#it was literal TORTURE to look back at my old art to find this ONE photo

[iamvery-confused]

2024 redraw!!

#it was literal TORTURE to look back at my old art to find this ONE photo #but is was worth it? #animaniacs #dot warner #webby #this was an era.

[thatanimewriter]

COULDA, WOULDA, SHOULDA, DIDN'T (ALTERNATE ENDING).

➳ synopsis: aventurine has never lost. that's what he tells people when he makes bets and in passing conversation about gambling. but every night when he lays in bed, he will always think about the day he almost lost you. angst version.

➳ character/s: aventurine

➳ warnings: 2.1 spoilers, aventurine backstory spoilers, aventurine real name spoilers, mentions of death, slavery (it's not romanticised, you're safe-), mentions of torture, blood, hurt/comfort, marriage, sleeping together (literally), reader described as beautiful

➳ word count: 0.7k

➳ notes: here's the happy version for those who were asking for it LMAO also i jumped on the bandwagon of fic writers inspired by aventurine official art-

𝐫𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐫𝐮𝐥𝐞𝐬 / 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭  / 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬 / 𝐰𝐢𝐩 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

aventurine will never forget the day he met you. he himself didn't know much better than you did as you ran for your lives as children, but he knew he never wanted to see you like that ever again. that night, he thinks he fell in love.

even with the heavy metal cuffs crushing your wrists, he thought you were beautiful. in the most horrible circumstances, you found solace in each other's arms. aventurine made it a habit to kiss your brand mark and then your forehead as he let you use his arm as a pillow. any screams of pain either of you made as you were roughly dragged from your cell to undergo 'disciplining' haunt your minds in the rare moments of emptiness.

the day aventurine was bought away by jade, he's never felt fear quite the same as looking back and seeing you be dragged away by your cuffs, calling out for him as he left while you were pulled further down the abyss of pain and agony.

"i'll come back for you, wait for me!" he yelled behind him. he was desperate, he didn't know if he would ever get to come back for you and ultimately, that scared him more. the idea that his last interaction with you was filled with despair only fueled his desire to rise to the top. he would free himself and ensure that when (if) he freed you, you would have everything you needed immediately.

aventurine remembers the day he came back for you. he'd beat up a lot of guards, and possibly killed a couple, only to find you unconscious and bleeding onto the cold concrete floor in your cell. scrambling to his knees, he held you in his arms and bolted out the door, desperately praying to whatever god would listen that you were alive.

he lived a nightmare as you recuperated in hospital, but nothing came close to making him cry since leaving you than holding your hand and kissing you all over again as if it was your first time. each night as he slept in the chair beside your hospital bed, he wondered what would've happened if he never got to you or was too late.

when he proposed to you, it felt like a fever dream. when he woke up the next morning to see you beside him, ring glinting in the morning sun and cheek pressed into a silk pillowcase rather than dusty concrete. he smiled in adoration, pulling you closer by the waist and chuckling at your sleepy whine of protest before burying your head into his chest and falling back asleep. taking your hand in his, he kissed the ring he'd given to you as a token of your engagement, resting his chin atop your head.

his phone rang and he sighed, blindly reaching behind him to check who was calling him. dr. ratio.

groggily, he answered. "you're calling early, don't you know i'm spending my paid leave with my wonderful fiance?"

aventurine could practically hear the eye roll from dr. ratio over the phone. "i am well aware, i just thought you would want to be informed that i have located your old master that was missing from the premises when you were searching for them," he said, probably polishing one of his marble busts to occupy himself.

"...keep an eye on him. i'll figure out what to do with him when i get more sleep." and with that, aventurine hung up the phone. he returned his attention to you and caressed his thumb over your hip as he pondered this newfound information.

he could've lost you if he didn't get there when he did. he's grateful for that, because he can have you by his side forever and a little bit more. he would've come looking for you to discover you'd died if he didn't push himself harder than recommended to rise to the top. he should've lost you, for that is what the sick gods on some alternate plane of reality deemed reasonable for his kind.

he didn't.

#honkai star rail #hsr #aventurine #hsr aventurine #honkai star rail x reader #hsr x reader #aventurine x reader #hsr aventurine x reader #honkai star rail imagines #hsr imagines #aventurine imagines #hsr aventurine imagines

[ffc1cb]

new art blog

the short version:

1. i made a new art blog: @cbge;

2. @ffc1cb will stay up as an archive.

the long version:

hi everyone. this announcement is somewhat late, since the blog in question has been up for a few months now, and i’ve already started posting art on it. the reason it took me so long to “reveal” it is because i’ve been trying to figure out whether a new blog is something i actually want, or if it's just me throwing darts at a board, trying to make myself feel better somehow.

i don’t know when precisely it all started, but ever since sometime last year i’ve been going through a hard time, both emotionally and creatively. i’m not sure whether being depressed is what made art harder, or art becoming harder is what made me depressed (a bit of both, i think), but lately, drawing has been a struggle. 

i’ve found myself having less and less energy for art, and this lack of energy resulted in poorer quality of drawings, which resulted in me feeling like i’m getting worse at it, despite my efforts. i knew i could make good art, art that i’m proud of - i’ve done so countless times before, - but somehow it felt like i just couldn’t anymore, like my hands forgot how to. nothing looked right. 

i’ve been trying to experiment. i’ve learned some new things, tried this and that - it was enlightening, to say the least, and even though i kind of liked how it looked, it made me feel a sense of displacement. i was at odds with myself, my art, and how i felt about it, when previously i was always in sync. i was making art, yes, and it looked nice, but it felt like it wasn’t mine.

i suppose part of it was also the growing lack of engagement, and i don’t mean likes and reblogs - i never particularly cared about those. they are all just numbers to me; dry and impersonal. what i’m talking about is actual, human interactions: personal thoughts in tags, asks, replies, etc. a conversation. 

i don’t mean to sound “old” or anything, but i remember when talking to artists online was more commonplace. my wife tells me it’s because the internet culture has changed over the years, that people have become more reclusive, less willing to be open with their thoughts, and she's probably right, but in my slump i find it hard to believe. somehow it feels like it’s my fault for being less “engaging”, for seeming unapproachable or perhaps intimidating. maybe it’s “just a skill issue”, maybe it’s because i have stopped churning out fanart for popular fandoms, maybe it’s because i refuse to torture myself emotionally by having an art account on twitter (i can’t fucking stand the place anymore; i still post nsfw art there, but only because it’s literally one of the only places on the internet that allows you to do so. i miss when you could post female presenting tits on tumblr).

i have always, ever since i started posting art on the internet back in 2012, done it for human connection. i wanted to talk to people, and have people talk to me. i wanted to inspire people with my art, and i wanted to bring them comfort. i wanted to elicit an emotional response, and have people tell me about it. it was one of the main reasons i drew in the first place; having lost that, i’ve been struggling to stay passionate about making art.

i miss being a small artist on the internet during the 2010s. i remember when i could make a post going, “hey everyone, how are you all doing today?” and it would not seem weird to people in the slightest. it is just me? does anyone else feel that way? am i too deep in my own head? the internet feels so unwelcoming nowadays, especially to artists. we are all just content machines; people scroll by our stuff, or maybe look at it for half a second and leave a like before scrolling away. i know it’s unfair to demand people’s attention, especially now when our lives are already so overwhelmed by everything - no one has the energy to pay closer attention; i myself am not immune to mindless scrolling. but it feels bad. i wish we were all sincere and enthusiastic again.

anyway (sorry for rambling. i hope i haven’t bored you to death), you might want to say, okay, but how is making a new art blog on a “dying” social platform going to help with any of that? the truth is, i don’t know. i just felt like i needed a change. 

i’ve been running this blog since 2016 (that’s almost 8 full years!). i feel incredibly attached to it, but at the same time, i feel it weighing me down. 

there are people who followed me years ago for one specific thing, still expecting me to post about said thing (i still find it mindboggling that some people follow artists for a specific fandom only, but that is a whole other matter for a whole other post that i will never write). a third, if not half, of my following are probably dead blogs. and with my current struggle with trying to regain the joy i once felt for making art, looking back at all the art i’ve done over the years makes me feel tired. i still love it all; it’s all very dear to me. i’m proud of it; looking at it makes me mourn my younger and more passionate self.

so i’ve decided to make a new blog, where i will let myself post whatever i want, in whatever stage of donness i feel like. maybe it will help me, somehow. maybe it won’t. but if you care about my art, if you want to keep following me on my artistic journey, i welcome you to join me there. similarly, feel free not to - no hard feelings.

thank you everyone for your support over the years; it matters a lot to me. i’m not planning to delete or private this blog; it will stay up, and i will still be reachable on here. i will still answer asks, if there will be any. i’m just not planning to post any art here anymore. this is it for my dear old friend ffc1cb.

i can be found in other places:

@cbge, as mentioned earlier,

@k0nstanta, an art blog dedicated solely to my wife and i’s ocs,

@inquisimail, a dragon age ask blog that has become my dragon age sideblog in general,

and multiple other blogs, none of which are art related, but feel free to ask, if you’re curious.

thank you very much for reading all of this. i hope you have a wonderful day.

#salt talks

[silky-silks]

Minty reminds me of a Minecraft sniffer, just as fluffy and cute :3

Well My Fellow Friend, I have to say

Minty is a Minecraft Sniffer

Well, a rejected one but I wont get too deep in that. Actually scratch that I will. Have a lore dump for you! (get your pen and paper ready because im literally about to spew 100 hours worth of pointless words)

Minty is a boy, he was part of a group of Sniffers I like to call "Sneezes."

(A group of Sniffers in my opinon is going to be called Sneeze.)

He was originally the smallest of the group until one day after randomly wandering around he finds a hanging hand parasite from oak tree. At first it had no name. Suddenly the hand parasite attached its body to Minty, casuing him to grow to a arrangment of teeth on his back as well as a awful red hue. The hand soon was able to speak, in a rather cheery and very yappy voice. Now its to note these two had no offcial name so Syrup and Minty just really didnt refer to each other as name. Also Minty cannot talk, only can make noises.

When the connection happens. Syrup explains to Minty how he got stuck in that tree. Minty surprisnly doesnt seem to mind Syrup as in his "Sneeze"no one really talked. He was interested so he kept Syrup around.

Personality

Syrup as usual is the talker of the duo while Minty is reserved in quiet. The share one thing is common and that is their curiosity. The only difference is Syrup can express his with words while Minty can only say "dum".

Goals:

One day walking through a village they saw a villager trading with someone. Syrup wanted to try it out but failed miserably as no one wanted their "good" (They didnt understand how worthy emeralds were) and couldnt really get info as the villagers became rather annoyed or scared if Syrup and Minty due to their weird looks. Determined to fit in with the group, they looked everywhere and met with other humans "Steve and Alex" to learn how to trade, along the way they discover mining and archelogy.

Other Lore Spooky Month (Oc Based)

They stay relatively the same in design for Spooky month, and I have shown a bit of then interacting with Nina and Grant

(characters belonging to ericvelseb666)

Their prescese was alarming to everyone there, literally everyone was like "WHO THE FUCK IS THAT".

Syruo became nervous and Minty grew protective of his friend. As he deliver bites and growls they were scared off by Jack and John until Stumbling across a holy site. Starry Night Bakery. Inside Syrup saw all the cool sweets, and with the little money they had at the time (more of stolen as some guy dropped their wallet and ran), they ordered a lot of Turnovers and snacks from Nina and Grant. Not understanding change they left a bit too much money and hurried off with their snacks.

(old art, this was a redone concept deisgn when I didnt know what I wanted to do with them yet)

It was the first time they felt truly accepted, and they did miss Nina and Grant as they didnt go all "Oh my god what is that?!" on them. Syrup wishes to work there but stays hidden for now. Until they heard she was hiring. And Well you get what happened next. They realize the lacked a proper name, so they gave themselves one. Well Syrup names Minty, "Minty" for his colors and Syrup names himself Syrup after eating pancakes some stranger left for them with the strange liquid on top.

Minus the Frank torture, Syrup and Minty were a grateful duo. They stuck close to Nina and Grant, and for the first time Minty became more "emotional". Always flapping his ears, sniffing and nose booping, even doing little stomps when he sees Grant. (He mistakes Grant for a sniffer for some god forsaken reason)

Syrup will bring Torchflowers for Nina whenever they can as a sign of "thanks" as they are very very grateful monsters.

WELCOME HOME

Not much content on this one as I am still working on a offical deisng for them. But Minty and Syrup are just trying to understand the universe and what is happening with HOME and the rest of the puppets.

Due to their odd looks, the neighborhood was quite questionable.

But for the meantime, Minty hates Frank for inspecting Syrup. Poor guy got Mauled.

Oh and they became uber drivers in the backrooms. Why? Dont know. Currently trying to shove them in Cuphead, so they may end up working for the devil BUT are saved by angels as they are just desperate for some work. Besides they suck at contracts, the devil himself got tired of them.

YOU CALLED AN UBER??????

CONCLUSION

Thats Minty and Syrup for ya! I know you didn't ask for all of this but hey i Wanted to treat you with some rather cool lore. So if ya choose to ignore all of this that's fine!

#minecraft sniffer #Welcome home Frank #nina velseb #grant hedony #frank frankly welcome home #oh my god #why did i write all of this at 11:pm?

[starrose17]

ok i'll bite cos youve got me intrigued. i wont ever play hogwarts legacy but who are these people Sebastian and Ominus that you keep reblogging about?

AH HA!

Okay yes thank you I'm glad someone asked but there will be MANY spoilers ahead!!!

Both Slytherin boys, 15 years old, basically they're your characters best friends in Hogwarts Legacy regardless of the House you choose, and have a integral part to play on if you choose to go down the good or evil route.

Ominis Gaunt is a parseltongue, and blind, and his "sentient" wand pulls him around Hogwarts. Possible great uncle to Voldemort (according to the dates in the HP wiki), his family would torture the local muggles by using Crucio on them (his brother possibly Marvolo Gaunt it's never officially stated in the game).

As a child Ominis refused to participate, so his family used Crucio on him until he relented and used Crucio on the muggles too, something he's never been able to forgive himself for. Because of this he hates the ties to the dark arts that his family has and distances himself from them entirely, and anything to do with the dark arts in general.

Which is what makes the angst so great and the shipping so great when it comes to his best friend, Sebastian Sallow.

Sebastian is crucial to the story, he has a sister named Anne who was cursed and is in constant pain (it's a long story i won't go into but it's a big part of the plot of the game) and who had to leave Hogwarts to remain at home with her uncle as their parents died a few years back.

In a desperate attempt to try and cure her Sebastian delves into the dark arts and teaches himself all 3 unforgiveable curses across the game (he can teach your character too if you choose), which causes the dark arts hating best friend Ominis to constantly be berating him, yet constantly forgiving him, yet constantly hating him for choosing this path, yet constantly refusing to leave his side and AHHHH I LOVE IT!

Some parts of the game get REALLY dark, like there's one quest where you're finding this secret scriptorium that belonged to Salazar Slytherin, and your character is trapped with both of them in a small corridor with nothing but a dead body belonging to Ominis' aunt, a locked door with screaming faces on it, and the word CRUCIO scratched on the floor.

The only way forward is to cast Crucio on one of the others, which the aunt couldn't do because she was trapped there alone so she starved to death. Ominis refuses to do it despite the fact he's the only one that's done it before, so Sebastian either casts it on your character, or you can cast it on him. Either way, poor Ominis standing there only able to hear one of his best friends scream in agony while the other uses a dark curse must be torture for him! (excuse the heart eyes oh baby the angst).

I mean throughout the game Sebastian uses Imperio to make a goblin stab himself instead as he was about to kill Anne, he also murders his own Uncle using Avada Kedavra, and at the end you and Ominis can either turn him over to the authorities (which ends with you hearing he's been expelled and awaiting trial), or you can keep it all a secret. Either way there's Azkaban angst or forgiveness between the deeply damaged Ominis who just cannot turn away his best friend despite the darkness that surrounds him, he will stick with him always <3<3<3<3

Plus there's also a ton of flirting that goes on, between them and your character. My favourite is just before the crucio part where we're all exploring in pitch black corridors:

Sebastian: "Hmm, a dark ominous corridor......my favourite."

Ominis: "...no comment."

I literally guffawed at that, a literal guffaw, I mean what were the writers actually trying to say here because it's damn obvious and yet... XD LOL

Plus around the time you first meet Sebastian (depending on what House you chose), you meet him during the dueling lesson and he just looks at you and says, "Time to give you a proper Hogwarts welcome." in this like proper sultry cheeky voice there's no other way of describing it.

Ahem, so, yeah...I might love them just a bit.

Ah, feels good to be back in the HP fandom again.

#sebinis #gaullow #hogwarts legacy #sebastian sallow #ominis gaunt

[ellienettie]

Grim reaper!dick au with sort of immortal!marinette (she gets reborn every time she dies)

I keep forgetting to write their story because I can never get it right and I'm halfway into giving up so therefore I decided to just write their dates <3

Anyway I love this concept because this is death falling in love with someone who never dies. They part ways for lifetimes but their love is for eternity. They find romance and intimacy in moments of pure agony and their love is like the sweet first bite of an apple. Every meeting is fast, fleeting, unforgettable and their love grows with each day spread through timelines. Rot meets Marinette much too fast for them to savor their relationship.

Imagine the lovers dancing in the literal eye of the hurricane, time and wind is still and it seems like the world has stopped around Dick and instead of focusing on the stable ground around him, he's there with Marinette leaning foreheads with each other. He's in love in such a precious, once in a lifetime moment and rather than marvel at the art piece they're stuck in, Dick marvels instead at the woman in his arms. They don't kiss each other, no. There's no need to. They have the rest of the life of the universe to do so, and right now what they need is to feel the closeness before Marinette is literally ripped away from his hands to suffer another death and be reborn in another body.

Imagine Dick offering sweet butterfly kisses on her cheek, an attempt at comfort as she lay on the hospital bed about to die. Lashes tickle her cheek and she softly laughs, frail shaking hands clinging on to tanned skin. She's old and wrinkly, but Dick looks at her and she feels young, alive, as alive as she was when she last died young in the hands of a murderer. Dick looks at her and it's loving, as if the wrinkles just enhance her youth and beauty. "Sometimes." Dick murmurs, rubbing circles on her wrist. Her heart thumps slowly in her chest where Dick's head lay, listening to the beating. "Sometimes I think about us. If we could defy odds and grow old together. Do the one romantic thing we can never do." And Marinette can't find the strength to speak. Instead, she shuts her eyes, dying in smooth slumber.

Imagine that the pair are wrapped in each other's embrace as they lay in a bed inside the sinking titanic. Cold water flows, trapping them inside the room. "Such a lonely coffin you have, my love." Dick tells Marinette, shaking from the cold. "At least it has you in it." She says, every exhale coming out of her mouth as a cold cloud. As much as he wants to offer her warmth, a body as dead as his is far from heat. Dick comes back to her body floating trapped in the sea. And places it on her bed, covering her with the wet blanket. An apology she'll never hear about him never being enough.

Ofc sweet moments like this to overshadow the pure angst of this concept. Because not every life is a happy story. Some stories are the worst and every word you read of them makes you feel like you want to cry your heart out.

Imagine a small child, a toddler who's learning full sentences. He gets to hold her small chubby hand as she guides him to her place of torture. He listens to her excited rambles of dreams he knows she's achieved in her past lives and he hasn't the heart to tell her that she can never grow old, she can never feel the satisfaction and relief of achieving those dreams. So, moments before her death he tells her gently in a soothing tone about how she's already achieved such dreams, how she's marked as the greatest of the greats, written down in history, stories, statistics, she's forever meant to be remembered. There's stars in her eyes and that's the only thing keeping Dick mentally sane as he holds her small lifeless frame, her murderer escaping successfully to repeat the crime again.

Imagine Marinette meets him on a normal day for her and her heart drops at the realization that something will happen. Something will happen to her that day because Death will never meet you until it's near time for your depart. It's a normal date in the park with ice cream melting on their hands. It's a normal date where they just drive around until eventually fate happens and crashes the car they drive in to the side of the road. They-- She dies with him, and they experience every romantic tragedy there is.

What happens after Marinette's soul parts from the vessel she's temporarily trapped in, she will never know unless Dick tells her. And Dick will never tell her about how in love he is with her. He will never tell her about the small services he does for her bodies. He will never tell her of lips kissing rotten bones when he's missing her and it isn't her time. He will never tell her how he cradles corpses after fresh murder, blackened tears leaving his eyes to drip on her bleeding wounds. He will never tell her how he mourns small bodies, small, small bodies, how her eyes are the brightest before she's tainted with reality. He will never tell her about how he wishes that every child she's conceived and left to fend alone was his. Theirs. He will never tell her that he favors one child of hers, with her brilliant blue eyes and petite frame, hair as dark as his and skin as pale as the snow that covered the ground when he was born. He will never tell her.

