#I just realized I had a typo in this quote

[lovebugism]

oh my god,,,, gurl!!!! THE CUSTOMER'S ALWAYS RIGHT fic is sooo good 😫 my heart literally breaks every time I read this story. Thank you for blessing us with this masterpiece <3

THE CUSTOMER'S ALWAYS RIGHT | square one

summary: eddie makes a confession that's been weighing heavy on his heart. you realize that your future with him is haunted by ghosts from your past. pairing: virgin!eddie munson / f!reader word count: 16.3k warnings: hopper, steve, and robin being the reader defense squad, hints at reader's previously poor mental health, mentions of abusive and toxic relationships, a banshees of inisherin quote, b*lly h*rgrove because he needs a warning. (pretend any typos don't exist pls and thank u!) a/n: guess who's back, back again? ✨✨ i'd apologize for disappearing for a month, but then there'd be apologies in all my notes, so just know that i'm sorry every time i disappear unexpectedly, okay? 🥲 thanks for being so patient! please enjoy this long-awaited installment of tcar ily <3

( PREVIOUSLY ) | ( SERIES MASTERLIST ) | ( NEXT )

Eddie’s got a 1986 Van Halen tape in his boombox and a baby pink heart stitched into the fabric of his shirt. He’s the least metal he’s ever been, but he couldn’t be happier.

You keep your promise to him to patch up his torn Hellfire tee. If anything, you use the absentminded assurance as your excuse to see him again. The night you shared before, all but baring your scarred souls underneath glittering stars and streams of pale moonlight, hadn’t satiated your hunger for him. Eddie left you craving in a way you weren’t used to before — a yearning to be close to him that went beyond the boundaries of physical intimacy.

It was a simple sort of longing. It was a homesickness. A sense of nostalgia for a love you’d never felt before.

You wish you could wear Eddie’s adoration for you like a blanket, wrap yourself in the hand-stitched quilt of many colors and bundle it tighter around your shoulders when the cold comes. You want his softness to hold you in a way you’ve never been able to hold yourself.

You feel swaddled in it, succumbed and cloaked and at peace in all his tenderness. You’ve never been so at ease, so blissfully comforted by the presence of another human being. And Eddie feels all of that, every ounce of warmth you feel, because it pours out of you like rays of sunshine and bathes him in shades of gold.

He didn’t think you could get any softer than you had been that night at Skull Rock, until you were nestled in his unmade bed the next morning. You curled your legs underneath you as you weaved the needle and thread through the tear in his t-shirt, eyes squinted and tongue poking out the side of your mouth in an astute concentration. 

All of the sudden, you were marshmallow fluff and honey on toast — made of all things sickly sweet that made his stomach feel suddenly full. 

You finish mending the rip in record time and beam when he wears the heart-shaped stitching with pride. The rest of the day thereafter was spent in the tiny confines of his one hundred square-inch bedroom. From there, the both of you came to the silent understanding that you didn't want to spend another day apart.

The weekend had given you a limited sort of freedom, allowed you to pretend that you lived in a world with no responsibilities or anything other than Eddie Eddie Eddie, but adulthood made you no such promises. He had a side job to do to keep himself afloat, and you had a cat that thought it was the end of the world anytime you were gone for longer than a night. Both of those things together meant that the eve of parting was ultimately inevitable.

Every second you spent away from Eddie felt like you were grieving.

You mourned for him in the darkness of your apartment and tried to pretend you weren’t half a person in the cat food aisle at Melvald’s.

You tried to lessen the unbearable distance with phone calls, though it didn’t come nearly as close as feeling his fingers thrumming imaginary beats on your thigh or his heartbeat thudding against your ear. 

But his voice filled the emptiness of your one-bedroom apartment and the Eddie Munson shaped hole he’d left just behind your ribcage, and that was good enough for you.

When you weren’t with him, you were roaming around your apartment like some kind of ghost, with the phone tucked between your ear and shoulder and the rotary clutched in your free hand. 

You cook yourself dinner with him ranting about his day in your ear. You hold the receiver closer to Bowie and force him to hear her purr when she’s being exceptionally cute. He falls asleep some hours later to the sound of your soft snores, and you wake up the next morning to the sounds of his.

It was pathetic, truly.

You’d be gagging at how sweet it was if it wasn’t happening to you.

But it was.

Every ounce of this sticky sweet goodness was yours, and it tasted just like honey on your tongue. 

It was the honeymoon stage times a thousand, all rose-colored and reflecting light — your own personal utopia. It brought with it a heavenly sort of refuge, a bubble of peace you never wanted to pierce.

Eddie basks in the serenity of it all when he finally has you with him again. You’re in his lap, on his lips, and all over him, but it still isn’t quite close enough. He doesn’t think he’ll be satisfied until you’ve successfully melted with him and your limbs have entwined with his like tree roots, destined to remain that way for the next couple of centuries or so.

And it’s weird because he could hardly handle living in such a tiny trailer with Wayne, let alone stomach more than a couple hours with the guys from Hellfire all in one place. But you? You entered his life all at once and now he can’t remember what it was like without you.

He doesn’t particularly want to, if he’s being real honest.

It’s why he’s always less enthused about letting you leave when you’ve both got responsibilities dragging you apart. He begs you to stay with him a few hours more, pleads for you to stick around while he makes a quick deal or an emergency pick-up when Dustin Henderson calls and says he needs a ride. 

And you promise you’ll wait on him there, because he makes it virtually impossible to say no to his rosy pouted lips and chocolate syrup puppy dog eyes.

That’s when you run into Wayne for the first time, when Eddie’s out and you’re making breakfast for when he comes back.

French toast and scrambled eggs sizzle on the stove and warm the kitchen with all its cinnamon confections. It makes the man’s face screw up in confusion when he steps inside the trailer because he’s never known Eddie to cook a day in his life. And then his eyes find you — a young, pretty girl all alone in his kitchen with his nephew’s van gone from the drive.

“…Who the hell are you?” he wonders gruffly and pops a cigarette between his lips, totally unbothered.

He’s got no reason to be intimidated by the stranger in his trailer. He’s more confused than anything else, and he’s got this contorted look on his face like he’s blaming the exhaustion from the graveyard shift for his vision of you.

“Oh— my god,” you mumble through the mouthful of whipped cream you’d squeezed into your mouth moments prior. You fight to swallow it all down. “Uh. Hi. I’m, um… I’m Eddie’s... girlfriend?”

It sounds like you’re lying. 

In some ways, it feels like you are. 

You’ve been spending more time in his trailer than in your own home, but it’s not like either of you has motioned to make anything official just yet.

He eyes you with a tired and heavy gaze, eyes as dark and as infinite as Eddie’s. The man gives you a once-over and then chuckles lowly to himself as he tosses his corduroy jacket onto the back of the recliner and his tin lunchbox to the coffee table.

You shift awkwardly on the other side of the room. “…What is it?”

“When Eddie said he was talkin’ to a pretty girl on the phone every night, I thought he was lyin’,” he admits through hearty chuckles. 

It makes you laugh too. 

There’s little talking after the fact, besides you offering him some of the breakfast on the stove and him joking that you should come around more often.

You recount the story to Eddie when he returns, utterly mortified about the whole thing. You’re even more embarrassed when the boy finds amusement in your horror and starts to chuckle to himself — not exactly at you, but not with you either.

He laughs louder when you swat at him for it. You clamber on top of him, mattress squeaking mattress under your weight, as you demand him to stop through giggles of your own.

Somewhere down the line, both of you stop caring. 

Neither of you is quite sure where the conversation stopped and ended, only that when you started kissing, you couldn’t stop. 

They weren’t innocent little pecks, but they weren’t sloppy and full of tongue either. You press your lips together with the intent of being as close as you can to the other, like you haven’t spent every second you could together.

Neither of you will be satisfied until you’ve swallowed each other whole.

And you, you’ve got this ache for him. A swirling of want that’s constantly rippling in your belly for this boy. He’s just not usually under you when it’s happening — and now that he is, the crackling embers have burst into white and blue flames behind your sternum.

Your lips click each time you part, a lewd noise you never want to stop hearing. The sound of it gives you goosebumps, like a good song you’ve just heard on the radio. You wonder if Eddie can feel them as his hands start to creep up beneath your shirt and find purchase along your waist. 

You open his mouth with your own and sneak your tongue inside just as you roll your hips over his lap.

It’s the most forthcoming either of you had been in your three-day stint of nonstop talking. Even when you were over at the trailer, totally alone and pressed underneath him, it was otherwise completely innocent. You just make out like a couple of teenagers until one of you wants to make a food run or offers to roll a joint. 

And you like that. You like that he doesn’t expect anything from you, but it does get a little agonizing when you’ve tried every attempt to give yourself to him and he just won’t take it.

Like usual, Eddie tenses when he feels you grinding on top of him — partly because he feels a tingle at the base of his spine when he gets instantly half-hard, but mostly because he knows there’s nothing he can do about it.

He keeps preaching to himself it’s not the right time, it’s not the right time, it’s not the right time — but he’s got no idea when it’ll ever be the right time, if it’ll ever be the right time, or if he’ll know it when it comes.

Because he’s had you to himself for days now — no Wayne, no responsibilities, no pressure — with his tongue rutting against yours and your hands fidgeting with the metal buttons of his jeans, and it still doesn’t feel good enough. Eddie doesn’t feel good enough.

He’s not sure if he ever will.

And it’s not you. God, it’s the farthest thing from you. As far as Eddie’s concerned, he’s never had more fun with anyone else. He’s never laughed harder with anyone else. He’s never felt as comfortable with anyone as he’s starting to feel around you. So he’s not entirely sure why he finds the rest of it so hard. 

Eddie wants you so bad that the ache of all his yearning is palpable. It’s like the weight of it is what’s keeping him from you — unstoppable force, immovable object, blah, blah, blah. 

Either way, it leaves him entirely unable to take things further with you, however much he wants to. There’s something in his way and it’s him. 

Your heartache is his own when he has to pull away from you.

“You okay?” you ask him with wide eyes and swollen lips, always so concerned for him.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m good,” he’s quick to assure you. He’s still breathless when he fidgets beneath you, trying to prop himself up on his headboard without rubbing his half-hard cock against your thigh.

When he succeeds, he musters a smile that shakes at the edges. “It’s just… you know, not everything… It doesn’t have to be about sex, you know?”

He makes himself as soft as possible for you when he says this. He gets rid of all the usual teasing lilts that tend to lurk on his tongue as the words spill from his mouth. The last thing he wants to do is hurt your feelings or, in some roundabout way, make you think you’re the problem. 

He just wants you to know that that isn’t why he’s been wanting to spend so much time with you. There was never an ulterior motive with him other than all the adoration he holds in his hands and his mouth for you.

The strike of hurt that flashes across your face is obvious to only Eddie, who’s spent enough time mapping out your features to know what twitches are ones of discontent. The slight frown that dips between your brows when they scrunch together for half a second comes like a stroke of lightning. It’s a brief flash of purple in the sky that leaves so quickly that it makes you wonder if it was ever there at all.

You fidget on his lap, not resting as comfortably upon him as you had been just moments before. “Oh…” you murmur through soft, jutted-out lips. “Sorry. I, I didn’t—”

“No, it’s not— that’s not what I—” he tries to assure over your insecure stammers, but succeeds only in tripping over himself in return. He cuts himself off with a breathy laugh, shaking his head while his fingers fidget on your hips. “That’s just not what this is about for me, you know? I just… I wanna spend time with you.”

It’s easily the softest thing he’s ever said to you — to anybody, for the matter — and the marshmallow sweetness of it all wraps around you like wisps of pink cotton candy.

Your apprehensiveness twists into something lighter, a pair of twinkling eyes and a bashful smile.

“Oh,” you hum again, obviously more pleased than before. “That’s nice…”

“No one’s ever said that to you before, have they?” Eddie asks you.

He tries to muster a crooked smirk as the words leave his mouth, but he’s got a feeling he already knows the answer. Hearing you affirm his suspicions will do nothing more than make him angry at all the assholes that had you before him, at everyone who taught you that you were good for sex and hardly a thing else. 

It makes him wish that he’d gotten to know you sooner. Maybe then you’d understand that he’d be happy just holding you like this and never doing anything more.

You don’t answer him verbally, just shake your head with your lips pursed softly to the side. You look more innocent than anything he’s ever seen before, even with your lipstick smeared on your chin. 

He’s still not quite sure how someone could be so reckless with such a fragile thing — to watch you break and not spend the rest of time grieving to know that you’ll never be quite the same again. 

There’s a primal instinct that swims in him then, an urge to keep you in his arms and locked in the confines of his trailer forever and ever. He wants to keep the wolves of Hawkins, Indiana from ever getting a whiff of you again. It’d be more than they deserved, anyway.

“God, you have got to get better boyfriends, sweetheart,” Eddie tells you with a playful lilt in his voice despite the anger simmering in his belly.

“Isn’t that what you are?” you giggle.

His world stops.

“Huh?”

You tense at his tenseness. Only when he’s gaping at you does the weight of your words dawn on you. “…Huh?”

The awkward moment goes as quickly as it arrives, chased out by the fit of laughter the two of you are quickly thrown into. Your entwining chuckles rise like smoke in his tiny bedroom and then settle back over you like a fuzzy blanket.

“Are you asking me to be your boyfriend, babe?” Eddie teases.

“Of course not,” you scoff. “Babe.”

“Oh, right, of course not. That would be way too crazy considering we’ve spent, like, every day together and have made each other come… what is it now? Twice?”

“Three times for me,” you correct with you a smile. “You need to catch up, Eddie Spaghetti.”

“Another time?” he offers with a scrunched nose.

“Whenever you want.”

Eddie is grateful for your lack of urgency, even more so for the kiss you press to the tip of his nose. 

You peck him on the lips after — once, twice, and then a thiiird, drawn out time — before moving on to his chin and jaw and neck. Whatever part of him you can reach (which is just about everywhere, considering the vantage point you’ve got sitting on his lap), you sprinkle a kiss to it.

It’s an innocent sort of affection, the kind that makes him wonder how it ever came to be in the first place. What evolutionary measures led to this, to you pressing your lips to his skin to show how much you care about him? Eddie doesn’t really want to know the answer, he’s just grateful that it happened in the first place.

You’re so good at it, loving on him. You’re always so kind and so gentle in your way and it makes him feel guilty. There’s a lingering feeling of undeservedness that settles something heavy at the base of his stomach. How could he ever expect you to be so open with him when he hasn’t done the same for you?

A heavy sigh rattles in his deflating chest. 

“I gotta tell you something, sweetheart,” he cautions when your lips smack against the thrumming pulse below the left side of his jaw. “Something you’re not gonna like…”

A billion things run through your head all at once. When you part from him, he can see the rollercoaster of emotions each one of them puts you through.

Your first instinct is that he’s got some kind of partner he’s kept hidden from you until now. It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve gone steady with a guy who’s then told you about some other girlfriend he had — or, god forbid, a wife. 

But then you realize that you surely would’ve had some sort of inkling if that were the case. There’s no way Eddie would’ve been able to spend every second of his day with you — and then another several hours on the phone when you had to leave — without someone else coming along to burst your bubble. 

And so far, there haven’t been any angry wives, just the occasionally confused Uncle Wayne.

Then you start thinking he’s about to tell you he wants an open relationship. The you’re great, but I’m just not ready to settle down yet spiel that you’ve heard a thousand times before. Usually when people say that, they mean that they just don’t want to settle down with you.

You’ll become some douchebag’s fuck toy for a month or more until the girl next door comes around. He gets her knocked up in record time, his family forces him to marry her, and they begin their cushy lives together in the center of some cul-de-sac — really settle down, as it were.

You’re not sure if you could take that from Eddie. You could grin and bear if it you had to, take whatever attention he’s willing to give you because who cares if he’s giving it to someone else on the side? You’re just not sure how long you’d last like that.

And then you start to worry that he’s just going to break up with you entirely — it’s not you, it’s blah, I’ll always care about blah, please don’t tell anyone about how we blah-ed. That whole talk. 

All the rest of your worries stop mattering so much because you’ve only just called him your boyfriend. And here he goes, about to end it all before it can really even start. That’d be just your luck, you figure.

“Did I do something wrong?” you caution after a few moments of heavy silence.

Eddie’s bleeding heart wrenches at your words, at how sad they sound spilling from your mouth, and how you immediately think that it’s got something to do with you. 

He shakes his head feverishly in response. “No. No, it’s not you. You’re… you’re perfect.”

“Okay…” you concede quietly, voice trembling with a lingering disbelief.

“I just… I haven’t been totally honest with you, you know?” the boy admits before his glimmering chocolate eyes fly open and he corrects himself quickly. “And I haven’t lied to you or anything. Not— Not exactly. I just… I wanna be honest with you… As your boyfriend and all.”

