#so like each song belongs to either mike or eleven

[mike-haters-dni]

The Michaeleven Playlist ♫

[galacticlee]

The Entertainment Conflicts

 These prompts made me cry they're amazing holy quiznack

For some reason, Tumblr decided to delete this ask, but here are your shidge ficlets, @rebelgirlmatrix1213

1)Soft!Shidge + music = my heart attack waiting to happen

And for 2) I got into Stranger Things only a few weeks ago, and I know for a fact they would love it. Besides, couples fighting over TV shows is the best, so why not.

Prompt from this post (x)

1)

It was all started when Pidge snooped through his playlist one night before dinner.

Music was a welcomed privilege to have, and the Paladins hadn't realized the quietness of the void of space until it had departed them. Thus, once the five returned to their home planet, melodies were blasted through out their cars, homes, and whatever hang-outs they attended, the unmistakable urge to jump up and wildly dance as if no one was watching stronger than ever. Each earthling had their genre of tunes that they preferred; Keith loved old rock music, Hunk a fan of classical, and etcetera. The tunes that would exhale from the local stations were a blend of 'southern' and whatever their parents would listen to, the satellite edition blasting heavy-beated pop that would threaten to break a car's speakers or Broadway show tunes that no one in the universe could ever get quite right. It took him a while, but the Black Paladin finally found his comfort songs.

Shiro rocked out to whatever his tiny girlfriend would, thus the songs that would echo throughout the walls of their home vastly consisted of indie rock and whatever slow, electronic beats she felt fit the pair's collective emotion. The genre grew on him, creating a soft spot in his mind for anything that reminded him of Pidge. His now vast collection of memories with her included the pair with ear buds stretched between them, whether it be in bed, walking across busy city sidewalks, or huddled together on a crowded tram. Dancing together in their kitchen, or bedroom, or shower was a common event, socks or bare feet sliding and squirming across the tile or wood floor with ladles or hairbrushes or hands used as would-be microphones. Music was the warmth of her figure next to him in the early gold morning, the cooling touch of her fingers trailing across the back of his neck amidst steaming water, and the soft melody of her voice dancing from her lab as she worked on some intergalactic project. Anything that reminded him of her, especially a band or artist, helped his day go by.

Thus, as he explored her playlist, he began to grow a love for Lindsey Stirling.

He expected to be made fun of, as was the norm when either of the couple found a new, freaking-out-about thing to get behind. The teasing was always loose, always comfortable, but he couldn't quite put his metallic finger on why he kept the artist tucked in his pocket. Yet, he did, humming the tunes of the songs he could remember and sneaking his favorites into her phone.

But he could never hide anything from the intelligent Holt.

"Soooooo," She started, leaning over the kitchen counter with her feet kicking in the air, thumbs pressing against his phone's screen. Her smile was audible through her words, though he couldn't decipher if it was coy, sympathetic, or incredulous. "I see you have a favorite electric violinist."

He near dropped the spatula he was holding, mouth drawing together into a thin line and hand around a saucepan tightening whilst his face began to sting. Shiro stirred its contents faster, a tad bit nervously. "Hmm, what about it?"

He braced himself for the incoming roll of the honey-shaded eyes, or the awful violin impression, but they never seemed to arrive. Shiro glanced up from the pan, throwing his eyes over his shoulder and toward her. She wiggled in place, smile wide as she swung her legs back and forth against the cabinet and phone pressed in her lap. She fiddled with the sink's taps, choosing her next words with a pursed lip.

"Master of Tides or Crystalize?"

"What?"

"Master of Tides, then."

 He narrowed his eyes, blinking as he ceased the stirring and reprocessed the statement. Pidge's freckled features were glowing, intelligent grin shining at her partner as she squirmed off the marble slab and neared him. Fingers pressed against the screen of his phone, her steps became bouncy, shoulders moving back and forth as a rhythm began to exit its speakers. He instantly recognized the noise, the thump of a beat fading out of the device and into his ears.

"No teasing?" He questioned, dropping the hand from the dish as she snatched onto it and twirled it around her.

