canon divergent fic where shane and ilya get into an argument post-hookup and shane wants to hash it out but Mr. Avoidant Attachment feels like he’s drowning bc this is supposed to be easy and fun and when did it stop being easy and fun? why does shane being upset with him make him feel so anxious? he shouldn’t care, they’re not even in a relationship, he doesn’t owe him anything so why does he feel like he does and why does that scare him so much? so he leaves and shane doesn’t answer any of his texts after that so he goes inside himself where it’s safe and he forgets about it bc he can. He Can
then the raiders play montreal. he’s soooo cool he’s so aloof he doesn’t even care that shane won’t look at him. he apologized, shane didn’t, he’s done everything he could. he still checks him hard against the boards just to get his attention. shane barely reacts, just pushes off the wall, spits near his feet, mutters cheap loud enough for him to hear and skates away. it’s the closest ilya’s ever been to losing his shit on the ice and throwing hands even though he’s the one that started it.
afterwards, ilya is hell bent on getting so drunk he can’t stand. and he succeeds, he gets so shitfaced he’s nearly blacked out and telling half the raiders alllll about his fight with montreal jane and how she won’t talk to him and he thinks he’s going to get a cab to her house bc she can’t keep avoiding him like this. and marleau takes him aside and is like heyyyy buddy i’m not sure this is a great idea maybe we should go back to the hotel? but ilya gets all indignant like i am your fucking captain don’t tell me what to do. so he backs off, and ilya’s already booking the car out of spite.
it’s not until he’s already buzzed his apartment three times that he starts to feel really fucking stupid. for all he knows, shane has already moved on, it’s been months since they’ve spoken, maybe he’s up there fucking somebody else right now and ilya’s downstairs ringing his doorbell like a drunk idiot.
but then shane opens the door, looking sleep-rumpled and confused and a little bit angry at being woken up. it all melts into concern when he sees ilya there, slumped over, swaying on his feet, eyes red-rimmed and so filled with despair that all shane can do is usher him inside and get him a glass of water.
and ilya didn’t come here for sympathy, opposite. he wanted shane to be pissed that he showed up and he wanted to get pissed back and finally finish what he couldn’t the first time. and then have life changing, drunk, angry sex about it. but all he gets is a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and one of shane’s pillows on the couch, and he asks what time his flight is and takes his phone to make sure it’s on the charger and that his alarm is set for the morning. bc shane is actually so touched that ilya still remembered his address even when he could barely remember his own name. and he looks so sad and shane hates that it’s his fault, even though he’s felt so justified all these months giving him the cold shoulder.
so when ilya comes into his bedroom fifteen minutes later whining about the couch being uncomfortable, shane lifts up the corner of his blanket without a second thought. and ilya clambers in and apologizes a thousand times against his bare shoulder. when he feels like he’s said it too much, he starts kissing him in random places all over his chest, each one an apology of its own. and then he apologizes that he’s too drunk to fuck and shane’s like are you crazy i’m not fucking you like this and i’m mad at you, remember?
then ilya remembers why he’s actually here and his face falls and he mumbles you don’t want me anymore before he can stop himself and he starts to cry a little and he fucking hates himself so much bc this is all his fault. but shane just pulls him into his chest and pets his hair and tells him it’s okay, he still wants him, they just need to talk first and they will, he promises, bc now he knows that ilya didn’t hurt him on purpose, and he came to him when he was drunk and hurting and that means something.
when shane wakes up, ilya is gone, already left to gather his things at the hotel so he could get to the airport by 7:30. he doesn’t have any texts from him, and he’s disappointed and already preparing himself for the worst, that ilya was just drunk and horny and thought he could milk it out of shane one last time, how stupid of him to let him in and share his bed.
until he finds a post it note on the bathroom mirror when he goes to take a piss, in ilya’s messy all-caps scrawl. it’s simple, no frills i’m sorry, i miss you, please text me when you’re in boston.
Nancy cuts her hair with a pair of her mother’s sewing scissors at three o’clock in the morning five days into the new year. She makes quick work of it, hands steadier than she expects. Nut-brown curls drift to the floor one by one, warmed by the gold glow of the light over the sink, and when she’s finished they form a circle at her feet, and the back of her neck has an itch she can’t shake.