You can tell by the sudden weight in his voice that he’s serious. But the fine coat of glowing rose that splotches Eddie’s cheeks after calling himself your boyfriend for the first time makes you melt. 

You smile to yourself and start to trace the heart you’d stitched into his t-shirt with your finger.

“Yeah. I mean, we are about to spend our two minutes anniversary together and everything.”

“Exactly,” the boy huffs out a laugh. It lacks its usual jest, though, because of the ice-cold anxiety that drenches him from head to toe and makes his hands and feet go numb.

His fingers tremble where the rest on your waist, trying and failing to find a comfortable position there because, right about now, Eddie feels the most awkward he’s ever felt.

“I just want you to know that I… I’ve never done this before,” he confesses quietly and with his eyes squeezed shut. He prays that he doesn’t have to be any less vague than that.

Your face twists in confusion — your brows furrow and your nose twitches and your head tilts to the side like a puppy. And then you’re laughing, a soft little thing of a giggle that normally makes his heart sing, though now he can only feel it breaking.

“What…?” he tries to scoff out his own chuckle. “Why are you laughing?”

“Because you’ve already told me that, dummy. That you’ve never felt this way before…” you answer, reciting his own words back to him. You haven’t yet forgotten how he’d looked at you as you said them, pale skin made silk under the moonlight while he sparkled beneath the beams of it and his love for you. 

“No, it’s… it’s more than that,” he corrects. “I’ve never even had a girlfriend before you. Or anything really.”

You still don’t seem to understand. You just look on at him with uncertainty. 

A quiet “okay?” tumbles from your mouth entwined with a nervous giggle, because you don’t understand what’s got him so somber. He’s never dated anyone, you’ve fucked half of Hawkins — these are just facts that went unsaid before now. 

And maybe it’s because you’ve never been with a virgin before, but the thought that Eddie might be one hasn’t seemed to cross your mind at all. 

It’s that exact thought that scares him. 

Because if it hasn’t already, maybe it’s because you’re avoiding it altogether. And why would he ever be the exception?

He opts to bite the bullet and hopes that his heart doesn’t get broken after.

“I’m a virgin. Okay? I’m a complete, total, proper adult virgin,” he blurts with a brazenness he’d previously lacked when it came to all this. “And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before now, but I didn’t, because I liked you and I was scared. So if you wanna yell at me or if you wanna break up with me before our five-minute anniversary, I totally get it, but I should probably let you know that it’ll rip my little virgin heart to shreds, so…”

Eddie ends his nervous ramble with a trembling, lopsided smile that does little to ease the leaden tension he’s just manufactured in the four walls of his bedroom.

He can’t seem to gauge your reaction after the fact, which is strange because he always knows what you’re thinking. 

He knows when you’re laughing with him and not at him. You scrunch your nose and giggle when he tells you a funny joke, then tilt your head back and cackle when he trips over the punchline. 

He knows the exact moment when something’s started to bother you — when you get real quiet in your bubble of reserved stillness and your eyes start to glaze over. To anyone else, it might just look like a person who’s keeping to themselves. Eddie’s starting to learn that usually means trouble when it comes to you.

He knows the difference between your gentle sort of sadness and when you’re damn near inconsolable. When you cried at the end of Stand By Me, you smiled at him with a glassy tear-filled gaze, then rolled your eyes when he tried to comfort you. The tears only spilled over when you laughed because Eddie pretended you’d hurt him when you’d shoved him away. 

But when you’re really upset about something, you don’t show him at all — you fight to keep it all to yourself until you’ve squished the problem into a tiny enough ball that you can forget about all of it.

This is something different.

There’s too much crossing your mind all at once for him to get a good read of you.

You just gape at him, like you’re trying to figure out if he’s joking or not, and then fighting to understand what it means when you realize he’s being serious. 

And just when you’ve started to wrap your head around it all, when your brain remembers how to make words again and you realize you haven’t said anything in several agonizing seconds, a foreign voice sounds from down the hallway.

Not foreign in that it was unfamiliar exactly, just foreign in that you and Eddie had spent so much time alone that you were starting to forget that there was an entire world outside of yourselves. A great big world, filled with a great many people, some of whom were your friends who tended to get pretty worried about you.

“Edward Wayne— why the hell is the Chief in my driveway?” his uncle curses from the living room, sounding like he’s speaking through a cigarette in his mouth.

Eddie himself is immediately freaking the fuck out because he figures he must’ve gotten tipped off again. He tries to calculate the quickest way to get you off of him and to all of his cubby holes full of miscellaneous drugs so he can flush them down the toilet before Jim Hopper busts the door down.

And even though you’re not the drug dealer who’s had cops on their ass since they were fifteen in this equation, you look a whole lot more terrified than Eddie does.

Your eyes go wide and the whites of them swim with terror as you launch yourself off of his lap. You don’t spare another glance back at him, not even when you nearly trip over yourself when you shove your sneakers on your feet and shuffle out of the room. He’s forced to follow behind you like a confused puppy as you bound through the trailer at lightning speed. 

The haste of your movements startles even Wayne, who halts mid-puff of his cig when you’re in and out of the living room before he can blink. The opening squeak of the screen door and metal slamming against metal is the only thing that punctuates your exit.

“Would it kill you to answer your damn phone every once in a while?” the powerful timbre of Jim Hopper’s angry voice, of which only the man himself could pull off, is muffled until Eddie cautiously slinks onto the porch behind you. 

He finds the chief standing beside the Cruiser he’s parked sideways. The door of it is still flung open. A distant beeping sounds from the ignition. 

He’s still got on the pressed khakis of his uniform — complete with the golden badge pinned to his chest, darkened sunglasses on the bridge of his nose, and flat-brimmed hat on his head. Even with the majority of his face covered, it does little to hide the anger that radiates off of him like a hot stove eye.

You remain on the porch, shifting your weight on your feet at the top of the steps. “Okay, Hopper, just listen to me for a second—”

“Three days!” he shouts over you, not deterred by your composed nature. “I have been calling you… for three days! Seventy-two hours. No answer!”

Eddie decides to speak up from behind you despite his better judgment. “Yeah, uh, that was kinda my fault,” he confesses with an awkward laugh. “Wouldn’t let her hang up the phone—”

“I’ll deal with you in a second,” Jim interjects firmly and without thinking. He goes back to berating you with an admirable finesse. “Buckley wanted my head on a pike when I wouldn’t file a missing person’s report in the first twenty-four hours, but seventy-two? She was gonna kill me!”

Rather than argue with him, like every fiber of your being so desperately wants to, you make the difficult choice to concede with a heavy sigh. Because you don’t doubt that Robin was on his ass the second she realized you weren’t answering your phone or at your apartment when she and Steve dropped by.

She did tend to be on the overprotective side, after all, which obviously paired well with her melodramatic disposition.

“I’m sorry, okay? I’ve just been… busy.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard the one before,” the man answers bitterly.

“It’s different, Hopper!”

“I’ve heard the one before, too!”

Eddie can only assume that the both of you are communicating telepathically, what with the way your synchronized glares seem to say a thousand words (probably every curse imaginable, if he had to guess) without your mouths ever moving once. 

He stands on the outskirts of it all, feeling a bit stuck in the thorniness of such a tense silence, like any slight movement might cut him.

Jim moves slowly, akin to a creeping snake, as his hands raise to remove the glasses from his face. Their lack reveals the ice-cold glare that was previously hiding beneath them.

“Get in the car—” 

“—No,” you reject just as the direction leaves his mouth because you knew it was coming.

Jim inhales sharply and smacks his lips against his teeth, like a father whose child is most ardently testing his patience. He plants his work boot in the gravel and his hand on his hips. His steel gaze goes far off for a moment before flitting back to you again.

“…Get in the car or I put you in handcuffs.”

Your breath hitches at the threat. You squint over at him. “You wouldn’t.”

Jim smiles at you, but it’s more threatening than anything else. “We both know that I would.”

Eddie’s eyes flit between the both of you. He can tell that Hopper’s serious and that you’re trying to decide whether or not to call his bluff, with your arms crossed defensively over your chest and lips pursed in a tight line.

You ultimately decide not to. Because Hopper has, in fact, done that before. And even though the circumstances are very, very different, you wouldn’t put it past him to do it again. So you all but stomp your foot like a protesting child and spin on your heel to storm back inside the trailer.

Eddie’s nervous gaze flits between your disappearing form and the storm cloud of a police chief standing in his driveway. When their eyes lock, he realizes he should probably say something. He cocks his thumb over his shoulder and stammers, “I should— I should probably…”

He doesn’t finish his sentence. He catches the front door before it shuts and slithers through the crack of it to follow in behind you.

“Wait, was he— was he being serious about that?” Eddie wonders once you’re back in his bedroom.

It feels a lot less cozy than it did minutes before, less like the bubble of refuge that you thought nobody could pierce and more like a lonely space that feels entirely too empty. You pluck your things scattered around his room, and it starts to feel less and less like home with parts of you gone from it.

“I don’t know,” you answer within a sigh as you collect your cardigan from the back of his desk chair and shrug the thing back over your shoulders again.

“But it’s happened before?”

“Yeah. Once. When I was…” you confess quietly, then trail off. You get your bag from his nightstand and haphazardly shove your scrunchie, sunglasses, and chapstick into the bottom of it. “…When I was in a bad way— it doesn’t matter now.”

Eddie so desperately wants to pry.

He’d wanted to make a joke before, about the handcuffs — something less than tasteful about them and you and Hopper and some good ol’ freaky deaky that you'd scold him for after. But he decides not to now because you sound so strangely solemn about the whole thing, as though it was a story you buried deep with the intent of never bringing it up again.

“You don’t have to go with him if you don’t want to, you know that, right?”

“Of course, I do,” you scoff at his worries, not nearly as threatened by Jim as the rest of Hawkins. You move to stand in front of him in the center of his room and meet his furrowed brows with a soft grin. “He’s not gonna do anything, he’s just pissed. He’ll berate me on the drive back to my apartment and then it’ll be like nothing ever happened.”

That seems to please Eddie well enough, though he’s still a bit disheartened at your leaving.

“I guess we couldn’t keep spending time together like this, huh?” he teases lightly, like the realization of it doesn’t make his chest ache. “Sorta forgot about the rest of the world… whatever that is.”

“It was fun while it lasted,” you tell him with a shrug and a whimsical sigh.

“Wait for me, will ya?” he jokes, if only to make you laugh and to feel like he’s stuck in some sickly sweet ending of a romcom for a couple moments more. 

You roll your eyes at his dramatics but let him wrap you in his arms anyway. His hands find purchase on your elbows, thumbs rubbing soothingly along the outsides of them. “How about a kiss, then?” he offers when the urge to feel you because too great to bear. “For our ten-minute anniversary and all?”

“You never have to ask me, Eds,” you assure with a laugh. You rise to the tips of your toes and he meets you halfway. 

Home is in your mouth. It’s warm and cozy and safe there. It’s easily the most familiar place he’s ever known, with your bottom lip nestled between his own. He feels homesick when you part from him. 

“You’re not mad at me?” he wonders quietly, feeling a bit like a cowering child from where he stands in front ahead of you — eased only when you shake your head almost immediately in response.

“No. I couldn’t be even if I wanted to, I think.”

“Okay. That’s… That’s good.”

“We can talk about it later, if you want. After I get lurch off my ass.”

He tries not to smile too wide, but it’s hard not to beam every time he looks at you. “Yeah. Sure. I’ll… I’ll see you around, I guess?” he stumbles over himself, having forgotten how to say goodbye to you. 

It’s equally as hard for you too, it seems, because you nod at him and turn to leave and then realize once you’re halfway down the hallway that you might not survive if you don’t kiss him again. 

So you turn and rush back, catching Eddie with his back turned and spinning him around so you can peck him again. You feel his cheeks heat beneath your palm and his sigh against your cupid’s bow and his lips melt against your own.

You etch each tingling sensation into the edges of your mind in the hope that you won’t drive yourself completely insane when you inevitably start to miss him like crazy. 

You focus on that and on him when you find Hopper and his stupid proud dad smirk. It’s the only reason you don’t punch him in the jaw and tuck and roll out of the Cruiser when the silence becomes so slowly insufferable.

You’re starting to think Jim left the radio off on purpose. You’ve never known the guy not to drive around without the strumming of an old-school folk song to accompany him. You figure it must be some sort of intimidation tactic, to make you so uncomfortable that you break. You’re a lot closer to that than either of you realize.

You spare a glance over at the man next to you. He hasn’t looked at you once since you get in the car. He’s got one hand at three o’clock on the steering wheel and the other with its elbow propped up on the door as he scratches at the stubble on his jaw. 

He’s too at ease not to be bothered. This is obviously some kind of front he’s putting on to conceal his inner irritation.

You give on the lecture you’d been trying to prepare yourself for and exhale sharply through your nose. Your fingers fidget on your thighs as you kick your restless feet up on the console. 

“Get your feet off the dash,” Jim scolds without missing a beat. 

You huff and obey. “Okay, this is crazy— can’t you just yell at me already?”

He barely wastes a second.

“I cannot believe you right now!” he seethes through gritted teeth, stewing in a dad-like sort of anger.

“It was three days, Hopper!”

“You know what happened the last time no one heard from you for three days?” he shouts back. 

You tip your head back against the seat and groan. You should’ve known he was going to play that card. 

He waves an accusatory finger between the both of you. “You and me— we had a deal, remember? You let me check in on you. You agreed to that. You visit your little high school friends, and I see you at work, so I can make sure you’re not off somewhere killing yourself.”

Hopper becomes a casualty to the tense silence he created then, when you don’t retort with some comeback of your own and force him to feel every ounce of pressure from the leaden quiet. 

He sighs a great big, too loud sigh and shifts in his seat. His softening gaze flits between you and the road. “I didn’t… I didn’t mean it like that, okay? I just meant it, you know, figuratively. I wasn’t… trying to be mean.”

“When have you ever cared about being mean?” you monotone.

“I don’t,” he assures. “I’m just not trying to hurt your feelings, alright? Jeez…”

You try not to take too much pride in the man’s half-apology, though you’d be lying if you said it wasn’t a little bit rewarding.

Jim Hopper’s practically an iceberg. He only melts for his kid, Joyce Boyers, and you, apparently. 

It’s why he’s always so damn protective over you. He’s developed this sort of deep-rooted urge to keep you safe after watching you make every wrong decision a human being could possibly make. And when you mess up, because you do mess up, he feels like it’s partially his fault — that, if he’d done more, he could’ve kept you safer. 

It makes you feel like a burden most of the time, but you know it’s above yourself and mostly out of your control.

You’d known of each other for a while before you really met, because a troublemaker and police chief in such a small town are bound to. But somewhere down the line, he found you in a valley of mourning for someone that was still alive and you found him in a black hole of grief for someone who wasn’t. The empty and infinite voids within you both were stitched slowly together all over again. 

Jim Hopper was the dad you never had. You were the daughter he couldn’t.

And you thought something might change after he adopted El. You figured he might forget about you because it wasn’t like it was his job to watch after you or anything. Playing pretend always felt nice, but you knew it wasn’t real. 

It was to Jim, though, who’d developed a similar adoration for you as the one he had for Sara. He hasn’t been able to forget about you in the same way he hasn’t been able to forget about her. 

Every night, after he’s scrubbed the day off his body and washed it all down with a lukewarm beer, he lays on his pull-out bed in the small living room of his cabin and goes through a checklist in his head. 

He makes sure that he’s checked on El and reminds himself to wake up early to make her breakfast the next morning before he brings Joyce coffee at Melvald’s — Joyce. She always comes next on his list, always right after El, and then you. 

He forces himself to calm down when his blood pressure inevitably spikes at the thought of not having heard from you all day. He reminds himself that he saw you at work on his lunch break and that he’ll see you again tomorrow.

Jim hums to himself as he settles more comfortably into his springy cot, deciding that he’ll try a new wine he can’t pronounce when he sees you at Enzo’s the next day and that he’ll drink it while he rambles about Joyce or El’s new boyfriend.

He drifts to sleep with thoughts of Sara.

You’re as ingrained into his mind as every other person he’s grown to love.

He stopped worrying about never getting you out a long time ago. Like a tomato sauce stain on a dress shirt, he knows he’ll never get you out of his head. He knows even more so that he doesn’t want to — no matter how much you annoy him or how angry you make him when you don’t answer his calls.

“Sorry…” you murmur and swallow down whatever mundane argument you could’ve spewed then, at the result of his sudden warmth. You turn to gaze out the window and trace the edges of the puffy white clouds with your eyes. “I wasn’t thinking about that — the… deal, or whatever… Honestly, I was a little too busy being happier than I think I’ve ever been in my life, so…”

You don’t see the dramatic eye roll he gives you in response, but you can’t miss the hearty groan that spills from his mouth. 

