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steviewashere · 6 months

Text

Decorate My Silence While I Figure Out How to Breathe

(also on ao3)

CW: Depression, Suicidal Thoughts, Implied/Referenced Suicide in a Minor Character, Self-Harm (Without Realizing That's What it is) This is rated mature on ao3 for a handful of reasons, including the content warning. Please take caution and care for yourself.

wc: 10,624 (I know, it's a doozy), Steddie Tags: Post Vecna, Post Season 4, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Hopeful Ending, Steve Harrington is a Mess, Self-Hatred, Worried Eddie Munson, Eddie Munson Takes Care of Steve Harrington, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Bathing/Washing, Steve Harrington Has Shit Parents

(I apologize for how long this is, but I just don't feel comfortable separating it into different posts.)

Heed tags and all content warnings, please!

—

The night was silent. Except for the wind. It was whispering in Steve's ears. Muttering soft things, soothing him, blowing air back into his lungs.

He's sitting in his backyard. On his diving board. Jeans cuffed to mid-calf, feet dangling in the cold water, beer between his hands—it wasn't cold at all, pulled straight from the box and warmed with the setting sun. He watched it disappear over the horizon, dipping down between the trees, tucking itself into the soil. He wishes he could do that. Maybe if he could mingle with the worms and the centipedes and the forgotten pinecones, the night wouldn't seem so lonely.

It's July 1st, 1986. Steve's anticipating the onslaught of fireworks. Waiting for the hissing of fuses, billowing of smoke, and shout of color overhead. Over the last week, he's kept his ears on high alert.

In case, he tells himself.

Though it's silent, with the wind brushing against his back, he can hear a heavy accent spitting words between his eyes. Can feel blossoming bruises and fresh, dripping blood. Crunchy hair stuck to his tacky cheeks. Burns across his body from what kept him tied up to Robin.

Speaking of Robin, he wonders how she's doing. What she's doing. Her parents ushered her out of Hawkins to a lake trip. He hopes she can still call. Her voice is constant when he's so absent to the world. Maybe she's in the wind. Maybe she never really left. Maybe she's just as bad off as he is.

He shutters when the wind stops teasing his spine.

It's late. The sun is asleep. His feet are numb from the water. And the beer has been sipped once.

He's not really a beer drinker anymore, not since Barb's death. How did I get here, he wonders.

Steve is sitting alone in his backyard, staring down a beer tab, longing to go under the freshly cleaned water, and sink to the bottom. Lonely and tired and desperate for the phantom touches to go away, that's his life post-Upside Down.

He sips his beer. It fizzes against his lips and leaves a sticky trail under his nose. Drips down his Cupid's bow. Trails across his wobbling lower lip and chin. Then, it settles atop his thumbs, not tracing along the ridge of the can. Sharp under his fingertips, scraping across the sensitive skin, giving him a taste of muted pain.

Terribly he wonders, If I dug a little deeper across the rim, would I bleed? (Maybe he should put the beer away, drain it into the pool, and let it swirl across the surface.) Would I bleed? Would I seduce the monsters below me? Could I be nothing just for the next few days?

He takes a deep breath. Lets it fill out like a balloon and pop between him and the gravestone embracing his feet.

It's late and Steve is tired. Stuck in a dredge as sticky and lukewarm as the beer in his hand. The silver spoon he ate from as a kid digging into his sternum, melon-balling his cigarette stained lungs and beaten, but broken heart, ladling his blood like pasta sauce, and pouring it across the world for all of Hawkins to see. For the demogorgons to taste. For the people he calls his friends to stumble upon, gag over because it's the essence of Steve Harrington spattered across the poolside, and scrub at like taping over a wedding video.

He aches and sizzles. Burns and shrivels. Drinks and drowns.

Nothing bad is going to happen again. Nothing as dangerous as having to pull Eddie Munson from the Upside Down, protect Robin Buckley from Russians with sharp teeth and blunt force, save young Lucas Sinclair from Billy Hargrove, and defend oneself from being eaten alive—by bats and friends and own self-hatred.

Nothing terrible is going to happen again. So, why does Steve Harrington want to throw himself into danger so bad, why does he yearn for it, why can't he feel bad for himself? What does he do if the person he needs to protect the world from is him?

Let the fireworks come, Steve threatens. Let them rain upon me. I can't care anymore.

---- Steve wakes up in his bed the next morning. Unaware of how he even got to his room.

The sunlight is pouring through his window, spilling across the carpet, and staining his duvet. It's warm. Makes his skin itch and burn.

He's still tired, he finds. Aches erupt behind his eyes, under his thumbs, across his cheekbones. Fresh bruises. Belts digging into skin. Blood across his drooping eyelids. Everything hurts and tenses and rips into him.

The spoon digs deeper. Closer to his bare back. Travels to the bottom of his ribs. Scrapes against every bone in his abdomen, squelches every inch of his intestines. He wants to scream, but the energy to pull sound from his lungs hurts.

In the sun drenched room, warmed by rays and birdsong and gentle sway of trees, Steve wants to disappear into the world. Melt into his mattress, if possible. He wants to sit straight in his bed, hands cupping under his chin, mouth gaping with saliva, and project acrid yellowish beige puke across his fingers, escaping through the gaps to his lap. Wants to sit in the mess for a long while and realize, there's no point in cleaning himself up if he's going to do it again.

There's no point in a lot of things post-Vecna. The party is almost the same age he was when all this shit had started, they're about ready to run off and rebel against the damned world they swore to protect. Robin and Nancy and Jonathan are leaving to go to school. Eddie will surely go off and do his own thing, always too big for such a small town. His parents weren't present before and they've already communicated they won't come back.

So where does that leave Steve? The kid who had everything laid out for him. A future promised by his name. Friends who were on par with him; not that his new friends aren't, they just are bigger and better than what he could ever imagine for himself. He doesn't deserve them or this current life he has.

He's decided, he doesn't deserve anything. All his life he's been handed the better deck of cards. Been boasted over. Has been a bully though and through; major aggressions like the breaking of Jonathan's camera, minor aggressions like threatening to knock Dustin's teeth out, a joke that would have never landed. Got Barb killed by his own selfish needs and tired to persuade Nancy to move on; that was too fast and he knows that now. If only I hadn't been so stupid, he muses. Couldn't get into college. Or make his parents proud. Has nearly gotten other people killed too.

I should've died, he laments. Which, shouldn't that be true? The demogorgon in 1983, those demodogs and Billy in '84, Russians in '85, bats and Vecna in '86. He had every chance to get himself killed, to show that he's done his job, that he's taken the hits for the people that mean so much more than whatever pathway he's dug. He couldn't even do that right.

And now...now it's just a countdown to the next thing that could get him killed. Hoping for once, that nobody goes after him or is there to be his aid. To let him slither away, be beaten beyond pulp, and pulled apart like pork. Even then, would his killers be satisfied? But he knows he should die.

Maybe he can conspire that in his bed. Where he doesn't move from. Maybe a stray firework will come crashing through his bedroom window. He hopes that it will explode and drench him in stray fire. Hellfire, drown me in hellfire, he wants to beg to nobody in particular.

Steve rolls to face away from the window. He wraps the blanket tighter over his shoulders and buries his face into the pillow. It smells like night terrors. The skin on his face is slick with sweat. Torso ripped by scars. He doesn't want to move. Isn't hungry. Isn't thirsty. Doesn't want anybody to find him.

He doesn't have much energy, but he forces himself out of bed. Only to go down to his front door, hide the key on his porch, and lock it behind him. He pulls shut all the curtains. Climbs the stairs like a mountain and slams the bedroom door behind him.

In hindsight, maybe he should call someone to say that he's sick or something. That he wants to be left alone. He doesn't though. Maybe he should shower and eat and force himself to have a good day. But he doesn't. Won't.

Can't. That's going to be his favorite word. And who's going to shut him up? Nobody. They can't.

---- It's July 4th.

Steve hasn't left his room in two days. Well, only three times to use the bathroom. But otherwise, he's kept his promise. Successfully made himself a shadow, a silent specter.

When the phone rings, he covers his ears. Everything is so loud, he realizes. The fireworks and neighborhood kids screaming. Cars driving by. Even the smell of smoking barbecues, which really doesn't make sense, but it's so much.

His stomach growls, but his limbs are stiff. Unable to shift and get food. At the very least crackers or soup. Even then, he can't.

Steve's starting to smell ripe. Which is pretty unusual for a guy so high maintenance. The mere thought of standing under a shower stream or having to strip his clothes or having to even turn the bathroom light on is, daunting, to say the least. There's only ten feet between him and the upstairs bathroom and even then, he only goes for emergencies.

With the way he smells, he could envision himself rotting. Turning green from the outside. Turning red and mushy on the inside. If a mirror were placed in front of him, he could watch the way his eyes turn white and glassy. See the areas of his skin that are burned red from the pooling of his blood. He could watch the life literally leave his body. He could watch his body warp into spirit and then continue to haunt his childhood home. I've already rotted, he thinks. I'm already a ghost.

The phone rings and rings. His fingernails dig into the soft flesh around his ears. He pulls at the roots of his hair. Grips to his biceps and squeezes. Makes himself hurt over and over and over again. To escape his senses. To feel something else.

There's an emptiness where his lungs are. It's sucking down every bit of his insides. Enveloping him in a dry-heaved breath. Where he would usually cry and swallow down his guilt over how he's survived, there's nothing. He feels every last awful thing of himself, but not the tears. Can blink and be spitting in Jonathan's face. Take a deep breath and be recommending Tina's party to Nancy. Bite his lip and hear the way Dustin's name spill from his mouth to the Russian bastards. And he can rub across his skin, feel the way his scars aren't as deep as Eddie's. But he can't cry. Can't make himself feel better. And he doesn't know if that'll ever be a possibility for him again, if he's stuck this way. If he'll be forever broken. Ruined.

Because this is new to Steve Harrington. Not once has he ever felt so in the dark about himself. But now that the fights are over and everybody is safe and living as large as possible...Now he's left with what didn't happen, what should've happened, with the question on the tip of his tongue: Why am I still here? And he can feel himself crumble under the weight of his own breath. And though he's miserable, he aches to feel this way forever.

This is karma. This is what he deserves, right?

---- A rustle and drop break Steve out of pulling his hair.

There's something downstairs in his home. It could be a demogorgon or a demodog or a demobat or Vecna. Something dangerous could be lurking in house. But he can't pull himself up to find his nailed bat. Can't come to his dull senses and put his fists in front of his face.

He can't pretend to care.

Footsteps cause a stampede on his stairs. Heavy with each step. Loud on purpose. To alert Steve most likely, but he can't bring himself to be alarmed.

The thing hasn't even made it to his bedroom door. But all he can feel, for once over the last few days, is relieved. This is his moment of release. The moment that should've come during the first Upside Down encounter; Steve Harrington's untimely demise.

He holds his breath. Untangles his fingers and lets them drop across the pillow. He swallows all the saliva pooling in his mouth.

The door swings wide open and a breath is released into the air.

Nothing happens after that. The thing's presence is standing in his doorway, but it doesn't move or breathe or prowl. It assesses, but doesn't do anything else.

Steve doesn't drown in a pool of his blood or get ripped to shreds or strangled by a rope-like tail.

He cracks his eyes open. And there, watching his form, is Eddie Munson.

Eddie's hair is wiled, more untamed than his everyday. Like it was in the Upside Down. As if he fought to get over to Steve's house. His clothes are nothing usual. Sweatpants and a plain t-shirt, Reeboks still on his feet. There isn't a jacket or a vest or several chains. He's normal, regular citizen, must've rolled out of bed, Eddie.

When his eyes finally meet Steve's, he whispers, "Oh, thank God." He even does the Sign of the Cross with his eyes closed, finishing by kissing the edge of his t-shirt's collar, where a cross would lay. His eyes reopen to gaze at Steve once more. "Oh, thank God," he fervently presses into the air.

His eyes are too intense. Steve looks away without speaking. He buries himself further into his blanket and stabs his fingernails back into the meat of his biceps.

Eddie hastily makes his way to the side of the bed that Steve lays on. He slowly crouches down to land on his knees. Brings his hands up to lay on the space between Steve's heated body and the spare room on his mattress. His eyes roam. They map every exposed bit of skin, the drooping, greasy hair, rumpled clothes. He reaches outa hand to lay atop Steve's, to try and pull his fingers away.

Steve flinches backwards and growls, "Don't."

"Okay," Eddie placates. He pulls his hands back towards the edge of the mattress. Lets there be distance between them. Steve hates it, but he can't express that. There's no way he can express anything other than apprehension. "I just," he stammers. "I came to check on you. The backdoor was unlocked. You weren't answering your phone and both Robin and I were getting worried."

His voice is soft and sad and concerned. It makes Steve's skin itch.

"Well, you're here," Steve flatly states. "And I'm alive."

Eddie is taken aback by the tone of his voice. He winces like he was slapped. And maybe the lack of intensity, yet the severe intensity of Steve's voice, really has that power.

"Well apologies, asshole," he spits back. "But when somebody in the group doesn't fucking answer, we tend to get worried. We thought you weren't alive," he barks. He pushes his body up and looms at his full height. With one last look thrown in Steve's vague direction, he makes his way to the door.

Steve knew he couldn't say anything in return. Not yet, at least. Because how would he respond to that? "I wish I was dead. Sorry for worrying you, but I think you'd be terrified to know what I'm thinking about."

So instead of saying something as treacherous as any of those responses, his body betrays him differently.

Right before Eddie crosses the threshold to go back into the hallway and down the stairs, Steve lets out a wounded whimper. He lets several loose into the tense air. Maybe he will cry, he can't, but it could happen, but it can't, and it will, but he so badly wishes it wouldn't.

"Steve?" Eddie whispers over his left shoulder, eyes pierced to where the lump of his friend stiffens with every sound. He feels his heart breaking like a brick wall struck by a wrecking ball. His ribs are collapsing. His heart is sifting through stomach acid to try and float back to his chest.

Steve's body convulses with every breath. He stammers, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm s-sorry." Over and over until each word is unintelligible. "Don't go," he pleads between each staccato intake.

He feels warmth crowd over him. Like the sun. There's a hand hovering over his shivering shoulders. But it doesn't touch him. As if, to Eddie, it can't.

