#split tailgate

[king0fcrows]

.

[syoddeye]

unedited soap x reader thing, through simon’s POV. based off an image in my inspiration folder.

cw: abduction, imprisonment, more medical inaccuracies we breeze right through. cages. italics.

simon drives slow through the backroads. he takes the time to avoid potholes and cracks in the neglected asphalt.

he whistles low when it transitions to gravel, eyes flicking up to the mirror to check his cargo. gaz does his best with an arm slung over the goods to try and keep it still. tries to not whack his head as the ride jostles him about the bed.

price’s big blocky hand painted letters on the signs let simon know they’re close. turn back and private property and no exit. proper warnings. generous, really, to the right people. more than simon would give any lost souls wandering all the way out here.

the property comes into view through the trees, and simon sees johnny at the woodpile. wide shoulders and back slicked with sweat and dirt, heaving the axe up and bringing it down hard. adding to a pile of split wood. he doesn’t need to. they all stocked up while he was out, but it gives him something to do. an outlet.

johnny came back after the bullet. mostly. but even with all the doctors and specialists supplied by two different governments, something was left behind in the tunnels. he wakes up ranting and raving, talks about a wife. a whole life he lived while he was out—comatose, that is.

johnny told them how he was medically discharged and moved house. how he met a bird who lived a floor above him, chatted her up, and managed to get it in. how he dated this girl, popped the question, and married. they were trying for their first mactavish, when he woke up. he came to in the hospital, delirious and sick, and quickly spiraled when he realized none of it was real. he nearly bludgeoned himself to death with a steel meal tray, hoping to go back down, to find her. it took him and gaz to pin him until someone could sedate him.

since then it’s been a group effort. a new mission. they got the first bit done easy. medical discharge. no one fought them on it. their johnny’s got a hole in his head and can’t go ten minutes alone when he’s conscious. the next step was more of a challenge. difficult to execute without tipping johnny off, putting him on a scent.

simon parks the truck beside price’s, and tells gaz to hang back. he finds his captain overseeing johnny from the porch.

it’s ‘ere. in one piece, primed and ready.

paperwork?

done. squared and filed.

i’ll bring him around.

simon waits with gaz. they hear johnny before they see him, swearing up a storm. clearly irritated, in one of his moods. poor thing, simon thinks.

price guides johnny to the front with a hand on his shoulder, pushing him forward when the scot stops in his tracks.

steamin’ jesus.

ya like ‘er? she’s all yours.

she’s—

from the clinic. we thought you’d like someone familiar.

simon watched johnny stagger forward. him and gaz come away from the open tailgate, giving the shark-eyed man a wide berth. price chuckles quietly when johnny’s fingers lace around the thin bars of the kennel. when he grins at the crude sign gaz wrote and reads it aloud: just married.

feels like a dream, johnny whispers, reaching in to stroke the temple of the terrified, bound and gagged woman in the cage.

for all their sakes, simon hopes it’s a good one.

[froggibus]

Roadtrip - Overwatch Boys

Includes: Cassidy, Genji, Hanzo, Baptiste, Lucio & Mauga

Genre: fluff, some crack lol

Summary: take a summer roadtrip with your favorite OW man

CW: irresponsible/reckless driving, cops (Cassidy's), drinking (not while driving I promise), Genji slander, camping, very fun summer vibes w this one

This is part of my Summer Suntacular event, come check it out!

Cassidy:

definitely takes you through the midwest somewhere

insists on driving the whole way but its ok cause he has an insane sense of direction

like knows every road and shortcut like the back of his hand

tries to pretend like he doesn’t like your music but ends up singing along

loves stopping in old local diners

at least once the owner of a bar recognizes him and reminds him that he’s banned for life

and somehow he ends up talking the owner into letting you guys stay??

only drinks black coffee and pretends like he enjoys it

you forced him to try an overly sweet 6$ coffee one time and now he insists on stopping for one in every town

pretends to obey traffic laws but speeds whenever you’re on a backroad

a cop tries to pull him over and suddenly he turns into Max Verstappen and is offroading through a random field to lose them

“what the fuck is happening”

“I’m winnin’.”

you guys get takeout and eat it on the tailgate of his truck

stops at any bar that advertises live music 

will sing all the words all dorky to you and try to get you to dance with him

wants to stay on the road with you forever

Genji:

do not let this man drive he can’t drive for shit

wants to go somewhere neither of you have been before, but doesn’t really have a solid plan

matcha lattes at EVERY stop

you camp rather than stay in a hotel cause he never got to as a kid

like he’s never even tried a s’more or had a campfire before

chooses the most beautiful campsites ever with pretty beaches

neither of you can figure out how to set up the tent so you end up piling the blankets and pillows in your car and sleeping in the trunk

it’s surprisingly cozy though

also he totally winds up cuddling you for warmth

takes SO MANY pictures 

insists on using a paper map because he wants a more “authentic” feel 

results in you guys getting lost in the woods at least once

picks up handcrafted flavoured marshmallows at literally every gas station you stop at so he can make different kinds of s'mores

some of the flavours get wild too—like maple bacon or banana split

weirdly good at roadtrip games

brings his Switch or something so he can play Pokemon while you drive + names the ones he catches after the models of nearby cars

you end up staying on the trip way longer than intended because you guys have so much fun

Hanzo:

has a meticulously planned schedule of where you’ll visit and when

wants to take you through the Japanese countryside, maybe stop at a beach or two

very careful driver 

has a Nissan Versa that he babies and refuses to let you eat inside of (though if you bat your eyes at him enough, he’ll give in)

brings a polaroid camera so he can take pictures of all the beautiful sites

keeps the polaroids in a little folder tucked into the glovebox

refuses to get fast food and insists on stopping at cute local cafes

has packed for literally every possible occasion in only one tiny bag

you ask him to stop so you can buy something weird and obscure and he just so happens to have it

“I really wish I had Shrek 2 on DVD right now”

“check the glovebox”

???

has a soft spot for roadside fruit stands and had to stop at every single one to buy stuff 

the whole trunk is filled with fruit. there’s no escape

lets you play whatever music you like and will have your favourite songs memorized by the end of the trip

prefers experiences to souvenirs, but if you buy him a keychain or something he’ll treasure it forever

Baptiste:

annoyingly slow driver

everyone is passing you guys

has a pretty solid plan of where he wants to go but he’s open to feedback

has an immaculate sense for choosing the best local restaurants

always wants to try the most niche food combos he can find—like deep fried milk

needs to have his water bottle, an energy drink and a fun drink or else he can’t drive

wears sunscreen in the car and stops every few hours to reapply

cringes at your driving no matter how you drive and definitely gives you at least one (1) lecture about the dangers of speeding

loves tourist traps and wants to stop at every one you pass

insists on getting those dorky commemorative t-shirts from said tourist attractions so that the two of you can match

loves salt water taffy and looks for fun weird flavours wherever you find them

his entire centre console ends up being FULL of them by the end of the trip

he has the ac in the car on full blast to the point you’re shivering

not big on taking pictures but loves videos—he has about a thousand of the two of you trying new fun drinks and snacks

it’s been so long since he was able to be on the road without worrying about Talon—and he never wants to go back

Lucio:

nobody is more fun than him on a road trip

has a super fun car that he’s souped up and decorated to hell

the car has window tint so dark that you can’t see into it

does not obey traffic laws. you’re getting so many tickets, im sorry

buys those window markers so the two of you can draw on them when you’re bored

chooses the music and probably has a thirty hour long meticulously curated playlist

car singalongs all day

drinks so many energy drinks you’re surprised his heart still works

wants to stop in every single town to try their local specialties 

doesn’t really have a solid plan or anything, just wants to hit the road and see where you end up

wears increasingly goofy disguises when going out in public

“omg is that Lucio?”

“where?”

gets dragged into performing at least one impromptu concert somewhere

takes turns driving with you so the other can rest and reads out gossip articles about himself to entertain you

every hotel you stay in is a different gimmick and he goes crazy for it. the sillier the better

posts cute pictures of the two of you on his insta and is always taking candids

wants to make your roadtrip an annual thing

Mauga:

insists on taking his big ass Jeep that he refers to as “Little Betty” and refuses to let anyone else drive ‘her’ 

completely reckless driver too

drives with one hand on the wheel, music way too loud, the windows down even when you’re going like 110

he lets you pick the music as long as its upbeat 

constantly drinking some weird protein shake 

absolutely no plan of where he wants to go, just wants to hit up some nice beaches

has all of your stuff crammed in the back so high that you couldn’t possibly see out of the back window

drives in the sluttiest skimpiest tank top ever 

wants to try all the local cocktails and party in every town you stop in

gets drunk and becomes best friends with everyone he meets

needs to collect a Hawaiian print shirt in every place you stop in to commemorate the occasion

wants more than anything to teach you how to surf

he stops at every beach you pass and BEGS you to try it out

either wants to sleep in a five star hotel or on the beach with no shelter. there is no inbetween

takes one awkward blurry picture of the two of you throughout the entire trip and puts it in his wallet

Summer Suntacular | Masterlist | Overwatch Masterlist

(if you enjoy content like this, interactions go a long way! comments, likes & rbs are always greatly appreciated ^-^ !!)

[shitouttabuck]

this could be the year for the real thing

buck/eddie | 1.7k | 7x06 coda(ish)

Eddie can count on one hand the number of times he’s been this horrifically hungover. His pre-teenage-pregnancy body bounced back blessedly quickly from tailgate parties and keg stands and beer pong tournaments, but after that? His cousins threw his bachelor party before he married Shannon, which involved a lot of mixed liquor, and then there were a couple miserable nights out after she left him, and now, last night, him and Buck the sole bachelor party members standing after Chim didn’t show up.

This is his worst hangover, because at least all the other times he wasn’t seized with worry about one of his closest friends and regret that he and Buck hadn’t noticed the empty hotel bed the night before. The nausea from hell doesn’t help, either.

Chim’s safe now, under the careful monitor of Cedars hospital staff and Maddie no more than three feet away from him at all times. The relief is a palpable thing, and Buck offering him a steaming paper cup of green tea soothes the churning in his gut a little bit, too.

He takes a sip and sighs gratefully, slumping against Buck in the hospital waiting room chairs when he takes the seat beside Eddie.

“Still queasy?” Buck asks, voice a rumble.

“Mm,” Eddie says, “back-to-back shots of tequila and sambuca are not it.”

Buck shudders beside him. “Don’t,” he begs, closing his eyes and tipping his head back. “I’m still very much in range of hurling.”

“Have you eaten anything today?” Eddie’d only managed half a banana when he went home to shower and change, but he knows Buck’s been with Maddie most of the day, and when it comes to taking care of other people, he sometimes forgets about himself.

“Had a granola bar,” Buck says, eyes still closed. “Can’t—don’t wanna think about food yet.”

His stomach chooses then to grumble audibly, with traitorously comedic timing, and Eddie snorts. Buck opens one eye to grin at him.

“Don’t listen to her,” he says, patting his belly. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

“She doesn’t, huh? Then I guess she’s not interested in stopping by the juice bar on Sunset on the way home? Some sweet, sweet smoothies, all that fresh fruit and hydration, don’t even have to chew…”

Buck’s stomach rumbles interestedly and they both laugh.

“That sounds—so good, actually,” Buck admits. “We can pick up the peanut butter one for Chris, he’s always hankering—”

He breaks off as Hen appears at the end of the hallway, looking around and hurrying over as soon as she spots them. Eddie doesn’t think anything’s wrong—she’s beaming—but he and Buck sit up quickly in their seats anyway.

“Ugh,” Buck says, and Eddie’s dizziness at the sudden movement wholeheartedly agrees.

“We’re having a motherfucking wedding,” Hen grins, tugging them both to their feet, uncaring of their delicate dispositions. “Right here, right now.”

“Hospital wedding?” Buck asks, eyes wide. “Holy shit, okay, what do we need—who do we call—fuck—”

“Calm down, Buckaroo,” Hen smiles. “Just get friends and family over here, Karen’s gonna pick up Maddie’s dress, I’m gonna call Bobby, and we’re having a wedding.”

Buck’s already pulling up a copy of the guest list on his phone, squinting at it and muttering names under his breath.

“You boys got this?” Hen asks while dialling Bobby.

“Yep,” Eddie gives her a mock salute. “We’ll split the list and make some calls.”

He types out half the names Buck reads off to him in his notes app, and the two of them work through them methodically, calling Chim and Maddie’s nearest and dearest for this impromptu ceremony.

“Chris will kill us if he misses it,” he says suddenly, and Buck looks up at him, mid-text.

“He’s with Isabel, right? Pepa’s place is only a ten minute drive from here.”

Eddie nods. “I don’t have my car, though. You drove me.”

Buck tosses him the Jeep keys. “I’ll finish calling people, you go get them.”

“Cool,” Eddie says, and nearly bodies himself with the instinctive urge to lean over and kiss Buck on the cheek as he stands. It’s surprising, even though it shouldn’t be, because it’s an urge he fought and failed about thirty times last night, Buck’s sweaty skin pressed to his, salty under his mouth every time he dropped an innocuous, friendly kiss to his face with nothing but alcohol in his veins.

It hadn’t seemed out of place then, everything shiny and bright, Buck leaning right back into him.

Now, under the fluorescents of the hospital, organising a makeshift wedding for their family? Eddie doesn’t think it would land quite the same.

“Back in twenty,” he tells Buck instead, and has to physically tear himself away from the smile Buck turns his way, warm and golden under the harsh lights.

Chris and Abuela are delighted to be included, and, true to his word, they’re back at the hospital as the rest of the guests begin arriving, too.

Eddie’s—okay, he’s not going to say he’s not a crier, it’s just that his best friend is Buck, who cries at anything remotely tearjerky, so in comparison, Eddie’s not a crier. Now, though, they’re both very much damp-cheeked, much like everyone else crowded into this hospital room, watching Maddie and Chim exchange rings and vows with little Jee between them.

They’re a family, have been and would still be even if they never got hitched, but the fact that Chim refused to wait another few weeks, another few days, another minute before marrying Maddie? Eddie’s chest aches in the best way, and he slings an arm around Chris, and, before he knows he’s doing it, he looks for Buck.

The ceremony’s over, and Buck’s grinning at his phone, and Eddie pats for his own automatically, anticipating a goofy text.

But Buck’s edging backward, slipping out of the room, still grinning at his phone, and the ache inside Eddie spreads like an inkstain, blotting his insides.

And then Buck reappears with Tommy, which Eddie knew he was going to do, because who else would have Buck smiling at his phone like that, leaving his sister’s wedding even for a minute. Not me, Eddie doesn’t think. He doesn’t.

He’s not ready to make sense of the churning inside him—he doesn’t think he can blame the hangover for this one—when he clocks Tommy’s soot-stained everything and the way Buck’s own smudgy face matches like a puzzle piece.

He sees the way Chim notices, and Hen and Karen, Bobby’s eyes going wide and then soft. He sees the way Margaret Buckley doesn’t even attempt to school her face into anything but distaste and he hates her, but Buck’s not even looking at her. He’s looking at Bobby, and then he’s looking at Chim, and he’s smiling, this wide, guileless spread of happiness across his face.

Eddie’s helpless to smile too, the churning too complicated to parse beyond easy joy at every step of Buck’s sexuality journey, and this second-hand relief he’s not sure he’s got any entitlement to—he doesn’t, does he? Sure, he can be relieved that Buck doesn’t feel like he has to stay closeted, that everyone who matters loves him just the same, but he doesn’t get to feel like any of the relief belongs to him. Not now.

Not—yet.

Tommy’s made his way to Chim’s bedside to congratulate them properly, and Buck’s squeezing through the guests to get to the Diazes.

“Hey, bud,” he says to Chris. “Hi, Isabel.”

His face is still a smear of soot, and Chris giggles. “Buck. Your face.”

Buck frowns in confusion and Eddie steps over to him, hand already reaching to wipe the soot off his face, just like he has a hundred times at work. Except Tommy’s already there, licking his thumb and rubbing firmly at Buck’s chin, a gesture so familiar to Eddie that watching it happen separate from him feels like getting punched in the throat.

And beside the joy and the second-hand relief, there’s—this sense of profound loss. This emptiness, a space inside him he didn’t realise Buck had been occupying all this time. And now it’s like Eddie’s entered the room, finally, but the door is swinging shut on the far wall and Buck’s footsteps are echoing softer and softer as he leaves. Eddie’s late, he’s missed something he didn’t know was waiting, much less had a timeline on it.

The room empties out slowly, everyone giving the Buckley-Hans some space to rest, and Buck disappears down the hall hand-in-hand with Tommy.

“Y’all ready to go home?” Eddie asks Abuela and Chris. “We can get take-out.”

“Is Buck coming?” Chris asks.

“Uh, I don’t think so, mijo,” Eddie glances down the hall. “Although—” he pats his pocket, retrieving the Jeep keys, and startles when Buck appears by his shoulder.

“You have my keys,” he informs Eddie, stretching his hand out for them. Eddie drops them in his palm dutifully. “Juice bar? The fancy one on Sunset.”

Chris whoops excitedly, and Eddie smiles, even as his brow furrows.

“You’ve not got a hot date?” he asks Buck quietly as they walk to the exit.

“I drove you,” Buck shrugs.

Eddie rolls his eyes, stopping Buck with a hand at his elbow. “I think we can manage getting a cab.”

“I seem to recall you promising me a ‘sweet, sweet smoothie,’” Buck says, raising an eyebrow at Eddie. “You tryna stiff me, Eds?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Eddie lifts his hands in surrender. “Uh—do you wanna ask Tommy along?”

“Nah,” Buck says easily. “Maybe another time. He’s just gotten off shift. I’m seeing him tomorrow, anyway.”

“Okay,” Eddie nods slowly, ache bittersweet. “Just us, then.”

