dharmainitiative
Fandoms
Recent works
-
Tags
Summary
Nancy stirs her cappuccino. “I just thought—well, it’s been a year since…everything. And since we’re all in New York anyway, I just thought it might be nice to…I don’t know, do something normal together. For once.”
She has the look on her face she always gets when she’s dead-set on something, but beneath that is something imploring—like she truly wants the rest of them to be dead-set on this, too. It's the very expression that has made it impossible for Steve to say no to her all these years, and without meaning to, Steve glances at Jonathan.
He isn’t surprised to find the same recognition he feels reflected on Jonathan’s face, too. But alongside that expression is something resembling what Steve’s pretty sure is...acceptance. As though, just like Steve, Jonathan already knows he’s going to cave.
Or: Nancy, Jonathan, Steve, Robin, and Argyle’s Secret Santa in December 1988.
-
Tags
Summary
“That’s—” Nancy starts, faltering a little. “I’m not leading him on.”
Robin looks pointedly at the hickey on Nancy’s shoulder.
Nancy flushes, tugging her shirt to hide the mark. “I’m not,” she says again, and Robin wonders how on Earth Nancy can still be this tightly wound after getting laid. She can only assume this is a byproduct of sleeping with men. “That’s—that’s not what this is.”
“Then please, Nance, enlighten me on what this is, exactly.”
“We’re just—we’re just blowing off some steam! Alright?”
“Nancy,” Robin says in disbelief. “If you just wanted to blow off some steam, you wouldn’t do it with your ex.”
-
Tags
Summary
Their trek to Hawkins Lab starts alright. But after about ten minutes of a—frankly suspicious—lack of Demogorgon sightings, Steve starts not-so-subtly suggesting they pick up the pace, which Jonathan, evidently, takes as a personal attack, so the next thing Nancy knows, the two of them are trying so hard to outpace each other that they end up yards ahead of her and Dustin.
"How do you even put up with them?" Dustin asks, watching Steve and Jonathan from afar with a wrinkled nose.
"Practice," Nancy mutters.
Or: two conversations between Nancy and Dustin and Jonathan and Steve in the Upside Down.
-
someday i'm gonna be somebody people want by dharmainitiative
Fandoms: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
23 Nov 2025
Tags
Summary
Nancy untwists her hands and smooths them down the front of her skirt. "Look. What if we just…say it at the same time?"
"Oh." Jonathan clears his throat. "Yeah. Okay. Uh, on three?"
He doesn't realize how childish the idea sounds until after he's said it, but if anything, Nancy looks relieved. "Sure. On three."
"Okay," Jonathan nods. "One…two..."
“Three," Nancy finishes.
And then he blurts, “I don’t think I like having sex,” at the same time as Nancy says, “I think I like Steve.”
-
august slipped away (into a moment in time) by dharmainitiative
Fandoms: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
11 Oct 2025
Tags
Summary
Erica raises her eyebrows behind her sunglasses. “You're hanging out with Nancy and Jonathan now? Didn’t Nancy dump you and stomp all over your heart last year?”
“Whoa, that is not what happened.”
Erica turns to Robin, as if seeking confirmation, and Robin says, “Well…”
“Robin!”
“What I can’t understand,” Dustin starts. “Is why? You don’t even like Jonathan.”
“I like Jonathan just fine!” Steve shouts, loudly enough that the couple in the car next to them shoots them a look that makes the back of Steve’s neck heat.
Recent series
-
- Words:
- 73,063
- Works:
- 2
- Bookmarks:
- 16
-
flufftober 2024 by dharmainitiative
Fandom Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Stranger Things (TV 2016)
04 Nov 2024
- Words:
- 7,536
- Works:
- 3
-
- Words:
- 45,723
- Works:
- 2
- Bookmarks:
- 12
-
take my hand, wreck my plans by dharmainitiative
Fandom Shadow and Bone (TV), The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
19 Apr 2023
- Words:
- 10,284
- Works:
- 2
- Bookmarks:
- 32
Recent bookmarks
-
Tags
Summary
volta (n.) a turning point or point of change in a poem, most commonly a sonnet.
*
Derek watches as Dex’s eyes flick over the poem. He pushes back the dishevelled hair in his face like it’ll help him see clearer. He mouths the words as he goes, pauses, reads each line again. His fingers tap against the page in iambic pentameter. When he comes to the final line, his lips pull up into a barely there smile. “That in black ink my love may still shine bright,” he murmurs. “That is kinda nice.”
(Or, five times a poem doesn’t reach its intended recipient, and one time it does; five drafts, and one work completed; five turning points, and one ending.)
Series
- Part 1 of poetic devices
Bookmarked by dharmainitiative
14 Mar 2026
-
Tags
Summary
The table has been silent for 31 painstaking seconds—Nath has counted each one. During it, details that escaped him, for he is fixed on his plate of Hamburger Helper, his little sister Hannah soaks in like a sponge cleaning a mess: their mom, mouth opening to say something, then shutting so fast Hannah thinks she hears the thunk of teeth, then opening again; their dad, staring at Nath like a stranger who’s wandered in through the back door and sat down at the table; and Nath himself, fingers curling tighter and tighter around his fork until Hannah fears it might snap in two.
At the thirty-third second, Nath finally says something. “I just—” his voice strains out of him in a thin line “—thought you should know.”
Everything Nath Lee never told his parents about his relationship with the boy across the street.
Bookmarked by dharmainitiative
08 Mar 2026
-
Rome Is Better Than Rome by dasyatidae for rainingover
Fandoms: Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng
18 Dec 2016
Tags
Summary
Nath smells like whiskey and the lake when Jack pulls him up out of the water, onto the dock, and into his arms.
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 20,348
- Chapters:
- 1/1
- Collections:
- 1
- Comments:
- 89
- Kudos:
- 550
- Bookmarks:
- 133
- Hits:
- 8,297
Bookmarked by dharmainitiative
08 Mar 2026
-
Tags
Summary
Nikolai Lantsov is the heir to the throne. He can have anyone he wants, except the two people who only have eyes for each other.
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 3,242
- Chapters:
- 1/1
- Collections:
- 1
- Comments:
- 25
- Kudos:
- 109
- Bookmarks:
- 13
- Hits:
- 914
Bookmarked by dharmainitiative
01 Mar 2026
-
Tags
Summary
Jonathan listens to Steve's voice and hears home in each syllable, listening too hard for the hint of anything else without hearing what he wants, and doesn't catch any of the content. He supposes it doesn't matter, anyways. Nothing is resolving into the pictures he takes the way he wants them to, nothing matching up to the words he sees dancing around in his head. It’s just sharp feelings and unfinished sentences, moments he can see that need to be arranged carefully, but can’t quite be captured by his camera yet.
Steve should have never kissed him.