#dot does febuwhump

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Robin stops mere inches in front of Nancy, bends at the waist to be at eye level as she raises a hand and lets the gentle pressure of her fingertips trace across the apple of Nancy’s cheek.  “There’s magic woven into you, Nancy Wheeler.”  » Ronance // Rated T // Immortal!NancyxDragon!Robin // 2.8k » Febuwhump #14: left for dead, “no…not like this” & not allowed to die » Febuwhump Masterlist

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“So, are you a witch?” asks the girl with hair like fire and a tongue to match. She goes by the name of a boy without an ounce of shame. She bruises her knees and brags intelligence. She is living a life Nancy might have in a different time. 

A life she is somehow, impossibly, still living. 

“What makes you think I’m a witch?” 

“You live in the woods and you saved Will,” she points out like it’s obvious. 

“I found Will. Your friends saved him.”

“Same, difference,” Max shrugs. “But why else would you live out here? So far from everyone else? If you’re regular?”

“I don’t have to be a witch to not be regular,” Nancy can’t help the breath of amusement that cuts through her voice. Can’t help feeling it either. 

Can’t help that enough time has passed to make it hurt less, if not entirely absent of the hurt even still. 

“Are you even human then?” Max asks, a glimmer in her eyes, a spark in the curiosity that envelops her like an aura. There’s no malice to her search for knowledge. 

There’s so much wonder, like a girl behind the counter in her family’s shop so many years ago, books hidden in her skirts, cracked open behind the register. 

“Endlessly so,” Nancy smiles, and she feels an old, forgotten glimmer return to her own aura as well. 

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“Go— go help them. Finish this, Mike, it's okay—” “Shut the fuck up,” he snaps and finds that he means it. He doesn't know how his hands remain steady and he doesn't know whether or not they're vulnerable to any incoming threats but he does know that she can't continue on that train of thought because, “it's not okay. We have to get you inside. Now.”  » Nancy & Mike // Rated T // Sibling Bonding Via Near-Death Experiences // 2.3k » Febuwhump #13: "I love you" & "Help them" » Febuwhump Masterlist

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He’s half present and distracted when the thing gets to its feet, puts him in its crosshairs, and leaps, which is why it’s not his spear which takes it down before it can get its claws in. 

Which is why it’s not even his own flesh where those talons go to tear. 

She doesn’t call out to him, doesn’t say duck, but he recognizes the cry of pain from her lips accompanied by a click of an empty clip and that deafening snarl and even as tired as he is, he acts on autopilot before he even registers entirely what’s happened. 

Mike whirls around where he stands, sets his aim and sends his spear flying down the open maw of a demodog, watches long enough to be sure it’s been properly struck down, sharp tip pointing out the back of its skull, before striding forward and yanking the thing free to let it bleed out in the dirt and only then, only then does that cry of pain sink in. 

Only then does the sound of her labored breath ring true in this reality. 

Only then does his gaze land on his big sister bleeding and prone on the ground at his feet. 

And Mike has assimilated pretty well to war, at least he thinks so. He’s gotten good at fighting back, used all the excess bitterness in his veins to keep going on spite alone when the nights get too long and daylight rots away. 

He knows how to be there for his friends, knows how to look at a situation and find a way out, knows that he can take care of people even when things don’t go their way but— but he freezes. 

Right here and now? So close to getting back behind their barricades? Mike Wheeler freezes. There’s no time to freeze, no such thing as a moment to process, but he’s pretty sure the clock stops on his life right then and there because he looks at her and all of a sudden Nancy is— Nancy is human. 

She’s no longer armor and bullets and sharp tongue; she’s not the soldier who keeps them all on track, not the leader who, despite his stubbornness, even Mike knows he ought to listen to. She’s not any of it suddenly, none of that strength and bite, because he looks down and sees the blood pooling out of her neck beneath the weak press of her own hand and she is, simply enough, his sister. 

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“And when will you leave?” he asks again. “When are you leaving? After Florida?”  Steve rolls them sideways, rolls them so Eddie is flat on his back, so his emotion-wrought muscles can slump with the weight of gravity, so all he has to do is gaze up at Steve hovering just above him and promising, “never leaving. Not without you. Never again.”  » Steddie // Rated M // Escaped Prisoner!Eddie // 2.3k » Febuwhump #12: Presumed Dead & "I'm doing this because I care about you" » Febuwhump Masterlist

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He hears the haste in the footsteps outside his room before anything else, the way they land heavier than everyone else who has come and gone throughout the day. 

