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mickeyswhore · 5 months

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Just A Nobody

A/N: might feel silly and write a Part 2 of this, lmk if I should.

Summary: Homelander wants you, and you find an unlikely ally in Soldier Boy, at least that's what you think.

Soldier Boy x Reader

Warnings: not a lot of smut, manipulation, degradation.

GIF by @coppoladelrey

You started working at Vought while you finished college, Ashley needed a new assistant and she wanted someone young to be able to relate to the younger demographic that you represented. To say that your job was a nightmare was the understatement of the year, everyone treated you like a doormat, especially people in the Seven, except Starlight but when she left you were in the lion’s den again.

You had a system of how to navigate the supes, if it was The Deep, never be in a room alone with him under no circumstances. If it was Noir, it didn't matter because he never talked to you or anyone else for that matter so he was harmless, A Train was a mess and Ashley was very strict with you, never do any favours for him so you stayed away, Queen Maeve was always unpleasant with you so you stayed away. The only person Ashley said that you needed to do anything they asked was Homelander, which resulted in him rentelesly flirting with you.

The different ways that you were avoiding him were insanely creative, you knew that no one could stop Homelander if he decided to attack you so you had to rely only on yourself and your intelligence. You were constantly stressed, every time you went to work you were on the verge of a panic attack and you were so close to quitting when Vought took it upon themselves to pay for your college.

“Ashley? What is this?” You were so pissed, you had written up your resignation letter and everything.

“You’re welcome are the only words that should be coming out of your mouth right now, darling.” You despised her tone, it was filled with a superiority complex.

“I didn't ask for this.” You protested.

“It wasn’t me, alright? It was Homelander! You made quite an impression on him, if I were you I’d express some gratitude.” She left, tears were already running down your cheeks. Homelander basically owned you and he would come back to claim you.

After freaking out and hyperventilating for hours in Ashley’s office, you decided to take a sick day and go to your apartment. You needed a way out of this but you had no idea of how yet, you took the subway and went home after warning Ashley.

At home you were thinking about what to do, if you ran away Homelander would eventually find you. He found his son and the mother and was with Vought’s help, you wouldn’t even last a day. While you were freaking out and thinking about all of the worst possible scenarios Ashley was blowing up your phone.

WHERE ARE YOU?????

SOLDIER BOY WAS FOUND

NEED YOU HERE STAT

NOWWWWWWWWWW

You thought that Soldier Boy was dead since before your father was born, maybe Ashley was mistaken? Maybe Vought being in disarray about this person would clear you from being away from Homelander for a while. You got up from your sofa and you were ready to get back to work and deal with Ashley almost having a mental breakdown. When you opened the door you saw him there, your blood ran cold.

“Homelander.” You whispered and he smiled, his smile always unsettled you. “What you’re doing here?” You had no idea that he knew you where you lived, that made you so fucking scared.

“I wanted to explain myself, I paid for your college tuition and we barely spoke before.” He entered your apartment and looked everywhere, you felt so violated.

“It’s gonna have to wait, Ashley needs me.” You were about to touch him so he could leave your apartment but his facade fell.

“She can wait.” You felt the urge to cry but somehow you didn't.

“Not really, Soldier Boy is back.” That was the first time you saw Homelander scared, and for a second you were more afraid of Soldier Boy than Homelander. Who was he that even the strongest man on earth is afraid of? “So I really need to go. You understand that, right?” You had no idea what he was going to do, you sighed relieved when he got out of your apartment.

“It’s fine, I’ll take you back to the tower.” Homelander motioned for you to follow him and you looked confused.

“No worries, I’ll take the subway.” He invaded your personal space and got inches near your face.

“I’m trying to be a gentleman here, girl. I said, I’ll take you.” Homelander was definetly getting off on the fact that you were scared of him, the way you smelled when you were scared and he didn't hide the fact that he enjoyed it. You simply nodded and the two of you walked in silence outside.

Outside, Homelander scooped you up and flew with you that made you so scared but you didn't even had the mental capacity to scream. You were at Vought in less than two minutes, you were about to remove yourself from Homelander when he kept you in place.

“Meet me in my room at 10, hm?” He smiled wickedly at you and released you. It felt as if you couldn’t breathe and Ashley’s words were repeating in your head:

“If I were you I’d express some gratitude.”

You knew what was implied but you didn't want to do this, why it had to be you? Why couldn’t Homelander just find you unnatractive? You were just a nobody, why couldn’t it continue that way?

Ashley was waiting for you, and apparently all of the testing proved that it was Soldier Boy. How he was able to look the same age or get captured are questions that need to be answered. The two of you entered the room Soldier Boy was being held, Ashley needed to talk to him about all of the optics, how he was going to be in the Seven, if he insisted on it. Vought was more than happy to keep him under wraps, you can’t really control a supe, no matter how hard you tried.

Soldier Boy had his head down, he didn't look at Ashley when she introduced herself and started rambling about PR and how to mitigate the situation and you could tell that he wasn’t interested in the slightest. That’s when he looked at you, and the look he gave you was not one you describe, no one ever looked at you that way before.

“Shut the fuck up.” His voice boomed around the room and Ashley stopped talking instantly. “I’ll talk to her and her only.” Soldier Boy pointed at you and the two of you were speechless. Ashley quickly left the room and the two of you were alone, you sat down in the chair that your boss was sat a couple of seconds ago.

“Why do you want to talk to me?” You whispered, you have no idea why you had the courage to speak first maybe because since Homelander wanted you in his room, you had nothing to lose.

“I want to know what you do you think I should do, doll?” He looked genuinely interested in your opinion, but the reason behind it was totally lost on you.

“But why?” The look on your face could only be described as utter confusion making Soldier Boy laugh.

“You seem the only person I’ve seen so far to have integrity.” That took you by surprise and you simply nodded. “So? What do you think I should do?” He asked again, this time it seemed that was impatient.

“Well, you’ve been tortured by Russians all this time. The thing that seemingly makes the most sense is getting revenge?” It sounded more like a question than a statement and Soldier Boy picked up on that.

“You’re not sure? Speak up, woman.” He banged his hand on the table and startled you, making you jump slightly.

“If I was you, I would take the time to decompress and enjoy something before going on a suicide mission killing everyone that wronged you.” You said rather quickly and he grinned at you.

“You’re not wrong, doll. Tell Vought that I want a private island, and if you want a promotion you can come live with me and be my handler, I’ll need one since mine is fucking dead.” He laughed and you were about to refuse when Homelander’s demand for you to be in his room flashed in your mind.

“Alright, I accept.” If that meant being as far away from Homelander as possible, you’d accept whatever job in a heartbeat.

“Great to hear, sweetheart.” Soldier Boy smiled at you, there’s no denying that he’s the most handsome man you’ve ever laid eyes on. “Are we done here?” He spoke in the direction of the glass, you could tell that he was annoyed but he wasn’t as scary as Homelander, you felt at ease with Soldier Boy.

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You didn't leave Soldier Boy’s side, the deadline to meet Homelander was approaching and if you were with a supe that wanted you near there’s nothing that Homelander can do, right? So you took full advantage of your brand new position, Ashley was annoyed about the fact that she needs a new assistant. But she wasn’t about to go against Soldier Boy, so she kept quiet.

Homelander was not happy about your new predicament, he was supposed to have you all to himself. He was looking for you, but you were packing all of Soldier Boy’s clothes that Vought even after all this time, that was very handy. Packing was always something that brought you peace, so you were humming your favourite songs whilst doing this chore. You gasped when you realised that Homelander was right behind you, he was angry you could tell that much, you looked around and realised that Soldier Boy probably went to the bathroon so you were all alone with Homelander.

“Let me get this straight, you’re going to jump on Soldier Boy’s dick the moment I pay for your college tuition? Talk about being an ungrateful brat.” He walked slowly towards you, and you took a step back.

“It was a job opportunity, a really good one…I…” Homelander raised his finger to stop you from talking.

“No, no.” He got closer to you, this was it. He was going to kill you, he raised his hand and caressed your cheek. “You’re not his, you’re mine.” You started crying, that’s when you heard someone clearing their throat.

“Do we have a problem here?” It was Soldier Boy and you were relieved, Homelander was pissed and your saviour was as cool as cucumber.

“No, we do not.” It was the first time you saw fear in Homelander’s features, and he quickly got away from you and he left without saying another word. After he left you sat down in Soldier Boy’s bed and sighed relieved.

“What’s going on between the two of you? Do I have to kill a supe to keep my handler?” Soldier Boy snickered and you let out a small laugh.

“He…always wanted…me.” The awkwardness seeping through every pore of your body makes you cringe. “He also demanded me to be in his room now…so…he came to talk.” Soldier Boy had a strange look on his face, the only thing that you could place was jealousy? That wasn’t possible, he barely knew you? You just ignored it.

“He’s never gonna bother you again, don’t worry.” Soldier Boy placed his hand on your thigh and it felt…nice. You knew that Soldier Boy was attractive, but him being comforting? The icing on the cake.

“Thank you, Soldier Boy.” You gave him a genuine smile.

“Ben.” You looked at him confused. “My name is Ben.” He clarified and the two of you smiled.

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You and Ben, as he insisted to be called were now in this private island. You realised quite quick that besides some members of staff that took care of cooking and cleaning, the two of you were all by yourselves. But other than that, you had the most amazing bedroom ever, it was bigger than your apartment and you couldn’t be happier to be away from Homelander.

Ben was always flirting with you, he never stopped. He was also touching you constantly but it never made you uncomfortable, it felt natural to have that intimacy with him. Your days consisted of just making sure that Ben was comfortable and if Vought had any plans for him, which they never did. That made the supe on the edge, you could that he wanted something and you had no idea what.

Until you found out.

It was raining, so neither of you left the house. Ben still hasn’t come out of his bedroom which was odd, he was the first one to wake up at 5 AM. You needed to ask him about what he wanted to eat, so you approached his door before you could knock you heard his gruntings and moaning, he was masturbating in there.

“I know you can hear me, doll. I can smell your arousal from a mile away.” You got caught and there was no way out, so you opened the door and there he was was, his dick was huge, it felt that it should be on a porn actor not a super hero. “There she is, why don’t you come here and let me fuck your mouth, huh?” It felt that he had power over you, so that was exactly what you did.

When you took his cock in your mouth, Ben grabbed your head and started fucking your throat. You tapped his leg so he could slow down but he didn't, you were gagging around his cock, it was painful but he never slowed down. Tears were running down your face, and you could hear Ben’s grunts and moans.

“Fuck, I’m gonna cum doll.” He warned and you felt the thick ropes of cum and that made you gag but you did your best to swallow it all, after you were done, you looked at him and he was trying to catch his breath.

“I knew that I made a good deal with Vought.” You looked at him confused. “They let me keep you to do whatever I want in return I don’t appear in public.” He kissed you but you didn't have the ability to kiss him back. “If I was you, I’d warm up to me real quick. There’s nowhere for you to go, and remember sweetheart, you’re just a nobody.” He laughed and went to clean himself, it was going to be a very different stay on this island now, Ben would make sure of it.

#soldier boy x reader #soldier boy x you #soldier boy smut #soldier boy x female reader #soldier boy #the boys fanfic

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iiseor · 6 months

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ੈ✩‧₊˚ lights | prt. 4

Summary: dating Ellie was a battle, but maybe her cheating on you, was the start of something new.

cw: toxic!ellie, biker!abby, fem reader, cursing, mention of reader having a breakdown, mentions of alcohol abuse, a poor attempt at hinted smut at the end i can’t write it for the life of me…

The morning was gloomy. The slight breeze and smell of crisp smell of rain flowing through a small slit in your window.

You woke up from what felt like a year long nap, to the sound of your alarm.

“shit shut up” you groaned, turning over and switching it off—your head pounding, your room a complete mess.

You covered your head again for a moment before finally rising, sitting up against your headboard and drinking some of the stale, warm water you had on your nightstand.

As you drank, your phone quickly lit up, the bright screen making you groan again.

You dimmed the screen before unlocking it and checking the notifications.

Seven unread messages.

Dina

4:30am

Hey did you get home alright?

Dina

4:35am

Ellie came into our dorm mad as fuck, so I’m assuming you two talked

Dina

4:40am

message me in the morning

Unknown

4:50am

Hey y/n…it’s sai, I got your number from ellies phone while she was asleep, she came back here last night

Unknown

4:55am

That sounds creepy….but I just wanted to see if you were alright, she left really mad…and while came back the same.

Abby

6:30am

Goodmorning

Abby

6:35am

Message me when you wakeup, so I know you’re alright. hope you slept well.

You put your phone down on your bed, covering your face with your blanket out of embarrassment.

The night before was everything except a blur, every second of it being recapped in your mind the moment you saw abbys message.

When Ellie left, and Abby saw you standing there—your body locked in complete shock, everything felt like a whirlpool.

The night had ended short, despite it being nearly three in the morning by the time Abby left. You couldn’t stand to make her stay with you, to make her comfort you the first night you met.

You were sure that Abby had made you feel something. what it was exactly, who knows—but you knew you couldn’t mess it up.

When she left, you were left with nothing to do other then drink your feelings away. The alcohol driving you insane, your nerves being taken out on anything around your room you could possibly reach.

Your anger being drowned out by tears, your tears being drowned out by the silent sound of slumber.

You uncovered your face, taking another sip from the warm water on your bed side, this time downing pain killers with them.

You slipped out of bed, still wearing the same t-shirt and shorts you wore when abby had been over, and ellie had left.

You grabbed your phone off your bedside table, stumbling over all the clothes on the floor and into the washroom.

Standing there for a moment, you starred at yourself in the mirror, then looked down at your phone.

You opened the chat, ignoring everyone else and only reading Abby’s message—at least six times before responding, almost immediately getting a reply back.

Y/N

9:30am

Good morning

Abby

9:32am

Good morning again love, How do you feel?

Y/N

9:35am

I’m okay.

Abby

9:36am

That’s good, do you need anything? I want to see you again, if it’s not too soon.

you didn’t open the text. you sat your phone down, Leaning over your sink and putting your head down for a moment before brushing your hair and teeth.

walking back into your bedroom, you sat on the floor and starring at the mess you had made. The hungover headache driving you crazy as you took in the sight of clothes, spread across the floor, and the leftover wine bottle on your table.

You drank nearly the entire thing, downing leftover whisky you had in the kitchen directly after, then adding nearly any other alcohol you could find. Not forgetting to make a complete mess of your clothes and bedroom before dozing off.

When you were finally done dissociating, you silenced your your phone and threw it onto your bed. You sprung open your curtains, the sudden brightness pushing through the damp clouds and making your eyes squint.

You instantly started fixing everything. You threw out the alcohol bottles, cleaned up the clothes on the floor and showered before changing the ones you were wearing.

Your mind couldn’t stop wondering. You couldn’t comprehend why you did this to yourself, why you were letting Ellie affect you in this way—why her words and actions had such a toll on you. It didn’t make any sense, you weren’t in love with her, after last night, you hated her. Yet there was still a feeling running through your veins, you needed something to take it all away.

Y/N

11:37am

Are you busy right now?

Abby

11:40am

Not at all

Y/N

11:41am

Can you come over please?

Abby

11:42am

Are you sure? I can wait, if you need more space.

Y/N

11:43am

No, I don’t want space

Abby

11:45am

Okay sweetheart, I’ll be there soon.

As soon as you read her message you rushed to your vanity, fluttering your eyelashes through the mascara and spreading clear-glittery lipgloss all over your lips.

You then studied your face in the mirror above, fixing your hair quickly before your phone dinged again.

Abby

12:00pm

im outside whenever you can open up, no rush.

Her message made you smile. despite her reassurance, you got up immediately and rushed to the door.

You hesitated for a minute, brushing your hands across the skirt and tight tank top you were wearing.

“Hi” you said, Abby standing in front of you holding a bag.

“Hi y/n” she replied, walking in as you backed up to hold the door open.

“How do you feel?” She asked, placing the bag down on your kitchen counter and taking off her gloves—the ones she always wore when riding her bike.

“I’m okay” you replied, shutting the door and walking over to her.

“Are you sure? Last night was…rough” She questioned, looking over at you—her eyes so sympathetic.

“Yea…just hungover” you laughed, making her laugh back.

“Ah, well I guess you can save this for another day then” she said, pulling out a fresh bottle of wine from the bag and walking to place it in your cabinet.

“Oh Abby you didn’t have to-“ you said, your words cut off by her laughing again.

“Don’t protest, please, it’s just a gesture to make you feel better” she replied, walking over to stand in front of you.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” She asked.

The feeling of Abby was close, causing you to nearly push yourself against the counter to be distant.

“Yea, im sure..” you replied, trying to look at everything but her.

“Have you spoken to her yet?” She asked.

“No, I don’t want to….or need to. I think she made it pretty clear how she feels” you replied.

Abby walked closer, pushing your hair behind your ear—the same way she did the other night.

“I’m sorry sweetheart, she’s a bitch” she replied, caressing your face with her thumb, Your breath growing heavy. Abby just, had that affect on you.

“Im just, lost really. I don’t want her back, it doesn’t even feel like we were ever in love. I want to forget about her completely. Sai messaged me saying she left mad, she came over just to yell at me and be angry, even though I should be the one angry that she cheated ” you rambled on. Abby focused on your every word, watching your eyes and lips as your head was faced down, letting the words spill out.

She sighed at your cracking tone, your emotions becoming overwhelming.

“Don’t get upset y/n….She’s not worth any of it, your mind, you, your feelings, she doesn’t deserve to make you feel this way” she replied, her tone so gentle and sweet.

She moved closer, lifting your chin up to look at her—your eyes slightly glossy from the mix of emotions.

As ur eyes met, it was as if she sent a signal to your soul. Her soft eyes making you locked in a trance, your heart beating faster then ever.

You both paused for a moment more, but before you could get a word out, her lips were pushing onto yours.

You pulled away for a moment to breathe, everything still pressed together except your lips—until your pulled her closer bringing them back together.

It was messy, Abbys hands gliding up and down your exposed thighs, gripping your lower body as she lifted you onto the counter, pushing herself closer into you.

As her lips made their way to your cheek, then down your neck, your mouth letting out quiet whimpers, her touch rendering you weak.

She made her way back up towards your jawline, placing soft kisses along it before leaning towards your ear.

“let me…show you how you deserve to feel, what she should be making you feel like” she whispered against your skin, sending chills throughout your entire body.

Her hands moved from your thighs to your waist, her lips a magnate to your body.

“Can I?” She asked breathless as she held onto the lower lining of your shirt.

You nodded at her question, so desperate for more of her touch, the slight separation make you deranged.

“words please” she asked, placing more wet kisses onto your neck.

“Yes” you let out through a shaking breath, the feeling of her tender hands against you making you choke on your words.

she lifted your shirt over your head, her hands drifting up and down your sides.

“Fuck” she let out, kissing you a few more times before pulling back, giving herself a second to take in every part of you.

“You’re so beautiful…” she said, bringing one of her hands up to caress your face again, your shy eyes becoming hypnotized by hers.

“So, fucking pretty” she added on, pulling you in again.

“Please y/n…let me show you how it should’ve been from the start, let me make you feel what she couldn’t. I want to show you everything you’ve missed” she spoke in between every press against your neck.

Every word she spoke only increased your hunger for her, you were completely melted into her presence, starving for more. Your mind dizzy with desire.

“Please Abby” you whined, your body longing for more.

Her hands glided back up your legs, each kiss becoming more messy and rough, your dorm being filled with the sounds of heavy breathing.

Your whines drove her over the edge, she needed more—and that’s what you gave her. Every moment was centred around you, which turned her on even more. Your pretty voice sending butterflies through her body at every sound.

