#see now i have a problem where i have two seasonal sticker sheets

[humming-fly]

To celebrate the unofficial start of summer a new sticker sheet has been added to my etsy store!

Enjoy the seasonal festivities of BBQ, beach volleyball, and arguing with relatives with these, the second most self-indulgent seasonal stickers I've ever made~

[kaylathekittykat225]

Second Best // Steve Harrington X Reader

Warning/s: Defo Angst, or at least self-doubt and if you squint self-hate, slight abuse/violence

Word Count: 18k. You gonna scrolling for a little bit

Am I the only one who gets into fandoms by accidentally finding a post about it and then being really confused at first until you are like ten posts in and finally understand everything and then getting into the show much later? Yeah, that’s what I did with Stranger Things. Hope I did this justice, I still need to get to more recent seasons, but it’s fine. Only behind the eight balls by a couple of years. 

So, I am not against any people racially, but I put the reader, you, as a white person because it adds to the character. If you wish to imagine yourself different racially cool! I just took the white person approach because I thought it would add to the character and her thought process.

Also, if anyone wants to request anything, I am open to write justa bout anything, I am better at writing some people than others, but write for most anything I will give it my best and I will write my heart out.

Here’s my Masterlist.

Enjoy.

-----

“Hey, Y/N, can you drive me over to Mike’s house? Mom doesn’t want me riding my bike with the rainstorm coming tonight.” Looking over your shoulder, you saw Lucas standing next to you with a small bag in one hand and a notebook with ‘Lucases Campagne, Top Secret!’ written in his big sloppy handwriting across the front of it on a name tag sticker. 

You quirk your eyebrow at him and looked between his notebook and yours, showing the vast difference between how the two of you planned on spending your Saturday. “Please, this is the first time in two weeks we’ve been able to get together for the campaign! It’s supposed to be a big one too! Mike says he’s been planning it for a month now! Plus! Halloween is two days away and we need to double check that our costumes are all right!”

He started poking at your arm, something he picked up early on with you when you both were much younger when he wanted your attention. “Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeaaase.” The poking evolved into pulling, now moving from tapping and lazily pulling at your sweater to grabbing at your elbow and trying to move your hand away from your homework.

“Oh yeah?” Let’s be honest, you could never resist the puppy dog eyes of the middle Sinclair child, so keeping a straight face while trying to build up your yes was hard, especially when you knew how much he loved all these campaigns he did with his friends. “Well, I guess I can finish up that college application later.”

“Yes! Thank goodness, you were my last hope! I already asked Will’s mom and Dustin’s and then I even asked Nancy, but they were all busy or their moms were letting them ride their bikes! You are a last-minute lifesaver.” A small knife pressed its tip into your heart as you repeated the words in your mind a couple times more as you grabbed hold of your keys and backpack and headed after your brother.

Last hope? Why didn’t he just come to you first? You live across the hall from him, he knows your door is always open and you never cared about driving him anywhere. So why were you last?

Surprisingly you got to your car first, you would have thought he would be bouncing up and down at the door, begging for you to hurry up, seeing as the kid wanted to rush on over to his friend’s house so badly and get started, at 10am on a Saturday. “Hey Lucas!” You shouted into the house from the doorway, “Let’s get going! We need to make sure your knight is able to save the day!”

“Y/N?” Instead of Lucas, your mom walked into the door, pulling a struggling Erica along by her hair as she tried braiding her course black hair into place. “Are you taking Lucas over to the Wheeler’s house?” A sigh of relief followed your nod and she thanked you over and over again. “Thank you, you know how I worry about the boys biking when it’s raining. They could get sick or slide off and I just...want to sleep at night. And can you see if you can figure out how to spell the name I have to put on Lucas’s costume? I’ve asked your father, your brother, even our neighbor and I was hoping you could figure it out for me.” 

Always saved for last. Even the neighbor trumped you?

“Really, it’s no problem mom, I have nothing to do besides college applications; I’m sure I’ll run into Jonathan tonight when he comes to pick Will up and make sure that we’re still on for going with the rascals next week.” You smiled and chuckled to yourself as you saw Lucas racing out the door. “I’ll make sure to get him home hopefully before midnight.”

“I trust you, Y/N, I do. Lucas, I love you!” She waved and smiled as he yelled back a ‘love you too mom‘ before kicking the door shut with her foot. “Bye, Y/N.” As the door shut, you looked through the glass door into the house, seeing the gorgeous dark-skinned woman smiling down at her baby girl who complained about her dark hair being pulled too tight.

Your eyes shifted and you were staring at your reflection...you don’t look like that. Instead of seeing a beautiful girl like Erica, whose hair your mom could twist your hair into intricate braids or buns, you had...Y/H/C, nothing like your mom’s, it was stick straight and thin, it could never hold what she was doing to your little sister’s hair.

And your eyes, they always were annoying and stood out in family pictures, too bright and...Y/E/Ced. You just didn’t like them. In fact, that’s all you did in this family, stand out. Every Christmas card, every family portrait, the four of them all looked like a family...and then you were there, a pale girl with Y/H/C hair and Y/E/C eyes who was a sore thumb, obviously taken in by a family who...maybe they don’t even want her anymore because they have their own kids now and they don’t need to keep the girl they adopted years ago anymore...

Maybe...

“Hey Y/N!” Lucas’s voice pulled you out of your own reflection and you shake your head lightly before walking over to him. “finally, what were you doing?”

Instead of actually telling him, tell him the hurt you are feeling right now, you smiled at him and gently pushed him into the car. “Just felt like I forgot something, making sure I don’t get us locked out if we stay out till midnight and mom and dad are asleep when we get home.”

The two of you made it over to the Wheeler’s house, Mrs. Wheeler let the two of you in without any question as to why the two of you were entering her house so early on a Saturday when everyone should be sleeping. “The boys are downstairs Lucas, and Nancy’s up in her room, Y/N.” 

“Thanks, Mrs. Wheeler.” The two of you greeted her together before heading to the different levels of the house, each to their own respective friend groups, but one of you would be more loved and welcomed than the other. 

Knowing where your best friend’s room was, you opened the door and stepped inside; “Hey Nancy, you know about the boys Ghostbuster costume right? Do you know-” Looking into the room, you were shocked to see that Nancy wasn’t alone. “Um, hey guys…” You stuttered a hello to Steve lying on the bed, a paper in his hands with red scribbles all over it; Nancy sitting up next to him, red pen in hand, obviously the one marking up the paper. 

But Steve wasn’t the one you were surprised about, “Hey, Y/N.” Jonathan smiled at you from his place on the floor by the two, two stuffed animals in front of him, his camera in hand and a few polaroids were beside him, looking somewhat like test shots. 

“Y/N!” Nancy happily cheered and Steve just nodded his head at you. The two of you were friendly only in terms of him always being around Nancy and inevitably snagging her from you. Not after sophomore Christmas. “Come in! Steve and I were just working out our costume for the party!”

“Plus my paper.” Steve muttered as his eyes scanned over the paper again, scratching something onto a new sheet of paper. Nancy chuckled and ran her fingers through his hair before she turned back to you, not seeing the smile he sent her as he stared at her, his eyes sparkling as he just watched her sit there, she wasn’t doing anything and yet he still looked at her like she was the only person in the room. There really was no way of explaining how he was looking at the girl you called your friend but the thing you could explain was that no one had ever looked at you that way before. 

You pulled the chair out of the far end of the room and sat down, feeling a little out of place with three other people, something you had gotten used to over the years in this room. First it had been Barb before…well before what happened last year. You swallowed and looked at the ground, away from the pictures to your right on her desk; the pictures littered of Barb and Nancy mostly, with you popping up in there every once in a while. 

You were there in the prom pictures from last year where there was a group of five of you, including Nancy and Barb, where all of you decided to go stag and enjoy your junior prom without dates. Another was your guys eighth grade graduation, the three of you huddled together with your cheap little hats and gowns. There were others, all of them with varying levels of one, two, or three people, but over the years you noticed that there weren’t any pictures of just you or you and Nancy, it was always you with the other two. Something that really only popped up to you recently after all that has happened. 

Pausing from flipping through his pictures, Jonathan looked over at you. “Hey, Y/N, are you going to this party too?” Your head snapped up at him, a feeling of betrayal pushing that knife even farther down. You two....it had been...no.

“I...I don’t think so,” You said quietly, playing with your fingers as your stomach twisted and you felt like you were about to be sick. “I have...college apps to finish. An-and my mom wants me to...watch Erica on Halloween.” Pushing the bile back down your throat, you look back up at Jonathan, hoping he could see the hurt you were radiating from breaking a promise neither of you have ever broken, not when you had the flu two Halloweens ago, or the snow storm that left many kids stuck at home, the two of you were always by each other's side on the spookiest day of the year. The two of you were even talking last week about the new movie you wanted to see and what candy he was gonna buy, since it was always you got the movie, he buys the snacks. You hoped when you talked about walking Erica around, that he would remember what you two did, but...

Nothing.

Nothing except Nancy Wheeler. 

When you looked up, Jonathan wasn’t even looking at you like he was before. Like Steve was moments ago, Jonathan was now staring at Nancy, this time with a look of longing at the couple, his hand slowly tightening around the stuffed lion in his hand. The same glow was in his eyes as with Steve’s, this time jealousy mixed into his brown eyes. 

You didn’t hate the fact that Nancy was being stared at when you weren’t, but...Jonathan? Your best friend? The one who would fight off the monsters under the bed before he went home for you. Your first crush...knowing someone since childhood never ended in you going into a relationship, you two would only ever be friends, because that’s what he knew you as his whole life, his friend, never his girlfriend. So seeing him stare at her only made you hurt more. Even him...he put you second. Never seeing you as the one he could choose above all else. 

“Y/N, you know your mom will never know if you don’t go with Erica, she’s old enough to be on her own for the night. I even got Jonathan to let Will go! Come on, Y/N it will be fun!” Nancy had the happiest grin on her face, but something in her eyes told you...no, this isn’t what was gonna make her happy, or...maybe that was just you reflecting yourself into her eyes. 

Was she just trying to pull you along out of pity? Did she know that Jonathan would not come unless you went too? But that didn’t seem to be a problem with how he sounded like he was going anyway. 

What did she have to be unhappy about she lived where she does? Not that you wanted to judge her but...she was from a happy family who loves her. How could you compare to her? Her grades were perfect, her boyfriend was perfect, her hair was perfect, her life was perfect, her boyfriend was perfect. Wait you already said that, hold on. 

You looked back over at Steve and saw him staring down at what you could now assume to be a college application essay he needed to write. It was your turn to look at someone longingly; how can someone be so sweet and then...just stop? 

First last summer tested your understanding, then the winter before tested you heart...what else could life test you on? Your will to want to stay here?

“Hey guys, I uh...gotta go...clean my...doghouse. Yeah it’s really dirty and I just can’t let my dog live like that so...see you guys Monday.” Stumbling over your words, you caught yourself as you tripped over the chair and felt your face go red as everyone turned to you, confusion in their eyes at your flustered state. Turning to look at them, you only made it worse by doing so, Nancy and Jonathan looking confused more than anything else, no sense of worry on your behavior. Were they that dense or were you just really good at hiding your pain? “Bye guys.”

You spun around and left the room, running into the wall on the other side as you tried leaving. Continuing your day of making a fool of yourself, you left the three friends to hear you mutter a sorry to the wall before you finally rushed down the stairs.

“I...didn’t know Y/N had a dog?” Steve asked, looking up at his girlfriend for an answer. But she only shrugged while she stood up and walked over to her closest, fanning between her clothes to see what she could use as a costume for this party the three teens would be attending soon. Looking once more at the open door, Steve saw the top of your Y/H/C haired head and heard you leave before he turned to his paper, groaning while he smashed his face into the bed cover.

You walked down the stairs into the infamous Wheeler basement and were met with the boys yelling at each other. “Why do you get to be Venkman?! What if I wanna be Venkman!” 

“Dude, we agreed in these terms months ago! You would be Winston, Will is Spengler, Dustin is Stanz, and I would be Venkman!” You watched as your brother pointed to everyone and explained how they all had specific roles. 

“No! I am supposed to be Venkman! Why do I get stuck being Winston? Why can’t you be Winston, you’re-” Mike cut himself off from speaking anymore and widened his eyes.

Your little brother, being ever smart as he is, picked this up. “I’m what, Mike? Is it cause I’m black?” 

“Nononononononono!” Mike spluttered over his many no’s as he tried explaining himself. 

“Whoa guys, calm down.” You stepped in stepping between the two boys who were arguing over their costumes. “Boys, come on, can’t you two...both be Venkman.” Oh but this suggestion set the two off.

“No!”

“Y/N! God, why would you even suggest that? There’s no way there can be two Venkman! That’s not how the story goes! Could you be any stupider?” Dustin stepped in, getting closer to you and pushing more hurtful words down on you. Why of all days is it all falling apart right now.

“I-I-I-I just wanted to help.” You slowly shrank down, tentatively stepping back toward the stairs behind you. “Lucas, I’ll pick you up at six, okay?” 

“Y/N, wait, I-” You had heard this sob story from him before, complaining how eight hours wasn’t enough to play this big of a campaign, but you didn’t want to hear it. Spinning around you ran up the stairs, trying to stop the sick feeling from rising up your throat and the pain in your chest from deepening itself.

“Y/N, honey? Is that you? Leaving so soon?” Mrs. Wheeler turned the corner and looked at you with a smile that quickly morphed into one of worry when she saw your glossy eyes and slightly loss of color in your face. “Sweetie, are you okay?” 

“Yeah, Mrs. Wheeler, I just feel a little under the weather and I don’t wanna spread it if it’s actually contagious, I’ll be back to grab Lucas at six.” And with that you left, not giving her anytime to check on you, offer to drive him herself, anything. As you left the house, she turned her attention to where both of her children were, feeling the urge to ask what happened to you. 

All the way home, you kept quiet, the radio was off, the windows rolled down as you let your brain mull over everything that had really become apparent the past few days. Maybe...maybe you were just over exaggerating everything. Nothing really bad was going on in your life, school was good, graduation was coming up and you were hearing back from a few colleges, you had a family who cared for you. 

So why, why do you feel like you were only second best in everything you did?

Stepping into your house, you kicked your shoes off and quickly rushed to the stairs, wanting only to hide in your room. “Y/N? Is that you sweetie? Karen called me and told me you were feeling sick and came home. Are you okay?” Your mom ran over to you from the kitchen, her eyes wide at seeing you stepping into the house. 

She gently took your face in her hands, her eyes scanning over you, trying to notice is anything was so obviously wrong with her oldest daughter. Mrs. Sinclair muttered numerous things to herself: temperature fine, eyes not dilated, eyes are glossy though tongue is pink, skin not…

“Mom.” You whispered, you didn’t have a scratch in your throat, you just knew that if you spoke any louder than a quiet hush, you wouldn’t be able to keep yourself from crying or your voice from shaking. “I’m just tired.” 

