#first half of season three will have you so bad i promise

[kiwi-bitchez]

Double Down, Triple Threat 

Summary: insecure!Eddie x bartender!Reader

Eddie is constantly flirting with you after his Corroded Coffin sets at the Hideout, and you have the bad habit of flirting back. What happens when you overhear a conversation that wasn’t meant for you? Maybe you’ve had the wrong idea about the cocky metalhead who negs you for free drinks. Now you need to take it into your own hands to resolve some built up tension. 

Smut, as always, with a touch of angst but generally fluff/happy ending. 

Word count: 18k (eek! in retrospect I maybe should have split this into multiple parts but...fuck it, brevity has never been my strong suit LOL) Buckle up for a doozy.

Content warnings: smut, afab reader with she/her pronouns, use of y/n, alcohol consumption, smoking, the devil’s lettuce, mention of Eddie's scars and sustained injuries (slightly canon divergent obviously because our boy is ALIVE here, but the events of season 4 generally stand otherwise), also Eddie does some negative self talk where he refers to himself as mutilated but everything is happy in the end I promise, and scars are nothing to be insecure about he's just down in the dumps you feel me?, oral (fem receiving), fingering (fem receiving), unprotected PIV sex (plz use protection irl), pet names, reader and Eddie shower together

A/N: I know it’s been a hot minute since I’ve posted a fic on here, but I hope all y’all who are still riding the Eddie Munson thirst train enjoy this :) I’m trying to regain the motivation to write more, so hopefully more fics to come soon (no promises though lol) (maybe some Steve? Steddie x Reader? Let me know what y’all want to see.) I

"I'll have the usual," his hoarse voice and boisterous presence cut through what few other customers sat at your bar, forcing your attention his way.

"Yeah, and what would that be?" you try to give him your best deadpan voice, unsure yet if you were in the mood for his antics. 

"Come on, like I ever order anything other than a whiskey and coke," his curly dark hair stuck slightly to his damp forehead, not having bothered to wipe the sweat from his brow in between the stage and the bar. If you could even call it a stage. It was more of a sad corner with an extension cable and a few amps that his grunting bandmates were lugging back into their truck while he very helpfully came over and tried to flirt with the bartender. You were the only bartender. On Friday nights anyways. 

"That's because you're unoriginal," his drink was already half made as you flick your eyes up through your lashes at him, knowing he was watching you intently, not that he was particular about how his drink was made by any stretch. "You're actually going to pay for it this time," you slid the glass over to him, "I'm not joking."

"You wound me," he tries his best to give you puppy dog eyes, "but I'm pretty sure Randy mentioned something about drink tickets when we negotiated our new Friday slot."

"That's not a thing," you make up menial tasks behind the bar to keep your hands and eyes busy while he relentlessly chats with you, "never has been. Plus if I keep giving you free drinks you'll get the idea that I like you or something." 

Fuck, you told yourself you should stop flirting back with him. Your first excuse had been professionalism, which didn't make a lick of sense considering you were a bar back at this hole in the wall that paid local bands in drink tickets, apparently. Your second excuse had been that as fun as Eddie was to chat with, you hardly knew anything about him other than his loud band and his drink order. 

Unfortunately he liked to chat and sooner than later you knew more about him than you wanted to. Your newest excuse? If you kept flirting back with him he might get the idea that he could see you outside of this dingy bar, and you liked the comfort and safety of the three feet of wood separating you, it kept you from doing something you might regret. 

"Don't act like you didn't like our set," he threw the rest of his drink back, "I saw you watchin' from over here."

"Yeah, well you're kind of hard to ignore, you know, with the volume and all," your voice had a too-playful tone that you mentally noted to dial back on. 

If you were being honest, Corroded Coffin was one of the weekly acts that you didn't entirely mind. Most were groups of middle aged men trying to relive the glory days by booking a weeknight at the Hideout, instruments barely tuned and a setlist that was decades out of style. While Eddie's band certainly wasn't everyone's cup of tea, you found yourself tapping your foot along with their songs more often than not. At least they were original, you’d give them that. 

He held his glass up to signal a request for another. "Go help your friends carry all your shit," you swiped the cup from his hand, hating that you focused on how your fingers briefly touched his, "and then I'll make you another. And I'm charging you for both."

"Whatever you say, babe" he spun around three or four times on the bar stool before sauntering off and finally assisting with moving the amps and drum kit. You rolled your eyes, not that he was watching you anymore, but more to keep yourself from checking out how his shirt clung to his torso. His black t-shirt was always a size too small, revealing his tattoo covered arms that you never allowed yourself to stare long enough at to make out what any of them were. 

Eddie was nice. As much as you liked to push each other's buttons and joke around, he was a lot more respectful than most patrons that tried their hand at flirting with you. He never said anything gross or disrespectful, not something you could say about most men who've had more than a few beers. 

But you didn't want to risk pushing any boundaries with him, because you work here, and his band plays here weekly, religiously. You didn't want things to get weird, and as much as you learned how to avoid certain patrons, there was only so much space between the 'stage' and your station behind the bar. 

Despite this, you have his second drink made before he finishes putting his stuff away, and you haven't started a tab for either of them. A big smile stretches across his cheeks when he notices his already-made drink set by his stool as he walks over from the back door. You couldn't help but feel a tiny smile creep up on your face as well. 

"Really made me work for this one, huh?" he takes the first sip while still standing before setting back into his seat, "truly amazing service, best I've ever had, really." You glare at him while cleaning some cups absentmindedly with a rag. "Not sure if you can tip on a drink ticket though..."

"Fuck off," you giggle and throw the wet towel at him, "you can't charm your way into TWO free drinks you ass."

"Aww you think I'm charming?" the flirtations between you were always edged with sarcasm, which you both found a lot easier than admitting 'hey you need to stop looking at me like that or else I'm going to keep thinking about pinning you against this countertop.'

"No, I don't, which is why you're PAYING for both those drinks," a lie followed by another lie, and you both knew it. "Where'd your band go?"

"Why? 'm I boring you?" he didn't mind taking up all your attention when the other bar patrons were either too drunk to stand or too old to even notice that a metal band had performed for the past hour. "No one's ever accused Gareth of being more interesting than yours truly. Plus he doesn't drink anyways, so your venture capitalist instincts wont work on him." He raised his drink to punctuate his joke before taking another long swig. 

"Ha ha," you don't give him the satisfaction of a real laugh, "I just wanted to make sure you had a ride home in case you try and swindle me into making you a third drink."

"Oh no, I told them all to scram, that I had a hot date with you and my unsettled tab," he leaned over the bar, trying to eliminate as much space between himself and you, "plus I've got a friend coming by to pick me up in a bit. So if you wanted to make me that third drink in exchange for me keeping you company while you close up, I certainly don't have any reason to turn you down."

"Fine," you point at him with a stern finger, "but this one'll be more coke than whiskey."

"Deal," he pointed his finger back at you, moving carefully in so the tips of your pointers touched. This made you genuinely laugh, unable to keep up a wall for too long around him. 

He finished his second drink while you ordered last call, and settled up with crumpled cash and mumbled thank you’s from the few remaining drunks. After closing up the cash register you make him that more-coke-than-whiskey drink as promised, and get to wiping down every sticky surface. 

"What's your drink?" he asks.

"Hmm?" you glance over from your hunched over position, trying to get the wet rag across the underside of the bar where someone had clearly spilt what appeared to be an entire pint of light beer. 

"You know my drink order, I wanna know yours." you stand up straight and look at him. 

You consider pushing back and demanding why he wanted to know, but it was late and you only had so many quips left in you, "Gin and tonic with extra lime." You get back to soaking up the spilt mess.

"Woooooow," his drink was finished and he took it upon himself to grab the broom from behind the bar and start sweeping up the bottle caps and tracked in dirt, "and you had the nerve to call me unoriginal."

"I'm not some creative rock and roll guitar guy like you, I don't need to be original, I'm just a bartender," you let him keep sweeping and start checking off other tasks from your closing list.

"You aren't just a bartender, give yourself more credit than that babe," he held up the dustpan full of crap, silently asking where to put it and you hold open a mostly full garbage bag for him to dump it into before tying it off, "judging by your drink order I would also guess that you're, hmmmm, an 85 year old man."

"Oh my god," you slap him on the arm with another half dirty hand towel, "in that case, you're doing voluntary manual labor just to flirt with this 85 year old man, so maybe you need to reevaluate your priorities."

He takes a few steps forward, not quite caging you against the bar, but nearly there. "And how am I doing? Is it working?" He's the closest he's ever been to you, jokingly sliding the broom around your feet, pretending to sweep while maintaining searing eye contact.

As the which-one-of-us-is-going-to-learn-in-first question buzzes around you, an irritating light flickers through the big front window, indicating someone had pulled their car right up to the curb with their high beams on. Eddie scrunches his nose up, and your urge to kiss him somehow grows despite his annoyed expression. "That's my ride."

You give him a small nod, turning your head to try and squint to see who could possibly be picking him up at this hour, but not making out much through the foggy glass. "I suppose I can manage the rest without you," you grab the broom from him, fingers touching for the second time tonight, "see you next week, rockstar."

Eddie wants to do something smooth, a wink or a clever line, but instead nervously gives you a nod and is out the front door before he can give it a second thought. The minute the door closes behind him you let out all the air you had been holding in your chest, both frustrated and slightly relieved. Eddie on the other hand- was bursting with regret and frustration, immediately running his hands through his hair and pulling a cigarette out of his pocket. 

"Absolutely not," Steve craned his neck out of his car that always looked like it had just gotten a fresh wax and detail, "at least five feet away from the beemer if you're going to light that." 

Eddie rolled his eyes, considering putting the cigarette back into the carton and getting the fuck away from this bar, but ultimately gave in and pivoted on his heel storming back towards the brick exterior and slumping against it as he flicked his lighter and took an aggressively deep pull. 

"What's your damage?" Steve moved out of the expensive car, keeping a bit of distance from Eddie but close enough that the two could talk, "That bartender you like wasn't on or something?"

"She's inside closing up now, so keep your fuckin' voice down" he gave Steve a glare and then immediately an apologetic look for being so prickly, "I'm just bad at this shit, man."

"You can't be that bad at it, Gareth and Jeff said the two of you eye fuck across the room every Friday night," Steve shrugs, understanding Eddie's drawback but knowing his friend rarely gives himself the benefit of the doubt. 

"Yeah, well, that's not the hard part," Eddie rips his cigarette and presses his wild hair deeper into the brick behind him, exhaling upwards. 

You had taken note that Eddie's ride hadn't left yet, so you busied yourself for a minute before deciding who cares if you had to give him an awkward wave on your way across the parking lot, so you locked up and grabbed the trash to take to the dumpster out back before leaving for the night. 

You really didn't mean to eavesdrop, but as soon as the back door clicked you heard their muffled conversation from around the corner. Rather than give away your presence with the clanging of the trash you gently set it against the wall and moved forward silently, staying out of sight but well within earshot. 

"Flirting is the easy part, she's fuckin' easy to talk to, man" Eddie's voice carried, and you felt guilty but continued to listen, "I don't want to just fuck her though, I want to like, date...her."

"Oh," Steve's voice dropped knowingly, "well that's... good, I guess, that you like her like that."

"Well even if I didn't like her like that and was only looking to fuck her," he sighs out, and you carefully listen while furrowing your eyebrows, trying to make sense of their conversation, "she's gorgeous, and no girl that hot- scratch that no girl at all want's to fuck some mutilated freak."

"Don't call yourself a freak," Steve's voice seems apprehensive. 

"Yeah, sure, but you can't say I'm not mutilated." There was a beat of silence, and you didn't have time to think too much about his words before he went off again, voice laced with thick sarcasm, "Oh hey babe, so glad you were able to look past that I live in a trailer park and all my neighbors think I'm a satan worshiping murderer, but I hope you can be cool with my singular nipple and weird lumpy scar tissue, I know it's super hot, you're gonna have to get in line." His voice carried easily far past your hiding spot. 

"You're not giving her much credit dude," Steve was still apprehensive to respond, knowing how Eddie got when he started to spiral, "Maybe she's not that shallow."

"It's not that," Eddie's voice started to calm, "I'd just rather take my twenty minutes of flirting after our Friday gigs than risk it and have her look at me like she's sorry for me or something." 

With that he snubbed out his cigarette butt with the toe of his combat boots, let out a big sigh, and moved to get into the passenger side of Steve's car. You take a few slow, careful steps back towards the slumped garbage bag and wait until you hear the engine start and see the lights pull out onto the opposite side of the road. 

Fuck. Part of you felt incredibly guilty for listening to what was obviously meant to be a private conversation, especially a private conversation about you. But your gears were turning far too fast to get hung up on guilt. 

You always felt apprehensive about Eddie because you figured he was a flirt, a player, the kind of guy who talks to all bartenders like that, and you just happened to be the one he flirted with after his Corroded Coffin shows. You never wanted to get too invested in making him smile or waiting around for him to chat you up, because you know how most guys are, especially guys who carry themselves with that much confidence. And you were fucking wrong. 

Now fully realizing that the ball is in your court, you need to plan your first move. You decided, Eddie was worth taking the risk. 

It was truly a shot in the dark, but if your intuition ended up being a bust then no one would know about your wasted afternoon other than yourself. The following afternoon you drove aimlessly up and down the unpaved residential streets of the trailer park. There were two in town but you had a pretty good feeling that this was the one. 

You only started to feel stupid when you got some confused and slightly angry looks from people going about their business, hanging laundry or smoking on their porches, scrunching their noses and trying to make out the unfamiliar car driving in circles around their neighborhood. 

Aha! There it was. You knew that your gut could only fail you so many times when it came to Eddie. Exactly what you had been looking for, a big black and blue 1971 Chevrolet van strewn with dents, patches of rust, and, your telltale sign, a homemade Corroded Coffin sticker crookedly placed on the faded chrome of the bumper. 

Step one, complete. Step two was contingent on Eddie even being home. The presence of his van had you feeling hopeful. 

You attempt to rid yourself of lingering nerves with a deep breath and silent pep talk. You park adjacent to his van and hop out before your legs can convince you not to, and suddenly you've rung the doorbell and are standing with your hands clasped nervously in front of his door. 

"Just a minute," you hear him yell from inside, step two, complete, "What're you here for? Cuz I only got weed right now so if you're..." his hollering voice trails off from inside as he catches a glimpse of you through the screen. "Y/n? What the fuck are you doing here?" 

"Jeez, hello to you too," you try to lace your voice with the same flirty edge that you always took with Eddie, but you didn't have the comfortable barrier of the bar or the security of being the person serving him his drinks. 

"How the fuck do you know where I live?" His tone wasn't quite angry, but it was bordering on more pointed than just confused. 

"Sorry, I didn't mean to drop by totally unexpected," you suddenly felt vulnerable, regretting this whole stupid plan, "I can go." 

You start to scurry back to your car and hide your face forever, but he cuts you off with, "No, no, just, why are you here?" He softened his voice, and came down the stoop to hover over you on the last step. 

"Well," here goes nothing, "last night I felt like we sort of got interrupted." You pause, trying to gauge his reaction, "And I couldn't stop thinking about it, and I didn’t want to wait a whole week to see you again."

"Oh," his face and reaction didn't give you much of a clue as to what he was thinking. 

"And," you started filling the empty air with words, as you often did out of anxiety, "I know where you live because I've heard you sing 'fuck everyone in the trailer park, I'll play my music and curse your existance' probably a thousand times, it really wasn’t that hard to figure out where you live." 

He let out a chuckle, despite being deep in the throws of processing your earlier statement of feeling cut off. Of course he wanted to see you outside the confines of the musty bar, he just hadn't expected it to be like this, so sudden. "Well that's fair. I’ll give you double points for perception."

"I didn't mean to interrupt your Saturday," you began to reel again, "just wanted to tell you I'd like to hang out with you sometime, preferably not at The Hideout."

"Can sometime be now?" he hopped down from the last step and gave you an inquisitive smile, nose slightly scrunched and giving you butterflies. 

"Yeah, sometime can be now. You promise I'm not interrupting anything?" you felt a wave of relief, his energy had fully shifted from confusion to your comfortable flirty banter.

"Just a packed bong and have some laundry I probably wasn't going to do anyways," he suddenly realized he either had to invite you inside, which would be slightly embarrassing given the current state of his trailer, or suggest a secondary location, "you hungry? We can grab lunch or something?" 

He offered to drive, and you suggested sandwiches and beer to go for a backseat van picnic. He was relieved that you were down with doing something so casual, no stuffy cafes or overpriced food. If you were more than happy to suggest eating deli counter sandwiches in the back of his clunky van then maybe he had less to worry about than he thought. 

The passing moments between you had him realizing he truly didn't know much about you. Your job, how you had no problem snapping back at rude customers, and most recently your favorite drink. He wanted to know more, and quickly did as you had a 'regular' sandwich order and gave him directions to a side street that looked out onto a small lake, explaining that you'd eat lunch out here sometimes when the weather was nice. He parked the van in reverse, letting the back doors swing open, giving you the perfect bench looking out to the scenery to sit back and eat. 

"All my years living 'round here, I've never been to this spot," he noted through bites of sandwich wrapped in white paper.

"Yeah, most people know the spot across the lake with the rope swing and all that," you gesture across to where there was a popular jumping rock littered with empty beer cans, "too crowded for me though, it's more peaceful over here." 

"Sorry if I was a bit rude earlier," he started, but you quickly cut him off before he could finish his apology.

"No, no," you move your hand over to gently grab his mid gesture, "don't apologize, your reaction was incredibly reasonable."

"I just-' he started but you gave his hand a squeeze, "I really am happy you decided to come by, I didn't want you to think otherwise."

"I'm happy you chose lunch with me over a bong and laundry, that was some tough competition I had," he rolled his eyes at you.

"Don't make fun of me," he nudged your side, "I'm usually pretty wiped from Friday's show and trying to think of clever things to keep up with you, so my Saturday's are usually pretty lazy," your shoulders rubbed against each other, "being a washed up wannabe rockstar and flirting with a girl way out of my league can really do a number on me."

You share a soft giggle but reassure him that playing live music, even if it is only for you and a crowd of five drunks is still pretty cool. "Plus I like that you dress like this all the time, it's not just an act, this is just how you are," you gesture to his ripped jeans and ring clad fingers.

"What did you expect, babe? Surprise me at my trailer to find me in a polo and khakis?" the suggestion alone had the two of you laughing, brainstorming an alternate universe where Eddie was an accountant by day and only let his rocker side loose on Friday nights. 

"If you aren't secretly an accountant, what do you do when you're not playing music, if I may ask," you realize this was really one of the first personal questions you'd exchanged, keeping things punchy and surface level until this point.

"Ah, well," he scratches the back of his head, "although I wish the drink tickets we make at The Hideout were enough to cover rent, I work down at the body shop, you know the one down the street from the grocery store? My uncle knew some guys there and hooked me up with a job fixing cars after high school, and it's not too bad, I'm not half bad at it either, so that's where I'm at."

"You just really keep getting better and better, huh?" at first he wonders if your comment is sarcastic, but you continue "So what I'm hearing is you'll look at my rattling engine for free? I know nothing about cars and am always worried the people at the body shop are going to overcharge me."

"I only charge in sandwich dates and drink tickets, so you're in luck," he responds quickly without giving it much of a thought. 

You take a second, "What about dinner dates? Maybe movie dates too? Are those acceptable payments for your mechanic expertise?" 

"Not usually, but I'll make an exception for you," he responds after a few beats, realizing you wanted to see him again, and not just at the bar. 

You both are looking out at the lake, the buzzing energy around you making you nervous to look at each other. So you just tilt your head sideways to rest on his shoulder, "Phew, that's a relief, because I have a lot more of these planned."

"Oh yeah?" he shifts his body towards you, lifting your head from his shoulder and finally meeting his gaze, a stupid grin plastered across his face, he couldn't help it. "Which one of these dates do I finally get to kiss you?" You let out a breathy laugh, half amused by his corny line and half surprised he was being so forward. 

"Hmmm, I'm not sure," you pretend to think it over, stringing this out was killing both of you, but you couldn't help but push his buttons a bit more, "I'd say I'm kind of a third date kind of gal."

"Three? As in three from now or three including this one?" He seemed genuinely concerned, causing a genuine laugh to slip through the act you were putting on. 

You move your hand to his chest, faces closer than they had ever been. You had always been sucked into his big brown eyes, but now you saw flecks of honey and deep browns that bordered on black in them, faded freckles dotted across his cheeks, a chapped patch on his lower lip that had clearly been the victim of some anxious chewing. "I'll make an exception this time, for you."

He let you make the first move, leaning in and gently pressing your lips to his, soft and slow. You could feel his breath catch in his throat, prompting you to pull back and look at him through fluttered lashes, as your mouth parted slightly to ask him if that was okay, his big ring clad hands cupped the sides of your cheeks and pulled you right back into him, kissing you like he was afraid you'd evaporate if he ever stopped. 

The wind was knocked out of you. You couldn't be bothered to breathe when your attention was solely focused on his lips, his tongue, the sharp intake air he sucked in between slotting your top lip down to your swollen bottom one, nipping with teeth and holding your face so close. 

After a minute of soft whimpers and exploring the new intimacy you pull back to finally catch your breath, fully ready to ignore the need for oxygen and lean back in when you see his face, rosy and buzzing with excited energy. 

"Sorry, if that was kind of a lot," he realized you had given the sweetest peck and he proceeded to practically shove his tongue down your throat. 

You however, were already brushing his apology off and leaning in for more, missing the feeling of his big hands cradling your face, sending tingling shockwaves down your body. Before you could lunge back at him and take more of what you wanted, he takes your chin in between his fingers and tilts your head up to his.

"I don't know if you can tell, but I'm sort of crazy about you. And I really don't want to fuck this up, but I've wanted to do that for a really long time.” 

He could tell by your pout that you were begging for another kiss, and he couldn't refuse you. You were completely lost in it. Learning that he let out a little gasp when you ran your fingers up into his hair, that he would catch your bottom lip in between his teeth when you started to pull away and he needed more, that you were already completely wrecked for him. You weren't even conscious of the fact that you were now fully seated in his lap, sandwich wrappers and empty cans long pushed aside. 

Part of you wanted to wait, to let things build up organically over time and get physically intimate when the moment felt right. But fuck it, the moment felt right now. 

Any apprehension or worry of scaring him off dissipated when his thumb ran across your cheekbone, his other strong arm holding you steadily against him, you don't think you could wiggle away if you tried. Swirling in your apprehension you also fought the urge to press your hips down into his and grind against him harder. You wanted to let him take things at his pace and not rush anything, but fuck you could feel his cock getting hard between your legs and it was driving you insane. 

He dragged the knuckle of his middle finger up your neck along the curve of your jaw, speaking softly into your kiss, "can I kiss you here?" pressing his touch into the side of your neck.

"You can do anything you want to me," you pant back, slightly embarrassed at how desperately horny that came out.

"Fuck," he groaned out, cock noticeably twitching against his black jeans and into your thigh, "you can't say shit like that to me."

"Sorry, sorry," you try to gain your composure and lift off him slightly, “I-"

He took a hold of your waist and pulled your back down into his lap, diving into the side of your neck and nipping and sucking until he found the spot that made you squeeze your thighs slightly around him. "Anything I want requires a lot more time and space than we have right now, pretty girl." He mumbled into your neck in between kisses, his words making your back arch slightly more into him. "Plus I need to be a gentleman," you rolled your eyes at this. 

"Since when have you ever worried about that," you tug his hair back to force him to look at you.

"You really want to know what I want, right now?" he quirked an eyebrow.

"Really, really," you let your weight sink down onto his lap a touch more, feeling the stiff length under his jeans slot between your thighs a bit deeper, making his breath hitch before he could respond. 

"I want you to lay back on those blankets up there," he nodded towards the few crumpled up blankets he had shoved behind the driver's seat, "and let me eat your pretty pussy until you're screaming loud enough for the people across the lake to hear."

Whatever you were expecting, it wasn't that. 

This unexpected burst of sexual confidence threw you for a loop, as you were fully prepared to be the one making all the big moves. Your mouth hung open slightly, struggling to form a response when all that was swarming through your mind was holy fuck, holy fuck, that was so hot, what the fuck do I say. 

Rather than respond with words you just roll off his lap and start moving deeper into the back of his van, propping your torso up on bent arms and sending him back a suggestively raised eyebrow. He swung his legs up over the ledge and took one of the doors with him, sliding into the van and quickly shutting the other as well. 

It took a second for your eyes to adjust, the previous sunlight coming in from across the lake was cut off, and the light source now was only coming from the front windows, making things darker but not invisible. You quickly had no trouble making out Eddie's slender form shuffling around and getting situated in between your bent knees, urging you to lay back a bit more and relax as much as your body would allow against the lumpy blanket pile. 

"This is okay?" he asks while leaning down to pick up where you had left off a moment ago. 

"Yes, fuck," you wiggle up into his form, wanting as much contact as he would allow, wrapping your arms around his neck and pulling him down into your lips. 

It all had moved faster than you were used to but fuck if it didn't feel so right. Why did you feel more comfortable with this person you hardly knew than you had with your past few long term relationships? He just had this way of taking your nerves and throwing them out the nearest window. 

After sucking on your lower lip until it was puffy and slick he dips his chin into the crook of your neck, dragging his perfect nose up your jugular and nestling into the junction of your neck and ear, licking a stripe all the way. You wanted to desperately buck your hips up into his, but only allowed yourself half the satisfaction of lifting your thigh slightly to give him more space to sink deeper into your slumped form. 

When Eddie’s life flashed before his eyes, on more than one occasion- actually- he wasn’t particularly satisfied with what he saw. In the moments before what he assumed was death, his brain searched for the best moments to accumulate and reminisce on before his body succumbed to the untimely demise he was facing. It wasn’t much. 

He wished he had more than smiling moments with his D&D club, a few killer performances at the Hideout, no killer audiences, some nights of revelry with his friends, and a few forgettable hookups in dingy bar bathrooms. That couldn’t be it, right?

In the wake of his life flashing, fading, and flashing again, he made more space for good things. After his shows now he let himself think about you, and how much he liked you, let himself try his hand at flirting. Because if he was going to come anywhere that close to death again, he needed more to show for it than a few trysts with nameless girls and an unnerving amount of scar tissue. 

So he wasn’t about to fuck this up. If someone came at him with an axe tomorrow, at least he’d have the memory of you splayed out beneath him in the back of his van, lips shiny and cheeks rosy. If his life were to flash before his eyes again it wouldn’t be as bad.  

“Do you know how long I’ve thought about this?” he mumbled into your neck, his denim clad thigh pressing perfectly in between your legs. You could only hum back as if to say, “no, tell me.”

“I think you do know,” his teeth grazed upon your earlobe, sending a jolt through your hips and finding solace in the friction between your thighs with his.

“Yeah, I know,” you breathe out, arching your neck down to nudge the tip of his nose with yours, “do you?”

“I didn’t have a clue,” he mumbled into your lips before slipping his tongue against yours, sickly sweet and laced with all the regret of not asking you out sooner. 

You let your ankles hook around one another, locking your hips together and earning a deep rumble of a moan from the man trapped. “I recall you mentioning something about the people across the lake hearing me…” you playfully trail off, equal parts confidently flirty and deeply desperate for him to act on his earlier promise. 

He had nudged his way down into the neckline of your shirt, licking and nipping at as much of your breasts as he could find, fingertips grazing the waistline of your pants. Part of you wanted to just lay here and let him have his way with you, but the conscious part of your brain recognized the insecurities he expressed in that conversation you weren't supposed to hear, and signaled you to be as forward with him as you could be. 

“Fuck,” you struggled to pry your hands between your pressed bodies to reach your jeans button, “Eddie can I take these off, I want to feel you.” 

With your hands moved south, you managed to undo the clasps of your jeans while also running your hands upwards towards his shirt, wanting to feel the skin beneath. 

It was subtle, but impossible for you to miss, when your fingertips grazed his lower stomach and trailed up his t-shirt his body shifted into a tense state for just a moment. You could have easily missed it. It took all of a millisecond for him to subtly jerk away from you and redirect the attention to your now unbuttoned pants. His hands were dragging the material down your thighs before you had a moment to register the way he averted your touch. 

