Hawkins, Indiana
January 1987
Max has been home from rehab for about a week and all she’s really been able to do is amble around her trailer watching movies and listening to music. The second semester of the school year doesn’t start for another week, so she’s got a lot of time on her hands.
Sometimes, when she’s really bored, she’ll make her way, slowly, over to Eddie’s trailer and bother him for an afternoon. Sometimes Wayne is there and awake to bother too and it makes her remember what it felt like to have a family that cared about her. It doesn’t make her bitter, just hopeful, because she thinks now she’s found people that could be that for her.
She’s knocking on the trailer now and she can hear Eddie scrambling for the door on the other side. He swings it open, his guitar in his other hand. “Max!” He exclaims, a bright smile lighting up his entire face when he sees her. “Come in. I was just learning a special song.”
Max makes her way up the steps into the trailer and follows Eddie into the living room. Eddie drops into the sole armchair in the room, leaving Max to the plaid couch. It was old and the fabric was a little scratchy, but it was soft in all the right places. She sits with her back against one of the arms, lifting her legs to stretch in front of her. Her ankles were a bit swollen today because of the weather and they were irritated. She was supposed to keep them elevated when that happened.
“So what’s the song?” She asks. Eddie smiles and starts playing. He’d already played her “Running Up That Hill” in the hospital so many times, she was almost getting sick of it, but this time it’s “Hounds of Love.” Max can’t help but smile as she listens.
When the song is over, Eddie says, “I’m making my way through the entire album.” He doesn’t say ‘just in case’ but Max hears it anyway and something inside her swells as she looks at him. It’s been hard for them all to believe that the Upside Down is gone and Vecna with it.
There’s another knock on the trailer door then and Eddie smiles at her, placing his guitar in her hands before he goes to answer the door. She strums the strings absently as she waits for him to come back.
Eddie is trying to keep his voice soft, maybe so she doesn’t hear, but she hears anyway. “Hey Stevie, Max is here.”
She can’t hear Steve’s response but then Eddie’s stepping back, making space for Steve to come through the door. Then Steve is there, smiling, grocery bags in hand.
“Hey, Max,” Steve calls over to her. “Any dinner plans tonight?"
Max just shakes her head, smiling back.
“Good, because I’m cooking the best pasta you’ll ever taste in your life.” Steve’s grinning now as he pulls off his jacket and starts unpacking his bags, arranging his ingredients on the counter in the kitchen. Max’s eyes dart over to Eddie and she can see the way he’s looking at Steve. It’s the same way that she’s seen Will look at Mike or the way that Lucas looks at her when he thinks she’s not paying attention. Eddie’s looking at Steve like he's hung the moon.
“Oh,” she says, almost involuntarily. “I don’t want to intrude.”
“You could never,” Steve says, pulling several pots from a cabinet near the stove. Max doesn’t miss the way he seems to know his way around the trailer. “Right, Munson?”
Eddie seems to shake himself from a daze. “Absolutely, Mayfield. You gotta stay. Steve’s, like, a professional chef. Wayne’ll be here too.” Eddie leaves Steve to start preparing their meal in the tiny kitchen and comes back over. “Wanna learn some chords while we wait?”
Max nods and Eddie starts to show her where she’s supposed to put her fingers, how to strum using his guitar pick. At some point, Wayne emerges from his room down the hall, making his way to the refrigerator and grabbing a beer. He makes conversation with Steve in the kitchen while Max and Eddie keep playing. Before long, Steve’s calling them over to the kitchen table while Wayne arranges the place settings.
Max can’t remember the last time she’s had a dinner like this. Her mom wasn’t really the cooking type anymore and she was at work more often than not these days anyway. Max smiles at the way Wayne and Eddie tease each other, how it’s so clear they love each other. She laughs at Wayne’s stories of the guys at the plant, at the dumb shit they do when they’ve been drinking on the nights they have off. She laughs at the way Eddie makes fun of Steve for being popular and playing basketball and how Steve makes fun of Eddie for being a nerd.
