Mostly Stobin, Steddie, and Lucas Sinclair content here, but I am, broadly speaking, a multishipper! (There is the occasional canon-Stancy-critical reblog here and there, tagged anti-stancy for filtering purposes.)
No DNI criteria, but minors take note that there's fairly frequent 18+ content here. And B*lly Hargr*ve fans who don't think he's canonically racist: we will not get along.
links & nav guide
[ ao3 account ] • [ spotify ]
tags:
#read.txt : original homegrown ramblings. sometimes there are even coherent headcanons here.
#read writes : general-purpose writing tag
#read microfic : where all of my microfic drabbles for my 250 follower celebration can be found!
things i currently ramble about a lot:
#jeff is steve's bi awakening au | #wayfinder tag [s4 lucas pov fix-it] | #first light tag [rockie apocalyptic first date fic] | #wigwag tag [steve's gay slut-discovery era: the fic]
fic list
highlights:
currently posting: Follow Celebration Microfics!
newest: held frozen like an angel to me • E • steddie • [read on ao3]
biggest hit: lay your cuts and bruises over my skin • unrated • Steve-centric • [ao3 only]
writer's higlight: the firmament in you • T • stobin • [read on ao3]
SERIES
semiotics 'verse
[series masterpost tk]
/ˌsemēˈädiks/
plural
1. the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation.
"Queer identities, and the everyday practices and performances associated with them, cannot be dissociated from the ways in which they are expressed by language—in all its subtleties and implicit associations as well as explicit self-reports—as situated in dynamic contexts of social norms and values, politics, power, ideology and various media" (source)
lay your cuts and bruises over my skin
3/3 | wc: 22k | Unrated | Gen / Steve-centric | ao3 only
People like to say that Steve can’t take a punch. But that’s not strictly true. The other accusation—that he’s no good at throwing a punch—is closer to the truth. But really the issue can be neatly summarized by the fact that he’s a little too good at taking a punch.
OR
A history of Steve Harrington’s bruises.
plinth
One-Shot | wc: 1k | G | Gen / Robin & Max | read on ao3
There are monsters in Hawkins, Billy Hargrove is dead, and Robin is sitting next to his kid sister while her summer job burns in front of her.
phryctoria
7/7 | T | Gen / Stobin & Steve-centric
Sometimes your gay awakening is just having someone to show you it’s possible.
After Starcourt, Steve realizes he's gay, comes out to his best friend, and starts figure out how to navigate his new reality with her.
Sometimes your gay awakening is just having someone to show you it’s possible.
After Starcourt, Steve realizes he's gay, comes out to his best friend, and starts figure out how to navigate his new reality with her.
A Cure for All That Ails You
One-Shot | wc: 6k | T | Gen / Stobin | read on ao3
Steve gives her a despairing look. “Please don’t tell me your only experience of grilled cheeses have been ones made with Kraft singles.”
“Okay, I won’t tell you!” She says brightly.
Steve looks to be on the brink of tears.
“Hey…it’s okay, Steve. I promise you can pop my good-grilled-cheese cherry!”
Steve’s expression, if anything, grows even more pained. “Please, for the love of God, do not put it like that.”
For Lex's Spicy Six Summer Fanworks Challenge
prompt: “How did you go through life so far without knowing how to make a grilled cheese sandwich?”
perfect creature rarely scene
held frozen like an angel to me
One-Shot | wc: 10.3k | E | Steddie | read on ao3
There's a figure in the doorway, silhouetted by the chandeliers he keeps faintly lit in the receiving hall.
Eddie sees the outline of wings. Of horns. A flowered crown.
No sooner has he had the thought to reach out than the figure is stalking towards him. Eddie still can't move, and the beat of his heart picks up its pace. Not yet pounding in terror, but racing like he's just started a chase. He wants to speak. Wants to cry out, wants to—
"Hello, my pet."
