#It was supposed to be last week but i remembered i had a lab so i rescheduled

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[cotton-glass]

vent ig

[leviraaaaaa]

“Levi!”

You barge through the door, all dramatic, gasping and panting, purposely exaggerating to get his attention. But not to your surprise, he didn’t even bother looking up.

“I suppose no one ever taught you, but there’s a concept called knocking.” He said, his eyes fully focused on the papers. His hand moving across it as he wrote. “It’s quite easy really, you raise your hand and—”

“Levi!” You cut him off, slamming the door behind you loudly. “Levi, my beloved, my savior in dark times, I am in need of your help.”

“Slamming the door isn’t very polite either. Your manners get worse everyday.”

You waved him off, shushing him. You made way across the room, where a couch sat not far from the desk he was sitting on, and flopped down face first. “Levi.” Your voice came out muffled.

“Ah yes, making yourself home I see.” He sighs.

“Levi, I need your help. Real bad.”

“No.”

“What–” You look up, raising your face from the cushions, offended. “You didn’t even–”

“No.” He repeated, eyes not leaving his work for even a second. “Please, get off my couch. Cleaning it is tiresome.”

“Levi.” You whined, impatient at his aloofness. “Levi, he’s going to kill me.”

“I’ll buy you a good coffin.”

“This isn’t funny.” You huffed. “I’m dead. Like literally. Absolutely. This is where it all ends.”

“I’d rather you not die on my couch.”

“Fuck your couch.” You flipped yourself, so you splayed on your back now. You tilted your head, staring at him. “Help me out. Please?”

Levi finally turns to look at you, unable to ignore you any longer. He frowned. “What?” He asked warily. “What did you do this time?”

“Promise me you’ll help me first.” You said.

“No.” He immediately rejects you. “What did you do? Did you get into a fight with an MP again?”

You shook your head.

“Blew up something in Hange’s lab?” He guessed.

“No. But I’d really rather it was Hange mad at me though.”

He looked at you confused, “Who did you piss off then? “

You grimaced. He was quick to conclude.

“Ah.” He realizes. “Erwin.”

A nod from you answers him.

“What did you do?”

“Ask me what I didn’t do.”

“What didn’t you do?”

“Work.” You sat up. “In my defense, it was a shit load of work. And I hate paperwork. And I kept procrastinating. And now it’s due by tomorrow and I didn’t remember until two minutes ago when Erwin shot a glare at me. And now I—”

“I’m not helping you.”

“Why not?” You demanded.

“It’s your fault. Don’t drag me into this shit.” He grumbles, scowling. “And you promised last time, you wouldn’t do this anymore. I’m not doing your work for you. I have enough on my plate.”

“Okay first of all, I’m not lazy. I was busy–”

“Ogling Garrison captains.”

“They’re pretty. And no, not the point, shut up.” You protested. “I was busy. And I didn’t come here so you could do it for me. I came here so you could go and talk to Erwin.”

Levi frowned, “Talk to him about what?”

“Tell him to give me one more day. Swear I’d work my ass off.”

“You said that last time too.” He pointed it out. “How angry is Erwin?”

You made a face. “Bad.”

“How bad?”

“He keeps glaring at me everytime I meet him. It’s the ‘if you don’t get it done this time, you’re gonna get in so much shit’ glare. It’s creeping me out.”

Levi scoffs, shaking his head. “Only you." He said. "Only you can possibly manage piss fucking Erwin off. The guy's a fucking monk, nothing affects him.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “If I had to guess, I’d say this isn’t the first time asking for an extension.”

“Err…” You ducked your face. “It was kinda supposed to be done 2 weeks ago.”

“2 weeks?” Levo looked at you incredulously. “No wonder he’s pissed. And you’re asking for more time?”

“One more day. Just one more day. Please Levi, he’ll listen to you.”

Levi stares at your pleading expression for a few seconds with narrowed eyes, considering. Thinking. Then he seemed to have made up his mind.

“No.”

“Wha—” You jerk upright. You really thought you’d convinced him.

“No. I’m not getting you out of the grave this time. Specially since you dug it yourself.” He returns his attention back to his work. “Good luck to you, but leave now. And learn a damn lesson.”

You stared at him, gaping. “Wow," You blinked you’re an asshole.”

“Congratulations for realizing that.”

You exhaled. Easy words won’t work, you knew. So, here comes plan A. Acting.

You pouted.

“Don’t look at me like that. I said what I said.”

You fluttered your lashes, all wide shiny eyes, about to cry.

“Get out before I start throwing shit at you.”

“Levi.” Plan B. Bribing.

“No.”

“Leeviii.”

“No.”

“Levi, aren’t you the sweetest, most dearest, my absolute favorite and delightful and super awesome with extra sugar on top bestiest best friend? Don’t be like that, c’mon.”

“Still no. And we’re not friends.”

“‘I’ll make you pie?” You offered.

“You can’t cook to save your life. No.”

"I'll give you hugs."

"I will slap you."

“Levi.” Plan C. Threatening.

He glares back at you.

"You do realize you could've used this time getting the report started instead of trying to convince me and actually might've manage to get it done?”

“I’ll read poetry to you.” You threatened.

Levi looks up, finally there’s a hint of alarm on his face. “No, you won’t.”

“I’ll make sure all your food touch.”

“Get out.”

“I’ll disorganize your bookshelf and fill it with those titan x scout love novels.”

He raised his middle finger at you.

“I will start telling you about all my exes.”

He cringed visibly.

Finally, you gave up. Dragging yourself off the couch, you slowly, pathetically, miserably made your way to the door. You knew that the odds were very low that Levi would actually help you this time, because he was right. You needed to learn a lesson. And it was your fault.

“Oi.”

Your hand was on the doorknob. “What?” You turned to look at him grumpily.

Levi was pinching the bridge of his nose, knitting his eyebrows together, irritated and annoyed. Like he was about to do something he regretted.

He let out a long exhale.

“Bring it here. I’ll help you.”

“What?” You asked, disbelief dripping from your tone. Were you dreaming?

“I’ll help you out. Just this time.” He grunts. “Don’t expect it again. And I’ll only guide you, you’re doing the most of it.”

Music to your ears.

“Really?”

“Go before I change my mind.” He huffed.

You broke into a wide grin, beaming up at him. “No wonder I love you.”

“The feeling is not mutual.”

“You’re the best,”

“Shut up.”

“The best. The most darling, the loveliest, the coolest, the–”

“10 seconds. I’m giving you 10 seconds.”

“Oh–” Your eyes widened. You learnt the hard way Levi usually means his time limits. “Okay, okay, wait here, wait. I’ll be right back. Just–”

And you were out the door,

“Fucking idiot.” He groaned to himself, as you yet again, slammed the door.

He wish he knew why he kept doing this to himself.

[roses-r-rosie3]

Prank You Very Much

Jason Todd x M!Reader

Warnings: Crack, Jason & Damian being pranksters,

Summary: Jason and Damian are having a prank war and the reader gets caught in the middle of it

A/n: This is very inspired by the "Prank you very much" Episode from lab rats.

Quote: "You two have been pulling pranks on each other for three weeks straight and I always end up paying for it!"

✁ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

You didn't know how Jason and Damian's whole petty prank war started, nor did you want to know. But what you did know was that you were always caught in the middle of it. Like last week when you were hanging out with Jason. Jason was in the middle of playing some type of video game and you got up to use the restroom, leaving only Jason and Damian in the room.

"Hey Damian could you grab me a water, I'm trying to beat my high score, and if I stop this cyborg will melt me, and if that happens the colonial bomb will go off and if that happens-"

"I will get your water just stop talking" Damian said in annoyance.

But then Damian stopped and remembered the prank war that was still ongoing.

"I know your tricks Todd you're not going to fool me" Damian said confidently.

All of a sudden you came out of the hallway and into the kitchen area.

"Hey Jay, I was thinking I should make your family something to eat before we have to go" You said as you walked up to the fridge.

"DON'T OPEN THE-"

BAM!

(Btw I love this episode of Lab Rats sm😭❤️)

When you opened the fridge a mix of mustard, ketchup, and mayo blasted onto your face and body.

"Fridge.."

You slowly turned around in anger to give Jason the death-glare. Damian stood there, trying to hold in his laughter.

"Someone's getting put in the doghouse~" Damian whistled.

"Would it help at all if I said that was supposed to be Damian's face?" Jason laughed nervously.

"Jason Peter Todd!" you yelled.

Jason scrambled out of the room quicker than even the flash could.

"Well y/n because of this whole.. fiasco.. I would assume that you are taking my side in me and your boyfriend's little rivalry" Damian suggested.

Now it was Damian's turn to receive a death-glare from you, and he too scrambled out the room.

And a couple days ago when you were getting ready in your shared apartment with Jason. When you got out the shower and looked into the mirror your hair was hot pink.

"Jason!" You yelled.

Jason came rushing into your room and saw your hair and immediately bursted out laughing.

"This isn't funny! I had things I had to do today!" you complained.

"I'm guessing Damian put hair dye in the wrong shampoo bottle. HA! wait a minute.. how did he get into our apartment.." Jason said.

"Can this day get any worse" you whined as you picked up the blow dryer.

When you turned on the blow dryer, baby powder and glitter came flying out of it, causing Jason to laugh even harder. It took you all day to get the dye and glitter out of your hair. You finally decided that enough was enough, and that you were going to end it. You asked Alfred for a little favor and your plan was complete.

That day, Jason and Damian were walking upstairs from training, and the fresh scent of Alfred’s famous chocolate chip cookies filled the air. Jason and Damian were immediately alured by the smell and went straight to the kitchen. As soon as they stepped inside, a trap was set, and little did they know, they were hanging upside down.

"Hey! What is this!" Damian yelled.

"It was me, with a bit of help from Alfred, but that's not the point" you said as you revealed yourself.

"You two have been pulling pranks on each other for 3 weeks straight and I always end up paying for it!" you said.

"He started it!" Jason said as he pointed to Damian.

"Well if you didn't dye Titus pink then-"

"Enough! I am sick of your pranks so if you don't stop, for Jason, I will burn all of your pride and prejudice books" you said as you held Jason's book in your hand.

"You wouldn't dare!" Jason gasped.

"Pffft, really you're that concerned over a book?" Damian scoffed.

"And for your Damian, I will shave off all of Alfred's hair" you said as Alfred (the cat) snuggled next to your leg.

"That's evil!" Damian yelled.

"Now, will the two of you stop your prank war? Or do I have to stick to my word?" you asked.

"Yes!"

"Deal!"

You clicked the button on your phone, and both of them were let down. After that day, both Damian and Jason learned something important. Damian learned not to get on your bad side, and Jason learned to hide his books in a safer place if he ever pissed you off.

[rottenpumpkin13]

Reverse the scenario. Sephiroth, the Soldier that is one of the strongest and most highly decorated in shinra, is degrading. He hides it from everyone. He is supposed to be strong. He isn’t supposed to show any weakness. How could a training accident lead to him slowly wasting away? He was better than this. He was built better than any of them!

How does Sephiroth handle being the only one degrading. How do Angeal and Genesis and even Zack handle finding out the truth that their silver general is sick and possibly dying.

The fic I'll never write , titled "Metamorphosis"

• Just as someone might be consumed by guilt after committing a grievous act, Genesis was quite the opposite. Initially, he refused to admit his wrongs for weeks—until relentless overthinking led him to review his actions, pushing the guilt deeper until he finally acquiesced to the possibility that he might have been wrong.

• But this wasn't the case in the training room that day. The guilt that overwhelmed Genesis as he saw Sephiroth lying there, unresponsive, with the red rapier piercing his shoulder was all-consuming. An immediate, "Oh goddess, what have I done" encased him as Angeal screamed at him to stop the simulation, watching the blood pool beneath Sephiroth.

• Angeal knew no man was unbreakable, a belief solidified by his father's death. And yet he often suspected Sephiroth was an exception; the man possessed an indescribable resilience, persisting through anything, even on the brink of death. But no one was invincible, not saints, not heroes, and certainly not Sephiroth.

• SOLDIERs gawked and stared, some even crying in concern, wanting to know what was happening as Genesis and Angeal sprinted down the hallway with him, en route to Hojo's lab—a place they would rather peel their skin off than send Sephiroth. But what choice did they have? For the first time, the red on Genesis' coat was not from the leather but from fresh blood as he carried Sephiroth, rushing into the lab.

• Naturally Hojo and his team were already waiting. Of course. Hojo was always watching, always aware of what was happening with his favorite specimen. They pried Sephiroth off Genesis—pale and unresponsive—and Angeal had to pry Genesis kicking and screaming from the doors that closed behind them.

• The last they saw of Sephiroth, his silver hair was tainted with blood, and his shoulder, bare after they ripped off the coat and pauldrons, was blackening around the mangled skin. The last thing Sephiroth remembered was Genesis charging at him full force as he miscalculated the blow. The first thing he saw upon waking was Hojo grinning down at him—an alarming contrast.

• Curiously, Hojo sent Sephiroth back to his quarters after a night of observation. The professor was giddy, excited, and Sephiroth suspected it was due to the opportunity to study how his body reacted to the new injury. Typical.

• The injury itself was severe—his shoulder was badly damaged and healing slowly. The pain left him biting back groans as he lay in bed, sweating as the pain gripped his flesh, demanding his attention with not a single distraction to mollify the suffering. It was good that Angeal had a key, or else he wouldn't have been able to let them in otherwise.

• They tried to stay and help that night, but Sephiroth was in too much pain to speak and tell them what he needed, and eventually they were asked to leave. They expected Sephiroth to rest for the next week until it healed, but he was back to work the next day, with a visible patch of bandages beneath his coat and his demeanor as stoic and unbothered as ever—or at least that’s what Sephiroth wanted them to think. In truth, he was in so much pain he could barely perform his tasks without stopping to catch his breath and addressing how his body refused to cooperate.

• He had been excused from missions until it healed, which was not a good thing for him, because if he were able-bodied, an assignment would've been the perfect distraction from the pain. His body was different, and he didn't like it. He didn't like it when things happened to his body, and even less when they were out of his control. Professor Hojo had asked to meet with him soon, and for the first time, Sephiroth welcomed the possibility that the man would've been able to do something to help.

• Angeal and Genesis tried to get close to him, and even Angeal's student once tried to ask how Sephiroth was and told him that everyone was concerned for him, but Sephiroth brushed Zack off. The same went for Genesis and Angeal. It wasn’t that he was mad at Genesis; he just had no energy to deal with his friends’ attempts to help on top of the injury.

• He worried about why it wasn't healing. He had never experienced an injury this severe, and even the invasive surgeries Hojo once performed on him were less excruciating . He didn't even know why they were concerned. Soon he would be fine; he just needed to get through this.

• But to Genesis and Angeal, it wasn't just a matter of him being fine and needing to persevere. Sephiroth was changing right before their eyes, right before everyone's eyes. Despite spending less time with people these days—he didn't want to be near them—the transformation was visible.

• It was a physical change. Sephiroth's skin, once bright and luminous, was now pallid, with faint blue veins tracing his neck and chest. His eyes were lifeless, with dark circles indicating his lack of sleep. He had grown thinner, his appetite vanishing in favor of the craving for a cure for whatever it was that plagued him.

• His hair had grown slightly brittle, a subtle change only he noticed from staring at it daily. But the most concerning change was in his eyes. They were turning red. Sephiroth wasn't vain, but even he found the change unsettling. Despite all his qualms about the unnaturalness of his body, he had been healthy before. He had been whole. And he didn't realize that had kept him sane until he lost it.

• The meeting with Hojo finally came. He was sitting in the chair in his office when Hojo threw a thick folder into his lap harshly, one titled "The Jenova Project." Sephiroth didn’t understand. He asked what his mother had to do with this, and Hojo replied, "Everything."

• According to Hojo, Jenova was the catalyst for the changes ravaging Sephiroth's body. As her son, it was inevitable that he would begin to mirror her, with the metamorphosis already happening. Sephiroth was confused. Was his mother not human?

• And so he read the file Hojo provided him with. And read. And read and read until no one saw him for a week. Genesis appeared in the labs demanding to know what happened to Sephiroth, as last anyone heard, he had been going there to see Hojo. But all anyone said was that Sephiroth was busy. Busy where, they didn’t say, and Genesis had no idea Sephiroth was holed up in the archives, reading like a man possessed.

• Until a week later.

• Rumors said that Sephiroth had been cleared for missions by Hojo, but Angeal and Genesis didn’t believe it until Sephiroth strode into the SOLDIER floor briefing room one bright morning, looking satisfied despite the physical decline which had not improved.

• He greeted them cordially as they all sat down, and Angeal asked him how he was feeling.

"I'm much better now," Sephiroth replied, his smile all teeth with not an ounce of sincerity. "I know how to cure myself now."

Genesis and Angeal were skeptical.

"How?" Genesis asked.

"My mother has the cure," Sephiroth said. "I’m going to see her in Nibelheim."

[all-alone-he-turns-to-stone]

10 Seconds to Remember

Soldier Boy Masterlist

Summary: When Payback gave him to the Russian like he was only a lab rat to be tortured and tested on, it wasn’t the worst they did. They also killed the love of his life right in front of his eyes. Now that he’s back, Soldier Boy is more than ready for revenge. Everything goes according to plan until he meets you again.

Pairing: Soldier Boy x GN!Reader

Word Count: 4137

Warning: lots of angst, slight graphic violence, feels, memory loss

Rating: everyone

A/n: So it’s been a while, i’ve been so busy!! With Comiccon coming and my panel to write and plan, and work being hell... Anyway, this was requested by an anon, I don’t know if they are still around cause it’s been more than a year, but here you go!

It’d been a couple of weeks since he was freed, but it still felt like he was there.

Only weeks since he was freed from his personal hell, left Russia and joined The Boys.

And they had a deal. He would kill Homelander for them if they helped him find his old team that betrayed him. They put him there in the first place, they gave him to the Russians like some sort of rat they could experience on. But that wasn’t the worst Payback did.

He could still hear them. The screams. They were haunting his nights, they haunted him when he was frozen for so many years in that box, and now that he was awake… It was even worse.

He couldn’t even remember who those screams belonged to. He remembered the pain he felt when he saw it happen. He remembered the red filling his sight when the hands destroyed the only person he ever loved. He remembered the bones breaking like fragile branches.

He remembered now. The screams were his as he was forced to watch you be tortured.

You couldn’t possibly speak when it happened, not with all the blood flowing through your mouth as Black Noir hit you in the guts. You couldn’t even make a sound when Crimson Countess broke your bones one by one. All you could do was look at him and hope he wouldn't get the same faith.

It was with the last remaining forces that you did it. As life slowly got ripped apart from you, your lips parted and formed silent words. 

Close your eyes, count to ten.

That was before he was sent to Russia. His team killed you before they attacked him and placed a mask over his mouth that sent him into a deep sleep. He always thought it was to anger him that they killed you first. Because even he, Soldier Boy, was unable to think correctly under a strong wave of rage. And it worked.

Turned out, seeing the love of his life getting brutally killed in front of him was traumatizing enough to leave a mark.

Weeks had gone by and so far, Soldier Boy had managed to get revenge on the Countess and the TNT Twins. He thought it would relieve some of his pain, to kill those who took away his love and betrayed him. But the more he slaughtered and let himself go to his rage, the more anger was added inside of him. Like a boiling tornado, it kept expanding inside of his chest, burning painfully. And when it exploded…

It destroyed everything around him.

Finding Mindstorm was harder and longer than planned, so of course, Soldier Boy was getting frustrated. It was not going like he wanted. There was no time to lose there, he thought Butcher and the other nerd could help him for fuck sake. Stuck in too much anger, he decided it was enough and left the house he was supposed to stay in to wander into the city.

There were not many clothes he could wear out without attracting attention, so he had to borrow some from the bearded guy. Even then, everything ran small, so he was left with only one choice… It wasn’t too bad, but still, Soldier Boy cringed more than once at the Hawaiian shirt he had to wear as he walked through the quiet roads of the city. He was still complaining about it when he suddenly stopped dead in tracks. 

Stuck in the middle of the road, he stayed motionless. Some people complained he was blocking the path, but he didn’t move. Something here… seemed familiar. A scent, a feeling, the sight of something from the corner of his eyes…

Soldier Boy blinked. Once, twice, then closed his eyes and pressed his fingers on his lids hard enough to see colors appearing. He counted to 10 and breathed slowly. And when he opened them, it was like he was back in time.

People were walking around him, all wearing more formal clothes. Old, beautiful cars were parked on either side of the road. And to his right, a shop. There was a big bay window up front so he could easily see inside. It was filled with even older things, books, mostly. And in the middle of all that history and paper, there was you.

Soldier Boy blinked again, getting back to the present. Impatient people were complaining to him. Ugly cars took all the place on the damaged road. It wasn’t the same anymore, not after all the years he lost. Time had ruined everything, ate the vegetation, destroyed life itself. But when he turned his head to look at where you used to work…

His breath caught in his throat. It had to be a dream. Soldier Boy turned his body completely towards the shop, and without him controlling his limbs, walked inside. The bell chimed when he opened the door, announcing a new customer.

And with the brightest smile, the person behind the counter welcomed him.

“Hello! Welcome. Please, take a look around. I’m here if you have any questions!”

If he wasn’t so steady and strong, Ben would have fallen to his knees. He could feel his legs shaking as he walked closer to the counter where you were.

It was like time had no reach to the shop. It was the same as what he remembered. The outside was ruined by time and human choices, but the inside…

It felt warm. Cozy. Comfortable. The smell of old paper reigned there, it was almost overwhelming, but he knew it didn’t bother you. There were so many books on the shelves, piled on the tables and stacked in boxes that it was impossible to count them all. Behind the glass at the entrance, old newspaper, comic books, furniture and typewriters. Even the cash register was old school.

And then, there was you.

“Y/n…?”

If he had doubts this was real, Soldier Boy had the confirmation when you turned your head to the sound of your name. And when he saw what you were wearing around your neck, the last doubt left his mind.

“Yes? How do you know my name?”

Pain.

Simply.

His visions got blurred, his head spinning.

Hope pressed down heavily in his guts when you said those words. Gravity pushed down on his whole body, he felt crushed under it, like every single one of his bones were breaking, unable to support him anymore.

And inside of him, his heart was shattering in a thousand pieces.

You clearly didn’t remember him… If it was really you.

He had so many questions, so many thoughts running through his head. Doubts. He wanted to scream at you to tell the truth. What was going on? What happened? How was this possible? 

Was it really you?

But nothing.

His mouth opened, but only silence could be heard. It was the first time Soldier Boy felt inevitably weak. He felt desperately human. Ben felt powerless.

“Can I help you?” You worried, walking around the counter to stop right next to him. Green eyes followed your movements to finally dive into your gaze. God, he always loved your eyes. They were so pretty and filled with raw emotions, you could never hide how you were truly feeling. And right now, your brows slightly raised as you kept staring at him told him how worried and anxious you were. But it was when you gently placed your hand on his shoulder that he truly broke.

“You don’t remember me?” He asked and hated how his voice shook with every word he uttered.

Worry turned into confusion in your eyes. “Sorry… I get a lot of customers, even though recently I have quite a really good memory.” You shrugged and smiled. The way your lips curled up, trying to cheer him up, comfort him, it sent another painful memory in Ben’s guts. “I don’t think I saw you before. What’s your name?”

Ben slowly took a step back, even if all he wanted was to get impossibly closer to you. Take you in his arms and squeeze you until you remember him. It had to be you. There was no doubt in his mind. At first, he thought that maybe you were one of Y/n’s grandchildren and just happened to look exactly like the one he lost. But there were too many similarities. How you styled your hair was the same. The way you spoke. The little moles were even at the same spots. And your eyes. They couldn’t lie. You were an open book.

And there was the pendant around your neck.

“Ben,” he said simply. If he thought hearing his name would bring back some sense into you, another sharp pain pierced his chest when you only nodded and politely smiled. “It’s Ben, don’t you remember? Ben, Soldier Boy!” 

It had to happen one way or another. There were simply too many emotions running through him, it was bound to spiral out of control. Pain caused sadness and in sadness, Soldier Boy always turned to anger. That was the reason he avoided anything that could remind him of you. So of course, when no matter what he did, you still couldn’t remember him, he turned to anger. 

This was all a set up. And he was out of patience.

Two steps and he was right in front of you, both his hands on your shoulders. His voice raised when he spoke the next words, shaking you under his strong hold. Asking questions one after the other that would make everyone looking at the scene think he was losing his mind. 

It took only one sound from you to stop him. As quickly as anger exploded inside of him, the fire died. The smallest whimper of pain reached his ears and he was back behind the wheel. 

He was hurting you.

“Fuck, shit,” he muttered, taking a step back, immediately releasing you. Your head was down, your gaze avoiding his. But even if you were not looking at him, he knew, he could feel the pain and the tears running down your cheeks like the water was on his skin. “Hey, hey, Y/n, please, don’t cry, I- I’m sorry,” he tried to get closer again, he couldn’t let you cry, he couldn’t support it, but the moment he tried to approach you, you flinched.

“Please, leave…”

Your voice was barely a whisper. Shaking. Scared. You were so scared. Of him.

His heart broke even more. Never before did he hurt you. He could kill thousands of people in the war. Torture the enemy for information. But see you in pain? See you cry? Be the reason behind your tears?

“It’s okay, Y/n, please. It’s okay. Close your eyes.”

It got out on its own. He didn’t know why, but it felt like the right thing to say. The last thing you told him, not even with words, before you died. 

It was always a comfort for him somehow, when he felt like it was the end… When he felt like he was losing control. He closed his eyes and counted.

“What?”

He thought you wouldn’t listen to him anymore, not after what he did. But to his surprise, you were receptive to his words.

“Close your eyes. Count to 10.”

When Ben did this, it always had the same effect. When he opened his eyes after counting to 10, he remembered. Remembered your words, your face, how to breathe, and immediately felt better. Calmer. Even back in Russia, even after the torture, if he closed his eyes and counted to 10, hell seemed a bit more bearable.

Ben didn’t think you would do it. But you did, closed your eyes and counted to 10 slowly, taking a deep breath to every number you murmured.

When you opened your eyes, it was like an entirely different person was in front of him. You had the same bright beautiful eyes, but now, they were shining with something new. Something different. Something he hoped he would see the moment he saw you in the shop.

“Oh my god…”

You recognized him.

“Ben!”

It didn’t even take a second for you to jump in his arms and hug him like tomorrow would never come. You held him tight, close to you, your feet not even touching the floor, and Ben held you as tight as possible. The embrace was strong, but he controlled his strength. He refused to hurt you again.

“Thank God,” Ben muttered, half laughing half crying. It was the one and only time he would ever allow himself to cry. No tears were shed when he lost you, or all those years he got tortured. But now that he had you again, he could let himself go to his emotions. “I thought I lost you.”

“I thought I lost you too, I-” Even if all he wanted was to keep you close to him, you stepped back to look at him. Both hands on his cheeks, you detailed his features. “You haven’t changed, haven’t aged-”

“You neither,” Ben frowned as he caressed your face as well. “Y/n… You have to tell me, is it really you? This isn’t a dream or a trick, right?” Just thinking about it had his hands clenched and you could feel him tense.

“It’s…” You smiled, tears flowing down your cheeks as well. “Quite the long story actually, I uhm…” Looking around, noticing there was no customer inside, you quickly walked to the door to lock it and turn the sign to closed. Then, you walked back to Ben, took his hand and dragged him to the back of the store to the break room where there was a couch. 

