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lovebugism · 2 months ago

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📼 ; 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 (▰˘◡˘▰)

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amiableness · 5 months ago

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Dad!James Potter x Bsf!Reader (mentioned) ☼ 734 words

series masterlist ; main masterlist

“I can’t do this, James.” The mother of his child sighs, her arms crossed defensively over her chest as she leans back against the kitchen counter. Her eyes are filled with frustration and weariness.

James looks up from where he’s scrubbing baby bottles at the sink, concern etched across his face. He rinses out the last bottle and places it on the drying rack before turning to face her fully.

“I know. I’m feeling tired too, love.” He says, trying to offer a reassuring smile.

“No.” She huffs, her irritation cutting through the air as she sends him a scathing look. “I can’t do this.” She gestures to the baby items strewn across their flat, her frustration evident. James follows her gaze, taking in the sight of baby toys scattered everywhere. The living room is a chaotic mess, with bottles, blankets, and tiny clothes strewn about. The once tidy space now looks like a whirlwind passed through, and the weight of their new reality settles heavily on his shoulders.

Her words hang heavily between them, the weight of her admission sinking in as James feels his heart drop. It’s silent as she stares at him, waiting for his response.

“Listen, I know it’s been rough with a newborn but-” He starts out, scrambling to think of the right thing to say.

“Rough? That’s what you think it’s been?” James nearly flinches at the sharpness in her voice. “This is not what I wanted my life to be! I had dreams, James. And being a mum was never part of them.”

He considers asking her to lower her voice, worried about waking Henry, but he knows that would only escalate the situation.

“Becoming a father at 20 wasn’t part of my plan either, but I’m making the best of it. I think that if we—”

She cuts him off, “James, stop.”

“Darling—”

“I don’t want to hear how you never planned on becoming a father but now love it, or how Henry is the light of your life and should be mine too. I don’t want to hear any of it.”

“But I don’t understand what’s happening.”

She straightens, her tone final. “I’m leaving. He’s your responsibility now. I don’t want to be a mum.”

His voice trembles with uncertainty, and his eyes blink slowly as he tries to absorb her words, “My responsibility?”

“I’m giving up my rights as his mother.” She replies firmly.

James stares at her, his stomach sinking as her words register. Her expression was resolute, leaving no room for doubt. He wasn’t truly upset about his girlfriend leaving; their relationship had been strained for a while. His real concern was the daunting prospect of being a father on his own. The weight of responsibility pressed heavily on him, and he wondered how he would manage sleepless nights, endless feedings, and the overwhelming task of raising a child without support.

“I can’t—fuck, I can’t do this alone,” James collapses into a nearby chair, his hands running through his hair and disheveling his curls in frustration. “What is it they say? That it takes a whole damn town? How am I supposed to do this alone?” His voice cracks with desperation, and he can’t help but feel that she’s likely seeing him as weak and pathetic. She never liked when he cried.

She huffs, “That’s what you’re worried about? Not the fact your girlfriend is leaving you? Honestly James, you should’ve seen this coming sooner.”

James glances up as he hears the sound of her footsteps retreating. He watches in disbelief as she retrieves her luggage from the hall closet, a suitcase and a duffel bag emerging from behind the coat hangers.

“When did you—”

“I’ve been packing slowly for weeks.” She interrupts, her voice steady as she continues to methodically zip up the bags. The realization hits him with a pang; this wasn’t a sudden decision but a carefully planned departure.

He really was going to be doing this alone.

“Oh.” The word feels clumsy and inadequate as it escapes his lips. He doesn’t even bother to stand, just staring at her with a sense of helplessness as she stands by the door, sending him a blank look.

“Call Y/N and tell her you need her. You’ve never had a problem doing that before.” With that, she grabs her bag and slams the door behind her.

Henry starts crying immediately.

please reblog or comment with your thoughts! they are very appreciated and keep me motivated to keep writing! 🤍

#james potter headcanon #james potter fic #james potter oneshot #james potter fanfiction #james potter x reader #james potter #marauders fanfiction #the marauders era #dad!james and bsf!reader universe #dad!james potter x reader #dad!james potter #james potter baby blurb #james potter blurb #james potter hc

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drinkabletoxicdishsoap · 25 days ago

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the fandom’s characterization of peri becoming a father to dev will always be interesting to me because where it did it even come from ???

I mean in operation birthday takeback, bro CLEARLY did not care. He honestly seemed so disinterested and didn’t even care when they went into his dad’s private office by accident. He didn’t seem care or smile for his godkid when he was happy. Even got a little mean when Hazel made a nice wish for him with the rocket boots (“Well that should keep him entertained for about 10 minutes” or smth like that)

Lost in Fairy World he didn’t really seem to care either??? he really only just wanted his wand and to ‘look good’ in front of his godkid and do things his way without his parents interfering. Sort of like how a babysitter wants to look good in front of the family of the kid they’re looking after if that makes sense.

The only time we ever seen him actually care about dev was in the finale when he said that. But even after fairy world got turned to normal he didn’t really seem sad about dev??? he was just smiling after, seemed genuine too and not a fake one. Maybe it’s just me, but if I was a fairy and lost my first godkid, who took over my home, I would be doing anything BUT smiling, even if we won in the end. Peri doesn’t seem like one to hide his emotions easily either (maybe I’m reading into his character wrong)

You could bring up best of luck, which I would say is a fair point, but I’m going to bring back the babysitter/job synonym. Wouldn’t you get jealous of the person that stole your position or place in a work environment after you got fired?? Especially if your rival/enemy took that position?? I PERSONALLY don’t think the jealousy comes from a place of care, but maybe that’s just me.

It could honestly just be the fandom’s way of coping since Dev doesn’t seem to have any good people in his life after the finale, but why Peri? I mean if you really want to make one of the fairies a father figure to dev, I’d say the anti fairies more over are his family but that’s IF we have to choose.

Don’t get me wrong, I do think all of the peri and dev being a father son duo is super cute and heartwarming!! I love seeing all of the art and fics of that because it really is sweet :3 but to me, it just doesn’t really make sense and seems more out of character for Peri if anything.

He seems to care more about following Da Rules in my opinion. And while I do think it’s important to follow rules, especially when it comes to a job, you shouldn’t rely on them. At a job, you shouldn’t be constantly looking over rules to make sure you’re following them, you might end up tripping over yourself. That’s what Peri ended up doing.

If I assign the duo as anything, it would be the tired babysitter who just wants to get paid and the kid he’s looking after. A dude working a 9-5 at his job he couldn’t really care less about (dev).

I mean (only from his words) he wanted to go into the family business. Not because he genuinely cares for kids, but because it’s what his family has done. He’s treating godparenting as work, not stepping into a kids family and genuinely looking after them.

I do wonder if he would act the same way if he had an easier godkid.

BUT!!!! that’s just my thoughts. I’m sorry if I got anything wrong and feel me to correct me if I did !! Also if you disagree with anything that I’m saying, tell me why in either the replies or reblogs !! I would love to hear other people’s perspectives or opinions.

That’s it 😨 thank you so much for coming to another yap session and I hope you have a great day/night wherever you are in the world <3

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spdrwdw · 1 year ago

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Pairing: Dom!Miguel x Virgin!Sub!f!reader

Warnings: 18+, smut, oral-m/f receiving, hair pulling, choking, unprotected intercourse, no use of y/n

Summary: You and Miguel have been together for over a year, however, you have never been sexually intimate with him, nor with anyone, actually. You were a virgin. Miguel never seemed to mind, in fact, he's been rather patient with you. However, you believe now is the time to experience your first time with him.

A/N: this is my first Miguel fic! I do hope everyone enjoys it. I do have some ideas for more future fics. And I am currently taking requests. Also, thank you to @thel0velykey190 for the request. Note: this fic has not been proofread so apologies for any grammatical errors. *Translation for Spanish words/phrases and sentences will be at the end

Word Count: 2.7k

☆*:.｡. o .｡.:*☆ ☆*:.｡. o .｡.:*☆ ☆*:.｡. o .｡.:*☆ ☆*:.｡. o .｡.

“Wait, wait, wait! Are you sure about this? Like, one hundred percent sure?” Miguel asked you, eyes wide and brows raised.

You looked at him with determination and nodded your head. “Yes. Yes, I am sure. I’m ready for this, Miguel.” You have been pondering about this for days. Weeks, even. It was time. You were tired of your toys. They didn’t satisfy you anymore. But, you were certain that Miguel would. You knew he would. And he knew it as well.

Miguel stared at you for a moment, trying to find a hint of doubt in your expression, but he found none. And honestly, he was glad. He had been waiting months for this day. He was surprised he had such patience. Yet, with you, he would wait forever.

He reached for your hand and gave it a gentle squeeze before he stood up from your living room couch, still holding onto your hand as he waited for you to follow him. “Okay. Let’s go.”

You got up and led him to your bedroom, feeling butterflies in your stomach. This was really happening. This is it. You were finally going to do it.

You were going to lose your virginity. To Miguel.

You’ve been dating each other for about a year and a half, and you had yet to be intimate with him. It wasn’t that you didn’t want to. It was simply because well, you were a virgin. You have given each other oral countless of times, but, whenever things got too steamy and there was a chance of intercourse, you always stopped him. Miguel was experienced. Of course he was. And you trusted him. But, you were afraid that you wouldn’t be enough for him.

“Nena, look at me,” Miguel spoke softly, pulling you from your thoughts as he cupped your face with his hands.

“Don’t be afraid. Okay? Let me do all the work. I’ll be gentle,” he assured you before you shook your head.

“Don’t be gentle,” you told him. Miguel had confessed to you how he liked being rough. You wanted to experience it. Even on your first try.

“But-,” he started before you cut him off.

“I trust you, Miguel.”

He looked at you for a moment before nodding his head and led you to your bed before you suddenly sunk down to your knees in front of him, looking up at him through your lashes. You could’ve sworn you heard a low rumble coming from his throat. Miguel was easy to get riled up. And it made you feel a sense of pride.

He watched you as you removed his jeans, slipping them down to his ankles before he stepped out of them. The outline of his bulging cock was seen through his boxers. You continued to look up at him before you began to palm his bulge, earning a groan from him in response.

“Don’t be such a tease, nena,” he breathed.

And while you did love to tease him and make him whither under your touch, today wasn’t the day for that. So, you pulled his boxers down, letting his cock spring free and present itself in all its glory. The sight made your mouth water.

Taking him in your hand, you began to pump him, earning a couple of moans from him.

“Come on, pretty girl, I need that skilled mouth of yours,” Miguel rasped, a smirk lifting his lips as you made eye contact.

You did as you were told, opening your mouth wide, with your tongue sticking out and ready for him. Guiding his cock into your mouth, you gave the tip a couple of licks, feeling the saltiness of his precum on your tongue. It made your panties wet instantly.

It wasn’t long until you had him groaning and growling. You were bobbing your head, taking in as much of him as you could.Your hand pumping along what you couldn’t take in your mouth.

You felt a hand on the back of your head, lightly tugging at your hair, forcing you to look up and keep eye contact with him.

“That’s it. Just like that. Lo haces tan bien, nena. You take my cock in your mouth so well. I can’t wait to see how you take it in that virgin pussy,” he growled.

“Así. Chúpelo.”

His comment made you whimper onto his cock.

You could feel a bit of wetness pooling onto your panties from his words, imagining how he was going to feel inside you. How he would stretch you out so deliciously.

Swirling your tongue around his cock, you continued bobbing your head, Miguel’s cock twitching slightly in your mouth. When you grazed the shaft with your teeth, Miguel let out a raspy moan, tilting his head back.

“Keep going, nena. Just like that. Just like that for me,” he growled.

You continued with your work, taking in as much of him as you could til you felt the tip hitting the back of your throat, causing your eyes to water. You knew he was getting close as he felt him twitching again.