"Sweetheart..." he coos sadly. "What's wrong?" He watches Steve's face turn red. Sees the tremble of his eyelids as it tries to contain whatever pressure is building there. How his chin wobbles.

Steve doesn't really respond. He mutters "Wrong" on repeat and "Dunno," but each word is slurred. Eddie sits down and asks to touch him, when he gets a nod in return, his hand digs into the greasy hair. He lightly scratches his scalp. Untangles knots. Repositions certain strands of hair to where they'd normally sit.

Eddie notes how pale Steve is. The indents of fingernails on his biceps and areas of red, irritated skin where his hand teases hair. How wrinkled his pajama bottoms are, indicating how long they've been worn. His hair is an easy giveaway. He can hear his stomach growl. He realizes how resigned and numb Steve appears. The way there's no other emotion on his face outside of accepted misery.

He sweeps his hand to cover Steve's exposed right ear. His thumb is careful as it caresses his cheekbone.

"I don't know what's happening, but I've got you, Stevie." And as if that was all the permission Steve needed, he begins to sob. Wet and congested and rough. "I've got you," Eddie whispers. Soft like the wind.

Every screeching sound leaving Steve's barren chest ripples through the air like an ocean in a storm. Each gasp rocks Eddie's body and settles tense like a fresh scream. The noises are that of several sheep being slaughtered brutally by the hands of unkind men. Calloused is his breathing. Innocent are his cries.

The spoon has cleared all the way through Steve. In its wake is a gaping, frayed crater. Each seize of his lungs squirts blood halfway across his room. If he squints, there's droplets the size of beads bedazzling over Eddie's left side. The sprays seep into his clothes and harden the carpet and stain his closet door. In every part of the house, though he's been cooped up in his room, Steve can feel his soul being ripped apart and strewn over; every corner occupied with pre-1983 him and every seam in the hardwood now glued by the residual sweat from his last run through the Upside Down. The carpet contains his footprints. But his room is a slaughterhouse; in his bed is him, the version of Eddie pre-occupied by the last swirl of demobats, but by his dresser is Nancy fresh from the pool, and out his window is Barb grasping to a cement edge, being dragged by her feet, and taken for all she both was and wasn't. His house is a morgue and a graveyard and a funeral home; it's a last resting place and a crime scene. There's death everywhere.

And that's why it would be perfect, right? For Steve to rot there?

He has been. He still is. He can't stop.

When the room has fallen silent, so has every emotion Steve could possibly feel. His eyes burn like they always do after he cries. But, his chest is loose, yet tight. There's a new hollowness to him. And it's exhausting every stretch of his muscles.

Eddie is still caressing his face like he's something worthwhile. He's gentle. Even if he's usually boisterous in conversation, violent in his mannerisms, brash across his clothes.

Steve's breath quakes in his throat as he chokes, "I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize," Eddie whispers. "You needed that, it's alright."

He shakes his head at that. "No, I'm sorry for being so mean," he swears. "I didn't mean it, I didn't mean to be that way, I didn't," he garbles and gargles and drowns.

The hand on his face shifts to his back. It taps across his spine and presses between his shoulder blades. "I know, honey. I know you didn't mean it. You're okay," Eddie coos once more.

"Somethin' is wrong," Steve tells him. "Bad."

Eddie's face glows with fear. His eyes widen as two black holes. Mouth wrinkled downwards. "What do you mean? Do I need to call Joyce?" he tries to not frantically question. Reaches out, too, to grab Steve's right hand, squeezing over his fingers, thumb massaging against his bones.

Steve turns to strangle his face in the pillow. Mutters, "No, no, no...with me. Not Vecna, just me."

And then there's silence. Nothing now. The wind is stagnant. Eddie's hands have stilled.

Steve isn't sure what to do with so much swirling inside of him. What he's willing to let spill across his mattress. If there's a way to go back in time to when Eddie was just about to leave, stomping out the front door, and for his underwhelming, sad, decomposing body to be left here; he wants to figure out that science.

"Steve," Eddie calls. "Can you tell me what's wrong? Maybe I can help you out." He continues to rub Steve's back. Squeezes the hand he's holding too.

He waits a while to hear a response. Steve is still pressed into the pillow. But he positions his face to look out over the side of his bed, not looking directly at Eddie, though it's nearly the same.

"My body hurts," he whispers. He inhales as deep as he possibly can, exhaling what feels like shards of crumbled glass. "And I'm heavy," Steve states. "Like...like somebody set a cement block on me. And I can't get up." His voice is small and worn and stretched thin.

Eddie acknowledges by humming and rubs against the veins in Steve's hand.

"But I also don't want to get up? Not in the lazy way, but in the..." he trails off. His breath catches in his throat, knocking around the tunnel of his windpipe. There's a ruthless, scalding burn settling in his chest. "In a way that would make a lot of people unhappy, but I can't stop thinking about it. And I know maybe I shouldn't think that way, but it won't go away. And I wonder..." He doesn't finish.

"What kind of thoughts, Stevie? What are you wondering?" Eddie calmly asks. Inside though, he knows the answer. Has heard it before from his own mother. Came across her in the after of those aforementioned thoughts, seen the way life had been cruel. How life chose, so full heartedly, to take goodness from the Earth.

"Why does it happen to good people?" He had asked Wayne at one point. His uncle's response, "I'm not sure, Bubba. I wish I could tell you." And Eddie had whined, "That's not fair." Wayne responded, "I know Ed. I know."

So, though Eddie could relay to you the words he knows are building in Steve's chest, he's freaking out. Trying to connect the dots as to when this all started. Asking himself if it's possible to go back in time and prevent these horrendous thoughts from building inside his friend. Praying too that they may never come, that he can be safe from torment. But none of that can happen, won't, wouldn't. He'll forever be stuck in a time where he's met Steve Harrington as a great person to the universe, where he beats himself internally for things outside of his control, where he walks across hot coal just to make himself feel alive.

"I wonder if—if maybe dying would make it stop," Steve admits, shamefully. "I think I've been wanting it for so long that it doesn't surprise me, but I've never felt like this." Eddie's fingers begin to tremble from how hard they grasp to Steve's slick skin. "I can't stop it and I think I deserve it, Eddie. I really do."

His body nearly seizes with the intensity of his breathing, willing himself to not cry. He's never been so ashamed to be the person he is. And the person he isn't. Every word cuts across the roof of his mouth and scrapes against his lips. He wants to be evaporated into the hole in his chest. Waits, practically, for the universe to collapse in on itself now that his confession is out in the open.

Instead though, gentle hands continue to traverse his frame. They squeeze passionately at any tense muscle. Not once do they pull away or become sharp in nature or shove him.

"You don't deserve death, Steve. Nobody does. Not for anything like this," Eddie whispers. "I can't say that I know, but I want to understand. And I want to help you not feel so bad."

"Why?" Steve breathes. "I'm not worth that."

"Because you deserve good things. You deserve kindness," Eddie replies, factually. "I'm not sure how to stop those thoughts. But maybe I can help you feel fresher? If you'll let me?" he offers. His eyes are full and earnest, hand still careful, breath warm across Steve's skin where he now bends to gaze into his eyes.

The offer rattles in Steve's skull. Eyes searching over each one of Eddie's features; his beautiful, brown eyes, bulbous tipped nose, his chewed lips, and small freckles; each one reads: "I'm telling the truth, I want to do this." He's never been offered help as large as this. And he hates the way he feels, yet finds he can't do anything about it. This would be good, his brain says. Then you can rest, it adds.

"What did you have in mind?" Steve asks. His eyes drift down to where his hand is being held. He brings his other fingers to tap across the back of Eddie's hand, toying with his sharp knuckles.

Eddie swipes his thumb across Steve's ear. He hums thoughtfully. "I was thinking of running you a bath. So that you can sit instead of stand? And while you soaked or whatever, I make you something you'd like to eat. Then, I'd change out your bedding, but I would put it in the dryer for a little bit so that it's warm when you get tucked back in. And the rest is up to you," he lists. "Is that some stuff that you'd like to do?"

He caresses the side of Steve's face. Patiently, he waits.

The energy used to keep talking is depleting rapidly. He isn't sure how much longer he'll be able to keep up with Eddie for the day. For the night, more like. It's already 8 PM, fireworks sounding distantly. But Steve remains heavy in his bed.

"Sounds nice," he eventually breathes. "But, can you stay with me in the bathroom? I don't want to be alone," his timid voice shakes. As if asking such would turn around to punch him across the jaw. He swears he can feel the pain bloom from his chin, an unsettling pop tossed around the room, echoing across his plaid walls.

"Of course, Stevie," Eddie murmurs. His face is soft. Dimples barely appearing around his mouth, but still he gives Steve a gentle smile. It pays to see Eddie at night; quiet and careful and less devious than when he's around everybody in the party. "I'll do whatever you need right now."

----

Eddie's sitting in Steve's bathroom, filling up the tub with warm water. He's got a plastic cup sitting on the ledge, a mountain of bubbles threatening to spill out onto the tiled floor, a washcloth, and two towels; one for Steve's body, one for his hair.

Steve still hasn't left his room. He's currently sitting up on the edge of his bed, staring down at his bare feet in the carpet. His torso is curled over his knees and his head pounds. There's hair falling into his eyes, but he can't bring his fingers up to swipe them away. He's only wearing sweatpants; but his heart is worn across his chest in a splattering of reds and pinks and muted blues. With every beat there's that creeping itch to collapse onto his back and crawl through the mud that is sleep. He yearns for the firm mattress to comfort his exhausted muscles, a pillow to smother himself in, his blanket to cover the errors of each Upside Down fiasco; drag scars, torso chunks, plate cuts, crooked nose.

He wants to close his eyes against the brightness curling into his bedroom from the hallway, so he does. Lets his head droop down to curve the top of his spine. Blood settles along his lower back, sloshing down the tops of his thighs, anchoring to his toes. There's almost a calm within being so weighted, to being too heavy for words and sounds and lights and movements. With each breath, the crevice from the spoon begins to stitch. Not entirely. It won't ever close up completely, but he can feel the sinew of muscle reattaching; blood seeping across his chest hair, tacky across his sternum, threatening to pour back into his belly button.

Eddie opens the door and tiptoes to the bed. He settles on his knees in front of Steve.

Though he can't bring himself to stand, he can feel Eddie's warmth. And he yearns for it.

"Ready to go to the bathroom?" Eddie questions. Not loud. Mellowed and pastel in the way it breaks through Steve's collapsing lungs. Steve shakes his head.

"Not yet," he whispers. "Can't."

Instead of being shamed, like he would be when he was home from basketball practice and too sore to move, he's left with softer words, "That's alright Stevie, take all the time you need. I can always refill the bath." Eddie stands and sits next to Steve on his right. His hand tucks hair away and tickles down his earlobe, settling warm across the back of his neck. Thumbs dig into the top of Steve's spine, lightly scratching over several moles and freckles; connecting them into various constellations. Eddie doesn't say anything for a while. Just hums random notes and heaves breathing exercises when Steve seems to seep inwards.

Steve raises his head ever so slowly, every vertebrate realigning. He tilts from side to side, reintroducing his muscles and nerves to the normal of sitting straight. "I'm ready. I think. Can I—" he begins. There's a voice in his head that screams: Don't ask for help, you don't need it. Don't ask for help, you don't deserve it. A battle twitches between his eyebrows. The muscles throw grenades and stab arteries and shred arms like raking soil. He tentatively asks, "Can I lean into you while I walk?"

Without answering, Eddie stands in front of Steve. He grasps onto his hands, heaving his body fully, steadying him when he wobbles on shaky knees. One of Steve's arms goes across Eddie's waist. "Put your head on my shoulder, I got you," he whispers.

They make their way and when they cross to the lip of the tub, Steve feels heavy with no emotion; only one cracks through him though.

Adoration.

That's the first thing outside of being bodied by emptiness and loneliness and weighted cowardice, that Steve can feel through every limb, in every vein, at the edges of his frayed nerves and still beating heart. For a mere moment, he is able to tally away one reason why he shouldn't disappear. And that makes his heaviness lighter, he sits like a bag of bricks, but his toes begin to tickle like feathers.

Eddie is silent and attentive in the way he undresses Steve. With his eyes as they roam over wilting hair and kissed-pink puckering scars and knotted muscles. And with his deft fingers as he plucks away the sweatpants' waistband, shimmies them over Steve's knobby knees, and bunches them over his long feet. He folds the dirtied laundry and sets them on the floor by the sink. Tucked away, yet noticeable for later; whether Steve cleans up or Eddie does by proxy when he changes the bedding for a warmer set—a duo of sheets covered in dainty lavender flowers and a duvet dusted with pink stitching.

He dips his elbow in the sudsy bath water, nods to himself over the temperature, and then carefully maneuvers Steve's legs to face inwards. His left hand holds steady to Steve's and his right massages over the other's shoulders. Simply just smearing his palm's softness over the spattering of back moles; previously connected by careful lines, shining bright like an array of white fireworks in the dimmed bulb of the bathroom.

Once Steve is submerged to just under his pecs, Eddie whispers featherlight, "Does everything feel okay?" His hand cards through stringy hair, timidly cautious when he meets a new knot he hadn't quite untangled.

Steve nods. Words feeling too big for his sullen mouth.

"That's good," Eddie states. "Do you want me to help you with washing up or would you rather I sit here and talk?"

He isn't sure how to respond quite yet and Eddie doesn't seem upset at his molasses responses. In fact, when Steve looks over him, his eyes boring and at ease, he finds that Eddie is just patient. Which normally, he's stubborn with his temper and anxious to get things moving and for his voice to be heard. But in this moment, he longs not to be heard, but to be understood. And that's enough for Steve to request, "Please do both."

Eddie's hand slips through the ends of his hair and easily reaches over for the washcloth folded neatly on the toilet lid. He dips it under the mound of bubbles and brings it back to wring out. His movements are languid, wary, but not in a fearful way. As if when his body settles over his heels, he's gauging Steve's reactions, as subtle as they are.

"Do you want bar soap or body wash?" He kindly asks. And Steve feels warm without sweat at the question. He's never had the choice before when he took baths as a kid; his mom always ran a bar of soap between her hands and then gently stroked it over his body.

"Bar," Steve croaks.