#romantic dickinette #dickinette #dick x marinette #marinette x dick #maribat dick grayson #maribat marinette #maribat marinette dupain cheng #maribat #mlb x dc #dc x mlb #batman x mlb #mlb x batman #dcu x mlb #mlb x dcu #wip idea #prompt #pls I've had this for a year pls will my writing just improve already so I can write this

[subiysu-chan]

Tonight I wanted to find other Innocent-related blogs (I read it a year ago and the fixation came back), so I scrolled through who you follow (didn't mean to stalk so sorry if it comes off like I did... it was my intention to find similar content creators) and I found 2 things:

1. Sakamoto's old blog where he posted foot pics

2. A blog called scripttorture (through looking at scriptstructure and other script- blogs which are all AMAZING btw) which made me realise how much effort and research Sakamoto put into his manga, and how accurate the scenes of and reactions to abuse really were. And also the fact subyss is a drinker who believes his job is an art, even though it's unsuccessful in nature and very very stupid. And the way Charles reacted more to Anne-Marthe's psychological conditioning than his father's physical abuse. And the way Anne-Marthe's punishment made Marie a lot more resilient and motivated and wanting to be in control.

I apologize for the rant, I have to share my thoughts on this manga and the fandom is WAY TOO DAMN SMALL. So sorry for making you put up with it.

Thanks. No need to apologize. Yeah...Do know of @scripttorture and read some of their bibliography...It's interesting. And yes, Shinichi Sakamoto did do his research on the psychology of torture, like Subyss being an idiot and Charles more impacted by psychological conditioning than physical abuse...To an extent. Charles-Henri also seems to be mostly suicidal in this manga. For example, at one point he considers slicing his veins and seriously intends to talk to his father he plans to become a monk and reject the family profession, after his father literally tortured him for rejecting the family profession.

Also, Shinichi Sakamoto's Charles-Henri actually displays almost all Slytherin values, exept self-preservation...Which is interesting. It's implied that he was able to hide his identity in a boarding school out of all places for a certain amount of time and still able to somewhat succeed academically.

I have devoted my university studies to this man, Charles-Henri Sanson, and...Let's just say he was rather incompetant at his job, was willing to risk his post, what was left of a reputation and possibly even his life for a night with a stranger, but miraculously survived many lynching mobs. The more I learn about the XVIIIth century, the more amazed I am this man made it passed 30. Also, my opinion on him is more revisionistic, as I don't think this man really cared about his reputation...at least not sincerely. Because when we place his desire for rehabilitation in the economical and political context of the French Revolution, it very clearly appears as an act of self-preservation. If he indeed attended boarding school and managed to be moderately successful, academically speaking, it's a sign that he was a very intelligent person.

#innocentmanga #sakamoto shinichi #jean baptiste sanson #subyss

[tarlos-spain]

Summary: TK believed that his life would be perfect forever. His marriage to Carlos is almost perfect, they have three wonderful children, Carlos has made detective... everything is perfect, until the darkest part of TK's past comes back to torture him. Someone has taken Carlos, someone is sending him videos that TK will take a long time to forget.

Pairing: Carlos Reyes/TK Strand

Acknowledgment: Time to thank the right and beautiful people helping me with this story. My betas, @lire-casander how are you so patient with me? @morganaspendragonss thanks so much for helping me write in proper English and @chaotictarlos for the beautiful art

Chapter 01:

"I'll be there in five minutes." TK said to Carlos over the phone, as he saw the uber finally arrive.

He looked at his watch, it was late. The cab was never late; just the day they were going to have dinner with their parents to start preparing the school holidays and the damn cab was late.

Add to that the fact that Carlos never left the police station on time because he was a damn perfectionist and had to close any open cases before he went home.

They were going to be late and the consequences of leaving their parents talking alone could be terrible for the next three months.

"I'm just finishing up some paperwork, but I'll be ready when you arrive."

"I know that's not going to happen, so remember we're booked at 8. My dad will be there at 7:45 and your parents will probably arrive earlier. We'd better avoid them having too much time to talk about the kid's holidays, or when we get there they'll have it all set up and we won't be able to say two words about it."

"Don't worry, tiger. I'm sure they'll behave themselves."

"I'm not so sure but I trust you. I'll get in the cab and see you soon. Be on time please," TK repeated again as he watched the cab park in front of him.

As the vehicle stopped, TK saw that the cab driver was someone different from the usual driver and that made him hesitate for a moment.

"I'm sorry Terry is at home with Julie. Did he tell you about Julie, his five year old?"

TK nodded. The usual cabbie, Terry, usually talked about his family a lot and sometimes it seemed like TK had known them forever, even though he had never met them before.

"Oh wow, I hope it's nothing serious."

"Nah, a little gastroenteritis; you know how kids are. But he's asked me to take you home. He'll give you 10% off for your trouble."

"No, really, it's been no bother at all. But I'm used to Terry and well...my partner's a cop, I guess it makes me overthink things.

He looked at the clock, it was getting late and if he counted the time it would take Carlos to finish and leave the police station, they could still make it to the restaurant in time.

Unlike Terry who kept talking, their driver for the day, John, was a quiet guy, who only cared about the drive and getting him to his destination.

He parked in the police station parking lot. TK looked at the time, he was going to give Carlos five more minutes before literally telling him to get his ass off his desk. But he was so nervous that he decided to relax for a moment, close his eyes, and rest his head on the cab seat.

A noise made him open his eyes and it almost seemed normal to find the barrel of a gun pointed at his face. But that didn't take away the fear that John behind the gun might shoot.

"What's this all about?" TK asked, trying to sound calm.

"You'll find out in a few minutes; don't worry. All you have to do now is stay here quietly with me and don't make a fuss."

"You expect me to sit here quietly while you point your gun at me and not ask for help?"

"I know what you're going to do, if you don't want us to hurt your boyfriend."

There were few things that really made TK nervous, but someone endangering Carlos was his weakest point.

"Who are you?"

"Too bad you don't remember me and my boys."

Two men opened the back doors of the car. One grabbed TK and no matter how hard he tried to scramble he couldn't get him off him, even less so when he wrapped an arm around his neck and squeezed him to stop him from moving. The other pinned his legs against the seat and grabbed his cell phone from his pocket.

"Let's go tell your husband we're waiting. We're late for the wonderful family dinner."

"Leave Carlos alone! Leave him alone!" TK protested as they dragged him out of the car, pulling him out and leaving him lying on the ground, in between the occasional, totally unnecessary blow or two.

"He's coming."

"Great." John said. "Get into position."

"Carlos!" TK shouted, hoping his husband would hear him before he got there, that he could do something, that he'd be ready.

But the new hits to the ribs left him breathless and unable to speak. The guy who had him by the neck squeezed a little more, while the other hand covered his mouth and almost didn't let him breathe.

TK, desperate, heard the footsteps of someone approaching; he knew perfectly the way Carlos walked, so he knew it was him.

"Shhh, don't spoil the fun now, TK. Maybe your respectable life now has wiped your memory, but you owe a lot of money to the wrong people, boy." TK looked at the man who had approached him and was holding him by the chin. "Remember that last party? Those funny pills you tried to get out of the way with?" he leaned close to his ear. "You forgot to pay for them and now, they come with interest...which your husband will pay."

TK pushed again, but it was impossible — the man holding him was twice as big as he was and if he squeezed any harder, he could break his neck. But that wasn't going to stop him from trying to break free.

Carlos saw the cab and smiled, he knew TK was going to give him a good telling off for being late.

But something caught his attention, something that at first he didn't know what it was, but it only took him a few seconds to realize. The car was empty, TK was not in the cab, and a noise on the other side of the car made him reach for his gun.

But he didn't have time to react; a kick in the back made him fall to the ground.

As he fell he saw TK's body. He grunted and tried to get up, but a new blow, a kick in the ribs, made him scream and roll on the ground.

The man pulled TK to his feet, without taking his hand off his neck. "Carlos... Run."

"No, no, no. Nobody runs here." John grabbed TK by the chin again and forced him to look at Carlos, still on the ground and being kicked repeatedly by the third man. "I was thinking of collecting here and now what you owe, but then I realized the interest was too high and I need my time to be satisfied."

A knife on the skin of his throat made TK stop struggling, and so did Carlos, kneeling on the floor as they watched.

"Please... I'll pay you... I swear I'll pay you, but don't hurt him."

Keep reading on AO3

#911 #9 1 1 lone star #9-1-1 lone star #carlos reyes #tk strand #Tarlos #Hurt Carlos #Hurt TK #Kidnapped Carlos #Sick TK #Tortured Carlos #Drugged Carlos #Family #Kids #Protective TK #Hospital

[finiansghost]

'Shoulder blade' - Fian/Sabha, Summerchild era

Third of three bingo fics.

1577 words. Warnings for (oh heck here we go): off-page torture and abuse of power, not dreadfully graphic (I don't think it gets any worse than the first line); rather a lot of self-loathing, the absolute incomprehensibility of hope, the long shadow of childhood trauma; if Fian admitted he was self-medicating he'd have to admit to needing it; being a healer in a Frost-kingdom is ethically challenging; Iestyn is still alive (for another, like 14 hours at most) and he is his own warning (he is off-page but this is Fian's point of view and Fian's mind is not entirely his own).

Also it makes what's coming next in Summerchild worse.

But on the upside Sabha the trainee chronic pain and mystery ailment specialist makes everything better, sometimes literally, and it's at least kind of bittersweet. The dove is perhaps not entirely dead but is missing a few feathers; I still wouldn't suggest you eat it.

The echo of Kellan's dying agony still lingers down his spine, burns if he breathes too deep.

So does the way no-one in the warband would meet his eye, and the lass from the Averdeary garrison he'd been casually flirting with flinched. He walked away wanting nothing more than to drink until he forgot what it was they were afraid of.

Three days and it hasn't worked yet.

This is nothing he planned, nothing he would have dared hope for, nothing wise. Old Medwyn's fiercely protective of his 'prentice, for all she's long years grown, gave her oath to Finian before the end.

He remembers that, because he remembers her trying to help. Little slip of a thing then, but she already knew more than most full-fledged healers about the kind of pain that was gnawing at the old king in his last days. A reckoning come due, Finian called it; bitter and laughing.

Another reckoning's riding on the wind through the dead reeds, ash and salt and the beating of wings in darkness; Iestyn's, or Trick's, or maybe just his own. Hasn't managed to drown that knowing, either. Yet.

And now Sabha - strong and skilled and respected by anyone with any merç-cursed sense, bowed perhaps a little by pain no amount of skill can vanquish, but not at all by any other cause - is looking at him with curiosity, even interest. Not horror at the twisting of a healer's art, and the gentle understanding in her eyes is more intoxicating than the drink.

The clan-house shadows drink up his lantern's light; Mairi's not waiting up tonight. Mairi also doesn't tolerate clutter left in the aisle; they make it back to his little room without incident, and without waking anyone sleeping by the banked fire.

The wards come up as he stirs up the coals in his little brazier, and she doesn't ask. The same way she didn't ask what the herbs in his brandy were, nor why; but this is firmer ground than kindnesses he ought not to permit and so chooses not to see.

"The rest of the house prefers not to share my nightmares," he murmurs. Feels her register that more professionally than personally. "Among other things," he tacks on, and maybe he has to reach a little to find warmth to put in his voice, but he finds it all the same.

Enough to make her blush, anyway.

She's shy, when he kisses her, but not hesitant; she doesn't flinch. He does, when she wraps her free arm around him, hand in the small of his back, and that gets the healer-focus again.

"Are you - aware you're in pain?"

He's not sure he'd call it pain as such; it's just a ghost. (A ghost that Iestyn's been poking at. Cold hands. Just enough touch to give the phantom sensation life. Between the isolation of the wards and the numbness of drink he can think that thought, and know it's deliberate. Doesn't mean he wants to think it.)

"So are you." It's mostly a guess; he's about as closed-off and numb as he's ever managed to be, he can't actually feel it, but it's a fair bet. She looks more worn in the candlelight than she did in the hall.

"No more than normal;" she makes a vague gesture with the stick. "Nothing to be done for it; my foot just wants to ache. Let me see?"

"So long as you sit down first," he parries, not really expecting it to distract her; she has the kind of focus that would make him wary in a swordsman.

There's nothing to see; only the ghost of someone else's hurt, but it can do no harm. She lets him help her out of her cloak, props her stick in the corner by his spear; accepts his offered arm to climb up and sit on the end of his bed, good leg tucked under her and back against the bed-cabinet frame.

At least it's not entirely the healer's clinical gaze watching him strip off cloak and coat, tunic and undershirt, and that's its own kind of - not quite reassurance, but kin or cousin to it. He knows the story his scars tell, and she has the skill to read it; as reactions go, curiosity and challenged craft are hardly the worst of all possible worlds.

No amount of flippant thought makes it easy to sit beside her on the bed and twist so she can touch, and that's a skittishness he thought he was long past. Her hands on his back are not at all like Iestyn's - warm, her touch firm, movements deliberate, and that helps. The trickle of power - precise, controlled, unmistakable - is a surprise. There's nothing to be done.

"What are you -" he lets the question hang unfinished.

"Whoever taught you healing needs a kick up the arse," she says, a little tartly, and he answers without thinking.

"Nobody taught me." Maghister Evran, and Greymere's bitter cold dawn, incidental demonstration perhaps but nothing he was ever supposed to learn from. Or at least, not learn that. Not what she means.

"Perhaps we won't get into that now," she says, and there's something... strange in her voice. "It's - this is - as if a part of you thinks the wounds you healed were something that happened to you."

He can't quite keep the bitterness out of his voice. "I wouldn't call that healing."

She snorts. "I'd call the work of keeping someone alive healing, no matter what end it's turned to. You think I don't know that some of Medwyn's midnight calls are no mercy to the ones he's called for?"

Fian hadn't known that himself, but - it makes sense. Echoes of Greymere again. Nothing of mercy there, not maghister Evran the healer, not in any of them.

Certainly not in maghistra Lindy, sick sour heat of memory rising unwanted -

- her index finger is on his collar-bone, over the scar.

"This didn't put you off sharp-toothed Gaudies?"

It isn't obvious. It mostly looks like a burn-scar. Because it mostly is. But it's obvious to her. As long as he manages to not to think about it, he won't have to realise what that means.

"Lot of power there." Very neutral. "Or persistence. You want to be careful with woodsies."

Not that he had a lot of choice in the matter.

The other thought creeps in around the edges while he's carefully not saying that. "You didn't really need rescuing, did you."

When he turns so he can see her, it's half hunted reflex; her smile's a little rueful, and her teeth seem entirely normal. "I panicked. And I certainly didn't have a… diplomatic exit plan. But - Medwyn wouldn't have agreed to teach me if I couldn't protect myself." She shifts her fingers on his back, and he can't help but tense again.

"Easy. I'm not gonna bite you," she says quietly. "I'm not that woodsy. The only thing I generally go a'stalking of is mystery pains and baffling ailments. Much less walking involved. Also much less sleeping on the ground and waking up with angry joints." There's a pattern in the movement of her hands, in the flow of power, a rhythm to it, not steady but consistent, calm -

- and then he's blinking, from a sharp stab that had nothing of pain in it, and she's asking, "is that any better?"

She's still touching, hands flat on his shoulder-blades, but now it's just touch, secondhand pain-shadows banished - "how did you do that?"

"Oh, technically, realigning the disjunct flow between the present and the pretergenetic selfnesses," a little chuckle, "but it wouldn't be untrue to say the problem was a small and elusive target, and I am very precise."

Of course she is. So's Eamonn, so's Danny, so was Lindy, each in their separate field. He doesn't quite manage not to twitch when she leans in and kisses scar-tissue over his spine.

She pulls back. Sighs. "I didn't realise you didn't know. I'm not going to be offended if you change your mind."

Gentle. Sincere. Maybe she could be a monster if she wanted to be. He already is.

And whatever these stirrings of fate, whatever doom rides the wind, waiting its hour - it can wait awhile longer. Tonight - whether it's luck's fickle grace or mercy's hand, cursed if he won't take the chance. "And if I haven't changed my mind?"

She smiles. Blushes a little. Doesn't show her teeth. "You might give me a hand with these buttons."

Dress-buttons and belt-knots, kirtle-laces and boot-laces, garter-knots and giggles. These four walls and these dark hours carve out a space where tenderness can be real, where scarred hands can be gentle on soft flesh and unmarred skin. More patience than he thinks she expected, here where patience can be other than cruel, to drink down life's small joys to the last drop and savour each sip. Here and now is all that matters; the dawn will come soon enough.

There's a saying, a desperate whisper, a plea to mercy for better days. Words he's heard, and carefully forgotten when or from whom; words he daren't let himself think, even in the darkness of his own mind and the quiet of a warded room. But let tomorrow's hopes lie with tomorrow's fears; tonight has its pleasures, and that is enough.

More than enough; tonight is all there is.

#writing #origfic #summerchild #flashfic #fic bingo #i said Fian had come a long way in Grace #this is more or less where he was coming from #sabha is seriously really good at complex medical work #this will unfortunately be relevant

[polyghostfacehours]

bestie consider poly billy n stu with an s/o who makes snuff films but like they just found the vids hidden away while their s/o was out I JUST NEED TO GET THIS OUT OF MY BRAIN

,Ooooooh~ Love, love, love this idea. Dark!Readers are always loved and welcome. So implied Modern AU.

TW: Homicide. Torture. Dark!Reader.

poly!Ghostface w/ Reader who does snuff:

---

So if you make snuff, it can be assumed you don't have a problem with their darker proclivities.

As a matter of fact, that was how you guys got into the relationship in the first place.

You started as friends, slowly getting integrated into their college friend group. But your darker sense of humor, love of splatter films, and generally chill demeanor when it came to squickier stuff quickly resulted in you getting along more with them than the others in the group.

You guys quickly became the three musketeers. Where one went, the other two usually werent too far behind.

Surprisingly, it was Billy that was interested first. And this is largely due to how enthusiastic you are when it came to gore in movies.

He also found it endearing that you would complain about how fake the blood or gore looked, or explain how certain body parts would bend instead. As if you knew...

Huh. He chalked it up to you just doing your research. And you tell him as much when he asks.

Stu loves gore, so much. More so than Billy even. You're the first person besides Billy that he was okay showing his "art project" too: The mutilated dolls in his attic.

He does this behind Billy's back tbh, because Billy would think it was too big of a hint that they're serial killers.

But he did anyway and you loved it! Said you wanted to help him with it. He was over the moon.

Big discussion with Billy about bringing you into the relationship. They had never considered being poly before, but they knew they both wanted you and they still wanted each other.

You know that GIF of Tulio and Miguel saying "Both? Both. Both is good."? Yeah, its basically that lmao.

So, after a bit of time in the relationship, they noticed how accepting you are of...pretty much anything dark they let slip out and stuff.

And this is where Billy casually brings up murder in the same way he did to Stu originally. He was 1000% sure you wouldn't mind and figured he could bring you in.

It was risky, but a three person alibi would be invaluable.

You decline, because your MO was different, unbeknownst to them. But you were enthusiastic and encouraged them.

You couldn't believe your luck at finding two boyfriends who also love murder as much as you. The odds are low, but not impossible, and you're living proof.

So, Stu loves to try and spoil you, because Billy wouldn't let him unless it was food, but you always seemed to have your own large amounts of money.

When they ask, you just mention its your parents, like Stu, and that you just get a large college allowance from them bc they care about your education or whatever excuse.

They buy it, it's not unbelievable. Stu also has parents like them.

But in reality, you money comes from your snuff films and streams. You stream in Red Rooms on the dark web and your fans are veeery generous.

And the films you make sell for ridiculously high prices.

You don't tell Billy and Stu about it because you dont know how okay they'd be with literal torture.

They killed, but they never tortured (much), and you just weren't sure if it was too far for them.

So every time they ask to move in together, you deflect.

One day they're over at your place, and you decide to go pick up the pizza you guys ordered.

They snoop around a little, and find a bunch of unlabeled tapes. Pretty old school, but they find a VCR as well. Strange.

They pop it in, and they are floored. Absolutely shocked. You're in disguise and are using a voice changer of your own, but they could still tell it was you by your mannerisms.

You come back and they confront you.

"What the fuck is this. Why didn't you tell us?"

At first Billy is pissed. He trusted you with his and Stu's secret, and you couldnt trust him with yours? Wow, fuck you.

You explain to them everything, nervous as hell. You tell them you just werent sure about if theyd be okay with the torture aspect of it.

And they are, especially Stu. Billy isn't much for torture, but he doesn't care about anyone but himself and you guys, so who cares.

Stu is over the moon at the news, asks a lot of questions, and definitely wants to join in maybe.

Billy doesn't really care to join, because he has better shit to do, and he killed for revenge or necessity - not pleasure - and any pleasure he did derive was mainly from the psychological torture. But he'll help out with other stuff if you and Stu beg him.

It basically becomes you and Stu's thing.