“Hold that pretty head still for me,” Miguel ordered, and of course, you did as you were told. He gripped onto your hair a little tighter, keeping you still as he fucked into your mouth. You kept your jaw slacked for as long as you could before he pulled out of your mouth and came on your face with a grunt. Keeping your mouth open and tongue out, you caught the streams of cum, licking up and swallowing every bit of it.

Miguel then picked you up like you weighed nothing and laid you down on the bed. He removed the remainder of his clothing before doing the same with you.

You let out a soft gasp as his lips began trailing down your body, giving you goosebumps.

Miguel always worshiped your body any way he could.

As he made his way further down, he pushed your legs apart, hoisting them over his shoulders as he made his way to your aching, wet core. Licking his lips, he spread your pussy with his long fingers, groaning at the sight of your wetness. Your smell was intoxicating to him and it made his mouth water.

“Miguel,” you whimpered out his name just before feeling his tongue lapping over your folds, licking and sucking and slurping your juices. He was a man starved.

You quickly became a whimpering, moaning mess underneath him, hearing the sounds of him just slurping up your pussy like it was some sweet. You could feel his teeth grazing at your bundle of nerves, tongue swirling around and slipping into your pussy.

Grabbing onto his hair, you gave it a tug, bucking your hips against his face, needing more.

“Miguel, please!” You cried out. “I need you, please.”

“Need you to cum on my face first,nena,”Miguel muttered against your pussy, keeping his brutal pace with his mouth and tongue.

You let out a whine, tugging onto his hair as you continued to grind his face, feeling that familiar heat pooling in your lower abdomen. Your thighs began to quiver a bit, back arching.

He then quickly slipped a finger inside of you, then another, then he had three of his fingers inside you, pumping into your pussy.

“Miguel!” You gasped, feeling him curling his fingers, hitting that sweet spot that made you see stars.

“Need to stretch you out. Gotta get you nice and ready for my cock.”

You bit your lip, feeling his tongue and fingers overstimulating you. It wasn't much longer until you came.

Crying out his name, you did as he had desired, spilling yourself all over his face, feeling his warm tongue licking you all up without wasting a single drop of you. You needed more. You were aching for him. You were ready.

Miguel crawled over your body, leaving open-mouthed kisses on your skin before kissing you feverishly on your lips, tasting yourself on his tongue.

He kneaded your breasts with his hands, pinching and tugging at the nipples, making you cry out into his mouth.

"M-Miguel..please..” you started to beg, trying to grind your drenched pussy against his swollen cock. You didn’t want to wait any longer.

A low rumble was heard coming from the back of Miguel’s throat from your movements. You were soaking his cock with your never-ending flow of juices. He wasn’t going to be able to stall much longer.

Lifting his head up to look at you, he licked his lips. Normally, he would’ve gotten on with it already. But, this was you. You were his girlfriend. His most treasured person. He wanted this to be the best experience possible for you.

Despite the lust-filled look in his eyes, he still looked at you with a bit of concern. He wanted to make sure you were really positive about this. He could wait. He would wait a lifetime for you.

You could see the hint of concern on his face and you wrapped your arms around his neck, pulling him down.

“I’m ready, Miguel,” you assured him, giving him a sweet kiss on the lips. “Go ahead.”

Nodding his head, he did as instructed. He pushed your legs apart and aligned himself to your entrance, teasing you with his swollen tip, causing you to moan.

Ever so slowly, he began to push himself into you, causing you to let out a gasp as you felt his cock stretching you out.

“You okay?” He asked, stalling his movements. Last thing he was gonna do was force himself into you.

You nodded your head. You didn’t want him to stop.

“Relax for me, mi alma. I need you to relax. I’ll be able to slide in more smoothly,” he told you, caressing your cheek before he slowly began to push himself in.

You did your best to relax. But holy shit he was huge! You thought he was gonna rip you in half.

But, after a blink of an eye, he was seated comfortably inside of you. “There you go,” he breathed.

“I’m gonna start moving, okay?”

You just nodded your head.

Miguel started to move, slowly at first, checking in on you before he gradually increased speed.

Until he was fucking you into the mattress.

“Oh, Miguel!” You cried out, clawing at his back as he thrusted hard and deep inside of you, his hand wrapped around your throat.

Your eyes were rolled back, your back arched. This was your first time and it felt so so glorious.

“Like that, nena? Like it when I fuck you like a little slut?” Miguel growled, very pleased that you were taking him so well.

“Y-yes!” You sobbed as he lightly tightened his grip around your throat.

“Fuck! This pussy is so tight and delicious. Sucking me in,” he growled.

He glanced down to where your bodies met, seeing how his cock disappeared into your pussy. He was going balls deep, smacking them against your ass. The sound of skin to skin filled the room.

“Miguel!” You cried out his name, feeling yourself getting closer and closer to your release.

“I’m gonna cum!”

“Cum for me, nena. Let it out,” he rasped against your ear.

“Want this cock drenched with you. Gonna fill this pussy up so good with my seed.”

You whimpered, closing your eyes before you felt a hand gripping your face. “Look at me. I want those pretty eyes open while I fill you up,” he ordered.

You opened them and stared up at him, not daring to break eye contact. His gaze made your pussy clench, causing you to let out a mewl. His thrusts quickened, knowing that you were teetering on the edge. Just a little more and..you came with a cry, singing his name.

Miguel moaned out your name, feeling your walls fluttering around him as you climaxed.

He gave you a couple more thrusts, his movements growing sloppy before he came inside you.The feeling was like nothing you’ve ever felt before. It felt warm as he filled you up with his cum, causing you to let out a soft gasp, eyes wide.

Miguel slowly began to pull out of you once he was done, before you grabbed onto his wrist and shook your head.

“Again.”

“A-Again?” Miguel repeated in question, eyes growing wide.

“Yes. I..I really liked it,” you admitted, blushing a bit as you averted your gaze.

Miguel stared at you for a moment before he finally let out a breathless chuckle, shaking his head. “You are going to be the death of me, nena.”

And so, a second time became a third, which then became a fourth.

Miguel had you face down and ass up as he rammed into your swollen, sore pussy. Filled to the brim already with his seed. You let out muffled cries, your face planted into a pillow as Miguel hit that sweet spot again and again.

“¡Mierda! Had I known you were gonna love this so much..” he muttered through gritted teeth.

“Who knew you’d be such a little slut for me, nena. It’s so sexy.”

Now that you were comfortable with sex and Miguel’s size, he wasn’t going to hold back. You had broken the dam.

“Now I’m gonna get to have my way with you whenever I want, right?”

You only let out a muffled moan in response right before Miguel grabbed a fistful of your hair and yanked your head up, leaning down over your back as he continued his harsh thrusts.

“What was that?” He smirked, giving your ass a smack.

You let out a cry at the sting of his hand before nodding your head, feeling tears pricking from your eyes. “Y-yes!” You sobbed out before letting out a moan.

“That’s my girl,” Miguel growled, pressing you down onto the mattress to muffle your loud moans.

“You gonna cum for me, nena? Cum for me, pretty girl. Sé que puedes hacerlo. You did it three times already. Just give me one more and I’ll let you rest.”

You muffled a whine in response before Miguel grabbed you by the neck, wrapping a hand around your throat and lifted your head up. “Shh, not so loud. You’ll wake up the neighbors.”

“Miguel, please,” you whimpered. You could feel yourself getting closer to your climax.

“Miguel!”

Miguel grunted out your name, his free hand wrapping around your lower body, finding your clit and began to it feverishly.

“Cum for me. I want those sweet juices all around my cock, babygirl.”

Gripping onto the bed sheets, you came with a lewd moan, doing as you were told and covered Miguel with your climax as he continued to pivot his hips against you. The sweet sounds of skin hitting against skin, the sounds of his full balls hitting against your pussy, made you immediately orgasm again.

“Such a good little slut you are. Fuck, you’re so perfect,” Miguel growled before he emptied his seed inside of you yet again, filling you up til your overflowed.

Panting, you lifted your head up a bit and glanced behind you as Miguel slowly pulled himself out of you with a soft sigh. He caught your gaze and his look of lust faded away, giving you a gentle smile.

“I do think that’s enough for tonight, hmm?”

He laid down beside you, wrapping her arms around you and pulled you to his chest.

“Feeling okay?”

You nodded your head, letting out a shaky breath before smiling. “Yeah. I feel fine. Gonna be hella sore in the morning, but..” you shrugged.

Miguel laughed and nodded his head in agreement. “I suppose we did get a little carried away.”

“I liked it, though,” you admitted, feeling your face growing warm.

“Better than your toys?” Miguel questioned with a smirk.

“Oh, so much better,” you giggled, nodding your head.

“Thank you for being so patient with me, Miguel. And..I’m sorry I had you wait so long.”

He shook his head.”No, mi alma, don’t say that. I would’ve waited a lifetime for you. You know that. Yeah, I may have had my urges now and then but, you were definitely worth waiting for.”

He gave you a kiss on the forehead before pecking your lips a couple of times. “Get some sleep now. You’re gonna need the rest,” he stated with a chuckle.

Nodding your head, you nuzzled up against him and closed your eyes, letting sleep consume you.

Who knew you’d end up becoming addicted to sex.

☆*:.｡. o .｡.:*☆ ☆*:.｡. o .｡.:*☆ ☆*:.｡. o .｡.:*☆ ☆*:.｡. o .｡.

*nena -babe

*Lo haces tan bien, nena. - You do it so well, babe.

*Así. Chúpelo. - Like that. Suck it.

*¡Mierda! -Shit!

* Sé que puedes hacerlo. -I know you can do it.

*mi alma- mi soul

#miguel o'hara #miguel x reader #miguel o’hara x reader #miguel ohara fanfiction #atsv miguel #miguel o’hara smut #miguel ohara x you #miguel ohara smut #miguel ohara x y/n

2K notes · View notes

torasplanet · 11 months ago

Text

❝𝙄 𝙍𝙐𝙉 𝙎𝙃𝙄𝙏.ᐟ❞

H. RAN + AFAB. READER ft. I. KUROKAWA

𝙨𝙪𝙢𝙢𝙖𝙧𝙮 ; ran gets so mad that he can't see through your fake apologies but izana does. he thinks it's cute how you believe that you run shit.

𝙬𝙖𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨 ; smut, threesome, oral(reader giving and receiving), p in v, degradation,, izana and ran arguing over uuu, arguing, throat bulging, hair pulling, gagging, deepthroating, dp ig, daddy kink, brown skinned reader but skin color not mentioned, mention of rindou, petnames (slut, whore, princess, doll etc), couch sex, overstimulation, i think thats it, oh p2 to this

marls notes 2 u(*´▽｀*) ; here are the people who wanted prt 2 reallyyy badd!!! @mysouleaten

The photo of Izana gazing up at the camera while his face so deep in between your thighs was shoved in your face as Ran glared down at you “You’re a fucking slut, y’know that right?” Ran cursed at you as you swatted his phone away from your face. As much as you like looking at the picture, he was pissing you off by shoving that fucking phone in your face “I asked you what you did and you lied in my fucking face knowing you sent this shit to me.” The long-haired man angrily said to you getting all in your face. Nose to nose. Ran had never been this worked out about anything but it didn’t scare you, not one bit because you didn’t care. He could only blame himself for your infidelity.

Ran wasn’t willing to get on his knees for you like you were for him so you found someone who would without you even having to suck his dick. Well, you did suck Izana’s dick but that was after he ate you out. “I’m a slut because I wanted someone to eat my pussy? You weren’t going to do it so what the fuck was I supposed to do?” You asked pushing him away from you roughly. Ran looked at you as if you didn’t have any fucking common sense “I don’t know, not fuck my boss [Y/n]!” He yelled at you. The neighbors were probably ready to call the landlord on the two of you because of all the yelling that had been going on for the past half hour. Rindou was smart enough to leave when Ran asked you what you did the other day and got upset when you said nothing.

