#Free & Equal | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

pinkrelish · 1 year ago

Text

𝐭𝐡𝐞 "𝐲𝐞𝐬" 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐲.

singledad!mechanic!eddie x fem!reader

✶What happens when Eddie tries to hide the less-than-fun side of being a single parent from you, and you discover Miss Mouse can't always save the day?✶

NSFW — angst with a happy ending, reader wears eddie's hoodie, comfort, kissing, 18+ overall for smut, drug/alcohol mention/use

chapter: 11/20 [wc: 14.2k]

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

AO3

Chapter 11: In the Beginning...

——Then——

In the beginning…

It was January 31st, 1988, and Wayne had come in to check on him again. And maybe he had a reason to when Eddie continued to stare at the pockmarked ceiling, dressed in the same clothes as three days prior, laying on the same bedsheets last washed by well-meaning, pre-aged, liver-spotted, wrinkled hands gnarled from factory work after being tanned on a big rig’s steering wheel for decades.

No music played from the stereo record player; The Doors still sat with the album art turned, stopped mid-spin. The paperback on the nightstand remained unfinished, its dog-eared page trapped as a placeholder from New Year’s Eve. Dust and cigarette ash clung to the room as if saving it in a time capsule of the morning he was arrested, and any movement would disturb the illusion.

“Eddie?” Wayne called out to him with his Free name; one that shouldn’t hold a stigma, because Eddie was a free man, wasn’t he? He was innocent. Even if they hadn’t caught the other guy yet. “You okay if I go?”

Tracing the bumpy lines of the most recent tattoo on his stomach, he answered, “Yeah, I’m fine,” and his uncle breathed as he usually did when he was wringing his mouth with indecision.

Wayne twisted the doorknob, uncertain. “If you’re sure.. And, uh, I’ll stop by the hardware store and pick up somethin’ for the spray paint on the trailer if the cookin’ oil trick doesn’t work, don’t you worry about it.”

Whatever rude thing someone wrote this time, Eddie hadn’t gone outside in days to know.

After a long silence, Wayne cleared his throat and gave a gruff, “I’ll see ya after work,” and left, as foretold by his rackety truck fading further into the night, and the deadness of winter taking over. A staleness of midnight inactivity in the crisp air invading the guitars and amps and magazines Eddie never touched anymore; the ceramic of his bedside lamp, the model car next to his lighter, the binders stacked on his desk with a pencil he hadn’t sharpened since it broke six weeks ago. He didn't get much relief from his routine of ignoring, shutting down, isolating, and desperately trying to get tears to form when he had none left to give, so he wept agape and dry, spiraling downward.

The phone rang.

He wasn’t going to answer—he hadn’t since December unless under obligation—but in case it was Wayne, he did.

“Hello?” The other end of the line was equally hesitant to answer his unrecognizable voice, gone hoarse from disuse. “Hello?” he repeated.

“Eddie?” A beat. “I guess I’ll get this over with. Look, uh, do you remember selling to a girl at Brad’s party a couple months back? Not the Halloween one,” they said, definitely a young woman’s voice, but with each word spoken she lost her fluttery nervous edge and replaced it with a direct tone, leaving no time for him to dawdle.

He hurled his mind into searching his memories before the ones made in the weeks prior, only grazing past the details which haunted him, and registering the question he was asked. “Uh, yeah, yeah I think so. Ah, Sarah? Something generic like that. Sold to her a couple times before. Why?”

Her severe silence loaded the chamber. His forthcoming nature pulled the trigger, never learning when to shut his mouth and keep information to himself. There was no telling who he was speaking to, or what happened to the girl he sold to, or why he was the subject of interest. His stomach clenched in knots at the whiff of gunpowder. He was too relaxed at the prospect of a normal conversation. He said too much. It was happening again. The police sirens would wail any minute now. Whatever happened to Sarah—or whoever—was bad, and he incriminated himself. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

But it was her next words that fired the shot. Rang in his ears. And he knew then, as the cold sweat took over his body and bile stung his throat quicker than his heart leapt black spots to his vision, life as he knew it was over.

“I’m pregnant, and it’s yours.”

————

In the beginning…

It was March 7th, 1988, and Eddie walked out.

It was better than listening to Wayne blame himself for not doing enough, or being involved enough, or whateverthefuck he was saying about failing Eddie, because soon those judgments would turn into nags about how Eddie’s irresponsibility got himself into this mess, and those arguments would become shouting matches about his lack of preparedness for raising a baby, and Eddie would end the fight with his fist through the hallway closet door, where his piece of shit father’s jacket swung on the hanger and fell to the floor.

Following the Munson name.

————

In the beginning…

It was April 29th, 1988, and Eddie left his motel room to drive forty-five minutes outside of Hawkins to sit across from a woman in a dimly lit restaurant with her hand laid atop her round belly, and his cold chicken alfredo. The cheese in his oval shaped dish had coagulated, but he wasn’t hungry anyway.

The entire time his mouth ran sentences, he kept his gaze focused on a crumb dirtying the white tablecloth as the candle flickered shadows through their untouched water glasses. Yet, his tone remained animated and optimistic, though a bit hollow. “—So, uh, with the money from workin’ at the gas station, and what I have saved from that graveyard shift I picked up at the laundromat, I can afford the crib no problem. Maybe you could, ah, come with me to pick it out! I don’t really know what I’m supposed to be looking for, but whatever you want, you got it. And—And I’ll start stocking up on diapers, and stuff. Y’know, different sizes. Some clothes. Could even get a nice baby blanket, or somethin’. I guess cribs have those teeny mattresses, so we’ll need sheets for that, too. Um, one of those, y’know, things that hangs over it and spins, puts them to sleep.” His lips hinted at his first smile in weeks at his dumb explanation for a mobile. “And with your job, you have health insurance, don’t you? That’ll.. That’ll really help us out,” he emphasized by bugging his eyes, and nodding. “There’s a position open at an auto shop in town that I’m gonna apply for, but I don’t think insurance will kick in until I work there for a certain number of days. Sucks, but it’s decent money. Better than what I make now, anyway. Um..” Thinking, he sorted through his plan for the future in his head, making sure he didn’t forget anything important—

That’s when he made the mistake of looking up, and a different type of heartache wrung his chest.

Indifference powdered her shimmery beige eyelids, darkening to smoky apathy at the outer corners with a touch of heavy mascara weighing her eyes half-closed. She appeared bored—he wished she appeared bored—but in the eternity he glanced at her, she resembled a loaded chamber moments from cutting him off.

Continuing, he said, “I can also handle the small stuff like bottles, and bibs, and pacifiers. Depending on how much the crib is, I can probably swing the carseat too, just gotta sell my other guitar, and—”

“Eddie,” she stated. He winced.

There was no trace of his smile left on his lips; trembling and licking at the sore metallic-tasting spot he bit out of habit. The first sign of rejection welled behind his eyes. A sense of shame clogged his throat, but he tried, “Are people still bothering you about me?” he asked, so meek and defeated.

Her words were a merciless killing, “Does it matter?” He shrugged, running the side of his hand along the table’s edge, concentrating on the crumb. “And don’t bother buying anything.”

“Why not?” he faltered. “I’m not gonna be some deadbeat who doesn’t provide, okay? I’m good on my word.”

“You know why.”

The cruelty, the truth he denied, struck him.

“You don’t want to try?” His voice went watery, and the candles swam in his vision. “We’re having a baby together, and you don’t want to try and work something out between us?” There was a reason he avoided addressing where the crib would go, or what the arrangement was after coming home from the hospital. In the first few calls they had, she seemed interested when he rattled off the list of cheap apartments he found around Hawkins scribbled into his notebook, and when he lightened the bleak mood with a joke, she laughed, sort of.

Though, he was always the one to call her, and her answers were refined to short words such as yeah, or no. And she did pick up the phone less often, but she was busy with University or her career or there was a family thing that had come up or she was just headed out the door, so he stuck with planning their future by himself, aware of the ugly reality twisting his stomach with dread.

Maybe he was being naive, but he thought she’d come around by now. See how responsible he was being, and maybe.. maybe..

“I’m not interested,” she dismissed him in monotonously stern frankness.

“I thought you said you liked me,” he reminded her, on the verge of something pathetic, “at the party.”

The corner of her jaw twitched from an emotion she ground between her teeth.

That was the final straw.

She swung her gaze around the restaurant, releasing a hard sigh of frustration, and shaking her head. Dropping her hand to the bottom of her belly, she leaned forward, and eviscerated any hope he had for them being together. “I’m not interested,” she hissed under the susurration of nearby tables, “in raising a baby with someone whose reputation is for giving girls discounts when they flirt with him.”

Eddie shrunk into himself, not expecting the hit below the belt.

“You’re just the loser dealer that all the guys send their girls to because they know you’re too lonely to turn them down. I wish I stuck with flirting, because let me tell you, having a couple of smarties to get me through last semester wasn’t fucking worth it.” She motioned at her stomach, he assumed. “I almost missed my finals because I couldn’t stop puking.”

Fat drops wobbled his vision. Anxious sweat from holding his breath prickled his hot face. His knuckles hurt from clacking them against one another, punching bone-on-bone in his lap to distract himself from letting the venom win. Biting impressions of his teeth into tongue from the weight of his one chance at normalcy slipping through his fingers.

The ache of deep-seated rejection stung worse, built worse, escalated worse with every heartbeat echoing in his head: not even someone who’s having your kid wants to be with you.

Chairs skid across the tiles behind him, and a family stood to leave. Eddie faced the stained glass window as they passed, pretending to admire the intricate details while warm tears spilled over the dam, and onto his cheeks in steady drops like rain. Drip, drop, drip, drop..

Embarrassment, failure, freak..

Even before he was wrongfully arrested, his reputation was trash.

Pathetic loser not good enough for his dad, his uncle. Can’t pass fucking high school, or get a girl to stick around for more than a few weeks; just long enough to feel the safety of attachment, learn their likes and dislikes, what their favorite flowers were, and then they’d leave too..

“Doesn’t matter,” she exhaled. One, two—she took two calming breaths through her nose while his was running, and he was trying to not sniffle through the grossness of crying.

Composed and diplomatic, she sat up, smoothed the buttons of her burgundy maternity blouse stretched across her swollen middle, and informed him “I’m giving her up for adoption.”

Eddie froze.

Her.

Tiny tines of salad forks ceased clinking on plates. Silly dull knives unworthy of much else sank into whipped butter, and stopped. Pretty laughter faded, leaving red lipstick kisses staining the rims of wine glasses.

Her.

He froze. A strange cliche to explain how his body reacted. How his heart pounded, and tears splashed onto his clenched fists. How his brain latched onto one word, one word only, and the blood drained from his cheeks to pool liquid rage in his empty belly. How his temper surged like a wave, and crashed, again and again on the shore of fate. How he was thinking sharper, seeing clearer, smelling the raw flame of the candle being snuffed out from his sudden movement.

The tableware rattled when he planted his elbow next to his forgotten dinner, and pointed a stern finger at her stomach. “That’s my daughter, and you will not—”

“C’mon, Ed—”

“No,” he cut her off. He didn’t give a damn if another tear rolled from his wide eyes when he said it, he put conviction behind his voice even when it cracked, “That’s my daughter, and you are not giving her up for adoption.”

“Be serious,” she spat back. “You don’t have the means to take care of a baby. I’m doing this as a favor for the both of us. Mostly for you.”

Eddie sucked his bottom lip inward and chewed the flesh. Shivers of indignation trembled his body, and his nostrils flared from the absolute power he invoked to rein his voice from the snap, bite, snarl his upper lip suggested. “I don’t care what you think is best,” he maintained through the viscous tar coating his refusal in the abhorrence she deserved. “That baby.. She’s mine.” He nodded until the motion was ingrained, and her expression changed. Pointing to himself, now. “She’s mine, and I want her.”

There wasn’t much thought put behind his decision. It was done. It was innate. It was automatic, and her soft warning—”You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into,”—was as heeded as the candle’s flame.

He paid for the date. It cost five hours of his minimum wage. That was all his money. He was hungry when he got back to his shitty motel; opening the door to darkness, and a suitcase of dirty clothes he’d need to sort before going to work at the gas station at the edge of town where his boss cut his hours last week because it was making customers uncomfortable to see a criminal serve them at the till, and a new sound replaced the ding of the cash register: loser, loser, loser..

Already, he couldn’t afford diapers.

Already, he failed.

Already, he was worthless.

Already, he was alone.

Not even the woman he was having a baby with wanted to be with him.

——Now——

Eddie hung up the phone, and you watched his shoulders rise and fall for long moments, listening to the rain pattern shift above. The storm spilled its sorrows on the tin roof, uncaring if the structure could handle the stress of another trial when it was weak and susceptible. It poured, and poured. Ruthless. Vicious and brutal as nature could be, targeting the vulnerable and strong alike.

His back broadened with a breath, and finally, he dropped his hand from the yellowed plastic, staring at the dial pad as his arm went limp at his side. Absorbed by his thoughts as the old night rolled into another low growl of thunder, and whatever was on his mind reflected heavily in his vacant appearance.

“Ed?” You waited for him with a kind lift to your brows, but as soon as his glance landed, your chest tightened.

The emotion in Eddie’s eyes was heavily guarded, communicating little as to what caused the tenseness in his jaw when he averted his gaze to the floor, walking fast and purposefully away from you standing half-dressed in his kitchen, and stopping at the front door with his head down. Going through the motions of buttoning his pants, and buckling his belt, rigid and rough, snapping the leather against itself.

“Is Adrie okay?” you asked, voice coming out painfully shallow, like when you were using it to diffuse a customer service issue with the breeze of happiness and a plastered smile.

Leaned over, he shoved his feet into his boots, and began lacing. “She’s fine.”

Blunt, and closed off. Not like your Eddie from an hour ago. And you didn’t know how to navigate asking him what was wrong, and easing him into opening up to you, coaxing him back to that place of union and understanding.

Left feeling confused, you gleaned that this wasn’t the time to bother him about it, and mumbled, “Okay,” and assumed the rest. You dragged the whispery ends of the blanket across the floor, and picked your sweater off the carpet, having that particular sense of embarrassment as if you’d missed a cue, and should’ve read the room sooner, and been clothed and leaving without him asking.

You dressed in silence, doing up the buttons on the cardigan he so skillfully slipped you out of. Treading over linoleum to wash the evening off your hands and mouth. Making yourself small to fit next to him in the entryway, and putting on your shoes in a state of quiet obedience, missing the warmth of his hands and the comfort of his lovesick grin. Wilting under the coldness of his attitude, and wanting nothing more than to reach out, and soothe that bit of regret knotted between his eyebrows.

He regarded the exposed skin of your upper chest, and handed you his black hoodie from where it hung next to his canvas work jacket. “Here.”

Here wasn’t much of a break in the distance he resurrected between you, but you pulled the heavy scent of cigarettes and cologne over your head, and he almost found himself braving eye contact to tell you, “I’m dropping you off first.”

“What? No,” you blurted, “I’m going with you to pick her up. She’s just scared of thunderstorms, right? No big deal, you can drop me off after.” Which seemed like the right thing to say; that you were fine with Adrie crying, but when he set his gaze on you, a small image of yourself swam in his endless pupils, and your stomach clenched at the animal warning in his unbreakable stare.

Eddie shook his head an imperceptible amount, only enough to loosen the curtain of curls tucked beneath his jacket’s collar, and shift the lamp’s glare at the edge of his bitter coffee eyes. It was a threat to back off. Leave well enough alone. Stop encroaching on the parts of his life he hid, and keep the illusion intact.

“I wanna go,” you assured gently.

However, your support fell short when challenged against the aggressive shine swallowing you whole. He looked at you. Really looked at you with the same intensity as when his hands were on your hips and you rocked yourself in his lap, chests flush together with a lazy prayer of your name on his tongue; when nothing mattered more than honoring each other with lips and teeth, tasting sweat on necks and sucking bruises until moans were spilled from heads thrown back. But instead of unraveling you in shocks of pleasure, the ignorance of your child-free lifestyle softened the harsh lines of his face, and slowly, slowly, the shine dulled. The fight left him.

He saved his apology until his back was turned, and the squeaky doorknob gave under his heavy palm—turning it with too much force—and he cracked open the world beyond the two of you, dousing the lingering tenderness of your affection on his skin with frigid mist. “Sorry tonight ended this way.” The door banged open on the rusted iron handrail, caught on a gust.

The trailer park was bright with daylight. Flash, after flash.

Eddie’s silhouette eclipsed the doorway, outlined in lightning. He stood impossibly taller—like the animal threat still lurked within his structure, and caution stayed within your subconscious, altering how you perceived his lanky frame into something more imposing. His shoulders carried many burdens, bulked from five years of hard labor, possessing strengths you couldn’t imagine. He stepped to the side, insisting the door stay open with the spread of five fingers only, and his body no longer shielded you. You were exposed to the cold splash of rain on your shins. His palm was firm at your lower back, and you peered up at the hard set of his jaw feathering the muscle at the corner, sweeping the bone in a mature edge of stubble. Strands of his frizzy hair whipped in the wind. Droplets speckled his nose like freckles. His gaze, anchored on his car through the downpour, brewed with resentment.

His deep timber resonated in your chest beneath the safety of his hoodie, “Car door’s open, I’ll lock up behind you.”

And you were pushed.