The washcloth is set on the edge of the tub. Eddie leans over to the bathroom's counter and grabs a handful of boxed soap bars. Each one has a different label.

"I found these in the cupboard. There's a peach scented one, vanilla musk, whatever that means, and the classic Irish Spring. Is there one you're more particular to?" He asks, holding each box up as he goes, and then placing them on the edge alongside the rag.

"You smell like Irish Spring," Steve observes.

The scent had brushed him once at a gathering in the Wheeler's basement. It had been a warm day in May and the A/C was running, but everyone and their mother was sweating. He had been invited to watch a campaign oneshot. "Something short enough to keep your attention," Dustin had said. The kid genius had been right, of course. Though, Steve paid attention differently on that day. He noticed this new awfulness he resides in start to creep across his skin, light like the hum of the air conditioner. He was fighting with himself during that little get together, but Eddie had came over during a snack break, long arms, slim figure. Plopped down on the worn sofa and slung an arm over Steve's shoulders. His t-shirt was damp with sweat, but all Steve really could smell was the citrus and bergamot disguised in green.

The feeling of Eddie's arm was comfortable. And so the scent stuck to the inside of Steve's nostrils. When he left that night, he stopped by Melvad's and bought a bar. With the intention of eventually using it, but he had to work through his body wash first.

He is given the option here. He can ask for it.

Eddie chuckles, "I guess I do. It's my favorite soap. Wanna use it tonight?"

Steve nods and whispers, "Please."

So, the washcloth is redipped in the warm water, rung out so it's not sopping wet, and the bar is ran through ever so carefully. Eddie starts with Steve's neck, rubbing small circles across his skin. The dead skin flakes away over the coarseness of the cloth. It's worked over the slope of his shoulders, into his chest hair, his biceps, and pecs.

But Eddie skips his hands and instead moves down to his legs. Each swipe like a paintbrush marking a sunset sky. The reverence in which Steve is being treated with is so foreign that he begins to tear up. His lips tick into a tiny smile, only an inch wide, but brighter than any firework beyond the windows.

"Still doing alright?" Eddie asks when he rings the washcloth out once more and hangs it to dry over the toilet.

"Doin' better," Steve whispers. Though, there's still a fault line fracture in his soul and a bullet would scar from that spoon.

He inches his fingers to settle over the surface of the water. They're pruned. Over the lip of the tub, he dances them until he's touching Eddie's pointed elbow.

Eddie gently takes his hand. Intertwines their fingers. He smiles without teeth.

"You're really good at this," Steve mutters through a sigh.

"Used to do this with my mom. I don't mind doing it," Eddie responds.

Steve hums. He licks his dry lips. Feels each one of Eddie's words settle over the bathwater and drown his limbs in sorrow. Ever so carefully, he shifts his hand back into his own lap, and watches with regret as Eddie's beautiful face sours. He sucks on a lemon in the time their hands separate. And Steve is so tired.

His throat stings. Scratchy with oncoming tears. His eyes water. Bubbling with something he didn't know he had to feel that night.

Remorse.

It seems that being gone to the world for days on end, for a while so it's been said, really brings down everybody. At one point, Steve was okay with being alone on weekends and holidays and birthdays. He was doing just fine inviting over Tommy and Carol for stale beer his dad forgot about or muck water weed. In his evenings, he was settled with laying in his giant, cold bed; tucked under a duvet that smells like a different detergent than his childhood. And it seems that's how life moves. Steve grows bulky and remorseful and regretful. He grows ashamed and bastardly and inside this need to be constantly admonished.

Never in his life did he imagine he'd feel so greatly, yet so few. Would be left with a rusted spoon in his grip and a body feeding from survivor's guilt. He wants to scoop the rest of himself from his ribcage and serve his rot to the world. Force Mother Nature to birth a son and kill a son and start his grass anew.

If younger Steve knew that he'd grow to not only disappoint, but also make his friends sad, he would have gone missing or ran away or been found dead by age ten. His mind flashes with Tommy yelling at him in that convenience store parking lot, a cold Coca-Cola forgotten in his tyrant rant. A sign reading: Nancy "the Slut" Wheeler. Jonathan's hardened face over being called queer. And Robin's original distaste for him. The way Dustin had to call him out over the teeth joke. Eddie's initial bias over his popular jock persona.

Now, he's looking at Eddie's crumpled face. Hearing back his concern and Steve's blatant disregard for the tremble in his voice.

I should just drown in this tub, his inner-monologue hisses.

A tear he couldn't feel drips down into the rapidly cooling bathwater.

Eddie's hand scrambled to cup Steve's face. He says, "Steve, it's alright. It's okay." But those words fall upon deaf ears.

Steve flinches back hard enough to slam his head into the ceramic tile backsplash. His voice trembles, "I'm sorry that I made you sad. Maybe you should go, I'll finish in here and then I'll go back to bed and you won't have to deal with me anymore. I'm so sorry, so so sorry. I didn't mean to." There's wetness coating his cheeks, an erupting pulse of pain in his head, an empty ache in his chest.

As he begins to sob again, albeit quieter than before, Eddie begins to speak. "No, Steve, no. You didn't do anything wrong, I promise." His voice is all passion and alighted flame and bursting firework. "You were caving again and I was getting worried, you're alright. You're alright," he whispers when Steve's body shivers and his crying slows. Hesitantly, cautiously, he shows both his hands and floats them closer. "Can I check the back of your head? Just to make sure you didn't crack or split anything." Steve nods with the smallness of an injured child fallen on hard pavement.

Eddie combs his fingers through hair, separating along Steve's part. His fingertips lightly trickle over and around and through. He doesn't miss a single spot. With care, he massages at the irritated red patches from where the hair had been pulled. "Nothing damaged, but let's be careful," he breathes against Steve's ear. He settles back on his heels and assesses.

Steve won't look at him. Can't look at him.

"Steve," Eddie whispers. He doesn't get anything in return. Steve's body sits like a Raggedy Andy doll that's been shoved onto a high shelf. And that's really who he is, isn't it? He's been placed somewhere he can't get down from and needs somebody to pull him away. He keeps pushing back, flailing, and then the other person gets hurt.

His eyes close. Throat bobs with the force of his swallowing. He takes a dangerous moment of peace in the silence. With it, his skin crawls. But he doesn't mind. When he does breach the quiet, he asks, "Can you hold my hand again?"

Eddie obliges. Both of his hands wrap around Steve's left.

His skin is hot. Not uncomfortably. Not in a sexy way either. The heat reminds Steve of soup and saltines when he was sick as a kid. Reminds him of late night bonfires with old friends out by Lover's Lake in the fall. Heated pool late at night. That beer from a few days prior. The sun.

He's decided that Eddie is both the wind and sun.

Bright. Yet calm. Brash. Yet timid. Burning. Yet soothing.

And that's really Eddie's essence, isn't it? Some bigger, more necessary, more constant thing. Washed between trees and light all around. Creeping his way through billowing curtains and gaping doors and finger gaps. Looking to nestle and maneuver and cushion. In his consistent, over-bearing, tumultuous everyday normal; Eddie is all around in smaller ways, hesitant moments, and manicured silences. He's worked his way to being somebody Steve can expect as being reversed in his mannerisms; going from big to small to mild. In each sense, Steve's been wondering where the sun and wind are. They're here in his bathroom, holding his hand so lightly it's as if they're merely brushing skin with feathers.

Eddie knows how to decorate Steve's silence.

So, gently and shamelessly, Steve requests, "Tell me about your mom?"

"Do you want me to wash your hair while I do?" Eddie asks. Steve just nods. He grabs the shampoo and squirts a small amount into his palm. "Well, she's a good woman first. One of the best people I've ever come to know." Once it's warmed in his hand and frothy, he gently rakes through Steve's hair, not going to the ends. "Very kind. Warm. Soft. It's a wonder that I ended up the way I did, guess we can thank my dad for that," he snorts.

Steve's eyes are drooped, body lax against the back of the tub. He whispers, "I think that you're all those things."

"Yeah?" Eddie breathes across the crown of his head. His hands scrub fervently, precisely, and painlessly meticulous. Steve hums. "I think you are too," he states.

He fills the plastic cup with warm water and leans Steve back. One arm wrapped around his neck and back of head. His thumb massages where skull meets spine. He doesn't pour the water all at once, rather trickling small waterfalls over and over. When the suds aren't as noticeable, he eventually does pour it all. And then, he begins on the conditioner. Warms it the same as the shampoo.

"My mom, she dealt with what you're going through. I think almost as long as I got to know her." He rubs the conditioner over the ends of Steve's hair, bunching it as he goes. "She had her ups and severe downs. Sometimes we'd go out for days on end; basking in the sunlight, feeding ducks at the pond, going out for ice cream. Those were great days." Steve watches a wistful smile ripple in like a small tidal wave. Intense in the nostalgia and the childhood and the ache. "Her down days...Toughest fucking days I've ever had to endure. Saying something, I suppose, considering all that was spring break."

"I'm sorry," Steve sympathizes. Though, he can taste empathy like a packet of salt on his tongue. Violent in flavor, buried in his teeth, roaming through his saliva. Each swallow burns.

"It's alright," Eddie whispers. He works water through hair again. "I was with her on those days. May have been tough, but at least I got to spend time with her." He assesses Steve's hair. Wonders very briefly if he should do one more shampoo rinse. He does, a smaller amount filling the well of his palm. "She did what you've been doing. Laying in bed, not really doing much, but that was all she could do. Several days she'd go without washing herself or eating something, sometimes just drinking water was too much on her mind."

He shutters through his next breath. It stutters warm and cold over Steve's skin. Audibly, he swallows. As if he was consuming whatever was left of his mother. The bad days. The good days. The end.

"She lived in those thoughts you've been having," Eddie adds. Barely makes a sound. If Steve weren't sitting so close, so heavy to the world, he would have missed it. "I could just tell some days when she was lost in one. Had to hide things around the house. Medicine and sharp things and cleaning products," he lists. Each word cutting against his throat, deeper and deeper. "Dad had told me about all of that. In case he wasn't home. He rarely was considering his criminal history, but at least he taught me something valuable."

His hands travel down Steve's neck and the slope of his shoulders. Works all the way down to hands, wrinkled like old skin. And Eddie thinks, I want to see him like this.

Eddie keeps his eyes on the shriveled tips of fingers. "One day I came home and she was just still. Silent." His throat clicks through the next swallow. "I didn't get much time with her. Only twelve years, but each day I spent with her was the best. Whether it be that we walked to the park and she pushed me on the swings or I washed her skin the way I've been washing yours. As long as I could help her feel at least cleaner, it was a good day."

He falls eerily silent. Steve uses any mustered strength to squeeze at his veins, his fingers, his palms.

"So, whatever we need to do today, I'm willing to offer. Because I love you so much, Steve. I can't even find all the right words. I'd say you're everything," he whispers. "Everything," he urges. "And I want you here, and I have the chance to help those thoughts simmer. So, let's get you dried off and reclothed and then I'll make you some food. How does that sound?"

"Like music," Steve shares. His eyes burn, his breath cuts, his brain is silent. For the first time in two months, his brain hears silence.

----

After several minutes, Eddie sits Steve down at the dining table. He sweeps wet hair away from his forehead and gazes into his eyes. Steve's face is dim and hard-set, wrinkled with loss.

"I'll make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, get you some ice water too," Eddie whispers between them.

Steve hums. "Can I have mine without crusts, please?" he sweetly asks. His lips curl up and his eyes are consuming. Color starts to wash over him, painting hues like a sunset, a billion red and blue fireworks, the deep magentas and light pinks of cosmo flowers.

"Of course, sweetheart," Eddie breathes into his left ear. Before he evades Steve's space, he presses a light, simmering kiss to his temple. His lips brush skin as he says, "I'll turn on music too."

So he slithers away to the kitchen and turns on Mrs. Harrington's radio in the window. Usually, he'd tune it to a heavy rock station, but today he turns on pop. He mutters under his breath, hoping that Wham! plays. The ingredients aren't hard to find and neither are the utensils.

His hands keep busy while Steve sits at the table. Back hunched over tangled hands. Set down onto a hardwood table that used to house family dinners.

Visions of his father at one end, his mother by his side, him across form his mom. They eat Chinese takeout because it's a Friday night and nobody has to work or go to school over the weekend. Steve's dad eats sweet & sour chicken directly from the box. His mom eats rangoons with her dainty hands. And Steve slurps noisily at sauced noodles, successfully coating his lips in something sticky and his cheeks with a deep color. Mr. Harrington sticks the chopsticks under his upper lip, mustache tickling over the edge, and he barks like a walrus. Steve laughs so hard that tears spill down his cheeks, water spraying from his nose. Mrs. Harrington giggles too. In this, they're happy.

But now, Steve is—he's muddled. Eddie notices how cold the downstairs is. The scrapes in the hardwood from chairs digging and being shoved around. He recalls a time a while back where Steve had mentioned his parents purchasing a new home in Southern California. The postcard he got in the mail reading, "Greetings, From Sunny California." There was a return address, but specifics about not contacting them. Not visiting. That they'd handed him the home in Hawkins, his responsibility now, cursing his name for digging his feet in retail and Barbara Holland disappearing from their backyard. Disappointment being scrawled in bold, black, scratchy handwriting. And then, when Eddie chanced a look at Steve's face, he was resigned.

Like he is now.

He wonders if that postcard had been the start. If Barb's disappearance eventually settled in his lungs after Nancy's Vecna vision. Maybe it wasn't familiarity that Steve was looking for in the Upside Down, but rather, protection from himself. A time where things were simpler and happier and smaller. Where his life wasn't on the line.

Now, he's looking for that sign. For that moment of brevity where Satan climbs through the forest floor and creates a vortex to Hell. A whispering through the wind, vicious and hissing, telling him to "Climb in."

Maybe if Nancy wasn't the one that Vecna trapped, it would've been Steve.

Eddie realizes, he probably would've broken out of it. And he would've been upset to hear Steve swear, "I'm still alive!" like a slur.

Steve is a teenage boy still, even if he's freshly twenty years old. But, his maturity certainly hit him all at once. Whether that be the last time the Harringtons were all in the same room or when that nailed bat was being swirled around in the air, Eddie isn't sure. Somewhere though, Steve lost his sanity. Lost his patience. Lost himself.

