lingeringmirth

[lingeringmirth]

every person can feel freddie’s presence in their souls when they sing MAMAAAAAA UUHHHH, I DONT WANNA DIE, I SOMETIMES I WISH I’VE NEVER BEEN BORN AT ALL with all the air in their lungs i’m not joking

#bohemian rhapsody #Queen #humans are beautiful

[lingeringmirth]

no strength left

Written for day 30. "We're out of time." of @whumpril. Went for the throat with this final entry.

Stranger Things | Steddie, platonic Stobin | Rating: G | Drabble, angst, hurt steve, omega steve, alpha eddie, omegaverse, open to interpretation.

-

Robin kept tugging at his arm and Steve kept shrugging her off, clinging to the body in his arms, cursing his own that he didn’t have the strength to carry Eddie.

‘Come on.’

‘No.’

‘Dingus…’

‘I can’t leave him!’

He bit his lip and whimpered.

Eddie had to open his eyes and tell him he was okay, because Steve wasn’t and wouldn’t be if his alpha didn’t get up. The skies rumbled and the ground shook as he sat in the puddle of their mingled blood.

He saw the moment she understood he wasn’t making it, that it was over.

#whumpril2024 #whumprilday30 #we're out of time #stranger things #steddie #platonic stobin #omega steve harrington #alpha eddie munson #angst #open to interpretation #drabble #hurt steve harrington

[lingeringmirth]

because no-one else will

Written for day 29. reluctant caretaker of @whumpril.

Stranger Things | Jim Hopper & Steve Harrington | Rating: Gen |drabble, hurt steve, s2 canon divergence, whump.

Also here on AO3.

When Hopper sees Harrington’s beaten-in face and the way his eyes can’t quite track and how slow his responses are, he decides that he needs to take care of the kid, because no-one else will..

‘Don’... No… ‘m fine.’

The kid, and he is a kid still, never mind that he’s sixteen (seventeen? how old is he, really?), resists him, of course, why wouldn’t he? All his previous interactions with Hopper have been Jim coming to put a stop to his rowdy parties.

‘No, you aren’t. Come on.’

Harrington follows, subdued.

And that’s how Hopper gained a second kid… eventually.

#whumpril2024 #whumprilday29 #reluctant caretaker #steve harrington & jim hopper #whump #hurt steve harrington #s2

[lingeringmirth]

okay where's all the fics with Steve just blatantly flirting with Eddie all the way through highschool, with Eddie being adamant that Steve couldnt possibly be flirting anytime someone asks, like he always has an excuse, a reason, some way to waft it all away like noooo couldnt be flirting with me i'm a dude.

but he is. he has been. always. every interaction he has with Eddie he flirts with him.

the only reason he didnt wanna join the nerd game was cause:

A: Lucas's game, cant miss that fuck you guys who missed it what the fuck

and

B: he'd have flirted and the kids dont need to see how over the top he gets. the band has already seen it and are over it, the kids dont need to.

[lingeringmirth]

ARCHIVE YOUR FIC ON AO3 FOR ETERNAL GLORY

It physically pains me to see people post awesome fanfiction to tumblr and nowhere else. Tumblr moves so fast! By tomorrow people who didn’t look in a tag at the right moment won’t know it existed. By next week even people who did read it won’t be able to find it back to reread. Finding anything on tumblr via search function is practically a fluke. For all intents and purposes, your hard work has a halflife of about a week at most.

PUT YOUR WORK ON AO3 WHERE IT CAN LIVE ETERNALLY, I BEG YOU

People who come into that fandom in a month, a year, even a decade will be able to find your work!

People can bookmark it!

People can rec it to others!

People can reread it into infinity! (and people like me can do that and comment every time!)

You can get comments & kudos until the endtimes because people will keep finding your work! (seriously I still sometimes get new people finding and loving my work from ~2013)

And best of all, people can SUBSCRIBE to your work so they will get email about new chapters and stories! (I’m seeing people do manual ‘Tag you in the next chapter’ lists and seriously, physical pain, this wheel has already been invented and it is rolling beautifully)

PLEASE LET ME BOOKMARK YOUR FIC I BEG YOU

“But I need an invite for AO3!”

Yes, and the waiting list is currently 2-3 days. That’s hardly worth not doing this for, right?

“But I only read fic, I don’t post it”

here is a post on why having an account just to read fic is also very worth it!

