#There's a reason for Tommy's pose

[monsterritory]

Tale of a Dreamon update is underway, have a preview meanwhile

[smimon]

Käärijätober day 29: It's Crazy, It's Party

This took way longer that I expected but I regret nothing 😎

[lavendertales]

Hi hi hi 🥰🥰🥰 any thoughts on writing a fox on reader and Joel Miller where they have an age gap (obvs) maybe reader is a friend of Tommy’s and Joel is a bit protective over her but they end up fucking and the whole time he’s trying to shut her up from the clickers by covering her mouth, choking her but at the same time talking dirty etc etc I’ll let you live out your thotty imagination with this one xoxo

Hiii love, thank you for the request! Well this one was... phew 🥵 hope you enjoy!

Where you belong || Joel Miller x f!reader**

summary: who would've thought one of Tommy's good friends would have such an impact on Joel?

word count: 2k

WARNINGS: this is FILTH. age gap mention, teasing, some dirty talk, mutual pining, male & female masturbation, choking, unprotected piv, vaginal fingering.

AGELESS/EMPTY BLOGS & MINORS WILL BE BLOCKED!

gif: @pajamasecrets

Stubborn and harsh as he may be, Joel Miller knows how to appreciate some of the finer things in life.

A good song, a fine illustration, a movie that sticks with him for a while… and then there’s you.

Tommy’s made it clear that you were a close friend of his and Maria’s, and Joel respected that. He stayed within the limits of respect, never crossing the border. But he did enjoy the occasional sneak peek at you, always when you weren’t looking.

He’s not sure why. It just always felt… easier. Just watching you from afar and keeping things cordial between the two of you was always the easy and safe option, as opposed to actually caring too much.

Caring meant loss. And Joel had enough of that. He just needed something nice for a change. Something good, something that wouldn’t be tainted by the threat of harm.

Perhaps that’s why he’d grown so fond and so protective of you. Being significantly older than you was certainly another reason why he preferred to keep his infatuation for you at bay, but it also gave him a reason to be your unspoken protector. You didn’t ask for it, yet he simply provided it. For that, you were beyond grateful.

And frustrated, too.

Particularly on this hot summer evening in Jacksonville, when you were out checking the perimeter for raiders or infected, and you used every excuse imaginable to establish physical contact with Joel: a light grip on his arm when you faked a potential fall, soft giggles at his dry jokes that no one else seemed to get, and being face to face with him with every single opportunity you got. Five, in total. You gazed at him, searching his face for confirmation that he understood why you were doing all that, why you were craving his touch so dearly, and still you failed to see that. Joel remained as hardened as ever, and it only grew your frustration more.

So when you got back into town, throwing your gun on the rocking chair in the corner of your living room, you were surprised to see Joel behind you, footsteps heavy, as if he was angry about something.

“What’s wrong with you?” his thick voice asks.

You turn to him, utterly dumbfounded, almost insulted at the question he just posed. Maybe you misinterpret it, too, but hell if you give a shit right now.

It’s been months since Joel’s caught your eye, months of sneaky glances and wishful thinking, and closing onto three years without the intimate touch of another human being.

It’s too much. In this moment, all feels overwhelming.

“What is wrong with me?” you emphasize the pronoun. “What is wrong with you?! Have you not noticed me around you for the past, I don’t know, two hours?”

“Sure I have, how can I not?”

You scoff, hands on your hips and licking your lips in frustration. Gesture which does not go unnoticed by Joel, who licks his own in return, awfully tempted in this moment.

“I don’t know, Joel,” you reply sarcastically. “For someone with such great hunting and surviving skills, you sure lack some basic observation skills.”

He frowns, approaching you. “What are you talking about?”

You grow even more dumbfounded, curious whether he’s playing the fool intentionally or if he’s simply playing with you.

“How long have we known each other?” you ask.

“Six, seven months.”

“Seven months. Seven months since you’ve known me, and you still don’t know a fucking thing about me.”

“What don’t I know?”

You approach him too, your lips parted to make room for words that refuse to come out. Instead, you breathe through your mouth, your body nearly quivering at the simple, yet overpowering sensation of being so close to him, yet so far.

“What I like and don’t like,” you say in a near-whisper manner. “I don’t like being fooled. I don’t like being played or led astray, and I don’t like guessing. I hate guessing games. I was never any good at them.”

“Yeah, me neither.”

You nod several times, puckering your lips. “Clearly.”

“And what do you like?”

The way he says it, so rich with gruffness and tempting, it’s causing your knees to buckle and your heart to race faster. It’s the first time tonight you think he’s actually teasing you, and you feel heat spreading throughout your body, settling in your nether area.

“A lot of things, actually,” you reply, unable to look away from his full lips.

“Mhm. Like what? Tell me. Use your words.”

Yeah, he’s definitely fucking with you. But it’s all the more enticing.

You don’t tell him, though; you simply reach to press your lips onto his, only for a split second, and then you pull away. You watch his face closely, checking if you have his approval. When he wraps a faintly hesitant hand around your waist and pulls you in to kiss you properly, you melt into his arms, and realize that you do have all the approval in the goddamn world.

It doesn’t take long for the kiss to deepen. In a matter of seconds, you find yourself writhing beneath him on the bed, splayed shamelessly by his calloused hands. Under normal circumstances, he’d be a perfect gentleman and ask you out, spend as much time with you as possible, but for the past two decades, Joel lived on the edge, strictly in survival mode. Which means that some relief is all he can allow himself to have.

Your hands hastily undress him, messy just like the kiss you are sharing with him, and your breaths get ragged, as fast and irregular as your heart.

“You don’t know—how many goddamn times I’ve—wanted this…”

Joel’s voice is trembling despite its huskiness, and it causes you to shiver with excitement. The thought of him wanting you this much, this desperately, is getting you wetter with each passing second.

“Never allowed myself to—to want you” he confesses, peppering wet kisses along your jaw while you worked against his belt and zipper.

“Why not?”

“Tommy might kill me.”

“Or Maria.”

He chuckles briefly, prompting the same reaction out of you. You help him out of his jeans and his boxers, your mouth watering upon seeing how hard he is already. It’s beyond flattering, and you’re not sure how much longer you can stay apart from him.

“Thought about you too,” you confess, spreading your legs further so that you are on full display for him.

Joel stares at you in a delirious haze. In the sunset’s gold and red light, he can see the glistening of your pussy, and he swallows harshly. He doubts he’s ever felt this parched in his whole life, the waiting tearing him apart.

“You did?” he asks cheekily, cupping your sex while you gasp in surprise.

“Yes. Oh yes…”

He’s palming you gently, eyes locked on your face and nowhere else. He’s practically working on muscle memory, but it serves him correctly it seems.

“What did you think about?” he demands, drawing circles around your clit.

“Just you… touching me.”

“Like I’m doing now?”

“Yes—I thought about you… while I was touching myself.”

Joel can’t help the grunt that escapes his lips. That sole confession awakens something primal inside of him, something big, roaring in his chest. He pushes with two fingers past your folds now that he feels you wet enough to grant him easy access, and starts pumping in and out while you whine.

“Shh,” he coos you gently. “Easy, baby girl.”

“F-Fuck—“

“From this moment forward, you’re being silent. Not quiet. Silent. Is that clear?”

You bite on your lower lip and frantically nod your head while you palm your own breasts. It feels so good just to feel his fingers inside you, you can’t even imagine more. It’s definitely been a long time for you—presumably for him too—so you are awfully sensitive and needy, but just knowing that this is Joel Miller doing this to you, causing your body to react this way, to arch under his touch and whine from his words, it’s making you hotter and wetter than anything you could’ve ever imagined.

“Be a good girl for me and shut up, will you?”

He asks too softly for you not to obey, and again you nod frantically, unable to utter any words.

Joel’s fingers keep pumping in and out of you, faster and faster, and you do everything in your willpower to not scream. You barely let out a few whimpers, but it seems they get Joel going: you catch a glimpse of him stroking his cock in the process, the sight lewd as fuck. You focus on that while you reach in between your legs to furiously rub your clit while Joel’s fingers fuck into you, and his own hand is curled around his cock. Breaths ragged and in tandem, you work on each other to climb the ladder of ecstasy.

“Fuuuuuck—“you mutter, mouth in the perfect O shape as you feel your orgasm fast approaching.

“Keep your mouth shut, baby girl,” Joel reminds you, abruptly pulling out his fingers, now sticky as he takes them to your mouth, and you instantly suck on them, having a taste of yourself.

You don’t hide the disappointment on your face upon feeling empty, especially when you see that he’s not even jerking off anymore.

“There could be clickers around,” he seemingly justifies his command.

“We checked the area. There are none.”

“There are plenty of reasons for you to keep your mouth shut, darlin’. Or do you need me to find another use for it?”

You smirk. “If you want to.”

He doesn’t, though. That’s not for tonight, he thinks. Not when you’re both so worked up and needy. He wraps his hand around his weeping cock, almost ready to explode at how hard he is, and guides himself to your entrance. Muttered cuss words fill the room from both of you, said like a chant on repeat with the first roll of his hips against yours. Your pussy swallows him whole, and he watches mesmerized as you take all of his cock in, coating the hair at the base with your juices. He doesn’t waver with the pace: it’s fast and hard from the second thrust. He slams his hips into you, your wanton cries musically pleasing to his ears.

It’s only then that he wraps his hand around your throat, putting an end to any words you might’ve wanted to say. You only moan at him as he’s fucking you speedily, needy, with a fury you’ve only seen him use in combat.

“Do you fuckin’ know—what you do to me?” he grunts, the impending sensation of his release overcoming him. “Do you, hm? Look how full you are… stuffed with my cock… good girl, just like that…”

With a bit more pressure applied to the grip over your throat, you moan as you come, coating his cock with your arousal. The sensation of your walls trapping him inside you is the final click for Joel when he comes too, pulling out and painting the filthiest painting over your swollen pussy and thighs. His warm seed is all over your lower area, and there’s so much of it, you wonder how long exactly it has been for him since he’s last felt relief.

Breathless, you reach for him, cupping his cheeks and kissing him tenderly, a stark comparison to the rough way you were being handled just a few seconds before.

“Do you know what you are doing to me, Joel Miller?” you cheekily ask after a while.

“Think I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

You both chuckle, the sound shared only between the two of you, in your bed.

It’s the first time in months Joel gets a good night’s sleep. And the first time in months since he’s laughed. All because of you.

[joezworld]

Traintober Day 6 - "The Comedy"

Hey it's Traintober! I have a couple of things written for this - more will be revealed if/when circumstances allow.

This one is just written for me: "What if I re-wrote arguably one of the worst Chris Awdry stories but also made it extremely topical? What's that? It's basically a shitpost?"

Yah anyways this is Drip Tank but it's also not.

Dripping

The Present Day - 2024

“Chaps,” Thomas said one evening as he arrived back at the sheds. “What is ‘the drip,’ and how can someone have it?”

“No.” Percy said firmly. “We’re not doing this again. It was stupid last time and I won’t be made the fool a second time.”

“This week.” Toby murmured under his breath. 

“What was that?” Percy glared. “Was that a constructive comment telling Thomas that we’re not playing dictionary games in public ever again?”

“Thomas, in what context did you hear that?” Toby ignored Percy. 

“I don’t know,” Thomas explained. “It was a group of children standing on the platform.” 

“Oh, so it is like last time!” Percy was irate. “We. Are. Not. Doing. This. Again!”

Thomas ignored him too. “They were talking about someone getting a new jacket, but it didn’t seem to be a bad thing. I think it was a compliment.”

“So it’s a compliment now?” Toby was curious. 

“Maybe.” Thomas looked pensive. “They could have been trying to be mean, but I didn’t get that sense. The boy they were talking about wasn’t even there.”

Percy wondered why he continued to like them all as much as he did. “Just, just, stop, you two. This is idiotic. Just ask the kids in the morning when you take them to school. Then we’ll know.” 

He paused. “Wait. Have Henrietta ask them when you take them to school, Toby. Then we’ll get the actual reason.” 

“I’m taking them in the morning, thanks very much.” Thomas said cheekily. “So I’ll ask.”

“You?! Since when do you take the kids? Since when does he let you?” 

“Since they’re resurfacing the main road tomorrow.” Toby said. “All the children are going by train because the buses are too big for the detour. “Unless you would like to take Henrietta, Victoria, Annie, Clarabel, and one of the big main line through coaches on the first down train tomorrow?” 

Percy quickly backpedaled, much to everyone else’s amusement!

-

The next morning, Thomas scanned the platform for someone he knew. He didn’t have Toby’s encyclopedic knowledge of the line’s children, so he had to wait for someone… there! “Rachel! Rachel Kyndley!”

Rachel Kyndley was definitely too old to count as “children” - she was commuting to the University in Suddery, for goodness’ sake - but Thomas definitely didn’t recognize anybody else.

“What’s up, Tommy?” She said, blissfully unaware of the question she was about to be posed with. 

“Do you know what “drip” is?” Thomas asked innocently. “I’ve been hearing children talk about it, and I don’t know what it means.”

Rachel made a series of facial expressions, before burying her head in her hands. “Who said this to you and why?”

Thomas explained what he’d heard, and Rachel took a long blink. “I’ll be back in one second.” She walked away, towards the carriages. 

A minute later, she came back with a younger boy in a blue satin jacket with “MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS” written across the front. “Is this who they were talking about?”

“I believe so,” Thomas said after a moment of thought. “They said his jacket “had the drip,” but I don’t know what that means.”

The younger boy made an indescribable facial expression. “Rachel, I’m not doing this.”

“Yes, you are, Roy McColl.”

“No!”

“This is your fault!”

“Mine?!”

“If you don’t help I’ll tell your sister!”

“And I’ll tell yours!”

The two stared at each other. “Fine!” “Fine!”

The young boy started first. “So, what d’you wanna know, Thomas?”

“What is drip, and how do you have it?” It really was not a difficult question, and if they took much longer they’d be late setting off.

The boy - Roy - took in a deep breath. “It’s my jacket, see? It’s got drip, which means that it looks real fly. I got that rizz right now.”

Rachel looked defeated. “Roy. Think about what you just said.”

“What? It’s the truth, innit?”

“You explained a word that he doesn’t know with two other words that he doesn’t know.”

“He doesn’t know what rizz is?”

“I don’t know what that means!”

“Uhghh, fine.” He thought hard for a second. “Drip is… like when you look real good, innit? Like you’ve got some clothes that look real nice, gives you a bit of a swagger. Fly is sorta the same thing but it’s like what old people say - maybe more good looking and not a swagger thing, understand?”

“If you think that old people say “fly,” you’re going to have a rude awakening in about five years.”

“I thought that only helicopters and airplanes could fly,” Thomas chipped in unhelpfully. “I guess I’ve learned something.”

“Roy…” Rachel glared. 

“Alrigh’ fine!” He recoiled. “So fly and drip mean that you look real nice and fresh. Like, you look good and all that.” He explained again. “You got me?”

“Okay…” Thomas said carefully. “What was that other thing?”

“Am I really gonna tell Thomas the Tank Engine what rizz is?” The boy said quietly. 

“You brought this on yourself…” Rachel said darkly. 

Thomas looked on expectantly. Seeing young people get so flustered about this sort of thing was one of the few perks of getting old. 

“So, rizz is when you got that charisma, that charm, that style. You know, if you ever wanna get with someone, you might wanna rizz them up, be a real gentleman about it.” Roy said it with an ever-increasing look of dread, as though he had never heard the words spoken aloud until they were out of his mouth and unable to be retracted. Rachel Kyndley looked like she wanted to die on the spot. Inside his cab, Thomas’ crew were in hysterics. 

Thomas wasn’t sure if he should be worried or impressed that this explanation made sense. “So, drip and fly are similar in that they mean you look good, and rizz is when you’re particularly charming?” 

A strangled noise from the platform said volumes, and his crew were now bent over in laughter.

“That’s almost -” Whatever Roy was about to say was cut off by the guard’s whistle. “Oh, well looks like I’ve gotta go-” 

“Nope!” Thomas’ driver gasped out between chuckles. “If you don’t get this right now, we’ll never know for certain. Get in here!”

“I don’t think that’s strictly necessary-” Rachel started. 

“You too lassie!” the fireman chortled. “This is the funniest thing I’ve heard all year!”

“I-uh, well-” Rachel hemmed and hawed, wondering if she could do a runner and then call in sick.

“Oh, come on dearie!” Said Clarabel, who had been watching the proceedings with amusement. “We’ve all been so curious!” 

“Oh my god.” she whispered, and followed Roy into the cab with a sense of impending doom.

-------------------------

Later

A few days later, Thomas headed off to the works for his annual inspection.

“Nothing’s too wrong,” The manager of the steam shop said as he went over the list. “We do want to get you in for a new coat o’ paint, though. Starting to look a little tatty ‘round the corners.”

Thomas was not one to turn down a new coat of paint, and so a few hours later he was being sanded and stripped of his old paint, ready for the new coat. In the corner of the paint shop, a few of the workers were hunched over an old Ford Anglia, polishing it to a strangely-sparkling finish. 

“Allrighty,” the paint shop foreman said, entering the room with a few swatches of paint. “We’ve got some new variations on the old blue and red. See, this one is going to show up much better in bright sunlight, while this one is - well, we’ve managed to get a hold of the retro-reflective stuff that they put on road signs; might make you a touch easier to see in the dark, if we do the red lining with it.”

Thomas looked at the samples, before turning his attention to the car in the corner. “What are they doing with that?” he asked. “It’s so… sparkly.”

“Oh that?” The foreman said. “It’s someone’s project. I think they’re mixing in pearl with some metallic blue. Really makes it shine, doesn’t it?”

It was shiny even from across the room, and Thomas felt an instant, impulsive attraction to it. “Can you do that to me?”

The man was taken slightly aback, but nodded. “Sure we can, but, are you sure? It’s not exactly something that you can take off once the novelty wears off.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine!” 

---------

Later still

A day later, they rolled Thomas out of the paint shop to a flurry of camera shutter noises. The paint shop crew had jumped at the chance to “tweak” Thomas’ paint, and he sparkled in the sun like a pearlescent gemstone. 

The younger members of staff were especially pleased. Most of the time they had to work within the constraints of “history,” and “tradition,” and “but I’ve always been this colour,” so seeing their creativity on full display was very rewarding. 

“Wow,” Thomas said as he inspected a picture of himself. “I look great!”

“You really do, mate.” One of the painters said as he took a selfie. “We gotta see if we can get Gordon or someone to do this.”

“Oh, he’ll never go for it,” Thomas rolled his eyes. “I don’t think he could handle this level of drip.”

Dead silence followed this. 

“What?” Thomas looked around. “Did I say it wrong?”

“No, and that’s the scary thing.”

--------

Later still

Thomas’ new paint was the talk of the Island for several days. Most of the opinions were positive, however some engines had a less-than-complementary view on the situation…

“Who does he think he is?” James grumbled to nobody in particular at the big station. “Gallivanting around in this shiny paint like that, it’s likely to cause an accident!” 

Gordon, at the next platform, raised an eyebrow that said volumes, but otherwise stilled his tongue. 

“Oh please!” Tornado said from the platform on the other side of James. “He looks so good in that paint. I’d say that you’re just jealous.” 

“Jealous? Me?” James retorted at a suspiciously high pitch. “I’m just pointing out the obvious here! If everybody keeps looking at him they’re bound to run into something sooner or later!”

“And it’ll be worth it…” Tornado whispered in a sing-song voice, leading her crew to roll their eyes in unison. 

“Don’t mind her,” Said the driver, who Gordon idly noted was one of the youngest girls he’d ever seen on the footplate. “She’s just blinded by Thomas’ incredible drip.”

“Completely rizzed up.” agreed the fireman, who looked like a child. “Totes delulu.”

“Mood.”

Any further conversation was cut off as the signal dropped, and Tornado steamed away, lost in her own imagination. 

James continued on indignantly. “And that’s another thing! People just keep saying things about him like they’re supposed to make sense!”

Gordon looked at him out of the corner of his eye. “Nobody will tell you what any of it means, will they?”

“No!” James wailed. “And I have no idea why!” 

“One wonders…” Gordon said snidely. 

“Oh, as if you know what an “on point drip” is!” 