He comes back to the table with two sandwiches wrapped in paper towels and a tall glass of ice water. Wham! is on the radio.

"Thank you," Steve murmurs when he takes his sandwich. He takes a bite and hums. "Like when my mom made them."

"That a good thing?" Eddie asks.

"Yeah, I like to think so," he mutters. "Also, you don't like this music, how come you're playing it?" His big eyes land on Eddie's.

Eddie grins. There's crumbs on Steve's lower lip. Water in the corners of his mouth. He reaches out without thinking and drags his thumb to wipe away the wetness. "You like it," he answers. "Anything you like, I like." His thumb rests on the divot under his lip. Gently holding his chin.

Steve's chewing slows and he swallows. His eyes fill with something. A sparkle where they were once vacant and drowning. "You're too nice to me," he whispers. His head swivels back to his food, leaving Eddie's hand to roughly drop onto the table.

And his eyes clear once again.

"You know, you don't have to stay here with me. I'm probably just going to be like this for a while," Steve hollowly states. That spoon is back again. Playing his ribs like a xylophone; hitting hard enough to crack and disturb. He wants to throw up the little bit of food he's managed to swallow.

He just wants to disappear.

Eddie opens his mouth to say something, but he eats his sandwich instead. Slowly, too. The room is heated with tense energy, crawling under his t-shirt, scraping against his spine, and ripping his hair.

His friend, best friend he considers, curls smaller. Hands picking at the crustless edges. Balling corners of paper towels, eyes half-lidded and just empty.

In another life, Eddie starts to think, we would be eating sandwiches and watching fireworks. His hands tremble on the surface of the table. In another life, he begins, we are sitting at this dining table creating a grocery list, arguing whether or not we should get orange juice with pulp. Steve's not eating anymore. Head firm in his hands, elbows on the table, so informal. In another life, he muses, he is so happy, overflowing with it, body warm with it, eyes shining with it.

In another life, Steve doesn't cry into his hands at the dining table. He doesn't fall in love with a boy. He certainly doesn't work measly retail. Or have scars across every inch of his back. He doesn't sit by his pool late at night, wondering if he could die by proxy.

In the next life, he can only hope he's treated with reverence like this, from birth in screams and blood to death in whispers and halted breaths.

The radio fizzles. Batteries dead. Fireworks quiet for the night.

Every inch of the Harrington house is silent. Surfaces coated in stale breath and curdled blood. Bathwater cold and getting colder. Beds stiff and empty and too wide.

The silence is so loud.

And so hungry.

Steve aches. He confesses, "I love what you're doing Eddie, but I'm tired. And I'm so empty. And I don't know what to do. I can't—" His chest stutters so hard that the muscles in his back spasm. "I can't do this everyday." His arms fold crossed onto the table, head hitting his forearms.

Eddie scoots his hand close and gently brushes his fingertips over Steve's left forearm. "What do you mean, Stevie?"

His fingers tremble where they rest.

"I can't be like this forever. I feel like I've been stuck since we got back from the Vecna shit." His hands reach up to rub harshly at his face. "What if I never get better? You don't want to take care of me everyday and I can't do it by myself. I mean, God—" His palms press harshly into his eyes. Hands turning white from the pressure. "I've been in bed since the first. What if I just stay in bed for weeks, Eddie? That's hardly living. I can't do that to you or anybody or myself."

Eddie's palms firmly grasp his arms. They pull Steve's hands away from his face. There's blooming redness across his eyebrows and waterlines. Snot threatening to drip across his lips.

The shuttering breaths that Steve explodes into the air are breaking Eddie's heart further. Crumbling into thousands of little pieces like bread crusts.

"Steve, I need you to listen to me okay?" Steve doesn't respond, but Eddie continues anyway. "I want to help. I'm sure our other friends would be willing to help too. It's daunting, but eventually you may have to talk to somebody. We won't be able to help with everything, but we can do our best." He swallows every awful emotion making itself known on his tongue. Flashes of his mother and her death. "If you need to rest because your brain is telling you to, then you rest. Even if it's for weeks or months. Fuck, Steve, you could lay in bed for years. You've been through so much awful shit and it's all over. Of course you're stuck right now. You aren't in overdrive. It's okay to be this for a while," he breathes.

His breath leaves him hot and wet. Choked in muscles and blood. Rippling through ribs and fingers and toes. "You don't have to be anything right now. If you have days like these, then that's okay. I would rather be here taking care of you, helping you, whatever you need. I'd rather clean your home or change out your bedding or run you a hot bath. I'd rather do all of these things than..." his voice wavers and thins. "Than go to your funeral. Because you deserve to be here Steve, no matter what your brain says. I know that it's being unkind and that you think this is it for you, but I promise it's not.

"It's not. And we'll figure out what we need to do when we get there. But for now? Let's finish our sandwiches and I'll change your bedding and then, you can just sleep. If that's what your body is asking for, then we oblige. No need to do anything else, do you understand?" He asks, smoothing his hands to hold Steve's. Eddie's eyes are wet, he knows that. His eyelashes are anticipating the need to clump. But for now, he gazes at Steve's form, watches it fight and breathe and shiver.

Steve nods and squeezes in return. He doesn't let go with his left hand, but with his right he continues to eat his sandwich. It's sweet and fulfilling and warm in a comfort sort of way.

Eddie eats too and they both end up with crumbs on their lips.

----

By the end of the night, nearing eleven, Eddie has warmed Steve's bedding and tucked him under the duvet.

Steve's hair is unstyled and wavy and spread like a halo around his head. There's a crumb still nestled on his mouth, but neither make a move to brush it away. Eddie lays across from Steve, gazing, memorizing, creating memories.

In eight hours, Eddie will wake up with strains against his spine. Each vertebrae will pop and settle and his blood will be warmed. Steve will still be asleep most likely. And what he looks like in that state, Eddie can't wait to see.

For now, he holds his breath and counts Steve's moles. Over and over three times. Making sure he doesn't forget. Because, what misery would it be if Steve was forgotten in these silent hours? Terrible, it would be. There's something new to ogle at. A freckle birthed from the sun. Those damned bread crumbs. Flecks of gold and green and honey brown in each eye. Stray blonde hairs nuzzled into his hairline—baby hairs.

His palm holds Steve's left cheek. Thumb dotting over two moles. Then, it sweeps under his eye, catching in an eyebag divot. "You can sleep, honey," he murmurs.

"Can't," Steve mutters back. "Don't wanna lose you."

"You won't, I promise," Eddie fervently swears. "I'll still be here in the morning."

Steve hums. His left palm cradles Eddie's wrist.

His head scoots closer to Eddie's. He basks in this. How pleasant they both smell, wrapped in the same scents and breath; peanut butter and strawberry jelly and bergamot. Though that crater still throbs in his chest and his mind swirls and teeters, there's something settling inside him. With each swipe of thumb, each careful cradle, each promise whispered like prayer, Steve feels one thing.

Contentment.

He knows that tomorrow he will get up feeling like an untreatable basket-case. With a new gruesome idea and unpleasant ending. In the sunlight, he will drown and try to save himself by scooting away from the window. The fireworks will be silent, but the imagines of Barb's wretched screams will wash through Steve like a shipwreck on shore. He'll pick apart his brain, wood buried under sand, and find the sunken eyes of her teenaged body; still vulnerable and venerable.

Steve will bury himself in blankets and wish it was dirt. He'll burn and shiver and sob and choke. Each hour spent in bed will feel like eternity. And he'll rot from the outside in, then the inside out, and in each corner, the tub, down the stairs, out the front door.

He'll have to call Robin. And he will berate himself as she rambles down the phone how worried she was, how miserable her night had been because she spent each second twisted with nausea and anxiety and panic. He is going to remind himself that she doesn't mean it in a "you're an asshole" way, but rather, "I thought something terrible happened and I'd come home to you gone."

I'm still apologizing, he thinks. I deserve everything bad, he will think.

There will be a memory of this week when he's eventually out of his rut. And it may be shameful, but he'll be fond.

"I'm glad you came over," Steve admits. "I'm sorry that I'm so...bleh."

"That's alright," Eddie whispers. "We'll do this together and maybe you'll get sick of me."

"Never," Steve promises through giggles. "I love you."

Eddie presses another one of his wet forehead kisses into Steve's skin. Sweet and long and reverent. "Love you too, now get some sleep. I'll bring you pancakes in the morning."

And so, though tomorrow will be hard, possibly the next day too, Steve snuggles closer to Eddie. Head on his shoulder, one arm wrapped around his waist, thumb rubbing into his side. And he sleeps.

Dreams of Irish Spring soap and warm duvets and kind, unwarranted comfort.

—

Apologies, again, for how long this was. I just really love this one that I wrote some months back, thought it was worth sharing here, too. Take care of each other <3

#stranger things #fanfiction #steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #angst #heavy angst #hurt/comfort #heed the tags #heed the warnings

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starlight-shades · 10 months

Text

Called Home to the Depths of the Forest Ch. 5

• summary – Montage time. Scenes as they're falling into a rhythm as a family.

• rating – M

• wordcount – 3.6k

• warnings – mentions of previous character deaths

• This is my first fanfic, so please let me know if there's anything I forgot to tag. Feedback is welcome and encouraged

Read on Ao3

Ch. 1 Ch. 4 Ch. 6

Together, the four of them found a new routine over the next few weeks. Whoever slept in the living room would make breakfast for all of them (Johnny was the better cook, they both knew it, but Simon would be damned if he ever told him that). Then they would usually spend the day outside.

Sometimes Johnny would shift and play with the pups while Simon would work on the cabin extension. Other days, Simon would spend time showing them around the garden, letting them dig new holes and rip weeds out with their teeth.

On more than one occasion, they tore out plants that were meant to be there. It was still early enough in the season that Simon just sighed and made a note to plant more.

Duncan took great joy in bringing Simon every single bug he found, and he caught himself smiling every time the little wolf trotted over to him with a caterpillar, beetle, or yet another ladybird.

What surprised him, however, was that the boy didn’t have any qualms about spiders. There were several times he had wanted to jump out of his own skin when Duncan would let out the little woof he would do when he wanted attention. Simon had turned around, expecting an inch worm or maybe an interesting rock, but instead he found Duncan with a frighteningly large and hair spider on the end of his usual stick. The only thing that kept him from launching the stick back into the woods were the years of practice he had keeping still and silent.

Ailsa, on the other hand, found gardening to be quite boring, and she would only spend about ten minutes helping until she left to go play with whatever toys she had brought outside. She had started carrying around a plush owl everywhere she went. She and Johnny had a game where he would guess what she had named it, getting increasingly more outlandish as they went.

“Lauren?”

“Jefferson?”

“Tulip?”

“Professor Hubert?”

“Saint Roxanne the Bewildered?”

“His Holiness the Exuberant and Exalted Larry the Just of the Kingdom of Temperance, son of Norbert the Eighth?”

It usually ended with the two of them play wrestling, Johnny dramatically falling back and Ailsa covering his face in slobbering licks, her tail going fast enough for a small breeze to develop behind her.

A few times, the four of them would spend the day hiking through the woods. It was usually an excuse to check Simon’s traps (usually he checked them on his own), but they would often veer off, following Johnny when he insisted he “knew a spot” that they “had to see.”

One of those spots turned out to be a small waterfall tucked deep in the forest. It was a scene straight out of a storybook, the afternoon sunlight streaming through the trees. The sounds of the water flirting with the shore coupling with the songs of far-off birds. Early spring flowers had started to make their way across the forest floor, pushing through the detritus of fallen leaves and broken sticks. Rocks were covered in the plushest looking moss.

Johnny let out an excited whoop, shucking off his clothes down to his underwear as he ran to the small pond that the waterfall fed. The three of them stared after him from the shore as he took a running leap into the water.

Simon couldn’t help but think of magic when the resulting spray erupted, sending water droplets through the light to sparkle like tiny diamonds, suspended for only a moment before falling to get swallowed by the eager soil beneath their feet. When Johnny burst back through the water’s surface, flipping his hair back out of his eyes before turning to grin at them, he swore he didn’t know what he had to deserve such beauty.

“Refreshing!” he called to the three of them. “Come on in!”

Ailsa was quick to take up his invitation, flying into the water from the same spot Johnny had jumped from. She didn’t quite go as far as he had, but he was quick to paddle over to her, showering her in praise for her bravery. After giving Johnny a few cursory licks to his chin, she yipped at her brother, presumably to join them.

Duncan was less enthusiastic in his entrance. Tentatively, he padded to the edge of the swimming hole, dipping one paw and carefully setting it down. He picked his way through the shallows, making sure of his footing as he went. By the time he had gone deep enough to submerge himself to his chest, Ailsa was paddling over to him, Johnny close behind her. With only a minimal amount of prodding, Duncan eventually started swimming around with his sister, splashing and just generally having a great time making noise.

Simon grabbed Johnny’s clothes from where they had been thrown everywhere and tossed them down in a pile. He sat down next to the pile, settling with his back against a tree not too far from the water.

“You coming in, Si?”

“No, I’m good right here.”

He found that he was rather unexpectedly content. Everyone was happy and safe, at least for the moment.

When he had gotten home from his trip into town with Price, he had taken Johnny aside and they had spoken about the likelihood of incriminating evidence being found of their involvement in the deaths and subsequent dismemberment of the hunters. While Johnny was more confident than Simon that nothing could be linked back to them, they had agreed to ask Gaz and Price for help.

He was still uncomfortable with the idea of trusting them, but Johnny had reassured him, and he trusted Johnny. It was unclear when he had begun trusting the other man so much, but it hadn’t been a mistake yet. Price and Gaz had easily accepted the job of collecting any body parts still around and burning them. Total destruction was the only way to ensure their safety.

But now, in the glow of the afternoon, watching as Ailsa and Duncan took turns jumping off a rock outcrop into Johnny’s waiting arms, he allowed those worries to fade to the back-burner. Instead, he just basked in the quiet joy he found for himself in that moment.

On days when Johnny would go hunting, Duncan would go with him. They had pretty quickly figured out that Ailsa did not have any interest in hunting if it went further than play-stalking, but Duncan was captivated. He loved the whole process, especially when Johnny would let him carry some of the smaller game home.

He had yet to catch anything on his own, but that didn’t seem to deter him too much.

