#really just his mom

[aknosde]

standing through

Steve Harrington & Steve Harrington’s Mother // Steve Harrington & Everyone // (everyone being the s4 hawkins crew) // Angst with a Happy Ending // Injury // Not Canon Compliant // takes place in that two day time skip and eddies alive and max isn’t comatose bc i like them too much // Mother-Son Relationship (a v complicated one) // based on this post // 5k

ao3

—————

The gist of it is that Nancy looked at Steve.

At their poor rendezvous spot in the woods, halfway between Eddie’s trailer and Vecna’s house, Robin and Eddie look at him and Nancy and say, “We can handle the kids, but you guys are the only ones with enough experience to tell us what to do next.” Steve thinks experience is overrated. Steve thinks if anything has changed since he was sixteen, preparing to apologize to Jonathan Byers at his front door and taking Nancy Wheeler’s bat instead, his proficiency in planning for the apocalypse is not what has improved. The bat is in his hand, three years later.

“Okay,” is what Nancy says, and Robin and Eddie go to check on the kids—Lucas had carried Max all the way here, and he has one hand in Erica’s hair and the other wrapped around Max’s back, keeping her from tipping over with Dustin on her other side. Together they look like puppies discarded in the rain.

Nancy leads him a little ways away, to a tree, and Steve leans his weight against it and pretends his hand is on his hip because he needs a place to put it and not because he’s holding hoping it will keep all of his guts from spilling out. It’s standing here with Nancy Wheeler, the two of them the only pseudo-adults of this posse that have been here since the beginning, that she looks at him. Expectantly. Which, all things considered, makes not even a lick of sense. Nancy just shot Vecna with a shotgun. Steve got swallowed by watergate and has approximately a gallon of demobat venom coursing through him.

“Why are you looking at me,” he asks. He’s not even a hundred percent sure she is looking at him, at first. It’s dark out, and his vision is doing this thing he remembers from the Russians where it gets all blurry around the edges. But her face is supposedly turned in his direction.  

“You’re the babysitter.”

Steve blinks.

“Look,” Nancy says, and that’s the pointificating voice that taught him the word pontificate. “You have more experience with the kids in situations like these. You’ve spent more time with them. You know them better.”

“Bullshit, you’ve known them longer.”

“I know you don’t have siblings, Steve, but I have to tell you that I don’t spend a lot of time with my brother’s friends on purpose. They’re great kids, but I have my own friends.”

“Rude.”

“You’re one of them, asshole,” she says, punching him gently in the shoulder.

He rubs the spot dramatically, but instead of making Nancy roll her eyes it makes her features soften with concern. He waves her off, despite that the motion pulls on the bites.

“So?”

“Alright, give me a moment to think about it,” he says. The mood has lightened some, but standing face to face like this with Nancy—the smartest person he knows, who has just given him full authority over a gaggle of children and three other teenagers—is a little intimidating. He feels like she can look through him. With how well she knows him, she could probably get through his skin, if not to his heart.  Steve wipes his hands on his bloodstained jeans nervously and looks over her shoulder.

Eddie has managed to pull Erica and Dustin away from Max, and now is watching Erica demonstrate a hand game with Dustin that Steve vaguely recognizes from being in third grade and sitting against Hawkins Elementary’s chain link fence, waiting for his dad to pick him up. Eddie was not so successful with Lucas. He’s pacing behind Max, who is sitting up of her own accord now and speaking with Robin, crouched in front of her. Her walkman has been crushed, but no one appears to be worried about it. Blood has crusted beneath her eyes, down her face. She looks ready to keel over any second. Steve feels ready to keel over any second.

“My house.”

“What?” Nancy asks, but he’s too tired to really explain himself.

“Let’s go.”

-

All things considered, this is one of the better ideas Steve has had in times like these. They have to walk to his house due to Eddie’s continued status as a suspected murderer and the fact that half of Hawkins’ road have been ripped to shed by a supernatural earthquake, but they make it there, and that’s all that really matters. He wants to keep everyone together, no matter how much the kids’ parents would probably prefer to have them home. From experience, and he’ll welcome it here, the first nights pass better in a group.

He’s lost his keys, but it doesn’t really matter. If Steve hopped the back fence and broke the glass doors in the dining room to get inside his parents wouldn’t ever know, and if Eddie Munson unclips a safety pin from the vest Steve is still wearing and picks the front door’s lock, they wouldn’t know that either.

Once inside, he gives directions and then puts the house in Robin’s care.

Eddie, who has been supporting roughly three-quarters of Steve’s weight since they crossed Clover’s Creek and who whistled rather loudly as they entered the house, sets Steve down on one of the dining room chairs and begins poking around. Lucas wanders in circles around Max’s spot on Steve’s couch, looking out at the pool, and Erica joins Eddie in both looking through a shelf of records and criticizing Steve and his parents’ taste in music. Dustin is the only one of the kids who has spent any time in Steve’s house—Steve doesn’t like to be here, when he can help it. Living alone was nice until he realized the house was so imbued with his parents that it makes it difficult to relax anywhere that’s not his room. The only reason he does spend so much time here is because Robin prefers it to her house, where by the nature of her parents’ near constant presence they can’t speak freely.

Robin takes authority over the household with her typical manic energy, seemingly elated to be doing more than trudge through the woods and helping Lucas carry Max. She puts Nancy in charge of cleaning up Lucas’ face in the downstairs bathroom, leaves Dusin to take Erica into the kitchen and find snacks and water, and busies herself with collecting every spare mattress, blanket, and pillow in Steve’s living room. Steve instructs everyone to call their parents and tell them they’re safe.

He wonders, for a moment, if he should do the same, but realizes it’s extremely unlikely that his parents have any idea something has happened in Hawkins from their hotel in Nevada. Or maybe it’s New Hampshire. Either way, if they find out he’s hurt, his father will have a way to spin it into being Steve’s own fault and they’ll come home and then Steve’ll have to watch his mother over his father’s shoulder while he’s being chewed out, with that concerned expression of hers and the way she tightly clasps her hands in front of her and never says a thing. Steve has long since expected anyone to stand up for him, but it still stings watching his mother.

