#I’m just like. so tired… of constantly being made fun of in the place where I should feel like… safe?

[blowflyfag]

There’s this. Bird inside a cage feeling that comes with having to live with your parents.

[lovelivision]

TEMPORARY

pairing: gojo satoru/reader

wc: 5.2k

summary: your close friend gojo is kind enough to let you stay with him for a while, it's just a shame that he's overly curious about what you read when he's not home

a/n; gojo is nosy and i stand by that, also, i can't seem to help myself when it comes to him... this was only meant to be 2k but i think i like him a little too much. that or he just yaps a lot

warnings: 18+ only, smut, pwp, dirty talk, fingering, tease!gojo, hickeys, p in v sex, clit slapping (once), creampie, afab!reader, no use of pronouns or y/n, big dick gojo, gojo likes embarrassing reader

MDNI | SMUT UNDER CUT

Somehow, you’ve ended up in Gojo’s fancy apartment… the ‘somehow’ is, he is one of your closest friends and the only person you could ask for help. It had already been a long day when you came home to a hole in your ceiling and a bath – that isn’t yours but the floors above – in your apartment, you wanted to give up on life. Your apartment was wet and some of your stuff had water damage.

Maybe if you weren’t so distraught and just wanting somewhere to stay, you would’ve asked someone else but you decided to call Gojo and while he was more than happy to accommodate you, temporary living with him has been… troublesome.

It’s not so much as what he’s been doing but how you’re feeling, you feel self-conscious and too aware of yourself. Constantly wondering if it’s okay that you’re here, that you’re sitting on his couch or using his kitchen. He goes away for days at a time and yet you still worry about whether or not it’s okay you’re here.

You don’t bug him too much with it, you know that can get annoying, asking for constant reassurance but you’re worried that you’re overstaying your welcome. Especially when your building manager keeps calling and telling you fixes will take longer than expected. At this rate, you might just have to live elsewhere.

Another call like that had just come in and when you walk back into the living room and plonk down on the couch next to Gojo, he can immediately tell you’re feeling disheartened, “Not ready yet?”

“I don’t even know if they’ve started yet,” you sigh, kicking your feet a little in your frustration, “I’m really sorry, Gojo,” you lean back into the couch more, head resting on the back of it.

“I’m not worried about it,” he hums, crossed leg bouncing slightly, “Stay as long as you like, it’s nice having someone here when I come home,” he leans his head back on the couch too but turns to look at you.

Turning your head, you meet his gaze, “Are you sure? I don’t want to overstay my welcome,” your brows pull together, “I can always find another place to stay, honestly, I won’t be offended if you’re sick of me… I don’t want to inconvenience you.”

He scoffs, “What inconvenience? You barely make a mess and move around the place like it’s made of glass,” he’s making fun of you a little, trying to get you to relax more, “You should chill out and get a bit more comfortable, it seems like you might be here for a while yet,” he shrugs easily, not at all worried about you staying.

You intake a breath, “Yeah but I–”

“–Plus, where else would you stay? I’m like… your only friend,” he snickers.

Frowning at him, you defend, “That’s not true and you know it!”

“Yeah? Then why was I your first call?” He’s smug.

Looking away, you mumble, “You have no way of knowing that.”

“Ah, but I think your reaction gave it away,” he chuckles, poking your cheek with his finger.

“I wonder if it’s too late to ask Shoko for her couch,” you grumble, ignoring him.

“Nooo~” he pouts, “Don’t leave, you’re such a good guest, I’m sorry for saying you have no friends.”

You roll your eyes at him, “Do you ever get tired of yourself,” you ask, side-eyeing him.

He smiles big, “Never.”

If Gojo were being honest with you, he’d admit he likes your company, he likes coming home and hearing you patter around his apartment, and he likes that you trusted him enough to call him when you needed help. He likes that he was the first person you called because he wants you to rely on him, he wants to feel wanted and needed by you. It’s just a shame a bathtub had to fall through your ceiling for it to happen.

He's not even mad that your building manager is downright atrocious at his job because that just means he gets to have more time with you.

⸝⸝⸝

You’re in his home… alone, just for tonight. Gojo said he had ‘super important and super-secret’ things to attend to, so you’re choosing to be scandalous and instead of reading your current novel in your room, you’re reading it on the couch.

Under a blanket and snuggled into Gojo’s nice couch is about as close to comfortable as you get these days. His living room is nice and you like it out here, though you tend to shy away from main areas when he’s home, afraid of disturbing his peace.

The book is in depth, the scenes heating up quickly, you quietly read, flicking the pages slowly, savouring the tension. It’s not often that you read stuff like this but you’re getting invested, finding a good book with plot and porn is hard to come by and you’re finding yourself getting more and more invested.

Gojo’s voice from behind you is a scare you weren’t ready for, “Wouldn’t it feel better to actually get fucked instead of just reading about it?”

“Fuck! Geez, Gojo, way to scare someone to death,” you huff, not at all ready for his comparably loud voice in the quiet room.

He’s leaning over the back of the couch, apparently reading over your shoulder, “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Yeah, that’s why you were lurking behind me for so long… because you didn’t mean to scare me,” you crane your neck to look up at him, your eyes showing your clear scepticism.

“Let’s change the topic back to how you’re reading porn out in the open,” he smiles.

You squint at him, “It’s a sex scene, not a porn book.”

He leans in a little closer, “Could’ve fooled me.”

“You’re nosy,” you accuse.

He clarifies, “I am curious.” He adds, “You were so involved in your book that you didn’t even notice my presence… now I know why,” his eyebrows wiggle at you.

You shoot your head back up so you don’t have to look at him, “Why are you back anyways? I thought you weren’t gonna be home until tomorrow?”

“I’m just simply too good,” he boasts. You grumble at him but pick up your blanket and stomp off to the spare room with your book, he calls out to you, “Don’t be like that, come hang out with me.”

“No,” you cement, feeling overly embarrassed. You know he was just kidding but you can’t help the way your skin feels all hot and the bit of shame that creeps into your bones.

⸝⸝⸝

When you’re in bed, you don’t continue reading, the moment ruined and now you just want to crawl into a ball and die. It’s too early to sleep though, so you end up just lying there lifelessly. Some time passes before Gojo knocks on your door, waiting for you to answer to see if you’re still awake.

“Go away,” you pout out. He opens the door at the sound of your voice, “That’s like… the exact opposite of going away.”

“I know,” he shuffles over to the bed and flops down next to you, making himself comfortable, “But I wanna talk about earlier.”

You groan, “Ugh, that’s like the last thing I wanna talk about with you right now.”

“You sure? Because there are plenty of other things I could think to talk about instead,” he smiles evilly, he sits up slightly, resting his weight on his forearm to watch over you.

Flat on your back, you scowl up at him, “Maybe we should talk about how lovely the weather has been lately.”

“It’s been raining for a week straight,” he reminds.

You cross your arms over your chest, “…Maybe I like the rain.”

“I am sorry,” he changes the topic.

“It doesn’t matter,” you try brushing it off.

“I made you uncomfortable and I didn’t mean to,” he looks away in thought, “I wasn’t trying to pry, I just wanted to know what you were so interested in and when I saw–”

“–Okay! It’s fine, I’m not mad.”

“It would be understandable if you were,” he flops onto his back again.

You turn to look at him, “If you’re still feeling bad, make me breakfast in the morning.”

“Look at that! I think all the guilt I had just left my body,” he smiles cheekily, also turning to look at you.

You can’t help the way your eyes drop to his lips, just for a second, you didn’t mean anything by it… you think. Gojo sees it because of course he does, he doesn’t miss a single thing and he decides to push the limits of your friendship, just a little bit.

He speaks again, “You know… I am curious about something though.”

Unamused, you raise a brow, “Oh yeah? And what’s that?”

“Does it do anything? I mean… reading porn like that? Does it actually effect you?” He knows what he’s doing and he knows the answer to his question, he’s not as dense as he pretends he is.

“Invasive question,” you squint at him before letting your face relax, “I can always read it to you and you can see for yourself,” you joke.

His smile grows, “Fantastic idea!”

Your eyes widen, “No! No it’s not! I was kidding, I’m not reading porn to you Gojo.”

“Boo,” he jeers.

“You’re so weird,” you sigh.

He offers you an alternative, “I’ll settle for an answer to my question if you don’t want to read me porn.”

This man is getting on your nerves, “Who would want to do that in the first place?”

“Me, I will read porn to you right now if you like,” he offers.

“Okay let me rephrase, what kind of sane person would want that?” You’re hoping to guide him away from this topic.

“Ouch, words hurt,” you can see his face light up with his joke, “And arouse, apparently.”

“What do you mean apparently?” You ask, “I haven’t even answered your question, very presumptuous of you.”

“Yeah but if the answer was a simple ‘no’ you would’ve just said that and moved on,” he looks proud of himself right now, “Sometimes… not giving an answer is almost as telling as giving one.”

“Yeah, whatever,” you move your head to face the ceiling again, “Get a load of Socrates over here.” You sigh, “What do you want to hear? That it does arouse me, that I get sooo wet reading porn on your couch while you’re gone?”

He’s quiet, at a loss for words really, which is shocking to you. His prolonged silence has you looking back to him. His eyes look a little darker than before, his gaze far away. You’re starting to feel bad, like maybe you’re the one who took it too far now, “Gojo, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you–”

“–No�� go on,” he encourages, “Tell me all about what you do when I’m not home,” his eyes glimmer.

“I– nothing really– I’m not…” you’re starting to heat up, his gaze on you not helping, “I’m not being creepy while you’re gone…”

“I didn’t say you were being creepy,” he moves so he’s being supported by his forearm again, your eyes follow him as he ends up almost hovering over you, “I said I wanted to know what else you do when I’m not home.”

You hesitate, “This might not be–”

“You don’t have to tell me, if I’m being pushy, if you’re uncomfortable… tell me, I’ll leave you alone,” he wants this bad but he’s not going to force you, he wants you to want it too.

“It’s not… I am uncomfortable but only because,” your thighs press together slightly, seeking pressure, you’re uncomfortable because he’s turning you on and he’s not done a damn thing.

“…Because…”

“Ugh, Gojo,” your hands cover your face, trying to hide yourself from his eyes, “Because you’re…” you mumble, trailing off.

He leans in a little closer, smug smile loud in his voice, “I’m sorry, what?”

You peak through your fingers, “…You’re…turning me on…”

“I still didn’t get that,” he feigns ignorance, he heard you just fine, “Maybe move your hands properly?”

“You’re being mean,” you mutter from behind your hands, “I know you heard me.”

His gaze lowers, scanning your body, taking in how your breathing has sped up, how your thighs clench together, fighting the urge to rub against each other. “No idea what you’re on about, I can’t hear a thing from behind your hands.”

You drop your arms with a huff, “You’re really quite unkind, you know?”

“I think I’m perfectly kind,” his tone is jovial, happy with your acquiescence, “Now repeat what you said, I wanna hear it loud and clear.”

You’re gonna hit him, you wanna hit him. Taking a breath, your hands reach out for his face and move him so he’s looking you dead in the eyes, “Gojo… you’re making me really wet and needy,” your tone is coquettish, “I need your help, please.”

His eyes brighten, deliciously satisfied with your words and confession, “Tell me what you do when I’m not here then.”

You stare at him, you thought you had one up him but he readjusts alarmingly well, you’ll just have to double down, “I lay on your nice, big couch and I fingerfuck myself, hoping I get to cum before you get home.”

“I already like coming home to you,” he leans into you, his lips brushing the shell of your ear, “I think I’d like coming home to the sounds of you playing with your wet cunt even more.”

Oh god, he might kill you, he’s clearly much better at this than you are, his words have your eyes glazing over slightly. Just his presence is suffocating, “Gojo, please… touch me?”

He pulls back, “Hmm, giving up already? Where’s your fighting spirit?”

“You’re an unbearable tease…”

“Tease… yes. Unbearable? I don’t agree, you’ve put up with me for this long,” he all but singsongs, he’s so smug – you want to get up and walk away from him but you don’t have the strength.

“Either kiss me or I’m changing my mind and pretending that tonight didn’t happen,” you glare at him.

His smile doesn’t falter, “Now who’s unkind?” You make a show of trying to get up but he pushes you back down into the mattress, his lips finding yours. You moan into his kiss and he huffs against you, “Open your mouth more,” he speaks against you.

You do as he says and his tongue slips into your mouth, he licks at you and you tentatively meet him half-way. If kissing someone felt this good surely you’d have remembered it, so why can’t you remember a single kiss that feels as good as this one.

He crawls onto you more, your hands move to find his shoulders before wrapping around his neck, tugging him closer. He groans into the kiss and you swallow it down, your head is swimming, he sounds hot, he feels hot, he’s making you feel hot.

He pulls back, “Fuck, I gotta touch you, let me touch you.”

“Mhm, yeah, please,” you’re all too eager to agree, not missing the thinly veiled desperation in his words.

His hand is quick to snake down your body and into your pants, slipping past the waist band of your underwear. A shiver runs down your spine as his fingers carefully part your folds and slide through you’re very wet cunt. Gojo groans, he wasn’t expecting you to be this aroused, his head swimming with just how slick it must feel to fuck balls deep inside your pussy.

His dick twitches in his pants, he’s been horny since he started this stupid conversation, not that you noticed, too self-conscious to take note of the semi he’d been sporting while teasing you. Fuck, he needs more, his finger moves to your entrance, his eyes watching your expression carefully as he slips it inside you.

Your brows turn up and a soft sigh leaves your lungs at his finger entering you, he doesn’t move straight away, his thumb instead rubbing into your clit. He can feel the way your walls twitch around his single digit; he might go crazy before this is over.

“Gojo~ more,” you want more, you wanna feel full.

“Anything for you,” he teases but pulls his single finger back, easing in another with it.

They curl when reaching their hilt, caressing inside you, the pleasure makes you whine and your stomach jump. He pumps his fingers languidly, enjoying the view, delighting in how you squirm and whimper underneath him from just a couple fingers.

He looks down to his hand underneath your pants, your thighs shake slightly, “That’s cute,” he murmurs.

He pulls his hand away from you, “Wait– Gojo what are–”

Laughing at how frantic you are, he reassures, “–Shh, it’s fine, I just wanna see how your pretty pussy sucks my fingers back in is all.”

You feel like you could faint, he’s so crude and for what reason? Just to embarrass you? Or to turn you on? Or is it just a bonus that he manages to do both at the same time?

Your pants and underwear are tugged off at once, he kneels between your legs and very lewdly pulls them wide apart, his eyes greedily watching the way your cunt opens up for him. He salivates at the way your pussy glimmers for him, cunt drooling from your tight hole, down your ass cheeks and onto the bed.

He wastes no more time and fills you back up with his long fingers, his mind registering that you got wetter, fuck you can get even wetter. The realisation hits him like a ton of bricks and he has a feeling he knows exactly what did it.  

A grin on his face, he asks, “You know you could get this wet? Or are you shocked?” It’s not rhetorical, and to demonstrate what he means, his fingers speed up and you can hear the loud and obscene noises of your wet cunt sucking them back in.

You clench around his fingers at his words and his smile grows, now fully understanding the effect he has on you. The delight he takes in it could almost be diabolical, the enjoyment he’s getting out of knowing he can be a little mean or lewd with his words and it will only turn you is immense.

“Come on, I want an answer when I ask a question,” he reminds you.

You gasp as his fingers crook up, purposefully making it harder for you to answer, “I –hah– I didn’t knooww–”

And you didn’t, not to this extent, it’s mortifying, how much your cunt gushes for him. You’re ashamed and also… so ridiculously turned on. His voice doesn’t help, not only the content of his words but just the sound of him, it’s setting you on edge.

“I find that quite shocking, only realising just how turned on you can get and it’s for your good friend? How scandalous,” he tsks at you, his words holding no malice, he truly is amused by how things have unfolded.

“Stop t–teasing me, Gojo,” you frown at him but it’s not nearly as effective as it normally would be. To him you look like a cute mess who’s making a mess on his fingers and spare bed sheets.

His thumb presses into your clit again, steady pressure rounding it, “I like teasing you though~”

Your head tilts back, your eyes unable to focus on anything, you’re going to cum, you’re so fucking close, you just need him to not stop, “Gojo, please, d–don’t stop –ngh– please, please, please please pleaseppleaseplease,” you’re begging him to show mercy – pity, you don’t care what you just want him to make you cum.

“You think I’d be so mean as to not let you cum?” he asks like it’s not definitely within his character to do something so cruel, “I’d never deprive myself of the sight.”

Your toes curl and your head presses back into the pillows hard, your eyes rolling into the back of your head. It feels like your stomach does flips as you moan out for Gojo, your hands clutching the sheets as you shake pitifully with the force of your orgasm.

He massages your walls through it, fucking his fingers in and out of you steadily, letting you ride out your high. He keeps going even as you reach overstimulation, he likes seeing you twitch and shake with your sensitivity, makes his cock leak into his pants at how you clench pathetically around his fingers as he strokes in and out of you as he pleases.

“Gojo… is too much,” you mumble weakly.

He hums at you but pulls his fingers from your sopping cunt, he holds his two fingers up and pulls them apart, watching the way your cum coats them and connects them by sticky strings. Fuck it’s a sight to behold to him, he shoves those two fingers right into his mouth, sucking them clean and savouring the taste.

Pulling his digits out of his mouth, he comments, “I think… if I didn’t wanna stick my dick into you as badly as I do… I’d shove my tongue inside your little pussy and eat you until you came again and again and–”

You’re gonna burst into flames, “–Do you get off on your own words or something?”

“I’m not the one getting off on my words,” he grins knowingly.

The words you were going to retort with die on your tongue as he suddenly tugs his shirt off, exposing his bare skin to you. How are you meant to reply with anything smart when he’s constantly able to throw you off kilter, you can’t win against him.

He undoes his belt and nods towards you, “Take your shirt off.”

“…Bossy,” you pout out.

He stands up to undress completely, “You into that?”

“No.”

“Could’ve fooled me, you take directions so well,” he smirks, clearly poking fun at how you took off your shirt as soon as he asked you to. He gets back on the bed and taps your thigh, “Hands and knees,” you look at him with an unamused expression and he tacks on, “Pleeeasseeee?”

You get up and spin round onto your hands and knees, feeling vulnerable like this, extra so because you can’t see what he’s doing. One of his hands slides from your lower back up your spine, gentle pressure behind his touch, encouraging you to push your upper half into the bed, cheek pressed against the mattress by the time he reaches your neck.

“Yeahhh, you take directions so well,” he means it as a compliment but it feels degrading.

Soft clicking noises of him fisting his cock fill the room, he’s spreading his precum all along the shaft, collecting it at the tip. He needs to be slick if you’re gonna take him, though he figures you’ve done most of the work on that end already.

You wiggle your hips back at him, feeling impatient and dazed from your previous orgasm. He chuckles at your eagerness but doesn’t keep you waiting, you’re far too enticing for him to tease any longer. He swipes his dick through your folds a few times first, letting you feel him and also let your cunt drool onto him a bit.

He wants to slam into you quickly, he’s so sick of waiting, he’s harder than he’s been in his life and he’s itching to have your pussy swallow him whole but he doesn’t want to hurt you. If he fucks this up he’ll never forgive himself, he needs to give you the best dicking of your life so that you keep coming back to him for more.

His initial thrust is shallow and barely gets the head of his cock inside you, this is going to be a slow process. He’ll have to take his time, not that he particularly minds, the longer he takes, the longer he gets to spend fucking you. This is a responsible decision on Gojo’s behalf, unfortunately for him, you’re not quite so patient. You’re horny beyond belief and have the sudden urge for him to be as deep as he can possibly get, you want to feel him in your guts, you fucking need it.

Bracing yourself, you spread your legs apart further and push back, his cock slipping deeper suddenly, the stretch has a delicious feeling crawling up your spine, or maybe that’s Gojo’s hand. His hand reaches around your neck and pulls your back to his front, a whimper tumbling from you as you slide down his cock further.

He breathes against you, “Desperate thing aren’t you?” He nips your ear and then trails his lips down to your neck, leaving marks in his wake.  

His hips thrust up, forcing you to take more of him, “Ah~ sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry~ I think it’s very endearing,” his voice is dreamy, “Very flattering, willing to hurt yourself just to take me?”

Ah, of course he’d find a way to boost his own ego through all this, “–ngh– You really do love yourself, huh?”

You can feel his big smile against your skin, “Not as much as I love this pussy,” he thrusts inside you deeper, punctuating his words with his hips.

You can’t do much else but moan and take it like this, though, you’re pretty happy to take it like this. Your slick gushes from your cunt and leaks down his shaft. The mess you’re making on the bed is beyond lewd and you have no idea if you should be more embarrassed of the state you’re in. You’re not here though, you’re elsewhere, head in the clouds as your eyes glaze over.

“Aww~ you’ve gone stupid and I’m not even fully in yet,” he coos at you.

He drops you back down onto the bed in your previous position, face buried into the blankets with your ass in the air, back arched deeply. Gojo thinks he has enough room to slip in completely now so he does, when he does, he knocks something so deep inside you that your cunt quivers and you make the smallest, fucked out sound.

It makes him moan deeply, your pussy gripping him for dear life as you sound out gasped whimpers, you’re a fucking mess in more than one way and he’s gonna paint your walls white before too long if he doesn’t get it together. Your cunt is sinfully tight, snug and warm around him, spilling out around where he’s stuffed you full. Your eyes are glassy and fucked out and you look like you might cry, drool dribbles from the corner of your mouth from how deep you can feel him.

Tentatively, he pulls back, his thrusts initially shallow, wanting to get you used to the motion, you really are not capable of any coherent thought, everything coming from you right now is downright pornographic, you don’t even think you could string together enough words to beg him to let you cum.

He’s ruining any future sex you may have and he’s barely started fucking you, his rhythm, is slow but constant. The pressure you feel slowly building in your abdomen makes your pussy cry on his cock.

“You literally have–” he cuts himself off with his own gasped whine, “–the most perfect cunt, holy fuck.” What he did in life to deserve sticking his dick inside you, he has no clue but he’ll keep doing it if it means fucking your tight hole.

You chant his name at him, it’s all you’re really able to do, in your brain fog you spill out, “S’toru sobig, you’re –hng– so deep~” You can’t think.

His hands grab your hips tight, the pressure bruising, his thrusts are speeding up, growing frantic, desperate. He’s fucking you like it’ll be the last time he ever gets to be inside you. One hand reaches around and lands on your clit, furiously rubbing at it, the stimulation has you biting back a cry as tears slip from the corner of your eyes.

Your pussy spasms and twitches on him violently, you’re so sensitive, in general and to him. His hand pulls you back against him with every thrust in, the resounding smacking of skin on skin and your sloppy cunt are like music to his ears. You’re so messy, such a beautiful and delightful mess, he wonders just how fucking messy he could make you; he’ll need to remember this thought if he ever gets another chance to have you… though he’s probably never going to be able to think of anything else after this.

The muscles in your legs are quivering, you’re not going to be able to hold yourself up for much longer, not with how he’s fucking you. You’re going to cum and then promptly pass out, your vision is dotted and you’re barely able to comprehend your surroundings, the only thing you hear is Gojo’s moans.

“Need you to cum for me, now,” he urges, his words hissed through his teeth, fighting off his own orgasm.

His fingers on your clit speed up, he slaps your clit once and harshly, the sudden contact makes you shake. Your orgasm comes out of nowhere, your legs would’ve given out if he weren’t holding you up, you’re actually just crying now, the force of your orgasm shaking you to your core, it’s so overwhelming that it’s all you can feel.

Gojo moves both his hands to your ass cheeks and spreads them, looking at how he’s plowing into you over and over, watching how you grip him tight, trying to milk his cock. The sight of this, of your pussy clenching around him, has him cumming, he bites out your name before stuffing his dick all the way inside you. His cum dumping itself deep inside, his cock twitching as he spills. The amount he cums is immense, leaking out around the base of him and down onto the sheets, the mess you’ve both made only growing.

He stays seated inside you for a while, letting you both come down before even attempting to move. When he does slip out of you, it’s with a hiss, he holds you up for a bit longer, watching the way his cum seeps out of you, his eyes transfixed on how much he came inside of you, how much of him you took. He’s addicted.

Laying your lower half back onto the bed gently, he flops down next to you, evening out his breathing more. He turns his head to the side to look at you, your eyes closed and a stupid smile on your face, tear stains on your cheeks and a little bit of drool still present in the corner of your mouth.

He reaches out and wipes it way with his thumb, “Fucked dumb taken to a new level, huh?”

“You’ve ruined me,” you mutter back, not really paying attention.

A cocky grin takes its place on his face, “In what way?”

“S’many,” your words slur together.

He jokes, “Better than your book though right?”

You can only hum your confirmation, all your limbs are heavy, you might die, you’re fighting it though, the unconsciousness that’s threatening to take over.

Gojo moves closer to you, kissing your arm, “Hey, sleep, I’ll take care of you,” he murmurs into your skin.

That’s the last thing you hear before you’re dead asleep.

PLAGIARISM NOT CONDONED | REPOSTS NOT AUTHORISED

[lovebugism]

📼  ; ONCE BITTEN, TWICE SHY | 1/2

summary: by the summer of 1987, eddie munson has mastered the art of dying and coming back to life again. but worse than that: he can't seem to stop running into the pretty lifeguard from hawkins community pool. the grumpy ol' vampire slowly learns to love sunshine in the afterlife. (23k)

pairing: vampire!eddie munson / ditzy!sunshine!reader

contents: fem!reader, strangers to friends to lovers, fluff, hurt/comfort, extreme canon divergence (most of the events of st3 and st4 still happen but starcourt is still standing, some people aren't dead, etc.) (i'm just here to have fun, honestly) cw for mentions of grief and ptsd, mentions of blood

( best listened with headphones, full fic playlist here )

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

          she lives in the place in the side of our lives

          where nothing is ever put straight . . .

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

Being a vampire sucks.

No pun intended.

Eddie Munson’s too tired for puns. He’s too tired for most things, really.

That’s what they don’t tell you about being a vampire — it’s not nearly as cool as The Lost Boys make it seem. He isn’t any stronger now than he was the night he died. He isn’t any faster, either. And if he’s capable of shape-shifting into a bat, he hasn’t tried because the thought of becoming the thing that killed him feels like more of a purgatory than what he’s been doomed to already. 

He didn’t even get a cool cape out of it, which is more of a bite than anything, honestly. 

No pun intended.

All Eddie’s got to show for his death are the patches of marred skin on his stomach to prove it. And a couple of pointy teeth — which, so far, have only tasted his own flesh because he’s bitten his lip with them more times than he can count. And, yeah, maybe he’s got a heightened sense or two, but that’s it. It’s not nearly as cool as it sounds, either. Enhanced hearing and sense of smell are just code for being constantly overstimulated.

Eddie misses being alive. He misses not knowing what blood tastes like. He misses forgetting to eat all day and accidentally having ice cream for a first meal — which he’d then scarf down like a man starved until it inevitably made him sick, so that he could then complain about how sick he felt. 

He misses the consequences of humanhood because now he’s half-corpse, half-god — a dizzying mixture for a boy who used to just be somebody’s kid.

And what does Eddie do to cope with it all? He gets his weekly mint-chip cone at Scoops Ahoy.

Steve passes the ice cream over the counter with a kinder smile than Eddie’s used to. His skin is freckled and golden against the dark navy of his uniform. So full of life. The child’s sailor outfit hasn’t stopped being funny, but Eddie scowls at him ‘cause he’s jealous. He’s never been anything but pale, even before death, but he can’t exactly catch a tan now, can he?

“You look good,” Steve Harrington observes, distant but meaningful. 

The wild-haired boy ahead of him doesn’t seem nearly as poorly as he did a day or so ago, when he looked somehow more like death than the day he actually died. He’s got his usual color back now. A telltale sign of a recent feeding.

Eddie flashes the boy a dubious, brown-eyed glance. “Are you flirting with me?” he jokes with his ringed fingers curled around the waffle cone, too monotoned to sound as playful as he means.

Steve’s face screws. “No.”

“Damn.”

“See! That’s what I’m talking about!” the brunette proclaims proudly, waving an accusatory finger in the other boy’s direction. “Eddie from yesterday wouldn’t have made that joke. Eddie from yesterday wouldn’t have said anything, actually.”

“Well, Eddie From Yesterday, hadn’t eaten in two weeks,” the boy deadpans. (He isn’t talking about food, either). “And Eddie From Yesterday was so exhausted and filled with an inhuman rage that death was funnier than making stupid jokes.”

Steve tries not to cower at his faux-seriousness. “Touché,” he nods.

Eddie hands the boy the last bill in his wallet. Steve makes out his change and, like a total idiot, dumps a dime onto his palm. The silver hits his skin like a drop of acid rain or molten lava. Eddie winces at the burn, hissing through his teeth as he jerks his singed hand back. 

“Why are you giving me dimes, man?!” he shouts over the sound of clattering coins.

“Shit!” Steve grimaces. “Sorry, dude— I forgot.”

“Oh, you forgot?” Eddie bites in a mocking tone.

“Yeah! Sorry if I can’t remember everything about—” Steve pauses his rant to peer around the shop with cautious eyes. He quietens. “—Vampires, alright? Sue me.”

Eddie watches the boy scramble to gather scattered coins –– coth hat askew on his head, scarlet tie in his way. The sight alone makes him laugh. A sharp exhale through his nose, but a laugh nonetheless. “You know what? How ‘bout just keep the change?”

“You keep the damn change,” Steve grumbles under his breath.

“Nice one.”

“Shut up.”

Eddie takes a big bite from his fresh scoop. He lets the sharp peppermint and deep chocolate concoction melt in his mouth. The strange combination was always the best distraction from the coppery tang of blood lingering on his tongue. 

Distracts because the metallic taste never quite leaves him, no matter how often he washes his mouth out. The taste of death always persists. Not in a poetic way, though. It’s more like a mouthful of old pennies.

Only problem is, he can’t really taste it now — the tart mint-chip or the pint of blood he’d choked down yesterday afternoon. The sensuous scent of hibiscus lilts along an otherwise still breeze, sudden and very overwhelming. It’s powdery and floral, rich and fruity. A fragrance sweet enough to make him ill, and it’s accompanied by the rhythmic flip-flop, flip-flop of rubber sandals.

Eddie glances mindlessly over his shoulder, then nearly breaks his neck at the force of his double-take. The candied scent, he finds, belongs undoubtedly to the pretty face behind him.

You saunter into the ice cream shop like a rolling summer cloud — with a walk that’s as soft and delicate as you look. There’s something thaumaturgical in the honeyed atmosphere that follows you in, still unceremoniously punctuated by the flip-flop, flip-flop sound of your shoes against the linoleum.

You are, unsurprisingly, as pretty as the raspberry, marshmallow, lily-of-the-valley scent radiating from your sunkissed skin. There is much of it on display now, and what little is covered is hardly left to the imagination.

Straight from a shift at Hawkins Community Pool, your mandated uniform clings perfectly to your torso — a pretty, scarlet one-piece that scoops deeply at the chest. Stamped on the center is a pool floatie and two surfboards that make a more summery skull-and-crossbones shape. ‘Lifeguard’ is written just beneath it, right over the swell of your breasts.

You wear a pleated skirt on your lower half to match. The bouncy fabric rests scandalously, and perhaps unintentionally, low on your hips. A faint sliver of your skin is showcased in a way that drives him hopelessly wild. And you’ve paired it all with a pair of too-big sunglasses on your head and a cherry sucker in your mouth. 

Effortless. A total cakewalk of perfection.

Eddie Munson and Steve Harrington have never known much about either. 

The latter is still trying to dump change into the tip jar when he goes to greet you. Your eyes link, the words get stuck in his throat, and the coins scatter to the laminate all over again. Steve tries to catch them at first before realizing how utterly uncool he must look. He makes a bigger fool of himself by just letting them fall.

“Hey. Hi. Wel—Welcome to Scoops Ahoy,” the brunette clears his throat. He props his hands along the countertop and feels a rogue penny stick to his clammy palm. “You’re not lost, are you?”

Steve forces a lopsided smile at his sorry excuse for a joke. Eddie rolls his eyes. You blink at him and pluck the cherry sucker from your mouth — which has left your lips softly swollen and tinted a rosier shade.

“This is where pretty boys in tiny sailor outfits sell ice cream, right?”

Your deadpan expression makes it difficult to gauge whether or not you’re joking. Steve’s face glows red at the sort-of compliment. He nods rapidly until the words catch up to him. “Yeah— Yeah, it— It is, actually.”

You smile at him, tightlipped and warm. It fills the windowless shop with glittering sunbeams. “Then can I have a scoop of rainbow sherbet, please?”

Steve raps his knuckles against the counter and nods again. “Yep. Coming right up.”

Eddie takes another hearty bite of his ice cream while you linger at his side — a couple of feet away but feeling much closer than that. As the minty chocolate melts slow on his tongue, all he can taste is the fruity-floral scent of you. 

It makes his head go all swimmy because he knows your blood must taste the same. Like velvet. Or an expensive red wine people spend half a fortune on. He can hear the soft wooshing of your heart, too. Soft and unhurried. Gentle like an ebbing and flowing tide.

