. That actually snaps a lot of shit into place, Steve.” Steve flinched at his name, and wondered why, swallowing again.

“No,” he answered. “No, it’s, um, it’s just El. She’s, uh. Eleven’s what the lab was making,” Steve told him, dropping to press his cheek to the floor, and sigh under the door at Billy’s bare toes clenched in in the carpet. “I didn’t—I mean, it wasn’t my secret. We got talked to by the FBI, she—she could get taken away from Hopper, they—”

“Don’t give me that shit,” Billy said, dropping to sit crosslegged. His fingers drummed against the carpet. “Who the hell would I tell. You told me about the—about the goddamn blue bodybuilder bananas. I can—I can still smell the burning records, Steve.”

“El hurting you wasn’t—it wasn’t a plan,” Steve growled, trying not to yell. “You think—you think I’d get you away from your dad and just—just throw you—why would I want you to scare a little kid until she killed you, Hargrove, hon—honey mustard. Jesus.”

Through the gap in the door, Steve could see Billy picking at the carpet, and twitching his toes. “...just might blow up my head if I, like, took her by surprise.”

“She wouldn’t kill you for startling her,” Steve said, rolling his eyes, then bit his lips as he remembered Dustin talking about El straight-up murdering the people with guns. “She, uh, she’s never hurt anyone...accidentally, um, I don’t think.”

“You don’t think,” Billy laughed. “I’m filled with confidence.”

“I’m sorry, christ,” Steve whispered. “I didn’t even—”

“Don’t get pissed at me—” Billy’s voice cracked, and he kicked the door.

“No, I’m not—” Steve rolled onto his back staring at the ceiling. “Christ. I didn’t...I’m not—I did, I thought about it, I—I should’ve warned you. Kept you away from her. Sorry I—sorry I didn’t—sorry I suck,” he groaned into his hands. “Damn it.”

The floor creaked, and Billy’s voice got louder. “God, I’m such a moron,” Billy told Steve, the floor creaking by his door. “All this time, I thought—you didn’t trust me at all, did you. Never forgot I was Billy Fucking Hargrove for a second. You just knew little Ellie Hopper didn’t have to tell her sheriff dad I needed putting down. She didn’t need help from anybody, she could twist my head off my goddamn neck, right? I step out of line, she’d take care of it, right, Steve?”

“Sorry,” Steve said again. “I, um.”

“That’s why you’d let me take Max and her for waffles, right, but the second Will shows up you start acting like I’m—I’m the Zodiac killer, christ. Screw you.”

“I didn’t—you’re nice to El, there was no—”

“Why the fuck have you been pretending to give a shit about me,” Billy yelled through the door. It shuddered with a loud THUD on the other side, then creaked in its frame as Billy’s voice dropped to almost a whisper. “You knew—you knew she could do that. You knew she’d—do that—for Max, you—you knew—” Steve was silent, grimacing, and wondering what he could say. He jumped as the door thumped again in its frame, and Billy snarled, “Did you fucking leave.”

“No! I’m—I’m sorry,” Steve told him, scooting closer. “I-I’m here, I didn’t—you just, uh, you locked the door.”

“Like you couldn’t bust this shitty lock off in a second. Like Eleven couldn’t rip it off its hinges, right? Make me fucking bleed from—from the eyes probably,” his voice shook with anger, fear, or a combination of both, and Steve didn’t point out the door wouldn’t protect him.

“What? No, you—you locked the door,” Steve flailed at it. “If you want me in there, you gotta open it up, I—I’m not gonna break your door down, I’m not—I’m not the fucking trespasser here—I didn’t mean that to—shit, forget I said that, don’t leave, I’m talking bullshit, tell—tell me what to do, Hargrove. Kings have—they have advisors, or something, right, tell me—”

“Advisors get all the goddamn information,” Billy hissed back.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said again, groaning. “I’m so fucking sorry, I should—I should have known you—”

“Known I’d what, fly off the fucking handle?” The door thudded in its frame again, and Steve flinched back. “Right,” Billy whispered, “—I’m crazy, aren’t I, I’m acting insane right now, my brain doesn’t fucking work, I’m stupid, I’m losing my shit over nothing—” Billy’s laugh was wetter than Max’s.

“No!” Steve squirmed across the floor, closer to Billy’s locked door. “No, not—no, you’re—”

“Am I nuts?” Billy asked, his voice shaking. “Your royal majesty,” he laughed. “G-go on. Tell me to shut up and open the door. Wasn’t to lock you out, right? It’s not for that, that’s not—that’s not what you said to do—”

The lock clicked, like he had his hand on it, and Steve scrabbled at his hair. “N-no, wait, wait. Hargrove. Wait, I don’t—it’s—it’s your room, you can lock the door, you can lock it, it’s—it’s okay, you can lock the door—”

“Yell at me some more,” Billy said, laughing unsteadily. “I’ll open it. I’m opening it, jesus. Tell me I’m fucking nuts. Tell me to open up, King Harrington. I know I’m the asshole, I’m wrong, right? I’m—I’m wrong, somehow. Harrington,” he whispered, “—you—you keep—you go through so much shit for me, this is—this is my fault, right, you wouldn’t—”

“No, no, wait, Hargrove, listen—” Steve caught his breath as he recognized the metallic scrape of the lock sliding open. “Stop—”

A loud thump rattled the door in its frame. “It wasn’t even a big deal, right, I am, I’m acting insane. Jesus, I’m so dumb sometimes, I’m fucking crazy— I don’t know what to—let’s forget it,” Billy said thickly, turning the doorknob enough to click it unlocked. “Sorry,” he gritted out. “Y-you can come in if you want. We can—”

“No! No, no, no,” Steve yelped, scrambling to lie on his stomach on the floor, and slide his fingers under the door. He held it shut. He stared under the gap at Billy’s feet. “No! Be—don’t try and—babe—shit—you’re mad, you should be mad! You should be pissed, okay, be pissed, be—be fucking pissed as hell—okay—”

Billy was quiet for several seconds. “...okay,” he repeated softly, sniffling. “Whatcha doing, Harrington...you trying to fit under the door?”

“Fuck you, just—just—lock the door,” Steve told him. “Lock the door, babe. Don’t unlock the door until you wanna let me in, okay. Knight. Remember you’re pissed at me. I’m bullshit sometimes, okay. You’re pissed off.”

“Royal command,” Billy whispered, dropping so he was lying on the floor, one eye facing Steve through the gap underneath.

“You’re supposed to be mad,” Steve said again, and Billy laughed, a tear running out the side of his eye and dropping into the carpet. Steve scrambled for words. “I didn’t mean—I didn’t think—”

“I mean. You usually don’t,” Billy laughed hoarsely, and Steve wedged more of himself under the door, ignoring it scraping what felt like half the skin off his wrists, to brush the tips of his fingers against Billy’s toes. Billy jerked away, then grabbed Steve’s fingers in his cold, sweaty ones.

“No, I mean it, I’m a moron,” Steve hissed, pissed at himself, even if Billy wasn’t. “I know—with my bat,” Steve pointed at Billy under the door, and Billy laughed again. Steve squinted with concentration. “You had to—you had to know all about the bat, so you could figure out whether you were safe. I couldn’t just say you were safe. I had to tell you everything about the bat, so—so you could—decide.”

“Except about El,” Billy said, and Steve swallowed.

“Except about El,” he agreed, sighing. “I—I almost did, I—you asked if I was gonna lie, she’s—it’s a big secret—I-I’m sor—I’m so sorry. Honey-mustard. Hargrove. I’m—I’m so fucking sorry. I just—there was a lot happening, and—I should have made sure you were okay. First. First before anything.”

After what felt like a long silence, when Steve was starting to tense up again, Billy whispered, “You—you said you fucking forgot.” He rolled onto his back, shaking with laughter. “Did you seriously just— completely forget to tell me. Harrington. You did, didn’t you.”

“No! No, kind of,” Steve groaned again, into his arms, catching Billy’s half-hysterical snickering. “I thought—I mean, I freaked out that first time, when Dustin drug me off and you drove off with El in your car, but then—I mean, you were okay, nothing happened! I’m a fucking moron—”

“You’re so dumb,” Billy whispered, grinning under the door. “Holy shit. How could you—okay, I-I’ll open the door. I’m opening the door.”

“You don’t have to,” Steve told him, grimacing.

“Can’t lock you out in your own house,” Billy said, sounding weirdly flat. “S’not what that lock’s for, is it. It’s not—it’s not to st—” he took a shaky breath, swallowing. “It’s not to stop you,” he whispered, his fingers shaking in Steve’s.

“It’ll work!” Steve yelped. “It’ll stop me, it’s a sturdy door, right? The lock’s little but um, it’s uh, it’s latched! You’re safe from me in there!”

“Harrington, what are you gonna do when I open this door,” Billy asked, and Steve had the horrifying suspicion he was crying. “I won’t lock it again, I swear, jesus, please,” he mumbled, his words hitching, and Steve squeezed his hands harder.

“I—” Steve fumbled his words, trying to think of a way to prove he wasn’t angry, while also wanting to burn Neil Hargrove at the stake. “I’m not mad,” he said, trying to keep his voice soft. “I’m not mad, baby, you can lock the door, you can lock me out anytime—” He’d lost Billy for a while again, he realized, listening to the nonsensical mumbles and apologies on the other side of the door, and running his thumbs over Billy’s clenched fingers, so he just kept saying it was okay, and he wasn’t mad.

After what felt like the longest eleven minutes of Steve’s life—as he talked, he was staring at the watch on his wrist, wedged half under the door—Billy took a long shuddering breath.

“You back with me, Hargrove?” Steve whispered, his throat raw.

“...think so,” Billy whispered back. “I was...I was gonna open the door,” he said. “I won’t lock it again,” he promised, and Steve gave his now well-practiced speech.

“You can lock that door anytime,” he told Billy. “You can lock it for no reason, okay. I won’t be mad, you can lock your door.”

“I’m allowed to be crazy,” Billy laughed uncertainly.

“I don’t know if it’s crazy,” Steve told him, frowning under the door, but deciding not to bring up Neil Hargrove. “But you can lock the door, people lock doors, that’s what locks are for, dick—honey,” he said, changing his insult at the last minute, and ignoring Billy’s snickers and whispers of “Dick honey! I’m your dick honey.” “Billy Hargrove,” Steve whispered. “You can lock me out, I still love you—”

Billy choked, curling up on the floor around Steve’s fingers. “...okay.”

“Love you so much,” Steve told him, ignoring the heat in his cheeks. “Love works through doors, okay, I can wait ‘til you come out, jesus. It’s fine.”

“You’re such an asshole,” Billy laughed, crying. “Fuck you, stop making me—bawl, okay, jesus, you prick, christ. Fucking... hate how much I love you.”

“Yeah, I know,” Steve laughed, his eyes tearing up with relief, and the pain of his scraped knuckles wedged under the door.

“You’re really not pissed I locked you out,” Billy asked again, trying to sound casual.

“I showed you that lock,” Steve told him, trying not to sound pissed.

“Yeah, because—for if—if he comes, you wanna rescue me,” Billy laughed. “Protect what’s yours. Not supposed to lock you out.”

Feeling the exhaustion of another trip around the monopoly board, without passing Go, and without collecting $200, Steve closed his eyes and tried not to groan. “You can lock this door whenever you want,” he said for what sounded like the ninetieth time.

“Yeah,” Billy breathed, and they lay there, on opposite sides of the door, for nearly another five minutes. “...you pretending not to be pissed,” Billy hissed finally. “You—are you—I’ll open up and you’ll be mad as hell, you—you’ll—” he trailed off into sharp breaths, and Steve tried to squirm closer.

“Not gonna lie to you,” he said, and felt Billy’s fingers twitch. “I’m not, honey-mustard, I’ll tell you if I’m mad.” Billy took another long shaky breath, and Steve screwed his face up in thought, kicking his feet so they thudded lightly against the railing of the stairs. “...look, I could open the door,” he whispered, and Billy was silent. “You already unlocked it,” Steve reminded him. “All I’d have to do is turn the knob. But—”

“But what?” Billy asked.

“I don’t think you’re ready yet,” Steve told him. “I’m gonna let you open your door, okay?”

“God, I’m so crazy,” Billy sighed, muffled by the carpet.

“I think you’re just, y’know,” Steve flunked talking as usual, “—you think, um, you think stuff will happen that maybe...happened before. That’s, uh, that’s smart, actually. That’s smart.”

“I should trust you,” Billy groaned. “Shit.”

“I mean, I guess,” Steve made a face. “I just kind of...fucked up. Big. I didn’t—you have to be careful, I mean, you—” he groaned too, trying to fit the words together.

“Not with you,” Billy argued.

“No, with—with me, too, you have to be careful, you’re really important,” Steve huffed, his hackles rising as Billy started laughing again on the other side of the door. “You are! Steve hissed. “You’re so important, you’re the most important, and I’m really—I’m so shitty at this, you have to—you have to help me—”

“Oh my god,” Billy wheezed, and Steve opened his mouth to keep arguing, then blinked as Billy reached out to push Steve’s pointer finger back under the door.

“This lil’ piggy’s gonna get stomped, Harrington,” Billy whispered through the gap, and Steve snickered as Billy’s fingers lifted each of his and prodded them under the door, then stuck his own middle fingers under at Steve.

Steve laughed and rubbed his wrists, rolling onto his back.

Billy’s face disappeared from the gap, replaced by his hand, then his foot, and the sound of a door opening across carpet.

Steve pushed himself to his feet, and then got an armful of Billy Hargrove, breathing unsteadily against his shoulder, and yanking at the fly of his pants.

“Fucking moron,” Bily whispered, trying to unbutton Steve’s jeans as Steve tried to push his hands away.

“Max—Max and El,” he gasped. “They’re right downstairs, we can’t—”

“Sure we can,” Billy whispered against his mouth, and Steve grabbed his hands.

“Okay, but I’m the one apologizing, right,” Steve changed tactics, trying not to grin. “You didn’t screw up. I screwed up.” Billy’s eyes narrowed, then widened as Steve grabbed him by the fly, whispering. “Lemme choke on your dick.” As he’d expected, Billy froze, frowning at him, and Steve seized the opportunity to squeeze him until his bones creaked.

“Not sure how much you’re gonna like that when you’re sober,” Billy hissed in his ear, rocking their hips together.

With the hot pressure on his dick, Steve couldn’t think of an argument other than the truth. “I was,” he whispered, sliding a hand under Billy’s sweatshirt and up his warm side, feeling his muscles work. “I was—I was sober, cake, um, cake pie. I dumped the whiskey out. Didn’t drink it.”

“What,” Billy asked hoarsely.

“Sorry I lied,” Steve buried his face in Billy’s neck, dragging messy kisses over his collarbones. “Shouldn’t lie to you, I mean it, I—I’ll stop, but—but I knew you were freaked, didn’t wanna—didn’t wanna do some dumb drunk thing—” he bit gently under Billy’s jaw, and felt him shudder.

“You goddamn liar,” Billy breathed, grabbing the ass of Steve’s jeans with both hands.

“Sorry for that too,” Steve whispered, and Billy groaned melodramatically in his ear. “Am I out of the doghouse?” Steve asked, and Billy snorted.

“No, you are not,” Billy said, his gaze flicking uncertainly over Steve’s face. “I’m gonna make you work for it—”

“Oh, I can work for it,” Steve told him, his grin way too wide, he suspected, to look seductive at all.

“What the hell are you two doing up there?!” Max yelled, and they both started.

“Okay,” Steve said, tucking his laugh against Billy’s neck. “I’m gonna suck your dick. With feeblings.”

“Jesus christ,” Billy muttered back, relaxing against him. “Just a minute,” he shouted downstairs, and Max stomped away. “...El might actually come up and ask what we’re doing in a minute,” he groaned, sliding his arms around Steve’s waist to sway together, and muttering a string of profanity into his shoulder.

Steve rubbed his back, trying to remember the intense cold-shower effect El had had on his half-chub earlier, when she’d stomped into the locker room wanting Billy to teach Max to use tools. The idea of her throwing the bedroom door open as Steve tried to negotiate his first real blowjob didn’t sound appealing.

After standing there a while, Steve’s adrenaline bubble started merging with the relief of Billy choosing to trust him after he’d fucked up again, and he wanted to move— run, or dance Billy around, or carry him somewhere, listening to him yell, and kissing his hot blushing face. “Later tonight. I got blowjob tips from Nancy. But we should probably go back downstairs,” he whispered, rubbing his thumb across Billy’s tear-sticky cheek.