When Nancy has ushered all of the kids into bed—fed and hydrated, if not clean—and Eddie has closed the blinds and turned a lamp on, Robin pulls Steve into the vacated downstairs bathroom and removes the piece of Nancy’s shirt that has been keeping him together for over a day and goes through the process of disinfecting—instructions she had received earlier courtesy of Max and her experience in skateboarding wipeouts. Steve bites his tongue and hisses through his teeth as she does it, focusing not on the venom dripping out of him but Eddie, who is pacing up and down the length of the hallway, checking on the kids and Nancy asleep in the living room and watching Robin work on Steve.

Steve doesn’t remember sleeping the first night that winter three years ago. He remembers Robin calling him last summer, three in the morning and she couldn’t sleep alone so he snuck into her room and slept on her carpet, leaves from the bush outside her window stuck in his hair. He remembers the winter before that, Billy Hargrove and contaminant inhalation putting him in the hospital overnight, Hopper coming in from checking on Will and falling asleep in the chair next to Steve’s bed.

He tells Eddie to claim a spot before Robin gets out there, she'll hog the blankets, and when Robin finishes he tells her to go ahead without him, he can stand on his own, and when he joins them all in the living room he finds them all asleep.

In the light of the pool, fitting through the blinds, and the lamp they all agreed was better left turned on, he can see that Robin has collapsed face first on a duvet between Nancy and Erica; Lucas has finally left Max’s side, curling protectively around his sister, who is curling towards him in turn. To Lucas’ back is Dustin, spread starfish with a foot sticking out from under the knitted blanket he’s sharing with Lucas and nearly jammed in Eddie’s stomach.

Steve grabs his bat off the kitchen counter, shrugs back into Eddie’s vest, and takes a seat on the floor, leaning his back against the base of the couch, giving himself a direct line of sight to the front door. He reaches across the couch, finds Max’s pulse steady, tips his head back, and falls asleep.

—————

He’s not quite sure why he wakes up when he does.

His house is quiet, just the sound of air pushing through the vents and the gentle lapping of water against the pool filter, and still. Light is filtering paley through the blinds and the window over the kitchen sink, tinting everything in blues and greys. He’s barely moved since falling asleep; the only changes being Eddie, who must have shifted to give Dustin more room and now has his legs thrown over Steve’s lap, and Max, who is clinging to the arm Steve must have left on the couch after making sure her heart was still doing the pumping blood through her body thing. He looks down to confirm his bat is still in his hand.

It’s on his way to tip his head back up and hopefully fall asleep again that he hees her.

Standing upon the precipice to the living room, Margaret Harrington, coat on and hat in place, drops her coordinating leather handbag to the floor.

Sometimes it feels as if all Steve has done in his life is stand through shockwaves. He is no stranger to them, in theory or in actuality. Steve stayed on his feet through his grandfather’s death, through his parents’ fights, through his breakup with Nancy and the social ramifications therein. Not twelve hours ago he felt Vecna’s earthquakes ripple through this town. Now, the sound of his mother’s purse, leather on tile, ripples through him like an alarm.

Apparently, he’s not the only one.

“I’m up, I’m up,” Robin shouts, jerking to her knees and rubbing her face groggily. It works out for her for about two seconds before she loses her balance and sends her arms fumbling for purchase. The purchase she finds is Erica’s hair.

Steve remembers learning about Rube Goldberg machines in school. Whether it was in middle or high school, he doesn’t know. With a gun to his head he wouldn’t be able to say what class he studied them in. But he knows enough about them to know one when he sees it, and he also knows enough about them to say that what is unfolding in front of him is ten times more amusing—and appalling, considering his mother’s presence—than watching a VHS tape in class.

Erica, still curled towards her brother’s chest, cries out and moves to push Robin’s hand away. Unfortunately, she can’t exactly turn over with Robin on her hair, and instead she slaps Lucas. Lucas calls, “Hey!” immediately, but in his attempt at retribution Erica pushes him into Dustin, who kicks out. This wouldn’t be much of a problem if Eddie was still in his original spot, where he probably would have been kicked in the shin, but due to his shift he actually ends up being kicked in the face. Steve, who has been awoken by Robin kicking him in the face on several occasions, both sympathizes and anticipates the way Eddie jerks into sitting. What he does not anticipate is the way Eddie doing so yanks on his arm, irritating the burn on the back of his bicep and pulling his hand from Max’s grip. She grumbles and sits up, rubbing her eyes.

“Mom,” Steve chokes out, the only thought in his head, it’s too early for her to be home, playing on repeat.

“Oh shit,” Lucas says.

“Mrs. Harrington,” Nancy greets, sickly sweet and in a manner matching the all As, goody-two-shoes persona of her freshman and sophomore years. She, rather predictably, was not woken up due to bodily harm, and looks miraculously fresh-faced in the light of a new day.

“Nancy,” his mother responds in a tone that implies that she would purse her lips while speaking if she could. His mother has always liked Nancy, or at least she liked Nancy on the two occasions they met; the tone is for him.

“Watch your language, young man,” she says to Lucas, who has stood up at some point.

He nods seriously and says, “Yes ma’am,” before turning wide eyes towards Steve. Everyone has wide eye, split between Steve and his mom. It makes him feel like he has been pushed into some sort of arena for an unknown sport, and all of his friends are afraid of seeing him torn to pieces.

“Hi, Mom,” Steve tries again.

His mother turns her gaze from Robin, who had been awkwardly waving at her, back to Steve.

The last time they made eye contact so pointedly, Steve remembers vividly, was when they came home for his graduation. It was also their first trip home since he told them he didn’t get into college. She had looked him in the eye right as his father had begun a lecture that had definitely leaned towards yelling, volume wise. Her own silent way of saying, you earned this.  

Steve has always been closer to his mom than his dad; she made him sandwiches when he was too short to reach the counter and tucked him into bed after nightmares and comforted him after big fights with Tommy. Even now, following his father on business trips, she calls every other week, asks about work and his friends, and comes home once a month to see him. But, when it comes down to it, she is his father’s wife, and no matter how many times they fight, or his father cheats, she will always be his father’s wife.

Looking at each other then, eyes meeting over his father’s back, was probably the last time they made eye contact, period. He can’t tell if it’s good or bad that he remembers it so clearly.