The night was drowned out by the sense of lust. Anything you ever felt for Ellie, being inevitably forgotten by every knot tied around your stomach. Abby, full filling her promise of making you forget any touch that Ellie had every laid on you.

#abby the last of us #abby tlou #abby x reader #ellie x fem reader #ellie x reader #ellie x y/n #ellie x you #tlou #🫧 sena #abby x you #abby x fem!reader #abby anderson x y/n #abby anderson x reader #abby anderson #ellie the last of us #tlou part 2 #tlou fanfiction

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carolmunson · 1 year

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wish i had a river (part two)

here it is, the part two i said i wouldn't write. if you missed it, here is the first part - wish i had a river this is very much an eddie munson fanfiction, it's mostly from his perspective and follows his story through his eyes and actions. 'you' are mentioned and seen in this fic, but for the most part, it's all eddie all the time. cw: minors dni, adult themes, some smut references. angst. hurt/comfort. lots of mentions of poverty/hunger, sleep deprivation, all around eddie having a bad time. cigarettes/mild drinking but nothing inherently like -- bad? idk. unpopular ship mentioned. i did NOT proof read this.

The alley behind Macy's was a safe haven. Cold, a blue black, poorly paved, with nothing but the dumpters of other stores and the rats to keep him company. Eddie nursed a cigarette on his third smoke break of the night, two bad customers away from a total nervous breakdown. His anxiety built higher every day, every rush, every icy road report -- more people yelling, more people stressed out, more car accidents he'd have to clean up. Wayne's been in an out of the doctor's office more often and it's looking like he might have to retire early. The cigarette loses it's flame and he curses under his breath when he goes to light it again, the nicotine soothing his lips and tongue with a slow steady burn.

You never got to decorate cookies together on his impromptu 'sick day', you hadn't returned any of his calls. Not that he thought he was off the hook or anything, but he did basically write you a fifty two page love letter. If he had the time he'd come by your apartment to apologize in person but at this point exhaustion had started to over stay it's welcome. He could barely make it to the pharmacy on his nights off to get Wayne's medication. The guys at the auto shop could tell something was starting to go very left, 'cause why was the youngest guy there the one who couldn't keep up anymore?

And Eddie really couldn't keep up anymore.

At least his commission in the shoe section was doubling daily.

The cold bites his cheeks while he finishes his cigarette, tossing the butt on the dirty, uneven pavement and crushing out the flame with his work shoes. He rubs his eyes, heavy and swollen with lack of sleep, with scrubbed fingernail hands and sighs. Just another hour and he can go home, just another hour and it's not a closing shift, he can go home at seven like normal people with regular jobs.

He drops his coat off in the cubby area upstairs, stopping in the bathroom to splash some cold water on his face. He inspects himelf, eyes half closing in disappointement while he does -- he looks like a shell of himself. He hadn't picked up his guitar in months, didn't turn the radio on anymore -- opting for silence since it was so rare for him to hear between Macy's, the shop, and Wayne's breathing machine at night.

He takes his hair down, shaking out the curls that had at least dried into waving perfection last night, and gives it a shake before putting it back up in a neat ponytail. His bangs sit on his forehead, a few strands framing his now gaunt face. He practices an awake smile in the mirror before he completely deflates -- one bad interaction, one rude look, one snap from a boss, and he'd lose it. The rawness sat in a lump in his throat, a grenade of tears ready to blow if the pin is even so much as nudged.

The door to the back rooms squeaks open on its hinges, revealing the never ending click of boots, heels, sneakers, and men's shoes on the sining tile of Macy's walkway floors. In the beginning, the scent of the perfume section across the way and the bright lights of jewelry used to be an assault on his senses -- but as Wayne says 'You can get used to anything.'

"You good, Ed?" he hears, and turns his head -- it's Angie. Angie is his favorite coworker because she makes the best and meanest jokes about people. If it wasn't for some nights closing with Angie he would've left this job a long time ago. He'd been keeled over in laughs with a duster in his hand so many times that it almost seemed wrong to abandon her there.

"Yeah," he furrows his brow at her, "Should I not be?"

"Some pretty boy's been looking for you," she says, nodding over to the boots section, "You got another business I don't know about?"

A grin stretches across her frosted red lipstick'd lips, crinkling her overlined and spider lashed eyes. She's what Eddie and the guys at Forest Hills would have called 'trailer park pretty' if she was thirty years younger.

"They would be so lucky, wouldn't they?" Ed smirks back, eyes following her nod and landing on a head of beautifully coiffed chestnut hair, "Harrington?"

Steve's eyes perk up like a golden retreiver, a winning smile spreading across his face with a flash of white teeth in it's wake, "Hey, Ed!"

Angie gasps when she realizes who it is, "Oh shit! Is this the guy that --"

"Shh, shut up Ange," Ed huffs, waving her off while Steve comes up to approach him.

"Hey dude, I was hoping you were here. I uh, got a pretty big collection to get tonight so I figured -- you know, I'd come say hi and ask for your help." It's frustrating how pleasant Steve is. How warm his demeanor radiates to others, his candor, the way that he stands. It's annoying that a denim button under a cozy green sweater looks good on him. It makes Eddie sick that he can pull off wire-rim glasses and still look his age, that he smells like spice but not in a cheap way. A twinge of fear shook in his chest when a seed of assumption planted itself in his head -- was this why you weren't answering his calls? Was Steve Harrington smothering you with Christmas spirit every night?

"Yeah, man, sure," Eddie responds like the world isn't sitting directly on his shoulders, which -- he observed -- were not nearly as broad as Steve's, "How can I help you?"

"I need like, four pairs of Moon Boots," he shrugs, "Guess they're in style again? My sister's and nieces want matching pairs so like -- two in a size 8 and then, if you have it, two in a size 4 kids?"

"What color? We have white, purple, black, some metallics," Eddie lists on his fingers, "Well, maybe not black -- those probably sold out already."

"You got silver? Pink, maybe?" Steve shrugs, "I'm just trying to get these wrapped by tomorrow."

Christmas Eve. Ed had almost forgotten.

"Let me see what we have and I'll bring it out," he offers. He wants to ask about you but it seems too obvious. You must have talked about the fight or about him in general, how else would Steve know he worked here? How else would he know to come looking for him.

Moments later, Ed comes out with four boxes, "I have two in silver and two in pink -- so it looks like your nieces will be matching and your sisters will be matching. Does that work?"

"Oh shit, that's perfect," Steve smiles the same winning smile. Eddie wonders for a moment what it feels like to smile genuinely, it's felt like years since he had. He guesses that when you're Steve Harrington, you must get to smile pretty often. Rich, girls love him, former captain of the basketball team, has a masters degree, painstakingly handsome -- no wonder you called him after your fight. Damn, he would too.

"Is that all?" Ed asks, reaching up to run a hand over the five o'clock shadow speckling his chin.

"No, actually, sorry. I need some like, work boots, if you sell those here -- is that okay?" Steve asks.

"Work boots like, how? Like construction?" he asks, "You're a teacher, Harrington."

"Yeah but my uh, my roommate -- he's not in construction but he's on a whole bunch of terrain for work -- desperately needs good shoes for that," he explains.

"What's he do?" Ed asks, guiding him over to the display of Timberlands and Doc Martens.

"He's a photojournalist -- he's all over the place," Steve answers, "He's worn his sneakers down to the sole and like, swears their okay --"

"Jonothan Byer's is your roommate?" Eddie asks, making the connection. He'd only known him from their photography class they shared in Eddie's second senior year, but he knew enough to know he went into journalism shortly after college.

"Yeah," Steve nods, running a hand through his hair.

"Hm," Eddie looks over the shoes and looks up at him, "If I can be honest -- he's gotta be quick on his feet, right? These are gonna be too heavy for him to be walking around in. You might just want to get him some higher quality running sneakers. There's a Foot Locker downstairs if you wanna check that out? A lot of our sneakers are sold out until next week."

"Hmm, shit," Steve clicks his tongue, "Well um -- could I maybe try a pair?"

"Of Docs?" Eddie asks with a laugh.

"Yeah, of Docs -- I can be hip and cool, too, Munson," Steve's faux defense is charming. Eddie wonders what else you find charming about him.

Part of it feels degrading, kneeling down in front of Steve, lacing and relacing each new and different pair of boots he tries on -- but at this point he's buying seven pairs of shoes and the commission alone will cover at least a month of groceries so he's not complaining.

"So you don't hate me, huh?" Eddie asks, slipping a lighter weight Timberland over one of Steve's argyle socks.

"Why would I hate you?" Steve cocks his head, amber eyes catching in the light.

"Oh, did she not talk about it?" Eddie flushes. Why would you talk about him? Your loser mechanic (maybe ex) boyfriend who works at the mall, and at the auto shop, and sometimes sells drugs.

"Your fight from last week?" Steve raises his brows, "Yeah, she talked to me about it. But I woudn't hate you for that."

Ed tightens the laces up his foot to his ankle with care, "Why not?"

"I mean, you're doing a lot right now," Steve shrugs, "I think it can be hard when you're teaching little ones, especially this time of year, to not get caught up in the magic -- you sort of popped her bubble. But y'know, it was sort of a reminder to her that not everyone has it so good."

"She didn't deserve me yelling at her like that, though," Eddie shakes his head, he can feel the threat of the grenade pin tugging on his heart strings. One false move. One shake. One nudge, and he'll blow.

"You're doing the best you can," Steve offers kindly. Eddie swallows hard, offering him a tight smile.

"Thanks. I'm trying, I'm--" he shakes out the tingle of a cry before tying up the laces, "I'm trying really hard."

By the time Steve checks out it's about 7:15 and Eddie wants nothing more than to go to bed. His back hurts, he's gotta make sure Wayne took his medication, he's gotta eat sleep for dinner for the third night in a row.

"Thanks so much," Steve beams, "This is great, thanks for your help."

"Yeah, no problem dude," Eddie sighs, running a hand over his face again, "Have a good holiday."

"You done for the night?" Steve asks.

"Yeah, just gotta y'know -- grab my shit and go," he shrugs.

"You wanna grab some dinner with me in the food court or something?" Steve asks, balancing the many shopping bags he'd collected this evening in his hands.

"I don't know, dude. I don't wanna keep you or anything," Eddie says. His stomach clenches at the word dinner, his body reacting like a dog who just heard the sentence 'you wanna go outside?'

"You're not keeping me," Steve assures, "C'mon, it's on me."

Before he knows it, Eddie's been corralled into a mall food court, sitting slumped over on the sticky table. He tunes out the shreiks of children, the tinny Christmas music playing in the background of the cocophany of noise that is the mall on December 23rd. His forehead sticks to the leather jacket over his forearm, only lifting it up when he hears the slap of a plastic tray being put down in front of him. He surveys the Burger King in front of him and huffs a laugh, it'd been a long time since he'd ventured into the food court. He almost forgot what fast food looked like after the past few months of thin ham sandwhiches or cold cans Spaghettio's.

"So why didn't you try to swoop in?" Ed asked, toying with a french fry before biting off the end, "When you went to her house the other night?"

He savors the oil and salt on his tongue, warm and crispy on the fry disolving in his mouth while he waits for a response.

"Swoop in?" Steve asks, shaking his head, "No, I wouldn't. We just -- we work together. She's my work friend."

"So you never thought about what the kids say?" Eddie challenges, still trying to keep it light hearted, "How the first grade teachers should get married?"

"Her classroom is across from mine and we make lesson plans together," he assures, "What the kids say is what the kids say. They're six, what do they know?"

"Whatever you say, Harrington," Eddie shrugs.

"Munson, seriously -- she's my friend. She's not my type," he offers. The way he says it stings Eddie, what's not his type about you? You're perfect. You're the best person he knows.

"The card thing though? That was cute. I'm gonna put that in my arsenal if I ever fuck up," Steve laughs. Eddie chest rattles when he realizes that Steve was still there for that. He never even knew your reaction.

Eddie clears his throat, "Did um -- did she like it?"

Steve nods with a lazy smile, "Yeah, she liked it."

"Did she say anything?" he asks hopefully.

"She cried," Steve answered, Eddie leans his head on his hands, "I know that might not be what you wanted to hear."

"I didn't wanna make her cry more," he explains, "I wanted to make her happy."

"They were happy tears," Steve encourages with a nod, "She knows you love her. She loves you, too."

"Then why isn't she answering my calls?" he asks, another fry passing his lips.

"I think she's hurt, a little embarrassed. You know how girls are, they never come right out and say it," he shrugs, taking a bite of his cheeseburger. Ketchup drips out onto the paper mat on the plastic tray with a wet plop, Eddie sighs.

"Did you end up getting anything for her for Christmas?"

"No I -- I can't afford it this year," Eddie rubs his eyes again, more swollen and aching than before. Heat beams through his cheeks in embarrassment, tinging pink and then red.

"Well I had an idea," he offers, "If you're up for it."

"Yeah, go for it Harrington. Shoot," he says, the enthusiasm was greatly lacking.

"Well her uh, her class room needs a lot of repairs and the custodial team isn't really equipped for that. The school'll either bare bones it for her or make her pay for it out of pocket if she asks," he starts, "And she told me you're really handy, y'know, working at the garage and all. So maybe you could take care of her class room this week while we're out for break. I can let you in and everything."

He mulls it over in his head, "That's a really good idea, actually. I could um, I could ask the guys at the shop if I could borrow some tools."

"And there's a bunch of wood palettes in the backrooms at Medvald's. Jon said he's happy to get them out of there for you," Steve says with a smile.

"Oh, so you already talked about this?" Eddie smirks.

"Well, yeah, kind of," he blushes, "I was asking around just to see if it was a plausible kind of thing."

"Definitely a plausible thing," he nods, taking a bite of his own cheese burger. He holds back the moan in his chest from eating something warm and mildly filling after such a long time, "Do you think she'd like it?"

"Oh, Munson," Steve shoots him the 'okay' sign, "She'd lose her mind. All she does is complain about how nothing ever works and everything's falling apart. Doesn't even have new chalk."

"Chalk I can definitely handle," he laughs, "I think I can afford chalk."

He feels a moment of calm wash over him when the van rumbles to life in the parking garage. Finally heading home and going to sleep with a full belly, finally with a plan to make you happy, finally feeling like after the new year things can go back to normal. He flicks on the radio and doesn't even change the station when Mariah Carey's 'All I Want For Christmas' crackles through the speakers. He heard it 700 times today, happy to hear it for the 701st.

It was your new favorite song, after all.

Eddie woke up feeling slightly refreshed on Christmas Eve, the dull ache in his back mildly relieved. He fished into his pajama pants for his lighter, flicking it a few times before getting the fuse lit for his morning cigarette. He stood at the open door, bathrobe tied tight around him, and listened to the hum of Wayne's machine from the other end of trailer. The mug of black coffee in his hands had the bitterness cut by the soft sweetness of cinnamon -- that's what you always did this time of year.

'I like making it a little festive for you, honey,' you'd giggle, 'Don't be such a Grinch.'

He wished he appreciated it more, all the little things you did to try to make him happy. The faces in fruit on his pancakes some mornings, making his old favorites for dinner at your place, 'build your own sundae' nights. Scratching his head, scalp massages, hand massages. You'd call them man-icures so he didn't feel weird about you doing his nails and softening his callouses. He didn't care that it was just a manicure with a stupid name, all he cared about was your cute face when you concentrated on his cuticles. He missed your laugh, the way you tap your pen out to your favorite songs when you're grading papers or writing lesson plans, your elaborate schemes to make learning subtraction more fun. The way you're kind to everyone, all the time, constantly. When he first started taking you out he'd get embarrassed by how forward you were with people, how you'd make small talk with cashiers, or grab someone's hand to tell them their nails looked beautiful.

Maybe in a lot of ways, he wished he was more like you to start.

He took a shower and slipped on his coveralls, opting to be one of two guys in the shop today. Him and George. It was George's garage, and for the past six years, Eddie had always volunteered to be the emergency mechanic on deck on Christmas Eve. He got paid time and a half and never had to wait for the check, he'd always get paid at the end of the day.

He laces his boots before trudging down the hall to wake Wayne, taking off his machine and flipping the switch.

"I'm headed out," he whispers, "You okay?"

"Yeah, yeah," Wayne groans when he sits up on the rickety mattress, "I have a new perscription, not sure if the pharmacy'll be open but would you be able to pick it up on the way back. They called last night but I couldn't make it to the phone, it's ready I think."

"Yeah, I'll grab it on my lunch break Wayne," he softens the more he looks at him, "Have some coffee already to go for you on the table, there's a couple eggs left for you too."

"Thank ya, son," his voice is grizzly, but it still feels like home.

Eddie shivers his way into the shop, George in the office organizing some files. The day was always slow, but there were some cars still in need of fixing so he got right to work.

"Hey George," he calls, knocking on the door.

"Hey kid," he calls back, "Merry Christmas!"

"Merry Christmas, round six," he laughs back. He goes back to the break room and drops off his coat and his back pack. Normally he'd have you to look forward to later with a plate of cookies from your family's Christmas Eve party and some left overs expertly packed. You'd drive an hour and a half to bring it down to him and then an hour and a half back to spend Christmas with your family. But not before he gave you a present, or multiple presents, in the break room when George went out to get a six pack.

"Ed," he calls again, "C'mere when you're done dropping your shit."

Eddie heads over to the office, leaning on the door frame, "'Sup bossman?"

"Someone left a message for ya on the answering machine, think it's the pharmacy," he said, "Ya might wanna give 'em a call, s'probably for your uncle."

"Oh, yeah, I think his prescription's ready," he nodded, "Can I use your phone?"

"Yeah, by all means," he said, pushing it toward him, "Want me to give you a minute?"

Ed shakes his head no, "It's fine, just a quick call." He's got the number memorized by heart at this point, clicking the numbers on the grease stained white plastic buttons while barely looking at the machine.

"Hawkins Pharmacy, this is Debbie," Eddie smiles because he knows Debbie. He likes Debbie a lot.

"Hi Deb, it's Eddie, Eddie Munson," he says, "Calling for my uncle, looks like you called my work. I was gonna come by and pick up his meds on my break, will you guys be open?"

"Oh um, about his prescription Ed..." she starts, and he can hear the hesitation in her voice. The clip in the grenade buried in his chest jiggles slightly, he takes in a breath through his nose.

"What's up?" he asks, his voice his short and curt.

"Well, he changed his insurance recently, as you know and -- well there's a lapse in his coverage right now. His new plan doesn't activate until the first," she expains.

"Okay, and what does that mean?" he says, his palms sweat onto the cool plastic of the phone, his ear sticks to the receiver.

"Basically," she says, and then sighs, "His current insurance can't cover it and neither can is upcoming insurance, so the prescription has to be paid out of pocket."

"Um -- uh, fuck -- okay," he says, a chill courses through him, tightening his veins. The pin jiggles again, "H-how much?"

"For the month?" she asks, "For this prescription it's, hold on, let me check...it's looking like it'll come out to around..." she takes a breath of defeat.

"Around three hundred dollars, Ed," she says softly.

"Three hundred..." he repeats back quietly, "Is there like, is there a cheaper version cause he like..."

His voice cracks, the pin rattles dangerously while his eyes start to sting with oncoming tears, "He really needs these pills, Debbie."

"This is the cheapest option," she says apologetically, "I'm so sorry."

"I'll um, I'll figure it out," he shakes his head, "I'll come by and I'll figure it out. Thanks uh, thanks for letting me know Deb."

He doesn't wait to hear her response before he hangs up the phone, quickly leaving the office to go back to the break room. He sniffles in big shuddering breaths, sweat dripping down his back despite the lack of heat in the garage.

"Kid," George says softly, following behind him, "Hey, Munson. What's goin' on?"

