I have a lot of thoughts about Steve who craves physical affection, who thinks of his worth in terms of what he can do for other people, and who got very drunk at high school parties. This is one of them
CW for heavily implied past dubcon (not between Eddie and Steve). Please take care
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Eddie has never seen Steve drunk.
At least – not up close. There had been a few high school parties back in the day where Eddie had passed by the “Keg Stand King,” but since he’s come to know Steve personally (intimately), Steve has barely touched alcohol.
He’s told Eddie the story of being drugged against his will and how he doesn’t want to repeat the feeling of losing control, and how he doesn’t like not being able to drive if he needs to, and how the hangover would probably just trigger a migraine anyway – and, really, he just doesn’t drink much anymore.
Yet tonight had been a special occasion: Robin’s birthday. She herself isn’t much for alcohol (for at least some reasons that match up with Steve’s), but drinking, she said, feels like a part of the birthday experience. She’d somehow gotten Steve to match her beer for beer, for “emotional support,” and it hadn’t taken long for the both of them to become entirely inebriated.
Time has apparently greatly eroded Steve’s tolerance.
Eddie had distantly expected him to be kind of a bitchy drunk—and he had become a bit cattier, for sure—but mostly he’d just become affectionate. There had been hugs for nearly everyone, and he’d spent the latter half of the party slowly migrating into Eddie’s lap, plying him with constant kisses on the cheek and giggling ridiculously at nearly everything Eddie had said.
It had been sort of adorable (not that Eddie will tell him that; no, he’s going to sit on that information until it benefits him).
It’s a little less fun now that he’s trying to cart Steve up to his room and into bed. Steve is a bit wobbly, and a lot heavy, and is much more interested in trying to cling to Eddie like a koala and bury his face in Eddie’s neck than he is in actually walking anywhere.
“Y’know, we could cuddle to your heart’s content if you’d just let me get you to bed,” Eddie points out when he and Steve have stalled out partway down the hall, leaning against the closed door to the bathroom.
Steve hums vaguely, tightening the grip he has on Eddie’s t-shirt. “But you’re out here,” he mumbles, nuzzling into the crook of Eddie’s neck.
A shiver travels down Eddie’s spine at the feeling of Steve’s warm breath ghosting across his throat, but it doesn’t go much further than a gentle, dying flutter in his gut. As affectionate as Steve has been, as hungry for contact as he’s acted all night, there’s been nothing sexual about it. It’s been all hugs and sweet kisses, not heated embraces and sloppy make outs.
Besides– Steve’s drunk. Eddie’s not going to take advantage.
He wedges a hand between himself and Steve and gently pushes Steve back.
“I’m coming to bed with you, you colossal dork,” Eddie says.
Steve blinks at Eddie, slightly unfocused. “Oh.” He finally heaves up and away from the wall, grabbing Eddie’s hand to tug him along as he weaves unsteadily down the hall. “Well why didn’t you say so?”
Eddie rolls his eyes, all affection. “Where else would I be going?”
Steve stops when they get to his room, apparently pondering the answer.
“Away?” he finally volunteers, half-questioning, as if he’s hoping he’s wrong.
“No, baby,” Eddie assures him immediately, leaning in to give him a quick kiss. “I’m staying. Gotta make sure you don’t choke on your tongue after you pass out, anyway.”
“’m not that drunk,” Steve says; he rolls his eyes and then immediately seems to regret it, reaching out for Eddie’s shoulder to steady himself.
“Uh huh,” Eddie drawls. “Okay, time for bed, big boy.”
Grumbling, Steve releases Eddie to shuffle over to the bed, where he flops down on his back with a sigh, jeans and all.
“Alright, not exactly what I meant, but I can work with this,” Eddie says, kneeling on the bed by Steve’s hip.
They’d managed to ditch their shoes in the entryway, but they’re otherwise fully dressed, and Steve is going to be uncomfortable if he tries to spend the whole night in his belt and jeans.