Trying to smile as best as you can, the weak smile seemed to convince your mom enough to agree with you to let you go upstairs to your room and relax. Your mom still didn’t let you go quietly though, walking you up until your room and insisting you call her up if you need anything, she would be in the kitchen. 

Finally alone in your room, nothing else really mattered at you looked to your bed. Rather unceremoniously, you fell onto your bed and finally let the air out of your lungs. No screaming or cursing. No cussing, kicking, or blaming the world.

Just sobbing. You let out a sob as you tried letting the heavy feeling empty itself from your chest, the emotion being you had felt before. You gave all of yourself to someone, all of your love and care for them, hoping that if you love someone unconditionally, that perhaps, maybe, just maybe, they could return your love if you ever needed it. 

No. No of course not, because second place is always where you would be, and second best never got first love. 

<<<>>> 

“You really think you gonna be wearing that?” Erica’s little voice sassily spoke from the entrance of the shared upstairs bathroom where you brushed a bright pink blush over your cheeks followed by you pressed one of your mom’s nude lipsticks on and smiled at yourself.

“Why not? Not loving the Star Wars rep?” You turned to her as you pushed yet another bobby pin into your hair to try and keep your hair in the iconic buns of Leia’s first Star Wars appearance. The white dress thankfully you had lying around in your closet from a homecoming or two ago, it wasn’t an exact replica, but it was close enough. With a chunky black belt and some white boots you bought with your allowance, you were able to make a pretty good-looking Princess Leia.

Erica rolled her eyes and pursed her lips in her little way before turning around. “Ain’t no way in hell am I gonna be seen with you wearing that. You look like you stapled two cinnamon rolls to the side of your head.” From the bottom of the stairs, where your brother was stuck in his mom’s photo line, you both heard her scream ‘language!’ up at the youngest Sinclair. “Yeah yeah mom, I hear you.” She turned back to you and rolled her eyes again, pulling a happy cackle out of you.

“You two better get down here or else you’ll miss the pictures!”

“Oh no, Erica, we better get down otherwise our pictures won’t be on the mantle this year.” You two chuckled down the stairs together and internally grounded at the millions of polaroids your mom took of the three of you in your “adorable” outfits. 

Finally, forever later, you three were allowed to make your leave for the Wheeler house. In your stomach, you hoped so dearly that Will would already be there, and Nancy would be gone, meaning you could just go about your Halloween night without running into your friends. Or even better, Jonathan would forget about Nancy, show up in his Luke Skywalker on Tatooine and his blaster and you two could enjoy your Halloween like you did every year. 

Your hands tightened as you slowly drove up Maple Lane and tried not to murder any children with your car as they ran around in excitement, thinking that just because they were in a play costume that they could not be hit by a car. “Damn idiots.” Muttering to yourself as you pull in, you were more than relieved to see the driveway empty of cars other than Mr. Wheeler’s car. 

“Lucas!” The boys all call as they race towards their fourth member of their party, almost tackling him to the ground in their excitement. 

A groan came from next to you as Erica came up from behind you, her My Little Pony pillowcase in hand as she rolled her eyes at her older brother. “Dorks.” And she walked over to her friend group that agreed to meet at the Wheeler mailbox, as she said, not wanting to be tainted by that nerd group. 

Looking around a little bit, even though you didn’t see his car, you were hoping to see Jonathan running out of the house, having to fix his Luke Skywalker hair and be ready to ‘take them weirdos to get their candy on!’ as he would say. 

But he wasn’t here. He was probably at that party at that one girl’s house, not that you really cared about who it was, since you didn’t need to go there. Who knows, maybe he’s having the time of his life kissing someone and having fun for the first time is a while for him.

“All right guys! The longer you play around, the less candy we can scrounge you guys up!” You clapped your hands together, gathering the boy’s attention, they all cheered your name as you walked over to them, lifting your skirts up to make sure you didn’t trip. They all chattered about your costume and how dope it is, cool, outta this world (nice one Will), bitchin’ (language Mike), excited to see you as their favorite alien princess. 

“Guys!” You hear Dustin scream at your group, and you all turned to him, seeing he wasn’t up close to you, ogling at your outfit and he was instead glaring at the four of you, his lower lip almost poking out angrily. “Why is your sister here, Lucas? We don’t need a babysitter! Jonathan isn’t here, Nancy isn’t here, my mom isn’t here, so why! Why are you here, Y/N?” 

You were blown away by his outburst, no words were coming from you, I mean, what could you say? Dustin just called you out, and for what? For wanting to spend the night with your little brother and his friends? “I...I-I just…”

“Dude! Stop being a bitch to my sister!” Lucas stepped up to Dustin and shoved him backwards. “What is your problem?! She’s like us, dude. She just wants to come and have fun on Halloween.” You felt something brush your hand followed by a squeeze, causing you to look down and seeing a hand smaller than yours holding onto you. Following the little arm, you found Will looking up to you, a small smile on his face directed at you. 

Will looked up at you and saw you staring down at the ground, your face blank, but your eyes gave up everything you were feeling. The pain of this last week grew a little deeper, you couldn’t even hear Lucas’s words as you tried not to let the wetness in your eyes spill over, the hurt of the knife as it pierced deeper.

Pain, loneliness, betrayal, loss, unloved. Everything he felt over there. 

Slowly and tentatively, Will looked down to your hand, seeing it hanging limply by your side, so he reached for your hand and grabbed it, squeezing it and hoping to get you out of the lull you were in while Dustin and Lucas continued to scream at each other.

“Let’s leave these losers behind, more candy for us!” Will offered with his smile and began pulling you along with him towards the road. A smile grew on your face at the younger of the Byers brothers, for his young age, he had always been super mature. Honestly, after everything that happened last year, he was forced to grow up and survive and fend for himself for a week before anyone could get to him. You felt for the kid, he had no way of enjoying his childhood without ruining it. Yeah, he could go out on a Halloween adventure filled night, but not without his mother wanting to have the entire police department of Hawkins to follow him block to block.

“Hey guys!” You and Will stopped and turned around, seeing Mike run up behind you two to catch up. “Don’t go candy hunting without me!” 

“Come on then, slowpoke.” Grinning back at him you held your other hand out to him and finally walked towards the younger girl of your family, allowing yourself to smile again tonight at your little sister who was rolling her eyes, honestly the second most common thing she did besides sass was roll her eyes at the weirdness and dorkiness of her older siblings. 

The night went on from there, your brother and Dustin joining the three of you shortly after you turned the corner and ran into the seemingly millions of goblins and witches and Power Rangers as they all went from house to house, screaming excitedly to their mom, their friends, anyone that would listen about which houses were the good houses and which ones were the bad houses.

One more person joined your little nightly candy raiding party, Max, you think you heard her right? She popped out of nowhere and scared the boys. No matter what Lucas said, you and Erica would laugh for the rest of your lives at hearing him screech like a little girl at the sight of the Michael Myers mask jumping out at them. 

What you could tell from Max, she seemed pretty chill, she definitely had a sense of wanting to belong to the group. You couldn’t help but chuckle at seeing how Lucas acted around this girl. It was kinda how you started out with...

Shaking your head, you pushed those memories down into your brain, not really wanting to remember how that all went sophomore year. “Hey Y/N,” Pushing some stray hairs that had fallen from your buns out of your eyes, you looked over to Lucas with a raise of your eyebrows, signalling him to talk while the other kept walking ahead. Dustin was chatting it up with Max while Will and Mike were already sifting through their goodies for the night, and Erica was ahead of your group, but she knew well enough not to walk too far ahead. “No matter what Dustin says, I like having you as an older sister. You’re chill, I mean, you drive us around when our moms won’t let us bike, you’re the one who takes us out trick-or-treating while dressed up and not like some lame mom who just follows her kids around. You even played DnD with us when we needed another player. You were the DM when we all couldn’t agree who could be it next.” 

Lucas took you by surprise here, honestly you weren’t expecting anything like this, an apology for Dustin, just, that’s not what you expected. You were shell shocked by your little brother, the youngest Sinclair that could not for the life of him do words, that just wasn't who he was, unless of course it was describing in great detail what was going on in a DnD campaign. “Lucas, I…” Staring down at him, seeing him in his ghostbuster outfit, he wasn’t the same little brother you remember growing up with and him coming home the first-time screaming cause he was hungry. “Good to know you’ve got my back, LuLu.” 

Laughter filled the air as Lucas complained about that nickname, blaming Erica for it and not wanting his friends, especially Max, to know about this name. As the group of you all laughed along, there was a little bit of a better feeling within you as the knife was pulled up out of your heart ever so slightly. The pain was still there, but it felt better with knowing your brother was looking out for you. With the other drama in the night, you were honestly happy the group returned to its normal antics. 

<<<>>> 

Not to be dramatic or anything, but you were definitely going to kill Dustin when you saw him next. For the past ten minutes, all you heard was “Code red, code red, can anybody hear me? Code red, I repeat code red! Guys!” Groaning, you rolled over and looked at your clock through the wisps of your Y/H/C hair to see it was too early in the morning to be hearing the little voice of Dustin. 

You’ve tried everything at this point, shutting your door, shutting Lucas’s door, putting your head under a pillow followed by you finally giving up and grabbing the walkie talkie from your brother’s bed just as Dustin was screaming about last summer and something about a dart? “Dustin, it is seven in the morning, what do you want?” 

“Y/N? Where’s Lucas? It’s impertinent that you put him on for me.” 

“Well sorry buddy, but Lucas is currently not here. Now what’s all this ‘Code Red’ business your harping about? And what about last summer?” 

You should have known with Dustin that he wouldn’t give you a straight answer. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll just go to Mike’s house.” 

“No, Dustin get back on the damn walkie! Dustin? Dustin Henderson you tell me what’s going on!” Even at seven in the morning on a Saturday you could scream loud enough, but even your screeching couldn’t be heard to Dustin’s house. 

The stomping of your footsteps could be heard round the house, causing your mother to shout at you to shut up from where she was downstairs. “Some people enjoy their quiet mornings, Y/N.” 

“Whatever mom,” You muttered to yourself among other hints as you threw in a pair of jeans, sneakers, and then your favorite yellow rain slicker. “I’ll be back, mom! Dustin needs a ride!”

“Just make sure you bring Lucas home!” Racing through town, you held Lucas’s walkie in one hand, calling Dustin on it every few minutes to try and hear from him? But he must have flipped to a different channel to get you to shut up. The only place you could think to Mike’s place since that’s all Dustin said to you before blocking out your help. 

Why the hell were you even doing this? For the past few months he has been treating you like shit after what happened last summer. It’s not like you didn’t help, hell you were the reason they had a ride from the police when they caught up to Eleven and you guys.

“Last summer. Holy shit!” You almost take out two mailboxes as things slowly connect in your brain. One of them being the Wheelers and you slam on your breaks and not so quickly or quietly stopped in front of the house, seeing the back of Dustin’s baseball cap at the door. 

“What do you mean Nancy and Mike are both not here?!” Dustin was practically screaming at Mr. Wheeler who has answered the door. “Where are they?!”

Running up behind the young boy, you pulled out your best smile and laughed quite loudly. “Dustin! Here you are. Mike told me I would find you here! Come on you’re gonna be late for game day!” Placing a hand on his shoulder, you gently, but also not so gently, squeezed it, hoping he would get the message to shut up. “Hi Mr. Wheeler, I hope you are having a fantastic day, see you soon, thanks, we gotta go bye!” You all but shouted at him as you guided the curly haired preteen away from the front door.

Turning the corner of the house, you spun around and glared at him. “What the hell is going on?” “Why the hell are you here?” The both of you asking your question at the same time, both with glowering faces and arms crossed over your chests. “Why am I here? You’re the one who was calling a ‘Code Red’ this morning, so naturally I assume you are dying and am here to help!”

“Well I don’t need your help; you would get in my way anyway.” 

Your eyes squinted into slits and you intensified your glare, having perfected this with Lucas years ago when your mom left you in charge and Lucas would not believe you. “Dustin, if you don’t tell me what’s going on right now, I swear to God that I will tell the boys about your front teeth.” 

At the mention of his teeth, Dustin paled significantly, almost as white as the fake teeth in his mouth. “W-what are you talking about? My teeth? What about them? There’s nothing to say.” He began running his tongue over his teeth, almost checking to see if he put them in this morning or if they were crooked and needed adjusting.

“Oh?” You smiled at him triumphantly, stepping towards him slowly, leading him back to the front of the house. “So, if I just grabbed your two front teeth, they...wouldn’t just come out?” 

You see, Claudia Henderson was so upset that her little baby boy hadn’t gotten his permanent teeth that she went to the extent to get him a retainer with fake fronts to make it look like he was finally growing them in. Another thing about Mrs. Henderson, was that she was the gossip of the little mom group built around the boys and one night, you were in the kitchen when you heard her telling all of the moms about her plan and how Dustin made her promise not to say anything. But how can she not when she was so excited that ‘her little Dusty was finally becoming a big boy now’. 

Dustin almost screamed in horror as you reached for his mouth, but he didn’t know that you really did not want to reach in there, only reaching towards him just to scare him enough to have him spill what he was hiding from you. “Okay, okay okay! Please just don’t say anything about my teeth!” 

“As long as you tell me what is going on, I won’t say a word to the rest of the party.” You both did the official handshake, spit and all, and began walking to your car. “Okay, now what is going on that you had to call Lucas at seven am?”

Sucking in a deep breath, Dustin began talking, when the rumble of an engine pulled up next to your car. Looking over, the two of you saw none other than Steve Harrington stepping out of his BMW, pulling a bouquet of flowers with him. From what you could hear, it sounded like he was mumbling an apology to himself, almost like he was...rehearsing it? “What is the Hair doing here?” You ask out loud, shouldn’t he be the reason Nancy wasn’t home?

“Harrington!” Dustin called from next to you, pulling the long-haired brunette out of his strutting to the front door and turning to you two. “She’s not home.”

“Not-not home?” Steve came closer to you two, the flowers dropping down with some of the petals falling off their stems. “Do...do you know where she is?” Steve was solely locked on Dustin, more or less ignoring your presence beside the preteen.

“Nope, but I do know there are bigger things than your love life. Do you still have your bat?”

The two of them talked and began walking towards Steve’s car, something inside you pushed you to follow them or ask if you could come, but from how this was looking, the two looked like they had this covered and you could go back to bed and forget all of this happened. 

“Hey, Y/N!” You turned back around at your name being called, seeing Dustin looking at you with a face that could only resemble one of ‘where ya going slowpoke’. “You still got that blow torch flamethrower thing?” 

“You mean my lighter and hairspray?” Opening your trunk, you pulled out an old pink, almost black at this point, backpack and showed it to the two boys, a grin on your face as you walked over to them. “Never leave home without ‘em.” 

Glancing over at Steve, you both looked at each other, he was staring at your face. Keeping up your smile, you looked to his bat he replaced the flowers in his hands with. “Forgot you were on the other end of the Demogorgon, Harrington. Still know how the swing that thing?”

