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powderblueblood · 1 year ago

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HELLFIRE & ICE — eddie munson x f!oc as enemies to star-crossed lovers

CHAPTER FIVE — CHEERLEADERS MAKE BAD NEIGHBORS

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summary: after you get kicked off the cheerleading squad by an enraged tina, you're stranded in a rainstorm of biblical proprtions- and the only safe haven is eddie munson's trailer. fuck. content warnings: MINORS DNI I'M NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU HERE- male masturbation, sexualized language, some mild objectification, cursing, smoking, drinking, drug mention, reader backstory (i do it for the plot the plot the plot), steve harrington cameo, reader is a pretentious bitch word count: 10.1k

Dear reader, Joan Didion said something because Joan Didion is always saying something. Particularly to me. She comes at me hard, smacking me in the back of the head with perfect clarity and I have not gotten around to not resenting her for it yet.

‘I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.’

Joan Didion probably did not have to stay on nodding terms with a girl she used to be in order to score a cheerleading scholarship because her family blitzed her college fund on ill-chosen legal advice.

But she’s got a point.

You remember that day with perfect clarity.

Middle school had been a lesson in elocution, thanks to your then-best friend Phoebe’s older sister Casey. Phoebe was a relic of your former life– a bookish indoor kid with Coke bottle glasses, a slight stammer and a distinct lack of style. Despite this, you loved Phoebe and she loved you. But more than that, more than anything, you loved that Phoebe had an older sister.

A cool older sister.

Casey was popular in the best way, which is to say that she wasn’t showy about it but she wasn’t humble either. By recognizing the power of being hot and likeable, she knew nothing could ever touch her.

You wanted to be just like that.

You remember the first time Casey told you you’ve got potential. Her hand-me-downs were a little too big for Phoebe, because Casey had boobs and Phoebe’s hadn’t come in yet. Even as a pre-teen, you knew an opportunity when you saw it. Can I try that top? And you did, flipping your hair and adjusting yourself in the mirror just like you’d watched Casey do a hundred times, sitting on her bedroom floor and soaking up her knowledge while Phoebe moaned and sulked about being bored.

Check you out, hot stuff, Casey had smirked, but not in a way where you felt stupid. You’ve got potential.

The shirt didn’t feel entirely right on you, but the way Casey regarded you did.

Fast forward– your first day of freshman year. You were in the parking lot, stepping out of the passenger side of Casey’s car. Phoebe slid out of the back seat, shoulders slumped forward. You were dressed in an outfit that you and Casey spent hours agonizing over the night before–first impressions are everything, girl–while, again, Phoebe looked on glaring.

Come meet some of the crew, Casey said, pointedly to you and not to Phoebe.

Hey– I thought were were going to find our homerooms together, Phoebe protested, grabbing you by the elbow. She knew she wasn’t invited. And she didn’t care– she’d never cared for Casey and her ‘airhead ways’, as she so derisively called them.

Yeah, girl! you affirmed, a note-perfect impression of her older sister. Phoebe’s big eyes flared with disbelief. You’d spent junior high carefully studying Casey’s every movement, absorbing and adopting her behaviors as your own. Stella Adler would have loved your ass. Don’t worry about it. I’ll catch up with you later, ‘kay?

Make a move, freshman! Casey yelled, and you came trotting after her. There would be no catching up later, and you knew that. You bit back the sinking in your stomach with a Bonne Bell-glossed smile.

Look, I love my sister, Casey murmured, but I’m glad that you’re my little freshman experiment, ‘kay? You are way more fun that Phoebs and her goddamn library card.

You nodded, wordlessly grateful. Way more fun. The older girl confiding in you like this made you feel warm, included, grown-up. But not quite so grown-up that you remembered to watch where you were going– the laces of your left Chuck Taylor All-Stars came undone, sending you tripping– tripping–

Oof! Right into the muscular arms of Steve Harrington. Steve Harrington and his autumn colored eyes, his swathe of hair that seemed to grow more voluminous the more girls he flirted with, his shock of grown-up cologne and his perfect, perfect, perfect smile.

But it wasn’t just Steve Harrington. It was also all the surrounding popular kids that had already made a name for themselves coming up alongside you in middle school–Tina, Carol and her boyfriend Tommy Hagan–mingling with the older kids.

You okay? Steve asked, his voice all breathy and cute the way boys voices are when they’re halfway making fun of you.

Uh-huh, you nodded, lashes fluttering like crazy as you wracked your brain for something smart to say.

Let me help you out here.

Then Steve did something you never thought possible, something right out of your daydreams. He got down on one knee and started to re-tie your shoe.

Better watch yourself, Lacy, he said, tightening the bunny ears, gazing right up at you, Wiping out on the first day is not a good look.

Lacy. Lacy. Your heartbeat quickened at the nickname, hammering like hummingbird wings. It was the greatest thing you’d ever heard– it makes you feel fresh. New. Seen for the first time. Seen by Steve Harrington for the first time.

Can you blame me? you said before you knew you were saying it; a common occurrence with you, You’re just too easy to fall for, Harrington.

You drawled out too easy like you’re making fun of him, which of course you weren’t, because he’s Steve Harrington and you would never– but it earned some warm guffaws from the surrounding kids and a little ugh, please, from Tommy Hagan.

Hagan’s something else. Hagan’s hated you since day dot, and you him. You remember his merciless teasing of some kid during Nancy Wheeler’s thirteenth birthday party, the last boy-girl party of your middle school careers, goading that they were too chicken to go into the closet with you for Seven Minutes in Heaven.

Steve grinned at you, eyebrows quirking upward. A fizzing feeling ran through your sternum and you felt like you might faint. Casey threw an arm around your shoulder, a magnet for attention. Well, it looks like some of you already know my little Lacy! You guys better be fuckin’ cool to her, okay, or else you’ve got me to answer to.

You smiled up at her, the older sister you’d always prayed for, and she looked impressed with you. That’s all you wanted. That’s all you craved. That, and for Steve Harrington and everybody else to never quit calling you Lacy.

And they didn’t.

Everything you’d gleaned from Casey equipped you to cruise through freshman year with no speedbumps, no checkpoints– you knew exactly how to wear your hair, how to flirt, how not to flirt, what not to eat, who not to be seen with… and even better than that, these people really took a shine to you. The girls especially.

Hawkins isn’t kind to teenage girls. It’s heavy with passive-aggressive Midwestern sensibility, with all the backwards, misogynistic attitude that comes along with that. It’s not overt, it’s insidious. It makes sense that these girls were scared. Few women make it out of here, and look at the ones that don’t. Their mothers. Your mother.

But what was even scarier was to want something more. To strive for better and be met with the begrudgery of your attempt. To think about life outside the snowglobe of this wicked little town.

That's the thing with wanting. It doesn’t leave you alone. It gnaws at you while you zone out in the cafeteria, churning around with the half fat yogurt in your stomach. It finds you in the middle of the night, awake on the floor of your friend Carol’s room after an evening of pounding secret wine coolers and picking apart the rest of the Hawkins student body for their flaws and faults, looking around at your friends and thinking,

God, I fucking hate these people. God, I’ve got to get out.

And you were working on it. Like a motherfucker, you were working on it– perfect grades, perfect attendance, the perfect extracurriculars in an excruciating balancing act with your demanding social life. Keep your record spotless and you could fly the coop to any college you wanted.

One such extracurricular was–is cheerleading. And god, you were great. You’re a flyer, one of the shining, pretty faces responsible for revving up the Hawkins Tigers and their adoring fans. Given your propensity for perfectionism, it’s an obvious position for you. Tina, the reigning captain of the cheer squad, had even taken you under her wing and spit shined up your back handsprings when you tried out as a freshman. Tina had a prior career as a child gymnast, making her a shoo-in for the title come senior year. And here she is now, hollering you all into formation.

It’s Thursday, and it’s still the week from hell. You had almost forgot about cheer practice, but here you are, in your green and white and gold, ponytail too tight and bruise fading out. The tension between you and Tina casts a thick haze over the gym, the other, less-clued-in members of the squad not exactly knowing where to look.

It probably wasn’t fair, outing Tina and her indiscretion with Hagan like that. But you felt like a cornered animal. It was all you could do, after all of them subtly chipping away at you for weeks when you’d done nothing but be there for them. Wiped their tears.

Bought their crabs lotion, in Tina’s case.

“Sloppy, Lacy! Again!” She’s drilling you like you’ve never been drilled before. Each twist and flip you perform, she finds something wrong with it– and you can’t even tell her she’s wrong. You have gotten sloppy, because your head’s not in the game. While cheerleading was a social and athletic high at one time, it wasn’t high on your list of priorities right now. Dismounting your bases and tugging your ponytail ever tighter over your skull, you stalk towards her.

“Alright, Tina!” you yell, bubbling over with frustration. “How about you just drop the Russian gym coach bit and tell me what I’m doing wrong? Or is yelling at me all you got?”

She does her best attempt at a withering glare. You can’t help but think it looks like something she learned from you. “How about I show you instead?”

Tina shoulder checks you, hard, and calls to one of the underclassmen. A mousy sophomore with sandy bangs and blazing Bambi eyes. This kid looks terrified, and knowing Tina’s reputation, she should be. “Cunningham! You’re up!”

Chrissy Cunningham. Right. Heir to the throne of Hawkins High. You don’t think you’ve heard her speak more than a couple of words and most of those have been in response to her Aryan meathead boyfriend, Jason Carver.

But for what Cunningham lacks in vocal force, she makes up for in aerodynamics. This girl makes a basket toss look like ballet, ponytail pirouetting as she lands in the bases’ arms. Every move, faultless. She’s locked in.

“That is what I want. What I don’t want, Lacy, is a flyer that looks like she’s losing control of her rectum mid-toss,” Tina hollers. “We all know how crucial this weekend is. Not just for us, but for the Tigers, too. Right? So that means the last thing we need is dead weight dragging us down.” She locks her laserlike stare on you. “Right?”

The squad mumbles in the affirmative. Chrissy Cunningham visibly gulps.

And you? A knife slices right through you, cold and exacting. You almost gag, trying to swallow through your thickening throat. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“You tell me, Lace. You’re the one that knows everything.”

You don’t waste a second of time trying to counter-argue, because you can’t be sure it won’t end in your limbs flailing, trying to smash Tina’s head against the waxed floorboards of the gym. Instead, you grab your bag. You give the squad a grimacing nod and head to heave the double doors open.

The sound of your sneakers squeaking against the linoleum floor makes you want to tear your shoes off and throw them through a window, just to watch the glass shatter.

You really never thought of yourself as a violent person, not until– everything happened.

But now, god, now you just want to punch and tear and rip everything apart. This slow burn of your social status, your friends, your tether to reality as you know it slipping away is torturous. You’d rather burn it all up than let it swallow you whole.

Standing on the front steps of the school, your eyes automatically dart to the parking lot.

It’s not there. He’s not there.

And why would he be? you think, starting in the direction of the trailer park. You hadn’t spoken to him since that day in the record store, leaving him hanging with his hands behind his back and his mouth in that grin.

There was a reason for that. Call it post-high clarity or something else, but you knew right then you needed to focus the fuck up. Quit acting out because of your daddy’s mistakes and prove all of these shitheels wrong once and for all.

Blend in. Stop causing trouble. Fall in line and study hard and cheer harder and get the hell out of dodge once you get your hands on that high school diploma. By whatever means necessary. Those means really did not include hanging out with Eddie Munson for even a second longer than you already had.

–which is a nice thought and all, but Tina really shit all over that one with this shedding the dead weight move.

The clouds above you carry the most pathetic of pathetic fallacies, gray and pregnant with rain that starts to hit you square on the crown of your head in fat, heavy drops. You’re still fifteen minutes from the trailer park, at least, and you don’t have a raincoat. You don’t have an umbrella. And you don’t fucking care.

You stomp up the dirt drive leading into Forest Hills, the pleats of your green skirt heavy with water, your cheerleader’s cardigan weighing down your shoulders. Your white knee-high socks are flecked with mud and getting dirtier with every sloppy step. And the rain, the relentless relentless rain, is streaming into your eyes, streaming mascara with it.

You gasp against the cold of the downpour as you approach your trailer– and a glowing yellow light catches in your peripheral vision. His bedroom, the one you can see into from your bedroom. Though you try not to look. And sometimes you fail.

You don’t see much, when you do look. It’s mostly his hunching figure, bent over his guitar or some binder or book or map or figurine. But he always seems calmer, the frenetic energy he wears around like chainmail finally falling to the floor. Watching him like that makes you want to breathe a sigh of relief right along with him, just to see if you’d feel similarly. Calmer.

Calm is not how you feel right now, wiping the rain from your face as you dig in your bag for your keys. Once, twice, thrice they slip out of your hands, and on the fourth try, you finally get them in the door. And then– the key strains in the lock. Come on. This door has always been unnecessarily sticky, but this wasn’t really the time– you push and you push the silver key to the left with no give.

Was your mom in there? Had she left her key in the door by accident before she went on another overnighter with Prince Valium? “Mom! Mom!” you yell, hammering on the door. No dice. You pull at the key again, and pull and pull and–

Snap.

You shudder, a full body shake that’s only partially down to the rainwater that’s soaked you right to the bone marrow. The key has snapped off in the lock, leaving you standing there with a useless silver nub.

“Fuck!” you holler, “Fuckfuckfuckfuck fuck! Fucking–shit!”

Your fists go straight to the side of the trailer, banging one after the other against the metallic veneer. You don’t care that it hurts your knuckles, you want it to dent or crack or something, you want to not feel so impotent and fucking useless, but here you are!

“Hey! Asshole!”

Your head whips around, heavy, sodden ponytail smacking you in the face.

Eddie Munson is leaning out his bedroom window, barely visible through the downpour.

“Keep it down! You’re in a residential goddamn area!” He’s not smiling that shiteating smile. He’s not even grinning. He’s just glowering at you, which is the look you’re most accustomed to seeing him wear. Even so, it feels– it feels– it makes you feel worse.

