#which just means everything else has to get figured out and squared away

[lookwhatyoumademelou]

.

[fairyysoup]

it will come back

part 3

a.k.a. sever the blight (eddie’s version)

pairing(s): werewolf!eddie munson x fem!milkmaid!reader

summary: It's May Day, so naturally you'd have a hedonistic time. Except there's nothing natural about any of it.

cw: smut, consensual noncon is negotiated, primal play, literally i cannot stress how consensual it is, public sex (no one gets caught), knotting, biting, marking, possessiveness, reader is bitten by a werewolf, marriage proposal of sorts, dark themes, physical abuse, reader is a servant to an abusive master, misogyny, minor character death, blood, fairytale au, some kind of historical fantasy period, inspired by The Company of Wolves by Angela Carter

a/n: hiiiiiiii :) do I like this? no, but I've been working on it for half a year and if I don't publish it now I don't think I ever will, so pls enjoy it and if you don't shhhhh don't tell me ok love you bye

ALL MY WORKS ARE 18+ MINORS DNI

The bouquet of flowers on your doorstep is beautiful, and not lacking in symbolism. Purple lilacs, for the first emotions of love. Bluebells, for consistency and everlasting love. Red roses, for true love.

In the center is one singular, bright yellow marigold. You figure you know who left them.

You’re stunned by them when you first open the door. Your hairline, already covered by your flowers from last night, prickles with sweat. You had hoped for something, some kind of affection or gesture this year, as you do every year, but you hadn’t imagined it would actually… happen. You’d hoped a bit like a child hopes for rain on a clear day. It’s possible, but it would take a lot, in the grand scheme of things. 

You turn it over in your hands, your heartbeat thudding in your chest. You’re not sure what to think. You don’t know how Eddie would have known that this particular shack, in all of your Master’s sprawling estate, was yours. You don’t know what he means by this gesture. Is it an apology for turning you away last night? For embarrassing you? Is it a promise of some kind, that he intends to do something tonight? Is it a real declaration of love, or is it something else entirely? 

You sniff, getting a waft of fragrant lilac when you do, and turn to place it inside. There’s nothing to be done with it now, aside from finding a vase for it. You don’t know where Eddie lays his head at night. You don’t know where he is now, or where he’ll be later. You have to trust that he’ll find you. 

I’ll always come back to you. That’s what he said, before you walked away last night. You have to believe him, because otherwise you have nothing else.

“Just where do you think you’re going?” snaps a stern voice when you jauntily march out the door of your shack. Your Mistress stands with a sour look on her face, eyeing your day dress, free of an apron.

“To the town square, ma’am,” you tell her honestly, your head bowed. “For the… festival.” 

“Just because it’s May Day does not mean you are exempt from your daily chores,” your Mistress reminds you, shoving a pitchfork in your hand and ordering you to go bale the hay. 

You do as you’re told; you always do. You also know that you’ll probably be baling the hay until nightfall, when the festivities are sure to be picking up. 

It gives you time to think. You don’t know what you’d do if you ran into Eddie at the bonfire tonight. Or, maybe you do… you have some ideas about what you’d like to do, anyways. But you can’t speak for what he wants. 

He told you not to go near the woods, which he also said is where he lives. If he wanted to take you somewhere… wouldn’t it be to his own home? If so, has he already given you his answer, that he doesn’t want you in the way that you want him? It’s hard to believe, based on everything he’s done up to this point. 

Well after noon, and several hay bales later, you’re sure the maypole in the center of town has been decorated by now. You’re sure that the town square has been covered with flowers, and you’re sure that Victoria and Hyacinth and the rest of the maidens in the town have determined which eligible bachelor they want to celebrate with tonight. 

A flame of jealousy sparks in your gut. You hope that none of them have set their sights on Eddie. The mere thought of it is enough to make you see red. 

As the sun sets on the horizon, shining golden light in through the open doors of the barn, you’re sure that people have noticed your absence from the festivities. It’s common knowledge around town that your Master is crueler than most. Less lenient, more forceful. You’ve heard whispers behind your back, and you pay them no heed, usually. That the Master intends to take you for a wife after your Mistress dies, whenever that may be. That he keeps you close for his own twisted purposes. And, you suppose, there’s merit to those rumors.

You’re not unaware of the way the Master sets his eyes on you sometimes. He isn’t good at hiding it, you should say. Not that he really tries; on more than one occasion, you’ve incurred the Mistress’s wrath simply because the Master stared at your chest for a little too long. Yes, you could say that the Master is attracted to you, in some way. And, once, you might have counted yourself lucky.

If he wasn’t attracted to you, he could be crueler. And you could do worse than to catch the eye of a powerful, wealthy landowner. If he married you, you would be financially secure, and you would never have to seek a place to live. You would never worry about being labeled a whore or being thrown out on the street. At one point, you’d accepted that this was the best case scenario for you.

But something has changed your perspective, recently. Something that has dark eyes and a mischievous smile and rings on his fingers. Fingers that, you know, are very skilled.

And what if… What if you were to marry Eddie? As you had imagined in the field last night, your mind wanders to the idea of being Eddie’s wife. Tending to his house, you imagine, a stone cottage in the woods. To lie in bed with him on a rainy night, warm against his burning chest. Being able to gaze into those sparkling eyes as often as you like, being able to wake up to him. 

For the first time since you were a young girl, you really consider the possibility of being… happy. Your happiness. The idea of a happy future is something that has been such a foreign concept for so long, it almost makes you uncomfortable to dream about it. 

When you were little, you’d dream about being a beautiful princess in a tower, saved by a knight in shining armor, who also happened to be a prince. These dreams went away once your family sold you into indentured servitude; princesses don’t work. Princesses aren’t covered in shit and filth on festival days, baling hay in a cow pasture. Princesses would be dancing the maypole and crowned the may queen–

“And I crowned her my sweet queen of May.”

–Princesses would be showered with flowers and gifts–

Bluebells for consistency and everlasting love.

–Princesses are whisked away in the night from their troubles and marry princes. 

I am not a princess.

You throw your pitchfork down beside the last bale of hay. The sun has set, finally, and the moon is already high in the sky. The bonfires in the town square will be burning down. If Eddie was there, he’s sure to have found someone else by now. 

Your cheeks, dusted with dirt, feel crusty and filthy when you cry. You are no princess, despite the crown of flowers on your head. Eddie isn’t going to save you. And really, what would it say for your honor if he did? Can you not defend yourself? Are you so helpless that you need a strange man from the woods to save you from your life?

Marching out of the barn, you feel hungry, and tired, and you figure that you would probably be best suited to go to bed. But there will be food and drink at the festival, even if it’s late. There could still be time to meet someone, anyway.

“And where do you think you’re going?” It’s a deep and gruff voice that asks this time, and you’re about sick and tired of hearing that same question. But your irritation is easily replaced by dread, when you turn to find your Master standing by the entrance to the barn you just stormed out of.

“The bonfire,” you reply, with less heat than intended. “It’s May Day, and I’ve done my chores.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” your Master says. 

He’s not a tall man, but what he lacks in stature he makes up for in intimidation. He has cold blue eyes and a sneer that could freeze a King in his place. You know what it’s like when he’s on the other side of a cane, and you don’t relish the idea of a beating just because you wanted to go to a festival. When the Master steps up to you, he smells like liquor, so strong it stings your sinuses.

“You think I don’t know what you’ve been up to?” He growls at you, a nasty sounding thing in the back of his throat. You flinch. “That girl from the Werther’s house– Victoria, is it? She told me all about you and some… some boy in the woods. The one they call the Beast in town. Is that what you’re doing now? Dallying with any boy who comes around? Even ones from the woods?” 

Your cheeks burn hot, and you step back just as he steps forward, looming over you in his drunken state. “No, I… I don’t dally–” 

“Not from what she says,” he snaps back, and you briefly consider wringing Victoria by her stupid neck. And then you think, Hyacinth would have never betrayed me. “Running around in your night clothes, fooling around with some woodland freak. I ought to whip you where you stand.” 

Your heartbeat pounds in your ears as he backs you into a corner. The fence for the pig pen meets the edge of the barn where you end up, your back hitting the barn door and earning a loud creak from the hinges. 

Your Master reaches for you with a snarl. Instinctively you curl into a ball, your arms coming up to protect your face and neck. Your instincts don’t take into consideration that he doesn’t have a cane in his hand, and he’s too drunk to throw a good punch. You cry out when his hand clamps tightly around your wrist, and he yanks you toward the barn. 

“What are you doing?” is your undignified shriek when he throws you into the barn, and you fall into the pile of hay bales you just stacked.

“You’ll sleep with the cows tonight,” the Master growls, and spits a glob of phlegm at your feet. “It’s what you are.” 

“No, please–” you rush forward just as the barn doors slam shut in front of your face, locking you in darkness with the stench of manure and dirt. The cows are down at the other end of the barn; you hear them jostling unhappily in their restraints as you bang on the door with the flat of your hand. 

You finally let yourself cry. You’re filthy. Covered in sweat and grime, mud all over your skirt from working all day, the crown of flowers on your head wilting. You don’t know what you expected. You’re not Cinderella; you don’t have a fairy godmother, and you don’t have anyone coming to save you and let you go to the ball. This isn’t a fairytale. The stories you were told when you were a child were just that.

Even as you continue to bang on the door, you’re already starting to accept it. You won’t be getting out of here anytime soon. They’ll let you out of the barn in the morning, sure, but you’re not going to leave this farm, or your Master, or this life of servitude until you’re dead, or otherwise ripped from your mortal life. 

Then there’s a scuffling. On the other side of the door, you hear your Master shout once, shortly, before it’s muffled and frantic. Footfalls in the dirt. A growling, snarling. Yelping. And then something bangs on the barn door, making it jostle so hard you scream and jump back. 

Your Master, just on the other side of the door, like he’s been thrown against it, screams loudly. Something snarls, and then there’s a wet squelch, like the sound of something alive being torn open. A chicken being gutted. You stand away from the door, your eyes bulging in the darkness, your hands clamped over your mouth to quiet your frantic breathing. 

Something just killed your Master. The fact sinks like a stone in your stomach. He’s no longer shouting. There’s no movement, nothing to indicate that there’s anything alive on the other side of the door anymore. Only dead silence. 

And then another scuffle. A heavy thud, like something being thrown aside. And then something, or someone, is unlocking the door.

In the darkness, you panic. You back away quickly, your hands searching, feeling for anything that you can grab to defend yourself with. You find nothing, but collapse into the stack of hay bales just as the doors swing open, and you come face to face with your Master’s killer. 

“Eddie?” 

It’s him, all right. He stands with his arms outstretched to either side, holding the barn doors open with the light of the full moon shining in behind him. You don’t know how it’s happening, but his eyes reflect the moonlight with a bright red hue to compliment the red blood that’s all over him. 

It drips down his face, his neck, his chest. It’s on his hands. When he smiles at you, it’s in his teeth.

“Hi, sweetheart,” he says, and you feel like your heart could leap out of your chest with how hard it pounds in its cage. He tilts his head, seeing your tear streaked face, the way you cower against the bales of hay in your muddy dress. “Rough day?”

“You– you–” and your brain has stopped working. You know what you’re looking at; Eddie killed your Master. Eddie is covered in his blood. Eddie, Eddie, Eddie, is a killer, a murderer, looming over you with a smile that could scare ghosts back into their graves. 

“Yeah, me.” He takes a step forward. You scream and jump back, putting a bale of hay between you and the man covered in blood at the door. Eddie puts his hands up in defense. “I’m not going to hurt you, princess–”

“Stop calling me that.” You grab your pitchfork off the ground, and hold it up at him. “You killed my Master. I don’t even know how you did it– but do you know what that means?” You thrust the pitchfork at him. He jumps back. “Do you?”

Eddie blinks. “It means… you’re free?” 

“It means I get passed off to his next of kin,” you snarl at him. “Like a fucking cow. That’s all I am to them. I’m cattle. And the next person who gets me may decide to slaughter me. Do you understand?” You jab the pitchfork at him again, and he backs away into the moonlight. “Why would you do that to me?” 

“Because he hurt you!” Eddie retorts, flailing his outstretched hands, exasperated. “Because he locked you in a barn! I could– I could smell the rage on him. He wasn’t going to leave you here, he was going to do something worse. Just give it another drink, he would have been back out here. And I wasn’t going to let it happen. I couldn’t… I couldn’t watch it anymore.” He drops his arms with a sigh, and his hands smack loudly against his thighs. “You’ve helped me twice. Let me at least return the favor.” 

“I helped you once,” you snap.

Eddie shakes his head. “No, sweet pea. Twice. You just didn’t know it.” 

He raises his right hand, his bloody fist tight. He shakes his arm until his sleeve falls, and exposes the light pink scrap of fabric tied around it– the one you swore was yours. The one you swore you tied around the leg of the wolf you nursed last month. 

“You–” the pitchfork in your hand lowers. You think you’re halfway to crazy. Or, maybe you’re already there. “You’re the wolf.” 

Eddie nods. “I am.”

“You’re a… a wolf-man?” You’re shaking your head, but even so, the entire thing makes sense. It’s why you’ve been so suspicious, why something seemed so off about him. Why his smile is always so sharp. Why you always feel a little bit like a frightened animal around him, in spite of it all.

“I am,” Eddie repeats, and he turns to look over his shoulder.

You shake your head. “I don’t believe in that. I don’t believe in fairytales.”

“Doesn’t matter what you believe in, sweetheart.” He spits something out of his mouth, grimacing as he licks his teeth. “The moon will peak at midnight, and then I change. I need to be far away when that happens.” He looks at you, his eyes pleading. “Come with me.” 

As incredulous as you are, as slowly as you’re coming to terms with what’s been in front of you the whole time, you still drop your pitchfork to the ground. “Where?” 

“To the woods,” Eddie shrugs, his smile disarmingly sweet beneath all the blood. “Maybe I can be your new Master, hm?” 

“Fuck you, Munson.”

“That’s the name of the game.”

“You’re a goddamn demon. I shouldn’t have trusted you– I shouldn’t have talked to you.” 

Eddie crosses his arms. “Listen. I think God’s got a sick sense of humor; otherwise, I wouldn’t be what I am, and you’d be a lady in a castle far away from any of this. So why don’t we make the best of a bad situation, hm?”

You narrow your eyes at him. You can feel yourself doing something stupid even before you say it. “I’m… listening.”

“Great!” He claps his hands and launches into a spiel that leaves you wondering if he’d spent the entire time since last night concocting it. “I’m gonna turn into a rabid beast in, oh, I dunno, maybe two hours. Give or take. But if you want to stay in my home, safe, where wolf-me can’t work a latch, I’ll be back in the morning. And then we can get married and fuck and have lots of babies and be that old couple who lives in the woods. Or something. Really, I haven’t thought that far. Maybe just stay the night? Or forever. I’m not picky.”

You’re frowning when he turns to you with a half-crazed grin. “That’s the worst proposal I’ve ever heard.”

Eddie gestures to himself. “Not exactly a poet.”

“So, what are you, then?” You raise an eyebrow at him. “No riddles this time. Tell me, honestly. What are you?”

Eddie sighs. He tilts his head to the ceiling, kicks the ground with the heel of his boot, and then he says, “I’m a monster. I’m a man. I’m a woodworker and I’m a charlatan. I cheat, I lie. I turn into a wolf and I kill men because they’d do the same to me. I can’t help it, comes with the territory. I have a family of other wolves who look after me and I look after them, and you’ll meet them if you want. But…” He peers at you for a moment, and then averts his gaze, “But really, I’m yours. I’m in love with you. I have been since you helped me that time Thatch shot me, and I’ll be yours even if you run to town and turn me in, and I’ll be yours if they hunt me down and throw me on a pyre. That’s all I am, really.”

You can barely find it in you to breathe. You’re still shaky on your feet and you don’t think you’re quite in your right mind, but you find yourself thinking about the last night, about his hands and his lips on you, about how it was so easy for you to get lost in him. How you spent all night and all day thinking about him, wanting him, wishing for precisely this. 

Just not with the caveat of fur and four legs. 

“You’re looking at me funny,” he muses, his eyes flaring. His smile is wider than it should be. His teeth are more pointed than they should be. 

“I’m not looking at you any sort of way.”

He laughs. It runs clear down your spine and shudders through your limbs. You have to swallow past the dryness in your throat. 

“Always so proud– you know you don’t have to stand on ceremony anymore, right?” He tilts his head at you. “There’s no one around to judge you here, princess. Least of all me.”

 “I’m not standing on ceremony,” you press, but you feel like an indignant child the more you argue with him. “If I was, I wouldn’t be talking to you. I’d be trying to get out of here.”

“You want to leave?” Eddie asks, his voice clear and frank. He points over his shoulder. “Don’t let me stand in your way.”

He holds his hands out at his sides, palms up. His fingernails are long and sharp– like he’s slowly transforming into a monster, right in front of you. He stands aside, and there’s a clear path between you and the door. 

You could leave. You could run. You could find a place to run and hide, disappear by morning. 

But you don’t. You don’t want to leave. Not him. Not yet. 

His eyes are different now as they peer at you. They seem iridescent, glinting in the darkness. He sizes you up and down, and you feel more and more like prey. You… should be scared.

“Am I to take that as a no?” Eddie asks after a lengthy pause. 

You don’t exactly have anything to say in your defense. If he was wrong, you would already have tried to bolt. 

“Will you chase me?” You watch his eyebrows shoot up when you ask the question. You wet your lower lip with your tongue, an inch away from gnawing on it. “If I run, will you come after me?”

“Do you want me to chase you?” 

Your breath sticks in your throat. It would be so easy to just say yes. Yes, I want to be chased by you. I want to be pursued and I want you to make me yours in every way possible. But the words won’t come. They can’t come, as if it would soil you just to say them. It would be admitting defeat.

“I don’t want to be given a choice.” 

Eddie shakes his head, his frown of confusion deepening. “You always have a choice with me.”