“Steve,” she says in the voice that means she’s actually saying Steven, but hasn’t gotten to the point where she’ll call him by his full name in company. “Are you going to stand up and tell me what’s going on?”

“Yeah, of course.”

Steve has never had much of an understanding for his parents’ obsession with standing in the face of adversity. When beaten, shamed, or admonished, Steve’s greatest desire has always been to curl up in bed with the TV on until the rest of the world becomes nothing more than a fuzzy grey static. He spent a considerable number of nights doing just that when he was younger; whether it was because of a lost game or meet, a bad test grade, or his parents shouting downstairs. The only time it has ever made sense to him is in the middle of a fight; no matter how many times he gets knocked down he does his best to stand right back up. Steve may not win many fights, but he’s nearly always the last person standing tall. It’s a more literal interpretation of adversity than his parents mean—what his father really wants is to be able to lay into Steve and make him internalize it all until he’s miraculously successful—but it’s all Steve’s got.

So, despite that there is nothing Steve wants to do less—even with antibacterial gel and more tylenol than he should probably be taking, he is roughly eighty percent certain that he will list over if he get up in any manner or speed that can be considered normal—he takes the arm Max had been clinging to in her sleep, sets it against the frame of the couch, and, bat still in hand, makes his way to his feet. You’ve always had a thing for beating odds, Hopper told him once. He used to come to Steve’s basketball games when the nights were slow, apparently. Probably has been to more games than Steve’s parents.  

It’s only when standing three feet away from her that his mother finally lets her gaze solidify on him, her expression change. It’s an easy face to identify: inspective. He doubts he’s spent a single day in her company without seeing it directed at one thing or another. Even the way her eyes dart around him is familiar; he can feel her picking and tucking at parts of himself. His shoes, beaten to hell and back; his jeans, stained by mud and blood; Eddie’s vest, riddled with hand sewn patches. She skips over the bandages, he knows. Very few injuries he sustains are not his fault, in his parents’ eyes. The bat, he thinks, dried guts and goo stuck on the nails, is the final straw.

“What,” she says slowly, eyes quickly snapping to his grimey face, “have you been doing?”

“I–” he starts, only to be silenced by the hand his mother holds up. It’s a good thing too, because he has no idea how he’s supposed to answer that. The government has always established the cover story before he gets anywhere near having to relay it to his parents.

“Not here. We’ll do this…” she looks pointedly around the room, “… privately. Outside.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says. There haven’t been many times in his life that he’s felt the need to speak to her in the way he’s begun to speak to his father over the years—carefully, and shaped with a false if hardy respect—but he feels it now. “I’ll be there in a minute,” he tells her back, already headed out of the sliding glass doors and into the backyard.

“Holy shit,” Dustin says, loudly, the moment the door closes behind her.

“Keep your goddamned voice down,” Steve says, digging a thumb into his temple as if that will suddenly give him a perfect explanation for carrying around a bat full of nails and seven strangers sleeping in the Harrignton house.

“No, no, he’s right,” Max says. He’d be annoyed with her if this wasn’t the most alive she’s sounded in months. “Holy shit, that was your mom.”

“I know.”

“She’s nice,” Eddie says, tone clearly indicating something else.

“I know that too.”

“Are you… alright? What do you need?” Robin asks, and instead of answering her, Steve rests his forehead on her shoulder and groans. She moves one of her arms around his back and settles her other hand at the nape of his neck. A hug, he realizes too late to return it. It’s comforting, nonetheless. Miraculously he finds himself able to think properly for the first time since he woke up. Robin truly is magnificent.

“A shirt,” he says after a moment.

“What?”

Steve pulls out of her embrace and takes a step back. If movement didn’t tug at his demobat bites and exacerbate their ache he would pace. Nancy always hated it when they studied together, said he’d never learn the material if he couldn’t sit down and read the book. Robin reads novels while walking loops around Family Video. Steve thinks best on his feet.

“I need a shirt,” he says, “and a good excuse.”

-

Stepping outside, Steve is sure his mother has decided to set their conversation here because of how deeply she knows he hates the backyard. In the late winter months of 1983, which his parents had spent mostly at home due to Steve’s recent run in with the law, he had begged them to get the pool filled in. They said that Barbra Holland had gone missing from it, she hadn’t been killed in it. She had, of course, been killed in it, but his parents didn’t know that. Since that winter, sending Steve into the backyard has been one of his father’s favorite punishments. Especially with company over—what self respecting teenager would hate getting out of a party full of stuffy adults? His mother hasn’t done it until now, though. Maybe it’s just because she wants to smoke.

Crossing the patio, Steve has, in no particular order: a fresh shirt courtesy of Robin, advice on lying courtesy of Eddie, and a promise of pancakes from Max, who looked far too empathetic for a fourteen year old. He has also left his bat inside. Hopefully his mom will forget about it.

“Steve.”

She’s taken her coat off, folded it and draped it on the back of a deck chair. Her purse and hat sit, placed carefully, on the dusty glass surface of the outdoor table. She looks too clean against the backdrop of the backyard in her matching plaid skirt and sweater.

“Ma’am,” he greets.

“Mind telling me who I just met?”

Speaking with his parents has always felt like participating in a tennis tournament wherein every match he finds himself the receiver. The ways in which being receiver puts him at a disadvantage varies. Sometimes, he finds himself playing doubles without a partner. Sometimes, he finds himself in an unconventional three-way singles match. Sometimes, he finds himself playing one v. one. Whichever it is, it’s better over the phone, and whichever it is, it’s easier when he hasn’t disappointed them.

So, regardless of the distaste for his friends his mother has expressed in the ten or so minutes he’s been awake, and remembering Eddie’s advice, he says, “Of course,” and does as she asks, praying she hasn’t seen Eddie’s picture on TV.

When he’s done, his mother takes a drag of her cigarette and puts her smoking arm at rest in a way that makes her appear as if she’s made of nothing but angles.

“I never understood your fascination with that Buckley girl.”

“I never understood why you can’t remember her name is Robin, given how much I talk about her,” he snaps. Her sharp, ageless eyes meet his, and suddenly Steve doesn’t need to recall the feeling of cowering under her glare, he’s living it. “Sorry, ma’am.”