“You’re still learning, lad. You’ll get there soon enough, but now you can focus on helping me track, how about that?” Johnny would say.

And Duncan would bark, tail wagging slowly. It was good to see him excited.

With Johnny and Duncan gone for the day, Ailsa would shadow Simon. He had started on the cabin extension, which wasn’t terribly interesting for her. She would go back and forth between playing with her toys (always taking the owl with her) and watching him work. When she showed interest, he would explain what he was doing.

“Have to make sure we have the right measurements.”

“This is called a tape measure. It’s pretty rigid, but you can fold it like this.”

“See how this screwdriver has a tip that’s flat, that’s a flathead. This one is a Phillips-head screwdriver, see how it’s got a little plus on the end?”

When he dug out the foundation, she was eager to help him, digging holes in places he would have to fill in later, but he thanked her anyway.

Johnny came home that day with Duncan trotting behind him, and laughed.

“Thought Dunc and I were gonna be the messy ones today.”

Ailsa, covered head to toe in dirt, had cheerfully barked at him before shaking, causing dirt to fly everywhere and cover everyone else in dirt too.

The resulting game of chase when Johnny announced that they had to be bathed had lasted a good thirty minutes. Ailsa and Duncan had the infinite energy of children who did not want to do something, which was difficult to compete with on a good day, but much harder when both of the adults had spent all day doing physical labor.

They had resorted to negotiating.

“You can have an extra cookie after dinner.”

“You can stay up for a second chapter tonight.”

“Fine. You can have an extra cookie, stay up for an extra chapter, and I’ll ask Gaz to come over tomorrow.”

Gaz had been a fast friend for both the pups. When they learned he was a gryphon, one thing led to another and he was scooping them up and flying them around (like five feet off the ground, Simon had been adamant that they not go too far).

Dinner was a task that they often swapped back and forth, occasionally cooking together, but Simon found that Johnny insisted on cooking more and more frequently.

“What, am I that bad at cooking?” he had joked once.

Instead of the expected chuckle, Johnny had pursed his lips. With a guilty look, he nodded.

“I wouldn’t say bad per se, but Si, a man can only eat the same meal so many times.”

“What do you mean?” he was completely caught off guard. Sure, he cooked pretty much the same thing, but it had worked for him for years. The combination of a seared steak and sautéed vegetables was simple, and he thought he had gotten pretty good at making it.

“Have you been eating like this the whole time?” he sounded incredulous.

“If it works, why change it? Can’t always know if I’m going to like something, so why risk it?”

Simon watched Johnny’s growing horror with every sentence he spoke.

“Is that why your spice collection is so small?”

“Can’t go wrong with salt and pepper.”

“That’s the most British thing you’ve ever said to me,” Johnny groaned. “I willnae raise these children without seasoning. Next time you go into town, I’ll make you a list of spices you’ll need to get. This is nonnegotiable.” He brandished a spoon at Simon for emphasis. “You can keep your bland dinners for yourself, but I’m gonna teach you how to cook properly so these children aren’t scarred when they taste garlic for the first time.”

So now, whenever Johnny cooked, Simon was in the kitchen learning. He learned how to make a roux, the best way to batter a fish, and different ways to combine the things he already knew how to make. Together, they were able to find ways to introduce new flavors that Simon could tolerate, and on the days when he really couldn’t stomach anything foreign to him, Johnny made sure to make him a plate with his usual steak and vegetables.

Simon also made sure that he planted some of the herbs on Johnny’s list in addition to the dried stuff that he found in the grocery store.

Every few days the pups would get a bath (Simon was quickly becoming used to the smell of wet dog), and after drying off, they would all climb into bed together.

“Simon, is the dog shampoo meant for the wee’uns?” Johnny asked from where he was in the bathroom with Ailsa.

“I wasn’t sure so I grabbed both. The baby shampoo should be next to it,” Simon called. He and Duncan were organizing the rock collection he had started that day.

He could hear the loud sigh that Johnny let out. The pups did get bathed (Johnny insisted if the shampoo was good enough for babies, it was good enough for werewolf fur).

Bedtime jobs were something that they couldn’t exchange. Some nights Johnny shifted, some nights he didn’t. On nights when he was in his human-shape, they would find themselves pressed against each other with a pup in each of their laps as Simon read a chapter from whatever book they were on. Once, they had tried having Johnny read, but their little audience made it quite clear by whining and giving little baby-growls that however Johnny did it was not acceptable. So every night, it was Simon’s low voice reading them to sleep.

When they finished “Frankenstein,” they moved onto “The Secret Garden.” The children’s books Simon had bought were fine for reading during the day, but the pups never settled as easily as they did when he read to them from a chapter book.

On more than one occasion, Simon and Johnny found themselves both falling asleep in bed with Duncan and Ailsa. It was routine that at least one of them slept with the children as they hadn’t been able to sleep alone just yet, but some mornings Simon would wake up with the book, still open, in one hand and the other curled around Johnny who had plastered himself to his side sometime during the night.

While they had been falling into their roles as the new guardians and parental figures for the pups, something else had grown between them.

Simon could feel it in the moments when he caught Johnny staring at him. Whether it be in quiet moments playing with Ailsa and her toys, or marveling at a new bug Duncan had shown him, or swiping the sweat from his face on an afternoon where it had gotten warm enough to force him to take off his shirt to remain cool while he worked on the cabin extension, Simon would look up and suddenly find himself lost in crystal clear blue eyes.

He found that he would catch himself staring at Johnny too. It was easy to be captivated by the man’s booming laughter, or the smiles that would be so bright, they felt like they lit up the whole room. There was something about him that made Simon think he was possibly the most alive anyone had ever been. Some days, Johnny would fall quiet for longer than usual, and he would stare out into the forest, just looking. In those moments, Simon felt grateful for the opportunity to observe Johnny at rest.

When he would take a break from working on the cabin extension, he would watch Johnny play with the pups, teaching them how to be wolves. No matter what shape he was in, the easy power with which he carried himself would have Simon admiring him.

When he shifted back to his human-shape, he would watch his muscles flow from canine to human, bulging beneath his skin only to settle again.

His body was something Simon imagined Ancient Greek poets would write about. He would be a heroic character. Someone people would look to for safety, someone people worshipped, someone who could only be crafted by divine hands.

On a particularly clear night, they had all gone outside after dinner to look at the stars. While Johnny had been marveling at the heavens, Simon was marveling at a star he could touch if only he dared to reach out. Johnny had been lit by the soft glow of the moon, a benevolent goddess granting her favored her kiss. The stars reflected in his eyes, like they contained galaxies of their own.

And Johnny had howled. In his human shape, he howled, joined by the unpracticed howls of Duncan and Ailsa. Simon couldn’t keep himself from laughing. His joy had bubbled up out of him, unstoppable in that moment. He grinned, and when Johnny had looked at him, he let out a howl of his own. The smile Johnny had gifted him had eclipsed anything the sky had to offer.

This thing growing between them wasn’t exclusive to stolen looks.

Grazed hands as they walked beside one another started happening more frequently. A hand on a waist as they moved around each other in the kitchen. Thighs pressed together when they sat together on the couch, Johnny drawing in his sketchbook as Simon read his own book, the pups playing on the floor at their feet or lounging in front of the fire. When he finished a second chair for the kitchen table, they would sit next to each other at dinner, hands grazing where they rested next to each other on the table.

“Didn’t know you were left-handed,” Johnny had commented.

“I’m not.” He just liked having his right hand free when they ate.

Life was not without its growing pains, however. Simon had gone from a mostly solitary existence to very suddenly living with three other people in a cabin he had only built for one person.

“Johnny!” he yelled when he stepped under the ice-cold spray of the shower. “Quit hogging all the hot water!”

“Sorry!”

“Johnny!” he growled when he opened the cabinets, expecting to find something to snack on, only to discover the chips he had to get in town had all already been devoured.

“Sorry!”

“Johnny!” he hissed when he saw all three of them in their wolf-shape digging holes in his garden.

“Sorry!” Johnny said after shifting back, hands cupped over himself for some semblance of modesty. “We thought we found a mole.”

That particular incident had led to one afternoon being dedicated entirely to building a sandbox for the pups (and Johnny).

Suddenly, Simon found he couldn’t blame Johnny for staring at him when he was sweating and shirtless because he found himself in the same situation, staring as he hammered in the last few nails to secure the corner of the sandbox. When they had finished, Simon had mumbled something about needing to restock on firewood.

It may or may not have been a deliberate move to draw Johnny’s attention to him as he swung the axe down only to toss it aside as soon as he had wedged it deep enough to be able to tear the logs apart with his hands.

It was very effective. It also had the added bonus of supplying them with plenty of firewood. Wood that was promptly used to teach Duncan and Ailsa how to build a “proper bonfire.”

“See you need to provide structure while leaving enough room for air to circulate. You can’t have a fire without oxygen.”

Simon prepared a bucket filled with sand to use to smother the fire when it got out of hand. He wouldn’t admit that it was nice to see them all playing around the fire. Johnny was always there with the pups, making sure they didn’t get too close.

That night, almost by accident, Ailsa and Duncan slept on their own for the first time.

After their bedtime story, Johnny had slipped out to sleep in the living room (Simon would eventually admit that it was nice to have the mattress, even if it was a little small). He realized that he wasn’t sure how well they had put out the fire, so as carefully as he could, Simon scooted out of bed, leaving a slumbering pile of pups behind.

Johnny was not in the living room when he exited the bedroom, so he pushed out into the crisp chill of the spring evening. And there he stood, already checking the fire pit as Simon had meant to.

“Was coming out to check on that, but I see you’ve already got it handled,” he murmured, walking up next to him.

“One day, I’ll get you to believe you don’t have to do everything yourself,” Johnny teased, that smirk teasing at the edges of his mouth.

“And maybe one day I’ll believe it,” Simon whispered, a little more somber than Johnny had expected.

His face fell a bit. “It’s okay, I’ll just keep trying until you do.”

They were quiet together, letting the crickets and the occasional owl fill the silence instead. Johnny stood up from where he had crouched next to the fire pit. He slipped his hand into Simon’s and gave it a squeeze. A moment later, as if remembering himself, he pulled away.

“Ah, sorry. Keep forgetting wolves are touchier than humans,” he apologized, sheepish, averting his gaze.

Suddenly, Simon felt an overwhelming urgency to meet his eyes again. He reached out and took Johnny’s hand again.

“S’alright. I don’t mind the touch so much when it’s you.”

And there they were again, those wide blue eyes staring at him in surprise. They stayed that way, hand held tight between them, just looking at each other in the moonlight.

Hesitant to break the moment, Simon knew he had to get back. He tugged on Johnny’s hand and wordlessly, they walked back to the cabin together. They let go once they were inside, Johnny readying the mattress leaning against the living room wall, and Simon heading back to the bedroom.

What he found there made him stop in his tracks.

“Johnny!” he hissed as quietly as he could.

They made eye contact and Simon gestured him to come over. Together, they stared at Ailsa and Duncan, still sleeping peacefully.

“I think I’m going to sleep on the couch,” he whispered.

“I think you need to get that second bedroom finished as soon as you can,” Johnny joked.

They shared a smile between them, the look of tired, but proud parents.

Duncan and Ailsa sleeping on their own for the first time was not the only surprise that came. The next morning, Simon was awoken by a poke to his face.

“Johnny,” he grumbled, eyes still firmly shut. “Quit it.”

“Simon?” an unfamiliar voice spoke. “I’m hungry.”

That had him rocketing up, wide awake in an instant. Peeking at him over the side of the couch were two, very human looking children.

#soapghost #fic #my writing #soap #ghost #ghostsoap #ghoap #called home #werewolf soap #fanfic

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necro-man-sir · 9 months

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The Archdruid of Wildfires, We are Embers.

The rains has ceased, the dawn was breaking, and the smoke was gently rising from the embers glowing and dying at his feet. A new calm and stench of death and wet, filthy soil and charred remains of old trees burned the inside of his lungs. Each breath was chased by a soft cough or two leading into a deep, guttural coughing fit. This one, however, was much deeper and plenty painful, enough to draw him down to a knee as a thin, bony hand clutched at his chest. But there was something new, here, dancing in the edge of his peripheral. His head turns slowly, firelight illuminating the insides of eye sockets in an old, intricately carved skull shrouding his face. A delicate flame floated above something small, a heap of fur in the ash no more than five paces away.

"Oh, no," he wheezes, his hand falling to his knee, the other taking a hold of an old willow staff to press its end into the wet soil to push himself back to his feet. A gentle wobble, a huff to steady his paces, and he was making his way with care toward the poor animal. A rabbit. It's fur wasn't burned, not that he could see, anyway. But, watching it a moment was easy to make out that it was no longer alive. The fire that danced above it's small corpse he reached out for instead, cupping a hand below, and he dips his palm upward and into the fire.

That fire erupted into sparkling incandescent embers that danced through the still air and engulfed the area with warm, pleasant heat. And, as they died and faded like fireflies, breathing became a little easier, a little less laboured. He smiles, and slowly, he kneels back downward once more. A wrapped hand reached forward, the other setting his staff down once more at his side, a bell softly jingling until the movement stopped. He dips his fingers under the small animal, lifting it up, and he draws it closer to his chest, holding it tenderly, a soft nuzzle of bone into it's wet fur. "I'm sorry, little one," he wheezes, his voice rough, gentle. "Thank you, for your gift."

Silence fell through the area, at least, for the most part. The wood was waking, the air was blowing in a soft breeze and snapping charred, bare branches against each other. Ash blew through the area, dirtying his tattered robes. He holds the rabbit in one arm with care, the other he reaches forward, quietly taking a moment to dig a hole into the soil.

He found no bugs at the surface level, but deeper down, where the earth was still moist and cool, he smiles at a worm, a few beetles, greeting them kindly and gently picking them from the soil so he wouldn't crush them in his next task.

With the hole dug, shallow and wet, he places the poor rabbit down into the soil and begins to fill in its small grave.

Embers sits there, for a time, staring at the little ashen grave, a quiet, warm smile pulling at the old burns on his face. With care he stands, leaning heavily onto his staff, gripping it with both hands as it sank into the moss, and he sighs. "We will see you again, soon," he speaks to the rabbit in it's little grave. Turning, he begins to slowly hobble away, muscles and skin stiff, strength spent. Another season, his duties fulfilled. The dead and old were cleared for the new, and he found a gentle sort of excitement in the scent of soil and ash. Soon, he would enjoy and be nourished by the new growth. Perhaps there would be another raspberry grove near his home.