He feels George's big hand on his shoulder, the soft squeeze on the muscle under his skin.

"I can't afford my uncle's medication," he says, the pin jiggles, "I mean I can, but like, if I get his medication I'll be late in paying the gas bill, but if they turn the gas off there goes our heat. Or I can delay the electric bill but if they turn the lights out he can't use his machine at night. So maybe I could like, go out tonight after this and shovel some driveways in the rich neighborhoods or -- I could -- I could --"

The pin falls.

He breaks.

He breaks hard.

Eddie's cries turn to wails, his body shaking with hunger and exhaustion and the unbearable heaviness of having to be himself. The tears pour in droves down his face while he tries to catch up with them, trying to find the words to explain to George that he's okay, he'll figure it out.

"Hey, buddy, it's okay, it's okay," George soothes, his aged face crumpling while he watches Eddie break down in front of him. He pulls him in tight, a hand plopping ontop on his mess of curls.

"Why don't you tell me what's been goin' on? You haven't been yourself for months," he says softly, "Talk to me."

George smells like Old Spice and Newports, it's a scent that's always made him feel safe. Like having a second dad -- well, a third dad, if you count his real dad. He never counts his real dad, though.

Eddie sits down at the table while George takes a couple of beers out of the fridge and places them down in front of them. He cracks them open and settles down, two sets of brown eyes meeting each other.

He begins.

"Well if Wayne was sick why didn't you tell me?" George exclaims, "I've known Wayne longer than you've lived in Hawkins, boy. I would've helped you figure somethin' out. Taking shifts at Macy's? At Christmas time? No wonder you're so exhausted."

"I mean, I'm young. I can do it," Eddie shrugs.

"Those bags under your eyes say you can't," he says matter of factly, "And y'know you shouldn't have to. You're -- damn you're a kid."

"I'm like, inching towards thirty George," he laughs.

"And what about your little girlfriend? She not helping?"

"That's..." he sighs, "That's a whole other mess."

Eddie rehashes the story he told Wayne last week and then Steve's visit from yesterday, "So today I was gonna ask if I could borrow some tools and go in tomorrow or something to fix everything up. But now I gotta figure out how I'm gonna make an extra three hundred bucks for these meds."

"How about this," George starts, "You've been workin' for me a long time. You come early and you stay late. You cover for everyone. You know -- damn -- you know more about cars than I do and I've been runnin' this place for thirty years. How about you take this week off to work on your girl's classroom and I'll see you after the New Year."

"I can't. I need to work, George, I need the mo--"

"How about," he interjects, loud and stern, "You take the week off to work on your girl's classroom and get some rest, and I will pay you for the week. It's not like you're just sittin' on your ass."

"I can do that, that's not f--"

"If you say no again, I'm just gonna fire you. Is that what you want?" George challenges.

"No sir," Eddie quickly shakes his head and shuts his mouth.

"And," the older man continues, "I will cover the cost of Wayne's pills. I'll go pick them up at lunch for 'im and drop 'em off. 'Bout time I caught up with that geezer anyway."

The tears build back up in Eddie's eyes, his mouth lets out a sputtered version of a 'Thank you'.

"You gotta stop pretending like you have to do everything yourself," George's voice holds a fatherly fondness when he gets up and tosses their empty beers in the trash.

"C'mere, kid," he chuckles while Eddie tearily gets up out of the chair and back into the dad like embrace of his boss.

"You got ten minutes, but then we got some cars to fix."

Eddie didn't tell Wayne about the insurance lapse or the pills, even though he was surprised to see George at the trailer park that afternoon. Eddie went home with his tool belt from work, his time and a half, and a little extra that his boss insisted he take with him. Wished him luck on his repairs and that he'd see him on the 2nd.

He was warned that if he didn't rest, Wayne would tell him, and it would mean hell for him at the shop.

Eddie'd already been through hell, so he didn't really want to have to do it again.

Christmas morning came and Eddie woke Wayne up to a cup of coffee and some breakfast.

"Thanks, son," he said smoothly, pushing in his chair at the table in the kitchenette, "Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas," he wished back, tapping some cinnamon into each of their cups of coffee.

"What's that for?" he asks before a harrowing cough bubbles out of his chest. He takes a sip of coffee to ease the ache of the rattle in his throat.

"It's just festive, Wayne," he teases, "Don't be a Scrooge."

"Doing anything today?" Wayne asks, eyes casting up to look at the old pictures of a younger Eddie sat on Santa's lap. No longer a holiday where they stayed home and snuggled, where he played with his toys, where there was magic.

"Gonna go fix up my girl's classroom as a gift," he says, picking at his nails, "Thought it'd be a nice gesture."

"She hasn't called ya back, hm?"

Eddie shakes his head, already dressed in the Black Sabbath shirt you got him that he hadn't gotten a chance to properly thank you for. The chain you got repaired hung aroung his neck delicately, the pick hitting his chest in a gentle reminder that you're still here with him. You had to be. He'd know if you just decided to be done with him.

By the time the late afternoon rolled around he hopped in his van after Wayne fell asleep in the recliner. The perk of the holidays was that he could drive around in the rich neighborhoods and no one was out to give him and his car dirty looks. No one was around to be confused that Steve Harrington was hopping into his passengers seat to head to Melvald's. No one was around to be confused as to while they were loading wood from broken down pallets into the ample trunk space.

"Good holiday?" Eddie asks.

"Same holiday it always is," he shrugs, "My parents weren't around so I stayed home. Jonothan went to California with Joyce to go visit Will so he wouldn't have to pay to fly home."

"That's lonely," Eddie mutters, "Sorry dude."

"Don't be sorry, I'm used to it," he looks out the window. Steve looks well dressed for repairs -- a pair of worn in jeans, white on white Air Forces, an Izod half zip sweat shirt -- he might as well look like a father of three, "Have you heard from her at all?"

"No -- I left her a message on her answering machine, but I think she's already up with her family. I don't know what she told them so -- I don't want to bother her parents if they're upset with me," he explains.

"They'd never be upset with you," Steve shakes his head, "They're good people."

"I'm sure they wish on a star every night that she was with you, Harrington," he jokes.

"You'd think, right?" Steve laughs, "No, she told me how much they like you. They think you're so good to her -- you are so good to her."

Steve speaks about you with a fondness that makes Eddie wonder. He softens, looking over at him while he turns down the road to the elementary school, "Do um...do you wish it was you?"

"I already told you, man. I love her to death, but she's not my type," he laughs again, but there's a pain there.

"You keep saying that but like -- are you sure? 'Cause you can tell me it's not weird," he assures.

"She hasn't told you?" Steve asks, brows furrowing.

"Told me what? Did you guys used to fuck, or something?" Eddie asks, his heart hammering, "Did you fuck the other ni--"

"No, no, Ed I'm --" he sighs, running a hand through his hair.

"I'm gay," he says quietly, "Like, Jonathan isn't my roommate he's -- he's my partner. I'm gay."

There's a silence there for a moment and Eddie shifts in his seat a red light. Oh, I'm such a fucking idiot. Of course that's why they aren't together. I thought maybe he had a weird dick or something.

"That's y'know," Ed shrugs, "That's cool with me, man. Like, silence equals death and all that."

"Oh, shut up man," Steve laughs and shakes his head, putting his hand up to stop him from talking, "Don't like, do that all shit. I'm just surprised she hadn't said anything."

"If you told her not to, she wont," Eddie's voice drops to something sweet, "She's a good girl like that. Great secret keeper. Great -- Oh, shit..."

When the boys pull into the lot, Eddie's surprised to see a couple more trucks sitting by with their lights on, doors opening at the sight of them. A gruff voice calls out from the dark, a light snow obscuring him and the name on his coverall.

"How long were you gonna keep us waiting here, kid? It's a holiday."

George's gruff voice cuts the silence, a couple of the guys from the shop chuckle in the background. Eddie smiles, a genuine, warm smile -- the kind he envied from a couple nights ago that he saw from Steve. These were people who cared about him, who wanted to help. This was, he guessed, was what Christmas was really about. This was what you were trying to tell him the whole time. His heart breaks all over again, and he swears he can feel the pulse of your heart beat in the guitar pick hanging at his chest.

By the 27th, most of the repairs had been done. The help from the guys was beyond what he could've imagined. They were able to replace part of the roof that had water damage, fix the windows, repair a cracked pane, build a new bookcase, fix the wobble in all of the desks, and yours. Now, he was just adding a new coat of paint after spending the morning chipping off all the shards of it that were falling off. In his backpack was an overflow of new chalk, pens and pencils, markers, crayons, construction paper, pipe cleaners, and glue. The guys went through their kids bookcases at home and donated a slew of new books for the room -- some duplicates, too.

He felt good. He'd gotten two nights of adequate sleep, heeding George's warning that he has to rest. He was able to buy a good crop of groceries and most of the guys from work came by to drop off so many Christmas cookies that Wayne was nervous he'd start losing his teeth too. Now, all he had to wait for was you. For you to come in on Friday and see his surprise when you dropped in for your professional development day with Steve. He wasn't sure if he wanted to leave flowers or gingerbread men with the card but he figured he'd cross that bridge when he --

"Eddie?"

He jumped, nearly falling off the ladder he was on to reattach over head light that had rusted on the ceiling, "Jesus Christ!"

He clutched his chest, letting his heart rate settle down when at the bottom of the ladder, there you stood. His face blushed pink, pulse ping ponging through his wrists at the sight of you.

"Hi, sweetheart," he smiles, "This um...this was supposed to be a surprise."

"Who told you?" you asked, looking around, "About all my stuff?"

Eddie climbed down the ladder carefully, "Steve came to the store, told me that you needed some help. I figured y'know, if I couldn't get you a present I could just -- I could make you one."

"It's not done yet though, I still have to paint and put all your art supplies away," he explains, meeting you in the center of the room. He looks at you and then at the tears in your eyes, the heat rising in your cheeks. You don't say anything, his heart races in embarrassment. Maybe it wasn't enough, maybe you didn't like it. Maybe you wanted to do it yourself.

"And um, the guys from the shop, they uh, they brought books," he says, walking over to the new bookcase, "And I uh, I built this, like, with my hands."

He painted it to match the rest of the decor, a fun bright color that would hopefully draw the kids in to read. You'd mentioned that the got bored with the same ten books and weren't sharing well -- half of the books were falling apart since there wasn't anywhere to put them.

"And uh, I got you some new chalk -- white obviously, but I got you some multi-colored sets cause I know you like to do little sketches on the board during holidays and like, with spring comin' up maybe you could do little flowers or something?" he doesn't realize it, but he's gasping through his rambled sentences. Watching you walk toward him slowly.

"It's okay if you don't like it," he assures, "You can tell me and I can fix it I just wanted to--"

Your kiss feels like a spoonful of summer warmed honey on his cold lips. It trails down his throat and into his chest, down through his fingertips and his toes. He feels your soft hands cup his face, resting against his cold prickly cheeks. He's afraid to touch your face because you haven't given him a manicure yet this week. He doesn't want to scratch you with his rough hands, so he places them around you instead, frowning when you finally break away with a soft click.

"I just wanted to do something nice," he says against your lips.

"This is the best gift ever," you whisper quietly, a little sniffle stifling your cry, "It's very nice."

"Merry Christmas, baby," he smiles, leaning in for another kiss.

"Merry Christmas," you wish between kisses.

He wakes up wrapped up in you, in your sheets, in your scent, peering at you while you sleep soundly next to him. You both had barely made it through the door of your apartment before you both had shed your clothes -- landing on the bed with a mutual 'oof!'

It had been so long since he'd been present. Savoring every soft moan out of your mouth, every shake of your thighs, everything whine, every clench, the way you'd rake your nails down his back, the way you'd pulse when he held your hand. You both laid there together after round one, eating cookies in bed (which you'd allowed just this once), while he told you everything. About how hard it had been taking two jobs, how he'd completely shut down, about Wayne's insurance lapse, about the guys at work, about Steve coming to Macy's, about how much he loved the gifts you got. About how he cried the night he yelled at you but was too afraid to face you after because he felt so awful. He listened when you told him that you just needed some time, but that you felt awful that you weren't there when he needed you.

"Need you all the time," he mumbled between heated kisses, "Never lettin' you outta my sight."

His eyes rolled and his toes curled when you took him in your mouth, letting you take the lead. He gasped and writhed, whining for more when your tongue swirled and sucked, showing him how much you missed him. How you'll always take care of him -- and he made sure to show you how he'll take care of you back.

Round three was long and drawn out, slow and sensual, close and quiet -- your boom box playing low static by the end.

Your eyes opened, stretching out when you see him sitting up in bed.

"You heading out?" you yawn.

"No, baby," he smiles down at you before laying back down, losing himself under the covers with you again, "I have the week off, so I'm intending to spend every moment I'm not with Wayne, in this bed, with you."

#eddie munson fanfiction #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson fan fiction #eddie munson smut #eddie munson fan fic #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson angst #eddie munson hurt/comfort #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson x y/n #eddie x reader #eddie munson

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farfromstrange · 3 months

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Do No Harm

CHAPTER SEVEN: Downward Spiral

Masterlist | Series Masterlist

Pairing: Matt Murdock x F!Reader

Summary: After agreeing to go on a date with Matt, you start realizing the weight of your decision, and your thoughts begin spiraling. In a moment of need, you turn to the only close friend you have in Hell's Kitchen, hoping she can pull you away from the edge of the very steep cliff your trauma is trying to throw you into.

Warnings for this chapter: ANGST (the caps feel appropriate here), mentions of domestic violence, suicidal thoughts, allusions to a suicide attempt, allusions to sexual assault, mentions of being taken advantage of by a superior, (I guess you could say) mentions of hypersexuality, self-loathing, PTSD, some foreshadowing, mental breakdown, alcohol, Season 1 related plot (spoilers)

Word Count: 6.4k

A/n: Surprise! I'm posting early because I'm going to see my family this weekend, and after I had an epiphany at two in the morning and spent 3 days writing this, I got it done, and I'm actually quite proud of this (or maybe it's the caffeine). Anyway, heed the warnings because the topics of conversation in this are pretty dark. That's why I highlighted the angst. And if you haven't watched past episode 1 of Season 1, this might spoil some things for you. (Also, I have no idea how this turned into a beast with a word count over 6k. Sorry in advance.)

Read Chapter 7: Downward Spiral here on AO3

You don’t know what came over you.

You typed in Matt’s number in a moment of weakness, and once you heard his voice through the line, you gave up on being careful. You gave up on denying yourself what you’re so desperately craving, and you abandoned all rational thought.

For him.

You promised not to get attached to someone ever again—let alone a man. You started a new life in Hell’s Kitchen to find your way back to normalcy. You took all the necessary precautions, and even though you look back at the shreds of your old life every day, you are never going back.

Two years. That is the longest you have managed to stay in one place ever since you left California. But you still haven’t found your way back into the real world.

You have been guarding yourself, afraid of having your heart broken, afraid of losing this chance at a new life, and afraid of the man who ruined you.

Every time you close your eyes, you see his face. You hear his voice in the back of your mind. He’s everywhere, even when you don’t want him to be.

It’s easier to put a wall between yourself and everyone else. A wall no one can break through, not even yourself. You trapped your soul for the sole purpose of keeping yourself alive after you made the hardest decision of your life. When you ran, you believed your life was over, but you have always been too much of a coward to end your misery. God knows you’ve tried, but even a trained doctor can’t fully understand death, and some things just don’t work out the way we want them to.

Drunken one-night stands can’t possibly compare to a meaningful emotional connection, but they satisfy the need for physical intimacy. At least for a little while. It killed you; slowly, almost pathetically, but sleeping with strangers in dirty motel rooms did a better job than you ever could.

For the longest time, you used sex as a coping mechanism. You let strange men use you because that is the only way you know how to be with someone else. You let them hurt you to feel something, anything because pain is better than feeling nothing at all. But when you finally got settled in Hell’s Kitchen, thanks to Claire, you stopped.

You locked up your heart and threw away the key. You started to shield your body the same way you have shielded your soul. You retreated into a shell of restlessness and constant fear of every little sliver of hope you feel being taken away from you.

You have nowhere else to run, which is why keeping a low profile is so important to you, but after two years, don’t you deserve to finally live?

We don’t exist to just survive; we exist to live the life we were given. You are Olivia Clarke now, not the broken girl you left behind, but every time you think about it, his voice returns and backs you into a corner that you can’t escape from.

Every time you see the scars on your body, all you want to do is rip the skin off your bones and feed it to the dogs.

The men you slept with while you were running from your past saw you as a mere object, and you are used to being seen that way, but it was isolating nonetheless. They didn’t care about your scars, they only cared about what you could give them. They treated you like he did without lifting a finger.

Even though you don’t do that anymore, it still weighs heavy on your wounded soul.

Matt treats you like a person. He can’t physically see, but he still sees you. He sees you in a way no one has ever seen you before. And he is gentle, and patient, and—

You scream into your pillow. Your nose still hurts, but it is nothing compared to how fast your heart is beating.

To you, Matt is perfect. You know that no one can be perfect, and you should be careful, but he makes you feel things you have long denied yourself. He makes you feel wanted. Desired. Like you can be yourself around him and still be worthy of his attention. Like you matter. And he has a certain way of being around you that makes you feel protected, almost.

You don’t need protection. You have made it this far without a bodyguard by your side. You know how to fight your own battles better than most, but you can’t deny that you wouldn’t mind being saved by him.

You wouldn’t mind those hands he always wraps around his cane to wrap around you instead. He can’t see your scars, but he can feel them, and as terrifying as that thought sounds, it also excites you.

You’re treading dangerous territory, but God, he won’t leave you alone, not even when you’re trying to sleep. He could offer you a sense of normal that you have long missed. He could teach you how to be a person again. And maybe, just maybe, you could let yourself be cared for by him.

You roll back onto your back when you need to breathe, one of your hairs getting stuck to your lip. You let out an annoyed huff. There won’t be much sleeping tonight, you’re sure. Not when you keep thinking about tomorrow.

“You’re not fifteen anymore,” you mutter to yourself. “What is wrong with you? God!”

It’s almost too surreal to believe that this magnetic force of a man managed to retrieve some of your long-lost hope, and he only had to call you beautiful once for you to be completely smitten.

When he allowed you to take care of his injuries on the first day you met, you didn’t think a person could be this guarded yet so vulnerable at the same time. He’s breaking under an invisible weight that must have been on his shoulders for years, maybe even decades. You’re painfully aware of other people’s feelings, and it wasn’t hard to tell that Matt carries a lot of unresolved pain with him. Always. He reminds you so much of yourself, it’s like staring into a mirror. Two broken halves of a whole.

Your thoughts won’t stand still, no matter how hard you try. You’re stuck inside an invisible hourglass. Not even heaven knows what will happen once time runs out. You don’t understand why you’re overthinking this while, at the same time, knowing exactly why. And you hate it.

There is a part of you that you can never get back. A little girl who grew up too fast. A girl who didn’t know any better. A broken teenager who wanted nothing more than to escape and live a better life than her parents could ever give her, and when she did manage to escape one hell, she found herself in a new quarter of purgatory built just for you.

You used to think that maybe you just bring the worst out in people, but after seeing the worst of humanity outside of your broken relationships, too, you’re not so sure about that anymore.

The fact that you don’t understand why you can’t stop your usually so intelligent brain from spinning out of control makes you want to claw at the walls of your apartment that threaten to cave in on you.

Part of you wants nothing more than to run and never look back, but you can’t run forever. This time, you wouldn’t be running from the Devil; you would be running from a fear of your own feelings. Human feelings. Feelings that have a high likelihood of recurring, and then you will have to run again.