He shouldn’t be thinking this way, he knows. He fed yesterday; he should be feeling halfway normal by now. But your scent is dizzying still, and much stronger than Eddie figures it should be. If he’d met you a day or more ago, when the need for a feeding was quite literally eating him alive, he’s not sure he would’ve been able to contain himself.

He doesn’t think he would’ve hurt you, per se — because he hasn’t actually hurt anyone yet. Not in this stage of his afterlife, anyway. But it would’ve taken all the waning strength left in him to stop himself from doing something unthinkable. And that thought alone is somehow more terrifying than death.

Neither, however, is as scary as your gaze meeting his. 

Your eyes lock, and only then does Eddie realize how long he’s been staring. His blood runs cold. Cold-er. An eon blinks as he tries to recover from his hopeless leering. (He’s just as useless as Steve The Hair Harrington, turns out).

“Hi…” he murmurs through a mouthful of mint-chip once he realizes he’s got nothing else to say. How’s a freak like him meant to talk to someone like you? A walking fairytale of ethereal chaos?

You move the cherry sucker to the pocket of your cheek with your tongue. Through it, you mumble, “Yeah. I guess I am.”

Eddie laughs before he means to. His pink lips curl into a smile, and the inside of the delicate skin scrapes the fangs threatening to poke through his gums. They fit just perfectly over his canines, typically veiled by his gums until it’s time to feed. Or until he’s faced with a pretty girl who smells like Heaven and looks just the same, apparently.

He hides his grin behind his fist and scoffs a breathy laugh.

Your face twists in a delicate look of confusion. “Why’s that funny?” you question once you’ve plucked the piece of candy from your mouth.

His smile ebbs instantly. “Oh. It’s… It’s not— It’s not funny, actually,” he stammers, chocolate eyes wide and round like a pair of buttons.

Your frown deepens. “So you don’t think I’m funny?”

“No, it’s— it’s not that I don’t think you’re funny, I just— I think that—” Eddie stumbles over himself trying to get the words out. He inhales deeply through his nose and swallows hard. “I’m a little confused, honestly…”

There’s a brief moment of silence that passes like minutes. 

There’s something distinctly wild in your unwavering stare. It possesses a sort of magnetism that makes it impossible to look away from — though Eddie desperately, desperately wishes he could. But because he can’t take his eyes off you or the fire swimming laps in your irises, he catches a flicker in your gaze. A flame. A spark.

A smile quirks at the very corner of your mouth before a brighter beam blooms there. A sunshine sort of giggle sputters past your lips. “Oh, gosh— You should see your face right now,” you manage through a fit of laughter, swatting his shoulder with your free hand (a little harder than he thinks you mean to.) “I’m just kidding! Seriously. You can laugh now. It’s okay.”

Eddie doesn’t find it all that funny anymore, but your gaze is pretty and expectant, so he forces out a faint laugh just to appease you. He gapes in confusion the second you look away.

You’re a strange thing. Pretty, yes. But still very, very strange.

When Steve passes you a rainbow scoop on a waffle cone, you fish a crumbled bill from the chest of your swimsuit. The boy takes it with a trembling hand — like touching the cash is touching you in some way — and struggles to recall basic arithmetic when he makes out your change. 

Eddie watches you savor one last taste of your diminishing sucker, lips curled around the lolly before popping audibly off of it. “Is there a trashcan—” you ask and glance around the shop.

“There’s one back here,” Steve offers mindlessly. “I can chuck it.”

Your hands brush when he takes the paper stick between careful fingers. Silky sunkissed skin sweeping against silky sunkissed skin. 

Eddie’s almost jealous. He wishes he could touch you in such an innocent, accidental way — or anyone, really. But his blood stopped circulating about a year or so ago, and he’s had a glacial disposition about him ever since. Sometimes, when he’s just freshly fed, he feels sort of warm. Sort of normal. But that only lasts about an hour or so before his skin goes wintry and grey again.

“Thanks,” you lilt with a kind grin, sandals squeaking as you step back from the counter. You arch a brow, and the sweet smile turns suddenly mischievous. “And don’t worry about the change. I’d hate for you to make a bigger mess.”

You tilt your head and take a kitten lick of your scoop, fighting back a giggle when the sailor boy gapes at you. You spin around and flip-flop, flip-flop out of the ice cream shop — back to whatever fairytale you came from.

The scent of ripe fruit and freshly-cut flowers leaves with you, along with the lavender haze Eddie had been swimming in since he saw you. Drowning in, more like.

Steve laughs at your sort-of joke until the mist passes. Only then does he seem to notice the coins still scattered across the countertop and the half-eaten sucker in his hand. His fluffy brows pinch together in a very evident confusion — like he’s just woken up from a dream.

“…What the hell was that?” he muses after a few long moments.

Eddie shrugs and takes another bite of his half-gone scoop, tasting it for the very first time now that you’re gone. “No idea,” he answers through the mouthful.

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

          once you get it, you never wanna quit (no, no)

          after you've had it, you're in an awful fix. . .

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

Eddie finds you again several minutes later. Not between the pages of a fantasy book, but on a lone bench by the bus stop. 

You finish your rainbow sherbet in silence, people-watching behind a big pair of Sharon Tate-style sunglasses. The sight of you alone makes him trip over his feet, like you’ve got your own gravitational pull that makes him stumble on thin air just to be closer to you.

“Oh—” The huff spills accidentally from his mouth when his sneakers scuff the pavement.

It garners your attention accordingly as you turn slowly towards him. You lift your sunglasses to your head again, just to squint at the vividity of the golden hour. You flash the boy an ice-cream-stained smile, tight-lipped and warmer than the setting sun — like he’s one of your old friends who deserves to be looked at so kindly. (He’s neither.)

“Hello!” you greet brightly as you lift the waffle cone to your mouth. You take another bite and add through the mouthful. “Again.”

“You’re still here?” Eddie squints, ‘cause he’s not sure what else to say.

“I’m on lunch—” you answer, slightly slurred through the melting ice cream on your tongue. A milky drop of pink and orange falls to the side of your thumb, and you lick it away mid-sentence. “—Late shift.”

Eddie hums with a slow nod, squinting one eye to block the sun. 

His pale skin buzzes, even under his leather jacket and dark thrifted tee. It isn’t because he’s hot, though. He hasn’t broken a sweat — not even swaddled in the ninety-degree evening — because he lost the ability to somewhere between getting eaten alive and rising from the dead. 

The sunlight just makes him feel a bit weaker than usual. Hungrier, too. And he hates being hungry because it makes him feel viciously ravenous. Like a total barbarian. Cruel and angry and inhuman. So he tries to stay out of the sun when he can.

He knows he should start plotting his way out now, but talking to you is like getting caught in a spider’s web. He gets all tangled in his words, netted in his want to impress you. He ends up superglued in a trap he isn’t totally sure he wants to get out of.

“Must be a slow day then, huh?” Eddie jokes dryly.

Your face twists. “Hm?” you wonder wordlessly as your tongue darts to the corner of your mouth.

“I just meant that— You’re a lifeguard and everything, right? And you— You’re dry, so… There must not have been a ton of lives to save today,” the boy explains, gesturing wildly with ringed hands. He laughs at himself and sticks the trembling limbs into his jacket pockets. “That’s… That’s what I meant.”

You don’t seem to notice his sudden floundering, or the way he can hardly make out an intelligible sentence when you’re looking directly at him. He can’t tell if you’re just kind enough to ignore it or if you’re just totally aloof. He hopes for the latter.

“It’s a lot less swimming than you’d expect, honestly,” you confess as you analyze the melting cone in your hand. You twist your wrist with your face pinched in concentration — like deciding whether to bite into the pink, green, or orange bit is that intense. “It’s just a lot of, like, blowing whistles... And walking around…”

You choose the raspberry pink side in the end, crunching as you bite into the waffle cone.

Eddie nods in response — not because he’s really heard you, but because he feels like he sort of understands you in some way now. You were sweet raspberry in the flesh. The color pink incarnate. Gold and glittering, like the sunset was fashioned in your likeness.

But then you smile up at him, with crispy wafer crumbs clinging to the raspberry-lime-orange concoction on your mouth, and the moment feels a lot less poetic than that.

“Sometimes I just wanna be like, ‘Jeez— Can’t one of you fuckers at least try to drown or something? God,” you mock in an accent that’s hardly your own, giggling at yourself halfway through. 

You flash Eddie another expectant smile. Grinning with all your teeth as you wait for him to laugh with you.

It takes him a second too long to force another chuckle — still trying to gauge how serious you are — but you don’t seem to mind. “Right. Well, uh… Here’s hoping, right?” Eddie quips with a crooked smile, lifting his right hand to flash his crossed fingers.

You giggle louder at that. Laughing with him, and not at him, for the first time since he started making a fool of himself in front of you. 

His chest swells like he’s still got a functioning heart hiding there. It’s sparkling and warm, full of pride, almost like he’s alive again. Truly alive. He realizes, then, that he never wants to stop making you laugh.

When your giggling ceases, you hum a contented sigh and take another sloppy bite of your ice cream cone.

Eddie watches you — unblinking, like a total freak — and tries to figure out if he made you up in his head. 

You were like a fairy-tale princess come to life. An enchanted form of imagination, slightly childlike and effortlessly romantic in a way. You were the kind of girl who held butterflies on the tip of her finger, who reached out to touch the stars at night, who shared her secrets with the moon when no one else would listen.

You’re the kind of thing that only exists in dreams. You have no real sense of reality, accordingly, which Eddie thinks only proves his point.

With sunshine glittering in the strands of your hair, your eyes flit back to his. Eddie averts his gaze suddenly (and very obviously) from yours, but if you’re perturbed by his leering, you don’t show it.

Instead, you look at him the same way you’ve been looking at him this whole time — like you’ve got a world of magic secrets hidden in your eyes. Like you want him to come searching for every single one of them.

“Did you— Did you walk here, or…?” the boy trails off, eyes falling to your rubber sandals. 

He hopes you hadn’t. It’s far too hot, and the pool is quite a few blocks from here. From what little he’s learned about you, though, he figures you’re probably crazy enough not to care.

“Bus,” you answer plainly, pausing mid-bite.

Eddie blinks. “The buses stopped running a half hour ago… You know that, right?”

You freeze. Melted ice cream pools at the edges of your mouth. A very loud answer, even in its silence. 

There’s a very audible crunch-ing sound as you chew through the too-big bite. You bring your palm to your chin to catch rogue crumbs and blink up at Eddie with wide eyes. 

“…What?” you wonder pitifully in response. Though, with your mouth still full, it sounds more like a deep, muffled, and utterly pathetic, “Wah—?”

“They stop running here at six-thirty.”

You swallow, face screwed.“Why?”

Eddie shrugs. “Beats me.”

You turn away — staring far off at the parking lot but looking at nothing, really. Eddie feels like he can finally breathe now, without your eyes strangling him.

He watches you go deep in thought and wishes he could see what the inside of your mind looks like. He imagines it’s full of confetti. Wild, glittering thoughts and a handful of sparkling confetti.

“Well…” you huff after a few moments, a deep and whimsical sigh. You look down at the melting cone in your fist and try to find a silver lining in the swirls of pastel colors. “‘Least the ice cream’s good.”

“Are you gonna walk?” Eddie wonders aloud as his chest pinches with misplaced worry. He crosses his leather-clad arms over himself in a feeble attempt to soothe the ache there — to smother his palpable empathy, which makes him feel like your burden is his to carry. 

He doesn’t have to. Carry it, that is. It’s not like you’re not asking him to. But he can’t ignore the overwhelming urge to help you — this strange, elven princess who needs rescue by a lowly bard way out of his element. It’s an instinct that borders on primal.

“Do I have a choice?” you respond rhetorically. Eddie shrugs and you shrug back, unfazed. “I can walk. The sunset’s pretty… And there’s a dog park on the way there, so… That’ll be fun, I guess.”

Eddie’s dark eyes flit to the sky, where the sun’s slow descent paints the wispy clouds in vivid colors of blush and honey. He understands the simple beauty of it but rarely ever gives it a passing glance.

He spends most of his sunsets inside, hiding from the pretty golden hour behind closed curtains. He cowers under his blankets like a child (‘cause his tiny square window is west-facing, painfully so) and tries to tell himself that he’s not as hungry as he feels.

That he’s not hungry at all.

That he’s still normal.

Eddie looks back to you a moment later, features twisted with uncertainty. “I’m pretty sure the park’s gated after sunset…”

You don’t ask him how he knows that, and he’s grateful. He figures you must assume that he’s got a dog of his own, which is a lie he’s happy to stick to. 

It’s better than admitting that Jim Hopper nearly caught him dealing a couple years back and had to make a quick escape through the park — where he then had to hop a locked fence he didn’t know was there. It wouldn’t have been so embarrassing if he hadn’t rolled directly into dog shit when he fell to the ground. That’s a secret he’ll take to the grave. 

If the Chief takes mercy on him, anyway.

“Well… The sunset’s still pretty,” you conclude with another sigh, because at least that can’t be taken from you. 

Eddie watches you take another bite and makes a very pointed decision not to tell you that that’ll be gone soon, too. By the time you walk back to work, the sky will be a muddy mixture of orange and lilac and navy. Hardly a thing worth looking at.

He lets you revel in your little nothings anyway.

“I should— I should probably go. I have a… thing to get to, so…” he trails off, chuckling at his own hopelessness. His worn sneakers scuff the pavement when he steps back from you. He scratches at the small curls twisted at the nape of his neck and tries to find the words to say goodbye. “Uh— Have a good rest of your shift, I guess. Hope it’s more… eventful.”

You smile at his stammering and his poor excuse for a joke. 

“Thanks,” you nod. “Have fun with your… thing.”

Eddie nods once. His smile wavers only slightly when he turns away. His cheeks puff as he exhales a deep breath — which he hadn’t realized he’d been holding until now. 

He stops short at the edge of the sidewalk. Doesn’t even make it off the fucking curb before his guilty conscience catches up with him. It stops him like a force field and weighs heavy on his chest with a similar strength.

He turns quickly again, curls whipping around his face. “Do you… Do you want a ride?” he blurts with a squint in his deep chocolate eyes. 

The offer is hardly from the kindness of his unbeating heart. He just wants to make himself feel better, if he’s honest. He wants you to decline, actually — so then he’d be alone, and his conscience would still be clear.

Your eyes widen softly at his offer. You shift on the hard bench. It squeaks quietly under your weight. 

“Well, I— I wouldn’t— I wouldn’t wanna intrude,” you tell him, stumbling over your words for the first time in front of him.

Something about it, how shy you’ve suddenly gone, makes you feel a bit more human compared to the glittering creature Eddie made of you in his head.

The boy shrugs. “You wouldn’t be.”

“No?”

“No. It’s just… on the way…” Eddie insists, sighing to himself, because Hawkins Pool most definitely is out of his way. “So, you know… It’s no problem.”

There is a beat of fleeting silence, filled only by a whispering summer breeze and muddled conversation from distant mall-goers. Eddie’s eyes dart over your features, twisted softly with a faraway look of worry. 

The anticipation has his heart in his throat. He isn’t sure now what answer he wants to hear. Both might equally break his heart. A double-edged sword.

Your chest deflates with a dramatic sigh of relief. A lazy smile tugs at the corners of your mouth. “Okay. Good. ‘Cause I didn’t wanna be, like, too eager, you know? But that would be… super duper nice.”

“Good thing I’m a super duper nice person then, huh?” Eddie jokes with a tightlipped smile, which ebbs into a scowl the moment he turns away from you. 

He becomes a storm cloud of annoyance as he stalks across the parking lot. Less so because of you and more so because of his deep-rooted sensitivity, where everyone else’s emotions demand to be felt by him and him alone.

It’s a very strange thing, indeed: to be dead and yet still carry the crushing empathy of a person with a bleeding heart.

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

         real to real is living rarity, people stop and stare at me

          we just walk on by, we just keep on dreaming . . .

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

Eddie doesn’t look back to make sure you’re following him. He knows you are. He can tell by your lingering strawberry-vanilla scent, and your rhythmic footsteps in rubber sandals that trail just behind him. The incessant flip-flop, flip-flop, flip-flop quickens as you rush to keep up with his longer strides, trying hopelessly to finish your ice cream and talk at the same time.

“Adam— my manager— he’s such a hardass. Like, if I was late today, he definitely would’ve fired me,” you ramble and crunch hard into your cone. “Well… maybe not fire me… ‘Cause we’re kinda short-staffed right now— But he definitely would’ve given me a lecture! Like, dude, just because your dad owns the joint, doesn’t mean you have any actual authority over me, you know?”

You giggle loudly at yourself. Eddie just nods in response, barely listening, and not bothering to glance back at you.

You continue anyway, through a mouthful, no less. “Except, he kinda does have some authority, I guess. Since, you know, he’s the one who signs my checks and everything, but… You know what I mean.”

The boy ahead of you stops suddenly in place. Your sandals scuff the pavement to keep from running into the back of him. He turns to face you, brunette curls flouncing, and your heart skips at the proximity. He’s much too pretty for anything else.

You can smell the cologne spritzed on his neck from here. A high-pitched and very boyish cedarwood that makes him somehow more endearing. There’s something floral in it, too — perhaps from the conditioner making his hair all shiny. And the subtle powdery scent, you figure, comes from his old Back Sabbath tee. An evident hand-me-down of some sort. 

You can see more of him like this without having to ogle like a creep. His brown eyes are so dark they’re almost black, but you can see flecks of gold in them, too. His pronounced nose is dotted with pores and faint freckles you think you could count if he let you. There are a couple of spots on his jaw, too — some still red, others already scared over — that make his scowling face more youthful.

He’s got a couple of dark circles under his eyes, which you think means he doesn’t get as much sleep as he should. He’s got a pair of perpetual smile lines beside his mouth, too, which must mean he laughs a lot (even if he isn’t now). And he’s got a subtle furrow between his bushy brows ‘cause he’s totally the quiet, observant type.

You’d like to think you’re taking a closer look at him than anyone else in Hawkins ever has. Where they see a freak with crazy hair and a dangerous attitude, you see an old soul with young eyes and a wild mind.

“Is this you?” you wonder aloud, with ice cream clinging to the corners of your mouth.

Eddie lifts his hand and taps the key fob twice. The rusted tin can behind him unlocks with a hearty ca-chunk. He fakes a tight-lipped smile, “Yep.”

You rush around the hood then, hurrying for the passenger seat and struggling to finish the rest of your ice cream. Eddie eyes you expectantly as he lifts himself onto the chipped pleather of the driver’s side. His deadpan face twists with amusement as you inhale the remaining bits of your ice cream.

Your eyes go wide when you catch him staring, cheeks jutted like a chipmunk’s. You wipe your mouth with the back of your hand, then swipe your palms together. “Sorry— Sorry, I didn’t—” you swallow hard and try not to choke. “I didn’t wanna get ice cream all over your van.”

A laugh sputters from Eddie’s mouth, a more boyish sound than you thought he was capable of, and he hurries to cover his mouth with his fist. He can feel the sharp stinging of his fangs as they stab slowly through his gums, more prominent now that you’re so close to him — smelling as sweet as you look.

“Well, this isn’t exactly a sports car,” he scoffs. “I don’t think you have to worry about that.”

You swallow down the rest and hop in beside him. The faux leather of the passenger seat has grown distressed with time, sticking to your sunkissed thighs where your skirt doesn’t reach and poking you in places. The smell of his cologne stains the interior, along with a more subtle, skunkier scent.

You have to tug extra hard on the seatbelt — once, twice, and then a third time — before it gives.

Eddie sticks the key into the ignition and twists. A heavy metal guitar solo blares suddenly through the speakers, rattling the old van and making both of you lurch with a momentary panic. 

“Shit!” the boy curses as he reaches for the blasting radio. He turns down the volume with pale, lanky fingers, wide eyes flitting from the console to the pavement as he peels out of the Starcourt lot. “Shit… Sorry.”

You shrug a bare shoulder. “It’s okay. I listen to my music loud, too. I’m pretty sure I’ve blown out the headphones to at least two Walkmans by now.”

“Yeah?” Eddie hums with a lazy smile. “What kinda stuff stuff do you listen to?”

You purse your lips to the side and avert your gaze as you ponder the question. “Van Halen, definitely… Dio and Def Leppard occasionally— oh, and don’t even get me started on Ozzy Osbourne.”

Eddie feels like his heart’s in his throat. It settles there and makes it hard to breathe while his anxious hands fidget on the steering wheel.

You can’t be this pretty and like all the music he likes. It’s just not fair. It’s like the universe is trying to kill him. (Even though it kinda already did that once.)

“Are you joking?” he wonders aloud, laughing with furrowed brows. His chocolate eyes dart from you, to the winding road before him, and back again. The soft smile on your lips blossoms into a more mischievous thing, and he nods slowly to himself. “You’re… You’re joking, right?”

“I might’ve been looking at your cassettes, yeah.”

Eddie’s gaze flits downward to where he keeps his tapes stacked in a cubby beneath the console. His chest aches with a distant embarrassment. “Right…” he huffs.

“Real answer?” you offer with a twinkle in your eye, spinning in the seat to face him more. You tuck your feet beneath you and count each name on your fingers. “Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, ABBA, and Blondie. That’s my top four— Not in that order, though! I love them all equally.”

“That makes… a lot more sense.”

“Do you have any of their tapes we could listen to?”

Eddie scoffs a faint laugh until he realizes you’re being serious. His tightlipped smile ebbs as he answers, “I can’t say that I do. No.”

“That’s too bad,” you huff and slouch further in the passenger seat. You gaze out the window with a faraway look in your eyes and start rambling before you mean to.

“I’ll let you bum one of mine, if you want. You can borrow my copy of Arrival, that’s one of my favorites! My most favorites. Or Super Trouper, maybe. I love that one, too...” You deflate with a heavy sigh. “Shit. I can’t decide— Which one do you prefer?”

Eddie stammers for an answer. He feels like you’re barely speaking his language.

“Screw it. I’ll just make you a mixtape,” you decide firmly. “It’s impossible to pick just one.”

Eddie nods wordlessly to himself, unconvinced that he’ll ever actually see you again — like this, anyway. With you making a home in the passenger seat of his van, which has never known a pretty girl like you before now.

“You could always swing by the pool if you want,” you offer with a hopeful grin. “Adam lets me man the radio sometimes.”

“Does he?” Eddie hums indifferently.

“When I wear my bikini, yeah.”

His face screws at the thought of someone taking advantage of you in that way, with you perhaps too gullible to understand. “Well, Adam sounds like a dickwad,” he grumbles and shifts his grip on the steering wheel.

“A massive dickwad,” you giggle like it’s your first time ever using the phrase. “One time, I played my Billy Joel tape, and he called it pedestrian. Pedestrian! Not only is that, like, totally sacrilegious or whatever, but it’s also extremely pretentious. Just call it lame or something, you sound arrogant.”

When your rambling ceases, you can hear Eddie laughing. Really laughing. Not just that weird breathy sound he keeps making. It spills from his mouth like sunshine, though he tries to stifle it with a fist pressed to his mouth. And even though you don’t remember saying anything particularly funny, you laugh alongside him.

“Why do you cover your smile when you laugh?” 

“Why do I do what?”

“You always put your hand over your mouth when you smile,” you observe with a curious squint. “Did you know that?”

Eddie’s tongue darts over his protruding fangs, which peek in faint slivers from his pink gums now. You would only see them if you checked his mouth like a dog, but he gets self-conscious about it, anyway.

“No. I didn’t. Must be an old habit, I guess,” he stammers, lying through his teeth as he turns into the parking lot of Hawkins Community Pool. 

The crowd there has seemingly ebbed with the setting sun, which he’s grateful for. He stays on the far edges of the property still, lest he draw any unwanted attention. ‘Cause the only thing more recognizable than his wild hair is the tin can he rides around in.

His ringed hands curl around the gear stick. The van jerks softly when he puts it in park. Eddie clears his throat. “We’re, uh— We’re here.”

You get distracted easily, and he’s grateful for that, too. You drop the conversation entirely as you reach for the seatbelt. The buckle clicks when you unfasten it. “Thanks for the ride, Eddie,” you chirp with a pretty smile.

His head snaps in your direction with enough force to give him whiplash. His mouth opens and closes like a fish as he gapes at you. He struggles to find the words to say. He thinks he’d rather face a hundred demobats (again) than have this conversation.

“You…” he swallows hard, adam’s apple bobbing. “You know my name?”

You shrug, oblivious to his otherwise very palpable fear. “‘Course I do.”

His heart would stop if he weren’t already dead. He thinks the force of his current shock could jolt it into beating all over again. Though, he figures he has no right to be so surprised. He is Eddie Munson, after all — the town freak who didn’t murder Chrissy Cunningham but left her to die instead. 

No one knows that she’d been long in the dying before Eddie ran like a coward. No one knows that there was nothing he could do to stop the dark wizard from killing her. No one knows that he died trying to avenge her death despite all that. And no one ever will — save for the handful of teenagers who saved Hawkins alongside him. 

Eddie knew, from the moment he rose from the dead and made it out of that godforsaken hellscape, that he would never be seen as the hero. He didn’t want to be. He just wanted to be a kid.

But here he is now. A half-dead and hated thing. A creature not worth loving.

And here you are, smiling at him like you intend to love him back to life.

“So… So you know what happened with… With the…” He talks with his hands and struggles to make the words out. He always has. He always will.

You nod before he has to. “Yeah. I think I just… I figured that wasn’t something you wanted to talk about with strangers—”

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” he insists.

“Then me not bringing it up was a good thing, right?”

“I mean, yeah, but—”

“Well, I’m hearing a lot of talking for someone who doesn’t want to talk about it,” you mock, not totally unkind, just a little bit strange. 

Eddie almost laughs at that. “I’m just— I’m confused.”

“About what?”

Now, he really lets himself laugh because the answer’s rather obvious. 

“Because most people are scared of me!” Eddie blurts with a cynical chuckle, gesturing wildly with his pale, ringed hands. “Everyone thinks I’m some— psycho-killing murderous freak.”

“Well, I don’t,” you insist, all pretty in your way, as you shift on the worn pleather seat beside him. “That’s gotta count for something, right?”

You unlatch the glove box ahead of you and help yourself to its contents. The junk inside clatters together while you search very obviously through it, rambling mindlessly to yourself as you do so. 

“You like mint-chip ice cream cones smothered in sprinkles. And your initials are sewn onto the waistband of your jeans— like you’re gonna lose them or something. And… there’s a Blondie tape hiding in here.” You giggle to yourself and flash him the cassette.

Eddie blinks at you like an owl. “That’s not mine.”

“Secret girlfriend?” you tease with a scrunched nose.

“Secret tape,” he confesses before plucking it suddenly from your fingertips. 

There’s a whole story behind it that he’d tell you if he could. About how he couldn’t leave the house for some weeks after he came back to life and how his friends brought him things to pass the time. Robin Buckley had an elaborate assortment of board games that bordered on concerning, and Dustin Henderson had brought an entire library to his trailer. 

The rest of them put together a selection of tapes for him to listen to. He can’t be sure now if Nancy Wheeler really gave up her prized Blondie cassette or if Mike Wheeler did it without her knowing.

You struggle to bite back your laughter as you sort through the center console next. 

“See! That doesn’t exactly read psycho-killing murderous freak to me, Eds. Honestly, it kinda reads as someone who’s never hurt anyone in their whole life, who probably wants everyone else to stop hurting them—” You cut yourself off with a gasp. “Ah! Here it is.”

You dig a rogue ink pen from the depths of the console. A bright smile tugs at the edges of your lips. Eddie’s still struggling to breathe when you reach for him. “Can I have your hand?”

“Why?” he wonders with pinched brows.

“You’ll see,” you lilt mischievously and take his ringed hand in your smaller one. 

He worries, briefly, that you might comment on how cold he is for the middle of summer. But if you notice it at all, you don’t mention it as you scribble your number onto the back of his hand.

Eddie grimaces when the tip presses hard into his pale skin. “Ow…”

“See? You’re just a big baby,” you joke, giggling quietly to yourself. You click the pen with your thumb as you part from him. “There. Now you have my number.”

Eddie flashes you a dubious glance, unsure of what he ever needed your number for.

You answer his silent question like it’s obvious. “So I can give you the mixtape.”

“Right,” he hums with a slow nod.

“Well, I’m gonna go clock back in before I get a total earful from Adam,” you sigh and reach for the metal door handle. “Thanks for the ride, Eddie.”

“Don’t mention it,” he shrugs nonchalantly as you slide out of the van. The back of your pleated skirt rises softly in the process, flashing a glimpse of your ass. He swallows hard and stammers. “Just— Just, like, be safe, or whatever.”

“Or whatever,” you mock with a lighthearted chuckle.

“Well, this is a crazy world we live in, haven’t you heard?” Eddie jokes to cover up his blunder. He tilts his wild head to his shoulder as a pink smile forms crooked on his mouth. “I hear psycho-killing murderous freaks are roaming the streets these days.”

He expects you to laugh, but you grow strangely serious instead, furrowing your brows as you mumble to yourself. “Crazy World... That’s a good song, actually. I should put that on the mixtape—”

You forget to say a proper goodbye as you close the door behind you. The rusted metal hinges screech before slamming shut. You walk off towards the pool house without another word, flip-flopping the entire way to the front gate. Eddie watches you go with his features twisted in a subtle mixture of shock and awe.

Steve Harrington was right. What the hell was that?

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

         oh, how could i ever refuse?

          i feel like i win when i lose . . .

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

Three days pass before Eddie sees you again. Not that he’s counting, anyway. He debates, however, calling you on the second one — but by then, your number had long disappeared from his hand. He decided, then, to count his losses and pretend he wasn’t as boyishly heartbroken as he felt. 

Missing you was a double-edged sword. He never wanted to see you again, but he mourned for you always. He prayed he’d never run into you like before but searched for you in all the faces he met. It was agony. 

When he drops Dustin off at Scoops Ahoy after a long afternoon of campaigning, Eddie tells himself it’s not with intent to run into you there. He tells himself it wouldn’t be the worst thing, but not to get his hopes too high. That he’d only make a fool of himself. That it’d be better if he didn’t see you at all.

He’s left grieving anyway when he doesn’t immediately spot your face in the dwindling crowd of the ice cream shop.

“If it isn’t the man of the hour,” Robin lilts from where she sits at one of the tables, obviously on her break and eating from a bowl of the rainbow gummy bears they use as toppings.

“You dweebs talking about me?” Eddie scoffs as he shoves Dustin light-heartedly ahead of him. 

As soon as he crosses the threshold of the small shop, you come very suddenly into view. You sit ahead of Robin, in your usual uniform, and with your usual rainbow sherbet cone. You steal a few rogue gummy bears from her cup and dip them into your ice cream, which has started to melt with your distraction. 

He stills in place, struck with a bolt of blue. Your pretty, summer scent hits him full force, then — slaps him in the face and demands to be noticed. You flash him a small smile, and he has to remind himself to breathe.

“Not at all,” Robin answers with a knowing smirk.

Steve scoffs from where he wipes down the counter, tendons flexing in his golden arm. “Only for ten straight minutes.”

“We were talking about how I gave you my number. And how you never called,” you explain to the poleaxed boy, tilting your chin to your shoulder to peer at him from beneath your lashes. A mischievous smirk hints at the corners of your lips. “A girl could start to wonder, you know?” you tease, only partially playful.

Eddie stammers for an explanation. He feels like his heart’s in his throat, like it’s closing on him, and like he can’t really breathe.

He blinks rapidly as his head starts to swim. He zeroes in on your heartbeat, though he knows he shouldn’t. It’s a soft and rhythmic whoosh, whoosh, whooshing — like that of an excitable baby deer. His hands ball into fists until his dull nails leave crescent shapes in his palms.

Dustin gapes at the sight of you. “You’re real?” the strange, curly-haired boy blurts.

“Me?” you ask with pinched brows, motioning to yourself with the ice cream cone.

“Dustin!” Eddie scolds, nudging him pointedly on the shoulder.

The boy cowers. “Sorry. It’s just… I thought you were, like, an imaginary person Eddie made up or something,” he admits, squinting his hazel eyes and crossing his arms over his chest. You flash him a dubious look until he elaborates obliviously. “‘Cause Gareth was making fun of him for not having any friends outside of Hellfire and stuff—”

“Hey,” Eddie snaps to get the rambling boy’s attention, tapping the brim of his Thinking Cap. “Shut up.”

“What’s Hellfire?” you wonder aloud.

“Book club,” Eddie lies.

You grin with furrowed brows. “You talk about me at book club?” 

“I mentioned you. Once. ‘Cause Gareth asked— And I didn’t call because the pen smudged,” Eddie answers all at once, swallowing hard when he feels bile building in his throat. He can’t get your heartbeat out of his ears. Or your scent out of his nose. It’s suffocating, all of it. “Does that clear everything up, or…?”

Steve hisses through his teeth. Robin scoffs. You blink at him with wide eyes, hardly expecting him to be so short with you. “Uh-huh,” you nod with a forced smile.