“Eddie,” you say slowly, inclining your head. “I don’t. Want. A choice.” You stare at him heavily, willing him to gather your meaning without having to say it. I want you to force me.

You watch as the fire of recognition ignites in his eyes, and he opens his mouth with a noise of understanding. Ah. Yes. This is your choice. He smirks at you, then looks down at his foot as he digs his heel idly into the dirt. 

“I’ll count to three,” Eddie mutters without looking up at you. Still, you can see the ghost of a playful smile on his face. “One-”

You take off like a shot. You don’t have time to hear him continue counting. You’ll probably make it to the pasture before he catches up with you, unless he’s stronger than a normal man. If the bloodied carcass of your Master is anything to go by, though, you imagine that he is. 

You don’t make it to the pasture. You don’t even get close. You come to the doorstep of your pathetic little shed, your feet slamming the dirt, kicking up dust all the way, the air in your lungs burning with the labor of your breath, when your back is hit by something solid and unforgiving. Your legs are ripped out from beneath you, and you topple to the ground in front of your door with a thud.

“How fitting,” Eddie’s voice says in your ear, deep and husky, while his hand cups your chin, yanking your head up from the dirt. “Right where we met, isn’t it?”

He crowds you, half-laying on top of you, his weight pressing into your back and his hips meeting yours from behind. You gasp at the feeling of sharp claws pricking your cheeks where he holds your jaw in his hand, while the other creeps beneath your skirt and along your thigh.

“I never got to finish what I started last night,” Eddie purrs, his voice resonating in his chest. It’s enough to make you shiver, while goosebumps erupt on your skin. “I never like to leave a lady wanting.”

He scrapes his nails along your inner thigh, coaxing your legs apart. You jerk a little in his grip and whine when his claws dig in. Your face burns, your skin feeling like it’s on fire. It would be so easy for someone to find you here, flat on your stomach with a monster at your back. 

A whimper escapes your lips when his finger circles your clit, just like he did the night before. You shouldn’t want him, especially not like this, but it’s almost as if everything about Eddie begs you to go against your own nature. It began when you invited a wild animal into your home. It doesn’t seem like it will ever end. Nor will your want for him. 

“Eddie,” you sigh out shakily, and he shushes you while his finger plays through your wetness. He touches you like he knows exactly how to set you on edge. He’s cruel with his gentility, even while you want him to tear you apart. 

You arch against him, driving your ass back against his hips. You feel his cock press against you through the layers of fabric still separating you, and it makes you want to whine in frustration like a spoiled brat. It’s not enough to have him here, pinning you, touching you. You need him everywhere. You need him to consume you entirely. 

Gasping, you open your mouth to say something else– urge him or taunt him, you’re not sure which– but his hand clamps down over your mouth before you can manage it. 

“I told you to be quiet,” he growls, grinding his hips down into yours harder. “I’ve already been shot once, I don’t need it to happen again because you can’t keep it down.”

Eddie flips your skirts up over your hips, and your bare skin meets the cool air. There’s a moment of heavy anticipation, of Eddie’s harsh breathing against your ear, of the scrape of his trousers against your thighs. And then there’s the press of his cock against your entrance, and you tense. 

“Do you believe in me now?” Eddie whispers in your ear. His voice has taken on a ragged tone, like he can hardly contain the animal lingering beneath his surface. His fingers have just started to tremble against your cheeks– just enough to let you know that he, damn him, is holding himself back. 

Your eyelashes flutter. You have a mind to grind against him, to spur him on. “I have to, don’t I?”

He chuckles, and the sound raises goosebumps on your skin. Your heart pounds in your chest, and Eddie takes a long, slow inhale. “Your heart’s beating so fast, princess. Something on your mind?”

“Fuck you,” you seethe. 

“As you wish.”

He grabs your hips and pushes in deep. You cry out, digging your fingers into the dirt to steady yourself, scrabbling for a sense of stability. Eddie holds you close by the throat, pulling out and pushing back in with the same brutal force. 

The sounds coming from your mouth can’t be real, can’t be you. You aren’t proud of yourself, but you can’t stop while he’s being relentless, fucking into you hard and fast. 

Eddie groans low in your ear, his hand around your throat slipping down. His claws wrap around your neckline and he tears through the fabric, ripping the layers of clothing to expose your shoulder to him. You feel the whisper of his sharp teeth along your skin, tickling at your pulse point, and it’s all you can do not to cum right then. 

Your eyes roll, your back arching against him. “Eddie, I–”

“Don’t be afraid,” Eddie tells you. His words vibrate on your skin. “I won’t bite.”

You reach back, and your hand finds his hair, thick and curly between your fingers. “I want you to,” you pant, while your orgasm mounts, pleasure gathering between your legs with every move that he makes. You moan, your breath catching in your throat. “Please, Eddie–”

His nose pressed to your shoulder, Eddie shakes his head. You can’t see the way that his pupils dilate, his limbs shaking with the effort of holding back. 

Instead, his hand slips between your legs again, and when he circles your clit with his gentle touch and his sharp claw, you cum with a silent scream of relief. 

He keeps going, hard and fast as you ride out your orgasm. And finally, Eddie lets out an animalistic growl loud enough to shake the earth, and he spills inside you. 

Your legs threaten to buckle out from under you, but Eddie catches you at the last second just before you both slump to the damp ground. Gasping for breath and still coming down from your high, you barely have the energy to object when your clouded mind registers the swell of a knot keeping him inside you. 

Eddie wraps his arms around you and pulls you closer, until you fit against him like the missing piece of a puzzle. The full moon overhead douses the pastures with silver light. Far off in the tall grass, crickets sing. 

“You didn’t bite,” you croak, your voice sounding distant and hazy. He shifts, and it makes you squeak when it moves the knot inside you. 

“Didn’t want to do it to you if you didn’t mean it,” he murmurs. His breath is hot on the back of your neck, and you find yourself wishing that you could turn and look at him in the moonlight. 

“I meant it,” you tell him earnestly, running your hand along his arm. “I want… I want it. Make me yours, Eddie.”

He makes a weak noise in his throat, his arms tightening around you even further. “Don’t say that unless you want me forever.”

You laugh. It surprises you, but you can’t help it. “I don’t think I could let you go even if I wanted to, baby.”

He stills for a moment, like he’s trying to process what you’re telling him. “So… so you’ll come with me?”

You sigh, with a gentle smile curling at your lips. You consider the dreams you’ve had, of running away with him, of living with him, of having him whisk you away like a knight in shining armor. Even if he isn’t a knight, it is what you’ve been wishing for, isn’t it?

“Yes,” you tell him softly. “I’ll come with you. Just make me yours.”

When he pulls your hair away from your neck, Eddie’s touch is so tender that it could make you cry. His lips touch your skin, and your eyes flutter shut in anticipation of the sting of his teeth. 

“I’ll always be yours,” he tells you again, this time so quiet that it sounds like a prayer for you alone to hear. “Always.”

And when Eddie sinks his teeth in, the world goes black.

You wake with your head on a pillow of soft cotton and your back on a mattress filled with hay.

Wherever you are, there isn’t much light in the room. There’s an open window somewhere over your head; you hear birds outside. The forest sings in the morning. 

The cabin you’re in is much like your own, except it affords more room to move around. The floor has a decadent rug thrown across it, something that you wouldn’t expect a cabin like this to have in its inventory. It isn’t much bigger than your own shack. You old shack, now, you suppose. 

The more you look around, the more things seem… eclectic, to say the least. The bed is simple wood, but the blankets and linens are fine, like something an aristocrat would use. The ring dish on the window sill is an abalone seashell, shining iridescent purple and blue in the morning light to reflect the rubies and sapphires on the rings inside of it. The humble dining table is worn and covered in knicks and scratches, but the silverware is finer than any you’ve ever seen. 

When you finally pull yourself out of the bed and take a look around, you see Eddie’s burgundy blouse tossed across a rocking chair in the corner by the hearth. So, you conclude, this is Eddie’s domain. His home. The cabin in the woods you’d been dreaming of. 

And with a bit more snooping, you conclude something else. Eddie Munson is a goddamned thief. 

He has pocket watches engraved with names of nobility from all around the country. The platter on the table is monogrammed H.R. Cheshire. Eddie’s wardrobe has a large amount of men’s and women’s clothing piled in it, and all of it is fine silk, taffeta and lace– not something a simple woodworker living in the woods would be able to afford. 

You stumble to the door almost like you’re drunk, and when the door bangs open on its hinges, it’s Eddie who startles backwards in the bushes this time. He yelps, and you see just enough of him to catch him losing his balance and toppling ass-over-head over a log past the treeline. 

“For god’s sake, Eddie,” you chastise him. 

“Wasn’t expecting that,” he retorts, his head popping up over the top of the bush. He’s cleaned himself up, at least, so his face isn’t covered in blood anymore. He still looks so beautiful, though, and you still feel your heart skip a beat to look at him.

“You– you’ve stolen half of everything in here.” You gesture vaguely over your shoulder at the cabin. Your shoulder aches and stings when you move it, leading you to believe that everything that happened in the night was not a dream. It was real. 

Everything you’ve thought didn’t exist is real. 

Eddie is just a flicker of a shadow through the trees as he rounds one and steps into full view. “Had to make a living, somehow.” 

“And yet you walk around in the woods naked?”

He holds his hands out at his sides. “Um. Didn’t have time to get changed after I brought you here. It's kinda… it’s hard to hold it off when it happens.”

“When you turn into a wolf, you mean?”

“Yes.” 

You nod slowly, trying to only look at his face. It’s inordinately difficult. “Am I going to turn into a wolf?”

“Eventually.” Eddie tilts his head and looks at you warily. “Did you… not want it after all?”

“No, I–” you pause. It’s hard to put into words what you’re feeling, but you know it’s not regret. Your voice wobbles when you finally say, “I think it’ll just take some time to get used to it. Things have been the same for so long, and now…”

“Hey,” Eddie says, sounding almost the same as you had when he showed up the first time, crying at your door. He holds out his hand, his palm facing upward. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Okay? Let me help.”

You look at him through misty eyes, and you almost laugh at how blatantly your roles have reversed, now. You, standing at his door, crying. Him, trying to be of service to you. 

You give him a meager smile, placing your hand in his. “Can I stay?”

“Stay forever,” Eddie tells you, looking up at you with kind eyes. “But I can’t promise I’ll be polite for all of it.”

“Then it’s a good thing I’m in love with you,” you admit, and watch as he absorbs your words slowly, almost as if he never imagined he’d hear you say it. 

And when he kisses you this time, you don’t even mind the sharpness of his teeth.

[valentine-writes]

i just rly wanna luv u !

「 tws + notes: no tws, unserious asf, atsv ben reilly having kenergy (CREDS 2 @//KAIRISCORNER THE GOAT for this), ben is mad silly, reader is a spider-person, unedited, ooc (?) 」

↳ ft. scarlet spider/ben reilly

「 oblivious gn!reader, romantic relationship <3 」

author's note: im having so many thoughts about him in the movie always. bro had bare minimum screen time and i still go AWOOGA thinking of this stupid stupid guy </3 im gonna b real here, i luv my bitches silly!!! (*ﾉε｀*)

▸ you were teamed up w/ ben reilly on your first mission!!! this was the first time you ever interacted,,, which was. interesting to say the least

"scanning the area..."

"who are you talking to–"

▸ you just kinda have to get used to his narrating while you hunt down the anomaly miguel sent you two after. but!!! just because he's talkative (more to himself rather than you) doesn't mean he's incompetent

you end up locating it and capturing it in about an hour and a half. quick as hell.

▸ you seem to work well with him!!! progressively, you notice that you're paired up with him quite frequently.

this isn't strange– itz actually fairly easily rationalized this by the fact that you just seem to work more efficiently as a duo

▸ eventually, you two become friends and spend time together beyond just doing missions

▸ it's relieving for the rest of the spider society to know he does more than just ruminate over his harrowing past and distressing memories when he's not saving the multiverse

▸ but it becomes just... a little peculiar. you may be oblivious, but you're far from stupid. everyone notices how he's spending more time around you than anyone else– he follows you like a lost puppy

you ask him about this,, and he fervently denies it

"following you? pft. no. not even. you wouldn't get it–"

like... ok dude. um. anyways.

▸ you pick up on little things here and there, but you just figure the poor guy doesn't have a lot of friends.

▸ you are the only person who's allowed to call him "benny" (though he will feign distaste for the nickname, he letz it slide)

▸ you are the only person who distracts him from his dramatic monologues, the only one who draws his thoughts away from whatever he's brooding about

▸ you are the only person who he ever actively seeks out

"has anyone seen them today? they haven't been around–"

"searching for them... hm... nowhere to be seen... checking frequent hangout locations–"

▸ and all of a sudden, you're the only person who he wants to show off to. not like you notice this part. you just assume he's grown accustomed to talking to you about everything

"check it out. i've changed my arm routine."

and he's jus.. flexing.

you hit him w/ the "cool dude, it's really showing!!" and he immediately takes +5 dmg from u tugging on his heartstrings

▸ ur compliments just mean everything to him

▸ the littlest things about your appreciation get to him. even just you smiling because of him seems to make him a little weak in the knees though he tries not to show it too much

▸ he's... trying. again, he really isn't incompetent but sometimes he's straight up making himself a cringefail loserboy around you

"THIS ONES FOR YOU!!!!" tries to shoot a basketball into a hoop

it hits the rim hard

bounces back

hits him square in the face

he tried.

▸ so maybe you haven't noticed much. however, you've definitely noticed he's been trying so much harder around you. and though you reassure him always that he's just fine the way he is– he still always attempts to be more.

you don't understand why.

▸ "ben, this... really isn't necessary, y'know? you're cool as you are." you tell him. it seems like he's relentless in his quest to impress.

you make it simple:

"i like you." you tell him.

ben pauses, taking a moment to look at you. his gaze is focused on you, your face– he hears the sincerity laced in your words. he feels his face heat up just a little. "...really?"

you grin and for a moment, his heart skips a beat. he feels his breath catch in his throat

"of course! ben," you say, his name on your lips being akin to the sound of a choir of angels, "you'll always be my best friend, dude."

+50 dmg to ben reilly

he cries HARD that night into his pillow IAHWOEHDJW

▸ you two are free entertainment for the rest of the spider society. people are placing bets on whether ben's gonna stop pussying around or if you're gonna put two-and-two together before he actually confesses

▸ and they are DIVIDED abt how this is gonna end for you both

after all, you still seem to be absolutely clueless about the fact that ben was the one practically begging miguel to be teamed up with you on each mission.

▸ and now, he's REALLY trying

▸ shows up with your favourite flowers at your door

"oh!! benny, that's so nice of you! you really are such a great friend–"

+60 dmg to ben reilly

▸ "inadvertently" (aka: TOTALLY ON FUCKING PURPOSE) tries to cuddle up to you on the couch or put an arm around you while watching a movie

"are you cold?"

"no, i–"

"here, i don't really need this blanket anyways"

+65 dmg to ben reilly

+5 warmth

▸ STRAIGHT UP TELLS YOU HE LOVES YOU

"i love you too, ben! you're irreplaceable. the absolute sweetest friend i have."

UR KILLING HIM

▸ you two r just:

▸ atp the spider society is in SHAMBLES. it is no longer entertaining it is torturous watching ben reilly now lament over his "unrequited love burning like a wildfire in his heart" (his dramatic ass words probably) and you have no clue it's about YOU

▸ one day, he's decided he has to do something. he needs to make it completely and undeniably clear that he's in love with you.

-

you're hanging out as usual, in the cafe not touching the miguel burger that they're serving there for some reason becuz eating the face of your boss feels... wrong and he clears his throat

"no backing out now..." he declared to himself, narrating while sitting Right In Front Of You

he clears his throat, making you look up from your fries.

"so..." he begins.

"benny, what would you do if someone didn't like you back?" you suddenly blurt out.

he looks up at your face. you've been pouting this entire time, head held low as you pick at your food.

how did he not notice? his attention is constantly on you. he mentally beats himself up for this

in the anxiety of his plans to confess, he somehow completely disregarded how you were feeling. he was so in his head.

"switching directive–" he mutters to himself, now focused on what you wanna say.

you give him a weak smile. "look, i just... i dunno. maybe this is bad timing."

there's a beat of silence between the two of you before you speak up again.

"ben. i really like you. like... more than a friend. it hurts. so so much. because i know you only think of me as a friend and i just–"

everyone within earshot nearly explodes hearing this.

-

▸ like ok plot twist i guess. so the pining went both ways and you were both completely oblivious to it.

▸ the other spider-people who were betting on how this would end are all SHAKEN

but are also so relieved they don't have to walk past ben loudly declaring his anguish due to a broken heart

▸ ben is astonished by how you even thought that he saw you as just a friend. he did EVERYTHING to get through to you

but hey. something worked. finally, after the yearning, and the trying, and the fear of rejection– he finds himself on a date with you :3

[gnashingwailing]

@fireflywritesgt LOVINGLY WRITING MY UNHINGED CH23 THOUGHTS AND THEN BURYING THEM UNDER A READMORE. I felt such overwhelming hype when I saw we got 2 chapters in 1 day I truly was ready to throw my phone out the fucking window. TOO MUCH JOY FOR ONE LITTLE GNASH... I hadn't even finished processing ch21......

first off pov Joe when he goes to Calloway's to pick up his cute new tailored fit in 3 days

soooo right from the jump. hey.

"“…’cause he’s way better off than I am, it’ll make it harder for me to leave him or something. That he’s luring me in. I mean—” Joe laughed nervously as he steeled himself in preparation for how the captain would react to his next statement “—if it were a giant treating me the way he treats me, everyone would call me a pet.”

“Well of course they would, Joe. That’s because giants are evil.” The captain said matter-of-factly.

