“A new beginning. Purple, the sky at dawn; rain, the cleansing factor.”
- Lisa Coleman, Prince and the Revolution
Purple Rain
Rated: T
Fandom: Stranger Things (TV)
Relationship: Steve/Nancy/Jonathan
Relevant Tags: Friends to Lovers, Polyamory, Getting Together, Mutual Pining, Letters, Established Nancy/Jonathan, Robin is the best
Summary:
At the end of the summer, only a few weeks after Starcourt, Steve’s dad gives him the news... Steve, he tells him in no uncertain terms, is joining the military. At least that gives him four years without having to watch Nancy and Jonathan be happy without him.
Distance, though, famously makes the heart grow fonder.
"you need me to hold your hand so you can read the instructions?" "it helps me concentrate!" is Luke/Reggie and it works either way so...
Reggie comes tearing into the studio like a hurricane, flushed and gasping for air.
"Luke! Luke, I got it!"
"Got what, Reg?" Luke teases, grinning around the pick in his mouth. He wiggles his eyebrows. "Laid?"
He certainly looks the part, with his windblown hair and his big bright eyes and his red, red cheeks. His breath is still coming in short bursts through parted lips, and his flannel is falling off of his shoulders.
He's excited about something.
"Screw you—" Reggie flushes further as Luke wiggles his eyebrows some more. "Not like that. No, this is better!"
Luke hums, setting his guitar aside. He plucks the pick out of his mouth.
"So, on your scale from sex to pizza—"
Reggie's laughter bubbles out of him. He ducks his head, but he's definitely smiling.
"Shut up, okay, I stand by what I said. Sex can be good but I don't, like, seek it out, you know? But I want pizza all the time! The obvious conclusion: pizza is better."
For all of Luke's teasing, he does get it. Replace pizza with music and then the scale becomes Luke's.
Reggie, though—he's special.
He breaks Luke's scale, and Luke can't resist an especially flirty comment or a nudge here and there. He's a little addicted to the chemistry that sometimes crackles between them, and a lot addicted to Reggie’s easy grin, the familiar sight of his crooked teeth. It sparks a lot of feelings that he's been trying to put to paper.
Reggie's smiling at him openly, now, expectantly, and Luke clears his throat.
"Alright, alright, so—this? What'd you get?"
Reggie slings his backpack around to pull out a large box, bounding over to shove it in Luke's face. There's no mistaking it—
"It's the Lego Death Star! I can't believe they still had it at the thrift store—Mrs. Cardenas said she'd hold onto it for me but—I really can't believe my luck I mean—it's never even been opened!"
"Mrs. Cardenas loves you," Luke says fondly, "of course she kept it for you, dude, you practically work there whenever you have a spare minute to help her out."
Reggie shrugs. His flannel falls even further off of his arms, and he slips out of it, leaving it on the coffee table with the box. He twists his fingers together.
"I don't know about that, Lu."
Luke shakes his head. He wraps his arm around Reggie's waist and tugs him down onto the couch.
"Come on, Reg. You're easy to love."
Reggie smiles again, but it's brittle this time. He clearly doesn't believe him.
Luke shouldn't push, as much as he desperately wants to make him see, to show him that he's wrong, that he makes the world so much brighter. He'll just have to channel that motivation into his song.
In the meantime, Reggie deflects.
"You know what's probably not easy? Putting this thing together! You don't have to help me, but—would you? It'll be fun, I swear! The challenge makes it fun, everyone says so. Or, well. The box does."
Luke chuckles. "Of course I'll help you, bro. What do we need to do?"
Reggie bites his lip, considering.
"We should probably clear off the table. Read the instructions." He looks at Luke with a little smirk. "We could do that if you'd, you know, give me my body back."
Luke squeezes him tighter in retaliation, burying his face in the crook of his neck.
"Well, maybe now I don't wanna."
"Luke," Reggie whines. It shouldn't be sexy in this context at all, and yet. "Please?"
Luke releases him wordlessly. He doesn't trust his voice not to give something away.
They get the table cleared and the pieces spread out in no time, but Reggie falters a little when he picks up the instructions.
"Um—this is going to sound stupid, but—could you hold my hand?"