Billy and Stu have their murder stuff, and you and Stu have your torture stuff. Now it's just a matter of finding something for you and Billy to do together <3

#billy loomis #stu macher #billy loomis x reader #stu macher x reader #poly ghostface #poly!ghostface #poly ghostface x reader #slasher imagines #slasher x reader #slashers x reader #poly!ghostface x reader

[streaming-yn]

Hiya there! I really like your writing and was wondering if you could write something where forgetful y/n meets Technoblade- and also- can I be 🏹 anon if its not taken? :D

yeah yeah!! I don't know if you meant c!forgetful!y/n and c!techno or cc!both and I kinda like the heads of both soo ,, I did both !! I hope that's cool w you !!! n ofc, welcome to the crew 🏹 anon :)

part 1 // part 2 // part 3 // part 4 // part 5 // part 6 // part 7

part doesn't look like a real word anymore

pairing (platonic); c!forgetful!y/n x c!techno , forgetful!y/n x (cc!)techno

warnings; dark humor (punting kids, killing, hitman stuff, stuff along those lines!!)

Characters

met bc you're ranboo's sibling !! :)

you were looking for ranboo but couldn't find him (he was hanging out with techno) so you sent him a text on the communicator (whispering) to ask

him, being the protective brother (in lore, the world it's tons more dangerous and he knows) he is, he didn't really think and sent you his coords and said he'll be near there, he's hanging out with someone

he didn't specify who exactly he was with so you were like oh ok be there in a bit

you go the coords and see them through the trees, techno's pink and red colors pallet and ranboo's black half and tux standing out against the snow

immediately you're still, if you move they might hear you – techno might hear you, you look for a bit, going through a back and fourth in your head was what you were going to tell him actually worth what might happen if techno didn't like you? it's not necessarily important information, you just wanted someone to talk to about what you talked with Tommy about today and your brother was your closest friend – tommy tied for first place with him but talking to tommy about what you and tommy spoke about? that's be weird. you really want to talk now, so you don't forget, and your not the best with holding in stuff without snapping at people who don't deserve it

so you decide to go on anyways. he wouldn't hate you, right? you're not really on a side, you're more of a middle ground type of person so you're not connected to the government so he wouldn't hate you, right? and even if he did; your brother would never let him kill you; you reasoned with yourself, happy with the resolve you start forward towards them

thank God for your naturally quiet and agile movements, they would've noticed you before you were ready otherwise, you made it halfway to them and decided to make a little bit of noise so they wouldn't pull weapons as soon as you were right next to them

you threw a snowball at a tree causing both boys to turn and see you wave "hi! just wanted to talk with ranboo"

"well I'm talking to him, about something rather serious too, so leave." "okay so? I want to talk to my brother so why don't you leave?"

talking like this with the blood god was extremely risky, but you're also not the most well known for having smart, thought out decisions. in other words; you don't really think before talking, which can be both good and bad

people admire the honesty and what they believe is guts (it's not, you just don't have cognitive filters), on the other hand, though, it can, and will (and definitely has) land you in a world of hurt

ranboo's looking between you two anxiously, eyes showing obvious worry that this will escalate to a battle

as the piglin hybrid looked down at you like you were dirt under his boot you glared right back up at him, matching the energy he gave, as you grabbed ranboo's hand and started to drag him away

ranboo turned around to look at techno and waved "oh- uh- I guess we can talk some other time!", techno grumbled at that

though later he did let himself laugh about it, someone who looked quiet not being afraid to match his energy was amusing itself, but pair that with you dragging your brother along, not being careful of his foot placement causing him to almost fall many times and it makes it funnier

when he spoke to you again, it was clear neither of you held any grudges or anything but the "oh my god I hate you and we're literally enemies" bit continued, but it was obvious it was just y'all's dynamic

fans were in love with that dynamic and adored making art (comics, drawings, fics, animations, etc) of it :)

and despite everything the friendship and dynamic stayed the same, making fans cry

fans often worried about what would happen to y'all, because nothing in the dsmp stays the same – something bad always has to happen

quite a few ",,, what's gonna happen to c!techno and c!y/n's dynamic... something bad has to happen right? it's been good for way too long" tweets and most of the replies consist of "if something happens I'm blaming you" or "if anything happens I'm coming back with a bat" (both jokes ofc)

haha,, something bad eventually does happen but that's for a different time o/ (dw abt requesting for it! I already have a request where I plan to reveal it, however it will take a bit to get to, until then, enjoy the cliffhanger >:) )

content creators

immediately y'all match up on the same jokes and things!!

yk the thing like "wait, it's not what it looks like" "you kill people for money????" ".... .yeah" "and this whole time I've been doing it for free like a chum!!!"

that's y'all, you're the one who's doing it for free 💀

y'all met through the dsmp and started interacting so the lore won't be awkward and ended up becoming friends

(truth be told you were scared of him not liking you bc you were a fan of his content for some time now)

if you let him rant about Greek stories and such he'll let you rant about what you want to too

if you have any knowledge of old torture machines talk to him about it! like obviously torture is not good or anything but it's interesting to learn what happened in the past yk?

,,although maybe don't do that on stream-

I feel like after talking to techno for the first time and it going well you immediately go back to ranboo like "GUESS WHAT OMG"

"GUESS WHAT GUESS WHAT :DD" "Well, hello to you too" "But what's up?" "SCARY MAN THIUGHT I WAS OK 👍👍" "Who? Literally every new guy you meet is "scary man" to you" (/hj /lh) "TECHNOOO!!!!!" "That's awesome, man!! :D"

depending on how you react to jokes about punting kids he would end up making them more often around you bc he finds your reaction funny

if it's normal, you have no reaction, or just laugh in reply, he'll make them a normal amount most likely

if it's something along the lines of "NOOOO !!!!!" he's going to end up making them more, and out of the blue too

"so, you really went far in streaming so far?" "yeah! I think it's neat! I didn't expect to-" "almost as far as the kid I kicked-" "NO !!!!"

there are a lot of times where you have to clear up what is and isn't lore because y'all's dynamic is similar in and out of roleplay

also yk,, people are starved of and wanting c!y/n and c!techno interactions so they're trying to get the crumbs they can – it's actually really funny

taglist: @cvsmixplant @l0ver0fj0y @youngstarfishdinosaur @icarusthefoolish @ophelia-enthusiast @decay-as-a-life-form @xxtwizztedxx @akino-akina-writes @qrimbarkk @milkydisaster @xx-smiley-xx

#asked and answered #request #🏹 anon #new anon #technoblade x reader #techno x reader #platonic!reader #platonic fanfic #platonic x reader #platonic techno x reader #platonic technoblade x reader #mcyt x reader #streamer!au #streamer!reader #streamer!y/n #fanfic #headcanon #headcanons #writing #forgetful!y/n #forgetful!reader #forgetful! reader #forgetful! y/n #forgetful reader #forgetful y/n #series #c!techo x reader #c!technoblade x reader #c!reader #c!techno x c!reader

[itssleepyrabbit]

hi! wow i super love your art and i don’t have enough dabihawks in my life 🥺 was wondering if you had any fic recs for them?? 💕💕

aah thank you so much!! 💕💕 💕💕

BOY IF I DO HAVE!! alright buckle up this might get long (most are fluff and SFW~ i’ll put a NSFW warning but be sure to look at tags in all of them!!)

Bed I made (lie in it with me) by  silverwordswrites

“Touya is in desperate need of a plus-one for his brother's wedding and Keigo is infinitely curious about the man who he was sure used to hate him in college.” 

-- the summary says everything and honestly it’s one of the most romatics dabihawks fics i’ve read.

On-going

He Doesn't Love Me by  Fatally

“Dabi doesn't love him. He's accepted that thorny truth, swallowed it down and let briars grow in his chest, drinking down his blood like water.Or: The one in which Hawks settles for pining for his entire life and doesn't realize Dabi's been staring at him the entire time, too.” 

-- I love pinning Hawks with a burning passion.

Completed

sweetheart, is that you? by  fuckendeavor666

“dabi and hawks say i love you (without actually saying i love you) in five different ways.“ 

-- This is my absolute fave dabihawks fic

Completed

Deck the Halls With Boughs of Folly by  DrAphra

“In which the League has acquired a new fancy mansion -with all the heating and food and plush beds they could possibly need - but they still prefer to spend the day out in the wilderness with just each other. Plus Hawks.“ 

-- Honestly all Aphra’s dabihawks fics are more than worth it but this one has a special place on my heart.

Completed

fuck, im so young - orphaned

“Todoroki Touya writes poems.

Words upon words of heartfelt confessions, letters of sing song fantasies, syllables of feelings he never got to say out loud.

When Todoroki Touya hits sixteen, he burns himself to death.

When Dabi hits twenty four-

He meets Hawks.” 

-- i don’t know how to explain but this fic it’s pretty

Completed

Feathers and Feelings by  Toboe1087

“Hawks keeps leaving feathers on his pillow, and Dabi's about had it.

(like hell he'd let anyone else have them, though)”

-- Dabi preening Hawks feathers is a blessing

Complete

(this is not a) swan song by  bittermoons

“"Who's your favorite, then?"

"Hawks." Touya doesn't miss a beat. "Definitely Hawks."

"What? Seriously? How come?"

"He has his flaws, but at the end of the day, he's trying to do good. It's something he always strives for. Dabi, on the other hand...if it weren't for Hawks, he wouldn't be a hero, that's for sure."

[Or: How a secret is revealed, and what comes afterwards.]”

-- Adorable no quirks AU with manga artist Touya and oblivious Keigo! Another author i adore pretty much all dabihawks works.

Completed

You can't trap the sky in a bottle by thyandra

“Letting Toga organize the accommodations for their trip might have been a mistake. This particular truth becomes obvious to Keigo as he opens the door of his hotel room for the first time. There, staring back at him mockingly, is a single, king-sized bed. It’s only by virtue of all the years spent perfecting his poker face around his adoptive parents, that he manages to keep his face straight. At his side, Touya clicks his tongue. “They must’ve given us the wrong key.””

--(no quirks AU) I really love they way Dabi and Hawks are written here i can’t express it in words and so so much pinning

Completed

A Tale as Old as Time by  EloFromMars, Gotcocomilk

“Dabi and Hawks are hit by the most improbable Quirk: both are yeeted in Fairytales land and have to rely on each other to get out of this.“

-- this was such a fun read omg

Completed

A Romance Written All Over Your Body by  minatsukinoamayo

//NSFW mind the tags!//

“Hawks is assigned to infiltrate the League of Villains in order to expose them. Hawks usually never fails a mission, but Keigo usually never falls in love, either.A story of how Hawks falls from grace to become a villain, because hero society has failed them all.

OR

5 times they're not in a relationship and 1 time they are.“

-- you know those fics you say “one more chapter” and it’s 3AM

Completed

it caught spark in your eyes by  youareoldfatherwilliam

//Mature - Implied Sexual Content//

“Keigo’s quirk is powerful, but sometimes it comes with unintended side effects.

Or: A 5 + 1 fic of five times the more…instinctively bird-like parts of Keigo’s quirk took over accidentally during his relationship with Dabi, and one time it happened entirely on purpose.“

-- I was screaming about this particular fic on twt the other day pls give it a read if you can it’s so so so good! Any fic that has Hawks with bird traits has a special place on my heart

Completed

The Others by  threesipsmore

//Mature - 2 sexual scenes, nothing too explicit but they’re there//

“"Skeptic's starting to think he’s more important than me,” Toga sneers, an acidic edge to her voice. “Making decisions on his own, sending out birdie without even talking to me first.”

She’d simply acquiesced to cooperating with Skeptic, but from day one the complaints had never stopped. In this tiny room layered with sushi and cakes, Dabi was forced to listen to her whining.”

-- You go birb, you get that man

Completed

Equivalent Exchange by  inexchangeforyoursoul

“Keigo blinks the blurry oblivion away from his eyes, although some part of it is oddly stubborn and to stay indefinitely. There's three things he's certain of: first, he’s alive. Second, just by looking at the bed and windows he can tell this is no villain hospital or torture room. Third: something feels wrong. Very wrong.

The silence… is deafening.

xxx

To obtain, something of equal value must be lost.

If so, what of a bird that has lost its wings?”

-- i had so many feelings reading i can’t physically explain them to you also PINK HAIR DABI PINK HAIR DABI

Completed

dabi's 5-step guide to being a better parent than endeavor by  twinkfrankenstein (orphan_account)

“A little voice inside his head whispered spitefully about how this was no place for a child, and how he was making a mistake and would only traumatize the kid, yada yada. He responded with an equally spiteful-

“Fuck off, its not like I planned to do arson today.”

(or: how Dabi becomes a good dad just to spite his own, realizes he kinda sorta maybe likes Hawks for realsies, begrudgingly admits the League cares and finally comes to terms with his protective side. Not in that order.)“

-- this legit made me laught out loud idk what else tell you

Completed

The Todoroki In-Laws by  aphrodaisyacs

“Over 10 years after the fight against the Paranormal Liberation Front, Rumi, aka the part-time hero Miruko and the proud wife of one Todoroki Fuyumi, decides it would be an awesome idea to create a groupchat with the significant others of the other Todoroki siblings.

Maybe things would be easier if its members weren’t two Pro Heroes, a former one and a rehabilitated villain, but…Honestly, where’s the fun in that?”

-- this is not dabihawks focused but it’s so funny pls

Completed

With Being Petty Comes Consequences by  CursedUndead

“"When we were saying fuck pro heroes, I didn't think you literally meant FUCK them," Tomura grumbles, kicking over an empty beer can.

"Pretty judgmental for someone fucking a pro twice their age," Touya says.

Tomura squints, and says, "Ten years is not twice my age."

Or, after spending Enji's money, Touya is forced to babysit for the number 2 hero to pay him back. Touya makes it his life's mission to fuck his new boss.”

-- this only has 4 chapters but i know it’s going to be one of my faves

On-going

The Truth series by  AmethystUnarmed

-- Hawks gets hit with a truth quirk and starts to be actually free by the power of love, friendship and a bit of crime <3

The last entry is on-going

and if we sit and count it up it's really not a lot by  sincerelysamedt

“Hawks finds a bento box in his messenger bag and almost cries.

"Is that a loving wife bento?"“

-- please PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD READ THIS ONE /sobbing noises/

Completed

steal your heart by  darlingest

//Mature//

“When infamous thief Hawks announces that he is going to steal the heart of Endeavor's son, everyone expects him to prey on Shoto Todoroki - nobody suspects Touya to be the actual target.“

-- Villain Hawks and civilian Dabi are my guilty pleasure and this one it’s so soft too i’m- djsahfdjkfhadf

Completed

darling, thank god it’s this universe we’re in (and you can annoy me as much as you please) by  juurensha

“ Todoroki Rei divorces Endeavor and moves all four of her children into a small apartment next to a boy with wings as red as the hair of her eldest son. “

-- This was one of the first dabihawks fics i ever read and, to this day, i come back to it when i feel i need the extra burst in happy feelings and check their other works too! Honestly all are such a good fucking read

Completed

#ask #faerie-fang #this is not even half the fics i love #i can always show more but i was afraid of bugging again djsfhadf #honestly check ALL this authors you're not gonna regret it #fic rec #dabihawks

[fill-me-with-your-memes-daddy]

Watching the Rise of the Titans movie and I'll be documenting all of my thoughts/reactions here. [Spoiler Warning]

So instead of reblogging every new update, I'm just going to have this post up on my phone as I watch and type my reactions in a bullet list format.

Nari's human disguise is so cute. As someone who does have a cottagecore aesthetic, I want to cosplay her so bad

Are Skrael and/or Belroc non-binary coded? Regardless, I'm also obsessed and I want to fuck Skrael and be Belroc.

STEVE CARING ABOUT JIM BEING HURT YESSSS!!! My god his redemption has probably been one of the greatest there is because he doesn't just suddenly go from being a bully to a completely good person. You can see the gradual shift in learning better throughout the shows which is awesome.

IN NEW YOOOOOOORRRRRRRK!!!!!! CONCRETE JUNGLE WHERE DREAMS ARE MADE OFFFFFFFFFFFFF!!!!!

The mugshot montage reminded me of season 1 of trollhunters when toby and Jim were arrested at the museum.

STRICKLER PUT A RING ON IT??? HE'S THE ONLY DILF IVE EVER ACTUALLY AGREED WAS HOT WYM I CAN'T HAVE HIM??? well I'm still really happy about his arc over the series probably one of my favorite character growths.

Eli my guy got his growth spurt!!! As an 18 year old who is still 5'0", I'm happy but envious for him

So I went into this movie without watching any trailers or promo, but I doubt anything could have prepared me for the existence of mpreg. In fact, I wasn't going to document my reactions until I saw that.

NAMURA!!!!!!!!! MY BELOVED!!!!!! I CAN STILL THIRST FOR YOU WITHOUT GUILT

The coach teacher just called the kids zoomers so I have to dock one point from my final rating just because of that. Unforgivable

Those husky animation models suck lmao

Oh fuck the titans got power ranger zords!!

God why did they include the mpreg??? This movie would have been perfect without it.... After that plot point being revisited only one time I'm already beyond done with it

Like it's bringing me back to the v*ltron days where they're was a suspiciously high amount of klance omegaverse and mpreg fics and art created and it physically hurts because Steve and Keith's voice actor is the same person meaning this is especially cursed to me since I was unfortunately in the v*ltron fandom and remember all of that

But like on another note, how old are these characters again??? I haven't checked any wikis because of spoilers but is Steve an adult??? I know aja might be technically a lot older than 18 because alien but is whatever age she is equivalent to an adult as far as emotionally and physically in Akaridion development??? IS THIS A TEEN (M)PREGNANCY IN A KIDS SHOW????

Like bruh I saw a singular post on here before going into the movie that was like "rott spoilers without context" and there was a pregnant belly but I was absolutely not expecting the actual context of it. I'll find the post after I finish and edit this post to tag the creator right here: @makoden

This entire post is just gonna be me ranting about mpreg huh

Anyway I love the whole roundtable allusion to the legends of king arthur (not the toa version but the one he's based off)

THERE'S 3 TO 5 BABIES????? I need to take a break bruh this is just too much

Alright I've taken a 30 minute break got some food and did some things i love (decompressed by tactile stimming with some owl plushies and watched some videos on my favorite owl, Garu. He lives in Japan with his owner and is a domesticated eagle owl who basically just acts like a sky cat. If anyone else needs some eye bleach, here is their YouTube channel)

Blinky and ARRRGHHH!!! saying their "if one of us doesn't make it" talk my god one of them is going to die I can see it and I will be utterly crushed. Jim can't lose another father figure and Toby can't lose his wingman again I will riot if this happens

On a similar but unrelated to the movie note, can we just talk about how toa started with Jim having 0 dads and (if strickler and blinky live to the end) will end with 2 dads? Like I just really feel happy for him that he has two dads who actually figured out how to put the past behind them to not have any infighting between them so that both of them are healthy father figures. Jim has already been through literal hell and back losing his actual humanity in the process so if he loses one of them, I'm going to be really pissed because at this point, this is just Jim torture porn. Y'all know how as SpongeBob SquarePants went on, the show just became Squidward torture porn? It's starting to feel that way for toa and I really hope they cut the shit by the ending

Jlaire is such a good ship but like I feel like it's too perfect they never disagree with each other

YESSSSSSS Someone finally doesn't treat toby like a fat waste of space who messes stuff up!!! I think out of all the characters that would have been most deserving of a rewrite, it's Toby. Sometimes I just feel he's only comic relief and any heartfelt moments he's had in the series was also born of stupidity (ie his flour baby project being unharmed was seen by him as divine intervention from his parents but was actually just Eli and Steve behind the scenes).

Ohhhhh yesssssss Archie's father!!! I was hoping I'd see him again because we got so little of him last

Ooooooooooh Asian trollmarket!!!!!

Oh never mind slavery trollmarket

Bruh titanic camelot

I feel like we're not seeing enough of the villains because I completely forgot about the power ranger zord things

NAMORA NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MY LAST CRUSHHHH

STRICKLER NO NOT YOU TOO PLEASE

WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THE ONLY TWO CHARACTERS I SIMP FOR ON THIS SHOW DIED WITHIN FIVE MINUTES OF EACH OTHER

THAT WHOLE ASS RANT I WROTE IS COMING TRUE FUCK THIS MOVIE THIS SERIES IS JUST JIM TORTURE PORN

WAIT JIM'S SPERM DONOR INFO?

Oh thank God I don't want to know anything about that person

For the record, I call that man Jim's sperm donor because he has no business being called a father to him. All he did was donate some swimmers to the creation of him and give him abandonment issues

Oh another blind troll elder???? This fucker is just if vendel was a bad guy

Bruh I was grieving

PACIFIC RIM WITH GUN ROBOT VEX AND THE BELROCZORD? I've never seen that movie but I know the reference

Bruh Blinky doesn't read horoscopes? Does he realize conspiracy theories are just the manly version of horoscopes?

