#and this is how that came out

[formosusiniquis]

something green

inspired by @stevieweek day 2 prompt: cryptid | hospital, but this might not be enough stevie to qualify wc: 1.4k | T | cw: minor character death | tags: stobin hivemind

Their Robin part answers the phone when it rings.

They’re home, have been all week scouring the classifieds for a job that they think won’t be completely miserable. It’s been boring, but boring is a lot better than monsters and as the late-July humidity persists outside it’s at least a little bit better than anything else too.

“This is a call for Steve Harrington.”

They’ve not been that for a while.

“Speaking,” their Robin answers.

The voice on the other end of the line pauses, like it’s not sure it believes their Robin, but continues, “Your mother has asked we inform you that she’s currently receiving care at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Indianapolis. She’s been in an accident, I’m sorry to say I’m not sure how much time she has left.”

“Is my father there?”

“He has been informed.”

“But he wasn’t with my mother,” their Robin finishes.

“I have a note that says he told the staff member who called, ‘he would be down from Chicago when he was finished with work.’”

“Thank you,” they say, and their Stevie means it. “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

If the employee on the phone finds that strange they don’t have time to say it. Their Robin hangs up the phone with a finality that smacks of disagreement.

“Do we really need to go up to see Mother? Mom is making lasagna tonight and she never got drunk and told us that she thought about going to a special doctor when she learned she was pregnant with Richard’s baby.”

Mom’s lasagna is their favorite, but they’re more prone to regret now. “Call her and tell her we’ll be late. I’m sure she’ll save it for us.”

Mom always said that special occasions meant a dress, father said you don’t go to a business deal unless you’ve shined your shoes.

A hospital visit to see their dying mother, it’s hard to decide if any of those rules apply. But both parts of them are still in the boxers and the white undershirts they’d gone to bed in, so they make due with what they know and the pieces they’ve scrounged from the thrift store since the government check cleared.

They’re used to getting dirty looks when they go places. The perk of their Stevie part still looking beaten half-to-death is most people don’t bother with trying to finish the job. Their Robin finds a nurse who points to the private room Mother is being kept in.

It would be funny that even when she’s dying, Mother still demanded luxury, but then they’d have to admit their sense of humor has gotten a little fucked.

Their Stevie enters the room first, goes to the bed while their Robin stays closer to the door. They don’t need privacy from each other, but they know to others they’re something strange and off putting.

The hospital is one of the worst places they can imagine spending their final moments. The smell of antiseptic and bleach unable to bury the scent of death and bile, even in this room that only privilege can buy. Mother looks smaller than they can ever remember seeing her. Her face and chest a mottle of bruising, a strip of her blonde hair shaved away to make way for a wound the doctors have bandaged. Blood and something tinged yellow are already seeping through it. The machine beside her bed beeps, each one weaker than the last like even it is giving up.

One of their Steve hands brushes hers, gentle. Mindful of the IV going into the back of it. One of her french tips is missing, another broken in a jagged line. The hand reaching for hers is missing a nail too. She’d hate that.

“Mother,” they start. Her eyes are shut, not swollen shut like one of theirs, just closed. The spiderweb of veins is visible through the thin skin, and that’s worse. “Mother, I-”

Mother not Mom or Ma or Momma or Mommy.

It’s always been Mother for as long as they can remember. Mother and Father. It’s hard for them to wrap their mouth around now that they’ve got Mom at home with her lasagna. They’re crying, just a little. The salty sting of tears prick at their Robin eyes.

She’s not going to get better and she’s always going to be Mother. She won’t get to become something different to them, like them.

“Mother,” they try again. Maybe this time the right words will come out. In English or one of the others.

Her spiderweb eyes flutter. They open just a crack. Bloodshot and hazy. “Is that my baby?” Her words are slowed, slurred together.

“Mo-”

Even open all the way her eyes are glassy and unfocused. Her hand tilts up to catch theirs. “My baby.” 

“Morphine,” they remind themself from the other side of the room.

Mother’s eyes track to where the sound came from, and back to the part of them that’s holding her hand. “I always thought there would be two of you,” she says. “The way you’d kick.”

The machine beeps tick higher. Intracranial bleeding, traumatic internal injuries, thrown from the car, intoxicated. Those were the things the nurse had told one half while the other was headed into the room.