Buck beams. “Me and my boys,” he crows, wrapping an arm around Eddie’s shoulders and tugging him forward so he can wrap the other one around Chris. Isabel makes a noise of offense, and Buck hastily amends, “Me and my boys and Abuela. Dream team!”

Christopher groans at the very public embarrassment and Abuela smiles indulgently at Buck and Eddie lets himself get pulled along, safe in this room in his heart that won’t ever be empty, even if Buck’s not filling it in the same capacity as Eddie’s getting ready to allow himself to want.

It doesn’t matter. The door on the far wall’s not quite swung shut after all; it sits ajar, crack of light and Buck’s love spilling through. Maybe one day he’ll come back through it. Maybe one day Eddie’ll follow after him enough to ask.

[ytmanzwhore]

Chase It - 3

read parts one // two

summary: nellie and kate come face to face with a tornado

warnings: brief descriptions of injury!

an: Im glad folks are enjoying this!! tagging a few friends in the update @stillhere197 @thespillingvoid

"What did the tornado cowboy have to say?" Javi asked the girls as they sped down the road towards the building storm.

"Exactly what you'd expect," Kate looked at her laptop. 

"He's definitley needing a serving of humble pie," Nellie said under her breath as she cracked the window and felt the build around them. She closed her eyes and let that feeling wash over her after five years as Kate directed Javi closer to the cell. This is what addicts must feel, Nellie thought as she opened her eyes. Because that's the only reason she could be sitting here after the tragic storm five years ago, and the one that had followed that Spring.

Nellie observed the wind turbines on either side of them, many of them bending with the wind but some of them already beginning to shake in the face of the storm. "It's forming, just like you said," Javi said with excitement in his voice. Javi took some time to explain the plan to Nellie and Kate, and the red head could practically feel Kate's anxiety rocket as Javi's excitement increased. 

Their car headed further towards the cell while the other Storm Par vehicles split off to triangulate around the vortex. Nellie kept her eyes on the storm, watching in awe as it formed and began to descend to the ground. Her moment was abruptly interrupted as Javi had to yank the wheel to avoid the big red truck cutting them off. 

"It's like the wild wild west out here," Javi yelled as he adjusted, bringing their truck back onto the road. 

"Good god," Nellie laughed, watching as the truck veered off again to cut through the wind farm beside them. As Kate continued to guide Javi, the three of them went quiet as hail began to fall, taking them all back to five years ago. They were snapped out of their memory as they drove by a large grouping of cars and people, Javi honking as they all got out of the car to watch apparently Tyler's live stream. 

"It's the Tyler Owens' effect," Javi scoffed before the rest of the team began to call in with their locations and radar activations. "Where am I going Kate? I've gotta be within 300 meters of the front of the tornado."

Nellie watched as Kate looked out the front window. "Take these," Javi handed the girls goggles. "Are we getting close?"

"Just up here, in the clearing," Kate stuttered. Javi took the directions, pulling over and hopping out of the car. Nellie and Kate followed, Nellie following Javi to the tailgate while Kate stared at the storm in horror. 

"Get back in," Kate screamed at them, immediately getting in the driver seat and pulling away. "This isn't right."

Nellie ignored Javi's questions as she watched the car move out of the storms path, Kate pulling the car to a halt. 

"We're too far," Javi yelled as he looked back at the storm, shaking his head. Tyler chose that moment to drive by them.

"What are you doing out here?" Tyler asked with a grin. "Storms over there! Hey city girls." Javi's look could kill as Tyler pulled off with a laugh, driving directly towards the tornado. Nellie watched in wonder as the red truck went straight towards the vortex.

"Are those," Nellie gasped. "Fireworks?"

"Yep," Javi said dejectedly as Nellie let out a disbelieving laugh. 

"He's insane," Kate said as she got back in the car and the three of them headed back to the team. "I'm sorry Javi," she said in the tense silence of the car. 

"It's okay," Javi said as he pulled the car back to a stop. "We'll find another one, it's all part of the gig. I'm gonna check in with Scott."

"Dammit," Kate muttered as he shut the door behind him to call his pissy friend. 

"Don't beat yourself up," Nellie leaned forward to squeeze Kate's shoulder. "That was your first time coming face to face with one in five years. There was bound to be some issues. You weren't ready today."

"Yeah," she sighed as she looked back at Javi in the mirror. The man joined them, announcing they would be meeting up with the other guys at the motel. They pulled up to a familiar sight: a dingy motel, with storm chasers running around the parking lot after a long day. 

"Haven't we stayed here before?" Javi asked.

"Yeah, we've stayed in every motel in Oklahoma," Kate laughed. 

"Some of us more than once," Nellie grinned as the two laughed. 

"We used to have Addy check in," Javi reminisced. "And then we'd all sneak in. Have Addy do it because she was-"

"So sweet," Kate and Nellie said softly. 

"Y'all want to hang out tonight?" Javi asked abruptly, looking at Kate nervously. "I was just gonna shower, but we could come back out."

"I'm real tired," Kate excused. "But maybe another time?"

"Yeah, sure," Javi's smile was fake.  "All right, see you both tomorrow. It's good to have you back."

"I'm not back," Kate protested, but Javi just grinned. Nellie smiled softly as she turned back to the lot, seeing Tyler's team all settled around and huffing as she watched the man usually behind the camera poking at a gash on his arm. 

"City girls," Tyler said as Kate headed up the stairs and Nellie stopped by the three people at the foot of the truck. "Y'all said the East would give us a show."

"Didn't throw you off," Kate shot back with a smile. 

"That's what makes Tyler famous," the man with the gash said with a big smile.

"On youtube?" Kate asked while Nellie rolled her eyes, putting her bag down and smiling at the three members of Tyler's team watching her curiously. The brunette man gave off some youtube stats while Nellie pulled out her mini med kit, putting it on one of the camp chairs and waiting for the group to finish. 

"Can I get your surnames?" Ben asked as Kate looked down at him. "In case I mention you in my piece?"

"Just Kate and Nellie," Nellie interjected softly, offering Ben a kind smile. 

"These two are tricky," Tyler shook his head as his friend complimented her and Kate's call on the storm that day. While another member of the team explained cap to Ben, Nellie turned to the camera man. 

"Can I please clean that up before you catch an infection?" she raised a brow as the man's smile went wide. 

"If you wanted to get your hands on me sugar, you just had to ask," he said in a drawl as he hopped down from the truck bed, offering her his arm. "Name's Boone."

"Nice to meet ya," Nellie focused as she looked at the cut, prodding it for a second before Boone went on. 

"Right there behind ya, you got Dani, Dexter, and Lily," Boone's introduction were cut short by his yelp as Nellie surprised him by pouring peroxide over his cut. "Damn darlin, gotta warn a man before you start in with the pain play."

"Where did you guys all meet?" Kate asked. "Did you guys all study meteorology at the UofA?"

The group all laughed. "Nah, me," Boone laughed. "I go with the wind ya know? But him," he nodded up at Tyler. "He did, taught me everything I know."

"Aw," Nellie cooed as she wrapped up Boone's arm and Tyler got his friend to stop talking about him. "Is the tornado wrangler being bashful?"

"You," Tyler pointed a wrench at her and shook his head. "Our crew ain't like your crew. We don't need PhDs and fancy gadgets," Tyler said stiffly. "I guarantee this crew has seen more tornados than yours combined."

Nellie had to giggle at that as she finished up with Boone's arm, giving him a little tap. "Keep it clean please, and if you need more bandages, come to me, I've got a ton."

"Thank you nurse Nellie," Boone smiled brightly, Nellie returning it as she put her bag back together. 

"Where are y'all chasing tomorrow?" Lily asked as the red head headed up the stairs to join Kate.

"Nope, not falling for that again," Tyler cut them off. "These girls are from New York, can't trust a thing she says."

"Well, you can always trust a guy who put's his name on a t shirt," Kate said with a smirk, as Tyler's friends all laughed.

"Or wears a belt buckle with no scratches," Nellie shrugged as she followed after her friend, offering Tyler and the crew a finger wave as Lily and Dani's cackles followed them.

[in1-nutshell]

I would like to request Fearless getting a trip to earth, finally being able to meet up with their crush.  Only for the lost light to be completely obvious in their spying.  The two of them are out at a cafe, the same sports car has driven by several times, two ‘grandmas’ are at another nearby table, who happen to have exactly the same wigs and comically cartoon looking nightdresses because that's what grandmothers wear right?  Someone is watching the two of them from over a newspaper.  That baby has a fake mustache.  There's a pair of binoculars popping out of a bush.  The crush is completely oblivious to this while Fearless is feeling fear for the first time.  And finally, Whirl appears in his holoform.  “Fearless, is this a friend of yours?”  “He’s my… sister.”  Who knows where Megs is or how hes actually handling this.

Now some Fearless fluff to balance yesterday's angst.

Hope you enjoy!

Fearless meeting their crush in person

SFW, Platonic, Hinted romance, Familial, Human reader

MTMTE

Fearless’s superiors had called in and had scheduled them to come to Earth for a couple of days.

They were lucky that the Lost Light managed to travel close to Earth on time.

There was a good number of bots excitedly talking about sight seeing and talking about old stories about their time stationed on Earth.

Fearless was just happy to be on Earth for a bit.

It certainly would be a good change of scenery.

Upon landing in the base, Fearless was already walking down the platform with an away bag.

Rodimus looking at the bag. Rodimus: “What’s with the bag?” Fearless: “I’m staying at a friends place for the time being.” Several bots look at Fearless in surprise. Tailgate: “Does that mean you won’t be coming back to the ship?” Fearless: “It’s not like I’m never getting back on the ship Tailgate. My friend just offered to let me stay for the few days we’re going to be here, nothing more.” Chromedome: “Who’s your friend?” Fearless: “Just a friend.” Rewind: “That still didn’t answer the question.” Megatron: “But you will be on base at the end of the day?” Fearless: “Megs my friend has nothing to do with my job.” Megatron: “You still didn’t answer the question.” Fearless: “I’m not staying on base Megatron. I’ll still be coming back for work, but—” BEEP! BEEP! A smile appears on Fearless’s face as they race to the sound. Fearless: “Bye guys! Be good! And tell Whirl to stay away from the electrical lines!”

The bots just watched their little human run to the direction of the car honk.

Out of pure curiosity, some tried to go see who was picking them up.

Put the hangar door had closed before they had the chance to see.

The next few days ended up in a pattern of sorts.

Fearless would come in for the morning, stay for the meetings, make sure the bots were doing okay before spending the rest of the day out.

Many bots tried justifying their behavior.

They had been gone from Earth for a while and just wanted to get in as much of their planet before they had to leave it.

It seemed to do well with most of the bots…

And then there were the outliers of that group.

Fearless was in a coffee shop waiting for their crush to return with the orders. They looked around and for a split second thought they saw a familiar-looking orange vest. Brushing it off as soon as their crush sat down in front of them. ‘Crush’: “Here you go.” The crush gives them their cup. Their fingers brush. Their crush looks behind them a bit confused. Fearless: “What it is?” ‘Crush’: “There’s this lady doing some Victorian era cosplay near the napkins. Fearless stops mid sip. ‘Crush’: “And she also has a little kid with a fake mustache.” The crush laughs a bit. ‘Crush’: “I should go ask what convention they are heading to.” Fearless quickly grabs his hand before he starts to get up. They quickly scan the room. Sure enough, the lady in purple and the baby with the fake mustache where by the napkins. A table away was another familiar pair. Two blonde men with grandma hats. One of them with a large camera and the other had a familiar looking tie. Fearless grabs their crush’s hand and their drink and starts heading out the door. ‘Crush’: “Hey you, okay?” Fearless suddenly makes eye contact with a woman with purple top and Autobot insignia on her belt. Fearless slightly sweating: “Peachy. Let’s just go!”

Fearless was now hyperaware of their friends holoforms around.

And actively following them!

They swore they even saw Magnus’s holoform in an alley.

They were not ready to have their crush meet them yet!

What if they ran away?

What if—wait they weren’t even dating yet! Why were they so worried?

Fearless knew exactly why.

It was hard enough to find someone outside work to hang out with.

Much less someone who made them feel good.

They were not going to risk it, at least not yet anyways.

Thankfully their crush didn’t seem to be bothered about suddenly moving from place to place without a clear direction.

Eventually Fearless managed to lose the group near a park.

They sighed in relief before noticing that they were still holding their crush’s hand.

Fearless quickly let go spouting out apologies, but quickly stopped when he grabbed their hand and carefully laced his fingers in their hand.

He gave them a sheepish smile and quietly stated he liked their hand in his.

Fearless swore they melted a bit inside.

Fearless’s crush pointed to a swing set. ‘Crush’: “You want me to push you?” Fearless smirking playfully. Fearless: “As long as I return the favor.” Their crush gently pushes their shoulder. The pair reaches the swings when they notice a girl sitting on them. A girl with teal hair… in pigtails… and was that an eye patch? Fearless starts sweating more when the ‘girl’ turned to their direction… and started walking to them! Whirl: “Hey Fearless, missed you today at the meeting.” ‘Crush’: “Uh, you know her?” Fearless: “I… babysat her a couple times. A chaotic little fiend, aren’t you?” Whirl just puffs her chest a bit. Whirl: “Only doing my best.” Fearless: “Hey do you mind waiting a second? I need to remind this young lady that her new babysitters are looking for her now.” Whirl: “No they—OW! Fearless!” Fearless grabbed Whirl by the ear and walked a few feet away before whispering harshly. Fearless: “Whirl?! Are you kidding me?! What are you and nearly half the ship doing here?! I think I saw Magnus in an alley way!” Whirl: “Sightseeing… Magnus took a wrong turn.” Fearless: “You gave him those direction, didn’t you?” Whirl: “Maybe…” Fearless: “Back on topic, why, oh so conveniently, are you all ‘sightseeing’ in places specifically I go to? I don’t think that a coincidence.” Whirl: “You’re a smart Fleshy you figure it out.” Fearless: “Primus, Megs is going to have a field day when he hears about this.” Whirl just gives them a cheeky look. Fearless pauses and looks at Whirl mischievous smile more closely. Fearless: “Whirl… where’s Megs?” Whirl: “As much as I’d love to tell all about our plan—” Fearless: “Whirl…” Whirl: “I might be worried about your little boyfriend over there.” Fearless: “He is not my—wait what?”

Whirl just points behind them.

Fearless feels all the blood from their face drain.

Their crush was talking to MEGATRON!

Fearless never sprinted so fast in their entire life.

They were red in the face, they didn’t know if it was from anger, embarrassment or from being flustered.

When they got back to the ship, they were going to be EVERYONE’S problem.

Their crush waves at them. ‘Crush’: “I didn’t know your dad was cool.” Fearless: “I’m so sor—did you say cool?” ‘Crush’: “Yeah, we were talking about human poetry and what writing styles we liked.” Fearless gives Megatron a look. Fearless: “Was that all… Dad?” Megatron: “Besides an introduction to your male companion.” Fearless looks at their crush who just smiles and nods in agreement. They look down at their phone and notice the time. Fearless: “Well, we got to go now. Gotta get dad his pills on time.” Megatron: “I don’t—” Fearless giving him a side glare. Megatron sighs and begins to walk away. Fearless: “…Was that really all you talked about? There was no threatening or anything?” ‘Crush’: “Nope, nothing weird.” Fearless looks down a bit. Fearless: “Sorry that our last day was all…this.” Their crush gently takes their hands in his. Fearless is fighting a blush best they can. ‘Crush’: “We can’t plan everything right? I’m just glad I got to spend it with you.” They get pulled into a tight hug. It lasts a minute before they both let go. ‘Crush’: “Give space a taste of Earth Fearless!” Fearless waves back and starts jogging to catch up with Megatron. They don’t see their crush’s image sigh, flicker and disappear.

Fearless on the inside with their crush.

[touyas-multi-purpose-saline]

wisteria with hari kurono please?? 🤍

cw: Yandere Themes, Religious Imagery, Sacrilegious Themes, Hints of Kidnapping, Use of Drugs / Sedatives, Graphic Imagery, Hinted Stalking, Unhealthy Relationships, Uncomfortable Scenarios, General Dark Themes Not Suitable for Immature Audiences, Gender-Neutral Reader. Read at your own discretion! 18+ Only!

author's note: Thanks for this request! I really like Kurono. This was fun to write. It was definitely a prompt that made me think! REQUESTS ARE STILL OPEN—READ TAGS! This was a prompt from "Yandere Prompts Flower Language" and can be found here . I do not condone unhealthy behavior in any sense! This is strictly fiction! Do not force yourself to read if you're uncomfortable.

PROMPT: Wisteria (Long Life, Immortality): "Tell me I'm your God/Goddess and I'll grant you a slice of Heaven."

word count: Approximately 1.2k.

You’re stumbling.

The floors seem to warble, they rush around in strange angles, a flock of birds scattered and frantic, and your arms swipe out for any sort of way to grasp those wings and whisk away too. Tears are streaming down your face, or maybe that’s blood, but you feel like you’re looking into a fishbowl and its fins tickle your cheeks and you wonder if you’re even crying. A stack of books open, their pages fluttering, and you wonder when the epilogue will draw to a close. You think you can see your life on each page, but they’re too fast and you can’t help but feel like you’re hallucinating even being alive.

Footsteps, is that what that is? There are claps of something plastic against the floor, into the darkness, reverberating, and you know that air recycles around you but you’re not gasping it in. Someone is walking behind you, a car tailgating, headlights on bright, blinding, and you can feel that they’re getting closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and

“There’s no point in running.”

A line slices between your brows, splitting the seam of your face, the cawing of a raven. You want to glance around, you do, and you feel like your landline’s been snipped. No tone, no message after the beep. You hope the voice won’t speak again, its odd tenor lilting into bass. Perhaps that saxophone has a blistered reed, and if you focus on the elongating hallways, you’ll be able to hear the trumpets on the horizon, that peachy swan. You know that voice. It’s terrifying, and that reed splinters more and more.