She stares at herself in the mirror long enough that her face starts to look like someone else’s, less human each moment, an illusion poised to crumble into nothing. Her features seem sharper, more hollowed-out, as if everything foolish and unnecessary has been erased, and all that’s left is shame, laid out as if on an operating table, an open incision to her center. It doesn’t measure up to the way Barb had looked the first morning she’d come over without her red braid; it doesn’t invite the same observations: boyish, tidy, so mature, so grown-up. But it looks like it belongs, sort of the way snow belongs on the roof of a tomb, and that’s good enough.
She cleans up quietly enough not to wake her parents, but when she walks in cold bare feet down the hall to her room, she hears a movement behind Mike’s door. She almost stops to knock on it and sit on the floor with him like they used to, surrounded by pillows and blankets, safe in a fortress of their own design, one that protected secrets and halted time.
Her knuckles linger over the wood for six beats of her slow, cluttered heart—but then she remembers the sharpness to his changing voice at the dinner table the night before, just before their dad had sent him up to his room—can’t you all just leave me the fuck alone?—and she bends to yet another grown-up lesson she still has yet to master: that even when someone is hurting so loudly and so helplessly that you can see the wound, plainly, still raw at the edges, sometimes the kindest thing you can do is not touch it.
If asked, she wouldn’t be able to say when she and Mike stopped talking. It had been all at once gradual and abrupt, affording no space for elf costumes or staying up past midnight, and Nancy had done nothing to alter its course. Now she wonders if that had been her responsibility, to be the eldest and to repair things, to hold them together, to defy hopelessness; she wonders if she had failed, and if that had been her only chance.
She pulls her hand back, where it rests at her chest for only a moment before she lets it drop to her side. Her throat feels swollen with grief, but she doesn’t know why. An absence of something should just mean there’s less to carry. Her shoulders should feel lighter. This should feel less like losing, and more like having—like taking.
On Monday morning, Steve caresses her hair carefully and twists a lock around one finger, and she can’t parse the nuances of the expression on his face, but in his eyes she can discern something lost between hope and despair.
“Did you do this?” he asks her, free of any accusation or confusion.
She nods, tightening her grip on the spine of her Calculus textbook.
“Yeah,” she says, and then cautiously meets his eyes, searching. “Does it look bad?”
After a moment that seems to stretch to its breaking point, he shakes his head.
“No,” he says, and lays his palm on the back of her neck to guide her, gently, into a hug that she reciprocates as best she can. “No, it doesn’t.” He says, “It suits you,” and in that moment, it’s the most important thing anyone has ever said to her before, and she is never able to invent the proper way to thank him.
…
“You like Nancy,” Will says, quiet and pitying but nonetheless matter-of-fact, and Jonathan’s heart slows in his chest. “Don’t you?”
It’s a Tuesday, and they’d woken up to snow. So many inches of it had accumulated outside the house that it’s impossible to open the front door, and the weather report had said to expect more, so the schools are closed for the day, along with most of Main Street.
He and Will have been playing Go Fish in their pajamas for about twenty minutes. Mom is in the kitchen, making Campbell’s chicken alphabet, quietly and irregularly humming a slow song.
Jonathan discards. Will is doing him the kindness of not staring at him, which he appreciates, because he’s never had a very good poker face. Part of why Will always kicks his ass at Go Fish.
“It’s okay,” Will says after a while, like he already knows the answer, thoughtfully drawing a card and inserting it into his crowded hand. “I was just wondering.”
Jonathan hums in response. None of the cards in his hand match. Go Fish is ruthless.
“What made you wonder?” he asks, scratching at his shoulder absentmindedly, not lifting his eyes from the Queen of Hearts.
Will shrugs.
…
…
Eight days before Christmas, Jonathan calls her from a pay phone, somewhere in the Mojave Desert. Nancy hasn't heard from him in months, not since he'd left Hawkins at an hour too early for anyone to be awake to stop him, so for a brief second, after her dad passes her the phone and gives her a quizzical look, she can't place a face to the voice that greets her with a near-inaudible, "Nancy."
He says it breathlessly, sorrowfully, like he thought he'd never get the chance to again. No one has ever said Nancy's name like that, like it's something they've been waiting their whole life for. No one has ever said her name like Jonathan does, every time.
