#its sad and very toxic

[stevie-petey]

at arm's length

You fixed his hair and made a face in the mirror, just to get him to laugh, and you smiled when it worked. “I think you look handsome.” “Yeah, sure.” Steve pushed you away, though his arm stayed loosely wrapped around your side. He had always somehow done this, holding you at arm’s length with a possessiveness to it.  You would come to learn that the possessiveness never really goes away. Not in the way either of you may wish for it to during nights two years from tonight. 

Summary: you and steve found each other when you were eleven; he's held you at an arm's length ever since, suffocating you

Rating: general, suggestive themes

Warnings: toxic relationship, heavy angst, allusions to sex, some stancy, fem!reader, use of y/n, not proofread so pls be kind

Words: 2.9k

Before you swing in: where did this come from ? no clue ! this is pure angst though, no happy ending, all just heartbreak and a very toxic steve. beware. prepare. have fun !

-

Neither of you know how it started.

You aren’t sure when you allowed the lines to be crossed. Steve isn’t sure when he realized he wanted to cross them. 

One night he had simply wanted to crawl through your window.

And, one night, you let him. 

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” you always whisper against his skin in between highs and desperation. 

“I know,” he always kisses the patch of skin just below your ear before encasing you, silencing you.

You’re not sure if he kisses the patch of skin as a promise or as an apology. For what he’s putting you through, for the ignored glances in school, for the way his body stills when someone says your name when he’s around, for the way you always see it.

Afterwards, Steve never stays long. He picks up his clothes as the quiet in your room overwhelms him. He feels your eyes follow him in the dark as he gets dressed and you remain in your bed, sprawled out wanting, waiting, mourning. 

There’s never any malice or anger in your eyes when you watch him, and sometimes Steve resents you for it. He wishes you’d make it easier for him to leave. 

Instead you always watch him with interest, a slight glint in your eye as if you know more than he does; Steve wants to mold a crease between your brows and turn your mouth down with his fingers so that your face isn’t as angelic and understanding. 

“Drive safe.”

Your whispered words are the final blow to the thin wall of glass Steve hides behind. You wish him a safe journey home every time he drives to your house to climb through your window and take more from you than he deserves. 

He hates it.

He hates you. 

Yet every night Steve crawls through your window.

And every night you let him in. 

– 

No one knows how it started.

Your friendship with Steve Harrington was an oddity within Hawkins. 

One day the two of you sat down together during lunch in the sixth grade, and the entire middle school cafeteria went quiet. Everyone had stared at you and whispered, wondering who you were and why you were sitting with someone above your rank, someone who ran with kids like Tommy Hagan.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” you had mumbled to Steve, tugging at your sweater with an insecurity you can only feel when you’re eleven. 

“I know.” Steve hadn't seemed to feel this same sense of insecurity at eleven as he popped a french fry into his mouth with a shrug, uncaring. “But who cares?”

You remember looking down at your food, embarrassed and unsure about it all. You’d been standing at your locker merely minutes ago as you looked around helplessly, lost in the school your mom had promised you’d enjoy this time. 

Then Steve had found you.

He had been on his way to the lunch room, late to meet up with his friends, when he had seen you. He will always remember the way you’d been holding yourself, then. You were drawn in, looking around the empty hallways with a wonder in your eyes, despite your obvious fear, that Steve had never seen before in someone his age. 

Steve couldn’t help himself. 

He had asked if you were lost and the way your eyes widened at his question made something within him stir. He watched as a blush spread across your cheeks, shy and nervous, and Steve knew then and there that he couldn’t ever leave you alone. There was something in your eyes, in the way you had looked at him in that moment with that same wonder that had made Steve stop in the first place. 

Soon enough everyone in Hawkins Middle watched as your friendship unfolded. 

It was innocent enough, almost imperceptible to those who weren’t paying attention, but everyone knew. 

Steve was never outwardly friendly with you following your first day meeting him, although he was inseparable from you in his own ways. He would walk you to your classes and always sat a few seats behind you so that he could keep an eye on you. Everyone saw how his eyes never left you. 

You never asked why Steve wouldn’t include you with the rest of his friends. He never introduced you to them, yet he made you promise that if they ever said anything to you that you’d tell him. You promised him, swore to him that you would, and the promise seemed to calm something within Steve. 

“Why?” You had asked him afterwards, not understanding why it seemed so important to Steve that you’d tell him if his friends were ever mean to you. 