ONE SHOTS
the shape of things lost; the shape of things to come
T | wc: 1k | Gen / Stobin | cw: Major (Canonical) Character Death, Post-Season 4 Vol. 2, Grief & Mourning, fatalistic thinking
hitch, loop, hand & heart [ READ ON AO3 ]
E | wc: 2k | cw/tags: Bondage, Shibari, Hand Kink, Praise Kink, Anal Fingering, Soft Dom Steve, Good Boy Eddie, ‘puppy’ used as a term of endearment
the mouth that feeds you [ READ ON AO3 ]
E | wc: 4k | cw/tags: Office Sex, Desk Sex,Lingerie, thigh biting, Stone Top Robin, Sassy Pillow Princess Nancy (kinda), ‘sir’ used as an honorific, Praise Kink, Oral Sex, Dacryphilia (just a dash), Edging, Vaginal Fingering, Squirting [there’s…a lot going on here]
CHALLENGES & PROMPT FILLS
Steddie Week fics:
Day Two: Fluff [T+]
Day Three: First Kiss [T]
Day Four: Familiar / “let me be the void you fill” [T+]
Days 6: Misunderstanding & 7: “Freedom!” by Wham / “talking could, if we’d just dare (you know that i’ll forgive you)” [part 1][part 2]
Steddie Microfic Challenge fics:
July
prompt: 'pool' original wc goal: 442 bonus round goal: 273
title: center stage • rating: E / M • cws: Kink, D/s dynamics, Public Sex, Bondage, Chastity Device (briefly implied), Boot Kink, Light Degradation/Humiliation
August
prompt: cake wc goal: 311
fill 1: gilding the lily • rating: E • cws: cockwarming, facials, group sex, “puppy” used as term of endearment
fill 2: avarice for pearls • rating: E • cws/tags: D/s dynamics, free use, sloppy seconds, Daddy Kink (no age play)
Spicy Six Summer Challenge fics
A Cure for All That Ails You
One-Shot | wc: 6k | T | Gen / Stobin | read on ao3
prompt: “How did you go through life so far without knowing how to make a grilled cheese sandwich?”
TK: the firmament in you [prompt: Dancing under the stars. - stobin]
TK: first light on the horizon (at the end of the world) [prompt: First date - rockie]
prompt fills
prompt: “Just pretend to be my date.” [stobin] rating: T (for language) | wc: 771
prompt: things you said but didn’t mean [stobin] rating: T (for language) | wc: 616 | cw: hurt/comfort, arguments & misunderstandings
prompt: things you said through a closed door [steddie] rating: M (for frank discussions of sex) | wc: 679 | cw: hurt/comfort, erectile dysfunction, internalized ableism
prompt: things you didn’t say at all [stobin] rating: G | wc: 276 | cw: angst, hurt/comfort, ambiguous loss
Playlists!
fic related mixes
World's #1 Babysitter Mixtape [rel: lay your cuts and bruises]
Steve & Robin's Scoops Tracks [rel: lay your cuts and bruises]
Steve's Heartbreak Playlist [rel: Steddie Week Day 7 fic]
Stobin Car Tracks #1 [Summer '85] [rel: phryctoria]
Jeff Taste Profie ['84] [rel: 'Jeff is Steve's Bi Awakening AU']
Wayfinder playlist
first light on the horizon [a Vickie mixtape]
(at the end of the world) first light vibes playlist]
there's a big reason why Steve probably isn't living with Robin at the time of the epilogue and I've never seen anyone mention it.
Robin is going to a historically all women's college (although it is technically open to non-binary folks and men now) that (from what I know) has always had a pretty large lesbian community, including a lesbian alliance formed in the 1970s.
Smith is the perfect pick for Robin to go to, but it also has a housing policy that requires students to stay in on-campus houses.
Of course Steve isn't there!
While I'm still kind of a townie!Steve truther (what can I say, I think he likes his hometown) I also think it's reasonable to think Steve might miss his friends enough and be hoping for something new after 4 years and move in with Robin wherever she ends up after graduation.
But him not following her immediately while she's at a college that wouldn't allow her to live off campus (except with exceptions) makes perfect sense! I really don't see it as a nail in the coffin of their friendship or out of character.
Another thing about Steve and Robin is that to onlookers they appear to have this freaky telepathic bond where they can communicate without saying a single world, the same way a couple that's been happily married 30+ years can.
But then alone they both speak fluent Dumbass™ except in different dialects, so they're constantly confused and wondering what the other is on about.
some art/oneshot fic for day 2 of dom eddie week with the prompt: mean dom <3
gross
rating: E, no archive warnings
word count: 19,708
pairing: steddie
basic tags: canon divergent s3, mean dom eddie, brat steve, degradation, dirty talk, (rival workplace colleagues to lovers???)
snippet under the cut !
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“Wow,” he smirks. “You feeling lightheaded, princess? Should I catch you if you swoon? All the blood in your body seems to have travelled, uh –”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Eddie closes his mouth. He leans his hip against the counter, waiting for Steve to make a move. Steve does, his mouth in a bitter line, his hands still fisted – he steps into Eddie’s space, breathing hard, his fists curled up at each side.