“I’ve hit you with the hour hand, so you’re not getting very far anyway. I’m surprised you’ve been able to get to this point.”

Is it because you’re lucky? Or has he been methodically stalking behind you, watching you trip over your own two left feet, watching your arms flail pathetically, watching you gag, watching you beg with wordless pleas? You know he has. Why are you even asking yourself these rhetorical questions? Maybe because you’re hoping some sort of ethos will nibble on the crux of your jaw, will whisper sweet nothings to comfort you, to tell you that this isn’t as bad as it will be. How long will this last? It’s like mushrooms are pooling into your veins, on a slingshot that keeps tensing backwards, and you’re rocking roughly gentle, and you think that there are hums dragging your body down below the current. If psychedelics steer your body into the ground, will those arrows shoot forward again, cottonmouths, vipers, rattles, and snatch you up?

“This is my fault, I’ll admit that. I should have put a chain on you, but I guess I miscalculated the exact dosage of the sedative. Maybe I don’t have your accurate body weight? Height? I’ve looked at the most recent doctor’s papers, but it has been a while since your last visit. My bad.”

Does he know what your endocrine system looks like too? Does he know each neuron, each axon, each hormone, each receptor, each cell, each threshold? Does he know the inner mechanisms of your subcortical structures? Hindbrain? Does he know how your hypothalamus works specifically? Can he target your front lobe? Parietal? Temporal? Occipital? Even your fucking cerebellum? Has he figured out their coding? Has he found a way to alter all of their functions until the floor swallows you and he can pull you by your ankles back into that desolate white room?

Who even is this man?

“I didn’t want to resort to this, of course. It just kind of happened. If you wouldn’t have run away, you wouldn’t be so… like this.”

How can he be so formal? So fake? Your head is spinning in ways that don’t comprehend reality. There shouldn’t be a way for your ankles to twist upwards, shouldn’t be a way for your downcast eyes to cross backwards and forwards, shouldn’t be a way for your heart to shred into two before reforming into loops. You just want a name—you just want a name.

“Hurting you wasn’t a priority. I wanted more than this. I wanted it to be easy, but you’re making it kind of difficult. But I’m sure you can already tell that.”

Just keep going, even if the slick underneath the soles of your feet, the jelly and jams of snails, trails behind you like vomit and spittle and slows you down. You can do this, you can get out of here. The darkness doesn’t want to swallow you, doesn’t want its throat to constrict around your shuddering frame, the refocusing of a camera lens, the click, the growling technology.

“Sigh. Listen, listen to me genuinely. You don’t have to be afraid of me. I won’t hurt you… again.”

The jelly turns into gum, turns into plasters that rip off your follicles, peel at your skin, residue on a windshield. It’s getting harder to breathe, but maybe that’s the extra poison he stabbed into you whenever you slipped underneath his legs. You shouldn’t have, shouldn’t have hit your knees to the floor and crawled, shouldn’t have barreled, back slamming against the ground, rattling your skull, just to escape him. That needle was sharp, that arrow was sharp.

“All I want is for this to be perfect. Tell me I’m your God and I’ll grant you a slice of Heaven.”

Insane, he’s so insane. He can’t be there in the head. Whatever verses, whatever psalms, whatever dead sea scrolls, whatever avesta, whatever sacred texts he’s built this foundation upon are just words on a page. Maybe it’s what he wants, maybe there’s a reason, maybe that’s why your knees wobble and give out. That’s why the balls of your palms ache whenever your nails clatter to the floor.

There are worms wriggling around the edges of your vision, dancing, singing, laughing, rejoicing, hallelujah, hallelujah. And you can’t focus on the sound of his approaching footsteps, the drumbeats, the way your ears hear whistles and bells, the way the floor grows hotter and hotter, melting oil and broiling lakes, and you feel like those cloudy acres shift into burning flames. He’s almost here, imminent domain.

“Will you love me like I ask?”

You can’t respond, the words are glue and bondage taped around your throbbing tongue. Maybe you were never crying, maybe that’s why drool is seeping from your ducts, maybe the romans were right. There’s a tourniquet in your body that loses its threads, and your side collapses, the puzzle pieces of the tiles filled with hymns and sins.

He stops. Your eyes are blurry whenever you slowly turn your head. Those lava gray locks are snakes swaying in the wind, those piercingly cold eyes. There’s a memory in your head, a face behind fencing, something tucked away, a name, a person, recognition. But that won’t save you now.

“Because, you know, it’s not like you have much of a choice.”

[thanksjro]

More Than Meets the Eye #51 — Ten Has Done So Much for All of You, and for What? You Don't Deserve Him.

So, obviously, last issue ended rather poorly for Team Rodimus and Pals. It doesn’t look like the start of this one going much better, as a mass of baddies bombard the late Necrobot’s “Fortress”. Whirl, being Whirl, wants to go out and face his certain death head-on. Everyone else is more than fine to wait for death to come to them.

Rewind, showing off the skills he’s picked up as a videographer over the last several thousand years, gets the security cameras up. I’m assuming that Censere had these installed to keep an eye out for bored space teens who might have wanted to graffiti his millions of plinths. Too bad it didn’t save him, or his property, as outside, Tarn is shooting the ground with his twin fusion cannons. He’s having to hold his arm in place with his other hand, as I’m sure the kickback of firing two lasers at once must be something fierce. He finishes and commands his troops to cease firing, everyone withdrawing.

The Lost Lost Lighters are super jazzed about this, Brainstorm stating that they must have heard about Tailgate’s Power Punch, an attack with a name so banal, it surely must kill anyone who faces it, if only so they don’t talk shit about it after the fact.

Megatron, however, knows what Tarn’s pulling, as he’s a theatre kid, and everyone knows that the really intense theatre kids follow their scripts to a T, and will murder you for trying to ad lib like some filthy fucking improv performer.

By doing this, he’s honoring Shakespeare.

Swerve has begun to bawl like a baby over how bad the situation has gotten, likely recalling all the awful shit he witnessed the last time he crossed paths with the DJD. Magnus, who still has his arm off, because Velocity is all about uplifting her fellow women, demands that they try to call for assistance, then apologizes for swearing, even though he’s absolutely at the very least said “damn” in the past. Maybe he’s confusing the total inability to curse with the IDW publication law that you’re not allowed to say “bitch” until your series has been truncated by 50%. Or maybe he only allows himself to swear in the presence of poor snack management. Anyway, it’s not like it matters— Megatron’s just informed everyone that Tarn also likes to cut the phone lines in situations like this.

All of this, because you wanted middle management for your faction.

Because Megatron never baked any sort of loophole into the DJD’s way of handling shit, because how the fuck could he have possibly known he’d one day have to denounce his entire reason for existing to satisfy the commercial whims of Hasbro, the gang is going to have to figure out some way to defend themselves or escape in the next eight hours. Rodimus orders everyone to split up and look for clues, blowing off Ten in the process.

Velocity calls Swerve, the closest thing to a doctor besides her, to come look at the Necrobot’s corpse, which appears to have turned into a pile of ash. Swerve informs her that this is what happens when someone who’s old as balls kicks it. Now, it may concern you that Velocity, who was the only doctor for a ship of over 200 until this morning, doesn’t know what a dead old man looks like. However, we must recall that age-related spark burnout hasn’t been a thing until very recently for Cybertronians, and Caminus, the colony Velocity is from, is marginally younger as a society. It probably just hasn’t happened in her circles yet.

Velocity and Swerve play around in the pile of old man dust, until she pulls a key out, with “1/001” written on it. Her search party will be focusing on finding what this key goes to, as it was surely important, given that it was on Censere’s person at the time of his death.

Over on the DJD’s ship, The Peaceful Tyranny, Deathsaurus stares at the corpses Tarn’s nailed to the wall of his room. The nails have Decepticon insignias on the heads, because of course they do. These are the same corpses Tarn had on the wall of his office in Grindcore. Tarn asks if Deathsaurus is impressed with his first editions, and when Deathsaurus is understandably bewildered by this question, Tarn explains that these are corpses that were sent home after dying in the mines of Messatine, who had Megatron’s writing etched into their organs by Terminus, so that said writing would reach the outside world. Tarn thinks it’s pretty fucking cool, but Deathsaurus is, again, bewildered by this interior design choice. In general, Deathsaurus is bewildered by a vast majority of the ways Tarn chooses to live his life.

Tarn, opening the mouth section of his mask to drink a shot’s worth of energon, likely totally unable to see as he does so, since the eye holes don’t line up anymore, says that if Deathsaurus was a true intellectual like Tarn was, he’d understand that trying to chase down a ship with quantum jump capabilities is really difficult when you no longer have a sneaky little double agent to give you exact coordinates, so grounding their targets was the best option. No word on how Tarn feels about the ship he super-nightmare-death-murdered being perfectly fine now.

Deathsaurus really just wants to know why they backed off after having their targets cornered, because he hates Tarn and his stupid little games, having been working with him for at least a couple months by this point. Tarn, however, has the audacity to be smug about how all the Autobots are probably tearing each other apart out of fear, as the sun makes its way across the sky.

Back with Velocity’s search party, Nautica’s joined the one-and-a-half doctors in the Key Quest. Velocity asks Swerve about why Ten came down with the rest of the group, and in Swerve’s defense, it’s not like anyone knew this was a murder trip until after they’d arrived. When the brain attack happened last issue, Swerve hadn’t disclosed what exactly he’d heard— now, however, he admits that he’d gotten an earful from Ten about the Ambus Test, and how just because he’s made up of the corpses of multiple religious hermits doesn’t mean he isn’t a person too, and also once that union gets going, he’s gonna sic lawyer-mode Magnus on him.

Anyway, they found the door that key went to.

Back with Rodimus in the main room, he’s collecting the notes of all the other search teams. Rung’s face has been shaded to look like he got lip fillers. Rodimus isn’t pleased, but it isn’t because of Rung’s gotten work done.

Nightbeat, however, DOES have good news to pair off with the bad. News so good he starts using metaphors, which confuses and frightens Magnus. Nightbeat has found the quantum travel device the Necrobot used to travel to the deaths he recorded, and what do you know? It’s got just enough juice to get everyone out of dodge and into the loving embrace of safety. Hooray! Time to form an orderly queue, going from most to least obnoxious paint job.

Then Team Killjoy shows up, Velocity and Nautica letting everyone know what’s behind door #1: it’s a bunch of organics in stasis.

I will say, the inverse of Transformers fans collecting robot toys mint in package is decidedly more disturbing.

Whirl isn’t horribly keen to die over a bunch of squishy nobodies. Nautica states that the organics are vulnerable and need protection. Skids, really wanting to be in that straight-passing relationship, agrees that the DJD will totally kill these guys, because they learned their technoism from SOMEONE MEGATRON. Chromedome, who has had his husband back for maybe six months at this point, really doesn’t want to stick around for the sun to set. Cyclonus asks just why the fuck there’s a bunch of dudes in the basement. Tailgate wonders if it really matters, considering the situation at hand. Magnus, needing direction in his life, makes sure that Rodimus hasn’t decided to take a nap standing up like a horse. Brainstorm, who has been oh-so-subtly trying to edge the door to the quantum tube shut, makes the point that they could do a lot of good after the fact, if they left now and then vowed to protect a slew of organics afterwards, which would eventually even out their sins, probably.

Rodimus feels pretty good about this proposal, but he loves looking like the most appealing, middle-of-the-road choice, and says that they have some time to talk this out. However, we’ve forgotten that we’re riding with Mr. Ex-Peace Through Tyranny, who does nothing in half-measures and loves to be contrarian to Rodimus at every given opportunity.

This turn of events is such a shock to Rodimus, he shouts at Ten for trying to show him something. Poor Ten.

Rodimus reminds Megatron just what exactly they’re up against and what he’s signing himself up for and for what variety of living creature, but Megatron is aware of all of these things. Looks like the talking to Skids gave him on the duplicate Lost Light finally sank through his thick skull, and he’s ready to be a big boy about this whole Autobot thing. He then informs everyone that he’s not doing this to make a point, and that anyone who wants to dip is welcome to do so, as long as they’re doing it for themselves.

Of course, it’ll be a cold day in hell before any Autobot lets Megatron out-Autobot them, and it’ll be an even colder day before Cyclonus leaves his not-boyfriend alone on Murder Planet. Oh, and the fact that organic life is just as valuable as mechanical. Totally. Everyone defaults to stay, Rodimus closing the door to the quantum tube.

Swerve then offers a real heel-clicker of an alternate escape plan: what if… we just stole the DJD’s ship, stuffed it full of the organics, and flew away before anyone noticed? Now, this is, of course, an immaculate plan, which no man could ever find fault in, but Whirl is not a man, but rather a machine, and does question where exactly they’d be getting the keys to such a ship. Cyclonus is trying to be a bit more of a supportive friend to Swerve, since the last time the guy felt left out, they all had to project their consciousnesses 400 miles out and pay NYC rent, asks if there is more to this perfect, perfect plan, crafted in one of the finest minds of any generation.

There is not.

So, we’re gonna steal a ship.

Ravage offers to track the smell of unwashed bachelors and Megatron body pillows to see where the DJD parked. Rodimus gives him his blessing, marveling at the skillset at his disposal, as Magnus makes a fucking wild face of incredulousness and Ten sulks in the corner.

Before he runs off, Ravage brings Megatron a phone and asks that he talk to Tarn, because surely if anyone can get him off the warpath, it would be his old boss.

Back at the Peaceful Tyranny, Tarn, Deathsaurus, Nickel, Tesarus, and Vos are going over the plan for the day. Sure hope Deathsaurus can parse Primal Vernacular. Tesarus reminds Tarn of the time they went after Heretech and he turned a storm shield into a forcefield that held them off for days, but this band of Autobot nerds aren’t Heretech, now are they? Even if they do have an ex-Wrecker, a Skids, and the power of love on their side.

Then Tarn tells everyone to shut the fuck up, because he’s getting a call on his electric razor.

Back at the “Fortress”, Megatron stands astride the space scooter, looking horribly depressed, as he prepares to have a little chat with his most murderous fanboy. Rodimus questions this decision, having clocked that even on his best day, Megatron wouldn’t just whole-heartedly decide to effectively kill himself for the sake of 50-60 organics he doesn’t even know.

Of course, we’ve seen that at least one planet in the Magisterian system still has life, as the Scavengers had to use holomatter avatars at some point, as seen in issue #45. Perhaps if Megatron knew about this, he wouldn’t be so keen to go on a suicide mission.

Over with Ravage, he passes by Skids’s plinth, which I’m sure isn’t an omen of any kind, and discovers that the smell of B.O. and hot pockets he was following wasn’t attached to the Peaceful Tyranny, but rather a base the DJD and Deathsaurus’s boys threw together. Also, Ten’s been crawling after him in an attempt to keep hidden this whole time, over what was likely multiple miles. He didn’t do a good job in the slightest, but points for tenacity, buddy. Ravage understands that Ten’s just trying to help in some form or fashion, so Ravage gives him a special job: bullet sponge.

Deathsaurus’s men, Helex, Kaon, and the Pet all see Ten up on the hill. Kaon in particular looks very excited at the promise of a plaything, so much so that he lets his rabid little chihuahua off-leash.

Meanwhile, Megatron races across his personal field of spark flowers, on his way to rendezvous at his plinth with Tarn. I wonder who suggested this meeting spot? When Megatron arrives, he demands that Tarn at least face him with his, well, face, but Tarn says that his mask IS his face, even though we know it isn’t, because Tarn couldn’t commit to the bit hard enough on this particular front for some reason.

Megatron offers himself up for surrender. But enough about his crisis of morality, let’s get back to Ten.

Ten, former Legislator that he is, fights valiantly, throwing four guys in the air at once, even as the Pet scratches his collar bone and Helex punches him in the head, his face telling me that he’s gonna do horny mouth shit with Ten’s brain if he manages to get ahold of it. Kaon’s in the background, shooting electricity into the sky. I think he’s just happy to be here. This nonsense up on the hill allows Ravage to sneak over to the base to check for a ship that DOESN’T smell like wine, jockstraps, and viscera.

Back with the Autobots, someone finally remembers that Ten’s a person, and asks where the hell he’s gotten to. Magnus isn’t sure, though he knows where he HAD been. I expect better from you, Magnus. Ten is your little buddy! Your brother in artistic arms! He even left something for your enjoyment, while he went out to help Ravage!

After having solved the issue of their defense system, Ten went out and got his ass shredded for multiple pages, where he was repeatedly shot and set on fire and torn limb from limb and electrocuted (I guess someone finally pointed Kaon in the right direction). It seems like the end for Ten, but his assailants are suddenly shot and dealt with, blanketing the hill in silence.

Silent enough to hear the equivalent of twenty USD in Australian dollaridoos, having been converted into English pounds, rustling around in a British guy’s wallet.

[wheelsgoroundincircles]

1953 Dodge Coronet Sierra

The first of the Hemi Wagons

This 1953 Dodge Coronet Sierra station wagon is powered by a 241ci Red Ram Hemi V8 paired with a three-speed manual transmission with overdrive and is finished in red with a gray roof over two-tone gray leather upholstery. It's listed now on BaT!

Features include a 12-volt electrical system, electronic ignition, American Racing 17″ wheels, dual exhaust, a split tailgate, tinted windows, a heater, and a push-button AM radio with iPod compatibility. The car was refurbished around 2010 under prior ownership and was acquired by the seller’s spouse in July 2023.

[curiositydooropened]

Wildfire • Searing

A trip to the Ether brings force new pain and horrors, and you spend time in quarantine remembering truths of the past.