“What?” you laugh in response. “Have you never been a kid in love before?”

It’s almost jarring how he goes from huffy to concerned in a fraction of a second. His head snaps over to you, jaw clenched and eyes suddenly stern and swimming with a lingering fear. 

“Love?” he repeats like he must’ve heard you wrong. “Love— That’s— That’s what this is?”

You shrug. “I don’t know… Maybe…”

His eyes flutter shut for a moment. “Please don’t tell me you’ve said that to each other yet. This guy was just a crush four days ago.”

“No, Hopper. We haven’t. I mean, he literally just told me he was a virgin, so I don’t think we’re even close to—”

“A virgin?” Jim echoes, voice high-pitched and giddy. He beams at you from beneath his bushy mustache and slaps you a little too hard on your arm when he laughs. “Shit, teacup. Are you runnin’ out of options over there or somethin’?”

You twist your body to hit him back harder with your right hand. “It’s not funny, Hopper,” you scold. “He’s nice.”

“You said that about Hargrove once—”

“This is different,” you monotone before the words have the chance to leave his mouth.

“Yeah? How do you know?”

The question stumps you for a moment because you don’t know — you can’t.

You’d never admit it out loud, but Hopper was right; you’re still not quite sure how you ever could’ve thought that Billy Hargrove was a good guy, but you did. You felt a similar feeling of elation with him as you do now with Eddie, an otherworldly sort of happiness that makes you feel like you’re the only person it’s ever happened to.

And here you are now, sometime later and reveling in the aftermath, still gluing pieces of your shattered heart together.

You treat love like a drug. You use and use and use until it stops being a fun thing and becomes a crutch you can’t live without. That’s always when it starts to hurt you, but you’re in too deep to stop craving it.

And you know it’s bound to happen all over again, but you have to believe Eddie’s different or else you might as well fall into the deep pit of despair you’ve been trying this whole time to crawl out of. 

He makes you happy, really really happy, and you’d rather gamble that he hurts you than give it all without even trying.

“I… don’t,” you conclude after a few moments.

Jim seems surprised by your admission, shooting you an incredulous look with his untamed brows raised to his hairline.

You meet his look with a wavering grin. “But he makes me really happy, Hop. Like… It feels like it should be illegal or something. He makes me feel so good my heart hurts. There’s like this—”

“Ugh,” the man grumbles in disgust, sullen all over again.

“I didn’t mean it like that, you weirdo,” you chide.

A grin twitches beneath his mustache in response. “I know you didn’t… ‘Cause Munson’s a virgin.”

“Oh my god!” you groan. “I didn’t even mean to tell you that, okay? Leave him alone— and a swear to god, Hopper, if you make fun of him—”

“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with it, alright? I mean, he’s got the expert around to show him the ropes— ow!” You cut off his stupid joke and accompanying sardonic grin with a fist to his shoulder.

Steve and Robin tend to be quite the formidable duo.

They’ve barely got a brain cell to rub together between them, but there’s still something strangely intimidating about them when they’re both angry. It feels a bit like they’re your I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed parents, and you’re the scolded child taking your lashings in the form of a lecture.

It’s what you feel like now, sitting across from them in your designated booth at Benny’s Burgers — the one by the window in the corner. It’s far enough away from the bustle of the entrance but close enough still to gossip about the assholes you used to know from high school when they walk through the door. 

“You scare the shit out of us when you go AWOL like that, you know?” Steve confesses, still soft even though you know there’s a more upset part of himself he keeps hidden for now.

His chocolate gaze flits between you and the pile of fries in the middle of the table that the three of you share. He finds the one covered in the most salt and pops it into his mouth.

“AWOL?” you echo with a distant laugh when you realize how much he sounds like Hopper. “It was three days.”

“Yeah, and you fell off the face of the earth,” Robin retorts, half-muffled through the hearty gulp of strawberry milkshake starting to melt in her mouth.

“You guys are acting like I went halfway across the country,” you scoff. “I was with Eddie. At his trailer.”

“Exactly!”

Steve’s face contorts mid-bite. “Wait, you were with him? The freak?”

It makes you roll your eyes. He’d been too busy hopelessly flirting with the waitress at the counter to hear the entire recounting of your absence to Robin, though it was more of you gushing about it than anything else.

“Yep,” you answer.

“You skipped out on movie night to be with… Eddie Munson?” he reiterates for himself, as though there was any correlation between watching the same three movies while gorging on greasy junk food with your best friends and falling more in love with a guy you were already head over heels for as he tried to explain away the unopened box of condoms collecting dust underneath his bed.

Both are equally fun in their own ways, but totally totally different.

“How did you survive without me, Steven?” you joke back in response.

“He didn’t,” Robin quips.

“So… what? You guys just went on some kinda bender? I don’t get it. Did you just fuck the entire time or something?”

“Well, contrary to popular belief, I can actually spend time with someone and not fuck them—”

“Okay, that’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“And to answer your question — no, we didn’t fuck,” you confess, then elaborate more slowly, a tad bit awkwardly. “Because he told me today that… he is a… virgin.”

Your words seem to settle over each of them differently. Robin stills with her lips wrapped around the candy-cane striped straw then furrows her brows, as though their meaning hits her a few seconds after the fact.

Steve, meanwhile, goes entirely agape in an amazed sort of shock. His eyes go wide, his brows fly up and hide beneath the bangs that hang down over his forehead, and his jaw falls open. And then he starts to smile, a subtle hint of a grin on the corners of his pink lips, like he finds it funny.

“I knew it,” he murmurs to himself.

“…Why are you smiling like that?”

His smirk widens. “That freak said he screwed Vicki Carmichael senior year. I knew he was lying.”

“And why do you look so proud of yourself, exactly?” Robin asks him.

“Because now I feel less bad about never fucking her,” the boy explains like it’s obvious. He set his elbows on the table and gestures wildly with his hands. “I always thought the freak one-upped me because she, like, never gave me the time of day after Hargrove came along, you know? But… It’s good to know that I’m still king.”

His delighted grin is met with confused looks from both you and Robin, who look upon him with twisted eyebrows and squinted eyes. 

“Are you not aware of how strange everything that comes out of your mouth is?” you ask him, only partly joking.

“At least that settles why he wouldn’t let you give him a blow job,” the brunette girl concludes with a shrug as she slouches against the booth. “Poor guy was probably shitting bricks about it.”

You realize then that it does make sense, why he’d always been so adamant about your pleasure and never his own. Why he always touched you like you were some fragile thing he might break, and like everything was new to him. Because it was new to him. All of it.

And even though it baffles you to no end how he went his entire life without someone wanting to jump his bones (because truth be told, you’re doing a terrible job at hiding your want to do just that), the fact still remains — Eddie Munson is a virgin. 

He’s a virgin with an acute infatuation for the local slut, both of you freaks in your own right. 

It just adds more intricacy to a puzzle that already feels so complicated.

“I’ve never been with a virgin before,” you admit quietly, mostly to yourself, as you train your gaze on the straw wrapper you curl around your finger. “It’s different… Scary.”

“Why?” Robin wonders aloud.

“I don’t know. I just— I don’t know what to do now.”

“Just do what you always do,” Steve tells you like it’s that simple. He folds his arms on the table and leans in closer to you. “Experience is good. Okay? Experience is key.”

“No, it’s not that. I think I’m just… I’m scared I’m gonna treat him the way, you know, that I was treated. And I don’t wanna… I don’t wanna do that to him.”

You’re not sure when the shift started, when you stopped being a person to people. You only know that you were something less than that. Somewhere between junior and senior year, you become a plaything that anyone could do anything they wanted to with, and you were too starved for physical affection to tell them otherwise. 

You liked the attention. You liked feeling loved, even if it was only for a minute and a half, and all you had to show for it was a pool of cooling come on your belly.

Eddie’s the fragile thing now that you were then. 

He was a delicate little thing that can break so easily, something you could split in half if you wanted to. 

You don’t. 

You want so desperately to be kind, but you’re scared you won’t know how to, because no one’s ever been kind to you.

Steve reaches across the table for you, taking a wild stab at an attempt for affection after several months of being scared to touch you — he did enough of that, he thought, and he’d hurt you. But he can see the lingering ache hiding in your glazed-over eyes and feels an overwhelming urge to quell your worry. 

Five warm fingers wrap around your wrist, not too tight or too strong, just enough to stop you from cutting circulation off to the tip of your pointer finger and to remind you that he’s still there.

“Trust me,” he tells you with a sudden soft swimming in his caramel-colored eyes and a smile playing on his lips. “You couldn’t do that to anybody. Not even if you wanted to.”  

Your heart nearly stops at his words, at the sheer kindness of them, and at the way he holds you in the soft way you’re used to only Eddie holding you. Your eyes go wide when they flit up to him and then start to sting with the weight of unshed tears. 

You’re quick to blink them away though, while you playfully shrug him off and joke — “stop being so nice before I get the wrong idea, Harrington” — because it’s easier than accepting his tenderness.

Robin takes one look at his fond gaze, all gooey and dripping with honey, and then at your rolling eyes and accompanying shy grin, and groans at the softness of it all. She slides out from the confines of the booth and grumbles something about getting a refill on her milkshake.

“Some fries too, while you’re up?” Steve offers with a hopeful grin.

He’s met with the girl’s signature scowl.

“Please,” you finish for him.

Robin grins. “Anything for you,” she croons, if only to make the boy pout, before skipping off to the counter.

She leans her elbows upon the red wooden laminate top and smiles that same sickly sweet smile for Benny by the grill — no doubt trying to get her refills for free. 

Even though the bearded man seems unimpressed with her presence, you know that he’ll give them to her free of charge. He’s always had a soft spot for her, one of the only people in town who could rival his wit.

The door dings open, a familiar and high-pitched chime that often becomes more frequent as the evening progresses. This time it lets in a foreign, bitter breeze when the door swings open and closed again.

You can feel the chill from a distance — it resembles the crispness of autumn despite being comfortably settled in the middle of March. It nearly takes your breath away, prickles your skin and makes you grimace back a shiver. 

When your eyes leave Steve, a difficult feat considering he’s doing an alarmingly good impression of a walrus by sticking fries in his upper lip, you find that it wasn’t abnormally cold air at all. It was a Peter Parker spider sense form of anxiety that had felt like a bucket of ice water had been poured over you.

Billy Hargrove used to turn heads when he walked into a room. 

Now he just sucks all the air out of it.

And it’s not like you haven’t seen him since the break up; for a while, the asshole was painted on the backs of your eyelids — he all but haunted your consciousness. You’ll see him around town on occasion, in his sunglasses and jean jacket and too-tight denim pants, while he struts around Main Street with his new girlfriend (otherwise known as, his flavors of the month).

You think this is the first time you’ve been in the same room as him since your split, though. It feels like it must be with the way your throat starts to tighten and you forget how to breathe. 

All at once, you’re scrambling for an exit. It’s like Billy’s a fire and his smoke is rapidly filling your lungs. Your legs start to tremble when your adrenaline spike. Your brain tells you to get out as quickly as you can before he burns you.

Steve notices the look of fear flood your features like a dark storm cloud. You were laughing just seconds before the door opened, equal parts with him and at him, but now you just looked terrified — like a child who’s just spotted a boogeyman in her closet.

He turns in the booth to find what haunted thing has just caught your eye and finds that it’s worse than any monster you could conjure up. It’s Billy fucking Hargrove, with his pretty hair and his pretty smile and his pretty girl under his arm.

His presence filled targeted, almost. Like he chose to come to this diner, on this day and at this time just to fuck with the group of you.

“Don’t even look at him,” Steve advises when he turns back to you. “Look at me, okay? He’s not even worth it. That asshole doesn’t deserve to ruin our day.”

And you try to listen to him. You try really, really hard to let him change that subject to the cold fries or Robin taking too long or a combination of the two, but you can’t focus on him. You’re already so overwhelmed at the sight of Billy that you can’t focus on anything else but him. 

You settle on the fact that you might just have to drag Steve and Robin out by their wrists because you can’t sit in this booth any longer, and you definitely aren’t hungry anymore.

And that’s when he spots you.

Your eyes lock and you freeze, immediately averting your gaze but catching the sudden sparkle in his own as he grins a sly, sadistic grin.

“No way,” you hear him say with a laugh under his breath. The sound of his voice makes you tense. You hadn’t realized how at peace you’d been all this time without having to hear it. Now it feels like so many little needles piercing your skin.

“Fancy seeing you guys here,” he greets after he’s made a b-line for your booth and dragged Vicki Carmichael along with him. He smiles with all of his pearly whites while he smacks pungent wintergreen gum between them. 

When he slides into the booth beside you, he does so without invitation, and forces Vicki to slink in next to Steve.

And like it wasn’t already awkward enough, you know Vicki — like, know her, know her. There was a drunken makeout at a Halloween party in ’82. Then a one night stand with her brother before he left for college in ’83. And then her Tom Selleck clone of a father at a sleepover for her eighteenth birthday in ’85. 

You’re not exactly proud of it, but you’ve gotten a rather hefty taste of her family tree, and the fact that both of you know it makes it that much more uncomfortable.

“We’re kinda busy here, Hargrove,” Steve tells him when he notices how comfortable he’s making himself in your booth.

“Ooh… Is this a little date?” Billy teases with a grin.

Steve’s face falls. “…No.”

“Oh, right,” he nods, though the sardonic lilt in his voice tells you that he already knew the answer. He crosses his arms on the tabletop and turns to look at you with eyes bluer than any ocean. They flicker up and down your form. Suddenly, you feel self-conscious in your baggy jean and tank top duo.

“You’ve been seeing that guy, haven’t you? What’s his name again? The, uh— the freak?”

“His name is Eddie,” Steve answers for you, defending him because you can’t find the words to.

“That’s it,” Billy snaps his fingers, then points. He nudges you with his shoulder. The familiar feel of his jean jacket against your skin makes you wince. “God, you must be runnin’ out of steam over there, huh? I mean… the freak? Seriously? You couldn’t do any better than that?”

The jokes were tolerable coming from Jim and Steve and Robin — they weren’t funny by any means, but you could stomach them because you knew they were jokes. But this? This was just to hurt you. And it works too easily because Billy knows exactly how to break you. He knows all the wires to cut and buttons to push because the puzzle of shattering your psyche is one he memorized long ago.

“He’s actually a really nice guy,” you manage through a tight throat, still staring at your fidgeting hands.

“Well, that’s good,” he hums like you need his approval. “It’s about time, right?”

You huff and choose to entertain him despite your better judgment. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He only shrugs. “I don’t know... Just, you know, that found a guy willing to settle for you. That’s all.”

“Settle?” you repeat, trying to laugh despite how tiny your voice sounds.

“You know what I mean, c’mon,” the blonde boy chuckles. “Sluts are fun and all, but they’re not the kinda girls you wanna settle down with. Steve knows what I mean.”

“No, I don’t,” Steve monotones quickly and without thinking, gaze hardened and jaw clenched. “And you need to leave.”

“I”m hungry, Billy,” Vicki whines, feeling every ounce of the tension surrounding her — like syrup or quicksand. She slides her permed bangs from her eyes and tucks a rogue strawberry strand behind her ear in a nervous tick. “Can’t we just get something to eat?”

“Alright, alright. I know when I’m not wanted,” Billy chuckles.

You grumble bitterly under your breath. “Apparently not…”

“I’ll see you around, Harrington,” Billy singsongs with a grin that wreaks of insincerity while his girlfriend slides out from the booth. He turns to look at you and squints. “Don’t be a stranger, alright? Matter of fact, point Munson my way, and I’ll give him a few pointers.”

You’re uncowed by his offer and angered by his mention of Eddie. Your eyes are stern and unwavering as you meet his gaze for the first time since he sat down beside you. 

“I think you could learn a thing or two from him, actually,” you retort, words sounding sweeter than the venom lingering behind them.

Billy’s grin only widens, impressed by your arguing. “Ooh… I forgot about the mouth you had on you, sweetheart.”

The use of the nickname makes you cringe. It doesn’t sound nearly as fulfilling as it does when it comes from Eddie. Now, it just sounds artificial — degrading.

He leans in close to you like he’s about to tell you a secret and splays his arm along the back of the booth behind you. The nicotine on his breath makes you grimace; it’s intoxicating when it comes from Eddie, disgusting from the boy sitting next to you. 

His eyes are bluer so up close, darker than you remember them being, and you notice he’s trimmed his usual stubble to a patchy mustache. He looks like the grown-up version of the boy you used to know, visually more mature but still the same in his way.