"It's not stupid, dude." Luke grins. "It's just unfair. I'm not allowed to hold you, but you need me to hold your hand so you can read the instructions?"
Reggie splutters. "I—that's—it helps me concentrate! The other thing—doesn't."
Luke hums, folding Reggie's hand in his. He rubs his thumb over Reggie's knuckles.
"Hey, it's okay. I said that it's not stupid, and I meant it, bro. I'm just teasing you."
Reggie worries his lip between his teeth.
"You tease me a lot."
"Does it bother you?" Luke starts to pull his hand away, but Reggie holds tight. "I'll stop if it bothers you, I never—I only—"
Reggie silences him with a serious look.
"Do you mean it? Do you really—"
He stops. Swallows.
Luke squeezes his hand. "What, Reg?"
He takes a shuddering breath, and his eyes shimmer with unshed tears. His voice comes out small, but he finally says it.
"Want me?"
Luke cups Reggie's cheek, cursing himself. If only he could get that damn song done—if he could get the words out properly—
It's now or never, he supposes.
"Reggie, I love you. I want you because I'm in love with you, alright? I don't want anyone else the way I want you. That's why I tease you so much and I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable, I would never—I know you don't always want sex, okay, if you never wanted that I wouldn't care—"
Reggie chuckles wetly. His fingers are restless in Luke's, and they fiddle with his rings, twisting them round and around.
"No, you didn't make me—uncomfortable. I tease you back a bit, don't I? But I did worry—whether I'd be enough for you."
"You're more than enough," Luke insists, wiping a trickle of tears away. "Baby, you really are easy to love. I figured that if I acted like it was just chemistry, you wouldn't realize that I'm like, madly in love with you and decide to quit the band."
That makes Reggie snort. "God, we're so stupid. I've been in love with you since like, second grade, Luke. I thought everyone knew and pretended not to because—"
"If you beat yourself up, I'm not helping you put that thing together. I can forget about holding you, and you can forget about holding my hand." Luke pauses. "We might be a little stupid, though. For each other."
Reggie hums in acknowledgment, chewing his lip. His face is still pink, and he has no right to look so pretty when he literally just stopped crying.
Then he breaks into a smile, and Luke's heart is bound to stop.
"What about a kiss?"
Needless to say, they don't make much progress on the Death Star that evening.
"you need me to hold your hand so you can read the instructions?" "it helps me concentrate!" is Luke/Reggie and it works either way so...
Reggie comes tearing into the studio like a hurricane, flushed and gasping for air.
"Luke! Luke, I got it!"
"Got what, Reg?" Luke teases, grinning around the pick in his mouth. He wiggles his eyebrows. "Laid?"
He certainly looks the part, with his windblown hair and his big bright eyes and his red, red cheeks. His breath is still coming in short bursts through parted lips, and his flannel is falling off of his shoulders.
He's excited about something.
"Screw you—" Reggie flushes further as Luke wiggles his eyebrows some more. "Not like that. No, this is better!"
Luke hums, setting his guitar aside. He plucks the pick out of his mouth.
"So, on your scale from sex to pizza—"
Reggie's laughter bubbles out of him. He ducks his head, but he's definitely smiling.
"Shut up, okay, I stand by what I said. Sex can be good but I don't, like, seek it out, you know? But I want pizza all the time! The obvious conclusion: pizza is better."
For all of Luke's teasing, he does get it. Replace pizza with music and then the scale becomes Luke's.
Reggie, though—he's special.
He breaks Luke's scale, and Luke can't resist an especially flirty comment or a nudge here and there. He's a little addicted to the chemistry that sometimes crackles between them, and a lot addicted to Reggie’s easy grin, the familiar sight of his crooked teeth. It sparks a lot of feelings that he's been trying to put to paper.
Reggie's smiling at him openly, now, expectantly, and Luke clears his throat.
"Alright, alright, so—this? What'd you get?"
Reggie slings his backpack around to pull out a large box, bounding over to shove it in Luke's face. There's no mistaking it—
"It's the Lego Death Star! I can't believe they still had it at the thrift store—Mrs. Cardenas said she'd hold onto it for me but—I really can't believe my luck I mean—it's never even been opened!"
"Mrs. Cardenas loves you," Luke says fondly, "of course she kept it for you, dude, you practically work there whenever you have a spare minute to help her out."
