#i was OBSESSED with that song when it came out like even as a kid ive had this audio thing | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

phoward89 · 7 months ago

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Based on this ask

WARNING ⚠️ Coriolanus Snow is his own warning, obsessive!Coriolanus, manipulation, murder, unplanned pregnancy

You’re by yourself in the house you share with your little sister Maude Ivory and your cousins whenever a loud series of knocks sounded on it. Oh god, you hope it wasn't Billy Taupe coming around to torment (woo) Lucy Gray again.

Hell, he moved out of the Covey house and into the Mayor’s house to live with Mayfair as soon as Lucy Gray was shoved onto that train’s cattle car headed to the Capitol to be tribute in the Hunger Games. Just because she won; came back in one piece, doesn't mean that he has the right to come around. Begging her to take him back, even though he has no intentions on leaving Mayfair.

Why would he? He's got it made by shacking up with the Mayor's daughter. Hell, being with Mayfair means he never has to work again.

Sighing, you placed your composition book down on the sofa and went over to the door. When you pulled it open, you were shocked that it wasn't Billy Taupe at the threshold, but a peacekeeper.

A very handsome peacekeeper, might you add.

You had to crane your neck up slightly to look him in the eyes. Eyes that were icy blue, like a frozen over lake. You noticed that his buzz cut was platinum blonde, a blonde so light that only the gods of ancient myths could have such fair hair. Your eyes didn't miss his prominent nose or his broad shoulders and tapered waist either.

But it was his smile that had you dazzled. A smile that was bright, splitting his face in half with perfect pearly whites.

“Hello. I'm Private Coriolanus Snow; I was Lucy Gray’s mentor during the games and since I'm serving here in 12 I just wanted to check up on her. Make sure that she’s alright.”

“Yea, she mentioned you.” You nodded, feeling your heart sink into the pit of your stomach. Of course, your cousin's mentor looked like a Greek god. No wonder Lucy Gray seems to have a little crush on him. No way would he ever talk to you again once he got to see her.

Nobody ever talked to you again after spending time with Lucy Gray. Hell, her voice made the mockingjays stop and listen to her sing. Her beauty was exotic; she was a beautiful mystery that every man wanted to solve.

“I’m Y/N Scarlett.” You introduced yourself, only to tell the peacekeeper, “She's deep in the meadow that's some yards behind the house. She's working on a song, but I'm sure she won't mind if you interrupt her.”

“She never mentioned you.” Coriolanus said, moreso to himself then to you, his eyes raking over your body.

“Why would she? She was in the Capitol for the Hunger Games, not an afternoon tea party.” You sarcastically scoffed. Unknown to you, Lucy Gray did talk about the Covey, including your little sister, just not you. “Well, since I told you where to find my cousin, you better be on your way.” You said, politely dismissing him so that the blonde could go woo your cousin; you could also finish writing your thoughts down in your composition book.

“Is she doing alright?” Private Snow asked instead of saying goodbye.

‘She seems fine to me. Went right back to singing and charming the stage.” You wanted to add living off of her charms too, but you didn't think that'd go over too well with the buzzcut blonde grunt.

“That's good, I'm glad singing while covered in a bunch of lethal rainbow snakes didn't stop her from singing.”

“Lucy Gray stop singing because of the snakes? Are you kidding me? That girl loves snakes, is always playing with the slithering demons.”

“You don't like snakes, I take it.”

“You ever get snakebite because your loving cousin played a practical joke on you by hiding a harmless garter snake in your shawl that was nestled on the grass?”

“Uh, no, can't say that I have.”

“Yea, well, I have and it's not fun. So, no, I don't like snakes.” You dryly told the blonde peacekeeper.

“Would you like to go for a walk?” Coriolanus asked with a charming smile painted on his face.

One of your brows rose up. “To the meadow to see Lucy Gray?”

No, Coriolanus wanted to take you on a walk.

By yourself.

There was something about you that he was instantly attracted to. As soon as he laid eyes on you, all thoughts on your cousin left his mind.

It's was like ‘Lucy Gray, Lucy Gray who?’ in his brain. She didn't matter to him anymore, but suddenly you did.

You seemed so beautiful to him. Like a fine piece of spun glass that holiday ornaments are crafted from.

Coriolanus couldn't explain it, but he has the primal urge to claim you. To protect you; make you his. All because of the sweet look in your doe eyes whenever you answered the door for him.

“No.” Coriolanus shook his head. “I want to take you for a walk, spend some time with you before I have to head back to base.”

He wanted to spend time with you? Oh boy, now that's unexpected.

All you could do was smile and squeak out, “Okay.”

And that's how you became Private Snow's girl, much to Lucy Gray's dismay.

You've been seeing Coriolanus for a few weeks now. Every weekend he seems to get weekend passes from his commander; uses them to stay with you at the Covey house. The Covey takes to him pretty well, especially when he brings over something from the Mellark bakery with every visit. He also brings over large bags of ice too, which is a godsend considering your family doesn't have an icebox.

Lucy Gray looks at him with sorrow and pain in her big, brown eyes. It's evident that she's disappointed that Coryo (what he's told you to call him) picked you over her. See, nobody ever picks you over her.

Well, not until Coryo that is.

But he's not like the other district boys because he's not district. He's a Capitol boy. And you know what they say…

You can take the boy out of the Capitol, but you can't take the Capitol out of the boy.

Today's a sweltering hot summer's day so you, Coryo, his friend Sejanus, and the Covey are at the lake: swimming.

You and your platinum blonde peacekeeper are the last to enter the water. Everyone else is already in the water as you two stand by the dock, stripping out of your clothes. Despite having seen Coriolanus naked a few times already, seeing him pull off his shirt makes you swoon.

You can't help it. He's just so handsome. Too pretty to be real.

Goddamn, those broad shoulders, toned arms, toned chest, and tapered waist of his gets you every time.

And yes, when the Covey's asleep he sneaks into your bed; fucks you senseless. The two of you think that Lucy Gray doesn't know, but she does. Her room and yours share a wall, she has ears and can hear the noises you and Coriolanus don't even try to quiet down.

Lucy Gray's disappointed in how reckless you're acting with Coriolanus. The last thing the Covey needs is for you to fall pregnant. Your family can barely stay afloat as it is.

But, on the other hand, your cousin can't help, but to see how happy you and her former mentor look, laughing and giggling as he chases you down the dock, causing you to jump into the water with him cannonballing in right after you.

The loud sounds of laughs, squeals, and overall cheerfulness mixed with water splashing loudly fills the air. Everyone's having fun.

But despite that, Coryo seems a bit melancholy. So much so that he swims a few yards away from the group, just to have a moment to himself. You have no idea what's going on in that head of his, but you don't want him to feel alone. As if he can't lean on you.

So, you swim over to him; climb up his back like a sloth and wrap your arms around him. You rest your chin on his shoulder, causing him to grab your hand and lift it up to his lips; pressing a kiss against your knuckles.

The boys, Sejanus included, are cleaning the fish that they caught while your little sister's digging up swamp potatoes (Katniss as Lucy Gray calls it) and giving it to Lucy Gray, only for your cousin to remind Maude Ivory that the plant’s roots ain't ready yet. Barb Azure was with Lucy Gray, just talking.

And you're off to the side, laying on a blanket with Coryo. Your head’s in his lap as he lazily runs his long fingers thru your hair. Looking out at the view of the crystal blue lake and the trees surrounding it, Coryo told you, “It's beautiful out here.” Flashing you a smile, he added in, “Thank you for sharing this with me. You sharing your special spots with me means a lot, little dove.”

“No need to thank me, Coryo. I enjoy spending time with you; bringing you along on Covey excursions just happens to be a part of that.” You replied with a genuine smile.

“You know, there's so much I’d like to show you in the Capitol.”

“Lucy Gray says that the Capitol's a horrible place.”

“Don't listen to her, Y/N. She never told me about you, but she talked an awful lot about your little sister and the rest of the Covey.”

“She talked about them, but not me?” You asked, feeling sudden heartbreak and betrayal from your cousin.

Coriolanus’ heart hurts for you. He can't imagine how it'd feel to be so easily dismissed by his cousin, Tigris, who practically raised him. Just seeing your face so fallen and grief stricken at the revelation that Lucy Gray talked about all of her cousins, except for you, made him want to protect you from her.

Yes!

Coryo wants to protect you from your own cousin.

But not just her. No, he wants to protect you from everything that might cause you harm. And the only way to do that is bringing you back to the Capitol with him.

“Do you like it here, in District 12?” He wondered. He personally hates it; secretly wants you to hate it too.

“No.” You shook your head. “It's miserable in 12.”

“It's not miserable in the Capitol. The Capitol had rules, law and order, food, and warm beds.” Coryo recited, as if reading an ad from a vacation brochure. “I hope that when I go back one day that you'll come with me.” He confessed, looking down at you with a hopeful smile.

“I dunno if I could leave the Covey. They're my family, Coryo.” You honestly answered, feeling a sense of dread at the idea of leaving your family behind for another life. A life thousands and thousands of miles away from them.

“But you could leave me, your man?” Coryo asked incredulously, his jaw ticking.

“Coryo-” You tried to reason, only for him to cut you off with a blunt honest retort of, “You're going to have to choose one day, little dove. I just hope you pick me.”

Silence fell over the two of you as he twisted his torso, reaching into his bag beside him to get something. You didn't pay it any mind, figuring he was getting a snack or something that he packed. But, when you noticed a balled up piece of orange material in his hand as he straightened his back to resume his previous position of sitting, you couldn't help but wonder what the material was.

It wouldn't take you long to find out.

Handing you over the orange ball of fine spin silk, he softly told you, “It belonged to my mother.”

“Oh, Coryo…” Your hands gently clutched the token to your heart. You knew that it must've meant a lot to him; that you must mean a lot to him too in order to receive such a gift. “Thank you, I'll take good care of it.” You studied the orange gift, concluding that it's a scarf. “I promise.” You smiled, looking between him and the scarf. Taking his hand in yours, you sighed, “I only wish that I had something meaningful to give you back.”

“I don't need anything, but your love, darling.” Coryo assured you before bending down, cupping your cheek with his large hand, and capturing your lips in a soft, but hungry kiss.

The following week, you began getting sick in the early mornings. Sometimes, you'd get sick due to a strong smell too. You even seemed more fatigued, sometimes even feeling a bit flushed and dizzy. And your boobs were tender. You knew what the symptoms mean and it terrifies you.

It terrifies you because you and Coryo never talked about the possibility of children. Would he even want a baby? He's a peacekeeper, is he even allowed to claim a baby with a Covey girl? Would the baby be a bastard? Would he-

“Hey, little dove, what's wrong?” Coryo asked, walking up your front porch with a bag of ice over his shoulder and a paper bag labeled Mellark Bakery in hand.

“We need to talk, Coriolanus.” You sighed, picking at your nails.

You're afraid that after you tell him your discovery that he'll leave and never come back.

Coryo's brow furrowed with worry. You haven't called him Coriolanus since the day you first met him. Something's wrong.

Setting the bags he was carrying down, he went over to your side. He pulled you up from your seat on an old wooden rocker, only to sit down and pull you onto his lap. Lightly threading his fingers into your hair, he asked, “What's wrong, little dove?”

“I'm pregnant, Coryo.” You nervously revealed, dropping your head in shame.

“Yea?” Coryo asked, gently tipping your chin up; making you look into his icy eyes. Icy blue eyes that are filled with only joy and pride. “We’re having a baby?”

“Yea.” You confirm.

“I promise, I'll take care of both of you.” Your peacekeeper vowed, protectively placing one of his large hands over your stomach. He pressed his lips against yours in a soft, chaste kiss. Pulling away, he leaned his forehead against yours and asked, “Does the Covey know?”

“No. I wanted to wait to tell them.”

“Why? Are you afraid of what they'll say?” Coryo asked, genuine concern flooding his baby blues.

“I doubt they'll be happy about another mouth to feed.” You sighed. You could already hear your family's fake congratulations in your head. You know full well that they'll be disappointed about this. It's just not the ideal timing.

Coryo tucked a stray piece of hair behind your ear. “Don't worry, little dove. We'll figure it out.” Your boyfriend assured you with a thin smile.

Coryo didn't want you performing with the Covey anymore. He claimed that the stress of it would be bad for the baby. So, you obliged him and made a lame excuse about a headache in order to be a spectator in the crowd.

You're sitting at a table against the wall with Sejanus and Coryo. The boys are drinking jars of shine while you're stuck drinking nothing- since shine's bad for pregnancy and the Hobb doesn't have anything else for drinking. Lucy Gray had just started singing her debut of a new song whenever Sejanus excused himself and took off to the bar, where Billy Taupe was. It looked like he was waiting for him too.

“You might want to keep an eye on that. Billy's bad news, Coryo.” You told your boyfriend, subtly gesturing to where Sejanus and Billy Taupe were.

Unknown to you, Coryo's been keeping an eye on it. That he even sent a jabberjay to the Capitol with Sejanus' dumb rebel plans on it so that Strabo Plinth could be made aware of the bullshit his son's up to; buy him a discharge and a one-way ticket back to the Capitol.

“I'll follow him; check it out.” Coryo told you, standing up. “Stay here, I'll only be a minute, little dove.” Coryo kissed your cheek before slithering thru the crowd to follow Sejanus and Billy Taupe as they ventured to a back room.