Lately I’ve been the tumblr person who jumps onto people who post cool fic to tumblr and going HEY HAVE YOU POSTED THIS TO AO3, YOU REALLY SHOULD, HIT ME UP FOR AN INVITE CODE and I hereby invite all you fellow fic readers and posters to join me into spreading the good word.

Please reblog this and tag your favourite fandoms and pairings! Spread this post to the people who need to see it! Save great fic from the tumblr void!

[lingeringmirth]

towards a brighter future

Written for day 28. fight/flight/freeze of @whumpril.

Stranger Things | Wayne Munson centric | Angst, drabble, eddie's dad is a DICK, family.

cw: non-graphic references to child-neglect.

Also here on AO3.

-

The kid stares at him with wide eyes like a deer frozen in headlights. His head is buzzed,  his limbs gangly and his clothes hang on him in a way that even Wayne with all his lack of knowledge about children knows is more about malnutrition than the clothes being ill-fitting.

This is his nephew, already touched by the darkness that clung to Wayne’s brother, and his now to try and lead towards a brighter future.

Wayne wonders if the boy wants to run from this as badly as he does.

He fights the impulse and vows to do better.

#whumpril2024 #whumprilday28 #fight/flight/freeze #angst #wayne munson #eddie munson #drabble #eddie's dad i a DICK #cw: child neglect

[lingeringmirth]

for the @steddielovemonth prompt, day 16: Love is staying in bed for five extra minutes because you can’t tear yourself away from them just yet

Pls go and read @thefreakandthehair 's and @sidekick-hero 's accompanying fics!! Here's Steve's and here's Eddie's POV! ❤️

#steve harrington #eddie munson #steddie #hngh

[lingeringmirth]

Boysss In collaboration with wonderful tiny_faust on Instagram

More under the cut

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #so good #pretttttty

[lingeringmirth]

cackling at this, can NOT believe it's a real, actual quote. it reads so much like one of those clickhole pieces

[lingeringmirth]

kinda I want to (steddie, 1.5k, T)

Eddie gets home from work to music playing louder than usual from the kitchen. It’s not Steve’s latest obsession, at least—the guy gets fixated on one single record at a time and listens to it over and over again, singing along with his regrettably beautiful voice until Eddie’s learned every fucking word to every fucking song in Dream of the Blue Turtle against his will. It’s a problem. 

He hangs his leather jacket over Steve’s blue-and-purple hoodie on the overcrowded coat rack, straining his ears. It feels vaguely familiar, but he can’t quite—

It’s nothing of Robin’s he can immediately place, either. Synth-pop, kind of dancey, except not New Order-bouncy. He takes off his boots and starts making his way to the kitchen. It kind of sounds like Depeche Mode? But the voice is wrong. Tougher, a little strained, a little… whiny? What the fuck is it?

He still hasn’t placed it as he gets to the kitchen. Steve doesn’t hear him approach—he has his back to the door, hands plunged into the suds-filled sink and he’s humming along to the mystery music. Eddie doesn’t step into the room yet. He needs to listen a bit longer, buy himself some time. Steve will think he knows what the tape is, and he’ll ask about it, and Eddie will have to admit that he doesn’t, and—

It’s a matter of principle, okay? He’s a musician and he works in a record store! He should be able to place whatever his less musically-educated roommate is listening to! Harrington catches him by surprise all too often, even after the nightmares they survived, even after moving to the city together, even after sharing this apartment that Eddie might refer to as shitty to get street cred with his intimidating goth co-worker at the store but is actually really nice, and warm, and by now probably, if Eddie’s being honest, feels more like home than Wayne’s, due in no small measure to Steve’s endless thoughtful little touches. The pink bathroom and the pale yellow walls here in the kitchen. The basil and mint on the windowsill. The mismatched wooden chairs, painted a glossy dark brown, set around the aqua blue formica table. It is but one of many surprises that Steve is just, like, weirdly good at—

The next song starts, and Eddie knows what they’re listening to. It’s something Pearl, the aforementioned goth co-worker, put on at the store a few times last week. Nine Inch Nails. Great band name, Eddie’ll give them that. Phallic and blasphemous at the same time? He’s almost jealous, honestly. They’re not metal, though, so it doesn’t count.

