hey! so as is typical for me, i’ve been thinking about this whole thing a lot again and now you get this:
Corroded Coffin are invited to play at the Grammys the year of their sophomore album being nominated for album of the year.
so, they go, they play their biggest hit from the album on stage for the whole world, get cheered to high heaven, and when they win (bc why wouldn’t they??), they play something… else.
eddie gets to the mic at the front of the stage, plugs in his sweetheart, settles her around his neck, and nods to someone off stage.
for a handful of moments, nothing happens, everyone teetering on worry about technical difficulties, then.
eddie lifts his sweetheart up off his front, and tucks the guitar into the crook of his neck.
the whole crowd ?!?!?!?!?????s even moreso when eddie whips out a goddamn violin bow and attempts to play across the strings, making a horrible screeching noise.
he looks at the thing, dumbfounded, and tries again. more inane screeches.
he looks even more baffled at the second attempt, inspecting the bow this time before setting it across the strings.
third time’s the charm, everyone supposes, because SOMEHOW eddie munson is playing his infamous warlock like a fiddle.
the tune is recognizable instantly, and so is the grey-faced balding man who emerges on stage with an actual fiddle tucked into his chin.
the crowd roars,eddie brings his guitar back down to him properly, and begins to sing along to his uncle’s insane fiddling.
corroded coffin just won album of the year and they’re playing a (metal-imbued) cover of The Devil Went Down to Georgia.
the music world never stops talking about it.
- - - - -
btw in this au the whole metal community has adopted wayne like:
So, back at Christmas, I bought Project Hail Mary for my son, 16, because he loves hard sci-fi but doesn't like dystopia. He read it in about a day, and then he let me borrow it and I read it in about a day, and then we read that Saving Grace Rocky PoV fanfic and both loved it, and now I just love Rocky and Grace so much and can't stop thinking about them.
All this background is to say that I have my longfics on pause until I finish this Rocky-centric one shot. The draft is sitting at almost 9K. I expect it to be over 10K by the time it's finished. It's a little all over the place now, but I'm hoping to have it cleaned up and posted before the movie comes out in March. It's about Rocky all alone on the Blip-A, but also about him meeting Adrian, and about his engineering mentor. And also an alien religion, because that's how I roll.
i was tagged by the lovely @evaofkonoha, who i am eternally grateful to know. <3
Rules: Post the last line you wrote, then tag as many people as there are words.
nobody worry about what wip this is from, let's all just move along and pretend we read nothing.
He enjoys bantering with Shisui, he enjoys that Shisui had enough sense to stop treating him like a child when he was still a teenager, and he likes that Shisui has more than a few working brain cells in his head, so if he’s given the choice between paying two hundred bucks a month to shoot the shit with Shisui every night or paying a thousand to rent an overpriced apartment on campus with a loud ass roommate who's never cleaned a dish in their life, he's taking the former.
if you've ever read anything i've written then you know "tag as many people as there are words" is an EVIL instruction. this sentence is about 100 words long and i so genuinely do not know that many people, much less active writers, but if you follow me and you write, consider yourself tagged! i'd love to see everyone's wips! :)
the past few wip games i’ve been tagged in, i haven’t had anything solid enough to participate in but this time i decided to actually post something (even if its not 100% yet)
thank u to my darling @morning-star-joy for tagging me 🫶🏻
here’s a snippet to a little angsty, hurt/comfort one shot i’ve been working on these last few weeks (probably wont be up for a while bc the depressy has kicked in full throttle 😀)
storm anxious eddie waking up in the middle of the night when a rare thunderstorm rolls into LA
he's back from texas now, he and buck and chris all living under the same roof for a couple months at this point, buck having migrated into his bed after only a couple weeks
there was no point in either of them waking sore and miserable from a night on the couch when there was a bed down the hall that was perfectly capable of holding them both—eddie had reasoned—so buck migrated
all this to say that when the storms would roll into el paso, eddie was alone.
he was alone and how ever many fucking miles away from the one person he thought of when lighting shocked his room alight in stark whites and answering thunder rolled over his head.
now though
now, buck was here.
buck was here. having scooted up behind him at some point in the night, the warmth of him lying along eddie's spine already a balm to the panic threatening to build in his chest
balm enough that the first crack of lightning that night doesn't send him shooting out of bed.