After a while, you got concerned and decided to find out what was going on. So, you went down the back hallway and into the room you saw Coryo slip into. Which was a mistake considering you walked right into a dicey situation.

You saw a small pile of guns splayed out with Sejanus, Billy Taupe, Spruce, and Coryo all in a corner of the room, exchanging barbs.

“Who's she?” Spruce asked, pointing to you with a gun.

Looking over his shoulder, Coryo gritted his teeth and told you, “Baby, I told you to wait for me out there.” He grabbed your wrist and shoved you behind him, while telling Spruce, “She's my girl.”

But at the same time Billy Taupe said, “Y/N Scarlett's Covey, her and her peacekeeper friends are coming with us.”

“Since when, Billy?” Asked the shrill voice that belonged to the district shrew, Mayfair Lipp.

Oh shit…

Mayfair entered from the other side of the room, making her presence known when she heard her pathetic accordion player boyfriend was planning on taking a Covey girl and some peacekeepers somewhere.

Somewhere her daddy wouldn't approve of.

“What's going on?” The redhead asked.

Looking at his girl, who he was trying to shake in favor of making up with Lucy Gray, Billy said, “I'll explain later, Mayfair. Just let it go.”

“No, I won't let it go, Billy. I want to know what you're planning with these guns.”

“Oh my God, Coryo, I'm so sorry. I swear, I didn't mean to bring you into this mess.” Sejanus cried.

“You should be sorry. You've pulled not just me, but the mother of my child into your stupid bullshit.” Coryo angrily shouted. He was so pissed that he could strangle Sejanus for his stupidity.

“I'm so sorry, I didn't know.” Blubbered the dark haired peacekeeper.

“Wait a minute, I know exactly who the two of you are.” Mayfair’s beady eyes lit up. Pointing at Coryo, she said, “You were Lucy Gray Baird’s Capitol mentor during the games.” Pointing to you, she sniggered, “And you're her cousin.”

You and Coryo exchanged worried looks. Right now, both of you wished you'd stayed outside in the main bar room of the Hobb.

“Well, wouldn't my daddy like to know that you're all planning on running away.” Mayfair's voice rang out, all smug and evil sounding.

“She won't say anything.” Billy Taupe assured everyone. Looking at his girlfriend, he asked, “Won't you?”

“Oh, why don't you ask her if I'm bluffing.” Mayfair pointed to you. “Did your cousin like her trip to the Capitol? Maybe you and your peacekeeper traitor boyfriend will like your trip to the hanging tree.” Mayfair said before pivoting on her heel and making to leave. To tell her father, Mayor Lipp, about what she's seen and overheard.

But before she got very far, Coryo reached for one of the rifles and shot her in the back, causing her to fall down.

Dead.

Your eyes widened, but you knew why he did it. He did it to protect you and the baby.

“What did you just do?! Why did you do that for?!” Billy Taupe shouted at Coryo while Sejanus was just balling his eyes out.

“He did what he had to, she was gonna talk.” Spruce said, siding with Coryo.

“Oh, I'm not going down for this.” Billy frantically said, most likely figuring that he'd be the first suspect since he was Mayfair's man. Grabbing a gun, he pointed it at you and Coriolanus.

He never got a shot off cause Spruce got him first. Tossing his gun in the pile and motioning for Coryo to do the same, he told your boyfriend, “I'll get rid of the guns.”

Coriolanus nodded, only to turn to you and cup your cheeks. “Go back out there and find some friends to talk to as an alibi.” Kissing you, he swore, “I'll keep you and our baby safe, I promise, my little dove.”

“I know you will.” You replied, softly wrapping your hands around his wrists and squeezing them.

Sejanus was crying to bad that he was hunched over, having a panic attack. You and Coryo shared a silent look. Without words, you told him to help his friends and he agreed that he word.

After parting from each other, you went out to the main bar room of the Hobb while Coryo calmed down his best friend and assured Sejanus that they're brothers; that he'll protect him.

Sadly, Coryo couldn't protect Sejanus from being marked a rebel spy and a traitor; from the noose of the hanging tree. The death of his friend hit him hard. Sejanus was hanged alongside Spruce and his sister, Lil.

Coryo had received a spot in an elite officer's training program in 2; he wanted you to go along with him. Apparently officers were allowed to have women. Coriolanus himself was the son of General Crassus Snow. You agreed to go with him, but told him that you suspect that Spruce might've told Lucy Gray about what happened.

When he asked you why, you told him that Lucy Gray made a remark about how you couldn't trust Coryo because men like him need to tie up loose ends in order to get what they want. That if he's able to find the guns hidden at the cabin he'll get rid of her; tie up his loose end so that he'll be free to ran back to the Capitol.

Lucy Gray had told you that in warning, after stumbling upon Spruce hiding the guns while out hiking to help clear her head and get her muses energized. But, you didn't take her warning. In fact, you did the opposite of that warning; told Coryo all about it.

When he asked where your cousin was so that he could talk to her about what she knew, you never would've thought in your wildest dreams that he'd kill her to shut her up. To ensure that he'd be able to bring you with him to District 2.

So, you told him that Lucy Gray was hiding out at the lakeside cabin because she was afraid of Mayor Lipp (since he's been harassing her ever since his daughter's death).

No, how would you know that by telling your boyfriend where to find your cousin that you're signing her death warrant.

The day of your departure arrives and you don't have many things to bring. Just a single, small carpet bag filled with a handful of dresses. You're wearing one of your nicest dresses paired with the orange scarf Coryo gave you. And when Coryo saw you step onto the train platform, he couldn't help but to run over to you and wrap his arms around you.

Kissing you, he smiled, “You look beautiful, my darling.”

“You look quite handsome yourself.” You told him, since he did look stunning in his dress uniform. Honestly, the hat did things for you.

“I'm glad you think so.” He smirked. Breaking your embrace, he took your hand in his and said, “Come on, we need to be sent off by Commander Hoff.”

“Okay.” You nod, despite feeling uneasy about revealing your relationship to his former commander.

After a couple of minutes walking along the platform, you spotted Commander Hoff. He was standing by the train, waiting for Coriolanus. Upon seeing him, Coryo greeted him with a salute. You did a slight curtsey, out of respect.

“There’s been a slight change of plans. You and your girl will be going to the Capitol instead.” Commander Hoff informed the two of you. “You make us proud, Snow.” He said before walking off.

“The Capitol…” You trailed off in awe.

A large grin split Coryo's face from ear to ear as he picked you up and spun you around. “We're going home, baby. We're going home.”

As you sat with Coryo on a train bound for the Capitol your family was at home, sulking over your sudden decision to leave. One that they didn't approve of. One that they thought Lucy Gray would be able to talk you out of if she was around. They blamed the mayor for her absence

And while, yes, her fear of Mayor Lipp made Lucy Gray hide out in the cabin, it was Coriolanus Snow that truly made her disappear when he showed up at the cabin, peacekeeper issued pistol in hand. Poor thing was at her patch of Katniss, checking to see if they were ready to pick when he snuck up behind her and shot her point blank in the head.

He dumped her and the guns that he found hidden under the floorboards, after tearing the entire cabin apart, in the lake.

You'd never know that he committed not one but two murders to keep you safe, to keep your unborn baby safe. Because to Coryo you're as precious as spun glass and he'll do anything to protect you. Anything or anybody he sees as a threat to you and the baby he'll deal with.

And he knew that Lucy Gray was dangerous. She didn't trust him; might try to turn you against him. The thing about spun glass that it can break if not handled with care. Coryo will never let anyone break you, so Lucy Gray had to go.

He knew that your cousin saw right thru his facade. Could see him for the true snake he was. And he couldn't have her ruining everything for the two of you.

But you'll never know any of that. All you'll know is the safety of the Capitol and a loving husband that'll spoil you and your baby rotten.

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s1llydr3amscape · 5 months ago

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LET ME OUT

Looks like someone failed the captcha test to many times!

Anyways I always wanted to doodle this specific pose from Toyless' animation why because I can :]

Extras under the cut :

This was the specific screenshot I based the pose off I love hands grabbing head!!! :

youtube

The original video ^ (I'll be real with yall I was shocked the original song was poppy playtime because my only experience with it was that all my baby cousins loved that franchise. And they would show me vids off it at family gatherings because I was the babysitter. One of em even debated me abt fnaf like chill out bro you weren't even born when it came out!!!!!)

Glitchtrap rambling time woohoo let's go!!!!

-I redrew em again because I think I'm almost 100% happy with its design!!!! Like I don't wanna change their face so much because the way his face is shaped is my fave!!! Like they have the same style of muzzle as sonic characters!!!!!! I just made it rounder cuz its their early days before this au lore

-I just wanna achieve the unnaturalness with their design. Like they don't belong here. They want to get out. LET HIM OUT. type vibe basically like that's why it has like those kind off teeth instead off the rabbit ones. They get those later in the au.

-I fucking love Glitchtrap so much you don't understand they're so peak!!!!!! I jokingly hate him because I despise what it did to Vanny.

-I was a fan since day 1 bro is just so unique like woah a non animatronic for a change?!?!? STRAIGHT UP A FURSUIT!??!?! Color me impressed!!! I love zooming on it its model and seeing everyy little detail!!! Like omg bro is crying and drooling on the suit!!!!! There's also a patch of uneven stitching pattern on the top of their head compared to their mostly symmetrical design!!!

-I was so fixated on em like my level of obsession for him was bad bad!!!! Like yeah it was still there when Vanny came around during the curse of Dreadbear DLC but you don't understand it surpassed all my Foxy art!!! The first fnaf character I fixated on!?!?? Like what and yall can ask my IRLS bro had lots n lots of art!!!!! I have so much trad art of glitchy it's embarassing!!! Atleast I improved tbh!!

-I just really really loved the fan animations were bro got to time travel to the older fnaf animations and fuck em up!!!! Causing them all to glitch out like hello PEAK!?!?!?! No im not biased to rabbit characters with whiskers shhhhh... SHHH...

-Because I know all those animations already and it's like omg omg OMG Glitchtrap kinda expanded my music taste imma be fr... Fnaf autism is so bad I omfg I only listened to fnaf songs and the only time I listened to other franchises songs is because someone animated fnaf over it... like yeah I was an animation meme kid but even then I only remember the lyrics and titles to songs if I saw fnaf on them (cringe!!!!) So yeah thank u Glitchtrap <33333

-I think Malhare is the cooler name but the Glitchtrap name is cool too because when the names end in trap like this it makes me think they're like warrior cats adjacent. So in this one they just fluctuate between either Malhare or Glitchtrap

-Also another reason he's my super fave is because my brain predicted it's gloop form!!!!

-Like no joke literally the same character I dreamt about during the early days before Princess Quest.

-Except mine was a shadow like the shadow animatronics. More wispy than gloopy. I think the reason I dreamt it was because Shadow Toy Chica and fan made shadow animatronics were getting popular!! But legit same character and colors!!!!!!!

-Just a big dark mass with purple eyes surrounding it like literally the same character my brain came up with and I'm just wow <3333 minus the fact my design had really big giant swirly white eyebrows

-However my Shadow Glitchtrap was kinda more wack to say the least. Like heheheh cuz Glitchtraps a fursuit there's no denying that I changed the dream design a bit. In my old Glitchtrap designs they'd have a zipper and so what would happen was they'd unzip and flip their insides into outsides to reveal the Shadow Glitchtrap thing which was hiding inside them.

-Like those plushies that you can unzip to reveal a different plushie design basically!!!!

-TBH I prefer Glooptrap because yeah!!!!! Amalgamation of hate let's go!!!!!! I think with how gloopy he is its just fun to draw I love the fact that the weird Glitchtrap blockers look like that it fits too much with my own preestablished AU lore.

-I feel like Glitchtrap turns into Glooptrap from like the seams of their suit. Like you see that each part the suit got stitched just turn black as black liquid pours out like ohhh that shit haunted!!!! Bursting outta the seams like oh this guy has no one inside they're all just black sludge!!!!

-In this AU specifically (The one with my millions of Vanny designs) is actually a spoof fnaf AU where everyone lives!!! Like I have 3 AUs technically one of them being the fnaf cast in my oc world where they become my ocs basically called Rabbit City. My other one which is my more serious canon adjacent fnaf AU where no silly stuff or shipping happens, and it's just more overall following my own formed understanding of the canonicity and the series of events with me trying to keep the animatronics more game accurate (I dont think ive posted any of that here due to me feeling like my style limits the nit and grit I wanna go with it). And this one I mainly post on here where everything is just silly and bends to my command and everyone lives because I love everyone <333333 Literally playing with my toys type AU where I do what I want which is why a million vanny designs are in this AU specifically. I usually tag it as this 🦭🩷🐇🐰🐇🐰🐇🐰🐯 because the original name of this au is self indulgent and I'm embarrassed but it's too iconic to change it.

-Glitchtrap in this AU is just much more goofy and silly infecting people like a zombie virus and possessing them for his own gain. Weird eldritch horror that came out of a fnaf fangame. Anything goes in this AU so if I wanna make Glitchtrap a mind controlling zombie warlock wizard so be it!!!! Sorry I love zombies soo much you will have to take this trope out of my cold dead hands!!!!! I love rot!!!

