#04 || Never-Ending World

[sapphire-rb]

Summer fun

[sapphire-draw]

in mourning...

[acid-ixx]

(12/30/24) — again &. again masterlist

by the bird and the bee

ft. platonic soft! yandere batfam! x gn! neglected reader

✮ MAIN MASTERLIST ✮

— TRIGGER WARNINGS !

- lowercase writing, emotional neglect, allusions to sexual assault, prostitution & physical abuse, kidnapping, alcohol abuse, drugging, themes of depression, dissociation, vague traumatic events, mentions of murder, amnesia, other warnings would be added soon.

— SYNOPSIS !

who would have thought that living with your rich, billionaire father and endless supply of sisters and brothers would actually end up being the worst thirteen and a half year of your life?

when your mother was taken away from you at the ripe age of five, you were forced to live at the solemn wayne manor with nobody to accompany you but the butler, alfred pennyworth.

there, you learn that giving up was better than trying to gain the attention of your ever-growing family. so you left, and never once tried to look back at the decades of neglect they left you with.

but when alfred, your kind caretaker, had started leaving clues of your sudden disappearance; that's when they all take notice and then on starts the ultimate race of chasing freedom, and escaping what once was your gilded cage.

little did you know your mother's dark past manifests itself at the worst of times.

— CHAPTERS ! ; 48k+ words

00. — oh, please leave me be.

01. — because you only notice me once i'm out the door.

02. — and you don't even remember my face?

03. — i need a drink, away from everyone.

04. — mors tua, vita mea / your death, my life.

05 : 01. — a halo in the pit of darkness.

05 : 02. — to be his child is all i want.

— DRABBLES ! ; #series: again &. again

dick grayson calling you his baby bird

why now? (yan! damian wayne)

brutus (villain au concept)

brutus: out for blood

what if you were never neglected?

just a taste (yan! conner kent - suggestive)

laughter is the best medicine (yan! dick grayson, jason todd, tim drake, damian wayne)

to you, my greatest passion (non-neglected au-verse)

brutus: both arms cradle you now

bruce finding your graduation picture

how to be a heartbreaker! (yandere harem)

mea culpa (mini chapter)

conflicting comfort scene with jason todd

dialogue spoilers related to above drabble

more about jason todd and hurt/comfort

dick and his baby blue eyes

time travel au concept

sharing the same features with damian

brutus: the only fucked up thing in this world is you

cause you're takin' it like a champ, sweetheart! (yan! conner kent - suggestive)

brutus: just a burning memory (yan! conner kent)

young, just us?! (yan! young justice au)

that's my type! (yan! john constantine)

— ASKS ! ; #series: again &. again

dick's spiral into yandere-ism

leaving gotham, resenting alfred, changing last names

your mysterious identity &. conner being your love interest

dick seeing you as a child & damian's need to be your favorite

damian and his cool, matching bracelets

does dick close the door on you? nah, he doesn't even know you were behind the door

wally west as your love interest

you care now?

conner as your angry, protective bf

jason trying his damn best to be a brother to you

calling bruce by his last name only

calling alfred your dad ft. jealous bruce

how are damian and jason obsessed towards you

their nicknames for you

how bruce and damian would try to bond with you

will you still go to college after being kidnapped?

will the series have a happy ending?

why does damian hurt you? and why do you justify his actions?

the family stalks you even in-game

— INCORRECT QUOTES ! ; #a&a: incorrect quotes

yan! villains kidnapping you

hostage situation

how to become a target to the wayne family

dick and you miscommunication trope in a nutshell

— FANART ! ; #a&a: fanart

happy birthday by @luffyadolover

diary by @luffyadolover

another reason they're broke &. finished art by @oh-nowo-i-got-uwu

a take on the reader's appearance by @luffyadolover

reader trying to study ft. the batfam's endless calls &. finished art by @ghostdoodlen

reader finding bruce and damian watching a movie by @luffyadolover

again &. again mv by @luffyadolover

reader and their playlist by @luffyadolover

a comic panel by @lucioleestolie

conner and reader flying through the skies by @ghostdoodlen

when all of a sudden, i hear this agitating noise by @punpunsonny

villain au reader by @lazyemmy

a&a oc: emile by @questionthegrapevine

graduation pic, conner comfort, and mirrors by @ghostdoodlen

neglected &. non-neglected reader by @lazyemmy

jason calling you his angel by @ghostdoodlen

alfred gives you a christmas gift by @luffyadolover

— TAGLIST ! ; taglist is under construction!

@.lilyalone, @.secretomelettetroops, @.earlqurl, @.simpingfor-wakasa, @.amber-content, @.ruiroku, @.okaybutfullhomo, @.trasshy-artist, @.obsessedwithromance, @.jjsmeowthie, @.fairy-lenaa, @.ilovvmyhusband, @.6uuyuuhgy, @.plsfckmedxddy, @.lavender-moony, @.sweetheart-era, @.chemicalsandghosts, @.darling006, @.starringyau, @.samanthahanes, @.rosecentury, @.jaythes1mp, @.pi1nkl0ver, @.i-thirsty-boy, @.sharks-are-cool-l, @.silverklaus, @.samanthathanes, @.traumaramacenter, @.maddimoon, @.anxrq, @.thedarknesslord, @.h0rr0r-10ver-69, @.lazy-idate, @.cupids-pretty-boy, @.alishii, @.mel-star636, @.sitepathos, @.freakyotaku059-blog, @.dirtydiavolo, @.sunbleachedantlers, @.24hrsoflanii, @.ceramic-raven, @.une-lueur-dans-la-nuit, @.tdickensstuff4, @.thickerthanthieves, @.arlandvery, @.distressed-lezbo, @.bunbunboysworld, @.bellethesleepypotato, @.naina326, @.nebuluma, @.alliwantisadonut, @.alishii, @.kusakiguzen, @.sirenetheblogger, @.emmbny, @.ryukyuin, @.solkara, @.starsdotalk

[pha55ed]

War is Over || F1/F2

type :: fluff

tw/cw :: none

contains :: carlos, charles, lando, oscar, max, ollie, paul, pepe

summary :: the 2024 is finally over, which means they get to come home and finally relax with you

xmas celly here! || f1 masterlist || f2 masterlist

Carlos Sainz | 55

Skiing sounded terrifying for you. The risk of injury, the freezing cold, not being to control your movements, all of it seemed so scary. But Carlos peer-pressured you into it, which you couldn't be more grateful for. Although he's already experienced, almost at a pro's level, he still waited for you and taught you everything he knew.

There was no embarrassment in it either. He was so gentle and understanding when teaching you, always holding your hand, tucking your hair back into your cap, and cleaning your visor. It was hours filled with giggling at your mistakes and Carlo's poorly worded explanations.

But in the end, you managed to get the hang of it slightly, only doing small ramps and gliding around. He's never been prouder. He starts filming you like a facebook mom and he WILL 100% post it on his story.

Charles Leclerc | 16

Being so busy with driving makes him unable to do what he really loves, which is piano. So once it's Christmas time, he has get back his skills. But even though piano is usually played solo, he always tries to add you into it.

Either by letting you sit right next to him and sing the lyrics. Or letting you play the right-hand notes while he does the left-hand notes. He's very passionate about his music, always going into long rants about the musical choices he made and his biggest inspirations.

You can't help but just admire his nerdy-ness. It's so fun to hear the calming piano and his long rants, which helps you sleep. Which he doesn't even get mad at, instead he just drapes a blanket over you and continues playing.

Lando Norris | 04

Winter isn't something Lando wants to experience often. Of course, he loves to go snowboarding or watching the snow fall, but his comfort comes from the sun. So when the season ends, he's instantly telling you to pack your bags and prepare for an Australian "winter".

Which is perfect, since that's Oscar's hometown. So now you're stuck in Australia with your dumb ahh boyfriend and Lily's not-as-dumb-boyfriend. But you don't mind, it's great to get a bunch of double date time, discuss the grid drama, and more. Lily is basically your sister, you're almost more excited to see her than you are to see Lando.

But of course, he'll go back home to London with you so you can meet his family and have the true winter experience. He'll play in the snow, make an unbelievably disproportionate snowman, and possibly,,, just maybe,,, make a drawing in the snow with pee...

Oscar Piastri | 81

Christmas time means it's time for him to be his real self: a professional bed-rotter. Going out is so tiring for him, and he's sick of it. So prepare for weeks on end of just staying indoors, cuddling, ordering take out, and debating over movies.

Even though you're staying indoors mostly, it's never boring with him. Mainly because he has awful movie opinions. For example, he watched "Home Alone" with you, only to root for the kidnappers to take Kevin... Or when he was rooting for Voldemort to kill Harry just to thicken the plot.

Truly awful ideas, but you love debating them and hearing his logic behind it. Despite being drama free on the grid, he can't help but love the drama on screen. So, once you're done with every Christmas movie: it's time for Love is Blind, Love Island, and more shitty TV shows with even more shitty opinions.

Max Verstappen | 01

Racing was fun for Max, of course it is. But so is just staying home and being able to be a normal person. He really enjoys having time to himself just to think and enjoy the peace and quiet before he's forced to be back into a world filled with cameras, mics, and more.

So you two just do domestic tasks. Like grocery shopping, picking Christmas gifts, cooking together, and more. It's simple, but he loves it to death. There's been so many times throughout the season where he just wanted to call in sick so he could do something chill with you.

The only con is that he's an awful cook... And awful for grocery shopping... And he's not up to date with the kids,,, and picks the most awful gifts...

But thank god you're there to help! You'll be there to laugh at his stupid mistakes and help him do better, which he loves.

Oliver Bearman | 87

Family is one of the most important things to Ollie. He's who he is because of his family, so be prepared to be with his family almost every single week. Although it was scary at first, his family greeted you with open arms.

His sister loves you and gets to be girly with you. You go shopping with her and talk about the gossip at her school. His brother and you both team up to bully Ollie and prank him. His mom is so sweet and always treats you like her own daughter, giving you the best dinners and gifts. And his dad is so caring towards you, being more protective of you than Ollie.

It makes Ollie start to feel like HE'S the in-law instead of you. But he never complains, instead he's so grateful to have you. He couldn't ask for anyone better.

Paul Aron | 17 <3

You know those dumbass shirts at Walmart that say "Eat, Game, Sleep, Repeat"? That's the exact moto Paul lives by, but except it's training instead of gaming. Which means he's never had the chance to be able to fully relax. Even during summer vacation, he would sneak away to go to the gym or even fucking sneak a hand-grip onto the plane. This man is ADDICTED.

So you help him calm down, which is very needed. You take him to do all the fun stuff that he should be doing. But you know he's very concerned for losing his abs and muscles, so you make sure to make it a physical activity.

This means going to ice rinks, walking for miles in winter-themed towns, and even trying most aggressive ice sports. Things like skiing, snowboarding, and even hockey. Although you're not good at all of them, Paul is there to help.

Despite him just starting these sports too, he's already a pro at it. So now it's a time filled with giggles and laughs as you try all of these new activities together.

Pepe Marti | 21

It's well known by everyone that Pepe is one of the very few drivers in university. So this winter break is used by him to not only study, but also catch up with friends. You and him get to experience and cozy winter, filled with cuddling, procrastinating on homework, and hanging out with friends.

You hangout with not only his university but of course, the trio. Christian and Sebastian are so fun to hang around with and they're super sweet to you. It's as if they're your brothers who annoy the shit out of and Pepe.

100% Chris is the oldest sibling, Pepe is a middle child, and Sebs is the annoying youngest. You guys all mess around by playing stupid games, screaming karaoke, riding carts in Target, and more. Just a true college experience with the nicest people ever.

xmas celly here! || f1 masterlist || f2 masterlist

[yu-huuuu]

𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘥𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯?| 𝘣𝘢𝘵𝘴𝘪𝘴!reader| chapter: 01, (next part) 02, 03, 04, 05

[🌸] hi hi :> I wanted to upload this here, since probably many don't know it, haha

Summary: Perhaps the most important question is not; "How did you end up in this place?". it is; will you be able to finish the unfinished business that your self from this world left pending?.

...

..

.

You were exhausted, the movie you had gone to see with your friends had lasted longer than you expected. The duration had been three hours, and the idea of a hot bath made the somewhat stiff muscles from sitting for too long cry with joy. It was at least six in the afternoon, the sun was hiding, leaving behind a beautiful sunset.

The air was cool, giving you a little peace. The place you were walking through was lonely, there were no people around, which was weird, since you should be near the park and– oh, you can already hear the happy cries of little children playing. You felt safe, in a way hearing people nearby gave you some security because if someone strange showed up you could run to the park, you know; Just follow the voices and you'll be safe.

Although in extreme cases, you would just use the pepper spray you bought at that cheap store. Fortunately, for you, there has never been an edge case where you had to use it.

You were very close to the park, there was only one more block left for you to arrive. The screams of the children were getting louder, indicating that you were close, you could already hear the adults talking and some dogs playing with their owners.

You were about to get to where the voices were coming from when you felt the air changing and suddenly, you no longer had a ground to step on.

The ground had simply disappeared, leaving you to fall into a black abyss. The laughter of children, the happy voices of adults, became more and more distant until you simply remained in deathly silence. The peace you had before had been giving way to confusion and terror.

The feelings and questions racked every fiber of your being until you simply couldn't take it anymore and passed out.

You didn't know what was in store for you or what would happen once you opened your eyes, if ever.

Maybe when you open your eyes, everything will be alright again.

.

.

.

.

Maybe...

...

The old woman who found you was looking at you with pity... again.

You simply decided to recap what had happened these last few weeks in a lousy attempt to ignore the look 'Laura' was giving you. Apparently, you had woken up in a small town called 'Bibury'... which was in England.

'England?!', was your first thought when you found out where you were, your shock was so great that you couldn't speak for a couple of hours. The kind old lady named Laura had given you some tea to calm you down.

She had practically stayed by your side, patiently waiting for you to come to your senses, for which you were profusely grateful. Sometimes you needed alone time to process things, but not this time, you needed company and before you knew it you were hugging Laura and crying like a baby. She didn't care that you wet her soft coat with your tears. Your worries, your fears began to surface, how-how would you get back home?

You cried for what seemed like the whole day until the moon came up and it was only at that moment that you fell asleep, but before doing that Laura had taken you to a rather dirty and small room, she practically tucked you in like a small child while you sobbed and held on to everything you could reach. She had stayed close to you until you closed your tired eyes.

The next morning, you had a soup for breakfast that Laura had made for you. Having already had breakfast, you called the first number that appeared to you with your phone, which turned out to be your mother's, it rang a couple of times before—

'Sorry, the number you have dialed is unavailable or disconnected. If this is an error, try calling to...-'

"What?" It had been the first thing that had come out of your mouth, this was definitely not something normal. Deciding that maybe it was just a mistake, you called back, only to get the same message as before. With a tired sigh you called your dad, and they answered- but it wasn't your father's voice, you called each of your friends or acquaintances that you had in your contact list, but none of your contacts answered, not even your boyfriend who answered the first two or three rings.

Strangely, your dad's number kept calling your phone, you answered twice before giving up. The voice on the other end that belonged to a man sounded strange, almost as if he was in...shock?, although thinking about it, perhaps it was just confusion. The last thing he said to you before you hung up was a "who the fuck are you–?". You just turned off the phone after the last four calls because it wouldn't stop ringing.

Leaving you in your current state, unable to communicate and in a town you didn't know. Laura kept looking at you worried from her seated position. Deciding that enough of wallowing in misery was enough, you got up from the comfortable sofa you were on and sat down next to her. Perhaps socializing with the only person you knew would be better for now, plus when your headache subsides you might think better of what to do next.

Grabbing the small notebook together with the pen you wrote <<don't worry, everything is fine>>

When the old lady took you in, you learned many things about her.

The first thing you learned was that she was 98 years old. And that she was deaf due to an accident she had as a child.

The second thing you learned was that her husband had been killed in World War II. And all because he was enlisted in the army to fight for the allied countries, he had died due to the impact of a stray bullet.

And the third thing was that his son died several years after his father's death, due to lung disease. You felt bad because you were using her son's room, but Laura had told you not to worry about it.

Clutching the small notebook in her wrinkled hands together with the pen, she wrote to you <<you can always tell me anything>>

It could be said that you were lonely and somewhat hopeless, but with Laura by your side you felt that very soon you would be able to find a way to return home.

...

You didn't know what to think when a blond man appeared at the house that same afternoon. What caught your attention the most about his appearance was his beard and the long jacket he was wearing.

"Shit– I was right". Ah, he had the same voice you heard, he was the man of the phone.

Wait- what was he right about?

- - - - - - -

// curiosities //

World War II ended 79 years ago (1945 - 2024), Laura was 20 years old when the war ended. Her husband died when she was 19 years old, her son died of a lung disease that slowly became terminal when she was 27 years old.

- - - - - - -

I want a Laura in my life~ 😩

reblog and give me a big heart if you like it <3 and also comment and tell me what do you think! you can do it in this post or write it in my inbox!

[dia-souls]

Diabolik Lovers Cute and Sweet Confessions (Based on DF and LE Games and CDs) part1

(❤️ fluff moments, cute confession, OOC, ... ❤️)

Shu to Yui: I...lose all meaning in life when you’re not with me. From here on out, I’ll protect both you and my family with my own two hands. To live alongside my precious family, and the woman I love. Komori Yui. I...love you. (DF Vampire.End)

Shu talking about Yui: Forcing her way into my heart, she’s a meddlesome, bothersome, and precious woman. Until she takes her final breath, I’ll continue to love her. (Zero CD track.04)

Shu talking about Yui: I’m well aware. Even so, I don’t plan on letting her go. If I fall into misfortune, I’ll simply drag her along with me, no matter how deep we may drop. (Zero CD track.04)

Reiji to Yui: My beloved Yui... No matter what kind of destiny lies ahead of us, we will always be together. Forever, and ever. (DF Vampire.End)

Reiji to Yui: Please make a promise. Vow that you will entrust your future to me, and me only. I love you. (BB CD track.05)

Reiji to Yui: The flowers right here are in full bloom right now. It is a beautiful garden. Let us pluck one of them. I am sure it will look lovely in your hair. (Daylight CD track.05)

Ayato to Yui: You’re right here in front of me. That’s why I want to touch you. Want to embrace you. Don’t want to let you go. Want you by my side... I love you Yui. No matter what becomes of the world, let’s be together. That’s simply how I feel. (DF Vampire.End)

Ayato to Yui: Don’t ever let go again, understood? …Well, I’m not lettin’ you even if you tried. Haha…I’ll love you and only you…forever. (BB CD track.05)

Ayato to Yui: I love you. More than anyone else in this world. I won’t let you go until death parts us. ...No, scratch that. Even if one of us dies, I’m not givin’ you up. (LE Vampire.End)

Kanato to Yui: Yui-san I’ll live on for your sake. So please be there by my side. Stay with me forever, and ever. This love is eternal... (DF Vampire.End)

Kanato to Yui: Your place to be is by my side. Likewise, you are the only person I wish to keep my by side. I won’t hand you over to anyone! (Zero CD track.04)

Kanato to Yui: You...were always the one holding me in your arms, while I failed to do anything for you. I was always on the receiving end, making demands...Even if it may be too late, is there really nothing I can do for you right now? For your sake, I will... (Daylight CD track.04)

Kanato to Yui: Honestly, the fact I’m able to hold your hand again like this...It feels like a miracle to me. I truly...truly am so relieved. I think I finally realize how valuable you and your life are. ー And what it means to have to part one day. ...As well as that it is something unavoidable. (Daylight CD track.05)

Laito to Yui: My life has been worth it, simply because I was able to meet you. ...Thank you. Even if I have been nothing but a marionette my whole life, my love for you is genuine. It’s such a trivial matter, when I consider I could have lost you. (DF Vampire.End)

Laito to Yui: Thank god...To think that for the longest time...I believed that I did not need something precious...or special to me...Yet right now, I can’t even phantom a life without you...That’s a huge change of heart...for me personally. So, please? From here on out, till forever. Or till your life comes to an end is fine as well... Stay with me, okay? (BB CD track.04)

Laito to Yui: You truly are a strange girl. You are probably the only one...who can rouse my emotions this much. It hurts. Very much so...I want you to love me from the bottom of your heart. (PS CD track.04)

Subaru to Yui: Thanks to you, I was able to change. I found something I wish to protect. All I want is for my precious family to smile. Because I realized there is no greater joy which exists in life. Thank you. (DF Vampire.End)

Subaru to Yui: I was able to break through the darkness, and overcome my own cruel fate.I’m never lettin’ you go again. Yui I will love you forever. (DF Vampire.End)

Subaru to Yui: No matter what the future holds for us, I’ll protect you so don’t ever leave my side again...Okay? I love you. (BB CD track.05)

Ruki to Yui: I didn’t think we’d one day tie the knot under the blue sky like this. ...I wonder if this warmth in my chest is what one would call ‘happiness’? ...I would have never gotten the chance to experience this feeling if I hadn’t met you. ...So thank you. ( DF Vampire.End)

Ruki to Yui: It’s because you’re here. You’re the one who makes the sky, and the whole world seem that much more beautiful. You are the one making me feel so fulfilled inside. You were my joy, my luck...and my hope. I doubt that will ever change. We will live and pass away together. That’s how I truly feel. I love you Yui. (DF Vampire.End)

Ruki to Yui: Let’s be together and love each other. Just like we vowed on this ring. Until the bitter end. (Daylight CD track.04)

Ruki to Yui: No need to be scared. I’m right here with you. Even if I were to leave, it would only be for a short while. Once you open your eyes, I’ll be there in front of you again. No matter where you find yourself waking up. I will come to see you at once. So...Don’t worry about a thing, and rest in peace. (Daylight CD track.05)

Kou to Yui: You’re so beautiful! I almost want to show you off to the whole world and brag about how you’re MY bride! Thank you so much for choosing me...I will treasure you for life. (DF Vampire.End)

Kou to Yui: Even if death tries to separate us...I won’t give up on you so easily again. I will vow my eternal love to you. Until the very last second. I love you Yui. (DF Vampire.End)

Kou to Yui: Please…Smile? …So I can burn the image of your smile...in my mind forever. (Daylight CD track.01)

Yuma to Yui: Try holding my hand. It’s warm, right? Hehe...It’s the same temperature as yers now, right? (DF Vampire.End)

Yuma to Yui: Still...Don’t ya think it’s ironic? I once survived a fire, yet here I am once again, surrounded by flames. ...I’ll love ya forever, and ever...Yui. (DF Manservant.End)

Yuma to Yui: Take a look. The sun has appeared in the sky. Right now, we’re the very first people on this earth to witness the sunrise. (Daylight CD track.05)

Azusa to Yui: I will never let you go again...I love you, Eve...Let’s savor these moments we spend together from here on out, okay...? (DF Vampire.End)

Azusa to Yui: I’m so happy to be able to live here together with you in this Paradise. A Paradise for just the two of us, where nobody will get in our way, or disagree with our relationship. Now it can be just the two of us, for eternity. (DF Vampire.End)

Azusa to Yui: If you were to become a flower…I promise I will continue to treasure you, just as much as I do right now…I’ll tell you how pretty you are every day, and give you water. And every time the petals move…I’ll think of it as you smiling. (Daylight CD track.05)

Carla to Yui: I promise that I shall forever protect you...as well as our child inside your belly, to show my thanks for granting me with such warm feelings. (LE Vampire.End)

Carla to Yui: I thought happiness was something I would never get to experience. But I believe that I have finally come to somewhat understand what it means. (LE Vampire.End)

Carla talking about Yui: To think she would seem so fleeting, in such a fragile physical state. Even so, she continued to strongly express her feelings for me. My irreplaceable partner. (Daylight CD track.05)

Shin to Yui: You are all I need. There is nothing else I want. ...Be with me forever, okay? (DF Vampire.End)

Shin to Yui: I-I’m begging you…!! Don’t leave me…! …Ugh…Why? …Just when…I finally saw the light thanks to you…This just can’t be, right? (Daylight CD track.05)

Shin to Yui: Right now I realize that being able to submit to others when needed is a sign of strength as well. It does not matter if this other person belongs to another race, or if they’re the enemy of us Founders. …I refuse to give up. Not until the bitter end. No way in hell! This is my chance…to show you how strong I truly am! (Daylight CD track.05)

Kino to Yui: You taught me many important things...Such as how to love someone...and trust others. Thank you so much, truly. (LE Vampire.End)

Kino to Yui: At this Promised Land, I want to live together forever. With you, the person more dear to me than anything or anyone else in this world. I love you Yui. (LE Vampire.End)

Kino to Yui: I honestly didn’t think there would ever come a day where I get to speak these words but...Let me say them. I love you Yui. More than anyone, or anything else. You are precious to me...even more so than my own life. (LE Heaven.03)

Kino to Yui: Hehe, I can’t believe just hearing you say my name…fills me with so much joy. If only I had realized this sooner. (Daylight CD track.05)

[thehelltingvilleclub]

Bill Dickey - Comic & Ego Extraordinaire

Welcome to the club, why not meet the president?