“Fuck you!” you scream across to him, “Who died and made you the fucking neighborhood watch?!”

“Go inside, you lunatic!”

“My fucking– my key broke off, dickhead!”

That makes his brow loosen a little bit. You just stand there, gasping in the rain. And then he disappears from the window–

–only to fling open the front door of his trailer.

“Come on,” he grumbles, massaging the space between his eyebrows like he can’t believe what he’s fucking doing.

“No.”

“What? Cut the shit, Lacy, come inside.”

“No! I don’t want to!”

Munson’s face opens up in an expression of sheer incredulity– and you partially can’t believe yourself either. What is it about him that just makes you shove and shove and shove, unable to let him win– or in this case, unable to let him help?

“Fine! Fucking drown out there for all I care!” The trailer door slams.

Your teeth have started to chatter, and your options from here on out are… walk or hitch your way back to town and drag your sodden ass somewhere there’s a phone where you then call your mom and pray she’ll pick up (she won’t) and tell her about the lock and try to tell her about the cheerleading squad and pray she’ll understand how upset you are (she won’t) and how much of an awful spiral this whole year has become and it’s not even Christmas yet and–

The trailer door swings back open.

Eddie Munson comes stalking out into the rain, white Reeboks splattering mud everywhere. He’s wearing that shirt from his Dungeons and Dragons club, the one with the big fucking smug Satan splayed across it and you wonder, did he model that after himself?

“What’s your fucking problem?” he asks, point blank. It feels like he’s aiming something at you.

“I’m having a shitty fucking day!” you scream in response, making that dog belonging to that red headed kid sister of Billy Hargrove’s yap somewhere in the distance. “And I keep telling you, I don’t need your fucking–”

“Help? Right!” he scoffs, loud and indignant, crossing his arms across his chest. The fabric of the ringer tee is changing color before your eyes, clinging to him. “You don’t need my help yet you always take it, you don’t wanna be seen with me yet you end up at my lunch table, in my van, smoking my weed– you know, it may shock you but I’m not exactly thrilled to be seen with you either, Lacy! I mean, playing chauffeur to a grade A certified bitch that wouldn’t give me the time of day unless she was desperate? Who stood by and let her shitty friends, who aren’t even her friends anymore, make mine and my friends’ life a living hell for how many years? What kind of an asshole does that make me? How pathetic is that?”

The way he spits the word bitch– it was different from the way he said it in the record store. There, it felt like a come-on. A compliment. Here, it feels like a curse. But oh, he doesn’t stop there! You are rooted to the spot, an unmoving target for his justified rage.

“You can’t even play ignorant, y’know, because I’ve seen you. You’re smarter than them. You know how godawful those people are–Harrington, Carver, Carol, fucking Hagan worst of all–and you just let ‘em run. Because you needed that status, you needed to be the most evil fucking twat at the twat table, and for what? They left you, Lacy! They all left you!”

You’re not sure at what point in his speech you started sobbing but at its crescendo, you yelp. It’s a high, pathetic sound you wish you could stuff back inside your throat and hopefully choke yourself with. See, you know all these things. You’ve told them to yourself in your most honest moments, of which there are not many, but having Eddie Munson lay them out for you in the pouring rain– it’s horrible. You’re horrible.

Eddie’s arms move from where they were bound on his chest. Okay, that was an outburst, sure, but he didn’t mean to make you cry. And you’re like, really crying. He can’t stand it when girls cry, and you, in particular–you, having never displayed much emotion beyond bemusement and annoyance and mild disgust toward him–is especially frightening.

And then you let out this scream. It comes right from the center of your chest, rumbling and primal and visceral and real. It’s a real noise, not one you put careful, curative thought into, tuning it just right before you let it out. Because in this instance, he’s right! You’ve worked so hard, and for what! For fucking nothing! For it to blow up in your face! So you let out another howl– and it feels so, so good. A feeling of satisfaction, more than a feeling of relief–

–so Eddie screams too. God, that feels fantastic.

His is heavier than yours, obviously, because he’s a guy and he probably screams as a hobby in whatever metal band he supposedly plays in. But you like that sound. You like the way it seems to ring off the exteriors of the trailer, ricocheting around like a pinball in its machine.

A couple more painful sobs escape you, and Eddie’s taking tentative steps toward you, like you’re a snarling animal he’s trying to coax.

In ways, you are, but that’s because you feel hunted. You have to blink, through tears and through rain, but you see that his shirt is so soaked that it’s see-through. You can see a vague suggestion of a tattoo on his chest. You see that he’s fighting a smile.

This is so stupid. This is so ridiculous, that you could make a noise like that and completely short circuit the white hot anger he was spewing at you.

“Come inside,” he breathes, a little less than a foot of space between you, “You lunatic.”

Your head, so heavy on your neck, so heavy from crying, so heavy from carrying your spiteful brain around, falls against his chest.

“Uhh…” Eddie mumbles, hands hovering behind your back, not sure if he’s supposed to embrace you or if you’re about to rip his heart out of his chest. Either could be true.

You know what you’d prefer.

You’re positive he doesn’t here you exhale into his chest, into the mouth of the cartoon Satan, into the thrum of his jumping heartbeat. Sorry. I’m really… I’m so sorry.

“Hey,” he murmurs, “hey. Shit.” His hand finally rests in between your shoulder blades. You let him guide you inside, and he even picks up the book bag you had thrown in the mud. You reach, try to grab it from him, but he yanks it out of your grasp. Half teasing, half assuring you that it’s okay.

A squeaky, squelching silence settles between you two as you stand in his doorway. You’re creating a puddle near some old work boots. You wonder if they’re his– you’ve never seen him not wear those Reeboks.

“So… welcome,” he cringes, emitting a pitchy, awkward laugh. You follow him through to the kitchenette, which is identical to your kitchenette, except every surface is not covered in legal correspondence or empty wine bottles or too-expensive tchotchkes. The light in here seems dimmer, warmer. There’s a distinct aroma of stale cigarette smoke and old coffee, which you breathe in deep. “Sorry for the mess–”

“It’s fine. It’s good mess,” you say, a little distant. You peer around the place like you’re in a gallery.

“Good mess?” he queries, crossing to the kitchen sink where he attempts to wring his shirt out by hand– still wearing it.

“Lived-in mess,” you say. What you mean is, it doesn’t look like a mausoleum of a life someone left behind. A storage locker. A haphazard sarcophagus. Before you moved to the trailer, your house was so clean– that was a whole other problem. The same tchotchkes that are scattered on your counter were kept behind glass, only touched when your mother polished them, the only housework she ever did. You stare at a collection of trucker hats nailed along the living room wall, the shelf of novelty mugs that accompanies them.

“Living in mess? What is that, like living in filth? You better start showing this fine abode some respect before–”

“Lived. In. Munson, I said, lived in if you would just listen– it’s good, it’s fine. It’s n-nice.”

It’s warm in the trailer, you can tell, but you’re shivering. You bear down in your body, jaw all set so your teeth don’t start chattering again, but he hears it in your voice.

“Uh-oh,” he says, somehow not at all betraying any signs of being out in the freezing rain except for being entirely soaked. You bet his skin is still running hot, like you felt through his shirt, like you felt grabbing his wrist. “Star cheerleader’s coming down with a case of hypothermia. Right before the big game!”

He slaps his hands to his cheeks in mock horror.

“I’m–” you’re about to tell him a couple things; one, that you’re fine which would be stupid, because you are so clearly not fine; two, you’re not the star cheerleader anymore; and a third, forgotten thing. “--cold,” is what you settle on. It sounds small, vulnerable.

Eddie holds his breath for a second. You sound so delicate. Hard, terrible you.

“No, sure, of course you are,” he fumbles. The way his wet hair has flattened to his skull makes him look younger– exposing a nervous boy behind the metalhead posturing. “You can– take a shower. If you want. To warm up.”

Take a shower. In Eddie Munson’s trailer. Your eyelids flutter closed, taking on their own vibrations from the wracking of your body. This is a hell of my own making. “Yes. Sure. Thank you.”

“I can also,” he starts, crossing the kitchen again and knocking something over on his way– it just clatters to the floor, whatever it was, and he lets it, like he’s used to leaving crashing sounds in his wake. “I can take your clothes if you want. Put ‘em in the washer.”

You hesitate a beat, then follow him down a hallway.

“I probably have something you can wear,” he says. There’s a note in his tone that’s high and nervous. “You’re for sure gonna hate it, but hey– beats freezing to death.”

“Just barely,” you murmur.

“Huh?”

“This, uh– this is dry-clean only,” you correct yourself, gesturing to the uniform.

He rolls his eyes. “Of course. Only the best for the pom-pom shakers.”

He ducks into a room that must be his bedroom, but you don’t follow him. Instead, you linger in the hallway, near the dingy bathroom, staring at the corn themed wall calendar. Going into his bedroom feels too personal– too intimate, as if preparing to take a shower in Eddie Munson’s trailer only to change into his clothes isn’t intimate.

“I figured,” he says, emerging from the bedroom with clothes and a towel in hand, “since you like all that rinky-dinky-tinkly garbage, you wouldn’t hate wearing a Stooges shirt.”

“I–” the shirt is soft under your wrinkled fingers, as are the boxers he passes off to you. Boxers. You hold them up between your forefinger and thumb, stepping into the bathroom. “These are clean, right?”

Eddie stares at you for a second– then leans his head into the bathroom and shakes his sopping locks at you, just like a dog. You let out a shriek that he thinks almost sounds like an involuntary giggle. I’ll take it.

“No comment!” And he slams the door on you.

Then you’re standing. In Eddie Munson’s trailer. In Eddie Munson’s bathroom. Holding his old Stooges shirt and his boxers, with mascara running down your face.

You pinch yourself, hard, just in case.

The shower heats up quick–quicker than yours, you notice–and you rest your head against the tile as the steam swirls up around you. This is so weird. This is so fucking weird, and you can’t scrub away the weirdness fast enough. There’s not enough Irish Spring in the world. You reach into the shower caddy to replace the bottle and notice something familiar– wait, that’s–

Wait.

Do you and Eddie Munson use the same brand of shampoo?

You had to switch from your favorite to the best that the Big Buy had to offer, given the change in your personal means, and this was the top score in terms of quality. Eddie Munson apparently agrees– but better yet, you realize as a grin spreads across your face, Munson uses women’s shampoo.

It’s nice to have a fresh piece of arsenal to aim at him once you get out of the shower.

Toweling off and changing, you do give the boxers a wary sniff before you put them on– but luckily, they smell like generic detergent and aren’t stiff in any way. So you slide them on.

They fit snugly– naturally, given he’s all sinewy and you have hips. He is really sinewy, now that you think about it.

His wrist wasn’t bony, but it was active. Tendons flexing under the thin, soaked layer of his shirt. You wonder, absently, was that a tattoo you saw. What is it. What does it look like. Is it shitty. It’s his, so it’s probably shitty, but I want to see it. Does he have any more.

You shiver, slipping the Stooges t-shirt on, and blame your hardening nipples on the cold.

The cheer outfit is another problem. You emerge from the bathroom, clutching the still-sodden uniform with Eddie’s– Munson’s towel thrown over your shoulder.

“Do you have, like, a garbage bag or something?” you ask, eyes rising to look at him where he stands in the doorframe of his room. He’s still in his soaked clothes.

He takes a second to answer you, and when he does, his voice is all thick. Avoiding eye contact.

“Suuure,” and he disappears and reappears with a plastic bag, quick as a blink.

“Thanks.” You dump the uniform, sneakers and all, into the bag and make for the door.

“Hey, it’s still raining–” his voice follows you, as if you hadn’t heard the raindrop gunshots hitting the trailer roof.

“Yup,” you say, popping the ‘p’. You yank Munson’s door open and fling the garbage bag outside. It lands squarely between your trailer and his.

Munson appears over your shoulder, looking out at the garbage bag. His face is twisted in confusion, concern, curiosity.

“I got kicked off,” you explain, plain as biscuits.

“Off the pom pom squad?” he whispers, eyes flaring in surprise that you think might actually be real. You’re looking at his lashes again, fanning around the almost-perfect circles of his eye sockets.

“The very same.”

“Escándalo. What happened?”

“How about you go and shower first,” you suggest, poking a finger into his chest. He makes a little breathy noise, a little ‘unh’, that you don’t… hate. “Can’t have the star dork of the make believe board game club catch his death, can we?”

“Anything happens to me and you’re the prime suspect, babe,” he grins and snaps the towel off your shoulder.

“Hey!”

“This is the last clean one. What am I, a fuckin’ Rockefeller?”

Christ, he wants to jerk off into this towel but he knows that’s weird. That’s perverted. That’s fucked up. That’s everything everyone says about him and that’s everything you make him feel.

So he strips, turns the hot water to scalding and furiously rubs one out down the drain. One, because he feels bizarre about leaving you alone among all of his things for too long and two, because hot water is in short supply.

And three, because he’s achingly rock hard at the sight of you in his boxers, tossing your cheerleading outfit into the mud and the wet.

The metaphors. The implications. The feeling of your forehead against his chest. The stab of your finger in his sternum.

He cums jaggedly, almost silently, with his mouth rammed against his forearm.

If you heard him– God, you’d be so nasty about it. God, he’d never live it down. God, he’d love to know what you’d say.

He makes damn quick work of sudsing up and rinsing down, wrapping a towel around his waist– only to run into you as he’s coming out of the bathroom.

You stare. You stare at him, and Eddie’s mouth goes dry, and all the blood drains away from his brain. Again.

“Stare much?” he sneers, but only just about. Because his first instinct is to drop the towel and give you an eyeful. See what you’d do– hopefully something with your mouth. God, he hopes it’d be something with your mouth.

“Where are your smokes?” you snap back. “I know you have some.”

“Kitchen. There’s probably–,” he needs you to stop looking at him like that; like you’re going to snap his neck, “--kitchen.”

Eddie slams his bedroom door and smacks his face with three quick strikes. “Come on, man! Get it together!”

Because it’s go time.

He has to formulate some kind of plan.

