#so much miscommunication

[artiststarme]

What If Steve Were To Leave Hawkins? Part 3

Part 1 Part 2

I'm still surprised that people are interested in this but hey, if you want more, I'll keep writing more! Thanks again for all of your nice comments. I think I managed to tag everyone that wanted to be tagged. If not, let me know and I will tag you in the next part!

~*~*~*~

Steve called his mom on his fourth day of being in the city. He had already used his charm to secure a job at a preppy coffee shop in downtown Chicago. And he had put her name down as a reference in an effort to secure the studio apartment located above the shop. She seemed surprised that he had stayed in touch, despite him telling her he would. Regardless, she remained engaged throughout their admittedly short conversation and told him about his friends visiting the house. And wasn’t that a baffle. He hadn’t expected anyone to notice his absence, much less go to look for him at all. Maybe that meant that he could still be of use to them despite him acting hastily. 

Later that day, he called Dustin from his motel room phone. Mrs. Henderson answered and told him that Dustin was at the Wheeler’s house playing DnD. She asked if Steve wanted to leave a message but he declined and said his goodbyes. He didn’t want to bother Dustin if he was going about his typical routine. Maybe his mom was wrong about them worrying about him?

He called Family Video next to speak to Robin. Steve was not mad at his best friend, he was happy for her. She was finally in a happy relationship, she was spending time with family, and she was aiming to go away to college in the fall. Even still, their growing distance stung. She had better things to worry about than some dumb jock that dragged her into the nasty Upside down business. But man, talking to his best friend after being entirely alone for a little while sounded pretty damn good. 

“Hello, Family Video, how can I help you?” Robin answered with bored inflection. 

“Hey Robs, it's Steve.”

He heard a clatter over the phone before she hurriedly responded, “oh my god, Steve? What the hell, Steve. Where are you? I leave town for four days and you fall off the face of the planet. Jesus Christ, are you okay?”

Steve smiles at her familiar rambling and lets out a happy sigh. “I’m alright. How was your grandma?”

He hears an angry grumble and hardly has time to brace himself before she releases her worried wrath. “We are not talking about my grandma, Steve! We’re going to talk about you. About how you left town without telling anyone after avoiding everyone for months and getting kicked out by your parents. What the fuck, Steve! Why wouldn’t you come to one of us? We could’ve helped you.”

“I’m fine.”

“Bullshit Steve!” He full-body flinched at the venomous word. “People that are fine do not run away from town without telling any of their friends!”

Steve rolled his eyes and huffed, “I’m surprised anyone even noticed.”

There was a moment of silence in which Robin stared at Eddie with the phone held between them. Thinking she may have hung up, Steve pulled the phone away from his ear to look at it before asking quietly, “hello?”

Eddie spoke then in a subdued and quiet tone, “why wouldn’t we have noticed, Steve?”

Steve blinked in shock. He hadn’t realized that Eddie was there. This was too much, too quick. Apparently his friends had noticed he was gone and were offended he left without telling them. What the fuck. 

“No one has wanted me around for weeks! I’ve been alone for months and the only time someone reached out, it was for a ride or to borrow money for the arcade. No one even talked to me unless I reached out first. So, I didn’t think it would be a big deal if I left. I didn’t realize anyone would notice.”

Robin or Eddie made a strange keening sound before Eddie spoke into the phone. “Steve, you’re our friend. Of course we noticed, man. Where are you now?”

Steve let out a derisive laugh of disbelief, “some friends, man. You don’t even like me. I have to go. Bye.”

He placed the phone back in its cradle and laughed humorlessly. How dare they say they cared now that he was gone? Their actions certainly didn’t show it. Some revelations have been made since Spring Break. He knew they were his friends but he definitely wasn’t theirs. So much for staying in touch. That’s on him for being hopeful he mattered to someone. 

~*~*~*~

“No, no, no, Steve!” Robin yelled into the phone but Steve had already hung up. Tears bled from her eyes as she realized just how much she had messed up with her best friend. She cried as she watched the phone, waiting for Steve to call back.

Eddie looked stricken on the other side of the counter where he held the phone in front of him, unseeing eyes clouded and looking into the distance. He set the phone back on the cradle and settled his elbows on the counter before letting his face fall into his hands. Of all the things Steve could have said, Eddie had not been expecting him to say he thought Eddie didn’t like him. He might love the guy. He had blown things out of proportion though and his attempts at protecting his own heart had broken Steve’s. 

Robin looked up at Eddie through her eyelashes, tears still dripping down her face. “How are we going to fix this, Eddie? He’s my best friend. He can’t just be gone.”

Eddie stressfully ran a hand through his unruly curls as he sighed. “I don’t know. How did we not realize it had gotten so bad?”

“I don’t know, it’s Steve! He’s always there, he’s just… Steve. He’s never not okay,” Robin said, gesturing as if to motion to Steve’s ‘okayness’.

“Apparently not! But what do we do now? The Chief said he couldn’t file a missing persons report because he left of his own damn free will. What else can we do?” 