His mother hums, looks out at the pool, takes another drag.

“There are certain things I trust you with, Steve,” she says after a moment, turning back to face him. The inflection of her voice is cool and clear, pointed and sharp. It’s one he can only attach to a single memory: being six years old and clutching her skirt in his father’s office as she spoke to his secretary, who he’d never seen again. He doesn’t much like being on the receiving end of it.

“In fact,” she continues, “there are certain important things I have been entrusting to you for quite a long time. There are not a lot of things in this town I take seriously. It’s women for one. It’s police for another.

“The one thing ,” she says, taking a step forward and using her cigarette to emphasize her words, “I have always taken seriously here”—another step—“is our reputation. Your father may have had money, but I made us The Harringtons. I put the capital T in ‘the,’ and I worked my ass off to do it

“That” —she rests her index finger on his sternum, lit cigarette only an inch away from singeing his shirt— “is what I entrusted to you.

“And I was right to do so,” she says, taking a step away again. Steve exhales. “At least I was until last year. So, you’re going to tell me what the hell seven strangers, only three of whom come from respectable backgrounds, are doing in my house. And what clothes you were wearing when I walked in. And then I’ll decide what I’m going to do about it.”

Her voice settles like the smooth surface of the pool, leaving him feeling like a drowned man standing shakily in the cool air with how much she has given and taken from him in the past minute. In all of his fights with and between his parents there has never been a lack of heat. There has never been an I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed. For every accusation of infidelity or expensive shopping habits or drug use, there have always been shouts fired off like cannons and someone stomping up the stairs and bedroom doors banging shut. The emotions don’t exist separately for his parents, and maybe not for him either. That might be why her claims burn him. She’s poured and drained her trust in and out of him, and it pierces like a lance.

“I was out,” he says. He’s clinging to Eddie’s advice—Just stick as close to the truth as possible, Harrington—with all he’s got, but that doesn’t stop the words from feeling numb on his tongue in the way they only do when he’s trying to stop a fight with his parents before it starts and ends up making everything worse. “I was out,” he repeats, “during the earthquake. I was with Nancy and Robin by the lake when it started. We ran to higher ground, through the forest, which is where we bumped into the kids and Eddie. We decided to stick together so no one got lost. It was late, some of us were hurt, so I offered to let them spend the night.”

He doesn’t know if it’s the measured, near toneless way he’s speaking, or the fact that he’s created a story so simple, with nothing more to protest than generosity, but his mother appears appeased. She nods slowly as he talks and when he’s finished she puts her cigarette out.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call and ask first,” he adds. It’s meaningless. His father doesn’t care about his day to day life as long as he’s not attracting the wrong type of attention and his mother only cares enough to call twice a month. It’s been this way since he was twelve. His parents never expect him to check in, and not in the least because they move hotels every week. His mother nods again.

“And the clothes?”

“What?”

She gestures to his pants, ripped in places and imbued with dirt and blood. “The clothes you were wearing.”

This, he thinks, is what she really cares about. He puts effort into his appearance, to the point that his friends will tease him about it and to the point that people in school would talk about, but compared to his mother he might as well roll out of bed ten minutes before he leaves and grab the closest clothes off the floor. Where she’s always been his guide, she and her concern over image have always made his biggest critic.

He grits out an explanation of falling debris and the kids being hurt, hiking through mud and rubble and slipping. When he tells her about Max walking through brambles and a falling branch hitting Lucas in the face he doesn’t include an excuse for the bandages around his stomach and he doesn’t know why besides the thing in his heart that tells him to do it, that begs her to call him out.

She doesn’t but she does nod, say, “Alright,” pat his cheek, assure him she won't call his father and light another cigarette. Her tone has changed to something more normal, the voice he hears on the other side of the phone, and besides the fact that they’re standing out on the patio it begins to feel like one of her normal visits.

“I heard they’re doing emergency relief at the middle school, so I’m going to go over,” she says, collecting her belongings. “Throw those jeans out and clean up the house, will you?”

“Yeah, mom.”

She smiles, then, and it makes him wonder if she actually likes being called “ma’am” when she’s angry or if he just does it because of his dad.

He trails her on her way through the house and to the front door, spots Erica spread out on the couch with Max, who is shouting directions for pancakes to Dustin and the others in the kitchen. His mother pays them no mind, and he wonders if she's doing it for her own sake or for his. He watches from the lawn as she enters the garage, pulls the Mercedes down the driveway. The grass is wet with dew and it soaks into his socks, yet somehow it feels warmer than the backyard. The sun is climbing in the sky, and the clouds around it are beginning to drift away, and he's still standing.

“Mom,” he says, when she’s shifting the car out of reverse. “Why did you come home?”

She purses her lips for a moment, and he thinks he won’t get an answer before she drives away, but she stops at the curb.

“Our image Steve,” she says, and then, as she steps on the gas, “Make sure you go to the hospital.”

[beybuniki]

they should go on a fishing trip pt.1

[chloesimaginationthings]

Michael Afton let his FNAF trauma slip again…

[suiheisen]

you think YOU had a bad day at work?

bonus: sid shrieking "no!!!! NO!!!!!" loud enough to be heard in the stands and on camera

[gobbogoo]

Who Is Scout's Ma?

She's a character we know extremely little about, however when you stop to consider the IMPLICATIONS of what little we DO know, things start to get interesting:

1. She lives in the roughest part of Boston ("if you were from where I was from, you'd be dead") but dresses quite elegantly.

2. She had 8 boys, all of whom she raised BY HERSELF, and yet somehow she finds the time to maintain this impeccable appearance.

3. Scout clearly loves and admires her to a point where it's one of the few things he'll drop his "tough guy" act for, and dialogue in the comics like "Ma's gonna kill me if she finds out" implies he also still fears her disapproval, despite being a fully autonomous adult.

4. Spy, despite what he likes to pretend, is clearly head-over-heels for her. He even had her likeness engraved on his fanciest gun! (Note the distinct hairband & hoop earrings) For a man who avoids attachment to the point where he never lets anyone see his face, that's an unusual degree of infatuation.