You can’t run from reality forever. It’s a different reality now, but it’s a better reality. That is a rational thought, but being rational currently has no place in your mind, so you’re spiraling, and all because a nice guy asked you out for coffee.

You find yourself in a cab a few minutes later, wearing a pair of sweatpants, and an oversized shirt, with an untouched bottle of wine in your bag. Your worn-down sneakers are not the appropriate footwear for today’s weather, but you couldn’t be bothered to pick another pair.

You’re aware that it’s late and maybe you should have texted, but you’re already here, and Claire told you that you could always come to her, even if it happens to be the middle of the night. If the rule still stands after she suddenly decided to stay at your co-worker’s place without a proper explanation, you’re not quite sure though.

You knock. At first, no response. You knock again. The floorboards creak on the other side of the door.

“Claire, it’s Liv,” you call out.

You can hear the exact moment the person inside the apartment starts to panic. The floorboards creak again, more frequent this time, and it sounds almost as if Claire is turning the room upside down. You raise your eyebrows.

Before you can knock again, the lock finally clicks, and she opens the door. She’s more of a mess than you are, and that is put lightly.

“It’s the middle of the night,” Claire greets you. “What are you doing here?”

You blink a few times. “Hello to you too?”

She sighs. “I didn’t mean—I’m sorry, it’s just been a long night.”

“I can see that,” you answer. “Are you alright?”

“I could ask you the same thing.” She looks you up and down. “What happened to your nose?”

“It’s a long story.”

“No shit.”

“Yeah. Can I, uh, come in?”

She hesitates before stepping aside to let you in. “Sure.”

You take a quick look around the apartment. Nothing seems out of place. A bowl of cat food stands in the corner by the kitchen. The window in the living room is open, but it seems intentional.

The scent of antiseptic lingers in the air. You’re not sure if your nose is betraying you as you breathe in, but the smell is familiar. Bandages, disinfectant, and salve. You don’t want to question it, but you can’t help it.

“Did you hurt yourself?” you ask.

Claire blows her nose behind you. If you didn’t know better, you would think she was actually sick. She shakes her head upon hearing your question, but there is a faint blush on her cheeks.

“What makes you think that?” she retorts.

“Oh, no particular reason. It just smells very… hospital-y. That’s why I asked.”

“I, uh, I had to put a bandage on my leg earlier ‘cause this stupid cat decided to scratch me after peeing everywhere.” She sniffs. “Had to clean the wound, that thing—“ she nods toward the cat sitting in the cat tree, “and then the apartment. Maybe that’s why.”

You follow her gaze toward the little furball resting on his cat tree. You approach him, but Claire seems less pleased at the prospect.

“Be careful. He’s pissed.”

“At you,” you correct her. “Also, you’re having an allergic reaction, and—if he really, honest-to-God scratched you—very probably an infection. Why are you even staying here?”

Your voice rises in pitch when you reach the sleeping cat. “Hello, you.” You stroke his fur. He only opens one eye to sniff you, but once he recognizes you, he starts purring. For a moment, you forget the reason why you even came here.

Claire exhales loudly. She scratches her neck, her skin threatening to break out into hives. “It’s a long story,” she says.

You glare at her over your shoulder, your hand still stroking up and down the cat’s back as he settles back into a deep sleep. “I’m worried about you."

“That’s sweet of you, but I’m fine.”

“You called out of work and told Shelly you were sick.” You straighten up and turn back to face her. “You’re not sick, Claire.”

She sniffs as if to prove her point.

“Your immune system is overreacting by producing Immunoglobulin E. The antibodies are traveling to the cells responsible for releasing chemicals into your body, causing you to get a stuffy nose and break out into hives. You’re not sick. You’re allergic to cats and sharing an apartment with one. There’s a big difference,” you state. “Look, I know it’s none of my business, but you have to admit that, from where I’m standing, your behavior looks a little suspicious.”

“I’m going through some shit, alright?” she says. “And it’s a lot easier to deal with them here than back at my place. That’s why I called in sick.”

You don’t know what to make of her answer. It’s vague. You don’t like vague answers because they often indicate a bigger problem. It is one thing for you to deal with your demons on your own and refuse to talk about it with your best friend; it’s another thing entirely to keep a dangerous truth from the person you’re closest with, one that could potentially lead to worse consequences. If Claire were a naturally secretive person, maybe you would understand, but she isn’t like that. She isn’t you.

She’s the only person who knows your entire story. She saved your life. You can’t imagine her keeping secrets from you that might end up hurting her.

You dare to ask, “Are you in danger?”

She shakes her head a little too fast. “I’m fine, Liv. Really.”

“I’m sorry, but I have a hard time believing that.”

“It’s…personal.”

“Personal? Oh, my. Are you sleeping with Luke again?”

Claire stammers. The look on her face suggests that she didn’t expect you to jump to that conclusion. “What? How did you even–”

“Are you?” you repeat your question.

The last time she slept with Luke Cage, she lied to you about it. She knew you would worry. It’s only natural for you to come to that conclusion now. Except that Luke is in prison, serving his sentence, and it doesn’t make sense.

“How would I sleep with an incarcerated man?” Claire deadpans.

“I’m sure you have your ways,” you say.

“You’re grasping at straws.”

“That’s… true, but it’s coming from a place of love.”

She responds with a sigh. “I don’t wanna fight.”

You join in. You exhale, slowly lowering yourself down on the couch. “I’m sorry,” you murmur. “Just tell me you’re okay, please.”

She offers you a gentle smile. “I’m okay,” she says.

“Thank you.”

You choose to believe her. For the time being, at least.

The silence tugs at your brain cells. You obsessed over Claire’s situation because you didn’t want to face your own, but now that your thoughts have regained the freedom to roam and cause irreversible destruction, you start spiraling again.

You reach into your bag.

“You brought wine,” Claire points out.

“Yep,” you say. The bottle weighs heavily in your hand.

“You need a glass?”

You unscrew the top. “No.”

She doesn’t listen. Claire makes her way into the kitchen, reaching for the wine glasses in the cupboard. “Does this have anything to do with why your nose is all blue and swollen?”

You shake your head at her question. “That was a patient I tried to sedate. No, I, uh… I have a date,” your voice falls flat.

The wine glasses move back into the cupboard. Claire turns around, her eyebrows moving up to her hairline. “Come again?”

“I have a date.”

Saying it out loud makes it real. Something so surreal cannot be real, but it is. You have a date with Matt Murdock. Your heart begins racing again, and you feel the same desperate urge to scream into the nearest pillow again.

You take a sip of wine straight from the bottle. You have a date with a nice man who, for the first time in two years, made you see some resemblance of light at the end of this endless tunnel of despair, and the thought alone is terrifying. Because how are you supposed to live after just existing for the longest time? After you dedicated your life to the act of survival?

Claire steps out of the kitchen and in front of you. “Liv, that’s… that’s amazing!” she says. She sounds like a proud mother. Maybe she is.

You want to shake your head, but you can’t find it in yourself to do anything other than put the bottle back against your lips and take another sip. The alcohol burns down your esophagus into your stomach, spreading a warm feeling through your fragile body, and into your broken soul.

“Or not,” she corrects herself upon seeing the expression you’re carrying. Your eyes are empty. “I’m confused,” She pauses, “Are we not happy about the fact that you’ve finally got a date after two years of being miserable?”

If she puts it like that, you feel even more miserable. Another sip of wine finds its way down your throat.

“Okay, maybe you should put the bottle down. I’m sorry if I said something wrong–”

“It’s not you, it’s me.” You put the bottle down.

Claire sits down next to you, but you get up before she can take your hand and look at you with that caring look she always gives you when she’s worried. You’re not even mad that she played your concerns down when you expressed them and now she is expressing concerns about you; you’re mad at yourself.

She watches you. “You have a date. That’s a good thing. It means you allowed yourself to finally say yes to someone interested in you, right?”

“No,” you shake your head.

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“That’s not an answer.”

You’re pacing over the creaky floorboards. “The last time I went on a date with someone was after my intern year.”

Her gaze softens. “You told me that,” she murmurs.

“He took me to a restaurant,” you tell her. Your lip quivers as you speak, and your nails dig into your palms until they draw blood. You can barely feel it. His face is right in front of you. “It was a nice restaurant. He paid for me, even offered me his jacket while we were walking home. It was the best date I ever had. And then he kissed me on the doorstep before wishing me a good night.”

“I know. You told me all of that before. But you couldn’t have known that he would turn out to be who he turned out to be. He was your boss. He had no right—”

“That is precisely the problem, Claire!” your voice breaks. “The guy I met, he’s… his name is Matthew. He’s… he is so nice to me. He cares. He treats me like a human being. He… he’s respectful. He called me beautiful. I don’t even know how he knows that. He just… he was so nice to me, and I feel so comfortable around him. I haven’t felt this comfortable around a man in so long. I… I wanted to go out with him. I flirted with him, for fuck’s sake! And when I’m with him, I finally feel wanted again.”

“But you know who else was nice to me when I first met him?” you say. “Who was respectful? Who said I was the only real thing in this world, the only important thing in his life, and that he loved me? You know who made me feel safe and wanted, and who said he cared about me? John said that I was the most beautiful woman on this planet, and I fell for it because he was nice to me. He–”

“But that guy isn’t John,” Claire cuts you off. She raises her voice only slightly—only enough to make you stop and stare at her, tears streaming down your cheeks. You’re miserable. You’re a mess. It is truly embarrassing. But she doesn’t look at you any differently.

“Don’t you think I know that?” you snap back.

“Liv–”

“Every time I close my eyes, I see his face. I’m 32, and I can’t sleep without a nightlight most nights because I wake up in a cold sweat. I can’t drop a glass without going into shock. I can’t look in the mirror without feeling his hands on me. Without feeling disgusting and worthless, and…” You can feel the shiver traveling up your spine from the thought alone. “I can’t exist without feeling like he should have killed me when he got the chance.”

“Liv, I know you’re upset, but please, don’t say that,” Claire says, her voice gentle yet assertive.

“Why? It’s true. I wish he would’ve killed me. He took four years of my life that I can never get back. At least if he’d killed me I wouldn’t have to suffer now.”

“That’s exactly why I don’t want you saying things like that.”

“You don’t get it,” you say. “Every time I look in the mirror, I want to vomit because I see what he made of me. I can’t even meet a nice guy and allow myself to like him without seeing his face and hearing his stupid voice in my ear, telling me—telling me that no one will ever love me, that he tainted me, and that I will never be free of him because I can’t exist without him.” You break into a sob.

“And he was right, you know,” you cry. “I ran from him. I made the hardest decision of my life after years of living in his shadow, and I almost died. Because of him, I can’t trust a kind and respectful man who treats me like a person to actually be kind, and I recoil at the thought of someone being gentle with me. Something is seriously broken inside of me, Claire. Very, very broken.”

Claire opens her mouth, but all she can do is bear your tirade. She knows that if she speaks now, you will find another reason to shut her down. This is your pain talking. It’s a powerful avalanche set out to cause destruction on a global scale.

“With Matt, I—” you exhale. “I was myself around him for the first time since I ran away, and he didn’t shy away. I had hope, Claire. I felt like I could finally step into normal life again after settling down here, and I thought I’d have a chance,” you say. “But I just have to close my eyes, and John is right there to ruin everything for me. He is always right there, and I can’t fucking escape him. That’s the problem. That’s why I can’t be happy about this date because I’m fucking terrified. I can’t go through this again. I—I can’t give myself to someone again because there is hardly anything left of me. He took everything, including my ability to love another man ever again, and that thought is fucking with my head.”

You fall silent. The tears continue running down your cheeks, and you bury your face in your hands. Your knees are so weak. You don’t have it in you to hold yourself up any longer. You drop to the carpet, crying into your hands, but you don’t sob. You stay silent because your pain is so great, you don’t know whether to scream or shut down, so you scream internally and shut down from the world around you because you can’t face it. You can’t face Claire.

The couch creaks. Her feet brush against the carpet. “He abused you,” her voice borders above a whisper.

She kneels beside you, her hand reaching out—but not touching you. She knows what lines to cross and which to better leave untouched.

“What he did to you wasn’t your fault. He’s a cruel man with cruel intentions.” When you don’t shy away from her proximity, she finally places her hand on your shoulder. “You did the impossible. You survived. You’re here now because you chose to save yourself, and that is so admirable,” she says. “It’s been two years. You’re safe here, you’re not alone anymore, and I know it hurts and it is terrifying, but it’s a good sign that you want to feel more of what this guy made you feel.”

“But I can’t,” you choke out.

“I know, and I wish I could help you, but I’m not a professional. The truth is, John may have made you feel like there is nothing left of you, but you’re not Olivia Clarke. You’re still you. You’re still…” Claire takes a deep breath before she utters your name. Your real name. The one you were given when you were born.

The mention of your name makes you shiver. “She’s gone,” you say. “He killed her, but he left her body alive.”

“She’s not gone, she’s just buried very fucking deep. I mean, you said it yourself. You could be yourself around this other guy, and he took you for who you are. That isn’t Olivia, that’s you. And it’s such a good sign that you want to go out with him. That you like him. John hurt you, but he didn’t break you beyond repair. Please, you have to remember that.”

Your tears slowly subside. Her words finally manage to reach your rebelling mind through your ears. Even though everything feels like it has been wrapped in cotton, she manages to get through to you like no one else. It was a subconscious decision to come to her, but perhaps your soul knew something that you didn’t, and you can’t say that opening up didn’t help.

The mess slowly subsides. Left behind is nothing but hot air, and the words Claire decided to share with you.

You look up to meet her eyes. She smiles down at you. “I just… I don’t want to feel like this anymore,” you whisper.

“That’s why I think you should go on that date,” she tells you.

“Yeah, but who wants to sign up for a mess like me?”

“Seems like he does. And if he’s a good guy, he’ll like you regardless of your mess.”

“You know it’s not that easy.”

She shrugs. “I hate to break it to you, but you can’t pretend it never happened. And you can’t give John the satisfaction of putting your life on hold because of him. That’s just giving him what he wants.”

“I don’t want to give him what he wants,” you’re quick to answer.

Claire hands you a tissue, and you take it gratefully, wiping your runny nose and the salty tears stuck to your dry skin.

Her words stir something within you; even though you don’t want her to be right, she is. Matt may not deserve a mess like you, but if he’s truly a good guy, it can’t hurt to see if it would work between you. And when your past comes out eventually, there is a chance that he won’t abandon you. A slight chance, but a chance nonetheless. That’s a positive outlook you still have to learn how to adapt.

“C’mon.” Claire helps you off the floor and onto the couch.

You reach for the bottle of wine instantly, but she takes it away from you. She screws the top back on and places it aside, far out of your desperate reach.

“This is not the answer,” she says, “talking is.”

“Can’t we talk and have wine?” you counter.

“Not when you’re on the verge of a nervous breakdown.”

You sniff, wiping the remaining tears on your cheeks with the tissue.

“We need to take care of you, and alcohol won’t fix your problems.”

Once again, she isn’t wrong. You let out a defeated sigh before dropping your head in her lap.

A long time ago, you used to be an affectionate person. The fear of being hurt again, of someone raising their hand against you, took that away from you. With Claire though, it’s different. You know she won’t hurt you. She’s not that kind of person, and you can say that with complete certainty.

Claire Temple is not a violent human being, except for when the people she loves are in danger, but only then.

She gently brushes the hair out of your face and crumbles it into a messy bun at the back of your head. She wipes at your nose and the last of your tears before they can dry out your skin more than it already is. The past couple of days have taken an emotional and physical toll on you.

You wince slightly when you notice how sore your nose is. It isn’t broken, but you still got hit. You’re not quite healed yet. A shiver rolls down your spine.

Shaking her head, Claire gently removes her hand. “You always get yourself in trouble when I’m not around,” she mutters.

You scoff softly. “Maybe that’s a sign.”

“A sign for you to be more careful, yeah,” she says.

“Now, where would be the fun in that?” You try to joke, but your voice falls flat with the weight of your exhaustion.

Claire offers you a chuckle, but it’s more of a pity laugh than anything else.

You sigh. You know that you’re not an example when it comes to the significance of making the right decisions. Not at all.

“Did I ever thank you for saving my life?” you ask her then, breaking the silence between you in two.

She leans back against the cushions. “Once or twice.”

“Not nearly enough then.”

“I don’t know about that. I mean, if you hadn’t come into Metro General with your hand in a man’s chest cavity, I wouldn’t have gotten the chance to help you. You chose to stay.”

“Well, I had my hand on his vena cava, so, letting go would have been unfortunate for the poor guy.”

“That’s true.”

“But if you hadn’t disobeyed protocol, risking your job by putting your trust in me, I wouldn’t have had a reason to stay.”

Claire looks down at you, and you meet her eyes. “That sounded a lot like a love confession,” she nudges you.

You roll your eyes playfully. “You wish.”

“Hey, I’d understand it if you were in love with me. I’m hot.”

She never fails to make you laugh, even when you feel like a truck has rolled you over and broken every bone in your body. That is one of the many qualities you value about her. She’s a good person with a good heart, and she is the kind of person you could trust with your life and she would always make sure that you come out on the other side unharmed, mentally and physically.

If she hadn’t taken you under her wing, you’re not sure where you would be, but it surely wouldn’t be where you are now.

When your laughter quiets down, you nod. “I can’t argue with that. You are hot. If you weren’t my friend,” you say, “I’d ask you out.”

“And if I were into women, I’d say yes,” she says.

“I appreciate that.”

“Speaking of dates though–” She stops when you sigh a little too loudly. Claire shoots you a stern glare before she continues, “Promise me you won’t cancel.”

It’s not a question, it’s a statement. She wants you to mean it. You won’t lie; canceling your plans with Matt did cross your mind, but after Claire worked her magic on you, you can see a little clearer. The fog that kept your mind clouded has started to lift slowly but steadily. You’re no longer spiraling as fast as you have before.

If you could wash your hands and wash him off of you, it wouldn’t be as much of a problem as it is, but you’ve tried. You have tried washing all memory of him off of your body, out of your mind, but he’s a resilient son of a bitch. John will always try to drive a wedge between you and a normal, happy life, the question is just if you will allow him to do so without even being near you, or if you will finally allow yourself to crawl out of the dark hole he tossed you into.

You can’t do it alone, and asking for help is terrifying. You have spent the past two years trying to push through. Unfortunately, your healthy coping mechanisms won’t work forever.

You sigh again, a little quieter. “I won’t cancel,” you tell her, your voice barely above a whisper, yet still so very certain. As certain as you can be, anyway.

“Thank you.” Claire reaches for the wine bottle next to the couch. “You deserve to be happy.”

“Hm,” you can only murmur.

“What?”

“What are you doing with the bottle?” you ask.

“Drinking,” she says.

“Now I feel betrayed.”

“You should celebrate the fact that you found a Matt, or whatever his name is, and not another Mike.”

You promptly sit up. “Hold up. Pause. Rewind. Mike, like your ex?”

Claire takes a sip of the bottle. A storm rages behind her hazel eyes. You have never seen her that conflicted before.

“Is he the personal reason why you’re subjecting yourself to a constant allergic reaction by staying here?” you ask.

The pieces slowly start falling into place. She nods. “Not Mike Mike, but yeah. It’s always the Mike’s.”

Your jaw drops. “I feel like you skipped some chapters there. You met a guy and you didn’t tell me? What–”

“He met me,” she corrects you. “I didn’t tell you because we’re not a thing. Let’s just say there’s a reason his name is Mike. That’s why I’m here.”

Claire takes another sip. You watch her closely, trying to catch her in a lie, but it seems like she’s telling the truth—or a version of the actual truth, but that still makes it true. She’s giving you as much as she can after you cried your eyes out to her.