He hadn’t exactly thought ahead when he invited you inside–or, demanded you come inside–and since you now had no place to go and Wayne had specifically told him not to go near you and your boobs were stretching out his dad’s old Stooges t-shirt…

Christ.

He’s entirely, massively, completely at a loss. Eddie paces around the room like an animal in panic, grabbing a Scorpion shirt and some worn flannel pants as he goes.

“Like, I’m supposed to go out there and do what? Ask her to hang out? Fucking paint her nails, read Cosmo? Study?! Jesus!” he angrily mumbles to his reflection, tearing the towel away and tugging his t-shirt over his sopping hair. “Hey, Lacy, you wanna beer? Who am I, Steve fucking Harrington? Jesus, Jesus, Jesus Christ, dude!”

“Munson. Are you talking to me in there?” He hears your voice from a minute distance away– see, that’s the thing about trailers. Small space, thin walls, and Eddie Munson’s voice travels at super speed.

He stops, seizing, cringing, shoulders hitching up to his ears.

That was not enough time to formulate a plan.

Eddie, jankily tugging his pants on, sweeps out to the kitchenette area like something is chasing him and stops dead when he sees you. You haven’t trashed the place. You haven’t even tried to stick your head in the oven, two things he was kind of concerned about given the way you were wailing outside.

You’re standing in the middle of the room with your hip cocked out, smoking a stolen cigarette and studying his uncle’s trucker hat collection.

All the air in the room seems to orbit around you like a tornado in slow motion.

How is it that you make an old shirt and boxers look like a skirt set? How is it that you can be sobbing your lungs out one minute, then the picture of poise and sophistication the next?

All that air and none left for Eddie to take a breath.

“Hey, Lacy,” he strains, “you wanna beer?”

“What,” you purr– like, he’s so sure that you actually purr, “You mean you’re all out of Sancerre?”

He does not know what the hell that is, but he can only assume it’s some rich people bullshit– and he’s relieved. You’re mocking him. At least that’s some tether to normalcy. She’s baa-aack.

Eddie rolls his eyes, not entirely meaning it, but if he beams right at you he’s going to give the game away.

“Think fast!” He tosses a can of the cheapest beer available at the Big Buy your way and you just about catch it, hands above your head and the cigarette dangling out of your mouth like Keith Richards.

“God, Munson,” you mumble around the filter, “What kept you off the basketball team?”

“Half a brain and a big dick,” he smirks, cracking the pull top and snatching the soft pack of cigarettes you’d left on the countertop. You cross from the living room, propping yourself up on the counter stool in a fluid movement that can only be described as feline.

“Well, we sure can account for one of those things,” you say, ashing with your right hand and tapping at your temple with your left.

“And the other?” Eddie asks, voice dropping a mocking octave.

“I’d sooner drink arsenic than find out.”

He raises his beer can to you. “In that case, cheers!”

Your mouth twists around a smile and Eddie can see you’re fighting hard to keep it at bay. And that you’re losing. You tip your beer to your lips and he braces his elbows on the counter, looking around for a lighter. He spots a Bic, but the trigger won’t light it– just sparks, no flame.

“That thing’s dead,” you say, “I lit this off the toaster.”

“Oh! Right,” Eddie goes to turn, but something chilly snaps to his forearm. Your fingers. Damn. What is it with you? Circulation thing or what?

“Don’t do that,” you shake your head. “I don’t trust you not to burn the whole trailer down.”

“This is my trailer, y’know.”

“Yeah, and I’m in it. So burn it down on your own time.”

You motion for him to light his cigarette off the half-burned length of yours and Eddie tentatively places the filter between his lips. You prop yourself up on the stool, ass raised from the seat, leaning toward him. He leans in too and you cup that little hand with the perfectly painted fingers around the cigarettes. Like you’re whispering a secret. You look down, focusing on making fire, but Eddie’s eyes follow the tiny crease of your brow, the slope of your nose. The little wipe of mascara still underneath your eye.

Tips touch and Eddie inhales just as you do. The cherried ends of the smokes glow orange and you pull back and Eddie just stays there a moment, frozen with the now-lit ember hanging out of his mouth.

You pull back and inhale that smoke like one of those chicks from those black and white movies Wayne is always watching. You exhale all daintily, in one perfect clouding stream. You’re all– you’re so–...

“Fucked,” you groan, shoving the heels of your palms into your eyes. “I am so fucked.”

Eddie finally tugs the cigarette from his mouth, filter gone a little soft with the low-level salivating he’d been doing. “Oh. The cheerleader shit?”

“Yes, Munson. The cheerleader shit.”

“What happened, anyway?” He resumes the position of being elbow-up on the countertop, which incidentally brings him a little bit closer to you. Incidentally. “You crack some skulls this time?”

“Huh,” you chuckle emptily, “Almost. Um, Tina more or less took me out at the knees. Which, I understand of course. If I were her, I would have obliterated me, but–”

“You’re not her, and it doesn’t feel awesome to be on the other end of obliterated,” Eddie nods, giving you a squint-eyed pout of mock-sympathy. “Poor Lacy. Getting shitkicked by the consequences of her own actions.”

Thunk! You punch him in the shoulder, which hurts and he gasps, but it’s so funny and categorically unladylike coming from you. These little peals of violence that keep coming off you are a seemingly bottomless source of amusement for him.

She’s so funny-looking when she’s mad.

“Fuck off!” you bark, as if reading him like a goddamn horoscope, but there’s a glimmer to your narrowed stare. “I got replaced by a sophomore, as if I needed an insult topping on that injury shitshake.”

“Oh, she Old Yeller’d your ass!” Eddie gasps again, chuckling heartily, “Took you out back and–” He mimes blowing your brains right out, nailing you right through the forehead. You stare at him square, unimpressed. “Who usurped ya?”

“Chrissy Cunningham.”

Oh. Well, isn’t that interesting. Eddie’s lips flatten into a straight line and he makes a little mmh sound. And you pick up on that immediately, being that you’re annoyingly perceptive.

“Munson! Come on!”

“What? Whaaat? I didn’t say anything!”

“That’s a child.”

“That is a sophomore and you said so yourself. Besides…” he trails off, pointedly crushing the butt of his cigarette into the ashtray until it’s oversquished. “...we have history.”

If his cigarette extinguishing was pointed, yours is needle sharp with the way you crush it into the ashtray right next to the remnants of his.

“Go on,” you hum, just like you did in the van that last night. I really wanna know. It’s conspiratorial and intoxicating and makes it feel like you’re on his side, which you know he’s not but it’s so, so tasty to think that for a second you might be.

Is this how you make everyone feel? Lull ‘em into a false sense of security? Hoard your ammo and go apeshit later?

Eddie draws back, nearly congratulating himself for doing so. “That’s for me to know, and you to die ignorant.”

The way your lips pop open is almost too good, your little doll face turning to a mask of betrayal too quick for you to hide it. Too quick for you to be all like fine! Keep it to yourself! You’re both totally irrelevant anyway! or whatever other bitchy retort you’re bound to come up with.

“Wow. Well, if that holds any water, Carver’ll shit,” you start, sipping on your beer, “His little virgin Mary deflowered by the devil’s first alternate.”

“Hey, I never said–!” Fuck. Fuck! How do you do that! Eddie pinches his lips together as you smirk over the rim of the beer can, all stuck under your gaze. Fly in the spider’s web.

“A-ha,” you say, irritatingly smoothly. “So nothing happened. She’s just spank bank material.”

“Didn’t– say that either,” Eddie mumbles, mind going annoyingly blank under your rapid fire tearing and the inebriating way you’re delivering it. He hates this and he has no intention of telling you to stop. The duality of man.

“Didn’t not say that, though.”

“You oughta be a lawyer,” he tells you, swigging deep, “the way you find a loophole in everything.”

“The way you want me to get you off, you mean.”

You come out with that, something so incendiary, oh-so-casually and slip off your seat. She can’t just do that. You’re padding around the living room again, bare footed and small-looking, but Eddie’s staring at you like you’re a hand grenade with the pin missing that also has the secret to everlasting life inside. Terrified. Fascinated.

A little stiff.

“What?” he breathes, but doesn’t really want you to answer the question.

And you don’t, you just keep looking around the living room with your arms crossed over your chest. “You need money to be a lawyer, Munson. To go to law school. To go to any school. And I don’t have that. And I foolishly figured getting a cheerleading scholarship would be a cinch of a backup plan, and now I can’t do that either.”

“What are you looking for?” he asks, finally willing his dick down and his legs to work, rounding into the living room with you.

“Your, like… stereo, or record player, or something,” you murmur, smoothing down his boxers over your hips. “It’s too quiet in here.”

Eddie blinks. What should really happen is he should say, no, stay out here in the silence, you insolent wench. Think on your crimes. Reflect. Repent. Stop being such a bossy little ballbreaker and give my balls a break.

“Room. Uh– it’s in my room,” is what he says instead.

“‘kay,” is all you say with a little shrug of your shoulder, grabbing your can from the counter and padding down the hallway toward that same bedroom. His bedroom. Eddie Munson’s bedroom with his bed and his shit in it. “Let’s go.”

How irregular does your heartbeat have to get before you classify it as a cardiac event?

There’s only so many times you can flagellate yourself with the ol’ what the fuck are you doing thing before it becomes redundant.

Songs get overplayed, nail polish color gets overused, trends die. Things become redundant all the time, and you discard them.

The notion of what the fuck are you doing in Eddie Munson’s trailer in Eddie Munson’s boxers walking towards Eddie Munson’s bedroom has become redundant because you simply are doing all those things. Not much point in questioning them. The chips have fallen.

An eerie calm had come over you when he was in the shower and you were staring at all of these trucker hats on the wall– if the insanity is temporary, you might as well lean into it. You can’t go anywhere else. You’re trapped. Might as well get comfortable.

“God, this place is filthy, Munson.” You, with your arms still bound across your chest, toe a discarded t-shirt out of your path as you move into the bedroom with that same reserved interest of a gallery-goer. The place is cluttered, posters and flyers and doodles torn out of notebooks tacked up on the wall in total disarray. Every surface area is covered in what could be organized chaos, but knowing Munson the little that you do, you doubt it.

To test the theory, you ask, “Where are your records? Tapes, anything?”

But he’s just lingering in the doorway, chewing on the end of a lock of hair. Watching you stand in the middle of the room with astronaut eyes, unblinking. It’s kind of– sweet, in a deeply unnerving way. He looks like a kid.

Your brow furrows, grimace turning your lips into a point.

“Fine. Ogle me like a goddamn lobotomy patient, then.”

You resume your perusing of his things, when you spot the most precious piece of hardware hanging by the mirror. A marbled black and red body fashioned into nasty spikes. You reach out to give the strings an aimless thrum but your wrist is rapidly snatched away.

“Nuh-uh. That’s where I draw the line,” Munson says, shuffling you away from the guitar like a security guard. A flash of something as your calves hit his mattress– him shepherding you toward your own bed, you drunk out of your gourd. “Siddown.”

And you sit, bouncing against the sinking mattress on impact. Rubbing at the spot on your wrist that his fingers had been squeezing. Staring up at him glowering down at you. “Ow.”

And Munson, it turns out, knows where everything is in his nuclear fallout of a room. He shoves a shoebox of tapes into your hands and nudges a bigger milk crate full of records nearer to you with his foot.

“Knock yourself out,” he huffs, flinging himself face-down on the mattress next to you. You jerk; always the court jester, this guy. “Not that you’re gonna find anything you want to listen to.”

A scoff flies out of your mouth before you’ve got a chance to suppress it– he’s gotta know, right? He’s gotta know he can’t just say shit like that to you without you fully activating that I can do anything you can do better–backwards–bleeding–in heels chip in your brain. You’ll show him. There’s nothing that matters to you more in the world right now than showing him.

Though, rattling through his box of tapes, each one bearing a different variation of hot chick and the Devil artwork, you’ve got your work cut out for you. W.A.S.P. Mercyful Fate. Dirty Rotten Imbeciles. Witchfinder General. Some band that’s literally just called Loudness, for Chrissake. As you flick and flick, hope wavering, one catches your eye. There’s a jump in your throat. Scrawled letterhead against a draped satin background. A photo of something you always figured was a headless marble statue, though you could never be sure.

“Why do you have this?”

No response from the corpse of Munson, presumably smothered by his own comforter.

“Hey!” you tap the back of his skull with the plastic casing. One eye appears, glaring up at you from the mattress. Rattle rattle goes the Cocteau Twins tape as you shake it in its case. “Thought this was haunted doll music.”

“Ow.” Munson slowly raises himself onto his elbows, looking like he’s about to start kicking his legs in the air behind him. Twirling his hair around his finger. A grin is edging onto his lips, lips he’s pulling strands of hair away from.

“Sometimes the five finger discount chooses you.”

A feeling akin to heat spreads rights across your breastbone. You want to pry, secretly. You want an explanation. Why would you take that? Do you like me, or something? But asking speaks it into existence, and the insanity is temporary, and you’re so waiting for dawn to break on it so you can resume some hobbled together semblance of a normal existence.

One that doesn’t include Eddie Munson stealing tapes that make you feel ticklish in order to, I don’t know, listen to them on his own so he can feel ticklish too.

He hadn’t listened to it, for the record. Not all the way through, at least.

He’d gotten as far as track two and had to switch it off, ejecting it out of the tape deck of his van with such speed that he was sure it’d shoot clean through the doors in the back. Too close, too real. That had veered a little out of the lane of objectifying you as someone whose crotch he maybe wanted to bury his face in and a little into the lane of you being like, a person. With feelings.

The events of tonight aren’t helping that case. He hoped that lying face down for as long as he possibly could might let them just unfold around him, like he’d roll over and you’d just be gone, no evidence left behind except for your hair in the drain.

But you demand attention. Eddie might be obvious, but you demand attention. His attention, at least.

He grabs the tape from you. “We’re not listenin’ to that bullshit. Try again.”

“Fine!” you snap, but there’s this irritating bemusement dancing around your face.

