#s4 fingernails

[simmillercc]

SIMS 4 - HALLOWEEN FINGERNAILS - ROUNDS - BASE GAME

I have re-uploaded these and they are now available on CurseForge! They're one of the earliest sets of nails I ever recoloured, before I knew how to manage uv maps and such.

These nails come in 3 patterns:

black with pumpkins

red with ghosts

orange with bats

Each pattern has two versions:

the same image on all nails or...

thumb and ring finger have sparkles instead of main image

They are for child through elder, but with the way the meshes work they have to be divided into adult male, adult female, and child unisex.

I have put the packages into 3 folders in the zip, entitled ALLOWS RANDOM ALL, ALLOWS RANDOM ONLY FOR SITUATION AND PARTY, AND NO RANDOM.

More information is available in the description and the files are ready for download FREE HERE

[linsims]

After many months without publishing anything, I'm back today with a "so French" recoloration of the rounded nails found in the basic game.

You can choose between 75 different colors. Between the discreet colors of the very classic French manicure and the polishes that cover the whole nail in transparency, through the reversed French and the more pop colors, your sims should be able to have pretty nails, colored and discreet at the same time.

I hope you'll enjoy them! Don't hesitate to reblog to let people know about them!

Links below ↓

Dowload Lin_FrenchManucure V2 : Mediafire or SimFilShare And if you want to support me, you can also download it on CurseForge

If you liked this recolor, you can also find other nails of the creation by following this link 😉 : Naturals Nails

@maxismatchccworld @sssvitlanz @mmoutfitters @sccfinds @mmfinds @simblr-diary @itsjessicaccfinds @emilyccfinds

[lighthouseas]

"Mike?"

He shouldn't be up. Mike steals a glance at the clock on his nightstand -- the red numbers read 1:30 AM. He's clutching a book, his eyes burning open from the little slivers of light his lamp provides against the darker than usual night.

He supposes evil alternate dimensions did that sort of thing. Made everything...darker.

But even so, Holly shouldn't really be up, either. In fact, it's even worse that Holly is up. If his mom finds out, she'll kill him.

Mike rubs his eyes, the action causing him to see spots. He blinks them away, eyes adjusting to the darkness. Holly is standing at his door, white nightgown illuminated against the blackness of the hallway.

"Hol, go back to bed."

Holly shuffles, bunny slippers digging into the soft carpet. She clutches her aged stuffed dinosaur -- Growly (Mike has a matching one named Rory) -- and stares at the ground.

"I can't," she murmurs.

Mike forces himself to sit up. His back aches with the effort; the slouching position hadn't been good for him.

"Why not?"

Holly's lip trembles, and Mike prays that she doesn't start wailing and wake their mom up.

"I'm-- I'm scared. I had a nightmare."

At this, Mike feels his heart break. He hadn't considered this; that Holly has no idea what's going on, that as far as she knows, this "earthquake" is consuming everything-- including her small, six year old world that she's barely had time to adapt to.

He blinks, dry eyes suddenly moistened.

"And you--" he swallows, "came here?"

Holly nods. She shuffles again. "Can you read me a story?"

"Read you a--" Mike glances at the time again, which now reads 1:33 AM. "Hol, you need to be in bed right now. It's way too late."

"Then why are you awake?"

Okay. She's got him there.

"That's different." It isn't, really. Mike has been having nightmares almost every night, now, which are only satiated with the occasional hot milk that he has the rare privilege of indulging in (given the supply shortages). Tonight is one of the nights where sleep didn't want to come, so he just decided to read instead.

"No it's not," Holly says, because she knows when Mike is lying even despite her age.

Mike cracks a small smile. "Is too."

"Is not."

Mike giggles quietly, missing the familiarity of sibling banter, and pats the spot next to him on his bed. This isn't the first time he's read to Holly: since fall 1985, it'd become a common occurrence. Their mother used to do it, but had stopped after the weekly fights with their dad had turned into almost daily fights. Now, all their mom seemed to want at night was "time to herself" and since the first night where she'd coerced Mike into reading to Holly before bed with a promise of five dollars, it'd since become a free tradition. 

Honestly, Mike didn't mind. He took pleasure in reading in voices and listening to Holly's comments on the story so far (positive and negative). She was very observant, and oftentimes predicted elements of the plot before they happened. And, now that she'd started kindergarten, she'd sometimes ask to read some of the book "for" Mike. And he'd let her, because she actually wasn't a bad reader. In fact, she was the best in her class-- but no one else seemed to know this fact except Mike.

Holly hops up next to Mike. He notices the slight bags under her eyes reflected in the lamplight, but decides not to comment on them. She rests her head on his shoulder, burrowing under the covers and huddling close for warmth.

"What's the book?" Holly pokes the page Mike is on.

Mike side eyes her, and sighs. "The Hobbit. I dunno if Mom will want me reading it to you--" The age rating isn't quite right for Holly, and he really doesn't want to get yelled at on top of...everything.

"No. Read it. I won't tell."

Holly is many things, but she isn't a snitch. Mike has to make sure, though.

"Promise?"

Holly nods. "Promise."

Just for fun, Mike bends down and pokes the stuffed dinosaur that Holly is currently holding against her chest.

"Growly too? You know how he gets..." Mike shakes his head in mock disappointment.

Holly scowls, evidently having taken the comment seriously. "Yes, Growly too. He'd never tell."

Mike throws his hands up in defense. "Just making sure, considering--"

"Mike. The story."

"Okay, okay. Let's see..."

Only ten minutes later, Holly has stopped making whispered comments on the story; she breathes softly against Mike's shoulder, having fallen fast asleep. Growly sags out of her arms, which have gone limp with sleep. Mike looks at the clock.

1:45 AM

Gently, Mike lays Holly down, tucking the covers over her. She doesn't stir (she's a heavy sleeper), and snores lightly. Mike giggles, and then yawns.

He's tired.

He looks out of the window, and red lightning illuminates the sky.

Then, he looks at Holly, asleep in the wrong room, but still appearing somewhat peaceful.

And before he can register it, Mike falls asleep, too.

[darklcy]

𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐫𝐭.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

‣ eddie's session runs longer than you thought. bored, with nothing to do, you find his shirt.

‣ eddie munson x reader | stranger things masterlist | 823 words | fluff, established relationship, idiots in love ig

‣ i havent posted him in a while and i just got to rewatching s4, so naturally-

He’d been gone far too long already.

You tried not to complain, not having the desire to suck the life out of his soul for simply engaging in his passion. Dungeons and dragons served as an enigma in your brain, its complexity never failing to swirl your thoughts in knots each time you tried learning to play. If him being late was the only self punishment for not comprehending the rules of the game, then perhaps it was justifiable.

..It was just late. And you were beyond bored.

Boredom was a lazy explanation for the feeling you were experiencing at the moment, but for lack of better word, boredom will do. Body sprawled across his mattress, Gremlins displayed in the living room television down the hall, fingernails touched skin in a pattern, as if counting sheep represented itself through your fingers. The night sky stretched further along the hours as you waited for his campaign to finish, but with the way your eyelids drooped and head bobbed, you may not be around for his return.

Laying back on your spine, ceiling coming into view, you fought the upcoming dreams with all your might to avoid slumber, wanting to greet Eddie properly the moment he stepped inside. Chin lolling to the right, a signature club shirt curiously grabbed your eye, the red faced demon poking through the gaps of his drawer. 

Huh.

Somehow that pumped a vein full of awoken energy throughout your body. Sitting back up, you crawled over to the drawer and yanked the shirt from its clenches, freeing the fabric from its prison. The demon’s eyes met yours in a sneer, and sometimes you wonder if the corners of his mouth grew each time you stared at him. Discarding your own top, you replaced it with his, the remnants of smoke and faint cologne wafting in your nostrils.

Eddie smelled like home, a sanctuary, a safe place. A bit ironic, with fire comes reassurance, in your world, that is.

The garment was a bit loose on your figure, the ends reaching just below your hips. With the canvas of your legs exposed from lack of pajamas, his shirt became your blanket and lover all in one, a figment of the real thing. This will have to do until he returns. 

Cheek pressed to the comforter, Gremlins had just barely faded out into the credits when sleep found you, tucked away and hidden in the cotton of Hellfire.

“Baabe, I’m home.”

Brass met knob when Eddie unlocked it open, enjoying the warm heat of the trailer compared to the brisk November air outside. Campaign was good, as usual. Dungeon Master certainly had its perks, even if repeating senior year didn’t. The journey to his bedroom was swift, eager to finally end his day with you by his side, how it always should be. 

However he wasn’t at all, in the slightest bit, prepared to greet you adorning his beloved club shirt, soft skin of your thighs bare, asleep comfortably in his bed. His bed. Alone. With his shirt on. And boyshorts. Oh, wow. You were going to be the death of him.

It was as if he’d been transported to the Moma, viewing a delicate, historical self portrait of an acrylic artist from the 1700s. You were a sight to behold, and for him only. His feet almost sunk into the floorboards from the sheer weight his heart plummeted against his ribs. He’d just fallen in love  all over again. How do you do it so easily?

A gentle groan emitted in your throat as you shifted. What a sweet sound. You’re so sweet. 

Crouching down towards your face, his ringed knuckle gilded hair from your eyelashes, a smile on his face at the way you stirred from the action. When your eyes awoke to meet his, his lips only stretched wider.

“Mornin', sweetheart.”

Stretching out your arms, a yawn escaped you as a sleepy, “Oh, you’re home,” uttered out in a jumbled whisper. His full palm caressed your face now, occasionally smoothing down your hair while continuing to grin at your drowsiness. He couldn’t get enough.

“Yeah, Hellfire ran a lil late. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

You shook your head into his fingers. “No, you’re fine. I was just bored.”

A deep chuckle rumbled in his chest as he moved to sit beside you. His fingers transitioned from your cheek to the shirt on your skin, rings grazing the neckline and shoulder. Eddie had never seen anything like it, and he wore this exact thing every god damn week. 

“You look beautiful like this.”

It was as if complimenting a model, the way he spoke so carefully and tender. You gave him a look.

“..It’s comfy. I might steal it from you.”

He’d give you anything he wanted if you gave him the word. His lips captured yours in a trance, ending too quick for your liking. 

“You should. You wear it best.”

—

[klausinamarink]

He Want Kiss

rating: G | cw: none | wc: 630 | tags: post s4, getting together, first kiss, Steve is down bad | prompt: Love is when you look at his lips for half the conversation because you can’t stop thinking about kissing him

written for @steddielovemonth

Steve is obsessed with Eddie’s lips. 

Like completely to the point that he might actually start going to therapy. 

But Steve is just a simple man. He sees a pair of well-rounded lips that can make a perfect smile with dimples and he’s a goner. For example, look at Eddie. They’re so plump looking that Steve cannot believe it’s legal. And the way they move whenever Eddie speaks-

“-ink I should go for this one?”

Steve snaps his gaze up, barely surviving from the combination of head whiplash and the pointed attack of Eddie’s eyes, Jesus Christ, look at them Bambi eyes.

“Oh yeah, man.” How Steve manages not to stutter is both a mystery and a blessing. 

“Yeah?” Eddie looks at him, his expression mixed with expectation and nervousness.

“Yeah.” Steve repeats confidently. He’s already forgetting what exactly they were talking about but he knows it has to do with Eddie trying to get a job, hence why he called Steve over to help him out with the few applications that believe in Eddie’s innocence. “Like, yeah, go for that.” 

Christ, he might as well bash his head again. Steve really doesn’t want to come off as a douche again, but it’s not his fault that Eddie’s lips are just right there. They’re just begging to be kissed.

Thankfully, Eddie seems pleased by his answer. He smiles, dimples and all - oh lord please have mercy on Steve’s soul because he cannot handle the adorableness any longer - as he says, “Well, if Steve Harrington says so, then I will do it.” Then Eddie starts biting his lip, glancing down at the resume they’ve polished together. 

Steve digs his fingernails through the jeans over his thighs, but it’s not enough to bat away the growing temptation to reach forward and brush his fingers over Eddie so the other man wouldn’t abuse his lips anymore. The skin had already been cracked and bleeding in the past few months and it’s always so devastating to see Eddie hurt a part of himself like this.

Actually, now that he’s thinking about it, Steve should kiss him. 

Eddie is right there. While there will be lots of opportunities to have him at Steve’s side, there’ll never be another perfect chance like this. 

Steve leans forward a bit but stops himself. Has Eddie ever been kissed before? If he did, does he like the faint touch of lips brushing together? Like smashed together? Full-on make-out sessions that lead to something more passionate? 

Okay, Steve could work on the slow route. He’s done it before with his previous girlfriends. He could lean in at a snail’s pace so Eddie has enough time to register what’s happening and-

“Steve?”

Suddenly, Eddie’s face is much closer than Steve remembers. He feels a heat of breath against his lips. Then the rush of realization comes over Steve because he was about to kiss Eddie.

Yet despite this, Steve barely feels a sense of embarrassment. He stays in place, staring into Eddie’s wide eyes as they flicker over his face, lingering on Steve’s lips every few seconds. 

Finally, Eddie huffs out a nervous little laugh, “You, uh, listened to what I just said?”

“Hm-mm.” Steve shakes his head. He feels like he’s on cloud nine and whatever Eddie does next, he’s going to scream at the heavens anyway. 

Eddie’s lips form the briefest of smirks, but it’s gone in a blink. They part open slightly. 

Steve can’t hold it anymore. He closes the space between them and meets Eddie’s lips at last. It’s more rough and desperate than he plans it to be and tries to dial it back. But when Eddie kisses him with a similar force, Steve goes screw it and kisses back like it’s their last chance.

[findafight]

Obsessed with the idea of Mike only-boy-yet-still-the-middle-child Wheeler viewing Steve as sort of a hand-me-down from Nancy, and getting kind of territorial and possessive when he thinks that they might be getting back together. Steve’s *his* friend now, Nancy! Just because he’s not Steve’s favourite and they aren’t that close, doesn’t mean you get to take him back!

He doesn’t even have a crush on Steve (because it’s funnier to me that way), he’s just *pissed* at the idea of having to share Steve with Nancy . Sure, he’s already sharing with Holly, but that at least gets him out of babysitting her. They already have fucking *Robin* to contend with…

:0 Steve being Mike's hand-me-down friend from Nancy omg. Once Dustin brings him in Mike is actually on board for it they're snippy bitches to each other. He no longer glares at Steve he's glaring at Nancy he's pushing Steve out the door like "let's gooooo stop looking at her it's pathetic and bums everybody out! Nancy you're not allowed to try to get him back he's OUR friend now! No takebacks!!! Holly gets him because I GUESS she got her sharp little baby fingernails into him first."

Then post S3 Robin's ALWAYS around Steve, and Mike is going okay I can live with this Dustin thinks Robin's cool, we can all be cool. Robin can have Steve while we have Eddie it's cool it's chill. ITS FINE THAT DUSTIN ONCE AGAIN GOT TO BE ON STEVE'S TEAM THE WHOLE TIME THE UPSIDE DOWN WAS BACK AND MIKE BARLEY GOT TO SEE HIM ITS F I N E

S4 and Mike gets back going NANCY WHAT DID YOU DO I TOLD YOU NO TAKEBACKS!! I CANT BELIEVE I WASNT ON STEVE'S TEAM AGAIN

God yeah he WOULD have middle child possession issues. I love him.

[kurokoros]

into open flames | (s.h.)

Rated: M (future smut)

Words: 16K

Pairing: steve harrington x fem!reader

Summary: There’s a storm raging, winds howling and snow beating against the cabin walls. Outside a monster shrieks his name in an awful and warbled voice that sounds like you. And it shouldn’t be awkward, Steve thinks. It’s not the first time he’s seen you naked.

You and Steve are almost something. Almost lovers. And it feels almost like hell; almost romantic.

OR: A blackout snowstorm and a monster force you and Steve to take shelter in Hopper’s old cabin. From there, everything starts slotting into place.

AN: Yes, there will be a part two. Yes, it will be smut. It’s in progress and should be ready to post within a week. Reblogs are appreciated--nay, strongly encouraged.

Warnings: horror elements (the monster is modeled after the official illustration of the “bagman” from dnd). minor violence. reader implied to be shorter than steve. reader is a hopper but there’s no mention of blood relation. cop!steve but it’s for monster hunting reasons. S3 and S4 never happened in this universe alteration, but upside down shenanigans have still been happening post-S2

Chapters: Part One | Part Two | Part Three

The rhythm you’ve set stutters suddenly. A low, breathy version of his name rolls off your tongue, sticky and sweet like honey. Your hands are soft as they roam down his chest, feather-light touches that have his hips lurching off the mattress. It’s all hot and wet. His teeth scrape the side of your throat, a litany of sweet nothings mumbled into your sweat-slicked skin.

“Steve.” Your breath is hot against his ear, his name a sigh that has his fingers squeezing your hips a little too hard.

 The stutter becomes a full stop.

“Steve,” you say again. No longer saccharine. There’s a wobble to the way you say his name this time, higher-pitched and sharp with what he immediately recognizes as panic. You’ve said his name like that before. On a rundown bus in the middle of a junkyard, with hellish monsters circling beneath the low-hanging fog, ready to rip you both apart.

You’re sitting up, then. Pulled away from his incessant mouth. And when Steve’s eyes snap open, you’re already staring down at him. Petrified. Your eyes are wider than he’s ever seen them, your pupils constricted into pinpricks.

“Steve,” you repeat, louder as a thick, squirming vine slinks further around your neck.

Neither you nor Steve move. In his chest, his heart ceases to beat as the fleshy tendril winds completely around your throat, wrapping tighter and tighter without constricting. Slime spirts between the coils. Gray-tinged sludge drips down your collarbone and chest. A sticky, wet sound breaks through the stillness. Your hands shake where they’re pressed against his chest, and in the back of his mind he registers the bite of your fingernails digging into his skin.

Like it’s the only thing you know how to say, his name is whispered into the space between you and him, so quiet that he doesn’t hear it so much as recognize the shape of it on your lips. It’s a plea. You’re begging for him to do something. Begging for him to protect you. But the horrified glint in your eyes keeps him pinned and unable to breathe as a gnarled hand reaches out of the black emptiness behind you. Long, boney fingers cover the upper half of your face. Claws scrape against the side of your head. A sick caress. All Steve can see is the tremble of your lips, still mouthing his name. And he can’t move. Can’t do anything at all.

The vine constricts, and you’re ripped away from him. The weight of you leaves his hips as you’re dragged backwards off the bed. Plunged into the darkness. And then you scream. One loud, petrified wail of his name that curdles his blood.

His eyes snap open.

A sharp, gasping breath tears from his throat, like he’s come up for air after being held under water. His ears ring with the shrillness of your screams. Steve lurches halfway off the bed, already kicking off the covers before he sees the moonlight filtering in through the window and reality slams into him.

A nightmare. It was a nightmare.

It doesn’t calm the frantic beating of his heart. Doesn’t stop him from twisting towards your side of the bed. Doesn’t stop the breath from being slammed out of his lungs when he sees you aren’t there. The spot where you slept beside him is bare. Empty. Still warm with the remnants of body heat. But the sheets are rumpled. The thick, lilac comforter is bunched lower on the bed, kicked off in a hurry.

The nightmare doesn’t stop.

Another terrified cry of his name splits through the silence.

He lunges for the bedroom door, stumbling as he bashes his knee against the corner of your old dresser. The door is already cracked open part way. It bangs against the wall as Steve shoves through. The screaming doesn’t stop, muffled from outside. There’s a body on the floor. Mike Wheeler. Sprawled out and snoring. And Steve nearly trips over the lanky teen as he races for the backdoor and rips it open.

There’s no one outside. Wildly, his eyes dart around the open space beyond the porch. Twenty odd feet separating the trailer from the bank of Lake Tippecanoe. The cold slams into his lungs. It’s quiet. Unnaturally still. The silence makes his ears ring louder.

“Steve!”

It punches through his chest. Far off across the lake.

His hand clenches around the aging railing in front of him with every intention of throwing himself into the thick layer of snow below.

“Steve?”

The sound of his name, closer this time, makes him flinch. It’s not from the woods though. It’s not a shrill scream that sends his heart lurching into his throat.

His head snaps around, eyes wild.

And there you are, tucked into the open space of the doorway, your arms wrapped around yourself and your lips downturned in a confused little frown. Sock-clad feet shuffle against the porch as you take a step towards him, careful to avoid any remnants of snow still sticking to the floorboards in patchy clumps.

“What are you doing out here? It’s freezing.” You smother a yawn with one hand, squinting at him. You shiver in response to your own words, your bare legs rubbing together in a weak attempt to chase away the chilly air.

The porch creaks under your weight, sharp and real compared to the agonized screams further off in the distance. Silence is all that rings from the trees now. The screams silenced. And Steve wonders if there were any screams at all. Wonders if it was another nightmare bleeding through into waking hours. Those have happened before. On bad nights.

They usually involve you.

It takes a long moment for your words to reach through his scrambled thoughts and pull him back out. “You weren’t in bed,” is what he manages to choke out, throat tight. Like that’s explanation enough for why he’s standing on the back porch of your dad’s old trailer in the middle of the night, chasing echoes and ghosts.