“Holy jesus. Is that—is that what you were talking about? Giving blowjobs?” Billy asked, his laugh warming Steve’s neck.

“Sort of,” Steve hedged, wishing Nancy hadn’t wanted him to keep secrets. “She decided to start telling me all the weird shit she used to tell Barb, and I’m not supposed to tell anybody, and—” he remembered Nancy shaking with laughter over Jonathan’s sex habits, and tried to smother his vindictive glee, “—I really, really want to tell you Nancy’s secrets, I swear.”

“Why the hell would I want to know any of that,” Billy slumped against him with a contented sigh.

“It’s hilarious,” Steve hissed. “Being friends with a girl is annoying.”

“You poor baby,” Billy snorted.

“She wants to check in all the time! She likes you,” Steve said, remembering abruptly, and Billy burst into a fit of snickering against his neck.

“She does, huh.”

“She does! She said you were all freaked out when I ran out of the library.”

“...Harrington,” Billy said, pulling back to narrow his eyes at Steve’s face. “I—”

“We should probably go downstairs,” Steve interrupted, his face heating as he remembered Billy knew he’d run off to cry. Like the five-year-old birthday boy, he thought, with a self-directed smirk, when he realizes everybody in the class just came because he’s got a pool. “Sorry I was acting like—an idiot. More of an idiot,” Steve shrugged. “We should go down.”

Billy opened his mouth, closed it, then pulled Steve’s face into a kiss that was warm and salty with tears. After a few seconds of hot breath and slick tongue that left Steve harder in his pants than ever, his sweaty hands clutching at Billy’s biceps, Billy pulled back. “You saying I should stop hiding from a little girl,” he asked, grinning, and Steve swallowed a couple times, gathering himself to speak.

“El’s pretty scary,” Steve rasped, “—they’re gonna start using the chainsaw or something, though—”

“You have a chainsaw?” Billy interrupted.

“Maybe?!” Steve stepped back to throw his hands in the air. “I didn’t know we had a circular saw!”

“We need a ride,” El’s voice carried up the stairs.

“Are your—” parents? Steve thought, and stalled out, “—are your uh, your adults even off work yet? Thought you were helping Billy fix my door,” Steve called back, leaning over the railing to look downstairs, and reaching back to squeeze Billy’s hand.

“...we should finish that first,” El said, after a second, and Billy turned him around and leaned in for one more kiss before squeezing his hand back and pulling away to jog down the stairs after Eleven.

Max was waiting at the foot of the stairs when Steve came down. She looked him up and down, then rolled her eyes, her shoulders lowering a little from their angry hunch.

“Hey, Max, uh,” Steve said, then stopped, thinking.

“What, did you run out of batteries?” she asked dryly.

“No, shut up. You know—you can still bring your mom here, if you need to, ever. Or call us, if you need help. We can—we can come pick you up, you and her. Anytime.”

“...Billy gonna second that?” she asked, and Steve considered.

“Yeah. Yeah, he said he’d help me out if my kids needed it. He offered. I mean, he might not stand between you and his dad—”

“No, he’s—he’s done that. Done something just as—just as I was—got himself hit.”

“...that’s…” Steve trailed off, unable to say it was good, Billy getting himself hurt.

“Weird is what that was, because usually he’s a total shithead,” Max hissed. “Which I didn’t tell El. And I won’t—” She stopped.

Because he’s your brother, Steve thought, then wondered whether it was just basic decency in Max, not wanting to hurt anyone if she could help it. Anyone but monsters, like Neil Hargrove.

“...El wants you both to come to the Byers’ for waffles,” she reported, sighing. “Soon. Every damn time anybody’s upset she wants waffles.”

“D’you want him there?” Steve asked, suspecting she didn’t.

“I don’t care,” Max sighed, setting her jaw, and frowning towards the garage. “If he keeps acting like a goddamn human being instead of an asshole. I think El wants to ask him about his mom.”

That will go great, Steve thought, wincing.

“Guess I better help them fix the door,” Max said, unmoving.

“You didn’t break it,” Steve told her, wandering over to the hot chocolate cupboard.

“I wanted to see his photo albums. Check his story, you know, so I lied,” she said, “...kind of.”

“You...lied,” he glanced back, eyebrows raised, before realizing he needed to get more marshmallows out of the garage, which would mean walking out on Max wanting to talk, which...didn’t seem like the right thing to do. He sighed.

“He won’t let me take shop. I signed up for shop and now I’m in home economics,” Max groaned, and Steve rewound the sentence in his head and substituted Neil in for he . “I told El, and said I wanted to talk to Billy, and she said Billy takes shop, since he’s a boy— and next thing I know, he’s waiting for us in your car after school. Trying to tell me how to use a saw. Billy fucking Hargrove, Shop Teacher—and of course Eleven’s having fun.” She squinted towards the garage. “I just wanted to see that photo album.”

“...want some hot chocolate?” Steve asked, feeling a keen empathy for El, and her urge to stuff waffles in the face of anyone having a problem.

“No,” Max said, burying her face in her arms. “Yeah. Damn it. Do I have to—I have to stop hating him now?! Just like that?” She snapped in the air, growling. “Because that asshole’s been beating his face in since he was like—” she held her hand flat a couple feet from the floor, glaring at Steve. “—that high? How come my mom had to fall for him. How come he can’t die of a heart attack. HEY MISTER GOD, THIS IS MAX,” she yelled suddenly, at the ceiling. “FIX YOUR SHIT.”

Steve was cracking up, leaning against the cupboard. “You tell him,” he held up a mug in a toast, and Max snorted.

“Listen to him in there,” she said, glaring at the table, and Steve leaned to listen to Billy laughing, and explaining something about the latch. “Being some rad older brother. You know, that’s what I thought I was getting. Will Byers loves him, musta asked me to invite him like twelve times. He got a cat out of a fucking tree, Steve, did he get brain trauma on your watch?!”

Steve thought about how tense Billy’d been, the afternoon Max had come over to learn to bake bread. Neil hadn’t helped, that morning, or calling that night, but Billy’d been a mass of barbed wire all afternoon.

“You finding the meaning of life in that cocoa mix?” Max asked, and Steve jumped, realizing he was staring into the jar.

“Yeah, kinda,” he leaned to look deeper, humming exaggerated noises like a Muppet, and she snorted, watching him spoon mix into mugs. “Nah. I, uh, I think he...I think maybe you make him nervous.”

“I make him nervous?!” Max smacked her hands on the table. “I make him nervous?! What in the hell kind of—”

“No, shush, I just mean—like I remember the floaty thingies, in the tunnels, you know,” he told her, waggling his fingers to indicate the wispy substance that had clogged their lungs, and ignoring Max biting back a grin. “In the snow, I—I can freak out a little. It’s not—it’s not the snow’s fault, snow never ate my friends—” Max snorted another laugh, but she was listening. “You haven’t...done anything, but you were—you were there, while things were happening, I think—”

“I remind him of home,” she said, chewing her lip. “Maybe. Gross.”

“Maybe,” he shrugged, but when he glanced over again, she looked like she was thinking hard.

“He could still not be a dipshit,” she muttered at her mug, and Steve nodded, sighing.

“You—you can bring him for waffles,” she decided. “Will can just have him, I don’t care. He can be Will and Eleven’s brother, I don’t give a shit.”

Steve opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again. “I’m, uh, I’m pretty good at. Things.”

“Not English, apparently,” Max narrowed her eyes. “The hell does that mean?”

“Nothing,” he shrugged, turning back to turn off the kettle, and add the hot water to their mugs.

“You really want to be my brother?” she asked, sounding amused, and he turned to glare, but her eyes were kinda wider than her usual wary glower. “I mean, you—you said that, when you—when you wanted me to get him out of the house, but—”

“I’d be better at it than Billy,” he pointed out, and she tried to talk and laugh at the same time, and choked.

“Yeah,” she laughed, wiping her eyes. “Yeah, uh, you—you really would. Uh. I dunno. Do I really need a brother, right, I mean. I, um. I have some—friends. Now.”

“If you need one,” he said, keeping his tone cheerful, and ignoring her red face as she groaned into her sleeves. “Or just, y’know, want one. I can put Dustin down as a reference.” He turned back to the hot chocolate.

He gave Max the rest of the marshmallows, and sat her mug in front of her, watching her eyes well up as she looked at the little Garfield cartoon about spiders on the mug.

“Thanks, Steve,” she rasped, and he clinked their mugs together.

Next chapter

#harringrove #platypan #Fix-it #Season 2.5 #Lovesick dorks #Friendship is magic #Strangest #platypan fic #peterqpan on Ao3

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scary-lasagna · 4 years

Text

Slender-Sitter

An idea I got at 2am one night.

A different take on the Slender Brothers (and Mama Slender!).I probably won’t follow up on it, but if you guys want one I’ll be happy to write it.

* * *

You weren't quite sure what happened. One moment you were eating shitty off-brand cornflakes, and the next moment there was a machete to your throat. "You're coming with me, and if I hear a peep outta ya, I'll slit your God Damn throat. Got it?" What else could you have done besides nod? To be fair, the walk through the forest with this masked man was awkward as all can be. You tried asking his name for small talk, to which he replied by throwing a rusty knife past your ear. Maybe he was an introvert. The sun was starting to rise now, and you realized you didn't want to die on a cold spring morning with your socks soaked through with dew. But it as too late now, because the ivory and shadow colored manor slowly appeared into view. You didn't know where the Hell you were, and there was no way this was a half an hour walk from your house. The masked man walked past you instead of following in your shadow, grabbing your arm and dragging you toward the mahogany double doors. He pulled the heavy knocker three times. It was so loud, that the sound disturbed a flock of birds resting in the circle of trees surrounding the building. There were a few clicks and shutters behind the door before it peeled open, revealing a quite tall, pale woman. Her height wasn't even the intimidating part, it was the fact that she didn't even have a face. "Hello, sweetheart. You can call me Mother." She outstretched a thin hand, which you hesitantly took to shake. "I hope Deliberate didn't cause you too much trouble." She nodded towards the masked man beside you. "I would've sent someone more qualified in choosing a baby sitter, but all of my other proxies were busy." You shook your head to clear your thoughts when she turned to lead you into her home, "B-Babysitter?" You stuttered, being nudged in by the rude 'proxy'. "Mhm! I'm heading out today for some errands, and I needed someone to look after my children." She bent down, extending her slender arms to pick up one of the said children. "Mostly this one." She planted what sounded like a kiss on his forehead before turning and outstretching the child to you. The baby was fucking adorable, in honesty. With a wide grin and sparkling black eyes, it almost looked normal despite the black took over the whites of his eyes. “Y-You want me," You pointed at yourself," A complete stranger to hold your pride and joy, none the less a living child?" It seemed kind of absurd. "Honey, don't make me not like you." Her tone fell flat, causing you to remember your situation and quickly scooping the baby onto your hip. "Oh good! He already likes you!" Her hands clasped together, "I'll go get my other boys." Oh, Christ, they're all boys. You felt a little awkward waiting with this dude who looks like he wants to kill you at any second, and with this baby who won't stop staring. You looked down, watching as his eyes lit up and that previous grin taking place on his chubby cheeks again following by a gurgling laugh. You couldn't help but return the smile. His pudgy hands reached up, one grasping at your shirt and the other pinching your cheek. "The one in your arms is Splendor." The woman approached again, this time carrying another child. Two were following in her footsteps, obviously older than the infant and toddler. "This one is Trender, and these two are my oldest, Slender and Offender." She nodded at each respectively. None of them really sported any facial features besides this Offender kid. He had a toothy grin that just made him look like he was up to something. You can already tell he'll cause some trouble. She huffed and set the toddler down, who waddled over to his older siblings. "Now, I'm going to be gone until 10:30 tonight. Feel free to explore around the house, eat the food, honestly...I don't care what you do." She shrugged with a sigh. "Just keep them occupied, and if the house isn't burned down by the time I get back, I'll give you a pretty penny for your efforts." There was a rustle behind you and Deliberate brushed the fur coat against you as he walked past to help Mother put it on. "If you need help Slender will know what to do." She glanced your way before walking towards her children, saying an individual goodbye to each one. She approached you, letting Splendor grasp onto her finger as she looked at you. Her voice lowered out of earshot for the older boys. "If I come back and either a, you are not here, or b, any of my boys have as little as a scratch on them, I will find you, I will break all of your bones, rip them out of our body and use them for home decor." She paused, letting the emphasis sink in. You nodded slowly as Slendor chimed in with a laugh. "Isn't that right baby boy!~" She cooed at the infant, kissing him on the cheek. He pressed saliva covered lips to her thin cheek in return. She straightened up to her full height, placing a hand on your shoulder. "10:30, 15 hours. Do not screw up." She struts past you, Deliberate sparing a glare as he followed her out. The door slammed behind them, leaving you alone with these little shits.

Staring at the mahogany wood, you tried to think of a plan for the day. "So..." You turned away from the door, looking at the three- wait one was missing. Your eyes widened in panic as you glanced around. "Offender went to raid the fridge." The tallest one said, despite not even having a mouth. Not that it surprised you, considering their mother is the most abnormal creature you've seen in your life. "Right." You nodded, glancing across the large lobby of the manor towards a set of doors with 'Kitchen' carved into a plaque above them. "Slender, right?" You looked at the eldest, who responded with a nod. "Okay, you're going to have to help me, because I don't do children, and they don't like me either." You paused, looking down at Trender who has decided to latch on to your jeans. "Small ones, at least." You added as the kitchen door swung open, revealing a walking pile of ramen noodle boxes. "Can you fix these Miss Human?" You could see a pair of legs poking out from under the boxes. "Not all of them, and not now. You guys aren't having ramen for breakfast." You paced towards the second eldest, grasping a box from the top so the kid can see, "And I have a name, squirt." You said, pushing the door open to the kitchen with your shoulder. "Have you guys eaten?" "No." “Yes." "Yes." "Will you guys shut up? You want extra pancakes or not?" Offender set the boxes down by the large dining table with a grumble. "Trender only knows the word 'yes', Offender." Meanwhile, you struggled to get Spenldor in his high chair, who kept spreading his chubby legs so they wouldn't go through the leg holes. For a little baby, he was putting a hell of a strain on your arm. You had to quite literally peel Trender off and set him on your leg to see over the table you sat at. "Aight, we're gonna have a talk to set a schedule for the day." You secured an arm around the toddler's torso. "You should just let us watch t.v. all day, nothing can go wrong then." Offender shrugged. "You're gonna be a shit eater aren't you?" "Yeah, that's what mom says." He grinned. "Try not to curse too much Trender is learning words." Slender chimed in. "My name is [Y/n], by the way. You can call me that." You paused as they awkwardly just nodded in response. Splendor managed to learn how to eat his own foot for the time being. "How old are you guys?" You glanced between the four. Offender opened his mouth as if to speak, but Slender beat him to it. "In Ender years, I'm 11, Offender is 7, Trender is 3, and Splendor is 1." "Ender years..." You whispered. "Should I ask what that is for humans?" "No." "We're not allowed." "Yes." "Okay, whatever. You two watch t.v. or whatever, I'm gonna see what I can do with these two." You glanced between Splendor and Trender, who was neck grasping onto the chain of your necklace. "There's a schedule mom made on the fridge for Sun." You huffed and stood, struggling to hold Trender on your hip due to the contrast in size between him and Splendor. "Who's Sun?" You shifted your weight on one hip as you looked over the schedule. "One of mom's proxies," Slender answered. As you looked over the schedule, there were really some peculiar things that stood out to you. "You guys have a library?" You glanced over your shoulder to find Offender was gone and Slender was picking up Splendor to accompany you by the fridge. "Yeah, we go in there to do school work. We have lessons today." He mentioned., pacing over with a squirming piece of chub. "Outdoor play, 1:00." You mumbled, running a finger down the list. "Don't let Offender outside, he'll throw a ball through the window to get you in trouble. Mom's catching on though, so it's a 50-50 chance." "...Thanks." You sighed, turning. "I take it you do most of the work with your brothers?" You lead him out of the kitchen and held the door for him. "Yeah, mostly." He mumbled, shifting Splendor on his side. You paused, seeing the sight of the lobby and wondering how in the hell Offender managed to make this much of a mess in the span of 3 minutes. Toys were scattered, the table in the middle was knocked over, the rug was twisted in all kinds of directions, not to mention the articles of clothing on top of the chandelier. Trender gripped onto your shirt and neck, burying his head into your chest. Your brows furrowed as you rubbed his back. "He gets upset when mom yells at Offender." "Does she do it often?" "Have you met him?" "Right." You glanced around at the harsh sight. "Let's find your brother, then."