He may as well have poked Joe squarely in the eye. Nonetheless, the bartender continued."

hey. UM. Joe you beautiful idiot who canonically has bad luck and, presumably from reading this very chapter, a terrible poker face. Maybe you should have said. Any Other Thing? GODDD in my heart he's definitely sooo overconfident and drunk like wow I am so smooth :) nobody suspects a thing :) while Calloway is having a conversation with him like uh... just saying, but you know, none of us could stop you from. for example. idk. becoming a giant's pet. we wouldn't like that but it's just a random thing that came to mind just now, unrelated to the really tall really wealthy really powerful guy who is afraid of taking advantage of you by luring you in and giving you things like a giant would and maybe isn't treating you like a person. And you're afraid you shouldn't want it. Like BRO IT IS SO OVER FOR YOU even without Harry literally calling Joe's name 3+ times in the dead silence 😭😭😭😭 And presumably Harry having been waiting around there for a while to see Joe! Loitering in a way we know tinies are on guard about since they all noticed that snatcher back in Ch13!

They're idiots ur honor, so true, but it's all worth it to see Joe get rescued and swoon like a damsel ... I definitely wonder if Calloway observed any of that, and what he might think about it if so. >:) May or may not have been daydreaming and writing bits about how horrifying it would be to give your surrogate kid all this well-meaning advice, see him nearly slip to his death, and while you're hurrying down to try and help him, watching him call out to a walking nightmare for help and then get whisked away by it

I have a pet theory that everything we've seen from Calloway so far has been pretty heavily colored by it being from Joe's perspective when he's having a bad day, and maybe he will be more understanding than we think? Objectively, I didn't think he was being very rude or anything back in Ch 13, when he was speculating on Joe's love life. It rankled Joe, which is understandable, but he 1) he's happy that Joe looks good, 2) he doesn't let Gutters or O'Grady rag on Joe too hard and 3) he just generally seems like an interested father figure would about his kid's love life:

"“Oh, lay off him, Tim. It’s a good borrowing year!” Captain Calloway cut in. “We all have ‘em, we all enjoy ‘em, we all cry ourselves to sleep when they’re over.”

Relief washed over Joe like the warm water in Harry’s sink.

“Though I gotta say…” The captain gave a wry smile as he continued. “…it could just as easily be someone else’s good borrowing year if ya’ catch my drift. Could be he’s got a little sweetheart looking after him. A brick of pure chocolate? That’s practically a dowry."”

Although I may be wrong here, since Ch 21's incident at Tiny Town with the Italian mob that saved him gives us the insight that "[for] the first time in Joe’s entire existence at that, Joe understood what it was like to have a real father." So maybe Calloway is not that nurturing to Joe and not much of a caring dad -- as @remordsposthume's tags so wisely point out:

WTF WAS HE DOING LETTING HIM LEAVE THE BAR LMAO. Calloway's Den of Drunkards confirmed for an "everybody drive home drunk. it's not my problem" bar??? Everyone is processing TAoLaW thru their own cultural lens and. in that spirit. lmfao. I must say. Calloway reminds me of the libertarian redneck dads I've known who just let their kids do whatever. If he was a giant I think he'd let his kids ride ATVs thru the woods drunk. Most probably he would also be ridin around drunk with them. "If you die it's your own damn fault" being his motto is too on the nose LOL. Huge farm dad "I LOVE MY SONS. ONLY HALF OF THEM WILL SURVIVE TO ADULTHOOD BUT I DO LOVE THEM" energy. To Me.

(Btw Harry & Joe processing their parental issues together WHEN <3)

BUT ANYWAY YEAH EVEN IF CALLOWAY WAS THE MOST UNOBSERVANT GUY IN THE WORLD RE: THAT SUSPICIOUS CONVERSATION? YOU WERE LITERALLY BOTH SCREAMING EACH OTHERS' NAMES LIKE LOVESICK ROMANCE PROTAGONISTS RIGHT UNDER THE DREDGE THAT'S STILL PROBABLY GOT AT LEAST SOME NIGHT MARKET CUSTOMERS? HELLO?? @94444 we are on the same wavelength rn

AND MORE ABOUT CALLOWAY... I am very heartened by how you mentioned once, Warren, that you planned to give each character real depth and treat them with sincerity. I feel very interested about when that time will be for Calloway! We know that he takes in kids (or at least O'Grady and Joe scratch that. tag lore be upon me) and teaches them how to sell trinkets. We know that he hates giants. We know he's been horribly injured in a way that led to him losing a hand, an eye, and possibly teeth. Knowing what we do about the risks of being a borrower, and how casually cruel giants are to them, it's not unlikely those last 2 things are related. I'M TAKING YOUR TAGS AND RUNNING AWAY WITH THEM LIKE A DOG W SOMETHING IN ITS MOUTH.

So Calloway knew them for several years as vulnerable kids... then lost them for a year or so... then got them back after they escaped the watchmaker's? I will be interested to see if that trauma means he's more protective of them, or uh, still more drunk libertarian dad about them. Lmao. He seemed like he cared about Joe getting into Tiny Town way back in Ch3 tho at least! (as an aside... interested in who Gutters is, too. He SEEMS to be older than Joe/Tim, but he could also still be a Calloway Kid himself... he seems to defer to Calloway... and/or he could just be some guy embittered about giant/tiny relations. which. fair, brother.)

If the broader Tiny Town culture (such as it is... would word get around about this incident with Joe and Harry, or does news just not travel that well amongst lots of secluded borrower communities? much to consider. it makes sense in a dark way why you would physically mark somebody who's transgressed against society's cardinal rule, in a culture where you cannot generally spread information effectively) would reject Joe for his proclivities... will Calloway, too? Or is it Joe's anxiety making him think that? I'm afraid we already know how Tim would feel. Other than him, Calloway is the person who Joe seems most connected to in miniature society... Although Harry's worry about Joe not spending enough time around his fellow miniatures in Ch22 is at least partially motivated by his own guilt-trip, I think he has a bit of a point! I hope Joe doesn't lose touch with everyone -- or if he does, I hope there will be new friends out there for him, too, who are more understanding.

(LORRAINE WHEN)

Now Calloway aside, OBVIOUSLY THE ENDING OF THIS CHAPTER HAD ME HOOTIN AND HOLLERIN.

“Joe… can we go back to the big, sexy giant part for a second?” <- LIT'RALLY me rereading this chapter 800 times

A snapping turtle is a fantastic little horror for poor Joe to face, woof. Those fuckers are scary enough when ur height is measured in feet. The quick way they snap is no joke. Just want to 👏👏👏👏 about how good this passage is: The turtle’s maw emerged from the waters of the lake like the gaping mouth of some ancient monster that fed on the souls of sailors. The grimy lakewater rushed over its beady little eyes as its beak, sharp as a dagger, flew towards Joe faster than a gunshot. YEAH.

It just!! makes my little heart sooooo happy to see that Joe does have someone who will unconditionally look out for him...!!! Harry has his issues, and they're still learning how to open up about themselves, but he consistently shows up!! :') the thought of him waiting for his man all night ... hoping the dredge would be the place Joe meant ... and then acting sooo fast when he saw a tiny guy fall off of it... what a faithful hound of a [future] boyfriend. Calloway is so right. Joe deserves somebody to look after him. And Joe has done the (forgive me for the loaded meme) girl math on this. One big man is the best possible outcome for him. ONLY THE BIGGEST MAN WILL DO to keep him off of his bullshit as much as possible 👍👍

And OF COURSE god their conversation is just so so so fucking funny. "Thank you" "fuck no I'm not" -> "FUCK YOU" is INCREDIBLE i CANNOT STOP THINKING ABOUT IT lmaooooo and Harry still being so gentle about receiving this insult and trying to parse what Joe means ... he does listen to Joe, they're definitely not back to square one as drunk!Joe feared, his own issues are just getting in the way! (And Joe's are getting in the way of him seeing thru Harry's facade into what the real issue is! We love to see it!)

"“I meant that. You don’t get to call me handsome until you start listening to me.” He slurred. “You gotta—you gotta want it.”

Joe crossed his arms and scowled up at the beautiful man and his beautiful face as Harry tried to parse what Joe was saying.

“Want it…?” Harry echoed.

“Yeah. You gotta want to be my friend. And screw what anyone else thinks!”"

And did anyone else cackle at how Joe telephone-gamed Calloway's advice to still be in plausible-deniability-land. "You gotta want to be my friend" ok. not what he fuckin said. run that back real quick -> "Not if you’re being open about what you want and everything. That’s how love works, Joe. You gotta want it."

I just adored the moments of insight between them, too. "... Joe knew his real answer was yes – he was just too afraid to say it overtly. He argued and fought and begrudgingly accepted it instead. / What was that saying to Harry?" vs. Ch22 Harry's revelation: "How much of his relationship with Joe was genuine, he wondered, and how much of it was Joe going along with Harry’s suggestions in the name of diplomacy?"

Joe IS acting like somebody who's being coerced! Harry IS being a trustworthy guy by noticing it and checking in once their relationship is definitely turning intimate! It's so fascinating to think in hindsight that every time Joe turned red and embarrassed, Harry was having a thought at the back of his mind like "he doesn't want this. I'm scaring him. He doesn't want me, and he doesn't even know the real me yet. And worse, he can't tell me, because he's afraid of what I might do to him." But he can't SAY all that because it would hurt too much if he said it and Joe confirmed he was actually correct, so Ch22 comes out as a trainwreck where he's accidentally insulting Joe's ability to survive without him. (Side note I KNEW Harry wasn't REALLY considering Joe his landlord. Sad!!! That fucked up scrawny starving guy has squatter's rights and he was doing pretty good all things considered maybe !!!)

The respective issues ~Society~ has given both of them just make it impossible to talk about the root of their problems without baring your guts in a really terrifying way. OOF.

HOWEVER this chapter confirming that homophobia isn't such a problem in tiny society is going to make this eventual conversation betwen them real interesting... Harry like "You don't understand Joe :( there's something really wrong with me... ... I like ... men..." and Joe being like "omg :) :) :) :) :) wait what's wrong with you tho" and then Joe "No you don't understand Harry :( I know this is sick but... I like.. giants... I'm sure you could never see someone smaller than you as anything other than a pet ..." and Harry just ":) :) :) :) oh what no :) Georgie was shorter than me" I hope they can have a good, baffled laugh at how long they could've been snuggling guilt-free. At the end of the angst. <3

[themuseandantarctica]

* 𝒊 𝒏𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒆𝒅 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒂 𝒓𝒐𝒔𝒆 𝒈𝒂𝒓𝒅𝒆𝒏

sentence starters from joanne greenberg's novel i never promised you a rose garden. change however necessary. i never promised you a rose garden is a semi-autobiographical account of a young girl admitted to a mental hospital for treatment for her schizophrenia, which means...

tw: mental hospitals, medical, self-harm, suicide, suicidal ideation, ableism, ableist language

it should look as if we trust her. she must feel that we trust her…

they call it a mental hospital, but it's a place where they put people away.

we should have expected them. why should we be so surprised?

i told you the truth about these things you asked. now are you going to help me?

you are just in time for the patient's soothing tea and the end of the world.

it was considered advisable to terminate the interview.

well, i'm a hundred square yards sane.

you will not have to give up anything until you are ready, and then there will be something to take its place.

the prisoner pleads guilty to the charge of not having acute something-itis and accepts the verdict of guilty of being nuts in the first degree.

someday i hope to help you see this world as other than a stygian hell.

it seemed like a good life -- a very good life she had. now they say it wasn't.

i can't really see you and i can't really hear you.

they think that both of us would be too much just now.

it's without a cause, you see, and that's what is so frightening.

i hated it and had no talent for it. it was one of the flags to capture, you see, and he had to try to win it, even through me.

it's going to cost us -- everything. you know that, don't you?

am i not what you wanted? do you have to correct my brain, too?

you see, she knew, in her own way, that she was not attempting suicide, but making the call for help, the call of a mute and confused person.

waiting for the blows… and then there came a time, later -- a time where she began to arrange for blows to fall.

i swear to you that i will not use you.

they never said they were sorry, not one of them.

is this… forever?

that was not my doing. i was not even in on the consultation.

you are walking around your destruction and poking a little finger at it here and there.

it's funny… i never figured that kid was really sick.

i scratched my arm a little -- that's all.

do you know what a coldsheet pack is? i'm going to set one up for you.

this is the little tart i was telling you about.

there are flowers in a hospital and strength, too. you will live and be strong.

i could not be sure. i am good at getting deceived, you know.

you know… the thing that is so wrong about being mentally ill is the terrible price you have to pay for survival.

there is no injustice being done.

don't hit me, [name] -- don't hit me! i know how hard you can hit!

once i greeted my best friend and she turned from me. when i asked why, she said, "after what you did?" she never spoke to me again, and i never found out what happened.

none of the others laughed, really. you were only afraid that they might laugh. you alone made yourself lie.

there are other deaths than death -- worse ones.

we might someday… have to be "well" and be in the world.

i didn't want to hurt you -- to make you sicker.

when i get around to it, i'm going to do your portrait.

my hair feels dirty.

it is my selfness and it is poisonous. it is mind-poisonous.

another camouflage is to blame it all on someone else. it keeps you from having to face what they really did to you, and what you did to yourself and are still doing.

somewhere there is a thief who has heard that people bury and hide their gold and jewels. can you see the expression on his face when he comes on what i have buried!

i like being somebody's punishment; it makes me feel needed.

their religion doesn't permit them to commit suicide.

i found out about being insane. it really is something.

lay off [name], will you?

do you think the sick people are all in hospitals? do you think you have a corner on suffering?

you ought to know mental trouble when you see it.

it's envy! the best and smartest are always envied. walk straight and don't let them know if they touch you.

i thought i was going to die, but at last they came back.

that kid looks through me as if i'm not here at all.

i am a hair in my eye, and so are you.

a pacifist is one who uses his open hand.

i never promised you a rose garden. i never promised you perfect justice, and i never promised you peace or happiness. my help is so that you can be free to fight for all of these things.

it's because of the maybe. it's because of the little, little maybe.

she never took your world at all, don't you see?

what do they want with me, broken into and spoiled already? i'm not good enough for anyone else.

i could still be crazy if i wanted to?

i wish i could have made it to that narcotics cabinet.

are you calling me? is it me you want?

you have quite a number of bits and pieces all copied down on those papers of yours.

who ever told you that learning facts or theories or languages had anything to do with understanding yourself?

there is nothing you can do to me that my own craziness doesn't do to me smarter and faster and better.

i'll be around. you could even get privileges to come and visit me.

i never could ask for anything. i thought you knew that. when i have to ask, something happens to me and i… well, i start to fight.

i always wondered why those reports seemed to be more about [name]'s thoughts than about her body, like pulse or temperature.

maybe the cannon blast we were fearing was only what we heard.

you are captive and victim. we did not want you to escape.

it's going to hit -- please -- it's going to hit harder than i can stand up under.

god, they build their tortures cunningly!

everyone is so afraid of getting blood on the living room floor. "i can't stand to see suffering," they say, "so die outside!"

i think now, though, that you are little too happy with yourself for this trouble you have.

mommy and daddy are shelling out plenty on that bitch who isn't fit for saving.

get away from that door, [name]. you have no business there.

you are trying to hurt yourself now. what happened?

don't forget what i know about you!

i had known all those years and years how sick i was, and nobody else would admit it.

if you're seeking objective reality, this is one hell of a place to start.

even if you didn't really talk out loud, it was that look you get…

i'm not giving up; i'm just tired, that's all.

occasionally, others are damned by you to punish you.

this you have earned. i don't often give presents either, so take it.

this is one-by-one from the jawbone!

my difference is not my sickness.

when i get upset… i usually have trouble seeing properly.

did i hurt anybody? did i hurt anybody?

kid, i never knew you had it in you. you can really fight!

if i want to die, what am i saving myself for?

you've seen this… awfulness before; why are you so shocked?

measure the hate you feel now, and the shame. that quantity is your capacity also to love and to feel joy and to have compassion.

i would be worse than wasteful to give a moment's time to a hopeless case.

you will find no shortage of moral issues and hard decisions in the real world.

i have decided not to be immoral, because of what happened to [name].

where is what you used to scratch this?

it is why you need a hospital.

you are worn out, but no longer so very frightened, are you?

what am i doing here with all these crazy people!

i don't want to think anymore! i'm tired and scared and i just don't care anymore what happens.

i like an anger that is not fearful and guilty and can come out in good and vigorous english.

we just didn't get on. we didn't like each other. i think perhaps we were too much alike…

you've only got one kind of cold, the kind coats can fix.

you may not even have to do anything about it. you may not even have to think about it.

it was just a simple statement in my mind that i was going to live, to come up alive.

what hurts is being kicked by the forces that everyone else lives by and years of being nuts and not being able to tell anyone and have them believe you.

i tried to go easy. i hope it didn't hurt too much.

grapevine never told me you were back.

it can be very, very tough, but people are sometimes better than you think they will be.

somehow lately, there's been something like a caring in her.

now, am i crazy or did you make that story up?

you can have something on which to model yourself.

stop it! will you never end it!

if everybody would stop dying over the big secret, it'll be a lot easier.

you're not here that much. i want to see you this week.

no, [name], he was weeks ago -- i just went to the party with him.

when she blows, she's going to cover the ceiling.

sometimes you have to fight what won't yield and put yourself where it's safe to be crazy.

whose idea was this in the first place?

if i weren't scared to death of it, i would be so grateful!

you're not just rubbing it in good to get a little free suffering out of it?

alive is fighting. it's the same thing. i still think [name] could have made it.

well, i hope you like the room.

now, when you have come again to the world, you are able to remember what was also there with the darkness. much of it was darkness only because it was balanced against the light of loving and experiencing truth.

what about your new friend, [name]? do you still see her sometimes?

the one place i could never go… the one hunger i could never admit.

do they know how beautiful and enviable their lives are?

i can't go back to my merry high-school days again, volleyball in the gym and teeth-teeth at the school dances.

could you call them for an appointment?

just… well, i liked to think of you being outside and starting along, that's all.

hey! you know what happens when you burn yourself? you get burned, that's what!

is it true that you bring me beauty lately only when you are threatened?

if it's okay with the people down at that place she mentioned, i'll be ready whenever they are.

say "hello" for me. throw something at her and be rude so she'll know it's me.

she is prompt and obedient and never insane in the classroom.

does it all have to go? do we pile it up and throw it all out?

i will never have that. not by fighting or study or work or withstanding will i be able to walk with one of them or be warmed by their hands.

we had to call your landlady and tell her you weren't coming back there tonight and that you were here.

you rotten whore! let me go!

i am going to hang with the world. full weight.

