#can you see how fun making that scarf was? it was so fun

[sciencebecameouraddiction]

title: a thursday night outing

author: sciencebecameouraddiction

fandom: arcane

rating: pg

genre: romance

pairing: viktor x reader

summary: heading home to get ready for a fun dinner with mel, you find viktor who is blindsided by your impending absence, even though you told him like 3 times that week.

based off this Shorts skit loosely: https://youtube.com/shorts/yRAdhnj2oOc?si=uLdR4bdqTWNlgGIy

“darling?” i ask as i walk into the apartment viktor and i share. “are you home?” my voice echoes through the apartment, as if on auto pilot my hands work the scarf from my neck and place it on the stand near the door, along with my coat. i blink a few times as i slip off my shoes hearing no noise coming from the apartment. viktor should have been home by now and normally would be writing in his journal or making a cup of tea. sighing as my feet guided me to our room, a bit disappointed as i wanted to say hi to him before going out to dinner with mel.

i turn the corner into our room and go to the dresser, as i open the drawer for a change of clothes i don’t hear but more so feel a presence behind me, my body locking as if i was a deer in a bright light. i feel them getting closer and quickly my rational mind recognizes this must be viktor. i have just a few seconds to decide if his little plan was going to pan out the way he thought it would. i gently smiled and continued to grab clothes feeling his arms wrap around me. i hear his sigh and chuckle.

“i can never sneak up on you.” he says, pouting.

“i felt you behind me when you were near the bed, my love.” i smile and roll my eyes as i turn in his arms to finally look at him.

“how was your day?” the words come out as routine but i appreciate them nonetheless.

“it was good. i was just looking forward to tonight.” his brows furrow as i explain.

“tonight….?”

“yes, tonight! don’t tell me you forgot. i’m going to dinner with mel tonight. a little girls night, uninterrupted by council meetings or crazy inventors changing the world. just a night where we can have good food and talk about skincare.” a laugh falls from my lips as he looks mildly affronted and also completely disinterested.

“so, you are going to need to do whatever you normally do when i’m gone.” i laugh seeing the look on his face. “viktor, are you okay?”

“just… i forgot that was tonight so i am feeling a little… ehhh, blindsided, if I’m honest.” i nod as he looks like he’s going through five stages of grief realizing i wouldn’t be at home tonight.

“do you need me to give you some space or do you want a hug?” i ask as i pull back a bit, my hands resting on his forearms. his face falls into partial annoyance and disbelief.

“don’t “gentle parent” me.” i laugh as he still looks pouty and then looks at me. “a hug would be nice.” and as i lean in my heart feels too big for my chest as my arms wrap around him and i hold him close. my head buried into the crook of his neck and his in mine. i make sure that he moves to separate first, his grin content as he looks at me and then his eyes widen as he sees tears in my eyes.

“darling, what’s wrong?” his voice somewhat panicked.

“nothing. nothing.” i smile as a tear runs down my face and i hold his hand resting on my cheek. “i love you so much, that sometimes the… strength of my emotions feels like my body is incapable to hold onto a love this strong. a love this big. it feels like it is so much, but i delight in it because that love is for you.” viktor’s eyes widen and his face goes from worried to relaxed to a gentle smile.

“you know, i wouldn’t have believed that if you had told me that a year ago.” his hands grip my hips bringing me closer.

“i know. how can you accept love when it’s never been given to you freely?” i smile. “but i’m here now. jayce is here. we have so much love to give you that all you have to do is just stand there and accept it.” i kiss his cheek as he looks up, knowing that he was trying to make sure i didn’t see his eyes well up with tears.

“how about while i go to dinner, you and jayce hang out? and then when i get back, you and i can cuddle in bed and i’ll pick up reading that book we were almost finished with last week.” i ask, not wanting him to be alone.

“i can be alone, my love.” he levels me with a glance and i chuckle, it’s like he can read my thoughts.

“you can be, but do you want to be?” i ask.

“i’d like to read and wait for you to come home… alone. jayce would not shut up in the lab today so quiet would be much appreciated.” i chuckled at his exasperated eye roll.

“okay. okay.” i say as i turn to grab a last few garments before i get ready to shower. i hear him hum behind me and then rewrap his arms around my waist.

“you should definitely wear the black lace set.” he murmurs and kisses my neck.

“just for you.” i pull out the set and place it with the rest of my clothes. “do you mind keeping me company in the shower?” i ask, him knowing it’s not just me asking if he minded, i knew he didn’t. it was asking if he could, if he felt up to it and wanted to.

“i’d love to.” i smile at him as i took his hand in my left and grabbed my clothes in my right and we headed off to the bathroom.

“besides…. since i felt so blindsided about your outing tonight, seeing you naked will definitely help me get over it.”

“viktor!”

[atlaculture]

Hello!! Firstly, I love your blog, thank you so much for providing such useful and interesting information! Secondly, how was pirate culture in the Qing dynasty? Especially in regards to their clothes. I'd like to make an Earth Kingdom pirate oc, so I've been taking some inspiration from Jiang from the comics and Ching Shih, a famous pirate, but I'd love to see any information you could provide about this topic! Thank you!

What a neat question! The pirate culture during the Qing Dynasty was really interesting. Since I know I have a lot of historical fashion fans following this blog, I'll show you the inspiration board I created first and then try to connect it to the Avatar world. If you're interested in the history of Qing-era pirates or the greater context behind my clothing recommendations, you can click on the "Keep Reading" line.

So what might the pirates of the Qing Dynasty have worn?

Since Qing Dynasty pirates spent most of their time in the South China Sea and docked along the China-Vietnam borderlands--- both the Qing Dynasty and the Tây Sơn Dynasty had employed these pirates at different points in time--- they were likely a mix of Chinese and Vietnamese culturally, if not ethnically. Their clothing would reflect this, as well as incorporating fabrics and cuts that would be suitable for a tropical climate. In general, their wardrobe would be very Southeast Asian in style.

Since you seem to be designing a female OC, I figured I'd make a collage of clothing and accessories that a Qing Dynasty lady pirate might have.

Headwear

Khăn lươn (Vietnamese Women's Headwrap) - Used to keep hair neat and out of the way. It's like a halfway point between a turban and a hairband.

Khăn mỏ quạ (Vietnamese Women's Headscarf) - A bandana that Vietnamese women would wear over their Khăn lươn to shield their hair from the sun. It literally means "Crow's Beak Scarf", because the bandana forms a triangle shape at the front.

Mũ chữ Đinh (Vietnamese Military Officer's Hat) - Many Qing Dynasty pirates would offer their services to the Tây Sơn Dynasty (Vietnamese) navy. I can imagine some pirates wearing these hats as a spoil of war. The hat is showcased on the bottom left corner of the collage.

Nón lá (Asian Conical Hat) - A traditional hat that is commonly worn in Asia by any profession that labors outside. It's probably the hat most associated with East and Southeast Asia.

Đinh Tự (Vietnamese Women's Hat) - A giant, wide-brimmed hat made from dried palm leaves--- it's basically an Asian conical hat on steroids. Whereas the nón lá is relatively gender-neutral, the dinh tự is considered a feminine hat.

Tops

Yếm / Dudou (Vietnamese/Chinese Halter Top) - Fun Fact: Its original purpose was to keep the belly warm, as the stomach is the sea of chi!

Áo gấm (Vietnamese Tunic) - A thin overcoat worn over the yếm. It's often fastened with a sash.

Áo bà ba (Vietnamese Folk Shirt) - A lightweight shirt with slits on the side.

Suoyi (Chinese Folk Raincoat) - A cloak made out of local materials such as palm leaves and grass. It was also worn by laborers in Vietnam, Japan, and Korea.

Bottoms

Kangkeng Le (Thai Fisherman Pants) - They're from Thailand, but I've seen them worn in other parts of Southeast Asia.

Váy (Vietnamese Skirt)

Miscellaneous Speculation

Kiềng (Vietnamese Gold Necklace) - Traditionally, gold or silver Vietnamese/Chinese necklaces were solid rings of metal, rather than being composed of small chain links like European necklaces. I imagine a powerful Asian pirate queen would wear at least three kiềng necklaces.

Tattoos - Since Confucian cultures traditionally considered body modification (including cutting your own hair) to be a sign of rebellion and criminality, tattoos would be the perfect status symbol for an Asian pirate! For a uniquely Vietnamese look, you could try incorporating ancient Vietnamese (Dong Son style) patterns to your design. Alternatively, they could have "protection charm" tattoos on their body, to ensure that the spirits watch over them while at sea or during battle.

Cormorants (Fishing Birds) - Historically, the fishermen of China and Vietnam have trained these species of bird to catch fish for them. I think it would be really cool if your pirate OC had some bird companions.

Weapons

Going to lean into the Vietnamese influence for the weapons as well. Most Vietnamese weapons were heavily inspired by Chinese weapons, but with uniquely Vietnamese touches. Generally, these weapons tended to have more tapered blades, metal engravings with floral patterns, and rattan-corded grips with smaller guards compared to their Chinese counterparts.

Dadao/Trường đao (Chinese/Vietnamese Machetes)

Jian/Kiem (Chinese/Vietnamese Doubled-Edged Swords)

Changdao/Guőm truòng (Chinese/Vietnamese Two-Handed Swords) - Fun fact: These swords were really popular with Chinese and Japanese pirates during the Ming Dynasty, as well.

Niuweidao - I don't think there's a Vietnamese version of Oxtail Sabers. Anyways, I've discussed Zuko's trademark swords at length elsewhere. They're civilian weapons that look very pirate-y to me.

Who would the Earth Kingdom pirates be? How would they make a living?

It has been shown that their is a Vietnam analog in the EK, as I've posted about before. The Swampbenders have some Vietnamese inspiration, as well. So the main base operations for EK pirates might have been that EK village that Zuko and Iroh begged in. Maybe the jerk that Zuko stole the swords from was a pirate.

Considering that Froggy Swamp denizens and other Water Tribers would probably be marginalized by EK society, I think their would be good reason for them to become pirates. Especially since waterbending would obviously be a very useful skill to have at sea. Also, since the Northern Water Tribe is shown to be a bit sexist, I could see the surprisingly not-as-sexist world of EK piracy being especially appealing to the ladies of the NWT. As far as EK natives go, farmers and fishermen who've been displaced by the Fire Nation would probably also turn to piracy. Similarly, jaded or corrupt Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation naval officers might switch to piracy, as well. What drives a person to piracy would definitely inform their clothing choices and weaponry.

Like the real-life pirates of the Qing Dynasty, Earth Kingdom pirates likely have no national loyalties. If you paid them enough, they'd be willing to fight for either the Fire Nation or the Earth Kingdom. You also had to pay them off to cross their territory unscathed. Pirates raided merchant and military ships alike. For refugees who could afford it, they likely paid pirates to smuggle them into Ba Sing Se. Pirates probably also smuggled goods between nations, as well as drugs.

I also think Earth Kingdom pirates would worship water-related spirits, like Yue (+ the Ocean Spirit) or the Painted Lady. Perhaps they'd lay out offerings to spirit alters they'd have onboard or even "feed" the offerings to the seas themselves.

The Greater Context of Chinese Qing Dynasty Piracy

Who were the pirates of the Qing Dynasty?

The pirates of Qing Dynasty were predominantly made up of former farmers and fishermen. During this period, population growth in China lead to land shortages and many farmers lost their land either from being unable to keep up with rising taxes or outright theft from corrupt officials. Fishermen turned to piracy when fishing could no longer guarantee their survival, especially with European pirates and colonial ships invading their waters. In general, extreme poverty drove people to piracy.

Also, Chinese pirates were surprisingly more accepting of female leadership than men from more "respectable" parts of society. This is due to the fishermen roots of many pirates. Traditionally, when a fisherman died, his wife was expected to take over his boat and crew. Also, the two most prominent patron gods of seafarers are goddesses, Guanyin and Mazu.

What did these pirates do?

Qing Dynasty pirates were a unique fusion of bandit, mercenary, and drug smuggler. Obviously, if you planned on sailing through pirate-infested waters, you had to pay off the pirates to be left unscathed. Otherwise, your ship was getting plundered.

Qing pirates also offered up their penchant for violence to the highest bidder during times of war. In the 18th century, Imperial Vietnam would frequently hire and train up Southern Chinese pirates to assist their fleets during naval battles. Those who earned merit during these conflicts would even be granted official military titles. In 1857, the Chinese government would even employ these South China Sea pirates to take down the Portuguese pirates terrorizing their waters.

Finally, as Qing Dynasty piracy reached its epoch at the same time as the First Opium War, Chinese pirates participated in a lot of drug smuggling. As pirates have no loyalty, they had no issue serving as middle men in the profitable European drug trade.

Where were these pirates found?

The South China Sea was the stomping ground for Qing-era pirates, particularly the Gulf of Tonkin. In terms of ports and towns, they tended spend a lot of time in the border areas where China met Vietnam. Remember that these pirates offered their services to both Imperial Vietnam and Imperial China, so they didn't exactly have national loyalties.

[rekino2114]

Snowball fight with arei nageishi

Holiday post #7

Pairing:arei nageishi x gn reader

A/n:I don't really know what to say here but I wanted to fill the space sooooo arei is great....that's it

"Hey look it's snowing!"

You turned towards arei who was pointing at the snow outside through your window

"Oh yeah it is"

"Can we play outside?"

"Like in the snow?"

"Duh"

"Why?"

"Cause it's fun"

"We aren't children anymore"

"Oh what so only children can play in the snow now?"

You giggled and grabbed your coat

"Calm down I was joking, just make sure to dress warmly, I wouldn't want you to catch a cold"

"Yeah, yeah, don't worry"

She put on her winter attire, which consisted of a blue jacket, a beanie, and a scarf and gloves, and you did the same and went outside

"It looks beautiful"

Arei didn't answer you as she immediately feel into the snow and started making a snow angel while laughing

Seeing her so happy warmed your heart, so you decided to do the same. You went near her and started making a snow angel, too. Until you saw her get up and run towards the other side

"Hey what are you doing?"

"Having fun"

You smiled and got up, dusting the snow from your jacket. You were about to look back at arei when you heard her speak

"Hey babe, catch!"

"Huh-"

Before you could even respond you were hit with a snowball right in the face, when you shrugged off the cold sensation you looked up to see arei giggling to herself

"Hey no fair"

"Eh, did you think I was only good at bowling?"

"I was distracted, that's against the rules"

"Too bad, we didn't set any rules"

"Two can play at that game"

While arei was busy laughing you picked up a snow ball and threw it at her face instead

"Hey!"

"It doesn't feel good does it?"

"Tch"

She got mad and started throwing more snow balls. You tried to run, but she got you with her good aim, so you retaliated by throwing even more snow balls

The situation soon developed into a full-on snow ball fight, but your irritation very soon turned into happiness, you started laughing while hitting your girlfriend and being hit.

As you launched another snow ball you felt yourself getting tired, arei hit you once again and you decided to end the fight, falling in the snow in the same position you and the blue haired girl were in before the fight started

"Hey what's wrong tired already?"

You saw her face smirking at you as she held up a hand to help you get up

"Yeah, it's cold too"

"It's snow, what did you expect?"

"How are you not cold?"