“Because you’re my friend.” He stood by your locker as he waited for you to gather your books. People walked past the two of you, whispering as they always did, but he had learned how to ignore them.

You remember frowning, feeling a pit forming in your stomach at his words. “But they’re your friends, too.”

“No, they’re not.” Steve scoffed at you and shoved his hands into his jean pockets.

“But you’re always with them.”

He looked down at his scuffed sneakers, then. “They follow me around. I don’t mind it that much, my dad says it makes boys look cool.”

“Your dad?”

Steve will never understand why he had told you about his dad that day, but he would come to learn that you always somehow made him weak against the things that darkened his mind; how you were always the one he confessed to.

“Can we go to class now?”

“Sorry,” you grabbed the last of your books and closed your locker. You smiled at Steve, you will always remember how hard you had tried to calm him down, make him comfortable around you, and you will always remember how you had placed your hand on his arm. “Let’s go to class.”

Steve flinched at your touch, and you would come to learn that touches weren’t something he was accustomed to; how it would be because of you that he learned what it feels like to be warmed by someone’s fingertips. 

– 

Steve isn’t sure when he became King Steve. 

He thinks it was sometime during his freshman year of high school when he shot up a few inches during the summer and grew his hair long. 

It had been your idea, growing his hair out, because you knew he liked it when you played with it.

“I look like a douche, Y/N.” Steve groaned when he had looked in your mirror. Sometime between sixth and seventh grade, he had started going to your house after school and on the weekend. He claimed it was because your mom was always nice to him, but deep down you knew it was because he enjoyed having you to himself. 

You fixed his hair and made a face in the mirror, just to get him to laugh, and you smiled when it worked. “I think you look handsome.”

“Yeah, sure.” Steve pushed you away, though his arm stayed loosely wrapped around your side. He had always somehow done this, holding you at arm’s length with a possessiveness to it. 

You would come to learn that the possessiveness never really goes away. Not in the way either of you may wish for it to during nights two years from tonight. 

But two years ago you leaned into the arm that still held onto you and played with the hair that had only grown long because of you. “I mean it, you know.”

Steve’s eyes met yours in the mirror, and he saw the wonder there again, though now that you were both fifteen with a shared history, the wonder was now accompanied by a fondness that Steve couldn’t bear himself to look into for long. He loved your eyes, he loved the way you looked at him, but it always burned. 

Thick silence had started to crawl in between you two, then. 

Steve had grown a few inches and his jawline had sharpened and his skin evened out. One day, before your very eyes, he had stopped looking like the eleven year old boy who found you in the hallway. As you stared at him in the mirror that night, you realized just how beautiful he had become, and somehow, even then, you knew that this beauty would strangle you.

The silence had started to grip your neck, so you cleared your throat and tried to pretend that nothing had changed, even though everything had changed in that moment. “It’s late, your parents will want you home soon.”

“They probably don’t even notice I’m gone right now, Y/N.” The moment had been broken and Steve now felt the same fury that had been building within him ever since he was eight. The anger threatened to spill over, but Steve had come to learn that his anger only scared you, so instead he had tried to find another way to quiet the waves within his mind. “I have a better idea.”

“Is that so?” 

“I spend the night.” Steve winked at you, he knew that you sensed his brewing anger, and he desperately wanted to reassure you that he wouldn’t ruin this.

You froze, as if you knew even then that this would be a shift within your dynamic with him. You called Steve your best friend at this point, and while he never said so out loud, you were his best friend, too. At school, you didn’t have many friends, but Steve had now become surrounded by both boys and girls, all vying for his attention, and though he still never introduced you to them, you knew even then that you were the most important person in his life. 

As your eyes met Steve’s in the mirror once more, for a moment you could see the eleven year old boy again, and he’s the reason you say yes.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” you reminded Steve for the tenth time that night as you looked over at your door to make sure it was locked. Your mom would’ve killed you if she had ever found out Steve never left. 

“I know.” Steve crawled into bed next to you and collapsed with a huff. He wrapped his arms around you and you were weak against him.

You’ve always been weak against him.

– 

You’re not sure when you first lost Steve to Nancy Wheeler.

They met when you were all in middle school, and yet somehow she hadn’t caught his eye until you were juniors and she was a sophomore. 

He had dated other girls before, but none had been like Nancy; she was the only one who truly caught his eye. 

