#smin au

[musical-chick-13]

Ohh please tell us about the Twelve x River noir detective AU, and the time manipulation horror

YES I WAS HOPING YOU'D ASK ME ABOUT ONE OF THESE

Okay, so time manipulation horror: creepy guy has time rewinding/mild timeline resetting powers. He becomes obsessed with this woman and stalks her and uses his powers to kill her again and again and again, and then just restarts when he's done. Because of weird Story Mechanics™, the linear progression of days still happens. So he does this for awhile, and eventually we get to daylight savings time, where he forgets to account for skipping an hour; so she ends up surviving the night. And then she remembers everything. So what follows is her trying to figure out how to kill this guy once and for all.

Twelve/River noir detective AU: So I'm gonna preface this with a warning that Thirteen doesn't come off looking too great in this one. Believe it or not, this started as a Spite Fic™ to break down why I don't think Th*smin works, and everything else followed later. So basically: 13 and River are ex-wives. 13's new girlfriend is Yaz, who goes missing. River is A Noir Detective, and 13 asks her for help. River's not as heartless as she wants to pretend she is, so she (begrudgingly) agrees. Enter Twelve. He's also searching for Yaz because he thinks she's related to a Super Secret Conspiracy Case that he's been working on. He's instantly charmed by River, who just keeps going, "Who tf is this guy." They figure out the mystery and fall in love. Meanwhile, 13 comes to the realization that she doesn't actually see Yaz as an equal romantic partner, but as a way to satisfy her unhealthy fixation on the idea of normalcy, and Yaz goes "Uh, wtf, I deserve better than this." Currently toying with the idea of Dhawan! Master showing up to further deconstruct the idea of "normalcy" in relation to one's personal identity, but we'll see.

Ask me about my wips

[ichabodcranemillswrites]

Thinking about Deathless AUs has got me reading Deathless again and, although Spydoc was the first one I've ever imagined, I'll probably never write a Spydoc Deathless.

It's tricky in its essence, because Thoschei are equals in a larger sense than the other pairs are equals, and however it is that it ends, Koschei and Marya do not begin the story as equals. I would have to make an entirely new dynamic.

And I don't want to write it because Ivan would have to be Yaz, and I really, really hate Th*smin. I thought about it: "Oh, do it with River", but it doesn't work, it has to be a companion. Not any companion, at that. It could be Rose, but not Clara. It could be Bill, if I made it platonic but then the pair would be Twissy, and Twissy doesn't work with Deathless, only Spydoc does.

"Make it platonic with Yaz", but it doesn't work. Do you know that feeling? When you tell yourself a story in your head and it just doesn't work?

I suppose I could make Ryan be Ivan, but I don't know... The parental thing would work with Twelve running away with Bill, but Thirteen is not enough of an adult to parentally running away with Ryan.

Does that makes sense?

[sluttywonwoo]

Hi I love ur writing 💖

Recently I had a dream that after me and Minghao did ✨ the dirty 🤌 ✨ , he let me wear his silk robe and sleep on his chest while he read. When someone knocked on his door (idk dream logic we were in a castle or smin), he fully just let them come in while he lay there stark naked & holding me to his chest

The idk knight was like "umm sir, they need you in the throne room 😳" he just looks at him and goes. "I'm busy 🙂" NNGGGHJHHH

BESTIE HELP IT WON'T GET OUT MY HEAD 😭🤠

STOPPP HAO WOULD BE PERFECT FOR A ROYAL!AU LIKE !!!!

[savoir-entreprendre]

Sandrine Ngalula Mubenga est une jeune entrepreneure congolaise 🇨🇩 née à Kinshasa, CEO de Smin Power Group et professeure spécialisée en énergie renouvelable à l'université de Toledo. 👤 . Fille de diplomate, elle a vécu en RDC, en France, au Sénégal et aux USA où elle vit actuellement. Titulaire d’un doctorat en génie électrique, elle parle couramment anglais, français, kikongo, lingala, swahili et tshiluba. 👩‍🎓 . Sa passion pour l’électricité démarre à 17 ans, après qu’elle ait failli mourir d’appendicite. En effet, à cause d’une coupure d’électricité, il était impossible de l’opérer immédiatement. Après cette douloureuse expérience, Sandrine s’est jurée de dédier sa vie à apporter l’électricité en Afrique. 👩‍🔬 . Elle fonde Smin Power Group à Toledo en 2008. Après 2 années de préparation, elle ouvre une branche à Kinshasa. Depuis, les membres de son équipe sillonnent les villages et écoles de la RDC pour installer de l’énergie solaire. ☀️ . Sandrine a inventé le concept de voiture électrique hybride en y ajoutant une pile à combustible à hydrogène3. En 2018, elle invente la technologie « Bi-Level Equalizer », un égaliseur de batteries à Lithium-lon, utilisées pour les voitures électriques et hybrides4. Une invention permettant d’améliorer la capacité et la longévité des batteries. 🔋 . . . N'oublie pas de t'abonner à la page Askan - Entrepreneuriat et de partager nos publications pour soutenir l'entrepreneuriat africain ! 💪 . Tu es entrepreneur et tu as besoin d'être accompagné dans ton activité par un expert ?