He playfully tossed your bunched up pants over his shoulder, as if they had anywhere else to go other than the three feet of van between him and the doors. After that flashed moment of shyness, you noticed nothing but a playful smirk on his face, smile crinkled at the corners of his cheeks and eyes full of wild mischief. 

His hands spread against your thighs, digging his fingertips into as much skin as the width of his palms would allow. 

“So fucking perfect,” he drank you in, hardly noticing the moment you pulled your shirt and bra over yourself, but dumbstruck as soon as his eyes caught sight of your reveal.

Knowing he had yet to put his money where his mouth was, he adjusted downwards and let his flushed cheek make contact with your thigh. In that moment he vowed to let the sight of the little damp patch in the center of your cotton panties stay forever in his mind. 

He didn’t let a single thought register in his brain before he leaned forward and let his tongue lick a fat strip up the middle of your clothed center, adding dampness to the apparent arousal already there. 

“Jesus,” you were slightly taken aback at his action, letting your head fall back, while still lowering your gaze down to where his hooded lids and pink tongue sat in between your thighs.

He reveled in the feeling of being between your thighs, letting his tongue play around the center of your panties for a few strokes before the twitching in your legs signaled that you had had enough of his teasing. 

Taking a blissful moment to hook his finger through the crotch piece of your underwear and pull it to the side to reveal your slick center, he simply couldn’t help himself. He pulled back and drank the sight of you in, panties wet with your arousal and his spit pulled to the side and your perfect cunt finally in his sights. 

The groan he let out only tripled your level of neediness for him. You let your chest puff up and hips gyrate forward at nothing to signal that you needed him, like, now.

Before you could even think of something snarky to say to get him to get on with it, his entire face was fully buried in you. An involuntary ahhh escaped you as he let his entire tongue press as far into you as space would allow. 

“Ohmygod,” all coming out in one breath, “fuckeddie.” 

He groaned deeply into you at the feeling of your pussy on his mouth, your taste, how your hips twitched slightly when his nose pressed against your clit. He didn’t even think about all those drunken chats with the boys or stupid cosmo articles he couldn't help but read, eating your pussy didn’t require any thought, he could only feel. 

Your sighs were like a song to him, every sharp inhale and subtle whimper, he caught it all and it was the most beautiful music. He let his tongue swirl faster when he heard your breath hitch, gripped your thigh tighter when you let out that beautiful exhale. 

“So fucking good for me,” he mumbled into your inner thigh in between licks, fully pussy drunk and ready to stay here forever, “fucking perfect.”

After some selfish exploration, he settled on a steady rhythm against your clit, making your back arch and whines jump an octave. 

“Eddie, Eddie,” you groaned, feeling embarrassed how needy your voice already sounded, “can you use your fingers too, please.” Desperate. That’s how you felt, and you couldn't help but be self conscious for any more than a moment, as he immediately headed your request. 

Guitar fingers. You fucking knew it. You always found him attractive and charming, but immediately scolded yourself the moment you started speculating about those damn fingers. If he could learn Metallica solos in private, what else could he do?

Curling upwards in that magically delicious motion that had you already seeing stars, he glanced up at you upon entering and was met with the glorious sight of your mouth hanging open and eyes fluttering shut. 

You simply couldn’t be bothered by the rickety van floor beneath you, the sad lumpy pillow propped under your head, or the stagnant, vaguely cigarette scented air around you. Nope. No thoughts other than the tightening knot in your stomach and how those pretty brown eyes peered up through too-perfect lashes at you in between sinful strokes. 

“Making me feel so fucking good,” you hardly recognized your voice as your own, “please don’t stop, Eddie, please…��

And there it was, euphoric bliss found in the back of a pot dealing metalhead’s van. Your thighs quivered and your brain lost all capacity for thought. All you could feel was the sudden wash of pleasure, the pulsing between your legs, and the tongue and fingers fucking into you as if it was the last thing he ever did. 

Writhing, trying to keep your moans down despite his verbalized promise for them to be heard far and wide, you try to control the jerk of your hips and grip on his hair. You rode out your orgasm, far sooner than you would have liked. You wanted to revel in it. 

After months of relentless flirting and suppressing your attraction to him, you wish you could have held your orgasm off a while longer. You simply couldn't allow yourself to bask in the velvet of his tongue or the tickle of his bangs on your thighs. You needed it too badly to hold off. 

Coming down from your orgasm, a broken moan cracked from you and let him know to slow his roll. In between catching your breath you catch a view of him sucking your release off of his slick fingers, and almost throw yourself at him, beg him to jump your bones. But all you can do is let out a breathy laugh and find the strength to prop yourself up on your elbows to get a better look at him. 

“You come?” he asks, slight snark to his voice.

You muster up the energy to bop him upside the head and ruffle his hair along the way. “Fuck off,” you respond, still breathless, “you know I did.”

“I know,” he cocks his head, still admiring your form, your flushed face and rise and fall of every breath, “It’s polite to ask, though.”

“Ah yes, Eddie Munson, most polite man I know,” you flop back onto the mismatched pillows.

“Hey!” he pretends to sound offended but only manages to tug at your heartstrings, “I’ll have you know, that I am a delight.” 

“Can’t argue with that,” you reach down to feel your dripping folds before hunching forward to search for your underwear, which haven't traveled too far from his knees on the van floor.  

You wanted to return the favor, do more than return the favor, but something about his shift in demeanor and the way he angled his body away from yours slightly to adjust his hard cock in his pants and keep up the too-casual post-orgasm conversation had you thinking it was more than him being too polite to accept your advances. 

“Shit, what time is it,” he begins to shuffle towards the front of the van to check the time while you awkwardly gathered your clothes and redressed, fully assessing that whatever fooling around in the back of this van you were doing was officially over. 

“I, uh, have a few errands to run,” he sounded apologetic, not like he was making some excuse to get you out of his hair, “I can drop you off, or you can come along for the ride…”

There is was, your affirmation that he was just as desperate to hang onto this moment together as you were. 

“I actually have a shift starting pretty soon,” you regrettably admit, “and as much as I’d love to ditch it and be your passenger princess, the Saturday tips are usually the bulk of my rent money so…” 

He understood, he hated how much he understood. 

“What time do you get off?” He didn’t even try to hide how eager he was to see you again, again in ten minutes, again later tonight, again tomorrow, again as many times as you’d let him. 

“Get off? Pretty sure I did that like three minutes ago…” you joke and appreciate his huff of a laugh, “Um, I’m closing, so probably not until like two or three. Don’t worry though, I can give you my number and we can do this again when we’re both free.”

“I’m free later… at two,” his expression was dead serious, “or three, or four, or whenever.” He noticed your brows shoot up and words start to form in your mouth, before you could speak he cuts in, “If you won’t be too tired or anything. I can pick you up?”

“It’ll be pretty late Eds,” you were falling into the trap of his puppy dog eyes, “you don’t need to wait up for me like that, I promise we can see each other again, tomorrow even…”

“Tell me to fuck off if I’m being pushy,” he took your hand in his and mindlessly stroked circles into it with his thumb, “but I’m sort of a night owl, not big on the whole sleeping thing anyways, and I’d love to pick you up from work later.”

“Okay,” you agree, the soft earnestness of his voice snared you, and considered the magic he had just worked between your legs, who were you to say no. The glimmer in his eye and quirked smile at your response had you wishing you had said more than ‘okay,’ wondering what kind of look you would have gotten from a ‘yes, please,’ or ‘I’d love that.’

He drove you back to his trailer, not letting go of your hand during the ride, not even to turn up the music at his favorite parts. He offers to follow you back to your place, insisting that waiting for you to shower and change into work clothes and then drop you off at the Hideout was “on the way” to these supposed errands he had to run. 

You roll your eyes but start to accept that this is the kind of guy Eddie is, insincerity undetectable when he makes these offers. You invite him in, but he opts to wait outside with a cigarette, pacing a bit and then forcing his legs and mind to still by waiting in the drivers seat. 

“Hey hot stuff,” he wolf whistles as you exit your apartment, dressed in your usual black shirt and jeans for work, apron balled up in your bag to put on once you arrive. 

He’s sweet, and sincere. As much as you liked the jab banter between the two of you at the bar, you think you might prefer his sarcastic jokes mixed with sweet compliments and longing gazes more. Not that you weren’t getting that from him at the bar before, there were plenty of longing gazes there too, but now the shared glances are heavy with the knowledge of what his tongue feels like on your cunt. 

A sloppy, exaggerated kiss on the cheek and a ‘go get ‘em tiger’ sends you off into the bar, where your hands will be pouring cheap liquor for the next several hours but your mind will be solely occupied with what your post-work date with Eddie entails. 

The drink special of the night was a mix of anxious anticipation and lustful yearning, shaken too aggressively and served with sunsteady hands. Luckily the Saturday rush kept you mostly focused on vodka sodas and Guinness pours, wiping down sticky surfaces and making change for impatient customers. 

You had assistance behind the bar, and that also meant assistance closing up, finally allowing yourself to start peeking through the window to see if Eddie held up on his promise. Of course he had. He’d been waiting in the lot, scoring a few sales from exiting patrons who knew him previous deals, since long before the bar closed. 

You wipe your sweaty palms onto your apron and ball it up into your bag before bounding across the parking lot towards Eddie, who always seems to have this effortless charisma buzzing around him, a cigarette dangled from his pretty lower lip and posture just slouched enough to still be sexy. Maybe you were biased at this point. 

He pulls you in by your waist, angling his chin up to blow the smoke up into the sky rather in your direction. 

“How was work?” Your cheeks were already starting to grow hot at the feeling of his pinky finger landing on the strip of skin between your shirt and jeans, “Miss me?”

“Bartending’s a lot easier when I don’t have your nosy ass pestering me for free drinks,” you cock your head at him, silently asking for a drag of his cigarette, which he immediately understands and complies, “wasn’t too bad though, happy it’s over,” you exhale. 

“If you’e hungry there’s some fries and a milkshake by the passenger’s seat,” he let you slip from his grasp to spin around towards the van door.

“For me?” you peek through the window, realizing he didn’t just mean extras from his dinner earlier, he had gone out of his way to pick you up a post-work snack.

“Unless you aren’t hungry,” he moves to hop in the drivers side, “In which case you can practice tossing fries into my open mouth while I drive.”

You let a few fries fly across the car seat in his general direction, feeding him the occasional one directly, but inhaling most of them shortly after you peeled out of the parking lot. 

“D’you want me to bring you home, or…” you knew where he was headed with this, a nervous edge to his voice. 

“We can hang out back at your trailer if that’s okay,” you say mid-fry, “as long as I can take a quick shower I don’t mind chilling there.”

He grins like a giddy schoolgirl and grips the steering wheel just a touch tighter, and drives just a bit faster back to the trailer park. As anxious as you felt during your shift, you can’t be bothered to overthink with Eddie leaning towards you with his tongue lolling out of his mouth, making googly eyes at the shake you were downing as his way of asking you for a sip. 

He put the van into park before the wheels had even come to a complete stop, hustling around the front to make sure he was the one to open your door. He had spent some of the time you were away straightening up his trailer for the first time in a good long while. Empty beer cans were cleared and he even changed the bed sheets. It still wasn’t the Ritz or anything, but at least he can say he tried.

He tried to busy himself with locking the door behind you after entering, not wanting to see if your eyes drifted over to the mess of records and smoking pariphenelia that cluttered the coffee table, or the chance that the mixture of heavy metal and nerdy posters strewn about would draw a judgmental reaction. 

When he let his gaze drift back to you, you weren’t looking at any of that. You were looking right back at him, already leaning up on your toes and asking, “Can I kiss you again?” 

A mumbled “of course” had you wrapping your arms around his neck and melting into his touch, finding his lips already on yours before you could go in for the kill. 

The kiss started off French-fry-and-strawberry-shake flavored, smiling into his lips as the anticipation of seeing him again after only a few short hours slips away. 

“Thank’s for spending so much time with me today,” you whisper in between sticky sweet kisses, “and for the fries and-“

He took your cheeks in his hands and smushed your lips into his mid-sentence, pulling back to see the puckered fish face he held between his hands. 

“You’re welcome,” his big button eyes bore straight through you, as if he saw all of you and more, “but you don’t have to thank me, I like being with you, and I ended up eating most of the fries anyways,” he trails off, cheeks rosy and lips slick from your claim on them.

“You wanted to shower?” He cuts himself off, and feels stupid for it. He knew he could keep kissing you and kissing you and kissing you, and the only thing holding him back was his anxious brain and big mouth. 

“Oh, yeah,” you were a little surprised that he remembered, and chose to bring it up now, “if you don’t mind. I always feel a little sticky after work, you know, with the Hideout’s C health rating and all.”

With a smile that nearly knocked the air out of you, he took a deep bow like some silly court jester and motioned down the trailer’s only hallway. You took your lead and followed his outstretched arm, figuring there were only so may doors that could possibly lead to a bathroom. 

“Oh, shit, wait,” you hear him scramble behind you, shuffling past into the door you assume to he his bedroom, emerging milliseconds later with a crumpled towel in his balled up hand, “you’re gonna want this.”

“Thank you,” you’re slow with your movements, wondering how he was acting so squirrelly, like a middle school boy around the girl he wanted to take to the dance, even though he had you fully spread out begging for him in the back of his van only hours earlier, “is the shower big enough for two?”

You meant it equally suggestive and genuine, knowing full well that not all showers are built for partner bathing. However, the fear stricken look that washed across his face for a millisecond before scrunching up and setting to neutral had you thinking you had just asked if there was a built in hot tub or something like that. His mouth hung open and for a moment that conversation you weren’t supposed to hear replayed in your mind, maybe you had to take this slower than he was willing to let on. 

“Just looking for someone to massage my scalp, that’s all,” you try to jokingly play it off, keeping your invitation open but concealing it with a joke to double back on just in case.

“Yeah, it’s- uhhh,” Eddie, who was always quick with a comeback was suddenly lost for words, “It’s the size of a normal shower, yeah.” It’s not like he could lie, all you had to do was turn around and size it up for yourself. 

You take the towel from his white knuckled grip and pivoted towards the door that was close to having burn holes from where his laser focused eyes were shot. You give him a wink over your shoulder, figuring that was enough of an invitation and vague enough of an excuse for him to leave depending on what he wanted. You hated this line you were towing, knowing more than you should- yet still feeling so in the dark. 

He was right, it was a normal sized shower. A bathtub with a sliding door and a detachable shower head with only one working setting. There was a rack with three-in-one and a bar of dove soap, which should have annoyed you but made you giggle instead. You let a quarter sized drop of the generic body wash slash shampoo slash conditioner lather into your hands when you heard the bathroom door creek open, purposefully left unlocked. 

“Hey, is it okay I’m in here?” He sounded so genuine in his concern, unknowing you were on the verge of begging him to get in the shower with you. 

“Yeah,” you borderline shout over the running water, “here to help massage my scalp?” You let your tone stay light and joking despite being deadly serious. 

“Wow I didn’t realize your hands were really that delicate and incapable,” he tried to match your energy, but an anxious edge remained present. 

“I mean,” you searched for your words, “I’ve seen you play Metallica, I know those fingers could surely get this pine scented crap deep into my roots.” You let the suggestive comment linger, nervous after a beat of silence passed. 

“If you really need my help,” you heard him shuffling around , “who am I to turn a damsel in distress away?”

You felt your cheeks get rosy and shoulders wiggle with excitement as you caught the shower door jerk open. Your face was towards the shower head, and you only turned a quarter of the way around before Eddie stepped in behind you and those guitar-string-calloused-hands gripped your shoulders and twisted you back towards your view of the water stream. 

“I’m gonna make you a deal,” his voice was coated with as much charisma as he could muster, his worries only poking through enough for you to notice, “I’ll give you the full treatment, but you can’t turn around.”

You were willing to play along with about any game he suggested. If he asked you to bend over backwards you’d extend your spine as far as it could go. 

You stood with your front as straight towards the shower head as you could, only feeling his presence behind you and his gentle hands lay on your shoulders to assure you wouldn’t turn around. 

“Just let me take care of you,” he edged closer, letting you feel his naked body enter your space, his face craning over your shoulder to gauge your reaction, “Just stay like this and let me feel you.”

It was less of a question and more of a plea, the only thing more pathetic sounding was the whimper that slipped out of you when you felt his body press against your back, warm and hesitant to press all the way into you, but close enough for you to feel his skin. 

“Okay,” you let your head lull back onto the space between his collar bone and shoulder, keeping your eyes closed, not that you could see anything from this angle anyways, “I’ll stay just like this, promise.”

“I just-“ you could hear his walls come up, suddenly trying to find the words to explain himself to you, “I’m not-“

“Eddie,” you whisper, eyes fluttering open to glance up at him as much as you could, “it’s okay. I’ll stay just like this, I’m just happy to be here with you.”

You gently found his hands resting at your hips and guided them up to your soapy scalp, “We both know the real reason I called you in here anyways,” you joked, and angled your head straight forward so he could run the pads of his fingers all through your 3-in-1 coated hair.

He let out a light chuckle at your joke, nearly feeling it catch in his throat as all the passed time of insecurity and locking his feelings away welled up and shattered with the intimacy of washing your hair. What did he do to deserve having you like this? For you to understand and want him to stay anyways? 

As much as his emotions clouded his vision and stunted his breathing, the rush of blood in between his legs broke his internal monologue. As overwhelmed as his mind was, his body couldn’t be convinced to focus on anything other than the sudsy girl pressed up against him, letting out little noises of satisfaction as he let his fingers absentmindedly massage away. 

“This’s nice,” you lean back into him a bit, “it’s like masturbating, you know? Always feels better when someone else does it for you.” You didn’t feel too guilty about the sexually charged comment, considering the fat rod that was pushing into your lower back. 

He let out a short chuckle, but his breathing was rapidly turning heavy as the air clouded with steam and your wet body rubbed against him, fully arching into his erection as if you wanted to get a better feel. 

“Can I wash the rest of you?” his request is polite, but his voice is lust filled and bordering on begging. 

You hum in agreement and lift your arms to let him slip his hands around you, one crossing your chest and the other reaching around to get more gel, “It technically is shampoo and body wash, and I was promised the full treatment here.” 

As much as you wanted to keep joking with him, finding silly things to comment on to break the tension, your resolve was quickly going down the drain as his big hands lathered you up. 

“You’re so beautiful,” his voice is just audible over the rushing of the shower water, “I’ve always thought so, but now I fucking know it.” 

His warm breath against your ear manages to cut through the heat of the steam, making you shiver despite it all. “Eddie,” you whine, his hands running up and down your torso, spending more time on your chest than the rest, but surely showering you in as much attention as his hands could reach.

Knowing that tone from earlier, already committing to knowing your body as intimately as you’ll allow him to, he immediately gives in and touches you exactly where you want him most. 

Most of the bubbles had dissipated, and he held you close to him, with one hand splayed across the center of your chest and the other dipping down to run two fingers through your now parting legs. 

He could feel the slick of your folds, standing out from the water cascading down your body, so warm and wet in a different way. 

“Fucking hell,” he groans out, letting his hips roll forwards slightly to find some friction against your backside, sliding his fingers from your hole up to your clit a few experimental times before letting his middle and ring fingers dip into you. 

When he had gone to town on you earlier in his van, which somehow felt like a million light years ago, you had taken a keen interest to the way his metal rings brushed up against your inner thighs and lower lips when he slipped his digits into you. As much as you had reveled in that new sensation, he had taken all his jewelry off along with the rest of his clothes and reservations before joining you in the shower. And now you could grind down onto his hand until he was completely buried to the hilt of his knuckles, no demon heads or upside down crosses in your way.

You wanted to wiggle and writhe around, feeling a bit week in the knees and desperate to buck your hips down against his pumping fingers. He pressed your chest tighter against him, lips pressed up against your ear, “I thought you promised to be good and stay still for me.”

He could feel your pussy clench at that, letting out a satisfied chuckle and  plunging his fingers right back into your cunt, letting the meat of his palm massage your clit in perfect time. 

“S’ this what you wanted,” his voice had the full bodied confidence of a man who didn’t just ask you to not turnaround to see him without a shirt on, “for me to be all sweet and wash your hair, then make you cum on my fingers like the dirty girl I know you are?” 

The smallest fraction of you wanted to be a brat and joke back at his silly use of shower innuendo, but your mind was almost entirely committed to the feeling of his hands on you and his dick rutting Into the meat of your ass.

“Eddie,” you could barely squeak his name out, “Eddie, can I touch you too, please? Please?” While his voice had been pleading before, you were literally begging to get your hands on him. 

“Like this,” you manage to open your eyes, head still resting against his shoulder and your hand snaking back to where his cock pressed into you, not fully grabbing it but motioning towards it with your hand. 

He snatches your wrist up with the hand not occupied with your tightening pussy, and for a second you fear that you had crossed a boundary. 

As much as you were willing to comply with not looking, you were bursting at the seams to touch him, make him feel good, show him how much you wanted to be right here with him and nowhere else. 

Before your mind could race any further, come to a screeching halt and apologize, he guides your hand up underneath your chin and demands “Spit.”

Your short circuiting brain dashes from his fingers, remaining crooked inside of you, his request, and the tone of voice he used to ask. You were fucked. Drool leaks from your lips before you even have the chance to process his words other than the immediate feeling of oh fuck yes. 

He brings your spit coated hand back to reach around, allowing you to wiggle it in between your wet bodies and find his eager cock already arching into your touch. 

He only faltered for a moment, the consistent dizzying pace of his fingers inside you stuttered the moment he felt your slick palm take an experimental stroke. The moan he let out was involuntary, along with a breathy “Oh, shit.”

Obviously you couldn’t size him up visually, but the weight of him in your palm was enough to have your mouth watering and thighs squeezing his wrist a bit tighter. Uncut? Maybe? With a pretty patch of curls to match his mop top? 

“Just like that, please,” you whine out into the steamy air, the two of you finding a joint rhythm between your hands and subtly rolling hips. 

“Your pussy feels so fucking good, so warm and tight for me,” every other word slurred into the curve of your neck. 

“You’re gonna make me cum,” you try and match his increasing speed with your hand, “Eddie, please don’t stop, I’m-“

“Shhhh,” he was getting lost in it too, “I’ve got you.”

Your legs turn to jelly, but he keeps you steadily upright with his support on your chest, focusing entirely on you despite the welling orgasm of his own rapidly approaching. 

It’s the crack in your voice that pushes him forward, the high pitched breathy moans crumbling and releasing the noises of pleasure from deep within your chest. His name  mixed in with ahhhs and uhhhs as if his name is the only word you know in this moment. 

“That’s right,” a sense of confidence welled in him as your limp body twitched against his and your cunt squeezed his relentless fingers, “cum all over my hand, doing so good for me.”

Despite your orgasm wracking your brain and body succumbing completely to whatever Eddie was willing to give you, the thought of collapsing into the shower floor never crossed your mind. He held you so close and steady against his chest, it crosses your mind that you may not be putting any weight onto your feet at all by this point. 

Rather than catch your breath as you come down from your quaking orgasm, you slip deeper into the throws of pleasure, biting your lip and craning your neck backwards so he can see the fucked out expression on your face. A few more steady, enthusiastic pumps mixed with a desperate kiss, wet and at an awkward angle, breathless and needy, perfect and dizzying, sends Eddie over the edge with you.

The deep rumble of his chest against your back as he groans into your open mouth, encourages you to keep your pace as he gently fucks himself into your hand. He’s spilling into your hand and halting his wiggling fingers buried inside you, letting the momentum that the two of you had built up come to a pulsing end. 

The two of you stay tangled in each other for a moment, hands sticky and brows dewy with sweat despite the running water, which had long lost its heat and now settled at a less than comfortable lukewarm. Neither one of you wanted to move. Eddie would have stayed there until his legs cramped and the shower turned ice cold. 

His eyes were screwed shut, head tilted back, still holding you close until you wiggled from his iron grip to bring your cum covered fingers up to your lips to suck two of them clean. 

“Jesus Christ,” he was thankful that he had opened eyes in enough time to witness that, “You’re gonna fuckin’ kill me, you know that?”

You let out a mischievous giggle with his cum coated fingers still in your mouth, glancing over your shoulder to catch the look on his face. Equal parts hungry to pick you up and fuck you against the shower wall right now, and melting down to nothing and slipping away down the drain, unable to even start comprehending what had just transpired between you two. 

You let your fingers go with a pop and turn back around, “Don’t act like you weren’t going to do the same,” you let the chilling water hit your face, focusing on anything other than turning around and lunging at him, wrapping your body around his and letting your skin melt into his. 

He gives into temptation and lets his pruny fingers meet his tongue. He knew what you tasted like from your escapade in his van eaierler, but he’d seize any change he got to take in as much of you as he could. 

“That was,” he started, unsure how to sum how he felt, good, great, perfect, none of those words felt correct, “fuck, yeah- that,”

“Me too,” you press your back into his again, “Thank you Eddie.”

Before he can stumble over his words any more, you ask if he’s okay for you to shut the water off, and you ask if he’d be willing to spare some sleep clothes for you to borrow. You curiously stay in the shower while he takes your excuse for him to leave unseen. 

After toweling off and slipping into the old t-shirt and boxers he left folded up on the counter for you, you found him already dressed and in bed, set criss cross and packing a bong. 

“Post-shower-orgasm smoke, cuddle, then sleep?”

“I’d love nothing more,” you get cozy among the pillows and let the swirling smoke and easy conversation lull you into a comforting half sleep. 

An easy energy settled between the two of you, a silent understanding that you weren’t going to ask him questions, and a building comfort that made him almost ready to show you. 

You slept tucked into his side, and didn’t even mind his snoring or tossing in the night. Every time he rolled over, your sleeping form just found a new way to mold into him. It was the best he had slept in months. 

A steady stream of sunlight blazing directly through the blinds and into your eyes pulled you from your slumber, gorging your groggy eyes to open and crunched up limbs to search for room to stretch. The involuntary fluttering of your eyes and long extension of your libs was far beyond your control. 

“Oh!” You whisper out to yourself once your brain manages to catch up with your waking body, realizing the somewhat compromising position the night had thrown you into, your leg hiked up and clinging to Eddie’s waist, with both your arms scrunching up his t-shirt and leaving a strip of stomach exposed. 

A negligible, unnoticeable few inches between where his sweatpants hung low on his hips and where your gripping arms had balled up his hole-ridden t-shirt stood before your gaze. 

You didn’t mean to stare, and the moment you caught yourself doing so, you quickly and quietly removed your tangled limbs from his and repositioned yourself so that he was half spooning you, eyes facing far away from his unintentionally exposed scar tissue. 

You knew it was probably going to be worse than you were expecting. You hadn’t dedicated much thought to what it could be, or what maybe had happened. You just knew it made him feel like he wasn’t worth your time, and you needed to make him feel seen and safe enough to know that that couldn’t be true. 

Everyone has insecurities, sure. There are surely parts of yourself you weren’t eager to share with the world, let alone someone you’re romantically interested in. You had moved past being astonished that someone who wore gaudy costume jewelry and sang boisterous music for a bar of twelve patrons with the energy of someone who had sold out Madison Square Garden would ever shrink into their shell the way you had seen Eddie. Now, laying in his bed and knowing that whatever it was, the scars were more than what was on his skin.

“Mfffmmm,” he groans and shifts behind you, wiggling beneath the sheets and snaking his arms to wrap around your waist and pull you close into him, “This is nice.”

His morning voice was scratchy and barely above a whisper. 

“I think you just like that my butt is all pressed up on you,” you joke, dodging admiring that you’d rather be here than anywhere in the world in this moment. 

“Yeah, I’m not complaining,” he digs his nose into the side of your neck, “But you smell nice too, ’s nice to wake up to.”

“That 3-in-1’s really doing it for ya?”

“No, you do smell like that a little, but more just like yourself. Girl smell.”

“I’ll get started on that perfume line right away. Girl Smell. Might be a million dollar business venture.”