She can’t remember the last time she’s felt like this, like there’s something fuzzy flowing through her veins. She looks around the table at the three men and she can’t help but think that this is what a family is supposed to feel like.
The pasta’s pretty good too.
you can read the full (complete) fic “sorry about the blood in your mouth (i wish it was mine)” on ao3 here
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WIP Intro - The Protolith
Finally doing a WIP intro :0
Genre: Adult [18+] Fantasy Nonlinear Romance
Subgenres: gaslamp fantasy, dark academia, forbidden romance
Progress: First draft, 100k words so far!
Blurb: See this post :)
Tag: Protolith
Characters:
Charlotte [26, she/her]: impulsive, outspoken medical student and disgraced noblewoman. Seeks to re-enter the high court with her new husband, leaving her salacious past behind
Edith [26, she/her]: witty, feminist, polyamorous mathematician who works as Charlotte's lady-in-waiting and confidante
The Stranger [42, he/him]: a stoic war priest with a playboy reputation, money to burn, and hidden secrets
Nathaniel [22, he/him]: new-to-town rich boy with ties to the church and a new marriage to Charlotte to launch his career at court
Setting: Lorenzia, a marble city at the center of the Empire, a theocratic and oligarchic state
Vibes: late nights, summer rain, smoky scotch, cigars after sex
Excerpt:
Charlotte spent her nights one of two ways: seducing wealthy men at lavish parties or studying the cardiovascular system of a stolen cadaver. Though she vastly preferred the company of cadavers to men, tonight, Charlotte attended the former.
Read More Here:
The Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Excerpts: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (not chronological)
[I only post the first scene from each chapter, so please click the "read more!" link to read the entire chapter]
Writeblr Intro w/ Prolotith Links
[TW: This story contains discussion of sex work including graphic sexual content, survival sex work and sexual assault. Additionally, there are discussions of depression, suicidal thoughts, suicide, self-harm, and heavy drug use.]
Tag List: @broodparasitism, @socialmediasocrates, @asablehart, @anarchyandroses, @leighvalentin, @seasteading, @authoralexharvey, @local-writers-corner, @namelessscribe, @chishiio, @amaiguri, @innocentlymacabre
[Just ask if you want to be added to the tag list!]
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oh would u all like another bit i wrote for creative writing homework? the assignment was 'write a nonlinear/fragmented narrative' and i had a blast with it.
(currently entitled 'One last chance to be a hero' bcos on god am i bad at titles)
- - -
In spite of everything, the world does not end. It's touch and go for a little while, no one really sure if the heroes will succeed—but they do. They battle against the strange forces threatening the world; they push back the encroaching destruction; and they die noble, meaningful deaths.
They save the world. Everyone else has to live in it.
- - -
The day before the end of the world (projected), the hero Peregrine watches TV with her girlfriend, both of them snuggled up on their old green couch. They're so lucky, really, to live somewhere broadcasts can still get through. So lucky to have this together.
"Why do you have to go?" her girlfriend whispers against her shoulder.
"The whole world, Laine." Their argument is too well-worn to be angry, familiar words spoken in a ritual of love, of misery. "We have to."
"But why do you have to go, Beckett?"
"Because I'm a hero. I have to be a hero. Even if this is my last chance." A smile, a hand through her beloved's hair. "Promise to wait for me?"
- - -
The world is saved, but it is strange. The ground warps and reshapes itself. The ocean rises in endless storms.
Humanity survives, as best they can, as humanity always has.
- - -
In conference rooms around the world, men in suits hem and haw over stopping the world from ending. But the expense, is the refrain. Think about the economy. If we spend it all now, how can we help the survivors later?
It is determined that the resources of the men in suits are too valuable to use now. They lock them away underground, in the reinforced rooms the men will hide in themselves. Nowhere safer.