#Slender #Slender proxy #slenderman #mama slender #splendor #trender #trenderman #Splendorman #slender brother #creepypasta fandom #creepypasta #creepypasta imagines #creepypasta headcanon #creepypasta imagine #creepypasta blog

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marlettwrites · 5 years

Text

11/11/11 tag

I was tagged by the lovely @marie-writess! Thank you! Sorry this took me so long, I was really dragging my feet on writing my own questions.

1. How heavily do you plot before starting your story?

I like to make sure most, if not all of the details are planned out. I may change them later as I write, but it helps me a lot to know exactly where I want the story to go. If I don’t do this, I end up getting stuck. A lot.

At the very least, I like to have all my major plot points planned. Where are the characters starting? Where are they going? How do they get there, and what major obstacles do they encounter along the way?

2. Do you have writing schedule? If so, what does it look like?

I wish. I probably should start planning one. Right now, I write when I have the time and/or energy.

3. What are some common themes in the things you write? Is there anything that you almost always seem to include?

Okay, so found family. Always.

I’ve also been noticing a theme of family in general in most of my works. Often, there will be some form of familial conflict that is integral to the story. In A Curse of Healing, Jude is fleeing an abusive family and Kul is at odds with his dad. They find family within each other. In another story, a closeted trans teen is living with his anti-LGBTQ+ parents and siblings, in another one I have an Asian-American teen born to immigrant parents who doesn’t really understand everything his parents did for him and he’s kind of a little shit about it, and in yet another story I have a stay at home mom who feels like she’s losing touch with her husband and daughter.

So yeah, there’s a bit of a theme of a huge family divide that can either be fixed through mutual understanding, or ‘he/she/they is toxic, get the fuck out of there now’.

Also, not to be cheesy or anything, but I totally have a running theme of the power of friendship going as well.

4. What is the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever had given to you?

Writer’s Block? Don’t know her.

If you can’t think of what happens in your story next or how to word it, just write whatever is on your mind so you can blow your metaphorical nose. Once the clog is gone, you will be breathing freely.

5. What are some of your writer dreams? fears?

For dreams, I want to inspire people (specifically LGBTQ+, disabled, and POC youth) by showing them that they can be the hero of the story too. Really, I just want to help build a world where there is no ‘default’ character and a story with any kind of representation isn’t met with cries of ‘THAT character can’t/shouldn’t be a POC/trans/disabled/gay/a woman/muslim because *bullshit excuse for bigotry*!’

My biggest fear is that my ability to write won’t match up with what I want to do, and I’ll end up harming those groups instead of helping them.

6. When it comes to writing love are you more drawn to platonic or romantic love?

I love me some good platonic love. I adore sweet, wholesome friendships in stories. However, that doesn’t mean I’ll shy away from romance.

Although I can only think of two stories I have planned where a romance takes center stage

7. What weakness in your writing are you currently overcoming or have overcome?

I’m working on both writing and reading more regularly. I’ve had my nose stuck in a book since I first learned to read, but after my sophomore year of high school, I just kind of... stopped reading.

I don’t fully understand why that happened, but I think a big part of it is that I pick up books based on how similar they are to the ones I want to write (because they’re all I want to read) and then I feel disappointed when it’s not MY book.

I know, I know, it’s stupid and paradoxical.

8. What do you see as your greatest strength as a writer?

I can do a grammar and spelling real good.

Okay, but seriously though. I try to make my characters complex beings that feel real. I want complicated relationships, moral quandries, and ‘oh shit’ moments of self-discovery.

People better be able to spend hours psychoanalyzing the characters up in this bitch.

9. Is there a genre you thought you’d never write in that you have? What are the genres that currently you feel you’d never write?

Honestly, not really? I’ve always loved reading fantasy and sci-fi, and that’s all I can think to write right now. If we’re counting subplots, I never thought I’d be able to write anything romantic, but then Jude and Kul came along and whOOpS!

Currently (and probably forever and ever until the end of time) I will never write erotica. Not because I think the genre is ‘inferior’ or whatever (it’s certain to present its own unique challenges, and I’d assume is as difficult to plan and execute as any other genre), but because I am extremely sex-repulsed. Just reading about two characters making out makes me extremely uncomfortable. I wouldn’t be able to do it.

10. What kind of characters do you struggle to write? Why do you think that is?

Oof, uhh... probably really crafty inventive characters. I don’t know enough about the way things work to come up with a rube goldberg on the fly.

But I’m going to have to learn, because guess what kind of character Kul is?

11. Who or what was your biggest motivation to start writing? Is it still the same today?

Okay, so this was a whole process for me, and I kind of have to write out the whole story now. Sorry not sorry.

I hated writing up until one particular assignment in the fourth grade. It was a very specific turning point for me. I had been creating fan characters for awhile before this happened, but what I didn’t realize while crafting their (not so) carefully thought out backstories, was that I was moving along the writing process.

So we get an assignment. We have to write a story about a quest in the fashion of a Greek myth. There must be a character who is sent on a heroic journey to do a thing, and there must be exactly three obstacles that get in the way of the hero’s goal.

I don’t remember exactly what I wrote, but I do recall that it involved my Sonic OC, Crystal Amber Fox. She was an anthropomorphic fox with ice powers and pieces of amber embedded in her body because I thought it looked cool, I guess. She was also the princess of the ice kingdom, and her parents sent her on a quest to... I think slay a dragon? I think she also had to take the prince of the fire kingdom with her (a black hedgehog with flame designs on his quills. Aptly named ‘Flame’, if I’m remembering right. Also, I think he was actually someone else’s OC that I saw on DeviantArt and subsequently went ‘Hey! Crystal should date him!’ To the creator of Flame the hedgehog, whoever you may be, I am deeply sorry for stealing your OC and putting him in a Greek-inspired epic without your permission).

Anyway, there was a swamp and a magic sword and a dragon that they were supposed to slay, but I doubt they actually did because I’ve always had a huge soft spot for dragons.

So it was fourth grade, and the teacher was probably expecting like, two pages.

I turned in twenty and got the elementary school equivalent of an A+.

It was while writing out that story that I first started to think ‘gee, maybe writing could be fun, actually’. Thanks, Mrs. Burpee. I owe you one.

To answer the second part of your question, in a way, my motivations are the same. I write because I like writing and that’s all there is to it.

My questions and tag list will be under the cut. :)

How old were you when you first realized you wanted to write?

What was the first story you ever wrote about?

What are some of your writing goals?

How often do you write, and do you have a writing schedule?

Who is your favorite OC that you've created?

Which is your least favorite OC?

What are three things you like about your writing?

What are three things you want to improve in your writing?

Tell me a bit about your current WIP!

What are you most proud of about your WIP?

What is your favorite scene that you’ve written in your WIP so far?

Tagging: @kai-writesstuff @quilloftheclouds @practising-writer @imaghostwriter @caz-writes @angelolytle @planets-and-prose @runningonrain

#ACOH #11/11/11 tag #tag game #writing #my writing #writing about writing #marlettwrites #marlett

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arielmagicesi · 5 years

Text

often when a series ends and especially when there is such a show-stopping ending, before I can analyze how I feel, I have to first list everything that actually happened. Now I don’t know if Steven Universe is actually over but I just. what the fuck that was too much I didn’t have time to react before getting slapped with something else

spoilers below obviously

I was tempted to start listing from the point of “Gem Drill” because I’ve heard that only a year has passed since then and I mean, what a fucking wild year for poor Steven. I’m also tempted to start listing from “A Single Pale Rose” because shit moved FAST starting from there. But I’m just gonna list everything that happened in “Change Your Mind.”

It’s kind of what makes me suspect that this is the final episode of the entire series, because although plot pacing has been accelerating throughout the entire series (going from “Steven learns how to bubble” taking 10 episodes, to “diamond showdown” being a minor subplot of 1) and although the plot pacing went super-speed for this whole diamond arc, this episode shoved EVERY LAST THING IN.

stuff that could’ve waited (Lars and Sadie’s reunion) and stuff that should’ve taken vastly longer if it even should’ve happened at all (White Diamond’s lightning-speed reformation) was all put into one episode. now, it was deftly combined, and I liked almost every individual part, and there was some possibly-unintended comedy to it all (”she’s GOOOOONE!!!!” and White Diamond demonstrating the big ship’s pussy-out look, etc) but holy hell I would have loved for it to have gone at a slower pace so that they could have explored some of the stuff.

[also, my ability to react to things is lessened. meeting Sunstone would’ve been, I’m not joking, the highlight of my week just two years ago. now it wasn’t even the coolest of the fusions we met, and meeting the fusions was an incredibly minor point in the episode. also i have other things in my life now lol]

obviously, part of this pacing is due to the airing schedule of the show. on a normal airing schedule, I’d feel emotionally exhausted- this would have been, what, a month after the Pink-Diamond-is-Rose-Quartz reveal? but because this show airs in the dumbest way possible, we have like five hundred years between plot points. however, Steven did not? Pearl did not? Garnet did not? CONNIE did not? how the fuck are they getting along?

secondly, this was all in one episode, so yeah holy shit, some whiplash occurring for this here viewer

(one final note: I now take back getting annoyed that we got Watermelon Moana last week because it was so gentle compared to this)

anyway, my promised list of Crazy Shit that happened in one 40-minute episode:

1. Steven gets a flashback that tells him about a previous transgression of Pink’s, where we meet some other aliens. pointing to an old rebellion?

2. we see another Steven identity crisis with him flashing through Steven-Pink-Rose

3. Steven convinces Blue Diamond that she’s abusive and she immediately realizes the error of her ways and decides to help him and Connie out. (also, Connie talks to Diamonds a lot, I love her. damn girl)

4. we retrieve the bubbled Crystal Gems

5. Yellow and Blue have a big public diamond showdown

6. we discover that Yellow Diamond has emotions and tears, and feels pressured. shocking. if only the planets she’d colonized had thought to sit her down and chat

7. Yellow decides to join Steven’s side as well

8. they make a plan to escape via the leg-ship

9. White Diamond decides to show up and do her Creepy Act and she lands her big torso on the legs (confirming the obvious theory that the ships act as one big body)

10. Diamond Showdown Part 2, where Yellow and Blue attempt to fight White

11. Bismuth, Lapis, and Peridot return. We see Lapis and Peridot’s new forms.

12. Bismuth has fixed the arm ships and upper-cuts an upper-crust for the first time in her life in a really cool way.

13. Steven manages to say words to White Diamond, and so do Yellow and Blue.

14. White Diamond GREY-IFIES BLUE AND YELLOW DIAMOND

15. which also means we find out exactly what the fuck is wrong with White Pearl (also may I say, this is something I wrote about in my fic, accessible on my AO3, linked in my About)

16. Steven falls dramatically with the gems of his friends in his arms

17. Steven finds out he can (and decides to) retrieve gems from their gems by fusing with them

18. We see Smoky Quartz form mid-air

19. We see Amethyst’s new form

20. Steven fuses with Pearl for the first time ever, and we see Rainbow Quartz 2.0 for the first time

21. We see Pearl’s new form

22. We see what a pink diamond/rose quartz forms with a garnet for the very first time

23. Steven’s own first fusion with Garnet

24. Sunstone attempts to start shit with the giant robot

25. We see Garnet’s new form

26. Bismuth presents the replacement for the Sword of Rose Quartz, as a gift to Connie

27. We see the full-blown temple fusion for the very first time ever

28. Steven has his first fusion with all the Crystal Gems

29. We meet Obsidian and she succeeds in starting shit with the giant robot

30. We see Bismuth, Peridot, Lapis, and Connie all contribute to the fight and survive horrifyingly dangerous scenarios. (still gotta wonder what the HELL Connie’s mom was thinking... she went from not letting her kid watch inaccurate TV shows to letting her nearly die countless times in outer space at the hands of alien dictator robots)

31. let me just add, I <3 Connie and she deserves the world. bravest kid in the universe

32. the Crystal Gems find a way to invade the robot

33. the four main Crystal Gems face up against White Diamond herself and her grey-ified pearl and grey-ified fellow diamonds

34. White reveals a bit to us via villain-monologue that we probably could’ve guessed already: she wants every gem to be flawless, to be identical to her essentially yet subservient- which she considers to be synonymous with flawlessness- and her theory about the way the colors of the diamonds informs their personalities. Including that Pink is part of White, despite White’s dislike of this fact.

35. White grey-ifies the Crystal Gems

36. Connie arrives, also fully ready to fight this bitch

37. the grey-ified Crystal Gems restrain Steven and Connie

38. Steven gets to have that full-fledged conversation he wanted with White, I guess

39. BIGGEST ACTUAL REVEAL OF THE EPISODE: We find out what happens when Steven’s gem is removed from his stomach!!! that’s been a question since episode ONE I think

40. we get to see a Pink Steven and a Human Steven, which is pretty cool. I compare it to what might happen if you got split into What You Got From Your Dad and What You Got From Your Mom

41. this is just my theory, but we find out, I think, that Steven’s general strength in everyday movement comes from diamond strength and that he turns weaker than a baby without it, which makes sense because he’s always had it

42. White Diamond attempts to grey-ify Pink

43. we find out, as Pink Steven so eloquently says, that Pink Diamond/Rose Quartz really, really is gone. she died in childbirth essentially. I think he might someday manage to access her full memories but I don’t think that persona is ever returning

44. we see what Steven’s bubbles/shield would look like in full diamond form

45. the badass scene of Connie CARRYING STEVEN TO HIMSELF?

46. we discover that either Steven is the most special boy ever, or White’s powers are no match for love or some shit

47. we get to see Steven... fuse with himself?

48. everyone gets un-greyified. Including White Pearl. the white-pearl-is-old-pink-pearl theory is confirmed, though I think it may have been in a flashback in “Familiar” and hinted at during Steven’s flashback at the start of the episode when Blue said “she’ll take away your pearl”

49. we see Steven/Pink’s full empathy powers in play, I think? that’s what happened when he pink-ified the whole group? INCLUDING WHITE?

50. Steven gives White Diamond one of his lightning-round therapy sessions, and she decides to Be Nice Now, Actually

51. that’s right. THERE ARE NO VILLAINS I’M GONNA LOSE MY MIND

52. the ENTIRE GROUP GOES TO EARTH

53. meaning that White leaves Homeworld (and “her own head”) for the first time in eons, according to the other Diamonds anyway

54. we get to see Sadie and the Cool Kids’ new looks. minor I know, but Jenny looks great in a suit!

55. also minor but cool: they’re covering “Let Me Drive My Van Into Your Heart”

56. for the second time in like 2 weeks, Diamond Ships interrupt a townwide Beach City gathering

57. we find out that Beach City is full of fucking idiots who thought that the ship was like, a grand finale to the concert? instead of full-on panicking mayhaps? cause every time this shit happens it usually leads to mayhem?

58. the Off-Colors, coincidentally, finally arrive on Earth at the exact same time

59. Lars meets Lion for the first time as Pink Zombie Brothers

60. Lars and Sadie reunion, in which we also find out that Sadie is like a legendary figure for the Off Colors

61. THE OFF COLORS MEET THE FUCKING DIAMONDS

62. Greg and Steven reunite

63. The Diamonds meet and finally heal the Centipeedles

64. The Diamonds visit Rose’s fountain and get it working as a four-diamond extravaganza event

65. every gem from the temple is brought there to be healed. we see the healing of, I assume, p much every monster we’ve met

66. we get to see the Heaven and Earth Beetle, who are pebbles too, and lesbians!

67. callback to the memories of the four Diamonds having swimming pool time

68. Jasper gets healed and naturally tries to destroy Steven immediately, then looks up to see all three of her diamonds. She and Amethyst get to bond, I guess.

69. Callback to the intro itself with the “We Are the Crystal Gems” song and all the new Crystal Gems chilling on the beach

70. New song, “Change Your Mind” and it’s cute obviously

My feelings on the episode? So besides what I wrote above the list, re: whiplash, I think that from a realistic standpoint and a writing-fantasy standpoint, it is some wild shit. For all three diamonds to achieve a FULL redemption arc in one episode? Too much. For there to be NO villains? Come on. And for the lesson to be, we should just give heartless dictators love and they’ll grow hearts? Worrying.

However, as I reached the end of the episode, I thought about a time in high school when my teacher asked me which superpower I’d want, and then annoyed the class by seeming morally superior by saying he’d want to speak every language. Thinking on it later, I thought- I’d want more than every language. I’d want the ability to TRULY understand others, and to make them TRULY understand me- and each other. Because yes, OF COURSE every conflict can be boiled down to a lack of understanding, a lack of empathy. If we had superhuman empathy on our side, we really could do away with violence. But in the real world, we don’t have superhuman empathy, we just have regular empathy, and some don’t even try to use that. So saying “have a little empathy for your oppressors” is ghoulish.