"Jonathan?" she replies, under her breath, to better dodge her mom's questioning stare from the kitchen table, where Nancy's fresh dinner still sits, untouched.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Mike sit up a little straighter, craning his neck to better stick his nose into her business. (He and the other boys are all into lip-reading now; Nancy could kill Joyce for giving Will that book on codes. Her privacy is basically void.)
"Yeah," Jonathan says, and she hears a rush of noise behind it, a truck passing by on the highway, maybe. "Hey. How, how are you?"
Nancy's eyebrows furrow. "I'm..." She can't find it in herself to answer; it feels too trite, too much like she's enabling something she doesn't fully understand. "Where are you?"
After a pause, he says, "Um, Joshua Tree, kind of. I was gonna go straight there, but... car ran out of gas."
"Why are you calling me?" she whispers, half-accusatory and half-incredulous, shifting the phone to her shoulder so that her cheek presses against it, as if that's supposed to close a distance she can't perceive.
She can tell the second it's out of her mouth that it's too incisive, too close to being cruel. Though she can't see him, she can sense it when Jonathan winces slightly at the words, shoulders hunching forward, like he's trying to hide within himself. It's a response that she had come to see far too often when he had still been a ten-minute drive away.
"I don't know," he murmurs. "I've been wanting to since—since I left, I guess, but—"
"But what?" she cuts him off, bracing herself on the kitchen counter. When only silence answers her, she reaches up to grip the phone more tightly, and her voice rises to a shrill and shaking volume that will almost definitely earn her some questions from her parents when she hangs up the phone: "But what, Jonathan?"
The clock over the stove ticks six times before he says, "It never felt like... the right time."
Nancy remembers how his body had felt under hers, what seems like a lifetime ago instead of only a year ago; she remembers the staccato of his heartbeat under her fingers, the way the sheets had rumpled beneath them.
…
…
Dear Jonathan,
We got our first snow today. Everything is white and glistening. Mike and the guys built a snowman. They didn't use the carrot for a nose; they used it for—well, you can probably guess.
Hope it's not too cold where you are. It still snows here, but this town isn't the same without you. It isn't the same without a lot of people. But especially you.
🚨daddy alert🚨: it's 5 am. you're on the morning news. come home and sleep it off.
marchy🌈😘: no. don't wanna.
marchy🌈😘: skitstövel inkommande
Patrice staring at his phone and then taking a deep breath, trying to remind himself to be patient, it's the cup, it's different, he's gonna be bratty... and then laughing himself stupid when a drunk and grumpy Brad is delivered directly into his arms by the Panthers baby rookie.
"You're American, how do you-"
Samoskevich shrugs. "That's what the Swedes text each other when he's coming in hot and they don't want to deal with him."
Sometimes most times I write things that probably won't go anywhere. Here's a Stonathan one since this fandom lives on scraps.
The bittersweet sting of his break up with Nancy lasts through what would have been their first anniversary. Jonathan ignores it, genuinely happy for her when she leaves for Emerson in spite of how it hurts. She has dreams, after all, and the ambition and support to follow them while Jonathan has responsibilites. Except, he doesn't anymore. His mother stopped relying on him now that she has Hopper and Will grew out of needing his big brother to take care of him. The one place he finds some sort of meaning is the open spot Robin left at Steve's side when she went to Indiana University.
"Hey Byers, what's our morning movie?" Steve looks up from sorting returns as Jonathan pulls on his vest. Family Video is not his dream job, but it will do until he figures out something better.
"Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," Jonathan answers easily because he thinks about what movies they are going to watch way too much. It is easier to think about than college applications or putting a portfolio together or if photography is even worth getting a degree in. Going into a trade would be more practical. Being a mechanic sounds like a perfectly fufilling way to support himself, including his hobbies.
"I'll see if it's in."
Since it is a Wednesday, they are mostly left to watch movies and talk as they sort and rewind and stock and wait. Jonathan is once again struck by how well Steve listens. He doesn't always understand, but he prompts and engages in a way that encourages the flow of conversation. It makes Jonathan feel seen in a way he hasn't before.