She probably isn’t even lucid.

“When they said it was just one, I was sure you’d be a girl.”

“I’m sorry,” they say. They look over at their other half, not for answers but for the comforting reminder that they’re there.

Mother’s hand shakes as she lifts it off the bed, even with theirs beneath it, supporting the weight. The beeps get faster, louder, crying at the effort she’s putting forward. Her fingers are even colder than normal as they brush their face.

“Don’t be sorry, both of you, just as beautiful as I knew you’d be. My twins, my babies.” Her breathing is too fast, too shallow, too much of everything.

But the smile on her face is peaceful.

“I wish I’d been more for you,” she says.

“No,” they choke out from beside the door, tears running faster.

“I couldn’t see it at first, you looked so much like your father; and I missed it. I missed it.” Each word sounds more like an exhale. Each one is harder to hear.

They surround her now, a half on either side of the bed. Their mother is dying.

“Green was always my favorite, you look so nice in it.” Green dress, green button down, emerald and forest.

“I love you.” They manage to say it, gasp it out through the hurt lodged in their throat. She needs to hear it.

The beeps are fast, then slow, she says. “Love you two.”

The beeps stop, the machine whines. A long, loud sound that demands all of the attention in the room. The commotion starts, nurses and doctors flooding in.

But they know death by this point. They slip from the room, walking until there’s a seating area just to the side of a desk of busy nurses. They sit side by side, trying to find the state of whole they only ever feel when sleeping. Thigh to thigh, hand in hand, it’s close enough.

Their mother is dead.

They sit. Mom is at home, lasagna in the warmer; but Mother is cooling on a bed down the hall.

An elevator chimes, a clipped conversation at the nurses stand too quiet to hear, then. “Steven, what in god’s name are you wearing?”

Their shoes are shined, they twitch left and then right on their Robin feet. The white Chuck Taylors had looked better with the dress, they had decided while getting ready.

“What are you hoping to accomplish,” Father continues, his question after all had never really been a question. Much like this one.

“You were too late, I’m sorry,” they say, hoping they manage to sound consoling.

“The only thing to be sorry about is that whoever hit you didn’t do as well as the fucking car did. Christ, I just hope no one important has seen you looking like this.”

Dad said their attempts at makeup were avant garde.

Two separate instincts war within them. The one that’s snarky and snappish and fights demodogs and soldiers versus the one that knows the danger of the wrong idea being shared by the wrong person.

Love you two. Her last words.

They stand, hand in hand, united physically as they are in every other way. They walk past him, sputtering and spitting with a rage no father should have for their child. It will take all four of their hands but they can move their things out of their room to the other in the house where Mom and Dad love everything they have become.

And they’ll grab something green from Mother.

[razzafrazzle]

Just Checking In! (aka Something About Red Triangles)

[w1lmuttart]

The lake town

[gay-little-izzet]

Made this a while back and never posted it, but I figured I should now that I actually started T!!!

(Not a self portrait, this is just some guy)

[daftpatience]

the weather al(don'te forgetst me!)ways sticks together!

[drawnfamiliarfaces]

PnF Spirit Week 1: May 26th - Parental Units

Heinz and Charlene may have their share of troubles as a divorced couple, but no one can deny that they are good parents to Vanessa. A little bit overprotective at times, but what can one do, when their precious only child had entered puberty a bit too early for their comfort.

[creatorping]

It’s always been a dance with you

May we have time for another

[humming-fly]

I love how Gerald was trying to keep Shadow from spoiling anything about the future meanwhile literally everything Shadow says and does around Maria is the biggest death flag ever

[magdaamm]

I won't deny I've got in my mind now

all the things I would do

So I'll try to talk refined for fear that you find out

how I'm imaginin' you

[chez-cinnamon]

What if Pomni seeks out comfort from Kinger bc of the last episode?? Finale !!

It is DONE !!

Everyone is so fun to draw I cannot.......... /pos

[chloesimaginationthings]

What if Michael Afton was in FNAF into the pit,,

[clumsypuppy]

abogagos……..

[slightly-gay-pogohammer]

nox said it looked like official art and i got all giddy about it :)

[bacchuschucklefuck]

couldnt draw my thang for mid-autumn so treated myself to a calne redesign instead

[breadbugg]

mistletoe part 2

PREV

[ghostember]

take the bait