-That's why it's wrinkly because they too me are like a rotten banana (Even though his associated smell to me is lemongrass). Imagine squeezing a banana still with it's skin on. That's how I imagine bro turns into glooptrap if they didn't open the zipper in time. Also because I love the design trope of rotting and withering sue me. I love when the flesh sags across the body. Wrinkles are great bro theyre so real!!!!! Also because back then people kept drawing him as skinny as a twig??? Even though they have fat??? So I made them fatter mostly because like I love the gloop part of it hiding inside <3333

-They're more green pink and purple because imma be real my fave color combo ever <33333

-I wanna do an xray piece with them soon to show their insides but I'm still uncertain if I have the art prowess to concoct it exactly like how I envision it yet. Like I need to squash and scretch them more. They need to look more decrepit and horrible!!!!! something like the unknown from dbd!!!!

-They can't actually emote properly stuck in a permanent smile

-Glithctrap and Vanny’s dynamic is like Lord Hater and Commander Peepers in this one. There's more character adjacent to the dynamic between them concocted in my head but I wanna draw a comic abt it :]

-Like yeah one second they're besties and the next they're at each other's throats ready to strangle eachother. Vanny reluctantly trying to help him at first like how she was first called.

-Oh also in this specific AU Glitchtrap isn't connected to William in the slightest more just it's own thing!!!!

-He's like an AI that wants to be human. It believes it is human. They've mimicked people too much that they don't know what they are anymore. Or what it wants anymore. What do they want.

357 notes · View notes

crdteezv · 10 months ago

Text

Untitled - Han

Paring: !childhood friends to lovers! , perv!han jisung x afab! reader

Genre: idol! Au, smut

Synopsis: You finally reunited with your childhood best friend after 10 years! But, you didn’t notice how much he changed since you last saw each other…

Warnings: smut, rough sex, dub/non-con, somno, dirty talk, teasing, kissing, fingering, groping, use of sex toys, voyeurism, manhandling, overstimulation, unprotected sex

Word Count: 2.5k words

A/n: This was requested by someone a long time ago and I decided to post it now. This does contain CNC (aka consensual non consent) & if that’s something you’re not comfortable with please DON’T READ THIS!!!

One late night, you and Jisung were in a convenience store. He was up late in the studio working on a song with Chan. On his way home, he thought he should stop by and grab some food. You so happened to be there wanting the same thing. The aisles were really small and you had barely any room to walk around. You accidentally bump into him and he looks at you with a confused look.

Then it hit him.

You both used to be childhood friends and practically grew up with each other. You were also neighbors at one point and used to hang out all the time. Sadly at the beginning of high school, you had to move away. You both lost contact with each other and haven’t spoken since then.

“Hey, do you remember me? Han Jisung? We used to be neighbors and would hang out all the time.”

In that moment all the memories you shared with him came back. You were shocked, to say the least. Who would’ve thought you would reunite with Jisung in a convenience store of all places?

“OH MY GOD YES! I do remember you, Jising how have you been?”

He was so relieved that you remembered him. It's been over 10 years since you last saw each other. Even after all this time, he can still recall your beautiful smile.

“I’ve been good and I took your advice and focused on music! I am now a part of an Idol group. Thank you for always motivating me to become an Idol.”

“Aww of course! I still can’t believe you remember me telling you to go for it. That was such a long time ago. I was just a kid and would just be saying whatever really.”

"Well, how could I forget someone like you? You were my best friend - I was too shy to talk to anyone else."

Both of you shared a laugh. Jisung usually stuck to his close friends and found it difficult to make new ones. As he mentioned, you were his only true best friend.

“Well, I knew you would love pursuing a music career! I recently moved back here for school!”

♡♡♡♡

From that point on you and Jisung talked the whole night, he even walked you home. You exchanged numbers and would hang out when you both could. One thing led to another and he asked you officially on a date. You both knew you had feelings for each other.

You and Jisung got into a relationship not too long ago after that. It’s only been about 5 months and still very fresh and new. Sadly, after dating for 2 months, he had to go on a tour with all the members. So the majority of your relationship was long-distance. You still were learning so much about each other at this point.

However, people can change in the span of 10 years. Although Jisung was still the same kind-hearted and witty guy, you knew something was different about him.

Jisung became such a pervert for you and you didn’t even know it.

It only took you guys reconnecting recently to realize how obsessed he was with you. Before you started dating, he would sometimes come over to your apartment late as a surprise. Given how often he was at your place, you had given him a spare key.

One night he left the studio early and went straight to your place because he missed your company. He entered your apartment and kept calling out your name. He was confused when he didn’t hear you give a response back. He saw that your bedroom was opened a little bit and you were moaning out loud. He was taken aback by what he was seeing right now. He always would think of you in a sexual light but this was too much for him.

Your legs were spread open as you used your dildo. You let your imagination go wild and imagine Jisung was the one pounding into you. You were so horny you even moaned out his name.

He felt so hard after seeing all the things you were doing to yourself. He also felt really bad because he knew he was not even supposed to be here right now. He just wanted to watch a movie with you like he always does before he goes home. Jisung always loved watching movies with you, especially the cheesy romance movies. You would both make fun of the actors and how bad their acting was.

Instead, he was outside of your room stroking his cock to your moans.

He was imagining that he was making you feel this good. He tried to not make a noise so you didn’t suspect anything. It wouldn’t even matter anyway because you were too busy in your own world fucking yourself to the thought of him. He eventually came at the same time that you did.

Jisung realized how perverted he was jerking himself outside of your room without you even knowing. He quickly cleaned up himself and left your place before you noticed. He never told you about that night.

There are a lot of things he doesn’t tell you.

Sometimes you would send him some scandalous photos of yourself to see if you look good. You would ask him so you can get a guy's perspective on it.

However, he would secretly save them on his phone and beat off to them later. He always tells himself he will delete them and will never do it again. Yet, every time he is horny, he keeps on going back to those photos in his folder of you and gains so much gratification from it.

He was so obsessed with you that every little thing you did would turn him on. The way you put him in a trance from just your moans alone was insane. All he can think about is the first time he caught you getting off to him.

Now ever since you have been dating, you guys see each other less since he recently went on tour. All these nights you guys would spend without each other was so hard for him. It was so bad to the point that he would sometimes hide in the hotel bathroom and jerk off to your pics and videos he still had saved of you.

This was so embarrassing for him and he already felt like shit doing all this behind your back. But, he was too far gone give a fuck about it now. He always thinks about how disgusted you’d probably feel if you ever found out about his secret collection of you.

He just misses being with you in person instead of calling on FaceTime. It was getting frustrating for him and all he wanted to do is fuck you.

However, tonight was his last straw and he couldn’t take it anymore. He has been back from touring for about a week now. He took some time to recover before seeing you. He knows the moment he sees you it's going to be over for him.

Unfortunately, he had to be in the studio tonight with Chan and Changbin making some new music. It really sucked because today you and him were supposed to hang out after he was done working. But at the last minute, Chan told him he needed his help on this song he was thinking of making. The whole time Han was thinking about your moans from all the times he would touch himself to you.

He kept on getting distracted and barely gave any help to Chan and Changbin.

“Hey Jisung, are you okay? You’re normally not this quiet.” Chan said.

Jisung knew that he wasn’t ok.

All he wanted to do was go to your apartment and fuck the shit out of you. He has been pent up for too long now. You and him only had sex a handful of times and you have been without each other for 3 months.

“Yeah, I'm just a little distracted right now. Sorry, but I don’t think I’ll be much help tonight.”

“Hey, it’s ok! I know how tired you may feel after the tour so you can go home tonight. Have a good night!”

Jisung nodded his head and quickly left the studio. There was only one thing on his mind right now.

You.

He went straight to your place and opened the door with his key. He noticed you were asleep, lying on your side. Under the covers, you had your vibrator in your hands, and you were passed out on the bed.

That alone made him so hard. The thought of you using it and moaning out his name is driving him crazy.

He started taking off his clothes leaving himself in just his boxers. He gets into bed with you, wrapping his arms around you. You were barely awake but you leaned back against him not even realizing he was there with you.

He started grinding against you and became hard for you. He couldn’t hold back and started grunting out loud. At this point, you started to wake up. You felt afraid as the room was dark, making it hard for you to realize that it was Jisung. In your drowsy state, you half-awake, you thought he was an intruder.

You start to panic.

“Hey, who is there? Get the fuck off of me-”

You started hearing a buzzing sound.

It was your vibrator and he started to push it against your clit to try and make you stop talking.

“Shh sweetie it’s me. I am sorry you just got me soo fucking hard and I can’t take it anymore.”

You were in a state of shock and disbelief. You have never seen Jisung like this before.

“Mhmm I know you’re but I already came and I am too tired to do it again. Can’t we just do it in the morning?”

If only it was that simple.

Jisung's patience was running thin and he decided to not hold back anymore.

He covered your mouth and whispered in your ear and said

“I’m sorry baby, but tonight I am going to take what I want. And right now I need you to just let me fuck you.”

At this point, you were squirming around and yelling at him to stop it. You really weren’t in the mood for all this. He kept getting agitated and started putting his hand around your neck and began choking you. As he did that he started marking you and biting your neck and shoulders. With his other hand, he started to pump into his cock and get off to your cries and whimpers.

“You're squirming so much for me baby and I think it's so cute. The more you struggle, the harder you’re gonna get me"

You couldn’t believe what Jisung was saying to you right now. Your perception of him completely changed now. You thought he was sweet-hearted and nice and not such a creep and pervert.

He couldn’t take it anymore and started lowering his boxers and took out his cock.

You can already feel the precum that was escaping him and how needy he was for you. He started slowly pushing it in you. You gasped out so loud even though he was covering your mouth.

You forgot how big he was.

He also put his hands under your shirt and held onto them as he started pounding up into you. He also had the vibrator on your clit too. He started leaving hickeys all over your neck. He didn’t care what he was doing at this point he was marking where he felt like it.

You were still whining and crying from how hard he is fucking you and the vibrator on your clit wasn’t making it any better.

“Stop making so much noise sweetie, I already feel bad as is.”

You started crying at this point because all you want for him is to stop but he just keeps on going. He says such sinful stuff in your ear that you don’t even know how to feel at this point.

He started laughing at you crying from his dick,

“Aww baby, are you crying from how hard I’m fucking you? You’re so pathetic can’t even take a couple of hard strokes.”

You didn’t know why but for some reason when he said that you started to tighten up around him. That alone made you feel wetter.

He noticed it.

“Mhmm look at you becoming such a good girl for me. I knew deep down you secretly wanted this.”

You kept shaking your head, displaying that you were against this.

That just made him more hard and started fuck you harder and harder. You started to become so dizzy from all this stimulation.

Jisung was at his breaking point.

All this overstimulation started to become overwhelming for you. You wondered why he wasn't pulling out, as he usually does when you both are close. However, this time, he continues without stopping, still thrusting into you.

“ I am sorry but tonight, I have to finish inside you. I have been waiting for 3 fucking months. So how about you be good to me and take what I give you ok darling?”

At this point, you couldn’t take it anymore.

He took his hand off your mouth as you both came at the same time. You didn’t give a fuck at this point you were practically screaming out his name as he pumps his load into you. Both your moans were so loud you wouldn’t be shocked if your neighbors heard you.

Jisung fell back beside you and pulled you into him. He put you on his chest and wrapped his arms around you. He started kissing you all over and said

“Sweetie, I’m sorry for the way I acted out tonight. I just missed being with you these past 3 months. Especially being inside of you. Fuck I missed that soo much and having you moan out my name.”

You nuzzled into his chest and said “Yeah it's okay and I missed you so much too. Next time just tell me whenever you're in the mood. Tonight you really scared me. I hope you don’t act like this again.”

“Fine, I’ll never act out like that ever again and I am truly sorry if I hurt you.”

However, you both knew that wasn’t true and he would always come to take what he wants…

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leaderwonim · 10 months ago

Text

I LOVE YOU LIKE . . .

pairing. enhypen ot7 x fem!reader

genre. fluff, angst in some of them if you squint

synopsis: in which enha members love you like different songs

LEE HEESEUNG

“i love you like seasons by wave to earth”

he was the bad boy who was afraid to love you because he was so scared he would ruin your life. he tried convincing you that it wouldn’t work, that you deserved way better than he could ever be.

“that’s not true hee,” you say as you cupped his face into your hands. “i love you and that’s all that matters.”

although lee heeseung swore to himself he would never fall in love, the idea is thrown out the window as soon as you muttered those 3 words that seemed to change his whole lookout on life.

“i love you.” he says as he places a kiss on your forehead, engulfing you into a hug. “thank you for loving me back in this universe.”

PARK JONGSEONG

“i love you like my love mine all mine by mitski”

jay was a certified lover boy by heart. people, more specifically, guys—would often tell jay it was too early to settle down and he should have as much fun as he could before that moment came.

he disagreed completely. jay wanted someone to love, someone who he’d propose to after dating for some time. he didn’t just want someone to warm his bed for the night, or call when he’s drunk and alone. he wanted someone who would stay up late to talk about spontaneous things like how many kids they wanted or what career they wanted to go into.

and he found himself lucky when he met you, the cute girl in his chemistry class on his first day at college. you swooned him over with just one smile, and he knew he was helpless right there and then.

“here—i can get that.” he says, reaching for your heavy backpack.