[sminny-wew]

Fun fact: I saved this file as “HeScreamAtOwnCreator.mp3”

I feel like this could’ve been better (my Bendy voice sounds more feminine than I’d like and the accent’s kinda all-over-the-place), but whatever, I wanted to record something that I could use my Monster!Bendy filter on. I wanna do more Monster!Bendy.

Dialogue from this art from the Toon Henry AU by @squigglydigg (Happy belated birthday, by the way!!)

[lintasbatasindonesia]

Surakarta. Jateng, lintasbatasindonesia.com - Sejumlah 240 perwira baru dilantik oleh Kepala Staf Angkatan Udara Marsekal TNI Yuyu Sutisna., S.E., M.M. pada upacara Pelantikan dan Pengambilan Sumpah Perwira Siswa Setukpa Angkatan ke-22 di Lapangan Dirgantara Lanud Adi Soemarmo. Jumat (22/11) Dalam sambutannya Kasau menyampaikan bahwa kita harus mampu mengubah mindset dimana pola kepemimpinan di era informasi tidak bisa mengedepankan top down policy saja, namun harus dilengkapi dengan bottom up inovation dari para personel di setiap jajaran. Hal inilah yang menjadi harapan saya, para perwira TNI Angkatan Udara khususnya perwira mantan siswa Setukpa Angkatan ke-22 yang hari ini dilantik. Jika kalian mampu melalui pendidikan di tempat ini berarti kalian juga mampu menghadapi tugas kalian yang telah menanti. Bekerjalah tanpa pamrih, jagalah kehormatan diri dan kebanggan keluarga kalian, demikian ujar Kasau. Pada kesempatan lain, Komandan Lanud Adi Soemarmo Kolonel Pnb Adrian P. Damanik, S.T., menjelaskan bahwa setelah dilantik seluruh siswa Setukpa Angkatan ke-22 akan menyandang pangkat Letnan Dua yang selanjutnya mereka akan memperoleh wilayah penugasan baru. Para perwira ini bertugas memimpin lingkup-lingkup kecil di satuan-satuan TNI AU sebagai perwira pertama, ungkap Danlanud. Pendidikan Setukpa TNI Angkatan Udara Angkatan ke-22 ini diikuti sebanyak 240 siswa,  terdiri dari 221 siswa pria dan 19 siswa wanita Angkatan Udara (Wara). Para mantan siswa Setukpa TNI AU Angkatan ke-22 ini sebelumnya telah menempuh pendidikan selama 8 bulan di Skadron Pendidikan           ( Skadik) 401 Lanud Adi Soemarmo. Terpilih sebagai lulusan terbaik adalah Letda Adm Nanang Yulianto kelahiran Sragen, 7 Juli 1977 asal satuan Smin Asrena Kasau.    Upacara pelantikan dan pengambilan Sumpah Perwira Setukpa Angkatan ke-22 ini, dimeriahkan demo unjuk kebolehan kolone pedang, kolone senapan yang dibawakan mantan siswa Setukpa A-22 dan drum band dari SD Angkasa Lanud Adi Soemarmo serta sanggar tari Sasonojumantoro. Sebelum Upacara pelantikan dan pengambilan Sumpah Perwira Setukpa Angkatan ke-22 ini, telah dilaksanakan penutupan pendidikan Setukpa A-22 tanggal 21 November 2019, yang ditutup oleh Komandan Kodiklatau Marsekal Muda TNI Tatang Harlyansyah, S.E., M.M., di Skadik 401 Lanud Adi Soemarmo. Hadir pada upacara pelantikan ini para pejabat dari Mabesau, pejabat kodiklatau serta sejumlah tamu undangan dari Pemda, TNI Polri Surakarta dan Kabupaten Boyolali. Keterangan gambar : Kepala Staf Angkatan Udara saat menyaksikan penandatanganan berita acara pelantikan dan pengambilan sumpah Setukpa A-22, di Lapangan Dirgantara Lanud Adi Soemarmo. (Agus Kemplu)

http://www.lintasbatasindonesia.com/2019/11/baru-dilantik-240-perwira-muda-baru-tni.html

[riality-check]

part one

They all expected Vecna to come back.

If there’s no body, no body they can cut up and verify is a real body, they expect it to come back.

That’s how it’s worked since ‘83.