“When he gets bored of you — because, let’s be serious, he will get bored of you — you know where to find me,” Billy murmurs to you, a cynical smirk on the edges of his lips. “I’ll make sure you stay nice and broken in for the next dozen guys that want a taste—”

Steve can’t hear a word from where he sits across the booth, but he’s fuming with fists clenched under the table anyway. He hates how close Billy is to you, more so how uncomfortable you look with the proximity and how his words make you flinch. 

“Alright, you need to leave,” he blurts. “Now.”

Before the blonde could respond with a quip of his own, Robin all but teleports to the head of the table. She’s standing in front of the four of you suddenly, carrying a basket of fries and a strawberry milkshake and wearing a frown on her face.

“You’re in my seat, dickwad,” she monotones, even though she hadn’t been sitting next to you before. She’s not the least bit threatened by the Californian douchebag.

Billy smiles up at her anyway. “I was wondering where the third musketeer was! Still a carpet muncher, Buckley?”

“Happily.”

“What do ya say me and you head up to Lover’s Lake later?” the boy offers despite his date shifting awkwardly a few feet away. It’s a joke, for reasons that are more than obvious, and that’s what makes it so unbearably unfunny. 

He slinks out from the booth. The lack of his warmth is strangely comforting and you’re able to breathe for the first time in five minutes. He stretches his back out when he stands to his full height in front of Robin, then shrugs with his hands splayed on his hips.

“Maybe you just need some good dick. I mean… we’re gonna die anyway, right?”

“I’d rather,” she quips with a rouge-tinted smile.

The way it makes him laugh is startling. He finds a strange humor in being rejected — in most things, really. You still haven’t forgotten the cackles that left his bloodied mouth when Steve delivered blow after blow to the boy’s face in the middle of his living room, like it was all a fun game to him.

That was, of course, before Billy got the upper hand and nearly killed Steve that night. He laughed about it that too, until Max knocked him out with a baseball bat.

He’s got the same grin on his face now as he did then when he turns to look at you. A pink and pretty smirk, just wide enough to reveal the dimple in his left cheek. It’s nothing short of taunting, like he’s mocking you without having to say anything at all.

“Don’t be a stranger, alright?” Billy repeats. He keeps smacking his gum between his teeth and winks at you before spinning on the heel of his boot. He guides Vicki with him to the counter with a hand on the back pocket of her jeans.

Even when Robin slides in next to you and effectively pierces the bubble of tension that had already started to shrink with Billy’s leaving, you still find it hard to breathe. You have to keep reminding yourself, forcing oxygen in and out with wobbling breaths through your nose, or else you just stop altogether.

The other two move on rather quickly, having no trouble finding their voices again after he’s gone. Their words are muffled, though, like they’re underwater.

“I forgot what an asshole he was,” Robin grumbles.

“Well, I didn’t,” Steve retorts, eyes scanning the basket of fries for the most strategic pick of the bunch. “I can still barely breathe through my nose.”

“That’s because you didn’t go to a doctor, dingus.”

“Because I didn’t need a doctor, Robin.”

“Yeah, because being concussed three times in two years is so healthy—”

Your eyes act like magnets as they stay locked on Billy’s form. He leans in closer to Vicki to tell her something, then pats her once on the ass before walking towards the exit again. The door dings when he swings it open. Through the window, you catch him pulling out a red and white pack of cigarettes — the same brand of Marlboro Reds he’s been smoking since he was in middle school.

“You okay?” you hear Steve say, but it sounds too far away for you to realize he’s talking to you.

Robin nudges you with her shoulder to jog you from your stupor. You blink hard once and then turn to her with wide eyes. “What?”

“You doing alright over there?” the girl wonders.

“Yeah,” your answer is too quick and too high-pitched to be true. “Fine.”

“Like, fine as in you’re actually fine, or fine as in, if I leave you alone for too long, I’m gonna find you living under a bridge like a troll?”

You roll your eyes at her. “Fine as in, if someone bums me a cigarette, I’ll be good as new.”

Steve huffs when you hold out the palm of your hand toward him. He’s the only one of you who smokes recreationally enough to carry a lighter and pack of cigs with him. You swear he only keeps it with him because the weight of them makes him feel cool. You’re grateful for them now, though, and for the escape they unexpectedly provide you.

His fingers are warm when they brush your hand. The metal zippo he drops in the center of it is far colder and carries a comforting sort of weight to it. He thumbs a cigarette from the pack for you, and you take it with a sardonic smile and a sickly sweet “thank you, Stevie.” 

Robin gets out of the booth to let you slide out of it.

The door chimes again, this time over your head when you open it. 

Fresh, spring air nearly knocks you on your ass when it hits you for the first time. You realize then, that you’d forgotten to tell yourself to breathe and now your vision’s all swimmy. The cool breeze tries its hardest to quell your swelling anger, but you’re still at a simmering boil. Fists clenched over the lighter and cig duo in your palm and your sneakers slapping angrily against the cracked pavement.

That’s what signals your arrival, the raging stomps that echo in the alleyway Billy takes his smoke break in. 

The boy takes a puff of his cigarette and smirks on the exhale at the sight of you. All he needs is one glance to see how angry he’s made you. It’s an innocent, childlike sort of rage that’s got you all scrunched face and red — a heartbroken girl on a war path.

“I knew you couldn’t resist me, sweetheart,” he taunts with his signature sarcastic smile. He holds his arms at his sides, like he’s waiting for some kind of embrace from you. “You used to be like that all the time — all over me, you know? Clingy.”

“You know what you used to be?” you ask him once you’ve planted yourself a few feet away from him, fists shaking at your sides in a nearly overwhelming mixture of rage and apprehension.

“What’s that?”

“Nice! You used to be nice! Or do you not remember that?” you wonder rhetorically. Your anger fades slowly, an ebbing tide, as a reminiscent sadness eclipses your fury — a flood of blue in all your red. 

The sharp frown between your brows crumbles and so does your clenched jaw as your harsh features crumple like a balled-up piece of paper. You look upon the man that broke your heart with all the shattered pieces of it.

“You used to let me sleep over at your place when I was too scared to sleep alone at mine, and you’d bring me food when I told you I hadn’t eaten all day, and you’d take me on drives when you knew I hadn’t left my apartment in days,” you ramble in a single breath, gesticulating wildly with your hands — waving them at him and at you and the still air between. They fall hopelessly to your sides. 

“You used to be so sweet, Billy…” you conclude with a wavering breath. Your chest trembles on the inhale as you straighten out your shoulders and lift your chin, trying your best not to look as defeated as you feel. “And you know what you are now?”

Billy grins that stupid grin at you, the one that almost looks kind. Almost. It’s still soft in all its insincerity, like a parent entertaining their kid that’s gone on some meaningless tangent.

“No, sweetheart,” he answers after a beat. “What am I?”

“Not nice.”

He scoffs out a laugh.

“You used to tell me, all the time, how scared you were about ending up like you’re dad—” he tenses at the mention of the man, of his own monster in his own closet. “—He’d beat you black and blue every night, and I’d bandage all your cuts and put makeup on you when you begged, so you could go out and pretend like everything was normal. And you know what? You’re just like him!”

Billy doesn’t cower when you walk closer to him. He’s got no reason to be afraid of you, but your words hit him in a place far deeper than a thousand bloodied fists.

“What he did to you, is exactly what you do to me… Or do you know see that?” you don’t wait for a sarcastic reply, mostly because you wouldn’t see the indicators of it through the tears that blur your vision. “You’re not punching me, but it feels like you are. You break me over and over and over and I have to pretend like everything’s just normal and that we—”

“Real mature of you. To bring out the dad-card,” he interjects, if only to stop your ramblings so that he might not have to hear the truth that comes with them.

“You used to he nice,” you repeat, you agonize, you deflate. “Or… Or did you never use to be?”

The shell of your mind answers for you, paints itself with all the memories you’ve been trying like hell to forget for the past six months. It’s easier to pretend the bad things aren’t real than unravel all the reasons why they were bad to begin with, you find.

The negative memories come together like renaissance paintings — dark and gloomy and blotted with too realistic tears and spatters of blood. The oil stains the backs of your eyelids, destined to remain there forever like paintings in museum that’ll stand the test of time if you nurse them well enough.

You hadn’t yet been able to forget the screams and the cracks of fists colliding with bone. They tend to keep you up at night, even when you squeeze your eyes shut and beg for your memory to be wiped away completely. 

Billy crouches over Steve’s chest and pummels wholehearted punches to the boy’s face, never tiring in their force, even well after the boy goes limp underneath him. You beg for him to stop while trying like hell to shield Max from the sight of it all. 

For a while, you’d blamed yourself for it — for Max being there in the first place and for Steve’s cuts and bruises. 

You’d taken the girl and sought refuge in the Harrington home after witnessing a rather heated fight between Billy and his father. There was a sudden urge within you to take her far away from it before it ended how it always did — in weeping cuts and salty tears and insincere apologies when the cops were called.

But you made it worse anyway. 

For Max, for Steve. 

And you apologized profusely for it after, cried to the boy in his bathroom while you nursed his cuts like you were the one who put them there. 

When he told you it wasn’t your fault, you didn’t believe him. Not until now. Not until you realized that Billy had always been angry — always raging with an ocean of fear and grief and violence.

When he fought with his sister, you thought it was normal, that that’s just what siblings did. But the way she cried to you after couldn’t have been normal. Neither could the unearthly fury that washed over Billy like a riptide when he found out you and Max had sought safety in Steve The Hair Harrington — angered that it was Steve and that he couldn’t be that for the both of you.

And then there was the fights. The yelling and screaming and crying fights that felt like the end of the world every single time. The kind of fights you shouldn’t be having when you’re eighteen. You thought that maybe there was some normalcy in the cheating and the secrecy and Billy’s accompanying assholery because that was all you’d ever known.

Or maybe because you had to tell yourself that was normal in relationships because you didn’t want your’s to end. Billy was the first guy to give a damn about you in ways that went beyond just sex. How were you supposed to just give that up?

But then there’s Eddie — Eddie The Freak Munson, who was really just sunshine wrapped up in leather jackets and wild hair and chunky rings and metal music. He makes you happy. The sort of happy that makes you suspicious because something bad has to counteract all the goodness he makes you feel. 

Maybe that’s what this was. 

Seeing Billy after having wrapped yourself in a blanket of Eddie’s warmth made you see somehow more clearly. He loves on you so much that it’s made a mockery of everything else. 

Whatever you had with Billy wasn’t normal, it was a goddamn shit show. He loved you when it was convenient and then had you believing it was the real thing, that you wouldn’t find it anywhere else, when you tried to leave him. 

It was a lie, all of it.

The realization makes you falter.

“Oh, god…” you sigh, voice fragile like cracking glass. “Maybe you never used to be…”

For the first time ever, you see Billy’s grin shake. The edges of it flitter, like he’s fighting to keep the corners quirked up. And his eyes have gone a lighter shade of blue, the way they always did when he blinked back angry tears as he talked about his father.

It isn’t rage glassing his eyes now. It’s something sadder, but still as real — something you never got from him in the two years you were together.

He tries, still, to cover it all up. He smacks his lips against his teeth, sympathetically. “Sorry it took you this long to figure that out.”

The laugh you exhale then is heavy with sadness. Your smile is far away and so is your gaze as you stumble back from him. You turn your head to the edge of the alley where mom’s with strollers and people in fancy suits bustle on the sidewalk and keep your eyes on the strangers that whiz by you’ll probably never see again. 

“This is… This is pointless,” you murmur. His lean form is blurry through the burning tears you blink away. “Every time I see you, it’s just more bullshit so let’s just— let’s just leave each other alone, okay?”

Billy takes a puff from his cigarette. When he sighs, white smoke billows from his plump, pink lips. “That’s a shame… I was just thinking that you were the most interesting you’d ever been.”

The ebbing tide that had just left you rushes back in a bubbling scarlet wave. His words don’t make you sad anymore, they just make you angry all over again because you know you don’t deserve them. And you’re not entirely sure why he’s chosen you to antagonize out of all the other girls who’d made the mistake of falling for him, but you’re too far past the point of not caring to ask.

“Bother me again and I tell Chief Hopper,” you threaten even though you don’t feel very threatening just now. “I know you’re not scared of me, but you’d be stupid to be scared of him.”

“Why’s that?” he wonders before sticking the half-gone stick between his lips again.

“Because he runs Hawkins. And he fucking hates you—” for what you did to me, you almost say. You swallow the words down like bile before they have the chance to spew out. “And… And be nice to Vicki. Okay? She’s too good for you. Don’t do to her what you did to me.”

Your plea for another is the last thing you say to Billy before you turn away from him. You wouldn’t be upset if it was the last thing you ever said to him. You’re grateful for the resounding silence that follows. It’s nothing but the sound of your receding footsteps and the soles of his shoes scrapping the concrete as he snuffs out his cigarette. 

There is no snarky remark or insincere plea — just two people who used to love each other that have no idea to exist together anymore. 

When you step outside the brick confines of the alleyway, you feel as though a fraying string that had always connected the both of you had been finally cut.

It allows you to take a deep breath in for the first time in months. A lungful of fresh air that cleanses you, body and mind.

And when you catch Steve and Robin idling at the corner and doing a terrible job of pretending like they hadn’t just been eavesdropping, you don’t get upset or angry with them — you don’t feel much of anything, really.

You just hand the boy his lighter and unused cigarette and let them comfort you on the drive back to your apartment.

A misery sandwich. That’s what Robin calls the three of you and the heaping pile you lay in. 

Your queen-sized bed is in no way meant to accomodate three moderately sized adults, but you make it work anyway, like you always do.

Steve lays on his back, legs crossed and hands tucked under his head. Robin is on her stomach on the other end of the mattress, arms wrapped around the pillow she smushes the side of her face into. You lay between the both of them — on the both of them. Sprawled out sideways, you’ve got your head on propped up on Steve’s ribcage and your legs thrown over Robin’s thighs. 

The awkward position is the most comfortable you’ve ever been.

“I can’t believe that asshole had the nerve to show up to the diner on our day,” the boy rants. “And then sit in our booth, I mean— who does he think he is?”

Robin’s response is mostly muffled by the pillow. “I thought he left, like, forever ago.” 

“Maybe he just couldn’t stay away. It’s Hawkins, shit attracts shit, right?” Steve answers with a shrug that jostles your head slightly. It doesn’t little to knock you from your stupor, though, where you’ve been stuck for the better part of the day. You pick at the skin around your nails with little regard for how red and raging it's gone.

He notices this and thumps you on your temple — hard enough for you to feel it, gentle enough that it doesn’t hurt you. 

You turn your chin to your shoulder to look over at him. He tilts his own head to stare down at you, honey-tinted gaze somehow stern and soft at the same time. “If he bothers you again, I’ll kill him.”

You’re instantly warmed by his protective disposition. You know that he cares about you, even though you like to joke that he doesn’t. Steve hurt you once, made a promise to himself to make it up to you, and then just never left you alone. 

You’re grateful for it. 

You’re not sure who’d be the butt of every joke if he wasn’t around.

“Good to know,” you answer, nodding against his side and trying to hide the smile he gives you. You fail. “You think if he breaks your nose again, it’ll pop back into place?”

His face falls. “You’re real sweet, you know that?”

You open your mouth to respond, something along the lines of “I’m always sweet. You of all people should know that, Stevie,” before a knock sounds at the front door. It comes in the several rhythmic raps that Eddie is known to give when he’s got a tune stuck in his head. 

Apparently now, it’s the chorus to “Why Can’t This Be Love?” The Van Halen song he said he couldn’t stand before you.

Robin huffs at the sound of the muffled taps. She frowns like a child. “Who the hell…?”

“It’s just Eddie,” you affirm through a half-hearted grunt as you rise from your comfy position.

That brightens the two of them up almost immediately. Her and Steve share a look you can’t place as they grin at one another. Then they turn back to you with identical mischievous twinkles in their eyes. “Your boyfriend is here,” the former of the two singsongs.

You roll your eyes, but make no move to correct her. 

When you stand from the bed and make the short journey towards the door, you hear the patter of their feet following close behind you. 

“Gonna go all the way tonight?” Steve teases and jabs you on the shoulder. “Do you want us to leave?”

“No, nothing is happening. And yes, I think you should leave,” you monotone playfully.

Robin rushes past you suddenly and grabs the brass door handle before you’re able. She swings it open without thinking twice about it. Her sudden appearance, coupled with the fact that it isn’t you, startles the man on the other side of the door.

Eddie’s umber eyes go wide, brows raising and disappearing beneath his fluffy bangs, as his head jerks back.