"I'd run away to Bolivia with the Sundance Kid," Steve decides before taking a drink of his soda. He had run out during his break to buy them bagel sandwiches from the deli down the street. Jonathan makes a mental note to vacuum behind the counter later.
"I didn't think Robert Redford was your type."
There have been hints that Steve is attracted to men, off hand comments or appreciative looks. Then there is the flirting.
"It's his eyes." Steve looks at Jonathan with the start of a smile pulling at the corner of his lips. "They're the type you could fall into and happily drown - Kind of like yours."
Jonathan has no idea how to respond to that. He collects his sandwich and drink instead.
"I'm going to go work through the returns list," he says on his way to the phone in the back office. "Call if you need me."
"Just in the work way, right?"
There is the hint of a smirk in Steve's tone. Jonathan rolls his eyes and tells himself it is just banter. He might get his hopes up otherwise.
“What do you mean you can’t sell me tickets?!” Eddie splutters at the irritated looking teenager snapping her gum behind the glass. “It’s supposed to be released today, I promised her,” he makes a vague motion to you, the dim light of a nearby street lamp reflecting off his chunky silver rings.
“I mean,” she snaps her gum again and you can see him clench his fist. He’s getting irritated, possibly overstimulated by the interaction. He’s been focusing on seeing this movie for the last week, over you finally having a ‘real’ date night amidst your busy schedules. “I can’t sell you tickets.” She sounds so bored, after probably having had this conversation multiple times already tonight. You’d feel more sorry for her if she would stop with the obnxious gum chewing. “It didn’t turn up, we’re trying to find out why.” She snaps her gum again.
You’re about ready to tell him that you’ll just go to Family Video and rent something, grab some candy and a few beers and spend a night curled up on the couch, sure, that’s what you always end up doing but it’s better than nothing.
Eddie huffs and crosses his arms in frustration, almost pouting like a toddler at not getting his own way (but you don’t know many toddlers that are blood thirsty for slasher movies) and you swear the girl behind the glass snorts. “Can I get you tickets for anything else?” Another snap of her gum.
Your eyes look at the posters, a couple of action movies are playing and then your eyes settle on one. Your lips quirk into a smile and you try and hide it from Eddie, because it’s definitely not this thing and you’d kind of thought you could drag Nancy and Robin to see this movie you’ve heard so much about.
Eddie catches you. He sees what you’re glancing at and he sighs. “That one…” he tells the girl behind the glass. “I promised her a real date tonight, so I’ll take two tickets to that one for my… that one.”
Booth believes in ghosts enough to know that when a light bulb explodes overhead and voices begin to whisper and murmur and sing in the blinding darkness, this is not a house he wants to be in one second longer.
I found a 1-sentence-fic meme on my old blog and although I will never develop this idea further, please know that this is one of my favorite things I've ever written.
That in itself is somewhat unexpected. Shouta sits, leg aching, watching the other people around him live. The woman next to him scrolls on social media, sound muffled by her headphones but still loud, reading posts and stopping to watch videos. Across from Shouta, backed by the sun, a couple leans against each other; one of them has fallen asleep to the gentle hum of the train. Outside the city passes in blurs of buildings and trees, interrupted by patches of ruin.
But—it’s ordinary.
No one calls Shouta to inform him of an emergency. No villain boards the train nor comes to wreck it. He’s not on the way to a hospital, or to a fight. He’s simply going home. It’s safe.
His nerves feel raw. Like Kaminari is barely shocking him, his body awake and on edge. Survival mode is what Hound Dog likes to call it; the way Shouta glances and keeps track of his exits, of the people around him, waiting for someone to make a move that won’t happen.
The woman next to him taps her phone. The opening theme of the news plays, and out of the corner of his eye Shouta catches a glimpse of the report and the faces of his students.
Former students.
Shouta wants to reach over and pause the video. A light feeling swells in his chest. He wants to tell this stranger, you know, I taught those kids.
He looks away, down to the bag nestled comfortably between his feet, where the shadows don’t quite hide the stacks of envelopes. He doesn’t touch them until he’s home with only his cats for company.
The top one is neatly penned, and sealed with wax. Yaoyorozu’s letter. Underneath hers is Kirishima’s, a card with a drawing. His students, one by one, thanking him.
“Be safe,” he says, touching each letter, reading the words over and again. “Make me proud.”