Eddie feels himself relax. He actually opens his mouth to finally say hi like a normal person, but then Steve starts bopping along to the beat. His legs bounce lightly, the movement rippling rhythmically through his thighs, his back, up to the soft curve of his shoulders. And it’s like Eddie can see what will happen if he announces his presence—Steve will turn to him, and smile, and say hi back. He’ll stop dancing. He’ll be embarrassed.

So Eddie stays right where he is. He doesn’t say a word, barely breathes at all, really. He surreptitiously leans one shoulder into the doorjamb because he needs some support during this difficult time. Steve is energetically brushing away at a gross saucepan, and his humming has turned increasingly coherent. “Your kiss,” he sings along with the second repetition of the refrain, shaking his hips. Your fist,” he croons, rinsing off the saucepan. “Na-na-na, na-na, under my skin.”

Because the thing is—and Eddie had noticed it already, pointed it out to Pearl in fact, who’d agreed with him, it should be noted—these lyrics are, uh, pretty gay? And so, and so, this, plus the dancing, isn’t helping one bit to rein in Eddie’s inconvenient, unrelenting crush on his roommate cum best friend cum life-debt beneficiary. He usually does a pretty good job of it, if he can say so himself, but it’s a daily struggle, of course, what with Steve looking like that, and being so sweet, and funny, and delightfully bitchy. There have been times—times! Moments, even. Steve coming out of the bathroom, freshly showered and drip drip dripping on the hardwood floor. Steve coming in after a run, flushed and sweaty and smelling like—

Eddie has turned out to be a much stronger man than he thought he was, let’s put it this way. Also, a constant source of free entertainment for their other roommate, who laughs in his face daily and slings baseless accusations about being able to cut the sexual tension with a knife in this fucking apartment.

Robin Buckley is unhinged and dangerous and should mind her own business.

As if the gay lyrics and the dancing weren’t enough, Steve’s wearing the good jeans, too: the Levi’s that send Eddie’s brain straight (ha!) back to the hallowed halls of Hawkins High, to his own sneaky, risky, guilty looks and the way light-wash denim clung to—not that Steve has any bad jeans, as such. And not that these could be the same jeans he had in high school: that pair was painted on, Eddie remembers it well, and Steve’s not as svelte as he was back then. (Personally, Eddie thinks he looks even better now, but that’s neither here not there.)

Eventually, he starts feeling less like he’s fondly witnessing his good friend’s moment of joyful abandon to the music and more like a fucking creep, so he leaves the safety of the threshold to take a step toward the boombox and turn down the volume. Not by much! He definitely doesn’t want to discourage Steve from turning shit up to eleven.

As expected, Steve startles, freezes, and his shoulders rise up toward his ears. He half-turns toward Eddie, doesn’t stop rinsing the saucepan under the tap. “Oh hey,” he says. “I didn’t hear you come in.” He looks caught, as if Eddie had surprised him doing something way more damning than listening to some music that’s a bit out of character.

Eddie clears his throat, steps closer, tries very hard not to look at the water splattered over Steve’s white tee and the enticing tiger stripes of see-through fabric on his belly, pink with skin and dark with hair. “Hey yourself,” he says, normally. “What in the world are you listening to?”

“Oh, this?” Steve says, gesturing toward the boombox with a couple of wet fingers. He sets the saucepan to dry, face down on a towel on the counter. “Just something Jon thought I’d like, I dunno.”

“Jonathan Byers,” Eddie clarifies, taking another step closer. “Lent you his Nine Inch Nails tape?”

“Gave it to me, actually,” Steve says. He shuts the water off and roughly wipes his hands on his jeans to dry them off, turning fully toward him.

“Gave it? To you?” Eddie repeats, less normally. What next, a fucking mixtape? he thinks, scoffing internally. “He’s—giving you music? I—”

I’m the only one who can do that! he wants to say. He also wants to kick his feet like a toddler. He does neither, because Steve steps closer still. He steps closer still, and he tilts his head in such a way that somehow brings him to look through his lashes at Eddie, even if they’re exactly the same height, and he asks, “Why, are you jealous?”

Eddie gulps, swallows nothing. He thinks of Robin’s smug, smug face and resigns himself to being mocked for the rest of his natural life. He would pay a steeper price, honestly, if that means he can— 

“I am,” he admits. “I’m really fucking jealous.”

“Oh yeah?” Steve asks. He presses one hand to his chest. It’s still damp, and the warmth seeps through the fabric of Eddie’s shirt.