5. None of Scout's brothers left Boston while he was growing up, despite a few of them presumably being adults by then. Not only this, they were still all getting into fights together, implying they were both continuing to live with or near their mother and brothers, AND had reasons to brawl with others beyond just some adolescent street scuffle.

My Theory:

Scout's Ma is the matriarch of a Boston-based crime family.

It explains her elegant appearance, how she and Spy were able to meet, why their bond clearly goes beyond a one-off fling, why she was able to be in Scout's life so much despite the financial burdens of being a single mother of 8, and why all of said 8 were continuing to get into fights with other locals. They weren't just some street gang, they were enforcers. It also explains why/how Scout got into mercenary work, his many mafia-themed weapons, and why he continues to fear her ire even as an adult.

Plus, take a look at this unused angle of the last photo from Meet The Spy:

You'd THINK a single mother from the rough side of Boston wouldn't appear so in-her-element on a fancy date with The Spy, and yet her appearance and demeanour here just SCREAM "confident and in control."

Scout's Ma is Boston's Godmother, and I desperately wish to see someone draw her as such.

[rubydubydoo122]

Robin!Jason, Dying: Honestly, this isn't even the most traumatic thing that has happened to me.

The Joker: Excuse me? this is so traumatic. I'm about to blow you up.

Robin!Jason: I was homeless at 9, a pasty man with a crowbar isn't really that scary compared to the streets of crime alley

[willowser]

HMMMMMM interesting to think about arranged marriage with prince shouto...............

i think he wouldn't know. what to expect with you. i think he'd have an idea, as in, what his father, the king, has taught him; the duties of a wife, where your importance ranks in relation to his duties. what he's not meant to discuss with you, like politics and matters at court and foreign relations. how you will speak to him. what to buy in the event that you become...unhappy. a nuisance.

("and she will," enji had muttered, briefly glancing up from the parchment on his desk to fix shouto with a look he didn't understand. "they always do.")

you don't meet until the royal wedding, when you're coming down the long aisle of the grand cathedral, dressed up in a swathe of silk and lace. a thin, gossamer veil hides you from him, but he can feel the ardor in your eyes, the intensity burning through the material. it doesn't seem real until your bare face is only a breath from his own, until he has to see the earnestness in your stare, too.

your kiss is simple and chaste, nothing spectacular, something that leaves his mind as soon as it's over. ever a todoroki, a hundred other things enter his mind, all regarding his now iron-laid obligations: it's vital he meet with advisor keigo to reiterate the plan to establish his authority among the council; general aizawa is in attendance to the wedding, and shouto has not yet received word on his opinion of the new king's ideas to modernize their armed forces; midoriya is somewhere, no doubt wanting to go over state affairs again.

truthfully, shouto doesn't spend long "celebrating". there's already too much that's required of him, hardly enough time to even scarf down a few bites of the banquet laid out before he's being chartered off into discussions on foreign relations and infrastructure development. maybe once or twice does he look back to check on you, chatting pleasantly with his mother and sister at the front of the great hall, and that's satisfying enough.

it's not until much later that he sees you again; freshly bathed and wearing something sheer and long and white, atop his bed.

or his marriage bed, he must remind himself.

enji didn't spend long going over consummation, with him or either of his brothers—natsuo, red-faced and annoyed at the very subject, always storming off, and touya had seemed well-aware of the process, at the time (back before he'd been ex-communicated). it had sounded simple: strip off your dress, get his cock out and into you, and only retreat once he was sure his seed had been spilled.

—so he's not exactly sure what to do or think or how to feel, when you're laid bare and reaching up to hold his face.

it's so startling that he sits back on his knees, to frown where he's looming over you.

you stare at him quietly, like you're expecting him to say something, and he only has a moment to wonder if this is you becoming an unhappy nuisance—what had been the answer, to solve this, anyway?—before you let out a soft laugh.

"c'mere," you tell him, sitting up, too, when he keeps his distance. "i want you to kiss me."

"i already have."

"yes," you laugh again, amusement glowing in your eyes, like the warmth off the fireplace, as you reach for the ties on his trousers. "but you're meant to do it again."

and up until then, he'd felt confident in his achievements, his executions; he'd managed a lot today, in one evening, and he had a lifetime to manage more. it was a good a start as any, he'd thought, but now—

shouto almost can't get the words out when he feels your hands ghosting up the inside of his shirt, nails tickling over his ribs. "a-am i?"

you wrap your arms around his waist in what could be a hug, scooting forward to look up at him with your chin against his chest. "yes," you smile and—it's familiar in a way, how touya would whenever he was teasing. "you're my husband, you're meant to kiss me whenever i want."

that—was not something his father had ever said, he was sure, and it was a too-rare exchange between his own parents. now that he thinks about it—and he does, then, because he's faced with the reality that he doesn't know as much as he should—he's not sure the former king and queen even sleep in the same room, much less the same bed.

much less hug and touch and even smile, the way you do now.

there's no argument he can make against it, aside from finding keigo to find his father to verify the truth to such a statement, and he's only meant to retreat from this bed on one condition.

and if this is what it takes to meet that—then shouto supposes he'll have to do it, for now. he's a brand new king, after all, and it would seem he still has much to learn.

[drenched-in-sunlight]

Me 2 years ago: i love the bonds the demigods share with each other & some with Radagon/Godfrey/Rennala, but it’s kinda sad no one seems to be particularly insane about Marika :(

Fromsoft pre-heating Messmer in the oven: hey-

this image has changed the trajectory of my life

like, it might not be apparent before but i've never been normal about Marika for one bit... so a demigod with a whole ass giant statue of her cradling a baby in his boss room (also, that's the most LOVING depiction of Marika so far in the entire game) + the first one to outright calling her Mother ?? M A N

also all the “unwanted child” thing is pure fan speculation so far. no one in canon is saying he's unwanted. yes he carries all the symbols that are against the Erdtree but have you considered ...... they are trophies ....... of all the forces he had slayed to protect his Mother ...... how about that .........

EDIT to add that the throne he’s sitting on in the poster is actually also in the boss room, it’s just tiny af against the gigantic Marika statue behind it.

What’s his deal that is so insane … just a lil guy chilling in front of a colossal statue of his mom cradling baby him

[kawaiichibiart]

Hello, yes, I need more cards where the characters interact with their younger selves.