You clear your throat, lowering your voice. “But you’re not in danger?” you ask to clarify.

She shakes her head. “I just have shitty taste in men, even if it's platonic, apparently. It’s like… I’m trying to exist, and then I find a stray cat in a dumpster, but the stray cat has been stabbed and needs medical attention.”

“But you’re allergic to cats and you’re not a vet?” you try to make sense of her analogy.

When she lets out a sigh and nods, you figure you came as close as possible. It still doesn’t make sense to you, but when does anything? At least when it comes to romance and people’s love lives.

You decide to push a little more, “Did you actually find an injured guy in a dumpster?”

She shakes her head. The reaction comes a little fast, but you don’t question it. “No, that–that was just an analogy,” Claire says.

“And Mike is the stray cat in that analogy? But not your Mike, another Mike?”

“Yeah.”

“Dude, you’re frying my brain cells.”

“The single one you still have, or did you buy new ones?”

You try not to laugh, trying to look like you are genuinely offended, but your lips still curl up into a smile. “Shut up,” you mutter. You reach for the bottle, against better judgment, and take a sip.

Claire shakes her head. “What I’m trying to tell you is that, if he’s a good guy, you can’t let him slip away. You can’t let a good thing slip away and possibly end up with a–a Mike kinda guy for the rest of your life.”

“I know.” You look down at your hands, your broken fingernails, and sore knuckles from the constant scrubbing. “I just wish I could understand what he’s doing to me without questioning my entire existence.”

“Some people are just that enigmatic,” and she sounds as if she knows exactly what she’s talking about.

You wonder about Mike. Not her ex-boyfriend but the one she mentioned. He sounds like he has no sense of self-preservation, and he may not even be a good influence. He reminds you of yourself, and that’s creepy—you don’t even know him.

And then there is Matt, who is also so eerily similar to you, but in different ways. It’s more of an emotional connection. His heart is in the right place. And unlike the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, he doesn’t have a savior complex.

Why did he even come to your mind? His existence should not be playing into the equation. You brush the picture of his chiseled chest in that tight shirt away, or the way he looked even more dangerous with that smirk below the the mask.

You hand the wine bottle back to Claire. If you don’t cut yourself off now, you will melt into a puddle of embarrassment.

Your focus should be on Matt and Matt alone. You have to try. Claire was right. You can’t sacrifice your happiness because you’re scared—you can’t give the man who dedicated his life to breaking you and your confidence down the satisfaction of cowering in fear every time a man shows an interest in you. A good man. A man who could make you happier than he ever had.

You won’t run this time. You will face the situation head-on. You owe that much to the little girl who dreamed of a life beyond the hell she grew up in, the same girl who was obsessed with finding her soulmate and still believed in true love. Above everyone, you owe it to yourself. No one else matters quite as much as you do.

And for the sake of seeing what could be instead of wondering what could have been, you have to try.

Tag List: @shiorimakibawrites @allllium @siampie @auroraslibrary @roseallisonparker @abucketofweird @thatonegamefish @capylore @kniselle @sumo-b98 @peachstarliight @danzer8705 @kakamixo @littlehappyperson @atemydadforbreakfast @stevenknightmarc @zheezs14 @shouldbestudying41 @kiwwia-wiwwia

#matt murdock x reader #matt murdock #daredevil #matt murdock x you #matt murdock angst #matt murdock fluff #reader insert #charlie cox #doctor!reader #do no harm

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the-traveling-poet · 6 months

Note

hello darling! Congratulations on hitting 100 followers! 🥳 I honestly thought you had at least 1000 cause your writing is really good! And so here I am to request a second fic… could you do a Levi x lieutenant reader where the reader has lost someone close, maybe a sibling and even if she’s usually chatty and everything, now she seems distracted and absent and during a mission outside the walls, maybe to capture a titan or something she almost gets killed and wakes up near Levi in the hospital wing? Thank youuu 🧡🧡

Cleansing

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With the fifty Seventh expedition led by the Scouting Corps beyond the walls on the rise, Lieutenant Y/N finds herself on the verge of breakdown.

Distracted by the grief surrounding her heart over her late friend’s death the previous expedition, Y/N lands herself in the infirmary wing next to a familiar face.

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Pairings: Lexi x Grieving!Reader

Warnings: language, depression, injuries, lost loved ones

SFW, grief-to-fluff, s2

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A/N: Thank you so much my lovely Alex!! I’m thrilled to have even reached 100 lovely followers 🤎 I’m sorry about the wait!

I hope I did your vision justice! I always love your requests~ As always if anything wrote doesn’t meet your expectations, let me know and I’ll happily re-write!

Enjoy~

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“Prepare yourselves! We ride out in five minuet’s time!”

Commander Erwin’s voice boomed out across the crowd of both citizens and soldiers alike, reaching the ears of everyone gathered. But for the first time in your enlisted life, the confidence in his tone did nothing to boost your morale.

You sat atop your steed near the middle of the crowd of soldiers, your head bowed as you stared down at your hands holding your horse’s reins.

Fifty seven expeditions the Survey Corps has undertaken, and somehow you still managed to draw breath after every single one of them that you’d been around to participate in.

Others hadn’t been so lucky as to survive the missions beyond the walls, and years ago you would mourn their deaths from afar. As a comrade, perhaps as an acquaintance of the fallen. But now…Now, everything was different.

Squeezing the leather straps of the reins, you forced your chin to raise up and locked your gaze somewhere far away from where you sat. Swallowing down the lump in your throat, you forced yourself to take deep breaths.

Just a few weeks prior, had been the fifty sixth expedition out into titan territory. You’d figured, back then, everything would go as it always had.

Ride for your life, fight like hell, cover the rear guard, and pray to whatever might be out there you didn’t get your ass ripped a new one by a titan’s sharp teeth.

But you had been sorely mistaken, on that fateful day.

Your duty as Lieutenant within the Special Operations Squad was simple; aid Corporal Levi in any way he demanded, and cover your squad’s rear. But that day, you had been selfish.

There had been a girl. A girl you spent a good portion of your teenage life with while training to become a Scout. She had been nothing short of your un-biological sister. Your best friend. She wasn’t apart of your specialized squad, and you grew weary from the lack of contact the entirety of the formation had had that day with the right wing.

Levi’s command had fallen on deaf ears that afternoon when you steered your horse in another direction. You’d called over your shoulder you would return quickly, but your promise was quickly broken.

By the time you had reached the right wing’s position, you’d been too late. The dismembered and mutilated bodies of her squad laid all about the field in mangled heaps, their blood soaking deep into the earth. Titans roamed about the scene, lazily shifting through the corpses to find anyone alive to eat. Unable to take them all out on your own, and without any aid, you choked back your anguished cry and raised a flair gun over your head. Your vision had been blurred by unshed tears when you squeezed the trigger and rode off.

One last glance over your shoulder showed you what was left of your best friend; her body bitten into half and a silent scream frozen on her white face.

You’d never been the same since, and you didn’t figure you would ever be.

And you certainly knew you’d never forgive yourself for leaving her body out there. For leaving her in the first place, despite duty pulling you two apart.

Now, as you sat as still as a statue upon your horse, you forced your mind to wander elsewhere in your memories. Subtly you used your jacket’s sleeve to wipe at the corners of your eyes and focused your attention on the back of your Captain. He sat further up ahead of you all, nearer to Commander Erwin.

As if physically feeling your gaze on him, he turned to look over his shoulder and met your eye. You held his gaze, but showed no emotion on your face, which ironically matched his expression.

He raised a brow towards you, to which you merely gave a solemn nod. Taking that as all the confirmation he needed, he reluctantly drug his gaze away from you and faced the front.

As the gates began to slowly crank open on their rusted metal gears, you made a promise to yourself.

I won’t stop until you’re avenged, even if it costs me my last breath.

Though you were tasked with the rest of your squad to watch over the newest recruit, Eren Jeager, from the center of the formation, you kept your guard up and eyes peeled for any opportunity to seek your revenge against those man eating bastards.

Every titan that was spotted by your group once the formation had split up had been taken care of by you. You’d break away from the squad at every given opportunity to thin out the titan’s numbers, despite Levi’s constant reprimanding.

“Lieutenant L/N! Back in formation, now. We are not to engage unless necessary, you know this.”

“Sorry sir,” you’d mumble in response once you were back in place behind him, but you weren’t really paying attention to his words. With every kill you racked up, the less you could think straight. In order to keep the tears at bay, you just kept swinging.

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A little over an hour later, the Forrest of Big Ass Trees (As Levi had dubbed it) loomed high up into the sky just a mile ahead. Hastening your pace, you followed your Captian inside and gripped your reins tighter.

You’d been briefly informed of the situation at hand the night before this expedition; so now you knew to just keep riding, and wait.

You knew you’d take your revenge soon enough…

By the time she appeared, your hands were off your reins and gripping the handles of your blades. Levi shot you a warning look over his shoulder, but said nothing. You both knew you wouldn’t jeopardize the whole purpose of this mission, emotional or not.

When the trap was sprung by your Commander, the last thread of your patience snapped. Springing into action, you shot away from the group to where you knew your Commander would be stationed, and took a deep breath.

Soon. Soon I’ll give your death reason.

To your surprise, Levi landed only a breath away from where you hung latched onto the tree and scoffed. Shifting slightly from how close he was to you, you held your breath.

“The hell was that, brat? You were supposed to supervise the squad after the bitch was captured.”

“Sorry, sir,” you mumbled again, averting your gaze. “But this is personal.”

He gave you a strange look, somewhere between understanding and surprise. But again, he chose not to ask. He trusted you, after all. Even if he didn’t know what was on your mind at the moment.

So when the Female Titan began to scream, and the ground began to rumble and quake with the thuds of charging titans, Levi hadn’t expected for you to bolt forward into the masses.

His warning fell on deaf ears as Erwin commanded his soldiers to advance and take out as many titans as possible before they reached the Female. As you fought your way through tangled limbs and gnashing teeth, time seemed to slow down and speed up simultaneously. But only one thing stuck in your mind.

You were doing this for her.

But in your rage, you failed to hear Erwin’s command for retreat. Suddenly finding yourself alone in a hoard of titans broke you out of your haze, and panic took over. Large arms batted you this way and that as you did your best to swivel through the frenzy. Bones crunched under the pressure of harsh blows, cuts formed from poorly aimed swipes of your blades, human and titan blood alike blinding your vision and loosening your grip.

And suddenly, the world around you faded into a blur and went dark.

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Startled yells and fearful screams snapped you back into consciousness. You jolted up, only to gasp as a sharp pain ran through your left leg and arm. Holding your injured arm close to your chest, you saw a makeshift sling tied around your limb. Groaning in both pain and annoyance, you lifted your gaze to view your surroundings.

You were holed up in a wagon with several other injured soldiers, some still unconscious. The world around you was moving fast as the Scouts made their retreat from the botched expedition.

Looking over the side of the fast moving cart, you saw Levi riding close by on his own horse. Your movement caused him to snap his gaze towards you, relief flooding his eyes before they turned sharp once more.

“Not a word, L/N. Just be thankful you’re alive.”

His words caught you off guard, causing you to furrow your brow in confusion.

“Captain, what do you me-“

“I said; Not. A. Word, L/N.” He shot back, keeping his eyes trained ahead. His jaw was clenched and his brows drawn close together in a scowl. He was stiff in his saddle, causing you to worry. But per his request, you managed not to voice your concerns just yet. You’d wait until you were all back safely within HQ. For now, you’d try to rest…

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Stifling a yawn, you cracked your eyes open once more. Only, this time, you were back inside the walls. The infirmary within HQ, to be precise.

You heaved a sigh, feeling defeated and frustrated. Your body felt weak, shaky even as you lifted a bandaged hand up towards your face. The movement stung, but you did your best to ignore it.

Hearing a shuffle from the other side of the room, you slowly brought yourself up into a sitting position on the cot.

Across from your bed against the far wall stood Levi. His presence here confused you, until you saw the dust rag in his hand.

Thinking not much of it after this, you cleared your throat to speak. “Evening, Captain.”

His shoulders tensed as he glanced over his shoulder, silently evaluating your state. He was still in uniform, dressed and dirtied as though he hadn’t returned from the walls. It unnerved you, seeing the usually pristine man looking so ruffed up off duty.

He set down the cloth and turned to face you, slightly favoring his right ankle. This didn’t go unnoticed by you, but before you could ask he spoke.

“Finally awake? Took you long enough; we’ve been in this damn room for an hour.”

“An hour? We?” You questioned slowly. “You mean, you’re-“

“Fine. I’m fine.” He insisted gruffly, now looking off to the side. “Eyebrows threw a fit that I should have my ankle evaluated, so I’ve been here since you have.”

Glancing over the bed and down at his ankle, you saw he wasn’t applying any pressure to the joint; merely hovering his heel above the ground.

“Doesn’t look fine,” you mumbled. “Broken?”

“Broken,” he affirmed with a scoff.

“Damn…” you whispered, unable to hide your surprise. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

“Like you can speak. Doctors said you’ve got three broken bones. Arm, hand, and ankle. All left.” he snorted, doing his best to (discreetly) hobble closer to your cot and take a seat.

“I figured as much. But why are you standing? You should be sitting, or laying. You know, to support your ankle while it sets.” You rolled your eyes and changed the topic, worried about his injury.

“Tch, couldn’t just sit here all day. Not in a room this dusty.” He wrinkled in distance, glancing back over at where he’d left the dust cloth on the windowsill.

You sighed, but cracked a smile. “Of course not. We can’t have that. But…” you swung your legs over the side of the bed with a wince. “I can’t have you hobbling around doing it alone. You might get hurt.”

He watched you incredulously as you stood, gathering your balance before shuffling on your leg’s cast and inched towards the window. Levi limped after you, feinting annoyance.

“Again, like you can speak.”

Chuckling, you grabbed a second cloth and attempted to help him. You were his right, and he was your left.

“So, the others come to visit yet?” You asked absentmindedly, wondering where the rest of your squad was. Levi stiffened, his hand stopping in place on the windowsill. His silence started to eat at you as it drug on, leaving fear to cloud your mind.

“Levi…?”

“They…They didn’t make it,” he whispered, his gaze distant as it stared down at his hand.

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By the time he had finished his recount of the events leading up to his injury, your hands shook and eyes watered with unshed tears.

“I failed them, too…” You whispered hoarsely.

“Too?” Levi asked softly, finally gazing over at you.

You just nodded, now unable to meet his eye.

“ ‘This is personal.’ Is this what you meant earlier? Why you were so fucking reckless?” He stated suddenly, his eyes narrowing. With a sigh, you gave in.

“Yeah…I’m sorry, but I had to avenge her. The friend I lost, on the fifty sixth expedition a few weeks back. My best friend…She died because I wasn’t there to help her. And now…the others…” You trailed off helplessly, tears finally falling freely down your face.

A sturdy hand found its way to your shoulder, squeezing it softly.

“L/N, don’t. You did your job as Lieutenant, and you fought well. Their deaths are not your fault.” Levi whispered, a strain in his tone.

Sniffling, you looked to him and saw the same grief that clouded your mind swimming there in his own eyes. You leaned your head against his shoulder, feeling exhausted from having held in your emotions for so long.

“It’s not your fault, either.” You whispered as you felt the hand on your shoulder slowly slide up and pet the top of your hair.

“I’m just glad you’re still here. You don’t have to go through this alone, and now neither will I.”

A watery smile formed unbidden on your face as tears dribbled down your chin and onto his shirt. You’d never seen your Captain so open and vulnerable, even though right now you knew you looked the same. It sparked a curious flicker in your heart, one you heard resonate in his chest as you pulled him in.

Your silent promise to stay with him at his side, and his silent acceptance of you into his life. Maybe even someday, his heart.

Taglist: @21aurora

If you want on the tag list for drabbles, headcannons, and one-shots, just DM me~

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iravaid · 9 months

Note

(in reference to your reblog)

I would absolutely love an exhaustive breakdown of all of your decisions regarding ‘Simon Riley in Situations’

That series consumes me. Much like in the way that Simon was consumed by the desert. I have been fundamentally altered by it.

Oh my god, genuinely thank you so much for asking

This became a very long set of rambles that I have two split in two, possessed by the talk too much demons... sad! Here is the first part, the second part I'll tack on in a later reblog.

More below, I get a little bit Pepe Silvia in this, but oh well lmao

An Introduction

I’m going to preface this with stating that the comics are bad. On an artistic and writer’s standpoint, their net value is negative. I have read those six wretched issues at least seven times through and feel confident in that assertion. I have no idea why people think they’re actually good, in the face of muddy rendering and an overall displeasing art style, Americanised writing with poor panelling and pacing and dialogue, among other torture-porn related things.

That being said, there are moments of competency that shine through, past the early 2000s edge and casual sexism + racist stereotypes, which in turn irritates me because it does show there could have been a better story here. And Yet. But the comics have been a well of spiteful inspiration, first with Except You, and second with In The Desert (and perhaps more to come), and I do want to talk about that. (and I do know that the comics aren’t necessarily canon for the reboot Ghost, but like. C’mon. Work with what we’ve currently got. Even if my money is on Makarov in the reboot having something to do with Ghost’s past, considering the knowing look he and Price share upon seeing the photo.)

Simon is a character that has been doomed by the narrative since day one, and while it would not be a surprise if he survives MW3 on account of the company wanting to make money off his multiplayer counterpart, there is a certain compelling grief in knowing his fate was always going to be how it was in the original trilogy. Simon suffers: Simon dies; Ghost suffers: Ghost dies. There is no other way this story ends. And there is something about the cyclical nature of his life, and patterns to be found in a such a story, which I think are extremely fun to try and enforce, as well as emphasise. It’s this, among other things, that makes him a compelling character to me. Well – that and him being tall, built like a brick-shithouse, gravelly voice, wears a skull mask, has a strong sense of loyalty and compassion for fellow soldiers… (but that’s beside the point!!!!).

The things he went through in the comics had occasionally been so over the top that I need a moment to stand back and go ‘… really? Like. Really? After all that, you put him through more?’ after every reread. It’s not enough that his entire family was murdered but also his psychiatrist and superior officer, and so on and so on. But unfortunately, I have to reiterate that the comics have been a source of inspiration. ‘Simon Riley In Situations’ is an extension of this spiteful motivation to retell/improve upon what the comics were trying to do, as well as occasionally extrapolating on them, or even warping canon to better accommodate my own headcanons/the rebooted universe.

I love stories were a main/side character goes through an incredible change, to the point where they’re noticeably and irreparably different to how they were at the beginning of the story, for better or for worse. Examples that come to mind, currently, are Jinx from Arcane, Zuko from ATLA, Ahsoka in Clone Wars, Steve from Stranger Things. To me, the transformation of Simon into Ghost is something very compelling. The Simon Riley that’s about to fly to the states with Major Vernon is a man very, very different to the Simon Riley freshly recruited into the 141 by Shepherd. But fundamentally they’re still the same person, and that can be an important facet for a big change in a character imo.

I like using a lot of poems and songs and the occasional bible reference in my works. I know it’s fanfiction and maybe for some people that’s overdoing it, but I love it. I love how art informs and inspires itself, and I love using the inherent emotional and cultural connections attached to a specific work in order to enhance that of my own writing. I think it’s good practice, and maybe it doesn’t matter that it’s expressed in the form of fanfiction. I’m a better writer because of it, and that’s something of significance to me: I never studied English lit/creative writing at a higher level of education, so this is where it will be expressed.