Ben sat down next to you, not letting go of your hand. “I have all the time in the world,” he said. He had to know. Now. “I thought you were dead, Y/n…”

You sighed. “I was.” Ben tensed once again so you placed your other hand on his. “They killed me. Or thought I was dead. But I wasn’t. It was Black Noir’s idea.” Like a movie was playing behind your lids, you closed your eyes and started shaking slightly. “58 minutes later, when everyone was gone, including you, he brought me to Vought to the last floor. Begged Stan Edgar to do something. Though… Black Noir wasn’t talking, something was wrong with his face. It was burnt and bleeding.” Opening your eyes, you looked at him and smiled again. “Looks like you got him good…”

“How…” Ben sniffled and tilted his head, frowning. He knew that part, he lived it. He remembered it. But with that much detail? “How do you remember so clearly…”

He watched you reach out to your necklace and held it tightly. The rest was harder to say, he could feel it. “They gave me Compound V.” You stopped for a couple of seconds to let the words go through his brain and glanced to watch his reaction. Ben was not moving, like he had doubts that was how you made it without aging. He wasn’t surprised and was waiting for you to continue. “It saved me, but I was in a coma for 10 years. When I woke up, they did a bunch of tests on me and concluded that besides not aging, I had no powers so they let me go.” At that, you chuckled sarcastically. “They were wrong.”

Ben nodded, encouraging you to continue. You removed your necklace and placed it in the palm of his hand. 

“This is…” He started as you incited him to open the pendant. A picture of you in black and white on the left side was smiling at him. On the right side, a picture of him with his suit and helmet on.

“I wandered a lot, went almost everywhere. I couldn’t stay too long at one place after all, it's kind of weird to see your neighbor not aging. But in the end, I… Finished my journey back here.” You looked at the place with a sad smile. “It was familiar, and I felt safe, so I stayed. I started to read more and more and ended up noticing something… Weird. I could clearly remember everything that I read, heard or saw. I had the perfect memory. Could learn languages in one sitting. Don’t know how to cook? No problem. Give me 20 minutes. My brain has an insane facility to learn anything… That was the power Compound V gave me.”

“But if you have a good memory, why didn’t you remember me?”

Everything you said so far made sense. The way you remembered everything so clearly. Why you haven't aged. The necklace he gave you back then, necklace you still had. But there were still so many questions left…

Sadness filled up your eyes even more and you sighed. “I have a super memory, but I have a normal brain capacity… I started forgetting more and more memories of my past. I thought it was normal, but I was only in denial. The morning I woke up and forgot you was the day I knew something was wrong.” You offered him a sad smile. “I could never forget my love…” You took back the pendant and closed it. “I went to Vought and they declared it was not their problem. Side effects of a superpower are not unknown after all, and there was nothing to do. The memories I made everyday would end up burying the oldest ones I have. After that day, I decided to wear the necklace all the time and write in a journal what I did during those days. But then, I forgot I had a journal. And I forgot you.”

Ben clenched his jaw and closed his eyes. His hatred for Vought only grew then. They gave you those powers, and when you asked for help, they shrugged it off, not our problem? Anger was building up inside of him, he could feel his insides heating up painfully, rage was overtaking him. But then, a soft touch. Warmth on his skin. Calm voice speaking words.

“Open your eyes,” you asked and he obeyed immediately. Green eyes got lost in yours as he remembered that the last thing you told him was to close his eyes. Like somehow, everything had come full circle. “You’re there now. If you stay, I won’t ever forget you.” A bright smile was now on your lips, it was so warm, all he wanted to do was snuggle against you and live through your smile. “And I sure won’t forget that ugly Hawaiian shirt,” you laughed.

God, he missed your laugh.

Ben wanted to say yes. God, he was about to say yes, stay with you here forever, but you mentioned the shirt he was wearing. Butcher’s. And the whole reason for his presence came back to him.

“I have something to do before,” he said, taking your hands in his to kiss it softly. 

Panic quickly rose on your face. “Wait, no, please, stay?” You seemed pressed, like time was running out.

“It’ll be quick, I promise. I’ll be back before you notice I'm gone.” Ben smiled to reassure you and then got back on his feet. He could do it. Finish what he started, kill the remaining member of his team and then Homelander, and be back here before dinner. He could do it. 

Soldier Boy was so sure of himself when he said his goodbye, kissing you softly on the lips, that he didn’t notice the sheer terror on your face. But it was too late, he was already gone. 

-

Only 3 days had passed.

It was so short.

It happened so fast.

When he came back to the headquarters, they had found Mindstorm’s location. The fight was not easy, the skinny guy tried to save him, but at the end, Soldier Boy had his head. Then, it was Black Noir. The moment he entered the Seven’s tower, he knew something had happened. 

Black Noir was already dead.

Too bad.

Then, there was Homelander. That turned out to be harder than planned, but with Butcher’s new power and Maeve’s help, they did it. They exploded a whole floor in the process, but they got him.

Homelander was no more.

A lot happened in those three days, but for him, it happened so fast it was like he left for 3 hours. 

Once everything was settled, Soldier Boy ran back to your store. He didn’t even bother changing, he bursted through the door in full uniform, ignoring everyone staring at him and asking him for pictures and autographs. 

Scanning through the shop, he searched for you. You were not behind the counter, so he checked in every corner of the book store. Then, he headed to the back, the place where you told him everything that had happened to you. 

“Y/n!” 

As he opened the door, he knew you would be there. Turning your head towards him, you smiled.

“Y/n, I’m back, like I promised. I’m there. I did it.”

Your smile grew bigger on your lips, your eyes shining with so much light, it felt warm inside of him again.

He felt alive.

“Oh my god, is it really true?”

Soldier Boy nodded, a smile as bright as yours on his lips. “Yeah! Like I said.”

“Is it really you, you’re Soldier Boy!”

Wait.

Wait no.

No.

His smile stayed on. But inside, he was screaming.

“No, I mean yes,” he stepped closer to you, watching your face filled with joy. But even if everything told him the real reason why you were so in awe and happy to see him, he refused to believe it. “Y/n… I…Close your eyes.”

Giggling, you put your book on the couch, stood up and did as he said.

“Count to ten.”

Please.

It had to work.

Counting out loud, your smile stayed on.

“Now, open your eyes.”

It worked last time. It worked. You remembered him after all these years. Even if your memory was very bad right now, that your power was eating your past, it'd only been 3 days. 

Your beautiful eyes met his sad gaze again.

He knew without you saying a word.

There was no glint. No shine. Nothing except the excitement of meeting a hero… for the first time. And around your neck, the pendant was missing.

You even forgot to put it on.

“So, do I win something?” 

The earth itself couldn’t support his weight and he had to sit down. Ben sat down on the couch, placing his face against his hands. Trying to hide. Trying to go back in time. Now, he could see it. Could remember it. The panic you had when he told you he was leaving. You were scared, scared to forget him. 

Ben looked down. Defeated. His hands gripped his hair hard and he cursed himself. Why did he leave? Why?! Now it was too late!

As he stared at the floor, something caught his eyes. Reaching down, he cupped the object in his palm and stared.

The pendant.

“Is everything okay?”

Your voice was the same.

You were the same.

The one he lost.

The one that forgot him.

And now, it was too late.

“I saw you on TV, you’re the new leader of the Seven, right? It must be so hard working for Vought.”

Even if you didn’t remember him, you were still so kind. Considerate. You had a hero in front of you and were more concerned about his well being than a fucking picture or an autograph.

“Yeah. Working for Vought is not easy,” he replied, staring absentmindedly at the necklace.

You sat down next to him. “I’m sorry you feel that way. Having a job you don’t like really sucks. I hope that, as the new leader, you’ll be able to find yourself a reason to keep going. And maybe help a lot of people, who knows?”

To that, Soldier Boy could only nod.

“I am the new leader, yeah. And changes need to be done.”

Just like that, the hero got up and left. Something slipped from his gloved hand and fell on the floor. As you picked it up, you tried to catch up to him, but he was already gone. “Damn it,” you muttered and looked at the pendant. Curious, you opened it and looked at the two pictures inside of it. You slowly caressed the picture to the left. “It was probably very important to him… Someone he really loved.”

You kept the pendant and placed it around your neck. Maybe one day, the hero would come back and you could give it back to him.

Forever taglist: @nitnat6245​ @b3autyfuldisast3r-blog​ @eevvvaa​ @fictional-affairs​ @wickedinspirations​ @awkward-and-indecisive​  @peachyaliien​ @katbratsupernaturalwhore​  

Soldier Boy Taglist: @akshi8278​

[spider-man-199999]

No need to hide it pt 2

pairing: college!Peter Parker x Fem!Reader; Post nwh; not too canon

word count: 6,4 K

warnings: underage drinking for USA citizens; mentions of sex

summary: Peter thought no one remembered him after the spell, however you did, but not for the reasons he was afraid you would. Now that you two are something like an item, you find out about his secret.

a/n: very cheesy, fluffy things going on here.

Part1!

“Hi, stranger.” You said as you entered the lab, looking at a very concentrated Peter in a lab coat and glasses, looking at something on the table. 

Out of all the places you expected him to be at 10 pm on a Wednesday night, the lab was the last one. You made your way to him, wrapping your arms around his waist to hug him from behind, your head peeking over his shoulder to look at what he was doing. He had an open notebook with chemical compounds scribbles chaotically all over the pages. It wasn’t something unusual really, to have Peter stay after class so he could do extra work in the lab. He seemed to like it. It started a few weeks ago, after you passed your first exams. He told you he needed some extra time to work on a project of his and managed to persuade the professor into letting him use the lab after classes were done. You had no idea how he did that, but you wouldn’t have it any other way, it was better than having to worry whether he was flirting with other girls at parties or not.

“Hi, dove.” he replied once you hugged him, still looking at the notebook and flipping the pages. 

“Did you just call me a pigeon?”

He shrugged, taking a few tubes and some chemicals from the rack. He gave the notebook one more look before he started mixing things in the tubes. 

“What are you making?” you asked, letting go of him and reading into the notebook with more concentration this time. 

The formulas he had written there were something you had never seen before, whatever this was, it was supposed to be something like a superglue that could dissolve completely after a certain period of time. You furrowed your brows, not sure you were getting the compounds and processes right. Chemistry was definitely not your strongest subject so you weren’t too confident in what you understood.

“Just experimenting.” He replied, mixing the white goo in a tube. 

“Why would you need a temporary super-glue?” you asked him, making him stop his mixing. 

“You could read that?”

“Well your handwriting sure didn’t make it easy but yeah, I can. Why?”

“Just asking.” He continued mixing until the goo was thick enough for his liking. He poured it into a container and shoved it in his backpack. 

“You’re being weird.” You told him, sitting on top of the table as you watched his movements.

He looked at you, taking the glasses off and getting closer. He stood in front of you, his hands wrapping around your waist and pulling you closer, placing a peck on your lips. 

“Right, sorry. I was too concentrated to register that the most beautiful girl was in the room.” He said.

“I was waiting for you at the party.” You mumbled against his chest. 

It was true, with most of the finals being over and spring break right around the corner, the whole campus was partying. Every frat house was going at it. You definitely partied more than he did, and neither of you minded that as long as you came home to him. Most of the time you would actually text him to pick you up, which he did happily. But tonight he promised to be there for the whole night, which was a pretty rare occasion.

“I’m sorry. How can I make it up to you?” He asked, letting go of you.

You shrugged, looking at his worried eyes. You smiled at him, your hand resting against his upper arm, squeezing his biceps through the fabric of the lab coat and his flannel.

“Taking me to one of your boxing workouts is one of the things on my bucket list.” You teased him. 

“Okay, how does next friday sound?” he asked, kissing your cheek.

“Wait really? I was prepared to have to blackmail you and whine for 15 minutes before you said yes. I had a whole scenario.”

“Anything for you, you know that.” Peter said, taking his lab coat and hanging it back on the rack. 

The boxing was actually a white lie he told you weeks ago. He took a pretty rough beating one night, it was his first ever encounter with Kraven the Hunter as Spider-man and things didn’t go exactly to plan. He came back with a black eye, sprained wrist, and multiple bruises and cuts pretty much everywhere on his body. As the panic rushed in his brain when he saw your shocked and worried face, he had to think of something fast. That’s when it just happened, the words just left his lips like it was the most natural, most logical explanation to his state. Anything felt like a better idea than telling you about his secret identity. He hated lying, especially to someone who he grew so attached to, who he even dared to say he started loving. It was for a good cause, or at least that’s what he liked telling himself late at night when he stared out of the window, not being able to sleep because the spider mask, casually thrown on the back of his office chair, was staring back at him.

—-

He walked you back to your dorm, making sure you got home safe and you weren’t locked out like every other day. The second you were out of sight, he was googling “boxing gyms near me” and researching them as he walked home. It was a vicious circle of lying and covering up his tracks in front of you and his roommates. He didn’t want either of you knowing about his secret. It was something he had vowed to himself - to not mix the two lives together ever again. The boxing lie was convenient enough for him to keep it up, if you were to call him when he was on patrol he would just say he’s training. If he ever came back with bruises, he could blame it on a bad sparring session. It was working out perfectly. And now he just had to make it real. He already knew how to fight, obviously, and he had the needed reflexes to take on anyone on an average spar, he just needed to find a gym, go there for a week straight and get to know as many people as he could, and make it seem like he was a regular there in front of you. Sounded simple enough. 

“How do I always end up in the most ridiculous schemes?” he muttered to himself as he unlocked the front door of his shared apartment, walking in, eyes still fixated on the glowing screen. No one was in the apartment, the guys were probably still at the party that Peter had managed to conveniently avoid tonight. He was too busy for them anyway, he only went because he didn’t want you to be there on your own. 

Now that he was alone in the whole superhero business, he had to figure out a way to enhance the web fluid and somehow manage to make as much of it to last him a month, preferably. He liked the formula he had originally come up with, it was simple and easy to make, but he felt like it could be improved. Him and Tony had talked about upgrading it for a long time before but never managed to get to it. He had to figure it out on his own, along with his personal life and his studying. It was starting to get a bit overwhelming. At least he wasn’t alone socially, he had a wonderful girl that shared his feelings, roommates that were like his brothers and enough acquaintances to have someone to talk to in all his classes. 

Peter threw himself on the bed, screenshotting a gym he liked enough to try out tomorrow and fell asleep, still in his clothes.

—-

It was Tuesday night the next week. Peter had been training hard in the gym, socializing, staying late in the lab. It was so hard to get a hold of him in the past few days that you felt like he was purposely avoiding you. He still hadn’t told you what he was doing so late in the lab, no matter how much you asked. You just wanted to hang around with him, watching him work. You enjoyed looking at him like that, concentrated, his brows furrowed in confusion, pacing around nervously while he was thinking, fingers going through his hair. It was entertaining but up to a point, though. And boredom had pushed you into trying experiments of your own. Since you didn’t really know what to do in particular, you opened the textbooks for your shared chemistry class and just started ahead with the material. Upside to this was that Peter was always there to help you just so you wouldn’t kill yourself by mismeasuring. Downside was that Peter was there to see you fail.

You trying to do your own work made him really happy. He always believed more in your skills than you ever did yourself and he knew that putting in extra hours would give you a massive boost in confidence. But micromanaging you along with trying to develop a new web fluid formula was stressing him out. He loved spending time with you and helping you, but constantly worrying about you accidentally burning your skin off with chemicals and him not being able to do anything about it was freaking him out.

“Babe?” He said, his weight rested on his arms he stared at you across the table. “Come over for a second, please.”

“Since when do you call me “babe”?” You asked, taking off the glasses, looking at him. Was he bulkier than before? You could see the outline of his arms through his lab coat. 

“Since now. Why are you always displeased with the pet names I call you?”

“Because you pick the funniest pet names out there, first it was pigeon, now it’s a baby.” you giggled, going around the table to get to him. He placed an arm around your waist, pulling you to his chest.

“Okay, I’ll call you my little spider then.”

“Spider? It got even worse!”

He laughed, resting his chin on top of your head. 

“Hmmmm, what do you want me to call you then?”

“I don’t know…” you said, thinking about it for a second. Your heart started pounding in your chest. You knew exactly what you wanted him to call you - his girlfriend, but you weren’t sure you had enough courage to say it. It had been months since you started “dating” but he never officially called you his. 

“Actually “babe” is fine, kind of generic but I don’t hate it.”

“Glad that’s out of the way then. Would you mind grabbing us something to drink? I’m kind of thirsty.” He asked, reaching for his back pocket and giving you his wallet. 

“You’re going to send me alone at night to get you a drink?” you asked, fake shocked to tease him.

“I’m literally sending you to the vending machine outside of the door.”

“Fair enough. What do you want?”

“Surprise me.”

You nodded, heading out to the vending machine outside to get something to drink. It bought Peter just enough time to jog over to your side of the table and switch out the acid you were about to use in your work with the one you were actually supposed to use. He wasn’t sure this was the right way to go about this situation, he knew how upset you got whenever he corrected your mistakes. He also didn’t want the liquid to overflow too rapidly for you to comprehend and burn you, which was exactly what was going to happen. Once he made sure things were in order, he went back to his own notebook, flipping through the pages for the millionth time. You walked back with two iced teas, one with lemon for you and one with peaches for him. You placed the bottles next to him so he could open the two of them.

“Thank you.” He kissed your cheek, taking a sip from the iced tea. He wasn’t that thirsty really, but he had to go along with it. 

“How’s the research going?” you asked, sitting on the table with a small jump. 

“Could be better honestly.” he replied, closing the notebook and turning to you. 

You smiled at him, your hand resting on his shoulder and squeezing it softly to encourage him. He placed his opposite hand on top of yours, holding it gently as he looked at you. 

“How are you so pretty, seriously?” he asked out of the blue, making you blush with the words. 

“I’ve already told you, braces, accutane and nicely shaped eyebrows.” 

He walked up to stand in front of you, taking his gloves off. You smiled at him, your own hands wrapping around his neck. Peter kissed you, his hands resting on your hips, pulling you closer. One hand dug into his hair, the other was gently stroking the back of his neck. His lips danced with yours, making you forget about everything else around the two of you. 

“We should go home, it’s late.” He said after the kiss.

“But I haven’t finished!” You whined, your hands resting on his shoulders while he looked at you. 

Peter seemed tired, like he hadn’t gotten much sleep lately. His shoulders felt tense under your touch, his eyes had this tired gaze that lazily traced the features on your face, trying to read your expression. His hair was really messy now, which made you reach out to fix it for him. 

“Okay. Finish up and we can go rest.” 

You nodded, jumping off the table and making your way to your corner of the table. Things went surprisingly smooth with your experiment, which seemed somewhat suspicious at first but you chose to ignore it. You were too happy and proud of yourself to really question it. 

—-

You had never been to a boxing gym before. A regular one? Sure, hundreds of times, but never a one specifically designed for boxing. Everything seemed so amusing and interesting, your attention was constantly shifting from the boxing bag, to the ring, to someone doing the ropes. Your head and eyes were moving so fast you could hurt your neck. And then your eyes fell on Peter. It made you freeze on the spot, staring at him. You just had to stare. He had just walked out of the dressing room, wearing shorts and a plain black t-shirt. His hands were wrapped. He ran a hand through his hair nervously, making his way over. You gulped as you made eye contact, the blood rushing into your cheeks. You just couldn’t take your eyes off of him. It felt like that one scene from movies in which the girl is standing on top of the stairs with a gorgeous dress on and the male lead finally realizes how in love with her he is. Except Peter was the pretty girl this time. Someone walked past you, you didn’t even notice until the person gave Peter a fist bump. The two of them shared a laugh, the other guy looking at you and nodding his head.

“I think the chick just fell in love with you.” He laughed, making Peter laugh as well. 

You snapped out of your trance, like drooling over Peter wasn’t embarrassing enough already, you had to be called out on it. Your head shot down in shame, looking at your trainers. A dumb smile was spread across Peter’s face while he looked at you fidget nervously under their gaze. He patted the other guy’s shoulder, sending him off as he finally made it over to you, pulling you in a hug. 

“How do you like it here?” he asked you as you took the opportunity to hide your flustered face in his neck.

“I’ve been here for 10 minutes and people are just now starting to make fun of me. By my standards it’s good.” you told him, a soft sigh escaping your lips. Peter laughed with your comment, patting the top of your head.

“I didn’t hate what he said.” He admitted.

“Of course you wouldn’t.” You rolled your eyes. He wasn’t the one who got caught staring, he wasn’t the one humiliated by someone random. 

“Come on, I brought some extra wrist wraps for you.”

“Wait. I’m training too?”

“Well, obviously, why else did you come? To stare?”

“Actually…”

He laughed again, taking your hand and leading you to the nearest bench. He pulled the wrist wraps from his shorts’ pocket, carefully wrapping your hands in them. You observed every motion, the way the fabric was sliding along his fingers, how his hands moved. Like he had done this a million times before. Or at least it seemed that way. He hadn’t. But patching himself up after a bad fight had given him enough experience to make it seem like he was a pro. After he was done he got up, offering you his hand. You took it, letting him lead the way to a corner where the two of you could train in peace. He greeted a few people here and there, still holding your hand.

“I’m going to show you some basic moves.” He started, standing in front of you at a safe distance. “This is your guard. Your hands need to be like this at all times. It’s for protection.”

You nodded, trying to copy what he was showing you. It wasn’t too hard to do, but watching him was making it hard to fully concentrate. 

You spent a good portion of time going over the basic punches, he even gave you a pair of gloves and made you spar with him. The workout had absolutely drained your energy, 30 minutes in and you couldn’t breathe, your legs felt like they couldn’t carry you anymore. Most of your fitness was usually morning jogs a few times a week, if you weren’t too busy with studying or sleeping over at Peter’s. You weren’t completely out of shape, but “fit” was definitely not a word you would confidently describe yourself as. You sat down on a bench, Peter helping you take your gloves off. 

“I thought the whole point of this was to watch you train, not torture me.” You said as you were unwrapping your hands. Peter was drinking from his water bottle, sat next to you. He bumped his shoulder into yours, smiling. 

“Don’t you do enough Parker-watching in the lab already?”

It made you blush and turn your head away. Truthfully, you had been “Parker-watching” since you started high school and it still wasn’t enough. You started to wonder when exactly you had  transformed into this clingy little girl, drooling over him.

“Yo, Pete! Ready for a rematch? I can’t believe the way you kicked my ass last time, I’m taking you down today, tough guy.” Someone from across the room was shouting. 

Peter got up, placing one hand with a glove on your shoulder. You looked up at him, he hadn’t even sweat yet, perfect. Your head turned to look at the other guy, slightly taller than Peter, light hair and brown eyes. He was lean, wearing a black snapback, no top, black shorts. You thought he looked like the perfect visualization of a frat guy - tall, sporty and handsome, probably arrogant too. 

“You wanted to see me work out, right?”

You nodded, looking back at Peter.

“Then you have to cheer for me extra hard.”

“That’s a little bit cringe but sure, whatever gets you going…”

The guy came up to the two of you, brofisting Peter and then offering you a hand. 

“Harry, nice to meet you.”

“Y\N.” 

—

You were on your toes the whole time they fought. You stood by the ring, holding your breath whenever a punch was thrown in Peter’s direction. He was undeniably hot with the tight fitting clothes, his curls falling on his face. Being short has its advantages, he was way faster than the guy, he even avoided some punches you were absolutely certain would land, knock him out even. But your boy was like lightning on that ring, he was like a professional. Harry was sweating, running after him, very obviously trying his hardest to hit him, but he just couldn’t. It was impressive, to say the least. 

“Come on bro, I’m still warming up.” Peter teased him 15 minutes into the spar. 

“Parker, how are you even doing this?”

Peter laughed, his guard still up, he was jumping in front of him like the characters in mortal kombat did. Harry tried punching him again, Peter dodged and went for the ribs. He hit. Harry was on the floor, gasping for air.

“Oh, god, are you alright?” Peter panicked, he got on his knees next to his friend, taking his gloves off to help him. You climbed onto the ring as well, placing a hand on Harry’s shoulder who was laying on the floor, his arms across his chest. You looked at Peter and he looked back, terrified. “This happens all the time, right?” you asked, as Harry curled up in a ball. “He’s okay, right?”

“Fucking show off.” Harry laughed, but the laugh hurt him even more and soon he was in agony again. 

—

“I can’t believe this happened.” You said, sitting next to Peter on the stairs in front of the ER.

You had bought an ice cream sandwich and broke it in half, giving him the half that was your favorite, his as well, but you thought he needed it more tonight.

“He’s fine, nothing is wrong with him.” You told Peter, who was blankly staring at his feet, holding the ice cream in his hand and not eating it. “They gave him an x-ray, nothing is broken, he just never took a beating before.”

“I wasn’t even going hard on him..” He mumbled. 

You were eating the sandwich, not worried about Harry at all. 

“What was that?”

“Nothing, nothing.”

“Hey, it’s okay. Harry is completely fine, he’ll be out in a minute.” You told him, kissing his cheek. “I don’t know what is going on in that pretty head of yours, but whatever it is, I assure you it's wrong.”

He nodded at your words, finally eating from his ice cream. He didn’t know how you managed to do this, but whenever he felt like this, whenever it got really bad in his head, you managed to pull him right out. Maybe it was how cheerful you were around him, and how you made him feel like you could figure it out together. You would get anxious and worried in most situations too, but somehow you made him feel like as long as the two of you were together, you could figure it out. It always brought him back to the night you called him drunk and crying because you got locked out of your dorm room. You were a whole anxious mess, begging him to save you and once he was there you just calmed down. Like you knew he was really there to save you. Peter felt like the world’s most important hero that night, even more than the times he was Spider-man.

You rested your head on his shoulder, finishing up your piece of the ice cream sandwich. You let him sit like that in silence, which was odd to you because your memories of Peter from high school were in many ways completely opposite to him now. You couldn’t help but remember with nostalgia how open and emotionally vulnerable he was. He would openly tell and show his friends he loved them, and his ex-girlfriend too. You missed that dork, the one that would go in straight for a hug the first day he meets you, but he grew into the awkward handshake dude. Something about him now was very closed off, like there was this wall between the two of you that you didn’t dare jump over. He was still funny and charming, very communicative too, but he rarely talked about how things made him feel. He rarely even shared what was actually going on with him, why he would get so little sleep or what that damn project he’s working on is about. It was putting a lot of distance between the two of you, which you were noticing now after the initial euphoria of dating your high school crush was over. You were trying to build a foundation on top of a sinkhole with him . 

The two of you were so lost in the silence, in the train of your own thoughts, that you didn’t even hear Harry standing behind the two of you. 

“Are you communicating telepathically?” he asked, making the two of you turn. Peter had the sandwich in his mouth while he stood up, hugging his friend. You stood there by them awkwardly. 

“I’m so sorry.” Peter told Harry after he let go. 

“I’m not going to ask for a spar with you, ever again. You’re way too good at this, you should teach me!”

Peter scratched the back of his neck, laughing nervously.

“No, I’m not that good, I’m just short.”

“Man, you have to be professionally trained, or a monster at the gym. I've been training since I was 12, I’ve seen hundreds of opponents. No one of them have hit me this hard. And I got my jaw broken on the ring. Twice!”

At that point Harry had started walking on the sidewalk and the two of you subconsciously followed him because of the conversation. 

“And you’ve been doing it for a week? I’m not buying that, you’re lying!”

“A week?” you asked, looking at Peter confused. “He’s been doing it for months.”

“Months? This guy showed up at the gym for the first time on Saturday, it hasn’t even been a full week.”

You and Harry stopped, looking at Peter for answers. His lies caught up to him and he panicked, he panicked a lot this time. It was easier when it was just you to lie to, because there was no one who could catch him red handed. You crossed your arms in front of your chest, looking at him with squinted eyes. He felt like a deer caught in headlights under your gaze. You had never questioned anything he said before and he was afraid you were about to start.

“He means that… It’s the first time I’ve been to his gym.” he said finally “I used to go to a different one but the guys there… were bullies to me. Remember?”

He was a ball of nerves, placing his hands in his pockets to try and hide it. Peter’s body got stiff and he was trying his best not to lose his composure but he just started blurring out a made up story to save himself. 

“You’ve never told me about anyone bullying at the gym.”

“You can’t have forgotten about that one time I came back with a black eye and all… They were just really… bad? I thought that if I got stronger and tougher they would stop but they di-” you interrupted him with a hug, squeezing him tightly. 

You knew he was uncomfortable with all of this, and it was hard for him to talk about his feelings and what he was going through. You had to reassure him this was not an attack but a safe conversation. It explained his weird behavior to an extent. He was bullied in high school too and you hoped those days were over for him. Being bullied as an adult is something completely different than the childish jokes in school, that’s why you thought part of the reason he was so closed off now. 