Eddie would apologize for it if he didn’t feel so sick. But now he teeters on the knife’s edge of nausea, unsure if he’s going to faint or vomit or both. So he fakes his own smile and inches towards the exit. “Great. I’m gonna— I think I’m gonna go—”

“And leave us with babysitting duty?” Steve scoffs. “How nice of you.”

Dustin frowns and flashes the makeshift sailor his middle finger.

Eddie fumbles to come up with an excuse. “I just remembered, uh— Wayne wanted me to record Cheers tonight, and I totally forgot. The ol’ geezer’ll kill me if he misses an episode, so… I gotta run.”

He ducks out without another word, grimacing at himself because he’s usually a much better liar than that. The others can surely see right through him. They know that he’s unwell — that he’s just hungry and impossibly overstimulated. 

But you don’t. You don’t know him at all, and maybe that’s exactly why you rush out of Scoops behind him.

Eddie shoves the glass exit of Starcourt Mall with trembling hands. The summer breeze rushes over him immediately, billowing through his hair and clothes. He takes his first good breath and the swimmy feeling of nausea starts to fade.

The hunger remains even still. The ravenous thoughts remain, too — of your heart between his teeth, beating on his tongue, and your blood tasting of sweet red wine.

When he starts to scare himself, his mind tells him that he’d never hurt you. That he hasn’t yet, and that he never will. But still, the thoughts are there, and they hardly ever leave.

Your fresh berry scent covers him like a shroud as he rushes to his casket (his van, really, but the symbolism fits.) You struggle to keep up with his longer strides, pleated skirt flouncing as you hurry behind him — a kicked puppy who doesn’t know when to stay back. 

“I don’t mean to annoy you, you know?” you call after him.

Eddie stills and spins sharply around to face you. You stumble back on rubber sandals to keep from running into him, trying not to cower when he towers suddenly over you.

“What?” he asks with his features swirled in confusion and distant suffering.

Your wide eyes dart over his pallid features, more sallow than you remember. You forget everything you were going to say as concern drips from your pretty features. “Do you feel okay?”

“I feel— fine,” he stammers, less than convincingly.

“Okay…” you nod, unconvinced, then repeat yourself. “I don’t mean to annoy you, by the way.”

Eddie shrugs. “What makes you think you annoy me?”

“I dunno,” you answers, sheepish in a way he hasn’t seen you before. You shift your weight on your scarlet sandals and talk wildly with your hands, looking everywhere but at him. “I kinda talked your face off a few days ago, and then I made that stupid joke about you not calling, and I just… I realized you don’t know me all that well. And that I can be kind of a lot sometimes. Or, you know, a lot of the time. But it’s not like I mean to be, you know? I don’t mean to be a burden or to—”

“You’re not a burden,” Eddie blurts.

Your breath catches as you blink at him with wild, glassy eyes. He gets the feeling no one’s ever said that to you before and tries to ignore the stinging in his chest.

“No?” you echo in a mousy voice.

“Not even a little bit,” he answers instantly.

You inhale a shaky breath that leaves through your mouth in a sigh of relief. “So you’re not upset with me?”

“No,” Eddie scoffs. “You haven’t done anything to upset me. So far, anyway.”

You nod to yourself at the reassurance. “Okay. Good. I just— I thought you ran off in such a hurry ‘cause you didn’t wanna be around me or something.”

You chuckle to yourself, feeling silly about it now. 

Eddie shifts awkwardly ahead of you ‘cause you’re not too far off.

“Do you… Do you want a ride?” he offers despite himself — despite his overwhelming feelings for you and despite the fact the buses are still running for another fifteen minutes. 

He chucks his thumb over his shoulder and flashes you a sheepish look. Because he isn’t sure of what to say now, or if he wants to leave you at all.

You duck your chin and scrunch your nose, too pretty for your own good. “If it’s not too much trouble?” you lilt.

Eddie only grins. “Who says I don’t like a little bit of trouble?”

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

         under those white street lamps,

         there is a little chance they may see . . .

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

He survives the golden hour, but just barely. Eddie hides from the setting sun underneath the covers, writhing on the thin mattress as he waits for the ravenous feeling of insatiable hunger to pass. It never does.

Instead, he feels the absence of you most ardently. He withers away as he grieves for you, like a wilting flower craving sunlight. But he’s nothing but a pale, gray, and exhausted thing now — an unloveable creature aching for a feeding. 

“Wayne…” Eddie grumbles tiredly, half muffled into his pillow. When he receives no response from his uncle, he musters the strength to shout. “Wayne!”

Footsteps trudge down the hall, bulky work shoes heavy on thin carpet. His bedroom door creaks slowly open, and his uncle stands beneath the frame of it — wearing the thick navy coveralls that has his name sewn in cursive on the chest. His weathered hands work at the buttons below the collar.

“What is it, Ed?” Wayne wonders in a gravelly drawl.

Eddie takes in a rattling breath, peeking one eye open to look at his uncle. His vision’s too swimmy for anything else. “Can you call Hopper?” he slurs like a sick child.

Wayne’s graying brows furrow in worry. He squints at his nephew across the bedroom, languishing beneath his covers and growing more waxen by the second. He’s typically only this miserable when he hasn’t fed in weeks.

“You hungry again? It’s only been a couple days.”

“I know,” the boy grumbles, squirming on the mattress like he can’t get comfortable. “I just don’t feel good...”

Wayne can see that much from here, so he doesn’t put up any more of a fight about it. He fastens the cuffs of his sleeves with wise and suddenly anxious hands. “I’ll give him a call before I head to work… You gonna be alright without me?”

Eddie nods against the pillow, curls frizzing around his head. He responds in jumbled slurs, “Mhm. ‘M alright. ‘M just… real tired…”

“I’ll call Hopper,” Wayne repeats, firmer this time, before shutting the door behind him.

Eddie spends the next half hour rotting away in the lonely trailer. 

Jim doesn’t bother to knock when he arrives, but it’s not like he needs to. He makes enough deliveries of the riboflavin kind to Forest Hills that he deserves his own key.

Besides, Eddie could smell him when he pulled into the driveway — the pint of blood he carried with him, more so. It’s a deep, rich, and powdery scent. Nowhere near as sweet as you. But then again, he doesn’t think anything could be.

“What’s the special this time, Chief?” Eddie jokes with a small huff as Hopper helps prop him against the headboard. 

The mustached man is still clad in his khaki work uniform, gold badge glinting in the lamplight. His hardened face remains in its usual deadpan frown, though his bushy brows furrow in a subtle confusion. “Do you really wanna know?”

Eddie thinks for a moment, then sighs. “No…”

Jim opens the brown paper bag sitting on the nightstand. He pulls out a plain styrofoam cup topped with a lid typically used for coffee. The thing looks innocent enough, save for a few drops of crimson staining the white of it, likely from an overfill. 

There was a time when Eddie could do it himself. Where he could puncture the blood bag Hopper delivered and pour it into one of the mugs he and Wayne have been collecting for years.

He stopped being strong enough for that a while ago, though. The sight of blood makes him queasy now, which is ironic for very obvious reasons.

The chief does most of it for him now, though Eddie thinks Hopper likes it best that way. 

“Here you go, kid,” Jim says as he passes the boy his cup of liquid scarlet. He holds the lid of it in his other hand, face screwed at the coopery smell engulfing the small bedroom. “Try not to think about it too much, alright?”

Eddie takes the cup in a trembling fist and squeezes his eyes shut so he can’t see its contents. He forces himself to down it in one go — equal parts because it’s easiest that way and because he doesn’t want to be too much of a baby in front of the chief. 

The blood tastes like a strawberry milkshake as he swallows it down, but that’s always the easiest part. It’s the after that’s so ruthless. After the overwhelming bout of starvation passes. After he’s half normal again. That’s when the blood starts to taste like blood — all metallic, like a bunch of old pennies. That’s when he feels like a monster.

Eddie groans when the cup is fully drained. He passes it back to Hopper with his eyes still shut. The man takes it with one hand and pats him on the shoulder with the other. “Good job, kid,” he mumbles, dropping the empty cup back into the bag. 

The boy relaxes against the pillows with a shuddering breath.

Jim waits until then to interrogate him. 

“What happened between now and four days ago?” he asks with his arms crossed over his chest, towering over the boy’s bedside. “This is the first time you’ve needed to feed more than once a week. Hell, it took Wayne and me almost a year to convince you to feed more than once a month.” 

Eddie shrugs lazily, lips jutted and eyes lidded. “Nothing happened.”

“I need to know, kid. So I can keep you safe.”

And so I can keep everyone else safe, too, but he doesn’t say that part.

“It’s just— This girl,” Eddie confesses, then grumbles with a sigh. “I don’t know, alright. It doesn’t even matter.”

Hopper squints. “What girl?”

“No one,” Eddie insists, then cowers under the man’s glacial stare. “Fine. Some-one. She just— makes me go all weird or whatever. I don’t know.”

Jim hums, nodding softly to himself and trying not to be too amused at the thought of Munson having a crush. He scratches at the coarse hair underneath his chin. “And is… staying away from this girl an option, or…?”

Eddie ponders the question for a moment, then exhales a chest-deflating sigh. Just like he did when questioning the origins of the blood in his cup. You were a lot of the same in that way — a thing he needed to survive but wasn’t strong enough to face.

“No… I don’t think it is…”

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

Hawkins Community Pool is strangely liminal after dark. The property itself is illuminated by only a few amber streetlamps, with most of its light coming from within — from inside the wooden pool house and beneath the sparkling cerulean water. 

Eddie parks his van on the darkened edges of the parking lot and tries to find the courage to leave it. The crowd is minimal now, having lessened significantly since he dropped you off some hours ago.

There are only a few stragglers left, most of them teenagers soaking in the last few minutes before closing. He’s grateful for that much. The fewer eyes on him, the better.

If he wasn’t being ogled at with gazes hardened with disgust or softened with pity, people weren’t looking at him at all. Their attempts to keep from staring were perhaps more blatant than they realized.

Maybe they didn’t want to be rude, or maybe they wanted to pretend he wasn’t there at all. It made Eddie hyper-aware of himself either way, which is why he often preferred to stay hidden.

He idles by the chain-link fence, swaddled in the humid summer air that smells overwhelmingly of chlorine and dewy grass. It takes several agonizing moments to catch your attention.

You dance softly in place and mouth the lyrics to a song Eddie can only make out vaguely from here, while the girl beside you stands perfectly and unenthusiastically still. 

You freeze when you catch Eddie’s gaze. Confused at first, then surprised. It takes a matter of seconds for both emotions to mix together and leave you a bumbling ball of excitement. 

The boy raises a ringed hand in a curt wave, which you reciprocate with a much more enthusiastic one. You turn to your co-worker and mouth something Eddie can’t hear before rushing to the parking lot to meet him. The flip-flopping of your rubber sandals grows as you make your way to him, along with the rustling of the windbreaker you wear over your bikini.

It’s a modest scarlet two-piece, with a high waist and a halter neckline — but much more of your skin is on display than Eddie’s used to. (If there was any time he needed to be grateful for a recent feeding, it was now.)

“Hi…” you greet, panting heavily as you stand before him.

“Hiya,” Eddie grins cheekily.

“I… I didn’t know you were coming.”

“I didn’t either, honestly.”

“Did you, uh— Did you and Wayne get to watch Cheers?”

It takes Eddie a moment or more to recall his earlier lie. He nods rapidly in response, perhaps too quickly to be truthful, but you don’t seem to notice. “Uh, no. Not yet. He’ll watch it when he gets back from the graveyard shift.”

“Okay. Cool,” you beam, eyes sparkling as they dart over his features — which have seemed to gain a bit of their life back. He’s still pale, but his eyes are less sunken in than they were. The dark chocolate of his irises swim with a melted honey color. “You look a lot better, by the way. Than you did when I left, I mean. I was scared you were getting sick.”

“Nah, I just… Needed a breather, I guess,” Eddie admits with a breathy chuckle. “I was with Hellfire all day, and… Babysitting’s a tough gig, turns out.”

You laugh alongside him, noticeably less forced. “No, I get it. I basically spend all day babysitting, so…”

“Right. I shouldn’t be complaining.” Eddie scratches awkwardly at the back of his neck and grimaces when his rings get caught in his hair. It takes a very noticeable moment for him to gain the courage to ask the question on the tip of his tongue. “Can, uh— Can I see your hand real quick?”

Your brows pinch. “Why?”

“You’ll see,” he lilts with the same mischievous smile you used on him some days ago now.

He holds a ringed hand expectantly out for you. Your gaze glimmers with intrigue as you put your fingers in his paler, colder ones. You watch him dig in his jacket pockets for a moment before pulling out the same ink pen you’d rescued from the depths of junk in his center console. He clicks it with his thumb, and you jerk your hand out of his.

“Wait!” you blurt. 

Eddie flinches, feeling like he’s done something wrong, like he must’ve hurt you in some way. 

Your features screw in a pinched look of concentration as you stick your hands in the pockets of your windbreaker. “I’m pretty sure I have a marker in here somewhere— Ah! Here it is!” You’re smiling all over again when you pass him the black Sharpie. “So it won’t wash off before I get to call you.”

“Right,” Eddie hums with a slow nod, taking the marker from you. He bites back a smile when he catches you shoving a pack of sparkly stickers back into your pockets. “What are those?”

“Stickers,” you answer, then grimace when you realize that much was obvious. You rush to elaborate. “For the younger kids that have older siblings. They usually get dragged here, and nine times outta ten, they haven’t learned how to swim yet, so… I try to make ‘em feel better with sparkly things.”

The grin Eddie tries to hide blooms very suddenly across the expanse of his pink lips. His chest swirls with a warmer feeling because you’re sort of his sparkly thing, in a way. A bright and glittering thing that makes him feel whole without trying.

You offer him your hand again, shier now. He wraps it in his larger one with fingertips that border on glacial. You fight back a shiver while Eddie uncaps the marker with his teeth. He mumbles through it while he scribbles his number on your wrist.

“Don’t let this scrub off before you get to call me like other idiots do, alright?” he jokes, flashing you a sparkling stare beneath his lashes.

“I’ll call you the second I get home,” you promise with a firm nod. “I’ll write it down, too, so I won’t forget.”

Eddie caps the marker with a lopsided grin sitting lazily on his mouth. “And it’s only for emergencies, alright? Like, if you need a ride or… A spare Blondie cassette that I may or may not have in my glove box.”

You nod again, this time with a giddy and very poorly hidden smile. “Emergenicies,” you parrot, so he knows you really heard him.

(You call him the second you’re back from your shift, though Eddie expected nothing less from you. The emergency in question? You missed him too much.)

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

          this is stranger than i thought,

          six different ways inside my heart  . . .

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

You decide to visit him that weekend, unannounced and unexpected — which is basically how you entered his life in the first place.

You’re a smiling thing on his doorstep. A rival to the early morning sun beaming in rays behind you. Eddie squints one eye and grimaces at the brightness of each.

“Morning!” you chirp like a songbird.

“What are you doing here? How’d you even find me?” Eddie grumbles tiredly, rubbing his sleep-swollen eye with his fist. He wears his slumber all over — in the wild curls, and in the wrinkled shirt that used to be Wayne’s, and in the baggy plaid pants sitting low on his waist. 

The complete and utter opposite of you: an angel kissed with the summer season.

The sun sparkles in your hair. The warm breeze billows in your clothes. The scent of something sweet clings to your skin — of fresh cherries, vanilla cake, and swathes of dewy grass. Each is tantamount to your bone-crushing beauty, which borders on whimsical and intimidating now.

It’s weird seeing you out of your uniform. A strange, but welcomed sight. You’ve traded the mandated bathing suit for a flouncier dress. The thin cotton fabric clings to your torso and drapes over your thighs like summer rain. It’s a scarlet number, gingham-patterned, with two white bows for sleeves. 

Eddie’s tired eyes rake over your pretty form despite himself. He gapes when he finds the raging scrapes you wear on both knees, a bright crimson color to match your strawberry aura. “Jesus Chr— Are you okay?!”

You follow his gaze, bending softly at the waist to peer down at your legs. You press the skirt of your dress down with your palms, and your chest pinches at the sight of your raw knees.

Your eyes flit from the fresh scratches to the concerned boy ahead of you. “Which question do you want me to answer first?” you wonder with wide, sheepish eyes.

Eddie repeats, firmer now, “Are you okay?”

“I’m totally fine,” you shrug with a beaming smile before rambling an explanation, talking absentmindedly with your hands. “I decided to buy a bike after I got my paycheck, but I don’t really know how to ride it yet, so I’m trying to teach myself, and I… kinda accidentally swerved into a ditch on the way here.”

Eddie’s chest flares with a primal feeling. He can’t stand the thought of you hurt — can’t stand the thought of you hurt and him not being there to help you. “Okay…” he wavers with his face still screwed.

“I wasn’t stalking you, by the way! Scout’s honor!” you blurt, holding up four fingers instead of three. “I just knew you lived at Forest Hill’s, and, I mean, the van is a dead giveaway, Eds.”

“Fair enough,” he huffs.

“Besides, I really wanted to bring you something, and I couldn’t wait until I saw you at Scoops because the anticipation was driving me crazy—” You lose yourself in thought and slide past him in the doorway without thinking. 

Eddie just blinks and shuts the door behind you. “And… What is it… Exactly?” he wonders cautiously, only partially fearful of the answer.

It takes you a moment too long to answer him, as you get lost in the sights around you. The trailer was bigger than it appeared on the outside, not messy by any means, but very lived in. 

There’s a folded cot in the corner beside the recliner and a small square TV across from it playing morning cartoons. Vintage baseball caps line one wall, and a collection of mugs line the other. Everything feels like a self-portrait of the Munson family.

“The mixtape I promised,” you answer finally, spinning around to face him again. You pull a plastic cassette from the pocket of your dress and gesture with it in a nervous hand. “I was starin’ at this thing all night, and I couldn’t stop thinking about you— about giving it to you, I mean.” You correct yourself with a nervous laugh and rush to move on. “I’ve always been super bad with gifts— I can’t keep ‘em a secret to save my life. I’m good for, maybe, five seconds, and then I’m just like, gosh, I can’t wait anymore, you know?”

You realize you’re rambling and trail slowly off. You swallow hard, muster a wavering smile, and motion for Eddie to take the cassette. You watch as he studies it with a careful hand — pale and lanky and devoid of his silver rings.

“You made this for me?” he mumbles after a few moments.

“Well, I told you I would.”

“Yeah, but… You made this? For me?” he repeats, with a different inflection. ‘Cause he doesn’t know who else to put it. Doesn’t know how to tell you he doesn’t feel half deserving of anything you could give him.

You giggle in response. “You said you didn’t own anything ABBA. Or Madonna. Or Cyndi Lauper— so obviously, I had to make you an entire compilation of their discography. I’m not an asshole,” you laugh. “And I put a few of my favorite songs on there, too…. And songs that made me think of you and stuff…”

Eddie smiles before he means to. It’s a strange thing, he finds, to be thought of in such an innocent way — to be looked for in the places where he couldn’t physically be. He ducks his chin and peers at you with glimmering eyes. “Yeah? Like what?” he humors.

You don’t miss a beat. “He’s so shy!”

Eddie flinches at your singing — the volume of it, more so. Your voice rings across the quiet trailer, and a laugh sputters past his lips.  “Yeah. Alright.”

“That sweet little boy who caught my eye!” you continue and reach out for him, digging your fingers into the junction of his neck and shoulder. His skin is milky white, smooth, cold to the touch.

“Okay!” he chuckles and swats you away with a playful hand. “I get it!”

“It’s the Pointer Sisters,” you grin.

“I’ll take your word for it.” 

His chocolate eyes dart back and forth between both of yours, momentarily lost in the way you’re looking at him — with your eyes all squishy around the edges. He’s not used to being looked at so softly. Or being noticed at all. 

He swallows hard and averts his gaze. Your scrapped knees enter his vision again, weeping a bright scarlet that threatens to drip down your shins. He ignores any instinct of hunger. 

“You’re bleeding pretty bad, by the way.”

You only feel the ache when you’re reminded of it. Your stomach gets all swirly at the sight of your bruised knees, rubbed raw and stained with the grass that partially cushioned your fall.

“Gosh…” you mumble to yourself, clutching the skirt of your dress in your fists. You flash Eddie a sheepish look and a wavering smile. “Any chance I could bum a bandaid?” 

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

The bathroom is a tight fight, but you make it work.

You sit on the counter, per Eddie’s instruction, while he retrieves the first aid kit collecting dust in the medicine cabinet.  He sits on the edge of the bathtub across from you, way out of his element (in more ways than one), as he cleans your cuts with trembling hands.

His throat is tight with nausea. His head swims with it, too. White stars speckle his vision that he tries hard to blink away. The sight of your blood, diluted and pink on the white tissue, makes him weak.

He isn’t sure if it’s instinct or desire that makes him want to swallow you whole, but the primal urge to consume you is there — in the figurative sense, of course; to bury his teeth in your neck and have a piece of you forever. 

Being between your legs in such close confines is ample enough distraction, though.

You push the skirt of your pretty gingham dress up the expanse of your thighs to give him space to work. You sit with them slightly spread, too — enough to reveal a sliver of your underwear, he thinks. Eddie isn’t sure if it’s intentional or not, so he fights the boyish urge to catch a glimpse of the most private part of you.

“Jesus…” he huffs and chucks the napkin into the bin. With the blood and the grass stains now wiped away, he can see the scratches more clearly. Your delicate skin is abraded and raging with it. Like you fell and kept on falling. “Did you get mauled by a bear or something?”

“In the knees?” you quip.

“Looks like it.”

“I just wanted to match my dress,” you shrug. “That’s all.”

Eddie opens an alcohol swab with his teeth, then meets your pretty smile with a scowl. “You’re hurt. It’s not funny,” he deadpans after spitting the package from between his teeth.

“It is a little bit, though,” you argue just to argue, scrunching the bridge of your nose. He presses the damp wipe to your knee, and you flinch at the sudden stinging feeling. “Ow!”

He smiles at your pouting. “Maybe a little,” he concurs.

“That was mean!”

“You told me to distract you, so I distracted you. Sue me,” the boy shrugs, feigning innocence, as he reaches to toss the swab in the trashcan beside the counter. 

The sight of wadded tissue, all stained with your ruby-colored blood, makes his breath catch in his throat. The ground starts to sway beneath his feet. His eyes go lidded and heavy. His mouth waters with need.

Eddie shakes his wild head in a feeble attempt to remove the ravenous thoughts from his brain, but all it does is make him dizzier.

He blinks wildly as he reaches for a bandaid in the opened container beside him. It slips from his clammy, tremoring hands. He fumbles to grab it again and slaps it to the counter beside you.

“You okay?” he hears you ask, sitting right in front of him but sounding much further than that.

He sits up again and clears his throat, gaze dim and glassy. “Yeah. Yeah, just— Just give me a second…” He breathes hard through his mouth. Eyes squeezed shut. Knuckles going white around the edges of the ceramic tub. 

You watch with a wide, inquisitive stare as you smooth the bandages over your knees yourself. Your concerned gaze flits from the pallid boy ahead of you, to the plasters on your skin, and back to him again. 

“If blood makes you queasy, you coulda just said,” you joke, trying to make him smile, ‘cause you hate seeing him so ill. “You didn’t have to torture yourself just to help me.”

“Blood doesn’t make me queasy,” Eddie tells you, though he’s still slurring his words.

“Then why do you look like you’re about to hurl?” 

His glazed-over eyes are slow to open. “That’s just my face,” he deadpans.

“No. You have a pretty face, Eddie,” you insist as your giggling swells like sunshine in the tiny bathroom. “It’s just all scrunched together, like you’re gonna be sick or something— like this.”

You swirl your features in a manufactured look of drama and pain. Brows furrowed, nose scrunched, mouth snarled. Eddie chuckles before he can help it. The sick feeling still lingers, though not as obvious now. 

“You are bizarre. Did you know that?”

“I did, actually,” you giggle. 

Your entwining laughter fills the bathroom’s close quarters. The glittering noise echoes through the small trailer and finds Wayne at the doorstep. He toes off his work boots and pauses at the sound of giggling — one familiar and lower in pitch, the other foreign and sparkling. 

His socked feet pad down the length of the carpeted ground until he finds the door between Eddie’s bedroom and the kitchen’s edge, already ajar. It creaks loudly under the man’s calloused palm when he pushes it slowly open.

His tired eyes widen at the sight before him — a pretty girl on the sink with a pair of scrapped knees, and Eddie sitting on the tub ahead of her with bloodied tissue in the bin beside him.

Wayne’s heart falls to ass like a steep drop on a rollercoaster.

You smile brightly at the strange man. “Hello!” you greet with an enthusiastic wave.

He blinks slowly at you for a moment, then nods politely. “Hi there,” Wayne says in a deep and gritty drawl before turning to his nephew. “What’s goin’ on here?”

“Nothing,” Eddie blurts, all wide-eyed and fidgeting. He struggles to be casual as he swipes his clammy hands over his thighs. “We were just, you know, hanging out…”

“Everythin’ alright?”

Eddie nods quickly, then stops when it makes him queasy. “Yeah,” he answers, clearing his throat. “Yeah, she just— fell on her bike on the way over, and—”

He flinches when you gasp. 

“Wait! You’re Wayne!” you shout with a sudden recollection.

The man tries not to recoil at the volume of your voice — much too loud for so early in the day, like a chirping bird outside his window. He forces a tightlipped smile and nods again. “I am,” he tells you.

You smile so wide your eyes squint at the edges. “You have Eddie’s nose!”

Wayne laughs, a single scoffed breath. “What can I say? Big noses run in the family.”

“Well, I happen to like ‘em that way,” you insist with a casual shrug, kicking your feet back and forth from where you’re perched on the counter. Your heels meet the cabinet in several rhythmic thunk, thunk, thunks.

When you look down at your bandaged knees, Wayne and Eddie share a look without you.

The older man raises his greying brows. This girl is bizarre, Eddie can hear him saying. 

He nods wordlessly at his uncle’s silent observation, as though to say: I know she is, and I happen to like her that way.

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

          i guess you’re just what i needed,

          i needed someone to bleed  . . .

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

The plastic case of the cassette you made him clatters on the dashboard of his van, filling a silence that would otherwise be occupied by you. 

Eddie’s passenger seat, cracked and worn with age, feels strikingly empty without you in it. Which is strange, ‘cause your presence used to frighten him once. It does, still, he thinks — but now he mourns the haunt like an old, empty house. 

He drives his rattling tin can across town to Hawkins Community Pool, with a cup of rainbow sherbet rattling in the holder at his side, like an offering for a ghost he no longer wants to exorcise from the home behind his ribcage.

“It’s gonna melt before you get it to her,” Robin remarked with a smirk as she scooped ice cream with an expert hand. “You know that, right?”

Eddie bowed his head and tried to hide behind his curls. “Not if I run real fast,” he joked sheepishly.

The pastel sherbet softens quickly in the summer heat. (Not even the van’s middling A.C., pointed right in its direction, could keep it sufficiently cool.) The muted hues of pink, green, and orange begin to swirl together as the milky concoction undulates in his ringed fist. He hopes you don’t mind and prays you see past his feeble attempt to be kind.

“Well, well, well…” Billy Hargrove lilts with a pretty pink smirk at the sight of Eddie Munson’s familiar face. He lifts his sunglasses to the top of his mulleted curls and rests his magazine on his lap. “The dead has risen…”

The poor boy sticks out without trying, despite his desperate attempts to stay hidden — all but swimming in his leather jacket, baggy jeans, and wild hair. He’s a pale, death-touched thing floating in a sea of golden life. 

But, unlike the contemptuous leers from the other patrons, (some who are still certain Eddie killed Chrissy, and others who have always seemed to look at him that way), Billy Hargrove only smiles. A fake, sardonic grin that shows none of his teeth and shines mostly in his eyes. 

His squinted ocean gaze glimmers like he knows all of Eddie’s secrets — which is only half-true. Billy knows what the end of the world did to him, because it almost killed him too, once upon a time.

So, no. He doesn’t know all of Eddie’s secrets. 

Just the biggest one, maybe. 

Despite being largely immune to the summer heat, Eddie still feels the burn of embarrassment stinging his chest. Clawing behind his ribcage like a thousand ravaging demobats. The hot-cold aching of wishing he were dead ebbs when you turn to look at him over your shoulder — when your wide eyes of sparkling hope lock with his darker, dead-er ones.

There’s an undeniable spark of delight in your irises, though Eddie doesn’t know what for. No one’s been this happy to see him in a year. No one’s been this happy to see him ever.

Something about it makes his stomach hurt. Or maybe it’s just the way you and Hargrove are sitting behind the front counter together, like a couple of old friends, with glowing sunkissed skin hugged tight in scarlet bathing suits. 

In that split second, Eddie feels like he’s in high school again — a loser, not yet dead, pining for the pretty girl way out of his league and praying the basketball jock doesn’t shove him into the bleachers.

If you notice the momentary fear in his eyes, you don’t show it.

And if you care that he’s a loser, you don’t show that, either.

“Eddie! Hi!” you greet, giggling as you push yourself off the countertop. Your pleated skirt swishes around your thighs as you rush to him. Your matching sandals pad rhythmically along the stone floor. The flip-flop, flip-fop sound echoes through the shaded breezeway.

Eddie doesn’t know how wide he’s smiling when you’re finally standing ahead of him, but he can feel it burning in the apples of his cheeks.

“You haven’t been around for lunch,” he says in place of a greeting, fidgeting with the cup of melting ice cream in his fist. “I was scared that you keeled over or somethin’.”

“You were worried about me?” you wonder aloud, voice a few octaves higher than he’s used to. You purse your smile to the side of your mouth and scrunch your nose. “Aww…” you croon and dig two fingers into the junction of his neck.

Your touch is soft and warm and less than gentle.

Eddie cringes, effectively set aflame by the electricity of you. He shrinks back with a wavering smile and finds himself grateful that he’s too dead to blush these days — or else you’d see how hopeless he is. 

You ramble an explanation while his skin buzzes.

“I’m a little slow on my bike, turns out, and I couldn’t make it back here in time,” you tell him, which rests his anxieties a little.

Eddie’s been worried about you ever since he patched you up in his bathroom. Everyone’s been worried about you, in truth, ‘cause it’s a well-known fact that you’re a total klutz.

“And after being late for the third time, Adam got kinda mad at me…” you continue, shifting on your feet. “He got really mad at me, actually. I wore his favorite bikini, and he still threatened to fire me. I was, like, oh shit, I’m actually in trouble—”

You giggle to yourself, but Eddie feels like there’s a knife between his ribcage. A sharp, burning, and pulsing urge to get you away from all of these assholes. To get you out of this town. God knows it doesn’t deserve you.

He swallows hard and tries to joke. “Must’ve been real bad then, huh?”

You exhale a dramatic sigh. “Yeah, so… I’m kinda trying to get back on his good side and everything. It’s easier to just stay here. I would’ve called, but I— I didn’t think you cared that much.”

“I care!” Eddie scoffs, pale face swirled with offense.

“You’re the one that said emergencies only!” you mock through another pretty giggle.

“Abandoning me for a week is an emergency.”

You light up like a goddamn Christmas tree at that. 

“See! I knew you were worried about me!”

Eddie scoffs again and looks away. He focuses on the crowd bustling outside the breezeway because it’s easier than meeting your eyes. Until one of them catches his gaze and flashes him a leery look, anyway. Then he feels like he might puke. 

“Not at all,” he answers in a playful deadpan, clearing his throat when his voice shakes. “That’s definitely not why I decided to bring you a… half-melted cup of rainbow sherbet.”

His chocolate eyes avert to the plastic container in his fist, swirling the milky pastels again for good measure. When he looks at you again, it’s through his lashes and with his head bowed sheepishly.

You smile with your lips curled under your teeth — obviously giddy and trying hopelessly to hide it.

“I thought it was for me, but I didn’t wanna assume,” you admit quietly, cheek squished into your shoulder.

“It’s basically a milkshake now,” Eddie mumbles and extends his arm. His voice shakes as much as his hand does. “Sorry…”

You beam at the pinched look of worry on his face. “I like milkshakes, too, silly,” you giggle and take the cup of melted ice cream from him. 

Your fingers are gentle and strikingly warm as they brush his colder, paler ones. Warm like dragonfire, or an old house bathed in candlelight, or a freshly sharpened blade through the heart.

Eddie bleeds out on the pebbled concrete as you turn away. 

You rush back to the counter you leapt from, balancing the container in one palm as you bend over the top of it. A satiny summer breeze rolls through the shaded shack and billows through the pleats of your skirt, lifting the thin fabric to reveal the thong of your one-piece — a sliver of soft scarlet running between your thighs.

Eddie’s undead heart lurches into his throat. He turns his gaze to the ceiling until the wind passes.

Billy looks up from his magazine to smile at you with his teeth. “This your boyfriend, sweet thing?” he asks as you pluck your straw from the styrofoam cup you were just drinking from.

The nickname floats on the humid air and strangles Eddie accordingly. Your mouth curls around the end of the bendy straw before you give him a proper answer. You blow hard to dispel the remnants of room-temperature water before sticking the plastic into the milky concoction in your fist.

