msthugbear

[likecastle]

It took me five months, but I finally put the ficlets I wrote for @strangerthingsfemslash Stranger Things Femslash Week up on AO3.

[jonathanbyersphd]

brb going feral from the implications

[williamprattz]

and you continue to haunt me

[eightfifteen]

Nancy hating pools but being fine with natural bodies of water. Mike hating natural bodies of water but being fine with pools. You see.

[snowangeldotmp3]

a study in season 2 nancy wheeler, featuring WILDFLOWER by billie eilish

guilt || grief || ghosts // ribs

[darcylightninglewis]

@pscentral event 19 — music (noah kahan's the view between villiages)

[rusirius967]

The fact that Nancy will never know that Barb's last word was Nancy.

[the-lark-ascending69]

Nancy Wheeler love triangle but instead of Jonathan and Steve it's Barb and Robin and instead of choosing between two love interests she has to choose between a rotting love for her dead best friend that's haunted her since girlhood even though she will never know if she felt the same or if she was allowed to love her but she clings to her grief regardless because pain is the only way she can still feel love for the soulmate she doomed, and between a living girl who fights tooth and nail to survive in a world that wants her dead and shares her dreams and hopes for the future and knows true love is real but has always felt it was denied to her yet she wants to believe she'll find it one day, and maybe she's found it already if her love looked to the future instead of the past for once since she lost her soul to the jaws of the monster.

[artiststarme]

Swimming Ground

Warning: mentions of su!cide

Steve hated his pool. Not swimming or lounging near water but the pool in his backyard in particular. He hated the reminders it held. The pool in the Harrington backyard held too much power over him.

He remembers when he was in the eighth grade and his parents decided to get the pool. He remembers how happy they were to be one of the only families in Hawkins with a new in ground pool that Steve could practice for the swim team in. They never could have imagined that just two weeks later, they’d find Steve floating in it. His mom looked out of the kitchen window to find her beautiful boy fully clothed, face down in the water. They didn’t love the pool so much after that.

They didn’t love their son too much after that either. To his parents, Steve had tried to take their precious boy away from them and they could never truly forgive him for being so selfish. They started taking more business trips and longer vacations away from home to forget about the son that wanted to die.

And Steve was left at home with the constant reminder that he failed.

He used the pool to make friends and to throw rambunctious parties but he never stepped foot in it. The first time he did since the eighth grade was with Nancy when he pushed her in. That was the night his pool took Barb. After that night, the kids thought his hesitation around his pool was because of guilt over losing Nancy’s best friend which he went with because it was so much easier to explain.

He’d throw them pool parties and play lifeguard but he would not touch the water.

Some nights, Robin would swing by to the Harrington house just to find Steve sitting at the pool’s edge. Close but never touching the water. She’d lure him inside to complain about girls or any other topic that helped distract her from the uneasy feeling she got when she saw him sitting there.

After their final bout with the Upside Down, Loch Nora was destroyed. Steve’s house was barely standing and his backyard was a chasm. The pool that had haunted him for years was gone but the thoughts that gave the pool such power remained. Steve didn’t know why he deserved to live more than Eddie and he wasn’t even sure he wanted to. As he thought about his fallen friend that could’ve been more, he yearned to feel the floating like he had in eighth grade. He wanted to feel his lungs burn for air and the fire in his chest when he finally breathed in.

But the pool was gone, he couldn’t do what he’d wanted to since he first tried and even though it was gone, the temptation remained. Instead of sinking into the chilly water, he slouched down next to the blazing chasm where his pool used to be. He felt the heat envelop his body and knew that it was the right decision. He was supposed to perish in the Upside Down as a martyr fighting for his friends. That didn’t work out though so now he had to pull the role of a coward and die a fiery, reasonless, self-imposed death alone.

He didn’t leave a note, didn’t think he needed to. His friends would care or they wouldn’t but nothing he said would make the situation better.