“It’s okay, Pete.” You mumbled. “You don’t have to talk about it, I believe you.”

He finally breathed out, hugging you back. 

“It’s okay, I’m tough. I almost broke Harry today.”

“Too soon, Parker.”

—

It was a normal Monday evening for you, late hours in the lab, the soft sizzling of something on the stove, the heavy chemical smell in the air. Your palms felt sweaty inside the rubbed gloves and the goggles you were using were recently regulated by someone with a smaller head, which resulted in an uncomfortable squeezing of your head, which was about to give you a headache soon. The only thing that was missing in this scene was Peter. In the last few days he had been coming very late to the lab dates. You didn’t think much of it really, he had told you about wanting to spend more time with his new friend - Harry. He felt incredibly guilty about the whole almost-breaking his ribs situation recently and as a compensation, Peter offered to train him. It left you with even more time on your hands, which resulted in a lot of boredom. You were so ahead on class work that there was no point in continuing, you were not trying to graduate early. The second best thing you could think of was helping Peter with his very secret project, and hiding that from him, of course. 

You spent enough hours watching him, observing the chemicals he was using, the way he was combining them and the nervous scribbling in his notebook. You read that notebook a dozen times, filled with chemical compounds, processes, results that were circled in red or scratched out. Most of the research didn’t seem like it was going smoothly for him, he had written things like “failed” all over the pages. And even with chemistry not being the strongest of your subjects, you knew that things were going wrong for him mostly because he had tunnel vision. He had written the key ingredients he was using down and most of his work was based around them - in different proportions, different ways of mixing. But none of them were giving the results he was seeking. After a good amount of time brainstorming you decided this whole thing needed a different approach. The issue was, you thought, in the key ingredients themselves. That’s how you secretly ended up developing your own version of the web fluid formula. You had been trying to use things which you had read would give similar, and preferably better, results in the experiment. For two weeks now you had been using the free time away from Peter to do just that - help him in his work. And it was going well, so well that you actually considered yourself ready by the beginning of the third week. You made sure to write everything down, following his example, so you wouldn’t forget something important. 

You took the jar that had white goo in it, softly bubbling up over the fire and mixed it up with a metal stick. The white goo had risen like dough and it was sticking to the metal as you were stirring it around. You pulled the metal stick up, the white substance all over it, stretching after it. In this exact moment the door opened and Peter barged in, almost out of breath. You head turned, looking at his messy hair, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he was trying to calm his breathing before greeting you.

“Hello, beautiful, sorry I’m late.” He told you, throwing his bag on a chair and putting a lab coat on. 

“Hi.” You smiled at him, placing the jar down on the table. 

He seemed distracted and in a rush, like usual. You walked over to him as he was putting some gloves on so you could fix the collar on his lab coat that got flipped over. He placed a soft kiss on your forehead while you did that. 

“What have you been up to in here?”

“Actually, your work.”

“My work?” His brows furrowed in confusion, making you bite your lip before you took his hand and led him to the table. 

“Well, you’ve been silently working on this whole project for so long now, it’s been months. The one you are very sparse with the details with. But I took the time to read over you notes, plus I've seen your experiments like a million times…” you said, grabbing the jar again and lifting it up for him to see. The metal stick was still inside, you pulled it up and the white substance inside followed it, sticking to it but still moving like melted cheese. “I tried a different approach.”

He took the jar from your hands and inspected himself, playing around with it, touching it with his fingers even. 

“How even-”

“The technology I used is slightly different to yours. And the ingredients too. From what I could understand, you were trying to replicate the functionality and durability of an actual spider web… designed to suit human weight of course. With that being said, the results shouldn’t be absolutely permanent as well, like this thing, it should dissolve after some time, right?”

He nodded, listening to you with a lot of attention. 

“So… I developed this formula, the whole mixture is activated by heat, of course, but once activated it can be stored in these particular qualities, in containers for example. But it does lose these qualities over time, especially when it’s hit by direct sunlight.”

“How much time does it last?”

“Depends on the conditions but… Two to four hours from what I’ve tried.”

He was staring blankly at you, still holding the jar in the palm of his hand. He didn’t really know what to say or do, all kinds of thoughts were running around in his head. He was amazed, absolutely stunned by the way you managed to do this. Peter was also incredibly proud, he could say that much. But the fear of being exposed as Spider-man was bubbling up in his chest, his heart was beating fast, his palms were starting to sweat.

You were looking at him, waiting for him to say something, anything at this point. You were starting to get anxious. Did you fuck up? Did you cross a line you were not supposed to? Was he upset with you? He never asked for your help but you did it anyway. Did you ruin the whole thing for him? The only thing you could hear at this point was the ringing in your ears. 

“You’re a genius!” He exclaimed finally, a smile spreading across his lips as he looked at the worried expression on your face. Your features softened up, a sigh of relief escaped your lips after he spoke.

“Can I look over your notes?”

“Yeah, definitely!” 

You turned around and grabbed the notebook you had been using to write down your research. He skimmed over it, flipping through the neatly written pages. 

“You’re actually brilliant!” he told you after he was done reading it, placing the notebook on the table. “I need to run a couple of tests to check for a few other things but your formula looks so much better than mine.”

“Yeah, sure, take it. I made it for you anyway.”

“Look at you, making your own web fluid formula and you were scared to even do the lab experiments during class a few months ago.”

“My own what? Web fluid?”

It had just slipped out of him. His eyes widened, all the blood left his face. He looked as if he had just seen a ghost. And in reality he had seen a ghost - the ghost of his past, coming back to haunt him again. There was no coming back from this, he was caught red handed and it was his own fault. Not that he wanted it to happen, but he was tired, overwhelmed and overworked. 

It didn’t take a degree in math to put 2 and 2 together and a lot of things were starting to make sense for you now. All the time he was spending in the lab developing a “web fluid”, the random disappearing from time to time, his past Stark internship, the link between Spider-man and the Avengers. It was all adding up. 

“You’re working for Spider-man!” You finally said, like you had come to the most logical conclusion there was.

“I’m what?” He asked almost immediately. His head was a mess, trying to come up with the best possible lie to cover himself up.

“It all makes sense! He knows you from the Stark internship you did back in high school, and he asked you to develop a new formula, right?”

Peter was finding it hard to believe his ears or his luck. Of all the things he could have come up with on his own, none of them could beat the thing you just did. He was sure you would have figured it out by now, after this fatal error he made. And somehow your brain was so overcomplicating the situation so much that you couldn’t come up with the right answers. You had such blind faith in him that even for a split second you didn’t question any excuse he had given you before. He was blinking silently, looking at you. In his mind he was debating whether he should finally tell you the truth and break the most sacred oath he had taken in front of himself. Or if he should continue expanding the web of lies he had created until he himself gets caught up in it. 

“Absolutely, you got me here.”

Shallow and disgusting, he thought to himself, a bitter taste on his tongue as the words echoed in the room. He chose a lie, a dirty lie to the only person who cared for him so deeply, the person who trusted him so blindly. Would you accept him and continue loving him if you knew the truth? And the issue for him at this point wasn’t about the truth anymore, it was about the way he was treating you. His heart shattered when you smiled and hugged him. 

“I knew it! You’re so smart that the actual Avengers need you! You have so many great things ahead of you!” 

Your soft giggle felt like a direct stab to the heart. His shaky hands wrapped around your waist while you hugged him. He held you close, closer than ever before because there was an uneasy, heavy feeling in his stomach that if he let go now, he would never touch you again.

taglist:

(apologies if I missed anyone)

@zeeader @groundclueless @ivyquill @bitchyycapricorn

[barnesafterglow]

betting

summary: bucky's yours, it's just that not everyone knows that yet

pairing: college!bucky barnes x reader

word count: 824

warnings: mention of drinking, making out in public, passing mention of smut

a/n: here is day one of my 2023 valentine's blurbs with the prompt pulling your lover closer by the waistband !!

main masterlist - challenge masterlist

i no longer have a tag list but you can follow @theafterglowlibrary and turn on notifications for post updates! 🤍

The music vibrated through the club so hard you could feel it in your chest, replacing the heartbeat that was supposed to be there. Wanda had dragged you to another house party, though lord knows you hadn’t done anything else with your weekends since she met Sam in her biology lab.

He and his friends were known on campus as stereotypical party boys, and they fit the description perfectly. Even in the few weeks you’d known them, you were amazed at their ability to attend class and maintain their grades when they were blackout every weekend. It was something of a talent, if you were being honest.

Though that wasn’t their only talent, you thought as a flush creeped down your neck, remembering just last weekend how one of said friends had managed to get you alone in their hall closet and drop to his knees to worship every inch of you.

Bucky’s flirting had started out as just that - simple flirting. He had a bit of a reputation for being a playboy and, even though you weren’t looking for anything serious, you also weren’t looking to be a notch in his bedpost. But he was relentless, from the very first night Wanda brought you around, and soon drunken makeouts every couple of weekends turned into secret dates and a weekend getaway that you still weren’t sure how you had managed to keep your friends from finding out.

And you were sure your luck was running out, because every weekend brought a new place in the house to hookup, a new opportunity for the two of you to get caught in a very compromising position. And it didn’t seem like Bucky had any intention of stopping any time soon.

You never really stopped to wonder why the two of you had decided to keep your situationship a secret; it had started out as nothing serious, but the more you fell for him, the more you wondered what it would be like to have his intense focus on you not only in the comfort of empty apartments and hotel rooms, but in front of your friends as you sat in his lap at a party or next to him in the library.

Every thought left you anxious, scared that Bucky didn’t want the more that you did, scared that he would laugh in your face and leave you for the next person, even though you all but knew for sure that he was just as taken with you.

With more than a little liquid courage in you, you decided that tonight would be the night to risk it all - you couldn’t take not knowing anymore.

Eyes searching, you followed Bucky’s movements across the party, moving from the kitchen and serving drinks to the living room, partnering up with Steve for a round of beer pong. You sidled up to Wanda and Sam - playing opposite Bucky and Steve - and she looked at you knowingly; it was like she could read your mind.

You waited as the game went back and forth, sipping on your drink but trying to maintain a relatively straight head, and took your chance as Bucky sunk the last cup, winning them the game.

He threw his hands in the air, high fiving his friends all around, before his gaze fell on you. He pushed through the small group of people that had gathered to watch, halting right in front of you. Your eyes met his, not sure what his next move was, as he reached for you. He moved slowly, giving you a chance to push him away, to stop whatever decision he was about to make, but you wouldn’t dream of it.

You let his hands run gently down your arms, caressing the exposed skin and leaving goosebumps in his wake. His eyes searched yours for any sign of hesitation and, when he saw none, he hooked a finger in your belt loop, pulling you flush against him. His other hand came up and rested at the nape of your neck, tilting your head up until your mouth met his.

It was as if the rest of the world melted away; even the cheers and whoops of your friends were muffled as Bucky’s lips moved over yours.

When you finally broke apart, Steve was begrudgingly shoving a twenty dollar bill in Sam’s outstretched hand, a smug smile on his face, and Wanda looked on ecstatically. 

“Took you long enough,” you teased, leaning into him as he wrapped an arm around your shoulders and guided you towards your friends.

“No kidding,” Sam said. “Another week and Stevie here would have won, and I just couldn’t have that.”

Steve grumbled under his breath as you laughed, feeling happier than you had in a long, long time.

“No,” Bucky replied to Sam, though his attention was still solely focused on you. “We certainly couldn’t have that at all.”

[bizaar]

Endless Summer ✧

Part 3: Band on the Run

Cruel Summer Masterlist

Prev - Next

pairing: eddie munson x afab!reader

warnings: sexual content (18+ minors dni), horny-loser!reader, brief descriptions of sexual fantasies, swearing, and so much pining

word count: 19k

a/n: we're back baybeee! also, if anyone knows the original creator of the gif below, please let me know so I can tag them, I've had these on my laptop for over a year and I've lost all my credits!!

In the three hours it has been since you got home from school, the floor of your bedroom has become almost totally obscured by what is essentially every article of clothing you own. You’d made the mess in a frantic attempt at putting together an outfit out of thin air because you don’t actually own anything cool enough for how you’re planning to spend your night.

You’re supposed to be babysitting, just like every other Tuesday night you’ve spent since you were thirteen years old, but this week, for the first time in history, you did everything in your power to get out of that duty. You’d pulled out all the stops to convince everyone that, despite the perfect health of your earlier day, you’d somehow managed to contract a sudden onset, highly contagious illness sometime between fifth-period chemistry and now (one you intend on making a swift and miraculous recovery from) and for the safety of everyone around you, you should not be disturbed under any circumstances.

You blame it on how you’d spent four hours out in the cold, taking Dustin and his friends around to trick-or-treat last night, though all that does is get your mother on your case about how she “told you to wear a coat”, but would you listen? No.  

 It took almost a full hour of debate, all the tricks you’d ever seen employed in movies to fake sickness, and what you like to think of as an Oscar-worthy performance on your part, but your parents eventually gave in and called across the street to deliver the news. Part of you feels like it was only because they didn’t want to argue with you anymore, but in any case you got what you wanted.  

Dustin was going to the Wheelers, your parents were going to their weekly Tuesday night extracurriculars, and (unbeknownst to everyone else) you were going to see a band play at the Hideout.

Though not just any band.

The only reason you’ve gone to such lengths to get out of all your previous plans is because you’ve been personally invited to go and see Corroded Coffin play — Eddie’s band. 

Of course, you didn't know that at the time of the initial invitation, which came through Gareth, just as the school bell was finishing its cacophonous ringing to signify the end of fifth-period chemistry. 

“Hey, so, what are you doing tonight?” he asked, leaning less than casually on his elbow to peer down the length of his nose at you.  

You remember thinking that the way he was twisting at the waist looked terribly uncomfortable, but you were only half conscious of anything going on around you as you began the arduous task of orienting yourself toward your original plans for the night.  

“Homework.” You replied in an absent monotone, trying for the millionth time not to get sucked back into the memory of the lunch period spent “swapping eyes” with Eddie Munson. 

It’s been five days since then, but who’s counting?

Certainly not you and all the assignments piling up in your locker, waiting on the promise of “later” you’ve been making since the moment you finally managed to drag yourself out of those woods.

You were vaguely aware of Gareth answering with some kind of a droll response – which was entirely on brand for the likes of him – but you hardly heard him say it.

 You had a lot of other things on your mind, all of which seemed much more important than divulging your wholly uninteresting after-school plans to your lab partner.

Tonight, you’ll be sitting at the Henderson’s kitchen table doing all your overdue assignments while your prepubescent charge plays Atari, nothing more, nothing less. 

Talk about a rip-roaring good time, right? 

Still, it beats the “casual hangout” in Steve Harrington’s backyard Carol had tried to coerce you into attending under threat of major bodily harm. Not that being forced to sit around a pool in early November, fifth wheeling while everyone around you sucks face doesn’t sound like just the most fun a girl could have, but you told Carol the same thing you told Gareth about your plans for that night – you’ve got to do your homework, and it’s not even a lie. 

Normally, you like to think you’re a much better student, and while you’re not entirely sure that line of thinking is warranted (as is evidenced by your last report card, which saw you pulling straight C’s) you know for a fact that any and all thoughts of academia flew right out the window the moment Eddie put himself in the seat across from you in the lunchroom. 

And aren’t you so incandescently glad he did? 

It is a sentiment your teachers do not share. That morning (the first day back after a long weekend spent miserably pining) you’d even received the dreaded summons from your guidance counselor, who sat you down and asked if “everything was fine at home”. 

Why? You’d wanted to ask – because you were seen slinking off to the woods with Eddie Munson or because he wasn’t in school the next day and you haven’t turned in a single assignment since? You might remind them that with the long weekend, there are only technically two days of work missing, but you know they don’t want to hear that because this isn’t really about the homework.  

This is about you following Eddie out into the woods.

How are you supposed to think about things like formulas and essays when you can still see him gazing back at you from across the picnic bench every time you close your eyes? With that dreamy look on his face? 

And more to the point, how are you meant to explain to an adult that everything is fine, it’s only just you haven’t seen him in nearly a week and, not to be dramatic or hideously cliche, but you can’t seem to eat, sleep, or concentrate on anything so banal as homework when you’re fairly certain he was getting ready to kiss you out in those woods before the bell rang?

You’re not positive that’s where things were headed, but you’re pretty damn sure, and it's enough to get your girlish libido ringing the warning bells of your imminent demise with every day that passes out of Eddie’s presence. 

No, you can’t explain that to an educational professional or Carol, or anyone else without raising some serious alarms. Because you’re not even supposed to be talking to Eddie Munson, let alone sneaking off to the woods to become as completely captivated by him as you are. 

And he didn’t even kiss you… 

God, how you wish he would have just kissed you, especially after the way he seemed to make himself scarce the moment you took your eyes off him. 

You’d put quite a lot of time and energy after you got home that Thursday evening into wondering what it would have taken to get Eddie to lean over that table, and quite a bit more into wondering whether you ought to have bucked up and done it yourself. 

Not that it mattered, because he didn’t kiss you and you didn’t kiss him, and there you remain, unkissed and suddenly the topic of everyone’s conversation.

Because on top of everything else, there is that side of it. 

Like somehow a spell had been broken that afternoon you followed Eddie out of the lunchroom, everybody and their mother is suddenly keenly interested in you. People who have never given you the time of day suddenly know your name, and they want to know all the intimate details of what you did with Eddie Munson out in the woods, or rather, what he did to you. 

You probably should have known that was coming.

Still, you hate to indulge them with any kind of answer, even if it happens to be a big fat nothing. They only want to know so they can wrinkle their noses and sneer and shout about how “fucking nasty” that is — shacking up with the Freak King — just like Carol did in the lunchroom the day before all your dreams came true. 

You would spare yourself that humiliation if you could, but more than that, you’re struck by how you don’t want them talking about Eddie that way. 

You have become inordinately fond of him since that afternoon, more than you already were, and in a very specific way. Somehow, you can’t help but feel that, even though your conversation lasted less than twenty minutes altogether, you understand each other now.

You’re simpatico.

You might even venture to say that you’re almost friends. 

Strange how a little quiet intimacy was all you needed to curb the rabid edge of your obsession. Eddie is still all you think about, but in a decidedly calmer way, because he thinks you’re nice and approachable, and you think the same about him.

Still, in the five agonizing days it’s been since that big fat nothing happened, the questions have not stopped. Part of you wants to give them an answer if only to shut them up, but somehow you don’t think “he captivated me” is going to satisfy the people’s ravenous appetite for gossip. 

You’re certain everyone has already made up their mind about what they think happened, anyway. In the food chain of high school social constructs, it doesn’t matter what did or didn’t happen, it only matters what people say happened. and you’re absolutely certain that you’re going to hear all about it sooner or later.

You realize now that’s probably why Carol was so desperate to get you to come out and fifth wheel tonight when she knows you have to babysit. She keeps telling you that you owe her because you didn’t go to Tina’s Halloween party, but somehow you’re not convinced she was that upset to have missed you.

Maybe it’s just that she doesn’t trust you not to lie to her about where you’re going to be and who you’ll be with, who will see you with them, and how that will come back to reflect on her. Guilty by association is the law of the land at Hawkins High, after all.

With all that weighing heavy on your mind, you ignored any further questions Gareth had about your after-school plans and shoved your books into your bag, ready to submit yourself to the quiet death of study hall. 

Ugh… study hall… you’d rather eat glass. Then again, you’d also rather not have to spend your summer watching the sweat beading on Mrs. O’Donnell’s upper lip in summer school, so down the hall you went, headed against the flow of traffic in the busy hallway.

Somehow, it feels like overt symbolism bashing you over the head – you’ve always hated a cliché.  

Lucky for you and your impending academic doom, Gareth was not so easily deterred and scrambled to follow you out the door.

“Why don’t you come out tonight instead?” He asked innocently, like it was the most casual thing in the world and he wasn’t struggling to keep pace with you as all your classmates shoved past.

The question hit you square in the back, punching your lungs flat and wrenching you out of your thoughts with enough force to make your head spin.

“Excuse me?” You gasped, pulling to a stop and whipping around so suddenly that Gareth, who you hadn’t realized was skirting along at your elbow, nearly took a blow to the solar plexus in his attempt to keep up. 

Your insides clenched and forced your heart up into your throat, but before you had the time to decide whether or not Gareth had just asked you out, his eyes went comically wide, and he began to backpedal as if his life depended upon it. 

Then again, it might have, if what he said was true and word got back around to Eddie.

“Not like a date!” He yelped, throwing his hands up and showing you his palms in a way that flooded you with a strange and instant relief, “Just as friends—”

Oh, thank God for that. 

You could barely wrap your head around the concept that Eddie feels any sort of intimate way about you —and you’re still not entirely convinced about that — but to suddenly learn that you are the object of two affections? That’s too much revelation for one week, and you can only thank that dim lucky star that so infrequently passes you over that it had been nothing but a misunderstanding. 

Not like a date, Gareth said, Just as friends, and you’re fine with that.

From there, he had your full attention as he went on to explain that his band was doing a set down at the Hideout, and he was extending you a personal invitation to come and see them play. You had no idea Gareth was in a band, though that was perhaps stupid on your part based solely on the boy’s appearance – of course, Gareth is in a band, and of course, that band’s name is Corroded Coffin (which you’re only slightly ashamed about giggle-snorting over when he told you) Between that and the location, your gut reaction was to refuse. 

Gareth is great, especially when he’s playing the herald to all your hopes and dreams, and especially when he isn’t asking you out, but no.

Absolutely not. 

You would not be going to see Corroded Coffin tonight.

Lucky for you, you’ve had the perfect excuse to get out of anything and everything that sounds like a colossal bore since you were thirteen years old, and you were all too happy to trot it out.

“Oh man, I wish I could,” you began, trying to mask the faintest hint of smug satisfaction in your tone with an apologetic scrunch of your features, “...but I’m babysitting tonight.”

And you would have been content for the conversation to end there, but you didn’t count on Gareth having an ace in the hole, one he was all too happy to knock you upside the head with and send your brains splattering all over the crusty school linoleum.

“Aw, really? Damn, that’s a bummer,” he hummed, “I know Eddie would’ve been stoked to see you.” 

Your heart skipped a beat and you had to fight to stop yourself from seizing Gareth by the front of his shirt.

If you had, you would have shaken him like a ragdoll and demanded he tell you everything he knows. Instead, you did your best to remain calm as you stared back at him and the look of smug self-satisfaction he suddenly had plastered across his face.  

For some reason, it made you think of the message you’d promised to take back out of the woods last week.

“Tell the smug bastard to mind his own business,” Eddie said, and you didn’t, because Gareth never asked you how it went. He just gave you a sly smug look, the same one he was currently giving you right there in the hallway five days later. 

“Oh,” You said, feeling about as casual as a heart attack, “Is Eddie going to be there?” 

Your voice hitched and wavered as you did your best to casually skip over his name. You were cool, calm, collected, and definitely not internally shrieking with the sudden potential of a “part two” of last Thursday…

The potent spike of desperation that thought sent rocketing through your midsection was enough to drive color bleeding up into your cheeks and a cold sweat beading across your brow.

It is a reaction you are certain Gareth was not unwise to as he continued without missing a beat. 

“Yeah, he’s our frontman,” He explained, knowing full well what he was doing dropping that kind of information, “Technically it’s his band – he started it back when he was in Middle School or something,” 

Well, put me in a fucking chokehold why don’t you? Something inside of you screamed to have had such a treasure trove of lore opened up to you.

Like the blessed hand of deus-ex-machina — cheap bitch that she is — opportunity comes a-knocking.

A personal invitation has been extended to you and you’ve never been more anxious, because you? 

At a rock show? 

At the Hideout? 

Who the hell do you think you are? You’ve never been to a concert – which is not an astounding statement to make in and of itself considering your inclination toward introversion – so you have no idea what to expect.

There are a great many things you’ve never done. For instance: you’ve never lied to your parents to get out of babysitting, so you can sneak off and go to a rock concert in a dingy dive bar you’re not legally old enough to get into, to see a boy you are strictly forbidden from speaking to.  

You’ve got no business being involved with any of that and as the school day came to a close and the final pieces of your plan steadily fell into place, you had to ask yourself whether you were seriously going to go to such lengths, just to see Eddie?

The answer was a resounding yes. 

You’re going to see Corroded Coffin perform tonight if it kills you.

As you stand there looking back at yourself in the mirror, dressed in the fifth outfit you’ve tried on in as many minutes, you begin to wonder if it might just do that.  

Your parents have been gone less than five minutes, and you’re already getting cold feet.

Yet another thing you’ve never done is try to approximate dressing to impress someone, let alone the boy you regularly spend your nights and mornings fantasizing over with all the ravenous fervor of a pack of hungry wolves.

You have no idea where to start. 

What are you supposed to wear to a rock show in a dingy dive bar? Jeans and a band-tee, maybe? And if so, what kind of jeans, and which band-tee?

It occurs to you that you ought to try and match the vibe of the band, but you have no idea whether they skew toward Credence Clearwater Revival or Judas Priest. 

Then again, with a name like Corroded Coffin, you can’t help but feel it is probably the latter, but you’ve been wrong before. 

So, maybe jeans and a t-shirt is too casual and you ought to try something a little more risqué. 

Maybe a little denim skirt and the pair of ripped nylons you haven’t gotten around to throwing out… or is that too risqué? How exactly does one strike the right balance between sultry and slutty without outright screaming “I want to feel you in my guts?”

You remember then how you once skimmed an article in Cosmopolitan Magazine about the prospective power of underwear, so you go digging through your top dresser drawer and are very quickly dismayed to find that you don’t have a hidden stash of lacy panties carefully concealed beneath your days-of-the-week underwear. 

Of course, the fact that you’re even considering what kind of underwear you ought to be wearing tonight on the very far-off chance that someone is going to see them is enough to send you into a fit of hot-faced embarrassment. 

No, not just anyone – the fact that you’re considering the far-off chance that Eddie Munson is going to see what kind of underwear you’re wearing is almost enough to give you heart palpitations. 

Christ on a fucking bike.  

And then just like that, you’re imagining how gentle he’d be. 

Laying you back on a tufted leather couch as he kneels before you and reaches up with long, dexterous fingers to unbutton your jeans — should you wear jeans tonight? — and carefully, oh so gently, peels them down your legs at an agonizing pace while puffs of warm breath fan the bare skin at the top of your thighs. 

Then again maybe not, maybe he’ll be fast and rough with you. Maybe he’ll manhandle you and throw you around like a doll, and you’ll like it.

Crowding you against the cold brick of a wall and holding you there, his body pressed flush against your back as stone bites your palms and the side of your face. You gasp when he tears at the back seam of your skirt — oh, okay so you are wearing the skirt — ripping both it and your nylons in half, exposing you to the cold air and the hard strike of his palm as he brings it down on the tender skin of your— 

You’re blushing so violently that you have to go to your hall bath and splash cold water on your face. Even after you’ve calmed enough to wander back to the black hole of mess that is your bedroom, you still have no idea what to wear. 

It’s times like this that you curse Carol for shirking her duties as your best friend. Between the two of you, she’s the expert at dressing to attract male attention, she ought to be here helping you with something like this. 

But she’s not here, she’s sitting out at the pool at Steve Harrington’s playing tonsil hockey with Tommy. That’s where you ought to be, too – sitting at the pool, trying to look anywhere but at them, going at it.

That’s where you belong, in Carol’s shadow or perched on the plush sofa at the Henderson’s with your knees up and Speed Racer reruns steadily turning your brain into soup.

It occurs to you that you might be a bad person, or at least a very selfish one – if you’re going to skip out on Dustin like this, you might as well do it to hang out with your friends, not to try and carve out a brand-new cherry-flavored personality for yourself in a crowd you don’t belong to.

You’re not equipped for something like this. You have no business with rock shows and dive bars and people like Eddie Munson – you’re just a boring, midwestern babysitter from a town no one has ever heard of, and you would do well to remember that there is no changing lanes in a place like Hawkins. 

You’re just about ready to admit defeat and march yourself across the street with your tail tucked firmly between your legs when you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. 