“Eddie Munson,” the girl full-names the stranger she’s never spoken a word to before now. She leans against the doorway and effectively blocks the boy’s view of you. Steve, who squeezes himself in beside her, doesn’t make it any easier. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“You too, Buckley…” he wavers, trying to peer past them for any sight of you.

“Perfect timing, Eds,” you call out from behind them. “They were just about to leave.”

He’s relieved at the sound of your voice — even more so at your appearance when the two in front of you step off to the side to toe on their sneakers. 

You don’t look much different than when he saw you last. You’ve put on some makeup that’s started to smudge after the long day and changed your baggy sweatshirt for a more fitted tank top and boxers, but other than that you’re still the same. Still familiar and comforting in your way, a home away from home.

His smile is a tired one and it wobbles at the edges. “Oh, shit, am I— am I interrupting something?”

“No,” you’re quick to reassure him. “You’re saving me, actually.”

“Oh, give me a break,” Steve scoffs. “You love us.” 

The boy pulls you into a hug before he leaves, and it’s not the rarest thing in the world, but embraces like this do tend to be few and far between. He whispers  “use protection” in your ear and then a sharp “ow!” when you jab him in the ribs.

He and Robin smile kindly at Eddie when they walk by him and out the door, but waste barely a second before turning back around and grinning wildly at you. Steve flashes you a thumbs up while she mouths a cartoonish ‘good luck’ — like it’s the first time you and Eddie had ever been alone together. Like they were just on your ass about having been with him this whole time.

You usher Eddie and shut the door behind them. A quiet sort of peace settles on the apartment like a weighted blanket. The boy revels in every bit of its warmth.

Exhaustion drips from him like syrup. He’s sticky with it. His eyes have lost their usual twinkle, weighed down now with the burden of his fatigue. His face has lost most of its color, leaving a pale sheath of monotoned skin, and his hair is wilder than normal, with an unintentional sort of ruggedness to his curls.

It’s what being without you has done to him.

“You okay?” you ask him softly. It almost makes him want to cry.

“Yeah,” he answers anyway and idles in the spot where your kitchen meets your living room. “Just had a pretty shitty day. Wanted to spend time with you.”

“Me too… About the wanting to spend time with you part— and the shitty day part, too, I guess.”

Eddie smiles at your rambling, but purses it to the side to conceal it from you. “And since it is just about our…” he trails off and bends his elbow to check the watch on his wrist. “…Twelve hour anniversary, I picked us up some takeout.”

He sets the plastic bag on the counter. The red logo of Oriental Jade on the side of it makes your stomach roll with a distant hunger. You hadn’t realized how starved you were feeling after you abandoned your early dinner at Benny’s. It makes you more grateful for Eddie, who always seems to be on the same wavelength as you without even trying.

“Keep this up and we’ll be married before we hit hour twenty-four,” you joke as you rifle through the cartons — chow mein, sweet and sour chicken, dumplings, the works.

Eddie settles in next to you, propping his elbows on the countertop. “Well, I’m pretty sure the courthouse opens at nine, so… What were you thinking for the honeymoon? Hawaii? Bora Bora?”

“How about a cabin in the woods where no one can find us?”

“Hmm… Spooky. Sexy. I’m into it.”

You settle in the living room and eat on the couch while She Ra re-runs play on the television. You try to teach Eddie how to use chopsticks, though he can only work them with his non-dominant hand and all the wrong finger placements. You think it’s cute to watch him fumble with them, and you giggle about it until you’re scolding him for trying to feed Bowie some noodles. He laughs as you swat at him.

When all the containers are fully scrapped clean and tossed in the recycling bin, you migrate to the bedroom — which is perhaps too raunchy a phrase to use when the two of you only bury yourselves under the covers to talk shit.

Eddie drags out the chunky box fan you use when the air conditioner goes out in the summer — because it always goes out in the summer — and props it on the chest at the foot of your bed so the covers will billow around the both of you. “And it’s perfect because we can stay in the fort forever and not get hot,” he tells you, all giddy about it like he's a kid again.

“What if I get cold?” you retort.

Without missing a beat, he answers, “Well, lucky enough for you, I know several ways I can warm you up, sweetheart.”

He ditches his leather jacket and strips down to his boxers and settles in beside you underneath the blankets. The two of you lay shoulder to shoulder while you trace absentminded patterns on the palm of his hand and tell him about your day.

You make sure to leave out all the re-traumatizing-Billy-Hargrove bits, though. You focus mainly on the tense drive with Hopper and the small fight you’d had with Steve on the drive to the diner later that afternoon about the lyrics to Love My Way (both of you had been wrong).

Eddie tries his hardest to focus on your story and your fleeting touches, but he’s too far in his own head. You tell him all these things but he can’t stop thinking about himself — about whether or not you might’ve brought him up somewhere in between. 

He wouldn’t have blamed you, if you had. Steve and Robin are your closest friends and, for whatever reason, so is Chief Hopper, you’re bound to bring him up eventually. He was just hoping it would’ve been in a better capacity. Maybe about how kind he was or what a god he was in bed — not how he could only be one of those things because he’d never been anything in bed.

“It doesn’t make things weird between us, does it?” he wonders out of the blue.

You halt mid-sentence and turn to him with furrowed brows. “What?”

Eddie realizes then, that the first half of the conversation with you had only happened in his head. He prays that it’s too dark beneath the covers for you to see how red his cheeks get. “Just… What we talked about this morning. About me… you know…” He finds it hard to say the words. Or any of them at all.

“Why would it make things weird?”

“I don’t know. Because I wasn’t… totally honest with you, I guess? I feel a little bad about it, you know?”

“It’s okay,” you assure and turn on your side to be closer to him. Eddie stays on his back, more than happy to let you cuddle further into him. “I guess I do wish you’d said something before, though.”

His chest tightens. “I’m sorry. I just… I didn’t know how to—”

“I’m not saying it to make you feel bad!” you interject quickly when you catch the spiral of regret he was about to twist himself into. You curl tighter into his side, tossing a leg over his thigh and wrapping your hand around his bicep in an effort to melt with him. When he turns to face you, your noses nearly brush.

 “That’s not how I meant it. I just meant that, if I’d known before, I wouldn’t have… I would’ve taken things slower. I wouldn’t have been so, you know, so all over you.”

He hates how apologetic you sound. Like there was ever an ounce of him that would want to take back what happened that night at his trailer or a part of him that might hate how much you love on him.

“I liked it. I do like it.”

“Maybe we can just start over,” you offer. “Pretend like none of that ever happened.”

Eddie knows there’s no way in hell he’ll be able to forget about a single damn thing — not his cum stained jeans and how you looked so pretty washing them for him, not the feel of your tits in his mouth or you wrapped around his fingers, not how you made him blow his load all over his fist just by talking to him. 

He goes along with it anyway, though, just for you.

“Okay...” he nods slowly, then squints over at you. “You’re still my girlfriend, though, right?”

“Of course I am,” you giggle.

He grins proudly to himself. “Well then… Hope it’s not too early to have our first kiss then?”

It makes you roll your eyes because it’s such an Eddie Munson way of asking to kiss you. You told him earlier the day that he never had to ask you — in fact, you’d prefer it if he’d just kiss you out of the blue and take your breath away without you ever knowing it was coming. But there was something foreign and sweet in his little reassurances.

“Kiss me silly, Eddie Spaghetti,” you beam. He twists on his side to press tiny pecks to your smile.

It’s rather strange, you find, to kiss someone this way without the intention of it ever becoming something more. You kiss him just to kiss him — just to map the outline of his cupid’s bow and memorize the pattern of his tongue. Just to feel him, as much of him as your mouth will allow you to.

With one arm curled under his head and the other cradling your jaw, when his watch alarms — high-pitched beepbeepbeeps in quick succession — it’s sudden and close to your ear. 

Your lips click in protest when they part. His are pink and swollen and glossy with your spit. He smiles with them. “Happy twelve hour anniversary, sweetheart.”

“How long are you gonna make that stupid joke?” you laugh like your heart isn’t swelling so much you’re scared it might burst entirely.

“Uh, I was thinking… forever. Yeah. That sounds about right,” he concludes after a moment of feigned thought. He turns his watch off again and you swear you see him set for another twelve hours from now.

“Forever?” you echo.

“Uh-huh. Forever—” he presses his lips to yours once. “—And ever—” Twice. “—And ever.”

Eddie kisses you until you’re flat on your back and surrendering to each of his tiny little pecks. You twist your hands in his hair and let him love on you a little while more. You giggle when his mouth trails from your lips to your chin to your jaw to your neck. Please don’t get bored of me, you beg silently within your laughter.

I don’t think I could even if I wanted to, he answers with each kiss his sprinkles to your starved skin. How could I, when you’re the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me?

[ventismacchiato]

32 behind the lens — sad quotes bot !

scaramouche x g!n reader

__________________ ׂׂૢ་༘࿐

Almost a week has passed and you haven’t spoken a single word to Kuni in that time. You’ve been rather busy doing streams with your camera on but pretending to be okay with millions of your fans watching was beginning to look difficult. You received a few confused texts from Jean when she saw your reveal, but she didn’t question you further than that.

Class became burdensome as you could only stare longingly at the back of Kuni’s head. He arrived right on time and left without bidding your farewell. He never even turned his head in your direction. He wasn’t being outwardly mean but you’d rather have him yell at you then pretend you didn’t exist.

Childe had texted you that morning updating you on Kuni. He was in the same boat as you, ignoring his meals and plunging all his energy into work.

You follow him out of class that day.

It took you a while to find him, his monotone outfit blending in with every other student. But you eventually caught up and grabbed ahold of his backpack, causing him to stumble before turning back. He flinches at the sight of you.

“Hey,” you greet, “Can we talk?”

He reaches out to remove your hand from his backpack and shakes his head, about to turn around before you speak up once more. Desperate.

“Please?”

Kuni stares past you for a few seconds, an unreadable expression adorning his face.

“Didn’t I ask you to leave me alone?” he eventually says, his voice lacking any warmth it once held before. How could the same lips uttering such cruel words be the same ones that were on you skin mere days ago? Your stomach was sinking.

“Yes,” you lamely answer. It felt like you were being scolded like a child, “I just thought I’d check on you.” Screw Childe for giving you false hope.

“I don’t need you to check on me,” he spits, “I don’t need you.”

Now you were the one who flinched.

“You don’t mean that,” you eventually say as students mill past.

Scara opens his mouth to say something else but quickly closes his lips shut.

“I said give me time so I don’t say something I regret,” he sighs, “Bye,” he mutters and shoves past you.

behind the lens !

masterlist — prev | next

typo in slide 1: toasting a poptart*

childe changed scaras wallpaper to nayeon to cheer him up :3

author’s notes — if you rmbr when i accidentally posted this no u don’t (gaslighting)

synopsis — you, better known as STARDUST, and BALLADEER have always been in competition for the top streamer spot on twitch, which is especially impressive since the two of you have never shown your faces. you’ve never been on good terms, constantly one-upping each other in matches and getting into petty arguments on twitter, causing your fans to also dislike each other. that’s until BALLADEER does a face reveal that breaks the internet with his good looks…which makes you realize it’s the same guy you went on a date with last night. the type of date that made you crave to see him again. the only problem was he didn’t know you were STARDUST and he was way different behind the lens than he portrayed himself online to you. should you keep your identity a secret to salvage the relationship or just let him go?

taglist — @captainzep @elysiumarchieve @plinkuro @sakkakuu-squared @eliqusgenma @vuvulia @kunikuzushiit @ins4nebish @stxrgxzxr @lilneps @uma-umie @kcbenis @mitsukifilms @caesars-bubbles @wheneverthesunrise @its-like-twilight @kazuhalvrr @erosdevil @thenightsflower @p1utto @noodleshark420 @lxry-chxn @court-jester-stuff @lauragalliart @veyu002 @kaeyas-eyepatch-69 @leathernourishingshoepolish @satowaluverr @lexlapis @drunkwithfever @exhaustedcommunist @vincanzu @ainlaw @ovaliz @kitsuvil @whatamidoing89 @celestair @kunihaver @kazioli @xiaosoneandonly @cridtiins @cherrybeomgyu @asukahiriko @moon-320 @orionicchaos [1/3]

[snail-toes9]

(let me start by saying this is a very long post, and there might be typos)

hello hello! im Matthew, and since i dont have any new fanart to post, i wanted to provide my in-depth analysis of Captain Curly from Mouthwashing! this was originally posted to my tiktok page, and some of the original text has been altered to make more sense; also keep in mind that this can all be taken as personal opinion! this is just my personal analysis of Curly’s character and his relationship with Jimmy.

i want to preface this analysis with this statement: this analysis is not a defense against Curly’s actions (or lack there of). everything i say is the CAUSE behind the lack of action he took against Jimmy, and the reason he handled the situation he did. reason and excuse are not synonyms: this is why he acted the way he did, but it does not excuse his lack of action, and it does not free him from fault, nor does it take away the damaged that he (indirectly) helped cause. now, let’s begin with my analysis of Curly’s character!!

People tend to forget that things aren't just black and white, good and evil - Curly is an example of this; his need to keep the peace and make everyone happy unfortunately extended to Jimmy, partially because Jimmy had known him for a long time and had a lot of time (possibly years) to manipulate him.

I’ve seen people say Curly might have some for of Stockholm Syndrome with Jimmy, this is plausible as we can see in many scenes (the birthday scene, for example) that Jimmy talks down on Curly, constantly demeaning him, and Curly lets it happen.

Curly's need to keep Jimmy happy is part of what led to the events that take place; not to mention he was most likely afraid of what would happen if he confronted him. This, however, does not excuse his lack of action taken against Jimmy.

Anya confided in him, she looked to him for protection and he failed her. He DID want to help, he DID want to protect Anya, but he wanted to protect Jimmy, too. Curly had known Jimmy for a long time, and his course of action after Anya told him what had happened is very realistic: most men, when faced with that situation, will want to protect their friend.

There wasnt MUCH Curly could have done differently, but there were definitely things he could've done:

1. Put Jimmy in a cryo-pod

2. Hide any and all weapons

3. Hide the auto pilot keys

That being said, this, again, was somebody Curly had known for a very long time, and he had very little time to actually process what was going on. We see in the game that the time between when Curly got the news about pony express shutting down, to when Anya told him she was pregnant, to when Jimmy crashed the ship, was not a long term event; it happened very quickly, over the course of less than a week (POSSIBLY 8 days, dont quote me on that).

By the time Curly had finally realized what he should've done, what a monster Jimmy was, it was too late. The ship had crash and he was rendered incapacitated.

The game is about taking responsibility, which Curly failed to do before things took a turn for the worst. By the time he realized what he had done, he couldn't take responsibility; he couldn’t move, couldn’t talk. There was no way for him to fix things (not that he could, but he couldn’t even try), there was no way for him to apologize to Anya, to the rest of the crew. By the time he realized what a huge mistake he had made, it was impossible for him to do anything about it.

Curly has some fault in the events that transpired, seeing as he didn't do everything he should've and could've done to immobilize Jimmy, to protect the crew, and to most

importantly, protect Anya.

However, that doesn't make him a bad person. Curly's fault doesn't lie in his intentions, but in his actions. He was acting with his heart, not his head. He was so caught up in making sure everyone was happy, that he lost sight of what was truly important: safety.

The events that took place would have never taken place if not for one key factor: Jimmy. If he had not been on that ship, none of the horrific incidents would’ve never occurred.

And the reason he was on that ship, was Curly. Curly helped Jimmy get that job. He saw what Jimmy could've been, instead of seeing him for what he really was: a manipulative, selfish, narcissistic, and honestly, evil man.

Curly knew that something about Jimmy wasn't right, he knew there was a reason he was at rock bottom. He knew, and looked past it because he wanted to believe that he could be better.

In his mind, Jimmy just needed help to turn his life around. Anya says in the game "I want to believe our worst moments dont make us monsters." I believe that Curly subconsciously had this same mindset towards Jimmy for YEARS.

Curly wanted to believe that his best friend was a good person, despite what he knew about him prior to the events we see in the game, despite all the manipulation he endured at Jimmy’s hands, he wanted to believe that he was good.

And ultimately, that was his downfall. He was too kind, too trusting, and too set on keeping everyone happy.

Curly lacks self respect, he let Jimmy walk all over him, all over Anya. He unintentionally enabled Jimmy not only out of fear of what he might do when confronted, but out of a lack of respect for himself.

If Curly had even an ounce of self respect, he would've stood up to Jimmy. But he lacked that respect for himself, Jimmy knew that and he used it to his advantage.

Jimmy is at fault for everything that took place. Jimmy SA’d Anya, Jimmy manipulated Curly, Jimmy crashed the ship. But Curly is not innocent. Despite his desire to help, to protect, he enabled Jimmy and by proxy has some fault in the events that transpired.

