#the whole of hawkins is just one big fruit basket

[duskdrawings]

Okay so Ronance has officially summoned the fanfiction writer in me (after a year or so of not writing anything) and now my brain has just become a vessel for Ronance prompts to bounce around in and I have a bunch of ideas that I'm hoping to write for them so I just wanted to compile a list in case anyone was interested or had any ideas/suggestions! These aren't all fully finished ideas yet but I'm currently giving them plenty of thought (as I'm finding myself unable to think of much else besides these two 😂)

Fics will be mostly Ronance centric, possibly with side ships in a few but definitely with Ronance as the main focus/main ship.

Band AU:

•Could either be set in modern times or in the actual years of ST, I've not fully decided.

•Either one large multi-chapter fic or lots of random one chapter fics inside a series.

• The band starting out being a duo consisting of Steve and Robin who were messing about and decided to start a band (And they want to impress Eddie and Nancy).

•Stuck between two ideas: one idea involves Eddie and Nancy eventually joining the band OR the other idea has them just becoming their biggest fans and always cheering them on and watching them practice and things like that and Eddie could still be in his own band whilst Nancy is studying into journalism and could write articles on the band's performances?

-If the fruity four were in the band together:

Eddie: Lead Guitar (pretty obvious choice really 😂)

Nancy: Bass (I feel like Nancy could rock a bass). And possibly keyboard if it's part of the song.

Robin: Main vocals and rhythm guitar? And bits of brass if the song includes it because of her band kid background. (I recently heard Maya Hawke's song 'Thérèse' and just love the idea of Robin singing. And Robin starts out as the main guitarist before Eddie joins).

Steve: Drums? (I just like the idea of Steve on the drums).

(Could potentially swap Robin and Nancy's rhythm guitar and bass around as I'm not fully sure about those yet).

They could all do vocals on different songs as I feel like they would all have amazing voices but Robin acts as the main vocalist. They play all sorts of genres to suit each other's tastes. Steve and Robin writes songs for Eddie and Nancy when they are just a duo.

•Main ship would be Ronance and a bit of Steddie

•A little bit of jealousy flares up when Nancy/Eddie see Steve and Robin with fans or Robin with Vickie. I just love the idea of Nancy being jealous and Robin calming her down when she finds out but being touched that Nancy was getting jealous over her.

---

Modern AU:

•Probably lots of random one-chapter fics set in modern times where the gang are just vibing and being gay.

•One where Robin is an avid gamer and likes it when Nancy joins in and plays with her. Especially with Mario Kart. Robin usually wins but Nancy doesn't mind as she enjoys seeing Robin being all happy and celebrating - but she secretly wants to beat her at something so she trains at a game and then smugly beats her.

•One where the whole gang go to Pride (because let's face it, Hawkins is a whole entire fruit fest. And the ones that are straight are huge allies and come by to support their friends) This fic will probably be less specifically Ronance centric so I can write for all the characters but they'll definitely still be together and being cute. The people who are more knowledgeable on all identities/sexualities teach the ones who know less/are questioning.

Not fully set on everyone's labels yet but here's what I've got so far:

Robin: Lesbian (canon)

Nancy: Bisexual or Lesbian (she gives me HUGE struggling with comphet vibes)

Steve: Bisexual with female lean

Eddie: Gay

Jonathan: Pansexual? Nonbinary? (There's just something about Nonbinary Jonathan that makes my heart happy) Questioning?

Argyle: Pansexual or just doesn't use labels but is attracted regardless of gender

El: Lesbian? Asexual? Pansexual? Questioning? (I have way too many thoughts on El 😂)

Mike: Bisexual or Straight??

Will: Gay (pretty much canon at this point)

Max: Bisexual

Lucas: Straight

Dustin: Bisexual or Straight or Questioning???

Hopper: Straight

Joyce: Straight?? (Joyce would make a killer lesbian, I just know it but I'll probably just say she's straight 😂)

Murray: Gay (this matchmaking king totally likes dudes)

Some are working out their pronouns.

Possible ships: Ronance, Steddie, Jargyle, Jopper, Byler and either Elmax or Lumax and possible mentions of Duzie. (Definitely Ronance though).

---

Coffeeshop or Diner or Ice-cream Parlour AU:

•A true classic where one of them works at either a coffee shop, diner or ice-cream parlour and the other is a customer (because you can't beat the classics!)

•Most likely set in the same years as ST is but just without all the monsters and Upside Down stuff

•Robin will most likely be the one who works and Nancy will be the customer.

•Nancy is a regular at this place but keeps finding excuses to go back after Robin starts working there because she likes Robin. Even takes friends there to try and see what they think of her.

---

Robin getting trapped in the vines:

•One chapter, just something short and self-indulgent as I always wished it was just Robin who got caught so we could see how Nancy and Steve reacted to almost losing her.

•Focuses on Robin, Nancy and Steve. But Robin is the only one to get trapped in the vines.

•Gets rid of that conversation between Steve and Nancy about him wanting Nancy to be the mother of his six lil nuggets because no.

•Basically a rewrite of some of the scenes in season 4 episode 9.

---

Graduation fic:

•One chapter

•Most likely angsty unrequited love but part of me just wants to make our girls get together in everything so I'll see how much gay stuff I can throw in for them both.

•Set in a graduation after-party in the school gym after the events of season 4 - except Eddie is alive and Vecna is dead and defeated and Hawkins is saved. And for all intensive purposes, we're just saying that everyone is graduating at the same time and is in the same year.

•Characters involved are: Robin, Nancy, Steve, Eddie and Jonathan.

•Everyone has a partner/clearly soon will be with someone except Robin and Robin is pining for Nancy.

•Nancy either single or with Jonathan?

•Steve possibly with Eddie?

---

Nancy figures out she likes girls:

•Maybe one chapter or perhaps a few chapters?

•Basically Nancy is having a huge gay crisis and doesn't know what to do and goes to Robin about it and Robin helps her figure herself out.

•A very jokey and light-hearted fic.

•Nancy either bi or lesbian (who suffered with major comphet) but either way, Nancy is a total mess for women. Robin Buckley in particular.

•Completely Ronance centric

---

Dates:

•Several one-chapter fics of Ronance basically just going on dates and being cute and gay

•Unsure whether to make modern or set in the past

-Cinema (Robin getting really invested in the film and whispering little facts and observations to Nancy throughout, they secretly hold hands during tense parts, Nancy finds herself staring at Robin lots and missing parts of the film).

-Sleepover (Them giggling together under the covers, one of them staring at the other whilst they sleep, them sharing a bed and keeping each other safe and warm and cosy and warding off any nightmares. Also I headcanon that Robin hasn't really been over to anyone's house since she was really young so she's really flattered when Nancy invites her over).

-Buying presents for each other (they both want to get each other something special and wrack their brains for the perfect gift and they just think about how much they love each other and all the things they love about them. Super cute and fluffy and soft girlfriends).

-cafe/coffee shop (cute lesbians sharing sweet treats!)

-Fun fair (Robin wanting to be tough and strong for Nancy and win her gf a prize and Nancy teasing Robin as she continues to fail but she makes it better by giving Robin a kiss)

---

Vampire AU:

•Robin being turned into a vampire. Either she gets ambushed by a random vampire one night or I'm wondering whether to make her get close to another character (possibly Vickie or someone completely different) and it's because of them that she gets turned. Then the fics/fic involves Robin navigating being a vampire and possibly trying to look for a cure? With the gang finding out and being supportive, Nancy being the most protective of all.

•Multiple one chapter fics in a series or a big multi-chapter fic.

•One involves Nancy finding out. Robin tried to hide it from her to keep her safe but Nancy gets suspicious and is either with Robin when she turns or follows Robin and sees her turn/get into a fight or confronts her.

•One could involve Nancy caring for Robin after something goes wrong. (I'm a sucker for some good hurt/comfort) Robin is initially scared of being around the gang because she doesn't want to hurt them so Nancy.

•Robin saves Nancy from being hurt by other vampires, she's hella protective of her gf and that causes her to get braver when other vampires cause trouble.

•Robin would definitely want to be a "vegetarian vampire" and not feed on humans but gets forced to at one point and causes her to have a big crisis.

•Ronance centric (possibly with a few side ships?)

---

Some of these are only loose ideas and may alter slightly during the writing stage. If anyone has any suggestions or more prompts/ideas that they'd really like to see or just wants to discuss Ronance/Stranger Things then don't be afraid to hit me up! I don't really write NSFW but could potentially include a few slightly risqué moments if desired. I've already begun planning and some I've already started writing so they are in the works and I'm really excited to see where all these ideas go and to just add more Ronance fanfiction out into the world! I just love the idea of getting Ronance right near to the top/to the top of the most popular Stranger Things ships on AO3 because they really are so amazing together and throughout my years of shipping in fandoms, Ronance has pulled me in in a way no other ship ever has.

#ronance #robin x nancy #nancy x robin #gay stranger things #stranger things fanfic #stranger things prompts #ronance fanfiction #ronance fanfic #robin buckley x nancy wheeler #the whole of hawkins is just one big fruit basket #ronance nation: all rise! #the fruity four #band au #vampire au #vampire robin buckley #stranger things modern au #stranger things pride #the hawkins crew go to pride

[basedkikuenjoyer]

Let's take a day for the new one, Chapter 41's first half is live and it has a vibe with which I can jive. We don't have a whole lot in the way of funny panels this time but the atmosphere is just great. Everyone's hanging out at Cora's with the Donquixopticon Chamber that does have an equally corny name for realsies. Playing Daifugo and scheming for investigating Doffy's involvement with a Dark Bingo Tournament. No, it's not as much of a reference in Japanese. I got hopeful. These kind of moments are great though, lot of nice gags. I love how everything is interspersed with card plays, Daifugo is a fun game. Fruits Basket has it pop up and the old Tokyopop volume had the rules. Convinced a group of friends to play on a school trip once. Very fun memory. Get a load of Luffy cheating!

Where this gets cool is we do break up into teams based on the game. Worth mentioning it by the way, you could call it like "Tycoon" or "Millionaire." As a game it has a theme of wealth disparity and caste. So legitimately interesting to juxtapose with the Donquixote Brothers' origin story as well as what we potentially set up. Reminds me a little of both how we use Hawkins's tarot cards and the Go board in Wano. That's all the symbolic meaning for now, if it shows up again and terms are flummoxing someone gracious enough to translate, shoot me a DM. Moving on. New World parody, gotta split the party. One half will tail Doffy...and the other will investigate Onigashima Middle. Here's our groups:

Well how about that? Miss Nami who mentioned having Kiku's contact info, Miss Robin who pondered how much she'd know, and Miss Vivi who was part of actually saving the day around Yamato's trip to the carnival are all on the Onigashima team. The team notably without someone in that guide role Cora's in for the party crashers. So surely we're about to have some girl time with your new tol buddy. Does Kiku get a nice cardigan like y'all have? I bet she'd like it. Recall our theory is that based on established norms and uniforms, it seems Kiku might already be a New World Middle student like Izo.