“I just woke up,” the sleep in his voice melted away and his hands running up and down your sides were more deliberate, “Don’t make fun of me. Plus I’ve got a pretty girl in my bed making me all nervous.”

“Anyone with magic fingers like you has nothing to be worried about,” you keep the conversation playful but allow the unspoken truth, that he truly has nothing to worry about with you, be spoken.

“You just like ‘em cuz I washed your hair so well,” he plays with a strand, letting his finger pads dig into your scalp and scratch away, massaging a bit harder after you let out a satisfied groan.

“You must have lots of practice,” you reach an arm back blindly and half smack the side of his shoulder before finding his messy bedhead, staying resolutely facing the poster-covered wall. 

“You’ve got really pretty hair for a boy,” you let your finger wrap around a curl. 

“For a boy?! Excuse me, I have pretty hair period.”

“Yeah, suppose that’s true” you giggle at his joking defensiveness, “It’s incredible that it’s this nice considering you use the same thing to condition your hair as you do to wash your balls.”

“If you show me what kind of shower products you like I’ll replace the three in one,” he nuzzles his face into the hand playing with your hair, “but maybe the three in one is what’s keeping it so luscious.”

“I wanna wash your hair next time,” you say absentmindedly, meaning it wholeheartedly, with little anxiety after that you had implied a next time. 

“Yeah maybe next time,” his voice trailed off, still soft and flirty but edging on a tone that let you know this conversation was just about over. 

“Eddie,” it came out as hardly more than a whisper. You wait for him to respond but the gravity of the silence between you quickly became unbearable and you needed to break whatever tension this was. 

“I meant it yesterday when I said I wanted to go on more dates with you. You know that right?”

“Mhmm” he mumbles into your shoulder, still holding you against him.

“We have a lot of fun at the bar and stuff,” you search to find your words, “But I want you to know that I don’t just like you cuz you make me laugh and have magic guitar fingers. I like pretty much everything about you so far, and I want to know you more if you’ll let me.”

Your voice wavers, and your message is perhaps more vague than you would have liked, but the deep exhale he lets out conveys that he hears you loud and clear. 

“I know I’ve been…” he starts, “It’s just that I…”

“It’s okay Eddie,” you flip around, rolling so that your chests are pressed together and noses are almost touching, “I don’t want to push it. You can tell me when you’re ready, I just want you to know that I like you a whole lot and I don’t think there’s much that could change that right now.”

His eyelashes flutter shut, forehead touching yours, “Thank you.” 

“Unless you have a huge chest tattoo of something wildly offensive, or like a tramp stamp that says ‘I heart Ronald Regan.” He appreciates your natural ability to make him laugh even in situations like this. 

“Nah,” he pulls back and gives you a serious look, “Fuck Ronald Regan.” 

The two of you burst into a fit of giggles, rolling deeper into the sheets and settling into a comfortable cuddle again, with your head on his chest, face angled up to his and legs all tangled up.

Coming down from the beginnings of the conversation that had been lingering above both of your heads, you place a few reassuring kisses up his jaw and find your way up to his parted lips. 

“Mmmm,” he hums into the deepening kiss to signal you to stop, “I probably have mega morning breath,” he huffs into a cupped hand which makes you laugh and flop your head back into his chest.

“It’s okay, if you do then I do too and didn’t notice,” you peek back up at him, “But if you want to brush teeth and get your day started I won’t stop you.”

“No, no,” he grabs your cheeks and pulls you back up for a smushed kiss, “I wanna stay here all day with you, if you’ll let me. Our second date, we can order a pizza and watch movies here, won’t even have to put pants on.”

“That sounds really nice, I don’t have work today so I’m all yours.”

“All mine,” his grin reaches the apples of his cheeks, “I will go brush my teeth though, cuz I think this second date involves a lot of kissing.”

“Got a spare I could use?” you shuffle out of bed before situating yourself  on the edge of the bed, “Or do you brush with three in one too?”

“Oh my god,” he chuckles, “you with the three in one. After today I promise there will be three separate shower products stocked and ready for your use.”

He manages to find a spare toothbrush in the closet and keeps you wrapped in his arms while both of you take turns spitting into the sink. Looking at the two of you, eyes still crusty from sleep, in the scratched up bathroom mirror, a weird sense of domesticity washes over the two of you. 

Eddie realizes that less than 48 hours ago he was too nervous to make a move to kiss you, and now he was already thinking about making room for your toiletries in his bathroom. 

As comforting and easy it was to do normal everyday things with you at his side, he couldn’t help but notice your nipples poking through his oversized t-shirt you slept in and the way your toothpaste full mouth was framed by your perfect, spit slicked lips. 

“You got a spit kink or something?” You half joke, pressing your ass into the growing rod you could feel nudging against your side.

“Sue me,” he spits and wipes the corners of his mouth, pulling you by the waist into a minty kiss. “Bed? All day?”

“Mhmm,” you agree and lean in to kiss him again, standing on your toes and letting out a shriek of surprise when he scoops you up bridal style and travels the short distance to his bedroom. 

“Eddie!” You yelp out as he gently tosses you back into the pile of sheets. 

“I know I’m no Hulk Hogan, but moving guitar amps is pretty good strength and conditioning.”

“Shut up, you never help your friends carry the equipment.” You think of all the times you watched his poor bandmates lug their equipment after a show while he seamlessly flirted with you. 

“Not when you’re around, you’ve got me there.”

As promised the two of you laze around all morning, bowls of cereal in bed and a bowl of weed to accompany it, switching between fits of giggles and tangled in the sheets while a B horror movie plays on the little TV set propped up near the end of Eddie’s bed. 

He tells you about how he used to live with his Uncle in a trailer down the street until he saved up enough to start renting his own, the three attempts to finish high school and the relief when the local mechanic shop hired him despite his reputation around town as a satan worshiper. He talks a bit about his friends, some who’ve stayed in town and others who’ve long moved away. 

You listen attently, taking in every spared detail. In return he asks you about where you’re from, why the hell you had moved to a bumfuck town in Indiana to be a bartender. He assures you that you wouldn’t have liked him if you had known each other in high school and you laugh and tell him you were far from popular yourself. 

After inhaling a large pizza and running out of VHS tapes you demand a “post pizza bloated cuddle” to which he happily obliges.

“Wish we could do this every day,” he pulls you into him.

“Then we’d need a much bigger movie selection, and maybe body doubles to go do our jobs,” you don’t disagree, although lazy and uneventful the day felt perfect. 

“Don’t wanna go to work tomorrow,” he whines, holding you a little tighter.

“Me either, but we can’t be in this lazy cuddle bubble forever,” his hands came up to massage and scratch your scalp, which he now knew you loved, “but next time we’re both free maybe we can have that third date.”

“If I remember correctly, date three is when I finally get to kiss you,” he jokingly smooches behind your ear and down your neck. 

“Only if you behave,” you reply sarcastically, “you’ve been such a gentleman lately, but you’ve been pushing it mister.” 

“I’ve never been accused of being a gentleman before,” his voice trails off as he buries his nose into your neck, “Will you let me be a gentleman now, make you feel good?” His tone was suddenly dripping with lust, sending a rush of arousal through your already so-relaxed body. 

“Mhmm,” you agree and let your body mold back into his a bit more, pressing yourself against him and letting his hands start to wander.

You arch your neck around from your spooning position and search for his lips, your kiss starting out gentle but not staying that way for very long. 

“You’re just somethin’ else,” he breathes out in between heated kisses, his eyes big and round, earnest, making your heart swell.

“Can I make you feel good too?” you roll your hips into his erection, your breath catching in your throat when you feel it pulsing under his boxers and pressing into the space between your legs. 

You flip around to straddle him, not hiding your intention to grind yourself down onto his covered cock, moans from both of you interrupting the hungry exchange of tongues and lips.

A shaky breath grabs your attention and he finds the air to exhale out, “Can I fuck you?”

You bring your hands to his cheeks to pull him into a deep kiss, continuing to rock your hips against him, giving him words as well you mumble a “Fuck yes, please, please Eddie.”

He finds the hem of your shirt and slips it over your shoulders, the momentary break in kissing makes you whine. He immediately makes it up to you by paying delightful attention to your exposed chest, leaving sloppy wet kisses on every inch of skin he had access to, “fuck”s and “so perfect” breaking them up. 

You instinctively reach down in between the two of you to take his hard cock into your hand, still pressing your core against it, but taking the rest into your hand to stroke him over his boxers, the choked out moan that escapes him is the prettiest sound you’ve ever heard.

You’re losing yourself in the feeling of his weight in your palm, sitting up to see his gorgeous fucked out expression, pinched eyebrows and flushed cheeks.

He swore he’d died and gone to heaven, despite all his sins, with you above him, lip tucked in between your grinning teeth as you rubbed up on him. Fuck, there was no going back after this.

You lean down to resume making out for a moment, missing the feeling of his nose pressed into the side of yours and his too-perfect eyelashes brushing the tops of your cheeks. 

“We can, um-“ you catch your breath, hips stuttering as you find your words, “I can turn around. Or we can make a blindfold or something.” 

His heart swelled at the thought that amidst fucking yourself against his lap you still had the courtesy to think of his comfort, his obvious insecurity, the elephant in the room that he was so desperately trying to shoo away. 

“I want you,” his voice strangely steady, “and I’ll let you have me, no stipulations.” 

You nod with a “Please.”

“Only because, I plan on fucking you every chance I get,” his tone makes you clench your thighs, “So we might as well rip this bandaid off now, because if you’re going to be my girlfriend I don’t want you worrying that I’m hiding something from you.”

He flips you over so you’re now laying beneath him, eyes still glassy with lust and mind swirling with the words he’s just let out.

“I’m gonna take off my shirt now, and I don’t want you to pretend like everything is fine, or that you don’t notice anything, because that’ll be a thousand times worse, okay? I know it’s bad. It doesn’t hurt or anything, but I know it’s not easy to look at.”

With that he pull this black t-shirt off by the back neck collar, and bares his soul to you. You can tell he’s examining your face for a reaction, very carefully managing your facial expressions for his benefit. 

He was right, it wasn’t easy to look at. Only because it made you wonder what horrible thing had happened to leave half of his torso, hip, thigh, and what you could only assume traveled onto his back as well, left entirely torn away and scarred. 

“And-“ he cut off your wandering eyes with his words, “Don’t ask what happened. I’ll tell you eventually I just- We can’t have that discussion if we’re about to have sex.” 

You nodded with understanding, you knew better than to ask. 

You think that your snooping and seed of knowledge helped hide some of your shock, his comment about missing a nipple dampening your realization that he was telling the truth, the scar tissue running so deep that his entire pec was covered in a jagged pink , slightly mishapen scar tissue, and leaving his opposite nipple to stand alone on his chest. 

The one thing that did leave you in a bit of shock was half of a tattoo on his hip that abruptly ended where the scar tissue started. Some sort of zombie head, the black ink lines all coming to a halt when’re his skin had been injured.

You let a tentative hand come up, fearing he’ll flinch away, but he doesn’t. You touch his chest, feeling the textural difference as you let your palm run across his chest and down to his hip. 

“You know, I still think you’re super hot, right?” You try to assure him, but he only lets out a dry chuckle. 

“I mean it,” you sit up a bit, pulling your hand from its exploration of his skin and bringing it to your own chest, using three fingers to cover your left nipple, “you’d still like me, right?” 

The softness in his face almost made you jump up to wrap him into a hug, you wanted him to know that everything was okay and he was safe with you, whatever happened was in the past and he didn’t have to worry. Although the moment was emotionally charged, neither of you could ignore the fact that you were both ravenously horny for each other. 

“I’m sorry you felt like you had to hide this from me,” you pull his face down to yours, “but I’m glad you showed me, because I’m so fucking ready for you to ruin me.”

He lurches forward and lets his body weight collapse down onto you, your legs widening to wrap around his hips, arm and legs locking him against you. 

Feeling his bare chest pressed against yours, lips on your neck and hips rutting into your spread legs, has your head spinning. 

“Please Eddie,” you whine, “let me feel you.”

Without missing a beat he shoves the waistband of his boxers down just enough to reach his thighs, hard dick springing free in the little space in between you, and he snatches your wrist and shoves it in between your bodies without unlatching his lips from your collar bone. 

“Oh fuck,” you couldn’t see what you were grasping, just like in the shower, but you didn’t dare push him off of you to catch a glimpse. He was all over you, hands tangled in your hair, groans and whimpers hardly making their way out in between the wet sloppy kisses he spread across your neck and chest. 

He slips a hand down your body, gracing your ribcage with his fingertips, a stark contrast to how they suddenly part your lips and rub the pool of slick from your hole up to your clit. 

“So wet, this for me?” He quirks and eyebrow and sinks a digit into you, causing your mouth to open and hips to wiggle up to ask for more.

“Yes ’s for you,” you breathe out, wanting to give him some pushback, wipe the smug look off his face, but not finding an ounce of courage to do so. You just let your head lull back and eyelids flutter shut as he curls his fingers perfectly inside you. “All for you.”

You use your free hand to push your underwear as far down your hips as this position will allow, not wanting to shift your focus from the feeling of him on your lips, his pulsing cock in your hand. 

“Need you,” you gasp out, partially at the feeling of his knuckle deep fingers buried inside of you, and equally the fucked out look on his face looming over yours, eyes blown wide and mouth parted on the verge of begging for more, “Eddie, need you to fuck me, please.”

He sits up and removes his fingers from you, earning a wince and a whine. He helps crunch your legs up to remove your panties, leaving your legs raised and crossed over one of his shoulders. He takes a moment to kiss your ankle and tenderly run his hands down the length of your leg. He took the moment to take off his own boxers, leaving you both bare in front of each other for the first time. 

“You’ve got a pretty cock,” you complement him earnestly, it was pretty. He gave you a halfhearted scoff and an eyeball in return. “No Eds, I mean it. It’s big too, good thing you got me ready with your fingers. That and I’ve been soaking wet for you for like 48 hours now, so it shouldn’t be a problem,” you giggle. His shy smile tells you he’s willing to take the compliment. 

You let your legs fall from their perch on his shoulder and fall to either side of his hips, opening yourself up to him. He’s staring, mouth half agape. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before, but to have you laid out like this before him, fully ready to give yourself over to him and wanting him wholly in return, how couldn’t he stare. 

You let your hand stroke up his cock, bringing his attention back to where the two of you nearly met. You angle him closer to you, you’re slowly pumping fist brushing against your own center. He snaps out of his trance and nudges your hand away, using his own grip to tap his thick cock against your opening. 

Tap, tap tap. His head meets your slick folds, hips jerking slightly with every tap.

“Don’t tease me Eds,” you push your hips forward and are only met with him rubbing his dick into the outside of your pussy, “want you inside, need it so bad.”

He want’s to be a bother and continue his teasing, watching your writhe and squirm, but he can’t find it in him to deny you, so he presses the tip in and gauges your face for a reaction, only finding babbling bliss and pleas for more. 

He’s sinking into you at an agonizing pace, craning down from his kneeling position above you to frame your head with bent arms and his lips on yours as you moan into each other’s mouths, him filling you more and more. 

Your hands are in his hair, keeping your foreheads anchored together, breathing in tandem. He finally sinks all the way down and you can feel it in your lungs. You wrap your ankles around his back and squeeze him into you tighter, not wanting him to move just yet, wanting to just feel how deep he filled you up for the first time. 

He lets out a shaky exhale and squeezes his eyes shut, “You were fuckin’ made for me,” he punctuates this with a subtle roll forward of his hips, lips falling into yours as if they had nowhere else to go. 

You let your legs fall back, unclasping his hips, and move your hands from his wild hair down to his thighs, pushing him to start fucking you. 

“Feel’s so fucking good,” you whisper into his mouth, your hands hardly assisting him anymore as he pumps in and out of your slick cunt, almost knocking the air out of you each time. 

He grabs your chin with the hand that’s not propping himself up, “look at me,” his pace doesn’t falter and your mind nearly turns to mush, “you’re mine now, yeah?”

“Yes Eddie,” it comes out as a broken sob, your eyes barely able to focus on him with how close he was, “all yours, only yours.” Your mind had barely made the decision to say the words before they had escaped your lips, a dumbfounded truth serum setting over you in your cock drunk state. 

You knew it to be true though, there was no going back after this, and you were willing to give yourself over fully, and accept anything he would give you. 

“Ahh, fuck” you let out after a particularly harsh thrust, fists now dripping the sheets beneath you. 

“So fucking good for me,” his hands now found purchase on your hips, setting a rhythm between you that only a musician could. 

Through glassy eyes you admire him. Curly bangs stuck to his forehead, frantically thrusting torso making his tattoos look like stop motion cartoons, and through it all the scars are hardly noticeable. If anything, they’re just another part of him, the person between your legs that you found incredibly sexy, insecurities and all. 

His perfect hands slid from your hips to your shoulders, now using the weight of your torso as leverage to fuck into you harder. His eyes bore into yours, searching for eye contact and finding your reassuring gaze that told him this was everything you wanted and more. 

“Yes, yes, oh fuck,” you babble out. His little grunts and whimpers send volts of electricity to your core and fog your mind with lust and desire.

He moves a hand down to meet your center, palm splaying across your abdomen and keeping you pinned to the bed, thumb methodically catching your clit with each thrust. He didn’t have to ask if it felt good, the rolling back of your eyes and mouth so wide he could see your molars were enough of an indication that he was headed in the right direction.

“Mhmmmm,” you could hardly form words, but smiled up through your fucked out gaze at him, wide beam and lust fulled eyes telling him that he couldn’t possibly be making you feel any better than you do right now. 

He leans back a bit, balancing himself on his thighs keeping his pace, thumb on your clit and eyes locked into yours. Through a groan he brings his unoccupied hand up to his face, biting down on the knuckle of his pointer finger, trying not to blow his load at the feeling of you squeezing around him. 

Of course, this only made him look hotter to you, and thus you flexed around his cock even tighter. 

Unexpectedly, he pulls out of you completely and before you can muster up the breath to complain, he’s dipped his lapping tongue against you. He fully buries himself into your cunt, cutting off the rhythm, of his cock with the somehow perfectly timed pulsing of his hungry tongue. 

You can’t help but cry out, arch your hips, and send a hand flying to his hair to ground yourself. Through frantic panting and wet slurping sounds you think you can make out a “just had to taste you.”

Completely breathless, you can hardly conjure a response before he’s plunging into you again, fucking into you deeply and capturing your parted lips into a passionate kiss.

Something takes over you, and you’re suddenly wrapping your legs around his hips and using some found momentum to flip the two of your over. Suddenly, you’re on top of him, his curls splayed around his pretty face and body laid flat beneath you. 

Before you had a moment to question yourself, you anchor your hands onto his shoulders and try your best to pick up the pace he had set earlier. Hips rolling and wet slapping sounds coming from between you. 

“Jesus- fuck,” he stuttered in his movements, unsure if he wanted his hands on your face or your tits or your hips or… they landed on your ass and he wouldn’t argue with his first instincts. 

“Eddie, I’ve wanted you like this for so long,” your words were breathy and mixed with lustful gasps, “always wanted to have you like this.”

“We could have done this a long time ago, huh?” He tries not to think about all the time wasted, and instead fantasies about all the making up for lost time you’ll do in the near future. 

“You were always giving me those eyes while you played with your band,” you looked angelic to him, face hovering above him, framed only be the poor overhead lighting and flickering VHS menu of the last film you’d finished, “I always wanted you, just wasn’t sure you wanted me like this too.”

Your statement was simple enough, but he knew what you meant. You wanted him more than a fuck, and that’s what he had been worried about all along. Now, to have you sunk down on his cock like this, telling him that you had been scared in the same way as he had, only made him roll his hops up into you and pull your cheeks down for a sloppy kiss to seal the deal. You were finally on the same page. 

Switching from a bounce of your hips, you lean back slowly and shift to more of a roll, keeping his cock buried deep inside of you while you gyrate your hips. Your arm extends back in between his spread legs to keep you stable, your torso finding its own rhythm in the midst of pleasure and fucking yourself onto his cock. 

“So fucking perfect,” he gasps out, hardly able to take in the sight of your body writhing and rolling above him. He manages to find bait of sense in his brain and brings his hand back to your lower stomach, thumb flicking over your clit with every thrust of your hips. 

“Oh,eddieohmygosh,” it came out as one breathy syllable, “pleasedon’tstopthat.”

He gently fucks himself up into you, matching your movements and not throwing you off of the sinful rhythm you’ve set, just managing too punctuate each bounce with the raise of his hips into yours and the increased pressure of his thumb on your clit. 

“Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck,” he loves the way each breathy word out of your lips is matched with the beautiful bounce of your tits, “Eddie, you’re gonna-“

He doesn’t change a thing, the pressure on your clit, the arch of his hips, he would sooner die than rob you of pleasure or ruin this moment. Every moment he get’s to look at you, he thinks it’s the most beautiful you’ve ever looked, but he knows for sure that this one takes the cake. 

“Ahhh, I’m-“ you don’t  have to finish your statement for him to know you’re cumming on his cock, the pulsing squeeze of your walls and intense concentration from him not to bust on the spot, and rather to focus on the parting of your lips and the twitching of your hips on his. 

“That’s it,” he keeps his thumb on your clit, but lets up on the pressure as soon as he feels you jerk against him, “that’s my girl.”

You lurch down and wrangle him into a kiss, only wanting to feel his lips on yours as you come down from your orgasm. You’re still slowly rolling your hips against his, but focused more on the feeling of his cheeks under your palms and his lips on yours. 

“You okay?” He asks in between tongue tied kisses. 

“Yes, perfect, thank you,” you arch your back into him a bit, “ready for more.” 

Although you were fully prepared to bounce on his cock until he came, you were pleasantly surprised when his large hands surrounded your waist and hoisted you up off the bed. He wanted to try and keep his cock inside you, but accepted defeat as he managed to situate on the edge of the bed.

He shifted around you and situated himself in between your legs. You laid out, everything below the knees hanging off the edge of his hand-me-down mattress. He stood above you and lowered himself to land a few wet kisses on your breasts, his hard cock pressing into your needy center. 

He jerked you up by the underside of your knees, pressing your thighs into your chest and sinking down into your open pussy, causing a deep groan to emit from both of you.

Here he was, scars and all, standing above you and thrusting into you as if it was the last thing he would ever do, and he looked like an angel to you. 

More thoughtful than you may have initially given him credit for, his thumb finds your clit again and he politely, yet breathlessly asks, “Can you come again for me, pretty girl?”

How could you say no to that. You dumbly nod and throw your head back against the sheets, your hands balled up at your sides as he thrusted into you, grunting and moaning your name. 

“So fucking good Eddie,” you manage to squeak out, “You make me feel so fucking good.”

“Ah fuck, yeah, yes,” his voice nearly jumped an octive, signaling his release. “Where should I-“ he began to ask.

“Inside,” it came out as two syllables in-between breaths, “It’s okay you can come-“

“Fuuuuuck,” a strangled moan and a collapse of his arms, along with the delicious pulse of his cock inside you signaled his release. 

Before you could eve catch your breath, regain consciousness of the situation, he was reeling back and replacing his softening cock with two fingers. He latched his lips to your clit and began to suck in time with his finger’s replication of his cock’s earlier movements. 

“Oh my god,” you were truly taken aback, his face buried in your cunt and setting you back on track to your building orgasm. 

It didn’t take more than a minute and a half of him slurping your mixed releases from your cunt and bullying your g-spot with those damn magic fingers to send you hurdling towards orgasm number two, shaking and crying out his name. 

It wasn’t until your legs were truly shaking and your hand was searching for his forehead to push him away from overstimulation that he finally let up and let up of your pussy with a wet pop and a smug look.

“You come?” He asks again, just as he had in the back of his van. 

You don’t have the energy to respond, only roll your eyes and flip him the bird as you flop back down onto his bedsheets. 

He managed to get you a warm rag and a cold glass of water, stroking your har and asking if you felt alright.

“Feel perfect Eddie,” you say after a long gulp, “you took such good care of me, you always do.”

He stroked your hair and positioned the two of you back comfortably beneath his sheets. “Thank you,” he starts, but you cut him off with a kiss. 

“No, thank you,” you kiss him again, “for trusting me.” The look in your eyes could nearly make him melt. “You’re really something special Eddie, I mean it.”

“Special enough for a fourth date?”

You smack his chest and bury your head into his neck. “I don’t think we have to count dates if I’m your girlfriend now…”

Those dimples you adore perk up on his cheeks, and he bear hugs you, scarred chest and all. 

“What time should I set the alarm for tomorrow?” He asks with a sorrow in his voice. 

“How about never,” you roll over to trample him with another kiss, smothering his body in yours, knowing you’d be luck enough to have many moments like this soon to come. 

A/N: I'm sorry I have long lost the tracking of a taglist (crying emoji) don't want to bother anyone who asked to be added the last time I wrote a pic ten thousand years ago, so I hope this reaches everyone it needs to <3

[formulaforza]

💐 hi my wonderful birthday girl !! so i was thinking about a dress coded lewis blurb (because i was born a lewis and ts girl) where they just get drunk together and there’s teases flying and stuff. keep it as brief as u wish <333

—you can take it off

lewis hamilton x merc!reader summ. thank you stephy i love u bad <3 inspo from... ur never gonna believe it... this. hope it's up to your standards my love. 2.7k (kind of got out of hand)

You were half-asleep and half-drunk the night of the Belgium Grand Prix. The air was cool, recycled like all air seems to be in hotels, smelled of too-strong perfume and was filled with the dull noise of elevator jazz. What had begun as a before-we-go-to-bed night cap in the hotel bar with Bono had turned into a seemingly never ending addition of guests. 

Valtteri was first to join—never could pass up the opportunity to give you shit, to offer you job postings at Alfa Romeo that weren’t job postings at all—and with him around, there’s no casual drinking. You don’t try to keep up, not really, because you know you don’t stand a chance, but also because he would never let you. After all these years of being just a few months younger than him, he still calls you kiddo, still promises to call your parents when you’re out after dark, and always sends you a text after a race with some… questionable strategy decisions you’re catching flack for online. 

A brief appearance from Toto and Susie, just long enough for them to know they had no business trying to go drink for drink with Valtteri, and then they’re wishing all three of you a wonderful summer break and retreating to whatever room is considered prestige enough for Motorsport’s it-couple. 

And then there was Lewis, the last to arrive, who never called you kid, who never viewed you as one. He sits adjacent you in the red, high back leather booth and takes up a seat and a half, the toe of his shoe brushing against the side of yours, flashing you apologetic puppy dog eyes every time he bumps against yours. 

It’s somewhere between drink number five and six that Lewis gets his first, insists on a toast to the summer break that officially began… six hours and fifty-three minutes ago. For a long season this and a too-short summer break that, you lot had a mouthful of things to complain about, but a million more to be grateful for. “To not having work for a month,” Lewis proposes, clinking his glass against yours, offering a quick wink and holding it up properly over the table. 

“To no racing-talk for a few weeks,” Bono adds, clinking his glass against Lewis’. 

“To summer-fucking-break,” Valtteri chimes in, laughing at himself before the rest of you get the chance to match it. 

“To summer fucking break,” you repeat because you know there’s no better way to sum it all up. 

Unlike the other two, you slowed down when Lewis joined, wanted to give him time to catch up, to give yourself time to meet him somewhere in the middle. A glass of water and a virgin rum and coke and another water and the night is still young. 

“First summer break as the big boss, kiddo,” Valtteri remarks, and you have to squint to hear him through the alcohol-induced thickening of his accent. 

“That’s right!” Bono laughs. Your cheeks run hot at their mention of your title, of your promotion following James’ departure earlier in the season. Lewis smiles against the rim of his glass, bumps his foot against yours and doesn’t give you apologetic eyes. No, he raises his brows so slightly you think you’re the only one that notices, which is probably exactly the way he intended it to be. “Little miss queen of strategy is making the big money now, got any big travel plans?”

Lewis clears his throat, and your eyes dart over to his almost instinctively. “You’re staying in London, yeah?”

He’s right. Your summer-break plans consist of four weeks of trying to remember what it feels like to do nothing, failing at that task pathetically, and spending the rest of the time meticulously picking apart every call you’ve made all season and imagining the million and one things you could’ve done differently and their billion and two outcomes. 