And these are the types of characters that you don't see often in media; morally grey characters, characters that aren't perfect but aren't evil either. Media is so flooded with pure evil and pure good, that people try to fit characters who are realistic and morally grey into that pure evil or pure good box, and it doesn't work, because they are not one or the other.

They are both and neither at the same time, and that is what makes them too human for a lot of people to properly understand and comprehend. (more on that in a separate post, later down the road).

and that concludes my in-depth analysis of Curly’s character!!!! to everyone that made it this far, thanks for reading!!! feel free to tweak anything you disagree with, and let me know if something is worded incorrectly!

i’ll post a more in-depth explanation about my “too human” end statement at some point, but i’m finishing school, and my birthday is tomorrow so i’m quite busy here lately!! more art, analysis’, and more ramblings coming soon^_^ bye bye!!

[luwritesomething]

HEY I KNOW YOUR WORKING IN MY OTHER REQUEST RN BUT HEADCANNONS ON WHAT DATING RANDY WOULD LOOK LIKE KINDA LIKE AN EXTENSION ON THE CUDDLING HEADCANNONS YOU JUST DID 🤩🤩🤩🤩

Randy Meeks Heacanons: Dating Randy would include.

Warnings: Swearing lol, probably typos or bad constructed english

Edited?: Like always, no.

Reader's pronouns: Not stated, gender neautral.

Summary: Dating Randy headcanons!!

Author's note: RANDYYYYYYYYYYYY not enough works for him, so i gotta keep up with his requests. also kudos to alex for requesting constantly with great ideas :) i had so much fun making these.

criticism, comments and reblogs are always appreciated! requests are open, especially for scream! hit that anon button and tell me your ideas. in the scream fandom, i write for billy loomis, stu macher, randy meeks, tatum riley, sidney prescott, mickey altieri, kirby reid, chad meeks martin, mindy meeks martin, tara carpenter, anika kayoko and laura crane.

a lot of forehead kisses

cheek kisses too

he just looks like the type. he's gotta go to class? have a cheek kiss. you're meeting up? cheek kiss. you made him laugh? cheek kiss. going to sleep? cheek kiss. whatever, cheek kiss.

him being rather shy at the beginning of your relationship, but growing bolder as the time passes.

holding hands!!!! he loves holding hands. he actually blushed the first time you guys held hands, he's that cute.

getting along with his little sister martha!!! even teaming up against him with her lmao.

lots of dates, and a lot around getting food/eating/cooking/going to restaurants.

but i'm also not gonna lie, movies and dates are a big deal.

movie marathons! movie nights! going to the theater!

cuddling with randy (headcanons here)

you better not like guilty pleasure movies too much because if he has to cinematically roast you HE WILL.

learning a lot about movies and cinematography because he doesn't shut the fuck up.

but it's not like you want him to shut up like, ever.

competing to see who can insult people more 'culturally'

(like homo-repressed mama's boy, creepy tarantino film student, leatherface, pussy ass-wet-rag)

he likes dancing with you and will do so with absolutely every excuse he can think of.

the kind to get drunk, flirt with you and get really sad when you tell him you have a very loving boyfriend (he doesn't realize that's him)

really sweet

if he ever meets your parents, he'll most probably win them over. he's still walking on eggshells around them.

compliments you/what you're wearing every single day.

even if it's just your socks, he always says something nice to you.

he's so greatful to have you.

the type to walk out of arguments when things get heated, before any of you can say anything you'd regret.

he adores you, he could listen to every single thing you say for the rest of his life.

randy doesn't care if you're just talking about your favorite type of pen, he'll listen like you're trusting him with the secrets of the universe.

he remembers a lot of little details because of this.

call him 'pretty boy' and he'll be yours forever.

not a cheater :) (THE BARE MINIMUM---)

he rarely ever lies to you. he'd let you go down to the basement with him in a horror movie, and that's a shit lot of trust.

quotes different romantic dialogues from different movies, but it's always at the most unexpected/worst timing.

he's so goofy i love him.

always making sure you're okay, no matter where you at. it doesn't have to be a frat party for him to worry about your well-being

randy walks you everywhere, no matter how impractical that can be.

especially at night. he doesn't want you to go out alone when it's dark.

overall, he's a really good boyfriend, although i'm not getting involved with the angsty stuff.

[damthosefandoms]

my outsiders essay i wrote in eighth grade on "what is a hero? who is the hero in the outsiders? why?" (236 words, all quotes from the book):

my outsiders essay now (2k words, all nonsense but there’s a point in there somewhere):

Juliette Damthosefandoms

Transcribed by Mage Mutopians (because I’m lazy but I still edited it after. if there's typos blame mage they just typed every word i said)

12/23/2024

Hero Essay 2.0

Way, way back in spring 2014, when I was thirteen years old, I was tasked with writing an essay about what the definition of a hero is and who I think the main hero of the Outsiders story was. I said that there was only one character in that story and his name was Johnny Cade and he was “defiantly” the hero. After submitting that essay, there was a day where I was in a PPT meeting (because if this doesn’t make it clear that I have ADHD I don’t know what will), and I have a very specific memory of it being brought up to give me more instruction in adding detail to my writing. Now, I have spent way too much time putting entirely too much detail into my writing to the point where I do not believe in anything that is not a run-on sentence. (I am sorry for making you type this @mutopians.) (It’s okay @damthosefandoms <3) Anyway. In this essay, I will explain what I think the definition of a hero is after having spent many years obsessing over superheroes, which doesn’t apply to the Outsiders, but it could, if you write a 22k fic and not post it. (Drop the fic Julie-) (NO.) Anyway. Again. 

A hero….What’s a hero? A hero is (I think I stand by whatever my original definition was) probably somebody who helps people who are in need or go out of their way to do things to do-Fuck it. I don’t know. If you’re going for the Batman definition, it’s Darry, because he’s taking kids off the street. This also works for Johnny because he took kids out of the building. To quote my essay from almost eleven years ago, “To start, Johnny ran into the church after Ponyboy.  “‘Hey, Ponyboy.’ I looked around, startled. I hadn’t realized Johnny had been right behind me all the way.” (Pg.91-92) He wasn’t afraid to go into a fire to save those kids.” (Me, 2014). (insert Mage and Julie argument over the appropriate way to cite an essay from 2014 in MLA while Julie pets Mage’s cat) If we’re talking about saving people, Johnny fits the bill. 

Moving on, I was rereading that essay and laughing at it so I posted it on Tumblr the other day and did a poll and you guys decided that, as of December 23rd 2024 at 3:18 PM EST, Johnny is defiantly the hero at 65.2% of the 23 votes. Soda and/or Darry have 21.7% of the vote. Other has 13% but nobody actually put in the tags who they thought the other heroes would have been so. I don’t know what was going on there. Ponyboy, I guess it’s my fault for making it biased because I called him the boring answer. But he didn’t do anything heroic so I stand by it. He has 0% of the vote. Not even zero point something. Just zero. So that’s apparently what the internet thinks. There’s five days left on the poll if you want to vote on that, but I don’t think that’s going to change. My theory is that the Johnny thing was winning because I made the joke about the typo earlier in the post and I think Soda and/or Darry are just because of musical fans bias, which I’ll get into in a minute. 

(Right now, at this point, I asked Mage to put in a word count, because I’m having fun.) (Counting this part, there’s 601 words.) (I had to teach Mage how to enable the word counter on Google Docs just btw.) (In my defense it intimidates me when I’m staring at an already blank page) 

What was the point of this again? (Julie then paused to pet my cat and say he was cute.) Where am I? We need to figure out who the hero is. In the musical, let’s talk about that, there’s a lot of bias. Giving Soda and/or Darry as an option didn’t help because I kinda knew that, as we’ve all grown up and reread the book in a different point in our lives and listened to the musical on repeat for six months straight and nothing else and except Christmas music recently and and the occasional One Direction song back in October (RIP Liam Payne), we all know how the story goes. Now that we’ve seen a point of view that’s not just Ponyboy’s and we’ve accepted he’s an unreliable narrator and we’ve all listened to “Finale (Tulsa ‘67)” we know what Ponyboy’s point of view is: “And now I look at what my brothers do for me. They’re the reason that I’m standing here right now. One thing’s for certain, I can say without a doubt. Those heroes paved the way so I could finally make it out.” (Outsiders Musical) (I’m not doing any other in-text citations now because I hate them and they’re stupid and if you’re reading this you know where it’s from. Goodbye.)

Anyway, Ponyboy sees his brothers as heroes at the end of the story. I think that now that we’ve all grown up enough to realize that Darry isn’t abusive and was just scared and that hitting Pony in the face wasn’t intentional, it’s just what siblings do, and if you’ve never slapped your brother before, you’re lying. Obviously in the context of the situation, it wasn’t cool, but sometimes the Cain instinct just takes over. Johnny even says I think later on in the musical that Darry probably didn’t mean it, and if the kid who consistently is getting abused is saying that Darry didn’t mean it, then Darry probably didn’t mean it. It’s also interesting that after it happens, during all of “Far Away from Tulsa,” Darry is still on the stage literally just sitting there on the floor staring into nothing like “what the fuck did I just do.” He did not mean it. Thirteen year old me did not understand this but I grew up and I get it now.

We can talk about Darry a little bit because I do actually think that maybe it could be him who’s the hero because if you think of it from a grown up point of view and not a thirteen year old point of view, he has so much going on and they don’t even realize how much shit he gave up for them. Some of them might, but they don’t appreciate it and should appreciate it more. Ponyboy realizes it at the end and that’s kind of the whole problem of their relationship. It took the whole plot for him to realize it. But, like, he literally could have gone to college and didn’t. To be fair, in the book canon, he didn’t get that scholarship, but in the musical he did. He had to drop out of school, he probably lost a lot of friends in the process, everybody is giving him shit and calling him a soc and being shitty to him and he’s just like…no wonder he’s no fun now, when he’s worried about Ponyboy running around and getting in trouble and risking social services getting called on him. Give the man a break. He’s twenty. He should be at the club. He got punched by his ex-boyfriend because Pony was out past curfew. So let’s say Darry is the hero of the story, and needs a break, and. You know. To not live in 1960s Oklahoma where if he’s gay, his brothers will get taken away. 

Soda’s probably also got a little bit of hero in him, but didn’t get the opportunity to show it much. He probably had his big hero moment way earlier closer to when their parents died but that’s not explained in the book so yeah.. Rigjt now he’s  just there for hugs and to keep his brothers from killing each other. Also maybe for sending that letter? But otherwise if you think about it, what does he do? And I’m a Soda stan, so I can say that. Although, I will give you, that the ADHD/dyslexia combo really does give demigod vibes and by the Percy Jackson definition of the word  that makes him a hero. So. You know. Yeah. Also, he’s like the only thing keeping Pony from total self-destruction. He did step up a lot, too. He dropped out of school and got a job to help Darry pay the bills. He does so much for their family and is very underappreciated, and I say this as someone who only writes fics based  around Soda. I’m just having trouble coming up with examples off the top of my head. This is hard. We’ve just written a 1300 word essay in under half an hour and I’m just talking off the top of my head while Mage types this for me so please excuse me for being stupid. Sodapop Curtis. I fuckin love that kid.

 Let’s talk about Johnny again. Because he…what does he do? Johnny stabs Bob and Bob had it coming. I think in the book Cherry says that Bob had it coming. And I quote, “Maybe Bob asked for it. I know he did. But I could never look at the person who killed him.” (Julie gave in and checked for quotes but still will not put actual citations in.) (I wanted to read that line is my excuse.) It was gayer in the musical. That’s a lie, actually. Johnny and Dally were gayer in the book, but Johnny and Ponyboy were gayer in the musical. We all listened to “Faraway from Tulsa” and “Death’s at my Door.” You know.

BUT. However. I don’t care if I get crucified for this by musical stans. There is something to be said about the part in the book where (and I specify in the book because the book characters are very different than the musical characters and that context is important. It’s a different universe. Pay attention) they’re driving back from the Dairy Queen and it’s not just that, yes, Johnny stood up to Dally at the drive-in and told him to leave Cherry alone because frankly Dally was being a gross piece of shit to her (men are disgusting <3). Dally got mad at him because “I went out of my way to get you this and Johnny was like we’re going to turn ourselves in and didn’t care what Dally thought blah blah blah”. Johnny is a lot braver than we think and they argue like an old married couple (DALLY BEGS AND TALKS TO JOHNNY IN A VOICE PONY HAS NEVER HEARD BEFORE?). And Dally said that they were going to get in so much trouble, and Johnny said it was the right thing to do. He didn’t want Ponyboy to get in trouble. He knew going back and turning himself in was the only way to ensure that he didn’t screw things over for the Curtises. 

Which, kind of the whole idea, is that everyone is trying to do what they can to keep the brothers together. Maybe the real hero was the rest of the gang. Like maybe that’s why Steve didn’t want Ponyboy to ever tag along if he knew there was a chance he and Soda would get in trouble. (Soda’s a lot closer to being an adult than Ponyboy is, so if he got in trouble and taken away and had to be on his own, he could, but Ponyboy’s got a lot longer until he turns 18. It would be a bigger deal for him to be put in a boys’ home than Soda, who is almost 17 and has a lot more freedom and would only be there for a year.) There’s this one part that, it’s in the book and movie where Two-Bit checks if Ponyboy has a fever by putting his hand on his forehead. It’s like they’re all watching out for them because that’s rule number one of being a greaser: stick together. That, and don’t get caught. They do that, help out, because that’s what the brothers do for them, like when Dally calls for help at the very end of the book, and Darry and the gang drop everything to go get him (and just to see him die, but, you know). That’s why Darry keeps the door unlocked. Pony says he could call Two-Bit to come pick him up in his car, but Pony decides to walk home alone anyway. But they’re always around. It’s about COMMUNITY!!!

In conclusion, I still don’t believe in conclusion paragraphs, the only one who’s not a hero is Ponyboy because he didn’t do jack shit. (I guess he did run into the church to save kids. And other things. But. You know. I don’t feel like talking slash writing about that right now.) Want a conclusion? Read what I wrote. The end. 

[tnglesbian]

Assorted thoughts and quotes I liked from "Imbalance" by V.E. Mitchell

• I enjoyed Riker getting to have a musical moment! The chapter made me want to pick up my cello.

@overseer-picard Hi!! Book #2!!

• In a similar vein to how I chose the first book, I chose this one because Beverly is on the cover 🥰

• Keiko's inclusion was a pleasant surprise! I like her character, so when I realized she was a main character in the plot I was excited for more content.

• I liked the utilization of multiple perspectives. It kept the suspense alive, and I enjoyed weaving the storylines together.

---

• The issues Keiko and Miles had throughout the book were a can of worms I didn't really want to unpack while reading. This book felt very 90s. As happy as I was to have Keiko in the story, I ended up disliking much of her storyline.

• Overall, the writing was good. The plot was interesting. I can't say it's a book I would've picked up if not for these characters, but it was a good read! It was a very action driven sci-fi story. It didn't have as much of an episode-like feel as "Boogeymen", but that's fine because it was a solid book.

• I appreciated the lack of typos lol.

• I enjoyed the book! I don't know how motivated I'd feel to reread it, but I'm glad I read it! I don't read sci-fi very often, so I'm having fun with this avenue of venturing into the genre.

1.

It should be noted that I also point out every time this happens while watching the show. I love the inclusion in both books I've read so far.

2.

I already texted you about this, but man, Riker is always going through it. Is it even a Riker-centric scene if he's not getting battered and bruised? He did not have a single moment of peace in this book. He was concerned for Picard's well-being every time he went to the planet. He was nervous about offending the aliens when he accompanied their musicians. He was totally bruised, swollen, and had poisoned scratches all over himself, but instead he focused on Beverly's (mostly healed!) scratch on her arm.

I think I've mentioned it before, but the turning point for me starting to like Riker's character while watching the show was a result of him getting beat up so much at the end of season 1/beginning of season 2. This whole book, I felt bad for him 😭. He's just a traumatized little guy (I say about a grown man over 6 feet all).

3.

Beverly has my heart forever. It's very sweet that Wesley was at the forefront of her mind while she was in danger, and she was comforted by knowing he wasn't facing the same danger. It also seems very in character for her to acknowledge how bad her situation was while also pre-planning how she would repackage the story as to not concern Wesley.

Wesley may not have been involved in this story, but I enjoyed knowing he was in Beverly's thoughts.

---

Additional thoughts:

• I thought it was funny that Worf and Riker ended up in fairly similar situations, but they had entirely different outcomes. Worf strategically got himself out of the compound and was rescued by the Enterprise. Riker severely injured himself, and then he escaped the compound by being kidnapped and taken to a second location. 💀

• I guessed pretty immediately that Keiko was pregnant. It's a pretty used trope that if a woman in a committed relationship in a book is suddenly puking a bunch, the reveal will be that she's pregnant.