The spiked bat was something you and Jonathan came up with and were fully prepared to use against the creature, but your mom called you out of what you two were planning and Jonathan replaces you with Nancy, the one who could use a gun and stand up for herself. Not that that didn’t hurt or anything, honestly it was just the beginning of the vicious cycle you soon noticed of Jonathan passing you up to hang out with Nancy instead of your weekly Saturday Byers-Sinclair evenings where you guys order some pizza, rent some movies and hide out on his couch while the boys were off fighting the next great monster. 

But when you got home and your mother told you that somehow Lucas was being pursued by the police, you flipped out. And then he called you on your back up walkie you keep in your car for emergencies, you jumped at helping him get out of whatever trouble the group of boys put themselves in.

Learning that your little brother was facing the same monster, you were pissed that that thing was what took Will and is hunting Lucas and his friends. It wasn’t that hard to sneak into your mom’s bathroom to find her stash of Farrah Fawcett Hair Spray and the lighters kept for birthdays around your house. You remembered Mr. Clarke’s class and how pressurized items, mostly hair products if we’re being honest, are very flammable, even going so far as demonstrating with hairspray and a lighter himself. 

Now, it would definitely be a lie if you said you didn’t enjoy every second of sending flames into that flowery mouth of the monster and watching him squirm in pain. Call you a pyromaniac, you don’t care because it worked and kept you and the boys safe.

“Didn’t know you became a fan of shooting fire at things, Sinclair, could have used a little help with that back at the Byers place.” He counters back, his eyes still trained on yours.

Steve doesn’t remember the last time he took time and looked at your eyes, but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t remember the Y/E/C irises being so...dull wasn’t the word he would looking for, more like...sad, broken almost. The girl he remembered from sophomore year was a bubbly one who was happy to help him on his bio homework when he forgot because of basketball. How she loved to talk about her love for her little brother and telling some of the funniest stories he had ever heard. How excited she was about the Snowball.

This Y/N was not the same one he got to know three years ago, she looked the same: same Y/H/C hair, same face, well she did mature a little bit, grew another inch or two and lost more of her baby fat around her face, finally learned how to tan rather than burn and gained some darkness to her face, accentuating the freckles she had littered everywhere. But as Steve drove his car down the main road to Dustin’s house, he kept sneaking glances through his rear-view mirror to see you and felt like he didn’t recognize you compared to then.

The you in his back seat sat slouched over, eyes were still dull, or less excited to be in his car. Your arms were crossed tightly over your chest, your head leaning against the car door while you stared at the passing houses. This you was one that still leapt at any opportunity to help, but you didn’t seem to do it with as much enthusiasm. It’s almost like you helped people out so much that others expecting you to help and not because you wanted to anymore. He remembered the last time Nancy asked you for help with studying for another Physics test earlier this year, you agreed but something about how you said yes rubbed him wrong, almost like...you felt like you were forced to help because you helped her in the past.

And even though you two weren’t as close as sophomore year, he saw you with the boys more times than not; he never heard Jonathan or Nancy tell any funny stories about what the boys did at their last game night. And he knows it wasn’t because they were there babysitting. Him and Nancy were almost always on some sort of date night, either in her room or his either working in college stuff or making out, one extreme or the other. And Jonathan was...doing whatever Jonathan does. But he did notice that no one seemed to care as much as she once did, so why did she stop?

Steve didn’t know how close his assumption was to being right, this time that she was remembering, if he asked, you could recollect the memory and remember why you were closed off with helping. 

Yes in the earlier years you loved helping people, allowing them to copy homework, take away from your study time to help them with a problem or concept, staying back to tutor kids in certain subject your teachers felt you had a good grasp on. But you quickly learned how naïve you were being. There were days when you didn’t get the homework done and when they asked to see yours, they didn’t bother sending help to you in return. They would talk about how you let them down and you were the reason they were failing. It took one Thanksgiving vacation to change you from the little middle schooler mindset you had to a high schooler, forgetting about how you thought that if you help others, they would help you too. You were wrong.

Shuddering in the backseat, you press yourself a little further into the fabric seats and stare out the window at the neighborhood passing by. “Cold back there?” Steve chirped up, causing you to look up front. You are surprised to see his eyes flicking to look at you through the mirror, how did he see you shuddering? Was he watching you?

You shake your head and turned back to the window, watching through the corner of your eye to see if he was watching you. But he turned back to Dustin and they continued their conversation about what was going on. 

Sighing, you tried wrapping your mind around why you were here, neither of the boys really chose you, you came here to help, once again pushing yourself to stare out the window and watch the houses slide by. 

Today wasn’t too bad, but the silver medal still looked like it was waiting for you at the finish line.

<<<>>> 

Somehow more of the party ended up joining in on the adventure after your own little group called for backup when you saw the condition of the Henderson basement and laid a bunch of cow out for Dart to follow to the old junk yard the kids frequented before the great mouse infestation of ‘81. Lucas and Max rolled up while Mike and Will were still under radio silence. “Sorry guys! Erica said she heard you this morning but didn’t say anything and then my walkie is missing and...Y/N what are you doing here?” 

“What does it look like I’m doing, doofus? I’m trying to make this pile of cow and sheep look yummy to a demodog.” You were quite unceremoniously moving raw meat around in a pile, adding bits of 3 Musketeers and Milkways to it, per Dustin’s request for some reason. 

“Demodog?” Lucas asked before turning to Dustin, “You mean you kept that thing! Dustin the party agreed!”

“No, you said we agreed but I don’t remember ever saying yes to killing Dart.” The two of them went after each other while Max came over to you. 

She sat down in front of your meet pile and watched. “Please tell me you don’t believe this hokey story too. I mean really, Demogorgons? Mind Flayer? It’s like they got this out of some weird fantasy story like Lord of the Rings.”

Glancing up at the Y/H/C-haired girl, you cocked your eyebrow at her. “For your sake, I hope we don’t see one, cause once you see one of those damn monsters, they…” You stop and look back at her. “Have you met my brother? He’s the biggest nerd ever, of course he’s gonna name them after animals from fantasy stories.” Your comment got Max laughing and you right alongside her, the two of you moving the meat around while talking about things besides the current situation.

Steve came bursting out of the school bus, shouting about getting inside and nighttime and such. “When did Steve Harrington find time to help us with this?” Lucas looked to you for an answer, but all you could do was shrug and mention Dustin being very persuasive. 

With all of you on the school bus, Dustin took the roof and insisted on taking first watch. Lucas and Max sat talking; it was cute to watch your brother have a crush on a girl this bad. Leaning against the walls, your feet on the seat you took up, you sat and enjoyed the quiet, for now. 

Someone let out a breath as they sat down in the seat to the left of you. Looking over, it was none other than Steve. “Looked like you could use the company.” He chuckled to himself, peering over to you, only getting a quirked eyebrow and a confused look directed towards him. 

You mumble a thanks and look back over to your brother, just watching him try to interact with Max without flustering or making himself look stupid. “How was the Halloween party? I haven’t really seen Jonathan or Nancy since last Saturday, so I would have asked one of them, but they seem to be ignoring me.” 

“You aren’t the only one they’re ignoring.” You heard Steve curse under his breath, and you allow yourself to look over at him and see him glaring at the wall. “It went. To answer that question.”

Looking at him, you saw him shoulders were tense and raised close to his head, his arms were wrapped around his legs and his eyes were fixed on the ground in front of him. You could tell that he didn’t want to talk about it, but…“Are you okay?”

He sighed, not answering right away. “Peachy.” He didn’t say much else, giving off the obvious vibes of leave me alone. You gave it a shot. 

It was slowly getting darker outside, and you and Steve had spoken little since the other conversation, rather enjoying the quiet of being in each other’s presence. “How was Halloween of babysitting?” 

“Hmm?” Opening your eyes up, you asked for him to repeat his question. “Oh, it was good, just watched the party and my little sister while they were trick-or-treating.” 

“Sounds kinda boring.”

“They’re actually a really good group of kids, having their fun with each other and keeping me on my toes. Honestly, it’s not that bad, just...a little lonely this year.” Steve tilted his head, nonverbally asking what you meant; it was your turn to sigh before answering. “Jonathan and I always kept it a tradition to spend Halloween night together, since it’s the night that solidified our friendship as kids. We were the only ones who would watch the kids when they were younger and couldn’t go out by themselves. Now yes, they can go out now if they so please by themselves, but...Jonathan and I would still go with. Having funny costumes, scary ones, everything in between but we always were a pair that spent the scariest night of the year together.”

“But he was at the party this year.” Steve whispered, finally understanding why you reacted so strangely last week. “That’s why...you were a little weird last week.”

A blush dusted your cheeks at him calling you weird. “Um, yeah you could say that.” 

Steve finally realized what he just said and wanted to punch himself in the face for it. “Wait! No I didn’t mean you were weird. I just mean that you were acting a little odd or like a little off from how I normally see you. And you just seemed off or having a bad day and I was just worried but then I just called you weird and I am making it worse. I’m sorry.” You had to press your hand to your mouth to stop yourself from laughing at how flustered he got.

“You’re fine, Steve, I guess...I didn’t know you noticed how I normally acted” He didn’t really say anything for a little while, leaving you just to glance over at him and see him playing with his fingers. “Steve...are you okay?” 

He sighed and shook his head against the metal plates pressed up against the window behind his head. “But I’ll be fine, I’ll get over it.” Looking over to you, the quiet Harrington smiled as best as he could, but unlike himself this morning, you were willing to call bullshit when someone isn’t being open with their feelings. “Hey, don’t give me that look.”

“Steve, I can’t make you say anything, but I know that look, so tell me if you need an ear, okay?” You send a smile back at him before hopping your way over to the ladder that Dustin was still looking out from and shimmied your way up. “How goes the lookout for Dart?” 

Dustin jumped at the sound of you sneaking up on him, not that he would ever admit that, before realizing it was you coming up here. “Um, it’s good, nothing really too interesting to see up here, it’s still pretty bright outside and I don’t think he’ll become active until nighttime, but that’s just my theory.” He told you, scooching over to give you room to sit on top of the roof next to him.

You jumped up top and sat tall and high, smiling as you shut your eyes and listened to the wind rustle through the tall grass surrounding the junkyard, the birds that still haven’t moved on for winter were still chittering away, some higher pitched ones calling out for their mothers. The silence was what you needed right now; nothing honestly could have helped you more in this time of everyone seemingly be out to get you. 

“He-hey Y/N?” Your atmosphere of quiet was shattered as you opened your eyes and looked over to Dustin who kept glancing at you. Humming in response, you kept your eyes on Dustin while waiting for an answer. “I’m...sorry for calling you stupid and being an asshole to you. I treated you like shit and you never really did anything wrong. I was just...jeeeeeeeealous of Lucas.” The curly haired boy’s words slowly slipped away into a quiet whisper when he dragged out the last part of what he was saying. 

“You’re jealous of the little weirdo I call my brother?” You threw your head back in laughter and let yourself enjoy the apology for a short time. “What do you have to be jealous about with Lucas? His comic books? And what does that have to do with me?” Your eyes were watering as you wiped away the happy tears.

“Well, cause he has you.” His confession pulled your breathing to a halt, your lungs forgot how to breathe for the time as you whipped around and stared at him in shock, never seeing this type of situation coming from him, wanting to talk to you. “Yeah, of course, because you are the coolest big sister, I have seen anybody have! You like hanging out with us, I mean sure you have a car and can drive us places, but we have bikes and legs, we could walk somewhere if we really wanted to do something. But you always jump whenever we say we need a movie, or candy or the arcade. Nancy and Jonathan are the other bigger versions of us, but they don’t give us the attention and...well love that you give us whenever you come over to babysit us. And we don’t even need babysitting anymore and you don’t get paid to do it, but you still come over to watch us play our stupid games that last forever and listen and rate our burping contests and you would be willing to try our weirdo drinks we made just to try and make you throw up. I can’t just say I’m sorry, but I am mad at you cause...well.” 

Honestly you couldn’t comprehend what he just told you, and he was still not done, but you just sat there in shock. He just, Dustin just, he was...apologizing? What was this? In the time that you knew Dustin Henderson, he was a sweet kid yeah, but never had you ever seen him come and apologize to you without someone telling or ordering him to, which often came from Lucas or one of the moms hollering at him to say sorry. But now…

“I’m mad at you because you are a really cool big sister and really wish I had one like you and I’m jealous of Lucas because you’re really badass and you’re the shit and I can’t really think of any other words to call you besides cool because that is what you are! Lucas does love you, but this may sound weird but I like love you too like a big sister that I really wish I had and he should be happier to have a sister like you cause I would love for you to be my sister!” Dustin stopped to gasp for air, all of his words came running from his mouth as he spoke, the speed of his mouth was astounding to be honest with how much he said and almost in one breath. 

The binoculars he was holding were forgotten on his lap while he kept his eyes screwed shut and his hands rung together tightly as he waited for something. Dustin was waiting for you to react to him. The kid looked like he didn’t know what to expect from you, should you scream? Run? Hug him? He didn’t even know what to expect from all this that he just poured out of him.

You sighed and got ready to speak, something in you was feeling odd, but he cut you off, his head shot up to look at you with tears tracing in his eyes. “And and and it’s so unfair that Lucas gets to have you as a big sister cause he has everything! He has a normal family with a mom who isn’t crazy, and dad and little sister who is kinda annoying but she’s here. He gets girls attention, like Max, that’s totally not cool to do that but I mean she’s not a piece of meat so we really can’t call claim to her, but I still thought she was cute and pretty and pretty badass and I’m just upset. Cause all I get is Dart and we all see how that worked out! But he also gets you! I want to have you as my older sister! It’s just not fair!” You finally reacted as he started raising his voice and the tears kept falling down his face. 

Reaching out, you pulled yourself closer to him and wrapped your arms around him, bringing him in for a hug. The only way you could really do this without sliding off the top of the bus would be for you to keep Dustin where he was and move yourself to have one leg swing down the safety hatch leading back into the bus and the other folded next to you as you wrapped one arm around Dustin’s back and brought the other around his head and weaving it into his hair. 

“Dustin,” Your voice was at a gentle whisper near his ear, for the sake of his emotions being on hyper alert while also keeping the conversation away from the three people below you. “It’s okay for you to be upset, especially when you are feeling upset with your friends.” You gently rubbed your fingers up and down through his hair, using your nail to add pressure to his hairline and ease the tension in his body as he was working out the tears and frustration in his system. “It’s okay for you to get angry at people, Dustin, but you also can’t get mad and lash out at your friends, that’s not fair to you or them. You don’t have to tell them that you are having problems unless you want to, but I’m gonna tell you that you can talk to someone about frustrations you have. Just because Mike is having girl problems missing El and Will having his episodes of the Upside Down and then Lucas just...well I’m gonna be honest he just is Lucas. But just because they are having problems doesn’t mean that you don’t have problems too.”