“oh it’s okay jay!” you quickly protest, but it’s to no avail because jay’s already got it swung around his shoulder, your textbooks in his hand.

“i can’t have my future children knowing i made their mother carry heavy items, can i?” he jokes, which makes you blush as you look down at your feet.

“enough jay! you’re gonna make me turn a tomato.”

it has only been one week since he’s asked you to be his girlfriend with some cliche chemistry pickup line, but it was the best decision of his life. after all, you were all his, and he was all yours.

SIM JAEYUN

“i love you like would that i by hozier”

sim jaeyun likes to think of your relationship as a breath of fresh air on the first day of summer vacation. he feels fulfilled when he’s with you, and he couldn’t ask the universe for a better feeling.

when you spoke about the things you loved, he listened in attentively, his pretty eyelashes batting as his ears concentrated themselves to only tune into your voice.

“hey! are you listening?” sunoo whines as he taps jake’s shoulder, but heeseung stops stops him.

“don’t bother,” heeseung snickers. “jake’s too obsessed with his girlfriend to hear you.”

he lives for picnic dates with you in autumn when the leaves are turning their pretty shade of orange. he’d pick a more secluded place, one where you can run off into the nearby grass while he chases after you, pulling you into a hug and placing kisses all over your face once he catches you

PARK SUNGHOON

“i love you like slut by taylor swift”

park sunghoon was most definitely the most popular guy in your uni. he had the looks and his shy but charming personality made him even more attractive to the girls.

when they first saw you walking around with sunghoon, there were rumors that he was just using you because they’d never seen him with a girl before and he wasn’t the type of guy to get into a relationship (but boy were they wrong)

he wanted to take things slow because he really liked you, so you two began hanging out more and more and he even introduced you to his friends — heeseung, jake and jay.

heeseung and jake even took you to the arcade after one of your long exams, claiming they needed to take care of sunghoon’s girlfriend even though he hadn’t officially asked you out yet.

when girls at the uni saw this, they freaked out, bombarding you with words like slut or whore simply because you were hanging out with sunghoon’s friends.

“i don’t know why they hate me so much.” you sniffle as you wipe away your tears. one of the girls had bumped into your shoulder harshly as she was walking by, creating a small but aching bruise where she had hit.

“c’mere.” sunghoon says, pulling you into his arms. “they’re just jealous because i like you and not them. you’re the most beautiful and sweetest girl i know.”

even though everybody seemed to like park sunghoon, he made it clear that he wanted you, and when he pulled you in earlier as you cried to him, you realized that in a world full of boys, park sunghoon was a gentleman.

KIM SUNOO

“i love you like sweet by cigarettes after sex”

it was truly easy to fall in love with kim sunoo. he was the epitome of sunshine, and he made your days just a little bit brighter by simply being around you.

loving kim sunoo was sweet and delicate, going on small dates where you two would walk around and eat street food as you admired the views that seoul had to offer.

“i love you, you know that?” sunoo suddenly says, finishing up the last of the bread he bought from the sweet old lady vendor next to your house.

“all of a sudden?” you giggle nervously, tippy toeing to place a small kiss on the bridge of his nose.

“just thought i’d let you know.” he shrugs. “i love you more than anything.”

“i love you too sun,” you smile. “you’re the sweetest boy i could ask for.”

YANG JUNGWON

“i love you like real love baby by father john misty”

loving yang jungwon felt like finally kissing your soulmate in the rain.

it felt like kissing them with such a passion even though both of your hairs are wet from the water and you swear that you’ll catch a cold the next day by your soaked clothes.

however, it doesn’t matter because you’re finally with the one person that you want.

loving yang jungwon felt like that. it felt real, and it felt like it was the final piece in your missing puzzle.

“wanna dance in the rain?” jungwon asks, eyebrows wiggling themselves at you.

you roll your eyes, smacking your hand against his chest softly. “and risk catching a fever? i thought you were more responsible than that yang.”

“ouch,” he says, holding his chest. “we’re on last name basis now?”

you pull him in, placing a kiss so quickly on his lips that he whines when you push him back.

“that was not fair!” he says, sitting himself next to you on the soft fuzzy floor.

“oh my won baby,” you tease. “we can dance in the rain only if you promise we get chinese takeout after.”

“PROMISE!” he shrieks, grabbing your hand as he practically runs over to the coat shack.

NISHIMURA RIKI

“i love you like black friday by tom odell”

nishimura riki was a joker by heart. he loved playing around and making jokes because it made his body rush with dopamine that fueled his ability to keep going.

however, when he was with you, it was like there was a whole new side to him — that not even his friends or family knew.

“i wish i had a better body,” you say, frowning as you look down at your legs that were currently tangled with riki’s on the couch. “i wanna be perfect like all of my friends.”

the clicking of his remote stops immediately after you say that, his game console long abandoned as he untangles his legs from yours, pulling you straight into his arms.

“yah, where is this coming from?” he asks, eyebrows raised. “did someone say something?”

“no.” you sigh.

“you know that you’re the prettiest girl i’ve ever set my eyes on?” he says, holding your shoulders so that he could make direct eye contact with you. “pretty like the ocean, pretty like the wind, everytime i’m around you — i get this rush of adrenaline. you make me so happy.”

your eyes soften at his sweet and genuine tone, wrapping your arms around his neck as you play with his hair. “i love you riki, you make me happy too.”

he lets you lay your head on his lap as he plays his game, your laugh every time he made a noise of disapproval at his teammates made his heart leap.

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okiedokrie · 1 month ago

Text

All Is Fair In Love And War (TEASER)

Summary: Joshua is nothing if not determined. If he wants something, he'll get it; not that he even had to try before. But sometimes, like Icarus, he flies a little too close to the sun. But hey, all is fair in love and war!

Characters/Pairing: Aphrodite Incarnation!Joshua x Fem!Detective!Very Mortal!Reader

Genre: smut, fluff, crack, angst if you really squint

AUs/Trope Info: Greek God!AU, Partners In Solving Crimes, Strangers to Lovers, "time isnt linear" trope, "holy shit im kind of obsessed with you" trope

Word Count: 900+ for the teaser, est. 10k≤ for the full fic

Warnings: Depiction of a crime scene (gore, blood, gun, conspiracy), depiction of drug use, character death (major and minor), smut warnings under the cut when full fic is uploaded

Rating: 18+

A/N: This is part of the The 13 Gods of Olympus: A Seventeen collab hosted by @beomcoups and @wooahaeproductions! This is just the teaser, so if you enjoy it, please consider signing up for the taglist. Thank you!!

In the summer of 2000, Joshua Hong was almost five years old. People always commented on how pretty he was for a kid, that he’d surely grow up to be a very handsome man.

Which is why it was a tragedy when he died from a freak truck accident.

Yes, Joshua Hong died at the age of five. For like, 10 minutes.

The doctors called it a miracle - a small child should not have survived a whole six of the twelve truck wheels, but somehow he was resuscitated, much to his parents’ delight.

This incident caused two things to change dramatically - Californetherlands now has stricter trucking laws and Joshua woke up to memories of literally being Aphrodite.

Throughout the years, from that fateful summer day to the present day, Joshua flopped back and forth between believing that the memories were just fever dreams and genuinely considering that he may be a reincarnation of the goddess. But ever since he got to hone his powers, he’s been more inclined to believe the latter.

By the age of 28, he has mastered the art of seduction. No, not sleeping with people constantly. It was more so the art of getting people to say ‘yes’ to everything he asked of them.

This made Joshua a very powerful and influential figure in Los Amsterdam; You see, the way he dealt wasn’t by out-witting people or being richer than them. He dealt in favors. If you wanted to be a popstar, he’d introduce you to a famous producer, and get you a record deal that would solidify your career - all for the low, low price of free.

In turn, you’d owe him, like the many powerful people who owed him large favors.

Joshua found himself in downtown LA, in the club that he owned, just under his penthouse. He enjoyed playing the guitar and performing for his patrons, everyone seemingly captivated by his voice, or his beauty, whichever one caught their attention first. He finally strummed the last chord of his song, enjoying the applause of the crowd as the DJ started to play the usual club music. Just as he was about to retreat to the bar, a feminine voice stopped him.

“Joshua! Hey!” She said, hair bouncing over her new fur coat, jumping excitedly, calling him over.

Joshua smiled widely at her - she was one of the people he had helped start her career as a singer. He didn’t do much other than introduce her to the CEO of her current label, it was her natural talent that got her this far.

“Ah, Diana, good to see you!” He said, going over to meet her in a friendly hug, the kind that didn’t touch at all. “How has being a singer treated you? Any good news?” He said, making small talk with an old acquaintance.

“Oh please,” she started, her new haughty attitude showing, “It’s all over the news! I just got nominated for a Grammy!” She said in a sing-song tone. Joshua just nodded Truth be told, he didn’t really have much interest in pop music, but he did try to match her enthusiasm.

“That’s great! I knew you’d make it big.” he said, remembering the first time she came to him, a girl in clothes that almost looked like rags, now decked out in every designer brand you could think of. “So, what brings you back here then? Surely you already have everything you ever wanted?” He said lightheartedly. Even if all of Joshua’s connections owed him favors, it was quite uncommon for them to come back to him after having achieved their dreams.

“Well,” She said, her old, meek bashfulness coming to the surface. “I just wanted to see you again, to thank you for what you have done for me.” She tucked a hair behind her ear. “And I know no matter what favor I do for you in return, I could never break even for just how much you’ve impacted my life. So, thank you, Joshua.”

Joshua genuinely felt relieved to hear her say that - usually, people’s pride and greed got in the way of them acknowledging those who truly helped them along the way, but as he suspected, this girl still had a soul so pure. “Let's get some drinks by the bar and chat some more, yeah? My treat.” He offered, which she gladly took, the conversation between them flowed naturally, Joshua enjoying her tales of success.

It was an hour after the club closed that Diana decided it was time to head home. Joshua offered to see her off, like the gentleman he was, and so they walked to the sidewalk, her hand around his arm.

Joshua opened the taxi door for her, offering her a few bills in cash to cover the fare, “It was nice seeing you again, hopefully, you’ll make time to catch up with me in the future.” he said through the taxi window.

“Yeah, I hope I get the chance to see you again soon. Goodnight Joshua.” She said as she rolled up the taxi window.

Joshua watched the taxi drive until the end of the block, everything seemingly going smoothly, up until another car intercepted hers in the intersection.

It happened so quickly, too quickly for Joshua to even register the new car’s window sliding down, holding a gun out to the taxi Diana was in. Gunshots echoed through the street, the sound of tires popping and glass shattering but all Joshua could make out was the sound of two sets of four tires screeching against the concrete. Diana’s taxi collided with a nearby lamppost, the taxi flattening and curling around it.

That was the last time Joshua saw her alive.

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tonixe · 11 months ago

Text

Charade...

a/n: Omg, like guys I'm lowkey obsessed with Coriolanus Snow, like obsessed, but I can't like to stop, like I'm literally going crazy for this white boy like lemme just love you like pleaseeeeee. Also, I got heavily influenced to write this after watching the charade movie, this fic will have lyrics connected to it, so you can listen to it or not, the choice is yours. The song I used is Charade by Henry Mancini.

warning: angst, mentions of some sort of cheating, reader being used, yelling. proofread (?) maybe, idk.

pairing: Coriolanus Snow x reader

word counter: 1.6k

When we played our charade...

You stood there fitting on your dress, one of the maids tightening up your corset on the back of your dress. You were going to attend an event, being seen by the public of the people of Panem. Well, being the first lady of Panem, organizing, and attending thousands of events in your husband's honor. Your role was to keep a smile, even when it was a good time for you or your country. You served the public and served your husband, looking inside yourself into the mirror in front, as the maid finished fighting your dress up. It was a red, burgundy dress that he personally picked for you, to match your husband's suit.

We were like children posing...

You weren't originally supposed to be in the position, you weren't even supposed to be married to him. You only know if when you were kids, him and his cousin, Tigris. You were familiar, knowing her more than you knew him. But time came to pass by, and you managed to know more about him, his likes, and dislikes, he was always around his grandmother when he stopped by you. It was always a vivid memory for you, playing seek with the younger version of himself and running around the park, you really missed him, but now it didn't feel like him at all.

Playing games..acting out names..guessing the parts we played...

Placing your hand near where your heart lay, staring at the mirror hoping it would break. It was a small world, you both went to the same academy, where you met him again after a little time apart, you still sent letters to him though, hoping he read every last word you marked on the page. You manage to reunite there, spending your time with him, talking, walking to classes, and doing everything together.

Oh, what a hit we made...

You felt your heart pumping when you were near him, his nice demeanor making you feel safe. He was your everything, you didn't think he thought the same but you still kept the feelings to yourself. Remember sitting in the library after hours, studying next to him, feeling yourself getting drowsy, almost falling down on your open textbook. "Are you tired?" You turned to him, he didn't look at you, his eyes looking at the textbook. Your cheeks flushed, before he turned to you. You felt your palm getting sweaty, and the pace of your heart increasing, "No" You lied, turning back to your book, "I know when you lie, Y/N" He tapped his shoulder, your eyes widening, "You sure?" You asked. He nodded. You placed your head on his shoulder trying not to make him uncomfortable or distracted. Smiling to yourself, before closing your eyes, you swore to yourself that you saw a little smile on his solemn face.