Reggie shrugs. His flannel falls even further off of his arms, and he slips out of it, leaving it on the coffee table with the box. He twists his fingers together.
"I don't know about that, Lu."
Luke shakes his head. He wraps his arm around Reggie's waist and tugs him down onto the couch.
"Come on, Reg. You're easy to love."
Reggie smiles again, but it's brittle this time. He clearly doesn't believe him.
Luke shouldn't push, as much as he desperately wants to make him see, to show him that he's wrong, that he makes the world so much brighter. He'll just have to channel that motivation into his song.
In the meantime, Reggie deflects.
"You know what's probably not easy? Putting this thing together! You don't have to help me, but—would you? It'll be fun, I swear! The challenge makes it fun, everyone says so. Or, well. The box does."
Luke chuckles. "Of course I'll help you, bro. What do we need to do?"
Reggie bites his lip, considering.
"We should probably clear off the table. Read the instructions." He looks at Luke with a little smirk. "We could do that if you'd, you know, give me my body back."
Luke squeezes him tighter in retaliation, burying his face in the crook of his neck.
"Well, maybe now I don't wanna."
"Luke," Reggie whines. It shouldn't be sexy in this context at all, and yet. "Please?"
Luke releases him wordlessly. He doesn't trust his voice not to give something away.
They get the table cleared and the pieces spread out in no time, but Reggie falters a little when he picks up the instructions.
"Um—this is going to sound stupid, but—could you hold my hand?"
"It's not stupid, dude." Luke grins. "It's just unfair. I'm not allowed to hold you, but you need me to hold your hand so you can read the instructions?"
Reggie splutters. "I—that's—it helps me concentrate! The other thing—doesn't."
Luke hums, folding Reggie's hand in his. He rubs his thumb over Reggie's knuckles.
"Hey, it's okay. I said that it's not stupid, and I meant it, bro. I'm just teasing you."
Reggie worries his lip between his teeth.
"You tease me a lot."
"Does it bother you?" Luke starts to pull his hand away, but Reggie holds tight. "I'll stop if it bothers you, I never—I only—"
Reggie silences him with a serious look.
"Do you mean it? Do you really—"
He stops. Swallows.
Luke squeezes his hand. "What, Reg?"
He takes a shuddering breath, and his eyes shimmer with unshed tears. His voice comes out small, but he finally says it.
"Want me?"
Luke cups Reggie's cheek, cursing himself. If only he could get that damn song done—if he could get the words out properly—
It's now or never, he supposes.
"Reggie, I love you. I want you because I'm in love with you, alright? I don't want anyone else the way I want you. That's why I tease you so much and I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable, I would never—I know you don't always want sex, okay, if you never wanted that I wouldn't care—"
Reggie chuckles wetly. His fingers are restless in Luke's, and they fiddle with his rings, twisting them round and around.
"No, you didn't make me—uncomfortable. I tease you back a bit, don't I? But I did worry—whether I'd be enough for you."
"You're more than enough," Luke insists, wiping a trickle of tears away. "Baby, you really are easy to love. I figured that if I acted like it was just chemistry, you wouldn't realize that I'm like, madly in love with you and decide to quit the band."
That makes Reggie snort. "God, we're so stupid. I've been in love with you since like, second grade, Luke. I thought everyone knew and pretended not to because—"
"If you beat yourself up, I'm not helping you put that thing together. I can forget about holding you, and you can forget about holding my hand." Luke pauses. "We might be a little stupid, though. For each other."
Reggie hums in acknowledgment, chewing his lip. His face is still pink, and he has no right to look so pretty when he literally just stopped crying.
Then he breaks into a smile, and Luke's heart is bound to stop.
"What about a kiss?"
Needless to say, they don't make much progress on the Death Star that evening.
Not people saying “Fandom has always been like this” in that vent post I made. No. It hasn’t always been like this. Fandom has NEVER been like this until recently and if you were in fandom pre-tumblr purge, pre-twitter, pre-netflix boom, pre-tiktok….then you would fucking know it was nothing like this.
We still had the drive to create. We still sold prints and charms and made zines…but it was never like this.
