#maggie stone

[hb-writes]

A Dream Come True

Summary: When Ben makes an impromptu trip home, Maggie cancels her college Halloweekend plans to spend the weekend with him and their parents.

Prompt: "Are you high?" "Doo Doo boop boo." "Oh yeah, you're high alright.”

Characters: Ben Stone & Maggie Stone (OC)

Warnings: Mention of Pot Brownies and Alcohol

--

Maggie rubbed at her arms, a brisk wind nipping at her skin through the last-minute Halloween costume she had pulled together—a flannel shirt with some old overalls and one of her dad’s old straw gardening hats. All things she had found digging through the many closets of her parent’s home, none of it belonging to her.

Everything except the straw stuck in her shirt and pants and hair had once belonged to a sibling or a parent but they straw…Maggie had gotten creative and stolen that particular component from the decorative hay bale placed at the end of the Kessler’s driveway. She had thought herself rather clever when the idea came to her and she thought herself a bit of a badass for not getting caught, but it itched like hell the longer she sat there on her parents’ front porch.

It almost made Maggie wish she had picked out something else. Her mother and father had dutifully dug out the old bins of Halloween costumes for her and Ben—opening up boxes upon boxes filled with some truly wretched stuff from the 80’s and 90’s—and Maggie had dismissed each of her parent’s suggestions, putting together her last minute, makeshift scarecrow costume on her own instead. 

Some parents might have been offended by that, but Sybil and Kelly weren’t. They’d raised too many strong-willed kids to be put off by that sort of thing, and they were truly just too overjoyed to have two of them home at the same time, a hot commodity these days, especially at Halloween.

And at the ripe old age of twenty-one, they all knew that this wasn’t how their youngest had planned to spend her weekend...

If things had gone as planned, Maggie would have been at school. She would have been celebrating Halloweekend with her college friends—getting silly and tipsy in a risque costume and dancing with some random stranger dressed as a Marvel character, or something stupid like that. That was what Maggie Stone had intended for her weekend, but she didn’t think drunk and risque would mesh particularly well with handing out candy to trick or treaters on her parent’s porch. Word of that sort of thing spread fast in Thayer, so Maggie was shivering and sober in hand-me-down flannel instead.

Ben didn’t seem even a bit bothered by the cold or the quaintness of their evening, a smile plastered on his face as he passed the night in the chair beside her, telling the most ridiculous and inappropriate jokes to the kids who stopped by for the full-sized candy bars their family was well-known for.

Ben stood up suddenly and started singing to himself, his lanky body swaying to the music only he could hear. It had been a while since their last trick—or—treater, their bowl nearly as empty as the streets, and Ben’s singing only grew louder as he reached the song’s chorus, some tune Maggie couldn’t name, but had heard more than enough times blasted from his speakers when she was little.

A memory nudged at the edge of Maggie’s brain—Ben was driving her home from school in their dad’s old car, the two of them singing along to that exact song at the top of their lungs…

“Are you high?” Maggie asked as a chilled wind popped her back into reality.

She couldn’t smell any pot on him and she half-doubted herself even as she asked the question. Ben was notoriously odd—goofy, as evidenced by his choice to halfway dress up as a robot. It was part of a costume Thad had worn somewhere back around 1990, a homemade thing, little more than a cardboard box covered in aluminum foil with some vague details glued and painted on, all of it well-worn. He looked ridiculous, practically bursting out of it and Maggie couldn’t quite fathom why her parents had kept it all these years… But Ben’s eyes had lit up like a Christmas tree when he spotted it in the basement and he’d happily donned the glorified recycling bin contents over his head and shoulders for a few hours now, not even taking it off to have their pizza dinner. 

Maggie prepared herself for her brother’s answer, some part of her bracing for him to utter some sort of affirmation to the accusation she’d made. She was already feeling a preliminary bit of annoyance at the prospect of him being inebriated when she was terribly sober and a little melancholy, especially now that trick-or-treating was winding down for the night. 