He hears the testing of the knob next, the turning of it when it doesn’t meet resistance, and then the slide of the door against too-tall carpet. 

He opens his eyes to meet the opening of the door and he does it just in time to watch the tension on Steve Harrington’s face melt. 

Steve Harrington, full beard and wire-rimmed glasses, a bit of extra meat on his bones since the last time Eddie saw him in person, since I’ll figure something out and the tightening of chains around Eddie’s soul. 

He melts. His jaw hinges open on an unsteady breath and snaps shut again in just a passing of a moment, and then he shuts the door behind him and puts the chain on the hook without ever letting his gaze fully leave where Eddie hasn’t moved from the middle of his mattress. 

Shirtless and boxers and wondering what differences Steve sees in him. 

Maybe the short crop of his hair or maybe the handful of new scars. Maybe the extra lines around his eyes, aging quicker in prison than he ever did in the open air of the apocalypse. 

Maybe the ease in the slope of his shoulders that Eddie can feel in the same way he can feel himself taking the moment as it comes and accepting it more than he ever, ever has. 

Steve just stands there and stares and looks and melts and Eddie can’t help but to grin at him, pull himself to the edge of the bed with his knees spread wide and his weight leaning back into his hands when he murmurs a quiet, “c’mere then,” that quakes through the whole state of Arizona. 

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The sound which comes out of Nancy is more like choking than sobbing, like she herself is cracking down the middle as she lays her eyes on Barb for the first time since 1983.  Because it is her.  It's her.  » Nancy & Barb // Rated M // S4 Missing Scene // 2.3k » Febuwhump #11: Unresponsive & "You weren't meant to be there" » Febuwhump Masterlist

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She has to keep moving. Forward and towards. She has to just find out for herself if she’s been right this whole time, if this is where it happened, if Barb didn’t get to so much as try to leave the Harringtons’ backyard because…

Because if Barb stayed. If Barb stayed it was for her. It was to look out for Nancy. It was to make sure there was someone trustworthy nearby just in case Nancy changed her mind and wanted to leave and–and–and–

There’s a hand around her forearm just before she reaches the edge of the pool, a hand large and strong but a hand, still, which releases his grip with a half-hearted shove from Nancy. 

“Don’t,” she snaps, whirling around to look at him, avoiding the confused and concerned and baffled expressions of Robin and Eddie hovering feet away at the edge of the forest like they truly don’t know what to do with themselves. “Don’t.” 

Her voice is ragged, she knows. She can see the sound of it in the harsh shine of Steve’s eyes, but she can see something else there, too. 

She can see something like understanding, like the crossing of a great divide between them, where they’ve both changed irreparably in the journey, but changed into the kinds of people who can trust each other above all else. 

“I think this is a bad idea,” he tells her simply. It’s honest in ways he wasn’t when they were together. It’s lacking in that desperation for regularness because although he doesn’t want her to go digging in this long-cold grave, he’s not stopping her either. 

No one is stopping her. 

No one, Nancy doesn’t think, could. 

She lets her head tilt sideways slightly, lets herself look at him, Steve Harrington, the man that he's becoming, but she doesn't force herself to answer him. 

For so long she has forced herself to have answers for all of them, answers to save their lives and answers to create something akin to a watered down justice for the rest. Nancy has fabricated answers, has discovered them, has dug deep into endless dirt and mud and detritus and crawled out again victorious and still never felt it. 

But she doesn't have to answer Steve. She can see him, understand the ways he has grown, understand the ways she herself has, and know that neither of them expect that from her. 

Instead she nods, lips pressed together in a flat line, and instead she turns her back on him, and instead she takes that final step forward to gaze upon this empty divet in this broken world. 

The pool is dry, mostly empty and lined with cracked and mossy tiles. 

Mostly. 

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She didn’t trust them until Nancy got mad over Robin insinuating she didn’t understand the impact of NINA, got well and truly in Robin’s face about they used my best friend as bait to understand the toothy fuckers better and you think I don’t get it? She didn’t trust them until Nancy. End of sentence.  » Ronance & Stobin // Rated T // Apocalypse AU // 2.4k » Febuwhump #10: Truth Serum & "Please don't" » Febuwhump Masterlist

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The monsters came when Robin was eleven. 

The earthquake opened up crevices in the ground, jagged and dangerous things, and then three months later, the monsters came, and then in the chaos so did NINA. 