The introduction of streaming, binge shows that drop all at once, tiktok and vine RIP i still love u vine but you were the beginning of a particularly ugly era) creating this bite sized, quick paced ‘content’ era of creation and it bled out into fucking everything else.
Fandoms didn’t die down when the show ended or the season was over. You didn’t mass unfollow artist, writers or moots just because they changed fandoms. There wasn’t this need to please the algorithm in order for your posts to get seen by people and enjoyed.
Fandoms used to last YEARS. Star Trek is literally the oldest running fandom out there and you got people in there that could care less about the new stuff and still have been happily prancing through their fucking fifty year old fandom today. Hell, even SPN after all it’s fuckups and shitshows has a dedicated fanbase STILL creating tons of art and fic.
There is no patience anymore. No calm feeling of taking in fandom and friends at a pace that which doesn’t make you stressed and is still fun.
Do I blame fandom for this? Of course not, but people are complacent with it and start changing their vocab to accommodate and end up making the situation so deep it cant be fixed.
We call Art & Fic Content now, completely stripping the value of what it is to a level of consumerism instead of personal entertainment & community bonding.
[Image Description: White rice on a plate with the text caption above it reading “You can only add two things to this plate of simple rice. Name them” End ID]
Amsterdam is turning rainbow for a visit of the Russian president Putin. The council of the city of Amsterdam has decided to hang out the gay pride flag on all council owned buildings and offices, in protest to Russia’s new anti-gay law.
hey remember how awhile back i mentioned that tiktok has a whole trend where people mix cleaning supplies well i redownloaded tiktok so im finally able to show you what i mean
Jesus fucking christ. One time I accidentally mixed an ammonia scrub and a bleach spray and gave myself a migraine in 15 minutes how the fuck are they even still standing.
See below for a chart on what household cleaners to NEVER EVER MIX EVER OR YOU CAN (AND WILL PROBABLY) DIE OR OTHERWISE BECOME EXTREMELY FUCKED UP AND NOT IN A FUN WAY BUT IN THE HOSPITAL AND/OR GRAVEYARD WAY:
The above is not a complete list, but these are extremely common in most households and therefore are the most likely chemical fuck-ups to occur.
DO NOT MIX HOUSEHOLD CHEMICALS.
DO NOT MIX CLEANING AGENTS.
DO NOT MIX CERTAIN ASTRINGENTS. (HYDROGEN PEROXIDE IS OFTEN IN FIRST AID KITS OR WOUND SPRAYS AND CAN CAUSE A REACTION IN SMALL AMOUNTS IF MIXED WITH THINGS IT SHOULD NOT BE MIXED WITH EVEN ACCIDENTALLY ON A SURFACE ETC.)
DO NOT MIX ANY CHEMICALS THAT YOU ARE NOT 100% SURE ARE SAFE TO MIX. (SPOILER: MOST THINGS ARE NOT REALLY SAFE TO MIX AND SOMETIMES COMBINING SAFE ONES ACTUALLY MAKES THEM LESS EFFECTIVE ANYWAY, SO JUST DON’T COMBINE THIS KIND OF SHIT!)
YOU ARE PROBABLY NOT A CHEMIST. PLEASE DO NOT TURN YOUR KITCHEN/BATHROOM/HOME INTO A LAB ACCIDENT.
IF YOU ARE A CHEMIST, YOU SHOULD STILL NOT FUCK AROUND. MANY OF YOU DO NOT RELIABLY USE YOUR SAFETY GOGGLES OR THE CORRECT TYPE OF SAFETY GOGGLES. (IF YOU’RE THE TYPE OF CHEMIST WHO DOESN’T ENSURE ADEQUATE VENTILATION IN YOUR WORK AREA, I WILL NOT TRUST YOU WITH BLEACH. COMPLACENCY KILLS.)
CONCLUSION: STOP MIXING CHEMICALS!
YOU ARE NOT PROFESSOR X, AND YOU WILL NOT END UP CREATING THE POWERPUFF GIRLS.
YOU WILL ONLY CREATE A NEW INVOICE FOR YOUR LOCAL FUNERAL HOME.
I AM YELLING AT YOU BECAUSE I LOVE YOU AND WANT YOU TO BE SAFE.
TO ANY DUMBASS TEENAGERS OUT THERE, I WANT YOU TO SURVIVE LONG ENOUGH TO BECOME DUMBASS ADULTS.