You left him with your words for a minute, still holding him tightly to you while he calmed down. You honestly had more to say but didn’t want to give him too much. Even with your eyes shut you could feel time going by; feeling it around you as the sun slowly gave less heat to the day. How the birds got quieter and no longer chirped their lungs away. Even the talking below you had stopped a while ago. 

Dustin took a deep breath and brought himself away from you, bringing his hands up to rub his eyes furiously to wash away the salty tears and hopefully the redness that showed he was crying. “Feeling better, bud?” His nod was answer enough, his teeth finally shining through when you tousled his hair. You knew he was feeling back to normal when he shoved your hand out of his curls. 

“Thanks, Y/N.”

“No problem Dustin. And hey,” You grinned at him as you slowly stepped down the ladder. “You all are like little brothers to me at this point. Also, if you ever need to talk, my ear and phone is always open.” And with that you shimmied down the ladder, jumping off the last two rungs with a grin on your face as you took your seat down next to Steve. 

Today was slowly looking better, better than most these days lately. Cause today, you came first in Dustin’s eyes. 

<<<>>> 

“Max!” A voice roared outside the house; you could practically feel the house shaking at the angry voice. The kids all fell silent, the young girl whose name was just called went pale. 

“He found me.” Her words barely came out as she whisper-yelled at all the kids to hide. “He can’t know I’m mean, or he’ll kill you then me then you again!” Her words were mostly directed at Lucas, while you were left to glare at you brother, wanting answers as to why Billy Hargrove looked like he had death in his eyes, and it was aiming to Lucas. 

Steve steppes up next to the door, motioning for the kids I keep their heads down while he told everyone that he would take care of this. “Wasn’t he the one that got pummelled by Jonathan last year?” Max chirped up, causing the other boys to chuckle while you walked up to the door and looked through one of the small windows that always are next to the door. 

You could vaguely hear what was going on, basically just throwing insults at each other. But you kept hearing your last name thrown in there. The kids in the next room over screeched, pulling you from watching Steve and Billy to see them running away from the window. “Idiots! Stay away from the window!” You yelled at them before turning back to the window, seeing Billy stalking towards the door, his face red and he was shaking his hand. Looking behind him for a split second, you could tell why: Steve was sprawled out on the ground, holding his nose and trying to roll over onto his stomach. 

“Shit!” The door was kicked in next to you with a booted door slamming down on the floor, breaking the handle off and sending the piece of wood into the wall next to it, the faded gold door handle lodged itself into the wall. “Kids get in the kitchen!” 

“Sinclair!” Billy’s voice roared behind you as you skid to a stop in the kitchen in front of the kids. “I knew you’d be here. I’m gonna make you pay you little shit.” Billy began stalking towards your brother while you pushed the kids further back and especially kept them behind you and away from the crazed teen. 

“Keep your nasty hands off my brother.” You growled at him, keeping your voice low while reaching your arms out around you, trying to build up a wall between the kids and Billy. 

When he actually looked at you, Billy’s face had a smirk on his face. “Now who is this cute thing?” His tongue ran along his lower lip and he began to walk hips pushed forward, wanting to show off that he was in fact a dude and had a crotch.

“Someone who wants you to leave my brother out of whatever shit you have between you and Harrington.” You snapped back, not liking how he slowly got closer and closer to the kids with you in front of them.

He did the stupid lip lick thing again and his smirk only grew. “Oh, so Harrington was hiding you for himself? I see how it is.” His eyes flicked between you and Lucas, whom you specifically held onto his wrist and kept pushing him and Max behind you, whose hand was in Lucas’ other one. “I see Sinclair just loves to steal everything under my nose.” He kept slowly stepping forward, pressing the group of you back and against the kitchen counter until he was nose to nose with you, his eyes dangerously flicking back and forth between your angry eyes and your lips.

The intimacy, or really lack thereof, of how close he was to you caused you to involuntarily shiver. Besides your brother and Jonathan as well as your father, you had not been in such close proximity to a guy in a long time. In other situations, you think you might relish the attention and the thought of a guy wanting to be this close to you. But not here. Not with the guy who is giving you the attention is the infamous Billy Hargrove, man with a different woman in his bed every night, Keg King, frigging chain smoker, nothing that your nose or your mind really wanting to think about. 

“How about you,” You paused and pushed the kids to your right as you also kicked Billy in the knee. “Stay the fuck away from my family!” Lucas pulled the others along further from the two of you, Max’s hand in his hand while Dustin followed behind. “Get to the car!” You called after them before you felt someone grabbed hold of your arm, yanking you back from following; spinning around, you saw Billy was beyond pissed at this point. 

“I’m gonna teach you a little something called respect.” His words were quiet, but the threat behind his words reverberated in you like he screamed through a megaphone into your ear. His eyes had grown dangerously dark, no longer the clear blue eyes that stared at you before, but now they looked like the sky as a storm was thundering. 

“Hargrove! Not unless I teach it to you first.” Billy and you turned to the voice as it kept speaking and you felt Billy’s grip loosened as he was flung onto the floor with the swift punch to the nose from Steve. “Y/N, get outta here!” Steve didn’t even take the time to look at you before he knelt down and dealt another punch to Billy’s face. 

You didn’t need to be told twice to run as you followed the kids, hearing them arguing in the hallway. “No! We need to go back to help Y/N!” Excuse me I don’t want to die because of Billy!” “But we can’t leave your sister!” “Billy is gonna kill me! I wanna live till next Halloween thank you very much!”

As you rounded the corner, more crashing came from behind you, a further point telling the kids to book it out of there. “Idiots, run!” You shouted as more crashing came and the two wrestling boys tumbled through the hallway, Billy trying to pursue while Steve worked at keeping him back. 

You skid to a stop and spun around after seeing the kids finally listening, hearing the commotion. Billy’s back was turned to you as Steve had hold of Billy’s collar, shaking him back and forth, maybe trying to make him dizzy? It didn’t seem to work when you saw Billy raising his hand and rushing a fist across Steve’s face, reopening the gash on his nose and adding another to his cheek. Hargrove’s plan worked in taking Steve down and he drew back to slam him with his fist again and again. “No!” 

You jumped onto Billy’s back and wrapped your arms around his neck trying to get him in some form of a choke hold while also working on getting your legs to snake around his torso and keeping his legs from moving any further. That didn’t work as well as you planned it would; while you were able to get your arms securely around his neck, he was able to keep his legs free and managed to walk his way over to the corner where the hallway met the family room. You felt his neck contract under your arm, you honestly thought he was coughing against you, trying to breath only for you to tighten your grip further.

His adam’s apple rubbed against your arm as you worked on wrapping your legs further around him, trying to place your heel into his crotch to take him down. “Re-re-res-” He gasped out, still moving towards the intersection of the hallways. His speaking threw you off, what was he trying to say? But as always, curiosity kills the cat. “Respect.” 

Your arm loosened enough for you to try to hear what he had to say, but as you did so, you felt your body get slammed into a corner, you back felt like it was being stabbed as the point was driven into you. The air rushed out of you as black spots danced in your vision; your body went slack with your arms letting go of Billy’s neck while your legs lost their grip on his waist, letting your body fall to the ground in a daze.

The next few minutes left your mind completely fuzzy and you had no idea how time went.

There was an insane ringing in your ears that was louder than your thoughts and the things around you. 

Your body had gone numb and you could only feel your heart pounding in your chest and the air trying to enter your lungs. 

You couldn’t move anything. 

Your eyes were throbbing, working their hardest to get you to see anything; you could see, but then you couldn’t. 

Nothing was connecting to your brain and your body was reacting in overdrive to get the brain to respond. 

At one point, you thought you saw Lucas hovering over you, shaking your shoulders maybe? Or maybe your body was having a seizure and moving itself? 

Lucas’ mouth was moving; was he talking to you? Screaming? And your body was shaking again.

Lucas and Dustin were both over you now. Lucas was scared, but Dustin looked like he was about to break down crying. Why was he crying? Was he okay? 

You were able to feel your arm again. With your shaking hand, you were able to reach up enough to touch Dustin’s cheek with your fingertips, they were wet. Why were they wet? 

Dustin’s face was all scrunched up while he took your hand in his and held onto it for dear life. His mouth was moving too, like Lucas’s but they must have forgotten how to talk. Or maybe you forgot how to listen?

Your eyes stopped working for a second, you couldn’t see anything. Everything was fuzzy beyond recognition. Black was everywhere. Was this the Upside-Down that Will was talking about? 

You were back in sophomore year. You would remember this year for the rest of your life. Memories leapt before your eyes. You walking into your first class of high school. Being in Biology with Nancy and Barb. You going to a basketball game.

You were like every other high school girl when you first saw Steve Harrington. Gawking and looking at how cute he was. There never seemed to be an awkward phase for him, he was always attractive and the star basketball player in high school. Everyone wanted to be his girlfriend, and you were no exception.

Images flashed ahead, to when the unexpected happened. 

It began with Steve sitting next to you during English sophomore year. You thought nothing of it at first, because it was just another seat. Inside you were freaking out because you know, STEVE HARRINGTON IS SITTING RIGHT NEXT TO YOU. But you kept yourself contained.

He went against what you thought would happen. That stupid pencil thing actually happened. You dropped your pencil in class and quietly groaned to yourself before stretching over the arm of your chair to try and grab the writing implement when someone else grabbed it.

You didn’t even notice that it had fallen in Steve’s direction until he picked up the pencil and extended it back to you. “Drop things here often?” He had his cutesy little grin on his face that made his eyes shine and your heart flutter. And you in your naive state just giggled at him like a child, not used to this kind of attention from a guy, especially a guy like Steve Harrington.

You saw more days pass by your eyes from the ending of summer to the beginning of Thanksgiving break. Steve had been slowly working his way into your life. The pencil was only the beginning. Any chance in English class he got, he took to talk to you, and he took the further step and began talking to you outside of English class. He would say hi to you in the hallways, wave at you from his place on the basketball court every time he got the ball through the hoop. 

The final straw was when he came to your front door the first day, he could drive his car and asked to drive you to school. Your mom and dad were in shock while you were left in a melted puddle on the floor with a dark blush on your face that he would think to come to you first when he got his car. By this point, you knew this crush you had like every other girl in the high school had flittered away and you knew, well you thought, maybe you...loved him? 

Was love too strong of a word to tell someone you weren’t married to or at least was dating? You didn't know. Steve was kind to you; he appreciated your help but didn’t come to you because he needed help like the other kids in your grade. He saw something in you that apparently had him wanting to be your friend and he went out of his way to be in your presence. 

He got his license the Thursday before Thanksgiving Break. He drove you to school that Friday morning. He asked you to Snowball that afternoon next to his car.

For you, the stars were aligning and making it a bit obvious that Steve liked you. And you really liked Steve. What could go wrong?

Thanksgiving is what went wrong. 

You didn’t expect him to pick you up on Monday, just cause you two never said anything of it, and your mother was more than happy to drive you the Monday after break. But when Steve wasn’t at your locker before first period, you were worried. ‘Maybe he just overslept, thinking it was another day of vacation and he would be here by English. He was there during English. 

He came over to his normal seat next to you and you smiled up at him, but he didn’t make any sign that he noticed you. You felt hurt at first but pushed past it as the teacher began teaching. The class went unbearably slow as you kept glancing over at Steve. He was doodling in the corner of his notebook. He did that all the time, so it wasn’t much of a surprise about him using his lead on these mindless doodles. Usually it would be of a funny bird or the teacher in a small comic, but today, you saw something that completely shut you down. 

A name over and over again with small hearts all around it. Then there were more, some just the name, others the name followed by Harrington. Others were preceded by ‘I love’. 

Nancy.

The name you never expected to see. The name you would soon begin to associate with the dropping feeling in your stomach. The name you would begin to mull over for months.

Why Nancy? What happened? Were you not good enough? What did you do wrong? Why her? Why not you? Why him and her? Why did any of this happen? 

why?

The bell rang and you sprung out of your seat, running out the door to your next class. You didn’t get to see Steve watch you leave, a frown on his face as he looked at the doodles, he had to draw on the sides of his paper, all of them ones he hated as he continued to draw them. But it had to be done.

You saw what you needed to see, you got the message and never looked in Steve’s direction again. You hung around Nancy and you began to see him flirting with her, in ways that he never did with you. But she didn’t say yes right away. Was that what you did wrong? Were you too easy?

Were you too easy for him, he got what he wanted, and he moved on?

But you two did literally nothing, the only thing he did was ask you to a dance. 

Was that all he wanted? To make fun of you behind the scenes with his new buddies Carol and Tommy H.? To get a naive little girl’s hopes up about a guy liking her?

Obviously, that’s all he wanted from you.

You never spoke to Steve again after that. And he didn’t talk to you. You both respectfully ignored each other and pretended the other one wasn’t there unless Nancy or Jonathan was present, then they would just talk to someone else and they could continue ignoring each other until the end of time. 

You opened your eyes again and was able to see. Dustin was gone. Where was Lucas? You reached your hand out, you were alone with the room. 

Something grabbed onto your hand, something you couldn’t see right away. Lulling your head to the side, you saw what had hold of your hand. 

The kids stood in the distance, Dustin’s hat standing out from the Byers wallpapered living room. Max’s red hair gave her away. Lucas was not standing there though, he was kneeling next to you, his eyes looked like they were very wide in his head and he was leaning on his hands as he tried getting closer to you. 

Following your hand, you traced your arm up to your hand and saw someone’s fingers laced with your own. Their arm was covered in a denim jacket and led further up and show you a face. Their mouth was moving again, this time you could almost hear what they were saying. Going higher on their face, their brown eyes were ones that shouldn’t have worry in them.

You and Steve stared at each other for a time, things were slowly starting to come to you again; your back felt like you had been hit by a bulldozer, your head was pounding and there was now a steady poking going on in the base of your skull. You could feel Steve slowly and methodically squeezing your hand with his. You watched as he pulled your hand up to his mouth and pressed his lips to the back of it. 

“Come on, Y/N, if you can hear me, I need you to squeeze my hand.” Steve whispered onto the back of your hand, keeping it close to his mouth where you could feel his breath brush across the you. Him and the kids had been trying to you to respond to them for the last five minutes, but they hadn’t been able to get you to say or do anything. 

You gave them a scare a few minutes ago when your eyes rolled into the back of your head and they barely got you to breathe again. Steve pushed the kids back and took your hand, trying to talk you back into waking up again. Over and over again he spoke softly to you, telling you to just squeeze his hand.

Finally feeling like your body was back in control, your fingers tightened, it may not have felt much stronger than the tips of your fingers clenching tighter around his, but he felt it, nonetheless. “Holy shit.”

“Language.” You rasp out with a smile on your face; the kids all screamed behind him, Dustin and Max were hugging each other while grabbing onto Lucas and pulling him in too. Steve gasped out in shock; his breathing shaky but he was still able to chuckle at you telling him how to talk around the kids. 