Beaten down to a hunch, you took careful strides in your heeled shoes down the concrete steps and into the soft mud, covering your head as best you could from the cloud’s assault, and flinching at the closeness of the strikes darting around the boundary of treetops surrounding the trailer park. You tried the handle, and the car welcomed you into its dry insides. Guilt followed your tracks of caked on mud, leaves, and dead weeds on his nice red interior, but when you shivered to the bone, you didn’t care as much. Curled in on yourself, you spied Eddie’s vague shape through the waterfall blurring the windshield, and listened to his heavy boots trudge up to the door, and soon, the car sank with his weight too.

The engine roared to life. Heat wouldn’t come from the tiny AC units for some time, but the promise of such gave you hope. Eddie, beside you, drenched beyond measure, did not match your enthusiasm. Shadowed streams snaked across his pinched expression, swimming down his heavy brow, and splitting his raw lips. His bangs stuck to his forehead, and his cheeks trembled from his clacking teeth.

Soft music played from the radio station.

Riders on the Storm.

Two booms of thunder ended your small attempt at a smile from the timing.

Leftover adrenaline pulsed in your veins, fumbling your grip on the seatbelt. Wet earth and unease stroked your skin like skeletal hands, muddying your tights, and soaking his hoodie, weighing it down to your crushed sweater beneath. You wanted to speak; to poke, to prod, to press him to talk to you. The questions were there. On your tongue. At the ready; inviting him to tell you why his mood soured over a situation out of his control, other than the obvious weather.

But Eddie’s face was carved with irritation, baring his teeth as he attempted to buff circles into the icy fog on the windshield, only for it to cloud over in an instant. “C’mon..”

The wipers couldn’t keep up with the powerful current, and the tires struggled to find traction. “Fucking—damnit,” he said, interrupted by him slapping the steering wheel, cascading water off his work jacket, and onto every surface around him.

You twisted your hands in your lap at his mild slip in temper.

Now was not the time to bother him.

In a lurch, your shoulder bumped the door, and your head rocked side to side from the car backing over the swell of mud behind the tires. With another frustrated stomp on the gas, it evened out on paved road, and though the visibility was low, you were off towards the nicer side of Hawkins.

For once, he drove responsibly. Street signs could be read before he passed them. Fallen limbs in the road could be avoided, not ran over. His rings tinked off the glass when he rubbed at the thin fog, and the music was dialed to a somber ambiance behind the deep sighs through his nose. Dark stretches of treetops bent to the wind’s will. Short buildings sat so dim beyond the faint streetlights, they might as well have been deserted. Each red light was a necessary break for him to shove his fingers in the air vents to thaw them.

He never spoke. Never looked at you. He kept himself busy with tasks, and when those tasks were over and his hands were defrosted and the windshield was mostly clear, he regressed within himself. Unnervingly quiet. Turning onto streets with heavier regrets sagging his features the longer he crawled in front of white picket fence houses, and stopped.

The two story home was lit beautifully by the ornate sconces placed on either side of the doorway. Their lawn was manicured, and the sidewalk was free of weeds. No cars were at the mercy of the storm, they were parked inside the two-door garages. There was activity behind the embossed curtains hung in the living room of the residence. Presumably, the biggest shape was the father who called over the phone.

Someone who wore a business suit to the preschool’s Thanksgiving play lived here.

Eddie stalled. He remained seated forward, hands gripped at 10 and 2, squeezing the steering wheel as rain echoed in the belly of the car, battering the roof inches above your damp hair. There was a pause in his movements, his breathing. An awareness in his silence at the questions you didn’t ask. Tension in his pursed lips, rubbing them together as he surveyed the street.

He opened his mouth. Then, he thought better of it, and got out.

Your earnest call of his name was swallowed by the sea cleansing his body of your night together.

Leaping up the bullnose brick stairs, Eddie raised his hand, but before he could knock, the artisanal stained glass shimmered with movement. The immaculate door opened to a winced face. The man’s glasses were askew on his aged eyes, and his peppered hair hung over his eyebrows, no longer gelled back. He exchanged a few tight words with Eddie as Adrie was handed over, and Eddie, of course, shuffled into a meek posture, dipping his head, apologizing profusely. Almost bowing to this man dressed in matching pajamas and a robe. In horror, you watched the door close during one such apology. You could tell it happened in the middle of him speaking, because you had to sit through the agony of Eddie animatedly explaining something only for him to look up, straighten at the realization, and stand there for a few more seconds until the sconces dimmed off.

Worse, still, he cowered in the nook as cruel rain belted his back, doing his best to bundle Adrie in her tattered quilt and securing her on his hip, keeping all of her dry except her little legs wrapped around his middle. She buried her face in his neck, and he hesitated on the balls of his feet, judging the distance between the house and the car. His large palm covered the blanket over her head. All he had was his jacket.

Lightning revealed his weary frown.

At the clap of thunder, he sprinted.

Back in New York, at the going away party your friends threw in your and Robin’s honor, they warned you about moving to the Tornado Alley, and what to look for if one were to appear—green skies and all—but most importantly, they told you an incoming tornado sounded like a train. Being city dwellers, they wouldn’t actually know, but Robin confirmed it. And now you could too, because the piercing wail coming towards you could only belong to a natural disaster, not a four-year-old girl.

Murky water flooded to Eddie’s ankles from where it rushed against the sidewalk, sloshing in with his boot stomped to the floorboard for balance as he ducked inside amidst the fuss. He got Adrie into her carseat as quickly as possible. In the chaos, her overnight backpack fell somewhere in the dark, her quilt was chucked aside, and he cursed when the buckle bit into his thumb. She had a fistful of his hair, tangling it, making it harder to see what he was doing. He may have even threatened her full name to let go. It was hard to hear on account of the shrieking.

“Daddy!” The vowels were elongated, broken by hiccups. He shut the door, and in the small space with no escape, her big emotions rang louder. “Daddy!” Again, the y was screamed with the full power of her lungs, which would be impressive for their tiny size if it wasn’t for the pounding in your skull. She hollered louder when he sat heavily behind the wheel, “Daddy!” He didn’t shush her fourth tantrum spilt on his name; he accepted it, knowing it was futile.

It took all your strength to blink. Sat half-turned in your seat, frozen, gaze unfocused, marveling at your brain’s ability to function. You shifted your attention to Eddie’s face, a surprising few inches from yours.

The heat of his concentration scorched shame to your cheeks.

Avoidant no longer, your reaction to Adrie’s meltdown was the sole subject of his interest. Zeroed in on, dissected, and picked apart by just his eyes alone. Didn’t matter which eye you shied from, you were pinned in both, your discomfort blatant for him to witness. Your clamped mouth, your apologetic withdrawal, your fidgety fingers on your skirt; all of it. All of it was captured in his periphery because he didn’t dare break sight as he turned the key in the ignition, and started a raucous engine you couldn’t remember being turned off.

Humbled by the girl assaulting your senses, your questions were answered.

This was why he didn’t want you to come. This was why he slighted you with a pointed look from the recesses of his annoyance when you trivialized his daughter’s behavior as ‘No big deal.’ This was why he kept you separate from his parental sphere where everything wasn’t made of sunshine and rainbows. This—coming to terms with your inexperience staining each uncontrollable contortion of your unprepared expression—was why he never let anyone near his heart.

Adrie could no longer form his name through her open-mouthed cries, resorting to plain, wet screams which trilled past your eardrums, resulting in a throbbing headache.

At that, he grasped the gear shift, put his boot to the gas, and cut fat lines through the river overflowing the pampered neighborhood streets.

Eddie’s anger was a presence. His embarrassment, too. Just like at the auto shop when problems stacked and stacked into an unbearable weight on top of his sleepless nights and long mornings, he turned inward to delay his outburst. To feel everything so fully in his fists wringing the leather covered steering wheel until it creaked, and teeth gritted until they begged no more. Just that one second to release his frustration, and then it was suppressed from sight. But you felt it. His ire rested below your braced muscles, beneath your clammy palms and in your shallow breath. It invaded the tidy home you kept behind your ribs, taking up residence in your hammering heart.

The humiliation of having the date end when it did paid its dues in his bad mood. Disappointment radiated off his narrowed eyes, and slack frown. “Adrie,” he warned in a low tone.

She bawled louder, shriller than the crack of lightning.

The immense pressure to adapt was upon you. There was no sense in parsing what he expected you to do in this situation, it was clear he was soured by your ineptitude the moment you let it show on your face, but.. Only two short weeks ago, he relied on you to divert Adrie’s meltdown before DND night. And sure, she had already stopped crying by the time you got there, but you could come to his rescue again, couldn’t you?

You twisted around in your seat, proud of yourself for thinking of a solution, and showed him you could handle a modicum of parenthood. “Adrie, look!” you tamped down your children’s television host voice to a delightful, excited cheer, “I’m here. Miss Mouse is—!” Shocked with your hand reaching towards her, shooting pain traveled up your arm from her swift kick to your wrist. You recoiled, rubbing at your forearm without blame. It wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t even looking at you. Her fit was directed at the window she couldn’t peel her attention from, dropping tear after tear from her swollen eyes at the thunder shaking the car. “Adrie?” you tried softer, but she beat her hands on the carseat harder. Wailed until you were defeated to a wince. Yelled until you accepted a unique heartbreak you weren’t prepared for.

Miss Mouse couldn’t always save the day.

Acute twists of rejection wrung your chest. Eddie wasn’t the type to say I told you so, he wasn’t mean like that, but when you sat forward and your gazes moved past one another, never quite meeting, you knew what he was thinking.

Little else stung worse than his obvious cynicism at how this date was concluding.

Exacerbating the issue, Adrie escalated to screeching her distress. Every open sob of hers pulled your focus, invaded your brainspace, overpowered any thought before it began, and set your teeth on edge from the high-pitched squeals you swore vibrated in your bones. Her behavior seeped into your nerves, winding them up, scratching them with the very tip of a brittle nail, inciting a riot. The need to flee crawled under your skin. Breathing was uncomfortable. Your ankle hurt. There was to break in between the blinding pulses of your headache. The car was too hot, too cold, too swerving from the high winds buffeting it sideways. Your tights were too tight. His hoodie too stifling. Itchy yarn from your sweater chafed your damp neck. Alarms of panic battled inside. Louder, louder, louder—Adrie cried louder. Eddie’s lips tugged down at the corners, chin wrinkled, tensing his face from a sadder response. Your lashes fluttered from the chokehold his frown had on you. Fingernails bit your palms. You tried to bide your time, to resist snapping. Dug down deep for something, something you could do, something.. innate. Some answer within you to fix it all. To get her to stop. To get him to relax. Something, something, something—instinctual.

“Pull over!” you barked; Eddie had every right to whip his head around at your sudden demand, but in your panicked state you only cared about the road ahead. “Ju-Just—just—” You scanned the dark parking lot outside the hardware store, and stabbed your finger on the cold window, pointing past it. “The gas station! Under the roof-thing.”

When it wasn’t clear he heard you, you turned towards him at the same time he leaned forward to catch your eye. Justifiable skepticism burdened his brow, tightening the edges of his crow’s feet. His lips hung parted with a confirmation hesitating between them; however, it was silenced after you maintained your need, and the fight against the wind won.

Soppy pebbles scraped wet asphalt, muddied in the bump and grind from Eddie turning too sharply into the sloped driveway, banging into a pothole, and rattling the innards of his already rocky cargo. He careened towards the closed convenience store with its row of dim fluorescent lights inside. Pulling up alongside the gas pumps, he slammed the breaks. A second later, he slapped the windshield wipers OFF, violently shushing their grating squeak.

His patience strained thinner. Working through the sensory overload festering like infected wounds on blistered skin, he rumbled a shallow apology past his aching teeth. Quickly, it devolved into a barrage of doubt. “Look, I’m sorry she—Wait, where’re you—?” The instant fear of rejection shot past his octave. “Wait! Please don’t—”

Cruelly, he thought; heartlessly, he knew; the sun-faded black cotton draped about your shoulders was the last image his adrenaline latched onto, playing it over, and over, door slam and all. He wasn’t parked for more than a clock tick, and you hurled yourself out into the storm, leaving him behind. His first assumption was gentle. Kind whispers stroked the angst in his chest, telling him you needed a break from the noise, that was all. Then the hatred of abandonment gutted his center.

“Giving up already?” he asked aloud in a conclusion only meant to hurt himself when no one was there to answer.

As if sensing his hopelessness, Adrie sniffled into the worst of her hyperventilated cries. Broken disjointed things. Sinking him deeper, deeper into his seat, crossing his arms over his caved chest, shuddering at the hot sting wobbling his vision at his own inadequacy.

Never good enough for anyone to stay.

Tremors of repressed memories wakened the churn of nausea making him sick.

“Baby, baby, it’s okay,” soothed a voice behind him, trickling in with the splash of faraway drops. “It’s okay, sweet baby, I’m here. I’ve got you. I’m here.”

Eddie jerked his chin up and stretched his neck to see into the rearview mirror. The wall of water teetering on his lash line made everything blur, so he tugged down the slick skin beneath his eyes to suck back the tears, and almost allowed them to spill at the scene behind him anyway.

In the reflection, you crawled across the backseat and unbuckled Adrie’s carseat, learning how to maneuver the straps from watching him. She reached for you, your hair, your clothes; small fists belying their strength. You didn’t care. You calmed her struggles with pretty words. “It’s okay, yeah, you can hold on to me, baby. Let’s get you wrapped up nice and warm. There we go.” Shhh. “Let me see your face, so I can clean you up.” Shhh.

“M–M-Mizz Mou—se,” Adrie got out between body-wracked sobs.

“Mhm, I’m here.” Shhh. “Miss Mouse is here.”

—Oh.

“Baby..” So modest was his whisper when so resolute was his yearn.

He leapt into motion, flushed with adrenaline.

The ripple effect of your actions caused tidal waves to swell and crash over him; body hitched in the place where his past convinced him he lost it all, only to collapse into a stuttered exhale of acceptance, understanding there was someone out there who cared about him to this degree; throat constricting with gratitude he could only express by stumbling out into the foggy cold, throwing open the door, and sliding into the backseat with you.

His fingers grazed the baby hairs at your nape on their way to the side of your head, using his wide palm which took up too much room to cradle you steady with a gentleness unknown to his tough skin. He trusted you to forgive him for how hard he knocked his forehead to your temple, and smashed his nose to the soft of your cheek. He need not worry. Beautifully, you adjusted to the bulky arm behind your neck, leaned into the crook of his body he hollowed out for you, and filled the familiar place at his side. You worked diligently to clear his daughter’s face while he passed a strong hand over her back and dropped it to shape his grip at the end of your thigh, curving his fingers in and slotting them to the underside, behind your knee.

“S’okay, Adrie,” you cooed, wiping at the sticky grossness clinging to her nose. “I’ve got you,” you continued the mantra, albeit with a lapse in motherly tenderness as a result of trying not to gag too hard.

Outside the car, the gas station’s tall canopy provided enough coverage to stop the rain from pounding the roof. Harsh winds howled past, encouraging the woeful sobs dropped onto your breasts, but the lightning stayed within the clouds, and the thunder faded in the distance. “Look at me,” you guided, sweeping the hoodie’s cuff over her puffy cheeks glowing splotchy red from the neon beer signs in the postered up convenience store windows. “We’ve got you. Nothing bad can happen when we’re here.”

Eddie lips pulled thin against your skin, breath stuttering damp and thick on your neck like a smothered cry.

“Nothing bad can happen when we’re here, okay?” Repeating the union of you and him, you went on, “We’ve got you. You’re safe with us. Nothing bad can happen when we’re here. Right, sweet bean?” You tucked the quilt around her feet, and held her close. “We won’t let anything bad happen to you, ever.”

With her hands latched into the folds of fabric around your neck—cotton, yarn, and canvas—her big coughs were cushioned by your arms snuggling her to your front while Eddie’s chest was at her back, embracing her between your two bodies converging to protect her in a toasty nest. Warm air hummed from the vents, shooing off the stale chill clinging to the backseat, now disturbed by activity and plucky guitar strings playing over the radio.

Across the Universe.

Undertaking the complexities of the man rubbing his forehead into your hair with the same sort of neediness as his little girl wringing your clothes, you assumed the responsibility of consoling them both. “Nothings gonna change my world,” you mumbled the lyrics into the patchwork quilt covering Adrie’s curls. “Nothings gonna change my world,” you sang to Eddie, face tipped up and eyes falling closed, seeking out his nose to trace the tip of yours along the soft bumps in a devoted offering after the turbulent events causing you both inner strife.

His fingertips became an imposing force spread across the scope of your cheek, turning you toward him, capturing you in a deeper kiss than you were ready for. It was demanding, hard with desperation, misaligned and urgent. Born out of necessity in the moment. He kissed you in front of his daughter, where she could see if she picked her face up from your chest, and a dart of surprise lit your heart at the recklessness. You kept a level hand atop her head in case he’d come to regret the decision, but he didn’t seem to notice, or care. He sighed into a second helping, and at the sound of the wet smack, she stirred.

Adrienne hooked her fingers into your collar and sniffled hard, soothing herself from further cries by hugging you tight, huddling into your comfort, oblivious to what was happening around her.