“Uh-huh.” He nods, stepping forward so his leg slots between Steve’s. “That’s my job.”

The stupid music is still going, another track change. How can you turn me into this? After you just taught me how to kiss, the guy whines, and it’s a bit too on the nose, right, as the soundtrack to a first kiss? But then Eddie touches his lips to Steve’s and allows himself a cliché: the music fades.

He pulls back, just a second, just to see what Steve’s face looks like from this new vantage point of a handbreadth away, but Steve had his eyes closed and he frowns as he opens them again. “Eddie,” he says, low, serious. “Don’t you want—”

“I do, I do, fucking—of course I do,” Eddie mumbles against Steve’s lips. “Jesus.”

Steve laughs, and then he takes Eddie’s fumbling first kiss and makes it ten thousand times better, angling his own lips and Eddie’s with a gentle hand on his jaw. “God, finally,” he sighs between kisses, pulling him closer.

+

Later, Robin finds them on the kitchen floor, very much not fit to be seen. To her credit, she doesn’t even shriek much.

“Seriously? In our shared kitchen?” she says, looking down at them with her hands on her hips. Unimpressed, but with a smile dancing on her lips. “Happy for you dinguses,” she adds. “I’m ordering pizza.” Then she turns and leaves them to the thirty-seconds walk of shame to their rooms.

Or, well, to Eddie’s room. Steve trails after him and Eddie’s sure as hell not sending him away. Not now, not ever.

#steddie #❤️❤️❤️

[lingeringmirth]

i want you to stay

Written for day 27. "please don't go" of @whumpril.

Stranger Things | Steve Harrington centric | Steve has bad & absent parents, emotional hurt, platonic stobin, stancy (canon compliant), steve & dustin friendship, steve has abandonment issues.

Also here on AO3.

-

Steve Harrington is eight the first time he pleads for his mother not to go, his father is going as well, but it’s his mother is the one who he wants to stay, since his father is, at best, a distant figure, and a nasty one at worst, always ready with belittling words and seeing his son as less than, although this is something Steve learns to have been bad only later on, at eight he’d thought it was normal.

His mother looks apologetic, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes, he doesn’t think, then or later, when he starts nitpicking through his memories about his childhood to try and pinpoint when the abandonment started.

His mother leaves and Steve is left with a nanny, the first of many, they always left and a new one came when he had started to trust they wouldn’t. He complains once, at ten, then never again when that doesn’t make a difference. part of him starts to feel that his mother doesn’t want him to have a trusted close adult in his life and doesn’t want to fill that role either.

When he’s twelve he’s left home all alone, because he’s “old enough”, “mature” and “should learn to take care of himself” and it’ll “toughen you up.”

He cries his pillow wet that night and many nights after. He learns to be self-reliant, to take care of himself, to never be close to anyone, always aloof, he’s learned the hard way that attachments never last.

Then he goes and falls in love with Nancy Wheeler and she leaves him, too, calling him bullshit, slurring and unco-ordinated, but not dishonest, because drunken words are sober thoughts.

He cries himself to sleep that night after drowning his sorrows in a bottle first.

He tries to not grow close with Dustin Henderson, but the kid’s tenacious, burrows under his skin and stays, Claudia Henderson wheedles her way in as well, with smiles, kind words and hugs which he believes in despite all the disappointments he’s had in the past. He still can’t quite believe they’ll stay. He never asks them to, because he doesn’t want to hear the answer, convinced that it’ll be no even if he wishes for it to be yes.

Then comes Starcourt, Robin, Russians and torture.

Steve doesn’t go to the hospital even when he maybe should, instead, he goes home with Robin trailing behind him and, for the first time in ten years he asks the question he never asks.

‘Will you stay?’

They’re standing at his bedroom doorway after she’s helped him up the stairs, fussing and telling him he should have gone to the hospital. His head is killing him, he’s limping and sore all over. The words are out before he can even think about them properly.

Robin squeezes his arms. ‘Of  course, Dingus.’

She’s still there in the morning and he can finally trust that there are people who want to stay and will stay, for him.

#whumpril2024 #whumprilday27 #please don't go #whump #stranger things #steve harrington #steve harrington has bad parents #whimp #platonic stobin #steve harrington & dustin henderson #angst #emotional hurt #steve has abandonment issues #stancy

[lingeringmirth]

no son of mine

Written for @whumpril day 26 using the alternative prompt "blanket nest".