“I wouldn’t have had to fuck him if you did what I asked.” You said in a way calmer tone than his showing your true lack of care for the situation; it pissed ran off way more than the entire situation did. “You say it like I’ve never eaten you out before.” The Haitani male answered rolling his eyes at your comment which you scoffed at. “Once. I asked again and you didn’t but for some reason, I keep sucking your dick. Stupid.” Ran shrugged his shoulders as he chuckled a bit under his breath as if he didn’t care but you knew that he did.

“You know why. You’re the one that’s always pleading for more and more.” Ran paused to raise his voice a few octaves prepared to mock you “Daddy, I can feel it in my tummy! So warm! Uhn, Uhn, Uhn!” He teased with that stupid smirk on his face as you frowned, your nails digging into the palms of your hands in agitation. No matter what, Ran always made it his mission to tease you and be an absolute dick, especially in arguments. It didn’t matter how mad he got because his mission was to make you more upset than he was.

You glared at him “I ain’t fuck him because your dick was bad, I fucked him because his head was good.” Ran’s eyes narrowed at you just as yours did to him before he let that word slip from his mouth again “Slut.” Your hand was quick to swipe across his face leaving a red handprint on his right cheek. You were getting pretty fucking tired of him trying his hardest to irritate you because it was actually working. Whatever he was going to do, you wanted him to just do it and get the fuck out of your face.

“If you’re gonna leave just leave.” You said as Ran looked at you frankly unbothered by the slap to his face. He couldn’t count on both his hands how many times you’ve slapped him and this was not the hardest. You could do better honestly if you really wanted him to leave. “Nah, I wanna hear you say why you cheated. I want to hear those words come out of your mouth.” You scoffed once again. The fuck else did he want? A porno of you and Izana?

When you didn’t respond, ran began to walk closer to you forcing you further back until your lower legs hit the bed but he didn’t stop there, he kept walking until you were forced to sit on the edge of the bed and stare up at him as he loomed above you just waiting for you to speak “Wanted someone to eat that slutty pussy huh?” Ran asked brushing back his long hair that was free from the twin braids it usually was in. You didn’t say anything but nodded, still looking up at him through the small blades of hair that rested on your eyelids. His attitude right now was sort of turning you on…getting so worked up and upset. If he wasn’t going to leave, the least he could do was take out all that anger by fucking you. Maybe you were a slut like he said.

Ran gave a smile full of false sympathy as his hand crept up and grabbed your chin tilting your head up forcefully, he glanced down at your legs and saw how your thighs were beginning to rub against each other showing your need right now “Aw, wanna get fucked?” The Haitani male cooed to you. You knew exactly how to play ran to get what you wanted, all you needed was to play the embarrassed role and give a small apologetic look. “Yeah.” You said nodding gently and Ran cooed again as his smile grew.

His hand dropped from your face “Why don’t you get your new boy toy to help then?” He said not dropping the gentle tone he had just to toy with you a bit and you will admit, it did throw you off a bit but it’s okay. Sometimes things took a little more work for you to get what you wanted. “No please ran.” You said grabbing hold of his hand before he got the chance to turn his back on you. You looked up at him with fake tears glazing over your eyes “I’m sorry…I really am.” You pleaded trying to drag him closer to you.

“Are you sorry or do you want dick?” Dick. You could never be sorry for getting what you want, it’s not like you did it without asking him to eat you out because then you’d feel bad but you gave him a warning. Not like he cared about that bullshit so you had to give him a little apology to give him what he wants. The number one rule to not letting a man run you is learning when to give those fake tears and apologies so you can get whatever you want. “M’ sorry. Please, Daddy.” Ran’s grin turned nasty at how you addressed him. He was so easy to please.

Ran grabbed your jaw and leaned down to connect his lips to yours roughly leaning down just a little bit. He forced his leg between your thighs making you part your legs wider to give him better access and he pushed his leg right against your clothed cunt making you moan into his mouth “Feel good?” Ran asked in between kisses as he put his hands on your shoulders. You hummed happily in response letting him push you to lie on the bed, legs still dangling over the edge. Ran broke the kiss and caged you between his arms and stared at you, his long hair coming undone from behind his ear and floating above your face.

“I don’t wanna give you a reason to go to him for some shit like this ever again,” Ran said sternly and you grinned up at him as your thighs squeezed around his leg “Then eat my fucking pussy ran.” You said a bit meaner than you anticipated but it got your point across because his hands went to your legs that were clamped tight around his leg that had stopped moving at this point. Ran lowered himself to his knees onto the carpeted floor of the bedroom and spread your legs wide for him “As you wish pretty.” The blonde and black-haired man said as his fingers traveled up your legs tickling your skin on the way. His long fingers hooked onto the waist of your pants and panties and pulled them both down in one swoop, you kicked them off to a random place in the room and stared down at Ran just waiting for his head to go between your thighs.

He made eye contact with you before slowly putting his face between your legs and he began to lap at your clit making you mewl. You grabbed at the blankets and bucked your hips up as a way to tell him to stop teasing you making him smile on your clit and just when he was getting started to tongue-fuck your hole that was just soaked, squeezing around pure nothing, there was a knock at the door.

What the fuck. You groaned loudly sitting up as Ran rose from your pussy “I got it.” He said delivering a light slap to your pussy making you shiver before he hopped away toward the front door leaving you there with your lower half naked. If that was Rindou who forgot his key, I’ll kill him, you thought rolling your eyes as you waited patiently for your boyfriend to get back and give some stupid excuse for what it was. “Pretty, why don’t you come here for a second?” You heard Ran shout from the living room confusing you.

You gently tilted your body to the side to peek out of the open door and your heart dropped just a tad bit. Ran was grinning at you and Izana in the doorframe of the front door with that careless look on his face that he always had. You had completely forgotten that you told Izana he could come over today. In your defense, you thought that Ran and Rindou were going to be out doing some stupid shit today not that you and Ran would argue until it lead to angry sex. Standing up, you felt a bit nervous and you didn’t want to go out there at all but you did.

Izana’s eyes drifted from your face to your lower half and a small smile appeared on his face but he didn’t say anything “Pretty, why don’t you answer the question I asked you earlier? Seems like the perfect time right now.” Ran said draping an arm over your shoulder, he didn’t look at you because his gaze was locked on Izana. There was a smile on his face but it was obvious from the look in his eyes that he did not like Izana being here, hated it actually and it was probably taking everything in him not to launch at Izana.

Maybe it was because he just got the best idea of his life or because Izana could beat his ass very easily. Your eyes shifted to Ran as you nervously shifted in place. You would like to say that you didn’t know why you were so nervous now when you were just so confident about defending your actions but you knew. Having Izana and Ran near you while you were practically naked and dripping was embarrassing. You didn’t know how you’d be able to handle both of them. Telling ran whatever he wanted to hear would not be what Izana wanted and vice versa, you would not be able to lie to them and make them both happy. Rule number two of not letting a man run you is to know when you’re outnumbered and when it’s time to give up and standing here with these two men looming over you waiting for you to speak was definitely telling you that it’s time to give up. Your false apologies may work on them if you played your cards right but that’s it and you didn’t want to risk it failing.

“Don’t look at me, look at your little boy toy.” Ran said glancing down at you before looking at Izana once again who gave a snarky smile “Don’t call me little.” Izana not being bothered by being labeled as your boy toy was not surprising but he was not little. Not by a long shot in any way.

Your eyes shifted to Izana like you were told “Go ahead, tell him why you ran to him.” Ran said a little more stern this time showing he was getting upset at your lack of words. He slapped your bare ass hard making you yelp and jump slightly earning a laugh out of Izana “Wanted to get my pussy ate…” You muttered. The nervousness and hesitation to answer the question were real this time and Ran grinned, you wondered if he knew you were lying the entire time. Izana cooed at your demeanor and then his eyes flickered back to Ran.

“So what? Is this your way of telling me you want to watch when I eat your girlfriend out?” Izana asked with a mocking grin on his face and Ran almost laughed seriously. “Ha, no. I want you to tell me how you did it so she never has a reason to see you again.” Ran said. He wasn’t asking, he was demanding it and luckily for him, Izana wasn’t too against this idea especially because of how you seemed to quake at the request. Ran was so serious about you not leaving that he’d actually do this shit? Was that the case or did he just want to embarrass you to teach you a lesson? To teach you that in fact, you didn’t run shit.

Izana leaned against the door that had closed behind him a long time ago. “So a tutorial? I’ll do it but if you think that’s gonna stop her from coming to me or for me, you’re stupider than I thought you were.” Ran went to protest against the assumption but when he noticed that Izana wasn’t even looking at him and instead focusing on you, he decided to be quiet and listen to what was going to be said. Izana lifted his hand and gestured for you to come closer to him with two of his fingers, his grin widened as he observed how nervous you seemed. From the moment he walked in the door, the air in the apartment seemed to shift and he almost giggled as he remembered how your once calm and slightly annoyed look dropped when you saw he was here.

He wondered what happened before he got here. You stepped just a bit closer to him and his hand went to your chin holding it gently and you seemed to get even more nervous, you didn’t want Ran to find out about your false apologies. Izana didn’t look like he’d care that much but ran would and knowing Izana…he’d exploit that annoyance and use it to his advantage. What would happen after that was beyond you but you knew you’d be a part of it.

And you wanted it. You wanted it so fucking bad.

Izana’s lilac eyes flickered past you and to Ran “What’d you do to her? Princess looks like she’s gonna cry…” He said in a mocking tone and you damn nere were going to cry with how he was saying that “Nothin’. She was just begging for me a second ago, how she was so sorry for getting a side bitch.” You should’ve known better really…if you remembered that Izana was coming over, maybe just maybe you would’ve done literally anything else than lie to ran because of course he was going to bring it up to be petty. The purple gaze that was lighter than your boyfriend's came back to you and his hold on your face became cold and you got even more scared. You were just mere words away from getting cornered because of your own lies.

“Really? Are you sorry?” Izana asked knowing damn well you weren’t. See Izana was a lot smarter than Ran, not to say Ran was stupid but Izana was definitely smarter and he saw right through those lies despite not hearing them from you himself. You were not sorry. If you were sorry, you would not have invited him over. You lied to ran and that dumbass believed you because you stuck your bottom lip out and acted like you needed him. But he wasn’t going to be the one to break that news to ran, he wanted you to do it and admit that you lied. Ran raised an eyebrow at your silence as you avoided eye contact with Izana, Ran’s hands found their way on your hips. As if to give you a little push in the direction of answering but you remained silent until Izana tilted his head giving you that look. It was a threat.

“I don’t know…” You muttered quietly and Izana’s thumb grazed over your cheek “So I guess that’s a no.” Izana muttered almost as quietly as your words were and Ran chuckled lowly from behind you “Why am I even surprised? You’re lying so you can get dick?” He said and you knew that his words had evil intent. He wanted revenge.

Izana nodded in agreement “Seems like princess wants two. Such a bad girl being selfish.” Izana said with that kind tone he always used but it was different. He was mocking you just a tad bit. He got closer to your face, and his grip on your chin was harsh forcing you to make eye contact with him “I’ma help your dear boyfriend learn to eat your sloppy pussy out and then we can find out what to do with you, understand doll?” Izana asked and you nodded in response still remaining eye contact with him and Ran did not like that at all. His fingers dug into the bare skin of your hips before he yanked you away from the white-haired man.

“Get on the couch and spread ‘em,” Ran said reaching his hand around to slap your cunt making you squeal and hurry over to the couch. Izana and Ran then made eye contact after watching your form scurry over to the couch and lie down “You seem upset.” Izana said, the smile on his face not faltering at all.

“I’m not. Why would I be?” Ran asked with the same smile, his words were almost teasing.