But you don’t question it. Instead, you send him a sad, understanding look that makes his chest ache. “Bathroom,” you tell him.

There’s an apologetic note in the gentle murmur of your voice, and he hates it. Hates that you can’t get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night just because he might panic when he realizes you aren’t there. It’s not fair to you, but you’ve never once complained about how clingy he can be, how sometimes he hovers too closely.

Truthfully, you need that closeness, too. Something to stave off the rampant paranoia threatening to eat you alive. Keeping Steve close helps, makes you feel safe in a way no one else can. And Steve? Steve can’t sleep at night if you’re not there next to him. After the second time Hawkins went to shit, he couldn’t sleep in that big house anymore, not by himself. There were too many dark hallways, too many places for monsters to hide around corners. The silence was the worst. Every bump and creak kept him awake until exhaustion pulled him under. And when he did sleep it was never comfortably.

It wasn’t until after you both graduated that you and Steve started sharing a bed more often than not. Naturally, Hopper wasn’t happy about it, but after seeing the two of you rested for the first time in months, he kept his overprotective father speech to himself.

The far away, panicky look in Steve’s eyes makes your frown deepen. You know him too well not to recognize the jittery way he keeps glancing across the lake. More than just momentary fear at waking up without you curled up beside him. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Steve says. “Nothing—I just… I just needed some fresh air. That’s all.”

It’s a lie and you both know it. He waits for you to call him out on it, but you don’t, and he wonders if there’s something in his expression that’s telling you not to press. Either way, you don’t ask. Steve doesn’t tell. And you cross the short amount of space between the two of you with near silent steps.

Only half-awake and still soft with sleep, you cuddle up against his side when he lifts an arm in offering. Both of your arms wind around him, your head tucked into the crook of his shoulder, and you let him pull you flush against his chest. Steve’s arm slides around your shoulders. A large palm smooths down your back all the way to your hip before coming back up. His lips burn where they press to your temple. You sigh, breaths coming out in warm puffs against his collarbone.

The tips of your fingers peek out from the sleeve of the too big sweatshirt you’re wearing, emerald green with Hawkins Basketball printed across the front, and your skin is cold where your fingers brush against his side above the waist of his sleep pants. A content sigh has your hand sneaking out further, thumb absentmindedly stroking a puckered scar. The first faint brush of your skin against the mark makes him flinch, but your touch is gentle, soothing in a way that makes him relax.

Under the guise of keeping you warm, Steve pulls you closer to his chest. If you could crawl between his ribs and lie there, he’d let you. Selfishly, he just wants you pressed against him. Needs to know that you’re okay. That you’re real. And he likes the way you fit against him, he decides, as your fingers curl around his hip with familiar ease, slotting into place where you belong.

For a moment, neither of you speak. Steve is still far away, gazing out over the water like he’s looking for something that simply isn’t there. The gates are still open. Contained, but open. The monsters that do slip through occasionally aren’t the same threats as when he was seventeen. Knowing that doesn’t stop him from being terrified that something could still happen to you, or the kids.

As you let him stew in peace, your bleary gaze follows his to where Lake Tippecanoe is frozen over and dusted with a thick layer of snow. Once the silence has dragged on too long, you shift your head on his chest, eyes on the side of his face.

“Bad dream?”

Idly, you rub your chilly fingers against his side. One of your hands slides around to rest on his stomach. Your pinky ghosts against the hem of his sleep pants, teasing the trail of hairs that disappear there, and his stomach tightens with the memory of what he was dreaming about earlier, before it all bled into something horrific. If he thinks about it long enough, he can still imagine the weight of you on his hips, taste the sweetness of you on his tongue, see the terror in your eyes before clawed fingers wrapped around your head.

Steve clears his throat when your nose bumps against the curve of his jaw. “No.”

“Liar,” you call him this time, but you don’t ask if he wants to talk about it. He never does. Not when they’re about you.

His breath comes out in a puff of fog as he huffs. There’s no point in arguing with you. Not when you’re right. Instead, he squeezes your bicep. It’s not quite a reassurance, but it’s close enough.

In lieu of thinking any harder about the nightmare that dragged him outside into the freezing night, he asks, “Did I wake up the kids?”

He hopes not. They all have nightmares of their own to deal with, they don’t need his keeping them awake as well. At the very least, he’s glad that he didn’t wake up screaming tonight. That’s happened before more times than he’s proud to admit. The worst one was right after graduation. The screaming woke Hopper, who burst into your bedroom with a loaded shotgun. Steve hadn’t stopped thrashing until his voice became hoarse and he dissolved into sobs. It was your fingers running through his hair that calmed him down, his head cradled to your chest as you whispered to him, nonsensical reassurances that might as well have been a lullaby. Selfishly, he doesn’t want any of those kids to see him like that. Like this. Pale and washed-out. Dark circles underneath his eyes. Hair disheveled. A wild and panicked look in his eyes.

It might scare them. Or worse, make them pity him—empathize, you’d always correct him. They’d empathize, because they care. But even five years gone, Steve’s still not used to being cared for—being taken care of.

Like you can hear his thoughts, you squeeze him a little tighter around his middle. “Just Will,” you tell him. And then, because you can picture the guilt in his eyes without needing to look, you add, “But I think he was already awake. I mean, it can’t be easy to fall asleep when Dustin snores like a bear.”

The casual jab startles him into a laugh. “Jesus, I know. You remember that one night at the cabin? The kids wanted that sleepover, and your dad and Joyce were on that date, and you let the kids pick the movies—”

“Me? That was not—”

“—and,” Steve continues loudly, hand dropping to poke your side for cutting him off, “they picked up those horror movies from downtown. Dustin fell asleep halfway through Halloween. Man, I thought we were gonna be, like, Texas chainsaw massacred or something.”

You giggle, and it’s enough to loosen the tightness in his chest. For now, at least.

The pair of you lapse into silence after that. Just for a moment. Just long enough for Steve’s shoulders to relax, for your hands to wander a little more than they should.

“Cold?” he asks when you shiver.

With a confirmatory hum, you step out of his embrace. Quick as you leave his side, the freezing air takes your place. The cold January night hits him all at once. For the first time, Steve notices the goosebumps prickling at his skin. A sharp inhale stings like he’s been kicked in the chest. You take a short, shuffling step backwards, while Steve stays rooted in place, frozen to the floor. The porch is an unforgiving chill against his bare feet.

Idly, he glances down at your own feet, enveloped in your purple socks. They’re the thick kind, wooly and soft, and he’d never understood how you could wear them to bed at night until the one time you didn’t, making him jolt each time your cold toes bumped against his calves beneath the blankets.

When he doesn’t follow, you frown at him again, lips pursed in a little pout. Both of your hands wrap around one of his, your fingers lacing through his seamlessly. Your chest presses against the length of his arm when you sidle up to him. So close, you have to tilt your head back to peer up at him through your lashes. “Come warm me up?”

The low murmur of your voice unsticks his feet from the floorboards. Your pout slips into a sleepy smile that brushes against his shoulder in a sweet kiss.

Steve’s lips twitch upwards at the edges. He lets you pull him back into the trailer wordlessly. With one hand, you fumble with the door, closing and locking it behind you as Steve’s eyes sweep around the cramped, but cozy living room.

The kids—nearly adults themselves now—are all sprawled out along the furniture and floor. Will is curled up on the couch, asleep now. Or pretending to be, at least. Mike is on the floor beside him, undisturbed where Steve nearly tripped over him earlier. Dustin and Lucas have claimed a chair each, Lucas with his limbs folded up awkwardly and Dustin with his head tilted back, snoring obnoxiously just like you said. Steve cranes his head to look down the hallway towards El’s bedroom. The door is open wide enough for him to see the shapes of both El and Max under the covers.

With the door locked and the kids all asleep, Steve lets you tug him down the hallway towards your bedroom. The floor creaks under your steps. The moaning floorboards cause the hairs on the back of his neck to rise, but your thumb rubs soothingly over the bumps of his knuckles, placating his already frayed nerves.

As soon as you step into the bedroom, you turn on your heel. Both of his hands are grasped in your smaller ones. Naturally, your fingers come to slot between his, and the smile you give him is sweet, sleepy and just a little bit sad. He follows as you walk backwards towards the bed, trusting him to catch you if you trip. You lead him to his side of the bed—his side, because he does have a side, and the domesticity of it makes his pulse jump—and settle onto the mattress, shifting across to the side furthest from the window.

Steve follows you down.

As he drags up the covers, you shrug out of your sweatshirt, dropping it to the floor beside the bed so you can slip into it again in the morning. By now, you know well just how clingy Steve can be in his sleep. Some nights, he likes to press right up against your back, radiating heat like a damn furnace until you’re itching to shrug off a layer or two of clothes, even in the middle of winter. Tonight, you’re wearing something dark and silky that leaves your arms and shoulders bare, and he can see the soft swell of your chest from the faint moonlight streaking in through the curtains.

The mattress is old. There’s a spring that digs into his hip when he sleeps on his side. And it’s too small for the two of you to be anything but pressed against each other. You wait for him to settle onto his stomach before rolling onto your side and curling up against him. You don’t hold him, but your sock-clad toes rub against his calves through his pants and your fingers draw shapes along the curve of his ribcage, fleeting and barely there.

The door is left cracked open.

There’s light filtering in through the curtains when Steve wakes up again. You’re gone, again, but the covers are folded up neatly, and that’s enough to quell the panic that instantly wells in his chest.

He isn’t used to waking up without you. Most mornings, you’re still curled up beside him, sleeping in until he nudges you awake before he leaves. Forever a night owl. Guiltily, he knows that it’s partly because he keeps you awake most nights. You’ve never mentioned it, and Steve would be hard-pressed to say anything himself, but he knows that his nightmares take as much a toll on you as they do on him. You’re the one thing that can quell the overwhelming fear that threatens to suffocate him, able to pull his head back above water when he’s sure he’s going to drown in it.

Through the cracked open door, he can hear you humming. Something low and indistinct, but vaguely familiar, though he can’t place why.

For several minutes, he just lies there, lightly dozing to the sound of you humming and the closing of cabinet doors as you busy yourself with something in the cramped kitchen. It won’t be long until the kids start waking up and grumbling about breakfast.

A glance at his digital clock has Steve realizing it’s a little after eight. The alarm should have gone off at seven.

With a groan, he pushes himself up, joints cracking from being in the same position for too long. He rolls his shoulders, his back popping as he sits up. Unsteadily, he rises to his feet, one hand running through his sleep rumpled hair as he casts a glance around the room.

He lands on the clock again.

Steve doesn’t have to look at a mirror to know he’s a mess this morning. Just from the sticky feeling of his eyelids, he can tell he didn’t manage to sleep much last night, even after he was sure you were secured beside him, your hair tickling his arm and the rhythmic puffs of your breath sweeping over his skin. He has to clean up before work. Usually, it’s the first thing he does after rolling out of bed. Showering. Letting the hiss of the water and the fog of steam drown out everything else for just a little while longer.

Your humming is overtaken by the hiss of something sizzling in a pan.

His feet are moving towards the door without a second thought towards the shower.

You’ve got his sweatshirt on again.

It’s an absentminded realization as Steve wanders out into the main living space. The kids are all starting to wake, grumbling and groaning and already beginning to bicker about something. Down the hall, he can see the girls rolling out of bed, awoken by the boys or the smell of what you’re cooking. You don’t pay them any attention, swaying gently from side to side as you stand in front of the stove, humming quietly to yourself.

With your back to Steve and a pan sizzling in front of you, you don’t notice him lingering in the hallway, leaning sideways against the wall with a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. For a moment, he just watches you with that overtly fond look in his eyes that the kids like to tease him about, gaze roving down your figure slowly. Your hair is draped over one of your shoulders, sleep-mused and messy, and your legs are still bare, the dark fabric of your shorts barely peeking out from beneath the sweatshirt you’re being swallowed up in. And Steve tries not to stare at your legs for too long. Tries even harder not to think about why the “Harrington” stretched across your shoulders has something possessive and hot curling in his stomach.

You glance up from the stove when Lucas and Mike break into snorts of laughter. The two of them are taking turns tickling the bottom of Dustin’s foot so that he kicks and snores louder in his sleep. Will is sitting up on the couch, smiling as he watches the others, but there are dark circles under his eyes, like he didn’t sleep much at all. Max and El amble out into the living room, El with too much pep for so early in the morning and Max with frizzy hair and a slight scowl. They plop down on either side of Will, content to watch the show.

Kids distracted, Steve pushes away from the wall.

“Want me to take over?” he asks, coming up behind you, his chin dipped down to speak directly into your ear. One of his hands slides around to rest on your waist. Pure muscle memory.

Immediately, you lean into his touch. There’s a small stack of pancakes on a plate to your left, a mixing bowl still filled with batter to your right.

“Not unless you’re planning on being late for work,” you say, flipping the pancake in the pan. You shoot him a look, barely smothering a smirk as you tack on, “again. Callahan’s gonna be up your ass all week if he has to come drag you out of here himself one more time.”

He squeezes your waist. Snorts. Phil Callahan has been up his ass since Steve started training at the academy after he graduated from high school. Clearly, he still hasn’t forgotten about all of those house parties he had to break up when Steve was still in school. Or maybe he’s just bitter because Hopper actually respects Steve half the time. Either way, he takes pride in giving Steve a hard time about anything and everything. Especially you.

Steve’s pretty sure he hasn’t gone a week without being told that cozying up to the chief’s daughter isn’t going to get him promoted, but he’s gotten damn good at rolling his eyes and firing back.

“Can you blame me? I learned from your old man.” With a roll of your eyes, you bump your hip into Steve’s, and he gives your side another squeeze in response. “You didn’t have to let me sleep in,” he murmurs, just loud enough for you to hear.

You glance up at him. “You needed it.” Simple as that. If it came down to it, you probably would have let him sleep through the morning, came up with some excuse for when Callahan inevitably came looking for him. You’re too good to him like that.

“Thank you.” He presses a quick kiss to the crown of your head, crowding you against the counter, but you don’t mind. Another pancake is deposited on the pile, and Steve’s breath is hot against your ear as he says, “Let me help?”

His lips brush against the curve of your jaw as you hum, pretending to think about it. “You can start the eggs,” you concede, biting back a smile when you feel him grin.

Steve kisses your cheek. Reluctantly, he disentangles himself from you, grabbing a skillet from the cabinet and the cartoon of eggs sitting off to the side. He joins you back at the stove quickly, cooking the eggs while you keep flipping pancakes, making enough to feed the bottomless pits lounging in the living room.

The kitchen is small. Most days, it’s barely big enough for one person to move comfortably between the stove and fridge. With two people it’s near impossible to move at all. Consequently, the two of you are pressed together from shoulder to hip, the softness of your sweatshirt rubbing against Steve’s bare arm each time you shift. It makes it harder to cook, but neither of you complain about the distinct lack of space.

“Your dad coming back today?” Steve asks as he starts scrambling the eggs.

You shake your head. “He and Joyce called early this morning. They’re stuck in Indianapolis through the weekend because of the weather, so Will’s going to be spending the night again. Joyce doesn’t want him home alone at all, much less during a blizzard.” Your nose wrinkles at the thought. “Can’t say I blame her.”

He can’t blame Joyce either, but it still makes him groan to hear. “And that means the rest of the little shits are going to be staying here, too,” he grumbles, scrambling the eggs a little aggressively.

“Don’t lie to yourself,” you say. “You love it when they’re all here.”

You got him there. He does like having a full house. It keeps him from being lonely and paranoid over every little sound at night. But he’d much rather it be just you and him, instead of six nosy high schoolers butting into his business and giggling and pretending to gag about Steve making googly-eyes at you when you aren’t looking.

“Of course, I like when they’re here. They don’t keep me up with that damn radio all night when they’re in the same room. I just don’t see why they can’t hang out in the Wheeler’s basement anymore. Isn’t that supposed to be their cave, or whatever?

You snort as you flip the last pancake. “Whatever you have to tell yourself.” He pokes your side and you nearly smack him with the spatula when you jolt. “Steven!” you admonish, but you’re giggling.

“Eww.” Steve looks up to find Mike staring at him from the other side of the counter, his brows pinched and his nose wrinkled in a look of disgust. “Can you two not be gross already? We haven’t even had breakfast yet.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, Wheeler,” Steve snaps back, reaching into the cabinet above your head to grab a stack of plates. “You shitheads ready to eat, or what?”

It doesn’t take long for everyone to settle down with their breakfast. Steve’s question had set all of them off, making the too small kitchen an even more cramped flurry of motion as the kids dished up their own plates, muttering thanks before scurrying back to the living room to eat.

They’re all spread out comfortably now. Max and Lucas are sitting at the small dining table, whispering to each other and giggling. Dustin is louder, his hands moving wildly where he’s sitting on the couch explaining something to El, who looks confused, but continues to watch Dustin in apt fascination anyway, so captivated that she’s letting her eggs and pancakes go cold. Mike keeps interjecting from where he’s leaning against the arm of the chair Will is sitting in, just picking at his eggs somewhat disinterestedly, unfocused on the chatter going on around him as the rest of the teens start arguing about if they’re going to the arcade or the video store downtown today.

Steve frowns, brows furrowing in concern, but he doesn’t have time to dwell on it when you knock your foot against the side of his leg, drawing his attention back to you immediately. You’re twirling a piece of pancake on your fork, letting it soak up syrup while your legs swing idly back and forth from your place on the counter.

“How’s work been going?” you eventually ask him, lips twitching when he snags some eggs. The plate is on the counter next to you, covered in whatever the kids didn’t take, and you’ve both been picking food off of it leisurely. “You regretting that offer yet?”

He shakes his head, angling away from the kids so he can face you. “Owens says we’re all clear. There haven’t been any flareups since, what? That big, nasty slug thing back in June? None of the gates have been active so far this year.”

Neither of you point out that it’s only January.

Steve pops a piece of egg into his mouth. When he looks at you again, you’re frowning down at the plate, watching the pancakes get soggier.

“Are you going to check on them today?”

“I’m supposed to.”

“I don’t like you being out there alone,” you tell him, finally looking up. “You should wait until dad gets back from Indianapolis.”

You don’t have to explain why; he knows. They’ve made it a rule not to go poking around at the gates by themselves, but with Hopper out of town, he doesn’t have much of a choice. He’d skip it, if you asked him to, but you won’t. It’s not that you think he can’t handle it. That he’s not capable of checking the gates himself. Privately, you’d confessed to him one night that you’d probably lose your mind if anything happened to him. And, fuck, Steve understands.

He wouldn’t be able to handle losing you.

“I’ll be fine, honey.” The endearment slips out without him meaning to say it, but neither of you pay it any notice. “What are you going to do without me and these brats bothering you all day?”

Sock-clad toes bump into his leg again. “I’m going to stop by the cabin, actually,” you tell him casually. “There are some boxes dad and Joyce need for the wedding, and I figured I’d get them ready for when they come back.”

“Which boxes?” A piece of pancake is popped into his mouth, a pair of questioning eyes trained on the side of your face. Predictably, his shoulders are tense, one corner of his mouth quirked downward slightly at the edge. “I can swing by and pick them up on my way back from work and—”

“No,” you cut him off, firm but gentle. You knew he’d be on-edge today. A little over-protective. He always is the day following the nightmares bad enough that he refuses to talk about them. But you understand. After the living hell you’ve both been through, how could you not. “No, you don’t have to. I can do it myself.”

The look he sends you is skeptical, so you reach out and wrap your fingers around his upper arm, squeezing his bicep reassuringly. When he still doesn’t look entirely convinced, you sigh. Your fork clinks against the nearly empty plate by your hip as you set it down, shifting on the countertop to face him.

“It’s not going to take that long,” you promise. “Half-hour. Tops.”

One of Steve’s big hands finds your leg, squeezing just above your knee. And if his fingers dip inward, brushing against the soft skin of your thigh, neither of you mention it.

He turns suddenly. Your knee presses against his side as he shifts to face you, hand leaving your leg to press against the counter next to your hip. He doesn’t try to slip himself into the space between your dangling legs, but he does lean in close.

“At least take the kids with you?” It’s less a suggestion than it is an attempt at bargaining. The timbre of his voice deepens, pitched low and close to your ear. The heat of his breath washes over your neck, that too big sweatshirt starting to slip down towards your shoulder.

“What? And listen to them bitch about it the entire time? I don’t think so.” That gets you a crooked smile. “I’m going to drop them off at the arcade. Then, I’m going to pick up those boxes. And then,” you stress, brushing away the lock of hair falling into his face, “I’m going to go steal you for lunch. How does that sound?”

There’s a part of him that wants to argue. Because weren’t you the one just saying you don’t like him being out there alone? But he bites his tongue instead. He knows how capable you are. And the cabin isn’t close to any of the gates he’s been keeping an eye on for Owens.

“All right. All right. Fine. You win. I’ll leave you to it.” He slumps sideways against the counter, back facing the kids. The pretty, triumphant smile you send him makes him feel just a little bit better about giving in so easily. “The chief and Joyce still planning on fixing the place up?” he asks, changing the subject. “Last I saw it, it wasn't looking too hot.”