He wondered what that little bunny would nourish. He looks back, noting the area, picturing it lush, again, and he smiles.

He could not wait to return home to his Circle, and share in their company.

#Embers #dnd 5e #circle of wildfires archdruid #animal death #my fic #we are getting to play a character for this current arc in the game I've been in for years and I'm #so excited for Embers #literally cannot get over this it's so cool I wanted to play this circle of druids so bad

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aurorabay-communitygardenclub · 1 month

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MAY to END OF SUMMER — 🪴

With planting season underway, all members have been welcome to plant all they wish to harvest in late summer in their boxes. All fences are installed, the compost bin is providing the garden with fertilized soil, and plenty of pollinators have been attracted by the wall of sunflowers planted.

TO DO — ☀️

- Put out bird baths and bowls with marbles and water in it for the bees to drink.

- Finish building the worm bin for extra nutrients to feed the plants with.

- Apply pest repellant to the crops (non-chemical blend that is 1:1 water and blended cayenne peppers that needs to be applied twice a week or anytime after it rains).

CURRENT IN SEASON CROPS >>

(have been planted throughout the previous month to now and expect harvest by end of July through the summer)

Arugula

String Beans

Beets

Blackberries

Boysenberries

Bok Choy

Broccoli

Cabbage

Cauliflower

Carrots

Chard

Celery

Cucumbers

Cilantro

Eggplant

Fennel

Kale

Leeks

Lettuce

Okra

Onions (sweet)

Snap Peas

Black-eye Peas

Sweet Potatoes

Bell Peppers

Hot Peppers

Radishes

Squash

Pumpkins

Strawberries

Tomatoes

Sweet Corn

Various spices & herbs

Flowers

— AS ALWAYS, HAVE FUN! 🌱

#aurorabay.garden

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3rdeyeblaque · 1 year

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Tomorrow we have the Worm/Crow/Sap Moon @ 16:40° Virgo 🌙

This Worm/Crow Moon marks the rugged end of Winter. In the stillness & silence, we can observe Nature's way of communicating this to us. This the time of year when worms weave upward through to the warming soil. It is also the time of year when American Crows sound their caw again across the skies over most of North America. It is the Worm that tells us to begin preparations for the Planting Season. It is the Crow that tells us that the New Earth Year is fast approaching, the season will change, & new life will begin.

For us Indigenous Americans/Afrikans, each Full Moon holds great cultural significance. We name each Full Moon according to seasonal events or natural phenomenon that take place around this time, by region/country. Thus this serves as one of many traditional ways to mark our place in the Circle of Life, from one year and season to the next.

•Full Moon at 16:40° in Virgo on Tuesday, March 7th

•Waning Moon at 29:56° in Sagittarius on Wednesday, March 15th

•New Moon at 0:48° in Aries on Tuesday, March 21st

•Waxing Moon at 12:52° in Cancer on Wednesday, March 29th

Some Workers time workings by the moon; using the moon cycle to observe the progress of applicable workings (aka those that can run their course over a month, work that doesn't need to be done asap). For those who do, it is Blackbelt Tradition to start said workings under the New Moon and measure its progress throughout the duration of the moon cycle; growing under the Waxing, peaking under the Full Moon, and coming to completion under the Waning Moon.

🌱 In Rootwork, Full Moons often call for foraging certain plants under it's peak Divine Feminine energy.

🔮 In Conjure, this is an appropriate time to petition or invoke certain spirits for their aid.

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spidermilkshake · 1 year

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Ancardia's Unusual Animals--The Great Sandworm

Classification: Beast (mollusc)

Habitat: Under the dunes and desert soils of the Hazarit region.

The Great Sandworm is the single largest animal on all of Ancardia—and also among the most docile. This does not mean the worm is not a dangerous creature; its sheer sizes reached bring with it the risk of being run over, and the evidence of its travels can become terrible environmental hazards to the unwary traveler.

Limited to the deep sandy soils of the Hazarit, the great sandworm lives its entire life burrowing under the surface between 2 meter depths and bedrock. Living an average of 150 years in the wild, the great sandworm grows to an average of 60 meters in overall length, and about 5 meters in diameter. It has a relatively tiny mouth, but a broad, spiny area around the head which assists in burrowing; it is primarily a detrivore, feeding on long-buried dead material such as plant roots, deceased animals from sandstorms and droughts, and other bits and pieces. It has an extremely slow metabolism, often taking long dormant periods where it barely eats or moves for months at a time. It always becomes active in the brief rainy season in the Hazarit, when it burrows closer to the surface and excavates a hollow to collect rainwater and to lay its egg mass. The eggs, if they are lucky to not dry out, hatch into half-meter larvae which disperse into the neighboring regions, and take nearly 30 years to approach even a fraction of the gargantuan sizes of the adults. Newly-hatched larva are sometimes prey to burrowing animals of the desert, such as golden moles, jackals, and monitor lizards.

Great sandworms create an extensive, crisscrossing network of tunnels, all of which have a number of openings to the surface which the worm will keep its “snorkels”, breathing structures at the end of its tail, protruding slightly from for ventilation. Currently unoccupied breathing pits of these worms end up being dangerous pitfalls to some, and difficult ones to climb back out of in a hurry. Some mortality has been reported from these pits, mostly from injuries, lost fallen folk wandering the worm tunnels and becoming lost before dying of dehydration, and in a few cases of being plowed over and crushed by the return of the sandworm.

#ancardia #ancardian homebrew #bestiary #mixed media #creatures #animals #Ancient Domains of Mystery #ADOM #Dnd-like #giant worm #great sandworm #sandworm

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thepermanentrainpress · 1 year

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REVIEW: STARS ON ICE AT ROGERS ARENA - MAY 18, 2023

Of the four cast numbers, my favourite was the sentimental “To Build a Home” that preceded intermission. It really solidified Browning’s role as a guide and respected leader in the sport as he individually embraced each skater/pair at song’s end. The pairs and ice dancers had a brief spotlight, and the number felt warm and nuanced.

It was Madeline Schizas’ first full tour, and I enjoyed her skates to “Don’t Rain on My Parade” and “Everybody Wants to be a Cat.” I really think Stars On Ice has been beneficial for Schizas to work on her expression in a low stress environment. It was nice to see her embrace her playful side (cat ears and all!). She also has some very impressive spins! Patrick Chan was a crowd favourite, having called Vancouver home for the past six years. In his tour return for the first time in four years, he didn’t show much rust to “Wicked Game” and “I Hear a Symphony.” He’s such a staple in Canadian figure skating, and the ‘Pchiddy’ appreciation was evident in the room.

Keegan Messing performed a redux of this season’s short program to “Grace Kelly” and a skate to Tophouse’s “The Mountain Song.” His quick footwork and spins were in full force, as was his unwavering warm spirit. I will miss Messing on the national team, and hope he continues to do ice shows while spending time with his beautiful family, who figure skating fans have grown to know from afar.

World Bronze medalists Piper Gilles & Paul Poirier were sensational in their “Evita” and “Annie’s Song/Thank God I’m a Country Boy” routines. I’d watched them many times on television from this season, but nothing compares to the live event. They were fighters this season, notably Gilles after a surgery to remove a cancerous tumour in the winter. Their poise and ability to transform into character is something I always admire, which extends into their “Evita” bows towards the audience.

Alexa Knierim & Brandon Frazier are coming off their best season yet. Their throw jumps and height on the triple twist are outstanding! They performed their exhibition routine to “Shallow” and short program “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart).” Their steady and sure demeanor was on display, and I was happy to see them skate in-person. One of my favourite skates of the night was Alissa Czisny’s “Chasing Cars.” It was proof that you don’t need jumps to make a program special. She used the song (version by Tommee Profitt and Fleurie) to emote through movement, graceful skating and spins that spanned the ice. The cover song had a really cinematic build that Czisny used to her advantage.

Jason Brown is having the most fun on tour, uncontested. His Backstreet Boys routine was a joy. In an all-white ensemble, Brown even demonstrated ‘the worm’ on the ice, among some impressive jump splits. Even his bows had energy, with waving and jumping abound. In his Act II skate to “The Impossible Dream,” I was reminded of his gorgeous triple jumps, some of, if not the best, on tour. As a side note, I had a brief interaction with Brown as the skaters arrived at the rink, and he could not have been friendlier!

Satoko Miyahara was a returning cast member from last year. Her elegance and interpretation of the music was stunning to watch. “Jenny of Oldstones” and “Ne me quitte pas” were her programs of choice, and I can confidently say her elegance is missed on the circuit. There’s a confidence and calmness in how she glides on ice, and I hope she’ll continue to be a mainstay in the cast.

A breakout season for Belgium’s Loena Hendrickx, we were graced with her presence in her debut Canadian tour. As girls behind me whistled and hollered “get it, girl!” Hendrickx skated to Britney Spears’ “Circus” and Loni’s “Loneliness.” She had attitude and was fierce, and it’s easy to see why she will continue to be a top contender next season. Her arms overhead jumps are flawless! Madison Chock & Evan Bates are technically immaculate, if we didn’t know already from their consistently high scores in competition. Their performance is also top notch, and they’re very innovative skaters in their lines and elements. Their skate to “Nightcall” was a highlight (the chemistry!), and I was excited to see #ChockBates in action for the first time!

Elvis Stojko’s bringing old school rock back. Skating to Shinedown and Van Halen, Stojko looked casual and collected with hands in his pockets, denim and black fingerless gloves. His mature and slightly edgy presence is always popular, drawing favourable cheers from the crowd. Even though he ended his competitive career over twenty years ago, he still has a power in his skating that is magnetic to watch. He joined Browning for an interactive skate as friendly rivals to “Raise a Little Hell,” where they sported matching shirts in admiration of each other. They joked about who was supposed to give the music to production (“on cassette”), did a quick bout of the chicken dance, and still had a raw synchronicity. Truly a memorable duo with heartfelt words of their memories together on tour.

Kurt Browning received too many (well deserved) standing ovations to count! His animated personality shone and I loved the extra long looks he’d direct at the crowd in his skates. It felt personal. Skating to “Please Forgive Me” and “Who Are You,” his smooth skating ability is unparalleled. Yes, there are still jumps, and a backflip too! His aura is just so pleasant and it felt like a night celebrating Browning, with multiple montages or clips of his past performances played throughout the night.

I loved the costumes! Between the gold-detailed military inspired fits for The Killers’ “All These Things That I’ve Done,” to the rainbow pop of colour in the closing routine to “Brand New.” And, who could forget the sleek James Bond outfits - black suits and metallic dresses that screamed ‘diamonds are forever.’ They complimented the music well, and many of the skaters brought their pre-loved, familiar outfits from their signature skates this season.

You can tell the cast enjoyed each other’s company, sharing camaraderie and grace towards the encouraging audience. Browning is leaving behind an unmatched legacy, but Stars On Ice remains in good hands.

Written by: Chloe Hoy Photographed by: Timothy Nguyen

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balkanradfem · 2 years

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What I found in my garden after neglecting it for 3 months

Well, most of the stuff I left in there, of course, but in stages of sickness, decay, and being overgrown with weeds. Here's a little sneak-peak to how a neglected garden looks like:

All of the ground is covered (with strawberry plants mostly), the tomatoes have gotten sick, rotted and fallen to the ground, sunflowers have dried up and clogged up the place, and there are some very big weeds!

This state of the garden is not bad, or problematic. In fact, this is pretty good. Leaving plants to rot and decompose after they're done growing food for you, enables them to return the nutrients down to the ground; the roots will decompose under the surface, feeding the worms and making new fertility in your soil! The garden being covered by strawberries, who have very shallow roots, is good because it's almost like a cover-crop; it protects the ground from the sun and the wind, keeps it humid and healthy, keeps all the other weeds from growing.

The setup of my garden was fairly good to start with: I had my plants grown up very large and tall by the beginning of summer, the soil was covered in a thick layer of mulch, and everything was staked up just far apart to have good ventilation. The summer was insanely hot and dry; me not watering the garden did end up in losing some plants – mostly peppers. The tomatoes were producing insanely thru the summer, I was getting them home and canning them as much as possible, and I think I'll be fine for the winter stash. They would have lived longer had I taken care of them; they always get sick in the summer, but if you take off the sick leaves, prune them, protect them from the sun, they can survive longer. So, their life expectancy was cut a bit short by my lack of care, but ultimately I got so many tomato preserves I am not complaining at all.

Since I had the ground mulched, not many weeds have managed to grow; but those that did, grew absolutely huge. There was one bit as a tree, I didn't even know what it was, barely pulled it out of the ground. This meant that dealing with weeds was reduced to just pulling the few huge ones out, and the rest were just a few dandelions, and strawberries. I never expect I'll have to pull that many strawberries out during the gardening but here we are. Wish there was someone I could gift them too, they're good plants, just unruly and invasive.

Taking the weeds out of the garden wasn't a lot of work, most of the labour was pulling out sticks, untangling all of the plants tied down to them, and pulling out the sunflowers. Some sunflowers had actual tree-like density and had me convinced that I was pulling out a tree out of the ground, it was impressive. Made me wonder if I could produce actual sticks for some use, by planting those huge sunflowers.

I didn't take any pictures yet, because my garden fixing is not done, in a few hours I've managed to: clear out almost all of the dead plants, clear the weeds from one third of the garden, harvest all beans, green beans, peppers, carrots, zuchinni and chives, make a new fence for the areas that look alluring the passers-by, clean and organize sticks for the next year, plant 3 broccoli, transplant about 20-30 leeks, plant onions and garlic, and admire a pumpkin that wasn't yet ripe.

Now that the chestnut season is done, I'm sure to be done fixing the garden completely, and when my broccoli picks up, I'll take pictures to show the progress.

#neglected garden #gardening #soil health #fixing the garden #fall garden

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breelandwalker · 3 months

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Worm Moon - March 25, 2024

The world is thawing and spring will soon be sprung. Dust off your garden tools and get ready for the Worm Moon!

Worm Moon

The Worm Moon is the name given to the full moon which occurs in the month of March in the Northern Hemisphere. Most sources claim this name is taken from the renewed visible presence of vermicast (worm droppings) and earthworms themselves, as the spring thaw allows them to emerge from the soil.