“I have better things to worry about than the idle slang of children.”

“Oh, so they won’t tell you either!”

“I never said that!”

“Oh really? Then please, professor, educate me on what drip could mean in relation to Thomas! Has he sprung a leak?!”

Just then, Edward emerged from under the station canopy, and drew up to the signals. “What, Thomas?” He said conversationally. “Personally, I think he looks fly as hell, but then again I’m a boomer, so I could be tripping.”

He looked like he wanted to say more, but the signal dropped. “Ah well, gotta bounce, TTYL!”

And he puffed away, grinning widely. 

Gordon and James took about three seconds to process that. 

“Edward, who taught you those words?”

“Edward! Get back here and tell me what that means! EDWARD!”

[manicpixiedreamcurl]

The More You Give ❧ (Part VIII)

Pairing | Eddie x shy!reader Warnings | 18+ only. Do not interact if you are underage. Roleplay (PrincessxWannabe Usurper lmao), sexual fantasies (including rockstarxgroupie), Eddie says some weird possessive stuff but reader likes it, oral (M receiving), P in V sex, dom!Eddie, sexual guilt as per, there’s aftercare. Word Count | 10,400 A/N | Nobody ask me about the timeline of this story, either in the fic or how long it takes me to write it. Taglist Previous Chapter

❦⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄❦⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄❦⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄❦⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄❦  

The air is stuffy, despite the growing chill outside. The last days of Summer are at least a week gone now, and with Autumn comes heated stores. An ABBA song is playing on the main floor, filtering through enough for you to make out the tune. It’s the sort of thing your Mom plays in the car all the time, your mind following the words even though you can’t quite hear them over the buzzing ceiling lights. 

I try to capture every minute, the feeling in it. Slipping through my fingers- 

The curtains pull back, the sound of metal over metal dragging you to full attention. May’s eyes are bright with excitement as she twirls, showing off how the strapless black dress fits around her waist and flares out at her hips. 

“It’s perfect, right?” She says, smoothing it down only to twirl and puff the skirt up again. “Ooh, let me see with the jacket.” 

You search through the bag at your feet for the cropped jacket she’d found earlier, then watch as she pulls it over her shoulders. She fluffs her hair and poses in the mirror at the end of the changing room hallway. “I mean it actually is perfect, right?”

“For sure, you can totally see who you are already.” 

“Right? And then I can just backcomb my hair a little. My Mom’s gonna lend me her scarf. God knows what earrings I’ll wear, but I can work it out. Definitely can’t get anything new after this,” she finishes, turning her head and pulling at the tag on her back to double check the price. She pulls a face before tucking it away gingerly.

“That bad?” 

“That bad. Even with 30% off.” May smooths her hands over the skirt again, turning once more to the mirror. Her smile lights up her pretty face. “But totally worth it.” 

Once the dress is folded and wrapped in tissue paper by the woman at the counter, paid for with what seems like every spare penny in May’s purse, attention moves to your costume. “Okay, Fairy God Mother,” May says, linking her arm with yours. “Game plan. Where do we need to go?”

“I think just the costume store. I have a blue dress I can use. But I’d like some wings and a wand. Maybe a tiara, if I can afford it.”

“Ugh, you’re gonna look so cute. Are you sure you don’t want to come to Tommy’s party?”

“The whole reason I’m dressing up is for Grace,” you reason, spotting the orange banner reading City of Fright, which appears in the same spot every year mid-September and vanishes November first. 

Gone are ABBA’s lilting tones, replaced with stock Halloween music, the occasional creepy laugh and thunder clap. The entire front of the store is complete costumes, wrapped up in plastic and hanging on metal rods, but once you reach the shelves at the back, you are surrounded by an array of vampire teeth, witches hats and face paints. 

“Eddie’s renting Theatre of Blood,” you tell her, not waiting for a reaction before launching into a prepared defence. “It sounds really good. It’s about an actor who takes revenge on his critics by murdering them like Shakespearian deaths - drowning in Malmsey wine, that kind of thing. He picked it cause, you know, he thought I’d like it.” 

“Okay, but she’ll be in bed by what? Eight?” May asks, wandering around the table of paraphernalia as you start thumbing through fairy wings piled next to fake blood bags, searching for the right blue. “You could come after.”

There’s a moment of silence, then she sighs softly. “Okay, I will say it’s kind of cute that he picked that. In a weird, not really that cute cause it’s a horror movie about gruesome murders, sort of way.” 

You stifle a grin, chancing a look at her over the table. “That sounded…almost like a compliment?”

“Almost,” she agrees, walking back round to your side. Then, before you can answer, she has seized a shiny silver plastic tiara and is reaching out to place it gently on your hair. “There. Fit for a Princess.”

You shake your head, laughing. “What about a Fairy Godmother?”

May hums, grabbing a set of the net and wire wings and pulling them over her arms. “I’m the fairy now!” She declares, raising her chin and going up on tiptoes to whirl around the racks, wings shaking behind her. “Here to make all your Halloween costume dreams come true!” 

Your heart warms, a giggle escaping as she peers curiously at the rubber masks and cat ears in character, mumbling about the strange habits of humans. 

“Oh please, fairy godmother! I need a wand if I’m going to look anything like the real thing!” 

“A wand, of course!” She cries dramatically. “No true fairy would be seen dead without their wand.” You watch her scurry on tip toe around until she comes to a display of wands of various colours, topped by stars and hearts, sequined tassels and glittery handles. She wiggles her fingers above them, picks out one with a simple silver star and travels back to you gracefully. You take it from her with a flourish. “There, and now your wings.” She helps you into your own pair, then turns and throws a graceful hand into the air. “Now, we fly!” 

You flit about after her, laughing at her with every pause she takes to frown disapprovingly at fake scars and rubber spiders. She stops in front of a Tinkerbell costume, pointing with a surprised smile at the model on the package. “Hey, I know her!”

You snort a laugh and it sets her off, all attempts to stifle your laughter only making it worse. Your giggles are only beginning to settle when you feel the sudden awareness of being watched tickle the back of your neck. 

“Uh, hi girls.” 

Your heart drops. Caroline stands, a hand over her mouth, barely covering the smirk. “You look like you’re having…fun.”

Suddenly, the clear elastic of the wings is too tight around your shoulders. You can feel the crooked angle of the tiara atop your head, close to slipping off entirely. The wand in your hand isn’t silver now, just chipped paint on plastic. 

Next to you, May is wrenching off her wings, laughing airily. “Just messing around,” she assures, folding them up and holding them with a tight fist at her hip. “You costume shopping?”

Caroline looks around at where you are. “I mean, obviously. Not for me, though, for Ethan,” she sighs. “You know boys, no interest in shopping.” She sets her stare on you, eyes scanning from the crooked tiara downwards. “Are you girls dressing up together?”

Your throat feels blocked, leaving you just to shake your head. May answers for you both. “No, no. Like I said, we’re just messing around. So we should probably put this stuff back.” She slides her wings into the space between some hanging masks before elbowing you into action. You’ve abandoned the tiara and wand and are in the process of sliding off the wings when she adds, coolly, “I’m actually going as Madonna.”

Caroline’s smirk falls, replaced at terrifying speed with a deep frown. “What? You can’t, I’m doing Madonna. I’ve got a veil and everything. Ethan’s going to be Sean Penn.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’m going as her in Desperately Seeking Susan, so it’ll be, like, totally different.”

“But I don’t think there should be two Madonna’s,” Caroline continues, almost sounding sympathetic. She crosses her arms, shrugging. “You’ll just have to go as somebody else.”

“Oh,” May says, shoulders falling. “Um, right. I get what you mean.”

You’re not in the habit of arguing with Caroline. It’s been easier, historically, not to contradict her or answer back. But you can feel May deflating beside you, and it tumbles out. “But you won’t look similar or anything, they’re completely different costumes.”

“They’re not though.” She answers with finality. “They’re both Madonna, and the last thing we want is comparisons, right? People talking about who wears it better all night?”

May nods. “You’re right. Totally. I’ll think of something else. No worries.”

“But May, your dress! You can’t return it now, it was on sale!” 

“It’s fine,” May snaps before smiling close mouthed at Caroline. “I can find something else to wear, no issue.”

“You could be fairies together!” Caroline says. “I bet the guys at Tommy’s party would love that.”

“No, no, like I said, we were just messing around,” May says. “Not really my thing. And anyway, she’s not coming on Friday.”

“Oh no!” Caroline pushes her bottom lip out into a pout. “But I haven’t seen you outside of school in ages!”

“I’m babysitting,” you explain, clutching your removed wings in your fists. 

“Oh sure you are, not spending the night with your boyfriend. We hardly see you anymore, I feel like there must be so much detail we’ve all been missing out on. You’ll have to come on the next girls trip, right May? So we can hear all about you and…Eddie.”

Your heart pounds as May nods. “Yeah,” she answers. “Eddie can’t have all your time.”

“Perfect. Well, let me know what you end up doing, May! See you later, girls!”

She flounces away, and May hides her face in her hands. “I can’t believe she saw me doing that.” 

“It’s okay-”

“It’s not!” She says, throwing her hands up. Her eyes shine with frustrated tears. “It’s not okay! Not for me, anyway. It’s different for you, people already think you’re weird.” 

You blink at your friend. Then you look down at the speckled linoleum floor, watch the spots fuzz and blend into each other as the lump in your throat builds. Before five seconds have passed, her arms appear at your sides, pulling you into a tight hug. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I didn’t mean that.”

But you know that she did. You know that’s exactly what she thinks. 

For the moment you have to think about what you say now, you imagine calling her out on this. Pushing her away and telling her that she doesn’t have to spend any more time with you, given you embarrass her so much. You’d buy your fairy wings and your crown, walk out with your head held high. 

Maybe she’d call after you, apologise again, say that losing you isn’t worth impressing Caroline or sitting at the cheerleader table.

But maybe any pain she’d feel at the prospect of your friendship ending would only bring out her anger. Maybe she’d swear to never speak to you again. 

If you were somebody else, someone who didn’t love May, maybe you’d take that risk. But you are you, and you’ve loved May since you were five. To you, the only thing worse than feeling hurt yourself is the thought of hurting her back.

So you shake your head at her shoulder, blink away tears and squeeze her tight in your arms. “It’s okay,” you whisper. 

“Really?” 

“Yeah,” you nod, pulling away from her collar that smells the way being seven smelled. You release her, and in turn her arms fall from you. “I get it, you’re just stressed.”

“I know! I don’t know what I’m going to do about my costume!” 

Your heart pangs. You swallow the lump in your throat that’s trying to rise back up. “Well, at least the dress is black,” you say, sniffing quick and quiet. You drag your hands over your eyes, clearing away the wetness clinging to your bottom lashes. Stop it, you think. Stop crying. “Let’s return the jacket, yeah? Then you’ll have money for a witch hat or something.” 

May nods slowly as she thinks it through. “Okay, yeah. Yeah, that works.” She gives you a relieved smile. “God, what would I do without you? Let’s go.”

❦⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄❦⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄❦⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄❦⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄❦  

“Well, I didn’t think I wanted glasses because Katie has glasses,” Grace explains, holding her plastic pumpkin, now close to overflowing with candy, in both hands at her stomach. She looks at you with a look too knowing for a seven year old, then continues. “Katie is a tattle tale.”

“I see,” you nod. 

“But I want ones like Jessica’s!” She cries, arms extending with the weight of her treasure trove before she pulls it back up. “They go dark in the sun!”

“It’s not the same,” she whines. “And then when we went to the optom- uhm.”

“But you already have sunglasses,” you reason, picturing the little red plastic pair you’ve had to run back for when out on walks many times. Grace hefts the pumpkin again and you give in, lifting the bag from her grasp and burying your wand in with the candy. You soften when she grabs your hand with a deep sigh.

“The optometrist?”

“Yeah, when we went to see him, he said my eyes were perfect!”

“Well, that’s good.”

“No!” She yells, dramatically, pulling on your arm with her whole weight until you have to  heave yourself back up. You stifle a giggle at her distraught expression. “Because now I’ll never get glasses, and everybody has them.”

“Well, first of all, I’m sure not everybody has them,” you say, smiling down at her grumpy face. “And secondly, you shouldn’t just want something like glasses because other people have them, even if it was everybody else. You can’t just live your life just trying to be like everyone around you.”

“I know,” she mumbles. Then, catching your raised eyebrow, “I know!”

You round the corner to her street, and by the time you’re approaching her house, she’s moved comfortably on to the next topic of her candy eating schedule for the next three days. “Because Jessica saves all her Skittles for last,” Grace explains, her position now firmly against being anything like Jessica. “Which is stupid, because you should have the best candy first.”

“Mm? Why’s that?”

Grace looks at you with a frown. “Because the best comes first,” she tells you, with the tone of somebody kindly trying to hold in their frustration with an imbecile. 

“Of course, silly of me to ask. Hi, Mrs. Miller!”

Grace’s Mom was clearly waiting for you near the front door, already out and standing on the front steps as you walk up the front path. Grace holds her hands out to take her bucket back, launching forward when she’s got ahold of it. “Mom! Look at all my candy!”

“Whoa! There’s no way you’ll be able to eat all that!” Her Mom says, eyes comically wide. “Think you need someone to help you out, hm?”

Grace shrieks indignantly, running under her Mom’s arm inside and clambering up the stairs out of sight without a bye nor leave for you. 

“Everything went okay?” Her Mom asks, smiling when you give her your usual answer, all fine. “Will you be okay getting home? I can get her back down if you need a ride.”

“Oh, um,” you check either side of the street, feeling suddenly warmed inside at the sight of Eddie’s van parked at the end of the road. Now that you’re concentrating on it, you’re sure you can hear the music blasting behind glass. “No, it’s okay. That’s my boyfriend.”

“Ah, Eddie.” She smiles, then smacks her teeth as she, too, registers his music. “Maybe tell him to keep it down next time? I don’t mind but I already get monthly phone calls from Mrs O’Hara about the sound of the lawnmower.” 

“Oh, sorry. I’ll do that,” 

“Okay,” she says, calling after you as you start up a fast pace towards Eddie. “You have a good night!”

You pull your cardigan sleeves down over your hands to fight the chill as you move, smiling when you can properly make out Eddie sitting in the front seat. He had a special D&D night planned when he dropped you off at Grace’s earlier. While your costume sat folded in your bag all day, he’d gone to school dressed all in black, even his white Reeboks swapped out for a pair of knockoff doc martens he’d launched himself towards when he caught sight of them at the thrift store. They’d fit him just fine with three pairs of socks.

This morning, sitting in his van, he’d barely managed to control his excited twitches while you lined his eyes with a cheap black pencil from the drugstore. Your work is a little smudged now, but on him, it looks even better than before. Which makes sense, you think. Eddie doesn’t suit neat lines. 

“Hi Princess!” He calls, turning the music down enough that his excitement is just audible through the glass as you approach. 

“Not a Princess,” you remind him as you climb in, turning your back to shake your shoulders and display the blue net wings. “A Fairy God Mother.” You settle back into the seat, shivering away the chill that had gooseflesh rising over your body. Eddie rubs your arm over your cardigan, and you take the opportunity to grab his hand. As much as you want to warm your cold fingers, it’s mainly just to touch him. “How was the game?”

His grin turns sharp as he leans back in his chair, chin tilted up. “So fucking good. I have them right where I want them. I thought for a second Lucas had me worked out. He hesitated when they were getting to the caves, but then he just went along with it. I can’t wait till next week.” He lets go of your hand long enough to start up the van before returning his open palm to the space between you for you to take hold of him again. “How is Princess Grace?”

“Increasingly despotic. She executed like five of her toys before we went out trick or treating.” 

“Jesus,” Eddie laughs. “What for?” 

“Well, her not-so-wise Fairy God Mother,” you start, gesturing to yourself. “Made the mistake of telling her about royal food tasters? Now there’s a poisoning attempt every few days.” 

“Very active imagination, this girl. Violent, but active.”

“Mm, I think most girls play that way. When I was little- Well, me and May, we’d act like witches sometimes? And make potions out of mud and sticks and stuff. And talk about who we would curse.”

“Yeah?” Eddie asks. “And which poor soul had earned this spite, pray tell?” 

“Did you ever have Mr Gilmour?”

“Oh, Gilmour, yeah, I fuckin' hated that guy!” Eddie yells. His eyebrows furrow. “I threw up during gym in seventh grade and the sadistic prick made me finish running a mile.” 

“Yeah, I forgot about that till now.” His brows stay taught for a second longer, then he shakes his head a little, tapping his fingers along your knuckles. “Too bad I didn’t have you around then, coulda cursed him for me a little earlier.”

“Oh, Eddie, that’s horrible.”

“I would have,” you promise. “But you were telling me about the game. Did you get Dustin with the, um, venom troll?”

“Not yet. We didn’t get as far as I’d have wanted before they had to go. I mean, what fourteen year old has a curfew? I didn’t, and I turned out alright. But I’ll get him next week. I can’t wait to see his face - that little punk thinks he’s so smart, but he is pre-dictable.”

Eddie continues describing the campaign, the traps he’s set for them that he’s sure they’ll run into, the whole drive to his place, excited and animated as he usually is on the rare occasion you get to see him after Hellfire, wound up from the events of the day. He only slows down when you’re settled on his couch. Sneakers left at the door, wings, tiara, and wand abandoned on the kitchen table, wrapped up in his arms as the opening titles of Theatre of Blood play. 

Eddie’s so warm, and unusually still when you sit with him like this. Being cuddled up to him puts you in mind of your aunt’s black cat. She spends the first couple hours of every visit pretending that she isn’t interested in being anywhere near you. Then, after letting her sniff your hand, rubbing gently between her ears, she darts up on your lap, her soft heat spreading through you. 

Eddie might not admit it, at least not verbally, but he likes being petted the same way. You’ve seen his eyes flutter when you play with his hair, heard the gentle sighs he lets out when you touch his cheek. Now, leaning into his chest, rubbing lazily at his torso, you can feel the way his body relaxes into the couch under your touch. It makes you smile at the TV even as Vincent Price swears revenge on all his critics.

You turn your head just a little, trying to be subtle as much as possible so you can look at him properly. Eddie’s eyes, which in sunlight can be bright as copper, are dark and focused in the electric light of the TV. The light freckles that dotted the tops of his cheeks and nose during Summer have faded from the cloudy days and early sunsets, leaving only his soft pale skin. His lips, as always, are soft looking and pink, still shiny from the last time his tongue peeked out, set in a near constant subtle pout. 

You sigh gently, and in turn breathe in the remnants of smoke and laundry detergent from his shirt, the fading spice of his drugstore aftershave.

“You know I picked this movie out special,” he says, only his eyes moving to fix you with a mockingly suspicious expression. “Vincent’s a master.”

You’re surprised to find you’re not ashamed at having been caught. “M’just looking at you.”

“Therein lies the problem, sweet thing. One minute you’re just looking. Next thing I know my head’s trapped between your thighs.” This time he leans in properly. “Wicked temptress.” He whispers it, his breath warming your face. 

You think he’ll kiss you then, but instead he relaxes back into the couch with a sigh. “M’just lucky you weren’t dressed up all day.” His hand tugs at the hem of your skirt, then spreads out just above your knee. “I wouldn’t have been able to think about anything else. It’s a miracle I even got the movie playing instead of trying to touch you.”

“I wouldn’t have minded,” you answer, trying not to sound too eager. 

“I bet,” he says, eyes shining. Then his face turns serious, palm coming to his heart. “But Eddie the Chivalrous would never touch a Princess without properly wooing her first.” His eyes scan over your face quickly. “I guess that means we need to finish the movie.”

He’s teasing you. He wants to push, see how much he can get you to say, if you’ll ask him outright to just touch you the way you want. Warring feelings compete to decide what you do next. Maybe months ago, when you first started dating Eddie, you would have pressed your thighs together and settled in to finish the film. A part of you still calls for that, screams that whatever you say won’t be right. 

You stare at Eddie now. His eyes still lined dark, the smirk he’s trying to hide. Your toes curl just looking at him, and the thought escapes naturally. “You don’t look like Eddie the Chivalrous, right now.” 

Eddie blinks slowly. His head tilts. “No? Who do I look like, then?” 