I want more of this please:

[ironinkpen]

The interpretation of Rise Raph as a 'perfect responsible soft boy uwu' is so BORING I'm sorry, Raph is a rowdy adrenaline junkie with anxiety and I won't take this slander any longer

Raph secretly kept an enemy soldier in their actual literal house as a sparring partner. Raph glued his brothers together and dragged them out to fight crime. Raph once asked Leo to punch him in the face to prove he 'takes damage like a boss.' Raph tried to lift a school bus, twice. Raph offered to help his favorite wrestler beat his little brother up. When Leo suggests evacuating Bullhop, Raph says no bc the best defense is a good offense babey. Raph's idea of a 'friendly chat' with April's upstairs neighbor is to put on a black ski mask and go stand menacingly at their door. It takes Raph 10 episodes to conclude that they should MAYBE start training. Raph's plan to get a potentially priceless (and potentially FRAGILE) museum artifact is to punch a car in the middle of a busy street and also cut it in half with his brother still inside.

Raph's never met a problem he wouldn't try to punch in the face and does not know the meaning of the words 'excessive force.' He roughhouses with his bros and drags them out to fight villains and thinks any plan that doesn't involve an all-out brawl is boring and lame. He'll do anything to protect his family from harm and be a hero, but also he eats wet salami off the floor and once single-handedly destroyed a library.

I just adore how, at his core, Rise Raph is such a classic Raph—impulsive and stubborn and caring and passionate. He is a very sweet, strong, honorable guy who has a very powerful sense of personal responsibility... and he is also the exact kind of jock who throws you in the pool at a party without checking if you have your phone in your pocket first.

[starry-bi-sky]

Stuck in the middle of a forest made of

Flesh and bones and they're all scared of

A lost little boy who has lost his heart

Fear's not enough, they have to

Tear him apart —-------

There are two things Daniel Fenton knows that his family knows as well: 

He’s adopted.

He can’t remember anything else before that.  

‘Adoption’ is a loose term, implying that they went through the official legal processes and troubles of adopting a child into their home willingly, and with the full intention of doing so going into it. That is not what happened. What happened is that Jasmine Fenton found a half-dead child, in strange clothing, in the middle of the woods at her Aunt Alicia’s cabin, and then she went and got her parents. 

What happened is that a twelve year old Danny woke up in the same cabin, wearing clothes much too big on him that didn’t belong to him, and with very little memory of before that moment. He wakes up like a spring being set loose, sitting up so fast he scares the daylights out of Jasmine Fenton sitting next to him. He wakes up, reaching for his sleeve for something that isn’t there, and when it isn’t his mind stutters, like he’s tripped at the top of a steep hill. 

When they ask him for his name, he tells them, clearing muddled thoughts from his mind; Danny. He’s twelve.

(He thinks that’s his name, at least. It sounds right; it feels right. If he thinks really hard about it, he thinks he can remember someone calling him that, utter adoration in their voice. So it must be his name.) 

The Jasmine girl convinces her parents to take him home with them, and they give him the spare guest room upstairs. He has nothing to fill it with.

It’s… a strange experience, to go to a ‘new’ home when he doesn’t even remember his old one. 

The official adoption process… happens. He can’t say it’s easy, or difficult. He’s oblivious for the most of it, Jasmine intends on helping him settle in and Danny can’t say he enjoys the smothering. He learns that he is stubbornly self-independent, that’s one new thing he knows about himself. 

His adoption papers say ‘Daniel J. Fenton’. Danny remembers staring at the name ‘Daniel’ for a long, long moment, something curdling sour in his sternum. His name is Danny, that he knows. But it’s not Daniel. But he doesn’t know any other way of saying it, so he keeps his complaints to himself.

(Jack Fenton boisterously claps his hand on Danny’s shoulder and jerks him around, grinning wide as he welcomes him into the Fenton Family. Danny’s mind blanches at the touch on his shoulder, an instinct snapping like the maw of a snake, telling him to cut off the man’s fingers for daring to touch him.) 

(He keeps the thought to himself, tension rising up his shoulders the longer Jack Fenton’s heavy hand stays on him.) 

They found Danny in the summer. It’s a perfect coincidence, Maddie Fenton says before she goes back into her lab with Jack Fenton. She says it’s enough time to allow Danny to adjust; that they’ll enroll him into the school year in the fall. Then she stuffs a canister of ectoplasm onto the top shelf, and disappears like the ghosts she studies back down the stairs.  

(There’s something eerily familiar about the ectoplasm sitting in the fridge, something unsettlingly so. Danny knows what that stuff is, but he doesn’t know where. When the house is empty, he takes a can from the fridge and inspects it.)

Jazz wants him to leave the house. Danny doesn’t want to step foot outside of the FentonWorks building until he has something that quells the feeling of vulnerability he gets whenever he does. He tried to once, and he felt exposed. Unsafe. 

He turned back around and went inside.

—-------

Where do we go

When the river's running slow

Where do we run

When the cats kill one by one

—------

One day, when the house is empty — or, as empty as it can be; the Fenton parents down in the lab, and jazz out with friends. Danny is making a sandwich, and he caves into the urge to flip the knife in his hands between his fingers. A childish impulse, but one he falls for nonetheless. It comes to him easily, like second nature, in fact. The slip of the blade between his fingers is seamless, flowing with an ease like water running down the wall.  

He’s almost startled by it; his body holds memories that his mind does not. Muscles that know which way to move and twist, limbs that know how to hold and how to throw. He continues twirling it, fascinated, as if he were a scientist discovering a new species of animal. 

It’s not for a handful of minutes when a new thought hits him; an impulsive thought that pops in the back of his mind like a firecracker; Danny moves without thinking. 

He turns, and throws the knife. The pull of his shoulder, the flick of his elbow, is familiar like a hug. He knows when to let go, and the blade flies through the air in impressive speed, embedding itself into the wall with a hearty, loud thunk. Sinking into the drywall like butter. 

Danny stares at it in shock, he feels relieved — about what? — before he feels the guilt. He scrambles across the kitchen to pull it out, heart racing in his chest at being caught, and prays no one notices the hole it left behind. 