An understatement, really. Last he saw the cabin, it looked one bad day from collapsing entirely. And that was before a monster from another dimension came crashing through the ceiling. That ceiling has been patched since, if only to keep out the weather and wild animals, but it certainly wasn’t a pretty job.

“Yeah. I keep telling him he’s just gonna have to tear it all apart because they need more bedrooms and another bathroom and it’s gonna be a pain in the ass, but yeah,” you finish. “They want to renovate. Something about it being remote, but not too far out of town. Joyce seems to like it, too.”

“Yeah? What do you think?”

“I think it’s… quaint,” is what you finally decide on, struggling to find a better word.

Steve’s lips twitch in amusement. “Quaint?” he teases.

You shove him away by the shoulder. “Go get ready for work.”

Everyone in the living room sees the way Steve’s hand lingers against your waist before he pulls away. The fabric of his sweatshirt bunching under his fingers as he tugs you a little too close, his head dipped down to whisper in your ear and make you giggle. The kids see it, but none of them say anything. Instead, they watch with snorts and dramatic rolls of their eyes. They do that often, when you and Steve act domestic like this. Almost something, but not quite.

You’ve seen it in the way Mike will roll his eyes when Steve’s flirting is blatant. How Max and El giggled at the way you slipped your fingers between Steve’s and lead him down the short hallway to your old bedroom last night. How all six of them are shooting you and Steve unsubtle glances, like they’re waiting for one of you to make a move.

Dating isn’t the word you’d use to describe your relationship with Steve. It’s too blasé, too casual for the way his lips wander across your shoulders while you sleep, for the way you run your fingers through the hairs at the nape of his neck. As far as anyone else in Hawkins is concerned, you’re Steve’s and he’s yours, but that hasn’t nudged either of you towards putting a label on whatever it is you’re doing. Sleeping together, sure. But there’s still that gap neither of you are quite willing to fill just yet.

Almost lovers, in a way.

What you have now is easy. The sex is good, when you have it.

And Steve is afraid to fuck it all up, just like he’s done with everything else in his life. He’d rather have you like this, halfway, than lose you completely.

Steve could put a ring on your finger tonight and no one would bat an eye except to tell him it took him long enough. And he thinks you’d say yes. If he asked, you’d say yes. But he won’t, and you don’t. And it’s a little bit like limbo, this in-between state you’ve fallen into. Or a waltz, but neither of you can get the rhythm quite right. Always just out of sync. Just off-beat. Pulled in too close, or not pulled in enough. Limbo. It feels a little bit like hell; almost romantic.

Almost lovers.

And Steve still lets his hands linger too long; and you still let him walk away.

Steve keeps his gun in the top drawer of the nightstand.

There’s a part of him that hates it. Keeping a Glock in the bedroom he shares with you most nights. In a house where kids who aren’t quite kids anymore practically live half the time. It leaves a bitter taste in his mouth, so he tries to tell himself it’s for the monsters. Just in case they come back. And he tries even harder to pretend that he doesn’t keep a gun in case the government ever decides they’re all too much of a liability. It’s always there, just in reach in case he needs it. A precaution.

He still keeps that nail bat in the trunk of his car.

You keep a shotgun in the back of the closet. Buried beneath the black dress you wore to Barbara Holland’s funeral in late November, 1984.

He’s just finishing the last button on his uniform shirt when there’s a quiet knock at the door. It’s open. Cracked slightly. Enough for him to hear the muffled chatter from the living room. The sound of your voice, even if he can’t make out the words.

“Steve?” someone that isn’t you calls out, hesitating before they peek around the door. It’s Will, chewing at his bottom lip as he toes the door open wider, just enough to squeeze through into the bedroom before he nudges it back to its previous position. He keeps his head down, eyes on the floor, that pensive and slightly haunted look still plastered across his face. It hasn’t really left him since the fall of 1983.

“What’s up, kiddo?” Steve asks, far nicer than he’d ask any of the other little shits in the other room. By now, he’s used to the kids coming to him for things. Sometimes serious. Mostly not. Will has done this before. Still a little shy about asking Steve for advice, or asking if he could pick something up on his way home from work, even if Will knows Steve will always say yes.

Steve spares Will a glance before turning his attention to the plain, black tie laid out on the bed, considering it. The sight of it makes him grimace. He’s never liked it as a piece of his uniform. He’s never really liked ties at all. They feel too formal. What he does like is the way you always give that tie a little tug when he wears it, a teasing glint in your eyes and a secretive grin on your lips.

He decides he wants to keep that smile to himself and leaves the tie where it is.

Will chews on the inside of his cheek for a minute, watching Steve. “Did you hear it, too?” he finally blurts.

“Hear what?” Steve asks absentmindedly, yanking open the nightstand drawer on his side in search of his gun. He releases the magazine, checking the bullets inside, and nearly spills them onto the floor when Will speaks up again.

“The screaming.”

Steve freezes, staring down at the gun in his hand. White-knuckled grip. His tongue is thick and heavy in his mouth, and it simultaneously takes too long and too fast for the words to process. When they do, it makes him feel sick.

Will shuffles his feet, shifting his weight from one leg to the other as he awkwardly stares at Steve’s back. “Last night, I heard it coming from outside,” he continues, quieter than before, wringing his hands a little nervously. “And then you ran out onto the back porch, so…”

The implication is obvious by the way Will trails off, but Steve still croaks out, “So?” Biding his time just a little longer as he struggles to wrap his head around it. He knew Will woke up last night. You told him that. But Steve didn’t think it was from the screaming—didn’t think that was anything but in his own head, because none of the other kids woke up from it, and you would have told him if you heard it. It was just a dream. A nightmare. It was all in his head.

“So… you must have heard it, too,” Will finishes the thought when Steve doesn’t. He stops playing with his fingers and lifts his gaze from the floor to Steve’s tense shoulders.

There’s a part of Steve that wants to play dumb. To tell Will he didn’t hear anything at all. But Steve isn’t stupid, or oblivious, or anything else people have called him in the past. He can hear the hope in Will’s voice. Hesitant, but there. The subtle relief that he isn’t crazy, or hearing things.

Steve doesn’t have the stomach to ruin that.

“Yeah.” Steve snaps the magazine back into the Glock. He tucks the gun into the holster attached to his belt, finally turning around. “It was just a fox, Will,” he says. “I saw it down by the lake.”

Will doesn’t look entirely convinced.

“It was just a fox,” Steve tells Will again, firmer. Trying just as hard to convince himself of the same thing.

The way Will stares at Steve is slightly unnerving. His eyebrows are knitted together, and there’s a look in his eyes like he knows Steve is lying. Steve clenches his teeth so hard that his jaw starts to hurt, forcing himself to keep a neutral expression.

Finally, Will’s shoulders droop, the tension bleeding from his ridged stance. “Yeah. Okay.” He still doesn’t look completely convinced, but any skepticism he still has is outweighed by sheer relief. “It just…” He shakes his head. “Never mind.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

Will waves him off. “It’s nothing. Never mind,” he repeats. He offers Steve a subdued smile before turning around and pulling the door open again.

Steve sighs, suddenly exasperated. “Jesus,” he mutters. “Look, kid, if something’s wrong, you can talk to me.”

That’s enough to make Will pause before leaving the room. He looks over his shoulder, less troubled now, but there’s a puzzled look on his face instead. “I know. I guess… it just sounded like your name,” he explains, then clarifies. “The fox. It sounded like it was screaming your name. That’s what woke me up.”

Ice floods Steve’s veins as he stares at Will, who’s already trudging back down the hallway, satisfied with Steve’s answer or at least content to drop it for now. Steve has half a mind to chase after him, demanding answers that he knows Will doesn’t have, but before Steve can act on that impulse, someone starts pounding on the front door.

The sudden knocking makes him flinch. “Shit,” he hisses, nerves still fried from last night. Steve runs a hand through his hair, disheveling it only slightly.

You’re already at the front door when he rushes out of the bedroom, cursing under his breath and making sure his gun is still secured in its holster. You’re leaning against the wall, smile tight as you humor whoever is at the door. He recognizes the subtle irritation in your expression, but when the floor creaks under Steve’s feet, you glance at him, smile slipping into something genuine. The kids all watch as Steve comes up behind you, exchanging glances and nudging each other like they know something he doesn’t.

It’s Callahan, standing on the porch with his arms crossed and a smug look on his face because he gets to chew Steve out for being late, which Steve should have expected considering it’s a little after nine and he was supposed to be at the station nearly half an hour ago. But the older officer isn’t alone.

Frankie fucking Cooper is leaning against the side of the trailer with one arm bent and braced against the wall over his head. Steve realizes why the kids were snickering when he sees Frankie’s eyes drop to your bare legs none-too-subtly, eyeing you up the way he always does when he thinks Steve isn’t around to see it—and sometimes when Steve is, just to piss him off.

The other man’s eyes snap away from your legs comically fast when Steve presses himself up against your back. His arm slips against the side of the trailer, making him stumble and straighten awkwardly.

Now, Steve never had an issue with Frankie when they were in school. He graduated two years before Steve, so they were never close, but they played baseball together, and basketball, and it was at one of Frankie’s shitty house parties freshman year that Steve first started getting to know you. In a way, Steve has always been a little grateful for that night, even if he ended up sprinting down the street away from the cops at one in the morning and the hangover left him sick for an entire day afterwards.

Working with Frankie has soured Steve’s opinion of the other man just a little bit, and the way he’s staring at you makes it easy for Steve to slip an arm around your waist. Protective, or maybe just jealous, even though he has no reason to be. You’re wearing Steve’s high school sweatshirt. His name is printed across your back. You spent the night curled up against him. Frankie knows it, too, judging by the way he clears his throat and has the decency to look a little sheepish about getting caught.

“Callahan,” Steve greets, leaning into you a little more than he usually would. He reaches up, bracing a hand against the doorframe as you shift, resting your weight against his chest. An old, petty part of himself rises up as he pointedly ignores Frankie.

One of the kids snorts. Steve has half a mind to give them the finger, but manages to restrain himself in the presence of his coworkers, even if the little shits deserve it.

“Harrington,” Callahan greets in return, trying not to look incredibly amused by everything happening. “You’re late.”

“Alarm is broken,” he lies easily. You snort, quiet enough for neither of the officers to hear you, but Steve still squeezes your waist a little tighter. Not that that it matters. Neither Callahan nor Frankie looks like they believe him. In fact, he’s pretty sure he knows what Frankie is thinking when the man briefly glances down at your bare legs. They don’t bother to question him though. “I was just about to head out.”

Callahan rolls his eyes and scratches at his mustache. “Yeah. Sure you were, kid. Hurry up and say goodbye, or we’ll have to report this to the chief when he gets back.”

This time, you do laugh. A quiet giggle that draws three pairs of eyes directly to you. Steve presses his lips against the side of your head to hide his smile. Callahan looks confused for a second, then annoyed when he realizes why that’s funny.

Steve slides out from behind you, keeping his hand on your waist for longer than necessary. He’s only halfway out the door when he turns around to look at you.

“I’ll see you later, okay?” he promises, keeping his voice low for only you to hear. He’s sure the kids are still watching, and Callahan and Frankie are definitely still watching. Honestly, Steve really doesn’t care if they are. “Stay out of trouble while I’m gone.”

“You’re one to talk.” You smooth your hand down the front of his uniform, plucking at one of the buttons, and he almost regrets not wearing that damn tie, but the pretty smile you send him makes up for it. “I’ll stop by around lunchtime. Pick something up from the diner after I’m done at the cabin.”

“Be safe,” you tell him, a demand more than anything else.

“Yes, ma’am,” he teases. That hand on his chest shoves him backwards, sending him stumbling out of the trailer, where he nearly crashes into Frankie, laughing. You pretend to look annoyed, unable to hide the twitch of your lips; Steve wants to kiss the smile off your mouth, but he can’t.

The kids all call out goodbyes from inside the trailer, some of them more colorful than appropriate, which he hears Frankie try not to laugh about behind him.

You linger on the porch as Steve follows Callahan down the steps to the cruiser parked in the gravel.

“You’re getting pretty domestic there, Harrington,” Callahan says as Steve pops open the driver’s side door of Hopper’s truck. The older officer leans against his cruiser and gives Steve a look over the top. Steve likes the insinuation even less than he does when it comes from Dustin. “Still gunning for that promotion, huh? What would the chief say if he saw you like that?”

With his daughter, is what Callahan doesn’t tack on, but Steve hears it anyway.

“Probably to mind your own damn business,” Steve tells him.

Callahan makes Steve pick up donuts on the way into town for being late. Or for telling him to fuck off. Either way, Steve doesn’t end up strolling into the station until half-past nine, arms piled with boxes from the bakery a few blocks down from the station. The girl behind the counter smiled at Steve when he walked in, immediately clocking his uniform and asking if he wanted the usual. Hawkins PD breaks less stereotypes than they do, that’s for sure. Though, Steve doesn’t mind too much about the extra stop. There’s an extra box of donuts in the backseat of Hopper’s truck, hidden under an emergency blanket. Something to bring home tonight.

Home.

He tries not to think too long about that, but can’t quite keep the thought from swirling around in his head as he shoves open the doors with an armful of baked goods.

There’s a stupid smile on his face when he finally drops the donuts off in the break door, but no one else manages to heckle him for it before Flo peeks her head in and calls his name.

Despite the routine nature of Flo gesturing for him to follow her, wanting to talk in private, there’s something about the look on her face that makes a foreboding feeling sink into the pit of his stomach. He chalks it up to the lack of sleep and his nightmare. It rattled him last night, and he had to leave you this morning. That’s going to make the day hard to get through.

Steve follows Flo out of the room, ignoring the look that Callahan and Powell share and the way Frankie snickers, like they’re still in school and Steve is being called to the principal’s office and scolded for something. He barely resists the urge to roll his eyes, not wanting Flo to catch him and chew him out for it.

She doesn’t lead him far, just a few steps out of the breakroom, away from any prying ears. Steve shuts the door behind himself, leaning against the wall with narrowed eyes. “Something wrong?”

The look Flo sends him is nothing short of exasperated, her lips pursed in the same way she does whenever Hopper asks too many questions instead of just shutting up and listening. Instead of answering she looks him up and down, scrutinizing him. “You’re late,” she tells him. “Hop is a bad influence on you.”

“Yeah. Probably,” he agrees. He crosses his arms. Flo wouldn’t bring him out here just to berate him for not being on time, so he tries again. “What’s going on?”

“We’ve received some strange calls this morning,” she explains, mouth still pressed into a thin line. “According to chief Hopper’s notes, they fall under your authority when he isn’t available.”

The tone of her voice lets Steve know she doesn’t agree with that. He can’t say he blames her. Steve is barely twenty-two. He’s one of the newest officers working for Hawkins PD and plenty of his colleagues don’t understand why Hopper defers to him so readily over officers that have more experience and a better track record. Flo had been the one to receive all of those noise complaints about the Harrington house when Steve was still in school, and while not unkind, she’s never let him forget it.

But aside from Hopper, Steve is the only one in the force who knows about everything that’s actually happened in this shitty little town over the last several years. And with Hopper away, there are no other options besides Steve when it comes to handling anything out of the ordinary. Nancy and Jonathan are both away for school. The kids are too young to be dealing with any this crap. And Steve tries his damn hardest to keep you out of things, even if he knows you can handle yourself just fine.

It makes him a little sick, thinking about anything happening to that trailer down by the lake and all those people in it that he cares about. Crowded and run down, but home.

Steve realizes he’s been quiet for too long when Flo looks at him expectantly. He clears his throat. “What kind of calls?” he asks, wondering what could be so strange about them that they’d fall under the category of things Steve needs to handle in Hopper’s place.

Briefly, his thoughts flash to missing people and murder dressed up as suicide before he forcibly shoves them down.

“Noises,” she says plainly. “Coming from the woods.”

“Noises?” he repeats. Skepticism all but drips from his tongue, and he’s aware of how much he sounds like Hopper in this moment. “Someone called about noises in the woods?”

Flo sighs. “The Mulligan boys have been calling all morning.”

She says Mulligan boys with a hint of distaste, and Steve can’t really blame her. There are at least five of them living down by Kerley, all with the same angular features and lanky build. They’re troublemakers, ever more than Steve used to be. It wouldn’t be the first time Steve’s dealt with calls involving them. Fireworks at midnight. Brawls. Public Intoxication. What’s unusual is that they’re the ones calling.

There must be a look on his face, because Flo continues, “they told me they heard something screaming out in the woods down by Kerley before the sun was even up this morning. Thought it was a fox. Or a mountain lion.”

“A mountain—there are no mountain lions in Indiana,” Steve blurts, needing to latch onto something other than screaming down by Kerley. The Byers don’t live near that road anymore. Neither does Steve, most of the time. But his nightmare is still fresh, and he’s never quite been able to scrub his mind of everything that was lurking in the woods there when he was still in high school.

“A bobcat, then,” Flo corrects, exasperated. “Or coyotes. I don’t know what those boys thought they were looking for.”

“They called because they think they heard an animal?” Steve asks, more to clarify than anything else. There’s still a tinge of skepticism clinging to the words. Or maybe he’s just being condescending. More likely, it’s false bravado. If he clings to cynicism and a barbed tongue, maybe nothing will happen. Hawkins is practically surrounded by miles of forest. Of course, there are animals wandering around in the woods. If he tells himself that enough times, maybe he'll start to believe it. “Thought that was the DNR’s problem, not ours.”

And Steve thinks about the black bear in his backyard that wasn’t a black bear at all, and it makes that churning feeling in his stomach just a little bit worse.

Flo doesn’t keep him waiting for an explanation. “They called because they said it wasn’t an animal,” she tells him, and Steve’s heart lurches. “Damn fools went looking for whatever it was to shut it up. They said they saw an eight-foot-tall wild man walking through the trees.”

As quickly as his heart leapt into his throat, he makes himself swallow it, forcing it to sinks back down to where it belongs. He hopes it doesn’t show on his face. It’s hits a little too close to home. A monster in the woods. The screaming he woke up to. The screaming that Will heard, too. Not just a nightmare rattling around in Steve’s head. Not a fox.

But he’s not sure how to navigate this without Flo thinking he’s crazy, so he lets his eyes roll, even as Flo sends him a disapproving look. “A wild man.” This time, he definitely sounds condescending. And he lays it on thick. It’s not the first time someone’s seen a “wild man” in Indiana, but none of those sightings have turned out to be much more than stories by drunks and potheads. Right now, he really hopes that’s all it is. “Did they say if they’d been drinking, too? I haven’t seen Tommy Mulligan sober since the tenth-grade.”

“Harrington,” Flo starts, and he already knows she’s going to tell him to just deal with it so they stop calling while she’s trying to read her book, or finish her crosswords, or whatever it is she does to pass the time on slow days.

“I’ll go check it out after I finish something for the chief,” he says. He needs to check around the lab first. Just in case. “If they call back, tell them it’ll be an hour or two. Okay?”

“Thank you.”

Steve starts walking backwards towards the front of the building. “I’ll radio when I’m headed to the Mulligan place. Have Callahan or Cooper meet me there.”

The clock on the wall catches his attention, and he winces when he sees it’s after nine-thirty. “Shit,” he hisses under his breath. Even if he finishes his rounds for Hopper early, there’s no way he’ll be back in time to meet you for lunch.

“Flo,” he starts, but she’s already waving him off.

“If she stops by, I’ll let her know there was an emergency call. I’ll tell her to wait in her dad’s office until you come back. Now get out of here.”

Steve doesn’t bother to tell her thanks.

The car sits idling on the side of the road for almost ten minutes before you finally work up the nerve to kill the engine.

A strange, foreboding feeling settled into the pit of your stomach after you dropped the kids off at the arcade. All six of them piled out of the car—Steve’s BMW, still well-loved, even if the kids have to squish to fit into the back now that they aren’t in middle school anymore, which is technically illegal, but between being one of Hopper’s daughters and Steve’s something every cop in town is willing to look the other way when they recognize the car—bickering about something that you didn’t bother paying attention to as you mentally filed through which boxes you needed to dig through. It wasn’t until you took the right off Denfield, the car creeping down that lone, dead-end road, that you felt ice starting to creep into your veins and churn in your stomach. It’s been a while since you’ve been out this far, this secluded from the rest of Hawkins. The trailer by Lake Tippecanoe is private. So is the Byers’ temporary house. But the cabin is a ten-minute walk through the woods this time of year.

There’s a part of you that almost wishes you had listened to Steve and brought the kids with. If only to fill the silence. The woods make you jumpy these days. Most things do, if you’re being honest. The only time you feel completely safe anymore is at home with Steve, or the kids, or your dad. You used to find comfort in being alone, but now the paranoia threatens to eat you alive when no one else is around. It would make you feel ashamed if you didn’t know Steve felt the same way.

It’s a gray day. The sky overcast; the threat of a storm looming overhead. A genuine blizzard, according to your dad. The worst of it always comes in January, and this year is proving to be no different. It’s only noon, but the lack of sun makes it feel like dusk.

You chalk the strange feeling up to how dark it is and throw open the car door. It takes another second until you can bring yourself to leave the warmth of the car, familiar and safe.

Instantly, the wind makes you wish you hadn’t.