Easily, you fell into the third kiss. Became what he needed, mouths mashing together at the odd angle, your lower lip plush between his. Dizzying amounts of reverence manifested in his spontaneity. He packed a lifetime’s worth of bottled up feelings into the affection he was privileged to. Giving, and taking. But his impulses were still a puzzle. When he’d drank his fill, he squeezed your leg, broke apart from your lips in a silent slick slide, and drew a deserved breath.

“Sorry, no one’s ever just.. done that for me before.” He shrugged his hand off your thigh at the poor summary of the millions of things on his mind, and left it at that.

Spurred by the praise, you seized the opportunity for communication. “Remember how before we played DND that night, I told you to call me first next time you needed help?” you reminded him, and something vulnerable, maybe even pleadful, entered your tone. “I want to be someone you can rely on, Eddie.”

An unfortunate amount of complicated emotions passed in his eyes. There wasn’t much to garner from them, nor his soft grunt when he dropped his nose to the column of your neck, above Adrie’s head, and regressed into his quiet self. Reserved. Hard to decipher. He did speak up once to warn you she would fall asleep with how you were holding her—same as he did most nights on the couch while Late Night with David Letterman aired—and you embellished your promise to him with a kiss to the stringy curls frizzing at his scalp, “That’s okay.”

And it was okay, truly, when the storm raged heaves of rain against the car, spraying the windows with shocks of water. You dabbed Adrie’s cheeks. Wiped her nose. Rocked her in the same tempo as the backs of Eddie’s fingers stroking your cheekbone, flexed bicep behind your neck. Thunder occurred. Lightning happened. But with your quick thinking, lulling gestures, and genuine effort to speak past the fondness clogging your throat, you calmed her. Calmed her so well, in fact, her hands went limp and her body relaxed, fatigue claiming her victim to the numbered sheep hopping over fences in her dreams. After her tantrums, she was taxed out. Drained.

Stuck in the cramped middle between Eddie and the carseat, you rearranged your legs before they went tingly numb from her weight on your lap, and shifted the pressure off your heels. It was sweet having her fall asleep on you. Her slow breaths filled your arms as a reward for your efforts to hush her. The quilt smelled of their home, cozying itself in your lungs and sweeping you in a sense of longing for the humidity in his kitchen after making soup.

Though, as much as you thrived on the temporary role you played as parent—taking over for Eddie and dwelling on the fact Adrie slept propped on your chest like the many times she napped on his stained coveralls—you could do without the additional pain of him leaning on you too.

You groaned at the sharp twinge in your spine from slouching sideways, and conveniently, your movement roused his consciousness. He launched into a sleepy inhale. Robust, filling his lungs to the brim, too loud, too silly and sweet. He primed you for a solid press of the bridge of his nose to your jaw by thumbing you towards him, after which he pulled away, separating himself from you fully.

Eddie rolled his shoulders, stretching out from the uncomfortable position, and faced the window. He commented in a sincere tone, “You’re good with kids.”

“I know how to entertain kids,” you corrected him. “I don’t know how to do any of the hard shit you do.”

The streetlights painted strokes of dotted orange on his complexion cast in shadow. He played with the tips of his fingers, squishing each one in a line as he ruminated, staring elsewhere, perspiration blurring the outerworld, sealing yourselves in this crowded car together. “You do a good job,” he reassured, petering out in a hoarse whisper.

Ceaseless nerves gnawed at his absent-minded ring spinning. Not a big production like when he wrung his hands or bit his nails, but enough to show he was getting anxious. You’d expected his leg to be bouncing by now, but it was laying softly against yours. Something big was on his mind.

You bumped your knee into his. “Talk to me.”

Talk to me. Yes, you asked the world of him. You knew it, too. Encouraging his gaze to flick to Adrie bundled in your arms, and back to the window. His eyes weren’t wide with fear, just larger than normal at the subtle confrontation. It was time he opened up to you. There wasn’t a concrete ultimatum if he didn’t, but there was a mutual understanding that if this were to continue, he needed to trust you to be there for him. No more reluctance.

He extended his hand towards your knee, patting twice before claiming it in the great breadth of his palm, stroking his thumb over the thin pantyhose; bridging the gap from his earlier behavior, but not yet apologizing for the soreness he caused.

Sorting his thoughts, his throat bobbed twice on the swallow.

And of all the questions he could ask, of all things he could say, of all the topics he could choose, he picked, “Did you ever want kids?”

Heat swam to your cheeks, blood rushed to your ears. Buds of true belonging bloomed at the question, adorning stems of untended longing first planted during the Christmas party at work, ever growing. Your heart pumped faster at the inherent past and implied future of the subject. His curiosity was a mild prod, perhaps not meant to encourage these leaps in logic considering he announced it in the same buckled cadence of someone who was asking about the weather—and yet, the hold it had on you was impossible to deny. A blend of you, Adrie, and him, just like now, but in different contexts—different meanings other than sitting in the back of his car—something domestic, like being piled together on the couch watching Disney movies; that’s what was pushed to the forefront of your mind.

But, despite those instantaneous fantasies, this was a place for honesty, and the significance of your pause between his question and yours was an entity of its own, stiff like his posture.

“Are you ready for this conversation?” you checked. He fostered an anxious glance and nod. “Having kids is not something I ever saw for myself, no.” The consequence of your answer marked his immediate dropped eye contact, but ever patient with him, you continued strongly, “With how I dated and moved around, I didn’t think it was for me, that sort of lifestyle. It’s just not something I put a lot of thought into except when my friends were having kids, and really, they kinda turned me off of the idea. Pregnancy sounds.. daunting. Or—you know—really fucking scary. They’d always talk about how awful it is, all the complications you could have, the risks, the near death experience in one case,” you broke off in a squirm. “And then you don’t even get the relief once the baby comes. Like, seriously, taking care of a newborn sounds straight up terrifying.”

Eddie cracked. His hiss of laughter was a welcomed reprieve, especially when it sank to his chest, gripping his shoulders in a hearty shake. “Y-Yeah,” he got out, face crinkled in all the ways you adored, “it is straight up terrifying.”

You giggled in the softest way, careful to not disturb Adrie’s shallow breaths, and careful to not swoon too head-over-heels over the image of him rocking a baby. “It seems easier when they’re older, though,” you said, broaching the real crux of the conversation with your chin dipped to the top of her head. “Like it’s not as bad when they can actually communicate why they’re crying, or tell you what’s bothering them.”

“Not necessarily easier, just different,” he clarified. “It’s less about making sure this little tiny thing that can choke on its own snot survives the night, and more about the emotionally draining problems like her telling you about her day at preschool, explaining a situation where a group of kids kept giving her tasks to do that sent her away, and she’s smiling so big when she’s telling you, thinking it was a game, but deep down you’re just waiting for the heartbreak years down the line when she realizes they gave her errands to run because they were excluding her, and the reason they were laughing every time she came back was because they took joy in being mean to her.”

Wilt tinted your faint, “Oh..”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He upped the pressure he used to pat and rub your knee. “S’part of life.”

Consumed by his side profile, you studied the scope of his impassive expression set on the premature lines edging his face. The urge to find the right thing to say amidst the convoluted churn of anger on his behalf, and sadness on Adrie’s, itched something fierce beneath your skin. Ultimately, no words of inspiration came.

Eddie took an anticipatory breath.

The radio garbled advertisements for the station’s sponsors.

“Still wouldn’t trade it for those first months when she was a newborn, though.” Pursing his mouth thin, he rolled his lips inward with a hardened brow, releasing and scrunching tension around his nose as he shook his head slowly, addressing the memories of those days with a shine of pain to his eyes, and a loud smack of his tongue. “The moment I found out Adrie’s mom was pregnant, I wanted to do the right thing—y’know?” He took his hand off your leg to demonstrate the narrow path he followed. “Kept my head down, stayed focused, didn’t bother anybody, got a real job, and kept my mouth shut. Lotta places didn’t wanna hire me, obviously, but I applied anywhere I could, and when I got the job, I’d go get another one on a different shift, and another one on a graveyard shift. Sold whatever I had—guitars, ‘nd shit—bought what I could with the money. I wanted to be a good man. Be a provider. Be worth something.” Scrubbing his shaky fingers over the stubble on his chin, he aimed to calm himself, but when bringing up the Hell he went through during those times, there was little to stop his pitch from wavering. “Still wasn’t good enough.”

A verdict aimed at him flippantly, yet the impact on his self-esteem was immeasurable.

Gathering himself, he licked the inside of his cheek, and explained, “In the beginning, when Adrie was born, I tried to make it on my own. Locked in this little motel room with a crying baby. Couldn’t go to work. Didn’t have anyone to call to watch her for me, y’know, didn’t.. didn’t have anyone to rely on after walking out on my uncle, and isolating myself from my friends. The people at the bullshit resource center said I wasn’t eligible for benefits because they were for single moms, not dads. And child support was taking too long to kick in. Not like it mattered when it couldn’t pay for a single canister of Similac. I didn’t have fucking anything. Or know anything.”

His shame was only beginning to unravel.

“There were these free classes at a clinic for expecting parents, but I..” He dropped his knuckles to his thigh and fed them along the coarse cotton, using the friction to burn away the guilt. “I-I didn’t go. I didn’t want to go alone. Be the only guy there, by myself. Have all these people w-who might know who I am fucking.. fucking staring at me.” With how he was looking down at his lap, rocking slightly with his movement, he stood no chance against the wall of tears damming at his lashes. “I didn’t want to go because of my sense of pride, and my baby suffered because of it.”

“Eddie, that’s not true—” you stepped in.

Three effective beats of his fist on his leg, and you were left to witness his face crumple from the utter contempt he had for himself.

“It is true,” his volume fluctuated in jumps. “She wouldn’t eat. She wouldn’t fucking eat and keep it down.” Droplets splashed his jeans in unyielding splats. Drip, drop, drip, drop.. They slipped and spread in splotches of salty remorse he couldn’t wipe away quick enough. “Nothing worked. Couldn’t get her to latch onto a bottle, and, and—I didn’t know, I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to microwave the formula, but she wouldn’t take it room temp, so if it was too hot she’d just scream at me until it wasn’t, and I–I just—I was having these breakdowns, I don’t know. I blacked out, and next thing I knew, I was at Harrington’s, and Nancy was taking care of her for me.” The emphasis alluded to much, though the fact their son was only a year older, and Nancy would still be producing milk said it all.

Frantic breaths which wouldn’t catch were pulled past grimaced lips parted on the unrefined sob his confession emerged on. “I never wanted to be with Adrie’s mom, but proving what she said was right, th-that I was a fucking loser who didn’t know what he was doing, it-it-it.” In a desperate flourish, he pointed at his temple, It lives in here, and another tear clung to the tip of his nose, smeared by the back of his wrist.

Stunned useless by the suffocating urge to help him, you blanked. Sat still while your favorite mechanic reduced himself to the wrong opinion of others; the same person who showed his gentle nature by picking worms out of the garage after a heavy rain so they didn’t dry out. Remaining frozen while silent pain wracked your friend’s held breath, heaved and shuddered out as a cough into the same palm he used to catch your ankle when he challenged you to a race on the creepers, and he had to cheat to win before you beat him to the service door. Saying, “Baby, no,” to the man who snuck a smirk over his daughter’s head when he caught you doting over her as she sat on his hip, and the smell of Christmas potluck embedded itself into the memory of Eddie’s eyes hinting at a deeper glint than the tease on his grin.

“I am a fucking failure,” he seeped out his regret. “C-Couldn’t give her what she needed. I still can’t. Still can’t give her what she wants, ever. T-T-Tellin’ her I can’t get her something when she asks for it—and the disappointment. Just a piece of shit who disappoints her. Never good enough—” There was another high-pitched stutter, but it was muffled behind his trembling hands covering his face, and smothered by your intervention.

“Eddie, Eddie, Eddie,” you shot out, hand and voice working together to untangle the trauma his knotted fingers attempted to hide. “Listen to me.” No please, but no lack of kindness, either. “You are not a disappointment. Not then, not now, not ever. Do you hear me? You’re not any of those things.” You tugged at the canvas jacket around his stiff arms tucked tight to his body, and rocked him away from his huddle against the door.

In the aftermath of your scramble to comfort him, Adrienne startled awake. Her soft hmm? became a grunty whine when the sensation of slipping backwards disoriented her. “Daddy?” One of her fists found your hoodie for balance, but her groggy curiosity dealt a heartbreaking blow.

She traced the wet trail on his cheek, encountered a tear in its path, and broke the droplet’s surface tension on her finger, wondering aloud, “Why’s Daddy crying?”

Thinking quickly, you used your muscles earned through unloading car parts from delivery trucks, and scooped her from your lap onto his, diverting the nuance of grown-up-problems by fumbling out, “Daddies cry sometimes, too. Have you told him you love him today? Can you tell him? It’ll make him feel better. Please, Miss Adrie?” Whether or not it was the perfect phrasing wasn’t important. What mattered was the unsuspecting gratitude laden at the base of his frown.

“I love you, Daddy,” Adrie said, latching her arms around his neck. “I love you.”

“You’re a good man,” you added, and rolled onto your hip, fitting your body to his side. You nosed through his long, frazzly curls, and spoke earnestly, but softly into his ear, “You’re a good man, Eddie. Look at how well you take care of her. Look at how well fed, clothed, and happy she is. You make her so happy.. You make me happy, too. You’re the best dad I’ve ever met. No one else compares.”

He dragged a sniffle from his last sob into an unintelligible mumble.

“I’m here.” Shh. “I’m here.” You included Adrie in your hug as you brought your hand up to the other side of his flustered hot face, blending your fingers through the hair stuck to the sweat and stubble on his jaw. “We’re here for you. We’ve got you. Nothing bad can happen when we’re here.” Sweet with conviction, “It’s okay, handsome, I’ve got you.”

Overwhelmed by the small I love you, Daddy, on one side, followed by You’re a good man, on the other, his inhale shivered, and he cuddled Adrie to him for a watery, “I love you, too.” Croaky and real, and mouth agape on an ugly cry he let you witness until his needy reach cupped the back of your head, and smushed you to his wet cheek, scratching the same sentiment into your nape, just like you were rubbing it into his scalp, exchanging the affection without words.

Us and Them funneled through the car, mellowing the heightened emotions with its dreamy saxophone opener.

“I’m so glad to have met you,” you prized in tender sweeps of whispers and thumbs. “I actually look forward to coming into work because of you, even when you hide my pen cup, and tickle me when I go to reach for it on top of the Coke machine. Which is unfair, by the way.”

“Yeah?” he asked for dear reassurance, and distraction.

Humming against the intimate corner of his jaw, you nudged the prickly scruff, and melted into his uncoordinated pets over your ear. “I see your sacrifices, and trust me, Eddie, you’re doing a great job at raising your daughter. Stuff like buying her toys, or cookies, or whatever doesn’t matter. The love you show her is better than any of that. She’s so lucky to have you.”

Another tear dropped to the tattered quilt. Another, another dropped. He squeezed his eyes shut and more fell. Hindered breaths let go in stuttered huffs shook his chest, swayed his damp hair. You circled your thumb over the rivers on his sensitive skin, and found a dry section of your sleeve to clean the price he paid for being a good father without the proper support he needed. Soothing him with fond shushes and feather touches. Forming a ball of comfort around him: cramped in the tiny car, a cast of solid fog on the windows for privacy, Adrie’s blanket draped about your jumbled legs, and her lanky arms wrapped around his neck where precious words were stoked from the embers of a fire which he built. “I wanna color with you to-mah-rrow,” she pronounced. “You can have the dinosaur book, because I want the kitty cats. Deal?” Deal, he nodded.

Your bottom lip introduced a blessing at his sideburn, “You deserve to see yourself how we see you.”

Recovering from the unbearable throb his stuffed sinuses drove to his headache, he tried—“Thank you, baby,”—though the letters were mashed together, and further pulped by the thickness in his throat. Loud, however, was his hug. Crushing you both to him with honed strength; flexed forearms demonstrating the power lying dormant in the track of muscle he snaked around your waist. Groans were earned from his expertise. Bones protested the gesture, begging to be released. It took several seconds of your heartbeat pumping visibly at the edge of your vision, but he let go. Afterall, there was no praise to be had by flattened lungs.

“That hurt,” Adrie complained.

“Ow,” you agreed.

“Sorry,” he said in non-apology.

At a change in tone, you fawned, “But that was a nice hug.”

Adrie rated it, “An 8 out of 10.”

Crowded together, the bond was unmatched. His arms were spread like a greedy dragon hoarding its wealth. Chest open, collecting his most remarkable treasures to the roaring furnace locked within the confines of his body, ready to share the warmth to those who could appreciate its value. Clasped in your hand was Adrie’s ankle, gaining squirmy kicks for each smile and giggle traded under Eddie’s chin. Dressed in his well-loved hoodie, the crook of his elbow fit to your figure, and the backs of his fingers strummed your bicep in a trained motion. None of it was perfect, no. The hoodie could smell less like cigarettes, his forearm stuffed behind you meant you couldn’t recline comfortably, and when he patted your hip, he awakened the dull throb of the bruising grip he left during earlier events.

Those weren’t bad things, though. They were as real as human flaws. Accepted as such, too.

“Are you feeling better?”

Sporting a grin favoring one cheek more than the other, Eddie’s eyes were framed by clumped together lashes after being stripped to his barest self and given the grace he needed. “Yeah,” he answered Adrie in fondness, “I’m feeling better now.” Not forever. He wasn’t cured. But with time, he guided his gaze to the velcro shoe you were wiggling back and forth onto her heel, and climbed his soft study up to the plump concentration on your bottom lip after you released it from between your teeth.