Chopper can come too and honestly I'm down with Brook being a part of this. I uh, wouldn't mind checking off finding out how our girl reacts to being propositioned about seeing her underwear while we're at it. Seriously though, high chance our most precious flower of Wano's much more obviously foreshadowed return in this series feels quite imminent.

Since the other team is going to like, a gathering of something that sounds way too much like the Black-Black Club for this not actually ending up being a YYH reference I wonder if Big Mom will work her way in. Totally would make sense with what we have set up. Is a little weird to have Doffy rubbing elbows with her over Kaido but he was always the broker for everyone it seemed. Wouldn't mind seeing schoolboy Perospero, we know Pudding in a sailor suit will be cute, and if I get Katakuri & Corazon in the same panel I know I'mma break reaction records again. Not to mention Jinbei's absence has been a lil fishy. I love where this is all heading, seems like it'll be really fun.

#one piece academy #episode 41 #donquixote rosinante #trafalgar law #straw hat pirates

[thephantomofthe-internet]

Not Your Type

Steve Harrington x Reader

Read part 2 HERE

Word Count: 6,669

Warnings: Swearing, Smoking, Drinking, Sexual Assault mention

Tag List: @carolimedanvers @moonstruckhargrove @denimjacketkisses @hotstuffhargrove @thechickvic @alex--awesome--22 @hipsmcgee @lilmissperfectlyimperfect @so-not-hotmess @balladblood @ashescilev 

“You’re not her type, Steve.” 

“You can’t say that till she meets me.”

The two had been arguing for days on the subject, without a clear answer in sight. Robin had promised, after weeks of watching Steve fail at getting girls, first at Scoops Ahoy and now at Family Video, to introduce him to a girl. Not just any girl, a girl like her. Steve had finally admitted that Dustin was right and he needed to go after girls who could make him genuinely happy, not just a girl who fit his popular mindset. He had tried his luck with Robin, and easily accepted the loss due to her own sexuality, and now he was set to try again. And Robin had been hyping up this friend of hers for weeks. She was cool and funny and smart like her and she was straight. That was all he was looking for. Whoever she was, she sounded perfect. 

But Robin was holding out on him.

His turned halfway to look at her, leaning his elbows on the counter to watch her shelf VHS tapes of music videos by the checkout line. She kept her back to him, rolling her eyes at his last comment. He was so pig headed most of the time, it was honestly annoying.

“Robin, you made this big deal about her, you said she was perfect, that I’d want to marry her on sight, and now you’re holding out. You gonna tell me what the deal is or not?” he asked with a brutal sigh. 

Robin didn’t turn around “Look, I might have...overhyped her a bit...like she’s amazing but she might...not be interested.” she said, brushing a strand of hair out of her eyes, turning to look at him with an embarrassed grimace.

“What?” Steve asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

“Look...she likes Billy Idol types. She probably would’ve gotten along with Billy Hargrove if...well, you know.” Robin said, trailing off at the end. Both nodded softly, Robin swallowing as if her throat was dry. Maybe it was, the memory was certainly hard to swallow and even harder to forget.

“Right...so?” 

Robin scoffed “You’re too squeaky clean for her.” 

Steve slapped his hand on the counter, his hair bouncing excitedly with the quick movement “Oh come on! Do you remember me? I’m Steve ‘Hair’ Harrington! I was the coolest guy at Hawkins High.” he puffed up his chest proudly, like a peacock.

“And the most modest.” Robin stood up, dusting off her knees from grim from the carpets sticking to her bare skin. The only perk of working at Family Video was the lax dress code. The store’s air conditioning had broken in June and had turned the place into an oven with its big windows that couldn’t be shaded to hide the marquees and cardboard cutouts in the windows. Keeping the front door open and wearing as little as possible helped. 

“But seriously, Steve, I don’t want you to get your hopes up about her. She might not be interested.” Robin replied, planting her hands on her hips.

“I got it, now when can I meet her?” Steve asked.

Luckily for him, you were already on your way.

You had no idea why Robin had been so insistent on you visiting her at work. She never had been before, she’d made you promise not to visit her at Scoops, which was strange since you only worked a floor above at Claire’s, piercing children’s ears with ugly silver butterflies and flowers, only for them to buy big plastic hoops and balls to shove into the unprepared holes and get them totally infected. It was fun, you got to use a piercing gun. You’d almost gotten fired for trying to pierce your nose with the gun. You were glad that you didn’t, it would’ve totally ruined your nostril, but you wouldn’t pretend that it wasn’t totally worth it to see the look on your fat manager, Marge’s face. She was such a bitch, you were glad when that damn mall burned down. The one in Carmel was better anyway.

When Robin insisted on you coming to Family Video to meet her for her lunch break, you weren’t insanely apprehensive about it. It wasn’t until her tone changed when she mentioned meeting her coworker and friend that you started getting that sickening feeling in the pit of your stomach. She was trying to set you up with someone. Again. She always did this when she wanted something. Last time she did it, it was with that awful Keith to try to get him to give her his poster from The Godfather, which he’d nicked from the back storage at The Hawke while it was still open. Whatever she wanted, you weren’t going to be used to get it. 

Still, you showed up. You promised that you would after all, and you were a person of your word. Parking your car in front of the store, you saw the almost empty parking lot and the wide open door signaling the open store. You sighed softly to yourself, grabbing your purse off the seat next to you and stringing it over your shoulder, popping the door and climbing out.

“Robin? You here?” you called as you walked in.” the store was empty and far too quiet for your liking.

“Welcome to Family Video, where we bring movie magic to you! Can I help you with anything today?” Steve asked from the counter, startling you. You practically jumped out of your skin, your hand coming to clutch at your heart as you whipped around to meet the soft expression of Steve Harrington. He looked slightly bemused, clearly trying to not laugh at your over the top reaction. You rolled your eyes, walking up to the desk.

“Is Robin here? Robin Walker.” you asked, looking him over with a calculating eye.

“Yeah, she’s just in the back, wait here.” Steve stepped out from behind the desk, pulling at his stiff, polyester golf shirt. The shirt was so white and blindingly bright that it hurt to look at, but the large black logo for the store broke it up enough to make it easier to watch Steve leave as it was to watch him walk away. 

Steve didn’t even make it all the way to the stockroom before Robin emerged, already changed out of her uniform and was grinning like an idiot. “Hey! You made it just in time!” she said, tossing you her purse and sweater. You caught them easily, relieved to see your friend and get out of there. 

“Steve, this is my friend Y/N. Y/N, you know Steve, right?” Robin said, gesturing between them with her now free hands. 

“What up, Harrington?” you asked boredly, crossing your arms over your chest.

Robin gritted her teeth, squeezing her eyes shut and pulling her lips into a straight line. This is exactly what she thought would happen. Every time she’d introduced you to someone, no matter how genuine she was being, you turned into a brick fortress, completely impenetrable. Gone was your bubbly, snarky personality and quick wit, replaced by sneers and eye rolls and sarcasm. You weren’t nice or warm or open when you met the boys Robin decided you’d like. You weren’t yourself.

This wasn’t you. Robin knew it, she was certain that deep down you knew it. But Steve didn’t know it. Robin was certain that he had no idea who you were. And that made it worse. He had no background to you other than her own descriptions. And that wasn’t enough. This was not going to end well.

“You ready to grab food?” you asked, drawing Robin out of her mind.

“Huh? Oh yeah definitely. Burger in a Basket cool?” she replied, her eyes darting strangely between the pair of you.

“Sure, I’m not vegetarian this month. Accidently ate a fish stick last weekend while babysitting Todd Carther again. Total shit head but his parents pay me so much money to do it.” you replied, handing Robin’s things back to her. 

“Hasn’t he scared you off yet?” Robin asked, tying her grey sweatshirt around her hips.

“Nope, almost got me by dumping a whole jar of electric blue paint on my head. But the stuff is non-toxic so it didn’t mess up my eyes or skin and it let me know that dying my whole head blue isn’t going to be a good look for me.” you replied with a giggle, flashing a strand of faded blue hair to her. “The stupid paint did dye some of the bleach though, which totally sucks.”

“You babysit Todd Carther?” Steve asked, drawing your attention back to him and indented a hard frown onto your face. Robin caught the look and wrapped an arm tightly around your shoulders, squeezing them too hard. 

“Oh yeah, Y/N is utterly fearless.” Robin announced with a grin.

“I know his older brother Matt; wicked dude, total party animal. He threw the best parties at the end of the basketball season. Totally rad…” he trailed off with a doofy grin, clearly imagining the fun times he’d had at some shitty house party.

“I know Matt too. He groped Sylvia Newman in the middle of freshman English for a stripe of Fruit Stripe gum. He assaulted her and didn’t even get detention for it.” you replied stonily, narrowing your eyes at him.

“Oh… bummer.” Steve tried. You scoffed, rolling your eyes. “No, I’m serious. I didn’t know about that, that’s really fucked up. I don’t hang out with him anymore, but if I did I’d stop.”Steve said more confidently this time, running a hand through his overstyled hair. 

That...wasn’t the answer you were expecting. It knocked you out of your senses and you took a moment to respond. “Yeah...well I take money from his parents so I mean nobody’s perfect. And that whole family’s fucked up anyway.” Steve smiled slightly and you tried not to notice it. He just looked so proud of himself. It was almost endearing. But not enough to make you want to care.

“So, anyway, Steve? You go on break yet?” Robin asked.

Steve furrowed his brow, looking at Robin as though she’d grown a third head. Robin nodded her head towards you strangely and suddenly Steve blurted “That’s the girl? Really?”

You whipped around to look at Robin, utterly appalled. You had a sinking feeling that the whole reason you’d been invited out today was to be introduced to some guy, but you had no idea it would be so quick and for the guy to be Steve motherfucking Harrington. You couldn’t believe it. I mean he was the dumbest, more generic guy at Hawkins High. You swore he’d won the metal for stupidest questions in your Home Economics class in freshman year. He was just…such a dork! How he’d gotten so popular, you had no idea. Maybe this town was such so void of charm and charisma that even the most empty, callus boy could become a god with a wink and a smile.

“What does he mean that’s the girl?” you asked, your face pulling into a look of sheer anger that could stop a man in his tracks.

“Oh great work, Harrington, now you’ve done it.” Robin sighed, pulling her purse across her chest, smacking his arm roughly.

“Robin, what does he mean? What did you do?” you snapped, forcing her to look at you. Her face pulled into a look that you knew too well. Regret, embarrassment, and just a little bit of fear.