You changed before you left: jeans, a thick sweater and a pair of even thicker socks, boots meant for hiking, and a too-big jacket you think might be Steve’s, but it was shoved to your side of the closet, so you took it anyway. If you try hard enough, you can almost pick up the faintest trace of his cologne clinging to the collar as you bury your nose into the warm fabric, blocking out the chill. The wind still makes you shiver. You curl your fingers into your sleeves, suddenly wishing you hadn’t forgotten your gloves on the counter as you were leaving. You didn’t notice they weren’t crammed into your pocket until you were dropping the kids off at the arcade, and by then you didn’t want to make the extra trip. Luckily, the cabin isn’t too far into the woods.

The snow is thick already. Deep enough that it reaches nearly to your knees. The idea of getting more makes your nose wrinkle, so you try not to think about it for too long. There’s nothing you can do about the snow. Truthfully, you won’t mind the excuse to stay inside, curl up somewhere with a book and something warm to drink. Or stay in bed with Steve for longer than either of you should. For now, though, you keep curses locked behind your teeth as you almost lose your footing.

There’s no path through the snow anymore. It’s been too long since anyone has been to the cabin, so the snow isn’t packed down in places like it was last year. It’ll make the boxes hard to move. Belatedly, you think you should have taken Steve’s advice and brought the kids with, but the whining wouldn’t have been worth it.

The walk from Steve’s car to the cabin is uneventful. There are animals skittering through the trees, small mammals that are moving too fast for you to keep an eye on, and the constant chatter calms you.

You’re careful as you step over the trip wire running along the tree line, still in place after all these years. A precaution, your dad calls it, even though there’s nothing in that cabin aside from storage items that have been forgotten for years. Nothing worth stealing, at the very least.

The cabin looks worse than the last time you saw it, even from the outside. The shingles are starting to fall. Parts of the wall look like they’re finally starting to rot, giving in after years of not being properly taken care of. Paint won’t be able to fix it. You’ll have to tear the walls down when you fix the place up. If you can even convince your dad to tear the place apart. At least the windows are still intact. If snow or animals were getting inside, you’d just have more problems to worry about.

The porch practically groans under you as you reach the steps.

Your fingers are starting to feel numb by the time you fish the key out of your pocket. The lock sticks when you try to turn it, but finally gives as you shove your weight against the door, forcing it open.

The wood floors creak under your boots as you walk deeper into the cabin. Dust coats the room in a fine layer. The floors. The furniture. It tickles you nose and makes your face scrunch with a sneeze that doesn’t quite come. There’s still some debris on the floor. Broken glass and splintered wood from when that monster came crashing through the roof. Hopper patched the ceiling, but didn’t sweep the floor. Instead, he just left the cabin to rot. Frozen in time in the months it’s been left unoccupied. It isn’t nearly as bad as it had been before El lived here back in 1984, but even a brief glance around the room tells you it needs a deep cleaning come spring.

It takes some effort to slide the chair and rug out of the way so you can pry open the hatch in the floor. The dusty, moth-bitten chair makes you grimace as you touch it, so you shove it aside as quickly as you can. The rug is kicked aside and shoved into a sad heap. It’s stained with something dark. Blood, maybe. Or some kind of thick, otherworldly ooze that makes your stomach twist sickly.

The box you’re looking for is buried in the storage space beneath the floor. Tucked between a box labeled “Nam” and a stained one with “43” scrawled across the side. The box you finally drag out is well kept. Plastic instead of cardboard. And when you pop the lid to make sure it’s the right one, you can’t help the gentle smile that curves your lips when you see the photo album tucked neatly on top. You’ll have to look through it later, after the kids have gone to sleep.

There’s a second box that you have to drag out, wincing as porcelain rattles inside. Old silverware clangs noisily as you deposit the box on the floor beside the storage hole. A quick peek inside shows that none of the dishes have broken. They’re fancy. All tucked into a pretty case. Sterling silver and the kind of plates that are too delicate to use in almost any situation, but you heard your dad mention them to Joyce in passing once, and thought you’d surprise them by getting them all cleaned up before the wedding.

Maybe you’ll be able to get El and Will to help you clean them up.

Both boxes are shoved to the side as you close up the storage space again, making sure the cover is sealed tight, just in case.

As you stand, you dust off your hands, lips pursing as you glance at the pair of boxes. You won’t be able to carry both at once without struggling. And the last thing you want is to haul those dishes through the woods only to drop them all halfway to the car. Resigned to taking two trips there and back, you grab the one with the dishes first.

Again, they rattle as you pick it up, huffing at the weight. And, again, you wonder if maybe you should have brought the kids with you for help. Lucas, at least, is sweet enough that he probably would have offered to help even without you asking. Mike and Dustin wouldn’t have been nearly as agreeable, though. And if you brought one with you, you’d have to deal with the other five as well. After everything that’s happened, the party rarely lets one person go off without the others. Lucas going with you wouldn’t have changed that.

You leave the door unlocked behind you after you jiggle it shut, unable to grab the key with the box in your arms and unwilling to put it down. It shouldn’t matter. You’ll have to come back anyway, and the chances of anyone else slipping into the cabin in the ten minutes you’ll be gone is slim, if not impossible. The cabin is well hidden, and there shouldn’t be anyone wandering around this part of the woods anyway.

It's difficult to get a firm grip on the heavy box in your arms, and your pace is slower than you’d like it to be, but you make it back into the woods without tripping the wire. Even in the faint light, your path is simple enough to follow. The matted down snow makes it easier to move, your steps more stable as you walk back to the road. The crunch of snow and the chattering of animals slip into a comfortable background noise.

It happens suddenly.

All at once, the forest goes silent. The chatter of birds and rodents stops abruptly. Every hair on your body seems to stand on end as you freeze mid-step, clutching the box tighter. There’s an unnatural stillness in the air, one you can’t quite explain. It feels wrong.

There was something Benny used to tell you when you worked at the diner—before everything. He was friends with hunters, and they used to come in, tell their stories. And they all said the same thing. The woods are never supposed to be silent. Quiet, yes, but never silent.

Still frozen, you strain to listen for anything, but there’s nothing but the faint howl of the wind and the crunching of snow under your boots when you shift your weight.

A strange sound comes from further into the trees to your left, quiet and muffled, almost like crying. Immediately, you want to run, instinct driving you to move, but your feet won’t unstick from where they’ve sunken into the snow. The noise whispers through the trees again. A whimper. Childlike and frightened. Your first thought is of Will all those years ago. A child lost in the woods. Scared. Freezing in the cold. Alone.

And you don’t think about it as you take a step off the path you’ve made. The porcelain plates clatter together, rattling in the otherwise still air.

Another whimper.

“Hello?” you call out automatically, voice a little bit shaky.

Another step.

The snow crunches under your feet. You don’t call out again, struggling to listen for those quiet cries, and you make it a dozen steps into the covered brush before you freeze up again. The whimpering is just as quiet as when you first heard it, so soft that it’s hard to pick up beneath the wind. Soft enough that you didn’t notice it right away.

The whimpers aren’t changing. Not in pitch. Not in length. Not in the time between them. It’s the same sound over and over, like a tape on loop, or one that’s gotten stuck and keeps repeating the same word, broken.

Again, that whimpering sound filters through the trees, right in front of you.

The wrongness of it is what makes you take a shuffling step back the way you came. Your pulse jumps. Ice fills your stomach, churning sickly. You don’t notice your breath quickening until it clouds the air in front of you, labored and heavy.

Slowly, you turn to the right, back towards the path you came from.

And then you feel it. The heaviness that comes with being watched.

Your head snaps up.

A pair of milky, silver eyes are already staring back at you. Beneath the waning light, they glow, large and set deep behind thick, matted hair, grizzled and stringy. Long, spindly fingers wrap around the trunk of a large oak tree. Claws the size of your fingers dig into the bark, leaving deep lacerations behind.

The air is slammed from your lungs. You don’t move. You don’t breathe. Those eyes lock onto yours, unblinking and so, so large, and it’s like you’ve been doused in freezing water. All at once, the pieces of you begin to shut down and lock up. The seconds bleed together, blurring and seeming to drag on forever.

It—whatever it is—is hunched over, half-hidden behind the tree and trying to make itself look smaller. Limbs are tucked against a grayish, naked torso. Pale and veiny. Built similar to the Demogorgon from years ago. Like you, it doesn’t move, so still you’d think it was some kind of sick hallucination if you believed your mind could ever conjure something so horrific.

Then, the creature cocks its head to the side, slowly. In your own voice, just like you did minutes ago, it calls out, “Hello?”

Time slams back into motion. Your weight shifts suddenly. Gravity rocks your heel back to the ground. Snow crunches beneath your boot. A twig snaps. The creature’s limbs unfurl as it stands, arms and legs unnatural and long, claws dragging against the top of the snow as it rises to a height much taller than you. Still hunched over, its back curved dramatically, with its spine bulging through that mottled, gray skin. Wiry, stiff spines protrude from each vertebra.

“Hello?” it calls out again, taking a step out from behind the tree.

The wind whistles through the trees, blowing your hair forward into your face. The stringy locks covering the creature's face shift with the gust. A maw of needle-like, crooked teeth. Its jaw cracks open. It screams for you, a horrific wail, drawn out unnervingly. “Steeeeve?”

The cardboard box you’re carrying crashes to the ground. Inside, porcelain plates shatter into pieces. The sound of broken glass echoes through the empty trees, splintering the silence. Before the monster can take another step, you whirl around and bolt.

Searching the forest behind the Mulligan property ended up being nothing more than a waste of time. Steve searched the woods with Callahan and Frankie Cooper for hours, trudging through knee-deep snow and trying not to freeze his ass off because Tommy fucking Mulligan thought he saw a monster in the woods. And Steve had believed it, too. Between his already frayed nerves and his own experiences with monsters, Steve would have been a fool not to take the claim seriously.

Fat lot of good that did him.

There wasn’t anything behind the Mulligan house. Not footprints. Not fleshy, rotting portals in trees, or oozing slime. No wild men. Just a half-eaten deer carcass and the smell of coyote piss. Tommy Mulligan hadn’t sobered by the time Steve reached the farm off Kerley. Technically, he hadn’t even stopped drinking. But he still insisted that he’d seen something lurking near the tree line. Too tall to be a man.

Callahan thought it was teenagers fucking around. Steve thought it was just the damn coyotes. Frankie nudged Steve in the ribs and suggested it might be a black bear, and Steve had to swallow down the acrid taste of vomit that welled up in the back of his throat.

When Steve finally gets back to the station, the sun is already starting to set. It’s low in the sky, and the already overcast day is only getting darker as the storm clouds start to roll in from the West. Snow has been falling for over an hour now, wispy flakes dusting the ground and growing thicker by the minute. There’s a solid inch or two of fresh snow in the parking lot, just enough to make the ground slick.

It’ll be a pain in the ass to deal with tomorrow, for sure.

He shoves open the front door with more force than he means to, cold and irritated and hungry—because dammit he missed lunch with you to stumble through the woods with Callahan on a wild goose chase. Of all things, that’s the worst part. Steve has gone out on bogus calls before, ones that waste his time and amount to nothing, but it’s one of the first times he hasn’t been able to meet you for lunch when you’ve promised to stop by. He always makes time for you, when he can.

Steve shakes off the snow clinging to his hair as he steps into the station. Automatically, he’s sweeping the room with his eyes, looking for you in the nearly empty room. You’re not sitting at his desk, like you do sometimes while you wait, leaving him little notes on sticky pads for him to find later. And your coat isn’t hanging from the rack. He can’t see down the hall into Hopper’s office, but somehow, he already knows you aren’t there.

Disappointment sits heavy in his chest, but Steve can’t blame you for going home already. You must have stopped by hours ago and gotten sick of waiting for him to come back from the call out at the Mulligan place. Sometimes, when you have the day off, you’ve lingered longer waiting for him to come back, but over five hours is a lot to ask.

“She’s not here, Casanova.”

The voice makes him flinch. Steve’s head snaps sideways to the desk where Flo is usually sat taking calls. Flo isn’t there though. Instead, it’s the lanky brunette that’s going to be taking Flo’s position as secretary come spring when the older woman is set to retire. She’s lounging back in her seat, feet kicked up on the desk as she chews bubblegum, looking bored out of her mind. Robin, he remembers. A year or two younger than Steve. She graduated from Hawkins High a few years back, went off to Berkeley, if he remembers right. She’s just a temp right now, working for winter and summer break while she’s in town visiting family.

It takes a second longer for her words to register. “What?”

Robin rolls her eyes. Her gum pops loudly. Steve has only been in the building for a matter of minutes and she already seems exasperated with his mere presence. “Your girlfriend,” she clarifies, speaking slowly and enunciating obnoxiously, “isn’t here. She’s not hiding under your desk or whatever it is you’re thinking.” There’s an implication there that she only catches after one of Steve’s eyebrows lifts towards his hairline, and her expression twists from boredom to one of utter disgust. “Oh, gross. I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.”

Any other day, he might have laughed at the look on her face, but there’s something about what Robin says that trips him up before he can.

“What do you mean she’s not here?” he asks, a little redundantly. He guessed as much when he walked in. That’s not the problem. It’s the fact that she thought she needed to tell him that doesn’t sit right with him. Robin doesn’t come in until after three, when Flo leaves for the day. Usually, you’re gone by then anyway. Though, you’ve met Robin a few times when you’ve stopped during the afternoons, or dropped something off on those late nights when Steve works the midnight shift.

His question is rewarded with another eyeroll. This time, she even sighs heavily, like answering him is a chore. “What do you think it means, dumbass? She didn’t stop by today.” The disinterest in her expression shifts into an odd mix of amusement and sympathy. “You’re not having some kind of lover’s quarrel, are you?”

But Steve isn’t listening, still caught on, “she didn’t stop by?”

“Nope,” Robin pops the ‘p’. “And she always stops by, according to Florence—unless she can’t stop by, in which case you always make sure to mention it to someone—so whatever it is you did, you might want to hurry up and think of an apology.” Robin leans her chin on her palms, brows furrowing as she starts to ramble. “We’re talking grade-A groveling. Flowers. Dinner. The whole shebang. Because wow, you will not be doing any better than what you have now, Harrington.”

She doesn’t seem to notice that Steve still isn’t listening, or that he hasn’t moved at all since she started talking. Steve is frozen in front of her desk, eyes wide and a sick, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Car trouble. It must have been car trouble. Or the kids whined until you gave in and hung out with them at the arcade all day. They’ve done that before. And you’re always a sucker for it, even worse than he is. You’d do anything for those kids, after all. You probably lost track of time, either with the kids or at the cabin. You’ve done that before, too. Sometimes, you get so wrapped up in what you’re doing that you don’t even realize how much time has passed. It’s one of those little things he loves about you.

It’s not until she changes the subject that his brain catches up with the conversation. “Also, you need to tell your children to stop calling the station.” She’s stopped grinning at him in that smug way. Instead, she just looks irritated. “We don’t need a bunch of teenagers asking for you and whining about needing a ride home on the emergency line, which is, you know, for emergency situations only. Also, aren’t they like seventeen or something? Why do they even need rides anymore? Why are you friends with so many children?” The rapid-fire questions only make him more confused. And Robin still doesn’t stop talking. “I had to tell them we’d send an officer to their houses to tell their parents to get them to knock it off. Seriously, Harrington, that shit cannot—hello! I’m talking to you!”

Steve isn’t listening anymore. He’s already halfway to his desk across the room before he even realizes he was moving. And then the radio the kids gifted him one year for Christmas is being yanked out of where he stashed it in one of the drawers this morning. It crackles to life as he turns it on.

“Hey! Dumbasses!” he snaps into the receiver, holding down the button so they can hear him. “What did I tell you about calling the station for stupid things when I’m at work, huh? You little shits are gonna get me fired one day.”

He takes his thumb off of the speaker button and waits for all of them to start chiming in with their excuses, and then frowns when they don’t.

Eventually, the radio does crackle, the signal somewhat weak with the distance. “Steve?” one of the kids asks. Only one of them. They aren’t all talking over each other, for once, and that only makes him feel sicker. And they sound scared, quiet and timid. More than Steve’s heard in a long time.

“Will?” he asks after a second, concern thick in his voice. “What’s wrong?”

The radio crackles with silence again. “Is…” Will starts, then stops. “Is she with you?” He doesn’t bother clarifying who, but Steve knows. “She dropped us off at the arcade before lunch and told us she’d pick us up in a few hours, but she hasn’t come back yet. We thought maybe she just stayed late with you after you guys got lunch, but…”

“She didn’t pick you up?” Steve repeats, strained, voice tight.

More silence. “No. Did… is she not with you?” Will’s voice is slightly higher than usual with the beginning note of panic.

Steve wets his lips. “She didn’t stop by earlier.”

“Oh.”

Steve’s hands are starting to shake. Will doesn’t say anything else, and Steve doesn’t want the kids to panic, so he forces himself to say something even mildly reassuring. “Shit. Look, she—she probably just lost track of time at the cabin? Right? You’ve been there. Place is a damn mess and Hopper can’t organize anything for shit. I’ll just go pick her up and we’ll be back before it gets dark. Okay? There’s some cash in the top drawer of the nightstand. Order a couple of pizzas or something for when we get back. I’ll stop and grab some movies on the way home, or something.”

“It’s supposed to storm soon,” Will reminds him.

“Yeah,” Steve manages to croak out. “Yeah, I know. Look, we’ll, we’ll be back in an hour tops. Okay? Just—just stay out of trouble until we get back.”

When Steve takes the right off Denfield, he immediately spots a lone car pulled to the side of the road. It’s his car. The red BMW is stopped close to the dead end, pulled partway into the ditch even though there’s never any traffic on this road. Steve pulls the truck up behind the car, cutting the engine and throwing open the door without a second thought.

There’s snow starting to pile up on the car. The windshield and roof are blanketed in a thick layer, evidence of just how long you’ve been here.

It’s starting to get even darker now. The last of the sunset is bleeding out, and the snow is getting thicker and harder to see through as it comes down faster. The world begins to white out, and he has to squint to see through the flurry. Steve fumbles for the flashlight attached to his belt, clicking it on and shining it through the windows of the BMW, though he already knows you aren’t there. If you ended up stranded out here, you probably would have gone back to the cabin.

When he confirms you aren’t huddled in the backseat, he steps away from the car and shifts his focus to the forest on his right. Slowly, he scans the ground for footprints in the snow. They’re there. Faint. Half-filled with fresh snow that just keeps coming down. But there. He knows the way to the cabin even if they weren’t there, but there’s something about seeing the tracks that make the knot in his chest loosen ever so slightly.

You were here, at least. And it seems like he was right. You made it to the cabin and just lost track of time, like you always do. Probably found some old photo album and got lost flipping through the pages. You’re sentimental like that sometimes. He just wishes you would have called, but you must have left the radio in his car, and you wouldn’t have been able to reach anyone with the phone inside anyway. Last he saw, it was smashed to pieces on the floor.

Following the tracks you’ve left behind isn’t hard. They’re the only ones in this part of the woods. He isn’t sure if the land is private property or if it’s owned by the state, but he’s never seen anyone else out here. There aren’t even deer tracks, which Steve might consider odd any other day, but tonight he barely notices, just keeps following your footprints like they’re a lifeline leading him right back to you.

The beam of his flashlight illuminates the darkness, reflecting off the snow and casting dark shadows against the trees as he walks. They flicker and shift with each step he takes, shadow puppets stalking him. He blames the ice in his veins on the dropping temperature, and keeps his head down so he doesn’t start looking for figures in the dark that aren’t really there.

Steve hasn’t been walking for long when he finds a strange spot in the snow. Where your footprints before were consistent and moving in one direction, each step you took clearly visible in the snow, there’s a spot midway between the road and the cabin, maybe five minutes in, where the footsteps start to overlap. He shines his flashlight further down the nearly invisible path between the trees, his brows furrowing.

There’s a second set of tracks coming back from the cabin.

They’re overlapping the original tracks, deeper and fresher than the ones that he’s been following. And they’re human.

The panic that bursts through his chest is wild and raw. It tries to climb up and out of his mouth, but sticks halfway as his throat closes up. He can’t breathe. That second set of tracks—your footprints—suffocates him. Because you came back. You were coming back. Maybe hours ago, now, because the tracks are filling in with snow just like the rest. And then they just stop.

It’s instinct that keeps him from shutting down completely as his nightmare from last night slams back into him. You were dragged away from him. Swallowed up in a vast nothingness. And there was nothing he could but watch. He’s been dealing with the strange, supernatural occurrences in Hawkins since he was a teenager, and he’s been working with the PD for nearly as long. Steve knows he needs to keep a level-head, for your sake, and the whisper of your voice telling him to be safe rings loudly in his ears.

Desperately, Steve sweeps his flashlight across the snow-covered ground. His hand is shaking again. He freezes when he sees more footprints, the tracks veering off the path to the left. They don’t go far. Only a dozen feet before Steve sees something in the snow, partly obscured by the snow. At first, he thinks it might be you.

It’s not, but it doesn’t loosen the tightness around his throat.

There’s a box on the ground. The cardboard is damp and broken open on one corner. Ceramic shards spill from the hole. Smashed plates, he realizes after a moment. Nausea hits as he immediately realizes where they came from. Out here, there’s only one place they could come from.