You lean forward from your spot on the mattress and tug the milk crate between your calves. Now, this is more your lane– in here, Munson’s got the classics. Or as close to the classics as he will deign to recognise. Zeppelin, Sabbath, Alice Cooper, Blue Öyster Cult– the combination of which you have something borderline mean to say about, but you’ll leave that ‘til later. You dig around, and then.

And then. Hello there, handsome.

In your hands are twelve inches of beauty, belonging to a grisly-voiced Tom Waits. Blue Valentine. Straight to the record player with this old bastard.

“People give this record too much shit,” you remark, and Eddie watches you as you tentatively lift a sock off the turntable. Yeah, he’ll cop to it, he doesn’t take such good care of some of his gear, but sometimes his brain behaves like a police scanner. Lotta channels operating at once. Anyway. Doesn’t matter. He’s watching you lift the needle onto the vinyl right now. “People say that this is a mediocre addition to the oeuvre, but what is mediocre about this–!”

Rousing strings seep from the stereo speakers– it’s Waits’ cover of Somewhere from West Side Story. Eddie knows it within the first half a second because, and now he’ll never admit it since he knows you like it so much, he has played this album to death.

Somewhere around the halfway mark of Christmas Card For a Hooker in Minneapolis, the record will skip because it's scratched. Or well-loved, if you ask Eddie.

“Fucking Robert Christgau thinks he’s being funny, doing this, y’know,” you sneer, examining the record sleeve as if you hadn’t seen it thirty thousand times before. Your copy had been lost in the move, among a number of your little sonic secrets. The records you’d keep to listen to by yourself, lying on your bedroom floor. “As if the whole core of Tom Waits’ whole thing isn’t heartache, the sentimentality of what-if. What if we could, what if life wasn’t garbage. That’s sentimentality, right there. It’s West Side Story, I mean, c'mon. Tom Waits is singing to us with his heart on his sleeve, but Christgau wants to suddenly be pedantic, turn around and be like, it’s a vaudeville act! because Waits sometimes also wears his dick on his sleeve.”

It’s a tirade you’ve often repeated to yourself, in your diary or alone in your room, pretending like you’re on a panel, pretending like you’re Susan Sontag and people actually give a shit what you actually have to say. You can’t exactly figure why you’ve said it again now. Maybe because you always found the strings on this song too much to bear without emoting, and you’re already vulnerable and tired.

Munson, for his part, has flipped over onto his back on the mattress. “Who?” he drones.

“Robert Christgau,” you say, momentarily distracted by the way his shirt has rucked up around his belly. No six pack. Some meat there. Tendons, like you’d noticed before. “Just one of the most seminal rock writers of our time.”

You have a well-thumbed copy of his Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies somewhere in a still-unpacked box.

Munson has a happy trail that curls like brushstrokes.

“You fucking trifler,” you grumble.

His face takes on that terrible look that he’d given you in the record store, all enraptured and cloudy at the corners of his eyes. Looking at you from where he leans on his elbows, one knee propped up, rocking back and forth ever so slightly. You want to shove it back down.

And see what he’ll do about that.

“How do you know all this shit?” he asks. Eddie can’t help this. He can’t help that he keeps changing his channel about you (again, police scanner) because one second you’ll be such a massive pain in the ass, then the next, you’ll say something so clever that it’ll make him want to vomit.

“I like music,” you say, flatly. You give it to him straight, because you suddenly feel searched. You clutch Waitsy’s printed face to your chest in an effort of self-defense. “And I like… words. Kind of makes sense that I would enjoy music journalism, if you’re not totally stupid.”

“I’m only a little stupid.”

“Debatable.”

“Wait, but I mean–” and he’s gearing up, because Eddie is about to ask you a real question. Something that’s been on his mind, the more ice shavings he can tear off of you. Considering you, all three dimensions of you– four, if you add in how much you like to punch him and stuff. “You’re like, incredibly smart, right.”

“Yes.”

“Like, perfect grades.”

“Almost. Save Kaminsky, because he can’t teach for shit and he can’t grade for piss.”

“And you’re a cheerleader… like, an important one?”

“Artist formerly known as, but yes.”

“And you’re on the newspaper.”

“Very perceptive, aren't we.”

“You’re also popular– or, yeah, were. You party and stuff. You’re always hanging out with those assholes who don’t do half the shit that you do.”

“Are you closing in on a point here, Munson?”

“How?” he nearly whispers, tone close to dreamy. “You’ve gotta have like, body doubles running around or something because no human person could possibly have that much time in the day. How the fuck did you do all that and also be running around ready to cite, like, an issue of the New Yorker from 1975, and not go completely insane?”

How do you know I’m not completely insane. Because, if he had ever witnessed how Jekyll and Hyde you could get, smacking the shit out of yourself with your hairbrush before you could turn on and be Lacy the cheerleader, Lacy the hot chick, Lacy the playground bitch, he would think you are totally insane.

You answer him half-straight this time.

“Diet pills.”

This makes him sit up, and makes you take a couple of steps back towards the bed. You flop down, tossing the Blue Valentine sleeve to the side.

“Diet pills,” he repeats.

“Oohhh, yes,” you nod, drawing the shape of the cylindrical pills on his comforter with your finger. You don’t really want to look up at him. “Rainbow diet pills. Soon as I hit my menses, I started lifting them from my mom.”

“Isn’t that stuff illegal?” Eddie murmurs out of the corner of his mouth, mimicking your criss-cross applesauce seating position. “It’s basically speed, right?”

“Said the drug dealer,” a snort bursts from you. You’ve moved your fidgeting, starting to braid your half-damp hair. “And it is. It’s fully speed. I was doing baby Valley of the Dolls at age thirteen.”

“That is fucked up, Lacy.”

“Yeah. Well. I'm a little fucked up, or haven't you heard?”

“There’s been rumblings.” Eddie watches your fingers work, weaving locks of hair, one over the other. He’s never braided his hair. He wonders what it might look like. You come to the end and twist it around your finger, at a loss for a hair tie. He sticks a finger under his leather and silver bracelet, digging out an elastic he keeps handy, just in case. There are a lot of times that Eddie needs to yank his hair out of his face just to focus. “Here.”

You mouth a silent thanks and wind the elastic around the tuft of hair. Tom Waits whines away about rain washing memories from the sidewalks and you feel weirdly… at ease. You’ve shared a couple of rainbow diet pills with Nicole and Carol (Tina doesn’t mess with amphetamines, a consummate athlete), but you’ve never had anyone ask you how you’ve managed to be the person you’re pretending to be.

To put the clues together about your impossible do-it-all identity.

And not react in disgust when he finds out you’re fallible.

“Hey,” Eddie says. Something about hearing you rattle off, not sniping for once, saying something real… it eased the heartburn. It has loosened his tension around you, a little. He figures it’s his turn to say something real. “I’m sorry I called you evil.”

Most evil twat at the twat table, you nearly correct. “You had grounds.”

“No, no, I didn’t. You–” this is actually harder for him to get out than he thought, “You’re trying. You’re trying really hard to make the best of a messed up situation, and maybe I should’ve seen that– but I didn’t, because it’s high school, and it’s dumb, and I’m trying too, and we’re all trying, just to survive this messed up microcosm of the world– and– and–" He huffs. It's you gazing at him this time. Eyes sparkling in the half-light cast by his bedside lamp. You're... really pretty. "Jesus, can you just forgive me so I can stop talking?”

“That’s a first,” you say. “Microcosm is a five dollar vocab word, Eddie.”

The way you say his name. “I’m a changed man.”

“Can you use adulation in a sentence next?” Your big grin is devastating.

He leans right into you, dastardly looking suddenly. “Is this provocation getting you hot, you psycho?”

Fingertips braced over your knees, your torso keening just the right amount of degrees to favor him, your stare making an unsubtle job of darting from Eddie’s lashes to his lips to his lashes to his lips…

“Maybe.” A beat. A heavy beat. “What are you gonna do about it?”

In any other world, with any other person, the wanting would completely make sense. Wanting him to say nothing more and just do, to plant a big, ringed hand either side of your hips and pull you into his lap. To crush his lips against yours. To dig his hands into your thighs, to wind your fingers into his hair. To feel the chill of silver traveling up, under the back of your borrowed shirt, to press down onto him and–

Hey Charlie, I almost went crazy-ayzy-ayzy-ayzy-ay–

Eddie doesn’t mean to, he really doesn’t mean to, but his head snaps away from you just as the record starts to skip.

Then the door slams.

Fuck.

“Ed?”

Wayne.

He totally forgot to formulate that plan.

author's notes: ZOOWEE MAMA HOW WE FEELING ARE YOU STILL WITH ME longest chapter in the fic so far. thanks for keepin up. i love you, let's not waste any time, i don't think i've got a lot of notes for you this go around but i love you - there is nothing more secretly pretentious teenage girl than loving joan didion and susan sontag (i know this because i was her, i am her to this day in fragments) but particularly joan didion on keeping a notebook really sticks to one's ribs. this is not the last joan didion ref in this fic, sorry for being unbearable - stella adler, the mother of method acting - steve harrington being the originator of the nickname lacy is a tribute to him showing signs of being a goofy motherfucker from day dot. please see this post. it was always there, we just couldn't see it in freshman year because of all the hairspray - what's going on with tommy hagan? does anyone really care but me, probably not. but for those that are keeping tick on the timeline (don't)- he got held back senior year, hence why he did not graduate with steve and is in the same grade as eddie, lacy, carol, et al. - WICKED LITTLE TOWN!!!! - the stooges t-shirt is yet another flight of icarus pick; al wears a stooges shirt and i creamed because i love the stooges. let's listen to one of my favorites - loudness are a metal band from osaka, japan! they got signed to an american label in 1985, but how did eddie munson get that tape in hawkins, indiana in 1984? well, my theory is that eddie loves music and jerry from main street vinyl loves benzos. a trade's a trade's a trade. - reader, you are an 18y/o girl who thinks you're better than everyone. of course you're stealing lester bangs' opinions on blue oyster cult and making them your own - and shitting on robert christgau bc you've got a wetty for tom waits - also, here is tom waits' cover of somewhere! my theory on eddie being a tom waits fan-- of course he is, that man looks and sounds like billy goat gruff and is a storytella just like eddie is. he would especially be into his later stuff, like the megalithic orphans album. y'all remember this song from shrek 2 - rainbow diet pills were a real insane thing! this seems more accessible than adderall for the time period, which modern!lacy would certainly have been abusing - for the time that's in it, let me present tom waits' anti-christmas song, christmas card from a hooker in minneapolis my loves, if you've still stuck with me this far, i thank you greatly. i know i'm nutso but i'm having fun writing this fic. i would've been writing it if nobody was reading, but it's a billion times better now that you are. reblogs are always appreciated, and the inbox is always open to chat shit ♡

#published by powder #in progress #hellfire & ice #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x f!reader #eddie munson smut #eddie munson fic #stranger things fic #e. munson by powder

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yakumtsaki · 3 months ago

Text

Dear readers, we've been through so much together and you know at this point it takes a lot for me to describe a situation as 'out of control'.. yet here we are. So Kea moves in and the following happens in the span of like 2 hours:

Barth beats up Felina.

Kea beats up Spice.

Barth beats up Cyan.

Felina beats up Barth. Like seriously, ENOUGH. I've decided that next generation when we're at the third cousin tier relation I'm just gonna let whoever wants to date a cousin do it because holy hell, breaking them up has been a disaster. Everyone is near aspiration failure, everyone has shit grades, we're BROKE, and to top it all off..

-HELLO AGAIN

Why. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING WE DON'T OWE ANY BILLS LIKE THIS IS LITERAL THEFT. I also love how everyone is already so miserable so the repoman just comes and takes all the fun objects we can't afford to replace, FML

Barth's aspiration meter is absolutely pathetic as a result of everyone viciously assaulting him and desperate times call for desperate measures..

-Well well.. If it isn't Glitched Butler #9.. How's it hanging? ;)

-Same as always, I'm here to not cook and to open the doors we no longer have thanks to Baby.

-You know what, I'm too depressed to seduce you so will you just sleep with me?

-As you well know my butler programming prohibits me from doing anything helpful!

FFS. It's ok Barth, I will fulfill your throw a party want, I don't see how anything could go wrong with the situation in this house being what it is!

-Hey there! Join our party! Sleep with me! I COMMAND YOU

Barth please get it together.

-I CAN'T FUNCTION ROMANTICALLY BECAUSE I'M SO SAD BUT I REFUSE TO THROW ANY WANTS THAT DON'T INVOLVE ME SLEEPING WITH SOMEONE

OK DO YOU MAYBE SEE THE PROBLEM WITH THAT APPROACH

-NO

-Ugh, Spice is so hot when he's crying after I beat him up.

Ok Kea, I'm only gonna ask this once: are you fucking kidding me????

-What? It's only natural to be attracted to your girlfriend's ex who is her cousin and your enemy.

I'm just gonna pretend I didn't see this shit and move on.

So I have invited several of Barth's existing and potential lovers to this party and my goal is to figure out who, if anyone, I'm gonna marry him to. Now please enjoy this sequence of events:

a) Barth is flirting with my current top spouse pick, Stella Terrano, and it's going great!

b) Barth leaves Stella Terrano to go sleep with GODDAMN GUNNAR. Since I can't seem to shake this fucker off, the only option remaining is to give him a ridiculous fake accent to make him bearable.

-Oi luvs you, Barth!

-Why are you talking like a servant from Downton Abbey? Also who the hell caught me cheating now?

Who knows or cares? Let's continue:

c) Barth goes downstairs to beat up Cyan.

d) Klara aka my former top spouse pick attempts to leap into Barth's arms and HE LETS HER DROP

-Äääääh mein arsch!

-Sorry Klara but I refuse to get caught cheating by Gunnar..

-..unless it's with Stella Terrano!

LOL OMG, I really thought I'd have to marry him to fucking Gunnar due to THIS SHIT:

But God's mercy finally shines upon me!!!