You watched as he became infatuated with her. It happened slowly, and then all at once. He stopped walking you to class, stopped sitting a few seats behind you, stopped asking to spend the night. 

Steve still saw the wonder in your eyes, though. He still saw the fondness that burned his skin and ground into his bones. He saw your eyes in Nancy’s, and it infuriated him. He loved the girl, he knew he did, but somehow you were always there.

Even after you stopped asking to see him, to sit in his car and drive, to be his best friend again. 

Somehow, you were always there. You were always there, long after you stopped calling yourself Steve Harrington’s best friend and he stopped feeling the need to miss you. 

Then, one night, when Steve had been on his way to pick Nancy up to go see a movie, he drove past you sitting on a park bench with someone’s arms thrown over your shoulders. He remembers feeling the wind being knocked out of him at the sight, he remembers the possessiveness that clawed so deeply into his chest that he had been afraid for a moment that he was dying. 

He doesn’t remember changing lanes and parking there in front of you.

He doesn’t remember the way your face fell when you saw him.

He doesn’t remember the way the guy who had been wrapped around you stood up, asked who Steve was and why he was bothering you.

All Steve remembers is that he no longer saw the fondness in your eyes when you looked at him. The wonder had been gone. 

“Y/N?” His voice hadn’t sounded like his own. Your name hadn’t left his lips in months; it felt like exhaling after breaking an oath. 

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” you had shaken your head at him, somehow knowing Steve’s feelings before he did. He would come to learn that you had always known his feelings for you, long before he was ever able to figure them out himself. You looked at the guy next to you, your date for the night, and shook your head again. “Not here. Not right now.”

“I know.” But Steve hadn’t known anything. If someone had asked, then, what his name was, all he would’ve been able to answer with was yours. He was yours. “I… I know.”

“I think you should leave, buddy.” The guy you’d been with said, and Steve remembers now that his name had been Jamie. He had been on the soccer team, someone he had once shared a drink with at some stupid party last year. 

Steve cleared his throat and avoided your eyes. You knew too much. You knew too much and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d spoken to you until then. “Have a good night.”

And then he was gone. 

Steve broke up with Nancy a week later. 

You never saw Jamie after that night. 

– 

Neither of you know how it started. 

But you know how it will end.

Steve doesn’t, but you don’t blame him. 

He sneaks in through your window most nights and takes from you what you’ve always been willing to give him; it’s how your relationship has always been, and yet you’d give him everything and more if he asked you to. 

Steve kisses you and holds you at arm’s length and tugs you back in every time. 

You always allow yourself to be pulled in. 

One night Steve crawls through your window and reeks of alcohol. He trips over himself as he enters, his hair a mess, still grown the length you once suggested to him, and his jean jacket hangs loosely from his thin frame.

“Steve?” You rush towards him and help him through your window, holding your breath as you do so.

He leans heavily against you and slurs his words. “‘M here.”

“You’re here.” You confirm for him, setting him gently against your bed. As he stares at your ceiling with blurred eyes from the alcohol, you start removing his jacket and shoes. He’s not going home tonight in this state, you know his dad will only send him back here again anyways. 

“Always here,” he slurs again, rolling his head to the side as he does his best to look at you. He squints, studying your side profile and it takes everything within you to not face him. You busy yourself with his clothes, giving yourself something to distract yourself with. He frowns, even in his drunken state he can read you so well. “Always… here.”

“You are always here,” you untie his shoes and place them against your wall. “It’s late, Steve. Let’s go to bed, okay?”

“No,” he now tries to fight against you. Words float through his mind, in a haze of letters and sentence fragments, and vaguely there’s something there that he knows he has to say. Some grand epiphany in between his sixth and seventh beer tonight. “I wanna–I wanna talk.”

You freeze. 

He sees your discomfort and feels something break within him. He tries desperately to grasp at the words within his mind. “Here. It’s… You’re here.”

“I live here, Steve.” You’re not sure what he’s trying to tell you, but you know that if he keeps talking, he’ll ruin the last remaining line that tethers you to him. “Please, just close your eyes and sleep–”

“You’re always here.” His voice has strength to it now, as if the confession has sobered him up. His eyes are now focused, though his mind is still a haze of everything he hasn’t told you. His movements are still slow, his breath still reeks, and he knows that this isn’t what you deserve. “W-why?”

You close your eyes. 

You’ve always known how this would end. 