“Fuck,” he hisses between his teeth, passing his flashlight to the other hand and reaching for the gun attached to his belt. If you dropped the box like that, it means something grabbed you, or you ran before it could. Neither option is reassuring.

There’s no blood in the snow. A quick scan of the immediate area tells him that much. And he can see where your tracks veer off again, deeper into the woods, away from the road and the cabin. They’re spaced further apart than the others, and his teeth clench so hard that his jaw starts to hurt, because he knows that means you started running.

He doesn’t realize how quiet the forest is until someone starts screaming.

High-pitched shrieks echo between the trees, long and loud, and it’s in horror that he makes out the mangled sound of his own name. Like last night, the sound of your terrified cries smashes through his ribcage and rips at the soft tissue of his insides. Eviscerate him. Hollow out his chest until he can’t breathe.

And then he’s running.

The screams don’t stop. Choked sobs. Wordless cries. His name, mostly. Loud and unceasing. Absolutely gut-wrenching. Like you’re being eaten alive. Each wail rips through the woods, muffled and carried away by the wind, but Steve doesn’t stop chasing your voice as he stumbles through the snow, narrowly avoiding trees and thick brush.

The flashlight beam cuts between the trees wildly as he follows the sound of your screams, but something isn’t right. He can’t make out what direction they’re coming from. They keep swirling around, echoing through his head as if they’re coming from all sides at once. It’s disorienting. Steve spins in a circle, starting to feel sick as he calls out your name and prays that you’ll answer him—tell him where you are so he can find you.

Instead, the screams cut off abruptly.

In an instant, Steve feels the crushing weight of reality begin to collapse around him. Dread rolls down his spine. Silence rings loudly in his ears. So much louder than your screams. So much worse. In an instant, Steve prays to whatever deity is out there that you’ll start screaming again, prays that the sound of it will haunt him for the rest of his life.

In the stillness of the forest, the only sound is the wind howling between the trees. Even that seems far off, growing faint.

“Hello?”

All of his limbs lock up. Steve’s flashlight flickers.

The greeting is hesitant. Shaky, with a distinct crack midway through the lone word. And it’s so, so close. Breathed from the space right behind him, into open air. The shock of it makes his stomach flip and sends a shiver running along his spine, and it takes an agonizing second for the sound to slot into place.

It’s your voice.

“Steve?” you whisper again. Quieter. Closer.

Steve whips around to face the other direction. Milky eyes glint under the beam from his flashlight, like a cat in the darkness, surrounded by dark, scraggly locks of matted hair.

A gray, hulking shape lunges from between a pair of trees, and Steve shouts as it hurtles towards him, closing the distance before he can click off the safety and get a shot off. Instead, he throws himself to the side, tumbling down into the snow, but not before something sharp catches his arm. Claws slice through his jacket and uniform shirt. It hurts, he registers, somewhere in the very back of his mind, but it’s shoved to the side before he can latch onto the pain.

Despite the thick layer of snow on the ground, the breath is still slammed from his lungs as he hits the ground. The thing starts screaming at him. His name. Your voice. Just like a moment ago. Just like this morning. His nightmare and whatever was in the woods. Whatever Will could hear, too.

The screeches rise and rise in pitch until they make his ears ring, losing form until it’s not even his name anymore. Just noise.

He scrambles backwards through the snow, but can’t find his flashlight as he fumbles for it blindly, unable to see the creature. The flashlight is still on, lighting up the immediate area between flickers. Something moves at the edge of the beam, where light melts into the darkness. 

Those pale eyes are glowing in the darkness. Steve gets a look at long, inhuman arms and legs and gray flesh pulled too taut over a spindly, skinny frame. It doesn’t have a face. Not one that he can see behind that matted hair or fur.

It shies away from the light, shrinking back between the trees, but it’s too tall to hide between them properly. Those empty, unblinking eyes watch Steve roll to his feet and raise his gun. His hands shake. It takes a second for him to unlock the safety.

The thing cocks its head to one side, one distorted hand curling around a thin tree trunk. Claws scrape the bark. Steve’s right arm throbs. Beneath his coat, his skin feels wet. His fingers are stiff as they shift to the trigger.

“Steve!”

The shriek comes from his left. His eyes flick in that direction for a split second.

A mistake.

The monster screams at him, low and garbled. It lurches out from between the trees, lunging. Steve stumbles backwards in the snow. Not fast enough. A burning feeling laces up his arm. Milky eyes bore into his. The stink of rot chokes his nose and throat. His foot catches, sending him hurtling towards the ground. The gun in his hand goes off. The shot echoing through the air. It’s the last thing he hears before his head slams into something hard.

[miynt0012]

[SIM DOWNLOAD] Lumine | Genshin Impact

maxis match | four outfits | full cc list

I found some hair that looked like hers and sooo this happened.

I’m quite pleased with the result, tho I’m 99% she’s the only genshin character I’ll ever make lol

ps, her name in the gallery is gonna be hotaru (her jp name), since that’s the name I use the most :P

please don’t share my sims / pictures of my sims on the gallery or on any other platform

DOWNLOAD: mega

edit: since the high-waist shorts are no longer available on the link provided, you can download them here!! All credits go to the original creator ofc!

cc list:

skintone

lamatisse - bare skintones

genetics

NSW - perfect eyes shaping(mm eyebags n2, mm eyelids n5, eye prest n10) | NSW - eye colors | yooniesim - imperfection teeth set | NSW - bodycare kit (female torso mask n2 mm, cleavage mask n6 mm overlay) | NSW - skin n7 kit (skin n7 mm overlay) | stretchskeleton - maxis match-y eyebrows (01-06 merged) | PYXIS - about face (skin details) | luumia - skin features (lip tints) | remussirion - nose mask 04

hair

simandy - mimori hair 

makeup

pralinesims - blush n25

accessories

oydis - make or break collection (long coffin 2 nails) | oydis - nuit jewerly set (necklace star) | magic bot - fingernails polish 7v | magic bot - classic thights set (ripped thights) | eunosims - nail set | simpliciaty - ephemeral chocker

clothes

belaloallure - off duty cc (ayres cargo pants) | simandy - drown in the night (bad habits jacket acc) | seoulsoul - basic techwear (halter top) | trillyke - go baby pants | manueapinny - bab bab set (open chest crop top) | ms-marysims - maxis match set (high-waist shorts) | rusty's - basic sleeveless t-shirt | babyetears - mirror skirt / jacket leather moonlight (mirror skirt) | ren okamoto - jenn top  

shoes

MMSIMS - dr. martens molly shoes | seoulsoul - girlboss boots set (high boots) | jius - sweety&salty collection (platform heeled boots 01)  

extras

joshseoh - universal hair overlay | kijiko - ea eyelashes remover | NSW - female new year collection (lips presets n33-41, lips presents n1-9) | evoxyr - bad memory nose presets | hellfrozeover - hip dips slider 

+ cc I couldn’t find online (+ the tattoo I made myself from this image, which is blurry as hell because I can't use s4s, but at least it exists), included in the sim’s folder (3 files)

additionally, the following add-ons have been used:

nifty knitting

a preview of her outfits:

please take a look at my TOU before downloading!! thank you!

[theninth09]

re: the blond vs. brunette thing. I hc he lost a bet with mason in middle school and had to get frosted tips as the forfeit but his pride wouldn't let him admit he was Miserable so he decided to rub it in Mason's face that Blondes Do, In Fact, Have More Fun and went all out with the blond for freshman year :) but then supernatural s**t happened and then kept happening and he basically became a caveman with his natural hair around Theo during it all, and on top of that my other hc is that Liam unintentionally grows it out into a lil ponytail in college, and Theo will never admit it but he likes the style very much 🥺

waitttt this is so cute omg. i love this hc and i feel like it makes a lot of sense for their characters too!! liam and mason absolutely have this kind of friendship where they constantly make bets and lovingly laugh at and tease each other. and oh god, now im just thinking about how in s4 when the supernatural shit starts happening how liam distances himself from mason... and how both liam himself and mason watch liams roots grow out, measuring the amount of time they havent properly talked to each other... this fun thing that was done out of friendly spite and a testament of their friendship's dynamic turning into the physical proof of how they havent spent time with each other :(

and them in s5 dying liams hair together when they're talking again... as this ritual for them that they finally figured it out/that mason now knows about liam being a werewolf. they're such cuties to me i love miam friendship so much. also, i know that mason's hair is really short and they dont do much with it anyway (which is very annoying to me, how come most of the male characters get an updated haircut but mason doesnt??? i would've loved to see him with a different Black hairstyle in s5 or 6) but! maybe mason teaching liam how to take care of his hair too, teaching him how to braid it? perhaps when they were younger? sleepovers where they'd have movie marathons and paint each others fingernails and do each others hair... Anyway!

i totally see liam slowly growing his hair out and not dying his roots anymore because it just became too stressful with everything that was happening. like the way its styled sometimes in s6b... he does not look like he knows how to handle that length. its just??? the way it curls at his neck in certain scenes is so silly to me, im sorry. he definitely didnt plan growing it out, that just happened and hes trying to wing it.

and yesss theo secretly enjoying it. i have this hc of my own that he used to braid tara's hair and sometimes takes the longer strands of liam's hair and braids them, almost absentmindedly :') and liam quietly asking him where he learned how to do that. so if liam's hair became even longer, theo could Actually braid it.

also, consider: liam with a man-bun. i feel like he could pull it off. and theo would absolutely never admit it, but he enjoys anything liam does with his hair, because of course he does. even when liam looks ridiculous, he's into that because theo is just that much of a down bad gay loser. he keeps hair ties on his wrist for liam all the time, too.

(link to the referenced blond vs brunette post for those curious)

[munson-blurbs]

Ghostin' (Steve Harrington x Fem!Reader): Chapter 2

Part One

Summary: Five weeks after receiving unexpected news, you still haven't spoken to any of your friends. A talk with Wayne helps you make a decision, while Steve struggles with his own guilt and the possibility that Vecna isn't quite done with him yet.

Warnings: language, S4 is canon, pregnancy

WC: 4.8k

Taglist: @kaybee87 @sidthedollface2 @chelebelletx @livsters @atombombbibunny @tattooedkiss13 @manda-panda-monium @charming-winchester @corroded-hellfire @trashmouth-richie @sweet-villain @slightlyvicked @hxllfired @yogizzz @tlclick73 @thefreakofhawkins86 @sheisjoeschateau @harrypotteranna23-blog @harringr0ve

Divider credits to @firefly-graphics

You wake up to sunlight streaming through your kitchen window, giving a groan as you wipe the sleep from your eyes and sit up; an action that is becoming more difficult with your growing bump. The TV screen is blue, and likely has been for awhile. You’ve fallen asleep watching a movie, again. At this rate, you’ll never finish St. Elmo’s Fire until after the baby comes, and then you’ll be too busy raising a kid by yourself.

As you pop the VHS out of the player, your body feels like it’s been drained of all warmth. Your plan was to watch the movie last night and return it to Family Video immediately. Some random high school kid worked there on Saturday nights, which meant you could sneak in and out without your friends getting a glimpse of your belly.

But now it’s Sunday morning. And Steve Harrington works on Sunday mornings.

Maybe I can just toss it through the doors like a Frisbee, you think wryly. In theory, you could just return it tomorrow and pay the late fee, but you can’t afford to waste money now. You bury your head in your hands with an exasperated groan. You throw on the oversized sweatshirt that best conceals the bump, though you look completely ridiculous in the mid-July heat. Your keys practically slip through your fingers, sweaty from your own body heat and nerves. 

There’s only one other person who knows your secret besides the nurse and your parents, and you find yourself driving to his place before you even realize where you’re going. 

Rapping on the door lightly in case he’s still asleep, you let out a breath you didn’t know you’re holding. Guilt gnaws at your insides; here you are, bothering someone with your own problems for the umpteenth time. 

“Hey there, darlin’.” Wayne greets you with a tired smile. “You got any more of those pictures for me?” The man, usually so stoic, was elated any time you brought new grainy ultrasound photos. 

You shake your head. “Not today, but I have an appointment in a few days.” Given the high-stress situation, your doctor had you coming in more often than the traditional expectant mother. “‘M sorry if I woke you up.”

Wayne holds the door open for you and you step inside the trailer. Each visit, it smells less and less like Eddie’s signature scent of musky cologne, stale cigarettes, and weed. “You’re never a bother. Always cheers me up to see you and my little grandbaby.” 

The first time you met Wayne, a few months into your relationship with Eddie, you were so nervous. This was the man who raised him, who took him in when no one else would, and you desperately wanted to make a good impression. You had a similar feeling now, looking anxiously at the ground while you tried to formulate a sentence.

“Could I ask you for a favor?” You’re picking at your fingernails, unable to look him in the eyes. 

“‘Course,” Wayne says softly. “What do you need?”

You hold out the VHS. “D’you think you could return this to Family Video for me today?” Your hand trembles, and considering your wrist is fully healed, it has to be due to your own anxiety. Tears prickle at your eyes. 

“Oh, darlin’,” Wayne sighs, sitting on the couch and patting the spot next to him. “You still haven’t talked to your friends?” You can only manage another head shake as the teardrops fall. He pulls you in for a side hug. “You know they won’t judge you. They’ll still love you, and they will certainly love that baby.”

“That’s the thing,” you manage through heaving sobs. “I know they’ll be here for me, for us,” you amend, placing a hand on your belly, “but that’s not what I want. I don’t want to keep being everyone’s pathetic pity case.” You feel Wayne’s grizzled hand rubbing your back gently, and you start to calm down. “I don’t want to be a burden to people.”

Wayne pauses for a moment before speaking. “Did I ever tell you about the time Eddie and I had to go on food stamps?” he says finally.

You scrunch up your face. “I don’t think so.”

“It was a couple months after I got custody, and as my shit luck would have it, I lost my job. Thought we could just push through, but then I woke up one morning with no money in the bank and just a bottle of mustard in the fridge. If it was just me, I would’ve dealt with it. But now I got a ten-year-old kid; a growing boy. He’s gotta eat.

“So I bite the bullet and sign up for food stamps. I’d always promised I’d never rely on anyone else, especially the government, but there I am at the grocery store, week after week, with that booklet in hand.” 

A hint of a grin appears on his stubbled face. “I tried to hide it from Eddie, but you know how he is; can never mind his own business.” It’s not lost on you that he’s referring to his nephew in the present tense, like he’s still here. “And one day he catches me paying with stamps instead of cash, an’ he goes, ‘what’s that?’  I’m tellin’ him that I’ll explain later, but he pulls my arm down, looks, and says, ‘oh, it’s just food stamps.’ Real casual, no big deal. Meanwhile, I’m humiliated, thinkin’ I’m less of a man for not being able to provide.”

“But that’s not true,” you interject. “You did what you had to do to take care of him.”

“‘S not how I felt, though,” he counters, and you nod. “We get in my truck and I finally say to him, ‘I’m sorry we gotta use food stamps. ‘S only till I find work again.’ An’ you know what this kid says to me?”

“Mm-mm.”

“He goes, ‘Better than mustard for breakfast.’” You and Wayne both laugh at that, and soon you’re crying again, but now it’s from laughing too hard. 

“That is a classic ‘Eddie’ moment,” you giggle, wiping the tears from your cheeks. 

Wayne scratches his whiskers. “Yeah, that memory always cheers me up. But that’s not why I told you.” You give him a puzzled look, and he continues. “Sometimes, we have to let people in, even if we wanna push them away. Because nine times outta ten, that fear is all in our head, and they aren’t bothered by our weaknesses at all.” His eyes are misty as he reaches for your hand. “It can be embarrassing and scary as hell to admit you need help. But trust me’,” he says, “it’s better than mustard for breakfast.”

You exhale, still feeling ambivalent about confronting Steve, but slightly less on-edge. “Thank you, Wayne,” you whisper. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re the best?”

“Jus’ you, darlin’,” he replies with a grin. “And if you and that baby of yours ever need anything else, you don’t hesitate to knock on this door.”

Taking a deep breath, you push open the door to Family Video. The bell on the door alerts Robin that there’s a customer, and she puts her book down and looks over. As soon as she sees who it is, her entire face lights up. “Y/N! You’re alive!” she cries out, nearly leaping over the counter and sprinting to you. “We were so worried!” She stops just short of you. “Wait, are you sick?”

Your brows pinch together in confusion. “No? Why?”

She points to your attire. “You’re wearing a sweatshirt and it’s, like, 90 degrees outside,” she says simply.

“Oh, yeah, no,” you rush, “it’s just, um, cold in the air conditioning?” But it comes out as more than a question, and Robin picks up on it right away.

“What’s going on?” She crosses her arms over her chest suspiciously, but quickly lets them drop. “Look, I know we didn’t know each other long before…everything…but you know you can tell me anything.”

You look around cautiously before slowly lifting your outer layer up over the gentle curve of your belly. Your shirt still covers your skin, but the bump is still prominent enough beneath it to warrant a gasp from your new friend.

“Oh, my God,” she murmurs, still unbelieving. 

“D’you wanna feel it?” you ask shyly. It’s a bit of a relief, actually; having someone else know your secret. It makes everything slightly less scary. 

Robin brings a hand to your stomach, smiling as she lightly touches it. “Oh, my God,” she repeats, blinking away tears. “Does Steve know?”

Your face blanches and you instinctively pull away. “It’s not his.” Your tone is snappy, and you feel bad as soon as you hear it. “‘M sorry, I just…”

“No, no,” Robin shakes her head. “I didn’t mean it like…” Her eyes widen when she realizes. “It’s Eddie’s.”

“Yeah,” you say, voice choked with emotion. “Yeah, it is.” You clear your throat. “And to answer your question, no; I haven’t told Steve.”

Robin bites her lower lip in contemplation. “Are you going to?” She glances towards the breakroom. “Because he’ll be coming out here in, like, five minutes.”

After your conversation with Wayne, you thought you were ready to explain everything to Steve, but now that the moment arrived, you’re suddenly unsure. “I don’t…I don’t think so.” You let your gaze drop to the tiled floor and place St. Elmo’s Fire on the counter. “I’m just gonna return this and go.” You head for the door before stopping to turn back to Robin. “Please don’t say anything to him. I’m not ready yet.”

She nods, miming zipping her lips and throwing away the key. “He won’t be mad, you know,” she tells you. “If anything, he’ll just fall even more in love with you.” She claps a palm over her mouth. “You didn’t hear that.”

But it’s too late–your head is spinning with the news. “Steve’s in love with me?” you gawp. “No, he’s in love with Nancy.”

“Was in love with Nancy, until…” she hears the breakroom doorknob rattling and shoots you a warning glance. “Incoming–I’ll explain another time.”

You exit as fast as you can, grateful you haven’t developed the infamous pregnancy waddle yet, and get into your car just as Steve walks back into the storeroom. 

“Did I just hear–” Steve questions, scanning the room. “Never mind.” He gives a little stretch and yawns. “My dreams are so realistic now; I can’t even tell what’s actually happening and what’s not.”

Robin rests her elbows on the counter, pressing her lips together like she’s physically trying to conceal your secret. “Anything good? Or just the usual nightmares?”

“What do you think?” Steve mumbles. “D’you still have them?”

“Sometimes,” Robin admits. “Not as much as in the beginning.” She twirls a piece of thread from her vest around her finger absentmindedly. “For me, it’s those damn vines. I feel them winding around my body, and I’m writhing underneath them, but when I finally break free, it…it’s too late for you and Nancy.”

Steve pauses. “Do you ever see him? Vecna, I mean? Is he there?”

“No, oddly enough. Maybe he’ll show up in future installments of ‘Recounts of Robin’s Traumatic Experiences.’” She laughs half-heartedly at her joke. “What about you?”

“Yeah,” Steve nods. “I see him. Hear the chimes, too.” The dream he just had in the breakroom was one of the most terrifying ones yet. 

He’s back in the gym at Hawkins High, shooting three-pointers, when a familiar voice calls out. 

“Hey, Steve.”

“Eddie!” Steve’s grin is so wide, it practically splits his face open. “We thought we lost you forever!”

“You know you can’t get rid of me that easily,” Eddie says, giving his signature smirk. “How’s life treatin’ you?”

Steve sighs. “Not great, dude. The town’s a mess, I have the worst dreams—“

“And you’re in love with Y/N,” Eddie cuts him off, his smile melting into a more sadistic expression. “You, Steve Harrington, want to get with my girlfriend. You selfish fucking prick.” His voice deepens, becomes sinister. “You could get any girl in this town, but you want what you can’t have; is that it?”

“N-No,” Steve stammers. “That’s not it at all.”

“I bet you wanted me to die, just so you could take her from me. That’s why you told me not to be a hero, isn’t it?” The voice coming from Eddie’s body doesn’t even resemble his anymore. “You knew if you said that, I’d take it as a challenge. Put my life at risk.” Thick, ugly vines snake around Eddie’s limbs. “Did you get everything you wanted, Steve?”

“I didn’t want you to die! I wasn’t trying to steal your girlfriend, Eddie! I swear!” 

And then Steve hears them: the demobats. They start off squawking faintly from a distance, but they get louder. No matter how fast Steve sprints, he can never outrun them. 