Pidge shrugged, stuffing the phone in her pocket after transferring it to the speakers hidden around the home. "I may or may not have an obsession with her as well," She admitted, caramel freckles flushed as Katie unrolled his arm. "And I might know most of them by heart."

"Might?" The food was now forgotten, utensil set on an unoccupied burner as she grabbed his other hand, the melody that bled through the hidden speakers she installed for God knows why picking up its pace. The tune was familiar to him and appeared to be with her as they slinked across the kitchen floor, feet turning and hands clenched around each other's. She rose on her tip-toes, moving an arm to position on his broad shoulders.

"Oh, so we're really dancing now?"

"You call this dancing?"

He grinned as they moved, raising his metallic limb as she twirled underneath it, giving a snort and a roll of her energetic eyes in response. The song was faster, livelier as the pair's pace increased, knee and ankle-high socks sliding across frigid tile and arms dropped when dancing became more of a flail-your-arms-to-the-tune-and-feel-good sort of feat. They spun and waved and tossed and turned, grins breaking into uncontrollable laughter as the pace of the song hurried and slowed, on and on again. By the end of the song, both were wheezing from chuckling, Pidge's hands pressed to Shiro's cheeks and his upon her wrists as the electric instruments washed away, leaving an out-of-breath couple and a steady beat that was soon to past.

He was glad she snooped through his phone.

2)

"Jancy will never top Mileven, Shiro, how dare you!" She shouted, pointing a finger toward him as she stretched away from him, digging her feet into the sofa's cushion. Shiro's face furrowed back at her as he leaned over, near spilling the contents of the bowl that lay in his lap.

"Jonathon and Nancy will always be the best paring in the show, Pidge." Shiro's voice was firm, and his steel grey eyes burned in the back of her head, but she stuck to her argument as she climbed back and thrust her fist into the sweetened kettle corn, stuffing her face full of it and resting her feet on his arm while awaiting him to continue. "Even the insane conspiracy theorist said that they belong together, and even Steve and the jocks though they were dating in Season One. So the Jancy plot is stronger than the Mileven."

She waited until he made a move for the corn to retaliate with her . "Sure, but think about it. Eleven and Mike are part of the main five or six that are the core of the series. Name a more iconic duo than them."

Shiro raised an eyebrow. "Alright. Batman and Robin. Spiderman and Deadpool. Coran and his moustache is also-"

She pursed her lips. "Coran is not an acceptable answer-"

"Should we even get on the Jopper subje-"

The two were interrupted by the screen in front of them thundering aggressively, the pair's heads swiveling to catch a glimpse of their collctive favorite show, Stranger Things. Pidge had come across the hit series while preparing to dive into the depths of Netflix one day, watched the first season, and promptly demanded her partner watch it alongside her. It was an instant hint, and both absorbed the irony of the government-hiding-secrets trope that they knew all too well about. And, as was the trouble of being a fan (or in this case, stan) and having your significant other be the same, it offered either pure happiness when you completely agree, or heated arguments in any other alternative.

For these two, it was indefinitely the latter.

Pidge squirmed closer to Shiro, tucking into his side as his arm fell instinctively over her shoulder. They sat in a few minuets of silence, watching as a group of kids biked down a road, only then speaking after the credits rolled and the 'Play next episode' button appeared. She turned her head to the side, strands of hair that fell out of her incredibly messy bun tickling the back of her neck as she spoke her following words with childish determination.

"We need to give Keith the Steve Harrington hair-cut."

Shiro exhaled a breathy laugh, shaking his head. "Do you think he would really allow us to style his hair, much less give him a style from the 80's?"

The brunette rolled her eyes as she reached for the kettle corn, nudging the collar of her (Shiro's. It was Shiro's, but it as hers) shirt back over her bare, pale shoulder. "He's had a mullet for, like, seven years at least, and a mullet is one of the things that defined the eighties! We might as well have the damn thing piled taller than his Lion," Pidge reasoned, throwing a hand out to emphasize her statement as the other reached for the snack-bowl. Her only response was another shake of the head and a gesture to play the next episode in addition to Shiro's head slowly dipping to the side and resting on her covered shoulder. The opening minuets finished, theme starting up with it's scarlet-outlined letters floating across the screen when Pidge grabbed his flesh hand, turning her head to whisper in his ear.