Vecna’s body didn’t lay outside the Creel house, so of course he came back. Charred, missing an eye, more grotesque, and even less human than before. They expected that, and they prepared for it.

They expected Vecna to come back. They didn’t expect Eddie to come back, too.

It was hard to tell it was him at first. His hair had been cut close to his scalp, uneven in places, and he wasn’t all Eddie. Not with the claws and the wings and the too pale skin and the dead black eyes, too dark and too all-encompassing for a person.

A human.

Dustin took one look at him and dropped his weapon. He just shouted his name, over and over and over again, but Eddie didn’t respond.

Dustin begged and pleaded, kept saying, “Eddie, it’s me! Don’t you know me?”

Eddie - well, not-quite-Eddie, just kept moving forward, claws sharp, teeth bared.

Steve had to drag Dustin away, kicking and screaming, when it got too close.

Eddie coming back forced them to change their strategy. They went into battle with music, trying to find the song that would bring him back or at least neutralize him. 

He had to come back. He had to.

Mike had memorized all the pins and patches on his vest, the vest that Steve still had hanging up in his closet. They cycled through band after band, tape after tape, starting with the songs Jeff and Gareth and Archie remembered Eddie always playing in his van and working from there. Judas Priest, Motorhead, Megadeth-

None of them worked.

So, they went to Wayne. Begged him to wrack his brain and figure out a song, any song, that could be Eddie’s favorite, one that was strong enough to break him out. Wayne gave them Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson and Tammy Wynette and Dolly Parton songs, songs that Eddie grew up with, the first songs he learned on guitar, the acoustic one.

None of them worked either.

Eddie wasn’t free until they defeated Vecna. Until both Will and El were gone.

Because Vecna went for Will next. Will, who was his target from the beginning. Will, who was only guilty of being so terribly similar to Henry Creel.

Vecna took him to be a puppet, to infiltrate the party, and then disposed of him.

His fatal mistake had been doing that in front of El. Her fatal mistake had been refusing help from anyone else.

But when the battle was over and the wreckage cleared and the dead buried and Vecna finally burned, they found Eddie.

Eddie. Lucid, scarred, human, and afraid.

The wings and claws shrunk back, and his eyes cleared again, enough to see the whites. But his hair was still short and his skin was still pale and instead of being a terrible, awful thing in the shape of a friend, he just looked…

small.

It took him a week to stop shaking and two more to speak again.

And when he did speak, the first thing he said was, “This one’s lasted a long time. I wonder when he’s going to kill me again.”

part three part four part 5 final part

ao3 link

tag list : @ashwagandalf @novelnovella @hi-im-eff @ladyapplejackdnd @silentiumdelirium @grtwdsmwhr @resident-gay-bitch @brassreign @sidekick-hero @starrystevie @henderdads @greyhoundsgirl 

[riality-check]

part one part 2

Eddie doesn’t like the look on Steve’s face.

The thing is, Steve doesn’t get angry, not really. He gets annoyed and he gets frustrated and he gets petulant, but he doesn’t get angry.

But now? Steve looks like he’s barely holding himself back from screaming. Eddie hates it, and he hates himself for being the one to make Steve look like that.

Eddie doesn’t like the look on Steve’s face, but he might hate the look on Nancy’s even more.

She’s staring at Steve like she sees the secrets of the universe in his face, and they’re too awesome and terrible for her to comprehend.

He moves to put an arm around her, but she, as expected, brushes him off. She always has to be in the right mood for something like that, and Eddie guesses that sitting on her ex-boyfriend’s bedroom floor at ass o’clock in the morning because Eddie asked her to - well, he doesn’t want to think about it, not when it still has to happen - doesn’t create the right mood for Nancy to be hugged.

He can’t really hold that against her.

“I shouldn’t have sat down,” she murmurs at the same time Steve says,

“Eddie, I heard the clock, too.”

“What?” he says to both of them.

Steve answers first. “The clock in the hall? It just got fixed, and it’s, like, super loud when the house is quiet. I heard it go off right before you got out of bed.”

Oh.

Oh no.

Eddie doesn’t know what to say, not to Steve, who’s messing with his hair in the way he does only when he’s about to lose his shit, and not to Nancy, who’s taken to frowning at the floor.

He weighs out his options and comes to a pretty obvious conclusion.

He nudges Nancy gently and says, “False alarm, Drew.”

She doesn’t crack a smile. She doesn’t even look at him.

“I shouldn’t have sat down,” she repeats, a little louder and more certain.

“What difference would that have made?” Steve asks, sounding a little hysterical. 

Yup, Steve is definitely on the cusp of losing his shit.

Nancy turns to Eddie. “I should’ve gotten you up and moving and talked to you on the way to the woods. Then, we could have figured out it was a false alarm without anyone else around.”