So, he closed his eyes and stepped into the void just as he’d done so long ago. There wasn’t peace or panic like there was the last time, just nothingness as he stepped into the crack in the earth.

Strangely, the afterlife wasn’t dark as he’d expected (but to be fair, he hadn’t thought about it much). Instead, it looked exactly like the Upside Down almost as if the chasm wasn’t a portal to hell but a gate to the alternate Hawkins.

When Steve sat up, still alive despite his efforts, it was face to face with Eddie. A bloody and scarred Eddie that looked a little pissed off but Eddie nonetheless.

“Well hello Harrington, what the fuck are you doing here?”

Goddammit, the swimming excuse wasn’t going to work this time.

[jackiietaylor]

And you might never come back home, and I may never sleep at night

A HOUSE IN NEBRASKA by Ethel Cain merry christmas bru 🎄@fadeintoyou1993

[likecastle]

ST Femslash Week - came back wrong/monsters

Uhhh so for @strangerthingsfemslashweek‘s “came back wrong/monsters” day, I tried an alternate take on Nancy’s Vecna trance, I guess? It’s Barb/Nancy if you squint but not in a fun way, unfortunately!

Content note for canon-typical body horror, grief, and a fairly disturbing unresolved ending, I think? Sorry, this got kinda dark!

One minute, Nancy is pulling herself up the rope of bedsheets, and the next she is falling, falling, arms flailing through something even less than air—

Until she lands with a splash, the water a hard slap across her back. For a moment longer, she’s still falling, plunging through churning bubbles that make it difficult to tell up from down. She’s reminded of diving after Steve, but the water’s warm and clear around her, so it can’t be Lover’s Lake.

When she surfaces, shaking wet hair out of her face, she can see that she’s in Steve’s pool, the Harrington’s back yard turned an eerie blue by the underwater lights. Steam rises from the surface of the water around her, curling into the chill air. There’s nobody out on the patio beside the pool, but she can hear Carol’s shrill laughter faintly from somewhere inside the house. She glances up to see the light on in Steve’s window, and then, instinctively, she looks to the diving board.

“I was wondering when you’d get around to me,” Barb says.

Nancy’s heart seizes in her chest. Barb looks just like Nancy remembers in her puffy blue coat and pink blouse. Her bare feet dangle in the water, something misshapen wrapped around her injured hand. The light glints off of Barb’s glasses, hiding her eyes.

“Although I guess what else should I expect?” Barb continues. “I was never your first thought, or your second, or even your third.”

“Barb,” Nancy whispers, already feeling guilty tears springing to her eyes.

“It’s OK, Nance,” Barb says with a small smile, and Nancy can’t believe how long she’s waited to hear those words. “I always knew you were selfish. You never cared about me, or anybody else. All that mattered to you was what you wanted. The only reason you kept me around was because I didn’t push back.”

Nancy wants to climb out of the water, to go to Barb and wrap her arms around her, but all she can do is tread water. “That’s not—”

“Isn’t it?” Barb cuts in. There’s blood dripping from her hand, dark and thick. Nancy can see the stain of it in the water, spreading like a void. “Who insisted we spend an entire weekend shopping for a new outfit in case Steve happened to notice what you were wearing? Who decided we should both sign up for Newspaper, even though I wanted to join Drama Club instead?”

“I—I wanted to spend time with you,” Nancy protests weakly.

“Who picked which movie we saw every single time we went to the Hawk? Who vetoed my music choices whenever we were studying?”

“That’s not—” She remembers those as friendly arguments she won because she persuaded Barb to see things her way, or because Barb didn’t really care one way or the other.

“I let you win, Nancy,” Barb says, and this time her smile doesn’t offer any absolution. There’s something wrong with her mouth, Nancy notices, something dark and viscous smeared across her teeth. “I always gave you what you wanted, because that was the only way you’d pay attention to me.”

That dark stain of Barb’s blood in the water has become a vortex, drawing Nancy closer—the current’s slow but inexorable, a pull that could easily drown her if she let it. She cuts her arms harder through the water, but she can feel herself slipping closer to Barb, closer to the coiled nothingness at her feet.