Oh man I'm so upset by this >:)

-Ha culd youse do 'is, ya broke ma 'eart!!!

-What?

-Oh my, turtles are considered the sexiest animal in my planet👽

Stella ffs. Oh well, so sad, goodbye Gunnar, I was really hoping to add your freakish lack of chin into our gene pool but looks like I won't have the chance huhu!

e) Barth flirts with Stella again and is caught cheating AGAIN..

f) ..by Sarah Love who I keep forgetting exists but man that's a HARDCORE slap, she legit got her fingers in his eyeball(s)

-SORRY WHATSYOURNAME BUT I THINK BLINDING ME IS A BIT OF AN OVERREACTION

Yay! See Barth, our amazing party did the trick and now everything is gonna be ok!

-IM BLIND IM BLINDDDD I CAN'T SEE

Excuse me?! You know what Barth I'm done helping you, nothing is ever good enough for you!

#gen 4 #unions #ts2 #long post

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courtofcrescent · 4 months ago

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How do royal marriages work in your world? If the MC is Mallory's Royal Consort will they be the only one or one of many consorts? Is it common for royals to have multiple lovers simultaneously?

Heya, Dear Anon!

A good question! And I'll absolutely take any opportunity to talk about worldbuilding 😆 Let’s delve into some ramblings about marriages, lovers, and heirs under the cut!

1. How do royal marriages work in the world of COC?

It depends on which kingdom we are talking about! But for the Kingdom of Luxendis (MC's kingdom) where passion is held in high regard, it’s an open secret that royal marriages are not born from passion; it's mostly political agreements (surprise!). It's common for both the ruler and their consort not to love each other romantically—there have even been a few who openly hated each other in the past. This is why the ruler may have concubines and the consort may have (official) lovers~

Luxendians don’t bat an eye about the royal family's affairs as long as both the ruler and consort always remember Luxen's sacred will to never forget the duty of the crown and keep the kingdom flourishing. So yeah, there won't be any big ridiculous scandals regarding these matter 😉

However the heir to the throne must be legitimate, meaning must come from an official union between King/Queen and Consort or King/Queen and Concubine to avoid succession problems (thus consort and their lover are prohibited from having any children in their union). If the ruler has no children from any legitimate union, they may appoint a legitimized bastard (royal bastards are quite rare tho) or a blood relative as the successor.

2. Is MC the only one or part of a line of consorts?

MC is the only Royal Consort of Luxendis! There is only one royal consort; the ruler's main spouse, so think of it as the King/Queen/Prince Consort in our world. However, in (new) Luxendis—the Court of Crescent—the term King/Queen Consort that Luxendians originally used has evolved into Royal Consort regardless of gender due to Imperial influence.

Why did the Empire simplify it to Royal Consort? Simple: the Empire wanted their conquered kingdoms to adhere to Imperial customs! The Imperial House uses the term Imperial Consort, so the rest must follow suit. But why use Imperial Consort instead of Emperor/Empress Consort? Because the Emperor who introduced it was a greedy narcissistic bastard who didn’t want to share his "magnificent title" with the Empress Consort—according to certain questionable historical chronicles, at least lol.

3. Is it common for royals to have multiple lovers?

The custom of having multiple lovers may vary depending on the kingdoms. For Luxendis, it’s a big yes! The Old King of the Former Royal Family had both a Queen Consort and a Concubine. The Queen before him had three concubines, and the King before her had dozens. Almost all of the Luxendis royalty have multiple lovers, with a few exceptions that can be counted on one hand. After all, Luxendians hold passion in high regards.

Additional Note: MC is Mallory’s only consort, yes. However, that doesn’t mean there won’t be any potential concubine(s). If MC and Mallory are of the same gender or if MC doesn’t choose Mallory Romance Path or if MC doesn't want child of their own blood, Mallory will automatically take (or plan to take) a concubine(s) to produce an heir later in the story.

Thank you for the ask! 🩶

#marriage 101: rules #coc: raven #coc: lore #coc: luxendis #coc: empire #coc: general #coc: if #court of crescent

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kings-highway · 3 months ago

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i saw u were giving ur thoughts abt rare pairs and i wanted to know what you think about kurokita if ur down!!

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 🤔

I haven't really thought that much about these two in particular. Even if I love all the captains in every rotation. But.... welll.............

I think the funniest immediate dynamic that comes to head is that we've got Mr. Down Home "It Ain't Much but It's Honest" versus "Captialist Rex" which honestly I am not an enemies to lovers kinda person but if you wanted to make a hallmark movie-

Dear Kita has to come into the city and he's only there to help a family member sell at a local artisan market, and they've got a little shop set up, and Kuroo is basically classic entrepenurial spirit like "wow you could really make a business out of this little set up" and Kita says "get my name out of your mouth right now" and-

Actually hang on I'm kinda into this conceptually. Because Kita's, like, mean. Canonically. He's not like most of the other captains that like, mince words or try and keep people's morals up, up he straight up tells people to stop making mistakes and to be better, like... I don't know if Kuroo has a lot of people like that in his life that would hold a knife to his throat and tell him to be a better human being or the Gods will send him to hell.

I do think Kuroo could easily absolutely fall in love with this downhome kind of simple logic Kita has, very yes sir, thank you ma'am, let's get our work done, but in the way that what Kuroo might be missing in his very corporate life is a little bit of home comfort, somewhere to come back and rest his head and feel fulfilled. And I can imagine the first few nights he stays over on the farm rest him like nothing has ever rested him, and once Kita actually lets him talk about *why* he's climbing to the top of the volleyball managerial ladder (to lower the net for everybody!) Kita almost instantly falls in love. To put that much work into an ideal, to commit to something he cares about that hard and put that many hours a day in, that's something Kita can support, whatever it is.

Anyway Kita would absolutely make him little homemade bento boxes with cute little notes to take to work and then sometimes when Kuroo's messed up he'll leave very aggressive little notes.

Kita tries to pretend he doesn't think Kuroo is attractive at all, but (before they're together) he catches him sleeping on the bed with his shirt off and almost has an aneurism

Kuroo is pretty sure every time Kita smiles a year gets added to his life.

Atsumu finds out Kuroo (yes, that Kuroo!) is dating his former captain and Osamu has to stop him from sending a strongly worded letter to the editor regarding why Kita should absolutely break up with him right now do not trust the black cat do NOT

Anyway also I forgot to include somewhere in the original hallmark enemies-to-lovers triad that they have to hardcore hate fuck atleast once. I think they could do it. Better than other rarepairs i've thought about I think they could.

Overall Rating:

For Me, Personal Interest: 2/10

Personal Interest for Enemies to Lovers Country Boy v Coporate Man: 10/10 send me this fic right now. (and I don't even like enemies to lovers-)

Concept/Potential: 3.5/10?

Concept/Potential as Aforementioned Hallmark Movie: 10/10 oh my god I want it now??? I talked myself into this.

#i WANT IT #haikyuu kurokita

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nitroglycerin-flavored-coffee · 4 months ago

Text

His Blue Serge Chapter 2:

Alastor was impressed. That seemed to be happening a lot lately. This little Demon Belle, her determination, her will.

Her power.

The princess had taken control of their deal. In making deals, usually only one person holds the contract. If you were to ask dear old Husker the specifics of his deal, he would surely be able to tell you the gist of it, how he had fallen to the Radio Demons' misconstrued offer of ‘help’. If you were to ask Alastor, well he could pull out the signed contract composed of his magic and read off every little footnote, details of the initial encounter listed there, even footnotes about how body language can be interpreted as consent for certain aspects of the deal not quite spoken out loud. It was all there, recorded thanks to the magic that comes with making deals.

But Charlie, oh Charlie! She had gripped his hand, and by simple willpower, split the power of the deal between them. Due to the switch-up of power, there was no physical manifestation of the deal, no contract that could be manifested, just the bond of their spoken word. That may make things more difficult for Alastor later on when he would choose to cash in his favor, but he was not deterred by the risks that insinuated.

No, he was simply overjoyed at the display of power. Charlie would be a truly formidable foe if she chose to make herself one. Luckily, Alastor planned to keep her on his good side for quite a while longer. Oh, how could he not when she proved to be just too entertaining? Even Rosie was able to see the potential just under the surface of the princess's kind demeanor, and Dearest Rosie was quite the judge of character.

Though since the battle, the dear princess seemed to be gloomy. She wasn't going so far as to lock herself in her room again, but it was very clear that the Doll would make herself scarce at the sight of a particular winged gal. He took notice one day when the main staff was gathered together, working the logistics of some of the cannibal colony staying after the battle had concluded. Apparently, Charlie had charmed them so well they’d like to stick around!

The short stack of a king wasn’t around, not used to being around so many people for extended periods. He had locked himself away in his suite, luckily on the other side of the hotel as the Radio Tower in which Alastor resided. He listened into the meeting taking place a few stories down through a hidden shadow.

Angel had excused himself, after a call from Valentino in which the moth claimed to be struck by inspiration, and needed the spider fella for an impromptu shoot. Husker was passed out at the coffee table, in this little lounge where they had originally gathered for the meeting.

Nifty had scurried off, chasing a bug that had landed on the window sill from outside. This was a pest-free house and she damn well intended to keep it that way. No one was particularly worried when this endeavor ended up with her physically leaving the window to chase the bug up the side of the building.

And that left the Darling Princess and her former lover. And the Shadow that lurked where no one knew of its presence, quietly listening in for the Radio Demon. He often felt inclined to tune in for the meetings they had, even if he didn’t feel the need to be there to contribute.

Vaggie had stopped trying to wake up Husker when she realized that this was probably the first time she and Charlie were ‘Left Alone’ since before the battle. Charlie noticed a beat after her and quickly scrambled to her feet, gathering up the papers and crayons that she could, some being trapped under Husker's prone form.

“Well, I guess let's call it there for today. See you guys later.” The princess said to the room, not addressing Vaggie despite her being the only one in the room who would probably hear her. To her knowledge that is. Alastor smirked, still glad to have the occasional upper hand over his colleagues. Relaxing back into his plush chair and lifting his coffee mug to his face, he listened in to what he hoped would be an embarrassing stumble on the angel's part.

“Wait, Charlie-” there it was. “I really think we should talk.” Oh, how delicious. This should be absolutely heart-wrenching for the two.

“Now really isn’t a good time Vaggie. I have paperwork to do.” The princess was rubbing her forehead beneath her short horns, trying to smooth out the stress lines forming there. “Maybe later.” She left no room for discussion as she walked towards the door, hoping to flee to her own little part of the hotel, where Dazzle was surely waiting for her. She stopped, stepping back when she saw Vaggie blocking the path with an outstretched wing.

The grey-pallor woman looked more ashen than usual as she breathed out a plea. “It’s been weeks.” Alastor could hear the quiver in her voice. “We need to talk.”

Charlie lightly stomped her hoof in irritation, holding her papers closer to her chest. “And I said not now . So, if you’ll excuse me.” She went to walk around the wing but it strained further as Vaggie pushed herself in between the Princess and the exit.

“Charlie, please. You haven’t even let me explain-” The angel was quickly cut off.

“I have heard plenty. I have heard your tale when you told Angel in the lobby; explained it to Nifty over and over every time she asked; when you sent Husk after me as an unwilling middleman.” Tears came to the princess's eyes, carrying a bloody sclera with them.” I have heard what you have to say, and it doesn’t change the fact that you lied. I am done. I am over it. I am moving on.”

She attempted again to walk past the outstretched wing, but this time, since it could stretch no farther, Vaggie pushed herself in the way. “Charlie-”

“I said,” The princess's black-tipped nails turned into claws, “Leave me alone.”

It wasn’t so much as a roar, as a low growl. But the power of it sent a burst of magic through the room. Invisible as it was, it knocked Vaggie over to the side and out of the way, poor Husker off the table and out of his nap, and even dispersed the lurking shades. Much to the surprise of Alastor.

He jolted up from his chair, dropping his coffee mug as he felt winded. His shadow crawled up from him, looking just as confused as his counterpart. Now what under Hell’s red skies was that?

Ever the curious cat, Alastor found his way through the shadows to a hall nearby, that may just happen to be on Charlie's way to her room. He could feel that it was her magic that had dispelled him, so clearly she was the one to approach for information. He casually made his way in the right direction, humming a sickly sweet tune to himself as he practically waltzed right into the crying princess.

“Oh! Why Charlie, Dear! I didn’t see you there! How did the-” Alastor stopped himself. He was never at a loss for words, but they seemed to flee as he looked down at the poor doll he had knocked over. As expected, she had tears of frustration in her eyes, but less expected was the torn sheets of paper in her clutches, held tightly under extended claws, her palms swollen and blackened. He had noted that the little horns were now an ever-present feature upon her head, but he noticed the way they seemed shifted to red as they extended past her bangs. She glared up at him- the gall of this gal! And stubbornly pushed herself right back up. “Well dear, you look a mess. What is that all about?” He asked, ignoring her razor-sharp claws and taking the ripped sheets from her grasp.

Alastor looked over the now hardly legible sheets- just a shame, too. Charlie, even though she used crayons of all things to scribe with, had such neat handwriting. Charlie gawked at him and moved as if to take the pages back, but seeing the black engulfing her forearms, resolved to tuck her hands under her armpits and glare once more.

“As if you don’t know.” Her glare turned into more of a pout and she moved around the taller demon and marched towards her room.

Alastor raised an eyebrow at her, stuffing the torn sheets into his lapel as he moved to follow her. “How would I know why you are missing that beautiful smile of yours? I am just now coming downstairs.” The demoness's claws seemed to shrink as she took deep breaths, but the discoloration had yet to recede. Alastor mistook this as her feeling guilt for throwing accusations at him but was immediately corrected.

Charlie turned to him, her arms still crossed to (poorly) hide her still receding claws. “You can sit in in the meetings you know. It might be nice to have your input every now and then as a partner of the hotel.” She scoffed and blew a chunk of hair over her horn. “Unless your shadows can talk and not just listen.”

He worked very hard not to let the surprise show on his face. So the Princess could sense his shadows now? Or had she always been able to and had just not said anything until now? Nevertheless, he took the new information in stride.