Pairing: Steve Harrington x Reader

Chapter Wordcount: 9,356

Warnings: There's a flashback this chapter! I marked it off and hopefully it's easy to understand, but please let me know if it's confusing! Thank you! • enemies/rivals to lovers, second chance romance, slooooowburn, made out scene that goes nowhere fun, unrequited love, so much pining, blood, gore, character death, best friend!disabled!Eddie Munson, character injuries, trauma, PTSD, hallucinations, drowning, concussion, hurt/comfort, fire, panic attacks, insomnia

Fic Masterlist • Navigation • Masterlist

Chapter Four: Pyre • Chapter Six: Combustion

---

NOW

September 1988

Byers hummed under his mask, the low rumble of his chest against your arm that shook like the truck bed over treacherous and unpredictable terrain. Your eyes were closed in attempt to quell the nausea of motion sickness. The soft vibrations of the boy’s voice combined with some foreign sixth sense you could feel in the marrow of your bones, steeling the claws of terror that shredded your esophagus. 

The truck came to a halt, and you peered one eye open to take in your surroundings. The streets of Hawkins were black on a still night, moon casting shadows down alleyways and across the back side of The Hawk’s marquee. Harrington pulled himself to two feet, reaching a hand to help you up. You took it, pack weighing you down.

“Argyle, radio on?” Nancy hopped from the tailgate and spoke into the receiver clipped to her shoulder strap. Her voice echoed to the one on your chest, and Steve’s, a handful more of Scorch team as you all stepped onto pavement, dust kicking up at your heels. 

“Copy that, Scorch lead,” Argyle repeated, and then you heard the slow crank of his window before he shouted. “Hey, be careful out there. I’m just a call away.” His demeanor had sobered entirely.

Jonathan met him at the window, and they exchanged an intimate handshake. 

You had to look away. 

Your breath tasted of oxygen from your tank and tequila without the buzz, adrenaline taking over and burning through the calories before it could hit you properly. Your ears rang a bit, struggling to focus on the crunch of asphalt beneath your feet. You were moving before you’d even realized, a steady walk.

Something tingled in your fingertips, a magnetic pull. You halted your steps and clenched your fist, released, clenched again. With a frown, you glanced forward at the gaping wound in concrete, a pulsating wall of wet and vines, a whisper that sounded like home. 

Something snatched your wrist, and you pulled back to find Steve’s eyes on you, big brown and worrisome. 

“Alright, we go in, find the source, torch what we can, and get back to the Gate.” Nancy’s voice cut through the air. She stood before the gash in the wall, the steady pulse of red flashed across slender features. “Stay in your groups. Watch your feet. If anyone gets bit, you call for immediate quarantine.” She paused and looked out on the group before her before saying, “Stay alive.”

The torch end of her gun split through the thin membrane, and the vines began to slink away, leaving the space gaping and cold. Again, it pulled you to it, tugged on your sleeve opposite Steve’s grip, led you forward. 

“Hey, are you good?” He asked, voice low, breath too warm against your ear. He sounded underwater. 

You grit your teeth and offered a curt nod, pulling him with you through the gash. That swoop rocketed your stomach, but backwards, a tug at your navel that felt right, like pieces were falling back into places, like someone had reversed the fall of a Jenga tower. The bits that wobbled and swayed now firm and planted like your boots to the grey matter of the Ether. 

“Steve,” Jonathan called, far off. “You two are with us.”

—

 The Ether was a desolate landscape of ash and ruin. Vines overtook the charred remains of your comrades and their own kind. Not as thick as they had been, dust remained, still in the damp atmosphere. No wind kissed at cheeks. No cloud moved, an overhead shadow of burgundy and black. 

You felt the next quake before it settled, a buzzing in your fingertips, a rumble in your stomach. The only movement in a statuesque world. Then the asphalt rolled, cracked. You gripped Steve’s shoulder strap to hold him upright as Nancy and Jonathan barreled into one another for support. 

Nancy shouted orders, muffled by her mask, but you watched her two fingers pointing for cover. Northbound, a semi upsized, jack-knife becoming a rickety shelter. 

One-by-one, you filed in on unsteady footing, the Ether quaking around you. The crackle of broken limbs split the air as widow makers were shaken from nearby trees, branches stabbing into decaying Earth at right-angles. A power line groaned and snapped, loose line slapping against asphalt a handful of meters away. 

“What exactly are we looking for?” Steve asked, voice too loud, breath fanning your ear. 

“Sign’s He’s back,” is all Nancy could muster before her hands came flying near your face. You crouched out of her way just in time to see her slapping Steve’s mask back onto tanned cheeks. “Keep your mask on.”

“You mean signs like an Earthquake…” Jonathan snapped. Mid-word, the low rumble stopped, settling your stomach, an ache in your knees. 

“Let’s keep going,” Nancy instructed, peeling herself from beneath the truck bed to scout the road once more. 

“Do you feel anything?” Steve’s voice came muffled this time, still inches from your cheek, and you felt his hand, once again, around your wrist. He held you back, allowing the other two to gain quite a distance. 

You swallowed, adjusted your straps. You felt everything: the prickle of your skin beneath his clammy fingertips, the damp chill of stagnant air, that all-to-familiar set of eyes between your shoulder blades. The smell of death and decay somehow stronger. 

Steve stepped into your sight line, jaw tight, brown eyes full of worry. His plastic mask cut into the bridge of his nose, past smile lines you hadn’t seen in years. He released your wrist, but the steady burn of his knuckles against yours grounded you, pulled you right-side up. 

Then you heard her voice. Vickie spoke your name. Her breath fanned your cheek. Her nose nuzzled your ear, sent chills down your spine.

Steve had heard her too, maybe he’d even seen her. You watched as brown eyes went wide, face flashing in terror. He lurched forward, forearm shoving at your bicep to get you out of his way. “Jonathan!”

Everything else happened in slow-motion: the turn of your heel as you crashed to the ground, pack weighing you down and bouncing off cold asphalt, Steve’s footfall echoing as he scrambled for the trigger. Fifteen feet away, a demodog crouched on its haunches, flower-like face opening one petal at a time, claws extended before it sprung.

Jonathan Byers cried out, a sound that pierced the dull throb at the base of your skull. The meat of your palms turned to pulp as you caught yourself, hands and elbows bloodied, but the taste of iron filled your mouth like copper pennies, mixing with saliva and the soft meat of human flesh.

You sputtered, spraying the pavement red, and scrambled to your feet.

Steve kicked at the beast, hard, sending it flying from the gaping wounds on Jonathan’s side. It caught itself in a slide. Another one leapt from the ruins of the semi trailer, the sound in its throat guttural, dark, bone chilling. 

“Steve!” You called, pulling your gun from its holster.

Nancy was faster on the jump, knocking it from the sky with her fist. 

Jonathan managed to fight off a third, smacking it over the head with the butt of his weapon with a distinct grunt of pain.

“All clear?” You called from behind the first two, thrower heavy in your hands, finger on the trigger. 

“Clear!” Steve and Nancy confirmed, taking two steps backward until they were backed into Jonathan.

With a deep breath, you squeezed the trigger. There was minor kickback, nothing you weren’t used to, and the surge of power as you sprayed the creatures with a stream of liquid fire. The heat burned at your mask, the tops of your cheeks, your lashes, a sensation you were all-to-familiar with, had made peace with, found home in. But as the flames stuck to the gooey flesh of the monsters, as the smell of ash and decay met your nostrils, something worse settled into the pit of your stomach, seared beneath your own flesh, charred your bones.

You dropped the device in your hands, unable to maintain hold. Your breath had been stolen from you, replaced instead with unbearable, all encompassing pain. Was this what Vickie felt when you stripped her flesh from her bone? Was this white hot the same that she felt in her last moments, fire on her last breath? You fell to your knees. 

“Harrington to base, we need emergency evac immediately.” Steve’s voice stuttered over the radio on your chest. You heard your name and Byers’. “Requesting medic and mandatory quarantine.”

You ripped your mask from your face and gasped for air, trying to see past the blur of your eyes. The horrible image of Vickie’s death flashing in your mind again and again and again.

“Copy that, evac on its way,” Argyle’s voice was high-pitched, cut-off on the end as he undoubtedly hit the gas. 

“Harrington, it’s Munson. What’s going on out there?”

Two hands grasped your face, cold, clammy, a plunge of relief despite the fire still rattling inside you. Soft thumbs swept at the tops of your cheeks, and when your eyes focused, Steve was inches from your face, his own expression wrought with worry. 

“Harrington!?”

“Demo dogs,” Nancy answered for him. You glanced over the man’s shoulder to see her tightening a tourniquet around Jonathan’s thigh. She reached for her radio again, hand slick with her partner’s blood.

“What do you mean dogs? Alive?” Hopper’s voice came through the radio this time, and it wasn’t until he’d said it that you realized. You hadn’t seen a single living creature in the Ether since Vecna died. No demogorgon walked the scorched Earth, no demo bat patrolled the skies. For over a year now, this place was desolate, empty. 

“Hey, look at me,” Steve squared your chin back to him while Nancy explained your team’s predicament back to base. “Are you in there?”

“I could feel it,” you croaked, voice shaking. “The fire, Steve. I felt it.”

“I know,” he frowned. “You were screaming.”

Just like Vickie had screamed, engulfed in flame, calling your name, pleading for you to stop. 

Your stomach rolled, and you shoved your partner out of the way as it emptied its contents to the asphalt, as black and bloody as the heap of dog charred not fifteen feet away. 

“Is she flayed?” Nancy approached, ever the investigator. “Are you flayed?” 

“No,” Steve stepped between the two of you. 

“Nancy,” Jonathan warned from his place on the ground. He was holding his side together with one hand, and his face was growing increasingly pale. 

“I just want to know what we’re dealing with here,” she explained, teeth grit to turn her jaw sharp as glass. “Is he back? Is he talking to you?”

Steve glanced over his shoulder at you, and you shook your head, wiped your mouth on the back of your hand.

“Well, you’re clearly connected to the hive mind, so -” 

“Nancy!” Jonathan called, sending a chill down your spine. His partner rushed to his side, and he gripped her hand. “Help me up.”

“Steve,” you rasped, staggering backwards, out of earshot. “Maybe she’s right.” 

“Stop it,” your own partner held his hand up before he helped Nancy pull Jonathan to his feet. 

“I mean, what if he can see all of this through me? What if I lead him right to base?”

“You won’t,” Jonathan grit his teeth, leaned on Steve’s broad shoulder. “I’ll keep my eye on you.”

Steve scrubbed his face with his hands, and you watched his measured gaze point Nancy’s direction. She wiped blood on her pant legs and nodded, adjusting the straps of her pack. 

“You’re not staying out here,” you argued. “There are dogs, bats, probably. Who knows what else.” 

“Someone has to stay and figure it out.” Nancy pointed out.

Before you could come up with more excuses, more reasons to pull Steve back with you, back to the base and back to safety, Argyle’s set of wheels squealed into view. He reached out the window to pop open the door handle to the rickety old pick-up, a distinct scowl darkening his features. 

“What the fuck didn’t you understand about ‘be careful’, Byers?” But there was no meanness in his tone as he scurried to help Steve pull Jonathan up and onto the open tail gate of the truck bed. 

Nancy followed, heaving his pack up beside him. 

You waited a long moment, turning to face the beasts you’d helped gun down. They felt eerily familial now, some kin you’d betrayed with the tug of your finger. They lay before you charred and pock-marked, flesh bubbling to a sludge of goo beneath their forms. A shiver on the wind caught your shoulder tops. 

“Let’s go, buddy! We gotta get this idiot stitched up, pronto!” Argyle called, drumming the side of your caravan back to the real world, your real home. 

You lifted yourself up and over a wheel-well, pack weighing heavy against your lower back. Someone tossed a handkerchief your way as a means to blindfold yourself. You gripped it tightly in one hand, willing your trembling fingers to still. 

Over the red cotton, you caught a whispered moment between lovers. Jonathan told Nancy not to worry, begged her to be careful, pressed a chaste kiss to her forehead, her cheek, her salted lips, her pointed jaw clutched in a grimy hand. 

You bit back emotion that welled, this need that pitted itself somewhere dark, somewhere deep. You turned your cheek away from the couple and found a honeyed gaze, brown eyes beneath a crumpled brow. You opened your mouth to speak, but something latched to that need, somewhere dark and deep, lurking on the water’s edge, a predator waiting to strike. 

You grit your teeth and dutifully brought your handkerchief to your eyes. Strong hands replaced yours at the back of your head, maintaining a knot that wasn’t too tight, and you felt the warmth of Steve’s breath against your ear. “Keep it contained.” 

With the wrap of a fist to the tin roof, your stomach lurched, and you were off. Steve’s words and Jonathan’s hummed tune playing tennis in the recesses of your mind. 

———

THEN

One Year Earlier

September 1987

The music was so loud. Pop ballads blasted through overhead speakers that once called fire drills and announced containment breaches. Chatter echoed against concrete walls between each break in song. The occasional whoop and holler accompanied the clinking of plastic cups and pouring of more liquor. 

Your own glass of lukewarm bourbon stung like smoke, only sweeter, and hung at your side. You were tucked into a folding chair in the corner, watching the party rage on in an echoing cafeteria, the bitter taste of defeat on your tongue.

Your best friend clung to the shadows on the far side of the room, pressed against a pillar with her face buried in her girlfriend’s throat. The smiles on both of their faces were the only consolations you’d allow yourself to celebrate.

“Hey, don’t know if you heard, the Wicked Dick of the Upside Down is dead,” Eddie Munson slid into your purview, all curls and dimpled smile. He returned your non-response with an eye roll, and ordered you to hold his walker steady so he could dip into the seat beside you.

He slumped against you, his denim jacket jingling with the amount of pins stabbed through it. “You’re seriously harshing my mellow.” 

“Oh, am I?” You rolled your eyes and continued your stare into the middle distance, watching the steady pulse of happy party goers. “I’m not stopping you from enjoying your night.” 

“Yes you are,” he whined. “Because the little dark rain cloud over your head is bumming me out.” 

“Yeah, well, I don’t feel like celebrating,” you sighed. 

Eddie hummed, nodded, all hair in your periphery. He shifted in his seat, and you caught a glint of light out of the corner of your eye. He’d pulled a flask from his pocket and twisted the cap off, tipping it against the plastic brim of your cup. “For Gutierrez and Ramsay,” he mumbled low enough for you to hear.

Emotion clawed at your chest at the gesture, wetting your eyes, thus far the only remembrance you’d heard for your fallen compatriots. Your team leads fought fire with fire, and died at the hands of the Devil. When you closed your eyes, you could still make out the sharp angles of their necks. Hank cradled his partner. Staring at their lifeless bodies, Vickie’s hand tugging you to retreat, you wondered if you’d succumb to the same fate. Bodies twisted and torn, in the arms of someone you loved.

With a shaky hand, you brought the sticky sweet beverage back to your lips. 

“You know, Linda told me we can’t carry the burden of every life lost. It’ll just weigh us down.” Eddie sounded about as convinced of the bullshit as you were. 

You rolled your eyes and took another swig for good measure, the bourbon stinging like ash at the back of your throat. “Fuck Linda.”

A laugh caught your attention, a private moment that was probably too far for you to catch, but your subconscious was listening for it. Steve Harrington was perched on a cafeteria table, all long limbs and head thrown back in delight. A smile lit up his tanned features as he took what you could assume were slicing insults from Erica Sinclair. 

Her own lips were pursed into a shy smile, a rare expression on her sweet little face that had your own heart swooping. The girl’s arms were crossed, face tilted downward to hide the smile before it spread across all of her features.

You watched Steve toe at her knee with his shoe until she looked up, and he offered his fist in some form of solidarity or congratulations. She returned the gesture with knocked knuckles before the two of them erupted into a more intricate secret handshake. 

The entire exchange warmed your insides more than the drink in your cup ever could on a day like this.

“Hey, dickheads,” Eddie’s call startled you back into focus.

You cowered into him, as to not be seen by wandering eyes, and noticed the couple of teens he’d called out for. Dustin Henderson and Mike Wheeler inched by, red solo cups in their hands. 

Eddie beckoned with long, ringed fingers. “Are you both insane? If Hopper caught you with those, you’re dead men.” 

“Hopper can’t do anything about it,” Wheeler scoffed, but he kept his volume low. 

You snorted.

“Uh huh,” Eddie cocked an eyebrow, unconvinced.

“We were bringing them for you guys,” Henderson informed a little too loudly, the most obvious lie he’d told.

Wheeler kicked him in the shin. 

“Thanks so much, Henderson. We were running dry.” Eddie’s face split into a grin, and he held his hands out to receive the kids’ drinks. 

Shoulders slumped in defeat, the two boys handed over their drinks. 

You noticed, with the faintest glint of light, that Eddie had exchanged them for his flask. “You bring that back to me tomorrow, or else.” He hissed, but couldn’t manage to hide the look of mischief from his brown eyes, the curve of his mouth.

With a matched grin on their faces, the boys scurried away down a secret hallway to partake in their own form of celebration.

“Eddie Munson, you big softy,” you snorted, elbowing his side. 

He sighed, taking a long sip of something bright red from the cup in his right hand. You managed a chuckle at the cringe of dramatics on his face at the taste, tongue stained neon within seconds of the liquid touching his lips. He chased it with whatever he held in the left.

“Did you just confiscate these from the children?”

Robin and Vickie approached the two of you, hand-in-hand, matching lovestruck looks on both of their faces. Eddie extended the cherry concoction, and Robin took it with a matching look of mischief in her blue eyes. 

You felt a familiar sneaker tap against your own, and managed to greet your best friend with a sad smile. Her head was tilted toward you, pretty orange hair cascading over her shoulders. She took two fingers to the rim of your cup to tip it towards her, peering over to see just how much you hadn’t drank.