"Hey, Shiro."

"Hmm?"

"Do you think I could make us have Eleven's powers?" Her golden eyes glittered, mouth forming into a curious smirk as she watched all of the ideas of consequence fire off in Shiro's synapses. The bowl of kettle corn was trashed as both moved quickly, Pidge aiming to leap away but was pinned down to the sofa by her much bigger, much stronger boyfriend. She gave a slight pout, forcing herself to restrain her laughter in her throat. His eyes were narrowed, the white patch of hair falling in between their eyes as he shook his head.

"Bad Idea. Bad, bad idea." He answered, tapping his fingers against her wrists which he held to the sofa's arm rest. Her response was an exaggerated sigh and a roll of her eyes, though her grin broke though her poorly cobbled-together pout while her freckled cheeks folded up.

"We just watched an eleven year-old girl flip a van, though," She reasoned, wrapping her legs around his torso as she flung a hand out to the screen, lips pressed together as she attempted to illustrate the failing point. The episode they had watched seemingly hundreds of times was becoming white noise, conversation no longer about Pidge running off to her lab but about keeping each other's focus. As Shiro listened on, he realized what he would say in the next few seconds could very well get him kissed, or get him killed. "That could help us defend the universe!"

"Only the kind of person who puts Mileven at top priority would say that."

"Don't you start-"

[s0bers0ngs-blog]

THE BEGINNING

I took my first drink at thirteen years old. My sister’s boyfriend had a pontoon boat, and on the weekends, we would ride it out to the inlet for some fun. Even when we weren’t on the water, I was always so curious as to what Mike’s Lemonade tasted like, why it was so HARD, and why my sister could pound back six of them within an hour and seem happier. She was twenty-six and had been drinking since high school. She used to tell me that she would sneak out without our mother even knowing, and that she did horrible things pretty frequently, but was such a mastermind that she never got caught. She was thirteen when I was born, and used to take me everywhere with her as a toddler. Her favorite past-time was asking me what my favorite movie was in front of her friends - “The Fuckin’ Hound” (Fox and the Hound) - To make them laugh. I obviously didn’t remember any of that, but I think she just wanted me to like her, and maybe offering me a drink was her way of bonding with me. One day, as my friend Veronica sat next to me on the boat, I asked my sister if her drink tasted like real lemonade. She didn’t hesitate to hand it to me and tell me to try it for myself. I can’t remember if I was reluctant or if I went for it immediately, but I still remember the way it bit my tongue and warmed my chest, and the faint taste of lemonade lingered long enough for me to tell her that I liked it. She grabbed one out of the cooler, popped the cap, and handed it to me. “You can have one.”

Veronica was my sister’s favorite friend of mine, so she became my boating buddy, and eventually my first drinking buddy. It soon became a tradition to sit on the edge of the boat and drink Mike’s every other weekend, our feet grazing the waves, blasting “The Great Escape” by Boys Like Girls over and over until my sister made us play a different song. We loved some of the lines more than others, but our personal favorite was let’s get drunk and ride around, and make peace with an empty town. It made us feel on top of the world. Even though we argued half the time on whether he was saying tonight or today at certain points of the song, we both agreed that boating was more fun with a bottle in your hand, and that’s all that really mattered. My sister told her as long as she didn’t tell her parents we were drinking, she could come with us every time, and she did. When we’d go back to school on Monday and tell the other kids that my sister let us get drunk on the boat, our “cool” factor always increased. What kind of parent would actually let their thirteen year old get drunk? Mine certainly wouldn’t, but mine also wasn’t around, and sometimes I think the other kids forgot that. I moved in with my sister during my eighth grade year because I was becoming too rebellious for my mother to handle me. A lot of the kids were jealous of my newfound freedom and my lack of parental guidance. They would frequently ask if they could join us on the boat sometime. I always hit them with the “maybe” - That way I was able to keep them guessing, but also able to maintain my newfound popularity, which was a far cry from my elementary school days when I napped during recess and had imaginary friends. Now, years later, I was the kid whose mom didn’t even want her, and that’s probably why she was drinking. I didn’t actually know what they said behind my back, but I chose not to listen most of the time because I knew it would probably be something along those lines. I knew I’d always been “the weird one” and it probably wouldn’t change, even if I did get a pair of the latest trendy footwear or I moved to the nicer neighborhood down the street from our apartment complex. I spent my free nights in church and had a solid gaggle of friends from my youth group, and they usually proved to be better people anyway, but I didn’t dare tell any of them about the drinking. I knew I’d lose them if I did, or they’d think differently of me. But I was content having two different lives, and thriving in whatever one I wanted at whatever time I wanted. They say you can’t win ‘em all, but I certainly became the MVP of leading a double life.