“Don’t you ever do that again.” Steve muttered as he helped you sit up before he wrapped you in a hug, you were pretty much sitting on his lap and he hid his face in the name of your neck. 

Today was a roller coaster of a day and you honestly having no clue how to just...deal with it all. Your arms were awkwardly tucked around you so you couldn’t exactly hug him back. But you wanted to. Your fingers found his shirt under his denim jacket and held onto the fabric. You could feel his heart racing under his shirt, and it didn’t feel like it was anywhere near slowing down. You also rested your still throbbing head against the side of his, letting him squeeze you a little too hard for your comfort but you honestly couldn’t really complain about the situation. 

You two stayed there for a little while, just...wanting a moment of peace in this day of absolute craziness. Steve having his arms holding you to him as tightly as he could, his face hadn’t moved from hiding in your neck. His rhythmic breathing ran across your skin every few seconds, causing goose bumps to prickle around your neck. You had your forehead still pressed against his temple, your own exhaling and inhaling ran across his cheek, where you couldn’t see a blush darkening on his skin. His heart rate had finally slowed down a little, your hands still holding onto his shirt and close to the left side of his chest. The serenity of this situation was one that you never would have imagined happening to you, yet here it all was. Here you were. With Steve Harrington, nonetheless. 

15-year-old you would have flipped and gone all heart eyes in the situation. But now…

You wanted to push everything away. Push Steve away, push these feelings away, push the past away. But you didn’t want to. You wanted to be selfish and enjoy what was happening. Enjoy the attention you have been extra jealous of Nancy having the past few days.

Nancy.

Shit you knew that Steve was dating Nancy, he couldn’t be here hugging you like this. He had a girlfriend. 

“Steve.” You shuffled yourself away from him, guilt filling your gut as you began to think about Nancy. He looked up at you with a little red in his eyes, probably from Billy punching him. “We have to go.” You whispered to him. Even if you didn’t want to end this moment, someone had to.

He nodded and stood up, not seeing how you felt or understanding why you pushed him away. “You are feeling okay?” 

“As okay as I’ll ever be after I’ve been slammed into a wall.” 

Steve chuckled quietly and took your hand to help you stand up; you were still wobbly on your feet and with no balance, you managed to fall straight into Steve’s embrace yet again. “Well hello again.” His smile was back on his face and the worry was gone from his eyes, but he was still in high alert and this time did notice when you pulled yet again away from him. “You sure you’re okay?”

You nodded and stepped toward the door, but the brunette hadn’t let go of your hand yet. “Steve, please let me go.” Steve’s number one give away was you not wanting to look at him, and he watched you try walking off, you definitely weren’t fine enough to be walking without help. 

“What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing is wrong, Steve. I just want to go before Billy wakes up again with an even stronger vengeance.” Still wouldn’t look at him.

Harrington resorted to tugging gently at your arm that you were pulling back on, just hard enough to have to turn around and look at him. Your eyes were a matching set to his: red rimming the edges, a thick gloss all around your Y/E/C irises along with an obvious collection at the bottom, you were ready to cry. “Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.” He finally let go of your hand as he walked closer to you, stopping when you stepped back, not yet running away from him, but he saw that you didn't want him near you. “Y/N, what’s wrong?”

You didn’t answer right away, he was standing in front of you, obviously wanting to hug you, comfort you. But you couldn't. As much as you wanted to feel him hug you again, you couldn’t do that, not to Nancy. “Nancy.”

“Nan-wait what does Nancy have to do with anything?” Steve was now beyond confused.

“She’s your girlfriend. You can’t keep messing with me and making me want to date you and being nice to me and making me want to forget about sophomore year and every time I get over you, you somehow come back into my life, making me want to date you even harder than the time before and it's not fair to Nancy. But I hate you every time I see you because I like you so much. And I fucking hate what you did to me, but I still can’t help almost feeling like I might move you.” By the end of your emotional word vomit, your voice broke off into a quiet whisper. You stared at the ground with tears rolling down your face nonstop at this point, you were just letting yourself cry with all this frustration you were feeling towards him. It felt nice to get this all out, but maybe not to his face directly.

A beat of silence fell between you and you were starting to feel the awkwardness when Steve ran the tips of his fingers over your cheek. Out of instinct, you cringed away. “Y/N,” He stepped closer again, but you were frozen to where you were standing, you kept yourself there rather than running away, but you didn’t like up at him. “You weren’t kidding when you said they were ignoring you too.” 

You finally looked up at him and saw him standing a hands length away from you, enough to give you space, but you could definitely see the small blue speckles in his beautiful brown eyes. “Can you please just forget I ever said any of it, I thought I made it clear two years ago how I felt, and I really don’t want to go through all that pain again.” 

“Well, maybe if you tried talking to me, you won’t have to repeat anything?” His answer took you by surprise, not really what you were expecting from someone you just told you had been crushing on for three years and that they were currently unavailable to date. You watched his eyes, trying, just trying to see what was going on in his head. “You know, I really was a dick in high school.”

“You could say that again.” A laugh pushed through your crying, more or less you were just making sputtering noises as you felt Steve wrap your hands with his own, with you not pulling away from him this time.

“I would like to blame the fact that Tommy H. was an asshole but why say something everyone already knew.” You laughed at this again. “But, sophomore year I...about the Snowball. I...well…” He sighed and stared at the wall next to you two, trying to think his thoughts out before he probably said something he would definitely regret. His thumb began slowly rubbing the back of your hand, causing more shivers to run up your body and sending a warm happy feeling in your brain.

Not even during sophomore year did you ever hold hands or anything, the most you two did was hug. Maybe that should have been a sign, but as a young little sophomore, you weren’t worried about PDA or having someone hold your hand or anything like that. 

“I can’t say anything except that my dad and Tommy both pressured me to do something I didn’t want to do.” He paused, again thinking. “My dad didn’t like how I was falling behind in basketball; I would skip practices to study with you, missing more points or rebounds because I was searching for you in the first quarter of a game to be sure I could wave at you when I scored. He knew who you were too, heard me on the phone with you a few times. He told me he would take my car away if I kept seeing you after break.”

He looked back to you and saw you had your head tilted towards the left a little, he thought you were too cute. “And then Tommy took me to my first party that Tuesday and he got into my head about how I needed to go after the prettiest girl in our class to him. He told me that you were too plain for the Keg King to be dating apparently. So much so that he pushed me to just ignore you otherwise he would tell the whole school about my hair.”

“Your hair?” You chuckled at him, but still had a feeling of shock. “You broke sixteen-year-old me’s heart because you didn’t want people to know you use Farrah Fawcett Hair Spray? I lost to your hair?” You were more chuckling out of pain of the situation you realized you were in during your younger years. 

“Yes?” He shut his eyes in shame and waited for you to respond to this. “I had my priorities in the wrong place back then, okay? I thought having a car would make me cooler and then Tommy using my Kingship against me and then my hair on top of it, I was a mess until last year.”

You left yourself to think for a little longer, think about what he said, what apparently was happening during those days when you felt so isolated and alone because you couldn’t tell anyone what was happening without revealing what Steve was drawing in his margins. “That still doesn’t explain why you are being really nice to me while you are currently dating Nancy.” 

“Nancy and I...we um...broke up like three days ago.” Everything was hitting Steve almost as hard as it was hitting you.

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, it was all ‘bullshit’ to her anyway.” The venom and sadness in his voice gave away how Steve felt backstabbed inside. You look down at your locked hands and gave his a gentle but hopefully reassuring squeeze. He pulled his head back up and looked at you, brown mixing with Y/E/C while you smiled at him.

Steve stared back at you, he himself was happier seeing you smiling at him again, with this smile being one that finally reached your eyes, the familiar and much missed glitter dusted your eyes as the grin stayed on your face. He watched you smile up at him and felt the urge to just, kiss your forehead. Has he wanted to kiss you, like kiss you on the lips? Plenty of time, but he didn’t want to overstep any boundaries you two placed while sophomores, but from the first day he got you to laugh he had wanted to lean over your desk in English and kiss you.

That feeling and want hasn’t changed. Not in the two years he spent away from you, these feelings were resurfacing very quickly.

“Guys! It’s a code red! We need to get to Mike needs us to distract the Demodogs!” Dustin came running into the room with his eyes wide, not really saying much about seeing you and Steve standing so close while holding hands. “Come on! We need one of you two to drive us to the main hub thing!” Steve began to follow after Dustin when you stopped him with your still held hands.

“Yeah?” He turned around to see what you needed and was pleasantly surprised when you reached up and pressed a short and sweet kiss to his cheek. You walked past him with a grin and a blush rising up your face as you ran after the kids. He stood star struck for a few seconds before he broke out in a grin and ran after you guys, calling driving Billy’s Camaro since his car was left at Mike’s house when they regrouped a while ago.

You climbed into the shotgun passenger seat and couldn’t wipe the grin off your face as you drove to the pumpkin patch Hopper got stuck in hours ago. Even with the situation that was going on with the Upside-Down fighting back, it felt good to get gold for the first time in forever.

By the time morning slowly rolled around, the five of you had heard from Mike and Will that the Mind Flayer had been purged from Will’s body, you were all crowding around Dustin’s walkie talkie all on channel 33, waiting for confirmation from Hopper and El that the gate was closed.

Half an hour had passed between hearing that the Mind Flayer had left Will and where you were currently waiting in the middle of a field of rotten pumpkins. You all didn’t want to move for fear of losing connection in some of the denser areas of the forest leading back into Hawkins, so you voted on staying put. But the waiting was making all of you anxious, nothing was being said and Dustin kept calling through but still to no avail in hearing a response. 

“What if they didn’t make it? What if they fell down the chasm and died? What if the Demodogs ate them? What if Hopper tripped and pushed El over the edge and she’s just falling endlessly, and she is just stuck in a state of endless falling?!” Lucas was getting jumpy standing next to you; he wouldn’t stop pacing and it was starting to get on your nerves.

“Lucas.” You wrapped your arms around him and got him to stop moving by hugging him tightly to you. “You need to calm down. Yes, Hopper is very clumsy, but I don’t think he would accidentally push El down a hole in the ground. They probably are on their way back up and got stuck in a touchy spot. Or hey, maybe they lost the walkie and that’s the worst thing that has happened to them.”

You held Lucas where you were for a while longer, your chin on top of his head while you let him turn himself around to be able to face the rest of the group. Your arms were around his shoulders with his hands holding onto your forearms near his neck. The two of you started to sway in place and he moved to balance his feet on top of yours. “Haven’t done this in a while.” You chuckled at him, not moving your head and you began to move the two of you around with your feet. It was much harder than you remember it being when he was younger. “I think you’ve gotten fat, Lucas. This wasn’t this hard last year.” The grin on your face gave away how ready you were to get an angry exclamation out of him for your comment.

“Y/N! I am not fat! I am just muscular!” You threw your head back and cackled as you kept him from wiggling away from you, muscular my ass. 

The radio started crackling in Dustin’s hands, it sounded like someone was trying to call through. “He-anyo-earme-hell-any-Hello!” Hopper’s voice finally broke through and everyone screamed at Dustin to answer him.

“Curly Bird to Chiefy Bird, has the target been vanquished?” Dustin called into the radio.

“What? Who is this?”

“This is Curly-this is Dustin! Hopper did you close the gate?” There was a beat between answers and all of you were on the edges of your seats while waiting for an answer. 

“You bet your middle school ass we did!”

Screams filled the night in joy as you all congratulated each other and cheered in victory at beating the Mind Flayer. Lucas broke free and tackled Dustin and Max in joy while Steve leapt in the air in excitement before running over to you and lifted you up in a hug while spinning you around. “We did it! We survived!”

You laughed in happiness as you wrapped your arms around his neck to keep you stable and cheered with him. “Goodbye and good riddance!” Steve put you down and grinned at you, bouncing on the heels of his feet before he was taken down by a charging Dustin. You turned around and caught Lucas as he ran over and hugged you as well. 

The group of you continued to celebrate what only fifteen people in Hawkins would ever know happened, but you all deserve to be happy for once.

<<<>>> 

A month has passed since what happened at Hawkins Lab and things were starting to fall into place again. All but one piece. 

Returning to your normal schooling routines, you were met with a very familiar situation of hanging out with Nancy only to be left alone by her whenever Jonathan called for her. You were happy for her, to be with Jonathan, but that feeling slowly started to creep into your life again. And it wasn’t just Nancy.

Lucas was also a part of it; it began when he would skip out on driving with you to ask for Steve to drive him instead. For the party, the kids started to turn to Steve for their rides, for candy runs, for Family Movie rental runs. 

Things were starting to fall back into place for everyone's lives, and that includes you falling back to second best. This time, it didn’t hurt as much, it still hurt, but it was the sad reality that you had gotten used to being here. It was good for a set of time to be closer to the top of being chosen, but you also knew deep down that that wouldn’t stay. But you had a better time taking it now, not taking everything personally. For some reason, seeing your life flash before your eyes more than once really can put things into perspective. 

The only one who ever came back to you was surprisingly Dustin. It was a surprise the first time he called your guys family phone and asked you to pick him up instead of hitching a ride with Steve like your brother was doing that night. But it really was a nice surprise. 

Dustin calling you and asking to hang out with you is what kept you afloat some days. Others were good even without him. It was a blessing having Dustin be a better brother than yours ever was. 

Tonight was the Snowball and your mother wouldn’t stop taking pictures of poor Lucas. He obviously just wanted to go, but she had to make sure that her little precious baby boy had these memories for forever. You just smirked from the hallway in your jeans and sweatshirt, happily comfortable to not have to go to a dance like this ever again. 

“Okay, have fun sweetie! I love you Lucas! Bye Y/N!” You mom called behind you as you lead your poor and scarred brother to your car to drive him to the middle school. You waved at your mother and drove off, the car being rather quiet. 

“You look like you’re going to a funeral with how tensed you are.” You teased, trying to get something out of him, but he sat quietly in the passenger seat. “You okay over there, bud?”

“What if I ask Max to dance and she just says no?” He shouted the words before you even finish your sentence, this obviously been poking at his mind for a while now. “Cause like I can’t ask you about this because you’ve never been asked to a dance so you would have no experience with what I’m worried about. And I can’t ask you because you would just say something nice like why anyone would say no to you, but you have never had to worry about this because no one has ever been interested in you and…” 

He continued talking, but your brain shut him out after what he said. That was a gut punch you were not at all expecting from him, that kind of an insult. I mean, it’s true that you had never been asked to a dance besides the epic fail of sophomore year, but that didn’t mean that he got to call you out on it.

You let him babble for the rest of the ride to school and told him bye before he left you alone in the car. And then it was another quiet ride home where you don't want to think about anything at all that would remind you of what he just said.

Stepping in the door, you shut it behind you and marched upstairs and shut the door quietly behind you, bidding your family a good night and locking the wood behind you. You pressed your back against the door and stared at the window in your room. It honestly could be that easy...just open the window, climb out and....