They pushed those of them already at the bottom of the ladder further down it in the name of protection. They put up fences and created curfews and took charge of the law with the fist of the military and Robin was eleven when it started but she learned how to fight fast. 

Her parents were some of the first to push back, to see their protectors for what they were and call them by their proper name: fascists, Robbie, born out of the power vacuum. They want us to rely on them so they can control us, but if we want to survive this we can’t let them, understand? 

Robin was eleven when the monsters came, and she learned how to fill a Molotov cocktail with young, uncalloused hands, learned how to rough them up with the handle of a throwing ax launched again and again at the trunk of a tree until she could hit the same spot every time. 

She was eleven and then she was twelve and fifteen and she was a freedom fighter because her parents never let her forget what it was like before. Never stopped finding her books to read and music to listen to and stories, so many stories to bury herself in. They stoked the fire in her gut to push back and they gave her hope for a future where it wasn’t like this and she believed them. 

Robin believed them, and that was maybe her downfall, the believing. 

She met Steve Harrington when she was seventeen, a boy raised in the barracks where they taught him how to control, how to lead, how to follow orders. She met him during the same week he decided to get out of that place and she met him while she was trying to get in. Cause some chaos. 

They both learned how to fight young, fight hard, fight tooth and nail without much strategy but a lot of vigor, and it got them locked up underground for three days straight. Broken fingers and something they claimed to be truth serum, Steve didn’t have any information to give up yet, but Robin did. 

Robin had plenty and she kept it to herself, kept it safe, kept it hidden, escaping with that stuff still running through her veins and a broken boy hanging off her broken shoulders and so much pride to show her parents what she’d survived only to find that they hadn’t. 

They hadn’t.

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“Steve–” he croaks, half a sob and half a cry, keys clanging together with the shake of his hands as he rushes to the lock, to get it open, to get him out out out. “I’m here, I’m here— We’re leaving, okay? Robin and Nancy have prepared us horses, I have a plan and we’re leaving tonight.” » Steddie // Rated T // Medieval AU // 2.1k » Febuwhump #9: Hostage Situation & Too Weak To Move » Febuwhump Masterlist

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Eddie Munson carries the eyes of his father, expressive and dark and cutting. 

He is a familiar face down these hallowed halls, lined with the scruples of a kingdom eternally at war and the gifts of those too afraid to be anything other than allies. 

He is recognized to the point of no longer being of note even as the click of his shoes echoes across stone floors of this expansive, ever-expanding castle and he makes use of this fact regularly. 

To sneak into the kitchens and ruffle Maxine Mayfield’s hair; to pull on the pigtails of his favorite lady in waiting Lady Wheeler and ease some of the tension that comes with being an eldest child in need of a good and wealthy match to care for her family. 

To rough house with Dustin in the courtyard and delight in the bickering of the Sinclairs in the stables and find joy and light in places other than the dingy corners of a place he is cursed to remain for the rest of his days. 

Because Eddie Munson carries the eyes of the King, but he carries the name of his mother, and so he will never be more than a wandering bastard with nothing more than a cottage to share with his uncle, his only surviving family, at the edge of the castle grounds. 

Still, though. 

He is a recognizable face. To the very point of it turning unnoteworthy. 

So he zips up his terror, the roil in his gut, the haste he wishes to take instead of the slow, unnoteworthy pace he must maintain until he is no longer in sight of the general public. Eddie makes use of his invisibility, puts to work his inconsequential position, and apologizes to his mother for any gratitude he might feel that her death led to such a thing being possible. 

Gratitude he does feel, however, when he finally reaches the staircase at the back of the East Wing, the one that goes unguarded for long portions of the day, the one with an exit straight onto the lawn which backs up almost immediately to the forest. 

Gratitude because if he weren’t what he is, if he weren’t a bastard free to frequent town and make a ruckus and meet people as his whole self rather than one designed for diplomacy and battle in equal measure, he never would have met Steve Harrington.

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“I was so careful with you,” she murmurs, almost quiet enough that it feels as though it wasn't meant for Robin's ears at all. Quiet enough, even that Robin feels herself straining to listen past the muffled flow of cars and people and life just beyond this alley. “You don't have to be,” she says, even if she's not supposed to, because it feels important. “I'm not fragile.”  » Ronance // Rated M // Vampire!Nancy // 2.4k » podfic & cover art by @n0connections 💜 » Febuwhump #8: "Who did this to you?" & Came Back Wrong » Febuwhump Masterlist

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There’s a regular at the bar where Robin works. A girl. Woman, actually, is a better fit in every conceivable way. 

