#I only did this bc I wanted to draw aroace richie | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rhondafromhr · 10 days

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So I started writing that Max and Steph roleswap AU and I wanted to post this little snippet I have so far and hear everyone’s thoughts because I’m not 100% happy with it yet…idk i feel like it might be too exposition heavy if that makes sense?? Like the backstory is important but idk I feel like I just kind of dumped it and maybe could weave it throughout the story better?? Lmk if you have any thoughts :)

Also Max and Richie’s relationship is going to be platonic in this (bc once again I’m weak for aroace Richie and the power of friendship being treated with the same narrative weight as romantic relationships).

Finally shoutout to tumblr user @idk-imrambling-idk who said in the tags of the original post that Max and Steph give sibling vibes in this au because I was like you know what, I love that, yes they do!! And it really inspired their dynamic and relationship in this

Here it is :)

Stephanie learned what it meant to be powerless at the ripe old age of nine. She sat next to her father in the crowd, watching the blindingly bright spotlight shine down upon her mother and beaming with pride as she was crowned Honey Queen. The applause was uproarious, every last townsperson’s gaze fixed solely on her. She’d always known her mom was the sweetest woman in Hatchetfield, but now it was official. Now she had the beautiful, ornate crown upon her head to prove it. As her mother was whisked away to what she assumed was some sort of super special, secret ceremony, her father insisted over her protests that no, they couldn’t go with her, she needed to go home and get to bed. It was a school night, after all, and she’d see her mother soon enough. She didn’t. Her mother never came home that night and with each passing day, Stephanie’s hope that she ever would dwindled even further.

Every woman who’s ever won that pageant has left Hatchetfield and never looked back, but back then, she didn’t know that. She just knew that one day, her mom was there to fawn over her drawings and point out all the little details she liked and put her spelling test up on the fridge and say how proud she was that Steph worked so hard and got more words right than last time and the next day, she wasn’t and there was nothing Stephanie could do about it. She wondered what she did wrong that her mom was so eager to get away from her. To this day, Stephanie doesn’t know where she ended up. She went through a brief phase where she spent hours a day fervently researching online and following every crumb of information she could find, desperate for any answers, but the very few flimsy leads she was able to find turned out to be dead ends. Not long after her twelfth birthday, Solomon told her she really ought to stop digging, because she wasn’t going to find the answers she was looking for and if she did, she wouldn’t be able to handle them. She rolled her eyes at his usual weird, cryptic nonsense, but for once, she didn’t argue with him. She never did figure out how he knew what she was doing. She only did her sleuthing when she was home alone and always made sure to use incognito mode.

As she got older, the list of things she had to do and wasn’t allowed to do and people she couldn’t hang out with grew exponentially. Everything always came back to the next election and how her behavior might reflect on her father. There was to be no hanging out with the smoke club kids, because he didn’t want the public thinking she was some kind of drug fiend (as if they were doing actual drugs. They were seventh graders. They may have upgraded to the real stuff now, but back then, Stephanie’s confident their vices of choice were, in fact, cloves and oregano, whether or not they were aware of it). If there was an option for honors or AP in a given subject, she had to take it, regardless of her interest or aptitude. He didn’t want her looking like some kind of slacker. Ironically, she credits that with how she became one. It was embarrassing trying so hard, only to still struggle to understand the material and receive abysmal grades in return, but it was equally embarrassing to admit to this and ask for help, so she figured the easiest route would be to stop trying. She made sure to keep her grades just barely high enough to keep her dad off of her case, but refused to do anything more. These days, she doesn’t have to sweat it. If she’s really in a pinch, she can just threaten some nerd into doing her homework for her.

As if that weren’t bad enough, the summer before Freshman year, one Greg Jägerman followed in his wife’s footsteps and vanished without a trace. That in itself was nothing out of the ordinary, but it did raise the question of what to do with the son he left behind. Solomon wasn’t doing so hot in the polls and Miss Tessburger decided that taking in the guy’s now-orphaned kid would make Solomon look kind and charitable, two of the last descriptors most voters would apply to him. Of course, nobody asked Steph her opinion. She was just stuck with this annoying pseudo-adopted brother one day and expected to be cool with it. Well, more accurately, nobody cared whether she was cool with it or not. The worst part was that he totally bought into this stupid fake family thing. He still won’t stop calling her sis.