William “Bill” Alan Dickey [04/13/80] | [5'11.5 (that .5 is real Important*)] Secretary of Comics | President of the Eltingville Club AOL / Online Users: [greedo318] | [DarkxKnightx] Theme Songs: What’s My Age Again? - blink-182 | My Own Worst Enemy - Lit | Brutal - Negative 25 Favorite Shit: Stan Lee, The X-Men, Complete Runs, Signed Editions, The Joker, Emma Frost, The Batman, Alternate Earths, Variant Covers, Crossovers, Torrent Sites, Action Figures, Statues/Busts, Alex Ross, Bondage Covers, First Printings, Continuity, Cosplay Chicks, “Headlights”.

In the ripe year of 1999, Bill Dickey couldn't be any more... Tired? Annoyed? A lonely piece o' sh-- But that's fine, everything is fine, right guys? .... Guys? The fact he's managed to keep the club together is baffling at best (and all thanks to Jerry, and May.. er.. Mr. Osewai, actually), and completely unbelievable at worst, but he's still got his friends (kind of) and they still like him (eh..) He's a nice guy, honest, just.. don't turn on your brain.

Variants Under the Cut--

Oh Captain, My Captain

His @ greedo318 account got banned essentially in the first two weeks of him getting it on Messenger about a year back, as May and Pete helped Josh essentially spam report it when he started to harass Josh there too. Hence the new name that he actually uses.

Mrs. Dickey is still trying to force him to get a job, and while he has applied, he flops any and every interview he lands with his stupid need to be the loudest asshole in the room.

This man's ego is absolutely the size of the sun, it's almost immeasurable I assure you, HOWEVER--

Show him some ⋆｡°✩spunk~✮⋆˙ show him you bark back just as harsh as him and he *might* just keep you around.

Someone please just get him a better acne face wash and a steady form of income that isn't his mother's paychecks bro please for the love of god--

He was actually one of the first in the group to get a car, but he never has money for gas so he like never drives it. It was a "gift from dad" according to his mom, but he doesn't believe her for a minute. (He's convinced she bought it for him to get him to move out.)

His mom watches Titanic every year on his birthday after 1997 and he HATES it to the point he has threatened to disconnect the breaker if she kept playing it at full volume.

He is still convinced that he has a shot with May (Despite her telling him repeatedly no) and is INSISTENT about it like a possessive little weirdo (news flash, he doesn't but he's delusional so it's fine)

^^ This absolutely pisses Pete off but he can't say shit cause he's a baby that won't ask her out so--

The night of the Destruction of Joe's Fantasy World, Mr. Osewai had tried to stop in and pick something up for May when he walked in on.. well, Dickey on fire. His paternal instincts kicked in and managed to help the kids and smooth some things over with the families (and.. may or may not have threatened to rip out Joe's tongue but like it's fine).

Dickey has a strong sense of gratitude for the guy, even if he expresses it in the WEIRDEST ways, 'cause at the end of the day the guy kind of saved his only group of friends from his own bullshit.

When he does eventually land a job, it's essentially a generic gas station attendant, but they let him read his comics on the job when he has to work nights so that's a plus?

Guh guys I hate this man so much can someone please explain why I have so much fun drawing him please please please--

also... this somethin' y'all want?

[tothosewholisten]

presents

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Forever Healed | TUA insert

available across wattpad, tumblr, quotev and ao3.

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"He was never a father really, more like a mean old state-national basketball coach."

- Y/n Hargeeves, Number 00, The Gifted

Being the adopted super powered kid of Sir Reginald Hargeeves was never a simple task. You always could've been better for him. But what happens when he dies and the world ends in a few days?

You are Number Zero, here's your story..

Masterlist

Pintrest board

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[pinkrelish]

𝐭𝐡𝐞 "𝐲𝐞𝐬" 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐲.

singledad!mechanic!eddie x fem!reader

✶"Can I kiss you?"✶

NSFW — smut, blowjob, swallowing, ball worship, cock worship, grinding, dry humping, first kiss, slow burn, flirting, mutual pining, eddie is touch starved, mild angst, 18+

chapter: 10/20 [wc: 25.1k]

↳ part 01 / 02 / 03 / 04 / 05 / 06 / 07 / 08 / 09 / 10 / 11 / 12

AO3

Chapter 10: The Intentional Second Date

Smoke trembled past his lips in stuttered bursts.

It was Eddie’s second cigarette of the morning. Not completely out of the ordinary for him; sometimes he needed a second one when Adrie gave him trouble before preschool, or if he had a bad night’s sleep and relied on nicotine to help delay the impending headache, but that’s not why he was smoking again today. Adrie woke up, got dressed, brushed her teeth, and told him she loved him in the carpool lane. She was a dream. His nightmare, on the other hand, was coming to fruition. Because of course he couldn’t remember where he’d set his wallet if it weren’t chained to his pants on a sober day, but drinking enough to where he should’ve been plastered? He remembered it all. He remembered it all.

Oh, he remembered it all.

And when he heard the front employee door to the auto shop unlock, he held his breath, and counted down the routine seconds for you to pop your head out in the alleyway and greet him, and when it didn’t happen.. He knew you remembered too.

The morning smile did not come. No greeting. No laughter. Just nothing. Nothing happened except for the glass door to the lobby opening, and you going inside.

He fucked up. He fucked up. He fucking fucked up.

He made things weird, and now you were avoiding him, as you had every right to after he tried to initiate phone sex without warning— Consent? Consent. Both of you were inebriated to some degree, and he’d never felt more like a creep.

Oh, God.

His knees went weak.

Anxious bile sloshed in his seizing stomach. His face broke out in a cold sweat. Knots constricted tighter. Heart beating in his throat. Decisions—mistakes—put stars in his vision. His world was ending, and it pounded at his temples. This was it. This was it. He fucked up.

“Good morning, hand—Oh?”

Eddie froze.

You leaned more than your head out the door, and stepped onto the concrete slab. All your tender attention was on him, studying his pale face, and his hunched form. Your eyebrows swooped in worry at how he was crouched to the reedy weeds instead of standing tall with his back against the gray bricks. A frown slighted your smile, insulting your beauty when you saw him bent down, knees to his chest, holding his head while his other hand shook hard enough the cigarette pinched between his fingers fell amongst the rocks.

“Eddie? You don’t look good. Are you okay?”

His lips parted.

Was he dreaming? Was the lift of delight in your tone when you first went to greet him, and then the drop to concern ebbing your voice deeper when he appeared ill a figment of his imagination? Were you about to call him handsome? Was this the second chance he didn’t deserve?

“Eddie?”

“Yeah!” His exclamation helped him stand, and the twitch of your lips battled his nausea. “Yeah, I just had a long night,” he lied.

Lightheaded, he concentrated on keeping balanced in his woozy lurch towards the wall.

Sharp edges of rocks slid against one another under your winter boots. “Aw, I’m sorry.” Your apology was sincere, as was your silly quirk of swinging your arms to point finger guns towards the garage. “I brought donuts this morning, and went ahead and made coffee, so they’re both fresh if you’re the type to dunk.” You mimicked dunking a donut into a mug of coffee. “Maybe it’ll make you feel better?”

Endearing. Genuinely, honestly, so fucking adorably endearing.

“Yeah, that sounds great right now.” The pet names returned to their restricted status for now. He had to know for sure. “Did you, uh, like playing with us Saturday?” It was a coward’s way to dance around the real question burning his esophagus, but it was a valiant introduction.

“I did! It was a lot of fun. I’m glad you invited me. And, hey, uhm, I didn’t say anything weird to your friends, or anything like that, did I?”

“No, you didn’t,” he responded in an even tone, stomping his curiosity from fluctuating his cadence with hopefulness when you chose that of all things to ask him.

“Good! My memory went a little fuzzy after my fourth drink, you know, when Lloyd kept trying to get us to sing along to that adventuring song he made up. I didn’t know if I said anything weird, or rude, or something by accident.”

Salvation reigned upon him.

Eddie’s lungs allowed him to breathe at the kindness alcohol spared him, and finally, he could relax. Your fretting stemmed from making a good impression on his friends, and with his reassurance, you stopped fidgeting at your nails, and the color returned to his cheeks. “You don’t need to worry about that. Seriously, they loved you.” His grin struggled to blossom. “Do you not remember anything else?”

In contrast, your grin was a field of wildflowers swaying under the summer sun.

“Not really, it’s pretty spotty around the time they left, but I do remember a few things,” you said, taking another step towards him. “I remember you throwing a napkin at the back of my head. I remember falling asleep in Robin’s car. I also remember asking her to pull over on the side of the road. I remember waking up in the living room, on her dad’s recliner of all places. And boy! do I remember being hungover.”

Closing the few feet of distance remaining, your confidence was established in your ability to pinch the sleeve of his coveralls and tug at it in a playful, flirty way, coasting your frosted sigh over his embroidered name patch.

You claimed him, heart and soul, “But I remember us dancing, too. I’m so glad I remember us dancing.” Softer, “You’re the sweetest person I’ve ever met, you know that?”

“I’m the sweetest?” he repeated in a mumble, complying with the tug to open his arm in a curve, which you fit into.

“Of course you are. You sure you’re not sick? You still look like you’re about to puke.”

As if your grip on his tricep wasn’t enough of an anchor on reality, the backs of your fingers gliding down his cheek were, checking his temperature like he was worthy of being doted on. A fortunate thing, a blessing; having your hand guide him from the river Styx with a simple brush, thumb tracing the edge of his lip.

Yeah, his heart clenched. “I’m okay,” he rushed to whisper, wanting the words to sprint after your fingers falling from his chin. He kept the connection alive by copying the stroke along your spine, over your denim jacket. 

The wintry redness returned to his face, he knew. His racing pulse brought it there, splotching warmth to his skin. There was not enough bravery in the world to ask how much of the dance you recalled; whether your memory ended at your head on his chest, or your wrist to his lips, or your foreheads together with your noses smashed to the other’s cheek, but he did gleam one thing for certain.

You beamed up at him with eager eyes, as if those intimacies flashed in the sun’s reflection, and you wanted more of them.

He said, “I think I’ll feel better after a donut. Or three.”

“Or a nap, or three,” you countered.

“Sweetheart,” he exhaled, a rasp present in his throat from smoking, “I’m not gonna waste my time napping when I could be eating donuts with you.”

A wry laugh played at your lips. “How romantic.”

“I’ve been known to be romantic from time to time.”

You hummed in interest, arching an eyebrow. It was a challenge. Oh, really? you asked. Show me, then, you said.

Stepping back, you dragged your hand down his arm and embraced the motion, seeing it through to his elbow, forearm, the heel of his palm. Feeling but a faint outline of his form beneath the thick sleeve of his canvas jacket and light blue coveralls, yet still clinging to him as if he were your heater. Your warmth. Another body laying next to you in a cold bed.

“C’mon, handsome.” You urged him inside by your feeble grip around the stretchy knit cuff covering the plastic bead bracelet around his wrist. “Let's see if getting some caffeine in you helps you look less like a corpse.”

He snorted, and obeyed. “Whatever you say, dear.”

By all means, it seemed you didn’t remember the phone call. No doubt you were stone cold sober for the bad jokes, dorky innuendos, and inappropriate behavior that would be frowned upon at work, but you didn’t bring those up, so he didn’t either. He was in the clear.

Fate forgave him. And now, he could move on with the ‘thank you’ he owed you in good faith.

————

It was days later when your stapler ran out of staples.

You clamped it shut a few more times until you realized, and opened the second drawer on the short filing cabinet beneath your desk. After a cool slide of metal on metal came a rattle. Instead of your extra sticky notes, folders, and office supplies being visible, a foreign object sat on top of them. Perplexed, you reached in and grasped the lime green box. An index card was taped to it, and removing it jolted the waxy candies inside, sliding them against the cardboard in a merry cascade.

Setting the Mike and Ikes aside, you read the thin, angular handwriting on the note, written in red.

DO YOU WANT TO GO ON A DATE WITH ME? (circle one)

              YES    or   NO

ARE YOU ONLY SAYING YES BECAUSE ITS YOUR POLICY?

              YES    or   NO

By outward appearances, your mouth was tugged downwards at the corners, but make no mistake, it was not a frown. No, no. What your expression was overcome with was so sentimental, so empathetic, you had to pout.

Besotted, you hugged the card to your chest, and reflected on the heaviness of his expectant gaze when he passed by your desk this week. The longer eye contact, the anticipatory lift of his eyebrows wrinkling his forehead when you waved at him. He must’ve put this in your drawer days ago, and you had kept him waiting by accident, poor guy.

You weren’t about to keep him in suspense any longer.

(Though, maybe he should’ve put it in the top drawer, which you opened daily for your highlighters, if he wanted a quicker response.)

Pen to paper, you selected your answers, jotted a line, and tucked the notecard inside a manila folder with two invoices he needed to fill out. You pushed your rolly chair away from the desk, and dug through your purse before going to the breakroom where Eddie sat hunched over the round table, shoveling a chicken Rice-a-Roni meal in his mouth (haphazardly) with his left hand while writing in his DND notebook with his right.

You stood at the vending machine with your hip jutted out, sinking to one side with utmost concentration on your pursed lips, perusing the rows of choices. There were just so, so many categories to choose from. Chips, candy, chocolates. How could you ever decide? You crossed your arms, and tapped your chin at the dilemma, taking your time. This was a wise use of your work hours, of course. Flirting with your coworker by passing notes, and watching the side profile of his smirk break through his curtain of curls in the glass reflection.

Finally, you settled on F4, and slotted in your quarters, punching those buttons.

The Kit Kat bar was deposited in a loud clunk.

“Hey, didn’t know if you saw,” you started casually, and held the manila folder out to him with an imposing grimace, “but you forgot to fill out a couple of lines at the bottom of these invoices. Can’t have you slipping up, and not finishing your paperwork before working on your little roleplaying game, now can we?”

Eddie shifted his gaze from the bulky folder failing to stay pinched closed, to your face. Fawning, he arched into an overly apologetic expression to match your performance, and placed a hand over his heart. “Oh, no, sweetheart. I’m so sorry. Did I forget to do that? Silly me.”

“Better not let it happen again, Mr. Munson,” you warned, placing it on the table and leaving.

“Never, never,” he promised.

Back at your desk, you sat in your chair, calm and poised. And approximately two seconds later, you kicked off the floor into a fierce spin, dizzying the lobby around you. The place was a blur, your stomach swirled, and still, your goofy grin refused to wane. But, you did stop eventually. The antics had to come to an end. You did have work to do, afterall.. Which you ignored when you heard him rip into the foil wrapper in the other room, and you couldn’t possibly concentrate on calling a warehouse to check on an order of headlights when your ears were tuned to the flimsy chair scraping across the tile, and his heavy work boots stomping down the hall.

“Filled out those forms for ya, sweetness,” Eddie said with a wink.

There was a weight to the manila folder when he dropped it on your desk, and tapped twice on his way out to the garage. Not a physical weight, but a gravity that wasn’t there before, now concentrated in his keen eye contact. An invisible significance.

The relationship had changed, just then, in the trade off of boring invoices.

Opening the folder, the index card was deemed more important than the paperwork. Your gaze stalled on the thick circles around YES, and NO. Yes, you’d go on a date with him, and no, it wasn’t because of your policy. Below them, your thick handwriting flowed together.

what did you have in mind?

I RETURNED THOSE KIDS MOVIES FOR YOU.

  YOU CAN THANK ME FOR SAVING YOU

    THE LATE FEE BY WATCHING SOME

       HORROR WITH ME AT MY PLACE

PICK YOU UP SATURDAY AT 6?

Fighting back another sickeningly stupid willowy sigh at his charm, you wrote a lovesick reply.

In usual Eddie fashion, he left the very last box on the second form blank, so you had to go out to the service area, and address the mechanic bent over a car engine. Not that you were complaining. The back of his coveralls hugged the slight curve of his ass, and his hair was not only pulled into a low bun at his nape, but he wore a bandana tied to keep his bangs off his forehead.

“Hey there handsome, couldn’t help but notice you left the date box on this form blank again.”

“Oh, did I, pretty girl?” He spun, and rolled his eyes to mock himself. Wiping the grease from his hands on his coveralls, he took your pen. “It’s my old age, y’know. Things always slippin’ my mind.” Mumbling to himself, he pressed his palm to the back of the folder, and sketched out a sentence into the page longer than a few numbers warranted. During the arduous process, he looked at you with sorrow, and complained, “These dates are just so tedious to write out, it may just take me all night to complete.”

You refused to give him the satisfaction of a smirk at his (possible) insinuation.

All night? He wished.

Eddie surrendered the folder and pen, and smiled at you, stretching the streak of soot on his chin and cheek. “There you go. All filled out. Not a ‘T’ uncrossed, nor an ‘I’ left undotted.”

“Thank you,” you over-enunciated as a goodbye.

The very second the glass door came to a slow close behind you, you sat at your desk with the folder, and threw a subtle glance out the window to the garage to make sure Eddie wasn’t watching you lose your mind over two short words exchanged in quick succession.

sounds perfect :)

YOURE PERFECT =)

For the second time since you moved to Hawkins, you had a date. And judging by Eddie’s sway from foot to foot with his hands laced behind his neck and his head hung back, listening to the traffic outside echo off the cement walls, he was thrilled for his second date, too. He dropped into a steady bob at music that wasn’t playing. A too-large grin teased at his mouth as he paced to the motor he was repairing, and bent over it. His boyish excitement spilled like an overpoured mug of coffee into his unabashed giggle, and glance in your direction.

Eyes locked, he didn’t steal your breath. You gave it to him willingly.

————

Saturday’s setting sun was just another audience member to your date night routine. Robin and her mom leaned in the doorway of the bathroom the entire time you were shaving, and due to the opacity of the shower curtain, you were unable to convey your glare to the degree it deserved.

“Well, why doesn’t she wear this instead?”

There was a shock of laughter mixed with Robin’s scoff. “Mom, if she wore that Eddie would pass out on the spot. What if he hit his head, and they had to call an ambulance? You know she can’t drive him to the hospital. No, this bra still gives sex appeal without causing an injury. And besides, calling 9-1-1 would put a damper on them—”

“Rob,” you groaned.

“—spending a wonderful evening together,” she finished.

The thunk of a walking cane neared, and her dad’s hoarse voice sounded from down the hallway, “My! The rowdy Munson boy is getting lucky tonight, is he?” he proposed in a faux British accent after watching BBC nature documentaries all day. “Do you think he’d have dinner with us tomorrow? We haven’t seen him since Robin threw that New Year’s party years ago, and almost set the roof on fire.”

Oh dear God get me out of here.

Once you were finished with your shower, freshly scrubbed and smelling nice, you humored them by wearing the outfit they picked out. It was pretty much what you would’ve worn anyway. A short black skirt made modest by nylon tights to stave off the chill from Eddie’s trailer, and an oversized crocheted cream cardigan with tiny pink flowers, the hem of which hit you at your waist, showing a tempting preview of your stomach when you raised your arms to fix your hair. The pale lavender bra (the reason for their debate), was covered by the aforementioned sweater, and you weren’t sure if the sheerness of the lace mattered much when Eddie’s daughter may be present, or in the next room over. It didn’t occur to you to ask if he’d have Adrie with him, so, such is life. The bra may stay a secret despite their efforts to doll you up. But the sudden realization he may see you in it tonight clenched your stomach with excitement..

The clock struck 5:55, and an ominous roll of thunder put everyone on edge. It electrified nerves, and stood hair on end, setting forth premonitions of bad weather and foul fortune. Doom, it was; and it came, and came, neverending. Except.. It wasn’t thunder. It was Eddie Munson’s brutal music.

His little black car came flying down the road, and swung into the driveway, screeching to a halt heralded by flung rocks spat by his tires, and a flock of songbirds splitting the sky.

And yet?

Charm bowed before Eddie’s easy strut. Pebbles dodged his stride. Clouds of hellish dust evaded the shine on his laced up boots. His tight jeans flaunted the subtle flex of his thighs, and his belt sloped on his narrow hips with each uneven stride, daring the world to stare at the extra length of stiff leather flopping outside the confines of the belt loops, attracting all the attention he desired to the places he wanted.

You were still in the living room struggling with the buckle on your Mary Janes when the intense, raw screams of his heavy metal music stopped, and the muffled guitars faded away. He showed up, shockingly, on time, and you shot out the door before the heavy slants of sun breaching the leafless trees could beat down on his trademark jacket rattling with dainty chains.

“Hey there, sweetness.”

“Hey!” you blurted in a huff, racing down the steps. Flustered by his punctuality, you made the first move of the night by snatching his hand and dragging him away.

Slighted by your absence of drooling over how cool he looked, Eddie grunted in objection, but let himself be steered away. He glanced over his shoulder at the three faces peering at him from the window, and spared them a tentative wave. They were nosy, but not in the unkind way he was used to, and for that, he was thankful.

You apologized at a hurried pace, “Sorry, but if you step foot on the porch, they’re gonna ask you a bazillion questions, and never let us leave.”

“Ah,” he said, short of a laugh, “but let me get the door for you. Wanna impress them.”

“Impress them?” Dregs of sleepy sunlight highlighted the twist of your lips. “You come in here like a bat outta hell, blaring your music loud enough that I’m surprised you’re not hard of hearing, and you’re worried about impressing Bobbie’s parents?”

Refusing to let your fingers slip from his when he felt your grip go weak, he tightened his hold, and opened the car door with his other hand, sidestepping awkwardly to avoid the wide swing, towing you around him.

“Is that so strange?”

“It’s a little strange.”

“Good.” He established the bond of your palm cupped to his until you sank into the red plush passenger’s seat. At the groan of the hinges, and a hard slap on the metal, he finished, “I like being strange—” Punctuated by the door slamming shut. His cackle was far away. Shrieking silence filled your ears, interrupted by your elevated pulse pounding in your chest, and the tink of a pebble pinging the bumper when one was unfortunate enough to come into contact with his boot as he strode around the front of the car with his hands in his back pockets, stretching his shirt over the curve of his stomach.

What a lovely thing he was, truly. To lord the power of sheer captivation over you, and still ground you with a humble gaze and tender smile through a windshield flecked with dirt, as if stealing one of your five senses was a normal feat and returning it to you wasn’t an act of benevolence.

He folded himself into the seat beside you and staggered his legs until he could relax fully into the position, and turned the key in the ignition. His music took residence in the sense he stole. You tensed in anticipation, but it wasn’t offensive. The previous song was ending, and with you being boxed in with the speakers bullying your ears from every angle, you heard the animalistic screams as something more haunting, more beautiful. They were organic. Emotional. Conveying a longing which flowed into the next track; a restrained piece laced with sweltering lines, where each croaky utterance heated your cheeks fiercer and fiercer. Carnal of a different nature.

Intentionally avoiding eye contact with Eddie, you twisted enough to see the carseat behind you was empty. “No Adrie?” you asked to confirm a suspicion.

“She was invited to a sleepover for one of her friend’s birthday parties tonight,” he said.

You reeled at the information, but not for the reason you assumed. “Wait, what? There’re people out there willing to have a hoard of five-year-olds running around their house? Like, with the screaming and everything?”

“Crazy, right? Some people still have their sanity, I guess.” He stamped the gas and clutch, revving the engine with an amused answer poised on his plump lips. “Or enough downers to get them through the night.”