You pick apart the drink napkin, tear it into tiny little pieces. “Yeah, yeah. Just staying home, catching up with friends and family,” you clarify, try not to sound as pathetic as you feel. It’s hard not to when you’re sitting next to the guy who spends his offseason snowboarding in Antarctica with his celebrity friends and his weeks off traveling to Paris fashion week for front row seats next to supermodels. Anything you say would sound pathetic to someone who makes thirty-five million a year. 

“I love it,” he nods, stares right through you and into your soul so you know he’s being genuine. “That’s awesome.”

You nod, swallow hard, purposely angle your body away from his, to the rest of the group. “What about you guys?”

Lewis laughs, soft, quiet, completely under his breath. The kind of laugh that deserves to be bottled into a jar and kept on a shelf for safe keeping. You know he’s always laughed like that, even before he knew you, but in the last few months it just feels different. Good different, like he’s laughing just for you now instead of everyone else too. 

You know you’re crazy, that he’s just Lewis being Lewis and you’re just single for the first time in a long time and also drunk. Not half drunk anymore, just drunk—even if you do think you’re meeting him in the middle, you’re not. He’s just chasing after. 

“Back home, too,” Bono concludes. “Take a breather, might head up to the country with the family.”

“You’ll take pictures, yeah?” Lewis asks, starts to pick up the pieces of your napkin tear pile and move them in front of him like a kid who isn’t patient enough to share or destructive enough to rip up his own. You watch in your peripheral, the way he fiddles with the wet paper, gets it stuck to his fingertips. You can’t laugh, so you don’t, but you want to. You think he knows you want to. 

Bono scoffs, nods while swallowing a sip of his drink—something dark, something pungent. Not what you would have pegged him for ordering, even after knowing him as long as you have. “So I can compare with the likes of you lot and,” he turns to Lewis, leers around you to emphasize the eyeline, “your million dollar vacations or,” and then the other way, back to Valtteri, “your olympic cycling events?”

Valtteri smiles, swirls his drink—gin, you think. Expensive. “Yes.”

“No chance.”

“I’ll be sure to send you a picture of me having a meltdown when I think about our side pods from the beginning of the year,” you chime in, because it’s not like they all don’t know you well enough to know exactly what you mean by spending time with friends and family at home.

 “What sidepods?” Lewis chuckles.

“Fucking exactly,” you add, mirror his mannerisms without even realizing it, all the way down to readjusting in your seat when you’ve had your laugh. 

“Could be worse,” Bono offers. “Could be last year.”

Lewis nods, holds his drink up in the direction of Valtteri across the table. “We never should have let you leave.”

He smiles, weak, lips  pursed. “I could have told you that.”

The night continues on, all drinks and laughs and yawns, occasional remarks that it’s about time I head up, followed by another round, another joke, another comment about this, that, or the other thing. 

You’ve always liked Lewis when he’s a little tipsy. He lightens up a bit, you can actually watch the stress drip from him like sweat, all the titles and the wins and the losses, they all just fall away when he’s relaxed like this. You’ve always liked him like this. Always. Before he was king of the world and before he was the prodigal son and every moment in between. 

After every joke he makes—or, after every comment he makes that he thinks could be considered a joke—you find yourself laughing, because it’s Lewis and you have a crush on him and of course you do. And, without fail, everytime you laugh, he winks, like you’re in on some inside joke even though he’s making it to the whole table, like there’s some double meaning to all of his words that are meant just for you, just for the two of you to understand. 

Somewhere in it all, it comes back to Lewis, because, well, it always does. “Is your back still bothering you?” Bono asks, and you think you already know the answer. You think you know, because you can’t remember the last time you;d seen him take careful consideration of his posture when he sits. Not even now is he sitting up straight, with his legs perfectly spread a shoulder’s width apart and his feet flat on the floor. Instead, he’s taking up more room than he needs to, all relaxed and comfortable on the leather booth bench. 

He swipes his thumb over the  condensation of his glass, looking up from the action at you, and then to Bono. “No, no. All good there.”

“All good?” Bono prods, because he was on the receiving end of a year and a half of complaints from Lewis.

Lewis nods, clicks his tongue on the roof of his mouth. “No Paracetamol in a month.”

Across the table, Valterri chimes in. “None?” 

“None for my back,” Lewis says, and the whole table laughs. You just watch him, though, because who laughs better than he does? You could wax poetic about it without a second thought, the way that his lips upturn and his cheeks round and his eyes crinkle and go soft in a way that makes you feel like you’re the funniest person in the world even when you’re not making a joke. The way that his smile is brighter than anyone’s you’ve ever seen, and the way that if you look at it for too long, you think about how it would feel to run your finger along the gap in his teeth. 

“That’s what I thought,” Valtteri mutters off the end of his laugh. “You're getting old.”

“Not too old to make half a million.”

The entire table’s heads fly to him. You gasp, an embarrassingly wide smile on your face. “You didn’t!” You almost yell, smacking his upper arm with a weak hand. 

He mocks your gasp, makes it somehow more dramatic and over the top and laughs sweetly, shrugging your hand off his arm and letting his hand fall to your leg, bumping your foot with his again. “I didn’t.” The table chuckles, you pout, and then you realize that his hand is on your thigh, that it’s staying there quite comfortably, and that you mind it less than he does. 

“Don’t be a tease,” you sigh, take a swig of your drink. Your knees are suddenly weak, like you know you wouldn’t be able to stand up if you wanted to. It’s like he can sense your change but can’t quite read it, because then he’s moving his hand back to his own lap, interlocking it with the other and resting it there.

 He nods, suddenly shy, suddenly guilty. “It’s as good as done.”

Valtteri laughs. “Yeah, I’ve heard that one before.” You hear what he says, but you’re not listening, not really. Lewis stares into you like he wants to look anywhere else—apologetic eyes and a fear he’s taken a misstep. He hasn’t, you want to tell him. You haven’t, put your hand back, please. Silently, you try to convey what shouldn’t dare be spoken. “I’ll believe it when pen is on paper.”

He snaps his eyes away from you, back to Valtteri. You don’t follow suit, stay fixed on him, on trying— hard—to get your message across. “I’m telling you, they’re announcing it after the summer break.”

“Whatever you say, Mate.”

Bono nods around a mouthful of alcohol, sets his half-empty glass down with an incidental thud. “Who’s to say we still want your geriatric ass?”

Lewis raised his interlocked hands from his lap, to the tabletop, resting his elbows on the wood grain and rattling the empty glasses when he does it. He leans in towards the center of the table, even though the only person separating him and Bono is you. “Would you tell Schumacher ‘no?’”

“What was that?” You ask, your words a convenient excuse to lean in closer, to settle into a spot that much closer to him without raising any brows. To brace for the shift, you leave your hand on his thigh with less subtly than your original movement, but it’s okay. It’s okay—only Lewis knows where your hands are, and you don’t want it to be subtle, don’t want anything to be lost in translation. “I can’t hear you over your ego,” you smile, and your fingers dance up his leg just a few, careful inches. 

He drops back into his seat, drops his hands back into his lap. Under the table, he grabs yours and laughs, but it’s stifled, stunted, not quite relaxed. “Very funny,” he humors, and moves your hand back. His stays too, though, and he crosses one leg over the other under the table. His thumb moves over the fabric of your slacks in shudder-worthy circles. 

“Someone’s gotta check you,” you smile, nod in the direction of your tablemates without ever looking away from him. “These two won’t.”

Bono scoffs.“Are you kidding?”

Your smile grows. “How do you want me to answer that, Peter?”

“Damn,” Lewis laughs so hard he coughs. “She Peter-ed you. That’s cold.”

“You’re the one comparing yourself to Michael fucking Schumacher,” Bono scolds. 

“I didn’t say that, but,”

“But!” You interject. 

“But,” Lewis laughs, threatens to continue even though all at the table know he won’t, knows that no matter how often the media and the girlfriends and the friends and the family tell him he should put himself up there with the greatest, he’ll never quite see himself in the same light. “But it’s about time I head up, I think.”

“Ah, see,” Valtteri chuckles. “Old man Hamilton can’t hang.”

“No, he can not,” Lewis remarks, pulling his phone and his hotel keycard from his pocket, setting the latter on the table and if you were feeling a little crazier than you are, you’d swear he nudges it ever so slightly out of his bubble and into yours. He types away rapidly at his phone, and you try to pay attention to the jokes Bono and Valtteri throw around, the pokes at Lewis they make, but suddenly you’re feeling like it’s a good time to head up, too. You try to shake the crazy, to leave it with your backwash in the final sip of your drink, and you do. You do.

You do, but then he’s slipping his phone back into his pocket. He’s leaving his glass just beyond his keycard and telling you to feel free to finish it. He’s saying his goodbyes while he moves out of the booth and his hotel room key is still sat on the table next to you. It stares at you—the hard, thin plastic. Stares at you in its white paper pocket with the intricate printing of the hotel label and dares you to look at him when he walks away. 

You do, begrudgingly, subtly, and his eyes are already on yours. They’re expressionless, and yet, say so fucking much. You hold the remainder of his drink in his direction before downing it in a single gulp and then he winks at you. He looks at his keycard on the table, and then to you, and then he winks, and you’re sure you’re absolutely crazy. 

You swallow. 

“Oh, fuck,” Bono says, reaches over you to grab the keycard from the table. It’s like you were zoned out and he snapped in front of your face, the way it pulls you from Lewis to the table. “He forgot his key.”

“Oh,” you squeak, and then louder, “I can take it to him.”

“No, no, It’s okay,” Bono says, and he makes you stand up to get out of the booth. “I should be heading up anyway.”

“Really,” you half-insist, trying to convince him you can handle it without letting him in on why you’re convincing him. “It’s no problem.”

Bono pulls out his wallet, flips through the pockets of it and fiddles with his bills. “Our rooms are right by each other,” he insists, tosses his share onto the table. “I got it.”

“Okay,” you nod, accept your defeat. “Yeah, I should be heading up, too, I guess.”

[luveline]

Hiiiiii!!! Since it’s back to school season you should write a blurb where Steve and Reader get emotional sending Avery to school for the first time in your KBD universe!!

thank you for your request ♡ kisses before dinner —you and steve have a tumultuous morning on avery's first day of school. mom!reader, 3k

"Oh, fuck," Steve mumbles into his pillow, cheek wet with drool. "Shit." He drags his face up to look at the alarm clock for the third time that morning, having slept on and off for hours. He can't believe he's awake again. 

"I think you have to admit defeat," you say softly from the vanity. Steve turns, finds you sitting slouched with a brush in your hands, applying powder to your cheek carefully. "I couldn't sleep either." 

Steve groans at his ever present back ache and sits up. The comforter falls down into his lap, his naked chest exposed. He scratches at his collarbone mindlessly. "You think it'll be really hard?" he asks, knowing you'll know what he's saying. You always do. 

You put down the brush, turning a very sympathetic smile his way. "I think it will be awful. But you'll be okay, Steve. She needs to go. And she's excited!" You nod toward Avery's room. "Can't you hear her?" 

Steve gets up without checking for himself. He slinks out of your bedroom and onto the landing, where Avery's door is ajar. 

"Hey," he says, opening the door with his foot. "You okay?" 

Ash blonde hair like a riot around her face and pyjamas in disarray, Avery sees Steve in the doorway and beams, doing a wiggly half dance by her dresser. "Daddy! It's my first day at school!" 

"I know," he croons, or attempts to, his voice still hoarse from sleep. "I'm just gonna shower, and then we'll start getting ready. You hungry?" 

"Are you still gonna do my hair like mommy's?" she asks. 

"Yeah, just like mom's." 

Steve's reassured by her smile even if he's feeling about as anxious as the day he found out you were pregnant the first time (ecstatic, terrified, in love and bricking it). He showers in three minutes, an expert in the art of wicked fast washing and in anticipation of Dove's imminent waking. Sure enough, he's crossing the landing back to the master bedroom with a towel around his waist when a cry sounds from behind him.

You appear in the doorway dressed for work and somehow prettier than you were yesterday. It doesn't fade no matter what people say, Steve still has a huge crush on you, and it feels like a gift to have you stroke a line down his tacky arm as you pass. 

"I have it, handsome." You take a step back and he pauses on instinct. Your hand cups his face. "It won't be as bad as you're thinking. I promise." You stroke his cheek. "Yeah?" 

"I'm fine," he lies. 

Dove cries louder. You take your hand back. "Okay. Get dressed. I'll make breakfast." 

Steve does as he's told. Bethie tries to barge into the bedroom while he's changing, and he laughs at her dejected sigh. "It's not opening," she says, nearly three and a half and sounding it, her voice still cutely disjointed. 

"I'm just getting dressed, Beth. Mommy's making breakfast, you want waffles or something?" 

"I can't get down the stairs," she mumbles. Steve almost misses it. 

He throws a shirt on and yanks a comb through his hair. Bethie's standing expectantly by the door when he opens it, your image completely. Steve's seen the rare baby photo of you and he's surprised every time; you could switch it out with a photo of Bethie and he's sure he wouldn't notice, though her nose might look a little different. 

"Hey, pretty girl. Trapped?" 

"They'd left me up here with you," she says. 

Talkative this morning, he thinks. "I can see that. Excuse me then, babe, and we'll get this gate open." 

Steve hates the baby gates. He doesn't think they're necessary, but he knows he'd think that until the day one of his poor girls took a dive. You hate them too for being so finicky. Maybe in a couple of months when Dove's walking you'll take them down. 

He opens the gate and takes a few steps, holding a hand out for Bethie. Fingers wrapped around hers, they descend the stairs and approached the second dreaded baby gate where Avery's waiting. She pinches the lock and pulls up the handle for them surprisingly easily. 

"Thank you," he says to her, stepping over the lip of it and assisting Beth down those last few steps. She wobbles. 

"Dad, when can we get ready?" Avery asks. 

Steve checks his watch. "Uh, soon as you finish breakfast." 

"I finished already."

"No you didn't!" you call. "Come on! Come and eat this egg before it goes cold." 

"I wanted a waffle," Avery says. 

"Don't tell me, tell your mom. I'm sure she'll make you something else."

Avery spirits away. Steve watches her go and decides maybe he can't do this after all, sweeping Bethie into his arms to hug close to his chest. "Don't grow up, Beth. Promise?" 

She looks at him lovingly. "Promise." She offers her tiny pinky. 

You're not so stressed in the kitchen. Or, Steve may not think so. Inside you're a ball of agony. You're acting as normal as you can, knowing Steve will take the change harder; he's spent almost every hour of every day with Avery for nearly six years, to suddenly have her gone will feel wrong, and strange, and achy. 

He'll understand how you feel going to work every day. Missing your family becomes a second feeling that trails behind you, not always sad, but there nonetheless. You'll be sitting at your desk wishing a little back was pressed to your chest, or that there were a hand in your hair. Or, when things are especially boring, you long for a whiny shout, "Mommy!" said over and over. 

It isn't his fault, of course, and it's not even the thing that's hurting. Just. Avery's getting older no matter how much you wish she'd stay the same, for a day, an hour. If you could just stop time and hold her for a bit, you'd feel better. 

Time doesn't stop. You make her a waffle and eat her cold egg, Dove spits up on your blazer and you have to get changed. Steve struggles to get Avery ready in her bedroom while Bethie crowds his legs, and you can't help. Your second blazer has a peach juice stain and the third has been personalised with a blue marker. You can't find anything to wear. 

You scrub the spit up off of the shoulder in the bathroom and trudge to Avery's room to ask Steve if he can tell. 

Avery's standing in front of her mirror, and she looks perfect. 

And she looks so old.

Surprise spreads like a bruise, like you've been winded, a flat palm pressing with force against the gentle structure of your diaphragm. You grip the blazer in your hands until the fabric squeaks, eyes on Avery's hair, her shoulders, her new dress and shoes. She spins on her heels when she sees you in the mirror and poses proudly. 

"Doesn't it look nice, mommy?" she asks. 

You frown at her. Your breath catches in your throat, your eyes turning warm, your whole face. "You look really nice, sweetheart," you say, blinking to dispel the moisture in your eyes before it can turn to tears."Daddy did a good job." 

"Are you okay?" Avery asks. 

You try to turn your frown to a smile, the expression one Avery isn't used to seeing. Panicked, she looks to Steve, who's already looking at you tenderly. 

"I'm sorry," you say. It aches in your cheeks. Being a parent means hiding how you feel when it's bad, but you're grasping at the air for a reassurance that isn't there. She's never going to stop getting older. And this is a beautiful thing in reality. 

Right now, it's terrifying. 

"You look lovely," you say, swiping at tears as they tip. "I'm really sorry, Avery, I'm okay. You look so beautiful, honey." 

Steve crouches down by Avery's side, hands on her waist. "This is going to sound silly, because you're so excited about going to school, but me and your mommy are just a little sad." 

"You're sad because I'm going to school?" Avery asks. 

You nod, shame-faced, "A bit." 

"Well, I won't go," she says in confusion.

You close the distance between you and hold her chin in your hand. "You have to go! I want you to go, I promise. I want you to meet new friends, and learn new things. I can't wait for you to see the whole world." 

"Then why are you crying?" she asks. 

You push your thumb into the corner of her mouth and make her smile. "You'll understand when you're older," you say. 

She groans. "Mom, I want to know now." 

"I can't explain it." You kiss her soft forehead. "Sorry." You kiss her forehead again. "Sorry. You really look beautiful, and I know you're going to have a good day. They won't know what to do with you." 

You arranged to start work late so you can see her off for her first day and help if drop off becomes too much for Steve to do alone. Now that Avery's old enough for school, she'll need to be dropped off and picked up everyday, and your working hours don't allow for you to do it. This means Steve will have to get all three girls ready every day. They can't wait in the car by themselves. It's a lot more than he's used to doing, which isn't to say he doesn't keep his girls clean and clothed in fresh jammies. He takes them grocery shopping and to the movies and Aunt Robin's house by himself all the time, it's not a difficult task (most of the time) but it takes work. It's going to be a lot for him. 

He can do it, obviously. You just wish you could be more helpful. You tried to talk your boss into an earlier start time so you could finish in time to grab Avery and save him the trip, but it meant you'd start work at 6AM. Nobody would be there to let you in, and it was deemed 'unfeasible'. 

You worry about it on the ride there. Three girls in car seats, you in the front, they're hard to handle. Avery's far away in the very back, the third row, while Dove whines in the second, Bethie behind you asking if she can come and sit in your lap. 

"Sorry, lovely. Two minutes, okay? Two minutes and we'll be there." 

Steve shouts over your placating, "How are you feeling, Avey-Bear?" 

"I feel good, dad!" 

"It's the left entrance, right?" Steve asks you. 

"Yeah, with the big crayon mural. Dove, I know! I can see it! Is it too tight? Let mommy have a look." 

You lean through the seats. Steve takes a hand from the wheel to hold your side up and stop you from collapsing forward as you fiddle with Dove's seat straps. This chaos cannot be a good sign, you think.

You pull into the lot. Kids are everywhere, hundreds of them flooding toward the elementary school like ants carving paths through grass and sidewalk. The air smells like pine trees as you step out of the car. 

While grizzly, you're pleased to find that your girls look good. Smart, well-loved. You grab Bethie, her seat behind yours, and Steve takes Dove. Avery unclasps her own car seat and climbs over the second row to slide out by your legs. 

"Nice job, babe," you say, holding up your hand. Avery high fives you. 

Soon as Steve's ready, you take Avery's hand with Bethie perched as a heavy weight on your hip. She's too big to need carrying and you'll have to put her down sooner rather than later, but for now you hold her, mind racing as she asks, "Mommy, do I go with Avery?" 

"No, sweetheart, I'm sorry. Avery's going by herself." 

And what the fuck? you think, looking down at Avery where she squeezes your hand, the skirt of her dress swishing side to side as she skips. How can she be doing this by herself? She doesn't seem old enough. How can anybody expect her to do this? 

Bethie rests her cheek on your shoulder. "That's OK. I want to be with you." 

She's not going to be pleased in another half an hour, then, but that's a future problem. 

Steve trudges behind you like a man walking to his death. You're not exaggerating when you think to yourself about how pale he's gone, his cheeks devoid of any colour. 

You follow the path past the school gates and into its playground. Most kids stay waiting with their parents while younger ones crowd the jungle gym, though there are some you recognise from playgroups and the local playground. You've accidentally cut it a bit close, not expecting the girls to be as hard to get into the car as they'd been, and the bell rings to call everyone inside only thirty seconds later. 

Children call goodbye to their parents. Avery had an orientation day a little while ago and knows where she has to go, but for the first time that morning, she hesitates. 

"You okay?" Steve asks her. 

She looks between you both and her sisters with a funny kind of smile. Altogether too grown up. "Will it be okay?" she asks. 

"What, school?" he asks. "School is going to be awesome. You are going to have so much fun." 

She licks her lips, thinking. You step forward ro fuss with her hair, every bit of it perfect. She looks up into your face and you plaster a smile over your worries. The longer you look at her, the more authentic it becomes. 

"You make things amazing everywhere you go. School won't be any different," you promise. 

"Quick, kiss before you go to the classroom," Steve says. 

You get yours first. Avery goes on tiptoes to kiss you, then Bethie, who laughs. Steve crouches down to get his, stealing a too-long hug with her as Dove wriggles under his arm. 

"Love you." Steve pats her shoulder. "See you in a couple of hours. We'll go get a treat for you being this brave." 

Avery holds her lunchbox to her stomach and nods excitedly. "Okie dokie. I love you." She waves at Dove. "Bye-bye, Dove." 

Dove looks at Avery like she's an alien. Her confusion lasts, lips puckering into a pout as Avery races toward the school door and disappears from view. 

"Ready to go?" you ask Steve gently. 

"I think I'll just… we'll just wait for a bit, in case she forgot something."

You fight another wave of heat as it gathers behind your eyes. Steve looks so sad that it's making you sad too. "Sure, honey. Let's wait a bit." 

You aren't expecting Avery to have actually forgotten something, but she rockets from the door looking terrified. Steve seems surprised that she really needed something too, though he doesn't waver. 

"We're still here," he calls as she runs up to you. 

"Dad," she says, breathless, putting her hand on his knee, "what do I say?" 

"To who?" 

"To the other girls!" 

Steve rubs her cheek with a forefinger fondly. "Hello is a good start. You could say… Hi, I'm Avery Harrington. I have two little sisters, a pet fish, and my favourite colour is lilac." 

She nods like she thinks this is a great idea. "I'm Avery, and I have two sisters and my fish and my favourite colour is lilac," she repeats verbatim. "What about you and mom?" 

Steve blinks, pleased. "Uh." 

You grin, saying, "What about, my mom and dad are best friends?" 

Avery nods again, little chin dipping severely. "My mom and dad are best friends. Okay. Okay, thank you, I'm going back now." 

Steve steals another kiss before she can run off. "Have a good day, honey."

"I will!" she shouts, spinning on her heel. You listen to her leave, her lunchbox making a metallic clicking sound, her shoes squeaking on paving stones. 

She's gone a full minute before either of you attempt to leave, a strange silence between you. Eventually Steve wraps his arm around your shoulders, and you make your way back to the car. 

"You okay?" you ask him. 

He's pink around the eyes, but he says, "I'm okay. She looked really excited, right?" 

You kiss his cheek. "It'll be alright." 

"I know. Just feel really fucking weird." 

Bethie claps a hand over her mouth with a little pop. Steve imitates her, eyes glowing with bemusement. "Who said that?" he asks. 

She giggles in that syrupy way kids do when they know they're doing something naughty. "That's a bad word." 

"I'm allowed one bad word today, Bethie. They said so." 

"Who?" Bethie asks. 

Steve shrugs his shoulders. "I don't know. You expect me to know everything, little miss, how'm I supposed to know everything?" 

Bethie wraps an arm behind your neck. 

"What's he doing to you?" you ask, arms on fire from carrying her this long and with no intent to put her down. "Daddy's not being very nice, is he? Asking my little girl all these big questions." 

Your soft crooning has her like jelly in your arms. Steve relaxes in turn looking at her, his hands petting at Dove's back. "They're ganging up on me," he says to her, in a similar sweet tone, searching Dove's face for some affection. "You're not going to pick their side, are you?" 

Dove pouts for a kiss. 

Steve is ecstatic, Dove never so generous. He kisses her gently, and rubs his forehead against hers to tickle her with his hair. 

"Mommy's gotta go to work," you remind him. 

"Do you?" he asks, not looking up from Dove's affection. 

"Unfortunately." 

"They're taking my girls from me one by one. I thought missing you every day was bad enough, now I don't get my Avery… I hate everything." 

"I know. It doesn't feel this awful all the time, I promise." 

He makes a grateful sound. "I'll take your word for it. Thanks, honey." 

You squeeze his bicep. "You're welcome." 

[thedailydescent]

The thing is though that it doesn't matter.

People clamor against the idea that Louis ever loved or even liked Armand, and that he was just with him out of fear/to protect Claudia. That narrative quickly falls apart when you look at how completely at ease he was with embarrassing Armand in front of the coven, the promise he made to Claudia that he broke when he tried burning Armand's photo, then couldn't because of the soul he managed to capture. The additional knowledge since 2x03 that Armand is heavily influenced by the coven and their demands, and even after a year and half of them being together, he is still so. How it would have made more sense, if Louis was just with him for survival's sake or to protect Claudia, to leave Paris with Armand already recommending that he leave with his blessing. Madeleine feeling Louis's love for Armand (which wasn't her misreading it as love for Lestat, and, as far as I'm aware, is not canon either). How the very premise of the interview is about Louis processing his grief for Claudia and how he failed her. How the writing, cast, and crew emphasize that Louis feels a certain amount of entitlement towards Claudia, how he never truly put her first despite his best efforts, and how that doesn't make Louis a bad person, but a person shaped by and is stuck in traumatic circumstances.

Same with people accusing Louis of using Armand/not loving Armand the "right way". 95% of garbage "pimp Louis" takes and fics with poor unloved helpless Armand suffering the most from their roleplaying or Louis's cruising. Nevermind what was actually shown onscreen, what the cast and crew tell us.

But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if Louis didn't do everything he could to protect Claudia. It doesn't matter if Louis was indeed a terrible partner to Armand (he wasn't btw). Nothing would have justified what Armand did to Louis and Claudia. Louis shouldn't have to be on 24/7 survival mode to avoid him and Claudia being lynched. If Louis had indeed been an awful person to both Claudia and Armand, he still wouldn't have at fault for the trial, or been the reason it happened. He is still the wronged party here. For the deception leading up to it, for the torture, for the racial trauma inflicted on him and past trauma used against him, for being buried and starved in rocks for days, for the murder of Claudia and Madeleine, and for the lies and manipulation 73 years afterwards. Louis doesn't need to be the perfect victim for Armand to still be the bad one. Armand could have prevented it at any time. Louis could not, nor should have had to.

Similar idea to people saying Louis never asked Armand to erase his memories. If we were to take burnt Louis taking a shower after three days as true (which I do), isn't the issue not, "It doesn't make sense therefore Armand is lying", but more, Armand's blood is so powerful it can heal a severely burnt person enough to be able to take a shower within a short period of time, yet he purposefully withheld it from Louis during those 5/6 nights in San Francisco? Or, Armand erased Louis's memories at Louis's request but also included said request for it, leaving him to rely on Armand on what is true and what isn't? Armand doesn't actually look any better here if he's telling the truth!

Likewise, since people parallel the two situations, some people were still questioning for months after Season 1 aired if Lestat had been telling the truth that he didn't kill Paul (which I always believed), that I guess Sam Reid grew impatient with that and finally said "Can we stop asking if Lestat killed Paul?!" or something. And it's true, Lestat didn't mind-control Paul to commit suicide. That still doesn't negate the fact that Lestat did get into Paul's head at dinner threatening him and his family, used his mental illness against him, leaving him frightened for Louis until the day he died. That still doesn't negate the fact that for 26 years, Lestat let Louis sit on whether he did or didn't. Louis died the day Paul was buried, but Lestat never comforted him about Paul, never brought up Paul, and changed the subject whenever Louis brought up his family. Lestat, in short, never considered Louis's grief or paranoia against him, nor cared to. For 26 years, he did not care.