NO DON'T KILL VEX STOP KO-ING FOUND FAMILY MEMBERS

Oh thank God he's okay

NO NOT ARCHIE AND CHARLEMAGNE OH MY GOD

oh never mind they're just gonna coup de tat I believe in them :))

But I want to see him again

But I'm glad to see vex

Yay they're in arcadia!

But yeah I wondered why the trolls and Merlin didn't keep the whole "daylight doesn't hurt trolls" feature from the eternal night but now Guillermo del Toro I see you were playing the long con in that just to kill my girl Namora :(((

Oooooh I love the animation of the Narizord over Chihuahua!! It looks very good and realistic (if only they could have put some of that into those huskies from before smh)

Bruh the character designs of the arcane order are so good I want to be them

Nari making sure the Skraelzord doesn't crush the bus

DAMN DOUBLE HOMICIDE

Bruh I'm just glad we finally have an answer on why arcadia had everything going on as opposed to literally anywhere else!! I always found that as a weird coincidence for plot convince.

BRUH WERE BACK TO THE MPREG IM SO JEALOUS I FORGOT ABOUT THAT EVEN THOUGH IT WAS BECAUSE I WAS GRIEVING THE LOSS OF MY LOVELIES.

Oh that's real convenient that the ninth configuration meant all of them. Way to not decide which character gets more attention. Though it probably was a smart way to not have any infighting in the fandom between each character's stan group.

Bruh I just realized where is Barbera did they just ditch her on the Camelot ship???

And where are the other trolls that migrated at the end of trollhunters s3? They said something about new jersey but obviously Jim and the other main characters got on Camelot instead.... This feels like a plot hole

And we never learned the process of how changelings are made and bonded to humans and stuff. We just know it's super painful but I'm curious ffs!!!!

THE DONT THINK BECOME HERO SPEECH ALL SAID TOGETHER!!!

BRUH THEY REALLY HAD TO SHOW HIM GIVING BIRTH??????? WAS THAT AN ABSOLUTE MUST??????

Plus the main audience for this series is little children (the rating for the movie is literally TV-Y7) so even though my adult ass is not in the target audience, I STILL DONT UNDERSTAND WHY WOULD MPREG AND ANAL BIRTH WOULD BE AN IMPORTANT THING TO 7 YEAR OLDS???? THIS IS A LITERAL FETISH HIDDEN IN KIDS CONTENT ITS ELSAGATE ALL OVER AGAIN Y'ALL 😭😭😭😭😭

Though it's probably hypocritical of me to think fetishes don't belong in kids tv when I've openly admitted to thirsting for strickler and namora

HUZZAH

NEW AMULET WAZ GOOD????

STAB THAT BITCH JIM

WAIT NO I SAID STAB NOT GET STABBED

Alright good job just missed the directions at first but you fixed it

SEVEN KIDS?????????

T O B Y ????????????

W A I T NO

N O

IS HE ACTUALLY

OH MY GOD THERE'S HOPE

NO THERE ISN'T

F U C K THIS SHIT THEY REALLY JUST HAD HIM TO BE BULLIED THEN KILLED

Y'ALL IM ACTUALLY CRYING THIS NEVER HAPPENS

I NEVER ACTUALLY GET SO EMOTIONAL OVER MEDIA THAT I CRY IT ONLY HAPPENED ONCE AT THE END OF VOLTRON BUT AHHHHHHHH

W A I T

HE'S GONNA BE BROUGHT BACK?????

HOLD UP THEY'RE JUST GONNA BRING ALL THOSE DEAD PEOPLE BACK??????

WAIT IS HE

BLINKY CALLED HIM A SON

HOLD ON IS THIS GOING TO BE A CLIFFHANGER???????????

BRUH THEY REALLY JUST CAN'T END THE SERIES WITHOUT CLIFFHANGERS like there's always an open ending

TROLLHUNTER TOBY????? You know what forget the whole rants I had on how toby was written they just redeemed it all

And that's all! I'd rate it a 6.5/10 because it's definitely the weakest of all the sequels but still had amazing animation and some good plot points. It's just really hard to look over the bad stuff enough to rate it any higher.

#tales of arcadia #rise of the titans #trollhunters #rott #rise of the titans spoilers #rott spoilers #toa #3 below #athena's own original post! #jim lake jr #claire nuñez #toby domzalski

[wolferine]

Forgiven

Natasha Romanoff x Reader

Summary: One-shot sequel to my “Unforgivable” series. After being paralyzed in an accident, Natasha reunites with her lover who caused the accident in the first place.

Warnings: Mentions of torture, language

Word count: 2300

Tags: @yeetus-thyself @phoenixofash @yeeterthekeeper @alessiapn @diaryoflife @norwaynatasharomanoff @lovelyy-moonlight @nightingalxx @supersourlemon13

AN: This one’s for you, @allhailthelesbian! :)

You do not have to read the previous story to follow this one!

Something shifts in your arms and you instinctively tighten them, feeling a tickle of hair across your nose.

“Y/N,” Natasha whispers, “You squeeze me any harder and I’m gonna choke to death.”

“Huh?” You loosen your arms and open your eyes, finding your red-haired, green-eyed beauty staring back at you.

“Good morning,” she says.

“Good morning.” You close your eyes again and press your foreheads together.

“Ready for a workout?” she asks.

You chuckle. “It’s been a while since I’ve done one of those.”

She traces her finger over your bicep. While you’ve lost some weight in the past few months, you’ve still got some wiry strength, but you know you have some catching up to do. 

“Really? I couldn’t tell,” she says. “But my legs don’t even work and I’m not using that as an excuse.”

“Okay, okay,” you sigh. “Five more minutes?”

“Fine. Only because I need your help getting to the bathroom, anyway.”

“Oh.” Your eyes fly back open. Although Natasha’s been living with her condition for more than six months, it’s still your first week back with her and sometimes you forget her needs are different than before you left. “I can just get up now—” you start.

“It’s fine,” she says, pushing you back onto the bed as you try to sit up.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Ask me again in five minutes.” She snuggles closer to you and her breath is hot against your collarbone. You close your eyes again and feel her touch the starburst of a scar on your cheek from where her bullet had struck your face.

“I’m sorry for hurting you,” she whispered.

“Hmm?”

“When I fired my gun, I wasn’t trying to hurt you,” she says. “I just wanted to distract you. But then my bullet bounced off the pole and hit you in the face.”

“It’s okay,” you reply, knowing you’ve done far worse to her. A minor blemish was nothing compared to losing control of your legs.

Ten minutes later, Natasha announces she needs to use the bathroom. You sit up without being told twice and pick her up bridal-style, carrying her into the bathroom. Tony had made some modifications, such as adding handlebars near the toilet and inside the shower and lowering the medicine cabinet for easier access.

“Can you bring my wheelchair in? So you don’t have to keep carrying me back and forth,” Natasha asks as you help situate her on the toilet.

“I don’t mind,” you say.

“But I do,” she says.

Without argument, you move her wheelchair from the bedroom to the bathroom. “Holler if you need me,” you say, closing the door and going to change into a tank top and shorts. When you’re done, you hear water running in the sink and can’t help asking, “Everything okay in there?”

“Uh-huh! Jus’ brushin’ my teef!”

“Okay! Take your time.” You don’t want to be overbearing but you want to be ready to help when she needs it. Tony had talked to you about how independent she was; she insisted on learning how to do everything for herself, not liking the help of caregivers or nurses. 

Obviously, she was more comfortable asking you for help than a stranger, but you knew her well enough to know that she hated showing any signs of vulnerability, even if she really needed help.

Natasha rolls out of the bathroom and you trade spots with her, using the toilet and brushing your teeth. When you come out, she’s by the closet with her back towards you. She has on a workout shirt and struggles to pull a pair of shorts up her legs.

“Do you need some help?” you ask. Tony had told you to always ask first instead of jumping right in.

“Yes, please.” Natasha sighs. The shorts are hooked around her feet. “It’s…It’s a little hard for me to reach sometimes.”

“That’s okay.” You kneel and shimmy the shorts over her knees. 

“Can you pick me up so I can pull them on?” she asks.

“Sure.” You wrap your arms under hers and gently lift her high enough for her to pull the shorts up to her hips.

“Thanks.” You set her back down and help her put her shoes on. “All ready?”

“Let’s go.”

You go down to the Avengers’ state-of-the-art gym, containing every single piece of workout equipment you’re humanly aware of. There are weights up to the ton and a 12-foot deep Olympic-sized swimming pool.

“What did you have in mind today?” you ask as you walk next Natasha. She rolls suspiciously close to the swimming pool and you wish you could squeeze yourself on the other side of her to make sure she doesn’t fall in.

“Leg day,” she says.

“Huh?”

“Kidding!” Natasha laughs when suddenly, her wheelchair catches on the end of a loose pool noodle someone had left out and she launches from her wheelchair into the pool. If the situation hadn’t been so serious, you would’ve cried from laughter, but instead your heart drops to your feet and you jump into action—literally.

“Nat!” you scream, diving in headfirst. Underwater, you open your eyes, letting the chlorine burn into them, and see the blurry shape of Natasha bobbing up to the surface. You swim towards her and when lift your head to take a breath, you find her howling in laughter.

“What are you laughing at?” you ask, coughing up a mouthful of water.

“I’ve been swimming every day since the accident, babe,” she says, doing a much better job of treading water than you. And she doesn’t even have use of her legs. “I’m not going to drown.”

“Well, I might.” Your head dips under and you swallow a mouthful of water. Natasha wraps her hand around your arm and yanks you up.

“Seriously?” she asks.

“Haven’t…swam…in a while,” you choke.

“So, you thought you could jump in and save me when you can barely save yourself?” Natasha shakes her head, but admires your blinding love for her. She drags you over to the wall and grabs the pool noodle. “Use this.” 

You bend the noodle under your arms, grateful for the moment of rest.

“Okay, let’s go do a few laps now!” She paddles away before you can protest. Grudgingly, you kick after her.

***********************************************************************

An hour later, you’re so exhausted you can barely walk and you’re tempted to ask Natasha if she’ll let you sit on her lap while you go back up to your room.

“Shower together?” Natasha asks, and there’s a hint of shyness in her voice.

“Sure.” You’ve already seen there’s plenty of room for the both of you. First, you get Natasha settled into her shower chair before you turn around and take your dripping workout clothes off.

It’s the first time she’s seen you naked since you left. Her eyes trace over the visible bones of your ribs and the scars crisscrossing your back. There’s a burn in the shape of a triangle on the back of your left shoulder, where Hammer had tried to brand you with his logo. Because he didn’t see you as a person, but his property.

Natasha knows that although she’s had a difficult past six months, you had been in your own hell.

You turn towards her and see the sadness in her eyes. “What’s wrong?” you ask.

She doesn’t say anything and offers her hand, pulling you into the shower. You turn on the water, removing the showerhead from the wall to spray over the both of you. There is nothing sexual in any of your actions as you help each other shampoo your hairs and wash your bodies. However, the closeness is still intimate and comforting.

Afterwards, you both dry off and get dressed, going into the kitchen for breakfast. Falling back into a routine with your girlfriend—even after six months—is the easiest thing you ever did. But even though it’s almost like you never left, things aren’t exactly the same, and you want to make up for the lost time as much as you can.

***********************************************************************

When lunchtime rolls around, Natasha suggests taking you to your favorite diner. You haven’t driven a car in six months, so you’re a little nervous when you go down to the garage, until Natasha insists that she’ll drive instead. She takes you over to her black Corvette Stingray, which never fails to make you whistle.

You help her into the driver’s seat, noticing the specialized hand control Tony installed so she could work the pedals with a hand lever. You make a mental note to thank him again for being so generous in caring for your girlfriend in your absence. When you sit in the passenger seat, it feels just like old times.

“Don’t crash,” you tease.

“Oh, please,” Natasha scoffs. “I can’t even use my legs and I’m still a better driver than you.” 

“Ouch.”

You watch as she expertly maneuvers the steering wheel with her left hand while her right hand pushes and pulls on the handle for the brake and gas pedal.

“You look so badass,” you say.

She looks at you and smiles. “I know.”

“I think I’ll just have you drive me around from now on.” You close your eyes and relax in the seat.

When you arrive at the diner’s parking lot, Natasha skips over the blue handicapped stalls and parks across from them.

“You don’t want to park there?” you ask, pointing to an empty blue stall.

She shakes her head. “Maybe someone else needs it more than me,” she says. “After all, they don’t have you to carry them around.” She tries to make a joke out of it, but you can tell she’s a little embarrassed. It’s also the reason she’s so hesitant to drive her Corvette around: most people who see it assume she’s a jackass trying to take advantage of a handicapped spot.

She’s had people scratch her doors and leave ugly notes on the windshield. One time, before she even had the chance to get out of the car, a group of people had gathered at her door to cuss her out. Their red faces of embarrassment and stuttered apologies when Tony helped her into her wheelchair was something she would never forget.

You get her wheelchair out of the trunk and set it next to her door, helping her into it. Inside the restaurant, the waitress removes one of the chairs at your table so Natasha can sit next to you. You don’t even bother looking at the menu, knowing exactly what you want.

You end up finishing all of your food and Natasha’s leftovers, and she can only laugh at your appetite.

“Hammer didn’t you feed you enough?” she teases.

“I’m pretty sure the stuff he gave me can’t even be counted as food,” you respond.

“Before we go home, I want to take you somewhere special,” she says as you leave the restaurant. “I visit it once a week.”

“Let’s do it.”

She drives you to a high school. But since it’s the weekend, the parking lot is empty except for a few cars. Natasha takes you inside. As you go down the hall with her, she grabs onto your hand.

“You don’t need both hands to roll?” you joke.

“I just like being close to you,” she says. Her wheelchair is at the perfect height that you don’t have to strain your shoulder lower to hold her hand. She directs you into a classroom, and when you step inside, you see some people already there. 

They’re all in wheelchairs.

You suddenly feel angry at Natasha for bringing you here. Was she trying to make you feel even more guilty for what you had done to her? These people were all going through their own pain, and here you were having caused that exact same pain to your own lover.

“Hey, everyone,” Natasha says with a confidence in her voice you haven’t heard yet. “This is my partner I’ve told you all about, Y/N.”

“Hi, Y/N!” they chorus. You cringe, wondering how much of yourself Natasha told them. Some of them are like her, paralyzed from the waist down, while others move their wheelchairs around by blowing into tubes or pressing a remote hanging from their necks.

You move out to the hallway and Natasha follows you.

“Why did you bring me here?” you whisper, your stomach churning. You feel like you’ve intruded on something private, something you don’t have the right to be a part of. “What were you thinking—” 

“Please stay,” she begs. “They’re all my friends, and some of them bring their partners along, too. It’s not an exclusive club or anything. We tell stories and learn how to get through things together.

“My condition changed everything for me, but it’s also a change for you. I want to make sure you get the support you need. Because there’s not just two of us in this relationship anymore,” she continues, and you raise your eyebrow. “It’s me, you, and my condition.

“I don’t want you to feel like I’m your burden or you’re my caregiver. I’m still the same as I always was. I can’t do everything myself and I might need your help. It’s just a different kind of help than before.”

You kneel and cup her face. “I love you, Nat. I’ll be here for you, whenever and whatever you need,” you promise.

She leans forward to kiss you. “I know.”

And with that kiss, you feel her forgiveness wash over you, cleansing you of the guilt and trauma of what you did. She had already forgiven you, a long time ago. You couldn’t continue to be so hard on yourself if you wanted the relationship to work. 

You know it won’t be an easy journey, and it’s only the beginning, but with Natasha by your side again, you feel completely unstoppable.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

AN: I was definitely nervous writing this as I have little experience working with people with paralysis, so I did some research and hope I did it justice! If there’s anything out of place, please let me know. :)

Join my taglist for future stories here! Thanks for reading, and until next time…

#natasha romanoff x reader #black widow x reader #natasha x reader #natasha romanoff fanfic #black widow fanfiction #natasha romanoff #black widow #marvel imagine

[yikesharringrove]

Agitation (or disturbance of the mind)

Here is my piece for the Harringrove Big Bang!! I’m so so proud of how this piece turned out and I’m so excited to share it! @harringrovebigbang

Read on Ao3 (highly recommended. It’s over 16k).

Special thanks to my beta readers @thinger-strang @crispysteve without whom this story would’ve been scrapped in many fits of emotions.

Art for this story to be linked soon by @thedogsled

Check out this amazing moodboard by @memes-saved-me !!

Enjoy!

-

Steve Harrington is a liar. 

He always has been. 

Nearly everything about him is a perfectly crafted facade. 

From the story of his family’s move to Hawkins when he was eight, to the smile that slides easily onto his face when he tells Robin I’m fine. 

Steve is a liar. 

But it's all out of necessity. All for the greater of some good he isn’t all that clear on anymore. 

It was always about protection. 

Protecting his friends and everyone in Hawkins from the truth about Hawkins National Laboratory. 

Then it was about protecting himself from his powers. 

From the way his words had a knack of worming their way into someone’s brain. Of setting up shop inside and clanging around until they could do nothing but bow to his suggestion. 

Just because he could get his way with the right inflection and the telltale shiver down his spine, didn’t mean that that was okay. 

It was drilled into him the first night he arrived in Hawkins. 

After his file was stamped with a large red mark that read defective, he was given to one of the scientists and her husband. 

The Harringtons. 

A normal new family from Eastern Oklahoma. 

That’s what they told everyone. 

That’s what they made sure Steve parroted to everyone in his brand new school. 

His new father took a cigar to the tattoo on his wrist, welting the flesh with an ugly burn. He ignored Steve’s screams and tears. 

You have to fit in here, Steven, he had said, the cigar smoldering between his fingers, Steve clutching his wrist, eyes shining with tears. You have to fit in and be normal. 

So Steve lied. 

He smiled and told everyone he came from a normal family from normal Oklahoma. He said that he lived in a normal house, and read normal books, and played normal sports. 

And he tried, and failed, to convince himself the lab was a dream.

-

“We should do something after this.”

Steve was careful to keep his voice casual. He didn’t want to let Robin in on how much he was dreading returning to his empty house tonight. 

Robin didn’t acknowledge him. She was sorting the returned movies, placing them in piles of genre so they could easily be returned to their proper section. 

Steve quietly lifted his leg, and lightly kicked her hip. 

She glared at him. 

“Quit ignorin’ me. Just say yes, or no.” It’s not like if she said no it would crush him or anything. No. It’s fine. 

“I just have a bunch of homework that’s all, like, due tomorrow,” she said it slowly, as though telling him a beloved relative had died. 

Was it that obvious how lonely he is?

“Don’t worry about it, Buck.” Robin took school real serious. She had perfect grades every year and had already applied to sixteen colleges and universities, including four Ivy League options. 

So Steve didn’t blame her for not skulking around with him. 

With college-less, nowhere bound Steve. 

“I’m really sorry,” she began, getting that sad look in her eye like that night in the mall bathroom when Steve spilled his drugged-out guts. Literally, and metaphorically. 

“Nah, I was just lookin’ for something to do. It’s okay, Robin. Really.”

And it was. 

Almost. 

It’s just that, Steve’s not got a lot going for him right now. 

He’s got a big empty house, and a brain that likes to give him excessive nightmares, and one age-appropriate friend in the whole place. 

But he doesn’t wanna talk about all that shit. 

And Robin looked like there was something on the tip of her tongue. Something her teeth were barely holding back. 

So Steve just scooped up the stack of neatly ordered Action films, and made his way over to the far shelf, taking himself out of the situation before it would get to a place that would only make him lie more and more. 

Robin means well. He knows she does. 

It just feels like a lot of her well-meaning chats end up with Steve lying through his fucking teeth and Robin nearly in tears of frustration at his lack of openness with her. 

She feels like being tortured and drugged together gives them a close kind of kinship very few share. 

Steve feels like he’s got just too much fucked-up baggage to dump on her. 

Not when they’re trying to put the Upside Down behind them. 

Not that Steve could ever put it behind him. 

He felt something build in his gut. Something hot and heavy. Something that always meant his powers were scraping at the walls of the neat little cave he had shut them in. Something that meant his skin would burn until he unleashed some of his pent-up energy. 

He took a deep breath, blowing out the air slowly through his nose. 

He had rules to his power. Rules he had given himself, mostly. Things he’d never use his powers for. 

He tried to avoid his powers at all costs, but he had seen what could happen if he tried to tamp them down. It was less dangerous to open the lid of the box just a tiny bit. 

Especially if he did it right. 

He made his way back over to Robin, finding that spot in his brain that made a shudder zip down his spine. The spot that was made of cold and electric heat. 

It was always too simple when he let the power take over. 

Locate her feeling. Let him consume him. 

And then just, twist it as much as he wants. 

“Robin,” he spoke slowly, honing his suggestion. “You don’t have to feel bad about not spending time with me tonight.”

He felt her sadness and guilt about the evening recede about as fast as the tide. 

She really shouldn’t feel bad about ditching him, especially not when her education is the main priority. 

He matched her lazy grin, wiping his nose discreetly, only a small drop of blood smeared against his hand. 