"I dunno, I guess I'm just better at you"

"At handling cold temperatures. That's a very specific thing to brag about"

She giggled and laid down on the snow next to you

"Come on you know I'm just teasing you"

"Yeah, I know"

You closed your eyes and let the cold breeze and snow hit your face for a bit, you then felt a hand wrap around your gloved one, you opened your eyes and looked to your right where you saw arei giggling at the fact that she could see her own breath. When she noticed you looking at her, she turned towards you and stared back at you

"Oh yeah, thanks for letting me spend winter break with you, by the way?"

"Did you seriously think I'd let you go back to your family?"

"Fair"

You felt arei's gaze on you soften as she was thinking

"........still thanks"

"Don't thank me, it's the least I could do, you're the girl I love after all"

"......yeah, I love you too"

She kissed your cheek and licked a bit of the snow off your face

"Blergh! It's cold!"

You couldn't help but laugh at that

"It's snow, what did you expect?"

She laughed a bit too and sighed

"......hey you wanna go back inside and cuddle?"

"The cold is finally catching up to you?"

"Nah, I just miss you"

"OK, just remember we also have to do our homework"

"Eh? They gave us homework?"

"Yeah obviously, it's winter break,....you didn't know?"

She just stood up and started running towards the door, you sighed but smiled at her as you started following her

[leonidele]

Viktor nation, how are we feeling?

full ver under the cut:

[cirr0stratus]

just finished episode 6 of band of brothers!

ANYWAY

[cashmoneyyysstuff]

before katsuki left for his remedial classes, you tied his scarf for him once.

"oh, wait !" you exclaimed suddenly. katsuki looked at you curiously, scarf still in hand. you took it from him while he continued to watch, still confused.

you started tying the brown wrap around his neck. it has been getting colder, you thought it was cute how hard he was trying to stay in top shape. shows how much of a cool bad boy he was.

"lemme do it.." you mumbled, focused on your task. katsuki's eyes widened for a second, then he squints. "i can do it myself, dummy.." he huffs, but he doesn't make a move to stop you, especially with that look on your face. he quickly looks away shoving his hands in his pockets to hide how sweaty they're getting.

"i know that, just lemme !" you whine, he doesn't respond to you. clicking his teeth under his breath. you pat his chest once you're done. it doesn't take long, a few seconds. quick and effective, you smile.

"alright, you're all bundled up." he rolls his eyes, clearly not amused by your words and it makes you chortle. you lean up to press your lips to his, it only takes him a second before he reciprocates it, leaning into you so suddenly you have to grip at his uniform to keep your balance.

"i'm off." he breathes when he pulls away.

you nod "do your best, yeah ?" he nods back, then heads out.

it wasn't anything special. it only took you a few seconds, quick and effective.

a week later, there's a knock at your door.

"oh, katsuki !" you chirp "i thought you had your classes today ?"

katsuki stands at your door, making no move to come in. he has his usual grumpy look on his face, tilting his head slight. his scarf draped across his neck.

"i do, jus.." he cuts himself off, his eyes dart around to you, then peeking inside your room. "wanted to let ya know 'm heading off." he mumbles, ducking his head. he's grumbling so you can barely hear him, but you tilt your head when you catch his words.

"okay.." you utter wearily. you lean against your doorframe and he readjusts, shifting his weight from one foot to another with a huff.

you keep staring at each other. you're confused but he won't say anything so neither will you. he huffs loudly again, jutting his neck out to you.

"did you..need something ?" katsuki's shoulders drop the moment he hears the second part of your sentence. eyebrows furrowing. his mouth opens and closes, before he groans "s'whatever, forget it." shoving his hands into his pockets he trudges off, pink staining his ears. you roll your eyes.

"katsuki !" you call out, he stops immediately, glancing back at you slightly. you smile, walking over to him you spin him around. he's about to open his mouth to question you, but quickly closes it when he sees you reaching for the soft fabric around his neck.

you grab the ends of his untied scarf. slowly tying it for him "you'll catch a cold." you tease, tightly securing the knot. katsuki squints down at you, and when you look up at him he quickly looks away. he scoffs softly and you giggle to yourself at the glimpse you caught of his pink cheeks.

once you're done, you pat his chest. "there we go, all done." you hum. katsuki grunts, fiddling with one end of his scarf before dropping it. "thanks..'r whatever.." he leans in, "gimme' kiss." he mumbles quickly, but doesn't even give you any time to think about it before he already presses his lips to yours, you smile into it.

he looks down at your lips once more "'m off." he says lowly.

"have fun." you smile. your smile widens when he rolls his eyes with a scoff. "do your best, okay ?" he nods subtly, turning around and heading off.

"be careful !" you call out, he sends you an lazy wave.

katsuki tucks his nose into his scarf the moment the outside air hits his face, he inhales and his eyebrows pinch together at the cold. but he thinks he catches a whiff of your perfume on his scarf, he thinks about your hands on his chest and he feels just a little bit warmer.

he'll get you to tie his scarf for him again next time.

[shy-writer-999]

All Bark, No Bite?

WARNINGS: MINORS DNI. NSFW CONTENT.

A/N: Mostly smut. ~4500 words. Strawhat reader (afab) x Ace, who is visiting the ship for a while. When Ace finds someone who can match his banter, what goes down? ( ´ ω ` )

CW: dirty talk, fingering, P in V, prone bone.

All Bark, No Bite?

The flirtation with Ace had been getting ridiculous recently. You’d both been dancing around the idea of fucking each other senseless for weeks. Part of the fun was the teasing—Ace felt like he was going to explode any time he saw you, and his presence stoked a fire in your core any time he was around. The banter itself was enough to make him hard and you wet, respectively. And sure, you’d make out a couple of times, he’d gotten handsy (with your eager consent), he even fingered you once—but these events happened once every blue moon, and your brief trysts never got past that threshold.

At one point the suggestive back-and-forth and lingering touches transformed into shameless horniness. Any chance he’d get, Ace would make you blush, whisper sweet nothings in your ear, and then he’d turn around and talk about how he was going to fuck you into oblivion someday. You were counting down the hours until the perfect moment presented itself, and, of course, it did.

You shot Ace one too many lust-filled glances one night, and he couldn’t hold back anymore. You were wearing the shorts that you knew drove him rabid, so short that he got a tiny peek of your ass cheeks (Sanji loved the shorts too, coincidentally). Combined with your tank top and the shape of your breasts more visible because you weren’t wearing a bra… Ace could feel himself going feral.

He was sitting next to you at the dinner table, while the rest of the crew was rowdily laughing at Luffy almost choking on a chicken bone because he had scarfed it down too fast. Leaning to the side, Ace murmured something your ear. At the same time, his hand crept under the table and squeezed your thigh.

His comment wasn’t completely out of left field—earlier that night, he complimented your shorts, and you responded something along the lines of “Oh yeah? Wanna see more?” He had rolled his eyes at you in the moment, saying (sarcastically) “mmmhmm, sure” but afterwards he was shaking his head and laughing at himself over how viscerally down bad he was for you.

So, when he leaned over and whispered the following comment in your ear, you giggled. “How much you wanna bet that I’ll fuck you better than anyone has before?”

Now you were the one rolling your eyes. “Fat chance, Ace. In your dreams.”

“What, you don’t want to?” He feigned surprise and hurt, keeping his voice low and hushed.

You gave him an annoyed look and cocked your head slightly. He knew you wanted to. It was fucking obvious.

“It’s not that I don’t want to, Ace, it’s just that I think you’re all bark and no bite. Best dick I’ve ever had? Yeah right.”

A grin took over his face, nose scrunching up just slightly, those adorable freckles winking at you. “You want to find out?”

“I know you want to.”

Ace got up without a word and went to wash his now empty plate. You were puzzled at the lack of response, staring at his back, annoyed, until he turned and flicked his chin in the direction of the hallway. Message received. He put his plate on the drying rack and then sauntered down the hallway in question, disappearing as he turned a corner.

You got up and took care of your plate, following in Ace’s footsteps from a couple minutes before. As you left the dining area you sent Robin and Nami a small wave. Robin smiled and Nami gave you a wink. They knew they would hear every detail later.

When you walked down the hallway, you figured Ace would either be in your cabin or his (guest) cabin. Your door was open, light on just how you left it, Ace he was nowhere to be seen. So, he must be in his own cabin. But as you approached, you could see that his door was ajar, and it was pitch black inside. When you reached the room, you cracked the door some more and peered in. “Ace? Where the fu—”

Mid-question, a hand reached out of the darkness and grabbed your wrist, pulling you. You couldn’t see anything—the shutter on the room’s porthole was pulled shut, the light turned off. The only thing you could feel as you groped around in the dark was Ace’s hand on your wrist, which pulled you closer to what you assumed was the bed. You could hear the muted sounds of blankets rustling in front of you. He let go of your hand.

“C’mere.” His playful voice was a couple feet in front of you.

“I’m trying to, but I can’t fucking see anything!” You snapped, fumbling around in front of you until your foot hit his and you toppled over. He caught you by your waist and guided you down to straddle his lap.

“If you would have waited a minute, I would have given you a light.” He flashed a finger, a small flame burning on the tip. You saw his gorgeous smile just barely before he extinguished it. As his grip grew tighter on your waist, he purred, his face centimeters away from yours. “I want you.”

“I know you do, Ace” you laughed at him. He knew you well enough by now that he could hear you smiling through your voice.

“Please.” His voice was so sweet and pleading, veiled notes of desire behind his honeyed tone.

Leaning forward, you gave into a temptation that you knew would only lead somewhere hot and steamy (and you had no problem with that). It had been far too long since you locked lips.

You’d never get over how soft his lips were and how good of a kisser he was. While the jury was still out on whether or not he fucked you better than anyone else, you knew for a fact that he kissed you better than anyone else.

The kisses started out tame, but you could tell how badly he wanted more. You cupped the side of his face with one hand and threw your other arm around his neck, pressing your body into his. Ace’s hands around your waist crept down and grabbed two handfuls of your ass—extremely accessible through those short shorts. You could feel his half-chub forming in his shorts, starting to press onto the denim that covered your crotch.

Ace’s tongue parted your lips and explored your mouth. Your fingers tangled in his dark hair and you could feel his erection, fully hard now, starting to slowly grind up into you. He was letting out puffs of air into your mouth, hands kneading your ass, pulling on it. You moved your hands from the nape of his neck and reached for the hem of your tank top. When you peeled it off, you threw it across the room.

Ace was about to start massaging your bare breasts, but you shoved his shoulders so forcefully he fell back onto the covers.

“Feeling feisty, aren’t we?” Ace’s smirk was almost as audible as the smug chuckle he let out.

“Don’t move.” You got off his lap and shimmed out of your shorts and panties. When you had freed yourself of them, you leaned forward to tug on Ace’s shorts and the waistband of his boxer briefs; he helped speed the process along, and pulled off his shirt while he was at it.

Climbing back on the bed, you straddled Ace, cowgirl style, as he watched you from below. You felt like he deserved to get teased a bit, since he had such a big mouth and cock. Adjusting so his cock was laying flat on your lips, you started rubbing up and down it, bare pussy grinding on his shaft. At the same time, you braced yourself on his abdomen with your palms. You used his washboard abs for leverage, to adjust how hard or soft you grinded into him. Ace’s hands alternated between squishing handfuls of your ass to gripping your hips tightly.

Ace took one of his fingers and held it before you, a small flame dancing on his fingertip again. The light cast red tones and shadows on your body—he felt a sense of reverence as he watched you grind on him, head thrown back, like you were something holy, some work of art ripped from the frame of a renaissance painting or a sculpture from classical antiquity brought to life. Your hair, your curves, the way you braced yourself on him, the way your hips rolled ever so slightly to elicit the most pleasure from him… he was in denial about how intensely and ardently he liked you. He was obsessed with you, entranced by you, he couldn’t get you out of his head ever since he started spending time on the ship. Your flirting sessions and the occasional horny tryst were killing him inside because all he wanted was to be close to you. Sure, he wanted to fuck your brains out, but the feeling he got while he admired you in that muted light was something akin to awe. The moment felt surreal. He extinguished the flame.

“Princess, I won’t be able to take much more of that.” His voice was strained.

“I’m just getting started, Ace, sheesh. Don’t get too excited already, big boy.”

The feeling of your clit rubbing up and down, snagging on the head of his cock sent ripples of pleasure through both of you. It was so easy to get off when Ace was underneath you, like putty in your hands. He was trying to keep his groans back, trying to push them down in his throat; he didn’t want to give you the satisfaction of knowing he was enveloped in pleasure after less than five minutes of this. But the precum was already leaking out of him, a fact that did not escape you as you grinded your core on his shaft.

“Fuck, baby, you’re killing me.” He croaked, his voice was almost hoarse. He wanted to fuck you immediately—either that, or he’d need to finger you or eat you out, ASAP. He couldn’t take five more minutes of this. He was going to cum soon if you kept it up, and if he came before he even got the chance to fuck you, he knew he’d never live it down.

“Oh, you’re falling apart already Ace? Weren’t you just saying you’d fuck me better than anyone I’ve ever been with?” Your tone was scornful, but you knew he’d get off on that. He loved any sort of sass or brattiness, he liked whining and begging, too, and his heart went crazy inside any time you made pathetic and pleading puppy-dog eyes at him.

“So, you just want to rub yourself on my cock forever and you won’t even let me fuck you with it?” Ace always returned your sass tenfold. His deep voice was incredulous and almost mocking you, but for some reason it felt like he was doting on you.

“Mmmmhhmm, Ace, and you’re just going to have to deal with that.”

He finally let out a groan. It was feeling dangerously good. Concerningly good. The slick oozing out of you and coating his shaft wasn’t making things any easier.

Ace squeezed his eyes shut and tried to control his breathing in an attempt to fend off the mounting desire-filled craze that was about to overtake him.

“You’ve got about thirty seconds left before I fuck you senseless, darling.” He practically growled at you—his voice sounded different; more desperate, deeper, and gruff.

You quipped back scathingly with a laugh, continuing to glide back and forth on his cock leisurely. “Ace, you’ll cum from me humping your dick before you even get the chance. I’d like to see you try.”

In a split second, everything changed. Because the room was pitch black, the only thing you could go off was the sensation of being thrown around.

Ace grabbed you by the waist and flipped you over, almost knocking the wind out of you. Your stomach was flat on the bed now and Ace was on top of you, his cock throbbing, pressing on your ass. His body was almost completely flush with yours, except he was bracing himself with a hand on either side of your head. His knees were outside of yours, firmly pressing your legs together.

“What was that?” He murmured, close to your ear. “You’d like to see me try?”

You let out a muffled sound, having to pick your head up a bit to be audible amidst the plush covers and blankets. “Yeah, Ace. Try.”

He reached a hand down to push your thighs apart slightly. Combined with you arching your back, he had better access now. He crept his hand down to your core and swiped two fingers through your folds—you were dripping wet, and when his fingers touched your bare folds, your hips bucked inadvertently.

“Now who’s the one gettin’ all worked up, sugar?” He taunted you, repeating his movement down your lips and to your clit a couple more times.

You rolled your eyes, like he could see them. “I’m hardly worked up, Ace. You’ll be able to tell when I am.”

