#WHY IS THE LORE AND STORY SO SAD

[jaime-in-chaos]

Why the hell am I crying over gay robots with depression and sick cats.......

[nguyenfinity]

Every time I draw Mamagi it does AoE damage (I am also in the area of effect)

Lighthearted bonus:

[thingswhatareawesome]

¨

[froggysoup]

i dont care about genshin lore anymore because unbeknownst to the common man i have actually been fabricating my own genshin impact in my head for the last 6 months. Some characters have simmered in my head for so long that they might as well be ocs now. I know everything about the mechanics of the world because I made it all up myself. Every time I assume another personal headcanon as reality my already massive burgeoning muscles ripple a little harder

[amatres]

anyway my personal ranks of origins backstories just in the game by themselves is brosca and tabris at the top, aeducan at the bottom. cousland i will admit is pretty impactful but i still feel like, as wild as an option it would have been, that a cousland warden should had the option to solo rule. they are from the only other teryn in ferelden and it's even said that it was considered for bryce to rule so like! come on!

aeducan is at the bottom because it so tightly locks you into siding against bhelen, which i suppose is fair for brosca being so skewed in behlens favor bc of rica, but brosca is just Good so i forgive that, while aeducan is just suffering.

i still stand by my idea that the 'noble' dwarven origin shouldn't have been the second aeducan child, they should have been the second aeducan's second in place of gorim. that way there would have been more room for roleplay. also the second aeducan child would have been a secret third option for ruler of orzammar that you would encounter with the legion of the dead that they joined after being kicked out.

you would have to both do the legion of dead quest to give them a noble caste, and also have high as hell coercion for it to work but it would really cool and also so funny to do. that said the origin just by itself is pretty fun, love being backstabbed by my second favorite baby brother from the dragon age franchise

mahariel and the magi warden are in the 'i like them but they don't feel as impactful' as much as it hurts me. they're both just kinda there, however that said if the game let you recruit jowan into your party that would bring the magi warden up much higher. alas.

[saintedbythestorm]

Not dad trying to tell me about some big fallout news he heard about from some work colleague 😂 oh what the poor man just subjected himself too.

[alchemiclee]

I hope someone writes a good fic about the high cloud quintet with all the messy pieces of lore we have because i'm very unsatisfied with what we got and I want MORE OF THEM. don't know why i'm so obsessed with this tragic group of friends but 😭 IM SO FEELINGS ABOUT THEM but also empty because they didn't satisfy me with what they gave us lmao I require more. but that was the end and i'll never get more....unless someone writes a great fic about them.....!

[katyahina]

the unholy amount of details in your art is impressive :o how do you keep it up? are your eyes ok? is there a secret? are you a wizard? im just jealous bc i have eyesight issues lmao

Oh, well, this is hard to explain actually... The main reason is that Bloodborne has very detailed designs as is, and my brain will not let me rest well at nights until I got every little thing JUST right! xD It takes a lot of time to ensure I got details right, but that's just how I roll.

So yeah, my secret is just perfectionism </3 I presume you sent anon after that Rom drawing display or so? She has many branches with glowbuds on them and is COVERED in eyes and has grass at the tips of her tails, so I was just... repeating this. In drawings, I tend to appreciate every single detail about character there is, no matter how minor or at times maybe not very pretty. I also have this WIP with the faces of like 130-something Bloodborne characters' faces drawn that started as self-reference - and I try to factor every face "imperfection" they have (if shown in canon) or add some fitting ones (if never shown).

And I do not know how alright my eyes are? I've got strange eye issue back in early 2020, weird 'grey' spots in my eyes around which details ALSO 'distort' - it was very hard to read through this at first, plus I still see some numbers and letters wrong (usually numbers next to each other switching places and I realize too late). Doctor outright said there was irreversable damage by some infection that 'burned' places in my retinas and that it "isn't clear whether you go blind in 2 months of 2 years or in 20 years or never". Well... Clearly, 2 months and 2 years predictions failed yet, so hopefully there will be other 18 years. x)

It is very hard to explain what exactly I did, but I was training myself to tilt my head in a specific way to still see the details I needed, and over time I could more or less look through these 'spots' - as you've noticed, detalization in my drawings didn't suffer! The spots are more blurried than grey either now... Either 1) the 'irreversable' was doctor's mistake or...... 2) I was blessed with eyes but OUTSIDE of my brain to draw my stuff, LOL!

[elegyofthemoon]

i think this is something i have to go search around for again but im wondering if the jibashiri DID in fact leave enkanomiya or did they wind up dying/left behind in it ?

i cant remember which quest talks about this or if it was just in the books you can collect but at some point as rebellion/resistance against the sunchildren and the jibashiri, someone sought out orobashi to save them and that in turn led to orobashi taking them up to watatsumi, meaning that the people that were saved was actually the rebellion rather than the jibashiri

but i also dont think i got information about who it was that sought out orobashi. aberaku did also seek out orobashi to create helios but that was at the beginning of the timeline, prior to the sunchildren. besides, if it were aberaku, we wouldn't have the sunshadow in enkanomiya

so who was it that sought out orobashi? who created the rebellion in the first place when so many other rebellions failed?

maybe that would actually be mouun and ayame's family in watatsumi. i just haven't really found the bridging point of what happened when they all moved to the surface

[tsukidrama]

what happens to reader after annie goes into the crystal? does she join levi's squad? what's her experience during the war against marley? what's her reaction to reiner and bertholdt?

