#hope you like it sara!!!

[fizzseed]

hey fizz !!! for the ficlet prompts : do i wanna know and byler (literally Look At My Blog Title lmfao did u expect anything less?)

have you ever thought of callin’, darlin’? / the nights were mainly made for sayin’ things that you can’t say tomorrow day.

do i wanna know? — arctic monkeys for @willelfanpage

Mike still keeps his walkie on his side table. He didn’t take it with him to California, but it was right there when he returned, even though his mom went through his room to clean it up, even though the earth cracked open under everyone’s feet. 

He keeps the antenna extended permanently these days, just in case of a code red. There’s a pack of batteries in his bedside drawer, too, ever since Dustin gave them to him after the whole Starcourt fiasco. 

Never again, Dustin had said solemnly.

Mike wishes they’d had the same foresight about tapes and Walkmans during their Upside Down mission. 

Since the disaster, things have settled into an odd kind of normalcy. He and El broke up, Max is still in the Hospital, Lucas still sits by her side most of the time, Dustin spends his days in Hawkins High’s gymnasium trying to distract himself from Eddie’s death. 

Mike tries very hard not to think about any of it. 

It doesn’t really work.

He picks up the Walkie, dials in the frequency out of sheer habit, away from the Party’s decided wavelength for some privacy. 

“Hey, Will,” he sighs into the static of the receiver. “I know you’re out of range, so, whatever, but…”

He scoffs at himself. This habit he’s formed, of talking to Will without actually talking to him, probably isn’t healthy. But he never went to see Ms. Kelley, so— jury’s still out.

“There’s so much going on. And I feel like,” Mike hesitates. “Whatever, it doesn’t really matter what I feel, but— I can’t keep up. It’s like… for the first time in my life I don’t have a plan. I don’t know how to fix this. Max is… not waking up, and El thinks it’s her fault and I was fucking lying to her, but she knows. She knows. She’s known for longer than I have.”

He laughs, the sound absent of the joy it should contain.

“Whatever. She’s a better person than I’ll ever be, so she let me off the hook.”

He pauses, stares down at his wrinkled bedsheets, notices a stain on his tank top that he picks at. The white noise of the walkie is comforting, a reminder of simpler times even as red clouds glow in the distance of the 2AM sky. 

“And… I miss you,” he confesses quietly. “I know I messed up last summer. I promise I didn’t mean to, I was just… messing around, I guess. And I know it was a dick move, now. And I never apologized, not to your face. Because by the time we found you, the Mind Flayer was active again, and then shit went down and then…”

Mike sighs.

“Then I was too much of a coward to say anything. For three months. And then… then you fucking moved to California and shit got even weirder. And now— now it’s the fucking apocalypse. And I miss you. I kinda wish you never moved.”

Mike drags his thumb over the stain. It won’t come out. Now, he’s just pressing old chocolate syrup or ketchup or whatever it is into the fabric. 

“You know, the week before I walked around hoping that Lenora would, like, explode or something.” He laughs again. “Just so you’d have to stay. And I know that’s selfish, because Lenora was good for you guys, what without all the Upside Down shit.

“But Hawkins isn’t the same without you. I’m not the same without you. You’re— you’re still the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

“Do you remember that? When we were trying to get the Mind Flayer — Vecna now, I guess — out of you? When you tapped the morse code into the chair?”

Mike smiles at the memory. “I told you asking you to be my friend was the best thing I’ve ever done. And you broke out of his hold, and I was so proud of you.”

He drops the walkie into his lap, letting go of the button. 

“Over and out,” he mumbles to himself. 

Back when he could still do something. Other than be a shitty boyfriend and a bad friend, that is. 

The walkie crackles to life in his lap, and he startles wildly, dislodging it enough to send it clattering to the floor. For a while, there’s just silence on the line, and Mike picks it up warily, halfway through a million disaster plans of what to do if he’s getting a call from the Upside Down. 

The line crackles again, and then:

“I remember.”

Mike chokes on his own spit, trying desperately to keep his coughs quiet enough that he can still hear what Will is saying. 

“Everything else is kinda blurry,” Will says, “but you, talking about the swingset? I remember all of it. Saying ‘yes’ was the best thing I ever did.”

Mike presses on the talk-button. “Will?”

“Yeah, Mike?”

He doesn’t need to ask if he’s real. Mike knows. “Why… why were you tuned to this frequency?”

A beat of silence. “I guess it was the last one I was on.”

He doesn’t say anything else. Mike feels the blood rushing in his veins. So Will heard everything he said. He tries to figure out a way to recover from this embarrassment, to make Will forget he ever said anything. He could just ask. Hey, Will, can you forget that I was spilling my absolute guts on our separate frequency and talking to you even though I thought you couldn’t hear me? 

“You played Should I Stay or Should I Go, right?” Will asks suddenly. 

Mike laughs to himself, presses to talk. “Yeah, yeah we did. It was Jonathan’s idea.”

He catches the tail end of Will’s laugh over the line. “Of course it was.”