You stood up and slowly walked over to the glass pane that kept the cold Indiana winter out; opening it, you felt the cold rush over you, blood rushing to your cheeks to keep them warm. You swung one leg over the window ledge and…

Steve drove by your house and stared at it. He had been avoiding this talk for a month now and didn’t know if that was the best of ideas. Staring at the facade of the building, he looked to where your room and saw the window was wide open. 

Squinting in curiosity, Steve shut his car off and got out, going over to see if you were in there and why you would want the cold to infiltrate your room so willingly. He trudged through the layer of snow that had been littering all of Hawkins and was under your window, the snow around the square had been displaced, looking like you had opened the window recently. The brunette looked around, finding a water drainage pipe leading up right by your window, he grinned as he walked over and grabbed hold of it before crawling up the side of the house, using the piping as a means of keeping himself attached to the fake wooden exterior.

After much struggling and ninjaing later, Steve finally made it to the ledge of your window and peeked inside. Huh. You weren’t there. The lights were on, but the door seemed closed and you weren’t hiding anywhere that he could see. He swiveled around as best as he could and looked for your car, yup, it was in the driveway, so you were here. Were you just not in your room?

His fingers were starting to ache from holding onto a cold pipe and it was easier to finish his climb to the roof rather than to scale back down to the ground. Upon getting to the roof, he (oh so smoothly) swung his leg up and shimmied his way up, again very ninja like, and took a seat on the shingles, his fingers and legs happy that he was not using them in this moment. 

“If I had known that I would be expecting company, I would have made better arrangements, like a blanket.” A voice spoke quietly behind him; hearing someone speak behind him caused Steve to almost jump off the roof in surprise. Whipping around, Steve was surprised to see you behind him, sitting on the roof in a small circle of snow that had been cleared away to let you not sit in frozen water. 

You smiled tiredly over at him with your crossed arms resting on your knees that were being hugged up to your chest. He smiled back as he stood up and walked over to you before he began to push snow out of the way like you did right next to you. “Come up here often?” 

Chuckling, you turn your head to look up at him, giving him a better view of your face. “It’s not like you haven’t used that one on me before.” He noticed that you still had your smile on your face, but it hadn’t made it to your eyes yet, and that made him upset. Not again. He didn’t want to see you broke and defeated ever again.

“What are the odds that I can get you to talk?” Harrington asked as he finally took his seat next to you, sitting shoulder to shoulder with you. 

“Depending on how much of a sad story you want to hear.” His eyes never left you for the next few minutes before he answered, wanting to watch you before he said anything. You weren’t even looking at him, your eyes were fixed on the sky, to which he turned as well, trying to see what you would be looking at. 

“Well I have until 11 when I have to pick Dustin up from his dance, so I got a few hours to spare.” He heard you chuckle at this, but he too began to gaze at the sky, seeing stars peeking out from the clouds that were predicted to drop more snow, so says the weatherman, but when was he ever right?

He was so fixed on staring at the stars, that he almost missed your response. “Do you think the stars ever feel overshadowed by the moon?” He hummed in curiosity, wanting her to explain further. “Like, the moon is so much closer to us, and it changes all the time, going from full to new and everything in between. But the stars just stay there. I mean, they are amazing, but we get so used to them that we just let them slip by and forget about them a lot. So, do you think the stars ever feel overshadowed by the moon?” 

Steve looked back over at you and saw you now looking down, your chin and mouth hiding in your knees while you just stared at your driveway. “Don’t you remember that every star is a sun to other planets. So I feel like every star has someone looking at it like it’s the sun to them.” 

“But how can you be sure?” You voice had faded to a shuttering whisper, blocked by your knees and lost in the wind that blew by. 

“Because I’m looking at you and you are the brightest thing in my life, and you are my star.” You looked over to Steve and you saw him staring at you. He was right though, he was looking at you like you were the center of the universe, like everything orbited you, he was looking at you with love in his eyes. He was looking at you like Jonathan looked at Nancy, but this was Steve looking at you.

Your face grew a dark shade of red, not able to look away from him while he moved closer to you. All you could do was watch him, what else could you do when he literally just said that. “No one’s ever said something like that to me. Everyone sees me as second best.”

Steve sent you a small grin before he leaned over and pressed a kiss to your forehead. You squeezed your eyes shut, feeling tears starting to prick at them; you loved this. You needed something like this, especially right now. Inadvertently, you leaned into the kiss he was giving you, until he pulled away and you laid your head on his shoulder. “Second best doesn’t mean second place; it just means you had to wait for something better than what the first placers got. And now you got me.”

[missroserose]

coronavirus meme

Cross-posted from Dreamwidth.  Feel free to answer the questions yourself!  I’d love to hear how you’re doing, and what better time to make something go viral...?

1. Are you an essential worker? Nope.  I have Opinions on who is and isn't classified as essential and how much they're (not) being compensated for their risks, but ultimately there's not much I can do about that, other than tip generously when I do things like order delivery.  Regardless, massage is pretty low on the list of essential services, so I was laid off two weeks into quarantine. 2. How many drinks have you had since the quarantine started? Recently a friend asked what I'd been doing to cope, and the snarky-but-uncomfortably-truthful answer that immediately came to mind was "drinking".  So I'll let y'all draw your own conclusions. 3. If you have kids, are they driving you nuts? No kids.   4. What new hobby have you taken up during this? Other than curling in an anxiety ball and constantly refreshing news and social media?  Um.  Well, I saw a post on Pillowfort about a local papercrafting store that was doing $50 grab bag orders where they'd stuff a box full of supplies and send them to you.  Figuring now might not be a bad time to get back into papercrafting, I went ahead and ordered one; it came with a rather nice A5-size planner and a number of stickers/inserts/what have you.  I've started browsing through the Instagram planner community and am working on a plan (hah!) to start my own account/YouTube channel...I figure, since creative work is all I can really do right now and my biggest trouble with consistently finishing creative work is the lack of structure, maybe this'll help me get my butt in gear?  Or it'll become another project that disappears off the radar.  But hey, at least it'll give me something to focus on in the interim. I'm pinkpunkplanner on Instagram, if anyone wants to follow along. I've also been cooking more.  It's never been my favorite hobby but it's become weirdly calming. 5. How many grocery runs have you done? Two.  So far we've stuck entirely to Trader Joe's, since that's where our cat food comes from and we've been able to get everything else we need there.  I suspect a Costco trip is upcoming, however. 6. What are you spending your stimulus check on? Already dumped it onto our credit card, where it nicely made up for my lost income this month.  We'll see if the Illinois unemployment office ever gets back to me about my claim. 7. Do you have any special occasions that you will miss during this quarantine? Nothing that immediately comes to mind, so long as my family all stays healthy.  I'm going to be rather upset if my mother or grandmother fall sick, though, given that I skipped visiting Alaska last year for financial/time reasons and indeed had plans to visit in April but...well. 8. Are you keeping your housework done? Ish? Enough to be functional, nowhere near what my mother would approve of. 9. What movie have you watched during this quarantine? Several, in fact.  I saw The Birdcage and Her for the first time, both of which I suspect are going to become favorites.  Jojo Rabbit I was slightly disappointed by; it was cute but didn't feel quite as narratively coherent as some of Waititi's other work.  The new version of Emma was absolutely sumptuous.  Brian and KC suggested your name. one night, which was stunningly beautiful.  I've watched both Ladyhawke and Portrait of a Lady on Fire with friends via voice chat; the former is a perennial favorite and the latter also beautiful in a very minimalist way.  Probably some others I've forgotten. 10. What are you streaming with? iTunes, Netflix, and Hulu, possibly with a little Amazon Prime and Crunchyroll mixed in. 11. 9 months from now is there any chance of you having a baby? A miniscule one, I suppose. 12. What's your go-to quarantine meal? I've made this roasted-root-vegetables-and-chickpeas dish a few times.  If you don't have a NYT subscription, it's really simple:  Take a pound and a half of root vegetables (I use sweet potatoes and carrots), chop into pieces of roughly equal thickness, pour onto a sheet pan, season with salt, pepper, thyme if you have it, add enough olive oil to coat generously.  Stir together.  Roast for 30 minutes at 350.  While they roast, open a can of chickpeas, drain and rinse, toss with olive oil and whatever spice mixture that you've had sitting in the back of the cupboard intending to use (I have an Indian-flavored one that's been excellent).  Add to the pan with the vegetables, give everything a stir, raise oven temperature to 425 and roast another 15 minutes.  Mix together some yogurt (2/3 cup seems about right), salt, fresh garlic, and any seasonings you feel like adding; when the vegetables come out, serve them in dishes with yogurt sauce dolloped on top.  Delicious, warm, filling, and reasonably healthy. 13. Is this whole situation making you paranoid? The problem with not knowing the extent of the threat is that we can't really know the line where anxiety becomes paranoia.  This may be directly contributing to my current mental health state. 14. Has your internet gone out on you during this time? No, thankfully.  RCN's been sending out regular updates about the upgrades they've been implementing, and I've seen solid evidence (trucks with workers, improved physical infrastructure) that this is the case.  One building down the street from us has two junction boxes, one labeled "RCN" and the other "Comcast".  The RCN one is neatly wired with everything aligned and secured and all superfluous cabling removed.  The Comcast one...well, I'll let Adam speak for me on that one. 15. What month do you predict this all ends? See above re: uncertainty.  One of the things giving me anxiety is the sheer fucking hubris of the people in power making noises about "acceptable losses" in reopening the economy before we have anything like a robust testing/contact tracing/protection system in place.  Does the economy exist to serve humanity, or do humans exist to be ground up in the machine of economic progress?  I suspect we're quickly learning where the bulk of the USA lands on that spectrum. 16. First thing you’re gonna do when you get off quarantine? It probably says a lot about my current mental state that I can't really picture it.  But "make arrangements to go visit my family" is likely high on the list.  "Spend some quality time with my boyfriend" is also up there, assuming we're still together. 17. Where do you wish you were right now? Somewhere in 2021 or 2022, so I could get the uncertainty out of the way, take stock of the situation, begin the grieving process, and work on putting my new life together. 18. What free-from-quarantine activity are you missing the most? Looking at other people as potential friends and loved ones instead of potential vectors. 19. Have you run out of toilet paper and hand sanitizer? Funny story—I signed up for a subscription about a year and a half ago from Who Gives A Crap, and in order to get the best price I just got the largest (48-roll) box and, when they email me about the next installment, I delay until we need it.  So our latest box came in...at the start of March. As for hand sanitizer, I barely use it (I prefer hand washing, it's less drying if you have good soap), so the stuff we have will probably last for months. 20. Do you have enough food to last a month? Probably, although the cats would be pretty skinny.

[mydarlingvioletine]

Just a Puppy Crush - Chapter Twelve Ship(s): Violet/Clementine, background Aasim/Louis and Ruby/Brody Media: The Walking Dead Game (Season 4)

Violet sat herself down between Brody and Louis, who was in the middle of a heated debate with Ruby over the validity of wearing acid-washed jeans in the modern day. Brody was obliviously scribbling in her notebook, completely tuned out to the nonsense going on to the left of her.

        “Oh, I’m so sorry, Lizzie McGuire,” Louis snapped with much more ferocity than was expected for the situation. Ruby groaned and threw a chopstick at him, which he narrowly dodged. “Keep your head up, Rubes. Your snapback is falling. Here, let me check your mood ring.”

Louis went to grab Ruby’s arm and she slapped his hand away, angrily opening a bag of chips with more force than she intended to, as chip crumbs flew across the table. “Shit.”

        “Vi, settle this. Today’s hot topic is ‘90s fashion fads, and how they should stay in the fucking cave of irrelevancy that they crawled into. Hannah Montana here wants to undo years of evolution and slap on some overalls and a windbreaker. It’s revolting, right?”

Violet pursed her lips, jabbing a straw into her chocolate milk container and taking a contemplative sip.

      “Overalls are cute. Oh, and those slap-on bracelets. We’ve already got frosted tips representation with Reese over there.”

She gestured towards Marlon, who was too absorbed in a page that Brody was showing him to defend himself. Louis, distraught, looked between the redhead and the blonde incredulously, and threw up his hands. 

“I give up. You fashion mongers win.”

       “Dude, you asked a lesbian for fashion advice. What were you expecting?” Violet giggled at Louis, who now was holding his head in his hands. “I rock Hawaiian shirts unapologetically all the time. Do better.”

“You’re right,” Louis raised his head, and twisted around to observe the courtyard around him. “Where’s Clem? She’s got better taste than both of you combined, and that’s saying something.”

        Violet shrugged, piling a forkful of ramen into her mouth. A stray noodle hung from her lip, which she sucked back in with a satisfying pop, earning a grossed out look from Ruby.

Louis placed his hand on top of Violet’s outstretched arm, which she balled up into a fist, but didn’t pull away. “You know I love you, Vi. C’mon. If I didn’t abandon you the day you wore denim on denim to school, I never will.”

With a scoff, Violet sat back in her seat with a dismissive eye roll. “Lucky me.”

       “Are you gonna come to the mall with me and Ruby after school?” Brody chirped up from her book, setting it aside to give Violet an enthusiastic grin. “We’re gonna pick out Halloween costumes. We’re thinking of being the Powerpuff girls. I’m gonna be Bubbles, Rubes will be Blossom. You’d make a perfect Buttercup!”

“As appealing as matching costumes with you two dorks is,” Violet snorted, shifting her glance from Brody to Ruby. “I’m gonna go see Clem’s little brother’s baseball game tonight.”

      Louis’ and Marlon’s heads jerked up, and they shared a nervous glance, unseen to Violet.

“Thought you hated baseball.” Brody sneered, taking a huge bite out of her sandwich.

         “I don’t hate baseball,” Violet protested with an eye roll. “It’s for AJ. Plus, it’ll be fun to watch adults scream at each other over a little league game.”

Louis anxiously chewed on the end of his straw, before clearing his throat. “You probably shouldn’t go tonight, Vi. You don’t like baseball, and it’s gonna be pretty warm, so that’s another level of unbearable.”

            Marlon nodded strenuously at his point, and added onto it with a level of urgency. “C’mon, have a girls night out with Rubes and Brody! There’s that really good fro-yo place in the mall, and there’s a Hot Topic. That’s right up your alley!”

He meant for the words to be encouraging, but received a middle finger from the pissed off blonde across from him. “Oh, fuck off, dude. I’m sure the Hollister is right up your alley, isn’t it, ‘Generic Blonde Boy Bully from every 2000’s movie’?”

      She dumped her empty tray into the garbage, and ignored the worried glances from Louis as she pulled out her math homework.

“Why are you guys being so weird about it, anyway?” Violet questioned the two. “I’ve got a Halloween costume. An old pirate outfit my mom put together for the middle school play.”