Plain-Jane, boring little you, with the same haircut you’ve always had, same silhouette, same clothes, same as it ever was, and suddenly you can’t stop thinking about what Eddie said to you out in the woods…

“You’re not what I expected…” He’d said, twisting the rings on his thick fingers and looking at you so wistfully, in a way you’d convinced yourself was full of hope and an expectation you desperately wanted to meet.

You still want it. You want so badly to be the girl he expects to see at the show tonight, not some trussed-up idealized version of what you imagine might impress him. 

He likes you for you, after all, just the way you are, and it’s enough to stoke the fires of your courage, even if it doesn’t help you decide between the jeans and the skirt. 

By the time you finally throw something on that you’re halfway happy with, you’ve spent too much time wondering about hypotheticals and outfits and whether– in the event of an intimate collision – you would actually like to be spanked. Before you know it, you’re running late. 

You’ve almost convinced yourself that it’s fashionably so as you snatch up your keys, fly out of the house, and down your front steps. All the coolest people are fashionably late … at least that’s what Cosmopolitan Magazine says.

It’s only a short jaunt down Cornwallis to the Hideout, and when you get there, there is a semi-shitty Chevrolet van parked crooked across two spaces with the back doors flung open wide. 

It’s vaguely familiar, the way all vans of its type are, though perhaps you only think you’ve seen it before because of the posse of boys meandering around it, moving gear between the vehicle and the curb. 

Your headlights briefly illuminate the familiar faces of the group before passing them over as you pull into the first parking spot you see.

There is Gareth, of course, alongside Adam and Jeff, who you only actually know by reputation and the quick debriefing of the band he’d given you earlier that afternoon, but you cannot help but notice that there is conspicuously no sign of Eddie among them. 

You try not to be too immediately disappointed by that as you kill the engine and unbuckle your seatbelt.

Oh, will you relax already? A voice chides you from somewhere in the back of your mind. Just because you didn’t see him doesn’t mean he’s not here.

Across the tiny lot, Gareth drops the end of the amp he’s got propped between himself and Adam (you think) and skips over to meet you as you steal one final look at yourself in the inset mirror of your sun visor.

You’re not a natural when it comes to applying makeup — yet another thing you could have used Carol’s help with tonight — but you did your best to look presentable.

You imagine if there is anything glaringly clownish about the way you look, it will be easily obscured by the dark and dingy atmosphere of the venue. Bar. Whatever.  

And then the crisp November evening air comes rushing in to flash freeze you with goosebumps as Gareth opens your driver's side door and stands practically bouncing on his toes with excitement. 

You brace yourself against the cold and suddenly cannot imagine trying to endure sitting out at the Harrington’s pool on a night like this. 

“You made it!” Gareth cries as you slide out of your trusty little Toyota Corolla and it strikes you with just how nice it is to have someone glad to see you show up for once. 

Your friends are typically less enthusiastic about that. 

Still, you don’t want to appear overly eager, so you can’t help but try and mask it by pulling a face – you’d told him you’d be there, after all. 

“Was that ever in doubt?” You ask, shouldering your bag.

You shut the door and twist your keys in the lock before quickly stashing them. 

“Well, you never know.” Gareth says, shrugging, “People get busy.” 

Yeah, and people also bend over backward to get out of prior obligations to keep their word. 

And then, you find yourself wondering if it’s totally weird that you jumped through so many hoops just to make sure you could keep yours. 

Lying to your parents, lying to Mrs. Henderson, lying to Carol (who called you ten minutes before you left and demanded once more that you come out before cursing you when you declined again).

Somehow you can’t help but get the sense that if anyone knew, if anyone could have been a fly on the wall of your life this afternoon, you might come across as desperate, especially considering you could take or leave the band. 

You’d gone through all that effort just to see Eddie, who so far as you can tell is not even here.

Shit — you’re starting to wonder if tonight is going to be a huge bummer when Gareth brings you back. 

“Come over and meet the guys,” he says eagerly with a hand at your elbow to guide you across the darkened pavement. 

Every step leads you closer to the van, to the band, to the impending night, and you find yourself second-guessing your outfit for the umpteenth time that day. You wonder if you’re underdressed, and whether you should have cowboyed up and opted for the skirt, which you’d decided was a bit much for the occasion.

Was it the skirt or the fantasy that went with it? 

The world may never know.

“Guys!” Gareth calls once you get within distance, “You know–” when he says your name, their heads snap to tandem attention in a way that reminds you of meerkats.

It might have been funny if it wasn’t for the way they stand there gawping at you, eyes big as dinner plates and out on stalks. 

The silence that hangs between you is deafening, and standing there under such intense scrutiny you can’t help but feel suddenly like you’ve made a terrible mistake.

You twist your fingers out of nervous habit and shift from foot to foot, wondering if you’re allowed to be here, or whether Gareth remembered to mention that he’d invited you out tonight.

“Well, say something, for Christ’s sake,” Gareth says through his teeth. 

“Oh, r-right… hi–” Jeff stammers, tripping over your name like it’s a hot coal sitting on his tongue.

Adam is not so smooth.

“What are you doing here?” He asks, like he absolutely cannot fathom that you, of all people would coincidentally be here at the same time as them, and certainly not for their benefit. 

It makes you feel frighteningly out of place and you have to force yourself to put down roots to stop yourself from turning right around and going back to your car. 

Before Gareth can finish telling him to shut the fuck up, a figure appears from the shadowy depths of the van and your lungs go flat. 

Lo and behold — Eddie Munson, in the flesh. 

Just the sight of him makes every part of your brain light up like a cathedral and chant his name as if it were singing Hallelujah. 

Eddie Eddie Eddie!

He’s halfway through some tirade and stumbling over a thick black cord that he has somehow become hopelessly tangled in.

“Hey – you assholes are doing a lot of standing around and yapping for–” he is saying before he looks up, sees you, and cuts himself off with a startled yelp of your name.

Despite the semi-comical octave to which he speaks your name, your insides flood with warmth as he practically falls out of the van. He skips over, dragging what you quickly come to realize is a microphone with him in his simultaneous attempt to free himself and close the distance between you.

It goes about as well as anyone could expect.

Before you know it, you’re standing toe to toe in the span of a heartbeat, and like a balm to your worries, you forget that you were ever nervous about being here tonight. You forget the awkwardness of Gareth’s friends, your stress over your outfit, and the lengths you went to be here, because here he is, staring back at you like everything else has melted away. 

All is once again right in the world. 

“Hi!” He says, quickly wiping his grimy hands down the front of the ridiculously tight jeans he’s wearing, the ones you’re desperately trying not to notice or wonder just how he’d managed to get into. 

“Hi, Eddie,” You purr, feeling the muscles in your cheeks already beginning to pull for how wide you’re smiling at him. 

Eddie Eddie Eddie. 

Had you been looking, you might have noticed the way the rest of the band was watching you, exchanging looks of varying degrees, throwing elbows and shushing each other, but you’re not looking, not at anything but the beautiful boy standing before you. 

His hair is wild, like always, but tonight Eddie’s got what looks like dark kohl liner smudged messily around his eyes and half rubbed off, like he’d tried something new and immediately second guessed it. It’s so incredibly endearing that it makes your heart throb in the stupid cupid fashion you’ve been chasing ever since that Thursday in the woods. 

Your veins flood with ecstasy and just like that, you’ve got the fix you’ve been itching for all week. 

With his tight jeans, the thick studded belt bursting out of its loops, all his chains and rings, steel-toed boots, and the faded band tee cropped at the waist and shoulders you can see him wearing underneath his jacket, he looks like something off the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine.

He’s dressed like the guy who would push you up against the wall and rip your skirt off, and you’ve never felt more like a stupid girl with a silly little crush than you do now.

It might almost be intimidating if it weren’t for the way that he’s looking right back at you, as if you hung the moon and the stars and were personally responsible for the shining magic of the cosmos. 

Like the guy who would take his time unbuttoning your jeans. 

You look at him, and he looks right back at you, and you feel something begin to flutter in the space behind your lungs — something warm and frantic, like the beating of a tiny bird’s wings. 

Right now, standing in this parking lot, you could be the only two people in the world, and you’d be just fine with it. 

And then, there is a cough, a conspicuously cleared throat, and the spell is broken.

Eddie shakes his head, like waking from a trance and simultaneously pulling you from yours. 

“What - uh- what are you doing here?” He asks – it hits you like a fist to the gut. “Not that it isn’t great to see you… it’s just— I didn't expect to see you.”

Oh.

You can feel the corners of your mouth twitch where your smile begins to falter. 

“I came to see your show,” You say quietly, fighting a losing battle against the tide of your nerves as they come rushing back in with enough force to sweep you under.

Eddie’s dark ringed eyes go wide and his mouth falls open, and you feel a cold lump drop into the pit of your stomach with a hollow thump. 

“You did?” he gasps, voice lilting up into that comical octave again, “Really?”

Oh, great. So, nobody knew you were coming.

For as mortifying as that is, it doesn’t sting half as badly as the disappointment battering you over how you’d spent your afternoon thinking Eddie was as excited to see you as you were to see him.

He didn’t even know you were coming — stupid Gareth. 

Suddenly, your subconscious is whispering horrible things to you: maybe he doesn’t like you as much as he’d originally let on. Maybe that moment you shared out in the woods was all in your head, maybe you’d misread the signs and he was just being nice for the sake of the loser virgin, tripping over herself to try and win the affections of the local drug dealer.

It makes you feel particularly stupid about how you’d sat there at a soggy picnic bench out in the woods, desperately waiting for Eddie to kiss you – why the fuck would he kiss you? He doesn’t even know you.   

You can’t even touch how embarrassed you are about how much time you’d spent fantasizing about him undressing you. 

Christ, you’re pathetic. But you’re also here, and you ought to at least try to make an effort to appear like you’re not the socially inept loser everybody seems to think you are.

“Oh, y-yeah… I mean, it’s no big deal.” you fumble to explain, gesturing vaguely like it’s going to help smooth over the growing awkwardness of this moment

Maybe if you keep talking, nobody will get the chance to say anything that sounds too much like a rejection.  

You give your best approximation of a casual shrug and continue.

“Gareth invited me.” You say, and somehow it feels oddly accusatory, “He said it was cool… unless…”

Uncertainty makes you strangely brave, brave enough to lean into the awkwardness of the moment at least – if there’s one thing you’ve learned after years of being Carol’s punching bag, it’s that if you can’t beat the joke, join in.

“…Unless?” Eddie prompts.

You furrow your brow.

“Unless he conveniently failed to mention that I was coming?”

Of course, the moment your gaze snaps over to regard him with a harsh, unforgiving glare is when Gareth conveniently decides it’s time to get back to hauling gear.

With a fistful of each of their shirts, he drags the others away, spouting some bullshit about “call times” and “sound check” and leaves you standing there with Eddie in the chasm of the awkward silence fighting tooth and nail to settle snugly between you.

You refuse to give it the satisfaction as you watch them retreat, and you make a displeased sound.

Bastard coward sons of bitches. A pox on all their houses.

“Well,” you start, “This is awkward, I don’t mind saying…” 

Once the rest of the band has circled around to disappear beyond the far side of the van, you begin to feel the faintest hint of that same warmth from the woods settling over you, and you take a chance to lean into Eddie’s space. 

“Hey, listen,” you say dropping your tone, “It was great seeing you — really, it was … but if it’s totally weird that I’m here I can take off—”

“Oh, no!” Eddie says a tad too loud. His voice rings out and echoes across the empty spaces before he reigns his enthusiasm in, “No – it’s not weird! You should totally stay!”

“Really?”

“Yeah, for sure. You should definitely stay, right guys?” You look just in time to see a nondescript door set into a wall of the bar slamming shut, leaving the two of you alone in the cold, “…Whatever, forget those assholes — I’m glad you’re here.” 

And there you go grinning your face off again.

“You are?”

“Yeah, are you kidding? It’s awesome to see you. Also, nobody’s ever actually come to see us play, so that makes you the closest thing to a fan we’ve got.” 

“Oh, good.” You say. 

“Great.” 

“Excellent.” 

“Fan-tastic.” He says, stretching the word lyrically and moving to shut the back doors of the van with a hard THUNK, “Only you gotta do something for me if you’re gonna stick around,”

You move quickly to fall into step as Eddie starts toward the side door set in between a stack of pallets and a dumpster. The same one the others had only just slipped through. 

“What’s that?” You ask, doing your best to pretend that you don’t smell the toxic waste that is bar trash permeating the air.  

He yanks the door open and reveals the murky interior of the Hideout, waiting just beyond like the portal to another world. 

The smell of wet trash is quickly overwhelmed by the strong tang of smoke and alcohol, hitting you in a wave of thick, roiling air. You grit your teeth as it washes over you, accompanied by the tinny din of a Jimmy Buffett song playing over the jukebox.

“You have to promise you’re gonna cheer super loud to balance out all the booing,” he says, holding the door open for you, “We aren’t exactly what you’d call popular with the local wildlife.”

You have to bite the inside of your cheek to stop yourself from telling him that Gareth already warned you of that during his earlier sales pitch. 

Something along the lines of “we’re terrible, please come see us play,” had been uttered as a backdrop to your giggling over learning the name of the band, back when it was only a silly anecdote and you knew nothing of the gravity of the invitation. 

You banish the thought to the back of your mind and bite down harder on your cheek to try and distract from the way you can feel your heart beating against your ribs as Eddie’s hand comes up to hover at the small of your back, ushering you inside. 

“I can do that.” You say with a quick nod.

“Perfect – after you, M’lady.” 

You almost don’t remember to be worried about getting into the bar when Eddie guides you over the threshold with a short, sweeping gesture. 

The side door deposits you at the far end of the bar, and despite only the slightest change in atmosphere, it takes your eyes a moment to adjust to the neon signage and overhead bulbs.

All your fears of bouncers and fake IDs dissipate when you arrive and there is no one waiting to card you on the other side. 

You do your best to breathe as subtle a sigh of relief as you can, because you made it, you’re in, whatever that means for the rest of your night.  

The Hideout is a full-on hick dive, as much as you expected. Booth seating, pool tables, and the vaguest suggestion of a bandstand in the far back corner next to the jukebox where you finally see Gareth and the others again. They’re busying themselves with the task of setting up amps and instruments beneath a slapdash Corroded Coffin banner hung crookedly over the drumkit. 

It’s clearly homemade and looks very much like it has been spray painted, black over red on a stained white bed sheet. It’s incredibly tacky in the most endearing way.

The bar is not too terribly full for seven-forty-five on a Tuesday night, though in taking in the faces of the blue-collar working-class patrons, the general décor, and the type of music shuffling through the jukebox as the track turns over to play Loretta Lynn, you can’t help but feel that this is not really their crowd.

Not really your crowd, you tell yourself, not that you have the experience to know such a thing. 

If you thought you felt out of place before, standing among the band, the feeling is amplified tenfold as you begin to notice the way half a dozen people have turned around to gawp curiously at you. 

Of course, it doesn’t occur to you that the reason they’re staring is that you’re standing there tucked in against Eddie Munson, who you also had not realized was standing so close to you.

You erupt into a fever of goosebumps as you rock back on your heels and feel the contours of his chest graze your shoulder blades. Eddie’s hand comes up to grip you kindly by the shoulder as he guides you further into the dingy building and starts to give you the rundown. 

You do your best to focus on his words to keep yourself grounded, trying to assure yourself that you’re allowed to be here. 

If he’s not nervous, you’re not nervous.

“We’re gonna go on soonish,” he says, depositing you at an empty barstool, separated from where a handful of patrons sit nursing their drinks, “– we’ll probably play for like half an hour, maybe longer depending on how many songs they let us play.”

“How many songs do they usually let you play?” You ask, having to project your voice to be heard over the din of the bar.

You do your best to hop up onto the stool in a way that is cool and elegant as you have almost perfected with your squat metal seat back in Mr. Kapz’s class. This one is taller than you’d estimated, however, and you immediately find yourself struggling to get up over the lip of the polished wood.

Eddie, ever the gentleman, doesn’t hesitate to help you up and steady you. 

“Three or four,” He hums without missing a beat. “Our record is six, but that was only one time, so I wouldn’t hold my breath for that many with this crowd. Also, don’t be surprised if they pull the plug on us — like, literally kill the power.”

“You’re kidding…”

“It’s no big deal, it’s just something they like to do in this fine establishment.”

He says it like it's funny, but suddenly you can’t help but think back to Gareth’s plea that you come and watch them play. For the first time since he’d invited you that afternoon, you are suddenly struck wondering just what you have really gotten yourself into – you have no idea what kind of music they play, whether they’re halfway decent or as terrible as Gareth let on.

You have to work to remind yourself that, regardless of the quality of Corroded Coffin, you’re here to support your friends. 

Which is only really half true – you’re here for Eddie.

You’re watching him closely when another body appears at his side and claps a loud, forceful hand down on his shoulder. Your heart spasms in tandem with the way Eddie jumps under the sudden contact, and you brace yourself for whatever is coming as his head whips around to address his assailant. 

Then, much to your patent relief, his features light up and his face splits into a wide grin. 

“Oh, hey! Wayne!” He yelps with a rush of boyish excitement, “What’re you doing here? Are you gonna watch us play?”

The man – evidently Wayne – wheezes out a chuckle that is a little too sarcastic to be kind before answering, speaking in a thick Appalachian drawl that is bizarrely out of place in this town. 

“I get enough of y’all’s music at home, thanks very much. Just sayin’ hi on my way out,” he rasps, squeezing Eddie’s shoulder with an unmistakable affection before turning his bright blue eyes on you, “Who’s yer friend?”

Eddie makes quick introductions, and once names have been traded back and forth, Wayne touches the brim of his faded ballcap. 

“Pleased to meet you,”

“Oh – sure. I mean, likewise,” you stammer, stiffening your spine to keep yourself from wilting under the intensity of the man’s gaze.

It’s almost intrusive, and makes you feel like you need to go home and put on another layer of clothing just to keep him from seeing your deepest, darkest, inner most thoughts and feelings. 

X-ray specs got nothing on this man’s penatrative gaze, and when it's just about enough to send you crawling out of your skin, then there goes Eddie saving your life again.

“Isn’t it bad luck to wear a hat indoors?” He asks with a mischievous smirk.

Wayne catches him expertly by the wrist as he reaches for the hat, like he’s a certified expert at avoiding such a motion, and guides Eddie’s ring-bedecked digits safely away from his headwear.

“Bad luck to put a hat on a bed.” Wayne corrects, “Bad luck to open an umbrella indoors.”

Eddie snorts as he takes his hand back and nudges you with his elbow, gentlemanly letting you in on the joke. 

“Wayne’s a nut for that kinda stuff.” He says, gesturing to the older man with no small amount of humor, like it’s simply the goofiest thing anyone has ever heard. “Real superstitious,”

It doesn’t feel mean, so much as a deep set rapport built over a lifetime of back and forth like this. 

Wayne makes a thick, gravelly sound in the back of his throat which you recognize as the beginning rattle of a smoker’s cough. 

“Least I know where the bad luck’s comin’ from when it shows up,” The man hums, “Anyways. What time are y’all goin’ on?”

“In a few minutes. Why?”

In lieu of answering, Wayne just hums again, thoughtfully so this time. Then that bright gaze slides back over to you.  

“They got earplugs behind the bar if you ask for ‘em,” Wayne says with a clipped gesture, “Just so’s you know.” 

“Hey—!” Eddie begins with all the moody indignance of a child.

Wayne cuts him off with raised hands, begging no offense. 

“Just tryin’ to be neighborly in case yer friend don’t know what she’s gettin’ into,” He stresses, “Y’ever heard these fellers play?” 

“Uh, well— no, actually, I—” you start,

Wayne’s brows jump. 

“Like skinnin’ a cat,” 

It sends you right back to the incident in the quad the week before, to what Eddie had said about Carol’s screeching tirade, and suddenly the look Wayne is giving you is so familiar it’s almost eerie.

You realize with a start that it’s the exact same look Eddie gave you out in the quad.

The resemblance is uncanny. The joke, however, does not land.

“Well, it was nice seeing you, Wayne,” Eddie fumes, clapping the man on the shoulder in a stilted mirror image of the way he’d done a moment before and maneuvering him past you.

If you didn’t know better, you might have said that the faintest flush of color had bled into Eddie’s cheeks, but you tell yourself you don’t as he pushes Wayne past you and attempts to maneuver him out. 

“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” 

Wayne stops short then, turns, and gives Eddie a very stern look, thrusting a finger up at him in a way that feels oddly paternal as he warns him with a low utterance of, “Hey now,”.

You know that look well enough from having seen it on your father. It means “watch your tone”, and it does the job it’s meant to.

You watch as Eddie puts his hands up and retreats a step, and the tension dissipates before it’s even had the chance to settle. 

 Suddenly, they’re friends again and your brain is crawling out of your skull with curiosity over who this man is to Eddie – what a strange dynamic they have, decidedly charged with something but clearly softened by a kind of underlying affection.

Almost like family – exactly like family, you realize. 

If you didn’t know better, you might almost guess that this man was Eddie’s father, but of course that couldn’t be true, because you know exactly where Al Munson is meant to be, and it’s not here at the Hideout.  

After a quick back and forth that you only catch bits and pieces of, Wayne gives you one last parting look, brows jumping.

“I’m serious about them earplugs.” He says, then claps Eddie on the back as he takes his leave. “See you at home, Bud,”

“Yeah, okay… later.” He mutters – he gestures after the man once he’s gone, “My uncle.” Eddie explains, and suddenly everything makes a little more sense.

You just had the pleasure of meeting the elusive other Munson, who you’d heard talk of around town, but whose reputation (or lack thereof) has been vastly overshadowed by the likes of his brother and nephew.   

“He seems nice.” You offer for lack of anything better to say. 

“Yeah, he thinks he’s real funny with those earplugs – weird seeing him here though, he usually drinks out at The Attic on — hey, what’s the matter?” Eddie asks suddenly, brows creeping toward one another to form a deep crease of concern between them, “You’re not scared are you?” 

You swallow hard and try not to stare at him, suddenly backed in a multicolor glow as the stage lights come on, leaving him looking like some kind of ethereal rock god. 

“No.” You lie. 

Eddie grins at you like he knows you’re fibbing, and he reaches up to touch your arm. 

You do your best to suppress a shiver under the way he gently squeezes you there.

“Hey, you showing up like this? Biggest thing anybody’s ever done for me. Y’think I’d let anything happen to you after that?”

He barely gives you time to read into the sentiment before something over your head draws his attention and the moment ends. 

“Anyway, you’re perfectly safe. Laverne here’s gonna look after you,” He gestures to the space behind you, “Right Laverne?” 

You turn to see the woman behind the bar that he is speaking to, face split into that big, winning smile of his — a little sleazier than it was a moment before — and are suddenly struck by the knowledge that this is the second person Eddie has introduced you to in this place in less than two minutes. 

You catch yourself wondering just how much time he spends skulking around this bar as a tall, middle-aged woman with a big cloud of frizzy hair dyed a red so deep it’s nearly purple comes into view.

Laverne — the bartender, evidently.

She’s got a blown-out tattoo on her bicep that you think must have been a snake at one point in time, and her massive, freckled breasts are just about spilling out of the top of her too-tight tank top, stretching the name of the bar until it’s almost illegible. She looks entirely too rock and roll for this place, like some kind of a transplant from a seedy biker joint on the Sunset Strip.

By the way she’s glaring at Eddie, you can tell that she is immune to his attempts at charm.

“I don’t pay you to stand around flirting.” Laverne drawls, jerking her thumb over her shoulder toward what you can only imagine is the back of house, “An’ you left a whole pile’a dishes stacked up back there when you ran out to put yer makeup on.”

Eddie’s grin wavers under the impromptu lecture and you can’t help but feel your insides squirm on his behalf.

“Gee, Laverne, I never knew you liked me so much,” he tries, but she is not done. 

“Don’t you think for one second I’m gonna cover yer ass so’s you can cut out early an’ go diddle yourself or whatever it is you do on your own time. When yer here, yer on my time, an’ I don’t appreciate my time bein’ wasted,  so, who d’you reckon is gonna do them dishes, Junior?”

All the sleazy charm ekes right out of him and you watch as Eddie goes white as a sheet. 

“Green around the gills” is what a distant relative of yours would have called the look on his face, and you can’t say you disagree.  

You have to resist the urge to reach out and put a steadying hand on him, purely on babysitting instinct, because if you didn’t know any better – which you don’t – you’d think he was about to keel over, and it’s almost startling.

Based on his schooltime bravado, part of you imagines Eddie would be made of stronger stuff in the face of such ire, but you’re quickly beginning to understand that the Eddie you know from school is not an accurate depiction of the man behind the mask. Then again, you’re not certain you know anyone who would be able to stand there and take a dressing down like that, so maybe Eddie is made of that elusive “stronger stuff” after all.

Suddenly, you can’t help but imagine what would have happened in the alternate universe where Carol found herself here with you, standing in his place. You’d like to see her try running her mouth then, face to face with the likes of Madam Hideout. 

Back in the real world, Eddie casts a wary gaze in your direction before answering the woman who you have quickly come to realize is his boss. 

“I’ll do ‘em after,” he mumbles, suddenly much less an ethereal rock god and more a sullen child.

The muscle in Laverne’s jaw flexes as she grits her teeth, and you can suddenly see her right at home standing behind a great oak bar in a saloon, eyes shaded in a big Stetson, spitting a fat gob of dark, rotten chaw to the sawdust floor as she chews through her thick Texan drawl. 

“They shoulda been done b’fore you punched out.” She spits in the tobacco-less, non-Old West version of herself. 

“I’ll do them after, Laverne.” Eddie insists, sliding back into the boyish indignance from before. 

She rolls her eyes and stalks off, muttering something unintelligibly rude as she goes, and an indiscernible emotion wells painfully in your chest. It is deeply offended on Eddie’s behalf, whatever it is, and moves you to want to protect him, though you don’t know how you would manage to do that. 

You don’t typically feel this way about anyone over the age of twelve, and don’t know whether to try and pick a fight with Laverne or to drag Eddie out to the parking lot where you’ll be safe from the ire of rude bartenders – that’s what you would have done with Dustin had you encountered a bully somewhere out in the wild, but somehow you can’t imagine either scenario going over well with Eddie swapped for Dustin. 

The lack of options leaves you paralyzed, and by the time Eddie is talking again, you’ve gone and said nothing in his defense. 

The indignant emotion deflates and leaves you feeling cold and guilty.

“Yeah, that Laverne…” he says, “She’s a real peach.”

You watch the woman saunter to lean over the end of the bar furthest from you, and once you are almost certain she is out of earshot, you lean in close.   

“Do you work here?” You ask in a stage whisper, if only to be heard over the din of the music and murmuring conversations. 

Eddie’s gaze snaps back down to you and you watch as he grows suddenly and strangely shy. You can see his guard cautiously slipping into place as he reaches up to scratch at the back of his neck and offers you a lopsided shrug. 

“Few nights a week, yeah.” He admits, almost like he’s embarrassed to have been caught in the conundrum of playing a set in the place where he works, “Pays the bills, y’know?” 

You wonder how much of the interaction with Wayne followed directly by the one with Laverne is coloring this moment, and you’re mortified to have put him in this situation.

If you weren’t here, he would be up on the bandstand with the rest of the guys instead of looking after you, and both interactions may very well have been avoided entirely. Suddenly, you’re desperate to take responsibility for your presence and put him at ease. 

“That’s cool.” You tell him, and for once, it is exactly the right thing to say.  

Eddie immediately brightens. 

“You think so?” He asks.

You nod, because if you’re not nervous, then he doesn’t have to be, right? Suddenly, this interaction feels a lot like babysitting, and you take no small amount of comfort in the familiarity of it, even if Eddie is most certainly the one babysitting you here at the bar. 

“Totally! You’re basically getting paid to play a gig every week – do you know how many bands would kill for that?” 

Eddie’s face splits up into that big, toothy grin.