“We can talk in the morning.” You try to appease him, now gently crawling over him so that you can lay his drunken state to rest. “How about you just hold me tonight, okay?”

Steve is gone again, now lost in the alcohol he’s consumed once more, and your offer of him being able to hold you is all he can focus on now. Exhaustion washes over him and he wraps his arms around you, distantly he thinks he remembers someone else doing this to you once. The thought makes him hold onto you tighter, though he thinks that this isn’t fair to you. 

Lips close to your ear, he whispers, “We shouldn’t be doin’ this.”

“I know,” you close your eyes again, scared he’ll see the tears within them. 

Neither of you know how it started.

The undoing of whatever you had started long before either one of you truly knew what it was.

One day you were both eleven and Steve had been drawn towards the naivety within you that he never had himself.

Tonight, you’re both seventeen and the naivety is gone, and as the alcohol burns through Steve’s system, he knows it’s because of him. 

You’ve always known how this would end.

Steve has only realized it tonight.

-

⌑ writing masterlist

[yuridovewing]

As a fellow Dovewing lover, it's frustrating how the fandom watered her down into a whiny brat who never cared about Ivypool. I mean, seriously? Not only did Dovewing care about her sister (reacting in horror when Lionblaze, her own mentor and Jayfeather are willing to potentially sacrifice Ivypool's safety by employing her as her spy instead of trying to get her out of the Dark Forest's clutches, hiding a thorn in her nest to cover for her scarring from her training).

Heck, even the scene where she tries to feed Ivypool her catch during a hunting patrol was demonized because 'she was trying to make Ivypool break the code like SHE does, as if it doesn't matter' and because she got upset when Ivypool started arguing with her! But you guys said she didn't care, right? Plus, people act like being forced into a prophecy is something you should be grateful for, as if it didn't irreparably change her close relationship with her sister? As if Lionblaze and Jayfeather didn't still keep her out of the loop (and for all the fussing they made about keeping it a secret, Lionblaze confesses his power to Cinderheart and Jayfeather doesn't even care).

Meanwhile Nightheart is angry he isn't orange and hates his mom for being exiled and the whole world has to stop for him. 🤪 And Bramblestar is simply so tortured by having an evil father, the only choice is to train with him and his evil half-brother and hide this from his wife! (But remember, it's bad when that witch Squirrelflight hides the parentage of the three from him, even when Blackstar and Leopardstar were still around after being complicit in the torture and killing of halfclan cats.) Why are these male characters sympathized with, even when they actively harm people (Nightheart forcing himself into Sunbeam's life by lying to everyone about being her mate without even asking her if she would be fine with that beforehand), Bramblestar (we all know what he does), but when Dovewing or any other female character is upset, people freak out and call them whiny brats or abusive for (checks notes) asking her partner if he loves her anymore after they argued multiple times in a book. Really makes you think! (Sorry this is so long, you just have based opinions!)

dovewing being characterized as this flighty airheaded vain popular girl stereotype in fanon is like. one of those biggest "we didnt actually read the books" things in the fandom. like theres so much fanart where shes grinning and giggling over the prophecy and shes besties with the trio and shes got preferential treatment, and then in the actual books shes basically the autistic kid no one actually likes. people really, REALLY overexaggerate that one scene where she snaps at ivypaw and brags. (and i dont wanna shit on amvs but i am forever side eying how the animation community handled dove back in the day. more than one person animated her getting murdered. normal.)

i do think its gotten better recently at least. but wow does it feel like at least one person on the writing team has a bone to pick

(also awww thank you <3 no need to be sorry i love getting stuff in my inbox)

[awesamforehead]

[mcybree]

man I wanna get in fh related fandom discourse but in like a quiet way where we all go around and directly share notes with one another. maybe a power point presentation is involved

[penisbilt]

the bittersweet but absolute flood of relief that comes from admitting defeat at living independently, to have to move back in with parents. we tried! we gave it our best shot for almost 3 years! but living like this (being on our own) is just not possible for us at this time of our lives. we've finally proved it to ourselves that we can't do it. it'll be okay to let ourselves rest now

[welcometogrouchland]

Getting back into comics is fun. Minus the Getting Back Into Comics part of it all

