“Yeah,” Jonathan breathes out. “I’m okay.” It’s not really true. But he’s still standing, so it can’t be a complete lie.
Can it?
Or, following Starcourt and the destruction of their cabin, Hopper and Eleven move in with the Byers. Life goes on. Jonathan struggles to go on with it.
But somewhere along the way, between breaking his hand, getting to know his two new roommates while reckoning with the changes between his two family members, falling (further) in love with Nancy and Steve, and witnessing his new household become a new family—and also just because it’s always inevitable—Jonathan gets there.
read chapter one here | listen to the playlist here
Lynette Scavo had a dream that night. It was one she’d had many times before. But this night, something changed. This was the last time Lynette would ever dream of me, and for her sake, I am grateful.
omg ok put in the tags a food that makes u feel like life is worth living when you eat it. like u eat it and it’s soo good and everything’s fine actually
literally though if you feel like your life is slipping through your fingers and every day goes too fast… try doing hard things, not just taking the easy route, like reading and making art and exercising and cooking a meal from scratch and journaling, doing these things without distraction, without being absorbed on a screen… the time will stretch and you’ll be reminded that life is long and beautiful if you make it so.
melanie martinez, womb / warsan shire, backwards / mary oliver, “blue iris.” devotions / jmfenner / nayyirah waheed / jenny slate, little weirds / @soapstore on tumblr / jenny slate, little weirds / ocean vuong, on earth we’re briefly gorgeous / sue zhao / @emmablowguns on twitter / jenny slate, little weirds / ottessa moshfegh, my year of rest and relaxation / @anariafortheendoftimes on tumblr / mary oliver, upstream / marya hornbacher, waiting / robert de flers
when people die early in a story but their death sets the tone for the whole story and to an extent sets everything in motion even if the story isn’t about their death… that’s good shit right there!
Lying facedown in adulthood today, which, while not physically possible, is very much the mood. Would anybody like a small Sunday sample of some writing, and if so, are there any preferences for which story.
Okay your likes are appreciated but none of you actually answered me, so here is a piece of the Steve/Nancy/Jonathan bodyswap fic. Enjoy! Or don't, I guess.
...
“Stop preening,” Nancy says, annoyed, from the doorway. “You look fine. It’s not even you wearing it. Let’s just go and get this over with, so we can go find El and get swapped back.”
“Jonathan’s going to be so offended when he finds out you hate his body and his life this much,” Steve teases, turning away from the mirror.
Judging by the way Jonathan’s face pinches up, though, Nancy hasn’t taken it as a joke.
“I don’t hate Jonathan’s life,” she says, sounding so genuinely wounded that, for a moment, Steve feels like an absolute shit. “And believe me, I definitely don’t hate his body.”
“Nancy. Come on.”
The smile that flickers across Nancy’s borrowed face is there and gone in an instant. But Steve still thinks it looks unexpectedly mischievous.
He’s not prepared for how much he suddenly misses seeing her smile like that. Making her smile like that. He’d been pleasantly surprised, when they’d dated, by just how much trouble good-girl Nancy Wheeler was willing and eager to get into, with just a little permission. Just a little encouragement, from the right person. At least, until Steve had suddenly turned into the wrong person. Or maybe until the kind of trouble he wanted to encourage her towards somehow became the wrong kind.
Steve tries not to wonder what kind of trouble she’s been getting into with Jonathan. Whether she even does, anymore, now that she’s taken down the lab. Whether Jonathan’s annoyingly down-to-earth responsible streak keeps her on the straight and narrow.
Steve tries not to wonder whether it’s Nancy who encourages Jonathan into mischief. Or what Jonathan Byers cutting loose and doing something a little wild and crazy even looks like.
He fails. Miserably.
Nancy’s amusement doesn’t last long, though. “I just want to fix this. As soon as we possibly can.”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t really want to get saddled with some of my exes, either,” Steve says, trying to make it sound light. Like it really is just a joke.
He can’t read the look Nancy gives him.
“We don’t know for sure what caused this,” she says, quiet but intense. “Eleven’s powers have been gone for months. If this was her, that means something’s changed. If it wasn’t her, then that means there’s someone – or something – else out there, messing with us. And nobody’s even seen Eleven since this morning. So you can waste all the time you want worrying about whether green suits my complexion, or whether you’ll be back to yourself before you’re supposed to take Robin out tonight, or having to sit down to pee, or whatever. I want to get swapped back and go find Jonathan as soon as possible. Something weird is going on, and I don’t want to only find out what after it’s already eaten somebody I care about!”
Steve bites down on his – Nancy’s – tongue.
The only words he can summon up in response to that are the absolutely genius, “Robin and I aren’t dating.”
Nancy snorts, crossing Jonathan’s arms over her chest. “Please. You’ve spent basically every waking moment together since the mall.”
“Yeah, well, getting kidnapped and tortured with somebody gives you a special kind of relationship.”
Nancy’s expression goes – kind of frozen. Like she’s very deliberately not freaking out. “Tortured?”
A slow sort of panic steals over Steve as he tries to remember if he’d ever filled her in on what, exactly, happened to him on the Fourth of July. Maybe he hadn’t. But then, had she really not even wondered about the black eye and all the blood and bruising? Did she – did she think he just got his ass kicked again?
Which, actually, now that Steve’s thinking about it, is a more reasonable and sensible assumption to make than ‘kidnapped and beaten and tortured for information by Russian thugs in their secret base hidden underneath the mall’. Maybe he can’t actually blame her. Although it stings, even knowing she has less than zero interest in him anymore, to think that Nancy Wheeler just assumes Steve can’t hold his own in a fight.
“Yeah,” he says, after what he realises is too long a silence. “But Henderson busted us out before they could break out the bone saw, so, y’know, no harm, no foul.”
Nancy just keeps giving him that frozen, incredulous look.
“Jonathan’s mom has the right idea,” she says, at last. “Why do any of us still live in this town.”
i think it’s really funny when fandom people make fun of nonfandom people for not recognizing a fandom url. shit like “jackstanifold” or “strifesuccubus” or “hobocop” are not immediately recognizable as fandom references dude
“You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discover that it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky. This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone. This is why art is important. Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important.”
