#August end

[dactylicreveries]

-Sylvia Plath, from a letter to Aurelia Plath written c. August 1951

[dafakismyblog]

S3 E6:

[verieas]

haven’t posted art in a bit so please take this wip 🙏🏼

[petaltexturedskies]

September approaching…I feel I owe myself a brief respite of leisure and no rushing around. I can't face the dead reality. I want rainy days, lanterns and a hundred moons twining in dark leaves, music spilling out and echoing yet inside my head.

Sylvia Plath, from a letter to Aurelia Plath written c. August 1951

[heartorbit]

always by your side

[tumatawa]

For her anniversary this year!

[breakbleheavens]

August sipped away like a bottle of wine

[hairmetal666]

Eddie's supposed to be writing. The guys, they all agreed they'd each come to practice armed with two whole new songs they could pick from to add to their set list at the Hideout. And he's got his pen, and he's got his most recent trusty Composition Book, and all his lyrics are fucking bullshit about golden tanned skin and honeyed eyes and tracing constellations in freckles and moles, pathetic lines about being twisted in bed sheets, and the hopeless love he found himself in.

For the fifth time in an hour, he rips out the offending page, crunches it into a tight ball, and throws it across the room.

He can't write about Steve Harrington for the rest of his life; spend his nights aching for the boy who established himself as a fixture in Eddie's life and then just disappeared.

The worst of it--the very worst--is that Eddie knew better. Steve was never his, not in any real way, no matter how many times they fucked. He's Steve Harrington. Straightest guy in Hawkins. Popular. Rich. Whole fucking life laid out for him on a silver platter. And Eddie fell for him. It's the Munson curse, he supposes; always wanting what you can't have.

It started the way these things usually do, "got any weed?" and "come back to my place, Harrington" and "I got this stupid job at the mall, meet me there?" and lying "hey, guys, can't make band practice, gotta help Uncle Wayne" and "Munson, I really want--can I kiss you?"

In every other fantasy Eddie's ever had, it ends there. Steve gets his kiss and they never see each other again. But Steve Harrington--he's full of surprises. It catches Eddie off guard, makes him want, makes him trust. Because it's not just kisses. It's hands and mouths and "anything you want, Eddie. Let me make you feel good."

Maybe it wouldn't have hit so hard--maybe Eddie could've stopped from falling--if Steve hadn't been so good. Bitchy, sure, but genuine and kind. Had this whole gaggle of junior high kids he babysat, like what the fuck. Would hang out with Wayne and shoot the shit about whatever sports nonsense was on tv. Harrington never was as mean, as spoiled, as superficial as Eddie suspected.

Then Starcourt. That's when it all changes. Steve stops coming around then, in the aftermath. It hurts, but Eddie tells himself it's for the best. Now, he knows it would have been.

Two weeks with no contact, and Steve shows up at his door in the middle of the night. Eddie winces at the healing bruises and cuts on his face, can't imagine how much worse they were to start. He steps aside, lets Steve in, plans to say that he can't be whatever they are anymore.

Steve kisses him. It's a hot, needy thing, wild with teeth and tongue, nothing like before. Eddie is helpless to it, helpless to the way Steve grinds against him, already hard. He should slow it down, check-in that Steve is in the right headspace for this, but Steve is moaning low in his throat and Eddie can't think.

They're in Eddie's bed and Steve says, "fuck me, Eddie?" and Eddie says "are you sure" because he can't stop himself. Steve rolls his eyes (beautifuly bitchy), says, "I need to feel you inside me, baby."

How can Eddie say no?

Eddie's never done this before, but it doesn't matter. It's everything--Steve is everything--he could ask for.

The next morning, he expects Steve to be gone. Thinks they'll never see each other again. But he finds Steve in the kitchen, in his boxers and Eddie's Iron Maiden shirt, making eggs and talking to Wayne like it's the most normal thing in the world.

The next month and a half are the best of Eddie's life. He and Steve spend more time together than they do apart. Nights at Eddie's trailer, in Eddie's bed. Days lounging at the Harrington pool and driving around the nothing that surrounds Hawkins. Sometimes they'll stop in the middle of nowhere, climb on top of the van, and just--be. Steve takes his shirt off, and Eddie traces their names in the sun-soaked freckles, thinking maybe he really gets to have this, have Steve.

It ends as quickly as it started. One morning in September, Steve is cupping Eddie's neck, pulling him in for a goodbye kiss, saying, "sorry, baby, gotta get home for my parents. I'll see you later tonight, yeah?"