Izana shrugged. “I’d be mad too but I’m just the side bitch, so I wouldn’t understand, right?” He said with his smile growing into a toothy one before walking past Ran and making his way over to the side of the couch where your head rested. Ran wished he could hit Izana, beat his ass even but he’d never win that fight. He’d die before he got another hit on the Kurokawa so he just sighed lowly and focused on his anger toward you.

Ran sat on his hind legs on the couch right in front of your spread legs, on the opposite end that Izana was leaning on just floating above your head. He looked at you and then his eyes slowly trailed down to your bare cunt that was wet. Slut. Getting wet from watching them argue over you and out you as a liar and a cock-hungry whore. “Let’s get this off, princess,” Izana said grabbing the end of the shirt you wore before pulling it off and throwing it somewhere in the room and he grinned at the sight of your bare tits, nipples already hard. “No bra. Just how I like you.” Izana muttered pressing his lips against your cheek getting closer and closer to your lips with each small kiss and as much as you wanted to kiss him back; Ran was glaring at you almost daring you to kiss him “Uhm…” You said quietly to gain Izana’s attention.

He looked at you and then at Ran as his hands trailed down to your shoulders and rested on your collarbones “What are you waiting for? Show me how you go down on her.” Izana said to Ran a bit upset because he stopped you from kissing him back. Ran’s hands grabbed your thighs before he immediately dove his head in between your legs after rolling his eyes at Izana.

“No wonder she came to me. You just dive right in like a maniac.” Izana insulted caressing your face gently as you leaned your head back on the arm of the couch to look up at the tanned male with little whimpers leaving your lips. Ran slapped the inside of your thigh forcing you to look down at him, he had a sour look on his face obviously annoyed by Izana’s talk. However, you could care less what was going on between them because you were between the two of them, you just wanted ran to finally touch you but they were too busy arguing.

Izana reached his hand down to your chest and began to play with your nipple making you moan with a few sobs laced between it “See? Gotta tease her a little bit, work her up, and make her beg.” The short-haired male said remaining eye contact with Ran as you shook beneath him. It pissed Ran off so much that Izana was just there playing with you like you were his toy while staring at him dead in his eyes but Ran couldn’t say that he didn’t enjoy watching you squirm and whine.

Ran did what Izana told him and began to deliver small kisses on your bare thighs, biting just a little bit and smiling into your skin as he got closer to the parts of your thighs that were completely soaked from your arousal showing your true need for them. “P-Please…just want more.” You mewled grabbing Izana’s hand holding it tight and digging your nails into his skin but he merely chuckled and cooed at you “You can wait. Just a little longer.” Izana’s breath was hot on your ear and it was teasing.

Like everything else going on right now, it made you wetter and more needy. You just wanted them to touch you but they weren’t going to do that, they wanted to play with you like a game. “You say it like she deserves it.” Ran commented with a chuckle before biting into your thigh harshly making you squirm more, you reached for Izana in hopes that he might convince Ran to go easier on you “Izana…p-please ‘m really sorry.” You whined grabbing onto his hand while looking at him with teary eyes but he didn’t even get a chance to respond because Ran once again, bit your thigh making you yelp.

“He’s not saving you. He’s enjoying seeing you all teary-eyed, baby.” Ran said with an evil grin on your face as you looked at him while Izana continued to silently fondle with parts of your body. You sniffed while whining just wanting him to stop being so mean. Ran has always been mean but he’s being extra mean. Biting you harsher than normally, grabbing at the fat of your thighs to dig his nails into your skin causing indents, he was being a jerk but you were a liar. A whore and a liar. So he felt like you deserved it and Izana did too but he was mainly enjoying it than rather indulging in it.

This dynamic was so entertaining to him along with how you jumped at the slightest touch. Showed how needy you were for some dick. “’ M sorry Daddy!” You whined aloud. Izana resisted the urge to laugh, of course, you called ran ‘daddy’, guys who don’t eat pussy always wanted to get called daddy. “Princess…I’m feeling a little neglected. Maybe if you showed me some attention, I’d give you what you want or…one thing.” Izana said with his grin extending during his pause and you looked up at him.

“I’m sorry…make me feel good baby. Please.” You pleaded just wanting some form of relief, and ran’s kisses every-fucking-where but your clit was beginning to piss you off and he shoved you down every time you tried to buck your hips up. Izana leaned down and pressed his lips to yours engaging in a sloppy kiss, his tongue swiped along your bottom lip asking you to open your mouth and you obviously did. Izana’s hand held onto your face as he deepened the kiss and took control “W-Want…” Your whisper in the kiss made Izana laugh just a bit. So greedy.

He broke the kiss and stared at you with the same sneaky grin on his face and his thumb ran over your bottom lip making you open your mouth thinking he wanted to shove his fingers in your mouth. It was almost shameful how slutty you were acting “Such a filthy hole. Gonna put it to use okay?” His words were so filthy. Disgusting and you drooled at the thought of him fucking your face. You wanted his cock so bad or ran’s. Both.

It was almost hilarious how bold you were earlier in comparison to how you were just begging to be silenced by cock. You looked up at Izana with an upside-down view as he began to shuffle his sweats off and his tight-fitting boxers allowing his cock to spring up, his brown tip leaking a bit of precum. Your lips popped open wide prepared for him and it made him grin, he had you wrapped around his finger like a ribbon but from the way your body was shaking from just small touches from Ran and him blowing on your clit; it seemed like he’d have to share you but he didn’t care really…as long as he still had you at his feet even if ran was right beside him sharing your gaze.

“Ah–” You said quickly as Izana grabbed hold of your face before stuffing his thick cock into your mouth, his heavy balls resting on your face as you sucked him off as best as you could from the position of your head. A glob of drool began to trail down your chin and Ran watched as you fell apart over just some dick in your mouth, your mouth as almost as sloppy as your pussy that was drooling just as you were. “So messy,” Ran muttered tucking hair behind his hair before placing his hands back on your thighs to prevent them from closing. He could tell that you wanted to close them badly from how they flinched toward each other every other second.

“Keep ‘em open for me,” Ran said and you hummed in response to this, not even being able to nod or speak because of Izana’s cock. His hands drifted from your inner thighs and to your cunt where he spread your lower lips watching as your hole squeezed around nothing. As ran began to drift down for his mouth to meet your cunt, Izana found an opportunity to piss him off. “Didn’t I say not to act like an animal? Suck on her clit first.” The short-haired male said with a helpful tone but it was obvious to everyone else in the room that he was not trying to do that.

Ran growled loudly under his breath intensely annoyed with the other man but still grinned at him “I was just going to do that so why don’t you focus on fucking up her face?” He said similarly to Izana’s words with false kindness making Izana let out a small chuckle before he tilted his down at you and ran his fingers across your cheek “Looks like daddy’s angry–” Izana’s gaze went to Ran again “better take that out on her.” He continued flashing his whites at the man before shoving his dick farther down your throat making you choke all while remaining eye contact with your boyfriend.

Ran merely rolled his eyes and continued his actions, immediately latching his lips onto your clit like earlier and you shouted around Izana’s dick but it was only a muffled sound whose only purpose was to be laughed at by the male above you “Fuck. So pretty moanin’ like this–ngh.” Izana moaned with you as he slowly began to move his hips to fuck into your mouth. Your thighs clamped around Ran’s head, his hair tickling the back of your knee as your back arched up from the cushions of the couch. Ran’s large hands held onto your hips as he began to eat you out, tongue-fucking your soaking hole.

“U-Use your fingers too–ugh. Makes her cum like a virgin.” Izana directed squeezing his eyes shut while he continued to fuck your throat raw making it sore, there was even a small bulge in your throat from it. One of Izana’s hands made its way down to your chest and he grabbed at your tit harshly, teasing your nipples and pinching them while Ran did what Izana told him to. He began to plunge two of his fingers into your pussy as he made out with your clit.

His fingers swipe over the ridges of your plush walls teasing you and purposefully missing your g-spot just by one small touch “P-Please Daddy.” You managed to say, it was hardly a sentence from how mangled it was but they both understood it enough especially Izana with how you looked up at him with watery eyes just begging him to tell Ran to make you cum. “I don’t think you really deserve it, princess. Liars don’t deserve anything.” He said harshly making you whine.

Your walls got tight around ran’s fingers hoping he’d touch your sweet spot. Ran removed his lips from your clit and looked up at Izana “Nah, I think she does deserve it. She deserves everything.” You were too busy in your dreams of bliss to even notice what he said or how he and Izana looked at each other, having a silent conversation about the fate of your pleasure but they had come to a conclusion that they both agreed to. You deserved to cum. You really did.

“Hm, you’re right. Make the whore cum all over the couch.” Izana said and Ran didn’t have to be told twice to dive back between your legs that were quaking just begging him to go back under. The fingertips of ran’s fingertips grazed over your sweet spot making you moan like a pornstar.

He began to ram his fingers in and out of your pussy, the wet sounds echoing in your ear and Izana threw his head back, moaning not only at how good your throat felt closing around his dick but how nasty your pussy sounded. Ran’s long fingers hit your g-spot over and over making you yelp with each hit and your legs trembled around your boyfriend’s head while you allowed Izana just to use your throat as he pleased. It was enjoyable for you too, you felt yourself inching closer and closer to your orgasm as they both used you how they wanted.

Izana groaned loudly with his deep voice bouncing off the walls as he came down your throat. You coughed just a bit as you swallowed it, the thick and slightly sour consistency sliding down your aching throat with ease as if you were built for that purpose only “So fucking good.” The man said rubbing his hands all over your body as he came down from his high, breathing heavily as the white stands of his hair stuck to his sweaty forehead but you…you were still enjoying yourself. Your moans were audible now and they were sluttier than they were muted.

Your hands immediately flew to Ran’s full head of hair grabbing at his long locks “Ah! D-Daddy, f-feel s’good!” The moans spilled from your swollen lips, it was so hard for your words not to become mush with how they were playing with your body. Izana leaned forward and pressed his cheek against yours while tweaking your solid nipples “Baby…t’much. Can’t take ‘nymore!” You mewled blinking up at Izana, it felt so good but it was too overwhelming for you. He was playing with your body while Ran was fucking you with his fingers and sucking at your bundle of nerves.

A small kiss on your cheek and a simple statement were all you got from him “Yeah you can doll, gon’ take as much as we give you right?” Izana asked lowly in your ear and when you didn’t respond, he frowned. You continued to blabber out incomprehensible moans completely ignoring him and he didn’t like that, at all. He slapped your tit harshly making you yell loudly “Yeah, Yeah! I will, baby I promise!” You shouted squeezing your eyes shut and letting the tears stream down your cheeks that would leave marks when the salty liquid dried.

You bucked your hips up to get Ran’s fingers to go deeper, you were almost there. Just right there. “Ah! Cummin’, ‘m gonna cum!” Ran smiled into your pussy as he continued to lap at your clit and quicken the pace of his fingers to make you cum faster, drool dribbled from your lips as you continued to whimper, moan and shout from everything they were doing to you. Your thighs quaked whilst your walls fluttered around ran’s digits. Quickly, your orgasm rushed over you and you squirted all over Ran’s hand and face, dampening the couch cushions in the process.

As you breathed heavily, coming down from your high while Izana kissed all over your neck and face to soothe you, you saw Ran lifting his face from your cunt but then he started to play with the button of his jeans “...Huh?” You huffed in confusion tilting your head slightly and you felt Izana’s lips stretching into a smile onto your skin “Did you think we were done doll?” Izana asked and you didn’t respond and only continued to watch as Ran got rid of his pants and boxers. His hands grabbed hold of your thighs again and dragged you down the couch closer to him.

Ran let go of your thighs and then began to put his hair in a low ponytail with the hairband on his wrist “You wanna cum so bad? You’re gonna keep coming until we feel like stopping.” He said with a malicious grin on his face. Ran’s anger was no longer directed toward Izana, you weren’t even sure if he was angry anymore. But he pushed it aside regardless to team up with Izana to make you regret what you did and you were already near to tears before they even started.