[morganski-19]

I Don't Know Which Way's Home

Chapter 12: Temporary

ao3 link, Part 1, Part 11

New Years Eve, December 1986

Steve looks around the room, seeing everyone watch the performances in Times Square and playing games. The adults talking amongst themselves in the dining room while all the older kids are talking on the couches. Even if they weren’t quite kids anymore.

It’s a few minutes until midnight, and Steve has never been happier. Seeing his house full of life, full of love. It always made his mood a little brighter. Even now, seeing Julie laughing with the kids that he thinks of as family, it makes him proud. Proud that he gets to call these people family.

Eddie saunters up to him, beer in hand. Getting close in the way that they can when no one else knows. “Wanna smoke?” he asks.

“Sure,” Steve smiles, knowing that’s not really what it means.

They head outside, the cold air instantly making Steve shiver. As soon as they get out of eyesight, Eddie pulls Steve close, wrapping his arms around Steve’s waist. Steve draping his arms around Eddie’s shoulders.

“Hi,” Eddie smiles. “Midnight’s pretty soon.”

“Yeah, that why you pulled me out here?”

Eddie scoffs. “Like I need an excuse just to do this,” he leans forward and kisses Steve. Steve melting into it every time. “That and Birdie beat me to calling the pantry. Her and Nancy are about to be ‘stuck’ in there for a few minutes.”

Steve laughs, pulling Eddie closer. “Think we’ll be able to hear the countdown out here?”

“With this group, probably. I know this is cheesy, and this year was shit for various reasons, but what was you’re favorite thing that happened this year?”

It doesn’t take much thought to have answers pop into Steve’s mind. “I actually have two. The first was Julie showing up on my doorstep and building my relationship with her. But the second,” Steve looks into Eddie’s eyes with a look that he’s feared for years. “The second is you.”

Steve has only ever been in love once before this. And that ended in a less than ideal way. Even if they weren’t meant for each other, or are now friends, it was still enough to make him scared. Make him fear for the day that he would open his heart up again for someone else. Hoping that they won’t reject him. Dates were fine, confessions of attraction were nothing. Love. Love was terrifying.

Terrifying enough that even when he’s standing in the most caring person’s arms, feeling more than he has in years, the words still get caught in his throat. Can’t be spoken, in the small case they’re rejected.

He’s always been fast to fall in love. Jumping in headfirst and figuring it all out later. Even in the darkest depths, he would always be the first to wade in.

Falling in love was easy. It was everything that came with it that made it so hard. And for Steve, there was a lot of baggage. With his parents, and his past, love was different. Love was complicated. Despite his best efforts, they always ended up intertwined. The feelings of loneliness and neglect mixing in where he doesn’t want them.

But as the kids yell out the countdown as the new year turns, Eddie’s lips find Steve’s again, everything sets into place. Every bad thing dissipating away for just a second. Because Eddie was different, at least Steve hoped. But that was for later, this was now.

“Mine is you too,” Eddie says when they break apart, his hands cupping Steve’s face. “You make me happier than you know.”

Maybe this was the one time where the waters weren’t as murky as they normally were. Where the water is crystal clear instead of green and grey. A place that is meant to be dived into, where the sun glimmers through to lead the way back to the top. And instead of pulling everything down to the bottom to drown, it all floats to the top and is able to breathe.

“Happy new year, Eddie,” Steve says quietly, letting this moment stay perfectly still.

. . .

Present Day, January 1987, Two Weeks Later

Steve is talking to someone on the phone. Which isn’t, like, a bad thing. Or a strange thing at all. Julie’s seen him talk on the phone a bunch of times, but not like this. Not with what can only be described as a dopey smile on his face and the way she’s never seen him like this before. And the laughter, giddy laughter. It’s unreal. Unusual.

Happy. Steve looks happy. Not to say that he wasn’t happy before, but not like this. But this time when he smiles, it actually reaches his eyes. Brightens them actually. Something that’s straight out of a shitty romcom. But real.

He has to be seeing somebody, Julie concludes. Has thought for a while now. She’s heard someone come into the house late at night, and Steve always seem to be a little bit happier on his days off. Like there’s been someone here when she isn’t. Or isn’t awake. That she’s being kept away from them.

Maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe Steve just wants to keep his relationship to himself for now. Do all of the introduction later. But she can’t help but want to know. Know why he’s keeping a secret, and if it’s because of her.

It’s stupid, she knows, but the voice keeps finding it’s way into her mind. Telling her repeatedly that Steve isn’t telling her because she won’t be here forever. That this is all still temporary, and he hasn’t done anything to change that. Then, neither has she. It’s hard to admit to someone that you want to stay. Especially when the other person has a whole life that Julie doesn’t know about.

She knows that Steve likes her, wants her to be here. But for how long, that is the question.

As Steve waves goodbye as he drops her off at school, she can’t help but feel like she’s asking too much. If she were to ask to stay permanently. He’s already given her so much, she can’t ask to take his life. She might not always feel like it, but she’s still a kid. A tie that holds people back, held her mom back.

She never showed it, but Julie knew. Deep down, she knew. Her mom would cancel dates when Julie got sick, or lost a job because she called out too many times. Stopped herself from going back to school and getting the degree she wanted. Doomed herself to waitress and secretary jobs, even if it made her miserable.

All for Julie. Always for Julie. Never for herself.

Julie didn’t want to tie Steve to the same fate. He was still young, only a few years older than her. He had the chance to be who he wanted to be, even if it meant leaving her. She didn’t want that. But if it made him happy. Well, why would she stop him. After everything he’s been through in life, he deserved to be happy.

“Dude, you need to let it go,” Lucas says to Dustin at the lunch table. The rest of the group has been eating with them more often. It’s been interesting, to say the least. Definitely louder.

Dustin rolls his eyes, saying a small hello when Julie sits down. “No, I don’t. He’s hiding something from me, and I know it.”

“Maybe you could respect another person’s boundary for once,” Max snaps, taking a bite of her food.

“I respect people’s boundaries,” Dustin gasps. Met with immediate disagreements from the rest of the table.

“What are we talking about?” Julie asks, taking a bite of her sandwich.

Mike rolls his eyes. “Steve, for no reason.”

“Dude that’s her brother.”

“My point still stands.”

“What about Steve?” Julie asks, not really wanting to.

Dustin turns toward her, already ready for a rant. “He’s hiding something. Like a someone,” he says with a face like Julie knows what he’s talking about.

Which she does, but it’s still annoying. “I thought we agreed you’d drop it until I knew something. He still hasn’t told me about it.”

Max interrupts, “you know about this?”

“Unfortunately,” Julie says the same time Dustin confidently says “Yes, she does.”

“And we agreed to let it go until Steve decides to share it with us. And by we, I mean him.” Julie points at Dustin.

Dustin huffs. “Well, that was before. This is now. Things have escalated.”

“Nothing has escalated,” Will says when Mike rolls his eyes again. “You’re just being dramatic.”

“Too dramatic,” Mike adds.

“And pushy,” Lucas says.

“It is his life,” El says. “It is up to him to share it with us. No matter how close we all are. We should not push it.” She shares a glance with her brother, silently communicating.

Max nods in agreement. “El’s right, nerd. Leave it alone. You know what happens when you push.”

“Things blow up.”

“Go to shit.”

“End pretty terribly.”

“Fine,” Dustin exclaims, crossing his arms.

. . .

Eddie lets himself into the house, immediately finding Steve in the kitchen. Days off are the only time they’re able to be together. Alone together. Not have to hide, to pretend. Just be themselves with each other, with no one else around.

It’s like a relief when they get to be together like this. Unashamed in his house, free. Like a weight lifts off his shoulders and he can just be. And not have to worry about the wrong person finding out, or someone finding out before it’s too soon. Just them, where Steve is happy and nothing else matters.

Steve presses into Eddie’s touch, pulling him in closer and melting into the touch of their lips. Tracing his hands at the hem of Eddie’s shirt, desperate to feel the skin of skin contact again. As if every time is the first time. Always having the same effect over and over again.

Because this still doesn’t feel real to Steve. It still doesn’t feel real that this can even happen for him. That he can be this happy in a house that caused him so much pain. This happy at all.

He still has times where he thinks that he doesn’t deserve this. That this is all just a phase, and it will pass. It has before, time after time. People tend to leave Steve, and he doesn’t want Eddie to leave. Never wants Eddie to leave. But after the person he’s been in the past, and the mess that he’s been in the present, he’s not so sure that it’s all set in stone. That the promises were written in sand near the shore, and as soon as the tide comes in, it will all go away.

The house will return to the lifeless whole it once was. Swallowing all that was good of Steve and leaving him empty. The life will be stripped away, the light will disappear. Everything that was good will become rotten and fall away. And Steve will sit on the stairs and wait for the door to open again.

He has to remind himself that these people are different. People who stay around Steve because they actually like him, and not just his money or his name. They won’t just leave him when he makes the wrong step. Won’t just abandon him. They aren’t his parents.

And when Eddie holds him like he won’t have the chance to do the same tomorrow, it only proves to him that this is real. That this isn’t going away, and Eddie won’t leave him without saying another word. How can a person hold someone like this if they want to leave? Steve doesn’t think that they can.

“Hey,” Eddie says when he pulls back. “I, uh, I actually wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Ok,” Steve says, for the first time not freaking out on the inside. “What about?”

Eddie steps back a little, letting there be a small gap between them. “About us, actually.”

His face is full of nervousness, one that Steve can’t quite read. Like a reflex, the anxiety starts to grow again. Like he’s back in that bathroom at the Halloween party and his heart’s about to break again. But it’s Eddie, Eddie wouldn’t hurt Steve. Not without a reason to. Has Steve given him a reason to?

“Oh,” Steve says shocked, trying his best not to freak out. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” Eddie assures. “No, no. It’s nothing bad, I promise. I just, it’s just something that I thought we should start thinking about.”

A small breath of relief escapes Steve’s lungs, but the anxieties don’t leave fully quite yet.

“I thought that we should start talking about when to tell the others, about us. When you’re ready to, of course. But we can’t keep this hidden forever, and Dustin’s been giving me some really weird looks lately. And just got me thinking, that’s all.”

“You know I’m not ready to tell them, about me at least, yet. I can’t risk it right now.”

Eddie’s face twists. “What do you mean, can’t risk it? They wouldn’t just go around town telling people about us.”

Steve knows it’s true, knows that they wouldn’t intentionally say anything. But that’s what gets him every time his thinks about it. Intentionally. These kids are just kids, and sometimes they can’t stop themselves from talking. Not until the harm is done. He can’t risk harm being done. Not with how much he now has to lose.

It was different when he didn’t have Julie, didn’t have this impending lawsuit hanging over his head. Steve could risk a lot when it was just him that he had to worry about. When risking himself meant just that, risking himself. Now, if this got out, there’s no question that he would lose custody of Julie. She’d be taken from him and placed in another home that wouldn’t care for her. And there’s the possibility that she could never look him in the eye again. He couldn’t risk that.

With the lawsuit, he needs to be on his best behavior. He needs to show the courts that there was everything wrong with his parents and nothing wrong with him. He can’t give them any ammo to make the judge see him differently. Being in a relationship with a man, even if it’s a loving one, that would make or break his case. It might justify his parents’ actions, make him lose. Make him a fool. Ostracize him. Run him out of town.

“But if by some accident that they did, just by accident. I have so much I can lose now, Eds.”

It never bothered him before, not like this. The worry surrounding his brain and shutting out the logic. Making his thoughts race to every way things can go wrong. Seeing the face Julie would make when he betrayed her like this. Promised her everything just to rip it away again. Sees the headlines in the paper the day after court, how it would affect him in a way that is unimaginable. And yet he can picture it all so clearly.

“They’ve known about me for months Steve, they haven’t said anything. It’ll be ok.”

But him is different. With Eddie, his reputation already isn’t that great. Steve is known, for the most part, as the golden child of the rich family in town. Even if he is a dead beat that didn’t go to college and works as a manager at the local video store. The fact of the matter is that people would talk, rich snobby people with power that could do so much harm. This small-town gossip could follow him outside, keep trapping him back in this house.

“I have a reputation, Eddie. One that I don’t really care about, sure, but I can’t afford to ruin it-.”

“So, this is about reputation?” Eddie steps away from him, fully breaking their contact. Steve can sense Eddie pulling away, rebuilding his walls. The hurt finding it’s way to his eyes. “It’s always reputation with you people.”

Steve feels his heart start to crack. But he can fix this, he just has to explain himself.

“You know it’s not like that. When it was just me, I’d ruin everything if it meant being with you. But I can’t risk this getting out, not when Julie depends on me.”

“And I get that. But that is so far from what I’m asking.” His voice is thick with hurt. Hurt that Steve caused. “I just want to tell people that I’m with you. Is that so bad?”

“It is if it means that I lose her. This is more complicated than just you and me.” Steve can feel himself getting heated. Feel the anger start to bubble underneath his skin. The anxieties of his mind only addling kindling to the flame.

Eddie crosses his arms, his jaw clenching. “So, you’d rather hide forever instead of tell the people we love and trust that we’re in a relationship.”

“Don’t say it like that and make me feel bad about this. You know that I want to tell people eventually.”

“That just it,” Eddie raises his voice. “That stupid word eventually. Everyone loves to use that as if it’s a promise when really, it’s just a lie. When is eventually, Steve? Is it when you feel comfortable to come out? Or is it when you get full custody of Julie? Is it after you go to court with you’re parents? Is it when Julie turns eighteen and you can’t lose her anymore? Is it twenty years down the line when your precious reputation might not be tarnished anymore?”

Each word Eddie spits adds another brick to Steve’s defenses, protecting himself for what he knows is about to happen. “That is so far from what I am saying.”

“Are you ashamed of me? Be honest. I’d rather be hurt now then before this gets serious.”

“Is,” a lump starts to form in Steve’s throat. Awaiting the one word that could make him break. “Is this not serious for you?”

Eddie’s face falls. “Shit, no. Yes. I mean. Yes, this is serious. Serious that I want to tell people. But if. I’ve been hidden before, Steve, I don’t want to be hidden again.”

“So, you’d rather break up with me than wait for me to be ready?”

“No, that’s not. I just want to be able to stay the night without having to sneak in. I want to hold your hand when we’re hanging out with our friends. I want to be with you on days other than when no one else is in the house.”

Tears start to well in Steve’s eyes. His mind races to find an answer, to find something to say. All the words he can even think of get stuck in his throat. And those aren’t the right thing to say. He doesn’t have the right thing to say.

Steve can’t give Eddie what he’s asking for. Not now. Not in the immediate future.

Eddie is hurt, and for reasons that are valid. Steve is hiding him. Partially because he isn’t ready to tell the kids, and partially because this relationship can’t get out. Even when it can, he is still going to be hiding Eddie from everyone other than their friends. They will never be able to be a real couple, at least the kinds Steve has had in the past.

He knew that. Knew that their dates could never be too romantic so they wouldn’t get caught. Knew that any form of public affection couldn’t happen. Not in this town. They weren’t safe if people knew the truth. Steve already had enough things to worry about, maybe he didn’t need this to worry about too.

“Forget it,” Eddie interrupts Steve’s train of thoughts. “I shouldn’t have said anything. We’ll just, we’ll talk later. I’m gonna go.” He picks up his keys from the counter and walks down the hallway.

Just as he turns to leave, Steve knows that this is something worth fighting for. Them, their relationship. It was something that was real, and worth it. Maybe he can’t risk it now, but that doesn’t mean he can’t in the future. And he wants to tell the kids, he’s just not ready yet.

Eddie should understand that. Wouldn’t he?

“No, Eddie, wait. Let’s just talk about this, I-.” Steve tries to catch Eddie’s arm, but it gets pulled away.

“Steve, let me go. I just need to think, ok.” Eddie shuts the door behind him before Steve can say another word.

Steve leans his head on the door, a tear streaking down his cheek. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. It’s not supposed to end like this. Steve can’t go through this right now. Not before he’s able to tell Eddie how he feels. Tell the group about them. It’s supposed to work out this time.

But he left Steve. Alone in the house, again. Just like everyone did. And how everyone might do again. He’s never good enough for anyone to stay. Why would this time be different?

It’s an hour before he moves. An hour until he makes it to the hall phone and calls Robin, explains what happens. Twenty more minutes until she lets herself through the door and finds him crumpled on the floor. Five minutes until she’s ready to dig Eddie’s grave. Fifteen minutes until she’s helping Steve put himself back together again. With a constant reminder that she’s not leaving. Not ever. Telling him that the others won’t either. That this was just a fight. It wasn’t the end.

He can’t stop feeling like it is though.

. . .

Steve is silent as he drives Julie and Dustin home. Robin in the front seat, making conversation enough so that they don’t notice. But constantly looking over at Steve to check in on him. Make sure that he’s ok.

Julie notices. Hard not to when she’s had that same look on her face before. He’s putting on a good show, nodding along as Dusitn rants, looking engaged. But his eyes are blank, as if his mind is somewhere else completely.

She wonders if something happened with his parents again. If they called and reprimanded them through the phone. Or if something else happened. Maybe with the mystery person he’s been seeing. Even if she’s half-convinced that mystery person isn’t so mystery. But that isn’t her conclusion to make.