“Nancy,” he says. “It’s okay. We’ve got nothing to worry about. I’m sorry I made you sneak out.”

“No,” she says, finally making eye contact. Her eyes have always been a little unnerving to Eddie. They’re objectively pretty and fit her face well, but they seem old. They see too much.

“It’s not okay,” she continues. “Because if it wasn’t a false alarm, then we could have had a problem. He could have taken you again. You would have gone through it again. You could have hurt someone. And I decided to sit with you and say nothing instead of figuring out if it was real and then doing what you asked me to.”

“What does sitting down have to do with it?” Steve snaps.

“Because I hesitated,” Nancy snaps back.

Silence falls, and this might be the first time in Eddie’s life that he doesn’t feel the need to break it.

Doesn’t matter. Nancy does it for him.

“I hesitated,” she repeats, and oh. Oh shit.

She sounds close to tears.

Nancy Wheeler, close to tears.

What the fuck is this night?

“I’m not supposed to hesitate,” she says, quietly but with conviction. “I don’t hesitate. I figure it out, and I do what needs to be done. That’s what I do.”

“Nancy,” Eddie says softly, pointedly ignoring Steve’s expression of abject horror.

“That’s why you asked me, isn’t it?” she challenges.

Eddie thinks back to getting out of the hospital. Of not going to Steve, or Dustin, or even Wayne first. 

Of going straight to Nancy goddamn Wheeler. They weren’t even on a first name basis then. But Eddie knew he needed ruthless, bold, good Nancy Wheeler for two different favors: be a second set of senses, and - well, he still doesn’t want to think about that.

But Eddie asked her because Nancy wouldn’t lie or sugarcoat anything. She’d figure it out and get it done. Without hesitation.

Eddie can’t look at her, so he tells the floor, “Yeah. It is.”

“Holy shit,” Steve breathes.

Neither of them pays him any mind. Eddie feels bad about it, but Nancy needs him more, and he needs her to understand.

“I shouldn’t ha-”

“You need to ask someone else to do it,” Nancy says. “Because I can’t.”

Steve rests a hand on her arm. This time, she lets it stay.

Eddie wants to tease her about playing favorites, but now is not the time.

“I can’t do what you asked me to, Eddie. It’s why I sat with you. I was trying to prolong the inevitable, and if it wasn’t a false alarm, it could have gotten all of us killed. You need to ask someone else because I can’t do it.”

She ducks her head down and whispers something so low that Eddie almost doesn’t catch it.

But he does.

“I love you too much,” she whispers.

Oh, shit. He’s the biggest asshole to walk the planet.

Eddie knows she means it in a purely platonic way, but that’s what makes it hurt more. Nancy’s already lost one friend to the Upside Down, and she told him that, for the longest time, she blamed herself.

And he asked her to lose another, at her own hands.

What the fuck is wrong with him?

part 4 part 5 final part

ao3 link

tag list: @ashwagandalf @novelnovella @ladyapplejackdnd @silentiumdelirium @resident-gay-bitch @brassreign @starrystevie @henderdads @greyhoundsgirl @thegingerrapunzel @seths-rogens @questionablequeeries @miss-hit @edmunsn @readbythestarlight @scooby-dum86 @deehellcat

[riality-check]

part 1 part 2 part 3

The first thing Nancy does every morning is check the List.

It’s in her planner, which has been her Bible since she was thirteen and finally managed to weasel her way out of going to church every Sunday. Her planner contains everything she needs to be a person: tasks, phone numbers, addresses, plans if shit goes off the rails again.

And it also has the List.

The List is a sticky note she writes out the night before and slaps on the cover of the planner to check in the morning. It’s got her to-do’s, long and short term, organized by priority.

She reads through the whole thing, nodding as she remembers how she has to call Hopper and follow through on her plans with Robin later, then circles back to the top, where she wrote down the request Eddie had for her yesterday.

He asked her for a ride home from the hospital. Her. He said something about Wayne working and didn’t have an answer when she asked why Steve couldn’t do it.

(That should have clued her in.)

But what was she going to do? Say no? Why would she, when no one else needed the car and she didn’t have anything else to do?

She and Eddie weren’t even on a first name basis, not really. He only ever called her “Wheeler,” which wasn’t bad, necessarily, but she thought it was weird that he asked her for a ride before he ever called her “Nancy.”

She pulled the car up in front of the trailer and moved to get out so she could help Eddie when he said, “Wait.”

“What?”

He grimaced. “I have to ask you two favors.”

“Shoot,” she said, and his face fell for a second before he fixed it.

The first favor was easy enough. Vecna had gotten into Eddie’s head, made him live through vision after vision until he couldn’t tell right from left and up from down. So, Eddie asked Nancy to be a second set of everything - not just eyes - because sometimes he couldn’t trust his ears, either.

Easy enough. She could do that.