“Oh, is that so?” He teased and slowly inserted his middle finger, his palm coming to rest on your skin. You were so wet that his finger slid in without any resistance. Your walls clenched around him. As he curled his finger and explored your insides, he pressed and roamed, trying to find your sensitive spot.

Now, you were the one trying to stifle your own sounds of pleasure. You feared that you were the one who was all bark and no bite—if his mere finger felt this good inside of you, who knows what it’d feel like when his cock was buried as deep as it could get.

Sure enough, Ace found your g-spot quickly and started relentlessly applying pressure. Your hips jerked up every time he pressed it, and you started to feel so good that your sighs and muffled groans were turning into full-blown mewls. You were one good g-spot press away from moaning his name with reckless abandon.

Based on the way you were squirming and clenching around his finger, Ace could tell that he could make you cum within a couple minutes if he kept going. He was painfully aroused; his cock was aching for friction. He wanted you so bad that it hurt.

He took his finger out and leaned down more, pressing his chest on your back, positioning his cock right at your entrance. He ran his tip up and down through your folds, rubbing it on your clit for a second before returning to tease around your slit.

“Fuck, Ace,” you moaned his name for the first time and he felt his heart stop. “I want it.”

He felt like being a dick. Now that you were under him, sopping wet and moaning his name, he wanted to take his turn playing the part of the bratty tease.

“What was that, pretty? Couldn’t hear you.”

“Fuck,” you groaned in frustration. He was going to drive you insane if he didn’t put his cock in soon. You were dying for it. “Ace, I want you. Now. Please.”

That was all he needed to hear before he started to press his tip through your folds and into your cunt. He was stretching you out and it felt so damn good. Your walls shuddered around him and his cock twitched in response. When he bottomed out, his chest was pressed directly onto your back, weighing you down so much that it was difficult to catch a breath. Ace's weight, his cock, and the feeling of him breathing on your neck all constituted an overwhelming sensation. In that moment, you would have done anything he told you to.

“God, you’re so fucking tight,” Ace rasped in your ear, sending goosebumps all over your body. He held still for a moment to feel you pulse around him and listen to your heartbeat below him.

“Ace, move,” you whined. You tried to move your hips up and down, desperate for him to start bringing his cock in and out. You were growing impatient. You could only handle so much teasing before you would start begging pitifully.

Ace obliged your entreaty, dragging his cock out of you slowly and then plunging it back in forcefully. He angled his hips down, getting the deepest possible angle that he could. His body was caging you in, hips pressing into yours. The weight of his body and the angle made you feel tighter and made his cock feel bigger than it already was.

He pulled out again slowly and plunged back in, hard and deep. You yelped and it turned into a moan. “Ace, fuck.”

“Nngghhhh, fuck, Y/N, your pussy is so tight.”

“You—already—said—that,” you struggled to spit out each word as he fucked you.

“I’ll say it as many times as I want,” he smirked in your ear and plunged into you particularly rough. Filthy sounds of pleasure left your mouth as a response. He was fucking you so well that you were beginning to lose touch with reality.

“Do you like that? Do you like when I fuck you like this, sweetheart?” His sugar-coated voice and the pet name went straight to your pussy. Every time he called you one of those adoring names he could feel your cunt pulse around him—your body was telling on you, letting him know how much you liked those affectionate names, even though you would never tell him how much they made your heart flutter.

“Gonna fuck you ‘till you can’t even talk,” he grunted between each word, pulling out slowly and fucking into you franticly the whole time.

You moaned into the sheets in front of you, grabbing handfuls of them and balling them up into your fists. The dirty talk continued from Ace as he got continuously more riled up. He knew you loved it.

“So wet for me, sweetheart,” his voice was rumbling from his chest and into your ear—you could feel it vibrate on your back as he thrusted into you. “Taking it so well. Taking it all for me. So fuckin’ hot.”

As Ace fucked you harder and deeper, he targeted your g-spot, drawing more pleasure from your already dripping cunt. He felt hot and stiff inside of you, and every time his tip and shaft pressed your sensitive spot like it was a button. Your toes curled in ecstasy and your thighs clamped closer together. Each progressive clamp of your thighs let Ace go deeper.

“Tell me how much you like it, baby,” he cooed, breath hot on your ear.

You didn’t know if you’d be able to squawk out a coherent sentence. But you were going to try, or else he would have something else to smirk over.

“F-feels so—so good, Ace, feels like—” your words got caught in your throat and turned into a sort of strangled moan, a noise so primal it made Ace feel like he was going crazy.

“My cock feels so good you can’t even talk? You like it that much?”

You clumsily attempted a nod, stopped by all the covers you were currently getting fucked into. A mewl would have to suffice.

“Aceee, fuck,” the noises were muffled, but Ace knew exactly what you were saying. It fueled him, goaded him into fucking you harder. He wanted you to melt in his touch completely, wanted your eyes to roll back into your head in pleasure. He wondered how good it would feel when you screamed his name and came on his cock. He was determined to find out.

“Your pussy feels so good on my cock, baby, juuussssttt like that.”

Ace slowed his hips down, exercising every bit of discipline he had to glide his cock in and out as slow as possible. For you, this speed was simply unacceptable. You needed more so badly that you were about to scream for it. Was he trying to edge you?

Right as you were going to feebly attempt to snap at him to fuck you better, you realized that he was leaving a trail of gentle kisses along your shoulder blade. He kissed up to your neck, kissed down your back as far as he could reach in this position, showering you in unexpected affection. It made your heart stop for a moment. Sure, he was cheeky and insolent in most interactions (in a way that you liked), but you always suspected that he really did have a soft spot for you. You could see it in his eyes whenever he spoke to you.

Ace slowed down his panting so he could murmur lightly in your ear, “God, you’re so fucking beautiful.”

Vivid shades of pink and red started to spread over your cheeks. One of his hands crept towards yours and came to rest on top of it tenderly. You released your fistful of blankets and he intertwined his fingers through yours.

“So gorgeous it hurts,” his breath tickled your ear. He squeezed your hand, fucking you at a snail’s pace.

Holy shit, was Ace… making love to you? Was he funneling his affection towards you, letting you know how much he deeply cherished you, all while fucking your brains out? It seemed like the answer must be yes. Your heart did a flip.

“Ace,” you keened out, your blush and his adoration going to your head. You lifted and turned your head as much as you could amidst the plush blankets, so he could hear you better. “I want you.”

He squeezed your hand. “I know you do.”

Ace sped up his thrusts again, his grunts and groans filling the room along with your sweet sounds of pleasure and the wet sounds from your cunt. His hips rolled, his weight bore down on you, your gummy walls pulsed around his cock—you were both on the verge of orgasm, holding on for dear life. He desperately wanted to make you cum first. The thin façade of bragging rights aside, he just wanted to make you feel good. He wanted to wrench heaven from your core and see you writhe in pleasure from his touch—he wanted the satisfaction of knowing he did that.

Every pass of his cock in and out of you was mind-blowing. Oblivion was approaching, quickly. His pace was becoming haphazard, messy, and frenzied.

“Ace, Ace, I’m—I’m gonna cum, feels too good,” you whined.

“Go for it, doll, wanna feel you cream on my cock.” His voice was barely going in one ear and out the other; it gravelly and deep, coursing through your veins like blood. But you registered it enough to know that he wanted you to let go for him.

One good thrust later and you were riding the wave of all-encompassing pleasure so intensely that you felt like you were going to pass out. You started to squirm—he had brought you to your peak and pushed you over it, into a free fall of desire and bliss with no end in sight. The pitch black of the room emphasized the maddening euphoria crashing through your body, it coaxed sounds out of your mouth that you’d never heard before, ones you didn’t know you could make.

You moaned Ace’s name on repeat—screamed it, almost, and every time Ace heard that noise grace his ears, the coil inside of him tightened. Feeling you writhe under him, feeling you squeeze the ever-living fuck out of his hand, feeling you arch your back and your walls pulse… It was too much.

The coil inside of him went rigid and snapped. Ace convulsed, jerking his hips and bucking them down into you. “Fuuccckkkk, Y/N, fuck.” Pulling out of you with heaving breath, his cock shot milky white ropes that painted your ass and lower back.

Ace felt like he was floating. He came the hardest he ever experienced—he didn’t know it was possible to cum this explosively or feel this good.

He collapsed onto his side and positioned his body next to yours. Your gasps for air and heartbeats were in sync as you both came back to earth. You laid there for a moment.

Ace lit another tiny flame on his finger and studied your face. Your eyes were closed, mouth hanging open, pressed against the bedsheets. Your cheeks were ruddy, lips just as pretty as he remembered.

A smiled dusted your lips as you opened your eyes, half-lidded, to see him inches away from you. Ace’s eyes reflected the small fire burning in between you, his lips curled into that heart-twisting grin that always gave you butterflies.

He extinguished the flame, reached over, and started to pet your back. His hand moved to smooth down your hair. “Hey gorgeous, how you hangin’ in there?”

“Wow.” You exhaled, breathless. A beat of silence passed. “What was all that about?” You were still smiling, blush creeping up your cheeks, threatening to take over your whole face.

“What do you mean, pumpkin?” His tone was puzzled.

“The lovey-dovey stuff...”

“Oh.” He paused. “Don’t you know how much I like you? I may tease you but I really, really like you.”

“Stop it, Ace. You’re making me blush.”

His hand resumed smoothing your hair. It passed down to cup your cheek. He rubbed a circle on your skin with his thumb.

“What’s so wrong with making you blush?”

You didn’t answer. He leaned over to kiss you. Again, you’d never get over how good his lips felt pressed on yours. Any time they met it was electric.

“One second—let me get you cleaned up sweetheart.” Ace got off the bed, grabbed a towel, and wiped his cum off your back. His touch was soft, treating your body like it was precious. He got back into bed.

“Come over here.” Ace’s voice was tender.

You turned onto your side and scooted closer. He threw an arm over you and held you to his chest. You cozied up to him for a long time. His chin rested on top of your head, you curled into his chest, heard his heartbeat, and felt the weight of his arm squeezing you closer.

After a moment he started to chuckle.

“Ace, what? What are you laughing about?” The sass started to trickle back into your voice.

“So, did I fuck you better than anyone has before? Am I still all bark and no bite?”

“Shut up.” You rolled your eyes. “I guess you’re all bite.”

“Mmmm, that’s what I thought.” He kissed the top of your head and held you close, with that cocky grin plastered all over his face.

(✿◠‿◠) ଘ(੭ˊᵕˋ)੭* ੈ✩‧˚ (*^_^*)

thank u so much for reading!! MAD shoutout to @acesluvrxx for the very detailed, and dare i say magnificent, request!

here's my masterlist, if you're interested!

[where-does-the-heart-lie]

Revolutionary Army Punk AU

Ft: Luffy (not punk)

Steampunk is cool but i think just straight up punk would be cooler. I just think what they stand for lines up a lot better

Design notes:

I did some research and talked to a punk friend of mine for these as i am not a punk, myself, and I dont want to look like a poser. I think i did a really good job translating them and i want to explain my thoughts!

Sabo was first, of course.

I not only wanted to make the characters punk, but i also wanted to crank their designs up about 20 notches, so i gave Sabo’s scar one hell of an upgrade. In this version I tried to make it very clear that that cannon ball hit him head-on. I think it works really well with his punk vibes because under-cuts and shaved parts of the head in general are very popular in punk culture.

I largely tried to keep the silhouettes the same with this au, and It was really easy to keep it with Sabo because of the fact that he already has a lot of design elements that translate well to punk. His big pants into tall boots were perfect to translate, crust pants and steel toed boots fits him well. Trench coats arent a staple in Punk, but i couldnt take the coats away from him… him or Belo. They deserve it…

I threw away his cravat for a choker, i replaced his vest with a red tank top and his undershirt for fishnets, Patches up the wazoo, he looks very cool.

Belo Betty was next, she was super easy to translate. She’s already in the punk spirit with her tits out, we love to see it. Her hat was really difficult to translate, along with all the other hats, but a red knitted hat that has those two points cuz it’s essentially a scarf sewed together looks nice on her.

My punk friend suggested i give her a bunch of nets and harnesses and i really agreed that was her style, so i gave her red tie to Morley, slapped some harnesses on her and just overall just turned her sexy up like 50 notches. I think i was clever how i adapted her striped stockings here with how they have runs in them.

Karasu is almost the exact same. I just threw out his dinky little cravat and gave him a bandana and harness. I also gave him piercings. That’s the only difference. In the words of my Punk friend “hes naked and wearing a spiked mask, He can hang”

Speaking of what my punk friend said, he said that Lindbergh would get “demolished” in the pit, and that he looks like he’s scared of bees. The consensus was that he couldn’t hang. But also i still had to make him punk, so then he suggested CBGB punks:

Redneck, bluegrass, southern american punks. I was really in a rut with his design, I didn’t know what to do to keep the silhouette of his backpack. But everything changed when I chance got the idea of a guitar. And then everything flowed from there

Morley was really really fun. Punk friend suggested i make him Pop Punk, inspired by this pic

Mainly Lindsey way with this plaid skirt and tie

He was so so fun to draw, i love his fucked up eyes.

For dragon, i didnt change much at all, even though it’s only his bust that’s shown. Imagine everything is the same, except now he has piercings. Dragon isnt concerned with the punk fashion, but the punk cause.

For Luffy, I wasnt trying to make him punk, but he felt a bit plain looking like base Luffy next to punk Sabo, so i just did the “turn design up 20 notches”, and just gave him a more visibly tattered hat, bangles and waist beads.

That’s about it! Ive been getting a lot of comments and asks lately saying that you guys like when i go on my design explanations, and i realized that i didnt do that for the last few AU’s, so i thought id type this up :)

Thank you for reading!

[twilightkitkat]

Can we talk about the dynamics of Logan "I eat anything and scarf it down immediately" Howlett and Wade "I only eat the same 10 foods in different fonts" Wilson?

Logan is used to living without. Even as a child, he had to get by when he was sick with the food his family could afford. Once he joined the military, he had to survive on the limited rations he was given. He didn't have room to be picky—he either ate what he was given or didn't eat at all. And in war, he had to eat eventually.

His preferences didn't matter. He was always treated as a soldier, a weapon, and his food reflected that. He'd get enough protein and carbohydrates to fuel his power but that was it. Food was for functional use, not to be enjoyed. It didn't matter if it tasted disgusting, he just inhaled it so the taste wouldn't linger.

He's also an extremely quick eater. He's feral and ravenous when hungry, tearing into meat with his claws and hands. He lived in the army, in the mountains, through the Great Depression, and in dangerous situations where he hunted for himself. To him, food is a scarce resource and if you don't eat it while you can, you might not have it tomorrow. So he takes gigantic bites and tears into food no matter how bland and unappealing it was because that's all he knows. His standards for food are just that it has to have nutrients and not be poisoned.

Wade, on the other hand, is more picky. If he had to choose between eating something he hates or not eating, he'd rather just starve. At first, in the army, he did eat what was given to him even if he disliked it, but it was purely for survival. He choked it down even when it made him vaguely nauseous and disgusted. But later, he'd hoard stashes of his own food that he managed to steal or barter for or bet on. It was better to be hungry most of the time than satiate his hunger temporarily only to fight to keep it down and feel sick the entire day.