“Did Steve find you?” Robin asked, licking neon from the crease of her plush lips. 

Something odd kicked in your chest, not unfamiliar, just dormant, and your face warmed. You avoided Vickie’s gaze as she tapped your foot again, and you shook your head. You peeled your cup from her grasp to take another drink.

“Oh, well he was looking for you,” Robin shrugged, but you noticed the smirk meet her lips simultaneous to her own cup. 

You narrowly avoided Vickie’s waggled eyebrows as you glanced over your own cup to search for Steve across the bustling caf. He was no longer perched tabletop, Erica long-since distracted in a conversation with her brother. But it didn’t take long for your eyes to attract like magnets to those broad shoulders, the gloss of his hair, the curve of his tricep. 

He stood toward the center of the crowd, locked into a conversation with Nancy Wheeler. Dim light was cast across her pointed features, and she seemed engaged in their conversation, a lightness on her brow you hadn’t seen since you’d met her. She seemed relieved, celebratory, maybe even a tad shy as she spoke, hands tucked beneath her arms. 

“I think I might go to bed,” you swallowed, sliding Eddie the remainder of your drink before pushing into Vickie’s space to stand. 

“I’ll walk you up,” your best friend seemed too eager, a frenetic energy buzzing under her skin. 

You tried to ignore the kiss she shared with her partner, letting Eddie offer a loving bite to your wrist like a feral child in his form of a goodnight. You patted his hair, and Robin took your spot beside him, cheersing you with a red cup and lips stained pink. You nodded. “Night.” 

-

The stairwell echoed in silence, that swell of a pulse in your eardrums that matched the tandem steps of you and your best friend. The steel door slammed shut behind you, quieting the ruckus of the celebration down below. An odd chill coursed over your shoulder, and you glanced behind you to find nothing and no one but the vast expanse of concrete and steel spiraling for floors below. 

“They’d want you to be happy, you know,” Vickie cut the silence, chewing the smile from her face with extreme difficulty.

You rolled your eyes and continued your climb. “I know, Vic. It’s just… complicated.” 

“Have you talked to him since?” She pressed. 

She referred to a drunken night one week earlier. You’d fallen asleep in Steve’s bed, nose-to-nose, large fingertips tracing hidden circles into your skin. 

“No,” you avoided her gaze, despite her neck stretching to catch you. “But it’s fine. We’ve been busy.” You’ve been avoiding him, sinking yourself in training, in Scorch, in fighting. Secrets shared between covers felt insignificant compared to a fire-fight with hundreds lost, minuscule in comparison to the ache from your grief and the confusion you’d attached to a win you weren’t sure would ever come. 

“Sure, okay,” Vickie scurried to round the landing before you, to stand a few stairs ahead and box you in. “But like, I don’t know, it really looks like it’s over. You know? Like really over. Which none of us thought would happen, and maybe it’d be good for you to consider what you’re going to do next, right? I just think you really need to seize an opportunity. And I’m not just saying this because you’re my best friend and he’s Robin’s best friend. I just want you to be happy.” 

She was nervous, rambling. 

You glanced around, her voice echoing up the staircase, and you gripped her wrist to lead her back up beside you. “Okay, I get it. Take a deep breath.” 

“Sorry,” her shoulders relaxed, bumping your own as you continued your climb. A soft breath of a laugh fell from her lips.

You pushed open the heavy steel door, holding it for her to pass through before you fell back in step, sneakers tapping against linoleum flooring, dimly lit by the escaping sunlight. 

Vickie walked beside you, gaze a little far-off, hands wringing in front of her, twisting at a ring on her middle finger.

You pulled your key on its lanyard from a pants pocket, and your dorm door clicked open. “You want a glass of water?”

You fell easily into your roles. You filled her a plastic cup of water while she tidied discarded books and pages, piled your laundry into a basket. She smiled at your eye roll, and you watched as she drained the cup. She caught a bead of water as it fell from her lip and released another of those nervous laughs, the ones that prickled the hair at the base of your neck, the ones you knew preceded confrontation. 

“Vic, what’s going on with you?” You scoffed, crossing arms over your chest. “You’re being cagey.”

She rolled her eyes, but you saw the chew of her lip. Caught, she turned her back and paced toward your bed before slowly lowering herself at the foot. “You really think this is done? Do you really feel like he’s dead?” 

This woman had fought monsters. You’d watched her jump into action on dozens of occasions, leading hundreds of innocent people to safety. You’d seen her face covered in char and sweat and ash as she scorched the remnants of her hometown. You’d seen tears spring to her eyes as the landmarks of your shared childhoods crumbled into matching piles of ruin. Never had you seen as much concern etched across her soft features. 

You swallowed, nodded. “He’s gotta be, right? We watched him burn. Eleven said…” A chill swept over the back of your neck as you watched Vickie twist her ring around her finger once more.

“I know, but I don’t know. Do you think he could have like… jumped onto someone else? Maybe he’s in hiding without a body somewhere.” Her tenor was starting to quicken, the breadth of her sternum rising and falling too rapidly.

You reached out for her, and she jumped under your touch. “Hey, why are you so worried about this?” 

Her eyes were wide like saucers, dark circles beneath them that you’d honestly all possessed over the last few particularly grueling weeks, but in this moment, hers felt pronounced. 

You swept hair from her long eyelashes, tucked it behind her ear. “What’s going on?” 

She shook her head, scrubbed at her face with her hands, and peeled upward and out of your grasp. “It’s nothing, it’s stupid.” 

“Nothing’s stupid. Come on, talk to me.” You reassured her, taking her seat on the foot of your bed, preparing for the worst. 

“It’s…” She paused, back to you, shoulders rising and falling with a deep breath. When she spun to face you, her demeanor had changed, lightened. The rain cloud that hovered before seemed to drift away. “I just want this to be over so bad. Robin and I have been talking about what we’re going to do, when this is all over. It used to feel so far away, and now it’s right here, and I’m scared, I guess, but excited, but also just anxious, and - “

“So tell me about it,” you cut her off, somehow managing a smile despite the repeated reminder that this was over and soon you’d be floating in a world who didn’t understand what you’d gone through, and odds are, you’d be alone. 

She chewed on her bottom lip, a habit her mom had scolded her for since she was a child, but that aching smile fell back over her features, and she crossed to collapse on the bed beside you. The mattress harrumphed under her weight. “We talked about going to school together. We both got into IU.” 

“Yeah?” You fell backwards beside her, staring up at the stained dorm ceiling panels. 

“Yeah,” she nodded, “I’m nervous, but like, excited, you know?”

You swallowed back that lump growing in your throat. “You were excited before. You still want to be a music teacher?” 

Vickie always had her plans, organized chaos in the form of binders stuffed with mail-in applications, the gentle push and prod of you to apply with her. You could never decide, stuffing envelopes into that floorboard beside your bed, lying about acceptance letters when she’d received her own. You’d sipped vodka out of matching Betty and Veronica mugs and tried not to imagine her off in the big city without you. 

“Or art,” she confirmed, fingers tracing lines in your ceiling like the constellations you used to lay out and watch.

You sighed simultaneously, and snorted in response. 

She muttered your name, and you glanced sideways to catch the pale yellow light cascading across high, freckled cheekbones, a soft sadness in her eyes. “Do you think I’m being reckless?”

You frowned. 

She caught your gaze and swallowed. “With Robin, I mean. I think I might ask her to move in with me, and I know that sounds crazy because we’re literal children, and - ”

You caught her wrist mid-air, gave it a squeeze, managed a dry laugh. “Vic, you literally followed her into War.”

The laugh that poured from her at the irony was warm enough to pull a genuine smile to your lips, a gesture that was growing more and more foreign as this fight continued. Your grip loosened on her wrist, and she moved to interlock your fingers, her little silver ring scratching between roughed-up knuckles, blistered and burned. 

“You know I’ll never leave you, right?” 

You bumped her with your forehead, her visage blurring in the proximity. “Couldn’t get rid of me when you moved to Hawkins, what makes you think you can get rid of me now?”

Satisfied with your answer, she brought the back of your hand to her lips for a peck and release. 

“Good,” she tutted, rising from the foot of your bed to open the tiny wardrobe beside you. She pushed aside a couple of grey tank tops and pulled a black v-neck from the rack, holding it to herself as if she didn’t have forty in her own closet to match. “Then I can talk to you without you getting mad at me, right?” 

The challenge prickled your skin, competitive nature over-wrought with irritation at the shift of her tone from sincere to playful, mean, even. “Probably not,” you snapped, propping yourself on your elbows to catch the shirt she tossed your direction. 

“Put this on, it makes your boobs look amazing.” 

You groaned and flopped back to the mattress, suddenly warm and exposed under her gaze. You hid your face in the t-shirt, hangar still attached, and shook your head. Her name slipped from your mouth in annoyance.

Yours was repeated back to you in a mocking tone. “What if tonight’s the last night?”

The rustle of your drawers pulled your focus from around a sleeve. “What?” 

She was bent over a pair of jeans you hadn’t worn in well over a year. A tear had pulled through the fibers on both knees, and you were positive the waist band wouldn’t fit now. “What if it really is all over?” She tossed the denim beside you. “What if this is the last night we’ll be in this building? What if it’s the last night we celebrate with these people? What if it’s your last chance to talk to everyone?” 

You knew she didn’t mean ‘everyone’. 

“I get that you’re sad, okay? I’m sad too. I’m going to miss them just as much as you are.” Vickie’s hands found your knees, and she jostled them. “And I understand if you’re tired. We’re all exhausted. I yawned about twenty times dancing with Robin in there. She yelled at me.” Her face lit up with something fierce. “But I’m asking you to get dressed and come with me back to the party, because tonight might be your last night, and I don’t want you to miss your chance.” 

You scoffed and tossed the shirt aside. “Miss my chance for what?” 

Her mischievous gaze was hard to avoid, and she leaned in even closer. “I don’t know. What do you want to happen?”

It was a question you’d asked yourself several times over the last week, when avoiding Steve meant slipping into the girl’s locker room and excess of times or taking the rickety elevator to avoid him on the staircase. You thought last time would be the ‘last time’ so-to-speak, and all the other times before that. That’s just how life worked under fire. 

And last time, as with each of your last times, you’d ended up exchanging truths under government issues linens, chuckling soft breaths against one another’s mouths, making promises of honesty and protection. You weren’t sure you needed more than that. 

Of course, you wanted to feel the coarse pads of his fingertips draw circles just north of the insides of your knees. You wanted to feel his breath fan your pulse points. You wanted to hear the way his breath caught when you dug your nails into his scalp.

You’d settle for soft kisses to the temple after long runs through the Ether, like the ones you’d caught him press to Robin’s sweat-slick hair. You’d settle for the elaborate high-fives he’d give the children when they’d reunite after nights in Quarantine. You’d settle for half-smiles across the caf like the ones he’d give you when you’d finally caught his gaze. 

“Okay, forget about it,” Vickie glossed over your non-response. “Just come downstairs and hang out with me. We’ll find Robin and Eddie and get you another drink and just pretend like we’re stupid kids again. Maybe we’ll sneak into the pool.” 

Her optimism was always so difficult to crush, her rosy lips split into a grin, and you knew she wouldn’t cease fire until you complied. 

With a resigned sigh, you reached your hand for her to help you up, and you nodded.

She took your hand with a grin and tugged you to your feet. 

-

The party below spilled upwards into living rooms and dorms. Music on overhead speakers was transferred to boomboxes and acoustic guitars. Instead of echoing off concrete walls, laughter was absorbed into threadbare couches. Hallways dimmed to the red glow of Exit signs. Footfall faded, stumbled behind locked doors. 

You perched on a comfortable sofa in the living space, waving Eddie goodnight as he waggled his fingers. Vickie and Robin had sandwiched you in sloppy kisses before they slunk off hand-in-hand, whispering sweet nothings. You sunk further into the cushions, hugging one tightly in your lap as the lights turned off and your world was cast in moonlight from a nearby window. 

You sat there for ages, maybe the entire night, staring out at the greyscale world beyond, those treetops tinged in golds and rubies in the daylight. You thought of your friends, hand-in-hand, and of Pedro and Hank, arm-in-arm, and of the emptiness that lingered when you recognized life, as you lived it, was coming to a close. 

You pondered and mourned in silence, starlight the ever-present reminder that you were Rightside Up and safe, somehow, a promise Steve had kept without realizing it. 

“Hey,” a voice full of recognition startled you from your reverie, and you turned to face Steve. His strong features were silhouetted, but you knew the curve of his shoulders, the dip of his jaw. 

“Hey,” you offered a smile, shrinking further into your seat. 

“Couldn’t sleep?” He asked, gesturing for permission to join you.

You nodded, shrugged. “Not really.”

He crossed slowly before sitting, his weight on the springs shifting your own. He was close, warmth radiating off biceps pressed against yours. “I was looking for you.” He touched his knuckles to your knee, a sensation that shot electricity through you. 

“Oh?” Your voice squeaked, throat dry. 

“Yeah,” he nodded, and you ventured a glance his direction. The moonlight poured in, pale yellow against his features, his nose, cheek, the swoop of his chestnut hair. “I know you and Hank and Pedro were really close, and I wanted to make sure you were okay.” 

His eyes shone, and you had to pull yourself from his gaze to process his words. He cared. The thought brought a smile to your cheeks despite the grief you felt in your soul. You tipped your face away from him and played with fraying of the canvas lining the pillow in your lap. 

You contemplated lying, reassuring you both that you’d be fine, but something about his warm presence settled beside you, the soft lilt of his voice, had you speaking freely. “I will be,” you nodded, a sentiment you hadn’t even realized until you spoke it into existence. “I just haven’t had time to think about what my life’ll be like without their… guidance.” Orders, teasing, coaxing, care.

“I get that,” Steve sighed beside you, head tilting to rest on the furniture at your backs. “It’s been kind of nice not having to make decisions for myself.” 

“What were you going to do, before all of this?” You gestured to concrete walls, a singular window, a common space long since vacant. 

His gaze trailed the room before landing on you, and you warmed under it. With another sigh, he looked outward again. “I thought I had a plan for when it was all over, but that was a year ago.” He waved it off. 

You nudged him with your elbow. “What was it? Maybe it’ll give me some inspiration.”

He snorted, shook hair into his eyes. “Ah, yeah. I doubt it.” 

“Come on, Harrington,” you goaded. “What was it? Become an actor? Join the circus?” This felt better, right, the tease of competition between you settling the tension that was building with each passing glance.

“Try marrying the girl of my dreams and having six kids?” That popped the bubble. You couldn’t hide the face of disgust and unease that settled after his comment, knowing all you knew about him already. “Yeah, bad, right?” 

You stuffed back a remorseful chuckle, tried to keep a strange bout of jealousy at bay when you remembered his conversation with Nancy earlier, how engaged the two of them looked, how hopeful her blue eyes were. 

You cleared your throat, made firm eye contact with your pillow, shrugged. “I don’t know. Seems like you aren’t the only one with those aspirations. I’ve heard Rob and Vic might move in together.” A harmless bean spilled surely wouldn’t rile up your best friend. 

“Wait, how do you know that? I thought Robin was going to wait to ask her…” Steve trailed off, and when your eyes met, you both rolled them in exasperation for the gushy love shared between clueless women. 

“So what about you?” Steve asked after a moment had passed, little finger soft once again to your knee. “If this is really all over, what’re you going to do?” 

You glanced back over the parking lot, the trees, Scorch course off in the distance. “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out… where I fit. You know?” You locked your fingers together above your pillow, as Vickie had done earlier, but without the lightness of her touch, yours were bruised and calloused and burnt. Your knuckles were sore.

“Right here,” he said.

His eyes were dark, brow soft, yet pensive, and under his watch, you couldn’t breathe. It was the same panic you’d felt all week when you’d watched him cross the caf or climb into the bed of a truck, that fight or flight ramping up within your rib cage. 

“I’m serious,” he shrugged, shoulder knocking your own. “What if you fit here?” He pressed a large finger into the pillow on your lap for emphasis. The skin of your wrists and hands lit up with proximity. “You’re so good at this whole thing, and we know it isn’t over. The Upside Down didn’t close up when Vecna died like we thought it would. There’s still a mess to clean up. Who says you have to leave? That you have to move on right now and make some huge life plan over night?” 

You blinked back at him because you hadn’t considered any of that, and maybe it’s because this existence had been something everything was counting down the chance to run from. You’d all been thrust into this life when the world opened up (or earlier), and you followed orders because that’s what kept you safe, what kept you alive. You’d never considered that maybe you were made for this. Although, when Steve mentioned it, things did sort of kick back into place. 

His knee knocked yours. “It’s not like you’d be alone.” 

The implications rendered you silent, a splash of cool water across skin that had been set ablaze, filling the space with steam. Your breathing was shallow, mouth dry, and you couldn’t unstick your knuckles from each other, though his hand remained centimeters away, picking at that same tear in the fabric you’d been playing with moments earlier. You felt yourself go stock straight, rigid against the warmth of his bicep. 

“Did I make you uncomfortable last week?” His voice was barely a gravel, a shockwave of electricity sent through you.

You swallowed in vain, shook your head. 

His eyes trailed your features, and you bit hard on your lip when he stopped there, before he found your gaze again. “Because I meant it when I promised I’d keep you safe.” 

Your reaction to Steve Harrington was reckless, always had been. Volatile, even, the way your heart raced, the heat that churned through you like water boiled over. There was always something in his tone that challenged you, always something in his gaze that riled you up. He pushed you over the edge you teetered on with an eye roll and a smug smile, arms pinned over your head against the mat or mask over his face on the Scorch course. 

Maybe that’s why neither of you were surprised when you reached across the space and pressed your lips to his. Neither of you stiffened at a first kiss, noses bumped and knuckles. Simultaneous, you parted for a breath and dove back for something stickier, something warmer, something more dangerous.