And it isn’t Dustin’s to make either, even if he keeps insisting that it’s right. Even if he is making eyes at Julie and nodding his head toward Steve. Trying to get her to ask the burning question. She’s not going to ask it. Not now. Now when she can see the blank look on his face. But Dustin can’t.

“So, meet anyone new recently Steve?” Dustin asks, not being subtle at all. Julie rolls her eyes, tempted to grab a notebook out of her bag and smack him over the head with it.

Robin groans and Steve leans his head further against the headboard. Julie glares at Dustin, trying to get him to drop it.

“What, it’s an innocent question,” he defends. Julie’s head falls into her hands.

“For the love of God, Dustin. Learn how to read the room, or car or, fuck this. I’m a lesbian, Dustin, we’re not dating. For the millionth fucking time,” Robin exclaims from the front seat.

Steve eyes widen as he turns to her, the first expression Julie’s seen him make the whole ride. Robin’s face slowly matches his, realizing what she just did. The car is excruciatingly silent, probably just for a few seconds, but it doesn’t feel like it.

“I-. That’s not,” Dusting starts, trying to figure out what he’s going to say. “Thank you for sharing that, I’m happy you told me. Even if it wasn’t what I was asking, like at all. But that actually makes a lot of sense, in hindsight.”

Robin clears her throat. “So, you don’t have a problem with it?”

“No, why would I have a problem with it? I don’t care who you date. Well, I do because you're my friend. But like, not who that person is, not really. “

“I don’t either,” Julie finds herself saying. “Care for you who date. As long as they treat you right and you’re happy. Not really much else to care about.”

Steve smiles softly, looking over at Robin who shares the same expression. He gives her a small thumbs up, staying silent otherwise.

“Well, thank you,” she says.

The rest of the car ride is silent, the mood shifted away from the tense moment. Dustin gets out of the car when they pull in front of his house. Giving up his investigation for today.

“I’m sorry about him,” Julie says when they pull away. “I tried to tell him to drop it.”

Robin snorts. “Yeah well, that never works as well as you think it will.”

“I can tell.”

When they get back home, Steve parks the car and unlocks the door. Heading upstairs to his room without another word.

“Is he ok?” Julie asks Robin.

Robin gives her a comforting smile. “He will be. Just a bad day.”

Julie nods as Robin heads upstairs to Steve’s room. Shutting the door gently behind her. Julie goes to the kitchen to do her homework. Her mind not really focusing on anything.

It keeps coming back to the car ride. Steve. Robin’s confession. How it really wasn’t that much of a surprise, not to her at least. She had a feeing that Robin was different than others. The same feeling she’s sort of been having about herself. But was always too afraid to say anything about it. Scared of what it meant. What would happen if people found out.

Maybe that’s why she was so defensive when Dustin brought it up at the Christmas Eve party. How his answer made her feel relief, not just for Steve, but for herself. That there might be a small hope that someone out there would accept her, if what she was feeling is true.

Then when Robin confessed in the car, it only made her more relieved. Steve accepted her, he knew. It’s not surprising that he did, they were pretty inseparable. But it was still nice to know that he would accept Julie too.

Because even though she’s still trying to figure it all out, it’s looking to be more and more like a fact. And it’s terrifying.

. . .

Steve walks into his house to find Eddie sitting in his living room. Normally he wouldn’t care. Normally it wouldn’t matter. But they haven’t talked in days, and it’s killing him. He’s mad. Angry. Sad. Guilty. He doesn’t know. He’s something, and he’s not sure if he’s ready to talk to Eddie just yet.

It’s not even that they just had a fight. Or maybe it is. Maybe it’s because of what their fight was. It was stupid, Steve was being stupid. At communicating at least. He still isn’t ready to tell the kids, even if he knows that two of them would accept it. But what he said is still true. This getting out would make everything worse right now. He can’t risk it.

Maybe that means they have to break up. Maybe that means they have to slow everything down and take a break from them. Eddie doesn’t deserve to feel hidden. It’s Steve’s fault that he is. This just wasn’t the right time for him. Steve has to accept that.

That’s why he isn’t ready for this. The farther he pushed away this conversation, the longer he can say that he and Eddie are together. The longer he’ll still be in the best relationship of his life. The one that he actually saw going for a long time. Forever, even. It’s stupid really, how hopeful he was. He knows he dives in to fast without checking for monsters in the water. But this time he thought it was safe waters. But he guesses it wasn’t.

“Hey,” Eddie says when Steve walks through the door. Standing from the couch. “You’re dressed fancy.”

Fancy was a nice button down with slacks. “Yeah, I had that meeting with the lawyer today. Remember,” he crossly says.

Eddie looks down ashamed. “Yeah, I did. I showed up and you were already gone. I thought you wanted me to go with you.”

“That’s before you left.”

It’s the part that hurt the worst. Out of all of this. Eddie left. Just like his parents. Instead of staying to fix this, to work it out, he left Steve stranded at his front door. Unable to move. Unable to feel. Just frozen. Waiting for the door to open again and for the person who left return. For the person he loved to come back.

Eddie wasn’t his parents. But it didn’t matter. Not to his mind. In that moment, his returned to the kid that was left at every important moment in his life. And even the unimportant. Back to the kid that was a disappointment for just existing. Not meeting expectations. By not being perfect. He wasn’t the perfect partner for Eddie, so he left.

“I went with Robin instead, so I wasn’t alone,” he says with more venom in his voice than he intended. But it was justified.

Eddie looks hurt, Steve wanted him to. But it still hurt to see. “You’re mad. You have every right to be.”

“Yeah, I do. You left Eddie. You left me.” Steve feels tears start to gloss over his eyes. “After everything you knew, you still left.”

“I know. And I’m sorry. I should have just walked around your backyard or something. Sat in another room. Not left.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.”

It’s silent between them. Neither of them really knowing what to say. Steve wants to accept his apology, but it still feels like every apology he’s ever gotten. Cheap and hollow, never enough substance to it to make it true.

Eddie runs a hand down his face. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say. I was. Triggered, I guess, by some of the things you said. Sounded like every other guy I’ve been with. But you’re not like them, I shouldn’t have treated you like you were.”

“There’s so much more at stake here than my reputation. I can’t let this get out, even if I was ready to tell people. And if you can’t deal with that, can you at least just tell me now.” Steve can hear his voice breaking. He wants to stop it but can’t. “Why did you even show up today? You clearly didn’t want to talk to me.”

“But that didn’t mean I wasn’t still going to be there for you. And I can deal with it. I just couldn’t in that moment, but it passed, and I realized how much of an idiot I was being. Just because we had a fight doesn’t mean that I was going to forget the promises I made you.”

Steve swallows the lump in his throat. “Why?”

“Because I love you,” Eddie confesses with one breath. “I love you and I’m sorry I didn’t say it sooner. It scares the hell out of me. I’ve never been in love before, not like this and I. I didn’t want to lose you, so I did what I do best and ran. Away from the argument and from you.”

Eddie walks up to Steve, and Steve lets him touch him. Let’s him cup his face with his hand and run his thumb across Steve’s cheek. It’s easy for Steve to fall into the touch, having missed it for days. “I promise to never run from you again.”

“Why you’d not talk to me for days?”

“Cause I thought you didn’t want to see me. Like you said, I left. I couldn’t face the fact that I hurt you like that.”

Steve closes his eyes. “Yeah, you did. But you also came back. And I didn’t blame you, not for what you said. It was true. I was, am hiding you.”

“And I’m ok with that. For now, until the dust settles, and until you’re ready. I’m sorry for making you feel like I wasn’t. This is too special to me to break this easily.”

The tears finally escape from Steve’s eyes, rolling down his cheeks. Eddie wipes them away, a few tears of his own finding their way down his cheeks. Eddie pulls Steve in for a hug, and it feels like home. Only making Steve break more.

“Thank you for coming back,” Steve whispers into Eddie’s hair when he calms down. “I’m sorry that I made you feel like you couldn’t.”

“You have nothing to apologize for, sweetheart. Nothing, you hear me. This was my mistake. I know that.”

Steve pulls away. “No, but it was also mine. I, I know that people have hurt you in the past and it was because they made you feel like nothing. I don’t want to make you feel like nothing.”

“And you don’t. I promise that you don’t. Sneaking in at night sucks, but then I get into bed with you, and it makes everything worth it. This, us, is so important to me.”

“Maybe you don’t have to sneak in every night. Maybe some nights you can just ‘stay over’ in the guest room and then sneak one door over. Instead of coming over at midnight.”

Eddie smiles. “That would work for me. But seriously, we don’t say a thing until you’re ready. That’s a promise I swear I won’t break.”

“I love you too,” Steve blurts out. “I didn’t say it before. But it’s true. I’ve been just as scared about it as you have.”

Eddie kisses him softly. “I love you.”

“I love you.”

. . .

When Julie parks her bike, Eddie’s leaving the driveway. Waving to her on the way out. She waves back, heading inside.

Steve is back to himself again. Wandering around the kitchen in sweats, singing softly to the classic rock station on the radio. He smiles at her when she enters, offers to make her a snack. She refuses, not that hungry.

It’s strange how this place felt so foreign to her a few weeks ago. How the walls felt claustrophobic and everything around her was just crushing. But it’s better now, she’s better now. Still sad, but better. And this place felt like home. Her home. She didn’t want it to go away like the last one.

“Could I talk to you about something?” Julie forces herself to ask before she loses the nerve. Before she just runs to her room and locks herself on a blanket of insecurities again.

“Sure,” Steve says. “What’s up?”

Julie picks at her thumb. “I just. Me living here is still temporary, right?”

Steve’s face drops a bit as he leans on the island. “From a paperwork standpoint, yeah. Why do you ask?”

It’s so stupid that this affects her. That her thinking that Steve not sharing his relationship with her means that he doesn’t want her here. But it’s a part of his life. She wanted to be here for the good and the bad. And it felt like the good was being kept from her. As if she had a right to know it. But it still hurt a little.

“I just. This is so dumb. But you’re terrible at hiding things and I’ve heard someone come in the house pretty much every night for the past month at midnight on the dot. And I can’t help but feel like you’re hiding it from me. Like them meeting me is too much. Like you don’t want me here.”

It sounds more stupid when she says it out loud. But it’s true.

“I do want you here,” Steve says softly. “I really do. You living with me isn’t temporary to me, it’s just a long process to make it that way. And we haven’t really talked about what the steps would be past just me getting guardianship. But if you want to, we can start talking about getting permanent custody.”

A weight lifts itself from Julie’s shoulders. “Yes, yeah. I’d like that. I’d like to stay here, with you.”

Steve smiles. “Good. Me too. As for the other thing. I am seeing someone, but it’s,” he takes a breath. “It’s a bit more complicated than just telling you. I’m not really ready to tell anyone about it yet, it’s not just you. But if them coming over without you knowing is making you uncomfortable, it can stop.”

“No, no, it’s fine. I really don’t care. I just. When you are ready, you can tell me who it is. I won’t judge you or anything.”

“I know you won’t. Is that what Dustin was on in the car the other day? He knows too?”

Julie groans. “Yes. I swear I told him to drop it, but he is convinced that something’s up. I can’t get him to stop talking about it.”

Steve snorts. “Yeah, well, that’s Dustin for you.”

“I’ve learned.”

Steve walks around the island, giving Julie a hug. “How about we talk to Sarah about making this permanent at the next inspection. We can start on the whole process.”

“That sounds good.”

“Hey,” Steve crouches down a bit to get on her level. “You’re my sister, and I love you. That’s not a temporary thing, ok.”

Julie smiles. “Ok.”

She pulls out her homework from her bag and gets started, already wanting to pull her hair out with her math homework. Steve gets started on dinner, distracting her with some work stories from the previous day. It all is making her feel at home. Real home.

Tag list(let me know if you want to be added or removed): @homoerotictangerine, @mugloversonly, @thesuninyaface, @imyelenasexual, @anaibis, @ilovecupcakesandtea, @brainsteddielyrotted, @jackiemonroe5512, @eddie-munsons-missing-nipple, @goodolefashionedloverboi, @cinnamon-mushroomabomination, @lolawonsstuff, @writingandmushroomdragons, @stevesbipanic, @sierra-violet, @steddie-as-they-go, @dauntlessdiva, @mousedetective, @the-daydreamer-in-the-corner, @zombiethingy, @connected-dots-st-reblogger, @that-agender-from-pluto, @allyricas, @cheddartreets, @devondespresso, @crypticcorvidinacottage, @queenie-ofthe-void @chronicpainstevetruther, @cheddartreets, @theupsidedownrealestateagent, @acidbubblegummie, @sirsnacksalot, @l0st-strawberry, @helpimstuckposting, @strawberry-starss, @freddykicksasses, @italianwhore1, @i-threw-my-name-out-the-window, @rageagainsttheapathy, @nuggies4life, @ape31, @whimsicalwitchm, @chrissycunninghamfanblog, @michellegilligan, @hippielittlemetalhead, @bridget-malfoy-stilinski-hale, @jaytriesstuff, @confused-stripes, @faeb1tch42069, @marklee-blackmore, @hel-spawn, @genderless-spoon, @mamafaithful, @estrellami-1, @starryeyedpoet17 @i-amthepizzaman, @lilpomelito @melonmochi

[agent-carvour]

@agent-black-heart @peip-peeps @stuckinmyweb As promised, I am informing you about what I’ve gathered and the plan I have come up with so far.

First of all, it seems like Wiggly made a mistake. The deal didn’t clarify that John actually belongs to Wiggly, or that Wiggly can keep him. At least according to somebody who claims to be an expert, this means that if we get John out of the Black and White, Wiggly can’t just take him back. The good news is, that I think I already have a big part of that part of the plan figured out.

The simplified version of the plan is obvious. We send somebody into the Black and White and they get John out of there. Of course, in reality it’s a little more complicated than that. Wiggly won’t just allow this to happen, so we have to distract him. For that - and I am sorry, Colonel, I would have preferred to avoid this too - we’ll do another summoning. But this time, there won’t be a deal. At least not a real one. We just need to keep Wiggly entertained for as long as possible.

For the summoning, I believe Axel and I should be present. Axel would be the obvious choice to go get John, since they can travel in and out of the Black and White at will, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Wiggly has noticed how much snooping around I’ve been doing, so it might make him a little less careful, if he can personally keep an eye on us. We’ll also need a third person, but that’s a little more complicated. One of us needs to have blood that’s never been used in a ritual like this before. Mine was used in John’s summoning, and I’m not sure if Axel’s still counts as pure after everything that happened with Blinky. Colonel Schaffer, I’d really like for you to be the third person, but if your blood won’t work, we’ll have to find somebody else.

The deal we’ll be proposing has to be interesting. It has to entertain Wiggly and give us a lot of opportunity to argue among each other and about the terms with Wiggly, to buy as much time as possible. My idea is that we offer him one of us in exchange for John - just like he did - but with the fun little twist, that Wiggly gets to choose who he takes.

That’s team summoning, let’s talk about team rescue.

This is where you become very important, Webby. Do you think, if Wiggly is distracted, you can get John out of the Black and White by yourself? And if not, can you get somebody else in and out of there and protect them from the damage the Black and White is causing the human body? Admittedly, I don’t have a lot for this part. That’s because we’re still facing one major problem I haven’t mentioned yet.

John started physically changing the moment the summoning ritual was over. And I have reason to believe that Wiggly has continued to expand his influence on him. In other words, we won’t find the John we all know. As far as I know, some of you have already seen what’s happened, but for those who haven’t, just assume the worst. That should be about right. He won’t let himself be rescued willingly, and it’s very likely that he’ll be hostile towards us. That means we need a way to overpower him and to hold him here, once we’ve got him. Once again, we’ll need your help, Webby. Apparently a piece of your web can be used to shield somebody from the lords’ influence. It won’t fix him, but it will make it easier for him to fight Wiggly’s influence until we have an actual solution.

Speaking of which, I am working on that. I don’t have much to show yet, but I really hope I’m looking in the right direction. Either way, I don’t think we should start acting until we at least have a concrete idea of how to fix John. If he escapes before we can fix him, or if Wiggly manages to intervene, that means we’ve lost. We’re back to square one. No, it would be worse than that! Right now our biggest advantage is that we might be able to trick WIggly with the summoning. He won’t let us do that a second time. I know you all want to act as soon as possible, but we can’t risk throwing this one chance away. I don’t believe we’ll get another one.

But if you want to do something now, here’s a list with things that still need to be figured out:

- If the Colonel can’t be part of the ritual, who are we using instead? - Detailed terms for the fake deal that we can argue about with Wiggly - Ideally a way to guarantee that we can stop the summoning before any contract is made - If Webby can’t get John out on her own, who will we send to do it instead? - An ALternative if Webby can't get somebody in and out of the Black and White - Almost the entire rescue part of the plan, especially how can we overwhelm John and keep him here?

And of course

- How do we fix John?

As I said, I am working on the last point, so I’d be very thankful if you could take care of the other ones. I’m trying not to involve either of the Wilburs in the first half of the plan, because of their still somewhat existing connection to the lords, but I’m trying to work with them on the solution for undoing whatever Wiggly has done to John. And I might also ask another person for help on that…

As always, if you find anything new or have any ideas, tell me.

[solalunar-eclipse]

Sonic Boom - S3E20

Chapter title: Unknown From M.E. (Part Two)

Summary: Now that the team has found this strange "Master Crystal", there are a lot of questions that need answering. Unfortunately, they'll only have so much time to figure it out, because they've been followed to the island by somebody else…

AO3 Link

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[This time, the episode starts with the intro sequence! Once again, the individual character introductions and team shot all stay the same.]

[After that, a series of red, glitchy squares appear, growing rapidly in number until they fill the screen alongside a static-filled droning noise.]

[Everything cuts out.]

[After a few moments of silence, the title of this week’s episode appears on the screen. Then, the episode begins.]

“Chaos,” Shadow swore. “It’s the Master Crystal!”

Everybody else immediately whirled around to stare at him. “The what?!”