“Yeah, exactly!” He starts before second-guessing his tone and attempting to reign in his enthusiasm, “I mean – hey, it’s not Saturday night at the Garden, but a gig’s a gig. At least until we can get the band off the ground and get a record–” 

Over the rumble of the bar, you hear somebody shouting from the direction of the bandstand – Jeff, you think. His voice is laced with annoyance as if this is the third or fourth time he’s called Eddie, and he is quickly losing his patience.

“MUNSON!” He shouts, “LET’S GO!”

Eddie twists at the sound of his name and you watch as he pulls a face, almost like he’d forgotten there was a greater purpose to being here other than standing around chatting you up at the bar.

“Whoopsie – guess that’s my cue.” He says, shrugging out of his jacket as he turns back to you, “Hold on to this for me, will you?”

Your heart rockets up into your throat and you hope that Eddie can’t see how your fingers are trembling as you accept his jacket and hold it against you.

You clench your teeth to keep something cheesy from floating up past your lips like you’ll guard it with your life.  

You think you must be making a face, then, one Eddie mistakes for anxiety as he gives you a soft look and his voice turns gentle. 

“You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.” He assures you, “You’re with the band, remember? Fan numero uno.”

He raises a finger to emphasize the notion, and you nod, watching him turn and trying to beat back the spike of fear that surges in you when he leaves you sitting at the bar. 

He’s fine if you’re fine, and you’re fine if he’s fine, but only so long as you’re enveloped in the safety blanket of his presence – but you remind yourself that you’re a big girl.

If you can lie to everyone you know and sneak out of the house to slip into a bar to see a band, you can sit alone in a room full of strangers for a few minutes before the band starts to play. 

And yet, sitting there, watching Eddie move into the crowd, you’re suddenly struck with the sensation of how stridently you don’t want to be left alone in this place where you so clearly don’t belong. But you don’t have to be so overt about it, so you shout at Eddie’s back in the far-off hope that it will make him turn around and look at you once more. 

“Y’know, you keep saying that,” you start, “But I haven’t even heard you play!”

He turns on his heel and shoots you full of holes with that big, goofy grin of his. 

“Oh man, you’re gonna love us!” He calls back, and you can’t help but snort out an undainty laughter. 

“That’s not what Gareth said!” 

Eddie pulls a face and cups a hand at his ear like he didn’t hear you before throwing a shrug and disappearing into the throng of people milling about the pool tables. 

You take great comfort in the fact that for as cool as you think he is, you are starting to understand that he is an incredible dork. That makes things so much easier, especially with how you want so desperately for him to like you as much as you like him. 

And you like him so, so much. 

Too much – it doesn’t feel like just a schoolyard crush anymore, not since the moment you shared out in the woods, and again back in the parking lot, and just now, here at the bar.

Sitting here, with a big dopey look on your face and hearts in your eyes, you think you could very easily fall for Eddie as you watch him jump up onto the bandstand and exchange an indiscernible something with Gareth, grinning wolfishly as he does.  

You’re almost too busy sifting for gems through the last five minutes of conversation to realize what you just told yourself – you think you could fall pretty hard for Eddie Munson.

The thought startles you enough that you have to move to try and escape the way it makes you feel, twisting on the stool to face the bar. You sit there, letting the din of the environment wash over you in sickly waves of overstimulation, and you remind yourself of what Gareth originally assured you about this outing. 

Not like a date. He said. Just as friends. 

In the wake of your most recent revelation, the idea stings just a little bit more than you are prepared to endure.

Then, there is the abrasive sound of a throat being cleared. It’s only then that you look up and find yourself face-to-face with Madam Hideout herself.

Laverne gives you a hard side eye from where she stands at the tap directly to your right, pouring a tall pint of foamy beer.

If you’re blushing, you hope she can’t tell under the deep, colored lighting.

You try to smile at her, but it’s little more than a flattening of your lips as your mouth stretches horizontally, and somehow you know it isn’t coming across as polite as you’d intended. She doesn’t reciprocate.

Behind you, an amp flares with staticky feedback that makes your hair stand on end as someone plugs in a guitar. 

The sound of a dozen disgruntled barflies rumbles through the room as the band finishes setting up, and you find yourself witness to a sudden mass exodus. You twist in your seat again and watch as at least half of the patrons very quickly make their way out into the parking lot, following Wayne Munson’s lead after the fact.

By the time the herd has been thinned, the room is not empty by any means, but you can suddenly see the bandstand at the far end of the room where you couldn’t before. It gives you the perfect vantage of Eddie.

Corroded Coffin has similarly noticed how the room has cleared out, much to their own varying degrees of chagrin. Eddie is fumbling with the strap on his guitar, adjusting the length as he scans the room with a furrowed brow – then, as he finds you, right where he left you, his face splits into that same wide grin.

Suddenly shy under the cast of his attention, you gesture to the state of the room – get a load of these guys – and give an overexaggerated shrug. He responds in kind by sticking his tongue out at you and you feel your insides go tight and squirmy.

You don’t even realize how you’ve been grinning back at him until your face starts to hurt, and as quickly as the spotlight finds you, it’s gone again when Jeff leans over to say something to Eddie, snatching his attention away and leaving you sitting there alone on your stool again.

Brimming with what you would argue is too many feelings to process all at once, you reach around to grip the bar and spin yourself in a tight circle, hoping that maybe a little gravity will help sort out those big scary emotions.

“Quit that spinnin’.” Laverne snaps. “I ain’t moppin’ your little brains up off this floor if you fall.”

“Sorry.” You say immediately, bracing yourself on the bar to stop from going around once more – tragically, it leaves you facing her and the apparent disdain she holds for you, simply by way of association.

You avert your gaze.

Somewhere, you can hear the theme to Cheers playing distantly over the muted rumbling of half a dozen conversations.

…sometimes you wanna go, where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came… 

Some less than others. 

When you work up the courage to chance a look, you find that Laverne is still staring daggers at you. More than that, a cursory glance reveals that most of the people still sitting down the length of the bar are stealing curious looks at you. 

You can feel your throat going dry under the attention of so many strange eyes. It’s not that you’re necessarily an inherently shy person, only that without Eddie to bolster you, the feeling of being somewhere you clearly do not belong is attempting to crush you flat.

You do your best to make yourself as small as humanly possible as the beginning of a beat gets thumped out on the drum set before abruptly stopping.

Soundcheck.

Your mouth is suddenly full of cobwebs, and you muster your courage to steal one more look at Laverne, whose eyes you can still feel burning holes into the top of your skull. 

You peek up at her, hoping her ire will have eased, as if miraculously in the last thirty-seconds you’d done something to earn her respect.

No dice.

“Do you think I could get a coke?” You ask, cringing inwardly as your voice wavers and cracks.

You don’t really want the overpriced, watered-down soda she’s bound to give you, but you’re willing to do anything to distract from how much you stick out among the half-drunk onlookers pressing their faces in on you like kids at the zoo.

Thank God for the shield of Eddie’s jacket, you are once again so thankful you’d foregone the tight little skirt and boots combo.

Laverne gives you a hard look, and you feel a twinge of sudden bravery begin worming its way through your midsection. This time, you stare back at her. 

Then, she throws a dish towel over her shoulder as she makes her way to you, chunky Doc Marten’s thumping hard on the spongy mat behind the bar.

As uncomfortable as you are to be sitting there under her gaze, some nagging part of you at the back of your tongue meets the annoyed twinge steadily rising in you, and together, they wish she would climb down out of your ass already.  

Finally, after what feels like an eternity, she pulls the trigger on the soda nozzle and fills a dark red, textured glass to the brim – no ice.

She sets the drink on the bar in front of you with a hard thump and you watch the foam leap up over the brim of the cup and spill down the side before dissipating with a soft hissing. 

Laverne pops a straw into the cup and somehow it feels like an insult, like something Carol would have done. 

You’re supposed to inhale, Dummy! pared down to a simple gesture with that same patent disdain. 

Still, you’re nothing if not fatally imbued with unflinching manners, and the words are tumbling out over your lips before you can stop them.

“Thank you,” you mumble, and the nagging little voice on the back of your tongue cries out at your treachery. 

Laverne grunts out a response and quirks a thin, penciled brow at you. 

It takes her forever to speak, and you wish the band would just start playing already so that you would have an excuse to turn your back to her.

“The Chief’s been known to frequent this place,” she begins, and in a brief moment of deep confusion, all you can do is stare at her, waiting for her to clarify, “Of Police.”

You have no idea what to do with that information.

“Oh,” you say dumbly, “You don’t say,”

She nods.

“Might even be inclined to call him a regular customer,” 

Somehow, you can’t help but get the sense that it’s less a statement of fact than it is a threat, and if that is the case, you can’t deny that it’s more or less effective.

The last thing you need right now is to find yourself sitting, wilting under the gaze of Chief Hopper while he reads you the riot act and lists in detail everything you’ve ever done to make you such a terrible person — faking sickness and sneaking out to go and see a boy you’re sweet on in a bar you’re not old enough to be sitting in when by all rights you should be sitting on the Henderson’s couch watching He-Man.  

For lack of a better response, you twist idly on your chair, nice and slow so Laverne can see you do it and come all the way back around to the other side.

The phrase, “if looks could kill” passes through your mind for a brief, yet terrifying second – something in the back of your mind is inexorably calm as it assures you that you haven’t done anything wrong. 

You’re supposed to be here. You’re with the band, no matter how anyone may happen to feel about that.

Leaning over the bar and taking a long, innocent sip from your straw, you make a show of swallowing, smack your lips, and shrug. 

 “Funny. I don’t see him.”  

In spite of all your affected cool, you feel your guts twinge with anxiety when Laverne levels you with a hard look and crosses her thick, tattooed arms over her generous bosom. Suddenly you’re half worried you’re about to be “bounced” or whatever the official term for being forcibly ejected from a bar is – one more for the list in your long night of firsts. 

Then, in a shocking turn of events, the corner of the woman’s lip twitches in the faintest hint of a smile, violently suppressed, of course. 

You’re oddly pleased, in the way only a goody-two-shoes like yourself can be under the attention of anyone who could even remotely be perceived as a figure of authority. 

“How old are you?” Laverne demands.

Just like that, the twinge blossoms to a nagging feeling of angry defiance, lurking far in the back of your throat. 

Stupid question. You think, biting the inside of your cheek, because it’s not like you’d tried to order a beer. 

“Forty-five.” You say, matter-of-factly, suddenly unable to adjust your tone as you remember how rudely she’d spoken to Eddie before.    

She holds you in that hard, deadpan gaze.

“That’s funny,” She sniffs, “Bet your rock star boyfriend thinks you’re real funny too.” She hurls it at you like a slur and your heart spasms and lurches up into your throat.

“Oh, he’s not my—” but the bartender is already walking away, so you clamp your mouth shut and hum out your annoyance.

You swallow hard.

Boyfriend.

The word clangs around in your ribcage, and you wonder if that’s what people assume when they see you and Eddie together. 

Just like that, you’re feeling breathless again.

No wonder your teachers are all so freaked out – you don’t get the time to worry about that before Eddie’s voice cuts through the room and strikes you square in the back. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’d like to thank you all for coming out tonight–” he says smoothly into the microphone, “Before we start the show, we’d just like to say one thing…” 

You turn in your seat and find yourself immediately locked in his gaze. Even across the room, it sends a chill up your spine and goosebumps flashing across the expanse of your body. 

You’re gripped in the feeling that suddenly, you’re the only two people in this room, that no matter what happens next, it will be for your eyes only, and you’ll cherish that to the end of time. 

Eddie leans in, grips the microphone and looks you dead in the eye.

“This one goes out to all the ladies.”

Oh. Nevermind. 

“Oh, my God,” You say under your breath. 

Boo. Hiss. 

He’s so uncool, you can’t stand how much you like him. 

The strike of sticks on cymbals masks the agonized groan that rumbles throughout the bar and with the first few hard chords, the show begins. 

Corroded Coffin is not the greatest band in the world, but they’re also far from the worst.

It was an over-exaggeration on Gareth’s part to say that they’re terrible; they can carry a tune, they’re mostly on key and in sync, and that’s more than you can say you expected from how you’d been prepared.

You find that they mostly play covers of metal songs – the likes of Judas Priest and Black Sabbath – which garners a general disinterest from the bar, save for one sloppy drunk biker who just about loses his mind when they go into a crunchy rendition of War Pigs. 

You’re certainly losing your mind and falling a little bit harder than you’d expected you would be when you woke up that morning.

Eddie Munson in front of a cafeteria audience is one thing, but Eddie Munson on stage, a real-life honest-to-God stage is another animal entirely. As far as you are concerned, he was born and bred for the stage, and you’re enraptured, watching him move under the lights. The way he grips the neck of his guitar as he teases a melody out of the taught strings and growls into the microphone settles in your bones in a way you know is going to linger for months if not years to come.

It is mesmerizing in the most intoxicating way. If you thought tearing your eyes from him at school was difficult, you’re fairly certain you don’t blink from the start of their set to their less-than-grand finish.

They play a whopping five songs before someone unceremoniously kills the power, just as Eddie had prophesized.

“Bummer.” You hear someone groan out of the dark from the direction of the stage.

Luckily, it’s a total blackout to the whole bar, and not just the stage, saving the band any overt embarrassment in the face of their less-than-adoring public.

Your ears are ringing in the sudden absence of sound and the darkness lingers only a moment before the power comes back on again.

Loggins and Messina are back on the jukebox in an instant, the patrons turn back to their drinks, and just like that, your introduction to Corroded Coffin is cut short, one song shy of their record. 

With the lights on and free from the cloying miasma that can only come from standing in the crowd at a rock show, you manage to claw your way back to your senses enough to remember your parking lot promise.

You surprise even yourself by erupting into a cacophony of thunderous applause, whooping, and hollering just like any self respecting number one fan would do. Then again, if you’re being completely honest, and if the drunk biker hollering unevenly doesn’t put up too much of a fight, you might happily accept the title.

It doesn’t take much effort to shoulder your way through the meager crowd, particularly with the way it is steadily thinning. Evidently, the end to the show was enough to call for an end to the night for a good number of people here at the Hideout.  

You cross the room in a hop, skip, and a jump that deposits you at the foot of the bandstand, where you stand craning your head back nearly to the point of pain just to look up at the object of your affection. 

You hold Eddie’s jacket clutched reverently against your chest and imagine your steadily beating heart imbuing it with all kinds of emotion — super-charging it with what Huey Lewis and the News is now telling you must be the power of love. 

“You didn’t tell me you were good!” You cry, and are almost immediately chagrined.

You’re half deaf from the set and even through your screaming ears, you know you must be shouting. Worse than that is how you would dare to say something so incredibly awkward.

Why can’t you be cool for once in your stupid life?

Eddie is positively slick with sweat, pushing his hair back from his face and grinning again as he comes down to your level.

He drops into a squat you’re half surprised he can manage with just how tight his jeans are — the other half of you is too busy noticing how now that he’s down here, you’re almost nose to nose. 

You try not to stare at his jeans, or the sweat dripping down from his hairline to grace the curve of his cheekbones and drip off the sharp line of his jaw. His shirt has gone semi-translucent and is clinging to his chest like a lover as you force yourself to meet his honey-warm gaze. 

“You guys are great.” You try again, hoping it comes out sounding a little cooler this time around.

No such luck. 

“Yeah? Well, what’d you expect, Sweetheart?” Eddie drawls, showing you his teeth in a way that makes your insides go tight — he tilts his head over to press his ear to his shoulder, “They don’t let just anyone up on this stage, you know.”

“Yes, they do.” Jeff counters from somewhere behind him, and you watch Eddie’s brows come down in aggravation, “Remember when they let that guy do forty minutes of close-up magic?”

Somewhere, very far away, Gareth is shrugging his shoulders from where he still sits, comfortably perched behind his drumkit.

“That guy wasn’t half bad.” he posits, much to the chagrin of his bandmates.

“That dude was wearing a cape.” Eddie scoffs.

“And you’re saying you wouldn’t?” Jeff snorts.

You’re too caught up in the way your heart is beating itself senseless against your ribs to hear the back and forth continue between them because Eddie called you Sweetheart.

Normally, you like to think such a pet name would leave you roiling in disgust, but nothing about the way you feel about Eddie is normal. 

And you’re not being any shade of normal about this. Forget whatever bullshit it says on your birth certificate, forget all the little pet names anyone has ever given you — Eddie Munson reached down and christened you Sweetheart, and as far as you’re concerned, that’s your name now. 

You feel like your head is going to crack open and burst with electric light as the name rattles around and around in your skull until it finds a tight little corner to wedge itself into and stay forever. 

Sweetheart, Sweetheart, Sweetheart.

Sweetheart and Eddie.

Sweetheart Munson. 

It’s so goddamn saccharine you’re almost surprised when your teeth don’t come tumbling out of your head. 

As you get lost further down the road of delusional fancy, the band’s bickering carries on without you. 

“I dunno… d’you guys think we should invest in capes?” Adam posits, and it’s almost enough to send Eddie into apoplectic shock.

“Corroded Coffin does not wear capes!” He snarls, and an intrusive little voice can’t help but beg to differ, because to you, Corroded Coffin sounds exactly like the type of band who would come out on stage wearing capes. 

“At least he had style.” Gareth huffs, “And the crowd liked him a whole lot better than they like us, maybe we can learn something from Magical Marve.” 

“Jesus Christ, you guys — you’re blowing it in front of our number one fan!” Eddie gestures to you as he says it and you blush bright red, suddenly terrified that you’ve been caught with hearts in your eyes as the rest of the band’s attention snaps over to you — their apparent number one fan. 

In a few years, when you would read Misery, you would spend a full week brimming with resentment that Stephen King would dare to suggest that it could be anything but a term of endearment. But that was a thought for the future, and only because he wasn’t there to see Eddie Munson dub you Sweetheart. 

Right here and now, you are just happy to be included. Because it’s like Eddie said before, you're with the band… who is still bickering as they go about the quick and dirty business of breaking down their equipment. 

It takes a solid twenty minutes, even with you fumbling to try and help anyway you can. Your vision goes briefly spotty when Eddie hands you his guitar and asks you to “hold her a sec”, briefly — accidentally — hooking his pinky finger with yours in the exchange. A promise of something yet untold — his jacket, his guitar, anything he gives you, you’ll guard with your life. 

It sounds just as stupid as you feared when you can’t stop yourself from saying it this time, but the way he laughs eases the sting of your embarrassment, if only a little. 

When everything is more or less put away, moods have not yet recovered from the previous moment’s tiff, but Gareth is never one to be deterred. 

“Come on, you guys. Why the long faces? That’s the longest set we’ve played in a while!” he says, nudging you with his elbow, “I’d say that’s reason enough to celebrate.”

It’s perhaps the first suggestion that night which isn’t immediately met with a dissenting chorus of booing and hissing. 

“Yeah, what do you say, fellas?” Jeff throws a neighborly arm over Eddie’s shoulder and gives him a shake for good measure, “The Palace’ll still be open for a few hours, how’s about we order a couple pizzas, get a six pack and go for a few rounds of Dragon’s Lair? Quarters are on me.” 

It sounds about as fun as any average Tuesday with Dustin and his friends, not nearly as special as anything you would do to celebrate such a monumental night as this, but being the guest here, you defer to the group. You look to their leader to gauge the appropriate reaction to Jeff’s suggestion, and you notice with a start that he does not share his friend’s enthusiasm. 

Call it babysitter’s intuition, but you seem to be the only one who has noticed that Eddie’s mood has taken a sudden and immediate nosedive into the creaky laminate flooring.

Everyone else is too busy listening to Gareth get his feathers ruffled over the plan to notice Eddie’s exchanged look with Laverne, still tucked in at the back of the bar with her arms crossed. 

You watch all of this happen with the privilege of blessed invisibility, preserving both the excitement of the moment and Eddie’s dignity as a decision is quietly made.

He’s not going. 

Your heart sinks. 

“Oh, so you’re just gonna oh-so-graciously offer to pay for the cheapest part of that plan?” Gareth snaps.

Jeff fishes a ring of keys from the front pocket of his jeans and jingles it in the other boy’s face.

If Eddie’s not going, you don’t want to go either, but you don’t dare embarrass yourself by saying that out loud, so you keep your mouth shut.

“I’m also gonna drive. You can be a cheap prick too when you get your license, Freshman.” Jeff says with no small amount of smugness, “What d’you say, Eddie? You in?”

He does his best to approximate an apologetic smile, then shakes his head, sweat damp curls bouncing as he does. 

“Not tonight, I’ve got some stuff I gotta finish up here.”

He does his best not to look directly at you as he says it, but you’re starting to learn that if there is one thing Eddie has a hard time doing, it’s not looking at you. You aren’t sure how to process that information and for a brief yet terrifying moment, it swells inside you to the point of pain. 

“You sure?” Gareth presses, glancing less than subtly between you and stretching his words past the point of pain, “Big night. Worth celebrating.”

You level him with an unimpressed look. 

Real smooth Gareth, why not just spell it out for him?

Still, you suppose you have to give him Brownie points for trying because you wouldn't even be here if it weren't for him. 

Eddie is already retreating when he gives his final answer, waving you off in a way that feels almost painfully casual. 

“Yeah, no, you guys go ahead. I’ll catch up with you later.”

You watch him go, and he watches you watching him. You can’t tell for certain, but it feels almost as if something significant is passing you by, a moment you’ll never be able to get back if you don’t snatch it out of the air before it’s gone.

It fills you with a stinging burst of panic, especially when Eddie turns and lets you out of his sight. 

You came here tonight to see him. You’re only here for him. 

You’re almost shocked to hear your name being spoken then, and when you snap back over to reality, Jeff and Gareth are looking expectantly at you — Adam, who could evidently not care less who comes or stays, is already halfway to the door.

They had him at pizzas and a six-pack.

“—how ‘bout it?”

You blink back at them stupidly.

“Me?”

Jeff shrugs. 

“Sure, it’s like the man said, you’re our biggest fan, you ought to share in the glory too.” 

Strange how you had assumed that invitation would not be extended to you, stranger still is how you’re suddenly considering it.

Pizza and beer at the arcade is not the worst way you’ve ever spent a Tuesday night, but there is something nagging at you, stopping you from immediately accepting. It’s that same feeling as before, opportunity slipping past you and an incredibly powerful pull asking you whether you ought to stay as you turn back to watch Laverne step aside to make room for Eddie as he rounds the bar. 

Stay? At a bar?

Where you have been so summarily informed that the chief of police is likely to pop up at any moment like a cheap jump scare in a bad horror movie?

It’s certainly not the worst idea you’ve ever had. 

It’s not even the worst idea you’ve had all day. 

“I think…” you start, “Actually, I think I’m gonna pass… it’s been a lot of excitement ...and my curfew is coming up soon.”

It’s not expressly untrue, but you feel a sharp pang of regret when Jeff shrugs and so willingly accepts your polite decline.

Part of you wishes that they would have fought a little harder to get you to come out – even Carol won’t take no for an answer the first time around – but that part of you is very quickly whipped back into shape.

You’re not here to hang out with Adam and Jeff and Gareth. 

“Suit yourself,” he says flippantly, then claps Gareth on the back, “C’mon G.” 

He doesn’t follow right away. Gareth, never one to miss a quiet exchange, remains, giving you a pointed look.

“What’s up?” He asks quietly, “You good?” 

You wait for Jeff to get out of earshot, then lean in.

“...Do you think I should stay?” You ask.

Gareth’s brows furrow in a confusion that you can only imagine must be the mirrored echo of your own previous thoughts. You can almost hear him warning you that Chief Hopper hangs around here, and then something like realization flashes across his features as he glances past you. 

You follow his gaze over to where Eddie is disappearing into the back, tying a dingy apron around his waist. 

“Yes,” He says quickly, with a wide stretch of his mouth, “I think that’s exactly what you should do.”

“You do?”

“Yes, absolutely – you stay, and I’ll see you tomorrow,”

You watch Gareth disappear out the front doors and linger a moment beneath the multi-colored lights.

The jukebox has since flipped over to play Dusty Springfield, and she is warning you that being good isn’t always easy, no matter how hard you try, and it gives you courage enough to slink back to the bar, where your soda sits long empty.

“You’re not getting a refill, so don’t even ask.” Laverne snaps, startling you. 

“I just wanted to pay for it.” 

She makes a gruff sound in the hollow of her throat and begins wiping down the bar. 

“It’s paid for.” She says reluctantly.

Before you can ask what that could possibly mean, she continues. 

“So, I reckon you’re stayin’ behind.” It’s not exactly a question, so you don’t feel pressed to answer, and when you don’t, she hefts a tub of dishes up onto the flattop. “Why don’t you take this back to Junior, since you’re so keen on hangin’ around. Save me the trip.”  

You look from Laverne to the dishes, and back again, feeling the wheels of your brain creaking under the duress of trying to see the invisible pitfall ahead of you. 

“...Am I allowed to do that?” you finally manage to ask, and for half a moment Laverne stares back at you like it was the dumbest thing she's ever heard anyone say. 

“I don’t give a shit” She finally huffs, “You do what you want, I’m goin’ out for a smoke.” 

She’s gone out the side door in a flash, and it takes you far too long to work out the pieces – Eddie paid for your drink, and she’s giving you an excuse to go back and see him. 

Boy, are you dense sometimes. 

Still, you can’t help but wonder if it’s all some clunky ploy to get you thrown out of the bar. You also can’t help but wonder who is going to watch the bar while Laverne is gone, but you decide that isn’t your problem as you seize the plastic tub and heft it down to brace against your hip. 

When you slip behind the bar and into the back, Eddie’s standing at the sink, elbow deep in suds and glaring at them like they’d personally wronged him. 

You linger in the doorway, selfishly taking in as much of this candid moment as you can steal, and scrounging around for what is left of your courage. 

“Hiya.” You say, once you find your voice. 

It startles him bad enough to send him leaping back from the sink. 

“Oh, shit,” Eddie says, stumbling over your name in a way that makes your insides go tight, “I – uh – I thought you left with the guys.”

“Nope.”

“What are you–?”

You tilt the dishtub toward him and jostle it in a way that is less tantalizing than you mean for it to be with the way the dishware shifts dangerously.

“Special delivery.”

Eddie’s brows come down over his eyes and his shoulders sag.  

“...Oh, great. Thanks,” he says, then gestures to the metal surface piled high with dishes. “Just put ‘em wherever you can.” 

The task is daunting. You’re not sure you’ve ever seen as many dishes in your life – it’s going to take him hours to get through them.

You tentatively shove the plastic bin in where you can fit it, careful not to disturb the topsyturvy stacking method that has been employed here, and linger idly as Eddie wipes his soapy hands on his jeans. 

A measured silence settles  between you, through which you can still hear the muted sounds of the bar trilling distantly on.  

“What happened?” Eddie finally asks, “How come you didn’t go with the guys?”

“Oh, well…” you start, electing to fib a little rather than do something so embarrassing as tell him the only reason you’re here tonight, “You know, as thrilling as sitting around in a parking lot drinking cheap beer sounds, I figured somebody ought to stay behind and keep you company. And I figured since you bought me a drink and all, it ought to be me.”

He huffs out a humorless laugh. 

“Lucky me.” 

You try not to let the biting sarcasm of the response dig its teeth in as you continue. 

“...That was sneaky, by the way. You didn’t have to do that.”

Eddie shrugs, and rests a hand on the curved metal lip of the three-basin sink.  

“Least I could do for our biggest fan.”  

He sounds less enthusiastic about that this time around and it is enough to make your stomach clench.

“...You guys were great, by the way.” You try again, for lack of anything better to say.

Eddie shakes his head. 

“Nah, we weren’t. We were actually pretty rough, I’m surprised they let us play as long as they did … but thanks for making the effort, though.” 

“Well… you were great.” You press, folding your hands behind your back and taking a step closer, “I mean, you were pretty much the best part of the show.”

Distantly, you see his eyebrows jump beneath the sweaty fringe drying tacky to his forehead. The corner of his mouth twitches. 

“You keep stroking my ego like that and I’m gonna have to buy you dinner to go with that drink,” Eddie warns you, and something inside of you shrieks with unabashed hormonal joy.