Veronica and I continued being weekend warriors until school let out for the summer, usually having sleepovers at my house after our boating trips. Eventually, I graduated from Mike’s Hard Lemonade to Seagrams Wine Coolers, and my sister let us drink at home, too. I liked them more because they were sweeter and came in an assortment of flavors, but Veronica usually stuck with Mike; she insisted that he was stronger. This was before I knew what alcohol percentage was, and I didn’t want to ask my sister any questions for fear of showing too much interest. I wanted to keep my building love for booze under wraps. I never felt like I needed it back then, but I remember feeling odd if I was doing something fun without it, because I knew the fun would be magnified if I was one or two drinks deep. One night I made the mistake of taking one from the fridge without asking, and the next morning when my sister asked me about it, she told me I wasn’t allowed to take a drink unless it was offered to me. I was underage, after all, and she didn’t need me “developing a problem.” Either way, it didn’t add up in my teenage brain. I immediately apologized and returned to my room to sulk, angry at her for trying to control my new habit.

Once summer ended and I started ninth grade at a new high school with new people, it was time for me to reinvent myself. Veronica and I lost touch and I didn’t have any other friends once I switched school districts. My sister stopped offering me booze, and eventually I was okay with it because I started immersing myself in more youth group events and in the church choir. I spent three nights per week there until my grades started slipping, and my sister forbade me to go to anything except Sunday morning services until I got A’s and B’s again. I became a master of resenting her for the way she took the things I loved away from me, and before too long, I began feeling like every good thing in my life was disappearing. I didn’t have friends, I didn’t have God, I didn’t have family who loved me, and I wasn’t doing well in school - So what did I have? Depression began to build, suicidal thoughts began to haunt me every night, and I started hating myself for being such a fuck-up. I developed anorexia and weighed about ninety pounds soaking wet, only ate one small meal each day, and became obsessed with my weight. I didn’t tell a soul. It was my secret with myself because I didn’t want anybody taking it from me the way my sister took away my alcohol and my God. Towards the end of the school year, we got news that she was pregnant - Which meant I had to go back to my mother’s, because my room would now belong to the new baby. Tensions in the family were high because my mother saw that I enjoyed living with my sister so much at first, and I hadn’t spoken to her in almost a year because of it. I remember feeling like the biggest burden of all burdens because I thought nobody wanted me. But truthfully, at that point, I didn’t even want me. The suicidal thoughts continued, and were unbearable. I tried to start cutting, mostly because I was so curious as to why so many of the other kids did it, but I was always so afraid I’d go too deep that, most of the time, I’d just take a razor to my wrist until a scratch formed. That was enough to make the world stop for a little while. I never went deep enough to leave any scars because I was afraid it would hurt, and afraid that my mother would notice. After all, I’d already caused enough drama in the family; I didn’t need to cause any more.