Steve squirms a bit when Eddie reaches for his belt buckle, as if he’s not quite sure whether to move away or not.
“Eddie…” he groans – an exasperated sort of groan, rather than the usual way he groans Eddie’s name when he’s squirming on the bed.
“Just hold still,” Eddie shushes him with a quick pat to the hip.
He gets as far as pulling the tongue of the belt through the buckle before Steve’s hands shoot out and grab Eddie by the wrists. His grip is surprisingly strong, considering how uncoordinated he’d been tonight, and Eddie stills immediately.
“Steve?” Eddie looks up to see Steve staring down at him, wide-eyed and apprehensive; hell, if Eddie didn’t know any better, he might say Steve looks… sort of frightened.
“Not– not tonight,” Steve says, enunciating carefully, and Eddie’s confusion only increases.
He doesn’t want his belt off tonight? Is that what he’s worked up about?
In the wake of Eddie’s baffled lack of response, Steve only grows more insistent, tugging Eddie’s hands away from his waist.
“Not while I’m–” Steve breaks off, licking his lips nervously. He shakes his head and adds quietly, “Please.”
Brows furrowed, Eddie stares at Steve a second longer. “Not while you’re…?” Then the penny drops, and Eddie jerks away from Steve so quickly that Steve barely has time to let go. “Oh shit, no. That’s not– no, I’m not– Steve, fuck, no, that’s not what I’m doing.”
Steve stares up at Eddie, the anxiety he’s a little too drunk to mask still lingering in his eyes.
“I promise, I was only trying to get your belt and pants off so you’d be more comfortable. For sleeping!” Eddie says quickly. “But you can keep them on if you want. Hell, put on more layers. Do you want a jacket?”
Distantly, Eddie realizes he’s rambling and tries to stop; it doesn’t seem to be helping.
“I– I know I was kissing you,” Steve says, then glances away with a grimace, seeming a bit more sober now. “Practically throwing myself at you. ’m sorry, I just–”
“Don’t be sorry. Don’t be,” Eddie says firmly. “Even if you were throwing yourself at me—even though you weren’t; like, I can tell the difference between cuddly you and horny you, okay?—but even if you had been, you can still say no. You can always say no. But I swear, Steve, I was only trying to get you comfy, that’s all.”
For a moment, Steve just breathes, processing Eddie’s words as carefully as his sloshed brain will allow.
“Are you still going to stay?” he finally asks. “Even though I don’t want to have sex?”
“Of course,” Eddie blurts, some dizzying combination of baffled, anxious, and incensed. “I’m only gonna leave if you tell me to.”
And even then, he’d only go as far as the couch downstairs (just in case).
Slowly, Steve nods, then reaches for his belt to pull it off in a series of determined, clumsy movements. He drops it on the floor when he’s done but makes no move to remove his jeans.
Eddie, following suit, resigns himself to an uncomfortable night. He strips off his jewelry and his own belt but leaves his pants on.
All the lights go out, save for a small, dim lamp on Steve’s desk, and then Eddie crawls on top of the covers with Steve, pulling the blanket from the end of the bed—a gift from Claudia—up over both of them.
A little of the churning, anxious mess in Eddie’s chest eases when Steve immediately plasters himself to his side, resting his head on Eddie’s chest (and Eddie just knows there’s going to be drool there come morning, but he can’t bear to move him). All the same, even as he hears Steve’s breathing even out into sleep, Eddie can’t get his mind to rest.
What has he done to give Steve the impression that he’d try to fuck him when he’s too drunk to really say yes? What has he done to make him think he’d leave if Steve doesn’t put out?
Nothing.
Genuinely and truly, Eddie can’t think of anything. There have been plenty of times they’ve hung out, even shared a bed, and they haven’t had sex. Sure, they’re active, but they do actually do other things together.
There have been other nights where sex has seemed like a sure thing, only to be halted by an apologetic look from Steve and the start of a migraine. There have been times Eddie’s called it off because his anxiety has reared up and bit him in the ass. There’s never been anger over it.