He was sweet, whisky and something softer, ice cream, maybe. His lips were warm, and a bit dry, but plush. And when you finally sunk your fingertips into his silky hair, you coaxed a breathy whine that sent warmth pooling through you. 

“Is this okay?” You hissed between kisses.

He hummed in agreement, hands reaching for your middle to tug you into his lap. He massaged your thighs with oversized hands as you bracketed his hips, pulling another loud groan from deep in his throat.

You had him pinned beneath you now, hips rolled, and his head thrown back against the sofa, pupils blown with your fingers in his hair. The moonlight cast shadows across his chiseled features, a constellation of freckles down his left side. The way he watched you, lips licked, sent a wave crashing through you, another sizzle to fan the embers burning within you.

His hands found your hips, and your ribcage beneath the t-shirt you’d been forced to change into, and you thought of Vickie’s encouragement, her optimism that this would be the last of it.

The warmth of Steve’s palms coaxed you forward until he caught your mouth with his once more, and his words echoed in your mind beside her, a chorus of contradiction. This is your last night here. You fit right here. I’ll never leave you. It’s not like you’d be alone. Two truths pulling at you like a rope over a line, neither would exist while the other did. 

Steve sucked in a breath, harsh, and you blinked your eyes open to see him licking a tender lower lip. You’d bit down on him without realizing, that ever-present competition fresh between you. He didn’t seem to mind, already going back in, but you pinned his shoulders back, pushed off of him to stand. 

“Whoa, it’s okay,” he wiped at the corners of his mouth, ran a hand through his hair to replace yours. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” you nodded, stumbling backwards until you almost tripped on a coffee table. You managed to side-step it, feeling claustrophobic surrounded by so much canvas furniture. 

He stood to catch you in case you fell, and the reach of his arms had you backing even farther into the shadows of a long corridor. He recoiled, scratching at the back of his neck. “Are you sure? Because um… I didn’t mean to push anything if you weren’t…” 

You shook your head, that familiar panic clawing at your chest at the mess you’ve created. “Steve, it’s fine. I just don’t think I should do this right now.”

A crease formed between his brows, concerned, pitying, and he shoved his hands into his jean pockets. “Okay?” 

You sighed, scrubbed at tired eyes, tried to ignore the taste of him that lingered on your lips. You’d already taken it too far, already scratched the itch that had been growing within you for months now.

“I can wait.” His voice was soft, almost imperceptible, and his brown eyes held that same hopefulness you’d seen in Vickie’s.

Guilt rattled your rib cage, searing. You nodded and said goodnight. 

-

The night remained sleepless, starring at water-stained ceiling tiles while you contemplated next steps. The feeling of Steve’s hands ghosted your ribcage. The image of Vickie’s hands twisted in your own burned behind your eyes.

Knuckles wrapped against your door, and you pulled your watch from the beside table to look at the time. 08:25. With a resigned sigh, you buckled it over your wrist and answered the door. You startled to find Nancy Wheeler on the other side, brown crinkled and hair curled around her slender features. 

“Hopper wants us.” She informed you, managing the softest of smiles. 

You swallowed, nodded, and went for your room key on the countertop.

After the loss of Gutierrez and Ramsay, your Scorch team needed new leaders, and there was still so much Ether to scorch.

———

NOW

September 1988

Stains on pale yellow walls churned at a bread-and-broth full stomach as cigarette smoke wafted in beneath the broken seal at the bottom of the door. The lone light flickered, exacerbating a migraine that had lingered for weeks now, maybe months. Two familiar faces sat on the other side of the plexiglass, wrinkles between their brows, smoke swirling round faces. 

“How you feeling, kid?” Hop asked, voice gruff, concerned, paternal. 

“Sweaty,” you winced, peeling your tank top from your sternum. “Hope I don’t smell. My shower is one scalding pressure wash every morning.”

Hopper snorted, a cloud of smoke exiting each nostrils and floating skyward. “I know. It’s Hell.” 

Hell was the Ether. Hell was the tug between your shoulder blades. Hell was lurking somewhere deep, waiting for the opportune moment to strike. 

“How is everyone? Byers?” You grit your teeth, pushing back the wave of nausea and slumping against the glass that fogged on your side. The water bottle, lukewarm, was the only reprieve you’d been given from your sauna, refilled at frequent intervals to ensure you stayed upright and alert. 

“Jonathan’s fine, but he’s not out of the woods yet. We’ve got him holed up too. Huntley and Miller are dead. Dog fight this morning on the county border.” 

You cursed under your breath, squeezing your eyes closed to push back the visions of yourself lashing out against the two Scorchers, gnawing on their flesh, the fresh squeeze of hot blood between your teeth. “I was hoping that was just a dream.” 

“Are you having any visions right now?” Owens asked, voice gentler than his gruff counterpart.

You shook your head. “Same as yesterday and the day before. I can see her,” you gestured to somewhere in your periphery, where the wave of fiery hair stood out, just beyond your reach. “And I can feel him.” That tug in your shoulder, the bend in your spine that itched and ached. You rolled your shoulders and pushed it back. “But I don’t see anything unless I’m asleep. Even then it’s just roaming the Ether. I can never see him. He’s not coming out.” 

“What happens when those fuckers catch fire?” Hop asked, wrapping his knuckles against the glass. By the look in his eye, he was testing the strength of it, making sure it’d hold you back.

You took another sip of water. “I wake up.” 

“Maybe we do a bit of uh… what do they call it? Remote viewing? Put her under, have her tap in.” Hop spoke under his breath, but you knew he was talking about Eleven. He knew Hop was talking about Eleven. You felt the itch under your shoulder and shuddered again. 

Owens caught your movement and stopped Hopper with a hand up. “Alright, miss. Are you comfortable if we take another look at your back?” 

With a sigh, you pushed yourself upright and turned your back to the men to pull your shirt up and over your head, holding it to your front with what little sliver of modesty you could maintain. Although, at this point, you’d lost your will to care. 

For days now, you hadn’t noticed growths on your back, no indication that you’d been Flayed or that this parasite was growing within you. Nothing showed itself beside this feeling you had that you couldn’t explain, that no one could understand. 

“Thank you, dear,” Owens wrapped his knuckles to the window to tell you it was safe to put your shirt back on. 

You did so and turned to face the men again. Both of them offered characteristic grimaces: one of pity, the other of disdain. You slumped back into the chair next to the window. “So, what’s the prognosis, doc?”

The older man shrugged, scratched at his forehead. “Unfortunately, we might just have to keep you in here until we discuss further plans. We kind of have to keep you out of the loop, kiddo. Can’t risk him hearing us.” 

You understood. You shook your water bottle, tapped it against the glass, and said, “Empty.”

“Fresh water, coming right up,” he smiled and stood. “Jim?” 

Hopper waved him off, stamping his cigarette out on the seal. You watched ash scatter the ground. He stood, chair groaning beneath him, and he towered over you on the other side of the glass, teeth ground into a clenched jaw. He scratched at the stubble on his chin. 

“Harrington and Nancy make better partners than you two did. He actually listens to her.” 

You snorted, rolled your eyes. “That doesn’t surprise me.” 

“He and Munson ask about you constantly. I caught Wheeler and Henderson trying to hack into your security camera footage.” He wrapped his knuckles against the glass again, pointing toward the camera that had been watching you. He waggled thick fingers, and you mirrored him, trying to hide the swell of something lighter within you. 

“Keep holding him back,” he ordered, your commanding officer once more.

With exchanged nods, he exited down the hallway with Owens, and you slumped back against the fogged glass. You swallowed and stared up at the bright green bulb that glowed just beneath the lens of the camera.

—

Days had gone by. Maybe nights had too, but you couldn’t tell under the buzzing fluorescents. You had no windows to the outside world, probably miles beneath the Earth at this point, just on the precipice of that churning, horrific world on the other side. 

You tossed and turned on your cot, sheets stained with sweat that clung to every inch of you. Cries echoed a few boxes down, unfamiliar voices of more and more faces sequestered into quarantine, their fates somehow worse than your own. 

All you wanted was to stay awake. If you stayed awake, he stayed away. But the ache of your eyelids added to the dull throb at the base of your skull, and every so often, the rake of fingertips down your arm coaxed you into a slumber. 

Feet sputtered down the hall, steady, a run, and your heartbeat matched it. You launched from the unsteady rock of your cot and met a figure as its hands slapped against the glass of your window, steadying itself.

“Harrington?” You frowned at your partner on the other side. His palm met yours, thick glass in between, and his chest rose and fell as his breath fogged the glass. “What’s going on?” 

He shrugged, slumped into the chair Hopper had been in. It creaked beneath him, and he glanced down the hallway for on-lookers before turning back to you. “Are you okay?” 

“Are you?” You scurried into your own chair, leaning in to get a better look at him.

The bruise around his eye was yellowing, and his hair looked good pushed off his brow. He maintained that signature scowl, but there was something soft in his eyes as he observed you the same way you looked him over. “Are you suffocating in there?”

“Only a little,” you shrugged. “Why are you here?” You glanced back down the hallway, as much as you could see, to find it the same as it always had been, empty. 

“We had a bad firefight yesterday. Ten dogs or so.”

You did another cursory glance of his person. That you could see, there were no bandages. His hair wasn’t burned or singed. Any soot had been scrubbed from the creases on his face. 

“Could you feel it?” 

You shook your head and watched his shoulders relax. You wished you could soothe him further, reassure him you were okay, that you were safe, but the two souls attached to you lingered in the periphery. Instead, you tapped your fingertips to the glass. “I thought of something yesterday.” 

Steve adjusted in his seat, glanced down the hallway once more before leaning in to read your lips.

“You remember the party, the night after he died, or at least, we thought he did?” You asked, feeling that presence heavy over your shoulder. 

Recognition flashed behind your partner’s eyes, and he shied from your gaze, scratching at the back of his neck.

You warmed, tried to forget the feeling of your hands there, of his warm hands against your sides. Something prodded your shoulder. You cleared your throat. “Vickie made a weird comment that night, off-handed. She was acting really shady, and she asked if he could have latched himself on someone. The body died, but maybe the soul didn’t?”

He looked back up at you, brow crinkled, understanding sinking into him, and you watched his ribcage deflate. His knees began to bounce, and he buried his face into his hands. 

“And if that’s true, she had him for almost a year. It had nothing to do with the flower. He just latched on to the nearest thing, and when she died,” you gestured to yourself. “Maybe he’s weaker now.”

Steve was shaking his head, arms crossed over his chest. “You couldn’t save her.” 

You swallowed back emotion that boiled at that slap in the face. “She didn’t tell us. None of us could, but I’m telling you.” You hoped he couldn’t hear the desperation in your tone.

“This happened to her, and you murdered her.” His voice was lower, graveled. 

You balled your fist, swallowed back that panic which seared at your ribcage.

“What do you expect to happen to you?” Finally, he met your eye, his own brown replaced with piercing blue, cloudy. The smell of charred flesh stung at your nostrils. The taste of ash filled your mouth. 

---

[A/N: Remember when I said hiatus cuz of NaNo and then I wrote this chapter? *insert eye roll here* I can't help it! This story wants to pour out of me, and I want it to, too. I love these two more than anything. They bring me endless joy. And they kissed! I made them kiss! In a flashback, but still. Maybe they'll kiss again, who knows? Maybe the reader dies a horrific death like Chrissy, who knows? I do. I know. And I love it so much. Thanks, as always, for reading xo]

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Chapter Four: Pyre • Chapter Six: Combustion

[valve3nthusiast]

I wanna talk more about the vector au so yay 💜

I may have did a fib previously, there are a few people who know about vectors: Cyclonus and (surprisingly) Tailgate, and the Camiens

My reasoning being: Functionalists attempted to completely eradicate all information about cybertronians *gags for dramatic effect* reproducing like organics, but Caminus split from Cybertronian society before that could effect them. And with their population issues, they specifically place importance on vectors living comfortably. Cyclonus and Tailgate are just old as dirt, and were around when vectors were still common-ish knowledge

Functionalists attempted to wipe all knowledge of vectors, and where they couldn't, they mythologized. You know what they did manage to remove all information on?

Vector medical data. Every bit of information on the coding, the fabricator for the sparkchamber, all of it

Oh, Ratchet is not happy. Not only is this ridiculous newbuild-tale real, his Captain is now afflicted with a medical condition he knows nothing about. Do you know how much Ratchet knows about the cybertronian body? He would have said "just about everything" before this, but apparently not!

(Ratchet is very old, but not that old. He thought he'd seen it all. He's wrong, and not handling it well)

(Meanwhile Rodimus is on the other side of the Medbay getting scans by Velocity, both of them absolutely gushing like "oh Primus I'm so excited for the newbuilds!!💕!!!!!💖!!❤️‍🔥!!!")

Hmm many thoughts... head full of pregnant Roddy. I'm really happy that other people like this idea :D

[female-malice]

Women's freedom of movement and freedom to cycle have been at the heart of feminism for 130 years

And men know this. And that is why they harass female cyclists. They want to intimidate us and keep us from claiming our freedom through cycling.

The most recent counts by the City of Portland estimate that only three out of every 10 bicycle riders are women and the gender split hasn’t budged since counting started in 2006. In east Portland, the City tabulated just 17% of all bike riders as women. As we ponder the reasons for this disparity, a survey has revealed one factor that’s causing it: the high rate of demeaning interactions and aggressive behaviors some women experience while riding.

A survey conducted in February by nonprofit BikeLoud PDX asked women to describe the worst or most common incident of abuse they’ve experienced while cycling. A shocking 311 out of the 329 women who answered that question reported some level of traumatic incident. The woman who led the survey project, Cathy Tuttle, analyzed the results and found that 229 respondents experienced a Level 3 Trauma (swearing, honking, catcalling, rolling coal, etc), 53 experienced a Level 2 Trauma (deliberate close pass, tailgating, menacing, etc), and 29 experienced a Level 1 Trauma (hit and run, throwing projectiles, aggressive stalking, etc) — the most severe category of abuse.

The vast majority of these aggressive behaviors came from people driving cars. Respondents said 88% of the aggressors were in cars, 7% were identified as homeless people and 5% were other bike riders.

In a summary of the survey results made public Monday, Tuttle shared several examples of the responses. I’ve pasted a few of them below:

A man screaming “get the f*ck off the road” repeatedly while I was cycling on a low traffic route downtown, revving their engine constantly and pulling up too close behind me. I finally got off the road, shaking and crying and called 911. The dispatcher told me there was “nothing we can do, it’s not illegal.” She didn’t want me to report the behavior, even though I had the license plate.

I had a driver stop to tell me that I needed a rear bike light so they could see me. I didn’t respond so the continued to verbally harass me. When the light changed they followed me and kept trying to yell at me. Eventually I came to park and biked into it so they couldn’t follow me. I was scared to bike for a while after that.

A woman yelling out her (passenger) side window “hit the bitch” after I pointed to the stop sign that they were rolling through when I had right of way.

Tuttle also included a longer response from someone who took the survey that is worth reading (edited slightly for brevity):

After he physically threatened me with his car, and after honking, I was told by a man, “I’m going to kill you the next time I see you” while I was biking — legally — on a typically busy (but not at all busy right then) 3 or 4-lane one-way road that has no cycling-specific infrastructure and doesn’t see much bike traffic, but which was at the time a crucial connector that I needed to be on to get across a freeway without going extremely far out of my way…

He didn’t yell it. He said it slowly, deliberately. I’ll never forget it. It wasn’t inflamed reactive rage; it was a slow, methodical, simmering threat. He looked right at me. I can still hear it many years later: I’m going to kill you. I’ve had men in SUVs and trucks deliberately swerve into me, almost, but not quite, hitting me more times than I can count. This is a cross-Oregon problem, in urban, suburban, ex-urban, and rural areas, all of which I’ve biked in extensively. I’ve been called a dumb c—, a stupid b—-, and other misogynist slurs, again, more times than I can count. I’ve also been treated to yelling misogyny from male street joggers, who run in the street against traffic all the way to the side of the road, right where cyclists typically are… This is weirdly common in Portland, and they are often very rhetorically and even physically aggressive. I’ve also been in collisions with street joggers, and their dogs, and I, the cyclist, have always been the more injured person, so it’s a real problem actually. I’ve encountered groups of 3 men jogging with 2 or 3 huge dogs who are taking up literally the entire street and are very aggressive when confronted with a cyclist — me, one woman — trying to get to work. Once I was biking to work in Portland with a male cyclist who was behind me, and a truck deliberately swerved into me at a high rate of speed to threaten me or worse, and the man who was biking behind me chased the driver down and yelled at him because he saw it all happen in a way I did not have the vantage to and he was pissed. The truck driver was likely annoyed by my male companion, who he encountered first, but didn’t do anything. Then when he encountered me, he became enraged and deliberately tried to intimidate me by swerving into me. If anything had “gone wrong,” I’d probably be dead now, due to the speed of the driver. Still have a pretty visceral reaction to light blue Leer-brand pick-up truck toppers to this day because of this decades-ago incident. None of these described incidents are rare, aberrant, unusual, or even, really, worthy of note anymore, but they’re the specific ones that come immediately to mind with no thought at all, but that are representative of a whole problem. They happen ALL THE TIME, for seemingly no reason often. The misogyny comes out almost immediately, reflexively. I feel that if a female cyclist doesn’t preemptively display deference to motorists — of any sex, but especially male — they will be targeted, and if we’re assertive, then all the more so. But cyclists need to be assertive to be safe. Male cyclists too often seem like they’re not our allies (aside form the aforementioned male cyclist — this was actually a rare instance in my experience). The dismissive ‘male glance’ is real, on the bike as in all of life. I can distinctly recall men realizing another cyclist (me, almost 50) is behind them, at a red light or whatever, and looking back, only to discover a woman who is older than he is, on a not-interesting-to-him bike, with no interesting blingy gear on it, and have him turn away, barely able to acknowledge I was there at all. What was he expecting to see? A sexualizable object young enough to be worthy of his attention? Men are far more sexist than they can admit. As many jobs become more gender-integrated, men find new ways to assert their male supremacy. There seems to me to be a distinct strain of “biking everywhere with no infrastructure makes me a man” in the Portland bike ecosystem and it’s detrimental to a lot of folks, not just adult women. We live in a deeply sexist society and misogynist backlash to feminist gains is observantly real across both dominant culture and most if not all subcultures. Women already experience this whether they have the interpretive lens to see it or not. Many women I know just don’t want to be extra-burdened by the physical and emotional danger of biking routinely for transportation, because they’re already burdened enough in a way men just aren’t.