The second he has the freedom to pick his own food, he sticks to things he knows he likes. That he feels comfortable with. He's picky about brands and specific types of food and how it has to be cooked or made, but he manages. He can normally find something on the menu he's OK with, even if he often has order a kid's meal. But most places have grilled cheese sandwiches and chicken tenders and macaroni, and people chalk it up to him being childish and silly, so nobody pays much attention.

Wade sees food as one of the only things he can control. He's been devoid of true choice for most of his life. He couldn't control getting cancer or being forced to turn into a horrific mutant. He couldn't save his relationship with Vanessa. When everything around him was collapsing, he hyperfixated on the little things he could control like food or clothing.

The two, together, learn to have a healthier relationship with food.

Logan was the first person to truly pay attention to Wade. To see which foods he liked and which he picked at and grimaced towards when nobody was looking. When Logan abruptly said he'd cook dinner one day, Wade was nervous, but nearly started bawling when Logan made homemade chicken tenders and macncheese. He noticed. He cared.

It was the first time Wade could be open and let someone see he was genuinely affected by food instead of him just playing it up as a lunatic. And Logan took him seriously and didn't make fun of him. He learned recipes to make the foods Wade liked but healthier and more balanced. He helped Wade finally get the nutrients he needed consistently without feeling sick to his stomach.

And Wade helped Logan too.

Logan was never allowed to have preferences. To have a sweet tooth or ask for more. To expect quality. But here Wade was, buying him some apple cinnamon-filled pastry just because he looked at it too long in the store.

Logan was never allowed to have dessert. To have sweet food just for the sake of it even after a meal. His eyes become wet as he clutches the pastry between his shaking hands and takes a bite. He's allowed this. To have the comforts in life. To eat just because it tasted good.

Someone cared about him enough to buy him what he wanted just because he'd enjoy them, not just to keep him functioning as a tool. Wade treated him as human. Like he was precious. Like he deserved the nice things in life.

And Wade reminds him of this. He stocks their kitchen with desserts that Logan likes, because he knows that Logan secretly enjoys sweet things. He sees the way he sniffs the air and wanders close to the fresh-baked goods of a bakery. He keeps snacks around the house, so Logan can eat whenever he want. Even if it isn't a "necessary meal."

And Wade learns to be more comfortable and try new variations of foods he likes that Logan makes. Because Logan knows the textures and flavors he hates and is somehow able to create a few new dishes entirely that he likes. He stops dreading mealtime or trying new foods. And Wade feels comfortable just trying the food without pressure, knowing that he can just not finish it if he doesn't want to and that someone else will.

And Logan learns to let himself enjoy eating again. To see it as less of a chore for the maintenance of his body and more as an enjoyable activity. Wade reminds him that he can eat just because he wants to and that it's OK to have preferences and ask for things. Logan feels well cared for. Pampered, almost. And he basks in the feeling of being wanted and loved and being allowed to express it through cooking and food.

[lovebugism]

📼  ; ONCE BITTEN, TWICE SHY | 1/2

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

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

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

( best listened with headphones, full fic playlist here )

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

          she lives in the place in the side of our lives

          where nothing is ever put straight . . .

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

Being a vampire sucks.

No pun intended.

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

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

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

No pun intended.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Steve’s face screws. “No.”

“Damn.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Nice one.”

“Shut up.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Effortless. A total cakewalk of perfection.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“They stop running here at six-thirty.”

You swallow, face screwed.“Why?”

Eddie shrugs. “Beats me.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That he’s not hungry at all.

That he’s still normal.

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

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

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

If the Chief takes mercy on him, anyway.

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

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

He lets you revel in your little nothings anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The boy shrugs. “You wouldn’t be.”

“No?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That makes… a lot more sense.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Does he?” Eddie hums indifferently.

“When I wear my bikini, yeah.”

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

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

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

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

“Why do I do what?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I mean, yeah, but—”

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

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

“About what?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why?” he wonders with pinched brows.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Right,” he hums with a slow nod.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Steve Harrington was right. What the hell was that?

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

         oh, how could i ever refuse?

          i feel like i win when i lose . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s Hellfire?” you wonder aloud.

“Book club,” Eddie lies.

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

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

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

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

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

Dustin frowns and flashes the makeshift sailor his middle finger.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re not a burden,” Eddie blurts.

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

“No?” you echo in a mousy voice.

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

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

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

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

You chuckle to yourself, feeling silly about it now. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

         under those white street lamps,

         there is a little chance they may see . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The boy relaxes against the pillows with a shuddering breath.

Jim waits until then to interrogate him. 

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

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

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

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

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

Hopper squints. “What girl?”

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

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

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

“No… I don’t think it is…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hiya,” Eddie grins cheekily.

“I… I didn’t know you were coming.”

“I didn’t either, honestly.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your brows pinch. “Why?”

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

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

“Wait!” you blurt. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

          this is stranger than i thought,

          six different ways inside my heart  . . .

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

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

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

“Morning!” you chirp like a songbird.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Fair enough,” he huffs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well, I told you I would.”

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

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

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

You don’t miss a beat. “He’s so shy!”

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

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

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

“It’s the Pointer Sisters,” you grin.

“I’ll take your word for it.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“In the knees?” you quip.

“Looks like it.”

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

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

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

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

“That was mean!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You are bizarre. Did you know that?”

“I did, actually,” you giggle. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Everythin’ alright?”

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

He flinches when you gasp. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

          i guess you’re just what i needed,

          i needed someone to bleed  . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just the biggest one, maybe. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your touch is soft and warm and less than gentle.

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

You ramble an explanation while his skin buzzes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Abandoning me for a week is an emergency.”

You light up like a goddamn Christmas tree at that. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Billy laughs. Loud. 

“Of Munson?” 

You nod quietly, straw caged between your teeth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s that look for?” he cautions.

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

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

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

         only boys who save their pennies

         make my rainy day!

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

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

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

Benny ends up throwing in free fries for the effort.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Exactly!” Dustin huffs, flailing his arms.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Billy Hargrove?” he monotones.

“Ha-ha.”

“Heather Holloway,” Robin tells him.

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re such a boy,” Eddie scoffs.

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

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

“Yeah,” Robin answers with a disbelieving sigh.

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

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

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

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

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

“She’s working today. Billy said so.”

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

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

“She’s not my girlfriend, Mayfield.”

“That’s beside the point.”

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

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

“You’re already dead, Munson.”

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

          hey, you, with the pretty face,

         welcome to the human race!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you were around, he’d know it.

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

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

“Barbie?” Eddie finishes flatly.

“Yeah.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“So!” you chirp. “Family trip?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Barbie?” you echo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Uh… no.”

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

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

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

“Rude,” Eddie scoffs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You told me to say it!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which, of course, only makes her laugh harder.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No running, please!” you shout sweetly to the pudgy middle school-aged boy on the other side of the pool. (His babysitter always brings him here so she can sunbathe, and he’s always roughhousing in the deep end. Billy’s developed a personal vendetta with him over the summer.) 

The suddenly quiet pool returns to its deafening chaos a second later.

You flash Adam a cheeky smile. “You were saying?”

“I was saying that I’ll take it out of your paycheck,” the man bites, angled jaw clenched tight. “You’re already on thin ice. Understand?”

Your lip juts in a feigned pout. You nod slowly, eyes wide like a puppy he’s just kicked.

“One more strike, and you’re cleaning toilets, newbie.”

“Ah, I knew that’s what this was all about…” you lilt seductively, lips curling into a mischievous smirk. “You just want to see me bending over—”

You lean closer toward him until your spearmint breath fans across his chiseled jaw. Your bottom juts out in Eddie’s direction, until he can see the very bottom of your ass from beneath your pleated skirt. It makes him as flustered as Adam the Asshole, who stalks off on long legs quickly after, sufficiently embarrassed.

You laugh at the back of him until he disappears into the crowd again. The bubbly sound ceases the moment he’s out of earshot, and your smile ebbs into a girlish pout. “Dickwad,” you mumble under your breath.

You recover from it all rather quickly while Eddie struggles to remind himself to breathe. His mind reels as he, for the first time ever, grapples with the very real possibility that he might actually be in love with you. Or that you’re not real at all, and that this is just Vecna’s doing — long gone but still putting visions in his head somehow.

He doesn’t know which is worse.

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

         oh, what a strange magic!

         oh, it’s a strange magic!

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

The golden-orange sky turns a milky pink and lavender. Eddie’s friends, sunburnt and sufficiently pruned, don’t leave until the first star blinks faintly in the sky. The rest of the crowd goes with them, bustling bodies spilling out in a swarm.

It takes the rest of the gang several long moments to realize Eddie isn’t behind them. (You told him you forgot your sunglasses, and he offered to get them for you, ‘cause he’s nice like that and everything.)

(He doesn’t know the sunglasses are currently hiding in the pocket of your windbreaker.)

“What, where’s Eddie?” Dustin wonders aloud to the rest of the group, head flitting wildly in search of the misplaced metalhead.

“He went to the bathroom, I think,” you blurt the first lie you can think of. “He was talking about a nervous tummy or something. I don’t know.”

Steve scoffs like he senses a non-truth. “So, he’s leaving me with babysitting duty again?” he quips with a cynical, lopsided smile. “How predictable.”

“You say that like we’re the spawn of Satan or something,” Lucas jokes.

“You aren’t?” the oldest boy deadpans.

Dustin flips him off with a chubby finger and a flat face.

They bid their leave tangled in mindless arguments and lanky limbs. You watch them leave with the understanding that Steve’s 733i will be a tighter fit than it should be, crammed with a bunch of rowdy teenage boys. You feel sorry for Max and Robin most of all. 

Steve’s car peels out of the parking lot one moment, and Eddie returns the next.

“I couldn’t find your sunglasses anywhere,” he confesses sheepishly, face twisted like a puppy’s as he scratches awkwardly at the back of his neck. “I don’t know. I think some asshole might’ve stolen ‘em—”

“Oh, no, it’s okay,” you shrug with a tightlipped smile. “I found them in the, uh— In the lost-and-found bin.”

“Oh. Okay. Cool,” Eddie stammers, nodding slowly, just before a smile tugs at his lips. You watch from beneath your lashes as the subtle realization curls on his face. “You had ‘em the entire time, didn’t you?” the boy wonders in a low voice that makes your stomach do whirl.

“Yes,” you squeak in a mousy voice, then ramble before you can stop it. “But only ‘cause I wanted everyone else to leave! You know, so we can have a real date and everything…”

“As opposed to the fake ones we’ve been having?” he jokes with pinched brows.

“Exactly,” you nod, strikingly sincere. ‘Cause the constant carpooling and melted rainbow sherbet dropoffs had to have meant something. 

“As tempting as that sounds, sweet thing,” he humors, scrunching the bridge of his nose. “I do think I might be actually coming down with sunstroke.”

You turn your head wordlessly to the entryway of the shack. There’s only a sliver of the night sky visible from here, but it’s navy blue and sparkling with so many little stars. You look back to Eddie with a dubious glint in your eye. “The sunset twenty minutes ago, Eds.”

“Yeah, but… I’m still sick.”

He removes his hand from the pocket of his leather jacket and balls it into a fist over his mouth. He coughs once, trying hard to make it believable ‘cause he hasn’t been truly sick since the winter of ’84.

That’s perhaps the only cool thing about being a vampire — he’s basically got Superman’s immune system now.

“Well, I actually learned how to treat sunstroke while I was in training,” you lilt with an air of mischief in your voice as you take a daring step closer. The scent of sunscreen and cheap musky cologne clings to his skin. Something about the combination of the two is maddening.

You’re filled suddenly with the primal urge to bite into him like an apple. But you refrain, lest you scare him off.

Eddie’s caught in a similar dilemma, but with perhaps realer consequences than that. Your natural marshmallow-passionfruit scent suffocates him like a pillow to the face. His fangs threaten to force their way through his gums as his head starts to swim.

He ignores every vampiric instinct swirling in his mind and focuses, instead, on the pretty smile curling at your lips.

“Bet ya didn’t know that, did ya?”

Eddie swallows hard and shakes his head. “No, I— I don’t think you ever told me that,” he stammers, then clears his throat when the words get stuck there. He puts both hands back in his jacket pocket, balling them into fists until his nails bite into his palms.

“First, you gotta take off your clothes—”

“You’ve been trying to get in my pants all day,” the boy laughs. “You realize that, right?”

“—And then you gotta cool off in a very luxurious community pool.”

Eddie gets what you’re playing at, then. His smile ebbs almost instantly. “No,” he dismisses with a stern shake of his head. His deep chestnut curls, frizzed with the late-summer humidity, sway around his jaw. “No. No way.”

“Oh, c’mon! Please,” you whine. “The pool closes in, like, half an hour— Then it’ll just be us! We can swim together!”

“I don’t know how,” Eddie whines back, head tossed and face screwed. “Seriously. I grew up in a trailer park. No one ever taught me how to swim, alright? I’ll drown.”

Something about that seems to please you, as your pout curls slowly into another smile. You meet the boy’s wet brown eyes with a gaze that glitters something wicked.

Eddie can see your head spinning with a thousand bad ideas from here. His heart would race at the thought of getting into trouble with you if it was beating still. 

You’ll bring him back to life yet.

“Don’t worry, Eds,” you shrug with a sure grin. “I’d give you mouth-to-mouth in a heartbeat.”

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

The pool glows a vibrant sapphire color. It makes the surrounding amber streetlamps seem dull in comparison. The water is as blue and crystalline as an early summer sky. Eddie figures you must be the sun, swimming in the center of it all. 

You wait patiently in the shallow end — out of both your windbreaker and pleated skirt for the first time in front of him — and swipe your hands over the water, letting it drip like liquid diamonds from your fingers. You hum quietly to the slow song playing on the boombox across the way, which now houses the mixtape you made that Eddie seems to take with him everywhere. 

The boy shifts uncomfortably at the head of the pool, feeling awkward in the pair of swim trunks you found for him in the break room.

You’ve never seen so much of him before. His paper-white legs are a lot longer than you expected, ‘cause his baggy jeans hardly do him any favors. And his arms are a lot muscular, too — likely from moving band equipment and bussing tables.

He’s already so pretty to begin with. You don’t know what he’s got to be such a Nervous Nelly about.

Eddie knows he’s making it harder for himself. It’d be a lot less awkward for the both of you if he just took his shirt off and jumped in the water. But he’s paralyzed by the misplaced panic that strikes that lightning in his chest. And by you, ogling at him like he’s a pretty thing that deserves to be ogled at.

“Stop staring,” he calls to you, pretending to be playful but meaning every bit of it. “It’s makin’ me nervous.”

“Would it make you feel better if I closed my eyes?”

“Much.”

You put your hands over your eyes, to make him feel better and all. Though, you can’t help but peek between the slivers of your fingers as he strips himself of his Corroded Coffin tee.

His torso is as long and lean as you imagined, with sprinkles of hair on his chest and the pudge of his tummy that trails into his borrowed trunks. You try very hard not to stare too long at the gray scars embedded in his pale skin.

Everything seems to come easier to him when you’re not looking at him. He slides the black fabric off his pale, pale torso, tosses it to his feet, and hurries to hide in the water in one fell swoop.

The chlorine makes his nose burn, but the water feels like satin on his skin. It’s soft and warm and smooth against the cold, sharp edges of him.