“I might have promised Steve that I’d introduce you to him.” You groaned loudly, your head falling back to look at the white tiled ceiling. Robin pressed on, her face turning into a look of sympathy, her smile made of rubber. “Because you’re so great! He doesn’t have many friends his own age anymore and I just thought-”

“Oh I know what you thought.” You bit out.

“Well, are you coming or not?” Robin turned to Steve, completely ignoring you.

Steve’s face turned sour and surprised and he looked between the two of you and then to the clock above you. “I mean…I kind of have some stuff to finish up here and I should really wait until Keith gets here before I go on my break…don’t want Mr. Mueller mad at me again.” He scratched the back of his neck, shrugging awkwardly.

Robin clicked her tongue “Since when do you care?” Steve simply shrugged again. “Y/N, can you wait for me outside?”

You nodded, turning on your heel and heading out just far enough to be out of sight. You wanted to hear whatever they had to say.

“Dude what the fuck? You wanted this!” Robin whispered violently.

“Yeah but I didn’t want her!” Steve replied. You didn’t see the smack, but you sure heard the sound of skin hitting skin and the embarrassing yelp Steve let out.

“Yeah well, you’re going to come with us and you’re going to be nice. Because I did this for you. And now you have to accept it.” Steve didn’t respond, which must have been a good sign for Robin.

“Remind me to never do anything nice for you ever again…” Robin muttered as their footsteps charged closer to you and you scurried out the open door, choosing to lean against the burning hot glass, crossing your arms over your chest and knocking the sunglasses from the top of your head to your face again.

“You ready to head out?” You asked, standing up straight, smiling at Robin.

“Yeah, just waiting for Harrington to put the sign.” Behind her, Steve was hanging the tiny clock shaped sign on the door, trying to figure out what time it would be when they got back.

“Just put four fifteen, Steve, Keith will be back by then and your shift will be over like immediately anyway. You clocked out, right?” Robin said quickly, turning to you to add “Keith is a menace; he doesn’t like to work with anyone and kicks everyone off the floor whenever he can.” You nodded boredly, you’d heard this when she worked with him at the arcade; she quit whereas he got fired, it was a point of bragging for her.

“Yes, Robin. I did what you said. I don’t like this idea, I need this job more than you do.” He muttered bitterly. You raised an eyebrow curiously. Bitter looked decent on him.

“Oh, will you relax? Let your hair down a bit, dingus.” Robin grinned, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. The three of you headed down the street to the cheesy diner Burger in a Basket. The whole place was themed after a fifties diner, complete with neon and pastel colours and fifties nostalgia on the walls. Bikes, hoola hoops, records, pictures of dead icons like Elvis and Marilyn Monroe, movie posters-the whole shebang. You didn’t go there for atmosphere, no, you went for the food. Robin insisted that it was the best burger she’d ever had and you’d be hard pressed to find one better in Hawkins. You didn’t know if Steve had been initiated into the burger ritual yet, but you didn’t really care.

Entering the teal and pink dining room, you nodded to the poor young thing in the giant black beehive wig and roller skates, you and Robin heading towards your normal booth. Steve followed behind, wide eyed and a little bit horror struck. You slid into the booth and grabbed the menus out of the rack at the table, handing them out wordlessly. Robin pushed Steve towards your side of the booth and he begrudgingly slid in, much to your dismay.

“You dragged me out of work…to go to a cheesy themed diner?” Steve asked incredulously.

“Just wait till you try it, Steve, it’ll change your life.” Robin said with a grin, flipping open the menu. You knew that she always ordered something different each time you came. You always ordered the same thing so you didn’t bother to open yours. Steve cautiously followed Robin’s example, flipping around with a wide eyed, innocent expression.

“Alright, welcome to Burger in a Basket, I’m Sylvia, how are you guys doing today?” the voice above you asked. You grinned as you saw Sylvia standing there in the stupid uniform. It was a comfort to know that her life was a little worse than yours. After all, she was such a bitch to you most of the time. That Matt Carther thing gave her plenty of room to get away with being a complete bitch, and it gave you something to use as a tester with guys in town. If they didn’t know who she was or they laughed, then they weren’t worth your time. Sure, you felt bad for her, but she treated you like dog shit for a year before dumping your ass to hang out with Macy Clarke and Nancy Wheeler.

“Hey Sylvia, we’re doing alright.” You said with a slight smirk, resting your head on your palms. Sylvia cringed slightly, but her eyes landed on Steve’s and her whole expression changed.

“Hey, Steve…” she murmured, pulling her lip into her teeth, grinning slightly.

���Hey, Sylvia, how’s it going?” he replied. Of course he’d go for her, you thought to yourself, she’s exactly his type. Just dumb enough to be cute but just pretty enough to hold your attention, with the slightest stink of desperation. You wanted so desperately to roll your eyes, but Robin was watching you with the knowing look, so you maintained your composure.

“I’m good! Can I get you a drink? Or are you ready to order? Do you need a minute?” you wanted to laugh; this was the best service you’d ever gotten at the restaurant. And it was all thanks to Steve.

“I mean…are you guys ready? I think I’ve got it figured out.” Steve said, gesturing to Robin with a nervous expression.

“Yeah, I’ll get the Fourth of July burger with mushrooms and can I get no mustard? Oh, and a diet coke.” Robin said, smiling confidently at Sylvia, who took down the order boredly.

“Sure, and for you, Steve?” she asked sweetly, fluttering her lashes.

“Um…I need a second more, Y/N can you order?” he muttered, leaning over to you. You nodded, surprised that him being closer to you didn’t upset you. It was almost…nice.

“Yeah sure…I’ll get the double hula burger with extra cheese, no pickles, no ketchup, and a triple thick chocolate shake.” You rattled off quickly, enjoying watching her struggle to get everything down.

“Alright, you ready, Stevie?” Sylvia asked and you noted the distinctive blush forming on his cheeks. Sylvia seemed too proud of her work and you wanted to wipe that look off her face. Pride was a bad look for her.

“Can I just get classic burger with mayo and extra tomato? And a coke?” he asked awkwardly, still clearly very unsure of himself.

Sylvia nodded “Perfect! I’ll be back with your drinks in a moment.” She said, turning and skating off, waving coyly to Steve as she headed back into the kitchen. You and Robin snickered, Robin rolling her eyes as soon as Sylvia disappeared.

“Oh my god we should have been bringing you since day one, they never give us that much attention!” you cried with a loud laugh.

“Dude, she wants you so bad oh my god!” Robin added, reaching out to slap his shoulder. Steve lowered his head, shaking his head.

“I totally remember her now…she had a thing for me in junior year, covered my locker in paper hearts. I wasn’t supposed to find out but I did. It was very uncool.” He muttered, shaking his head. You remembered that too, how she’d planned it for weeks, forcing you to help cut out pink, purple, and red hearts. You thought the whole thing was so cringy and weird, but she was dead set that he’d be intrigued by the mystery and sweetness of the action. She thought it was so cute. Barbra Holland unintentionally started the rumor that it was her, but you wished it was you to tell the world. Watching her slink home was worth the afternoons in the library with her calling you stupid for not cutting the heart out perfectly.

“She was just trying to put her feelings out there!” Robin replied incredulously.

“No, Rob, she was being weird. She could’ve shoved a note in his locker, send him a candy gram and Valentine, they do that every year for lacrosse team. She did something unnecessary and creepy to get attention. You’re just a hopeless romantic.” You grinned, reaching out to touch the bright red heart drawn in permanent marker on her wrist. You knew she had a thing for Jennifer Buffet, who worked at the now defunct Starcourt movie theatre. She always drew that little heart on everything whenever she had a crush, it was like she was trying to get caught, you didn’t get that; you always wanted to hide your crushes until the other person showed any interest in you. You wouldn’t usually agree or defend Steve Harrington, but he was right for once. You didn’t mind agreeing if he was correct for once.

“I am not!” Robin cried, crossing her arms over her chest.

You leaned in to whisper to her “Tell that to Tammy Turner.” Robin turned bright red and she leaned back into the vinyl seat, looking away from you.

“Oh was it bad?” Steve asked with a wide, doofy grin. You were surprised to know that he knew about Tammy, but you didn’t question it. Asking questions could reveal something that Robin didn’t want known. You were used to being careful with her.

“Ohhhh yeah, it was a rough year with her pine after that muppet.” Watching Robin pine after Tammy Turner was so embarrassing, since the girl was so straight. I mean the Steve thing was one thing, but the girl dated Tommy H for two weeks between his forty-second break-up with Carol. That’s the epitome of straight bullshit: finding Tommy H’ s awful, crass, and downright sexist attitude and sense of humor attractive and desirable. How Robin didn’t see that was beyond you.

“That’s what I said! She sounds like a damn muppet! Like Kermit the frog or something!” Steve cried, smacking the vinyl and turning to look at you fully. When he wasn’t trying so hard, he was actually pretty cute. His eyes blew wide and his smile reached its fullest capacity, straining to not split his face in half.

“I thought more Ms. Piggy, like when she sang with Elton John. She always like pinching up her mouth at the end of her words, she looks like a wrinkly old apple.” You said, giggling slightly. “Don’t go breaking my heart…” you imitated, pursing and squeezing your lips together, making a tiny ‘O’ with your lips. Steve’s eyes grew impossibly wider and he laughed far too loudly, his head tossing back. You turned to Robin, who was blushing crimson, fully turned away from the scene you were making. Sylvia skated over with your food and drinks, smiling far too much. She placed each order in front of you, angling herself so her chest landed in Steve’s face when she handed his order over to him. He didn’t seem to notice, he was too busy laughing.

“What’re you guys talking about?” she asked, tossing your order in front of you.

“That time you made Steve’s locker look like the Valentine’s Day massacre.” You grinned back spitefully.

Sylvia paled significantly and she reached up to adjust her wig, looking away. “That…that wasn’t me…” she replied softly.

“Yeah…yeah it was…” Steve said between breathes, wiping tears away from his eyes. Sylvia opened her mouth to reply, but nothing came out. She turned away quickly, skating out fast. You laughed hard when she ran off, hunching over in your seat.

“That was so mean!” Robin cried, looking between the pair of you with a stern look.

“She…she deserved it! After everything I dealt with from her, I get to have one!” you replied, shrugging softly as you recovered. Steve offered you a high five, which you took happily. You never thought in your life that you’d be laughing with Steve Harrington. Today was a weird day.

“Eat, both of you.” Robin snapped and you complied equally happily. You loved this place-everything was fresh and made to order. Sure, it was greasy and unhealthy, but you deserved a bit of comfort food once and awhile. Steve took his first bite and let out a very loud moan. You giggled, it was so stupid. And a little cute, you wouldn’t pretend that it wasn’t. And maybe a little hot. But you wouldn’t admit that.