Now, something like shame creeps back in, and you wish you’d just settled down to watch the movie.

You haven’t ever put a name to it before. In your fantasies, the ones that appear unprompted when you’re alone in your bed and you haven’t been able to touch him in a couple days, Eddie’s always Eddie, but sometimes just a little different. 

Maybe Eddie the Chivalrous is the right name for how you first thought about him like that, calling you Princess as usual but meaning it. You thought about him as your knight and guard, sworn to protect you, breaking all the rules by laying you down and treating you gently, better than any lord or Prince you could be promised to.

Then you’d think about his laugh, the one that comes out when you moan a little loud, or lose your patience and try to direct his hands or his tongue to where you need him. The mocking gasp and teasing tone that often comes along with it, you want it bad, huh, Princess? You think about an Eddie who’s like that all the time, teasingly mean with you, dark and dangerous to everyone else, finding you alone in your soft bed, holding your hands above your head and- and-

People already think you’re weird.

You give in to the sudden hot shame, pressing your face to Eddie’s chest lest he read your expression so perfectly that he works it all out. You whisper into his shirt, more to yourself than him. “I’m so weird.” 

“Well, s’a good thing you’re with me then, mm?” He says, big hand moving to stroke the back of your neck. “Cause if you got a fantasy, like, something you think about when I’m not around. You know I won’t judge you for it, right?” 

“I know.” It comes out muffled against his shirt but it’s certain. It’s instinctual, now. You’re as sure that you don’t need to worry about Eddie judging you as you are that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. More and more, you find yourself talking to him the way you talk to yourself in your head. Easy and free, not waiting for the other shoe to drop. But this is different. “It’s just- It’s like-” You sigh, searching for the words that won’t come. 

He hums, still rubbing your neck. “Maybe I could- I mean, do you…wanna hear one ‘a mine?” You emerge from your hiding place, leaning back into his hand to gauge how serious he is. Eddie’s eyes crinkle at the sides at having coaxed you into looking at him again. “Yeah?”  

“Okay.” 

“Okay,” he echoes. Eddie searches his side for the remote first, pausing Vincent in the middle of another monologue. “Okay. Well, yeah, sometimes I think about- Wait no, gotta set the scene. I’ve just played maybe the best show of my life. Nothing too big,” he continues, giving you a serious look. “I’m not a sell out. We’re talking the smaller arenas, you know? Anyway, after, when I get backstage, feeling like hot shit, there’s this girl. Prettiest I’ve ever seen. And she’s wearing the band’s shirt.”

“And she’s a little shy. Can barely look me in the eye-” He catches you just as your gaze moves to his collar, pulling you back to staring, helpless, into his dark eyes. Eddie takes your hand from where it was playing with the hem of his shirt, weaving your fingers together. “She’s kinda fidgety, too.”

You swallow. “Me?”

“You, sweet thing. S’always you.” You bite the gum behind your bottom lip, holding back from grinning too much. You squirm a little under his gaze, waiting for him to speak again. “And you tell me you’ve been waiting for me,” Eddie says, voice smooth and quiet. “You tell me you’re my biggest fan. And you can’t quite say everything you wanna say, but it doesn’t matter, cause I’ve got you worked out. So I get real close,” he says, his face disappearing as his mouth moves towards your ear, “and I ask if you want me to touch you?”

“And I do,” you continue for him, shivering again at the little groan Eddie lets escape from his throat. 

“Mm hm, real bad.” His eyes reappear, scanning over each part of your face. “So bad you wanna earn it. Wanna show me I was right to pick you and not some other girl. You get on your knees for me.” Eddie licks his lips quick. “And I know you’re kinda inexperienced, but it’s good, the best I’ve ever had. You know why?” You shake your head, gaze darting between his eyes and his mouth. You watch his lips move around his words. “Cause you’re so fucking grateful for it.” 

“Mm. And when I decide you’ve earned it, I lay you back on a couch somewhere. A green room or a tour bus or something. And I show you you were right to wait for me.” You shiver. It’s a delicious thrill to picture Eddie that way, completely new to you, a total stranger, yet so sure of what he can take. “And after that?” He says, giving the back of your neck a squeeze. “I keep you.”

“Eddie.” You feel your heartbeat between your legs, wishing he would touch you there now, or even put you on your knees the way he wants so you could show him you’re as grateful for him here and now as you are in his fantasy. 

The fantasy fades when Eddie kisses you. With the press of his lips, the taste of Dr Pepper on his tongue, he’s your Eddie again, familiar and perfect. You’re still floating back to Earth when he pulls away. “Your turn.”

You flinch, crashing to the ground instead. “What?”

“You like Latin, right? It’s quid pro quo, sweetheart. I show you mine, you show me yours. Tit for tat. That was the deal.”

“It was implied.” Eddie answers breezily. Then, with his thumb rubbing gently at the back of your hand. “C’mon. Try? You liked mine, right?” You give a barely noticeable nod, but Eddie catches it. “Yeah. And I bet I’ll like yours.”

“There was no deal!”

“I can’t- I don’t have it all, like, thought out the way you do.”

“Well, I’m a storyteller by trade,” he says, pressing his free hand to his chest. “All my sex fantasies have lore. And we can build on yours, if it needs it.Alright. I’m not Eddie the Chivalrous right now. Who am I?” He tilts his chin to where you have started playing with his rings, twisting each round his fingers in turn. “Apart from Eddie the Stress Toy.”

“It’s not- You’re just-” You swallow, rubbing your thumb over the metal skull sitting where a wedding ring would go. “You’re just somebody…somebody I shouldn’t want.”

“Intriguing. And you are?” Your face flames. You mumble it, barely opening your lips, and Eddie squints. “Mm?”

You sigh. “Princess.”

“Always,” Eddie replies, ducking his head to make sure you see his face, reassuringly still smiling. “Okay. I can work with this. Maybe I'm…Eddie the Banished. I tried to take power for myself by force but I failed.” He brings your hand to his mouth, kisses the thin skin at your wrist. “And I’ve returned, because I realised I don’t need to win a battle. I just have to…take the Princess?”

You clench around nothing. “Yeah.”

“Fuck, yeah. C’mon, sweet thing.” 

Your gaze follows him as he stands. “You want- Right now?”

“Why not? We’re all dressed up. The time is now.” Eddie pauses his excitement when he registers the fact you’re still sitting. “If…if you want.”

“I do,” you breathe. “But I can’t, y’know, talk like you.” You just know Eddie already has some dialogue thought up, things he can say as the character he’s just come up with that will make you dizzy. “I’ll get stuck.”

“Maybe you will, maybe you won’t,” Eddie says, squatting down in front of you, hands spread out on your knees. “I don’t mind taking the lead. Besides, the Princess would be kinda nervous anyway, right? If you’re not supposed to want me. The outlaw, the traitor. You’ve been told about all the terrible things I’ve done, what I tried to do for power. Now you feel guilty about what you really want from me. And I’ve been thinking about you while I’ve been on the run, living rough- You know, this is good stuff,” he says, interrupting himself and looking round. “You got a pen? I should maybe write some of this down- No. After, sorry.” He gives you a sheepish grin, then leans in close. “Don’t think there’s much chance I’ll forget this, anyway.” 

He stands then, hand extended to you with wiggling fingers for you to take and let him guide you through to his room. Eddie hums when his door is closed, shutting out the world beyond the frame. “Shoulda done this at yours,” he says, sitting you down on the mattress. “In your pretty Princess bed.”

“Doesn’t matter,” you say breathlessly, meaning it entirely. All that matters is it’s him. He’s the only person you could do something like this with. 

“Okay, I need a little more. You shouldn’t want me, I’m…morally grey, let’s say. Chaotic neutral. Am I mean?”

“Kinda,” you answer. “You’re…selfish?”

“Selfish,” he repeats. 

“Just like, y’know. It’s like-” Eddie’s hands spread at the sides of your thighs, teasing the skin at the hem of your skirt. You want them everywhere. “You know I want you. That I’ll…do things for you. And you take advantage. ”

There’s a pause. “I think I’m following. Things somebody like you shouldn’t do?” You nod quickly, cheeks burning as you watch him work it out. “You wanna get your mouth on me, Princess?”

You fight the instinct to hide, the urge to look away, the voice telling you to deny everything, take it back. Instead, you start playing with the hem of his shirt again, soft cotton between your fingers.  

“Mm hm.”

“Shit. Okay. Anything-” His voice cracks a touch, and he clears his throat before he speaks again. “Anything else?”

“It’s not like- Even though you’re mean, you still- With me, you feel-” Now you do have to look away, staring at where your fingers are fiddling with the black fabric. He can read you too well, and you don’t want him to see exactly what you want from him. “You-”

You love me. 

“I feel…how I feel about you?” He suggests.

You bite the gum behind your lip to stop yourself asking exactly what that means. “Yeah.”

“Okay, good. Hard to pretend anything else.” Eddie leans down to press a soft kiss to your lips, long enough that your whole body relaxes into it, your mind settling on Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. When he pulls away, it’s easy to answer his question. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

Eddie stands to full height, his shoulders back. He tilts his head, expression shifting. From your Eddie, with chestnut eyes and his perfect, dimpled smile, to a smirking man with a dark gaze excited to ruin you. 

“I’ve been looking for you, Princess,” he says, voice smooth and confident. A thrilled shiver runs up your spine. “Knew I’d find you eventually, but I could only hope I’d find you like this. All alone.” He takes a step towards you. “Unprotected-”

“Eddie,” you whisper. 

Softness peaks through with raised eyebrows. “Good?” You nod quickly, and it disappears again as he slinks closer towards you. “I missed you, while I was away,” he tells you, soft and teasing. “Did you miss me?”

“I-” You swallow. You’re used to repeating back what Eddie says to you, in times like this, letting him guide you through everything he wants to hear from you. But you don’t want to just watch him do this for you. “No.”

Eddie blinks, surprised, then he puts on a mockingly hurt face, hand over his heart. “No? You wound me, Princess.” That same hand reaches for your face, cupping your cheek. His thumb strokes gently under your eye and you can’t help but lean into him. “Or you would, if I believed you.” He tilts your head up to see him properly, standing over you. “You think I didn’t see the way you’d look at me, before I left?”

Your fingers twitch to reach out and brush at the ends of his hair as it falls towards you, but you keep them at your sides on the bed, curling into the sheets. “You didn’t leave, you-”

“Left, banished, driven out; it all comes to the same end, mm?” His eyes scan your face, down your dress and back up. “That’s you and me, Princess. Here, alone together. You gonna pretend you never wanted that?”

His thumb, callused and warm, keeps rubbing over your cheek. “I can’t want it”

“No, you can,” he presses. Eddie, your Eddie, would sit with you now, squat in front of you to talk to you at the same level. Now, his grip on your jaw tightens just enough to remind you that he could stop you looking away if you tried. “Cause I’ve had time to think about it.”

“While you were hiding in the woods?”

“While I was regrouping,” he corrects. “I realised something. I went about it all wrong.” he tells you. “It was foolish of me to try and use force to get what I want. Not when you were right here. Waiting for me.”

His thumb pulls at your bottom lip, then presses inside to the tip of your tongue. 

“If I make you mine, everything else follows. That’s right, isn’t it?” He nods slowly until you copy him. “The throne, power, vengeance on everyone who tried to hold me back. And you, in my bed every night. All day if I wanted.” He pulls at your lip again as he steals his thumb back, leaning in until his breath is warm against your cheeks. “That sounds nice. Doesn't it, Princess?” You glance at his lips, wanting him to kiss you now, to take it from you. Eddie shakes his head, drawing your gaze back to his. “I wanna hear you say it. You wanted me to touch you, just like this, and more, didn’t you? Wanted me to show you how to make me happy?”

You can feel your heartbeat heavy in your chest, your breath coming quicker. Only Eddie could do this, have you convinced of a story which before tonight only existed half formed in the fantasies of your bedroom. You can feel the internal conflict as if it really is your duty to say no, and your heart’s only desire to give your next answer.

“Yes, Eddie.”

He gives you a kiss that’s half teeth, dragging at your bottom lip. Even this is different. You’re used to the gentle start, feeling him smile on your mouth. He breathes deep through his nose, pulls from you so suddenly that you make to follow him until he presses a hand to your shoulder. 

“And I will. Get on the floor.” Eddie steps back, and it doesn’t even occur to argue with him now. You slide off the mattress easily, knees falling to the carpet without looking away from him. There’s a pause. He speaks quietly, as if he doesn’t want an invisible audience to hear. “You comfy? You want the pillow?” 

“No,” you answer, heart aching. “I’m okay.” 

“Okay.”

You watch the way he steels his face again, looking at you on your knees in front of him like that’s where you’re meant to be. His hands work at his belt, a soft hiss escaping when he presses his palm down the front of his pants. His head tilts back, displaying his thick neck, the rising pinkness across his pale throat, and he breathes a laugh. “Now, Princess- Wait!” You jump at the suddenness of Eddie pulling his hand from his pants only to clasp them at his waist as he half-jogs towards the door. “Just a second. Don’t move!” 

Eddie disappears through the door, mumbling to himself. His words are faint but it’s clear enough that he is looking for something. You close your eyes, focusing on his voice, however fuzzy. You never thought you could have something like this. Someone like Eddie. Someone safe. So safe that you can abandon yourself to fulfilling a silly fantasy thought up under the covers of your bed. 

Something catches your hair and you open your eyes to find him standing over you again. The tip of his tongue curls over his top lip as he places the plastic silver tiara just so on your head. When it’s as he wants it, his teeth show with his smile. “Perfect,” he says, pressing two fingers to your chin and turning your head each way. “My Princess, mm? I’m going to show you what it is to be mine.”

Eddie reaches into his pants to pull himself free. His hand drags over the shaft, quick and dirty, just for a moment’s relief if the clench of his jaw the second he stops is any indicator. 

You think you know what to do now, tipping your chin, opening your mouth, ready to take him. Only he angles his head away from your tongue. You peer up at him in confusion, watch the way his excitement plays out on his face. “C’mere, Princess.” 

Cupping your cheek with his spare hand, he guides you to the base of his cock, where he is softest. Your lips graze the fuzzy skin of his balls and Eddie makes a noise that has you squirming for the lightest touch between your legs. You kiss delicately, blinking up at him, watching his thumb rub over the head of his cock, catching wetness to ease the slow movement of his hand. He taps his fingers on your cheek gently. “Open up. Want your tongue.”

Your toes curl. You want to taste him here, aching at the smell of him; like his neck at the end of the day in Summer, his sweat and musk, fading body wash. You want to make Eddie feel good so badly, you think you might do whatever he asks as long as he looks at you the way he is now. 

You reach for him, palm settling on his knee where denim meets exposed skin. Opening your mouth, you lick quickly at the seam of his balls, taste salt on soft skin. He groans, fingers flexing around your jaw. “That’s it,” he encourages. “Fuck yes,” Eddie bites out when you lick broad and wet up to the base of his cock, thinking of his wide tongue drawing upwards from your pussy to your clit. “Fuck, yes.” 

He draws you back, smiling down at you. It makes your face burn, but you struggle between looking him in the eyes and staring at his cock. His balls are pink and wet from your attention, his hand moves steadily over his length, drawing folds of skin over his thick head and back.

“Want you to suck on them a little,” he tells you. The pause he leaves gives a moment for you to squeeze at his knee, as if presenting your open mouth wouldn’t be enough to show your agreement. He drags the weight of his balls over your chin to your wet tongue, listing off curses when your lips close just enough to suck gently. Eddie’s hand moves faster over his length, the curve of his fingers brushing your forehead with each tug.

Eddie’s groans are all that matter now. His sack is heavy, falling past your lips the wider you open your mouth. “So fuckin’ full cause of you,” Eddie bites. You hum, closing your eyes, his hips stutter. First towards the warmth of your mouth and then away entirely, replacing his sack with the head of his cock tapping against your tongue.

Eddie gasps when you lap at his leaking tip. “Can I-” He pauses, rephrases, puts on the right tone. “I’m gonna fuck your mouth now, Princess.” 

He watches you carefully, gives you time to tell him no. You squeeze his knee once more, gaze moving from his dark eyes to his cock. You press a quick kiss to the swollen head, a darker pink than the rest of him where it peeks through folds of skin, then let him press your head back against the mattress. 

Eddie’s cock glides smoothly over your tongue to the top of your throat. “Fuck,” he breathes, rolling his hips. “M’starting to think this is what you wanted the whole time.” He eases further, just past the entrance of your throat. It’s easier, like this. You are more open to him with your head tilted back this way. He holds himself in the warmth of your mouth, watching you blinking back tears to try and keep him clear in your gaze. Finally your throat protests, and Eddie draws back till you can suck at his head, the exposed length of his cock shining with your spit. You gaze at him, wanting him to be proud of you for taking him deeper than you have before. He makes a soft encouraging noise, but Eddie like this won’t give you the validation you want so easily. “Teased me for so long. I think I deserve to take what I want, now.”

Eddie thrusts slowly at first, easing you in despite his words. The hand that was on your cheek now stroking at your heated forehead. 

You like it like this. 

You liked having him in your mouth the first time, and every time after that. Like watching him shake, hearing him groan and whine, and knowing that you’re the one making him like that. You like focusing on him; lick here, nip there, let him feel you moan around him. Now, you don’t even have to think about how best to please him. You can focus on your breathing, taking air in through your nose when he pulls back enough. And on Eddie and how he looks as he takes his pleasure from you. 

Eddie’s so beautiful. His dark hair frizzes around his face, eyes crinkling at the sides when he closes them and groans into the air. His neck is pink, a pretty blush crawling up to his cheeks as his thrusts speed up. “We’re gonna do this all the time, Princess, you hear me?” He grits, fingers curling into the sheets at the side of your head. You moan in answer, pleased when it makes his cock twitch in your mouth, his tip dipping deep enough past the entrance of your throat that you can’t blink away the wetness that springs to your eyes. “You’re gonna be in my bed all the time, maybe I’ll tie you up, mm?” He presses deep again, then holds steady. When the tears collected at the corners of your eyes start to fall, he wipes them away before they can reach the apples of your cheeks. “Keep you here, just for me. Don’t need to see or talk to anyone else ever again.”

If your head weren’t fuzzy, you’d start questioning why that makes you ache. Eddie withdraws his cock from the top of your throat and you only take a second to gasp in the air you need before following him, reaching up to touch the inches of his cock your mouth still can’t quite cover. Eddie laughs through a moan at the feeling of you jerking his cock into your mouth, licking wet at the end of him. “You want that, huh? Hey-” He drags you away from his cock, leaving you with wet, pleading eyes looking up at him. “You want that?” Your mouth opens, then closes. Your hips roll, seeking friction you can’t get while kneeling like this. Eddie’s eyes flick down, lips turning up at the sight. “Get on the bed for me, mm?”

Eddie reaches a hand out to help you sit up on his mattress. Then he pulls his shirt off over the back of his head, exposing all the soft pale skin and dark ink of his torso. You pull your dress up too, knocking your tiara in the process. When the dress is off entirely, Eddie’s there in an instant to fix it for you, his fingers caressing your cheek when he’s done. “Hey, uh. Am I doing alright? Is this the sort of thing you imagined?”

“This is better,” you tell him earnestly, loving how pleased he looks. You’re learning that this, the pleasure gained from praise, is something you and Eddie share. You love it when Eddie calls you good, or smart, or sweet. When he tells you that you’re good at something he’s teaching you. In turn, Eddie likes it when you tell him how good he makes you feel, that he’s doing everything right, that he’s looking after you exactly how you want it. 

He kisses you, and it’s softer this time until he bites gently at your bottom lip as he’s pulling away. “C’mon and lie down, Princess,” he says, guiding you to lay down. You press your legs together, knees bent and feet flat to the mattress as Eddie climbs up after you. His hands stroke up and down your thighs, making you giggle softly as he passes ticklish spots. It relaxes you enough to let him guide your legs open and back, allowing him closer. Eddie tilts his head, thumbing the little blue bow at the waistband of your panties. “You really want me to tie you up?” 

Without thinking, you glance quickly at the handcuffs hanging from his door. You feel the beat of your heart against your chest, wondering if you’re ready for that, knowing really that you’re not. Eddie’s hand cups your cheek, directing your gaze back to him. He kisses your knee. “Not tonight, Princess.” He leans in, whispers. “And only ever if you really want, okay?”