What really infuriates her is that he gets the freedom she’s long been denied. Solomon truly couldn't care less what he does as long as he stays out of major trouble, doesn’t completely flunk his classes and shows up for all the public appearances and family photo ops. To this day, he still calls Solomon Dad as if he has any right to, as if Solomon sees him as anything more than an unfortunate consequence of a bold PR stunt, as if he’s had to put up with a fraction of what Stephanie’s endured from him. Solomon is not his dad and he is not a Lauter, no matter how many people mistakenly call him that. Solomon even praised him once. He came home from his latest lacrosse match and proudly said that they’d creamed Sycamore or whoever. Solomon, nose-deep in the latest poll and survey results Miss Tessburger had sent him, absently said, “that’s nice, son,” and waved him off. Sure, it was insincere. Sure, it was dismissive. But it was still far more than Stephanie had gotten since she was literally nine years old and more than she’s gotten since. It made her blood boil. She’d been jumping through hoops like some kind of goddamn show dog for her father for years and never got so much as one half-hearted compliment. It was just expected of her.

Still, she continued to jump through those hoops. It wasn’t like she had much of a choice and at this point, it was all she really knew, anyway. Unsurprisingly, Solomon still demanded more and just before she went into high school, he decided she was going to do sports. If there’s one defining trait that all of his constituents in town share, it’s their bizarre obsession with high school football, so this was a surefire way to impress them.

“Why do I have to?” she’d protested “Max already plays volleyball and lacrosse, doesn’t that satisfy the sports kid requirement?”

“Stephanie, I’d like to have an intelligent conversation with you. In other words, shut up. You know as well as I do that nobody cares about either of those sports. Clivesdale doesn’t even have a lacrosse or volleyball team and beating them is all these simple-minded hicks seem to care about. If you refuse to bring up your mediocre grades or put your time into any useful extracurriculars or bettering yourself in any way, the least you can do is join the cheer squad. How hard can it be to jump around and do some silly little chants?”

Max was there, too. Of course he was. On the increasingly rare occasions where Solomon was actually home, he was sure to be right there at his side, telling him about his day as if he fucking cared. Calling him Dad as if he had any fucking right to. She didn’t miss the way his face fell ever so slightly when Solomon said that nobody cared about his stupid sports and she couldn’t help but feel smug about it.

“Ha, yeah,” she said with a smirk “volleyball and lacrosse are dumb.”

The brief satisfaction was quickly overshadowed by a more pressing matter. Hell no, she was not going to join cheer. Pep, enthusiasm and silly dance routines aren’t really her style. She wasn’t sure she could do it if she wanted to and she really, really didn’t.

“Well, figure it out,” Solomon told her, looking at her with the usual disdain “it’s either that or football.” He may have said it mockingly, but she decided to take it as a challenge. She breached her own “no putting in more effort than necessary” policy and spent hours a day on the empty football field practicing plays. She’d usually drag Max along with her if he didn’t have practice for whichever one of his unimportant non-sports was in season.

“Hey,” he said during one of these practice sessions as he threw an admittedly decent spiral, his signature dumb, goofy grin on his face “I’ve been thinking about trying out, too. It might be kinda fun to be on the team together.”

She scowled. “No,” was her only response “just shut up and throw the ball, okay?” This was going to be her thing, damnit. He wasn’t going to invade it like he did everything else in her life. He did as she asked and never brought it up again.

She spent hours more at the gym, doing hard cardio until she was as sweat-soaked as that annoying weeb kid she saw around school sometimes and pushing herself to her limits strength training. It all paid off when the day of tryouts arrived and she blew everyone away with her athletic prowess, earning the position of star quarterback. That alone would have been great publicity and the fact that she was a freshman and the first girl ever to make the team in any position were the cherry on top. It spoke volumes that Solomon didn’t have anything negative to say, although he didn’t offer any praise, either.

If nobody could stand up to her before, they really couldn’t now. She wasn’t just the mayor’s daughter anymore. She was the star football player and with every victory she helped them score, especially against Clivesdale, the teachers and the principal became less and less likely to discipline her if anyone complained of her so-called bullying. It wasn’t as if they could do much before, but now they didn’t even care to try. With that, her iron grip over the school was secured and she’s thoroughly enjoyed it ever since. She still can’t do anything about her mom walking away or her dad treating her like some kind of accessory whose only use is to make him look good to potential voters or her stupid not-brother encroaching on her life and taking everything that’s rightfully hers, but she can maintain the delicate balance that is the high school hierarchy she’s created and bring order to Hatchetfield High. Really, she’s doing them all a favor. They don’t know what’s good for them and without her, it would descend into chaos.

Max slides into his seat in AP Calc with seconds to spare before the bell rings. He’s slammed two of those vile tasting sugar free energy drinks and he’s praying they’ll kick in soon.