“This is so good!” he said, muffled by his mouthful of food.

“It’s even better when you’re high.” You whispered, nudging his arm. Steve nodded in approval, clearly into the idea.

The three of you ate in silence, wolfing down your burgers without much of a hum save for the sounds of ice clinking in glasses and small slurps from straws. Burger in a Basket still had glass bottle of coke, the rumor was that they filled them up with every drink and washed them after, since they didn’t really make glass bottles of soda for retail sale anymore.

With only their fries left, the group returned to each other’s attention. To your surprise, Steve spoke first.

“Can I be like honest here?” he said, turning to face you once again. You nodded shortly, shoving a fry into your mouth. “I have like, no idea who you are. I really don’t.” you raised an eyebrow at him, unsure of how you were supposed to react to that news. You swallowed your mouthful, nodding to yourself.

“Yeah, I figured as much.” You replied “I remember you though.”

“Oh yeah, what for?” Steve leaned back in the booth, putting his arms over the seat. He looked to be ready to take in praise.

“I remember how shit you were on the basketball team. How shit that whole team was.” You replied with a chuckle, watching Steve deflate immediately.

“I was, like, the best player on the team!” he replied indignantly.

“That’s not saying much.” That line made Robin laugh and Steve curl further into himself.

“You really should’ve joined the track and field team. You were much better at that anyway.” You added softly.

“On what planet? I’ve never even done track and field.” Steve cracked bitterly.

“Yes you have, we all had to do it in middle school.” You said. Both Robin and Steve looked at you like you were crazy, so without any remaining shame, you pressed on.

“At the end of the year, every year of middle school, we had the grade-wide track and field meet. We all trained on basic stuff-long jump, cross country, shot put for the older kids, and high jump. Then, each grade would compete and the best of those kids would go onto the main competition. We all got a day off to watch and there were free freezies. It was one of the best days of the year.” You explained.

“Yeah, so what? I never competed.” Steve replied, watching you closely.

“Yes, you did.” Steve raised an eyebrow at you. You rolled your eyes and continued.

“You were in eighth grade and I was in seventh. You had won the long jump in your grade level because Jude Armstrong broke his ankle and I had won the high jump. So we both competed. I remember three things about that day: one; that I won the high jump against all the older kids and Tina tried to push me into the mud after I got my medal; that you and Tommy snuck off to smoke cigarettes during the high jump. You both pretended that you’d done it before, and maybe you had, but Tommy was coughing so hard even after that it was so obvious that he’d never even touch a cigarette before.  And three, that that was the year we were all forced to run the cross country race. Nobody had wanted to compete in the race, so they forced us to do it to set an example. I didn’t want to run it, I’m not a distance runner, but you were so confident. You didn’t look nervous at all. And when the whistle blew and everyone bolted, you held back. You came in third in the cross country race and second at long jump, against the odds on both. It was the coolest thing I’d ever seen.”

Steve nodded. You looked so pretty when you explained the memory, your whole face lit up and your smiled so softly. You looked angelic, it was truly a sight. But the memory itself turned his stomach.

“I remember that…” he muttered “What I remember about that day was my dad telling me that no other place matter except first and that I was absolute shit.”

You felt so bad, bringing it up at all. He looked so sad now, you regretting even commenting on it. “Oh…I’m sorry…” you said softly. Steve shrugged as if it meant nothing, as if he felt nothing. “God, what a dick and you were good too!” you cried.

“Nah, I kind of sucked.” Steve replied, pushing away the compliment with his hands.

“No seriously! We could have used you on the team, Jude Armstrong sucked ass after like freshman year! You showed real aptitude. And you’re built for it, strong legs and a good core. Let guys like Chuck Bronson stomp around the court, you should’ve came and competed with us, you would’ve won something.” You joked, kicking his shoe with your own.

Steve huffed “We got into the county semi-finals last year…”

“Yeah? We won country finals and got fifth in state. Half my team got into state colleges on scholarship based on that alone.” You replied haughtily.

“You gonna get one?” he asked.

“I might, I got a scout watching me. Don’t know if I’m gonna take it.”

“Oh yeah, why not?”

You grinned proudly “I’m hoping to follow in Emma Lancaster’s footsteps.”

“What she do?” Robin rolled her eyes at that comment.

“She got a full ride to NYU for fashion design.”

“You sew?”

You rolled your eyes “I’m the head of the costume department for the drama club.”

“It’s how we met.” Robin added proudly.

“Emma Lancaster founded and headed up the fashion club at Hawkins High and ran the sewing club. She wants to work for designer labels and head up her own one day. I just want to make costumes for plays. I’d work anywhere that paid and go to any school that offered money.” You explained.

“That’s cool, I hope you get it.” Steve said and you noted the slightest hint of sadness in his tone.

“How’s your planning going, Steve, got any ideas yet?” Robin asked, clearly catching onto the tone Steve had in his voice.

“Well…” he looked a little embarrassed as he spoke, but did so anyway “I was thinking about applying to the police academy in Carmel…it’s not a clear shot, but I’d like it more than working for my dad.”

“My uncle works there, I can put in a good word with him if you want.” Robin said cheerily.

“That would be cool. I just don’t know if I’d be any good.” Steve muttered to himself.

“I’d think you’d be pretty good, I mean you’ve got strong morals.” You turned to Robin “Remember when he broke freak Byers camera? He deserved that fucking shit.” Robin nodded in agreement.

“I mean yeah, Steve, you care about people. Like you take care of Dustin like he’s your brother. It takes guts to be genuine and unafraid about hanging out with literal children.” Robin added.

“You hang out with Dustin Henderson?” you asked curiously.

“You know Dustin?” Steve asked, equally confused.

“Yeah, my sister Stacy made fun of him for like a week last year after the snow ball for asking her to dance. I wanted to smack the shit out of her for it, it takes guts to ask somebody out, especially at that age.” You explained, slamming your tall milkshake glass on the table, having just slurped up the last drops of chocolate milk and whipped cream.

“Yeah well he’s got a girlfriend now named Suzie.” Robin said. Steve’s attention had turned to the window and you heard a small gasp.

“Shit, Keith’s here, I gotta run.” He pulled out his wallet and slapped a twenty dollar bill on the table before sliding out of the booth.

“Don’t get in shit, dingus!” Robin called after him.

He spun around quickly, jogging backwards “If you get me fired, I’ll kill you.” He looked you over slowly, a lopsided grin pulling at the corner of his mouth “I’ll see you around, Y/N?”

“Yeah, sure.” You smiled. Steve nodded happily and his back slammed into the poor dish boy, stumbling slightly before scampering off.

As soon as he was gone, Robin turned to you with a devilish grin “He likes you.” She giggled, reaching out to poke your shoulder.

“Good for him.” You replied, trying to seem confident and uncaring about the whole situation. Internally, you were utterly rocked. He’d gotten to you. You’d drunk the Steve Harrington kool-aid. He was deeper, more genuine, honest, and cooler than you’d ever expected him to be. You were utterly intrigued and now you had to know more. But you weren’t going to admit it now, not when Robin was being so cocky about it.

“I think you like him toooo!” she said in a sing-song tone.

You scoffed “No, not really.”

Robin saw right through you. But there was no sense in arguing when you were like this. You had too much pride to admit it now, especially with Sylvia floating around, looking for any excuse to rip the rug out from under you. But she had an idea.

“So, listen, I’m not working tomorrow and we haven’t hung out in forever. Wanna have a sleepover tonight?” Robin asked, pulling out cash from her wallet to cover herself and you, since she owed you money from the last time you’d gone out to eat.

“Sure, I’m not babysitting the brat tomorrow.”

“Great! You want to rent a movie or something? I get a discount at Family Video.”

You knew what she was doing, but you went along with it. No sense in calling her out now when she had a plan, it wouldn’t stop her anyway.

“Eh, whatever. I’m good either way.” You replied breezily.

“I wanna rewatch Carrie so let’s head over. Maybe grabbed some snacks too, I want some sour belts.” Robin said, climbing out of the booth and grabbing your hand, pulling you out. You didn’t really like horror movies and you really hated sour belts, they weren’t even sour, so you knew Robin was milking your ambivalence for all it was worth. What she didn’t know is that you actually kind of liked Carrie and you had a new dress that needed fitting and Robin would be the perfect model for it. Karma was a bitch.

Robin dragged you all the way to Family Video and inside, grinning at Keith and watching him blush as you passed by. He’d told you that he loved you the first and only time you hung out. You never called him back and Robin had to explain to him that saying I love you on a date that wasn’t even a date is the wrong move. Now, he wouldn’t even speak to you, which you didn’t mind.

“Y/N! Go gather as many packs of sour belts as you can get your hands on! I’m gonna find Carrie in the back!” Robin instructed.

“Get something fun too! Like the Princess Bride or something! Something I’ll actually watch!” you called after her. Robin flashed you a thumbs up and you sighed, turning on your heel and heading to the checkout line, grabbing lime green packs of rainbow striped, sugar coated candies off the rack and clutching them to your chest.

Robin found Steve in the back and, with very little pushing, sent him out onto the floor to talk to you. It only took two tries from him to get the courage to go and talk to you.

And again, he scared the shit out of you. He tapped you on the shoulder and you jumped a foot in the air, dropping all the sugary treats.

“Shit sorry!” Steve cried, dropping to his knees to clean up the mess.

“It’s okay!” you replied quickly, following suit. He shouldn’t have to clean up your mess after all. Your hands both rushed to grab the packages and when they brushed one another over the last packet, you couldn’t pretend that it wasn’t nice. The briefest chance of touch set your heart aflutter. You felt like you were ten years old again. He handed the packages over quickly, standing up just as fast. He offered you a hand up, which you took, if only to hold his hand for the briefest of moments. God, who even were you? You pulled it away fast.

“So…what’s with all the sour strips?” he asked, looking over the armful of candy you had.

“They’re Robin’s favourite. She told me to grab a shit ton, so I did. She’s grabbing the movies for tonight.” You explained.

“What movies?”

“Robin wants to watch Carrie. I’m hoping she gets something fun too, like Fast Times at Ridgemount High or The Princess Bride. Something funny.” You replied. You’d never smiled so much in a day, your face was starting to hurt but with Steve you couldn’t help it!

“Oh yeah? Having a sleepover or something?” that cocky Steve Harrington attitude was coming out, but it wasn’t making you as nauseous as it usually would, which was very odd.

“Yeah kind of. Which means Robin’s gonna wanna watch horror movies, eat so many of these until she pukes, and sneak malt whiskey from her father’s liquor cabinet.” You said, not hiding the slight disdain in your voice.