Shadow’s eyes were wider than any of them had ever seen before. “The Master Crystal. An incredible force, existing to balance and control the eight Chaos Crystals. With it, someone could potentially neutralize their power, at least temporarily. It was presumed to have been lost for centuries, even back…in the past.”

“But that doesn’t explain why it’s sitting here, inside the island where Knuckles apparently grew up.” Amy put her hands on her hips, clearly demanding an explanation. 

“I don’t have an answer to that.” Shadow folded his arms. “Like I just said, even the Ancients knew nothing about where this crystal might have been.”

Tails stared up at the android, eyes bright in an otherwise serious face. “Is this entire place—like the whole chamber—is all of that the Master Crystal?”

“I believe so, yes.” Shadow looked around the cavern once again, still mildly stunned himself at the sight of one of the few mysteries that had managed to stump even the most honed of Ancient minds. “But I am by no means an expert. Knuckles, do you know anything about this?”

The echidna shook his head, his shoulders sagging. “I never even knew my parents. I didn’t have anyone to explain this to me—I mean, I didn’t know this was here until just now!”

Sticks tapped Knuckles on the arm with their boomerang, drawing his attention. “Well, every ancient civilization has some kinda clues about what they were like, right? We just gotta look around and find ‘em!”

Sonic grinned, beginning to jog in place. “Sounds like a plan to me! Let’s see what this cave is hiding!”

The rest of the team gave each other a single nod in agreement, before spreading out to hunt for any potential clues. Once they actually started looking, it became clear that the cavern was a little more complex than they’d originally thought. There were various niches in the walls, some appearing more naturally formed than others. In addition to that, Tails soon discovered that the most massive stalactite of all pointed directly down to the center of the floor, which seemed…oddly intentional for a crystal. (Then again, this was no ordinary crystal.)

Before long, the others were all called away from their searches by Knuckles, who had begun exploring many of the niches in the walls. Once they’d all made it to the opening, located about a third of the way up the wall, they found a medium-sized room, large enough to fit about double their team comfortably. Nine spaces were worn away into the floor. 

“These look like how the sand does when I’ve been sitting in it for a while.” Sonic mused aloud. “You guys think these are like, some sorta seats or something?”

“This could be a council’s meeting room, perhaps.” Amy studied them a little more closely, before her attention was drawn to the faceted walls of the space. “I think there might be some scratches on the walls, but it’s hard to make out with the way they’re glowing. Does anyone else see those?”

Tails squinted at the wall, running his hand along it lightly. “I can kind of see them, and I can definitely feel them. I could probably get my Miles Electric to give the wall a scan and then project the marks so we can see them more clearly!”

He motioned for everyone else to stand back, before hovering in the center of the room and slowly rotating his device as it scanned every inch of the walls. Once he had finished, his scanner beeped—and then proceeded to map out the markings in blue holographic light all around them.

They weren’t just scratches at all. They were pictures. Precise, geometrical lines marked out a series of images that were near-invisible to the eyes and almost impossible to understand via touch alone. 

First came a picture of various different species living together in apparent harmony, in an area that resembled a massive yet technologically advanced garden. Shadow spoke up about this one, his voice quieter than normal, as though he would disturb the creator of these images were he to speak too loudly. “That looks like an Ancient garden that I learned about once. It was the first time that the early Ancient civilization had managed to create technology that worked with nature instead of against it…but as with many first attempts, it turned out to be a failure, and its ruins were left as a monument to the mistakes made. I never got to see it, of course, but there were photographs.”

The next image showed the garden growing larger…and larger…and larger, eventually close to covering an entire continent. And the leader of it all—the one with a shovel in one hand and a set of wires in the other—was an echidna.

In the third image, certain plants, the most beautiful and ornate, were being kept in the garden, while simpler wildflowers were being thrown out to the point where they risked vanishing altogether. Similar things were happening to the animals, now that some species were no longer necessary to maintain equilibrium in the ecosystem.

Then, two echidnas were depicted arguing. One was defending the unwanted plants and animals, while the other one stood in support of the garden. But suddenly, both of the echidnas fell, and were instead replaced by—

—something else.

It was growing out of the perfectly organized, perfectly ordered garden itself, but it wasn’t a plant or an animal. It was depicted as a simple square, which expanded and turned everything around it into more squares. A group of echidnas appeared, banding together to destroy their once-perfect garden and release the previously unwanted species back into the ecosystem. The echidnas built a massive device that sucked the square into the Master Crystal, but not before the square absorbed many of their own. 

After that, the echidnas left the Ancient society and came to the island that the six heroes stood upon now, where their numbers slowly diminished as time went on. They watched over the Master Crystal despite this, which was depicted as containing the square. 

And that was where the images ended.

“But…what does that all mean?” Tails asked, staring at the images his device showed.

Shadow rubbed at his face, sighing quietly. “In summation, the Ancients pushed too far. They tried to create a perfect world that suited their needs…but in doing so, they began to erase too much of the natural balance in favor of an artificial one. Chaos energy thrives on that natural balance, and it began to dissipate as the Ancients continued their terraforming. Some argued that the project was too dangerous and needed to stop, while others thought that the lack of Chaos energy was a small price to pay for a perfect world. But as Chaos faded…

“…something else clearly rose up to take its place.

“The echidna who had designed the garden was part of a tribe that had only recently attempted to join Ancient civilization. That tribe helped contribute to a great deal of advancements, but especially this garden—likely why most left together to guard against the evil. They must have banded together to stop the force released by their previous leader’s meddling, sealing it inside the Master Crystal at great cost to themselves. Then, they retreated from Ancient society and went to go watch over the Crystal in order to ensure that this power would never be unleashed upon the world again.”

Silence hung over the room for a long moment. 

“Man, it sounds way too stuffy when you say things like ‘in summation’. Never do that again.” 

Shadow’s gaze snapped over to Sonic so fast his face blurred. “Why in the name of all eight Chaos Crystals is that what you took away from this?!”

Knuckles grinned. “I appreciated it, the mood needed some lightening after all that.”

The android walked over to the nearest wall, leaning forward and pressing his forehead against it. “Just when I think I understand all of you…”

“Really, Knuckles, are you sure you’re okay?” Amy asked. “This seems like a lot to learn all at once.”

Knuckles shifted in place awkwardly, his eyes trained on the floor. “I mean, it’s a really sad story, and I’d always hoped I’d find other echidnas somewhere, but…at least now I know, y’know? It helps to know that my parents probably didn’t mean to leave me alone—even if the alternative is that apparently I’m part of an endangered species, I guess.”

Tails hid a small smile behind his hand. “Wait, does this mean that your house counts as a protected habitat now?”

“You have to get a certification for that kind of thing, Tails.” Amy facepalmed, but couldn’t quite manage to stifle her own amusement.

“Bold of you to assume I can’t forge a certification for a friend!” the engineer shot back.

“For-ger-y! Forgery! Forgery! Forgery!!” Sonic began to chant, Sticks joining in as well.

“Chaos, please have mercy and obliterate the pitiful dregs of my conscious mind.” Shadow pleaded, smirking despite his attempt at maintaining a serious tone.

At that, everybody laughed at least a little, and though none of them noticed, the Master Crystal seemed to glow just a little bit brighter in response.

Unfortunately, they were all interrupted when Knuckles abruptly began clutching at his head, grimacing slightly. “Knux? What’s wrong?” Sonic asked, dashing to his friend’s side.

“The Master Crystal’s freaking out—I think somebody else is on the island!” Knuckles gasped.

As soon as he’d finished speaking, one of the crystalline facets on the wall flickered briefly…before displaying an image of Eggman landing on the island. He appeared to have created some form of jet plane attachment to his Eggmobile (similar to the car he used in the village races), from which he released at least a hundred badniks, if not more. 

The entire team turned to their echidna friend. “This is your home.” Sticks said, her eyes flashing with determination. “What do you want to do?”

Knuckles grinned and held up his fists. “We’re gonna smash his robots, and then we’re gonna get him off my island!”

All six of them yelled in agreement, before racing out of the chamber and back the way they’d come, following Knuckles’s lead just like last time. They burst out of the side of the mountain as it shut behind them, ready for battle in poses that honestly looked awesome in slow motion.

Tails grabbed his older brother’s hands, swinging him around and around into a top-speed spindash that tore through a good five badniks all on its own. Sonic uncurled, landing low to the ground in a fighting stance, and yelled, “Hey Egg-breath! You haven’t even conquered Seaside Island yet, whatcha doing all the way out here?”

“Ohoho, I could ask the same of you, Sonic!” the doctor declared. “Is there something interesting on this island that I should know about?”

The blue hedgehog swiped under his nose, smiling smugly. “Psh, and here I thought you were a genius. Is your brain too smooth to figure it out on your own?”

Tails abruptly burst out laughing at that—so hard he almost fell out of the air, as a matter of fact. 

“Enough of this ridiculousness!” Eggman barked. “Robots, attaaaaaack!”

All six heroes charged into the fray, doing an excellent job of smashing badniks, as per usual. Sticks and Sonic had some fun passing the badger’s boomerang back and forth, while Shadow used his Chaos attacks to help Tails cover the rest of the team in the air. Amy’s hammer strikes left deep indents in the earth when she missed and piles of scrap when she didn’t, while Knuckles blew through entire groups of badniks with all the force of a freight train.

As a matter of fact, while Amy and Knuckles were usually at about the same power level when it came to heavy-hitting strikes, this time Knuckles was visibly dealing much more damage than the hammer-wielding hedgehog.  It quickly escalated to the point where his punches were practically emitting explosions as he plowed through robot after robot. He felt perfectly in tune with the very island itself, its power surging through him in a way he had never noticed as a child, because back then, he’d never known a life without it.

When he first realized this, he simply beamed and redoubled his efforts, but then, as he jumped up to deliver a particularly devastating drop punch—

—a massive green shockwave exploded out around him, leaving an entire crater in its wake.

When the dust settled, Knuckles brushed his hands off proudly…only to hesitate when he saw the particular smile that Dr. Eggman was wearing.

“Oh.” he muttered. And for a moment, he could have sworn that he almost felt the Master Crystal have the exact same reaction.

“So there is something special on this island! I knew it!” the doctor cried, his smile so wide it practically stretched past his mustache. “Badniks, search the area!”

The team quickly set about smashing all of the robots they possibly could with a newly frantic energy, shouting to each other as they fought to keep any from traveling out of sight. Despite their best efforts, however, a group of Motobugs broke away from the rest, tearing towards the forest at top speed.

“Sonic!” Tails yelled, kicking a Buzz Bomber in the side and pointing frantically. “They’re getting away!” 

“Ames, cover for me!” Sonic called, already dashing off into the undergrowth in pursuit.

Unfortunately for the team, however, the hole Sonic left in their defenses was just enough for one little badnik to escape their notice.

Double unfortunately, this particular badnik was a Burrobot.

Triple unfortunately, the Burrobot immediately set about digging into the ground on the side of the battlefield closest to the mountain.

Once it had fully drilled into the dirt, its hole no longer registered as a threat to the team, and so they simply fought around it. Even while Eggman panicked as his badnik supply began to run low (and screamed in an astonishingly high pitch when Sonic returned and roundhouse kicked the remnants of his Motobug force directly at him), it searched for the direction where the bewilderingly powerful energy source might be coming from, and dug towards it until it finally hit solid rock.

Then, it transmitted all of this information back to the Eggmobile.

By this point, Eggman had already been seriously considering just cutting his losses, fleeing back to his Jet Attachment (he was never letting Orbot name things again), and rattling off his usual “I’ll get you next time!” spiel. However, even as he began to inch warily away from the six heroes, he noticed that he’d received an information packet from a single stray Burrobot. 

He tapped on the notification, blowing the data up to full size—and rapidly regained his grin once more. 

“It would seem that you have failed to destroy all of my badniks!” he declared, before letting out a laugh that was more than worthy of the description ‘evil’. “So…how about I drill into this mountain and see what I find inside, hm?”

He immediately threw his hovercraft into full reverse, leaving the team yelling after him as he rushed back to his Jet Attachment. By the time Sonic and Shadow had recovered from their surprise and reached him, he had already morphed the attachment into a drill-car that he had, though he would never confess as much, gotten the idea for after playing a certain Tomatopotamus game. 

Just as the two hedgehogs tore towards him, curling up into twin buzzsaws of metal-shredding power, Eggman stomped on the accelerator and blasted forwards into the mountain. He cackled with delight as rock flew all around him, forcing Sonic and Shadow backwards lest they get injured by the debris. 

It was only then that the rest of the team appeared, letting out gasps of horror at the sight before them. Shadow snarled, attempting to throw a Chaos Spear after the doctor—but the energy infusing the island was much higher compared to what he was used to, and so the spear was rather more powerful than intended.

This would ordinarily be a good thing, but in this particular case, it just blew away more of the mountain in addition to the back plating of Eggman’s drill…which sadly did nothing to deter the front from pushing further into the rock.

“If we can’t stop him digging, we at least gotta protect the Master Crystal!” Knuckles cried, his voice audibly straining under the stress.

Shadow set his jaw, folding his arms so tightly it almost looked like he was hugging himself. “I can try to harness the energy from the Crystal to teleport all of us back inside it. That should ensure we can keep him from stealing any of its power.”

“Shads, that’s…that’s not gonna, like, hurt you or anything, right?” Sonic asked, for once more comfortable expressing his emotions than he was letting things slide.

“Does that really matter right now?” he shot back, raising one brow.

The resounding “YES!” from the team left him reeling backwards with its force, his expression showing just how visibly struck he was by their care.

“Very well. I’ll rest once we get there, but right now can we focus on stopping Eggman instead of my health?” Shadow held out his arms impatiently, urging the others to grab on.

“For now. Later, we’re having a talk.” Amy hissed, grabbing onto his forearm in a distinctly threatening way.

Once the rest of the team was in physical contact with him, Shadow closed his eyes, focused—

—and then they were in the cavern. 

They were just in time, too, since the sound of the drill was already making its way into the heart of the Master Crystal. The team braced themselves for battle, preparing to destroy Eggman’s machinery the second it burst into the chamber.

Suddenly, the crystal cracked. Despite the drill’s relatively small size, the entire room shuddered violently, and Knuckles grunted with the exertion of feeling the distress of an ancient power.

And then, a lot of things happened very quickly one after the other.

Eggman burst through the crystal wall, shouting in triumph as he did so…

…only to yell in sudden terror as five of the six heroes slammed into his drill, warping the metal spiral and destroying several pieces of critical technology…

…and an ear-splitting, unholy howl echoed throughout the inside of the Master.

Slowly, everyone’s heads turned to face the newly created hole in the crystal. Around its jagged edges, oozing like oil into ocean water, dripped a steady stream of buzzing, glitching red squares.

As it pooled on the floor, forming into neat and perfectly edged shapes, Shadow hauled himself to his feet—only to freeze. “That’s…that’s the thing the echidnas sealed away! It’s reawakening now that the Master Crystal is damaged!”

“So how do we fix it?!” Sonic yelped.

Sticks looked up at Knuckles hesitantly. “You’re connected to this big ol’ crystal. You think you can heal it up if we get all those busted pieces over to where they oughta be?”

Knuckles nodded frantically. “Yeah, I can, but we gotta get that stuff back inside it first! I can’t put it back in there and heal the hole all at once, it’s taking energy already just to keep this place together!” At that, Sticks leapt into action, gathering up the shards and bringing them back to the gaping wound in the green gem.

“Shadow, this stuff is the opposite of Chaos energy, right?” Tails yelled over his shoulder, and received a sharp nod in response. “Maybe we just gotta use a lot of Chaos to push it back into the Master Crystal!”

“But Shadow’s already blown out his powers getting us down here!” Sonic gestured wildly over to the aforementioned android, who was still relying heavily on the crystal walls to maintain his upright position.

Amy stepped up to the hero’s side, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Aren’t you always talking about how you can match Shadow in everything, Sonic?”

“Yeah…?” the blue hedgehog replied, squinting at her suspiciously.

“Well, with a little guidance, I’m sure you could channel the energy on the island yourself!” Amy smiled at him encouragingly, even as his eyes widened in shock. He whirled to look at Shadow, who shot him a sly smile and stumbled closer, leaning on Sonic’s other side.

“I’ll show you how. You have incredible abilities, Sonic—your speed and resilience already suggest that you have a connection to Chaos.” he said, and blue ears perked up in response.

“Okay…okay! Let’s do this!” Sonic bounced on his toes, shaking himself out before grinning confidently. “And uh…maybe make it snappy? That stuff’s comin’ close…” he muttered, eyeing the red substance uncomfortably.

“Look down at the crystal beneath your feet. You can feel the power flowing through it, yes?” Shadow said, nudging Sonic’s feet apart into a slightly more stable stance.

“Yeah…”

“Now, open yourself, and feel the power flow into you as you do so.”

Sonic felt tense for a moment as he tried to ‘open up’, hesitantly waiting to see what would happen. When nothing occurred at first, he tried to shake off the nerves by taking a deep breath—

—and that was when he felt the Chaos, flowing up through the soles of his shoes and into the very center of his body. 

He could distantly hear Shadow saying something, but he wasn’t sure what. All he could feel was the wild, free, untamed energy sparking in every single inch of his body.

And then he felt it.

It was cold, and sluggish, and everything it touched became more of it. It was, in essence, the exact opposite of him. He didn’t have to think, he just knew that this was wrong. This should not be here.

He could feel a cage already in existence, right there in front of him, but it was so slippery that it took a great deal out of him just to try and stuff it back in. It was only halfway inside by the time he found himself faltering, struggling to keep the thing from dripping back into existence. It may not have been as energetic as him, but it was persistent. So persistent, in fact, that he wasn’t sure if he could stop it…

“Sonic, you’re doing it! You’re actually doing it!”

“Sonic, you’re amazing! You’re doing great!”

“You got this, Sonic! I believe in you!”

“Don’t give up now, Sonic! You’re so close!”

“Come on, Sonic! Let’s finish this together!”