Especially now that her phone was buzzing almost constantly, each text and picture making her miss the alternative universe where she’d stayed at college for the weekend instead of coming home. She had only come home for the weekend because of Ben. Because he was randomly going to be in town…not that she was complaining about that. Having Ben on the East Coast was a gift these days. She saw the others pretty regularly, especially Everett, Thad, and Amy, since they were all geographically pretty close, but Ben and Susannah weren’t so close. Sporadic visits like this were a treat. 

This night was supposed to be a treat, but Maggie was starting to feel she’d been tricked.  

“Ben.” 

Maggie nudged her brother’s side when he didn’t answer, his eyes trained on the animatronic Halloween decorations at the house across the street. He pulled his gaze away to look at her, still humming the song he’d been singing. Ben hadn’t even heard her question, but his eyebrows now rose. 

“Are you high?” she asked again, a frustrated huff accompanying the words. It wasn’t a judgment, even if her tone failed to hide the hint of annoyance growing in her. It wasn’t as though Maggie Stone had never smoked a little pot, but him doing it without her left her feeling left out, a little betrayed… Two feelings she tried to push away and ignore when it came to her siblings, most of whom were quite a bit older than her.

Ben gave his sister a lazy smile before he stood and started moving his robot arms in beat to some imagined music that had Maggie rolling her eyes. 

"Doo doo boop boo,” Ben said, his face scrunched up in some exaggerated expression she could only assume was meant to reflect the face of a robot.

She snorted, shaking her head. "Oh yeah, you're high alright.”

“Just high on life, little sister, but the night is young…” Ben answered as he lowered himself to sit beside her, hugging her to his side. “And so are we, my young padawan.” 

“Mom’s gonna kill you if you were smoking pot in the house again,” she answered, trying to shrug him off. 

“I wasn’t smoking pot,” he answered, dropping his hold on her. “There is half a plate of Millie’s famous little treats in the kitchen though.” 

Millie Thompson…their 74-year-old neighbor. Prize-winning baker and notorious neighborhood pothead. Her pot brownies were famous and famously strong as hell. 

“So you are high, then?” Maggie asked, turning from her brother as the life force swiftly departed from the Halloween display across the street, the porch light suddenly winking out and the inflatable ghost shrinking to the ground almost as if their neighbor had been just waiting for the clock to strike 9:01 pm so they could close up shop. 

“I already told you, the only thing I’m high on right now is life. Kelly and Sybil are already passed out though” he added, nodding back towards the house. “Seems they had their fun.”

“Unbelievable,” Maggie said, remembering now that their mother had been more giggly than normal when she had popped her head out to check on them about an hour before. “It’s almost like we’re the old ones and they’re the rowdy kids.”

Ben shrugged. “The night is young,” he said, echoing his earlier sentiment. Maggie just shook her head. 

“No,” she said. “No way. Last time I had a pot brownie I…” Ben watched his sister with rapt attention, hanging on her every word. “What?” she hissed at the extra attention. 

“Nothing.” Ben shrugged, but a smile was etched across his face, a devilish glint in his eye. “Just surprised to learn my kid sister is a pothead.” 

Maggie pulled the bowl of candies into her lap, digging through for a package of Reese's cups. “I’m not a pothead…and I’m not your kid sister anymore either.”

Ben let out a laugh. “I know you’re not. My kid sister wouldn’t be so miserable about passing out candy with her favorite brother.” 

Maggie thought about making some sort of joke. She thought about insisting that Thad or Everett, or even John or Patrick, was her favorite brother, meaning that she’d just have to stay miserable, but there had been some small note of hurt in Ben’s voice as he said it, just a hint of it stashed behind the teasing. And Maggie didn’t quite have it in her.

“I’m not miserable,” she answered, handing him the package, the second peanut butter cup still stashed inside. “I just keep getting all these updates about what my friends are doing and…”

“And hanging out with your big brother is nice, but it’s not college,” he finished for her. “I get it.”