There is a possible alternative explanation, involving a colonial explorer's notes about the Naudowessie (Dakota) observation of emerging worm-like beetle larvae from the bark of trees. "Every month has with them a name expressive of its season; for instance, they call the month of March (in which their year generally begins at the first New Moon after the vernal Equinox) the Worm Month or Moon; because at this time the worms quit their retreats in the bark of the trees, wood, &c. where they have sheltered themselves during the winter." (It's entirely possible that this "worm" in this instance is a mistranslation of an indigenous word for "larva," since it refers to the larval state of certain beetles. Without knowing whether the language in question makes a distinction between larval worms and earthworms, it's impossible to tell, and I was unable to find further sources.)

Other North American Indigenous names for this moon include Goose Moon (Algonquin and Cree) and Crow Comes Back Moon (Northern Ojibwe), in reference to the reappearance of migratory birds, and Sugar Moon (Ojibwe) and Sap Moon (Shawnee), in reference to the season in which the maple sap begins to run and can be tapped for the production of maple syrup.

Fun Fact: The term "Worm Moon" only occurs in southerly indigenous nations. The March moon is commonly named for trees or birds in more northerly areas of North America because in those places, the native species of earthworms went extinct during the period when glaciers covered that portion of the continent. About 12,000 years ago when the glaciers receded, the forest grew back without earthworms. The species which now inhabit those areas are invasive or introduced specimens originating from Europe and Asia.

The March moon, if it occurs prior to the spring equinox, is also the Lenten Moon, named for the Christian holiday of Lent. If it occurs after the equinox, it is called the Paschal Full Moon, corresponding with the Christian holiday of Easter, or Paschal Sunday (This year's Worm Moon will occur the week after the equinox and Easter Sunday will be March 31st.)

What Does It Mean For Witches?

Full moons are both the beginning and end of the lunar cycle. With the Worm Moon, we can look forward to the beginning of spring and the yearly harvest cycle. So now is the perfect time for seasonal divination, plans for the coming months, and the setting of goals for the future, both short-term and long-term. You can also check in with goals you may have set back in January and record your progress. (Remember - even a little progress is still progress!)

Consider also how you can change or begin new routines and habits to improve your life, make better choices, streamline your schedule, or just give yourself a much-needed break. If there’s something hanging around that no longer serves you, now is the time to consider bidding it adieu and moving forward to a new path.

What Witchy Things Can We Do?

The Worm Moon heralds the imminent start of the planting season. If you’ve got green fingers, now is the time to begin planning your garden for the season. Prepare your sprouting trays and browse your favorite seed catalog for inspiration.

It’s also time for that all-important spring cleaning, so open up those windows on a warm day and air out all the staleness from winter. As you scrub and dust and declutter, you can also magically cleanse your space of stagnant, disruptive, or unwanted things, replacing them with your own energy and your good wishes and goals for the upcoming season.

This is also an excellent time for spells focused on fertility, optimism, and new growth. It’s important to remember that fertility spells don’t just have to focus on procreation. They can also be geared toward planting, creating, opportunity, inspiration, motivation, prosperity, abundance, and anything that requires nurturing and productivity.

The season of growth and renewal is upon us, so it’s time to Ready, Set, GROW!

Happy Worm Moon, witches! 🌕🌱

Further Reading:

Worm Moon: Full Moon for March 2024, The Old Farmer’s Almanac.

Worm Moon: The Stunning Full Moon of March 2024, The Peculiar Brunette.

Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America, in the Years 1766, 1767 and 1768, Capt. Jonathan Carver, London, 1781. (Text available on Project Gutenberg)

The Next Full Moon is a "Supermoon" Crow Moon, NASA, March 5 2020.

Easter and the Paschal Full Moon: Determining the Date of Easter, The Old Farmer's Almanac.

Everyday Moon Magic: Spells & Rituals for Abundant Living, Dorothy Morrison, Llewellyn Publications, 2004.

(If you’re enjoying my content, please feel free to drop a little something in the tip jar or check out my published works on Amazon or in the Willow Wings Witch Shop. 😊)

#witchcraft #witchblr #witch community #lunar calendar #full moon #worm moon #moon magic #lunar magic #i thought i'd forgotten this but it was buried in my drafts soooo here it is a week late??? enjoy

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xtruss · 4 days

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A River Runs Through It, 2021, oil, acrylic, resin, aluminum, fishing line, fishing hooks, wood, nails, cigarette butts, graphite, glass flakes, lipstick, hinge, ink, canvas on shaped panel, by Chloe Chiasson © The artist. Courtesy Albertz Benda Gallery

The Worm Charmers! A Florida Family Coaxes Earthworms From The Forest Floor

— June 04, 2024 | By Michael Adno

A Hint Of Blue On The Horizon meant morning was coming. And as they have for the past fifty-four years, Audrey and Gary Revell stepped out their screen door, walked down a ramp, and climbed into their pickup truck. Passing a cup of coffee back and forth, they headed south into Tate’s Hell—one corner of a vast wilderness in Florida’s panhandle where the Apalachicola National Forest runs into the Gulf of Mexico. Soon, they turned off the road and onto a two-track that stretched into a silhouette of pine trees. Their brake lights disappeared into the forest, and after about thirty minutes, they parked the truck along the road just as daylight spilled through the trees. Gary took one last sip of coffee, grabbed a wooden stake and a heavy steel file, and walked off into the woods. Audrey slipped on a disposable glove, grabbed a bucket, and followed. Gary drove the wooden stake, known as a “stob,” into the ground and began grinding it with the steel file. A guttural noise followed as the ground hummed. Pine needles shook, and the soil shivered. Soon, the ground glowed with pink earthworms. Audrey collected them one by one to sell as live bait to fishermen. What drew the worms to the surface seemed like sorcery. For decades, nobody could say exactly why they came up, even the Revells who’d become synonymous with the tradition here. They call it worm grunting.

Audrey and Gary Revell took to each other in high school. In 1970 when Gary graduated, he asked Audrey to be his wife, and they married at his grandfather’s place down in Panacea, about thirty miles south of Tallahassee. For his entire life, he’d lived on an acre six miles west of Sopchoppy, Florida, in an area known as Sanborn. The place is set deep in the heart of the Apalachicola National Forest, a vast expanse of flatwoods and swamp that covers over half a million acres struck through with rivers. It’s where he and his siblings grew up in an old church building, where his great-grandfather had settled after finding his way up Syfrett Creek into the wilderness. It’s where Audrey and Gary settled after their wedding. “I was only sixteen, so I feel like I grew up here,” Audrey told me. Soon after, they started looking for ways to make ends meet, and Gary suggested, “We might ought to look into that worm thing.”

His family was already deep into worm grunting. Three generations preceded him, and by 1970, his uncles Nolan, Clarence, and Willie weren’t only harvesting the worms to sell as bait but were working as brokers with their own shops that distributed the critters throughout the South. It didn’t hurt that Audrey fell in love with it immediately. The work was seasonal, busiest in spring. During other parts of the year, their family trapped for a living, dug oysters, logged, raised livestock, and set the table with what they grew in their yard or caught in the water or in the forest. “That’s how we learned the woods,” Gary said. “We went in every creek, water hole, pig trail. You name it.”

By the 1970s, the cottage industry had reached its peak. Then Charles Kurault arrived in 1972 to film a segment for his eponymous CBS show, On the Road with Charles Kurault. The attention led the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to start regulating the harvest of worms, investigating unreported income, and implementing permit requirements. Back then, the sound produced by grunters in the first hours of daylight was as common as birdsong in this forest, and hundreds of thousands of worms were carried out in cans. Folks who once turned to grunting to make ends meet seasonally were soon in the woods year-round during that decade, competing to summon the bait to the surface and sell to brokers among the counties set between the capital city and the Apalachicola River. Millions of worms left those counties bound for fishing hooks across America. Money followed the pink fever, but as with any rush, the demand eventually dimmed as commercial worm farms caught on and soft, plastic lures became popular.

By that point, Audrey and Gary had decided to shape their own outfit. His uncles had told them, You ought to just think about keeping all that money to yourself. The couple had grown tired of depending on others for work. So, they set up their own shop full time, cultivated clients as far away as Savannah, and delivered bait all over the South, driving it themselves, or sending it north in sixteen-ounce, baby blue containers via Greyhound buses. “All the money was coming our way, what little we made,” said Gary. “We struggled with it for a long time, because when you get off the grid like that and try to do it for yourself and you’re young, it’s hard.”

I wanted to know what spending their life in the woods hunting for worms meant, but I also wanted to know where this mysterious, artful tradition came from. In the UK, there are a handful of worm-charming competitions and festivals in Devon, Cornwall, and Willaston that began in the 1980s and another in Canada that started in 2012. I’d heard of similar events in east Texas, of people using pitchforks and spades as well as burying one stick in the ground and rubbing it with another to coax worms up to the surface. Later, I even found a newspaper clipping from 1970 reporting on the first International Worm Fiddling Championship, in Florida. I searched for a deep well of literature on the practice but found nothing. Certainly, worm grunting predated the Revells. But why did rubbing a stick stuck in the ground with a metal file conjure earthworms? The only way to understand was to follow the Revells into the woods.

In February, I carved out toward the Revells’ place from St. Teresa, a strip of homes along the Gulf coast. Going first through Tate’s Hell, then turning west through the tiny town of Sopchoppy, I slipped into the forest as the distance between each home grew wider and wider. I found myself in a sea of slash and longleaf pine. Six miles later, I met Gary Revell in his driveway beneath an eastern redbud throwing its first spray of pink flowers. “Morning, Mike,” he said with a contagious warmth. In their kitchen, I met Audrey, who had already poured a cup of coffee, set out milk and creamers, and had a jar of sugar in hand. A few minutes later, we piled into their truck and drove down a narrow vein of road near Smith Creek. A horned owl drew a line through the trees, where the yellow flowers of Carolina jessamine crawled over palmettos. Black water pooled in ditches alongside the narrow road lined with bald cypress and the periodic sweet bay magnolia. By the time we reached where we were going, I had no sense of how far we’d gone or where we were.

Although the northern borders of the Apalachicola National Forest press right up against the Tallahassee airport, the place is remote. Across nearly six hundred thousand acres, you could spend lifetimes trying to map its dizzyingly vast flatwoods, hydric hammocks, and cypress stands. Two hundred and fifty million years ago when our contemporary continents formed, Florida’s peninsula broke off a fault line belonging to what’s now West Africa; they share the same basement rock today. Fifty-six million years ago, as sea levels receded, the Suwanee Current flowed from the Gulf of Mexico across what’s now Florida’s panhandle, bisecting Georgia before running into the Atlantic. And over the next twenty million years, Florida appeared first as an island separated from North America by a sequence of patch reefs before sea levels continued to fall and a bridge formed with Georgia, revealing this very forest. A few thousand years later, the bones of the southern Appalachians, ground into dust by glacial erosion, washed out of the Apalachicola River Valley and formed barrier islands that rim Apalachee Bay today. That river carried sediment down through Georgia and into the Gulf, which flanks the western edge of the forest. And as you move east, the New River, the Ochlocknee River, and the Sopchoppy River flow through the forest made up of two districts. An archipelago of sinkholes and hardwoods is lacerated by thin roads that mirror oxbows in the rivers. In 1936, when the land was declared a national forest, it became one of America’s southernmost pockets of wilderness and among the world’s most unique ecosystems. As the Revells told me, many are afraid of the place, scared to step foot out of the car. “I’ve walked all over all these woods, so I love them,” Audrey said. “A lot of times when we’ll be going to work in the mornings, we won’t meet a single car. It’s just nice being out here mostly alone. You know?”

Left: Gary Revell roops in a stand of recently burned trees in the Apalachicola National Forest just after daybreak. Right: A native earthworm, Diplocardia Mississippiensis, crawls across the ground before Audrey Revell collects it by hand. Photographs By Michael Adno

That first morning I spent with them, the Revells made their way to a part of the woods called Twin Pole. The forest service had recently burned a block of woods there, which meant the ground would be clear and easier to work. As we got closer, I could smell the sweet fragrance of smoldering slash pines and palmettos. For centuries, pine scrub and prairie throughout the South has burned naturally and been torched deliberately, first by Indigenous peoples like the Timucuan or Apalachee and then later by ranchers and land managers to replenish the soil and promote growth. Worm grunters follow the forest service’s burns like a compass, as the open ground makes it easier to spot worms and avoid venomous snakes.

“Alright, Mama,” Gary said to Audrey before changing into a pair of boots, fastening knee pads, and slipping on gloves. We walked through the burnt palmettos, coated in a film of black soot, before he pointed to a few holes in the soil. They were clues to where worms were and where they were headed. He took his stob, one his son had hewn out of black gum, and knocked it a foot into the earth with his steel file before rubbing the file against the stob’s head. He called each pass a “roop.” With every roop, he mirrored the sound himself, groaning first in a low pitch then ascending to an abrupt stop. Gary would roop, pause, tell a story, then start again. It didn’t take long before a dozen large earthworms began crawling around the earth between us as Audrey gathered them by hand.

“Gary can call up any kind of animal,” Audrey said. Screech owls, ducks, even a bull they once came across in the woods. Once, after he called to a quail, Audrey swears the bird landed on his head. I looked down as Audrey picked up worms and could see this was a corollary. As Gary rooped and talked, Audrey drew concentric circles around him, picking up the largest worms and carefully placing them in a one-gallon paint can. Audrey noted the difference between worms—“milky” that are lighter in color and frail, and dark pink worms that last longer on the shelf. Gary roops most of the time, but Audrey does sometimes, too. “They’re coming up tail first,” Gary said. He gazed down and read the ground: Here were some castings left by worms; some mounds of fresh earth; a transition in the ground that meant prime moisture. The Revells’ intuition was like that of the fishermen they were collecting bait for, a catalog of knowledge assembled from spending time out here and bound together by deep curiosity. Gary knocked his stob down against the serpentine root of a palmetto and demonstrated how to change the pitch. “When I see that,” he said, pointing to some larger holes, “I know he’s right here somewhere close.”