“Yes,” you answer plainly, then take a long sip of the softened ice cream. You shrug with the raspberry-orange taste on your tongue. “He’s a boy. And he’s my friend,” you lilt. “Jealous?”

Billy laughs. Loud. 

“Of Munson?” 

You nod quietly, straw caged between your teeth.

He laughs louder and slouches in his swivel chair. The golden muscles of his toned chest flex as he flashes you a quieter smile — one that might say he knows a lot more than you do if you cared enough to read the signals.

“I can’t say that I am, no,” Billy hums, faux sympathetically.

“Well, maybe if you were a little nicer, he’d be bringing you food, too,” you tell him, very matter-of-fact about the whole thing, as you spin on the heel of your rubber flip-flop and saunter away. 

Eddie grimaces when you’re ahead of him again. “Please tell me this isn’t the only thing you’ve had today.”

Your face screws as you take another sip. “No,” you answer with a firm shake of your head, though the word comes out garbled from the fruity concoction in your mouth. You swallow it down and confess, “I had half a Poptart for breakfast, so…”

“That’s… not breakfast,” the boy monotones, then motions his wild head to the cup cradled in your right hand. “And this isn’t lunch.”

“Well, I told you I don’t have time to get lunch,” you argue like a child, soft and sheepish, head bowed to avoid his unwavering stare. You stab at the softened ice cream with the plastic straw, leaving holes in the pastel swirls, as you mutter to yourself, “And I can’t make it for myself, either. I’m not adult enough for that yet.”

Eddie feels it again. The sting of empathy in his chest. The primitive need to help you that makes it hard to breathe most days.

He shrugs his leather-clad shoulders and crosses his arms over his chest, tucking his trembling hands under his armpits.

“Well— Maybe— Maybe I can, you know, bring you something?” Eddie offers, stumbling over himself the entire way through. He shifts on his feet and swallows through the frog in his throat. “Like, when I have the time, or whatever.”

He doesn’t tell you that he always has the time. (‘Cause he only works nights at The Hideout now, and spends the rest of the day’s many hours rotting in bed.)

Your face pinches into a girlish pout. Something soft, but sterner than he thinks he’s ever seen you before. “I can’t ask you to do that.”

“You’re not asking. I’m offering,” Eddie argues. “And I’m not doing it outta the kindness of my own heart, either— It’d just make me feel better to know you’re not totally withering away whenever I’m not here.”

You try hard to keep your scowl. But then your chest starts to glitter like a thousand sparklers in July, and you’re beaming before you can stop it. Eddie watches the pretty smile curl slowly on your lips despite your futile attempt to hide it.

“What’s that look for?” he cautions.

“Nothin’,” you shrug, smiling with the straw between your teeth. “I just like you.”

Eddie forgets to breathe and dies all over again, right at your feet.

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

         only boys who save their pennies

         make my rainy day!

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

Most Tuesdays, some Wednesdays, and every Friday — (the mornings after his late night shifts at The Hideout) — Eddie Munson buys you lunch. 

He stands at the counter of Benny’s Burgers and pays with the rogue quarters and crumpled bills he finds in random pockets of his jacket. The bearded man looks on in slow-blinking bemusement while the boy counts out the $4.89 your sandwich costs.

Benny ends up throwing in free fries for the effort.

It takes Eddie an embarrassing amount of time to realize you were sneaking money into his pockets every time he visited you, even though he told you not to pay him back. Even though you swore you wouldn’t. (He’ll never believe another one of your stupid Scout’s Honor promises again).

Saturday comes, and Eddie’s cleaned out ’til his next shift on Monday. 

He thinks he’s handling it pretty well — the very palpable lack of you — but the contrary is written all over his face.

He’s sprawled out on the sunken-in couch in the living room with the headphones of his Walkman around his neck. Madonna plays muffledly (and far too happily) as he stares up at the ceiling, trying to make constellations of your face from the cracks and water stains.

Dustin watches his best friend grieve from the other side of the coffee table and sighs. “It’s the sandwiches, right? You guys hate the sandwiches?” he wonders aloud, but to no one in particular. “God, I knew I put too much jelly in them—”

“The sandwiches are amazing, Dusty-Bun,” Robin insists from Wayne’s recliner, with a mouthful of PB&J jutting out her freckled cheek. Her chipping maroon nails are stained with crumbs as they flash an ‘ok’ symbol in his direction.

With grape jelly on the corner of his mouth, Steve mumbles from the floor in front of her, “Doesn’t explain why Eddie’s still sulking over there, though.”

“Exactly!” Dustin huffs, flailing his arms.

Eddie rolls his eyes. He exhales a heavy breath that makes his chest deflate, then turns to face the eyes staring back at him. “I’m not sulking,” he grumbles like a rain cloud.

“Yeah. It’s the pouting that’s so convincing,” Max scoffs from Dustin’s other side, blinking at him from behind her glasses as she fakes a tight-lipped grin. 

Eddie just squints at her. She’s not nearly as menacing as she used to be. Not when her ocean eyes are bugged out from such thick lenses, anyway. Now he finds her sort of adorable, in a subtly intimidating way — like a kitten holding a pocketknife.

“I’m not pouting, either,” the wild-haired boy retorts, features scrunched in a soft pout.

Lucas wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “He just misses Barbie,” the boy croons playfully.

Eddie blinks at him with a flat face. “Barbie?” he echoes.

“Yeah,” he shrugs, voice high. “Barbie.”

“Am I supposed to know who that is, or…?”

“Oh, you know who she is,” Lucas nods with a boyish chuckle. “Very well.”

He keeps on laughing about it until Max elbows him hard in the shoulder. Steve misses the silent cue as he tears off a piece of bread crust, snickering to himself at the inside joke.

He pops it into his mouth and meets Eddie’s gaze, emotionless and expectant. His eyes widen as he stammers for a response.

“The girl— Your girl— She was at Jazzercise the other day,” Steve explains, then swallows hard. “She was with that pretty lifeguard, too. What’s her name again?”

He looks instinctively up at Robin for an answer. Eddie beats her to the punch. 

“Billy Hargrove?” he monotones.

“Ha-ha.”

“Heather Holloway,” Robin tells him.

“Heather!” Steve exclaims, snapping his fingers. “I’m pretty sure I dated her freshman year, actually… Or was that Heather Hart?”

The boy loses focus quickly as he goes deep in thought. Fluffy brows pinched, honey eyes squinted. A heavy silence lulls over the crowded living room, and Madonna’s muffled voice grows louder. ‘Cause we are living in a material world, and I am a material girl!—

Before Eddie has time to be embarrassed, Steve shrugs at himself. 

“Doesn’t matter. Anyway. She was at Jazzercise with Heather just, like, dripping in pink. Pink leg warmers, pink leotard, pink tights…” Steve trails off again, stare glazing over like he's imagining you all over again. “It was crazy…”

Eddie’s face swirls in disgust. Not at the thought of you, of course, but at the notion that your beauty is perceptible to others. That he isn’t the only one who can see you, admire you. He is not the only one you’ve threatened to kill with your piercing stare, and the thought alone makes his stomach twist.

“You’re such a boy,” Eddie scoffs.

Robin leans forward, freckled face solemn and serious. She rests her elbows on her denim-clad knees and slowly shakes her head. “No… It was crazy,” she echoes more earnestly.

It sounds different coming from her. It means something different coming from her, too. Eddie’s brows raise and disappear beneath his curly bangs. “Oh, yeah?” he hums with bated breath.

“Yeah,” Robin answers with a disbelieving sigh.

“Hence, the nickname,” Lucas nods, seemingly missing the meaning ‘cause the only other girl he’s cared to notice besides Pheobe Cates is the redhead sitting beside him.

The girl with magnifying glasses over her eyes and legs that don’t work as well as they used to. Despite the circumstances (involving dark wizards and a certain death), Max hasn’t changed at all. And neither has the way Lucas’ teenage boy heart beats for her.

Eddie scoffs a tired laugh. He turns back to the ceiling and throws an elbow over his eyes. “I’m gonna tell her you guys call her that behind her back, by the way.”

“It’s a compliment!” Dustin defends, a few octaves higher than normal.

“Or you could tell her to her face,” Max offers with an absentminded shrug, folding her napkin into a weird shape in her lap — only ‘cause she’s fidgeting, of course, not because Dr. Owens said it would help ease the stiffness in her fingers. (Being dead might’ve taught her some things, but listening to figures of authority is not one of them.)

“She’s working today. Billy said so.”

Eddie peeks at her, flat-faced. “Did he?”

“Yeah. Means you can go visit your girlfriend instead of bitching and moaning about how much you miss her all weekend.”

“She’s not my girlfriend, Mayfield.”

“That’s beside the point.”

“No. That is entirely the point,” Eddie argues, laughing more sincerely now. “Other than the fact that the sun will literally kill me.”

Max’s light eyes narrow into thin slits behind her clunky glasses. She says the hard thing out loud, without blinking. that the rest of them are already thinking, anyway.

“You’re already dead, Munson.”

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

          hey, you, with the pretty face,

         welcome to the human race!

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

No wonder the streets seemed so apocalyptically empty, Eddie thinks to himself as he walks through the front gates of Hawkins Community Pool. Because every goddamn person in town has chosen to spend their Saturday here.

Benny from the diner sits by the kiddie pool next to the entrance, watching his daughter wade in the shallow water. He looks like a different person without his grease-stained apron on. His swim trunks are bright red and slightly too short for him, his Hawaiian shirt is unbuttoned to reveal his beer belly, and his face is burnt everywhere but under his sunglasses. 

Jason, Andy, and all the rest of their goons hog the picnic tables while pretty girls sit on the tops of them — wearing their expensive bikinis and basking in the sun like it’s shining just for them. The boys laugh and shove at one another, trying to pretend like they’re far too cool for it all.

Familiar faces fill the blue water, but it’s hard to make them out in the crowd. Everyone’s swimming and splashing and stuffed within the chain-linked fence like cattle. They all go blurry, like a bunch of indistinct shapes before a backdrop of bright colors. Like a Claud Monet painting, if he ever cared enough to paint uninspiring Midwestern towns.

It’s far too packed to feel self-conscious ‘cause this is the kind of horde you drown in. But that just means it’s catastrophically overstimulating. For Eddie, most of all, who’s sorely out of place in his leather jacket and baggy jeans and dirty sneakers.

The boy cranes his neck to search for you, dark eyes flitting wildly over the crowd — once, twice, and then a third time.

You’re nowhere to be found, and he knows this because your face is far too pretty and not easily missed. Your sweet hibiscus scent is equally absent, drowned out by the overwhelming smell of chlorine, sunblock, and sweat.

If you were around, he’d know it.

“She’s not even here!” Eddie huffs, lifting his arms only to drop them dramatically at his sides. Any arguments about his pouting are surely moot now. Even he can feel the petulant scowl pinching his features.

Max, equally confused, stands at his side and pushes her glasses up her nose. “Billy said she was working today. I heard him on the phone. He definitely said it,” she observes, mostly to herself, ‘cause she can’t stomach being wrong. “Well… He said he was opening with the two prettiest girls in town, so I figured one was probably Heather and the other was—”

“Barbie?” Eddie finishes flatly.

“Yeah.”

“Well, she’s obviously not here, so… Let’s just go back home and do— literally anything else.” 

Eddie spins on the heel of his worn sneaker with the intention of going back the way he came. His van is parked crooked, anyhow. Steve complained as much when he parked his shiny new BMW right beside him. He figures he should probably get back before someone slashes his tires. Again.

He nearly runs into someone the second he turns around. Someone standing far too close for comfort, in a bright red bathing suit and matching skirt, with too big sunglasses on the top of her head.

“Who’s not working today?!” the person shouts loudly in his face, with the evident intent to scare him.

Eddie stumbles back into Steve, who promptly shoves him forward again. It takes him approximately that long to realize it’s you.

You guffaw when the rest of them jump in fright — a loud and heavenly sound that refuses to be drowned out by the droning of a million different conversations.

“I totally got you guys!” you exclaim, giggling so hard your head tilts back. 

Eddie laughs with you, mostly in shock, as he clutches his chest where his heart isn’t beating.

“Admit it! I got you a little?” you say, pinching your thumb and forefinger and squinting through the sliver of space between them.

“Yeah,” the boy huffs a forced laugh. “Yeah, a— a little bit.”

Visibly delighted by his words, you beam brighter than the golden hour sun.

“I knew it!” you grin before your eyes flit over his shoulder, to the group of friends gaping wordlessly behind him. You scrunch your nose sympathetically. “Sorry… You guys were just collateral.”

“You know I have a bad heart,” Steve complains for the sake of complaining, clutching his chest over his short-sleeved button-up. He flashes you a stern look and gripes, “That shit’ll kill me.”

Your eyes narrow in a challenging squint. “You’re twenty-one years old, Steve.”

“Yeah,” he scoffs. “And being around you ages me five years.”

“Well, then, I guess we’re gonna have a very long, very happy life together. Aren’t we, Stevie?” you retort with a sickly sweet smile that Steve meets with a scruffy-faced scowl. 

Eddie watches the brunette boy roll his eyes like he wasn’t getting half-hard at the thought of you at Jazzercise an hour ago. It makes him only partly jealous.

He could never dream of being so casual around you. ‘Cause when your eyes find his again, it feels like his stomach’s doing backflips. It’s like he blinks, and he forgets how to speak.

“So!” you chirp. “Family trip?”

Eddie opens his mouth and doesn’t realize until that moment that every word in the English language has left his brain. Robin shoves him hard in the back to put his head back on straight. The words fly from his mouth like a pull-string doll.

“I didn’t wanna bother you, but these idiots forced me into it.”

“Good. You need to get out of the house from time to time, Eds— You’re getting so pale,” you ramble and reach suddenly for his face. Eddie freezes when you take his chin by your thumb and forefinger. The warmth of your velvety touch sets his skin aflame; more so when you look directly into his wide-eyed gape and say, “There’s nothin’ wrong with needing a little sunshine, Eddie Spaghetti.”

“Weird,” Max muses with a sarcastic lilt. “That is exactly what we’ve been trying to tell him, too.”

Eddie shoots her a glare — the best he can, anyway, with your hand still cradling his jaw. He can only see the redhead from the corner of his eye, but the smug smirk on her freckled face doesn’t go missed.

Your fingers slip from his face, and Eddie feels like he can breathe again. He feels strangely empty, still, without you touching him — like he’s starving, or like he’s never been touched before now. Sometimes, it feels like both are true.

He wonders if that’s just the price he has to pay. If being near you means feeling like he’s dying and coming to life all at once. There’s a nagging voice in the back of his head that tells him he’ll pay it, with your pretty fingers strangling his neck and all.

“You’re MADMAX, right?” you wonder aloud to the girl with auburn plaits draping her freckled shoulders.

She’s mostly a stranger to you now, but you think she must mean a great deal to the rest of them. They talk a whole lot about the redhead with chunky glasses who acts like she’s way too cool for it all but defends her Dig Dug high score like her life depends on it. 

The girl nods and crosses her pale arms across her chest, flashing you a suspicious, tightlipped smile. “Yeah. Which means you must be Barbie?”

“Barbie?” you echo.

Eddie chimes in then. “That’s what these freaks call you when you’re not around,” he says, nodding his wild head to the group of aforementioned freaks behind him.

Your face twists as you bring your hand to the center of your chest. “That is the nicest thing anyone’s ever called me before,” you respond, strangely sincere.

Lucas smiles from over Max’s shoulder, nodding like he’s proud. “You’re welcome,” he tells you.

Dustin stands just beside him with a conspicuous paper bag under his arm. You squint past Eddie and over to the curly-haired boy. “What’s that?” you blurt.

It takes him a second too long to answer. “Oh. Uh. A sandwich—” he stammers vaguely, extending his arm towards you. You take the sack from him without thinking twice and rifle blindly through its contents.

“PB&J?” you guess with an inquisitive arch to your brow. Dustin nods, looking pleased by your assumption. Your arm stills suddenly within the crinkling brown sack, and your eyes narrow into thin slits. “With the crust cut off?”

“Uh… no.”

“Good. That’s obviously the best part of the whole sandwich,” you respond, almost to yourself, as you pluck the snack from the bag. 

You unwrap it from its plastic seal and take a hefty bite in one fell swoop. Your eyes flutter shut like it’s something gourmet, and not just something Dustin slapped together on his kitchen step stool at home.

“Thank you for this,” you mumble through the wad of food in your cheek. “You’re officially my new best friend, Dusty-Bun.”

“Rude,” Eddie scoffs.

You swallow hard and fight back a smile, like you were hoping for that exact response. “And who said you were my best friend in the first place, hm?” you argue playfully, waving the half-eaten peanut butter jelly sandwich in his face. “That is very presumptuous of you, Eddie Spaghetti.”

Your pleated skirt flutters at your hips when you spin on the heel of your plastic sandal. You flip flop, flip flop out of the shaded shack and towards the sunshine and unadulterated chaos. The rest of them follow behind you — save for Dustin, who migrates to Eddie’s side with a far-off gaze.

“Sure she’s not your girlfriend?” the kid wonders, never once taking his eyes off the back of you.

Eddie looks down at him with a flat face. “I’m sure,” he monotones.

Dustin grins wide, likely forgetting that other people can see it, too. “Good,” he hums to himself.

“Don’t get any ideas, Henderson,” the older boy blurts before he means to, then tries not to cower under the expectant glance he gets. “You’re obviously way out of her league.”

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

The group fits in pretty well despite being the self-proclaimed outcasts of Hawkins, Indiana.

Steve most of all, but that usually goes without saying. He looks like small-town royalty in his brand-name polo and too-expensive navy swim shorts. He’s lost his touch since high school, though, as he tries and fails to flirt with Carol Perkins’ sister.

“So, Amber— What’d you say you were studying again?” you hear him ask as he lingers awkwardly by the longue chairs.

“My name is Autumn,” she corrects in a drawl that’d give a valley girl a run for her money.

Steve, oblivious to his blunder, only smiles. “Oh, cool. That’s, like, definitely in my top four favorite seasons—”

Robin, in a strange turn of events, is much more casual in her flirting than her co-worker-slash-best-friend. She spotted Vicki the second she walked in, sitting with a few girls from yearbook and rubbing sunscreen onto her supple skin.

She pretended she didn’t, though, which only made it that much more obvious that she had. Vicki waved at her once, then again to invite her over, and Robin was far too awkward to decline. 

Now, she sits gracelessly with a bunch of half-strangers and her biggest crush, looking only slightly out of place in her frayed shorts and Steve’s baggy tee. She nods politely in conversation and thanks the universe for making it so damn hot today. At least now she can blame her burning freckled face on the golden setting sun.

Dustin and Lucas, meanwhile, stuff their faces with ice cream sandwiches in a feeble attempt to consume them before they melt. The softened vanilla leaves messes on their fingers and faces, making them look somehow more boyish than their respective Spiderman and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle swim trunks.

Max sits off to the side of them in her own chair, partly overstimulated, and trying to let the piercing sunbeams ground her again.

Eddie Munson, however, in his attempt to blend in, only draws more attention to himself.

He sits beside your post, shaded beneath a wide umbrella, in the same attire you’d see him in on any other day. The baggy jeans, and the thick leather jacket, and the Corroded Coffin merch. He’s dripping in black and silver but hasn’t yet broken a sweat. You don’t know how, though. ‘Cause you’re hot just looking at him.

You pluck your plastic whistle from your mouth to ask, “Are you sure you’re not burning up over there?”

Eddie laughs before he means to because the answer’s obvious to him. 

The last time he felt an ounce of heat was when he was bleeding out on the dirt floor of an alternate universe — when crimson blood ran warm over the mangled skin of his chest and ribs. He’s been colder than ice ever since. And he keeps forgetting you don’t know about any of that.

“Yeah. I’m sure,” he answers, angling his head to face yours.

There’s a white cast on his grey face from sunscreen deliberately not rubbed in. It feels like a shield in some way. Not in the warm-blooded human kind of way, of course, but in the vampiric curse kind. The kind that would otherwise make him debilitatingly weak sitting outside like this. Now, he feels somewhat normal.

The golden hour sun sits like a halo behind your head. He squints one eye to see you better. “If you wanna see me shirtless, you can just say that,” he jokes. “Instead of beating around the bush and everything—”

“I wanna see you shirtless,” you blurt in a strange monotone that makes it hard to tell if you’re joking or not.

The boy falters. Tries not to choke on his own spit. There isn’t a world where he can flirt with you where you don’t immediately snatch the upper hand. It’s like you’re immune to that sort of diffidence. Eddie wishes he was, too.

“Wow,” he scoffs after the few long moments it takes him to recover. “Way to be blunt, sweetheart.”

“You told me to say it!”

You give him a lazy shrug and a lazier smile as you swap the bright red lifeguard buoy to your other arm. Eddie shifts uncomfortably in his seat, as though physically affected by the way you look at him, and the plastic pool chair makes a weird squeaking noise beneath him.

“Yeah, well, most people tend to be more subtle about it.”

“I’ve never been subtle about anything in my life.”

You turn back around to scan the busy pool, and Eddie feels like he can breathe again. A laugh rattles through his tight chest as he quips, “I’m starting to realize that about you, actually—”

“God. Stop flirting,” Max groans from your other side, who has otherwise been so silent that Eddie was starting to forget she was there. She doesn’t turn to look at either of you from where she lazes on the lounge chair. “Sitting with Steve would be more bearable than this.”

“Yeah, Eddie. Stop flirting with me,” you grouse, obviously playful, and without missing a single beat. You glare at the boy over your mostly bare shoulder and try hard not to smile. (He can’t see it in your eyes, anyway, though.) “I’m trying to talk to my new friend MADMAX. Gosh—”

You spin on the heel of your plastic red sandal, and your matching skirt twirls with you. Eddie can’t take his eyes off the back of you. He forgets how to blink when the fabric swishes to give him a brief glimpse of your ass.

He’s always hated the sun, but he loves the way it kisses your skin — leaving you glistening and mouthwateringly supple. 

His fangs threaten to make an appearance when a warm breeze carries your cotton candy cloud scent to him. His gums start to burn with the sharp ache.

“—Hi, MADMAX,” you singsong to the scowling girl, grinning with your cheek pressed to your shoulder.

“You can just call me Max,” she deadpans. “You know that, right?”

“But MADMAX is so much cooler. And it suits you way better.”

“Does it?” MADMAX wonders with an unenthusiastic hum.

“Yeah. Maxine is a name for an old woman. Or, like, one of those ridiculously expensive French poodles,” you ramble and turn back to the pool again, head bobbing as you scan the crowd. “But MADMAX? Now, that is a name for a badass with really cool hair and a sick pair of reading glasses.”

There’s a beat of silence, filled only by the sound of splashing water and the buzzing of a thousand distant conversations, as Max tries to bite back a laugh. It sputters past her anxiety-bitten lips before she can stop it — a strangely airy giggle from such an intimidating girl. 

She shakes her head, still, to pretend she’s above the childish giddiness.

Your face screws in feigned offense. “Don’t laugh!” you scold.

Which, of course, only makes her laugh harder.

Eddie lifts his head, finally taking his eyes off you to gape at the redhead across the aisle, who hasn’t laughed like this since the world ended. 

It must be something strange you alone bring out of them, he realizes. Something special in you that the end of the world didn’t steal like it did everyone else.

“These guys bothering you, newbie?” you hear your manager call to you, only partially drowned out by the surrounding laughter and shouting from the bustling crowd.

His voice is annoyingly distinct. It’s deep and articulate in a way that makes him seem smart. You don’t know if he really is, but you do know that he’s really a raging asshole. 

Adam stands before you, gold and glittering under the setting sun like God’s first creation himself. He’s got veins up and down the length of his muscular arms, and a bulging chest that he waxes every two weeks like clockwork. He’s Steve The Hair Harrington pretty without an ounce of the charm.

“Huh?” you call back, brows raised and eyes wide, just to make him repeat himself.

“I asked if these guys were bothering you,” Adam repeats, flicking his cleft chin back to get the blonde curls out of his eyes. “You look distracted.”

“What guys?” you wonder with an innocent furrow to your brows.

The man’s emerald eyes flit instinctively over your shoulder at Eddie, who everyone has been trying and failing not to stare at this whole time. 

You wonder if Eddie notices it, too — if he’s gotten immune to the constant leering or if he’s bone-crushingly aware of it all. Either way, no one deserves to be ogled at like that. Like some kinda zoo animal. 

Everyone always walks on eggshells around him, refusing to look him in the eye out of fear he might bite. But you know he doesn’t have the teeth for it.

Despite that, you look at Eddie over your shoulder like he’s a stranger. His eyes are wide and swimming with apprehension as the chocolates of them dart between you and the man made out of chiseled marble. 

Adam knows that you know him. You know he knows it, too. Which makes lying to him all the more fun.

“I’ve never seen this man before in my life,” you shrug.

Adam squints and crosses his too-big arms over his chest. “Doesn’t change the fact that he’s loitering. Along with the rest of these kids—” He looks around him with a visible disgust. 

Max pretends he isn’t there. Dustin and Lucas, meanwhile, forget to be casual as they cower under his stare with their ice-cream-stained faces.

“It’s a public pool, Adam. Everyone's loitering. Duh.”

You turn away and stick your whistle back in your mouth. You chew absentmindedly at the plastic and scan the pool for any reason to use it.

Adam’s neck twitches. An angry sort of tic he didn’t know he had until he met you. “You’re still on the clock, newbie. If I see you gettin’ distracted again, I’ll—”

You blow the whistle. Loud. And for far longer than you probably need to. 

The high-pitched chirping rings in Adam’s ears from the close proximity. He flinches away accordingly.

“No running, please!” you shout sweetly to the pudgy middle school-aged boy on the other side of the pool. (His babysitter always brings him here so she can sunbathe, and he’s always roughhousing in the deep end. Billy’s developed a personal vendetta with him over the summer.) 

The suddenly quiet pool returns to its deafening chaos a second later.

You flash Adam a cheeky smile. “You were saying?”

“I was saying that I’ll take it out of your paycheck,” the man bites, angled jaw clenched tight. “You’re already on thin ice. Understand?”

Your lip juts in a feigned pout. You nod slowly, eyes wide like a puppy he’s just kicked.

“One more strike, and you’re cleaning toilets, newbie.”

“Ah, I knew that’s what this was all about…” you lilt seductively, lips curling into a mischievous smirk. “You just want to see me bending over—”

You lean closer toward him until your spearmint breath fans across his chiseled jaw. Your bottom juts out in Eddie’s direction, until he can see the very bottom of your ass from beneath your pleated skirt. It makes him as flustered as Adam the Asshole, who stalks off on long legs quickly after, sufficiently embarrassed.

You laugh at the back of him until he disappears into the crowd again. The bubbly sound ceases the moment he’s out of earshot, and your smile ebbs into a girlish pout. “Dickwad,” you mumble under your breath.

You recover from it all rather quickly while Eddie struggles to remind himself to breathe. His mind reels as he, for the first time ever, grapples with the very real possibility that he might actually be in love with you. Or that you’re not real at all, and that this is just Vecna’s doing — long gone but still putting visions in his head somehow.

He doesn’t know which is worse.

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

         oh, what a strange magic!

         oh, it’s a strange magic!

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

The golden-orange sky turns a milky pink and lavender. Eddie’s friends, sunburnt and sufficiently pruned, don’t leave until the first star blinks faintly in the sky. The rest of the crowd goes with them, bustling bodies spilling out in a swarm.

It takes the rest of the gang several long moments to realize Eddie isn’t behind them. (You told him you forgot your sunglasses, and he offered to get them for you, ‘cause he’s nice like that and everything.)

(He doesn’t know the sunglasses are currently hiding in the pocket of your windbreaker.)

“What, where’s Eddie?” Dustin wonders aloud to the rest of the group, head flitting wildly in search of the misplaced metalhead.

“He went to the bathroom, I think,” you blurt the first lie you can think of. “He was talking about a nervous tummy or something. I don’t know.”

Steve scoffs like he senses a non-truth. “So, he’s leaving me with babysitting duty again?” he quips with a cynical, lopsided smile. “How predictable.”

“You say that like we’re the spawn of Satan or something,” Lucas jokes.

“You aren’t?” the oldest boy deadpans.

Dustin flips him off with a chubby finger and a flat face.

They bid their leave tangled in mindless arguments and lanky limbs. You watch them leave with the understanding that Steve’s 733i will be a tighter fit than it should be, crammed with a bunch of rowdy teenage boys. You feel sorry for Max and Robin most of all. 

Steve’s car peels out of the parking lot one moment, and Eddie returns the next.

“I couldn’t find your sunglasses anywhere,” he confesses sheepishly, face twisted like a puppy’s as he scratches awkwardly at the back of his neck. “I don’t know. I think some asshole might’ve stolen ‘em—”

“Oh, no, it’s okay,” you shrug with a tightlipped smile. “I found them in the, uh— In the lost-and-found bin.”

“Oh. Okay. Cool,” Eddie stammers, nodding slowly, just before a smile tugs at his lips. You watch from beneath your lashes as the subtle realization curls on his face. “You had ‘em the entire time, didn’t you?” the boy wonders in a low voice that makes your stomach do whirl.

“Yes,” you squeak in a mousy voice, then ramble before you can stop it. “But only ‘cause I wanted everyone else to leave! You know, so we can have a real date and everything…”

“As opposed to the fake ones we’ve been having?” he jokes with pinched brows.

“Exactly,” you nod, strikingly sincere. ‘Cause the constant carpooling and melted rainbow sherbet dropoffs had to have meant something. 

“As tempting as that sounds, sweet thing,” he humors, scrunching the bridge of his nose. “I do think I might be actually coming down with sunstroke.”

You turn your head wordlessly to the entryway of the shack. There’s only a sliver of the night sky visible from here, but it’s navy blue and sparkling with so many little stars. You look back to Eddie with a dubious glint in your eye. “The sunset twenty minutes ago, Eds.”

“Yeah, but… I’m still sick.”

He removes his hand from the pocket of his leather jacket and balls it into a fist over his mouth. He coughs once, trying hard to make it believable ‘cause he hasn’t been truly sick since the winter of ’84.

That’s perhaps the only cool thing about being a vampire — he’s basically got Superman’s immune system now.

“Well, I actually learned how to treat sunstroke while I was in training,” you lilt with an air of mischief in your voice as you take a daring step closer. The scent of sunscreen and cheap musky cologne clings to his skin. Something about the combination of the two is maddening.

You’re filled suddenly with the primal urge to bite into him like an apple. But you refrain, lest you scare him off.

Eddie’s caught in a similar dilemma, but with perhaps realer consequences than that. Your natural marshmallow-passionfruit scent suffocates him like a pillow to the face. His fangs threaten to force their way through his gums as his head starts to swim.

He ignores every vampiric instinct swirling in his mind and focuses, instead, on the pretty smile curling at your lips.

“Bet ya didn’t know that, did ya?”

Eddie swallows hard and shakes his head. “No, I— I don’t think you ever told me that,” he stammers, then clears his throat when the words get stuck there. He puts both hands back in his jacket pocket, balling them into fists until his nails bite into his palms.

“First, you gotta take off your clothes—”

“You’ve been trying to get in my pants all day,” the boy laughs. “You realize that, right?”

“—And then you gotta cool off in a very luxurious community pool.”

Eddie gets what you’re playing at, then. His smile ebbs almost instantly. “No,” he dismisses with a stern shake of his head. His deep chestnut curls, frizzed with the late-summer humidity, sway around his jaw. “No. No way.”

“Oh, c’mon! Please,” you whine. “The pool closes in, like, half an hour— Then it’ll just be us! We can swim together!”

“I don’t know how,” Eddie whines back, head tossed and face screwed. “Seriously. I grew up in a trailer park. No one ever taught me how to swim, alright? I’ll drown.”

Something about that seems to please you, as your pout curls slowly into another smile. You meet the boy’s wet brown eyes with a gaze that glitters something wicked.

Eddie can see your head spinning with a thousand bad ideas from here. His heart would race at the thought of getting into trouble with you if it was beating still. 

You’ll bring him back to life yet.

“Don’t worry, Eds,” you shrug with a sure grin. “I’d give you mouth-to-mouth in a heartbeat.”

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

The pool glows a vibrant sapphire color. It makes the surrounding amber streetlamps seem dull in comparison. The water is as blue and crystalline as an early summer sky. Eddie figures you must be the sun, swimming in the center of it all. 

You wait patiently in the shallow end — out of both your windbreaker and pleated skirt for the first time in front of him — and swipe your hands over the water, letting it drip like liquid diamonds from your fingers. You hum quietly to the slow song playing on the boombox across the way, which now houses the mixtape you made that Eddie seems to take with him everywhere. 

The boy shifts uncomfortably at the head of the pool, feeling awkward in the pair of swim trunks you found for him in the break room.

You’ve never seen so much of him before. His paper-white legs are a lot longer than you expected, ‘cause his baggy jeans hardly do him any favors. And his arms are a lot muscular, too — likely from moving band equipment and bussing tables.

He’s already so pretty to begin with. You don’t know what he’s got to be such a Nervous Nelly about.

Eddie knows he’s making it harder for himself. It’d be a lot less awkward for the both of you if he just took his shirt off and jumped in the water. But he’s paralyzed by the misplaced panic that strikes that lightning in his chest. And by you, ogling at him like he’s a pretty thing that deserves to be ogled at.