That leaves two options: it’s either an imagined scenario stirred up by anxiety and insecurity and alcohol, or… it’s based on a different experience, in a different time and place.
All things considered, Eddie has a terrible, sinking feeling that he knows which one it is.
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Sometimes I think about Louise Hobbs for too long and start going a little crazy.
Garret Jacob gets all the attention on the show. Abigail gets it from fandom. The absence of Louise is almost invisible. She’s not there. We don’t think about her.
We don’t think about her, of course, because she’s not in canon in the first place. She has no lines. Her name is not mentioned in dialogue. She only barely appears on camera.
Here is Louise Hobbs alive and well. Striking about this bit, once I was looking at it: she doesn’t look towards the camera, she doesn’t look towards her family members, and her family doesn’t look towards her. They move around one another and don’t directly interact. Look at it: Abigail and Garret Jacob Hobbs are communicating, here, in a way that she’s entirely cut off from.
(And, ok, listen, I’ve gotta sidebar. Even before Abigail actually picks up the phone, GJH is keeping track of where she goes. There are no clear frames of this tiny interaction, but look:
he’s keeping tabs on her. The minute she moves, he’s checking over his shoulder to see what she’s up to. By contrast, he doesn’t look at his wife even once.)
(One other thing about this tiny little scene of them playing house. GJH has absolutely no chill. He is tense and intense even before he gets on the phone. It’s not really possible to tell what Abigail is thinking through all of this--we know from later that she’s a pretty good liar--but Garret Jacob Hobbs is not subtle. He’s jumpy as fuck, and he’s probably that way all the time.)
Continuing.
The next time we see Lousie, she’s being shoved out the front door. Think about that. GJH didn’t kill her immediately. He’s not interested in seeing her dead. He’s using her to buy time in the kitchen with Abigail because he knows he doesn’t have any left.
The way I remembered Louise dying was with a cut to her throat, but look at it. She’s got wounds on her arms, on her torso. He wasn’t careful, or quick. He didn’t hold out his hand to her and ask her to come closer. He attacked her, shoved her out the door, and slammed it behind her.
That is the end of Louise Hobbs.
Hobbs family dynamics just. Absolutely fascinate me. (Too much.) I so desperately want to know what it was like to be Louise Hobbs. I want to know how much she knew, how much she suspected, and how much she refused to let herself understand. She’s the cannibal the show cares about the least. She’s the one who dies so that someone else can have a little more time.
The show constantly returns to the idea of murder as a way to break or make families. Besides the Hobbs family, there’s the children and foster mother from Oeuf, Gideon killing his wife in backstory, Lawrence Wells who killed his own son, Margot and Mason, and of course Dolarhyde’s obsession with killing families together. Louise Hobbs’s is a murder to break a family. She is, very literally, cast out.
We do see her one last time:
It’s interesting that, when Abigail sees this, Alana is the one who becomes her mother. Whatever you want to say about the long-term feasibility of the Murder Family, it’s indisputable that Hannibal was never interested in planning a future with Alana. She’s there nearly by accident. Holding a place meant for Will. She is not part of the plan.
If Abigail mourns for Louise, she does it off-screen. We see flashbacks to her interactions with Garret Jacob, but, after this, Louise never returns. We’re left to wonder, or to forget, all on our own.
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Death Warrant!Au
When the rejuvenating, life-extending effects of ectoplasm to the dead and dying was discovered by planets across the stars, it triggered mass conflicts that left several systems obliterated beyond repair. Hundreds of Billions had migrated to the Realms in numbers that were never seen before by the residence of the dead. They had various forms of damage and disfigurement on their new forms as a result of the ectoplasm being weaponized and used on them. Their very beings were corrupted beyond repair with their minds significantly altered with highly specified obsessions.
• Peoples from the destroyed worlds being so afraid that they lashed out, ripping anything that saw them to pieces out of fear of being attacked.