(He runs up the stairs before anyone can find him, food forgotten, and hides the knife beneath his mattress like a guilty murder weapon.)

After that, he leaves the house more. It’s more out of fear of being caught than the desire to leave. But Danny is quickly learning that among all things, he is someone who was dangerous, before he lost his memory. Even with his mind in fractures, he is still dangerous. 

He’s not sure how to feel about that — he thinks he should be scared. He feels a little proud, instead.

—------

Hazel beneath our claws

While we wait for cerulean to cry

Unsettled ticks run through time

Enough for the hunt to go awry

—-----

There’s another thing he learns about himself. That he knows about since he woke up. He knows that he left someone behind. He doesn’t know who, but he knows they must have been close; he’s always looking down and finding himself surprised when the only shadow he sees is his own. 

He thinks that he must have sung to them a lot; he finds himself humming familiar melodies when he’s lost in thought. Lullabies lingering at the tip of his tongue, an instinct to turn and sing them to someone beside him. He can’t remember the lyrics, but his mouth does, it tries to get him to say them when he’s not thinking. He can’t. 

Danny’s found himself humming under his breath more times than he can count, trying to recall whatever it is his mind is trying to claw forward. 

(“That’s a pretty song, Danny.” Jazz tells him at breakfast one day, Danny screws his mouth shut. He hadn’t realized he was humming. “What is it?”) 

(Something mean and possessive rears its head on instinct, uncoiling like a snake from its ball. His shoulders hunch defensively, he bites his cheek to prevent himself from baring his teeth. He doesn’t know what song it is, but it’s not for her. “I don’t know.”)  

He misses his person. Dearly. He knows, the longer he is without them, that they must have been close. Otherwise, he wouldn’t feel like he’s missing a chunk from himself. He wouldn’t be turning to someone who's not there; reaching for a hand that’s missing, birdsong on his tongue, a story to tell. 

A dream haunts him one night. Warm and familiar, he’s holding onto someone smaller than him, they’re tucked into his side like a puzzle piece. He’s humming one of his songs that is always playing in the back of his mind, an unfinished tale of a harpy and a hare. Danny can’t remember their face, not all of it. He remembers green eyes, hair dark like his own, skin brown like his. 

He loves them more than anything else in the world, a fact he knows down to his soul. He loves them so much it fills his heart with sunlight. Danny squeezes them tight, nuzzling into their hair; he makes them laugh. Then, he proudly boasts something. That when he takes something of their father’s, that his person — a sibling? That feels right — will be… the word fades from Danny’s mind before he can make sense of it. 

His person hugs him tight, his… brother? And their mother — a woman whose face he can’t remember either, but who he loves like a limb nonetheless — appears, smiling. Her hands reach for them both, voice calling them, ‘her sons’. There’s ticking in the distance, it sounds like the fastening of chains.

Danny wakes up cold, tears streaming down his face. The details of the dream already fading from his mind like the cold pull of a corpse.   

—-------

Harpy hare

Where have you buried all your children?

Tell me so I say

—-------

When school starts that Fall, Danny joins the sixth grade class, and quickly learns more things about himself. One of those things being that he’s smarter than the rest of his grade, whatever education he had before, it was better than the one he’s getting now. 

Everyone knows he’s adopted right off the bat. He tells them when the teacher forces himself to introduce himself, but it’s not like they needed him to tell them for them to know; he never existed in their little world before now, and the Fentons are pale as they come. Danny is not.

He befriends Sam Manson and Tucker Foley; they ask him about the scars fading up and down his arms, they ask him about the scar carved diagonal across his face.

Danny, as politely as he can, tells them he doesn’t remember. He thought kindness would come second nature to him, his dream burned into his mind where he hugged his brother so sweetly. Apparently, his sweetness is only second nature to people he considers his own. 

(It becomes even more apparent when Dash Baxter tries to bully him later that day, and Danny ruffles like an eagle threatened. His mind whispers, hissy and agitated, sinking like a shadow at his shoulder, several different ways Danny could kill him for talking to him like that, and fifteen more ways he could cripple him.)

(Danny ignores those thoughts, up until Dash Baxter tries to grab him. Then he breaks his nose on the wood of his desk. It’s easy how quickly the rest of his grade sinks him down to the status of social pariah.)

(At least Sam and Tucker still talk to him after that. When Danny goes to the principal’s office later, he wisely doesn’t mention the worse things he could’ve done than break Dash Baxter’s nose.)  

—--------------

It clicks and it clatters in corners and borders

And they will never

Hear me here listen to croons and a calling

I'll tell them all the

Story, the sun, and the swallow, her sorrow

Singing me the tale of the Harpy and the Hare

—-------

More dreams come, of course they do. Each one halfway to forgotten whenever he wakes up, ticking faint in his ears. He is many different ages. He is young, shorter than a table. He is older, holding onto his little brother. He is singing in almost every single one. He is singing to his brother. 

Danny can barely remember the lyrics, he’s begun leaving a journal by his bedside so that it’s the first thing he can write down when he wakes up. He’s a storyteller, he learns. He feels like a historian, trying to piece together a culture long dead and forgotten. 

His most vivid dream-like memory is not a happy one, and for once he’s almost relieved he barely recalls it. He is somewhere that isn’t home, but his mother and brother are there. He is dressed in black, blades keen in his hands. 

They are atop a moving train. They are fleeing something. His brother is struggling to keep up, he is small, and young. It’s beautifully sunny, they are somewhere green and lovely. 

It is a fast dream. 

His brother stumbles on something, and Danny, fast as a whip, snatches him by the back of his shirt and hoists him up to his feet before he can fall. “Watch your feet, habibi.” He murmurs low, a hand on his back. It’s hard to hear, there is wind in their ears.

His brother, face obscured in all but his eyes, which are green as emeralds, nods. 

The dream blurs, but Danny falls behind. His foot catches on air — impossible, it should’ve been, at least. He never trips. — and he lands against the roof with a thud and a grunt. His mother and brother stop, and turn for him. 

The train hits a turn before Danny can get up, and he shouldn’t have, something pulls on him, he swears, but he slips. He can’t find the purchase to pull himself up, cold fear hits him as his nails scrape against the metal. 