“We were all supposed to be dressing up as Disney Princesses,” she said, a sheepish smile on her face.

Ben snorted, nudging her side. “Not my kid sister anymore, my ass,” he said.

Maggie nudged him back, but didn’t argue. She couldn’t, not when she’d just confessed her costume plans. And not when she knew that to Ben, she’d always be a little bit of his kid sister no matter what. There was nothing she could really do to change that. 

“I guess there is a perk of you not being my kid sister anymore though…We could go to O’Malley’s now…since you’re twenty-one and all…”

“I do still owe you a birthday drink…or two,” he continued though Maggie didn’t need any extra convincing. Every time more than one of the older Stone siblings was home, they usually ended up passing a bit of time at their local hole in the wall. Maggie had never been…had never shared more than a glass of wine at dinner with any of her siblings, but she had heard plenty of stories. 

“Let’s go, then,” she said, standing up to set the bowl inside the front door before grabbing a set of car keys from the ring. They would drive to the bar, but either walk back or take a taxi home. Probably a taxi, considering how chilly it was. Maggie tossed the keys at her brother and Ben hauled himself off the front steps, trailing after her as she headed for the car. 

“You know, I bet Gus is tending bar tonight,” Ben said as he caught up with his sister. “You remember Gus, don’t you? Gus Abbott?” Ben gently nudged her side as he said it. 

Heat bloomed in Maggie’s cheeks at mention Gus. She hadn’t thought about him in years, not since going away for college, at least, but he had been friends with Ben, Thad, and Everett back when she was little. A favorite of hers. Maggie had been enamored with him back then, following the poor guy around whenever he came over to the house to hang out with her brothers. She had always begged him to play with her, casting him as a prince to reenact scenes from Disney movies.

“Maybe you should’ve dug out your old Cinderella costume instead,” Ben said with a wink. 

Maggie shoved her brother’s arm hard enough that he called out, teetering a bit off balance. “Say another word about that and I’ll punch your cardboard head in.”

“Hey, c’mon.” Ben let out a laugh, holding up his arms in surrender. “Be gentle with the box. It’s a family heirloom. Thad will be devastated.” 

Maggie rolled her eyes as she pulled open the car door and slipped into the passenger seat, waiting as Ben removed his infernal headpiece, setting the box gently in the backseat before getting behind the wheel. 

He put the key in the ignition before turning to look at his sister. “You shouldn’t be embarrassed, you know…having a crush on Gus O’Malley is sort of a Stone family tradition.” 

Maggie raised an eyebrow as Ben continued, ticking off on his fingers as he started naming off siblings. 

“You…Susannah…Amy…” Ben turned the key, bringing the engine to life. “Thad…” he continued, reaching over to turn down the music. “Hell, I think I might’ve had a crush on him, too.” 

“Don’t let mom hear you say that.” Maggie snorted. “It’s like her dream come true. You desperately in love with Gus Abbott…settling down right here in Thayer so she could have her perfect son close…” 

Ben nodded, well aware that it probably wasn’t far off from the truth even if Maggie’s words had been tinged by a bit of jealousy. Sybil Stone loved all of her children, but they all knew there was something special about the boys.

“You know, I never said I was in love with Gus...” Ben offered as they pulled into the parking lot. “But he always was a pretty handsome dude. No denying that," he added, nodding towards the front window of the bar and the unassuming man in flannel stationed behind the bar. 

"And look at that, you two match," Ben added. "A flannel-wearing pair of love birds," he said, pinching at the red and black checkered material on his sister's arm.

"You know this is your shirt, right?" Maggie asked. "I took it from your room."

Maggie couldn’t help but burst into a fit of giggles, Ben’s laughter charging right along after. It took six and a half minutes before the siblings could compose themselves well enough to make their way into the bar and really begin their night.

Poor Gus didn't have the slightest idea of the kind of nonsense he was in for.