I feel like the “may cause death” part on that chart needs to be majorly bigger. The descriptions of the first two sound like they’d be unpleasant, but “unpleasant” doesn’t cut it. Needs to have a way bigger “THIS IS HOW THEY KILLED PEOPLE IN WARS BEFORE IT WAS OUTLAWED” warning.
I did it!!! I wrote something under 2K words!!!! thanks for the prompt love x
It starts as little more than a sore throat, which Robin never meant for him to find out about in the first place. She’s been feeling a little under the weather, not unusual for an asthmatic during allergy season, and she doesn’t really need Steve to go into his conservative-suburban-mom mode on her. It just wouldn’t look good with the ‘Just Say No to Nancy Reagan’ bumper sticker she’s trying to get him to put on the BMW.
(Steve insists that bumper stickers are something for suburban moms, so maybe they’re just coming full circle on something, here.)
Her plan of deception works fine for a few days, but when they're on the phone on Thursday night, Robin's parents long gone to bed, Steve surprises her by noticing after only a few minutes the way she keeps having to clear her throat as her voice keeps failing her. Damn Steve and his sneak-attack moments of perceptiveness.
She can practically hear his concerned frown, the one that has the kids calling him mom behind his back with way more adoration than any of them can hope to hide. One day, she will prove it to him, and then he will finally have to admit that he is, in fact, a suburban mom and yield to her bumper sticker. For now, she has bigger issues.
“You alright?” Steve asks her, voice low. Robin pictures him on his bed, head propped up on his pillow where he’s staring up at the ceiling. He does that a lot.
“Sure,” she says, and as if to spite her, a cough slips out. She thinks in the depth of her petty mind that it must be the ghost of Nancy Reagan herself, punishing her for the blunt she used to corrupt oh-so-innocent Nancy Wheeler, and for trying to turn Steve against her after his parents did such a good job of voting for her bastard husband.
“Shit, are you sick?”
Maybe she should stop internally monologuing about politics and focus on Steve for a few seconds.
“Just a bit of a sore throat,” she tells him, and it’s not a lie. She really does expect this to be the end of it, for the cough to disappear in a few days and for her throat to stop hurting at every sip of water.
She doesn’t make it to work on Saturday.
Steve shows up in the afternoon, markedly half an hour before the end of what would have been their one shared shift of the week, with a bag that’s stuffed beyond advisability and a determined set to his mouth. Dear God. The beast has been unleashed.
“What are you doing here, dingus?” Robin sniffs. Her attempt at an unaffected demeanor fails somewhere between the fact that she barely has a voice and the thick blanket wrapped around her shoulders as she stands, hunched, before him.
“You’re sick,” Steve states.
“No shit.”
“And you told me your parents would be gone for the weekend. Which, I assume you probably played down this whole thing so they wouldn’t get any ideas of staying home, but if you’re feeling bad enough to call in sick after you just complained last week that you need to save as much money as possible for your nerdy band thing –”
“Steve,” she cuts him off. Actually, she tries to cut him off like that, but her lungs clearly decide that she’s spoken enough for now and send her into another coughing fit, instead, on that sends her bending over and that feels so deeply rooted inside her chest that she’s scared she might throw up something vital.
Steve ignores her pathetic excuse for protest (though it’s quite possible that he didn’t even recognize the garbled syllables that she managed to get out as his name) and ushers her inside, a hand between her shoulder blades as he sits her down on the small, well-worn loveseat in the living room.
He keeps rubbing her back over the blanket until she calms down enough to straighten her back and force some air into her lungs.
“What the hell, Robin,” he mutters as she slumps back into the cushions, her eyes closed to the shine of the ceiling lamp. She has a headache. It’s pretty nasty. As if he can hear her thoughts – or maybe he can just see the small crease between her brows where the tension seems to sit – Steve gently holds a hand to her forehead. It’s pleasantly cold, which is weird, because Steve never has cold hands.
Before she can comment, the hand is regrettably gone again, and Robin hears Steve rustling through his bag, setting an assortment of things down on the coffee table before making a sound that sounds somewhat like triumph.