“Yeah? What’re you gonna do?”

“I’m gonna hem the dress I made for the Roenke County theatre’s production of Romeo and Juliet, sip vodka from my flask, and take away the sour belts when Robin gets sick.”

“Sounds fun?” Steve questioned.

“It probably won’t be,” you chuckled “But it’s not the worst way to spend a night.”

“How’d you think an evening with me would chalk up? In comparison I mean.” Steve asked, his hand coming to the top of the low black shelf to lean into you.

“Well I guess it would depend, what’s your plan?” you asked with a grin.

“Whatever you want.” He murmured softly, smirking far too confidently. You didn’t mind though, you knew what was underneath it all.

“Well, I’d have to think about it…how about you call me sometimes and we’ll talk about it.” You replied slowly, looking him up and down.

“Anytime, you got a pen?” Steve said. You nodded, pulling one out of your purse and grabbing his arm. You scribbled out your number on his palm, trying to make it as legible as possible and ignore how big and warm his hands were.

“I’ll call you tomorrow, that cool?” he said as you watched Robin saunter up too confidently, too proud of herself and of what she’d done.

“Sounds good.” You smiled, ignoring Robin’s cocky leer. “You ready to pay for this shit?” you asked as she walked up, wrapping an arm around your shoulders.

“Gimme the belts, I got this.” Robin said, eyeing up Keith like she was going to beat him up. Maybe she was. “Wait in the car, okay? I didn’t bring mine, so you’re driving me home.”

You nodded “Got it.” You turned to Steve, smiling softly “I’ll see you around, Harrington.”

“Definitely.”

#stranger things #stranger things 3 #stranger things imagine #stranger things headcanon #stranger things au #stranger things 2 #steve harrington #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington x you #steve x reader #steve x you #steve harrington imagine #steve harrington imagines #steve harrington au #steve harrington aus #steve harrington fluff #joe keery #steve harrington headcanon #steve harrington headcanons #steve harrington fanfic #steve fanfiction

[fifiliphile]

A Taste Of Freedom

[Ao3 Version]

Relationships: Eleven/Mike Wheeler

Characters: Eleven/Jane Hopper, Mike Wheeler

Words: 2113

Summary: Who would have thought that the spring of 1985 would come round so quickly and liven Hawkins up so much, the whole town and its surroundings exploding with colours. It could have not come to be had it not been for the successful outcome of their fight against the Mind Flayer last November. Mike hardly believed almost five months had passed since that fateful night when everything in his life—turned upside down in the autumn of 1983—had pieced together once again. And all it took was for her to be back.

—A short and fluffy one-shot, focusing on that sweet little thing between Mike and El.

Beware! There might be minor spoilers for Season 2!

It’s my first fanfic to Stranger Things and I hope everyone is in character. This one I have a mixed feelings about. I really wanted to post it, because I’m really proud of a second half of it, but a first half… not so much. But it’s here anyway. And I hope you’ll like that shameless fluff with those lovable kids being kids and figuring love out. Enjoy!

Who would have thought that the spring of 1985 would come round so quickly and liven Hawkins up so much, the whole town and its surroundings exploding with colours. It could have not come to be had it not been for the successful outcome of their fight against the Mind Flayer last November. Mike hardly believed almost five months had passed since that fateful night when everything in his life—turned upside down in the autumn of 1983—had pieced together once again. And all it took was for her to be back.

He still caught himself smiling at the memory of seeing her for the first time in nearly a year, of how different she had looked, and yet so strikingly familiar. Of hearing her calling his name with her voice cracking, sheer emotions visible on her face. Of how great and soothing it had felt to have her in his arms once again. Of his tears soaking into her jacket, while he had been trying to swallow his sobs.

Even in his wildest dreams, he hadn’t dared to expect her to come back at that time. He’d been far from losing hope, but the idea of her return actually happening had become more and more surreal with every passing day. And then she had showed up, saving their lives and saving Hawkins all over again. This time, however, she had been still here at the end. Just like she had promised.

A thought that the spring came round in its fullest just for El to admire it crossed Mike’s mind several times, as he couldn’t help himself but realise that it was her first spring she could experience as an actually free person. Although she still couldn’t wander too far away from the cabin or roam Hawkins on her own, Hopper let her meet with her friends from time to time and she was spending a lot of time at the Byers’. In consequence, the party’s meeting point was moved from the Wheeler’s basement to the Byers’ living room.

Of course, Mike would rather have El come over to him, but for now Chief insisted on keeping her presence low-key, and, as much as Mike hated it, he had to agree. Luckily, his willingness to compromise provided him with a chance to spend some time with her on their own once in awhile. Hopper wasn’t a big fan of their “dates”, but he wasn’t naïve either. Well-aware that those kids would always find a way to see each other, he preferred to know about it, so he could keep an eye on them.

Mike remembered the first time they had gotten a chance to spend some time alone after her return. It had been quite a fun little stroll in the woods, as they hadn’t been allowed to walk too far away from the cabin. He had still been processing all of this, trying to wrap his mind around a journey she had just told him about.

“So, your real name is Jane,” he had made sure, getting a nod from her as a response. His eyes had been locked on the trees before them. He had swallowed a lump in his throat, as a wave of guilt had flooded his heart. “Would you like me to call you Jane?,” he’d asked, the name sounding strange to his ears. Before she had had a chance to answer, he had continued: “I guess now that you know your real name, calling you Eleven is… wrong, and I’m sorry for that.” He had winced, his hands fidgeting.

He had felt her gaze on him, and then she had grabbed his hand, squeezing it reassuringly. “Mike, you did nothing wrong,” she had insisted, smiling affectionately. “And I really like when you call me El,” she had admitted softly, coming to a stop.

He had looked at her, unable to keep a tender smile from lightening up his face. “El it is then,” he had affirmed, his eyes locked on her.

For a moment he could swear a weird energy had started to surround them, pulling them towards each other. However, before any of them could have even slightly moved, they had heard Hopper’s voice calling them in the distance. That had been the end of their first “date”, but it had marked the beginning of something exciting Mike had thought he would never get to experience.

Every time they had hung out afterwards, Mike had tried to come up with a different activity they could engage in. From watching movies (Mike was even more than willing to show El the ones he liked the most, so that she could better understand the references he or their friends sometimes made), through listening to music, reading comics (he couldn’t wait to show her the X-Men, even though not one of them was as amazing as her), playing games, to teaching her how to ride a bike, they were enjoying every moment they spent together.

And today, with the sky almost cloudless and the temperature quite high, he decided to have a little picnic by the lake that was located nearby Chief’s old trailer. It was Hopper who had proposed the spot, and Mike reluctantly agreed, forced to admit that a place actually seemed pretty nice.

He brought a small basket with him, filled with Eggos, candies, fruits, and cookies that his mother had baked a day before, one of the blankets that had created a rooftop of the fort tucked underneath his shoulder. El was already waiting for him by the shore, watching as wind created small creases on the surface of the lake. With light reflecting in them, the view must have mesmerised her, because she didn’t even seem to notice his presence.

Mike himself hardly paid any attention to the lake, though. He was surprised to see El dressed in a long-sleeved blue dress that reached her knees, revealing a pair of light pink socks and white sneakers. He hadn’t seen her wearing a dress in quite a while, and it didn’t fit a bit more punk style she preferred lately. Although she tried many new clothes that she was getting either from Nancy or Will’s mom, she didn’t pick any dresses, at least until now.

Placing the basket carefully on the ground, Mike took a deep breath, trying to stop painful memories from filling his mind. Despite the a different colour of the dress, similarities in her appearance made him recall that fateful night in November of 1983. He shook his head, convincing himself that it was all a distant past now, not worthy of his time.

Mike cleared his throat, unwilling to startle her. “El,” he greeted her happily, as she turned around.

“Mike.” She smiled lightly, and quickly approached him in a few steps.

“I brought some things you might like,” he said light-heartedly, reaching for the blanket.

She helped him to spread it out on the grass, and soon they found themselves laying beside each other, delicate, humid breeze grazing their feet. El insisted that she hadn’t been hungry yet, preferring to just lay down for a while and watch the world around them. It didn’t cease to amaze him how she could find even such an ordinary activity so enjoyable.

“I like the feeling, Mike,” she confined casually after a few minutes of companionable silence, her starry eyes locked on a cloudless blue sky.

“The feeling?,” he echoed, trying to figure out what she meant.

“Freedom,” she breathed lightly, clearly tasting the word on her tongue. And then an incredibly broad smile brightened up her face.

All that Mike felt was a pure joy mixed with a childlike wonder, radiating from the girl lying just inches away from him. He couldn’t help but think about opening up presents on the Christmas Day, and how her expression now had to mirror the one of every child on that magical morning. And somehow that association turned out to be even more fitting, as he had never seen her smile like that. Granted, it happened more often now than ever before, but if genuine, her smiles were frequently shy and restrained, giving him the impression that she still struggled with showing her emotions.

Now, however, was completely different. The smile—a grin, actually—not only reached her eyes, adorning their corners with adorable little wrinkles, but it also seemed not to be repressed at all. A sense of serenity accompanied it, as she let the corners of her mouth lift as much as it was only possible, her eyes almost closed.

Mike had no way of expecting to get to see such a wonderfully delightful showcase of emotions, coming from the very same girl, who, with just her presence, seemed to lighten up his every day. And seeing her so happy—so  carefree —only made his heart flutter.

He couldn’t look away from that wonder of a girl, and soon a murmur escaped his now dry mouth. “I love it when you smile. You look so pretty.” And then he stiffened, mortification filling all of his body, as he watched in horror her head slowly turning in his direction. Had he really said something so stupidly cheesy out loud?

For a moment he hoped she hadn’t heard his words, but his worry seemed to vanish entirely, as tender brown eyes locked with his. “You think?,” she whispered, her smile slowly disappearing, and he had to do something to stop it, a sight too extraordinary to be gone so quickly.

“Yes,” he answered, simply and surely. It took him a second to realise that what he had just said sounded very Eleven-like. It seemed that she had already rubbed off on him more than he was ready to admit.

However, it turned out that just that one word was all she needed to hear. And then that wonderful smile once again appeared on her face.

Mike was quite sure that if he hadn’t already been lying on the ground, he would’ve certainly found himself on it now, swept of his feet. Moments before, he couldn’t see much but a half of that beautiful smile, directed at the sky above them. And now that smile was all for him to marvel at.

He gulped, feeling a weird, slow shift in the air around them. Although he couldn’t put his finger on what was an exact cause of that, he found himself being drawn closer to Elle, even though their hands had already been almost touching. Maybe she was a really strong magnet after all? That would explain a lot.