“If I feel I have input, I will certainly give it.” He fixed the piece of hair that Charlie was still blowing at, refusing to move her hands out from where she hid them. Once it was tucked decently to the side, Alastor made a show of getting in her space. He leaned in close, ignoring the way her red eyes almost faded into her sclera. The Princess valued truth, so he would give it. “While my shadows are decent for listening in to keep me filled in on important matters, they are not great for showing what is actually happening.”

Alastor produced his radio staff- or at least the top half of it. He had been unable to repair it after his scuffle with that loud angel fellow, but he could still hear his broadcasts from the head of it if it was at the right angle. He held it up to Charlie as if that explained everything. Finally, the red faded from her sclera, as her horns receded into her head until they were barely poking up at her bangs. The taller demon smiled down at her as she shook out her palms, the black finally receding to the tips of her fingers once more as she sighed in relief.

“There we are! You really mustn’t work yourself up so, Darling.” After brushing her cheek with the back of his own clawed hand, he moved further down the hallway. Holding the broken staff behind him as he walked, he led the way to another sitting room which would hopefully be empty. He considered for a moment just going to the princess's room, but as much as he loved irritating her, he was wary of her on-edge mood.

Charlie sighed and followed him, making his smile grow wider as he heard the steps echo his own. He took comfort in being in control of the situation, the location of discussion, and now even the Princess's mood. Even if she was still upset, she was considerably in more control of herself than she had been moments ago.

Alastor played the role of comforting friend quite well. He had settled the Princess down on the couch that was near a fireplace, igniting the embers and summoning a fresh glass of honey lavender tea. It did wonders for the headaches you received after crying, you wouldn’t believe! His mother would make him some when he was a lad after he threw one of his fits, and it would put him at ease as she soothed him.

Although he didn’t share any of that with the blonde now curled up against the arm of the couch, she still gratefully went for the cup, and sipped at it as though it were ambrosia, and to spill a single drop would be a sin.

“Now,” Alastor said much softer than he normally would, keeping in mind the fragile state of the creature before him. “What on earth was all that?”

He wouldn’t deny that he was listening in, just as much as he would deny how lost he was at the display of power after the angel had tried to force Charlie to talk to her.

With a sigh and another long sip, Charlie moved the cup to her chest and began to rub around the base of one horn. “I’m not sure actually.” She shrunk in on herself as Alastor made himself comfortable in a recliner across from her. “I was just mad- I don’t know. Frustrated that Vaggie was trying to- to. Well.” another heavy sigh brought the tea back to her lips.

The Radio Demon considered the Demoness across from him. Such a kind and pure soul; such raw, unadulterated power. She could probably strike him down with a single finger, a thought, and a breath. But did she know that? He watched her with careful eyes and she searched the contents of her drink, as though it may carry the words she was looking for. Charlotte Morningstar, heir to the throne of Hell, child of an Archangel, and the original Demon, was like a toddler holding a loaded gun. The safety was off, and while she might understand the danger the weapon posed, she didn’t know how to hold it or fire it without injuring herself.

“Oh, dear.”

Charlie threw her head up at the man, eyes wide as he looked at her, smiling small and cocky as he tutted and shook his head.

“You have no clue how to control those powers of yours, do you?”

Charlie shrunk in on herself, as impossible as it seemed, knees to her chest and chin resting between her knees so she could still see the sinner. She was smart to not take her eyes of him. Why she looked so much like a cornered animal, a hunter standing before it ready to take the kill. But Alastor was smart, too. He knew to be wary of an animal who feels cornered.

Charlie refused to let words escape her lips, but it was just as much a confirmation as Alastor needed in order to steer the conversation. He considered the short and adorable horns peeking from the Princess's temple. Of course, he had noted that they never went away, but he thought about what they could mean. She had formally only shown them during brief moments of weakness and frustration, and the appearance of them was intense but brief. While they usually shot up to a foot, they never lingered for more than a few seconds.

“Perhaps you are too stressed lately, my dear.” Alastor coaxed her, rising from his seat to take her glass. She reluctantly handed it over, not feeling satisfied that she hadn’t been able to finish it, but feeling better even with the little she had received.

“Well, it’s not like I can do anything about it. We finally have patrons coming in. If I can’t handle this then what was the point of it all.” She pushed her hand into her hairline, getting caught on a horn and unmistakably surprising herself with it. She went back to rubbing soothingly around the bases of them. “Of the war, of the death! Of-” She choked, forcing herself to take a deep breath. Alastor put a finger up to his chin, thinking for a moment before summoning a blanket to his hands and dramatically draping it over the princess. Still curled up, it covered her completely, draping over her frame and the back of the couch. She uncurled a little from her ball and poked her head out of the side, the blanket stopping to hang over her face by the pull of her horns. “Al?”

“Sweet Charlie! You really haven’t even had a second since the battle have you?” He danced away towards the door. “I recommend you take the rest of the day to yourself. No paperwork! No patrons! No pesky Vagatha to upset you.” He spun around and gestured as Charlie adjusted the blanket off from her head, causing it to fall down onto her shoulder. “You know, I just checked and she is on her way to your chambers. I doubt you’d get any peace if she found you! Ha!” He laughed heartily as he held his middle. At Charlie's panicked face- and the way her horns grew ever so slightly he relaxed his shoulders and made his way back over to her.

“What am I supposed to do?” she asked quietly, and Alastor couldn’t help thinking of how wonderfully helpless she looked, wrapped up in the blanket with tears in her eyes. He casually shrugged and gestured to the princess buried on the couch.

“You could stay here! I doubt dear old Vagatha would think to look in this random Lounge for you.” He laughed again. “It’s the perfect place to have a good rest don’t you think?” He had hardly turned to move towards the door again when Charlie called for him again.

“Alastor! But what about what happened?” She withdrew any pause she had regarding delving her secrets to the dangerous demon. “I don’t know how I did it, or how to avoid doing it again!” Tears broke from her eyes as she clutched the blanket around her tightly, wishing it could suffocate her worries away. “What do I do?” She cried to the demon who stood frozen for only a moment. He corrected himself and relaxed his smile once more.

“Why I already told you, my dear!” He made his way over to her, an animalistic glint in his eyes as he kneeled before her, causing her to hold her breath in anticipation. He reached for her face, causing her to screw her eyes shut. She felt his palm rest over her eyes, the light from the fireplace no longer reaching her through her eyelids. “Rest.” He said as he ran his palm up off of her eyes, and to her forehead. The darkness remained though his hand was no longer there, and as his hand reached them, her horns finally retracted into her scalp. Releasing the tension she had been carrying for weeks there, her brows finally unfurrowed as the darkness spread from her vision to her mind. She was completely relaxed now, sleep quickly finding her. “ Rest .”

#charlastor #alastor #charlie morningstar #hazbin hotel #fanfic writing #just fml #His Blue Serge #Chaggie break-up #i love chaggie i really do #but #i am gay for angst

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likeadevils · 8 months ago

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I've been toying with the idea of the "Superman > Foolish One > I Can See You > Ours > Dear John > The Story Of Us" sequence of events and I need to know if I'm completely deluded.

While I'm pretty deadset on this timeline, the one iffy part is Foolish One. Now, I know what you're thinking, "Anon, Foolish One is a breakup song. How could she have written it before they got together," and to that I say I KNOW, BUT, there are SO many lyrical parallels between Foolish One and all the *confirmed John songs that I find it very difficult to believe.

In terms of the timeline, something that I recently learned after listening to Jessica Simpson's book, is that after they had been off for over a year, John had begun pursuing her in mid 2009, whilst she was dating Tony Romo (it's slightly ironic that this whole sequence is preceded by Jessica making mention of the fact that Rascal Flatts asked her to be their replacement opener after Taylor finished touring with them).

She then implies that the two slept together throughout the latter half and the year, and that she confronted him about "sleeping with another/other girls" after reading a quote from him where he said he "only wanted to f*ck girls he'd already f*cked because he didn't want to explain to them that he was interested in them."

(She also makes mention of the fact that he told her she and inspired basically the entirety of Battle Studies including Half Of My Heart. There is a lot of parallel here but that's a topic for another time.)

With that whole messy timeline, I am toying with the idea of this:

Superman:

the early stages of their working relationship.

She pines, hopeful that one day they will be together despite her current entanglement, and his potential entanglements.

Foolish One:

being hit with the sudden realisation that they will Not be together Someday.

Said realisation may or may not be be spurred on by a certain former flame, or a certain comment about whether she actually writes her music, something that is obviously deeply personal to her.

I Can See You:

A mark of a shift in their dynamic

Her waiting is finally paying off, and she is eager to explore it

It is seemingly pre "confession" of interest, but post denial of it.

Ours:

There are now "together" and subscribing to an Us and against the world mentality.

Takes place in the very brief "Happy" stage of the relationship, however despite this there is still a level of distance, something followed up on in the music video

Dear John:

The realisation that she REALLY should've known better.

The immediate fallout from the relationship

"F*ck you, we're done. You're broke, I'm up."

The Story Of Us:

"Hey, what if we just like... talked it out?"

The internal debate of whether or not to offer out an olive branch to someone who caused you great pain, but you still hold a torch for (she described the song as being about "pining" over someone in her journal)

The realisation that she got nothing out of the relationship, despite her high expectations.

This is VERY long, and I am SORRY, but if you took the time to read this, thank you, and if you take the time to respond to my midnight ramblings, THANK YOU🙏

oh no i see foolish one as very much a situationship song like it can absolutely fit “i have a crush and you keep PLAYING WITH IT AND THEN DIPPING”

and i think that does fit his and taylor’s relationship in 2009! like, they were flirting over twitter like, all year. may-december there was lots of flirty tweets. though, i don’t know if it’s about john specifically, or just the general idea of a man? like, that feb 2009 lover diary where she randomly brings up “i feel like i’m the one before the one” is before she really got involved with john and feels very foolish one to me

ALSO ALSO ABOUT OURS

i’m pretty sure it was written before they were Together Together? like? idk she said it was written the week before her 19th birthday and she didn’t break up with taylor lautner until at least the december 14? not that— like, i don’t think her and taylor lautner were ever seriously dating to the point of exclusivity, i think it was just a ‘while we’re both in the same city’ thing, BUT at the very least that implies ours was written before she was exclusive with john? idk fall 2009 is so. so teenage mess

i also think all of the 2010 songs are about her kinda. coming to terms with that. like mine -> innocent -> back to december -> mean -> long live is so. it drives me insane. chosing kindness, trying to apologize to those you hurt, rebuilding self worth— it’s such a fascinating little mini arc, that healing from that heartbreak (amongst other things) set her on

#asks*

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meraki-yao · 9 months ago

Note

I am writing you because I know you treat opinions, even those you may disagree with, with respect. If you do not want to print this, I understand. I really want to understand why the fandom needs to think that Nick and Taylor are 'besties' and friends for life. I enjoy their off screen interactions. I think the extremely limited promo we had was funny and cute. But there has been nothing to suggest since the premiere last August that they are anything more than respected colleagues. Nick and Taylor do not show a lot on social media, but the little they do show suggests they have close circles of friends and family, within which they do not appear to be that for each other. And that is fine! But the fandom lore that they have some deep secret friendship that is so precious no one knows about it, is dangerous and extremely parasocial, probably even more so than those who think they are secret lovers. It is ok that they are just former colleagues who worked very well together. For me, the past few months have shown that is exactly what they are. Colleagues who respect each other, no more, no less. Why does it have to be more?

With all due respect my dear, I think you might be missing some things is you only see them as colleague. Because we're not forcing this "best friends" narrative onto them, all of our commentary on their relationship is our reaction to what they have said about each other/done. Even if you count what they said about each other in interviews as courtesy from a co-star, that doesn't cover their other interaction.

Using a go-to example of mine: "the signing war", where when given anything with the two of them or firstprince, Taylor will draw a moustache on Nick/Henry, and Nick will sign directly over Taylor/Alex's face. You wouldn't do something like this, that's potentially offensive to just a colleague. Their relationship is close enough for them to joke about each other like this and know with certainty that the other wouldn't get mad.

Other less concrete examples include what I said in a previous post about the Academy Museum Gala Night: with the reading on Taylor's watch in his two photos with Nick and how photography worked that night, they were pretty much sticking together the whole night.

Regardling what you said about them having other best friends, I'm guessing you mean people like Sabrina Carpeter and Joey King for Taylor and Camila Cabeo and the two makeup crew girls from M&G for Nick. But people can have different friend groups and be equally close with each group, while not having a connection in between. Actually even that's not necessarily true in this case: Sabrina, Joey and Camila got a photos together at the party, and we have Camila, Taylor and Nick in the photo.

So to conclude, we don't need to think they're best friends, they simply are, from the evidence presenting in their interactions.

#anon ask #answered #taylor zakhar perez #nicholas galitzine

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amberjazmyn · 5 months ago

Text

i'll always come back for you 💔🥹

pairing : lando norris x carlos sainz jr (platonic)

summary : what should have happened after lando norris' girlfriend died and lando's former mclaren teammate drops everything and flies back to england to be there for lando.

warnings : sad, angst, death of girlfriend, words of love and endearment said in spanish meant in a platonic way

a/n : this was originally written for dr spencer reid of criminal minds but now i just had the brilliant idea to write it for lando norris. i originally wanted to do this for charles leclerc but i decided against that as charles doesn't need more heartbreak, even if it's fictional.

he was heartbroken.

he felt like his heart had been stepped on repeatedly.

growing up, he thought he'd never fall in love.

because his biggest focus as he got older was to become a formula one driver.

he never thought he'd have the time and space in his life and heart to fall in love but he did.

and then as he got older and finally did fall in love, it was taken away from him.

all because of a selfish woman who decided that she was exempt from following the rules of not getting behind the wheel of a car when drunk.

and that bitch made lando lose the life of the woman of his dreams.

the life of the woman he planned to potentially marry and create a family with outside of his work family with the formula one grid.

he wept on the floor of where his lover was killed in the hit and run and because he didn't try hard enough to stop the drunk driver from hitting her.