           Brody tugged her knees to her chest, and leaned against Ruby’s shoulder, expression solemn as it always was when Violet and Marlon were fighting. Seeing this gesture and instantly feeling guilty, Violet let her posture relax, and gave a forced “sorry” to Marlon.

“Just looking out for you, Vi,” Louis tapped his fingers on the table, lips pursed as he thought. “We’re probably gonna ump it if we can, so... know we’ll be there.”

       Violet nodded quickly, desperate to change the subject to anything other than this seemingly sore topic. “So, what are you guys being for Halloween?”

“Boo!”

      Violet felt two hands grip her shoulders, and a hot breath tickle the back of her neck, and jumped up at the contact. She turned around to see a jubilant Clem, very pleased with herself.

“Gotcha.”

Violet softly shook her head, her stressed expression immediately fading as Louis made room for Clementine to sit between them. She pressed herself against Violet’s side, and leaned her head in the crook of her shoulder.

       “Probably a bisexual.” Louis answered, earning a snort from Clementine, who’s breath tickled her neck.

She sat up triumphantly, and struck a heroic pose, winking at Violet. “What a coincidence! Me too!”

        “Dorks.” Violet happily breathed out, turning her math homework over to Clementine, eagerly willing to check it.

Hey, it’s not cheating if she offers to help.

     Violet’s heart swelled at the new piece of information she learned; that when Clem was intensely focused on something, the tip of her tongue protruded her lips.

A soft giggle made Violet lift her head, and she stared down the bashful Brody across from her, who’s eyes were happily flicking between the two girls. With a knowing glance, Brody took a sip of her iced tea.

     Violet leaned back in her chair, a flush of pink across her face as she shifted away from Clem, so their shoulders didn’t brush against each other when she leaned over to help with a problem.

As the bell rang, Louis gave one last worried glance to Violet, which went completely over her head. “See you two later. Maybe we could all go out to the diner afterwards?”

       “Definitely.” Clementine beamed, gathering her books and taking a red pen from her pocket. She scribbled an A+ on the top of Violet’s worksheet, along with a goofy smiley face with sunglasses. “I don’t have Lee’s teacher stickers with me, so that’ll have to do, superstar.”

A rush of heat flooded across Violet’s cheeks at the cutesy compliment from Clem. She slung her backpack over her shoulder, avoiding Clementine’s gaze as they walked out of the courtyard together.

     “See ya later?” Clem raised her fist and softly thumped Violet’s shoulder to get her attention.

Violet gave her a weak smile, and folded her hands together anxiously. “See you later. I’ll meet you in the courtyard after post-session.”

Clementine grinned and tapped her newly donned pin, before giving a soft wave and turning around to make it to her next class in time.

          Their glances back at the other over their shoulder lined up perfectly, and Violet’s face felt so warm that she felt it’d melt off if she didn’t make it to Chemistry and take her mind off of the curly-haired brunette that took up the majority of her thoughts.

The feeling of something small and sticky being placed between her eyebrows made her look up from her phone, her eyes meeting Clem’s, who was holding a pack of encouraging stickers she most likely stole from Lee’s desk.

             Violet took the sticker off of her forehead, and frowned at the neon ‘SPECTACULAR!’ before sticking it beside her Camp Paya pin. “Y’know, now that I think about it, I am pretty spectacular.”

Clementine rolled her eyes before hooking her arm through the taller girls’. “Come on, we gotta get there before the game starts so we can get some snacks.”

      The walk around the school and towards the baseball field was short and sweet, the slight breeze pushing Violet’s thin blonde hair out of her face.

The flimsy sticker flew off her jacket, so Clem ripped another one from the sheet, and placed it on the tip of the flustered blonde’s nose.

         The second Violet scrunched her nose up, the second sticker detached and fell to the ground.

The two rounded the bleachers, and Violet’s eyes landed on a tall man in his mid-to-late twenties, with slick brown hair that almost reached his shoulders. He was currently helping AJ perfect his swing, the logo across the back of his jersey displaying ‘García’.

       “Hey, da-“ Clem started, being cut off by Lee holding his hand out in front of him expectantly, eyeing her with suspicion.

“My stickers, Clem.” Lee sternly spoke, earning a sheepish huff from Clementine as she fished them out of her pocket and reluctantly passed them over. “Y’know, some students actually earn them and don’t have to steal them when I go to the teacher’s lounge.”

      A bashful Clementine tugged on the side of his jacket. “That’ll be twenty bucks, please.”

Lee rolled his eyes before fishing a twenty out of his pocket, and passing it to Clem. “No more of those Pixie Sticks, okay? At this point, I’d rather you just eat a salt lick.”

      His eyes landed on Violet, who he just seemed to notice was cowering behind Clementine. “Oh, hey Violet! It’s good to see you here.”

“I hope it’s okay.” Violet shyly responded.

        “Of course it is!” Lee boomed, passing a cartoonish foam finger to Violet. “We’re gonna need all the manpower we can get to out-scream these asshats.”

Violet gave a weak smile, and was abruptly pulled away by Clementine tugging her by the arm. She happily flashed the bill between her eyes, and started listing the types of food that she couldn’t wait to introduce Violet to.

       Happy and oblivious, the two intertwined hands and made their way down the street towards the corner store. Oblivious to the blue, icy glare that followed them from a distance.

[uglypastels]

✏ My fact is that I have an obsession with Lisa Frank stickers and art even though I'm almost 17. The title I have for you is; "Eyes as bright as the stars and heart as big as the sun" sorry if it's to long, I can send a different one instead.

I did switch up the title. Hope you don’t mind. I was really inspired by it, so I didn’t want something else. 

It turned out to be a bit longer than a “short” story. Hope you Enjoy!! 

The Sun, the Stars and the Moon // Tom Holland

Tom stirred in his sleep. Frustrating images flashed before his eyes before he jumped up, waking himself up. His hand reached up to his heart, while the other for the hand of (Y/N). She didn’t even budge, her chest rising and falling slowly as she breathed calmly in her sleep. The opposite of Tom. He had to close his eyes and count to ten before his breathing stabilized. The hand clutching on to his heart stopped shaking. His skin felt clammy and cold.

(Y/N) turned, still sleeping. Tom let go of her hand so she could fall to her side more comfortably. He loved watching her sleep. She looked so peaceful and sweet. Her hair falling around her face perfectly, enveloping the pillow her head was resting on.

With his face in his hands, Tom fell back into his own pillow. He exhaled deeply. There was no need to worry. Everything was great. He was still in bed, the love of his life right next to him. It was just a stupid night terror. Just like the ones he used to have when he was younger. He had to just shake it off and go back to sleep.

Only he couldn’t. Half an hour later, and Tom was still wide awake. Lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the cute snores of his girlfriend. It wasn’t even that bad, he thought. The problem now was that after the long period of just laying, not doing anything, his mouth had gotten incredibly dry. He needed a drink.

Careful not to made any harsh noises to wake (Y/N) up, Tom pulled off the sheets from his body and got up. The warm summer air felt tight around him. Quickly, but quietly, Tom walked towards the door and opened it hoping it wouldn’t crack this time. He only turned on the light in the hallway after he had closed the door. His eyes had to take a moment to get used to the brightness. Once they did though, he walked to the kitchen, still as quiet as he possibly could.

When he finally reached the kitchen Tom didn’t bother turning on the lights in there. He knew his way around that part of the house perfectly and, anyway, there was still some light shining through from the corridor. He could see just fine.

That was proved wrong by the first step he took. When he stubbed his leg against a chair. It took everything in his body not to scream out in pain. He had to think of (Y/N). He didn’t want to wake her up at… Tom turned to look at the clock on the oven… At 12:49 am. This was going to be a long night. He knew it.

Ignoring the pain, Tom walked to the fridge. He opened it just to stare at it blankly, forgetting what he wanted to get in the first place. He closed it, a bit too hard. The loud smack made him cringe but also remember what he came to do. Drink, he needed something to drink. Tea? That’s what people drank when they couldn’t sleep, right?

The cupboard above his head flew open as Tom pulled at the handle. The smell of various sorts of tea that (Y/N) had bought over the months filled his nostrils. Not really thinking much about it, he picked one of her favorites. He got a mug and then poured some water in the boiler. Then, it was just a matter of a few minutes. A few minutes that Tom gladly took as an opportunity to search for a late night snack. He knew that they had some biscuits stashed somewhere.

Too busy looking for the sweets, he had almost missed the point where the water boiled to its max. The boiler whistled and Tom had to practically run from the other side of the kitchen to take it off its heater to make the noise stop. Why did kitchen appliances always have to be so loud?

Tom had to get over the fact now that there was a high chance that he woke up his lovely girlfriend. He poured the boiling water into the Spider-Man mug (a present she had given him for his birthday as a joke. But the joke really was on (Y/N), as it was definitely one of Tom’s favorite cups).

When the tea had brewed until it was dark brown, almost black, Tom poured some honey and lemon juice into it. Another thing he had caught up since living with (Y/N). he remembered the first time she had made tea for him and the new taste had definitely left an impression. Even with the lemon in it, the drink was still sweet and in a way that didn’t feel artificial at all.

“Besides, it’s really good for your throat.” she had said and then nudged him to drink the whole thing. Oh yeah, he had been feeling sick that day. He remembered.

With the tea ready, Tom leaned against a counter and took small sips, aware of the temperature of the beverage. It was silent. His body was warming up, but at the same time cooling down, everytime the tea would enter his mouth. Tom felt good. Completely forgetting the reason he had woken up in the first place.

There were soft footsteps in the hallway, and Tom’s muscles tensed. So, he did wake her up after all. (Y/N) turned the corner. Only wearing one of his shirts, barely covering anything really. He saw that before she went out to find him, she had put her hair up in a loose ponytail. She rubbed her eyes lazily and even through a big yawn, Tom managed to make out her words: “Babe? What are you doing?”   

“Nothing, just getting a drink. Go back to sleep.” He nodded off into the direction of their shared bedroom. (Y/N) shook her head in response and did the opposite of what he had suggested. The pitter patter of her bare feet against the hardwood floor announcing that she was walking over to him.

“No, it’s cold in there without you.” she wrapped her arms around his waist, leaning her chin on his chest so she could look up into his eyes. He gave her a light kiss and she hummed into it. “Hmmm, you taste like honey.” she smiled.

“Do I now?” Tom laughed. She nodded happily, pouting her lips slightly so he would kiss her again. And that is exactly what he did. Their lips brushed against each other with that passion that only two people who deeply loved each other shared. Tom could feel his heart beat faster when she smiled into the kiss. He put down the cup, hoping that he actually did it on the counter and not in mid-air. Now he could cup her face with both his hands.

(Y/N) squealed at his touch. He pulled away and looked worried into her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re hand,” she giggled, “It’s hot.” There was a joke he wanted to make about being hot, but (Y/N)’s lips were on his again, silencing him for good. With every second they shared together, Tom fell in love with a bit more. He didn’t think it was possible to love someone this much, but he truly did. To both of their dismay, he pulled away from her once again. With a spark in his eyes, he said: “Let’s go for a ride.”

“Now? It’s 1 in the morning.” her laugh was mesmerizing. Together with her touch and her beautiful eyes right in front of him, his legs were like jelly.

“So? C’mon let’s go on an adventure.” He gave her a playful Inuit-kiss.

“Okay, fine. Where do you wanna go?” Before Tom could answer she did it for him, “Ooh, I know, let’s go to an empty field!”

“Oh, how romantic of you,” Tom said sarcastically. “What do you plan on doing there? Killing me?”

“For your information, Thomas, if I would ever murder you, it would be the most romantic murder in the history of… murders.” Tom laughed at her comment. “And yeah, I do think that my idea could be rather romantic, actually.” She let go of his waist to cross her arms.

“An empty field? Please enlighten me how that is romantic.” He mirrored her actions. She smirked, accepting the challenge.

“It’s August, shooting star season! We can go to a dark field and watch the stars. Who knows, maybe we will see something.” It annoyed Tom how good she was. This did sound romantic. He hated how she was always right.

“Okay, yeah. That sounds nice. Let’s go.” he took her hand, pulling her back into the bedroom to get dressed, leaving the cup of tea completely forgotten.

________________________________________

After a half hour of driving through some little roads away from the city, they finally arrived at a deserted field. Not a sign of human life around. It was pitch black. The only real source of light was the white moon above their heads. The clear summer sky was perfect for a night of stargazing.

They got out of the car and lay down on the bonnet. They lay there, hand in hand, her head resting against his shoulder, looking up at the stars, waiting for the comets to fly by. They lay in silence. A pleasant one. Because they didn’t need to talk for the other person to know that they loved them.

It didn’t even take that long before the first star passed their eyes. It was big, leaving a light blue tail behind in the sky.

“What did you wish for?” she asked, still looking up at the stars, not seeing that Tom was looking at her, pouring all the love he had for her out right there.

“It won’t come true if I tell you that,” he answered. Even in the darkness, he could see her roll her eyes.

“Fine, do you think it will come true, though?”

“Well, let’s see, shall we?” he slid down the hood of the car onto the ground. (Y/N) sat up. Not that she could see him any better if she did. Tom still appreciated it. It gave him the possibility to stand in between her legs. She put her arms around his neck. They shared one long kiss before she let him speak his mind.

“Alright, here it goes. Honestly, I had a whole different thing planned for this, but when you kissed me - back home in the kitchen - I couldn’t wait for a second longer. Every moment that I am with you, I fall in love all over again. With your smile, your quirky little habits, your lips, your body, your personality… everything. You are everything to me and I love you.”

“I love you too.” he knew she was smiling. He didn’t have to see it to know. He heard it in her whisper.

“I love how your eyes are brighter than any star that is above us and how your heart is bigger and warmer than the sun. You are the kindest, funniest, sweetest person I have ever met.” He put his hands on her hips so he could pick her up from the car. She swung her legs around him and started giggling. With a turn to the left, so they were parallel to the car, he put her down.

“I’ve already said it before and hopefully you will let me say it till the end of our lives because that is how long I want to be with you. For always and forever. (Y/F/N), will you make me the luckiest man alive and be my wife?” He waited for an answer. It seemed like an eternity. His eyes had gotten pretty used to the darkness so he could make out the shape of her face and the faint features of it. He tried to look for an expression. Any sign of feelings.

But before she could respond, there was a flash of bright light. So pure that it almost blinded him. Everything turned white in front of him. His head hit something. But it wasn’t hard. In fact, it was as soft as a pillow. Simply because it was.

He opened his eyes just to be greeted with Harry's. “Finally, you’re awake. Been trying to get you up for the last twenty minutes. Gotta go get ready for set.” He walked away, leaving Tom extremely confused. Where was (Y/N)? Where was he? What happened to the field they were on?

Only when he looked out the window did he realize what was going on.

The New York skyline greeted him, the rising sun breaking through the steel jungle of buildings. Yes, now he remembered, he was in America, shooting his upcoming movie. Of course, everything that happened was just a dream. He had said goodbye to his best friend, (Y/N), a week ago in Venice, when she flew back home to London. Still not knowing anything about Tom’s true feelings for her.