“Alright, we’re going to have a pop quiz today. Hope you’ve been hitting the books, Mr. Lauter,” Miss Mulberry says. He doesn’t bother correcting her. Maybe if he could wear his letterman that has “Jägerman” embroidered on it, people wouldn’t make that mistake so often, but he’s not allowed to. The letterman jacket is Steph’s signature look. Not even Kyle and Jason get to wear theirs unless it’s a game day and they’re her closest friends. Max doesn’t even get that privilege, so he settled for a navy blue flannel with a tiny nighthawk patch poorly sewn into the pocket and his letterman hangs untouched in his closet. Sometimes, he doesn’t mind being called Max Lauter, even if it sounds a little off. Sometimes, he wants to believe that’s what he is. Other times, he wishes people would get it right. That’s the least of his worries right now, though. His chest feels so, so tight and a wave of nausea overtakes him and makes him wonder if ingesting so much caffeine and chemicals was a wise idea. He’s screwed. He can barely pass a test in this class when he has time to prepare and sacrifices several nights’ worth of sleep to study. He shouldn’t even be here. He knows he’s kind of dumb. Stephanie gleefully reminds him on a regular basis. Solomon doesn’t vocalize it, but sometimes Max will say something to him and he’ll just give him this look as if he’s just uttered the stupidest, most incomprehensible words ever spoken, then shake his head and go back to ignoring him. He’s always had a lot of trouble in most subjects, but math is by far the worst. Realistically, remedial algebra would be more his speed, but it wouldn’t be very becoming of a sort-of Lauter. Solomon took him in when he had nowhere else to go. He’s been a lot nicer to him than his own father ever was. He figured the least he could do is make him proud, but so far, that plan has backfired tremendously. Nobody’s going to be impressed with the D plus that he’s clinging to for dear life and can still feel slipping through his grasp.

He glances to his left and sees his neighbor calmly reach into his backpack and pull out his pen and calculator. The sheen of sweat on his forehead would suggest that he’s almost as nervous as Max is, but his demeanor radiates confidence and excitement. Max wonders why that guy wears so many layers if he’s always so sweaty. They’ve been in classes together since the first grade, but they’ve hardly spoken two words to each other. Max has, however, watched his hand eagerly shoot up whenever Miss Mulberry asks a question. He has watched him answer every equation with ease, solving them without fail, even when it all looks like gibberish to Max. If anyone can help Max out of this jam, it’s this guy. He has no real reason to, but Max supposes it can’t hurt to ask. What’s the worst that could happen?

“Hey,” he whispers “Shitlips, right?” He immediately winces. Fuck, he did not mean to say that. That’s how Steph and her friends always refer to him and he let it slip without thinking. Richie turns to glare at Max, clearly not amused.

“Sorry,” he says sheepishly “I meant Lipschitz. Richie Lipschitz, right?”

“Yeah,” he says, still a little irritated “what is it? We’re about to take a test.”

“It’s just that, uh, we’ve been in school together for, like, ages and I just realized I’ve never introduced myself. I’m Max.”

“Yeah, I know, Max Jägerman. The mayor’s kid. Stephanie Lauter’s brother.”

“She doesn’t like me reminding people, but yeah,” Max replies with a self-deprecating chuckle “I feel kinda bad now. I called you Shitlips and you got my name right on the first try. A lot of people think it’s Lauter.”

This gets Richie to crack a faint smile. “Yeah, I always remembered it because it sounds like Eren Yeager.”

“So, you ready for this test?” says Max with a sheepish grin “‘Cause I’m really, really not. Like, nothing in this class makes even a little bit of sense to me. I’m one hundred percent going to fail. Unless you help a bro out.”

“Oh, we’re bros now?” Richie says with a raised eyebrow.

“Sure,” Max says “we’re Nighthawks, right? We gotta stick together.”

“But won’t we get in trouble?”

“Not if we don’t get caught,” Max says “rules were made to be broken.”

“Fine,” says Richie “I’m willing to tilt my paper slightly so you can see it better. Try to keep up, though, I’m not waiting to turn in my test so you can finish copying. That’ll look suspicious.” That much is true. Richie’s always the first person to turn in his test in this class, usually by a substantial amount of time. “And don’t be super obvious about it,” he adds.

“Really?” Max says, his face lighting up in a way that he rarely allows it to “thanks, dude, I owe you one!”

#nerdy prudes must die #npmd #max jagerman #stephanie lauter #hatchetfield fanfic #npmd au #max and Steph roleswap au #richie lipschitz

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