The rest of the shift passed without incident, and the roaring feeling in Steve’s gut had been sated enough for the time being. 

So he pushed it back out of his mind, and returned to his empty house. 

He was saving up to get his own place. He really was. But it was easier this way. He didn’t pay any bills, had lots of space to himself, and a pool in the backyard (that he never used). 

And it’s hard for him to explain, but there’s something tugging him back into this house all the time. 

He doesn’t know if it’s because it’s the only home he ever knew after the pain and fear that was his childhood in the lab, or if it’s something else that makes him feel tethered to the too-big house. 

Sometimes he thought there was a sense of safety in the old place. 

With parents that spent excessive amounts of time doing research for things he didn’t understand but was sure were important, it was largely an emotion-free place. 

Which was good for Steve. 

High emotion situations made his power boil up and spill over the edge like a pot of water on the stove. 

A place like his empty house, he could keep everything in check. Not get his feelings tangled with those around him. Not catch thoughts that were just beginning to be molded into something brand new. 

He clambered into bed, punching his pillows around in a way that was decidedly not petulant. 

There was a steady silence in the old house. A silence that was as depressing as it was easy on his brain. 

And there wasn’t silence. 

Creaks. 

Creaks issuing from downstairs. From the floorboards in the hallway. 

Footsteps. 

Steve was out of bed in a second, bat held aloft in as close to ready position as he could maintain while bolting down the stairs in his socks and faded green gym shorts. 

He knew how to navigate the house without a sound. Practice of tip-toeing around a volatile not-father kinda ended up giving him something useful. 

The creaks were still progressing, moving up the hallway from the back of the house, where his parents’ empty bedroom sat still. 

The person was getting closer, lumbering slowly as if they were trying to be quiet themselves. 

Steve adjusted his grip on the bat, taking proper batting stance, ready for the intruder to round the corner into his section of the hall. 

First sign of a person, and Steve would swing. 

No questions asked. 

The floorboard before the bend in the hall gave a loud sound, and he could’ve sworn he heard someone curse under their breath. 

He closed his eyes, and swung. 

His bat sailed through the air, and connected with, not an intruder. 

And then he was filled with an overwhelming sense of fear. A completely feral state of fight or flight made him nearly bare his teeth in an animalistic growl. He felt fear, and dread, and pure stubborn, stupid resolve. 

It nearly blinded him, the emotions were so thick and clear. 

And then there whooshed out of him, as though being sucked up by a feelings vacuum, leaving him empty and confused. 

His top lip was covered in blood. 

He had a lot of fucking questions as he stared at the bat, hanging by it’s long nails in the hallway wall, the ominous creaking moving past him towards the stairs. 

The footsteps that were caused by no one. 

It’s official. 

Steve’s lost it. 

He’s fucking crazy. 

He’s hearing footsteps and voices swearing quietly, and he’s going mad and completely batshit and should be tucked away in a padded room for the rest of his life. 

He didn’t even bother to wrench the bat out of the wall as he stumbled after the imagined footsteps. 

He clearly needed to get a good night’s sleep, and to forget that anything happened at all tonight. 

-

Billy hates Harrington’s house. 

He doesn’t, really. It’s given him excellent shelter while he pulled himself together, and it’s out of town enough to serve as a good base for the little gang of Lost Boys he had accumulated. 

It’s just that, the old house likes to make a lot of noise. 

It keeps him on edge. 

Every squealing door hinge, and every creaky floorboard sets his teeth on edge and makes him whip around in a frenzy, expecting to see a demogorgon snarling at him from the sitting room. 

He nearly had a heart attack when he heard the thuds coming from upstairs. 

He generally liked to avoid the top floor of the house. 

Harrington’s bedroom was up there, and it wigged him out something fierce. He’d only been in the dilapidated version of it one time, his first night in the house he had claimed for safety. 

He didn’t intend to stay the night in there, he had just stumbled upon it, and curled up in the bed. 

He remembers not sleeping the entire night. He was so scared after coming to in the library, something slimy and disgusting slipping its way out of his throat. 

The whole place had been screaming, as though the Upside Down itself was alive. Alive and being horrifically murdered. 

He didn’t know what it was called then, all he knew was that Harrington’s house was the first one he came across, and that Harrington’s room was depressingly empty and impersonal. 

But, there was a thudding coming from that general area, and if some kinda shitty creature was making its way into the house, he needed to hedge it off before it did any damage. 

He took hold of his ax, never far from his side these days, and slipped out of his cot. 

The floorboards in the hallway were creaky, and he tried to walk slowly, muffling his footsteps as much as he could in his heavy boots, not wanting to warn the monster he was coming for it. 

He cataloged the crew in his head: Hopper had his troop of three in the basement where they were resting up for the supply run tomorrow. Timothy was on nightwatch with his team of five. Billy was in a pack with four others; Heather Holloway, her mother, Janet, and the two boys they found skulking around the library the same night everyone seemed to wake up. One of the boys was called Andrew. The other hadn’t spoken a single word the entire time they’d been trapped. 

Billy liked to call him by different names each time he referred to the kid. Trying to get him to laugh. He couldn’t’ve been more than seven years old, and he was trapped in this fucking hellscape with the rest of them. 

Andrew was thirteen. Billy didn’t like to look at him much. Andrew reminded him of Max. Which made Billy feel empty and achy in a way he didn’t think was very productive for survival.

But Andrew took a shine to Janet Holloway. Probably missing his mother and needing more comfort than his thirteen-year-old self was willing to admit.

The Holloway women were a hell of a lot feistier than Bill originally gave them credit for, saving his ass in a scrap just as often as he had been there for theirs. Heather and Janet were equal parts caring and soft, with the right amounts of clever and bossy to take point on their team. 

Billy let himself be the muscle. 

He let himself be the watchdog and attack dog. He took nightwatches and never let his weapons out of his grasp.

Everyone had a role. 

And that was perfectly okay.

They had to keep together in this world. They wouldn’t survive it otherwise. 

They’d all lost enough people to understand that. 

One of the boards gave a hefty creak under his left foot, and he breathed a quiet fuck through his bandana, listening for more of the thudding. 

It had stopped about forty seconds before, Billy had counted, and he couldn’t hear any other sounds of something forcing its way inside. Plus, the nightwatch hadn’t sounded any alarms. 

He took another step, ax held ready and aloft in case he came face to ugly face with one of the horrible creatures that prowled the night. 

He rounded the corner, and there was a loud bang on the wall next to his head. 

He jumped as paint chipped off the wall and flew all over him. 

He was hit with a feeling of intense fear, and adrenaline rush that caused all the blood in his ears to rush. He looked wildly around, seeing, nothing. 

Billy bared his teeth, ready to go down fucking swinging. 

As long as he took the fucker down with him, that’s all that matters. 

Save the rest. 

And he stood, ready to fight, ready to die. 

And there was nothing.

Nothing in the hallway. He was all alone. 

None of this shit made any sense. He hadn’t dreamed the wall cracked beside his head, and looking back, there were holes in the wall, and a big dent that had splinted the white paint and drywall beneath it. 

There was some fucked up shit going on, and Billy didn’t like it one bit. 

He continued down the hall, creeping to the stairs to check the original source of the noises that had woken him up. 

Harrington’s room was pretty much just as he remembered it from that first night in the house. 

It was sparse and sad-looking. The covers on the bed were all jostled and thrown around, the horrible spindle-like vines covering nearly every surface in the room. 

They had cleared the tendrils in other rooms, cutting them and burning them back, ensuring the vines didn’t start creeping over them when they weren’t looking. 

Billy didn’t fancy being covered and tethered by the slimy black vines. He was pretty much over all this Upside Down shit. 

He took a cursory look around Harrington’s room, not noticing any signs of forced entry from a creature, really nothing was out of place. 

The meager school trophies on the bookshelf next to the closet looked rotted and tarnished, just like everything else in this absolute hell called a parallel universe. There were few pictures in this room, much like the whole house. It had taken Billy a long time to notice the lack of inhabitancy the house had. The way it seemed to feel so cold and empty, it would be that way in the real world too. 

His eyes swept over the dilapidated dresser, cataloging the room quickly for anything that should worry him. 

Billy deemed the whole scene safe, and made sure to close the door tightly as he retreated back downstairs. 

-

Steve’s going fucking crazy. 

He was still in bed, his alarm clock ringing angrily at him as it had for the past six minutes. 

He hadn’t slept at all last night. 

Something just felt. Off. 

The feelings in his chest were scrambled, and they felt foreign to him. Like he had taken in somebody else’s emotions. 

But proximity was the key to his power, and he was alone. Alone alone. 

Like, the closest person was Mrs. Gardfeld in the next house, all the way across their combined, much too big, yards. 

It felt like. It felt like someone was in the house with him. Someone was in the house with him, and they were scared, and stubborn, and tired, and a flurry of things that made Steve feel ill. 

And he couldn’t push them out. 

He couldn’t find the chasm between this slew of someone else’s shit, and his own messy cocktail of feelings. 

The other feelings were like those awful vines in the tunnel. Snaking around under his feet, wiggling up his ankles and keeping him stuck in the mud. Wrapping around his own emotions and squeezing until they just merged into one. 

He’s lost the metaphor. 

Doesn’t matter. 

His feelings are fucked and his brain is fucked and his day is fucked. 

And he has to work a double at Family Fuckin’ Video. 

He found his way out of bed. Not going very far, just standing next to his warm nest of blankets, debating getting back in and hiding for the rest of his life. 

He was going to be late for work. 

He didn’t really give a fuck. 

Keith would be all smug and probably make some remarks about Steve not even being worth the less-than-minimum wage he was making. 

He took a shower, not so much cleaning himself as letting the lukewarm water cascade down on him and hope it got rid of the stench of sweat and anxiety and bad sleep that was clinging angrily to his skin. 

His brain was empty. 

Empty save for the pounding otherness that were these horrible fucking feelings. 

Robin didn’t even have the heart to call him out for being nearly half an hour late.

“You look like shit.”

No, she just called him out for looking like shit. 

“Y’know, it’s really wonderful to have such a caring and thoughtful friend in these trying times.”

She rolled her eyes. He always told her one day she was gonna get stuck like that. With her eyes permanently fixed towards the ceiling in exasperation. 

“Drop the attitude, Steve Harrington. Just because you didn’t sleep doesn’t mean I have to suffer.” 

Sometimes it was hard to tell if she was joking. Steve just clenched his jaw and stared at her blankly. Either she would get mad at him, or sigh and roll her eyes. 

She sighed and rolled her eyes. 

Bingo. 

She wasn’t actually mad at him. 

“You okay?”

“Jus’, some weirdness. Bad vibes.”

He couldn’t give her more than that. Couldn’t say I can feel someone else in my house and I don’t know if someone is hiding in my house or if I’m going crazy, oh and by the way, I was one of those freaky lab kids and I can manipulate and feel people’s thoughts and emotions, by the way.

That’s too much for a slow shift on a Saturday morning. 

That’s too much for really any time of any day.

No, Steve fully plans to take all that shit to the grave. Like a real man, his dad would say. 

“Well, if you could take your bad vibes back to rewind duty, that would leave all the good vibes up here to me.” She shooed him off with her hand, landing a quick slap square on his left asscheck when he groaned and dragged his feet dramatically on his way to the back room. 

Not that Steve would ever actually complain about rewind duty. Steve preferred doing it to anything else in the place. Especially re-shelving. That was just asking for someone to come ask him for a movie recommendation. Steve only watched the same five campy old westerns and when he recommends any of those, people seem to wanna get out of his face right quick. 

No, rewinding was dull and monotonous and solitary, all the shit that Steve really needed on a day like today. 

There was a strict routine and he didn’t have to think or do anything. 

Just sit. New tape. Rewind. Put in case. Put in re-shelve bucket. New tape. Rewind. Put in case. And again and again and again until all the tapes were ready to go. 

Hawkins tended to take out a lot of movies on the weekend. Not much else to do when you aren’t sixteen and ready to hit up any party you could possibly weasel your way into. 

So, Steve had about fifty some odd tapes to rewind from the past few days and he was feeling benignly excited about sitting in the small room for most of his shift. 

It was easy to pass the shift like that. 

Sitting with the quiet whirring of the tapes being tracked back to the beginning. Not having to deal with anyone’s thoughts except his own tedious ones about when he should take his lunch break and reminding himself to check the TV Guide for anything good tonight. 

It was an odd emptiness that took hold of him throughout the day. And he almost felt, well. 

Lonely. 

He almost felt lonely. 

Which is fucking bonkers because that horrible feeling of someone else had well and truly fucked him over last night, and well into this morning, but he kind. Missed. The other presence. 

He’s officially crazy. 

Someone find this boy a padded fucking cell because Steve Harrington has officially gone all kinds of batshit bananas wacky. 

He’s feeling lonely because the horrible not his feelings of fear and anger and betrayal and desperation aren’t clogging up his little brain sink. Even when they were, the brain sink was threatening to burst and leak all over his brain kitchen. 

Or something to that effect. 

He let his eyes unfocus, watching Jaws at double speed and backward for the fourth time that day. 

There was something about the foreign feelings he just couldn’t quite wrap his head around. 

Something twinging in the back of his brain, screaming at him to open his eyes and pay attention. 

But that’s never been Steve’s strong suit. 

-

“Stupid. Fucking. Vines .”

Hopper muttered to himself a lot. 

It was usually too muffled underneath his own bandana face covering and the hefty beard he had been sporting to discern whatever he was thinking, but it’s not like hating the awful black tendrils of gross plant/monster/everything-that-made-up-the-Upside-Down hybrid of vine-ish tentacles was something that just Hopper experienced. 

It was a sentiment they all shared as they hacked away at the new growth in the dilapidated Bradley’s Big Buys. 

They had already ransacked the general store five times over, and took as much as they could salvage from the wreckage of the other-dimensional mall. 

Supplies were needed, and they had to be smart about it. 

Things had been quiet lately. 

Not many beasties out and about since the night they all seemed to come to. 

Hopper had said something about the gate closing and the brain being cut off from the body. 

Billy hadn’t listened. 

He’d been scared off his ass and all that had really registered was clear for now. 

So, they made supply runs. And poked around town for any survivors left to take back to Basecamp Harrington. Only Billy called it that. 

They had the runs down to a system. 

Pry away any vines they could, burning them back as they went, making enough room to slip into the bargain store, gather as much canned food and grimy medical supplies as they could manage, and book it back to the relative safety of the big house on the edge of the forest. 

Nobody talked about what they’d do when they ran out of supplies. When they’d exhausted their resources and were stuck with nothing but the vines on the ground and the spores in the air. 

Billy got it. 

It’s not like he wants to hear he’ll probably die of starvation and/or a gangrenous infection before he’s eighteen. 

They just. Make do. 

Ration food and keep each other safe. 

Always thinking about the minute they’re in and the minute coming up. Not looking too far forward. 

There’s nothing to see too far in the future. 

Billy crashed the blunt end of his ax through the sliding door at the front of the store, clearing away as much as he could. 

Janet and Andrew would slip inside first go, taking as much as they could carry with them. Next round, Heather would take the little one and gather anything left. 

Billy would keep watch. 

He always kept watch. 

Things had been too good for too long. 

After the first wave of those who didn’t make it, the whole broken side of the Earth was too kind to them. Not sending horrible fleshy monsters to nearly suck out their very souls. 

Billy didn’t think this could last for much longer. 

Heather took the little one by the hand, rushing past her mother and Andrew as they returned with their supplies. Billy did a quick scan of them, noting no new injuries. Nothing out of the norm. 

Supply runs were choreographed down to the minute. 

Should the group not return in forty-five minutes, a search team was sent out. 

The small group trudged back to the Harrington safehouse, keeping in the shadows, not a single one of them daring to speak. Billy walked slightly behind the others, never letting himself relax for a single second. 

Things were too quiet.

-

The feeling hit Steve over the head like a sack of bricks being whacked against his skull. 

Walking into his home was like walking into a stinking den of fear and anxiety. The air was clogged with so many emotions Steve felt like he was choking on them, slowly being crushed under their weight. 

Whoever was emitting all these, Steve felt sorry for them. He can’t imagine living with this much bad energy taking up space in someone’s brain. He could barely cope with his own terrible bullshit. He doesn’t know how someone could cope with this. 

He tried to move through his evening to the best of his ability. 

He nearly set the house on fire when he left the tin foil covering on his frozen meal, causing the microwave to spark angrily at him, the potatoes underneath the corner of foil that had nearly caught fire to smolder and blacken. 

Even in the shower, the water as hot and steamy as he could stand, he felt that prickle he couldn’t get rid of. 

Like if he could just close his eyes and reach out far enough, his fingers would brush someone else. Someone nearby. 

He’s felt it before. That there was a person just out of reach. A person he could feel clear as a bell, but couldn’t alter. Couldn’t manipulate. Just had to experience everything that was going on inside and try to hold on for the ride. 

He wore headphones to bed, blasting a mixtape Robin had made for him last month. Something with a lot of heavy guitars and girls wailing about society. 

He doesn’t think it was all that good, but it helped. Helped him feel like maybe the person wasn’t seeping into his own soul. 

And the whining synth of Patti Smith finally let him get some goddamn sleep. 

  “Hello?”

It was his house. 

But it wasn’t his house. 

It was a blank void. It was nothing. It was nowhere. 

But for some reason, his brain kept telling him it was his house. 

“Harrington?”

It was Billy. Hargrove. 

But it wasn’t Billy. 

He was dirty, covered in soot and horrible black sludge that made Steve’s stomach churn. 

“Why are you in my house?”

Billy looked around the blank void all around them. Water sloshed on the floor, lapping at Billy’s black boots. Steve observed his own toes. 

He was barefoot, but he couldn’t feel the water. 

“This is your house?”

Steve didn’t want to explain. 

“You’re dead.”

“Could be soon.”

Nothing Billy said made any sense. But then, Billy never made much sense when he was alive, either. 

He was an enigma to Steve. A big question mark all wrapped up with a gorgeous face and perfect body.

“Where is this to you?”

Why was Steve’s brain so adamant on declaring this place his house?

“Somewhere safe.”

-

So. 

That’s something. 

Dreaming about Harrington. 

Not necessarily something that Billy wanted to have happen to him while he was experiencing the worst possible time in his life. 

Or maybe he did. 

He’d said it in the dream. 

Somewhere safe. 

It’s what he felt in that blackness. 

Safety. Warmth. Hope. 

All the shit he hasn’t felt since he opened his eyes in the rank-ass library. 

That darkness was like a harness, keeping him grounded to something real. Tucking him in gently at night and kissing him on the head. 

It made waking up that much shittier. 

Knowing he’d be on nightwatch with Heather and Janet tonight, he used resting up as an excuse to lay on his cot, hardly moving in the clouded air. 

He needed to process. 

There was something so fucking weird about that dream. 

It felt real in the moment, and he didn’t question anything that had happened. 

Why there was water on the ground at his feet? Why Harrington was there wearing pajamas Billy could only describe as skanky? All of this made perfect fucking sense to dream Billy. 

Awake Billy, had some fuckin’ questions. 

Mostly, those previously listed. As well as: what the fuck?

He blames seeing Steve specifically on being in his house. That makes sense. You tend to think about a guy quite a lot when you’re living in the broken shell of his family home. He blames seeing Steve in those itsy-bitsy shorts and a homemade cropped t-shirt on the well repressed sexual interest he refused to admit he felt towards the guy. 

All that made sense. 

But everything else. 

Steve said he was dead. 

Was he dead?

Was this Hell?

Purgatory?

He’s read The Divine Comedy, and this doesn’t quite match up with any of the shit Dante waxed on about. 

And dream Billy didn’t think that was a weird thing to say to someone. To accuse them of being dead. He just said could be soon and then acted like that was a normal fucking response. 

His head was spinning out of control. 

The only thing that made sense was when Billy said they were somewhere safe. 

Because, they were. 

Even in the void place, he knew they were safe. 

There was a small tapping sound on the wall next to the open door frame. 

The door had long since rotted right through. 

“Miss Janet sent me to see if you’re alright.”

Andrew was always calling Janet Holloway Miss Janet. 

It makes Billy wonder if manners like that were beaten into him by a father like Neil. 

He hopes not. 

He likes Andrew too much for that. 

Andrew hovered around while Billy swung himself out of his cot. 

He changed out the bandana over his mouth and nose. 

Most of them slept fully dressed, even with their shoes and socks still firmly on their feet. 

You had to be ready to go at the slightest sound of Bad in this place. 

Plus, everything was so goddamn dirty, what’s a little mud in the sheets in the grand scheme of things? And the rancid rotting smell of the Upside Down did wonders to cover the smell of body odor.

Billy followed Andrew down the L-shaped hallway, to the sitting room where he found Janet and Heather huddled together on one couch, the little one between them. 

“Apparently something happened on the run last night.” 

Billy’s blood ran cold. He couldn’t make out Janet’s expression under her face covering. The little one got up from his spot on the couch, standing in Billy’s shadow. He liked to do that. Billy figured he felt safe behind someone so much bigger and stronger than him. Someone with a big fuckin’ weapon that was never too far away. 