Mike smiles. They sit quietly for a bit, long enough that Mike thinks Will has gone to sleep. It’s the reasonable thing to do in the middle of the night, way more sane than dumping your emotions into a walkie-talkie. 

“Mike, are you still there? Over.”

“M’still here,” Mike says quietly.

“You don’t have to fix this alone, you know?” Mike frowns. “It’s— it’s like you said. We’re better as a team. We can fix it together.”

Mike doesn’t really know what to say to that, but he promised Will that they’d do just that, that they’d be best friends again. He wants it so bad. More than he’s wanted anything ever, probably. To go back to normalcy, with Will at his side. So he says:

“Yeah, okay.” He lets himself fall back onto the bed and a shiver runs down his spine as his cold mattress makes contact with his spine. “I’m— gonna go to bed, now.”

“Okay,” Will says, voice small. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Mike answers. “Over and out.”

He lets the antenna stay extended as he places the walkie back on his side table and wraps himself in his comforter.

“Over and out,” Will’s voice washes over him, and then the static over the line breaks. 

[koiihpon]

Don’t wait up…

colored this panel from @thegunnsara's Back to the Past comic (part 6) :]

the bottom panel was so striking when I first saw it that I just needed to color it heheh sorry it took a while to finish ><

orig under cut vvvv

[kasterarts]

Moving Forward. (Spoilers for YTTD up through 3-1b)

[lyr-caelum]

Happy late Valentine's

[asoingbob]

the girl from the memorandum

HAPPY 7TH ANNIVERSARY! 🎂

full res here / alt under cut

[deadpoets]

PIPPA FITZ-AMOBI & RAVI SINGH ☆ happy birthday to my favorite sara in the whole wide world, @ohwarnette <3

[hyakunana]

Interrupting all my chores for a very important event

[sylkiescoat]

I don’t think Midori views himself as human, I don’t think he views Sara as human either! Which is why he is so fascinated by her behavior in the AI test runs. He has been a killer with twisted adoration and curiosity for humans since his youth, and likely felt somewhat isolated by that, like in the way a cruel god may experience isolation in toying with existence, or like a lonely child with a plethora of *dolls*. This is NOT a justification for literally anything, but I love digging into his character and feelings about things because he is peculiar. And it’s interesting to imagine that he was shocked and very excited to meet someone who might like to play with him. Imagine being a messed up evil scientist all alone in your lab, and you have tons of little rats and mice that you never get bored of experimenting on, but something is *missing*. Not in a huge, overly noticeable way, but a wish that is simmering on the backburner and can only be noticed once it is fulfilled. Now, someone else has visited and suddenly you are thinking of all the unethical experiments and mind games on these subjects that require multiple people to complete and you feel as if something has clicked neatly into place. You are a lonely child with a potential playmate who is finally about to enter the room through the barrier that has been between you and the world since your birth.

[landonmikaelson]

Happy Birthday @userlaylivia! 💛

[nikkiruncks]

"We're immortal, remember? We will find a way."

Tyler & Caroline [The Vampire Diaries]

(requested by @userbettycooper)

[andthatisnotfake]

Drabble prompt from the dialogue list!

“It’s too late for us now. We’re all going to die.”

Ghosts

(written for #YRDC2024 @youngroyals-events)

“... and when she looked up…” Stella pauses dramatically “...someone was right there… floating.”

Lightning strikes, making Fredrika scream.

“It's just li…” Maddie starts, but is cut off by the lights going out.

“Oh, my god!” Fredrika’s voice sounds panicked. “It's the ghost!”

“Ghosts aren't evil.” Maddie argues.

“Ghosts are real?” Sara sounds more puzzled than scared.

“NO!” Felice retorts before Maddie can say anything else.

“I think it's too late for us now. We’re all going to die.”

“NOT helping, Stella!”

Sara turns on a flashlight. “There. Now we can see the ghosts when they come.”

“Sara!”

Fredrika screams again.

[lewanarta]

8 women for the 8th of March

[silly-hope-draws]

Good morning, evening or night! Just finished this drawing of my oc, Hope! *Throws art at you and runs away* HOPE YOU ENJOY IT!!! :)

[nesonkin]

Every time Ryder as a protagonist is criticised for not immediately being respected by other people a part of me dies.

How do you acknowledge Andromeda as a story of growth and rise of a hero... but throw rocks at the game for doing exactly what is expected of this kind of story?

Why do you go to a bakery and ask for elbow grease?

[slozhnos]

one thing i really love about the great gatsby musical is the depth they give myrtle. in the book you don’t really know that much about her outside of her relationships with tom and george, but you get to really see the depth they added in “one way road” showing her feelings and actions right up to her death, and how those led up to her being in the road in the first place

[rynnthefangirl]

Me initially watching the S2 finale of HOTD: oh good on Alicent for betraying her shitty sons to help the rightful queen! You go girl!

Me realizing where they are taking this: oh my fucking god she is 100% going to be present at Rhaenrya’s death now you fucking bitches.