The Family Stone Masterlist

[rose-the-witch1]

i got bored and made gemsonas out of two mage stones because my mc is just my self insert version of steven universe. anyway the left one is maggie and the right one is maverick

[the-girl-who-cheated-death]

SHE reminds me of FLOWER CROWNS, FRESHLY PICKED STRAWBERRIES, CHUNKY KNIT SWEATERS, and WARM MUGS OF TEA, HANDWRITTEN NOTES, THE SCENT OF VANILLA, GIANT BOOKSHELVES, LIGHT BROWN HAIR PULLED PACK WITH A RIBBON, PALE PINK NAILPOLISH, JEAN JACKETS, PENCIL BEHIND THE EAR, BUTTERFLY WINGS, RAINBOWS, CANDY, HOPEFUL EYES. POLAROIDS, and COMIC BOOKS, PINS, PLEATED SKIRTS, WORN-OUT CONVERSES, and BIG TOOTHY GRINS, BIG CIRCLE THICK-RIMMED GLASSES, TURTLENECKS, KNEE-HIGH SOCKS, HOT SUMMER DAYS, SWEET ICED TEA, AND DANCING IN HER KITCHEN LATE AT NIGHT, SUNSHINE and, SCRAPED KNEES,

[leverage-ot3]

side characters that are invited to the ot3 wedding, in no particular order:

nana hardison

jim sterling

archie (blegh. we accept him for parker’s sake)

todd mcsweeten

the rest of the hardison family

tara cole

billy spencer

astrid pickford

jacob stone (eliot’s twin)

alex walker (eliot’s other twin) (they are triplets)

kai and ernesto (alex’s partners)

maggie collins

quinn

jack hurley

actually, any leverage international member that wants to come and is available (I’m thinking lee tae joon’s crew)

cassandra and ezekiel (ezekiel is on thin ice. he and parker have a thief rivalry that has been going on for years. frenemies!!!)

paul orozco

colonel vance

mikel dyan

olivia sterling

shelly (from the boys night out job)

edit: people I have been told I forgot

agent taggert

peggy

cheryl from the mile high job (she and hardison continued to be WoW buddies. she is bisexual because I said so and is a queer gaming elder to breanna that breanna totally doesn’t have a crush on)

patrick bonanno

[witchofthemidlands]

DOCTOR WHO || The Waters Of Mars

that one time on doctor who when a gardener got decimated by a washed carrot

[hermioneigrangers]

Harry Potter And The Sorcerer’s Stone: Portraits (2001)

[ancientstone]

nina and maggie are so funny. they go from expecting a boring meeting to a pride and prejudice ball to then spending an entire night fending off hellish eldritch monsters with encyclopedias, then meet the "good guys" who instantly want to turn them into pillars of salt. they escape all of that but decide to return literally ten minutes later to tell the demon he's in love

[musicalchaos07]

SORRY I AM THINKING ABOUT NANCY SAYING COPY/PASTE FOR HER AND JONATHAN'S DAUGHTER AGAIN AND IIIII

[avelera]

Weird confession time but I am, personally, absolutely terrible at visual aesthetics. Not just terrible, actually, but actively phobic about some things.

Fashion? I do not understand it. At all. I can sometimes manage a level of excitement if I can connect it with my historical knowledge or relate it to a certain type of story or character. That's pretty much my limit. I was so disinterested in fashion growing up that it almost became something of a phobia to discuss it, I felt like an alien when other kids got excited about certain outfits or the aesthetics of matching colors or what goes together. I want to look like a certain fictional or historical person. That's about all I can manage. Not understanding the pleasures of fashion has been a major point of awkwardness for me.

Likewise, a lot of visual art stuff doesn't make a ton of sense to me. I like putting characters in situations. I like emotion. And I like historical eras and stories and recreating those within an artistic space. But art or aesthetics for its own sake, unrelated to a narrative or a practical function of some sort? Absolutely do not know how to tell up from down or what's going on or what anyone is getting out of this.