“Stop staring,” he calls to you, pretending to be playful but meaning every bit of it. “It’s makin’ me nervous.”

“Would it make you feel better if I closed my eyes?”

“Much.”

You put your hands over your eyes, to make him feel better and all. Though, you can’t help but peek between the slivers of your fingers as he strips himself of his Corroded Coffin tee.

His torso is as long and lean as you imagined, with sprinkles of hair on his chest and the pudge of his tummy that trails into his borrowed trunks. You try very hard not to stare too long at the gray scars embedded in his pale skin.

Everything seems to come easier to him when you’re not looking at him. He slides the black fabric off his pale, pale torso, tosses it to his feet, and hurries to hide in the water in one fell swoop.

The chlorine makes his nose burn, but the water feels like satin on his skin. It’s soft and warm and smooth against the cold, sharp edges of him.

“You can open your eyes now,” Eddie scoffs when he notices your hands still over your eyes. He can see you blinking at him through the slits in your fingers. “I know you’re peeking.”

“I was not!” you gasp, mouth agape with a playful offense.

“Well, you weren’t exactly being discreet about it, sweet thing.”

“These are very nefarious accusations you’re making, Eddie Munson…” you scold with arched brows and wide eyes. The water ripples faintly around you as you stalk towards him like a predator to prey, eyes narrowed in a challenging squint. “Are you prepared to back them up?”

The boy cowers slightly under your unwavering stare. “I don’t like the way you’re looking at me right now—”

And he was right not to. ‘Cause you’re lunging suddenly towards him in a flash.

The water splashes violently around you as you wrap both arms around his neck and sweep him off his feet. Literally. You kick his legs out from underneath him, then catch him before he can fall completely backward. Both his downfall and his savior, ironically.

“Ha!” you shout in his face, the tip of your nose brushing his.

“Jesus!” Eddie gasps in response, still heart lurching in his chest.

“I asked if you were prepared!” you defend like you’re innocent, like you aren’t still cradling him in your arms — the only thing keeping him from going under.

“Not for this!” he yells back. 

Only then is he able to take a good breath in. He can smell the velvety scent of your blood from the achingly close proximity. He can feel your heart beating in his own chest from where you’re pressed so intently against him. It makes him instantly dizzy.

He fights back the primal urges that would otherwise drive him mad.

“Jeez…” he huffs, fangs burning. “You’re a lifeguard— You’re supposed to stop people from drowning.”

“Yeah, but no one ever needs saving,” you whine. “It’s so boring.”

His chocolate button eyes flit back and forth between both of yours. “You tryin’ to save me, sweet thing?” he jokes.

You squint. “Is it working?”

“Yeah, actually… If you let me up now, at least.”

He’s grateful when you do, though he mourns the lack of you when you step back a few paces.

His damp hair sticks to his skin when he rises to full height. He shakes his head like a dog, and you giggle when a few rogue droplets fly your way.

“You have freckles on your shoulder,” you observe distantly, eyes darting across the faint amber spots on his pale skin as you try to make constellations out of them. “I didn’t know that ’til now.”

Eddie’s lips jut downward as he peers at his arm from the corner of his eye. “Not really,” he shrugs.

“You do!” you insist. “There’s not many, though. I could probably count ‘em if I wanted.”

“Maybe on our second date.”

“I didn’t know you had a tattoo here, either—” You poke him in the chest, a little harder than you probably mean to. 

Eddie winces and rubs his palm over the fading black widow under his collarbone. “Well, you don’t know everything about me,” he quips. “I like it that way. It keeps you on your toes.”

Your face pinches into a girlish pout. “Only ‘cause you never tell me anything.”

“I tell you loads of things,” Eddie laughs.

Your frown deepens. “You never told me about the picture of Ozzy Osbourne you keep in your wallet.”

“…How do you know about that?”

“Dustin told me.”

“Of course he did,” Eddie huffs. “Remind me not to tell that little shit anything ever again.”

“You never told me about how you got those scars, either,” you blurt, eyes trained on his milky white torso. Beneath the clear, rippling water, you can see the parts of his supple stomach that are marred and turning pink.

You don’t realize what you’ve said until your gaze flits back to his startled one. Your eyes widen as you ramble quickly, “You don’t have to! I’m not trying to… I’m just— I’m just saying. ‘Cause, you know, Steve has the same ones… On his ribs…”

“I’m not even gonna ask how you know that,” Eddie jokes with a (mostly) feigned jealousy.

“Billy does, too. He’s got the same lookin’ scars on his chest,” you continue. “And then I started thinking, you know? I thought, since you all know each other and everything, maybe something happened to you guys. Like, in the earthquakes or something.”

Eddie swallows hard and debates on spilling his guts. 

He swallows his secrets down like bile, in the end.

“Yeah. You’re— You’re not too far off, actually,” he answers with a breathy, bitter laugh. He scratches at the back of neck, if only to busy his anxious hands, and flits his gaze to the velvety night sky.

The blinking white stars there ground him when the world starts to swim — reminds him that he’s on Earth, in Hawkins, and not in the hellscape he died in.

That was his final thought as he took his last breath that spring. How strangely fitting it was that there were no stars in the Upside Down.

“We, uh… We kinda went through hell and back, but, uh… ‘Least lived to tell the tale, right?” Eddie scoffs at himself, then remembers Chrissy — how young and full of life she was one moment, and how her wide blue eyes were sucked out of her skull the next. He recoils then, feeling like he’s said the wrong thing. “Wait. That was— That was insensitive. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“What are you talkin’ about? You’re right,” you assure him with a quiet, emotionless laugh. “You guys survived. You got lucky. We all did.”

Eddie peeks at you beneath his lashes, through the wild curls sticking to his face. “Where were you?” he murmurs. “When… When everything happened?”

“Crying into my milkshake at Benny’s Burgers,” you answer without missing a beat. The memory’s far too vivid for anything else.

A laugh sputters from Eddie’s throat. He’s sure you must be joking. You blink at him like an owl, and he goes solemn all over again. “Oh. You’re… You’re serious?” he mumbles.

“Yeah, I was… feeling sorry for myself over something stupid, and then the ground started shaking outta nowhere— like the universe was trying to say, ‘Hey, this could be soooo much worse, dude,’” you ramble quietly to yourself, skimming your fingers over the water’s surface. “…But then I found out people actually got hurt and everything, so I was like, ‘Oh, maybe I shouldn’t make this about my stupid broken heart, actually.’”

Eddie’s tight chest deflates with a wavering exhale. He didn’t know you back then, but something about knowing you were okay makes him feel better. ‘Cause, yeah, he died and all, but he couldn’t stomach the thought of Vecna taunting you.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” the boy confesses in a honeyed whisper.

A soft smile quirks at the edges of your lips. “I’m glad you’re okay, too, Eddie Spaghetti.”

Your hand reaches out for him. Almost instinctively. Like he’s a whole universe with his own gravitational pull.

Your palm settles soft and warm on the outside of his torso. Your thumb grazes the marred skin over his ribs, and Eddie tenses at the foreign feeling. You jerk back instantly.

“Oh. Shit. Sorry,” you stammer, face twisted apologetically. “I didn’t— I should’ve asked first.”

“No. It’s— It’s okay. Seriously,” Eddie assures with a rapid nod. There’s a faraway look in his chocolate eyes, almost like he’s daydreaming. He feels like he is, anyway. ‘Cause he’s never let anyone this close before.

“I just… I wasn’t expecting it. That’s all.”

Do it again, he says in so many words. Please, I think I might need it.

You reach for him again, more hesitant this time. Your hand settles over his scars again, and you breathe hard through your nose.

Your stomach twists with a phantom sort of ache, like you can feel every ounce of the pain he surely experienced back then. Thinking about how hurt he must’ve been makes you hurt, too.

Eddie can see it written all over your face. How much you ache for him.

He can’t stand it. 

He cups your cheeks between trembling, unsure hands. His touch is softly calloused and colder than ice. He tilts your jaw gently upward, urging you to meet his gaze once more. Your eyes are wet and glittering when they lock with his heavily lidded ones. Your mouth parts to say something, anything. But your brain doesn’t work fast enough.

‘Cause Eddie's kissing you before you can blink.

He tastes distinctly of nicotine and boyhood. Of midnight, full moons, and neon lights. You can feel every groove in his bottom lip from where he picks at it with his teeth. Every sensation is new to you, like cool sparkles of excitement in the pit of your tummy, but it’s strikingly familiar all the same. Nostalgia for something you’re experiencing for the first time warms the center of your chest.

You breathe hard through your nose. The gust of air tickles Eddie’s cupid’s bow as he parts from you, lips smacking apart in protest.

Your eyes, still yet to blink, remain wide and glazed over. “Whoa…” you sigh to yourself.

Eddie’s unsure of how to gauge your reaction. His face swirls with horror.

“What?” he mumbles, still cradling your face between worried hands. He can’t tell if your cheeks are heating or if he’s just colder than usual. Perhaps both are equally true.

“Nothing,” you answer quickly, still slightly faraway. “I just… I got a weird sense of deja vu just now…”

The boy forces a quiet laugh. “Who else have you done this with?” he quips.

“No one!” you blurt. “…But I think I might’ve dreamt about this once.”

“Really?”

“Definitely.”

“Was it better than you expected? Or should I just see myself out now—”

You lean forward to chase his mouth. The cerulean water ripples faintly around you. Your lidded gaze never wavers from his rosy lips, which you’re realizing now are all but begging to be kissed. You don’t know how you never noticed it before.

Eddie’s smiling too wide to respond appropriately.

“Why are you laughing?” you frown.

“I’m not!” he responds through breathy chuckles.

“You are—”

Eddie leans forward in a flash, pressing another chaste kiss to your pout.

You’re all smiles again the second he pulls away, bursting at the seams with a sort of giddiness that could give the sun a run for its money. 

He knows, somewhere deep down, that he shouldn’t make you this happy. He doesn’t even deserve the chance. But here you are anyway, smiling so wide at him that your eyes are starting to crinkle at the edges — showing him that there’s still sunshine in the dark, reminding him what it means to be living.

“Does this mean we get to do this forever?” you wonder in a mousy voice.

“What?” he chuckles. “Kiss?”

You nod wordlessly, blinking up at the boy with wide, wet eyes.

Eddie nods quickly back. 

“Then yeah…” he wavers, chest aching and gums burning. 

He loves you so much he’s gone hungry for it. For you.

He longs to devour you, in every way imaginable, and you want to devour him just the same. He can tell in the way you stare at him when you think he isn’t looking — in the way you stare at him even when he is looking — and in every one of your movements that urges him closer, closer, closer.

Your gaze is debilitatingly intense. Your attitude is mind-bendingly strange. You’re ruining his life, and Eddie can’t believe there was ever a time he wasn’t kissing you.

“Yeah,” he repeats, firmer now. “As long as you want.”

if you made it this far: i love you. so sorry for making you read something so long. i'd kiss you on the forehead if i could. also pls consider reblogging! this took me so so long to write, and it really helps a lot! thank u, love u (▰˘◡˘▰)

[faeriichaii]

hiii. if it’s not a problem, could I request a Legolas x human reader where the reader catches the flu but Legolas thinks she is about to die or something like that because of how fragile human life is? everything very flufff 🙏 have a good dayy💗💗

Immunity ~ Legolas x fem!human!reader

A/N: Heyyy!! Of course it's no problem :) I love the plot I can picture it so well omg!! I hope you have a nice day as well and enjoy the story <33

⇢ ˗ˏˋ Warnings: Fluff ࿐ྂ ⇢ ˗ˏˋ Words: 1.1k ࿐ྂ ⇢ ˗ˏˋ Request: Yes (Thank you <33) ࿐ྂ ⇢ ˗ˏˋ Meleth Nin ~ My Love ࿐ྂ

Summary: Being sick is not fun, especially when you see Legolas' panicked gaze at your condition, which seems to get worse as the days pass by.

As you woke up on the cold hard floor in the morning, you could already tell that you were getting a little sick. The weather on your journey seemed to be not playing in your favour, cold wind was constantly blowing, which was sometimes accompanied by rain or snow. You knew it was bound to happen at some point. Letting out a little cough you wrap up your small sleeping bag, next to Legolas’ and get on your way with the rest of the company. Walking beside the elven prince, you gave him a soft smile. “Good morning Meleth Nin. Did you sleep well?” His hand grasped yours gently, as he looked down at you, reciprocating your smile with one of his own.

“Yeah, I did, it just was a bit cold during the night.” One of his eyebrows raised up as he listened to your slightly deeper voice. “Are you alright?” You just gave him a nod, squeezing his hand to reassure him. “I’m alright love, don’t worry your pretty little head.” A chuckle left his lips, as he leaned towards you and gave you a quick kiss on the cheek. Giggling softly, you leaned your head on his shoulder. “Next time you are cold you can join me in my sleeping bag.” Legolas whispered sultry into your ear, while giving you a wink. A gasp escaped your lips, followed by a cough as you gently shoved him away by his shoulder.

He laughed at your reaction, throwing his arm around your waist to pull you closer once more. “I don’t know what you had in mind, but I just thought about a little bit of cuddling, that’s all.” Your eyes stared back into his. How can anybody look so breathtaking? He tried to lean in to give you a kiss on the lips and you really really wanted that as well, however knowing that you’re sick, you turned your face back to the path, resulting him giving you another peck on the cheek. Scrunching his eyebrows at you, the elven prince gave you a confused look, before you let out another cough.

“Meleth Nin, are you sure you are alright? Did I do something?” “No, of course not but I just remembered that Gimli gave us a stink eye yesterday. He wouldn’t even stop staring and at some point, started grumbling.” You partly lied, trying to hide the cough that was stuck in your throat. Gimli did in fact complain about your ‘constant smooching around’, however you knew that this wasn’t the real reason why you couldn’t kiss him. You just didn’t want him to catch a cold. A few coughs escaped your lips as you grabbed your water bottle to calm your aching throat down a bit. The cold liquid trickled down your throat, helping just a tiny bit. A hot beverage would definitely be the better choice, but that also calls for luxury that you currently can’t come by.

After the long walk of the day, you all set up camp. The fire was brightly lit, as you sat between Aragorn and Legolas. You held your half-eaten bread towards your lover. “Are you already full? You only ate half of the bread. You need to eat more.” You just smiled at him softly and brushed it off with a ‘Don’t worry, I ate a lot during the day.’, knowing you just can’t stomach more because of the flu that really started to catch up now. His gaze glimmered with worry. “Now if you will excuse me, I will go to bed early. I’m so tired because of the long walk today.” You gave Legolas a quick peck before you stood up from your place on the log and made yourself comfortable on your sleeping bag. The elven princes gaze never leaving your figure, even after you fell asleep.

“Aragorn, do you think (Y/N) is alright?” The man beside him turned his gaze from the fire towards your sleeping figure. “What do you mean? She seems normal to me.” Legolas’ gaze drops towards the fire. “Maybe you worry a little too much.” Aragorn says, giving him a reassuring pat on the shoulder, before excusing himself to prepare his weapons for the upcoming day.

The next day you wake up you can already feel the goosebumps on your skin. You felt incredibly cold and hot at the same time. A groan left your lips as you tried to stand up. The world seemed to be spinning around itself as you fell back down with a huff. Legolas eyes widen as he stopped packing his things and approached your side quickly. Worry gleamed in his eyes, as he held you in his arms. He put a hand on your cheek, feeling your very hot face. “(Y/N) what is going on! Where are you hurt?” His gaze roamed your body for any kind of wound that could have been infected that led you to an almost dying stage. “Legolas I’m fine I just-“ A few coughs interrupted you as you grasped his forearm for stability to properly sit up once again. “Aragorn, (Y/N) is dying!” He shouted from the ground where the both of you sat.

Aragorn quickly approached the two of you as he inspected you for any kind of injury as well. “No, I’m not dying I just got sick, that’s all.” Another cough escaped your lips as you grabbed your water bottle beside you. A dumbfounded look spread across Legolas’ face, as he watched you drink. Chuckling a bit, Aragorn stood back up from the ground. “All she needs are some herbs from the woods and drink some tea. Do you think you can travel for a bit (Y/N)?” He asked you, concern slightly visible on his face. “Yes, I just shouldn’t have gotten up that quickly.” You smiled at him before standing up with Legolas, who still didn’t let go of you.

Turning in his arms you wrap your own around his neck. “See I’m alright Meleth Nin. I just need some tea.” He suddenly hugged you tightly. His hand stroked over your hair as he breathed in your smell, his face in your neck. A gentle kiss was placed on the exposed skin. After a little while he slowly let go of you. “I thought you were dying.” He confessed. His eyes burned with an intense fire, as he leaned down and pulled your face towards his, resulting in a kiss on the lips. Gasping softly, you tilted your head to the side. His thumbs stroking your cheeks lovingly, while you let your fingers flow through his hair. Heat spread to your cheeks as the both of you separated to catch some air. “Legolas don’t kiss me! You will catch a-“ He silences you with another kiss. “Meleth Nin don’t ever reject my kisses again while you’re sick.” “But-“ Another peck was placed on your lips. “I thought you knew I was immune to all kind of diseases.”

[predestinatos]

inside me | CL16 ִ ۫ ּ 𓂅⋆ 🗝️.♡

chapter 1 chapter 2 chapter 3 chapter 4

pairing: charles leclerc × fem!reader 

summary: feelings aren't something charles and you talk about. especially not when you're tipsy in a club bathroom. chapter 3 of an ongoing series.

tags: enemies to lovers, more jealous!charles, i never get tired of writing it, smut, sexual content, cursing, some progress in vulnerability sort of? not much, angsty-ish but soft? ending.

word count: 5.4k

📎⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚ minors dni !! warnings & note underneath

warnings: smut, oral sex (male receiving), sort of rough sex, sexting, this is soo filthy, unprotected sex, creampie.

note: okay so! i got a bit carried away while writing this, clearly being so much bigger than usual, but it's to compensate for my 4-day absence which will surely delay the next chapter a bit!! thank you again so so so so!!!!! much for the good comments and support, it genuinely makes me very very happy. hope you like this one!

“Two more tequila shots, please” Oscar shouted to the bartender, the music muffling his voice and your thoughts.

The two glasses appeared before you, its content calling to your dizzy mind. Dropping the salt in your hand, you prepared for the countdown. Oscar looked flushed and giddy, already a bit tipsy, just like you. His cheeks were a soft pink and his eyes were constantly in a smiling expression, which spread itself to you. “A toast to a very good friendship” he said, laughing, as you clinked your cups against each other, licked the salt off of your hands, chugged the drink and placed lemon in your mouths.

Oscar and you had kept going out. You enjoyed each other’s company, talking to each other and overall just existing together. Of course, one of those nights you two had to have the talk you dreaded to have. Curiously, it was Oscar who started, his words spilling very fast and messily, although they could be condensed to a simple “I think we’re just friends.” You were totally okay with that. It simplified your life, and Oscar’s following proposal just made it even better. “That doesn’t mean we can’t… have fun together, though. If you’d like to.” And that was your relationship with him – purely a fun one, a jokingly flirtatious game where none of you had your hearts broken because there was nothing to break apart from a few glasses.

So, after many shots and funny faces at the taste were exchanged, here you were, dancing with him enthusiastically, your bodies jumping and touching and having fun.

You were surrounded by people you loved – Oscar, your friends, everybody at that club – and that loved each other in that moment. Your friends got along beautifully with Oscar, and you even saw some potential for deeper relationships with this one girl, so you were happy, insanely so. Except for one thing: the pair of eyes looking at you from you and your friends’ tables.

As much as you tried moving further away, enjoy yourself and drink away the burning hot sensation on the back of your head, you couldn’t. Charles’ gaze wouldn’t leave your body, filled with rhythm and loose, but contrastingly so tense from his eyes.

You knew Charles was coming. But you thought he would be calm about things, take them lightly and not care much, given the fact that you and him were in very weird territory. It was now hard to hide from your friends that something was going on – the snarky remarks had turned more like innuendos and inside jokes that made you blush, and there were only so many nights where, for some reason, only the two of you couldn’t make it. Apart from those two instances, your relationship with Charles hadn’t been physical again. Some texts were exchanged, sure, but neither of you knew what you were doing; you were ice skating on very thin grounds, which threatened to break at any given moment. It was a matter of who was going to take the hardest step.

“I’m pretty sure Leclerc is into you” Oscar started, laughing at something that wasn’t particularly funny were it not for the alcohol in your system. You laughed back, throwing your hands around his neck and letting your mind run through all the thoughts compressed in your head, all the sounds and sensations surrounding you. “You’re friends, why don’t you ask him?” you replied in his ear, hoping he would hear you, or maybe even guess what you were saying. Pulling away to look into his eyes, you saw him shaking his head in a negative motion, the tipsy smile in his pink lips “he would murder me if I even got remotely close to him.” You both bursted out laughing again, shrugging carelessly at the ridiculousness of it all. “No it’s just… he hasn’t stopped staring at us and I doubt it’s because he finds me attractive” the Australian continued, nodding his head towards where Charles was sitting. Unapologetically, you two stared at him, who also unapologetically refused to break eye contact. Holding a beer in his right hand, eyebrows furrowed and shirt sleever pulled up, he looked angry. Yet, he also looked attractive, his gaze dark and possessive, his left hand tense and his jeans hugging his legs perfectly. He raised his bottle towards the both of you as in a friendly excuse of a toast, or even recognition of your existence as something other than 2 nuisances. You nodded again in recognition, a peace treaty that was sure to be broken sooner than later.

As you turned around to keep dancing, you saw Oscar’s eyes widen in shock, amazement and amusement all at once. “What?” you asked, nervous. Before he could even answer, Charles was behind you, half yelling, half whispering, not to you, but to Oscar. “Can I borrow her for a second?”

In his drunkenness, but also his own enjoyment, he merely nodded gleefully, winking at you as Charles gripped your arm softly as if to assure you you were fine, or as fine as you could be in that moment.

The bathroom was tight. Very tight. Or maybe it was spacious but simply felt like it, when Charles was so close to you, his grip on your arm tight but not angry in the slightest. It also felt hot, burning and scalding, like being too close to the sun, yet you knew for sure they had AC and it was on. Releasing your arm, Charles pulled away from you only to lock the door of the bathroom.

You looked at yourself in the mirror, laughing drunkenly at the stupidity of it all. “You’re gonna drive a lot of people mad by doing that” you tell him while fixing your hair as best as you could. You notice his body stiffening at your words and how they mockingly leave your lips, and even though he is currently not close to you at all, you still feel him on every inch of your skin when he lowers his voice and says “you’re driving me mad.”

Perhaps because you were drunk, you giggled ironically. Not only was the situation frustrating to the point of laughing, it was clear you had the upper hand in this case, with Charles’ voice and expression finally showcasing more vulnerability than usual. “And why is that, Charlie?” you ask, keeping the mocking tone that was getting to him even more this time. With the question, you dared to walk closer to him slowly, not taking your eyes off of his face. His jaw tightened and he looked away, his brain seemingly as loud as the muffled music outside. For a few seconds, you remained like that, in silence, your defiance and his stubbornness fighting quietly. Upon his clear refusal to answer, all you could do was shrug, “that’s what I thought.” You start walking towards the door, but his tall frame stops you before you can get to it. You are, again, so close to him, feeling his scent, alcohol and expensive perfume, but not his touch, for his hands remain by his side. “I’m not going to stop you from leaving if you want,” he started, his jaw tense as he licked his lips. “Then answer me” you demanded.

It wasn’t even that big of a question, you just wanted to hear him admit that he was jealous, even though he had no right to be. You wanted to see where this conversation would go, if you could finally put an end to this game you two were playing, as painful as it was for you to end it. You knew deep down the reason why he didn’t answer was because that meant exactly that – it meant talking about feelings, about rules, about labels. And neither of you were ready to do that. You realized then that you were placing on him the weight of it, cowardice filling you even in drunkenness.

Running a hand through his hair frustratedly, he moved his feet to let you move towards the door, unblocking your passage. You suddenly felt cold, his frame not hovering yours anymore, and that gesture held more vulnerability than any other he had ever done in the past. So, because you were slightly drunk, or maybe in spite of it, you pulled him towards you and kissed him.

His whole body relaxed against you, letting out a frustrated and hungry breath. By now, his hands and lips felt familiar yet new all at once. Your heart raced as if it was all novelty, yet you knew it wasn’t, for you had been craving them for so long. The way he was kissing was new, however. It always seemed to be, every time you two met again, for he seemed to place more and more feeling and less and less thought into his kiss, his lips moving against yours in a needy, almost desperate way, much different from the previous arrogance he possessed.

He let out a breathy whimper against your lips, and you realized then how completely yours he was. You pulled even closer against you, his shirt collar feeling hard contrasting with his soft hands on your body, wrapping your legs around his waist as he placed you on the sink. The coldness of the sink causes you to hiss and then laugh to yourself amidst the kiss, to which he too lets out a soft chuckle.

“I’m serious, you do drive me mad” he suddenly said, bringing both of your thoughts back to that which you were trying to avoid. You looked down at the already visible bulge in his jeans, and your eyebrows raised before looking back up at him – “I can tell.”

Charles suddenly looked shy, not expecting your bluntness, and he looked away to compose himself. Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, he took a deep breath and placed his hand on your leg softly, to which you responded by biting your bottom lip and closing your eyes at the feeling. “You really want to talk about that?” he replied to your previous comment, his cockiness coming back as fast as it had disappeared upon realizing how turned on he made you feel by simple touches.

Feeling brave, playful, or overall crazy, you grabbed his other hand and brought it to your lips. You kissed each of his fingers carefully, not hiding your pleasured face as you felt his gaze darken at the sight of you. His grip on your thigh suddenly intensified, this time as an attempt to calm himself down, though it was clear he couldn’t do so successfully. Charles was already going absolutely insane over the view he had, but then you brought his hand to your cheek and placed his thumb on your open mouth. He inhaled sharply, in lustful anticipation, before you closed your lips around him and sucked his finger while looking up at him. “F-fuck… don’t do this to me” he breathed, his head cocked to the side, both desperate and demanding. You took his finger off of your mouth to reply, leaving your mouth smeared with saliva that he spread across your lips as you muttered “why not?”

With the question, he grabbed you by the waist and turned you around, your back pressed hard against him, feeling his heartbeat racing and his cock against you. His hand flew to your hair, pulling it so you could see yourself in the mirror, as the other went back to the position it was before, thumb pushing forcefully inside your mouth. “Look at yourself. You look so fucking hot. You can’t do this to me, not when I’m so so mad at you” he whispered in your ear, his breath sending shivers down your body, as he pushed himself against you harder, causing a moan to leave your lips. “What?” he mockingly asked, his eyes pierced on yours through the mirror, a dark smile spreading across his expression.

Everything Charles did hit you with a force a thousand times higher than anyone else. It was the years of accumulated tension that culminated in this incessant need for each other – and it didn’t seem to be fulfilled any time soon. So when Charles released his grip on your hair and removed his hand from your lips, you felt betrayed and disappointed, your underwear soaking wet but unsatisfied. “We’ve had enough fun for a night, you’re drunk” he said, tapping your shoulder carefully as if you were a child.

This sudden change in behavior managed to not only anger you, but also hurt you deeply. It felt like treason, of the highest sort – the way he suddenly seemed to care about your state actually, paradoxically, seemed like the meanest thing one could do in that situation.

“I was drunk the night in my house, too” you replied, your anger coming out of your voice and suffocating any attempts of the hurt from being noticeable. Charles merely closed him eyes softly, taking a deep breath. “We were both drunk. We were both impulsive” he said, opening his eyes and looking straight at you.

His words hit you like a punch in the stomach, making the music stop, at least in your ears, in your mind, in your body. You raised your eyebrows at him, and you wanted to scream, to yell at him, to hurt him back. And you knew the only way to do so was by doing the total opposite of what you felt like doing – “okay” – was the only word that escaped your lips as you made your way out of the bathroom, back into the noise, the drinks, the distractions.

You went home afterwards, your mind spinning and your body too exhausted to keep going. Oscar had dropped you off at home, already sober enough to drive (at least way more than you were), but not before listening to the whole story of What Is Going On Between You and Leclerc, his mouth hanging open during the whole journey. His goodbye was said through a kiss on the cheek and a “don’t show up to races with me anymore, I have to win!”, which made you laugh despite it all.

You now laid in bed, comfortable pyjamas on and too tired to take your makeup off despite the constant warnings from everyone that you should do so. You tried convincing yourself you’d do it later, knowing fully well the most probable scenario was you falling asleep just like that, but it didn’t matter. Your TV was on, something was playing in the background but you weren’t particularly watching it, for your head was still spinning.

The attention you weren’t paying at all was interrupted by your screen lighting up, which normally you would ignore, were it not for its content, and, more specifically, who had sent it.

Charles (Asshole): whre are you (3:12am) Charles (Asshole): cna we talk??? (3:12am)

You shouldn’t answer, in fact, you were tempted not to. However, his texts clearly revealed he was not sober in the slightest, and as much as you hated to admit it, you cared about him. Upon some minutes with your fingers hovering the keyboard on your screen, you replied.

You: home. pls call an uber (3:14am) Charles (Asshole): on my wya. i did. im not taht stupod (3:15am)

The wait seemed hours long. You sat there, before deciding to get some water for yourself, and also for him, who definitely needed it more than you did at this point. You checked how decent you looked in the mirror, and despite frowning a bit at the messy aspect of your comfortability, you decided it did not really matter given the state Charles appeared to be in.

Those suspicions were confirmed after a very badly typed “I’m outside” text, which you decoded well enough to open the door. You were greeted with Charles wearing a giddy smile, his eyes partly glossy and his cheeks red. He seemed unbelievably content, more than usual, and you knew it was because of the alcohol in his veins, his thoughts, his whole body. You stood aside to let him in, and without ceremony, he sprawled across your sofa. “Good memories in here” he started, his voice dragging, stumbling across some words, and finishing with silly giggles.

You merely rolled your eyes at him, despite how endearing he now appeared before you. Sitting next to him on the couch, you felt his head resting on your lap, which, surprisingly, did not ignite your need to protest. Instead, you instinctively caressed his hair, soothing him and yourself at the same time. He let soft murmurs escape his lips, and tried closing his eyes for brief moments. However, he quickly opened them, “God, it spins even more with my eyes closed” he said, bringing his hand to his brow.

“You should drink some water” you said, attentively. Charles looked up at you, his eyes shining with intoxicated passion, and his hand caressed your face softly. “You’re so pretty” was all he could say in reply to your suggestion, a reply which further confirmed the need for him to fulfill that task.

You carefully urged him to sit upright, which he did despite some protests, and brought the glass of water to his lips softly. You watched him gulp the liquid as it dribbled a bit from his chin towards his neck, and you shamefully looked away, images of other much different nights surfacing in your head.

You allowed yourself to look back upon hearing his satisfied “ah” and feeling the weight of the cup decreasing to its minimum. With this, you noticed his shirt unbuttoned, more than usual, and as he sat back, his chest almost fully exposed to you. Your eyebrows furrowed for a few seconds, and you bit hard, holding back whatever feeling was going through you, which you refused to name despite it all. He was drunk, you were not sober, you two had nothing, it was not the time.

You couldn’t help but make a comment though, “I see you didn’t let me ruin your fun” – you tried to joke, but it sounded more petty than you had intended. He looked towards his shirt, then back up at you, before letting out a loud laugh and running his hands through his hair. “Yeah, well, I wanted to take you off my mind. Clearly it didn’t work.”

There it was. The thin line you both didn’t want to cross. Frustratingly, the only times you were close to doing so had to be under the influence of alcohol, making it impossible to discern what is meant and what is blurted out. Because of this, you merely shrugged off a laugh, and remained in silence, looking down.

You felt and heard his body shifting closer to yours from behind, his hands making his way towards your shoulders and neck, massaging them softly. You let him, enjoying the feeling, needing it way more than you thought – either the massage itself or the simple feel of his touch, you couldn’t say. At first, his touch was light, almost hard to feel, like a soft breeze on your bare skin. However, slowly, his hands started applying more pressure, getting more greedy with their movements, as if consuming all of you.

His warm breath hit your neck and ears, the sensation causing your vision to completely blur. It impressed you, how despite being drunk, he seemed to know exactly what to do to push you to the edge. You turned your head back towards his and as is gaze fell on your lips, your heartbeat increased, signals travelling throughout your whole body.

Once again that night, you were aware of how you were the one who pulled Charles towards you, relieving him of the need he had for you like this – not merely with touches, but with a ravenous control and hunger, completely at his display. However, you pulled away, your mind stable enough to know what you were doing – if he already thought you drove him mad, he had no clue what was coming.

His confused expression met your suppressed smirk, and before he could protest, or at least question you, you spoke. “You’re drunk. Don’t want to be impulsive,” and with that, you got up and quickly went to your room, coming back with a sweatshirt and a pair of sweatpants, which you threw on the sofa. “You can sleep here. Those are Oscar’s,” you were aware you didn’t have to say that, but at that point you realized there were no rules to this game anymore – everything counted. “Goodnight”

You turned away, leaving Charles processing what had happened in those minutes, how things shifted so fast. You felt satisfied with the control you had over him, the payback for what he had done, yet you couldn’t deny the frustration only increased as well. It took so much of you to pull away, to not give yourself up completely to him, especially when you knew how good he felt and how much he wanted you.