The guitars increased in ferocity, drowning out his wistful reminiscing on such substances helping him through the day, pre-Adrie.

It was then you noticed an interesting detail about his compact car you didn’t fully appreciate last time you were in it: there was no center console. You didn’t need to check. The lack of separation was confirmed by the heat radiating from his heavy palm draped over the gear shift, and the blunt edge of his nails skimming your tights when he clicked the stick into a lower slot, dragging it along your leg. The armrests were raised, and they too touched at the base. It was no surprise when his long hair swept your clothed shoulder as he twisted around to look out the back window and put the car in reverse, avoiding the Buckley’s dented mailbox, and lurching you against the seatbelt.

The lyrics peaked in sultry aggression.

So, no Adrie. “Am I meeting your uncle, then?” Oh, how your question was thin against the strong note the singer held. His wavering timbre penetrated you in waves, releasing a ripple of tingles from head to toe. Creating a change in the tension existing between you and Eddie when he answered in a deeper register.

“No, he’s uh, he’s gone for the weekend,” he said, drumming his rings on the steering wheel, squeezing his fingers over the gear stick to shift it into drive. “Out playing poker with his friends. So, uh, it’s just you and me. S’that cool?”

So, no Adrie, and no uncle.

“Yeah—Yeah, that’s cool,” you replied. Whereas his voice went lower, yours went higher at the acknowledgement. Fainter, wispier. Fluttery with the nerves in your stomach. Restless like butterfly wings beating on gusts at the explicit implication matching the subject matter pumping through the speakers.

Tonight was your first real date with Eddie, in his trailer, alone.

Soon, the dense thicket of rural Hawkins was replaced by houses and population; gone were the fields of deer, and approaching in a blur were stout brick buildings, and stop lights swinging in the slight breeze.

He slowed at the intersection where Family Video’s neon sign struck red over the black pavement, and stopped. Eddie, being an opportunist, saw the boring wait for the light to turn green as fortuitous. It granted him the ability to gaze upon you as he wished, ready to take you in after your rushed greeting. You had robbed him of the movie-esque scene where he’d walk up to your door, knock three times, greet you with a stunning grin and compliment you until you were giggling and swooning in his arms. It was only fair he drank you in now, in the low liquid blue of the early night.

Beyond bewitched, he didn't register how methodically he traced his eyes over your body; devouring details the generous neckline of your cardigan allowed him, reaching the narrow channel of shadow where your bra assisted your chest, and the small gaps the tiny pink flowers woven into the yarn created in the chain loops, gifting him a charitable preview of the delicate lavender beneath. Appreciating how below that, your skirt wrapped your legs snugger than his arms had ever been privileged, and your tights graced skin he’d never felt. Perhaps he even lingered on the strap of your Mary Janes draped around your ankle, wondering if he’d be lucky enough to circle his fingers there one day, too.

Flattery raced your heart. You’d never been the subject of someone’s study to this degree, as if you were artwork to be admired. Not from any of the dates you’d been on, anyway. Not in a meaningful way, consumed wholly by someone you considered a close friend. And not while a man sang about vulgar acts in a gorgeous way.

Eddie remembered to breathe when green flashed in his periphery, and his gaze evened the playing field when he caught you dedicating entire prayers to the indecent crease at his hip and inner thigh where he rested his large palm.

“Baby, you’re beautiful,” he exhaled.

Not you look beautiful. You are beautiful.

Meeting him head-on, you smiled. “I don’t have the lexicon to describe you.” His expression faltered to a confused pinch between his brows, and you reassured him, “Handsome isn’t good enough anymore. Never was. No words are. They need to invent new ones.”

Leaning in, he scrunched his nose, and teased, “You can just call me hot.” Which would’ve been a decent line; imposing himself so near his words caressed the gloss on your lips, and finishing the hard plosive—Hot—with the bite of his charismatic wolfish grin. But the aggravated honks killed the mood.

Two cars behind him laid on their horns, and he was startled into the reality of holding up traffic. You openly laughed at his change in demeanor, at how he scrambled to get the car going before they got angry again, all flustered and stomping too hard on the gas, sending you both slamming backwards in your seats.

“Yeah, real hot stuff you got goin’ on,” you teased in return.

He stuck his tongue out in concentration as he checked the rearview mirror, speeding to put distance between him and the other cars. Dangerously, he slid his gaze to you once more, prioritizing you over the road. “Are you really gonna deny I'm the hottest guy you’ve ever met? Even with all your city boys, actors, and freaks who’ve been on bigger stages than me? Guys who took you to fancy sit-down restaurants in a suit and tie? Men who drone on about finances because they chose a viable career not covered in grease? Are they really hotter than me?”

His tone was flat, and his face neutral, cracking a cavern of curiosity wide within you.

Your instinct was to treat the insecurity as genuine, but the moment you opened your mouth to restore his confidence, he smirked.

“Just kidding, baby,” he broke the act. “I know I’m the favorite.”

Glowing with confidence, he took his hand off the gear shift to jab at your ribs, but he underestimated how thick the crochet was. Instead of tickling you, it was more of a soothing stroke along your side. And he didn’t stop. He kept up the intimate gesture, brushing the fabric with his curled index finger three times. Giggling, himself, at nothing other than his own thoughts.

Gone was the swell of empathy clogging your throat. “My favorite idiot,” you corrected in an exasperated mumble, yet leaning into the shy affection.

The cassette played static, then began a new song. Angsty still, but not quite as on the nose as the last. This, along with another dig at each other, eased the pressure preventing you two from relaxing into the evening. The awareness revealing itself in nervous glances and dry swallows digressed into your normal dynamic as friends with the benefit of flirty innocence without the stress of expectations. Those motives could stay locked between your clenched thighs, and aching against his jean’s zipper. Tonight was the first foray into real time together, and if you watched movies and it ended there with no moves made, or romantic elements explored, then so be it. There wouldn't be any unnecessary impatience, or snap decisions made to cross those final platonic boundaries if one of you chickened out. This date would be perfect, regardless.

Right?

You could endure another day of him acting confident in front of others, only for him to buckle under the pressure and pussy out before kissing you, right?

..Right?

Whatever. The night was young, and oh, how Eddie’s giddiness for spending time with you emerged. The instant he arrived at the trailer, he jammed his thumb into the seat belt latch and commanded you to stay put. Naturally, this didn’t go without a snort from you, but it escalated to true laughter when he stumbled out of the car, and sprinted around the front in a flustered jangle of chains beating on jeans, only to play it off as cool once he reached your side and opened your door for you. “You’re silly,” you commented. His chest rose with a panting breath, and his lips jumped into a playful smirk at his own oddities. He stepped back, and swept his arm in a classic bow.

The friction burn from the seat belt slipping through your grip was balmed by the chilled leather beneath your fingers when he offered his elbow to you. You set your heeled shoes on the uneven ground, and wobbled on the deep tire tracks scoring the dried mud, and again, he was twisting this way and that, trying to figure out the best gentlemanly way to help you balance. Not that his brave palm on the small of your back wasn’t warranted in the treacherous battle of shadows in the underripe evening, but even you couldn’t stop your snicker when he, too, met you with a side-ways glance.

“Nervous?” you asked, bringing attention to the situation for what it was.

“Me? Nervous?” He arched his eyebrows up, then brought them into a swift furrow. “Nah, never. I’m just making sure my girl doesn’t twist her ankle before I get to cook for her on our second date,” he ended with a suggestive tone, canting his head to yours. Foreheads near.

Ah, the buzzing of springtime bees was trembling your fingers again, gripping him when the hive in your stomach fed honey to your hungry heart, pumping, pumping a sugar rush.

Acknowledgements. His girl. Cooking. Second date.

He was sweet. And you were trapped in the sticky nectar thrumming in your veins. It was a futile effort, after all, to convince yourself you two could act as normal friends do around each other. Truly, you lost that war when you inclined your head to his, and divulged in the same grin he wore.

“Cook for me?” you repeated in a voice of ambrosia, which he partook.

“Mhmm,” he hummed amongst the drone of television programs filtered through bug screened windows. “I wanna watch movies with you, cook you somethin’ nice, and remind you that I’m not the guy I was at the movie theater—” He flinched at the last part, accepting your weak slap to his chest. Pleased with himself for finally swooning you, he trained his gaze on your giggly sway, and squinched his eyes with mirth.

“Eddie, I’m well aware you’re not that guy.”

“Oh?” he lilted. “But aren’t I? Still got the outdated haircut, stick in the mud attitude, and leather jacket.”

You slipped a finger beneath the jacket, and poked at the macabre skull on his tee. “Got a different shirt, though. Last time you were wearing a rattlesnake, now it’s..?”

“Metallica,” he finished. A softer expression deepend his dimple. There may have been a particular meaning behind it you were missing, but he didn’t share. “Good memory, but may I also bring to your attention that it’s fucking freezing out here?”

Overcome by a shiver, you retracted your prodding, and he removed his hand from your lower back. The warmth was sorely missed. You agreed, it was fucking freezing and pantyhose were not a replacement for snow pants.

Eddie jostled the keys from his pocket and unlocked the front door for you to enter first, trailing behind you with a welcome to his humble abode, as if you hadn’t been there several times before. But you supposed the circumstances were different when he showed you in, and a certain coziness defrosted your cheeks. The trailer was lit by a singular lamp in the living room and the nightlight from the bathroom. An electric radiator generated heat near the armrest where his pillow stayed, and at the other end of the couch was a messy pile of blankets in varying textures and thickness. A stack of three VHSes sat on the coffee table near a collection of never-used cork coasters. In the kitchen, a spread of groceries occupied the counter, along with a page from a magazine, but Eddie stole your attention before you could puzzle together the ingredients he laid out.

“So, which one do you wanna start with first?” Eddie asked, drawing your gaze to the VHSes fanned in his palms, fingers stretched wide to contain the movies.

Subtly, he wiggled the one on the end. The green HORROR sticker on the cover appeared new; unblemished, without creases or dirt. You recognized the drippy blood stylized title as the same one printed in the local newspaper warning mothers of its gore and perversions. Less subtly, he darted his eyes to it, and made encouraging noises while presenting it closer to you. It's not like you cared what order you watched his surprise selection in, so you went with the new release he was most eager for, as opposed to the other schlocky B movies.

“Sweet!”

Adorably, he told you to make yourself at home, and you both found yourselves bumping into each other in the entryway. You bent to unbuckle your shoes, and he shrugged off his jacket. Maybe you swung your knee into his shin, and he flopped the leather sleeve atop your head in retaliation. And when you stood, he jabbed his elbow into your arm before kneeling to untie his boots, and you picked a long, curly auburn hair off your sweater, holding it out and away from you as if it were revolting. “Is this what it’s like living with you?” you asked with an excessive amount of mock disgust.

“‘Fraid so,” he consoled, looking up at you as he worked the knot out of his laces. “At least—until I go bald.”

You tilted your head as you tried to picture him without his wild haircut, and after some consideration (and curious fingers kept laced tight to discipline yourself from running them through his curls to test the tamability of such rowdy layers cut without rhyme or reason), you concluded, “I think you’d still be the most attractive person I’ve ever met.”

His expression widened at your honesty. Pushing himself upright, he rocked side to side as he toed off his boots, and stepped beyond them, narrowing the distance between his ego and your lifted eyebrow. “Most attractive? Yeah?”

Before his head swelled to hot air balloon status from a compliment he pried out of you, you stopped him.

“Bald or not, you’re still Eddie,” you expressed. “And that’s what I like about you the most; your Eddieness. Regardless of your hair, you’re still that guy that’s willing to trip over his own feet so he can open a door for me.. and cook for me, apparently.”

You drove your gaze to the ingredients on the counter, but he distracted you from venturing into that part of the date.

“Uh-uh-uh,” he tsked. “Movie first, then dinner. I’ve been wanting to see this one, so make yourself comfortable. Get some blankets too, I know the radiator sucks.” The warmth it gave off rarely brought circulation to his toes when he was sleeping, much less kept him from shivering on the windy nights. “Lemme get us something to drink, and I’ll put on the movie.” He chose to fill two bright red plastic glasses with water and bring them to the coffee table. They were the type of textured cup one would find at a pizzeria, and he set them directly on the wood, because why bother with coasters when most of the varnish had been worn away over the years.

Water itself shouldn’t be a surprise, but the fact he chose it over beer stood out.

Interesting. You made yourself snuggly as instructed, and sat in the middle of the couch where two cushions met. Amongst the pile, you picked the thick blue and white striped comforter, and draped it over your not-quite-numb legs. He crouched in front of the TV, and popped open the VHS case, brushing his calluses over the frosted plastic cover, and shut the case with a satisfying snap. Lining the movie up with the VCR slot, he pushed on the flap, and it was accepted into the mouth of the machine—kuh-chunk, slide, whirring reels, a fuzzy high-pitched noise—staticy snow played, then the first commercial started, flickering a woman’s face mid-scream across the screen.

Eddie turned off the lamp, and in the sudden darkness, he slid his socked feet in timid steps across the carpet to avoid a pinky toe colliding with the coffee table, and he fell into place next to you.

The cushions sank with your combined weight. The seams separating you clashed. Hip, thigh, shoulder. Layers of clothing blazed from the heat of his proximity, setting fire to your cheeks. You weren’t touching, not really, not yet, and you both stared at each other with lips slightly parted.

Your voice went unnaturally airy as you offered him the blanket, “Want some?”

And his voice was lost to the sensation of his bare arm making contact with your sweater.

He nodded.

Predictable for the genre, the next commercial advertised a pair of tits before the camera cut away, and the woman was assumed to be brutally stabbed by a masked serial killer.

He shifted. You shifted.

The comforter slid across your lap. He stole the warm pocket of air you were generating for yourself, and replaced it with the cold half of the blanket. It may have been an innocent movement, but him yanking it caused you to press against him more than you already were. His arm went rigid with tensed muscles the further you sloped into the crevice where the cushions met, stiffening against your soft body like a brick wall you had no choice but to lean on. You tried to help the situation by breaking the silence between the next commercial.

“Do you want to know another Eddieness I find endearing?”

During the first part of your sentence he didn’t react. He watched the TV; jaw tight but not clenched; it was only on the last word did he turn his head, and set those big eyes of his on you.

You went ahead and answered, “It’s how shy you are.”

The hint of a deeper emotion eased from his gaze when he closed his eyes in a slow blink, and raised his brows, processing what you said. “’M not shy.” His smile grew at that, stretching half his mouth in shadow, making his nose appear larger, rounder.

“And awkward.”

“I’m not awkward,” he complained, tone soft and playful.

Lit by the soft grain of the movie starting on a scene of a young boy running inside pitch-black house, Eddie’s eyelashes clung to the remnants of light, curling longer, and longer. His lips lifted at the corners, testing a sneakier grin at the idea of you finding him both shy, and awkward. Words he hadn’t heard in years. Descriptors he would’ve called himself when he was still in high school and dipping his toe in the dating pool, but not since then. Not since he dabbled in liquid courage at parties and gained some experience from the confidence alcohol afforded him.. and lost when he discovered the consequences of acting impulsively, and his casual assuredness was ripped from him when his daughter was born.

Or, yeah, maybe he was always shy and awkward as you presumed, he just didn’t care about people’s opinions when he wasn’t invested in starting a future with them. Which was fine by him, you could call him dorky if you wanted, because here he was in the midst of a boyish rush of adrenaline when the lack of stressful music coming from the TV became ominous, and the excitement of his plan working vibrated in his chest.

“Oh! And you’re—” Whatever adjective you were about to use was bitten short.

Paying more attention to him than the movie, you missed the build up of the masked killer’s reflection in a mirror, and were caught off guard by the boy’s sudden blood curdling scream trilling above the heart-racing violin screeches. It wasn’t even a good jumpscare—totally predictable—but you still jolted from it.

Eddie lurched into a devious smirk. “Movie getcha, pretty girl?”

It was your turn to be defensive. You pouted, “No. It just surprised me, is all.”

“Aw, come on,” he implored in a gravelly urge. Under the thinning comforter, between the mountains of compacted cotton from overwashing it, there was movement, and the unmistakable contact of the back of his hand on your nylon tights. He bumped you once. “Here, if it’s that scary, you can hold my hand, okay?”

As snarky as his teeth glinted, as teasing as his words were, both of your chests rose with a mutual suspended breath.

This was the line. The barrier. The emotional boundaries were dust, only the physical ones remained. He invited you over them as gingerly as a grown adult man could when on his first true date in years, and the fresh fear of making a move on his crush spiked his rejective-sensitive nerves.

“Yeah, you’re right,” you exhaled. Holding his gaze with the same fondness which existed in your heart, you found the edge of his hand after some sightless venturing. At the graze of skin on skin, you dropped your head to the side, and appealed to him, “It’s so scary.” Across the room, the TV played a calm, serene daytime scene with birds chirping in the background. “So terribly scary,” you repeated, facetiously pitiful. “There’s no way I’ll get through to the end all on my lonesome.”

But rather than hold hands perfectly between the both of you like the pious churchgoing teenagers you’d felt yourselves become, you went in for the kill.

Drawing back, you wedged your fingers between his arm and his ribs, and after a beat, he understood and lifted his elbow. You snaked your hand along his forearm, and down to his awaiting palm. His jeans were rough; his palm was too, torn asunder by his trade to ensure a roof over his and his family’s head, but the spaces between were softer. Love gentled the joints digging into your bones. Your fingers had to stretch to accommodate him, and the wintery dryness pulled at your unlotioned knuckles, but the twinge was forgotten when you focused on your hand in his hand. Your hand in his hand. Your hand in his hand.

You dragged your attention away from the entanglement of your selves finding a missing half under the blanket, and searched his face. His eyes flicked from the same knot stirring under the comforter, and the wrinkles in his expression flourished. He thinned his lips into a tight smile. His cheeks were never that full, but there was a roundness there you’d give anything to discover by touch. You’d been closer to him before, like in the kitchen when you counted his freckles after your painfully geeky dagger innuendo, but if you leaned in any further, your vision would blur.

An obvious awkwardness dwelled in the intimacy of your entwined arms, and tensed bodies.

“So, so scary,” you promised during the exposition dialogue taking place on a sunny morning between the characters eating cornflakes at a large dining table. “I’ll probably have to cling onto you the entire time with my eyes shut.”

His voice cracked high pitched, “Yeah?” Feathery soft, on the verge of disappearing altogether. “Guess I’ll have to be the brave one, then.”

“So very brave,” you said, sweet as sugar.

He snorted whereas you giggled, converging with heads together, and a laugh shared, hands held so very bravely. A breakthrough. One second at a time, you melded into his shadows, as you belonged. You angled yourself toward him and tucked your legs onto the couch, freely huddling your knees against his thigh. Your joined hands were nudged onto his leg more, and the clasp became sticky from perspiration. That was okay. There was a thrill in being the reason each other sweated. He curled in his fingers harder, nesting them between the peaks of your knuckles, and you returned the honor by hooking your fingers between his, lightly squeezing him back. One second at a time, he sought your sunshine, as he belonged. He made sure the pressure of his arm and elbow boxing yours in against his side wasn’t painful, slouching a bit so the top of his leather belt wasn’t digging into your forearm. He was thoughtful that way. Concerned for you and your comfort. Didn’t matter if his lower back would be killing him by the end of the first movie, you were wrapping your free hand around his bicep and rubbing your thumb under the short sleeve of his shirt, back and forth. Back and forth. Then, you were resting the side of your head on his shoulder.

He heard you—felt you—inhale deep. Why? Was it to fill your lungs with the scent of his deodorant, the cheap cologne he spritzed at his chest, the drip of Old Spice aftershave on his shirt collar? Was any of that better than oxygen?

Curious, he tilted his head as if something in the movie had him stumped, and he put his nose to the top of your hair, and took a small breath.

A different shampoo than usual hit him first, but below that, clinging to your clothes, was the smell of Robin’s home. He was struck with the thought of what his home smelled like. Was it good? Bad? Could, over time, over months, over difficult questions he couldn’t bring himself to ask, could maybe by the end of summer your two homes combine to make one unique scent?

That would be the dream. And a dream, it may remain. But what a lovely reality it would be; you staying, and your scents mixing to create a new one.

So lost in his thoughts, he didn’t predict the fake-out jumpscare of a murder of crows taking flight after an eerie bout of silence, and he was the one to flinch.

“Aw, movie too scary for ya, big guy?” you cooed.

Eddie sealed his lips in a frown, and tucked his chin to create the maximum amount of wrinkles when he looked down at you. “Maybe a little. Good thing I have you here with me, though. Right?”

You nodded most ardently, squishing your cheek over his scorpion tattoo—just another place on his body you made your home—and grinned up at him.

“Of course, babe.” You called him babe. He smiled so fucking hard. “I’m here if you ever need me to hold your hand.”

You squeezed.

He squeezed back.

Scenes went by on the tiny TV across the room beyond the condensation pebbling on the plastic cups threatening to fall on the coffee table where Adrie’s box of crayons spilt into her coloring book. A story unfolded in the flash of blade, a clatter of piano keys, and a quiet neighborhood who knew no better. The movie played, but neither of you paid attention.

Your gaze was keen to the way his lips stayed parted after he licked them. His gaze was invested in your expression, how you viewed him with such kindness he was seldom shown. A tenderness he was rarely given. He tried to show you the same sincerity, but your eyes were fixated on his mouth.

Self-conscious, he asked, “Is there something on my—?” He rubbed the back of his wrist over lips.

You answered him with a belittling pat on his chest. “No, big guy. You’re good.”

Your tone didn’t sound ‘good,’ but you pulled the blanket up to your chin, and laid your head on his shoulder again, wrapping your other hand around his bicep until your fingers were stuffed between his arm and side. He interpreted your change in mood as a signal the conversation was over, and put his eyes on the movie. Though, his brain was busy toiling over why you were staring at him, and wondering if the pats on his chest were still echoing beneath your ear, or if it was simply his heart threatening to strangle him from the angst of not understanding if he did something wrong already.