The second favor is the one Nancy wrote at the very top of the List.

Wheeler, I hate to ask you this, but you’re the only one I can ask for it. If he gets back inside my head, please- 

I need you to shoot me.

She wrote it down in code so her mom wouldn’t snoop and read such a request.

SMIN.

Slay monsters, if needed.

Even with Vecna gone (Is he really gone? Is it ever really over?), it seems like it’s still her top priority.

But it’s not like she wouldn’t do it. Nancy might be a bitch, has known that since she was eight and got called it to her face for the first time, but she’ll always help people, especially when she’s the only one who can do it.

Eddie needs her to be able to do this. It’s no trouble. Her guns are in her shoebox and her ammunition is taped to the bottom of her nightstand.

It shouldn’t be any trouble, but the more Nancy thinks about it, the more it might start to become a problem.

She isn’t Eddie’s second set anymore, not since he and Steve figured their shit out and Eddie not-so-gently told her that he needed someone a little more… delicate to do that for him.

That stung a little bit, but he wasn’t wrong. Nancy’s always been a little too blunt, and there were times that she definitely could have been a little more tactful. 

(She just hopes Steve doesn’t get those blinders he gets when he’s talking to someone he loves. Eddie needs honesty in those moments, and sometimes action, too. Steve is capable, but he’s kind, first. Always has been.

Maybe only her mind works like this, but sometimes, she thinks that can be a problem.)

It’s fine. It gives her more space to focus on the second favor. Which has gotten a lot harder.

Somewhere along the way, Eddie became her friend. Probably one of her best friends, really. They talked about books and fought about music and dreamed of getting out of Hawkins, and somehow, Eddie “The Freak” Munson wormed his way into her life and made it clear that he planned to stay there.

She has no intentions of kicking him out.

Somewhere along the way, “Wheeler” became “Nancy” became “Nancy Drew” became “Drew.” It’s been a long time since Nancy’s had a nickname that personalized. She forgot how much she missed it.

She tries not to think about it too hard. If Eddie has to cash in, she needs to compartmentalize. 

Her guns are in her shoebox and her ammunition is taped to the bottom of her nightstand. If Eddie has to cash in, she can do it.

She has to. Even if it’s him. Even if it’s the person she talked down from panic attacks and went to the movies with and let see her cry for the first time in three years and sat on the roof, tipsy, and stargazed with.

She has to. Even if it’s Eddie.

part 5 final part

ao3 link

tag list:  @ashwagandalf @novelnovella @ladyapplejackdnd @silentiumdelirium @resident-gay-bitch @brassreign @starrystevie @henderdads @greyhoundsgirl @thegingerrapunzel @seths-rogens @questionablequeeries @miss-hit @edmunsn @readbythestarlight @scooby-dum86 @deehellcat @missarte-beltane @theysherobinbuckley 

[riality-check]

part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4

Steve glares at the two of them. For a long moment, he doesn’t say anything. He just lets the weight of his stare settle over the room, and it’s really heavy.

Nancy feels four years old again, like she just got scolded by her mother for waking up the baby. Only this time, there’s no baby to glare at with all the malice a four-year-old can muster.

There’s only Eddie, and Nancy knows that if she looks at him, she will, bizarrely, start laughing, because that’s just the kind of night this whole shitshow has turned into.

Finally, Steve takes a breath. Lets it out. Says, “This is what happens when two smart people make a plan with zero common sense.”

Neither one of them open their mouths to argue.

“What the fuck, guys?” he whispers. “Are you kidding me?”

“Wish we were,” Eddie mumbles.

Nancy elbows him in the ribs and fights back a smile when he tries to elbow her back and misses.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Steve asks, but Nancy doesn’t know who he’s asking.

Eddie answers, “We didn’t want to worry anyone.”

Nancy fights not to roll her eyes. That answer sounded stupid the second it left Eddie’s mouth. 

Not that she has a better one.

Steve is speechless. He opens and closes his mouth before finally saying, “I’m gonna correct myself. You’re both fucking stupid.”

Nancy bites the inside of her cheek to stop herself from saying something cruel along the lines of “pot, kettle,” even though she doesn’t mean it.

She gets it. Steve is concerned. This is why they didn’t want to tell anyone.

“So is no one going to worry when they find Eddie dead? When Nancy starts acting differently?”

“I don’t-”

“You do,” Steve says. “You go quiet. It’s scary. And I know it would be worse if you killed a friend.”

Nancy flinches at the word. Killed. It sounds so personal. Barbaric. Cruel.

But she doesn’t have another word for it.

“Sorry,” Steve says, and then he softens. “You should hesitate, Nancy. None of us ever should have had that beaten out of us.”

“But we did,” she argues.

“We don’t have to stay like that!” Steve shouts.