Skulls, Death, and the Ghost

Skulls haunt Simon throughout the comics; in turn, Simon has been haunted by the Ghost he’s doomed to become for a very long time. Roba wears skull face-paint when torturing and attempting to brainwash Simon, Simon’s father used to wear skull face-paint when performing, Simon smeared toothpaste on his face when in recovery from Roba’s captivity and it resembled a skull, Tommy wore a skull mask to emulate his father, and Simon hallucinates skeletons/skulls at different points in the comics. Finally, when his family are killed and Simon goes on his revenge mission, he wears the same face paint as he did during Día de Los Muertos when Roba captured him. He claims that the brainwashing didn’t ‘work’ (as the comics put it), but here Simon is, wearing the same mask as his tormentors. I wanted to stretch that recurring imagery by adding the vocalist wearing the skull face-paint in chapter one of Except You. Something there about returning to form, or perhaps finally looking back to see what exactly is that thing who’s been lurking in the back of your mind. I describe the skull reoccurring as “morbidly familiar” in that this has always been Simon’s fate, and it doesn’t matter what he does to try and escape, because he will always return to it.

It can also be stretched to symbolise his close relationship with Death. Simon has ‘died’ a lot of times in the story. At first he believes he’s dead on a subconscious level (nightmares with Roba’ saying he killed him), but then issues 3+4 happen, and that belief escalates into a conscious conviction that he died on the concrete floor in Roba’s captivity; he died out there in the desert; he died surrounded by his family’s corpses on Christmas; he died the moment he killed Roba; he died for good at the end of MW2. Roba killed Simon, and Ghost put whatever ‘Simon Riley’ once was to rest in the funeral pyre of his childhood home. Ghost has always had to everything on his own up until this point: even give himself a proper sendoff. A part of me wonders if Ghost believes himself, on some level, to be the keeper of Simon’s memory and identity. That is what a ghost is, right? The thing that lingers after a tragedy.

It's something incredibly interesting to consider present-era Ghost. Does he still think he’s dead? Is he waiting for the rot to set in? Has he been so dissociated from himself for so long that he doesn’t know how else to function, and on some level is terrified of what might happen, should he in turn look back to face whatever is left of ‘Simon Riley’? Maybe Ghost can be interpreted as the one that came back ‘wrong’, and he’s waiting for other people to notice that there’s nothing left but a corpse. He has gotten very little help by way of therapy/counselling, and probably doesn’t have the tools nor language at his disposal to neither work through these things, nor know how to voice them in the first place. That’s one of the reasons I wrote Simon as not fully aware of the definition of ‘child abuse’ and how it related to him. He knows Nigel (his father) was a cunt and a wifebeater, but he doesn’t know those necessary psych terms to properly begin processing what happened to him both as a child and adult, because who could have taught him? He never got the chance to go to DBT or CBT, and that hazy moment of time with Dr Halloway probably wasn’t conducive to learning about things like CPTSD and trauma and abusive households. I tried to extrapolate this, with Simon’s internalised ableism also being a block to fully accepting or even processing those terms. He’s in a lot of pain, and he very, very desperately wants to move on, to return to how he used to be before all of ‘this’. Will talk later on about how the military factors in to keeping the status quo of ‘the Ghost’.

In tarot (love you tarot love symbolisms in it love when it’s used in media mwah mwah), the death card symbolises major change, rebirth, and endings and beginnings.

If anything, Simon Riley is defined by his deaths and rebirths, how he keeps forcing himself to change in order to survive a brutal narrative set for him. And Ghost, who bears a skull-face not dissimilar to the grim-reaper, perhaps wears this taboo symbol to ward off ‘evil’, or to use that fear in order to keep people at arm’s length, in response to these injustices done to him by fate and the machinations of people far crueller than Simon. He has been through a lot, and still he keeps moving, keeps completing missions and being a ‘good soldier’, because that’s all Simon knows. He’s like a shark in that way, or a well-trained dog: he was never taught, nor given the chance to learn, how to not be a soldier. This is something me and @narramin, affectionately refer to as hound-coding, which, god, really suits Simon. Will talk about it further on.

Roba Himself

Manuel Roba is certainly there. It’s honestly incredibly disappointing to see how this specific character was handled, how heavily the writers leaned into stereotypes to depict Roba – there’s a panel of him holding a burrito for fuck’s sake. This caricature of a villain is both lazily written, but also serves to reduce the impact he has on Simon. This man is supposed to be the primary antagonist, above Simon’s abusive father. He is the reason that Ghost exists, the reason the Riley family are dead, and can be considered the primary catalyst for most of the comics’ plot. And yet this man, and all that he represents in Simon’s suffering, is reduced to the fat ‘El Gordo’ with dialogue lines that are ultimately meaningless, a personal motivation that is only said in his dying breath without further exploration, and ultimately is a villain without any teeth. I think Roba has the potential to be a terrifying figure, one this kind of dark story needs in order to ensure that Simon’s suffering isn’t made a joke when compared to the one at the source of it all.

There are moments of competency and personality that shine through here and there. The pink deck chair in the sensory overload room, the ‘plant flowers over [the grave]’ line, as well as Roba choosing to make himself appear as the grim reaper himself as a way to express ultimate power over his captives’ lives (and, in turn, Simon killing Roba and choosing to don the skull-face could be seen as him taking that control back).

There is a set of panels, one from issue 5 and another from issue 6, that piques my attention when placed together (seen below). Simon has tried so hard to convince himself and others that he is fine, that Roba’s brainwashing failed, that he is not deeply affected by the seven months of torture and humiliation and dehumanisation. But then he comes back from the dead wearing the same face-paint as Roba. He refers to himself as death, as does Roba. That man has his claws deep in Simon, and Roba knew this, and he died with a smile on his face because of it. As quoted by his final words: in the end Roba is just one man. Killing him won’t bring back the Rileys and it won’t stop the pain Ghost is in (but by god is it Ghost’s right to put that man down for what he did to him.).

The following paragraphs will discuss the torture Simon was subjected to in Roba’s captivity and features discussion of the sexual assault he experienced, as well as being him drugged + detailed acts of dehumanisation. The section itself will be bracketed with a ‘-’, feel free to skip to the final paragraph marked of this section if you’d prefer.

In my writing I want to show a competent, terrifying Roba. He should be purposeful in how he goes about breaking these men down in order to build them up into the dutiful hounds Roba so obviously wanted. That’s part of why I think, and wrote, Roba having never touched Simon, he made sure it was his men assaulting Simon while he watched (for one reason or another). And when they were finished Roba would try to manipulate the situation into one being Simon’s fault and that Roba, and only Roba, could fix for him. Simon needed to see Roba as the one with the power to control all these awful things happening to him, and that his own obstinance is the reason he’s suffering. Roba would make an offer – if you listen to me, follow what I say, I can make this stop. I can stop them from touching you ever again. It’s purposefully and insidiously phrased, he’s trying to make all this seem like Simon’s fault for not ‘giving in’. In turn, the prolonged torture and dehumanisation would best be served as well-thought-out tactics.

I’m not a fan of how every other captive was noted as too ‘weak’ or whatever to hold out against all that Roba was doing to them, only for Vernon to say that his methods were ‘genius’ – not with a near 100% mortality rate it fucking isn’t. It would be interesting to explore a fic where Roba was actually competent enough for those aforementioned super soldiers to be a real thing (and we’ll make death proud of us touches on this very well I recommend this fic). But, regardless, I find exploring the ways Simon could have been dehumanised/tortured without succumbing to infection or shock or a sudden heart attack from the sheer amount of stress and trauma to be morbidly interesting. I’m a morbid person, so this tracks lmao (it’s regardless a matter of balance, though, because we’re trying not to fall into that Edge the comics loved so much). I also want to note that Roba rarely, if ever, called Simon by his real name. It’s always ‘English’ or ‘Mr. Death’. A name is a powerful thing to control, stripping a person of their name is a common dehumanisation tactic, one that even the military has been known to use in order to get all these individuals into acting as one mass. It’s also a sign of non-acknowledgement, in my eyes. Simon was not a person to Roba, not really, just a dog that needed moulding. In a way, Ghost referring to himself as ‘Ghost’ may also be a tactic to distance himself from Simon in order to cope with the Everything that’s happened to him.

The next point is just as important as the prior ones: what kind of effect would all this have on Simon in different stages of the comics? And what kind of inner monologue and mindset would he have in order to endure these awful, awful things? And how would he heal from it, considering how the events of the comics went down? He has no control over the situation as a whole, but I imagine that Simon is the kind of person to try and grasp for anything to have control over regardless – he’s exhausted but he still might try to lay in a way that keeps him protected or stills his roiling gut, he’ll occasionally still try to lash out against the narcos, he’ll try and joke with Sparks and Washington in order to help them cling to their humanity (as well as preserve his own identity as a protector, which I want to get into later). He especially utilises dissociation as a ‘tool’ developed from living under the same roof as Nigel Fucking Riley. It provided a very necessary reprieve, and Simon probably believes he’d been ‘broken’ by his father long before Roba ever got his hands on him. Simon at this point probably (maladaptively, in the long run) perceives his ability to dissociate from the body to be a way to control what he truly feels. He can get some kind of control over experiencing multiple instances of sexual assault, over MONTHS, by creating a clear delineation between the body and the person. I wonder if this laid the groundworks for the self-perceived split between Simon Riley and Ghost.

He’s out of that place, Roba is dead and whatever was left of the Zaragoza cartel is hopefully long gone. But where does that leave Simon, whose primary coping mechanisms are either feeling horrific, yawning numbness, or forcing all that pain and fear and humiliation into over-powering anger? All these things kept him alive then… but now what? He has been subjected to a horrific slew of experiences in seven months, over two-hundred days. How do you approach that kind of deal and unpackaging and addressing of that trauma? It’s something in and of itself would be a compelling story to tell, especially with his childhood trauma informing how he processes those experiences. Simon has been physically and psychologically changed by Roba, even if he tried to ‘resist’ – even though interrogation resistance training only lasts for so long.

Sometimes I wonder at what point did Simon realise they weren’t torturing him for information, but to make him into something that wasn’t human. At what point did he realise that there was a reason they made him crawl down the hallways on his hands and knees with a collar around his neck, or that they fed him dog food off the ground, or that he might have been kept in retrofitted dog kennels, in a long-abandoned dog fighting pit.

I wonder if there were times he wished he’d just let go and listen to Roba, and kill the people the latter wanted him to kill; just so that the pain would stop, and he could be more than this thing surviving on the concrete floor. Very interesting to consider, what with the comics implying that Sparks and potentially Washington were also drugged in order to force a dependence on them, as a way to further exert control over them. I’m not sure why Simon didn’t also experience this. Yet another Comics Cringe Moment.

Ultimately, when I see Roba I think of a Judge Holden-esque figure: an intelligent man who has taken a step back, looked at the violence of the world, and ultimately came to the conclusion that, 1.) It is in man’s nature to wage war and be violent, and 2.) It is Roba’s right to control that flow of violence. He had Simon, Sparks, and Washington, and others who came before them, tortured, brutalised, dehumanised, starved, assaulted, and vivisected with intents to brainwash them into his own personal soldiers/bodyguards. He wanted to perverse nature and control something that was never his to control, and I think a character like that should ooze calculated cruelty and a disdain for the optimistic/what he perceives as weak. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, in Roba’s eyes, and he wants to be the one holding the leash.

Dogs and Hounds

Speaking of dogs, let’s get into hound-coding. Dog/hound/wolf metaphors are used for characters in a plethora of ways: dogs and other canines are embedded deeply in a lot of cultures and that can be seen in how disparate a dog can be used in symbolism. The rabid dog that requires put down, versus the loyal-to-a-fault dog whose diligence will be its downfall. The dog that hunts you down relentlessly against the dog that protects and nurtures. Vicious and borderline obsessed, pursuing a singular goal with tunnel-vision; dangerous predator stalking you from the shadows; wholly dedicated to a sole purpose in life; kicked to the point where anger lines their teeth and they meet the world with a bite, because they’ll never let anyone hurt them again; a caregiver and teacher, sometimes even a leader that will look out for who they see as family.

With Simon Riley, I feel he is a hound, the kind that’s been kicked enough times to know to bite first and ask questions later – but can someone please be gentle? Please, can’t someone let him rest? Then the narrative slaps his muzzle and tells him the story isn’t done yet. Simon, off the coattails of escaping his childhood home as a teenager, finds purpose in the military and clings to it. So much of Simon’s identity can be tied to him being a protector, as well as a soldier; he’s proud of his achievements within the SAS, cocky, even. He is well trained in violence and well experienced, too; he’s risen above to make a reputation for himself as a tough sonofabitch within the SAS, which is pretty famously full of that type of person.

The dog can be moulded into a lot of different things in fiction, just as it has in real life. So can Simon, so can Ghost: he’s a character that has been subjected to extreme kinds of change, with some very clear distinctions between Pre-Roba Simon, During-Roba, Post-Roba, Post-Family Massacre, and Post-Jungle Raid. That’s one of the reasons why I think the dog metaphor, and its imagery, can provide very impactful parallels for Simon. What is a dog, if not loyal and loving? Didn’t we make it that way? And what is a dog, if not defined by the job it can fulfil. We made it that way. What use is Simon to the military, if he won’t do what he was trained to do. I wonder if he worries about that in between missions: losing his purpose and identity one way or another.

Ghost is a good leader; he knows how to direct a team and how to keep Soap calm during the chaos in Las Almas. I imagine he found sanctuary in the camaraderie that can be found in a military environment, compared to his chaotic homelife. He doesn’t necessarily have to be open about it, or all that externally happy. But it’s regardless a community that has provided Ghost with some form of support (ironic, again, considering it’s the military, but that is how it works). Like a pack animal, one might say.

His potential relationship with Soap, if people take it that way (I do and will be talking about it more later #peaceandlove), reminds me of the poem ‘bait dog’ among others, here's an excerpt from the end of it: “And she still flinches / When I reach to pet her / but she smiles / once I get behind the ears / you will not heal from everything / that does not mean / you will stop being loved.”, and I feel that’s a very lovely image when applied to Soapghost, y’know? Simon has been through a lot, and Soap is emotionally mature enough to recognise that and give him space, while still putting in that necessary work to bridge certain gaps. Kind of like the slow burn of getting a rescue dog to trust you, except it’s your human superior officer with CPTSD and an edgy comic book backstory. They will doubtless have issues and bumps in the road, but they’ll also have shitty jokes and a lot of patience to keep things buoyed. Love wins or WHATEVER.

Roba tried to make Simon into an attack dog, too. Treated him like one, and I imagine there was a point where Simon was starting to believe it. Then he gets buried alive and has to dig his way out. He has to drag himself through the desert (more to come on that) and survive months of recovery until he has a chance to return to the state he physically was. I imagine this time of injury was awful for Simon: he felt incompetent on top of the other churning emotions one would have after surviving so many months of All That. Simon, I imagine, has always defined himself by his ability to provide, protection or otherwise, as well as his own physical prowess. It’s what kept him and his family safe all this time. It also led to him being picked for that fateful mission. I think Simon is a man shown to be capable of that single-minded focus of a hound that’s caught the scent, especially when he spent months tracking down Roba in the jungle.

Simon is a dog constantly having to remember its teeth. There is a lot to be said about dogs that learn to bite back.

I have reached a character limit here but still have a lot to talk about, please hold (and tysm, again, for the ask)

#ask #codposting #simon riley #ghost mw2 #cod mw2 #call of duty #rape mention #shaking my fist at the sky every time i think about the comics. god.#This is LONG and it's not done yet... freak

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stillness-in-green · 6 months

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On Heteromorphs and Heteromorphobia (Arc XVI - XVIII, Endeavor Agency to Villain Hunt)

My thanks to @codenamesazanka for providing me a few crops this week for less fuzzy looks at background characters than I could manage working just off the Viz online catalogue. I'm hoping this posts okay, because it's about a thousand words longer than any of these have been so far, but has a lot less sub-sub-sub bullets than last week's breakdown of the CRC volume extra. Fingers crossed, and dive in, all!

The Endeavor Agency Arc (Chapters 241-252)

Chapter 245:

Another installment of Bakugou using animal terms, as he calls Hawks a spoonbill (in the Japanese, heradori, loosely meaning carefree bird). Deku asks, with some sweatdrops, if he means Hawks; Endeavor’s sidekicks just tell him he’s got moxie. One of Endeavor’s four consistently illustrated sidekicks is a big horse-like guy, though he’s by far the one who gets the least attention from the narrative; he is notably not in the panel of Endeavor sidekicks praising Bakugou’s go-getter attitude.

The Paranormal Liberation War Arc (Chapters 253-306)

Chapter 256:

Shouji is noted as having done his work study with Gang Orca. I would kill to know if they ever had a conversation about their wildly different approaches to managing their scary heteromorph image, but Horikoshi has not deigned to show us anything to that effect.

Chapter 258:

This chapter gives us the full spread of the PLF regiment advisors. While only a few of them will (as of this writing) get much to do, it’s notable that the percentage of obvious heteromorphs considerably increases at this level. The MLA leadership was, barring cosmetic things like Curious’s skin or Re-Destro’s pointed ears,[1] all quite baseline, but every single regiment has at least one obvious heteromorph in their chains of command. Indeed, a solid third of them are blatant heteromorphs,[2] which is a better percentile than, for example, the Shie Hassaikai or the U.A. staff can claim. It makes sense, given the obvious problems with restricting unlicensed quirk use to the home, that the MLA would attract a disproportionate number of heteromorphs, but the full extent of this will not be apparent for some time yet.

[1] His nose I read as more an exaggeration than a trait that’s specifically intended to be non-human-looking, but if it is supposed to be non-baseline, it’s considerably more obvious than his ears.

[2] That is, the really obvious, extreme heteromorphs, who number seven of the twenty-one advisors. I didn’t count the R2D2 lookalike, the guy with the question mark mask, or Hose Face, who might be heteromorphs or might just be in costume, nor did I count Dabi’s #1, the spiky guy in the cabbie hat, whose concrete divergence of a pronged chin is a lot less noticeable than his being, like, eight feet tall and as broad in the chest as a particularly top-heavy wardrobe. Any of those that are heteromorphs obviously increase the ratio even more.

Chapter 259:

Our only shot to date of the gal who’s probably Natsuo’s girlfriend, who’s a heteromorph in the “mostly human but with some tertiary animal features glued on” mode; in her case, she has mouse ears and, judging by her body language, a fairly mousy demeanor. Notable for being one of the most prominent heteromorph/non-heteromorph romantic relationships in the series, which is setting the bar about a quarter-inch off the ground. Even more notable when you consider Dabi and Shouto’s willingness to sling around dehumanizing microaggressions! I will remind everyone again that Natsuo evaded the topic of his having met someone at school when Fuyumi brought it up in front of their mother back in Chapter 187; while it played at the time as just a young man being embarrassed, this chapter’s splash page makes it apparent that he had a reason to be embarrassed, and was not just that awkward about the very concept of himself in a romantic relationship. Knowing, then, that he had met someone at school, the question for the attentive reader becomes, “So why didn’t he want to tell Fuyumi and Rei about it back then, when Fuyumi gave him such a perfect opening?” At this stage, the most the reader has grounds to assume[3] is that he’s just shy, or he wasn’t quite yet at a point in his relationship with this gal that he wanted to do the whole “introduce her to my family” song and dance, especially given what someone finding out more about his family would entail! Later reveals about Rei’s side of the family will suggest a different, less benign possibility, however.

[3] I’ll go ahead and rule out the idea that Natsuo is an asshole who’s not serious about her as being obviously not in the spirit of what we know about him.