At least he was holding your hand like a real boyfriend would. That had to count for something.. Right?

~~~

The credits rolled, and neither of you moved until you pointed out a name scrolling by, and a laugh so akin to a man being punched in the gut wheezed out of him, it caused you to erupt into your own embarrassing goose honk laugh, causing you to both double over in a fit.

Somehow, his nose was nuzzled to your hair. His inhale was cool on your scalp, and his words were a humid huff. “Bart Horsedick,” he said, “Whatta name.”

“You should name a character after him in DND.”

“Mm! You know what? I will. He’ll be a local legend with all the ladies, and tries to charm his way into the party by constantly making passes at the girls. Erica will kill him for sure.”

With a groan and a wince, he sat up straighter, and you lifted your head off his shoulder, making similar complaints about your neck. It was tough work being brave during the scary parts for each other, regardless if neither of you were paying enough attention to care about the reveals.

He asked, “How’d you like the movie? Even that last scene kinda got me.”

“Yeah, it was good,” you answered in the same tone, searching for anything to say that wasn’t, If you don’t kiss I’m going to fucking scream. “I wasn’t expecting the second killer to be the news reporter. That was kinda cool. And that final death was super gory, with the guts ‘nd all, but uh, I’m starving, and ready for something campy.”

Heeding his lady’s request, Eddie dashed around the room, turning on a few of the eclectic lamps, and jabbed the backwards arrow button on the VCR until the movie was playing in reverse at a hilarious speed. “Be kind, rewind, y’know.” Once it clicked, he took the tape out, and put the next one in.

You followed him into the kitchen where the groceries were laid out on the counter. Some were things he already had, like the half-empty bottle of olive oil, and two government supplied cans of vegetable stock, but from the fridge he added an unopened tub of butter, a container of mushrooms, and a wedge of parmesan cheese. He put them beside the onion, fresh sprigs of parsley, and special bag of rice. Ingredients he bought specifically for a meal he didn’t know how to make, but knew it was impressive, and wanted to try cooking it for you.

You picked up the magazine clipping and raised your eyebrows at the recipe.

He fidgeted, spinning his rings. His voice was hesitant; falling back on self-deprecating humor as a crutch, “I know you’ve probably been to France, or, uhh, Italy or whatever,” he guessed, “and’ve learned from experts on how to make it perfectly, but I thought maybe I’d give it an attempt and hope it turns out edible. Just forgive my shit knife skills, and if I pour too much broth, or don’t stir it the exact number of rotations, or some pretentious bullshit like that,” he finished, gaze solidly on the floor, toeing at a scuff on the vinyl to occupy himself. “‘M not exactly a chef outside a can of Boyardee, so..”

Some of his mumbling was lost on you as you read the bottom of the page. Narrowing your eyes at the title printed beside a number in the corner, you put your fist on your hip. “Edward Munson.” He snapped out his worrying at the use of his full name. “Did you rip this out of one of my lobby magazines at work?”

He rolled his lips inward to curb his grin. “No, no, of course not, dear,” he promised, finding it the most opportune moment to turn away, and organize the ingredients in no practical order.

“I swear if I go to work Monday and find Better Homes and Gardens missing page 57—”

“Okay, okay—I’ll tape it back in, but give me some credit, will ya? I didn’t rip it out like some animal.. I cut it out neatly with scissors.” He eyed your harmless smirk, and plucked the mushroom risotto recipe from between your fingers. “Now, if you’d like to get out of my hair, you may,” he said, gesturing at the TV with a knife. “Skedaddle. Go watch the movie.”

“You don’t want me to help? Or at least to keep you company?”

It wasn’t often he was tripped up on what to say, so when his mouth hinged on a mute excuse to get you to leave, you registered what he was going on about earlier, and shook your head.

“Wait, Eddie, I worked in kitchens prepping vegetables when the cooks were too drunk to come in on time because they went home with some random woman from a bar, and were too hungover to know what day it was. That’s why I’m like, okay-ish with a knife. You don’t really think I’d judge you for how you chop an onion, do you?”

A few words were stammered. You shushed him from bothering.

If his confidence had trouble surfacing when everything was out in the open and not hidden under a blanket, then you’d give him another nudge; a single stroke of your knuckle along the monster tattooed on his tricep. The muscle reacted to you, flexing the wyvern’s clawed feet. You did it again. And again. Pinching his sleeve and tugging at it, doing all the cutesy, flirty things you’d learned over the years, including dropping your gaze to his pretty pink lips. Employing your best strategies, you laid it on thick; swaying your hips, and bringing in your arms to frame your chest. “You could heat me up a can of Chef Boyardee, and it’d be the best meal I’ve ever had, as long as I got to share it with you.”

Shy, shy, shy. He brought his shoulder up and ducked his face from your view, giggling at your heavy adulation. “You don’t have to flatter me like that,” he mumbled, sounding not unlike he was wrapped in a ball of lovesick yarn. Overly smitten, ooey gooey with the warm fuzzies in his chest. So very, very adorable, sneaking a glance at you with an unbelieve amount of precious crinkles at the corners of his eyes.

How sweet.

It’d be sweeter if he could take the hint and share those kinds of things with you, but you could be patient and wait until he was ready. Again..

Just.. keep making everything so obvious for him, and try to ignore the sting of rejection when the guy you’ve liked for months finally invites you over for a date, and still won’t kiss you.

At least you were saved from the worst of your downward spiral by the bad B movie and its body melting scene.

“Ooh!” Eddie pushed the cutting board away. “That effect was really cool!”

Since he was already making his way to the TV, you trailed at his heels, and crouched beside him, sinking to your knees while he pressed the rewind button, and clicked Stop/Play twice. The lead up to the moment played again. You sat in anticipation, wholly aware you’d just watched this interaction between the college girls putting their best effort into delivering their lines, only for them to fall flat when their acting was off the charts horrendous. Eddie regarded them with the same sort of awkwardness, rotating his hand in hurried circles until one of them got obliterated into a goopy pile of human remains, and you began to dissect the undulating puddle of sludge.

“How do you think they made that one?” he whispered, mesmerized. “The way it pulses like that?”

“I think it’s from a balloon inflating beneath it. Watch the way the flesh cracks, and the blood oozes out. I think it’s something like that pushing it up from under.”

He hummed, and rewound the tape a few seconds. “Yeah, yeah, I see what you mean,” he said, tapping his finger on the thick curved glass. “And look at that bone. It actually looks like a charred, brittle skeleton instead of those cheap femurs everyone gets at the party store for Halloween.” You also agreed with him in a hum. The extra touches of effort were impressive for a low budget film like this.

The movie continued inches from your eyes. You rested on your calves, flattening the plush carpet under your shins. The harsh fibers were dulled by your pantyhose, and if this was a spot Eddie had to scrub clean after Adrie spilled juice, you weren’t aware of the stain; you were only aware of the hair-raising sensation of being watched.

You directed your attention to Eddie’s pointed stare on the side of your face, about to ask if there was a reason behind his adamant inspection when—

He dropped his gaze to your lips.

Sparks ignited behind your ribcage. Hopefulness latched onto each long second wherein he resisted flicking his eyes back to the screen. Each passing breath a choice to follow the gentle curve of your mouth, and stay there to revel in the simple pleasure of studying the unspoken language evolving between you two, sinking into his own warm grin for you to decipher. He was still crouching on the balls of his feet, and you had to wonder if he leaned over to kiss you now, would he lose his balance and cause you both to fall to the floor? Would he catch the back of your head in his palm to soften the crash? Would his hips fit perfectly between your legs? Would his jeans drag along your inner thighs? Would he whimper when you held him? Would he grind down on you at the first sign of reciprocation? Would he already be hard?

Your thigh muscles ached at the racing thoughts, clenched so tight in response to the needy throb between them.

Was the unspoken language shouting now?

Eddie’s throat bobbed on a stuttered exhale; his chest shook at fractions of his inhale, as if he was experiencing the same tightness there from the rosy desire blooming so greatly, struggling to cope with the oxygen in his lungs when there were far sweeter things they’d rather be filled with. “I—” He stopped. “I read a review on the back of the box that said this movie was scary too,” he informed you in whisper, right when a godawful green alien appeared and shot the worst CGI laser you’d ever seen from your peripheral vision. “Better hang out with me in the kitchen, where we can keep each other safe.”

You urged your yearning away from his mouth to the neon colors of a spaceship glancing off his cheeks, to his large nose, to the tips of his bangs skimming his eyebrows, to the bags under his eyes, and finally, you caught the last moments of him roaming your features with utmost care before your gazes locked.

The floor beneath him creaked.

Briefly, you considered closing your eyes.

The carpet flattened in a muffled rustle.

Briefly, you considered uttering his name.

The dry air in the room vanished with his humid huff coasting over your forehead.

Briefly, you considered begging him when he pushed off his knees, stumbled slightly towards you, and stood, offering you a helping hand.

He said, “Gotta make this dinner for you before I starve, sweetness.”

Kissless, you fought against your inner bitterness, and accepted his fingers. To hide your wilting resilience, you put a swing of vigor in your voice, and happiness on your face. “Yeah, watching hot blondes perish into goo really makes one hunger for sloppy rice with mushrooms.”

Well, at least you could always make him laugh.

~~~

Onion skin crunched under Eddie’s heavy chop. The papery layer was discarded. Laying the halves on the textured cutting board, he dragged the knife in long slices out from the root, then rotated to dice it into cubes. He blinked away fresh tears, and beside him, you scraped the sweated mushrooms into a bowl, and placed the pan back on the burner for him to sweep his prepped vegetables into. They sizzled on impact. You stirred the mixture with a wooden spoon, and made sure nothing seared to the bottom.

Steam rose from the bowl of cooked mushrooms. Slippery oil slicked their surface, adding to the smells of onion and garlic. Condensation fogged the tiny window above the sink. The rice began to toast. A burnt popcorny, yet pleasantly floral fragrance mixed with the sour note of cheap white wine bubbling down to nothing, and salty splashes of broth.

Mostly, the continuous stirring was done passively because you were both watching the movie from across the room. When it was your turn at the stove, you grasped the skillet handle and moved the spoon around in some sort of pattern, but your upper body was twisted towards the TV. When it was his turn, you took his place at the wrap around counter, bending over to rest your forearms on it, savoring his body heat baked into the surface under your palms before it faded and was replaced by your own.

The last VHS was inserted. No commercials on this older tape.

You grated the last of the cheese into the rice, and tipped in the mushrooms. Behind you, there were two metallic latch sounds followed by two loud bangs. Eddie sucked in a hiss, and apologized. You were too busy portioning out the risotto to see what in the world he was doing, but the sharp clicks of his lighter were distinct, as was the notch turns of the unnecessary lamps being turned off, casting you in dimmed ambiance.

Garnishing the meal with parsley, you scooped up the bowls and turned.

“Ta-da,” he said meekly, opening up his arms with weak pizazz.

You were stunned at the effort.

The collapsable ends of the green table hung by their hinges, making the surface area impossibly intimate. On top, there were three lit candlesticks to set the mood, and underneath, the seats of the chairs almost touched. The whole thing was incredibly sweet. Thoughtful. Endearing. He had trouble meeting your eye.

Eddie glanced at the unscented candles burning bright for practicality’s sake. The first wet drip of wax joined the others melted down the side since the last time he used them when the power went out. Not exactly romantic. “Has, uhm, anyone made you risotto before?” he asked, and tacked on, “At home?” when the fear of not being the first smacked the words out of him.

“No,” you stated. “No one's ever done something so sweet for me.”

His lower lip twitched, and he ran his tongue over his teeth to quell the giddiness from exploding. And to stop himself from celebrating too soon.

As you carried the bowls towards his attempt to recreate a fine dining experience, he tried to push aside the thoughts of inadequacy—the candles, the fact he couldn’t take you to a real restaurant, the flowers he decided against because he no longer had a vase, the nagging voices in his head that told him this whole idea was stupid—and instead, he focused on anything else. Anything, anything else.

“Here, lemme help you, sweet—Ow, ow, ow, ow—Jesus, do you have hands of steel or somethin’?” The candles wobbled when he dropped the bowl on the table, and you both froze as they teetered back and forth, praying your second date didn’t go up in literal flames.

When they came to a rest, you both sighed.

“Hands of steel, huh?” you mused. “I think they feel kinda soft compared to yours.”

Quickfire, he picked up on the age-old flirt you used on him months ago (back when he was dumb, and genuinely thought he was the one flirting with you by suggesting you come back to him when you found a spider as big as his palm), and he concurred, “Maybe we need to compare them again. Y’know, really get in there and make sure I have the toughest hands in the Midwest.” Adopting a southern drawl, he stuffed his thumbs into the waistband of his jeans, and puffed out his chest. “Can’t let a lil’ lady who answers phones with ‘Yellow?’ have stronger hands than me, now can we?”

You pinged him with a wry expression twinged with cringe, and sat down, scooting your chair in, and looking up at him still standing. “You are so pitifully dorky.”

“I sure am, sweetheart,” he said proudly, falling into the chair across from you.

Your knees collided under the table; bone on bone due to his inability to wear jeans without holes in them. They knocked painfully, and while he did remember to apologize when you winced, he was distracted by the silly notion that his bare knees were the second body part to make contact with your tights. The back of his hand during the movie didn’t lend much to his senses, now he had a better feel of the texture, and how it rubbed against his skin. A strangely marvelous thing. And he was getting ahead of himself, sure, but he wondered how your tights must feel under the same rugged palm he was offering to you upturned on the table while below, his thoughts were erring away from respectful visions of circling his thumb over your knee cap while you were stretched across the couch with your legs in his lap, to something he felt unworthy to ask for.

Oh, but how he ached to be the one who was trusted to keep you warm when you were undressed..

Your chair squeaked. You changed the position to where your legs were bracketed by his wide spread. Perfect, because he brought in his stance and crossed his ankles behind yours, locking your thighs and calves between his, as if you were his possession, unable to escape. Indulging him, you giggled, and squirmed to the edge of your seat, taking his hand. His right, your left. A polite union of criss-crossed fingers. Mountainous calluses mapped against rolling hills of satin. Flickering candlelight dancing off the silver band of his ring. Kind, and sweet.

He gripped his spoon in an unnatural way, dragging it through the risotto, and bumping the ceramic.

“I can hold your other hand,” you offered, motioning at where you could link his non-dominant hand in the space between your bowls.

His voice was made of mushy tenderness, but his clipped tone left no room for argument, “Nah, I like it this way.” If you didn’t understand why yet, you did when you traced his gaze to his wrist. The beads had shifted from where they dug into his flesh. Squares from the blocky letters left indents in his skin, as did the corners of star beads interspersed throughout the round ones. Opposite D-A-D-D-Y, your sleeve was bunched up from cooking, baring the precious nickname M-O-U-S-E.

Your eyelids fell half-closed. The fondness on your lips wasn’t a result of the risotto—as delicious as the first bite was—no, the sentiment was much too darling. Almost as if you could hear the dormant vocabulary you awoke running hot in his veins. My girl, my girl, my girl is wearing the matching bracelet my daughter made for us, and I’ve never wanted anything more than another excuse to call you my girl out loud; I want it so bad I could cry.

“You did such a good job on this,” you complimented the risotto after taking another bite.

Fate. “It only tastes good because I had my girl’s help.” Under no circumstance was he about to make eye contact after saying that. In fact, he avoided sound altogether when he angled his spoon so he wouldn’t scrape it along his teeth a second time, and blew on the porridge-like rice before sliding the richness over his tongue, alighting his mouth with mellowed complexities for such unassuming ingredients. As he ate, he listened to you eat too. As he glanced, you glanced too. As he embellished his grin with a secret, you snuck in one of your own through the mysterious sharpness in your eyes boring into his too. He didn’t question it, didn’t breathe, didn’t make a sound above the panicked yelling happening in the movie in the other room; for now, he was content with holding your hand and calling you his girl.

The pressure to continue conversation waned.

He squeezed.