♥︎𓆩♡𓆪♥︎

it had been days since matilda lewis' death. which meant it had been days since lando had slept, ate, kept a clean apartment and done anything other than cry and wallow in his overwhelming grief.

a grief that was unlike any other he'd felt before. this grief was unlike any other because this was the first time he had actually been in the situation of losing someone this close to him. the only other time he had gone through something similar was when carlos left mclaren for ferrari...carlos

it had been a couple of years now since carlos had moved from mclaren to ferrari. lando missed carlos. missed him more than he thought he could miss anyone...not that they didn't see each other anymore. they were still the best of friends whilst driving for mclaren and ferrari. however, he needed to see someone anyone and whilst he appreciated, loved and lived for his mclaren family, oscar, zac, his own biological family and for the rest of the f1 grid family, he needed someone who hadn't contacted him when matilda had died. and, the only person he could think of with his head in this tailspin of grief was carlos.

he needed carlos. and it seemed as though carlos knew it and sensed it too.

before lando could even think about grabbing his phone let alone think about ringing anyone, carlos rang him first.

"...hey carino dear, i heard what happened, are you okay?" carlos whispers over the phone, knowing that lando wouldn't be able to fathom talking any louder than a whisper

"...no...i...i...i'm in pain, carlos...everything hurts" lando whimpered as he felt like his body was on fire

"i am so sorry carino. what do you need?" carlos says softly. his own heart breaking for the british boy who he called his own little brother

"you..." he was worried carlos couldn't hear him but he did

"...por supuesto of course. leave the door unlocked for me lando. i'll message you when i've arrived back in england. i know you've been refusing the help of the rest of the grid. promise me you won't shut me out." whilst it may sound like he was demanding, his voice was soft and anything but demanding

"i promise...just, please carlos...i...i...i need you..." lando sniffled as his heart continued to spread pain throughout his body that carlos sensed

"...i'm on my way carino. please don't do anything stupid before i get to you. i don't want to see you covered in your own blood or anything, please..." carlos hated seeing those he loved in pain but none more so than lando - it was true when people said he had a soft spot for the english boy

"...thank you. and i promise, i won't do anything stupid. i...i love you, carlos..." lando sniffled, disregarding his tears as he curled into himself on his couch

"...good...and i love you too, muppet. i'll be with you before you know it..." carlos said before lando murmured a small, "...i know" before they parted ways so carlos could book the first flight back out to the united kingdom

and, blessed be to god, the first flight back to the u.k was midnight that very same day. and due to the slight timezone difference of where carlos was, it didn't even feel like a day had gone by before carlos had arrived in the united kingdom. whilst lando was nowhere near smiling or thinking of it, waking up from his restless sleep to see a text from carlos that he was in the united kingdom and was on his way to him gave him the feeling that eventually, he would be able to smile.

♥︎𓆩♡𓆪♥︎

but, before carlos even arrived back in the united kingdom, he had to explain to his family of whom he was on holiday with, why he was all of a sudden flying back. and flying back so quickly without much notice and on a midnight redeye. and, his reasoning? a family emergency. because everyone in the sainz family knew that lando was just as much part of the sainz family as anyone else in that formula 1 grid. it was a miracle that the entire sainz family didn't fly over alongside carlos. it was off-season for the formula 1 drivers, hence why majority of them were in different countries around the world on holiday just taking everything in with their families and loved ones before having to go back into work mode for the next season. and anything that involved lando was considering a family matter but never a family emergency. because of carlos' holiday, he actually had no clue for around two weeks that matilda, lando's girlfriend, had died. his phone had been off those two weeks since he had been wanting to really remember and be present with all of his family and girlfriend during the holiday. all the photos and memories from those two weeks coming from other people's phones, polaroid cameras and other types of film cameras. it wasn't until he recieved a very distressing call from oscar piastri, lando's current mclaren teammate and then another one from his ferrari teammate charles leclerc that carlos realised that something was wrong with lando. and it was then that he saw the news articles and videos dipicting matilda's last moments before she and her car got rammed into a fence at a red light intersection in london's north. that was when it became clear to carlos that he was the only one that could really help console and comfort lando more than anyone else. lando had been ignoring the rest of the f1 grid's attempts at consoling them but nothing worked. not even the grid dad's fernando and sebastian could help lando. so, carlos was the last grasp at trying to get lando to accept help. so, that's what he did. carlos was happy to drop everything and fly back to the u.k and because it was lando of all people, he knew it wasn't time for him to make this into a whole group thing with the rest of the grid. so he didn't. he told no-one from the rest of the grid that he was flying back to the u.k. because he knew and it was clear that if lando was ignoring their comforts and attempts by stopping at his apartment door, that it wasn't them he wanted to help him grieve. not because he didn't love them or have faith that they couldn't do it. he did. there was a reason, a specific reason he wanted carlos and he wasn't going to betray that by using that to have the rest of the grid join him. so, whilst in the u.k, he wasn't going to be talking or messaging anyone else in the grid. he was just going to be there for lando and be there for him for as long as he needed him to be there for. and he didn't care if he needed him to be there forever, he would be there for him and he'd never leave him. even if it meant giving up both of their f1 seats.

which is what brings us to present day. carlos stood in front of lando's apartment door with all of the 'with sympathy' cards and flowers of the rest of the f1 grid and norris family at his feet.

he's just about to announce himself when he swears he hears a small voice come from inside the apartment, "...the doors open..." and it was a small voice, it was lando's

"...do you want me to bring in the flowers and cards? i don't want your neighbours to steal them..." carlos' voice was also soft as lando managed a scoff in his grief-ridden stupor

"...yeah, that's probably a good idea...thanks carlos..." lando mumbled as carlos smiled

his suitcast small enough that he could grab it as well as the three or four bouquets of sympathy flowers and cards along with other little things that were sure to (at some stage) bring a smile to lando's face. and just like lando promised over the phone just a day ago, although it felt like the phone call was years ago, he left his door unlocked for carlos. smiling, he let himself in skillfully, even with everything in his hands. placing everything on the floor or on a table nearby, he released the kinks in his body and straight away brought lando in for a hug. it didn't take a genius to figure out that lando was grieving and was stuck in that cycle.

he was wearing an oversized hoodie and sweatpants that made him look even smaller than he was and it broke carlos' heart. it was clear from just a look up and down of his body that he hadn't eaten since that day. carlos worried he was dehyrdrated but, he breathed somewhat a sigh of relief to see many monster energy drinks and glasses laying around his apartment. signifying that whilst he hadn't been eating, it was clear he was living off of monster energy drinks and possibly water or alcohol. which, whilst not terrible per se was still bad because he still needed to eat. his apartment was a mess. books and photo frames had been sent flying from it's shelves in the bookcases to the floor, blankets were spread out messily on the couch which is where it looked as though to carlos as the place where lando had been sleeping. everything just looked like the person living in this apartment was grieving and, it was true. because lando was grieving. he was grieving the love of his love of whom he had only been with for a shocking two years, he had fallen in love with her over a time period from when they were kids in primary school and had dreamt and waited for the day he'd get to marry her and have her as mrs matilda norris but he never got to propose to her.

in fact, he remembers his last words to her. of course he did. he remembered everything about that evening. he couldn't ever forget. even the things he wanted to forget about that whole evening, he couldn't.

in matilda's last moments, lando remembered telling her that "i'll marry you one day and make you mrs matilda norris, just you wait!" before lando was too late and no one with the ability to save her.

whilst carlos looked around lando and matilda's home-like apartment excluding the grief mess, he loved it. it wasn't carlos' first time seeing it since he'd seen it on streams and facetimes but it was the first time he was truly seeing it in person. it was the apartment that carlos always pictured seeing lando and matilda live in until they moved into an actual house. it had lovely creamy white walls, lovely bookshelves that were definitely for matilda, the lover of books and academics and even some lovely stained glass artworks haphazardly hung on the walls. absolutely what he imagined for his best friends, lando norris and matilda lewis. except, right now, what he saw in front of him, the strewn blankets on the couch, the strewn books over the floor, the little to no food he noticed that wasn't in his pantry or fridge. seeing all of it broke his heart. he knew from prior experience when they were in mclaren together that lando didn't take things like death and change in what others would consider to be the "normal" way of reacting to it. it scared lando, the prospect of death and change in ways. so, carlos knew on the flight back to the u.k that seeing lando, his apartment wouldn't be clean, it wouldn't be filled to the brim with food and all that there would be in the apartment was darkness, sadness and a grieving lando as he grieved in his own lando way as lando had never grieved for someone he loved as much as he loved matilda before.

but, it was obvious that just having to share the space with someone else, someone who didn't bare witness to the original influx of sympathies and news of the love of his life being killed, was already filling his heart with hope. hope of that maybe some day, not today or tomorrow or the next day but some day, he wouldn't be this sad and it wouldn't feel like it is such a struggle to breathe everyday. and he liked that feeling. he liked knowing that with carlos here with him, the same carlos that left mclaren for ferrari but still remained friends with lando but was away on holiday and didn't witness the first influx of news about matilda's death, still dropped everything and made himself available for lando when he needed...pleaded for him to be with him.

during this time, carlos had made an online order for some groceries as well as placed the flowers and with sympathy cards onto the empty and sad-looking dining table. making a mental list to let lando know that eventually, within a week maybe, all those flower bouquets were going to die and he'd have to throw them out so they won't get the chance to stink up the house. and that the more food he bought for them, that it could sustain the both of them since there was literally nothing in the pantry or fridge that could last both carlos and lando long enough. walking back into the lounge room, lando's curled up on the couch underneath the blankets, his eyes closed and a disney's stitch build-a-bear, that carlos quickly recognised as matilda's, clutched to his chest.

"...you asleep or awake?" carlos asks softly

opening his eyes, lando gives carlos the information that he's awake and carlos nods his head

"do you want me to stay with you and do you want to talk? or do you want to be left alone and i get the spare room ready whilst you sleep?" carlos asks softly again

but before he could even finish the whole sentence, lando muttered out, "stay, please" and carlos obliged, moving to the couch carlos snuggled up to lando who straight away latched himself onto him

"ok, i'll stay lando. but, if you do get tired, please do sleep, okay?" carlos said, his fingers immediately brushing through lando's matted curls

"as much as i'd love to go back to sleep, i haven't really been sleeping. it's just been broken up intervals of the first stage of sleep when you're not fully awake but not fully asleep before i wake up again..." lando sighed, before speaking up again

"...besides, you flew nearly 1,000 miles to be here with me. it'll be rude if i just slept the whole time, don't you think?" he mumbled, looking at carlos for the first time since he's arrived

"no, pequeño little. i don't think it's rude if you slept the whole time, lando. when we...when we as people lose other people that we loved, it completely changes us. it sends us into a tailspin of 180 degrees..." carlos trails off before continuing as lando listens intently

"...some people continue on with their life straight away as if nothing happens, before eventually, it all comes crashing back on top of them. whereas others don't continue on with their life straight away. for those people, their world is on stop or pause and they struggle to continue living their life the way they lived it before tragedy struck. and, for you, pequeño, since...this is the first time you've been struck with such tragedy, your body doesn't know what it's meant to be doing, whether you should be continuing with life or not. but, because the first proper loss your experiencing is someone you loved and loved with your whole heart, soul and being, it's forced you to a striking halt that's completely wiped you out..." carlos' voice was soft and full of emotions as his free hand that wasn't playing with lando's hair found his hand and grabbed it

"...like charles when he...when he lost his dad and jules..." lando whispered as carlos nodded his head, it was exactly like when charles lost his dad herve and his godfather jules and even when carlos lost his mentor and friend, maria de villota

"...exactly lando. it's exactly the same. not that we saw the whole grief of charles after losing his father or jules for that matter but it was clear that charles just wanted to keep on going. i mean, that kid, days after the loss of his dad had a race and ended up winning and just never stopped. and then, i don't know how he reacted to the loss of jules but i'm sure it was similar in that he just wanted to keep on going and push through. whereas, talking from personal experience, when i lost maria de villota, my mentor and friend, i always get told that my world was put on stop or pause and i struggled to continue living my life the way i lived it before losing maria. but, i had to keep on going if i wanted to really make her proud and make my dream of becoming an f1 driver a reality. i couldn't just give up because she was no longer here on this realm to see what i'd become. i had to fight every single day to continue not just the legacy that my dad had made in his karting days but also the legacy of maria and the legacy that would then turn into my own, separately, away from my dad's and maria's. and, quite honestly, going back to how charles went straight back into racing after losing his dad and jules, maybe that wasn't the best decision and he wasn't ready but, who am i to say that as he won one of the races after losing someone he loved dearly. but, in saying that, it doesn't matter what i think, or what the rest of the grid thinks. whenever you feel like you are ready to return to f1 lando, you come back okay? and if they ask you if you really are ready, don't doubt yourself because you came back for a reason." carlos stopped as lando listened intently and nodded his head

"but...what if i'll never be ready to press play again?" lando whimpered as his bottom lip quivered as carlos gave a look of sadness

"why do you say that, pequeño?" carlos questioned, hugging lando tighter as lando suddenly appreciated the sudden pressure he had been missing

"i'm just scared i'll never recover..." he trailed off as carlos nodded his head, understanding perfectly

"...you're scared you'll feel like this for the rest of your life?" carlos questioned as lando nodded his head, a sob leaving his throat

"yes and i don't want to, carlos..." lando sobbed as carlos' tight hug didn't falter away or loosen

"...oh muppet, you won't feel like this for the rest of your life. i promise, you'll get better. whilst you'll always miss her, it won't stay hurting like it hurts right now. it just takes time but you will heal," carlos sighed as he hugged lando tightly

"how much time, carlos?" lando sniffled as his eyes started to droop from exhaustion as carlos shook his head

"i don't know, lando. i'm sorry that i don't know. i know you want answers but i can't give you all of them," carlos whispered as he moved to let lando lay on him as he cradled him