Nancy looks at Eddie for some sort of help, but he’s staring up at the ceiling. She knows he’s trying not to cry. She doesn’t say anything about it.

“I can’t lose you,” Steve says softly. He takes Eddie’s hand, and Nancy can’t help but feel like she’s intruding.

“Sweetheart,” Eddie says, and yeah, not Nancy’s proudest moment, but she almost rolls her eyes at the pet name right then and there, “if he gets in my head, it’s better that I’m not around.”

“He’s gone,” Steve pleads. “We saw the body. We fucking burned the body. He can’t get inside your head anymore.”

He turns to Nancy. “You know that, too, right?”

The truth? Nancy doesn’t know that. Not at all.

Logically, she does. She watched the flames go up. But she hasn’t slept right since ‘83, and she’ll never be that girl again, the one who was worried about popularity and grades and writing about pep rallies.

Some days, it’s harder to put the gun down. It’s easier to justify it being in her hands if there’s a threat. If there’s someone who needs her to pull a trigger without hesitation.

It seems like that’s gone now, too.

But she doesn’t answer Steve’s question. She just curls tighter into herself, sitting on his bedroom floor, and tries not to let the weight of that realization crush her tighter.

She’s only half successful.

Eddie puts his arm around her, pulls her close to his side. She lets him.

“It’s not better if you’re not around,” Steve says, looking away from Nancy.

“I could hurt-”

“I don’t care,” Steve interrupts, and god, now he sounds choked-up, too. “I don’t give a shit. We need you. The kids need you, and Robin needs you, and Nancy needs you, and I need you. Our lives are better with you in it.”

Eddie swallows. “I can’t go through that again, Steve.”

“You won’t,” Steve says. “You won’t ever have to. But if you did, we’d figure it out. You, neither of you, get to make that decision without talking to someone. I can’t lose either of you.”

Nancy looks up at Steve. Sees that he’s definitely crying now. Wonders how he can do it without his voice shaking.

She knows she could probably dredge up an answer. She knows she would hate it.

“Please,” Steve says, and his voice finally cracks. “I can’t lose either of you.”

“I know,” Eddie murmurs, and he hauls Steve in for a hug, squished against Nancy, too.

The three of them sit for a while, breathing, finally calming down after way too damn long, until Steve loosens their little circle.

“I think talking to someone might help you two.”

Nancy doesn’t want to admit that he’s right, not now, sitting on his bedroom floor at nearly four in the morning, but he is. He is right. She’s been thinking about it for a while, more so since she wrote down Eddie’s favor on the List.

She settles for a nod, rather than admitting anything, and it feels pretty good to see some of the tension leave his shoulders.

But this, of course, is the moment Eddie chooses to fight. She can see it before he says anything, sees the way he completely shuts down.

“No,” he says firmly. “I’m not crazy.”

“I didn’t say you were,” Steve says.

“You insinuated it.” Eddie gets up and starts pacing. His arms fly so wildly as he talks that Nancy is afraid he’ll smack his hand into the wall. “Shrinks are for crazy people, and I’m not crazy, Steve. I know what crazy is, and I’m not it.”

Nancy has heard this spiel before, on the floor of Eddie’s bedroom while he got high and she sipped on the vodka she snuck over. 

I know what crazy is, he had said then, just like he’s saying now. Crazy isn’t me. Crazy isn’t dealing with what I dealt with. I’m not crazy.

Crazy is moving states multiple times to follow delusions of grandeur. Crazy is planning a trip to Disney World with money you don’t have, only to not leave the house for a month. Crazy is complete and utter instability. Crazy is shrinks that break the bank and pills that aren’t good for anything except for when you take a whole bottle of them and then a social worker takes you to live with your uncle. 

That’s what crazy is, Drew.

“Will you go if I go?” Nancy asks, quiet in the midst of Steve and Eddie’s growing argument.

Both of them stop talking, hands frozen in the air.

“What?” Eddie asks.

“Will you go,” Nancy says slowly, “if I go?”

Steve raises his eyebrows, and, after a glance at Eddie’s face, has the audacity to look something close to smug.

Nancy didn’t realize how much she missed seeing that expression on his face.

Eddie frowns, and Nancy can read his face like a book. He’s thinking about it. Hard. Weighing out the options, weighing his pride against the possibility of getting better, weighing his pain against whatever consequences Steve would otherwise impose on him.

Steve’s boyfriend privilege is really working in his favor. No wonder he looks so smug.

“Well,” Eddie says, smiling in a way that looks like it hurts, “I can’t let you go alone, now can I?”

Steve huffs out a laugh, and Nancy rolls her eyes.

“Of course you can’t,” she says. “It would be-”

“Bad manners,” Eddie finishes, making her laugh. 

It feels good to laugh, even though it’s nonsensical. Nancy hasn’t let herself be nonsensical in a long time.