I IMMEDIATELY GOT SO EXCITED UPON READING THIS MESSAGE HEHE *cracks knuckles*

okay okay i'm going lay out a basic timeline from after the Female Titan arc all the way up until the timeskip!

homegirl is imprisoned for a good bit after what happens in Stohess - in an actual jail cell for a bit, but then she's allowed back into the barracks essentially on house arrest. i mentioned in the last chapter of please be that Hanji is the only person who Reader feels comfortable giving details to while interrogated. and since Hanji is a very busy bee constantly on the move, Reader ends up becoming a reluctant addition to their entourage.

during the Clash of the Titans arc reader just kind of trails behind whoever she's with at whatever given time, in handcuffs and being mopey. while shit is going down at Ulgard Castle, she's bonding with EMA while Hanji is investigating the wall titan.

y'all know how after the Survey Corps come in to kill all the titans, the only ones who will go within a 20ft radius of Ymir are Hanji (research purposes) and Hisu (gay purposes). i think that reader would be right there behind the two of them, if for no other reason to be a source of comfort for Historia. i mean, if anybody is going to understand the predicament of your lesbian lover turning out to be a Titan....? they are definitely friends.

in her emotional whirlwinds immediately following The Crystal, reader goes from being friends with Reiner and Bertholdt, to being extremely bitter and distrustful of them. back when they were in the training corp she was ABSOLUTELY aware that ABR were a trio with lots of history together, and knows Annie was close to both of them in a way she wasn't with anyone else. she picked up on the 'team' vibes they gave off, dysfunctional as it was, and she starts to resent them for not helping Annie and leaving her behind. she gets this idea into her head that the only way she can protect Annie is by ratting them out. she definitely tells anyone who will listen that she suspects them of being traitors/titans/whatever the fuckin theory is at that point in the storyline.

but ofc she's just as caught off-guard as everyone else is by the sudden reveal and the transformation on the walls. and anyway she's still cuffed throughout all of this so she really can't do anything besides being emotional support for the people who need it.

whenever everybody else goes to get eren back for that big battle, reader is not allowed to go. she goes to the village to confirm the titans = people theory. the only significant thing that would've happened on the battlefield significant to reader would be that her opinion on Armin goes sour after she learns about what he said in order to get an emotional reaction from Bert. tbh that opinion remains low up until TRNT timeline, bc reader feels that he uses Annie as a tool to get what he wants (which he does, multiple times, just saying). she's not a dick about it but she doesn't get over it until years have passed.

she visits the crystal every 2 or 3 months, basically giving Annie updates on her life and cleaning up the area. lmao i once had an idea that never got written that's literally just reader talking about her day while sweeping up cobwebs and dust from the floor, wiping down the crystal if it's dirty, etc.

i don't think she would join Levi squad - i see her being absorbed into Hanji squad by default after the tagging-along-in-handcuffs turns into genuine trust/reliability. reader is motivated to find out the answers to the million questions she was left with concerning Annie so she commits herself to that in the only way she can, which is being a good soldier.

emotionally she's very empty, and i see her becoming a lot closer with Historia from here on out. they cry about being abandoned together. i love the idea of them still being friends and hanging out even after Historia becomes the queen. i want to include Hisu in TRNT so bad but I'm struggling to come up with a good way to bring her into the story that feels organic.

after the battle to retake the wall + basement reveal, she learns of the Warrior Unit and how young Annie must've been forced to do awful things. i have a vague plan for writing a fic about this one-sided conversation - i'd probably make it a direct parallel to the crystal scene in Please Be part 3 with a similar continuous train of thought-style storytelling and speculation about what she must've gone through. just like, really sad stuff. genuinely heartbreaking shit.

as much as I hate that Moblit died and it agonizes me to think about, i like the idea of Reader stepping up to perform those same jobs once he's gone. the two of them get a lot closer over the timeskip too (i'm allowed to do this because hanji isn't around for TRNT and i need in my soul to include them in this story as much as possible). reader becomes less combat-oriented and more into of a research position and just helping carry out day-to-day Commander duties. essentially a desk job, almost like a secretary?

ideally i would like reader to be minimally involved in murdering innocent people, if possible. during the attack on Liberio i see her being the airship with Hanji and Onyankopon.

i haven't thought much about what would happen for her after that point, though. i have ideas for Annie interactions but not really for where reader sits in canon for that final stretch

if one of you bitches (affectionate) wants come talk to me about any of this in the DMs i am so open to that, because i had so much fun writing this post out! heheh

if you have any more questions about Annie's reader and her extremely depressing life pleeeeeaaaase, i would love to answer it! and i'll love you forever if you give me an outlet for this creativity-fueled infodump

[boygirlctommy]

I listened to the new music disc last night and CRIED it’s absolutely haunting

[mothheart]

I like how on most of my rogier posts I see a few of the same people always liking them

[chieana]

I just love how JK Rowling took a fun and nice part of folklore and turned it into slavery

[dykepuffs]

How Do I Make My Fictional Gypsies Not Racist?