“Who’d we lose?”

“No one. Everyone’s okay. Hopper just called all of us for a discussion, then went to the basement.”

The basement was Hopper’s domain with his little chunk of the crew. 

He had found some busted up H.A.M. radio from somewhere he refused to explain, and spent all the time he wasn’t watching over his shoulder for threats or gathering supplies from smashed grocery stores, trying to fix it up, tuning it to different crackling stations, and yelling into it. 

El. El, I need you to copy if you can hear me. El!

-

The pillow was a mess of blood the next morning. 

It was congealed and cracked and tacky against his face and made the pillowcase stick to his cheek and his bloody upper lip in a way that kinda made Steve wanna puke a little bit. 

His nose had bled in the night. 

He never got nosebleeds. 

Unless he used his power. 

And that dream. 

That blank void space and that mucky scraggly Billy lookin’ like the hunky star of some apocalypse movie.

Wait.

Blood forgotten, smeared on his face and neck, Steve tossed himself towards the phone on his nightstand, smacking his shoulder against the wooden corner and tumbling to the floor, his legs still tangled in his sheets on the bed. 

He couldn’t deal with anything, snatching the phone up and punching in the only number that was grinding through his head. 

“ Pick up pick up pick up pick up pick up, ” he muttered into the receiver. 

His upper body was still flopped over to the plush carpet, legs twitching and shaking on the bed with his anxiety. 

He’s had some massive fucking realizations and he needs backup. 

“This is the Byers.”

“Put El on the phone.”

-

“Oh. Steve’s covered in blood again. The Upside Down must really be back,” Dustin said in complete monotone as Steve opened the door. 

Steve couldn’t give less of a fuck right now. 

He felt like he was on the verge of a major breakthrough, all coming in the neat package of a major breakdown. 

He felt manic and shaky and so what if he forgot he was covered in the aftermath of a superpower-nosebleed-explosion?

“Shut up. Just get in.”

El had rallied the old troops from St. Paul, calling everyone at the ass-crack o’fuck in the morning and saying something about catching some weird Hawkins vibes all the way from Minnesota. 

It was a fucking weak excuse, but explaining the whole Steve situation was just not really in the cards today. 

He’s got an agenda and they need to stick to it. 

Robin said she’d gather Max on the way to Steve’s place, and Nancy was probably hauling Mike and Lucas over faster than a speeding gun or whatever that expression is, so all Steve had to do was get his story straight. 

“And maybe you should think about putting on a clean shirt? At the very least. I’d say, maybe just start over. Take a shower. Powerwash your face, even.”

“When the fuck did you become sarcastic ?”

“Right after you became friends with the coolest chick on the planet and then decided you’re too good for her.”

“ Chick. Don’t call Robin a chick. And I’ve told you, we’re just friends. I’m not too good for her.”

Really, Steve thought she was too good for him. 

Well, that, and there’s the whole part where she’s super totally not into guys at all. 

“So, what’s this all about, anyway? Mike said on the phone that El called him and left a really cryptic message.”

“Look. She called me to explain and ask if everyone could meet here,” Steve lied. “I’ll give you guys a recap once the rest of the gang shows.”

“But she thinks there’s something going on with the Upside Down? Again ?”

“I think she knows there’s something going on with the Upside Down.”

The more Steve sat with the memory of how Billy looked in that dream, the more he was certain of where he was. 

Billy had been ratty. His normally perfect hair was long and limp, greasy on top and matted around his face. He was sporting a patchy beard, nothing like the fuckin’ pornstache the guy had been rocking all last summer. 

And he was filthy. Covered in grime and dirt, and Steve’s sure if he’d looked harder, he would’ve seen traces of that viscous black goo that only meant bad news. 

There was a squeal of tires, an alarm signaling the arrival of Nancy in her mother’s station wagon, toting her brother and Lucas. 

“I’m in this now, Lucas Sinclair!” came Erica’s voice from the entryway. 

Steve was tapping his foot impatiently.

“Erica, you accidentally found out about all this!”

“So did you!”

The Sinclair siblings’ bickering was only cut by the sound of the Wheeler siblings snapping at one another in turn.

“Am I the only one that thinks it doesn’t make sense to meet up this early? El and Will are like, seven hours away!”

“Mike! It doesn’t matter. We all have to talk and figure out what’s going on.”

The sounds of arguments all quieted abruptly as the four people rounded the corner and caught sight of Steve.

“Oh, Jesus. Who kicked your ass this time?” Mike snipped at Steve. 

Oh, yeah. He keeps forgetting he’s covered in his own nose blood. 

“What? It’s nothing. I kicked my own ass. Just take a seat.”

“I told you to-”

Steve didn’t wanna hear it. 

He loves all these people, but his head kinda felt like it was full of mushy jelly and runny pudding and all the loud talking wasn’t doing much to help. 

He stepped out onto the porch, snagging the pack of cigarettes he kept stowed in the flower box next to the door. 

It took two to finally tame his nerves any. 

Sitting there with all the people in his house waiting for an explanation, he kinda felt like his haphazard plan was shit and going to fall through immediately. 

Just tell them El called. Tell them she saw Billy in the nowhere place and she thinks he’s alive. Easy as pie. 

The tell-tale sound of a skateboard making its way closer and closer announced Max before he saw her. 

Robin was pedaling next to her, helmet lopsided on her head and not buckled underneath her chin. 

They were talking animatedly to one another, their laughter dying as soon as they saw Steve waiting for them.

“Fuck. So this is real.”

“Why does everyone think I got the shit beat outta me?”

“Your ass gets creamed every time some spooky shit goes down in this place, Harrington,” Max informed him. 

She was a little Billy replica, all the way down to the way the corner of her mouth twitched up when she said his name. 

It would’ve been sad. The way she tried to become her brother after losing him so violently last summer. 

But something like relief settled into his bones, strong and real and wait ‘til I tell her Billy’s not dead and he was laughing. Curling in on himself cackling so hard his stomach had already begun to get sore

“Fuck. He’s lost it,” Robin sighed, ditching her bike next to Dustin’s and heaving Steve up, both hands underneath his armpits.

-

Nobody dared speak. 

“And you’re sure? You’re positive you heard one of those things?”

Janet had her arms twisted over her chest, her jaw tight as she watched Hopper’s every move. 

“It’s not really a sound you forget.”

Billy’s hand was shaking, he was gripping the ax so hard. 

“So, we’re fucked,” Angela said harshly. Her cold voice sent ice down Billy’s spine. “If those things are back, we don’t stand a fucking chance.”

Hopper scrubbed his hand over his brow, sighing through the cloth over his mouth and nose.

“It just means I have to try harder. I can get to El, I know I can.”

Hopper said that a lot. But he never explained what getting to El meant. 

Heather had explained she met El once, but she said it was weird and she only saw her like some kind of shadow, a figment in this dark empty place. Somewhere as cold and broken as the Upside Down felt. 

The little one was leaned up against Billy, his left hand balled in the edge of Billy’s leather jacket. He stood like that a lot. It was grounding for Billy. Kinda like holding Max’s hand when she was young and still thought he was the coolest person she’d ever met. 

“But, you only heard something, right? So it very well could be nothing.” Timothy was good at keeping mediator. He always kept a level head and talked slowly and calmly. They needed someone like him in this nightmare.

“They make this noise. This kind of wet chirping. Like this gurgle that just sounds like they’re watching you, ready to pounce out at any time, shrieking and attacking. It’s not a sound you forget.” Hopper had this horrible haunted look on his face, and Billy fucking believed him. 

“Then we up nightwatch. Stick together,” Billy offered. He never usually piped up with strategy, but that’s the best he’s got, and frankly, he thinks it’s the only way they’d all be able to make it through. 

“Exactly. We move in a pack now. Keep track of everyone together, and stay aware of what’s around us. I think we should do a major run and then lock up for a few days to see what goes down.” 

Hopper leaned back in the ratty armchair he was taking up, looking around to see if anyone challenged his ideas. 

Billy had given up his alpha male attitude the second Hopper yanked his upper arm and nearly screamed at him, asking Billy if he was ‘one of the flayed’ all while aggressively checking him over for injuries. 

First time any of Neil’s lessons actually sunk in. 

Respect and responsibility. 

If that fucker could see Billy now, doing nothing but respecting authority and taking responsibility for all these peoples’ lives. 

“We should rest up. Take a run tonight. Get a lay of the land,” Timothy said with an air of finality. Nobody argued. 

Hopper nodded. 

Everyone broke out from the Harringtons’ living room, milling around to get prepared for tonight’s run. Taking stock of what they needed to keep going for the next few days. 

Billy was itching to slide back into his cot and try to seek out that space if he can. The empty space where Harrington and that warm feeling of safe existed. 

The little one stayed clinging to his jacket, and Billy took a loose hold of his wrist, trying to provide some kind of basic comfort to the tiny kid. 

“You wanna go raid the cabinet?” The kid stared up at Billy with big eyes. Billy could never tell what color they were in the gloom. He thinks maybe green. 

The cabinet was a large door, built into the wall of the sitting room, and clearly where the Harringtons kept their games. 

They had these excruciating couple thousand-piece puzzles, the pictures peeling and faded on the pieces. They had Trivial Pursuit and backgammon, and all kindsa shit. 

The little one went and pulled out the checkers board. That was the only game Billy knew how to play anyhow. 

He and Max used to sit for hours, playing with this dinosaur-themed checker game Max’s dad got for her one birthday. 

It helped, playing a game. Helped pass the time. Help bait the anxiety. 

Helped them all feel a little bit closer to human.

-

“I don’t. Get it.”

Apparently, Nancy was not the only one, if the blank stares Steve was receiving from around his living room were anything to go by. 

“Yeah, why did she call you ?” Mike’s snitty tone was really grating on Steve’s fragile nerves.

“She said, she called to make sure everyone could come over here before she told you all to just show up this early on a Sunday morning and then she kinda explained what happened.”

Max was white as a sheet, tracking Steve like he was playing a horrible joke on her. 

“And she saw Billy. Billy Hargrove .” 

Steve nodded at Dustin. 

“Why does she think he’s in the Upside Down?” Robin asked, perched on the coffee table, sitting closest to where he was standing nervously. 

“She just knows .”

It was frustrating, trying to impart the seriousness of the situation without just spilling his guts. 

He rubbed absentmindedly at the cigar burn on his wrist. 

“I just don’t believe this. I talked to her three days ago, and she’s still having trouble with her powers. She can barely move a book, and hasn’t been able to get to the void since July, and you’re saying she accidentally saw Billy Hargrove, who we all saw murder a bunch of people and then get killed -”

“Shut up! He wasn’t himself!” Max shrieked out over Mike, the only time she’d even opened her mouth since Steve had mentioned her stepbrother’s name.

“Even if he is alive, El couldn’t have seen him! It doesn’t make sense!” Mike’s voice rose over Max’s, and Steve has a fucking headache and he’s over it.

“It was me! I had a dream. I went to the void. I saw Billy in the Upside Down. I called El to say she saw him.” 

Everyone went dead silent, staring at him.

“Steve,” Robin began, searching his face.

It was like all the wind that had been filling up his sails, powering his energy ship, had suddenly quit blowing. 

Steve was tired. 

He sank to the floor, crossing his legs where he sat.

“I need you all to shut the fuck up for a moment and let me explain, because I only wanna say all this shit once.” He covered his bloody face with his hands. “I’m like El.”

That statement hung in the air for a moment. 

And then there was a roar of noise.

“How could you keep this a secret?” Dustin shouted.

“Not in a million years !” Lucas decided. Erica yelled something back at him, vaguely defending Steve, which was nice.

“You mean you came from the lab?” Mike had a look on his face like he’d swallowed a particularly bitter lemon. 

“Everybody, shut the fuck up!” Max roared, glowering at each person until they were silent again. 

In all this Robin hadn’t said a word. She was pale, staring at Steve.

“Look, I don’t wanna go into it because it fucking sucks to think about,” Steve still hadn’t uncovered his face. “But yeah. I was in the lab. I got out because they decided I was a failed experiment. My mom worked at the lab and she took me and we pretended like the three of us moved here from Oklahoma and my dad told me never to tell anyone. And I haven’t. Didn’t even tell El. She recognized me from then. Don’t even know how, I left when she was like, three. Doesn’t matter. I’m a freaky lab kid and last night I fell asleep and saw Billy in that-what’d you call it? The void? Yeah, I saw him, and he’s covered in dirt and gross black Upside Down shit, and he’s fucking stuck there, and now we’re here.”

There was another silence. 

Steve didn’t dare to look at any of them.

He didn’t want them to laugh in his face. Tell him he was making all this shit up and leave him alone to deal with Billy trapped somewhere else. 

He wanted them to take his word for it. To quietly believe this crazy fucking shit of a story because the scared other feeling was back and clawing at his spine and making him want to burrow into the ground and find somewhere safe and secure and-

“Okay.”

Of course it was Robin. 

It was always Robin. 

Steve let himself look at her. 

She was pale, but she was smiling at him. 

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

Steve nodded once.

“Okay. Uh, great.”

“Wait, if you’re defective, no offense, then how did you see Billy?” 

Steve stared at Max weighing his answer carefully. 

“Because, well, the defective thing, that was all, I didn’t mean to, that was before I really understood what I could do. Don’t get me wrong, it really worked out, but it was an accident.”

“Spit it out, Sailor Man.”

“ Erica .”

Erica just rolled her eyes at Lucas. 

“Okay. Uh, before I explain, just, just keep in mind that I have rules, and I don’t use my powers if I can avoid them, and I’d never use them to be a creep, but-”

“Steve!”

“Fine!” The words were right there, ready to tumble out of his mouth and ruin his life forever. 

There was no going back after this. 

The second they knew, everything would be different.

“I can feel other peoples’ emotions and, like, change them.”

Another silence.

“I don’t understand.”

Nancy was the last person he’d ever want to have this conversation with. 

He knows what she’s thinking. He knows that the great anger brewing inside her is because she assumes he made her like him. Made her attracted to him. 

Made her want him. 

“I don’t use it like that. I would never, put something there that shouldn’t be there. It’s just, When someone feels something near me, I can tap into it. Let it become my own feelings. And then I just, change it. Just a little.” He cast around for a harmless example because so far, everyone was staring at him like a goddamn creep. “Robin!”

She startled slightly when he yelled at her.

“Okay, so Robin. I’d never, ever make you feel something not true to you. Like, I’d never make it so you were into me when you’re totally not, right?” He cast a glance at Nancy. “But, like, the other day, when you felt really shitty when I invited you over and you were studying, I just, I made it so you wouldn’t feel bad. I felt all this guilt you had for leaving me alone when you thought I was having a shitty day, and I made it so you didn’t feel guilty because you shouldn’t. That’s the kinda level I allow myself to work on.”

The look Robin was giving him was breaking his fucking heart. 

Worse still, was the feeling of betrayal that began eating away at her. 

“So, right now. You can tell what we’re all feeling?” Even Lucas, ever the level-headed one, couldn’t look him in the eye.

“I don’t want to. I don’t try to, but I can’t really avoid it. I just try to ignore it. But sometimes, sometimes if I bottle it all up for a while, it comes crashing out of me, and that’s when bad shit happens. If I don’t use it occasionally, it only wakes things worse, and I-”

“I can’t hear this.”

Robin’s anger crashed through Steve like a wave, nearly knocking him over. She stood, towering over him. 

“When we were in that bathroom, all drugged out of our minds. I-” she sniffed, rage tears pooling in her eyes. Steve likes her eyes. So crystal blue. “Are we even really friends?”

Her last question was nothing more than a whisper. 

And it made Steve wish he was never born.

He gaped at her like a dead fish.

“Rob, of course we are! I would never-”

“Because I hated you. And then one summer. Two whole months where we’re close enough that you can get all up in my brain, and suddenly I’m telling you shit I’ve never told anyone before.”

“It wasn’t, Robin I swear, that whole time, I never once used-”

She held up her hand, cutting him off. 

A sob caught in his throat as she turned on her heel. 

She slammed the door closed behind her. 

Another fucking silence. 

Steve couldn’t look anyone in the eye.

Their feelings were enough for him now, betrayal and anger and disappointment rushing into his lungs, drowning him. Choking him. 

“You’ve used them on all of us.”

It wasn’t a question. 

It was just a statement. The coldest he’s ever heard Dustin sound. 

“I just want everyone to be happy.”

“Jesus, Steve. You realize that’s actually totally fucked up, right? You can’t just make us feel whatever you want,” Dustin bellowed at him, standing up like Robin had done, looking down at Steve where he sat pathetically on the floor. 

And, when it’s put like that. 

Sure. 

It’s kinda fucked up. 

But he’s only ever meddled in a way that’s good. He only ever tries to make his friends feel the positives. Hell, on the night of that stupid Snow Ball, he’d given Dustin enough self-confidence to make Madonna seem insecure. 

All he does is try to help. 

“All I do is try to help.”

More fucking silence. 

Steve was so goddamn sick of silence. All he had was silence. He had the nothing, empty quiet. And he didn’t want it from the people who were supposed to make his life loud. 

“El won’t be here until later tonight. I think we should just meet up then.”

Steve buried his head in his hands, biting back sobs as the small group filtered out of his house. 

This is why he had wanted to take this secret with him to death. 

He told everyone who he really is, and now they all hate him, and he’s completely alone, and wherever Billy is he’s fucking scared and-

“Steve?”

Max’s voice was small, mirroring the way she was curled in on herself in the plush armchair near the wall. 

“Do you really think Billy’s alive?”

Steve nodded at her, desperately begging her to stay. To help him. 

“I know he is.”

“I have an idea.”

-

He doesn’t remember falling asleep. 

Doesn’t remember much of anything in this place. 

He studied the water lapping at his muddy boots, dragging his toes through it to make the water wave and ripple. 

It didn’t make a sound. 

“I want to help.”

Billy knew Steve was there even before he spoke. 

Something about the warmth he brought to the void place. 

The safety. 

“Don’t know if you can.”

Steve’s lips twitched into a ghost of a smile at that. His face was covered in blood, dried and flaking away from his skin, painted all the way down his face and neck, some staining the collar of his shirt.

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

“That happens when the only interactions you have with a guy are to beat his ass.”

Steve cracked a real smile at that. Something big and bright that made Billy’s gut twist in a way he didn’t quite like. 

“You’re forgetting all those other times we spent together. You’re not very subtle, you know.”

Yeah, Billy knows. 

Mostly because he wasn’t trying to be subtle. 

He had talked to Steve about his bitchy ex while they both had their dicks out in the shower. He was trying to be very much un-subtle. 

“Wasn’t trying to be.”

“I know.”

Oh. 

Steve knows. 

And all he had done was stare blankly at Billy. 

Nice. 

“I need to know where you are.”

“Why?” 

“Because I can help.”

Billy just blinked at Steve. 

“Do you know El?”

Something funny happened to Steve’s face. He kind of gave a little smile that flickered into a frown and landed on something a little pinched and awkward. 

“Yeah. How do you know her?”

“Hopper keeps saying he needs to get to her. None of us know what he’s talking about.”

And with that, Steve’s eyes went huge, and his jaw dropped. The water at Billy’s ankles sloshed quietly. 

“Hopper’s there? Chief Hopper? Jim Hopper is there?”

“Jesus, yeah. Been here since we all woke up.”

Steve acted like Billy had told him that Farrah Fawcett herself was on her way to shave his head. 

Meaning, he looked struck fucking dumb. 

“I’m gonna need you to explain.”

“I don’t know. Don’t remember much. Crashed my car on one of your shitty backwoods roads, and then everything is just, kinda, gone. I woke up in this shithole version of the library and Hopper found me here and we’ve kinda set up camp.”

Billy shrugged lamely. Something was dripping, he could hear the sound of it far behind him.

“There’s more of you? How many?”

“Not as many as there should be.”

Steve’s mouth pinched, and his big droopy eyes went all sweet and sad. 

“Where are you? Where’s the camp?”

Billy was suddenly embarrassed. There was a sound like a stream flowing over rocks.

What’s he supposed to say? The hellscape skeleton of your house oh and by the way all your stuff is here and I slept in your bed once because I was scared and sad.

“Someone’s house. Don’t know whose.”

Steve huffed some air out of his nostrils, his mouth pinching again. 

Billy hadn’t realized someone could make so many different expressions just by pursing their lips in different ways. 

“Find out. We’re coming to get you.”

A crash of a wave, and Billy was back in hell. 

-

Steve sucked in lungfuls of air, tossing the towel that had been covering his eyes to the ground. 

“You saw him.” 

Max was sitting in front of him, the t.v. playing static behind her. 

“Yeah. He’s okay. I mean, he’s really gross. Like, he’s-sorry. He’s okay.”

Max was still staring at him like she didn’t quite know how to proceed. 

“But he’s in the Upside Down?”

“Yeah. And there’s others. He said Hopper’s there, that he’s been trying to contact El.”