Perceiving his attention, you clocked him with a sneaky grin. “We’re a sardine family.” Brightening at the bewildered noise he made, you tapped Adrie’s knee, and imparted your wisdom as if he should know it too. “Yeah, you know, you, me, and Adrie. Jammed packed back here like a tin of sardines. All squished together.”

They blinked at you. You blinked back.

“And I thought I was supposed to be the one with bad jokes,” Eddie offered after some thought. You cut him a look. “But I like the image,” he amended.

“I like sardines,” Adrie chimed. She didn’t know what sardines were, but you appreciated her enthusiasm.

The conversation waned from there. Drowsiness from the old night seeped into your collective huddle, slouching you all towards one another. Heavy limbs went boneless. Tender brushes of thumbs came to an end. The sound of deep breaths were heard between the local ads for Indiana’s finest antique mall and an uptick in the rain smacking the paved street. Near the edge of sleep, you convinced yourself to get Adrie up and into her carseat. Eddie sat back and watched you go through the steps of buckling her in, listening to her plea for Fluff in her backpack, tucking the quilt around her just right, and hitting your head on the roof in pursuit of making her happy. Taking care of his kid. You collapsed beside him, far closer than would be proper for coworkers, and basked in his approval, noting the pride in his charged gaze. The emotional rollercoaster of the evening took its toll on his swollen face—nevertheless, romance novels could learn a thing or two from the way his stare rendered you weak.

“Should get you home before the storm gets worse,” he warned in an attractive thrum of sternness. He might call you lil’ lady next. Or remind you he promised your father he’d have you back on time.

Floating in the fizzy pool of your crush's attention, you nodded your dizzy head, and observed without need, “Yeah, should get home before it gets worse.”

He laughed. You swam in his laugh, in the instinctual desire based in his mood after watching someone nurture his young. A silly thing to rock you into a sultry sweat considering the outcome of your second date. Luckily, when you stepped out of the car, the frigid mist stole your focus, hosing you down and keeping you from reading too much into the odd chemical imbalance that must be happening in your brain.

The night was really fucking long.

Driving with the radio on low, Eddie drifted his ringed fingers over your forearm whenever they weren’t being used on the stick shift. A small gesture letting you know he was thinking about you when there wasn’t anything to talk about, not that it was needed. The calm was nice. The storm behaved en route to the Buckley’s, avoiding the occasional tree limb blocking a lane. He removed his touch from your person, and with a glance, you were assured it wasn’t the last.

“You didn’t have to walk me to my door,” you gasped, posing with your arms stuck out, useless against mother nature sagging your soaked clothes.

A puddle formed on the wood planks where he wrung his hair. “And make you do this run all by yourself? C’mon, sweet stuff. I’m a gentleman.”

Shivering on the covered porch, your shoes were partially to blame for the slipping incident(s) in the muddy driveway. The lack of the house lights on was another, slowing down your sprint into a crawl. A yellow cast from a lamp in the back room lit the hallway, but other than its soft glow, that was it. Clearly, no one expected you to come home.

“Is it okay if, uh,” you began, “Is it okay if we kiss in front of Adrie?” Oh, how your awkward pointing from yourself to the car came to a charming halt, fingers caught in the stiff fabric of his jacket, under his spell.

Plush pink lips warmed by vented heat promised your worries away.

“I think she’s asleep anyway.” His voice was playful, tugging syllables in the way his lopsided grin ought. “But,” he softened, “yeah, we can kiss in front of her.”

The permission washed over you. Weeks and months in the making. Brewing tension under the surface in your daily interactions—and now? You kissed him. Just for fun, just to show off. You kissed him again. Gentle, pretty brushes. Tame, refined, and for the sake of exploring the lack of boundary before saying goodbye.

Working man arms defined your waist.

Fingers calloused from gripping pens grazed his steady throat.

He swallowed, and spoke endearments with his busy mouth, “Could kiss you all day, baby.” Your lips kicked into a smile which he devoured, kiss after kiss. Neat little things. Virtues, maybe.

“Could’ve kissed me since the day we met,” you answered, feeling the squeeze around your back when his belly pressed you into his embrace. Though, his dismissive snort caused you to frown. “I’m serious. Coulda had me back then. Or at least you could’ve kissed me when we were slow dancing in the garage, or standing under the mistletoe at the Christmas party. Like, seriously, way to make me feel rejected.”

His wide passionate eyes shared common ground with his genuine smirk at your feigned agony. “Excuse you, but I am not having our first kiss be at work.”

“Then why not at DND when everyone left?”

“Because, sweetheart,“ his cadence loved those two words most of all, “I knew I only had a few minutes with you. And I needed a helluva lot more than a few minutes with you.”

“Or, what about when—”

Crazy how you strove to be silenced by his mouth. Craved it like no other, provoking him into eager unions, fulfilling the itch and providing the scratch with your bottom lip between his, just how he liked.

You shifted. Your inner thighs rubbed through your ripped tights. The untimely circumstances bringing you to Robin’s door lived on the surface of your chilly skin; ushering you to reality, and he as well.

“I’m sorry for how all this turned out.” Eddie’s sincere apology pitched his voice to something sorrowful, something deeper, and maybe you underestimated how much the night ending when it did upset him as a man.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

He shuffled his stance, scraping his boots in dissatisfaction. “Baby, you didn’t even get anything,” and you knew what he meant. And it annoyed you he’d even brought it up.

Combing your fingers up from his nape through his hair, you drove him into you, chasing the molten ooze pooling at your center in effort to shut him up. Wet, hard, nipping kisses at his plump lips until they were raw like his tear-stained cheeks. You forwent air. Mouths melding as one, then apart as two, then one, then a set of awake eyes boring into his drunk ones. “Our date was perfect. We needed this.” The trust, the experience, the uncomfortable glimpse into his life and how you handled it. His breakdown, his shame, his face when he finally let go and ugly cried in front of you. “I don’t regret how our night turned out.”

Nodding into a nudge of his nose stroking the side of yours, he was honest with himself, “I don’t regret it, either.”

“Well, you might regret it in the next half-hour if this storm keeps up, and you’re stranded with Adrie in the car because a tree fell across the road.”

“Shit.” Indeed, the weather was turning again. If luck were on his side, he could deal with the high winds and sheets of rain until he got home, but, more likely, he drained his luck over the course of the date, and lightning was about to start again.

Eyeing the sky with hesitance, he asked, “Can I call you tomorrow? Or—today?”

“I’d be upset if you didn’t.” Acting as an endorsement to get going before things worsened, thick forest branches creaked in the distance, popping like warnings. You followed it with snappier affections doled between your palms fitted to his jaw. “Please be safe, Eddie.”

“I will, I will. Kay?” Urgency swept him from kiss to kiss—needy, and intense, treating them as the last. “I adore you, baby. Tell me you adore me.”

Mushy under his tender affirmations, your body went pliant and he accepted your weighty lean on his chest, making it harder than it already was for him to leave his sweetheart behind. “—dore you too, handsome,” you moaned into his mouth, sending him off on a proper goodbye.

“Jesus Christ, woman.”

Ever the lovestruck fool, he stayed rooted on the porch watching your figure move from shadow to light within the home, eyes glued to sways and curves as you met the hallway and bent to peep inside Robin’s room. It was the single lamp being turned off which broke his greedy gaze, and ended his fun. Oh well. His Monday morning was booked with penciled in meetings for his admiration and your assets.

Eddie spun on his heel and stopped stalling. He didn’t bother throwing his arms over his head, he accepted his fate, and ran. Sloshing through puddles, slipping in mud. He wrenched open the door, and fell inside the car. The heater made him sticky warm in the gross way, so he turned it down, and got comfortable behind the wheel, adjusting, adjusting.

Pulling oxygen into his outkissed lungs, he heaved a solid breath, and sank into his seat, unable to comprehend the recent events carving out a new path for him to consider where there wasn’t one before.

——Then——

In the beginning…

Summer died to autumn, and it was time to move on from Steve's. Eddie tried to make it on his own in the motel room over the three day weekend break from work, but his wallet was empty, his baby was dressed in another family's blue sailboat onesie, and come Tuesday morning at 7AM, he needed someone to watch Adrie who wasn't an overworked Nancy Harrington.

Infant in hand, pride left behind in his boyhood, Eddie knocked on his uncle's door, and in Wayne's usual manner, he answered by clearing his throat when neither words nor greetings failed to repair the strained relationship.

“Can I live with you?”

Taking in the marks of fatigue under his nephew's averted eyes, Wayne said, “Of course, son,” and welcomed him inside with a swung gesture.

The walk to the single bedroom humbled what spirit Eddie had remaining. Or, crushed what was left of it. He passed by the kitchen table which still had his chair cocked out, noticed the patched-up hole in the closet door, and flicked on the lightswitch, grazing the curled edge of a poster he hung over a decade ago. His stomach sank at the familiarity.

Blazed by the ornate lamp hung in the corner, standing out like a behemoth beside his white desk, was the crib he was never able to afford.

Adrie grunted awake in her carseat. Looking down at her would spill his tears, so he cranked his head back to stare at the ceiling, steeling himself after spotting the new bedsheets stretched across his mattress, and he knew—he knew—if he turned around, the pullout bed in the living room would still be set up.

His uncle never took his room back.

Defeated by the routine pang of worthlessness, impressed to have any self-esteem left to be stolen from him at the point, Eddie sank to his childhood mattress with his three-month-old daughter at his feet, undressed himself from his boots, and made a clear spot for them both on the bed, away from blankets or pillows. He laid on his side, legs crossed and knees bent with an arm beneath his head. Same position he assumed on the motel’s carpeted floor yesterday when Adrie experienced a milestone: rolling over. Not from her back to her stomach, she wasn’t coordinated enough for that yet, but with enough powerful kicks and wiggling, his paranoia coaxed his other arm around her.

He molded himself to be her protector. Chest sunken on a shallow breath, forearm spooned to her side closest to the edge, and gaze trained on her chubby cheek. Her babbly noise of happiness brought him a sense of reward, and though the newborn smell had faded in the weeks where motor oil stung his nostrils, he put his nose to the top of her head for a whiff of a sweet scent that wasn’t there, and felt the peace it brought him anyway.

Wayne shuffled into the room with a sizable stack of chunky hardcover books between his hands. “I, uh, checked these out from the library. Been doin’ some readin’ while you were gone.” He set them down on the bedside table, and pointed at a few of them. “Learned a lot from the one on the bottom, but they were all, ah, educational, I s’pose.. Some lean more religious than others,” he grumbled. “But, uhm..”

The expectant pause in his uncle’s speech drew Eddie’s awareness.

“Can I hold her?” Wayne asked.

“Yeah.” He almost had the strength to clear the rasp from his throat. “You can hold her.”

Putting his new knowledge to good use, Wayne first worked his palm under Adrie’s head before scooping her into his folded arms. Eddie took his shame in small doses, glancing at his uncle meeting his grandchild for the first time, and looking away when he cooed over her. Three months and his only family member had yet to meet his baby. Three months spent avoiding this trailer, and depriving his uncle from making these memories.

Self-loathing boiled under Eddie’s skin, and still, there was a fleeting desire to brag about Adrie’s neck strength, and how it wasn’t so necessary to be wary of her head falling back.

But he stayed quiet. He pushed his overgrown bangs out of his eyes, and read the book’s titles, wondering what sparked enough interest for Wayne to stuff receipts between the pages, or mark them with paper clips if they were particularly interesting.

Speaking in his gruff smoker’s voice with an edge of seldom heard unease, Wayne introduced a conversation, “I read in that yellow book there that babies shouldn’t sleep in the same bed as the parent. Dangerous, with how tired you are, ‘nd all. Should I put her in the crib?”

As gingerly and delicately as one could be when discussing the reality of a child suffocating to a parent who was well aware of the risks, Eddie regarded him with an annoyed expression, and Wayne shut his mouth in apology.

“I’ve gotta do her night routine again, so I’ll be up for a bit.”

“Yep.” A solid statement, and conclusion, to the conversation.

Bending down, Wayne positioned Adrie in the hollow Eddie created for her, and mentioned there were leftovers in the fridge on his way out. He shut the door behind him. It didn’t take long for tiny fists and tinier fingers to find a lock of his hair, and pull it into a drooly mouth. Didn’t take long, either, for his exhaustion to kick in and for the emotions to crash through his walls.

Tears slipped sideways along his features. Cresting over the bridge of his nose, colliding with his other eye, and joining the wetness at his hairline, dotting the bedsheet. He pressed his face to his baby who was too innocent for this world. “Daddy loves you,” he whispered, tasting the word for the first time. Daddy. It didn’t feel right when Steve stepped in as a father figure, but he could acknowledge it now. He was a dad. A momentous occasion followed by, “I’m so sorry you’re mine.” An apology uttered on a wet hiccup—borderline unintelligible—but after coming back to this trailer, and enduring his memories trapped between its thin walls, he promised, words slurring to a constricted squeak in his throat, “Daddy’s gonna get us a nice house, okay? Your own room. Your own bed. Daddy’s gonna do it. Just give me some time, okay? I’ll do it, I swear. Daddy loves you so much. So fucking much.” The promises bred dread even then, living in the pit of his stomach as future disappointments, knowing he would fail.

Perhaps sensing his distress, his little girl used the last of her energy to kick his arm in a fair warning before her face scrunched, and the wet coughs preluding her wail for food began.

He dried his face on the bedsheet. In this moment, it was hard to continue crying when he had another human relying on him. It was time to move on. Time to bury the pain, and move on. Time to neglect himself, and move on. Time to give up, and move on. Kiss her chubby cheeks so fucking much he feared he’d never be able to stop, and move on.

——Now——

Now, he checked the rearview mirror and Adrie was looking back at him, possessing a curious pinch between her brows at his reflection.

“You were kissing Miss Mouse,” she accused and questioned.

“I was,” he confirmed.

“What does that mean?”

“It means, ah,” he filled the pause with another ah while he searched, “It means we’ll be seeing more of each other. She’ll be coming around more, and stuff. Hanging out with us.”

Ever ponderous, ever candid, ever blunt, she asked, “Does that mean she’s my–”

Crazy Little Thing Called Love blasted their eardrums.

Eddie’s fingers slipped over the volume dial by accident—totally by accident—as he reached for the stick shift, turning the music on high and drowning out the last word of her sentence.

—Mom.

No way in hell was he ready for that conversation after the emotionally grueling night he’d had.

“Whoops,” he pretended, “Sorry, couldn’t hear you—but, uh! Hey, do you wanna start our bedtime story early? Should I go with the princess one, or the Sesame Street gang running their own bakery? Hmm.." He drew out his hum until he was in the clear of the Buckley's mailbox, swearing he wasn't the reason it was laying flat in a ditch. "How about we pick up where the princess one left off? So! The firbolgs have declared alliances with Toadstool Kingdom, and.." Throwing it into first gear, Eddie raced home as quickly, but responsibly, as possible, talking non-stop. His parched throat begged for a drink by the time he pulled into the trailer park—a scratchy pain made worse by his nervous chatter in the elusive quiet of his parked car.

He wrapped Adrie in her quilt as best he could while securing her on his hip and booked it through the rain, unlocking the front door and ducking inside right as an unlucky flash of lightning came.

And when nature’s nightlight died, he blinked and blinked at the spots in his vision.

It was unfathomably dark in his living room.

Stumbling over a small shoe in his way, he patted the wall for the lightswitch, and flipped it. And flipped it again. And harassed it some more. Sighing heavily in defeat, he grabbed the giant flashlight on the kitchen counter, and lit the way. "Looks like we're camping tonight." (Their codeword for when the power was knocked out.)

"Okie dokie," she said, ignorant to the cruel world of no pancakes for Sunday breakfast when the electric stovetop was out of commission.

In the meantime, he got them both ready for bed with the added pain of doing it by a single wobbly light source, ready to pass out the second his body sank to the mattress and his head hit the flat pillow—

But of course, Adrie rocked his shoulder incessantly, goading him into giving her attention at her whim, sanity be damned. "Mm?" he grunted, coating the noise in mild annoyance.

"Daddy?" she checked.

The wait for her question grew excruciatingly long.

He almost wasted an eye roll. "Yes, my child?"

"I wish Miss Mouse was here."

Surprised more so by his yawn than the request itself—and then surprised again when his heartbeat remained calm when confronted with the reality of Adrie noticing too much—he struggled to stay awake in his best interest, perhaps giving an inappropriate answer, and unwittingly feeding into her inner wishes, "I do too." He was fading, and quick. The hard rain had returned, droning white noise on the roof, soothing his eyelids closed over the dry sting they drew. Rolling, fighting the stiff sheets tucked around them both, he threw an arm over her before the doom-roll of thunder came. Sweet dreams greeted him in a pair of tiny arms folded to his chest. Brain shutting down. Night, night. Asleep.

"I wish she was my mom."

"Goodnight, Adrie," he stressed.