You squeezed back.

~~~

Dinner was finished in cherished bites. The movie was in the process of concluding, as most of the cast had been killed off by the time Eddie uncrossed his ankles and released you. He blew out the candles and stood, already regretting the act when the imprint of your body faded from his between his legs.

While he filled the sink with soapy water, you put away the forgotten ingredients, and wiped up the counter with a wet rag in absentminded circles, thoroughly invested in the slasher’s “forest chase scene” probably filmed in someone’s mom’s backyard.

Once the frothy bubbles sloshed to the rim with each dish put in, and the clammy air was brightened by the scent of blue Dawn liquid soap, Eddie rolled the stretchy bracelet up his forearm and began dunking the glass cup used for measuring the broth. He ran his hand around the inside to rid it of the gritty residue left behind. Dipping the thin washcloth, he submerged his hands up to his wrists in skin prickling hot water, and brought the cup out, exposing his chafed knuckles to the sting of cold air. He washed it, rinsed it under even colder water, and handed it off to you. You toweled it dry, and put it in the cupboard next to the fridge.

Over and over, he washed, you dried. He washed, you dried.

Routine, monotonous, robotic and quiet.

Outer input died away. No more movie, no more hot water, no more spoken conversation, no more meaningful glances, nor more intimate nicknames, no more inappropriate touches stolen under the guise of a drunken night. Just his thoughts, insecurities, anxieties, and hopes and the instant foreboding stress wrenching his stomach with fear of those hopes never coming true.

The air was thick with awareness.

You were in his home. The date was coming to an end, and so was his bravery. This was his chance, and he was letting it slip by him. Again.

He’d run out of excuses. Or rather, he reasoned with the excuses, and now he was facing the real problem. All the stuff from months ago about him not knowing if you liked him, your flighty lifestyle, the dynamic of being coworkers and worrying if it’d make things weird, the conversation he never had with Adrie; forgoing divulging his hobbies, his music, or his past with you because he didn’t see the point; those things he conquered. Those things no longer bothered him. Those things had answers putting them to rest.

Now, there was nothing keeping him from pursuing you except his own inhibitions..

Sad, how even when he had the courage to get this far with you, the differences in your lives served as a reminder he was just a poor boy from Indiana whose greatest aspiration was owning a trailer of his own so his uncle could have his room back. You had a drama degree—hell, you went to college in the first place. You had real dreams, and achieved semblances of those dreams before coming to Hawkins. A star as bright as you shouldn’t have to peter out in a town in the middle of nowhere. You needed the city to thrive, to perform on stage again. It was your calling, wasn’t it? Munson wasn’t calling you like your previous life, was it? You spoke of your accomplishments so highly. Would you ever learn to speak of him that way? Would he, one day, become one of your stories? A memory you moved on from?

Or did he deserve to ask you to give up everything you loved and earned to settle down in a dead-end shithole that hated him, and help him raise a child that wasn’t yours, tying yourself to his reputation forever?

What if he asked those things of you? Would you say ‘yes’?

Shit.

While the sea of doubt churned in his head, he rinsed off the ceramic bowl you used to eat from, and blinked the sting from his eyes after staring off into space for too long. He waited to hand it to you until you had put a pan away in the lower cabinet under the wrap-around counter, and accepted the bowl, drying it off and ping-ponging to the other side of the kitchen to the upper cabinet above the toaster. You didn’t have to guess. You knew exactly where it went. You were familiar with the precise drawer the spatula went in, next to the cutlery one where you tossed in the spoons. There was a beautiful domesticity to it all; washing dishes with you as if it were a nightly occurrence. Like you lived here. Together. You, him, Adrie, and his uncle—preferably not in that arrangement, and not in this trailer, but the vision.. the vision was there. You and him rejecting the bullshit small town mentality, and creating a life in Hawkins you could both be proud of, free from strife. A do-over, in a way, with you at his side, and his daughter on your hip.

The pit of self-loathing in his stomach yawned.

Those idyllic fantasies were too much to ask for. Too much to even risk speaking out loud. He could feel the rejection welling up behind his eyes as it were, wobbling at his bottom lip. The crushing reality of being a lonely single dad with nothing to offer—

You slammed the cabinet door shut, and tossed the towel aside. “So, are we gonna pick up where that phone call left off, or not?”

Eddie stilled under your loaded stare.

You remembered you remembered you remembered—

“If you adore me so much..” you added.

Jolted into action, the last dish slipped from his fingers, splashing and bouncing sluggishly off the bottom of the sink. Adrenaline hit him in droves. Frantic stings of want pushed him forward. Chores were forgotten. Mind blank. The soft thuds of his stride thundered off the thin walls. Pace quickened. Pulse beating in his throat. Vice grip on his heart. Months, weeks, days, hours of keeping his starvation alive through longing looks and inside jokes and hands brushing hands in fragile innocence, denying the vital comfort he craved to experience with the one person who made him feel special; the yearning reached its peak.

Predatory hunger rushed color to his cheeks at the remarkable sight of his dearest dream going slack with surprise.

He secured his fate with his arm wrapped around your waist, sweeping his hand upwards and dragging your cardigan with it. Water dripped to his elbows, cooling the wicked fever igniting his skin. He poured his strength into bringing you into him at the same time he stepped into you, forcing you back, back, back until the distance keeping you apart was eliminated, caging you where you gave him his final nudge beyond the brink of composure. His hips coaxed you side to side. His legs boxed you in where he commanded. Each motion pressed his strong, needy body to yours, driving the edge of the countertop into your lower back. Sway by sway, a dance of insurmountable patience built over months met its breaking point. You went pliant for him. No fight, only a small noise when he engulfed you in his aggressive embrace.

You gathered the hem of his shirt in your weak fists. His sudden leap over the platonic line broke goosebumps across your exposed midriff, tightening your nipples against the delicate lavender lace. The tremble in your knees was juxtaposed by his steady hand tilting your face up to his.

Sudsy bubbles burst on the peach fuzz beneath your ear from where he cupped your jaw. Droplets trickled to the base of your neck, curving over your breasts, and beading on the surface of your cardigan. He swept his fingers in an untamed stroke over your cheek. He tested a deeper angle, fitting his broad grasp to your chin and compelling you to lean in with the heel of his palm guiding you, drawing you forward, supporting the pout of your bottom lip with the base of his thumb.

His nose whistled when he took a shallow breath. The wet, soapy trails left in his hand’s wake went cold against his sigh coasting over your skin. Again, he tried another breath. Deeper; initiating the unadulterated intimacy of his stomach filling out and pushing against yours. More. The great expanse of his shoulders squared with confidence, and his muscles braced under your tender exploration. Your weak grip left his waist to climb up the confines of his arms, passing over his ribs and the flat plane of his pecs to place the lightest touch at the base of his neck. Closer. The serious glint in his eyes blurred as he neared.

The tip of his nose butted the apple of your cheek.

“Can I kiss you?” he spoke aloud for the first time, words breaking on the whisper.

You answered him in a faint, insatiable, “Yes.”

He imposed himself more. Frame on frame. Unyielding body leaned and curved around your softness, channeling every repressed feeling he’d had since you met into pinning you against the counter. Gradually, he dropped his head into a better angle; grinding forehead on forehead, tracing his perfect nose along yours, tilting so his mouth hovered fractions above a decision.

He teased, “Are you only saying that because it’s your policy?”

You smiled against the edge of his thumb after spying his sly grin through your heavy lashes. “No,” you stressed the single word, speaking through the mild irk of impatience building like an itch that could not be scratched in the marrow of your bones.

Anticipation clung to the prolonged gossamer blinks before they lulled into closed eyes, and slow swallows of air until lungs were poised on a held breath.

Every syllable of his next question dragged his lower lip across yours. “Are you my girl?”

“Eddie—”

The whine. The beg. The genuine plea of his name.

Organically imperfect, he smashed his mouth to yours. It was a harsh collision of teeth to lips, and a startled grunt at the abrupt impact, but neither of you cared. Reservations were off. You clung desperately to his shirt, stretching the cotton around his neck and biting the ball chain necklace into his throat, striving for a needier kiss; sparking a heady rush of awareness to the oversensitive areas reacting to the animalistic push and pull of him gaining control, advocating for his own fight in the flex of his thighs driving you into the creaky doors of the cabinetry. The fervency spurred him on. You combed your fingers through the downy curls at his nape, and he did not hesitate slipping a hand under your sweater to smooth his palm to your bare waist. And fuck, how you arched your back on instinct.

Nasally grunts of pain descended to pleasant hums from the throat.

Unable to divide his attention, the kisses went sloppier. Rushed. Awkward, and clumsy. He slotted his mouth to yours with too much force, to the point of bruising your spit slicked lips, and the wet smack pulled a submissive whimper from the places he’d yet to take. The flush blotching his throat ran hot like flames, heating the Old Spice aftershave on his skin. The scent aided the dizzy lurch in your head, lost to the dull lamplight beyond your eyelids, rocking you onto your toes and falling back on your heels in the swirling give-and-take of his unstated needs reaching levels of crisis only you could solve. A pain you could cure as you crammed your nose to his cheek, spread your fingers firmly against his skull, and kissed your friend harder than he kissed you.

Hums lowered into a depraved moan.

The intensity of your reciprocation fueled his ego. Seeking, he moved his chivalrous hand from cupping your face, downwards. Grabbing, seizing, squeezing. After refraining from so much for so long, he was mesmerized by the curve of your shoulder, the sway of your lower back, the waistband of your scratchy polyester skirt. He roved until he found your ribs, and he molded his fingerprints there, branding you with the sensation of his thumb beneath your underwire bra. It was a messy exploration. His excitement had him bearing his weight down on you, and when your strained feet failed to steady him, your ankle gave. Knees bumped; he stepped on your toes. He fell into you and matched the pain of the counter prodding your tender flesh with the bulk of his leather belt scraping your stomach. No apology. Not with words. It was the safety and protection of his arm crooked between you and the laminate countertop which rescued you, and as a reward, he dropped his forearm from the cusp of your hips and feasted his thick fingers on a handful of your ass, rocking you into him.

There was no other way to react to the blunt suggestion.

Heavy, uneven breaths were panted across the other’s sore lips as you both withdrew to gauge the next step. He scoped your features with urgency, darting from your relaxed brows, to your keen gaze. There was an etching of insecurity marring the honey in his gentle brown eyes when you were too dazed to remember to smile, jumping to conclusions in his worrisome ways.

He really did worry too much.

Bringing your hand out of his curls, you grazed the strained tendon on the side of his neck, and worked your way up. You trailed your knuckles along his cheek, swept them under his wispy bangs, and put your fingertips to his temple, triggering a shivered sigh and fluttering lashes at the new touch.

You answered him as you combed his hair away from his face, “I’m your girl.”

The instant sincerity of his red, swollen lips kicking up into an uneven grin invoked a raw tenderness to his pink nose scrunching in playfulness, and the corner of his eyes going tight with happiness.

“Yeah?” he asked, voice hoarse from the exertion of kissing you senseless.

“Yeah,” you promised in another caress.

For a moment, he held your gaze with the importance of someone understanding what it meant to be by his side and to be seen with him out in Hawkins public; as if he were on the verge of crying from the sheer gratitude of your policy landing you here, in his arms, on this night, wanting to be his.

Eddie peered into your eyes again. His wide pupils and dusky cheeks spoke of the nature of his body, but behind that, lurking beneath his fibrous sinew was the same innate marrow telling him this was okay. This was right. Just let go.

Just let go.

He listened.

As wild as he took you minutes before, he was ready to luxuriate in the nuances of affection. He pressed his mouth closed in a dry swallow, and raised his hand from your ribs, beckoning your cheek into the stifling heat of his palm. The throbbing pulse in his neck beat a rhythm to his chest, rising and falling in a quick cadence until he was able to discipline his attention away from the obvious snag of his zipper on your skirt.

He relaxed into another kiss. It may have been the hundredth of the night, but it was pivotal. Something changed. The frantic clashing lessened, and the cravings heightened.

Consistent as he was in taking things slow, he knew how to make you feel cherished. He took your bottom lip between his and dragged it as he broke the chain from one kiss to the other, as if the extra second he claimed a part of you was crucial to his survival. Truly indulging in the full potential of someone witnessing the many bad days of his life and still wanting to cook dinner with him. Someone enjoying the harmonized hum of your lips converging while you scratched small circles on his scalp above his ears. Someone willing to hear his shameful complaints about fatherhood, and not judge him when he took his lunch break in his car, cranking the seat back to rest his blood-shot sleepless eyes, instead of sharing a coke with them in the breakroom. Someone he’d come to rely on; a constant in his life.

He poured his coffee pot’s worth of trust into you, and you answered him with the blissful endeavor of your fingers scaling his forearm, brushing through the thin hair growing like wheat and pushing the beaded bracelet up to his wrist, cupping your hand over his on your cheek. D-A-D-D-Y. M-O-U-S-E. In turn, you drank his insecurities and added your own, overflowing with the mutual truth that neither of you had been in a stable relationship lasting longer than a month, and this whole thing should’ve been very scary.

But it wasn’t scary.

It was slow and steady.

The heaviness of his body returned. Hands wandered aimlessly. Arms entwined, untangled, confused themselves on who was where. Attentive fingertips glided over woven yarn and cotton, following the dips and curves and slopes; basking in the reverence of married threads and validation. Legs shuffled, spreading and accommodating. Jaws went slack. Languid tongues merged, lazy and hot. He palmed your ass in a lax grip, easing your hips flush against his. You answered with a purposeful roll intending to earn some friction, but you couldn’t reap the benefits on account of one problem..

Your skirt was stretched to the fabric’s maximum allowance, creating a taut buffer keeping him at bay. Any motion was nullified by the hindrance. Noticing this, he shifted to be better cradled by your thighs, and a delicious gift was granted with the tandem action of your bodies joining.

He flattened his hands on the countertop behind you and blessed you with a proper long drawl of his hips; pausing in an open mouthed kiss because the noise you made—the noise you made—the noise the noise the noise you made—

Your quick inhale faltered, flattering the hard press of his cock with a shameless gasp.

Eddie halted at the top of the motion from your involuntary praise, and locked eyes with you. Just like when he made you laugh, he wanted to witness your pleasure, soak in your reverent stare and pride himself on the way you asked for more—by sinking back and away and rutting upwards, instigating a filthy tension on the layers separating you; panties, nylon, polyester skirt, seams on seams on seams of harsh denim, and his choice of boxers; and God, you thrived on the bulk behind his zipper caressing you for the first time where climaxes were born. Your moan hinged on his satisfaction, and in a dare, you pivoted the descent of your roll towards the right, capturing between you his stiff length tenting towards his pocket. And when you arched into a slow grind on the base—sliding him along the curve of your clothed heat—he released his own pretty noise.

“Mm—fuck,” he groaned into your mouth.

Gravitating elsewhere, he left messy kisses on your jaw and brushed his nose over the peach fuzz on your cheek to put his love-bitten lips to your ear. Gravelly with want, he asked, “When did you remember what happened that night?”

A dirty throb pulsed where he buried himself between your legs, striving for the angle which had you grasping at his narrow hips as a silent plea for him to drive into you harder.

“Oh,” you panted into his hair sticking to your mouth. Answering casually as you could despite your face running hot, and your voice straining light with a joke, you answered, “I never forgot. I lied when you asked me.”

“You—?” The word was a quick huff of air against your neck. He pulled away enough to look at you, but not divorce your stomachs from touching. Two deep creases formed between his brows, shadowing his squint with incredulity. “You lied to me?”

A pang of doubt weeded its way into your insecure hands around his waist, forcing you to question if he was really mad at you for pretending you didn’t remember the exact details of last weekend in order to bolster his confidence into asking you on a date instead of wallowing in silent guilt for thinking he did something wrong and end up pushing you away, sabotaging himself from ever acting on this.

You were about to speak your mind—that is, until his lips crooked up, and he invaded your space with his big eyes, big nose, and even bigger grin.

“You lied to me,” he said with a snap of wolfishness, tonguing his sharp canine after the bite of his words; hosting an overabundance of admiration in his half-lidded gaze raking over you, alighting every sinful nerve in your body.

Time to pick up where that phone call left off—

“Yeah, I did.. But you didn’t.” You sank your hand between your bodies, and flattened your palm to the front of his jeans.

His breath hitched.

Skimming, teasing, playing with him, you strung his lust taut, tracking your fingertips over the hardness and sweeping them to the very end, circling an outline around his head like a Siren’s call to his fiery blood. His biceps flexed against your arms. The laminate counter squeaked from his sweaty grip on the edge. Vinyl flooring creaked at his antsy rut into your hand, and you gave in to your own curiosity.

Wrapping your fingers as best you could through the thick denim, a spike of cold excitement washed over you at the sheer girth you struggled to handle—much less the long, long drag of your palm from base to tip—sending an ache to your cunt begging to be stretched by him.

Slightly over seven inches, indeed.

Lacking poise, you blurted an unintelligible word, and his smirk underscored his heavy kiss.

“Told you I didn’t need to overcompensate,” he taunted.

His newfound smugness was allowed. Encouraged, even, by your firm strokes, again and again, creating a damp patch on his pants at every pass of your thumb. You were fascinated by his ability to engulf you in another tender union of lips when your senses were overwhelmed by the impressive size filling your palm. Intoxicated by the gentle glide of his considerable tongue along your bottom teeth. Dazed by his pitiful groan when you increased your pace, building and building the wicked friction burn from his jeans on your soft skin, tending to the flames of your arousal, sensitive nipples peaked and receptive to the warmth of his lean chest pressing down on you.

Needing him, you closed off the kiss and played into your appeal with a saccharine pinch to your expression, and a cloying sweetness to your tone. “You do so much for your family,” you murmured. “You work so hard to provide for them, always staying late at the garage, covered in grease and dirt, fixing cars until your hands are torn and your back aches. Making sacrifices without a second thought. Always putting their needs first.”

Stroking his hard cock, you asked, “When was the last time someone put your needs first?”

Eddie screwed his eyes shut and fit the bridge of his nose to your forehead. When he spoke, his embarrassment influenced his mumble, “S’been a long, long time.”

“Sounds like you need me to take care of you, handsome.”

He tensed to suppress his shiver from your sultry tone, and withheld his whimper at the prospect, meeting your gaze in a nervous flick. “I don’t, uhm.. have..” His assured demeanor ebbed to stuttering shyness. “I didn’t, uh, buy any condoms, and all the stores are closed by now..”

Your face fell flat.

You threw your exasperated stare to the ceiling, and searched the series of events which would lead to him asking you on a date, at his home, at night, without anyone else present, and somehow not think to buy condoms. “Why didn’t you buy any?”

He shrugged, frustration evident in his tone. “I was afraid of being a dumbass and leaving them out in the open where you could see them—like with the groceries or some shit—and give you the wrong impression, like my goal was only to invite you over for that reason, and, I don’t know, think I’m coming on too strong, or something, and make you uncomfortable.”

You gripped your beloved dumbass by the chin with your unoccupied hand, and put an end to his fretting. “Or, I would get the right impression, and we’d have that box opened within ten minutes of me walking through the door.”

He blinked dumbly.

Before he could ask if you were serious, you steered the conversation to its original topic with a gentle squeeze where the dark spot on his jeans bloomed, and said, “We’ll worry about condoms next time.” He throbbed in your palm. Next time. “After all the romantic stuff you’ve done for me, I want to show you my appreciation.” You slid your fingers through his belt loops, and leaned up, nosing your way through his frizzy waves to whisper a fantasy in his ear. “I want you in my mouth.”

You put the power of suggestion in your aggressive tug, snapping your hips together.

Ripples of electric pleasure stood his arm hair on end. The alertness in his expression glazed over. He lazed in the feeling, hardly able to open his eyes to follow the bounce of your eyebrows and the deep cut of your smirk; matching with his own goofy smile going lopsided with enthusiasm.

Since his birth, there were few instances where he felt wanted, or loved, and for his dream girl to waltz into his life and be so brazen about her attraction to him with no hidden motives, empty sweet-talk, or ill intentions—

For possibly the first time in Eddie’s ostracized existence, he felt desired.

Each low tug on his jeans was another boost to his self esteem, guiding him step by step further beyond the platonic line. Deeper, and deeper into new territory. Crossing the threshold from cracked vinyl to plush carpet, and with it, entering the fear of the unknown he wasted countless hours resisting. There’s no going back after this. Acquaintances was a laughable notion, coworkers was a tricky dynamic left to be dealt with on Monday, and friendship was the foundation of him opening up to you.

Every decision persuading you to the edge of his bed was made in careful consideration. Choices were presented and chosen without impulse. Nothing about him was casual. Not anymore. The slow crawl towards this relationship was impeded by his past, and instead of giving up, you stayed true to him. Because you saw him as worthwhile.

Eddie sank to the couch, and before his back made contact with the cushions, he had his fingers cupped to the backside of your thighs, proposing a bend to your knees. In a fluid motion, he dragged his rough palms up your tights and coaxed your legs on either side of him, running his heavy hands over your skirt and up to your waist. He relaxed into the sitting position with an arm crooked around your ass while he treated himself to a handful, gathering you as close as possible until he was satisfied with the places he could reach. Not once did his eyes leave your face. He tipped his head back to watch you go from standing at the end of his knees, to straddling his lap. Wholly enamored.

Blue cast from the TV’s standby mode contrasted the dim glow from the old lamp on the kitchen counter, highlighting his blushy cheeks in eventide colors, and cleaving a defined shadow down his bobbing throat.

Earned muscle and bulky denim and seven inches of bliss prodded the delicate meat of your inner thighs. You sat high on his lap, releasing the tension in your body in increments, settling yourself on top of him. He kissed you. Short and sweet; a brief encounter compared to before, but with your senses amplified by the deeper connection you two fostered for one another, it was the best kiss of your life. And it served as a chaste prelude to his next devotion.

Taking the lead, Eddie moved on from your lips, working downward in a dreamy, drunken daze, reveling in skin-on-skin. Want—more—please. When he couldn’t access the vulnerable underside of your chin, he urged your head up with a determined bump of his nose to your jaw, and continued to praise you in stray kisses and greedy palms. He showed you what he wanted by dragging you forward in his lap, and you didn’t need to be told twice by his white-knuckled grip.

You grinded down on him, and your mouth went slack with a fragmented moan.

“You’re so pretty when you do that,” he slurred, voice husky and low.

The bulge behind his fly parted your aching cunt. With your legs spread wide, you found your perfect middle and worked the stiff seams against your need. Each rut glided him along you, slipping over the nylon and stretching your pantyhose taut. You beared down harder, obeying the faint throbs of desperation, and turned them into inadequate stirs of pleasure, fleeting at each pass.

The first stitch of nylon broke. Then, another.

His generous kisses went wayward, favoring your jawbone as a means to end, tucking his teeth into the pocket beneath your ear and nipping at your vulnerable pulse. You swallowed under the threat, and dropped your head back, revealing the neglected expanse for him to cherish.

Cascades of euphoria flowed down your neck. Teeth grazed, his tongue tasted, the cold tip of his nose drew sentiments on your throat. For every dull sting of his untamed bite, he apologized with a softer, and softer affection. Lessening in aggression. Soothing your sweltering skin with cooling breaths on the streak of spit he left behind. You shivered despite the sudden break of sweat in the humid entanglement and embraced your urges, squirming against his jeans and circling your hips in measured thrusts, tilting into the motion for your own sake and blanketing your thigh over his achingly hard cock by chance. “Christ, sweetheart.” His muffled moan set your blood on fire. Your fingers went tight on his shoulders, digging into the muscle shifting beneath your nails, wrinkling the fabric of his favorite shirt.

More nylon stitches popped.

Too lost in your own efforts, you hadn’t noticed the loss of his possessive hold on your waist until your hard nipples brushed two solid objects.

Yarn fibers tickled overtop the sheer mesh cups of your bra.

Eddie nuzzled at the base of your neck and rested the slope of his broad nose there, moving his lips on your skin when he remembered, but otherwise his attention deviated elsewhere. At his leisure, he thumbed the top button of your sweater through the loop, and drifted to the next. Another, and another, exposing the sheen of perspiration on your chest to the stagnant air in his living room. His deft fingers undressed you with undue ease. Each loosened button raced your heart, and you repaid him by widening your knees and sinking fully onto his lap, laying your plush inner thigh on top of his length in a satisfying squish, and staying there.

A weak whine tinted his pretty, “Feels—good.”

Feels good played off the thin walls stacked with ceramic mugs. Feels good joined the sporadic pitter patter of raindrops on the tin roof streaming to the grassless earth outside. Feels good warmed you like the oil filled radiator at the end of the couch, popping and crackling when the heat droned higher. Feels good manifested in your cardigan slipping from your shoulders and falling to the floor in a mute drop; rooted itself in his ringed fingers dipping into your waistband; was proven by his other palm molding to the curve of your hip as if it were shaped by the same artist; and confirmed by the unambiguous focus to your right side.

Feels so fucking good burst forth in his hand’s unyielding snatch on your waistband and decisive jerk forward, ripping through the last of the strained seam trapped against your satin underwear.

The pantyhose split at the gusset, and your plump pussy spilled out, perfectly framed by the gaping nylon hole presenting your wet cunt to the thick denim. You draped him sweetly. Curved over the immense rise behind the creased zipper, creating a stiff peak before sloping to the soft give of his stomach. It didn’t take more than a single experimental thrust for your thin panties to slide into your sticky need, working them snug to your heat and inciting the first true tug at your core. Whispers of relief roused at your center, but it wasn’t until your second try, when you tilted your hips and Eddie guided you down onto him, genuine satisfaction was achieved.

The low rumble from the bottom of his chest filled you with oozy pride.

You concentrated the friction on your clit, and Eddie concentrated on anything else.

He stopped sealing his kisses, letting the envelope of his lips fall open, slack, and inarticulate, never beginning nor ending the ode to your neck. His mouth hovered wherever his head hung, and in his stupor, he could do little more than use his tongue to cut a fat line through the luster beneath the hollow of your throat, letting the salt sit in his mouth before swallowing, grateful. With each movement, the scratchy grain on his jaw from that morning’s shave buffed your sensitive skin, and he lapped at the rawness he caused in apology. The higher you rose over the swell of his cock, the lower he prized you in sloppy drags of his ample lips. He cupped his ringed fingers to the underside of the lavender lace and used his heavenly tongue to lick the top of your breast, accentuating the curve for his teeth to savor you in a lovebite. Your nipples begged for him, and your back arched for him. Your mouth fell open with a gasp—”Eddie”—drawing out the last set of vowels before they devolved into a whimper. Soon, his head was a heavy burden between your tits, and you wrapped him in your naked arms, cradling him there with your fingers in his hair. Spit from his sloppy kisses smeared on your cleavage, wetting the stubble on his cheeks, and he remained smitten, moaning into them with each bounce on his lap.

He was so wrecked on intimacy. 

Loading your lungs with another sigh of his name, you rocked your hips in whichever way felt best, not paying attention to the way your inner thigh rolled over Eddie’s fat cock, again, and again. Satin on denim; faster, and faster, tensing your leg muscles and releasing them like a quick stroke down his length. You embraced him with your chin to his hair, panting over the frizz sticking to your lips. Tender, always. Committed to lauding gentle kisses to his scalp even as you chased the one thing on your mind. Grinding in quicker thrusts. Listening to his muffled praise, but not hearing him go quiet, or noticing his body go still when his thighs edged into a hard flex under your ass. You were oblivious to his hand falling from your bra, and his fingers anchoring onto your waist. You were too engrossed in the act, rutting like animals do. Lurching towards the inevitable one desperate grind at a time, quicker.. quicker.. Heeding what your body wanted. Racing, faster.. faster.. 

Abrupt pain bloomed where he shoved his palm into your thigh to stop you.

“You’re gonna make me cum,” he panted in a ragged breath.

A new heat rushed to your cheeks. The dirty word spoken from his mouth engulfed you. It tingled and danced over your skin, firing signals of excitement in pulses. With clarity, you realized the few direct strokes during what was supposed to be foreplay had him tensing and trembling, trying to keep his release from arriving too early and making a mess of himself before getting to the real deal. Your nipples tightened at the knowledge, and your legs clenched on instinct. You almost made him cum his jeans. What a compliment.

Your puffy clit was sore from the brief friction, and you felt every centimeter of space he put between you and your reward, but it was like a switch flipped in your brain.

The sharp throbs of his fingers clamped onto the meat of your thigh and his thumb jammed into the soft muscle were forgotten when you looked down at the man who shied under your observation; his face aflame with the awareness he ruined your release as well and his, and his bashful eyes worried with remorse. He was the reason you craved the early dawn, and weekday nights. He was the reason your heart crowded your throat when you woke up and your first thought was to reach for the bracelet on your bedside dresser. He was the reason you took a liking to heavy metal and board games. He was the reason your body reacted to wafts of earthy tobacco in the air, only to be disappointed when the person behind you at the grocery store was just another smoker who hand rolled their cigarettes, as if they had the right to smell like Eddie Munson.

You looked down at the man who lived an isolated and thankless life, who found joy in the small things and loved with his whole heart, who had few outlets to express himself and receive love back, and nothing mattered to you more than giving him a reason to look at you differently come Monday morning.

You thumbed the edge of his jaw with a promise. “I’ll go slow, pretty boy.”

He made a choked off noise in response.

Eddie’s eyes followed the nuances of your movement as you rose from his lap and planted your feet on the carpet. His stance widened to make room for you, chest falling with a silent exhale; peering at you with a question between his brows, as if he were contemplating his luck. When you bent over and placed your palms on his thighs, you stole his gaze from the intimate way your cleavage shifted under gravity, and honored his lips a last time for the foreseeable future, about to show him how fortunate he really was.

You sank to your knees, dropping dry kisses onto his shirt in a path to his belly as you went, and lifted the hem. The bottom of the inked sword and dragon greeted you. Sparse hair fanned as you raised the shirt above his tattooed navel, and pushed it to the crease where his sternum and belly met. His stomach wasn’t as flat as when he stood, giving him a slight curve where it pushed past the edge of his belt—a roundness when he sat relaxed. You laid your elbows on his thighs, and avoided touching the large subject in your peripheral, instead shaping your hands to his hips, and bowing your head.

His muscles jumped under your lips.

Finally, you knew his ticklish spot.

He sucked in a breath, and squirmed at the scattered kisses to his sides. You applied more pressure, mashing your mouth to him with a giggly hum, and teased your wet lips through the thick curls leading downwards. The hairs grazed the sides of your mouth and nose. The warm metal from his belt buckle brushed your chin. You’d never guessed you’d come to know these sensations when you first met him and he made it clear your enthusiasm for life was not appreciated, but here you were, stroking your thumbs up his leather belt, bordering your grin with his happy trail.

Eddie skimmed his fingers over your wrists. “I’m not gonna last long,” he warned.

“That’s fine,” you assured him in a quick peck to the significant outline you’d become obsessed with, feeling him twitch beneath your lips. “We have all night to work on that.”

“What—? Jesus Christ, uh—okay.”

Sitting back on your calves, you held his gaze while you pulled the extra length of his belt through the loops in a smooth rush, and worked it through the handcuff buckle. You tightened the slack and loosened the pin with a nimble finger, undressing him with the ease of an expert.

Asking from a place of your own curiosity, you wondered, “How often do you jerk off?”

His eyebrows disappeared behind his tousled bangs.

Not yet used to you being so forward with him, he stammered on his tongue, but held his composure, much to the surprise of both of you. “Not that often, I guess.. Uh, a few times a month.”

You snorted. “You don’t have to lie to me, you know that, right? You can tell me if it’s everyday, I don’t care. It’s not like I’m gonna judge you.”

The two halves of his belt flopped to either side of his waist. With it out of the way, you pinched at the stamped button at the top of his stupidly tight jeans, but you had trouble getting a good grip on it. Here, let me—he mumbled in a small voice, lifting his hips off the couch to undo it himself, popping it through and revealing the waistband of his forest green boxers.

It was with great determination you aimed your gaze above his obvious grandeur when he started talking.

“I’m not lying,” he said during the sturdy grind of the zipper being tugged down. “Not exactly like I have a door to lock when I need some alone time around here, sweetness. Plus” —he grunted at the freedom his unzipped jeans granted him, pushing them lower on his hips— “I’m usually too worn out after work, and just wanna crash on the couch. Not to mention taking care of everything around here is exhausting. Just don’t have the energy most days.”

Reading the precious draw of sympathy between your brows, he sat on the edge of his bed, and reached into the fly at the front of his boxers. “But, uh, there has been a recent change in my life that’s motivated me to.. take better care of myself. More often.” A certain motivator who sat between his legs with her hands in her lap, piqued and obedient. “Lot more often than a couple months ago, before she started working with me.”

He wrapped his fingers around himself and stroked upward, moving his knuckles against the fabric. He’d been rambling to ease the anxiety from his nerves until only the adrenaline remained, and with his pretty girl biting her bottom lip at his impure thoughts, his stalling came to an end.

Out came his hand—broad palm and thick fingers stretched full—and you stared in silent awe.

The back of his pale wrist and rosy knuckles were the first to show. Prominent blue veins led to his crooked hand, thumb and foremost fingers grasping his base while the last two struggled to collect the rest. His wet tip grazed the top of his boxers, peaking the fabric and dragging it along in a mouthwatering sweep towards the opening, and out it bobbed in flushed hues of pink and needy red. Below, he used his other hand to lower the fly, and cupped his palm to his heavy hanging fruits. They slipped out one plump roundness at a time to display their greatness against his dark jeans in a weighty sway.

Eddie’s cock leaked a bead of anticipation for you.

Starting with a lazy tug, he stroked himself. The arousing sheen smeared around his tip glistened, shining anew with the pass of his fist. As predicted, he curved to the right, and the fact he could hardly overlap his thumb to get a good hold on himself spoke of his size. All of him was beautiful, and you felt beautiful when another drip of precum swelled from his pretty head, threatening to fall before your very eyes.

He was thrilled by your shock. “Want it?”

“Need it,” you responded in a faint exhale.

With a smirk deepening his smoky tone, he kept moving his hand up and down, and granted you permission, “It’s all yours.”

You snapped your attention to his face, and inched forward until you were snug against the couch, eager and motivated by the lustful stretch in your thighs exposing your soaked cunt to the air. Good and pleasing, you clasped your hands politely in the folds of your bunched up skirt, and framed your arms around your chest.

Dipping your head, you lolled out your tongue for his approval.

His expression was the highest compliment; revering you with crinkles at the corners of his heavy-lidded gaze, lips stretched into a genuine smile which emphasized the elusive dimple on his cheek, and defined the bags under his eyes. Strands of his finger-swept messy curls stuck out at odd angles after you had your way with his hair, grazing his high cheekbones, and thick neck.

His heart pounded louder in his chest the longer he stared at your offering.

Weight pressed down on the plush middle of your tongue. It left, then happened again, again. Again, he tapped the fat head of his cock to the sticky wetness, mixing his salty taste with your spit. Bestowing you the gift, and taking it away. Teasing you. He slapped his heaviness down in a dull throb of owning you, and lifted it off to run his fingers over his own length, jerking himself off at an easy pace he wouldn’t cum from before putting his weeping tip to your tongue once more for you to admire, but not indulge. It was the cruelest, and hottest, thing he’d ever done to you.

When he next rubbed his head along the supple muscle and took it away, you tempted him into giving you mercy.

His lungs stuttered at your first demure kiss to the underside of his cock. You listened to his shallow breath on the second, released in a short ahh on the third. On the fourth, you vied for privilege to spoil him. He relented. How could he not?

To give himself a better angle to watch, he propped one of his hands behind him, and dropped his cheek to his shoulder, where his hair poured in a mass of tangles. The broad grin he wore waned to a subtler emotion as you hummed for the silky skin thrumming against your lips, feeling him shift when he lifted his thumb from taming his hard-on down.

Eddie marveled at how you balanced his cock on your pout. Amusement—and an unending amount of tenderness—gentled his features. He was sweet on you. You were sweet on him.

Treating him how he deserved, you rolled your tongue around your mouth to gather spit, and pushed it past your lips to wet his slick head, making your kisses slip against him in a smooth glide. You showered him in small pecks at first. Short kisses with the cutesy sounds pressed to the sensitive ridges which earned Eddie’s involuntary moan; low and thick, drawing from the months of pining for this moment. Venturing into more, you darted your tongue out to test his reaction when you licked the valley between the halves of his plump tip, and you winced. His cock kicked up, and fell in a smack. It was painful, probably bruising the delicate inner flesh of your lips when it smashed them against your teeth. You thanked him in an acquiescent whine.

It was addictive—a daze. With nothing but gravity to keep him in place, you cherished your favorite mechanic’s cock openly and honestly. You flattened your tongue to him in a loving lap, and chased it with a long drag of your lips up the underside to the round head, struggling to keep your eyes open from the bliss of tasting his reward, and suckling noisily for more.

Eddie accepted defeat in a sudden, disappointed grunt, “Yeah.. I’m not gonna last long.”

He fell backwards in a dramatic flourish.

Sprawled almost flat, his shoulders hit the cushions, and his body melted into the position with his fingers laced over his eyes as a shield. A groan of despair reverberated in his throat. Poor Eddie, can’t last long with his favorite receptionist’s mouth around his cock. A giggle bubbled from your chest, and you were about to repeat your promise to go slow, but the words wouldn’t form.

Your mouth had other plans than wasting their time on reassurances.

In his melodramatic moping, his dick left your lips and flopped onto his belly—which was a loss you felt in your soul—but with how he slouched into the cushions, a fruitful endeavor presented itself. Swung, and bounced, actually.

You leaned in, and became acquainted with your hand around his girth; familiarizing yourself with the naked warmth in your palm, and his airy whimper when you did.

The top of his boxers brushed your knuckles as you drifted your hand up in a single stroke. One fluid glide on the cock which belonged to you. He did say it was yours, after all. And though the thought alone had you wishing it was stretching your tight cunt in a blend of pain and pleasure, you had a yearning for what else moved up and down when you pumped your fist.

“Eddie?” you called. He peered at you from the shadow of his fingers. Innocently, you traced the bottom of his sack, and oh so carefully settled them into the nest of your unblemished palm. “Are these mine too?”

A croak broke his speechlessness. “Y-Yeah, those are yours, too. If you want them.”

Please was written in your grateful lurch towards his cock. Thank you was expressed in your lush moan when he entered your mouth.

“Baby,” he whined in a docile sigh.

You sank his cock into the wet heat he needed, but only for the purpose of curving your tongue to his begging tip and bathing him in your spit, using your hand to work it down his shaft. Except, you got carried away. A few strokes in, and you put your lips tight around his head, and already there was a warning forming between his brows.

You backed off. His face went lax in relief.

“Feels too good, sweetheart,” he praised from the depths of his gravelly voice. “Gonna make me cum like that.”

Your pussy ached to be spoken to that way.

Moving your attention away from how pitifully empty you felt, you loosened your grip and twisted your wrist to massage the base of his slick cock; not exploring upwards, just giving him enough friction to keep him on edge without spilling over. A perfect amount of pleasure, you guessed, from his red face emerging from behind his hands, raising them to comb his bangs off the fine layer of sweat beading on his forehead, and blinking himself out of his haze just in time to see you lower your face between his thighs.

You tended to him first with a kiss. An opening, or introduction, to your lips finding the spot beneath your working thumb where the hardness ended and the velvety skin began. He tensed. His legs flexed around your shoulders, bringing his knees in all shy like, like he was self conscious to have you down there. And maybe it was one thing to have his balls cupped in your palm, but it was another to have you nosing around the opening of his boxers when he hadn’t gone through with his plan of trimming back the hedges.

All he could do was stare when you inhaled his scent after he spent the day cleaning his home, running errands, driving across town to pick you up, and sitting next to you during scene after scene of horrors playing on a screen directly across from the terrifying event of holding your hand while trying not to out-sweat his t-shirt.

His bewilderment was apparent, but so was your enjoyment.

You burrowed your nose at the narrow opening of his fly, and tilted his cock to the side, finding the thick thatch of curls growing around his base, and admiring his heavy musk breaking through the perfumed Dove soap. A heavy purr of pleasure rumbled in your throat, coming out as a nasally moan against the wrinkled skin you kissed. So enraptured by his body, you couldn’t hold back anymore. You had to part your lips, and run your tongue along the seam of his sack. It was with a dire urge you stopped at the bottom, and flaunted how big he was by snuggling your nose to the heft and lifting.

You draped his balls over your mouth.

It was silly to him, and you didn’t mind the tss of laughter, but to you, earning his baffled smile while your giggle was buried under his sack was vital to your design. Their ripe heat enveloped you. The stripe you licked was wet on the tip of your nose. His natural scent swaddled you. Both corners of your lips were encumbered by the wonderful weight hanging on either side, brushing your cheeks as you swallowed the taste of his tangy sweat. You kissed up into the excess skin stretched over your face, and they rolled to your chin when you changed the angle you were teasing his cock, disciplining him towards his stomach so you had more room to worship the pome.

Warming him to the idea, you flattened your tongue to one side and ran it along the fullness, curving up, and dragging down in a long caress. In a breath, he placed his hand on his stomach where his shirt gathered, and skimmed the other over his body until it laid on top of his jeans, in the crease between his hip and thigh. You could see his fingers work themselves into the loose denim out of the corner of your eye, and heard them relax when you traced the other side of his sack, ending with a murmur to the textured skin.

“Too much?” you asked—he shook his head before you could finish the question, still hanging onto a suggestion of his fascinated squint at what you were doing to him.

With his approval, you indulged.

The gentle licks evolved to sloppy circles, eager to prize and polish, ensuring there was no part of his balls gone neglected. Lapping at, kissing at, making out with another spot on his body out of a necessity to fawn over every inch of him. Willing to nuzzle your way between the plumpness and have your drool drag wetly across your cheeks in his name. Fully content with messier and messier affections, cozying your nose to the base of his curls until he understood how little it bothered you to be smothered by his nature.

Unable to resist satisfying him how he deserved, you dropped an open kiss to the squish of his sack, and suckled on a small section, checking his reaction.

Not an ounce of protest glimmered behind his lashes, eyes falling almost closed at the intimate gesture between two people who were never supposed to be more than coworkers.

You parted your lips, and accepted a mouthful. 

Eddie whimpered.

His toes curled into the carpet at the novel sensation. There was an incredible amount of trust required to fight the instinct to pull away. Even his fingers strained the denim when you drew your lips around one of his balls, and slackened your jaw. It was with great respect you brought him into your mouth, and cradled the weight on your tongue, cheeks stretched full and soft. You held him there for a long second. The rain was a steady noise of the roof, but your exhale was loud in the space between his thighs. Quiet suspense followed your hand climbing his shaft.

You wrapped your fingers around his hopeful tip, and fitted your thumb to the valley on the underside. In perfect sync, and with your eyes steady on his face, you hollowed your cheeks and squeezed each of your fingers at the same gentle pace.

“Fuck, baby—”

At once, Eddie’s unabashed groan inspired you, and his balls jerked in response to the direct touch in the places he needed it. From pinky to index, you massaged his fat head in a smooth pulse—matching the strokes of your thumb—and though your grip was light, he was already kneading his hand along his inner thigh and clamping it down close to your face. You soothed him on your tongue as best you could, and eased him into having more pressure from your lips, sucking harder on the most sensitive part of him.

Concentration stressed a shadow between his brows; chest braced on a held breath.

The telltale sign of his skin tightening in your mouth, along with his clenched stomach and abnormal silence, had you testing his limits. But it was too fun feeling his legs squirm at the effortless flow your fingers performed, coaxing him closer to coming undone and still daring to smear the swells of precum over the pleading edge of his tip, again and again, but slower. Slower. Memorizing the metallic slink of his guitar pick running along the ball chain necklace when you released him, and his chest sank with a sigh.

His voice cracked a notch higher, “Jesus, you’re really into this, huh, sweetheart?” he asked, but you couldn’t answer.

Before committing to his other ball, you spat into your cupped fingers, and put them to his cock, adjusting how you held him until you could look past and see the handsome glint of respect in his eyes, and he could gaze into wealth of adoration in yours.

“Love being on my knees for you,” you mumbled sweetly, kissing your way to the other side of his sack. “Love your cock, Eddie.”

His name, spoken where it was on his body, brought out a smugger twist to his already prideful grin. “Yeah? You like it?”

Rushing at the chance to compliment your man, you straightened your spine, and punctuated your words along the thick vein leading up to the drips of seed. “Love it,” you promised in a syrupy yearn, swallowing the bitter salt. “Love your cock; love it so much. It’s my favorite.”

“Is it the best?”

The question was tonally rich with confidence, but just in case there was any doubt woven into the wording itself, you regarded the man who went to work early on a day he had off for the purpose of leaving flowers on your desk, and smiled.

“Yeah,” you confessed, recalling a memory from the earlier months, after your first failed date, when he shared his can of Coke with you at lunch because the vending machine was out, and two sets of chapsticked lip prints were left around the metal rim. “It’s the best.”

You hugged his cock to your cheek, and nuzzled the warmth as you would any other part of him, humming a sunshiny hum, and parted ways to return to your true calling further down.

This time, Eddie groaned in relief when you settled his other ball in your mouth—”That’s it.”

With your newly slick hand, you slipped your palm over his desperately purple tip with ease. His thighs jumped into a flex, and his stomach fluttered with tension—almost like he was going to lose himself right there—but he exhaled hard through his nose, and became better at existing in the mutual pleasure. This was as much for you as it was for him.

There was a scrunch of determination above his nose, and a strong edge to his jaw, but otherwise, his fingers were gentle on your temple. 

“You always know how to make me feel good,” he said, tracing his knuckles downward, lacing multitudes of meanings behind the sentence. Physical, and emotional.

He prodded his thumb into the hollow of your cheek, feeling how full you were of him; how his calloused fingerpad rocked in the same rhythm of your lips sealing around him and sucking; and you leaned into the tender gesture of his open palm, to which he cupped your jaw with a sentiment tantamount to what you were baring.

A sweet man through and through, even as he trembled in your fist.

You curved your tongue around the tight skin in your mouth, and moaned prettily for him. Frequent moans, ardent moans, moans appealing to his ego, moans you’d hear on a tape rented from the backroom of a competing video store with a black curtain separating it from the wholesome movies up front. Performing for him, finding what he liked. Which lick, which whine, which speed had his cock leaking over your fingers. Which trick made the creases between his brows mature, and his mouth fall open: the answer was two fast pumps over his throbbing head, and back down to his base for a respite, prolonging his release with a thank you on his heavy eyelids.

Prolonging, at least, until two fast pumps became a naughty blur of more—Oh, fuck, baby—and his brushes along your cheek went rare, and he licked his dry lips in the fog of his ramping high, and he hung his head back to the dense cushions, and his question escaped his throat in a hoarse huff, “You wanna—?” and it wasn’t a question at all.

You pushed your lips in soft goodbye to his sack, and his fingers under your jaw communicated his wish, aiding your chin up with a light pressure until your mouth was tasting the result of his aching lust. Slow and steady, you lavished his head in tame licks, building into a long sweep over the top. Warming yourself up to the painful stretch your lips were about to endure while his kind fingertips coasted over your hair, and found themselves at the back of your neck. Drawing out the seconds he tucked his thumb behind your ear, and rubbed circles. Sitting in the moment of something delicate, before things changed, and the platonic line became a horizon.

You drove his tip past your lips, and channeled all your appreciation into sucking Eddie’s cock.

He whimpered in surprise. A different whimper than before; not a drowsy noise he may make when rolling over in bed, but a sputtered note expelled in bursts of heavy breaths, singing a hymn to your blood.

The pace was not shy.

You descended to meet your fingers wrapped around his shaft, and reached your temporary depth where his hardness caressed the back of your mouth, and your throat clenched. Pulling back, you focused on his head, wetting his length with the sudden drool, and busying your other hand with his balls, cupping and stroking them in gentle passes.

“Ri–Right there, yeah, God, right there, sweet girl.” The syllables were mashed and dropped and disconnected on his whine.

Flicking your gaze up, you thrived on his fixated stare, bobbing your head on his tip only. Sliding your lips back and forth over the luscious ridge which had his tongue pressed against his bottom teeth. Massaging your wet heat around the center of his pleasure; encouraging a pinch in his expression as if he were in pain when he was in anything but.

Being higher on your knees meant your tits could be seen, and what a delicious sight it was for him to covet. Braced by your bra, your cleavage bounced as you pumped your fist along his cock, grazing your nipples above the opaque floral applique, cresting them beyond the sheer lace. It was enough to make his stomach squeeze, and his fingers tremble in the baby hairs at your nape.

His cock twitched twice in your mouth, conveying a message.

You welcomed him to the back of your throat, gladly this time, accepting the overfulness making it hard to breathe and the soreness surely to come, using your hand for the rest you could not take. No amount of uncomfortableness would make you shy from showing him the recognition he earned. For years he didn’t see the value in himself, and knowing the person who saved a Laffy Taffy wrapper to tell you the joke on the back didn’t prioritize his own happiness compelled you to take him deeper, faster. You shaped your tongue to the outline of his cock, and chased your lips with your fist, hollowing your cheeks at the top, teetering him on the cusp, rousing him until your skin buzzed from the friction and his hips pitched. Bringing him so close to the edge that when you broke away to catch your breath, his muscles shivered, and the shadows between his brows lessened as they arched higher from the mounting pleasure, where every touch on his body felt better and better and better than the last.

In the brief seconds you wrapped both your hands around his length, he made a pleading noise with the added weight of his warm palm at the back of your head—an urgency in his disheveled state, but not without the option of choice.

At once, he was at home in your throat.

In a union, your fingers wrenched his waistband into your damp palm, and he laid his hand across your knuckles. The control was yours, but the pace was his. He fucked himself into your pliant mouth in short, quick thrusts; ever attentive to keep his thumb strokes on your cheek unquestionably loving.

“Gonna make me—” He found the angle to cant his hips so you could watch him unravel; eyes falling closed and face tipped to the ceiling. “—Make me cum, baby,” he finished, voice light as air.

Throat flushed bright pink, cheeks dark red. Eddie panted into a shaky moan of true relief, and your core craved to be the one to take care of his needs, but there was something special about proving your attraction to him in every way you could.

The ridges of his greedy tip found where they were best brushed, and his hips lost their tempo. His stomach sank and stuttered in pulses. A dear emotion clutched your chest, letting loose when he crashed into his climax.

His knees closed you in, crowding you to his lap. “I’m gonna—” he gasped, rough and breathless; presented as a warning for the shot of bitter taste at the back of your throat, filling your mouth and spilling over your tongue with each throb of the thick vein pumping over your swollen bottom lip.

Something undeniable feathered the vulnerability of the position.

You swallowed.

And when more remained after it slid down your throat, you steadied his twitching cock over the offering of your tongue and jerked him off, stealing more drips to satiate you, swallowing with your lips pressed in a kiss to his overstimulated tip. “Baby,” he begged with his head thrown back, legs shifting restlessly around you. He sucked in breaths. Squirmed. Bit his tongue. Tugs of laughter played at his screwed up mouth, so desperate to resist giving in to a true grin when you rode out his high until he was beginning to soften, and the euphoria wore off to a dozy tingles, and the tingles dissipated into you giving him mercy, and mercy gave way to the aftermath.

In all the awkwardness of reality, you unceremoniously wiped your hands on his jeans, and right as he properly tucked himself back into his boxers, he beckoned you with open arms, gripping at your hips and bringing you onto the couch in a clumsy tumble; straddling his lap with his eager kisses seeking your jaw, your neck, your mouth which worked so hard for him. “Fucking amazing, baby,” he mumbled at the corner of your lips. You didn’t need the words—you’d heard them all before—but the reassurance of his arms locked tight around your middle, and the golden rays of honey shining so bright in his eyes allayed the tiny ball of worry at the pit of your stomach telling you he’d next follow it up with an excuse to send you home, as did every man before him.

“‘Mazing, ‘mazing, ‘mazing,” he mushed together on his way to your slack lips, bringing you out of your thoughts and into a kiss. “And dare I say, ‘amazing?’”

His ability to make you giggle when your bare stomachs were pressed together was the sort of tenderness you sought, and he provided.

You rubbed the tip of your nose along his, so very aware of his broad grin, and sweet nature. “You’re silly.”

“That I am!” he stated proudly.

Dipping to complete your gentle smile with his, you sank into the acceptance of him wanting to take your bottom lip between his, and flatter himself with the knowledge of where it’s been, what parts of him it became intimate with, instead of avoiding what was only human. He noticed your cold skin beneath his hands, and ran them along your back and upper arms. There was a motive behind his fingers slipping under the hem of your skirt, and palming you forward—where your heartbeats hammered together, and heat stirred in the lack of layers separating you—but still, there was one more affection you thought he deserved before the night moved on to your own.

Shivers chased his thumb braving the roundness of your breast, edging closer to the sensation of due pleasure yearning to be released. He spoke straight to your needs by putting the suggestion in your hips, “It’s your turn now.”

You stopped yourself from toppling to the cushions, and upheld your decent balance through your grip on his shoulders. “Wait,” you complained without malice, forgiving him for not reading your mind, “I’m not through with you yet.”

The word choice sparked intrigue across his face, then it cautioned to curiosity at the ominous roll of thunder rumbling through the trailer, clanking the mugs on the wall behind him.

He turned his head to the side, eyeing you. “What does that mean?”