You thought you ran shit but you didn’t. They ran everything, they ran your mind, your orgasm, your pussy and they were going to run that slutty ass pussy all the way through.

#torasplanet.ᐟ #marls-fics.ᐟ #tokyo revengers x reader #tokyo revengers smut #izana kurokawa smut #izana kurokawa x reader #izana smut #ran haitani smut #ran haitani #ran smut #ran haitani x reader #◛⑅·˚'zana^^#◛⑅·˚♡ran hehe #this took so long for no reason #like 5.8k

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silksongeveryday · 10 months ago

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Drawing Hornet everyday until Silksong comes out - Day 365!

1 year! One whole year of daily doodles!!

Honestly?? Idk how to feel, so much has happened since I first started this blog.

I guess I’ll just write what I’m thinking right now??

(Everything under the cut, this thing is longer than I expected)

A lot of this text probably isn’t going to make sense. I’m writing this at 1 am. If there’s any mistakes or errors that’s why. I’ll fix them in the morning maybe.

So like. This whole thing kinda started as a joke, I wasn’t intending to actually draw for a year straight lmao. Like I even used a completely different art style from my regular one that was simple, quick and intentionally dumb. Not that I’m upset by it, I’m actually quite proud of myself that I managed to stick to something for an entire year. That’s pretty unusual for me believe it or not. My original intention was to stop at maybe 20 days because I really wasn’t expecting for this blog to get as much love as it did.

So, from the bottom of my heart, thank you so so much to everyone who has followed and supported this silly little idea I had, you guys are the biggest reason my experience has been so positive and worth it. (Sure it’s not original but I hope it’s at least been interesting!)

I’ve said this a few times now but I’ve mentioned wanting to take a break. I’ll admit that even though it’s been fun it’s still pretty tiring to keep up with this blog sometimes since some recent life events have made it so hard. After some thought, I’ve decided that I’ll likely take a break sometime in the coming months. Maybe toward day 400 or so. As of right now, things are at a lull so I’ve been okay enough mentally and physically to keep up this daily streak I think. Though this could change in an instant for whatever reason.

Overall I think my burnout has kind of gone away I think?? Or at least I’ve been reinvigorated recently after replaying a few runs of hk randomizer and steel soul. No promises it’ll stay away but I silly expect it to come in waves.

Ok but call me crazy or delusional or whatever, but my hopes are up that Silksong will release this year. (which means slowing down/not doing daily doodles yay) I genuinely believe big news is coming since I’ve been getting a lot of dreams lately about something happening with Silksong in March. Idk, I could be wrong but after doing this for a year I’m literally clinging onto anything right now lol

I’d obviously still make the occasional doodle or two when HKSS releases but not daily. This stuff is tough to keep up sometimes, I would never do daily posts like this again once it’s over

Oh yeah also I have an actual big drawing I’m still working on, expect that in sometime in the next few weeks I think!

Anyway, I can’t think of anything else to say right now so I guess that’s it for now!

Thanks so much and here’s to more doodles!

#silksongeveryday #ssed #hollow knight #silksong #hk hornet #hollow knight hornet #silksong hornet #hollow knight fanart #hk fanart

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livelaughlovesubs · 4 months ago

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guess who's back, back again, it's 🃏 anon back at it again!

so. Sampo Koski (i'm fully inclined to say his full ass name because why not, it's hilarious) recently i had a big craving for his bratty little ass, so i was thinking, maybe reader (gn or otherwise) getting way too tired of his quips and just... fucking him roughly, rough sex, bondage (or any form of BDSM), some (or a lot of) manhandling and a teensy bit of a blood (either from clawing or biting can work!) can work really well!

but honestly, go wild i don’t really mind whatsoever, i’m swamped with work right now and i just need to satisfy my needs from them lolol.

so, again, have fun with this request!

from, le 🃏 anon!

Hello hello~! Great to see you again. After two whole months, I hope you aren’t that swamped with work anymore? Haha

Dom!reader x sub!sampo - reader is gn

Warning: bondage, pegging (I use dick), rough sex, slapping, manhandling, chocking, scratching, mention of death, hair pulling, edging

It was a mistake to trust him.

Seriously, this man is wanted by the guards and owns the infamous image of a liar, how could you believe in his words? Maybe they were just too sweet, too tempting and irresistible. Even so, it doesn’t justify how stupid you were to trust him. That sweet yet two faced smile, it made you blind. I mean- how dared he scam you with low quality ropes?!

All you wanted was to buy some nice, pretty ropes, and he even gave you a discount. Then he talked big about how well he threats his customers, and that he’d personally bring it to your house. Though the moment you glanced at the item, seeing the rough texture and poor handicraft, your jaw dropped. No wonder the price was so damn cheap, this guy tried to rip you off! Who did he take you for? This won’t do, you wasn’t someone easy who’d let it slide after him apologising. You’ve been so excited to receive it after all, that’s why you had to teach him a lesson.

You grabbed him by his arm and dragged him inside, throwing him onto the ground. The rope slipped from his hands, landing next to him. A cold look in your eyes and you kicked his sides, telling him to get onto the bed. He eventually obliged, then you began stripping his clothes. Sampo let you do it with a sheepish smile and dropping eyes, chuckling satisfied. That lewd little fox just loved it when you are rough with him, when you push him around and put him in his place. Now his face was being pushed into a fluffy pillow while his ass was high in the air, kneeling basically. Wrists near his ankle as you brought the red rope closer to him, straightening it out then whispering, “hold still.”

With a swift move, you tightened the knot around his wrist, pulling with all your strength. He groaned a little and bawled his hands into fists, fully aware that there will be bruises on the next day. “Most esteemed customer~ why… are you testing your product on me?” His voice got higher towards the end, a sense of excitement hidden under the surface. “Hah, come on, we are more than just merchant and buyer.” You reminded him while giving his bare butt a harsh slap, leaving behind a red mark. “Nghh~! Ahaha! Oh y/n, you are as fascinating as ever.”

That’s right, you two have shared some intimacy before and despite the relationship you both had he still tried to scam you. “Save your flattery for later. Now, tell me, does this feel like quality ropes?” You asked him with a scorn, in the meantime opening the lit of a bottle. The tall male had a rather sarcastic expression, acting like he didn’t know. Though the answer was as clear as day. He could feel it rub against his flesh, irritating and burning his skin. It had an itchy feeling to it, yet it also hurt, causing the area around it to turn red.

A faint blush covered the cheeks of the boy. His breathing was heavy and ragged, sweat forming on his forehead. Then you grabbed his roots and yanked on his hair, making him arch his back into a crescent shape, mumbling, “answer me.” The rather rough treatment was immediately met with a loud moan, “uhhH-nNNGhhh~! Ah, be gentle, y/n..” finally he looked at you, mouth parted and tongue hanging out a little. His face also reddened by a few shades, the corners of his lips were curled into a grin.

“I take it you know what this means for you?” You sighed and asked him, squeezing a large amount of lube onto your inner palm. He acted like he didn’t know, staying quiet and making a -hmm?- sound. So you continued with, “your punishment, for deceiving me.” Then you stuck two fingers inside his hole, fingering him sloppily. “Punish.. ment? Ah-ngHhhh..! To-too rough~♡” Sampo threw his head back, his blue-white hair bouncing around. “Yes, punishment for bad boys.”

Seeing how he shuddered and shook, you deemed him prepared enough and pulled your fingers out. Afterwards you lined the tip of your length to his hole, followed by you dropping the bottle onto the ground and grabbing his waist with both hands. Holding him, making him stick his ass out some more. “Mhmm~ ha, haah… don’t hold back now, dear customer.” His breathing became even more ragged, he was obviously enjoying this. “What a fucking whore.” You chuckled, giving his bottom another squeeze, spreading his hole with two fingers before penetrating him.

You slowly pushed the tip in, noticing how his shoulders jerked upwards, the oh so familiar grin returned to his wet lips. Since he was taking this so well, you might as well speeding up the process. With one snap of your hip, you pushed the rest of it inside him, your pelvis hitting his ass. “NgGGHhh~!! Ah- f-fuck, so good, more, ha- mHm, do me harder ♡♥︎!” Sampo cried out, hands wrapped around his own ankle, grip tightening with all his might. He wanted to trash around so bad, though the restrains weren’t bulging in the slightest. Keeping him in check, unmoving and restricted.

Without wasting much time, you began moving, thrusting your dick in and out of him at a fast pace. “AhHh!” He moaned at the sensation, at you rubbing against his walls and hitting places so deep inside him that it made him see stars. Then you leaned closer to him, grabbing his hair again as you whispered into his ear, “You said harder? Let’s see if you can take it then.” After that you licked his earlobe, running your tongue all over the shell while moving your hips ruthlessly. “NGhhh! Y/nnn~! Ah, t-touch me more!” He whimpered, wanting you to show some attention to his leaking member, but you ignored him.

Instead, you opened your mouth and bit his shoulder, trying to raise the speed even more. The hand on his hip gripped him harsh enough to leave bruises, the other one accidentally ripped off some strains of hair from his scalp. You bit down even more when his voice hitched, enough to draw out some fresh drops of blood. At this point he was a withering mess, crying with such a dumb yet blissful expression on his face, his blush spread to his shoulders as well. “OoOhhhH, AHHnnHgg fuuuck!! There, r-right there, so good, fuck me more, more!!” A series of unintelligible words left him, echoing through the lust-ridden room.

The pain he felt from your rough treatment, from the newly gotten bruises and wounds all faded away the moment you found his sweet spot. Not only that, you’ve been abusing that poor area with such brutality he felt like he was gonna die. Each time the tip pressed and hammered against that spot, his head would empty themselves and more tears would fell from his eyes. Drool was hanging out of his mouth as you relentlessly pounded into him, panting and doing your best to keep the tempo up.

“Hah… this is hardly a punishment for you, isn’t it?” You scoffed under your breath, feeling a little bothered by it. That’s why you slapped and scratched his butt again, cursing out, “look at what a fucking pervert you are, Sampo koski.” After drawing some blood with your nails, you insulted him, smirking sadistic. His face was quite a sight to behold, so chaotic and blushy, so damn adorable. “UhHHmm!~♡♥︎ GuUughhh!!” All he did was whimpering and moaning like some dog in heat, struggling against his restrains while his cock leaked his filthy pre onto the bed. With all the remaining strength he had, he meekly trust his hips back against you, trying to get you to go even further.

Then you stopped, very abruptly. “Ah-ahhh..?” A confused squeak escaped him. Hands still holding his hips while he sobbed into the pillow, but you didn’t move at all. “Shall I just leave you like this? Considering you aren’t seeing this as a punishment.” You asked yourself, though talked loud enough for him to hear, you wanted him to know. “uhhh- huuu~?? N-no! Don’t stop y-yet!” His voice was rough and hoarse from his screaming his lungs out. That man really has no shame considering how loud his volume was the entire time.

He turned his head back, trying to look at you. And when he did, a shiver ran down his spine, almost enough to push him over the edge. You were smiling with your eyes, a dangerous look, one that told him to run away r he’d regret it. But, to him, he was already too deep in this mess to escape. This was going to be a long night for him, and he knew since the beginning. “You wanna cum, Sampo?” You began, leaning down to his level again. By doing so you pushed your dick a little deeper in and he whined at the friction. The male didn’t respond with words, he only nodded his head hesitantly, meekly. A sense of fear and pleasure bubbling inside him. How he loved to feel like nothing next to you.

Next thing he knew you clasped one hand over his eyes and wrapped the other one around his throat, squeezing him, about it choke him. “Be a good boy and endure it. If I’m satisfied, I’ll let you cum.”