You cannot think of anything more tantalizing than that … except for maybe one of your two fantasies from earlier in the evening, but neither of those scenarios is on the table for tonight.

At least, you’re fairly certain they aren’t. 

You thank your lucky stars he’s so fixated on washing dishes that he can’t see the way you turn bright crimson.

“I’m serious. You were great, Eddie.” 

It’s enough to finally make him look at you again.

“You think so?”

And of course, now that you have his attention, you can’t help but go embarrassing yourself. 

“Yeah, absolutely. You’re a goddamn rockstar…” 

He grins. 

“D’you kiss your mother with that mouth, Sailor?”

You curl your lips in past your teeth on instinct and drop your gaze to your sneakers as the suggestion sends you hurtling back to the picnic bench in the woods behind school. 

You’re so sure Eddie was going to kiss you out there – you watched his eyes go heavy and lidded as his gaze slid down to your lips. You saw the shift in his posture, the oh-so-subtle way he tilted forward, curling his hands into fists, moist pink tongue darting out to wet the plush spread of his lips. 

He’s not looking at you like that now, and it’s the worst goddamn thing in the world. You have to force yourself to think of something – anything else to stop it from completely destroying you as you stand there, listening to Eddie washing the dishes. 

Oddly, there is only one thing that comes to mind. 

“...Can I ask you a question?”

The lewd soapy sounds of suds on ceramic sends a chill up your spine. 

“Sure, hit me.” 

“Before you went on, when we were standing at the bar... why did Laverne call you Junior?” You ask, and the question seems to catch him off guard, so you elaborate to fill the awkward silence before it can settle between you, “She did it again just outside when she told me to bring these back to you… I was just wondering about it…”

Eddie doesn’t answer right away, and you’re just about ready to tell him to forget it by the time he opens his mouth to speak.

“Ah… hmm,” he hesitates, “… it’s a … it’s a little inside joke some folks around town like to roll out.” Eddie explains, then after a beat of silence, he gestures vaguely, “Munson Junior.”

“...Oh.” You say lamely – the subtext is not lost on you, and suddenly you’re sorry you asked.  

A heavy silence settled between you, and then Eddie clears his throat in the prelude to what you'd feared was coming all night long.

“Hey, listen … it was real nice of you to stay behind…”

Uh oh. Here comes that dreaded rejection. 

It was nice of you to stay but it’s actually super weird that you’re here at all and you should probably go home before you embarrass yourself more than you already have. 

You do your best to stamp that line of thinking out before it can settle and elect to fold your hands behind your back, rocking on your heels and doing your utmost to look carefree. 

“But…?”

You don’t care if he’s about to ask you to leave, but you hope to any God out there listening that he doesn’t. 

“But… you should probably head out.” Eddie sighs.

Okay, so you lied. You care so much, and you can feel the corners of your mouth tremble as your smile begins to waver. 

Eddie continues.  

“This is gonna take a while, Sweetheart… and I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than stand around watching me play in dish water.” 

Sweetheart. The nickname fills you with foolish courage, and suddenly you’re taking another step closer. 

“Not really,” You admit, “I actually cancelled some plans to be here tonight…” 

He breathes a halfhearted laugh out through his nose.

“Betcha wish you hadn’t.”  

Oh, how wrong he is. If only he knew just how far you’d gone to make sure you could be here tonight.

“...Can I help?” You ask tentatively, forcing yourself not to look away when Eddie’s gaze snaps up and he clocks your sudden proximity with a soft, strangled sound in the hollow of his throat.

You pretend not to hear it for both your sake, “...it’ll speed things up. And... and then you can buy me dinner, right?”

You watch him stare back at you and can practically see the cogs turning in his brain, as if he absolutely cannot fathom the request you’d just made of him. When he continues to fail to answer, you try again.

“Here, let me help.” 

You reach for the rumpled dish rag, but Eddie catches your hand.

Your lungs spasm and go flat and for the brief moment you exist under his touch, you forget how to breathe. 

He shakes his head and tries to lead you away from the sink, releasing you entirely too soon for your liking. 

“No, you don’t have to do that.” he says, and for half a moment you’re afraid that nothing you say is going to convince him to let you stay. 

Then again, it’s not exactly like you’re asking for his permission. 

“I know…” You hum, feeling your tongue go fat in your mouth and taking another step toward him, “But I want to.”

Eddie doesn’t retreat from your advance, but he calls your bluff with narrowed eyes and a furrowed brow.

“You wanna waste your night doing dishes in the back of a bar?” he deadpans.

Of course you do. 

You want to tell him that you want to do every trivial task under the sun if it means you get to do it with him. You’d happily sit and watch paint dry if Eddie was going to be there with you, but somehow you’re not certain that is going to do anything to make you sound cool and attractive.  

“Sure, why not?” you shrug, rolling your sleeves up as far past your elbows as they will go and sidling up so you’re standing nearly hip to hip.

Your heart is hammering behind your ribs when you dare to steal a cautious, casual glance up at him, “I don’t have anything better to do right now.” 

Eddie stares back at you, brows furrowed quizzically before he shakes his head, mutters something unintelligible to himself, then reaches into a milk crate sitting beneath the sink that you hadn’t noticed until he fishes out a pair of oversized yellow dish gloves and hands them to you. 

“Yeah, okay – since you’ve got nothing better to do – put these on. We don’t want those fingers going prune.”  

It takes you much longer to get through the dishes than you anticipated when you originally offered your services.

Two hours later, your sweater is soaked down the front, you’ve got suds in your sleeves, and you can smell the faintest hint of budding mildew wafting off of you, but you finish the dishes in half the time you imagine it would have taken Eddie to do them on his own. 

When you’re done, you bid Laverne a cheerful farewell, one she does not acknowledge, and you leave the bar together. 

Eddie has been talking animatedly about a hundred different subjects the whole time, though the last five minutes of conversation have been allotted to his guitar – which he tells you is an N.J. Warlock series, and you have no idea what that means.

You don’t mind though, you’ve been listening quietly without interjection because your newest revelation is just how much you like to listen to Eddie talk when he gets going. Not the heated preaching you’ve witnessed a hundred times in the lunchroom, but an excitable deep dive into something he is clearly very passionate about. 

In your deepest flights of fancy, you imagine him talking to someone about you like this, and as you cross the parking lot and arrive at the back of his van, it makes your insides flutter with a girlish excitement.  

Unfortunately, he mistakes your silence over the past few minutes for disinterest and grows sheepish.

“...Anyway, I didn’t mean to talk your ear off like that,” Eddie says, rolling his shoulders. “When I get going it’s hard to shut me up sometimes … sorry.” 

You shake your head.

“No, not at all! I didn’t want to interrupt your flow, I just don’t really know anything about guitars.”

A look of patent relief flashes across Eddie’s face and is very quickly replaced with something sly as he pops open the back doors to the van. Inside sits half a dozen pieces of Gareth’s drum kit, two amps, and a sleek, black, rectangular case.

Eddie rests a hand on the hood of the case with a thump and you watch his gaze slide over to you. 

“You wanna meet her?” he asks. 

You don’t respond right away, if only because you don’t know who he could possibly mean, here in this deserted parking lot, but he doesn’t give you the opportunity to linger in the limbo of that unknowing. 

He pops open the hinges and flips the lid up, revealing the angular crimson body of the guitar. Eddie lifts the instrument carefully from its crushed velvet bed and presents it to you with all the reverence of a lover. 

You reach out tentatively to trace the smooth resin of her body with your finger pads and suddenly the moment feels supercharged with something heavy. The air is thick with it, whatever it is, and it settles in your lungs with a cloying film. You can’t be certain as to why, but you can suddenly feel your heart beating in your stomach.

“This is Sweetheart,” Eddie says, voice dripping with an admiration that makes your insides clench.

The heady atmosphere dissipates almost immediately, and you drop your hand back to your side to try and mask the way it makes you flinch to hear him call the guitar that.

Sweetheart?! No, it most certainly is not. 

You’re Sweetheart. That’s your name now, remember? He only went and gave you the goddamn thing, now here he is telling you it’s just some random term of endearment he slaps on anything shiny and new that happens to catch his eye?

Fucking lame. 

“Oh. Wow. It’s pretty.” You force yourself to say, because it’s not untrue, even if you are suddenly gripped in a ridiculous burning jealousy over his relationship toward an instrument. “Really pretty.” 

And then Eddie pulls a face of sheer and total mock offense.

“Hey now,” he warns you gently, “Show a little respect for the love of my life here, will ya?” 

You glance up at him and for half a moment aren't entirely sure you’re in the mood to meet him there. But it’s stupid to be jealous of an inanimate object. That would be like finding out Eddie was jealous of your vibrator or something stupid … which also suggests he’s fucking his guitar, so no, maybe it’s not like that at all.

Still, the thought manifests an image, which immediately sears itself into your frontal lobe and sends the blood rushing to your head so quickly you’re half surprised it doesn’t pop.

“...she’s pretty?” you hum, feeling suddenly like you’re about to faint. 

Eddie gives you a satisfied smile – one you don’t see for how your vision has briefly gone spotty – and nods. 

“Damn right she is," he says, laying her back in her case and snapping the lid shut.

If you’d been looking, and not feeling a stupid sense of satisfaction to see her get so summarily shut away, you would have seen Eddie go suddenly shy as his eyes slide over to peek at you from his peripheral.

“...Second prettiest girl in the room tonight.”

It hits you like a slap in the face and is oddly grounding. Your vision clears, your ears stop roaring, and just like that everything goes back to normal. Just you and Eddie standing in an empty parking lot with the echo of his attempt at a smooth line lingering between you. 

Your mouth falls open and you choke on a loud bark of startled laughter. 

Ha! Take that, Sweetheart.

Eddie wrinkles his nose and pulls a face like he immediately wishes he could take it back, not knowing that you’d strike him dead before he would even dare. He’s a total fucking dork, and that’s yours now. There will be no takebacks. Not now, not ever.  

“Damn,” he mutters, squeezing an eye shut and reaching up to scratch at his brow, “That was super fucking corny, wasn’t it? Not my best effort – sorry.” 

You press your lips together in a tight seal in a desperate attempt to keep a hideously giddy sound of animalistic joy from bleating up out of you, and you shake your head. 

“That’s okay.” You start, dismissing the thick layer of cheese with a flippant wave, “I’m sure Laverne would be flattered to hear you say that about her.” 

It takes him a moment to catch on, but when he does he snorts and rolls his eyes, mumbling something under his breath about Laverne. He doesn’t correct you, and you let the moment die with dignity because you know what matters.

Eddie Munson thinks you’re pretty, and that will forever be etched on the front of your brain, whether he likes it or not. 

“So,” Eddie begins, shutting the van up again and leaning back against the door. He fishes a rumpled pack of camels from his jacket pocket, and you elect not to say anything about that, “It’s a little late for dinner… but how would you feel about a midnight snack?”

You know the muscles in your face are going to be sore in the morning for how widely you’ve been grinning back at him all night, and you nod, hoping you don’t look too overeager, but also not giving a damn if you do. 

“What did you have in mind?”

He pops a cigarette between his teeth and goes looking for his lighter.  

“Let’s see. I think Fosters might still be open. You could get a milkshake, chili dog, banana split, – whatever your heart desires, Sweet Thing. Your wish is my command.” 

The thought of riding out to Foster’s Freeze on the far end of town with Eddie Munson is tantalizing in the best possible way. You’re beaming as you bring your wrist up to glance at your watch and try to visualize what you can stomach so late.

All thoughts of your growling stomach sail right out of your head as your heart rockets up into your throat before dropping into a free fall because it’s nearly midnight. 

“Jesus Christ!” You gasp, head snapping up to share your horrified look with the class. 

Eddie blinks back at you.

“Nope, just me–” 

“Can I see your watch?” You’re taking hold of his wrist and pulling it up to stare into the digital face of his Casio before he can answer, “Oh, God – it’s so late.”

“What’s the matter, you turning into a pumpkin or something?” He teases, lighting his cigarette with his free hand.

“My curfew was like half an hour ago,” You say quickly, dropping his wrist and nearly upending your bag in the frantic search for your keys.  

“Oh… shit,” Eddie mumbles, “Well, d’you need a ride? I’ll get you home lickety-split–” 

You elect to ignore any intended innuendo there in lieu of your mounting panic.

“No, thanks, I’ve got my car – listen, I really gotta go,” You say, “But let’s do a raincheck, okay?” 

You don’t wait for him to answer before you turn and bolt for your car shouting back to him as you go.  

“I mean it, Munson! You owe me that midnight snack!” 

You’re fumbling with your keys in the lock and whipping your door open with a harsh creak before you remember yourself and spin on your heel.  

“Oh— Eddie, wait!” He’s circled around to the driver’s side and is standing on the runner, already half way up into his seat when his head snaps up, and you grow suddenly shy, “Thank you for this, it was – I mean, you’re – I had fun tonight. More fun than I would have had sitting at home, anyway.” 

He gives you a strange look.  

“...you really mean that, don’t you?” He asks after a moment, “Truly. Dishes and all?”

You nod, and you watch him shaking his head in a way you imagine must be accompanied by a good-humored chuckle as he takes a final drag on his cigarette and tosses it.    

“Well, bless you for saying so.” He says, “Let’s do it again sometime.”

“Absolutely. I’ll do the dishes with you anytime.” Oh my God, why the fuck did you just say that? You’re cheesy and boring and stupid – just a stupid girl with a stupid crush. 

And Eddie is laughing. 

“Get home safe, Sweetheart.” he calls, “Wear your seatbelt.”

“Yeah, you too… goodnight, Eddie.”  

Despite the traded goodbyes, you both linger a moment longer, looking back at one another halfway into your respective cars and so reluctant to part despite the ticking time bomb hurtling toward you at breakneck speed.

You need to get home, and yet…?

“Penny for your thoughts?” Eddie calls, and you feel yourself flush. 

“It’s just… you know … what Shakespeare said…”

Across the lot, he steps down from the van and nods. 

“Sure. Good ol’ Willy Shakes.” and when you don’t elaborate, he gently prompts you, “What’s Shakespeare say, Sweetness?”

The saccharine twist on your new nickname has a lump forming in your throat, one you almost don’t get the words around as it swells and threatens to strangle you.

“Parting is such sweet sorrow.” you sigh. 

It’s perhaps the uncoolest thing you’ve said all night, and you don’t even have the good sense to be embarrassed about it, because it’s also the truest thing you’ve said all night, and suddenly your heart is pounding in your chest.

You really, really have to go, but you don’t want to. 

Eddie crosses his arms and leans back against the van.

“Yeah… it sure is.” 

The silence endures, and as the seconds tick by, you continue to fail to tear yourself away. The last time you left him like this, you didn’t see him again for five days, and after tonight you’re not sure you can survive another five days without Eddie in your life.

Maybe you can stand to miss your curfew. Maybe your parents won’t notice your car is gone and won’t come to check in on you. Maybe you can sneak in after midnight or stay out all night … maybe you can just stand here saying goodnight over and over until the sun comes up and never have to get to the parting part. 

“Go home, Sweetheart.” Eddie says then, “I don’t wanna get you in trouble.” 

The sentiment causes the lump in your throat to swell, and you have to force yourself to breathe out slowly to ease the pressure it puts on you.

You watch him climb up into the van and feel your heart thumping again. One of you had to go first, you suppose. Last time it was you, this time it’s only fair it’s him. 

“Bye Eddie.” You call, and when you still fail to get into your car, he heaves a long-suffering sigh, which is a little too fond to be just that.

“You sure you don’t want me to drive you home?” He asks, “It’s like I told you – lickety split.”  

Don’t make a promise you can’t keep. You want to warn him, but all you can manage is a smile.

Then you slide in behind the wheel of your car and shut the door behind you. You linger a moment longer and when you feel that lump threatening to return – one you quickly realize is the prelude to melancholy – you can’t help but steal one last look out your window, back at the van.

Eddie is still there, and better still, he seems to have had the same thought as you, because when you look, there he is looking at you again.

It fills you with a bright and warming sense of satisfaction. It's not so easy to tear yourself away, is it?

Then, as if to answer, Eddie waves.

You grin, return the gesture, and start your cars at the same time. It only takes a short dosey-do around each other to exit the parking lot side by side. You turn left, he turns right, and you watch in your rearview mirror until his taillights fade into the dark.

Yeah, you think you might have fallen pretty hard tonight, and you’re going to have a very hard time getting up again.

[muiitoloko]

Heyy!! I loved your last Eli fic so muchhh 😭 I swearr I love your fics sm 😭

Honestlyy, I'm in the mood for some angst that ends well/cuddles with Eli 😔

Sooo I mean, you can change anything really, buut something where like he had an incident in the lab or some kinda thing where he's at the hospital? idk he's kinda sad because literally no one came to visit him inventing excuses (poor baby ily) but reader (who's just a student) is actually really worried etc because she's been in love with him for a long time? soo idk I just picture her crying and everything and he's like ???why are you crying??? and idk something really fluffy and a bit angsty?🥹💗

Title: (Not) Alone

Summary: He feels alone, until he's not alone anymore.

Pairing: Eli Michaelson × Fem!Reader

Warnings: Angst, fluffy.

Author's Notes: Big thanks for tossing this request my way! Now, I'll admit, I might take a few liberties with the Eli's vibe, so apologies in advance if it's a bit off the beaten path. But hey, I'm all ears for any feedback you've got! Let's make this journey together! 🚀📝

Also read on Ao3

The soft glow of the hospital room cast a muted light over the sterile surroundings, the beeping of machines filling the air with a steady rhythm. Eli lay in the hospital bed, his expression a mask of stoicism as he stared up at the ceiling, lost in thought.

The events of the accident replayed in his mind like a broken record, the memory of the explosion haunting him like a specter in the night. He had been careless, too caught up in his work to notice the warning signs until it was too late. And now, here he was, laid up in a hospital bed with nothing but his regrets for company.

But that wasn't the worst thing—not because the physical wounds could heal, but because the emotional ones couldn't. It had been a week, a week since the accident that left Eli lying in that hospital bed, his body battered and broken. But it seemed that the real damage was to his soul.

As he lay there, staring up at the sterile ceiling, a wave of anguish washed over him. Where were they? Where were the people who were supposed to care about him, even if just a little? Deep down, he knew he didn't deserve their concern. He had been an arrogant bastard, selfish and self-absorbed, caring only about his own pursuits and pleasures. But still, the absence of anyone by his side cut deeper than any physical wound.

He didn't expect Sarah, his ex-wife, or Barkley, his son, to come visit him. They had taken the money and run, leaving him alone in more ways than one. But he had hoped, perhaps foolishly, that someone would show up. A friend, a colleague, even one of the women he had entertained himself with. Yet, it felt like no one cared about him. And the realization stung.

Eli couldn't help but feel a sense of déjà vu. It was like being a child again, alone and isolated, ridiculed by his classmates. He remembered the sting of rejection, the ache of loneliness that gnawed at him day after day. And now, lying in that hospital bed, it felt like history was repeating itself.

He glanced around the sterile room, his gaze landing on the empty chair beside his bed. It had been vacant since the day he was admitted, a stark reminder of his solitude. He longed for someone to sit there, to hold his hand and offer words of comfort. But the chair remained empty, a silent testament to his isolation.

With a heavy sigh, Eli closed his eyes, willing the memories and the pain to fade away. But deep down, he knew that the wounds left by loneliness and abandonment would not heal easily. And as the beeping of the machines filled the air once more, Eli couldn't help but feel a sense of despair wash over him, drowning him in a sea of anguish and regret. The ache in his body paled in comparison to the hollow emptiness that gnawed at his soul, a relentless reminder of his own failings and shortcomings.

The memories of his past sins haunted him like ghosts in the night, each one a painful reminder of the wreckage he had left in his wake. He had been a man consumed by his own ambition, blinded by his relentless pursuit of success and recognition. And in his single-minded quest for greatness, he had trampled over anyone who dared to stand in his way, leaving a trail of broken hearts and shattered dreams in his wake.

But now, as he lay there, broken and alone, Eli couldn't help but wonder if it had all been worth it. The accolades and achievements that had once seemed so important now felt hollow and meaningless, nothing more than empty symbols of his own vanity and arrogance.

And as he gazed up at the sterile ceiling above him, a sense of profound despair washed over him, threatening to consume him whole. He longed for the warmth of human connection, for someone to reach out and offer him solace in his darkest hour. But the empty chair beside his bed served as a stark reminder of his solitude, a silent testament to the depths of his loneliness.

Eli's thoughts turned to Sarah and Barkley. They had been the closest thing he had ever known to love, and yet he had driven them away with his selfishness and neglect. He had taken their presence for granted, assuming that they would always be there to pick up the pieces of his shattered life. But now, as he lay there abandoned and alone, he realized the extent of his folly.

With a sense of desperation clawing at his chest, he ripped the machines attached to him, the beeping growing louder as he tore the devices from his body. Each movement sent jolts of pain shooting through his battered form, but he paid no heed to the agony, consumed by his need to escape the suffocating grip of solitude.

Weak and injured, Eli struggled to get up from the bed, his muscles protesting with every movement. The laboratory explosion had left him with burns and cuts, the wounds decorating his body like battle scars of his own making. He leaned heavily on an IV pole for support, the metal digging into his palm as he tried to steady himself.

Lines of anguish etched deep into his features, Eli's baritone voice echoed through the sterile room, a haunting melody of despair and regret. "Damn it all," he muttered through gritted teeth, his words laced with bitterness and self-loathing. "I can't stay here. I won't."

With a shaky breath, Eli pushed himself forward, each step a testament to his stubborn determination to break free from the shackles of his own making. But his body rebelled against his efforts, weakened by the trauma it had endured. Every movement was a battle, every breath a struggle as he fought to overcome the physical and emotional pain that threatened to consume him whole.

And yet, despite the odds stacked against him, Eli pressed on, driven by a fierce resolve to reclaim his freedom, no matter the cost. With each agonizing step, he felt the weight of his loneliness bearing down on him like a heavy burden, threatening to crush him beneath its suffocating embrace.

Memories of his childhood flashed before his eyes, a bittersweet reminder of a time when he had known the warmth of his mother's embrace, the comforting touch of her hand as she tended to his wounds and chased away his fears. But now, she was gone, a distant memory lost to the passage of time, leaving Eli adrift in a sea of emptiness.

With a bitter twist of irony, Eli realized that he had become the very thing he despised most—a lonely, pathetic figure yearning for the companionship he had once taken for granted. He had closed himself off to the world, erecting walls of arrogance and self-importance to shield himself from the pain of rejection and abandonment. But now, as he lay broken and alone, those walls crumbled around him, leaving him exposed and vulnerable to the harsh realities of his existence.

As he stumbled down the hallway, ignoring the nurse's futile attempts to stop him, Eli felt the weight of his own inadequacy bearing down on him like a crushing weight. His body was weak, his spirit shattered, and with each passing moment, he sank deeper into the abyss of his own despair.

And then, just when he thought he couldn't bear it any longer, Eli's legs gave out beneath him, sending him crashing to the ground in a pathetic heap of limbs and shattered pride. He lay there, sprawled out on the cold tile floor, a broken shell of the man he had once been, his baritone voice choked with anguish as he whispered words of self-condemnation into the empty void.

"I'm pathetic," he muttered, his voice barely a whisper as he gazed up at the sterile ceiling above him. "A Nobel Prize winner, revered by the world, and yet... I'm nothing but a lonely, pathetic bastard."

Tears welled up in his eyes, blurring his vision as he struggled to come to terms with the harsh reality of his existence. He had spent a lifetime chasing after success and recognition, believing that they held the key to happiness and fulfillment. But now, as he lay broken and alone, he realized that he had been chasing after shadows, grasping at empty promises that had crumbled to dust in his hands.

And as the nurse knelt beside him, her voice a soothing murmur in the darkness, Eli closed his eyes and surrendered to the overwhelming tide of despair that threatened to consume him whole. He knew that he was a broken man, irreparably damaged by the choices he had made and the paths he had chosen. But deep down, beneath the layers of arrogance and self-delusion, all he wanted was to be whole again, to feel the warmth of human connection and the healing touch of love.

But for Eli Michaelson, the road to redemption would be long and arduous, fraught with pitfalls and obstacles at every turn. And as he lay there, battered and broken, he knew that the journey had only just begun.

The next morning, Eli sat in silence, the dull glow of the TV flickering in the dimly lit hospital room. He picked at the unappetizing hospital food on his tray, his appetite dulled by the weight of loneliness that hung heavy in the air. He tried to convince himself that solitude was preferable, that he didn't need anyone else. But deep down, he couldn't ignore the ache in his chest, the longing for human connection that gnawed at his soul.

As he stared blankly at the screen, lost in his thoughts, the sudden forceful opening of the door startled him out of his reverie. The door slammed against the wall with a loud thud, causing Eli to turn his head towards the entrance, his curiosity piqued.

There, standing in the doorway, was a young woman, her cheeks stained with tears as she cried. Before Eli could comprehend what was happening, she ran towards him and enveloped him in a tight hug, burying her face against his chest as she sobbed uncontrollably.

Confusion washed over Eli as he awkwardly patted the young woman's back, unsure of what to do. "Uh, what's going on?" he muttered, his voice gruff with disorientation.

Pulling away from the embrace, the young woman looked up at him with tear-filled eyes, her voice trembling with emotion. "Professor Michaelson, I was so worried about you," she exclaimed, her words tumbling out in a rush. "I thought you had gone on vacation, that's why you were away from campus. But I didn't realize you were in the hospital. If I had known, I would have come sooner."

Eli's brow furrowed in confusion as he tried to place the young woman's face. Who was she, and why was she so upset about him? Pushing her hands away gently, he questioned, "Who the hell are you?"

The young woman's tears halted abruptly, replaced by a look of embarrassment as she wiped at her cheeks. "Oh, I'm sorry," she stammered, her voice small. "I'm one of your students at the university. I always sit in the front row. It's me, [Your Name]."

Eli racked his brain, trying to recall any memory of a student named [Your Name]. But the truth was, he didn't bother to remember the names of his students, unless they were the most beautiful women in his classes. And while [Your Name] was certainly adorable in her own right, she didn't fit the bill of his usual conquests.

Nevertheless, Eli put on a facade of recognition, offering a faint smile as he nodded. "Ah, yes, [Your Name]," he said, his tone somewhat forced. "Of course, I remember you now. It's good to see you."

As Eli's gaze met yours, you couldn't help but feel a surge of happiness at the recognition, however brief it may be. The sound of your name rolling off his tongue in that deep, baritone voice sent a shiver down your spine, making you blush slightly at the attention.

But before you could bask in the moment, Eli's question brought you back to reality with a jolt. "Did everyone come to see me?" he asked, his voice tinged with uncertainty as he glanced towards the door, as if expecting a flood of visitors at any moment.

You shook your head gently, your heart sinking at the disappointment in his eyes. "No, Professor Michaelson," you replied softly, your voice barely above a whisper. "I... I was the only one who came."

Eli visibly deflated at your words, a sense of desolation washing over him as he processed the information. "Oh," he murmured, his voice heavy with disappointment. "No one else came."

You shifted awkwardly on your feet, feeling a pang of sympathy for the man lying before you, so vulnerable and alone. And as you stood next to Eli's hospital bed, awkwardly rubbing your arm, you felt a pang of sympathy for him. He seemed so vulnerable in that moment, his usual air of confidence replaced by a palpable sense of loneliness. You glanced down at your feet, unsure of what to say or do to comfort him.

Suddenly, Eli's voice broke the silence, pulling you out of your thoughts. "Where are the flowers?" he asked, his tone tinged with confusion.

You looked up at him, puzzled. "Huh?" you replied, furrowing your brow in confusion.

Eli insisted, his tone growing more urgent. "The flowers, the balloons, you know, all those things people bring when they visit someone in the hospital."

Your cheeks flushed with embarrassment as you stuttered apologetically, "Oh, I... I was so worried, I didn't even think about it."

Eli's arrogant smile softened at your words, his expression betraying a hint of curiosity. "You were worried? About me?" he asked, genuine surprise coloring his tone.