Unfortunately, his thoughts got all messy and tangled as if on cue with her turning on her side. Mike followed suit, slowly reaching out a hand in her direction. His fingertips brushed her cheek gently, only to trace her lips as her smile grew even more. Mike’s fingers were slightly trembling, yet he didn’t withdraw his hand.

With a heart furiously thumping in his chest, he leaned in closer, so that their foreheads were almost touching. El didn’t stiffen nor flinch away, apparently relaxed and comfortable even with him being so close to her. Instead, she held his gaze, and he could swear that in such a close proximity her eyes looked even more mesmerising. “You are so pretty,” he whispered, his breath surrounding both of their faces with warm. “And incredible. And kind. And amazing,” he quickly listed, feeling his cheeks reddening. “And I’m so happy you’re here.” He mirrored her smile, retracting his hand, only to have it grasped between cool, delicate fingers.

“I am too,” she agreed and then softly admitted: “I am happy that you found me back then.” She cast her eyes down, looking at their intertwined hands. “Thank you,” she managed after a moment, her voice small and more emotional than ever before, but Mike could see a smile playing in the corners of her lips.

He squeezed her hand reassuringly. “Hey, I couldn’t just leave you there,” he affirmed delicately. “You always help a friend in need.”

“A friend…” She furrowed her eyebrows slightly. “You are my most great friend, Mike.”

“Greatest,” he corrected her warm-heartedly.

“Yes.” She nodded and looked into his eyes once again, as if pleading for him to say something more.

“You’re my most great friend, too, El,” he echoed her choice of words, with a light-hearted smile. “And you will always be.”

That weird energy seemed to be all around them once again, and he could tell that she felt it too. “Promise?” Her voice was barely above the whisper.

“Promise,” he murmured softly, just before their lips met in a gentle kiss.

I feel like El would say some things incorrectly sometimes, since, you know, she’s still learning. And that’s why I came up with that “my most greatest friend” (I just hope it’s not stupid).

#stranger things #stranger things fanfic #eleven #jane hopper #mike wheeler #mileven #fluff #fluffy fluff #one shot #my fanfiction #the unbreakable promise series

[yasbxxgie]

Black Farmers Grapple With A Changing Economy: Shifting market forces, immigration reform, and a lack of interest from younger generations mean that black farmers in the small town of Covert, Michigan, are at a crossroads

Steven Hawkins is younger than a good number of his blueberry bushes.

We are standing in the space between rows of Bluecrop berries, and he is scratching his chin thoughtfully as he tries to work out how old this particular section of his farm is. “This was the first field he planted,” he says, referring to his father. “You see how tall these are? They don’t handpick these. These are big bushes.” He gestures vaguely. “Sixty-three years old. Everything over here pretty much is 63, give or take a year. I wasn’t even around when these were planted.” Steven is himself 58 years old and his earliest memories are wrapped around these bushes; he has never known a world in which blueberries were not a part of family life and preoccupation.

In the town of Covert, Michigan (as well as the neighbouring towns of Watervliet and South Haven), blueberries are cheerfully ubiquitous. “Wherever you go in Covert, there’s blueberries. And the county we live in, Van Buren County, has a lot of blueberries,” says Steven as we drive over to another of his family’s farm sites. By the time I leave, several days later, I will have learned to spot blueberry fields from the window of a speeding car, and I will be able to discern varieties by taste, if not appearance. Casual visitors to Covert can’t miss the blueberry “propaganda” leading them into this small town. Even before they arrive, they are primed: Mixed in with the billboards bearing ads for gentlemen’s clubs and anti-abortion messages along the I-94 that brings you here are notices to suggest this part of Michigan is a veritable fruit basket, waiting for you to come along and pick your own colorful selections. Fruit and vegetables — pears, peaches, grapes, apples, cherries, and of course, blueberries — form the bulk of the economic farming backbone of this town (population: 2,888, according to 2010 census figures).

Covert is very country — there are signs advertising “fast rural internet” affixed to utility poles, no traffic lights, and bunny rabbits literally gamboling in the brush — and there is a sleepy feel to the place that belies the motto on the town marker: “A COMMUNITY ON THE MOVE!” It is a place where simultaneously very little and very much has changed over the years. In summer 2017, I spotted at least two Confederate flags flying proudly.

A cursory look at population data over the last couple of decades tells a clear story about a shifting demographic in line with America at large: Between 2000 and 2010, the population of Covert decreased from 3,141 to 2,888 (black people were proportionally the highest decrease) while the Latino population almost doubled, from 478 to 881, in the same period. In 2014, the Detroit Free Press named the town as “the most diverse community in Michigan.” It’s important to say: Covert is not — and has never really been — a black town. But with its long history of integration, and its proximity to summering black middle-class Chicagoans over the years, it sure feels like it is.

A quiet slide has happened in this farming town, and black farmers, who make up only 1.46% of the national figure, are at the forefront. Second- and later-generation black landowners and farmers like Steven Hawkins are not as common as they used to be here. Driven by a number of factors including immigration reform, the changing whims and forces of a global market, and, perhaps most pertinently, lack of family interest from younger generations, black farmers in Covert are at an interesting tipping point. With an aging population — and young people with their eyes on the nearby urban enclaves of Ypsilanti, Chicago, and Detroit, among others — a very specific kind of civic agreement, built on decades of familiarity, is disappearing alongside title deeds and family legacy.

American communities like Covert may never recover. And one has to wonder if the US is set up to support these kinds of jobs anymore. Farming has never been solitary work, and requires a hands-on approach that an increasingly globalized world does not make room for, especially for generations not necessarily weaned on farming practice.

Farming as an occupation is a romantic American notion. The onward march of modernity — in which people trade malleable rural earth for unyielding urban concrete — has gifted the farming community a certain level of unknowability. What we do “know” is largely idealized: Farmers work long hours, the work is backbreaking, they are the best, most salt-of-the-earth people, and they deserve all the praise, because they’re a big part of America’s economic backbone. The mean salary for a farmer in Michigan is just over $66,000, while the national annual mean is $75,790. Figures from 2012 suggest farming is slightly less robust than it was at the 2007 census: The total number of US farmers declined, and while farming was more ethnically diverse, there were fewer new farmers altogether.

In the popular imagination, the farmer is also white; think of Grant Wood’s 1930 painting “American Gothic,” reproduced over and over with only slight tweaks. On the one hand it is right to think of American farming in this way: The 2012 US Agriculture Census reported just over 2 million white farmers, operating on almost 855 million acres of farmland. But American farming has many faces, as ordered by powers greater than just a will to till the land. The majority of farming may be white, but that’s not the whole story, especially not in a town like Covert.

From 1844 until 1877, Covert was called Deerfield, which becomes self-explanatory when you consider that Steven gets to indulge his bow-hunting hobby during hunting season. (He showed me a photo on his phone of a young buck he shot last summer.) The small township has a curiously integrated past, with its earliest black settlers leaving the South in search of free living, and finding themselves living cheek by jowl with white people. The integration of Covert was a blip in the national picture in the 1860s, but its schools were racially mixed, as were its politics — in 1868, at a time when black men were unable to vote in the state of Michigan, the population of Covert elected one to the office of highway overseer. While the history of Covert is one of startling white and black coexistence, the reality of integration is a little more complex (see, for example, A Stronger Kinship: One Town’s Extraordinary Story of Hope and Faith by Anna-Lisa Cox for details of the “emancipation festivals” held in the 1870s).

“I won’t say harmoniously,” says Steven, laughing, “but they did live together and weren’t forced to. School was integrated, and you know, in other towns, they were forced to integrate, there was busing and all that. Covert didn’t have to go through all of that.” He talks about the town’s proximity to the Indiana border, and the Underground Railroad. “You’ve got a lot of blacks that came up from the South that was runnin’ away, they came in through the Underground Railroad: towns like Cassopolis, Vandalia, Niles, Berrien Springs. Those are all border towns, and the Quakers would house…hide the blacks.”

Steven is a jovial man with a relaxed mien; it is difficult to imagine a situation that would ruffle his feathers. It is a handy disposition to have as a farmer, since, as he puts it, “the weather determines everything. It’s timing, and Mother Nature controls all that.” When I call him a farmer, he issues a gentle protest. “I’m not a farmer!” he says with a laugh. “I’m a play-farmer. I play-farm. Real farmers do it year round. They live it year round, in my opinion.”

Real or not, 2017 marks Steven’s 31st year of involvement in the family farm. But the Hawkinses have been in Covert for substantially longer than the farm has been operational. Steven’s grandparents, Octavia and Charlie, lived in Chicago, and like a swath of Chicago’s black middle class, treated Covert as something of an annual summer retreat. Octavia Hawkins was a leader of the United Auto Workers Local 453, and a cofounder and first treasurer of the National Negro Labor Council. “My grandmother was an activist, politically conscious and always fighting for the cause, for the people,” Steven says proudly. His grandfather Charlie was a chef. “Most of the people when I was young, they moved here from the Chicago area — they would come down here with relatives in the summertime.” Eventually his parents, Sylvester and Carolye, joined them. Steven is the last of their four children, and the only boy. Alongside his farming, Sylvester poured hot steel at Bohn Aluminum for decades, and died of brain cancer in 2003; Ms. Carolye, now 88, is a retired teacher who taught in Covert’s integrated schools, and who still lives in the farmhouse close to the family’s original fields. She plays bingo every week, and still plays the piano in her church choir. Before I leave, she tells me that she’s a member of the “CRS Club” — the “Can’t Remember Shit” Club — before adding faux-demurely, “I don’t curse, I’m a church girl.”

Back in the 1950s, when the Hawkins family moved into Covert for good, they were at the vanguard of a small but tight movement of black farmers. “There was always black farmers,” recalls Steven, “but never a lot. My father was one of the few at that time, one of the first black farmers in Van Buren County that had blueberries. Everybody else might have had what they refer to as a patch — you know, 50 plants on your property, that’s a patch. We’ve got a lot more than 50.”

When blueberries were designated a “superfood” by trendy foodies in the mid-’00s, the Hawkins family had been growing the fruit for decades. “When [my father] started, blueberries weren’t as popular,” says Steven. “Trying to sell your berries was difficult. None of these processing places were around. He had to be part of a co-op.” Sylvester was, for quite a few black blueberry farmers in Covert, a spur. Steven gestures to a blueberry field that belongs to one of his friends, Leroy. “He started farming all because of my father. He would tell the young guys, ‘If you live here, what else are you gonna do? You might as well buy some blueberries, make some extra money.’”