“You can open your eyes now,” Eddie scoffs when he notices your hands still over your eyes. He can see you blinking at him through the slits in your fingers. “I know you’re peeking.”

“I was not!” you gasp, mouth agape with a playful offense.

“Well, you weren’t exactly being discreet about it, sweet thing.”

“These are very nefarious accusations you’re making, Eddie Munson…” you scold with arched brows and wide eyes. The water ripples faintly around you as you stalk towards him like a predator to prey, eyes narrowed in a challenging squint. “Are you prepared to back them up?”

The boy cowers slightly under your unwavering stare. “I don’t like the way you’re looking at me right now—”

And he was right not to. ‘Cause you’re lunging suddenly towards him in a flash.

The water splashes violently around you as you wrap both arms around his neck and sweep him off his feet. Literally. You kick his legs out from underneath him, then catch him before he can fall completely backward. Both his downfall and his savior, ironically.

“Ha!” you shout in his face, the tip of your nose brushing his.

“Jesus!” Eddie gasps in response, still heart lurching in his chest.

“I asked if you were prepared!” you defend like you’re innocent, like you aren’t still cradling him in your arms — the only thing keeping him from going under.

“Not for this!” he yells back. 

Only then is he able to take a good breath in. He can smell the velvety scent of your blood from the achingly close proximity. He can feel your heart beating in his own chest from where you’re pressed so intently against him. It makes him instantly dizzy.

He fights back the primal urges that would otherwise drive him mad.

“Jeez…” he huffs, fangs burning. “You’re a lifeguard— You’re supposed to stop people from drowning.”

“Yeah, but no one ever needs saving,” you whine. “It’s so boring.”

His chocolate button eyes flit back and forth between both of yours. “You tryin’ to save me, sweet thing?” he jokes.

You squint. “Is it working?”

“Yeah, actually… If you let me up now, at least.”

He’s grateful when you do, though he mourns the lack of you when you step back a few paces.

His damp hair sticks to his skin when he rises to full height. He shakes his head like a dog, and you giggle when a few rogue droplets fly your way.

“You have freckles on your shoulder,” you observe distantly, eyes darting across the faint amber spots on his pale skin as you try to make constellations out of them. “I didn’t know that ’til now.”

Eddie’s lips jut downward as he peers at his arm from the corner of his eye. “Not really,” he shrugs.

“You do!” you insist. “There’s not many, though. I could probably count ‘em if I wanted.”

“Maybe on our second date.”

“I didn’t know you had a tattoo here, either—” You poke him in the chest, a little harder than you probably mean to. 

Eddie winces and rubs his palm over the fading black widow under his collarbone. “Well, you don’t know everything about me,” he quips. “I like it that way. It keeps you on your toes.”

Your face pinches into a girlish pout. “Only ‘cause you never tell me anything.”

“I tell you loads of things,” Eddie laughs.

Your frown deepens. “You never told me about the picture of Ozzy Osbourne you keep in your wallet.”

“…How do you know about that?”

“Dustin told me.”

“Of course he did,” Eddie huffs. “Remind me not to tell that little shit anything ever again.”

“You never told me about how you got those scars, either,” you blurt, eyes trained on his milky white torso. Beneath the clear, rippling water, you can see the parts of his supple stomach that are marred and turning pink.

You don’t realize what you’ve said until your gaze flits back to his startled one. Your eyes widen as you ramble quickly, “You don’t have to! I’m not trying to… I’m just— I’m just saying. ‘Cause, you know, Steve has the same ones… On his ribs…”

“I’m not even gonna ask how you know that,” Eddie jokes with a (mostly) feigned jealousy.

“Billy does, too. He’s got the same lookin’ scars on his chest,” you continue. “And then I started thinking, you know? I thought, since you all know each other and everything, maybe something happened to you guys. Like, in the earthquakes or something.”

Eddie swallows hard and debates on spilling his guts. 

He swallows his secrets down like bile, in the end.

“Yeah. You’re— You’re not too far off, actually,” he answers with a breathy, bitter laugh. He scratches at the back of neck, if only to busy his anxious hands, and flits his gaze to the velvety night sky.

The blinking white stars there ground him when the world starts to swim — reminds him that he’s on Earth, in Hawkins, and not in the hellscape he died in.

That was his final thought as he took his last breath that spring. How strangely fitting it was that there were no stars in the Upside Down.

“We, uh… We kinda went through hell and back, but, uh… ‘Least lived to tell the tale, right?” Eddie scoffs at himself, then remembers Chrissy — how young and full of life she was one moment, and how her wide blue eyes were sucked out of her skull the next. He recoils then, feeling like he’s said the wrong thing. “Wait. That was— That was insensitive. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“What are you talkin’ about? You’re right,” you assure him with a quiet, emotionless laugh. “You guys survived. You got lucky. We all did.”

Eddie peeks at you beneath his lashes, through the wild curls sticking to his face. “Where were you?” he murmurs. “When… When everything happened?”

“Crying into my milkshake at Benny’s Burgers,” you answer without missing a beat. The memory’s far too vivid for anything else.

A laugh sputters from Eddie’s throat. He’s sure you must be joking. You blink at him like an owl, and he goes solemn all over again. “Oh. You’re… You’re serious?” he mumbles.

“Yeah, I was… feeling sorry for myself over something stupid, and then the ground started shaking outta nowhere— like the universe was trying to say, ‘Hey, this could be soooo much worse, dude,’” you ramble quietly to yourself, skimming your fingers over the water’s surface. “…But then I found out people actually got hurt and everything, so I was like, ‘Oh, maybe I shouldn’t make this about my stupid broken heart, actually.’”

Eddie’s tight chest deflates with a wavering exhale. He didn’t know you back then, but something about knowing you were okay makes him feel better. ‘Cause, yeah, he died and all, but he couldn’t stomach the thought of Vecna taunting you.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” the boy confesses in a honeyed whisper.

A soft smile quirks at the edges of your lips. “I’m glad you’re okay, too, Eddie Spaghetti.”

Your hand reaches out for him. Almost instinctively. Like he’s a whole universe with his own gravitational pull.

Your palm settles soft and warm on the outside of his torso. Your thumb grazes the marred skin over his ribs, and Eddie tenses at the foreign feeling. You jerk back instantly.

“Oh. Shit. Sorry,” you stammer, face twisted apologetically. “I didn’t— I should’ve asked first.”

“No. It’s— It’s okay. Seriously,” Eddie assures with a rapid nod. There’s a faraway look in his chocolate eyes, almost like he’s daydreaming. He feels like he is, anyway. ‘Cause he’s never let anyone this close before.

“I just… I wasn’t expecting it. That’s all.”

Do it again, he says in so many words. Please, I think I might need it.

You reach for him again, more hesitant this time. Your hand settles over his scars again, and you breathe hard through your nose.

Your stomach twists with a phantom sort of ache, like you can feel every ounce of the pain he surely experienced back then. Thinking about how hurt he must’ve been makes you hurt, too.

Eddie can see it written all over your face. How much you ache for him.

He can’t stand it. 

He cups your cheeks between trembling, unsure hands. His touch is softly calloused and colder than ice. He tilts your jaw gently upward, urging you to meet his gaze once more. Your eyes are wet and glittering when they lock with his heavily lidded ones. Your mouth parts to say something, anything. But your brain doesn’t work fast enough.

‘Cause Eddie's kissing you before you can blink.

He tastes distinctly of nicotine and boyhood. Of midnight, full moons, and neon lights. You can feel every groove in his bottom lip from where he picks at it with his teeth. Every sensation is new to you, like cool sparkles of excitement in the pit of your tummy, but it’s strikingly familiar all the same. Nostalgia for something you’re experiencing for the first time warms the center of your chest.

You breathe hard through your nose. The gust of air tickles Eddie’s cupid’s bow as he parts from you, lips smacking apart in protest.

Your eyes, still yet to blink, remain wide and glazed over. “Whoa…” you sigh to yourself.

Eddie’s unsure of how to gauge your reaction. His face swirls with horror.

“What?” he mumbles, still cradling your face between worried hands. He can’t tell if your cheeks are heating or if he’s just colder than usual. Perhaps both are equally true.

“Nothing,” you answer quickly, still slightly faraway. “I just… I got a weird sense of deja vu just now…”

The boy forces a quiet laugh. “Who else have you done this with?” he quips.

“No one!” you blurt. “…But I think I might’ve dreamt about this once.”

“Really?”

“Definitely.”

“Was it better than you expected? Or should I just see myself out now—”

You lean forward to chase his mouth. The cerulean water ripples faintly around you. Your lidded gaze never wavers from his rosy lips, which you’re realizing now are all but begging to be kissed. You don’t know how you never noticed it before.

Eddie’s smiling too wide to respond appropriately.

“Why are you laughing?” you frown.

“I’m not!” he responds through breathy chuckles.

“You are—”

Eddie leans forward in a flash, pressing another chaste kiss to your pout.

You’re all smiles again the second he pulls away, bursting at the seams with a sort of giddiness that could give the sun a run for its money. 

He knows, somewhere deep down, that he shouldn’t make you this happy. He doesn’t even deserve the chance. But here you are anyway, smiling so wide at him that your eyes are starting to crinkle at the edges — showing him that there’s still sunshine in the dark, reminding him what it means to be living.

“Does this mean we get to do this forever?” you wonder in a mousy voice.

“What?” he chuckles. “Kiss?”

You nod wordlessly, blinking up at the boy with wide, wet eyes.

Eddie nods quickly back. 

“Then yeah…” he wavers, chest aching and gums burning. 

He loves you so much he’s gone hungry for it. For you.

He longs to devour you, in every way imaginable, and you want to devour him just the same. He can tell in the way you stare at him when you think he isn’t looking — in the way you stare at him even when he is looking — and in every one of your movements that urges him closer, closer, closer.

Your gaze is debilitatingly intense. Your attitude is mind-bendingly strange. You’re ruining his life, and Eddie can’t believe there was ever a time he wasn’t kissing you.

“Yeah,” he repeats, firmer now. “As long as you want.”

if you made it this far: i love you. so sorry for making you read something so long. i'd kiss you on the forehead if i could. also pls consider reblogging! this took me so so long to write, and it really helps a lot! thank u, love u (▰˘◡˘▰)

[crispy-bonnie]

MK1 guys attending the fair with their S/O

(Tomas Vrbada, Bi-Han, Kuai Liang, Johnny Cage, Kung Lao, Raiden, Kenshi Takahashi, Syzoth, Liu Kang)

i just need to write these down because oh my god they've been stuck in my head for too long

this also ignores canon a bit (cough cough lin kuei cough cough) because i'm delusional and refuse to believe anything that bi-han did was canon /lh [lighthearted]

also not proofread and just a bit ooc , just made this outta impulse

• • • 🍟

Tomas likes to go on the rides, specifically the more intense ones. He just finds the thrill of being tossed and turned around fun. He will do his best to comfort you if you don't do well on those kinds of rides and will even bring motion sickness meds just for you. Also please hold him whenever you're scared on those rides because it makes him feel so happy to know that you're willing to cling to him shdbsb

Tomas also enjoys the fair games a lot, the both of you trying and failing miserably to win the games and simply laughing about it. There was only one time he ever won a game, and it was only because he used a bit of his magic to toss the ring around one of the poles. Even so, it was a win in his book.

• • • 🍟

Bi-Han doesn't really care for the fair. He's only there because both you and his brothers dragged him along. However, he seems to lighten up just a tad when he sees you gushing over how adorable one of the prize plushies is. He wastes no time in buying play tickets and making his attempt to win it just to impress you.

He eats shit every attempt that he tries. Eventually runs out of tickets and gets mad so he just uses his cryomancy out of pure rage. The poor guy at the stall is scared shitless and just claims that he won before handing him the huge ass plush out of fear. Bi-Han immediately hands it to you and just smiles tiredly at your giddy behavior as the two of you walk away hauling the big ass stuffy.

• • • 🍟

Kuai Liang has you on a leash because you get lost easily. Either that or he's just worried about losing you in the crowds. The leash is most likely latched to some kind of bag or belt that you might be wearing. Whether or not it's you or him taking the lead, he always makes sure he's got a firm hold on the leash.

If you get distracted or overwhelmed, Kuai Liang will tug lightly at the leash to bring you closer whilst muttering 'C'mere' under his breath. He'll hold your hand to keep you from straying and as a means of comfort. If you're too overstimulated, he'll cradle you to his chest and shield your face from the noise, whispering sweet nothings and reassurances for you to focus on.

• • • 🍟

Syzoth has had very little experience with fairs. Closest thing he's gotten to one is the Sun Do festival, and he's only experienced it once. You'll have to guide him through a lot of the stuff. He doesn't really like the rides (aside from the chill ones) but will do his best not to projectile vomit acid anywhere if you do.

You two are strolling down the place while munching on some fair food when you spot a cute looking prize at one of the game booths. You decide to use some tickets to try and win one, but you don't seem to nail it. Syzoth offers to give it a shot, scarfing down the rest of the turkey leg in his hand (that both of you were supposed to share together) before trying it out. He wins, like- perfectly, managing to win you the prize in one shot while leaving some fairgoers and the vendor stunned.

• • • 🍟

Kung Lao is absolutely destroying all the food at the fucking stalls. It's a wonder how this mf isn't built like a 1x1 lego piece from the sheer amount he powers through. He likes to share portions with you so that you can have a nice taste of whatever high-calorie junk is being served.

Oh my god and don't get me started on the stranger sides of the fair food. Kung Lao would happily order the weirdest shit only to regret it two seconds later. Except for once. There was one time where he tried pickle drink, which is just pickles in Dr Pepper. To your misfortune, he liked it, and now it's something he whips up at home every now and then. I hope you like pickles.

• • • 🍟

Raiden prefers to just have a chill day with you, doesn't want to do anything intense. He just walks around with you, looking at the shops and such while eating some fair food or something. He doesn't go on any of the dizzying type of rides, and will simply watch from the ground if you decide to do so.

Even without all the thrilling shit, Raiden does his best to make it enjoyable, mostly through romantic actions. Like- my dude will get matching stuff for you, stuffed animals or treats with the cheesiest lines ever—it's like you two are on a first date with how he tries to treat you. You find it adorable, especially when he gets flustered after you return the favor.

• • • 🍟

Johnny Cage thinks he's an absolute legend at the fair games. He's really not, but he will always boast about it anyway. He'll most likely drag you towards where most of the games are and use his fuckload of tickets to play. If you point out a prize, he will absolutely fight tooth and nail to win the prize.

He never does and eventually the vendor gets so tired of his attempts that the guy just hands him the prize. Johnny will probably go on about how he totally won that while you simply chuckle and roll your eyes as the two of you move on. He also will be taking an excessive amount of photos during the fair—but that's pretty par for the course on anything with him.

• • • 🍟

Similarly to Raiden, Kenshi isn't very fond of the intense rides, especially the ones that spin a lot. He just likes to stroll around and chill with you. He also doesn't really favor the games all too much, and if he does play, he's probably using Sento to help out.

Kenshi likes to hang around the animal-petting zoos, seeing as it's one of the few things he really can enjoy with his blindness. The two of you like to play this game where you hold an animal out to him or guide his hand towards one, and he has to guess what animal he's touching. The animals also seem to be very fond of him. Especially the fluffier ones.