#eddie munson x reader #eddie munson #stranger things #eddie x reader #mechanic!eddie #eddie munson fanfic #stranger things fanfic #eddie munson smut #the yes policy

3K notes · View notes

streetlvght · 27 days ago

Text

the warmth of a hearth | scb

pairing: seo changbin x reader (one-shot)

genre: tooth rotting fluff, no really i mean it

warnings: none except for some cuddling, smooching, binnie lovingly being a menace, reader being cuddly

word count: 875 words

a/n: so. so :} hi! this is my very first piece of writing since.. forever (ye olde days of rp back in the day) and essentially a mishmashed love letter to binnie! i don’t know what came over me to bring this out of the catacombs it’s been marinating in. binnie’s is such a cuddly guy i just wanna squeeze him (affectionately) and it’s manifested into this thing existing (malicious). also falling asleep on his chest would proooobably fix me. probably.

all photos have been taken from pinterest!

warm.

warm, warm, warm.

your sheets were always warmer when he was in them.

his chest was a curling light in your eyes, heart thumping under your ear. if you squeezed your eyes hard enough and shut out the sound, you could feel it buzzing in his skin. flowing from his forearms, down his wrists and through his fingers. they drew up and down your side, almost floating. if he moved a hair of an inch’s away from you, a whine would fill the air, “too far. come back,” and as always, he’d comply.

“you’re gonna suffocate, y’know.” changbin snorted at the shapes you nosed between his pecs, a tickle wedging under his ribs. he knew it you were at your most comfortable in his hold, free hand stroking the back of your head. he would hem and haw, whine and complain playfully when he got too hot but never willingly unwind himself from you.

“mmm, aaand?” the half mumble obscured by the worn cotton of his shirt somehow made the man snort harder, if not for the upward inflection. as if you wouldn’t be satisfied with siphoning off his body heat and nuzzling into him for the rest of your lives. you wouldn’t.

“what if i want to see my pretty yeobo’s face, mmh?”

he knew how to work you, the scamp of a man. how he’d worm his way in through you and knock on the inside of your chest. and much to your chagrin and his enjoyment, it worked every single time. you huffed, an indignant grumble wedged against him despite the way your feet overlapped his own.

“aren’t you used to it already?”

you could just about feel the haughty gasp he let out even at your half jibing words, literally clutching his figurative pearls. changbin? being used to you? especially when you were practically a limpet a fused to his body?

it was impossible, simply and utterly impossible.

“yah, how could you even say such a thing?”

the smile in his voice was more than noticeable over his outrage, just about resisting the urge. you knew the way changbin’s cheeks ruffled up when he smiled, his dimple prominent and that downward curve to his lips. all the more when he annoyed you lovingly.

a grumble pushed deeper into his shirt, drawing a nasal tinkling laugh out of him. it interrupted the spirited rant he was amping up, too busy (and infatuated) to fully go on a tirade. all you wanted to do was bury yourself in his cosmic heater of a body and begin to fossilise against his chest.

was that so bad?

“binnnnnnnie!” the drawling whine from your lips made the arc of joy in his chest leap higher, bowing under your head with his laughter. it made you smile despite trying not to, head rising from his chest to meet his eyes. those coffee brown eyes you were so certain there were stars embedded in. he got you up, he got you.

“bun—nyyyyyy!” he whined in kind, tone mirroring your own. there were equal parts schadenfreude and equal parts pure affection in them, so bare and unfiltered. it wasn’t even a question, even in his arms, the stocky man loved your eyes on his. your attention, your lips. your lips.

those dolly lips of his curved up just for you, your palm travelling to the plushness of his tummy. he knew how much you loved it, loved him and all of him. digits finding the shape of your own, he squeezed once. you squeeze back twice. the glassy look in his eyes he always got when his love for you was validated by a simple action. it usually followed a deep kiss you’d feel in your chest, your lips finding the semi-circled scar on his chin making the man all but gasp instead.

the needy look you’d sported earlier was turned on you, palm sliding up to card through his messy curls. his lips instinctively curled into a little pout, popping at you like a little fish under water. it was hard to say no to changbin, more so when he looked like you hung every star in the sky just for him.

and the sweet nothings you muttered so sweetly against his lips proved every single point. so much so without question and red tipped ears he chased your lips for another kiss and another until all his world consisted of were the bedsheets and you.

“mhm, c’mere, you little troublemaker.”

with all the gentleness of a man whipped, changbin tucked you back against his chest. back in your safe space and him in yours. not a single peep or protest out of the either of you. there could be nothing better than the love of your life in the palm of your hands, bodies so close you could be mistaken as one.

the worst feeling was a space once occupied now bare, a slip of the hand after being held too long or a empty space in bed come morning. not on a crisp night with a nip in the air and rustle of dried leaves outside your window.

you could always trust him to keep you warm. especially on nights like these.

thank you sm for taking the time out and reading my work! feel free to drop into my asks if you wanna froth about bin or otherwise :D

#stray kids #skz #stray kids fanfiction #stray kids imagines #stray kids x reader #skz changbin #seo changbin #changbin #changbin x reader #seo changbin x reader #pure fluff #one shot #rain.txt

126 notes · View notes

matty-bear · 7 months ago

Text

Concert Fright [C.S]

type: fic !

pairing: drummer!chris sturniolo x fem!little!reader

warnings: sfw, fluffy, age regression

summary: you and your friend liv manage to bag tickets for your favorite band ! who knew it would take a sudden overwhelming turn and the two of you would end up backstage ?

notes: submission for Bratzfornick141 writing contest ! (which is hosted by @bratzforchris and @nicksbestie !) <story elements selected: fluff, age regression, band member x fan, and concert> first age regression related fic i'm so excited ^^ hope u enjoy ! happy reading <33

WC: 4.7K

｡ﾟ☁︎｡ ⋆｡ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡ ⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡ ⋆｡ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡ ⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡ ⋆｡ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡ ⋆

The loud chatter of people ran through your ears as your friend, Liv, pulled you down the aisle and to the barricade. You could faintly make out an artist playing on the speakers in the small venue however you couldn’t quite make out who it was exactly due to all the commotion around you. With a soft exhale, you grasp the black railing and look over at the brunette next to you with a large smile.

“Okay, but you have to admit I bagged such good tickets,” Liv says as she turns on her heels, an equally large smile plastered on her lips as she looks over at you.

A few weeks ago, you and Liv’s favorite band announced that they would be going on tour. Considering how huge fans the two of you were of them, you both immediately decided on going. After ensuring that they were going to come to your area, Liv immediately made a plan for how to get tickets. The female took it upon herself to get in the traumatizing queue of Ticketmaster and sat in front of her desk for around an hour in hopes of bagging tickets.

Luckily, she managed to get two front-row tickets and didn’t hesitate to call you the moment she got the confirmation email. Since then, you guys began to plan out concert outfits (you guys obviously got matching outfits) and counted down the days till the band came to your area.

And that brings us to now.

“These are amazing seats, props to you for fighting all the fangirls.” You praise the female with a small pat on her shoulder. Liv simply chuckles softly at the touch and quickly digs her hand into the pocket of her pants. After pulling her phone out, she taps her screens softly and turns the device so it faces you.

“Two more minutes!” Liv lets out a small squeal of excitement and takes her free hand to grab your shoulder and shake your body back and forth. A small stream of giggles falls from your lips as you rock back and forth on your heels a few times before the brunette finally lets you go. “You think Matt will notice me? I mean I will be right in front of him.”

“I’m one hundred percent sure that he will fall in love with you the second he comes on stage. Kid will get so dazed that they're gonna have to call for a break.”

“Awh wait, I don't want them to have to stop mid-concert.” Liv frowns faintly with a soft huff. You shrug your shoulders and turn your head to allow your eyes to land on the stage in front of you. Your gaze wanders to the instruments towards the back for a moment, allowing your brain to get a better sense of your surroundings. You can faintly make out two of Matt’s guitars on a light brown rack tucked in the corner, the light blue one being attached to the amp a little closer to the ramp near the side of the stage.

Next to the rack was Chris’ orange drum set, the set the male has had since the beginning of the band’s career. The boy never went a day, from what you know, without using his orange drum set. You vividly remember him saying in a video that he’s grown very attached to the said set and would never get rid of it, even if the wrap is scratched and beaten to the core. It simply holds too many memories. As you stare at the bass, you feel your insides start to churn, half out of nervousness and half out of excitement.

You were very fond of Chris, him being your favorite member of the band. You felt as though the two of you had a lot of things in common and that’s why you were so drawn to him. Yes, the boy was very attractive but his personality was what took the cake for you. He knew when it was time to mess around and when it was time to get to work and you respected him a lot for it. In the middle of your daze, the lights suddenly dim, and the speakers get rid of the music sounding from them.

Immediately, the sound of high-pitched screaming runs through your ears. You freeze on the spot, a million feelings running through your veins all at once. At first, the feeling was a little overwhelming, however when you felt Liv’s hand gently grasp your hand, you felt more at ease. As you glance over at the female next to you, the sight of her excited expression brings you pure happiness. You watch her quickly take her phone out and open her camera before you face the stage again.

The second you do so, the band begins to take the stage. Your jaw drops slightly as you watch the boys take their places in front of their instruments or Nick’s case, take his mic, and set it on the stand. You find yourself staring at Chris, your breath getting caught in your throat as you watch him take a seat behind his drums. A large smile can be seen on his lips as he bends down slightly to slip two sticks out from his bag.

As he begins to twirl one in between his fingers, his free hand raises to adjust his in-ear. The boy finally lifts his head after a few moments and the two of you immediately lock eyes. You feel your face heat up when the brunette sends you a small wave, his smile somehow growing even wider. You send a small wave back before averting your gaze over to Nick who’s standing directly in front of you.

Holy fuck he waved at me.

Your heart was going at a million miles per hour at this point. You just made rather long eye contact with your favorite member not even a minute into their set. Your limbs were beginning to feel like jelly but you kept your strong hold of the barrier to keep yourself steady. As you kept your gaze focused on Nick, a certain boy behind him kept his eyes trained on you.

“Hey guys!” Nick greets into the mic, his voice booming through the speakers and filling the venue. The crowd immediately begins to scream loudly at the boy's simple greeting. “It’s great to finally be here! You all look lovely tonight, I swear we have one of the best-dressed fanbases. Wouldn’t you agree, Matt?”

The blonde turns his head slightly to look over at the mentioned brunette who rips his focus away from the guitar in his hands. Matt takes a moment to look out to the crowd, his eyes scanning over a few fans before he nods his head with a small smile.

“Well, I'm sure you guys have been waiting for long enough. How about we jump right in, yes?” Nick asks as he focuses his attention back to the crowd ahead of him. In response, everyone begins screaming again. Nick lightly chuckles in response, his mic barely picking up the sound.

The boy turns his body slightly to look back at Chris and gives him a small nod. The brunette nods firmly in response and you can faintly make out his chest rise and fall softly before he begins to play. You immediately recognize the song by the first few beats and a small scream escapes your lips as a result.

“It’s your song, girl!” Liv exclaims as she clamps a hand on your shoulder. You nod your head rapidly in response, your eyes shifting from Chris to Nick again as he begins to sing the first verse. You immediately allow yourself to get absorbed in the band’s set as their music spills from the speakers. The boys started with some of their slower songs and eventually transitioned to their upbeat ones, which caused the crowd to lose their shit. (that includes you and Liv)

As they were a few songs in, you felt yourself start to get a little overwhelmed. The girl behind you was starting to throw your senses off with her non-stop screaming in your ear. It seemed as though she had no off button during the band’s set. While you’re all for enjoying a concert and allowing yourself to be free during sets, you strongly dislike when people are nonstop screaming and aren’t being considerate of the people around them.

On top of the girls screaming, the music was starting to get a little too loud for your liking. Usually, you wouldn’t mind this however your feelings were getting thrown about like a rag doll and you felt super out of wack. Due to how overwhelming you were starting to become, you were starting to feel a little small. As your chest was starting to tighten and you felt yourself about to slip into your headspace, you looked over at Liv.

You hesitated getting the female’s attention since she seemed to be enjoying herself but you needed to get out of the crowd and God knew you couldn’t do it by yourself. People were constantly shoving each other, trying to get closer to the front, and as a result, you got shoved against the barricade, your ribs and legs smashing against the cold, hard metal.

After a long moment of hesitation, you grab Liv’s arm and shake her gently. It took a few good tugs for the female to finally turn to look over at you but when she did, a concerned expression flashed on her face as she looks at you.

“What’s wrong?” The female asks, her free hand immediately grasping your wrist. You let out a small whine and shake your head in response. You were fighting for your life to be big at this point and as a result, you couldn’t bring yourself to verbally respond to the girl. Liv takes a moment to study your features until it finally clicks.

She goes to open her mouth to say something however at the sound of two girls screaming bloody murder behind you, you immediately crouch down. One hand immediately shoots to cover your ear as the other firmly gasps one of the bars on the barricade, a small whimper escaping your lips as your eyes squeeze shut.

“Hey, hey, hey.” Liv says, her voice barely audible over the intense amount of screaming around the two of you. “y/n you need to get up. You’re gonna get trampled if you stay down there.” After not gaining a bodily response from you, Liv huffs and bends down slightly to grab you from beneath your arms.

With one strong pull, she lifts you to her feet and allows you to crash against her chest. When your soft whimpers and cries fill her ears, Liv sighs softly and rubs her hand against your back. As she begins to look at the crowd behind her, the dials in her brain begin to turn as she attempts to figure out how to get to a secluded area. Little did the female know, a certain band member had been intently watching the two females the moment the situation went down.

As Chris finishes his part of the song, he stops and allows his arms to drop to his lap, the tip of his sticks lightly grazing the hoop of his snare. As he takes one more worried glance at you, he finally lets his eyes shift over to Matt, who has now begun to walk to the front of the stage to play his guitar solo. Chris lets out a rather impatient huff and looks over at Nick, who’s reaching down to grab someone’s phone, not paying attention to anyone but the person in front of him.

No one’s paying attention. Shit.

As the brunette continues to keep the steady beat of the song through the usage of his bass, he eyes Matt and waits for the male to be done with his solo. When the boy strums the final chord and begins backing up, Chris finally decides to grab his attention.

“Matt!” The boy whisper-shouts. After not gaining a reply, he yells again, this time a little louder. “Matt!”

The guitar player finally turns his head, his eyes immediately locking with Chris’ worried ones. “What’s up?” Matt mouths.

Chris lifts a single stick and points toward you and Liv’s direction. “Get security and tell them to escort those two to the back.”

“The back?”

Chris rolls his eyes at the hesitant look Matt gives him. “Yes, the back! Hurry the fuck up!”

Matt huffs and turns back around, his eyes immediately getting to work on finding security. The moment his gaze falls on a bright yellow vest near the center of the stage, he quickly hurries over to them. When his turn to play comes up, his fingers begin to dance around the fret of his guitar. Due to both of his hands being busy, he crouches down as close as he can to the security and calls for them. At the sight of the brunette struggling to get the security’s attention, the fans in front of him assist the male by also shouting.

When the security finally turns back to face Matt, the latter quickly turns his head towards where you and Liv are. “Get those two girls to the back, please. Chris’ order.” The male states as he swiftly stands back up.

“Who?” The security asks, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion as he looks up at the brunette.

“Front row, right in front of Nick. They’re wearing matching outfits and one of them has the other held against her chest. Hurry please.” The security quickly nods and hurries over to where you and Liv are. When his eyes land on the two of you, he quickly shouts for you both.

“Hey, I'm taking you two to the back. Come with me please.” The male informs Liv after locking eyes with her. The female faintly nods and gently pushes your shoulders so she can see your face.

“Hey, they’re gonna take us to the back. Come on.” Liv says, her left hand gently running up and down your arm in a comforting manner. “Are you big or did you slip?” After you send the female a blank stare with a small pout, Liv sighs gently. “Come on, hun. I’ll help you get over the barricade.”

Liv carefully sets both her hands on your hips and on the count of three, she helps you get over the barricade. The moment your legs swing over the top railing, the security member grabs onto your arms and helps set you down. The male doesn’t have time to check on you and get back to Liv before the female leaps over the railing. She lands on the hard floor with a hollow thump and takes a moment to dust herself off and adjust her skirt before gently grabbing both of your wrists.

“Come on you two.” The security says. With a single wave of the hand, the male begins walking to the back, you and Liv following close behind him. The entire walk to the back, the female held you as close as she could, a single arm being kept around your waist. After a while, the loud beats and screams of the crown died down, ultimately lowering your uneasiness. Nonetheless, you were still frightened and tightly clutched onto Liv’s blouse for support.

“I’m gonna let you guys in this room for the time being. If you need anything, call one of the staff members. There’s already plenty of snacks and beverages in there so help yourselves.” The security says as he begins to unlock a door. After opening it and pushing it wide open, Liv bids the male a soft thank you before guiding you inside. The moment the door shuts behind the two of you, the female lets out a small sigh of relief and pulls you to the sofa. As you plop down on one of the cushions, you gaze over at Liv with a pout.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” The female asks as she sets a gentle hand on your kneecap. At the sight of you rubbing your stomach, Liv nods her head and gets up from the sofa. She takes a glance around the small room and the moment her eyes land on a large tray on the nearby dresser, her eyes light up. She quickly makes her way over to the tray and examines the snack selection for a moment.

Nuts, health bars, crackers…

When her gaze lands on the stack of fruit snacks and chocolate chip cookies, Liv immediately grabs two packages of each snack with a small smile. She turns on her heels when they’re in her grasp and makes her way over to you. The moment she takes a seat next to you, she sets the packages on your lap.