“Wait, Hopper? He’s alive?”

“Billy said all of the flayed woke up after the Fourth of July in the Upside Down. He doesn’t know anything that happened in this world, and Hopper was there and they’ve set up, like, some kind of camp, or whatever. He said they’re in someone’s house. He doesn’t know who.”

“ Fuck .”

Yeah, Steve agrees with that sentiment. 

This whole thing was like, kind of a lot. 

And deep inside him, those other feelings had yet to leave him alone all day. 

There was some kind of disappointment knocking about in his brain. 

He knows it’s Billy. 

All of those other feelings, it’s whatever Billy is feeling right that minute wherever he is. 

And it only happens when Steve is-

“Max, he’s here.”

She whipped around behind her, staring at the front door like Billy could waltz through it at any moment. 

“No, no not here, here .” She clearly didn’t understand. He used the towel to wipe the fresh blood from his upper lip, still having yet to clean himself up any. “The camp, the safeplace, it’s here. They’ve set up in my house!”

It felt like a revelation on par with the greatest inventions. Steve felt like the scientist that landed the man on the moon or the very first person to melt cheese onto fries. 

A genius. 

“So, he’s, I mean, he could be, just, here .” She looked over the room wistfully, and Steve knew how she felt. Like she wanted to pierce her hands into thin air, tearing a hole in between the two worlds and ripping Billy straight outta hell. 

(Really, she just filled him with a wave of fierce determination, but Steve likes to take poetic license on other people’s feelings sometimes.)

“And you can feel him.”

“Yeah.”

“Is he, okay?”

And he knows this question. 

Not the okay he assured her of when he first saw Billy. Soothing that he wasn’t missing any internal organs or possessed by any monsters. 

She wants to know if he’s held it together. 

“He’s scared. He’s always scared. But he’s really fucking stubborn, and he- I don’t know why he feels these things, but sometimes he gets kinda sad. Almost like he’s lost something, and sometimes, it feels like he’s caught fire, and his insides are just going up in flame and he gets overwhelmed by them. And sometimes he feels-” He hadn’t meant to continue.

“Tell me.”

He’s pretty sure Max knew what he was going to say next. 

She just wanted it confirmed. 

“Hopeless. Sometimes he feels hopeless.”

She sniffed, her eyes shining as she looked anywhere that wasn’t Steve. 

“But, we know now. He doesn’t have to be hopeless anymore. We’ll find a way in, and we’ll get him out.”

He didn’t want to manipulate her. 

He didn’t want to cross the boundaries everyone clearly thought he already had. 

But he was positive he would find a way to Billy. He was positive he would get him out and get him home. 

He sent a wave of that determination and hope and conviction to her. 

“Yeah. We’ll get him.”

-

“Hopper, man, some funky shit is going down.”

Hopper whirled around quickly, halfway to his feet and asking who's been hurt before Billy raised both hands, acting like he was calming an anxious horse.

“Nah, sorry, shoulda worded that better. I just mean, something’s happened to me. With me, maybe. I don’t know. Just hear me out. This shit’s gonna sound, insane.”

Hopper didn’t say anything as Billy explained, beginning with that night when the wall shattered next to his head, and ending with his most recent trip to the void place. 

Billy shrugged lamely when he finished explaining. 

“So, Harrington, huh? Never woulda guessed he was like her. You sure you didn’t see a little girl anywhere in the blank place?”

“No. It was just us. Both times.”

Hopper leaned back in his chair, scratching a hand through his thick beard. 

“The first time one of the demogorgons showed up on our side was behind Steve’s house. Took Will Byers from his shed. They live some few miles away. Second time was in Harrington’s backyard. Took Barbara Holland.” Hopper sighed, looking in the direction of the busted radio. Billy could more or less see the cogs turning in his head. “If you see him again, tell him where we are. Tell him I think the walls are thinnest here. That maybe he and El could tear through. Better yet, tell him to find me if he can.”

He clapped Billy on the shoulder, looking right at him in that way he did sometimes. It always made Billy feel like a little kid. 

“Thank you, kid. You might’ve just saved us.”

Billy felt awkward and didn’t really know what to do with his face. Thankfully, Hopper turned away from him, cutting the moment short and moving back to fiddling with the old radio. 

Billy ducked his way up and back to the furthest bedroom on the ground floor, taking a seat on his low cot and digging his palms into his eyes. 

He didn’t know how the void happened. If he could only get there in his sleep, or if it was Steve’s doing somehow. 

“C’mon, Steve. Where are you? Come find me, Pretty Boy. We gotta talk.”

When he moved his hands away, he was in that blank place. 

Billy was taken aback a bit, thinking somehow he had created the place around him. 

Until he saw Steve, standing nervously and staring at Billy. 

“I felt you. What’s wrong?”

“Sorry, you felt me? What in the fuck’s that supposed to mean.”

“Don’t worry about it. What happened? Are you guys okay?”

Steve wasn’t covered in blood anymore. 

In fact, he looked freshly showered, his hair slightly damp and soft-looking without product. 

It’s how he always looked right after having a post-practice shower. Clean and warm. Soft and inviting. 

“I talked to Hopper. He told me to give you a message.”

Steve’s eyes lit up, and he took a step towards Billy, the water rippling where his foot disturbed the surface. 

“He said, well. He told me where we are. Apparently, we’re at your place.” Billy tried to smirk a little, act like this was brand new information to him.

“Yeah. I gathered.”

“He thinks the walls are thinnest at your place. Said that maybe you and El could tear through easily. That mean anything to you?”

Steve nodded so hard his bangs flopped right into his eyes. 

He pushed his hair out of his face, tucking some behind his ear. Billy tracked the movement. 

“We’re going to try tonight. Maybe around six. Can you guys be ready by then?”

“We don’t have any way to track time around here. Don’t even know if it’s day or night, really.”

Steve bit his soft bottom lip, looking at Billy like he wanted to cry for him. 

“Then I’ll come and get you before. Warn you when we’re about to start. Make sure everyone stays close. I don’t know how long we’ll be able to keep it sustained, and we want to get everyone out if we can.”

“Steve, man, what in the fuck is going on? I’ve been shut up in this place for, for I don’t even know how long, and all of a sudden, you just start showing up in my head and telling me that you’re gonna take point on this big fuckin’ rescue mission.”

Billy doesn’t want to admit it to anyone, least of all Steve Harrington, but he’s scared, and confused, and he genuinely wishes that he had died in that library instead of waking up. 

“I’ll explain it when you get back.” 

And Steve smiled at him and the corners of his eyes crinkled and Billy didn’t quite feel like he wanted to die anymore. 

-

“Where are they?”

El didn’t even say hello when she pushed Steve’s front door open, just made straight for Max and Steve in the sitting room.

“They’re all being dicks,” was Max’s answer. “Steve told us about how you two know each other, and everyone kinda freaked.”

“I mean, it’s pretty freaky.”

“Yeah, sure, but they didn’t need to be such shitbirds about it.”

Somewhere between feeling harshly angry at Steve and his powers and hearing her brother’s voice crackle through the television speaker, Max had pretty much ensconced Steve as her sidekick. 

Which he didn’t mind in the least. 

It was kinda odd seeing the Byers in his house. 

Jonathan looked. Exactly the same. 

Like literally. His hair had grown out since his mother had taken a pair of scissors and a bowl to it last summer, and he looked just like the Hawkins Jonathan Steve was used to. 

It was kinda nice. 

At least one thing hasn’t changed. 

Especially because Will is pretty much unrecognizable. 

He had shot up, growing until he could nearly look Steve in the eye. And thank God, he must've followed Jonathan’s footsteps and stopped letting Joyce cut his hair. 

It was longer, adn shaggier, but it made him look so grown up. 

Nearly as grownup as El, her hair nearly down to her shoulder blades, the top of her head coming up on Steve’s chin, showing off the signs of her own growth spurt. 

Even Joyce was sporting a new look. Longer hair with bangs that were swept off her face.

She gave Steve a comforting hug, and those were just the same. 

Unease filled the room. 

Nobody knew what they were walking into. El had to have given them the basics, and Steve figures she explained some on the long drive back to town, but there had been even more developments since the last they had spoken this morning. 

Steve sifted through the borderline panic of Max and the Byers, clinging onto the fierce calm that El was radiating. Probably for his benefit more than her own actual experience. 

“I know where Billy is. We talked. I have an idea.” He took a deep breath, bracing himself for the feelings. “Hopper’s alive.”

It took a second. 

El’s carefully maintained calm wavered for a moment. 

And then it crashed down. 

Disbelief, relief, denial, anger, hope, joy. 

Everything a person could possibly feel at once poured out of El and Joyce both, nearly knocking Steve off his feet with the sheer velocity of the emotions. 

“Saw him?”

“No. But Billy mentioned him. He said he’s been trying to get to you.”

El’s eyes filled with tears, and Steve could feel the satisfaction, the pride, welling up in her that Hopper was still thinking of her. That he was trying to reach out. 

“My powers,” she trailed off.

“Yeah. I know. But, he said, well, he told Billy to tell me, he thinks the walls are thinnest here. Maybe in the woods outback. He thinks we can do it.”

Sorry,” Joyce interrupted. She had gathered herself somewhat, but her feelings were still shaky. 

She always felt like she was trembling emotionally. Joyce felt everything nearly as viscerally as Billy did. 

“I think we’re not on the same page. Steve, you spoke to Billy? El said she sensed him.”

“Steve is like me. From Papa.”

“You mean, from the lab?” Jonathan clarified. 

Everyone was staring at Steve again and he felt like burrowing a hole right through the floor and hiding underground forever. 

“Yeah, I got out when I was a kid. My parents were pretty hell-bent on hiding it from everyone. But. You know. Cat’s outta the bag now. But yes, it was me who saw Billy. He’s in the Upside Down. A bunch of people are. Including Hopper. It sounds like they were all taken and the flayed people out here were like, fake. Like evil twin versions.”

Sure, it’s a shitty explanation.

It’s the best he can do, okay? Leave him alone. 

“So, what’s his plan, then?”

That’s the good thing about the Byers, though. They get the whole, priority thing. Now’s not the time to focus on shit like Steve’s fake life. Not when the Upside Down is concerned. 

“Billy didn’t say much. Just that he thinks maybe El and I could like, band together to open it. I don’t really know how, I mean, I haven’t thought about it much, I just spoke to him, but that's the idea. I told him I would meet him in the void or whatever before we go so he can gather everyone and get ready.”

“So, is it just us?” Will asked quietly, biting the inside of his cheek. He was disappointed. His friends not being where they were needed. Not being there to see him for the first time since his family moved away months ago. 

Steve shrugged.

He was battling his own disappointment and hurt at everyone ditching him. 

“No. Let’s start calling. We need to stick together for this one. Billy hasn’t said anything about how bad the Upside Down has been, and we need to be ready to fight off anything that tries to get through.”

“Max is right. They should be here.” Will was already making his way to the phone placed on the side table. “They need to be here.” 

Jonathan caught Steve’s eye, jerking his head slightly to the hallway. 

Steve followed him, already knowing the line of questioning that was about to hit him. 

“I knew you called El. I picked up this morning. Now the story makes a lot more sense, I guess.”

“Yeah. I’ve been getting this weird feeling for a couple months, but I finally put it all together. Probably would’ve happened faster it is was El.”

“I don’t know. She’s been struggling a lot. She practices every day, but,” he sighed” I don’t know if she’s strong enough to make this work.”

He’s worried, adn scared, and has that exact same tremble-feeling that his mother does. 

“I know. I just don’t think we can leave them any longer. Billy said they’ve already lost people. I don’t know what it’s been like for them, but they’ve been stuck for fucking months, and-”

This time, it hit him so hard he really did blackout. 

His vision clouded around him, and his whole body burned with the raging fear inside of him. 

He could hear something, could hear someone screaming, adn something, something that sounded horrible, and so very very like a-

-

“Demogorgon!”

It’s like it had come out of nowhere. 

This towering figure, long and thin in all the wrong fucking ways.

And the sound. Billy realized what Hopper meant about how it’s not something you forget. 

They were in some form of a ready position. 

Billy among the front of the group, holding his ax he had never let go of in the first place. 

His heart was pounding. 

We’ll be out soon. We’ll be out soon. 

He didn’t believe it. 

How could he?

How the fuck is Steve Harrington going to get them out of the worst place ever? No offense to him or anything, but the guy could barely make a goddamn milkshake without spilling something on the sticky tile floor of Scoops Ahoy! and now, Billy’s life is in this guy’s hands while he stares into the jaws of a monster that looks like it stepped right out of H.P. Lovecraft’s wettest dreams.

It’s not like this is the first time he’s had this realization, but he is in way over his fucking head. 

“Steve,” Billy grumbled to himself through gritted teeth. “If you can hear me, get us the fuck outta here.”

The thing ahead of them wasn’t moving. It stood in the line of the trees behind Steve’s house. 

It was staring down the clump of people on the other side of the backyard. 

The air was still. 

Billy’s ears were ringing. 

He stared the thing down. 

Its long fingers twitched. 

Someone screamed. 

And the thing charged. 

It roared like nothing Billy had ever heard before. A shriek that seemed to vibrate Billy’s bones and tremble the earth underneath his feet. 

It charged. 

Sprinting forward on long thin legs, it loped with a grace that turned Billy’s stomach and made his knees wobble and threaten to give out. 

Plant your feet. 

It rang through his head, Steve’s voice from, some time Billy couldn’t remember. Or maybe Steve was just the little voice that commanded his bravery now. 

Either way, he dug the balls of his feet into the cracked ground, and waited. 

Don’t stop fighting.

He swung. 

The ax clocked right into the side of the thing, barely cutting into its thick leathery skin, but it slowed it down. 

Well, actually. 

It made it change course from attacking the group as a whole, to honing in on Billy. 

Which was less than awesome. 

Billy wrenched the ax out of its tough body, thick, sticky black goo connecting the ax with its entry point as he drew it away. 

He swung again, nearly hitting the same place. 

The thing cried out, roaring over the sound of screaming and gunshots. 

Hopper had his rifle trained on the flowered head of the one Billy was furiously chopping into like a tree. 

There were two more, two he hadn’t noticed in his preoccupation with the one in front of him. 

He didn’t know who was who. Which gunshot belonged to which gun, which shriek belonged to which animal. 

He didn’t know if the cries of pain were from the awful beasts or the people in his camp. He was hoping the former. 

He swung again. There was a sickening sound of the metal blade connecting with something solid. Something like bone. 

Hopper shot it, once, twice in the head. 

It was whining, making a high-pitched noise as it staggered about. 

One last blow to the side of the thing, and it was finished. 

The monster flopped onto the ground, dark liquid oozing out of it, its body nearly split in half where Billy had hammered it with his ax. A great gaping wound that showed sticky dark entrails. 

Billy turned. 

His brain was working in slow motion as he charged into the battle still raging. 

He didn’t know how many of the things had arrived. 

All he knew was taking them out.

His arms were sore from the force he was putting into each blow with his ax. His muscles threatened to give out at any moment.

Drive them back. We’re coming. 

The thought was shoved into his head. He didn’t know where it came from but he believed it. 

“Help is on the way!” He shouted to no one and everyone. 

He had taken down two more demogorgons with the help of the others. One was missing its body, a petal head lolling on the ground, getting trampled on in the fight. 

-

Steve had felt the demogorgon before Billy saw it. 

It was an odd feeling, almost like it was a black hole sucking up everything he thought and felt before he could cling onto it. 

It made him feel cold, and empty, and just like the Upside Down felt. 

“We don’t have time!”

El was insisting on contacting the others. She was livid with them for abandoning Steve, but things were taking a turn for the small group trapped in that hellscape. 

“Steve’s right. If there’s a demogorgon there, that means the Mind Flayer has gotten some strength back, wherever he is.”

Steve nodded at Will gratefully.

“But, what’s the idea? You two open the gate. Then what? We wait for those things to come through to our side?” Jonathan asked, kinda harshly, if you ask Steve.

Steve rubbed his eyes, his fists pressing against them so hard he was seeing odd shapes. 

“No. I go through. I get them. I bring them back.” His head was a fucking mess. Billy was all over the place. Fear, desperation, and a horrible calm that only came when things looked like the end. Plant your feet, he thought, trying to get his feelings to Billy through the thin dimensional wall. Don’t stop fighting. “For the past few days, all I’ve been able to feel is somebody else’s fucking fear and this stupid stupid stubbornness and I know it’s Billy, and I know he’s in trouble. Like right now. The demogorgons are coming for them, and he’s so scared. He’s so fucking scared and he thinks he’s gonna die, and he’s trapped .”

He looked at each person individually, glaring at them all in the eye. 

“We don’t have time.”

So it was decided. 

He brought El outside, and stared into the shimmering water of the pool. 

The pool where a demon came out and dragged Barbara to her death. 

It gave him the fucking creeps. Well, it more gave him the severe anxiety, but there was something about it that made it seem like it was the best place to try and rip the fold between himself and Billy. 

Drive them back. We’re coming. 

He wanted Billy to have some hope. Something like a lifeline that would keep him fighting the monsters. 

He had wrenched his nail bat out of the wall it was still planted in from a few nights ago, and stood next to El, ready to try. 

“To be honest, I don’t know how to help you.” It was the only thing that scared him about this plan. “I don’t have the same powers as you. The telekin-the moving stuff around. I don’t know how to open this.”

She looked at him thoughtfully. 

“In Chicago. Kali. When I’m angry my powers are better,” she took his hand. “Make me angry.”

Steve closed his eyes. 

He tried to push Billy to the side, clinging onto the first bit of El he could sense. 

Her anger was like a melted core running through her. Driving her in a lot of ways. 

He grabbed onto it. 

Papa. Everything he did to your mama. Being locked in isolation. Fights with Hopper. Being trapped in the cabin. Feeling alone and not knowing how to fix it. New kids at school being mean. Techs in the lab that treated us like rats. The smell of skin burning. Parents that called you a freak. 

He didn’t know when he had stopped using El’s ready-made rage, and began siphoning his own straight into the beating heart of her fury. 

His gut began to feel white-hot, and he could feel the blood dripping down his lip. 

Lying to everyone. Being abandoned for the truth. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. 

Steve was livid. 

He’s never felt an emotion consume him like this. Felt one feeling take over so completely it’s like there was nothing else in the world. 

He opened his eyes. 

There was blood flowing steadily from El’s nose, and he knew his was doing the same. 

He could feel his heart pounding against his ribs, his body going into overdrive to divert all of his energy to his powers. 

The rift glowed red through the clear pool water, splitting open like a seam on a well-worn shirt. 

The burn on his arm ached, and he pushed into it. 

He remembered being held down on his father’s desk. Remembers the cigar being forced against his skin, bubbling up and disfiguring the tattoo beyond recognition. 

He remembers his father, this is for your own good, Steven. You’ll tell everyone you had an accident. People won’t question a burn like they will a tattoo. 

Like no one would take one look at the quarter-sized mark and know what would make it. 

He remembers getting the tattoo. 

It was nearly the same process. 

He was strapped down in a chair, his screams going ignored as the needle drove into his skin over and over, leaving a neat black number behind. 

001

Number One. 

The first in a series of children bred for something more, and beaten into acceptance. 

His head felt like it could explode. He didn’t know what was going on around him, was barely aware of El’s sweaty hand in his, and the bright red light coming from the cracked bottom of the pool. 

It was open. 

Number One took a deep breath, and dived into the pool. 

-

It was the little one that noticed it. 

Billy had been trying to yell at him to get back inside, to keep himself out of harm’s way. 

They had killed six demogorgons, and more were certainly coming. 

The trees in the forest were rustling in a way they never did on their own. 

The little one was pointing frantically, his eyes wide and scared. 

Billy turned, and his blood ran cold. 

Something was moving in the pool. 

It was making the thick non-water slosh around dangerously, the dark liquid lapping over the sides and staining the concrete. 

There were vines crisscrossing over the surface of the liquid, and Billy approached it carefully, hoping whatever was coming out would be trapped underneath them. 

“This is the last fucking thing we need,” Hopper gritted out, cocking his rifle and aiming at the sludge. 

And then Billy’s head felt like it had been cracked open. 

He was blinded with pain and rage and 

Help me, Hargrove!

He started swinging his ax wildly at the vines. Trying to break them apart enough for a body to fit through. 

His heart thundered in his chest, and he dropped to his knees, ripping at the slimy black tendrils. 

He shoved his left arm in.

It was like dousing his arm in ice. Like the liquid was made from the purest essence of cold. 

He searched frantically with his hand, finding something solid and yanking with all his strength. 

He had to put both arms in, grabbing hold of whatever he could, using his body weight as leverage to extract Steve from the cold. 

He was limp when Billy finally got him out, but breathing heavily. 

He opened his eyes, wiping his face free of the goop and blood covering him, and grinned at Billy. 

“Told’ya we would get you out.”

They shepherd him inside, most of the gang speechless and struck dumb from the events of the past while. 