• • • 🍟

Liu Kang is kind of a mix of Raiden and Syzoth. He doesn't really care as much for the fair than he does your happiness and enjoyment. He'll happily go along with you around the fair or on rides, except for the dizzying ones. He'll gladly try some fair food, play some games, all to see you smile.

While Liu Kang often chooses not to play any of the games, he's actually jacked at this shit. Point out a prize and he'll fuckin slam dunk that game like it's nobody's business before handing you the thing you were eyeing. He doesn't pay mind to the shocked stares around him, content with watching that grin of yours shine as you giggly thank him. He also likes to go on the ferris wheel—he finds it relaxing and it gives him time to just be able to sit in peace with you whilst the fair goes on from below.

• • • 🍟

[leahsgf]

LOSS - mcfoord

mcfoord x child!reader | ireland doesn’t qualify for the euros

little monster masterlist

the energy rippling through the aviva stadium could only be described as electric. the stands, filled almost to the brim by a wave of green, were almost shaking - the sheer noise of the fans bouncing off of every corner.

amongst the chaos and stress of the ireland fans, sat you, perched on caitlin’s lap in the designated ‘mccabe family’ box - a mini ireland scarf clutched in your grasp, and a flag painted on your cheek, now rosy with the sheer bitterness of the dublin air.

katie stood on the pitch metres below, proudly wearing the captain’s armband for her country, and doing what she does best - even if that meant making everyone watch whilst wincing as she teetered on the edge of a second yellow card within minutes.

even at two years old, you understood somewhat how important this game, and this team was to her. it was your entire life in fact - your mother’s bursting passion for her country was engrained in you, having been told one night as she tucked you into your ‘big girl bed’, in the softest voice, how much it meant to her to wear the green jersey, how her team’s hard work was slowly but surely paying off, and, how important it was that you pick ireland over australia, of course.

(the most katie mccabe bed time story imaginable)

and despite how much they both attempted to shield you from the pressure of football, and tonight in particular- you were very much sensing it.

“can you see your mammy down there? she’s doing amazing, like always” caitlin pulled your green (of course) ear defenders away from your head as she whispered in your ear, pointing down to the pitch - whilst rocking you softly, attempting to distract herself from the stress of the game as the minutes dragged on.

the match was only getting more and more intense, every single pass and tackle becoming a battle as ireland fought for a goal, for anything, and wales fought to hold them off. caitlin’s grip on you tightened as full time rapidly approached - leaning forward nervously, as if she could already feel the incoming devastation, as your little eyes darted around, watching every desperate throw in intensely (despite not having a clue what they were doing, you just thought it looked fun)

before long the final whistle blew, and the stadium fell into almost an eerie silence. even your family around you, who had been bellowing and singing the entire time - were completely mute, and that was something you’d never experienced before.

katie practically collapsed down onto her knees on the pitch as the reality sunk in - her face in her hands, sobbing - with many of her fellow players doing the same, their long awaited euros dream well and truly shattered. you simply couldn’t grasp why the cheers had stopped, or why they weren’t kicking the ball around any more.

“why mammy sad?” you turn in the australian’s arms, picking up instantly on her own saddened expression, your tiny voice sounding so loud amongst the quiet - almost piercing the tension with a knife.

caitlin’s heart ached, not only for her partner but also for you, breaking at the idea of explaining this to you when you’d been so excited for weeks about this - adoring absolutely everything that your mammy did, being her little double.

“she’s a bit upset because her team didn’t win.” she spoke gently, “she really wanted this, like she’s been telling you.”

you frowned, clutching your scarf tighter, whimpering slightly at the thought of her being sad without you with her to make it better.

“go there?” you point down to the pitch, shifting to try and climb down, leaning forward to grip the barrier in front of the seat - caitlin almost instantly pulling you back, earning a whine in response.

“let’s wait a little bit pudding, kay? she’s still on the field, we’ll go and find her soon, don’t worry” she stroked your hair softly, suddenly standing up with you balanced on her hip, taking you away from the seats and back inside, away from the chaos for just a moment, bouncing you lightly, knowing all too well that if you can see katie without being able to be with her for a second longer you’ll be quickly on your way to a meltdown.

-

after a short while, and the heartbroken ireland team slowly started to filter out of the locker room, not wanting to spend another minute drowning in the overwhelming sadness - katie remained planted in her seat. the sting of this defeat cut her particularly deep, not solely because of the loss, but also because of everything in her that she’d poured into this campaign, into being captain in general - the sacrifices, the hours of extra training, and the dreams of being the one to lead her country to something bigger, something they deserve - all of it.

sat on the bench with her head in her hands, her chest rose and fell unevenly, and tears continued to stream down her cheeks as every emotion under the sun swirled through her head.

the door swinging open broke her out of her train of thoughts - revealing a very concerned, almost tearful looking caitlin, with you bundled in her arms.

“katie?”

the irish woman’s head snapped up instantly, her red rimmed eyes meeting the piercingly blue ones of her girlfriend, getting lost in them like she always did. the mere sight of the pair of you - her family, of the little, now smeared ireland flag painted on your face, only made her tears flow faster, the remains of her resolve crumbling.

you wriggled in caitlin’s arms as katie stood up, collecting the remains of her stuff - not wanting to hang around anymore either, reaching out for her desperately.

her arms opened in an instant, allowing you to be passed over into them before even a slight whimper could leave your lips, burying her face into your tiny shoulder as she sobbed a little more, muffled by your warmth, holding you almost impossibly close to her chest.

“it’s okay mammy, no cry” you babble, your words accenting your wonderfully weirdly blended accent, patting her cheek softly, causing the woman to let out a shaky laugh through her tears. “you the best” your little brow furrowed as you continued, poking at the tears on her cheek, having not quite learned how to ‘wipe them away’ properly just yet.

“oh my sweet girl, thank you” she nuzzled her nose against your cheek, pressing a kiss to your forehead as the three of you made your way slowly towards the car, wanting nothing more than to just be away from all of this.

caitlin watched silently as katie buckled you into your car seat, tickling you softly and kissing your cheek, lingering for a second longer than usual, as if she was delaying the inevitable hard part, where she’ll have to process this without an innocent, clueless toddler to distract her.

“you’ve done so much, love, you’ve made them all so proud, you’ve made us proud. you’ve made that little girl so proud - all she’s talked about all day is you.” caitlin wrapped her arms around the irish woman almost immediately after she closed your car door, rubbing her back comfortingly.

“thank you baby, i needed that, thank you for being here. i know you’re probably exhausted.” she sniffled, knowing that her girlfriend flew straight from australia to dublin to be here for her - before moving around to the passenger side, an unfamiliar one to her - but she wasn’t in the headspace to be in charge of a vehicle, not right now.

the drive back to the hotel (that was more of a stopover before you all head back to london in the morning then anything) was an unfamiliarly quiet one, the mood that settled sombre in stark comparison to the constant loop of ‘baby shark’, a personal favourite of yours - that boomed out of the speakers in order to keep you content.

-

the evening drew in with a lot of tears and hugs from all three of you at different moments - curled up in the plush of the hotel bed, watching some disney movie you’d all seen a million times over - your parents trying to keep the mood fairly light for you, knowing the walls would come crashing down once you were asleep.

despite this, you could sense that your mammy was still sad. very sad. she usually was constantly playing with you, making you screech with giggles, even when you were meant to be getting ready to go to bed and calming down for the night, but tonight she was just quiet, barely saying a word as caitlin got you ready for bed.

“come on then sweetheart, sleep time for you, say goodnight to mammy” your mumma held you and your bottle in her arms, crouching down so katie can kiss and hug you softly.

“milk?” you ask, words muffled by the dummy between your lips as you hold out your bottle towards her, tilting your head - knowing that that was one thing that always made you feel better, and all you wanted to do was make her happy.

and with that, katie couldn’t help but smile, the loss sitting on her shoulder feeling just a little bit lighter.

“i love you, my beautiful little monster”

[artofchoisan]

RIDE OR DIE WITH ME COWBOY

Cowboy!San x Lost!Reader

The plot: A girl lost on a barren road in the desert of Mexico city and a man approaching her to help. Too cliche? Think again.

TW: DOM!San!, Rough cock riding, Rough Sex, Unprotected Sex, Spanking, Mockery, Teasing.

Words: 4.2k words

► ATEEZ MASTERLIST

Traveling all across the world with your eyes gazing across the wonders of nature all around and the myriad of flavors and adventure had always been a gift you’ve wanted to own, yet who would know that it would turn out to be the apple that had gotten Adam and Eve to be thrown out of heaven.

“Get a license they said, it will be fun they said.” You grumble and angrily kick the side of your car, broken down in the middle of nowhere, "I should’ve just stayed curious,” you mutter. “Now here I am, stranded."

The road stretches out, barren and lifeless, for kilometers under the scorching Mexican sun. This is one of the most dangerous countries you promised yourself you'd never visit, given the high risk of mafia activity. Now, anxiety and fear grip you, making you feel like bait on a hook. 

Going to Mexico was for the sole reason of visiting one of your sick relatives there and you took the opportunity of making the rounds of many of the restaurants and having a feast of getting a taste of the delicacies there, it was worth it but right now the fear that had you in a chokehold was getting the best of you.

One could mistake you for an old trucker as how the curses flew out of your mouth like a train, “My dad would be so pissed well let’s hope he never had to find my body ugh.”

Since heat reigned across the place, you’ve opted for some light clothing, jeans short and a tank top that showed your cleavage which God had been quite generous with you which you knew you’ve got nothing to complain as you bend down looking for the cause of all this mess as you sigh, “I know nothing of cars.”

Frustration and annoyance etched into your features as you wiped off the sweat off your forehead, “If this heat doesn’t end me then this heat will surely do and damn those heels.” Kicking out your heels off your feet away as your gaze went back into glaring at the car as if it would magically apologize for the chaos and betrayal you were facing because of it, “Come on Mr Car, please do work I don’t want to die here.”

Shaking your head and cursing at the heavens, you caught something in the corner of your eye, the silhouette of a person, turning your head to face it, you felt your heart drop blood to drain off your face. 

“What the fuck.” Whispering under your breath as you saw the tall and broad shouldered frame of a man coming towards you giving off the western cowboy vibe a little bit too good but it wasn’t time to be in awe as you were in the middle of a barren road with that suspicious man coming towards you.

You back away slightly, your gaze never leaving him in case you need to make a run for it, good thing you had thrown off your heels, you can run better. 

As he was coming closer, you took in his look even better and your breathing hitched.

Was it the scorching sun that caused you to be feeling such a heat or was it the way the man coming towards you wore a black cowboy hat, head tilted down yet you could see there was a scarf that covered his face, already a red flag.

The closer he was reaching to you, the more detailed his appearance became. 

His muscular frame was partially covered by a black jacket with fringes that swayed with his movements. Studs lined the jacket, which barely hid his chest that moved at the way he was breathing barely hiding how toned and defined his muscles look, making you wonder what was the purpose of the jacket itself.

His abdominal muscles were toned and defined and was such a contrast, broad shoulders with a small waist only rendered for a wolf of lust and fear to fight within you unsure of the emotion you should feel.

The man came closer to you and stopped, your breath hitched as you saw the intensity of his feline eyes. 

Backing away slightly in fear, body shaking yet your eyes not being able to unfocused from his toned muscles that were on display as you waited for him to say something and indeed he did, “Are you alright Miss?”

Once more, his voice was raspy and slightly deep, his head tilted to the side as he lifted something in his hand, “I usually come into this part of the road as it’s more quiet and I saw you but I ended up almost getting hit by a pair of flying heels.”

“I…I’m sorry..” Stuttering out as you gulp still not wanting to trust this man, “I was just being annoyed and I didn’t see you there.” 

Vulnerability and fear darted across your aura to which he wasn’t blind, nor was he blind to your attire, glistening sweat drenched over your legs and exposed cleavage as you breathed. The man cleared his throat as he looked back into your eyes, “It’s alright Miss I’m here to help you. I knew of upcoming debris but never of upcoming heels”

The way he tried to lighten the atmosphere was yet to calm the uneasiness inside of you, ever since young you had been taught to never trust anyone blindly especially being brought by a single father who promised to keep you from every harm even if that means to kill.

A weak smile reached your lips which made him to smile, although you couldn’t see it through the scarf that covered for half of his face except for those eyes that hide an intensity like nothing else yet some warmth linger in them,

Eyes are the windows of the soul and those had nothing to hide.

“So let’s see what the issue is with this.” The man turned his attention to the car, bending down as he inspected the inside, getting a glimpse of his waist and how his arm flexed making his muscles bulge out as you gulped.

Starting timidly, “Somehow it just broke down and I’ve been stuck in here for an hour and I’m not even having any signal even here.” Relaxing slightly as you lean against your car, still keeping some distance with this stranger, “And this scorching heat is getting the best of me, didn’t know it would be that hot in Mexico.”

The man chuckled softly, the sound muffled by the scarf. “Mexico can be quite unforgiving this time of year,” he replied, his voice tinged with amusement. “But don’t worry, we’ll get you back on the road soon.”

You watched as he continued to inspect the car, his movements deliberate and confident. Despite your father’s warnings echoing in your mind, you couldn’t help but feel a slight sense of relief at the stranger’s presence. He seemed competent, and there was something in his demeanor that suggested he genuinely wanted to help.

As he worked, you took the opportunity to study him more closely. His eyes, the only visible part of his face, were a deep, intense brown, framed by thick lashes. They conveyed a mix of focus and curiosity, occasionally flickering up to meet your gaze. There was a subtle kindness in them that put you a bit more at ease.

“Do you know a lot about cars?” you asked, trying to make conversation and distract yourself from the lingering unease.

He glanced up, his eyes crinkling at the corners as if he were smiling beneath the scarf. “You could say that. Grew up fixing things, so cars became second nature.” He straightened up, wiping his hands on a rag he pulled from his back pocket. “Looks like your radiator overheated. We’ll need to let it cool down before we do anything else.”

You nodded, feeling a mix of frustration and gratitude. “Thank you for stopping to help. I didn’t know what I was going to do out here.”

“It’s no trouble,” he assured you. “I couldn’t just leave someone stranded in this heat.” He stepped back, giving you some space. “So, what brings you to this part of Mexico?”

“Just a road trip,” you said, shrugging lightly. “Needed a break from everything back home. a change of scenery might help clear my head.”

San nodded understandingly. “I get that. Sometimes, a change of scenery is exactly what you need.”

“I’m sorry but do you have any water?” you asked suddenly, breaking the silence. Your voice was soft, almost hesitant, as if you were revealing a weakness.

He nodded thoughtfully. “I have some in my truck. Stay here, I’ll be right back.”

As he walked towards his vehicle, you couldn’t help but watch him, your mind racing with a mixture of thoughts and emotions. San seemed genuine, but your father’s voice still echoed in your mind, reminding you to be cautious, you’ve found him faster than you expected.

More like, he had found you. 

Trust was a luxury you couldn’t afford easily.

San returned a few minutes later with a bottle of water, which he handed to you. “Here, drink this. You need to stay hydrated.”