But Steven DOES have superhuman empathy. In fact, all the Diamonds do. Blue can make others cry, White can make others be identical to her, and Yellow can give others fear and command. And they use it only for evil. But Pink can make others understand. And she had only used it for frivolous things until she finally combined with a non-gem life form. Then, human empathy met superhuman empathy, and did what it had to do. THAT is how Steven defeated the Diamond Reign of Terror.

That being said: I don’t know if the target audience of kids really caught that nuance, considering that the episode went so fucking fast. Additionally: some of that superhuman empathy could’ve been pointed at the legions of crushed, oppressed little gems- which I know it was- but the focus was SO intensely on, like, “poor Yellow never got enough credit for being SO good at imperialism!”

So yeah. Both writing-wise, pacing-wise, plot-wise, message-wise... I did love it, as I do the whole show, but I also thought it could’ve benefited from some space, some criticism, and some better organization down at Cartoon Network’s scheduling department.

Art-wise, well I’m not an animation expert, but Obsidian can get it <3 and I loved the designs for everything.

Character-wise... I’ll have to think on it more.

OK THE END I’M DONE REACTING TO STEVEN UNIVERSE. SHOW’S OVER

#steven universe #su spoilers #change your mind #written by me #this is a mammoth essay that i wrote on the spot. feel free to skip or skim

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bitegore · 6 years

Note

what is the most painful possible way you could murder someone using only things you have in your house rn

[fingerguns] get ready for A Ride, because my preferred methods of painful murder are just very, very protracted torture.

tw violence under the cut.

step 0: make sure they’re acceptably tied up by using dad’s awful twine rope thing to hang them from the chandelier hook. duct tape their mouth. now, time to begin:

step 1: take the little glass things that my mom keeps in the candy dishes instead of candy. crush them up. put them in a funnel from the kitchen and duct tape that to the air compressor that my dad has sitting in the hallway from when we had to fix my sister’s mirror. force the glass shards and air under their fingernails.

step 2: take the small cutting drill bit from my room, stick it on my drill, and go at the bottoms of their heels with it. insert broken glass into the open wound, and then stitch the skin shut over it with guitar string. apply fire to seal injury shut.

step 3: repeat step 2 in the wrists, ankles, knuckles, and jaw until satisfied.

step 4: now that they are functionally hobbled and in extreme pain, you can take a bit less precaution. Go get the stepstool. Then take the good old guitar string and stitch their eyes open, preferably eyelid-to-just-under-eyebrow. take the long lighter from the kitchen. apply it to eyeballs directly. then put marbles in their destroyed eye sockets for the hell of it and un-stitch eyeballs.

step 5: take the very small very sharp kitchen knife and skin their back. grind in some more of that broken glass. we should be out of broken glass by now. add some vinegar on top of that. then cauterize it using the base of a pan that gets heated on the stove.

step 6: time to start breaking out the screws. go get a hammer and some nails, force them to put their hands together behind their back, and then screw their fingers together through the middle flange. Put a nut at the other end to keep them together. dunk the combination of hands and metal in alcohol, preferably the pungent kind, because the smell of alcohol and burned flesh and blood is going to be insanely unpleasant and add to the torture.

step 7: boil some water in the teapot. pour it on their legs.

step 8: now go peel all the skin off of their legs.

step 9: get the circular saw out of dad’s workshop. go cut off their feet. Start at the toes, and go in very thin slices. cauterize the stumps when you’re finished with your trusty heated pan bottom. make sure you tourniquet their legs first though! don’t let them bleed out yet. we’re not done.

step 10: remember to narrate all of step nine to them out loud so they can’t forget about it. be sure you tell them in advance but don’t do it in a scheduled way. suspense adds to fear, and fear adds to pain.

step 11: now that you have a whole bunch of cutaway flesh, and a functionally ruined circular saw, pack all that flesh together in a sock and shove it in their mouth, and then duct tape over it again. use it as a gag. that’s so disgusting that it might make them vomit but the gag should keep it from getting out of their mouth.

step 12: go get the really long chain from your room. the heavy rusted one. no need to dirty the coated one with goo and flesh ooze. then fucking whip their legs with it. break them bones. you might need to take a large bucket, fill it with water, and use it as a counterweight to hold them still for that though. if so, use a tie and a whole bunch of the other ropes from your room tied together so that you can tie it around their knees and then to the counterweight.

step 13: they might be shutting down at this point. Give them an hour to come back to their senses. then dump a bucket of ice cold water on their head and tell them that they’re going to die so that they can be terrified and disoriented.

step 14: get the pliers. un-gag them.

step 15: remove their teeth.

step 16: go get the screws, the really long ones. screw them through the fleshy mess where their lower molars were until you see the ends of the screws protrude about an inch out of their lower jaw. use a nice really long screw so that you have like three inches inside the mouth. this should force them to keep their mouth open.

step 17: shred their tongue. take one of the exacto knives and just go the fuck at it. cut out pieces. make fancy shapes. anything. just do it slowly and in tiny sections. they can’t even bite you because they can’t close their mouth.

step 18: go get the hot glue and glue their mess of a tongue inside their mouth so that you have a smooth surface to be working with.

step 19: pour some apple cider vinegar directly down their fucking throat. they have no ability to spit it out without a tongue or way to close their mouth. this will make their stomach hurt.

step 20: take the fake plants out of the vase from the kitchen. shove them in their mouth so they have barbed plastic shit in their throat.

step 21: inform them that they make a very nice decoration. this is a lie but they don’t need to know that.

step 22: inform them that you might just keep them alive so you can keep them like this forever.

step 23: leave for twenty minutes. come back. tell them you changed your mind and they’re still going to die.

step 24: take the corkscrew out of the back room. put it into their windpipe. remove corkscrew.

step 25: now cut off their nose using a kitchen knife.

step 26: this is getting longer than you expected. look outside; it’s a new day. sigh.

step 27: go get the bleach out of the kitchen.

step 28: mix in some broken glass.

step 29: pour it into a glass.

step 30: cut a hole in their lower torso with a kitchen knife. aim for stomach or intestines

step 31: pour in the bleach-glass mixture.

step 32: break the chairs into pieces for kindling and then build a bonfire.

step 33: if they’re not dead yet, doesn’t matter. they will be. dump the body into the fire.

step 34: pour bleach on the ashes after the fire burns itself out. use the hammer to crush any incriminating bones and teeth.

step 35: scatter in the canal behind the house.

step 36: wash your hands and change your clothes. you’ve killed someone very painfully with nothing but household items. good job!

#red replies #torture /#murder /#violence /

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brokemultidotexe · 6 years

Text

Unexpected Pt.19

Pairing: Jungkook x Reader

Summary: You never expected your trip to Seoul to end up like it does. You didn’t expect to step off the plane and have coffee pour down your shirt. You also didn’t expect the guy to offer to show you around the city. You notice things about him that don’t quite make sense, like how he shows interest but will only see you when he has the time which is at random hours during the day and night. Who knew your only friend in Seoul would turn out to be an international star and just how difficult things could get.

Word Count: 2.6k

Warning: None

Genre: Romance/Friendship

Part: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 6.5 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 10.5 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 14.5 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |

“He knows you’re avoiding him Y/N. He’s not stupid, he knows that you know about the video and he’s freaking out.” Jimin sighed.

You shifted your phone from one shoulder to the other as you spread peanut butter on a slice of bread, “I know he is. He’s been blowing up my phone but I told him this was one thing I was worried about. I don’t belong in your world Jimin and I told him I didn’t want this type of thing to happen.”

“He’s already gone to Bang PD. They’ve pulled the video and replaced it with a version that blurred out the both of you in the background. You’re making this out to be worse than it is. I’ve seen the video there is no way that anyone would be able to tell it’s you.” You set the bread and the knife down on the counter and grabbed your cellphone with your hand and switched to the other ear and walking out of the kitchen.

“Jackson knew.” You pointed out.

“Because he knows that you hang out with us so you can’t go based off of one person. Look, neither of you are in trouble because you didn’t do anything wrong. Yeah he told you guys to be careful and try not to be on camera and you could see when you guys realized you were in frame and you left. The editing team should have caught it and blurred it out in the first place.” You heard a noise in the background and you heard a muffled voice that you couldn’t understand.

“Yeah that’s fine. Let me just finish up here and then I’ll come get you.” You stayed quiet knowing that he wasn’t talking to you but whoever had come into the room. “I’m talking to my mom, I’ll be done in a minute.” You felt instant crushing guilt knowing that he was now talking to JK and he was having to lie to him.

You heard the door closed on his side and you instantly apologized, “I’m so sorry you had to lie.”

“Y/N I won’t lie to him again.”

“I don’t expect you to.”

“He just found out our tour date was pushed up and he looks like he’s about to lose it, so I’m asking you to please put him first right now and deal whatever you have to at another time.” You were kind of shocked at Jimin’s request but you also knew that Jimin was really close with JK and probably knew exactly what he was thinking and probably a million other things you had yet to learn about him.

“Okay.” You whispered.

“Look, I need to go check on him but I really hope you’ll reach out to him today.” The two of you said your goodbyes and he hung up the phone and you stood there feeling ten times worse than you did before you talked to Jimin.

You could admit to yourself than in your panic you may have over reacted and you were trying to figure out how you truly felt about the situation. You had a bad habit of closing yourself off when you tried working through something and you kept hurting JK in the process which was never your intent. Jimin was right about you putting JK first. JK constantly put you first at every given moment and you were too afraid to do the same because a fear of getting hurt. You looked at the front door and sighed knowing what you had to do.

Agreeing to the total of the Uber made you die a little inside after seeing what it cost to get you from your apartment to the groups apartment complex. It took you a little bit to even find the address because JK had only taken you there once and it was just for him to run in and grab something and come back out. You knew which building and which apartment number it was but you had never actually been to their apartment even though you had received the invitation many times. You and JK had always opted to just stay at your place.

Your heart was hammering in your chest as you got out of the elevator on their floor and walked to the door of their apartment. You stood there and stared at the door trying to get up the courage to just knock on it. Your hand hovered in front of it for a second before knocking your knuckles against it. You felt incredibly nervous even though you had no reason to feel that way. You were about to knock again but the door swung open and your eyes met Namjoon’s.

“Y/N?” He seemed a little confused to see you standing there. But your eyes fell to the head that popped out around the corner. Jimin smiled at you and walked towards you and Namjoon.

“I’ve got it hyung. She’s here to see Jungkook.” When the words left Jimin’s mouth it looked like everything clicked and he gave you an appreciative smile.

“I’m glad you’re going to talk it out.” Your mind went back to the first time you had met the group and he had asked that instead of shutting JK out to please talk to him instead. Knowing you had shut him out at first made you feel guilty even though you were on your way to fixing it.

Namjoon stepped aside and Jimin motioned you to follow him. He led you to a door at the far end of the hallway and stopped in front of it where the door was cracked. “Thank you.” The sincerity in his voice made you nod. JK was lucky to have his brothers because they all cared for him so much. You didn’t have any siblings but you could tell they all cared very deeply for one another and took care of each other. Jimin gave your shoulder a reassuring squeeze before leaving you standing alone in front of JK’s bedroom door.

You took a deep breath and knocked on the door and opening it a little bit to see JK sitting at a desk that was under his bed with a million different things on it. “Hyung, I’m not in the mood.”

“Should I leave then?” You asked quietly.

JK’s head whipped around to look at you. Jimin wasn’t exaggerating because JK looked like hell. Only a day had passed since the video incident but it looked like the whole situation had made him age five years. “Y/N.” He seemed shocked to see you standing there.

“Can I come in?” you chewed your bottom lip a habit you had when you felt extremely nervous.

“Yeah.” He stood up quickly so you could take the computer chair but you just sat on a mini fridge tucked off to the side that was across from him. JK’s room was nothing like you imagined it. He wasn’t lying when he said he had a lot of things and his bedroom was cluttered. There were things everywhere but the room suited him. You could see evidence of his hobbies littered around his room.

JK was the first to break the silence between you once he sat back down, “I tried calling—“

“I know.” You said softly.

“I talked to Bang—“

“I know.” You gave him a small smile.

“If you know then why did you avoid me?” He seemed hurt and confused.

“I talked to Jimin this morning and he told me about you going to Bang PD and having them fix the video and I appreciate that.”

“Of course. I know how you feel about the whole thing Y/N. I promised you I would do everything I could to shield you from anyone knowing about you. I plan to stick to that promise. I know I’m already asking a lot from you because I want to be selfish and I don’t take a single second I have with you for granted. You’re important to me.”

You sighed, “I know that JK.”

“If you know that then what would make you think I wouldn’t fix it as soon as I found out about it?” you could hear the frustration in his voice and it made you feel guilty.

“It’s not like that at all JK, it’s not that I don’t think you would fix it. But see it from my point of view, okay? Something that was between just the two of us was suddenly on the internet and it wasn’t just a few people that saw it. Your YouTube channel has millions of subscribers JK and a cut of that video was already making its rounds on Twitter. Hell I mean Jackson called me to tell me to go look at the video. Do you have any idea how weird it felt? That people were seeing something that should have only been between the two of us? Or suddenly the girl your with has your fans already trying to figure out who it is. I’m a normal girl from America that doesn’t even live in a city so yeah the whole thing was overwhelming and it freaked me out and I just needed to catch my footing because I wasn’t prepared to deal with it.” You felt your body sag after getting your explanation out. “It has nothing to do with what I think about you or anything like that. It’s just the whole thing in general. Sometimes I forget about how much of your life the public cares about.”

JK reached out and grabbed your hand and tugged you towards him. You stood up and he pulled you over and pulled you onto his lap. Your legs hung over the arm of the chair and you melted into him your head resting against his chest while he wrapped his arms around you. The two of you stayed like that for a while, “They moved up the tour date.” His voice was barely above a whisper, “because of some scheduling conflicts they’ve had to start it earlier than planned.”

“So when do you start?”

“Less than a month.”

You sat up and looked at him, “What? How do they go from 3 months out to less than a month?” It felt like the floor had just disappeared under you because you felt your stomach drop. You had it in your mind that you still had a few months left not a few weeks. You weren’t ready to give him up yet.

“I don’t know. We have a meeting tomorrow to find out the exact departure date but they dropped that information on us a few hours ago.” Jimin’s change of tone after JK had come into his room now made sense because suddenly the two of you had a lot less time and wasting it over a stupid video wasn’t worth it.

Jungkook tucked a stray piece of hair behind your ear, “I’m not ready for this.” you whispered. Your brain was still processing and you felt panicked and it felt like someone was clutching your heart in their fist.

“Hey, we’ll figure something out. We don’t have to figure it out right now though. I just want you here with me. That’s all I care about right now.” He had gently grabbed your chin to look at him and the way he looked at you made your heart race but feel like it was shattering all at the same time. When he dropped his hand it looked like he wanted to say something and you waited for him to say it but whatever it was it looked like he was battling himself pretty hard. “Would you stay?” the question confused you and he could tell so he went on. “Would you stay here with me tonight....instead of you going back to your apartment?”

You felt yourself nodding before you had even fully processed his request but part of you didn’t want to leave. A month wasn’t long and you wanted to make sure you could spend as much time with him as possible.”Yeah, of course.”

He smiled and pulled you towards him and kissed you lightly on your temple and whispered a quick thank you in your ear. You gave his arm a reassuring squeeze while he still had his arms wrapped around you. You continued to sit on his lap with your legs dangling off the armrest and JK’s arms wrapped tightly around you keeping you close to his body.

You weren’t sure how long it had been before he suggested going to lay down on his bed. You slid off his lap and realized you didn’t have any clothes to sleep in. “Umm...JK.” he turned to look at you, “I don’t have anything to sleep in.” He walked over to his closet and you saw a bunch of white tshirts hanging up. He grabbed one and then pulled out some joggers and handed them to you.

“I’ll wait outside, just open the door when you’re done.” he kissed your forehead and left you alone in his room. You took the moment to look around. His room was packed with a million different things. He had recording stuff and photography stuff. You couldn’t even comprehend it all. You slipped on the clothes he gave you and his scent enveloped you. You sighed as emotions built up in your chest. You weren’t ready for him to leave yet and you didn’t know how you would handle any of it. You knew you couldn’t dwell on it because it would only make the time you had left depressing. Once you had yourself situated you opened the door and you saw Jimin talking with JK. They both looked at you once you opened the door and Jimin smirked seeing you in JK’s clothes and you felt your face heat up.