Steve was given a change of almost clean clothes, and allowed to use some of their bottled water ration to clean the freezing black fluid from himself. 

He wasted little time, and was down in the Upside Down version of his living room with everyone else. 

“We can’t be long. El had to use a lot of strength to open it, but she’ll need her strength to close it, too.” 

Nobody knew what in the fuck Steve was going on about. 

Nobody but Hopper, that is. 

He still had disgusting pool sludge all over his front from when he pulled Steve into a tight hug when he had gotten his bearings back from his journey through the rift. 

“We can’t send people through that shit. It took all of Billy’s muscle to get you outta there.”

“So we drain it,” Steve insisted. “My parents drain it sometimes, I know how to do it.”

“I’ll keep watch. Make sure nothing tries to make itself known.”

Billy had barely wiped himself off. 

He didn’t care anymore about how freezing that shit was, he just wanted to surge forward, and get back the fuck home.

Hopper studied them both.

“Bring weapons. Yell if you need help.”

Billy nodded once, and turned on his heel, following Steve out the back door. 

Steve led him to a wooden shed on the side of the house. Billy had to clear the vines away from it before Steve could pry open the doors. 

It was full of pool equipment, and it didn’t take long for Steve to locate a large grubby pump. He knocked it against the wall of the shed until the filter attachment clattered off, leaving bigger openings for the sludge to, hopefully, run through. 

“Shit. This thing is electric. You got electricity?” 

It was the first time Steve had really gotten a good look at Steve since being in the Upside Down. 

He looked exactly as he had in the void place. His hair had a lot more disgusting black fluid in it, and he overall looked kinda shitty with the flecks of grime and blood on his face, but he looked bright. Alive. Strong. 

“How did you do it? Take me to that place. Figure out we were here.” 

Steve flushed. Billy had become overly aware that his face was completely covered under his bandana. Steve should cover his face. 

He drew another one of his back pocket, and, he didn’t know why, but he tied it around Steve’s face. 

Seriously, he could’ve just handed it to the guy and called it good there. But no. He had to set his ax on the ground, propped against his leg, wrap his arms around Steve’s shoulders, and tie the bandana like this was some intricate ritual. 

All while Steve just stared at him with those fuckin’ eyes of his. 

“It’s a long story.” Billy could barely hear Steve speak through the dirty cloth now covering his mouth and nose. “I’ll tell you when we’re back. When we’re safe.”

“I’m holding you to that, Harrington. Can’t have a guy poking around my dreams and shouting in my head without knowing his intentions.”

It was as close to flirting as Billy dared right now. 

Right before they tried to journey between worlds. 

“Good to know you heard me. I was trying to give you something of a pep talk.”

“Well, it worked. I would’ve just put my arms out and let those things rip me to shreds if I hadn’t have known.”

Billy didn’t know what Steve’s face was doing behind the cloth, but his eyes dropped, and Billy imagined that little cinch of his mouth that he had noticed Steve doing so much in that void place.

-

Billy meant it as a joke. 

He really did. 

And the Billy that was torn to bits in the mall wasn’t this Billy. Wasn’t the real Billy that was made out of real Billy materials and real Billy personality. 

But it still made Steve feel queasy, thinking about his arms spread wide, black goop pouring out of his mouth and nose as the Mind Flayer decimated him. 

“We’ve got a lot to talk about, Billy. Just, not now.” 

And Steve turned off, hauling the pump back to the pool and taking calming breaths. 

The pump sank without much effort, like there was some kind of gravitational pull at the bottom of the pool. 

Steve had connected the thickest hose he could find, adn sent Billy off with the extension cord to find an outlet that didn’t spark and threaten fire. 

Before no time, the pump was humming, and pushing black slime through the hose and onto the dead grass. 

They didn’t need to get it all out, just as much as they could shove everyone through. 

Steve closed his eyes, trying to reach El like he had Billy. 

We had a hold up. Shouldn’t be long. 

He could feel her on the other side. 

She promised she would stay close enough to the rift that Steve could get in touch with her. 

He could feel something slither down his spine, a wordless confirmation from her. 

The liquid in the pool was slowly edging down, leaving a stain on the once-white walls of the pool. 

“Gather everyone up. Tell ‘em to meet out here. Tell ‘em to leave it all behind.”

Billy was still staring at the edge of the forest when he commanded Steve. 

It was odd, being in his house that’s not his house. 

Everything was so. Wrong. 

From the way the house seemed to be crumbling down, reduced to its studs in some areas, to the way it was still clearly his house. Paintings his father had bought. Elegant furniture his mother selected. 

It was all there. Just under a thick layer of dirt and nightmares. 

He thought idly about his bedroom, wondering if it would look like it did on his end. A little messy, the sheets typically rumpled and unmade. 

He resisted the urge to wander upstairs, reminding himself he was on a mission. 

“It’s time. Don’t bring anything. It’ll probably be ruined along the way.”

Everyone looked grave. Steve tried to smile at them, tried to push through some calmness to them all. He had forgotten Billy’s bandana was tied around his face. He sent one last wave of quiet confidence around the room, and led the group through the kitchen. 

They had barely rounded the corner of the kitchen island when they heard a strangled yell from outside. 

Steve put his head down, and sprinted through the shattered glass doors, skidding to a halt in the threshold. 

Billy was staggering backward, his ax forgotten on the ground and his left hand was clinging wildly to his right shoulder. 

His jacket was in tatters, thick blood dripping bright crimson down his arm, standing out like neon against the dark, dirty ground. 

Steve didn’t feel himself moving forward. He didn’t feel his hands raising in front of him. 

He just felt anger. The same anger from before that had ripped through him like a raging forest fire and straight into El. 

The thing shrieked. 

It backed away from Billy, twisting and writhing as its horrible screams filled the air, making the hair on the back of Steve’s neck stand on end. 

Fierce fury was exploding out of him, and he grit his teeth against the pounding in his head. 

“You don’t get to hurt him,” Steve barely barked out. 

All went still, and the demogorgon snapped into pieces. 

Steve felt like he could pass out where he stood. 

He had never felt so wrung dry. 

His vision was waning at the edges, and he felt an arm around his waist, coaxing him toward the red light now barely shining through a thin layer of slime in the pool. 

“Hold your breath, Pretty Boy.”

-

Steve was limp against him, and Billy was doing his best to ignore the searing pain in his right shoulder as he held Steve close to his side. He had fumbled off both of their face coverings, moving clumsily through the pain of his injury. 

He took one last breath, and jumped into the rip between worlds. 

He plunged into the water, the crystal blue of a chlorinated pool. 

It was the best feeling in the world. 

Being covered and surrounded by clean. The heated water doing more to soothe Billy’s frayed nerves than anything in his life. 

He kicked hard, swimming one-armed to the surface, Harrington a dead weight in his injured arm. 

His head broke the water, and he took in deep lungfuls of clean, crisp air. 

Someone was tugging at Steve, and Billy, for the first time in his fucking life, was glad to see those kids Max was constantly hanging around. 

A woman Billy didn’t know was fawning over Steve, feeling for a pulse, and looking relieved when she felt his hot breath against her palm. 

“There’s more coming,” Billy coughed. 

He barely managed to get the words out, dripping muck and grime on the cement by the pool, when it felt as though he was hit from the side by a speeding train. 

He buried his nose in bright orange hair, hugging Max back as tightly as he could manage. 

He was exhausted, and feeling her there, alive and okay, was all that was keeping him standing. 

“I thought, I mean, we all thought you were dead. We saw it. That thing killed you .” Billy realized, with a whole lotta horror, that she was crying. Sobbing outright into his dirty chest. 

“Yeah, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” How could they have seen when that monster just came at him? 

“Oh, you’re bleeding.”

And if she only just realized he was hurt?

Max frog-marched Billy inside, to a very pale-looking Nancy Wheeler, sitting ready with a first aid kit. 

Billy had to peel his clothes off his body, the fabric stuck to him like a second skin. 

Nobody was speaking, and more of the people locked in the other place came traipsing into the room, fluffy towels wrapped around their shoulders. 

Hopper was the last to come in, holding the woman tight to his side underneath the striped pool towel. 

“Steve and El are closing it back up.”

There was a quiet murmur around the room.

Nancy patched up Billy’s shoulder, Max still stuck to his side like glue, the little boy from camp pasted to his other side. 

He had no idea how much time had past when Steve finally came traipsing into the room with Max’s little friend, both of them sporting matching bloody noses. 

Steve looked like shit. 

His face was covered in blood, old and new, and he still had some of the gross not-liquid in his hair from the Upside Down. 

But Billy doesn’t think he’s ever been happier to see someone in his life. 

“I’m sure everyone has questions,” said the woman tucked against Hop’s side. El, Billy assumes, had taken her place on Hop’s other side, wrapping the towel around her shoulders as well. 

The woman launched into a story that made Billy feel like his brain was oozing out of his ears. 

A monster. One they had all met before. Playing body snatcher in their sleepy little town. 

Apparently, one had been wearing a Billy meat-suit and wreaking havoc around town, which made Billy wanna throw up until he died. 

Which, not-Billy, had died. Fuckin’ brutally. And in front of everyone. Which sure as shit explained why Max wouldn’t let go of his sweaty hand. 

The story made Billy queasy, and he took to studying everyone in the room instead. 

All the kids were there, even the one that had been following Steve around like a little shadow, but they were all glaring in the very much opposite direction of Steve. 

Steve himself was pressed almost against the wall, looking like he’d collapse if the wall weren’t supporting him. 

“What’s up with the cold shoulder?” Billy muttered to Max.

“They’re mad at Steve right now. He’s been lying to us all.”

It was all he got out of her before everyone started moving around. 

The woman, Joyce Byers, he’s learned, had finished her story, and the group from the Upside Down had begun clamoring for rides home, or maybe something to eat. 

Billy just saw Steve manage to slip away before he followed him. 

It took some doing, shaking off the little one, who still wasn’t speaking, and looked ready to burst into tears when Billy told him to stay behind in the living room. 

But Janet Holloway took the kid’s other hand and gently led him back into the living room. 

Billy nodded at her, and sped up the stairs. 

It was weird, being in Harrington’s actual room. 

It was messy, and looked like Steve spent most of his time here tossing clothes on the ground or twisting up in his bed covers like a tornado. 

But it was oddly comforting. 

Being in Steve’s real room, and not some perverse dirty copy. 

Steve was standing, facing the bed, peeling his borrowed jacket from his shoulders and leaving it there on the floor.

“I never said thank you.”

Steve startled at Billy’s voice.

“Yeah. No problem.” Steve’s tone was light and airy, but Billy heard him sniff.

“Max said the little shitbirds are mad at you. Something about you lying.” 

Steve turned around, giving Bily a watery smile.

“It’s a long story.”

“I got time.”

So Steve told him. 

About the lab. 

About the experiments. 

About the torture. 

He explained that he had rules. Never making anyone feel something they already didn’t. Never altering someone’s opinion of, or feelings towards him. 

Billy grit his teeth as he imagined Wheeler giving Steve a hard time about that.

Steve was silent for a moment, not looking at Billy.

“It’s okay if you hate me. I mean, everyone does now.”

“You'd be able to feel if I hated you. You and those powers of yours just saved my life, Pretty Boy. I’m pretty sure I’m feeling the farthest thing from hatred just about now.”

It was as close to a confession as Billy would let himself get. 

But if Steve knows what he’s feeling at any given moment, then that means that he knows, and he didn’t-

“Quit it. Insecurity isn’t a good look on you.”

Steve sounded tired, and he flopped back onto his bed, staring at the ceiling with his arms out. 

At first, it didn’t sit quite right with Billy. 

He had barely even begun to identify what he was feeling when Steve swooped in and just point blank told him what the emotion was. 

Billy spent nearly all of his time being a big fuckin’ facade. 

He tried his very best to hide any emotional tell from anyone around him. 

He prided himself on being a chameleon. That nobody would ever truly know how he felt in any given situation. 

And here’s pretty boy Steve Harrington. Who is feeling just as, if not more, strongly as Billy is. 

But, it takes out all the parts of emotions that Billy hates dealing with. 

Showing them. Talking about them. 

He’d never once had to grapple with the words to explain how he feels to Steve. 

Steve would just. 

He’d know. 

And god, that’s kind of a nice idea. 

Billy sat down gently on the bed. 

“Alright.”

Steve’s head popped up to stare incredulously at Billy. 

Billy just grinned at him. 

#this fic is named after kind of a throwaway line in rocky horror but thats my favorite movie and i thought it fits :) #i worked so hard on this and i'm really proud pls like it i'm begging #yikes writes #yikes gets pathetic in the notes #harringrove #harringrove big bang #harringrove big bang 2021 #harringrovebigbang2021 #harringrovebigbang #also look at me writing something in-universe for fucking once #steve harrington #billy hargrove #powers!steve #experiment!steve #i hate using the ! like that but whatever

[sage-nebula]

@smallestfish​

I typed about five cellphone screens arguing against this with things in the game, but I accidentally highlighted all but the last couple lines and replaced them with a closing bracket instead of hitting copy. So, heavily shortened, Josh was more respectful to everyone in this game than the first one. He made a bet that the city would sort itself out if it had a few extra lives, moved one or two pieces when it was necessary, and let his opponent paint himself into a corner. Then, either Haz or he could just make it magically better after anyway if things really did go south, and things did, so they did.  Haz was significantly more cruel than Joshua has ever been by resurrecting everyone except Rindo's friends just to watch the kid squirm, and we know he did it with the intent to see how Rindo would react. There's a question to be asked of why Haz only intervened after time travel stopped being an option, and the answer makes Josh look like he's only waiting for Haz and Rindo to quit first and make his intervention actually necessary and good.

Replying this way because typing in the limit-restricted tumblr replies is annoying.

I disagree that the Shinjuku Game is in any way more respectful to anyone than the Shibuya Game. The Shinjuku Game was explicit psychological torture on the Players with no end in sight but their own erasure. The Variabeauties, Purehearts, and Deep Rivers Society were stuck for I believe 30+ loops; that’s seven months. During that time they not only saw other teams erased, but knew that their own erasure could come at any moment, and it’s specifically spelled out in the Secret Reports that this has an averse psychological effect on the Players. Of course, not that we needed that; Fuya, a 27-year-old man, was reduced to hysteric sobbing once he realized that his and his team’s fate was sealed. Motoi was never what you’d call an upstanding person (he was a plagiarist and an art thief), but his facial expressions when his treachery is revealed show that his sanity has been slipping for a while and he, too, is left grasping for any hope of salvation he can find. Kanon outright says she knows the Game is rigged and there’s no hope of winning, but she’s willing to try whatever she can to at least make it fair; it’s pretty clear that this unwinnable Game has been breaking her morale as well. And hell, by week two we see Fret’s optimism shaking as he realizes that the Ruinbringers can snatch victory away on technicalities, so even two weeks in a Shinjuku Game is enough to start wearing down on Players’ psyches, let alone thirty.

In the Shibuya Game, on the other hand, while it’s more brutal in the sense that the Reapers are out for blood (everyone’s gotta eat), anyone left alive at the end of the Week gets a chance to be restored to life or become a Reaper. (Well, most everyone. I think in the OG Secret Reports it’s stated that some are still redistributed into the Imagination of the UG, but for the most part all winners get a chance to return to life or become Reapers.) On top of which, the Players aren’t pitted against each other; they’re allowed, even encouraged, to work together to complete the missions and defeat the Noise. Shibuya’s Game encourages personal growth and development, whereas Shinjuku’s Game encourages competition and, to be honest, psychological torment. Joshua wanted to erase everyone in Shibuya just as Hazuki did in Shinjuku, yes, but his Game is far less cruel to the Players involved, not to mention the Reapers.

But Joshua simply . . . didn’t care about that, for three years. For three entire years he sat back and allowed Shiba to waltz in and dethrone Uzuki as Conductor. He allowed Shiba to disregard Shibuya’s Game in favor of Shinjuku’s. He allowed the Shinjuku Reapers to erase nearly every single one of his own Reapers for daring to speak out against this, to the point where Uzuki and Kariya feel as though their only option is to keep their mouths shut and go along with it, for their own safety. For three years he allowed Shibuya’s Players to not have the chance to grow, to develop, to discover themselves, to question what it is they’d want out of a second chance, and instead undergo literal hell in an unwinnable Game with no idea what they ever could have done to deserve such punishment. (The answer is, of course, nothing. They did nothing to deserve it. They just suffered it anyway.)

The point is: The Composer is the one who creates the UG. He is the one who creates the rules for how it operates, both within the limitations of the Game and otherwise. When Kubo and the Shinjuku Reapers came to call, and Kubo made it known that he wanted to “purify” Shibuya the way that he did Shinjuku, Joshua made a deliberate choice to enter into this Game with him and leave Shibuya to its fate. He flat out says this is his intention in “A New Day”:

Now, while one could try to argue that he was lying here, because he lies a second after this about not caring about Neku anymore (although in my opinion his definition of “care” is still pretty damn selfish), his actions in Neo make it abundantly clear. Joshua could have very easily done what Hazuki did to Kubo three years ago by booting him out of Shibuya and back to the Higher Plane. He could have easily let Uzuki keep her spot as Conductor and protected his Reapers from erasure by the Shinjuku Reapers. He could have very easily just returned Neku to the RG (thus protecting him from the Shinjuku Reapers / Kubo) instead of locking him in the remains of Shinjuku. He could have very easily done all of this and it would have been within his rights because whether the Higher Plane likes it or not, Shibuya is still his city and he didn’t technically break any rules by choosing not to go through with the purification. Whether Shibuya was purified or not was his call, even if they didn’t like his choice. It’s the reason why Hanekoma is in angel jail and Joshua is not.

But he didn’t. He chose not to. I’ve seen some speculate that this was due to Higher Plane politics, that Joshua wanted to show the Higher Plane that Shibuya was worth saving because it had citizens who could stand up even against angels and win. He wanted them to see what he sees in Shibuya. But even if that was his intention, countless lives were lost because of his decision. Countless people suffered because of his decision. The Variabeauties, the Purehearts, the Deep River Society—hell, even Reapers like Ayano and Susukichi—their erasure dust is partially on Joshua’s hands. He could have prevented all of this and he made a deliberate decision not to. The fact that Hanekoma makes a point in multiple Secret Reports (getting increasingly frustrated each time) that Joshua had opportunity to do something yet chose not to tells us all we need to know about how tied Joshua’s hands were, and the fact is that they were not. Or if they were, the only person who tied them was Joshua himself. 

A few final notes:

1.) My original shitpost was not about Hazuki’s morality or saying that he’s a “better person” than Joshua, but merely pointing out that he did more to save Shibuya (despite it not being his city and not his responsibility) than Joshua did, which is factually true. Joshua did nothing beyond show up for “moral support” for Neku and return Shoka to the RG. (And as far as we know, it was only Shoka. The Variabeauties, Deep River Society, and Purehearts are presumably still erased since they lost the Game.) Even after Neku and the others were perma-erased, Joshua did nothing. He did not intervene. He claims to Neku later that if things got really bad he would have, but again . . . everyone died, the city was on fire, and he was nowhere to be found, so I personally don’t think his word is worth very much here. Bottom line, I’m not saying Hazuki is a better person than Joshua—honestly I think they’re on the same level, more or less—but only that it’s hilarious that he actually took action to save a city that wasn’t his.

2.) For emphasis, Hazuki didn’t have to intervene. Shibuya is not his city. It’s not his responsibility. He could have returned to the Higher Plane to do angel things if he’d really wanted to. He exorcised Kubo for erasing Shibuya once he saw that Shibuya was actually going to be erased because Joshua had saved it once and he was curious as to why, and he couldn’t quite figure that out if Shibuya was gone. But he didn’t have to, and in fact he points out to Rindo that he won’t be able to do so again. But either way, it really wasn’t his job. It was Joshua’s. Joshua just chose not to do it, for whatever reason.

TL;DR:

Joshua let a lot of people suffer and perma-die when he very easily could have prevented it for reasons that are unfathomable even to the Producer (“Does [the Composer] have a plan at all?” — Secret Report #20), and while this was perhaps due to Higher Plane politics and wanting to Prove A Point to the angels of the Higher Plane, that doesn’t change the fact that the suffering and erasure of countless individuals was a direct result of his inaction, or that another city’s Composer had to step in to give the Players a chance to fix the mess because Joshua himself couldn’t be bothered to do so.

#neo: the world ends with you #ntwewy #neo twewy #long post for ts #smallestfish #also Rindo was Joshua's proxy so . . . if Rindo lost Joshua lost #and Joshua STILL did nothing even when Rindo DID lose #HAZUKI had to intervene #quite the contrast to the first game where Joshua joined up in Week 2 to ensure Neku could survive the week #(but also to needle him back to his old ways - or try to. or see if Neku would regress with needling. for science.) #Joshua's such an interesting character but he is not nice or selfless or even good #the only nice angel is Hanekoma #and that is Facts #ntwewy spoilers #neo twewy spoilers