"s'fine, carlos. i'm sorry that i'm like this. i shouldn't be so upset over this..." lando mumbled as carlos shook his head

"...oi...uh-uh...don't do that, lando. you have every right to be grieving her. you loved her in a way that you'd never experienced before and then she was taken away from you. in a most unfair way as well. because you were seconds too late and had to watch the aftermath of what happened and that's not fair, lando!" carlos felt tears well in his eyes as he said that as lando nodded his head

"i tried to get her to wake up but i...i couldn't. no matter what i tried to do, it just didn't work, carlos. i tried so hard to get her to stay awake but it still wasn't enough-"

"-i know lando, i know," carlos whispered tearfully as he held him tighter as he let out a low whine

"you tried so hard and it's not fair, lando. and i am so sorry that you couldn't do more for her, that no one could do more for her!" carlos whispered as lando let out another low whimper

"and i know that your last words to her weren't everything you wanted to say--" just before lando could interrupt and tell him, carlos continued

"--she still knew just how true you were in your statement of wanting to marry her, lando. that's why she asked you to keep the ring for the next girl you're going to fall in love with because she knew just how much you loved how much she was loved by you. she knew that even though you wanted that with her and her with you, that she wouldn't be mad if you married someone else. she knew you had to say those words because you both thought those last words could save her life as though it was magic. and i'm unexplainably sorry that it didn't save her life..." carlos trailed off, purposefully skirting around saying her name as lando sniffled

"...matilda was gorgeous carlos...it was crazy at just how someone like her could be so gorgeous yet, so nice and innocent at the same time..." it shocked carlos that lando could even say her name, granted he whispered it

"...i know, lando. we all know how gorgeous she was. matilda really was the prettiest and loveliest girl. and i know she adored you lando, she loved you from her first breath to her dying and i know you two would've been a power couple had she made it out alive that day..." carlos worried he said something wrong until lando nodded his head and smiled what looked like the smallest smile ever

"...i know, carlos. and that's what i'm trying my hardest to focus on. but then that's when it starts to spiral because i start to think of all the what if's. like, what if i was with her or what if i reacted just that bit quicker or what if i got to propose to her..." lando trailed off as carlos nodded his head in understanding

"...what if i got to live the rest of my life with her?" carlos added in a whisper as lando nodded his head as a singular tear streamed down his cheek

"yeah..." lando mumbled with a sniffle as carlos rested his chin on lando's head

it looked a little weird picturing carlos' chin resting on lando's head if it's remembered that lando was being cradeled in carlos' lap. however, they had since shuffled around and they were no longer laying down but sitting next to each other, lando kind of sitting in carlos' lap. carlos' legs reclined out whereas lando's were tucked into carlos' lap and kind of into the space inbetween the seats of the couch.

♥︎𓆩♡𓆪♥︎

a few days after carlos arrived to help lando, it felt like he was starting to get better. he slowly started to go back to his room to sleep rather than the couch but in the mornings, would always wake up curled next to carlos in the spare room. carlos didn't hate it nor did he stop lando from joining him in the mornings. carlos would be under the covers and lando curled over the top of them and it was obvious this wasn't a romantic thing,obviously, lando was grieving and carlos was the only person he had allowed into his house, his space of grief. it was clear it was helping lando sleep in his room at night if he knew that carlos wouldn't mind waking up to him seeing lando curled up next to him so, he didn't say a thing, although he did find it quite the sight to see each morning. and it did occasionaly break carlos' heart because it was the only time that he would see lando fully calm and quiet from the loud sobs he would cry throughout the day. the food situation was solved the next day because carlos remembered his mental note of needing to buy more food. after telling him what he needed, carlos left and returned with four bags filled to the brim of food that would sustain not just himself but lando as well for however many days carlos would stay for.

whilst lando was improving, he still had blankets everywhere, he still had matilda's books spread out everywhere because he wasn't ready to deal with that specific part of his grief just yet. and, carlos understood and he didn't try to chance it or force him to clean it. the door to the lounge room would be kept closed when they weren't using it so they wouldn't have to see it and have it be acknowledged.

however, that changed mid-way through their off-season break. it had been forgotten by lando but halfway through their off-season, it would always fall on matilda's birthday and they'd always celebrate it with the norris' and lewis' at a lovely restuarant or sometimes even at one of the houses. and this year, it was matilda's twenty-fourth birthday, she was finally the same age as lando again. but she wasn't alive to celebrate it. however, that didn't mean that carlos or the rest of the norris' and lewis' forgot about matilda's birthday and they weren't ready to let lando forget just yet.

so, the day of matilda's twenty-fourth birthday, carlos shook lando awake carefully and told him to wake up.

"...wake up lando," carlos whispered as he shook the sleeping adult who grunted sleepily back

"mmm," lando mumbled back, his arm reaching over his face at the realisation that carlos had turned on the light

"come on, lando. you gotta wake up, it's 8:30!" carlos tried again, since arriving, carlos had been trying to get lando to wake up in the morning again rather than the late afternoon and it had been working so far

and when carlos thought it had finally failed, he was shocked to see the sleeping twenty-four year old almost rise out of his bedsheets, yawning and rubbing his sleepy eyes.

"aye, there we are! morning sleepy-head!" carlos smiled sweetly, ruffling lando's already messy bed-head as lando scrunched his nose up in annoyance

"yeah, morning to you too, carlos! why can't i just have a sleep in just one time, carlos?!" lando whined, a yawn overcoming him once again as carlos chuckled, sitting on top of lando's bed next to him

"because you'll fall back into the habit of sleeping until the late afternoon and that's not healthy. you can't keep on sleeping the days away, besides, today's an important day!" carlos smiled, scruffing lando's hair as he squinted as though he was trying to remember the importance of a random thursday morning

"an important day? carlos, it's an ordinary thursday during our off-season away from racing, let me sleep in until the afternoon! i don't do this during the season and you know this!" lando whines as carlos' heart kind of broke at hearing that lando just called today an 'ordinary thursday' whilst it was matilda's birthday

"it's not just any ordinary thursday during our off-season you muppet! think about what today's date is, not the day!" carlos lets lando try once more as his eyes widen as he subconsciously reaches for his phone

and there it was, on the bright blue screen on his iphone. in big writing in notification form it displayed three words.

"matilda's 24th birthday!"

and it felt like lando's heart broke all over again just like it did on the day she died. however, he didn't cry. he hadn't cried in ages and whilst carlos was happy because hearing his best friend cry like lando had been crying was devastating. but it felt like he was holding back the emotions and pushing them down. and that wasn't healthy. however, carlos let lando get away with it because there was surely going to be a moment today at matilda's birthday celebration that would invoke his built up emotion.

and, carlos was right about a moment at matilda's birthday that would invoke lando's built up emotion. it was a moment in which cisca, lando's mum and andrea, matilda's mum gifted lando a photo frame of a photo of lando and matilda together with one of the first letters that matilda wrote to lando. from when they first started dating those two years ago when matilda was studying overseas and unable to come to any of the grand prixs. and, the second lando knew what it was that his mum and andrea had given to him, the dam broke and lando's tears streamed down his cheeks with no warning and no apologies. thankfully, both his mum and andrea were there to help comfort lando and he didn't stop them this time like he had done before carlos' arrival.

but, that was when a change in lando was seen. not just by carlos but by everyone. and that started with a simple instagram post. a photo of lando and matilda. the first ever photo that had been taken when it was known that they were an exclusive couple. of course lando wasn't going to be okay straight away. this type of grieving took time to heal from however, what it was, was a step in the right direction and by the time the off-season break finished, lando was back in that car with mclaren. his girlfriend's singular wrist tattoo a new embellishment on his racing helmet, the tattoo a reminder that matilda was his first love but not his last ever love.

liked by carlossainz55, maxverstappen1, francisca.cgomes, charlesleclerc, flonorris1 and 12,000 others

landonorris matilda alexis lewis, the one who i thought i was going to love for the rest of my life ended up being the biggest loss of my life. you were bigger than the whole sky and you were more than just a short time my beautiful love. i will miss you every single day but i promise you won't be the only one who i'll open my heart to because you still want me to find that feeling of love again 🤍🪽

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carlossainz55 she loved you so much, lando! she'll be happy to see you willing to open your heart to someone else

maxverstappen1 matilda was the best of us lando

francisca.cgomes we love matilda so much, lando. we're all here for you

charlesleclerc so proud of you lando. we all know how hard this time has been for you

flonorris matilda would be so proud of you, lando! she's for sure smiling down at us right now

oscarpiastri she was truly loved by all of us, lando

username i'm going to cry! we miss matilda so much, lando!

kellypiquet she's for sure watching over you all the time, lando

username the taylor swift quotes i can't even!

pierregasly love you lando and love you matilda

username 'i will miss you every single day but i promise you won't be the only one who i'll open my heart to because you still want me to find that feeling of love again ' - i can't even! matilda gave him permission to fall in love again even though she didn't know what was going to happen after the accident, she still knew that she wanted lando to fall in love again whether or not she survived the accident

♥︎𓆩♡𓆪♥︎

eventually, lando's grief calmed down day by day, week by week, month by month. getting up in the mornings weren't hard anymore. he no longer needed carlos to be living in the apartment with him. well, speaking of that apartment actually - lando ended up moving out of that apartment complex and moved closer to the mtc so he wouldn't have to travel as far as he used to. even though lando did adore the old apartment, he knew it wouldn't do him any good if he still lived in the apartment that he was last properly living in with his girlfriend that was no longer alive. it was difficult, of course, but eventually, the books of matilda's that had been once strewn across those floors and those photos that were knocked to the floor, they were now all packed up in a storage locker. not because lando was embarrassed of his deceased former girlfriend but because he didn't want to put that pressure on the girl that was living next door to him. lando may have just fallen in love again, just like he had promised matilda he would.

books and photos did start to fill up the new apartment but they weren't all photos of lando's deceased girlfriend but of his new, very-much alive, girlfriend. harriet was her name. she knew of lando, of course she did. she was british and she was a formula 1 fan so, you could imagine her shock and excitement when she opened her front door to see that a formula 1 driver was moving into the apartment next to her. but, of course, that shock and excitement dwindled away and quite quickly, the two formed a bond that was unlike any other.

harriet knew about matilda, of course she did. but it had happened accidentally. harriet was helping lando decorate the rest of the apartment. specifically the lounge room since that was the room that lando struggled the most with decorating. because he didn't want it as an exact replica of how he was living in the old apartment with matilda. that was until harriet picked up the photo frame of lando and matilda - the first photo that had been taken of them as a couple when the letter from matilda had slipped out of the large photo frame. and naturally, of course, harriet was curious. not in a jealous girlfriend type of way because she knew that before her, lando had been in a two-year relationship however, she wasn't exactly clear on what happened to them and why lando was no longer with her. and that was because at the time of matilda passing away therefore her and lando's relationship 'ending', harriet had been overseas as a humanitarian worker so she hadn't seen the memorial posts for matilda lewis, lando's former girlfriend.

"...babe, what's this?" harriet asked softly, her voice sweet with no jealous or any other inflections behind it, turning around and showing lando the photo frame and letter as lando's faced softened

deciding it was time to finally explain to harriet who his ex-girlfriend was and why they were no longer together since he couldn't not keep it quiet anymore.

"remember when i told you about my former girlfriend, babe?" lando started off slowly as harriet smiled and nodded her head, placing the photo frame down as lando grabbed the letter, harriet not holding it tightly or anything

"yeah, is that her?" harriet then queried as lando nodded his head and smiled, his smile sad as harriet noticed, her demanor getting sad as well

"yeah. that's her." lando breathed shakily as harriet comforted him, her arm rubbing his back as she allowed him to take his time

"it's ok bub, take your time." harriet whispered as lando nodded his head as he took some more breaths in before he just came out with it

"her name was matilda lewis. we had grown up together from primary school onwards and then i started formula 1 and then, two years ago, we finally stopped beating around the bush and i blurted out that i had been in love with her since we were kids...and then, those two years were great but then...it all went downhill after that. not because anything bad between us happened but, the reason why we're no longer together and broken up is because she...uh...she died..." lando could only whisper the word 'died' as harriet's body froze and her eyes widened and she suddenly felt devastated as though she knew matilda and grieved over her

"...oh, honey. i...i am so sorry. matilda looked like she was beautiful...was she as beautiful as she was in the photos you have of her?" harriet questioned, no hint of jealousy or malice in her voice at all, she just geniunely wanted to know everything about matilda which made lando smile

"thanks darling, i'm sorry too. and, she was beautiful, so much more beautiful then she was in the photos. she was etheral but she's no you, harriet, so you don't have to compete with my dead ex..." lando whispered, that last sentence coming out of left field as harriet chuckled softly

"...it's okay, lando. you're allowed to miss your best friend who just happened to be your first love. even if matilda was still alive and you guys broke up because of a different thing, i still wouldn't feel like there would be any competition between the two of us. i'm not one of those girls that gets jealous when guys talk about their ex-girlfriends or their girl best friends. i say that because i want to know everything about matilda but only in a way that makes you comfortable. like, let's start off tame, when's her birthday first of all so i can put in my calender so i never forget to celebrate it...what was her favourite book so i know that i need to read it...what was your favourite quirk of hers...what was her favourite type of flower so i know what to buy when we go to visit her at the cemetery..." harriet really wanted to know everything about her boyfriend's first love and that couldn't have made lando fall more in love with harriet then he already was

tears welled in lando's eyes as he realised he was dating the version of matilda from heaven on earth in the body of harriet. harriet was the girlfriend that matilda had plucked for him right from her angel wings, the tattoo that was on his racing helmet and inked on both the left wrists of matilda and harriet.

fin

this was sad but i kind of like how it ended with matilda giving lando a heavenly version of her in the human of harriet. i may make a cheeky part two if i feel like i can get more inspo for this but i would love to expand it because i just can't explain how much i suddenly love this one-shot in a lando version.

#formula 1 one shot #lando norris #angst #carlos sainz jr #minor character death but no description just mention #grief #do not read if any of these topics trigger you

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