We came on next to closing...

You were really satisfied when you were with him, a smile never leaving your face. Spending time with him whenever you can, and he loved it too. A smile is always on his face when he sees you in the hallway, running towards him.

Best on the bill..lovers until...

He was familiar with your family. Your mom liked him. Your father respected him. You were happy, but happier when he confessed his feelings to you, your cheeks felt hot. Everything felt like a dream to you, this was what you wanted. His hands were on your face gently, as he pulled you into a kiss, you closed your kiss, loving every minute of it. You felt on top of the world, and your crush liked you back, isn't that what you wanted the whole time.

Love left the masquerade...

Everything took a sharp turn when reaping day came, he was in the top 24th of the best students in the academy, pairing in the Hunger Games as a mentor. You were happy for him, hugging him and giving him kisses. Him, laying down on your lap, as you played with his hair, as he voiced his wants to you. You listened to him, enjoying his ribboning voice to your ears, kissing him on his forehead.

Fate seemed to pull the strings...

Until you saw Lucy Gray, on the holographic screen. You never saw her as an opponent, she actually made you curious, about her voice and how she represented herself. She was from District 12, with a voice only found in the country of Panem, and a nice one too. Your eyes seemed to tune on to the TV screen, watching her. She was going to be the ticket for Coriolanus to win, hoping in your heart that she would win the hungry games. Though she physically didn't suit the standards of a fighter. You gave out prayers at night for her to stay alive for Coriolanus.

I turned and you were gone...

Time... when you Coriolanus would hang out was shortening. His time is consumed by the Hunger Games. Most of his time, his thoughts, and mind went to her. You understood why he couldn't talk to as often as you wanted, but a small part of your heart panged from the thought. Many thoughts rushed through your head, thinking that Lucy Gray would replace you as a seal upon his heart, you tried to wash them out, but couldn't. It was irrational to think that of your boyfriend, you wished you didn't believe too.

While from the darkened wing...

You tried to voice your thoughts to him but were met with a quiet stare. Your face was worried, and your heart was slowly crumbling. "Coriolanus, wait..please!' You exclaimed you cried out, but he kept on walking down the halls, before he turned to you, "Y/N, how can I..pay attention to the games, if you distracting me" That was the first time he raised his voice at him, your eyes widen, you felt your eyes getting glossy. It was the first time he ever raised his voice at you, "C-coryo, I'm just worried, please" You begged, he was getting irritated by you, "I just don't want to lose you" Your voice died out, your chest heaving, tears leaking onto your cheeks. Hearing his footsteps coming closer to you, his hands on your cheeks, "There is nothing going on with me and Lucy Gray, alright" He looked at you in the eyes, and your stomach dropped. Before he released it and walked down to the halls where the games were going to resume.

The music box played on...

Your heart beating in your chest, as you collapsed to the floor, Wanting to tear up but couldn't feel anything to let out. Your heart pumps a sad symphony as you place your hand on top of your chest, holding yourself close.

Sad little serenade...

You watched on your TV, your siblings, and your parents peering into the television. As you walked to the parlor room, looked at the television, looking at Lucy Gray being the last one alive in the games. Your heart jumped, feeling elated for Coriolanus and his victory being secured. You wanted to run to him, hug him, give him kisses on his cheeks, but the pang still ringing in your heart. Knowing that the seal of his love was won by another person, though it wasn't official, you still felt it.

Song of my heart's composing...

You went to the academy, going to your classes. You wanted to see Coriolanus, and hug him after his victory, waiting what felt like hours for you to go and run to him. Entering into the classroom and sitting down, looking to the side where Coriolanus was supposed to sit. It was weird, your dear Coryo. Would never missed any days of the academy anything, he always put his education first. You turned to your left, seeing Clemensia. Wasn't he his partner in class, "Um, excuse me. Have you seen Coriolanus" You asked, hoping for answers for yourself. She shook her head... wasn't it strange. The day after his win, he was magically gone. You needed answers...

I hear it still, and I always will...

The news hit you like a truck, Coriolanus volunteering his time in the military. it was odd, his goal, or dreams better to say, was graduating, and then going to a university, it didn't make sense at all why, he would go that route. He wouldn't do anything, he didn't tell you, right.

Best on the Bill...

You wrote letters, though time did pass

you still wrote letters to him, though you didn't send them, not knowing his direct location, but you hoped he was still alive, safe, and sound. Sending some prayers for him to come back, every day and night. Though you didn't give him a proper goodbye, you still felt you were entitled to do it.

A total of three years passed, you counted them. 365 days every year, waiting for him to come, maybe for you. But you just wanted to see him again.

Charade...

You heard a knock on your door and opened the door to see a matured Coriolanus at your door. Your heart dropped. It didn't feel real to you at all. You wanted to cry and hug him, but you kept yourself composed, looking him in the eyes, he didn't say anything. He offered you a dehorned, red rose. His appearance changed, his blond curls shortened, he was wearing a red suit and his face was stern, less gentle than you remembered. You took it, placing it in your heart, "I missed you" You whispered, feeling tears rolling down your cheeks.

But now, you are in his mess. Going out into the hall, as he waited for you, putting your hands around his, he turned to you, whispering into your ear, "You look beautiful" As you both walked into the awaiting people, waiting to see yours and his appearance.

Hearing the symphony die out, as you reached the shining light of the chandelier above.

#hunger games the ballad of songbirds and snakes #hunger games x reader #coriolanus snow imagine #coriolanus snow fanfiction #coriolanus smut #coriolanus snow #coriolanus snow x reader #coriolanus x reader #coriolanus snow x you #coriolanus x you #tbosas #tbosas x reader #tbosas spoilers #tbosas movie #tbosbas #president snow #president snow x reader #young cornelius snow

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lovebugism · 2 years ago

Note

forgive me for what is likely a basic ass request but... steve has a crush on eddie's best friend? smut optional but encouraged :) (love, j.d. aka mypoisonedvine)

✶ ┄ LOVE YOU, ON PURPOSE (i)

part one | part two

summary: steve harrington took extra care to avoid the local freaks of hawkins. having shared custody of a fourteen-year-old forced him into a bitter friendship with one, he's steadfast in his refusal to befriend the other. that is, until you start working at the groove beside family video. steve claims he only fell for you because you tripped him. (17k)

pairing: steve harrington / eddie's bff!reader

tags: strangers to friends to lovers, mutual pining, protective eddie, canon divergence TW swearing, bullying, some smooching, talks of insecurities, reader is doubtful of steve's intentions because steve used to be a dick <3

a/n: this request has been sitting in my inbox for ages. ages, i tell you! i wrote the outline the day it was sent in and ended up turning the blurb request into a full on 30k+ word fic. i'm sorry for the wait j.d. (and to everyone else who's been waiting patiently for me to put this out). i quite literally put my heart, soul, pussy, and so, so many hours into this. please enjoy! feedback is always appreciated! xoxo

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Something happens and I'm head over heels.

It would be a total disservice to call you Eddie’s best friend.

It wouldn’t even feel right to call you his platonic soulmate or his sister from another dimension. Not when the two of you are essentially an extension of the same human being. It’s a twin flame on steroids — your mirrored souls make the rest of Hawkins believe in some sort of higher power. There’s no way it wasn’t destiny that placed the two of you together at exactly the right place, at exactly the right time.

Your entwined spirits could’ve been a beautiful thing.

It’s too bad you’re both total fucking freaks.

Unfortunately, being a couple of metalheads who spend their free time creating fantastical worlds in silly little board games hasn’t become cool yet — for some sad, strange reason. It leaves you and Eddie as the town’s token social pariahs. The kind of misfits you only spot when you care enough to look — laughing too loudly at the lunch table or sharing a cigarette in the alleyway between school buildings.

The kind of weirdos who get your attention without trying. The kind that people only look at when they need something to make fun of.

With that being said, everything Steve knew about you came from the people that hated you.

Tommy Hagan said that you and Eddie had been fucking since the seventh grade, that the two of you had gotten close between blowjobs and fingerbangs in the old chemistry classroom. No one’s quite sure where it came from, but they believed him without thinking twice. You and Eddie tried to squash the rumor for years before leaning into it full throttle.

“And these are the freaks,” Tommy announced when he approached your lunch table. He was giving Billy Hargrove a grand tour of the high school, or rather the shithole, and detoured like you and Eddie were some kind of sideshow attraction. Him and his goons ogled at you like zoo animals.

Steve idled some feet away, not as interested in the bit as the rest of them. He was even less interested in entertaining the new kid on the block thateveryone else seemed to be obsessed with.

“Hey, Tommy...” Eddie sing-songed through a mouthful of PB&J. You’d given him the other half of your sandwich, because you always give him the other half of your sandwich. “Hope you’re not comin’ back to ask for a handy again. I already turned you down, remember?”

A dumb grin took over the boy’s freckled face. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned over to the California boy. “I wouldn’t get too close to them. Don’t know where their hands have been, you know? If I had to guess, I think Punchy got Munson’s rocks off in the janitor’s closet before lunch period.”

Neither of you were particularly fazed by the laughter that erupted all at once and threatened to swallow you whole. Instead, you smiled with bits of grape jelly smeared on your chin. “I bet you think about it a lot, don’t you, Tommy?”

You really lived up to the nickname. Punchy. You weren’t entirely sure where it came from — your fierce temper, perhaps, or maybe your intense personality. Either way, it suited you.

Vicki Carmichael once said that you bit a guy on a date one time. Barry Jenkins, a tennis douchebag who thought the world revolved around him because his dad owned a string of local laundromats. He took you on a date in his mom’s Impala and assumed making out in the backseat gave him free rein to stick his hand up your skirt.

The asshole sported a red mark on his neck the next day.

When people asked you about it, you smiled with all your teeth in place of any real answer.

Carol Perkins loved to comment on the state of your wardrobe, telling anyone who would listen about the time she caught you rifling through the $1 bargain bins outside the thrift store. She liked to joke that you were stealing from them. “Because she can’t even afford a couple measly dollars. It’s kinda sad, honestly. I feel a little bad for her,” you overheard her saying once.

You were smoking a cigarette in the stall and watching through the crack of it while her and her friends touched up their lip gloss.

“Wait, really?” Tina wondered, stopping mid-swipe of mascara through her long lashes to gape at the girl beside her. Because, god forbid, they don’t have someone to make fun of.

Carol snapped bright pink bubblegum between her teeth. She looked offended, almost — manicured brows furrowed and shiny lips snarled — like the idea of her taking pity on you was insulting. “No,” she snapped in response.

You’re pretty sure it’s the only rumor about you that’s got any bit of truth to it. Or any rumor of hers, really. The thrift store was great and all, but you firmly believe that your best pieces come remanufactured straight from Eddie Munson’s closet.

So it isn’t any wonder why the two of you seem to dress so similarly — all leather jackets and distressed jeans and hand-me-down t-shirts that are either too big or too small. The both of you take little care in your appearance, wearing only what you feel good in. And sometimes that means wild hair and baggy clothes that swallow you whole.

To make it worse, you and Eddie even talk the same. You’re both loud and brash and have very little awareness of personal space. You aren’t scared to make a scene or use your voice when you think it’s being stifled. And when you love someone, they know it, because you won’t leave them the hell alone.

These are all the things that Steve hated about Eddie. So he hasn’t quite figured out why he’s so damn in love with you.

But he is.

Quite dreadfully so.

Head over heels and stumbling since the day he met you for a second time.

It was the spring of 1986 and The Groove had just opened up. Steve had heard murmurings of a record shop taking over the empty outlet adjacent to Family Video but had no idea it would nearly run them out of business. The shiny, new music store attracted all of their usual customers. People were more excited to buy new cassettes than rent movies they’d seen a thousand times already.

Steve didn’t mind, though. He liked it best when the store was empty. But all of his friends — a closeted lesbian, a basket case, and a couple of fourteen-year-olds — seemed to have the same affliction that was plaguing the rest of the town.

He tried not to be offended when Robin said she was going to spend her break next door and not with him in the closet-sized break room.

He failed.

Robin spent her half-hour and then some meeting you. She returned forty-five minutes later with a blushing face and a bleeding heart. Suddenly, there were two people in Steve’s life that couldn’t seem to shut up about you. As much as it annoyed him, he let her gush about you anyway, because that’s what best friends do, after all.

But Steve knew you once upon a time. Or he thought he did.

You were a loudmouthed metalhead who wore all black to blend in to Eddie’s shadow. You created fictional characters because it was easier than making friends with real people. You were strange and awkward and mean and gauche — the total opposite of this heavenly, mystical creature Robin was making you out to be.

But then it became this whole… thing.

With Robin and Eddie constantly talking over him about you, the rest of the kids were as confused as Steve was. And as they so often tend to do, the group decided to take matters into their own hands and make the short trek to meet you formally. Steve figured that their answer would be final. When those teenagers hate you, you know it. He learned that the hard way

They’re gone for a little over an hour and come back with a thousand stories and various tapes they say you gave to them for free.

Lucas has got a new Beastie Boys cassette and a proud smile on his face as he recounts the promise you’d made him about catching his next basketball game. “And she said she really liked my ranger,” he brags less than humbly, telling the older teens about how you’d heard stories about his track record in Hellfire campaigns. There’s a sudden suaveness to his voice as he bounces his brows up and down at them.