The responses to this survey give us all a lot to think about and should add urgency to create a better cycling environment in Portland.

Tuttle based her survey on one conducted by the Women’s Freedom campaign in London. She said after hearing similar responses to their survey, bike advocates in London built an entire campaign around it with rides, petitions, letters to city council, etc.

What should Portland do to address this problem?

— Read the survey summary here.

[mylostloversbookmarks]

Peaceful Easy Feeling

Chpt 2 of Life In The Fast Lane

Characters - Frankie Morales x Reader, Santiago Garcia, Benny Miller.

Summary - As you and Frankie both reminise over your accidental meeting yesterday, you make plans to see eachother again, but will the two of you be able to get over your nerves?

Word Count - 6.8K

Warnings/Tags - 18+ only Minors dni. Typical canon language, Swearing, Fluffy!Frankie, Flirty!Frankie, Insecure!Frankie, use of pet names, mentions slight spice but nothing too explicit, mentions of anxiety and nightmares. Written in both reader's & Frankie's POV.

A/N - This chpt was meant to go a different way but I got so carried away that I decieded to split the rest into Chpt 3, which im hoping to have posted soon!

Feedback, Reblogs and comments are always appreciated!

June 24th 2016

You climbed into the driver's seat of your now very beat-up car—not that it was in the best condition before. Now with the bumper missing, the slight ripple in the metal of its bonnet, and the scratches left from the tailgate of Frankie’s truck, the car was definitely looking worse for wear.

You said a silent prayer that you had picked it up from a family friend for relatively cheap, and you had never been one to obsess over the looks of your vehicle; it was simply a method of getting you from A to B.

You stare out the windscreen and make eye contact with the kind stranger for the last time, unable to stop the smile turning up the corners of your lips and the blush working its way quickly across your cheeks.

You decide to take a page out of his book and chalk the new scratches up to character building. You honestly weren't sure if it was safe to drive without your bumper, but with as helpful as Frankie had been, you don’t think he would let you drive away if it wasn’t.

So, you put the car in drive and pull out of the slip lane you were both parked in. Allowing yourself one last glance in the rear-view mirror, you see him bending down to pick your bumper up and place it gently in the bed of his truck.

As you drove away from the scene of the accident, you felt both flustered and giddy at the same time. You can’t believe you crashed into his truck, yet he has been so kind and understanding. You couldn't help but think about how he had smiled at you and how his eyes had crinkled at the corners.

You shake your head, trying to clear your thoughts as you make your way down the street. You still had a lot to do today, and you couldn't afford to be distracted. You were supposed to be meeting your best friend, Lianne, at the mall in half an hour.

Turning up the radio dial, trying to distract yourself from the incident that had just occurred. You start singing along to the tune of one of your favourite Eagles songs, tapping your fingers on the steering wheel in time with the beat.

Your thoughts kept drifting back to the man you had just met. You couldn't help but wonder what he did for a living, where he lived, or what his friends are like.

You couldn't shake the feeling that you had just had a genuinely meaningful interaction with someone, even if it was just for a few brief moments.

You pull into the mall parking lot, turn off the car, and take a deep breath before getting out. You spot Lianne waiting for you by the entrance, waving happily as she sees you.

As you walk towards her, you can't help but smile. You were grateful for the distraction that Lianne always provided, and you were looking forward to spending the evening with her. But even as you talked and laughed, your mind kept wandering back to the stranger and his truck.

As you and Lianne sit down at a café, she looks at you curiously. "Is everything okay?" she asks, noticing that you seem a bit distracted.

You take a deep breath and decide to confide in her. "I had a bit of an accident this afternoon," you admit, feeling a flush creeping up your neck. "I rear-ended someone in the middle of rush hour traffic today." You explain, through another surge of embarrassment.

"Oh my God! Are you okay?" She asks, concern knitting her brows together.

You nod, wondering breifly how she hadn't noticed the damage to the car when you pulled into the parking lot.

"Yeah, it was just a small fender-bender. The guy whose truck I hit was so…lovely. He helped me out of my car and made sure I was okay; he even cleaned my leg and put a band-aid on it when I fell on the sidewalk like an idiot. He was just sweet about the whole thing." You state this matter-of-factly, as if you were reciting a news article.

You told her all this while stirring your tea absentmindedly, doing your best to avoid the scrutinising gaze she had fixed on you.

"Well, that's good at least. I'm glad you’re okay Y/N, is your car alright? I couldn’t really see it when you drove in." Lianne smiles sympathetically.

"The car has definitely seen better days, but Frankie said one of his friends could fix it for cheap for me, so that’s good." You shrug, not really caring about the car. Just more about seeing him again.

"Oooh, Frankie? Are you sure that the accident is all that’s got you distracted?" She asks as she bobs her eyebrows up and down suggestively.

You can’t help but laugh at her, still fidgeting with your teacup and trying to find the words to explain the pull you felt towards the handsome stranger.

"Okay, you got me there, but… I just had this weird feeling when I met him. Like, I was meant to bump into him or something."

Lianne raises an eyebrow. "Meant to bump into him?" she laughs at the almost pun.

You nod and laugh along, feeling silly for even bringing it up. "I don't know; it's probably nothing. But I just can't seem to shake the feeling that I was supposed to meet him."

Lianne chuckles softly. "Well, stranger things have happened. Maybe it's fate, or destiny, or whatever you want to call it. Maybe you were meant to meet this guy for a reason."

"Oh yeah, 'cause that’s just my luck." You retort, sarcasm dripping from every word.

"Hey, you never know. Maybe he's your soulmate." Lianne reasons, and there is a slight humor in her tone.

"Don't be ridiculous, Lia. I just met him. Besides, I don't believe in soulmates; you know that." You reminded her, shaking your head at the idea.

"Ugh, I know, but really? Why not?" Lianne raises a perfectly manicured eyebrow, clearly exasperated at your lack of scepticism.

You take a sip of your tea, considering her question.

"I don't know; I just think that the idea of there being only one perfect person out there for each of us is kind of…restrictive. What if you never meet them? Or what if you do, but they're in a different part of the world, or they're already married, or…" 

Lianne interrupts you: "Okay, okay, I get it. You don't believe in soulmates. That's fine. But you have to admit, there was something special about this guy, right?"

You nod reluctantly and say, "Yeah, I guess. I mean, he was really nice. And he had this…energy about him, you know? Like he was genuinely happy to be helping me, even though I'd just crashed into his truck." A small smile plays on the corners of your mouth as you remember how eager he had been.

"See? Maybe it's not soulmates, but there's something there. Did you get his number?" Lianne beamed.

"He has my number—and my bumper, for that matter; he said he would call me tomorrow once he speaks to his friend, and he kind of invited me to dinner", a buzzing from your pocket distracts you; apologising to Lianne, you pull your phone out and see a text.

When you unlock your phone, you find it's from a number you don't recognise that isn't saved in your phone. It's from him. You take a deep breath, open the message, and read it aloud to Lianne.

"Hey, it’s Frankie the guy with the truck.

I just wanted to check in and make sure you got home okay.  Also, my friend can take a look at your car tomorrow if you’re free?

x"

You stare at your phone, feeling your heart hammer in your chest. You glance up at Lianne and can see she is grinning at you like a Cheshire cat as if to say, ‘I told you so'.

"Oh, would you calm down; he’s just going to get my truck fixed for me, and that’s it!" You laugh at your friend's enthusiasm, and as much as you would like to join her, you needed to keep a level head.

If you were being honest with yourself, it felt like you were floating. One simple text from this man, a practical stranger to you, had you wondering if you had gone back in time to your first teenage crush.

Butterflies are battering violently around your belly, threatening to burst out as you quickly type a reply.

"Hey, Frankie, Thanks for checking in! I ended up meeting a friend for coffee, but I got here in one piece! That would be great; I have no plans tomorrow, so just let me know when works for you guys. x "

You can feel your face heating up; Lianne is looking at you expectantly, clearly waiting for you to tell her what you responded with.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" You laugh at your friend, who can barely contain herself.

"C'mon, spill the beans, Y/N!" Don’t make me force it out of you! She pleads with you, literally perched on the edge of her seat in excitement.

"I just told him that I met a friend for coffee and that I'm free tomorrow, that’s all! I'm sorry, there are no juicy details for you to drool over." You cock your eyebrow at her, teasing.

You know that she is just excited at the potential of a romantic relationship after your long spell of singledom. In truth, you don't mind being single; it wasn’t something you gave much thought to. You are happy with your own company and that of your family and friends.

"No, I think you meant to say there are no juicy details yet." Lianne grins as she rubs her hands together mischievously.

"Sure sure, that’s exactly what I meant," you mutter sarcastically while rolling your eyes.

You both finish your drinks, gather your things, and make your way out of the café. Noticing that it’s starting to get dark out, the crickets chirping away in the background, and the streets growing quiet, you offer to give Lianne a ride home; she only lives about ten minutes from you, and you welcome the company.

She gladly accepts the lift, but you can see the worried expression growing on her face as the two of you approach your car. You answer her question before she has a chance to speak.

"Don’t worry; it looks way worse than it actually is. The car runs fine, and I promise it's just cosmetic damage, thankfully. One accident is more than enough for me today," you joke, nudging her with your shoulder as you make your way to the driver's seat.

The two of you chat about her plans for the weekend as you drive and agree that you will take a walk with her on Sunday evening. She asks if you are planning on going to dinner with Frankie tomorrow, and you admit that you don’t quite know what the plan is but that you will wait and see what happens.

You pull up outside her apartment block, and she says her goodbyes as she climbs out of the passenger seat. Before she closes the door, she leans down, holding her hands to her chest as if she were about to say a prayer.

"Please, please promise me you will call as soon as you get home tomorrow and fill me in on all the details?" She was giving you her best puppy dog eyes, and it works like a charm.

"Yes, Lia, if anything exciting happens tomorrow, you will be the first to know. Do you need me to pinky swear?" You laugh as you lean over the centre console towards her side of the car.

"Alright, I'm not that bad! But be safe and call me if you need me, and if you go to dinner, let me know where he is taking you, so I know where you are, okay?" Lianne asks tone suddenly serious. 

"Of course, Lia, thanks; I appreciate it," you say sincerely and nod your head in promise.

This is one of the things you loved most about Lianne; she is loyal, and she protects her loved ones fiercely. She watches a little too much true crime, but you can’t blame her for being protective; there sure are a lot of weirdos in the world.

The drive back to your house is short, the exhaustion of the stressful day finally catching up to you as you pull into your driveway for the second time this evening.

After unlocking and relocking the front door behind you, you throw your keys into the checkerboard-printed ceramic bowl on the small wooden console in the hallway and let your bag drop from your shoulder.

You kick your shoes off and make your way to your bathroom, methodically washing your face and brushing your teeth. Absentmindedly, you pick up your phone.

There’s another text, and it’s from Frankie. You are suddenly much more interested in the device you as you pause to read the message. The toothbrush still hanging out of your mouth.

‘Hey Hermosa, I just wanted to check if 2 p.m is okay for tomorrow? x' 

Your face heats up as you remember how his voice got low and rough when he spoke in what you imagine to be his native language by the way it effortlessly rolled off his tongue.

You have never heard such an inviting sound. It made your skin flush, and thoughts of what it would be like to feel him murmur the beautiful language against your naked skin gave you goosebumps.

Your thighs pressed together of their own accord. You let out a quiet giggle to yourself at how much of an effect he already has on you.

Shaking the tempting thoughts from your head, you decide to be as bold in your reply as he is, your bottom lip catching between your teeth as you type your response.

‘Hey good looking, 2 pm is perfect! Do you want to send me the address? x'

Hitting send on the message before you lose your nerve and change your mind, leaning against the bathroom vanity, and staring at the screen, hoping it’s not too much. You set your phone on the counter and finish your night routine.

You change into your pyjamas, which is really just a baggy t-shirt; you throw the comforter back; pick up your well-loved copy of ‘Crime and Punishment, and settle in for the night. You don’t even get through the first page when your phone dings from your nightstand.

‘Great!  The address is 629 Pennington Ave, 32357 Jacksonville, It’s my friend's house; I'll meet you there at 2 p.m. It’s a date. x'

Excitement and nervousness settle over you as you set your phone on the nightstand. Picking the book off the nightstand, you try to read a few more chapters, but it's a wasted effort.

You are far too keyed up to read, deciding to pick out an outfit for the next day that was casual enough to wear during the day but nice enough in case Frankie asked you to dinner.

With it being the peak of summer in Florida, you know it's going to be another unbearably hot and humid day, so you picked out your favourite sundress. It's pale blue in colour, with tiny, delicate flowers printed all over.

It shows just the right amount of cleavage with a small drawstring that ties into a bow between your breasts and cinches you in at the waist to accentuate your curves.

The skirt of the dress flows to just above your knee. To make the outfit a little less dressy, you lay out a light-wash denim jacket and a pair of white sneakers.

You're happy with your choice, and with one less thing to fuss over tomorrow, you crawl back into bed. Leaning over and switching off the bedside lamp, you smile to yourself and curl into the comforter, hoping the exhaustion from today's events will allow you a good night's sleep.

But with the anticipation of seeing him again, you don't think it's likely.

June 25th 2016

Frankie wakes to the alarm screeching from his bedside table.

A loud groan escapes his lips as he rolls to the other side of the bed, his long legs tangled in the sheets. His hand frantically batted around until his fingers met the offending sound.

Groggily, he squints his eyes at the time, 8 a.m. Cursing under his breath, he swipes his thumb across the screen to silence the alarm.

Rolling onto his back, he stares at the ceiling of his bedroom. Large, veined hands rubbed over his face, scratching through the coarse hairs on his jaw.

The morning sun casts a soft glow on everything it touches as it peeks through the thin linen curtains. Why does he always forget to turn his alarm off on weekends? He has absolutely no reason to be awake this early on a Saturday.

As he stares blindly into space, the first thing on his mind is you. How you looked so disbelieving when he first caught sight of you in his rear-view mirror when you hit the truck, How you stammered your apologies; how the sun glistened in your eyes as he cleaned the cut on your leg. Your back-and-forth texting last night

He was a bit embarrassed at how nervous he was about reaching out. A million thoughts raced through his mind, one after the other, as he typed your number into his phone.

"Should I call her? No, no, that's a bit forward. I should just text her, but what if she doesn't like texting? I did say I would call, but that was just a figure of speech, right? What if I call her and she doesn't answer? God, Francisco, it's not a big deal; just text her!" He caught himself as he felt the smile pulling the corners of his lips upward at the memory.

Knowing full well sleep would not find him again, he throws the sheets back and climbs out of bed, stretching for the first time that morning. Heading into the bathroom, he stands at the counter and looks at himself in the mirror.

It's not that he doesn't take pride in his appearance, but now that his line of work no longer requires him to be pristine. No more meticulous shaving each morning, and he could allow his hair to grow longer, like he used to wear it before inlisting many moons ago.

His curls had begun brushing against his forehead and the nape of his neck. Sure, he was probably due for a haircut, but he kind of liked it, and it was usually hidden under his cap anyway.

As he watches his reflextion, turning his head from left to right and back again, he can tell he has let things run away from him a little.

His beard—although it had always been a little patchy—was now creeping up ever so slightly over his cheekbones and down his neck, the grey and white hairs becoming ever more present.

Deciding now was as good a time as any to tidy himself up, he lifts the safety razor out of the bathroom cabinet and replaces the blade. Lathering the shaving cream with the brush and placing wide, thick stripes of it across his cheeks and neck.

Frankie carefully drags the blade across his skin, removing the sparse hairs that grew above his beard line; he does the same with his neck, taking extra care not to nick his protruding adams apple.

He debates going the whole hog and shaving it all off but decides against it, afraid he might not like it once it's gone. Or that you won't.

Turning the shower on, Frankie steps into the welcoming stream of hot water, letting it wash over the untidy mop of dark chocolate-caramel curls. As he stands in the steam, his mind replays yesterday's events for the second time this morning.

Except now, he's remembering how innocent you looked when you called him sir. How he could feel your heart racing as he placed his big hands on your waist to boost you onto the tailgate of his truck. How your breathing hitched when he touched the smooth, soft skin of your calf. How good and right it felt to be held in his firm grip.

He feels the familiar tingle up his spine and the throbbing ache in his cock at the thought, and he shakes it from his head as quickly as it enters.

He wants nothing more than to fantasise about you like that, but he won't allow himself to do it until he knows the feelings are mutual.

Doing his best to finish his shower routine without touching himself at the thought of you, he once again finds himself in front of the mirror, a tower wrapped low around his hips.

He admires his handy work with his facial hair, only to find himself concentrating on the empty patches where the hair stubbornly refuses grow. He has never given any thought to that until now.

Frankie realises then that it's because he wants to look his best for you; he hasn't felt like this since he was a teenager, his thoughts all consumed by a woman he met only a day ago.

"Get a hold of yourself, Francisco; why would she be interested anyway?" He scolds himself, but he can't help but hope that he was wrong and that you were feeling the same butterflies in your chest as he was.