[peterm4rker]

¿dónde está la biblioteca? || z.cl

six. what the fuck was that (written)

🕸🕷✮⋆˙ wc. 1.5k w. curse words! ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ

the world officially hated you. 

not only had all your lessons been cancelled after you killed yourself studying for a test that was supposed to take place that day, but your car had broken down the night before on your way to the convenience store leaving you carless and dependent on public transport. or worse, your friends.

a pounding headache had taken over your head the moment you woke up, refusing to leave even after you took a pill. your body and mind exhausted from the countless nights of horrible sleep due to your studying.

when food seemed like your only salvation, you opened your fridge to find it almost empty, only occupied by a single tomato and left over almond milk, lacking the items you were going to the store for in the first place. you gave up and went back to bed, refusing to deal with anything more than the computer that was laid next to you projecting the third season of the 100, your only happiness seemingly coming from the handsome figure of Bellamy Blake.

your mind wandered off so far that you snapped back to reality at the sound of your phone receiving a message, making the corners of your lips lift up slightly at the sight of the contact name on your screen.

after answering, you decided that sleeping for a while before the class was probably the best idea, so you set an alarm and did your best to doze off to sleep.

thankfully, you had awakened before the alarm rang, saving you of the bad mood waking up that way would have caused. your body and head felt a million times better and the sun seemed to shine a tiny bit brighter through your curtains, giving you the motivation you needed to get ready to leave your house.

even when the forecast predicted non-stop rain for the entire afternoon, the sky looked clear enough for you to have faith in getting to your lesson completely dry. chenle was praying for you after all.

a tiny smile was left on your lips as music played in your ears, the walk feeling light due to the cold weather.

however, the world hated you and had to remind you of that.

one minute to the next, the clouds broke down in the hardest rain they had in maybe a whole century, making you let out an exasperated groan and start running towards your university’s library with a good 15 minutes left to run.

★🏀⋆｡ °⋆

chenle was worried. since you had talked earlier that day, he had kept his promise and prayed profusely to the sky that you wouldn't get rained on, but his prayers had been proven to be completely useless when the sky completely fell apart on top of the university gym. he tried his hardest to continue practicing, forcing himself to think that you were fine and a little rain wouldn't hurt you. but his clouded mind was interfering with his game, and he wasn't the only one to notice. 

seunghan walked towards him with a slight frown as they called a three minute water break, questioning him immediately “you okay there, captain?” his voice was laced with humor, but chenle knew his concern was meant.

“all good, just a bit worried about the rain” he answered half honestly, not feeling comfortable enough to voice his concern for you out loud yet. “do you need a ride home? i can wait for your tutoring and take you home" seunghan offered, making the sides of chenle's mouth quirk slightly upwards. this is what he meant when he referred to his team as a family. “nah, all good, it's just that yn had to walk here and i'm pretty sure she’s getting soaked” he brushed it off, although the slight crease of his eyebrows told seunghan that it was genuinely making him upset.

“you should probably go get her then, i can take over the last bit” he offered, patting his shoulder in a friendly manner. chenle thought of it for a second. was he really going to leave practice over the possibility of you maybe getting rained on?

“alright man, thank you, i'll see you later” he patted the boy's shoulder back and walked to get his stuff together, looking at his wrist watch. it was too late to go get you, but maybe he could make your arrival a little better.

★🎧⋆｡ °⋆

to say you were soaked was the understatement of the century. you thanked every single divine being out there for the fact that you had a waterproof backpack that actually worked pretty good, but cursed them because maybe they could have reminded you to take an umbrella. you walked into the library shivering of how cold you felt, muttering a small sorry to the librarian for the dripping of your hair and gaining only a sympathetic smile. you tiredly went towards the table you and chenle usually sat on, expecting to be alone for long enough to get yourself together and prepare for the lesson as you always did, but you were surprised to see the boy already there.

with a towel and a cup of what you were pretty sure was warm tea. he looked up at the sound of your steps, frowning worriedly at your state. he stood up and wrapped the towel around your body wordlessly, rubbing your sides as if he were trying to warm you up. “sorry, i was going to go pick you up in the car but i thought it was probably too late so i went to get you some warm tea instead.” he ranted as he backed away from you, giving you space. “thank you, lele, this is more than perfect” the nickname slipped from your lips and if you hadn’t shied away from looking at him, you could have caught the faint pinkness that covered his cheeks.

“here, wear this” he said as he took his hoodie off of his own body, handing it to you.

“i don't want you to be cold, it's okay” you pushed his hands away, cheeks flaming red at his cute gesture.

“i just ran around for an hour and a half, i think i'm warm enough” he chuckled and gave you a reassuring smile, pushing the hoodie back in your direction. you couldn't do anything but mutter a small thank you and put it on, sitting down to start the lesson and completely missing how chenle stared at you a little too long, his breath caught in his throat. ★🎧⋆｡ °⋆

the two hour session had flown by between laughs and jokes about how absolutely horrendous chenle’s spanish was (gaining a few paper balls to be thrown your way, of course.)

7 pm towered over you as you stuffed all your materials back into your backpack, mentally preparing yourself to walk all the way home again.

chenle looked out the window with a small frown that made you think a soft cute to yourself before turning back to you. “you're going to get poured on again” he commented with a poor attempt of a smile on his face. “no need to rub it in, i'm already dreading it” you groaned as you put your backpack on and started walking with him on your side.

“i can drive you home if you’d like” he shrugged, trying to sound as nonchalant as he could, even when his heart was beating a little too fast for his liking.

“there's no need for that, lele, i promise” you reassured, his heart almost beating out of his chest at the sound of that nickname escaping your lips again

“don't be stubborn, please” he asked and gave you an almost pleading look, and who were you to say no?

the drive was once again filled with laughter, terminating as “tsq” by humbe played in the background. (obviously your song choice as you used the excuse of him “having to listen to spanish music if he actually wanted to learn the language.) you smiled at him softly as he parked in front of your house. “thank you a lot for driving me” 

“no problem” he smiled as he took in the softness of your features, being interrupted as you spoke again 

"oh, sorry, almost forgot” you mumbled before beginning to take off the hoodie he had given you, being stopped by his hand on your arm. “keep it so you’ll have plenty of things to wear when it's raining” you almost missed the light blush on his face as he said that. almost.

“i have hoodies of my own, you know” you scoffed humorously, teasing him a little.

“yet you don't seem to wear them” he retaliated, making you roll your eyes before opening the door.

“adiós, chenle” you smiled and hopped off of the car, going to your building door and waving at him from the entrance, smiling as he waved back before driving away.

what the fuck was that.

previous ★ masterlist ★ next

★ blue's corner ;; first written chapter guys, lowkey terrified. anyways, im kinda adoring them too much to make it too slow burn, also bc i want them to pin over each other for a fat sec after. let me know what you think about this chapter and please keep in mind that english is not my first language! also i finally put the playlist on the ml so i recommend listening to it. ★ tag list ;; @yutarot @chenlesfavorite @fullsunbabe @taroddori @morkiee @jovialdelusionbouquet @winwintea ★ back to the main masterlist ★ please do not copy, adapt or steal any content !!

© peterm4rker, 2024

[blueparadis]

꒰ WHEN WE COLLIDED ꒱ ⋮ RAN HITANI.

───❪ SYNOPSIS ❫ ⋮ A decision always changes the course of one's life but mainly it affects just one person, the one who takes the decision. However, an accident doesn't, it affects more than one person. Ran seems to believe he can have both in his favor if he plays his cards at the right time.

───❪ TAGS ❫ ⋮ MDNI, 18+ & M RATING.

(sub!)ran haitani x (switch!)fem!reader, one sided pinning, manipulation, death via accident ( MCD ), fruity!ran agenda, yandere themes, mention of implied cheating, domestic violence ( not by ran ), bad marriage,slow burn, eventual smut.

───❪ PLAYLIST ❫ ⋮ stay by stephan, too close by sir chloe, million dollar man by lana del rey, i am the dog by sir chloe, me and my husband by mitski, movement by hozier, don't you know by james young, do i wanna know by arctic monkeys, sex with a ghost by teddy hyde, stuck on a puzzle alex turner, cherry waves by deftones, the witch by Rosenfeld & khemis.

part one.

summary: The monotony in the life of Ran Haitani has a flicker of excitement. It turns up for a second and then goes out. But, for a hungry animal to denounce the prey, even if it is a slice is nothing but a mockery of the ways of nature. word count —2,5k.

part two.

summary: Ran starts to gather pieces of his puzzle even barely has any piece of it, he could see a glimpse of the final picture. He has never been taught not to play with his food when he was a child and he never did unless the food feels stale and tasteless on his tongue. word count — 2,6k.

part three.

summary: Ran's heart starts to unwind, starts to overlook all the possibilities of obstacles he might face to have you. With his heart in a bind, he starts to seek ways to connect, ways to have you, see you, taste you, feel you. word count — 1,6k.

part four.

summary: There is a jinx that Ran heard when he was eight years old, from his nanny. "You lose the people with whom you share your handkerchief." Now, he is not much of a superstitious person but when he saw his favorite handkerchief in the fist of his father who was intimately clung by his mother in the newspaper picture, he started to believe; he started to experiment word count —1,1k.

part five.

summary: It has been almost half of another month since his last encounter with you. Ran has thought of his second encounter with you way too many times that it lies heavy on his eyelids, on his fingertips, creating goosebumps on his skin. It tingles his soul. He replays that particular memory in a loop until he gets drunk on it, until he gets what he is promised. word count —0.7k.

part six.

summary ~ to be updated soon.

───❪ NOTES❫ ⋮ read on ao3.

blog navigation.

dividers by @benkeibear. banner art by me. for better quality you need to view the image seperately.

This is for my beloved dawnie. @lalunanymph . ( kindly check her rules if you wish to read her works. )

Dawn baby, I have read your works when I'm happy, when I'm sad, when I'm angry, and whenever I missed you. I have kept coming back to read your works, again and again, especially during my exam season. And one day I reaslized that you and your writing has become an integral part of my Tumblr. Not only that, it has also shaped my writing and reading experience. Needless to say dawnie baby that I admire you a lot. So, this is a little gift from me to you for creating such a brilliantly bright trajectory in my writing journey. Tokyo Revengers has always been my staple fandom. Even being a multifandom blog it is the tokyo revengers’ masterlists which is most stacked. At first I thought I should write on Kakucho for you but didn't feel confident about it so I went with Ran Haitani. This is probably the third long fic on him and second series work. I don't generally write on my favs because I don't know what to write and how to write. It is always a struggle but I hope this scratches the right parts of your brain. Take your time, read it in a one fine afternoon all of a sudden or somewhere in next million years. I'm not in rush :’))

Love you,

paradis.

[acertaincritic]

Episode 9 & the season overall

MEEEEEH

Do I need to say more?

Like yes, fine, overall, it's not as bad as the previous two seasons. Overall, this was the best season since season 2.

But let's be honest, it's not some high benchmark to clear.

Structurally, this episode's problem is that it's the final episode yet it has the structure of an early-in-season episode. It solves a personal issue of Rayla and it deals out Aaravos's backstory, and it even recaps early seasons! If not for Aaravos's return in the end, this could've been the first episode of the last season. It still could've been, just move his return one episode earlier and the rest could stay the same. No reason Aaravos can't explain his backstory to Claudia after she lets him out. The whole "cast spell with love" was a bullshit excuse.

But the most prevalent issue of this whole series is its refusal to put its heroes through any meaningful trials or tribulations. Any time they have any meaningful choice to make, the story ultimately makes it so they don't have to pay the cost. Some examples:

Rayla decides to lose her hand instead of killing Ezran - Zym just breaks her hand-cutting bracelet.

Callum decides to use dark magic and regrets it - he just gets primal magic he can use with clear conscience. He arguably chooses wrong and then he's still given the good magic in reward.

That also entirely nullifies his initial choice of "use dark magic or have no magic." He just gets good magic.

Claudia kills a deer to heal Soren's legs and in the end... Nothing? She gets ugly I guess? Soren is perfectly fine, it doesn't matter that such a powerful dark magic was used on him, at most it's Claudia who bears the cost, and it's not clear what "looking ugly" really does, if anything at all.

The Dragon Mom ignores her injury and pretends she's fine - when she stops being fine she just stumbles across a healer by accident.

Or just this season:

Callum gets healed from using dark magic by a ritual. They say it's dangerous but eh, it seemed pretty easy, half an episode and done, and he's fine and has his primal magic. No cost.

Rayla thinks she'll have to choose who to save, but in the end her parents are at peace and happy to go. She doesn't really have to choose, she just goes with what the other people choose.

The Sun Queen strikes out at her brother's forces and in the end nothing happens to her lol. That whole Z plot line was ultimately a nothingburger. The big sun dragon wasn't even needed to release Aaravos. You could've entirely cut it out and just have Claudia sneak into the castle to get the egg!

And so on and so on. And it's just so tiring, because we're dangled nice stuff in front of us, like a possession arc, but then nothing happens.

Claudia just lets Aaravos out like she's intended for three full seasons. It's just dull. It's boring! It's, well, it's the definition of meh.

Guys tell me, seriously, am I the weird one? Is it weird for me that I expect the heroes to have to deal with complex issues and hard choices, and not the villains? Am I asking for too much?

Because it feels like the creators had some nice epic pictures in their heads, like Katolis burning or a big battle among the Sun Elves, but they just can't or won't commit to them. They don't write a meaningful story to accompany those pictures. All the heaviness is put on the antagonists, while the heroes, if they have any issues, typically resolve them within one episode - like the Sun Queen had a one episode long "arc," but she just had to listen to a story and she's perfect and flawless again! Callum's arc of struggling with dark magic and possession is the only such one, and it still came to an anticlimactic, easy end with the cleansing ritual.

Yes, the show can still do something with it. If I had more trust in this series and its writing, I'd say that sometime in the next season, Callum is going to use dark magic to save Rayla, breaking his promise, and then she'll be unable to kill him, breaking her promise, and they'll need to put themselves back together and come back from that.

But... I don't have any trust in this series at this point. They used false advertising in the trailer! There wasn't any scene with Callum having black eyes this season, yet they even used it as a thumbnail?

So with my zero faith in the writing of TDP, I'm presuming there will come a moment when it'll look like Callum might use dark magic again, but he'll then refuse and instead of suffering any consequences, he and others will be promptly rescued by someone, like maybe the Dragon Mom coming back during the final battle or something like that.

Because the heroes just got to choose right and they'll suffer no consequences for it. I guess the moral of the story is "just be good and things will work out on their own." In other words... "trust in God/Fate."

Amazing. That's exactly the message to teach kids, instead of "sometimes doing good is hard but it's still worthwhile" or "be smart and creative and you'll find a solution" or idk a hundred other messages this show could've had.

Like seriously, the setup where humans don't have inborn magic and elves do is such an amazing one. It could've been a story about humans outsmarting elves, about figuring out other ways to use magic, about not letting their lack of power put them down.

But nooo. Instead it's a story about those born powerful being always good and beautiful, and only a couple of them are bad apples - usually because they're deceived by one particularly bad apple. And if you're born without power (privilege, khy khy) you should just accept it and you'll be rewarded by fate/those with power.

This show is progressive?

[misc-obeyme]

omg okay this was originally going to be an ask about what you think the ring of wisdom may look like because i wanted to try and hunt something down that was similar to buy (mc has both the ring of light and ring of wisdom by season three I think, and i own the ring of light irl)

BUT THEN i went on the wiki and found out it's made of brass and iron, and also learned that u treasure created the ring of light look since it never appeared in canon (i can dream of them making the other half but unlikely as Solomon is a side character, sad)

AND THEN i was reminded that Michael gave the ring of wisdom to solomon so he could control demons more easily and not have the giant strain. But why give it to him? Why this specific sorcerer? Why aid in that?

So now I'm in a rabbit hole of wondering WHEN solomon got the ring. And if it was after the brothers fell, did Michael do it on purpose? Was he aiming for solomon to become powerful enough to even control the seven of the brothers? AND HOW DID HE FIND SOLOMON AT ALL? I have so many questions now

- ✨ anon

Hmm well if I remember correctly, Solomon gives MC a ring when they become a full fledged sorcerer, but I didn't think it was the Ring of Wisdom that he gave them? Perhaps I misinterpreted that part??

(Side note, I'm almost glad they aren't like to make Solomon's Ring of Wisdom just because OH THE TEMPTATION.)

Anyway, the question is how the heck did Solomon end up with that ring in the first place??

Oh, friend. You have unlocked a CC Solomon Theory because I've thought about this a lot.

I'm going to put it under a read more because of OG and Nightbringer spoilers!

We know almost nothing about the Ring of Wisdom. I can't remember if it's been mentioned in Nightbringer at all. And there may be more instances of it in OG that I'm not remembering. But here are two of the relevant parts:

This is from Lesson 2-2 of OG. He says he used it to create pacts with the 72 demons. Now, it's obvious that Asmo is one of those 72 demons, which means Solomon wouldn't be able to make a pact with him until after Lucifer & co fell. However, I don't think that means that Solomon didn't start making all his pacts before they fell.

This is from Lesson 29-5 in OG. And he says that Michael gave him the ring at a point in his life when he was lost, etc.

What does that mean? Is that before or after Solomon met Barbatos?

Now, there is also a part in Nightbringer where Solomon says that he met a friend back when he was locked up in the basement. He says that his new friend's family came to get them, but that they would come back from time to time and talk to him. He promise the friend he would be a good sorcerer so he could protect humanity.

What if that was Michael?

If it was, maybe Michael gave him the Ring of Wisdom around this time. Maybe Michael did it because he wanted to help Solomon protect humanity.

But this is also the story Solomon couldn't tell MC entirely. He stops part way and says he doesn't have the courage. Which means something else happened then, too. Probably something bad.

So I dunno, this is just a theory. But it could explain why Michael gave Solomon the ring to begin with. If it happened before the brothers fell, his motivation could have purely been to help Solomon protect humanity.

Of course, it's possible that wasn't Michael at all and was actually someone else. In which case we would be back to square one with the question of why Michael gave Solomon the ring.

It would be rather sinister if Michael gave it to Solomon after the brothers fell for the sole purpose of Solomon being able to control them.

It makes sense that Michael would need a human for this because he can't make pacts with the demons himself. But maybe Solomon didn't want to do what Michael wanted him to do and therefore decided to do his own thing instead. He only has a pact with one of the brothers, so he's not exactly going through with that idea.

If Michael is Nightbringer, this could explain why Solomon said that Nightbringer made him who he is. At the same time, it's pretty clear from Solomon's conversation with Nightbringer that he disagrees with Nightbringer and is kinda defiant.

But if Michael is Nightbringer and he's always wanted to control the brothers, that could explain why Nightbringer wanted MC to make pacts with all of them. Perhaps by creating pacts with the brothers in the past, MC has strengthened their pacts with the brothers in the future, too. That could make it easier for MC to control them, especially to control them all at once.

Which is kinda the point of the Ring of Wisdom. As you said, it's meant to allow someone to control multiple demons without it being as draining on the body.

Unfortunately, I still feel like I don't have enough evidence for any of these theories to say for sure that I think they're right. I kinda always thought Solomon's friend was Michael because to me that seems like the scenario that makes the most sense and fits with the Ring of Wisdom situation.

But in the end, I'm hoping they will reveal more about this part of the backstory. Even if I'm totally wrong, I would still very much like to know why Michael gave Solomon the Ring of Wisdom. Because that feels like a really big deal and so far all they've done is just kinda mention it briefly.

ANYWAY well you see I spend too much time thinking about this stuff. But I also have many questions! Here's hoping we get the answers soon!

[towriteloveontheirarms]

Peakaboo! I see you... (modern!Stalker!Aegon II Targaryen x reader)

synopsis: You have always felt safe in your own home, shutting out the scary, real world. Unknowing, that someone stared at you through the large windows almost every day and night. But a window is just glass, and glass… oh it breaks so, so easily…

warnings: Dark fic, non-con, slight somnophilia, stalking, obsession, mentions of alcohol and drinking, afab reader, angst, fluff, smut, oral sex (f receiving), p in v sex

word count: 8k

taglist: @urmomsgirlfriend1, @agqrtz

(If you want to be tagged in the `kissing booth AU´, for a specific character/fandom or in general let me know in my asks, comments or DMs)

a/n: So, in honor of spooky season I started rewatching `You´ and this is what happened. Let me know if I missed any tw´s or anything. I hope y´all enjoy!! <3

When you had moved to King´s landing you found yourself alone and truly scared for the first time in your life. Fleabottom wasn´t the safest place to begin with, but it was the only thing you could afford while attending Uni, leaving you very little safe spaces. One of them being your friend Sarah Snow´s place and the other, your own apartment. Where you could shut out the scary real world with the turn of a key and multiple locks. Cuddling into your bed with your phone, the tv providing the only source of light in the apartment. It´s still early in the evening, but you had always valued a quiet night in over going out to some shitty bar or club or party, like your friends did. You silently shake your head at the thought of Sarah, Aly and Cassandra getting hammered at some party right now. And as if they heard your thoughts your phone starts to ring with an incoming videocall.

“Hey girl!” Aly exclaimed the second you accept the call. Making you hold the phone a little further away at the sheer volume of her voice. You can see your other two friends in the background, getting ready for going out.

“Hey, Aly. What are you up to?” You ask in a much quieter tone.

“We´re going out tonight.” By the way her words slur ever so slightly it is clear that the three of them had been pregaming.

“Okay, but… Why are you calling me? You know I am not in on the whole party thing.” A feeling in your gut told you, that a plan was afoot. A plan you wouldn´t like as much as sitting at home and watching movies.

“You´re coming with us. That´s why.” Cassandra´s voice sounds from the background.

“Oh no. No. No. No.” You insist.

“No, no talking back this time. Your gonna like it. I promise. There is this really niche bar, that has an open mic thing tonight for anyone that wants to share their work. It will be great.” Cassandra tries to convince you in a sweet voice.

“Ugh. Cas, Aly…”

“Come on. You always whine about being insecure about your writing. This could be great for you.” Sometimes you really hated your friends persistence. Especially when her points weren´t even half bad.

“Alright, fine. Send me the address and give me an hour to get ready.” You hear them cheering as you rub your eyes with the hand that isn´t holding up the phone. “But I won´t get behind that microphone. No matter what you say.”

“Yeah, yeah. Just get yourself presentable and come down. We´ll meet you there.” Just as suddenly as they had called you, they hang up again.

You throw your phone to the side and sigh deeply. Running your hands over your face, followed by bringing them down onto your upper thighs in an attempt to motivate yourself. Of course it doesn´t work and so, with another sigh you turn the tv off and hop into the shower. The warm water feels nice on your skin and when the time to step out, the typical feeling of not wanting to leave overcomes you. But you have to get ready if you don’t want to get shit from Sarah or Cas, so you force yourself to put on some light makeup and grab the next best clothes from your closet, that make you look presentable. Looking at the location of the bar you realize that it is only a few subway stops from your place and so you grab your phone, keys and wallet and head out to the station closest to your place. Checking twice if the pepper spray is still in your purse.

You walk down the stairs just in time for the subway to arrive.

When you arrive at the bar Sarah, Cassandra and Aly are already waiting outside. Greeting you with a mutually hollered “Babes!!”

“Heyyy!” You mirror their tone. Putting on a wide smile to not let them see how tired you really were.

Together the four of you enter the bar and the first thing you notice over the low chatter is how stuffed it is already. You barely find a table that fits all of you and immediately order a round of shots. A good choice as it turns out, because you barely have time to put down your coat, when you hear your name announced over the mic. A frown flits over your face, but you don´t have the heart or maybe the energy for a discussion now, so you pound back another shot and get up on the small makeshift stage. You sit down on the uncomfortable bar stool and introduce yourself. Beginning to read the latest excerpt from the book you were writing that you still have on your phone. The audience honestly doesn´t give much of a reaction, aside from your friend´s aggressive cheers. And the spotlight blinds you a bit, letting your anxiety practically spike. You can hear your voice shake as you read. Your hands and legs still tremble when you finally get back to the table.

“Y´all are such assholes. I told you I didn´t wanna read…” You protested as you take a drink from them.

“Aw, you were great either way, babes. Now come on. Let´s enjoy the evening.” Sarah tries to keep peace, laying a soothing hand on your arm. You know she means well. All of them do, but you still feel kind of hurt, that they had gone behind your back like that.

Over all the commotion and the people that read after you, you completely ignore the blonde stranger who, ever since you had entered the bar, couldn´t seem to turn his eyes away from you. Blissfully unaware of the dark thoughts behind them. And it stays that way until you leave. Tipsy, staggering up to the uber under his hidden watchful eyes. You close the door behind you and push the feeling of being watched aside as a side effect of being a woman alone in the outside world. He follows you in his own car. Thoughts of needing to have you and being the one for you swirling in his mind and possessing his every thought. Your mind however is occupied with the need for sleep and so he goes easily unnoticed. Looking through the widow of your ground level apartment as you undress and go to bed in only your underwear. He can even count himself lucky enough to go unnoticed by you over the next few days as you follow your usual routine. Going to the gym, the library, lessons, grocery shopping. Whatever you do, his eyes are on you. Until he is sure he knows your schedule by heart. Moving him along to step two of his plan.

You meet up with your friends at a bar again. A different one this time and on your own accord. It was the last day before spring break and them all leaving to visit home. All of them except for you. You don��t mind not going home so much as being alone for a whole week. So, you make sure to enjoy the evening with them and once again ignore the feeling of being watched that had sat in the back of your brain for the past week or so. And when you go to get another round of drinks, that´s when he strikes.

You make your way over to the bar. Not really looking where you are going, when you run into someone. Their drink spilling all over the front of your shirt. You jump back as the wet fabric clings to your skin.

“Woah, I´m so sorry. Are you okay?” The stranger gives you a bright smile, flashing his perfect teeth. A smile that reaches his lilac eyes. Making them sparkle and crinkling their corners. He holds out some napkins for the stain that steadily grows more uncomfortable.

“Thank you. Yes, no. Yeah, I´m alright. Uh, I´m sorry too. I totally didn´t watch where I was going.” You tap at the stain in order to hopefully take some of it off. Smiling back at him. You can´t help but to. “Let me buy you a new drink. To make up for all of that.”

“No, no. I should buy you one. I totally ruined your shirt. I insist.” He is so effortlessly sympathetic that you couldn´t even protest against his words if you wanted to.

“Okay.” Youn nod and follow him to the bar, where you sit down together.

“I´m Aegon, by the way.” He extends his hand for you to shake, which you do while offering up your name.

“It´s nice to meet you, Aegon.” The two of you order drinks and fall into conversation easily. Talking about anything and everything until you feel your phone vibrate inside of your pocket. Pulling it out you see Cassandra´s name on the screen. Reminding you of who you actually came here with and why.

Another glance at the clock tells you, that it is well past midnight.

“Shit, I didn´t realize it was that late already.” You turn to him to say goodbye. Ready to never see this handsome not so strange stranger ever again, when he makes you another offer.

“Want me to drive you home? It´s probably not safe out there at this time of night.”

“That would actually be so great, but I´d hate to inconvenience you. I probably live in the whole other direction from where you need to go.” You rub your neck. Taking a step back, ready to leave to say goodbye to your friends.

“Come on, it would be my pleasure to do that for you. I would hate for something to happen to you on your way home. Just say yes.” Aegon´s gaze is so intense and there is only one thought behind them, that the alcohol has made you ignorant of to his luck. If you leave alone now, he wasted his chance.

You sigh. “Okay, alright. Thank you so much. I just need to say bye to my friends and then we can go.”

He offers you his jacket to hide the stained shirt and then follows your lead back to the table.

“Hey, girls. I´m super sorry I just dipped, but I met Aegon and he´s gonna drive me home now. I´ll explain tomorrow. Okay?”

“Yeah, alright. Just be safe and don´t do anything we wouldn´t do.” They wink at you and turn back to their conversation as you and Aegon make your way outside to his car.