Chapter 267+268:

Mirko has the thought, “Quick as a rabbit!” when focusing on catching up to Ujiko. Later, in the midst of vigorously dehumanizing Shigaraki, she makes mention of her “rabbit survival instincts.” We saw those animal references with Hawks as well, whereas it’s not something we see as much, if ever, from people like Tsuyu or Spinner. As I suggested before, it’s easy to imagine people who have a hard time because of their appearance are more sensitive about said appearances than people who look like drop-dead gorgeous baseline humans but with a few animal features—but only as long as they’re cute or charismatic animals!—pasted on as an “exotic” touch.

Chapter 271:

Dabi addresses Hawks and Tokoyami as yakitori—grilled chicken skewers, localized as “roasted chickens.” This is less eyebrow-raising than him calling Spinner a lizard and then accusing him of being oversensitive for protesting—Hawks and Tokoyami are Dabi’s enemies, after all, and this is hot off of Hawks murdering Twice. However, it certainly doesn’t support a read I’ve periodically seen offered that Dabi Learned From His Mistake With Spinner and Resolved Not To Do It Again.

Geten calls the assembled heroes “dogs of the state.” He’s not addressing any heteromorphs specifically, and of course using “dog” as an insult against someone viewed as overly obedient to a corrupt authority has plenty of history in many languages. Still, I wonder if it’s the kind of usage that is frowned on as insensitive in some circles, similar to using e.g. “blind” to describe willful ignorance.

Chapter 278:

First spoken line delivered by Spinner’s #2, who will go on to be a key figure at the hospital attack. Even the handful of lines he gets here is extremely effective at establishing his personality—grandiose, dedicated to the cause of revolution, and a vocal rallying figure for those he leads. A few pages later, another panel will reveal him as being unusually short, likely taller than e.g. Mineta, but shorter than any of the story’s other teenagers, even the girls. This small stature, combined with the insectile legs protruding from behind his shoulders, give an early hint that we’re looking at a heteromorph, while his mask sets up the possibility that he’s concealing something about his face. Regarding the mask, it's possible that he just wears it for The Aesthetic, save that the MLA—unlike, say, the Shie Hassaikai—don't have an organizational culture towards masks, as the MLA are very geared towards hiding in plain sight, just looking like normal, average members of society. Only three out of the twenty-one advisors (give or take whatever’s going on with the R2D2 look-alike) fully cover their faces; Spinner's #2 is one of those three. It begs the question of why—a question the hospital scene will at least suggest an answer to.

Chapter 281:

Shigaraki lays out, over the course of four pages, his mini-manifesto on why he’s going to destroy Hero Society, in which he talks about how heroes have disregarded, even actively concealed, the suffering of those they couldn’t save. While his mind seems to be mainly on his own experience, we also know that he’s aware of how others like him have suffered. He’s spent months with victims of Hero Society’s repressiveness, one of whom made very clear, by means of shouting it in Shigaraki’s face, the discrimination he’d faced with no one ever coming to help him. Shigaraki knows about heteromorph discrimination the same way he knows about villain quirk discrimination and the dehumanization of criminals. His declaiming here about generations of heroic failure serves to stand in for all of that. Notably, it continues to be the case that the crowd scenes consist mainly of relatively baseline, mostly human-looking folks. Those are the ones who most enjoy protection and safety in the current system; all of two people in thirty across three crowd shots in Shigaraki’s manifesto have heteromorphic features/builds more extreme than some extraneous pointy bits pasted on, and both of those two are dressed as heroes, not civilians.

I count the big energy guy in the cape in the top panel, and the Muppet-looking guy with four arms in the bottom. Everyone in the panel I didn’t include—the one of Tenko walking through the crowd of silhouettes—is baseline-give-or-take-some-pointy-bits. We hardly ever see someone like the Sludge Villain or Shouji, or hell, even Tokoyami, in these crowd scenes as everyday civilians, and the conclusion is, inescapably, that it’s because the present-day society doesn’t accept people like that as everyday civilians.

Note, here, how Endeavor responds to the accusation that heroes ignore the pain of those they can’t save—he takes a breather while Shigaraki rambles and then immediately resumes his attack, not seeming to register for even a second that this could be an opening to talk, to de-escalate, even if only as a stalling tactic to let Aizawa get a blink in, to buy the evacuation more time, to give his compatriots that little bit more time to recover. He’s clearly written off Shigaraki’s words the moment Shigaraki started talking, and no one with him seems to have done any different, not even Midoriya Izuku. This kind of thing is distressingly common in the series: the heroes have absolutely nothing to say about societal inequality, right up until a victim of it turns up acting criminal, at which point the dialogue goes from the stone silence of complicity to the moral scolding of, “This is going too far.”

Chapter 297:

The Tartarus jailbreak chapter brings us Shishikura’s father scoffing at the idea that Gigantomachia could be called human, referring to him instead as, “A disaster on legs, or a wild beast. Just like the rest of the animals we’ve got locked up here.” He goes on to say that “disgusting beings” like the Tartarus prisoners only managed to blend in with society for as long as they did because, “Quirks have warped our standards for humanity.” This is clearly mostly a villain bias issue—with the exception of Kurogiri, all of the villains shown on the page of this dialogue are relatively baseline, with transformation or emitter-style quirks. All the same, it’s worth noting that he repeatedly associates villains with wild animals, dehumanizing them in ugly, startlingly explicit terms. It begs the question: What are Shishikura’s father’s standards of humanity? What is he suggesting his society tolerates that pre-Advent society would not have? I would guess that his beef is with those he views as lacking the self-control or moral standards to refrain from villainy,[4] but rather than just say that, he instead goes to turns of phrase invoking the bestial. I suspect that deterministic rhetoric like his is not uncommon as justification for both anti-heteromorph discrimination and the bias against villains.

[4] This guess is based on his wording, what we know about his son’s personality, and the worldbuilding lore that the crime rates shot up with the advent of quirks and never went back down to pre-Advent norms. The crime rate issue in particular would be highly visible in a society that prided itself on being as peaceful as Japan does in the real-world modern day.

I will note that, of the six people we see making breakouts who we weren’t already acquainted with—five nameless figures and one Lady Nagant, at the time a new face—four of them are visibly, obviously heteromorphic.

The three in the foreground are quite distinct, and the one at the far back looks like he fits the bill as well. Only the one to Moonfish’s immediate left looks baseline, likely an emitter.

The guards, of course, are baseline to a man, with the only exceptions being Gyges and Briareos, who, judging by their costumes, are hero-licensed, not normal wardens.

Chapter 298:

The Central Hospital staff start getting introduced. In much the same way as the police force has a relatively high rate of animal-type heteromorphs in speaking roles,[5] Central Hospital is full of Super Mario Bros. joke characters. This is mostly a silly in-joke at the time, but Dr. Yoshi here will be back to serve as a deeply exasperating, bad faith gotcha during the hospital attack.

[5] The rando guys with riot shields are always hella baseline, but there are, by my count, six recurring roles in the police cast: Tsukauchi, Tsuragamae, Sansa, Gori, and two unnamed men I suspect to be with the National Police Agency (the one who tries to get Nedzu to call off the Cultural Festival and the one with the HPSC President in the scene where she’s giving Hawks his League infiltration assignment). Half of these are heteromorphs.

Chapter 299:

Hawks's dad, whose little elbow winglets prefigure his son's full wings, has a lament about how he could have been, “free as a bird!” There's no animal reference in the Japanese text.

I brought up a panel back in the Kamino arc to demonstrate that there was a higher incidence than usual of heteromorphs in an area that was meant to come off, visually, as somewhat seedy. While there’s always some element of randomness to that sort of thing—I assume the background extras are usually drawn by Horikoshi’s assistants, not the man himself—we see the same thing in the subway station Tomie takes baby Hawks to after they leave home.

Note how run-down the place looks, with cracked floor tiles, dingy walls, and equipment piled up in the open, then note how at least three, maybe four, of the five people in the foreground have heteromorphic features.

Chapter 300:

Dr. Toad at Central Hospital, who will show up in a flashback in the hospital raid that is barely less obnoxious than Dr. Yoshi’s appearance.

Chapter 301:

While not immediately connected to heteromorphobia, this chapter establishes that Rei’s family, the Himura, were once prestigious and much-storied, but had fallen on hard times by the time they were approached by Endeavor about a quirk marriage. The easy assumption for why Rei’s parents are so okay with the arrangement is that they were just that desperate for money, but in retrospect, a quirk marriage was far more sane and normal than what their family had been doing for generations!

Chapter 303:

Hawks mentions Spinner in his accounting of the problems facing Team Hero. This makes him rather unusual—All Might, for example, will later repeatedly fail to mention Spinner in similar situations, though it’s unclear whether that’s because All Might genuinely doesn’t believe Spinner to be a threat or whether All Might is trying to avoid bringing up the brewing race riot enormous mob consisting of members of a long-oppressed minority group, in hopes of keeping his students away from it.

Chapter 306:

I’ve avoided bringing him up until this point because his hero costume makes it very hard to tell if his neck is just a mildly caricatured feature like Re-Destro’s or if it really is covering up a non-baseline feature, but Best Jeanist’s outfit at the press conference is the place to start if you want to make an argument for him having a heteromorphic feature.

If he is a heteromorph, Jeanist covers it up extremely well, to the point that I’ve never seen anyone outside my chat group even raise the possibility that he might be! But that is part of his whole modus operandi, isn’t it? To keep up the appearance of things, to present an unassailable image of heroes, even when they’re running themselves ragged, because that’s what he believes the public needs? Here we see Shouji’s decision about masking himself taken to its logical extreme—being so invested in a harmonious appearance that doesn’t disturb anyone that he doesn’t even register as non-baseline to begin with. I’m very fond of Jeanist, mind you, and I love his awareness of surface and veneer—he feels like someone who has made a conscious, considered, moral decision to uphold the system, a decision he’s given far more thought to than fellow heroes who never get past, “How do I want to present myself to the public?” to the question of, “Why do I believe this presentation is the correct moral choice?” But that veneer is, as the endgame has gone to some efforts to explore, not sustainable for anyone. (Would that Shouji were taking notes.)

The Villain Hunt Arc (Chapters 307-328)

Chapter 310:

This chapter brings us the attack on the giant woman.[6] While the three men—all baseline, all using support goods rather than whatever their own quirks are—attacking her seem to be doing so out of fears that she’s a villain, not explicit hatred for heteromorphs, this is very clear heteromorphobia nonetheless. There’s absolutely nothing about the Ordinary Woman that suggests that she’s remotely villainous—not her attitude, not her dress, not even something like a punky haircut! The only reason to distrust this woman’s intentions is suspicion of her height, her claws, her vulpine face—in other words, her status as a heteromorph. The only other thing remotely dubious about her is that she was out after dark—but of course, so were the men hunting her! Note here the woman’s strong implication that she was attacked before she ever reached a shelter. She says she thought to take shelter at a hero school and, somewhat haphazardly, left her home in the night. She doesn’t finish the sentence, trailing off before apologizing, but it’s plainly nighttime when Deku rescues her, and, by her own words, she’s still in her own town. The story isn’t finished with her yet, and what happens to her next is tied to her experience at the shelter she was trying to reach.

[6] As yet unnamed due to some misguided idea Horikoshi has about keeping her an everywoman; even in her character profile, she’s just the Ordinary Woman.

Deku unthinkingly commits what reads to me as a fairly egregious microaggression here,[7] suggesting that the men who attacked the Ordinary Woman were probably just as afraid as she was of the recent chaos. They were just understandably afraid, so, you know, it’s not really their fault that they viciously attacked you, an obviously terrified innocent woman! You just look so scary!

[7] Though I don’t get the impression Horikoshi registered it.

The two discuss wanting things to “go back to normal.” Normal, in Ordinary Woman’s experience, means not getting attacked right out in the streets of her own town, but it’s worth thinking about how little it took to prompt that attack, and thus to ask how abnormal such violence truly is. As we will find, there are parts of the country that didn’t at all need a slide into lawlessness for an attack like this to be horrifically, appallingly “normal.”

Banjo compares the current circumstances to those around the time of the Advent—darker days in which people lived holding their breaths, trying not to stand out. This phrasing is not exclusive to heteromorphs; even something as simple as being on your own can make you “stand out” as a target, and we know plenty of quirkless people were victimized exactly like that.[8] All the same, it’s self-evidently the case that people who don’t look like everyone else will inherently stand out, and no amount of traveling in groups or refraining from the use of their powers will change that. Lines like this don’t explicitly reference the heteromorph mass slaughters we will later be shown, but they do lay the contextual groundwork that makes those slaughters both believable and predictable. Folding that all together, the Ordinary Woman demonstrates very clearly how difficult it is, especially in times of chaos, to be a heteromorph and just be normal. And when being "normal" is so difficult, what do you do? Try to be normal, gambling that heroes will be there to save you when you’re victimized? Try to protect yourself by becoming the kind of paragon your society admires, knowing it will cost you your voice? Turn against the society that repeatedly fails to protect you, resigning yourself to a life on the run? There's no outcome that doesn't demand carrying the burden of a decision that other, “normal” people are not required to make.

[8] We know this because it’s explicitly explained as what happened to the quirkless man in the One For All dream flashback in Chapter 193.

Chapter 314:

Lady Nagant drops the ugly secret of the HPSC for Deku,[9] telling a heroic character an only very slightly more extreme version of what the reader already knew from Hawks’ duties and backstory. This is not specifically about heteromorphs (though the face we most visibly see her murdering is one), but it does point to the possible difficulties in organizing serious movements to agitate for changes to the current system. The HPSC is so firmly convinced that the Hero System is society’s best and only defense against chaos, and thus any threats to that system can, justly, be disposed via extrajudicial assassination. What chance, then, would an activist leader have as soon as they started being disruptive enough for the HPSC to notice them?

[9] Who will do absolutely jack shit with it, and, indeed, come away from their encounter blaming her fall on AFO, somehow.

Chapter 318:

*meme voice Good For Him*

Introduces the Spinner fanboys, a pair of octopus-type heteromorphs in quite good Spinner cosplay, who will crop back up later at the hospital attack. They’re foreshadowing for the Spinner-as-representative plot, though said plot will not make 100% clear whether or not these two were inspired by Spinner on his own merits, back when he was just another member of the League of Villains, as opposed to after the PLF started pushing his image forward specifically. They’re with a small group of other heteromorphs attacking a trio of baseline folks. Deku defends the baseline group from the attack but apparently does not follow through on chasing down the heteromorphs; he just breaks it up and lets the attackers run off, perhaps feeling like panicky civilians (to whatever extent people literally wearing a wanted villain’s colors are “civilians”) are not threats he needs to facilitate the arrest of, or perhaps just conserving his energy for his big fights with AFO’s people.

Later in the chapter, we see a more abbreviated version of a similar sequence of events, save that this time, there are heteromorphs on both sides, demonstrating that the violence has not entirely broken down along baseline vs heteromorph lines. You saw this in an earlier chapter as well, with one of the people in the group confronting Endeavor being a lady with a dog head, but this is the first place you see it in an actual conflict.

I dig this kappa dude with the Shounen Main Character Guy haircut. And good on his more baseline friends for sticking with him.

This chapter also introduces Dictator, one of the Tartarus escapees singled out as sent by All For One. Dictator drives me crazy because like, okay, yes, he’s a cartoonish and ridiculous caricature of a Villain, down to his quirk name being given as Despot.[10] But I would ask the reader to look at this guy and really, really think about what life must have been like for him when he was, say, Kouta or Eri’s age.

I mean, really.

[10] Remember my thought experiment from early on about who decides what quirks are named, parents or a government official? Yeah. Who’s responsible for giving that quirk name to a four-year-old?

One thing that’s always felt telling to me about Deku’s brief exchange with Dictator here is that Dictator, in amidst a flurry of dramatic supervillain talk, says, “Taking you in will bring me security,” and Deku, Mr. Wants To Understand Villains & Save Absolutely Everyone himself, doesn’t ask, doesn’t even think, about what Dictator could possibly mean by that sentence. I know Dictator’s in the middle of controlling a bunch of people and is working for AFO and Deku’s exhausted and all—the story makes it clear that he took a turn for the more gritty and driven after Nagant quite literally blew up in his face. Still, when you compare the attempts he makes to ask questions and interact with Muscular, Overhaul and Lady Nagant—all relatively baseline when their quirks aren’t in use, and significantly more baseline than Dictator even when they are—his total incuriosity about Dictator does stand out pretty badly.

Chapter 320:

Ojirou mentions being touched by how angry at Shinsou Deku got on his behalf back at the Sports Festival. Recall that Shinsou called Ojirou a monkey back then. Is he not used to other people getting mad for his sake about that sort of thing?

Chapter 323:

Some really fascinating stuff both from and about Nedzu in this chapter. Firstly, Endeavor says that Nedzu’s contributions to “quirk morality education” have made him internationally renowned, yet I can’t help but observe that at least the first year students have not learned anything of the sort. Their classes and exercises are focused primarily on combat, with a secondary focus on teamwork in that most of their exercises see them separated into pairs or small groups. There are also special lessons that boil down to being about how to create their own distinct hero “brand.” What I cannot call to mind are any lessons on the morality of quirk use.[11] That’s not to say there’s none of that in the series at all, but the stuff that I think of is not encountered in class. The focus on dealing appropriately with injured and frightened victims, for example, comes courtesy of the license exam, while the lecture about heroes following the rules and behaving appropriately comes from Tsuragamae after the Stain incident. The remedial course with Gang Orca probably comes closest, and is technically a course, rather than an exam, but Nedzu has nothing to do with it, so it clearly can’t count. Once again, I am left to wonder when exactly Hero schools start teaching these alleged lessons in quirk-based ethics. Offscreen, or only in higher grades? It’s not a real great look, I think, that the priority is on all the cool flashy stuff and not the ethical ramifications of using your power to enact violence on people. And sure, it’s a shounen comic, so you’ve got to keep things flashy enough not to lose the readers, but it wouldn’t take more than a few dedicated pages now and again where Aizawa or Nedzu talk to students about the weight of what they’re doing. We don’t get those pages, so the discussion of quirk “morality” is largely under-explored.[12] This is, of course, not directly about heteromorphobia, but discussion of the morality of quirks would have to include the beliefs people have about quirks, which in turn affect everything about how the world deals with them: quirk discrimination, quirk counseling, the laws surrounding quirk use, the punishment for breaking those laws, and so forth. All things with significant impacts on heteromorphs!

[11] Indeed, if there were any effort from U.A. to provide morals education, you’d think Mineta would have seen some consequences for his egregious behavior ages ago.

[12] Honestly, I think the person who’s ventured the clearest moral stance on quirk use is Yoichi in his flashback, and he’s ludicrously absolutist about it, saying that quirks must only be used to help others, never for personal gain.

My Press X to Doubt response to Nedzu’s contributions to quirk morality education aside, I’m fascinated by his mini-speech that follows:

It’s a great observation of humanity from one who sits just that little bit removed from humanity, and begs a whole series’ worth of questions about Nedzu’s position and his feelings about the species his intelligence has both enabled and required him to grapple with. While he doesn’t specify exactly what sort of intolerance he has in mind, and the flow of the plot ties his words to the anti-hero sentiment amongst the civilians, we’re well past Chapter 220’s introduction of the CRC here, and have more to see yet on the treatment those with “villain” quirks are subjected to.

As one who was, himself, mistreated in a way that fundamentally would not have happened were it not for his (heteromorphic) quirk, yet whose quirk gives him a degree of insight about that very mistreatment, Nedzu is in an amazing position to opine on discrimination. I frankly wish he got way more room to do it in.

Chapter 325:

The Ordinary Woman giantess gal returns to tell us that she was turned away from several shelters because they didn’t allow heteromorphs. It’s hard to overstate how incredibly bad this is—the blatant discrimination of turning away an entire demographic during a national emergency. And not just a national emergency, but one where the actual support personnel—heroes—are going to be concentrating around the shelters, consciously electing to leave minimal aid for people remaining behind in evacuated zones. So like, when this is how bad it is, can it possibly be any kind of surprise that there’s a riot brewing, especially when there are villains stirring the pot behind the scenes?