- - -
"Sorry to ask you to help out again," the clinic doctor says. "I don't know why these machines keep acting up, but they seem to behave themselves with you."
Laine smiles. She's good at smiling, even if she can never manage a laugh anymore. "I've always liked electronics," she says.
The doctor holds the door open for her. "And we're lucky to have you around. God knows the government offices would love to snatch you up instead, the knack you've got for tech."
"Oh, I'd really rather..." She stops in the doorway—just for a second—until she can breathe again. It's been months, now, but she's still not used to seeing her old couch in the clinic.
(Their old couch. When the community association had come around asking for donations, she couldn't wait to give it away, as though it would take all her memories with it. When they showed up with a pickup truck, she stood outside and watched until she could no longer see the green of it in the distance.)
"...not," she finishes. "Can't imagine working for the government, honestly."
- - -
The night before the end of the world (projected), the supervillain Technobabbler robs a bank. It's not her usual MO, no high-tech target, no flashy robotics, practically sloppy. Peregrine stops her before she even opens the vault.
"Was there a point to this?" the hero asks, her voice weary as she leans against the vault door. "Or just one more piece of trouble before I go and try to save the world?"
Technobabbler's entire face is covered in a mask, opaque lenses over her eyes, voice modified until not an ounce of human emotion seeps through. Her shoulders are tense.
"Or you don't go," she says.
When Peregrine is silent, the villain continues, words falling out in a mechanical rush. "If you go—if you don't come back—I'll rob a bank every day. I'll kidnap government officials. I'll—I'll turn people into androids. No one will be there to stop me."
"I hope," Peregrine says slowly, "you'll stop yourself."
"I'm a villain."
"You don't have to be." She pushes off the door and takes a step forward, watches Technobabbler stumble back. Holds out a hand. "Come with us. Help us, and I'll put in a good word for you. It's never too late to change."
It feels like hours that she stares at that hand.
"I can't," she says at last. "I made a promise."
- - -
When the storms make land, the ramshackle community center floods. The clinic, especially, asks for help: beds for their patients, food and transportation for their doctors, dry storage space for their remaining equipment. Laine finds herself called for at midnight, frantically swapping out soaked and faulty wiring for nearly-new parts she hopes will fix everything.
It's dawn when she starts making her way home. The frigid, muddy water swirling through the streets and flooding her boots looks almost beautiful, shimmering with the first rose-gold rays of sunrise.
Its eddies catch and twist around something musty and green, just barely poking out of the water.
- - -
The day the world is expected to end, Laine nudges broadcast towers in her direction, strengthens the receptors in the television. She will watch this. She has to watch this.
The news crews grab as many interviews as they can—pre-fight interviews, they say, avoiding final, avoiding memoriam. Beckett shines in her Peregrine suit. She always has.
The cameras can't follow the heroes all the way, can only show the battle from a distance. It's too dangerous, could interfere with the fight. More importantly, cameras stop working if they get too close. Laine wonders if she could have made the cameras work, if she'd gone. If Technobabbler had chosen the heroes' side, in the end. Probably she would have had more important things to do.
She sits on the green couch for hours, alone, and watches her own world end.
- - -
Most of the conference rooms have been destroyed, and the suits are shabbier now, too. But the men still hem and haw just the same when people come to them for help rebuilding and resupplying. That hardly seems fair, they bluster. Why didn't you simply preserve your resources like we did? If we help you now, how will you help yourselves?
- - -
Technobabbler does not rob a bank every day. She does not kidnap government officials, or turn people into androids.
- - -
Underground, in their reinforced rooms, with their hoards of resources, the men smile. We did well, they tell each other. This is what we are meant for. The world needs us, just like this.
They don't notice the controls of their high-tech security systems start to move.
- - -
"An anonymous donation," the clinic doctor tells Laine, beaming. "We'll be able to ride this one out, rebuild, maybe even set up a backup location."
Laine smiles, and it feels like it could be a laugh.
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