JK left Jimin and walked towards you with a smile on his face and closed the door after he stepped into his bedroom. He stood at the bottom of the ladder and motioned for you to go ahead and climb up. You couldn’t remember the last time you had to climb a latter to get to a bed. You had a bunk bed when you were younger but it felt weird climbing into one as an adult. You scooted across the bed once you were up there and JK followed right behind you after turning off the light making the only source of light a lamp to the side of you. The two of you slid back and he laid down and pulled you with him so you were laying on his chest. You would have thought that you would feel awkward or incredibly nervous about spending the night with him and sharing a bed, but it didn’t feel weird at all if anything it felt right.

“We’ll make the most of the time we have left before our tour, I promise. You’ll be sick of me by the end of it.” His fingers were running through your hair.

“If there’s one thing i’m sure of, it’s that I’ll never be sick of you.” You curled into his side as the warmth of his body caused you to scoot even closer to him which you weren’t sure was even possible. The one thing running through your mind before you fell asleep was how you were going to make it through him leaving.

AN: I was originally going to post this tomorrow but since tomorrow is my birthday i figured i would gift you guys as well. I hope this chapter gives everyone some type of feeling. Their days are numbered and they’re making the most of what they have. I love you all and i hope you enjoyed!

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sally-mun · 6 years

Text

My shitty few days

Sorry just need to purge for a while.

So as I mentioned the other day, we had to put Autumn down. We’ve only had her for a couple years, and it was very, very sudden. I’m finding myself handling this loss really poorly compared to the other cats, I think because it’s so out of the blue rather than having been something we saw coming for a while.

Autumn was due for her normal annual appointment for shots and a physical, but over the last couple days we saw she’d been breathing a little heavily. I kept trying to listen to her breathing to get a sense of whether or not she was congested, but she was purring almost every time, so it was hard to hear anything at all. The one time she wasn’t, it sounded slightly stuffy, so we assumed she had a headcold, which Morrigan had dealt with before, and figured she’d need a round of antibiotics. We took her to the appointment on Saturday and explained the situation, and our vet tech took her in the back to weigh her. Everything was just... so normal.

Eventually the doctor came in with two x-rays, which was already a worrisome sign. She showed us one that she said was a normal x-ray from another cat, which already told me that something about Autumn’s was abnormal. She showed us how the lungs are supposed to be a dark spot in the front, and the heart is down here, and x-y-z, then switched over to Autumn’s chart. There was no dark spot for the lungs at all, and the trachea was pushed way up near her spine. She explained that Autumn had an enlarged heart that was pushing up on her lungs and that the cavity was full of fluid, and that she was in congestive heart failure and they had her on oxygen in the back room. From the sound of it, she probably would’ve only maybe gotten through the weekend at best had she stayed home, but the stress of riding in a car and then going to the doctor had accelerated her decline, and she really only had minutes left.

We were in utter and complete shock. I just... could not believe what I was hearing. I understood what I was being told, but part of me still just didn’t understand. I could not believe that she wasn’t coming home with us, that this would be the last time I’d ever see her. All of a sudden I could only think about how there was no ‘wind down’ period where we could make peace, and do our final iterations of our rituals, and take lots of pictures, and say our goodbyes. I realized that @fini-mun had no idea what was going on, and I called and said to get to the vet immediately because Autumn was about to die. More than anything I was haunted by a dream I’d had earlier in the week, in which Autumn was being put down and I remembered grabbing her off the table and shouting “What are you doing?! She’s so young!!” and just screaming and screaming as I felt her die in my arms.

When Deebs arrived they took her off the oxygen and brought her back to the exam room so we could see her for a few minutes, and it was clear that she was suffering and that even if we didn’t do it now it wouldn’t be long, but that the humane thing to do was to do it then. It was just all so rapid and there just wasn’t time to come to terms with it or get our proper goodbyes in. She just. disappeared. And as such I still haven’t felt yet like she died so much as I feel like she was taken away, and I’m having a lot of difficulty getting my psyche to even accept that it’s not that she’s missing, it’s that she’s gone.

Autumn’s death is almost exactly 2 months after Morrigan’s, and that is also messing with me, because I’ve never dealt with back-to-back passings like this and now Rory is the only cat. I’ve never had a single cat and the house feels so much emptier than I would’ve guessed. What’s worse is that Rory is a very social cat, and now he’s by himself. He’s had stress reactions each time one of the cats has passed (Morrigan in particular seemed to upset him), but he seems to be really urgently looking for Autumn. His entire social group is gone, and given that he’s only 5, they were all cats that were around more or less his whole life. He seems very disturbed to be the only cat and has been following us around and trying to get our attention and leading us to random places. Where’s Sally? Where’s Morrigan? Where’s Autumn? And I hate that I have no way of explaining any of this to him. All he knows is that they’re missing, and I can’t tell him where they went.

I had to work that day, too. Luckily my boss was really sympathetic to the situation and juggled the schedule around so that I’d only have to be there for 4 hours instead of a full shift, and she did that while on vacation, so that was really nice of her. Unfortunately this was a weekend where I had to work both days, so I couldn’t take Sunday to deal with it either -- but then it got even harder.

So on a Sunday, you both open and close because the mall hours are shortened, and you typically have one associate to work with, sometimes two if it’s a holiday weekend or something. This week, I only had one -- and he had texted me saying that he was feeling sick. He said he’d texted everyone on our team asking someone to take his shift and couldn’t get any takers, and he didn’t know what to do. This guy is generally honest and reliable, so I didn’t have any reason not to trust him. I told him if he could just make it in, I’d have him only do cashiering and I’d take care of the rest, but he said he hurt to even get out of bed, so I told him I’d figure it out. When I got to my store, the first thing I did was call some neighboring stores to see if they could send someone over. I was sure that out of 3 other stores, SOMEONE had to be able to help, but, no. No one could (or would) come help.

This was a huge, huge problem for several reasons. First and foremost, you’re not only not supposed to work alone on a Sunday, but you’re not allowed to close alone, period at the end. When we leave the store we do bag and pocket checks on each other, so if I’m not working with anyone, there’s no one to check me. It gets worse, though, because my boss is on vacation right now, so I’m responsible for doing the “Monday Madness” (aka a shiiiitton of administrative stuff), buuut I’m not able to work on Monday, so I had to do it Sunday. Furthermore, my company holds contests among the stores to see who can sell the most push items, and in my district we’re divided into teams of 5 to report on how much we’ve sold, aaand in this instance our store was a team leader, which means we have to call the other stores to check on them and record how they’re doing. On top of it all, this just happened to be a VERY busy Sunday; my store (or rather, I) did over $1,800 in sales, which is outrageously high for that day of the week.

It was just... such an enormous amount of work. Managing the store is a huge amount of work even on a normal day, but on this day I was both opening and closing, running the contest, performing Monday Madness duties, and still intermittently trying to get someone to come in and help me, all in the midst of an $1,800 sales day -- plus all the little responsibilities I have, such as trying to get add-ons for certain products (which I’m scored on) or trying to ensure that I sell contest items in at least sets of 2 (which I’m also scored on) and filling in the day planner (which typically takes the better part of an hour), plus just simply -cleaning- the store and getting jewelry out of the locked cases and greeting people that come in while I’m in the midst of a transaction and getting product down from high shelves on a ladder and trying to watch out for and deter shoplifters. It was just so, so, so much to handle on my own in 6 hours. By the end of the day I was so spent that I kept pausing because my brain couldn’t keep up with what I was supposed to say at check-out. Quite frankly I’m amazed that my drawer was only off 10 cents. Plus somewhere in there I was supposed to get a lunch and a 10 minute break, but obviously neither of those happened. The only thing I was able to consume over the course of the day was half a bottle of water.

Today I’m off, but it’s still no time for rest or relaxation. The only reason I’m off today is because my mother needed to have surgery done and I requested the day off because I needed to be able to drive her, get her medicine, and look after her once we got home. Had to be up at 6:00 this morning because we had to be to the hospital by 7:45, but we were aiming for 7:15 in case we ran into problems. For some reason I talked myself out of bringing a bottle of coffee to substitute for breakfast. What can I say, I don’t eat terribly well when I’m not in a great place emotionally. I finally had an opportunity to find something to eat around 11:00.

Anyway, I can at least say that the hospital staff was great and hanging out with my mom for a couple hours before they took her off to surgery was nice, but I was just so, so tired. And even though it was a relatively minor surgery (to fix her deviated septum so she could breathe and sleep better), there’s always that bit of stress with knowing that your family member is being put under and their well-being (or even their life) is in someone else’s hands and things do go wrong sometimes, and even following the successful surgery this is a procedure that needs particularly high guards against infection and I still need to be on my toes even though she’s home. My mom is doing okay but she’s still in some pain and there are a lot of things she can’t do for herself right now, so I’m having a hard time really letting myself settle down and relax because I don’t want her to fail to rouse me and try to do something herself instead and start bleeding or get an infection or otherwise get hurt because she’s woozy from the drugs.

I’m off tomorrow too so I can continue looking after my mom, so maybe in that time I’ll finally be able to take a deep breath, but who knows honestly. It’s just been. a lot over the last 3 days. I feel emotionally shot and even though I’m constantly tired I feel like I haven’t slept even when I have. After tomorrow I work 4 days in a row at my job, which isn’t necessarily bad but it’s always tougher when my boss is on vacation because invariably SOME shit goes down and I’m stuck mopping it up and trying to make it better before she gets back. Hopefully Sunday already fulfills that, but at this store, you never know.

So yeah, tldr: my life is a mess and I have no idea when I’ll be feeling better.

#Autumn #work #life #lfakjsldkhfa;skehlak

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avaantares · 6 years

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Tag game - Torchwood edition

Tagged by: @humany-wumany-stuff

Rules: Always post the rules. Answer the 11 random questions posted for you. Create 11 new ones and tag 11 people. Let the person who tagged you know that you answered.

1. When did you start watching Torchwood and what (or who) got you to start watching?

I was actually a bit late to the party, since my personal history with Doctor Who is... complicated (and waaaaay too long to relate here, though I’m happy to share the story if anyone ever gets really bored). The net result is that I didn’t catch up with New Who and, by extension, Torchwood until long after Torchwood had finished its TV run. I think it was 2014, maybe? (Sadly, I’d already been spoiled for most major series events, so I didn’t get to experience the shock and dismay of those who watched when it was new.)

I started watching because yes please, more Captain Jack Harkness, thank you. But I stayed for Ianto Jones.

2. What is your go-to episode to watch when you’re feeling down/bored and why?

You know, I really don’t have that kind of relationship with television. I watch TV so rarely (by which I mean I went for 13 years without even having TV and didn’t miss it), and I have so little free time in my schedule, that I don’t tend to rewatch shows unless I’m 1) showing the series to someone new (which I’ve done with Torchwood) or 2) looking for specific costume references (which I have also done with Torchwood).

That said, I think KKBB probably packs the most pure, shameless entertainment value, so if I really needed a Torchwood fix I’d probably go for that one.

3. Which of the TW villains/aliens/whatevers did you find the scariest and why?

I think Torchwood’s storytelling was at its best when the team wasn’t facing camp alien monsters, but rather dealing with concepts and issues rooted in our reality. Suzie Costello was a decent person, slowly warped into a serial killer by the things she’d seen and done. Out of Time touched on aging and cultural disconnect and loss. Meat was about exploitation. Children of Earth used aliens as a frame to explore political corruption and the abuse of power. Those stories were much darker and stayed with me longer than, say, a poorly-CGed “fairy” with improbable dentition. (Apologies to The Mill, but those effects... weren’t scary at all.)

4. If you had to pick 2 characters to do a BF audio, who would it be and what would it be about?

Ianto Jones and Norton Folgate. Probably having to join forces to save Jack, or something. I don’t even care what the plot is, I just want a full hour of catty insults and cutting dialogue between those two. SO MUCH SASS.

5. What is your favourite fanfic-trope to read/write?

To read? Probably slow burn, but it has to be done really well. I also enjoy emotional H/C, if it’s believable and not just abusing or woobifying the characters.

To write? The pen-dulum (ha!) swings liberally between angst and dry humor/snark. I also have a tendency to get characters into really heated, emotional arguments, possibly because they’re all so stupidly repressed and it’s nice to see them let loose once in a while.

6. If you could assemble your own TW team (post-CoE) with canon characters from the extended Who-niverse (any show related to DW), who would be in it?

So this is basically just a list of all my favorite companions, right?

Core Modern-Day Team:

Martha Jones - brilliant medic; worked for UNIT; saved the world a few times. Won’t take guff from anyone.

River Song - Jack’s equal in every way, only far more likely to shoot you. Tolerates even less nonsense than Martha.

Zoe Heriot - super genius from the future who can calculate pretty much any mathematical solution in her head faster than a computer. Adorably perky, but not afraid to hit bad guys over the head.

Sara Kingdom - by-the-book former Space Security officer. The one who would constantly be reminding Jack that he’s in violation of Torchwood code #439.27 subsection A. Also handy with a blaster.

Ianto Jones - because of course he’s still around, why wouldn’t he be?

Victorian Team:

The Paternoster Gang (Lady Vastra, Jenny, and Strax) - They’re pretty much doing Torchwood’s job for them already. so why not?

Jamie McCrimmon - 18th-century Highlander. Only barred from the main team because if Jack actually had a young, athletic, kilt-wearing man on his regular team, he’d never get ANYTHING accomplished (also, Ianto would probably have to intervene due to Olympic levels of workplace sexual harassment).

Consultant:

Sarah Jane Smith and K-9 - journalist-turned-suburban-mom who still saves the world on a weekly basis, and her robot dog. She doesn’t really approve of Torchwood (that’s actually canon!), but helps out when they need it.

7. A question you would like to ask the actors on a panel (assume they are all present :p)

Since we know that the storylines and character arcs were often in flux as the series was being written, what grounding concept or idea allowed you to keep your character’s portrayal consistent throughout the series?

8. If there was another season and they would do a crossover with any show/movie/book/whatever of your choosing for 1 episode, what would it be and why?

This is a little bit cracked, but someone recently posted about a Dirk Gently/Torchwood crossover, and I think, with enough suspension of disbelief, there’s actually some potential there. I mean, except for the conflict of Samuel Barnett being in both series. (Though I could see some good material there, too...)

Apart from that, it’s already been, er, “established” that Sherlock and Doctor Who/Torchwood exist in the same universe (oh, Arwel Wyn Jones, did you know the chaos you were unleashing?), so... why not?

9. If you were to find out tomorrow that Torchwood is real and Jack is leading a Torchwood team in your home city, how would you convince him to let you join them?

Oh, man. Would I want to? I mean, what are my odds of survival?

I am (among other things) a professional animal trainer with some certification letters after my name, so I would probably just point out that they really need someone to train their pteranodon so it stops eating livestock and pooping on all the war memorials.

10. How would you recast the original Torchwood team? (Jack, Owen, Tosh, Ianto and Gwen)

Hmm, I’m not sure I would. The characters are so closely tied to the actors in my mind, I can’t picture anyone else playing them. I can only come up with alternate faces if we port it completely out of context. So here’s my completely ridiculous Golden Age of Hollywood Torchwood cast:

Jack - Errol Flynn (dat jawline, yo)

Owen - James Cagney

Gwen - Barbara Stanwyck

Ianto - Marlon Brando (young Brando. Not Jor-El.)

Tosh - Miiko Taka? (This is a hard one to cast in that era, because Toshiko’s Japanese heritage is so significant to her character, but there were so few headlining Asian actresses during the GAoH. Or... well, even today, for that matter.)

11. If you could pick any author to write a Torchwood novel, who would it be and why?

Are we excluding fanfic writers? Because if we’re going to talk novel-length Torchwood stories, I could name a few that are more consistent and true to character than the official ones... *sidelong glance at @gmariam321*

But while we’re dreaming of impossible things, how about Douglas Adams? He wrote for Doctor Who, and his own books spanned the bizarre (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) and the tragic (Last Chance to See), so I think he would bring an interesting perspective to a bunch of alien hunters trying to save the world from their glorified sewer in Cardiff.

Also, potential sofa cameos.

In all honesty, I was going to do the 11-new-questions-and-tag-people thing, but it’s now 4:59 a.m. (ZOMG1 what am I still doing awake at this hour?!) and I really, really need to turn off the computer instead of thinking up creative new asks. So I’ll just open this up to anyone who hasn’t yet been tagged and offer them the same questions @humany-wumany-stuff posed!