“Which one would you like, hun?” Liv asks gently. You force your lips together as you stare down at the snacks. After a moment of ‘pondering,’ you snatch up a pack of the fruit gummies and set them on Liv’s thigh. “Great choice! These are so yummy.” The female picks up the small pack and opens it with one small tug. “Here you go!”

When she hands you the pack, a large smile appears on your lips, your eyes crinkling slightly. You gently slip the pack off the girl’s hand and stuff your fingers into the small opening. As you silently indulge in your sweet treat, Liv leans back against the back of the sofa and takes her phone out to keep herself busy.

-One hour later-

“Yeah, they’re in here.”

“Alright, thank you so much.”

At the sound of muffled voices coming from the other side of the door, Liv immediately lifts her head. The moment she turns to look over at the shut door, it opens slowly with a small creeeeak.

The female’s eyes widen in pure shock when Nick pops his head inside the room, a worried expression plastered on his face. When the blonde notices that the girl already has her eyes trained on him, he smiles softly. “Hey, girl! Is it okay if we come in?” Nick asks gently.

Liv’s mind sputters for a moment, all of her words seeming to be caught in the back of her throat. She takes one glance down at you, who’s settled in her lap and is intently staring at her phone which is playing My Little Pony before she looks back over at Nick.

“You can come in,” Liv replies, silently cursing herself at the way her voice cracked slightly. Nick sends the female a small smile before he stands upright and gently pushes the door open. He turns around for a moment and waves his hand before walking inside the room. At the sight of Matt and Chris entering shortly after him, Liv’s jaw drops and she quickly clamps a hand over her mouth.

“Are you two doing alright? Chris told me to get security and have them bring y'all back here.” Matt asks as he gently shuts the door with a soft click.

“Yeah, we’re fine now. My friend here just had a little episode.” Liv replies with a small head nod.

“She get too overwhelmed in the crowd? I saw everyone pushing each other and it looked horrible for the people in the front. I tried to get people to calm down but you can only do so much, you know?” Nick asks, a small frown overtaking his features.

“Yeah, she did. She's usually able to handle concert settings but the crowd today just didn’t sit right with her.” As Nick and Matt gently nod their heads, Chris hesitantly takes a step forward. When he’s able to get a better view of your face, a small smile creeps up onto his lips when he sees you already peering up at him with slightly wide eyes.

“Hey, kid.” The brunette greets. As you hide your now flushed face behind Liv’s phone, the boy chuckles softly. When his eyes shift over to the open pack of fruit snacks that is discarded near your leg, he carefully picks it up. “You like fruit snacks too?”

You slowly lower the phone to peer up at Chris before you nod your head. “They’re yummy aren’t they?”

As the brunette continues to converse with you, Nick and Matt exchange confused looks. “Chris, what the hell are you doing?”

At Nick’s sudden question, Chris cuts himself off and quickly turns his head to look back at the blonde. After taking a moment to take in the elder's warning look, he replies, “Making her more comfortable. She's a little, right?”

At the boy’s straightforward question, Liv’s jaw drops. The female shuffles back a little in her spot before eyeing the boy closely and hesitantly replying, “Yeah… How did you figure that out?”

“I have a friend who’s a little so I kinda have a gist of how they act and such.” Liv hums slowly and intently watches as Chris shifts his focus back to you. “How old are you, angel?”

You look down at your free hand and stare down at your fingers before holding up three of them and shoving them out in front of you. “Three? You’re very well-behaved for a three-year-old!”

You flash the male a large toothy grin as you force yourself up into a sitting position, both of your hands dropping down onto your lap with a soft plop. You look down at your hands for a moment, getting caught up in gazing at your pastel pink nails before your eyes snap over to Liv's phone which is still open and playing the cartoon you were watching moments ago. In one swift movement, you grab the device and show the screen to Chris. The male jumps slightly at your sudden move however his eyes soften as he watches AppleJack and Rainbow Dash converse on the screen.

“Woah, I love My Little Pony! Who’s your favorite pony?” The brunette exclaims with a wide smile. You set the phone down on your lap to point at one of your pink nails. “Pinkie?” You rapidly nod your head with a small giggle, your legs kicking out in front of you subconsciously. “She’s a silly one isn’t she?”

You nod once more and point at Chris, your action causing a confused expression to paint his face. After a moment, what you’re trying to say finally clicks in the boy's head. “My favorite pony is Rainbow! She’s so cool and fast. I would say she’s super cool but I'd be calling Matt super cool and I don't wanna gas him up like that. You know, considering how she plays the guitar in the human world and Matt also plays guitar.”

At the male's statement, Matt narrows his eyes and shoves Chris’s shoulder. You watch the latter stumble a little from the sudden hit with a small giggle. “Did I say something wrong?” Chris asks, a fake hurtful expression flashing across his features as he looks back at the male next to him.

“Yeah. Watch your mouth.” Matt grumbles in response, his eyes rolling as he turns on his heels and makes his way to the mini fridge in the corner of the room. When the boy is out of earshot, Chris walks up to you and bends down so you’re at eye level.

“He’s all bark, no bite.” The boy whispers to you, his statement earning yet another giggle from you.

At the sudden sound of three hollow knocks, the five of you all turn around to face the open door. Your eyebrows furrow in pure confusion when your eyes land on a female leaning against the doorway, both her arms crossed over her chest. “We need to get to the hotel. What are you three doing?” The female asks, a single eyebrow raising as she eyes the band.

“We’re just checking up on our friends, Laura. They had a little incident during the set and we just wanted to make sure they were alright.” Nick replies with a soft sigh.

Laura shifts her gaze over to look at you and Liv, her eyes narrowing as she eyes you both. “Oh. Well, they seem fine so let’s go. I seriously don’t want to deal with the receptionist today because we showed up late.”

“We’ll be there in a minute, Laura. Go wait in the bus.” Matt dismisses the female with a wave of his hand, his eyes staying fixed on the can of Root Beer in his hand. Laura huffs and turns on her heels before walking off. When her footsteps fade, Chris turns around and puts his focus back on you.

“So, where were we?” The boy asks you with a small smile. You quickly grab Liv’s phone once more and show the brunette the screen again. “Ah, yes! Did you know that Nick’s favorite pony is Rarity? Pretty fitting, huh?”

“Alright, kid. There’s no need to out me like this.” Nick mumbles as he stuffs his hands in the pocket of his pants. “I think we should wrap things up before Laura starts dragging us to the bus.”

At the blonde’s suggestion, Chris pouts and looks back at the older male with a pleading expression. “Exchange numbers or something if you want. We need to go kid, come on.” Matt says as he crushes the empty can in his hand.

Chris sighs softly and looks over at Liv, his pout not faltering as he gazes up at the female. “Can I have her number, please?”

“Yeah, of course! y/n would be pissed if I said no.” Liv replies with a small chuckle.

y/n…

“Am I her favorite or something?”.

“God, yes. She won’t shut the hell up about you sometimes. I swear if I bring up one thing that’s somehow related to you, she would immediately go on a tangent about you. I’ve learned to tread carefully when I say stuff yet she still manages to yap about you.”

At the female’s statement, Chris looks over at you with a wide, cheeky smile. “How cute are you!” The brunette exclaims. The boy lands a few playful pokes on your side, the small touch drawing small squeals from you.

After being rushed by Matt, Chris finally gets your number in his phone. The three boys quickly bid you and Liv farewell however before they leave, you quickly get up from your spot on the sofa and rush over to Chris. The brunette looks down at your shy expression and smiles warmly before engulfing you a hug. With a small pat on the head, the boy pulls away from the warm embrace and ruffles your hair before leaving the room.

“You're whipped aren’t you?” Nick asks the moment the three of them are out of earshot from you and Liv.

“What? No.” Chris replies with a firm shake of the head.

“Sure, kid. Sure.” Matt says as he lands a single hand on the younger’s shoulder. Chris looks over at the male and takes in his teasing smile before rolling his eyes.

The boy was most definitely wrapped around your finger but was he going to come to terms with it? Absolutely not. Well… not right now that is.

·:¨༺ ♱✮♱ ༻¨:· TagList ! ·:¨༺ ♱✮♱ ༻¨:·

@freshloveforthefit @thenickgirl @patscorner @frankdelreyy @sturnsann @kileybankzz @robins-scoop @miloisdone1 @rootbeerworshiper @rubyperic-09 @teenagetrash00 @maryx2xx @junniiieee07

click here if you’d like to be added to the list !

#bratzfornick's 141 writing challenge #sturniolo triplets #nick sturniolo #matt sturniolo #chris sturniolo #matt x reader #chris x reader #chris sturniolo imagine #chris sturniolo x you #chris sturniolo x reader #chris sturniolo fanfic #christopher sturniolo #matt sturniolo fanfic #matt sturniolo x reader

106 notes · View notes

deeppenguinstudent · 3 months ago

Text

(I was procrastinating so here sorry if the English is off or anything I didn't beta this at alll)

Rhemann looked at Jean with apparent disapproval as he stared at Jean as the boy returned an equally heavy look.

"No." He said simply.

Jean grunted in distraught, his hands flailing to the side - in obvious frustration - as Jeremy eyed him discrepantly. Catalina had made him a cup of coffee that had long turned stark cold on top the wooden table. She was sat across Jean in a wooden chair, her legs cushioning her girlfriends head as Laila sat on the floor.

"Coach, please. It's an unnecessary investment, I've wasted enough time as it is. I can't waste more to commute," Jean choked out. He sent a pleading gaze to his teammates and mouth twitched even further when he realised he was alone in his decision.

"Commute?" Catalina laughed pointedly, "You were attacked, fucking hell Jean, attacked! And you worry how long your time of travel to the court is?"

"Cat-"

"No, Jeremy!" Catalina continued her outburst with an exasperated tone, "Am I the only one who's pissed off? Pissed off at the fucking Ravens for not even batting an eye when shit like Grayson was happening right in front of their eyes!"

The room was silent for a while. Catalina's shoulders were heaving in vexation, Laila's mouth was pursed in a line of displeasure and Jeremy pensive gaze was all but familiar. It was good. Good to see the rage of his teammates, it was supposed to be startlingly banal but all Jean could feel in his chest was a buried lump of mangled emotions attempting to break free through his voice box.

He clamped his mouth shut in retaliation while avoiding Jeremy's gaze.

"The reason why I called everyone to have this discussion is because I believe you guys have the maturity of adults and won't blast off when this conversation is in progress," he sent a scathing look to Catalina. "So, I'd appreciate if everyone can keep level heads progress through this together. Ultimately the final decision is Jean's and he will have the final word."

Rhemann sank back into the coach and waited expectantly at Jean's response. He undoubtedly favoured Alvarez's decision but as a coach, his job was supposed to be fair to all his students; as much as he wanted to punch the teeth out of Grayson fucking Johnson's face.

Rhemann had visited the residence of the two girls harbouring their captain and Jean after the whole Grayson Johnson ordeal. He hadn't reported the incident to ERC due to Jean's desperate pleas, but had instead informed them of an aggressive bystander circling the on campus dorms. This in turn made USC amp up the security of the Trojan's dorms in particular and gave students that lived off-campus the option to change their residency to a further location temporarily until campus police caught the preparator or the situation died down; which typically meant in 6 months.

"Jean, come on," Jeremy attempted to reason as he moved closer to Jean, "It's only half a year, you'll be safer there and it's not like we won't be accompanying you; it's dangerous here, for you."

Jean's gaze softened as he met Jeremy's eyes, "It's okay. Grayson was the worst of them all, now that he's...gone back to West Virginia, there's no immediate danger for any of us living here."

Jean turned back to face Rhemann who he expected to feel more at ease at this revelation. To his confusion, Rhemann's once relaxed body language was now tensed and his eyes furrowed.

"Them?" Laila's voice was so soft, so mellow yet that one word sent horror blazing all across Jean's nerves. His hands slapped against his mouth, and his teeth dug into his lips for that thoughtless slip of the tongue.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Catalina's words were alike to a dragon's breath of fire, hot red fury dripping all over each word like boiling honey, "There were people besides Grayson? How many?"

Jean shook his head.

"How. Many." Jeremy enunciated each word as he side-stepped Laila and Catalina and made a beeline for Jean. His hands clutched gently against Jean's as he pulled his hands away from his mouth, awaiting an answer. It was cruel, so cruel to be so kind to a dog that had been beaten all it's life. Jean would prefer if Jeremy took a knife to his jugular, punched his body to oblivion because that was the normality Jean was raised in. Where if one bared their molars, it would be torn off and used to penetrate one's own skin.

However, Jeremy, sweet oh Jeremy, touch had causterised his bleeding wounds poured straight from his heart. The lump of hope that wilted long ago was suddenly blossoming and growing into a fickle little embryo of desire and yearning. Curse pretty boys and making them the bane of Jean's existence.

Jean kept Jeremy's gaze in an act of defiance; to show his captain that despite everything the backliners did, everything Riko did - he was fine. The crack of his voice was another unfortunate betrayal as he uttered, "Five."

The entire trajectory of Jean's world shifted, it was like the Earth's axis was imaginary and nothing mattered except for everyone's impassive gazes to morph into sheer horror.

"I'll kill them, I'll fucking kill them all. How dare they. How dare they?" Catalina jumped up from her chair in outrage and Laila's thumb was bitten red with blood dripping as her expression was seething.

Rhemann breath was aggravated but other than that, his demeanour was neutral as he spoke, "Talk kid, I can send them out but you need to speak to me eventually. About the pool, about the contrition you were forced to face, everything."

They held me down. Made me kneel, laughed at me as they spat into my mouth. I can feel their hands on me, teeth etched into my skin forever. Forever? Forever. They made me weep as they splayed me open. They laughed about it afterwards with Riko, detailing everything that happened as they watched me squirm. I had to shower with them. I had to play with them. I lived every moment in fear it would happen again. It always did.

Grayson said he liked it when I was in pain. Liked me crying out as it made him think I was an easy fuck and entitled to the Raven's as their personal whore. I don't think I'll ever forget how Oats and Whey milk feels in my mouth.

Jean pushed Jeremy out of the way before shutting the bathroom door and retching into the toilet bowl. He scratched at his neck as he heard Jeremy pounding against the door. Jeremy was a saint. Maybe he'd kill Jean if he asked politely. Begged him like he did to Riko all those years ago.

Death - after all - was the only salvation for him. It was just an untimely promise that kept Jean shackled to this treacherous, wasteful life.

#aftg #jean moreau #jerejean #jeremy knox #laila dermott #catalina alvarez #coach rhemann

38 notes · View notes

revenant-coining · 6 months ago

Note

Can you redesign the free minded and design a free spirit flag?

Free minded: https://www.google.com/amp/s/beyond-mogai-pride-flags.tumblr.com/post/616886461197942784/diamondpride-free-minded-pride-flag-for/amp

(ids: 2 rectangular flags with 6 equally-sized horizontal lines. colors in order from top to bottom are dark brown, light yellow, pale yellow, pink, purple, and dark purple. in the center of the first flag is a white broke chain symbol outlined in dark red. /end ids)

(ids: 2 rectangular flags with 6 equally-sized horizontal lines. colors in order from top to bottom are dark purple, orange, light yellow, light green, blue, and dark purple. in the center of the first flag is a white spirit symbol outlined in dark purple. /end ids)

alternative free minded flags & free spirited flags!

symbols from here (link) & here (link)!

tagging; @radiomogai, @thecoffeecrew404

#🪼 requests #anon #category: flags #alternative flags #flags

24 notes · View notes

blessed-pizza · 2 months ago

Note

For the oc asks, 1, 20, and 30!

"Huh? We have mail?" (How long has this been sitting here... whoops hehe)

"Let's see..." "A couple questions huh... Sure why not."

1: Do they sleep with a stuffed animal? If they have multiple, who’s the favorite?

"As far as i know, the only one to sleep with plushies is Ace, she has a Latias and a Latios plushie. She seems to adore them both equally, as far as i can tell. And, well... I have to admit, I'm kind of jealous."

"I'd love to have a plushie as well, though, with my size, most of them would probably be bigger than myself"

"Also, well... Im not sure if it counts, but Rose always sleeps with her hammer"

"It helps with my sleeping posture, OK?!"

"yeah, sure..."

20: What do they like that nobody else does?

"I think I saw Cotton eat a whole tomato berry once, like.. just raw... Ate the whole thing in three big bites, she didn't even break a sweat or anything... (She kinda scares me sometimes)"

"They're really good for your health, you know?"

"You should try one! Maybe you'll like it more than you think."

"I think I'll pass."

"Dude, you have no right to talk. You eat electricity."

"That's... THAT'S DIFFERENT! Besides, I don't eat it, I use it to recharge. I don't produce enough on my own to properly recharge, so I need an external source to help."

"What about Frillian then? He uses the sun to recharge, why isn't that weird?"

"Cus a lot of pokemon do that. It's called photosynthesis."

"First of all, that's not the same as photosynthesis. Secondly, a lot of other electric types also need outside sources to recharge their electricity."

"At least they don't ramble on about 'what battery tastes the best' for an hour."

"That wasn't about tas... Urghh.. Never mind"

30: What would they do if they knew it would be forgiven?

"I'm... I'm not.. sure.." "I.. I can't really think of doing anything that would normally be unforgivable..." "I... don't think i could bring myself to do something so bad.."