buck's front is pressed along every curve of his back, the softness of his stomach slotting evenly into the curve of eddie's spine, his chest pressed flush and warm over eddie's shoulder where it's prone to ache with the drop in pressure brought on by a storm
one arm has managed to wheedle its way under eddie's head, the other is hooked over his waist
another flash of light, another clap of thunder, and eddie doesn't so much as flinch.
buck, however, does.
a fleeting thing, more a tremble than a full flinch, but enough that eddie knows it woke him.
before eddie can confirm it though, make some joke at his own expense and the childish fear he's acquired of a natural phenomenon, buck's arm—the one that held eddie to him—moves
it leaves its post and pulls away, leaving a thick strip of cold branded over eddie's side
again, before eddie can complain, before he can make any sort of indication that he's awake and embarrass himself by asking buck to please put it back, buck's touching him again.
a warm, calloused palm presses itself to the crumpled shell of eddie's ear just as the room flashes bright with lightning once more, the following rip of thunder nearly completely muted by buck's hand on the side of his head.
for a moment, eddie is stunned. even more so when buck's steady breathing returns, falling back to sleep with his hand cupped protectively over eddie's ear
in the next moment, eddie's chest aches.
he wants to panic, wants to feel more scared now that it's staring him in the face—buck woke up, realized it was storming, and in the space between two flashes of lightning, registered this, decided to do something about it, and moved his hand to block out any more of the sickening shocks from reaching eddie all without even realizing he was already awake—
eddie wants to panic, he wants to deny what this obviously is that's straining against his ribs, he wants to—
his eyes droop
he's not— he can't— he—
another long blink
he wants to close his eyes and follow buck into sleep again
knowing he's in love with his best friend can wait till morning.
written for @steddie-spooktober Halfway to Halloween pop up event!
rated G | 2,832 words | on AO3: halfway there (fully smitten) | prompt: half-o-ween
meet cute, modern au, flirting, steve harrington is simultaneously super charming and on his game AND easily flustered
Steve would do anything for his kid siblings.
He would.
It’s just…
“Why’d it have to be this Saturday?”
“Because that’s the halfway mark?” Dustin says as if it was obvious, rolling his eyes for good measure.
“Oh you’ve got to–” Steve scrubs a hand down his face; Yeah. fine. That makes sense. It is called the ‘Halfway to Halloween’ craft fair. “You don’t even like crafts.”
“There’s going to be more than just crafts.” Dustin says, again, like it should be obvious. “C’mon Steve, even Max wants to go. Like, actually wants to go.”
Steve looks over at the Max in question, gazing up at him with her usual scowl on her face.
“She doesn’t look like she wants to.”
“Yes she–”
“She does.” she says.
“See??” Dustin gestures excitedly towards her.
Steve sighs again. Of course she’d want to go, she’s always been all about that spooky crap.
He looks down between the two hellions he’s so proud to call his siblings.
Internally.
Internally he is.
He sighs again, turning away from where they’d corralled him at the end of the hallway.
“C’mon Steve where’re you–”
“I gotta call Angie,”
“But–”
“I have to call off our date, dingwad!"
Dustin insisted that they be there right when the fair opened at 10 am, but after a syrup incident at breakfast and a couple bathroom breaks, their two hour drive to the 4H grounds the show was being held at, turned into two hours and 45 minutes, landing them in line at 10:10 am.
They waited their turn to pay the entrance fee, Dustin bouncing on his toes the whole time, and as soon as the bright orange bracelet was on his wrist, he was off.
Surprising Steve further, Max was right on his heels, scanning seriously over the first line of vendors.
“You shits better have your phones on you!” Steve calls after them, getting offhanded waves in return.
He watches them go a little on ahead, sliding between the already hearty crowd much easier than he would, then turns to look at some of the vendors’ wares himself.
It was not a great place to start paying attention, to be completely honest, the racks and tables filled with all sorts of stuffed animals with bloody gashes, exposed broken bones, and dangling bloodshot eyes..
His shock must’ve been fully apparent because the bearded man behind the stall table guffaws at his expression.
“S’not for everyone, kid. I get it.” he says when Steve apologizes.