“I know, Eddie,” you answer. And you do. You know that as much as Eddie is teaching you, seemingly leading you along to each new experience, in truth he’s making sure you set the pace. 

“Take this off for me,” he says, pulling at the strap of your bra. You reach underneath your back to unhook it, shimmying it off your arms and letting it drop to his floor. Once you’re settled, he takes both your hands in his, pulling them up over your head. You can’t help but giggle, feeling both nervous and giddy. “Hold onto the headboard?” You follow the instruction, wrapping your fingers around one of the wooden slats. Stretched like this, chest presented to him, you feel open and exposed, your nipples tightening from the cold air and from Eddie’s attention. “Don’t let go, mm?”

He leans down, kissing from the base of your neck down the skin between your breasts, his hair dragging behind him, tickling the sensitive skin. He leaves a wet mark on the curve of your left breast, the sting of his teeth quickly soothed by his tongue. When he takes the tight bud of your nipple between his lips, your whole body tenses. It’s a test of your submission, if you can last with only your memory of what it feels like to tangle your fingers in his hair. If you can bear not to tug at it when he flicks his tongue like that. 

Your hands tighten around the wood, hips tilting to find his cock where he tucked it back in his boxers, still hard and throbbing between your legs. The friction, however light, against where you have been waiting for him all evening, is too good to give up, and you keep searching for his hardness to rub against. 

Eddie releases your breasts with a grin. “You want it bad, huh, Princess?”

You whine, melting when he presses his hips forward to give you more delicious friction along your pussy. He huffs a laugh, sitting up and quickly reaching out for the pack of Trojans on his bedside. You watch him kneel between your legs, the way he fists his cock while he tears at the foil square with his teeth, his desperation to roll the condom over his length. Eddie shuffles forward on his knees and presses his wide hands to the back of your thighs. He gently guides your legs back, hitching your hips up for better access to your pussy, wet and swollen under his gaze.

“Wanted this for so long, Princess,” he says. “You’ve been waiting too, hmm?”

“Yes, Eddie. Been waiting so long.” You nearly cry from relief when his cock latches at your entrance, then from despair when he stills instead of filling you. The headboard creaks from your squirming. “Please,” you whisper, sounding pathetic in a way that would embarrass you if you weren’t aching from the emptiness.

Eddie stretches you perfectly as he presses inside your slick cunt. The tease of pain feels good now that your body recognises what it means, where Eddie filling you up leads. “Good?” He asks, once he’s deep enough inside that the curls of hair above his cock are teasing your clit. 

You mean to answer properly, but the intention is overtaken by the need for him to move. Waiting for him, your fingers tighten around the wood so much you swear there will be marks from your nails. “Eddie.” It comes out whinier than you intended, but he certainly doesn’t mind. 

“Eddie,” he mimics breathily, his teeth showing as the heat of pleasant humiliation crawls up your spine. He doesn’t keep you waiting any longer, snapping his hips to draw back and press deep again through your clenching cunt.

You’ve been under him every time, but like this you feel helpless. Hands voluntarily useless, body tilted up and legs opened by his hands, your body presented to him and positioned perfectly for him to set the pace. It feels right for this - you know now what the romance novels you hide under your bed mean when the heroine is taken. 

Your toes curl when Eddie’s hips roll just right, the heavy head of his cock hitting the end of you. When he reaches between you to press a thumb to your clit and rub in tight circles, your body tilts, hips trying to chase the pleasure, only for Eddie to press you back down to where he wants you.

“I like it,” you answer. “I like it, Eddie.”

“You like it, like this, hm?” Eddie asks. You blink at him slowly, wondering if it’s your boyfriend or Eddie the Banished asking. “Tell me.”

He shakes his head like he can’t believe it, hair shaking. “Knew you would. Pretty Princess just needed to be fucked right, mm?” You shudder, tightening around his cock enough that he gasps, “fuckfuckfuck. S’good. It’s so good, honey.”

You breathe a laugh. “Princess, to you.”

“My apologies,” he says, snapping his hips to land heavy against the spot at the back of your pussy. You gasp, legs kicking out against his grip involuntarily only for him to tighten his grip and push them back to where he wants them. You can hear how wet you are, the sound of him moving inside you as loud as the bed springs, as loud as your moans. “Mine now, aren’t you, Princess?” 

You nod easily. “Yes.”

“Gonna give me everything I want from now on, aren’t you?” 

“Yes. Yes-”

“Made it so easy for me. Should have just done this in the beginning, just taken you for myself.”

“Yes. Yes, Eddie.”

“Fuck,” he breathes, head tilting back as his hips speed up. “Fuck, I can’t- Can’t get enough of that.” When he looks back to you, the detached, mocking look is gone. He’s all intensity and warmth, your Eddie again. Your whole body tightens. “Tells me everything I need to know when you say my name like that.” He gives you a mean thrust, tongue peeking out as he watches where you’re connected, the slick coating his cock, before his gaze returns to your pleasured, sweaty face. “You’re so fucking good, you know that? So fucking good, the way you talk to me. Telling me what you want. Not gonna hide anything like that from me again, are you?”

“Nuh,” you manage, legs twitching. “Eddie.” 

”Again,” he gasps. “Please. My sweet girl-”

“Eddie. Eddie-”

Maybe you keep chanting his name, maybe you cry it out, maybe you stop altogether to scream out instead. You don’t know. You just know he’s all you’re thinking of as the pleasure crests, spreading out from the back of your cunt through your body until it’s intense enough you think you might cry. Then it fades to the gentle delight of Eddie still moving inside you, the warmth and weight of his cock when he buries himself deep. You hear him groan, feel the potential for bruises blooming where his fingers dig into your thighs. Then it’s his weight easing down on top of you, the ache in your shoulders and your legs as you let them relax before wrapping yourself around him.

You finally get your hands in his hair. The roots are damp from sweat, his curls tangled in knots. Eddie’s face is pressed so fully to the space between your breasts that you’re not convinced he can be breathing. He mumbles something that’s lost to your ears, then tilts his head up till you can see his face, and his goofy smile. Your heart aches even as you giggle. Then he’s crawling up your body to kiss you, his mouth warm and tasting like the sweat from his upper lip. 

“I’m gonna pull out now but I want it known that it’ll take amazing strength of will on my part.” 

He does so, disappearing from the bed for less than five seconds to throw out the condom before flopping next to you again and opening his arms to let you clamber into his hold again, you try to fight the rising worries by pressing your face into his neck. He hisses at the scrape of the plastic tiara under his chin, taking it off himself before returning to stroke at your temple with his fingers.  “How do you feel, sweet girl?”

It takes you a minute to answer, sorting through all the complicated feelings that emerged the second Eddie wasn’t inside you anymore. “Good,” you murmur. Then, “weird.” 

You hate how fast it all happens so soon after something so special. You feel overwhelmed and tired, like you want to scrub yourself raw under hot water, like you want to curl up in Eddie’s arms and smell like him forever. You feel like you don’t want to ever be touched again, but the thought that Eddie won’t makes your heart sore. You wish you were normal. You wish you didn’t have weird fantasies. You wish you didn’t feel guilty about what you want. 

Eddie holds you tight against him, and you let yourself feel the comfort of that. Eddie doesn’t think you’re weird, or gross, or immoral. Eddie won’t ever leave you alone to cry and scratch at your crawling skin. 

He presses his lips to your forehead, mumbles against your skin. “Gonna let me look after you?”

He keeps you with him while he runs a bath. You’re wrapped in a towel while he runs around naked, giving you mock coquettish looks over his shoulder every now and then until he gets a giggle from you. As steam starts to rise from the tub, he searches through the cabinet under the sink before emerging with a bottle filled with suspiciously bright orange liquid. “We don’t have bubble bath but, uh, this is six-in-one.” 

You try sitting in the water together, wrapped up in him, but the pins and needles come too fast, eight limbs not quite fitting as they should. You end up facing him, legs tucked up to your chest, watching the water drip from dark ends of his hair. 

“Not as romantic as I’d hoped,” he says.

“It’s okay. I like looking at you.”

His dimples show. Sweetest boy on Earth. He splashes at you a little, waiting for you to smile before talking. “Feeling better?” 

“Much,” you answer honestly. Somewhere between giggling at Eddie rushing to his bedroom to fetch towels for you both, a hair tie for you, with his hands covering the crack of his ass while leaving his dick uncovered and him quietly insisting on taking the side of the tub with the tap at his back, the grey cloud hanging over you faded. “Cause of you,” you say, splashing him back. 

Eddie smiles, resting his face against his knee. “Is there anything I can do, you know, to make it better, like, before it happens?” He reaches for your hand in the water. “Cause it hasn’t, in a while. I know that this was, like, different, but if I did something-”

“No,” you interrupt. “It wasn’t you.” Eddie lets that sit for a while, waiting for you to continue. “When it’s just me and you, it’s like-” You swallow. “Sometimes I feel like I’m being really, actually myself for the first time in my whole life.” Eddie’s eyes are so soft, looking at you now. “And I know that you won’t ever judge me for…my fantasies, or whatever. But then it’s like, it’s almost like- Like without even wanting to, I imagine what other people would say, if they knew the stuff I told you. If they saw how I am, when it’s just us. And then I just feel like, even though they’re not there, it’s ruined it.”

Eddie squeezes your hand, sighs with his whole body. “That sounds exhausting.”

Tears prick in your eyes even as you laugh without real mirth. “It is.”

“Well, you know this stuff really is always going to be just me and you. Right?” 

“I know, Eddie.”

“I wish I could fix it for you, sweet thing.”

You close your eyes tight, trying to force back the tears. You swallow the lump in your throat, thinking, me too. Instead, you sigh, remind yourself that however hard it is now, you’re sure it used to be worse. Before you had Eddie and his humour, his touch, his kindness. “You make it better, Eddie. I promise.”

He’s perfectly gentle with you the rest of the evening, curling back up with you on the couch when you’re dry to restart Theatre of Blood. You let yourself sink into his chest, playing with his rings. You are just about engrossed in the story again, watching with sick fascination as the first critic is stabbed like Julius Caesar. Then, a thought suddenly occurs.

“Did…did you say the soap was six-in-one?”

“Sure did,” Eddie answers. “Face, body, hair, laundry, pets and dishes.”

“That’s why it smells like the terrier next door.”

Eddie hums, lifts your hand to his face and sniffs. “You mean that’s why we smell like the terrier next door.”

[not-xpr-art]

Len and Tommy's life told through nine photos ~

A fanart based on the Inside no 9 episode 'Bernie Clifton's Dressing Room' because I loved it so much!

(09/2024)

See below for close ups and unnecessarily detailed explanations of each individual artwork lol

First wanna say that I spent wayy too long on these (like 25+ hours), especially trying to make them look like actual old photos lol... also trying to get their likeness right for the various ages was really bloody hard lol, but hopefully each photo has the essence of each character even if it might not look 100% right pfft...

Second thing is that the dates & locations are very much my own subjective thoughts on their life and not particularly rooted in the canon of the show lol

Also I did go really heavy with the colour symbolism lol...

Ravenhill School, 1965.

The year they met, both are around the age of 10 (give or take). Len is 3 from the left in the top row, Tommy 2 in from the left on the bottom row (also I tried to include references to the other 2 League Of Gentlemen guys... Though I think the only vaguely recognisable one is Jeremy pfft)

Also shout out to @lapis-lazuliie for the idea that they met at school!

(side note, this is the least detailed of all the paintings not just because I was too lazy to render all those children's faces pfft but ALSO because of the significance of them being less recognisable or prominent in each other's lives in this point...)

I was planning on making another childhood/early teen photo but couldn't really think of any good subject matter that could also fit thematically with the episode (also the fact both are coming from poor families who would have had limited access to cameras in this era means we can just pretend that there are just no photos that really exist of them at these ages pfft...)

Photo booth in Leeds, 1974.

Both in their late teens, they'd (well, mainly Tommy) gone to a photo booth in Leeds with the intention of getting some professional looking photos only for Len to immediately make Tommy laugh once they got in there lol

The middle photo is covered in lines as Tommy had planned on throwing it away, only to find he couldn't bring himself to do it in the end... Is it platonic? Romantic? Both? Who knows, you decide lol! I mainly wanted it to be a candid moment between two people that love each other lol

(final one is them play fighting because that's kinda just what 19 year olds are like pfft... also I think photo booths technically gave you 4 photos? so let's pretend there was another photo that they did throw away for whatever reason lol...)

Rehearsals, 1979.

Deep in the midst of practising their routine for some of their first performances!

I'll admit this photo was mainly me wanting to include something more episode specific lol and also to get in some much needed heavy handed symbolism (the crease in the photo separating them, the bottle in front of Len's face, etc)

Polaroids taken at Tommy's flat, 1985.

In-between shows the two often spent a lot of time at Tommy's place (featuring that god awful sofa the previous home owner had left). I did originally plan to have them in the sofa shot together, but was finding it hard to figure out who would have been taking that kind of photo so figured it made more sense to make it shots they took of each other.

Also marks the beginnings of Tommy's weariness (& Len's over drinking...)

Outside the Glasgow Pavilion, 1988.

The morning of that fateful performance...

Ok not much else I wanna say about this other than the reference I used for the pose had Reece sorta awkwardly clasping his hands in front of him which I really liked but unfortunately in my art it just looked like he was trying to cover his crotch so I had to change it pfft...

Tommy standing at Len's grave, 2024.

The sixth anniversary of Len's death, and the sixth time Tommy has travelled across from France to lay flowers at his grave. Photo taken by Leanne from the inside of a taxi (I'd like to have had more references to her in these photos but was unsure of dates/ages where it would have fitted...)

She couldn't get her phone to not focus on the raindrops on the window as she tried to take a picture of Tommy at her father's grave but then realised that she actually liked the pathetic fallacy and had it made into a print anyway lol (look I'll be the first to admit that this is the least 'realistic' in terms of a photo that people would take, but I couldn't resist the symbolism of it lol...)

There were a lot more ideas for photos I wanted to do but for obvious reasons had to keep it to just 9 lol

Also will be posting these on my ao3 with snippets of stories to go with each photo so keep an eye out for when I share that link!

[netherfeildren]

Someone's Wife in the Boat of Someone's Husband .1

Series Masterlist : Moodboard

(Joel Miller x F!Reader)

Summary: What do you do when you meet a woman, have a child, get married, and then find the love of your life?

-OR- 

A Joel infidelity AU

Content Warnings: Discussions of alcoholism and parent death.

Rating: Explicit 18+

A/N: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the new story. 

Disclaimer to begin with. Joel is married in this, but it is, and always has been, a marriage of convenience. There has never been any sort of emotional or physical intimacy between him and his wife apart from when Sarah was conceived. 

Like always, I promise there will be a happy ending, and that there will be lots of other fun :) stuff to make up for the occasional tears. 

I appreciate you all so much. Happy (lol I guess) reading. xx 

Art is The pain that keeps on giving, Noelia Towers, (2018-2019). Title of the story comes from this film.

Word Count: 6.8K

Read on AO3

.1

Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.

Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking 

The first time you’d fucked, it was like you’d never been touched by a man before. The first time he’d looked at you, like you’d never been seen, in the entirety of your existence, prior to that moment. Every other time after that, every touch, every look, was the same – a rebirth of sorts. And a devastation. Something not to be understood or conceptualized, only experienced. 

Taking that into account, it’s no surprise that things unfolded as they did – ended as they did. 

-

“Please, please, come with us,” Gerri drags the vowels out and hits you with the puppy dog eyes. You shake your head at her, smiling, packing up your supplies from tonight’s lesson. “It’s going to be so fun, I promise. Tommy’s sister-in-law hates my guts, I know, what-fucking-ever, but my sister and her girlfriend will be there, and my best friend’s planning on coming too. And there’s an extra bedroom, it’ll be perfect, I swear.”

“Yeah, I remember the sister-in-law from Easter.” Of course you remember her from that day. Gerri had invited you to their family barbecue, and the woman had pitched a fit that Tommy’s girlfriend, somehow posed as an insult, had dared invite someone without asking her permission first. It was also the first time you’d met him. And he was, by far and large, the reason you’d stayed away and evaded all subsequent invitations since then. Even if his wife had unapologetically said to your face that she found it crazy that people still party crashed, no matter that that hadn’t been what you’d meant to do, hadn’t known you were party crashing. She’d also thrown away the bunny cake you’d stayed up the entire night before making. No gluten in the house or something, even though the hamburger and hot dog buns had all been regular. 

“Oh my fucking God, Easter. Don’t even remind me. I know, I know.” She gives you a pointed look and you huff a laugh at her. “But that was months ago. Her and Joel were on the outs then, or… had just gotten back together… I can’t ever keep up. And well… they’re still on the outs now–” She scrunches up her face into the cutest little frown. You love Gerri so much. From the first moment she’d shown up for your Tuesday night ceramics class at the community college, she’d immediately decided that not only were you going to propel her into the upper echelons of the great sculptors of the world, the greater Austin area – her words, not yours, but she’d also immediately decided that you were going to be friends, and no, you did not have a choice in the matter. 

“But they’re always on the outs. And things haven’t been as bad recently – according to Tommy. But honestly the fuck does he know about all that anyways. My poor baby is so clueless – but still, please, please please,” she begs, pouts your name over and over again. “Please, come with us?” She brings her clasped hands up under her chin in a pleading gesture, hits you with the puppy dog eyes again. 

You were so grateful for her. Despite your recalcitrance, it’d always been hard for you to make friends. A byproduct of who your mother was, being an only child, a largely solitary upbringing, et cetera, et cetera. You’d needed Gerri’s tenacious spark and kindness to pull you out of your shell. She wanted you to join her, her boyfriend Tommy, and their friends and family at a house they’d rented on Lake Austin for the weekend as a sort of end of summer farewell. And you did – you wanted to go, bunny cake murdering sister-in-law and all, but there was the issue of him.

You were… there was not a single phrase for what it was your mind turned into when that man and his name and his face invaded your psyche. So you’d done your best to avoid him in your mind and in real life, at all costs. He was – he was not something you were capable of considering. 

“I’m not sure if I can, Ger–” you say slowly, wracking your brain for an excuse. “There was– one of the other teachers at the elementary school–” Your day job, when you weren’t teaching night class ceramics, was as an elementary school art teacher, “Asked if I’d cover for them on Friday – summer school.” Stupid excuse, you roll your eyes at yourself. 

“Oh, shut up. The summer camp classes end early – you told me that last time! You could drive up after.” She sidles up to you now, rests her curly haired head on your shoulder. “Please, you’ve said no to everything I’ve invited you to since Easter. You aren’t avoiding me because of the shitshow that was, are you?” 

“No, of course not.” Yes, yes you were. Just not for the reason she thought. “I would just hate to impose–”

“You wouldn’t! I swear you wouldn’t be!”

“You all already have your plan, and I–”

“No! No. My sister’s the one renting the house, and she said I could invite whoever I wanted. So, no one can say anything,” she sticks her tongue out, rolling her eyes. “And Joel said I should invite you too. I’m pretty sure he still feels badly about last time also.” Fucking hell, you did not want him feeling bad for you. At all. Ever. You did not want him ever thinking about you ever, ever, ever. 

-

You stand over the kitchen trash bin, staring at your destroyed cake. Your grandmother used to make it every Easter. Four separate cake loaves all cut into the shapes for a face, two big pointy ears, and a cute little bow tie, with a pineapple filling, and all covered in little flakes of coconut and your homemade vanilla frosting. You used jelly beans to make the eyes and nose and dark frosting out of a piping bag for the whiskers and mouth. It was your favorite cake, one of your favorite memories, one of the only good ones. 

“Fucking Christ, she did not throw it away. Please, don’t tell me that’s the cake you brought.” Large hand gently placed between the wings of your shoulder blades to peer around you, not touching, but still there, still very close, and yes, that’s it, you’ve gotta get the fuck out of there now, away from this man.