Isn’t he already? Haven’t they shown him, a thousand times, their strength and their character?
His phone buzzes. Tokuda.
I forgot to ask you something for your interview, the journalist texts. Shouta sets down an envelope, and taps out a yes.
Do you regret it? The question returns just seconds later. Shouta stares. If you could change your experience teaching Class 3-A, would you?
And hesitates. Logically he shouldn’t. Of course he doesn’t regret it. Of course he would do it again, teach this class of heroes, know them as his own; their struggles, their victories, their blood, and their first steps as heroes in a new age.
He writes, I wish I could have spared them their pain, and that suffering and hardship were not their teachers alongside me.
Shouta allows himself to be ordinary, and to accept that the worst is over. That there are brighter days ahead, led by a new generation.
But I’m glad, Shouta finishes. It has been an honor.
I’m having a Great Week, so here are some fic previews!
Oversharing a bit here but I got the all clear on my first preventative skin cancer screening this week, so I’m feeling Very Relieved and also Painfully Inspired. So I decided to share some Fic Scraps from ongoing projects! <3
*Note: Some are planned updates being polished, and some are Brand New Fics that I’ve been hoarding and working on between larger projects. Enjoy!
1. Sith Lightning, Paperwork, and Other Extreme Sports (Rated T, Gen)
Based on this post by @phoenixyfriend
Chapter 5 (In Progress):
Anakin wakes to the sharp, insistent trill of his comm with a flimsi sheet stuck fast to his cheek, a burning crick in his neck, and the grim certainty that he’s entirely too young to feel this karking pathetic.
He groans as he rolls onto his side, jostling his still-healing ribs, and the connecting ports for his prosthetic throb furiously. Probably because he forgot to take it off. He's not sure what time he actually managed to pass out but he knows it wasn’t nearly enough, considering he’s had hangovers that weren’t this miserable.
He feels like he’s been dragged ass-backwards through a rancor’s small intestine. It feels like the death of his youth.
His comm is still ringing. And Anakin really should answer it before it wakes everyone else in their suite but he mostly just wants to shoot it and see if that buys him a few more moments of peace.
“Kark.” He mutters, blinking blearily at the ceiling. “Am I a joke to you?”
He’s asking the Universe at large, really, but neither the ceiling nor the Force deign to grace him with a reply.
Typical.
2. The Kettle Chronicles (Rated T, Gen)
Inspired by this post from @brachiosaurus-on and @kivaember
Chapter Two (In Progress):
And Anakin had, shamefully, been ready to pack it all up and turn in his metaphorical ‘saber when Obi-Wan had found him curled up on the edge of his bed, wet and red-faced and furious in the face of the failed quiz on his datapad, and coaxed the whole story out of him in fits and starts.
Anakin expected him to yell. Or to demand that he leave the temple entirely because he’s obviously too slow and too stupid and unsuited to the life of a Jedi.
Instead, he’d sat back and apologized. Anakin had nearly concussed himself when he flailed in surprise and fell off the bed.
But Obi-Wan had made him dinner, afterwards, and settled them on the couch with Qui-Gon’s big orange monstrosity of a quilt thrown across their laps. And then he’d pulled out a datapad and a stylus and began to teach Anakin the Aurebesh alphabet.
And he never got frustrated. He never complained, even when Anakin stumbled or forgot words or clammed up and locked himself in the ‘fresher. And each night after latemeal he’d pull Anakin back over to the couch for the next lesson, the next story, the next song. And Anakin—
Anakin’s learning. Slowly, infuriatingly, but he’s doing it. And he doesn’t know how to thank Obi-Wan for that, either.
3. Tripping Forward, Turning Back (Rated T, Gen)
Chapter Two (In Progress):
Kamino is strange, he thinks, and it’s only slightly hysterical as Cody ushers him back into the facility, off the landing platform and out of the rain. The dozen or so men with him fall in behind them, save for a pair that duck forward to peer around the nearest corner, almost eerily synchronized and their steps near-silent even in armor. Well trained, then; almost terrifyingly so, and he can’t quite shake the memory of Jango Fett’s face peering back at him from all directions even as the man himself was being dragged away.