• While watching TNG, my brother and I would frequently say, "Picard in trouble. Riker most affected." In this book, I would say it was Worf who was most affected. Every single chapter in Worf's perspective, half of his thoughts were that it was his duty to save Picard. It was fun seeing Picard's amusement at Worf's dedication to his job + warrior status.

[thechaseofspades]

For the ask game

First off, I love the image you chose for this. I can always count on you to come up with something new and unique.

Anyway, on with the answerings. Long post incoming.

11: Link your three favorite fics right now

Alright, let's get this out of the way first. My cardinal sin is not reading enough of other people's work. I'm going to fandom hell after I fandom die sadly but I have already made fandom peace with it. -- I swear I really want to read you guys' stuff I just don't have the time and/or attention span a lot of the time!

[Dear Fellow Traveller by justaboot]

I know, recency bias and all. But hush. The first chapter of this story could have been a story all on its own. I'm going to elaborate on what I like so much about this story in a comment here soon but long story short, I love how Huey is portrayed. Della too. Also Jamie has mentioned that her stories can be traced back to experiences she's had, and I can feel that going through this one. So much vivid detail that takes an experience I've never even touched and makes me feel like I'm living it. Not to mention how Huey feels relatable to me personally (thanks, neurodivergence!). Anyway, get your peepers out for this one, and your reading glasses if you've got em. It'll be a good one.

[Complementary Colors by Korkorali and tsundereanubis]

Come to think of it, this fic might have been a huge inflection point for me. It was probably the first time I ever realized that Violet Sabrewing is Literally Me (TM) because she's autistic and ace and plays chess what is there not to love. But also going through it again, I feel like this at least indirectly inspired "My Head is an Animal". Specifically, the part where Violet has a breakdown and Lena consoles her. Also also, not really related to anything I've done yet, but it got me to take May Duck seriously as a character. One of those moments where I realized that fanfiction could take a one-off clone of somebody else and give them depth, personality, etc. Not that she didn't have that in the show, but I think anybody would tell you that we didn't get very much May Duck content in DT17. Without this fic, we would have never been May'd. Send this to your friends to totally May them.

Pretty much any of the Weblena picks from TerminalMiraculosis but I'm gonna go with three because I cheat:

[Stitched Through Time]

[Crossing the Streams]

[When In Rome]

This was my genesis in the DuckTales 2017 brain rot. I don't care if these end up aging terribly and turns out there's a trillion typos and also it was written in Gaelic so I can't even read it and actually it was all a dream and none of it ever happened. These three are still going to have a special place because they opened me up to being a fan of something. I was just ranging out of that age where you were supposed to hide if you liked stuff, especially anything for kids. My nostalgic pandemic-era binge of Phineas and Ferb, for example, was something to feel shameful of, not enjoy every second of like I ended up doing. But watching DuckTales, and then immersing myself into this fandom shortly thereafter, taught me how to enjoy things. How to love things. How to love myself. Since 2021, I've spent a lot of time embracing who I am and learning to love myself. I'm not gonna say that DT17 taught me how to do all of that, but I will say that it showed me how doing so could make me so much happier in life. And here I am now, being happy in life. Funny how that works.

41: Do you tend to reread fics or are you a one-and-done kind of person?

This answer applies to pretty much everything. Movies, tv shows, and yes, reading stuff. I don't rewatch/reread stuff unless I have a reason to do so. It's nothing against the concept or anything, just that I always feel like I need a reason for doing whatever I do. Usually if I rewatch/reread something, it's because I want to check a specific part of it, like quoting a line properly or what have you. Even the fics that I linked up top, I haven't reread them in the two years since I found them. That's just how my brain works I guess.

62: Thoughts on cliffhangers?

I'm fine with cliffhangers as long as they're eventually resolved. I used a few in "Groundhog Day", and that was fun to do. I'll also say that as a writer, cliffhangers in actively updated fics are a neat little trick to get people talking. Want some free feedback? Just have Lena Sabrewing wake up in a void outside of time and space. And then just end the chapter. Comments go wild for that.

As a reader, cliffhangers are alright but it comes with a big caveat: I'm not the best at remembering what I last read. So if it's been a few days or a week since the cliffhanger, I might have some trouble remembering where we are in the story. It might be a smooth transition where we pick up exactly where we left off, but that might not click in my brain. Idk it's weird. And like I said I tend not to reread stuff that often so that complicates things.

[winderlylandchime]

Just want to send you guys little moments that have happened in the last few days that for sure wouldn’t have without qaf. Just in case if you guys thought that maybe he has even one normal day/moment in his life. I am here to show you that you’re wrong. Anyway:

Our mom called him like 4 times which he didn’t answer. Finally when he called her back, she asked why didn’t he answer before to which he said ‘sorry mom, i was playing with Brian’ and my mom went dead silent and had the most scared look on her face and then just slowly went ‘please, please say you mean the cat.’

He went on a walk with the neighbor that watched qaf and he mentioned to him that he saw Gale on Criminal Minds. And the guy, i guess told him that Gale was on Desperate Housewives and the next thing I see out the window is a grown man trying to speed walk back home. And he barges in and goes ‘we gotta watch Desperate Housewives! Right now! Brian is there!’ And when I told him that he’s only in a few episodes in a later season, he went ‘fuck. So now I gotta watch that whole thing for a bit of Brian? That’s rude but I guess I gotta do what I gotta do’ so now he put DH on his watch list next.

Then he had a call with his therapist and I don’t know what they talked about but whatever it was, it lead to him bursting into my room going ‘do YOU think Brian would fuck me if given the chance?’ We got into an argument because I refused to answer. I mean what do i even say to that? But also i want to know what he asked his therapist with the way he emphasized the word ‘you’.

I was in a “meeting” (more like a catch up) like 2 days ago with my boss and a coworker (who thankfully have met my brother and are both cool) when this dude burst into my office to ask ‘when do you think Brian fell in love?’ He thinks it was before prom, he can’t make his mind up between 1x16, 1x18 or 1x20 he wants to say it was sooner but he doesn’t think so. But he thinks prom solidified it, which btw he said all that while still in the room and then when he noticed my laptop, he very, very slowly walked backwards and closed the door behind him.

Then I went to our local store (it’s like a tiny corner store or whatever) and when I was at the check out ready to pay, the guy working there goes ‘hey, i thought you only had one brother?’ And i confirm that yes, i onky got one, thank god. And then he goes ‘so who the fuck are Brian and Justin?’ And i felt like a deer caught in headlights. Turns out he’s been talking about them like they’re normal people, so the poor guy thought Justin was our little brother and Brian is his boyfriend/my brothers friend.

And my all time favorite one this week was the one that even made our mom laugh so hard she cried: an old lady that went to PT with him (after pt they have him on like some lasers or whatever to help the pain, so he’s laying on one of the beds and she’s on the other) she has heard him talk about Brian to the nurse(!!!) so many times that she actually thought Brian was his boyfriend. And he didn’t even realize it until she left her last session yesterday and before she left she went ‘sweetheart, leave that man, you deserve much better than what he gives you plus by the sound of it, he’s still hung up on his ex’ and my dumb brother sighed and went ‘yeah, i know- wait what’ and she waved and left. He couldn’t figure out if he gave off a certain vibe or was it how he talked/moved and she was just being a little ignorant about it or if all this Brian talk made an old lady think he’s gay. And when I didn’t answer bc idk what to say, he got into an argument with me again because and I quote ‘how dare you not know if I’m gay or not to other people.’ Oh and he texted our mom ‘do I seem gay?’ But he fucked up and wrote ‘seam’ so it changed the whole thing to ‘Am i gay?’ Mom’s response was ‘i don’t know hunny, maybe. Who knows at this point anymore’ it took him TWO HOURS to realize the typo/autocorrect and by then it was too late to fix it so he just gave up.

So i’d say living with my brother at the hight of his Qaf obsession has been going great.

Dear sweet anon! This has made me laugh so hard. Your brother is really in the mix of it all, isn't he?

my mom went dead silent and had the most scared look on her face and then just slowly went ‘please, please say you mean the cat.’ LOL. Because let's not have an adult man with a new imaginary friend who's a character on a long ago TV show.

I am so terrified of what he asked his therapist. I wish your brother was my client because I would just discuss the show for a session and get paid but now I'm imagining this happening to a therapist who has never seen QAF and how confusing it must be and how this therapist is probably consulting with other therapists to figure out how much to indulge this. (Btw has QAF come up in my own therapy? Yes, yes it has.)

As for when Brian fell in love - that is such a good question. I think I had an anon who asked me that. I think there's a meta post in your brother that is dying to be posted to tumblr.

Also everyone thinking Brian and Justin are other brothers or your brother's boyfriend or... the fact that your brother is not prefacing all of this with "this is a tv show and these are characters on the show" is just fandom brain. And it's hilarious. And the little old lady telling him to leave Brian? DEAD.

Mom’s response was ‘i don’t know hunny, maybe. Who knows at this point anymore’ is a great response to "am I gay" but also brother not realizing the typo/autocorrect is killing me.

You are a saint. Thank you for your service. This is incredible.

[animezinglife]

Really and truly, it was a comment on one of my fics that made me realize I'd made a typo when the reader had shared a quote she liked and I was so incredibly thankful for it.

I don't want typos in my fics, so if you see them, please point them out!

Most of the time, I'm writing these late at night after a long day at work (and tired enough that my eyes and mind just aren't functioning as they should be). I'm going to miss things. I appreciate when someone catches them and want to know about them.

not to be controversial bc I know this is like…not in line with shifting opinions on fanfic comment culture but if there’s a glaring typo in my work I will NOT be offended by pointing it out. if ao3 fucks up the formatting…I will also not be offended by having this pointed out…

‘looking forward to the next update’ and ‘I hope you update soon!’ are different vibes than a demand, and should be read in good faith because a reader is finding their way to tell you how much they love it. I will not be mad at this.

‘I don’t usually like this ship but this fic made me feel something’ is also incredibly high praise. I’m not going to get mad at this.

even ‘I love this fic but I’m curious about why you made [x] choice’ is just another way a reader is engaging in and putting thought into your work.

I just feel like a lot of authors take any comment that’s not perfectly articulated glowing praise in the exact manner they’re hoping to receive it in bad faith.

fic engagement has been dropping across the board over the last several years, and yes it’s frustrating but it isn’t as though I can’t see how it happens. comment anxiety can be a real thing. the last thing anyone wants to do is offend an author they love, and that means sometimes people default to silence.

idk where I’m going with this I guess aside from saying unless a comment is outright attacking me I’m never going to get mad at it, and I think a lot of authors should feel the same way. ESPECIALLY TYPOS PLZ GOD POINT OUT MY TYPOS.

[voidreplacement]

oh my fucking god

buckle up bitches because i’m tired and exhausted mentally and physically WOOOOOOOO

btw i didn’t really proofread this so if there’s typos:

sorry 😭

okay so

the son of a bitch

and i were talking about dinosaurs, which lead to talking about what’s considered unnecessary to bananas and the many banana recipes right

(we both don’t like bananas?)

and he says

OUT OF NOWHERE

“Oh my goodness / I didn’t realize how beautiful my arm looks in this picture / I have a shoulder vein”

to which i’m getting flashbacks to when he sent me the shirtless picture

and respond “ouh is it like the chest vein”

and he goes “Im like prime mj / You can’t stop me you can only contain me and you can’t even contain me you have to just hope / that’s like the average gym person / I might have the greatest sleeper build ever”

in between where he said the weird ass quote thing and that’s the avg gym person

he sent a photo

of his arm

curled

and then

UNSENT THE FUVKIMG PHOTO

(i don’t even KNOW who’s mj my first thought was from spider-man what is he yapping about dear god)

BEFORE I COULD SS IT OR REACT TO IT OR SNYTHING

and i KNOW he sent it because i checked back on my texts and i saw a preview on my notifications screen

and when i checked back

IT WAS GONE

anyways i respond with “ouh philosophy is back / nooo you can tell that you work out”

and he goes “I mean like you can’t tell everything / I wear big clothes mostly”

(and he DOES OH MY GOD)

anyways

i respond with “well yea not everything / but you obviously have muscle on you yk”

and that’s where the conversation stopped

i am in shambles

SHAMBLES I TELL YOU

because if he HAD kept it

i would’ve seen how ridiculously buff this guy is

and absolutely swoon over a bicep photo

but since he didn’t

i’m deprived of that

and wishing to see what i cannot

so either way

i lose

and he’s just there

being the reason

i’m going to explode dear god

help me

[automatismoateo]

Is there any actual evidence that would prove anything that was claimed in the Bible? via /r/atheism

Is there any actual evidence that would prove anything that was claimed in the Bible? Just thinking back to a conversation I had with my boyfriend because we have different beliefs. I was explaining to him why I'm no longer apart of any organized religion, main reason being I had a realization one day that I was stressing over stuff that I couldn't even guarantee was true. Slowly started to realize how much of a fairy tale it all really is. He thinks that Jesus was indeed a real person and that Mary really somehow got pregnant without doing the deed, lol. I was trying to explain we have no proof of these events taking place which is weird because we literally have proof of dinosaurs even though that happened long before "biblical events" supposedly happened. Like why would that be? And why were humans created on the 7th day of earth existing, despite the earth being 4.5 billion years old and humans only about 300,000. Anyway, I'm rambling here but I just wanted to know if there really was any small amount of concrete evidence that would prove anything claimed to have taken place in the Bible. Because as far as I'm aware, there isn't. Every time I've asked this question to religious people they just quote the Bible as proof, but like, it's obviously biased but whatever.. Edited typo, the earth is 4.5 BILLION years not 4.5 years old 🤣 Submitted June 09, 2024 at 04:04AM by My_4th_throwawayyy (From Reddit https://ift.tt/zHKOmCe)

[terrathetulpa]

"elaborate how youre.. not made up depitw being a tulpa?" Woah is this a hate re-blog??? "genuinely no harm intended we just are curious" Oh, wait they actually wanna know! (I captured your typos as well, for authenticity)

Of course I'm not made up! Although when I said that I meant it in the sense of a thing being pretend. "Made up" the way that fiction and OCs are made up. Thinking about it now the phrase has several other definitions in different contexts. (English fails us yet again.)

But really the answer to this question is super simple: "I think, therefore I am." (Thank you Rene Descartes, I know almost nothing about you. I had to google where this quote came from.) Everyone I'm sure has heard this quote before. For tulpa (and other kinds of head-mates who don't want to be called tulpa.) I think it is especially useful. There's no physical evidence of our existence, no tangible proof that we are. The only genuine proof of a tulpa is this "I think therefore I am."

By this statement's truth a tulpa can irrefutably prove to themself (and unfortunately only themself) that they are as real as the host they reside with.

No one can take that from you. No matter how they try. I know that this website and any other online space where you can find tulpamancy, headmates, and/or alters is going to be full of people who are trying very hard to tell you what is allowed and what isn't, and what makes sense, and who you are, and all about their system and what makes someone valid or not valid or real or not real or why they won't talk to these kinds of systems because they no oonga boonga like we oonga boonga.

But there's absolutely nothing that anyone can say that's going to make me suddenly realize "Oh wait! I wasn't real all along!" and then disappear into the void like Thanos just snapped and I lost the coin-flip. Because I think! Therefore I am!