"Uhh.. Amp? I... I think you might be looking a bit to deep into this one."

"You know what I'll do?"

"I'll take all the blast seeds we've collected over time, stuff them into some kind of closed container, take it outside and light m' up!"

"I'm curious how big of a fireball it would create."

"Hehe... Yeah... Yeah, that does sound kind of fun..."

"What about you, Bouy?"

"Hmm... I think I'll take one of my dad's atlases with me back here. I'm wouldn't be allowed to take them under normal circumstances, because they take my dad a ton of work to make."

"I'd love to have one, one day."

"Hatchet, Ace? you got anything?"

"I'll eat all the perfect appels in the pantry!"

"Yeah! And the Pecha berries. Those are my favourites!"

"As if the two of you don't already do that... Anyway, what I'll do is to just take a break for couple of days. With all the work I have to do, I can barely take a day of."

"Trying to keep track of the stock, keeping the bedrooms clean, filling in orders for resources and plenty more, all the while there are two literal teenagers running around... isn't the most relaxing experience."

"Even the weekends used to quite busy. Though a lot of the load has been lifted of my back since Amp and Rose joined. They help around with most physical tasks and while I share the paperwork with Frillian, most of it still ends up on my desk..."

"Well... Planning and preparing for expeditions takes quite a lot of time and resources, especially the maps. Dang those things are expensive.. And I haven't even started on the... Oh, yeah, right... the question."

"Well.. how much I'd love to take a couple days off like Cotton, I don't think forgiveness is going to be enough. Running an exploration team isn't really free, you see... How much I've loved it to be. So, yeah... I guess I'll be joining in to watch Rose's blast seed pile."

#IM SO SORRY. I COMPLETELY MISSED YOUR ASK #I DONT KNOW HOW BUT I NEVER GOTEN A NOTIFICATION ;-;#ask game #gravelshore exploration team

5 notes · View notes

melon-colli · 6 months ago

Text

Yapping about Inscryption

Just 'finished' (that's in quotes cause I'm not convinced that the games not DONE done) Inscryption and overall I really enjoyed it! I stopped live blogging after a certain point so heres a post to get those out.

!Spoilers for the whole game under the cut!

>I wasn't too sure about the art style change in Act 2 at first, and the fact that I was dog water at the new card mechanics didn't help, but it really grew on me and so did the new gameplay!

>The other scrybes were really interesting, there wasn't a single one I found boring. If I had to rank them I'd go Leshy<Grimora/P03<Magnificus. Grim and P03 only occupy the same space because I love them both equally.

LUKE CARDER INTERLUDE

>He's so quirky! Love him! Seriously though he was an endearing main character, truly creepypasta protag material. Seeing him get shot in the end really caught me off guard, and honestly shook me a little. Idk but why I didn't expect him to die, especially like that. Expected like a computer monster birthed from the old disk to get him, not for the GameFuna rep to cap him in the face. Had my chest tight for a second. Anyways rip bro, raising my mantis god to the sky.

>As for Act 3, I liked it! P03 is such a delightful dickhead, who I just know would be so annoying about Pokemon natures. Botopia was less immersive than Leshy's campaign, and I like what that says about P03's character, who cares way more about gameplay. This chapter's talking cards have my heart. Lonely Wizard specifically, but Angler was nice for the 5 minutes I knew him. (I traded him for another card specifically because he said 'choose me'. Sorry man I thought you had a plan)

>Obligatory Goobert Mention. Great guy, glad his pain was lessened by the tubes. Idk why you still want to go back to Magnificus, but I wont tell you what to do.

>The Uber bot bosses were still pretty interesting for a bot who supposedly doesn't care much abt crafting characters. I made my own special hell for the Make-your-own boss. Where for every dead card, another is drawn. P03 tried to stop me multiple times, but I was determined. For phase two I just chose leap bots for every dead card. Silly boss. Golly was also a sweetheart, loved the mole. As for the scribe Uberbot, the file deletion threat didn't get me nearly as bad since I came off of Kinitopet and knew the game couldn't actually do something like that and be on steam, but it still had me a little nervous lol (cause like what if it did?).

I got weirdly giddy at the prospect of finding the pelt man again. Idk why because I despised him in Act 1, Got a few pelts but never actually found him. Got scammed at the mart cause I thought buying the pelt would make him show up lol.

>Falling into the factory and seeing the 3 scribes just standing there scared me a little, thought they were gonna jump me.

>After that part, going back to P03 knowing what's going to happen, I felt a bit bad. At first. Sure P03's a smug jerk, but it just wanted to be free right? The walk back when it's reminiscing about the game amped this feeling up, but I love that the game yanked the rug from under me and went 'yeah no this puter just sucks' once it starts gloating. Lol. lmao. Also I didn't expect Leshy to just rip its head off wtf bro.

>Saying goodbye to everyone at the end was sad. Having one last game with the Scrybes was so bittersweet. Grimora's game was interesting, and its a crime we didn't have time for a boss battle. Leshy. Leshy I love you so much. I like that Magnificus wasn't going gentle into that good night at first, but his insistence to keep going lost him the chance to shake our hand. I was never super into his play style, but his game was really cool looking, even if im not super into that stuff. (I know the arm thing had something to do with Yugi-oh but I know nothing abt it sorry).

>The lead up to unzipping the Old Code was done so well. Grimora may have nuked the game to get rid of it, but Luke's curiosity still doomed him in the end. The totem lady's last words before we found it were quite unsettling. I don't know what was on that zip, but whatever it was clearly messed Luke up.

>I loved the ending of the game. Already talked about it in the Luke section, but it was so abrupt and final. Idk what I expected but I knew it was over when Luke opened the door for the Funa rep. Rip.

Overall, 10/10 game. There's still something called Kaycees mod for me to do, but all in all I really enjoyed it!

#yapping abt thing #inscryption

8 notes · View notes

unlust-fvck · 1 year ago

Note

C (panic attack), E, K, L, O for the 300 celebration (congrats btw) with Wilbur if that's alright. Feel free to do only one 😁

comfort—

will is definitely one to freak out at first in his head. sort of like the “don’t tell mom” freak out when you get hurt as a kid

he means well though. it takes him a bit to really get the gears turning on what to do

first, he tries to get your breathing evened out before anything because he definitely knows what it’s like to feel so suffocated

then, once you’re sniffling and avoiding eye contact, he likes to just hold you. not the too loose hold or the too tight hold; the genuine i love you hold.

he’d lay down with you, your head on his chest, and just let you listen to his heart to encourage you to keep steady until you say otherwise

equal—

will is the more domineering one in the relationship, though it’s very casual. switch ass bitch

he’s the type to hold the small of your back while the two of you navigate through busy streets. the type to keep an eye on you at parties and interfere once things become too much.

though everyone says he’s whipped for you, the dynamic is honestly the complete opposite.

in the least toxic way possible, he’s got you between his pointer and his thumb and you’re okay with that.

you love the feeling of knowing he’s the one taking care of you and making sure everything is well, though it may seem different from afar

kiss—

will initiated the first kiss.

the two of you had been dating for about three weeks at that point and he knew everything had to be slow, yet perfect.

he didn’t want to scare you off, nor did he want you to lose interest.

the two of you sat in his gaming room, his eyes set on the screen in front of him as you sat beside him on the couch, watching.

he glanced over at you and noticed the impatient huff leave your lips. those pink lips.

he spun around to face you and bent down slightly, his movements calculated.

his eyes flickered to your lips, then back up. a wordless exchange passed between the two of you and his lips ever so slightly grazed yours until you amped it up.

he’s definitely a good kisser but has his moments when he’s sleepy. his tongue just limply lapping at yours.

love confession—

it wasn’t planned, nor calculated like everything else.

the two of you had been dating for about four and a half months before it had really cross your mind.

you’d hint at it now and again, nervous to what will might think.

after a long day of streaming, editing, and more computer work, will was exhausted.

all he wanted was dinner and his bed, yet he groaned at the thought of cooking.

you had taken notice to his busy day and showed up at his door with takeout and wildflowers.

after seeing you on his doorstep with the objects in hand, he breathed it out quietly and pulled you into a tight hug.

on cloud nine—

anyone who knows will also knows you.

though he dosent say much about it, it’s very obvious to everyone else how lovestruck he is.

the way his eyes crinkle at the sight of you. his shoulders relax and his jaw unclenches.

you’re like a grounding force for him and it’s very evident.

will is a strong believer in words of affirmation and acts of service.

he’s always looking out for you and praising you for every little thing you do.

join the celebration here!

#jays big 300 !!#jays headcanons !!

48 notes · View notes

gatekeeper-watchman · 1 month ago

Text

Daily Devotionals for October 13, 2024

Proverbs: God's Wisdom for Daily Living

Devotional Scripture:

Proverbs 26:6-9 (KJV): 6 He that sendeth a message by the hand of a fool cutteth off the feet and drinketh damage. 7 The legs of the lame are not equal: so is a parable in the mouth of fools. 8 As he that bindeth a stone in a sling, so is he that giveth honor to a fool. 9 As a thorn goeth up into the hand of a drunkard, so is a parable in the mouth of fools. Proverbs 26:6-9 (AMP): 6 He who sends a message by the hand of a fool cuts off the feet (of satisfactory delivery) and drinks the damage. 7 Like the legs of a lame man which hang loose, so is a parable in the mouth of a fool. 8 Like he who binds a stone in a sling, so is he who gives honor to a (self-confident) fool. 9 Like a thorn that goes (without being felt) into the hand of a drunken man, so is a proverb in the mouth of a (self-confident) fool.

Thought for the Day

These verses tell us the damage a fool can do if given the opportunity. Fools, (those who are obstinate, rebellious, or self-confident) cannot receive godly wisdom.

Verse 6 - Sending a message by a fool "cuts off the feet" of satisfactory delivery. The message will probably not get there, or it will arrive late. A foolish messenger will probably perform his task poorly and leave a bad impression of the person who sent him. Instead of being useful, he creates more work for his employer. I have experienced this when I gave a duty to one whom I thought would surely take care of delivering my bills to the post office for me. They got sidetracked, and so did my mail. Although I would not call this person a "fool" they had done a foolish thing. We all do foolish things at times. This does not make us fools, but we should strive not to allow the enemy to cause us to be foolish in our ways.

Verse 7 - A parable in the mouth of a fool will not be of any use. This verse makes the comparison to one who has lame legs and cannot walk. A person who is lame must be carried about by others; they have to have help. So, it is when a fool tries to put forth a parable. Someone else has to explain it or it cannot be understood. Foolish talk never makes sense. In the mouth of a fool, a parable becomes as useless as paralyzed legs.

Verse 8 - Only a moron would tie a stone into a sling, and only a moron gives honor to a fool. Our modern equivalent of this term would be "giving someone ammunition" that is faulty. It would fire in the gun or go the wrong direction. Honor given to a fool is like ammunition backfiring.

Verse 9 - A fool misapplies a proverb so that its point is no more felt than a thorn cutting into a drunkard's hand. He puts a "spin" on a thorny issue so that one does not feel the point that is made. He is self-confident, trusting more in his own judgment than in God's. He waters down the truth. Sometimes God's Word causes us pain when we hear it, as it pierces our hearts. However, in the mouth of a fool, even God's Word can be distorted, so that one does not feel the pain of conviction and thus continues in the path of sin.

Prayer Devotional for the Day

Dear heavenly Father, thank you for Your words of wisdom in the Bible. I do want to adhere to them and avoid doing foolish things. Forgive me for the mistakes I have made in the past. Give me discernment to recognize the voice of fools, so that I am not taken in by their deceptive talk. I want to hear the truth, even if it is painful because the truth of God's Word is what sets us free. Give me ears to hear what the Spirit of God is saying, and then give me the grace to obey His Words. I ask this in the name of Jesus, our Lord. Amen.

2 notes · View notes

doomalade · 10 months ago

Note

Yes! And with this idea, let's say the deal with Lilith had warped his mind into the Alastor we know today. Not completely, but just amped up the "I'll fuck you up" part of him. I can see maybe it being apart of Alastor's redemption arc. However, it's not so a simple like Charlie and him talking it out. Because that would be waaaay to easy for someone like Alastor. I feel like he should be either the last or next to last one to crack. Anyway, because, he's not willing to just redeem himself like Charlie wants so, Charlie could maybe set up to find her Mom, now more desperate for her plan to work than ever. Of course, like every other situation like this, Lilith isn't so willing to relent her deal with Alastor, because "A deal is a deal." She's asks Lucifer, but then maybe we learn that he can't, because only Angels can intervene with a demon's deals maybe? I don't know, like I said, just building ideas. Not concrete. However, going with the idea, Charlie goes back to Heaven and strikes a deal with maybe God or St. Peter or some other angel to free Alastor from his deal with Lilith so, he can be uncorrupted. Whichever Angel she makes a deal with accepts, but at the expense of Charlie herself??

Anon

I love you

Thank you for fueling the fires back into my rewrite

It would be interesting to see how living so long in Hell and gaining such power would warp someone’s mind and soul

That the Overlords slowly become more and more sadistic with power, especially with their status putting them above their fellow sinners.

Alastor being tasked with protecting Charlie no matter what and doing whatever it takes, even if that means consuming souls to increase his power and influence so he can stand his own even against Exterminators. Even if Charlie has been white listed from being killed, Alastor’s duty and deal is to protect her and the hotel at all costs.

Her reminding him of Rosie, being that little sister figure he had lost all of those years ago, it further pushes him over the edge. Perhaps Lilith did this on purpose as a sort of equal payment for his immense power, maybe it was accidental.

Either way, all of the worst aspects of Hell consume Alastor, leaving him to be the one sinner Charlie just cannot redeem. Maybe he believes himself unable to be redeemed after all of the horrors he unleash upon Hell.

His pride, wrath, gluttony, greed, envy, lust, and sloth (okay maybe not sloth? Idk) all being rampant.

He almost feels guilt for becoming a monster, unable to live with himself thinking what Rosie might think of him, what Charlie might think of him.

And now he’s gone and enslaved Husk along with consuming and trapping countless souls. He ponders if he is no better than Lilith, who still has him on her leash, or maybe it’s best that he’s been held back by her and was not allowed to become a true monster and lay waste to Hell.

(Insert joke about more effort being put into this than what Viv did and imagine this is in a text to speech for added comedic value)

#doom.txt #hazbin hotel critical

11 notes · View notes

niningtori · 2 months ago

Note

I'm asking this question to several authors I admire, so if it seems a little random, feel free to blame my overthinking brain.

I frequently read fanfics about hybrids and honestly, I really enjoy them. However, I often find myself with little context about many aspects of the hybrid universe, so I’d love to know your perspective on it.

For example:

• How do you imagine the origin of hybrids in your universe? Are they a natural evolution, a genetic mutation, or a scientific creation?

Additionally, I have a few more questions I'd like to ask:

• How do the government and society treat hybrids in your universe? Do they have the same rights as humans, or do they face discrimination in any way?

• How do you envision interactions between hybrids of different species? Would there be rivalries, alliances, or specific ways of coexisting?

• If there’s adoption of hybrids by humans in your universe, how does that process work?

• How do you approach the topic of heat and hybrid reproduction in your universe? Do they follow similar patterns to real animals or do they have their own biological rules?

• How do you imagine the hybrid nature (half-human, half-animal) would affect their emotions and psychology?

I’m sorry if this seems like a lot or a completely off-topic question (because I know it kind of is), but I’m genuinely curious since no one seems to talk about these aspects in depth.

Regardless of your answer, thank you for your time and patience! Have a great day 🤘🏻😁💖

(If you see this same message sent to another author, don’t worry—I love you all equally!)

hi! i've never written a hybrid au myself because i have no idea if people would actually like to see that from me (seriously doubt it NQNSJEJKWID) but i do have a few ideas! i'm not sure if you meant to send this to me since i don't really write hybrid stuff but regardless here i go:

1) i like to imagine they're a scientific creation. i think i like that the most because it makes way for more angst (to me at least) because then i could make the hybrid feel isolated from human society and create conflict there

2) i would make hybrids be seen as subhuman, which ties into their creation. they would be fighting for their rights but would ultimately still be discriminated against because of their origin

3) i think there would be presumed genetic dispositions that would make you think a certain hybrid would like/dislike or coexist in different dynamics with other hybrids but in my world they would probably be so human that it wouldn't really matter what breed they are

4) i think adoptions would be similar to animal adoptions irl. the younger, cuter, rarer ones get chosen first while the others have a harder time getting adopted. depending on the quality of the adoption center/demand of the hybrid, the vetting process would either be lax or extremely demanding (e.g. you must have x amount of space, x amount of income etc.)