There’s a woman who regularly comes to the bar where Robin works. 

She orders a vodka soda and sits at the bar, chats with Robin the whole night through, and leaves three hours later with a hefty tip tucked under a still-full glass. 

She’s immaculate. Mysterious. Beautiful.

Or at least at first it was only that, this sort of baffling level of oh my god her eyes sparkle when she smiles at me that Robin has definitely felt before in what Steve considers to be her numerous and unending crushes, but Robin knows is just an inevitable eventuality when there are so many beautiful and handsome women walking around every day. 

As if Robin’s supposed to just ignore that? Please. 

The thing is, though, the woman at the bar? The woman who goes by the name of Nancy and always pays in cash and never, not once, has taken a sip of her drink? 

She’s funny too. She’s witty, even. 

She holds a conversation with Robin so intriguing and gripping that Robin’s gotten reprimanded by the other regulars for ignoring them on more than one occasion. 

She makes Robin feel giddy like she's back in high school and Tammy Thompson is asking to borrow a pencil instead of twenty-seven years old working behind the bar at one of the dingier holes-in-the-wall in Chicago. 

The way she crafts a story has Robin leaning forward, elbow on bar and chin in hand, eyes all big and smile dopey and stupid, because she doesn't want to miss a single syllable of it, doesn't want to miss a moment of this woman's attention on her because it feels like a gift. It feels like an honor. 

It feels, at the end of the night, like such a fleeting and impossible thing. Because that's what happens isn't it, at the end of every night? 

Nancy leaves her tip of crisp bills and says goodbye and then steps away from the bar and finds someone else to take home within the following ten minutes. 

She takes someone home with her every time she comes in and that person is never, not once, Robin Buckley.

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“You weren’t supposed to be there.” “I was where I wanted to be,” Argyle fights the slur that wants to leak into his words in favor of attempting at something imploring, certain, “and it’s not your fault.” » Jargyle // Rated T // Gunshot Wound // 2.1k » Febuwhump #5: "You weren't supposed to get hurt" & Blood-Stained Tiles » Febuwhump Masterlist

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“Hey, no, keep holding that.” 

“Whoops, uh, my— bad,” Argyle blinks slow, staring at the place where Jonathan’s hand wraps around his own, where that in turn wraps around the meat of his bicep. 

“Just— hold onto that,” Jonathan’s voice, even through the fog in Argyle’s brain, sounds unsteady. Like he’s holding his breath. Or like those days back in school when he’d step out of class without warning just to go peek through the window of where his brother and sister were listening to some lecture or other about To Kill a Mockingbird. 

Unsettled is the word for it, Argyle thinks. He’s never particularly liked it when Jonathan was unsettled, even before he understood just how much reason Jonathan Byers had for being an anxious mess at literally all hours of the day. (It’s a miracle the dude isn’t constantly at the end of his rope, as far as Argyle is concerned, actually.) 

“Hey, you alright, man?” Argyle furrows up his brow, watching specifically the tremble of Jonathan’s hands as he digs through the first aid kit on the floor beside them. 

When did they get on the floor? Was it— Oh, wait, no, he’s been on the floor for a while. He’s as woozy as he is because he’s been on the floor for a while, because it took quite a bit of time to dig the bullet out of his arm and now— now Jon is just— he’s—

“Am I alright? Fuck you, holy shit,” he murmurs under his breath. He’s trying to thread a needle, but his hands are still shaking. His breath is coming too fast. 

Argyle doesn’t like it when he’s like this. He’s put so much time over the years trying to help Jonathan chill out, at first in an herbal medicine sort of way, but more than that too. The kind of stuff that sticks long term, like proving to him that he has a support system now, that he doesn’t have to feel like everything is always on his shoulders to fix anymore, that Argyle’s got him and, yeah, Jonny boy grew up too fast, but maybe they can find a way to offer kindness to the little boy inside of him who had to be the adult long before he so much as took off his training wheels. 

So, Argyle frowns, because Jonathan is stressed and he’s on edge and they’ve worked on this, you know? He doesn’t have to take responsibility for this, because Argyle knew what he was getting into when he stuck around. 

Argyle may not seem it, but he’s observant. He knew what he was getting into when he stayed in Jonathan’s life. 

But none of that ever mattered so much as getting Jonathan.