But then Eddie is laughing at her laughter, and Steve looks, confused, between the two of them.

“Inside joke,” Eddie tells him.

Nancy remembers when Eddie first told her the story when he got told he had “bad manners” for not walking a girl home as a kid and how he started being overly chivalrous to try to make up for it.

Since then, “bad manners” has applied to all kinds of exaggerated chivalry.

Eddie not letting her do this by herself probably doesn’t count. Neither of them care.

Steve groans. “Are Robin and I this annoying?”

“Yes,” Eddie and Nancy say in unison, which makes them laugh again, and for a second, for the first time since she got out of her car, Nancy feels a little lighter.

final part

ao3 link

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[riality-check]

part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5

Steve wakes up early like he usually does. The sun is streaming through his window right into his eyes, his sheets are bunched at his waist, and Eddie is snoring way too close to his right ear.

Steve doesn’t move.

He glances at the clock. It’s early enough that Eddie would complain about the time even if he got a good amount of sleep last night. But he didn’t. Neither of them did, and Eddie had a panic attack on top of that, so he’s exhausted.

He deserves the sleep, so Steve lets him have it.

Steve, however, is still on a swimmer’s schedule even after two years of post-graduation life. He gets up and tries not to focus on last night.

They say nothing good happens after midnight, but nothing good happens before noon, either. Breakfast seems like a good first step, at least, before they sit down and talk.

Really talk, not huddle and cry on a hardwood floor.

Yeah. Steve needs food before they have that conversation.

He heads downstairs, where he sees Nancy sitting at the kitchen table, steaming cup of coffee in front of her.

Before he can say anything along the lines of “I thought you left” or “how did you figure out the coffeemaker, it took me two months to work the damn thing out,” Nancy points at the coffeemaker and says, “Yours should be done in about a minute. Light roast, right?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. His parents like dark roast. Despite both of them drinking it, that container is more full than the light roast. Steve’s gone through a container of his coffee since they last replaced theirs. He doesn’t even drink coffee all that often.

Sure enough, the coffeemaker finishes brewing, and Steve gingerly grabs his scorching mug and sits across from Nancy.

She still has her curlers in. He’d tease her for it if she didn’t look so exhausted.

He takes a peek into her mug. It’s half empty, but he can see that it’s dark.

“Dark roast, black?” he asks.

Nancy nods.

Nice to know some things haven’t changed since ‘83. Good that that coffee is getting used up.

“You know light roast has more caffeine, right?”

“I like the taste,” Nancy says. She takes a sip of it without grimacing, and Steve marvels at her.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever stop doing that, not really.

“I thought you left,” he says instead.

Nancy shrugs. “I was too tired to drive. My parents are out of town this weekend, anyway, and it’s not like Mike can use the car. I crashed on the couch. The blankets are in the wash right now.”

“I don’t care about the blankets,” Steve says. It’s true. They’re kind of ugly, too. Some gifts his great-aunt made for his parents’ wedding anniversary, he thinks. They’re warm though, and he likes that at least someone got some use out of them.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

Nancy stares at him, but Steve knows she isn’t really looking at him. She’s just thinking.

“I think so,” she says after a minute. “Or at least I will be in a little while.”

Steve nods.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“No,” Steve says instantly. “I need at least a day, I think.”

“Yeah,” Nancy says. She takes another sip of coffee. “Last night was a lot.”

Steve sighs. “Yeah. It was.”

He picks up the mug and when he registers it’s not hot enough to make him want to immediately drop it, takes a sip of his coffee. It’s bitter as anything, and that’s when he realizes he forgot to add-

“Milk and two sugars?” Nancy offers. She’s already up, having gotten the milk from the fridge, and now stands on her tiptoes, trying to reach the sugar bowl in the cabinet to the left of the stove.

“I got it.” Steve pushes himself out of his chair, but by the time he’s on his feet, Nancy has the sugar bowl in hand and is setting it, along with the milk and a spoon, on the table.

Steve is both surprised and not that she remembered where everything is.

He adds both to his coffee, stirs it with the spoon, and takes a sip to make sure it’s actually good this time.

It is. Milk and two sugars never fails.

Nancy finishes her coffee and rinses the mug out in the sink. Then, she turns back to Steve.

“Do you think,” she says, tugging at the sleeves of her shirt, “that talking to someone might help you, too?”

Out of all the questions Nancy could possibly ask him, that wasn’t even on Steve’s radar.

He’d be lying if he said that he didn’t think about it. After everything, especially Starcourt, Steve knew he wasn’t quite all right. People who are okay don’t have nightmares that often, or get way too on edge because of flickering lights or Russian.

But that always seemed like a leap he couldn’t quite take. Therapy is for people who really aren’t okay. It’s something that isn’t talked about, not just in polite company, but possibly ever.