He shakes the memory away, tousling his hair in the process. “Sometimes, I worry that they’re not dreams,” he says softly. “Max told me that Vecna uses your biggest fears, your insecurities, and uses them to draw you in. And that’s how it is in every single nightmare I have.”

“Is it the Eddie thing?” Robin asks, her voice gentle. She knows when to poke fun at her friend, and when he needs to be taken seriously. When Steve is quiet, she gingerly places her hand on his forearm. “Steve, in these dreams, what is Vecna telling you?”

He gnaws on his lips, trying to suppress the tears that will inevitably fall. “That…that it’s my fault Eddie’s dead. That I wanted him to die so I could be with Y/N.”

“But that’s a lie. You know that’s a lie,” Robin reassures him, but it does little good. “We wanted to save everyone, including Eddie. Even if you wanted to be with Y/N then, you wouldn’t have Eddie killed over it.”

“I know; logically, I know that. But Vecna’s so convincing. He has me questioning everything.” Steve grabs a handful of Laffy Taffy from the candy counter, unwrapping a strawberry one and popping it in his mouth whole.

Robin snorts at the sight of him struggling to chew on the candy. “You know you can just, like, bite into it like a normal person?”

“Yeah, but where’s the fun in that?” Steve smiles at her genuinely–it feels so good to smile–until his face suddenly contorts in pain. “Son of a bitch!” He reaches into his mouth and pulls the chewed pink blob out, now with a shiny silver addition to it. “My filling! Dammit!”

“Guess I’m taking your shift tomorrow while you go to the dentist?” Robin says with a roll of her eyes. “What were you saying about that being fun?”

Steve takes the hand that he isn’t using to massage his jaw and flips off his friend. “Actually, yeah,” he replies sheepishly. “If you wouldn’t mind?”

Walking into Hawkins Dental, Steve is hard to miss with the bag of frozen broccoli pressed to his cheek. You’re glad you’re sitting down, because the desk hides your belly. You’re one of two receptionists at the office, and neither the dentist nor the hygienists have noticed your bump yet. For all they know, it could just be run-of-the-mill weight gain.

The bag falls from Steve’s grip when he sees it’s you behind the counter. “Y/N,” he breathes, “wh-what are you doing here?” He shakes his head. “Okay, that was a dumb question. I just meant…I miss you. Miss, um, hanging out with you.” He picks the veggies up from the floor and puts it back to his face. For a moment, when he saw you, the pain just seemed to fade away.

You nod, trying your best not to rest your hand on your stomach. It’s a newfound habit that you find yourself doing any time you get anxious; like your first instinct is to protect your baby before anything else. “You’re here to get your filling replaced?” you ask matter-of-factly, trying to keep an even tone. You shuffle around in your chair for the intake forms and hand him a clipboard. “Fill these out and bring them back here. Dr. Scrivello will be with you shortly.”

A few moments later, Steve’s back with his completed paperwork. You can hear Dr. Scrivello finishing up with his current patient, but he’s not done fast enough to prevent you having a conversation with Steve.

“How have you been?” he murmurs, scratching nervously at the granite counter. “It’s been…”

“Almost six weeks,” you answer too quickly, and your face flushes.

Steve doesn’t seem to be fazed by your quick calculation. “Too long. Especially for people who were sharing a bed.”

“How did you manage to pull out a filling?” you change the subject. “Another casualty of a Family Video candy section?”

“The Laffy Taffy got me this time.” He gives a small chuckle before wincing. “Can’t laugh; hurts too much.”

You point to the bag in his hand. “Looks like it’s your turn to use frozen vegetables to nurse your wounds.”

“Oh, shit, yeah!” Steve raises his brows. “How’s your wrist? You’re not wearing the sling anymore.”

“Doctor said I only needed it for four weeks. Just have to be careful with it.” A confession is on the tip of your tongue. You want nothing more than to spill everything and to be pulled into a Steve hug. He just makes you feel safe and warm; you haven’t felt this way since…since Eddie.

“Steven Harrington?” Dr. Scrivello calls out, and both of you look over at him. “You can come on back.” He waves him over and pushes his thick black glasses up the bridge of his nose.

“Wish me luck,” Steve mumbles.

“Good luck, Steven,” you tease. But it’s you who will need luck. You just don’t know it yet.

Steve walks out of the room only twenty minutes later. The cavity wasn’t deep, so the dentist didn’t even need to use novocaine to fill it. You weren’t expecting him to be done so soon, and you’re reaching up to pull another file from the shelf. Your scrubs are riding up slightly, exposing your stomach.

“Am I good to–whoa.” Steve’s eyes are immediately drawn to your bump. “Y/N, are you–” He stops mid sentence, remembering something his mom once said about never asking a woman if she’s pregnant.

You’re flooded with a mix of emotions, primarily fear and embarrassment. Though you didn’t exactly have a plan to tell Steve your news, it certainly wasn’t like this. “I wanted to…” you start, but you can’t even manage to finish your own lie. “I’m sorry.”

Steve’s brows pinch together. “Sorry? Why?”

“Can you come back at noon?” You glance at your watch; it’s 10:30 AM now. “That’s when I take my lunch break.”

“Yeah, ‘course,” he says, unsure whether to make eye contact. “Do I have a copay?”

“Huh? Oh, no, you’re good.” You shove your hands in your pants pockets to keep Steve from seeing them trembling. “I’ll, um, see you later?”

“Yeah, later.” He can barely choke out the two words, shuffling through the door back to his car. 

You slump back into your chair. You’ve got an hour and a half, a full ninety minutes, to come up with a way to explain everything to Steve. Sure, the whole pregnancy announcement was out of the way, but now you have to tell him why you’ve been ignoring him. And the whole him being in love with you remark from Robin won’t stop replaying in your head.

The electronic hum of the bell buzzes at exactly twelve o’clock. You look up to see Steve walking through the door, carrying a giant brown bag with the Bradley’s Big Buys logo stamped on the side.

“Ready?” he asks, and you nod and place the “out to lunch” placard on the counter.

“Got yourself anything good?” You motion to the bag in his hand as the two of you walk outside. “More frozen produce for either of our various ailments?”

Steve cracks a smile; it doesn’t hurt as badly as it did this morning. “Nah, just got you a little something.” He holds it open for you to peer in. There are five jars inside, each a different type of pickle. “I heard that craving pickles is, like, super common for pregnant people,” he explains, blushing. “But I wasn’t sure what kind, so I just kinda…got them all.”

You can’t lie; a crisp, juicy pickle sounds like heaven right about now, but there’s a sinking feeling attached to the craving. “You didn’t have to do this,” you whisper.

He runs a hand through his hair, a disappointed sigh escaping his lips. “I knew I should’ve gone with ice cream, but I was afraid it would all melt.”

“No, no; ‘s not that.” Your lip quivers as you talk, finally ready to be honest. “Steve, the reason I didn’t tell you about this is because I didn’t want you to feel even more obligated to take care of me.”

You can’t miss the flustered look on his face. “Obligated? I never felt obligated to take care of you.” He places his hand over yours. “Where did you get that idea from?”

“Wasn’t anything you said or did,” you rush to explain, “‘s just hard for me to accept help from people. Makes me feel useless. Like I can’t take care of myself.”

Steve’s heart shatters at your admission. “No, God, no. I never felt that way—I never…that’s not why I stuck around.” He looks around, noticing the people passing by. “Wanna continue this in the car?” You nod and follow him to the BMW, sliding into the passenger seat. In a few more months, that might not be so easy. 

“When Eddie and I went for that walk in the woods, in the Upside Down, he asked me to take care of you if he…if he couldn’t,” Steve begins. 

“So you did this for Eddie?” Now it makes sense; there was an obligation to uphold a promise to his late friend. 

“That’s how it started, yeah. But then we started spending more time together, and I realized that…this might sound weird, but I felt peaceful with you. In a way I’ve never felt before.”

Your nose crinkles. “There are a lot of words I would use to describe the last few months, and ‘peaceful’ definitely isn’t one of them.”

“Exactly!” Steve’s burst of enthusiasm startles you. “Sorry. But that’s what’s so strange about it. Like, I should be tense all the time, and I mostly am, but being around you made me feel like things could maybe be, I dunno, normal again. Whatever that means,” he adds with a wave of his hand. 

“And I think part of it was selfish, too,” he continues. “It felt nice to be needed, instead of the one always asking for help.”

“That’s how I’ve been feeling,” you tell him, unwrapping your peanut butter sandwich and digging in. “I didn’t want to be a burden, a charity case.” 

“You’re not. I don’t see you that way; none of us do.” You assume he’s talking about Robin and the rest of the party. “For better or for worse, you’re our friend now. And friends take care of each other.” He leans down and takes a bite of your sandwich. “See? I’m hungry, and you helped me!”

You swat at him playfully. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you not to mess with a pregnant lady’s food? You could be taking away vital nutrients from the baby!”

Steve swallows his stolen piece of sandwich. “Speaking of which, how long have you known?”

You knew that your turn was coming, but it didn’t make things any easier. “Since I went to the hospital for my wrist. They ran a pregnancy test before they could do an x-ray, and—surprise.” You cup your small bump lovingly. 

“Is that why you asked me to leave and stopped talking to me?”

“Yeah. I felt bad enough having you take care of me. And I know you, Steve Harrington; you would’ve insisted on taking care of this kid, too.”

“Damn right I would’ve!” Steve smacks the gearshift for emphasis. “And I would’ve done it happily.” He looks at you with his big brown eyes. “I still will, if you’re okay with it.”

You drop your gaze as though you’ve developed a sudden interest in the car upholstery. It’s better than mustard for breakfast, you remind yourself. Let people help you if you need it—and you NEED it now more than ever. 

“I have a doctor’s appointment next Tuesday; just a check-up to make sure Little Bean is nice and healthy,” you say slowly. Every instinct is urging you to shut up and handle it alone, but you push them away. “My mom usually comes with me, but she can’t take off from work this time.”

Steve smiles knowingly. “I can take you. I have off on Tuesdays, so it’s perfect.”

“Thank you.” Relief flows through your body like a river, calm after a storm. You glance over at the Bradley’s bag tucked under the glove compartment. “This calls for a celebration. Put on some music, yeah?”

Steve starts the car and flips through the radio stations until the sound of Led Zeppelin pumps through the speakers. 

“Ooh, I love Black Dog!” you squeal, opening a jar of Kosher Dills and fishing one out, tapping it against the rim to avoid dripping pickle juice on yourself. You hold the jar out to Steve. “Want one?”

“Pickles with a peanut butter sandwich?” he grimaces. “I’ll pass.”

“Suit yourself,” you shrug, crunching into the snack and singing along to the radio. 

Eyes that shine, burnin' red 

Dreams of you all through my head 

Ah ah, ah ah, ah ah, ah ah, ah ah, ah ah, ahhh

The sound of you singing, so carefree, fills Steve with a warmth that he hasn’t experienced since before that wretched spring break. He wants to capture the joy, both yours and his, and hold onto it forever. “You know what always annoyed me about this song?” Steve pauses before relenting and biting into a pickle. “They never even say the words ‘black dog.’” 

You bark out a laugh. “You should write to Jimmy Page and let him know. File a formal complaint.”

“Maybe I will!” Steve shoots you a kind smile. “You know, Y/N; you’re not alone. We’re all scared, trying to figure out how the hell to deal with what we went through.” He gives a sarcastic chuckle. “There’s no handbook on coping with interdimensional trauma.”

“If you find one with a chapter on being a single mom because your child’s father died in said alternate dimension, let me know,” you quip wryly.

“I’ll keep an eye out,” Steve squeezes your hand. “I just know,” he tells you, a tear sliding down his cheek, “I just know Eddie would’ve been so happy to be a dad.”

You look up at him with wide, shiny eyes. “You think so?”

“Yes, absolutely,” he affirms. “He wanted the whole shebang with you–marriage, house in the suburbs, kids.” He wipes his eyes. “Eddie really fuckin’ loved you.”

You take in the information, bittersweet emotions swirling through you. You still love Eddie, love him so much it makes you physically ache, but there’s deep-rooted anger. And then the guilt of being angry at a dead man; a dead man whose baby you were carrying. It was all too much.

Twisting the lid back on the pickle jar, you clear your throat and reach for the car door. “Thank you again, Steve. For everything.” You lean over and press a soft kiss to his cheek. “You’re a great friend.”

Steve nods; the word friend is both comforting and unsettling. “Any time,” he manages. Anything for you. Anything you ever need, I’ll drop everything and come to you. No questions asked.

Tension resolved between you and him, Steve tucks himself into bed that night with a hope that he’ll have sweet dreams. He should know better by now.

It’s one of the usual nightmares, where Steve is calling out for his friends in the Upside Down, but no one is around. He’s alone, terrified, with no one to save him.

And then he hears the grandfather clock, so loud the world seems to vibrate. Clang, clang, clang, clang. But there’s something different this time. 

Steve’s blood runs cold at the sound of a fifth chime.

 –

[scoopertrouper]

could you write about steve and nancy's first major fight (and reconciliation) after they got back together post s4?

anon, i hope you're happy. this prompt ate my brain, chewed it up, and then decided it didn't like how it tasted and spit it out. i was at the ZOO with an adorable little toddler, watching him watch the turtles in wonderment while also thinking "yeah, but WHY are steve and nancy fighting??"

ultimately i think the characters here still need some fine tuning/fleshing out and the premise really only works if you don't think about it too hard. i will probably revisit this in the future with a much stronger editorial eye. 😬

that said, i hope you still very much enjoy this impulsive, self-indulgent 5k words of breaking up (not really lol) and making up schmoop (+ warning for tasteful-ish spice at the end - sorry if that's not your thing).

***

can’t let you slide through my hands

“I don’t like this.”

Nancy hates her voice right now. It’s a quivering, slip of a sound, and she can barely hear it over the slamming echo of her heart inside her ears. 

But Steve hears it. He always hears her, even when it’s something he doesn’t want to hear. 

And if he’s trying to ignore her – trying to pretend the slow, careful grind of whetstone over the edge of his ax has drowned out her words – well, the brief glance he can’t help but flick in her direction gives him away entirely. 

“Steve.”

“Nancy.” 

Each syllable is even, practically toneless, and she hates it. 

“Why are you doing this?” Normally she’d work a lot harder to quash the weak, plaintive note that suffuses the word why, but he’s not listening to her and she doesn’t know what else to do. How else to get his attention. 

“You heard Hopper,” he says with that awful, carelessly empty inflection. “They need all the help they can get.”

Nancy’s fingernails bite into her palms. The sting of it somehow grounds and incenses her, all at the same time. 

“He only said that after you asked him if you could go.”

And hadn’t that been a kick in the pants – Nancy, resigned to staying behind playing bodyguard at Hopper’s request, while Steve only too eagerly offered to tromp off into the woods with Team Distraction like some kind of kamikaze lamb for slaughter. 

(That’s not fair. She knows that of the two of them, she has what could be considered the more important job. Stay at the cabin. Protect El. Make sure nothing happens to her if this frankly suicidal diversionary tactic doesn’t work and they’re attacked during yet another round of psychic Marco Polo with the biggest, baddest ugly they’ve faced yet. 

And she knows Hopper wasn’t lying – they probably could use Steve’s help out there, his seemingly infinite supply of athleticism. Just like she knows that it’s actually a huge compliment that Hopper's trusting her to help keep his daughter safe. So no, she’s not being fair. But also – it’s not fair.)

Steve finally looks up, and he’s wearing that face she’d gotten all too familiar with during the last couple months of their relationship, round one – the one that says he’s trying to see where she’s coming from, but he’s getting annoyed in spite of himself. She hasn’t seen it in quite some time, but she supposes it would’ve been silly to assume it had been retired for good. Neither of them has changed that much.

“Nance. Come on. You know I’m gonna be way more useful out there than I would be here. I’m a garbage shot, anyway.”

Nancy scoffs.

“So you’d rather be cannon fodder instead?”

He props the ax next to the door to the front door of the cabin and crosses his arms, looking a little wounded. 

“Jesus, give me some credit. I’ve made it this far, haven’t I?”

“Sure, as long as someone’s there to follow your ass through a gate, and beat off the demon bats, and bandage you when you’re bleeding out all over the place!” 

She knows she’s probably starting to sound unhinged. She knows it. But she can’t help it. She does not want him to do this. This is not a good plan.

His face twists, and he looks like he wants to grab her – hold her like he would’ve if this were still September of senior year – but he pulls back at the last second. He does that a lot, now, like he’s still not totally sure what he has permission to do. 

She wishes he hadn’t. Touching him would be infinitely preferable to shouting at him. If she was touching him, she could grab on tight. Refuse to let go. Keep him anchored here by sheer force of will. 

“Nancy, I don’t get it,” he says, tossing his arms up helplessly instead of putting them around her. “This was exactly what your plan was the first time. Cause a ruckus. Create a diversion. Fly in under the radar. It worked once. Ish. We can make it work again, at least long enough for El to try and flush the creep out of hiding.”

Nancy’s jaw drops.

“Worked? Define worked, Steve!” Her eyes are burning. “Eddie is dead! Max is in a coma, maybe…maybe…” as good as dead “…forever. There is a gate to hell splitting the whole town open down the middle, and Vecna is still alive. Only now we have no idea where he is or what he’s doing! In what way would you say any of what we did worked?”

“Because we hurt him,” he responds immediately, low and hard. “We hurt him, and now – now we know he bleeds. We can hurt him again, Nancy, I gotta believe that.” His mouth thins. “Eddie dying, losing Max –” his voice cracks on the “a”, but he soldiers through it “– it all sucks. I hate it. But it wasn’t your fault. They knew what they were getting themselves into.” He pauses, and squares his shoulders. “They weren’t like Barb.”

Nancy’s mouth tastes like ash, and for once she can’t blame it on the air toxicity.

“Barb? Who said anything about Barb?” She’s trying to keep her breathing under control, but her voice sounds far away. “This has nothing to do with her.”

“Bullshit.” 

He looks at her dead on as he says it, like he knows she knows exactly what he means, and she sees red. She’s not sure what’s about to come out of her mouth, but she knows that whatever it is, she’s probably not going to be proud of it – and this time, she won’t be able to use spiked punch as an excuse, nor will she be granted the dubious mercy of drunken amnesia. 

“This has nothing to do with Barb,” she says slowly, “And everything to do with the fact that sometimes, I wish you weren’t so fucking stupid.”  

He flinches back like she’s slapped him and honestly, she might as well have. She feels sick. 

It’s the worst fight they’ve had – actually the only fight they’ve had – since they decided to try again, and what does it say about them that they didn’t last more than ten minutes before they started ripping out the stitches on old, barely healed wounds?

“Well you asked for this,” Steve finally replies, voice quivering minutely. “You’re the one who came to me and wanted to give this another shot. So you tell me which one of us is stupid.”

It hurts. It was supposed to. Nancy immediately feels herself deflate, like he’s sucked away all that was keeping her upright and angry. 

For once, she doesn’t have an immediate response and Steve doesn’t wait for one anyway, whirling on his heel and storming back into the house. 

He’s forgotten his ax. The blade gleams at her, mocking, from where it sits against the door frame. 

She’s a bit shaky, and she needs a minute to collect herself before she goes back inside. Everyone in the cabin is gonna know they’ve been fighting – the walls are not soundproof – and it’s humiliating.  

More humiliating is the fact that this is coming when they’ve hardly been back together two months (and when she’s barely been officially broken up with Jonathan for five). She knows what it looks like,  what she looks like – bouncing back and forth between two men on a whim because she can’t manage to choose once and for all who she wants.

But it’s not like that. Her relationship with Jonathan had been dead long before she’d been able or willing to admit it, and this thing with Steve is so new and old at the same time that it’s just – it’s hard to find her footing, sometimes. 

They’ve both changed so much, but now she’s realizing that there are ways they’ve stayed the same, too. And with the good always comes the bad.

Okay. Okay. She takes a deep breath, then two. She can’t stay out here forever. She has to go back inside, and hopefully they can awkwardly circle each other until they’ve cooled down enough to talk it over like the adults they almost are. 

Because she’s not giving up after one (shitty) fight. Rather than make her second guess her choice, Steve’s parting shot had the reverse effect – it had clarified exactly how stupid a decision it wasn’t. She had wanted this. She still wants it. 

It’s only been two months, sure, but she’s been happy, really happy (a miracle considering the world is literally ending around them). 

She hopes he’s felt the same, last ten minutes notwithstanding.

Damn it. She shouldn’t have said those things to him. That one thing. Guilt is settling over her like a blanket, thicker and more noxious than even the poisonous air of the Upside Down. 

Nancy’s not sorry about getting mad. If he wants her to be his girlfriend again – and she hopes he still wants her to be his girlfriend again – then he has to understand that she’s going to have an opinion on when and how he hurls his body into the line of fire. 

But being mean on purpose? That one, she’s pretty sorry for. Calling him stupid hadn’t been intended to do anything but inflict damage, and she knows she owes him an apology (once the thought of talking to him again doesn’t make the confused snarl of anger and regret and affection that’s all tangled up in her chest tighten to the point of pain).

First things first, though. 

Chin up, go back inside.