“I brought Motrin, since you can’t have Advil,” he says by way of explanation. She’s grateful because it means she gets another second of not opening her eyes. She’s also deliberately ignoring how warm and mushy and fluttery she feels because he somehow remembered that she can’t have Advil. “You have a bit of a temperature, and it’ll help with the pain, too. Which you know, obviously. You know what Motrin is. Some ginger ale to wash it down with because for some reason everyone always tells you that you should drink ginger ale when you’re sick.”
“Pretty sure that’s a myth,” Robin mumbles, but she grabs blindly for the bottle, anyway. Steve gives it to her only when she has her eyes open and busies himself freeing a tablet from the new Motrin pack as she takes a sip from the bottle. “Thanks, mom.”
“You sound like shit,” Steve tells her. “I mean, you also look like shit, but –”
He is appropriately interrupted by another coughing fit.
“Yeah. My point exactly,” he sighs, and his no-nonsense tone from before has morphed into something warmer. He gently rubs her upper arm as she gets it out, then hands her a tissue for the mucus. Gross. “You see someone about this yet?”
“Don’t be silly.” She waves him off, but she still leans into his touch. God, but she’s tired. Hurts all over. “It’s probably just a … mild chest infection, or something.”
“Mild.”
“Well, yeah, it would be without the asthma,” she deadpans into another sip of ginger ale.
“Asthma?!” Steve shrieks, and it hurts, shit, those painkillers really need to hurry up because she’s starting to feel like her head might explode if she has to be awake like this for much longer.
“Yeah, dingus, I got asthma.” It occurs to her, then, that she’s never mentioned it to him. To be fair, she rarely gets proper attacks these days, but it’s also weird considering everything else that he does know about her. She guesses it’s just easy to forget that they haven’t really known each other for that long. “Now will you leave me alone so I can sleep until the end of time?”
Steve laughs at that, just a little huff that tells her he thinks she’s being ridiculous. He’s one to talk, she thinks to herself, but before she can make a snappy remark about it, she is being hoisted off the couch by an arm around her back.
“Ngk,” she says, unhappy about the sudden movement.
“You’re not gonna sleep sitting up on the couch, Buckley,” Steve tells her. The bastard doesn’t sound like he finds it at all exhausting to drag around a fully grown woman, isn’t even a little out of breath by the time they get to their room. Stupid rich boys and their stupid, functioning lungs. “Here. That’s your bed. You can sleep in it, and when you wake up, I’ll heat up some soup, and we can do that thing where you hold your head over a bowl of steaming water if you promise not to be a clumsy dork and burn yourself.”
“You’re a clumsy dork,” Robin shoots back, but it doesn’t really land. Not when she’s already star-fished across her bed, mumbling into her pillow.
“Turn over, you’ll suffocate yourself.”
“No.”
“Huh?”
“I’m saying no,” Robin mutters even as she complies and turns onto her side. It is rather hard to breathe with your face smashed into a pillow, and she knows how awful it feels to cough while lying on her back. “Saying ‘no’ to Nancy Reagan, as God intended.”
Steve laughs at that, and she thinks he’s started piling blankets on top of her, but she also thinks she’s falling asleep already, so it might be a dream. What she definitely doesn’t dream is Steve sitting next to her against the headboard, on top of all those maybe- blankets, the mattress dipping under his weight, and muttering with a hand in her hair, “If you get better soon, maybe I'll think about your stupid sticker.”
just like enamored by this interaction i had yesterday and again today with this old gay man…not to be like ‘oh what a feeling to see someone who has survived’ but literally that & today we actually ended up chatting and he asked me “are you family?” which i didn’t catch at all until he gave me an extremely knowing look (chin tilt, raised eyebrow. and he really just had such a shine about him, too) and i just got flooded with this big stupid feeling thinking about how much he has seen and known…about many things but esp lgbt community as it exists offline and historically & how if i were to ask, and were somehow able to know, there are 1000 different lifetimes in his, i’m sure. his name is leonardo
It’s an absolutely beautiful word for us. And also the mafia, so you know. People who aren’t family are left guessing until we give them some rainbow cement shoes
I was talking to my (also queer & trans) therapist about this Monday and. the concept of it is just. so - uniquely powerful and the idea that our “families” may have failed us but the family that we choose and our community are the ones who we can count on.