Max scrunches her face in disgust. She clutches a Kate Bush tape close to her chest, like it’s a prized possession she never wants to let go of. She rolls her eyes at her boyfriend (or maybe ex-boyfriend, but Steve can never keep up these days) and makes her own conversation with Robin. The two girls are the only ones with more than half a brain cell between them, or so they claim.

The redhead tells her that she plans on bringing her broken skateboard over to your store soon. She says the thing’s been wobbly for days, and Robin nods along like she knows all about it. “Well, apparently, she has some tools and knows how to fix it. Said the trucks just needed to be reinforced or some shit, I don’t know, I’m just glad it’s getting fixed.”

“Wait, why didn’t you tell me?” Steve asks her, confusion contorting his words along with his features. He crosses his arms and leans against the counter. “I could’ve fixed it.”

“You don’t know anything about skateboards,” Max monotones.

“Okay, but you don’t even know this girl! She’s a total stranger, Max. That’s dangerous.”

She rolls her eyes. “She’s nice, Steve. Way nicer than you—”

That makes him scoff.

“—And you’d know that if you got to know her.”

It’s Dustin’s turn to gush about you next. His opinion, for a reason Steve has never been able to place, arguably means the most to him. And the kid is just absolutely fucking beaming about you. He holds a Star Wars orchestral vinyl in his hand — the brand new one he’s been talking about for weeks but couldn’t afford.

He talks of the collection of DnD figurines you were painting behind the counter and the promise you made to make one for his bard come the next campaign.

Dustin gazes at Steve, wide-eyed and nodding like he’s as amazed by the revelation as Steve is. “She’s cool, Steve. Like… really cool.”

The boy thought that Robin just had a crush, that Eddie was just being Eddie and overdramatizing all of his stories about you. But you’re everything they said you’d be and then some. The kind of stranger you meet that takes your breath away, that makes you sad in the understanding that you’ll never see them again. Dustin is grateful you don’t have to be a stranger anymore.

You sounded… nice. More than nice. They painted you out to be a fucking angel, the way you took care of a bunch of kids you barely knew for the better part of an hour. You weren’t the freak everyone made you out to be all that time ago.

They talk a great deal about your looks, too. Dustin, mostly. Lucas had received a glare and a half-hearted punch on the arm from Max when he said how pretty you were — even though she ultimately agreed with him. The curly-headed boy uses too big words to describe the renaissance painting you are, all heavenly morose and beautifully strange.

“Hey,” Eddie scolds from the sidelines, mostly playful. “That’s my sister you’re talking about. Bring it down a few notches, ‘kay?”

Steve is silent for the rest of the day after that. He’s not pouting about it like Robin keeps saying he is, just reserved in his reminiscence.

He can’t tell if he’s intrigued or annoyed. They talk about you the way people used to talk about King Steve — with a borderline obsession for someone they don’t really know. And deep down, he knows he’s just jealous. Jealous that no one talks about him that way anymore. Jealous that none of the kids have ever talked about him that way.

It leaves him skeptical and wanting to see the real thing for himself.

Steve opts to meet you on his lunch break the next day with a tight chest and sweaty palms, like a part of him knew it was going to change the trajectory of his life for the foreseeable future.

The door dings with his arrival. The record store smells like earth and nostalgia, a bit like flipping through the pages of an old book. Vinyls sit in rows and in towers that rise to the ceilings. Colorful cassettes, of which there are thousands, have nooks and crannies of their own. Posters decorate the walls along with various patterned records — there’s hardly a blank spot in the entire store.

And when Steve sees you for the first time, he only sees the back of you.

You’re in all black, just like he imagined you’d be. A sliver of skin at your midriff is showing from where your too small shirt has ridden up your torso. And your hair is as wild as ever, though a little longer than he remembers. You’ve haphazardly pinned back the ornery strings with a sparkly pin, but it doesn’t do much to tame them.

A breeze of warm wistfulness washes over him at the sight of you. A reminder of a life that used to be his, that you were a part of only passively.

It’s your smile that does him in. Maybe because you’ve never looked at him with it. As far as Steve’s concerned, no one’s ever smiled at him the way you do, and you barely even know him. You hadn’t seen him in over a year and if you shared any words in the past, it wasn’t anything more than snarky one-liners. But here you are, looking at him with sunshine anyway.

“Hi,” you beam with the warmest grin he’s ever seen, swiveling in your chair to face him. “Welcome in.”

He’s too stunned by the sight of you to respond. He just stands in the doorway, all wide-eyed and gaping, like he’s the first to see an angel on earth. And it’s strange because you’re far from perfect.

You’re blousy and a little disheveled, like you’d been running late that morning. The lack of makeup allows your imperfections to shine through in a way that makes you somehow more alluring. And you’ve got paint splattered like freckles on your cheeks, the culprit being the figurines you’re painting behind the counter. If you know you’re dotted with shades of red, blue, and green, you don’t show it.

“Can I help you find anything?” you ask him, still kind even though he’s acting like a fucking weirdo. That’s supposed to be your thing, not his.

Steve grasps for something to say but comes up short. His lips part and then close again in an embarrassing pattern that resembles a fish out of water. It makes sense, though; it’s a bit how you’ve made him feel just now.

When he realizes he can’t make out anything intelligible, he shakes his head. “Uh… nope.”

He’s leaving before he even realizes he’s leaving. The door dings again and he’s on the other side of it, long legs carrying him the short distance to Family Video at record speed.

He swings and slams the egress shut in quick succession, as though the ghost of you had been chasing him. He leans against the glass pane and exhales a heaving sigh, eyes squeezing shut as he recoils at what he’d just done.

He always knew that King Steve had died some time ago, but this was a new low.

Robin watches from the front counter with wide eyes. “…Did you forget something?”

Steve sighs a big, hopeless sigh, then peeks his eyes open. “My dignity.”

“She’s cute, right?” she asks, already knowing the answer. Her brows bounce in time with the smirk on her painted lips.

“Yeah, she’s cute,” he answers, all mad because it’s obvious. “She’s fucking— she’s beautiful.”

“Aw. Look at you,” she sing-songs and tilts her head to her shoulder. “I think your heart grew three sizes today, Stevie.”

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

I never find out 'til I'm head over heels.

Steve, all caught up in his boyish misery, has no idea that he’s enraptured you in a similar way.

You hadn’t cared very much for the guy in high school. You didn’t really know him then, and you didn’t particularly want to. King Steve was rich. King Steve was pretty — too pretty. King Steve got attention from pretty cheerleaders and overaggressive douchebags alike.

King Steve didn’t need any affection from the local freakshow.

But, by some strange turn of events, he’d managed to make nice with your best friend.

The way Eddie talks about Steve, his words always dripping with a distant venom, it sounds like they still hate each other. Maybe they do. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to admit that they hang out far too often not to be friends.

If you were still in school, you probably would’ve judged him for it. Being friends with the boy whose buddies made your life hell certainly warranted some degree of ridicule. But now, having graduated and trying to move on from it all, you can’t find it in yourself to.

High school might as well have been a lifetime now. There’s no use in holding onto old ghosts.

If Eddie could let that shit go, so could you.

He drops by after school to keep you company like he always does when he doesn’t have a campaign to prep for. It’s his favorite pastime, perhaps a close second to Dungeons and Dragons. He gets to hang out with his best friend and swim in an ocean of music while he does it. As far as freaks go, Eddie Munson considers himself the luckiest.

He likes to hear you talk about everything new you’ve gotten in while he rifles through the old stuff that isn’t selling as well. You happily let him take what he wants for free. And what he doesn’t take, he doesn’t pay for either, because you cheat the system with your employee discount and then wipe the record from inventory. Just to be safe.

“I love having a criminal for a best friend,” he jokes every time, without fail.

Eddie stays by your side until the sun sets. He parts only to flip the sign at the door to closingfor you, then plops himself back on the counter again. His legs hang off the side of it, sneakers occasionally thudding against the wood when he kicks them back and forth too hard. He scans the back of an old Lynyrd Skynyrd vinyl and bobs his head to the rhythmic bass as the song fills the empty store. He’ll take this one home, he decides.

You keep on painting like you have been all day, breaking only to assist customers or stretch your aching spine. The forest dragon had been far more work than you expected — made of pretty purple leaves instead of scales and blowing blush-colored flowers instead of fire. The little piece of clay has resulted in a day of back-breaking work.

You’ll be damned if Eddie’s next campaign isn’t the most stellar looking one yet.

Focusing on that makes it easier not to bring up Steve.

You want to. You just don’t know how.

Eddie’s friends were Eddie’s, and you don’t get involved where it doesn’t concern you. Besides, you did sort of give him shit for hanging out with The Hair way back when. The last thing you want is him taking the piss out of you about it.

You don’t want to sound like you care too much. Even more, you don’t want it to be obvious that you’ve been thinking about the boy all day — making yourself sick as you stew in what could’ve run him out like he did.

“Saw your friend today,” you remark, feigning a sort of absentmindedness, as you swipe your brush along the petals of your dragon. “King Steve.”

“Oh, you met him?” Eddie wonders, more intrigued by your words than you expected he’d be. He says it like you didn’t already know the guy — like this new Steve was a totally different person you needed to be reacquainted with to really know.

“I wouldn’t say met him exactly. He just, like, popped in for half a second and ran out.”

With your back facing him, you don’t see the shit-eating grin that pulls at the corners of his mouth.

Eddie was waiting for Steve to crack and finally see you. He knew he’d bite after the way the kids had talked about you — Dustin, especially. Because even though he claims he doesn’t have favorites, he’s got a very obvious soft spot for the boy. And he knew Steve would like you because everyone likes you. When they’re not clouded by judgment and high school hierarchies, at least.

He’s still got no idea how a guy that trips all over himself at the sight of a pretty girl could’ve ruled Hawkins once upon a time.

“Fucking idiot,” Eddie laughs to himself, already gearing up for the shit he was going to give Steve the next time he saw him.

But you see the boy before Eddie does. Steve comes back the next day, an hour or more after opening, less frazzled than the day before. The nearly twenty-four hours he had to prepare himself for the angel he was going to see allowed him not to make a total fool of himself when he stepped into the store again.

And you wouldn’t say it out loud — hell, it’s not even something you want to admit to yourself — but you’d been hoping he’d stop by again.

You thought Robin would come by and drag him with her, or that Dustin and his friends would come around before Steve dropped them all home. Frankly, you didn’t really care what brought him back. You just wanted to see him again.

Steve’s different than the boy he used to be. Enough that it was obvious from a measly thirty-second interaction. He used to be a charmer who could talk his way out of anything. Not to you, of course, he wouldn’t have been caught dead talking to you. But then he stops by out of nowhere, in rare form, stumbling all over himself and looking like he didn’t recognize you at all.

You’re still trying to figure out if that was a good thing or not.

He’s mystified you in a way he probably isn’t used to. Most girls like the hair and the arms — the super buff, super strong arms that fit so nicely in his uniform — or the fact that he’s got money and a reputation that precedes him. But you’ve never given a shit about any of that.

You’re more enchanted by the way nothing could even begin to conceal the soft, shy boy that King Steve had apparently turned into.

The door chimes above his head when he enters. The scent of earthy nostalgia is already familiar to him — lavender, sage, and something deeper. Steve considers it progress when he plants himself a few feet away from the door this time. If he runs out again, he’ll have to make an embarrassingly longer escape.

You turn away from your nearly finished figurine to greet the new customer. The practiced smile unconsciously widens at the sight of him. “Hi!”

“Hey,” he smiles with a curt nod. He regrets the half-wave he gives you the second his hand shoots up.

“You gonna run off on me again?” you tease and swivel in your chair to face him completely.

You’re wearing a Hellfire shirt that’s just slightly too big for you. It probably belonged to Eddie before it belonged to you. And you wear a corset-looking thing over top of it, a sheer number with a lace embroidery and a ribbon that’s tied in a bow at your belly. It doesn’t cinch you in the slightest, though, more for decoration than practicality.

“No that was… I just—” Steve huffs out a laugh as he tries and fails to come up with an excuse. He figures anything is better than the truth — that he saw how pretty you were and his brain forgot how to work because he’s the lamest person on the planet.

So he chucks a thumb over his shoulder and fibs. “I left something back at Family Video. Had to run back.”

“It’s okay. I was just teasing,” you assure. “Uh— Are you looking for anything specific?”

“No. Not really. Just… new records to add to my collection, you know?”

“Oh, you collect vinyls?”

He doesn’t realize that’s what he’s just said until you repeat the words back to him.

He’s kind of just talking out of his ass and hoping something sticks. That line does, apparently, because you’re beaming at him instantly. He’s scared to say no because then you’ll stop smiling. And he can’t have that.

“Yep,” he answers with a nod. The stack of records collecting dust in his den has to count for something, right?

He can’t find it in himself to regret his little white lie when it has you lighting up like a christmas tree.

You toss your paintbrush down when you rush from behind the counter to meet him. You seem to have forgotten that you’d just dipped the thing in purple paint. The thing splatters shades of lilac all over the limestone bench. And, in your haste, you nearly smack yourself with the leaden slab as you raise it to pass by.

Steve’s eyes widen when you narrowly dodge the weighty thing — then jumps, startled by the dense thwap that echoes through the small store when it slams back down again. He’s almost worried that it might’ve busted the hinge.