With a couple of paint cans filled, about 500 worms in each, Audrey and Gary headed back to their truck, collecting scraps of trash and some firewood along the way. An hour later, they dumped their catch out in a shed where they store their worms, counting them out by hand and then placing them in five-gallon buckets filled halfway up with sawdust they collect in the forest. Folks that know them come and collect worms from the shed themselves, leaving the money they owe in a box on the wall. Often, they’ll leave notes scrawled on pieces of cardboard, check registers, and even a cast-off piece of packing tape that read, “I got 200. I paid back the ten I owe.”

For two convenience stores in Wakulla County, Audrey and Gary are the source for worms. At home, they pack the bait in clear plastic cups with baby blue caps and deliver them each week. In the decades since the Revells struck out on their own, the market has winnowed with the advent of artificial baits and farmed nightcrawlers, and so have the venues to sell worms. In good years, they earned $30,000, according to a 2009 piece in the Tampa Bay Times, but they told me they didn’t want to discuss what they make today. Some years, they harvested oysters for part of the winter and then baited throughout the warmer months. The two found their way through, together, even when bad weather, drought, and competition reshaped the way they worked. They started traveling farther into Liberty County, hiking deep into the flatwoods to avoid previously worked pieces of land. In summer, when the temperature turned mean, they worked Tate’s Hell at night. “This earthworm deal is something that you got to live with and stay on top of to be able to survive it,” Gary said, “and we can say we’ve lived a very good life.” They’d raised their two sons this way, spent their lives living with the forest, watching almost every sunrise out there together. “It ain’t been no easy deal, but there’s really nothing on earth I’d trade for it,” Gary said. Today, one of the Revells’ sons, who is now forty-eight, marks the fifth generation of their family collecting the pink currency from the forest.

In the nineteenth century, Gary’s great-great-grandfather paddled up the Ochlocknee and into a branch that bent into the trees before it dissolved into a shallow stream. Audrey and Gary live in that area today, near a creek named for one side of his mother’s family, the Syfretts. As kids, Gary and his two brothers, Lucious and Donald, came up in the woods, often passing the days with three cousins opposite the creek from them. “We didn’t have a lot of people around, but we had this forest, and that kept us occupied.” Their father, Frank, was an equipment operator for the county during the week, but worked alongside his brothers on the weekends, grunting in the forest at first light. Fifty years ago, he could earn as much as a hundred dollars in two days of baiting, which dwarfed what he made in a week for the county, roughly eight hundred dollars in today’s money. Gary tagged along any chance he got. That’s how he first heard the tale of his great-grandfather’s worm discovery in the 1940s. Living along the Ochlocknee River, his great-grandfather fished often, and developed a sense of what baits worked where and when. While repairing his car one day, he’d left it running, jacked up the chassis, and removed a wheel. As the tire rolled away and his eyes followed it, he saw the ground strewn with pink worms.

As the story goes, his great-grandfather tested the theory elsewhere, leaving the car to idle and seeing worms sprout up on the spot. It was clear the vibrations stirred the worms, making it easier to collect bait and therefore sell it. This is how the mysterious practice became central to the Revells’ lives.

The Revells’ Intuition Was Like That Of The Fishermen They Were Collecting Bait For, A Catalog Of Knowledge Assembled From Spending Time Out Here And Bound Together By Deep Curiosity.

Later, the men noticed worms appearing when they chopped wood or ran saws against saplings. Gary remembered using an axe handle as a stob, rubbing the blade of another axe against it. Some folks in north Florida called it worm fiddling, worm rubbing, worm snoring, worm charming, and, of course, worm grunting. Styles and materials for coaxing worms to the surface varied. Some people preferred hickory stobs and used steel leaf springs from cars as a file. The Revells used different-shaped stobs for different sorts of soil, but they always used black gum, persimmon, or cherry wood, and preferred flat, thick steel files.

What’s strange is that despite the widespread practice of worm grunting, I couldn’t find a definitive origin story. There wasn’t a deep well of folklore to draw from online: not in the University of Florida’s special collections archive, the Florida State University archives, or those of Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University. I searched my copy of the Federal Writers’ Project’s guide to Florida, organized by Stetson Kennedy and partially written by Zora Neale Hurston, with no luck. I couldn’t find anything that went farther back than the 1970s. But after another pass through the newspapers at the University of Florida, I found a path that stretched back more than a century.

On Friday, July 16, 1946, the Bradford County (FL) Telegraph ran a front-page item, “Know Anything about ‘Worm Grunting’?” They asked readers to submit letters, offering a five-dollar prize for “the best replies to a series of questions on this fascinating subject.” Among them: how long had the practice existed, who told them about it, where they grunted, what they looked for, what they used, and what time was best to do it. Three months later, the paper published six letters. Dave Crawford from Starke wrote that he’d learned of it in 1933. Some claimed that it had existed at least since 1896, another since 1866, while one reader claimed it had been around in some form since 1786. One man wrote, “When I was a small boy, there was an old colored woman that worked for us. In the afternoon she would take me out and teach me to grunt for worms. She told me her mother taught her to grunt worms.” Those anecdotal accounts raised the question of whether this was a tradition that extended back to the period of chattel slavery in America or even farther, before Indigenous peoples were forced from the land that settlers would come to call Florida.

The Revells’ tales of grunting echoed those long-ago anecdotes. Readers referenced an axe handle method, or crosscut saws, and an iron and a stake—all before Audrey or Gary were born. The winning letter from Dave Crawford revealed a bit of poetry and intuition that grunters still practice today: “When the wen is from the west the werms come up good and when you see the birds feeding on the ground and the red heads flying from tree to tree you can grunt up better. Just get a old ax or tire iron and a good pine stob about 2 feet long and a old lard bucket and get down by the swamp where it is wet and boy go to rubing and get busy and grunt long and loud and the old boys will come out they hiding place.”

That tradition endures, largely unchanged here in the Apalachicola National Forest. Yet, it’s vanishing like so many other foodways, forms of heritage, and ways to earn a living in this part of the country. Lots of folks preferred this work to other forms of labor, such as driving an Uber in town or food delivery, but commercial fishing, crabbing, and the shrimp industry have shrunk with each passing year due to increasing regulation, depleted fisheries, climate change, and cheaper imported seafood. The same is true for oyster harvesting, once a mainstay of the region’s foodways. After years of oyster decline partly due to overharvesting and negligent water management, in 2020 the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission mandated a five-year halt in harvesting oysters from the Apalachicola Bay. It was part of a $20 million plan to restore the habitat and population. That ban promised to leave local oyster tongers without work until 2025. As for worm grunting and its slow decline, the passage of time is responsible, too. “All the old people is gone,” Gary said. “That was the key to the whole thing. They set it up.”

In 2002, a committee was organized to preserve the tradition and put on the first annual Sopchoppy Worm Gruntin’ Festival. Every second Saturday in April since, Rose Street and Winthrap Avenue fill with vendors, bands, and demonstrations. There’s a ball and an annual queen. Media outlets flock to Wakulla County to cover the festival, often centering the Revells in their pieces. In 2009, they appeared on the Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs. That same year, Jeff Klinkenberg profiled the Revells for a cover story in what is now the Tampa Bay Times. Nobody could say definitively why the worms responded to vibrations, though, until a neuroscientist arrived in Sopchoppy with a theory.

As A Kid In Maryland During The 1970s, Kenneth Catania had a curiosity about the woods near his home that shaped his career path as a neuroscientist with a bent toward ecology and biology. His obsession with moles came later during a job at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. And that obsession eventually grew into a dissertation on star-nosed moles, which revealed how their sensory cortex evolved and developed to process information. This, by proxy, revealed how all mammals’ senses evolved. In 2006, he earned a MacArthur Fellowship or “Genius Grant.” The award came with $500,000. Two years later, he headed for the Apalachicola National Forest, thinking that the moles there might help him unravel another mystery about a different group of underground creatures.

For years, he’d wanted to visit the worm festival in north Florida, but annual field work always overlapped. Finally, in 2008, he drove to meet the Revells in Sopchoppy. He arrived with a question shaped by a few sentences written a century earlier by Charles Darwin about worm behavior as it related to moles.

Darwin published his last book in 1881, The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms With Observations on Their Habits. A sentence that struck Catania read, “It has often been said that if the ground is beaten or otherwise made to tremble, worms believe that they are pursued by a mole and leave their burrows.” Darwin continued, “Nevertheless, worms do not invariably leave their burrows when the ground is made to tremble, as I know from having beaten it with a spade, but perhaps it was beaten too violently.” Seventy years after Darwin’s shovel experiment failed, Dutch biologist and Nobel Laureate Nikolaas Tinbergen claimed that herring gulls tapped their feet to drum up worms, employing “exploitative mimicry.” By 1982, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins had built off that notion, staking claim to the idea of “rare enemy effect,” by which predators cast themselves in the role of another predator to exploit their prey’s behavior.

Then in 1986, a paper by John H. Kaufmann of the University of Florida drew a connection between wood turtles’ stomping to draw worms to the surface and the work of worm grunters. “Many humans collect earthworms for fish bait by hammering or scraping on a stake driven into the soil…. There is now evidence that wood turtles, Clemmys insculpta, use the same principle in obtaining earthworms for food,” Kaufmann wrote. He also noted an earlier paper from 1960 by Tinbergen that identified a corollary in herring gulls among other birds like flamingos and geese that drummed up prey by “paddling.” Especially fascinating is that Tinbergen hypothesized that the worms mistook the birds’ paddling for the vibrations of a mole. “That’s what drew me down there,” Catania told me. He wondered whether worm grunters were unintentionally mimicking a predator, possibly a mole like Darwin and Tinbergen suggested. “Nobody had formally studied it,” he said.

On that first morning in Florida, Catania’s alarm woke him at five. He got ready and met the Revells, who charmed Catania immediately as he took a seat in the cab of their truck. As they drove into the forest, he thought of this Darwinian theory that shaped his own hypothesis: that earthworms had developed an escape response to vibrations caused by a foraging mole. “What’s beautiful about the system there is the earthworms are native, so they evolved there, and if the moles are there, they evolved there, too,” Catania said. Most importantly, he wanted to find out if the vibrations generated by worm grunting echo that of a digging mole and, if so, how the earthworms respond.

As they rode along, Catania noticed mole tunnels crisscrossing the backroads. He saw more around the stand of trees where Audrey and Gary worked. Catania was spellbound as he watched the couple work. Weeks later, he returned with recording equipment, marking flags, and a garden trowel. He spent hour after hour, day after day in the forest, dropping geophones into tunnel routes, hoping to record the vibrations of moles digging, as well as those produced by Gary’s grunting. For every worm Audrey picked up, he placed an orange flag in the ground, mapping just how many worms appeared, in what directions, and how far from Gary’s stob. Then, he stalked moles underground, using stakes placed along their routes to reveal where they were headed, and used the garden trowel to catch them. Back at the Revells’ place, they took a handful of worms, placed them in a five-gallon bucket, and dressed them in a pile of sawdust. Catania picked up a mole and dropped it into the bucket. The worms fled to the surface. “Okay,” Catania thought, “things are pretty clear.”

He replicated this experiment in larger bins with controlled variables. The result was the same. As soon as the mole entered the soil, the worms fled to the surface. Catania later recorded the sound of an eastern American mole digging and compared it to his recordings of Gary rooping. It was a sonic match. The vibrations were almost identical.

Catania’s work with the Revells confirmed Darwin’s theory set forth more than 125 years earlier. Worm grunters had unknowingly applied “exploitative mimicry” like that employed by herring gulls or wood turtles to lure the worms to the surface. Catania published his paper that same year in PLoS ONE, a peer-reviewed journal. The New York Times even ran a small story about his findings, as did NBC News and other outlets. Before he returned to Nashville, Catania received a parting gift from Audrey and Gary—a rooping iron that had been in their family for decades. As he drove north that day, he stopped one last time in the woods, drove a stob into the soil, and rooped with a clear sense of what was happening underground.

Audrey Revell collects worms by hand in the Apalachicola National Forest as Gary Revell moves to the next spot, carrying his rooping iron and stob. Photograph by Michael Adno

On My Final Morning With Audrey And Gary, a seam of blue sky between the pines grew brighter as they drove out into the forest. Slowly, the first signs of light threw deep shades of purple against the clouds before pink, then scarlet bands passed through the trees. “That’s beautiful,” said Audrey.

They parked their truck along the road, collected their gear, and walked into the woods. As we neared a brake of trees, Gary passed me the stob and file, pointing to a patch of earth, and I clumsily drove the stob down. I tried to place my hands on the file the same as Gary, and I slowly slid the steel at an angle. A deep noise followed, and I just smiled, rooping again and again. I varied speed and angles, making some wince-worthy goose noises on bad passes, but I found a rhythm, and soon I’d drawn up a dozen worms. I moved a few times, continuing to work, removing some layers. When I finally got up, Gary asked, “So, Mike, what do you think?” My chest throbbed and sweat ran down my neck. “It’s fucking hard work,” I said.

Back at their place, Audrey made some sweet tea and showed me a couple albums of photographs she’d made of flora and fauna in the forest. She told me of terrestrial orchids “as pretty as one you would buy,” of the pitcher plants in spring, and the white “worm flowers” that signal damp ground. “You never know what you might see,” she said. Finally, she brought out some scrapbooks and clippings of articles from the New York Times, Scientific American, and the Tallahassee Democrat. In 2010, the Revells received Florida’s Folk Heritage Award, an honor recognizing Floridians who preserve living traditions. Governor Charlie Crist presented the award in a ceremony at the state Capitol. As we looked through those reminders of their life in the forest, Audrey and Gary turned serious. “I’m a steward of this forest,” he said. “I don’t do nothing to try to abuse it or change it.” I asked Audrey what the forest meant to her. “Everything,” she said.

That afternoon, as I prepared to leave, I found myself moved in a way I hadn’t been in years, fascinated by their connection to the forest, above ground and below. “As much as we’ve done it, I’ve thought, ‘Man, you’ve got to be crazy,’” Gary said of their work. “But, if you take me away from it, I ain’t worth nothing. I’m one of the last.” I drove away with a sore palm and a cup of worms beside me.

#OxfordAmerican.Org #The Worm 🪱 Charmers!#Earthworms 🪱#Florida Family #The Forest Floor #Apalachicola National Forest #Diplocardia Mississippiensis #Gary Revell | Audrey Ravell

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