Something distinct, persistent, lingering like the ghost of its previous owner.
The notes of the scent are complex. There's the sharp tobacco-tang of cigarettes, but everything smells of cigarettes, especially if you buy it second-hand from an army supply store. Underneath it, leather, soft and aged and well-worn, much loved. Then spices, only the warmest, deepest tones of a gentleman's perfume surviving deep in the folds of the lining.
And something else, the faint memory of sweat, the musk of another man's skin.
The first time Steve puts on the brown bomber jacket, grabbed hastily from the rack for being roughly his size, he's hit with that smell, and something that almost feels like recognition.
But the world is ending, again, Hawkins in danger of being split apart, and Steve's mind does not hold on to it as he wanders into the Upside Down with his friends.
After, there's the smell of gasoline and gun powder, the smell of battle, overpowering everything.
But the jacket has grown on Steve, he keeps it, takes it home. Buys some leather cleaner, airs it out in his backyard by the pool for two weeks.
It smells fresh afterwards, a little bit like the pine trees growing behind Steve's house but in the deepest folds of the lining, the other smell remains. The other wearer. That sense of recognition scratching somewhere at the back of Steve's brain.
Steve wears the jacket again, for the final battle. It's sturdy, thick, feels safe. He almost ruins it when he gets covered in goo. But Steve holds on to it. Later, he goes to five different dry cleaners until someone agrees to try and save it.
When he gets the jacket back, its nothing but pristine. The outside professionally conditioned and sealed, the inside steamed and the lining mended. It looks like the same jacket. But it feels different.
It takes Steve a while to figure out what it is that's missing. But when he does, he presses the jacket to his face and tries to find the notes of spices and musk, looks for the memory that has been scratching at the back of his brain. He mourns, when he can only find the scent of detergent and leather conditioner, like he's lost an old friend.
Life only moves in one direction, which is forward. The kids graduate and leave for college, Steve buys a pick-up truck from his coach salary, a 1984 blue Chevy Silverado, pays it off in a bunch of installments all on his own. Keeps the jacket in the backseat. It's sturdy, thick, feels safe, smells like him now, and nobody else.
He drives his pick up truck to Philadelphia. Meets Robin and Jonathan at that weird uncle's house. Nancy can't make it. She's too busy reporting on growing tensions in Iraq. Steve doesn't want to hear about wars anymore. No matter how far away they might seem.
On the way back to Hawkins, he passes a figure walking along the side of the highway, going in the same direction. Hair long, curls some kind of dirty-gold but the beard covering his face dark, almost black. A vagrant or a veteran, a hitchiker perhaps. Something like recognition scratches on the back of Steve's brain.
He pulls over, driven by that something that now almost feels like compulsion, he stops, waits for the man to catch up, head twisted to get a look, but the bed of his pickup constructs his view. The scratch is so bad suddenly, Steve can't wait any longer, he has to meet the guy head on. So Steve puts on his brown bomber jacket, because it's thick and sturdy, because it feels safe, before he opens the door and steps out on the shoulder of the highway to meet him.
It's windy here, on the plains of Indiana, among the fields. It's open and empty.
Empty except for Steve, looking at Billy Hargrove, whose dirty-gold curls have grown too long, blowing in the wind, and whose blue eyes go wide before his bearded face scrunches up in a laugh.
"Harrington." is the first thing he says, "Why the hell are you wearing my jacket?"
Whenever they were intimate, there was always this thought lingering above Mikoto's head that somehow he couldn't let himself go and lose completely in the whirlwind of emotions, for fear that he would hurt Totsuka. He was, after all, the Red King, with immeasurable strength and Totsuka.. well, he has always been so fragile. What if, lost in the moment, a split-second of carelessness would have ended up damaging that frail body, the body of his beloved who Mikoto loved above anyone and anything. So, despite Totsuka's frequent pleas and beggings to perhaps be more rough, even more passionate than usual, Mikoto could never lose his cool and control. It still ended up being a pleasant experience for both, just a little less thrilling at times. But Tatara always understood, and never blamed him for it.
Technically, now they're both incorporeal as two souls deprived of their physical bodies can be. And maybe, Mikoto is not the Red King anymore, and it's agreeable that his strength is not what it used to be once. So, when he still tries to be too careful, not to grip too hard on the marble skin, or not to thrust with too much force and intensity, this time Tatara needs to complain.
"I could break you," is Mikoto's frowning rebuke.