Steve doesn’t know if he’s reached that point yet.

But he’d be lying if he said he didn’t think about it.

He doesn’t voice any of this. He just takes a sip of his coffee. Swallows.

Says, “That really seemed to scare Eddie. When I brought it up.”

Nancy sits back down at the table. “Yeah. I’m surprised he didn’t go off more since he was already on edge.”

Oh. So she knew. And Steve didn’t.

“I don’t think you can be too mad about that,” Nancy says, and that’s when Steve realizes he was frowning. “You’d tell Robin something like that before you’d tell Eddie.”

Steve opens his mouth to reply, and, when he finds that he really can’t argue with that, closes it again.

“You could try asking him about it, though,” Nancy says. “He might tell you. I won’t, since it’s not my story, but he might tell you.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Well, if it were me, I would press,” Nancy says. “But you’re not me, and that’s not the right thing to do, I don’t think. I think you just need to wait until he does.”

Steve nods. He’s not the world’s most patient person, but he thinks he can wait if it’s Eddie he’s waiting for.

“You didn’t answer my question, though,” Nancy says.

“What question?”

“Do you think talking to someone would help?”

Steve swallows and stays silent. He can feel Nancy’s eyes on him. He knows she’s not doing it on purpose, that she can’t shut off that intense stare of hers, but it makes him feel like a bug underneath a microscope anyway.

“How about this?” Nancy says after the silence stretches too thin. “How about we tell each other?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, we tell each other if it gets bad. We have to tell the other two, not just one other person.”

“What about Robin?” Steve says.

“Her too,” Nancy replies instantly. She isn’t brushing him off. Steve can tell that she means it, that she might even feel a little bit bad for not including her in the first place.

“We tell the other three,” Nancy says, “if it gets bad. That way, we share the load better. And it’s less scary.”

It is less scary. Steve knows Robin better than he knows anyone on the planet, is learning more about Eddie every day, and used to be able to read Nancy’s mind.

He wonders if he’ll be able to get there again with her. He hopes so. Really, he does.

“I think that could work,” he says.

The smallest of grins appears on Nancy’s face. “It’s less expensive, too. For Eddie and Robin.”

Steve is a little embarrassed that he didn’t think about that factor.

“We have to be honest, though,” he says. “No bullshit.”

“No bullshit,” Nancy agrees. Then, she adds, “You were never bullshit. By the way.”

Steve nods. Smiles. Downs the rest of his coffee and stands up.

“Thanks, Nance,” he says.

“I should have said it before.”

“Maybe. I’m just happy you said it all. You didn’t have to.”

Nancy frowns at the floor. “No, I did.”

Steve doesn’t like the look on her face, so he changes the subject. “I’m gonna start up breakfast.”

“Eddie’s gonna want-”

“Pancakes with sprinkles,” the two of them say in unison.

Nancy grins, and it’s less shy, this time. “He steals all my candy, you know.”

“You don’t like most candy,” Steve points out. He walks over to the pantry and pulls out the box mix and sprinkles.

Nancy keeps smiling and just shrugs.

“Eggos, still?” Steve asks. 

He turns around and sees that Nancy already has the freezer door open and the box in hand. He hears Eddie’s footsteps come down the stairs. He remembers that Robin is gonna come over in a few hours for their weekly “bridge and bitch” afternoon.

Yeah. He thinks they might be okay.

ao3 link

tag list:  @ashwagandalf @novelnovella @ladyapplejackdnd @silentiumdelirium @resident-gay-bitch @brassreign @starrystevie @henderdads @greyhoundsgirl @thegingerrapunzel @seths-rogens @questionablequeeries @miss-hit @edmunsn @readbythestarlight @scooby-dum86 @deehellcat @missarte-beltane @theysherobinbuckley @tillystealeaves @mercrx @nightmareglitter 

[riality-check]

it’s on ao3 now, if you want to see a more refined version of it.

updates weekly.

you can find the series of posts here, in case you missed them!

[riality-check]

halfway done on ao3!!

[riality-check]

SMIN is done!!

Summary:

Before he can say anything along the lines of “I thought you left” or “how did you figure out the coffeemaker, it took me two months to work the damn thing out,” Nancy points at the coffeemaker and says, “Yours should be done in about a minute. Light roast, right?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. Both of his parents like dark roast, but Steve’s gone through a container of his coffee since they last replaced theirs.

He doesn’t even drink it all that often.

OR

The morning after.

[riality-check]

it's smin sunday, and we've got one left to go after this one!

[riality-check]

Back on my angst bullshit

Summary: “They all expected Vecna to come back. They didn’t expect Eddie to come back, too.”

OR

Eddie is Kas, and then he isn’t. It costs a lot for that isn’t to happen.