His heart pounded against his chest, he felt lightheaded. All the ecstasy and anticipation was making him dizzy with lust. He didn’t even have to think twice before groaning with a low voice, “yes, please, toy with me. Kill me with your love♡”

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yuzurins · 2 years ago

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# circles

in which: sae’s tired of running around in circles with an undefined relationship, so he decides to take his chance when he can to make you his.

warnings: kind of unorganized, mentions of alcohol, intoxicated reader, insecure reader, mutual pining, just a bunch of comfort and fluff, honestly strayed from the original prompt t-t

reblogs and interactions are appreciated!

itoshi sae is a busy man.

being the most sought for japanese football player and as well as a regular on the real matrid team meant he was always doing something football related. practices, games, events, you name it.

his schedule is packed with plans set months before they happen. companies and teams always request to see him sooner, but he makes no exceptions for anyone, not even his own family.

well, that goes for anyone but you.

itoshi sae has found himself breaking his own ideals without any hesitation. he‘s standing in front of your apartment, 5 hours, 27 minutes and 54 seconds before his flight back to spain, after an obviously drunk text you sent him 10 minutes ago.

1:22AM

y/n: saweewea

y/n: did u knwo a broken heart hurts REAL bad😍

sae: what

y/n: i think i’m goign to crush my cat with my body weight

y/n: u fg hhh hj jgjjgjhhhrkdoforjfof

sae: where are you rn

y/n: ogm r ru gonna come visit me 😎😜🥺

y/n: i’m soooerirjf lonely

sae: .

sae: be there in 5

sae doesn’t know whether to ring the doorbell or call you to let you know he’s here. heck, he’s not even sure whether you’re at home or not, but he does know that it’s not often you go out to drink. as he’s hesitating, you hastily open the door, almost like you could sense him there.

“sae!” you slur, just barely avoiding stumbling over yourself as you straighten up. “i didn’t expect you to actually come visit me.”

“neither did i.” he scoffs as he takes in your current state: graphic anime tee (which he gave you last christmas), sweatpants, messy tangled bun and your face is entirely red. you reek of soju and he knows better than anyone you’re a lightweight, so sae mentally prepares once more for what he’s about to get himself into.

the response from the magenta haired in front of you causes a pout to form on your face. he’s not quite sure if it’s just his imagination or not, but it looks like you’re more down, more tired than usual.

“are you okay?” he asks, and this prompts you to stretch your arms out, almost habitually, and wrap them around the taller male’s torso.

sae flinches ever so slightly at your touch. he gently pushes you back into the apartment as he closes the door, all while having one arm wrapped around your waist.

it’s obvious you’re not in the right mind space, but as everyone says, drunk words are sober thoughts, though sae doesn’t know whether that’s good or bad. you getting blackout drunk as a result of academic stress has become a monthly occurrence now, and it always ends up with sae coming over to babysit you. he’s more than aware of the fact that you’re taking his presence for granted, yet despite that, he’s still always there for you.

you’re obviously more than just friends, so why does sae feel like the line separating friendship and relationship just keeps getting thicker?

you latch onto him like a koala as he shuffles over to your couch. he doesn’t force anything out of you, doesn’t show any impatience, and just waits for you to talk.

the two of you quietly bask in the comfort of each other’s arms for a long time. just as sae begins to loosen his hold on you believing you’ve drifted off, you cling onto him even tighter, refusing to let go of his warmth.

“don’t go.” you mumble into his hoodie, voice quivering, and sae wonders if it really is school stress that’s made you this way.

humming in response, he pats your back lightly as if he’s caring for a baby, trailing his hand up to your head to play with your hair.

sae doesn’t want to pry, but there’s something he really needs to confirm before it eats his thoughts up even more.

“i won’t leave,” he reassures. “did anything happen?”

a sound comes out of your mouth in response, barely louder than a whisper. sae turns his head to look at you and you take it as a request for you to repeat your words. you try again, and this time, you’re still mumbling, but it’s enough for him to make out what you want to convey.

“i’m sorry.” and a tear falls from your eyes, “i’m sorry, sae.”

now sae’s been in this position for countless times, always coming to be your personal therapist at unearthly hours in the night, but this is the first time he’s ever seen you act so vulnerable. he can feel your body trembling against him and his heart aches just seeing you so dejected.

but he’s not dense enough to not realize what you’re apologizing for, because it’s the same reason as to why he decided to ask in the first place. he gently removes his arms off your waist, turns you to face him and moves his hand up to wipe the tears streaming down your cheek.

this tender, silent exchange between the two of you is more than any amount of words that express. sae’s usually indifferent eyes are laced with affection, and you just can’t help but feel so guilty because of that.

“i know you’re really busy,” you avert your eyes, biting on your bottom lip to stop yourself from breaking again. “you’re always doing so much for me, and i feel so terrible because i don’t deserve any of it.”

sae doesn’t say anything, letting you finish your thoughts before stating his.

“i was watching one of your games earlier, and i was reminded of the fact that your world and mine are so far apart.” you’re still looking away, but a soft nudge from sae’s hand pushes you back to look at him. “i just—i feel like i’m not enough for you, sae.”

through watered eyes, you can catch the expression of the male in front of you waver, and with years of knowing him, you’ve mastered the ability to be able to tell what emotions are going off in his mind.

“i know it sounds silly—“

“it’s not silly.” he interrupts, despite being patient all this time, but struggles to find the right words to continue. “is this what you’ve been feeling since back then?”

you shake your head, and lean forward to rest it on his shoulder. “the internet is scary.”

sae lets out a soft chuckle at your unintentional joke, and moves his head to rest it on the side of yours. “but what only matters is that i’m here in front of you right now, yeah?”

“it’s true that i’m busy, but i’ll always be your anchor of support whenever you need it, seriously.” his fingers find their way to intertwine with yours, and your heart flutters at how romantic he’s being. “so don’t cry sweetheart, because you’re breaking my heart as well.”

the use of the pet name makes you giggle, it being so out of character for sae, yet that’s how you know he really means it, from the bottom of his heart. hearing the sound of your laughter allows sae to relax his shoulder from all the tension he unknowingly had been feeling, and he cups your cheek with his palm, bringing you face-to-face with the taller male.

his eyes study your features, taking in your beauty, before going back to make eye contact with you. though you notice how they flicker down to your lips and hover there for a split second longer than anything else, your heart thumping loudly at the realization of what he’s asking of you.

you flash him a small smile in response as approval, and sae wastes no time closing the distance between you two. his touch is soft, almost like he’s afraid of breaking you, and easily washes away all the worries clouding your mind.

sae droops his arms over your shoulders and rests his forehead against yours. “you were always and will be more than enough for me, y/n.”

his sweet words bring a red flush to your face (not from alcohol this time) and you purse your lips in embarrassment as sae’s grin only gets bigger.

“so just hurry up and be mine already.”

BONUS: the morning after

you wake up with a pounding headache, and immediately try to get up to get a drink of water, but your body doesn’t budge at all.

as your eyes begin to adjust, you look down to find sae and his arms locked around you, causing a scoff to come out of your mouth.

of course you couldn’t move when a whole professional football player (incredibly fit btw😍) has a death grip on you.

“sae, wake up.” you nudge him and he only whines in response. “didn’t you have a flight to catch this morning?”

“mm, shush.” he takes one of his arms and lightly pushes you back down into his embrace. “who cares about that, been waiting for this for far too long.”

you laugh and decide to give in, slowly drifting back to sleep.

meanwhile, sae’s nonstop vibrating phone on your nightstand is totally unnoticed, the cause being hundreds of messages and calls from his manager wondering where he is.

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hugsandchaos · 7 months ago

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Danny in an Encanto crossover gives the impression of someone trying to befriend a stray feral cat and bring them inside to give the love and shelter, but the stray feral cat doesn’t trust them and keeps hissing every time they get too close.

Although, I’d love to see everyone being completely accepting of Danny. They don’t look at him with suspicion or hatred when they see him slip up, they’re amazed! He has powers just like the Madrigals? That’s super cool! And he has more than one? Not just phasing through solid objects, but also invisibility and sensing ghosts nearby? Even better!

I bet that Bruno would relate to him in a way. They were both looked down on for their powers, but in different ways. Bruno because he mostly predicted bad things with no control over it, and Danny because a lot of people, including his parents, really didn’t like “Phantom” because the sole reason that he was a ghost. Alma knew that it was Bruno who had the powers, Danny’s parents didn’t know he was the ghost they keep shooting at.

Also, Danny 100% defends Bruno from any villagers who blame him for having bad visions. Bruno’s lacked social interaction with other humans for ten whole years, but Danny’s up for fighting for him. His favorite line to use was “If I’m a child and I have to explain this to you, what does that say about you as an adult?”. He didn’t get in trouble for it.

Danny talks about space and teaches them about it! He’s more than happy to explain it all and answer their questions the best he can!

Danny eats Julieta’s food and is honestly freaked out because his ribs are suddenly not broken anymore. Take it a step further and say that he’s sleep deprived, and one of the side effects of having food that heals you is that it can make you really tired if you haven’t slept well for a while, so you can’t help but take a quick nap. So he just falls unconscious after a few bites and wakes up in the early morning not knowing what year it is.

It doesn’t get rid of his death mark, though, which confuses everyone. Speaking of his death mark, Danny doesn’t like to talk about it, but eventually explains that it’s a scar from being zapped. He doesn’t go into detail or talk about what exactly the incident did to him, though. He just mentions that he got zapped and has a scar from it.

Eventually, the Madrigals will come to the realization that he doesn’t just have ghost-like powers. He’s actually a ghost. Half ghost, at least.

Also, Danny swears he sees Pedro around the house, not just in the paintings, and the most often place is by Alma’s side. He’s even had conversations with him. To everyone else, it looks like he’s talking to thin air, but he seems so fixated on something that’s actually there and listens to nothing so much that they think he’s actually being serious. Once, during a conversation with Alma and she was telling him about Pedro, he looked at her very confused and said “What are you talking about? He’s standing right next to you”.

At first, she was upset, but he said it with way too much confusion and conviction that she starts to realize he’s serious. Every time someone says that he isn’t, Danny gestures to nothing and goes “Are you blind?! He’s right there!”. In his eyes, Pedro really is there, looking awkward because this kid sees him and is arguing with his family about it.

Honestly, Danny doing something by himself and then suddenly turning around and making immediate direct eye contact with Pedro would be really funny. Pedro is honestly freaked out because something seemed off with the kid from the beginning, and he just made eye contact with a ghost?

Oh, and you best believe that after being treated so nicely by everyone, Danny will start throwing hands the second another ghost tries to cause them trouble.

Make it even better by combining it with Good Vlad. The two just show up one day trying to find a place to live. Their dynamic confuses more than a few people because people usually treat their god father or technical uncle with love and respect. Danny’s constantly getting on his nerves for the fun of it, doing things including but not limited to taking his coffee. He also calls him a “fruit loop”, which apparently means someone insane. Vlad calls him “Little Badger”, and yes, he’s actually been bitten by Danny once because Vlad startled him when he grabbed him to pull him out of danger and Danny’s first instinct was to bite him.

#danny phantom #danny fenton #encanto #encanto x Danny phantom #danny phantom x Encanto #danny phantom crossover #Encanto crossover

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sscieloz · 1 year ago

Text

What Friends do

Kim Minjeong x 5thmember!reader

Synopsis: winter finds out that you and giselle have been fucking. as you grow tired of her subtle glares and questions, you ask her if she wants to try it, too. She’s hesitant about it, at first, but soon confesses that she’d love to try being edged in public, and naturally, you’re more than happy to help her with that.

Warnings: sub!winter x dom!reader. public edging + cumming. vibrators. lots of plot w a little bit of smut, I guess :) I hope this is ok ˆˆ I tried my best.