I didn’t pick up another drink for the next three years. I call those the “dry years” - Ages fifteen to eighteen. When I moved back in with my mother, we started tolerating each other again, and I got to be active in church again. I recommitted my life to Christ shortly afterwards, and developed the understanding that it wasn’t right for my sister to take that away from me the way that she had. My mother raised me in church, and didn’t believe in that form of punishment. She used to say that God blessed her with me after her father passed away, filling the hole in her heart that he left, and that He favored me because of it. But I think that she may have been right about that, because as early as three years old, I was lifting my hands during church services like the cute little kids you see on Facebook and YouTube. I used to lay hands on people to “pray” for them, and my mother said she could physically see the difference in them afterwards. I’m not sure what kind of prayers a three year old has, but I was told there were plenty. It wasn’t uncommon for me to be humming along to worship music in the car before I could even form words, but my music of choice switched to country as I got older, and my first love was LeAnn Rimes. When I was eight, I sang her version of “Crazy” at a karaoke dinner at our church called “Spaghetti-oke” in front of an audience for the first time, and got a standing ovation. I still remember everyone jumping to their feet and clapping so loud that it hurt my ears, and my mother crying in the front row because she had no idea that I could even sing. I was a pretty shy and quiet kid, and never had much to say, let alone sing. During my dry years, I was a part of the contemporary church choir, and then graduated to lead singer of my youth band. When God was prevalent in my life, I had no desire to drink, or to do much of anything that didn’t require singing or being at church. God was the center of my life through grades ten and eleven. I wasn’t partying, sneaking out, or skipping school like the other kids. My grades were decent again, and I started feeling a little less hopeless. I brought friends to church with me, and talked about Jesus like He was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I continued life as such until age seventeen, when my grandmother moved in with us. Shortly afterward, my sister, her husband, and both of my nieces lost their house, and they moved in with us, too. The seven of us lived in a three bedroom duplex for months, and I became angry that my space was crowded with family that I didn’t even like. As tensions built and the screaming matches resumed with my mother, I slipped back into my rebellious ways, and she eventually gave up trying to control me. I would be out until midnight on school nights and even later on weekends, adventuring through cemeteries and making trips to beaches that were thirty minutes away just because I could. I always had older friends with driver’s licenses who didn’t live at home or didn’t have curfews - But still, we never drank. When my mother would bring up the fact that I stayed out so late sometimes, my rebuttal was always that I could be doing worse things than trespassing or crossing county lines, and she never had much to say after that. I told her that as soon as I was eighteen, I’d be finding a way to move out. My senior year began in August of 2011, and I turned eighteen in October - Which meant that, according to South Carolina law, I would be an adult for the majority of my senior year. I found every loophole I could not to involve her at school once I was of age, and it worked. I wished upon stars to find a way out of my house as a legal woman, and felt like I was waiting around for a miracle that was never going to come. Then, it came - And changed my entire life as I knew it.

During my second semester, I was put into Spanish II. It consisted of mostly seniors, but we had a handful of juniors as well. A girl named Anna was assigned to the seat behind mine, and something about her intrigued me from the start. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I found myself drawn to her, and started inserting myself into as many of her conversations as I could. We became friends quickly, which meant that I also had to be friends with Cora. Cora and Anna had been best friends since childhood, and were pretty much a package deal. They lived two streets down from each other and were attached at the hip - More like sisters than friends. But I was okay with it, because I quickly found that Cora was the most hilarious human I’d ever met. Anna was great, but nobody made me laugh quite like Cora. We became the three amigos, hanging out every day after school and spending all of our money on milkshakes at Denny’s. Anna owned a black Jeep Liberty, and the amount of miles we traveled that year could probably stretch clear through the Palmetto State. But once Anna got a boyfriend, it was often just Cora and I. I became her replacement best friend as Anna fizzled out, but it was a different kind of friendship than I was used to. I had plenty of best friends in the past, but none like her, and I kept trying to figure out why it felt so comfortable. I opened up to her about my home life and my disagreements with my mother, and she told me that I could come live with her and her parents, but we’d have to share a bed. I jumped at the opportunity, packed as much as I could fit into my car, and moved out the next day.