5) i think they would have a heat cycle and feel the need to breed but they would be able to crossbreed which i don't see a lot in hybrid au's

6) there would be a lot of feelings of inferiority and helplessness because they would have less rights/respect than humans do so i would prob make reader a human to really amp those emotions up and ensure that the hyrbid didnt feel deserving of the human at all

bonus: if i were to do this i'd probably make reader a depressed or anxious human in need of an emotional support hybrid and the male lead would be a moody hybrid that has trouble getting adopted 🫶 again i don't think that anyone would want to even see me write this because it's so out of my usual lane but it excites me nonetheless

thank you for asking and have a great day ❤️

#nini answers #anon 👤

2 notes · View notes

euphorial-docx · 1 year ago

Note

i will say as much as i agree w free palestine there are many many ppl who just use it to be antisemitic. jewish areas in britain like all over the country r being filled w antisemitic messaged accompanied by pro-palestine messages and it makes pro-palestine people like myself look bad

i am truly not trying to sound like a bitch, but i will be very very firm about this and my stances:

people who use this as a way to be antisemitic were always going to be antisemitic. about anything. about everything.

those assholes are nowhere near a big enough voice of the free palestine movement, or an actual power inside the movement at all, to be getting as much attention as they are. the antisemitic takes are being amplified for the sole purpose of discrediting any pro-palestine action. it’s another easy scapegoat to avoid any form of accountability or reflection.

additionally, what you’re saying is only anecdotal, and you’re very much inflating how popular pro-palestine stances really are. whether we realize or not, israel has a lot more power not only between governments of countries, but over every day people.

not to mention the general attitudes towards the middle east from western and european countries are already disgusting, and in modern times that almost certainly has to do with a post 9/11 america. this is feeding into those long-standing attitudes. it is soft ground for israel to bury into. but that is a much larger issue to tackle that i am too tired to break down right now.

back to the point!

in my opinion, what you’re saying is not a viable argument because of how disproportionate they are in this context. these “sides” are not mirrors of each other. they are not equal. amping up the antisemitic voices and tying them to pro-palestine stances is cut and dry propaganda, and you are fueling it by doing a variant of the “i agree but” argument.

as much as the media wants to try and complicate it, this is all actually very simple: palestine is being colonized, and has been for decades. we are witnessing ethnic cleansing and genocide. that’s what this is, and while we shouldn’t let go of empathy, we should not lose sight of the injustice palestinians are facing.

it is no coincidence that other movements such as black lives matter and land back are supporting palestine loudly; their experiences are, unfortunately and eerily, similar.

lastly, you should not be concerned about “looking bad.” supporting palestine automatically makes you look bad to many people, and the misinformation takes most of the blame for the negative perception of the free palestine movement. it is not a walk in the park to defend palestine right now. you need to push back against so much, but despite the outside forces, supporting palestine should be an easy choice— and an unwavering one at that— because what has been happening to palestine for generations is appalling.

sparknotes version: stop throwing up propaganda as talking points. you sound like you should be on fox news.

#free palestine

16 notes · View notes

dustedmagazine · 1 year ago

Text

Dust Volume Nine, Number 10

Older, but not a bit wiser, the Hives return

Fall comes with its smell of maple in the leaves, its intimations of mortality and, this year, its share of unsettling events—war in the middle east, AI in everything and the murder of our beloved Bandcamp by capitalist privateers. (We are not equating these things by any means.) Like always, we turn to music, the annihilating blare of metal, the agile interplay of improvisation, the well-shaped contours of pop, depending on our individual tastes. We hope you’ll find something to ease your own personal burden in all this as well. Contributors include Bryon Hayes, Bill Meyer, Andrew Forell, Tim Clarke, Jonathan Shaw, Ian Mathers, Alex Johnson, Jennifer Kelly and Ray Garraty.

Due to technical issues we're posting this in two parts, so don't miss the second one.

Ad Hoc — Corpse (Shame File Music / Albert’s Basement)

Ad Hoc was a Melbourne-based improvising unit, an experimental outfit that should have higher prominence. It only took 40-plus years, but Shame File Music and Albert’s Basement are finally spearheading a reissue initiative. Last year saw the arrival of the trio’s sole release, the hypnotic Distance cassette. It disappeared the moment it became available. Corpse documents an unconventional live performance from the group. They prepared their instruments (guitars, an EMS Synthi AKS synth and tape loops) for performance prior to the arrival of the audience and then shut off their amps. When all were seated, the trio turned on the amplifiers and unfurled an aleatoric blast of sound. The resulting music is far removed from the ambient tone clusters of Distance. The first piece shimmers in a way that calls to mind Matthew Bower’s Sunroof project, while the latter piece bathes in guitar noise so thick that it may have influenced The Dead C’s The Operation of the Sonne EP. Ad Hoc have today’s noisemakers beat: Corpse presents itself with a freshness that belies its 1980 provenance.

Bryon Hayes

Axolotl — Abrasive (Souffle Continu)

The French trio Axolotl existed for a few years in the early 1980s, and it reflects the aesthetic concerns of its time. Guitarist Marc Dufourd’s playing betrays some acquaintance with the work of Derek Bailey and Henry Kaiser, and the fibrous tones and agile exchanges between reeds players Jacques Oger and Etienne Brunet recall Evan Parker. All three double on electronics, hand percussion and utterances. These accessories, in combination with the concentration of the album’s 12 tracks, give the music a truculent attitude and just-the-facts brevity that brings to mind punk and post-punk. This may be free improvisation, but it is improvised from a point of view, and it’s that informed attitude that makes the album worth visiting nearly 40 years after its original release.

Bill Meyer

Will Butler + Sister Squares — Self-Titled (Merge)

youtube

Will Butler joins with Sister Squares — multi-instrumentalists Jenny (Butler’s wife) and Julie Shore, Sara Dobbs and drummer/producer Miles Francis — for their debut album. Bouncy, heartland rock garlanded with that 1980s Fairlight and Linn drum sound mixes with touches of art rock as Butler emotes wholehearted. The influence of the 20 years Butler spent with Arcade Fire is inescapable, but it feels like the quintet have also been listening to Billy MacKenzie (“Long Grass”) and Russell Mael (“Arrow of Time”) as well as Springsteen, Mellencamp and company. “Hee Loop” sounds like a mash of Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel. The themes and emotions can be big in that Arcade Fire way that’s equal parts exhilarating and exhausting, but the album works best when the band dial down the melodramatic flourishes as on “Car Crash” and “The Window,” where Butler is right in your ear, tired, disillusioned, real. This is a record I wanted to like both more and less. For every heartfelt moment and interesting musical choice, there’s a cringe-inducing gestural overreach that makes you wince. A bit like his former band but with enough promise to persevere with.

Andrew Forell

Claire Deak — Sotto Voce (Lost Tribe Sound)

Melbourne-based composer Claire Deak’s last release on Lost Tribe Sound was 2020’s The Old Capital, a fantastic collaboration with Tony Dupé. In my Dusted review I said, “There’s so much wonderful stuff going on across these seven songs that it’s a delight to revisit.” As its title suggests, Deak’s solo debut, Sotto Voce, very much sits at the opposite end of the musical spectrum. This is subtle, minimal music that softly arises out of silence and speaks an elusive language. The background to the album’s creation is Deak’s exploration of the work of two women composers from the early baroque era, Francesca Caccini (1587–c.1645) and Barbara Strozzi (1619–1677). The dominant musical elements are strings, harp and voice, with other instruments coloring the edges of these understated, starkly beautiful compositions. Across the album’s 42 minutes the music feels, at times, to be battling the entropy of erasure, struggling to be heard amid the cacophony of these overstimulated times. For that reason alone, it’s necessary to invest your attention and listen closely. The experience is eerie and transportive.

Tim Clarke

Mike Donovan — Meets the Mighty Flashlight (Drag City)

On a musical Venn diagram showing the intersecting circles of garage rock, lo-fi, and psych, Mike Donovan has set up his sandbox. With Sic Alps he veered more noisy and lo-fi; with Peacers he favored a straight-ahead garage-rock sound. On this new record with Mike Fellows, AKA The Mighty Flashlight, Donovan steers in the direction of shambolic psychedelic-pop in the vein of the Olivia Tremor Control. (To anyone who knows and loves OTC, this is obviously a very good thing.) The splashy drums and percussion tracks feel like a gestural afterthought rather than a rhythmic backbone the songs are built around, and Donovan and Fellows steer these songs into some choppy, unexpected waters. Opener “Planet Metley” is the clearest and most successful distillation of their aesthetic, offering up a staggering range of ideas in under four minutes, stopping and starting erratically, the bass roving all over the fretboard. At the other end of the spectrum, “Laurel Lotus Dub” is the kind of experiment that sounds like it was more fun to create that it is to listen back to. Between these two extremes there’s the junkshop boogie of “A Capital Pitch,” which features the hilarious line, “Hanging out on the ramparts with some dickheads in black,” the concise drum-machine and organ instrumental “Amalgam Wagon,” and the plaintive, country-flavored “Whistledown.” Wherever Donovan roams it’s usually worth following, and Meets the Mighty Flashlight is a winning collaboration that fizzes with fun.

Tim Clarke

Everything Falls Apart — Everything Falls Apart (Totalism)

“Somn” means sleep, or more poetically death. It’s the title of six of the seven tracks from Everything Falls Apart, the self-titled album from the duo of Belgian bassist Otto Lindholm (born Cyrille de Haes) and English producer Ross Tones. Those titles (numbered six to 11) and the coda “Wonderfully Desolate” tell you only part of the story of the music the pair produce. Their conversation focuses on the nuance of the Lindholm’s double bass which Tones swathes in electronic effects, stretching notes and motifs into near drones in timbres that rise from the murk like lugubrious sentinels. This is seriously heavy music but the dynamism of the duo’s understanding and interplay distinguishes Everything Falls Apart. Whilst many of the pieces focus on stasis and decay, “Somn 9” is a desert storm with clicking percussion, almost didgeridoo like growls from the bass and screeching electronic noise. On “Somn 11”, deep bowed notes support Lindholm’s move through the registers as if shaking from fitful dreams into the morning light. “Wonderfully Desolate” is comparatively unadorned, a string quartet playing against the end times, shimmers of light through the cracks.

Andrew Forell

False Fed — Let Them Eat Fake (Neurot Recordings)

youtube

Is it accurate to call a band including members of legendary underground acts Amebix (Stig Miller), Nausea (Roy Mayorga) and Broken Bones (Jeff Janiak) a “supergroup”? It might help to note that Janiak has sung for Discharge since 2014, and Mayorga has done a couple stints as drummer for Ministry. All names to conjure with (though a few of us first encountered Mayorga as a teenager back in the 1980s Lehigh Valley hardcore scene, when he drummed for Youthquake; West Catty Playground Building forever, man). In any case, the players have pooled their talents to create this death-rocking, sorta goth, sorta post-punk record, and it’s a lot of grim, grimy fun. Most of the music is mid-tempo, grand and romantic in its gestures, but shot through with a crusty growl in the guitars and production tone. The best songs speed things up a bit; both “The Tyrant Dies” and “The Big Sleep” have compelling momentum, complementing the stakes of songs’ ideas. It's Armagideon Time, people. Here’s your soundtrack, from dudes that know.

Jonathan Shaw

Hauschka— Philanthropy (City Slang)

German composer Volker Bertelmann’s 15th album of prepared piano pieces under the name Hauschka is noticeably warmer than some of his previous works. Joined by Samuli Kosminen on percussion and electronics and cellist Laura Wiek, Hauschka continues his exploration of the rhythmic and timbral possibilities of his instrument. At times almost jaunty, there are echoes of Bertelmann’s previous experiments with melancholic atmospherics but the general tone here is welcoming and optimistic. Kosminen adds subtle effects which frame rather than obscure the piano. There’s a touch of Satie in Hauschka’s playful iconoclastic approach to the piano and his deceptively simple melodies, especially on “Loved Ones” where Wiek’s plangent cello lines sustain and decay over an allusive harmony that speaks both of innocence and experience. At the other end of the spectrum, the closing piece “Noise” builds abstract ambience from repeated piano notes, smears of cello and a quiet wash of effects as if the players are enveloped in a thick damp fog. A lovely album for both fans and newcomers.

Andrew Forell

The Hives — The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons (Disques Hives)

youtube

There are usually going to be some questions when a band comes back with a new record after over a decade, maybe especially so with an act like Swedish garage/punk flamboyants the Hives; can they match the energy of their youth? Are they still willing and able to give us the old thrills? Or have they (and this is usually asked with a small, tasteful shudder of disgust) matured? It doesn’t take very long into first single/first track “Bogus Operandi” for the concerned listener to have reason for a sigh of relief. Anyone who used to (or still does?) blast “Main Offender” or “Hate to Say I Told You So” or “Walk Idiot Walk” should feel the galvanizing charge of a true, Frankensteinian resurrection once the riff hits. And across these not-quite-32 minutes (the brevity is also a promising sign) Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist and the boys kick up exactly the kind of racket you’d want from them, with tracks like “Trapdoor Solution” and “The Bomb” savoring the kind of gleefully dumb fun they’ve always provided (with a nice sideline in some of Almqvist’s deliberately, over-the-top awful narrators on “Two Kinds of Trouble” and “What Did I Ever Do to You?”). They even continue to throw out small, satisfying variations on the classic Hives sound like the brassy swagger of “Stick Up” and the surprisingly heartfelt thrash of “Smoke & Mirrors”. They may have killed off their “sixth member,” but the Hives are otherwise in rude health.

Ian Mathers

Islet — Soft Fascination (Fire)

The Welsh psych-electronic oddballs in Islet are on their fourth full-length now but show no signs of settling down. Soft Fascination is a bonkers mash up of dance pop, art song, hip hop, noise and folk. “Euphoria” floats a feather-light daze, a la Avey Tare, then punctures it the rat-at-tat of snare, the rifle shot rap repartee of Emma Daman Thomas. Gossamer textures of synth weave in and around the main action, snapping tight at intervals, like sails catching a hard wind. The whole thing is butterfly ephemeral with strong wires holding it up, a combination of daydream and architecture. “River Body,” if anything, tips even crazier, with its infectious sing-song, skip-rope vocals, its tootling toy keyboards, its blasts of noise and friction. And what can you make of “Sherry” which bucks and heaves and shouts out “Ay, ay, ay, ay,” like a lost Matias Aguayar cut? “Ay, ay, ay, ay,” indeed.

Jennifer Kelly

Jute Gyte — Unus Mundus Patet (Self-released)

Unus Mundus Patet is not the most dissonant or challenging record Adam Kalmbach has released during his 20-plus-year run under the Jute Gyte moniker. But neither is this black metal for the kvlt trve believers or for the hipster-adjacent sets, be they transcendental or ecstatic or blackgazy. The songs twist and turn in on themselves, always clear in their expressions of complex musical ideas, and also — somehow, someway — listenable and enjoyable. Avant-garde? Sure thing, and likely a much more authentic iteration of that phrase’s meaning than the music many other metal bands churn out under cover of high-minded beard stroking. See the by-turns undulating and fragmenting “Killing a Sword” or the trudging, vertiginous and then utterly thrilling “Philoctetes.” Jute Gyte doesn’t make music for the background, but if you can give these songs your full attention, you’ll be rewarded. Turn it up and open the portal into somewhere much weirder and more marvelous.

Jonathan Shaw

Danny Kamins / Chris Alford / Charles Pagano — The Secret Stop (Musical Eschatology)

Free improvisation may be a little sparser on the ground in the southern USA than it is in Chicago or New York, but The Secret Stop affirms the vigor of those who participate. Guitarist Chris Alford and drummer Charles Pagano play in New Orleans, and Danny Kamins is a saxophonist from Texas; this encounter took place in the Crescent City. As even players in places like the aforementioned northern cities or London will affirm, travel comes with this territory. Their interactions display a capacity to sustain balance when the energy is high and to back off when doing so will transform the music’s tension. Kamins intersperses long, coarse tones with emphatic pops, and Alford evidences a fluent stutter that suggests he’s spent a lot of time studying James “Blood” Ulmer’s sound grammar. Pagano’s cymbal sizzle and mutating not-quite-patterns provide both forward momentum and a framework within which the action occurs.

Bill Meyer

MIKE \ Wiki \ The Alchemist — Faith Is a Rock (ALC)

youtube

The long awaited collaboration between The Alchemist and MIKE took a sudden turn when they took on board another New York rapper Wiki who steals the show here. Both Wiki and MIKE were outcasts recording music in the vein of Earl Sweatshirt, even though MIKE was always a better version of Earl with only possibly a tenth of his fame. Knowing no rest, The Alchemist (that is his fourth collab this year) takes both MCs way out of their comfort zone, refusing to pander to the needs. MIKE and Wiki have to deal with The Alchemist’s fast and thick layered production, and it works for all of them. “Mayors A Cop” is a standout here, and Faith Is a Rock is one strong contender for the tape of the year.

Ray Garraty

Camila Nebbia — Una Ofrenda A La Ausencía (Relative Pitch)

The title translates as An Offering To Absence, which of course raises the question, what’s missing? Camila Nebbia is a multidisciplinary artist who grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but has seems to have spent a fair chunk of time moving around Europe in recent years, and is currently based in Berlin. She has a sizable discography, but this correspondent has not heard most of it, so let’s just focus on the album at hand. Its 16 tracks present three facets of her work — acoustic tenor saxophone, electronically adjusted saxophone and poetry — with the first method best represented. The unaccompanied saxophone performances reveal her mastery of both weight-bearing muscularity and adroit tap-dancing on the far side of the fences that confine conventional tonality. But when she layers long tones and feedback, Nebbia becomes a one-woman orchestra transmitting heavy Penderecki vibes. The one poem included, “Dejo que me lieve” (“I let it lie”), is recited in Spanish, and no translation is offered; perhaps home is what’s not there, so she needs to manifest it creatively?

Bill Meyer

[Continued in Part 2, because Tumblr decided we only get 10 audio links.]

8 notes · View notes