Word count: 5k

Notes: I j kept writing and suddely it was 5k long lol. honestly, I think +3k words (personally speaking) might be too much… the words start to lose their meanings and my writing kind of slacks off, yk? So it’ll try to tone it down, for any future works. that’s my opinion, tbh. what do you think?

Pt.1 | Pt.2 | Pt.3

“Are you and Aeri unnie a thing?” Winter asks, ever so casually. Her eyes are still glued on her phone; playing sudoku, most likely.

Her words make you choke on your milkshake, coughing violently. “What? No. of course not,” You add, curiously, “What makes you think that?”

“She checks you out all the time.” Your bandmate shrugs, tone indifferent as if she were talking about the weather. “And it’s not like you’re exactly subtle, either. You’d think her face is in her tits, with how much you ogle them.”

You frown, playing with your drink’s straw. Your encounters with Aeri were happening with some sort of frequency now, although it was rather natural— you were both needy and the sex was good and easy, so it was truly a win-win situation. However, you’ve never stopped to think about the way you acted in public. Now that you did, you could observe the truth behind Winter’s comments: you’d gotten closer to her over the past few weeks. Giselle wasn’t a naturally over affective person, but she’d often be found tugging your shirt or brushing your hips, dragging you to be closer to her whenever you wandered too far.

You gulp, reminding yourself to talk to her about it, later.

“…because if you are, then it’s ok, too.” You’ve missed most of Winter’s discourse, lost in thoughts, one she’s deeply immersed into. The older girl’s voice hushes in a low, hesitant tone, the usual confidence she’d try so hard to bring on stage all gone now. “I just wish any of you told us. I-I thought we were friends! I tell you everything. It’s not fair.”

Winter’s short, auburn hair moves with the wind’s breeze, enticing her delicate appearance. She crosses her arms, rolling her eyes once she realizes you were too distracted to pay attention to her words and give her a proper answer.

She already knows about it, somehow. And she’s hurt you haven’t told her. You realize. She’s a smart, attentive girl, of course; probably figured it out all by herself.

“Sorry, I dozed out.” You shrug as she remains silent, not backing down from getting her answer—yet not amused, either. It wasn’t uncommon for you to unintentionally drift apart during a conversation, with your unnies having to explain stuff to you two, sometimes three times, before you finally managed to maintain your focus for long enough to understand. “Ok, ok. We might’ve fucked a few times…”

Minjeong smirks; she loves to be right about things. Clapping her hands, she lets out little giggles, “I knew it! Why didn’t you tell me sooner, Y/n? We’re literally best friends!”

She was right; Winter was the one you were closest with, out of all the girls, even though none of you knew exactly why. Your personalities were rather different. However, you’d often be found talking for hours and hours over the craziest topics with insane enthusiasm. You tell her everything, and she was great at giving you advice and putting you back to your senses. She never complained, not even when your banter was too frequent or too whiny for the other members to endure.

“I’m sorry,” You apologize, sincerely. You really should’ve told her: it was nothing serious, and there was no reason in hiding it. “It just didn’t even go through my mind. It was so natural how it happened the first time—and the others… I didn’t think it would even matter.” You poke her nose, noticing the way Winter’s pout turns into a small smile. You knew she wasn’t truly upset— she simply just longs to be a part of your life. “What do you want to know, though? C’mon, I’ll tell you everything.”

Your suggestive tone is the reason Winter’s face turns as red as a tomato, sipping on her Coke Zero avidly to avoid your suggestive answer.

She does smack you when your loud laugh starts attracting them attention, though.

“Aeri is going out.” Winter announces, taking your AirPods off without your consent, so you’d fully focus on her.

You glance at Aeri, who’s caught up rearranging a bunch of stuff in one of her small Prada purses. Your bandmate is wearing a beautiful leopard dress with scandalous black heels, pin-straight hair falling neatly to her waist and red tint kissing her lips. She looks flawless, much different from you— too cozy in your big pajamas and disheveled hair.

“I have eyes, you know.” You mumble, but smile at the sight of the Uchinaga, dropping your nintendo on the couch and whistling to get her attention. “You look so hot, Aeri unnie! Have fun!” Aeri smiles and gives you and Winter a kiss before running towards the door.

“I will, thanks Y/nn-ie! Don’t wait up for me!” She screams as she locks the door, leaving the room silent. The only apparent tension is Winter, who stares at you with narrowed eyes.

“What is wrong with you, unnie?” You scoff, annoyed as you return to your game. Mario’s red cap and silhouette can be seen through the screen in your hands, and Winter shifts on the couch, hugging her knees as she keeps on staring at you.

“Aeri is going out. Somi-sunbaenim will be there, too.” She repeats herself, making you even more confused. Seeing your frown and how her words weren’t enough to have you interested in paying her attention, Winter grabs the device, shutting it down.

“Hey! What the fuck?” You try to take it from her hands, only for her to tighten her grip.

The auburn haired girl has, unlike you, a significant amount of strength.

“Yn, focus! Aeri is going out and Somi will be there!” Her voice is outraged, not able to understand how you were so chill about this.

“So?” You are still frowning as you try to get your nintendo back, clearly not bothered. “Somi’s fucking hot, Winter. I hope Aeri fucks her. Again, I mean. You know…”

Winter’s mouth opens to a big O, surprised by your answer. You take advantage of that moment to grab your nintendo back, although she’d managed to get your sole focus. You cock your head to the sides, engines running with the earn of being able to understand what went through her mind.

“Aren’t you jealous? Or insecure?” Winter asks, frowning.

“What? No. Why would I be?” seeing her equally confused expression, you sigh, sitting properly. “Winter, we fuck, that’s literally it. Aeri and I are friends, and will only be friends. It’s just sex, really.”

It was clear that the older girl still didn’t understand your dynamics, but she bit her tongue, not wanting to be a bitch about it.

“Ok.” She nodded, messing her hair, “I just don’t really get it, I think.”

“There’s no jealousy between us, Minjeongie.” You tell her, hoping to clarify things. “Because there’s not a relationship, get it? And there won’t be one. We are friends, and bandmates, and we like to have fun, sometimes. Nothing else.”

She stands up, still looking at you as if you were an alien.

“Ok.” Your bandmate sighs, clearly disapproving your whole dynamics. “I’ll go to my room.”

“Huh, ok.”

You stare at Winter’s back while she leaves the living room, without waiting for an answer.

The two of you are splashed on your bedroom’s massive rug when she mentions it again.

“So… it all started with that?” Winter asks, looking at the vibrator displayed on your desk. You grit your teeth, realizing you’d simply thrown it in the first place you saw, after cleaning it. You had found the toy when doing your laundry, and decided it wouldn’t hurt to keep it extra clean, even if it had been ages since you’ve last used it.

After the day Giselle went to the party, you started noticing how curious Winter had gotten about your relationship— or lack thereof. She’d send you subtle glances whenever the five of you were hanging out, and her questions were soon becoming more and more obvious. It was fairly noticeable, how intrigued and interested the whole thing had gotten her.

With that, Winter started seeking for details of how you and Giselle fucked for the first time, which led you to the current situation: the green vibrator displayed in your hands, teasing your friend as you playfully jiggle it onto her face. You try to hand it to her so she’ll touch it, but she retreats instead, face all red from embarrassment.

“Pretty much, yeah.” You smirk, eyeing her just as curiously, “Why are you suddenly so interested, though? Would you like to try it?”

“What, no! Ew.” Her eyes go wide at your suggestion, and Winter shakes her head vigorously. You laugh at how she looks like she’s about to combust; she’s always been so composed, and so… chaste, whenever one of you mentioned anything about sex. It’s endearing, even.

You had thought, initially, that she was simply a private person— which was more than ok, of course. However, her current reactions led you to wonder if her reactions weren’t from lack of experience, too.

“Ok, then.” You tuck your vibrator back in the drawers and brush the subject off, immediately sensing how her muscles relax, and her face changes into a mix of easy features. The last thing you’d want is to make her uncomfortable, so the change is much appreciated.

You do notice how Winter keeps biting her lip, though. And the way her eyes flicker to your drawers, before focusing back on your face. You bite your cheek, too, to prevent a big smile from covering your face. She’ll come around, just like you did. Patience was a virtue, and you would happily wait for your friend to grow confident enough to come out of her shell and take whatever she wanted to.

“I changed my mind.” Winter announces, staring down at you with assertiveness. You snort, pouting.

“Yeah, that’s too bad. You gave me that fucking top, there’s no way you’re getting it back.”

“No.” She rolls her eyes, annoyed. “I mean, about that other thing.”

The five of you have just finished performing at Music Bank, and you’re currently trying very hard to sit still, so the makeup artist can work on getting all the foundation out of your face. As a result, you’re unable to turn and take a proper look at your bandmate, whose voice is so quiet you barely hear her correctly.

“You mean dinner? Because we still have to cook, even though it sucks, I know. It’s our day, there’s no escape.” You frown. Winter rubs her arms nervously, eyes staring everywhere but at your face.

“No!” She’s exasperated, and impatient to know you’re not playing with her: you simply don’t understand what she’s implying. Which means she’ll have to be direct about it, nearly begging. And that’s the last thing Winter wants to do. “I want to… try what you’ve suggested, the other day. With the, ahn sex thing.”

You try your best to not make your eyes grow wide, swallowing deep to keep focus. “Ok. Do you want to do it when we get back home?”

Winter hesitates. Her hands trace patterns on the beige vanity, “I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to do it at home, either.” She seems to ponder, before adding. “But I do want to do it. Badly”.

“Ok.” You nod, smiling at her to make sure she’s comfortable and completely reassured. “We can just go with it whenever you’re comfortable, then. There’s no need to hurry.”

Winter smiles back at you, before being dragged by Ningning to film that new tiktok challenge the maknae’s been so eager to shoot. You don’t mind, though. In, fact, you thrive on watching them being the silliest, carefree versions of themselves they can, while on camera. It pleases you to know they can show such part of themselves to your fans without being scrutinized or criticized.

The five of you are at the mall, enjoying your day off together as if you’ve never been separated in your entire lives. You’re laying in one of the waiting room’s cushions, waiting for Karina and Ningning to be done with trying on the whole store’s winter collection. Giselle’s hands are full, too, and her critical eyes examine every piece before choosing for herself. Her expressive faces leave you curious, eager to you know what thoughts go through her mind. In fact, you get so invested in trying to guess the girl’s internal monologue, you barely notice Winter’s frame standing beside you.

You haven’t touched her at all, not ever since she’s confessed to you about her urges. You know Winter must be fuming, whimpering with need and the desire to be relived, or simply touched, in any ways you’d like. Your intention was to leave the idea of being pleasured linger on your bandmate’s mind. The flashes going through her brain for weeks until she was nothing but pliable and ready for your commands, searching restlessly for an orgasm that she’d have to work really hard for.

It was the sweetest part, out of all of it. Being able to see Winter jump slightly whenever your fingers brush her skin, like a lost, fragile bunny. You adore it.

“Y/n.” She whines, and you can hear the neediness in her voice, no matter how much she tries to hide it. “I don’t want to wait, anymore. I want it now.”

You roll her eyes at her demands, even though you’ve already decided you’ve had enough playing, too.

“I do have something for you, Winter.” You tell her, reaching your arms out. Once she gets to you, you kiss her hands, ever so gently. “Something to make you feel better. To kill the urges that have been going on your body for weeks, now. Would you like it?”

Her voice falters. “I thought you had forgotten about t-that.”

“Oh, I could never.” You think your smirk will surpass your face, with how much you’re smiling. Ever since she’d pleaded for you to touch her, your mind has been plagued by the numerous ways you’d take her, ruining her pretty little body until she was passed out, drunk on her orgasms. “Shall we, then?”

Truth be told, the anticipation you’ve built was starting to get to you as much as it riled Winter up.

She was confused to be guided to the restroom stalls rather to the car. Were you not taking her home? How else would you get a taste of her, like you promised, then?