The rest is just details.

i feel like i made myself up

[duskterrace]

✉️🥀

tw: long ass post. ✉️ : LETTERS TO SANTA

Raffa,

Heads up this is kinda lame, but I was told to be honest so this is me, being honest for once.I don’t really know how to start or end these, so I guess I'll start with a quote that I read lately that reminded me of you. “meeting you was like listening to a song for the first time knowing it would be my favorite.” This one stood out to me for a while, and I couldn't quite figure out why. Maybe I wasn't exactly sure how to do that. Because it would mean that I would have to be honest with myself about how I felt about you. Because it would mean that the second I am honest, I'll have to let those harbored feelings go. And I can admit…I didn't want to let them go. No one really wants to give up on a crush they’re harboring deep within themselves. Sometimes because they’re afraid a small piece of them will break off along with the person sized chunk they tore out of their chest. Other times because there's always that residual feeling of hope that one day, just maybe, if you try hard enough, that person will find space in their heart for you too. But that's not the case for us. For me, I mean. To give some back story ( excuse any typos because my hands are starting to get shaky hah ), I met you through Noa and Jaehyun so many times and thought you were just… so, so cool. At first it was awe, like when you finally find someone you can look up to. Someone to aspire to be like. It wasn’t love at first sight, in fact I didn't feel anything past platonic feelings. But then, that one…weird night when I was at my lowest ( mentally ), you came to the rooftop while I was up there doing my ‘pretty dorky’ studies on planets. We both knew you were searching for Noa and happened to stumble on me but, you being the nice person you were, noticed i wasn't in the best mood and you stuck around. I don’t know what that night did to me, but despite it being below 60 degrees… I was oddly warm talking to you that night. I, a person so….detrimentally afraid of falling…fell so hard in less than 3 hours and it shook me to my core. Achilles and the words he said to Patroclus had nothing on the things I wanted to say to you. And what…made me fall so hard, you might ask? You made a dumb fucking joke about the stars, and your smile just….messed me up from then on. The stars themselves couldn’t compare to it. And the rasp within your deep laugh was like the knife i twisted within myself, because i knew i was genuinely…fucked. I started looking forward to seeing you around. I started, despite knowing that this –that feelings– never usually end well for me, started looking forward to simple interactions between us after that. At first just noticing that weird flutter in the pit of my stomach when you’d pop up, to full blown waiting for my next fix of you as if I was addicted to the butterflies you gave me. I’d cherish those fleeting occasional texts, the “ hey’s ” or nods in the hallway and the random tiktok’s you sent about…fuck knows, but they made me laugh. I…fuck, this is beyond embarrasing. Why did it have to be you? I don’t know why my heart skipped a beat when it came to you, and i can’t lie, i tried to will and pray the feeling away. But, you were like that karma I wasn't ready for. Your name furiously etched itself into my heart in a way that no one else’s ever had and before I realized it, before I could erase it to save myself from the doom that was welcoming me, it was practically tattooed there.

Don't get me wrong … I’ve had my rib cage broken into and left empty countless times. So I know the routine by now. It’s very fond of me, so I almost welcome it. Fall, break my own heart before anyone else can, tell myself it is what it is, give up on feelings for a bit, hyper-focus on my studies, meet someone again, rinse and repeat. Over and over. And I did that with you. Twice. Broke my own heart to give it some relief from being painfully aware you wouldn't see you the same way I saw you. But you’d come back with that dumb smile again and – oh how fast i’d realize i was putty in your hands. At some point, i was almost 100% sure I was just infatuated. And I probably was. I hopefully was just simply pining for you for superficial reasons but… whenever I sat down to sketch to just clear my mind, the only face that came to mind was yours. The way the sun catches the slope of your cheek, the deep grooves of your jaw, the crook in your smile, the warm undertone in your skin, and the shapes your mouth makes when you're yelling to a friend from across the common room. On countless occasions, I closed my eyes to imagine the personification of beauty itself, expecting to see Aphrodite and the only image behind those veils of black that I created–– the only thing that ever comes up–– is you. You and the way your lips round out to pronounce my name, the rich color of your eyes when light is reflecting in them, and how shadows will literally bend to your frame like my will bends to accommodate yours. I know it probably sounds weird to hear ‘one of your boys’ tell you this ... so I feel like I have to mention that it's been months since that day and I do everything in my power to distance us so that these feelings fade on their own. But there are those days where everyones hanging out and I can't just avoid you, and there it is again, the idea that maybe one day. We could be something. Simply because you sat next to me. Simply because you asked about the stars again. When I'm with you…it's so fucking weird. I get homesick for arms that have never held me. Arms that honestly, probably definitely never wanted to. Sometimes i feel like this is the curse that comes with my power. Not feeling like I'm enough in either gender. Not being able to be permanently female when I need to be, nor permanently male when it's asked of me. But… I think what I hate most about it–– or really, what I hate about myself–– is that if I could choose who I was and I had a shot with you? I know I’d do it 10 times over for a single chance to have you look at me the way you do her. And that’s not healthy. My powers always manifest as however i feel and lately when i'm with you, by default, i’m always….female. Almost as if I'm teetering between wanting to be what you like and being heartbroken knowing these actions to make you want me won't be permanent. I know it won't happen, but I can't help but…hold out hope. Anyway i’m just fucking around and wasting your time huh? I’ve bottled these feelings long enough to know that wishing for you would only make one of us happy, so the one thing I really want for Christmas is to see your smile for as long as I can. That and to q u i c k l y get over you because jesus fuck, man, this pining thing isn't a good look. I’d like at least a pinch of dignity in 2024. Um…so yeah. I think the hardest thing I'll ever do is walk away despite still being head over heels for you. So, despite the fallen tears slipping down the back of my hands as I write this. Despite every bit of my soul wishing to hold onto you for just a moment longer– for just a single milli-second longer. I think this letter is me giving you up, officially. Maybe… in another universe, or in another lifetime, there's space for you and me, but it’s not this one. You aren’t mine. And I have to make peace with that. Also– Feliz Navidad, btw. Heh, Duolingo coming in clutch, once again huh?

Sincerely, Nasa Nerd.

[ this letter was left in drafts. ]

🥀 : 3AM DRUNK TEXT

( ✉️ ) SMS → PA RAFFA THE RAPPA

delivered / 03:25 am ✓ › you caillou built assh bitch where tf is my phone i saw yu take it???

delivered / 03:30 am ✓ › i hope a roach crawls across yur forehead tonitghte 😒

delivered / 03:40 am ✓ › nvm i founfded it. my bad.

[sasha276]

10/14/2023

My first journal entry on the Tumbler, since August 2022, over a year ago. I have written a bit in a different Tumblr account, because I couldn't remember how to access this one. I may connect that one to this one somehow, at some point.

I will introduce myself, since it's been a loooong while!

My name is Sasha. I'm 43 year old, but I feel a LOT younger. lol Like, a lot. I am married to a great guy, his name is Mark. He's loving, affectionate, supportive - what more could I ask for? I have a 16 year old stepdaughter, Sierra. We have shared legal custody between her Dad, me and her biological Mother. Another important member of the family is Nathan. He IS family to us. I'll talk more about my family situation another time.

Anyway, we bought this single level, ranch style home January 21st 2021. It's a cozy little home. I want to make some more updates to it. I'm sure i'll post more on that, later, as well.

I work full time as a Fraud Claims Evaluator, for Bank of America. I work for BOA, but through a 2nd party company. I've been working here since January 16, 2023. I work from my home office. I love my job!

I am also a full time college student, at Post University, online. I am majoring in psychology. I just got back into college, loving it do far! Next week is the last unit, and then i'll be starting my next unit. This unit I took Digital Skills for College and Career and College Success Seminar. I have a 100% in my Digital Skills class, and 98.24 in my College Success class. I hope I can keep up my grdes/GPA. My next classes are Fundamental of Psychology and College Writing. Looking forward to both!

I had been a homemaker most of my life, but most of the time, i'll admit - not a really good one. I am working on that. I am writing a daily task schedule for myself. I want to get in control of this house and my daily tasks!

Ideal with some health issues, both physical and mental. I'll go more into detail about that another time, too. Saving this blog entry for just the basics! =)

I am using this Tumblr as my personal blog/journal. You don't have to feel obligated to read it. I'm doing this for me. But, I welcome you to read through, if you are interested.

About me..

I'm 5'4" and 269.4 pounds, as of today. I had lost weight and was down to 250's, but then I have regained. I'm a size 2X right now. Clothes are a bit snugger than they were at 255, though. That is yet another topic that I will ramble on about another time. lol Anyway, to finish my description... I have blue eyes, though I sometimes wish they were honey/golden brown. Don't get me wrong, I love my eyes. But I really love gold/honey eyes. I am a redhead. From a bottle. lol My natural color was considered a dark reddish blonde. Although, I always considered it a light reddish brown. I have redhead complection, complete with freckles. lol Small up top, big booty. How's that from an honest and open description. lol

Some of my interests and hobbies include... Swimming, camping, short hikes, drinking beer around the fire pit, going out for drinks or sushi, gardening, poetry, cooking, decorating, shopping and thrift shopping, photography, writing, learning new things, seeing new places, long drives/road trips, the beach, palm trees, the mountains, waterfalls, psychology, forensics, true crime shows and documentaries, roses - especially those that I grow in my garden, old cemeteries, inspirational and motivational quotes.

I was reading through some of my older posts. It's interesting to see how much everything has changed. And, I realized how many typos I had in my posts! If there are typos in this one, i'm sorry ahead of time. lol I don't feel like going back over this post at the moment.

......More Later!

[akascow]

bokuto: *covers his eye with his hand*

bokuto: how does kuroo even see this

kenma, deadpan: he turns.

akaashi: thats exhausting

[scorpioracha]

Dating Jeongin

Hi guys im sorry Innie’s took so long to write but I hope you enjoy this one!! This has not been proofread yet so if there’s typos it be like that💀You know the deal, comments,reblogs,likes,etc

Yang Jeongin 양 정인

-whenever I think about dating Innie I just think of that shy first love kind of crush that has him stumbling over his feet and acting hella dumb💀 baby bread has no game and I’m so sorry to say it, this is an Aquarius man. His was of shooting his shot is staring in your direction like 😐 and then getting back to the dorms to ✨manifest you✨

-It takes a while for this boy to even establish a friendship—let alone even let his mind wander to dating. And when I say it takes a while, it takes a WHILE. This boy has been oogling over you since god’s menu was just an idea in the studio💀 you were a friend of their choreographer and he would just kinda 🧍🏻‍♂️ whenever you were in the dance studio. You held an unofficial official position at JYP, mainly running little errands,picking up coffee for the boys,etc. usually whenever you had free time.

-Hyunjin’s evil ass dubbed you dance studio bae and of course being the hyung’s they were, they wasted no time in teasing the boy both in and out of the group chat. Poor baby bread was a red bean bun half the time you were around😔

-You honestly thought he didn’t like you at first, he rarely spoke, and when he did kept it extremely formal—he wouldn’t even look you in your eyes when you handed him whatever he needed. Everyone was more or less friendly and you thought he was just shy.

-you didn’t let it bother you too much because vying??? For a MANS attention??? Absolutely not. whenever there was down time in the studio or you were called in on the odd day the boys weren’t practicing you realized the other seven were all pretty friendly. You got Channie’s seal of approval and the rest of them took to you pretty quickly. You earned yourself the nickname ‘little mom’ as you couldn’t help but fuss sometimes, you still had a job to do.

-This caused Jeongin to realize two things about himself. One, he’s the jealous type. And two, he doesn’t like that shit at all. If you thought he was shy at first he was just downright cold now.

-you could see him out of the corner of your eye grimacing half the time and the other half his face was just blank.

-It all came to a head one day when you got sick of his bullshit. It was a recording day and you were plucked alongside the rest of the staff to help keep up with busy work. You work exhausted. Channie needed a towel, Hyunjin needed coffee, Jisung couldn’t find his anxiety meds and Seungmin was being a brat—you were worn absolutely thin and it was going to be a long day. You brushed past Jeongin to help Jisung rifle through his backpack because he said and quote ‘moms find everything’ when Jeongin had the nerve to scoff. You had never about faced so quickly in your life.

“Yang Jeongin-ssi, I’m done with your princess attitude”you said, “you can dislike me, but you will not disrespect me”

He was baffled to say the least, and you had to deal with Bang Chan’s numerous apologies and stuttering explanations of how he doesn’t even know what happened or how Jeongin wasn’t really like this. You weren’t hearing it. The rest of that day was spent in uncomfortable silence.

-After that incident Jeongin was better, but there was still something off about him. You could always feel his eyes on you whenever you got a little too close to the others, it was really starting to get on your nerves.

-You finally got fed up enough to bring the issue to Chan and this man could not hold it together. Like you were so close to beating his ass because what was so funny🤨

-He told you to just go speak to Jeongin yourself and when you did, he was back to the shy and awkward little fox you originally knew him as. It took you exactly .02 seconds to connect the dots and when you did you honestly felt kinda flattered

“Yang Jeongin, do you like me?”

He got so defensive oml

“N-no! Why would you think that??!” But his rosy cheeks and flickering eyes were answer enough.

You just patted his cheek and said, “maybe actually spend some time with me and we can see where this goes, yeah?”

-From that moment on, you started to see a new side of him. He was no longer Yang Jeongin, he became Jeongin who smiled with a shy thank you when you handed him his coffee. Jeongin who tried to catch your eye during rehearsal and grinned when he had your attention. Then eventually Innie who weaseled his way out practice sometimes via maknae privileges to join you on your errands.

“I don’t want y/n-ah to be alone”he’d mumble

-That’s how you found yourself with in a Starbucks of all places laughing at a story from one of his childhood trips to the beach, iced americanos forgotten on the side. It was the first snow of the year and you still couldn’t fathom why they all wanted cold drinks. A simple twenty minute errand turned into almost two hours of you two trading stories back and forth. He was elated to know how familiar you were with Busan and went on a tangent about how beautiful it was.

-Sadly this was cut short by Bang Chan himself showing up at the Starbucks with his 😐 face to drag you to back to the company.

-There was an unspoken agreement that you two were going to see each other again.

-you learned that the real Yang Jeongin was a complete gentleman. Your second ‘hangout’ was spent walking around a mall as it was too cold to be outside longer than necessary. Jeongin greeted you with a hot coffee and blushing his way through explaining how he remembered you preferred hot drinks. As you went from store to store you soon realized whatever you touched ended up in his shopping bag. You thought it was a coincidence at first until your eyes had lingered on a shirt for too long and you found the sleeve peeking out of one of his bags. You drew the line when you entered a jewelry shop and he looked like a kid caught in the cookie jar when you told him to put the earrings back.

“I just wanted to…I..Y/n I really like spending time with you”he said, you went to speak but he quickly shook his head. “I had this whole thing planned out cause I’m not too good with words but…I would really like to continue spending time with you”

You felt your heart almost beat out of your chest “what are you saying Jeongin?”

“Be mine y/n…please?”

You couldn’t help but slap the back of his neck “Yang Jeongin, you idiot” nothing more was said but you did leave the jewelry store with the earrings in tow and his hand in yours. Close enough that your hips bumped and you could smell his cologne clinging to his winter coat.

-Things were different after that and because of him you learned that different could be good. He loved to tease and be teased by his hyungs and that soon got extended to you. Wiping off your kisses,sticking his foot out to trip you and randomly chasing you through the building were a few of the things he was known for.

-But he still smiled all the way to his eyes whenever you showed up even though you were there multiple times a week. Even in all his teasing he was still a doter. Coming over to kiss the top of your head in between run throughs, handing you his phone to order food and forcing you to go home when you came in dead on your feet.

-He may be the maknae of skz but he was still hyung at home and that kinda status isn’t something you shake easily. Older than you or not he still treated you like his baby, he was going to take care of you in whatever way he could. He was a lot more mature than he usually lead on, obviously he had to be.

NSFW

-as we established Jeongin has a jealous streak that goes a mile wide. Now that he’s more secure in your relationship with each other it’s not so bad, but it’s still so easy to push his buttons if you know what you’re looking for.

-All inhibitions go out the window if you test him and you’ll find yourself in the nearest lockable room with your panties down and his tee shirt in your mouth. he’ll say the filthiest things too while he’s pounding into you, it’s like he comes a different person.

“You just love to piss me off huh? You like when I snap, right?”he whispered in your ear, “if you wanna be fucked like a whore you can just ask and not act like one”

-He’s the type to want you to scream so everyone can know you’re just girl, but with the idol image comes idol responsibility. He satiates the urge by having your cunt dripping on the floor and down the black denim of his pants. He likes when you mark him up just as much as he marks you.

-He is big on hickies, once again idol responsibilities his can’t be visible but he loves when you suck on his hip bones and thighs before he’s forcing his cock back down your throat. You are not safe from hickies either, invest in a real good concealer or just deal with never being able to wear low cut tops because he’s obsessed with your tiddies. He loves the way they look, the way they taste and how pretty your chest looks covered in his bites and he bites hard.

-He’s only programmed with two modes, making love and fucking. Unless it’s an anniversary or you specifically asked him for it, you’re fucking. Hard,fast and nasty. He’s the type to spit into your mouth and tell you swallow it for daddy like the good girl you are with that stupid smirk on his face.

-and shiii ay ay captain 🫡

-We all know about Channie but this is the other one with the daddy kink. It’s unexpected but that’s exactly what Aquarius’ are. He treats you like a princess in public but has you cuffed to his bed with a wand on your clit in private. And don’t get me wrong, he’s also got a praise kink.

He’ll be railing you from behind and drapes himself over your chest to say “does it feel good jagi? Is daddy doing a good job for you? Show me how good I’m doing by cumming all over my cock, yeah?”

-Y’all try to reverse the roles a few times but you just get too nervous with his piercing gaze on you and he can’t help but coo at you and wrap you up in his arms cause fuck if that wasn’t the cutest thing he’s ever seen.

-but if you could actually get past his stare and stoic demeanor, he wouldn’t be too opposed to being on the receiving end…