~~~

“God, that feels so good.”

“Yeah, right there.. A little to the left—Oh fuck, right there.”

“So fucking good, sweetheart, keep going.”

Perturbed, you asked him, “Do you ever shut up?” and kneaded your knuckles harder into the knot of muscle between his shoulder blades, earning a louder groan than when you had his dick in your mouth.

One of the horror movies played on the TV, volume turned high for the alien’s gargled dialogue to be heard over the storm. Eddie’s lanky body was limp with sleepiness, melting under the smooth strokes of your palms starting at the base of his neck and gliding downward over his shirt, dragging another grunt out of him when his voice was hoarse from shameless use, not tempering it for a late night where he’d employ his range outside of singing for Corroded Coffin. He mumbled another praise, but his face was smashed to his pillow, rendering what he said unintelligible. His strong back rose with a shallow breath, and you moved with it. The couch was crowded, but you insisted he get comfortable, even if you had to straddle the curve of his ass with one knee fallen to the alarm of crayons and crumbs stuck between the cushions, and your other leg hung off the edge. This worked for him, though. It gave his hand a place to hold you, fingers clasped to your calf and thumb tending to you in little sweeps of truth. I need to touch you. The room was smothered in darkness, save for the brighter scenes highlighting the glossy line of his eye fighting a losing battle one massage of your thumbs into the pockets of soreness at a time.

You worked at the tense muscles with his comforter draped around your shoulders. It slipped down to greet the chafing air, rushing goosebumps over your skin. After the fourth time adjusting it, you left it gathered at your waist. Making sure Eddie was taken care of was more important. And the college girl turning into goo occupied what was left of your attention.

Though, soon, your tendons ached from effort, and staying-up-late stole the water you yawned from your eyes, and the comfort of being with someone who appreciated you wore heavy on your bones.

You grabbed the blanket, and leaned forward.

Brushing back the mess of curls covering the side of his face, you combed through the strands of hair stuck to his stubble, and found his chubby cheek smushed to his shoulder. You kissed him. “I adore you.”

He put a weak squeeze in his palm behind your knee, and spoke through the grog, “I adore you too, baby.”

Adore. Using the endearment in place of another word, and still, the weight was understood by the both of you.

Housed in the cozy heat of his body, sheltered from the rain lashing the windows in sheets, and the howling wind whistling past the corrugated metal roof in gusts, you sighed. Thunder vibrated from the floor, to the couch, to him, to you.

“You’re too sweet to me,” he said, sounding more awake.

“I’m exactly as sweet as you deserve.”

Instead of using his words to express he wanted to turn over, he just started rolling beneath you, forcing you to rip yourself from his divine warmth, and settle upright on his lap.

You were reminded of the reason you were cold when his eyes trailed over your naked skin, not afraid to show their appetite for your chest. The hunger in his hands returned, scaling the plush expanse of your thighs, and feasting his thumbs higher on the sensitive inner haven he’d yet to pay tribute to.

A smirk cut across his mouth. With a slow breath, he rocked his hips, grinding his half-hard cock against your neglected need, now attuned with the perfect tilt to achieve that pretty noise from your mouth which riled him like nothing else.

Oh, he was very awake.

Eddie exhaled with a pitying sound with attentive eyebrows, almost like he was mocking your moan. “You look so good up there, sweetheart,” he admired through his teasing. “Could get used to it..”

“Yeah?” you questioned. Reaching between your joined bodies, you held no qualms about circling your fingers over his cock, and honoring just under his head, ending your stroke just before he could reap the benefit.

He tipped his head back to gain his wits, finding his answer in the darkness behind his eyelids. “But you keep forgetting this night was about you, and thanking you for everything you’ve done for me. And then you go and add that on top of it.” Private fantasies took hold of him, influencing his heavy moan and thumbs climbing higher, higher. “Gotta thank you for so many things, sweetheart. So many.. However many you want,” he said, alluding to his way of showing gratitude. Fresh lust rushed to your soaked heat hugging his length. “Gotta get you out of these, though.” He scratched a nail over your pantyhose.

You snorted, accidentally ushering humor into what was a sexy exchange. “Why bother? You already ripped them.”

“I what?” Plain confusion marked his face.

Treating it like an ordinary thing, you bunched your skirt up to your waist, and drew his gaze to your mismatched black panties. You gandered at them as well, second guessing if you should’ve taken the extra time to find the lavender pair somewhere at the bottom of your drawer.

“Yeah,” he groaned; as his chest fell, his cock swelled. “I’m gonna show you just how thankful I am, again, and again, and again,” he trailed off, each word fluttering the heartbeat at your core—

Lightning struck, and the phone rang.

Jolting, Eddie stared at it from a long moment, breath held as if that alone would will it into submission from ringing a second time. Spikes of prickly anxiety stabbed at your chest, frightened out of the moment worse than any jumpscare.

It rang a second time.

He took the initiative and sat up, consoling you with his hand on your back and a kiss on your cheek. “I’m sure it’s nothing, just stay put and make yourself comfortable, sweet girl. I’ll be right back.”

Use your pet names all he wanted, his voice didn’t instill confidence when it went flat and wavered.

He got up from the couch and you were left feeling exposed, nestling into the blanket as the rain picked up, and the buzzy feeling he left imprinted on your skin faded.