Robin just shook her head and turned to help a customer ready to check out at the counter. Both her and Eddie made a silent promise to themselves. They were going to fix this somehow.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Part 18 Part 19 Part 20: Epilogue

Taglist:@nickavalens@conversesweetheart@themostunoriginalpersonever@swimmingbirdrunningrock@eddiethegreatteddybear @call-me-big-eyes @cornwallisandkerley @moonshadows-13 @glittergluekintsugi @cpidcupk @doubleb11 @mentalcyborg @amoris-no-smut-allowed @purple-lemonade @labels-are-for-the-weak @thebrazilianatheist @rajumat @livelaughlexa @5ammi90 @colorful565 @marvelousforlife @chaoticcoffeequeen @gregre369 @suddenlyinlove@thegreatmistake @stillfullofshit @nburkhardt @batxsignalsx @newunknowns @thosemessyvibes @tailsfromthecrypt @luciana-rowan @batxsignalsx

[kayjaydee17]

I just discovered one of my favourite OFMD age regression fics was deleted :(

[captainmaxatx]

Logan and Wade almost always do the nasty with the lights out and Wade is a little disappointed but he gets it and he resigned himself to a lifetime of dark sex long before Logan came along, sucks to know that your partner doesn’t want to look at you while getting down to business but its something Wade can live with.

Meanwhile, after a long day of stupid big bright lights Logan loves to have the lights out when making love with Wade because there isn’t any extra light bugging him and his natural night vision means he can see Wade perfectly, just the way he likes it

[hinamie]

i think the designs of the main cast r more or less solidified so it's time for the first not-a-sketch piece of this au featuring past and present avatars ! and their cat

jjk atla!au:

preliminary designs first year trio gojo/choso/nanami mahito/geto(?)/yuuta

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Laios's three Boy Best Friends. And yes, they hate him.

[plistommy]

No one needs to know that Steve lets the known Eddie ’The Freak’ Munson and known alpha fuck him.

No one.

No one needs to know how he begs for his big knot. How he cries and whines with so much desire once the older boy is inside him. How he even sometimes tells Eddie that he loves him in the middle of it when him and his omega are pleased. Content.

No one needs to know how Eddie teases his fangs across his neck, right where he could just bite and mark Steve up, making the omega his.

No one knows how much Steve wants it.

[mayasaura]

To be clear, I do ship Marcille and Falin!! I just ship them as.... complicated, you know? They have dyke drama. Marcille is deluding herself that Falin hasn't grown up and she's not going to age, and she's not going to die no matter what Marcille does, and Marcille isn't going to have to live most of her life having lost her. Meanwhile poor Falin would like a step by step written explanation of how to convince her very good elf friend that she is an adult, and has some potentially adult feelings about getting wet and naked and crawling into bed together

[calmbigdipper]

Beauty according to Alhaitham

[benoitblanc]

no no you guys don't get it. the x files cancer arc was, excuse the pun, a fucking white whale of a tv plotline that would not have worked nearly as well on literally any other show. it was a complete hail mary. the writers' room nearly didn't make it happen because they were worried it would fall too deeply into soap opera territory. and on any other show, it would! but the x files is about four key things: mistrust in the government, faith in both science and the otherworldly, building a life around trauma, and the fine line between love and codependency. it is the only show where the entirety of this situation- a government experiment on an unwilling young catholic leads to a terminal illness that is counteracted by a literal scientific miracle in the eleventh hour due to her partner's refusal to accept her impending death- could both happen at all and happen well. none of the themes in the cancer arc were new to txf at all. they'd all been lurking, to some extent, in the background since the pilot. the cancer arc wasn't merely milking a left-field catastrophe for the drama, it shoved the overarching themes of the show to the front and said look. look what these people are to each other. look how impossible it is to face the darkness alone. regardless of when the plotline was conceived, it was always going to happen. it was the only way the story could have ever gone. they were always doomed from the beginning

[trendingdrama]

What are you doing here? Don't you know you should be more careful? Let's go inside. I'll explain everything. And then,I'll do as you say. So… Hyun-woo... If this ever happens again,don't save me.

Qᴜᴇᴇɴ ᴏꜰ ᴛᴇᴀʀꜱ 눈물의 여왕 (2024)

[cloud-hymn]

how long do you think it took jing yuan to realize that yanqing was actually his son™ and not just some kid he was mentoring?

Honestly as much as I love the “local man adopts orphan child without realizing he is now a dad” trope I don’t think it really works for them. Jing Yuan is shown to be pretty wise and seems to be relatively emotionally intelligent so I just don’t think there’s a situation in which he would take in a child to “teach” without realizing that said child would also need a parental figure. If anything I think it would probably be Yanqing, battling with insecurity and self-doubt, that would have trouble seeing/accepting the fact that Jing Yuan values and cares about him enough to view him as family.

So basically I think their dynamic is less like-

Fu Xuan: So how’s your son?

Jing Yuan: My son?????

And more like-

Yanqing: Oh my god I can’t believe I just called the general dad I’m so embarrassed

Jing Yuan: I literally am your dad calm down

[aceforwhatevenisthis]

everyone hating on dev is sooooo wrong actually that’s my son, it’s not my fault he got the worst father in the world

[snoocupz]

Franmaya SWEEP.

[savethedots]

oh Mathias 💔

[gunsatthaphan]

"thank you for walking me home."

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Instruction on Courtship

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