“Oh, no. It’s okay – I– I mean– I should’ve asked before. I didn’t know you all were gluten free. I should’ve asked…”

“What? Glu–” he frowns. You knew his wife, Eva, had made that up. You step away from him, from his large warm palm that feels like it’s burning through your clothes and skin. He was really, really and truly the most unfairly gorgeous man you’d ever seen. He fucking terrified you. “Oh, yeah. The gluten.” He went along with the lie, passing the offending palm over his mouth, the wiry scruff of his beard rasping softly against what you imagined to be work roughened skin. He’d said he was a contractor. 

Gerri had invited you to her boyfriend's brother’s house for the Easter holiday. It was the first invitation to something you’d gotten since you’d moved to Austin six months ago, and you’d been so, so happy that she’d asked, had felt so sad you’d not have anyone to share your cake with. You’d planned to take it to work with you to leave in the teacher’s lounge for everyone to share. The thought had made the back of your eyes pinch, for some reason. 

“It’s alright. I actually need to head out. Could you let Gerri know? I– I’m–” you couldn’t think of a lie, and he was staring at you like he knew you had no real excuse – like he knew you were uncomfortable and out of place and were just looking for an excuse to leave. Embarrassment burned in your cheeks. 

“Don’t go, please. Stay for a while longer. I’m – fuck– I apologize about the cake–”

“No, no– really it’s–” you held out a staying hand, but he’d cut off your false appeasement.

“Please, stay.” He’d taken a step forward, closer to your retreating form, and you’d felt almost faint, dizzy at the image of him stepping closer to you. He was so tall, huge really, broad chest, thick arms, dark, lush curls and a scruffy jaw, a peek of chest hair covering the tantalizing golden skin at the opened button of his shirt. Sexy, deep Southern twang. The loveliest, warmest eyes you think you’d ever probably seen. You were going to try and mix the exact color of them when you got home, even though you knew you shouldn’t. You hadn’t been interested in a man in months, maybe longer, couldn’t remember the last time you’d had a crush, an anything on anyone, and now this man. Suddenly, blindingly, out of fucking nowhere – so damn attractive. Your eyes had fluttered shut for a second and you’d swallowed, trying to regain your balance – you’d known him for all of two hours and he already made you feel unbalanced. You needed to leave.

“Really, Joel,” his name on your tongue almost had a taste, “It’s okay.”

-

“He– He did?” you stutter. “He shouldn’t feel bad – he has nothing to feel bad about, it was nothing.” Lie – lie, lie, lie. Meeting him that day had been – it had been everything. You’d thought about it, him, for months afterwards. The sight of him with his three year old daughter, Sarah, the sweetest little thing you’d ever seen. Helping her hunt for the Easter eggs he’d hidden around their backyard, letting her crack the bright confetti filled shells over his head. His excitement for her when she’d finally found the basket he’d made up for her. He was a good father. 

“Yeah, and Tommy said he’d like to see you again too. And I told my sister about you, and she thinks all my pottery’s fucking amazing, by the way, and she wants to meet you too, and she’s even thinking of enrolling in the class next semester so really, really you’re obligated to come.” Fucking menace – she smiles sweetly. 

“Oh, fine. Fine, fine. I’ll come.” You’re putting away the last of your tools. “I’ll drive up Friday afternoon when I’m done at the school.” 

Immediate hopping squeals, and this is why you love her. She’s so happy, so open and silly, friendly and funny. All the things opposite to your restrained quiet, shy to the point of aggravation, sometimes. You didn’t want your constant refusals to alienate her. You could see him again, it would be fine. You’d met him once for Christ’s sake. It meant nothing. It had probably been nothing that day, heat exhaustion or a stomach ache or something. Nothing to fawn and stress over. You’d just be polite, cordial, keep your distance – especially from his wife. You did not, did not want to provoke her greater dislike. You’d keep your unwanted baking to yourself this time. It would all be fine. You wanted these people to like you, if you were being honest. A little desperately. Gerri and Tommy, her sister you hadn’t yet met – you wanted to be part of their group, one of their friends. They were all so kind, welcoming and fun, you couldn’t ruin this for yourself. 

Gerri had spilled the beans on the marriage over one afternoon of too many Mexican martini’s, an Austin specialty, and chips and salsa. They’d gotten married three years ago after Eva had gotten unexpectedly pregnant. Joel was traditional, he’d asked and eventually she’d agreed. They were both older than you, he’d just turned forty recently, and you guessed it’d made sense for them, at the time, but she’d left them soon after Sarah had been born. The marriage, the baby, hadn’t been in her plans, too much for her, Gerri said. They’d been separated for about a year and a half until she’d come back. They seemed to be trying to work it out now. Gerri claimed they were both miserable. You’d only met them the once – well, you’d seen Joel a few weeks ago, from a distance, when Tommy’d come to drop something off for Gerri before class, sitting in their truck. You don’t think he’d seen you – but you thought that their misery was very obviously apparent in that way that was easily recognizable to someone who, at one point, had existed in a house made only of misery. It breaks your heart for them all, in different ways, to recognize that singular brand of dissatisfaction that comes with living in a home where no happiness resided with you. 

But the reality of his marriage made you all the more terrified of him. To ever see him again. You wanted no part of that. Didn’t even want to exist in the same vicinity as someone who was experiencing something of that nature. You’d had enough of unhappy marriages and painful households in your own childhood. You never wanted to deal with that again. 

-

You’d read once that infidelity was a hereditary trait. Studies had shown that if you’d had a parent or even a sibling, someone in your household during your development, who’d been unfaithful, you were then more likely to also be unfaithful yourself. Something about that sort of childhood trauma inciting a propensity in the offspring to find it difficult to later on trust romantic partners, to incite trust themselves. Trust issues, emotional unavailability, baggage, blah, blah. Sometimes nature versus nurture was a real bitch, in your opinion. 

But as much as you wanted to call bullshit, the thought, the possibility of that being true, filled you with such an intense fear — debilitating, paralyzing, life altering. You found yourself with an immense inability to trust yourself, more than anything. Your greatest fear, the thing that scared you the most in all the world, was that you would be the perpetrator, that you would be the one to commit that sin. That you’d lose control, self awareness, morality, yourself. It wasn’t something your mind could even come to terms with, the possibility of hurting another person that way, betraying them in that manner. It seemed like the worst possible thing in the entire world that you could ever do to someone. After all, you’d watched your mother do it to your father, over and over again, your entire life, up until the point that she’d up and left the both of you. For many years, after her fateful abandoning, you’d watched him drink himself into a stupor and then into a grave. Years of waiting for her to come back, in love with a ghost or a figment of his imagination, for the woman he’d made her out to be, within the ever forgiving and naive confines of his love, had never existed. Something you could see, even through the lenses of your child eyes. 

She was an eternally flawed woman. Selfish, vain, manipulative, deceitful, but there was good in her too. She was eccentric and beautiful, and she could be kind, so funny, and immensely intelligent, her mind and wit, always sharp as a whip. It was, you thought, what made her so talented at deceiving others, at getting her way. She outsmarted everyone she came into contact with. But she was also weak and self serving, had never met anyone, in all her life, who she loved more than she loved herself. Not even you. Sometimes, you thought, especially not you. For you were the living reminder of all she’d lost and been forced to give up. It was a difficult, complicated, painful relationship you had with her, even now, all these years later. 

After she’d left, she’d kept in contact with you sparingly. The occasional call or birthday card. It had taken her three years to feel like seeing you again after she’d left when you were ten. The pains and awkwardness of puberty long started, endured on your own, before she’d even had the foresight to remember she had a daughter who might need her. It was an exceedingly painful and lonely time for a young girl to survive on her own, but you bore it, as you did the entirety of the fallout that came with her leaving. 

Your father was another story entirely. He’d fallen to pieces, completely, the day she’d left and had never had the strength of will to ever pull himself together again. It was a strange sort of existence the two of you had lived in those years, keeping each other company. Physically, he was there, but he was never present, never sentient. He drowned, for years and years, in a sea of pain and liquor, and he never resurfaced. You watched him sink, a young girl incapable of comprehending or acting in a way that could’ve helped him, as much as you wanted to or even tried, all of it was futile. Eventually he hit the bottom of the ocean and died there, and you were left more alone than ever. 

You remember there’d only been four people, in total, at his funeral. You and two men from the shithole bar he liked to lose himself at every week and the priest. It was a terribly painful thing to live through on your own. Humiliating in a very specific and acute way, for some reason. To know that this sad, pathetic specimen of a human being had had a hand in creating you, to know that he was your father and that you loved him, despite his weakness, his vices, his lack of care for you, you loved him. And you felt interminably sorry for the creature he’d been turned into at the hands of an uncaring and poisonous love. You hadn’t been able to tell her for ten months, after he’d been dead in the ground, that he’d passed. She’d not called, didn’t like giving you her number, said she was too busy to have to worry about you calling her at all hours of the day, as if you’d asked her for a single thing in the decade since she’d left. 

And you loved your mother, even after it all, you did, but it was a poignantly devastating moment, the day you realized she was not just your mother, but her own person, as well. The day that childlike naivety, unconscious self centeredness, was cast away to realize that she was savagely flawed and human, and that she did bad things that hurt good people. And still, and still she was your mother and you loved her. Your greatest influence, the hand that shaped you, and you loved her despite everything. It was only that, after the rose tinted glasses had been ripped away, and she was only then herself, nothing more – pedestal forsaken – she was just a flawed woman who sometimes made mistakes, made the wrong choices, hurt you and your father and fractured your family. That was a hard thing to come to terms with as a young girl. 

You realized now, with the lifetime of experience she’d inherited to you, that motherhood built a pedestal and a grave, all at once, over and over again. A woman could vacillate between being the Madonna and the whore, and the cycle was inescapable and destructive and enticing, all at the same time. It was something that one could try to avoid or run away from, but many times, it caught up to most, hooked its claws in you and dragged you away from the things you would’ve wanted or done otherwise. You realized this was what had happened to her. She’d never been built for motherhood, for the responsibility of raising a child, so she’d desecrated the altar of it, taken a sledgehammer to it and freed herself in the only way she saw she could, collateral damage be damned.

And so you’d isolated yourself, for the thought of doing the same thing to someone that you might have loved or someone that loved you, was soul destroying. And that was the saddest part of this whole overly cliché tragedy – that you were sure that, at a certain point in her life, she’d loved your father, as well. Perhaps not enough, not enough to change who she was, what she really wanted, but she had loved him in her own way, nevertheless.

Parallel to the tragedy was the ironic reality that in some very safely guarded part of you, you longed so, so desperately for your own chance at a happy family, love, children. How could you not? When you’d never experienced it for yourself during your own childhood. Always having to make your own meals, get yourself ready for school, alone at ten years old, walking to the bus unaccompanied, no one ever waiting for you, expecting you, watching over you. Alone, alone, always alone. How could you not want to build your own normal, loving, happy family for yourself? You wanted it very badly. 

But there was also no part of you that felt, in the most vital ways, capable of showing your underbelly in such a vulnerable way. You had always been too sensitive, a weeper from a long line of weepers, and the second thing you were most terrified of, after turning into your own mother, was being left again, abandoned to another derelict and lonely childhood. So your aloneness suited you, for now. At least, in terms of your romantic life. Your isolation kept you safe, guarded from those that would savage the sensitive and salted battleground that was your heart.

 That, however, did not mean that you were immune to wanting, to the disease of yearning, of desire, and so you found it most unfortunate, cosmically laughable and cruel, that it would be this man, this married,  beautiful, entirely unattainable man, that would have reminded you of that desire again, after it had lain dormant for so long: Joel. 

-

Joel tried to think of you only in the moments when he was feeling particularly strong. It was a challenge he’d set for himself from that day, all those months ago, when you’d appeared at his house on Easter. Like a fucking angel or a creature out of a fairy book. Soft and luminous and so fucking pretty. No, Joel tried very, very hard not to think of you. 

He failed often, though. He’d not forgotten you since that day. Had tried to fish, as subtly as possible, through Tommy, for information. See if he’d heard anything about you from Gerri. Any new details or gossip about the pretty little art teacher. Tommy was a terrible goddamn gossip, like a clucking hen. And Joel knew, he knew empirically, that thinking of you was wrong. That he had a wife that he needed to be respectful of, even if she was never respectful of him, fucking her coworker – or had been… still was — he couldn’t keep track anymore – didn’t really care, if he was being honest. But you, you were the one small, private thing he kept for himself. The thought of you, the image of you in his mind, you were only for his moments of great necessity. You’d been so sweet that afternoon, walking into his home with your bunny cake. That fucking cake haunted him – the look in your eyes as he watched you stand over the trashcan staring at it. He’d been so scared you’d start crying, that he’d have to comfort you, that he’d be able to take you into his arms. He’d been terrified of what would become of him if he’d gotten the opportunity to feel you like that. But no, you’d left. Made up some weak excuse he knew you could see he didn’t buy, and had quietly left, not even saying goodbye to the others. He’d had a terrible one-sided argument with Eva that night. Told her she’d been unnecessarily rude and cruel, doing that to a complete stranger who was just trying to be nice. She hadn’t batted a single eyelash, all his frustration going in one ear and out the other. 

He could, to a certain degree, understand where her behavior came from. He knew she was unhappy, he knew she hated their life together. That it was nothing like what she’d ever envisioned for herself, and so she acted out sometimes. At his age, he found now, that you couldn’t ever really fault a person for not being what they’d never been meant to be. He understood this, had accepted that his marriage would never be of the happy or intimate sort. That Eva had never wanted to be a mother, but had felt trapped by circumstance. He dealt with it. Or ignored it. Avoided looking directly at the ugly reality of it, more like. He had Sarah and work and Tommy, and now that his brother was with Gerri things had gotten a little better, happier for the family. She was a good addition – kind and spunky. She was good for his brother, and he was happy for them. 

But the day he’d met you – it had made a savage claw of want gouge through his entrails. He’d not remembered the last time he’d wanted something the way he did when he watched you walk out into the backyard long hair shimmering in the sun, and a nervous flush sweeping over the apples of your cheeks. And even if he’d been unattached, free to pursue you like he liked to dream about sometimes, you were so young – much too young and pretty for an old, washed up, has-been like him. But he could imagine it, like he’d said, only when he was feeling particularly strong. Or maybe particularly weak. He couldn’t keep track of which was safer anymore. When the years and work and responsibilities and grief and loneliness surged up too high and overwhelming for him to bear, he liked to think of you in that little yellow sundress. Wonder what it’d be like to be a younger man, to have met you first. A bad, selfish, terrible thought to have. But just in the quiet privacy of his mind, when he needed a small something to make him feel just a little better – he liked to think of you. 

The only other time he’d seen you, once when Tommy’d had to drop something for Gerri at the college, he’d insisted on tagging along. Hoping he’d maybe be lucky enough to get a glimpse of you, and oh, he’d been so, so rewarded. You’d been carrying a stack of supplies from your car into the building, one of those spiky things women wore twisted in your hair to keep it up, wisps of your long, heavy locks escaping the knot, and a little, red, spaghetti strapped top. The thin of it on your shoulder had slipped off the delicate wing of your clavicle as you balanced everything you’d carried in your arms and tried to kick your car door closed at the same time. It’d taken everything in him, all the self control he possessed, not to sprint over to you and offer to help you, to fall to his knees at your feet. You’d blown a strand of your hair out of your face, the cutest expression of frustration scrunching your brow. His gut had twisted almost painfully with yearning. He hadn’t even known he was capable of fucking yearning, but he sure as hell did now. He felt it sharply, piercingly, like a knife to the gut. He’d met you once for Christ’s sake, seen you in person only twice, but you plagued him, you plagued him. 

He knew it was probably partially a symptom of how alone he was. Lonely to his very core. His marriage had never been a real one, no closeness, no intimacy. A byproduct born of one drunken night, and Joel’s need to do the right thing, give his child a stable home with two parents and all the love he could give her. And Sarah, Sarah was the greatest gift that he’d ever been given. This perfect little person that he still, three years later, could not believe had come from a piece of him. 

He’d told Eva that he’d do whatever she wanted, would accept whatever she’d chosen when she’d first realized she was pregnant. She’d refused the alternative route vehemently, and so he’d never suggested it again. If he was being honest, he’d been happy when he’d found out, in some small way. The situation wasn’t ideal, of course, they’d been veritable strangers at that point, but he’d been thirty seven, at the time, and he liked the idea of children. Eva was attractive and intelligent. He’d proposed immediately, gone out and gotten a ring and gotten down on one knee. He’d naively thought that perhaps, eventually, with time, they might grow closer. That idea was squashed quickly. She’d made it clear that she’d never wanted to marry him, but she also didn’t want to go at it alone, knew he was responsible and reliable, and so she’d accepted. And perhaps, he should have tried harder to win her over afterwards, but if he was being as honest as he could be, he wasn’t very interested either, didn’t really mind the lack of intimacy with her. They just weren’t a good match.

She’d left a few months after she’d given birth. Ran off with some guy she’d met – only a note left saying she couldn’t do it anymore. He hadn’t tried to go after her, hadn’t tried to bring her back or look for her. A better man probably would have, would have fought for his wife, for the mother of his child. But he’d never loved her, not even close, and so he’d taken care of his baby girl, had tried to be everything she needed and worked as hard as he could so that she’d never want for anything. Eva had come back after about a year and a half – her affair had run its course, and she’d said she wanted to try again with Sarah, that she’d made a mistake, wanted to be part of her daughter’s life. Of course he’d let her come back. He wanted Sarah to have a mother that was present, to have everything a child should have. And afterall, it was no hardship for him personally. She didn’t want a relationship with him, only Sarah. And so they’d settled into this strange agreement of co-parents slash roommates who just happened to be married. Eva liked to keep pretenses up, so they did the occasional family thing together. Especially now that Tommy was with Gerri, she liked to pretend at the double date thing, occasionally. Even though Eva couldn’t stand the poor girl. It was a pieced together sort of life, but it was better than what some had, and Sarah had her mother. He couldn’t complain.

But he did like to imagine a sort of alternative sometimes – something different, less lonely. He could tell she was going to leave again soon, more unsatisfied and frustrated and restless than ever. He couldn’t even find it in himself to resent her for it, it only hurt him for Sarah’s sake, for he didn’t think she’d be coming back this time. 

-

It hadn’t been such a bad idea to come after all, you think, as you lounge on the dock by the lake. The sun is strong but not burning – warm and soothing. It feels like there are ghost fingers stroking all along the bare skin of your arms and legs. Gerri had made a pitcher of sangria and you were slightly tipsy off it now. A light weight, through and through. 

The house they’d rented was gorgeous. All exposed wood and big glass windows right on the lakefront. Gerri’s sister was a doctor – a spine surgeon or something really fancy. She’d rented the house and invited all of you – no chance for Joel’s wife to be pissed off that you’d tagged along. 

There were large boxes of the loveliest white hydrangeas along one side of the dock. The sweet scent of them drifting around you as you lounged on the chair you’d planted yourself in with your sangria. Yes, this was a good idea. You’d managed to evade Joel and his wife in the hours you’d been here. Gerri and Tommy were great as always and her sister and her partner were so nice. You’d talked about the pottery class, she wanted to pick up a new hobby, trying out the whole work-life-balance thing, and she’d thought pottery’d be a good fit for her. She was planning on signing up for the next semester. 

You’re slightly dozing now. The warm sun and sweet alcohol making you languorous and drowsy and all fizzy on the inside. You think you might be able to hear the breeze sliding through each individual blade of grass on the bank, whistling over the surface of the water, and you can’t stop picturing his arms in your mind, but you’re pretending to ignore that, or pretending the bulging, mouth-watering muscles, prominent veins running under the surface of his tan skin, dusted with a light coating of golden brown hair belonged to someone who was not him. He has the largest hands you’ve ever seen, and you wonder what one of them wrapped around your throat would feel like. Bad, inappropriate thoughts. 

You have one arm slung above your head, resting at the crown of your scalp to partially shield the sensitive skin there from the strong sun when you feel a sudden piercing pain, right to the center of your palm. You shriek, jolting violently, glass of sangria falling and shattering on the deck and stumbling up out of your chair, sending it flying back topside. A wasp buzzes menacingly around you, and you shriek again, cracked and painful. The thing had stung you right in the center of your tender palm. You hear the quick paced steps of someone approaching, too distracted trying to evade the horrible thing when you hear Joel’s voice. “Stay still, it’s okay. I’ll get it.”

Your hand really, really hurts. You stop your swatting and feel the back of your eyes pinch, hot tears pooling in the corners. Not only is the sting incredibly painful, but you really hate bees, wasps, all the ugly mean things that buzz and sting. You can feel the slight tremble of your frame begin to take over as you try to patiently wait for him to get rid of it. 

He comes closer, “It’s okay, he’s gone. Did it get you? C’mere, lemme see.”

You clutch the injured hand to your chest, try and scoot away from him shaking your head, but you get too near to the edge, and his hand shoots out to cup your elbow, other hand coming to circle your waist and turn you so you’re standing in the center, and he’s closer to the edge. 

“No, no, it’s okay. It got you, lemme see it–” he gently circles his big rough palm on the thin of your wrist, and now you’re really shaking.

“It’s o–okay,” you hitch, you feel a tear slide down your cheek. Fucking embarrassing. “I’m okay, really. It’s nothing.” You try and pull your limb out of his grasp, but he pulls you closer. He says your name then, not necessarily sharply, but in the way of a rubber band snapping against your skin, a slightly jarring crack followed by a tingle, something that reverberates through your entire body.

Then gentle: “Just come here,” and coaxing. How could anyone ever say no to a voice like that. So deep, so patient. “Lemme see, it’s okay. No, don’t be scared. Lemme see, open your hand for me, sweetheart. I’ll be gentle, it’s okay,” his soothing voice over and over. Coaxing you into capitulation, into following his orders. He smooths his rough thumb gently, gently over the sides of your palm, coaxing your fingers to uncurl and let him see the hurt. “Oh, it’s alright. None of that trembling, sweet girl.” And then he brings your hand up to his hot, wet mouth and presses his lips to the wound, gently sucking. You can feel the wet of his tongue pass over it once, slowly sucking the venom out of your palm. You feel everything below your belly button go hot and liquid at the feel of his tongue on your skin. Oh, God, you want to feel that mouth everywhere, between your legs. 

You think you let a jagged whimper claw its way out your throat, for his eyes flit to yours, a flash of heat igniting them. He pulls his mouth away, turns to spit, thumb gently brushing over the tender inside of your wrist. He says your name so softly. “That’s better. You’re okay. No tears.” 

His large hands completely engulf yours. His fingers are thick and long, his nails clipped short and neat. Beautiful, masculine hands. Working hands. He doesn’t wear a ring. “We can get a clove of garlic on this,” he’s still cradling your limb, “Heard that’s good for stings.”

This is bad, bad, bad, bad. Not part of your plan to stay away from him at all. He’s staring at your cradled hand, his gaze trained on the way his own palm dwarfs yours. You feel his touch tighten for just a second, he brings his eyes back to yours, and you watch as a swallow passes through the strong column of his throat. 

He called you sweetheart. 

There are so many reasons why you know he’s dangerous to you, why you should stay away from him: his kindness, how competent he is — the way it seems like, no matter what in life could ever present itself to him, he’d be able to take it in, take care of it, fix it. He could handle anything. How fucking gorgeous he is, his hands, his face, his body, the dark curls, the slightest hint of silver threads beginning to appear through them, the deep dark eyes, but most of all, more than any other reason, the way he says your name — like the worst thing you’ve ever heard in your entire life, and also the loveliest. So soft and deep and soothing. A voice that could get a person to do anything, capitulate to anything, commit any crime. 

And what was it about wanting something you should not want, could never have, that made you want it all the more? Rebellion of the highest order calls your name. 

“Thank you,” you say quietly. He still has you clutched in his grasp, is staring at you almost in shock. You try to pull away and his grip tightens for one second, like he can’t bear the thought of letting you go, and then releases you, lets you pull your injured hand back into your chest. 

“Alright?”

And you’re so disoriented by him, by his touch that you instinctively reply: “Yes. Are you?”

 He looks confused for a second, shakes his head a little and then laughs, “Yeah – yeah, I’m okay, sweetheart.” He shouldn’t be calling you that, but it sounds so lovely coming out of his mouth. You’ll tell him to stop next time. It’s okay. Next time he says it you’ll tell him not to call you that anymore. Embarrassment burns your cheeks. 

You shake your head, “Sorry, I–”

“It’s alright. No need to apologize. Let’s get you inside. Get somethin’ on that hand.”

You take a step back from him, and he matches it with one step of his own forward, like he isn’t planning on letting you run away. It makes the speed of your heart kick up a notch, a hummingbird fluttering within the confines of your chest. “No, really, it’s okay. I’ll ice it or something. I’m fine, honestly. Thank you for– for your help.” You feel like you’re blinking a hundred times a minute, the sun suddenly scorching, when just a moment ago it had been soft and warm. 

You need to get away from him.

“Rubbin’ a garlic clove on it’s good for stings. There’s some in the kitchen, I’ll get it for you.” He reaches a hand out as if to take hold of you again, and you take two more steps away. This time he does not follow, you see the muscle of his jaw flutter. 

“Really, Joel. It’s okay.” You feel like you’ve said these words to him before, like all your short acquaintanceship has consisted of, is you apologizing and running away, bowing out before it gets too scary or complicated or threatening. He probably thinks you’re an idiot. “Th– thank you for your help. I’m just gonna –” you hitch your thumb back towards the house, “I’m just going to go back inside. Sorry.” 

He only nods, frozen on the dock as you walk away from him.

Chapter .2

Netherfeildren Masterlist

[thisbuildinghasfeelings]

I'm fairly convinced that TK's 30th birthday party will be happening in 5x07 based on BTS. Here is my reasoning:

Rafa made his announcement that he would be doing cameos to raise money for Brazil flood relief on May 9. His announcement video appears to take place on the loft set and there are balloons behind him:

It's been clear since that time that there is some kind of party going on at the loft, with further evidence coming on May 16 when Brianna posted a picture of Rafa in that same outfit hanging out on the Tommy's house set (which is where they usually are during downtime while filming on the loft set) and a picture of herself in a fancy outfit. On the same day, Ronen posted a video of a disco ball. Now that we know TK's 30th birthday party is happening in season 5, that MUST be the party they were filming in May.

Then, on June 11, there was a post from Half Initiative, Ryan Murphy's director mentorship program. Included in the post is a picture of director Brenna Malloy with the mentee director posing in front of those same balloons on the loft set (and what do you want to bet that white thing with lights on it in the bottom left corner is going to be a big light-up "30"?!)

From this, I think we can safely assume that Brenna Malloy is directing the episode with TK's birthday party. The Half Initiative post also includes this, which tells us that the episode Brenna is directing is 5x07:

Add this to the fact that we know from imdb that Enzo will be showing up in 5x07 (and 5x08)...

I think the obvious conclusion here is that TK's birthday party is happening in 5x07 and Enzo is the surprise visitor from TK's past!

[piratefishmama]

Fake it till you Make it | Part 20

So now, he was sat in a car, with a rich older man.

To some little queer boys, this would be a dream come true, especially since the older man wasn’t half bad in terms of looks, that all American square jaw, strong nose, the works. Plus… rich.

But this wasn’t a rich older man whisking him away, no, this was Steve Harrington’s regularly absent father taking him grocery shopping.

It’d been a wild day.

“So…” Eddie didn’t do well with silence. Silence never sat right with him. Had to fill it somehow, be it with silly noises, random singing, or conversation with any person in his vicinity. “They uhm, they do that often?”

“It’s a family thing, I think we’re all as bad as each other.” At least he was self-aware, the eldest Harrington still watching the road as they drove through the small town, he knew where he was going though, each turn done as if he’d driven the route enough to do it blindfolded. “Lynda’s a lawyer so, that should explain that” loved being right, it was her job to be right, even if she was actually wrong, she had to make out like she was right and she did it well. “I’m a middle child” explained both everything and nothing at all, “and Steven… I think he got a little bit of both of us. I’d have thought you’d be used to that though, since you’re dating him.”

“Ah-haha, I mean… don’t get me wrong, I’ve always known about Steve’s uhm… how to phrase this… mean girl streak?” John snorted a little laugh, emboldened, Eddie continued, “he’s like everyone’s disappointed mother, always with the little—” Eddie shifted in his seat, just about managing to put his hands on his hips and cock them weirdly in place “pose that he does when he’s oh so very disappointed in you. I used to thrive on it back in high school, whenever he’d catch Tommy H or the other basketball goons bullying the kids, he’d just stand there like he’d caught his kids with their hands in the cookie jar, an they’d actually just… cower, like he could actually do anything to them. It was the funniest shit I’d ever seen.”

It'd actually been quite the surprise when that’d happened the first time, it didn’t happen often, Steve had been a douchebag, not the ‘shove your head in a toilet’ kind of douchebag, or the ‘shove Gareth in a locker’ kind of douchebag.

No, he was the mega bitch douchebag who could flash a smile and drop every set of panties in his immediate vicinity, he was the douchebag who KNEW he could do that. Who carried himself high with the knowledge, lording it over everyone without… ever actually lording it, it was a presence kind of thing. An attitude.

And maybe, occasionally, he’d have been the douchebag who didn’t really see anyone unless he wanted to see them, didnt really pay any attention to those not on his radar, those not in his friend group, which led to many an accidental shoulder check, which had in turn led to Eddie’s own personal little vendetta because he’d lost one of his prized mini figs to the underside of the Hawkins High trophy case when Steve had walked by a little too close and shoved him just hard enough to send Eddie’s shit flying.

Had just kept walking as if he hadn’t even seen him. Asshole.

It was only when he’d first been seen hanging around Wheeler that his personality had shifted toward something reasonably human. Thanks Wheeler, the sacrifice of your time and patience hath created a god among men.

“So he was never… bad then?”

“Nah” no sense bad mouthing the boyfriend, that wouldn’t get him anywhere. “Real Prince Charming in a perfectly pressed polo shirt. He’s amazing, sir… you have nothing to worry about with Steve, he’s… one in a million.” Now anyway.

“Good. Good.” And then he fell silent, the quiet stretch lasting nearly five minutes with only the faint music playing on low volume from the radio to fill that silence, until the eldest Harrington pulled the car into a quiet carpark, and parked. “Here we are!” Oh thank Christ.

“We can't keep doing this.” Steve was the first one to speak up during their mutual living room silent treatment, finally looking at this mother after nearly an hour of watching a gentle snowfall that’d started outside. He hoped it wouldn't get heavier before Eddie got back.

“I have no idea what you—”

“Mom.” Steve cut her off, his eyes sharp and tone firm. “We can’t keep doing this. This bickering, this who’s right who’s wrong shit, we’ve gotta stop, at least here.” If not for their own sanity, but for the image he was giving Eddie of his family life.

Of what he might possibly maybe be getting himself into if Steve could actually swing a real relationship by the end of the week. The chances of him saying yes were already pretty farfetched, but if Steve’s parents were their worst selves…

Why would Eddie want to subject himself to that long term?

She paused, expression unreadable, something she’d mastered years ago for the court room, then she sighed. “I know, Steven.” She sighed heavily “Sometimes I forget that you’re a grown up now, that you can argue right back and actually stand your ground.” It only felt like yesterday when he was tugging uncomfortably at the little bowtie they used to make him wear for special occasions, all dressed up looking up at them with those big hazel eyes of his. His childhood only felt like yesterday. “I miss when you were cute and just did as you were told” she sniffled. Back when his parents had been there regularly before their duties had pulled them away. Before distance had strained them and they missed everything. Steve rolled his eyes but said nothing as his mother continued “Anyway, i agree. I think I’d prefer it if Eddie didn’t go away from this trip thinking John to be the most mature of us.”

“God, could you imagine?” Steve shook his head to free himself of the truly harrowing thought, allowing the subject to change. “I really like him, Mom... I didn’t expect to at first, not enough to want something long term with him anyway...” He’d thought it’d be easy to just pretend with him at first, but Eddie just had this... thing about him, Steve didn’t really know how to explain it, he just felt like home. Maybe it should have been alarming as to how fast that’d happened but... Steve had always rushed into things, funnily enough he didn’t think Eddie minded. “So I’d really like it if he liked all of us by the end of this, an if he only likes Dad cause of our bullshit, I think I might just disown the both of you.” The last part said in jest but... god he’d never let it go.

He’d lockjaw it until the end of time, would take it out on special occasions and shake it in their faces like look what you did. Look at what you cost me.

“Honestly, sweetheart I think I’d disown myself.” Lynda laughed, the air finally lightening up a little between them. “Here, how about we go see if the maintenance men pilfered the wine cellar? I’m positive Mags was hiding a damn good red down there among the cabernet that I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t want to go to waste...”

“Well... we probably should check it... just in case, y’know? For security reasons.” Not that he actually doubted the integrity of the maintenance crew, they’d been employees for years, they’d known his grandparents, had worked for them in their later years when time had started to catch up to them, and a steady gig passing through generations wasn’t something to scoff at.

“Security, absolutely.” But then, the contents of the wine cellar alone was probably worth more than the actual house, so… better double check.

For security reasons.

Part 22

[journen]

Riley family photo! 🥺 Mama Riley, Simon, Joseph, Tommy and Beth!

Wanted to design Simon's fam for so long, so here we are! And I wrote a bunch more headcanons I have for them, and for the context of this photo being taken, under the cut below!! 🥺 And also, just, huge thank you to all the fic authors out there who expand on Simon's family in their fics, I live so much for all your content 😭🧡

Okay so, as for a lot of the Riley family thoughts I had when I was drawing this artwork. These may kinda be in random order..

So I'm imagining this pic was taken at Simon's mom's house! She had a friend over (or something) when Tommy, Beth(Tommy's wife), baby Joseph, and Simon, who's been visiting for the past week or so, come over.

I'm imagining this is several months post-Roba, but the Roba stuff is still pretty recent. Simon is still wearing the mask because he doesn't want his family or others to see his facial scars too often, but I imagine on some occasions, if it's just him and his fam, he's okay taking it off, but bc they're visiting the mom and she has a friend over he keeps it on.

So I think this is his second time visiting his family post-Roba? He's done some healing, and recovery since then, so he's more stable visiting his family, though I imagine it's still a weird experience for him but he's trying to get better. And yeah he's visiting for a couple weeks here. I wanted him to seem kinda slimmer tho, like he's not hugely bulky bc I imagine he lost a lot of weight in captivity and is still putting weight back on.

Also this is a total side note, but I really love the idea so much that baby Joseph brought Simon out of his shell a lot more post-Roba? Like I imagine he had a really hard time initially learning to bond again and heal, but having little baby Joseph who's too young to judge him and is so innocent, is good for him? 🤣 So on Simon's time visiting his fam he spends a lot of time with baby Jo. I think he'd thank Joseph a lot for helping him come out of his shell post Roba.

Okay, but yeah for the photo!! So Simon , Tommy and them go to visit the mom, maybe to help her move some things, or bring her over some stuff. Simon, who's staying with Tommy (bc he doesn't like to stay at his mom's house as much bc it's the childhood home) comes over too. Maybe they end up all sitting and chatting together, and then maybe Simon's mom asks if the friend can take a family photo of all of them? Bc I bet they have like, so few family photos of them as adults, if any. And so Simon, who I hugely hc hates photos being taken of him 😂 agrees ofc for his mom bc he loves her and wants to make her happy ahaha. And so they all pose for the pic together.

I think Tommy and Simon also look pretty similar, just have different hairstyles/ colours and eye colours. They're unmistakable as brothers if you see them side by side tho lol. And Beth, I imagine she met Tommy when he was in recovery, maybe they were both in some therapy program together (I don't think I hc her as a recovering addict like Tommy, but she had other reasons for being in therapy at that time in her life) and they hit it off. She has red hair bc that's the colour hair she has in the comics, and I like to imagine she's just super radiant and pretty, and maybe a little punk too? XD Or she was in her past, hence the piercings and tattoos. She's also just the coolest lady and happiest mom ever.

Also Beth definitely is trying to convince Mama Riley to get a nose piercing.

[typicalopposite]

Got an idea I will flesh out into a more coherent full length fic closer to Halloween BUT imagine with me if you will…

Buck wanting to go to this haunted house… attraction or the real deal whichever.. and he wrangles in the whole team. (Tommy, Eddie, Hen, and Chim)

They go and on the way they are listening to scary stories, and the three believers are sharing experiences and so hyped up… meanwhile Tommy and Eddie are like … 🙄🙃 yall are ridiculous gullible scaredy cats.

So they arrive at the place. (Let’s go with an attraction but it’s AT a supposedly haunted place) and the believers are screaming and running and swearing they see/hear/smell(?) things not part of the experience! They are having a blast but also scared out of their minds… and the whole time Tommy and Eddie are still 🙄🙃

They disprove all the “real” activity. They call out the cheesy fakeness of the actors/jump scares… and by the end Buck Hen and Chim are pouty from the two being party poopers (Chim’s words) and boring.

So…

Buck gets an idea… a way to really see if they are as brave and non-believing as they insist they are.

He finds a school… abandoned after the earthquake, but it had been claimed to be haunted even when it was open to students. It was built over a cemetery and was extremely eerie and supposedly super active; especially now that the ground was split open beneath it and the graves were disturbed.

“One night,” Buck proposes. “From sunset, to sunrise… you two last without experiencing anything, and we will stop giving you shit about being skeptics.”

Tommy rolls his eyes, says this is juvenile and probably illegal (what would Athena say). Eddie, on the other hand, leaps at the idea.. eager to prove these three wrong ONCE AND FOR ALL! “Come on, man!” Eddie all but begs. “Let’s show them how ridiculous they are always being!” Tommy teases it’s easy for Eddie to be so quick to prove them wrong… he doesn’t have to go home to one of them after… but he ultimately agrees.

So they go to the school. Some flashlights and snacks- Eddie brings his baseball bat incase any other people decide to get the same silly idea, and pose a threat. Buck reminds them: from sunset… to sunrise. They have their phones to call in case of absolute emergency… but if they try to leave before that for any other reason then they lose the bet.

Fast forward to a few hours in. They are bored and tired… and nothing has happened… until—until Tommy hears footsteps from somewhere in the school. He’d be lying if he said the sound coupled with the over all decrepitness of the old building didn’t send a chill through him. But because it could be some person with bad intentions— after all… real people are FAR scarier than pretend ghosts and goblins.

He hears it again— this time closer. Light tap tap tapping of footsteps coming down the hallway outside the room they are currently sitting in. “Hey… do you hear that?” he asks Eddie, who rolls his eyes and says it’s probably the others trying to scare them. He tells him to chill out. Tommy rolls his eyes at himself, thinking Eddie is probably right— that’s definitely something Buck and Chim would do… he’s not sure about Hen but he wouldn’t fully doubt it.

The night continues and Tommy doesn’t hear the footsteps again… for a while. They have wandered around a little and suddenly he hears them coming from behind them. Next to him, out of the corner of his eye he sees Eddie go still. They turn slowly and there is nothing behind them. No where for someone to have ducked down to hide either… and nothing to rationalize as the culprit for the footsteps. They (shakily) shrug it off and continue to explore the school.

There are pictures of the gravestones that were removed to make way for the foundation of the school. And plaques telling about spooky occurrences that have happened. Eddie scoffs saying they deserved to be haunted for disturbing a burial ground like that.

From down the hall a door slams shut. Both men jump, look at each other, then shine their lights towards the noise… it takes them a moment to decide whether it’s worth investigating, and ultimately decide if it’s the others… they don’t feel like listening to their teasing that they were to scared to check the noise out. So they make their way towards the room of the door that slammed, and Tommy reaches for the knob as Eddie readies his bat… just in case it’s NOT Buck, Chim, or Hen.

He pushes the door open and a breeze blows out, sending goosebumps all over Tommy’s body. He lifts his flashlight and shines it in the room… and it’s empty. He sticks his head in to be sure and yep… empty. Well— It’s empty minus a single red balloon floating ominously in the corner. He holds the light on it… Tries to make some sort of logical sense of it… asks Eddie what he thinks of it…

“I think I’m gonna kick those idiots asses come morning…” Eddie concludes, and lowers his bat, grabbing the door and pulling it shut. He walks off mumbling to himself about them needing to grow up, this being stupid… blah blah blah… and Tommy is about to turn and follow when the knob to the door slowly turns and it creaks open. Eddie stops and calls back to Tommy, asking what he’s doing.

“That— that wasn’t me…” Tommy says, shining his light at the door. Eddie walks back over and they watch as the door fully opens itself— both lift their lights and the balloon from the corner is now in the center of the room. They stare at it, and it sways forward— towards them. “Are— are you seeing this too?” Tommy asks.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah I see it. It’s— it’s just a draft, or— or something, yeah?”

“Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah… for sure.”

The balloon gently lurches forward again, now just on the other side of the open door. Tommy and Eddie— flashlights still aimed at the balloon— slowly back away from the door, down the hall to the point the rooms no longer visible. The school sits eerily silent, save for their staggered breathing. Then there’s a loud crash from somewhere behind them, causing both of them to turn. Theres nothing fallen over or broken… they turn back… and now the ballon is right infront of them.

~~~

Outside the school, Hen is shushing Buck and Chim who are in a fit of giggles as they pull dark hoods up over their pale and grotesque painted faces. “Shut up or you’re going to give us away!” She hisses, her phones camera aimed at the two as they sneak around the side of the school, creeping towards the entrance into the school so they can scare the shit out of the non believers.

The hear two loud terrified screams wail out from inside and watch as the schools doors are flung open, Tommy and Eddie running out and towards Eddie’s truck. One falls over his own feet grunting and groaning as he collides with the ground, one is possibly sobbing as he frantically tugs on the trucks door handle. And in less than five seconds they are loaded in and peeling off down the road away from the school… leaving Buck Chimney and Hen staring after them… extremely confused… but it doesn’t matter… because they won the bet.

👻👻👻👻👻

Idea sparked from THIS FANART omg it is GOLDEN!

Also inspired (the school on the graveyard and the balloon) from THIS TIKTOK that follows the same premise and is CREEPY AF! 🫶👻

[the-126-family]

The 126 and their pets

Marjan is obviously a dog person, given how much she loves Buttercup! I think she would love to have an active dog who she could take hiking, out for walks, and to the fire station. You know how some people train dogs to take "selfies" and they do a selfie pose? Marjan would 100% teach her dog how to do that. The dog would feature regularly on her Instagram and all her followers would love her dog.

Paul likes dogs too, but I headcanon him as more of a cat person. I think he would love to have a cat or two that would snuggle with him while he's reading his novels, or keep him company while he's cooking or working out. Paul would have two cats named Sherlock and Watson, because we know he is the best at solving mysteries and would probably get a kick out of that.

Mateo adores Buttercup -- definitely a dog person! Like Marjan, he would love a dog who could be his running partner. He would for sure spoil the dog with lots of treats and show it off to everyone he knows.

Nancy strikes me, for some reason, as a fish person. I feel like she would have a fish tank and she would know all their names and personalities.

TK, as we all know, loves just about any animal. Dogs, lizards, you name it! I could see him wanting to get another bearded dragon friend for Lou II sometime. He would name her Sue. Sue and Lou. Also he would love about 20 dogs, thank you very much.

Carlos puts up with Lou II and eventually learns to love him. He loves dogs, too. But I think that Carlos, like Paul, is more of a cat person and would love a cat that would snuggle with him.

Owen has Buttercup!

Tommy has the cat that she adopted from Tim. I feel like she would be too busy to have a dog, but maybe she would get her daughters hamsters or guinea pigs.

Judd and Grace I could see with a little tiny lap dog. Everyone makes fun of Judd because the dog is so small compared to him -- he can practically hold it in one hand -- but he spoils that little dog so much.

[messedupfan]

Chapter 12

Summary: It's the holidays and the kids school is putting on a show!

A/n: Sorry this has taken a bit of time to get out. There is a lot packed into this chapter. Enjoy!

Masterlist | All Chapters | All Stories Taglist

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Come on guys, no more pictures! We’re going to be late!” Rachel whines, tired of posing for pictures. Jean frowns with her phone covering half of her face. 

“Just one more picture, babe. You look so adorable!” Jean says as she waves her daughter back into place. 

“Baba,” Rachel looks at you for help. You nod and place your hand on Jean’s shoulder. 

“Come on, mama. Let’s get her to school on time. She’s stressed enough, she doesn’t need to be late.” You say as you attempt to reason with your ex-wife. 

“Fine, but you’ll regret this when you’re old and decrepit and have no memories,” Jean grouches as she puts her phone away.

“Jean, you'll have more opportunities to take pictures of our little soloist when she's on stage and after the performance. But for now, we have to go,” you say as you open the door for everyone to leave the house.  Both of your parents and their significant others are here along with Kate. Your step siblings are spending the holidays with their significant other's families this year. Which allowed your dad to spend them with you. It has been years since he's spent the holidays with you and he even apologized for that as he brought in many gifts for Rachel and even a few for you. Anna's parents, Owen and Pricilla, are also in attendance and they have also spoiled Rachel with presents making the tree overflowing with presents. Jean's parents aren't attending this year because they're spending the holidays with her older brother Roger and his family. Jean is the youngest of five and since the family spread out throughout the country over the years, her parents have had to rotate where they spend the holidays. But since Jean isn’t without family, she is fine not having her parents here. 

Even without the Grey’s, Rachel still has a pretty big crowd there to support her. You almost feel guilty for not having more kids for a crowd this size to root for, especially since some kids won't have nearly this many people attending to see them. 

The group of ten arrives at the school parking lot in multiple cars. You were lucky enough to get to drive Rachel alone since she wanted to avoid everyone fawning all over her. You help her get to her classroom where all of the students were asked to meet before the performance. It's a big holiday showcase with performances from each grade. Since Rachel is in her last year of elementary school, that meant her performance was going to be the big finale of the show. 

“Good luck, munchkin,” you kiss the top of her head before sending her into the classroom. 

“Baba, you're supposed to say ‘break a leg’ because the theater is very superstitious,” she says and you smile as you get ready to correct yourself but you get interrupted by her teacher. 

“There you are! My star! Come on in, let's get you ready,” the teacher takes her away from you and you go looking for the rest of the people that you're going to sit with. 

There are many families that are crowding the halls and are slowly filing into the theater as they find their seats. You're carefully scanning the crowd for a familiar face when you hear your name being called. You whip your head around as you try to find the face and stop when you find Daisy. You shuffle through the crowd to get to her when you feel some tug on your coat. You look back and find Luna smiling up at you. Then you notice Pietro before he notices you. 

“Hey,” you greet as you hold his arm. Pietro smiles as he greets you with a hug. “I thought you weren't coming,” you say as you step back to get out of the way. Luna asks to be lifted up and so you pick her up and she gives you a tight hug. 

“Yeah, I wasn't planning on it but uh,” he looks around before leaning in close. “Vision canceled on Tommy and Billy and they were taking it pretty hard so, here I am.” 

You shake your head. For someone who is so adamant about being the only male presence in his son's lives, he sure has a funny way of showing it. “That's a shame. I know that Billy was really excited for him to see his part.” 

Pietro shrugs, “I know, but we're here for him. Hopefully it's enough.” Even though the both of you know that it most likely isn't, you don't voice it. “I should probably get in,” Pietro says as he reaches for his daughter. “Have to find the wife.” 

“Crystalia is here? Where is she?” You look around, realizing that she wasn't with him. 

“She's with Wanda and my mom. We got here pretty early to avoid this traffic because we recently found out that Crystalia is carrying twins so we wanted to minimize her standing time. Unfortunately for me, this one needed to go potty,” he starts to tickle his daughter making her squeal and squirm in his arms. 

The two of you wish each other happy holidays as you go your separate ways and you finally make your way through the crowd to Daisy who has found Jean and the rest of the large family. She arrived separately because she said she had to work. But you believe she has been avoiding meeting your parents and having to sit through a meal with them. You place your hand on her lower back and give her an innocent greeting kiss. “I'm glad that you made it,” you smile at her. 

“I wouldn't miss it,” she takes your free hand and gives you a few squeezes. You squeeze back. It has been a rough adjustment between her and Rachel, but Daisy surprises you by trying every day to get your daughter to welcome her. 

“Did she get to her classroom fine?” Jean asks and you confirm that she did and throw in that she didn't seem nervous in the least. “She is so brave. It scares me,” she admits. You agree with her as you imagine the many wrong turns that bravery could take your daughter. All any parent can do is hope for the best.  

As you finally get through the auditorium doors, your eyes wander and you aren't sure what you're looking for until your eyes land on her. She is standing in front of her mother with a smile as she talks to her. You are curious about what is making her smile as it makes you smile. “What's got you smiling? The kids aren't out yet.” Anna whispers as she nudges you. 

You look at her, “I can't be proud that our daughter finally got a solo here?” You notice when she finds Wanda but she doesn't point it out. 

“I know! I'm so proud too, she has been working really hard on this,” she says as she squeezes your bicep. 

“I'm so glad she let me help her,” Daisy leans in, overhearing the conversation. “She actually called Y/n here tone deaf,” Daisy laughs and Anna joins her. You shake your head. When Rachel came to your apartment raving about the audition she had, she asked for your help but you couldn't carry a tune to save your life and she found it difficult to bounce off of. So, Daisy quietly sang to herself until Rachel noticed and the girl shyly asked for the woman's help. It got to the point that she would ask Daisy to go over to her mom's house to help her practice. You couldn't have been happier and your girlfriend couldn't have been more willing to help. 

During the performances of the five grades before Rachel and the twins, you find it increasingly difficult to stay awake through it. The kids certainly are adorable but none of them are Rachel, so you don’t have much interest in watching the little kids struggle to remember lines and sing the lyrics off key. Thankfully, you have Daisy there to wake you up when they announce the fifth grade class. You sit up and look around to remind yourself where you are and as you do, you turn around enough to see your father doing the same thing as his wife wakes him. You would find the symmetry endearing if the two of you weren’t so estranged. You smile at Daisy and put your arm over her shoulders as she snuggles into you in response to the gesture. 

Now since there are a lot of students, not every student is participating on the stage. Some of the students are operating backstage and others are managing props. Some even are the props. Like Tommy, he is a Christmas tree as punishment for being difficult in every other aspect of the play. You laugh to yourself as you zoom in on his Grinch green grumpy face and snap a picture for Wanda. Then you start recording the entire stage as Billy leads a group of boys and girls in a musical number. Rachel is crouched and hidden in the middle of the other students. She blossoms as they spread out through the front of the stage. Your daughter sings her little heart out and doesn’t miss a beat. You feel your eyes sting with proud tears as you continue to record her. 

“Put your phone down,” Daisy whispers. “I’ve got it. You enjoy the show.” You nod and end the recording. You want to whisper your gratitude but don’t want to mess up the recording on her phone. You experience your daughter's performance live instead of through the screen and watch as she gets her dance moves correct. You don’t even realize how close to the edge of the stage she is until it happens. You don’t think anyone did. Rachel certainly didn’t, not with the big smile she had as she nailed her performance. 

“Rachel!” Billy and Tommy shouted at the same time as they both abandoned their positions and rushed to the edge of the stage to look down at their friend on the ground. There was a collective gasp in the audience that made the whole thing seem unreal. You experience a delayed reaction and don’t run towards the stage until Anna and Jean are shuffling in front of you to rush to the stage. The three of you make it after Wanda, who is yelling at her boys to stay put as she assesses the situation. 

“Rachel, honey, don’t move okay?” Wanda says as she kneels down beside Rachel but not too close. You get next to Wanda as you watch your daughter struggle to wake up. You look her over for any obvious injuries and notice that her leg is in really bad shape. 

“Someone call an ambulance!” You shout as you look at the large auditorium full of people too stunned to do anything. You shake your head and pull out your phone to do it yourself and that’s when a school administrator speed walks over to see if she can avoid causing a big scene. 

The older woman’s view is obstructed so with good intentions she says, “Do you think you could carry her out of here? We will have an ambulance waiting outside. I just want to avoid canceling the big finale for the rest of the students and their families.” 

Jean and Anna, who were next to you, move out of the way and the woman still tries to ask you to move her. Just as you’re about to say that you don’t think you should, Wanda steps in for you. “Are you crazy? I’m sorry, I would have loved it if this didn’t happen either but we don’t know what internal damages she has! None of us here are trained to properly move her without making it worse. The show is over. Do you understand?” Wanda turns around to shout to the audience but Billy taps her shoulder and holds out his mic pack for her. “Everyone, please stay in your seats until we can get a paramedic to remove Rachel Y/l/n-Grey from the auditorium safely. Her family thanks you for your respect and patience.” 

With this announcement, the army that is Rachel’s grandparents rise and make their way to the front as well as they realize the severity of the situation. “I don’t think that was necessary,” the woman says to Wanda. 

“Excuse me, my granddaughter is in need of serious medical attention. She isn’t even conscious,” your dad steps in to defend Wanda. “Madam, are you a doctor?” The woman shakes her head. “Do you have any medical experience or knowledge at all?” She replies no and tries to continue after that but your father shuts her down again. “Then you can step away and guide the paramedics to us because that’s all you’re good for in this situation.” You are shocked to see this protective side of your father but you don’t stop him because he’s doing what you’re too shocked to do. 

You stay close to Rachel and as much as you want to hold her hand or touch her to let her know that you are there, you don’t. You just watch her chest struggle to rise and fall as you wait for the medical professionals to arrive. It hurts you to see the uneven breaths, but it comforts you to know that she is still breathing. The position of her head and her arm concern you, but you try really hard not to focus too much on the list of injuries she may or may not have. You just focus on the fact that she is alive and help is on the way. You don’t realize that you’ve been holding your breath until Wanda’s touch shocks you back to self awareness. You take a deep breath and look at her as she rubs your back. “She’s going to be okay,” she says to comfort you and with everything in you, you hope that she is right. 

Wanda has to move you out of the way when the paramedics arrive at the scene. You finally look away when they start to move her around. She looks so tiny and helpless in their care and you couldn’t stand the sight. Wanda continues to take care of you and you are grateful. You don’t notice that Daisy is standing at her seat until you are following the paramedics out of the theater. She collects her things and follows you out. “I’ll follow behind to give you a ride back to your car. When you're ready, of course,” she says and you nod as you climb into the ambulance with your daughter. Only one parent could ride along and Jean volunteered you without a second thought. 

“She needs you, Y/n. You’re better at this stuff and I can’t stop crying,” she said as she attempted to wipe her tears. You gave her a quick hug and promised that Rachel was going to be okay. It didn’t bring her much relief but she held onto the small amount of comfort it did bring. 

Wanda is walking at a fast pace as she holds her boys hands to get them out of the school. “Come on boys, I need to get you home.” Tommy stops walking and pulls his hand out of hers. 

“No,” he frowns, “I want to go to see Rachel. I have to make sure she is okay.” 

Wanda sighs, “Honey, we won’t know that for a while. It will be a lot of waiting.” 

“We’re okay with that,” Billy says. “She’s our best friend. We want to be there for her,” he says as he stands next to his brother. Pietro finds the three of them in the middle of the parking lot. His mother is helping his wife and daughter to his car. He was sent to find Wanda to see what she was going to do, and offer to watch the boys so that at least she can be there for you.

“What’s going on here, guys?” He asks as he places his hands on the back of their heads. 

“They want to go with me to the hospital to wait for Rachel,” Wanda answers. She looks at her brother for help. She wasn’t sure what she should do in terms of being a good parent but she doesn’t think she can convince her determined boys to go with their uncle. They almost never agree on anything at the same time like this. 

“Hey, so are we taking these two with us?” Mrs. Maximoff asks as she joins the group. 

“No,” Pietro says, helping his sister make the decision as he looks at his mother, “Tommy and Billy will be joining Wanda.”  

“I see,” she says as she looks at her grandsons. “My boys are so sweet. But are you sure you don’t want to come with us to Uncle Pietro’s? We can have ice cream and cake and watch movies.” Billy and Tommy shake their heads and cross their arms at the same time. 

“We have to be there for Rachel,” Tommy stands his ground, showing no sign of temptation to his grandmother’s offer. She shrugs and looks at her daughter. 

“I’ll join you,” she says. 

“Mom, you don’t have to,” Wanda starts to protest. 

“No, I’m supporting my grandsons. They want to be at the hospital then so do I,” she states and Wanda doesn’t argue any further. She's in a hurry to get to you. Well, to the hospital to be there for you. And Jean and Anna of course since they're her friends as well.

“Okay, let’s go then,” Wanda says and she says goodbye to her brother as she walks off with her boys and their mother. She drives, uncertain if she should even be there in the first place but knows that if something like this happened to either of her boys, you would be there for her. No question. When she finds you in a waiting area with your family she knows that the news can't be too good. Before asking anything, Wanda pulls you into a tight hug that you melt into. “What do you know?” She asks as she steps back. 

“She broke her leg, that's been confirmed. There is a lot of concern for her arm and shoulder and they don't know whether it's the pain that has kept her unconscious or if she sustained a head injury. The paramedics couldn’t tell how hard she might've hit her head but are optimistic that it wasn't too hard since it looks like her leg took the brunt of it. The doctor said that we won't know until she wakes up what kind of damage might've been done to her head. She's in surgery now,” you explain, trying to remain calm and not jump to the worst kinds of conclusions. Rachel is going to be fine. She is strong. Wanda nods as she digests the information. “You brought the boys?” You ask as you notice Tommy’s green face and Billy also still in his costume being dragged to seats by their grandmother. 

Wanda turns to look at them and then turns back to you. “They insisted. My mom tried to take them to Pietro's house but they refused. They really care about Rachel.” Wanda stands next to you and the both of you look at her boys as they fight over who gets a turn first on grandma's phone. “Which one do you think she'll marry?” 

You snort at the idea, “Hopefully neither.” 

Wanda looks at you feeling offended by your answer. “She would be a lucky girl to marry one of my boys.” 

You hold your hands up in surrender, “No one is saying she wouldn't be. It's just that Jean and I are both hoping we raised a lesbian. If she's straight, we might have to disown her.” You smirk at the end to show your lack of seriousness and Wanda shakes her head.

“It amazes me that you have a sense of humor in a crisis,” Wanda says.

“That’s my fault,” your mom says as she flips through the outdated magazine from the hospital collection. “I'm not good in a crisis so Y/n learned how to make me laugh from an early age in order to help us both get through it.” She closes the magazine and tosses it back onto the pile. She looks Wanda up and down and lifts her hand in the air as she remains seated. “I'm Eleanor Bishop, Y/n’s mother,” she introduces herself.  Wanda introduces herself and your mom makes a face to place the familiarity to the name. “Oh yes, I've heard of you! Rachel talks very highly of you and your boys. Twins right?” 

“Right, Tommy and Billy,” Wanda points out her boys to the woman. “They wanted to be here for your granddaughter,” she explains. 

“Oh they are so kind,” your mom says. “This is my husband, Derek,” she places her hands on her husband's shoulder. He half stands to shake Wanda's hand as well and gives a polite hello. “I'm not sure if you've already met my daughter, Kate,” she gestures to Kate who is sitting across from her and behind Wanda. 

“No, but I have heard a lot about you. Rachel adores you,” she turns to Kate to get a read on the girl but it's clear she's in no mood to make pleasantries. She just wants to know that her niece is okay. Wanda doesn't push and surprisingly, neither does your mother. 

“Would you like to take a seat,” you ask Wanda when you realize that the two of you are the only ones standing in the middle of the waiting area. She nods and looks over at her family to see that there isn't a seat for her. But there is one next to you, leaving you in the middle of Wanda and Daisy. 

The latter of the two snuggles into your arms and laces her fingers with yours once you've settled in. Something about the gesture comes off more territorial than it does comforting and it makes you uncomfortable. But you don't pull away. You know that she has an insecurity when it comes to your friendship with Wanda, so you do your best to show her that she has nothing to worry about. 

An hour passes with a couple of updates and Pietro shows up with some treats for everyone to help them get through the wait. He talks with you for a bit and you thank him for showing up and for being kind enough to bring food for your family. “I can't take all of the credit to be honest. Wanda messaged me to see if I was able to drop some things off.” You look at Wanda who is helping her boys distribute the donuts and coffee to the members of your family who at first declined but after getting a speech from Wanda about everyone taking care of themselves they all realized how much they needed the treat. You can't imagine a better person to have by your side in a crisis. 

You look at Daisy and notice that she looks a little off as she stares at her phone. You excuse yourself from Pietro and walk over to Daisy. But as soon as you get close enough she stands while collecting her things and apologizes to everyone as she starts to walk away. You turn back, unsure if you should go after her or stay just in case the doctor sends someone out for another update. Jean tells you to go so you do. 

“I wonder what that's all about,” Pietro says as he gets close to Wanda. 

“Pietro, please. Now's not the time,” Wanda rolls her eyes at her brother's nosiness. He nods as he drops it. “Do you think we'll be able to convince the boys to let you take them with you?” She asks as she takes a bite of the donut. 

“No, but we might be able to convince mom to let me drop her off,” the two share a laugh as Pietro points to the woman who is nodding off in her seat. 

“Daisy,” you say as you chase her down the hall to prevent her from leaving but she doesn't stop. “Daisy, please talk to me. What's wrong?” You ask once she's guided you out of the building. “Daisy, come on. I want to be here for you, whatever you're going through, but we need to get back in there for Rachel. I can't be out here for too long,” you try to explain.

“Then go back inside, I didn't ask you to follow me,” she snaps back at you but she continues walking. You shake your head and take a glance back at the building before continuing to follow Daisy. “I can't do this. I'm not ready for all of this,” you overhear her muttering to herself. 

“What aren't you ready for?” You ask, confused by her rambling words. Daisy drops her keys and you're quicker than she is to pick them up. She asks for her keys. “Not until you tell me what's wrong,” you negotiate. You really don't understand what is causing this behavior from her. You wonder if it has anything to do with Wanda but you don't want to believe that's the case. You don't know if it'd be fair to the kids to have to cut them out of each other's lives for Daisy. She knows that your first priority is always Rachel and her happiness. 

“It was great meeting everyone, despite the circumstances, but my wife just messaged me about some cravings that I should get to her before everything closes. Rachel is a strong girl, she's going to be fine,” Pietro says as he starts to make his exit after engaging in light conversation with your father and his wife and even managed to get Kate to chat after a conversation with Anna's parents. Your mother is preoccupied with reading to the twins and although the pair of them claim to be too old for a storytime, your mom can be quite the storyteller. Pietro walks over to his mom and gently wakes her to offer her a ride home. 

She looks at her grandsons and shakes her head. “I think it'll be a good example to stick out the wait with them,” she says as she reaches up and lightly pats his cheek. “Thank you for asking, my sweet boy. I love you.” 

Pietro smiles and gives his mom a sweet kiss on the forehead. “I love you too, ma. I'll see you tomorrow,” he says before he walks away. Wanda catches up to him and she says something about walking him out and he smirks. “Who's the nosey one now?” He teases and she shakes her head. 

“All of it, Rachel, you, us,” Daisy says as tears start to stream down her face. “I thought,” she takes a shaky breath as she runs her fingers through her hair, “I thought I wanted all of it. I swear to you, every time that I told you I was ready I meant it but… the way she fell. The reality that she could be gone in a split of a second. I froze. I froze when none of you did. I can't be a parent. I can’t be a parent,” she mutters the last part to herself a couple of times and you try to get her to look at you again to keep her from spiraling. “I cannot be another parent to Rachel! I'm not even ready to own a dog or take care of a plant. Oh I've killed so many plants. So many dead plants. And Rachel, she isn't a plant. She is a person and I can't,” you cut her off with a hug to stop her rambling. 

“Okay, shhh, shhh. It's okay,” you try to soothe Daisy as she sobs into your arms. “No one is asking you to be another parent to Rachel. She already has two mom's. She doesn't need-” 

“That's the thing, she doesn't. She has Wanda too.” Daisy holds her hand up to stop you from denying it. “I know what you're going to say. That it's not like that with her. But Rachel isn't her child and she was the first one to rush to her aid! She fought for her safety and I couldn't stop recording. She has instincts that I don't have. That I don't care to have. Not right now.” Daisy says and you don't know how to respond. You can tell her that you froze too but that won't mean much because you did eventually move. You can say that she's not expected to be a parent but you don't know how many more ways you can say it. “Wanda was able to get her family out here to support you and Rachel and I can't even get my dad here. Because he does hate you and he doesn't support us being together. Let's face it, I don't belong here. You and I… we don't work.” You open your mouth to try and come up with an argument but you fall short. You can't think of a reason for her to stay. This is the out that you were searching for months ago. A piece of you doesn't want this to be the end but it's not big enough to stop it from happening.

“So, this is it?” You say with a frown looking down at her keys and tears burning your eyes. No matter what, it hurts to say goodbye to a relationship that you've managed to maintain for months longer than you thought you could. 

“It has to be,” Daisy wipes her face with the back of her hand. You nod and hand her the keys that you held hostage.

“I understand,” you clear your throat. “Thank you for reminding me that I'm still young,” you say as she takes the keys. “And for letting me love you.” Her lips twitch at your words and she gives you a tight hug. 

“Please let me know when she is okay but after that… Please don't contact me. I'm going to need the space to get over you,” she says as she pulls away. 

“If that's what you want,” you reply. Daisy nods as she confirms it's what she wants. You walk away as she climbs into her car. You don't turn back because the thought of watching her leave is too painful. You don't want to experience the reality of it. Wanda is sitting on a park bench that is near the front doors of the hospital. “Hey you,” you greet as you get closer to her and try to hide the way you wipe your tears. “Didn't expect to see you out here,” she explains that what started as walking her brother out turned into her needing some fresh air as well. “Mind if I join you?” She nods as she scooches over to give you more space. 

“Everything okay with the girlfriend?” Wanda asks, sensing that whatever conversation that was had, wasn't a good one.

“Ex-girlfriend,” you correct, causing Wanda's eyebrows to shoot up and eyes to widen. “And everything is good with her. I think,” you look out into the parking lot and think about how scared she looked to be here. “I guess my reality finally spooked her and I don't have it in me to convince her to stay. It's not fair to tie her down to all of this,” you gesture to the hospital where your odd family lives. “Not when she has the option to leave.” 

Wanda nods in understanding. “Technically, even if she did marry you and have a kid with you, she'd always have the option to leave,” she states as she thinks back on this evening when Vision chose to take his other family on a vacation instead of staying even one night to watch her boys perform. She knew how important it was for Billy to have his father there. Tommy won't ever admit it but he was also excited to perform for his dad. “People aren't ever without options. We just make choices and learn to be okay with the consequences,” both you and Wanda turn to look at each other as she talks. “Whatever those may be.” 

You take in her words and nod slowly. “I never thought of it that way,” you admit. The two of you get quiet as you let the concept sink in.  “I heard Vision couldn't make it to the show,” you say conversationally. Wanda nods to confirm but doesn't elaborate on it further. She doesn't want to talk bad about her ex-husband anymore but he makes it so difficult. “Billy was really great on that stage. The kid is wicked talented,” you compliment and it makes Wanda smile. 

“Wanna know a secret?” She asks and you answer that you do. “He is named after William Shakespeare. I don't know how to explain it but ever since he was growing in me I had this image of him being wildly successful on stage and even on screen but mostly stage.” Wanda admits and it makes you smile a bit.

“That mother's intuition is strong with you,” you state and she shrugs. 

“I don't know how true that is,” she combs her hair with her fingers. “All I know is that you're the first person to see that potential in him. More than that, you’re the first person to get him to see it in himself.” You don't recall how you did such a thing and Wanda can sense your confusion. “When you complimented his dancing that one night, he took it to heart. I've seen that boy hurt himself time and time again to be more like his brother and get approval from his father but I think you got through to him.” She looks out to the parking lot. “I have never seen him happier and more free than I did tonight. Thank you for that.” She looks back to you and you give her a shrug this time. 

“I didn't realize I did anything so I won't take any credit for it,” you reply. “But thank you for telling me that.” You sigh as you look back into the building. “We should probably go back in there soon. There might be an update on Rachel.” 

Wanda agrees with a silent nod. “I could use a smoke right about now,” she admits and you scoff. 

“So could I,” you shake your head and look at the cigarette butts that litter the ground beneath the bench. “But I've been clean for forty-five days and I promised Jean that I'd stick with it this time. For Rachel.” 

“Glad to hear you're taking better care of yourself,” Wanda says. You ask if she's doing the same and she nods. “I never really had a bad habit of smoking, I've only ever done it occasionally. I don't think I've even opened the pack you gifted me,” she states as she stands up. “Okay, let's go back inside. We've been out here long enough.” 

“Alright,” you make a noise as you stand up and stretch. “Thank you for not asking if I'm okay,” you say with a small laugh. Wanda lets out a bigger one as she pats your back. The feeling of her hand on your back leaves a warm sensation.

“I didn't ask because I know you're not,” she says as the two of you walk into the building together. You find her statement as humorous as she does. The pair of you continue to talk as you walk back to the waiting area. Everyone looks at you when you return and you can tell that they notice the absence of Daisy but no one says a word about it. 

“Have you heard anything?” You ask Jean and she shakes her head. You nod and find a seat to get comfortable as the wait continues. As another hour passes with no update, everyone starts to get a little uneasy about what could be going on with the surgery. It didn't seem right to be waiting so long for another update. 

Your dad is the first one to start asking the nurses at the front desk for anything but he is told that if there's something to be told, someone will come out. Next it's your mom who believes she can be more persuasive. But she comes back with the same response. Her husband, Derek, who comes from money, thinks he can bribe one of the nurses to get more information but none of them take it and send him back to his seat with a threat that he will be removed from the hospital if he tries again. 

Kate is the next person to try and get information but she doesn't let anyone know that. She excuses herself to the restroom but as she walks around, she isn't looking for the restroom. She finds a clean set of scrubs along with a mask and scrub cap. From there, she makes her way to the locker room and finds a badge from one of the interns. She then walks through the operation hall and tries to find out where her niece is. When she does, she washes her hands before slipping in. She'll be damned if she compromises Rachel's health. Kate avoids looking at the table, unable to see her niece in that state of vulnerability, and instead searches for answers of the girl's condition. 

There are nurses and interns in the room that she notices are pretty chatty so she makes her way around the room listening closely and charming those that notice her presence. When she is able to get someone to talk about the patient on the table she tries to record it all in a notepad that she found when she was doing her snooping. She jotted all of the information down as if she was going to use it for studying later. But just as she thought she was going to excuse herself for the bathroom to leave, the intern she was chatting with asks if Kate will stay so that she can get a bathroom break. “I, well, um, I don't see why not,” she stumbles. The intern thanks her and walks out. She checks her smartwatch as seconds feel like minutes and minutes feel like hours. 

“Somewhere better to be?” The doctor says as he looks up from the table.

Everyone looks at Kate and she plays it off as though she doesn't know who he was talking to. “Me? No, no, I had sushi for lunch. From the gas station around the corner.” Everyone makes a noise as if each person in the room has had this made up experience. “Yeah, I probably should have listened to the warnings.” Kate holds her stomach and shifts uncomfortably. 

The doctor nods, “You're excused. Hopefully you don't make that mistake twice.” 

“Thank you, sir,” Kate says as she rushes to the exit to really sell it. She does stop at a bathroom to take a moment for herself before she has to sneak her way back out to her family. She looks over her notes again and again but hardly understands a word of it. So she calls Yelena to help her. Yelena isn't a medical student but she is the smartest person that Kate knows. The dial tone only goes twice before her friend answers. “I need your help,” she says before she explains her reasoning for the call. 

Together the two young women decipher the information that Kate was able to acquire. “You're a lifesaver, Yelena! I-” she stops herself from telling her friend that she loves her. She used to say it easily but since her feelings have developed further, it's become awkward. Especially after Kate tried to kiss Yelena. Her friend was sweet about it, and she said that if there was a person that she'd want that kind of life with it would be Kate. But as it is, she is asexual and aromantic. It's not something she can’t change about herself, it's just how she is. “I really appreciate the help. Thank you,” she says instead, then she bids her friend a happy holiday. She rushes out of the bathroom to get to the janitor's closet where she left her clothes. 

I can't believe I pulled that off, Kate thinks to herself as she straightens out her clothes. Without checking if the coast is clear, she steps out and bumps into a nurse. “That's not the bathroom!” Kate says to cover. The woman doesn't buy it and opens the door to find the scrubs in a pile on the floor. “Huh, I guess sex between the hospital staff isn't just for Grey's Anatomy,” Kate says as she looks at the scrubs as if for the first time. She smiles as the nurse makes a disbelieving facial expression at her. 

You are having a conversation with your stepdad about how he likes being in New York City when there is a lot of commotion coming from the halls. It's not until you and your mom and stepdad recognize Kate's voice that the three of you walk out of the area to see what's going on. She is being dragged out by two security guards as she swears that she only got lost looking for the bathroom. “I'll handle this,” Eleanor says as she follows the guards out of the hospital as they carry her daughter. 

You shake your head with a laugh as you walk back to your seat. Wanda asks what happened and you shrug and say that Kate must've done something illegal because she just got kicked out. “Are you serious?” Jean asks as she sits up from previously leaning on Anna’s shoulder. Derek confirms it and because the two of you are known for making up stuff at Jean's expense, she doesn't believe either of you until Eleanor returns to grab her things talking about how she has to take Kate home because they won't let the girl back into the hospital. Everyone has a laugh because they don't quite understand what has transpired in order to get Kate banned from the hospital for the foreseeable future. 

Eleanor leaves and it makes some of you laugh harder. It's clear that the stress of the situation has gotten to their heads but it's nice to have the moment that isn't overwhelmed by worry and fear. 

The moment is cut short, however, when the doctor clears his throat and addresses the room requesting the parents of Rachel Y/l/n-Grey.

Chapter 13

Taglist: @princessprudy @sayah13 @agaymilflover @awkwardmandalorian @bentleywolf29 @thatshyboy1998 @artisannat @thisischaismagic @wqndanat @madamevirgo @likefirenrain @tearsofglitter @feltlikethat @the-writer-arcane @natashasilverfox @karsonromanoff @aloneodi @lovelyy-moonlight @red1culous @jovialsublimecomputer @natasha-maximoff @iliketozoneout @doudouneverte @druggedduck @notbornbutforged @when-wolves-howl @lifespectator @justyourwritter69 @wandaromamoff69 @awesomelygayasf @nekoannie-chan @diaryoflife @wuwu96 @wandanats-goodgirl @sincerely-indi @blueredg52 @sisiwritesfanfics @fuzzyuniversityeclipsefriend @arcturusseer @scarlettwidow34 @chasethemoon @raven-ss @canyonyodeler @sokovianbaby @alexawynters @bittysworld @hopeless-romantic17177

[lowkeyrobin]

Omg I'm OBSESSED with your writing!!! Can I suggest RanbooxReader where reader is just very flirty to Ran and they just. Short circuit (in a /pos way)

Just wholesome, kinda romancey goodness, nothing suggestive of course :)

oooo yeah of course!! ; and thank you!! I'm so happy you like my content sm 🫶🫶 ; sorry this is so short, I've had 0 braincells recently and I'm halfway functioning

RANBOO ; short-circuit romance

summary ; you like to flirt with ranboo a lot, and it makes them freeze up sometimes

warnings ; language

word count ; 484

masterlist

"You're too sweet for me" You chuckle, "You're an angel, I swear"

Ranboo blinks and quickly looks away, trying to hide the red on their cheeks, creeping up their face and past their mask. You continue talking to stream as they try and factory reset themselves, attempting to make sense of your statement. As they try, it's apparent that they're flustered and confused, also trying to hide it from the stream and webcam in front of you as well.

They quickly excuse themselves, needing to "grab a snack" because they were hungry. Of course, you let them go, reassuring them that that their health and wellbeing was more important than the stream.

You notice the chat catching onto him, but you ignore it, thinking it was just typical shipping.

✮ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆｡°✩ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆｡°✩ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆｡°✩ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆｡°✩

A week later, Ranboo's back at your house to stream with you and some friends to play Monopoly. Tubbo sits across from you, Ranboo on his left, then Tommy on the final side. The board sits in the middle of the table, all of you sitting on the floor, on your knees, due to the short stature of the table.

You throw a hundred fake dollars at Ranboo, owing them rent on a space. "You're a bitch. A hot bitch, at that!"

"What does that even mean??" He asks.

"You're a bitch who's hot, Ranboo. C'mon"

They're left speechless, staring at you in confusion as you laugh, hanging the dice to Tommy.

Ranboo feels their face warm up a bit for some reason, finding the random compliment a little heartwarming.

✮ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆｡°✩ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆｡°✩ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆｡°✩ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆｡°✩

"How do I look?" Ranboo spins around, posing and whatnot in the doorway to your bedroom in a new outfit.

"Zoo-wee-mama"

"I'm sorry, what?" They laugh

"You heard me"

"I'm putting that on my goodnight post"

"Kay"

"You're a piece of shit!"

"Mkay"

"Oh my God"

"You love me"

"Yeah, I do, sadly"

✮ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆｡°✩ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆｡°✩ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆｡°✩ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆｡°✩

You, Tommy, Tubbo, and Ranboo had created a little home movie series and were now talking about your character dynamics now that five of the first ten episodes had been released. You and Ranboo sit on the floor in front of Tommy and Tubbo, sitting on the couch.

"No, no, no, it goes, Tommy is the moon, always revolving around the Earth. Tubbo is the Earth, never undershadowed. And Ranboo is the sun, he's just super fucking hot"

Ranboo freezes as they feel their face warm up a bit, unknowing of what to say as Tommy and Tubbo laugh and discuss with you.

"You good, Ranboo?" You ask

They merely nod as you see red creeping onto their cheeks. You smugly smile and get back to the blonde and brunette next to you.

[callmepelos]

The commission sale that I had planned in December and January was canceled for personal reasons BUT now it is back for February and March! (information about mini Gordon, Benrey and Tommy at the end of the post)

-Slot 1: -Slot 2:

(Payments only in US dollars)

These are NOT two permanent slots, when one opens I will announce that, managing two is much easier to handle refunds just in case

Extra pose and expression are $3 more (the default expression and first pose come with the initial price of $35, not only is the T Pose also a dynamic pose)

EDIT: if you want any accessories such as extra clothes, objects, jewelry, etc. that will have an extra cost of $3 to $5 (depending on the complexity, if it is very easy it may not charge you anything or if it is very complex it will cost over $5)

Waiting time one to two weeks (depending on the complexity of the character)

Before modeling we will work on the chibi design in drawing If you want, you can give me a specific chibi reference for your character, you can give me the references in T pose or you can send me just a drawing and I will take care of designing the reference in T pose (I won't start working until you are satisfied with your design, so Don't worry about asking for changes at this stage, the idea is that you like the design)

EDIT!!

If you want to add the Gordon ,Benrey and Tommy mini models to your commission it will be an extra $7 ,expressions are changeable, If you only want one of them it's $3 (I know you love Benrey and I don't judge you)

Thank you for reading!

[actual-changeling]

Whenever they have the chance, Ellie and Joel get matching clothes, usually sweatshirts.

The best places to find new ones are remote gift shops that haven't been picked over yet, but they will take anything they can get their hands on, starting a small collection. It's not clear who had the idea first, but they both love it more than they're willing to admit for exactly the same reason - it makes them look like a family, and, more specifically, the package deal they are. They don't actively coordinate their outfits, but if one of them wears a shirt they both have, the other one races to change as soon as they see it.

Everyone else finds it fucking adorable, not that anyone except Tommy would actually be brave enough to say it to their faces, but the people in Jackson like Joel and Ellie more than they know; it's the way they look at each other, really, the bubble of fondness surrounding them wherever they go.

Identical shirts pose one problem though, mostly for Joel. When they're scattered around their house, left on the couch or in his bed, slung over a kitchen chair, it's hard to see what size it is. Ellie loves wearing Joel's shirts, glowing with something adorably childlike whenever she does, but Joel cannot wear hers, and he has gotten stuck in them while trying to pull them on in a hurry more than once.

He complains to Tommy about it (with the biggest fucking smile, and his brother cannot for the life of him take his annoyance seriously), but he still comes up with a solution. After collecting all of their matching shirts, he commandeers their living room and stitches their initials where the clothing tag should be (Ellie hates them, they're itchy, so she cut them off). His embroidery is great, he even makes sure to use the right color schemes, and numb fingertips are worth the crushing hug Ellie gives him afterwards.

(She still steals Joel's shirts, just because she can.)