Glover Dandridge, 83, was Sylvester’s brother-in-law and friend. He’s lived in Covert for almost 50 years and, until recently, ran a bar, the Blue Star Lodge. He helped Sylvester plant some of his first blueberry bushes “on weekends, and after work.” He told me Sylvester’s ambition was simple: “to be the largest black grower of blueberries in Covert.” And so Sylvester began by buying a parcel of land opposite his parents’ house in 1954. That expanded over the years to what the family holds now: some 150 acres growing 11 varieties of highbush blueberries, across four sites. “We would be considered a medium-sized farm, right on the edge of being a big farm,” says Steven with no false modesty. Steven was 27 when he bought into the farm along with his sister Paula (who now runs payroll); his two eldest sisters declined a partnership offer. As the farm has grown, his role has evolved correspondingly, moving seamlessly from lender to copartner.

“I’m not a big fan of farming. This is what my father did,” Steven says with another easy grin. “Do I understand the fact we got the land and do I appreciate that this is what he left us? Yes, I do appreciate that. But the idea of being a farmer? That’s not something I really enjoy.” He chose early retirement and is now self-employed, running an emergency medical transportation company with his wife in Ypsilanti. “My father would say this is God’s country,” he says. The family legacy has hung over him as long as he’s been alive; Steven has had time to come to this conclusion, and make peace with it.

In 1945, a man from Mississippi by way of Chicago came to Covert, and being an enterprising sort of man, decided he could make a life there. He wanted to make this corner of Michigan look more like home, eventually going as far as planting nine apple trees for his nine sons, some of which are still standing. “My great-grandfather was here in ’45,” says Barbara James Norman as she gestures at the original farmhouse on the property, “and paperwork says he didn’t buy it, but rented it. I came in ’48.” She still lives in the farmhouse she grew up in, more than a hundred years after it was built.

Barbara’s own ancestors were comfortable with the outdoors. Her grandfather was a keen shooter and hunter, and also a canny businessman. “He owned a cab company in Chicago, and he had a restaurant in one of our buildings, and he tried other stuff up here too – he had as many as 200 pigs. He was an entrepreneur, and he’d say, ‘Baby, while you’re sleeping, the cabs are making money.’ My grandfather was always telling me when I was a teenager, ‘Plant these, baby, these are for your grandkids.’ And I was like, ‘I don’t even have a boyfriend.’” She emits a raspy laugh, her puckish face scrunching up. “Once he planted the blueberries, that was it. His thing was a business that would make you money 24 hours a day.”

A fourth-generation farmer, Barbara cannot remember a life in which she was anything less than at peace with her decision to be a farmer. To make sure her descendants never lose that connection, she’s tending to what she hopes will be the sixth generation: her grandkids. On the day I visit her, she’s just returned from Chicago, wearing a National Farmers Union baseball cap, and beside her is her 91-year-old great-uncle Leo Simmons (one of those nine sons).

Barb’s Blueberry Batch is doing just fine. “With farming, you work five, six months out of the year, and then you can live the rest of the year, you know? I think it’s good…but people don’t think farming is a business. They’ve got that stereotype of slaveowners or whatever, but I do all right, you know?” She huffs out a laugh. She grows organic Bluecrops and Jerseys on 25 acres of a 53-acre farm, but doesn’t sell to the usual processors and markets anymore. Instead, her biggest client is Detroit Public Schools — a partnership now in its sixth year — and she also sells to a food co-op in Plymouth, Minnesota. Barbara does almost no hand-picking, but rather sells directly off the bush. “I don’t need labor, not really. If you want my berries, you bring your crew.”

Barbara’s a Covert mainstay, and so she’s had a front-row seat to all sorts of change: She knows who’s passed on, who’s selling, and who’s potentially buying. She knows farming isn’t nearly as attractive to her grandkids’ generation as it was for her 50 years ago. “To attract them into anything,” she says, “you need to start in the womb. Just like you read to them in the womb, you need to start teaching them the value of the land. My grandsons have had a garden since they were 3.” The divorcing of black Americans from the land — something that was sped up drastically by the Great Migration — smacks of a cruel symmetry, considering the history of how they came to arrive en masse on this continent. Land ownership among black Americans peaked more than a century ago, and various factors – from discriminatory practices by official bodies such as the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and arcane laws to mass migration and industrialization – are to blame for that. For Barbara, helping people gain a deeper understanding of the potential of the land is her passion. “Some people think money is power. I think power gets you money, and I think land is power,” she says. “Go back to the land — they’re not making anymore.”

Barbara’s mission is to make sure people are exposed to this way of life. She regularly invites Michigan and Illinois schoolchildren to the farm — “They walk the land, they pick berries, they’re just loving it. I do it every year” — she’s a vocal advocate of the USDA’s many programmes and she teaches farmers about risk management, and how to diversify to survive. “The Agriculture Department is the second-largest budget in the nation, second only to the Department of Defense,” she says with a sharp smile. “And it’s kind of a well-kept secret.” (She’s not exactly correct, but the USDA is certainly in the top 10 highest-fundedgovernment departments.) Barbara tells people about the 1890 scholarships to HBCUs, and has personally taken Covert students on college tours. The pride is evident in her voice when she says, “I’ve had maybe four not-successes, but I bet I got about 19 or 20 success stories.”

Barbara’s mission is clear, and she is a steadfast champion for this way of life: More than just a means to an end, farming is about legacy, and specifically black legacy. But holding on to her family’s blueberry farm legacy — and helping others to build up theirs — is one thing. Barbara’s farm operates differently to many others in this township. She no longer needs pickers, but so many farmers still rely on seasonal labor. What use is a family legacy of a few acres if no one is around to farm the land? Selling becomes the obvious choice.

The two issues of labor and legacy are inextricably linked, as is perfectly illustrated in the story of another black Covert farmer less than a mile from the Hawkins homestead, Carol Baber.

A soft-spoken woman raised in Eau Claire, a village about 30 minutes from Covert, Carol is a 20-years-strong transplant to Covert. She worked for 18 years as a supervisor in the kitchen at Covert Public Schools before retiring and had been planning to open a daycare centre. When I ask what brought her to town, she laughs before saying, “I married Harold Baber, and he brought me here.” She is the proprietor of Baber’s Berries, a six-acre farm that grows two varieties of blueberries, Bluecrops and Elliott’s. Their little holding was all Harold’s idea, with the encouragement of one Sylvester Hawkins.

“He worked on the Hawkins farm for a time,” she says of her husband. “He always loved blueberries, so when we bought this place, he put his own blueberries out there. They’ve been here since 2001, I believe.” Harold died of cancer a few years back, and Carol assumed responsibility for the business. It is safe to say, however, that she never wanted to be a farmer. “If this wasn’t right here at the house,” she says, gesturing out of her kitchen windows, “I would’ve sold it a long time ago, is all I can say. It was my husband’s thing. I was just… I didn’t wanna be a farmer.” She giggles, but it’s a laugh filled with resignation. When I press her about the potential significance of holding on to her late husband’s legacy, she holds firm. “Uh-uh. I keep it because it’s here at the house. You see, it’s a ‘U,’ right here. And I just don’t want anybody else out there. So that’s why I keep it. And it does pay for my son’s college, the berries. So…” This time when she trails off, her laugh is knowing.

Unsolicited family legacy aside, Carol Baber’s most pressing headache is labor. All her berries are handpicked. Blueberries are graded — the handpicked ones generally get the best price at market, but they are also the most labor-intensive to produce, and picking conditions must be dry (“Nobody wants a wet berry,” Steven tells me, sagely, when I ask), which means picking during the hottest, most arid hours of the day. And that’s before the other maintenance issues that concern a blueberry farmer: weeding, pruning, fertilizing, spraying, and so on. “It’s hard for me because I don’t have any equipment,” Carol says. The Hawkinses help out with spraying (she buys the materials), but “it’s really hard to keep the grass down. So I’m working on trying to get a tractor.”

Most acutely, she needs pickers. “It’s really very difficult because you don’t have anybody to pick the berries,” says Carol. “My family helps me out a lot.” Her 9-year-old niece, unable to be a picker due to labor laws, helps by cleaning the berry buckets. Carol is herself one of nine children, and her siblings pitch in every summer. I join them in the midday sun to fill a pail with late-season Elliotts. It is careful, boring, and uncomfortably hot work. Carol’s sister Rheba Bell tells me being in the fields at midday is love as a verb: She says, laughing, “If she wasn’t my sister, I wouldn’t help at all!”

But of course, Covert’s picking was never done just by local hands. There was a time when migrant workers rolled through town with their specialist ability (usually honed over a period of years) and kept things running smoothly. When I visited Covert in late July and early August, there were signs up all over town and in neighbouring areas bearing the legend “PICKERS WANTED.” All the farmers I spoke to lamented the turnout. Steven recalls up to 60 pickers a day when he was a child. “Now we’re lucky if we get 20, or 25 on a good day,” he says. “Growing up, we used to have families out,” Barbara tells me. “Most of the kids who grew up in Covert picked in these fields before half these people around here had blueberries. Now some of them won’t let their kids come out and pick.”

Keith Colombel, a Hawkins family friend, worked on the Hawkins farm after high school in the late 1970s. For the last six summers, he’s been back in Covert after living all over the region, working the harvesting machine, driving berries to the receiving and processing areas, and spraying pesticides and fertilizer. He remembers a time when whole families would take to the fields come picking season. “When summertime came, you knew you was in the berry field,” he says in a voice reminiscent of the singer Lou Rawls. “You know, that was your money for school clothes. That was just the norm for all the families back then.”

Rick Anderson has been a blueberry farmer since 1973, when he relocated to Covert to start the farm with his parents. The plan had been to stay for a single summer before returning to Chicago to teach. He ended up working full-time, joining his parents on the farm in the evenings and on weekends. Their initial 40 acres — with roughly 15 dedicated to blueberries — was a fruit basket: cherry trees, McIntosh apples, Glohaven peaches, and about 200 Stanley plum trees. Eventually, the Andersons began experimenting with breeding their own blueberries. “Our very first propagations were done in a cold frame on the side of that chicken house. We made some cuttings that winter and started maybe five or six hundred.” They survived, and thrived, thanks to Rick’s mulching.

The growth of the Andersons’ operation occurred gradually, over a period of years. And a big part of their success was the picking workforce that Rick used to be able to rely upon. “It’s difficult to find good farmworkers now,” he says. “We used to have families that would come from Texas and Florida and made the circuit every year, but we don’t see that migration anymore.” There’s a wider issue of immigration and seasonal workers — mostly from Mexico and other North American nations — that will only become more and more troublesome in the current political climate. For Rick, who machines most of his berries these days, eliminating his need for human labor, it predates President Trump. But the background terror of the Clinton and Bush Jr. years has given way to something even more visceral in recent months.