Ever so gentlemanly he opens the door to the passenger side of the golden Mercedes s-class for you, making you curtsy jokingly and giggle, then walks around to the driver side, to get in himself.

The two of you find your way back into the conversation and so you don´t even realize that you never actually told him were you lived. Nevertheless he pulls up in front of your apartment complex in no time.

“I had a really nice evening with you tonight.” He says with another wide grin and soft chuckle.

“Me too. And I´m sorry again for that drink. One would think that at my age I would´ve learned how to watch where I´m going.” You run a hand through your hair. Still slightly embarrassed about your carelessness.

“No, again, it is fine. I should have watched my steps as well, but if you really want to apologize you could give me your number? And we could meet up again some time. I´m guessing you´re on spring break too now.” It´s almost frustrating how good he looks with his head tilted and those beautiful lilac puppy dog eyes. If there was any doubt about wanting to see him again, they are all gone now. You need to see him again. So, you pull out your phone and give him your number.

“Don´t let me wait too long before I hear from you.” You give him one last smile before exiting the car. He sits in the car until you close the building door behind you and then parks his car around the corner to go back and observe you for a bit longer without being overly obvious.

Through the large windows Aegon watches you like every night of the past week. Stepping out of your clothes, doing your nightly skincare routine, before slipping on the smallest pair of pajamas he had ever seen and slip underneath the covers to watch some more tv. Falling asleep in front of it. All with an almost dorky smile. He thinks you are the cutest thing he has ever seen. The way you are so excited about your little meeting is something he has never seen in his life and he is instantly hooked. Fantasies about you being all excited and running up to him when he enters the apartment after a long day out enter his mind. Thoughts about sharing the sweetest kisses. When he opens his eyes he sees something that isn´t as innocent as he first perceived you.

Your hands caress your breasts and wander bellow the blanket, your back arching as they enter your core.

Aegon lets out a breathless curse. His own hand wandering inside his pants to tug on his length. His thoughts turn instantly. From innocent kisses to you arching your back up until your breasts touch his chest. Writhing and squirming underneath him from the pleasure he is giving you. Your tight walls fluttering around his cock as you come from the circles his thumb rubs into your clit. He has to clamp his hand over his mouth so you don´t hear him moan outside of your window. Once he´s finished, he leaves. Not wanting to push his luck, but definitely looking forward to the next time he´d see you.

The next morning you text the girls group chat. Apologizing for your behavior the previous night, by telling them every detail about the conversation with Aegon. How nice he was to you and how you thought that maybe, after a couple more dates, you could say he is the one. And as if he smelled you were talking about him in that moment you get a message from Aegon. Asking you out for coffee. You try to hide the smile that forces its way onto your mouth by biting your lower lip, even though there is no one there to hide it from. You answer him quickly and this time take a little extra time getting ready. Facetiming Aly, who is the only one that isn´t on a plane yet, to consult her on what best to wear. Even if she teases you relentlessly about being so nervous about a simple coffee date.

The truth is you haven´t been out on an actual date in years. Not after your last boyfriend had broken up with you for reasons only known to that absolute piece of shit. You had wasted three years pf your life on him and he couldn´t even give you a reason as to why he didn´t want to be with you anymore all of a sudden.

You take a deep breath to calm your nerves and hopefully stop the bouncing on your leg. Entering the small café he had asked you out to where you find him already sat at a table. A half smirk spreads his face. And by the seven you have to calm yourself down not to do anything embarrassing as a result of the glee you feel upon seeing him.

“Hey, I didn´t make you wait too long did I?” You ask bashfully.

“No worries. I basically just sat down.” He assures you. Watching with careful eyes as you take of your coat to reveal the dress you had chosen with Aly´s help and are now second guessing if the choice hadn´t been a bit too revealing.

“Phew, I´m glad to hear that. I hate making people wait for me.” You wipe away an imaginary drop of sweat and chuckle.

“Nah, you´re good.” He goes to say something else, but in that moment a waitress interrupts him to take your order. Which of course Aegon makes a mental note of. Just like anything he had learned about you so far. The waitress, an older woman, seems to recognize the nature of your meeting and how nervous you are and gives you an encouraging smile. You smile back at her and make sure to remember to tip her later.

“Alright so, normally I´d ask how you have been, but since we last saw each other last night I guess did you come home well yesterday?” You quipped.

“Yeah, I did. How about you?” The two of you share a laugh. Without the alcohol in your system he seems even more effortlessly charming. Coffee gets followed by dinner, which he invites you to. Talking about family, life, dreams and aspirations. You tell him about your parents’ divorce, the relationship you have with all of them, how studying and writing is going. How your dream is to be published one day. You open up to him more than you ever have to anyone in that short amount of time and he listens. He listens so well. Telling you about his studies and his father’s company, that he will inherit one day, yet he never makes you feel small compared to him, like others would probably make you feel. It would be easy to, but he just doesn´t. And your feelings for him grow ever stronger. He even persists on paying for you. Saying that you could pay the next dinner, but the two of you are aware that you could never earn enough money to pay a meal this expensive.

At the end of the day he drops you off at home once more, but when you hug him goodbye whispering “Thank you so much. I had such a great time today.” Into his ear he goes in for a kiss.

It’s a possessive claiming of your mouth kind of kiss. All clashing teeth and heavy bursts of breath. Wandering hands, pulling on clothes in a needy attempt to get the close proximity you both want so deeply. He pulls the air from your lungs only to breath it back into them a second later. It´s hard to do, but in the end you manage to pull away.

“It´s late. We should continue this another time.” You whisper with your forehead resting against his shoulder. Everything inside of you screams to keep going, but your brain told you to take it slow. To savor it.

“Okay. I can´t wait.” He lays a peck on the shell of your ear. Letting you go reluctantly. “Text me when you get home.”

You chuckle and step out of the car. Pulling out your phone the second you close the door behind you to text him a quick `I´m home. Had such a great time with you. Can´t wait to do this again <3´.

He watches the glow of the screen vanish behind the large window. Replying with a `Same. Sweet dreams<3´, but this time he doesn´t stay around to watch you. Instead he goes home to sink into one of the dreams he had ever since he met you. One where he watches you sleep in the morning, the rising sun and the way you lay sprawled out beside him making you look like an utter goddess. And then you wake up to give him a smile that makes him feel like he has a heart attack. It feels so real that when he wakes up to another text from you, he has to pull himself together to not mess up his carefully hatched out plan. His train of thought gets interrupted by his phone ringing.

“Good morning…” Your raspy morning voice comes out of the speaker. You sound absolutely gorgeous to him. Making his eyes roll back into his head a little.

“Good morning, doll. What´s up?” The smirk on his face is audible in his voice.

“Nothing much. I just wanted to hear your voice.” You murmur, rubbing your eyes. “Oh gods, that sounded so cheesy. I´m sorry.”

“Hey, you´re good. I actually think that´s really cute.” He muses.

“Oh? Well, I guess I don´t have to feel like it is too soon when I tell you I had the weirdest dream tonight.” You chuckle and clear your throat from the sleepiness.

“Really? Do tell.”

“I don´t know. I can only remember that we were together, in my apartment and I guess you were watching me sleep and it felt so real… I probably sound so weird right now.” You scoff at yourself. Wondering why you even told him that.

He on the other hand chuckles at your confession. Cursing himself out in his mind, to will himself to stay strong.

“I had the same dream. I hope you don´t think I´m like a stalker or obsessed or something now.” His tone is lighthearted, but the gods now he needs you to stay unconscious of that side of him. No, he wasn´t any of those things. He was looking out for you. You meant a lot to him and that meant he wanted to protect you. “So, you know. You at least aren´t weirder than I am.”

Sadly you have a shit ton to study, before spring break ends and so you aren’t able to meet again in the coming days. Of course that doesn´t mean that he can´t see you though. The feeling of being watched follows you around like a burning shadow throughout that time. Yet you push it away. Telling yourself that it was probably just exam stress or social anxiety or something. Which Aegon, knowing you as well as he does, is grateful for. Usually he would hate to see you anxious or stressed, wanting to take all that burdens you off you, but when it came to him getting caught… Well, not that he was doing anything wrong, but experience has taught him, that people tended to see things differently from him.

So he stays hidden. Texting and calling you every day and watching you sink your fingers or a toy into your sweet cunt each night. Every time he is overcome by thoughts of how you would make so much sweeter sounds if it was his length that your walls where fluttering around as wave after wave of pleasure rolls over you. Each time he reminds himself anew that things are going steady with you and it would  only be a short while until those thoughts became a reality.

On one of those evenings you surprise him with another call. Curses fall from his lips under his breath as he scrambles around the corner, praying that you haven´t heard his phone.

“Hey…” He says after pressing the green button on the screen.

“Hey, is this a bad time? You sound kinda out of breath.” Your voice chirps on the line.

“No, you could never call at a bad time.” Except for now kinda. “What´s up? Didn´t you say you wanted to write all day?”

“Yeah, I did. When my friends come back tomorrow there will be little chance to do so uninterrupted, but um… I couldn´t focus. Like at all.” You murmur.

“Oh, can I do anything to help?” he purrs.

“You could get some Starbucks and come over?” You ask in the most tempting voice you could offer. Not that he needed much persuasion to tend to any of your wishes as soon as you asked.

“Sure. I´m on my way.”

“You´re the best. Thanks.” You chirp and then the only thing that can be heard on this side of the line is the tone of the disconnected call from the device in his hand. Sprinting to his car, he almost drops his keys in anticipation at the prospect of spending time with you. Basically racing to your favorite coffee shop to get coffee, and some pastries he knew would be more than happy about right now. He knew, knowing everything about you would come in handy one day.

At the same time you put your laptop to the side. Trying to find something to pass the time until he would arrive. Which was harder to do than you would have thought and so with nothing to do, you decide to put some effort in your little meeting. Sitting down in front of the small closet to look for a cute dress to put in. Getting ready just in time for a knock on the door.

“Come in, it´s open.” You yell as you go to sit back down on the couch.

“You know, you probably shouldn´t leave your door unlocked in this neighborhood. Whoa…” He stops in the doorway when he sees you.

“Wh-What?” You tilt your head and look at him with confusion in your wide eyes. You look so innocent right now.

“Do you always write like that?” Aegon puts down the snacks and vaguely motions to your outfit of choice. “Cause… If so, I want to always be around for it.”

You can´t hide the snorting laughter that forces it´s way out of your lungs. “That´s really sweet, but no. I usually don´t look like this at all when I write. In fact I usually look so much worse you would want to stay as far away from me as possible.”

“I seriously doubt I anything in this world could ever make me want to stay away from you.” Aegon lays his gentle hands on your shoulders and a feeling of warmth spreads in your guts.

You look up at him through your lashes and before you know it your eyes flutter close. Then, a moment later, your lips meet his in the most gentle kiss ever. And you don´t know when things escalate. If it is when your hands come up to cup his cheeks. If it is when you stand on your tip toes to make it easier to deepen the kiss ever so slightly or when his tongue presses against your lower lip to silently ask for entrance. The result is the same. The two of you forgot about why he came over in the first place and abandon everything to make yourselves more comfortable in the bedroom. Rolling around the mattress as you make out heavily. His hands are everywhere on your body at the same time, just as yours are on his. Each touch feels like the right thing to do. The only thing that feels even more right is the way he sinks himself into your tight, warm walls. Like he had wanted from the moment he first saw you.

He´s so careful not to hurt you and as you lay in his arms afterwards, cuddled close, his finger drawing small patterns on your shoulder, you can´t hold back the smile. This is the fastest you have ever gone this far with a person. Mostly out of fear, that they would only want to use you for it. Yet even after only one official date with him, you know there is no reason to be afraid. It´s almost funny how shortly you have known each other and yet you rely on him for everything. He knows you so well already, has an incredible gift of listening and observing, like no one else you had met before. Ever. Before you notice it, a giggle falls from your lips, just as he kisses your temple.

“What´s so funny, doll?” Fuck, even the nickname you usually hated sounded so good from his lips.

“Nothing, just… I just thought about how shortly we´ve known each other and yet we know so much about each other already. I never had that.” You say in an amused tone.

“I´m gonna go ahead and take that as a good thing.” He huffs a chuckle.

“Oh yes, definitely. I honestly love how open we can be with each other.” Oh if only you knew.

“Me too.” He mumbles into the crown of your head. Placing another peck there.

As it turns out it isn´t only the first time you sleep with him, but also the first time you spend the night together. Your activities had robbed all of your energy and with a little more quiet chatter, the two of you slide of into slumberland.

You are sad to watch him leave the next morning, but the alarm on your phone, that interrupts your romantic little breakfast that Aegon had cooked, painfully reminds you, that you promised to pick up Aly from the airport.

“I´ll call you later, okay?” You promise him as he steps out of your car.

“I can´t wait already.” He replies.

You make your way to meet your friend and of course he follows you once again. Extra careful that you don´t see his car. It wasn´t necessarily low-key after all. Things are easier once he follows you into a café that looks like no ordinary student could pay for the food there already, keeping a close eye on you as you and your friend order brunch, nothing unconventional from what you have told him about her and your other friends. He starts to toy with the idea of leaving to not get caught, when something Aly says makes his ears perk up.

“So, how is it going with your new favorite person?” Her tone is light and she wiggles her eyebrows at you.

“I already told you to stop calling him that.” You laugh at her antics. “And don´t even try calling him my boyfriend. We haven´t even been on two dates yet.”

“Yeah, alright. Not even on two dates, but he has also been inside of you and has spent the night at your place after getting you snacks simply because you asked him to…” she shoots you an unbelieving look. “Like seriously. And you haven´t even told me all the dirty little details yet. Bitch, you owe me. I thought we were friends.”

If his heart beat higher before, when the word boyfriend left your lips, it beats even higher now at the mention of your night together.

“There´s not much to tell.” You try to deflect.

Not much to tell? He asks himself. He thought he had done better than `not much to tell´.

“Oh hells no. You know I won´t let you off that easy.”  She persists.

“Alright. Okay. It was great. He was so sweet and made sure to make me come like two times before he thought about himself. You happy now?” You try to keep your voice down as much as possible so the people around you don´t hear. Which is only a half success as Aly´s squeal gets you some of the unwanted attention anyway.

“Was he big?” Her question earns a shocked expression and gasp from you. And a concealed giggle from Aegon.

“I mean I guess. You know I don´t have much to compare it to, but I´d say he was solid.” You shrug. “Now can we please change the topic? How was your time with the family.”

Aly starts on a rant about everything her family did and said and so Aegon decides to go before he truly overtaxes his luck.

As he walks by the window you are sitting close to, you think it is him, weighing the options of saying something or not, deciding against it. You were just imagining things, because Aly was talking without a single pause and you missed him. You sigh, trying to concentrate on whatever your friend was talking about.

When you finally get home it is late afternoon already and you are pretty tired, but you can´t pass up on the call you promised Aegon.

“Hello there.” He picks up.

“General Kenobi.” You answer in the fashion that the Star wars quote commands.

“How did it go with your friend?” He asks feigning genuine interest as if he hadn´t been there for the most interesting part.

“Yeah, it went well. I just got home, basically.” You sigh and rub your eyes, who were burning for some reason.

“Wow.” He huffs amusedly.

“You can say that loudly. I originally planned on asking you if you want to come over, but I totally forgot that I have an early class tomorrow that I need to prepare something for. This week is gonna kick my ass…”

“Ah, damn. So how about we meet up Friday evening? I could pick you up and we could check out this new bar that just opened.” He suggests. Knowing already what this meant for the coming days.

“That would be so cool.” A yawn interrupts what you were saying. “Gods I´m sorry I´m really tired. Would you be mad if we hang up now and I´ll text you again before class?”

“Not at all. You go ahead and do your thing. I´ll hear from you tomorrow.” He reassures you.

“Thank you. Good night, Aeg.” You chirp.

“You have a good night too and don´t overdo it with the studying.”

“I won´t, mom.” Your faux annoyed tone gets broken up by one last chuckle before the two of you hang up. You always laugh so much with him. More than with anyone else and at the same time your deep talks are on such a level you don´t know how to express it to your friends.

You have always felt safe in your own home, shutting out the scary, real world. Unknowing, that someone stared at you through the large windows almost every day and night. But a window is just glass, and glass… oh it breaks so, so easily…

Friday takes forever to roll around, but when it finally does, nothing can wipe the smile from your face. Your mood is basically indestructible. As is his. You sing and dance your way all through out getting ready and when Aegon rings the bell you open the door with a spring in your step.

“Someone´s in a good mood.” Aegon muses.

“Just happy about seeing you.” You admit. Hugging him and kissing his cheek as a greeting. “Lemme just grab my purse and then we can go.”

You lock the door behind you and together he drives you out to a place that can hardly be classified as a bar. Upon entering the place you feel massively underdressed, but he doesn´t seem to care. He is just happy to be there with you and you are happy to be there with him. He asks about your week and how your writing is going while you sip one drink after another until you feel a light buzz. The alcohol making your insides feel as warm as his presence and his hand on your thigh do. Over the duration of the evening you gradually move closer, but by the time he drops you off, he lets you go with just a quick peck to your lips.

“Thank you for the nice evening.” You rub your eyes. Wanting to say something, anything to stay close to him just a bit longer, but your tired and tipsy mind can´t come up with anything.

“With you it´s always a nice evening. Now go on. Get to bed before you fall asleep in the passenger seat.” He squeezes your thigh one last time before he lets you open the door to head inside.

As always he parks his car around the corner to watch you until you fall asleep, but somehow tonight something is different.

Aegon feels a strange sensation tugging at his heart. A longing. To have you right this second. He doesn´t know what comes over him, but without a second thought he takes one of the stones in front of your window and throws it at the glass. It was meant to tap the glass, at least that´s what he tells himself, but instead it breaks it.

Fuck, Aegon curses under his breath, praying to the seven or any other deity that is willing to hear him that you didn´t wake up from the commotion. When your apartment stays silent, he decides that it isn´t safe for you alone with the broken window situation. It takes a few tries, but in the end he manages to climb through it. Keen on not making to much noise while walking over the shards on the ground, he tiptoes over to your bed.

You lay with your back towards the free side and so it is easy for him to slide in under the covers as well. He presses his chest as close to your back as possible, his hand laying innocently but protectively over your waist.

Aegon kisses your temple and silently promises to not close an eye, to watch over you, all night.

But the night is long and having you so close to him, smelling your shampoo and feeling your hips rub against his every time you shift in your sleep, makes it hard to keep his hand there. It also made him hard. The next time you shift in your sleeping state, his hand wanders down to your thighs. Once more and it lands trapped between them. Gently caressing your slit through the thin material of your leggings.

You sigh and stir lightly at his touch, but don´t wake up. Instead you just press yourself closer to him in your unconscious state. The action prompts Aegon to bite his lip to stifle the moan that wants to break free from his lungs. He can´t give himself away like this. He would only scare you and that is the last thing he wants to do. You simply look so good, how could anyone help themselves. You can be lucky he is there to watch over you.

A quiet moan comes from you as he continues his ministrations. The touch barely light enough to tease, but that heavenly sound pushes him further.

His hand slips underneath the waistband, past your lace panties and finds your already wet heat.

“Fuck.” He whispers, pushing two of his thick fingers inside of your entrance. He wants to take things so much further, but if he wants you to stay asleep he has to be careful. He pumps the two digits in and out of you at a slow pace. Feeling you grow even wetter as you squirm, quiet moans the only tell for the pleasurable feeling you are experiencing. He speeds up the movement of his fingers slightly, until he can´t take the lewd noises coming from your core anymore. He just has to taste you or he was sure he would die right then and there.

He shifts his position on the mattress, turning you onto your back, pausing when you stir again, moving to lay between your legs. Your pants are discarded and carelessly thrown to the side, before he dives in for the first taste of your heavenly center. He regrets not taking the time to appreciate your body the way it deserves, but he needs you so much there is no time for that now. His tongue licks a stripe up the length of your cunt, moaning at the sweet taste. And when he hears your own quiet moan and sees how you bring your hips closer to his face he is unstoppable. His tongue delves into you, fucking you with it and recklessly. Reaping every single one of your little noises and movements. He is so far gone that he doesn´t even realize, that with every new stir you start to wake up a little more.

At first your mind is still foggy with sleep and the pleasurable feeling his lips and tongue bring you. Your hand instinctively treads itself into his hair. But when you fully come to You scramble backwards until your back hits the headboard. His mouth chasing after you before he realizes what has happened and looks up at you.

“Aegon?! What are you doing here?” You gasp.

“Shh, it´s okay. Just let me worship you in the way you deserve.” Aegon slides his hand up your calf in a feather light touch.

“How did you get in here?” You ask, becoming more panicked.

“The door. I told you, you need to be more careful. You are lucky I came here to protect you.” His voice is soothing and so deep. And so you relax a little, leaning back as he resumes his previous activities.

But somehow something just feels wrong. Like a feeling in your gut. This is so unlike anything he has shown you of himself. Thinking about it he hadn´t shown you all that much in the first place. And that feeling just won´t let itself be shaken off so you shove his head away once more.

“Can we please just go back to sleep? I don´t really feel entirely in the mood right now.”

“Oh doll, that sounded much different a while ago. I didn´t even touch you all that much, yet you were still soaking those lace panties for me.” He climbs on top of you, rasping the words into your ear. “And the position I found you laying in… You´re such a fucking tease. It´s like you were begging for it.”

A sickening cold fear spreads in your system. A yelp leaving your mouth as he pulls you down by the ankle so your core is pressed to his. You are too in shock to return his kiss when he forcefully presses his mouth to yours. This is not the Aegon you know, but something tells you that this is the real Aegon. Coming back from the shocked state, you try to push him away. Hands pressed to his chest and legs eagerly searching for a way out, but he is too strong.

“I don´t want this, Aegon. Please stop.” You whimper into his shoulder as he mouths at your neck. Nibbling at all the most sensitive spots. Hating yourself for the growing even wetter as he rubs his length against your core. You don´t even know how or when he rid himself of his own pants. All you know is, that he now is pulling on your night shirt. Eager to get it off while simultaneously pinning your wrists down over your head so you would stop pushing him away.

As it turns out it is harder to do than imagined and so another yelp falls from your lips as he rips the fabric off your body. Your chest moving with fast and harsh breaths.

“Shh, everything´s alright. I´m here to take care of you.” He silences you with another unrequited, bruising kiss.

You are helpless against him, squirming and writhing underneath his much larger frame. This whole situation is so absurd and to add to all of it, when you bite his lower lip in a desperate attempt of self defense and getting the upper hand, he simply laughs. Tears start to prick in your eyes as the sound reaches your ears. As much as you want to blink them away they free themselves. Running down your burning cheeks accompanied  by a sob.

“Aww, don´t cry doll. I´m going to  make you feel so good. Just relax and let it wash over you.” His free hand wanders down to roughly caress one of your breasts. Rolling and tweaking the nipple between his fingers until the bundle of nerves stands hard at attention and your back arches off the bed. Which he takes as the sign to go ahead in what he is doing. Bringing his mouth down to the other breast, sucking and kissing on it until that nipple looks much the same like the other.

With one swift motion Aegon pushes inside of you, his cock stretching you out like no one had before. It is nothing like your first time together. He immediately starts to thrust inside of you at a fast pace.

"Aegon... please... st-op." You cry out to him to no avail.

Rutting into you at an almost breakneck pace. His head bows down and you feel puffs of hot breath hit the skin where your neck and shoulder meet. The feeling is utterly upsetting and you want to throw up at the same time you lost all the strength in your body. It´s all futile.

“I already told you I´m not gonna stop. You know deep down that you enjoy this. So why don´t you make this easier for yourself and stop fighting it.” His teeth sink into your tender skin harshly.

"Aahhh! Fuck, that hurts! Why are you doing this?" You question him.

"Because you deserve to be worshipped. You are a goddess walking amongst men." He nibbles on your ear. Much softer than the bite before, but that doesn't make anything better.

His hips continue to piston into yours. The sound of wet skin slapping against skin filling the otherwise quiet apartment alongside with your bitter cries. The moon outside is the only source of light illuminating his features.

You try to turn your head away from him, but he forces it back by your chin. So instead you close your eyes. You can´t stand to look at him anymore. His face that looked so sweet and innocent to you before is now distorted into a grimace of sick pleasure. Eyes closely watching your every reaction and a sheen of sweat covering his skin, sticking the front locks of his silver blond hair to his forehead.

With a few more thrusts he comes inside of you and for a short moment you have the hope that this is it. Aegon relaxes against you, but as your cries become weaker you notice how he only seems to get harder inside your warmth.

“Can you please let me go now?” You try again with a quiet, shaky voice.

“Oh, you think I am done with you yet? No no no. We are done when you come around my cock and accept me for who I am. What you made me.” His tone is nothing short of condescending and he tuts at you as your crying grows hysterical again.

You guess the gesture is supposed to soothe you, but it has the exact opposite effect.

You cry yourself into a near state of incoherency as he pushes your knees up against your chest forcefully, giving him a whole new angle inside of you. The way the head of his cock bullies your sweet spot is the final straw. It hurts. Despite it feeling so wrong it feels so good. You hate yourself even more as inadvertent pleasure runs through you like electricity. Making your toes curl and your eyes roll back. You scream louder with every thrust of his until you are near voiceless. You try to remind yourself that your body reacting to it doesn´t make it any more right and it doesn´t mean that you secretly enjoy it. But it´s so hard.

“You like it deep, don´t you?” Aegon´s voice in your ear painfully pulls you back into reality.

“Please.” You beg one last time, but the plea, just like all the others, falls onto deaf ears.

Your body gives up any last fight it has left. Quietly sobbing when your walls flutter around him and your hips start to shake. A wave of pleasure, or maybe just disguised shame, washes over you, provoking Aegon´s second orgasm.

“You are mine. You will never leave me. No one can love you like I do.” His voice sounds so soft. So genuine.

You almost want to believe him, but that would require a level of coherency you currently do not possess.

As you lay there with your whole body shaking, trying to come down from this experience and waiting for what he would do next, you ask yourself where things had gone wrong. What did you do to provoke this? To deserve this? Yet no matter how hard you pray to the seven for a sign or anything at all really, you don´t get an answer.

[agalychnisspranneusroseus]

I don't like complaining about S3 too much, it's kind of a bummer to focus on what I don't like when there's so much I love, but one thing that I can't help but feel disappointed by is how we never got to see the new Marcy.

We got to see the new Sasha all through S3, who is completely different from S1 and S2 Sasha, and she's such a wonderful and loveable person, you can't help but adore her. Peak girlfriend material. It makes her oddly homoerotic friendship with Anne so sweet! And Anne herself, as the literal star of the show, had her development front and center from day 1. All of S1 was about her growth, and while she still had some work to do in S2, by then she had already changed a lot. Much like Sasha, she goes from being a selfish little shit to becoming a noble, honorable young woman, driven by love and responsability, with the emotional intelligence necessary to face any challenges coming her way.

Marcy... doesn't get that chance. The content of her arc is fine - she realizes she was selfish and self-centered, she understands how that's wrong and she decides to be a better person. But when Sasha (and I'm comparing her to Sasha because Anne, as THE protagonist, is not a fair comparison) had like... all of season 2 to change and develop, and half of S3 to truly shine as her new, improved self, Marcy... well, she did get some development in S2, true - the First Temple and New Wartwood are important moments that come to mind, but...

Okay, so, we knew everything about Sasha's situation from the start. She's lying to the other characters but not to the audience, so everything she goes through in Toadcatches, Barrel's Warhammer, the Dinner, Battle of the Bands and True Colors is very visible to us. We see her going up and down and we always understand what's up with her. We get a very clear view into her mind. We know Sasha. Marcy, on the other hand, has been lying to the audience up until True Colors, so everything we knew about her prior to that has to be recontextualized given the new information, and what we inevitably conclude is that nothing she learned was enough to make her question her plan. She understood the concepts, but she didn't apply it to her particular situation. That's not a bad thing! She's just halfway through her arc - accepting the Truth without letting go of the Lie. But when so much of her arc is hidden from the audience and further recontextualized through more flashbacks near the finale, what we get is a very mysterious Marcy who tells us "everything you thought you knew is more complicated that it seemed", and given that this is the season finale, that set-up inevitably promises a deeper exploration of the REAL Marcy in S3. No more scheeming and lying and manipulating, just Marcy in real time, with no need for flashbacks to recontextualize things again.