“Thank you,” you said gratefully, taking the bottle with trembling hands. You sipped the cool water and some water fell onto your cleavage, not caring as you were parched for hours under this heat and looking back at San from the corner of your eyes as you noticed his gaze flashed onto your chest then quickly darted your eyes away.

“Oops,” you murmured, glancing up at San with a sheepish smile. “Sorry about that.”

San chuckled softly, his eyes flickering down for a brief moment before meeting yours again. “No worries. It’s hot out here, water doesn’t always go where you want it to.”

Embarrassed, you looked down shyly, your cheeks warming. “I was really thirsty,” you admitted softly, your gaze lingering briefly on his toned stomach before you looked back into his eyes, “Thank you for the help with my car, I really want to thank you for helping me out.”

San chuckled, “It’s alright I’m just being a good samaritan here.”

“No please.” Stopping him with your voice as you look down shyly, “Please let me thank you. How about a treat?” Your own voice turned sultry as you pressed yourself against his bare chest as his eyes widened, “You truly deserve a reward for this all.”

“I’m curious to know what kind of reward that would be.” He blinked slowly, eyes still fixated on yours as he felt your hesitation but the hunger in your gaze? Even a blind man could see that.

Your fingers trailed onto his arms feeling the muscles on his biceps, “Will you let me?” Palming his biceps as your mouth fell open before looking back into his eyes, “The scorching heat always makes me act up.” Looking up at him with innocent eyes as a playful smirk danced onto your lips like snakes ready to slither around him.

Choi San, you could see how this man had the restraint of a monk, quite admirable for a man. 

Yet you were not blind to the thirst in his gaze that you wanted to be the one to quench. San placed his hand on your cheek as he lifted your face up, his thumb tracing the outline of your lips as you smiled at him, “You’re truly something but are you sure it’s what you want.”

“Anything for you Mr cowboy.” 

That was all the consent he needed before he took the scarf off his face, your eyes widened as if you’vr had the air knocked off your lungs, as if he was seizing it not letting it go. You needed this man to mark you right here and there, sharp feline eyes that caused your knees to be weak, sharp jawline with lips begging to be kissed.

A breathy ‘fuck’ rushed past your lips and that was all you could say before he grin, a dimple appearing in the depth of his cheek, “This reward is truly unlike any other, I’ll take it.”

Finally breathing the distance, as San kiss you roughly and fuck, the neediness in your own soul made you feel like a whore but for such a man to whom your arms were wrapped his neck, you could throw your whole dignity out of the window, nothing mattered right now except for how he held your waist and how his lips were so sinful and rough against yours.

Your moans mixed with his grunts as breathy curses escaped your lips, he wasted no time in biting your lips ordering for entrance to which you once more obeyed, your own moans growing louder as his tongue felt like heaven inside of your mouth.

The way he bit your lips was hard, none caring whether blood was oozing out, you wanted only him right now and oxygen wasn’t of your main concern right now as your arms explored his back and gripped onto his jacket.

San was the first one to break the kiss as you both were breathing heavily but his mouth wasted no time in cascading down to your own neck, lips feeling sinful against yours as you felt him chuckle, “How do you want it? How would you like for me to fuck you?”

“Fuck, please let me ride you.”

“I’ll take that reward.” With that, you were pushed away from the car as you pushed San inside the car, his back hitting the seat as you smirked and got on top of him.

“I’ll ride you to tears, cowboy.”

With that your mouth was what found his neck first, wanting to engrave your bite into his skin as your nails scratch onto his chest as he groaned while his hand found the hem of your shirt and you smiled at him, “Since you wanted to see them that bad.” 

You removed off your shirt along with your bra, letting your naked breast to be in full view as you trailed your fingers on them while San take a deep breath looking at your breast before reaching a hand and groping them, your head thrown back with moans rushing past your lips, “Feels so good.”

Quickly straddling onto him as you moan more, his other hand played with your nipple as you whine out more, face lost in pleasure as you rub yourself against his crotch, string of the word ‘fuck’ and ‘feels good’ was what came out your mouth as he praised your breast. “They’re so big and pretty.”

His slender fingers rubbed through them and pinched, eliciting moans from you, “God, you’re so good.”

Your nipples and breast were sure to be red and purplish with how his fingers and hand were abusing them but the pleasure made you care for nothing else. Then he pulled his upper body up as you unintentionally gulped with how close he got to your face, that same dangerous smirk burst onto his lips, “I wonder how they taste now.”

Lowering his head down, as his mouth takes one of your nipples into his mouth.

His gaze looked up at you, mockingly at how you twitched and moaned at his every touch as he tongue swirled around it, sucking on it and biting it while pulling it slightly. San was such a wild teasing beast. 

Opening your mouth to say something but once more you’ve got the air knocked out of your lungs as he blew some air onto your nipple, “Please…” Whining wasn’t one of your trait but instead of you holding the strings, you became his puppet into his hands as he darted out his tongue to lick slowly onto your nipples, “You’re..making me go crazy.”

Once more his taunting chuckle was heard, “Princess…” He began, “You’re already losing yourself on my tongue..” His whisper growing closer to your ear, “Are you sure you can take my cock?”

You were shaking and breathing heavily too bad to even reply to him, the pleasure coursing through your veins felt too good as he whispered once more, “Let me play with you a little more before that. I will make you cum three times, so better behave like a good girl and I want you to orgasm by rubbing yourself on me.”

“Pl..please— uh ah, ‘s too s-sensitive.”

Your own words betrayed your actions as you began to rub yourself against his clothed crotch, already feeling how big his bulge was as your mouth dropped open into a silent scream, your hand reached down to touch him but he grab onto your hand, amusement swirl into his stare, “Be a good girl and obey but let me make it easier for you.”

He worked onto the buttons of your shorts as he pulled them down slightly to reveal how damp your underwear already got, “Now you can hump.”

His words lead you into a trance as you obeyed, head thrown back with your hand resting onto his broad shoulders as you rubbed yourself and as time goes, you gasped out and shameless rub yourself against his crotch to chase your highs, “Fuck… fuck oh fuck… so good.”

Time seems to be lost for you, as it felt like hours how you came with only mere minutes, yet he was still hard. Your underwear is already messy from the stain of your own orgasm but his words resonate in your mind, he will make you go to orgasms two more times.

“You can now ride me princess.”

“What..” You breath out, he truly had fucked you dumb.

His dimple appeared once more, his fingers reached to your underwear as he just ripped it, “Sit on me princess, show me how good you’re at riding.”

The cockiness that drip from his tone made you even more aroused yet you completely almost forgot what lead you to be such a needy whore to be begging for this man’s cock like that, “Take your time, I don’t want you to get hurt although it seem you will be enjoying getting bruised up.”

Audacity danced like shadows into your gaze, as your fingers trailed his sharp jawline, “Don’t worry handsome, we will see who will have the last words.” Already unbuckling his belt, pulling down the zipper and pushing down his pants along with his boxer as you watched his cock being released out from its restraint.

And, fuck.

Choi San was exactly to your liking, your gaze never leaving how hard he was right now, the veins were protruding and the tip already was leaking from pre-cum, seem like the way you were humping against as if you were in heat indeed had an effect on him, his tip was raging red and for someone who wasn’t a fan of sucking, you would’ve broken all the rules just for your mouth and tongue to get a taste of this man’s cock.

“God, you’re making me act so bad.” You moan out, reaching your fingers down to touch yourself but he stops you, you watched him as he wrapped his hand around his cock as he lazily pumped it watching how your naked breast moved.

Seeing where his gaze was at, you touched your breast and moaned out pinching your own nipple as you mewled out, pressing them together as you cursed as you looked back at him as he gripped hard on his cock, “Do you enjoy the show? Well let’s not waste any time then.”

Moving slightly more on top of him, liming up yourself closer to his cock, lining it against your entrance. Moving up before, you felt the tip of his cock to slide inside of you and this already got you to want to act feral, yet you calmed yourself down and rested on his pelvis and moved your hips in slow circles as your own breathing grew heavy.

“What?” Whining out as he grabbed your ass.

“Do it properly princess, you promised me a good show right?”

The cockiness in his sinful voice felt like heaven on this earth, raising your hips slightly before you sank yourself onto his cock and cursed out, he was big, way bigger than you expected or you were just too small for him.

Looking back at him, pleased at how pleasure was written all over his face, mouth opened slightly as he looked up at you, “You’re bigger…than I expected.”

“Come on baby, I’m sure you can do it.”

His praises were all you needed as well as how his lips parted and breathy grunts and groans was all you could hear for him, making the hunger inside of you to get even bigger.

”Let’s see what you got.” With that you wasted no time, placing your hand onto his shoulders, nails digging his skin as you moved up, feeling how perfectly his cock was sliding into of you, you couldn’t even fathom to tease him betrayed by your own lust as you slammed down hard onto him with a loud fuck from the both of you.

Wanting to be more in control and wanting to chase your own highs especially how his hand fondled onto your breast, you increase your own pace and the feeling of his cock inside of you made you to bounce even more onto him, arching your back as you moved even wildly as he cursed out, “F-fuck princess.. God you’re—fuck, so f-fast. Want to slow d-down?” 

Once more, you’ve moved up before slamming down on his moaning out and this time chuckling, “You can take it.”

San’s head falling back against the seat as you smile, “I think…I love this.. Having you like this.” Moving even more, “I can touch you all I want to cowboy.” You can feel his hand gripping tighter on your ass, “You’re driving me too wild.”

“Fuck I’m so near.” San cursed out as you giggled before slowing down as he cursed more before his hand spanked your ass hard at your teasing as you giggle more before moving even more slowly and before he could say anything else, you slammed yourself hard into him more and picking up your space, up and down harder on his cock.

“I’ll be the one to decide when you can come.” San lost it when your hips rolled even more sensually around him, your nails creating moon crescent mark into his skin, your thighs sticking to his skin, your both body drenched in sweat at how wild you’ve been, running a ran through your hair as you moaned out, “You cock feel so good inside of me, y-you want to come now.”

Fingers once more tracing across his neck and jawline as you movement never stop, he had been so lost into the pleasure and how your movement were that he didn’t even thrust, your brush off the hair that stick to his forehead as you slammed once more into him, “You…are allowed to come now.” 

With one last slam to your core as you reach your own climax, you remove yourself from him as white strings of cum stains the inside of your car.

Exhaustion took a toll on your body as you almost fell on him but he was the one who dragged you down as you both came down from your high with ragged breathing escaping the both of you, your hand rested onto his bare chest with your naked body shaking and pressed up against him.

San ran a hand through his hair as he smiled, “Fuck that was wild.”

“Hope your reward was worth it.” Breathing out completely tired.

His voice came out as warm, “It was totally worth it.”

For a while, you both enjoyed the silence, waiting for your breath to become more steady, “I’ll get myself cleaned up at a nearby hotel then I will be leaving except if you want to take more from your reward.” 

“You’re truly something else.” San laughed, yet you could feel how jovial he looked, “But I lived nearby so you can get clean up there and maybe some food if you haven’t eaten yet, they serve the best tacos here, maybe that will make you want to come here often.”

Chuckling as you get off his chest smiling as you slip on your shirt, “Well if I can get good food and a good dick, I’ll surely be coming here more often.”

“Oh.” San realized something, “With all what had happened I forgot to introduce myself, I’m Choi San.”

You knew of his name already, that’s what you were here for afterall.

“Nice to meet you Choi San.” Replying with a giggle as you help him with his clothes as you introduce yourself, “I’ll follow you from my car, so lead the way San.”

As you watched him getting into his own truck, you smile turned into a frown as you picked up your phone and dial someone’s number and the voice of a man greeted you through the phone, “Yes, I’ve found him, no worries, they’ll have to go through me if they even think of laying their hand on... him.”

[kentoxo]

friction | reader (f) x crush!nanami pt.9

pairing: reader (f) x crush!nanami

synopsis: [AU] you have always had a crush on nanami. since the day you were hired as his personal assistant, you've been right at his side combating numbers and making money within the finance department for the company you two worked for. but, things take a turn when nanami catches wind of your feelings, and rejects you. little did he know the weight of his mistake.

warnings: angst, heartbreak, sexual tension, jealousy (future smut)

a/n: prepare urself. next chapter may or may not be crazy. once again (the usual) spam of thank yous. all of your kind words both in replies and reblogs makes my heart sing. to those who said they want to be part of the taglist-- i reopened it! i might have missed those who recently asked to be on it so pls reply to this chapter so i can get you :( so sorry for my lack of meticulousness.

all parts: pt.1, pt.2, pt.3, pt.4, pt.5, pt.6, pt.7, pt.8,

December | Tokyo, Japan | Saturday

You had to call out the following Thursday and Friday. 

The cold you manifested was wreaking havoc on your body, the constant shivering now straining your muscles and bones. You couldn’t even find comfort in your bed, as you’d sneeze and cough, or dash to the bathroom during the waves of nausea. You were grateful to not have gotten frostbite, but damn this cold bites! 

It was nice to have some space away from work, and Nanami. You deduced that this cold was inevitable, as the stress that loomed over since your confession (and second rejection). But this wasn’t fun either, as you could barely make yourself a cup of coffee while also having to answer Haibara every few minutes, who wanted to make sure you were doing well. It was bittersweet to say the least. 

As you cuddle your heating pad meant for your tummy, you begin to scroll carelessly on your phone. Although it was your day off, and you were sick, you often liked to check your work emails. You like to be extra prepared for Monday, as those were the days when you have bigger workloads to tackle. As you scrolled, you stumbled upon an email directly from Takada shacho. Before you could open it however, there was a gentle knocking at your door. 

“Coming…” you say weakly, quickly finding a mask on your bedside table. Comforting the straps around your ears, you make a slow walk towards your door. You get on your tiptoes to look through the peephole, only to back away in shock and slight embarrassment. “N-Nanami kacho? What are you… doing here?” You proceed to cough. 

“I came to check on you,” Nanami hums from behind the door. “I know you’ve been sick due to my shortcomings. I wanted to see how you were faring.” 

“A-ah, I see,” you stammer nervously. You were hoping not to see him until Monday, but luck still remains anywhere but your side. “You could have just called me as well…” 

“I felt… that it would be best to come in person,” Nanami begins shyly. The sound of plastic shuffling joins. “I, um, also brought some things to treat you. If it’s okay with you, may I please come in?” 

You go a bit pale, “um… I don’t really want to get you sick. I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to come in and–” 

“I don’t care. I’d like to see you, and make sure you are well.” Nanami interrupts you with a stern tone. His words sounded non-negotiable, and you didn’t want to [fuck around and] find out if you refused his entry. Reluctantly, you unlocked your door and slowly opened it, revealing the tall man before you. 

His hair was once again messy, lazily pulled back with his fingers. He was covered in snow,  of course, but had gloves on to protect himself from potential frostbite. You look down at his two large bags he got from 7-Eleven. You move out of his way and let him place the bags down. He closes the door behind him, and begins to untie his scarf from around his neck. As he did, you offered your hands out to take it from him. 

“Let me,” you offer in a hoarse voice. 

Nanami looks down at you, “you’re sick. Thank you, but I can hang it myself. Please feel free to go back to bed.” 