Walking back to his bedroom he finds himself standing in front of the dresser. What the hell was he supposed to wear? He's probably going to end up helping Benny with your car, so there's no point in dressing up just to get dirty.

He planned to ask you if you would join him for dinner tonight, so he threw on a pair of tan cargo trousers he uses for work and a grey crew-neck t-shirt.

Frankie throws his nicest pair of jeans and a flannel dress shirt into an overnight bag. If he is lucky enough for you to say yes to dinner, he'll wash up and change at Benny's place.

As he finished getting dressed, he ran his hands through his damp, unruly curls and placed the last missing piece on top of his head—his well-worn 'Standard Heating Oil' baseball cap.

It had been given to him by his mother. It wasn't necessarily a gift; she just saw it and thought he would like it. She always made a point of picking him things up when she saw something he liked, knowing he never usually spends money on himself. Frankie makes a mental note to give her a call later this week and see how she is doing.

The cap was the only thing he had brought with him when he deployed, to remind him of home. He remembers tearing it from his head and holding that very cap to his chest, right over his heart, with a vice grip on several occasions, as if it were a talisman.

When missions hadn't gone according to plan and he thought he might not make it back to his family and friends. In the end, though, he always got out with thankfully minor injuries.

So for that reason, he considers it his good luck charm and refuses to leave the house without it; even if he is going somewhere "formal," which is rare, he always brings it with him in the truck.

Frankies phone rings, pulling him out of his reverie. He picks the phone up off the nightstand, pulling the charging cord from the port, and, glancing at the screen, it's Pope. He answers the call and is greeted by a very cheery Santiago.

"Hola Hermano, how are you?" Pope's voice sounds chirpily from the speaker.

"Hey, I'm alright, what's up?" Frankie asks suspiciously. He had spoken to pope less than twelve hours ago, and it wasn't like him to call this early in the morning.

"Nothing's up. Can't I just call to catch up with my mejor amiga?" He responds innocently.

"I would usually agree, but considering I dropped you off not twelve hours ago, I'm assuming something is up?" Frankie shoots back with a chuckle.

"Okay, that's fair enough. I was going to call into your place to hear more about this pretty lady you're helping out this afternoon." Frankie can hear the shit-eating grin on Santiago's face through the phone line.

"I knew you were digging; feel free to come over, but theres nothing to tell," he deadpans.

"Alright, alright, I'll see you in five." Pope laughs and hangs up the phone.

The last thing Frankie wants is Pope grilling him about you when there is really nothing to tell. As much as he felt a connection to you, he was certain that he was letting his imagination run away from him and that in reality you were just being polite.

Right on cue, Santi is walking through the front door of Frankie's house. Taking in his surroundings and appreciating the fact that nothing had changed in this place; everything still lived where it had the last time he visited.

"Morning, you want coffee?" Frankie greets Pope as he strolls into the kitchen.

"Please! So what happened yesterday? You were pretty tight-lipped with the details around the guys last night," he asks, arching a thick brow and leaning against the kitchen island.

"Same thing I told you yesterday—nothing really happened; she rear-ended my truck and fell on her way to give me her insurance information. I patched up her leg, and that was that." Frankie retells the same shortened version of events as he had the day before.

"Frank Who are you trying to kid here? I can see right through you; you've been on cloud nine since you picked me up yesterday. This girl clearly has something to do with it." Pope insisted; he was observant; Frankie had to give it to him, but really, what was there to say?

"Fine, everything I told you is pretty much what happened, but… I told her not to worry about the insurance and that I would get Benny to fix her car, and I asked her to dinner." That's all. Frankie admits sheepishly, his large veined hand rubbing anxiously at the back of his neck.

"Ahhhh, you see, I knew there was more to this story than you were letting on last night!" Pope wagged his finger in Frankie's direction, obviously pleased with himself.

"Oh, of course you did; I forgot you were omniscient." Frankie snarks back with a roll of his eyes.

"Not omniscient, I just know you too well, Hermano! So what's this girl like? Did she say yes? She's clearly done a number on you if you asked her to dinner," Pope asks, eyes gleaming at the prospect of new information.

"That's true; she said yes to dinner; she actually gave me this note."

Frankie chuckles, sliding the note, which is now very worn from his constant folding and unfolding, across the counter to his friend before continuing.

"She said yes to dinner. I just feel like I read more into it than I should have known. I don't know if she's interested in me or just being polite." He lets out a long sigh and looks back at Pope, already waiting for a snarky comment, as he watches his friend read over your neat handwriting. but what he receives is understanding.

"Yeah, I get it, bud, but from that note, from what you've told me about meeting her yesterday and my infanite wisdom with the ladies," he pauses to give Frankie an exaggerated wink before continuing. "I think she is definitely interested! And if I'm wrong, then so what! What have you got to lose?" Pope grinned, glad his friend was finally taking a chance on someone.

"Just my pride, so, you know, nothing major," Frankie huffed out a laugh.

"Listen, on a serious note, I just wanted to come over and make sure you were okay after yesterday. I know things like that can bring up some shit." Pope said, his tone suddenly sombre.

He stood from his seat on the island and walked around to clasp a firm grip on Frankie's shoulder. reassuring him that he could be honest and tell his friend if he was going through something.

Frankie smiled genuinely, appreciating how much Pope looks out for him, even if he is gone the majority of the time.

"No, I'm good, Pope; meeting Y/N was honestly like a breath of fresh air; no nightmares or anything last night." He beamed, realising that for the first time in what felt like years, he had actually had a full night's sleep; he felt well rested, and his anxiety was at bay, aside from the nerves about seeing you again, which he tried desperatly to squash down.

"Well, I'm glad to hear that, Frankie; it's about time you got some well-deserved rest. Ah, so her name is Y/N then? There is more to learn yet," Pope says, playfully jabbing Frankie in the ribs.

Frankie has never really believed in soulmates or in "fate" bringing people together, but he had to admit that meeting you yesterday felt different; it felt special in a way he had never experienced before. It was like he was supposed to be at that stop light at just the right time.

He's never been more grateful for Pope; after all, if he wasn't on his way to pick him up, he would never have met you. Though Frankie keeps this thought to himself, Pope's head is big enough already; he doesn't need this information to inflate it more.

"Right, I have to shoot. Im meeting Will at the diner for breakfast. You joining us?" asked Pope as he shrugged out of his light jacket, picking up his keys from the countertop.

"Nah, I'm good. Im going to run some errands and then head over to Benny's; I'll catch up with you guys tomorrow though." Frankie assures him.

"You better, I want to hear more about this lovely lady!" Pope gives him a quick hug and a pat on the back before heading out of the kitchen. Leaving Frankie alone with his thoughts.

He needed to find something to occupy his mind as he waited for it to be an acceptable time to head to Benny's. He did a once-over of the house with the vacuum. Frankie has always liked his place to be clean and tidy, as he finds it helps with his anxiety.

Once that was finished, he grabbed his keys and headed into town. Frankie wants to do everything right by you and wants to give you everything you deserve and more. He knows he doesn't know anything about you yet, but he decides to pick you up some flowers.

As Frankie hits the town centre, he mumbles a low "Yes!" as he swings the truck into a curbside parking space just a few doors down from the florist shop. Once the truck is in park, a thought occurs to him and stops him in his tracks.

"Shit, I don't even know what kind of flowers she likes."

While he is debating what to do, he stays in the quiet cab of the truck until he swings the door open and heads in the direction of the florist.

"I'll just take a gamble, see what they have, and pick something nice." He thinks as he pulls open the door. The aroma of fresh flowers and foliage greets him, and it reminds him of you, the floral scent of your perfume still lingering in his mind.

"Good Morning. Can I help you with anything?" An older woman asks from behind a rather large bouquet of what looked like fresias, but he honestly wasn't sure.

"Morning, ma'am, I'm just looking for a bouquet, but I don't really know what I'm looking for; I'm a little lost," he admits sheepishly, his hand returning to the nape of his neck, rubbing at the curls sticking out from under the cap.

"Okay, I can help you with that, no problem! Is it for a special occasion? Or a particular person?" She asks while making her way around the counter and coming to stand in the centre of the shop floor.

Frankie follows, and as he looks around, he can see they are now surrounded by what looks like a hundred different varieties of flowers, some of which he is familiar with from seeing them around his mother's house and others he has never seen before.

"It's, uh, a first date, or at least I hope it will be." He laughs and smiles politely at the woman. She returns it with a warm smile, understanding settling in her features.

"Okay, what about some pink roses? Or even some daisies if you want something less traditional?" The woman gestures around at the different options available. Frankies eyes follow her hand and dart around the room until he sees them.

They were the brightest sunflowers he had ever seen, with their massive yellow petals shining in the sunlight of the shop window. He knew they were the ones the second his eyes landed on them.

"What about sunflowers?" He asked the florist with the same warm smile she had given him a few seconds ago.

"We can certainly do that; are there any other flowers you would like along with them?" She asks as she lifts the bucket and brings it over to the large, heavy-looking workbench on the south side of the store.

"Just whatever you think would look best," he nodded.

"Sure, no problem. Could you give me about twenty minutes to make this up?" Asked the florist.

"Of course, take your time; there's no rush." He offers another smile and heads for the door.

He finishes the last of his errands over the next fifteen minutes. Frankie pulls out his phone to check the time and notices it's almost one in the afternoon. He opens his contacts and hits 'dial' on Benny's name. He answers in two rings.

"Hey Ben, are we still good for this afternoon, yeah?" Frankie asks, hoping Benny can't hear the nerves in his voice.

"Yeah, man, all good. What time is your, eh, friend going to be here?" Benny chuckled down the line.

"I asked Y/N to meet me at your place at 2pm so I'm going to head over to you in five if that's alright?" He asked as he made his way back up Main Street to the florist's shop.

Yeah, brother, no worries! I'll see you soon. Benny replied brightly, and Frankie hung up the phone.

Just as he was about to enter the flower shop, his phone started to vibrate in his pocket. Digging roughly in his pocket to fetch the device, Frankie looks at the screen, and his breath leaves him. He is standing with his hand on the door handle, staring at your name on his phone like an idiot.

He finally answers and greets you with a voice like melting honey: "Hola Hermosa, how are you today?" The smile growing on his face felt like it could split him down the middle.

"Hey Frankie, I'm doing a lot better now that I'm talking to you good-looking. How are you doing?" a light, breathy laugh sounding down the phone at him.

He swore that was the prettiest sound he had ever heard. In that moment, he was sure he could listen to it on repeat for the rest of his life. The thought of that scared the shit out of him. How has he been so enraptured by someone he barely knows?

Well, I'm awfully glad to hear that. Are we still on for this afternoon?" He almost crooned back at you, hoping the eagerness in his voice wasn't too obvious.

"I am indeed; that is, if you still want to." He could hear the nerves in her sweet voice, and it made him relax a little. He was glad he wasn't the only one who was anxious about this afternoon. 

"Of course I do, I'm looking forward to seeing you again, Y/N," Frankie admits before continuing, "Benny thinks he has all the parts he needs to fix your car, so it shouldn't take us long." He debates asking you to dinner then and there but decides to wait so he can give you the flowers.

"You are?" you ask, sounding genuinely surprised.

"Of course I am hermosa; Benny is also looking forward to meeting the woman daring enough to take on the truck." Frankie huffs out a laugh, trying to cover his chagrin.

"That makes me really happy… that you're looking forward to it; meeting Benny on the other hand is sending my nerves into overdrive if I'm being honest," you let out another soft laugh.

"Don't be nervous; he's the human equivalent of a golden retriever." He laughs heartily.

Okay, I'll make sure to bring some tennis balls." You deadpan, and it sends Frankie into an uncontrollable fit of belly laughter. His sides are aching by the time he gets a hold of himself as he commits your tinkling laughter to memory.

"I like that sound," she murmurs into the receiver. Frankie isn't even sure if he was meant to hear it, but it spreads its way through his chest and squeezes around his heart.

"I could say the same thing to you," he whispers, his voice thick and rough with emotion.

"I will see you soon then?" You confirm with him that you don't care if you sound desperate or overeager.

"Tan pronto, Cariño" he promises, both of you stay quietly on the line, not wanting to be the ones to end the phone call.

"Adiós Frankie," you all but purr, and he feels his knees get weak.

As he stands by the shop window, Frankie tightly grips his phone while leaning his back against the glass. With his free hand, he removes the baseball cap from his head, running his fingers through the soft and thick curls at the back of his neck.

Chuckling to himself, he shakes his head again before proceeding towards the entrance of the shop.

He gazes at the breathtaking arrangement crafted by the florist, momentarily taken aback by its intricate beauty. The arrangement is adorned with bright yellow sunflowers and delicate blue cornflowers scattered throughout.

Grateful for the artistry of the florist, he manages to stammer out his thanks. She tries to hand him his change, but he insists that she keep it as a token for her hard work. Frankie wishes her a good day before turning on his heel and leaving the store.

As he walks towards his car, he realises that he's humming a tune under his breath. It's a song that he hasn't thought about in years, but now it seems like the most fitting song in the world. He chuckles to himself, feeling like a teenager again.

Climbing into the truck, he gingerly sets the flowers on the backseat. He unlocks his phone and flicks his thumb across the screen, opening the Spotify app, selecting the 'This is Eagles" playlist, and hitting play on the song he had just been humming.

Frankie let his head fall back against the headrest, eyes closed and a faint smile on his lips. He's lost in the music, swaying his head back and forth as he sings along to the smooth, melodic voice of Don Henley.

"Cause I get a peaceful easy feeling, And I know you won't let me down, 'Cause I'm already standing, Im already standing, Yes, I'm already standing, On the ground,"

He taps his foot to the beat, his fingers drumming out the rhythm on the worn-out steering wheel. Everything around him fades away, and he's lost in the moment, his deep, gravelly voice rising in volume.

As the song draws to a close, he takes a deep breath, closing his eyes once more and letting the final notes linger in the air. A moment of silence passes before he opens his eyes and exhales, a sense of calm and contentment spreading through him.

The next song starts to play through the speakers, and the familiar beginning guitar riffs of "Life in the Fast Lane" fill the cab, and Frankie is once again brought back to the memory of opening your driver's side door yesterday and being greeted with the very same song.

Putting the truck in drive and pulling out into the flow of lunchtime traffic, he continues to tap along to the music as he makes his way to Benny's house. As he makes his way to you.

"Ahh, Francisco, you're in trouble." He chuckles to himself and turns the radio up, unable to stop the grin that seems to be taking up permanent residence on his face.

[ahedderick]

November!

For the time being, Wednesdays are going to be firewood cutting day (also chemistry post-lab worksheets day just shoot me). Today when my husband and I got to the top of the ridge up turn the truck around the sun was lighting up the tiniest of snow flurries drifting in the air. Surprise!

There are enough trees standing dead or fallen in this little patch of woods to give a year's-worth of firewood. There will also be plenty of deadwood of varying sizes left on the ground for the bugs and fungi! If D gets the truck backed into the bank just right, I can step from the ground onto the tailgate easily, even carrying a heavy piece of wood. That makes loading the truck substantially easier.

Although her mouth is no doubt still sore, Lady enjoyed the time in the woods. Blep!

We'll cut this one up someday, but in the meantime it's almost sculptural.

And that stump - there HAS to be a way I can sell off neat things like that locally. Now that my husband has (not entirely voluntarily) retired, I'm sorta motivated to find more ways to sell odd things. We still have hordes of Things of my late father's that should be sold off.

Heavy. That was heavy. Now it has to be UNloaded, and some of it split.

Note the happy dog:

Arthritis means he has to be picked up and helped into the truck and out of it again. But he's SUCH a good boy . . I try not to leave him behind at the house unless I really have to.

[boombox-propaganda]

thinking abt LL#24 again. specifically, ultra magnus and whirl.

thinking abt how of all the people who could have been paired up with ultra magnus to defend him, it was whirl. it could have been megatron. it could have been one of the scavengers who got split up trying to protect other crewmembers. it could have been chromedome and rewind.

but it wasn’t. it was whirl. chaotic, unpredictable whirl. whirl who started the war by beating up megatron, who has been arrested countless times by magnus and others, whose immediately previous conversation with magnus on mederi included no small amount of wariness on magnus’s end. that was the mech who was sent to guard magnus, who magnus allowed himself to be sent with.

and then magnus got hit with that rocket launcher. he was knocked out of his armour and rendered unconscious. he was the one who was supposed to open the matrix, because he was ‘decent’ and ‘one of the best’. but he couldn’t - he was unconscious. there wasn’t a backup plan.

it was whirl who opened the matrix. with his legs half blown off, with death on the doorstep and no chance of failure, it was whirl who crawled over to the matrix and made it open. whirl who spent the vast majority of the series embracing self-destruction, whirl who was alone and pushed people away, whirl who claimed his anger was an insulator and that he was broken beyond repair. it was whirl who opened it.

did they ever talk about that? did whirl let the rest of the crew believe it was magnus who opened it? did magnus let that lie persist? did he ever talk to whirl about it at all, the same way he once talked to cyclonus after he risked his life to save tailgate’s spark from cybercrosis, apologising or welcoming him aboard at the end of it all? did anyone else ever realise that whirl, for all the chaos that he had brought and continued to bring, was part of the reason their world remained intact, not because of his guns and defense of ultra magnus but because despite what he and everyone else believed, he was good enough in the end?

i think about it a lot.

[transgeoffrickly]

good afternoon to everyone except the guy who ignored the stop sign leaving the parking lot (just in case you forgot you don't have the right of way leaving a parking lot) and almost drove directly into me and then proceeded to tailgate me the whole time he was behind me until we parted ways when the road split into two lanes and he proceeded to make a turn on red at a busy intersection with bad visibility despite the "no turn on red" sign. you're not included in this, man