“All I wanted was to matter to you,” Barb says, and the darkness is spilling from her lips now, dripping down her chin and across the ruffled pink collar of her blouse. She’s still smiling, her teeth slick black and shining. “But I never did, did I, Nancy? At least not enough.”

“You did,” Nancy tries to tell her. “You did, you did, you’re all that matters,” she tries to say, but the current is pulling her under, the blood-black water filling her mouth.

[stevesbipanic]

I like to think that Nancy let her natural curls come through after Barb died because Barb was the only friend she ever let see them. Barb would always tell her how pretty her curls were but her mother always said they looked untidy so she straightened it. She liked when Barb called her pretty, she never told anyone that either. Now Barb is gone but Nancy still feels her love as she makes sure her curls are healthy and bright. Nancy would never see Barb again but every time she looked in the mirror she'd still hear her say how pretty she looked. Nancy just wishes she had told Barb she thought she was pretty too.

[harringroveera]

Steve wakes up and feels weird. His bedroom isn’t his bedroom anymore. He takes another look.

It is his bedroom. Of his parents’ house back in Hawkins. He is back in his old bedroom. The house is empty. Everything looks odd.

He turns on the TV. Will Byers has gone missing. He stumbles outside the door and picks up the newspaper. November 6th, 1983.

He’s gone back in time somehow. 15 years backwards. To the first day it all started.

Steve crumbles the newspapers in his hand and decides this time he’s going to fix everything.

Including saving his soulmate from his death 13 years ago

[deancaslover]

Missing them hours

[gaysforbyler]

This means either platonic mlvn or romantic bancy. One of the Wheeler siblings is gay for sure

[morganbritton132]

I’ve played soccer most of my life and I do know there are concussion headbands some people wear to keep them safe when they head the ball since concussions are very common in soccer from headers (the only safe place to head the ball is about right on your hairline and you don’t always get it right lol). Nancy and Eddie def researched and got him one after seeing him head the ball for the first time and freaked out. Steve hates wearing it

First, thank you! I am very much Eddie and Nancy in the soccer part of the saga. I don’t play sports so big thanks to all the people that are giving information and ideas.

Second, I love the idea of Nancy and Eddie being very strict parent/understanding parent about it, but Eddie is the reasonable one and Nancy might just be fully insane.

“This is bullying.”

Steve sulks deeper into the couch, crossing his arms over his jersey in a full pout. He glares at the headband and then gives Eddie a pleading look, “I don’t want it.”

“I know, baby,” Eddie says sympathetically, “But-“

“Too bad,” Nancy cuts in. “Do you know how common concussions are in soccer? You decided to play Concussion: The Sport. Dress like it.”

“No one else is wearing one. I’ll look dumb!”

“Okay, then. Maybe we don’t stop a speeding ball with our head then,” Eddie tries. “How about that?”

“No,” Nancy answers even though the question wasn’t directed at her. “Not good enough! Wear the headband or we’ll get you a helmet.”

“Eddie!”

Eddie stalls for a second and then points to Robin, “You won’t look dumb. Robin has one too.”

“She looks dumb.”

Robin’s just like, “Hey!”

Nancy moves and sits on the coffee table in front of Steve with a look that has faced down interdimensional monsters and sexist bosses all the same. Steve’s going to wear this headband or he’s not playing and they both know it when she says, “Would you rather look stupid now and be able to remember it in five year or be drooling all over yourself when your cognitive functions starts declining after another head injury.”

“Hey, too far,” Eddie chastises, hitting her shoulder. “…But take that into consideration, Stevie. I want you to have fun but-“ 

“It’s going to mess up my hair!”

Nancy throws up her hands, “Then we’ll shave your head!”

“Jesus H. Christ,” Eddie swears under his breath. “Wheeler, reel it in and take a walk. Let me talk to him. Jesus.”