forget the moon

imagine a Steddie fic, where Steve is stranded on an island and sure he's going to die until he meets mer!Eddie who helps catch fish for him and shows him a spot on the island where a freshwater stream is feeding into the ocean, so Steve doesn't starve

and Eddie can't talk because he made a deal with a seawitch that cost him his voice, because the man he thought he loved didn't love him back 🥺 so he got turned back into a merman except with no voice. which is a shame because he loved singing so much!

- - -

The mermaid dude is back.

"Hey!" Steve says, not bothering to keep the relief out of his voice. Every time the guy leaves, Steve starts to convince himself the whole thing has been a sunstroke-induced hallucination. "What have you got for me this time?"

So far Steve's new friend has brought him a scrap of fishing net, some driftwood, and a shimmering palm-sized shell to scoop up drinking water from the little spring just inland. No sun block, and no bucket of fried chicken, but Steve supposes beggars can't be choosers.

The mer-dude grins, quick and sharp, propelling himself out of the surf to sit on a flat rock. The thing he's holding gleams in the sun. Treasure, Steve thinks, wading closer.

The treasure wriggles.

"Oh, whoa," Steve says, empty stomach clenching as he stares at the fish. Because that's what it is. "You brought me food?"

Mer-guy nods proudly, holding the fish up for inspection. Steve has no idea what kind it is. His dad never took him fishing, and all the fish he's ever eaten has been either breaded or covered in cheese and cream. This one is big and fat, which must mean it's a good one.

It looks kind of slimy, too. Steve doesn't really want to touch it. "This is great," he says, putting his hands on his hips instead. "Now we just gotta figure out a way to, uh, cook it somehow. You got any matches?"

The mermaid-man — Steve has got to figure out what to call him — shakes his head, sending droplets of seawater flying. Eat, he mouths, still not making a sound.

"I can't eat it like that," Steve says, wrinkling his nose. "It's not even dead!"

The eye-roll he gets in return is expansive. Mer-dude shifts his grip on the fish and jabs a clawed thumb into its back before slicing its belly open and yanking the guts out in one quick swipe.

Steve recoils. "Dude! What the hell!"

What? the mer-guy's eyebrows say, as if Steve's the one who's being a big freak. Steve watches as he carves off a glistening slice of raw orange fish-flesh and stuffs it in his mouth with every sign of enjoyment.

It's gross. Completely and utterly. Steve's going to barf if he tries it, and get like ten different diseases on top of that.

His stomach gurgles.

"Ugh, fine," he says, holding out a hand. "Fine, give me some of that."

Mermaid-guy clicks his tongue and beckons Steve closer with a blood-stained finger, and when Steve crouches down he carves off another slice and holds it up to Steve's face.

"Wha—" Steve says, and gets a mouthful of raw fish for his trouble.

The texture is kind of like jello shots, squishy-firm. The taste—

"Oh," Steve says, chewing. "Oh, that's actually good."

Let no machine eat away our dream

Baby, take my hand, let's go together

I don't know what I'd do

Thank you for asking, let's see if I can't tease it out! I like the 80's as an era, first of all; thrash metal, Art Deco revival, computers with monochrome monitors, car phones, that kind of stuff. A lot of technology that's already more or less obsolete was still brand new back then, like home video and CD players. I suppose it's a kind of nostalgia, because I am old enough to remember a time before everyone had computers and cell phones and an internet connection at home. Like I remember when dad brought home an answering machine and we recorded a message. It was exciting!

And, yeah, I guess these kids do only feel right to me in the 80's and early 90's. Steve to me is a guy who will never learn how to touch-type and will not know what an iPhone is until he's 40. Eddie's taste in music overlaps with mine in a way it probably would not if he were born 20 or 30 years later, and if he were younger I'd have to reckon with some baggage I carry from the late 90's/early 00's metal scene and frankly I'd rather not. And moving Chrissy forward in time would mean dealing with the increased focus on Christian abstinence-only messaging in American culture. Like I'm not saying America in the 80's was particulary liberal in that respect but things did noooooot exactly improve in the 90's.

I ask because I opened the draft of in Europe this is very normal (working title) and realized the document had hit 100 pages, of which 54 pages are a continuous narrative, a further 20 pages are partly written scenes interspersed with terse notes to self, and the rest is, uh:

and then on top of all this I have a spreadsheet with a more detailed timeline I can refer back to. this particular story is in gdocs but some of my newer WIPs are in Ellipsus (and structured much the same). I'd probably have made the switch completely if Ellipsus allowed comments on main documents because once I have a continuous narrative going I don't like to leave any notes to self in the body of the text, but I do like being able to append a [Tuesday, May 9th] to a "Steve wakes up with the sun in his eyes", or [last meal eaten 18 hours ago], or whatever else I'm trying to keep track of.