You sat in bed and turned on the TV once again, trying to drown the pulsating feeling in your core. It was hard to concentrate, knowing Charles was one door away, his warm body so ready to take you. The images running through your mind left you desperate, and you decided to take matters into your own hands – literally.

You slipped a hand down your stomach, inside your shorts, and touched yourself lightly through your underwear. You were embarrassingly wet, and so sensitive that as soon as your hand found its way between your legs, you left out a small moan. You knew it wasn’t loud enough for him to hear, yet you brought the other hand to your mouth impulsively and timidly.

As if guessing, your phone lit up once again, with a couple of texts that left you speechless.

Charles (Asshole): im tryign my best not to go there adn ruin you (4:02am) Charles (Asshole):  but youre making it so hard fro me (4:02am)

You couldn’t move – at least, not anything but your hand, drowned between your legs, frantically moving in unconscious and needy desire. You simply stared at the text, biting your lip to prevent any noise from coming out of. As you stared at it, you saw the three dots that told you he was typing more. Your eyes flew to the door, as if you could see through it towards the living room, where Charles was lying, typing these messages to you. The thought of him behind that door got you lightheaded, feeling utterly drunk again.

Charles (Asshole): i know youore reading these (4:04am) Charles (Asshole): if you want me to, ill sotp (4:04am)

Upon that last text, which wasn’t a threat in the slightest but which you interpreted as such, given the urgency in which you needed him to continue, your hand flew to your phone, immediately typing a response.

You: dont stop (4:05am)

It was hard, typing with only one hand, the other occupied trying to replicate Charles’ own touch, and to make matters worse, you couldn’t think straight. Typing those simple words took more time than you cared to admit or wanted, and you knew he wasn’t dumb to not have realized that. That simple request you made boosted his confidence to reply in a manner that immediately hinted that he knew what to do, that he now felt like he had free reign.

Charles (Asshole): why not? (4:05am)

You couldn’t see him, yet you knew this question wasn’t innocent, you knew he was on the other side completely pleased with himself, a smile sprawled across his pink lips.

Charles (Asshole): asnwer me princess (4:06am)

The nickname, even when used to get under your skin – or maybe because of it – set you over the edge completely. You had been holding your composure for so long that this simple word made you whimper, this time loud enough to know he had heard it.

Charles (Asshole): fuck that was so hot (4:06am) Charles (Asshole): i want you so bad (4:07am)

You were now filled with ecstasy, your walls begging for him to fill you, your head swimming in overwhelming arousal. So, you decided to do what you were meant to do since you first placed your lips on his: keep playing.

You: prove it (4:08am) You: i dare you (4:08am)

That text was all it took for Charles to completely unleash himself, getting up from the sofa and moving towards your bedroom, opening the door with urgency, finding your body outlined by the television lights.

He had changed, somewhere in between your trip to your room and his first text, but only partially – he stood, shirtless, before you, standing at the feet of the bed as you looked up at him, your face leveling his waist area.

You licked your lips instinctively, and for a moment time stood still between him and you, his chest rising and falling deeply, his muscles tense with need. Charles broke that spell by placing his index finger carefully on your chin, raising your gaze towards his and stilling it there. You swallowed dry, lustfully. “Show me what you were doing before I came in” he demanded, roughly this time. In fact, his hand remained there, forbidding you from breaking eye contact, as you lifted your arm and brough it downward, back between your legs. “Were you thinking about me?” he asked, voice growing deeper, more imperious. You nodded, as best as you could with the pressure of his hand on your face, now carelessly holding all of you in it. “Use your words” Charles continued, his erection visible, directly in front of you, so desperate, so conflicting with how he seemed so composed and dominant. “Yes” you replied. Yet, this did not satisfy him in the slightest. His grip on you tightened, and a tsk escaped his lips as he shook his head negatively.

Your hand started moving faster, one finger now dipping inside you, which Charles did not fail to notice, but pretended to be unaffected by. Without warning, he pulled down his sweatpants, followed by his boxers, just enough to expose his erection fully to you. Letting go of your face with violent affection, he now gripped your hair as he held his cock in front of you. “Let’s give those pretty lips some other use since you don’t want to talk” he whispered, his tip now caressing your lips. “Open, princess” his tone was commanding, completely new yet so dangerously arousing. You promptly obeyed, shocked yet completely vulnerable before his own desire.

At first, Charles merely played with you, frustrating your desire to have him in his mouth, despite the fact that it frustrated him in the process as well. His grip on your hair got tighter and tighter, as this teasing game was clearly driving him insane. In a swift and quick movement, he placed himself fully inside your mouth, the warmth and wetness causing his body to shudder completely. You swallowed around him, feeling his desperate push to take more of him in. As you removed your hand from in between your legs to hold yourself on his thighs for support, he grabbed it, bringing it back to where it was. “Don’t fucking stop” he growled, almost incoherently. Having him fully inside your mouth, your nose so close to his navel, and hearing his authoritarian tone, caused a cry to escape your lips. You could barely think, let alone speak, now two fingers buried inside your wetness.

Charles movements were rough as he fucked your mouth relentlessly, your name leaving his lips as if in a chant, as you kept holding his gaze. “Tu es tellement doué pour ça, putain” French once again escaping his lips, giving away his lack of self control, as he unleashed himself completely to his desire. You couldn’t help but moan, your eyes teary with the pleasurable strength he was using with you, and you felt yourself close to coming.

Charles himself was close, but did not allow himself – nor you – to continue. Pulling out of you quickly, leaving saliva all over your now darkened and swollen lips, he did not hesitate to push you down on your bed, climbing on top of your body.

Impatiently, he pulled your pajama shorts and underwear off, whilst you pulled your shirt above your head, completely bared to him. Harshly and lusciously, Charles slammed two fingers inside you, pumping them in and out to prepare you for him. “So ready for me, fuck” he whispered, more to himself than for you, yet not caring if you heard it.

His already sweaty body shone in the near darkness of the room, satisfaction spread across his focused expression as he saw how your body yearned for his. Removing his fingers from inside you and placing himself between your legs, he pushed in inside you, his hardness filling you up completely. Your back arched instantly with bliss as your legs wrapped around him in an attempt to feel him even closer, as if such was possible. You were trembling from his scent, his breath and the sounds of your bodies on each other. His movements were fervorous and electric, a fast pace which burnt your vision and set your body aflame.

“Charles” your voice begged, as he continued his movements. Your voice worked on him as a reminder of how mad he was when it came to you, how much he needed to take his desire out on you, his jealousy released with each thrust. “Does anyone fuck you as good as me?” he asked, eyes closing slowly from the amount of pleasure he was feeling. You let out a crying “no” as he grunted, his face now buried in your neck, biting it hard.

A crazy thought crossed his mind, one which was more common than he could admit, one that he thought about frequently in the darkness of his room or even when he was trying to distract himself with anyone else – the thought of filling you up, claiming you as his. This was enough for him to be close, as your moans filled the thick air, and he felt so good inside you, enough to feel intoxicated by it.

“You’re mine” Charles let out, incapable of containing himself. His words caused your whole body to convulse with shockwaves of pleasure as you repeated “I’m yours” into his lips, his neck, your nails drawing patterns on his back. His hisses of pain and pleasure revealed how close he was himself, and he positioned himself in order to be able to look at your satisfied and sensitive expression of complete bliss. Charles erupted inside you with a final thrust that made you see fireworks, as the thickness of the air reached an all time high.

After a few seconds of chests rising and falling, breaths being caught and thoughts becoming clearer, Charles pulled himself out of you and laid next to you in your bed, grabbing the remote as he caressed your arm softly.

That movement, the familiarity and comfort of it, how different it was from the uncertainty of what you two were, to the nature of your ‘relationship’, to you still filled with his cum, suddenly made you want to cry.

You wished he would leave, complete the final act so you can repeat it soon, so things didn’t get complicated, complex and hard for you to do anything about. The frustration was enough for you to get up with a “I’m going to take a bath” in a tone he recognized – somehow – as unlike you.

Getting up from his seat, he followed you into the bathroom, where you stepped into the shower and turned the water on, ignoring his presence completely. You kept focusing on the water running down your body, how it resembled his own touch but not as fulfilling, as pleasurable. The sound of the water running incessantly calmed your thoughts, enough so that you could barely hear him come in the shower himself, turning you around so you could face him.

His expression was tender but nervous, aware of something floating along with the vapor of the warm water, fogging the mirror. Yet, he pulled him to you in an embrace in which you two remained for long, longer than maybe it was supposed to, longer than for it to be considered normal. Pulling away, his lips fell onto yours gently, in a kiss that possessed more words than both of you cared to admit.

You knew, then, that was all he could give you in that moment. And you did not know how to feel about that.

@cmleitora @marialovesf1 @champagneholland

[shuaboo]

i usually don’t write on this account but heres some of my little takes on bf!gyuvin 🥹

lowercase intended // cw: fluff, sfw, i think these r called hcs idk, non-idol au so the members are just referred to as his friends, kind of all over the place and unorganized, sorry if this is bad im new to this, shitty writing because i’m seriously not a writer at all. 😭

bf!gyuvin who treats you like a princess and is literally the winner of the kindest cutest boyfriend award every single year 🥹✋🏻

no, seriously. i feel like his language is acts of service and he would absolutely do anything for you if it is in his capabilities.

gyuvin carries a bigger sized bag so you can carry your little purse that barely fits your phone and lip gloss. he also keeps a hair tie on his wrist or has a hair claw on the strap just incase you need one while you’re on a food date together.

when you get tired from walking and your feet start to hurt from your shoes, gyuvin will guide you (maybe even carry you) by the waist so you don’t struggle as much. probably also keeps comfortable shoes for you in his car since he doesn’t expect that this is the last time it will happen.

speaking of shoes, gyuvin is constantly checking your shoelaces. when he sees that they have gone undone he’ll stop you from walking and tie them up for you.

gyuvin who always holds your hand or has a hand on your waist when you’re in a crowded place, because the last thing he’d want is to lose you.

if you and gyuvin do lose each other in a crowded space, he would definitely panic and look around for you. he’d give you a call asking where you are in the most panicked tone. you’d have to calm him down and tell him that you see him, since he’s so tall that he practically towers over everyone else in the area. god bless this man ☹️

whenever you and gyuvin get food, he always asks if you want to try some of what he ordered. he’s such a sweetheart, kindly asking you and then feeding you his food if you agree to try some. i also firmly believe that if the food is still hot, gyuvin will blow on the food so you don’t burn yourself when you take a bite.

gyuvin who always brags about you to his friends. he really can’t help it, he’s so happy to have you that he always yaps about you and your dates to his friends. they tease him simply for being a man in love and beg him to let them meet you :).

when you do meet gyuvin’s friends, it legitimately might be the funniest day of your life, and maybe the worst day for gyuvin. they tell you about some of his embarrassing moments, and you all have a good laugh about it.

…except for gyuvin. he’s beside you 100% pouting and sulking at the reminder of his embarrassing mistakes in the past. oh, plz keep your attention on him as well ! ! ! he might start feeling a bit left out if you have too much fun with his friends. make sure that he’s comfortable and that he’s still smiling. you don’t want to end up with a sulky, jealous, sad boyfriend :’c. give him a peck on the cheek and squeeze his hand so that he smiles again :].

gyuvin who whines about how embarrassing it was that his friends exposed him to you while walking you home hand in hand, and you just laugh at his whining. hes secretly smiling to himself because he made you laugh, even if it kinda cost him his dignity. but hey, at least you’re laughing and you’re happy.

gyuvin who kisses you on the forehead, cheek, and lips and gives you a tight hug when you reach your home before leaving you.

gyuvin who facetimes you as soon as hes a few meters away from your house because he already misses you.

bf!gyuvin who is your constant reminder that pure and true love does exist.

sorry it became kind of a scenario at the end lol, this is also like way too long HAHAHHAHA😅😭

pls lmk if this is ok😭😭 i had a lot of fun writing this and i would love to write more

[kitkat238984]

Love Means A Free Babysitter

Summary: As a single mother of a three-year-old, you are constantly struggling to keep him under control, and boy are you glad Tyler was there at Rampage when you needed help. It worked out better than you expected.

TW: An annoyingly adorable child. You either love him or you hate him.

“Asher! Wait for me, please! Don’t run off!” You called for your three-year-old son who thought it would be a fun idea to make you chase him around backstage. 

The babysitter you’d hired had cancelled a mere hour before she was due to arrive at the hotel, so you made a quick call to Tony Khan’s team to ask if you could bring your son to Rampage and he reluctantly agreed so long as you kept him under control. 

“Oh yes of course. I promise you he’s an angel. You won’t even notice he’s here”. 

An ear-piercing shriek echoed through the hall you were running through and you ignored the shocked, puzzled looks thrown your way. So much for being unnoticeable. It probably would have been easier to catch up with him if you weren’t carrying all his toys, snacks, his blanket, your own water bottle, and your gym bag with your ring gear in. 

“Asher…”, you warned. “If you don’t stop running, mommy will be very angry with you”. Still nothing. You swore this kid had as much energy as if he’d drank dozens of energy drinks and eaten a bowlful of sugar. 

If everyone here didn’t know you were one of the professional wrestlers, they would most likely mistake you for a crazed fan. 

You didn’t take your eyes off Asher for one second, cautious of where he was running to, not wanting to find him somehow running through somewhere and into the arena. 

However, you gave an audible sigh of relief when a figure appeared from around the corner, causing Asher to bump into their legs and ultimately stopping him in his tracks, now wordlessly gazing up at the person’s face. 

As you drew closer you realised that the person your son had crashed into was Hook - or Tyler as you and some others preferred to call him - who returned the intent gaze into your child’s eyes, but his eyes filled with perplexion as he glanced around him trying to figure out where this random kid came from. 

“Uhh…”, he uttered before you closed the distance and placed your hand over Asher’s shoulder and pulled him away from your coworker. 

“Tyler, I’m so sorry about him. I’ve been trying to catch up with him for five minutes already and he just won’t stay still”. You managed to speak whilst catching your breath, proving difficult with everything you were holding as well as keeping Asher at bay who was now clinging and leaning against your leg. 

“Uh it’s cool. What’s with the kid?” He asked with no hesitation. 

You could see the obvious bewilderment in his features, glancing back and forth between yourself and Asher, and giggled before answering his question. 

“This is Asher. My son”, you told him, and he responded with five seconds of lip-mimed stuttering until speaking up again. 

“Since when were you a mom? You’ve never said anything before”. 

It was true that you’d never told Tyler before that you had a young child to take care of, but that was only reasoned with the fact that you never spoke to one another all that much. The closest you’d get to a conversation would be a few remarks on someone’s match in the viewing room or in one of the locker rooms. Your paths simply never seemed to cross naturally very often. 

“Since three years ago. I fell pregnant at eighteen, gave birth at nineteen, and now I’m a very tired mother and professional wrestler”. 

Hook felt he needed more than just a couple of seconds between bombshells to wrap his head around this discovery. You were a mom of a three-year-old boy. You were younger than him and had somehow managed to climb up the ladder of success into AEW whilst carrying around a baby in the background. 

He felt a sudden rush of respect that he’d never had before. Truthfully, he always thought you had a few screws in your head loose as you always scurried about everywhere and constantly looked like you had somewhere you needed to be. It had never the slightest bit bothered him and it never made him think any less of you, but now knowing there was a reason behind your madness made him feel guilty for thinking such things about you. 

“Can’t the father look after him?” he asked. 

“Oh um no”, you told him plainly. “He left me when he found out I was pregnant. Thought he was too important to deal with a child”. 

Then he felt worse than ever. You were a single mom, juggling everything all at once. How were you even sane? 

Frustration was visible in Tyler’s demeanour, evident in his clenched fists, pressing into his thighs and a small wrinkle in his nose which did not go unnoticed by you. 

“I’m kind of glad he left actually”, you continued. “I was trying to find a way out for months. He wasn’t a very nice person and would have been an even worse dad”. 

He appeared to relax slightly and you were thankful that he hadn’t burst into some fit of rage, however, what confused you was that he was angry in the first place after telling him about your ex. 

You hadn’t realised he cared so much about single mothers, let alone care about yourself. You wouldn’t exactly call Tyler a close friend so it surprised you that he would… well… actually give a damn. Whatever his reason for caring was, it brought you happiness that he felt the same way you did when your ex told you he was leaving you. 

“Anyway”, you snapped out of your thoughts. “We’d better get going if I actually want to fight tonight”. 

“The show doesn’t start for like four hours”. 

“It will take that long”. 

Hook gave you a questioned look before stuffing his hands back into the pocket of his hoodie and putting one of his earbuds in his ear. 

“I might see you later then. Good luck with uh… that…” He nodded towards Asher beside you and walked away behind you. 

“Thanks?” Was he scared of Asher or something? 

Taking advantage of the opening in front of him to continue causing chaos, you found yourself running after Asher yet again. 

“I swear that child is on steroids”, you huffed. 

—

Before even having gone in the ring yet, it felt like it had been the most stressful match day of your life, and you were waiting patiently in the viewing room with Asher standing in between your legs whilst you were handing him surprise tickle attacks. 

At least he wasn’t running wildly and screaming. 

You weren’t alone in the room as Hook was sitting on the opposite side with his earphones in and distracted by whatever was happening on the screen. You were a bit too preoccupied with your son to notice anything, even the frequent glances Hook gave the both of you. All you really knew and cared about at that moment was that you were to have a quick match with Saraya and that you were going to win. 

“Hey hey hey, Asher”, you addressed your littlun to get his attention. “When mommy’s done here we’re going back to the hotel and you, mister, are going straight to bed. Okay? So you’ve got to be a good boy”. 

“I am a good boy”, he said, nodding his head. 

“Good”. You kissed his head and reached down to Asher’s bag to pull out a bag of carrot sticks since it had been a while since he ate his dinner. 

As you were doing so, the door to the viewing room opened and you spun your head to see - as you expected - one of the producers. “Y/n, you’re needed now”. 

“Alright. I’ll be there in just a minute”. 

You quickly gave Asher his carrot sticks and got him to settle on a chair with his ipad so he should have been fine there for a while, however, you didn’t feel comfortable just leaving him alone the way he was. You had hoped that someone around you would be available, but one look at Hook made you feel… reluctant. 

As funny as it was that he called your son ‘that’, you shamedly didn’t have much faith in his babysitting abilities, and you didn’t want to make him feel uncomfortable. 

But in all honesty, you didn’t care too much. You were sure he wouldn’t let anything bad happen which was all you needed to know, and taking another look at Asher, he seemed pretty absorbed in his game so… 

“Hey, Tyler”, you called and he raised an eyebrow up at you. “Can you look after Asher for me? I won’t be long and he’ll be good. Thanks. Bye. I owe you”. 

He was in safe hands. 

Rushing to get out of there, you kissed Asher’s head and ran through the door to get to your match, leaving a dumbfounded Hook staring at the empty doorway where you were just standing.

‘What the fuck just happened?’ He thought. 

Hook unfortunately knew absolutely nothing about children and so felt very awkward about the situation he was forced in, however, he thought maybe if he kept completely silent and didn’t move then the kid wouldn’t notice he was there and that his mom had disappeared. 

Of course, that didn’t last long. After a couple of minutes, Asher’s head poked up and looked for his mom but found only the man with the fluffy hair staring at his phone. 

“Where’s mommy?” he asked, which attracted Hook’s attention. 

Here goes nothing. “She’s in the ring. She’ll be back soon”. 

“What’s a ring?” 

“It’s where people go to fight”. 

Asher looked puzzled and tilted his head to the side as if he were a puppy. 

“Mommy said no fighting. That’s not good”. 

“Well your mommy fights. Everyone here fights”. 

“Mommy doesn’t fight”. He began aggressively shaking his head. “Mommy’s a good girl”. 

A smirk turned into a chuckle at the thought of you telling your own child that fighting is naughty and there you were on the screen throwing someone’s head against the padding of a corner post. 

“I think mommy’s cappin’. Look up there”. He pointed to the screen where you were now being thrown onto the canvas with Saraya’s foot making contact with the arms that covered your head. 

Hook had assumed Asher would feel offended that you had lied to him yet think what you were doing was cool like he had when he first saw his dad wrestle, but when he looked over, what he feared would happen, happened. He was never good with kids so making one cry caused him probably the most panic he’s ever felt, even more than when he’s been pinned and desperately tried to find an outing. 

“Hey hey, kid, don’t cry. Your mom’s fine. She’s not getting hurt”, he said, rushing to Asher’s side, crouching to his level and placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder. 

“I don’t like it”. 

Asher’s whines alone were enough to make Hook’s heart break. What would you say if you knew he’d just made your son cry? 

He needed to fix this before you came back. He needed to fix this now. Fast. 

“Uhh it’s only pretend. It’s not real. They’re just… tickling each other”. 

“Tickling? Why are they tickling?” 

“Because it’s fun. They uh tickle each other until one of them gets too tired to carry on”. 

That’d have to do. At least the tears had stopped now. 

“Mommy being tickled?” 

“Sure”. 

“I want to do that”. He pointed to the TV and stared at Hook with large hopeful eyes. 

It wasn’t his position to start play-fighting with your son, let alone being the one to tell him what you do for a living, but the thought of a little kid wanting him to teach him wrestling made him forget about all that. He wanted to teach your kid the child-friendly version of wrestling and that was what he was going to do. 

“Alright. So have you ever had a tickle fight before?” He nodded. “Well it’s just that but you have to try and get me on the floor and for me to stay there for three seconds. Can you do that?” 

He nodded again with a gigantic smile that brought Hook some pride. He was about to guide Asher to the first move, but he beat him to it, flinging himself at Tyler who in turn flew back and hit the ground. 

His instinct would have been to push him off, but he had to restrain himself from being aggressive. 

In fact, he almost laughed when Asher made a poor attempt to tickle his neck. Three-year-olds were apparently terrible ticklers. 

“One two three”, the small person said, clearly not knowing how long one second is yet with how fast he was, but Hook went along with it anyway. 

“Heeeyyy I want a rematch. I wasn’t ready”. 

Hook surprised himself with how well he was with Asher and how easy it was to get along. It was pretty amusing how innocent and naive he was. He honestly thought that he could tell the kid anything and he’d believe him. 

Whilst ‘fighting’, he also noticed elements of Asher’s appearance and behaviour, small habits that easily resembled you. The little sparkle in his E/C eyes were the complete replica of your own, and the dimples in his cheeks was something he’d seen before many times when you’ve laughed at something someone said. 

There were parts about Asher that didn’t quite match, like the hair colour was completely different to yours which he presumed was from the dickhead ex-boyfriend. However, Hook didn’t hate the way it looked on Asher like he thought it should. It suited him and brought out the good in something wicked. 

He didn’t want to sound like a creep and say he’d been staring at you long enough to notice all these little things about you, but… well yeah he’d been staring. Truthfully, he thought you were a beautiful, sexy sight to behold which is why he was so surprised to see you with a child. 

How had he not noticed? 

How the fuck did you manage to carry that for nine months?! You looked fucking incredible for someone who had given birth and it only gave him another thing to love about you, that you were strong-willed and ambitious enough to make it this far with a baby. 

Again he was pinned to the floor on his front with Asher sitting on his back. If anyone saw Hook in that moment - pretend screaming and waving his arms and legs as if he was struggling - he would probably die of embarrassment. He had a cool reputation to keep up. But with his head facing away from the door, he didn’t notice that you were standing in the doorway enjoying the show from the sidelines. 

You couldn’t stop yourself from smiling at this sight for two reasons: you were happy Asher seemed to be having a great time (and would sleep really easily that night), and the smugness you felt seeing Tyler’s complete personality change from what you’ve ever known from him. 

“Ahh you’ve pinned me”, he cried. “Remember the count. Remember the count”. 

Asher giggled and counted to three on his fingers. As much as you wanted to continue watching the cute show, you knew you had to make yourself known. 

“Ding! Ding! Ding!” you called out and both boys whipped their heads to the sound of your voice. 

“Mommyyyyy!” Asher immediately jumped off Tyler’s back and ran to you, tightly wrapping his arms around your legs, a sign of affection which you kindly returned. 

“Have you two been having fun?” you asked. 

“Yeah! Yeah! I just learning wrestling”. 

“Oh really now? And who’s been teaching you that?” 

Asher looked back and pointed to Hook who was now sitting up and leaning against the chairs, running his hands through his hair trying to fix it. 

“Tyler taught you now, did he? How about you play with your cars for a bit and calm down, yeah? I think Tyler’s tired”. 

You and he knew that was all but the truth, but Asher had to come down from his energy surge somehow. 

“You told him? Really?” you asked, walking towards the chairs Hook was pulling himself onto and sitting beside him. 

“In my defence, I didn’t know you were trying to keep him away from fighting and I may have accidentally made him cry”. 

You gasped and your mouth stayed gaped open for a long few seconds before playfully slapping him on the arm. “How dare you make my son cry? You really are cold-hearted. And it’s not that I was keeping him away from it, I just don’t want him growing up thinking he can solve things with aggression. I mean, he still doesn’t fully understand the difference between right and wrong”. 

“You’re right. I’m sorry”. 

You chuckled lightly at his apology. “Don’t be. It was sweet watching him doing what we do”. 

“I thought the same. If he keeps that up he’s looking at a good future career ahead of him”. 

You nodded and watched as Asher so cluelessly played with his cars around the room, occasionally driving the toy cars across both your laps. 

“How do you make it look so easy?” 

The question took you by surprise and you unintentionally scoffed. “Easy? You’ve got to be kidding me, right?” 

“What I mean is”, he corrected, “is that you’re a fucking good-” 

“Language…” 

“Right. Sorry. You’re a great mom, and even though you’ve probably struggled, you’ve had incredible success. I just wanna know how you do it”. 

You took a deep breath, knowing this was going to be a looooong night. “Well… truthfully… I’m a hot mess. I don’t sleep. When I first found out I was pregnant and Asher’s dad left me, I was so sure I’d get an abortion, but then I went to the clinic and had a scan and realised I had a helpless child living inside of me and I wouldn’t let it down by taking away its chance at life. Although at least once a week I stay up all night crying, regretting every life choice I’ve made, when I wake up to this beauty I’m proud to call my son, I become slightly more disgusted with myself that I even dared to think about giving up”. 

You had to force yourself to breathe after that confession. You completely shocked yourself because you’d never really had the chance to talk to anyone about what went through your mind almost on a daily basis and yet here you were, telling Tyler everything in one go as if he were your damned therapist. 

“God I didn’t mean to spill everything out like that”, you told him. 

“Ah  don’t worry. You shouldn’t hate yourself so much for it, though. Can’t imagine what crazy shit- uh stuff you’ve gone through. I bet all single mothers have gone through the same as you”. 

You sent him a heartwarming smile and he sent the same but in smirk form which you never knew was possible without looking like a complete jackass. 

It still wasn’t possible. He looked dorky but you loved it nonetheless. 

“Do you want kids?” you asked. 

“Whoa ask me out to dinner first”. 

You tried to hide the laughter that was begging to come out from that cheesy line with a shake of your head, but you knew it was no use. 

“Me? Kids? Nah. At least not now. I wouldn’t even know where to start with being a dad. I’ve never really been around younger kids being an only child and all. It’s not like I could just drag a wife and kid around with me everywhere I go. I’m not father material”. 

Your heart dropped at hearing his admission, because you yourself had thought the exact same thing when you were pregnant. You remember how frightened you were of being alone or having no one there as the role-model you so desperately needed. 

But how were you to know how rewarding it all was in the end? 

“Well I understand where you’re coming from but you’re wrong. Very wrong. When I walked in here and saw you and Asher, I would have been easily convinced that you’ve been hiding three kids back home. You’d be an awesome dad”. 

“Ha… thanks, but it still feels like it’s off the cards for me. My job just doesn’t work well with having a family. It sucks but it’s the truth”. 

“And what about me? Do you think I teleport from place to place? Of course not. Asher and I take a few days once or twice a month to go home where he sees his friends, and we don’t let the constant travelling stop us from doing the things that mean the most to us. Which goes for you too”. 

Your words truly touched Tyler’s heart. His parents had told him so many times that it was possible to have a family life and still do pro wrestling, but he still never quite believed it. He wanted to be there for his future wife and children whenever they needed him at any time of the day, not just the occasional weekend when he had time off. 

Hearing your story and how you’ve coped with all the madness in your life finally broke that barrier that’s stopped him from believing he had to choose between a career and a family. Tyler was only twenty-four and had a long time ahead of him for his plans, but he knew where he wanted to start his future - well he knew who he wanted to start it with. 

He had no idea how long he’d been staring at you, but he was happy you were staring back. 

‘There it is’, he thought. The same shine in your eyes as the one he saw in Asher’s earlier. It took everything in his willpower not to devour your lips right there and then. Who cares if the kid saw? He’d find out eventually that kissing was quite normal between a man and a woman. 

“Hey”, he began talking, snapping you both out of your trance. “Can you make time in your busy schedule for a date tomorrow? About 12?” 

You bit your lip to prevent you from grinning like some psycho serial killer and managed to nod which brought a broad smile to his own face. 

“That is if I can find another babysitter by then”. 

“Bring Asher along. We can go to the park and get something to eat”. 

Your heart warmed at the thoughtful gesture. “I wouldn’t want to invade your plans with a three-year-old”. 

“You wouldn’t. I promise”. 

“Then yeah. Yeah, I’d love to go on a date with you”. 

“Perfect”. 

Tyler asked for your number which you willingly gave him and he sent a text to make sure you weren’t messing with him. 

“Alright, Asher. Say goodbye to Tyler”. 

Asher turned around and waved to your date. “Bye, Tyleeer!” 

“Bye, Asher. See you tomorrow”. 

“See you tomorrow”, he replied, not fully understanding what was actually happening tomorrow. Sweet. 

— 

When you got back to the hotel, you thought that the roles might have been reversed because you were exhausted from the long day and you could have passed out in the elevator, whereas Asher was straight on the small bed laid out for him and bouncing up and down like it were a trampoline. 

“Hey calm down. It’s time for bed. It’s been a very busy day and it’s very very late”. 

“I want to play wrestling”. 

“We can play wrestling tomorrow with Tyler. I’m sure he’ll play with you again if you bother him enough”. 

“No. I want to play with you”. 

You sighed deeply, just wanting to flop on the bed and let sleep overcome you. It was almost midnight which definitely shouldn’t have been a time a toddler was still awake at, and you were sure he’d end up waking you at stupid o'clock in the morning. 

Maybe one game wouldn’t hurt. He had such a confusing and stressful day. 

“Alright. One time then straight to bed”. 

He giggled before launching himself at you from the bed and you quickly caught him so he wouldn’t drop, but you still pretended to fall backwards on the bed. You were confused as to why Asher was fidgeting so much, but you carried on playing nonetheless and switched positions, rolling him over and throwing yourself over his torso, pinning him down. 

He had to learn to lose the hard way. 

“Nooo! Stop!” he cried. Thinking you might have hurt him, you quickly got off and scanned his face for any sign of pain. 

“What’s wrong?” you asked. 

“You doing it wrong!” 

“Wrong? How am I doing it wrong?” 

“That’s not how you do it”. 

“Then tell me how to do it”. 

Now he was sulking. Typical behaviour. You weren’t going to get a word out of him until you knew what he wanted. 

“Let’s just go to bed then”. 

“NOOOOO!” he screamed. 

“You’re tired. Come on”. 

“I not tired! I want to play wrestling!” he crossed his arms. You’d been through this situation before. Maybe if you just slept he would forget about it and go to sleep himself. 

“I want to play wrestling!” he screamed again. 

A lightbulb felt like it turned on in your head at the genius but probably the most logical idea. You hoped he wasn’t asleep yet but there was a slim chance that he was. 

“Heeey, Tyler”, you spoke into the phone. “Can I ask you a real quick question?” 

“You changed your mind already? I thought I would have had at least tomorrow’s date before you decided you didn’t like me”, he responded, his voice slightly muffled through the speaker. 

“Oh, no nothing like that. I haven’t dated in like five years. I need tomorrow. I just wanted to know how you played wrestling earlier”. 

You could imagine the perplexed look swept across his features. “Do I wanna know why?” 

“I think you’ve created Asher’s new favourite game and he keeps saying I’m doing it wrong”. 

“Well, are you tickling him?” 

“Tickling? You tickled him? You?” 

“Yeah, let's not tell anyone”. 

You almost burst out laughing at the all mighty Hook secretly being a softie and embarrassed the way he was then. 

“Oh believe me, I’m going to tell Ricky tomorrow and the word that you’re a secret teddy bear will have reached everyone’s ears before the week is over”. 

“We’ll talk about this tomorrow. Now go to bed”. 

“Thank you so much. Goodnight”. 

“Night”. 

You felt yourself swooning at his thoughtfulness and you understood why all those girls fawned over him and his unlikely charm. 

“Right. Now I know how to play, how about we start the game again?” 