Totsuka sighs. His fond doe eyes exude a sweetness that drips inside Mikoto like honey from a tree. Totsuka gently places his hand on Mikoto's cheek and he smiles lovingly.
"No. No, you won't."
It's simple. It takes immediate effect. It melts the knots tangled inside, the last defense he put up crumbles and it's gone. For the first time, the former King severs all ties that have bound him in life, for in death there's a newfound freedom. And maybe, for the first time, he lets himself loose without fear. Maybe, in this afterlife, together they can mold each other anew.
“Don't know nothing but I do know that it's a mystery, It's only mystery and I like it” ~ Christophe Maé (It's Only Mystery)
“My brother”
Skylor’s declaration repeated itself in a constant loop in Lloyd’s brain as he prepared himself for bed, alongside the small talk that had ensued right after the Elemental Master of Amber had given a soap-opera revelation.
They all had questions. That was obvious. And they all looked ready to assault the siblings with an interrogation, the Green Ninja himself included. But having looked back at Skylor and Waiter-Chef-Brother-Chen, still on the floor and holding in each other in a protective embrace, he realized that he couldn’t do that to them. It had been a weird night, to an extent (at least for him, anyway), and after fighting three thugs and having avoided a night at a hospital (or somewhere worse), the siblings didn’t deserve a bunch of questions thrown at them.
So before Jay or Kai could open their mouths, Lloyd informed Skylor that he and the Red Ninja would visit again soon, thanked them from the food, wished Chen a fast recovery (in a quick way too, which earned him a look from Nya), and proceeded to usher this brothers and sister out of the restaurant (but not before Cole made a beeline to take the cake away). Once outside and en-route to the Destiny’s Bounty, a debate had erupted between the group of friends, to which Lloyd barely paid attention to as he tried hard to think back to the Tournament of Elements, frantically searching deep inside his memories if Master Chen had mentioned something regarding a son. Or is his own father had mentioned anything of his former power-hungry master mentioning anything regarding a son.
“Maybe he’s an illegitimate child? Adopted, even?” Lloyd heard Zane mention as they neared the ship.
“It could be, I mean he didn’t physically look anything like Master ‘Crazy for the Anacondrai’ like Skylor does” Cole chimed, “On the other hand, even if he isn’t adopted, then psychologically-”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence with an implication that because his father was evil then his children must be” Nya dared as she and Jay quickly looked at Lloyd, who simply kept on walking.
“I wasn’t going to!” Cole replied, putting his hands up in a defense position, “I was going to say that it was a possibility! Not that it was a reality! I didn’t mean to imply that”
“Okay, we get it” Jay said, “But how come we just found out about this?”
“Well, in Skylor’s defense, we never asked” Kai pointed out a bit guilty. “And she’s clearly protective of him too”
Lloyd, despite his distance in the conversation, couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Like you guys with me?” he said as he turned around to look at his friends with a small smirk. Kai, Jay and Cole rolled their eyes, while Nya and Zane shook their heads in amusement.
“Silence, mister ‘I get Constantly Kidnaped Because of my Elemental Power’” Jay spoke with a commanding tone.
“Hey, that’s Master ‘I get Constantly Kidnaped Because of my Elemental Power’ to you” Lloyd had said before they had arrived at the Destiny’s Bounty.
Sparks flew in the dead of night, the embers of war roaring to life as two mountains of steel clashed together in the thunderous sound of conflict. One army shone as white as the moon, the other as bright yellow as the sun.
Arrows of white glitter rained down from the sky in silken clouds. The trails of the arrows glowed as white as porcelain, their steel tips embedding themselves in the necks and armor of every sun warrior unfortunate enough to find themselves under rain of arrows.
In counter, the night sky was streaked with blazing red tails of fire. The arrows of the sun landed upon the grass and set it alight with dancing flames. The moon soldiers scattered as the sky rained with soot and the ground beneath them roared with searing heat.
Vanguards of both sides clashed on the front lines. Their spears and shields clamped together is a phalanx as massive white shells rammed against equally as gaudy yellow shells. Spears and swords taking every opportunity to stab out in a frenzy at any and all holes they could find in their opponents defenses. Neither budged nor advanced, perfectly locked in a hollow battle.
This battle was like any other before it. Savage, bloody.....and utterly pointless. Two armies even in every sense of the word, and yet neither seeing the futility of their war. Their reason for fighting? Their call to action in a fruitless and endless struggle? To win. All other reason had been forgotten. Only bloodshed remained. And yet the battle went on. For as long as there was a sun and a moon, there would be war.
The city the armies once clamored for laid around the battleground in little more than pebbles or marble and piles of cold ashes. They had all but forgotten the name of the land. Many had forgotten a city had even stood here. To them is was the battle ground they had always fought on. To them, the dust and ruins were simply part of their life. As insignificant as the reason they fight.
In the center of this damned battle were the only two old enough to even remember why they fight. But their arrogance blinded them to it, failing prey to the same fate as the mortals around them. The two pillars of strength fought elegantly like a dance, a man clad in yellow and a woman in white.
The woman carried a spear of solid white and used it as skillfully as if she had been born with it in her hands. upon her back was an empty quiver, having let her last arrow fly very long ago. Despite the conflict, her armor showed not a scratch. The carvings of wolves appeared as fresh as they day they were made upon the beautiful white metal of her pauldrons, and her breastplate still displayed a flawless carving of the crescent moon. She moved like flowing silk, dancing in perfect time to the rhythm of her weapon’s strikes and curving around every strike made at her.
The woman’s partner in this dance was certainly no worse for wear. The black oxen painted on his sparkling yellow armor had not faded nor chipped. His sword was much the same, no scuffs or wearing made on the short length of the blade. He too, of course, bore an empty quiver that bounced with every futile swipe he made at the woman before him. Despite his obvious skill, not a sinlge blow connected.
This was how the battle had always gone, how it was always supposed to have gone. But tonight was different. In the throws of combat, no one noticed a single figure cloaked in simple grey robes walk upon the battle field. No one noticed as he approached the two warriors with a confident stride. And no one noticed as he drew his knife from his sleeve and plunged it into the side of the white-clad woman.
But, what they did notice was the blood that spilled from her side. What they did notice, was the yellow-suited man’s blade as it found purchase in the woman’s heart. And what they did notice, was the moon’s light began to wane. They noticed it all.
Yes, this was a night unlike any other before or after. This was a night to be permanently imprinted in history.
This was the night the moonlight faded from the sky.
Chapters: 1/2
Fandom: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Characters: Steve Harrington, Billy Hargrove, Tommy Hagan, The Hawkins Tigers
Additional Tags: Post S2, Field Trip, Team Bonding, Getting Lost in a National Forest, Banter, Rivalry, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Holding Hands, Huddling For Warmth, Sharing one Blanket, Rating will go up, Getting Together, Enemies to Lovers, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Summary:
When Steve and Billy get lost in the woods on the last night of a basketball team building trip, they quickly realize that they'll have to put their rivalry and animosities aside if they want to survive.
And as they finally find shelter from the darkness and the rain, they also have to learn how to share. One blanket, one mattress and the heat of their bodies.
Chapter 1 of my Lost in the Woods fic is up on ao3
I need a short break from my time travel fic, Let Me steal this Moment from You now, and work on something else this weekend.
Help me which one to pick?
Which Harringrove oneshot/short fic should I work on this weekend?
Homecoming Dance blowjob, oneshot, Rated E
Getting lost in the woods together on a field trip, 2chs, rated M-E
Snowed in over New Years, 3 chs, rated T
Billy lives after s5, ? chs, rated M
Cheap Thrills hookup, toxic smutty oneshot, rated E
Voting ended onJan 31
EDIT: The people have spoken! I shall work on my Billy lives concept tonight!!
But since the Lost in the Woods option is such a close runner up, I've decided to publish the first chapter that I've already finished on ao3 later this evening!
Keep an eye on my ao3 account CeruleanHeart when it goes up! And thanks for all the participation in the poll, I never thought i'd get that many votes! 😘❤️
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington,
Additional Tags: Time Travel Fix-It, Divergent Timelines, Dimensional Distortion, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Falling In Love, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Post S3, Slow Burn, Canon compliant recreational drug use, Marijuana, Shotgunning
Author: CeruleanHeart/ @aeon-of-neon
After having gone back in time to the summer of 1985, Steve struggles to find his footing, but while his actions are already beginning to re-shape the future he finds an unexpected companion in Billy Hargrove.
With Hargrove’s fateful date-night plans interrupted and Steve unable to go home, they end up passing the night together. And as they get to know each other in a different light, a new relationship begins to blossom that might change the course of everything as Steve vows to never let Billy die.