A serpentine creature of the Realms eagerly stalking them and fed upon their cores to grow stronger.
• Soldiers of these races were hell-bent on continuing to fight and proceeded to attempt subjugate this dimension that was new to them. Their rage guiding them blindly as they left paths of destruction throughout the realm.
A beast, wrongly slaughtered in the early madness of an delicate fledgling world that happened to be rich with ectoplasm followed the warpath and basked in the rage.
Eventually, more creatures like them came to prominence as a result of these strange new victims. Being aspects of emotion that were born from the masses in the war.
The Ghost King during this time period could not sit idly by and watch these newly born ghosts run rampant and terrorize his kingdom. With a heavy heart and a weapon in hand, a call to arms was called and the purge of these beings began. It tooks thousands of years, but when the last corrupted ghost was destroyed, the King took to the realm of living and wiped away all traces of the Realms from the minds of the survivors with all recollections of this terrible war for ectoplasm erased from history.
As his rested his eyes one final time, before the Tyrant would cowardly claim his life, made a major, sacred declaration that all citizens was made:
• If any hostile, mutant ghosts were to be found, they were to captured and examined by the king's council to await judgement. If they are too dangerous to restrain and seek bloody violence, they are to be destroyed.
• Any scientists trying to use ectoplasm for endangering life were to be have their memories erased and put to the sword for their crimes.
• Anyone foolish enough to Defy Death using ectoplasm, the greatest violation of the laws in the infinite Realms, they were to be put to death as and immediately given their Second End.
~•~ ~•~ ~•~ ~•~ ~•~
When Pariah Dark, the Cowardly Tyrant King, is defeated and Danny fianlly takes the throne after a few centuries of training, the Observers hand him a compiled a list of names who violated these sacred laws.
They have him start with Earth and Danny's jaw hits the floor with what the charges he was seeing. He can already hear the chaos in the meeting room.
• Amanda Waller, Vandal Savage, Darkseid, Granny Goodness, a court of owls(?)...the list is long, and that's just Earth alone!
• Jack "The Goddamn Joker" Napier and a few of the more violent Rouges of Gotham are charged with Veil Destabilization.
Even Jason Peter Todd Wayne...the Red Hood!? Danny can probably work something with Jason, force him into therapy sessions (along with the whole damn family) with Jazz and a couple cleansing sessions and supplements from Frostbite...the others had to go...
The continued slaughter of the innocent, combined with the suffering they endured and the misery felt by Shades who couldn't move on was making the veil deteriorate at dangerous speeds. New pits would form across the city eventually as a result.
Lady Gotham has done everything she can to keep the madness from happening but she can't hold it back any longer. Her core is ready to shatter under the stress and is constantly in agony, but she won't abandon her knights, despite Danny's pleas to save herself.
There's a certain brigade of furry's who may or may not like this news but said brigade had no choice but to take it on the chin. They have children who Defied Death in their ranks and the Realms are not afraid to destroy anyone foolish enough to stop them.
• Lex Luther is charged with crimes against humanity. And several other violations in regards to unethical experimentation.
One sticks out to Danny.
Lex used Danny's stolen DNA from a stray core shard from the Guys in White, who he was was funding in secret, even after they were disbanded, to create a clone comprised of the Earth's resident Kryptonian, the bald bastard, and himself to kill and replace said Kryptonian...the guy who literally helps save the earth time and time again from doom.
...Yeah, Lex is undoubtedly, fucked beyond total comprehension. Anyone defending him was risking all-out war with the Infinite Realms.
But hey, at least Danny was finally having child of his own! The little tyke is only a few years old in the tube, Ellie's visits are far and in-between and Danny's status as a Halfa made him sterile and develop an embarrassingly strong case of baby fever.
He's sure the ghosts from Krypton would love to help out in raising Conner in case Kal-El wasn't really planning on being around the boy. After all, being cloned himself, Danny knows the emotional baggage that comes with being violated to this degree by your enemy.
He just hopes the guy can come around and accept the little guy...
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