— 

“Eminem is not better than Snoop Dogg. You’re insane”. 

You snickered, relishing in the satisfaction you had from teasing Tyler. 

“Eminem’s songs tell a story. Snoop Dogg just says a bunch of random shit”. 

“What’s storytelling about two trailer-park girls going round the outside, huh?” 

“Ah you got me there”. 

The three of you were walking down a trail down the side of the park, Asher running ahead of you hitting every tree he could see with a stick. You took a side glance at Tyler who was gazing off into the distance at your son. You thought it was pretty adorable that he was growing a liking to Asher, particularly after the awkwardness he possessed around him when they first met. 

A laugh escaped your lips which drew the attention of Tyle who whipped his head to face you. “What’s so funny?” 

“What happened to the guy who didn’t like kids?” 

“Ah he’s growing on me”. 

“I’m glad. Because he’ll be tagging around to a few of our dates”. 

He stopped in his tracks whilst you continued walking but turned around once you noticed he wasn’t catching you up. 

Had you put him off by inadvertedly inviting a third wheel? 

“What makes you think there are more dates?” 

Oh thank fuck. 

“Well, aren't there?” 

He let out a sly chuckle as you moved closer to him, mirroring his smirk, and he instinctively rested his hands on your hips. 

Tyler felt his fingertips tingle at the touch of you. It was like his hands had finally found their destined home. 

“I guess you’ll just have to find out”. 

His lips captured yours in craving and you felt in the small but powerful gesture all the longing he had for you and your lips. Both yours and his lips massaged each other and your body fell into complete ecstasy. 

Until the little monster ruined the moment… 

“Why are you kissing?” You pulled away and smiled at Asher’s innocence. 

“It doesn’t matter, sweetie. Come on, let’s keep going”. 

“I don’t want to. My legs hurt. Pick me up?”. 

You looked at Asher in disbelief. You’d seen this child practically run marathons without stopping and somehow an hour at the park has him too tired to stand? You weren’t believing it for a second. Besides, as strong as you were, the kid was heavy. 

“You’re too big to pick up now. You’re a big boy”. 

“Pick me uuuuup!” 

“I told you no”. 

Ah there was the grumpiness again, his arms flailing everywhere and foot stomping on the ground. You sent him a stern look that you held for all of five seconds before Tyler decided to speak up. 

“Hey, do you want to sit on my shoulders?” 

“Yeah!” 

Hook knelt down whilst Asher climbed up his back and swung his legs over his shoulders, Tyler’s arms securely holding them in place so he wouldn’t fall backward. 

You rolled your eyes and you all continued walking down the path - with the exception of Asher, of course. 

It was a beautiful sight, you had to admit to yourself, but he was a cheeky mother fucker. 

“You’re a bad influence, you know that?” 

He chuckled at your comment for he knew you were telling the truth, but he loved the drama. 

“First, you make Asher cry, then you teach him wrestling, and now you’re his personal chauffeur. I hope you’re happy”. 

“Oh I’m more than happy, baby”. 

You couldn’t have agreed more. You had hope that this situation would progress into something much more wonderful than it already felt. 

THE END. 

[issacballsac]

“Being a Member of BLAST”

Life is short why not take a chance and join a band? Masc!reader intended

Minor spoilers for NANA

Joining | Nana

Actually joining the band wasn’t hard especially because when you met Nana there was no band💀

You guys met at the train station when she first moved to Tokyo

You already lived in Tokyo and were just returning from a trip when you saw her

It was like an instant click she caught your eye

“Hey, do you happen to sing by any chance?”

“Who are you?”

“Don’t worry about that just know I can play guitar pretty damn good if I do say so myself!”

She was tired from the long ass ride and didn’t know anyone in Tokyo aside from Ren

Went back to your place and played for her

“I’ll think about it.”

Nana isn’t a very emotional or open person so she tends to keep secrets but over time if you guys get that close she’ll vent to you

If you smoke she’ll always ask you for your lighter

Older sister younger brother energy

Opposites | Hachi

Nana paid you an abrupt visit to tell you about her new place and totally not just for you to fix the AC

Checking the place out you laid eyes on an inverted version of Nana

“Hi, I’m Nana Komatsu!”

“Just call her Hachi.”

“Nana!”

“Nice to meet you, Hachi?”

She’s had a crush on just about every BLAST member , so, of course she has had a crush on you before

If you wear makeup or paint your nails she would love to do it for you

Amazing cook and if you ever wanted anything she’d happily make it for you

She rlly just wants to be needed

Definitely went to you for relationship advice with Nobu

You tend to just appear places so you were one of the first people to know about her pregnancy and went to the hospital with her

You stayed outside though to avoid ppl thinking you were the father 💀

You def don’t help with her shopping addiction

Shopping sprees constantly that’s why your broke as shit

“Should I get the soft blue or purple skirt?”

“Both.”

After the Takumi drama you guys would stay in contact and when Nobu wasn’t at your place she’d come to watch you practice alone

You’d support her decision because it’s her life in the end

Formation | Nobuō

The unforgiving aggression spewing from your ringing phone at the dead of night

Some random number was calling you and for whatever reason you answered, confident that it wasn’t a scam caller

“Hello?”

“It’s Nana, come over.”

“I’m not into late night favours if you get what I mean.”

“That’s not what I’m calling for, just get over here!”

Reluctantly wandering the dark streets of Tokyo you made your way over to Nana’s apartment, you’d only been there once to help with the AC where you learned of the other Nana or Hachi

Opening the door to reveal the two residents and a blonde man standing with his guitar in hand

“Took you long enough. Anyways, like I said Nobuo I already have a guitarist so go home.”

“Well we could always play together I have nothing against dual guitars!”

“You aren’t helping.”

“Good.”

You and Nobu got along great your guitars and personalities blending perfectly

He talks with you about everything especially when he and Hachi get together

If you’re shorter than/same height him he’d be happy to have another short guy in the band

If you’re taller he’d be happy if you didn’t make fun of his height though he does tend to light heartedly joke abt it

He likes to go to you for fashion inspiration and vice versa

Drunk karaoke

You would help him with song writing

You guys would be around the same age too so besties

You guys get along the best in the band

The bass | Shin

After the whole Nobu moving to Tokyo fiasco all you guys need is a bassist and drummer

Nobu sending you a picture of Hachi’s little drawing of the 3 of you on the band poster

You met up with them at the studio to practice with Shinichi on bass

For such a young kid he was pretty good player (granted your only like 6-7 years older)

Being confused right alongside him when everyone stopped playing

You, Shin, and Nobu are like the 3 musketeers

You- Oldest, Nobuo - Middle, Shin - Youngest

Shin snatched your clothes on a daily basis much like he does with Nobu

Unlike Nobu, you don’t care

He stays over at your place more than you’d like to admit

He basically lives there

He would definitely go to you about the Reira/Layla situation

Has mini fashion shows in your room with a fake runway and everything

You guys play games together on your console

He relaxes and is actually a kid when he hangs out with you

Has you paint his nails

He has moments when he storms off if you bring up a certain subject but he never stays mad for long and shows up at your door

Likes to go eat at new places with you especially if you’re paying for it

“I’m gonna get the chocolate croissants, one of those fancy hot chocolates, and..oh! You’re paying for this right?”

“Um..”

Bit a of spoiler kinda but later in the manga when he got arrested you’d be the only one to visit him

Completion | Yasu

You definitely shat yourself when you first met Yasu

He’s the responsible one in the band so he’s like a father figure to you especially if you didn’t have one

You two probably get to the studio first before anyone else

He’d always let you talk/rant to him if you ever needed to

Would be surprised if you remembered his birthday and got him a gift

If you smoke he’d go on smoke breaks with you

If you don’t smoke he’d make sure to hold his cigarette away from you/out of your face

Would teach you various card games

If you didn’t want to watch a movie alone he’d watch it with you

Any legal troubles go to him

Scratch that ANY troubles go to him

“Man you’re like a wise monk.”

“..because I’m bald?”

“No, because you’re wise..and because you’re bald.”

[d1xonss]

could i request a oneshot where daryl is sick and y/n wants to help take care of him? just super fluffy stuff? thanks😙😙

Chicken Soup for the Soul

✧ Pairing : Daryl Dixon x Reader

✧ Era : Season 9

✧ Pronouns : she/her

✧ Genre : Fluff

✧ Word Count : 2.1k

AN ~ This request is so cute to me :,( I had so much fun writing it. Not much to update on today, but thank you to whoever suggested this! Hope you enjoy!

Alexandria had always been a place full of safety and comfort. With living behind the thick, tall walls and having some of your favorite people living only a few houses away, you absolutely loved the community you were a part of. The only downside now, was the cold months only getting colder.

Every time without fail during this time of year, it would get much colder than what everyone was used to all the time. Normally it would constantly be warm, almost scorching some days because of how harshly the sun baked your skin. But in the first few weeks of the new year, it felt like it was constantly freezing. Granted the temperature usually lingered in the thirties, it was far more frigid than what everyone around here was normally used to.

Which was why currently you were cuddled up on the couch, a fluffy blanket covering your lap and a book in your hands, reading in the dim light of your living room. You occasionally felt the warmth of the fire next to you creep up to provide even more heat whilst you passed the time, waiting for your husband to return home.

He currently was out on a run that had lasted a few days, though he promised he would be home sometime today at the latest. You were a bit weary of him going out in the first place, warning him that this weather was cold and unpleasant, not wanting him to be miserable out there. But he brushed everything off as the typical stubborn man would do, assuring you that he would be just fine and he could handle it. And though you knew he could, it still didn’t stop you from worrying the littlest bit while he was out.

But a sigh of relief passed through your chest as you began to hear the faintness of the familiar rumble of his motorcycle, signaling he had finally returned as he made his way down the streets. A smile spread across your face as you finished up the page you were on, before finding your bookmark and placing it in the spine, setting it off to the side just as you heard the engine of the bike shut off in your driveway. It felt like only a few seconds passed before you finally heard the front door opening, his heavy footsteps trailing inside.

“Hi honey.” you called softly as you swung your legs over the side of the couch, standing up to peer around the corner at him.

He grunted as he removed all the things from around his shoulders, looking up at you with a soft and tired smile, “Hey.” he spoke quietly, trudging over towards your frame to practically melt around you.

Your smile stretched even wider than before as you held him, rubbing his back soothingly as you heard him exhale deeply in relaxation. Just by feeling his tense and sore muscles around you, it was clear to sense how tired he really was, it was even written all over his face. The two of you stayed in each others arms for minutes in just peaceful silence, taking each other in after being apart for far too long.

But according to Daryl, even an hour was too long to be away from you. Meaning these past three days must've have been torture.

“How was the trip?” you asked softly, your voice being the one to break the silence that surrounded you.

He sniffled and cleared his throat as he nodded to confirm everything went fine, “Good.” he spoke, “Gotta couple crates of supplies.”

You hummed, “That’s good to hear…I’m glad you’re home.” you admitted quietly as you held onto him a little bit tighter.

His deep and vibrating laugh shook in his chest as he instantly seemed to agree, “Me too, baby girl.” he said before finishing his sentence with another sniffle.

You paused for a moment as you heard the small and distinct sound for a second time. Now that you really thought about it, he felt a lot warmer to you than usual as you continued to stay wrapped around him. It might’ve just been you reading too much into things, but something seemed a little off.

So you reluctantly pulled away from him then, seeing in his eyes now that he was utterly exhausted, “You okay?”

He nodded slow as you saw him swallow a bit thickly, “Yeah, just…just tired.” he confirmed.

But you weren’t convinced. Before he could process your next moves, you quickly raised the back of your hand up to his forehead to check his temperature. He sighed in defeat as your hand already made contact with his skin, your eyes widening upon feeling Satan's hellfire burning your hand at the simple touch. 

That may have been a little dramatic, but he felt quite warm.

“Honey, you’re burning up.” you said softly as your hand moved down to cradle the side of his face, “Are you sick?”

He scoffed as he opened his mouth to deny it, but instead, he quickly turned his face away and into his elbow to sneeze loudly, the sound practically bouncing off the walls.

Your eyes rolled, “So that’s a yes.”

“I ain’t sick.” he defended roughly as he turned back to face you again, “Maybe yer hand’s just cold.” he tried.

“Uh huh.” you muttered, “Then how do you explain the sniffles and that dramatic ass sneeze?” you asked with a tilted head.

He was silent for a long moment as his gaze stayed on the ground, trying to come up with a good reason other than the obvious. “Allergies?”

You scoffed, “You’re sick.” you concluded as you reached out to tilt his chin up so he would look you in the eye again, “Why don’t you head upstairs and hop in the shower. I’ll get you some medicine and I’ll make-”

“Nah, no, I’ll be just fine. Just need some rest is all.” he interrupted.

You couldn’t help but tilt your head at him a little as you silently knew why he was always so persistent about this kind of thing. Daryl always felt like he had to tough it out his whole life, act as if nothing phased him in the slightest as he carried nearly the weight of the world on his shoulders. The truth was it made him feel weak, asking others for help, having someone else take care of him, he felt he almost didn’t deserve it. 

But you on the other hand knew that he deserved everything and more. Sometimes it just took some reassurance to get him there.

“Sweetie, you are constantly taking care of me. Just let me take care of you.” you spoke sweetly and gently, your tone being enough for him to nearly cave right then and there.

Though he still looked unsure for a few more seconds, not wanting you to go through any trouble as he was capable of taking care of himself. He never wanted to bombard you with his needs as he was perfectly content with giving you everything you wanted, pretty much constantly waiting on you hand and foot. But still to this day for some reason, it felt odd to him receiving the same treatment though you had been doing it for years. You alone felt almost unreal sometimes to him. Like a dream.

But then you whispered one word, one single word that caused him to break. 

“Please?”

It didn’t matter when or how the word was used, but you and Daryl both knew that if you used that word to coax him into something he was prepared to deny, he would always fall apart instead. You had a certain effect on him that he still couldn’t quite describe.

So with that, he sighed heavily as he felt himself sniffle again, “Alright.” he agreed.

You smiled softly and gently grabbed one of his hands to place a kiss on the back of it, “Good. Head on upstairs and I’ll meet you there in a few minutes.” you promised.

His face broke out into a lopsided grin when he looked down at you, feeling a bit hazy from the illness he seemed to catch, his knees feeling weaker the longer he stood upright. Yet he still couldn’t help but smile at how unbelievably lucky he had gotten with you.

“Yes ma’am.” he eventually spoke, breaking away from you to slowly head up the long and dreaded staircase, preparing to head for the shower as you suggested.

You on the other hand went straight towards the kitchen, picking through the medicine cupboard before finding the right pill bottle to take up with you. After setting it down on the counter, you grabbed a larger pot and placed it over the stovetop, before rummaging around through the kitchen for ingredients. You planned to make him some chicken soup, one of his favorites when the weather got colder. He could probably inhale three bowls if given the chance.

You cut up the fresh vegetables along with the chicken, adding it all into the pot filled with broth to cook before adding the many noodles as well. You seasoned everything thoroughly and made sure to keep stirring it so it would be perfect, knowing he was probably starving from not only coming back from the long run, but from the sickness he picked up along the way. But once everything was done you placed it all on a tray to take up to your shared bedroom, even adding some water and crackers off to the side.

Stepping up the stairs slowly and carefully, you didn’t hear the water running and only assumed he was done by now as you entered the space carefully. And there he was lying in bed, his eyes closed until he heard the faintness of your movements, peaking them open again and seeing the amount of things you had brought up. It was written all over his face that he thought you did too much, but upon smelling the soup you continued to carry, he said nothing as if he suddenly remembered how hungry he really was.

He licked his lips as he eyed the tray, “Whatcha got?” he asked.

You laughed a little to yourself as you placed it down on his bedside table, “Well, the tylenol is for your fever, and the chicken soup is…for your soul.” you said proudly as you handed him the pill bottle first to take.

He huffed out a laugh, “Smells good.” he complimented as he took the medicine you provided for him along with a swig of water to wash them down.

You sat yourself at the edge of the bed, “Did the shower help at all?” you asked as you raised your hand again towards his forehead, still feeling very hot just as last time.

“A little.” he shrugged, “Still kinda warm though.”

You nodded to yourself as you noticed he was shirtless, the blankets wrapped only around his legs as the rest of him was exposed to the colder air. But you then got another idea that would help, telling him to wait momentarily before you trailed off back to the bathroom. You grabbed a washcloth out of the closet tucked away in the corner before running the material under some cool water, bringing it back to gently place on his forehead.

He sighed at the feeling as his eyes temporarily closed again, only opening once more to look towards you and the things you brought, “Ya did too much.” he commented quietly.

You tilted your head at him, “No I didn’t.” you insisted, “In fact, I didn’t do nearly enough. I want to take care of you, I always do. Please just let me from time to time…okay?”

His tired eyes stared at you for a long moment, before he was slowly nodding his head in agreement, “Okay.”

A smile was brought to your face knowing that it was getting to be easier for him to accept the help, before it was replaced with a teasing smirk as you eyed the soup he had yet to touch. “You want me to feed you?” you joked.

He scoffed, “Nah. Then ya would be doin too much.” he said before leaning over and grabbing the bowl himself.

You laughed a little before nodding your head, “Well, is there anything else you need? Anything at all?” 

He didn’t hesitate as he spoke his next words clearly, “Just you…can ya stay with me?” he asked as if he didn’t already know the answer.

But he did, he knew the answer quite well. Though a part of him just wanted that last bit of reassurance that you wouldn’t leave his side, wanting to hear you say it.

“Of course.” you promised sweetly, leaning over the smallest bit to place a kiss on top of his head, “I’m not going anywhere.”

~ Thanks for reading!

[froggywritesstuff]

pros and cons | rise!donatello

ship/pairing: rise!Donatello x male!reader

fandom: rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles

warnings: fluff, cuddling, mentions of a.i., not proofread

word count: 796

A/N: idk man. 18+ people DNI

There are a lot of cons to dating a mutant turtle who lives in the sewers. One, being the fact that he lives in the sewers, and you have a sense of smell. Among others was your friends constantly nagging you to introduce them to him, or to at least show them a picture of your boyfriend that they were getting more convinced everyday that he was an a.i. bot.

Although the list of cons might have looked like an extremely long list to anyone else, you focused on the pros. In your eyes, the cons were but a small hill compared to the mountain of pros. To name a few, having a really smart boyfriend meant never having to go to a phone repair shop. Considering how many times you’ve dropped your phone in the lair, this was a very big pro. And with a mutant turtle boyfriend apparently came three mutant turtle brothers that you had become fast friends with.

Being friends with them, there wasn't much difference between your friendship with them and your friendships with non-mutant people. Aside from the secrecy, the sewers, and all the weird places they'd take you and/or tell you about. You did have sleepovers though. They were always fun. It’s just less fun when you're sleeping in your super smart boyfriend's bed and he's suddenly super busy super late at night with some super smart and super loud project.

Now you could cover your ears with your pillow and count a million sheep while you will yourself to sleep, ignoring the sounds from Donnie's lab and trying to gaslight yourself into thinking it wasn't that loud. However, leaving the lonely bed to sit with and annoy him sounded much more fun. After little contemplation, you slide out of bed, trudging over toward where Donnie sat in his chair. With no explanation, you flopped into his lap, readjusting to make the both of you comfortable. Donnie paused what he was doing, pulling his goggles over his head and staring down at you.

”…Hello.”

He felt you smile into the crook of his neck, followed by the vibrations of your muffled voice, “Hi.”

”What are you doing?” He asked, idly continuing his work but still giving you his attention.

You stay quiet, answering with a simple shrug.

”Are you gonna go back to sleep?”

"That's what I'm tryna do."

"Then go back to the bed?" He suggested as if it were obvious, to which you scoffed at.

”Uh, rude.”

Donnie rolled his eyes, though he couldn’t deny the smile tugging on his lips as he talked with you, “Y/N, I doubt that my lap is a better place to sleep than the bed, in fact, I’m almost certain of it.”

A frown formed on your lips, and you shook your head, “Keyword; almost. So no, I will not be leaving. I just got comfortable. And you’re nice and cool.”

"I assume I don't have to warn you of this, but it's gonna be loud."

"I know," you said, "It's still loud when I sleep in bed." Donnie's shoulders sagged at the realisation that he had woken you up. You felt the subtle movement, and looked up at him to meet his eyes, "If you like, actually want me to, I can go."

"No," he shook his head, "You can stay."

"Are you sure? You're not just saying that?"

"I'm sure Y/N." he smiled at you.

A sigh of relief left your lips at the confirmation that your physical touch wasn't making him uncomfortable, and you let your head rest against his plastron, "Nice, I'm super tired and I don't wanna walk all the way to bed."

"I understand, that sounds so hard." Donnie drawled, a rare occurrence of him using sarcasm.

"Right? Can I sleep like this every time I sleep over? Wait, don't answer that, I've made up my mind and I wanna."

"Sigh," Donnie sighed, but you could still see the slight smile on his lips, “Get a boyfriend they said. It’ll be fun, they said.”

"I heard that." 

"Good, it was intended for you to hear." he pulled his goggles down, and handed you a pair of noise cancelling headphones. Thanking him, you placed them over your ears, yawning as you readjusted to a more comfortable position.

You fell asleep shortly after that, and woke up in bed, cuddled up to Donnie. He was still sleeping soundly, and judging by the bags under his eyes, you assumed you got a better night's sleep than him. You smiled, cuddling closer to him as you let yourself sleep some more. There was truly no better feeling than waking up next to him. The pros definitely outweigh the cons when it comes to dating Donnie.

[captainremmington-13]

𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖉𝖆𝖚𝖌𝖍𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝖔𝖋 𝖉𝖊𝖆𝖙𝖍

𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝖋𝖔𝖚𝖗

show!Luke Castellan x daughter of thanatos!reader

DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the image above or any of Rick Riordan’s characters/world-building. I only own the characters Lola, Layla, and Reylynne , who are featured in this chapter.

⚠️Warnings⚠️: some violence, swearing, mentions of night terrors and death, parental neglect, mild angst, confusing feelings, crying, mentions of puberty

A/N: doing martial arts not only made me stronger, it made it WAY easier to write fight scenes lmao

also, this whole chapter takes place while reader and Luke are both seventeen

Angel.

Who knew one simple word could turn your world upside-down?

According to Luke, he’d said it because you resembled one. Though you made it clear you disagreed, he firmly stood by it. 

How could he see the offspring of death itself as an angel? He was truly a mystery at times.

Nevertheless, the nickname stuck.

.

.

.

“Hey.” 

Luke’s voice snapped you out of your thoughts. He was walking up to where you were resting on a worn-down stone bench. 

You were both participating in sparring practice with the rest of the older campers. Unlike the basic sword-fighting classes that Luke hosted for demigods new to camp, these practices were cutthroat. Everyone wanted to prove themselves, and would do almost anything for glory.

“Getting tired already, Castellan?” you teased, scooting over so he could sit next to you.

Luke playfully rolled his eyes. “Not at all. You know I have an incredible amount of stamina.” 

You laughed. “Sure, sure.” You tightened your fingerless leather gloves, and picked up your beloved weapon. “I think I’m done resting for now. Who are you going to spar next?”

“You,” Luke said, as if it was obvious. “It’s been awhile since we’ve faced each other in combat, because we’re always on the same side.” 

“Alright then. Let’s go.”

The two of you walked to the center of the arena, and positioned yourselves about ten feet from each other. Luke raised his sword, his eyes burning with intensity. Even though he was your best friend, you couldn’t deny that it was terrifying to fight against him. He had incredibly fast reflexes, impressive strength, and an intimidating presence. 

You gripped your dual-ended sword so tightly that your knuckles turned white. At least your weapon of choice was almost as tall as you, which allowed you to stay far away from your opponent while still being able to attack. If you were desperate enough, you could throw it like a spear to catch him off-guard and disarm him while he was distracted. 

“Ready, angel?” Luke asked. 

Almost immediately after you nodded in agreement, Luke charged towards you, raising his blade and bringing it down in a deadly arc.

You deflected the blow with the right side of your weapon, and jabbed at his chest with the opposite end. He easily avoided it, and backed up a few feet, waiting for you to make the next move. 

“Come on, don’t go easy on me now,” Luke said, a teasing smile on his face. 

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” you replied, lunging forward and sending a stab to his abdomen. 

It became a constantly changing game of cat-and-mouse. When one of you became more aggressive and offensive, the other would play defense until they tired out their opponent. 

Many of the other demigods had already called it quits and left the arena, allowing you both to expand your range of motion. Eventually, it was just you and your best friend, alone in the ancient-looking arena. 

You were beyond tired. Your arms felt like they were made of solid Celestial Bronze, and your legs shook from soreness. You were drenched in sweat, which was not a fun feeling. But you refused to surrender, no matter how miserable you felt.

You brought your weapon down like a club, trying to hit Luke’s shoulder. He blocked it, but his sword flew out of his hands. Instead of retrieving it, he sent a swift kick to your sternum, sending you stumbling backwards. Before you could regain your composure, Luke had you pinned to the ground, one hand on your left shoulder and the other holding your wrists together. 

You silently thanked the Fates for the fact that the arena was empty. Otherwise, you’d never hear the end of it from the other campers. 

“I surrender,” you said quietly, your eyes closing as fatigue overtook you. “I’m too fucking tired to keep going.” 

Luke let go of your wrists and shoulder, brushing your sweaty hair out of your face. He still hovered over you, but his expression was much gentler. 

“You alright?“ he asked, setting his sword down to help you sit up. 

“Yeah…yeah, I’m fine,” you said breathlessly, trying to ignore the dizziness swarming your head. “I’m just fucking exhausted. You’re the toughest opponent I’ve ever faced, and I’ve fought a horde of young Cyclopes.” 

He laughed, “You flatter me, angel.” As soon as you were on your feet again, he wrapped a toned arm around your waist, surprising you. This was perhaps the most intimate touch he’d ever given you. Not that you were complaining though. It felt nice. “Now, let’s go get some food.“ 

“Best idea you’ve had all day.” 

________________________________________________

“Hey, you!” 

Your eyebrows furrowed as you saw Lola, a daughter of Aphrodite, looking at you pointedly. She was surrounded by her sisters and a couple daughters of Demeter. 

“I have a name, you know,” you said, standing up and putting a hand on your weapon’s condensed form instinctively. 

“Relax, I promise I’m not trying to hurt you,” Lola said. “Come on, sit with us.” 

You mentally weighed your options. The worst they could do was mock and belittle you, charmspeak you into doing something stupid, or curse you with a bad makeover. And if they did, they’d definitely be caught. Chiron would give them kitchen duty or stable cleaning duty, which would undoubtedly mortify them.

So instead of choosing the stereotypical “I’m-edgy-and-introverted-so-I-don’t-want-to-talk-to-anyone” option, you walked over to where your fellow demigods were congregated.

“Hi,” said a girl you recognized as a member of Cabin 4 (Demeter’s cabin). “I’m Katie Gardner.”

“Nice to formally meet you,” you said, smiling slightly. “I’ve seen you around, you’re in charge of the strawberry-picking, right?”

She nodded. “Yep. And you’re…Thanatos’s child, right?” 

You winced. “Yeah…yeah, that’s me.”

Her expression held no judgement, which made you relax considerably. Lola cleared her throat, diverting your attention to her.

“So, you know Luke Castellan, don’t you?”

“Yeah, he’s a good friend of mine. Why do you ask?”

You didn’t really need to add the last part; you already had a good guess as to why she was asking. 

You and Luke were now seventeen. No longer were you awkward young teenagers who’s proportions never seemed to match up properly. You felt well-adjusted to your more mature body, glad to be rid of the abomination that was puberty. 

Luke looked quite different than when you’d first met him. He’d been a slightly scrawny, cute teen with a sweet smile and wavy brown hair. His hair had become curlier, his figure was more muscular thanks to his rigorous training schedule, and he’d become much more confident in himself. Though his ego was a bit irritating at times, it did add to his charismatic personality.

It was no surprise that people had begun taking romantic interest in him. 

Lola smiled, showing off her pearly white teeth. “He’s cute, isn’t he?”

You shrugged. Honestly, you hadn’t really spent much time analyzing his appearance. “I guess so.”

“So then why haven’t you started going out with him?” 

“Excuse me?”

One of Lola’s sisters spoke up. “Hon, you and Castellan are like two peas in a pod. I rarely see you apart.“

You bury your face in your hands, sitting down on the grass. This was perhaps the most awkward conversation you’d ever had. Well, besides that one time you had to explain to Luke why you felt like your stomach was being stabbed by invisible knives for days on end.

“That’s because he’s my best friend,” you say quietly, hoping that nobody else was listening in. If this conversation got around, it would cause a lot of unnecessary gossip. “He’s the only person who I trust with my life, and he trusts me with his.”

Another daughter of Aphrodite scoffed, playing with her perfectly straightened hair. “That’s ironic, considering that you’re literally the spawn of death itself.” 

“Reylynne!” Katie said disapprovingly. 

“It’s fine,” you said nonchalantly. “It’s true, I am death’s child. Anyways, my point is that Luke and I…we’re just…you know, really good friends. I don’t know how else to explain it.” 

“We just think you two would be super cute together, that’s all,” another of Aphrodite’s daughters chimed in. “Oh, I’m Layla, by the way.” She held out her hand, and you shook it gently. 

“I understand where you all are coming from,” you said as politely as possible. “But I don’t  like Luke that way. I don’t think I ever will.”

Reylynne smirked, which made you inexplicably nauseous. “Fine by me. If you don’t want him, I’ll take him.”

“Reylynne!” Lola chastised, swatting her upside the head. 

You stood up, brushing the grass off of your leggings. “I better go. I have to help my cabin-mates clean up before the inspection later tonight.” 

“Alright,” Lola said, giving you a friendly smile. “Feel free to hang out with us whenever you want, ok?”

You nodded, hiding your shock. Giving them an awkward wave, you ran towards Cabin 11, glad to have finally escaped that extremely personal discussion. 

Even worse, it wasn’t really the topic of conversation that bothered you. 

It was the fact that it had planted a thought inside of your head:

you and Luke really would be a great couple.

________________________________________________

It was another sleepless night. 

You’d tossed and turned for hours before giving up. You simply couldn’t get your body to relax. There was far too much on your mind.

Even worse, the main subject of your thoughts was sleeping just a few feet away from you. 

You rolled over on your mattress to face Luke’s bunk, which was right next to yours. He was partially covered by his blankets, but you could still make out the old, torn camp t-shirt he slept in. His eyelashes fluttered sporadically, and his breathing was slow and steady. 

He looked calm, at ease. The sight made you smile.

If anyone deserved peace of mind, it was Luke.

You moved back into your back, closing your eyes once more. Maybe, if you tried really hard to clear your mind of any Luke-related thoughts, you could achieve a few decent hours of rest. 

Sure enough, drowsiness began to set in. Pulling your dark grey fleece blanket tighter around you, you prepared to enter Hypnos’s realm. 

But just as you felt yourself begin to drift off, someone whimpered beside you. 

Your eyes snapping open, you turned to face Luke, squinting in order to see him in the dim moonlight. 

He was clutching his sheets, his breathing had become heavy and frantic, and he was murmuring in an obviously panicked tone.

“Thalia, no! No, please don’t go, I can’t lose you again, let me die instead!” 

He was having a nightmare about the fateful night that he, Thalia, and Annabeth had arrived at camp. 

You knew how much he had cared for Thalia. They’d spent quite a bit of time on the run together, and developed a fiercely tight bond. He’d confessed that he’d started crushing on her at some point, but that never went anywhere because of her unfortunate demise. 

You felt like Khione herself had frozen you to your mattress. You wanted to wake him up and free him from his night terrors, but you also weren’t sure if you could properly comfort him. 

Still, you had to at least try. He needed to know he wasn’t alone.

As quietly as possible, you got out of bed and crept over to his mattress. You gently pulled the covers off of Luke, and gently shook him by the shoulders a few times.

Luke jolted awake, grasping his sheets tightly. Your heart tightened painfully when you saw the tears welling up in his eyes. 

“Oh, Luke…” you trailed off, not knowing what to say. 

“Angel,” he whispered, his voice cracking slightly. “You okay?”

“You were having a nightmare. About the night you arrived at camp.”

Luke sat up slowly, hastily wiping away the tears that had begun to run down his cheeks. “Yeah…yeah, I remember now. Gods, it was horrible. I saw her get overpowered and injured by the monsters all over again. It was like everything was in slow-motion just to torture me.” 

You placed a hand on his forearm, rubbing soothing circles on his clammy skin with your thumb. “You’re okay, Luke. It was just a dream.”

“About a very real thing,” he added. “Thalia died because of me. I didn’t do enough to protect her.” 

Instinctively, you pulled Luke into a hug when he began to cry again. You ran a hand through his curls softly, hoping it would calm him down somehow. 

“Don’t blame yourself,” you said. “Blame the Fates. Blame Hades for sending the monsters. Blame all of the fucking gods. They have failed at properly protecting their children. You did everything you could’ve done. You got Annabeth to safety, and Thalia met a hero’s fate. Her memory will live on, as her presence strengthens the border that shields us from the mortal world.” 

He wrapped his arms around you, pulling you closer. You sat there for what seemed like millennia, letting him cry against your shoulder.