You cower at the loud sound but move on with a commendable finesse, too focused on him to care about anything else.

“That’s so cool! I’ve always wanted to collect, but records are so expensive, it’s crazy,” you ramble as you walk up to him, totally unthinking in the way you grab his forearm and usher him to the back of the store.

Your sheer black skirt swishes at your ankles as you walk. The dainty fabric is patterned with sparkly stars and crescent moons. He notices you wear a pair of dark shorts underneath for modesty. Steve tries his best not to stare at your ass. He almost succeeds.

“We actually just got in a couple of Dio records — The Holy Diver, you know, the one that just came out. I’m pretty sure there’s only, like, a couple thousand of these things in the whole world — which is totally fucking bonkers if you think about it,” you explain in one breath, laughing, before stopping abruptly in your tracks. Steve nearly runs into you when you turn around to face him.

You laugh again, a sadder one, this time at yourself, as you bring your palm to your forehead. “Sorry. I don’t— I don’t even know if you like Dio. I mean, of course, you don’t, right? I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have… rambled like that.”

You’d just been so excited and Steve had just been so different that you forgot who you were talking to. Hawkins High Royalty, Prom King, Biggest Flirt and Life of the Party in the yearbook.

As far as you’re concerned, Eddie Munson is your only friend. He’s the only person in the whole world you can be yourself around and never get self-conscious about any of it.

But sometimes you have moments like this one with a total stranger. Moments where you lose yourself in the conversation and your own jumbled thoughts. Moments where you talk and talk and talk until something thumps you on the head and you realize how annoying you’re being. This time, it’s the musky smell of his cologne that knocks you back to Ms. Click’s history class. The crisp breeze of bitter nostalgia makes you shiver.

Steve can see the way you get so suddenly aware of yourself and how the cognizance of the moment makes you writhe. He tries to bat away the lingering insecurities with a smile.

“Love ‘em,” he responds with a nod. He raises his brows and scoffs, grins and crosses his arms over his chest. “I mean, Dio? God, they’re like… top ten bands of all time, at least. Maybe even five.”

That isn’t totally true. He doesn’t know much about the band to have an opinion, but he’s pretty sure he might’ve said he hated them once. That was only because Eddie wouldn’t stop talking about them, though. Steve could learn to like them, if it means so much to you.

That’s exactly how he justifies spending $60 on four records.

He tells himself that he’ll listen to them and think of you, that it’ll be a solid conversation starter the next time he sees you.

You had a whole damn rack dedicated to all your favorite bands — “I put it together myself,” you’d bragged with a proud smile. S it’s a wonder Steve didn’t walk out with the entire damn store. Because you just kept on smiling and talking, so happy to have someone to care about what you had to say, and he ate up every second of it.

He’ll have to work overtime to keep his pockets from hurting, but it’ll be worth it. Because he’ll get to keep talking to you and indulging in all the things you seem to love more than life itself.

You’re still rambling as you ring him up. Steve notices you haven’t stopped yourself like you did before. His lack of dismissal has made you more comfortable, it seems. He likes that.

“I think we’re also gonna get a couple cases of Def Leppard cassettes tomorrow, which is super sick. I think I might have to start collecting, honestly. Tapes are whole lot cheaper than records, you know,” you tell him as you scan and bag all his vinyls. “And it’s also, like, a fucking stellar album. I don’t think I’ve stopped listening to Photograph since it came out.”

“Photograph. Right. Love that one,” Steve nods with a kind smile as he props his elbows on the counter. He doesn’t particularly care that he’s not entirely sure what you’re talking about, or that he’s never actually heard the song. He’s starting to realize you could talk for hours and he wouldn’t get bored.

“Oh, is that your favorite too? Eddie’s more of a Foolin’ kinda guy.”

Despite the fact that he’s never heard the song or this album in his life, he nods anyway.

He sort of spent the first eighteen years of his life faking just about everything — it kind of came with being the King of Hawkins High. It’s a talent that hasn’t yet left him, it seems, lying through his teeth to impress people. It’s almost become a second nature to him.

“Foolin’s good, yeah, but I think Photograph is obviously better.”

“Obviously, right!” you exclaim with a sunshine-coated laugh. “That’s exactly what I told him! But he’s way too hard-headed to be wrong about anything, so…”

“Well, I’d like to put it on the record that I firmly agree with you,” Steve replies so smoothly that his tongue must be dripping with honey. It’s so easy for him to fall into King Steve mode — when he isn’t forgetting how to speak and running off, that is.

You’ve learned a lot Steve in the past half hour. He likes metal, but leans more toward rock. Particularly all the metal and rock that you like. He hasn’t once had a differing opinion than you, besides telling you he heard Eddie playing a Metallica song once that he didn’t particularly care for. The second you tell him it’s one of your favorites, he backtracks instantly, blaming the Munson boy for being too sloshed to play it properly.

And you don’t miss the way he’s looking at you just now either, with his chin toward his chest as he peers up at you with warm amber eyes. He’s the charmer that he always was. It makes you remember, again, just who you’re talking to.

“We have a lot in common, King Steve,” you lilt with a playful grin.

He deflates at the use of the old nickname. You see the light in his eyes flicker for a just moment before he’s ducking his gaze away from you completely. He tries to brush it off with a laugh. “Yeah, I’m not— I’m not really King Steve anymore…”

“No?”

“Nope. Just… Just Steve these days.”

When he looks back at you, he finds you nodding at him, almost in approval.

Most people are upset to find that he’s changed so much. They hate that he’s no longer the recklessly stupid dumbass they used to get drunk with.

Not you, though.

“Cool,” you mumble, smiling softly, as you hand him his bag and receipt.

“Uh, I’d love to, you know, come take a look at those tapes when you get ‘em in,” he says as he walks backward towards the door, finally making the brash offer he’s been thinking about this whole time. “Maybe I can bring lunch and we can—”

“Well, Hellfire’s been doing campaigns during lunch recently. And Gareth’s out sick, so I’ve been subbing for him, you know, so…” you interject awkwardly, shifting your weight on your feet. You hate to turn him down, but Eddie might just kill you if he has to get a substitute for the substitute.

“Oh…” he nods, softly puckering his plump pink lips that you can’t seem to stop staring at.

“But I don’t think they’re coming in until late, anyway,” you add quickly. “So, you can stop by at closing, if you want?”

“No, yeah, that’s cool. So cool,” he replies, a little more flustered than he’d been just moments before. He’s just happy that your rejection wasn’t a total refusal.

You try to bite back the wide grin threatening to take over your mouth. “Okay… I’ll catch you later, then, Just Steve.”

“See you,” he waves right before startling himself when he backs into the basket of clearance tapes sitting just beside the door. He barely catches the thing before it tips over completely. He flashes you a shaking smile afterward and finds you covering your mouth with your hand while you try not to laugh too loudly.

He wishes you’d just went ahead and laughed at him. He wouldn’t have even cared that you were laughing at him, if it meant he got to see you smile.

And even though he’d just gotten done making the biggest fool of himself, he walks back to work feeling like the coolest man alive. There’s a foreign strut in his step that hadn’t been there before he saw you. It doesn’t leave him when he realizes he’s gone slightly over his break and that Keith is manning the counter in his absence.

The man mumbles a monotoned goodbye to the customer he’d just checked out.

She turns around and Steve realizes he recognizes this girl — Mindy or Mandy or maybe Monica — from Mr. Kaminsky’s class way back when. She did all of his homework for him before and after letting him fuck her on her twin-sized bed in her all pink room. That’s when Steve was conquering girls like they were Mount Everest, way before Nancy, when King was a title he wore with pride.

But he’s still so stuck in his head with thoughts of you that he doesn’t even see Mindy-Mandy-Monica or the flirtatious wave she throws his way.

“You’re ten minutes late,” Keith scolds, with his dead tone and his deader eyes.

Steve only shrugs, uncaring if it came out of his paycheck because — “I just got a date with the hottest woman on the planet,” he boasts with a puffed out chest and too smug smile.

It doesn’t lessen Keith’s anger, just diverts it. Because he knows exactly who he’s talking about. And so does Robin, as she pops her head out from behind the man from where she sits at the computer. “No way,” they chorus in disbelief at his words.

Steve nods. “Yes way.”

“Eddie’s gonna kill you,” Robin remarks with the shake of her head.

He knows she’s right. He just doesn’t care.

Eddie’s always been protective of you. Everyone knows that. But the two of them were friends now — or somewhat good-natured acquaintances, at the very least. He would’ve been mad about a year or more ago, if King Steve had decided to suddenly woo his best friend.

But it’s different now. He’s different now. Eddie knows how much everything’s changed, it’s just a question of if he’s willing to rehash old wounds.

It’s a good thing Steve knows how to take a punch.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Don't take my heart, don't break my heart.

Steve finds you again the next day less happy than he’s gotten used to.

The record store is dim and the red sign at the entrance has been flipped to closed, but the door is left unlocked — for him. The warm scent is a distinct contrast to the frigid spring night, a cozy high hemp and lavender, but your absence is noticeable and terribly heavy.

Steve lingers in the doorway, his shadow looming like a giant before him from the moonlight streaming in from outside.

He calls for you in the emptiness.

“Uh… Punchy?”

He’s relieved when you answer. The “back here!” you shout to him is muffled and far away. He follows the sound of your voice, filled suddenly with a childlike consolation.

The yellow fairy lights dangling over his head guide him through the aisles of cassettes and closer to you. Through a cluttered backroom, Steve finds you standing just outside an opened door — left ajar, for him.

The smile you flash when you see him is as dim as the closed-down store. It lacks all the sunshine you usually look at him with, shades of stormy gray rather than the usual yellows.

A look of concern flashes across his features — furrowed brows and inquisitive twinkling eyes — as you take a drag from the lit cigarette caught between your pointer and middle finger. You muster your best grin, but it flickers like a shoddy radio signal.

“Punchy, huh?” you tease.

Steve’s brows pinch together as confusion floods his features. It takes him a moment to realize what he’d said and the nickname he’d used — and he doesn’t want to be dramatic or anything, but he kinda wants to die. It’s embarrassing, he thinks, to hold on to an old high school monicker. And, fuck, if you hate it half as bad as he hates being called king, he deserves a slap to the face right about now.

You laugh instead of ball your first. He’s able to smile meekly in relief. “Oh. Shit. Sorry, I… I don’t think I even realized it came out.”

“No, it’s okay,” you assure when you see him getting all apologetic. “Eddie still calls me that all the time, so… Old habits die hard, I guess.”

Steve tries to move on, but it’s hard to when you’re so obviously gloomy. He hates how reserved you’ve gone in your quiet, not talking up a storm like you had been the last time he saw you. Now you’re just… a storm. It’s a little like sitting next to a rumbling rain cloud.

The rumbling rain cloud beside him takes a drag of her cigarette.

“You okay?” he asks and sounds like he really cares.

You didn’t think King Steve was capable of caring about anything other than his hair, but he looks down at you like he can feel every blue bolt of your doom and gloom. He makes you feel seen in the void of your sadness despite all the years you spent being invisible to him.

“Uh, yeah. It’s just the tapes. They didn’t come in,” you answer with a shrug. Smokes leaves your mouth and lingers in white clouds in the air. “So I’m a little bummed.”

“Oh…” is all Steve says and his pink mouth forms a too pretty ‘o’ shape that you can’t draw your gaze from.

The following silence makes you momentarily cautious. Insecurity runs cold over you because no sane person gets this about upset over a broken promise of a couple cassettes. It’s stupid, you know it is, but you were really looking forward to them. It’s like promising a kid the most metal present ever and then snatching it out of their bare hands.

Now, over the course of a couple hours, you’ve managed to convince yourself you won’t remember happiness until you get those stupid tapes.

“Sorry,” you apologize to him for a reason he can’t place. You shift your weight on your feet and peer at him from beneath your lashes. “I know you were looking forward to them, too.”

You extend your hand and offer him the cigarette between your fingers like it’s an olive branch. He takes it from you with a distant smile, then opts to laze against the brick wall like you are. He stays a respectful distance on the other side of the entryway.

“It’s okay. They’ll come. If I’m being honest, you know, I was kinda more excited to see you.”

His admission is brazen and a tad bit brash, even for a certified ex-douchebag. It lacks all of the usual honey-coated flirtation that usually tints his tone when he’s talking to a pretty girl. Because he wasn’t trying to make you swoon — though he certainly wouldn’t have minded if you had. This wasn’t some romantic advance, just a proclamation of his own personal truth.

A flash of shock contorts your features. “Really?”

“Of course,” he answers, breathing out a laugh that exits along with the smoke in his lungs. “I love talking to you. You’re… You’re cool, you know? S— Super cool.”

His face screws up at his stuttering, and he shakes his head at how the words sound leaving his mouth. His cheeks glow cherry red beneath an orange street lamp.

“Super cool, huh?” you repeat with a giggle that’s bright enough to illuminate the velvet night. “I don’t think anyone’s ever called me that before.”

Steve scoffs when he passes the cigarette back to you. Because, lately, that’s all he’s been hearing about you. From Eddie, from Robin, from Dustin — every good thing a person could say about someone else, they all say about you.

He’s starting to understand why.