His mother and brother’s horrified faces are the last thing he sees before he disappears off the side of the train. 

(The ticking is at its loudest when he wakes up, pounding against his inner skull. He only manages to write down ‘train fall’ in his journal, before he’s flipping over to press his head into his pillow to get the pain to stop.) 

—---  

She can't keep them all safe

They will die and be afraid

Mother, tell me so I say

(Mother, tell me so I say)

—-------

When Danny is fourteen he is still humming songs he can’t remember, his mind still in a broken puzzle. But his room is now decorated with stars and plants in every corner. He has a guitar he keeps in the corner of his room, and he plays the lullabies in his head on the strings over and over again. 

The ectoplasm in the fridge still unsettles him, still reminds him of a past he can’t recall. The knife beneath his mattress has returned to the kitchen — he doesn’t need it. He found a box in the attic last year, it had his name on it, and inside he found familiar, strange clothes, and more weapons than he thought was possible to carry on one person. 

(Even without knowing that the Fentons prefer guns to blades, Danny knows, instinctively, that they were his weapons. He was — was? Is — a dangerous person. He takes the box down to his room to sort through. The weapons all fit into his callused hands almost perfectly — the grooves worn to fit his palm. They’re just a little small.) 

(He tentatively takes a small blade with him to school one day, and feels much more comfortable with it sheathed beneath his shirt. He’s kept it on him ever since, like he’s reunited a lost limb to himself.)   

Danny doesn’t have a name for his person, his little brother, nor does he have a name for his beloved mother. He’s haunted by dreams every few weeks, many of them repeating. He’s ingrained the words he can remember to memory, and the ones he doesn’t, he writes down in his journal. His little brother; Danny calls him a bird, he can’t figure out what kind. His little bird of some kind; when Danny takes something from their father — what, he can’t remember what — then his little brother will be a little bird. 

(He doesn’t have a name for his brother, yet, but he’s calling his birdie in his head. It’s better than nothing.)

—------

Seeker, do you ever come to wonder

If what you're looking for is within where you hold

Will you leave a trail for them to follow a path

You'll soon forget

Home

—---------

When he’s fourteen, Danny dies. It does nothing to fix his fractured memories, much to his consternation. It just confirms something he already knows; that he was someone dangerous, and that he still is. 

When the shock of death has worn off, Danny inspects his ghost in the metal reflection of the closest table. It’s blurry, hard to see, but shock green eyes pierce back at him, green like the portal. Lazarus, Danny’s mind whispers, and he blinks rapidly.

‘Lazarus,’ he mouths to himself. It’s familiar. Sam shows him with her phone what he looks like, joking that he looks like an assassin. Danny doesn’t think she’s that too far off. 

He doesn’t tell her that. He tucks the thought away with the rest of his secrets, and fiddles with the hood gathering at his neck, attached to a cape with torn edges swinging down to his ankles. He pulls it over his shock white hair. It shadows over his face impossibly so, until all you can see are his green-green eyes peering out like a wolf hiding in the brush.

He ends up calling himself Phantom. 

(Maybe now he can start putting lyrics to his lullabies; his memories may not have returned, locked away with the sound of a clock, but the dead can talk. One of them may just have answers.) 

----------

Home is where we are

Home is where you are

Home is where I am

-----------------

Dedicated to @gascansposts for being the one who introduced me to the band Yaelokre, and thus being the whole reason I was inspired to write this in the first place >:] Those lyrics at the line breaks are all from their album Hayfields.

[kinigoni]

roleswap au i’ve been thinking abt for weeks bc don’t u ever think abt how great chrom!morgan could pull of a marth cosplay just look at my son

[blackbatcass]

i can’t stop being plagued by thoughts of bart allen. can you. can you imagine being fourteen years old and waking up every day knowing that your loved ones will always be beyond your reach? that you have family who are alive and well but you’ll never see them again? that there isn’t just physical distance between you and your mom but hundreds of years? that no matter how much family you have in this time, no matter how much they love you, you’ll never be whole? you will never have everyone you love in one room? that not one single person in the world speaks your native language? that your mom wants you and loves you desperately and you still can’t be with her? that you can never go home?

[samarecharm]

Ryuji having the worst bi crisis of his fucking life bc his mom just had to fucking ask “oh, whats this young ladys name?” when he showed her a picture of Akira petting Morgana. Like okay yeah Akira is like objectively pretty, hes like the Classic Delicate Pretty Boy just like Yusuke which is like whatever; straight dudes have eyes, and they know what women like to see. But now hes like. Seeing things he likes in girls IN Akira now and he cant make it Stop like its genuinely keeping him up at night 😭

Pretty boy used to be A Face that would come up in his mind when he thought of the term. There was no specifics in mind, just like. Pretty Boy. Pretty boy! You say that and theres like a Face Template that shows up in ur minds eye and hed just attribute that to any dude who was like Vaguely Pretty. But now its Akira 😭 and he finds himself cataloging things that Akira does that he KNOWS he finds cute when girls do it. The hairtuck behind the ears. The headtilt when he mishears a question. The Actually Pretty Doe Eyes. The breathy, nearly inaudible chuckle he does in place of a Real laugh (thats made better by the fact that its so hard to get him to laugh in the first place). He likes cute snacks. He blushes easily. Ryuji is sitting here like ‘theres no fucking way man. Like theres just no way. That shit makes NO sense (a lie)’ lying in bed in the middle of the night looking like this vvvv w his phone in his hands (looking at pictures of akira)

It drives him insane bc like he did Not see any of these things as like inherently girly or whatever. Like thats just akira thats just his bro! And he does OTHER weird shit that cancels all that shit out. Hes like a messy engineer/tinkerer, he rolls out of bed and whatever situation his hair is is everyones problem. He wears that AWFUL gym uniform and doesnt tweak it AT ALL?? He likes baseball?? hes got a whole binder of trading cards that he will show off if u show any moment of weakness. Like hes just Some Dude but also manages to be Some Girl at the same time and Ryuji is like thats not fair. Life sucked ass but at least it made sense before Akira stumbled into it 😭

[puppyeared]

doodles of my fav sillies

anton belongs to @poicyss

[alunarts]

Shadow Akechi doodle