This tends to come up when people, really lovely people, want to chat with me about the aesthetics of my stories and I just. Do not know what to do.

For example, when I was writing "Prayers to Broken Stone" about Thorin turning into a dragon, it was always about how dragons represented Thorin's deepest, darkest fears, because a dragon's avarice destroyed his life and becoming a dragon would be the deepest fear and shame for him. But I appreciate that dragons are cool! Dragons being cool added some pretty cool sparks to the narrative, made for nifty visual imagery as it related to the story! But people, really really lovely people who loved dragons would come to me and want to talk about dragons, rather reasonably thinking I was into dragons because of the 104,000 word fic I wrote about a guy turning into a dragon, I was at a loss. I could listen to them talk about what PTBS did for them and their love of dragons, I'd love to listen to such a monologue, but I had no dialogue to offer. The specifics and the aesthetics of Thorin being a dragon never mattered to me. It could have been a frog for all I cared. It was about the, "Oh god, what have I become?" moment, not the aesthetics of that the thing the character has become is.

The same has sort of happened with "Come live with me" with Dream being forced to pass as a woman in the Regency era. I picked the Regency because I needed a time period long enough after 1789 that we could reasonably believe that Hob has made some serious amends for the "shipping" business, because I didn't want to write him as a romantic lead if he hadn't done that yet and it needed to be a reasonably long span for the depths of his crimes there. Regency just has a lot of info about it so it made sense to pick fro research purposes. Dream being a woman, specifically, was because the restrictions placed on women of the Regency era run directly counter to all of Dream's instincts. He's terrible at navigating social situations. He might be polite sometimes but usually only when it's a moment without conflict and he's terrible at not being blunt to the point of rudeness if someone crosses him. He's terrible at lowering himself to human concerns. In a world where messing up a social situation can have terrible ramifications for one's life, he is at a complete loss and his instincts can land him in actual trouble if he doesn't have his power to fall back on.

The story was never about Dream being a woman for the positive aesthetics of it, it was about being a woman as the obstacles best suited to basically force Dream to navigate the most difficult maze possible for his personality type.

So when people, really really lovely people, want to talk "Dream as a woman" aesthetics or "here's a pretty Regency dress!" or "here's a dress Dream would look great in!" I can appreciate that they are nice! The people and the items! But I don't actually know what to respond with. I'd love to hear that person monologue about what this means to them but I'm basically an alien sitting there, very awkwardly feeling like a bad person because I can't match the enthusiasm. I don't know how to respond or what to do with it. Because the dresses and femininity were always just window dressing to the story, plot, and character.

Anyway, I want to be clear this isn't meant to make anyone feel bad or feel like they can't come to me to talk about aesthetics from my stories that excited them! If anything, I want to encourage that! Just... as a monologue, not a dialogue. Because I know it comes out of politeness to want to be excited with me about those things. And it makes perfect sense that since I've written tens of thousands of words about a certain aesthetic, that I might enjoy it too! But what I enjoy there is what it means to others and if it involves fashion or visual art and I'm expected to have an opinion, I might have to go off after and breathe into a paper bag for a bit because "oh no, middle school flashbacks" around my own art and fashion blindness my crop up ^^;; So really this is an apology that I can't always match people and I feel really bad about it lol

[favorite-characters]

ℍ𝕒𝕣𝕣𝕪 ℙ𝕠𝕥𝕥𝕖𝕣 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕥𝕙𝕖 ℙ𝕙𝕚𝕝𝕠𝕤𝕠𝕡𝕙𝕖𝕣’𝕤 𝕊𝕥𝕠𝕟𝕖

Maggie Smith as ᴍɪɴᴇʀᴠᴀ ᴍᴄɢᴏɴᴀɢᴀʟʟ (dir. Chris Columbus • 2001)

[hb-writes]

This tiktok screenshot is all of my OCs about their siblings.

[dyke-a-saur-writes]

(I ADORE tumblr because only on here have i had a user dm me to rave about a comment i left on their junker queen post and then after a long exchange on here exchange discords with me so we can rave about her writing)

(I like Twitter because we can have a similar-ish experience, but it stays in the replies and stops after 7+ tweets)

Anyways, STOP SAYING JQ AND MAD MAGGIE ARE THE SAME. They may have similar aesthetics and designs but wildly different arcs.

As previously explained, Mad Maggie is Māori New Zealander, which is super specific to her story and informs her character greatly. Junker Queen is a tan Australian with her skin color having very little influence on her story outside of showing she’s been in the sun a lot. (Personally I head-canon her as a mixed First Nations woman but that’s neither here nor there).

Both characters have their own writing flaws and virtues but that’s more a reflection of the writing team and there’s gold if you know where to look.

Mad Maggie is amazing. I’ve seen fans write her off as “crazy for the sake of crazy”. Which is just… so wrong?

Margarita Kohere’s madness is a duly faceted. She holds real, burning rage at the occupation of her homeland, and the one person who claimed to stand by her who left to seek his own dreams of glory. And her mental state is reflective of the trauma she’s endured from said occupation. She’s had to be tough as nails and even bloodthirsty to secure the autonomy and freedom of her people and do things that are morally dubious. She isn’t deranged for shits and giggles, she’s traumatized and aggressive to achieve what she views as liberation in a system determined to paint her as a villain as they takeover her home and brutalize her people. It’s there for a reason and integral to who she is.

On Junker Queen’s end she’s so cool. But there’s fans who write her off as a “dumb jock muscle mommy” which is also so wrong?! Like where are you people getting these?

(It’s the voice lines, I blame the voice lines)

Odessa Stone is aggressive yes, and her voice lines in game seem somewhat childish, but not even those reflect an unintelligent she-brute. The tough-as-nails attitude, similar to Maggie, is a product of her environment. In the Wastelands, might makes right and keeping your place in that hierarchy relies on having a level of physical superiority that can be enforced. She learned this lesson young being kicked out her home at a very young age and (presumably) losing her entire family to the radiated desert sands. Someone like that grows to understand how valuable power and the numbers to back it up is. Especially in her WL short, she is shown to be intelligent, empathetic, and a team player. The people of Junkertown lover her for a reason. She spared the lives of the former king’s lackeys and even took a hit to the face for one of them. In the art at the end, she’s shown to bring not only order, but stability and prosperity to Junkertown. She doesn’t hold herself apart from the other junkers but exercises her authority when/where its needed. She’s shown to have a great knack and intelligence for battle (as seen in her LoJQ short and the WL short) where she’s taken on a ridiculous amount of rogue omnics and slaughtered them, while utilizing non-lethal force against her human opponents in the reckoning. She’s not even remotely stupid or particularly bloodthirsty and the throwaway line about making widows and not eating her veggies got y’all fucked up.

(Honestly a bigger part of the problem is overwatch not letting their “heroes” kill in their shorts, and she’d been allowed to, she’d have been consistent at the very least from short to game but i digress.)

Overall, they not the same, neither of them suck, and they’d probably be besties if they knew each other irl. PERIOD.

[the-girl-who-cheated-death]

[watchingmoviesandshit]

V/H/S/99 (2022)

[witchofthemidlands]

DOCTOR WHO || The Waters Of Mars

"The Doctor followed close on her heels. Whatever was waiting for them in the biodome, it couldn't stop him marvelling at the result of Andy & Maggie's work. Andy & Maggie. They did all of this in seventeen months"

[thekylemeredith]

This week on Kyle Meredith With..., my guests are Il Divo's David Miller, #impracticaljokers' Joe Gatto, #ThompsonTwins' Tom Bailey, & comedian Modi!

And on 91.9 WFPK, I'm hanging with Maggie Lindemann, Skeet Ulrich, Beth Ditto, #PearlJam's Stone Gossard, & #QotSA's Josh Homme