“Hello?” he answered, rubbing his stomach above the open fly of his jeans.

As he listened to the man’s voice on the other end, he dropped his hand, and his shoulders sagged at the information.

Turning away, he huddled the receiver to his ear, and asked, “Is she okay?”

His question didn’t have the direness a parent should have if someone were hurt, so you stood up and padded softly to the kitchen, straining your ears, listening intently and discerning a few sniffles. But one little girl’s cry rang above them all. A shrill call for her Daddy to save her from her greatest fear.

Thunder rocked the trailer.

“Yeah.. Yeah, I’ll come get her.”

The phone clicked into its holder on the wall, and like that, the illusion was shattered. It was no longer just you and him spending a night together, carefree. Responsibility took precedence, and when Eddie faced you, his mood was tainted by all the things he explained about being exhausted from just existing his thankless life, judged by all.

He stared into your optimistic gaze knowing this is when you’d get a dose of his reality as a single father.

Fatigue and dread haunted his expression: this date is over.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Housing is a labor issue

There's a reason Reagan declared war on unions before he declared war on everything else – environmental protection, health care, consumer rights, financial regulation. Unions are how working people fight for a better world for all of us. They're how everyday people come together to resist oligarchy, extraction and exploitation.

Take the 2019 LA teachers' strike. As Jane McAlevey writes in A Collective Bargain, the LA teachers didn't just win higher pay for their members! They also demanded (and got) an end to immigration sweeps of parents waiting for their kids at the school gate; a guarantee of green space near every public school in the city; and on-site immigration counselors in LA schools:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

Unionization is enjoying an historic renaissance. The Hot Labor Summer transitioned to an Eternal Labor September, and it's still going strong, with UAW president Shawn Fain celebrating his members victory over the Big Three automakers by calling for a 2028 general strike:

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/uaw-general-strike-no-class

The rising labor movement has powerful allies in the Biden Administration. NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo is systematically gutting the "union avoidance" playbook. She's banned the use of temp-work app blacklists that force workers to cross picket lines:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/30/computer-says-scab/#instawork

She's changed the penalty for bosses who violate labor law during union drives. It used to be the boss would pay a fine, which was an easy price to pay in exchange for killing your workers' union. Now, the penalty is automatic recognition of the union:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

And while the law doesn't allow Abruzzo to impose a contract on companies that refuse to bargain their unions, she's set to force those companies to honor other employers' union contracts until they agree to a contract with their own workers:

https://onlabor.org/gc-abruzzo-just-asked-the-nlrb-to-overturn-ex-cell-o-heres-why-that-matters/

She's also nuking TRAPs, the deals that force workers to repay their employers for their "training expenses" if they have the audacity to quit and get a better job somewhere else:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/#norms-code-laws-markets

(As with every aspect of the Biden White House, its labor policy is contradictory and self-defeating, with other Biden appointees working to smash worker power, including when Biden broke the railworkers' strike:)

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/18/co-determination/#now-make-me-do-it

A surging labor movement opens up all kinds of possibilities for a better world. Writing for the Law and Political Economy Project, UNITE Here attorney Zoe Tucker makes the case for unions as a way out of America's brutal housing crisis:

https://lpeproject.org/blog/why-unions-should-join-the-housing-fight/

She describes how low-waged LA hotel workers have been pushed out of neighborhoods close to their jobs, with UNITE Here members commuting three hours in each direction, starting their work-days at 3AM in order to clock in on time:

https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1669088899769987079

UNITE Here members are striking against 50 hotels in LA and Orange County, and their demands include significant cost-of-living raises. But more money won't give them back the time they give up to those bruising daily commutes. For that, unions need to make housing itself a demand.

As Tucker writes, most workers are tenants and vice-versa. What's more, bad landlords are apt to be bad bosses, too. Stepan Kazaryan, the same guy who owns the strip club whose conditions were so bad that it prompted the creation of Equity Strippers NoHo, the first strippers' union in a generation, is also a shitty landlord whose tenants went on a rent-strike:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/20/the-missing-links/#plunderphonics

So it was only natural that Kazaryan's tenants walked the picket line with the Equity Stripper Noho workers:

https://twitter.com/glendaletenants/status/1733290276599570736?s=46

While scumbag bosses/evil landlords like Kazaryan deal out misery retail, one apartment building at a time, the wholesale destruction of workers' lives comes from private equity giants who are the most prolific source of TRAPs, robo-scabbing apps, illegal union busting, and indefinite contract delays – and these are the very same PE firms that are buying up millions of single-family homes and turning them into slums:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#the-new-slumlords

Tucker's point is that when a worker clocks out of their bad job, commutes home for three hours, and gets back to their black-mold-saturated, overpriced apartment to find a notice of a new junk fee (like a surcharge for paying your rent in cash, by check, or by direct payment), they're fighting the very same corporations.

Unions who defend their workers' right to shelter do every tenant a service. A coalition of LA unions succeeded in passing Measure ULA, which uses a surcharge on real estate transactions over $5m to fund "the largest municipal housing program in the country":

https://unitedtohousela.com/app/uploads/2022/05/LA_City_Affordable_Housing_Petition_H.pdf

LA unions are fighting for rules to limit Airbnbs and other platforms that transform the city's rental stock into illegal, unlicensed hotels:

https://upgo.lab.mcgill.ca/publication/strs-in-los-angeles-2022/Wachsmuth_LA_2022.pdf

And the hotel workers organized under UNITE Here are fighting their own employers: the hoteliers who are aggressively buying up residences, evicting their long-term tenants, tearing down the building and putting up a luxury hotel. They got LA council to pass a law requiring hotels to build new housing to replace any residences they displace:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-11-28/airbnb-operators-would-need-police-permit-in-l-a-under-proposed-law

UNITE Here is bargaining for a per-room hotel surcharge to fund housing specifically for hotel workers, so the people who change the sheets and clean the toilets don't have to waste six hours a day commuting to do so.

Labor unions and tenant unions have a long history of collaboration in the USA. NYC's first housing coop was midwifed by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America in 1927. The Penn South coop was created by the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union. The 1949 Federal Housing Act passed after American unions pushed hard for it:

http://www.peterdreier.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Labors-Love-Lost.pdf

It goes both ways. Strong unions can create sound housing – and precarious housing makes unions weaker. Remember during the Hollywood writers' strike, when an anonymous studio ghoul told the press the plans was to "allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses?"

Vienna has the most successful housing in any major city in the world. It's the city where people of every income and background live in comfort without being rent-burdened and without worry about eviction, mold, or leaks. That's the legacy of Red Vienna, the Austrian period of Social Democratic Workers' Party rule and built vast tracts of high-quality public housing. The system was so robust that it rebounded after World War II and continues to this day:

https://www.politico.eu/article/vienna-social-housing-architecture-austria-stigma/

Today, the rest of the world is mired in a terrible housing crisis. It's not merely that the rent's too damned high (though it is) – housing precarity is driving dangerous political instability:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

Turning the human necessity of shelter into a market commodity is a failure. The economic orthodoxy that insists that public housing, rent control, and high-density zoning will lead to less housing has failed. rent control works:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/16/mortgages-are-rent-control/#housing-is-a-human-right-not-an-asset

Leaving housing to the market only produces losers. If you have the bad luck to invest everything you have into a home in a city that contracts, you're wiped out. If you have the bad luck into invest everything into a home in a "superstar city" where prices go up, you also lose, because your city becomes uninhabitable and your children can't afford to live there:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/27/lethal-dysfunction/#yimby

A strong labor movement is the best chance we have for breaking the housing deadlock. And housing is just for starters. Labor is the key to opening every frozen-in-place dysfunction. Take care work: the aging, increasingly chronically ill American population is being tortured and murdered by private equity hospices, long-term care facilities and health services that have been rolled up by the same private equity firms that destroyed work and housing:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

In her interview with Capital & Main's Jessica Goodheart, National Domestic Workers Alliance president Ai-jen Poo describes how making things better for care workers will make things better for everyone:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-12-13-labor-leader-ai-jen-poo-interview/

Care work is a "triple dignity investment": first, it makes life better for the worker (most often a woman of color), then, it allows family members of people who need care to move into higher paid work; and of course, it makes life better for people who need care: "It delivers human potential and agency. It delivers a future workforce. It delivers quality of life."

The failure to fund care work is a massive driver of inequality. America's sole federal public provision for care is Medicaid, which only kicks in after a family it totally impoverished. Funding care with tax increases polls high with both Democrats and Republicans, making it good politics:

https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2021/4/7/voters-support-investing-in-the-care-economy

Congress stripped many of the care provisions from Build Back Better, missing a chance for an "unprecedented, transformational investment in care." But the administrative agencies picked up where Congress failed, following a detailed executive order that identifies existing, previously unused powers to improve care in America. The EO "expands access to care, supports family caregivers and improves wages and conditions for the workforce":

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2023/04/18/executive-order-on-increasing-access-to-high-quality-care-and-supporting-caregivers/

States are also filling the void. Washington just created a long-term care benefit:

https://apnews.com/article/washington-long-term-care-tax-disability-cb54b04b025223dbdba7199db1d254e4

New Mexicans passed a ballot initiative that establishes permanent funding for child care:

https://www.cwla.org/new-mexico-votes-for-child-care/

New York care workers won a $3/hour across the board raise:

https://inequality.org/great-divide/new-york-budget-fair-pay-home-care/

The fight is being led by women of color, and they're kicking ass – and they're doing it through their unions. Worker power is the foundation that we build a better world upon, and it's surging.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/13/i-want-a-roof-over-my-head/#and-bread-on-the-table

[jeankluv]

But daddy I love him - Satoru Gojo [ch.01]

Short series

Summary: If there was a phrase that could describe you, it was; good girl. You had been a good girl all your life, following your father's orders and being as modest as possible. You had focused your entire life on being a perfect lady, one who could be a good wife in the future. This is how you had been raised and how you had been instructed. But your whole world was shaken when one warm summer morning, your eyes met the bold, defiant and sharp gaze of a young man with white hair.

Tags of the series: +18, female!reader, set in 1700s-1800s, loss of virginity, misogyny language and thinking, oral sex, fingering, innocent oc, unsafe sex, vaginal sex, manipulative, eating disorders, abusive parents, no use of y/n.

ch.01 | ch.02 | ch.03 | ch.04 | ch.05 | epilogue

Jujutsu Kaisen materialist

Note: this is going to be a short series, of around two or three chapters, it’s a way to say thank you for the 300 followers. The tags are in general for the series, in this chapter there are only suggestive language and some misogyny comments and actions, according to the time that is set. Oc and Satoru are +20

words: 4k

Pinterest board

You were on the beach, near the house, you had gone for a walk and read a book by the seashore. The morning was warm and your blue dress moved due to the sea breeze that hit you. Placing a lock of your hair behind your ear, you looked at the immense sea before you.

You had rarely left your place of residence and even less had you crossed the sea. But this was a fervent dream that you had longed for since you had started reading stories from different places in the world.

But your parents were strict and you had a weak body to be able to make that journey. So the only thing left was to long for something that would not happen and immerse yourself in your beloved books.

You turned the page of the book you had brought with you and continued reading. It was a romantic book, one of those that made butterflies flutter in your stomach with just words written on a piece of paper. You had always wondered if it really happened, if when you were in love with someone those butterflies appeared and fluttered.

You had never fallen in love, but you had always longed for it. You knew that when the time came, you would be married to someone, but the mere idea of ​​marrying someone, with whom you could never feel those butterflies or any kind of affection, terrified you.

You were terrified of the idea of ​​ending up like your parents and raising your children in a loveless home, like you had.

“It’s the book good, angel?” A deep voice spoke in front of you.

Resting the book against your chest, you looked up, meeting a face you didn't know. His gaze was sharp and even a little arrogant. You stayed watching him, while his gaze continued to rest on you and you felt like he was somehow undressing you with his eyes. You held the book tighter to your chest and drew your legs up a little.

“Oh don’t be afraid princess. I don’t bite, unless you want me to.” You felt your face heat up at his words.

“Who are you?” You murmured.

“Satoru.” He said, giving a bite to the apple on his hand. “What are you reading angel?” He pointed to the book.

You hesitated, unsure if you should keep talking with that unkown man. “I think I should leave.” You said getting up carefully.

The man whose name was Satoru cleared his throat. "Come on angel, don't tell me that my presence scared you."

“I would rather be alone sir.” You whispered. “Now I will take my leave.” You said turning around and moving fast across the beach.

You could still feel his gaze on you, never leaving you, not until you disappeared from his sight. Walking across the dirt road that connected your house to the beach, you looked back to make sure the man wasn't following you. Your breathing was labored and your heart was beating rapidly when you reached the door. Taking another breath through your nostrils, you straightened your back and put on the best of your smiles as you entered the house.

"My lady." One of the household maids approached you. “Her mother wants to see her.”

"Something happened?" You bowed your head.

“No, miss, I just want to talk to you about the dinner that will be held tonight.”

“Oh, yeah okay.” You nodded.

Still clutching the book to your chest, you walked through the house. You were not the wealthiest in the county, but your father had a good fortune and from time to time he held parties, in a desperate attempt to get one of the rich men to notice his daughter and thus marry her.

That night you would once again have to endure the lustful gazes of men three times your age, while you made excuses not to commit to them. But time was fleeting and his excuses were slowly running out.

You knocked on the door and heard your mother telling you to enter.

“Mother.” You bowed your head. “I heard you called me.”

“Yes.” She said. “Tonight as you know there will be a party in our house.” You nodded. “I want you to stay away from one of our guests.”

“Stay away? Wouldn't that be rude?”

“No. That man is no good news.” She stood up and walked to the window. “It doesn’t matter how wealthy he is, he is no good for our family.” Then she turned around and walked towards you. “So please my beautiful daughter, don’t you dare approach that man.” A shiver ran through your body when you saw your mother's threatening gaze and you nodded with fear.

“May I ask, what’s his name mother?” You said, still frightened.

“It's Duke Satoru Gojo. I heard he is good looking but besides that, there is nothing good about him.”

Satoru

That was the name of that man, wasn’t it?

“Is something wrong?” Your mother asked.

“No, nothing is wrong mother.” You responded feeling the nervousness in your words. “I retire to my room to start getting ready for the party.” Your mother nodded and you left the room.

You walked back to your room, thinking about the man once again. Just thinking about him sent a shiver down your spine. Mother had asked you not to approach him, but you had the feeling that he would be the one to approach you. Remembering your meeting on the beach, you wouldn't have thought he was a lord or anything like that. To tell the truth, you thought that he was one of the villagers in town who wanted to bother you, for the way he was dressed up.

He was wearing a white shirt, with the top buttons unbuttoned and the sleeves rolled up. With just one glance you could see that he was well toned. A subtle blush appeared on your face as you realized what you were thinking about. You shook your head to get rid of those improper thoughts.

“My lady?” A knock on your door brought you back.

“Rose!” You smiled at your maid.

“I’m here to start your preparations for tonight’s party.” She smiled with a small nod.

“That’s perfect. Let’s begin.”

And before you realized it, you were already putting on the final touches of your makeup and the sun had already set on the horizon of the sea. Rose said goodbye to you when you headed towards the door and with a firm step you headed to the entrance where the guests were waiting and where that man would surely also be.

Going down the stairs, you stood next to your parents, to welcome the guests arriving at the party. The faces of people already familiar and new, passed by one by one. Feeling a relief in your chest when you saw that that man did not appear, you entered the party. There were hardly any people your age or people with whom you could start a conversation that you liked.

“My lady?” You turned to see the face of the man who had called you.

He was a marquis from near the capital, he was approximately 40 years old, you heard that his wife died and now he was looking for a young girl to remarry and thus give him a male heir.

Taking a step back you greeted him. "Sir." You put on the best of your smiles.

“You look absolutely beautiful, my lady.” He flattered you, bringing the glass of wine to his mouth, his face was dyed a soft red so, it was more than evident, that this was not his first glass of wine. “It's a shame no one has courted you yet.” He said taking a step forward, you took one step back.

“The right man hasn’t appeared yet, sir.” You wanted to escape that conversation as soon as possible.

“My lady, how about I invite you to my country side house and let me court you properly?” He raised his hand so you could place yours on top of it.

Your mouth went dry and your hands started to shake. “I…” You wanted to say no, but that would be nonsense and disrespectful.

��I think the lady is not very interested in an insect like you.” A deep voice spoke behind you.

A chill ran down your spine when you heard that voice. It was him.

You raised your face to see him standing behind you, with a frivolous smile looking at the marquis you were conversing with.

”Duke Satoru Gojo, excuse me. How are you? I didn’t expect to see him at this party.” The marquis who seconds ago possessed tremendous confidence was now shaking like a wet puppy.

“Pretty annoyed, because I have to see insects like you believing themselves to be something they're not.” He scratched his head and took a step forward, standing at your height. “Now disappear from my sight.” You trembled as you heard his tone and saw his murderous look.

Who was that man? Your gaze was fixed on him and you did not see the marquis flee the place in terror. When you realized you were both alone and he looked at you with those same hungry eyes with which he had looked at you that morning on the beach.

“Angel, we met each other once again.” He bowed a little. “You look even more beautiful than this morning.” He tangled one of your locks in his finger.

“Duke.” Taking a step back from him, you bowed to him. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” You said without looking at his eyes.

Mother told you to stay away from him, so you needed to escape from there as soon as possible.

“Oh I’m a bit disappointed that you won’t look at me.” You heard him chuckling. “You are scared of me little one?”

“Sorry duke, but I must take my leave.” Trying to move away from him, he held your wrist pressing you against his torso.

“Careful angel.” He whispered into your ear, causing your legs to tremble at his warm breath. “You almost dumped into the waiter.”

And then you noticed, the waiter that was there holding the tray with more drinks. "I’m so sorry." You told the waiter.

The waiter shook his head and smiled at you, leaving your sight. "You have to be more careful angel, you could have hurt yourself." He whispered again against your ear.

“Thank you…” You whispered, releasing you from his grip and separating you from his muscular body.

Being close to him, his warmth and touch had caused a strange feeling in you.

“Angel, are you avoiding me?” His face came dangerously close to yours and your cheeks turned a subtle crimson red.

“No duke, that would be rude.” You looked down to your feet.

“So angel, how about you join me for a walk on this warm summer night.” He extended his hand towards you.

Your heart was beating strongly in your chest, doubting what you should do. Your mind wandered to the conversation with your mother, where she implored you to stay away from that man. But your heart wanted to grab that hand of his and take you for a walk that night. With your hand trembling you grabbed the duke's hand and together you left the house.

The cold of the night hit your body, causing you to shrink subtly, trying not to let your body heat escape. Instinctively you squeezed your hand, causing you to squeeze the duke's hand subtly. Realizing this, you moved your hand away and placed it against your chest, feeling your heart pounding in your chest.

The duke looked you up and down and took off his jacket, slinging it over your shoulders. You don't know if it was because of the jacket or because of the gesture, but you felt an intense heat settle on your face.

“Thank you duke.” You murmured holding into his jacket.

The duke just nodded and continued walking. Your gaze focused on his back and your mother's words echoed in your head again. You still had time to return to the party and ignore that you had been with that man there, but as before your heart decided for you and you walked following his step.

“So angel.” He spoke, taking what it looked like a cigarette out of his pocket. “Was the book you were reading good?”

“Yeah… it was.” His voice was making you feel things.

“What was it about?” He put the cigarette on his mouth and smiled at you while lighting up.

“About…” Your words didn’t want to come out of your mouth. “About a girl and boy that fell in love and escaped.”

“Oh… interesting.” He smiled. “You still don’t seem to trust me very much angel. Did someone talk bad about me?”

“No duke, not at all.” You hated to lie but you couldn’t expose your mother or else things could get complicated for your family.

“I don’t like when beautiful girls lie.” You felt his hand under your chin. “Tell me angel. What did they say about me?”

You trembled under his touch. “That… that you are no good news.”

With a crooked smile he spat the cigarette smoke away from you. “And that’s what you think, princess?” He asked you, narrowing his gaze.

“I haven’t had the opportunity to meet the duke, so I can not give an opinion.”

With a smile and with the cigarette between his teeth, he removed his hand from under your chin and walked to a stone seat overlooking the sea and sat there. You looked at his figure, muscular and large, feeling that heat in you again.

“Angel, don’t be shy and sit here with me.” He extended his hand and gestured for you to come closer. “I would like to know more about the beautiful lady of this house.”

You sat down next to him, placing your hands thighly on your knees, still nervous due to his presence.

“Ask me whatever you want, angel. I already told you.” He got near you. “I won’t bite you, unless you ask me to.”

Taking a deep breath, you spoke. “Why do you have a bad reputation?”

“Well…” He chuckled. “People think I killed my brother, to take the title and the power.”

“But those surely are just rumors right?” Your heart was beating faster and faster with each passing second.

“Maybe I did kill him, angel.” You began to feel dizzy, was he for real? “Don’t look at me like that angel, I didn’t kill him. My brother was clumsy and an idiot, he died due to his clumsiness but I loved him, at the end of the day he was my brother.” He threw the cigarette away. “But everyone started to believe that lie and to say I manipulated him because the title, instead of going to his son, it was leave it to me.” He shrugged. “Do you still think I’m bad angel?”

You shook your head. “I’m sorry you have to face those rumors.”

“How sweet of you angel.” He smiled. “That man… he wanted to marry you, right?”

You nodded. “Yeah…”

“Someone your age would be expected to be already married.” He pointed out.

“Yeah but I have a weak body, so my parents are trying to push it away.” You explained.

“Are they?” You looked at him confused. “Or are you?”

“What do you mean? I would never…”

“Princess it seems to me that you don’t want to marry any of those old insects and that you use the bland excuse of having a poor body to get away with it.” He cockily smiled. “I’m wrong?”

“That’s a gross lie, I would never lie about my body being weak.” You blurted out, embarrassed by his words.

He chuckled softly. “Okay angel, I will try to believe in your words.” He turned to face you. “But honestly, you would need a better match than those suitors your parents want to assign you. A princess like you doesn't deserve to be with those insects.”

You looked down. “I don’t have a say on what my father chooses for me. Once the moment comes, I will marry the person he chooses for me.”

“And that’s what you want, angel?” You felt his breath on your ear. “Or you want one of those love stories?”

You took a deep breath. “Those stories never come true, I’m destined to marry someone I won’t love, but you know.” You smiled looking at him. “Maybe with time love can happen.”

“Or maybe it never happens and you are unhappy for the rest of your life.” He said with those eyes all over you.

“Why are you telling me these things duke? Isn't it a bit rude to be talking like that to a lady?” You said.

“Is it?” He tilted. “I don’t know angel.” He stood up and you followed him with your gaze. “So you say you will marry anyone your father chooses. Interesting.” He smirked and watching that smirk, it made your body tremble.

You watched as he took a pocket watch out of his pocket and how he looked at it. “Duke…” You called him. “Why did you come to the party?” It was a question you have been wanting to ask since your mother informed you he was coming. “I don’t want to sound rude or anything, but the travel from your residence to here is quite long.”

He put the watch back in his pocket and smiled at you. “Just wanted to see with my own eyes how beautiful the lady of the house was or if the rumors were all fake.” He held your hand and brought it to his lips. “And the rumors were not wrong.” He said planting a kiss on your knuckles.

Your legs shook as the duke sank his teeth into the fabric of your gloves and gently began to remove it. But the real weakness came when he ran his tongue between your fingers while his piercing eyes were fixed on you.

An immense heat was established in the lower area of ​​your abdomen and as much as you wanted to remove your hand from its touch, the pleasant sensation it was causing in you, prevented it.

“I will keep this glove with me, angel.” He kissed the glove and put it in his pocket. “We will see each other again soon, angel.”

And you watched him walk away, disappearing in the darkness of the night. You stayed on the bench for a few minutes, thinking about what just happened and feeling a new sensation on your body that you could not quite understand.

Standing back up you walked back to the house, getting welcomed by the noise of the people speaking, singing and dancing.

“Where were you?” Your mother appeared. “And whose jacket is that?” She raised your voice.

“I was outside and a…”

“Outside on your own?” She held your arm.