Eddie has just barely an inch over him. Just enough to stare him down. To try and make him feel small. He waits for whatever vitriol Steve has planned to throw his way – braces himself for Steve to shove at him, even –
“So are we doing this, then?”
Eddie narrows his eyes.
Okay. Fine. Skipping foreplay, sure.
“Doing what, Harrington?”
Irritation flickers across Steve’s features as he steps forward again, still breathing unevenly. Still red in the face.
“You’re really going to make me say it?” he whispers. “You need me to ask?”
“No,” Eddie grins, reaching up to tug at the red ascot tied around his stupid little sailor shirt. He leans in closer, hooking a finger into the waistband of his stupid little sailor shorts. His lips brush the shell of Steve’s ear as he speaks, voice pitched soft and low.
The concept of the Hawkins gang forever being a little unsettling to outsider’s eyes.
There’s the obvious, of course, the fact that they are dangerous people who handle tense situations with off putting ease.
One parent gets a little violent mid baseball game and Steve is there, steady, voice firm, shielding the teen referee with his own body and there’s something about it that makes the man back off. Only after the fact does he seem to realize that he’d grabbed a bat, casually, as if ready to swing it if necessary.
They send little naive intern Nancy Wheeler to cover a student protest and actual war reporters think she’s one of their own within seconds of seeing her on the field. There’s something haunted in her eyes and a firmness in her stand, the way she eyes the riot police’s weapons carefully… like she’s ready to take them.
Robin seems like all rainbow and sunshine’s upon first meeting her but the first time her new friends take her to the club the can’t help but notice how her demeanor changes under the flickering lights, how her eyes dart to the exits and her body tenses as if expecting a fight. They assume there just aren’t any gay clubs in Hawkins, that maybe she’s still on edge.
It’s the teacher that notice something off with Jonathan, because he mostly keeps to himself. But there’s something in his scripts, in the images he pitches, in how he portrays horror and violence and pain that makes them worry. It’s the way he doesn’t flinch away from it, actually, that he forces you to look. It’s not even cruelty but normalization. But then he’s the nicest to other quiet or shy students, and makes a point to ensure everyone is accounted for after a night out with his few friends. They don’t know what to make of it.
The kids aren’t exempt of this either.
Mike’s is almost a given, as a writer, the horrors he builds in his world attract thousands of readers, but his mentors squirm and wonder where sharpness of his descriptions come from. People have commented on how he can describe the exact smell of fear and spilled blood.
Lucas’s is more quiet, the steadiness of a foot soldier. He’s all smiles and warmth with his new group of friends until he sees someone being pushed around from the corner of his eyes and he’s stepping in, a firm hand on a shoulder, a steady shove against a wall, a whispered warning that doesn’t require repeating. There are no empty threats there.
There’s something more eery about Will and his new friends definitely notice the way he seems to know where everyone is at all times, how you just cannot sneak up on him, how his eyes go distant sometimes like he’s searching for something he can’t quite reach anymore.
It’s Dustin who catches people off guard more often, because his outgoing and easy demeanor stands out the most amongst his nerdier colleagues, but he’s warm and sunny and makes a point to make everyone feel welcome up until the moment a line is crossed. That line is simple and it’s kindness and the moment it’s lost there’s a fire in the kid that turns him into the protector of the shy ones around him. It takes watching him throw a single punch to know it isn’t his first brawl.
Max on the other hand has always been ‘a handful’ according to every adult in her life and if they thought a year and a half in a coma would smooth down her edges they were dead wrong. If nothing else, she seems more reckless, more forward, particularly in the skating world she gains the reputation of being a little too fearless, like she forgets sometimes that she can get hurt, that she’s not immortalized in someone’s dream.
No one would dare mess with the girl from the cabin at the edge of town. She’s quiet and reserved and sweet… she still manages to make friends at the local tavern and becomes an excellent teacher particularly for kids who are struggling with language and learning, but there’s a sharpness in her eyes, like she can peek into your soul, that makes grown men weary and older women whisper about shadow dreams and dark paths.
And then, and then, things happen when you put them together in a room.
Most people wouldn’t be able to put into words what it is about them that sets their primal instincts off, like they are suddenly in the presence of predators. Hunters. Something in the way they eye the exits, how they stands shoulder to shoulder, how all their heads snap as one towards any surprising noise in the dark, how they seem to communicate with a look, how they fall in line like a platoon. A pack.
If they weren’t so young, some might think they are veterans, old war buddies.
But they are so young, from a small sheltered town in Indiana. What war could they have fought?