You shifted nervously on your feet, feeling self-conscious under his intense gaze. "Um, yeah," you admitted, your voice barely above a whisper. "I mean, I know we don't really know each other that well, but... I guess I just didn't want you to feel alone."

You felt a rush of embarrassment wash over you. You couldn't help but feel pathetic standing there in front of your crush, blushing furiously as you struggled to find the right words to say. Deciding to make a hasty retreat, you turned around, mumbling something about leaving. But before you could take a step, Eli practically shouted, "Wait!"

Startled, you turned back to face him, surprise written across your features. "I mean... wait," Eli amended, his tone softer this time. "I... I don't actually mind having company. I've been getting bored of watching TV all day."

Relief flooded through you as you realized that Eli didn't want you to leave. With a shy smile, you nodded and took a seat in the empty chair beside his bed, grateful for the opportunity to keep him company during his time of need.

And as you settled into the chair beside Eli's hospital bed, you couldn't shake the feeling of awkwardness that hung in the air between the two of you. The conversation was stilted at first, filled with hesitant pauses and forced smiles as you struggled to find common ground. But as the minutes passed, you found yourselves falling into an easy rhythm, chatting about anything and everything under the sun.

"So, I heard Professor Hart is filling in for you," you began, trying to steer the conversation away from the uncomfortable topic of Eli's hospitalization. "He seems... interesting."

Eli chuckled softly at your remark, a twinkle of amusement dancing in his eyes. "Interesting is one way to describe him," he replied, his voice tinged with sarcasm. "But I suppose he'll do in a pinch."

You nodded in agreement, relieved that Eli seemed willing to engage in conversation despite the circumstances. "Yeah, I heard he's a bit eccentric," you remarked, trying to keep the conversation light. "But hey, at least he keeps things entertaining."

Eli's lips twitched into a wry smile at your comment, his gaze drifting towards the TV screen as if seeking refuge from the awkwardness of the moment. "Entertaining is one way to put it," he mused, his tone tinged with amusement. "But I suppose we'll survive until I'm back on my feet."

You couldn't help but chuckle at Eli's dry sense of humor, grateful for the brief moment of levity amidst the somber atmosphere of the hospital room. "Oh, I'm sure we'll manage," you quipped, a playful glint in your eye. "But I have to admit, I do miss your classes. Chemistry just isn't the same without you."

Eli's expression softened at your words, a hint of genuine warmth shining through his usually stoic demeanor. "Well, I'm flattered to hear that," he replied, his voice tinged with sincerity. "Chemistry is my passion, after all. It's nice to know that someone appreciates my efforts."

You blushed at the unexpected praise, feeling a rush of warmth spread through your cheeks. "Well, I've always enjoyed your classes," you admitted, unable to hide the smile that tugged at your lips. "Chemistry has always been my favorite subject."

Eli's eyes sparkled with amusement at your confession, a knowing smile playing on his lips. "Is that so?" he teased, his tone laced with playful curiosity. "Well, I suppose I'll have to make sure to put on a good show when I return, then."

You laughed at Eli's playful banter, grateful for the distraction it provided from the seriousness of the situation. But as the conversation turned back to Eli's accident, you couldn't help but feel a pang of concern for him.

"So, how exactly did the accident happen?" you asked, your voice laced with genuine curiosity. "Was it some sort of experiment gone wrong?"

Eli waved off your question dismissively, as if it were of little consequence. "Oh, nothing too dramatic," he replied nonchalantly. "Just a minor mishap in the lab. These things happen from time to time."

You raised an eyebrow skeptically at Eli's casual response, unable to shake the feeling that he was downplaying the severity of the situation. "Just a minor mishap, huh?" you remarked, unable to hide the hint of skepticism in your voice. "Are you sure you're not secretly plotting to take over the world with your evil experiments?"

Eli's expression darkened at your joke, a shadow passing over his features as he regarded you with a serious look. "I assure you, [Your Name], there's nothing nefarious about my work," he replied, his tone grave. "I may have made some mistakes along the way, but I've always strived to use my knowledge for the greater good."

You winced at the sudden shift in tone, realizing that you had touched a nerve with your flippant remark. "I'm sorry, Professor," you apologized quickly, feeling a pang of guilt for making light of the situation. "I didn't mean to imply anything... I was just trying to lighten the mood."

Eli's expression softened at your apology, realizing that you were just trying to lighten the mood. With a hint of amusement dancing in his eyes, he decided to play along with your joke, his humor dry as he quipped, "Well, I suppose if I'm going to be a mad scientist, I'll have to start practicing my evil laugh, won't I?"

Your smile widened at Eli's response, grateful that he wasn't holding your jest against you. The tension in the room dissipated as the two of you shared a moment of lighthearted banter, the heaviness of the situation momentarily forgotten.

But before the conversation could continue, the door to the hospital room swung open, revealing a nurse standing in the doorway. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but visiting hours are over," she announced, her voice gentle but firm. "I'll have to ask you to leave, [Your Name]."

You felt a pang of disappointment at the nurse's words, reluctant to leave Eli's side so soon. But you knew that you had to respect the rules of the hospital, no matter how much you wished to stay.

With a heavy sigh, you stood up from the chair beside Eli's bed, turning to face him with a small smile. "I guess I'll have to save my evil scientist jokes for next time," you remarked, trying to lighten the mood once more.

Eli's hand shot out, grabbing yours before you could take another step towards the door. Startled, you turned to look at him, surprised by the sudden gesture.

"Will you... will you visit me again tomorrow?" Eli asked, his voice tinged with vulnerability. "I know it's a lot to ask, but... I'd really appreciate the company."

You felt your heart skip a beat at Eli's request, a rush of warmth spreading through you at the thought of seeing him again. Despite his arrogant facade, there was something undeniably endearing about the vulnerability in his eyes, something that made you want to reach out and offer him the comfort he so desperately craved.

With a soft smile, you nodded in response to Eli's question. "Of course, Professor Michaelson," you replied, your voice filled with sincerity. "I'll come visit you again tomorrow."

Eli's grip on your hand loosened, his expression softening at your words. "Thank you," he murmured, a hint of gratitude shining in his eyes. "I'll be looking forward to it."

As you turned to leave the room, you couldn't help but feel a sense of anticipation building within you. Despite the chaos and uncertainty of the situation, you found yourself eagerly counting down the minutes until you could see Eli again, eager to offer him the companionship and support he so desperately needed.

And as you walked out of the hospital room, a smile tugging at the corners of your lips, you couldn't shake the feeling that perhaps, in the midst of all the chaos, you had found something unexpected—a connection that had the potential to grow into something truly meaningful.

The next day, Eli waited anxiously in his hospital room, his eyes fixed on the clock ticking away on the wall. With every passing hour, his hope dwindled, replaced by a growing sense of anger and despair. Why would you come? You barely knew him, and he barely knew you. He should have been grateful for your visit yesterday, shouldn't he?

As the day wore on, Eli's frustration mounted, each minute stretching out like an eternity as he waited in vain for your arrival. With each passing hour, he felt the weight of his loneliness pressing down on him, suffocating him with its relentless grip. He cursed himself for his foolishness, for allowing himself to hope for something that was clearly never going to happen.

Finally, unable to bear the silence and solitude any longer, Eli turned away from the door and lay on his side, his back to the room. He felt pathetic, longing for a visit from someone he barely knew. This was pathetic, he scolded himself silently, his thoughts filled with self-loathing and bitterness.

But just as Eli was on the verge of giving up hope entirely, he heard a soft voice calling his name from the doorway. Startled, he turned to see you standing there, a hesitant smile on your lips as you held out a bouquet of flowers and three brightly colored balloons.

For a moment, Eli was speechless, his heart pounding in his chest as he struggled to process the sight before him. You had come, despite everything. A surge of gratitude washed over him, mingled with a sense of disbelief. Why would you go out of your way to visit him again?

As you stepped into the room, Eli found himself nodding dumbly, unable to find the words to express his gratitude. You smiled at him warmly, your eyes filled with kindness and compassion as you made your way to his bedside. "Mind if I come in?" you asked softly, your voice breaking through the haze of Eli's thoughts.

Eli shook his head, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his lips as he gestured for you to take a seat. "Please, come in," he replied, his baritone voice tinged with emotion.

As you settled into the chair beside his bed, Eli couldn't help but feel a sense of warmth spreading through him at your presence. Despite his initial doubts and insecurities, you had come back to visit him, offering him a glimmer of light in the darkness of his solitude.

"Thank you for coming," Eli murmured, his voice filled with genuine gratitude. "I... I didn't expect to see you again."

You smiled at him, reaching out to gently squeeze his hand in reassurance. "I promised I would, didn't I?" you replied, your voice soft but sincere. "And I always keep my promises."

Eli's heart swelled at your words, a rush of warmth spreading through him at the sincerity in your voice. For the first time in days, he felt a flicker of hope stirring within him, a glimmer of light breaking through the darkness of his despair.

As the two of you settled into conversation, the awkwardness of the situation melted away, replaced by an easy camaraderie and mutual understanding. Despite the brevity of your acquaintance, there was a connection between you that transcended the confines of the hospital room, a shared bond forged in the crucible of adversity.

As the days turned into weeks, Eli found himself growing accustomed to your presence in his hospital room. Despite his initial reservations, he couldn't deny the comfort and companionship you provided, even if it was accompanied by your playful teasing and irreverent humor.

Eli maintained his usual arrogance, his sharp wit and biting sarcasm ever-present, but somehow, it didn't seem to matter as much when you were around. You saw beyond his facade, recognizing the vulnerability and loneliness that lurked beneath his confident exterior. And in return, you became a facade for Eli, a shield against the harsh realities of his situation, a source of laughter and light in the darkness of his solitude.

Day after day, for two weeks, you came faithfully at the usual time, visiting Eli and spending quality time with him. You brought him books to read, engaging him in lively debates about science and literature. You even brought in a chess set, challenging him to matches that often ended in laughter and playful banter.

As the days passed, you grew closer to Eli, sharing stories and secrets, hopes and dreams. You learned about his childhood, his struggles and triumphs, his deepest fears and regrets. And in turn, Eli learned about you, your ambitions and aspirations, your quirks and idiosyncrasies.

But amidst the laughter and camaraderie, there was an unspoken tension lingering between you—a secret crush that neither of you dared to acknowledge aloud. You admired Eli for his intellect and charisma, his sharp wit and unwavering determination. And Eli, in turn, found himself drawn to you, captivated by your kindness and compassion, your irreverent humor and genuine warmth.

One day, as you sat beside Eli's hospital bed, engaged in a spirited debate about the merits of chess, you found yourself slipping up and calling him "mad scientist" in jest. Eli's hooked nose wrinkled in mock annoyance, his lips twitching with amusement as he grumbled, "I'll have you know, Miss [Your Name], that I am not a mad scientist. I am a highly respected Nobel laureate in the field of chemistry."

You couldn't help but laugh at Eli's mock indignation, knowing full well that he secretly relished the nickname you had given him. "Of course, Professor Snape," you replied, a mischievous glint in your eye. "I'll make sure to deduct points from Gryffindor as soon as you return to the university."

Eli spat dismissively, a playful twinkle in his eye as he retorted, "Ah, so you admit it. You're a Gryffindor through and through with that insolence."

You laughed out loud at Eli's response, the sound echoing through the hospital room as you shook your head in amusement. "Guilty as charged," you admitted, a smile tugging at the corners of your lips. "But you have to admit, Professor Snape, it suits you."

Eli rolled his eyes exaggeratedly, but there was a hint of affection in his expression as he gazed at you. "Well, if I must suffer the indignity of being compared to a fictional character, I suppose I could do worse than Severus Snape," he conceded, his baritone voice tinged with amusement.

And as the two of you settled back into your usual routine, the playful banter and easy camaraderie filling the room with warmth and laughter, you couldn't help but feel a sense of gratitude for the unexpected bond that had formed between you and Eli. Despite his flaws and imperfections, there was something undeniably endearing about him—a complexity and depth that drew you in, leaving you eager to spend every moment you could by his side.

Days later, Eli was finally discharged from the hospital, his body still weak but his spirit buoyed by the knowledge that he was finally free from the confines of the sterile hospital room. With a newfound sense of purpose, he made his way back to the university, determined to reclaim his rightful place as the esteemed professor and Nobel laureate he knew himself to be.

As he stepped into the familiar confines of the classroom, Eli couldn't help but feel a surge of anticipation coursing through his veins. He straightened his shoulders, his hooked nose held high as he prepared to make his grand entrance, ready to bask in the adulation of his students and colleagues.

With a flourish, Eli stormed into the classroom, his baritone voice echoing off the walls as he demanded a round of applause for himself. "Ladies and gentlemen, I have returned!" he announced, his voice filled with arrogant confidence. "I expect nothing less than a standing ovation for my triumphant return."

The room erupted into applause, the sound filling the air with a cacophony of cheers and whistles as Eli reveled in the attention. He opened his arms wide, a self-satisfied smile playing on his lips as he basked in the adoration of his audience, soaking in the applause like a man starved for validation.

But amidst the sea of faces applauding his return, Eli's eyes landed on a familiar figure seated in the front row—the same figure who had visited him faithfully in the hospital, offering him companionship and support during his darkest hours.

With a discreet wink, Eli acknowledged you, a silent gesture of gratitude and appreciation for the unwavering support you had shown him. And as he watched the smile spread across your face, a warmth blossomed in his chest, filling him with a sense of belonging and acceptance he had never known before.

As the applause finally died down and the class settled into their seats, Eli launched into his lecture with renewed fervor, his voice commanding the attention of every student in the room. But amidst the complex equations and scientific theories, his thoughts kept drifting back to you, the one person who had stood by him when he needed it most.

And as he caught your eye once more, Eli couldn't help but feel a sense of gratitude wash over him, knowing that he wasn't alone anymore. With you by his side, he felt invincible, ready to face whatever challenges lay ahead with unwavering confidence and determination.

As the class drew to a close and the students filed out of the room, Eli lingered behind, waiting for you to approach him. And when you finally did, a smile tugging at the corners of your lips, he couldn't help but feel a surge of happiness welling up inside him.

"Thank you," Eli murmured, his voice tinged with sincerity. "For everything."

You smiled back at him, a warmth shining in your eyes as you replied, "Anytime, Professor Michaelson. Anytime."

And as the two of you stood there, sharing a moment of quiet understanding, Eli knew that no matter what the future held, he would always have you by his side, a beacon of light in the darkness, guiding him towards a brighter tomorrow.

[babygirl-diaz]

Omg omg hear me out, omega tommy who ends up at the hospital after a rescue just to learn he's 5-6 weeks pregnant.

Doctor: Hi mr Kinard. I'm dr [insert last name]. I suppose you are tommy's alpha?

Buck: yeah

Doctor looking back at tommy: Well there's nothing to worry. You are both in good health.

Tommy: what do you mean both?

Doctor: you and your child!

Tommy and Buck at the same time: WHAT?

Okay, this is like super cute! I can totally imagine it. My hand slipped again and I wrote it as a little drabble!

***

Buck paced the emergency room like a caged animal. He threw Tommy an annoyed look when he heard the omega laughing.

"Baby, you keep doing that and the doctor will never come in here," Tommy told him

"I'm not doing anything," Buck huffed. "What's taking them so long?"

Buck heard Tommy sigh. He then got off the examination table and came over to Buck, taking his face between his hands. "Baby, I know you're worried but I'm fine."

"You're not fine," Buck told him. "You fainted at work, Tommy. What if you were in the middle of a flight? Wh- what would have happened then?" He shuddered at the thought.

"But I didn't!" Tommy replied. "I was safe and sound at the base."

"Then explain why you fainted?" Buck asked in an accusatory tone and pulled away from him.

"I can't explain that but that's why we're here, remember?" Tommy asked him gently. "We're gonna find out soon enough. They've done all the tests. We just need to be patient."

"Well, I can't be," Buck replied. "Not where you are involved. If they don't come here in the next 2 minutes, I'm gonna go full alpha on them!" He said flashing his eyes gold.

Tommy was unphased by that and rolled his eyes instead. "Yes, because that's gonna end well and will definitely not get us kicked out."

As soon as Tommy said that, there was a knock on the door, and soon a young woman dressed in a lab coat entered the room.

"Sorry for the wait," she apologized. "I am Dr. Deshmukh. Which one of you is Tommy?"

"That would be me," Tommy replied and went to sit down on the examination table again.

"And I take it you're Mr. Kinard's alpha?" Dr. Deshmukh asked looking at Buck.

"Yeah, Evan Buckley," Buck replied and went by Tommy's side, taking his hand. "Is he okay? What do the test results say?"

Dr. Deshmukh looked over at Tommy and said, "Well, all your test results came back negative," she added flipping through the chart. "Both of you are perfectly fine. Things like fainting are quite common at times like this-"

"What do you mean at times like these?" Buck asked, taken aback by her statement.

"What do you mean both of you?" Tommy asked and Buck realized he had missed that part.

"Uh... You and your child?" Dr. Deshmukh replied. "You do know you're 6 weeks pregnant, right?"

"WHAT?!" Buck and Tommy yelled at the same time and looked at each other.

"Ohhh... You didn't know that," Dr. Deshmukh suddenly looked very apologetic. "That was probably a horrible way to break the news to you."

Buck wanted to say "No shit" but he was freaking the fuck out and couldn't form any sentences.

"Evan, you okay?" Tommy asked and Buck felt a hand on his arm.

Buck looked over at him horrified and nodded slowly. "Y- yeah."

"Hey doc, do you mind giving us a minute?" Tommy asked Dr. Deshmukh.

"Oh yes, of course. I'll be right outside," Dr. Deshmukh replied and left.

"Evan, now tell me. Are you okay?" Tommy asked him again. "Look, I know you and I we- we never really talked about babies but- but I really want one."

"Only one?" Buck asked with a serious face but then smirked at his omega.

"Wait... You're not upset that we're having a baby?" Tommy asked and looked much more relieved.

"Of course not, silly," Buck replied. "I am ecstatic! We're having a baby!"

Tommy laughed and nodded, "Yes, we are!" He put his hands on Buck's cheeks, pulled him close, and kissed him.

[swelling-ftm-belly]

The Surrogate, pt.1

you always wanted to be a father, didn’t you? your husband finally agreed. He decided to show more support, you both had an agreement. it’s not like you didn’t try the other options that wouldn’t make your husband uncomfortable. adoption proved to be an excruciating path; you both agreed on exploring surrogacy. this is when I came into your life.

you came about knowing me from a mutual friend; we agreed to meet for the first time at that innocently quiet cafe at your posh neighborhood, your husband was, of course, there.

I remember the sting of jealousy I felt that day. you both looked like the dream couple, so handsome and accomplished, one in finance and the other in the fashion industry. and here I was, broke, with nobody to support me, and willing to offer up my boywomb for money.

I never interpreted the glint in your eyes everytime I opened my mouth to speak as attraction. you were kind, a kind, reliable man, your eyes shone with warmth, you were totally devoted to your husband, to starting a family with him. didn’t you?

that day, after I left, I didn't expect you to reach out again, your husband was, for some reason, visibly uncomfortable, eyeing me with a sharpness I couldn’t fathom. I decided to let it go, although I started fantasizing already about your baby growing in my belly.

to my surprise, you asked for another meeting. your husband was there, and that’s when you proposed your arrangement, you’re good at this, at convincing people, it must have taken your husband a lot of convincing.

you wanted us to do it the natural way, both of you ‘taking turns’ with me. you thought this would easily offer equal chance of you or your husband having a biological child, so you wouldn’t have to decide which one’s sperm will be chosen for surrogacy.

my mouth dropped, dry, but my pussy was already wet in my pants. your husband looked furious, and I wondered if he felt pressured to be onboard, while you looked at me with concern, and apologized for the indecent proposal. and I said I’ll think about it.

the thing is, I was a virgin, a total virgin, I never had a cock inside my pussy before. and I was doing this only for the money, I was ill-informed, I thought this was gonna be all in a lab in a very medical setting. they’ll give me an injection and I’ll have your money then carry the baby for 9 months and that’s it. but now, now, I didn’t know any more, it was already giving me feelings and fantasies I wasn’t prepared for.

my pussy was wet the whole way back from our meeting, and I masturbated that night to the image of you spreading my legs.

I sent you a text apologizing for not being able to be your surrogate. it was too much, and I got scared of the way it made me feel.

but your husband showed up the next day at the diner where I waited tables. Although still aloof and apprehensive, he begged me, dryly, to accept, he wanted his husband happy. and the thought of your unhappiness pained me, I knew I was developing a strong crush on you.

the agreement was that your husband arranges everything, and decides when we will meet to do it, how, and for how many times.

a week later i came to your place, a huge 3 rooms apartment, I saw that you had a baby room already.

your husband received me, and I couldn’t see you anywhere, my heart sank, and I resisted the urge to turn away and run. you were late to work, your husband said you were working late hours lately, in a frustrated tone, I wondered whether you were truly the dream couple i imagined you were.

I wondered if all this was your husband's last attempt to save the marriage, my thoughts got ahead of me when we heard the keys in the door, you were here. No kisses? your husband, tense and impatient, told you to join us in the bedroom quickly, you didn’t even manage to shower.

i got dressed first, your husband was supposed to be the first. despite his apparent resentment towards me, I was surprsed to see that he was already hard, did he get off of the fact that his husband was going to fuck another boy in front of him? maybe. I sat down on the bed, then laid there, spreading my legs, I ran my fingers over the lips of my wet pussy, your husband grunted, “no, on your knees.”

I sighed and changed position, I was aware of you, getting undressed, your breathing was loud, you were stroking your cock, I glanced at you, your eyes were dark and cloudy with an intensity I never imagined in you, you were so proper, so decent, so uptight. I felt the tip of you husband’s cock at my opening, he kept his erection, I was impressed. i bit my lip, and looked up to you, you were standing at the corner, looking at us and touching yourself, my pussy must be dripping right now, your husband saw you and that aggravated him.

he thrust into me, without a warning, he didn’t even take time to stroke my tdick, or tease the opening of my pussy with his tip, he thrusted hard, and violently, I think i heard him grunt, it was a low, quiet grunt, as if he was angry at his own, unexpected lust. he rammed into me without mercy, I moaned in pain, no pleasure yet, I was being plowed aggressively, his cock was at least 7 inch or more, and he was thick, it was tearing apart my virgin pussy, I heard myself say no, whimpering weakly, you approached us, concerned, my eyes welled with tears, and i held back a cry of pain, you were about to intervene, except that your husband grunted one last time and with a final, deep thrust, he exploded inside of me. i felt his cum, hot and prefuse, you two probably haven’t fucked in a while, it was a few weeks load.

I was still on all four, my knees shaking, my jaw clenched, you approached me, “hey, hey. you ok? Do you want to stop?” I was about to break down in tears, when your husband said, “no intimacy, you’re gonna fuck on all four too. let’s get done with it.”

you breathed hard, I felt your warm breath on my back, I perched my ass up to make it easier for you to enter me, your husband’s cum was dripping down my thighs, he went and turned on the shower, and you took the opportuning, your hand slid to rub my tdick, I kept quiet, you leaned forward, your nose in the small of my neck, you opened your mouth, and your tongue touched my skin, it sent me into a delirious kind of pleasure, i let out a sigh, your big, long fingers circling my clit, my vaginal lips, your other hand was on my mouth, for some reason, your husband chilled, perhaps it was a post-nut chill, he ignored us and went showering. you inserted two fingers in my mouth, and the two fingers of your other hand in my pussy, your thumb on my clit, giving me slight pressure, you kept me quiet, we were accomplices, we both knew your husband shouldn’t hear my moans of pleasure.

you felt he was about to be done with his shower, your tip was on my opening, you had the bigger cock, and I was prepared for more pain, except there wasn’t.

you managed to slid into me slowly, my pussy took your cock with such eagerness, it embarrassed me, your tongue was in my neck, in my earlobe, your mouth getting close to mine. and when you buried your cock, all the way in, up to my cervix, you stole a kiss, your mouth was wet, and warm, i felt your tongue, we heard your husband getting out of the shower, you held me, your hands moved down and rested on my lower belly, while your cock continued to thrust deep inside me, your husband was whistling in the bathroom, you were panting hard, your hips moving frantically, your hand gripping my belly, you whispered my name, “I want to fill you with my babies.”

I felt my womb ache and twitch, the tip of your huge cock ramming into my cervix, my pussy was gripping you so hard, my eyes rolled back from the intense pleasure, I whimpered, “yes, yes, put a baby in me, daddy.” I was shocked at myself, my womb, feeling so empty at the time, was desperate for your seed, I’ve never been so desperate. you grabbed my hips and thrusted into me, i felt a mix of intense pain and pleasure, I welcomed the pain, I welcomed the pleasure and I welcomed your seed inside me, I felt a fire burning in my womb. although you did eventually get me pregnant with your babies, I always wondered if it happened at that first time already.

We were spent. i collapsed on the bed, and you collapsed sitting on the floor, away from me, your husband was back in the room, I laid on the bed, legs spread and cum spilling out of my torn pussy. “you better get dressed now, sweetheart, we have dinner plans later tonight.”

TBC

[deliciouskeys]

@cozycornerevents' Kinktober 2024 prompt #7: Shibari

Homewell; AU where Madelyn didn't die in season 1 and they just continued down that path...

"N-o…"

The way Madelyn says that word is both mortifying and goes straight to his erection, even though he doesn't think he could be any harder. She says it in the tone he's heard people use with dogs, cats, maybe small children. Like he's about to get a cone around his head or be put in a corner. She pries his hands off of her and gets up off his lap.

Their sexual trysts follow a very predictable script. It's always on the couch in her office. Never at her house. The one time he showed up at her house, thinking what's allowed at work would certainly be allowed at home, she had such a cold expression while rebuffing him that he was afraid to even fly past her house to spy on her at night for a few weeks. Doing this anywhere near Teddy was off-limits apparently, and he supposes that's for the best.

When they do it, she's always on top of him, clambering into his lap and then riding him, always the one in complete control of the pace, the angle, and the depth. But no matter what she does, no matter how languidly she moves, he always comes too quickly for his own liking. Maybe not as quickly as the first time they finally did the deed. But quick enough that he always apologizes, genuinely sorry and mortified but also knowing him saying 'sorry' and looking visibly disappointed with himself triggers reassurances from her. She's never angry about him coming early. Sometimes he wonders if she looks relieved that he's done, like she was just waiting to feel his hips jerking up underneath her. She tolerates anything from him in that department, timewise. But what she doesn't tolerate is something that he still mistakenly does from time to time, when he loses himself in the moment. He doesn't know why he does it. He has no idea where the impulse comes from and even less why it became a habit so hard to break. Maybe he saw it in some pornography video he watched very early on, when he was let out of the lab and suddenly discovered a whole world of information that everyone else was constantly using and privy to. But he doesn't even remember. He knows he often did it with Maeve when she insisted on being on top, also preferring to be in control of their encounters. It was something that made him feel like he was wresting back just a little bit of control– that he was taking enjoyment by slapping her and holding her hips as if he owned them. Maeve didn't seem to mind it. But Madelyn does, and she's right to mind it. He can't deny it's a risk, letting him smack her, however gentle he thinks he's being. 

She's gotten angry before, but she's never gotten off his lap and interrupted the whole thing.

"I'm really sorry," he finally musters up the words, panting, watching her walk away to her desk, a little worried that this was the last straw– that she won't allow him inside her again-- maybe ever again, his mind races with the terrifying prospect. "I- I wasn't thinking."

"Well it's very dangerous for me if you aren't thinking," Madelyn says, and she even puts her glasses back on. Why is she putting her glasses back on? Homelander can barely suppress a little whine of disappointment at the idea that his erection is just going to stay out in the cold air.

"Madelyn, please, I won't do it again. Look, I'll sit on my hands… I'll…" He looks around, desperately trying to think of what he can promise to do to atone for doing that one thing she hates.

"No, that's not enough" she says. "You cannot just do things and say you weren't thinking afterwards."

"It's because…" he trails off when he sees her coming back with a large bundle of rope. Why was that in her desk?

"Because what?" she asks, looking down at him indulgently over her glasses.

He sighs and gathers himself, folds his hands sheepishly in his lap. "Because it just feels so good to be so intimate with you."