“A-ah, but you’re my guest,” you insisted through weak coughs. “My mom would reprimand me if she saw the way I was hosting you right now. I haven’t even boiled tea…” 

Nanami, now just in a sweatshirt and his joggers, quickly puts on his slippers and offers his hand to you. You look up at him confused. “Come and sit down,” he coos, taking your hand and guiding you towards your living room. He gently allows you to take a seat on the couch, which is quite the relief considering you were exasperating just from answering the door. 

Through small coughs, you watch as Nanami brings his bags to the kitchen, and begins to unpack them. He silently takes out a few vegetables and cartons of broth. A pool of pill bottles also leave the bag, along with other cold suppressants. “Can I,” you start hesitantly, your index fingers looping around one another, “can I offer you a cup of coffee?” 

“No,” Nanami shot you down quickly, “I’d rather you rest than concern yourself with me. Though, the offer in your condition is very touching.” 

Your cold now felt like a fever, as your cheeks went completely hot. You looked crazy, your hair and makeup undone. Your pajamas were ornate with little ducks, and you don’t even have tea prepared. And here was this effortless, handsome man in your house, with a pot in his hands and his eyes navigating your tiny kitchen. It was an honor to see him outside of his work clothes, as it still made your heart run. 

“Are there any vegetables you don’t like?” Nanami asks gently. 

You sit up promptly, staring distantly towards the pot that was now full of water and preparing to boil. “I’m not a big fan of daikon in my soup,” you reply awkwardly. “A bit too strong for me.” 

Nanami looks over at you and gives you a small smile, “I would have never expected that you didn’t like daikon, Y/N.” 

“In soup, I’m not a fan,” you quickly mend the confusion, “soups are meant to be calming, not crazy.” 

“Daikon makes soup crazy?” Nanami continues, amused by your detest. 

“It’s a bit much,” You exclaim weakly. “Just me personally, I can’t deal with all that sass.” 

“Sass?” Nanami finally lets out a chuckle, “what a way to describe a vegetable you don’t like.” As he cleans the vegetables he provided, he couldn’t help but continue to smile. “So this is what you’re like outside of work,” he whispers to himself. But your ears catch his words quickly. 

You feel your cheeks burn from shyness. But as you stared at the back of Nanami’s head, you remembered all the tears you’ve shed these last 2 weeks. Your heart still hurts, even while sharing a warm conversation like this. He was still the man who you confessed to, and broke your heart twice. You look distant towards your window, seeing the snow slowly fall over the city. 

“You don’t have to cook for me, Nanami kacho,” you say quietly, “you have done enough, so thank you. I can do the rest from here.” 

Nanami purposely ignores you as he begins to chop a carrot. “What do I have to do in order to stop you from calling me kacho?” Your neck snaps back to look at him, noticing Nanami’s seriousness from his side profile. 

You drop your hands to grip the end of the couch, squeezing it to calm you down. “You’ve made it very clear what kind of relationship we have. It’s inappropriate otherwise, so from your perspective, I should proceed with calling you kacho.”

“Y/N, please.” 

“Please what?” A bit of attitude left the tip of your tongue. You jump in fear. Just because you were hurt doesn’t change the fact that Nanami is still your boss. The man that signs off your hours. ”Ah, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to use that kind of tone. I just… think it’s best that we revert back to honorifics.” 

“I disagree,” Nanami hums from the kitchen. He begins to look through your spice pantry (which you were surprised he knew where to find it) and pulls out your pepper. “How spicy would you like your soup?” 

“You told me that you are my boss, and I am your assistant,” you repeated his words from the night before. “You want comradery but don’t see me as anything beyond your colleague.” You tighten your grip on your couch. “And...not so spicy, for the soup.” 

You were sick. Having to bring this conversation up once more was making you even sicker. 

“Y/N, I misspoke,” Nanami says firmly, closing the pot with a lid to allow the soup to simmer. He grabs a glass from your cupboard and goes over to pour water from the pitcher. Pouring the water generously, he makes his way over to you with a few of the pills he purchased. “Here, I have a few supplements you can take now. The painkillers will be for after you eat.” 

“I know how to take care of myself,” you murmur. Nanami takes a seat next to you, pouring the pills into one hand while carefully handing you the water in the other. Lowering your mask, you swallow the pills like morsels, and follow it with sips of water. “Feel free to go after this. Thank you for setting up the soup, I can take it from here.”

Nanami eyes your face, making you blush even more. You were thankful that you were sick, as the hue on your cheeks can be explained by your current health. Putting the cup down, you quickly busy yourself once more by taking the decorative blanket on the couch and covering yourself with it. As you did, a finger appears before your face. You halt, watching as Nanami begins to drag some sort of salve on your lips. His middle finger gently drags the petroleum-like substance against your bottom lip, before swiping the rest against your top lip. 

You could explode right then and there. Your nausea wave was a bit more intense, but more so from the intensity of Nanami’s gaze, and his touch against your chapped lips. Your heart was beating hard, and you couldn’t move. Like yesterday, you were frozen. His touch, despite his muscular stature, was gentle, soft. It felt like butter. 

“S-sorry,” Nanami immediately pulled his hand away. He quickly looks away from you, hints of pink at the edge of his cheekbones. “I overstepped. I’m very, very sorry Y/N.” 

“It’s fine,” you quickly spew, “just… wash your hands before you touch anything else or yourself. I would hate for you to get sick because of me.” 

“A-ah, right,” he concurs, quickly jogging to the kitchen to wash his hands. Drying his hands with a towel, he once again joins you on the couch. “I will admit, I didn’t just come here to care for you. I wanted us to… discuss more about our conversation the other night.” 

Here he goes. Opening a wound that is long but healed. “What else is there to talk about?” You say, coughing a bit to clear your throat. You felt light headed from how congested you are, especially since talking so much. And now, Nanami was forcing you to engage in a conversation that led to your feelings being hurt more. “We both expressed our feelings to one another, and came to the conclusion that our relationship should strictly stay as a coworker dynamic.” 

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, actually,” Nanami begins quietly. His eyes keep at your coffee table, with fingers weaving together slowly. He looks pensive, like he’s looking for the right words to say. But even within those thoughts, he was uneasy. “Hold on.” In a moment, he pulls off his sweatshirt, revealing himself in a black, skin tight shirt. This would be the first time you truly saw his physique, seeing as the shirt hugs into the dents and divots of his pecs and abs. The short sleeves give temptation to his muscular arms. His torso was enough to make any woman submissive. 

You look away, but still hold your ground, “if that is the case, then I’d like to apologize again for my feelings towards you. I’m working on letting them go so they no longer pose as a nuisance or discomfort for you. And if need be, I understand if you’d rather distant our work relationship, or transfer me back to Sales.” 

This is when Nanami faces you again, “Y/N, look at me.” 

His tone wasn’t aggressive nor strict, but you felt submissive to his request. You slowly turn, your eyes finding their way to his own. Hazel eyes bore into yours, and you noticed his bottom lip snug between his teeth. 

“That night when you confessed to me, I didn’t quite understand what it all meant for me,” Nanami begins quietly. He tightens his hold on his hands. “I’ve never really known what to do when people confess to me. But I was so used to not reciprocating those feelings that rejecting them was as easy as breathing.”

“You’re a little too good at it,” you let out, your heart jolting from the memory of the rejection. 

“And for that I apologize,” Nanami quickly spews, “not only for hurting your feelings, but for lying to you.” 

“Lying to me?” You felt your forehead going hot. “About what?” 

“About my feelings towards you,” Nanami’s tone hinted at a dash of embarrassment, “Admittedly, not even I knew I was lying to you until I finally gave it some thought.” 

You could only stare at him, trying to find some sense in his face. But as you stared at him, you noticed a break of conviction in his hazel eyes. His usual professional demeanor was absent, leaving you with a Nanami you’ve never met before. His confidence wavers, and before you was a red-faced, shy man. 

“Kento,” you begin, causing him to jump from his first name leaving your tongue. “I’d feel worse if you’re feigning liking me for the sake of making up with me. I told you, it is my fault for liking you.” 

“If you’re taking fault for that,” Nanami begins, his eyes diverting away from you, “then it is also your fault for making me like you back.” 

Huh? You felt hot, cold, and dizzy. His words were nauseating, and you were confident you were green in the face. Your hands and arms shake with nerves, goosebumps ornate all over your body. Before you could even utter another word, you feel yourself going faint. 

“Y/N?” Your name sounded distant. Before you knew it, your eyes flutter shut, pitch black surrounding you. 

Taglist:

@blossomedfloweroflove @numblytemporary @everyoneandtheirmothers @animechick555 @inthedarkshadows000

@m-arj-1 @julk4e @hadassery @swoozleee @angxlsatvrn

@v1x3n @s-witch-bitch @furgusonn @watyousayin @thechaoticarchivist

@simp-manhwa @5sos-wdw @ffyona1214 @phantombaby @evangel44xxcds

@ukiyodestiny @jasminelee324 @eurydxceorphxus @moonlightazriel @s3rp3ntsssc0ve

@dusty-dweller @wifenanami @bokuatsubro @ayesayman @starry-eyed--dreamer

[lunaoyabun]

Jjk mens favorite spot to give u hickeys

Just a random thought I had while thinking about what to write for the part 2 smau of embarrassed hehe

Including: gojo, geto, nanami, sukuna, choso & toji

MDNI! NSFT!

Gojo: Your hips

This man is all about fashion. And if there's one thing Satoru loves more than being buried deep inside u with his perfectly formed d*ck, it's giving u the most creative hickeys possible. His favorite spot is your hips, because one time be made them look like little hearts that stick out when u were wearing those low waisted pants he loves so much on u and they were always there for him to see and think about how much fun u guys had making them. Next time, he definitely tries to write his name out of hickeys in Kanji! Maybe u even think about getting it tattooed.

Geto: Your Chest

Suguru loves your chest. It doesn't matter if u think your boobs are too small or big. For him, it's the way they look when he marks them and the way u react when he gets carried away with his bitemarks. He almost never shows this side in public, but you always know how his true face looks whenever it lays between your wonderful formed boobs, ready to paint his very own canvas. One time, he even took a photo of it and made it his phone background.

Nanami: Your Neck

Kento is a classic man, and as much as he prefers to keep sexual things private, he sometimes gets a bit carried away whenever he kisses your neck. His hickeys aren't as big but rather all over the place, like little butterflies flying over your skin upwards your chin and downwards your collarbone. There's always one spot that gets him started, due to your reaction whenever he kisses your neck: either it's when he stands behind u, stroking your hair aside and kisses the middle of your nape or the little sensitive spot right beside your pulse. Good thing he doesn't have to be careful when you have long hair to hide it or winter- and scarf season is coming...

Sukuna: No preference/Everywhere

Let's be real, whenever Sukuna marks u it's for the one and only purpose to show who u belong to and to make his point clear: every spot that's visible for others and makes you crazy while he does so, is the right spot. But his bite marks, though... gosh, u really ask yourself when the day will come that this man will literally!!! eat u up. It doesn't help that whenever he sweettalks that he mentions how good your skin tastes.

Choso: Your Stomach

Choso lives for your reactions. He needs it like the air to breathe. Whenever he kisses u, he needs to watch your reaction. His favorite thing to do is kiss downwards to your center while claiming the path as his own. Your little twitches and moans, the way your eyes light up with the thought of him going to eat u out pops up is his perfect definition of foreplay and can never under no circumstances be skipped. And he also loves to see the marks the next morning, knowing you will not forget about him for at least a couple days until he needs to put fresh ones on your body so u won't forget who makes u feel the best! Simp.

Toji: Your Thighs/Between your legs

Toji is a messy eater. U found out about that on your very first date, and that became even more clear after the dinner when he made you his dessert. His hickeys and bite marks aren't for the purpose of marking what's his, even though it's a good side effect, it's just a reminder on how animalistic this man gets when he's near his favorite scent: your center. He loves to tease you and with kissing up and down your thighs, leaving bite marks and hickeys on his way up, he found his perfect routine for his life goal: to ruin u for every other man. Good luck hiding them in the summer season when u wanna wear shorts or a skirt because he definitely makes sure they won't go away for at least a week or two. Looking bruised, yay. As if your choked neck isn't enough...

[ikkyfics]

Little Charms

Summary: Things James does for love

Warnings: just fluffy

Masterlist

Since he started dating you, his Patronus changed to something that reflects yours, and he boasts about it to his friends, saying it’s “the power of true love.”

He gifted you a Golden Snitch engraved with both your initials, enchanted to always return to your hand when you throw it.

He loves messing up your hair the same way he does his, just to tease you and because he thinks it makes you two look “perfectly matched.”

Every time he sees you enter the common room, he makes a point of loudly announcing, “Ah, my muse has arrived!” just to make you blush.

When you complain about the cold, he immediately wraps his Gryffindor scarf around you, even if he starts shivering moments later.

He keeps a journal of every little detail about you—how you hold your wand or the way your eyes light up when you laugh—and uses it to surprise you with gifts or inside jokes.

James practices even harder at Quidditch just so he can dedicate his victories to you, pointing at the stands where you’re seated and winking.

He uses the Marauder’s Map to ensure no one interrupts your secret dates in the Astronomy Tower.

Whenever Sirius teases him about being “domesticated,” James replies that you’re “the best thing that’s ever happened to him.”

He loves pulling you into impromptu dances in the middle of the common room, even without music, just to make you laugh.

He insists on writing little notes that magically appear in the air during class, always signing them “From your favorite Marauder.”

He started decorating your chair in the Great Hall with tiny, glowing charms to make sure you know where to sit—and to let everyone else know you’re together.

James loves challenging you to silly competitions, like “who can cast the fastest spell,” just to have an excuse to watch you laugh.

When you’re upset, he enlists Sirius to help plan something utterly ridiculous and fun to cheer you up.

He started wearing cologne because he overheard you mention liking the scent of a flower field, but he overdid it at first and smelled like an entire garden.

Anytime someone asks what he sees in you, James answers without hesitation: “Everything. She’s perfect.”

He made an effort to learn a hobby of yours, even if it was something he never imagined doing, just to spend more time with you.

He loves taking you on broom rides, holding you close, and always making daring turns just to hear you scream in excitement.

He defends you against any rude comments, and his wand is always ready for a duel on your behalf.

He always manages to bring you your favorite treat from the Hogwarts kitchens, claiming it’s “the price for the privilege of being your boyfriend.”

He whispers little confessions during class when the professor isn’t looking, just to distract you and make you smile.

When you fall asleep on the common room couch, he magically conjures a blanket and sits beside you.

He keeps a magical photo of the two of you in a frame by his bedside that never leaves its spot.

James loves writing messages on the edges of your parchment during class, which appear magically when you run your finger over them.

He volunteered to be your date to the Slug Club’s party, even though he hates the events, just to make sure you had the best night possible.

He never lets you carry anything heavy, always using spells to help you, even if you insist you can manage on your own.

He loves inventing completely useless spells with adorable names inspired by you.

When you complain about being tired, he offers you his Invisibility Cloak and suggests you both sneak away from classes to spend time together.

He started keeping every note and letter you’ve written him, saying they’ll someday tell “the greatest love story Hogwarts has ever seen.”

Whenever it’s snowing, he challenges you to a snowball fight and always lets you win, just so he has an excuse to hug you.

James loves enchanting simple objects to surprise you, like flowers that dance or leaves that whisper poems when they fall into your hand.