Her thoughts, however, dissipated once you started to unbutton her jeans, letting the loose piece fall through her knees.

“W-What are you doing?” She paled, trying to reach for them back. Her back hit the wall, and she was once again reminded of how petite she truly was, cornered by your frame. She tried her best to nudge you, hoping to get you off her. Your feet, however, were stamped onto the ground, and the grip you had on her hips was a tad too strong. She gulped, realizing you’ve allowed her to overpower you every time you played games or competed for something. “Someone might c-come in, Y/n. Please…”

It aroused you to have her begging so quickly. You’d barely touched her, yet there she was: with her mouth half open and her fingers poking, scratching your neck. You smiled.

“They can.” You confirmed, seeing her gulp. “We better not take long, then. Right? We wouldn’t want anyone to see you like this. You look so pretty, though. I wish you could see yourself, right now.”

Your words were nothing but true. She looks so adorable, it leaves you aching. Your hands twitch, tense with how much you’ve envisioned groping her tiny body and sticking your fingers up in her cunt until she was screaming loud enough for everyone in that store to know what you were up to.

You’d wait for her to come around and be confident, though, just like Giselle did to you. Besides, the anticipation was part of the fun.

She hums, already feeling herself become lightheaded by your praises. Soon enough, Winter finds herself getting distracted by your sweetness, and it’s not long until she’s completely relaxed under you. In fact, she’s so engrossed by your frame, she barely registers your hand. It trails lower, and your fingers brush her clit through her small panties.

Winter drops her head, even though she’s no longer worried, and looks up to meet your eyes.

“I did say you were going to get what you’ve been asking for, didn’t I, dearest?” You explain, focused on her big orbs. Winter’s eyes observe your every move, attentive. “And you’ve been doing so good with the shows and rehearsals… You deserve a treat, naturally.”

You allow your hand to cub her sex, slowly caressing it as you feel her shiver under you. With gentle manners, you insert two of your fingers into her cunt, smirking to find her already dripping wet. She moans so loud you start placing small, wet kisses down her neck, to gather her focus back to you and not to the deep, unhurried pleasure your fingers provide her, now pulling in an out in a slow rhythm.

Taking all of her in, you add, “Do you like this, Minjeongie? The thrill of knowing someone might walk in and know how dirty you are, spreading yourself for me with such ease?” You smirk, not resisting on rubbing her clit for a few seconds, before your fingers find the place they were meant to wander for so long. “God, your cute little cunt is so wet already.”

You let out a little laugh, reminding of yourself of your intentions as you retrieve your fingers from her pussy, making her lick them clean. She does so, like a good, obedient girl.

“You always excel in everything, unnie. Such a good job you’re doing.” You praise the girl locked in your arms, immediately shutting down her needy whines and complaints.

“Please don’t stop…” Whatever words Winter’s had in mind die the moment she spots a small toy in your hands. You flicker it between your fingers, allowing her to process what you intended to do. “It this—“

“What you’ve told me about? Yes, it is.” You smile, making a show of sucking and getting the vibrator wet for her yourself. This time, it’s her turn to have a darkened gaze, one filled with hunger. Her attention is all on you: on your next movements, on your body. You adore it. “I even got it in purple, just like you had told me. It’s so pretty, Winter. A pretty little toy for a pretty girl, begging to be ruined.” You murmur, getting to your knees and facing her pussy. Your gaze never leaves hers, careful to not miss a single breath of hers.

Winter is truly a sight, and you want to make sure you’d remember all of her sensitive, fast responses.

In fact, you were actually very surprised when Winter went to your room in the middle of the night, confessing about her few, failed sexual experiences and what she’d like to try, someday. It wasn’t unusual for you to talk about sex with your bandmates, although Winter never spoke about herself to you— at least, not directly. However, the two of you were already used to talking about numerous topics, and the conversation went by easily enough. You were pretty surprised to hear her confess, with a quiet tone, about how much the thought of herself being tossed around like a doll aroused her. How she sometimes fantasized about doing things in public, yet hidden enough so people wouldn’t be completely sure about her actions. It pleased her, knowing she’d be clouding their minds, leaving them wondering without a proper answer. Though they’d have their doubts, no one would have a clue about it: that was what aroused her the most.

Of course, you were more than eager to make her wishes come true, and the current time seemed like the perfect one to do just that.

Winter’s pretty cunt’s all on display for you, and you can’t help but to get a taste of her. So, of course, you do so: parting her folds, you give her clit a brief, sloppy kiss. You feel your friend’s delicate fingers forging a firm hold onto your hair, and Winter tries her best to not make any noises. It’s the same as nothing, though.

She is, just as you had imagined it, too sensitive.

“No! Y/n, don’t tease…” She huffs, frustrated. As the toy slips inside, she can’t help but to let out a high-pitched scream—one that’s muffled by her own hands, who run towards her mouth in hopes to keep herself quiet. Her shoulders shake due to her laughs, then, as she fails terribly.

Seeing her so carefree is more than enough to have you giggling, too. You mess her hair, pinching her cheeks.

“Behave, ok? If you’re good enough ‘till the end of the day, I might reward you when we get home.” You promise Winter as you get up, zipping her pants back to place adn kissing her cheek.

The look she gives you assures you she’ll be anything but.

“Are you okay, Minjeongie? Your face is all flushed.” Karina asks the red-haired girl, as the oldest sits beside you at the restaurant.

The three of you nod, and Ningning is quick to put her palm over Winter’s forehead.

“You’re hot, too. And all sweaty. Were you this sick earlier in the afternoon?” She asks, with a worried tone. Winter takes a sip of her water, hoping to collect herself before answering her bandmates, but nearly drowns herself in it once you increase the intensity of the vibrations. They echo into her cunt, making it impossible for her to answer anything straight.

She was so stupid, thinking it was an easy task: walk around with the girls as they tried some clothes on, then attend dinner, and soon to go back to their dorms, where she’d get her reward for being a good girl and finally get properly fucked, like she had silently begged you for so long. No, she was a smart, attentive girl. How could she not have predicted that stupid toy would send such hums deep into her walls? It was difficult to stay still, and nearly impossible to focus or to keep her mouth shut. In fact, she feared deeply she’d just end up moaning loudly if she even tried to speak anything.

Luckily for her, you decide to give her a few moments of peace. As soon as the settings were back to its lowest, she takes another long gulp, with deep breaths, too.

“I’m all good, really. Just tired from walking around so much.” It’s all she manages to say, avoiding Ningning’s lingering touches.

“We should get you to the doctor, perhaps.” Giselle suggests. Her eyes, however, are not focused on Winter. Her attention is all on you, instead. Her gaze is so strong you turn your head away, looking everywhere but to your best friend.

“No! No, there’s no need for that.” Winter gesticulates, nodding and moving her upper body as much as she’s able to without getting the toy to budge. She tries her best to prove to her friends she was indeed ok. “Really, I’m sure it’ll pass once the food c-comes fuck.” Winter stands up abruptly, leaning on her arms to lift herself up as her legs felt like pure jelly. “Nervermind. I j-just have to use the restroom real quick. If you’ll excuse me.”

So, Winter leaves, without waiting for an answer. Almost instantly, you get up too, setting your napkin aside in a calming motion.

“I’ll go help her, girls. Don’t worry.” They all nod, their features completely diverting from one another; while Karina is frowning, Ning keeps alternating her looks into you and the hallway Winter has just disappeared into, torn between letting you handle the situation or stepping up and helping her unnie herself, and Giselle… Giselle has a blank expression, the engines running inside her mind.

Her long nails tap the wooden table in a steady rhythm, staring at your back as you leave them be, walking into the restroom to meet your bandmate. You make sure to lock the door once you get inside, too.

The room is exquisite, a perfect portrait of the whole establishment; embroiled with white and red, the adornments are carefully thought to have the room give off a harmonious, eloquent vibe. You don’t pay much attention to it, though. Instead, your gaze is focused on the girl in front of you, the one who’s gripping the sink with too much strength.

“Are you unwell, unnie? How can I help you?” You ask her, playfully.

Winter stares at you thought the mirror, as you approach her. Her teeth are clenched, her clothes are nibbled and her looks hold fire in them. You’re certain she could kill someone with such thing as a stare if she wanted to.

She opens her mouth, ready to throw a world of curses at you, but stops herself once you motion to your phone, now placing her vibrator at a particularly high setting.

“I’d keep some of those pretty thoughts of yours inside your head, if you’d like to cum just now.”

She’s smart, insufferably so, and you get the proof of it as soon as your words leave your mouth. Quickly, Winter’s defiant stare is gone, and she’s all pliable in your embrace, instead. She’s a whiny little mess, rubbing her teeth on your neck, licking and sucking it just slightly— though not enough to bruise.

“Let me cum, Y/n? Please? I really think I might explode.” She pleads, looking at you with her best puppy eyes. “I need it s-so bad, I swear I’ll fucking do anything, ‘promise.”

You smile at her change of attitude, nodding as you take the vibrator out of her cunt in one, swift motion, replacing it with your fingers. Your thumb works on her clit, applying just the right amount of pressure on it. Finally, you allow her to get the relief she so desperately wants.

“You can cum now, darling. Do it, then.”

The permission is all Winter needs to explode, her body throbbing as she feels so full of pleasure, with fireworks dangling from her skin into every possible part of her body. It’s so good, and she feels so complete it becomes difficult to breathe— the overwhelming sensations enough to make her shiver. She bites on your neck, then; just a single one, to keep her from screaming like she wanted to. You hold her through her orgasm, your strong arms helping to ride her through it as you whisper sweet praises in her ear. You’re proud of Winter.

You lose count of how many minutes you wait, making sure her breaths are even and stable to release her from your hold.

“You did excellent, holding up the whole time. Didn’t even let a single whimper out, in front of the girls. You took it so good, Winter…. Truly perfect.” You smirk, giving Winter’s tiny waist a reassuring squeeze. She hides her face in embarrassment, humming curses at you, but you can tell she’s delighted, too.

Grabbing her by the hips, you gently put her up on the marble. It’s an easy task, with her being so small, but the way your palms nearly circle her entire waist is enough for her face to get all flustered, once again.

Your low tone soothes Winter, who leans her head back as she feels your soft hands between her thighs, cleaning you up with paper the best you can, careful to not touch her most sensitive areas. The ghost of your fingers are enough to make her twitch, though, as much as she tries not to. Her responsiveness lets a laugh out of you, and you kiss the insides of her thighs, looking up at Winter with a reassuring smile.

“Stop saying it like that.” She murmurs, biting her bruised lip. Her hands run through her hair, just for the sake of having something to occupy herself with.

You smirk, throwing the paper away as you turn, taking a proper look at the beautiful, messy state she is. Still knelt between her thighs, you massage her thighs, palming them in big, circling motions.

“Like what?” You smirk, feigning innocence. Winter slaps you, playfully, and you shake your head, helping her to get down.

“Let’s go. The girls must be worried.” She says, trying to guide you out.

You stop her, gently grabbing her by the elbows.

“Are you really ok, though?” You ask, scanning her. “It’s ok if you still want some more time to gather yourself before going out, again. I can totally come up with something to fool them, or I don’t know—.”

Winter shakes her head, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. She’s shy, suddenly, as she answers, “I’m completely fine, I swear! Actually, I liked it a l-lot.”

You sigh, relieved. “Ok, ok. But if you feel otherwise, tell me. Deal?”

“Deal.” Your bandmate assures you, reaching out for the door. Before you leave, she calls for you quietly, “Y/n?”

You hum, staring at her still-flustered face.

“Thank you, you know. For… all of that.” Winter says, giving vou a faint smile.

“Don’t stress about it, unnie.” You smile back, nudging her. “It’s what friends do, right?”

Winter laughs, not believing your words.

“Sure. That’s what friends do.”