He yelled, gritting his teeth and clawing his fingers into the thing as he stomped into it with his own power, grinding it back into the crystal it had come from. He held it there, forcing it to stay as its own prison was rebuilt around it, piece by piece.

…his eyes opened.

For a moment, he saw a reflection on the newly healed crystal’s surface. Next to him was Knuckles, glowing with spirals of green light similar to the ones they’d seen on the drawings of the echidna clan and on the houses outside. 

And Sonic himself—his quills flared upwards, his fur stained in gold as though he’d been dipped in molten light. His bandages had come partly unraveled, and floated around him in some kind of invisible breeze. Speaking of floating, his toes just barely brushed the floor, his body suspended by the power flowing through it.

At first, he and Knuckles stared at each other as the Chaos energy dissipated, receding back into the Crystal along with the thing they’d just defeated.

“Knux, that was amazing!” he yelled, launching himself across the space between them in order to shake his friend around excitedly. “You just did a superhero move, man!”

“Hey, what about you?” the echidna shot back, beaming with delight. “You were flying! That was so cool!”

Seconds later, the two of them were very nearly tackled by their friends, all dragging each other into a massive group hug. 

“You both did it! Oh, I knew you could!” Amy cried, squeezing Knuckles and Sonic as tightly as she could.

Tails beamed up at the two of them. “That was SO COOL!”

“I can’t believe you crazy people actually managed to pull that off.” Sticks shook their head fondly, grinning as everyone else snickered at them calling anyone else crazy.

Meanwhile, Shadow hesitated for a moment before (in an extremely rare move) joining the group hug of his own volition. He didn’t say anything, but honestly, it wasn’t necessary. Everyone knew what he meant anyway.

After one more moment of basking in the relief of heading off a genuine disaster, Tails was the first to pull back, hovering over everyone else’s heads so he could be seen properly. “So, Eggman, you’re not gonna try messing around with this again, right?”

The rest of the team turned to face him warily, but there was no need for them to worry. “No! No no no, I deal in robots, not weird…godlike things!” the doctor exclaimed, shaking his head and waving his arms frantically. “Toying with forces I obviously can’t control would be just idiotic!”

[Cue barely-noticeable pause for interdimensional irony to hit.]

“And we can keep this between us, we don't need to tell anyone on Seaside Island about it, right?” Knuckles added.

The chorus of extremely vehement agreements that followed made him relax, even if only slightly.

“Welp! I’m ready to head home, how about you guys?” Sonic asked, lacing his hands together behind his head as he strolled towards the exit. 

Sticks was the first one to notice Knuckles’s hesitation. “You okay?” they asked him plainly.

“I don’t know…my ancestors made this place their responsibility, and I don’t want that thing getting back out. So I feel like it’s my responsibility, too. But also…Seaside Island feels more like home to me…because you’re all there.” Knuckles explained, scuffing one foot against the ground as he struggled to meet the others’ eyes.

“Knux…” Sonic reached out towards his friend, his expression lined with concern.

Before he could say anything more, though, Tails interrupted. “Hey, that’s not an unsolvable problem! I can set up some sort of transportation mechanism to let you come check in here without having to move out! And in the meantime, I’ll fly you over here as often as you want!”

“Wait, really?!” Knuckles gasped, his eyes practically sparkling.

“Sure thing! You can even help me design the blueprints for the transport, if you want.” the engineer offered.

“Ohmygosh, can we start talking about it right now?” At last, Knuckles began following his friends towards the exit, beaming with excitement all the while.

[Closeup on Knuckles’s hand as it brushes briefly against the wall of the Master Crystal’s cavern. Fade to outside, where Knuckles, silhouetted against the forest in the background, looks over his shoulder at the abandoned village where he grew up, before the camera focuses on one of the pieces of knotted rope swaying in the breeze in the foreground.

Another silhouette, this time of the team all climbing onto the plane at sunset, then taking off and beginning their flight back to Seaside Island. The final shot is of the six of them talking happily amongst each other, all clearly outlined against the golden light of the setting sun, flying over the pink-and-orange tinted ocean.

Roll credits.]

[tedwardremus]

hi, for the fic year in review thing, 2, 12 and 19!

What was something new you tried in a fic this year?

I tried a lot of new things this year! But I'm very proud of how the non-linear structure in Retrouvaille (or the happiness of meeting someone you love after a long time) worked out.

What fic was the easiest to write?

My marauder try to get tattoos fic Does Permanent Mean Forever? 

A breeze to write and the dialogue was so fun

Share your favorite piece of dialogue

Sirius and Harry talking about the first war in Padfoot in Privet Drive. It is a bit long so I put it all under the cut.

"How can you act like nothing happened? Everyone acts like they’re your friend, but…" Harry trailed off, unsure how to articulate what he was feeling.

Sirius sighed, his gaze fixed on the horizon. "The end of the war was complicated, Harry. Everyone was paranoid. There was a spy, and no one could figure out who it was."

"But that doesn’t explain why they abandoned you," Harry insisted, frustration evident in his tone.

Sirius turned to look at him, his expression somber. "They needed someone to blame, someone to focus their anger and grief on. We were young and brash and thought the Order was a bit of a laugh, to be honest. Everyone else was proper adults—Aurors, Ministry officials, politicians, journalists. They had all been on the war's frontlines since I started school. I think the other members spent most of the time annoyed at us, to be honest."

"But they had to know you wouldn’t be a Death Eater," Harry persisted.

Sirius let out a long sigh. Harry wasn’t sure if he was going to speak at all and looked away from Sirius, feeling a bit ashamed for having brought the topic up. He should have realized it was too sensitive of a conversation. But then Sirius got up from his swing and knelt in front of Harry, his grey eyes fixed squarely on him, not letting go.  "Voldemort started recruiting students, and Dumbledore wanted to know how they were recruited and who was being targeted for recruitment. Running a school that was turning into a hotbed for terrorist radicalization was highly concerning.

 "We - me, your parents, Remus, and Peter- had just left school and were willing to fight on the frontlines while providing information on other students we knew - Snape, Avery, Mulciber… my own family members. My younger brother became a Death Eater while still a student. My cousins were Death Eaters. So we were useful… I was useful. But that didn’t mean I was trustworthy. I was aloof and increasingly stressed. I was upset about my brother dying, so I set off to figure out what happened, and I was paranoid about trying to keep your parents safe in hiding… I wasn’t acting like myself. But none of us were really. Not in the end.

"People were always switching sides, whether out of fear or because they were Imperiused. Information was being leaked, which caused mass casualties for the Order. And when everything went down, when I was arrested, the natural conclusion was that I might have been closer to my family than to my friends than anyone had realized. A double agent. They assumed it was a long con of infiltration that started in Hogwarts. That’s exactly how You-Know-Who operated—in the shadows, letting people’s doubts creep in and change them."

Harry shook his head, still grappling with the injustice of it all. "But Remus, Dumbledore, Hagrid…"

"I hold no ill will towards them," Sirius interrupted gently. "They were just as confused as everyone else. They were mourning people they loved, trying to piece their lives back together. You don’t understand because you didn't live through it. The war ended in such a confusing and devastating way that people were willing to accept any truth if it meant they could move on. And then of course, there is time. Time has a funny way of filling in the gaps of what we think we know or remember."

Harry frowned, kicking at the dirt beneath the swing. "It still doesn’t seem fair."

"It wasn’t," Sirius agreed. "But fairness wasn’t something we could afford during the war. We were all just trying to survive, and sometimes, that meant making terrible mistakes. What matters now is that we’re here together and can fight for a better future."

Harry looked up at Sirius, seeing the pain in his godfather’s eyes. "I’ll never not trust you, Sirius," he said softly.

send me year in review asks

[spaceorphan18]

I'm just needing to to talk about writing a little bit. It's going under a cut, not because of anything scandalous or remotely interesting, but because I'm using my blog as a journal and being self indulgent.

I had this somewhat possibly naively romantic idea that while I was away on what is essentially a business trip, I could use the quiet and isolation of the hotel as a place to be inspiring and use my down time to attempt to write.

There have been a few complications.

The first being that this hotel room kind of sucks. There's nothing remotely inspiring about being in it. I'm honestly beginning to miss my home. And miss my library. And I hear you - I could go look for a library or some place to /be/ that's not the hotel room, but I am so exhausted from work that I don't want to be anywhere else.

Which leads me to point two - work is exhausting. I mean, I'm opening a new store, so it's a lot of moving shit around. This evening, despite barely being able to move after I got home, after resting a while, I feel pretty awake but not really able to focus... there's still a bit of time in my day, maybe I'll do some work this evening.

But okay about the writing itself...

So, first of all, let's talk about the Bridgerton hyper fixation. I really want to talk about Penelope. Like, I wanna really dig into Penelope and her character and explore it -- but... how? I don't know what I want to write. I don't know what I want to say? Is there a fic in me? Is there meta in me? I don't know. Usually, I express my love of fictional characters through writing, and I'm feeling stuck because I don't know really how to express all of this. So I feel... gunked up.

So. there's that.

Before Bridgerton made my interests take a left turn, there was Rogue. And, honestly, that really hasn't gone anywhere. I mean, X-Men have been a fixture in my life since I was ten, so it's a part of me. And I have this really beautiful, huge story I want to write. And I've started it, and got a really good outline. But it's a matter of sitting down and working on it. Which is the hardest part.

There are actually two projects -- the first one being the huge, novel-esque fic, that I'm slightly ambitious about, but it'll be so good once I write it. But the other project are one-shots following canon. And I'm so glad that I decided to do this as one-shots. I was so inspired to write the first few. But figuring out what to do next has been a little more difficult. I'm hoping doing the meta will inspire me.

Meanwhile, there's all the Glee stuff. And, maybe hard to believe - the Bridgerton stuff has has helped me re-fall in love with Klaine a little. I miss Kurt Hummel. I do. I need to finish Head Over Feet. You guys have been waiting way too long for that, and I just need to kind of get that squared away and done with. I'm not sure what project to work on next, but everything else I have in progress is at least episodic.

Idk idk. :/

I feel like I need to really just... get my shit together. And instead, I just feel full on stuck. *sigh*

[willowwitchreputation]

I think that, Latino American parents, not only in Brazil, from Mexico to the last country in Latin America, parents are like bears, as it seems that in Asia it is also, in certain countries, because I heard from above, so I don't researched in depth the extent to which Asians live with their parents. I mean, Latino American parents are very protective of their children, you know? My darling friend, she is already at university like her brother, in Chicago, as they are children of Mexicans, they don't mind living with them. I also agree that, as the United States like Brazil is multicultural, they don't mind their children still living with them, I guess. I think that nowadays, a lot has changed, it seemed that in the past people were colder, even towards their children, right? They seemed to be bothered, if their children lived with them until after university, I speak from experience in what I always saw in American culture. I think that parents also feel more concerned about helping financially and everything else, if their child had a good job, not like, owning a McDonald's in life. I don't have anxiety about driving, it seems like you feel free, you know? I have vision problems, so I can't drive, until both eyes are operated on, only one is. Even though I love the idea of driving a car or a motorcycle, I think that, you can live well with public transport (sometimes it can be bad or crowded on a day, when you're stressed) or a taxi or Uber, as it seems nowadays, everyone wants a car to be free to go wherever they want, as there are no buses, subways or trains. I rarely hear anyone, who lives in New York use a car. It even surprises me, when I saw Pedro Pascal opening a car, because he lives in New York, I thought he used the subway more than he had a car. Living in São Paulo, I've taken the bus, when everyone leaves work, I know how annoying it is. I think that, nowadays, if I were, for example, in New York, I said that, I live with my parents, since the time they made me, I wouldn't care, if an American judged me for that. If you don't care, where do you live, how did you say you lived in a big city? Sorry, I love talking, lol.

Yeah definitely, every culture has different approaches but there will probably be some variation in each culture too. I know what you mean about the US and the cold approach. I personally don’t have parents like that, but I know for a fact there are parents who are like, “ welp, you’re 18 so it’s time to get out of the house, we want to live our lives” or they just have a bit of a tough love approach to push their children to independence and have them learn lessons on their own. I can see value in both sides. But it’s a spectrum now a days and probably in the past. Not every set of American parents will do that. I kind of have done both. I did go right to college, came home for breaks and a few months after graduation, but I moved 3 hours away from them for 6 years (with several short visits a year). Then during the pandemic I decided it was better for me to come back and figure somethings out while also spending lots of time with my parents. I do have plans to eventually move out, but I’m taking my time. That’s great you like driving, can’t relate 😂. I might someday but it’s very scary for me.

I live in the suburbs now so public transportation is not great/or an option, so I just go where my parents go most of the time. I don’t trust uber that much even though I have used it in the past. It’s true about NYC, many people don’t have cars or even ever drive, but some do drive/have cars there. It’s just expensive and unnecessary for many people.

Yeah that’s cool you have always lived with them! I live in the Philadelphia suburbs. I did live in the Washington D.C area for 6 years, which is where I lived in a city. I used the Metro and walked everywhere! I loved it a lot, but it was starting to get more and more expensive (I paid $1600 a month for 360 square foot studio apartment) and I was a bit isolated during the pandemic when all my friends there moved away at the time. So I moved home!

It’s totally cool! I’m a chatty person as well, just hadn’t had to time to respond until now! 😊

[pesterloglog]

Jake English, Tavrosprite, Jasprosesprite^2

Act 6, page 7810-7811

JAKE: Tavrosprite thank you for surreptitiously scooting away with me to my planet.

JAKE: I hope they all dont think me too much of a soggy knickerbocker for ducking off without making the rounds and saying goodbye.

JAKE: I just needed to get away and clear my head and i guess get my dander up for this great green man-fracas i am to solely contend with apparently??

JAKE: Say tavrosprite...

JAKE: Youll help me with out this impending pugilism wont you?

TAVROSPRITE: oH, yEAH!

TAVROSPRITE: i'M DEFINITELY READY, tO BRING THE SICK FIRE, tO

TAVROSPRITE: tHOSE GUYS ALLEGED TO BE INSIDE,,, aN ENCHANTED OVEN,

JAKE: Atta boy tavvy!!!

JAKE: Oops is it ok if i call you tavvy?

TAVROSPRITE: yES, i LOVE IT, }:)

JAKE: Actually wait.

JAKE: No i think i wont on second thought tavvy sounds fucking stupid.

TAVROSPRITE: yEAH, pROBABLY,

TAVROSPRITE: oKAY,

JAKE: So were agreed then.

JAKE: We wait here and limber up and flex our stupendous guns a bit then let sail our haymakers once the circus trundles into town.

TAVROSPRITE: i, pROBABLY UNDERSTOOD THAT REMARK, aND AGREE,

JAKE: I just wonder if theres anything else for me to DO aside from kiss my knuckles and lather them up with elbow grease.

JAKE: Turn my ten favorite boys out for a bracing constitutional you know?

TAVROSPRITE: ,,,,,nO,

JAKE: Should i be...

JAKE: SOUL SEARCHING or...

JAKE: Straining my brain to have some sort of magnificent epiphany about myself?

JAKE: Is this...

JAKE: Is this IT for me? Is this all there is to understand?

TAVROSPRITE: uM,,,

JAKE: Maybe theres only so much ragged wood a man can scrape from a barrels basement.

JAKE: Maybe sometimes a fellas gotta fess up to the fact that all there is to get about hims been firmly got already.

JAKE: Ive pretty much concluded that im a complete waste of everyones time if i bother busying their lives with my brand of beeswax and buffoonery.

JAKE: I settled square on the determination that i need to just be alone for most of my life and you know what im perfectly ok with that idea.

JAKE: Im just a lunk head and a loner and thats that.

JAKE: What else is there wonder about myself or my future except which face is most deserving of my fist?

TAVROSPRITE: sINCE YOU PUT EVERYTHING THAT WAY, aND SINCE SOMETIMES IT'S HARD TO DISAGREE WITH A LOT OF CONSECUTIVE WORDS,

TAVROSPRITE: i THINK i AGREE WITH YOU,

TAVROSPRITE: mAYBE YOU'VE FIGURED OUT EVERYTHING ABOUT YOURSELF THAT MATTERS,

TAVROSPRITE: tHAT WOULD BE AWESOME!, lET'S BOTH PUT EXTRA EFFORT INTO HOPING IT'S TRUE,

JAKE: Thats the ticket!

JAKE: I love my aspect it feels so empowering every time i want to feel like somethings real when tons of facts are missing.

JAKE: I really am a lucky son of a bitch arent i tavvy. Shit i mean tavrosprite. Blech what i bad nickname sorry!!!

JAKE: But yeah thats pretty much what the doctor ordered for old jake english. No romantic stuff. No platonic stuff either!

JAKE: Ill be like... Mr nonrom sansplat... Or... Oh horsenoodles there has to be terminology that more effectively consolidates my present understanding of myself into a coherent identity i can get enthusiastic about.

JAKE: Maybe the troll lingo has the answers. Or maybe im pioneering some sort of... shadow quadrant system?? Ooh lordy wouldnt that be a swift kick in the netherdumplings.

JAKE: What do you think tavvyboy should i take my idea to the troll patent office and make a mint?

TAVROSPRITE: i DON'T THINK WE HAVE A THING LIKE THAT,

TAVROSPRITE: aLSO,

TAVROSPRITE: aLL OF MY PEOPLE ARE EXTINCT, aND MY PLANET IS BADLY EXPLODED,

JAKE: Oh yeah.

JAKE: Heh oopsie.