“Mother, you’re hurting me…” You whispered.

“Don’t tell me you were being a slut in our garden?” She asked you.

“What? Mother no, I was just taking fresh air.” You felt how your eyes got wet. “Please mother.”

“Agh.” She let your arm go. “Come with me, your father is going to introduce you to someone.” She turned around and walked.

You followed her in silence and with your head low, still feeling scared for your mother’s tone and angry look on her face. When you looked back up, you saw your father talking with a man, an unknown man for you. He looked the same age as your parents and was laughing with your father while smoking and drinking.

“Oh!” Your father said. “Look Marquis Harrison, this is my one and only daughter.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you sir.” You bowed your head.

“You have a really beautiful daughter.” The man spoke looking at your father.

“Yeah.” Your father laughed. “And you know Marquis Harrison, she is still unmarried and in the perfect age to to conceive.”

You felt your pulse accelerate and your breathing shorten, while you listened to your father speak. You knew where that conversation was going and you didn't want it to get to that point, you didn't want to marry that man.

You felt like the corset was tightening you more and more and how it was difficult for you to breathe with each passing moment.

Duke Satoru had been right, you had been lying about having a weak body and you had been paying gold coins to your personal doctor to corroborate it. But that excuse would soon be exhausted.

“Oh it’s that right my lady?” The man spoke to you.

You noticed the vein in your neck throbbing strongly, you felt like you would faint at any moment.

“Answer to Marquis Smith.” Your mother, angrily whispered to you.

“I…”

“Angel.” That deep voice again. “I totally forgot about my jacket.” He approached you causing all eyes to fall on him and then on you when he was in front of you.

Your cheeks turned red as you saw his face again, as if something about him had an instant effect on you.

"What does this mean?" Your mother raises her voice.

“Oh ma'am, I'm afraid I didn't get a chance to properly introduce myself to the hosts of the party.” He turned to face your parents. “I am Duke Satoru Gojo, thank you for inviting me to this party.” He smiled, bowing slightly and placing her hand on her chest.

“Are you the one who gave the jacket to my daughter?” Your mother asked.

“That's right ma'am, I found her daughter outside getting some air and I lent her my jacket.” He lied.

Your mother took two steps towards you and she grabbed you tightly by the arm, she didn't care that all eyes were on you. “Didn't I tell you to stay away from him, don’t tell me you are a slut who spreads her legs out there?”

“Mother please.” You felt your eyes sting.

Your father shook his head. “Our daughter is a bit poorly raised, Duke, we are sorry if something uncomfortable could have happened.” You felt like crying at that very moment, you wanted someone to get you out of there. You needed someone to do it.

The duke looked at you and then at your father. "I think the only rude people here are the hosts of this party, who dedicate themselves to humiliating their only daughter in front of all the guests, while trying to marry her to the highest bidder." The Duke's words came out like darts from his mouth and his gaze was so extremely sharp, you would swear he could cut the air.

“How dare you…” your father blurted out with his face slightly red.

“I want to marry your daughter.” The duke cut your father.

A loud gasp was heard in the room and you looked at him stunned.

“Stay away from her.” Your mother blurted, still holding your arm thighly.

He completely ignored your mother. “I will be staying in the house, so your daughter and I can meet better.” He sharply looked at your dad. “I hope this is not an impediment or I will have to contact his majesty the King.” He threatened.

"Alright." Your father stammered, looking at the ground. The duke turned and removed your mother's grip on your arm.

He lifted your chin with his hand and smiled. “Now we can see each other more, angel.”

You swallowed dryly, looking into his eyes and feeling that flame light up inside you once again.

[sapphire-rb]

Dying in Malhalla be like:

[If it can't load the save it boots you into the menu with a black background]

World's dead, can't load the save. Everything is eternal darkness. You screwed up. Malroth isn't there to drag you back to the base so you actually die...

[sapphire-draw]

That moment in Moonbrooke where Malroth gets angsty and decides he wants to break the siege.

Turns out, you can kill a lot of unintended enemies with the poison needle! including the siege ones!

So you can pull a Malroth and charge head first to try and kill everyone if you want to- before Malroth even suggests doing so.

They respawn for the cutscene... but don't worry they won't here

[moonpascaltoo]

james buchanan ‘bucky’ barnes

masterlist • marvel • 04/04/24

˚‧⁺ ･ ˖ · ୨ৎ recs

𑣲 video games I @twoghostsfromeden

Sam Wilson attempts to teach Bucky how to play video games, but you have a different idea

𑣲 just like dad I @ladyfallonavenger

The Reader loses Bucky in the snap and life presents a whole new challenge.

𑣲 coming in hot I @nexusnyx (ao3 link)

When your best friend Sarah recommends you a mechanic of her brother’s trust, all you can think about and pray to is that he doesn’t rip you off. Your car is your prized possession and amidst all the worry and concern of your medical studies, drowning in even more debt sounds as suffocating as it would be. Of course, you never thought of the possibility of the mechanic being the problem. A hot, polite, gentle, and silent-type of problem. Drowning in debt would be easier to navigate than the blue of Bucky Barnes’s eyes.

𑣲 wallpaper I @cosmicbucky

bucky finds out how to change the wallpaper on your phone, and takes every opportunity he can to do so. until one day he doesn't have the heart to.

𑣲 consequences I @duuhrayliegh

𑣲 letters to santa pt2 I @ellemj

𑣲 need and wants I @/ellemj

𑣲 against the rules I @/ellemj

Bucky's trying to fuck you senseless so you'll have to sleep over. Isn't that how a friends with benefits situation is supposed to work?

𑣲 i hate you I @/ellemj

y/n has these weird mind powers where she can feel others feelings or make others feel hers...she accidentally during a very heated fun time projects everything she is feeling to Bucky, basically doubling his pleasure

𑣲 trust I @kgficz

Set during the end of ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’. You had been forced to work as a nurse for Hydra’s soldiers, you never expected The Winter Soldier to be one of them. What happens when he starts to care about you?

𑣲 glitter and goo I @welldonebeca

When you have to go on a mission to a different planet together, Bucky is hit by a mating ritual flower, and some feelings you two have been hiding come up

𑣲 accidental pic I @mostlymarvelsstuff

Reader recives Buckys nudes accidentally

𑣲 just friends I @cadaverousnight

A night of drinking makes Bucky bold and a harmless text makes him bolder

𑣲 Worlds Collide I @espinosaurusrexex

The world is ending. And there are two types of people: The ones that embrace the last pieces of happiness left, and the ones that just don’t bother anymore. When those two clash, there’s no way of knowing what will happen. But maybe, some hopes and dreams aren’t so different after all and the both of them get a chance at becoming more than just acquaintances.

𑣲 refuge I @/espinosaurusrexex

You had a track record of cracking tough cases, but this one proved to be your breaking point. The Winter Soldier was out there, thirsting for blood, operating in total anonymity, and leaving a trail of bodies in the cold Colorado snow. Then, just as a snowstorm was about to paralyse the town, Bucky Barnes appeared on your doorstep – lost, sweet, and in dire need of help. It all seems too good to be true, but what happens when his secrets come to haunt him and Bucky’s blurred past reveals a predicament neither of you saw coming?

𑣲 happy little accidents I @/espinosaurusrexex

In a world after the war, Bucky tries to get pieces of his old self back by joining an art class. He meets you and instantly falls head over heels. Now he just has to work up the courage to ask you out.

𑣲 serious questions I @/espinosaurusrexex

Bucky agrees to go on a date to make his colleagues shut up. Now, he just feels sorry for the poor woman that has to spend an entire evening with him. He really tries to make it work, though, because he actually enjoys her company.

𑣲 bad boys don’t buy flowers I @/espinosaurusrexex

Bucky would have never thought, he’d be chasing after a girl. Not when all of them usually fell at his feet. But when he finds himself entangled in a deal born out of a desperate argument with his assistant, he realizes there is nothing he wouldn't do for you: The independent florist who is adamantly dragging him to the homeless shelter every chance she gets. There is just one problem: Bucky doesn't know how to tell you. And the teasing from his friends is certainly not making things easier for him...

𑣲 new slang I @/espinosaurusrexex

𑣲 remember me I @/espinosaurusrexex

After a fight against the most notorious Hydra agent of all, Steve and you discover that your assumed diseased friend Bucky is still alive. Old wounds resurface as you are confronted with the grappling reality that you have lived vastly different lives for the past 70 years. Will he remember your shared history? And most importantly: does he still feel the same?

𑣲 unexpected I @pellucid-constellations

With all of his rough edges and impassive glances, Bucky Barnes looked to be the last person you’d find at an elementary school bake sale. Too bad Steve couldn’t make it, and dealing with a class hopped up on sugar wasn’t a feat you could manage alone

𑣲 i need him like water I @/pellucid-constellations

You think Bucky’s having an affair. He thinks… well you aren’t sure what he thinks. But he must notice the living room light is left on. Every night.

𑣲 flowers in the compound I @/pellucid-constellations

That girl from the flower shop seems to be taking up a lot of Bucky’s time.

𑣲 grip I @/pellucid-constellations

You knew Bucky didn't like his arm. You just didn't know how much until he accidentally hurt you with it.

𑣲 counting I @/pellucid-constellations

Time heals all wounds. Bucky’d been holding onto that proverb ever since blip. But time had never been particularly kind to him, so he opted to keep track of the sweet girl’s in his apartment building instead, the one that made him banana bread and took him to diners at two in the morning. Sometimes, you didn’t keep the same schedule. That made Bucky panic.

𑣲 everybody talks I @nickfowlerrr

𑣲 come back to you I @buckyalpine

What happens when a time travel mission ends up with a version of Bucky from the 40′s standing on the time travel platform.

𑣲 did you hear I @/buckyalpine

𑣲 40s bucky w/ nurse!reader I @/buckyalpine

𑣲 sunshine I @/buckyalpine

𑣲 spiral I @/buckyalpine

𑣲 pick me I @/buckyalpine

𑣲 untouched I @/buckyalpine

𑣲 tongue twister I @/buckyalpine

𑣲 wait what pt2 pt3 pt4 I @/buckyalpine

𑣲 can you not pt2 pt3 I @/buckyalpine

𑣲 choices pt2 I @/buckyalpine

𑣲 drabble I @/buckyalpine

𑣲 aching I @bbyboybucket

After Reader gives Bucky a massage, he realizes how much he likes her touch

𑣲 tiny match maker I @jamdoughnutmagician

Adjusting to his new life outside of the superhero business, Bucky makes the acquaintance of a very young, inquisitive girl.

𑣲 metal arm brrr I @bombsonboard

Every problem needs a solution. Bucky just isn't the biggest fan of yours.

𑣲 the cards were dealt I @bucky-fricking-barnes

Bucky and Y/N are the children of the two most prominent mob bosses in New York. When their parents use them as part of a deal, they’re left to figure out how their lives fit together.

𑣲 a different kind of valentine pt2 I @holylulusworld

Your fiancé breaks your heart on Valentine’s Day out of all days.

𑣲 happy birthday big grump I @/holylulusworld

Your new neighbor is a professional grump. No reason to not be nice to him on his birthday.

𑣲 april fools day (stucky x reader) I @/holylulusworld

Steve and Bucky ask you to join their prank.

𑣲 siren be bound to me I @darkdemeter

He is your captain. There is no place you'd rather be than by his side, nothing you could ever want for that is not him. You owe everything, your entire self, to him. And yet overboard and on the tide you set sail across in search for a great and ancient treasure, a song continues to seep through the cracks of your heart and soul... a song so familiar yet unknown.Forgotten. And Bucky reminds you yet again that there no place else for you that isn't beside him, that there is nothing out there

𑣲 curiosity killed the cat I @queers-gambit

after rescuing you from kidnappers, you overhear your boyfriend-turned-savior complain about how clingy you've become

𑣲 i’d back off if i were you I @thighs-of-betrayal-blog

𑣲 an unforgettable love I @/thighs-of-betrayal-blog

𑣲 hold the door I @/thighs-of-betrayal-blog

You’ve never met your new neighbor, not until an incident happens involving the apartments elevator. 

𑣲 out of practice I @drabbles-mc

reader is a mom, bucky hasn't dated in like 70 years

𑣲 next door to love I @jobean12-blog

When you made the move to the city you never expected your new neighbor to be so sweet and helpful...or hot.

𑣲 this spells love I @/jobean12-blog

Bucky is your best friend and he really is the best but he wants more, he wants everything, but the idea that it could ruin your friendship and he could lose you is too much...

𑣲 boom clap I @/jobean12-blog

Before tonight you wouldn't have been able to label your relationship with Bucky but after he gets home earlier than expected from a mission and shows up at the bar everything changes.

𑣲 everything you want I @/jobean12-blog

there’s no one you trust more than your husband and he always knows exactly what you want.

𑣲 meet my family I @skaye44

Your parents want to meet your boyfriend Bucky which you agree, but the whole family invites itself along for the meeting.

𑣲 my sun my star pt2 pt3 I @cosmos-coma

You wait up late for your boyfriend Bucky to return from his mission, but it isn't Bucky who finds you

𑣲 my everything I @mrsbarnesblog

The last thing that Bucky ever expected to see was the love of his life from the past trapped in one of the Hydra bunkers in the cryofreeze chamber. Yet here he was almost two days later, staring at your still unconscious body through the window at the medical wing, imagining the horror and disgust on your face when you found out that he was no longer the innocent and happy boy you knew before

𑣲 i trust you I @/mrsbarnesblog

when Bucky comes back from a mission with a knife wound there is only one person who can convince him to get help

𑣲 5+1 I @mrs-elsie-barnes

Whether it's on a mission, a work event or a holiday, your sleeping arrangements never seem to work out as planned. It doesn't really bother you until...it does. Confronted with a night sleeping apart, you and Bucky finally talk

𑣲 just like that I @navybrat817

Bucky suggests staying in a hotel together before an undercover mission, which would be fine if you didn't have a massive crush on the super soldier.

𑣲 begin again everything i wanted I @sergeantbuckybarnes

When you go to meet your friend at her work you see a cute guy had been stood up, so you’re going to be the best date of his life.

𑣲 amnesia I @/sergeantbuckybarnes

During a fight in Madripoor you get hit in the head resulting in forgetting the last ten years of your life. And most important, your boyfriend.

𑣲 diamonds I @angrythingstarlight

𑣲 chubby!bucky I @/angrythingstarlight

𑣲 more chubby baker! bucky I @/angrythingstarlight

𑣲 blow me away I @/angrythingstarlight

You just discovered that your boyfriend has never had a blowjob before and that’s a travesty. Good thing you’re about to blow his mind.

𑣲 not so bad I @literaryavenger

It's Bucky's birthday, but doesn't want to make a big deal out of it.

𑣲 happy birthday I @/literaryavenger

It's your birthday and the only person who doesn't seem to be excited about it is you

𑣲 body and soul I @theladybarnes

Reader has a conversation with Sam that leaves her a little confused before her date with Bucky. Includes probably the best romance movie quote to ever grace films.

𑣲 you’re my desire pt2 I @marvelouslizzie w/ @/notafunkiller

Your best friend drags you out on a double date. You were supposed to be Steve Rogers' date, but plans change pretty quickly and you end up in Bucky Barnes' arms.

𑣲 she chose me I @notafunkiller

Steve's hopes get crushed when he wrongly assumes you'd choose him over Bucky.

𑣲 bucky has a crush I @assembletheimagines

𑣲 buckyvision pt1 pt2 pt3 pt4 pt5 pt5.5 pt6 pt7 pt8 pt9 pt10 I @fictionalmemoirs

𑣲 eye for an eye I @christowhore

you come home one night to find bucky in bed with another woman. after threatening divorce, he begs for your forgiveness and tells you he'll do anything. he should’ve known to always be careful with what you wish for.

𑣲 just one more minute I @/christowhore

you grow tired of bucky constantly leaving you in dark when it comes to his feelings. finally, you have enough.

[strwbryien]

ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ 🎧 backburner

a short scaramouche x reader smau

SYNOPSIS

scaramouche is an enigma. you met him when his band, 4ERO, performed at your school, and soon became one of his biggest fans. your first encounter with him was embarrassing—you were caught dancing to one of his songs while cleaning at the cafe where you work at. to be fair, the cafe was closed, and there was no one around! after giving him his order, he left, but not without writing his number on a piece of paper. you two texted nonstop, saw each other often, but then, all of a sudden, he disappeared. hurt and confused, you didn’t know what went wrong. after a month, he came back with apologies, and you took him back. things seemed normal—until it happened again. each time he ghosted you, you forgave him, and it became a never-ending cycle. loving scaramouche is both the best and worst thing in the world. you're just a backburner to him, always his second choice. are you sure you really don’t mind crisping up on his backburner?

WARNINGS mature language, inconsistent timestamps, hurt/comfort, toxic relationship, scaramouche being mean (sorry)

GENRE strangers to lovers(?) to ???, social media au, college au

STATUS yet to be started

TAGLIST open !

PROFILES:

tba...

NICOLE

01. before 02. high school in jakarta 03. backburner 04. keeping tabs 05. the apartment we won't share 06. facebook friends 07. anaheim 08. milk teeth 09. autumn 10. oceans & engines 11. on the drive home 12. take a chance with me

notes ᝰ.ᐟ

— 2nd smau woohoo (i just couldn't resist not doing this) — taglist are open! just submit an ask or simply comment here! — thank you guys sm for supporting my first smau IM GONNA KISS YOU ALL (with consent ofc) please enjoy reading this!

[yu-huuuu]

𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘥𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯?| 𝘣𝘢𝘵𝘴𝘪𝘴!reader| chapter: 01, (you are here)02, 03, 04, 05

[🌸] phew-- you guys give me so much love in the last part, thanks <3 , maybe you don't know but you always give me a lot of energy to continue, thank you, I love you.

Summary: Perhaps the most important question is not; "How did you end up in this place?". it is; will you be able to finish the unfinished business that your self from this world left pending?.

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The man took another sip of the steaming tea that resided in his hands, "I searched for you like crazy as soon as I first received your call."

You straightened up; however, you did not speak despite your desire to do so. Laura was sitting next to you.

When the man suddenly appeared at the door, the first thing he said was to know why you were in this place, and of course you were surprised by his words.

He had politely asked to speak to you, which you reluctantly agreed to. Laura, on the other hand, had offered to make some tea for the three of you to drink while you talked.

This man's appearance was so strange and unkempt, yet so... familiar, you vaguely wondered where you had seen him before.

"This is probably too sudden for you", he said, without showing any sign of discomfort at your lack of response. He put the small china cup down on the living room table, then pointed at your new old friend, "Does she have to be here?"

You knitted your eyebrows at her unappreciated words. You opened your mouth to reply before he interrupted, "No, forget it. I just remembered what happened last time I asked you that".

You were speechless; what did he mean by 'last time'...?

"Sorry, did we know each other before?", you asked, completely confused. "You speak as if we have known each other for a long time..."

The man frowned at your words: "Oh, right, you're not her".

"Her?" you murmured. You were so confused; did he think you were someone else or...?

He sighed while frowning a bit. His action and expressions were unexpected for you, but to be honest, it was more like he was mentally preparing himself for what he was going to say next: "How much do you know about other dimensions?".

"I...", what did you know? Only what was necessary, that was for sure. I mean, there was never a question like that on a math or physics test in high school. Goodness, it wasn't even a regular topic of conversation.

The man spoke again, not letting you finish your thoughts he murmured your name, "That's your name, right? I guess your last name is not 'Wayne', that would be too much of a coincidence'.

Wayne? Like the last name of that fictional character from the comics? You were going to ask him what he meant when the realization of what he said first hit you, you hadn't even told him your name yet, "How...?"

"So even names don't change in other dimensions," he said to himself without looking at your face. Then the man snorted; it sounded like an almost graceless muffled laugh. When he calmed down, he looked into your eyes. His look was serious— too serious, a little chill ran down your spine from the intensity of his look. "You are in another dimension... one where you died."

"What?" He was joking, right?

The man sighed, almost as if he were preparing himself for what he was about to say, "You were Bruce Wayne's adopted daughter".

As soon as the man finished speaking, you had enough. "Is this a joke!? Do you think it's funny that—?", Laura's warm hand on yours stopped you in the middle of your tirade. You turned to see her confused, only to see her surprised? She looked as if she had realized something.

Why did Laura see you that way? You could feel that your head was about to explode from everything that was happening. This was all too much; it couldn't be real. It was just impossible. This had to be a very well-crafted joke.

The man called out to you once more. "I didn't introduce myself, right?", he sighed in amusement and then raised his hand for you to shake in introduction mode, "You from this dimension probably would be scolding me for my bad manners. I'm John Constantine".

...

You saw the man's back walking away, his hands inside his coat. When he was a good distance away, he turned to you, "If you need anything, don't hesitate to contact me".

You squeezed the special card he had given you while you nodded vigorously, and then watched with complete surprise how what you assumed was a portal opened and then disappeared with John inside. None of this felt real, you were still taking in what happened an hour ago.

'I'm in another dimension', you thought as you, still very nervous, looked at the news magazine in which on the front page was reported about how the "justice league" managed to successfully catch the "injustice league" who threatened to destroy the entire city of Manhattan.

You knelt down, moving and reviewing different magazines from earlier dates that had different characters as protagonists, some better known than others. There was one of the "teen titans", a magazine that perfectly framed "Superman" flying through the sky to catch a plane with more than two hundred passengers on board that was going down.

You rummaged and moved more magazines until you got to the oldest news. One page featured Wonder Woman in particular as the protagonist of a march for Women's Day. Another page featured Flash, who was named the fastest human being alive. Even one of Aquaman gave an interview on how he managed to clean up the oceans by ninety percent.

There were some from Gotham that you were afraid to see for some reason. 'Is what he told me true?'

You sighed, tired; all this was giving you a migraine. 'Of all the possible things that could have happened to me, it had to be the worst...'

...

A sudden knock on the door startled you.

'Is it John?', was what you thought at first. It had been a few days since you last saw John, and the talk you had with him still weighed heavily on your mind.

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"I suggest you come with me", he tried to convince you, but he stopped when he saw your distrustful look, "or maybe I could take you to Bruce", he retracted as he raised his hands a little.

"Why?" you inquired uneasily.

"You'll be safer this way", he explained as he got up from the chair. It didn't take long for you to copy his action, "Are you coming?".

Should you really do it? Was it really safe to go with him? If everything he told you was true, then the world waiting for you outside wasn't safe at all, and you knew it. You weren't foolish at all; you were sure that even John couldn't protect you at all times.

What would happen to Laura? Would she be okay?

John, seeing your indecisive state, hums, "Though- this place is good". He spoke, taking his eyes off of you.

You looked up from the fixed point that you were looking at without realizing it, "huh?"

He just nodded to himself and then looked at you, "I mean, this place isn't safe, it's a small town, but no one would think of looking for anything of value in this place", he explained as he gave you a small but warm smile, albeit something very inside you told you that smile was not really directed at you.

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The second wave of knocks on the door took you out of your memories. You were about to get up to open the door when Laura suddenly appeared, waving you to stay in your place, which you obeyed.

"Are you sure that she is here?", it was a woman's voice, getting up from the soft chair, you headed towards the door.

You heard John's sudden voice, though it sounded like he was trying to defend himself, perhaps from some assumption, "Trust me, Zatanna is this house, I'm absolutely sure".

"It's better to be careful after last time-", the mockery in her voice trailed off as you stood in front of the door. She was a young woman, her eyes were a pretty blue, she had beautiful black hair that cascaded down her back; and next to her was John.

"See, what did I tell you?" John exclaimed triumphantly, ignoring the stunned woman next to him. "Hey , how's it going-?", the question hung in the air as the woman took a step towards you.

Laura, who was still standing in the same place, gave the black-haired woman enough space to pass. The soft touch of the female's hands on your face made you pay all your attention to her. Her eyes looked sad as she stared into yours, "You're not the same persona I used to know, are you?"

"I...", it wasn't even necessary for you to say anything else, she understood what you meant.

"I see, I understand. My name is Zatanna Zatara," she explained as she slowly moved her hands away from you, almost as if she didn't want to leave your person.

You felt bad for the woman in front of you.

...

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