Stranger Things | Rating: T | Steve Harrington centric | Omegaverse, nesting, Steve has bad parents, angst, self-hatred, Omega Steve Harrington.

cw: pejorative language.

Also here on AO3.

-

Steve is twelve when he makes his first blanket nest. His parents aren’t home so he gets to keep it for a glorious two months, but the moment his mother sees it she’s already dismantling it, hissing at him to never mention it to his father, or else. He can only look at her with wide eyes and nod, never having seen his mother this scared, even when she’s doing her best to hide it behind anger.

The impulse, the need, to make a nest doesn’t go away but rather intensifies as time goes on and he can’t ignore what it likely means.

In the next two years he makes several nests, always trying to dismantle them when his parents come home, but there comes a point where he’s afraid to have them any longer because his parents are suddenly at home more and his father keeps talking about how he’s happy he won’t have an omega for a son when the time comes, how Steve is independent and will do him proud, talking as if Steve will have any control over his biology, that words will make any difference to what his body’s gearing towards.

So, of course Steve panics when he presents, even when he’d been expecting the outcome.

He’s been nesting all week, unable to make himself take his nest down, it was always gone when he got home from school and he and his mother avoided each other’s eyes, he saw the fear in them, could almost smell it on her, that sourness people always talked about.

His father explodes when he comes home, Steve’s tucked himself into a corner in his bedroom, making himself small, crying for his nest as his father throws things and yells downstairs. He hears no son of mine and I knew you wouldn’t be any good and what good will it be besides spreading its legs?

It’s the first time he wishes he hadn’t presented as an omega and won’t be the last.

#whumpril2024 #whumprilday26 #blanket nest #stranger things #steve harrington #omega!steve harrington #omegaverse #angst #nesting #steve has bad parents #cw: pejorative language

[lingeringmirth]

There is a knock at Steve Harrington’s door.

Three to be exact.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

It’s nothing new. This happens every night. It doesn’t make it any less terrifying.

Steve gets out of bed and walks over to his apartment door, hands hovering over the handle. His body shakes, he feels too cold for a July evening.

Steve doesn’t bother looking out of the peephole. He knows there will be nothing to see. He hopes briefly it’s the awkward girl from down the hall, she always wears beat up converse and can hear her raspy laugh two doors down—but he knows it’s not. She often speeds by Steve’s apartment door, like she’s either terrified of him or what’s inside his home.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

Three knocks, three times. It’s only number two.

Steve wishes he knew more people here, but he hasn’t been here very long. So no one is looking for him, no one is here to wake him up at 3 am.

His palm sweat—but the chill hasn’t left him. He’s starting to think he’s haunted. Though nothing ever happens inside. Nothing happens at all, except the knocking. Steve never dares to open until it’s finished.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

Steve takes a deep breath, and opens the door….

No one is there.

Releasing a stuttering breath, Steve gently locks up and puts his head on then door.

“Fuck.” He whispers.

Then he hears, it from his bedroom.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

Steve’s let something inside.

#honey no #steve harrington

[lingeringmirth]

Yup

#steddie

[lingeringmirth]

Which do you prefer? Coffeeshop aus or soulmates?

Soulmates, always and forever, no contest.

#asks #soulmates

[lingeringmirth]

im trying to go to sleep but i cannotttttt stop thinking about this and laughing

[lingeringmirth]

im watching stargate atlantis for the first time without watching sg1 or having literally any background knowledge and all I can think about is how john sheppard is definitely a gay man very deep in the closet due to like...... being in the military in the early 2000s. I'm sorry but he only has any kind of tension with the men in this show (rodney and ronon specifically) and anytime he interacts with a woman it's so painfully platonic.

I also have some thoughts about how most of the atlantis crew is probably some kind of outcast with little to no ties to earth and now they're in the literal Mythical City of Atlantis. impossible things are happening. new bonds under new circumstances are forming. very queer to me idk.

also comparing john to kirk IN the text is interesting considering james t kirk was shipped so strongly with his chief science officer (aka his rodney equivalent 👀) that the pairing pretty much created fandom as we know it.

idk ive been at work all day and I'm tired so I feel like I could articulate my point there a lot better but that's what I've got rn

#there is no heterosexual explanation for John Sheppard #this is accurate #stargate atlantis