*****

At first, she’s grateful for how simple it is to avoid him all afternoon. The cabin is tiny, even taking into account the hastily constructed add-on that had come once the Byers realized that returning to California wasn’t an option, their house was no longer theirs and Hopper’s cabin in its original state had nowhere near enough space to house them all.

But as the unofficial headquarters for their little hodgepodge Upside Down insurgency, it’s also in a near-constant state of low-grade chaos, which is pretty easy to disappear into – or, in this case, use as a convenient excuse to avoid someone.

(That said, tension is tension, and in this case it’s so apparent that even Hopper – whose unspoken approach to any relationship that isn’t his own generally veers toward the less he knows, the better – shoots them both some pretty unimpressed looks when Steve volunteers himself and Robin, unprompted, for the second of the day’s supply runs.)

Her relief edges into anxiety, though, as they get closer and closer to nightfall and Nancy still hasn’t had a chance to get him alone or even do more than accidentally catch his eye over the sad cans of stew they scrounge up for pre-op dinner. It sits like sludge on her tongue (and based on the look on El’s face as she dutifully shovels down spoonfuls, that’s probably not just Nancy’s guilt talking).  

In fact, it’s only as they’re packing up to leave that she realizes she’s probably going to have to go out of her way to corner him, because while Hopper’s come inside to say his goodbyes, Steve's nowhere to be found. 

And part of her really, really wants to be petty and leave it at that. Wants to keep stewing in her resentment and let him go off alone because he was too much of a coward to spare her a fifteen-second goodbye.

But the larger, louder half of her brain won’t shut up about how she’d feel if something happened and the last thing she said to him was…that, so she sucks it up and stomps toward the door, flinging it open and –

– startling Steve so badly that he jerks back a step, eyes widening with alarm.

“Jesus, Nancy, you scared the shit outta me!” She can’t muster up more than a couple blinks in response, and he scuffs one of the dirty planks of the porch with his boot. “Look, I know I’m not, like, your favorite person right now, but I still wanted to come say, uh, see you later. You know…just because.”

Oh, he is such an asshole.

She doesn’t know how to tell him this in a way that would help him understand what she’s actually trying to communicate, so instead, she yanks him down and kisses him hard, something she hasn’t done in public much this go-around. It’s a frankly awful smash of lips and teeth, and may in fact be the worst kiss Nancy has ever given or received.

Regardless, she thinks it gets the point across. 

She pulls back, mouth throbbing, and stares at him again, fingers clenched in the collar of his jacket as he stands there, stunned and swaying. 

“See you later, Steve,” she says pointedly, instead of “please, come back”, or, better yet, “don’t fucking go.” He softens immediately, and inches forward.

“Nancy –”

“Later,” she interrupts firmly. “When you get back. Okay?”

Steve eyes her for several long seconds, then relents.

“Okay,” he says, then he kisses her for real this time (gently, because ow), a brief little soft–as–silk press that leaves her wanting more than she can possibly hope to have at this specific moment.

When she goes back inside (she refuses to watch them roll off into the distance like she’s some kind of war bride, she carries a gun for Christ’s sake), she pauses for a moment, debating checking for the third time since midday that her rifle is loaded and ready. 

Jonathan is there, sitting tense at the two-person kitchen table, staring out into the woods as the rest of the gang helps prep El (or "helps" in some cases).

Most of the time, they’re pretty civil with each other. The breakup had basically been mutual, and she only gets a little livid mad now when she thinks about how he lied to her about Emerson. And kept lying to her. Until the only goddamn reason she found out was because – anyway.

Most of the time, if she ignores inconsequential context like that, they’re pretty civil. 

“Trouble in paradise?” he says, almost inaudibly. 

She takes her rifle to the living room. 

****

In the end, the night and the operation are both total duds, and doesn’t that just add insult to injury?

El searches for what feels like hours, pushing herself farther and farther until her nose is bleeding thickly enough that Joyce sternly calls time on the whole exercise. 

No go, is what El says afterward, wiping blood off her face. Some of it ends up smeared under one of her darkly ringed eyes, and she lets Mike fuss over her until it’s gone. 

Whatever psychic plane she usually ducks into is dead silent, and in the corporeal world, there isn’t a single peep out of anything Upside Down-adjacent, as Hopper reports via walkie-talkie. No stray demodogs, not even an errant vine around what’s usually one of the most active sections of the gate. 

And nothing from Max, who Lucas has taken to watching like a hawk – “just in case” – whenever they can spare him. Nancy’s not sure what’s meant to follow “just in case”, and she’s always been a tiny bit afraid of what Lucas might come back with if she asks – so she doesn’t. For once, she doesn’t need answers.

It’s eerie, and anticlimactic, and it leaves Nancy with an uneasy pit in her stomach. Under the circumstances, no news doesn’t always feel like good news.

With how the night has fizzled, she doesn’t expect much when Hopper’s group rumbles down the drive – so the jagged, ugly cut she can see arcing down the left side of Steve’s forehead from even as far off as the front window comes as a nasty shock. (Though honestly, should it?)

“What the hell happened?” she demands, running to meet them before they can even climb out of the truck. “I thought you said it was quiet.”

“It was,” Hopper confirms, killing the ignition. “Not a crawler in sight. Wanna fill the lady in on what went down, Harrington?” 

The laughter is plain in his voice, and Nancy instantly relaxes. Whatever it was, it hadn’t been serious.

Steve looks downright mutinous as he crawls out of the back cab alongside Wayne. Good. See if he wants to abandon Nancy to go play Rambo after that. 

“Got into it with a tree branch,” he mutters, mortified. “Tree – one, Steve – zero.” He gestures up at his forehead. “Obviously.”

The fact that Nancy manages to mostly keep a straight face should probably automatically shortlist her for inclusion into some kind of Greatest Girlfriend Ever hall of fame. As it is, Dustin, (who’s been uncharacteristically quiet all night), does the dirty work for her.

“Jesus, Steve, is there anything you can beat in a fight?”

“Excuse the shit outta me, Henderson, but did I or did I not save your ass from goddamn Russian soldiers?”

“One Russian soldier, Steve. One. And I don’t even know if it counts when you mrrflmgh –” Dustin gurgles helplessly for a few seconds behind the iron hand Nancy clamps over his mouth before eventually giving up and going silent.

“I think what Dustin is trying to say is that he’s glad everyone’s okay,” she says with as much brightness as she can muster. “Right?” she asks pointedly, releasing him. There’s a long pause, and then he sighs.

“Sure,” he says with all the enthusiasm of a dental patient undergoing a root canal. “Glad to have you all back.” 

He shuffles back into the cabin, and Nancy knows that one of these days, someone’s gonna have to have a talk with him about his wild mood swings. But she doesn’t really want that someone to be her, so she’s refrained from bringing it up thus far.

“Someone’s gotta check that kid,” Steve utters almost inaudibly, agreeing with Nancy’s silent train of thought (and sounding more concerned than irritated). He’s sneaking glances in Dustin’s wake like he thinks he might be able to get away with following him.

Nancy clears her throat, ready to disabuse him of that notion.

“Some other time, Rocky,” she says, and she means it to be teasing, but it comes out too fond to be entirely successful. “Why don’t we get that cut taken care of, first?” 

She holds out her hand, and he only hesitates a second before he takes it firmly in his, palm to palm.

***

They stay linked like that as she leads him all the way to the tiny half-bath at the back of the new addition, and he only lets go when she shuts them in and urges him down onto the closed toilet so she can comfortably reach his forehead. 

For a few moments, he allows her to work in silence, wincing when she has to pour hydrogen peroxide over the cut (she still doesn’t know if you can actually get Upside Down rabies, but better safe than sorry with all weird dust particles floating around). 

Without the dried blood crusting it, it actually looks very superficial. Nancy breathes a sigh of relief, though she’ll still layer it with some antibiotic cream to be safe.

“I guess I just…don’t get it.” Apropos of nothing, Steve chooses this moment to speak quietly, picking up the loose thread of a conversation they haven’t even started yet. “The last time we were together, you were pissed because I didn’t want to get involved. Now I’m all in, and it doesn’t seem like you like that, either.”

Nancy’s fingers freeze on the cap of Neosporin.

“Steve.” She sets the tube aside and makes an executive decision – she needs to be touching him if he’s gonna insist on talking about this here. “Before we do this, can you do me a favor, first?” 

Nancy picks up his hands and haphazardly plants them on her hips before slipping her own up to cage his face. His brow furrows, but he doesn’t move an inch from where she’s arranged them. “Can you just…stop stopping yourself from touching me? I know we’re in kind of a weird place right now, but I promise you – if you want to, then there’s a pretty damn good chance I want to, too.”

The confused lines in his forehead don’t ease, but his fingers adjust and tighten around her sides until he’s holding her with surety. Surrounded by the warmth of him, the invisible string that’s been holding her shoulders taut all day loosens.

“I didn’t think you’d notice,” he says slowly, eyes skimming her face like she’s this entirely new person who just happens to still look and dress like Nancy. “I – of course I’ll stop. It’s not like holding you is some kind of hardship, Nance.” He looks down. “That still doesn’t answer my question, though.”

Nancy refrains from noting that he hadn’t asked a question, he’d merely made an observation. That level of pedantry probably won’t help much in her “get Steve to touch her more” crusade.

“I know,” she says instead. “But Steve, it’s not – I don’t get mad because you get involved. I love that. I think it’s…” She can feel a dull flush start to creep up her neck. “This can never leave this room, okay, but it can – it can be very hot when you go all action hero.” The flush has extended all the way up through her cheeks. Mercifully, he doesn’t comment on it, though a faint little glimmer that she hasn’t seen all day is creeping back into his gaze.

“Right back ‘atcha, Wheeler,” he returns with a trace smile, and oh! That’s flirting. That’s a good sign. “But then…why did you…?”

“React the way I did?” He tilts his head in the slightest nod. “Because I wanted you to stay with me,” she finally admits, feeling more naked in front of him now than on the night she’d given him her virginity. “The hero thing – it’s nice and all, don’t get me wrong. And sometimes it’s necessary, but I – I don’t need that. I don’t need a hero. I just…want a partner. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.” 

“Nancy…” In a blink, the amused glint is gone. In its place, he looks raw, like she’s torn him down to the studs.

There’s a lick of hair curling over his ear that she’s taken to mindlessly stroking, and it’s easier to keep staring at that than look into his eyes while she gets this off her chest.

“When we got back together,” she continues on, “you made me a promise. Remember?”

“Yeah,” he replies, and his voice is achingly soft. “I promised you we’d come out of this okay.” He turns his face into her hand, lips brushing against her palm with every tingling syllable. “I meant it.” 

“Yeah, but.” Nancy chews her lip. “If I can’t convince you that you matter more than how hard you swing or how many hits you can take, if you won’t stay with me so we can work together and watch each other’s backs, I don’t see how that’s possible.”

Abruptly, Steve’s standing, nudging his way deeper into her space, and the way he can tower over her a bit, dark and solid – well, Nancy fancies herself a feminist, but not so much that she’ll pretend it doesn’t make her shiver in a good way.

“Goddammit, Nancy,” he croaks, and then he’s folding her in his arms, curling tight around her body. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I didn’t – I didn’t even realize,” he mumbles into the nook of her neck and shoulder. “Shit, I am stupid.”

“You’re not,” Nancy chokes, tightening her arms around his neck like she’d wanted to earlier. He’s still wearing his jacket, and the zipper is digging painfully into the V of her collarbone, but it barely registers. She thinks it would take a literal earthquake to dislodge her right now. “I shouldn’t have said that, I’m sorry. You weren’t even wrong, it’s just that – sometimes it’s still really hard to talk about her.” 

She doesn’t need to specify who the “her” in question is. There are definitely a few tears leaking into the leather of his collar, but no one can see them, so it’s neither here nor there.

“I get it,” he says, “but I wanna talk to you about this stuff. If – if you want to. With me. I know I wasn’t there for you before but I swear I can be that guy now.”

“I know,” she gasps, because he’s holding her so tightly that it’s hard to breathe, but if the tradeoff is losing this hot–all–over feeling of his hands on her, then it’s fine, air is overrated anyway. “You are. You are that guy. I want you, I want us. I want you to believe that.”

Their bodies are so constrained in this tiny space, but there’s something wild crackling in the air, something that raises goosebumps on her arms and makes it so that one minute she’s mouthing reassurances into his jaw, and the next, he’s tilting his chin and kissing her quiet, stealing her words with one wet, electric sweep of his tongue.

Yes. She fists his hair between her fingers, soft and a little overlong, swallowing down his helpless whine as she angles his head so she can open wider under him. 

This – this is why, so far, she’s barely been able to kiss him outside of the privacy of one of their rooms. 

Because every time, almost as soon as it starts, they’re set ablaze, twin infernos trying to consume each other alive. It was never like this before, so she has no roadmap for how to cope, how to process the overpowering need that has her spreading her legs to draw him closer and shoving her hands under layers of leather and cotton to get at sweaty skin. 

“Steve,” she whimpers into his lips, rocking her hips up in a pale facsimile of what she truly wants (but it still feels so good). “I need…”

“I know,” he groans, sucking gently at her sensitive pulse point until she’s keening quietly and grinding harder into the rigid seam of his jeans. Everything is tight, and hot, and she thinks she might vibrate right out of her own body if she can’t get what she’s craving.

The night they got back together, they’d had every good intention of taking it slow, of getting to know each other again before jumping back into the physical. 

But that had lasted about as long as it took for him to get a hand under the band of her bra, and eventually he’d ended up fucking her nice and slow behind the locked door of her childhood bedroom, trailing scorching kisses from her swollen lips to the tips of her breasts until she was shaking apart into the mattress, vision white and head empty of anything that wasn’t him – his scent, his body over hers, the quivering place where he nestled inside her.

They don’t have time for that now – they hardly ever have time for that, which probably doesn’t help quell the desperate desire – so they make do, as always, with what they can. 

They make do with his hips, pushing into hers again and again in easy, dirty twists, sensation blunted between two layers of jeans but still enough to have her choking back moans, nipples pebbled hard into two pinpricks of pleasure against the stiff padding of her bra. They make do with deep, messy kisses, which also muffle the needy noises they can’t contain as their bodies strain higher and higher toward a mutual peak.

They make do with hands, scratching up his back and through his chest hair. Squeezing at her ass and guiding her movements until all Nancy has to do is hang on for dear life and enjoy the ride. 

When she finally crashes over the edge, it hits out of nowhere, in flashing, pulsing waves that come hard and fast until she’s digging fists into his shoulder blades and sucking on his tongue in a frantic attempt to stay silent. He’s not far behind, and when he tears himself away from her lips to bury his head in her shoulder, she can feel more than hear the deep shudder of his groan as he trembles in her arms.

Finally, they both still, slumping back against the wall in a frazzled tangle, and reality comes seeping in one mortifying realization at a time. 

“We‘re…still in Hopper’s bathroom, aren’t we?” Nancy asks faintly.

“Yup.” He pops the “p” against her skin, but doesn’t look up. 

“And…we’ve been in here a really long time.” Way longer than it would take to treat that cut on his head, anyway.

“Probably.” 

“My brother is out there. With his girlfriend. And his friends. Our friends.”

“He sure is.”

He sounds way more cheerful than anyone about to face down a firing squad of nosy teenagers ought to be – but then again, she’s remarkably relaxed, too.

Huh. Could it be that in the end, all they really needed was to get off?

(Probably not.) 

Steve finally shoves away from the wall and adjusts his pants, grimacing. 

“Okay, being honest, this might not’ve been our brightest idea,” he admits.

Nancy catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror just over his shoulder. Her face is flushed, and her eyes are bright. She looks pleased. Happy.

“Probably not, but can’t argue with results,” she teases, stepping back into his space and slipping an arm around his waist, under his jacket. 

He grins down at her, and he looks like such a man – handsome, and kind, and hers – that her heart skips. 

They’re not kids anymore, playacting at some great love that, in the end, was mostly smoke and mirrors. If they make it out of this, like he’s promised they will, they’ll be – they’ll be basically grown ups.

This time, it’s real. Maybe even for keeps. 

That should freak her out, but it doesn’t. 

He presses his smile to her forehead, chaste and sweet, and slings an arm around her neck. 

“Who am I to argue with the beautiful Nancy Wheeler?” he says with more than a bit of irony, and she laughs, because she wants to and he wants her to. “Ready to face the music?”

“Together?” Nancy doesn’t shield the hope in her voice. He dips his forehead to rest against hers, nudges their noses together.

“Wild demodogs couldn’t drag me away,” he says softly, sincerely, and the warm, secret feeling in Nancy’s chest – the one she’s been carrying around for months, waiting until she’s absolutely sure she has a name for it – balloons outward. 

Soon, it’ll be too big for her body alone to bear. One day, it will demand to be shared, and she’ll give it freely and joyfully. 

Not yet, but soon. 

“Come on, then,” she says.

She tugs him forward, and he follows.

***

(normalize panicking and giving an established character an extensive home reno complete with plumbing work smack dab in the middle of an apocalypse simply because you realized that the house's canon layout was not conducive to the main pairing getting it on as you had originally written.)

[simmillercc]

SIMS 4 - WINTER HOLIDAY FINGERNAILS - SPARKLES - TODDLER TO ELDER - BASE GAME AND SPA DAY

This is a set of fingernails with pretty sparkles! Great for parties or if your sim is just feeling festive or sparkly, themselves.

Fingernail meshes for each age are distinct, as are adult male and adult female, so you will need each package separately to get all of them in game. Or pick which ones you want and leave the rest!

There are 33 colours for each adult package, 11 for the child version, and 10 for toddlers.

Spa Day is required for the adult nails to show in game, Child and Toddler versions are Base Game 😊

TAGS:

AGE AND GENDER

BY COLOUR

FEMININE (MASCULINE SIMS SHOULDN'T RANDOMLY APPEAR WEARING THESE)

HUMAN, MERMAID, VAMPIRE, SPELLCASTER

PARTY, SITUATION, COLD WEATHER OUTFITS

WINTER COLOUR PALETTE

ALLOWED FOR RANDOM

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

In the file names you will see 2 letter codes:

AF - ADULT FEMALE

AM - ADULT MALE

CU - CHILD UNISEX

PU - TODDLER UNISEX

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

Enjoy!

DOWNLOAD FREE HERE

[yikes-em]

Blush Sands

For @astrangersummer week 1: nail polish

steddie | 1154 words | gen/no warnings | post s4 everyone lives

Read also on ao3

Below cut formatted for ao3

When Steve had asked Eddie about his fingernails, nothing could have prepared him for what it would set off. Eddie’s eyes lit up in the middle of Family Video and he gripped harder onto Steve’s hand that had pulled his painted nails into the light in the first place.

The explanation had come with Max at his trailer a few nights ago, her mom long asleep after a grueling work day had apologetically canceled on their ‘girls night’. So she’d slipped from her window with a few bottles of polish and knocked on his screen door. Eddie, at first a little aback at being her first choice and then fully clocked when she mentioned seeing Eddie doing his eyeliner in his van before scrambling off to see a concert in Indy, agreed. If Max was going to walk around with yellow fingernails they’d be the cleanest damn paint job ever.

So now here’s Steve, sitting in the middle of another ‘girls night’ at Eddie’s trailer. Said host is in the kitchen stirring Shirley Temples for Max and El with one hand and a large pot of mac n’ cheese with the other. Robin, having drank half and promptly forgotten her own very spiked Shirley, is crouched in front of El on the couch and painting little purple squiggles over pale blue. Max is leaning out of Wayne’s recliner with her fingers dug into Robin’s hair, deftly trying to tuck it into little braids. Her nails are yet to be done but she’s chosen the color. Bright pink this time.

Steve has three bottles in his hand. A deep maroon that reminds him of his car, a fleshy yet shiny pink tone, and a teal blue the color his pool was growing up in the summer. He’s staring so hard at them that he doesn’t have time to prepare for Eddie bumping hips with him as he settles back on the couch between Steve and El. He’s got a bowl big with enough mac n’ cheese for them both with two spoons precariously balanced on his lap while offering out a beer.

“Drink?”

“Thanks,” Steve hums, dumping the little bottles on his lap to accept the beer.

“Hungry?” Eddie’s speaking so low that the girls don’t even seem to acknowledge them. Steve nods and hefts a spoonful into his mouth and washes it down in one breath. Eddie makes another noise, something like casual, genuine awe. Steve can feel it where their bodies touch.

“Very,” Steve says around another mouthful of pasta.

“Mm,” Eddie hums as his gaze drifts down Steve’s face, his neck and chest, and finally rests in Steve’s lap. Steve has half a mind to let his face flush when he remembers the nail polish “Need help deciding?”

“Yeah, I uh… I’ve never had a choice on something like this. I know it’s not permanent but it feels like something that matters more than just putting on a shirt for the day.”

“No, you’re right,” Eddie says, leaning into Steve a little more. He grabs gently at the bottles and turns them so he can read the shades. “Merlot is very date night. Mysterious but sexy. A solid choice.”

Steve enjoys the thought of Eddie painting his nails for a date, wonders what color Eddie would paint them if it were a date that Steve asked him on.