(Or, "You can't, sorry, but…")

You want to include some Gypsies in your fantasy setting. Or, you need someone for your main characters to meet, who is an outsider in the eyes of the locals, but who already lives here. Or you need a culture in conflict with your settled people, or who have just arrived out of nowhere. Or, you just like the idea of campfires in the forest and voices raised in song. And you’re about to step straight into a muckpile of cliches and, accidentally, write something racist.

(In this, I am mostly using Gypsy as an endonym of Romany people, who are a subset of the Romani people, alongside Roma, Sinti, Gitano, Romanisael, Kale, etc, but also in the theory of "Gypsying" as proposed by Lex and Percy H, where Romani people are treated with a particular mix of orientalism, criminalisation, racialisation, and othering, that creates "The Gypsy" out of both nomadic peoples as a whole and people with Romani heritage and racialised physical features, languages, and cultural markers)

Enough of my friends play TTRPGs or write fantasy stories that this question comes up a lot - They mention Dungeons and Dragons’ Curse Of Strahd, World Of Darkness’s Gypsies, World Of Darkness’s Ravnos, World of Darkness’s Silent Striders… And they roll their eyes and say “These are all terrible! But how can I do it, you know, without it being racist?”

And their eyes are big and sad and ever so hopeful that I will tell them the secret of how to take the Roma of the real world and place them in a fictional one, whilst both appealing to gorjer stereotypes of Gypsies and not adding to the weight of stereotyping that already crushes us. So, disappointingly, there is no secret.

Gypsies, like every other real-world culture, exist as we do today because of interactions with cultures and geography around us: The living waggon, probably the archetypal thing which gorjer writers want to include in their portrayals of nomads, is a relatively modern invention - Most likely French, and adopted from French Showmen by Romanies, who brought it to Britain. So already, that’s a tradition that only spans a small amount of the time that Gypsies have existed, and only a small number of the full breadth of Romani ways of living. But the reasons that the waggon is what it is are based on the real world - The wheels are tall and iron-rimmed, because although you expect to travel on cobbled, tarmac, or packed-earth roads and for comparatively short distances, it wasn’t rare to have to ford a river in Britain in the late nineteenth century, on country roads. They were drawn by a single horse, and the shape of that horse was determined by a mixture of local breeds - Welsh cobs, fell ponies, various draft breeds - as well as by the aesthetic tastes of the breeders. The stove inside is on the left, so that as you move down a British road, the chimney sticks up into the part where there will be the least overhanging branches, to reduce the chance of hitting it.

So taking a fictional setting that looks like (for example) thirteenth century China (with dragons), and placing a nineteenth century Romanichal family in it will inevitably result in some racist assumptions being made, as the answer to “Why does this culture do this?” becomes “They just do it because I want them to” rather than having a consistent internal logic.

Some stereotypes will always follow nomads - They appear in different forms in different cultures, but they always arise from the settled people's same fears: That the nomads don't share their values, and are fundamentally strangers. Common ones are that we have a secret language to fool outsiders with, that we steal children and disguise them as our own, that our sexual morals are shocking (This one has flipped in the last half century - From the Gypsy Lore Society's talk of the lascivious Romni seductress who will lie with a strange man for a night after a 'gypsy wedding', to today's frenzied talk of 'grabbing' and sexually-conservative early marriages to ensure virginity), that we are supernatural in some way, and that we are more like animals than humans. These are tropes where if you want to address them, you will have to address them as libels - there is no way to casually write a baby-stealing, magical succubus nomad without it backfiring onto real life Roma. (The kind of person who has the skills to write these tropes well, is not the kind of person who is reading this guide.)

It’s too easy to say a list of prescriptive “Do nots”, which might stop you from making the most common pitfalls, but which can end up with your nomads being slightly flat as you dance around the topics that you’re trying to avoid, rather than being a rich culture that feels real in your world.

So, here are some questions to ask, to create your nomadic people, so that they will have a distinctive culture of their own that may (or may not) look anything like real-world Romani people: These aren't the only questions, but they're good starting points to think about before you make anything concrete, and they will hopefully inspire you to ask MORE questions.

First - Why are they nomadic? Nobody moves just to feel the wind in their hair and see a new horizon every morning, no matter what the inspirational poster says. Are they transhumant herders who pay a small rent to graze their flock on the local lord’s land? Are they following migratory herds across common land, being moved on by the cycle of the seasons and the movement of their animals? Are they seasonal workers who follow man-made cycles of labour: Harvests, fairs, religious festivals? Are they refugees fleeing a recent conflict, who will pass through this area and never return? Are they on a regular pilgrimage? Do they travel within the same area predictably, or is their movement governed by something that is hard to predict? How do they see their own movements - Do they think of themselves as being pushed along by some external force, or as choosing to travel? Will they work for and with outsiders, either as employees or as partners, or do they aim to be fully self-sufficient? What other jobs do they do - Their whole society won’t all be involved in one industry, what do their children, elderly, disabled people do with their time, and is it “work”?

If they are totally isolationist - How do they produce the things which need a complex supply chain or large facilities to make? How do they view artefacts from outsiders which come into their possession - Things which have been made with technology that they can’t produce for themselves? (This doesn’t need to be anything about quality of goods, only about complexity - A violin can be made by one artisan working with hand tools, wood, gut and shellac, but an accordion needs presses to make reeds, metal lathes to make screws, complex organic chemistry to make celluloid lacquer, vulcanised rubber, and a thousand other components)

How do they feel about outsiders? How do they buy and sell to outsiders? If it’s seen as taboo, do they do it anyway? Do they speak the same language as the nearby settled people (With what kind of fluency, or bilingualism, or dialect)? Do they intermarry, and how is that viewed when it happens? What stories does this culture tell about why they are a separate people to the nearby settled people? Are those stories true? Do they have a notional “homeland” and do they intend to go there? If so, is it a real place?

What gorjers think of as classic "Gipsy music" is a product of our real-world situation. Guitar from Spain, accordions from the Soviet Union (Which needed modern machining and factories to produce and make accessible to people who weren't rich- and which were in turn encouraged by Soviet authorities preferring the standardised and modern accordion to the folk traditions of the indigenous peoples within the bloc), brass from Western classical traditions, via Balkan folk music, influences from klezmer and jazz and bhangra and polka and our own music traditions (And we influence them too). What are your people's musical influences? Do they make their own instruments or buy them from settled people? How many musical traditions do they have, and what are they all for (Weddings, funerals, storytelling, campfire songs, entertainment...)? Do they have professional musicians, and if so, how do those musicians earn money? Are instrument makers professionals, or do they use improvised and easy-to-make instruments like willow whistles, spoons, washtubs, etc? (Of course the answer can be "A bit of both")

If you're thinking about jobs - How do they work? Are they employed by settled people (How do they feel about them?) Are they self employed but providing services/goods to the settled people? Are they mostly avoidant of settled people other than to buy things that they can't produce themselves? Are they totally isolationist? Is their work mostly subsistence, or do they create a surplus to sell to outsiders? How do they interact with other workers nearby? Who works, and how- Are there 'family businesses', apprentices, children with part time work? Is it considered 'a job' or just part of their way of life? How do they educate their children, and is that considered 'work'? How old are children when they are considered adult, and what markers confer adulthood? What is considered a rite of passage?

When they travel, how do they do it? Do they share ownership of beasts of burden, or each individually have "their horse"? Do families stick together or try to spread out? How does a child begin to live apart from their family, or start their own family? Are their dwellings something that they take with them, or do they find places to stay or build temporary shelter with disposable material? Who shares a dwelling and why? What do they do for privacy, and what do they think privacy is for?

If you're thinking about food - Do they hunt? Herd? Forage? Buy or trade from settled people? Do they travel between places where they've sown crops or managed wildstock in previous years, so that when they arrive there is food already seeded in the landscape? How do they feel about buying food from settled people, and is that common? If it's frowned upon - How much do people do it anyway? How do they preserve food for winter? How much food do they carry with them, compared to how much they plan to buy or forage at their destinations? How is food shared- Communal stores, personal ownership?

Why are they a "separate people" to the settled people? What is their creation myth? Why do they believe that they are nomadic and the other people are settled, and is it correct? Do they look different? Are there legal restrictions on them settling? Are there legal restrictions on them intermixing? Are there cultural reasons why they are a separate people? Where did those reasons come from? How long have they been travelling? How long do they think they've been travelling? Where did they come from? Do they travel mostly within one area and return to the same sites predictably, or are they going to move on again soon and never come back?

And then within that - What about the members of their society who are "unusual" in some way: How does their society treat disabled people? (are they considered disabled, do they have that distinction and how is it applied?) How does their society treat LGBT+ people? What happens to someone who doesn't get married and has no children? What happens to someone who 'leaves'? What happens to young widows and widowers? What happens if someone just 'can't fit in'? What happens to someone who is adopted or married in? What happens to people who are mixed race, and in a fantasy setting to people who are mixed species? What is taboo to them and what will they find shocking if they leave? What is society's attitude to 'difference' of various kinds?

Basically, if you build your nomads from the ground-up, rather than starting from the idea of "I want Gypsies/Buryats/Berbers/Minceiri but with the numbers filed off and not offensive" you can end up with a rich, unique nomadic culture who make sense in your world and don't end up making a rod for the back of real-world cultures.

[noxtivagus]

haurchefant

[supernovafics]

With your I’ll be there for you series would you be interested in writing about Steve discovering that he has feelings for reader? I think it would be sweet for him to just find even the silliest things she does cute and then him having a little melt down because he realised he’s liked her along. The series is such a great idea! 💭

𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐋𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐖𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐒𝐋𝐄𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐍𝐆

"i'll be there for you" universe masterlist

pairing: bestfriend!roommate!steve harrington x fem!reader

word count: 4.4k words

warnings: explicit language, alcohol consumption, drunk!steve, mentions of steve's dad being shitty, angst

summary: in which steve’s drunk and you don’t hesitate to cancel a date to take care of him

author's note: thanks for the request! probably from the moment i started this series/universe i knew that i wanted to have steve realize his feelings first so this request was quite literally perfect for that lol. this is slightly “while you were sleeping” by laufey inspired hence the title. the slow burn is finally starting to come to an end !! (i’m both happy and sad about that lmao) anyways enjoy<3333

general note: everything in this universe/series can be read as standalone oneshots but to understand the full “lore” it would prob be best to read the other stuff too<333

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Winter 1986

You were in the middle of debating between a black skirt and a brown plaid one that Robin convinced you to buy when you two went thrifting just a few days ago when the phone rang.

Leaving both options on your bed, you went to the kitchen to answer it, bottomless aside from the stockings you had already put on because of the cold late February weather. 

“Hello?” 

“Hello?”

“Steve?” You recognized his voice for the most part, but he sounded a little different. A little far away, like he was calling from the oldest phone in the universe.

“Oh, hey.” The way he said the simple two words both confused and amused you because it sounded as if he didn’t expect you to be the person on the other end of the line. 

You laughed a bit. “‘Oh, hey’? Don’t sound so disappointed. You called me.”

“I know. Sorry. I meant to call Eddie,” He said, and it was then that you heard what should’ve been obvious from the moment he said “Hello” to you— the way his words weren’t necessarily slurry, just slower than usual. 

He was drunk, and you now recognized the voice that you had become so used to hearing since Steve’s sixteenth birthday when he snuck his dad’s whiskey and you both only had two shots of it before feeling it fully. 

“Why would you call him? Aren’t you two together right now?” You asked, your confusion taking precedence over the amusement you felt in this moment. 

Earlier that day, before you left the apartment to head to your twelve o’clock class, he told you that he was going to tag along with Robin, Vickie, and Eddie to some art show thing after his shift that night at Family Video; you would’ve gone too if you didn’t already have plans for the night. 

“Also, I didn’t know that you could get drunk at an art show,” You added. “I’ll definitely make sure to go next time.” 

“I didn’t go with them,” He told you, and before you could ask where he was, he answered the unspoken question. “I’m actually at a bar right now.” 

Your eyebrows furrowed. “What? Why?” 

“Very long story. Dad shit. What else is new, right?” Steve answered with a breath of a laugh. 

He made his words sound lighthearted and as if whatever happened didn’t really affect him, but you, of course, didn’t see it that way. Without even being with Steve right then, standing in front of him and reading his facial expressions, you still saw through what he was trying to play off as “no big deal.” You’d known him more than long enough to know that anything involving his dad was usually always serious. And whatever shitty things his dad said to him this time around drove Steve to a bar rather than back here to the apartment to frustratingly rant to you, and that only worried you. 

“Which bar are you at?” You asked softly. 

“The only place in town, other than The Hideout, that doesn’t card,” He said and then immediately continued. “But, wait, don’t come here, though. I don’t want you to come get me. That’s why I was trying to call Eddie. I know you have your date tonight.”

Just for a second— actually, probably the entire time you’d been talking to Steve— you’d forgotten about the date, forgotten about the reason why you’d just been debating which skirt to wear, forgotten about what you were supposed to leave for in twenty minutes. And that slightly surprised you because, for the last couple of days, you’d been really excited about it. 

Meeting Jamie felt like a sort of “meet cute” moment that was straight out of a romcom, one that you probably would’ve laughed at because of how cheesy it was. You bumped into him in the hallway on the floor of your apartment. He was your neighbor’s, Miss Johnson’s, nephew, and you learned that even though he went to a college about an hour away, he was trying to visit her more often. He had been in the middle of leaving when you saw him, and you gave a friendly wave and smile at first and he started a conversation with you. You two then spent an hour talking in the hallway before you headed inside your apartment to start studying for a test and he asked for your number, which led to more long conversations over the next few days until he asked you on a date. 

In a way, it startled you how giddy you found yourself feeling about him after only those few days, how easily and quickly you liked him. It was the first crush that you had in a while that didn’t feel completely hopeless. 

But now all of that was the last thing on your mind. It quickly became pushed to the side because you knew that your best friend needed you.

You shook your head in this moment even though Steve couldn’t see you. “No, it’s okay, I’ll come.” 

“No, don’t, don’t. I’ll just call Eddie.”

He’s probably not home right now, was what you wanted to tell Steve, but you refrained from doing so at that moment. Instead, you said, “I’ll call him for you.”

The drunken sigh in relief Steve let out was immediate. “Okay, thanks, I don’t think I have any more change for this payphone, anyway.”

“Okay, just stay put and stop drinking.”

“The bartender already cut me off.”

“Good,” You said before saying a final goodbye to him and hanging up. 

You then picked the phone up again to dial a different number. You, of course, didn’t attempt to call Eddie and you instead called Jamie. He was completely understanding when you told him that you had to cancel the date because of an emergency, and he said that you two could do the dinner and movie on a different night, which you quickly agreed on. 

You put on the brown plaid skirt— quickly deciding that it looked better with the white top you were wearing, anyway— before slipping on a pair of shoes and grabbing your coat, shoving your car keys and wallet into the pockets, and then leaving the apartment. 

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

The drive to Webster’s took less than fifteen minutes and the current emptiness of it didn’t surprise you that much. From the handful of times that you’d gone to the place with Steve, Eddie, and Robin, it became a known fact that things didn’t become “lively” until after ten, and it was currently only a little after nine. 

You spotted Steve sitting on a stool at the counter, head down in his folded arms. You sat in the empty seat next to him and tapped the side of his shoulder until he sat up and looked at you. 

“Glad to know you’re alive, Harrington.” 

He smiled at you and you gave him a small smile back, he must have forgotten that he’d told you not to come to the bar. 

“I feel barely alive, actually.”

“Still counts.” 

Steve only looked at you for a moment, taking notice of what you were wearing beneath your unzipped coat. 

“You look nice,” He said and then seemed to realize something and his smile dropped. “Wait, shit, your date. You shouldn’t be here right now.”

“It’s fine. We’re just gonna reschedule it.” 

“I’m sorry.”

You shook your head at him. “No, don’t be. It’s just a first date, anyway. Your drunk ass needing a ride home is obviously more important than that.” 

Steve laughed a bit. “I guess I’ll take that as a compliment?” 

“Yes, you should,” You told him and then watched with furrowed brows as he went to grab the short glass that was in front of him, half full of some dark liquor. He was about to finish what was left in the glass, but you grabbed it from him before he could. “Steve.”

“I still had this from before I called you. I can’t finish it?”

“No, because if you end up throwing up in my car on the drive home, I will have to murder you.”

You looked away from him before he could say anything in response to that and waved at Barry, the usual bartender that you became on a first name basis with after your third time going to Webster’s. Since it was the farthest thing from busy right then, he immediately walked over to you two. 

“Hey, Barry, can he have some water?”

He nodded and filled up a glass, sliding it over to Steve and then looking at you. “Glad to see you here. He’s looked like a sad little lost puppy for the past hour.”

Steve stopped mid-sip to scoff. “That’s very not true.”

“Sorry, but I think I have to believe the only other sober person here,” You said and only smiled at the second annoyed scoff he let out, which was hard to take seriously because of his current drunkenness. 

Barry got called over by a group of people that just walked in and you silently watched Steve take a few sips from his glass. When he set it down, you lightly nudged his knee with yours. “Do you wanna talk about what happened with your dad?” 

Steve simply sighed at first. “He came to Family Video today and went on this huge rant about me and what I’m doing with my life. He thinks my job is shit, and even me going to school part-time isn’t enough. He thinks I’m such a loser in comparison to his friend’s kids who are actually “doing things with their lives.””

You frowned and shook your head. “Fuck him.”   

“Cheers to that,” Steve said with a small laugh and held up his glass of water for a second. “He also said that he wants to set me up with this job at his friend’s insurance company, and I immediately said no to that. I’m still not entirely sure what I wanna do yet, but I know it’s not that— some stupid fucking desk job. Especially not one that’s just given to me by my dad.” 

“He’s an idiot,” You told Steve. “And also his bullshit is not at all worth the hangover you’ll have in the morning.” 

“You might be right about that,” He responded, eyes fixed on his now half-empty glass of water and a small amused smile on his face. “But, it felt good for a second.” 

You poked his arm so that he would look at you. “You could’ve talked to me about all of that instead of coming here.” 

“I didn’t wanna mess up your date by coming home and talking to you about all of this sad shit. I knew that you’d just worry about me and probably not go,” He mumbled. “And I feel like a dumbass for still messing it up.”

“It’s okay. Seriously. Honestly,” You told him and then playfully smiled as you said your next words. “And you know that I would tell you if it wasn’t okay. I’d definitely hold this over you for at least a week, and force you to clean out Harold’s cage and do my laundry that’s been building up for the past week and a half. But you’re drunk and sad, and I’m way too nice to make you do any of those things.” 

He laughed at that, which made you smile wider. “Thank you.” 

“You’re welcome,” You said before you stood up from the stool you’d been sitting in. “Now, come on, let’s get out of here before it starts getting crowded. Can you walk okay?” 

Steve only nodded in response, which was a nonverbal answer that you weren’t sure if you completely trusted, so you stood close to him as he also got up and pulled some cash out of his back pocket and placed it on the counter. 

He then waved at Barry, and you were certain that he probably didn’t mean for it to be so animated and comical, but it very much looked that way. “Goodnight, Barry.”

The bartender laughed a bit when he looked over at you and Steve. “‘Night, guys.” 

Steve started heading toward the door first and you followed just a few steps behind him. When he stumbled a bit before even making it out of the door, you grabbed his hand and moved closer to him so that he could drape his arm around your shoulders, and then one of yours circled around his waist. 

Leading him to your car was a feat in itself, but once he was settled in the passenger seat and you started driving, he rolled his window down completely and had it like that during the entire ride even though it was freezing cold outside, and that was worse than dealing with his stumbling.

When you made it to the apartment building, his balance was actually a bit more coherent so you didn’t need to do more than just hold his hand during the entire walk to the elevators and then down the hallway to the apartment.

You dragged him to your room and he sighed in contentment when he sat down on the side of your bed; he always liked your mattress better than his own for some reason. 

“Wait, don’t fall asleep yet,” You told him before heading over to his room and grabbing a random t-shirt and basketball shorts from one of his drawers. “Here, put this on. I know you’d be mad at me if I let you fall asleep in those jeans.” 

“Thanks,” He mumbled with a yawn as you handed the clothes over to him, and then you went to the kitchen as he started changing. 

You filled a mug with water and then pulled open the drawer that had the bottle of aspirin in it. Neither you nor Steve were really sure why it lived there instead of in one of your bathrooms, where it probably should’ve been, but you two also didn’t make any effort to move it.  

Steve was already asleep and under the covers when you walked back into your room, and you placed the mug and aspirin on the nightstand on his side. You changed into your own pajamas for the night, which simply consisted of an old baggy t-shirt and shorts, before settling in on your side of the bed. 

It was still pretty early for a Friday night, barely even ten o’clock, but you didn’t mind going to bed because you were actually a little tired. Steve was turned and facing away from you, but you still watched him and his even breathing for a bit, making sure he was okay before you quickly drifted off to sleep yourself. 

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Steve didn’t know what time it was when he woke up, but he could tell that it was pretty early because he could see the just sun starting to rise. 

The other things he quickly noticed were that he was in your bed and he had a pounding headache, which was a little confusing at first, but then all of what happened last night started coming back to him. 

The shit with his dad, the bar, the accidental phone call to you, and then you coming to the bar and bringing him home— he remembered it all. 

With a soft groan, Steve slowly sat up in bed, doing his best not to wake you, and then reached over to grab the water and aspirin you left out for him. 

He took the medicine and drank most of the water and then laid back down, turning on his side to face you. Your head was against the pillow and even breaths fell from your slightly parted lips. You looked so peaceful like this, he decided, so pretty.  

Steve thought about you and Jamie, and how happy you had been when you talked about him. Steve also knew how excited you’d been about the date, and even though you had told him that it was okay that you had to cancel it last night, he still felt a little bad about it all. 

He knew that you would probably do anything for him, and that was completely mutual. If the roles had been reversed last night, Steve wouldn’t have thought twice about canceling a date to go pick you up from some dumb bar. And making those sorts of sacrifices for one another never felt like a question, it just always felt like the obvious thing to do. 

It didn’t completely make sense at first, but somehow it was that simple and crystal clear thought that managed to shift something deep down inside of him— it harshly drew the line between best friends and something more. And Steve quickly realized exactly which side he lay on.

Which was confusing because the lines of where your friendship began and ended had always felt so unquestionable— you and him were best friends; nothing more, nothing less. 

But it was different now, it changed, and it was this moment that told him that it actually had been that way for a while; probably since you two moved into the apartment. 

Starting from that day in August your lives became even more intertwined with one another— which didn’t feel entirely possible because of how close you’d been for so long— but it was true. He hadn’t realized how blurry the lines had been getting since then. 

Since you two started beginning your days and ending them in the same home. Since so many nights became spent in each other’s beds; nothing more happening than sleeping and late night talking, but still. Since you two got Harold only a few weeks into living in the apartment, and you both immediately fell into your unserious parental roles in the hamster’s life. Since an unspoken early morning weekend routine fell into place where Steve would make coffee and toast and you’d do the eggs and bacon. Since you two became something equivalent to a married couple that had been together for at least twenty years. 

And then Steve realized that actually maybe this something more had always been there— maybe it had always been so fucking obvious. 

He thought back to the end of Senior year when you two went to each other’s proms and slow danced at the end of the night because you both thought it would be funny, but those moments actually turned into something really sweet and wholesome; and you’d both think back on it during the most randomest of times. 

And then he also thought about smaller things, the parts of your personality that made him feel so goddamn lucky to know you. How you always fiddled with the radio and never settled on a station for longer than a few minutes during perhaps any car ride where Steve was the one driving; something that you’d been doing since the day he got his driver's license and you two went on your first solo car ride together. How pretty much anything you did would only make him smile and playfully roll his eyes or make fun of you. 

Steve wasn’t entirely sure why he was having this sort of “epiphany moment” right here, right now, in your bed as he looked at you peacefully sleeping next to him. 

It, of course, stemmed from you canceling something that he had known you’d been looking forward to for the last couple of days to instead take care of him, he could recognize that. But, what made that so different from everything else you’d done for each other over the years? 

He immediately thought that maybe there was no one straight answer to that question because it wasn’t about what was different. Instead, it was about all of those other moments too. They had slowly built upon each other until it came to this one on this February morning— nine years into your friendship and six and a half months into you two living together— and Steve could finally recognize what it all had meant, and he was ready to accept the truth for what it was too. 

He liked you. More than liked, actually. He loved you, he was in love with you. 

But, you were also his best friend, the most important person in his life, and he didn’t want to be the reason that that ever got messed up. And that thought was what made him finally look away from you and mutter out a soft, “Fuck.”

Steve quickly got out of the bed, and he was surprised, but also completely grateful, that his quick and hasty movements didn’t manage to stir you awake. 

He left your room and went to the kitchen. It was early and he probably should’ve been trying to get a few more hours of sleep, but he wasn’t tired anymore. 

The realization was the only thing on his mind— in a matter of seconds, it managed to completely consume it. 

Everything else that had been happening the past few months finally made complete sense; Steve saw it all in a different way. He now understood why he couldn’t picture any sort of future with Vanessa when he went out with her a few times back in December even though he really did like her, and why he couldn’t see anything with anyone he went out with. Because deep down, he knew that he could only see that with you. It made sense why his dating life had been in such a rut lately and why he didn’t particularly mind it all that much.

When you two would jokingly say that you both were completely okay with ending up “alone together forever,” he realized now that from his side of things, deep down, it had never been a joke. And he wondered if it was the same way for you. 

In an ideal world, the answer would be yes. But, things only felt confusing, and if he was being a thousand percent honest with himself, he didn’t know if that answer was yes in this world.

Steve knew that you really liked Jamie, even in such a short amount of time, so that couldn’t mean that you had any sort of feelings for him. Right? Or maybe you just hadn’t had your own “epiphany moment” yet? Should he tell you about his? Should he tell you about any of what just hit him in the past ten minutes? 

His brain felt as if it was going to fucking explode with all of the questions circling his mind right then, and the coffee he was making failed to distract his thoughts from everything. 

He came to the quick decision that he wouldn’t tell you what he was feeling; it would just be easier that way. There wouldn’t be any way for him to potentially fuck things up between you two if he simply ignored what he was feeling. It was easy to imagine how drastically your friendship would change if he told you everything and you didn’t feel the same. Therefore, he could push it all away to make sure that nothing changed for the worse.

When the coffee was done, he poured some into a fresh mug and took a long sip. Any other time, he couldn’t really stand straight black coffee, but the bitterness tasted good for once; he decided to focus on that instead of anything else. 

Steve wasn’t sure how long he had been leaning back against the counter and sipping from his mug before you came out of your room. It could’ve been one minute or ten; right then, time felt as if it was moving both slow and fast. 

“Hey,” You said, giving him a small smile and rubbing the tiredness out of your eyes. “I’m surprised you’re up already. I definitely expected you to be passed out until at least ten.” 

It felt equivalent to a light switch flipping how quickly Steve felt affected by your smile and simply you in that moment. He’d probably seen you like this a million times before— just waking up and still in your now wrinkled pajamas from the night— but it felt entirely different now. And that was when he knew how fucked he was. 

“Yeah, I, uh, I woke up and couldn’t, um, go back to sleep… So, yeah, just came out here. Made some, um, coffee,” He ultimately responded and then inwardly sighed at how flustered he was right then. He let out a quick laugh. “Sorry, blame the hangover for my inability to say sentences right now.” 

If that was how he was going to act around you from now on, he knew that trying to keep this a secret was probably the most unrealistic idea ever. 

You laughed a bit and nodded, seemingly unfazed by his awkwardness right then, and opened up the fridge. “You think you can stomach eggs and bacon?” 

“Yes to the bacon, but I think I should play it safe and say no to the eggs.” 

“Makes sense,” You said, closing the fridge after grabbing the bacon. You placed the pack on the counter near the stove and then looked at Steve. “You feeling better about all of that dad shit?”

It was almost comical how even though it had been the reason for everything that happened last night, the conversation he had with his dad was the farthest thing from his mind now. 

“I’m good, actually.” 

“Good,” You said, smiling at him and then reaching out to grab his hand and give it a light reassuring squeeze; which, unknown to you, made his heart feel as if it was going to somersault out of his chest. “Remember, the next time this happens, come to me and we both can get drunk here for free. Or we can just run away and join the circus, or whatever it was we agreed on when we were twelve.” 

Steve only nodded and gave you a small smile in response because it felt as if that was all he could do at that moment. If he attempted to say anything, he felt like his words would’ve started or ended with, “I’m in love with you.” 

He changed his decision then. He knew that he had to tell you everything because it wouldn’t be easy to simply bury it down and ignore it. There was no way that he’d be able to keep this from you, at least not for a long time, it was already swallowing him whole. And although he had no idea when or how he would tell you the truth, he made a quick promise to himself that he would do it. 

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

let me know ur thoughts<333

(requests are open for stuff you wanna see in the universe/series!🫶🏾)