TAVROSPRITE: bUT YEAH, tRAGEDY SITUATIONS NOT IN CONSIDERATION,,,

TAVROSPRITE: i SYMPATHIZE ENTIRELY WITH YOUR SOCIAL IMPASSE, cAUSING NOT GOOD REFLECTIONS ABOUT YOURSELF, tHAT MAYBE ALSO DOUBLE AS LIBERATING STUFF ABOUT YOU THAT YOU RANDOMLY DECIDE IS FINE SUDDENLY,

TAVROSPRITE: oLD ACQUAINTANCES, aND GUYS YOU ONCE CALLED FRIENDS,

TAVROSPRITE: tHOSE ARE VERY HARD,

TAVROSPRITE: bECAUSE OVER TIME THEY GET EXPOSED TOO MUCH, tO ALL MY FLAWS AND INSECURITIES,

TAVROSPRITE: aND THEY START LIKING ME LESS BECAUSE OF THAT,

TAVROSPRITE: aT LEAST, tHAT'S HOW THE TRUTH FEELS, iN MY BRAIN,

TAVROSPRITE: sO i START THINKING, mAYBE THEY CAN'T BE THAT IMPORTANT TO ME, aFTER ALL, iF i'M GOING TO WANT TO FEEL NOT SAD ABOUT MYSELF ALL THE TIME,

TAVROSPRITE: bUT THEN, aLSO,

TAVROSPRITE: i REALLY DO ENJOY MAKING *NEW* FRIENDS,

TAVROSPRITE: aND EVEN THOUGH i DON'T HAVE MANY TALENTS OR BATTLE SKILLS, oR INTELLIGENCE, oR DISCERNIBLE POSITIVE QUALITIES,

TAVROSPRITE: oNE THING i THINK i'M GOOD AT THAT PEOPLE UNDERESTIMATE,

TAVROSPRITE: iS MAKING NEW FRIENDS, wHO DON'T KNOW MY FLAWS YET, }:)

JAKE: Yeah...

JAKE: Yeah!

JAKE: Cheese and crackers tavvers what an inspirational little spiel that just was.

JAKE: Mayhaps youve more concealed talents than you let on??

TAVROSPRITE: nO, aBSOLUTELY NOT, bUT THANK YOU,

TAVROSPRITE: aAA,,

TAVROSPRITE: aAAAA,,, cHOO!

TAVROSPRITE: aCHOO!,!

JAKE: Tavmeister are you ok?

TAVROSPRITE: aAACHOO!

TAVROSPRITE: aCHOOOOOOO,,,!

JAKE: Heavens to murgatroyd park tavenue whats the matter??

TAVROSPRITE: aACHOO!

TAVROSPRITE: aCHOOO,!,

JAKE: Speak to me lobster tavioli!!!

TAVROSPRITE: aAAAA,,,,,

TAVROSPRITE: cHOOOOOOOOOOOO!

TAVROSPRITE: aCHOO, aCHOO, aCHOO!!!

JAKE: Ey! Rikki tikki tavi! Lay it on me bro... do you need to go to a hospital or what?!

JASPROSESPRITE^2: :3

[campbluelake]

And Cut! | Director Q-n-A 5

Malyce watches the ground, his heart heavy. He feels himself sinking into the ground, his heart breaking. How else was he going to make this up to the people he’s hurt? He doesn’t want to be hunted for sport… He doesn’t want to be murdered! He doesn’t want to suffer, even if he knows it’s what he deserves. Nora speaks up again, and he hangs his head. He’s losing his energy, but he wants to answer however he can.

“What else is even left to try? How do we fix this?”

“I… I want to hope that once all the cards are on the table, which I mean everyone has been revealed, we can work together to end this. Once and for all. Without being restricted by the rules of the killing game, I hope that… maybe we can break down the barriers that contain you all here. We can get everyone back home. Maybe… Niko, my colleague, Max and I can figure this out. Find a loophole I couldn’t maneuver alone.”

He felt a spark of hope at the idea. Maybe it could happen, who knows? There’s another demon here and an ancient earth being! Speaking of ancient earth beings, Max speaks up. His heart rate rockets again as his anxiety bleeds from his chest. When he reassures Malyce that he’s human, he feels that anxiety melt away, only to be replaced by a different anxiety. He won’t hurt him, but that also means he won’t stop the others. He nods shakily before lowering his gaze once again.

“Thank you, Max… For not tearing me limb from limb… I just want a chance to make things right before I die… Please. I am in no position to ask for this, I know…”

His soul shatters when he hears Yua speak. He knew it was coming. He knew it was always going to happen, but that doesn’t make it hurt less.

“I can’t date a big, murder guy. Who’s killed a bunch of people.”

“Yua, I’m sorry… I…”

Everything breaks his heart all over again as Yua continues. He can't even find his footing as he loses the last strand of hope he had. 

“Why didn’t you just do this to your siblings?”

“... I wanted them to see me finally be successful… They’ve hurt me, emotionally, physically, mentally. They’ve tortured me my whole life! I… I wanted them to see me finally do something worthwhile.”

Everything topples over as he continues to sob.

“Can we like… pull them out of the faucet?”

“I… I don’t know… I want to. I want to so badly! I don’t want them to stay dead!! I don’t want them to be dead! I’m so sorry!”

Malyce gets out of his chair and starts circling around it, hyperventilating.

“You have to personally escort me out of here.”

“Okay. Okay, I will, whatever you want… I didn’t do this stupid costume shit on purpose! I didn’t want a– a… Cringe ass reveal! I didn’t want dramatics! I don’t want any of this!”

He looks at Yua, shoulders shaking from his sobs.

“I wanted to say something… But I couldn’t… You don’t know how badly I want you all to go home.”

Malyce turns away and walks as far as he can from the town square to drop to his knees and cry. He’s done here.

[wolfbaenes]

the sentiment of not feeling human seemed to pass through the circle like a spirit, bouncing from one person to another and leaving its mark on every face. it opened an ache in hini's chest, knowing that they'd all been made to feel this way. as much as they comforted each other with the reassurance that they were all human, that no one could take that from them, it did nothing to assuage the bone-deep fear that they would be the innocent kids they'd been before the world left bloody fingerprints on their souls.

human and supernatural alike, they'd all been torn apart by something. some of them had never fully recovered from it. sometimes, she didn't know if she did.

she watched as holly's extrapolation settled over cora, the wolf nodding slowly as she figured out her own response for it. cora had never been one for words; everything that she felt was tightly packed away, the comfort and understanding left for the more vocal or empathetic pack members. the fact that she was trying at all said a lot.

"i... hm," she said. kira nudged their shoulders together lightly in encouragement. cora tried again. "my childhood was taken from me, too, in a different way. not just the fire, but what came after. and i never got myself back. the part of me that felt human, that might've been human, might've been just... a girl who liked dresses and time with her family, i never got that back. but i don't think⎯" she paused again, running her tongue over her lips. the silence sat gently on their shoulders; the earth waited for her. "what i've learned is that you can still be. even if you're not that person, or if you're not what anyone thinks you should be... i don't know, if you've already lost everything that you were, doesn't that leave a lot of room for you to be whoever you want now?"

"i think that's a good way of putting it," camden offered, giving her a smile. "that's not to say it's easy. finding the path forward can be the hardest part, especially when you've missed all of the steps that everyone else has pictures and videos of. it's like you're not even at square one, because someone pulled you so far away from the starting line, you can't make your way back. but i think you're in good company, holly," he said with a smile. "you're with a lot of people who've felt not-totally-human. and every single of us loves you enough to hold your hand and walk with you until you find your path."

"and if you're worried about not having a first dance, don't be," lydia added. "i'll recreate prom tomorrow, if you want. we can vote for prom queen right now." though her face was serious, she softened her features a bit. "that's not to invalidate anything that you're feeling. what i mean to say is... if there's anything there's we can do to help you reclaim that sense of personhood and agency that you lost, then i'll be the first in line to do it."

"me, too," heather said quietly, taking her sister's hand. she had been quiet during the conversation, not quite sure what she could say. she hadn't gotten over that inhuman feeling herself; how could she offer her sister comfort for something that she was still struggling with? all she could offer was the promise that she would always be there, which she would. "i⎯i don't know how to make you feel better," she confessed, lacing their fingers together. "i don't feel human myself. but i know that i love you. and that i'm here. i'm not letting anyone take you from me ever again. so if you need to figure out how to be human again, i'll hold your hand the entire time. we can find favorite things. we can get dressed up for dances and learn how to do our makeup. and we'll do it together, if you want. that's what i want."

scott smiled at them both before settling his gaze on holly. "is there anything we can do for you? any way we can help you feel like a person again?"

"you won't say the wrong words," holly said, head tilting to the side slightly as she looked up at cora. "even if we don't mean the same thing, it's not wrong to compare and relate. it's...nice. not nice that you can relate, but nice that...we can...understand. i don't think anyone else could understand, outside of this circle."

allison looked between cora and holly worriedly, but at their words, she had to admit to herself, she knew exactly what they meant. it felt like a constant internal battle sometimes; the need to try to help everyone, to fix everything, to atone for all of the pain her family had inflicted for generations.

to atone for all of the pain her family had inflicted on the people seated here, now.

sometimes, allison thought, if only she could help everyone, if only she could find the right words, say the right thing, do the right thing, fight hard enough, she could scrub away the brand of her last name. the lines of pain for so many of the people she loved most in the world could be traced back to her family, and the guilt of that was an albatross around her neck she knew she would never be completely free of. but as much as her instinct was to try to heal the pain her friends were expressing, at cora and holly's words, she paused, considering the weight of them, the reality. she was, by all accounts, among the most human members of the pack; she was a hunter, yes, but despite her skill she was still only human, she had no supernatural strength or speed or healing capabilities. sometimes, though— more often than sometimes— she hardly felt human, either. she had been molded from childhood into a weapon; she was a blade concealed beneath skin and bone, a drawn bow behind a smile. her family had raised her to be a weapon, and sometimes she felt it still. sometimes she wondered if that was all she was good for, still; what was the point of her, if she was not a protector, a defender, a dagger disguised as a woman?

looking up across the circle, her eyes fell on theo; he'd gone still as a stone, eyes glued to the spot on the grass in front of him. patariki stared into the night with sad, wide eyes; even sweet lucy looked pained and on the verge of tears.

"i think," laura said softly, her voice full of sadness, "that might be something everyone here can relate to, just like holly said." and oh, how it pained her to know her sister felt this way; that any of them did. even if the experience is different for everyone, it might be helpful, to talk about it, if you're comfortable with it," she added gently.

holly nodded, smiling shakily at cora.

"sometimes i think i really don't know how. i mean, on the most basic level. we spent so much of our childhoods locked up by the dread doctors," she said, looking around at the other chimeras as she spoke. "we missed out on so much. just normal things, you know? like going to a first dance, or going to the movies with friends, or just...hanging out. i never figured out how to do all of those things that you see in movies."

malia inhaled sharply, moving closer to jude and burying her face against her shoulder. she knew all too well what holly meant, and it felt like a sharp, shooting pain in her chest to hear it put so plainly.

"and then, i mean...i went from one place like that to another. who knows if i even would have trusted those people if i knew better? but i didn't, because...how would i, i guess. and the guards all called me pretty, but it felt so wrong and scary, and not like if someone my age called me pretty or..." she swallowed. "and i think i was treated like a science experiment or an object for so long that i feel like i don't know how to be. i don't even have favorite things. if someone asks what i like, i...i don't know. i don't feel like i even know myself."

[sluttywonwoo]

Hi! What do you think the svt members reaction would be to another member liking their crush as well - like would they try to win their crush over or are they more likely to back away / anything else? 👀

adding a cut just bc this one got a lil long!!

seungcheol: this puts him in a very precarious position because he’s supposed to be the leader. he’s supposed to be unbiased and love all of his members equally. but it’s hard to do that when one of said members also has heart eyes for you. he’d sort of give that member the silent treatment, and try spending more time with you as a result. he isn’t eager to tell you how he feels because he’s terrified you’ll reject him, but he doesn’t want to miss his chance so he’ll work up the courage to confess, waiting for the right moment.

jeonghan: unless he’s convinced you’re the love of his life, he’d tell the other member to go for it and let you go </3 if it’s just a simple crush, jeonghan figures it will pass eventually and he’ll find someone new. he doesn’t think it’s worth it to fight over a crush with someone he’s forced to spend all his time with and has to work with for at least the next seven years.

joshua: he’ll try and tell you how he feels first, beating the other guy to it. joshua isn’t sure if you’ll reciprocate but he wants to put himself out there so at least he won’t spend the rest of his life wondering “what if”.

jun: he’s more annoyed about it than he lets on. whoever the other member is, he’ll kind of laugh about it with them in the moment, but then when he’s alone again he’ll sulk. his moodiness might even bleed into his hangouts with you, leading you to ask him what’s wrong. he’ll either spill everything or just pretend like he’s tired, either way he’s getting cuddles from you as a result.

soonyoung: it turns into a sitcom-level competition for this dude, like who can win your heart faster— it doesn’t matter who it is, he’s going to fight for you and will do whatever it takes to come out on top.

wonwoo: he’s sooo so shy, it’d be like his worst nightmare to learn that one of his members also likes you. he would need major evidence that you also like him to even begin to consider confessing to you so he’d have to sort of… drop hints and test the waters to try and gauge your feelings.

jihoon: he hates conflict so he’d let the other member make a move first. if you don’t reciprocate, then he’ll shoot his shot and try and win you over fair and square. but if you do reciprocate, jihoon will simply be bitter about it forever and hold a grudge against them until the day he dies.

seokmin: poor guys panics, and ends up telling you everything, even though you didn’t ask. he basically blurts out all of his feelings and also mentions that he knows his member has a crush on you too. and then after dumping all of this info on you he’ll just. dip. he’d run off, leaving you there to process all the things he’d just said.

mingyu: listen, he gives everything his best shot. he knows he’s a good looking dude and thinks he might have a decent chance with you so he’d go for it. he thinks he can offer a lot too, but then again so can any member of seventeen which makes him a little less confident about the whole thing. at the very least, he knows he’s taller than the other guy which is a win for him (but only if you’re into tall guys).

minghao: minghao is quiet and reserved, but when it comes to love i think he’s a bit more headstrong. he’s a romantic, but also a realist, meaning he knows he has to work for what he wants. he can’t just sit around and wait for a relationship to fall into his lap and if he wants to be with you he needs to speak up. putting himself out there like that would be sooo difficult for him but he’s able to convince himself that it’s worth it for the opportunity to be with you.

seungkwan: he would honestly get pretty jealous— as anyone would if they were suddenly competing for their crush— and would do his best to steer you away from said competitor. he’d suddenly start spending all of his time with you so that the other member couldn’t get you alone, just silently hoping you aren’t getting sick of having him around.

vernon: he doesn’t think he’s bothered by it until he watches you laughing at their joke and realizes “oh fuck, i can’t let this happen”. however, how he decides to fix it… he doesn’t even know. he’d have to ask one of his other members (one that isn’t also in love with you) for advice.

chan: it’s tricky for him as the maknae because technically there’s a degree of respect he’s supposed to pay the older members but he’d honestly just say fuck it and do what he wants (he always does anyway). and in this case what he wants is you. he’s too proud to bow out so he’d be up front with you and lay it all out there.

[gold3nladybug]

* Gently places a grenade inside of a wasp’s nest *

Alright, so now that that’s out of the way, lets talk. I first read Worm in, oh, around 2014 when I was stuck in a city I didn’t live in with nothing to do for the better part of a week because all my plans had collapsed. I found it by googling something like “original superhero fiction”. I read it again in the last few years, and then read Ward. I say this because it means I read both pieces as complete works, and never engaged with them in progress - I didn’t stop to read the comments or even really spend any time in the fan community until quite recently, so I didn’t really have a handle on how other people were reacting to the text. Which means that I’m having an opinion about something that I’ve seen other people talking about in the parahuman tags, and I'm about to make that our problem together - that is to say, describing Victoria Dallon as a Cop. And, to be fair, that’s a pretty sensible thing to saddle her with; she do be upholding unjust power structures for the benefit of the strong at the expense of the weak. Its just that she also, sometimes, upholds unjust power structures for the benefit of the weak at the expense of the strong. Or the benefit of the strong at the expense of the strong. Or the benefit of the weak at the expense of the weak.

My favourite thing about Victoria Dallon, as of her stint as the protagonist of Ward, is that her only guiding Moral Principle is “I will do whatever I want, and I will justify to myself that it was the right thing to do” and that is so much more fun than just being cop-brained. Do what is Right (as defined by Vicky’s parliament of Herself, Herself but a Kid, Herself but a Wise Mentor Figure, Herself but a Nerd and Herself but Not Fucked Up) unless she doesn’t want to. Do what is Legal unless she doesn’t want to. Do whatever she wants that she wants to. She gets first pick on whatever the moral high ground is, because wherever she’s standing is the moral high ground - even if she’s just making the Tough Decision in a Bad Situation with No Good Outcome, she gets to place herself in a position of control and good judgment. And that’s a fascinating place to shove your protagonist, because it elucidates a lot of the inconsistencies in how Vicky views the world - . How can putting “criminals” in prison be imperative if Rain and Ashley going to prison is unbearably stupid? Vicky, ultimately, gets to square away the inconsistencies in her ethical axioms, because she doesn’t let them get in the way of her doing/feeling what she wants.

Which is a great flaw for a protagonist to have - the text even gestures at it when we get a quick look from The Fragile One’s perspective, because Vicky’s Genocide Alien Piece thinks its absolutely rad that Victoria will do anything to get her way and justify it to herself the whole time since that might make it possible for them to take over the world together and crush it beneath a forcefielded boot. Its a really natural flaw for Vicky to have, as well, because its all about manifesting control - she has to be right, she has to set her own path, because otherwise someone else could be setting it for her and that’s not something she can accept or go back to. Vicky’s not a Cop because she’s, in some way, better than that - she’s not. Its just that I feel like describing someone as a Cop implies that they’re following some kind of code, defending some kind of institution, part of some kind of group that is acting in its own interests or the interests of its superiors. Victoria might seem like she's doing that, but its incidental - the only one or only thing that she's accountable to is herself, and even then only if its convenient. (Where this all breaks down, of course, is that Wildblow decided at some point that Vicky actually was just right about everything which takes some of the wind out of my sails)

Anyway, I just think she's neat.