#torchwood #ask thing #fandom

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canaryatlaw · 6 years

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OKAY. so my entire day post is going to be put under a cut because the entire thing is WAY TMI, but there’s way too much shit that happened that I need to process and I already gave the sanitized language version of it on twitter but I can’t fully process it without getting into details. you have been warned- WAY TMI.

okay, so. backstory, I woke up on Tuesday with stomach pain and ended up spending most of the day on the toilet. By the time I finished (like 7 hours later- yeah it was BAD) I noticed there was something weird going on down there, but I wasn’t really paying attention. Wednesday morning I was having a lot of pain and it occurred to me that maybe because of Tuesday I had a hemorrhoid (it only gets worse from here, so if that makes you squirm you should bail out now), but like, idk because I’ve never had one before and idk what they look like, so I googled it and shit and did their home remedy stuff, sitting on a ice pack helped, I did a “sitz bath” (which is basically sitting in four inches lukewarm water for 15 minutes), aloe vera, and really nothing helped. Woke up this morning and it was still bad. I showered because the warm water did help a bit, but I was getting suspicious at this point that something else was going on here, so I asked my mom to look at it and she was like WOW OKAY WE’RE GOING TO THE DOCTOR. And here lies the problem of trying to diagnose and treat your injuries off google, because I wouldn’t have known that other than my suspicions that hey there’s this giant bulge in my ass crack and it probably shouldn’t be there. my primary care couldn’t fit me in today but they recommended we go to the walk in clinic, so we do that and the doctor takes one look at that and is like “yeah this looks like a rectal prolapse and a hemorrhoid and you need to go to the ER right away” OH JOY. so if you’re not up on your scientific vocabulary, a rectal prolapse is basically when part of your digestive tract comes outside of your body and usually requires surgery to fix. wonder-fucking-ful. Thankfully we’re close to the local hospital that’s like, the number one trauma center on LI (it’s like two miles from my house so that’s always been convenient) so we go there and the urgent care people gave us a letter to give the triage people, but we still ended up waiting in the hallway for like an hour and a half, during which I was in pure misery, but the male nurse who drew my blood was sweet though and slightly flirty but in a nice and not a creepy way so there’s that at least. he left the needle in my arm because it sounded like I’d be needing it at some point. So eventually we get called, and taken into a section called the clinical decisions unit, where I guess is where they figure out if you need surgery or not. So I get in there and someone comes to look and is like OH YEAH LEMME GO GET THE DOCTOR because everyone seemed to agree this was high key bad, so they got doctors, and more doctors, they even took pictures and sent them to the head guy of the department, but the consensus was oh yeah, this needs surgery to fix. and at this point I’m just like fine, just get it done. they did give me some pain medication around 3 or so, which ended up by 5 mg of morphine, which took pretty much all my pain away and I only felt slightly woozy lol but that perked me up significantly and I was actually like talking and stuff instead of lying there looking like death. there was a bit of a wait for the OR so we had to chill for a while, then eventually I get brought in there and the surgeon comes and like, I had been thinking all day about watching The Resident and just how ridiculously easy it is for them to just straight up kill patients in routine surgeries and they have the one chief of surgery who’s got a hand tremor and is just like slicing organs open, and then in comes this guy who’s like the #1 in the department and has gray hair and I’m just like FUCK MY LIFE I hope I survive this lol (I know the show isn’t very realistic when it comes to that subject). So we’re getting ready, their general idea is that they’re just gonna cut the damn thing off because it looked infected and shit, so they go to check and the doctor is like “oh, uh, it’s gone” and I was like......”really? are you sure????” cuz apparently it slipped back in because that’s a thing that can happen, but they were like well we should still probably go ahead with the surgery because the hemorrhoid is still there and could pop back out, so we go for it, they decided to not do general anesthesia but do sedation, whatever the difference between those two is, so I was out anyway and I woke up after and they were like “yeah so turns out it wasn’t a hemorrhoid and he didn’t have to do any cutting or stitching” and I was like “....so then what did he do?” haha and I’m still not 100% sure about that one really, but they were more than happy to send me home which I was very thankful for because I did not want to spend part of my spring break in the hospital. so they got me out of there pretty quickly with a giant bandage on my butt that I’m not sure is serving any purpose at all really, but they told me to leave it on there until I shit again so I guess that’s what I’ll do. We got home, my mom went to pick up the percocet they called into the pharmacy for me but they were closed, a little while after my dad and my brother got home, my dad was speaking at this big thing tonight that he’s trying to launch at churches across the island about understanding the opioid epidemic and how to prevent it, and he said not quite as many people showed up as he would’ve liked but it was still good so that was good to hear. As far as how all this craziness started, I’ve in the past had episodes of like scathing stomach pain that make me feel like I have to go to the bathroom, but I usually end up cowering in pain on the toilet with nothing coming, until eventually something will give and it’ll all just pour out as liquid (again, I told you this is TMI) and like, it used to happen a lot more frequently when I wasn’t eating much and my regularity was thrown way off schedule (like once a week) but I don’t do that anymore and I take a fiber supplement every day because I’m on a high dose iron supplement thanks to me being super anemic, so it’s usually not an issue, it happened the night of my sister’s sweet 16 at the end of October but I think it’s only happened maybe once in the four months between then and now? And I did bring it up at my last gastroenterologist appointment but he didn't seem to think much of it and said it was probably just another muscle spasm (because he had just said my chest pain issues were probably caused by a muscle spasm). The doctor from the hospital tonight apparently recommended I get a colonoscopy done at some point to make sure everything is alright and in place, but idk if I’m gonna do that because I have a pretty good idea of just how this happened, plus I have a lot of like, traumatic memories about that stuff from when I was little and they thought I had Crohn’s disease (when it was actually just nightly cramps for an entire year before my period showed up) and being subjected to a bunch of really invasive stuff that I was not at all comfortable with so that’s not exactly gonna be on the top of my to do list. Other than that they said not to strain when going to the bathroom and eat a lot of fibre, so I’m gonna try harder to eat actual fiber and not just the shit in caplets, and try to make that work out better. and yeah, that is about it, after all that I chatted with friends for a bit then started getting ready for bed with this absurdly large bandage on my butt 😂 We’re supposed to go out to dinner to this super schmancy place (because my parents have a gift card to it) tomorrow to celebrate my brother and I’s birthdays (his was today but because of all the crazy we’re gonna celebrate this weekend) so hopefully that will work out. And oh yeah, since I turn 26 in 11 days, if this happened 11 days from now I would’ve totally FUCKED because I would’ve had no health insurance thanks to getting kicked off my parents plan at 26!!! Lovely *sigh*. And as much as it does suck to get sick on vacation, I am at least glad I was with my family and not in Chicago where I had nobody except like, Jess (and no offense to her in the slightest, because I’m sure she would’ve been great, but with this kind of thing a mom is just better suited for it), and that sounds kinda miserable. Okay, that’s the end for real now, I took my pills a while ago and now my eyes really want to shut and I’m going to listen to them. If you made it all the way through, thank you for suffering through all that TMI to find out how I’m actually doing, though I kinda doubt many of you will actually reach this far, lol, but I cannot blame you for that. Goodnight my dear friends. I hope your Thursday was a hell of a lot better than mine.

#daily journal #March 2018

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kingofthewilderwest · 6 years

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Rules: Answer these 92 statements and tag 20 people. I was tagged by @dyannehs

LAST:

1. Drink: Water 2. Phone call: Myself. Because I lost my cell phone. Outside of that, my mom! 3. Text message: One of my awesomeful friends of awesomeness who I’ve nicknamed Hux (she’s the Hux to my Kylo!) 4. Song you listen to: A nerdy composition project I’m working on. *grins* It’s a secret ’cause I’m gonna share online when I’m done! 5. Time you cried: Actual-actual cry? Don’t remember. Tears in the eyes? Maybe like two days ago? Yay for being broke.

HAVE YOU:

6. Dated someone twice: Yes, I have dated the same person twice, and both experiences were quite wonderful indeed! And I’d probably date her a third time if life came around to it - both times we broke up came from us being too timid to do basic communication about relationship goals. We’re still really good friends rn - honestly either as friends or as dates, I’m happy either way! 7. Kissed someone and regretted it: Yes 8. Been cheated on: Not in the sex way, but my first relationship ended because my current gf was hitting blatantly on someone in front of my face, and while we were talking about maybe doing a poly thing, this hitting-on-someone-else was in the venue of putting aside and ignoring me, and that wasn’t okay. 9. Lost someone special: Yes. 10. Been depressed: Oh shit I forgot my depression meds again... *runs to take them* Umm. Yes. The answer’s yes. High-functioning depression, here I am, prime example. Yayyyy [sarcasm] 11. Gotten drunk and thrown up: I don’t drink alcohol so nope.

LIST 3 FAVORITE COLORS:

12. Silver 13. Chocolate brown 14. Black

IN THE LAST YEAR HAVE YOU:

15. Made new friends: Aye! 16. Fallen out of love: Not really? I mean I don’t know how to explain it. 17. Laughed until you cried: Thanks to Lance and Kaltenecker, yes. 18. Found out someone was talking about you: I guess my coworkers thought I was quitting instead of just reducing my hours, so I had to fix that rumor chain straight. 20. Found out who your friends are: I think that’s always an ongoing thing in life. This year, I’d say that I’ve had reaffirmations that the people I care about care about me, so that’s really awesome. It’s wonderful to know that people are thinking of me. And I’m thinking of you, friends! 21. Kissed someone on your Facebook list: Yep!

GENERAL:

22. How many of your Facebook friends do you know in real life: About 99% of them. It’s very rare for me to add an internet friend to my FB contacts. 23. Do you have any pets: No. My apartment only allows cats and dogs, and I want guinea pigs again. ;_; 24. Do you want to change your name: I’m proud of my name and have used it as a source of inspiration (it means “pure”). That said, in the last few years, I feel increasingly distanced from my name and honestly think of myself far more as being named “Haddock.” Haddock is my name, my birth name is second. Still a good name, but I’m a Haddock. 25. What did you do for your last birthday: On the day itself: relaxed, bought myself froyo, Skyped family, chilled, was awesome. The general-ish week of my birthday: had a dinner with family, stayed up and binged all of VLD S4 the night it came out, hung out with a friend and also binged VLD. Basically, a lot of VLD. 26. What time do you wake up: The number fluctuates quite wildly day-per-day because “sleep schedule” is a myth. Today, I got up at 11 AM. 27. What were you doing at midnight last night: Answering asks on tumblr and PMing/texting a few good friends. 28. Name something you can’t wait for: Having enough money to live comfortably and not stress every time rent week comes around. 29. When was the last time you saw your mom?: A few days ago, Friday. 30. What is one thing you wish you could change in your life: Oh where do I fucking start... Well. The biggest thing is I’d do is go back in time and prevent a terrifyingly bad argument/falling out with my ex/ex best friend that happened in 2011-2012, not because I want to still be friends with this person (I don’t anymore), but because the experience was very... traumatic... to both of us and I’d love us not to live with those mental scars. I’m still getting over those scars and it sucks. 31. What are you listening to right now: The composition I’m working on. 32. Have you ever talked to a person named Tom: Yeah. Don’t know anyone well named Tom, though. One of my coworkers is a Tommy if that counts? 33. Something that is getting on your nerves: There’s one wonderful friend of mine who’s going through a really challenging time. I want to help them so badly, but they’ve been closed off and hermitting themselves to the point I think it’s harmful for them, it’s hard to contact them to help them, and they live too far away for me to check on them in person easily. I want to do anything to see them in person to help, or to talk to them, or anything... sitting in silence makes me very worried because this wonderful human soul deserves all the love and support they can get for what they’re going through. 34. Most visited website: Tumblr, Facebook, Netflix, Google. 35. Mole/s: I have two bumps on my forehead, one to either side. I jokingly call them horns, but they’re not evenly lined up, and the one on my left is much larger than the one on my right. 36. Mark/s: Bellybutton scar from a second degree burning incident, lots of scars on my hands right now from falling on concrete two months back, lots of scars on my wrists from a whole bunch of whatnot (I even have one from my sophomore year of high school when a school binder scraped me?), oh. And I have basically leopard-speckled shoulders from countless acne/pimple scars. For unnatural marks... three tats! Plans to get at least two more. 37. Childhood dream: To be a published, bestselling author or a college prof. 38. Hair color: Currently dark brown with bleached bangs and a strip on the right side. Natural hair color is what I call “dusty brown” and some people would call dirty blonde; it’s in that random in-between blonde and brown where the top is blonde-ish and the bottom is rather brown. 39. Long or short hair: I have the conundrum of enjoying my hair either really long or really short. I’m in the process of regrowing it to the long stage. It’s sort of at the bottom-of-the-shoulder-blades/boob length now. Goal is to go back to waist length. 40. Do you have a crush on someone: Does Takashi Shirogane count? 41. What do you like about yourself: Honestly, quite a lot? XD I’m very thankful to be a nerd who is apt to learn anything from sciences to arts and music and sports. I’m thankful to be a musician, a composer, a creative writer, an animation junkie, an analytical and logical mind, a complete and utter NERD beyond belief who lives in nerd culture. I love my appearance, I love my facial hair, I love my eyebrows and face shape, I love my body shape, I love that I’m left-handed, I love that I’m not conventionally pretty. I love being a Christian. I love being aroace. I mean when I’m not in a depressive, self-deprecating mode, I really am proud and thankful to be who I am all across the board; there’s very little that I dislike about myself. Mostly what I dislike is my current life situation of not being anywhere career-wise. Everything else, pretty happy. :) 42. Piercings: Two on each earlobe and one halfway up the cartilage. Dammit and I wanted like a dozen piercings by this type in my life. Get me a more stable paycheck and we’re fixing this! 43. Blood type: O+. Most common blood type, woot? 44. Nicknames?: I’ve had a terrifying slew of nicknames over the years. Currently, the most common ones are Haddock, King, (Kylo) Ren, Spock, and Toast. 45. Relationship status: Single in my chill natural habitat. 46. Zodiac: I am so bitter about my Zodiac sign I refuse to say it even though it’s not too hard to figure out what it is given other answers to this meme. 47. Pronouns: He/his/him, though honestly I really don’t care too much what people toss at me. 48. Favorite TV Show: Voltron: Legendary Defender. 50. Right or left hand: LEFT-HANDED WOOOOOOOO LEFT LEFT LEFT LEFT LEFT LEFT LEFT LEFT LEFT LEFTY PRIDE YOOOO! 51. Surgery: When I was nine I had four baby teeth and then the four adult teeth under them removed. Basically, a wisdom tooth like surgery but younger and with different teeth. 52. Hair dyed in different color: FUCK YEAH! I was getting really bored of my natural hair color but was keeping it natural for the purpose of looking professional (job searches). I’d been wanting to reinstate some purple and black again, but with my current job only allowing “natural” hair colors, I decided I couldn’t go that route. Instead I bleached the front and dyed the rest dark brown in a sort of inspiration from Takashi Shirogane. 53. Sport: I played soccer all growing up, so much fun. Love jogging. Sports are great, miss having the opportunity to do team stuff. Also really enjoy watching professional gymnastics, soccer, American football, and especially tennis. 55. Vacation: I want to see so many locations oh my fuck. My “to go to” list includes Bhutan, Nepal, China/Tibet, Mongolia, Cambodia (again... come on I miss it!), Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Japan, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom (England & Scotland), Norway, Canada, Peru, Mexico, South Korea, India, Myanmar, Austria, Germany, Iceland... um. Yeah. You. Get the picture. I NEED TO TRAVEL, YO! 56. Pair of trainers: Uh they’re like really raggedy and old and stuff

MORE GENERAL:

57. Eating: I’m snacking on M&Ms again, like always. 58. Drinking: Water, though methinks I shall make some homemade ginger tea. 59. I’m about to: Probably go shower. It’s 3 PM and I still am in my pajamas. 62. Want: To fucking write and do NaNo and yet life’s been busy and I haven’t had the time for a word but I HAVE SO MANY VLD FANFICS I WANT TO DO AND AURGHGHGHGHGHGH the goal is to somehow write and finish my universal translator mix-up one this month???? We’ll see! Translators, stay tuned, and thanks again for offering to help! 63. Get married: 97% of me doesn’t want to get married I think? 64. Career: Linguistics consultant of doom. Not sure if this can be a career but if I could, I would enjoy continuing the remote work. To explain: I currently work contract positions with various companies who hire me for short-term projects, in which I use my linguistics expertise to analyze and annotate large sums of data according to certain guidelines. 65. Hugs or kisses: Hugs. I. LOVE. HUGS. SO. MUCH. HUGGGGGMEEEEE! I always look closed off in my body language but I swear the inside of me is always going “Giff me the cuddles and don’t let go.” 66. Lips or eyes: Eyes. Eyes are the most gorgeous thing about humans seriously. 67. Shorter or taller: I prefer to be the short one in all social situations. 68. Older or younger: For friends, I’m chill with whatever age you are. Dating, also chill, though I think I tend to prefer being slightly older just ’cause that’s how most of my relationships have been? But really doesn’t matter. 70. Nice arms or nice stomach: Arms. Nice arms are unique for me. I’m pretty happy with lots of different stomach types I see - tummies just are cute! :) 71. Sensitive or loud: A combo is fun but what I look for most in any platonic or anything relationship is someone with a deep heart. I want friends with whom I can confide in anything... so has to be that sensitive side (sensitive-logical if that makes sense is what I like best). 72. Hook up or relationship: I’ve done random PG hookups? But my answer for this is relationship; hookups are only fun for short-term boosts of self-confidence and not being 100% genuine and just being like carefree “whatever” for a night (make sure you both know you’re just doing the hookup night though, please guys, no deception!). Long-term relationships though are glorious like none other for their emotional power. <3 That is pure beauty, caring for someone deeply with lasting loyalty. But of course ya’ll know me... I find nothing more beautiful to cherish than deep platonic care! 73. Troublemaker or hesitant: Combo of both!