Except Eddie doesn't. Eddie doesn't see Steve that night, or the night after, or the night after that. He stops coming around and all Eddie is left with is a broken heart and these piss poor excuses for songs.

He rips out the latest page, waxing lyrical about the wonders of August, and time slipping away, and the boy he'll never forget. Crumples it into a ball and bats it into a pile of junk accumulated in the corner of his room.

Eddie needs a break.

He flies into the living room, snatches up his keys from the floor by the coffee table, and flees his house and all those memories of Steve. It's not like he has anywhere specific to go, so he drives around town, with his windows down and his music up.

His tires screech as he rounds the corner to the video store and arcade. He's not planning on stopping, but honestly, maybe a few rounds of Space Invaders is exactly what he needs.

The van hasn't even come to a stop in the parking spot when his eyes fall on Steve Harrington. He's standing in the middle of the parking lot surrounded by a gang of kids (including some of Eddie's new little sheepies) and Robin Buckley. Steve wears a sunny yellow sweatshirt, tight jeans, and his hair is perfectly coifed, falling in an elegant wave. His hands are on his hips, mouth and brows pinched stern. He's gorgeous, perfect.

It's an assault, an attack, Eddie's entire body shakes as the months they spent together crash over him. He has the van in reverse before he consciously thinks to do so, flooring it out of the space hard enough to burn rubber.

The noise, the speed, it draws the entire group's attention to him.

His eyes meet Steve's.

Time stops and so does he, idling in the middle of the parking lot. For a second, one moment in time, Steve's face falls. His mouth loses that grumpy pinch, his eyebrows drop, his beauty transformed by grief, by fucking longing.

Steve takes a step forward, and Eddie hits the gas, van screaming out of the parking lot. He watches the group shrink in his rearview mirror, sure that he imagined the sorrow in Steve's face, anyway.

They're nothing to each other.

Never were.

By popular request: Part Two

[yet-another-greek-myth-gay]

Once again sitting here thinking about how, for all the remorse August felt about the video, for how shitty of a person he felt like he was for posting it, for all his efforts (however subpar they were) to try and apologize to Wille about it...Simon never got a fucking apology.

Which makes sense, and shows how, at August's core, he's still an elitist, superior prick, even if he's more cognizant of his flaws and more uncomfortable with them than he's ever been. He could not be bothered to apologize Simon, doesn't even have the thought cross his mind—why? Because Simon's a nobody. Simon has no power. Like, let's be clear, August has fucked up his life irreparably. There is literally no future where the video will not haunt Simon. (I read a great fanfiction I have to find the link for, where Simon says that he was fucked the minute August hit "post," no matter what Wille said or did, and like...yeah.) That shit was all over the news in Sweden. We see, already, people recognizing him out in public. Beyond even just the emotional turmoil that comes with that video existing, we see, through the posting of his address and the rock through the window, that its existence physically endangers Simon. Even if Simon were to leave the country, move somewhere new and try to start over, it would take one google search of his name to uncover that blight on his life.

That's not to say that Simon couldn't process its existence emotionally, or that he won't be able to lead a happy, fulfilling life with the video existing, because he absolutely can and will! It just incenses me that not once in August's journey of feeling this guilt and shame over the video, and reaching some sort of understanding and peace with Wille, does he once consider giving Simon any sort of apology. (The settlement doesn't count, of course.) It makes sense for his character, and Simon probably wouldn't have accepted the apology, and by no means should be expected to, but the fact that he didn't get one still makes me so angry.

[hazelnutnebula]

and you'll always be the silly guy of all time 🧡🌻🐶

[defectiveferalfreak]

i rediscovered @nicktoonsunite and @choraa ‘s art like wowie did they inspire me to dip my toes into NUverse??

also i cant believe Dib and Zim basically waltzed into NU:GoD, like WHATS UP B*TCHS WE  GONNA HELP WHETHER U WANT IT OR NOT like can u believe that lol

[dactylicreveries]

But who I was before I met you?

[sad-leon]

My turn to post 2al fanart :D

I care about them so much, you dont understand

They mean everything to me @intotheelliwoods

Bonus with Big Leo and Sprout:

[cricket-approved]

I never needed anything more

Sylvia Plath- Abridged Journals // my august corn field // @diarygirls // my golden summer // Mary Oliver - The Pond // another photo of mine // @nobodysflower // unknown // @fortuneaday // Keaton St. James - September Affirmation (Don’t Be Afraid)

[petaltexturedskies]

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The brothers Karamazov

[linovadraws]

August and Peter figuring out the whole ~siblings~ thing. From the October Daye series, specifically the Patreon story, "In Safety Rest".