It does have the comments on the main doc thing that you mentioned. I think it's similar to what ellipsus has except scrivener doesn't have drafts separate from the main doc. (Although TBH ellipsus is very unintuitive to me and kind of stressed me out when I tried to use it so I haven't looked at it recently.)

Scrivener also has a nested folder structure over on the left where you can access all your chapters and scenes and move things around but there are folders outside the story structure for research, notes, trash and whatever else. You can import websites, pictures, videos, pdfs and other types of files into the research folder. And then you can also split screen if you need to have the file up for reference like this.

Written for @corrodedcoffinfest's June Microfic

[ AO3 ]

Steddie | Rated: T | 586 | CW: None | Tags: Post-Canon Fix-It, Hair Washing, Sort Of, Pre-Relationship, Mild Voyeurism, Alcohol

Steve watches Eddie try to fix his hair after they see a concert.

Steve sits on Eddie’s desk chair and watches across the hallway as Eddie wrestles with a wide toothed comb at his bathroom sink. He’s feeling good—tired, but not like the night should’ve been over hours ago—and despite the drying sweat and sobering up, he thinks he’d be happy just endlessly hanging out, drawing lines up and down Eddie’s body with his eyes, zoning out to the tendons in his hands.

Eddie had backcombed his hair earlier, because he wanted it BIG for the concert. That was good—he and Eddie had stayed at the edge of the pit. He’s a natural wall, and Eddie lit up like a dog chasing a car as he got to shove people. When Steve found a loose shoe and handed it to a tall guy, Eddie had caught his eye and beamed at him like he was being useful and fitting in. It’s easy, somehow. He was worried, looking like himself, in line at the thing, but there were other guys who looked regular too, and he’s not that preppy these days. Dressing for monster guts had changed him.

Eddie’s using oil on the knots in his hair. If he just got in the shower and used conditioner it’d go better, but Steve’s not going to suggest that because then he would have to find something else to look at while he simmers pleasantly under the echoes of their night out. Eddie’s gonna have to shower anyway, he’s not going to want to go to sleep with all the cooking oil in his hair, but that’s later. Maybe Steve can time it so he suddenly has to piss when Eddie’s in there and then maybe they can hang out, like he and Robin do, with the curtain shut tightly but trusting each other to be cool.

Watching Eddie work at his hair is not like watching Robin get ready, though. He doesn’t stare her down from wherever he can and catalogue the cut-out of her body like he does to Eddie—like he could take scissors and take him and put him on top of whatever picture he wanted to.

He could make a whole book of Eddie. Cut-outs of any second like a freeze frame in a movie and he could—

“Jesus FUCK!”

Steve jumps up and has to take a few breaths, watching Eddie’s frustration—boiled over; pasta water all over the stove—before he can swallow down his heartbeat and go into the bathroom.

“Alright. I’m taking over,” he declares, Coach style, like he never does with his friends but Eddie just gives him big eyes and holds the comb out. “Take off your shirt.”

Eddie eyes get even bigger but he does, flinging it across the hallway to the corner where his laundry basket is buried under dirty clothes. Maybe later Steve will declare something about that too.

Steve surveys the bathroom and takes Eddie’s wrist for no good reason, guiding him into the kitchen with its big sink.

“Run the warm water,” he says, lingering until Eddie nods, and even then he waits until the air gets awkward before he lets go. “Not too hot.”

He grabs conditioner and a towel, folding it to cushion Eddie’s back against the counter.

“How do you want me?” Eddie grins, toothy—funny. Steve wants to bend him face down and fit his his hips to his ass, sink his fingers in his hair. That’s how.

“Face up, I’ll be careful.”

Rating: Explicit

11,087 words, 1/1 chapters

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Tags: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Himbo Steve Harrington, First Time, Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington Are Best Friends, Podfic Available

Summary:

As soon as Eddie gets to the counter, Steve turns to him and says, “Back me up here. Kissing is no big deal, right?” Steve Harrington is talking about kissing. Eddie’s brain shorts out. “Uh,” he says.

This rec is a part of Challenge Monday. The challenge this week was Fics featuring Robin Buckley.

The thing is, there’s no way to know where these people are coming from. In the before, when fandom was more in the corners we all knew about, you could search LJ or a message board or whatever social bookmarking site we were using. You could join the community and participate.

You could get a little dopamine hit by seeing someone tell their friends why they loved your story.

Anymore, those recs are hidden in discords, or in tiktoks or instagram slideshows that you can’t search for. They’re inaccessible, not discoverable unless you’re already there. You may never know why 27 people left kudos on an old story of yours, what they liked and found in your writing. You just get the thumbs up and a kinda lonely feeling, cause these could be your people. You could like them, maybe. You could be friends.

But you’ll never find out why they stopped by, or what people are saying about you behind your back, and that’s sad.