There are people selling their collections of movie memorabilia, specialty indie costume companies selling their scarily (ha) detailed rubber masks, some folks are selling crystals, some are selling crochet, some have tiny taxidermied mice..
It’s honestly kind of overwhelming.
He stops at one end of this barn (the second in the grounds’ row of five that were full up for the occasion), leaning up against the open double doors.
He’d originally been concerned about the cool cloudy weather, thinking it’d be too cold to be walking around outside like this, but a lot of vendors had space heaters plugged in behind their booths, and there were so many people bustling through and around the space that the wide open doors were a blessing to his already sweating brow.
Taking advantage of his spot out of the flow of people, he opens his phone to check on where the gremlins were (two barns down already what the hell??), when Dustin’s text comes through.
He puts his phone back in his pocket and continues on.
The next booth he comes to is another with taxidermied things, though these are all bugs. Different beetles, bees, and butterflies pinned into shadow boxes.
For some reason, he gets kinda stuck at the display of colorful wings. He’s never really liked bugs, never had a strong opinion about butterflies, but these things are… seriously beautiful.
Some he remembers the names for without having to look at the little tags the vendor wrote up for them; Monarch for one, and he knows this blue one is an Emperor Butterfly from that Animal Crossroads game Max got him hooked on for a while a couple years ago, and he’s inspecting the pattern of greens and oranges on another when he feels someone brush up against him.
Suddenly aware of how long he’s been standing in front of the display, probably blocking a whole bunch of others from getting to look too, he glances back, stepping out of the way with a “Shit, sorry!”
“No worries man, I can look just fine from right here.”
Steve’s busy looking down at his feet to make sure he’s stepping around the boxes stored under a nearby display table, “No, really, I just got caught up looking at them;” he finally gets his feet in a safe spot, and turns to the newcomer, “They’re all really–”
He’d made the mistake of looking up at the source of the voice, and now his own is stuck in his throat.
Steve’s a sucker for all things 80s, the aesthetic (a new word introduced to him by Max) at least, and this guy looked as if he was plucked right out of time and delivered to him on a shiny silver platter.
A mess of dark frizzy curls, deep dark eyes, ripped skinny jeans and some sort of band tee under a leather jacket and denim vest..
Even the sun decided to point out how much of a simp he was about to be over this guy, choosing that moment to break through the clouds outside the doors and give hot 80s metal guy a hell of a glow.
“--pretty.”
Hot Metalhead smirks and ohjesusfuckingchristhehasdimples.
“You’re not too bad yourself, big boy.” the man says, and Steve swears he can feel the other man’s gaze trail over him. “You got a favorite?”
He gestures back to the display of bugs, and Steve shakes his head clear, “Uh.. The orange one maybe, the Monarch? But this one is really cool.” he points to the green/orange one.
Hot Metalhead nods, “The Madagascan Sunset Moth, that one’s my favorite.” then he levels a smirk at Steve, “Seems you’ve got good taste, pretty boy.”
Something kicks to life behind Steve’s ribs, and suddenly he feels completely back on his game. He slowly drags his gaze over the other man, lingering on his lips (chapped, but perfectly pouty even in their smirk), “Seems like I do.”
Steve meets the man’s eyes, and he opens his mouth to say something else when they’re broken from the moment by none other than Max.
“There you are! Do you ever check your phone?” she gripes, pulling him out of the booth
“What–Max?” A rock sinks into his stomach, “What’s wrong?”
“I need your help picking something for Lucas,” she puts her hands on her hips and it’s like he’s looking in a mirror.
The rock rolls out his stomach with the roll of his eyes, and turns to say something to Hot Metalhead, but he’s already a couple booths away, bending low over a table of books.
“You can flirt later, I really need your help!”
Sighing, but figuring he can find Hot Metalhead later, he follows Max to a bigger movie memorabilia booth in the center of the next barn over.
Eventually, they settle on two gifts for Max’s “He’s not my boyfriend nor do I want him to be.” boyfriend (“He’s not my boyfriend, Steve! Urgh, you’re the worst.”): a Freddy Krueger sweater, and a jersey boasting the Haddonfield Butchers, with the last name Myers and number 78 on the back.
“Are you sure that’s not secretly for you?” Steve asks, clocking the reference immediately. He had, afterall, been made to sit and watch Halloween close to a zillion times over the course of he and Max’s foster journey together.
“No, it’s for him. It's something I like fused with what he likes." She reasons.
“Sure, sure,”
Max wanders off again after that, and so does Steve, scanning the crowd for messy brown curls as he scans the other vendors.
Eventually, he comes to a booth covered in pins and earrings.
He immediately thinks of Ms. Hender– Claud— Mom when he sees all the earrings, and starts looking through the spinning racks, snapping a picture to send to the goblins as he does
“Find something you like?”
Steve glances up, one of the two ladies manning the booth has stood from her chair, the strawberry blond with the ponytail, smiling brightly at him. A pair of cigarette earrings hang from her lobes, one new and one half burnt down.
“Yeah, sorry, I was sending a picture of these to my siblings,” he picks up the fangs, “Our mom would love these.”
The woman holds out a hand and he passes the set to her, “Awesome, let me get them bagged up for you!”
“Do you want a different color?” The other woman says, looking through a basket of what looks like even more pairs of earrings; she’s a dirtier blond with a choppy bob and freckles.
“Another color?”
“Y’know, black, orange, purple, glow in the d–” that’s when she looks up at him, “Steve Harrington?”
Steve’s brain goes into a jumbled state of ???????????
“Uhm, yeah? How’d you–”
“You went to my high school!”
A rock plunges into his gut, “Oh, uhm.. I’m sorry? I don’t–”
“You dated Tammy Thompson.”
He feels his face pull into a cringe, “Yeah, that was… yeah.”
“She was on American Idol!” the strawberry blond says.
Steve finds himself laughing, “I don’t know how she made it, she sounds like a muppet when she sings.”
“She does!” She laughs at the same time Choppy Bob says an indignant “She does not!”
The rock is back, “Oh, sorry.. Was she a friend?”
Ponytail laughs again, saying “No,” at the same time as Bob but continuing on with “Robin here had a biiiig crush on her.”
Bob, Robin apparently, goes all splotchy, “Shut up Chris!”
Chris just waves her off, “Oh he’s fine, he’s one of us, did you not see his pin?”
Steve looks down at his own chest, Max’s gifted bi flag pin glinting up at him from his jacket, then back up at the two; the lanyard around Robin’s neck jumps out at him, striped in pinks and oranges and whites, and Chris has what looks like one half of a heart in colors matching his pinned to her sweater.
“Huh.” Robin says, looking perplexed, “Who’da thunk?”
“You’re telling me.” Steve jokes, finally getting Robin to smile back at him.
Suddenly, and at the same time another potential customer comes into the little stall behind him, Dustin comes out of the woodwork to tug at his arm, “Finally, there you are! Stop flirting and come with me, you gotta see these cars!”
“Whoa, dude! Chill out for a second, okay? I’m trying to pay the nice lady.”
“Well hurry it up dude,” he mocks, “They’ve got the Ghostbusters’ hearse back there!”
Dustin squeezes very impolitely past the other person in the booth, and Steve turns back to Chris, “Sorry, brothers you know?”
“He’s got a point, the Ghostbusters one is pretty impressive,” She says as Robin accepts his $10 bill for the jewelry, and passes him back a small bag and a card, “I wrote our cell numbers on the back, we should all meet up again sometime!”
“Course! I’ll let you know how my mom likes ‘em, yeah?”
Steve squeezes out the stall and Chrissy picks up her phone.
Dustin was right (what’s new?), this last building is packed full of hearses of every shape and size.
A 1940s era one, a slightly newer model painted entirely in matte black, one with a padded coffin hanging half out the end for people to pose for pictures in. But the real star of the show, at least according to Dustin, was the one for one remake of the Ghostbusters’ white one.
Steve follows him down the row, pausing at the hood of the replica to take a picture of the giant slime ghost plush in the passenger seat, then on to peer into the cab.
He was still inspecting all the old dials in the dash through the open window, when someone says, “See something you like?”
“I was told by a very reliable source that yours was the one to beat.” Steve says, taking in the shockingly low number of miles on the odometer, “And I gotta say, still having the original dials in the dash is pretty cool– Hey! It’s you!”
The guy leaning his weight onto the car’s roof with one hand grins, “Hello again, your majesty.”
“Majesty?”
“You liked the Monarchs, remember?” Hot Metalhead pushes himself up off the car and offers Steve the same hand, “I’m Eddie.”
“Steve.” he breathes, taking Eddie’s hand in his.
Eddie shakes his hand once, his fingers calloused and warm, “Well, King Steve, what brings you all the way to my neck of the woods?”
“I heard there was a super special hearse back here so I had to come see it for myself.”
“Good eye, Stevie”
“Only if it’s easy on ‘em.” he says, starting to get his normal voice back, “‘Easy on the eyes’ y’know?”
Eddie just laughs, “Yeah big guy, I got it.”
Steve’s face is on fire. He clears his throat, finally letting Eddie’s hand go. He notices a familiar pin on the front breast pocket of his denim vest that he hadn’t noticed before, this one striped in shades of blue, green, and white, the opposite half of Chris’ pink, purple, and blue one.
“Oh, hey! You know Chris?” Eddie's face flashes into confusion, so Steve clarifies, “She’s got the same half heart pin as you…?”
“Chrissy you mean? Tiny? Ponytail? Bangs?”
Steve shrugs, “That sounds right.”
“Has a girlfriend about yay tall? Freckles?”
“I mean, she didn’t stand up..”
Eddie considers him for a moment. “Nope. Never heard of ‘er.”
Oh god he’s a dork.. Steve’ll never survive this.
“D’she send you over here?”
“Kinda? Dustin wanted to see the cars anyhow so..” he holds his arms out at his sides, “Here I am.”
“So this curly-haired menace is yours then?” Eddie asks, turning to stand at Steve’s side and gesturing to where Dustin is talking with a balding man at the end of the car, “He’s been talking my Uncle’s ear off each time he’s come by.”
Steve nods, “Him and the redhead who’s… around here somewhere– there!” He points out Max as she heads outside into the sun, making her hair glow bright, “She’s my foster sister, Dustin’s mom took us both in about a year ago now, she was really great to take us in together, even with me being ‘aged out’ and all.. I wanted to make sure she had something stable going forward y’know? And I really don’t know why I’m telling you all that but.. There it is..”
His face is going to be permanently red at this point, but Eddie doesn’t seem to mind his rambling, looking at him with a mix of amusement and something else in his expression. “You can tell me whatever you want, whenever you want, Stevie.”
“Is that your way of asking for my number?” Steve asks on impulse.
Eddie laughs, “You give me way too much credit Stevie, I’m not even remotely close to that good of a smooth-talker,” he reaches into his back pocket and produces his phone, “But no way am I passing up the opportunity.”
Steve smiles and takes it, entering his information into Eddie’s phone, “Apologies to your uncle by the way,” he says as he sends himself a devil face emoji from Eddie’s cell, “Dusty can get to be too much sometimes. I hope he’s not giving you too much trouble?”
He hands back the phone as his own chimes in his pocket, taking it out and passing it to Eddie.
“Not at all; Wayne’s more than happy to talk about anything to anyone who’ll listen; He’s already told me everything he knows.”
“Don’t you mean ‘taught’?”
“Not in the slightest.” Eddie grins at Steve’s laughter, punches something into his phone and passes it back. “There you go, big boy, one brand new phone number just for you.”
Steve looks down at the screen, ‘super hot sexy metal deathlord eddie 😈🤘’ is at the top of his message screen.
He looks up at Eddie, who just waggles his eyebrows at him; Steve rolls his eyes, but can’t keep himself from smiling. “Perfect, thanks.”
“No problem…” he mimes looking down at his phone, “‘steve’.”
“Oi! Can you two flirt your way to the gut trucks, or are Dusty and I gonna have to get some grub ourselves?”
The two jump apart at Wayne’s words, both their cheeks burning (brighter in Eddie’s case).
“Yeah, yeah, shut your yaps, we’ll go get something.” Eddie grumbles, striding off toward where the food trucks are parked, pulling Steve along with him.
if you don't have one around you at this time, this is a real thing that happens in my area every may!! and it's on the 10th this year!! all of the things mentioned are things i've seen at my fair; my own pair of vamp fang earrings are truly a favorite pair of earrings i own :o)
spiderweb divider from @saradika-graphics! vampire earring pic is from this etsy listing!
there will also be a part 2 to this tomorrow, LINK HERE!