One thing that really, really gets me is the bit where Ordinary Woman says several shelters turned her down until she made it to U.A. Remember how I mentioned that the strong implication of her original scene is that she’s still in her own city, only left her home that very night, and was attacked before she could reach a shelter? If that’s so, then what in hell happened after Deku left her with All Might? I’m so serious about this. Did All Might just take her to the nearest shelter, drop her off at the door, and then drive off, so concerned about getting back to Deku that he left before he could ensure her safety? That would reflect incredibly poorly on him, and put her right back in danger. Though it would not be the first time he prioritized his mentorship of Deku over his other responsibilities, it would still make him look so bad that I’m doubtful that was Hori’s intended sequence of events. The other possibility I see is that All Might did stay with her, driving her to a few different shelters before getting fed up and bringing her back to U.A., where he could be sure she’d be accepted. This option looks almost as bad for a totally different reason: that even in the face of a refugee delivered to them by All Might himself, with everything the country owes him and the nigh universal love and acclaim he commands amongst the populace, people would still take one look at Josei-san and turn her away. Of course, it’s also possible that I’ve just misinterpreted her initial scene, and she already had been to the several shelters, but couldn’t bring herself to tell Deku why. Her silence on the topic would be its own brand of Relevant For This Essay, particularly given Deku’s baseline state—perhaps she doubted that he would believe her, or thought he might get defensive, if she told him. That’s certainly the least awful of the options. Still, I’d maintain that the way her story is framed—the way she was traveling on foot, the time she says she left vs. the time it was when Deku found her, how unlikely I think it is that there are multiple hero school shelters in timely walking distance,[13] the fact that she’s perfectly willing to tell him about her rejections when they meet again at U.A., etc.—suggests she hadn’t made it to a shelter yet when Deku turned up, and thus either All Might got unforgivably sloppy or there were multiple government officials overseeing shelters who were willing to be gargantuan bigots right to his face.

[13] That’s if hero schools are the only shelters in use at the moment. On the one hand, that feels improbable and unnecessary to me, given that HeroAca!Japan presumably has all the same emergency shelters IRL!Japan has now, and Jeanist’s phrasing in 306 suggests that hero schools are being added to the list of designated shelters, not that they are being designated the only shelters. On the other hand, he does also say the heroes are looking to decrease the amount of area they, with their diminished numbers, have to cover, and specifically calls out hero schools' defensive capabilities and large campuses, while not independently mentioning shelters of the normal sort like I might expect if both were going to be in use. For example, he could say something like, “We are asking people to report to their local emergency shelters, and will be opening hero schools as shelters to help with the increased burden.” I invite readers to come to their own considerations on what’s more likely, but will say that if it is only hero schools being used as shelters, that obviously makes the whole “turning away heteromorphs at the door” scenario even more scandalous.

The baseline dude who’s generally been the spokesperson for the anti-let-the-kid-back-into-school crowd asks Deku if everyone can go back to their old lives after this, if they let him in to rest up. Deku, who has just been told that a woman he rescued was turned away from multiple shelters, reiterates that he and the rest of the heroes will “bring it all back.” No matter when he promises this, he will never exhibit the slightest hint of awareness about what exactly he’s proposing to return.

Chapter 327:

Bakugou makes a conscious effort to call Deku by his given name instead of the derisive nickname of their childhood. It remains to be seen whether he will follow through on that for the derisive nicknames he uses for everyone else, but for what it's worth, I have made it all the way from here up through the point at which he goes down to ShigAFO and have not had cause to jot down anything about him for the purposes of this essay yet. We'll see if he can keep it up through the epilogue!

With Deku safely passed the fuck out, Jirou—a heteromorph, albeit not a hugely visible one—is the one to say that they and the rest of the heroes can’t just bring things back the way they were; they have to make things better. Desperately wish Deku would pick up what Jirou’s throwing down here.

Chapter 328:

328 gives us some cameos of international heroes, cameos from the third movie, World Heroes Mission. The one relevant to this topic is Big Red Dot, the Singaporean hero who the wiki claims is his country's #1,[14] and who appears to be a merlion heteromorph. And like, there is so much I could say about Big Red Dot and his status as top hero and heteromorph! So much! I could talk about the merlion as a national symbol for Singapore, and how heteromorphs who just so happen to resemble local sacred/divine/fortunate animals in their regions might be treated differently compared to heteromorphs like Spinner or Shouji. I could talk about the merlion's status as tourist attraction and subject of nationalistic poetry, and how that imagological history impacts Singaporeans' feelings about the merlion as cultural icon. I could talk about the way the merlion's brand image is maintained under trademark by the country's national tourism board, and how that might relate to or impact Big Red Dot's image as a hero, particularly given that we have no idea what sort of metrics Singapore's HPSC equivalent uses to rank their heroes! I'd love to talk about that, but I'm reluctant to do more than sketch out the above outline for two reasons, both profoundly Doylist.

[14] The fandom wiki does not see fit to cite a source for this. I assume it's mentioned in the movie? Anyway, if he isn't Singapore's #1, the stuff I said is still relevant, just somewhat less pronounced.

Firstly, I read Marvel comics growing up, and I am keenly aware that a tremendously common approach taken by superhero stories dealing with heroes from outside the author's country of origin is to just theme those international heroes after famous (e.g. stereotyped) aspects of their home countries. I highly doubt that whoever came up with Big Red Dot was thinking any deeper than "Singapore = merlion, ergo Singaporean Hero = merlion hero guy".

Secondly, Big Red Dot is, first and foremost, an original character created for the anime, and the anime transparently, desperately Does Not Want To Talk About Heteromorphobia, so I highly doubt they're thinking about ways it might impact their movie OCs. Now, I know Horikoshi comes up with many of the designs of prominent characters in the movies, but I don't know how much he's involved in conceptualizing those characters. That is to say, did Studio Bones ask him for "a design for a top hero from a country of your choice, Horikoshi-sensei," "a design for the top hero of Singapore," or "a design for Big Red Dot, the merlion-themed top hero of Singapore"?

Suffice to say that if I were going to include BRD in a fanfic, I'd be full of things to say about him. For the purposes of this essay, though, I'll just raise some possibilities and then leave the reader to turn him around in their heads some and think about how he fits into the broader tapestry of the heteromorphic experience around the world.

---------

Come back in (probably) two weeks for what will hopefully bring this essay up through the hospital attack! We'll see after that if I want to continue on into Vigilantes or what-have-you.

#bnha #bnha meta #bnha worldbuilding #heteromorph discrimination plot #bnha ordinary woman #ippan josei #my post button is showing now #but will it still be there if i go to edit this later #the villain origin threatens once more #which is to say i'm hoping i got the spaces right on the first try #my writing

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gaybananabread · 1 year

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hey! i saw your craig and tweek piece, and i loved it ahah, i was wondering if you write for south park, and if u do can we get ler! craig and lee! tweek?? like if tweek is struggling with his anxiety and craig cheers him up. if not its all good, hope u have a good day/night, take care of yourself ^^

Damn, this was a throwback. Been awhile since I've done anything South Park, hope you enjoy!

Ler: Craig

Lee: Tweek

Summary: Tweek's anxiety was rampant, his nerves completely shot. Craig helps him calm down, and have a good laugh.

Warnings: swearing (of course). This is a tickle fic, so if you don't like that, scroll away!

He couldn't belive it. His parents, his legal guardians, left him home alone for the week. True, he was 16, but that's a lot of responsibility! He could forget to lock the doors, someone could break in, steal his families prized possessions, and then the house is on fire! On top of all that, he still had school!

He stumbled through getting ready, his shirt-buttoning skills even worse than usual. Tweek didn't even bother with his hair, knowing the comb would do more harm than good. He didn't see the time, and almost missed his bus.

Craig's day was pretty average. His family were their normal level of assholes, annoying but manageable. When he saw Tweek before school, he knew it would be a long day. The blonde was crawling in his skin, flinching at every noise, and jittering like he had seven expresso shots. While that was probably true, he needed help to wind down. Lucky for him, Craig's got a plan.

...

School was over, along with Tweek's composure. He was on the verge of a breakdown when Craig walked over to him. "Hey, I'm coming over your house." No room for argument or overthinking. The boy flinched away, nervously laughing. "Hehe, sure, w-why not? It's not like a millLIONn things can g-go wrOng!" Craig clapped his shoulder, guiding him to the bus. The driver didn't care enough to question why a new kid jumped on.

The ride was quiet, aside from the tapping of Tweek's foot. Craig put his headphones on, listening to music. He sat his hand on the blonde's leg, trying to ground him. It sort of worked, but he was still a nervous wreck.

When they arrived at his house, Tweek fumbled with the keys, dropping them a few times. Craig helped, holding his hand and guiding the keys in. They tossed their bags in a closet and sat on the couch, deciding to watch a movie. At least, they tried.

"What about Jurassic Park ?" Tweek shook his head, going on a rant. "No! Th-those movies have a lot of nOIse, what if someone thinks w-we're in trouble and calls the COPS!" Craig rolled his eyes, moving past the fifth shot-down idea. This is getting old.

He grabbed Tweek's shoulders and pinned him to the couch, looking him dead in the eyes. "Dude, CHILL OUT! I know you've got some issues, but this is getting outta hand." He poked his stomach, trying to get his point across. What he didn't expect was the squeak he got.

"Damn, I forgot how ticklish you are." Tweek blushed, trying to hide his face.This is perfect! What better way to let go than with laughter! He pinned his hands beneath his knees, getting a better grip. Tweek twisted and pulled, but he was trapped.

"H-hey! Craig, this is so stuhuEEehehehehe!" Craig wasted no times, skittering his fingers across Tweek's belly. His poorly buttoned shirt allowed Craig's fingers to slip in and get his bare stomach. For once, the dumb buttons helped him. "CrahaHAIG! QUIHIHIT ihihit!"

The beanied-bastard felt like teasing. "Nah, you're waaaay too cute like this." Tweek just hid his face in his shoulder, trying to hide the rosy blush on his face. Craig moved his hand up, finding a sweet spo/ bear the top of his ribs. Tweek's giggles turned into laughter, the tickles getting five times worse. "Man, this must really tickle, huh? Sucks to be you right now."

Tweek was conflicted. He was enjoying himself, but Craig was super flustering! The tickles felt amazing, distracting him from his anxious thoughts. However, the teases were turning his brain to mush! "QUHIHIHIT TEHEASING MEHEHEHE!" Craig just rolled his eyes.

"Tickles come at a price. No teases, no tickles." Tweek whined through his laughter, shaking his head. He tugged at his hands, but they were very much stuck. He was starting to get tired.

Craig saw this, and leaned down. He was so close that his breath tickled Tweek's ear. "I'm gonna do one more thing. Buckle up, Jitters." He whipped upwards, lifted Tweek's shirt, and blew a huge raspberry on his poor belly. He burst out laughing, bucking his hips. "CRAHAHAHAHAHAIG! IHIHIT'S SO BAHAHAHAD!"

He blew a few smaller ones, skittering his fingers up and down Tweek's sides. After a few seconds of this awesomeness torment, he let up, climbing off of Tweek. The boy immediately curled into a ball, laughing off the ghost sensations on his torso. He kicked Craig's leg, getting a poke to the side.

"Ihi'm tired. W-wanna wahatch Frozen?" Craig laughed, turning on the movie. Tweek snuggled up next to him, pulling a blanket over them. Within the first half hour, they were both asleep, smiles on their faces.

#south park #lee!tweek #ler!craig #ticklish!tweek #creek tickles #south park tickle #sp creek #sp tickle #sfw tickling community #tickle fic #tickle #sp tweek #sp craig #tweek tweek #craig boone

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steddieunderdogfics · 4 months

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Our first writer's spotlight feature is: @anthotneystark! With seven works on Ao3 in the Stranger Things fandom (for ao3 users only), they've written five works with the Steddie ship tag!

Nominated by @thefreakandthehair, they recommend the following works by mywarisalreadywon:

Fools in love (Is there any other kind of pain?)

But when it's your brother (Sometimes you look the other way)

I will stay one night beside you, never go back to the sea (I will stay and be thy husband though it be the death of me)

My wounds cry for the grave (My soul cries for deliverance)

Sold your soul (Built the higher wall)

Kat is an absolute treasure and such a wonderful writer! Her ideas are always so fresh and so interesting, and I've never read anything from her that doesn't just hit. All of her works are so well-crafted and well-written, characterization is always on point, and I can't say enough about how much I genuinely enjoy every single thing she posts! - @thefreakandthehair

Below the cut, @anthotneystark answered some questions about their writing process and some of their recommended work!

Why do you write Steddie?

I just find them so compelling, and there’s so many ways to shift the story around a bit or put them in different universes, like the options are just endless in a way a lot of the ships I’ve loved can’t be.

What’s your favorite trope to READ?

I’m such a sucker for hurt/comfort, but I feel like that’s such a broad range, right? More specific would be the trop of one or both having insecurities and getting that “I love you and I will choose to keep loving you” moment.

What’s your favorite trope to WRITE?

Probably the breakdown moment of finally finding a safe harbor, or realizing that people love you, and it just hits you like a freight train and you can’t do anything but fall apart, and that can go hand in hand with found family, but that’s my specific gut-punch feeling that I want to put in every fic.

What’s your favorite Steddie fic?

Oh this is so hard! I have so many that I go back and read time and time again, so many that I absolutely adore! God, just picking one is so nerve wracking, I’m too indecisive, so I’ll say my top three (in no particular order): Sanctuary by SpicedSage, I’ve seen your face before, my friend,but I don’t know if you know who I am by HMSLusitania, and The One in Which a Time Loop is Fucking Exhausting by badpancake

Is there a trope you’re excited to explore in a future work but haven’t yet?

Oh for sure! I’ve had a rom-com idea bouncing around in my head for a while, I just have to figure out a good starting place for it!

What is your writing process like?

The majority of the time, I start writing out my stories on paper. I scratch it down at least enough to get me started and use that kind of as a springboard. When I can get to a point of typing it up, having that and editing as I go helps me to really build momentum and then I can just let it flow, but that initial momentum is the hard part between getting the story out of my head and onto a page. If I’m stopping and starting, I reread and edit what I’ve typed up as my springboard, so by the time I’m finished, I’ve reread it all enough times that I’m sure I’ve got everything in the order I want.

Do you have any writing quirks?

I’m very sure that I do! I start a lot of sentences with conjunctions and I try to write, at least in some parts, so it reads like a stream of consciousness without entering first person. For me it’s almost like I type how I talk and sometimes I get a little too far into that and have to reel it back.

Do you prefer posting when you’ve finished writing or on a schedule?

Oh definitely when it’s finished. I lose motivation for periods of time and have to rotate between projects, so I feel much better about stuff when it’s all just done and I don’t have to worry about being stalled for too long.

Which fic are you most proud of?

I’m kinda torn on this one! Like I’m super proud of all the heart and the emotion I felt and tried to express in But when it's your brother (Sometimes you look the other way), but My wounds cry for the grave (My soul cries for deliverance) was huge for me because that’s my biggest single chapter fic that I’ve ever written. If pressed, I think I’d have to go with the former just because that one in particular was so heavy for me on a more personal level.

How did you get the idea for But when it's your brother (Sometimes you look the other way)?

This fic is honestly so full of my own personal feelings that I get a little choked up thinking about it too much. I’m a younger sister, so I’m constantly in this cycle of making fun of my older sister and calling her names but having this deep love for her. My family isn’t one that really talks much about feelings, but there’s so much love there and I’m finding myself constantly thinking back on my own life about so many moments where neither of us was prepared for what we had to do, but I looked at her and thought she was invincible and I feel like that’s the core of Dustin and Steve. The “that’s my brother, he’s so tough and grown up and he’s always okay” and then the sort of devastation of realizing that this person you’ve always seen like that has a lot of moments where they’re scared and hurt and struggling but not showing it. There’s just a lot of me in that fic.

When writing I will stay one night beside you, never go back to the sea (I will stay and be thy husband though it be the death of me), what was something you didn’t expect?

I don’t know that there was anything I didn’t expect, because I try not to really push expectations onto my work, I try to just let it flow and figure it out from there. But something that felt right that I hadn’t initially planned for was the moment between Steve and Joyce. We haven’t seen them interact really, and I’ve seen a few different takes on them and how they’d see each other, but I honestly loved the thought of him having this moment of trying to hold it all together because there’s so much weight on his shoulders and the moment he sees someone who’s safe, someone who has been judged so much and wouldn’t be judgemental of him, he breaks.

What inspired Fools in love (Is there any other kind of pain)?

This one actually started as a “haha what if Steve was born on a holiday” and then I made it a little angsty. Because I do like the born on a holiday and your birthday gets overlooked vibe, but then it was just a moment of thinking about what if it gets overlooked not because it’s a big holiday, but because people just don’t believe him and how much that would hurt year after year.

What was your favorite part to write from I will stay one night beside you, never go back to the sea (I will stay and be thy husband though it be the death of me)?

Definitely the bit about Steve begging for Eddie to keep him, with that warring feeling of not wanting to be restrained but wanting to be chosen. Feelings are so often multidimensional and that was something that just really spoke to me.

How do/did you feel writing But when it's your brother (Sometimes you look the other way)?

I cried so much. Like I said, there’s so much personal feeling in there, so much of the way that I am with my siblings is there, and we didn’t have any life or death situations, but that sort of love, it just sticks with you forever. In equal moments I’m Steve and I’m Dustin in there, being a middle child and all I’ve got both experiences, so I definitely had a few moments where I needed to step back and let my own feelings settle again.

What was the most difficult part of writing Fools in love (Is there any other kind of pain)?

This was actually my first fic written and published in over three years. So the hard part for me was actually just working up the courage to post it. I’ve been dealing a lot with depression and anxiety and burnout for years now and just the general dissatisfaction with my own writing, so the love I got after posting that was really just so special to me and I can’t fully express how much it means and how encouraging it was knowing people liked it.

Do you have a favorite scene and/or line from any of your fics?

My favorite line is either this one from My wounds cry for the grave: “But right now, he just leans over, laughing with his favorite person ever, his heart soaring and matching hers, beat for beat.” Or this moment: “He drops right there, like a puppet with its strings cut, like a stone in water. Like Atlas being crushed by the weight of the world. Dustin is the only one close enough to make sure his head doesn’t hit the ground; he’ll be grateful for that later. In that moment though, surrounded by people who love him, sprawled on a cold tile floor, willing Eddie to be alive with his whole being, Steve Harrington’s heart stops once more.” Both of these were things I had rotating in my head for so long that I go back to those parts over and over just to feel them again.

Do you have any upcoming projects or fics you’d like to share/promote?

Oh I have so many things that are half done, but none that are near finished enough to try and hype them up yet. I literally have a running list of ideas I’m adding to here and there and I just follow the inspiration!

Outside of these questions, Is there anything YOU would like to add?

The only thing I can think to add is that I’m just absolutely so flattered and tickled about someone liking my work enough to nominate me for this! I’ve always tended to be more of a lurker in just about every fandom I’ve been in so this is such a surprise and it means the world that my writing touched someone enough for them to think of me.

Thank you to our author, @anthotneystarkm and our nominator, @thefreakandthehair! See more of @anthotneystark's work featured on our page throughout the day!

Writer's Spotlight is every Wednesday! Want to nominate an author? You can nominate them here!

#steddie fic recs #writer's spotlight #steddieunderdogfics #antotneystark #steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #steve x eddie

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