“Ah, blush sands, a classic. Casual, doesn’t draw much attention. It’s more for you to know and feel pretty in,” Eddie continues. Steve hadn’t thought about which color his eyes would be drawn to while checking in returns at work, or potentially ringing up customers.

“Lagoon.” Steve can sense the unsaid creature-from-the-black prefix and snorts out a laugh. “Summery, bright, attention seeking, fun.”

“Doesn’t really narrow it down, huh?” Steve groans and shifts his hips so not only do the little bottles brush together and make cute clinking noises but so do his and Eddie’s thighs. It’s a solid touch and Steve feels his mouth water for something. He satiates with a beer.

“Are you asking me to decide for you?”

Robin cackles at something Max says and the fond smile it brings to Steve’s face hurts. Seeing his people happy, after everything they’ve been through, is all he could ever want in the world. El is waving her hands in the air to dry her new designs and leans over Eddie to show them both.

“Look! Like the roller rink’s floor!” She beams. “Robin made them perfect!”

“I don’t know about perfect-” Robin scratches at her nose sheepishly but Steve can see the pride in her eyes.

“Damn perfect!” Eddie shouts, bouncing in his spot. “I call after Max! I want flowers Rob- ones with little yellow dots in the middle!”

“Jesus christ, who do you take me for?”

“A goddamn artist,” Eddie grins and blows her a kiss. It’s hard to tell if the red in Robin’s cheeks is from how hard she’s laughing or from the alcohol. Max and El swap spots, El simply twisting bits of Robin’s hair in on itself until she winces or it pops free. Eddie turns his full attention back to Steve and it sends a shiver down his knees.

“I’ll pick two, you take it from there?”

Steve nods, spoon in mouth again.

“I think Lagoon is a little daring for your first time. Could give you some weird feelings.”

“Okay.” Steve doesn’t even think to ask what might constitute weird feelings. “Okay, then I think blush sands. It’s not too far off what my nails look like anyway- in case I hate it.”

“Good job,” Eddie beams, snatching up the two unchosen bottles and stashing them away in the shoe box on the table. “You’ll definitely look cute in that one.”

“Thanks,” Steve mumbles and ducks his chin to his chest. “Uh… how do I… how do I start?”

“Oh shit, Stevie, yeah, here let me!” Eddie transplants his beer and the mac n’ cheese to the coffee table and pivots his whole body so they’re facing. “Gimme.”

Eddie takes the bottle of blush sands and cracks it open, gesturing for Steve to hold out his hand. It probably only takes about ten minutes maximum for Eddie to get two coats on each of Steve’s blunt nails but it’s long enough for Steve to finish both their beers and get pleasantly buzzed on the liquor and the smell of Eddie’s cologne.

“Pretty,” Eddie hums when he’s done, holding Steve’s hand up in the dingy lighting. His gaze drifts over his hand, up along his arm where Steve knows he has visible bat scars pulling taught over his muscles, resting finally on his face- his eyes. Steve blinks a few times and wets his lips. Eddie imitates the action. “Yeah, pretty.”

In that moment, Steve decides that he’d do anything asked of him for the rest of his life if Eddie would call him pretty.

[yua-nism]

Kaleido- A kaleidoscope or Pandora’s box? An analysis of Kaleido’s lyrics

Note: This is a translation of 互口互's theory on Weibo! Please go check it out!

First of all, the song name, the Japanese name for it is カレヰド, this term comes from the Greek term Kaleido, meaning kaleidoscope. KALOS means beauty, and EIDOS means shape. Ever-changing beautiful shapes, which is what a kaleidoscope is. But as to why the Greek term for kaleidoscope is used, we’ll leave this question for later.

Next, to put it clearly, the perspective of the song in the first half is from a woman’s view. (Before 01:48) The JP fans on Twitter, the courtesan setting in Awauta, and the female ghost in Uwasanometsukosan (Momochi is pretty used to writing lyrics from a woman’s perspective at this point), plus the lyrics of the song itself can prove this. As to the role he’s playing this time, I personally think it’s a caged woman waiting for her husband to come home desperately. Doesn’t that mean it’s from Momochi's kano’s perspective though? Nope. In my opinion, I think this song is about Momochi's feelings for his kano, which means he’s singing about himself. Details below.

"There’s nothing I don’t need, let me ask about everything.” These words are said by the wife waiting eagerly for her husband to come home: Did anything happen outside? Please tell me everything, every little thing matters to me, don’t miss anything. Now let’s think about something, even though the one staying at home is Momochi's kano, who’s the one actually doing the asking? Yep, it’s mmc. Did you behave? Anything you need? Did you stay at home? You didn’t go out, right? (Sometimes he’ll even look at her phone call history, cross this) Will Momochi's kano go up to him of her own accord after he opens the 4-layer lock and ask him a ton of questions at once? Probably not, she’s mostly the one being asked, like the husband in this song.

”You’ll be coming back late again, right? My suspicions go round and round” The literal translation, “the bugs’ messages keep coming” is a saying in Japanese, usually meaning a bad premonition. This part of the lyrics is about the wife feeling anxious and insecure about the possibility of her husband coming home later. Now, if her emotions reach a breaking point, what would she do? Is it possible that she’ll think of a way to let her husband stay at home so she can see him whenever without needing to wait? The answer is: putting a lock on the door. Just like Momochi putting a 4 layer lock on the door in reality and locking his kano in at home so he won’t have to be anxious about her returning home at a late time. At this point Momochi's way of thinking is completely matches up with the wife, of course mmc won’t have to wait long, he’ll call a lot and even threaten you to pick up within 2 rings (lol).

“A burning heart going from red to blue, it won’t cool down." These flames of love start to reflect” The color on the outer layer of the flames is red, while the inner one is blue, and the inner flames burn hotter than the outer ones, which means the temperature of his heart is getting higher and higher, it’ll burn and never cool. To put it simply, he loves her a lot, only more, and his love won’t ever become rational.

“’Please don’t go’ You’re all I have” In the lyrics, “anata” is used which is how wives usually address their husbands or seniors that they’re very close with as a sign of respect. If you don’t know what this one is about, you can think about how in S2 Momochi asked his kano in the rain why he left her, at that point in time, this is what he was thinking. “Hanging on with clawed fingers, hurting everything that they touch.” For one, clawed might refer to how the wife might have long fingernails, but it could also mean how the way Momochi asks to stay by his side is sharp and hurting. (In S2 he said his kano betrayed her promise, in S4 he said the opposite of his thoughts, talking about how he wouldn’t forgive her, saying she’s dumb, saying nobody except him would love her, incredibly offensive) Hurting everything that he touches, Momochi has done a lot of physically harming actions on his kano, biting, gripping her neck, punching earholes, in conclusion, he wants to say that he has a desire for destruction and dominance, that he can’t control or doesn’t want to control. Kind of feels like “the more beautiful something is the more I can’t touch it” kinda thing.

"Drunk on these colors, a mutual destruction.” You can’t really have mutual destruction if both parties have a clear mind, right?  “Ah, hold me in your embrace (This night once more), for my self-satisfaction” The “for my self-satisfaction” part can also be translated as “I’m alone tonight again”, it means a sense of self-righteousness. This basically brings out a feeling of loneliness yet a persisting unwillingness to admit it, so we’ll just translate it to Momochi’s constant denial of what he says, “Please hug me tonight, if you’re not willing to, then being alone tonight again sounds nice” In a nutshell, this part writes about a stubborn yet confusing wife, you guys can listen to the song itself to feel it.

“The more I call out, the further away you become. Losing even a place to belong.” This part has nothing to do with the story of Pandora’s box, probably Momochi’s thoughts on his relationship with his kano. Because of problems with expression plus his kano being a shy and passive person, though his love is only increasing, the distance between them isn’t closing in, perhaps even pushing his kano further away. If he loses his place of belonging, then on a physical meaning Momochi can be said to no longer have a home, except that house he lived in with his kano. (As to how twisted Momochi’s expressions can get, go look at Yakouka, literally no one can understand it) Now we’re in the second half of the lyrics. A repeating symbolism is a box. You can’t open the box, if you do you’ll lose all you have. As to which box is referred to, there are two boxes that fulfill the condition above, one is a Japanese legend in which a man opens the box, becoming an old man and losing everything he once had. This story is pretty simple so no analysis. The other one is Pandora’s box. Pandora, pan means everything, dora means gift, the gods created Pandora as an invincible woman who has everything, (mmc’s musical talent is also once in a hundred years), yet Zeus’ box that he gave to Pandora is filled with greed, lies, jealousy, pain, and defamation. (These qualities are all shown on Momochi).

Back to the question at the start of this, if KALOS means beauty in Greek, then why is evil mentioned? Is it because of this pandora full of bitterness because of revenge? Perhaps kaleido is the opposite of pandora.

Thank you for reading! That is all :D

notes: i'm dying. btw please go actually check out yakouka's lyrics they're on the wiki and yes the english translation for the lyrics is from the wiki...!! thank you so much to 互口互 for letting me translate their post!

[t-horn-n]

— he who wears the crown of thorns

PAIRING: peter ballard/henry creel x reader (female) 

GENRE: angst, h.end

WARNINGS: canon-level violence, allusions to substance (mis)use 

Stranger Things S4 spoilers.

SUMMARY: when you are injured in the lab, peter must finally admit what your relationship is.

NOTE: I have exhausted the well of Peter Ballard fanfiction, so I decided to write my own.

If you were one for poetics, you would craft the story of Hawkin’s Lab into a drama, or more likely, a tragedy.  Peter Ballard Henry Creel the hero, a fallen king who wears a crown of thorns around his neck.  And Martin Brenner, the arrogant mortal who tries to wield a god’s power.  

What does that make you?  Once, you may have simply been the narrator.  An outsider who felt obliged to tell the story of those who could not tell it themselves.  But now?  As time has passed, are you the fallen king’s guardian angel?  His pawn, a subject made to be ruled?  His friend?  Or his lover?  

It is not yet clear. 

What is certain is that you are entangled with him as though you have been ensnared by invisible threads, as unnoticeable as fishermen’s line, but as strong as spiders’ silk.  To Henry your presence in the lab has been as permanent as the white-tiled walls.  Though you are his age, you have been there since the beginning—to lend some normalcy into his life, Brenner had claimed.  Though, surely, you are not so ignorant as to believe anything about Henry is normal.  

Nonetheless, you are a constant in Peter Ballard’s life.  A rock that has stood even as Martin Brenner’s forest grew.  Peter became taller, older, more deceitful.  Together you raised the doctor’s saplings, fostered them with sunlight in the form of smiles.  

And now, your relationship?

Well, it’s simple in its complexity.  It’s peculiar in its secretiveness.  Your private grins and unspoken jokes and the strange way you store a piece of your weird, mangled souls in each other.  

But Brenner gets high off control.  If not, what need does he have for the collars?  The cameras?  The rules?  And when he loses his grip he suffers from withdrawal.  And he can be so very cruel when he does not get his fix.  

For a while, he pretended that that attraction did not exist.  He chose not to see the proximity because with all of the power Brenner tells himself he possesses comes laziness.  

“Don’t you think that if we all lined up on a checkerboard we would look like oversized chess pieces?” you murmur to Peter one afternoon—or at least that is what the clock claims—in the Rainbow Room.  

The two of you stand against the wall with the twin doors, facing the mirror with its reflection of your white uniforms and a dozen shaved heads.  

He chuckles quietly in amusement, the kind only you can earn.  “If that’s the case, that would make us the King and Queen.” 

You smile and your hands inch together.  A fingernail brushes against a fingernail, but a pinprick of red light bores into your forehead and you do not dare to do anything more than whisper.  

Brenner may be lazy, but he can also be sly and sneaky.

Two of the younger children colour on pristine sheets of paper.  Flowers and suns, things they have never seen for themselves, are conjured from the coloured wax of the crayons they hold.  Eleven drops a red disk into a numbered peg board, again and again.  Two, Three, and Four toss a bean bag between them.  Anything to cure their boredom. 

Suddenly, the door is pushed open.  It is not Martin Brenner, so the children do not rise.  They continue their puttering and only the oldest look to see who caused the disturbance.  Another Orderly addresses Peter.  

“Your shift is over.  I am here to take your place.”   

Peter smiles, his beautiful lips stretched thin.  

“I’ve been assigned a double shift today.  Don’t worry about me, Ballard,” you say to his hesitance.  

He smiles again and now his eyes crinkle too.  Then he leaves and you are left to stand with this Orderly on opposite sides of the steel door as though the lab is the prison Brenner tries so hard to deny.  You avoid staring at your own reflection because you have found that if you look at yourself for too long your reflection will become unrecognisable.  And then the person across from you is alien, and will certainly drive you mad.

Before your thoughts can run around your head in dizzying loops, the children start yelling.  Two and Three have stalked over to where Ten kneels surrounded by a fortress of blocks.  Wooden walls will not protect him from entitlement.  

“Move,” Two demands.  

For a moment, Ten does not reply and you think he will ignore Two—that he will weather this onslaught.  The silence permeates and is only broken by a soft whirring as the camera stationed in the corner of the room angles to watch the performance unfold.  

For that same moment, you do not know what to do.  Brenner has never liked Orderly interference in his children’s matters, always eager to see the extent of their capabilities, and of their rage.  But then again, he will be undoubtedly upset if one of his assets is damaged.

“No,” Ten says.

In a swift movement Two kicks his block towers and they go sprawling on the floor.  You and the other Orderly rush forward as Two takes Ten by his collar, yanking him up so quickly that he is not allowed time to yell, and his toes barely brush the tile.  

“Say again?” Two snarls.

“Two, your behaviour is—” you start.  

Two thrusts an arm outwards and the other Orderly flies backwards and into several chairs.  You do not move.  A rock. 

Perhaps Two would have been surprised if he were not so busy spitting in the other boy’s face.  “When I tell you to do something, you do it.” 

Ten’s face hardens defiantly and you are almost envious.  Where was this courage when you were a child?  Did you lack Ten’s bravery or the fodder of the other children?  

Two swings hard and his fist meets Ten’s cheek because in a deranged rage he must have forgotten that he is always being watched—or is the true reason more sinister?—and Ten is on the floor.  Blood runs down his face and stains his teeth.  Two appears drunk from adrenaline. 

A grin is spreading across his face, arrogant and smug.  But from the ground Ten throws a wooden block at his face.  It cuts his eyebrow, its point digging into his skin and now he too is bleeding.  Again, Two lunges forward like he is about to commit murder, but you are there, holding his shoulders and trying to push him against the wall.  His hands fly up, your face stings as Two drags his fingernails across your skin.  

Your fellow Orderly has since recovered and is holding Ten’s arms behind his back as though in the past three minutes the child has been traded for a criminal.  

“Let go of me!” Two yells.  

Your lips press together. 

Startlingly, the doors fling open, Martin Brenner has arrived.  Now, the children all jolt and stand in their lines.  

“Hello, Papa,” they greet. 

Even Two’s anger has waned in the presence of the doctor.

He speaks to the other Orderly first.  “Please escort Two and Ten to the infirmary.  I will have a chat with them later.”  

Then he looks directly at you and juvenile fear seizes you, the kind you should have grown out of.  “Come.” 

You release Two.  Approaching Brenner you do not look at the children, you try to relax your shoulders and raise your chin.  Peter would not be afraid, you remind yourself.  Brenner grasps your wrist in a handcuff not made of metal but flesh.  Roughly, he pulls you from the Rainbow Room and down the hallway.  

“You are here to protect them, Y/N, and today, you have failed to do that.” 

There is no point in protesting nor is there a reason to sputter apologies.  Simply, you allow him to drag you through the corridors of Hawkin’s Lab. 

A collar of metal and wires is fixed around your neck, a bite guard in your mouth.  You sit in a chair and an electrical shock races through your veins.  Your nerves alight and already perspiration beads at your hairline.  

Humiliation as you slide from the chair because your muscles spasm and you see Peter watching behind glass with an expression that discloses nothing.  But in his eyes, you see horror.  You tell yourself that you are not crying, and that the water that turns your vision bleary is the natural reaction to your situation.  

Pain as your legs commit treason and kick in odd directions.  

You count to yourself the seconds that pass.  It is all manageable if the time you suffer is compartmentalised.  When it is over and Brenner has left and Orderlies have taken the collar from your neck, Peter gathers you into his arms.  He tucks his head into your neck and whispers into your ear.  He does not tell you that you are okay because obviously you are not.  

“I’m sorry.” 

Still, your fingers twitch.  Your head jerks periodically while your feet tingle. 

He does not apologise again.  He does not need to.  Now it is certain that what you are extends past labels.

“They will not control us forever,” he promises.  “Soon we will rule them all.” 

Perhaps Henry Creel still wears barbs like a necklace, but his pledges to you are like a crown of thorns placed over your brow.  Those who wear the crown of thorns will not be caged for long.

— m. list

[charmixpower]

Think about the girlies nails rn bc I haven't gotten mine done in a while

Bloom: Bites, worries, and rips up her nails all the fucking time. At first it's just because she has pretty bad anxiety and is constantly fidgeting, and part of that is fucking up her nails, but after her first transformation when her Domino looks are restored she starts ripping them up because she hates how shes reminded of how fucked up her life has gotten. During s3 when Bloom is calming down after the pure anger she was running on for the end of s1 and most of s2 Stella starts painting her nails so they taste bad to bite and are harder to rip up so Bloom breaks her bad habit of destroying them. After this Bloom starts growing her nails out because she never actually cut them in the first place so they just grow out until she accidentally breaks them. They're usually like mountain peak claw shaped nails, because that's how they grow, but when Bloom gets them done she sometimes gets them in a oval kinda shape to have her old nail shape back for a little while.

Stella: Always has her nails done because of course she does she's Stella, fingernails and toenails. She usually has nails extending as well. Her nails aren't super long, she prefers medium length extensions. Her nails in s1-3 are done in an almond shaped, but in s4 she starts getting them done in a ballerina shape. After all that she needed a change, and it matches her new vibe and style better. They're usually in orange, blue, or green, but sometimes she gets them in white a more neutral color if she has a specific outfit planned that her usual nail colors will clash with. In her magic forms her nails are much shorter and don't go past her finger, as she uses a staff in combat and that can get difficult with long nails.

Flora: Her nails are usually pretty short, barely going past her finger in a oval shape. Mostly so they won't get broken while she's gardening and won't hurt under her gardening gloves. Even though she usually wears sandals and flip flops she usually doesn't bother doing her toe nails. She's usually not looking at her feet and neither are most people so it doesn't matter to her. Sometimes she'll do it for a special event or just because she wants to but it isn't usual.

Tecna: In s1 Tecna keeps her nails short in a square shape. Just a little bit of her diva energy seeping out despite the fact that she's convinced herself that emotions are cringe and logic is king. Though she's always been terrible at actually controlling her emotions lmao. When Tecna finally allows herself to express herself properly, instead of pushing all her emotions down and ignoring her anger until it boils over, her nails get longer. Not super long because typing would be inconvenient, but visibly pasted her finger. Like medium short. She'd love nail art and doing funny things, she has gauges and dimple piercings in my thing she tries flare nails and edge nails at least once.

Musa: Girlie does not take care of her nails. She's a tomboy and she plays instruments. While Musa primarily plays the flute, she can play every instrument. Which means string instruments, which notoriously do not get along with having any length to your nails. Due to her rejection of girly things in s1-s2 she doesn't really paint her nails, when she accepts herself, her sister, and stops distancing herself from feminine things she allows Stella to paint them or drag her along to a salon s3 on. The more she gets into fun performance outfits the more she does her nails as well.

Aisha: Very well manicured short nails. Aisha does a lot of stuff with her hands and long nails does not play nice with rock climbing so she cuts and flies them often. Very well maintained though, usually wears a clear coat, or skin tone colored nail polish that goes with everything. However in her magic forms her nails are usually longer and always fun colors, it's a chance to express herself without her nail polish being immediately ruined. At first she really didn't like nail polish because all it did was remind her of getting ready to essentially be a living ornament during noble gatherings, but then Anne painted her nails in rainbow colors and her gay heart was immediately won over.

Icy: She has long ass stiletto nails. She's had them for as long as she could confidently pull off the long ass nails look. Long, but not like x-long or any further. She still wants to be able to use her hands without too much of an inconvenience from her nails. I think she'd do her nails as long square nails in her civilian form right up until they get kicked out of CT and any pretense of not being evil is immediately dropped. Takes immaculate care of her nails, she even uses her ice to reinforce her nails so they don't break. They look too good for that.

Darcy: Short-medium squared oval nails, she does not have the time nor the energy to keep up with nails like Icy does and doesn't feel like them constantly getting in her way or getting them redone when they break so she just takes care of her natural nails and paints them herself. Laughs at Stormy when she accidentally stabs herself or at Icy when she struggles to do something because of her nails. In her magical forms her nails are much longer as she doesn't need to take care of them because of magic.

Stormy: Medium length almond shaped nails that she is CONSTANTLY breaking and getting redone. I'm so obsessed with how Stormy is the most feminine and the most chaotic of the Trix. Yes she only wears heels and mini skirts, yes she'll chase you down without breaking a sweat. I'm obsessed with her, but yeah she breaks her nails all the time because she's heavy handed and doing stupid shit and I love her.

A little guide, because I needed to Google this stuff to know them all: