Balance feels him long before the time of his birth, even before Kushina reaches to the Whirlpools. It feels him before he truly develops, possibility and light, intertwined with the very fabric of the universe's existence, red energy coiling tight into Kushina’s gut, into her very self, a responsibility she grew into with years of crafted instructions passing down inadvertently.
Kushina feels the second the foreign chakra in her veins shifts and knows .
(The third chapter of More Than Leaves in the Tree is up!)
Hospital Waiting Room (it’s not the place to get a crush)
Rating: Teen
Pairing: Will Byers/Gareth, Will Byers & Gareth
Tags: Comatose Maxine “Max” Mayfield, Eddie Munson Lives, He's also in a coma, Pre-Slash, i don't know how to write romance, just so you know, I'm in rarepair hell, No beta we die like Barb, Siblings Will Byers & Eleven | Jane Hopper, Of Course No One Dies, no one dies, Fix-It of Sorts, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence
Summary:
It takes Gareth almost two weeks to convince her mother to let him go visit the hospital, another four days to gather the courage to actually do it, in the end he can't make himself open that door.
At least he won't be alone in the waiting room, and hey, the guys keep talking about Will Byers, maybe he can say hi?
Or, I've been watching @my_ownhell Will/Gareth tiktoks and if no one is writing about this rarepair, I might just have to do it myself.
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It takes Gareth almost two weeks to convince her mother to let him go visit the hospital, and another four days to gather the courage to actually do it.
He doesn’t know what he’s expecting, he doesn’t know what he wants to say, the only thing he knows is that out of all of the members of Corroded Coffin, he’s the only one who’s even going to see Eddie, and that makes him so, so incredibly angry.
He thinks of Carver’s foot on his hand, pressing hard, hard, hard , he thinks of selling Dustin Henderson out and wants to punch himself. Henderson’s a year younger than him, he’s small, way too bubbly to stand up for himself, and he sent Jason Carver after him, the same psychopath that murdered his girlfriend and tried to frame Eddie for it. He thinks how betrayed he’d felt when he saw Lucas with them, of the broken skin above his eyebrow when they said Carver had punched him, trying to get rid of a witness after breaking Sinclair’s girlfriend bones. Had he outed Lucas as one of their club members then? Had he put him in danger?
He tells himself he’ll only work himself up more if he keeps like this, he had no idea of what was going on, still doesn’t, to be honest, but he knows that his friend is in a coma they don’t know if he’ll wake from, that he saved Henderson and that band chick during the earthquake, that he’d been hiding for days before that and Jeff and Grant, who are supposed to be his best friends are nowhere to be seen. So he steels himself, takes the stairs to a surprisingly empty hallway and marches on.
Outside the room where he knows Eddie is there’s two people; Erica Sinclair, curled up on one of the chairs, sleeping, and a guy he’s never seen before.
The guy tenses and turns when he hears him, and he looks incredibly familiar, but Gareth is not sure where from, but he seems to recognize him because he deflates and offers a tired smile.
“Hey” Gareth’s not sure what to do, he’s never been the best at social interactions, that’s why he always admired Eddie so much, even when he was in Middle School and he was just some dude four years older playing the guitar in the bar across the street from his apartment, even when the only reason he ever looked at Gareth was because his drummer had graduated and they needed someone to fill in, and a middle schooler who could hit the drums somewhat on beat was better than nothing.
Luckily the guy seems to notice he’s incredibly lost, because he offers;
“Hey, I’m just waiting for my sister, she’s in with Max, Mayfield. If you want to go see Eddie just know Dustin and Mike are in the room right now” He darts a quick look at the two closed doors, he swears he can hear Henderson from the one closest to him. The thought makes him remember the freshmen talking nonstop about someone else, the Byers kid, the one who went missing a couple years back. He looks older, but definitely the same guy, same bowl cut and everything, what was his name?
“You didn’t go in with them?”
“Ah, not really, I mean, I’ve heard a lot about him but I haven’t met him yet. The guys talk a lot about him but, you know, I’m not really comfortable going in when he’s not awake, you know?”
“I get it” Thinks of going in himself, watching Eddie laying on the bed. At least he could see him alive, but is it really? Is Eddie really Eddie without that manic energy, that constant noise? He sits on one of the chairs.
“The guys talk a lot about you too, Will the Wise, right?” He really hopes he’s right.
“Yeah, they mentioned me?” He looks surprised, Gareth can’t fathom why, the way they talked about him, he was the missing fourth of the whole person the younger kids seemed to turn into some days, knowing what each other were thinking and holding entire conversations without making a single noise, he feels the sudden urge to make Will understand this.
“Mention you? They wouldn’t stop talking about you, they made you out to be so great that for a while I thought you were as imaginary as Henderson’s girlfriend”
“I’ll let you know Suzie is a very real person.” Will smiles at Gareth’s incredulous snort and holy shit he has a nice smile “I know, it surprised us too”
After that, getting to know Will is easy, the guy is incredibly sarcastic and doesn’t hold anything bad, gareth finds himself almost laughing more than once, and the only thing that stops him is the muffled voices on the other side of the doors, Eddie’s and the Mayfield girl’s rooms.
As it tends to go with him, the conversation moves to music, Will asks about the pins on his vest, and Gareth asks him what he listens to.
He doesn’t understand how that’s a sensitive question, but it clearly is, because Will goes silent. He opens his mouth, tries to talk and changes his mind one, two, three times; in the end he settles for
“I haven’t been listening to a lot of music lately” Gareth’s not sure if he should push, but music’s never been a taboo topic before (unless it’s someone trying to preach something non metal to Eddie, then it’s kind of a bloodbath)
“But there has to be something you like more than others, come on, give me a genre”
“I guess I listen to most of what my brother does, you know? So Punk, I guess” He laughs at Gareth’s grimace “Don’t be like that, there’s more than Metal out there, it doesn’t stop being music because you can actually understand the lyrics, you know?”
“Sure, sure, but that doesn’t make them good!”
“Oh my god, you’re a snob”
“I’m not a snob! Have you thought maybe you just have bad taste? Another little sheep listening to The Smiths”
“What’s wrong with The Smiths?” Bless hi, he looks so offended , Gareth bits back a smile
i am in the depths of hell for greatwise (i have no idea WHY i think i maybe just sort of want to watch mike wheeler suffer while will lives his best sunshine life with a grumpy punk boyfriend, idk) anyways if you have more to give i’d be much obliged to receive 🫶🏼🫶🏼
I am so happy you liked my story, I totally get the wanting Mike Wheeler to suffer thing, believe me, haha. I’m not writing for ST at the moment, unfortunately I just follow the dopamine, and my old fandoms dragged me back to Naruto hell.
Since I have no idea when I’m coming back to ST (and GreatWise specifically), let me give you this tiny tiny paragraph I have in my ‘snippets’ folder in Google Drive, as a treat
For Will, music had always been something special, a lifeboat even before it had become a lifeline, the soft melodies from his mother’s old vinyls, her voice in the mornings humming with the radio, the booming noises of Jon’s speakers drowning the neverending yelling. Music had always kept him afloat, long before those cold, cold days trapped in the Upside Down, and Gareth had no idea but he still had brought music back to Will’s life.
Tags: Warring States Period (Naruto), Uzushiogakure | Hidden Eddy Village, The Fall Of Uzushiogakure | Hidden Eddy Village, This is kind of, Character Study, i guess, Fuuinjutsu, Uzumaki Clan-centric, the Uzumaki were fuuinjutsu masters, Uzushiogakure Is Alive, and kind of sentient, No beta we die like mne
Summary:
There were many clans in the Land of Whirlpool, all of them with their strength, all of them just a step to the left from farmer, from fisherman, from civilian, but none more than the Uzumaki.
The Uzumaki with their blood-red hair, their too old elders, their too fast steps. The Uzumaki with their smiles and ink smudged fingers and too knowing eyes, carrying fish barrels just a little too fast, a little too effortlessly, making conversation and opening trade routes between families.
The clans of the Whirlpool were many things, but they were not stupid. They could recognize a predator.
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Back when clans still held wars on each other, when the not then ancestral home was no more than an island in the middle of the Land of Whirlpools, when Shinobi villages were nothing but a distant childish dream, Uzushiogakure was already standing.
It hadn’t been called Uzushiogakure, not then, not when the idea of a hidden village was something unthought, but it was a village nonetheless.
But people are resilient, and while miles into land the idea of peace was nothing more than a fantasy, the clans of the Whirlpool had already thought of cooperation. They weren’t shinobi, not then, not like the Senju or the Uchiha were shinobi, battle worn and blood hungry; or how the Hatake and Inuzuka were shinobi, animal side proud and instinct-driven; not like the Nara and Yamanaka, strategizing and information hungry, always two steps ahead; they weren’t even shinobi like the Funato or that hebi clan from the north, nomads of the sea and land. No, the clans of the Whirlpool weren’t shinobi like that, but they were resourceful and able to mold chakra, and to them that was enough.
There were many clans in the Land of Whirlpool, all of them with their strength, all of them just a step to the left from farmer, from fisherman, from civilian, but none more than the Uzumaki.
The Uzumaki with their blood-red hair, their too old elders, their too fast steps. The Uzumaki with their smiles and ink smudged fingers and too knowing eyes, carrying fish barrels just a little too fast, a little too effortlessly, making conversation and opening trade routes between families.
The clans of the Whirlpool were many things, but they were not stupid. They could recognize a predator.
The Uzumaki taught children how to read while others taught how to fight.
The clans of land taught infants to hold weapons, to polish and to sharpen, they scolded when shuriken flew off path and scoffed over the idea of games. This was war, and this was survival.
The Uzumaki taught every child to paint, red hair or not, and smiled when complex matrices lit up under chubby fingers, laughed with kids on their arms, paper exploding under the contention of shining chains, and explained their art, their life. They shared, and the clans of the Whirlpool grew.
The clans around the Whirlpool looked and ignored, for in paper and ink they saw weakness, and the Uzumaki kept on doing it, for they saw no difference at all.
The clans of the Whirlpool carved seals in stone, fed chakra into the earth, under careful guidance they connected to their chakra pathways, and from them to the roots of the trees, to the soil and deep, deep into the very core of their island, they saw and sensed every creature, for chakra is energy and in the end all is one.
They learned how to meditate, how to detect sound from further away than their senses allowed, to detect life.
And the island fed on vestiges, on the small traces left when all energy is recalled, but something is always left back, and the soil and the water feasted. The Whirlpools protected their own.
The clans of the Whirlpool weren’t shinobi. But the Whirlpools were treacherous, so they learned the ways of the water and the wind and sailed. They learned how to walk over the sea foam, how to call the currents to lead the fish to their nets, how to write small, tiny symbols on their ropes to make them sturdier. They were not shinobi, not yet.
News of peace traveled to the Whirlpools, news of shinobi villages rising, one after the other, and they smiled, painted all the houses the same color and built a plaza in the middle and called it a day. Spoke of union like t was a new thing, because the clans of the Whirlpool weren’t shinobi like the other clans of land, but they knew secrecy.
They dressed in dark clothes and unnecessary armor, they strapped pouches of kunai and shuriken to their thighs and concealed scrolls in between. It’s never good to be unarmed, but an Uzumaki needs no steel.
They looked at the Uzumaki and called themselves Uzushiogakure, snickering. The clans of the Whirlpool were now Shinobi, but they weren’t hiding. Not between the whirlpools anyways.
With peace came union, and with union left Mito-Hime, red buns bouncing in her head with every step, ink-smudged fingers still at her side while her father presented her to the Shodai Hokage and the Whirlpool smiled, for he looked not like a shadow and not like a flame and thought she’s going to eat him alive. At least he looked like the type to enjoy it.
Stories of Mito traveled fast to the Whirlpool, always mindful of its people. Mito who was a princess without need of royal blood, who excelled where even countless others failed, Mito, who looked up into the red eye of the powers that balance the world and said you bow to me.
She doesn't understand, they realize, not really, what she’s chained to herself. She doesn’t understand the magnitude of her feat, and the Whirlpools rejoice for her.
She chains the others, they see, and gifts tem like objects with her husband to make peace. Balance, they wonder, and stand back to see. Everything falls back into place eventually, they just have to wait.
She returns twice, and the currents calm with her arrival. Pristine Senju-white kimono by the hand of her husband, hands clean. No Senju clan symbol in sight. No Uzumaki spiral either.
The children show her their seals, the young admire her from afar, and the elders observe. She moves with the grace of a princess, jumps with the dexterity of a panther and stands on the water flawlessly. Her balance is as good as ever but she doesn’t know how to walk through the whirlpools anymore.
Her heart belongs now with the forest, even if she hasn’t realized.
The second time she visits she does so alone. Her hair is darkened with age but her movement is just as graceful. Children call from their places in the playgrounds and young adults comment on her strength.
She talks with her father, with the elders, with the Uzukage. Talks of age and weakening seals, talks of successions and burdens. Talks of peace.
She carries a pouch of kunai on her thigh.
The Island listens and watches, senses, looks over its people, no matter how far, how faint the connection might grow to be.
The Whirlpools ward them as they grow, as they connect with it and their surroundings, as they seal more and more of themselves in it and rumble.
The children of the Whirlpool, Uzumaki even without blood-red hair, because it’s been too long since the clan was just their blood, since the clans of the Whirlpool were such instead of just their people, play and learn and grow, creating seals and jutsu and new ways of connecting with nature. All is one, and impossible is just for those who can’t understand that.
It takes all they have to let small Kushina go. Their little Whirlpool of red hair and vibrant energy, chakra bursting out of her in waves.
Her position is an honor, to go to the forest and accept the weight of balance inside her, even if she’ll never learn not to scoff at it, not to see it as a burden. She’s always been more free than others, temper like the tides, going from calm to tempestuous in an instant. She’s a child of the Whirlpool.
But Mito-Hime requested it, and no matter how long it might be, how much she might have renounced them, they won’t deny their princess this.
They watch her go, waving her little arms over her head, red reflecting in the sun like freshly spilled blood, standing over the currents with the ease of every Uzushio citizen. She promises to visit and they smile. They know they won’t have the time.
The attack takes them by surprise (they were expecting it), they fight with all they have (they know what’s coming), they tell their children to run, send them towards Hi no Kuni and pray to the tides to let them cross, small feet dancing over the foam that swallows Kiri shinobi like they’re nothing, and when they fall, they pray to the Whirlpools (reaching, instinctually, to the core of their island, that ball of chakra and seals and energy where the underground currents meet, a knot of foam and power that’s been there since the beginning, the first seal drawn in the sand, the first drop of Uzushio blood spilled on its shores, long before Uzushio existed; feeding the tendrils of blood-ink that move with the water, alive.)
Uzushio mourns after, when there’s nothing but ruins and blood and chakra. It mourns with their children, tiny lights in the distance too far away. It mourns for them and for what is to come, and It bows one day, one day it will rise again, and not Kami and not the balance will take Its children from It again.
It feeds on what’s left, residue from jutsu and lifeforce, Its currents swallow the enemy, the outsiders, and takes their bodies to the bottom of the ocean, and waits. Everything falls back into place eventually.
Tags: Uzushiogakure | Hidden Eddy Village, The Fall Of Uzushiogakure | Hidden Eddy Village, Pre-Canon, BAMF Uzumaki Kushina, Uzumaki Clan-centric, Uzumaki Kushina-Centric, Uzushiogakure Is Alive, and kind of sentient, Not Beta Read, Fuuinjutsu
Summary:
Uzumaki Kushina is born with hair red like blood and purple eyes the color of nightshade.
She will be dangerous, whisper the waves and they smile, she will leave her mark.
Uzumaki Kushina grieves and rages, and her ANBU guard looks at her from afar and tremble.
She is dangerous, and it has nothing to do with the beast inside her.
Rating: Teen
Pairing: Jonathan Byers/Steve Harrington
Tags: Underage Drinking, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Character Study
Summary:
In his darkest moments, Jonathan wishes he could get drunk.
It makes him feel horrible, thinking of his mom's voce becoming meek in the middle of an argument, of his brother shaking while he hides in his room, of his father's heavy steps outside the door, but sometimes he wishes he could have the excuse.
He wants to blame the alcohol on the thinks he says, the step he takes under the moonlight, why he keeps coming back to Steve Harrington
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As a general rule, Jonathan doesn't drink.
He understands why other people like it, but to him, drinking comes with the memories of his dad, beer in his breath and hate in his eyes, the way Lonnie slurred his words when he insulted him, or how he got more and more uncoordinated when fighting with his mom; it comes with an automatic flinching to the sound of a can opening, the noise of bottles clinking together, the ever-growing fear of turning into his father.
But it's the one year anniversary of the day he came home to find Will hiding in his closet, looking way too small between his two pairs of jeans and a winter coat, hiding and trembling, flinching from Jonathan and making them both tear up. A year to the day of the moment he saw his little brother with a black eye and a hand shaped bruise on his arm and saw red , because Lonnie wasn't supposed to ever touch Will, he wasn't supposed to lay a finger on anyone besides him.
A year since he saw his mom steel herself, find a strength he'd never seen before, and chase him out of the house, threatening him with the old ax. He can't say he feels bad about it.
So for once in his life, he's not going to let Lonnie mark what he does or does not do. And he might hate it, he might never do it again, but it's going to be because of himself. He refuses to let himself live with the shadow of that man looming over his every decision.
So he goes to a party, picks up a cup, and gets drunk.
When he wakes up with his head pounding and the memory of holding Steve Harrington's hips down, grinding his body against the other and kissing his lips red, he's not sure he can bring himself to regret it.
He swears off alcohol though.
Which means he has nothing to blame when less that two weeks later he finds himself in the same place, laying on top of an incredibly expensive bed, panting for air, with his hands on the hips of the most infuriating person he's ever met, the prettiest boy he's ever seen.
It goes on for months, going to a party he's never had interest on before, finding Steve across the room, locking eyes and next thing he knows, they're kissing on his room (that's a lie, he knows exactly what happens in between, the short conversations during their car rides, the way Steve giggled over something he said once, the lingering touches and glances that make this something over just hooking up, something more . He knows Steve doesn't have the drunk excuse either, he knows they both try to convince themselves they do), until one day he cuts to the chase, he skips the middleman, and next time, late enough that the sun has already set, the moment Steve gets out of his house to go to a party they both know he won't attend for more than ten minutes, Jonathan's already waiting at the door.
He tells himself that Steve's smile when he sees him doesn't make him feel anything. He's never been good at lying to himself.