“I can’t tell you how many times — even before Trump took office — how many times we had people working, back when we handpicked, and then the police show up. And we were friends with the police here, they’ve always been good to us and a lot of times, they would just stop to say hello, and our workers would just…” He splays his hands and makes a “poof” sound. “They��d disappear into the woods. And that was before there was any question about illegal immigration. I’m talking 15, 20 years ago. So you can about imagine what it’s like now. The ones that are here are scared. And they’re very insular, they stay to themselves, they really don’t mingle, and you can’t blame ‘em. It has definitely affected our workforce.

“It’s a shame, it really is, because we need our farmworkers. And there aren’t a lot of people who are actually willing to do this kind of work for the kind of wages that we’re paying and can afford to pay.”

There is a less depressing side to this tale of uninterested younger generations and a much reduced workforce: Some of those initially migratory workers have chosen to settle here — as suggested by the jump between censuses in the proportion of Covert’s population listed as “Latino or Hispanic.” (The 2012 Census of Agriculture recorded a decrease in Spanish, Hispanic, or Latino farm operators in Van Buren County between 2007 and 2012, but an overall increase in average farm size, from 39 acres to 69 acres. That acreage shrank for black or African-American operators over the same period. The number of farms decreased for both groups.) “Some of those families have settled here, and they bought their land, and they’re now successful berry farmers,” says Rick.

Steven concurs. “The Hispanics are really the only ones getting into blueberry farming on this end. So all the homes that when I was a kid were occupied by [black] people that I knew, the majority are Hispanic now. And they’re farming — they still farm. The African-Americans? Not so much.”

Steven knows what he’s talking about. On his family’s farm, Benny Enriquez lives with his wife Guadeloupe in the (now expanded) two-bedroom house Sylvester and Carolye first moved into in the 1950s. Benny is Mexican-American, and began a working relationship with the Hawkinses as a migrant worker almost 40 years ago. He speaks almost no English, and he is among the most trusted pairs of hands in the operation.

It’s an easy conclusion to come to, but the shift in ownership is not necessarily about a tribal, racial animus. Even though it’s never been majority black, Covert was a sort of black town. Like with many rural American communities in the age of globalization, there’s been a drift to urban centres. When she was a child, Carol Baber’s aunt and uncle used to live close to where she lives today, and she remembers Covert had a commercial strip: a grocery store, and other shops. These days she has to go to South Haven (7 miles away) or Coloma (9 miles out) for her groceries. “We used to have stores downtown,” says Keith Colombel. “We had a bank down there, a barbershop, about three or four gas stations. The Greyhound used to stop in Covert, and you could go anywhere you wanted from there. And once all that stopped…” He doesn’t have to finish his sentence. Covert is exactly the sort of place that most people just leave.

But sometimes, and increasingly in recent years, it is also a place where people — like Benny, like all the other recently arrived Latino fruit farmers buying farmland — are coming to settle down, and thrive.

On the Saturday morning before I leave, Glover Dandridge drives me around town to show me all the previously black-owned blueberry farms. Some are overgrown and look abandoned. He points out farmland that used to belong to a Jamaican by the name of Brown, one of the first black blueberry farmers around here, by Glover’s estimate; another farm that once belonged to a surgeon called Wilson from Chicago; yet another that was owned and run by a trumpeter from Chicago. Many of these farms have been purchased by Latino people, he tells me.

On one of the Andersons’ farms, Glover points to a conspicuously staked realtor sign swinging in the breeze on the frontage, a smiling white man above the words “For Sale.” “Selling everything,” says Glover, sombrely.

When I speak to Rick Anderson, he is resigned. He’s had many careers alongside farming — running secretary of state offices, rights representative in the Michigan Department of Civil Rights, security personnel at a nuclear plant, and car salesman. In his forties, he moved to the nearby city of Holland, where he still lives, and retrained as an electrician.

But at 65, he is finally thinking of what he wants for his future, and selling makes sense for his circumstances. The blueberry market has exploded, and farming, even aside from picking labor, is not inexpensive. “Everybody is raising blueberries now,” he says. “They’re raising them in Chile, in Argentina, in Australia even. Georgia, Florida. There was a time when this part of West Michigan was the premier blueberry growing spot. It no longer is. We don’t have that market share anymore. It’s just a matter of supply and demand. You got oversupply, you got less demand, and less money.” He recalls something Sylvester Hawkins told him several years back. “He said, ‘Rick, you know, blueberries are a good thing to get into if you can afford it.’ I never forgot that. If you have the wherewithal, you can do pretty well. If you don’t, then you’ll die on the vine.”

He wants to spend time with his wife, who is a cancer patient, and he wants to make sure his two younger sisters are taken care of. “If I survive another five years, I’ll be 70. It’s time to kind of let it go,” he says.

The presence of black blueberry farmers, growing this crop, in this part of Michigan, is no accident. Men like Sylvester Hawkins encouraged and built up the community, and all the farmers I spoke to had benefited from the presence of other black farmers. But if their descendants are selling up and moving on, particularly as a response to better educational and economic prospects, who can blame them? Certainly not the Latino farmers who appear happy to take over and maintain farming as the business of Covert. The new owners of Rick Anderson’s farm may well be Latino. That’s just what Covert’s (admittedly not infallible) demographic data and anecdotal evidence suggest.

“We’re gonna disappear,” says Steven. He has two sons in their twenties, both of whom live in Ypsilanti, a city two hours east of Covert. “We’re gonna become extinct as farmers because there’s no connection.” That lack of connection is a bit of a self-made problem, he admits. “It’s a twofold thing. We worked hard to show our kids what we considered a better life, and they’re taking advantage of those opportunities. They’re doing exactly what we told them to do.” He laughs ruefully. “Can you be mad at them about it? No. But do you hope and pray that some of it rubbed off? Of course.” His sons are now at the age he was when he first bought into his father’s farm. But his children are millennials, and the world economy is very different. “The job market in our era was a lot better, the pay rate was a lot different,” he says. “By the time I was 27, I’d been working at UPS for five years and they paid well. Rent wasn’t as high as it is now, I made a lot more money than [they] make, and I was able to save.”

Each farmer I spoke to is either hopeful of a future in which their children will want to remain involved in their birthright, or they stoically envision a reality in which black Americans’ bond with the land dissolves entirely. For many, the farm is a jewel in their family’s crown, a rite of passage for younger members of the family, earning their first paychecks alongside migrant workers as well as being part of the societally valued “job creator” class. The challenges faced are recast as the building blocks of pure American grit, aka an asset in the world. But that earlier noted aversion to picking is only exacerbated as the younger generations in these farming families become adults. Why become a farmer? What does it mean if there’s no new blood to take over?

Carol Baber’s son is at college, and she knows he has no interest in working on the family farm. “My son? Uh-uh. He likes air conditioning!” She laughs uproariously. “If I pass away, he’s probably gonna sell it. It’s not attractive to young people. You have to have that farmer in you to want to be a farmer, you know?”

“I say I didn’t do as good a job brainwashing with mine as my grandfather did with me,” says Barbara James Norman. “And right now, we’re rounding up the next generations, trying to see who will partake. Who will do something?” Concessions are being preemptively made. “You don’t have to necessarily farm all of it, or as much as I do,” continues Barbara. “But if you need to eat, you don’t know what’s going to happen with the economy. Just as much as you can, wherever you can.”

Rick Anderson’s three daughters live out of state, working as a law librarian, human resources specialist, and engineer respectively. Despite some interested sounds from his eldest, he says his children are “not really equipped” to be farmers like he and his parents were. Selling had never been the intention, until it was. “I don’t like it,” he says heavily. “I would have rather my daughters were able to just take this over and run it.” Blueberry farming cannot be done from a distance. “It takes a lot to do this,” he gestures at the fields behind him. “You have to totally… You’ve gotta burn your ships. It’s a tough way to make a living.” All his daughters are single, and the reality, Rick says, is that that makes life as a farmer harder. With uncertainty built into the job, you need all the backup you can get.

“All the blueberry farmers I know, their spouses all worked. My mother worked while my dad worked the farm because they needed the insurance, they needed the extra cheque, [for] their retirement.”

Money is as important as familiarity with the crop and locale, and the fact is, absentee farmers spend more. Steven and his sister Paula struggle with their weakened bonds to Covert as is, relying on family friends like Keith Colombel or Lorraine Cunningham (who has worked on the family farm for decades and looks in on Carolye Hawkins as needed). “I’ve been gone…in another year, it’ll be 40 years,“ Steven says. "I know a couple, a handful of people, a few senior citizens that are still around. People can say ‘I know your family’ but they don’t know me and vice versa. It gets difficult to operate because in farming a lot of things are done on the barter system. Used to be, when I came up, it wasn’t so much money exchanging hands, it was: You do this for me, I’ll do that for you.” With familiarity comes a discount. “Sweat equity. It was always give and take, and you don’t have that with the farmers that are here now. Everything from a distance, you’ve got to pay. And that’s money out your pocket.”

In the meantime the first set of Hawkins siblings have started having some tough conversations. “We’re both in agreement that we don’t wanna sell the land, but maybe the farm is too much for us based on our lifestyles,” says Steven. Both he and Paula work full-time jobs wholly unconnected to farming, elsewhere in Michigan. Land leasing is an option, at least up to a point: “Keeping [the original plot] and the farm by the house intact, and leasing out the other parcels to other people who want to farm it.” The key is maintaining ownership, even though there is no guarantee it will remain in the family after he and his sister are gone.

“If my sister and I gave this up, my kids, Paula’s kids, they might say, ‘OK, we could sell all this land and make some money.’ They don’t have the same ties here that we did. They loved coming down here in the summer — my sons still love coming down here in the summer. They come, and they enjoy themselves, but I haven’t heard them talk about coming back when they get older.”

Barbara Norman has hope, though, that her grandchildren will keep things going on the family land. “We always had family togetherness,” she says, “and it is trickle-down. We’re not as mighty as that generation there” — she smiles and points at her great-uncle Leo — “but we got a lot of traits from them. It takes family togetherness.”

“I think I’ve been blessed,” Barbara says softly, looking around at her blueberry bushes. “Because all my life, I’ve been able to walk on the land that my family owns. I’ll die right here.”

Photographs:

Steven Hawkins and Carolye Hawkins

Robert Dotson (left) waits as David Broady carries a harvest lug filled with blueberries to load on the farm truck, Covert, Michigan, Aug. 3, 2017

Steven Hawkins poses next to his farm truck, August 4, 2017

Barbara James Norman poses in front of the 100-year-old farmhouse at her blueberry farm, August 5, 2017

Rheba Bell looks through leaves to pick blueberries at her sister’s farm, Baber’s Berries, in Covert, August 5, 2017

Annette Williams picks blueberries at her sister’s farm in Covert, August 5, 2017

Aaron Hawkins and his brother Devon Hawkins pose in front of their house in Ypsilanti, Michigan, August 8, 2017

The Hawkins family’s farmhouse

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