But S3 gives us very few chances to see Marcy in Real Time. We see her in Olivia and Yunan, All In and The Hardest Thing. Three episodes. I'm not gonna complain about that because I think we all feel the same way. There's no need. But I will insist that a good solution would have been to have at least two or three episodes about Marcy inside the Core. The King and the Core should have been about Marcy uncovering that ancient information in Aldrich's memory without him noticing, for example. This would have been an improvement in several ways:

More Marcy screentime and development

More exploration on the nature of the Core

We have a present day character knowing all about the Box's lore, and it's not just Andrias randomly thinking about in with a vintage filter on.

Marcy having more agency inside the Core in general would have allowed her to fight back in some way, which would be necessary for another change I'd like to suggest below.

Other episodes could be about her "bonding" with Aldrich and slowly realizing he's delulu, her learning about some old Olm lore, and unlocking a secret that will help them later with like, Anne's powers or the Moon or something, and just... her thinking and realizing she fucked up. If the Core knows her memories, it could recreate a more prolongued scenario with Anne and Sasha, maybe a sleepover? In general, I think Marcy would need someone in there to bounce off of, whether it is a bad guy like Aldrich or lifeless projections of Anne and Sasha, or even someone in there that's actually on her side, sick of living forever in this fantasy, maybe.

She needs time to define her new, changed self after learning her lesson, just like Sasha got to do. Because we barely see who Marcy has become after the events of Amphibia. We got like... TWO scenes to tell us ANYTHING about it.

"No! Only a coward would hide away in this place! Well, I reject this sick fantasy, and I reject you!"

"Even if your friends win, your parents will still tear the three of you apart."

"I started this whole mess because I wanted to escape that reality, but I won't run away from it anymore!"

And later near the end:

"I came to this world thinking only of myself. It was wrong of me, and I wish I'd gotten to know you both better"

These are like... the only indicator of the person Marcy became in Amphibia. They're not worthless - she learned to be more aware of the people around her, and to be stronger in the face of change. Her final scene with Aldrich is her most confrontational scene in the show, and certainly her most angry one. Before, she'd only been like... mildly annoyed one time because Anne was being too overprotective, and she glared at Andrias for like two seconds during O&Y but didn't actually say anything. Marcy is not an angry person, and she does seem to be scared of conflict, so to slap Aldrich's hand away, call him a coward, and proudly raise her fist and declare she's done running makes her look much stronger, and I appreciate that. And she does pretty much declare she refuses to be a coward. But this isn't nearly enough. If I want to write fanfic about Marcy post-Amphibia, I shouldn't have to sit down to analyze these two moments to extrapolate what her characterization would have been like. It should be like with Sasha. We know exactly who the new Sasha is, but we never get to see the new Marcy shine. I think that's why her arc feels so rushed in comparison to Sasha, whose beginning of her arc arguably took up one 11 minutes episode, and the rest happened mostly off-screen: the new Sasha was radiant in S3B, even if we didn't see much of the transition.

I know that, due to structural reasons, Marcy wasn't going to have much screentime so they had to rush her arc quite a bit, and while my suggestion to give her more time inside the Core stands, I think that's not enough either. I think she needs time to interact with Anne and Sasha, and also King Andrias, her Amphibia friend. It's hard to think of a solution to this problem given the way the finale is structured, but my first idea is to make it longer: The Beginning of the End stays the same, All In stays the same except for the way Marcy is released: instead of just, cutting a cable, Sasha needs to reach her with the Power of Friendship. Think something like the Running Up That Hill scene from Stranger Things, or the Toothless Found scene from HTTYD2

Because we can't miss a chance to develop Sasha and Marcy's relationship here. AND since they both share the roles of the Betrayer, the Liar, the Manipulator, of Anne's toxic friend in the path of redemption, it's poetic that Sasha, who has held Marcy under her thumb for years, is the one to help her break free, not through brute force like in canon, but by actually putting into practice what she's learned. Kinda like how, in AtLA S3, Zuko is playing the role of group therapist to the rest of the Gaang. Sasha figured things out first, now she wants to help Marcy find redemption too. Make it a callback to Anne's little speech from TBOTE

"It's not easy. Forgiveness is hard, and it can take time. But believe me: it's worth it. I mean, just look at what you and I have now."

Because redemption isn't easy. It's hard, and it can take time. But you still need to show up, even when you think they don't want you, even when you think you ruined everything. Getting up to so the right thing is always worth it.

Of course, if we want Sasha to save Marcy, a little bit of previous development wouldn't hurt. What if we add a little episode in S3A about the girls all thinking about each other? Anne finding a copy of War of the Warlocks that Marcy forgot in her house, Sasha being reminded of Marcy while helping Maddie with curses for the resistance, and Marcy just... thinking about them, in general, while in the Core. A simple 11 minutes segment, 3 minutes and a half of screentime for each of them. You don't need much, just a moment for them to explore their conflicting feelings for each other.

But then... then, we still need to see Marcy - the new Marcy - interact with her friends, so let's add one or two more episodes to the finale, between All In and The Hardest Thing. Maybe we can shift the Olms storyline here? Would that mess with the pacing too much? Tbh the writers did put themselves in a predicament with Marcy, so it's hard to find a perfect solution. I guess we can keep the tension if the moon is falling veeeeeery slowly, giving our girls just enough time for one more quick adventure together while not making it feel like they're taking their sweet time. So we have one or two extra episodes, and what do we do here?

We challenge Marcy. Just like how Sasha was challenged in Commander Anne, Marcy has to prove she's changed too. Tempt her with her past self-centeredness, her possessive instincts, the easy way in which she lies to herself, her impulse to plan around Anne and Sasha and not with them, hiding important information. Her fear of change. She knows what she needs to do, and she's ready to sit with the uncomfortable feeling of change instead of rejecting it immediately. Maybe she has to let Joe Sparrow go, for example, to be with other sparrows or something, idk. Whatever it is, it needs to be an opportunity to show her newfound emotional maturity. Show how, just like Anne and Sasha before her, she became a more noble person, one who, from now on, is honest, selfless and brave. One who embraces change, and who may even seek it out, because she understands this is how you grow.

Anyway. Yeah, that. I guess I'm just disappointed we never got to see the person Marcy became, but at least it's not hard to extrapolate it from what little the show gave us. We're not 100% in the dark. Though it's not nearly enough. If they ever give us more Amphibia, it would be awesome to see more of this new Marcy, but until then, we have a beautiful community here of galaxy brained people to put the pieces together 🥰

[poetrysmackdown]

some informal thoughts

hello! hope the holiday season has been kind to all of you. and i hope all my jewish followers had a lovely hanukkah! anyways, since i said a few months ago that i’d pick poetry smackdown back up sometime around this time of year, i thought i should make a post. the gist of it is that i’m still quite busy, i have a break that’s about three weeks shorter than I was planning on, and i don’t currently have the mental bandwidth required to read, contemplate, and sort through poem submissions in a way that does justice to them, even if i were to recruit some friends to help out. since running a tournament format requires at least five weeks of continued engagement once it’s underway, and since i’m not at capacity to offer that right now due to the change in my schedule, i’m gonna have to bow out for now. sad bc i was looking forward to it!

my hope is that i’ll have some more time over the summer to hunker down with it, in which case you’ll be hearing from me. it’ll frankly depend on the kind of job i land in for the summer, but i find that my unemployed spirit can typically keep me doing stupid shit regardless of workload...to a point. i don’t want to make any promises because i don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up just to let them down again LOL. i do admit the amount of exposure the first tournament got has made me feel like more of a perfectionist this time around, doubly because i don’t feel that i’m very suited to being a public online presence (even a relatively quite small one)—i’m bad enough at responding to emails for my own real life responsibilities, let alone tumblr asks for the silly responsibilities i invent for myself lol. that’s not to say i no longer want to do it, or i don’t enjoy it, or even that i don’t feel capable of making a really interesting bracket—just that if i am working to put something new together, and if people are taking the time to submit poems they care about, then i don’t want to half-ass it.

my second admission is something like this. I made the original bracket as a celebration of poetry and our relationships to it. yes it was silly and competitive, and the poems were very tumblr, but still, celebration was the intention—I wanted to have conversations about poetry. I stand by the bracket format as a fun and valuable way to foster conversations about poetry, but truthfully, the poems i’m wanting to have conversations about right now—the poems that we should be talking about right now—are ones that i'm not comfortable putting in a bracket. I reblogged The Baffler’s Poems from Palestine collection on here earlier, and Najwan Darwish’s “Who Remembers The Armenians?”, which I still often find repeating through my head when I'm traveling from one place to another, walking home or riding the bus. I came across this beautiful thread recently where people have been translating Dr. Refaat Alareer’s “If I Must Die” into their own languages (this just makes my translator's heart sing!!!!!!). @havingapoemwithyou has been posting some great poems from and for Palestine as well—check out their tag here.

There's always more to add, and I'll be posting more on here as I come across it, but that's what I feel anyone should be focusing on right now when it comes to poetry. i think poetry can be an escape but it should never be a distraction. does that make sense? i wouldn't be against doing a one-off poll here or there, but it feels weird to be making a tournament for poetry right now, or anytime soon. i feel like what free time i have right now is still best utilized helping my friends with organizing in the real world. and god, a bit off-topic but while I'm talking, fuck poetry foundation—I have so much respect for all the poets keeping up the boycott, because while i think it's a simple decision, it's not always an easy one (Aurielle Lucier discussed that here).

anyways, if you read all of this, thank you for your time!! I could go on and on, but really this was just meant to be a message telling y'all that there won't be another tournament for a while lol. even so i'll be trying to use this small silly platform as best i can until palestine is free because that's the absolute least i can do.

[adventuringblind]

Drive with you Forever

Chapter Eleven: The end leaves room for more

Max Verstappen x Charles Leclerc x Lando Norris x Reader

Chapter summary: The end is just the beginning....

Warnings: depictions of abuse. Toxic media, mentions of murder and death, court trials,

Notes: have no fear, this may be the end of one story, but I promise there's more to come for these four ;)

Previous <-

Masterlist

The media had caught wind of what happened. It was an absolute PR nightmare. She’s sent Christian an email with the entire footage and not just what was leaked. She was thankful he understood.

How did nobody understand what she’d been through? Why did they feel the need to make her feel worse?

She couldn’t eat. She couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t think.

Her tears had run out days ago. The lack of fluids in her body causing dehydration.

She’d gone dark. Nobody had heard from her. The boys only using their media platforms to make statements about how things needed to change and their positions.

They’d been gone for pre-season testing. She was staying with Hanna and Seb since the paddock felt like to much right now.

Nobody had heard from whatever this group was calling themselves now. Her fathers small army. More interestingly, everyone had yet to hear from Jos Verstappen. The man who’d been seen helping pin his son to the ground and get away without a scratch.

“It’s quiet without them.”

“If it gets to bad I can hop on a plane with you to go see them.”

She shook her head. Grateful for the offer, but they needed to focus.

Lando especially since he had to navigate another new teammate this year.

Sergio had taken over her spot permanently. Max had already driven with him for half a year, .so it wasn’t as new to him.

“Do you think I’ll ever get back to normal?”

Seb looks at her with fascination. “Normal is overrated. Bees are far from normal and they are great.”

“Are you really comparing me to a bee?”

“It’s not a comparison, it’s a compliment.”

~

They boys find themselves catching up with everyone in between sessions. The air around them trying to be calm but it was obvious there is a massive elephant in the room.

“Can we ask about what happened? Like are you three okay?” Asks Alex. He’d always had a kind nature and wants to make sure his friends had the support they need.

“Nothing much to say other then the media sucks.” Hisses Max. Everyone else nodding in agreement.

“Y/N is hiding now because people are ripping her to pieces.”

The grin that appears on George’s face doesn’t go unnoticed. “We could always make a bigger statement.”

“What would that entail?”

“If all twenty drivers stand as a united front then maybe people will start to listen.”

“And how exactly do we do that?”

“We boycott.”

~

The first race of the season is always an exciting moment. She felt like a child again creating her spot for the next two hours on the couch.

But when the television was turned on, the drivers were nowhere to be seen. There were no interviews. Nothing.

The commentary Box was doing nothing but singing her praises. Mentioning every victory and achievement she'd made in the sport.

Then, across the Grid, the drivers, her friends pratically her family, were holding a flag out with the words 'Self-defense is not murder. We stand woth Y/N.' Written across in bold letters.

But then her boys were not there.

No, they were on the podium with their own signs. All words about how the media needs to stop the hate.

She cried.

Seb and Hanna were smiling like idiots because they knew.

It hadn't taken much to get everyone on board. Only a few days to organize. The entire F1 grid, driver, teams, commentators, engineers, mechanics, team principles, are all standing as a united front on her behalf.

For the first time in weeks, her tears were of pure joy.

~

She went to the next race. Still out of the prying eyes of gossips. But she wanted to be there. Her place is in the racing world.

An hour before the race, Lando came running into the redbull garage with Charles in tow. Successfully scarring her and Max out of their chairs.

"You two look like I said we'd do your favorite things tonight. What did you do?" Max playfully glares at them, pulling a laugh from the female next to him.

"Look at it! It's the best thing I've ever read in my whole life!" Charles gestures to Lando's phone.

"Didn't you cry at shakespear and claim it was also the most beautiful thing you'd ever read?" The female quips.

"That was different. This isn't tragic."

Max takes Landos phone from him. The Brit look like he might pass out from the happiness.

Breaking: Jos Verstappen and US head of experimental sciences arrested for alleged kidnapping and attempted murder.

Her and Max stood in shock. This is a joke, right? There is no way they might get to love in peace.

"It's great right! Kind of- I'm not sure I guess how I should react. Are we happy or sad-" She shuts Lando up with a kiss.

"Best news ever."

The Redbull staff shoots them all confused glances as they crowd into Max's small driver room. The four of them need a moment with nothing but the fact they could potentially put this behind them and start moving toward better mental health.

They took a minute there, and then they ran to Christian. He dropped everything to tell the rest of the team.

Next came Carlos and Daniel. They cheered and hollered in joy for the four. The relief in their faces cause them to smile.

It wasn't long until the entire paddock knew.

But then it was time to race, and they had to leave each other's arms. Goodluck kisses on each if their foreheads.

While she waited for lights out, she called Seb.

"Did you see it?"

"See what?"

"They're gone. They're really gone." She chokes.

"That's amazing news! I take it you'll be celebrating tonight?" She can hear the suggestive wiggle if his eyebrows.

"Not sure yet. Everything is so ovedwhelming." She sighs. "I'm free now."

"Oh love, you were always free. I'm just glad you can see it now."

"It just felt like with him running around I couldn't breathe. Like he could appear at any moment."

"But you don't have to worry about that now. Whatever happens next we'll take it day by day, just ad we always have."

Step by step. Day by day.

They would figure it out.

All good things take time, and now it's finally her turn.

~

The trial was far too long for her liking. It took three days to pronounce him guilty, sentenced to life in prison for a shopping list of offenses. Some she didn't even know about.

It was never her fault her mother died during childbirth.

It was never her fault. None of it was. She was just made to believe she'd been to blame.

After the trial, she'd gotten a permanent position as a redbull strategist. A position she loves and intends on keeping for years to come.

Jos was sent to the Netherlands and also given jail time for his offenses. Max had sarcastically wished him well as the older Dutch was escorted out.

Now 2023 is in full swing. Only on race number four but it felt like it had been years.

Technically speaking, it had.

Seb, Hanna, Charles, Lando, Max.

They had gotten her through so much.

And as she lay with them. Their smiles wide as they recall funny stories from their past, she knows she is safe. She is loved in their arms.

This is not the end of her story.

After all, the end is just the door to a new beginning.

~

@styles-sunflower @purplephantomwolf @boiohboii @reblog-princess-blog @jjsprobablywrong @jayda12 @faithm120601 @eugene-emt-roe @lpab @yaaadii @80sloverry @spongebeck3101 @eviethetheatrefreak @chanshintien

[clovermarigold]

Mk Oneshots: Raiden x waitress Fem. reader

Note: I am SO sorry for this image

You had been working at the tea house for a few months now, after your father insisted you find new work outside of the family business. You honestly should have seen it coming. It was well known in the village of Fenjian that you were the unluckiest person to walk the face of the earth. 

You had nearly driven your family’s rice farm into bankruptcy after accidentally tipping off a cart down a hill that crashed into your season's silo and allowed the entire harvest to be eaten by mold. To make things worse it was anything but your first offense. You had worn a new scarf your mother had made for the new year. Unfortunately, this scarf was very long, and very flammable. The fire nearly destroyed three people’s houses that year. The final straw for your father had been when you had gone into town with your sister to chaperone her and her betrothed. Well… previously betrothed.

The two had insisted on walking one of Fengjian's few gardens privately without you present for a few minutes. You had insisted that your father would not want the two to be together unsupervised but promised to give them some time alone and watch them from afar. However, upon entering the garden and leaving to watch them from atop a hill. You attempted to pick a plum from one of the trees. This backfired when the tree turned out to be half rotted, and upon jumping and pulling. The tree knocked down and rolled down the hill, hitting your sisters engaged. His family was outraged, he was hospitalized for months, and they called off the engagement. 

This string of bad luck has earned you a less than favorable reputation in Fengjian. Madam Bo had been the only one in the village who was willing to take you in. Claiming that, “wild women are often too much for small minded people”. While you don’t think she would lie, you don’t doubt that the fact she could have you work without pay played a role. Though she likely regretted her decision when she had to pay for all the plates you broke.

Kung Lao sighed at his friend, this had been the fourth night in a row they had gone to Madam Bo’s for dinner. Usually, they preferred to go once a month, due to her high prices. But lately Raiden had been dragging him out. On one hand, he shouldn’t be so upset about it, after all, Raiden was the one paying. But on the other hand, it was painful to watch his friend swoon at one of the waitresses, never actually doing anything to woo her. 

“Again? Is your wallet ok?” Raiden only smiled as they entered the tea house, “If my wallet is feeling any discomfort, it’s only because you insist on eating the entire menu every time we come”. “Ah, Raiden, Kung Lao, welcome back” you said, almost stumbling over, hair a mess and visibly ruffled. 

Kung Lao groaned at the sickening sweetness of Raiden, “Thank you, we are gratuitous for your hospitality”. Sitting in their usual spots, it was obvious Raiden was distracted. “I’ll make you some tea," Raiden watched as you walked away, never once looking away, until Kung Lao caught his attention “Well, that was embarrassing”.

“What?” Raiden asked obliviously. “This” he gestured to him, “You. For the last four nights we’ve been coming here. And for the last four nights, you’ve done nothing”. “I hardly consider–” a loud crash sounded as the teahouse’s attention was drawn to you on the ground clutching your hand. Raiden was quick to run over, “Are you alright?”. “Ah, no. I spilled some of the hot water and dropped the pot. Madam Bo is going to kill me” you said as he helped you to your feet. “I’ll handle Madam Bo. Let’s get you some ice for that burn”.

“Really Raiden, it is unnecessary,” you insist as he pulls you to the counter making you sit down, “Your health comes first, and Madam Bo would agree with me”. “Agree with what?” as if her name was spoken thrice, she appeared from the back room, the faint smell of nicotine telling you she had been on her smoke break. “Ay, not again” you winced at her scolding. “I swear you will be the death of me” she said, walking behind the counter and scooping a handful of ice into a rag to make an ice pack. “I’m sorry Madam Bo, I’ll work off the price of the pot–” Raiden interjected, “I’ll cover the price of the pot, Madam Bo”.

You looked stunned at Raiden, “No! I couldn’t possibly have you do that for me”. “Please, it’s the least I can do–” Madam Bo held up her hand to cut both of you off. “Neither of you will be paying. It was an accident, one that left you injured, I might add. I would not make you pay for that more than you already have, my dear. And you” she turned to Raiden, “You have made me proud. Taking care of her is no easy feat. I can tell you that much”. Your cheeks flushed in embarrassment as she side eyed you, “Go dress your wound and finish your shift early”. “Thank you Madam Bo” you gave a small bow before rushing off to finish waiting for your last tables. 

“You know, you would spend less money on others belongings if you actually spoke with her” Raiden raised a brow in confusion. “She’d break more of YOUR plates if you would actually make any moves on her” Raiden’s mouth opened and closed as he looked for words, “I.. I don’t know what you're talking about”. Madam Bo only rolled her eyes before choosing to lean against the counter next to Kung Lao and light a new cigarette. “You know those are bad for you, right?”, “You want to stay my favorite? Stop talking”.

Finishing the two of their meals, Raiden laughed as Kung Lao palmed his sore and overstuffed stomach, “You were hungry”. Kung Lao only groaned in discomfort, letting out an obnoxious belch. The sound of the check being laid onto the table drew Radien’s attention to you smiling down at him. 

Thank you“” Raiden said with a smile, grabbing the check. But looking down at it only had the words, ‘My shift ends in ten minutes’. Looking up, you were already gone, leaving Raiden stuck with a starstruck expression, jaw dragging the floor.  Standing, and leaving him alone with the bill, Kung Lao walked over to the smoking Madam Bo and reluctantly handed over a number of bills. 

Raiden could care less. He had a date. 