Finally, he stopped trembling, and pulled away slightly. “You’re right,” he whispered. “I know it isn’t my fault, it’s the gods’ fault. I just…I just miss her. She was so funny, such a good fighter, and an incredibly loyal friend. She deserved so much better. You would’ve really liked her, I know it.”

You gave him a soft smile. “I’m sure.” 

“Thanks for waking me up,” he said, taking your hands in his. “I really appreciate it. Gods, I don’t know what I’d do without you.” 

“Me neither,” you admitted.

Luke yawned, removing his hands from yours to rub his eyes. “I think I’m gonna try to go back to sleep. You should get some rest, too. We have archery practice in the morning.” 

You smirked, and his eyebrows furrowed. “I know that look. You’re planning something.”

You can’t help but smile. “You know me so well. I’m thinking that we should sneak out of camp tomorrow. We can take a day trip, just the two or us.”

Luke grinned. “That sounds amazing.” 

“Great, we’ll leave first thing in the morning.” You pivoted to climb off of the bed, but stopped when he said,

“Wait…please, stay.”

And that was how you ended up sharing a bed with Luke Castellan for the first time. 

taglist: @orionspaperwork, @pansexualwitchwhoneedstherapy, @marvelescvpe, @lovingjasontoddmakemewanttocry, @louweasleymalfoy, @stars4birdie, @stargurl-battleship, @daughterofthemoons-stuff

Thank you for reading! Pls let me know what you think in the comments!!!

Also, I was scrolling thru the Luke Castellan tag and noticed someone requested a fic with daughter of thanatos!reader who also had wings. It’s probably a coincidence so it’s not a big deal, I just wanted to say pls don’t plagiarize or take ideas without giving credit (only if it isn’t an original idea ofc)

Let me know in the comments if you want to be added to the taglist!

[multi-fandom-simp]

Hello! I'd love to see Garrett from Twilight with a soulmate au! I'd love to see him with a human mate, he'd be such a smitten kitten for her for sure! I'm open to the clock running down and them meeting or the red string and finding each other, or other ideas if you have one in mind.

Please and thank you!!

(A/N: I had such a fun time writing this piece! Soulmate Au's are truly one of my favorites. Thank you for such a lovely request, I hope you enjoy the fic💕)

Forever? Forever.

Pairing: Garrett x Human! Reader

Soulmate! Au (red string)

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the twilight characters, nor do I claim them as my own. This work is purely fictional.

Summary: You had always been told your soulmate was dead. That your string was never fully red because they were no longer here. Imagine your surprise when your soulmate does exist..just as a vampire. A vampire that absolutely adores you at that.

‼️TW‼️: mentions of death, mentions of eating a bunny (should that be a warning, idk??)

Word Count: 2,034 (I got a bit carried away)

Everyone was born with a red string, one that connected you to your soulmate. Most people had it wrapped around their finger or their wrist, but not you. Your string sprouted from your wrist as if it grew within your very veins. Not only that, but the further the string got from you, the paler it got, almost as if it was losing color. Everyone had told you that it meant your soulmate was dead, or dying, but something told you otherwise.

Unlike everyone else, your string came with sensations. Not anything weird, just feelings. Feelings of warmth whenever your hands would shake, or a sudden chill whenever you had a fever, almost as if your soulmate was comforting you. Oddly enough these occurrences never bothered you, in fact, they made you feel less alone. 

You weren’t always alone. You had a family, friends, and past lovers, but it was never enough. Despite how great they were, they made you feel suffocated. You wanted more, so you got more. Within a night you had packed a suitcase and moved to Forks, Washington where you worked early shifts at the local diner, and took night classes at the local college. It was nothing fancy, but it made you feel alive. The rush of moving somewhere new, where no one knew your name or your face felt like a breath of fresh air. The feeling of running on a few hours of sleep so that you could fit work, class, and exploration into your day was euphoric…until it wasn’t. 

After a year you had grown bored of the quaint town. Its same blue hue became dull and the rush soon became tiring. The only thing you had left was the woods. Now, as ominous as it sounds, the woods in Forks seemed guarded. Somewhere you constantly felt watched but not in a horrifying, murderous way. The forests become your safe haven for early-morning readings and late-night strolls. 

..and also the place where you first met him.

It had been stormy that morning. The power at the diner had been knocked out and with no backup generator, they let the staff go home. You decided to take a cut through the forest instead of hailing a cab. Was it the best decision? Absolutely not, but you weren’t the only one who had made it. Halfway down your path, you stumbled upon a fellow holding a rabbit. His eyes found you before you found him. His eyes followed your red string back to his own. He was mated to a human, how fascinating. 

His thoughts seem to escape him for a moment as he murmured, “A human.”

“ An odd man” You shot back quickly. His mouth stretches into a grin at your wit. You clearly had some spunk to you, and he liked spunk. 

“This odd man does have a name. I’m Garrett, and you?” Garrett noticed that you had yet to take notice of the tautness of your string, of the connection it bore to him. Little did he know that you had given up on finding your soulmate after years of being told that they were dead. 

Ignoring his question, your eyes flickered down to the rabbit still in his hands, “ Why are you holding a rabbit?” 

“ I’m sheltering it from the rain” That was a lie. Garrett had intended to feed off of the bunny, as he hadn’t had a feeding since he arrived to help the Cullens. However, upon your scrutinizing gaze, he deemed it best to release the poor thing. It’s not as if the small creature would fulfill his diet anyway. 

“Right. Nice meeting you then, Garrett” The name tag on your uniform seemed to gleam at him through the rain as you began to walk away. 

“ I take it everything in town is closed down then?” Your eyes shot to Garrett’s in confusion while he continued, “Unless you normally parade through the forest in waitress attire.” 

“ A few places remain open, such as the hospital. Which is where I’ll end up if I don’t get out of this rain.” Despite the intrigue nagging at the back of your mind, you turned away from Garrett and continued on your way. Missing the way he grinned at your remark. 

“ It was nice meeting you as well!” Garrett called after you before murmuring to himself, “Let’s hope our paths cross again soon.” 

And soon it was. The second time you met Garrett he was sat on the floor of the town’s library. The floor of the romance section to be exact. His hair was dry this time, allowing you to see its naturally curly state. The only odd thing being the clothes he wore. They were the exact same pair you had seen him in days ago, and truthfully they looked like they were from another time. 

“Are you going to stare at me all day or actually speak to me?” Garrett turned his head to look at you. His eyes swept over your comfy attire with a small smile. You looked much more relaxed in your casual clothing than in a wet work uniform. 

“I wasn’t staring” You grumbled, “ I was just surprised to see you in the romance section is all.”

Garrett stood and dusted himself off, “ Meeting me in the forest one time is enough to tell you about my reading preferences? Besides, I wanted to see what keeps the romantics entertained these days” 

“Fair enough” You shrug. Your eyes scan the shelves for a moment before settling on the top row. You reach up for the book you wanted, but it remained just out of your reach. A warmth, like the one you often felt through your string, surrounded you from behind. Turning your head you saw Garrett reaching past you to grab the book with ease. 

He hands it down to you with a smirk, “ I believe this what you wanted, my lady” 

“Thank you” Your voice was quiet as it caught in the back of your throat. You weren’t meek by any means but his eyes had taken you off guard. They were red, not like the auburn shade his hair was, but a blood red. You pulled your eyes from his, trailing them over his pale skin until you reached his hands. A silent gasp left your lips as you noticed that Garret’s thread also sprouted from his wrist and that it was pale blue. You shifted your wrist in curiosity, waiting to see if Garrett’s thread would move. When it did your eyes snapped back up to his. Garrett was looking at you softly, yet intently. 

“Are you..” You couldn’t even bring yourself to say it. 

“-Dead?” Garrett finished. You nodded silently, awaiting an answer. Garrett simply looked down at the novel in your hands. Once you followed his gaze it all clicked. Empire of the Vampire.

“Oh..you’re-..you” None of your words felt right. Were you terrified, or curious? Excited perhaps? 

Garrett hooked a finger beneath your chin, guiding you to look up at him again, “ Does it bother you?” 

The waiting expression in his eyes almost seemed sad, “ No, should it?” 

“ No. Just because I’m a monstrous thing does not mean I would harm you” Garrett reassured, “ I’ve grown far too attached to you to hurt you, my dear human.” 

Heat blossomed within your chest alongside confusion. The challenging look in your eye that Garrett had come to cherish returned quickly, “ You’ve only just met me.” 

“ I’ve known about you for ages. Your heartbeat thrummed through my thread and your feelings flooded my head” As if on cue, the warmth you’ve felt all your life thrummed through the thread and into your veins. It all made sense now. All these years Garrett had been your source of comfort while you had been his taste of humanity. 

You exhaled softly, “Where do we go from here?” 

“Wherever you want. You could forget this ever happened and continue your life as is-” The thought of continuing your boring day-to-day with the knowledge of Garrett in the back of your mind felt criminal. 

You were quick to interrupt, “-I don’t want to forget you. I want us to figure this out together.” 

“ Then, by all means, tell me where to start and I’ll follow”, Garrett spoke. He was closer this time, so close that the tip of his nose almost touched yours. 

You took a deep breath, “Start by telling me everything.” 

And so he did. The two of you sat on the floor of the romance section without a care for time. You leaned against the bookshelf as Garrett told you stories of his life and transformation, only pausing when other people passed by. Eventually, he told you about his thread. How it had started around his wrist but then sunk into the skin when he turned into a vampire. After what seemed like hours, Garrett offered to walk you home, in exchange for stories about your own life. Right before the two of you reached your home, Garrett explained the situation with the Cullens. He didn’t want to potentially die in a vampire battle and leave you completely in the dark. Surprisingly, you took it better than he imagined, though he could still feel your worry through the thread. 

“Don’t worry about me, dear human. I have been in many wars” His hands cradled the sides of your face as he looked down at you, “Now inside you go. It is nearly sunrise and you have yet to sleep.” 

“Where will you be tomorrow?” You inquire with longing brewing in your eyes. Part of you felt like he would vanish with the wind. 

Garrett chuckles softly, “I have to check in with Carlisle, but don’t fret, I shall be here when you wake in the morning”

“I could come with you-”

Garrett shakes his head firmly, “ No, some of the others don’t have control of their bloodlust and I would rather keep you alive and safe.”

“Alright, I suppose I’ll see you in the morning then” You detach yourself from his presence and turn to head inside. Once you reach the door, you turn to wave at him once more. He uncrosses his arms for a brief moment to wave back. You dream of him that night, of what your life could’ve been had you been born in his era. Garrett perched himself on a tree as you slept. Staying close enough to keep track of your heartbeat, but not so close that you felt overwhelmed. 

By the time you woke, Garrett had run to Carlisle’s and back already. The run down for the day didn’t take nearly as much time as he thought. He was back in the tree by the time you left the house for the day. 

“No work uniform today either?” He observed.

“Nope, I have today off” You informed him,” Figured I would visit somewhere for lunch, care to join me?” 

Garrett jumped down from the tree, landing skillfully behind you as you began walking, “ I would never say no to time with you, dear human.”

“You’re cheesy” You fought back the blush that coated your cheeks. 

“I prefer to call myself a hopeless romantic, thank you very much” Garrett snarked, “Speaking of romantics, how about I carry you? We would arrive much faster.” 

You snorted out a laugh, “ No thank you. Not every woman is comfortable being picked up off her feet, Garrett” 

“Your independence is going to be the death of my romanticism, just as the British were to peace” He mumbled. 

You stopped walking to face him, “ Did you just compare me to the British invasion?” 

“ Is this the part where I lie or say sorry?” Garrett teased, walking to you with his hands behind his back.

You shook your head with a chuckle, “ The universe expects me to spend forever with you and yet you’ve already insulted me before our first date. Perhaps it should reconsider.”

“ Perhaps it shouldn’t” Garrett hummed, “Not as if it has any say in the matter anymore. You’re stuck with me forever.” 

Your eyes twinkled at the thought, “ Forever?” 

Garrett leaned down until his nose touched yours again, “ Forever.” 

[ornii]

Someone Requested and Akina X Male Reader

(Sorry I had to remove the question cause Tumblr is shit sometimes.) I didn’t forget!

Don’t Let Go

An AU where She doesn’t Die? Sign me up!

You were 22, barely able to drink by most standards but still very Much Legal. You finally started your college courses after two years in the military and a Honorable Discharge after an IED incident that left a few, unhealthy Scars on your body and Psyche. Didn’t stop you from enjoying college life from drinking and girls, but you just felt detached sometimes and it also made it terrifyingly clear how in control you could be of your feelings. Of course that didn’t stop you from constantly being annoyed by your friends, mostly Tara.

It was an after class party that everyone was invited to. The Party was as fun as most College drinking spots were, music, laughing and the clank of glass. Sitting outside on the fire escape a few stories up, your eyes traced along the stars trying to find constellations. Your little tidbit of fun was cut off as you sensed someone walk out on the fire exit too. Akina slumped over to you, also leaning on the railing. Your eyes trail over to look her up and down, she looks worse for wear, definitely not happy, a little drunk, and pissed.

“You look like shit.” You said, “Bite me.” She responds and finishes her beer. She tosses it off the rail and it lands flush in a big Dumpster.

“Nice.” You finish yours and toss it as well. “Alright, what’s got you like this?” You asked, you could tell she was upset, very upset, so something had to be the catalyst to launch this, Anika sighs and clenches her palms hard, as if she’s trying to fight the strength to utter the words.

“Me and, Mindy we.. we broke up.” She admits, this was actually a shock to you. They seemed madly in love, perfect for each other. Relationships obviously have their ups and downs, but you expected them to get married, Adopt.. but this, this is a surprise.

“Oh, wow.. I uh, I’m sorry.” You mutter. Akina shrugs and casually leans her body on your shoulder. There was no Mistake about Anika she’s beautiful, she’s always been beautiful. You hide your racing heart and let it happen, being a shoulder for your friend to cry or pass out on. Reaching down you grab another beer from the tiny ice chest and drink.

“So, what happened?” You ask, and Anika shrugs. “I’m just… tired, we almost got killed by a fuckin cop, his bitch sister and That Loser Ethan…” she admits, and it was true, and for two of the three, you’re the one that put The cop and Ethan 6 feet under. Not like you had much of a choice. “And now she’s acting like everything’s fine. You’re acting like everything’s fine.” She said, obviously getting frustrated.

“I’m just… still a little in Shock I guess, sorry bout that.” You said, “It’s okay to not be okay Anika.. let your feelings be known.” You encourage her, she looks down, fiddling with her fingers. “You’re such a fucking Sap, I love that about you… I love you.” She said in a bit of a slur. You gave her a bit of a side eye for a moment before you leaned more on the railing.

“Thanks Anika… “ you tried not to let her words creep in, she’s not in the right mind. “No, I mean it… you, wanna get out of here?” She asked, you knew what she wanted but stuck to your guns. “Alright, think that’s enough for you.” You said joking. Anika frowns, but then looks you right in your eyes.

“It’s Tara, isn’t it?” She said, and it was. You and Tara aren’t dating but, you felt something for her, you couldn’t tell her. You just couldn’t build up the courage to admit it, but your silence spoke a lot to her. Akina laughed and looked back to the night sky.

“You know, if you two start dating you’re gonna have some big issues.” She started, and you took a swig. “Like what?” You said placing your lips on the bottles head. Akina leans in and whispers, just to make sure you hear her.

“Gonna be tough parking that big trunk in that little garage she’s got.” Your drink went down the wrong hole, coughing up a storm you try to catch your breath as she laughs.

“Jesus you trying to kill me?” You said, shaking it off. She gives a slight pout. “Sorry, didn’t mean to. You alright?” She asked with concern in her voice, you nodded. You and Akina sort of just went back to looking at the sky. Until her hand gently laid on yours.

“When I was on that ladder I thought I was gonna die, you made sure I didn’t..” she said.

“Of course… I wouldn’t let you go.” You reply, and Akina took a deep breathes.

“Please, Don’t let me go.” She said, and you kept your word, holding her hand as you both look up to the sky.

[whumpy-wyrms]

What would Silas be like as a whumpee?

ooh good question i’ve thought about this before A LOT!!

in short, he would be EXTREMELY defiant. like the most defiant, feral, unhinged whumpee you could think of. he’d constantly berate, insult and threaten the whumper until he’d be made physically unable to. he’d bite and scratch, kick and scream, be as violent as he possibly could without holding back in the slightest. if he was restrained because of this, he would literally chew or rip his own arm off to get out of restraints, silver or not.

he’s not afraid of pain, at least not at first. pain, and an equal opponent, is something Silas rarely experiences. so he’d see this as an opportunity for a real exhilarating hunt. he’d welcome pain with open arms. being hurt is FUN to him, in a fucked up way. he knows he can’t actually die unless he’s staked in the heart or burned in the sun, so he’s not afraid of any other pain (at first. it’d get old fast). and like i said, he rarely gets opponents just as strong at him to even cause him pain, so this’ll be a thrilling change of pace.

he’d take amusement in what whumper is doing, the fact they even think they can keep him locked up and break him. he would try to instigate and provoke whumper to make them even more angry and frustrated with him, causing them to lash out more violently. he’d taunt them, tell them to keep hurting him and see what happens, tell them that they’re not even trying, that they can do better than that.

and he’d LAUGH. loud, manic, deranged giggling and maniacal laughter nonstop. he wouldn’t take this situation seriously at ALL, it’s incredibly amusing to him. the fact he’s at this point to begin with is because he ALLOWED it to happen (of course, this might not be true. but it’s what he believes or what he tries to convince whumper to believe). the fact whumper thinks they can do serious harm to Silas is laughable. he still thinks humans are beneath him and that he’ll overpower them and get out of this situation eventually. and when he does, oh, whumper will wished they never crossed paths in the first place. like i said, he’d shout threats nonstop, describing in detail all the horrible ways he’d torture and kill whumper once he gets free. and if he does get free, he WOULD act on his promise.

anyway, if he doesn’t get free, obviously he wouldn’t last like this forever. he’d eventually get tired of all this and try to escape, wanting to return to his normal life of tormenting weaker humans, and he’d have a lot of ways. he’d easily kill whumper if he could (maybe the reason why he didn’t before was because he wanted to ride this out and see how far he could push whumper into hurting him, see what he’d do). if not, he’d break his own body in ways he’d be able to escape whenever they locked him up. he’d just dig or claw his way out of the cage or cell, bend the bars, break the chains, whatever. he wouldn’t let himself get to the point where he was too weak to do that (assuming he’s being starved the whole time). if his restraints are made of silver, he might be more hesitant but he’d easily touch that with bare skin if it means getting free. if he’s out of his restraints, he can also just turn into a bat and escape through small spaces too.

if whumper actually locks him up to where there’s physically no possible chance of him ever escaping, then things will be different. i’m not really sure how long term captivity would go exactly, there’d be a lot of different things to take into consideration. but the thought of Silas being a broken and conditioned, quiet and compliant whumpee just doesn’t feel right to me. i think he’d just keep fighting until he’s broken in a different way. he’d literally just drive himself completely insane. i don’t know how to explain it but he’d be a demented, monstrous beast until the end. he’d lose all sense of his humanity. that IS if he wasn’t being drugged or anything else that could potentially change his behavior

i did this one rp on discord once with @loonybun (using tupper bots. it was not taken seriously at first but it got good at the end) where Silas gets taken down by a doctor whumper. it was great. he kept like poking the bear and encouraging Vian (evil doctor guy) to shoot him and see what happens. Vian keeps shooting at him and missing since Silas has inhuman speed and could easily dodge the bullets. whenever he did shoot him, even just slightly, Silas would smile all bloodily and laugh while continuing to taunt him. Vian eventually shoots him with a stronger weapon and Silas finally gets knocked down. Vian then injects him with something and during that whole ordeal, Silas is laughing maniacally and spitting out threat after threat before finally slipping into unconsciousness.

so if he were ever a lab whumpee and constantly kept in a drugged state, this would definitely affect the way he’d act. this is the same with mind control or anything else that can actually alter his behavior. but in general, Silas would always be pretty defiant until the end :)

[onhiatus-xxsksxx]

Almost Heaven

Summary:

Mulder’s attempt to find more exciting cases to investigate while stuck in the bullpen turns into another weekend trip to the forest.

Meanwhile, Scully is faced with a tempting offer that could change both her future and their lives.

This story is complete, and I’m going to post one chapter a day.

AO3 | Back to the Beginning | @today-in-fic

Chapter 3: Drivin’ Down the Road, I Get a Feelin’

Interstate 66 Saturday, November 28th, 1998, 7:30 am

Scully turned her face towards the car window, trying to cover a yawn. They were already outside the city, heading west. Leave it to Mulder to knock on her door at 6:30 in the morning, eyes bright and restless like a five-year-old on the way to the ballpark.

You could’ve said no, her inner voice pointed out helpfully. She smiled to herself. Not likely. She loved their little adventures nearly as much as Mulder did. Not that she’d ever admit that to him. Scully gave him a sideways glance. Mulder was humming along to the radio, chewing on a sunflower side. She watched him reach into the bag between their seats, pulling out another seed and licking the salt off of its shell. No, there were certainly worse places to be on a Saturday morning than being in a car with Mulder.

And he’d brought her her cup of coffee, of course. Perfect, like always. She took a sip of the still-hot liquid and felt the caffeine enter her bloodstream, waking her up a bit more.

Scully loved their little routines as of late. They’d always been close, but since their return from Antarctica, things have shifted. She glanced into her cup, watching the coffee swirl. Now Mulder brought her coffee each morning just how she liked it. And he never left the office without giving her shoulder a little squeeze or brushing her arm before wishing her a good evening. And of course, the calls where they now talked about more than just work. She’d told him about her Sunday lunch with her mother just a few days ago, both of them laughing about the stories her mother had told. And they’d begun to end those calls with wishes for sweet dreams, good nights, and long pauses. Scully closed her eyes against the warm rush that made her face flush and her heart race.

It wasn’t like she wasn’t following her own routines now, either. She didn’t even ask when she touched him wherever she felt like it these days. Scully was surprised he hadn’t called her out yet on constantly checking him over, brushing through his hair, feeling his back and chest, or just grabbing his arm. Picking up the phone after the first ring each night probably wasn’t secretive either, she sighed. Whatever was going on, it seemed to be an underlying agreement between them that they keep doing it—unfortunately, without talking about it.

What else is new? she wondered. Their unspoken communication was great, but sometimes she wished Mulder would also use words. And you’re talking to him about it? her inner voice questioned, and she sank deeper into her seat, taking another sip of her coffee. No, she wasn’t either. That was true. But that needed to change. She was tired of running in circles.

She leaned sideways in her seat, pressing her shoulder into the back so she could watch him fully. “So, where are we going exactly, Mulder? I believe you skipped that part on the phone last night.”

Mulder turned to her briefly before turning his eyes back to the road. “Does ’Country roads, take me home’ ring any bells for you, Scully?” he grinned.

She gave him a confused look. “What does John Denver have to do with our little trip? Please don’t tell me some farmer has seen his ghost in a national forest.”

Mulder laughed and then puckered his lower lip into a pout. “No ghosts, Scully. Just some good old mystery.” He pulled out another sunflower seed from the bag and put it on the tip of his tongue. “Only two more hours, and we’ll be there. You’ll get to visit the beautiful state of West Virginia. It’ll be fun,” he added, wiggling his eyebrows.

Scully sighed and turned towards the vents, trying to adjust the airflow. The windshield wipers were working at a steady pace to keep the constant rain off the windshield. “I hope you’re not planning on us traipsing around in this weather, Mulder. Nothing says ’fun’ like being soaking wet.”

“Think of it as an adventure. I know you like adventures.”

She glanced at him, feeling almost giddy with their easy banter. “My idea of a fun adventure involves less rain and more heat. And maybe a nice, cozy cabin with a fireplace.”

Mulder raised an eyebrow and winked at her. “Keep talking, Agent Scully! What about the heat?” he wiggled his eyebrows.

“Be careful what you wish for. I might be willing to turn up the heat—and you might not be able to handle it after all,” she playfully replied, not shying away from his look.

Mulder blinked, but was the first to break eye contact, his eyes refocusing on the road. He took another sunflower seed, chewing thoughtfully. “Ever heard of the West Virginia Mothman, Scully? I plan on making his acquaintance today.”

Scully kept watching him, a small smile playing on her lips. “I can’t say I have, Mulder. But if it’s got you fascinated, I’m not sure, it’s something I want to meet in the first place,” she quipped.

Mulder smiled at her indulgently. “Oh, you of little faith. Wait and see. We’re going to meet Mr. Murphy at ten, and he’ll show us to the clearing where he saw the Mothman.”

A clearing in the forest and a Mothman? So much for that fantasy of a weekend getaway, she sighed, leaning back in her seat. But secretly, she couldn’t suppress a smile. She loved it when Mulder got like that. His enthusiasm was utterly contagious and was one of the many things that had made the decision to stay on this weird assignment all those years ago surprisingly easy. She shook her head at herself. Mulder’s passion for the unexplainable might be charming, but one of these days it will get us killed, no doubt.

“You know, Mulder, sometimes I wonder if your mysterious creature sightings aren’t just your way of getting me alone in the middle of nowhere.”

Mulder chuckled, his eyes still on the road. “And what if you were right?”

Scully’s smile widened, and she leaned her head back against the headrest, closing her eyes. “Then I’d say you’re more of a romantic than I would have thought,” she joked lightly, but her tone held some seriousness.

Mulder glanced at her, a genuine smile on his lips. “Who knows, Scully? Maybe I am.”

[captmickey]

Even More Confessionals, a Three Adventurers fanfic

Yes I did make a sequel fic to this. Yes I am aware it was a vent fic. You think that'll stop me?

---

His ribs hurt.

Graham sat on the bed at the inn and constantly touched the sore spots. It wasn’t like Guybrush to lash out the way he did, and he knew that there had to have been some reason (not necessarily a good one) for the way he behaved, but that didn’t negate just how much of a pain it was to try and take a deep breath.

Then again, he thought, maybe he shouldn’t be constantly poking at the various bat shaped bruises.

After he had sent Link to go after Guybrush, the Hylian came back looking properly wiped. It wasn’t entirely fair of Graham to send the one particular hero that barely speaks to do the talking, but seeing how his shoulders were somewhat sagged had him sigh in (painful) relief that he did the right choice. So when he asked where Guybrush was, Link looked behind him and explained that he’ll catch up back at the inn.

And back at the inn he was short two companions.

Graham looked at the window, trying to catch a glimpse of either of them when he heard faint voices from the door, quickly turning his attention there.

“And I’m telling you, it’s fine.” Link sighed. “Just stop thinking.”

“You’re asking a lot out of me with that one.” Guybrush’s voice muttered.

“As was ‘please stop beating up Graham, he’s not your enemy’ when you proceeded to beat him up.”

“You’re not gonna let that one go, are you.”

“You have the pit, I have this.” Link opened the door, his expression shifting from deadpanned to warm when he looked at Graham. “We’re back.”

“Welcome back.” Graham greeted, trying to sit up but winced slightly as he moved himself from the bed to them. “Need a hand?”’

“Nah, you don’t need to worry about that. You sit.” Link reassured him. “Guybrush has it handled.”

“He does?” Graham asked and looked, seeing Guybrush standing just behind Link, his eyes looking literally everywhere but at himself. 

Link closed the door, locking it even to make sure no ‘fans’ or ‘spectators’ barged in on the off chance that one of them was going to raise their voice. Guybrush, still adamant to look away, placed the basket of ingredients and potions to the side, fidgeting slightly with the ring on his finger.

He was nervous.

Noting the suffocating tension in the room, Link clapped his hands. 

“So I did my fair share of talking that I’m going to now properly shut up while you two hash things out. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get this medicine thing going… shouldn’t be too complicated.” Link picked up the basket. “Have fun.”

Graham and Guybrush made a slight face before Link disappeared into the next room and left the two alone with the pirate still fiddling with his ring and Graham absentmindedly rubbing his ribs. Neither of them knew who would or should speak first, constantly opening and closing their mouths as though maybe, hopefully, the right words would slip right out. But when that didn’t happen and that unbearable silence continued, it was Guybrush who let out a tired sigh and lowered his head briefly before looking up at Graham, his wedding ring still being used to fidget with.

“I’m sorry.”

Graham stared stunned, it was definitely not like Guybrush to get straight to the point. But even more shocking, it wasn’t like himself to stay quiet while someone apologized.

“I… shouldn’t have done what I did, and I know I’ve acted like… like…”

“A total jerk?” Graham blurted out, managing to just barely catch himself from properly cursing the pirate out.

Guybrush paused, scoffed, and nodded, still fidgeting with his ring.

“Yeah… though I’d probably use more, uh, colorful words.” 

“I already did that for you!” Link shouted from the otherside.

He nodded once more. “Yeah, yeah he did…”

“Great, then I don’t need to.” Graham shifted his weight. “Because I have a few words that would make even Amaya blush.”

“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t fault you for using them at me.” Guybrush said, his voice sounding slightly choked.

“I could, but I won’t.” Graham pressed.

But oh how he wanted to say it, he thought.

“Because it’ll honestly be counter-productive and more to that…” Graham briefly looked away, putting the right words together, “more to that… what would be the point?”

“Because I hurt you?” Guybrush sounded confused.

“So the proper thing to do instead of talking is to double down what made you mad? Guybrush, did you seriously think I didn’t hear what everyone else was saying?” Graham’s brows furrowed. “I obviously did, and the only reason I didn’t do anything was because if I didn’t block, you’d probably would’ve swung that bat at my head.”

Guybrush opened his mouth to counter but Graham shook his head and cut him off.

“Actually, probably not. You still had pretty good precision when blinded. So the head hitting is definitely not true.” Graham took a breath and winced slightly. “Kind of… kind of impressive, actually.”

“Um… was that a compliment?”

A pause and Graham shrug.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Oh. Thanks?” Guybrush hesitantly took the compliment before he took another breath, clearly trying to keep his cool. “Look, I know there’s no justifying what I did. There isn’t. And I already blew up at Link–”

“He sure did!”

Guybrush scoffed. “But what I’m trying to say– what I WANT to say, is that I unabashedly stepped out of line, and I completely lost it and it wasn’t right or fair that you took the brunt of it. And I can say that the only reason I did was… was because you were the favored one, and I got tired of being… not. And it stemmed even before you but that whole thing just– ugh, it tipped and boiled over and it’s stupidly childish now that I say it outloud.”

He paused and his fidgeting slowed down as he gripped the ring tightly, focusing his stare at the golden band instead of the archer’s sharp stare. “I wouldn’t fault you if you, y’know, wanted me at a distance. Probably the least I can do.”

“No way.”

Guybrush looked up, startled.

“Huh?”

“You heard me. No way.” Graham reiterated, emphasizing each word. “If I did that, I’m just pressing that whole image, and then what good would that do for either of us?”

“I mean, you don’t… have to be nice– ow!” Guybrush rubbed his forehead, not realizing Graham took a step closer to properly flick him on his forehead.

“I care, but I’m entitled to be angry, Guybrush. As are you. And yeah, you know what, I was and am actually extremely mad, but I’d be more upset if we stopped being friends because I let a fleeting emotion get in the way. And I might be mad for a while, but I promise I’ll be fine later. Like I know you will.” Graham paused and took a breath, pushing down that bubble in his chest. 

“The point I’m trying to make is that I’m hurt because you think I didn’t care. That you swung at me the way you did and then proceeded to storm off without so much as letting me in. I care because you’re my friend, and even if you weren’t, I’d still care. I’ll let you be mad just as I ask that you let me. Alright?”

Guybrush stared, taking in his words and nodded. 

“Alright.” He conceded. “Um… is there a way I can make it up to you? Not… sure how, though.”

“One hit.”

“Huh?”

Graham leaned back and had one finger pointed. “I get to have one hit on you, you can’t block.”

“The flick to the forehead didn’t count?”

“Hardly!” Graham scoffed.

Guybrush looked around the room once more and sighed. “Okay. Sure. When?”

“Now.”

“Now?!” 

When Graham nodded his head, Guybrush stopped, took a breath and pursed his lips. 

“Fine. Alright.” He closed his eyes and braced himself. “So… on a count or–”

C R A C K

“MOTHER F––!”

“ZARDS!”

“What in Hylia–?!” Link rushed out with a bottle in hand, catching sight of two men groaning in absolute pain.

Guybrush, who had his hands covering his face, was keeled over and lashing out a string of profanities that made the Hylian blush a little and Graham, on the opposite side, curled up cradling both his wounded ribs and officially bruised hand. Neither of them looked to have broken anything, but the bruises was going to be deep and painful.

Link slouched, staring at the two in a deadpanned disbelief.

“Graham, did you punch Guybrush?” He asked.

“Retribution… zards that hurt…” Graham groaned.

“Mm-hmm, ribs be damned. Guybrush, did you consent to that?”

“Least I can do… ow…”

“Annnnd you forgot Graham has a mean right hook being an archer. Wonderful. Good job, the both of you. Feeling better?”

They both groaned, but even Link knew that it was their own, very twisted, way of saying yes. He eyed the bottle and then the two of them and sighed.

“I’ll make more salve.”