Over the next month, I became more and more distant from my mother, and closer and closer to Cora. Her parents treated me as one of their own, cooking family meals every night and doing my laundry. It was strange to have a normal home life after so many years of chaos. What they didn’t know, though, was that Cora and I were skipping school at least once a week. We’d start our mornings at Chic-fil-A, then sometimes we would go home and go back to sleep, hiding my car around the corner in case her stepfather came home for his lunch break. Other times, we would go play mini-golf on the north end of town where nobody knew us, or even drive an hour to the town of Ocean Isle Beach in North Carolina to eat our weight in Italian food and explore back roads with no destination. We always timed it just right to make sure we would be back by the time school let out, and would even circle around the parking lot to make it extra convincing, in case teachers or friends were looking for us. We couldn’t miss more than five unexcused days, so once that limit was pushed, Cora started writing me fake doctor’s notes. She said she’d been doing it for years and the office never caught on, so I let her do it for me, too. It did work for a while, until they caught us towards the end of the year and stuck us in summer school for makeup attendance. I didn’t get to walk with my class that year, but was still able to graduate a month later than the rest of my peers, and walk in the county graduation at the neighboring high school in a town called Conway.

One day, Cora and I went up to Ocean Isle Beach, and started chasing each other through the sand. It was like one of those cheesy romantic comedies where the couple doesn’t have a care in the world in that moment. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, the temperature was comfortable, and we were weightless. I’m still not sure what came over me, but something told me to stop, dead in my tracks, and grab her hands with mine. I was operating on emotions that were foreign to me - Emotions that made sense, for the first time in my life. She made life better, and I loved being around her. Once I grabbed her, we stared at each other for a moment, sincerely and nervously. The next thing I know, my lips are on hers - And it felt like a grenade was set off in my soul. I had been with boys until my newly formed friendship with Cora, but had become so uninterested in them once she swept me up into her world. I was immersed in a universe where only she and I existed, together, for months. And suddenly, it all made sense - Why I could never stay with a boy for more than six months, why I could never connect with them, why they were never exciting and never fulfilling. They never made me feel like this. They never made me feel magical the way Cora made me feel. To this day, I still can’t explain how that moment of clarity felt, but in that moment, it all made sense. I was gay - And I was in love for the very first time.

Naturally, Cora and I became inseparable. We were in the purest form of puppy love imaginable, and I’m sure everybody could see it. However, we were both new at the female dating thing, so we kept it under wraps for a few months. We were so in love and so sure of each other, yet so unsure of how the world would perceive us. We only knew a handful of openly gay kids at school, and people weren’t exactly nice to them. But they didn’t seem to care, and I became somewhat jealous of that freedom they possessed to be themselves. I never felt like I had that. I was always hiding in the shadows, cowering in corners and covering up my anger and my feelings. I had become so anti-substance since my last drink years prior, but Cora loved to smoke cigarettes because she said they made her feel better. She said she drank a lot before she met me and missed doing it, and I gave her the story of my experiences with booze, too. I didn’t miss it, and Cora made me drunk with just one touch of her lips, but we both decided that we would try drinking together the next weekend that her parents were out of town. We needed someone of age to get it for us, so I invited my friend Carissa, and she quickly obliged. She was supportive of our newly formed relationship and said we had to celebrate. And celebrate we did.

I don’t remember much about that night, but I do remember playing card games, and becoming more intoxicated than I ever had on the boat. This was a new kind of drunk; a powerful kind. Suddenly I realized why people did this so often. I wasn’t thinking about anything except the present moment, and Cora and I were giggling like school girls every time we looked at each other. We must have said “I love you” every five minutes - I was shocked that Carissa wasn’t getting tired of us. But when the supply ran out, we stumbled into the street for more, and walked the short distance across the street to a Bi-Lo. Cora and I got snacks while Carissa got more alcohol, and so the night continued. None of us wanted to stop, but I remember feeling like I couldn’t. If I stopped, the fun would stop, and the thoughts would come back. I didn’t want that. I wanted to stay in this newfound bliss I’d discovered. We took great care to make sure we didn’t leave any bottles in the trash can at home, or any evidence of what had taken place that night. Her parents never caught us. I woke up the next morning with my first hangover, and despite the queasy stomach and pounding headache, I couldn’t stop thinking about how much fun we had, and how quiet my mind had been for a night. I was ready to do it all over again.

Such was the beginning of a very slippery slope.