Jango hadn’t been dubbed the Jedi-Killer for nothing, and yet his clones laid him low before either of them could get a word in edgewise. Obi-Wan eyes the tight, protective formation with no small amount of trepidation, a creeping sort of wariness that he can’t quite shake no matter how insistently the Force chimes home-comfort-safety in his ear.
Home is Anakin. It’s his Master, long-dead, and his crechemates. His fellow Jedi and the Temple, shining white stone rising amidst the ever-present smog and steel of Coruscant. And Obi-Wan has never presumed to know the secrets of the Force but he’s feeling distinctly wrongfooted, now more than ever, as the Living Force sings, a rich, discordant tangle of grief-life-confusion in his ears. Enough to allow Cody to reach out, not quite touching, as he herds Obi-Wan down the hall with nary a backward glance.
4. Not a Wheel, But a Stone (Rated M, Gen)*
Chapter One (In Progress, Not Yet Posted):
“I’m coming with you.” He says, tight and flat and ironclad. Master Windu raises a brow.
“Skywalker, no—,” he starts, stepping down from the transport and drawing Anakin off to the side. A few of the technicians throw them curious glances but leave well enough alone. “No, you’ve done enough.”
“No.” Anakin disagrees. He hasn’t. He hasn’t done nearly enough. All the things Anakin’s told him, all the missions that went sideways, he’s… he’d...
He trusted Palpatine.
And it had all but damned them, in the end.
Anakin’s never going to be able to wash the blood off his hands, not even if he renounced his title and joined the Agricorps for the rest of his natural born life, but still… Still. He has to try. And he has to start with this. “You need me. And I—I need to see this through.”
Master Windu hesitates, eyes flicking between Anakin’s face and his hands and the transport. “Obi-Wan will kill us if anything happens to you.” He says, slow and careful like he’s still thinking things through, and his eyes go hazy and distant for an instant as he looks somewhere beyond Anakin’s left shoulder.
“Obi-Wan’s on Utapau,” he counters and he’s never been so grateful to have his master on the other side of the galaxy. “By the time he finishes up there we’ll have taken care of Palpatine. He can’t be angry if we win the war.”
Or we’ll be dead, he thinks, and it will all have been for nothing.
5. The End of Love (is a Haunting) (Rated M, tentative Quinlan/Fives?)*
Chapter One (In Progress, Not Yet Posted):
“Are you always this prone to bad luck and violence? If so, that’s kind of sad.”
Quinlan grits his teeth, stumbles sideways into crumbling brick and the ever-present dripping filth of the Undercity, and ignores the little voice in the back of his mind that whispers how utterly fucked he is.
The stone is cool and damp beneath his cheek and there’s a pool of rapidly darkening refuse swirling about his boots. Quinlan tips his head back, bites back a whine, and shuts his eyes. The Force swirls sickeningly, a miasma of black agony amidst the ambient despair and squalor of the lower levels, and he takes a long, slow breath through his nose to fight off the cresting wave of nausea as he delves deeper into the ebb and flow of Coruscant.
It takes longer than it should to pinpoint his attackers, longer still to trace the imprint of their rage down, down, down into the darkness beneath his feet, where the sun is but an aching, distant memory.
6. The Light Of Distances (Rated T, Gen)*
Chapter One (In Progress, Not Yet Posted):
As far as bad ideas go, this is probably the worst one Feemor has had in a very, very long time.
He eyes the console readout, enters his clearance codes, and prays that they haven't been revoked or reissued in the years he's been gone. Beneath him, the Temple is a wash of white stone and shadow, dotted by the distant brilliance of the landing pad and passing speeder lights.
The ship is cool. Almost unreasonably so, he thinks, as the recycled air slides across the throat. Feemor scowls and hikes his robe higher on his shoulders.
Coruscant is loud. Bright with artificial life and light and the minds of three trillion sentients packed in close quarters with one another. The night sky is devoid of even the memory of stars, perpetually heavy and grey and so thick with clouds that not even the brilliance of its four moons can pierce the veil of creeping smog and light pollution.
He’d forgotten just how miserable it is.
I’ve got... a hefty handful of other projects on the side right now, but here’s a sneak peek of a few that are nearly finished. Feel free to send me a message if you have any questions about anything in particular. Or if you’d just like to know more/scream/etc <3