[falllpoutboy]

i think the most frustrating thing about jaime/cersei shippers is that they completely, wholly and literally single-handedly missed the point of why twincest is gross and unhealthy and how celebrating it, misinterprets both jaime and cersei to a nth degree

we are told/shown that their relationship started out as confused children who mostly didnt know better. but when they're on the cusp of adulthood, cersei initiates their sexual relationship through manipulation and coercion. and its because of this coerced relationship and the circumstances that followed (jaime joining the kingsguard and taking a vow of celibacy), jaime has only been with one person in his whole life and fathers her children whilst having next to no relationship with them, meanwhile cersei got to know her fair share of various lovers and parent her children (most joffrey) as she saw fit.

i think the most heartbreaking quote regarding their twisted relationship is from a jaime pov chapter: “I don't have a wife, I have a sister" and to see these shippers in turn romanticize that line instead of them seeing the utter tragedy in a statement like that (re: see above) is mindblowing. seeing tweets like "jaime looked his best in season 1 and/or season 4" (the seasons in which he is the most devoted to cersei and coincidentally in which he looked the most clean cut and put together, just like cersei says so he can be her mirror image)

the show certainly did no favors towards showing the inherent fucked-up ness of their relationship but the canon facts i listed are still the same in that canon too. and i think the overwhelmingly negative reaction to their critically panned ending (jaime leaving somebody who loves him for being wholly himself for cersei, who only saw herself in him and what he can do for her and dying without facing the true repercussions of her actions) also speaks for itself.

idk how to end this but like. its just crazy for me to see this for like 4 years now

[xamaxenta]

It’s difficult to not feel discouraged sometimes when your partner is also an artist and happens to be faster than you in every conceivable way

This doesn’t bother me often because everyone is different and comparing production time and skill against each other or anyone is detrimental mostly and its ok to have your own workflow

but it does weigh on me vaguely sometimes sometimes that she can finish 2-3 full coloured pieces within a week and ive been painfully scratching out the same number but theyre only sketches that ill never revisit within a month

None of this actually matters in the long run, it just makes me feel bad on occasion

[just-spacetrash]

giys im watching marianne and if that fucked up writer and her assistant dont makeout before marianne kills the assistant im suing

[2birds1song]

a small/big angsty plot idea that popped in my head bc angst resides 24/7 in my head when it comes to t.bosas. i was thinking about the after events and what happens when l.ucy gray is found, captured and forced to stay in the capital. shes angry at c.oriolanus (for her logical reasons). hes angry at her (for his illogical ones). which makes for fun when nights, days goes by and shes up all night long with nightmares one night and then finds herself wandering into his room late at night. they hate each other but shes still opening his door with a whispered 'c.oriolanus' with uncertainty in her voice. she hates him but shes still making herself a spot at the foot of his bed to curl up on. inviting herself at this point lol and now i just wanna know what happens??? his reaction?? l.ucy gray just pushing her way in like an uninvited cat and shoving its owner out his own bed. what happens!!

[wakanai]

YES GIRL. THERE ARE OTHER FISH IN THE SEA 👏👏👏 I was having my akutagawa moment of just wanting approval from someone who didn't give it and was being sad about it but then she was like "girl you can find better, there's lots of fish in the sea" and I'm like YES. this is the reassurance I needed. Let's be real, I can do better than this. I DESERVE BETTER THAN THIS. AND I CAN DO BETTER THAN THIS. So yeah. It is what it is. If someone doesn't like me back, then it's sad but so what? I like me, and I'm all that matters. So as long as I'm okay, then it's okay. 🥰❤️❤️❤️

[the-busy-ghost]

You know I used to beat myself up a bit for not reading/studying enough, and especially for wasting time during my teenage years because I stopped reading/trying and now have to catch up when it no longer matters or can do any good. 

But I’m slowly realising of late that there are a lot of books I’m glad I never read before I was ready to seek them out myself. Currently reading “Wuthering Heights” and I am so so glad I didn’t read that book in high school- I would have wildly misinterpreted the premise (even if I liked it), and that would have been a great disservice to the author and the book itself. Now I can really try to understand it on a different level and I think I will only grow to appreciate it more in time.

[bojackhorsemanobviously]

wondering if bojack haters would hate him if he was a girl , i mean i wouldn't but its something im pondering

[mako-neexu]

.

[aguacerotropical]

Gordo Stevens > everyone else

[lesbiten]

every day i miss nine he is literally the blueprint hes everything hes the specialest girl in the whole wide world he and rose invented love also hes a major bitch and i support #bitchrights