The End 

> my follower celebration 

> masterlist 

[perishingshards]

Tag Game

I was tagged by @gracesorkovsky

1. What is your favorite season? 

Summer. I hate and am physically weak to the cold (not an exaggeration) and I live in/near Toronto, Canada.

2. What is your favourite movie? 

Why would you be so cruel as to ask me to pick my favourite movie!? 

WALL-E

-=Alternates=-

Comedy: Tropic Thunder

Romantic Comedy: Definitely, Maybe 

Sci-fi: Moon (2009), Arrival (2016), Interstellar 

Crime drama? The Departed

Disney: Frozen

Ghibli: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Whisper of the Heart, Princess Mononoke

3. If you could have one super power, what would it be? 

Flight

Close second: telekinesis

4. If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you travel? 

Australia? France? Australia is just SO different. I love things that are different. And France because my French needs some serious work.

5. What is your favourite book series? 

YES! This one’s easy! His Dark Materials (The Golden Compass/The Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife, The Amperspyglass)

6. Describe your strangest dream. 

*Pulls out her old dream diary*

Uggh! Stop making me pick things! I suck at this. OMG, what weird ... somewhat disturbing dreams. Okay, that’s one way to filter. I’ll filter out the disturbing dreams.

if you can even follow this... I used to keep a dream diary:

Sunday, April 17th, 2011

For some reason … there was a group of us and we were hiding from our enemies. I think we were all Canadian. We went through either a door or portal to hide ourselves from our enemies. It was soon after that this portal/door was discovered by our enemies. Let’s say Americans. They come through, and although there are only four of them and twice as much as many Canadians, we don’t resist when they try to arrest us.

We are lined up by the wall of a building, and one of the Americans make a disturbance as they sing a pop tune I don’t recognize. Some buses pass by that are full of some older kids. For some reason, these buses have seats on the roof.

Soon after one of the Americans stops singing, she gets in trouble with the authorities (whoever they are). She gets taken away. The Americans soon are too busy taking care of their problem (the American who was singing got cited for disturbing the peace or something). Soon, the captured Canadians against the wall are able to wander freely.

I’m left talking to this guy in an greyish brown coat. As we talk, it’s a while before I see his face. For some reason I don’t look straight at him for a while. We exchange some words, then I ask if he’s Canadian. I am relieved and feel a friendly bond as soon as he confirms he is Canadian. We talk a little, and I get a glimpse of his face. I think he’s cute. He’s also wearing a greyish brown baseball hat to go with his coat. He’s of South Asian (Indian subcontinent) decent.

He says something like he has enough money to take care of me, later on. I get the feeling that we’re on the run and such and such. I am not the one to easily take money from others (as I’m kinda offended when guys do that and I almost always deny such offers…) but we continue talking. I tell him where I was born and how I ended up in Canada.

He tells me he was born in Saudia as well, and then later lived in Africa, before he moved to Canada.

As we talk, we walk around and end up at a mall/store or something.  It was there, I noticed he was a man much much older than I as he took off his coat and baseball cap to sit down. He seemed to have aged decades in just a minute or two. It wasn’t a gradual change as one minute I looked at him and he was a guy around my age, and another minute he was someone that looked like he was 65. I was internally saddened and disappointed at this, because the face I saw was of a younger, cuter guy whom I was starting to take a sorta romantic interest in. I don’t know why he seemed so much older now, when his face was clearly of someone my age earlier.

We sit down at a table as he fills out something. Despite his age, I continue to talk to him, as we were getting along. I figured some friendly chatting wouldn’t hurt. We talk as he fills out something and he asks for my help in filling out a postal code. At first he wanted to fill out the postal code by taking it from a sheet of stickers with postal codes on them. But it did not contain the postal code he wanted. So I ended up just writing it out for him.

It was then … I saw something. Think of this as a show whereby the scene gets changed. There’s a family (parents) who are worried about their son. Their son has gone off in search of his grandpa whom his parents don’t seem to be worried about considering the fact that the grandpa went missing. Anyways, the son’s come back home and it is revealed that he never found his grandfather. He’s sobbing like crazy as he loves his grandpa to bits and is really worried about him. I soon get the feeling that the grandfather dies soon after, or was already dead when the son went looking for him. And then I get the feeling that the son dies not long after… And then I get the feeling that the grandfather was unable to take care of one important thing just before he died...

I then get the feeling, that the old man I befriended was that man … Anyways, scene changes back to the store where we’re sitting on a small white circular table made for 2-4 people. I finish filling out the postal code and the old man, who wasn’t able to actually write out the postal code himself, thus the stickers, because of his really shaky hands, thanks me then walks away.

He walks away and I never see him again. It turns out that he was now able to mail that letter which was really important. Probably it had money in it or made sure someone deserving received some money they really needed or something really important like that.

From what I can gather … the son, and the grandpa (who is now known to be the old man I befriended) both died soon after each other. The grandpa left something unfinished. The son wished to help his dead grandpa, and so somehow … I was used as a tool (I am not offended by this or anything, kinda touched by the whole story more than anything). The son become a ghost, an apparition and befriended me, then switched to look like the grandpa. I was able to help the grandpa, which was the son’s last wish.

That letter got sent and the son (momentarily as the grandpa) disappears happy and relieved. While I sit there, contemplating the whole thing, at that white table situated right outside the walls of a store.

7. Who is your all-time favorite character (movies, tv shows, books, etc.)? 

STOP DOING THIS TO ME! Favourites are hard for an indecisive person like me, okay? Let’s see ... Avatar Korra, Asami Sato, Sousuke Sagara (Full Metal Panic!)

8. What is your favourite food?

When I used to care about food: Spicy tofu pad thai from Thai Express

9. Do you have any hobbies? 

Only one. Procrastination. I’m very good at it. It comes to me so naturally that i don’t even have to try!

 10. Do you have any tattoos?

I am on a journey of rediscovery. Having been raised Muslim, I was instilled with the idea this was wrong. Now that I’ve grown out of that (but still really respectful of those who are religious) I think I can be persuaded somewhere down the road? Who knows. Maybe something Korrasami related.

I’d tag people and come up with my own questions ... but I’m tired and it’s late and I have neither the willpower or creativity to come up with questions ... and I should go to bed instead of digging for people to tag.

Anyone who sees this and wants to continue, consider yourself tagged!

[chestnutpost]

What's next for the Kenya Ice Lions after viral fame?

7:30 AM ET

Emily KaplanESPN

In October, we were introduced to the Ice Lions, Kenya’s only ice hockey team. They play at what is believed to be the only ice rink in East Africa; the sheet at the Panari Hotel is typically used for recreational skating, a tad smaller than North American ice, and enclosed by square corners.

Due to numbers (and a lack of a goaltender), the Ice Lions had nobody to play but themselves. Over the summer, Tim Horton’s flew the Ice Lions to Canada, outfitted them in fresh gear, and organized a game with NHL superstars Sidney Crosby and Nathan MacKinnon. The produced video, “The Away Game,” quickly went viral. In late October, Tim Horton’s flew the Ice Lions’ captain, Ben Azegere, back to Toronto to watch his first NHL game and reunite with Crosby. When asked what it meant to him at the time, Azegere said, “Anything is possible. And every dream is valid.”

It was a heartwarming story underscoring the universal language of sport. It was also an acute reminder of hockey’s cost prohibitions and aspirations for inclusivity.

The Ice Lions returned to Kenya, their normal jobs, their normal routines, but not their normal practices. Tim Colby, a Canadian living in Nairobi who serves as the Ice Lions’ coach and adviser, noticed something different about the players after their North American exposure.

“The energy level they came back with — they were flying, throwing their bodies around like crazy,” Colby says. “I don’t wear equipment when I play, and now I’m telling myself, I might need to.”

The regular players — who were resourceful with limited gear, often taping pieces of couch cushions to themselves — now have donated full CCM sets, perhaps giving them more security. But they still lack what so many established teams take for granted.

There has been talk of a full face-mask rule being enacted, to help curb the number of injuries sustained as sticks and pucks come up high. Robert Opiyo/Kenya Ice Lions

When pucks and sticks inevitably get to the face? That’s a problem. A few weeks ago, a player sustained a cut; Colby was applying antibiotic cream when he realized, he didn’t have medical gloves to properly apply it. When you have players at varying levels, checking from behind is a concern. Colby might institute a full face-mask rule. He’s also working to send players to a Red Cross training course, or at least some online video training.

There’s no defibrillator at the rink, nor a trainer. The hotel has a doctor and nurse on call, but the team is still working out a protocol for how and when to call them. In Kenya, if you have a serious injury, you don’t necessarily wait for an ambulance. You get in the car and go yourself. Not everyone is covered by insurance. What hospital do you go to? Who has a credit card? Now Colby and the other team leaders are figuring out procedures. They might require players to have insurance if they get on the ice, and if they can’t afford it, they’ll work out how to subsidize it.

In 2016, Azegere approached Colby and asked if he would help them establish a program and get them to the next level.

“I was sitting on the bench thinking, ‘No F’ing way,'” Colby says. “I knew the amount of administration that it takes. It’s not just getting the guys ready on the ice. I tried explaining, every team has more off-ice people than on-ice people.”

But Colby, whose day job is with the United Nations Development Programme, couldn’t resist. He saw how much hockey meant to these players; many traveled hours just to get to the rink, or were spending their last dime to get there. So he said yes. He and a group of four or five meet after they play hockey and go over things. They’re getting started and, thanks to the publicity boost with the Tim Horton’s campaign, have a better foundation. But there’s still much work to be done.

The Ice Lions host two main shinny games a week, plus four different training sessions, partially broken up by age. There’s enough donated equipment now for the regular players, but not at the youth level yet. In all, there’s about 30 Kenyan regulars who come.

Tim Horton’s donated $30,000 in Canadian dollar to the Ice Lions, and Alibaba, a Chinese conglomerate, also donated $30,000 (USD). But the program hasn’t dipped into that money yet, partially because they can’t access it.

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Corporations can’t just give individuals money, and the Ice Lions are dealing with the bureaucracy of setting up a federation. They hope to reach affiliate status by the end of 2019 (or maybe sometime in 2020), but in the meantime, can’t set up a bank account.

After the Tim Horton’s campaign, there was a huge demand for jerseys. A man in Toronto volunteered to set up a web page, print them and ship them, all for free. They looked sharp: the same kelly green with red striped trimming that Crosby & Co. wore in the game, featuring a regal lion holding a hockey stick in the center. They weren’t cheap ($169 USD) but sold out immediately. So far, there have been about 300 sold, and the Ice Lions receive $100 for every sale.

That’s given them the largest chunk of accessible cash, plus the GoFundMe, which Colby describes as their “financial lifeline.” They’ve raised more than $7,000 on the page, although after an initial surge this fall, momentum has slowed.

Canadian Tim Colby is helping the Ice Lions with some of the administrative hurdles in setting up a federation, but knows that the team must develop its own coaching program organically. Robert Opiyo/Kenya Ice Lions

“We haven’t really spent any of our money yet,” Colby says. “And we’re about to have to.”

The Ice Lions have a wish list, and topping it is a new skate sharpening machine (their current one has long been on the fritz). But the first tangible goal is to send a handful of Ice Lions out to Canada for coaching clinics to earn certification. While there, the Kenyans would spend every evening at a youth hockey practice, then study during the day, and leave with a first level coaching certificate. Colby lined up some people who can host as billets, and they have enough money to give per diems.

The big cost is airfare. Because most of the players work and have families, they’re also trying to figure out their schedules before they can book. Ultimately, Colby wants to hand everything over to the Kenyans. As someone who specializes in intercultural relations, he understands that for long-term sustainability, the Kenyans “need to own” the coaching aspect.

“I understand that it will take a bit longer for them on the administrative and operational side, which I’m doing a lot of,” Colby says. “But I want them to own the coaching for many reasons. In my business, you learn that different cultures have different ways of doing things. It’s not like going from IBM to Ford and finding an organization of cultural differences compared to the West. It’s much better if they take on all of the coaching, and they take care of everything they can, down to the theories of how to run a practice better to make it more efficient, the progression of drills, how to manage, et cetera. If they own that, it will be much better for them, and much more sustainable.”

The buzz around the Ice Lions has been global. A Swiss photo journalist recently visited. A Finnish reporter swung by last week. A visiting tourist from somewhere in the midwestern United States brought three bags of equipment for the female players. A Mississauga (Canada) man who owns a trucking company offered warehouse space in Toronto in which the Ice Lions can store donated equipment before it is shipped over. In March, the Ice Lions will host Slava Fetisov and Mike Richter as part of their version of “The Last Game,” an initiative to raise awareness on climate change.

Rick Lipsey, a former Sports Illustrated writer, coaches his son’s 10-and-under squirt team in Manhattan. Looking to inspire his players, Lipsey arranged a Skype call between his players and the Ice Lions.

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“They made it clear on the call how hard they work just to get to the rink, and they appreciate just the ability to play hockey,” Lipsey says. “I think that really struck some of our players.” So the North Park Hockey Squirt Green team wears Kenya Ice Lion stickers on their helmets and the boys participate in a program where they solicit donations and pledges for the Ice Lions: small things, like a dollar for a goal, or 50 cents for a win. Every dollar counts.

As for the Ice Lions themselves, Colby has seen continued interest. They’re seeing more regular practice attendance. After Azegere’s last trip to Canada, he brought back goalie equipment. Ice Lions player George Gachara happily volunteered to give it a go in net; after his first few sessions, it turns out, he was a natural. Gachara barely flinched.

George Gachara was a natural once he put on the goaltending equipment. Tim Colby

Colby usually skates with his family on Sundays at the rink from 11-12 a.m., and noticed that some Ice Lions players are getting there an hour and a half earlier than their scheduled practice time to set up drills. Colby recently had a breakfast meeting with the GM, and again, even in darkness, saw some players sneaking in ice time.

The hotel has been a great partner, offering more free ice time and space in a storage facility that can be turned into a locker room. But Colby knows they can’t abuse the relationship. The rink costs roughly $8,000 USD to operate per month. Some developers have expressed intrigue about building another rink in Nairobi — it probably would have to be a multipurpose facility — but as of now, there are no concrete plans.

By this time next year, Colby would like to have a youth team ready to go to a tournament either in the U.S. or Canada; they’ve eyed the Bell Capital Cup in Ottawa as a great fit. Colby is also reaching out to players from South Africa, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia to see if they could arrange an African Cup. As of now, it would have to be a 3-on-3 tournament because the ice is so small.

CCM just came through with another 30 full sets of equipment, and the Ice Lions decided it would all go to the youth.

“The older guys, like Ben and them, know this is all about the next generation,” Colby says. “Their time in the limelight was in Canada. We’ll have some 3-on-3 tournaments here and there, but the big stuff, the international stuff, will all be for the younger guys.”

This is just the start. The Ice Lions plan to be around for generations to come.

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