HAVE YOU EVER:

74. Kissed a Stranger: Yeppers 75. Drank hard liquor: Nope 76. Lost glasses/contact lenses: Yes ugh I have no clue where one of my pairs of glasses are again 77. Turned someone down: Yes 78. Sex on the first date: I’ve had sex never so this is an easy answer 79. Broken someone’s heart: Yes 80. Had your heart broken: Yes 81. Been arrested: No 82. Cried when someone died: Yes 83. Fallen for a friend: Yes

DO YOU BELIEVE IN:

84: Yourself: Yes, typically 85. Miracles: Absolutely 86. Love at first sight: I mean I don’t deny it happens. It happens. But I don’t think it’s pragmatic to think that’s what’ll happen to you. 87. Santa Claus: Come on, of course North and the Guardians are kicking Pitch’s butt! 88. Kiss on the first date: Sure, why not

OTHER:

90. Current best friend name: I don’t have one best friend right now. A few of my current closest friends are named Josh, “Hux”, Keith, JuLee, Rachel, Peter, and Meredith. 91. Eye color: Brown 92. Favorite movie: HOW DO I PICK ONE FAVORITE MOVIE FUCK YOU?? The Prince of Egypt, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the How to Train Your Dragon movies, Pacific Rim, there, I made a list.

Uhhhhh let’s so who should I tag... if you want to do it... @akkeyroomi @the-mr-eggplant @chiefrosepetal @thefuriousnightfury @insaneskye @fanwriter02 @dragonpride99 @jettara @margarethelstone @shailyesshadow @hubwalker1 @godguy0001 @theravenfliesagain @frosty-viking @jackthevulture @hiccup-is-left-handed @dragonnan @spacekeet @nightfury326 yaknowwhat I am not going to count but we’ll say that’s about 20 XD

#non-dragons #long post #swearing #meme #ask meme #about me #blabbing Haddock #my life

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lollytea · 7 years

Note

I have a three hour class coming up, so naturally, I need to give you something that will take you three hours to write to make it fair. Gimme all of them for either Satin Diamond or Jazzle, your choice.

Idk enough about Puzzle to do ALL of these about Jazzle so I went with the sparkles.

1: Who spends almost all their money on the other?

Now I’ve said that Guy is a HUUUUUGE impulse buyer who would probably throw money at whatever remotely reminded him of Satin. But I also imagine Satin as the type to spend MORE on stuff for Guy.

Just because while he’ll buy anything that holds his attention long enough, she’s more focused on the quality. If it’s expensive, its good. All shit that goes on her boy gotta be designer and she is hellbent on dressin him pretty.

So Satin. Its Satin.

2: Who sleeps in the other’s lap?

Guy. Whenever he has a tight schedule, he’s either working or napping cuz damn son hes exhausted. But the thing is, that leaves him with very little time to spend with Satin. So sleeping in her lap is the best he can get.

Meanwhile, my girl has a way better sleep endurance than he does. She can pull off an all-nighter and still seem perfectly composed the next day. Satin’s fuckin incredible.

3: Who walks around the house half-naked and who yells at them to put on some clothes?

who tf u think

4: Which one tells the other not to stay up all night and which one stays up all night anyway?

Guy is often begging Satin to get some sleep. But listen, if she’s in the zone, you cant stop her. Yes, Guy, she’s aware its 2am.

5: Which one tries to make food for the other but burns it all by accident and which one tells them that it’s okay and makes them both cookies?

Neither Satin or Chenille have much experience in cooking. They were pretty spoiled and never had to lift a finger in any kind of housework during their childhood and teenage life. Both of them have had to learn since they moved out but they gotta stick to the basic stuff.

Bless her, Satin’s heart was definitely in the right place. But what she tried to cook was gourmet which she sure as hell was not ready for yet.

Guy’s childhood ran more on a chore wheel kinda thing. He and his siblings had to take turns cooking dinner each week so like he’s a lot more acquainted with it. But is he proud of Satin’s obvious efforts, that’s his girl! You did amazing for your first try!

Tbh he probably tries to eat some of it just to be like “Nonono its fine, we can totally eat this for di-” *Chokes and has to spit it out* “Yeah ok imma make some cookies. You did a good job tho I love you”

6: Which one reads OTP prompts and says “Oh that’s us!” and which one goes “Eh, not really”?

At a petstore, Guy points at two lizards lying on top of eachother “That one’s me and that one’s you.”

“There’s a fine selection of squeaky toys over here and I'm going to pick one just to whack you with.”

7: Which one constantly wears the other’s clothes?

I mean Guy wears the clothes Satin MAKES so

I'm sure he’s tried on her actual clothes a couple times tho

8: Which one spends all day running errands and which one says “You remembered [thing], right?”

Satin: “Okay okay, so it was a good day. A really good day. A productive day. Bought the groceries for dinner tonight, made the phone calls, picked up the dry-cleaning, went to the post office, got the car fixed, vacuumed the living room-”

Guy: “Aww baby, that’s great. Hey, where’s Jade?”

Satin: “Where’s who now?”

Guy: “Our 2 year old son? You-you picked him up from day-care, right?”

*Sounds of Satin grabbing her keys and tripping out the front door*

Guy: “.....was that a yes orrrr?”

9: Which one drives the car and which one gives them directions?

Guy cant read maps so he drives. Also if they have a kid (or theyre babysitting the other kids) Satin’s better at telling them to behave so its better if she’s not behind the wheel.

10: Which one does the posing while the other one draws?

Guy poses, Satin draws. Its like part of their whole model/designer dynamic. Duh

11: If they were about to rob a museum, which one does backflips through lasers and which one is strolling behind with a bag of chips?

Guy backflips, Satin has chips

12: Which one of your OTP overdoes it on the alcohol and which one makes the other stop drinking?

After the first article of clothing is removed, Satin is forced to confiscate Guy’s glass.

“Sweetheart, listen. We cant afford to do this again. We cant go back to jail.”

13: Which one likes to surprise the other with a lot of small random gifts?

They both do ofc

14: Which one keeps accidentally using the other’s last name instead of their own?

Satin did when she was really little but Guy hadn't the foggiest clue why she kept doing in. He just piped up with “That's not your last name, it’s mine, silly!” Then proceeded to tell her what her last name was in case she forgot.

She did start calling herself Satin Diamond a few years before they got married. Like it wasn't his real last name so it didn’t matter much. Plus it sounded classy as hell. You wouldn't wanna fuck with a lady called Satin Diamond.

15: Which one screams about the spider and which one brings the spider outside?

Neither of them are huge fans of spiders but as Guy always had to suck it up and take spiders out for his little sister’s sake, he’s a lot more equipped to dealing with it.

16: Which one gives the other their jacket?

Satin often doesn't wear jackets so if she cold, Guy’s on that shit in an instant

17: Who keeps getting threatened by the other’s overprotective older sibling?

They both got a pretty good relationship with eachothers siblings. Guy’s brothers are all lovable nerds in their heart so they adopt Satin immediately

Meanwhile Chenille is like a sister to Guy so like she knows he’ll cherish Satin with all his heart but like. Like a sister. Tell me Chenille hasn't blown her top several time cuz her annoying little brother/her sister’s boyfriend is being a shit again

18: Who’s the first one to admit they have feelings for the other?

Guy probably. Their relationship kinda develops from friends to occasional flirting to more recurring flirting to constant flirting and like Guy is almost CERTAIN they’re on the same page. Orrrrr flirty might just be a budding aspect of Satin’s personality because hey, it does suit her very well.

Eventually he just gets confused and impatient and blurts out like “HEY ARE WE DOING WHAT WE’RE THINK WE’RE DOING CUZ I LIKE YOU A LOT AND-”

19: How good would your OTP be at parenting?

Pretty good, considering they weren’t really ready to be parents. The whole nine months was like last minute cramming for a test. They read so many baby books my fuckin god.

But no Satin’s a natural mom. Not as high energy as Poppy and a lot more subdued but still very caring and considerate. She’s calm and logical when helping her kid deal with problems and makes sure he always feel comfortable when talking to her. Jade is REALLY close with his momma.

Also if he gets caught sneaking out at night, he’s shish kabob. But he respects and understands that. His mom is the best person in the world. He just wouldn't dare fuck with her

Guy is also a very devoted father and tends to act as the sillier parent. His relationship with kid can be best described as “Lovingly argumentative.” But no matter, how much he makes fun of his Dad, Jade is probably his biggest fan. He knows the man’s complete filmography by heart and aspires to be an actor too. (Jade cant act for shit but ssssh he’ll change his career choice when he’s older)

But yeah, Guy spent years as his acting coach and tried so hard too because he personally believed his boy could do anything. Turns out he couldn't but ehhh, its the thought that counts. Guy loves Jade to bits and vice versa.

20: Which one types with perfect grammar and which one types using numbers as letters?

Neither of them use perfect grammar but Satin is most definitely the number thing. Guy is not.

21: Who gets attacked by a bully and who protects them?

I dunno if either of them are the type to get bullied. At least in the case of Satin, she just doesn't take crap. But I guess in the case of Guy, who’s just so unashamedly himself, he might piss off a few other kids with that toxic masculinity mind-set. It probably doesn't happen often but if it ever did, Satin would bite their heads off. She aint here for this bullshit.

22: Who makes the bad puns and who makes a pained smile every time the other makes a pun?

Guy: *puns*

Satin: “You’re doing amazing sweetie” (I imagine death so much, it feels like a memory.)

23: Who comes home from work to see that the other one bought a puppy?

Hear me out. Guy is the impulse buyer, which is why it shocks everyone when Satin is the one to buy the puppy. She was going through an emotional week ok?? Leave her alone

Guy actually has to be the voice of reason here because babe do we have time for a dog idk if we can do this

They end up keeping it and tbh they are TOTALLY the type of people to call themselves the dog’s mommy and daddy. They’re those people fite me

24: Which one gives the other a piggyback ride when they’re tired?

Satin doesn't get tired easily but she wears pinchy shoes a lot so Guy gives piggybacks when she needs it

25: Which one competes in some sort of activity and which one does the overzealous cheering?

I need to tattoo “Guy is Satin’s biggest fan” to my gotdamn forehead

26: Who takes a selfie when the other one falls asleep on their shoulder?

Satin. Guy hates candid photos so fuckin much so like nobody has any pictures of him laughing or sleeping or just walking around with no makeup on.

Except for Satin. Satin has like a billion. Guy just doesn't know about them cuz she knows he’d make her delete them.

27: Which one would give the other a makeover if they asked?

I mean Satin DID give Guy a makeover when he asked. You don't think the legendary Guy Diamond look was a one man job, do you? Nah, the twins helped create the icon.

Hell, his first experience with makeup was Satin hiding him the girls bathroom stall when they were like 12 and covering up the acne on his chin after she caught him getting upset over it.

28: Which one owns a pet that the other is absolutely terrified of?

Look if Satin ever gets a snake, Guy aint gonna be pleased

29: Which one holds the umbrella over both of them when it rains?

Okay but listen to me. Guy makes a big deal every time his hair gets wet. He hates rain. He hates it so fuckin much.

One time when they were teenagers, they agreed to meet at the other end of town to see a movie. Ofc theres a downpour and Guy’s standing with his umbrella at the bustop, waiting for Satin’s bus to show up. But once she steps out, she looks frazzled af, clearly having not expected the rain.

So its been a long day and Satin is pacing back and forth, unintentionally splashing puddled as she rambles about an unfair detention she received, about Chenille stealing her hairdryer, about her homework not making any sense.

The rain suddenly stops pelting her head and a shadow falls over her frame. She turns around to find him with his arm outstretched and his umbrella looming over her.

Guy blinks, confused as she stares at him in shock, his hair a soaking mess. “What?

And Satin is just internally “Imma marry him. I stg imma marry this loser.”

30: If your OTP went on vacation, where would they go and what would they do? Who would take the pictures?

Wherever there’s city lights and rooftop penthouses. Theatres, restaurants and glitzy ballrooms. They live for the night glow. Tbh take them to Paris. Let them dance under the Eiffel Tower at midnight. Tell me that isn't the pinnacle of romanticism.

Also Satin takes the pictures. She’s the better photographer between them. Guy gets too eager and so many of his pics are fuzzy

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smolragematti · 7 years

Text

StevenBomb 6 [ Heavy Spoiler Warning]

First, if you have watched the leaked videos, please try to watch them on TV when officially come out or on the CN app. Support the show. Please.

This is the edited version with the keep reading line so as not to accidentally spoil anyone who has yet to watch the Bomb or does not plan to watch until the May 8th (The Keep Reading/Read More is having trouble please let me know if it shows up)

1. What is Lion exactly? No really. He is beginning to feel slightly more like plot convenience. One second he can take 5 people to the moon and next he just takes Steven hours away from a destination in a desert. Barfs up a key. HOW AND FOR HOW LONG WAS THAT IN THERE?!?

2. It was nice seeing Connie’s dad for a bit. He seems pretty cool. More plz.

3. Onion was running from Aquamarine and Topaz and I wonder what would have changed if they took him home instead of leaving him at FunLand

. 4. Lars got some development. Hazzah.

5. The cool kids are actually cool and not some cool jerkish teenagers. Bless.

6. I was a little hesitant on the voice saying “Are you my dad?” Being Aquamarine’s but now that I hear it, it works. She is small like a child so having that voice makes sense.

7. Pearl can draw!!!!!!!!!!!

8. I did not expect that Topaz captures humans the way she does. I have to say that is really interesting. (Did they make sure to keep the humans fed? I mean their mouths were covered and it had been a good 12-24 hrs [max being Onion least being Jaimie]. Also, I am not surprised by the lack of personality. She is from homeworld. Probably meant to be a silent guard type of gem. She is only meant to do as she is told without questioning. Remember, they have a heavy caste like system. Disobedience is not tolerated.

9. “Oh my god. Hulk Hogan finally made his cartoon debut” -Maddy’s reaction to Topaz

10. Aquamarine is Syndrome. I am so glad I wasn’t the only one to think this.

11. How high and rare are aquamarines? Pearl’s reaction just made me curious. Like are they valued more than Sapphires??? I need answers.

12. Pearl, Amethyst literally doesn’t know what the big deal is. She doesn’t know anything about Homeworld or how their system of importance works. She literally had not seen another Amethyst until the Zoo arc.

13. “Report by Peridot 5XG” OOOOOOOOOO. Everyone was right. Its the list from Marbled Madness. Which makes me wonder how Peridot would take it if the Gems told her about it.

14. Speaking of Peridot, how do they not know anything? Its not like the Barn is far away. Like they could probably see Alexandrite from the Barn if they looked the right way. Are they even going to tell those two? I would think that they need Peridot’s knowledge of current Homeworld in order to figure out a way to help Steven. Will they try to get her limb enhancers [would they even work after being in the water for months?]

15. Lars’ reaction isnt fucked up. I am about as skinny as him and I would probably piss myself. You really think he would make a difference? Sure you can try but with the possibility of getting injured, yeah no. Thats terrifying. Not everyone has to be brave.

16. Jaimie and Onion are a blessing to the episode “I am My Mom”. Good comedic moments. And that dive gets a 7/10 in my book.

17. AQUAMARINE STOPPED ALEXANDRITE WITH HER ENERGY WAND. STOPPED. HER. SOMETHING MALACHITE HAD A SLIGHTLY HARD TIME TRYING TO DO. NO EFFORT. NONE. HOW STRONG IS SHE. LAPIS V AQUAMARINE.

18. How much influence do the Diamond’s have in each other’s courts? Like Yellow Diamond sent Aquamarine, a blue gem most likely in Blue Diamond’s court. Is it because Yellow and Blue are equals that they can do this? Probably.

19. Aquamarine and Topaz arent discount Lapis and Jasper. Fite me. Aquamarine, while I adore her, is a little bitch. Ready to tell Topaz to kill humans. She dont care.

20. STEVEN YOU. NO. YOU CANT SING A SONG OUT OF THIS SITUATION. HOW ARE YOU EVEN GOING TO GET BACK. THE GEMS WOULD NEED A LONG TIME TO BUILD ANYTHING CAPABLE OF GOING INTO SPACE(MAGICALLY GET THE ARCHAIC SPACE SHIP RUNNING?!? IDK). MUCH LESS FAST SOMETHING ENOUGH TO GET TO HOMEWORLD. I DOUBT THE DIAMONDS WILL JUST GIVE HIM A PRIVATE FLIGHT BACK TO EARTH. STUFF WITH THEM CANT RESOLVE THAT QUICKLY.

21. THE DIAMONDS ARE GOING TO FIND OUT HE IS A HYBRID AND LIKELY EXPERIMENT OR TEST SOMETHING. IF PERIDOT KEPT THOSE REPORTS MAYBE THEY WOULD HAVE ACCESS ON HOW HE FIXED LAPIS’ GEM.

General Notes.

Part of me is concerned about the pacing of the show. They have to tell a fair chunk of info in 11 minutes along with not getting a consistent schedule like every Thursdays or something. I am worried that its somewhat coming back to bite the storytelling in the butt. While I enjoy Steven trying to help everyone, he also needs to learn how to do it in different situations for different people with different backgrounds. Garnet’s reaction after Room for Ruby made it seem like there was something he needed to change and do for her to have actually stayed. He tried to talk to Jasper like he would Lapis and Peridot, but she isnt like them. He didn’t approach the situation like he could have in order to have actually helped her. People can rant about it all they want, but Steven is a kid and he is going off of previous experience. It worked with Lapis and Peridot. So its a reasonable assumption that it work for her. He didn’t know about Pink Diamond. Now that he has information, he could try again. (provided this arc get resolved). The Diamonds might be the first step in him realizing that. Granted I do not think they would just ignore Steven’s existence much less let it slide. Plus we still have White Diamond. Who knows what she is like, much less how she feels about Rose Quartz or Pink Diamond’s shattering. We actually get to see homeworld. Different gems and their system of running things.

#steven universe #spoilers #su spoilers #garnet #pearl #amethyst #lapis lazuli #peridot #aquamarine #topaz #jasper #yellow diamond #blue diamond #ruby #sapphire #homeworld #questions #statements

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edsmysterygirl · 7 years

Text

92 TRUTHS - tagging @justaboywithaonemanshow @givemeedplzfanks @edandanniina

THE LAST…

1) Drink: Forest fruit squash. 2) Phone call: My mom. 3) Text message: A friend from uni. She asked me to proof-read her thesis. 4) Song you listened to: I’m A Mess. I’m rewatching Glastonbury. 5) Time you cried: Friday, when I had my mental breakdown. Good news though, I get until the end of August to finish my thesis!

HAVE YOU EVER…

6) Dated someone twice: Nope. My current boyfriend is my first boyfriend ever. 7) Been cheated on: No. 8) Kissed someone and regretted it: No. 9) Lost someone special: I mean, a lot of family members and family friends. But is it bad if I say the worst ‘someone’ that I lost was my previous dog…? I never knew two of my grandparents and I lost one when I was 3 and the last one when I was 7. I feel like I never got to form a bond with them. And I wasn’t very close with the other people that I lost. 10) Been depressed: Never had the official diagnosis, but came close to it. People have been wanting to put me on antidepressants probably since I was 16 – but I have always refused. Let’s just say I have a lot of problems and have been in therapy on and off for 13 years now. It’s a long story. 11) Gotten drunk and thrown up: Nope, I don’t drink. 😊

LIST THREE FAVORITE COLORS…

12) Blue. 13) Yellow. 14) Red.

IN THE LAST YEAR HAVE YOU…

15) Made new friends: In RL, not really. On Tumblr? Hell yes! 16) Fallen out of love: No. 17) Laughed until you cried: Yes. My boyfriend will sometimes make me laugh till a point where I basically can’t stop laughing and start crying. Fun times. 18) Found out someone was talking about you: Like, behind my back? Probably. 19) Met someone who changed you: Does discovering Ed count? 20) Found out who your true friends are: Yes. I’ve basically isolated myself socially in the past few years. The people that still check on my even though I don’t check on them (I know, I should…), those are my true friends. 21) Kissed someone on your Facebook list: Well, I’m friends with my boyfriend, so yes.

OTHER…

22) How many of your Facebook friends do you know in real life?: I don’t see everyone regularly, but I met all of them at least once in RL before I added them. 23) Do you have any pets?: A dog and a cat. 😊 24) Do you want to change your name?: My last name, sometimes. No one ever gets it right. I guess marriage may fix that one day though, lol. 25) What did you do for your last birthday?: Make a Tumblr, LOL. 26) What time do you wake up?: Sometimes I wake up at 7:15 AM, sometimes I wake up at 4:00 PM… My sleep schedule has been all over the place lately. It’s messed up. If I had nothing to do I would probably sleep from 2 AM until 12 PM. 27) What were you doing at midnight last night?: Watching a Supernatural episode with my boyfriend (over Skype, because LDR). 28) Name something you cannot wait for: The day that this freaking thesis is finished!! 29) When was the last time you saw your mother?: Monday morning when I left for uni. I’ll see her again tomorrow when I go back home for the weekend. 30) What is one thing you wish you could change about your life?: My mental health? 31) What are you listening to right now?: Nancy Mulligan (still watching Glastonbury). 32) Have you ever talked to a person named Tom?: No actually? I know a Tim. And a billion Thomases. But no Tom. 33) Something that is getting on your nerves: My thesis. 34) Most visited website?: Facebook? Though maybe now Tumblr… 35) Elementary: Not that great. I got bullied a lot. Didn’t have many friends. Other than that alright, I guess? 36) High School: Okay. Bullying turned into ignoring me. Still didn’t have many friends. But these were the years that I discovered my love for languages and strangely enough I really enjoyed high school. 37) University: Still enrolled at the moment. Hoping to finish my Master’s degree in translation this year. 38) Hair color: Brunette. 39) Long or short hair?: Very long. 40) Do you have a crush on someone?: My boyfriend. And Ed, of course. 41) What do you like about yourself?: That’s a difficult question that I can’t really answer at the moment… 42) Piercings?: None, not even earrings. 43) Blood type?: No clue… Probably should find that out at some point. 44) Nickname?: MG on here. 😂 I don’t really have a nickname in RL. My mom calls me Josephine sometimes, which has nothing to do with my name. 45) Relationship status?: I have a boyfriend. 46) Zodiac sign?: Gemini. 47) Pronouns: She/her. 48) Favorite TV show: I used to watch SO MANY TV shows. Back when I was in high school I would watch 12 at the same time (like, as the episodes came out). For the past 2, 3 (?) years I have sort of stopped myself from watching TV shows. Because I get obsessed with things. Like with Ed right now lol. I will still occasionally watch an episode (like last night), but I’m really behind on everything. My enthusiasm for TV shows is probably what led to me studying English in the end. And Supernatural was the common interest that matched my boyfriend and I. 😊 49) Tattoos: None. 50) Right or left hand?: Right hand, though I can write with my left hand if I have to. But I don’t consider myself ambidextrous.

FIRST…

51) Surgery: Does a lumbar puncture (spinal tap) count? Probably not. Felt like one though. I have a medical phobia and about a year ago they suspected meningitis, so I had to have one. One of the most traumatic experiences I have had. They had to sedate me because I was so panicked. The whole hospital must’ve heard me scream and I pushed a doctor away (not on purpose, but if I’m yelling “STAY AWAY FROM ME” in your face and you approach me with a weird object that looked like something they were going to do the puncture with, well…) So they ended up sedating me and luckily I don’t remember a thing from the procedure itself. But they must have hit something, because my legs were numb and I couldn’t feel whether my bladder was full or not for like a week after. I’d just go to the toilet at times where I would usually go because I just didn’t feel anything. Plus I couldn’t stand up for longer than 10 minutes or my legs would collapse. Luckily all that went back to normal, though I still get this weird back pain from time to time that I associate with that. I don’t know how I will ever survive a proper surgery… 😭 I just can’t handle pain. 52) Piercing: Still don’t have one. 53) Sport: I don’t know which one came first, horse-riding or table tennis. Started both when I was 11. I stopped playing table tennis when I was 20, I stopped riding horses when I was 16. I don’t miss any of my hobbies that I’ve given up, except for horse-riding. 54) Vacation: We used to have a caravan/travel trailer when I was little. We’d go to the same camp site every year where we had our own spot with a shed and stuff. We’d go there in the weekends and during the summer. Later we bought a mobile home at a different camp site, but that camp site closed down when I was 20. Now going to see my boyfriend (and him coming over to see me) just counts as vacation for me. But that will change once I finish uni, I guess. 55) Pair of trainers: No clue? WHY IS 56 MISSING 57) Eating: Of the day? Ice lolly… 58) Drinking: Water. 59) I’m about to: Make dinner, mac & cheese. 60) Listening to: YNMIDNY. 61) Waiting for: My motivation to kick in. 62) Want: To sleep. All day, every day. 63) Get married: I’m not married yet. 64) Career: Don’t really have a career yet… I have a student job at a holiday resort with villas. And before that I worked as a cashier in a supermarket. I’d like to become a subtitler eventually.

YOUR TYPE…

65) Hugs or kisses?: I could live without kisses, but not without hugs. Not that I want to live without kisses... But if I had to choose, I mean. 66) Lips or eyes?: Eyes. 67) Shorter or taller?: If you would have asked me this a couple of years ago, I’d say taller. But my boyfriend is shorter than me. That’s what you get when you date an Englishman as a Dutchie. 😊 68) Older or younger?: Older. 69) Nice arms or nice stomach?: Arms. 70) Sensitive or loud?: Sensitive. 71) Hook up or relationship?: Relationship. I don’t think I could ever just hook-up with someone. Maybe Ed, lol. 72) Troublemaker or hesitant?: Out of those two, hesitant I guess?

HAVE YOU EVER…

74) Kissed a stranger?: No. 75) Drank hard liquor?: No. 76) Lost glasses, contact/lenses?: No. I’ve never lost my glasses, but I’ve sat on them before, lol. 77) Turned someone down?: Relationship-wise? No. In general? Probably. 78) Sex on first date?: No. 79) Broken someone’s heart?: No. 80) Had your heart broken?: No. 81) Been arrested?: No. 82) Cried when someone died?: Yes, obviously. 83) Fallen for a friend?: Yes.

DO YOU BELIEVE IN…

84) Yourself?: No…t really. 85) Miracles?: No. 86) Love at first sight?: No. 87) Santa Claus?: No. Funnily enough most Dutch kids don’t believe in Santa Claus. They believe in Sinterklaas instead. He’s a saint (Saint Nicholas) who gives presents to kids (in the weeks leading up to and) on the 5th of December. Some parents decide to have their kids believe in both, but I think most Dutch kids grow up with the idea that Santa Claus (or the Christmas Man, as we call him) is simply fake. Not sure why little me never questioned the existence of Sinterklaas, though… 88) Kiss on the first date?: Since I met my boyfriend online and the first time I met him in RL was after months of Skyping and already sort of being in a relationship, yes? 89) Angels?: No. I don’t believe in a higher power, though sometimes I wish I did.

EVEN MORE…

90) Current best friend’s name: Merel. 91) Eye color: Hazel? 92) Favorite movie: All of the LotR movies?

#personal

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autistickitten · 7 years

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Part 1 (autism + gymnastics): Hello, I coach gymnastics to special needs children and I was looking for some advice. I have this one autistic kiddo who is around 11 years old. He loves reading (especially about animals-mythical or real). I am having trouble getting him to do stuff, he usually just wants to sleep all the time. I've tried telling him if we do this we can have a quick break and sometimes it'll work but other times he will just say no and lie down.

At some points he will start hitting me and ripping papers off the walls, throwing water bottles off a table, playing with light switches, throwing his glasses, slapping me, and kicking me (or any other coach around)-he won’t go near the other kids though.

I havent figured out what to do, his mom said to not let him do this so stop him form hurting himself and other people but ive had people at my work tell me to never say no and not to restrict him, just say i dont like what you’re doing right now please stop and try to redirect him very gently but the papers he’s ripping off have push pins and I’m afraid hell step on it and when he turns off the lights the gymnasts who are flipping will get hurt and the water bottles he throws usually spill so peoples feet get wet causing other equipment to be slippery.

Im worried about his safety, and other peoples safety. I need advice on how to get him to do gymnastics and avoid the meltdowns (not sure if thats the correct word for this case). Ive tried the way my coworkers said and I’ve tried just restricting him sitting down giving him deep squeezes and he usually calms down.

But this happens twice every class we have (the class is only 1 hour) or more than 4 times if we are doing camp (which is usually 3 or 7 hours). Ive also tried saying if we do this we can go read your book but he will say he doesn’t want his book but once i get him to do one thing he asks for his book. Ive also had times where I have taken him to get his book but it turns out he was using it as a way to get out of the gym and leave, he doesn’t want to come back in.

The problem is that he loves gymnastics, he asks to come all the time and he’s excited when i see him go put his stuff away before coming in but once he gets in he doesn’t want to do anything. Ive also tried making a schedule for him which worked out really well one time but the next time he came it didn’t work at all.

Any advice, I’m out of ideas? If anyone needs to know, the gymnastics centre isn’t all special needs children, we accept 1-2 children with special needs per class and we have competitive gymnasts around as well. *PS-sorry this is long*

This might very well be the longest ask we’ve ever received :P And unfortunately I don’t really have a ton of advice for you! I mean, it sounds like this kid just flat out doesn’t want to be there! Obviously something there is causing him such high levels of distress for him to consistently meltdown almost every time he goes there. I mean, at this point the question, to me, seems less like “What can we do to stop this” and more like “Could making him keep going there be considered child abuse”. And, frankly, since you only take a couple special needs kids per class he’s taking up a spot that would almost certainly be better served by someone who actually wants to be there.

I don’t know how much you’re allowed to talk to the parents or anything but, honestly, if you can, you should tell the parents that the kid just isn’t benefiting from the gymnastics class.It could be something environmental, maybe the lighting hurts or the sounds of the other kids. I know even as an adult I’ll sometimes be very excited to do something then once I’m doing it I go “Wow, I forgot how much I hate this!” so it could be the same for him. If he does genuinely like gymnastics, he’d probably be better off taking private lessons. If he’d really just rather read his books, he’d probably be better off in a library club or something.

Obviously it can’t keep going on like this, especially since he’s putting himself and others in danger. I think it’s time you have a meeting with the parents and decide if there’s something else that’s better suited for him.

-Brother Cat

Yep, I agree with Brother Cat !

It sounds to me like he’s being very sensorily overloaded during class. You might not realize it, but gyms are pretty awful. First of all, there are a lot of people. That means people are talking, being noisy, probably smelling like sweat. The equipment might smell funky, be squeaky, have weird textures. The lights (especially neon lights) are probably too bright and making noises you can’t hear but that he can.

Sensory overload can be very painful, especially to children, and can easily provoke meltdowns. (Here’s a simulation if you want to see what it might feel like.) When he’s turning the lights off and throwing stuff or slapping you, he’s not being difficult, he’s saying “being here hurts and I don’t want to stay here.” Pressure (deep squeezes) sometimes helps with warding off sensory overload, it’s great that it helps him ! But it’s not a permanent fix, this situation can’t go on.

I remember that during gym class I’d squeeze myself between the corner wall and the metal door and try to shut out the noises and lights :/ They’re not good memories. I would have given anything to read a book somewhere quiet instead.

PS: Kudos to you for coming to autistic people with your questions ! We really appreciate it !! You’re actively making a difference in this kid’s life :)

- Sister Cat

#Anonymous #ask #long post

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