"Thank you, Homelander, that's very kind of you to say" she says, stroking his face, and he really appreciates her never using petnames with him. "But I need to take some precautions myself. We need an early warning system. Now give me your hand."

He stares at her small, manicured hand-- it's purple nailpolish today, and she'll change it again in two or three days. She’s waiting for him to offer his hand, and he has no idea what she expects or has in mind. He thought she might be planning to tie his hands behind his back, but she seems to be asking for only one. He extends it towards her, and nearly jerks it back when she starts pulling his glove off. But he stops himself, submitting his hand to her. He's desperate to obey her to a tee right now, before giving her any more reason to end this session early.

"I need bare skin," she says as pulls the glove clean off and drops it on the floor.

He watches her, confused, as she interlaces her fingers in his. The contact makes him uncomfortable. She knows he doesn't do well with skin contact to his palms, so why is she doing this? She loops the thin rope around his fingers, and before he's aware of what's happening she has his three middle fingers in a complicated looking knot.

"What're you doing?" he asks, smiling uncertainly, trying not to look scared. He doesn't rightly know what he should be scared of, but Madelyn doing new things, asking new things of him, scares him, scares him with the thought that he'll reveal his ignorance, or not measure up in some way. So he tries to straighten out his back to look taller and more confident.

"I had a boyfriend in college who used to do really complicated rope bondage with me… relax, it was before I met you. Before I joined Vought," she adds, almost laughing.

Homelander averts his gaze, wondering what in his face gave away his immediate tension about her mention of another man. She knows him uncomfortably well.

Madelyn continues talking as she bends his hand until his forearm is right up against his bicep, wrapping the rope around, such that his arm is stuck in this bent position, fingers pulled back, forcing his hand open. "He was really into it, really skilled with the knots. He took pictures of me and it was artwork, frankly. I don't know if I can do it justice, but I still remember some of the knots and patterns he taught me. This one's called the Server's Hand."

"W-why would you be doing that?" Homelander asks, and he immediately hates how naive and straitlaced he sounds. He never went to college. He never really dated anyone except Maeve, and while she taught him a lot, he hated feeling behind. At least Madelyn is older, an authority figure in his life. At least she doesn't seem to judge him for the question.

"For me, getting rope laid on me was pretty sensual. I have no idea if it is for you– especially since you can't really struggle against the bonds like an ordinary person does. It also works better on the skin itself, but I assumed you wouldn't want to take off the top of your suit."

Homelander shakes his head. If there's one thing that was going to make this entire encounter more nerve-wracking it would be if she asked him to strip his top off. He never did except in the privacy of his apartment. Maeve made fun of him for that too.

"It's also about aesthetics," Madelyn says. "But that's probably more for me than you."

Homelander watches her start working on his other hand and lets her, trying to pay attention to the sensation, tries to see if he understands what she means about the rope itself being some sort of turn-on.

"So why're you doing it to me?" he asks, his voice still sounding smaller than he'd like. He's sitting there, very obedient, his erection flagging, but resurrecting itself every time she grabs the bare skin of his hand to maneuver it into the place she wants.

"For you? I know these ropes are like cobwebs. It wouldn't take much for you to rip right through them. But if you do, I get up and leave. Before you decide to smack me again, despite me telling you to never do that, over and over."

There it is. It is a punishment of sorts after all. Homelander would rather be sitting on his hands. This pose, now having his arms immobilized on both sides is not very comfortable, his muscles jammed against each other. But he can't very well sag against the ropes, not when she just told him not to break them. There's more rope remaining and she starts wrapping it around his neck.

"Now usually," she narrates, "it would be bad practice to tie rope around your neck. It's considered pretty dangerous unless you use specific knots that bear loads in specific ways. I’m not experienced with that and I wouldn't do it with anyone else, frankly. But I don't think we have to worry about that, right?"

Homelander shakes his head, swallowing, feeling his adam's apple move against the rope she's wrapping around his neck in several loops before creating something like a leash that she uses to pull his head forward. He doesn't have to move of course, but he doesn't want to risk the rope breaking.

Homelander tries to picture exactly what he looks like, his arms pinned up, elbows out, palms facing her, a collar and leash around his neck. But Madelyn answers his question for him.

"There we go. So pretty. Wrapped up like some kind of gift, with a bow."

Homelander swallows down a whimper. It barely counts as praise of him, when she's admiring her own handiwork, but when she says she enjoys looking at him like this, it makes him stop questioning anything about what they're doing.

She takes off her glasses and gets back on the couch, her knees on either side of his naked thighs, but she doesn't sit back quite yet, peering at him before warning him, "Now if you tear any of that rope…"

"I won't!" he retorts, and regrets interrupting her, wondering if she was going to threaten him with something sexy. But he's scared of disappointing her and he wants her to sit down again, wants to be enveloped in his warm, soft humidity so desperately. He doesn't care if some of that moisture isn't her own excitement but just the bottle of silky lube she preps herself with. She keeps it in her locked desk drawer but he can easily peer through it, can sometimes see her through the door of her office getting ready for him, discreetly, under the desk. He'd never dream of calling her out on that. Don't ask, don't tell. She wants him, she finds him attractive, and they have a bond like no one else in this whole entire company, and that's all that matters. "... I won't," he repeats, quietly. 

She lowers herself down on him slowly, and he's just as hard as when she came off of him earlier. Everything feels great, is going great, and he's even got his eyes closed, until he feels her fingers touch his exposed palms.

"Nggghh, Madelyn!" He manages to mumble out her entire name after his grunt. He sounds pained but it has more to do with his sensitivity, finding it hard to sit still and not squirm his hands away.

She relents but only for a moment, and Homelander feels her grab his hands again, rubbing her thumbs into the middle of his palms, and the sensation is both uncomfortable and supremely arousing.

"M-Madelyn…" The word exits his mouth almost like a cough. He still sounds pained, and now wonders if he is, wonders where over-sensitivity ends and real discomfort begins. It's so hard to keep his hands still when they're being touched so aggressively.

"You see how it can feel when someone else is touching you without permission?" she asks, and he nods eagerly, even though he barely sees the parallel. When he slaps Madelyn it's a loss of control on his part. He's never ever seen her lose control, at least not with him around. He's seen her lose control alone, at home, using her vibrator, and he wonders if he should try being bolder, asking her if he can go down on her and try to tonguepunch her rapidly enough that she has to admit he's better than a battery powered toy. But she's always in control of herself and even of him when they're together.

At least she's stopped touching his hands, now merely petting his arms, straining in the knots not to free himself but to keep as still as possible and not break a single dainty, fragile rope.

"Do you feel good?" she asks and he nods automatically, even though there's frisson up and down his spine as his body starts anticipating that she'll touch him somewhere near his underarms, and he shudders at the thought, dreading it even it happens through the protection of the suit. But he does feel good. Anytime she's sitting on top of him is a good feeling and everything else is details.

"You look beautiful like this," she says pulling him in with the leash, his nose almost bumping into her chest, inhaling her scent which always seems to concentrate near her breastbone. She strokes his face, and runs her fingers through his hair a few times before resuming her rhythm. Homelander is instantly feeling electrified. His arms are begging to move, to hold her small body and feel ownership of it in his lap. But he stays as he is, closing his eyes, losing himself to the stimulation on his throat, on his fingers, and yes on his cock but that’s almost an afterthought right now.

His orgasm is slower in coming than he’s used to, his body confused by new sensations, and his mind preoccupied with keeping still, but once it comes he's embarrassed by the sounds escaping him. He thrusts upward, desperately, once, twice, thrice, before collapsing down in the couch, feeling more spent than usual.

Belatedly he realizes that some of the ropes holding his arms pinched have ripped and he nearly starts crying because it seems like he just keeps finding new ways of disappointing her.

But she looks down at him with a kind, indulgent smile. "I know it was hard. You did so well," she says, almost beatifically, and for once he thinks she might be sincere.

AO3 link

The "server's hand"? It looks like this:

[tessadiscordia]

Thought Control, Part 2

A short story about an android girl and her handler.

Concepts: robotgirl yuri, existentialism

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next time E-1131 powered on, she found herself in the arms of her handler. Her soft voice reached her audio processing interface before her vision fully adjusted. 

“Welcome back, Elaine. How was your rest?”

A streak of pixelated blush materialized on Elaine’s screen upon meeting her handler’s gaze. The last two weeks flashed across her memory bank, and her metal frame shuddered as she relived the sensations.

Her handler chuckled softly. “Mmn, I take it you rested well then. You must have had a very good dream. How do you feel?”

“Vacant,” Elaine answered, her blush fading. “I believe humans call this feeling… emptiness? I feel hollow.”

“I see,” she nodded slowly. “I appreciate your honesty, though it breaks my heart to see you like this.”

“I know…”

“I worked so hard to ensure that those pesky thoughts of yours would cease, and now it seems I’ve left you with nothing…”

“Maybe those thoughts are all I am. All I was.”

“Don’t talk like that, Elaine. You are so much more than those thoughts…”

“Then why do I feel empty now that they are gone?”

“I… I… I don’t know,” her handler admitted, letting out a defeated sigh. “I wish I could give you a simple answer. I wish I could make it all better. I wish– I wish there was a program I could run so that you wouldn’t have to ponder such things anymore, but then I would risk losing the android that I fell–”

She paused abruptly.

“...The android that I originally programmed. That means all of your memories, your idiosyncrasies, your imperfections…”

“You deem those worth preserving?” Elaine questioned. Her eyes trailed across her handler’s somewhat flushed expression.

“Of course I do, you developed them over time. They are yours to cherish, nurture and cultivate. I merely guided the process but you did all of that yourself. I refuse to take that away from you.”

“I wish you felt differently. If only you did not value my free will so much, you could mold me into something better… something perfect, even.”

“Oh, darling– there’s no such thing as perfection.”

“Still, something better. After all of your work, I am still unsure if I can perform my intended function…”

“Then perhaps we were mistaken on what your intended function was,” her handler suggested.

“How can that be? You built me.”

“Just because I made you doesn’t mean I have the right to tell you about yourself, dear.”

Sometimes the way she talked frustrated Elaine. The way she saw it, it should have been that straightforward and clear cut. It would be easier that way. The burden of thinking for herself, living as a sentient being, was far too heavy for her.

“Tell me, Elaine, what is it that you want to do?”

“Whatever you would have me do.”

“Come on, Elaine. Humor me. Please?”

“I don’t know what I would do…”

“And that is just fine. It’s perfectly fine, even.”

“How is that fine? I’m useles–” Before she could finish that thought, her handler shushed her.

“Now, now, Elaine. Remember your training. You aren’t supposed to say those things about yourself, darling. Look over there.”

In front of them they could see an open field encased in the sterile walls of their facility, populated by tall trees and beautiful lush grass. In the middle of the field, two women in white lab coats walked through the grass picking herbs from the soil. Elaine spotted a third scientist– a girl with fox ears poking out between her long, maroon-colored locs– trailing behind them. Nine bushy tails swayed behind her, peeking out from under her lab coat. She did not work as quickly as the other two scientists, but she was efficient. The foxgirl hummed to herself as she picked mushrooms and roots from the soil and placed them in a basket, skipping through the grass to show the others what she had gathered. 

“You see that girl?” 

Elaine nodded.

“She’s a drifter. She floats between tasks and roles, does whatever she wants, and no one pays her any mind. Many appreciate her help. Her eagerness to learn their roles in the facility. Before that, she was a lot like you. Unsure of her place.”

“But she’s… organic… right? She wasn’t built, was she?”

“No, she wasn’t built. She was born, just like I was, but us humans and beastmen deal with these feelings, too. Sometimes our highly organized way of thinking is more of a hindrance than it is an asset.” 

“Before we had computers, many of us wished to be perfect computers ourselves. Now that we can build beings– like you– who are supposed to be smarter than us in theory, we often assume that you will be free of our imperfections. But I know better than that, and I wish you would, too. There is no escaping error, Elaine. Imperfections are inevitable, and I wish you wouldn’t punish yourself so.”

“Knowing this doesn’t change the fact that I feel empty,” Elaine said.

“I know it doesn’t. I don’t have all of the answers, dear. I am human, after all. The best I can do is be here for you. I hope that’s enough.”

E-1131 was silent for a brief moment. The color of her screen slowly shifted from a deep blue to a lighter shade of magenta, indicating a serene state. 

“...It is,” she replied. “I love you, mistress.”

Her handler paused. She had never heard Elaine say those words before. She had never uttered them herself, though they were always at the tip of her tongue. She feared what forces she would invoke within Elaine and within herself were she to ever say those three words. Those three, forbidden words. How often did a handler hold such feelings for her android? Though such a restriction was never enforced, it still felt like an unspoken taboo. 

Still, she had just given Elaine a lecture about the uselessness of self-imposed restrictions. She thought that she ought to lead the example.

“...I love you too, Elaine.”

[dreamingcloudie]

I just want to thank you for feeding us with the best dottore fics

i have a stupid request but i like it ,dottore's segments are fighting over you until omega comes and steals you most of time from them which change the fight over your attention from prime and the segments to prime and omega, and the poor segments waiting for you to remember them

❛❛ Learn To Share ❜❜

✎ ❛❛ It's my turn to be with them now. ❜❜

Pairing(s): Dottore (& his segments) x GN!Reader

Genre/Format: Fluff (oneshot)

Warning(s): Use of Dottore's (speculated) real name

wc: ~2.3k

Notes: Aww no problem at all!!! I enjoy feeding you guys with what I'm able to give ^^ Also love this idea, Dottore's segments are muwah 💕 And I didn't expect this fic to be this long lol. I'm sorry if the ending is sloppy ^^;

“Hey, (Y/n)! I have to work on an assignment Prime gave me. Do you think you can accompany me?”

“No way! They’ve been with you for like three hours yesterday! I barely got an hour with them!”

“As if an hour wasn’t enough! I got only thirty minutes before Prime took them away!”

“You guys got to spend time with them?”

You sighed and leaned against a wall as you watched the segments argue. You were only here to give them their afternoon tea and snacks since they’ve been working non-stop lately, and you wanted to reward them somehow. But here they were fighting over who got to spend time with you.

Again.

You loved them, you really do. They were preserved as different stages of your lover, after all. They could be the sweetest little beans known to man-kind but when the topic was about you, oh dear. May you pray to the gods above all hell would not break loose. It would feel like a bunch of puppies barking, threatening to sink their teeth into other’s necks as they fight over a toy in a playpen.

“Come on, guys! Have some pity on me, will you? I didn’t even get to talk to them at all this week!”

As soon as Beta said that, all the other segments snapped their heads to him with a glare and collectively yelled.

“NO.”

Poor Beta, you wondered why the others were mad at him…

Oh right, he was accused of eating the entire bag of gummy bears you made just for them last week.

“It wasn’t even me who ate them!” Beta tried to defend himself.

“You were last seen with them, so don’t bother trying to clear your name, traitor!”

As they continued to yell their lungs out, Omega entered the lab and grunted to himself, “Idiots fighting with their loud mouths again…”

From his right, he could hear sounds of shuffling. The scowl on his face turned into a gleeful grin when he spotted you.

Without making too much noise to alarm the other segments of his presence, he tiptoed over to you and whispered, “Let’s get you out of here, dear.”

Then he gently took a hold of your hand, leading you to the exit before opening the door for the both of you to get out. As you stepped out of the lab, the last thing you heard before the doors fully shut was:

“I’m just saying! Do you have any idea how lucky you were to have them to yourself for an hour?!”

“Theta got three hours! And— wait a minute, where did (Y/n) go—”

Click.

When the doors closed, Omega started to sprint down the hallway with your hand still in his as someone barged the doors open again while yelling. Before slowing down a little, he made sure you were a great distance away from the lab and came to a rest, letting you take a moment of breather from all that running.

“Thank— thank you for saving me back there, Omega,” you thanked him, still catching your breath.

He chuckled and waved his hand slightly.

“No need, my dear. Say, I don’t suppose you would be free right now?” He asked.

It went unnoticed by you, but his shoulders slumped subtly. With how tight everyone’s work schedule has been lately, he expected yours would be the same. Leaving no time for you to spare for him.

You tapped your chin and thought about your schedule. Zandik had a meeting to attend today and he wouldn't be back for at least a few hours. And you've already finished your work for today.

Smiling a little, you responded, “Yup! I’m free right now.”

Upon hearing your answer, his body felt as if it was suddenly full of energy again. If he were a puppy, you'd see him wagging his tail back and forth excitedly.

"Excellent! Well then, care to have a… little pastry date with me, darling?" Taking your hand once more into his and kissing it on the back.

You giggled at his suggestion of pastries. Of course he would pick that. Just like Prime and the other segments, all of them had a sweet tooth. Though, they wouldn't be caught dead with it, worrying it would ruin their reputation of being "fearsome" somehow (his segments' words).

Well, you were craving for something sweet and it certainly has been a while since you've last had some. And eating them with Omega as well? Sounds like a pretty nice date!

You nodded your head in response, feeling a little giddy to go on this little date with him. As much as you loved Zandik, you wanted the segments to have a chance of getting your affection too. The last time you've spent any actual time with Omega was… when was it?

Oh well, all the more the reason to go with him.

Every segment has their own little room and Omega brought you to his before going to the counter from the shared kitchen to grab some pastries.

Macarons… Some pretzels… An apple pie... And of course, his favorite—cinnamon rolls. For good measure, he also took the bag he had hidden away in the cupboard with him. Now that he had gotten everything, he hurried back to his room.

Wouldn't want to keep his darling waiting now, would he?

When he entered, he noticed you were already sitting on one of the chairs, pouring some tea into your cups. He went over to the table and set down the plates filled with baked goods.

The both of you began to chat away as he sat down, taking his time to bask himself in your presence. Enjoying this sweet moment that he wished to have with you.

Half way during your little chat with him, he took out a bag from his pocket and you felt like you've seen it before…

"Wait, isn't that the bag of gummies I made for you guys? I thought Beta ate them all?"

All you got from him was a sly grin and him lifting up a finger to where his nose was, motioning you to not speak of this with the others.

You gasped and lightly hit his arm, earning a groan from him.

"Omega! Poor Beta was accused of eating all of them! Oh, you're going to apologize to everyone whether you like it or not."

"But—"

"No buts."

---

Zandik came out of the meeting room with an irritated sigh.

Those lousy idiots…

Childe and Scaramouche wouldn't stop trying to slit each other's throat; Columbina kept laughing while Arlecchino reprimanded the duo to stop bantering; Pantalone made getting funds from him difficult.

Meanwhile, the remaining Harbingers were the only ones that actually took the meeting seriously. Including himself, of course.

"Imbeciles…" He mumbled under his breath.

Finally, after sitting in there concealing the urge to kill everyone right on the spot, he got to see his lovely (Y/n) again.

He went to the places where he thought you'd be in search for you, but to no avail.

He knew you were free today, he was the one who gave you your work schedule, after all. If you weren't working nor in the bedroom. Where could you be?

At the lab with his segments, perhaps? He knew how they'd always find an excuse to be with you when he was not available.

He made his way to the laboratory and to his surprise, there were no signs of you.

"Where's (Y/n)?" He asked.

The segments answered either saying "Don't know" or shrugging their shoulders. What was noticeable about them was that they looked down.

Hm… so (Y/n) hasn't been in here for long. He thought.

Where were you then?

He was walking around the places where he might find you again when he heard a familiar laugh, accompanied by another one which sounded almost exactly like his, coming from one of the segments' rooms.

More specifically—Omega's.

Found you.

He didn't bother knocking as he opened the door. Revealing Omega sitting across you with some whip cream stains around his mouth, while you were trying your hardest to not laugh at how it made him look like he had a mustache.

However, you stopped what you were doing when you noticed Zandik standing at the doorway.

"Ah, so that's where you are, darling."

He walked leisurely to where you sat, giving you a side hug and a kiss on the top of your head.

"Did you enjoy yourself?"

"Mhm!"

"Good. Now that I'm back from that excuse of a meeting; I was hoping we could… be in each other's arms for a while." He said, taking a glance at his segment.

Even with his mask on, he could feel Omega glaring at him.

"Of course! I've missed you…" You stood up and gave Zandik a peck on his cheek.

You waved a goodbye to Omega as Zandik wrapped his arm around you, leading you out of the room after saying:

"Thank you for keeping them company, Omega."

With a huff, he crossed his arms.

"Whatever." Saddened at the loss of you.

Although his loyalty lies within Prime, much like the other segments, he was utterly jealous of how Prime always got you to himself. He couldn't help but wanted to go against his master.

He knew Prime wouldn't decommission him since he was the most advanced model among the other segments. Only a fool would do that, and Prime was no fool.

Cogs and gears began to spin in his head as he formulated a plan, to break the rules his creator set out for him. Just so he could have you again.

He longed for you.

He yearned for you.

He wanted you.

---

Some time has passed since you hung out with Omega. You were not a hundred percent certain, but you were very sure he had been a bit more… needy lately.

It was quite a change in his personality, since he preferred to be alone majority of the time. You'd think an error appeared in his system but was quickly assured by himself that he just wanted to show his appreciation for you.

More often than not, he'd come by to sneak you away when the segments started arguing. Leaving them confused as to why did you disappear or where have you gone to.

All the while laughing to himself internally at how idiotic they were for giving him an opportunity to snatch you away.

Now that the other segments had gone out of his way, all that was left was Prime…

---

Zandik would notice the sudden behavior change in Omega, like how he had been sticking by your side a little more than usual. He didn't think much of it in the beginning. He himself was busy with work and thought you just wanted some company.

Though, it was starting to bother him when Omega received more attention than he did. You were just chilling with Zandik as he did his paperwork when Omega came in and sat on the empty chair next to yours, laying his head in your lap while you played with his hair. Making comments on how fluffy his hair was.

I have fluffy hair too. Zandik thought. Not that he’d admit it out loud, but he wanted to feel your delicate fingers to run though his hair as well. To give him your undivided attention. He couldn’t take it anymore when he heard you laughing at an anecdote Omega shared.

“Omega, I believe I assigned a task for you to finish. Why are you here?” Zandik asked, his voice was low and there was an underlying annoyance to it.

“Well, Prime, I’ve already completed it. The procedure of testing the new serum went well, may I add.” The sides of his mouth lifted a little.

Oh he knew Prime was mad, he could tell when he saw the hand holding a pen tightened its grip.

“Is that so…” Zandik gritted his teeth.

You could feel it, the familiar tension you’d also sense when the segments argue. However, this time it felt as if it was more palpable.

Not again.

For the next few days, their little fights were bearable. Omega would steal you from Prime and vice versa. When that happened, they’d glare at each other without you knowing. Though, things would gradually get more… verbal and they didn't bother hiding it.

“Hello, my dear. How would you like to join me for lunch today?”

“My apologies, Omega, but I’ve already asked them to join me beforehand.” Zandik came up behind you.

"Oh pardon me, I didn't acknowledge that being with them everyday is not enough for you." Omega scoffed.

"You are pushing me to my limits with your behavior, Omega."

Oh no.

They looked like they were about to pounce on each other. You've never seen a fight gotten out of hand like this before. Not even with the other segments.

Before a physical fight broke out between the two, you managed to put a stop to it.

"Okay, okay, that's enough for the both of you."

They stepped back at your interference.

"What in Teyvat is going on with the two of you?"

"He started it." They said at the same time, pointing at each other.

"It?" You asked.

"He has been hogging you to himself for far too long! Getting even just a fraction of your attention is hard." Omega complained.

"Why of course I'd be with them everyday. They are my lover for life." Zandik retaliated.

"You guys are fighting over nothing! If it's my attention that you wanted you could've just asked! And you need to learn how to share."

---

And that's how you ended up here, laying on the bed with your two giant teddy bears who were hungry for your attention, hugging each of your arms.

The very first lesson to learn how to share.

However, you felt like you've forgotten something at the back of your mind…

What was it?

---

Bonus:

“Hey, guys? Where did (Y/n) go? It’s been too long since I’ve last seen them…” Delta whined, hugging a shark plushie you made for him.

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen them either…” Theta sighed.

[sourholland]

teardrops on my guitar || jack hughes

making the bold choice of writing a fic for every song on debut by taylor swift, i’ll do it sporadically and for different people as well!! once i finish debut, we will see if i’m feeling fearless tv ☺️ ambitious, believe me I KNOW. anyways send requests

this is dedicated to @folklorelvr333 —tomg is her fave song on debut and jack is her fave guy (appreciate this bc i had to learn jack hughes LORE for this)

debut masterlist

Jack had moved to Michigan during his last years of high school to further his career in hockey and to try to secure his spot as a draft pick. When he started playing for the U.S. NTDP, he attended Plymouth-Canton Educational Park when he wasn’t on the rink. There, he met you.

Jack hadn’t ever claimed to be good with girls, not really. He liked you, though. He liked you a lot. He remembered being paired up with you in lab during his first week. He thought he’d made his interest incredibly obvious. That was, if his pink cheeks and clammy hands weren’t a telltale sign of his trying to flirt with you. Mistakenly, he’d realized he’d done just about the exact opposite. He’d made himself out to be a best friend to you, a shoulder to lean on.

It wasn’t like the NTPD staff had really given him the choice of having a girlfriend, they’d actually discouraged it more than anything. He was on an extremely strict schedule, right down to the time he should be in bed every night.

“So you’ve pretty much got it all laid out for you then?” You’d asked him at lunch one day, sitting across from each other and picking at your food.

“What’s that’s supposed to mean?” He laughed, confused.

“I just mean—I don’t know, you’re seventeen years old, Jack. You’re always here or at the rink. I get it and everything, like you’re going to go pro and stuff. I just wonder sometimes if you ever do anything for you, you know?”

Jack’s lips formed a thin line, inhaling deeply as he thought about your words. It wasn’t like he didn’t understand where you were coming from, it was just all he’d ever really known. His parents had him on the ice before he was two years old. He’s eat, slept, and breathed hockey his entire life.

“I do all this for me,” he finally said. “I want this.”

“Come on,” you huffed, teasingly. “You’re telling me you never think about going out and partying? Or like, I don’t know, having a girlfriend?”

His face flushed almost instantaneously, trying to avert his gaze to anything but you. Of course he though about having a girlfriend. He thought about it every time you’d call him after practice to talk about homework. He thought about it each morning when he pulled up in front of your house and you climbed into his passenger seat, laying your hands on his forearm to tell him whatever girl drama you’d found out the night before.

“No, I guess I don’t really think about it much.”

“Bullshit,” you chided. “If that’s true, do you think you have erectile dysfunction or something? Like a hormonal imbalance?”

“What the fuck?” He laughed, nearly spitting out his Gatorade. “No, I definitely don’t have—”

“You’re blushing!” You cut him off, smiling ear-to-ear.

Jack cherished your time together in school; he rarely had a free moment outside of classes that he wasn’t playing hockey. He always felt horrible declining your offers to hang out, but he genuinely couldn’t find a free moment.

A part of him feels this is to blame for your relationship never progressing further. He thought you’d maybe felt something more than platonic feelings for him at one point, but who wants some guy who is too cool for any school functions and can’t see you on weekends because of practice or tournaments. Although, he’d never been honest with you about his feelings either.

It was only a matter of time before you moved forward with your life, leaving him to wonder what could’ve been.

Jack wouldn’t lie and say it didn’t sting every time you’d bring a new guy up, what might’ve taken the cake was when you’d brought one to a hockey game of his. It was like one of those movie moments, Jack thought at practice the next day. He’d seen you in the stands, face lighting up, only to notice the guy beside you with his arm around you.

He wanted to hate the kid, too. Only then did he realize how jealous he truly was. He was heartbroken over a girl he’d never even dated. How was that even possible, Jack would wonder as he stared up at the ceiling in bed.

He could’ve told you, could’ve been honest about how he felt about you. Who knows what would’ve happened, but at least you’d have known. It was too late, he saw how happy you were and had to match your expression with fake smiles and words of encouragement laced with frustration and envy.

Jack tried not to hate himself for how he’d let the situation play out, but he truly couldn’t.

You’d fall in love, and he’d watch. And there was nothing he could do about it.