Taglist

~~~~~~

@themoon-shines

[the-cookie-of-doom]

split/kid! Kim AU as promised 😘

send me an ask and I'll tell you about one of these WIPs!

I haven't thought about this fic in so long I forgot it even existed, but I added it to the list just for you <3

In this fic, through ~magical handwaving~, Kim's younger self is split from his adult self. It was meant to only cut out his memories/trauma (bc Kim will turn to magic before therapy), but oops! Turns out all those memories became a whole person! So now there's a ~13 year old knife-wielding Kim running around the compound, and adult KimChay have no idea. The significance of that age is that's how old Kim was the first time he killed someone, and he sees that as the thing that ruined him as a person. So if he can get rid of the part of himself that decided to be a murderer, maybe he can become a better man for Chay. Spoiler, that's not how it works.

The whole idea behind the fic is Kim learning to forgive himself for the things he had to do to survive. It's a lot harder to blame yourself for life going wrong when you have to look that frightened child in the eyes and tell him everything is his fault. Kid Kim is also a darling, and the brother feels make me weep.

Chay’s phone is ringing on the nightstand. He reaches blindly for it, preoccupied with Kim’s mouth on his own.  “Ignore it,” Kim murmurs, giving Chay’s bottom lip a chastising little bite. He’s half on top of Chay, both of them naked, hands wandering, and well on their way to a second round. Kim is making a very compelling argument, but… “It’s hia,” Chay says, and finally grasps his phone, hitting “accept” on the second to last ring. Kim huffs at him and starts pressing warm kisses along his jaw instead. “Hello?” “Chay,” Porsche greets jovially. “Question for you. Why is your boyfriend a child?”  “... He isn’t?” Chay looks down at Kim, now mouthing at his collarbone, just to make sure. And yep, still the same twenty-three year old he’s been for the last four months.  “I’m literally staring at him, and he is.”  “I’m literally naked with him, and he isn’t. I think I would have noticed.” Porsche snorts on the other end of the line. Kim looks up at him curiously, his tongue tracing wet circles around a nipple. Chay tugs his hair to make him stop but it only encourages him to bite. “Want to tell me why you think Kim is a child, hia?”  “I’m a what?” Kim asks, his voice low and rough and dripping with judgment. “Has your brother lost his mind?”  “See for yourself.” Seconds later Chay gets a text alert. He pulls up the messages, and nearly drops his phone when he sees the picture that loads.  There, sitting beside Kinn, wearing obviously borrowed clothes and the stormiest scowl Chay has ever seen, is Kim. Unmistakably, irrefutably Kim. Chay, left gaping and unable to speak, turns his phone around to show his lover.  “... Hm.”  “What the fuck?” Chay whispers. Then, “Porsche, I’ve got to go. We’re on our way.”  He ends the call.  “You’re not surprised. Why are you not surprised?”  “I’m surprised.”  “Really? Because you sounded like I just told you the road flooded in monsoon season.” Chay pushes himself up to his elbows, dislodging Kim. “What gives? What did you do?” “Why do you think I did something?” “Because there’s two of you!” “... I didn’t do anything that would have done that.” “But you did do something.” Silence. Kim refuses to meet his eyes. “Kim.” “It wasn’t anything bad! I just… Look, don’t be mad, okay?” Chay takes a deep breath, and then another. They’ve been together for two years now. They’ve seen each other through a lot. Chay can confidently say they’ve reached a place where Chay would forgive him for anything, because he trusts Kim not to do anything unforgivable.  “Tell me what happened, then we can figure out what’s going on,” Chay says. “I might have… gotten rid of… my memories. Of my childhood.” “... What?”  Kim squirms. He pulls the blankets up higher, suddenly vulnerable in his nudity. At least he doesn’t try to run away.  “You’re always telling me to go to therapy. I thought I could go straight to the source, cut it out, then,” he takes a shuddering breath, “then I would be okay.” “Kim, you can’t—that’s not how it works.” Kim shrinks in on himself. Chay doesn’t let him hide, drawing Kim into his arms when he tries, clutching him close. “That’s—that’s half your life! And it’s just, what, gone?” “I thought it would be. Guess not. I promise I didn’t know this would happen.”  “And you were just going to hide this from me?” Kim shrugs. Chay’s heart clenches wondering how long Kim could have gotten away with it. He never talks about his childhood as it is, like he’s already locked that part of himself away. “When do your memories start, then?” “When I was thirteen, I think.” “Why that age?”  “That was the first time I killed a man.” Kim squeezes his arms around Chay’s middle, hiding away in his shoulders. Quietly, he adds, “That’s what broke me.”  The day he lost his innocence, Chay thinks. He stopped being a child when he took his first life.  Except he doesn’t believe that for a second. Trauma isn’t what makes someone an adult; Chay would know. Kim was still so young, and he must have been terrified. Alone. 

[basimdasasonst]

ofmd s2 rant

so, this is my first post, and I have @ketamoru to thank for corralling (gently suggesting) me into making this. we watched season 2 of our flag means death a while back when it first came out, and i wrote this huge long rant (that I just finished editing) about it, intending to post it to twitter or imdb or something. but. due to the sheer nature of the word length, i couldn't. so, here it is.

On OFMD S2: as a viewer, I’m appalled at the season. As a writer, I could feel my soul escaping my mouth with each cringed breath I took, escaping my pores every time I had to hit the spacebar to pause and bury my head in my hands. I’ve read and written bad stories in my past, I've been on both ends of a shitty narrative, but my god. 

There's three core tenets to a story: plot, world, and characters. You can lean on one if another is lacking, absolutely, BUT YOU CANNOT SACRIFICE TWO OF THEM AND EXPECT THE OTHER TO BE ALRIGHT. THEY ARE CONNECTED. THEY INFLUENCE EACH OTHER. GOOD CHARACTERS HELP A GOOD PLOT, A GOOD WORLD HELPS A GOOD PLOT. BUT A HALF DECENT WORLD CANNOT HELP SHITTY CHARACTERS AND PLOT!!!!!!!!!!

Let me start with the simplest to talk about: the plot.

In an introductory college level physics course without calculus (bare with me), you occasionally do problems with a pulley. If you account for the mass of the pulley and the string in calculations, the problem simply becomes too complex to deal with for an introductory course. So, you call the string massless, and move on with your life. Every single episode's plot was tied together by this massless string. As in, THERE WAS NO INTERCONNECTIVITY BETWEEN EPISODES.

The three sections of plot development are (as highlighted by Brandon Sanderson, who is not writing-Jesus, but is pretty accomplished in the fantasy genre, which should speak for itself) promise, progress, and payoff. Promises are made at the beginning of a story's plot arc. They hint towards the greater plot and arcs, and promise readers a story filled with [x]. For example, if you're going to write a comedy, your opening scene (the promises) should be comedic. You don't start a comedic novel out with a tear-jerker. This is arguably the only part, in my opinion, that OFMD gets right. The opening episode is, to give credit where credits due, pretty comedic for a comedic season. The tone is set properly. 

Here come the problems: Progress. THERE IS NO PROGRESS. Stede and Ed make up WITHIN THE SAME EPISODE THEY MEET AGAIN. And then they break up in episode 7. AND THEN THEY MAKE UP AGAIN IN EPISODE 8. There is no conflict between the pairing. There is no conceivable sense of tension or drama or ANYTHING that builds up to a climax. THERE IS NO CLIMAX. It’s just a bunch of minisodes strung together by a massless string. Villains come and go within the same episode (I'm looking specifically at Ned Low). The only one that comes back is Prince whatever-his-name-is (I'll get to him in a second), and we don't see much of him. He's introduced to us as a bumbling fool in the beginning, we lose him for a long while while Ed frolics around (again, I'll talk about Ed's character too in a second), and then he's suddenly a prince (episode 6, I believe) needing to take revenge. He makes a cursory deal with Zheng, we see him for 5 more minutes, and then he blows everything up in a totally-not-seen-coming betrayal. Boring. No progress, no payoff. 

Which leads me into the final part I have to say about the plot: payoff. WITHOUT PROGRESS THERE IS NO PAYOFF. Because of the nature of the season, with things just thrown at you with no cohesive narrative the season felt like a continuous dopamine rush with no need to work for anything in return. (What was the ultimate goal of the season, do you think? Ed's reconciliation? The prince's revenge? Stede's path to being a pirate? Do you think any of them were explored? Think about it, for a second.) The climax of Izzy's death (boy do I have some key words to say about that, but that's not the point of this review, far from it) didn't feel...worth it. In fact, I'm not even sure if that was the climax, or maybe it was Ed leaving (and coming back 30 minutes later … ) or maybe it was the bombing. Who knows? I don't. You can have subplots. You can't just treat them all equally. There has to be a point to a story, and you have to favour that point over mindless adrenaline rushes. There was a point to season 1: Stede's growth as a character as he realises piracy isn't all he thinks it is, and eventually falling in love with Ed. There is no point to this season. Or if there is, it's muddled by the 20 other things happening all at once, always. There is no progress, so there is no payoff. 

2. Next, the world.

In this case, the physical scenery, the props, the costumes, the music, etc. I'm not a costumer, nor a musician, nor a lighting director, I’m just a viewer with a basic high school understanding of world history – but nothing ... changed about the world in this season. When you establish a world in the first act of a book, do you just stop establishing it in the second act? No! Of course not! You keep building it, because the world changes too. 

Every single new town the ship visited, every time they docked or got off a ship, the scenery looked and felt the same. How many times are they stranded in the exact same kind of underbrush? The exact same biome, with the exact same kinds of plants? Do they ever go further inland? Is there more to the world than just two ships, one established town and then the shoreline? Of course there isn't! Because that means worldbuilding more than what season 1 did, and that's too terrifying to think about! 

And the music. Christ, I'm no musician but did the music feel, to anyone else, passive? In season 1, at least the last time I watched it, the music fit the scene. It wasn't just there because there needed to be music. It spoke to the world, it said something about the scenery. This music, by comparison, is so tame. It's not noticeable. The only part I did like was when Izzy died in silence, because that silence let the death settle with the viewers as Ed weeps openly and – oh, here's the mindless royalty-free music again. 

3. And finally, the characters. 

Jesus Christ where do I even start with this? Let me start from the foundation of storytelling as any amateur writer understands. YOUR CHARACTERS ARE YOUR MOST IMPORTANT ASSET IN A STORY. I am physically unable to stress this enough. I DON'T CARE IF YOUR WORLD SUCKS MAJOR SHIT. YOUR CHARACTERS CANNOT SUCK. WE STICK WITH THEM THE ENTIRE WAY THROUGH. IF WE CANT STICK WITH THE CHARACTERS, WE CAN'T STICK WITH THE STORY. 

(Note: You can write characters with obviously terrible personalities, and that are meant to be disliked, without them sucking. It's about intentionality. If you write a character, and they’re meant to be likeable, and nobody likes them, that character sucks, and you’ve failed. You’ve also (usually, but not always) failed if your viewers hate your character for a different reason than intended. If you write a character you’re supposed to hate for [x] reason, and people hate them for [x] reason, you’ve succeeded. There is a difference between a bad character, and a character with an intentionally flawed personality that you're not supposed to sympathise with.)

Next question: why is everyone in a romantic relationship? The day people realise that platonic relationships are just as important as romantic ones is the day I'm allowed to rest. (I say this beyond just the fact that I'm aroace. I say this as an exhausted reader.) There were not one, not two, not three, not four, but FIVE relationships that were given significant (well, as significant as it gets with 8 30-minute-episodes) screen time. Except, none of them were developed. Not even Ed and Stede's. What was the point in breaking up Jim and Olu, pray tell? Their conflicting personalities were what made them so interesting – to see two opposing forces find ridges where one slots into the other, where two people so different find solace in the other? Now Jim's just got over Olu in a third of an episode and they're kissing that other person. No, I don't even remember their name, because their personality was just Jim's in a different font. You paired two similar people up with each other. Why? Not sure. (I hesitate to chalk it up to some weird exoticism going on behind the scenes, but.) Now I'm bored. There's no tension in that, no story to tell, no good reason for it happening. And Olu with Zheng. NO BUILDUP. Zheng stares at Olu working on scrolls for a little while. That's it. THAT'S NOT BUILDUP, THAT'S JUST WASTING TIME. Her relationship with Olu is so unbelievably forced. (I could feel the crickets of the writers room permeating through my screen – that one stray writer going “well, if nobody else has any ideas, then idk maybe we could … “) They share nothing in common, her "you're the break in my day," is completely unfounded (I’ll get to this when i talk about her character outside of Olu in a sec), it irritates me to no end. 

I don't have anything to say about Swede and Jackie, or Black Pete and Lucius, because nothing fucking happens. Black Pete and Lucius make up, after a little bit of progress I will say, and then it's ... a few episodes of them loving each other unconditionally as if nothing happened. It's boring. I'm bored. 

Stede and Ed. Oh boy. Ed is clearly not ready for a romantic relationship in this season, despite whatever work he did last season. (Thrown out the window by this season! Who’s ever heard of setting up future seasons in your earlier seasons? Not the OFMD writers room!) He grapples (barely) with the idea of not being a necessarily good person, and tries (in heavy quotation marks, more on that below) to redeem himself, but ultimately just ends up right where he started: Blackbeard. He ends up reversing all of his progress in terms of his character arc. Right back where he started. Christ. And he's clearly too busy grappling with this to be conceivably ready for a romantic relationship with Stede. But Stede and Ed happen anyway. If handled by someone who wanted to comment on the nature of toxic relationships and wrote this intentionally, this would have been a GOOD PLOT. But it was clearly not intentional, as nothing seemed to flow together, characters spoke like robots, and I could feel the fact that the script was obviously just a shitty first draft. Not to mention the fact that Ed doesn't ACTUALLY do any thinking on what he's supposed to be. That purgatory thing was the best we get – and it was damn good in comparison to the rest of the season where he doesn't really reflect on his actions. He has one conversation, decides he's a changed man, then goes straight back to his previous actions. 

And STEDE – man. They DECIMATED his character this season. In the beginning, in the first season, he was the gentleman pirate – two juxtaposing adjectives. WHICH IS CENTRAL TO CREATING A CHARACTER. No real person is one track (even the most stubborn of us), no real person can be effectively summed up in a few words like a bad character creation sheet. The conflicts that we deal with as humans are what make us human. Flaws, in no small part, are part of the human experience. (I could get into this, but if you’ve ever looked at AI art and felt its soullessness staring back at you, then you know. It’s too perfect. Too lifeless. Too flawless.) Every single person deals with layers and layers of complexity. Two completely opposing things can be true at the same time and that is a VERY REAL THING that we must grapple with as humans. There is no such thing as black and white on issues. Stede as a gentleman pirate was this COMPLEX LAYER that made him such an interesting character to begin with because “gentleman” and “pirate” are two very different things with two very different histories and connotations. To see the intersectionality of where these worlds collide and where they conflict was what made him so interesting in the first place. 

In this season, he’s just a bumbling fool that calls himself a pirate. His backstory isn’t mentioned. He’s stupid in a cringe-ing way (not even comedic), and is just no longer a gentleman. He’s just a bad pirate. It’s so boring in comparison to the complex characterization we got last season, that every time he spoke I had to physically restrain myself from petulantly clogging my ears and going “lalalalala!” to pretend that he wasn’t really saying half the things he was saying. He’s just a puppet, waving around in the wind, contributing nothing to conversations and existing without complexity. It makes me want to bash my head into a table. 

Zheng. Why? What was her purpose? I’m white, I should note, so I’m not entirely qualified to talk on this subject from an experiential perspective, but a great big part of her character felt like something I wrote my end of high-school thesis on: orientalism in science fiction, and specifically the pervasive notion of the “submissive eastern woman”. This isn’t science fiction, but it does employ (subtly, might I add, but still noticeable) tropes that Edward Said wrote about in his work “Orientalism” (1990) -- stuff, specifically in OFMD S2, like being the "other" (in particular, viewing the east as a "backwards west" that requires a "western touch" to correct) in the way that Zheng's ship was clearly portrayed as "abnormal" to us in every way -- the all female crew, the rigidity, the organization, etc. We were told repeatedly, time and time again, that she is powerful. But think about it for a moment, did you ever really feel like she was powerful? When she revealed she was an infamous pirate lord that made people cower, did you feel it? We saw some displays of power – but only deep into getting to know her. We never really felt this power that we were told repeatedly that she had, this fear of being some pirate queen. No, she was just a pirate with money.

(As an aside: the theme of power is notoriously difficult to get right in fiction, because it's so multifaceted. If you want my professional opinion (as some random internet nerd who spends time in a weird mix of fandoms) on who gets it right in modern fiction: I think JJK does it really well. I could go on about JJK for hours, both its rights and wrongs, but it gets the notion of power right if nothing else. For those unfamiliar, the “mentor character”s name is Gojo, who is a sorcerer born with a rare combination of techniques that makes him incredibly powerful – almost completely untouchable. To the viewer, he is silly, aloof, and overall goofy as a character (it’s actually a front, but this is an OFMD essay, not a JJK essay) which allows us to get to know him beyond his power level – but when he’s not acting aloof, when his smile deepends (or worse, when it drops) we can feel the power emanating from him. From impact frames, to the fact he’s constantly unserious, to enemies cowering at the mere mention of his name – his entire thing is that he’s the strongest sorcerer alive. Curses (evil spirits) quite literally can’t do anything while he’s around – so much so, that when he gets sealed in a prison dimension in s2 of the anime, the effects are felt quite literally all over Japan. With one simple action (the sound of the cube sealing him hitting the floor of the train station) an entire nation’s power has turned on its head – every curse, every sorcerer feels it. When his power is gone, there is such a large disparity between the protagonists and the antagonists, you can feel it through your screen.)

Zheng does not have this. She does not have the luxury of being in a story where the writers care about making her a threat. I could extend this to Blackbeard too to a lesser extent, but I won't. OFMD is a comedy. But being a comedy doesn’t mean you can’t tackle heavy topics – you can, and should tackle the heavy stuff in your comedic show. Repeatedly we were told that Zheng is powerful – but nobody treated her like that. Hell, the show didn’t give her the power that it claimed she had. We only ever saw the safe side of her, the kind side of her that (for no reason) liked and cared about Olu. Complex female character? Nah. Random romantic love interest for Olu? Hell yeah.

Fucking Christ. And don’t get me started on the costuming choices. Pigtails? Really? You had no other options? You couldn’t have dipped your fingers into any historical media for reference, like you’ve been keen to do with European references in the show? Alright man. 

Finally, Izzy. WHY did they kill him? Probably my least favourite trope in modern media is when a character finally gets some closure towards the end of their arc, starts becoming a truly better character/dragging themselves up out of a deep pit – only for them to die mid arc. COME ON. If you wanted shock value it would've made more sense for ED to die because he’s, at least, stuck in his old ways. That could’ve been interesting, seeing him stick to his old ways to his detriment. Not to toot my own horn, but in the story I’m writing (shoot me if I mention it again) one of the primary main character’s whole theme is centred around desperation, and his eventual death as a direct result of it. His death is not just for "shock value" it serves a purpose. It's to further the commentary I'm trying to speak on about how far we’ll go to live in an idea rather than the present. I really, truly, honestly think that if they did that with Ed the story could’ve been so much better; and I say this having experienced the difficulties with writing out a central character. But again, this season lacks intentionality. Ed doesn’t die, and instead Izzy does after being the only character with any sort of redeeming qualities this season. I get, to some degree, it’s supposed to be a metaphor for Ed leaving behind his past but, does he really even do that? He’s Blackbeard when we end season 2. Izzy’s death didn’t mean anything to me beyond just wishing the season ended quicker, because (as we witness with Ed’s rebounding) concrete decisions made by characters can be reversed in the flip of a second thanks to Plot™! There is no permanence to the story’s cohesion, and Izzy’s death just doesn't stick. “Okay,” you say, exhausted. Nothing feels real. Nothing is internally or externally consistent. It's just a mess of ideas poorly strung together, and that's being nice about it.

I wont say much about craft because this is getting long winded but. Fuck me, dude. Why does every dialogue happen in a vacuum? NOBODY IS EVER DOING ANYTHING INTERESTING. a lot of scenes felt like filler -- there only to extend the series' runtime. I’m tired, man. It’s sloppy writing. I'd almost give it a better rating if Season 1 wasn't so much better by comparison. Instead of just being a bad season, it now also ruins what the show built up in the first season. I'm beyond disappointed. 

TL;DR: please for the love of god start loving the stories you're writing. the future generations deserve more than money-laundering garbage edit: whoops got her name wrong halfway through its zheng not zhen my b lol

[nerdestiwrites]

Tales of the Shadow (Hazbin Hotel Pirate AU)

The taste of salt wasn’t something that Charlie would ever be able to get out of her mouth it seemed, even after being on land for a few days after making port. Everything had a salty taste to it, bread, meat, ale, or whatever was being passed off as ale in the small fishing port. It either was that she’d forever have the salt of the sea in her mouth for the rest of time or that salt was the only seasoning that the people of the port knew how to use. Perhaps it was a mixture of both or perhaps it was all in her head. Either way, she’d learn to live with it, and hope that the next time they docked somewhere would prove it one way or another. 

Walking had gotten easier, she hadn’t fallen since the first day off the ship, even with her boots getting stuck in the muddy streets and nearly getting ripped off twice now. She’d only had to grab onto Vaggie twice for support, and once did Vaggie have to push her out of the way from a carriage nearly running her over. 

It had been a better day, the best out of the three that they’d spent docked. No one had tried to rob them or proposition them in any way, and most even stopped cursing them out when Charlie would try to talk to them. She couldn’t say it was all luck or the locals starting to like the two of them, a lot of it was thanks to Vaggie. She’d stopped the would-be thieves the first day, and on Charlie's behalf, only took a finger from each to teach them each a lesson. Vaggie would’ve preferred killing them but Charlie reminded her that wasn’t what they were there for. They needed people to want to come with them.

Charlie stopped in front of a tavern that they hadn’t ventured into yet and peered inside. The door was open, or rather, hanging off one of the hinges and the activity of the day had left the piece of wood pushed aside for easy in-and-out access to the place. Laughter, shouting, a crash of glass, and another loud shout covered the music playing from the poor bard on the lute in the corner. A bottle flew past her head and out into the street. It was as good of a place to find a crew as any. 

She stepped inside, took in a deep breath, and immediately made a face at the smell of the place, nearly doubled over. How it smelt a million times worse inside the building, just over the threshold of the doorway, she wasn’t entirely sure, but the smell was pungent. Vaggie took a step in after and placed a hand on her back, giving a warm half smile, “You okay?” She asked.

Charlie nodded, forced a smile as she attempted to breathe as little as possible while inside the tavern, and stood straight again. She adjusted the hat on her head and cleared her throat. “Right, should we split up again? That sorta worked yesterday. We at least got people to talk with us-”

“Absolutely no more splitting up in places like these. Did you forget how yesterday ended?” Vaggie interrupted as she led the others toward the bar. Best to get a drink before they start harassing the customers of the establishment. She was hoping they wouldn’t get kicked out, again, like they had been from every other tavern in the small fishing village. Vaggie was honestly surprised there were so many, and that they didn’t talk amongst one another and just had her and Charlie's faces plastered outside yet with a DO NOT SERVE written on top of the paper.

“Oh, it wasn’t that bad! The guy seemed like he genuinely wanted to join!” Charlie sighed, the optimism still shining through. This had to work, they needed a crew willing to go on this journey with them. Surely there’d be people who wanted to. 

Vaggie laughed at that and shook her head as she handed a mug of ale over to the blonde and placed a few silver pieces down on the bartop for the barkeep. She sipped the liquid, it was a poor attempt at ale, but it’d do the intended purpose of getting one drunk. “I keep telling you, the promise of treasure is much more enticing than just the promise of adventure.”

Charlie looked into the mug, spun the contents of it around slightly, and sipped it. She gagged at the taste and the mug was placed down on the bar as she shook her head. “But I don’t know if there will be treasure. It’s- We’re- I don’t want to lie!”

“It’s not lying per se, it's avoiding the unknown truth! There could be treasure.” She pointed out as she let a smile on her face at the other's reaction to the taste of the drink, “Besides, who knows how long it’ll actually take to find it? There’s bound to be some sort of gain between now and then.”

“Well, I guess that’s true.” Charlie huffed once. Then she felt a pat on her shoulder that caused her to look up at the other woman and she smiled, nodding once. “Okay, I guess we’ll try it that way… and if we don’t find any treasure along the way, it’s not like they’re not gonna get paid. I do want it to be worth their efforts.”

Vaggie gave another pat to the other's shoulder and nodded, downing the rest of her glass and grabbing onto the full one that had been placed down, replacing it with the now empty mug. “Right, well, if we don’t find anyone in this fishing town, there’s another one three days down the coast. After that, we’ll have to turn around and head north and try there.”

Charlie looked over at the patrons of the tavern, eyes scouring to try and find someone, anyone who she might get to join their crew. While she and Vaggie could sail the ship up and down the coastline easily, as long as the weather permitted, anything out on the open ocean needed a full crew. Even if the person didn’t know how to sail, they could teach them. Just extra hands.

“Or we could always tell them what it is you’re actually looking for.” Vaggie offered and that earned her a gentle hit against her arm, causing some of the ale to splash out of the mug and onto the wooden floor below, adding to the already sticky layer.

Charlie leaned back against the bar and ran both hands over her face. “I’m pretty sure that would mean fewer people would want to join our crew Vaggie! We can’t just tell them that we’re searching for the Shadow ship! Most people think that it’s just a myth and those who don’t are terrified of it.”

“Yeah, but it’s not a myth. Your dad went missing years ago searching for it?” The mug of ale was placed down and instead, Vaggie grabbed onto Charlie's hands and pulled them from the blonde's face, squeezing them. “And you say you’re certain he’s still out there somewhere. Some people just want to be known as the person to find it. Some might believe the myth of whoever finds the Shadow ship becomes the captain of the Shadow itself.. That’s plenty enough to entice some people.”

Charlie stared into Vaggies eye as she took in a deep breath to help ground herself, squeezing both of the other woman's hands. She opened her mouth to say something but a different voice cut her off. 

“I do apologize but I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation just now.” A tall man stood in front of the two women, and Charlie couldn’t remember seeing him inside the tavern or how he approached without either one of them noticing. “But, the topic of the Shadow ship has been an interest of mine for quite some time.”

The man was well dressed, especially for the place they all stood in. Vaggie was immediately suspicious of him, her hands let go of Charlie and one rested on the hilt of her sword, lax but ready to react in an instant if needed. The ears on top of his head flicked once, almost in response to her actions, which caused her to stand straighter as well. 

Charlie, on the other hand, didn’t seem to notice either action and she stood up off the bar with a newfound excitement in her eyes. “Yes! We’ve been trying to get a crew together to go after it, find it!”

As Vaggie stared at and studied the man in front of them, the more she began to recognize him. She placed a hand on Charlie's shoulder gently to try and lead her back and away, to get her to leave the tavern entirely if possible, as her other hand now tightened on the hilt of her sword. Charlie didn’t take the hint and instead took a step forward, putting her own hand out for the man to shake. “I’m Charlie, this is Vaggie, my sailing master and first mate!”

“Alastor, a pleasure to meet the both of you.” He took Charlie's hand into his own, brought it up to his lips, and pressed a polite kiss to her knuckles.

Charlie smiled at the action and once her hand was released, she grabbed onto Vaggies, pulling it away from the hilt of her sword. Alastor kept his gaze at both their faces, both hands returning to the top of the cane as he nodded and spoke up once more. “If you have the space for three, I have two…friends… that would be joining me if you would have us.”

“Yes! Of course, we do!” The blonde said immediately, much to Vaggies dismay. 

Alastors smile widened, “Brilliant! I promise that all of us will be a great deal of help on the ship, Niffty will ensure no rodents or vermin of the like survive past the first day of sailing, and Husker is a rather fine bartender and is a rather grand navigator.”

“Charlie I really think-” Vaggie started but was interrupted by the blonde.

“Okay! We were planning on leaving in two days. Tomorrow I can give you a tour of the ship, we can get all of your stuff moved onto the ship and figure out a real plan on where we’ll be heading next!” 

Alastor nodded as he bowed slightly. “We’ll meet tomorrow then, at noon?” He suggested. 

Charlie nodded. “Noon is perfect.”

With just as quickly and silently as the tall man had arrived, he left without another word. Vaggie let out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding the entire time and grabbed onto both of Charlie's arms, turning the blonde to face her. Charlie’s lips turned upwards into a wide smile, she jumped up and down a few times as she grabbed onto Vaggies shoulders to try and keep herself from freaking out too much. “Someone actually wanted to join us!”

Vaggie watched her jump. She didn’t want to ruin the excitement that the blonde held and didn’t want to cause the other to worry but she was concerned about the new crew members that Charlie had just hired on.

“You do know who that was, right Charlie?” She asked.

That caused Charlie to have a look of confusion cross her face and she shook her head. “No? Who was that?”

“That was Alastor Altruist, one of the most feared Pirate Lords.” Vaggies voice lowered to a whisper, careful not to let anyone around them hear her words.

It was like the air was ripped from the building and like everything had gone silent. “Oh.”

꒷꒦︶꒦꒷✧꒷꒦︶꒦꒷

The sun shined down and waves gently crashed against the ship's hull. Despite the nice weather and clear skies, the air was thick with nervousness and anxiety. Charlie couldn’t exactly go back on her invitation to the pirate lord Alastor onto her ship, on the adventure. They needed to help, and if he knew as much as he said he knew about the Shadow ship, then his help would greatly improve their chances of actually finding it. Vaggie had promised that if he even seemed like he had any ulterior motives she’d kill him, that was the only way he’d be allowed on the ship, so Charlie agreed to it.

The fishing village had long since started its day, a new ship had arrived with different supplies and trading goods and was already being filled with new cargo to be traded with wherever it made port next. Fishermen had been out and back twice already in search, hauling back different quantities of fish with varying qualities. 

Charlie paced back and forth on the ship, her hat on top of her head and she took in a few breaths. It was going to be fine. Alastor the pirate lord hadn’t been heard from in years, everyone had assumed he had died, his ship sunk, and that was the end of it. Yet there he had been, asking for a spot on her ship. This meant that he was missing his ship somehow, so something must’ve happened. Was he going to try and steal her ship? Once they were out on the open sea, was he going to cause a mutiny, throw her and Vaggie overboard? He hadn’t given that impression but she had been just excited that anyone was interested in joining.

That was why she was always so thankful that Vaggie was by her side. Without her, Charlie was certain she would’ve gotten into infinitely more trouble and misunderstandings that she wasn’t entirely sure she’d be able to get out of. As she thought of the conversation from last night, she now could see that Vaggie had tried doing the same there as well but Charlie hadn’t listened or paid any attention to it. Now they needed to deal with the subsequent outcome, whether that be good or bad.

Focusing on the good, Alastar truly was interested in the Ship as well, and truly just wanted to help her find it. He might not understand that the only reason she was after the ship was because of her father, but still, he had offered not only his help but the help of two more people as well. He was allowed to have his own interests in the Ship, two people with a common interest could get a lot done.

Now with the man being not only just a pirate but a pirate lord could hold problems on its own. Especially if they ran into the Royal Navy. Her father hadn’t been the Crown's most favorite person, though he never told her why, and he had always been on the run from the Royal Navy himself until he settled down on the small island she grew up on. Luckily for her, no one knew who she was, just someone interested in the ocean myths, searching for her father. No ties to the navy or pirates alike, or at least, she didn’t have ties. With Alastor joining her crew, ties were created. Perhaps if they ran into the royal navy she could convince them that he had turned over a new leaf, that he was no longer a pirate. Wishful thinking.

If they ran into other pirates, Alastors' reputation might be helpful. He would know what to say to make them not attack or to leave them alone. Or they might see him and just decide not to mess with them entirely, which would be the preferred option. The actual preferred option would be not running into any pirates and being left alone entirely while on the adventure but she doubted that would be the case. They needed to be prepared for any and all scenarios possible. 

Which was why Vaggie had insisted on having weapons on board, for protection against pirates and the navy alike, just in case she had said. Cannons, guns, gunpowder, swords, and knives alike. Charlie had been practicing her sword fighting with Vaggie every morning for an hour before they went on with their day and she was getting pretty good if she had been honest with herself. That or Vaggie was going easy on her.

“Heya toots!” A voice called out over the crash of waves that caught Charlie out of her thoughts and she stopped pacing. She looked out to the docks and noticed someone she didn’t recognize standing there waiting to be granted access to the ship. “Heard you were lookin for some hands, lucky for you I got four and I’m really good at usin ‘em!”

Charlie blinked a few times and watched as the man held up his four arms and flashed a toothy grin, the sun glinting off a golden tooth. She immediately smiled back and waved at him to board the ship. “You want to join my crew?”

“Been lookin for a way out of this small village for a while!” He walked up the board onto the deck and stuck one of his arms out for the blonde to shake. “I’m Angel, nice to meetcha!”

“Charlie! Nice to meet you!” She shook his hand with enthusiasm and nodded. “You’re just in time, we’re leaving tomorrow morning!”

“Sooner the better,” Angel said as he looked around the ship, his lower set of arms and hands rested on his hips. As he looked out over the small fishing village, he cleared his throat and pointed down at the docks, “Know them?”

Charlie looked back down at the docks and smiled brighter as she saw Alastor standing there with a catman standing on his left and a much smaller woman with one eye standing on his right. “Alastor! Welcome aboard!”

Alastor walked up onto the ship first followed by the two others. None of them seemed to be carrying any bags or personal items at all and Charlie wondered if Alastor had changed his mind. Showing up might have been just a polite thing to do, to tell her in person that he had changed his mind and the three of them wouldn’t be joining. It wouldn’t be the best news but Vaggie would feel relief and at least they had one person joining it seemed.

She felt nervous, more so now that there was a practical stranger standing on the deck as well. Would Angel recognize Alastor? Would he care that Alastor was a pirate? Would he change his mind about joining? “Charlie, this is Husker and Niffty, the friends I was telling you about last night.” Alastor introduced them. 

Niffty smiled brightly up at Charlie and stepped forward, studying her closely before her eyes began scouring the deck for any movement. Husk grunted once as he lifted a bottle up to his lips, taking a sip from it as he fluffed his wings out a bit. It was clear he wasn’t a fan of the bright sunny day as one of his wings extended slightly to try and block the sun rays from his face. 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you both!” She said before stepping to the side and allowing more access onto the deck of the ship. She motioned for Angel to take a step forward and gave an encouraging smile. “This is Angel, he said he’s interested in joining us as well! Angel, this is Alastor, Niffty, and Husker!”

Alastor looked over at the stranger, the smile never leaving his face as he looked the other over once before nodding. “Pleasure to meet you as well, I am happy to hear that this little crew is growing. By the end of the week the ship will be filled to the brim I am sure. Shall we begin the tour of the ship?”