Because you’re sweet. Like, pure sugar poured on the tip of his tongue kind of sweet. You’re bright like sunshine and soft like summer rain. You’re a shot of pure espresso for a boy who thought his life was at a dead end. He’s not entirely sure how he ever could’ve thought you were some deep, dark, devil-worshipping freak.

“I don’t believe that,” he dismisses with the shake of his head.

You breathe out a sharp exhale and a puff of nicotine-coated smoke. “I’ve been the town pariah since I was eleven, Steve. Everyone thinks I’m some kinda delinquent who’s in a cult because I play a dumb board game. So, no. No one’s ever thought I was cool before.”

“Still?” Steve wonders with a twisted face. “You graduated, like, a year ago. Are... Are people really still on your ass about that?”

“A little,” you answer with a shrug, trying your best not to look as affected by it all as you feel.

Steve feels his chest swell with the fiery urge to protect you. The same one he gets when Dustin tells him about the assholes at school that are bothering him. He wants to defend you from the same sort of assholes that he used to be. The impulse is borderline primal, rooted somewhere deep and far within himself, because god knows he’s got a terrible track record when it comes to winning fights.

“Shit, Punchy… I’m— I’m sorry.”

You sputter out a laugh at the apology, louder when you realize he’s using the nickname again.

He can’t relate to any of this. The trials and tribulations of being persona non grata everywhere you went were certainly lost on him. Steve might’ve lost his touch somewhere down the road, but he’ll always be crown royalty — the kind of guy you think fondly of when your wonderyears are long gone. But you? You’re lucky if people don’t cross to the other side of the street when they spot you coming.

Perhaps that’s why his words warm you so much. Because, despite all that, he’s trying to make you feel better anyway.

You give him a tender smile and a dwindling cigarette.

“It’s okay. I mean, it’s whatever, you know? I think it’s because I still hang out with Eddie all the time. Like, people see us and remember what fucking freaks we used to be,” you say with a laugh, then start to ramble without thinking. “We saw Tommy Hagan at Melvald’s the other day, and he looked at us like we caused him severe PTSD or something, like, he looked terrified. I honestly felt a little bad.”

Steve smiles, wide-eyed, equal parts intrigued and unsettled by the reminiscent glimmer in your eye and the daunting giggle that spills from your lips.

“But I wouldn’t leave Eddie, you know?” you blurt, suddenly serious, like you’ve taken offense at the very thought. “Not even if it meant people stopped being so mean. ‘Cause I love him and everything… Even though he’s a pain in the ass.”

“Oh, he’s a total pain in the ass,” Steve agrees and flicks the butt of the cig between his fingers. “He loves you too, though. I can tell. The asshole never shuts up about you.”

“He talks about me?” you ask, voice fragile and pitched higher than normal.

Steve doesn’t like the way you say it. He hates how you look at him even more, with a scrunched up face and eyes that flicker with embers of shock. Like you don’t believe it, like you think yourself unworthy of it.

“You’re all he talks about,” the boy assures, feeling so suddenly brave and wanting to make you feel brave too. He hands the cigarette back to you. “I don’t blame him. If I were him, I’d never shut up about you either.”

The contorted look of confusion on your face untwists itself, and your features fall flat with disbelief. A smile pulls slow at your mouth. Your eyes glitter an orange gold beneath the streetlight. They flit over to the boy beside you just long enough to take the stick from him.

“Steve Harrington…” you lilt, almost scoldingly so.

It makes him smile. “What?”

“Stop flirting with me.”

“Well, that’s very presumptuous of you,” he retorts playfully. “Who’s to say I was flirting?”

“So you weren’t then?”

“Maybe a little,” he shrugs with a knowing, practiced smirk. “Can you blame me?”

You don’t seem impressed by his not-so-subtle attempt at flirting, and he isn’t at all used to that. The bravado and the puppy dog eyes are his one-two punch — any other time, he’d have a phone number tucked safely in his pocket by now. But you’re not biting.

“I’m so not your type,” you dismiss with the shake of your head.

“Yeah?” he challenges, shoving himself off the brick wall with his shoulder and making the short trek over to you. He plants himself next to you, leans with one sneaker crossed over the other, and smiles with a playful twinkle in his eye. “And what’s my type?”

“Nancy Wheeler,” you answer without missing a beat. “Pretty girls.”

“Well, I think you’re very pretty—”

“Not like her,” you interject with a foreign firmness that Steve hasn’t seen from you until now. You’re still smiling at him, though, still kind but looking like you don’t believe him. Like you think this must be some kind of sick joke that he’s taking too far.

You can entertain Steve. You like Steve. Mostly because he’s totally different from the douchebag you remember him being — the douchebag you were expecting him to be.

You find that he’s terribly clumsy and not overtly good with words. He says dumb jokes that don’t come out right and smiles in relief when they make you laugh anyway. He’s soft like peach fuzz or a fluffy cloud, mushy like warm chocolatey gooey goodness, and not at all like you remember him.

But then he does this. He morphs into something else, changes shape right in front of you. He smiles at you with little of his dumbassery behind it — all smirks and faux longing gazes with the intent of making you swoon at his feet. He grins down at you and all you see is the teenage boy who would’ve never looked at you that way four years ago. Hell, not even one.

It reminds you of who he is, who he used to be, and who you are now.

You haven’t changed so much since high school. You’ve matured a little, sure, but there was never an asshole exterior that you felt the need to outgrow. You’re still loud at times, unaware and ignorant of the world around you. You still play lightsabers outside Eddie’s trailer in between lengthy Dungeons and Dragons campaigns. You still pretend like the lingering glares from all the people you used to know don’t bother you.

They do, though. They always have.

You look at Steve and you see this butterfly — someone made of rainbow colors and mostly mature. He’s growing, and you’re stuck in the same cocoon you’ve been wrapped in since freshman year, still fumbling around and trying to figure out where you fit.

He’ll always be the pretty butterfly he always was, with his pretty little iridescent wings that catch the light and all the attention. He’ll feed off the applause he gets while you’re sitting on the sidelines. The girl who’s destined to stay bundled in her cocoon forever only hears all of his praise — never watches, never receives.

“You and I are completely different people, Steve Harrington,” you declare with a grin that tells him you’ve already made up your mind.

The boy doesn’t get it, though, why you seem so upset by the idea. Him and Robin were completely different people. Him and Dustin were, too. The two people he adored — tolerated — most in the entire world weren’t a single thing like him, and it was better that way.

You don’t seem to share a similar philosophy, though. You take a drag from your mostly gone cigarette and mourn what could have been; if only he had been the town freak or you had been born the pretty girl next door.

“That doesn’t have to be such a bad thing—”

He’s abruptly cut off by the sound of muffled rock music and the bright yellow headlights of Eddie Munson’s van. The two of you shield your eyes when he whips into the desolate parking lot and parks in front of you. The sudden intrusion feels like being blinding like the sun after you’ve found such comfort within each other in the dead of night.

The stifled Def Leppard song — or maybe Poison, Steve can never quite tell the difference — is brought to a sharp halt when the engine shuts off. The headlights dim. The metallic slam of the driver’s side door sounds so much louder in the darkness.

Eddie rounds the front of his van and eyes the two of you rather suspiciously. The boy inhales deeply, puffing out his chest and splaying his hands on his hips. “…What’s going on here?” he squints at you.

You give him a terribly manufactured sunshine smile and bat your lashes his way, like you’re pretending to be un-innocent. “Nothing…” you sing-song.

Eddie rolls his eyes at you, then turns his attention to Steve. They’re not really strangers anymore, but he still feels the need to treat him like an outsider anyway.

“Harrington,” he says in the place of any real greeting. “Don’t you have other shit to do? Like, I don’t know, a shift as the mannequin at the GAP or something?”

Steve can’t find it in himself to get self-conscious about his fitted-sweatshirt, khaki-slack combo when the insult comes from a guy in a decade-old leather jacket, unwashed t-shirt, and ripped jeans.

“Very funny,” the brunette monotones.

“I’ll see you around, yeah?” you ask when you turn and walk backwards towards Eddie, like there’s a gravitational pull dragging you to him.

You say it to be polite mostly, but you’re hoping for an affirmative — a promise that you’ll have another night like this one, where he sees you just to be seeing you. Hell, you’ll even take a nod if that’s all he’ll give you. And when he does, he gives you a tiny smile that almost makes you trip over yourself.

Fuck, you think to yourself, like your brain is talking to your heart. We just agreed not to do that.

Before you get in the van, you walk by Eddie and bring your cigarette up to his mouth. You coax the stick between his lips with your pointer and middle finger, opting to let him take the last couple of hits because he never turns down a free smoke.

The passenger door shuts once you’re tucked into the seat of it. The sound it makes punctuates your absence. Steve feels all of its emptiness.

He eyes Eddie from the distance, immediately noticing the darkened skepticism dancing in his dark eyes.

The boy’s always felt the need to protect you. When the entire town got spooked about stories of some satanic panic and started treating you like monsters, he wanted to shield you from the boogeyman everyone turned into.

Steve wasn’t one of them, the bad men. But Eddie loves you and it’s made him doubtful.

“It’s not what it looks like,” Steve feels the need to say, as though he’d been caught with his pants down and not just sharing an innocent cigarette with a friend.

Eddie takes the final few puffs of it and exhales rather dramatically, lips pursing to blow it in his direction though it’s too far away to hit him. The boy throws the filter to the concrete and extinguishes the ashes with the toe of his dirty sneakers.

He waits until the white smoke has fully dissipated to speak.

“Damn right, it isn’t.”

That’s all he says. He doesn’t even look at Steve when he says it, or when he rounds the van and hops into the driver’s seat next to you. Steve squints when the too bright headlights come alive again in time with the roaring engine and dated rock music. His tires screech when he speeds out of the back parking lot.

The tin can he drives nearly tips over when he turns too sharply onto Main Street.

Steve doesn’t get a chance to get a good look at you before you’re gone completely. It makes him all boyishly upset, knowing the hours without you will be most agonizing, but the empty feeling is eclipsed by the warm relief of not getting clock cleaned by Eddie Munson.

Damn right, it isn’t. Four words. That’s all he gets. But they’re daunting and coated with a lingering foreboding that feels almost like a threat.

So, by all accounts, Steve probably should’ve known there was no way Munson was ever going to back down that easily.

Eddie comes back the next day, a thundering storm cloud of the boy he usually is, head wild with curly hair and a million thoughts.

The door dings far too gently for such an aggressive arrival. Metal bangs against metal as the handle collides with the window pane. He stomps to the counter in several quick strides, dark eyes darting around the half-empty store — obviously searching for something.

Robin, manning the front counter, is entirely unable to be threatened by him. The all black, chunky metal rings, and crazy hair stopped being so intimidating when she found out you called him Eddie Spaghetti. Now, it’s all she can think about when she sees him.

Even as he stands ahead of her, obviously upset, all she sees is a very cartoonishly angry Eddie Spaghetti, and it takes everything in her not to laugh.

“Where’s Steve?” the boy finally wonders when he realizes the boy’s not in the front.

“Uh, he’s in the back, I think. Why?”

Eddie doesn’t humor her with an answer. He just storms past the counter and makes a b-line for the break room.

Robin watches him over her shoulder. “You’re not supposed to go back there!” she half-heartedly shouts, but makes no further effort to stop him from doing so.

He finds Steve working beneath the dim yellow light of the back room. There’s a warmed-up container of leftovers on the small round table on one side of the room and a stack of unorganized tapes on the counter on the other. Steve multitasks between both and hums something summery under his breath — The Beach Boys, maybe.

He’s too distracted to notice Eddie’s abrupt appearance. It’s the subtle click of the shut door that gets his attention.

Steve’s confused at first. His head snaps over his shoulder like a ghost must’ve closed the door on him. He realizes that it’s just Eddie, and he’s so innocently relieved that it’s almost humorous, then confused all over again. His brows pinch together and through the chicken tender jutting out his check, he mumbles: “You’re not supposed to be back here—”

“Yeah, I got that part,” Eddie interrupts in a monotone.

He swallows. It’s as thick as the tension that settles between the two of them, made heavier by the lengthy silence. He crosses his arms over his chest, stands up a little straighter, and bares his neck when he lifts his chin. “I want you to leave her alone.”

Steve scoffs and chews through his mouthful. “Leave who alone?”

“You know exactly who I’m talking about,” Eddie squints with an unusual sort of seriousness. “I don’t want you messing around with her anymore, man. I’m, fucking— I’m so fucking serious right now.”

The clarification makes Steve laugh. He shakes his head and goes back to piling the myriad of tapes into organized stacks on the counter. “We were just talking, Eddie. I don’t need the lecture, okay?”

“We both know it’s never just talking with you.”

“What? Are you in love with her or something?” he retorts, trying to make a joke of it.

Eddie, for the first time in his life, isn’t amused. “Oh, god, get over yourself, dude. I know what kinda guy you are, alright? I’m not gonna let you hurt her.”

His words hit Steve like a pot of boiling water. It prickles his skin, leaving blisters and burning red blotches in its wake. He’s all but on fire with his anger, less offended by the accusation than by the person it comes from.

Steve and Eddie aren’t friends by any means. They’re just two guys with shared custody of a bunch of teenagers, bonded in their want to keep them all safe. But through their lighthearted animosity, is a sort of understanding: neither of them are the assholes the entire town claims them to be. Eddie isn’t apart of some satanic cult. Steve isn’t a douchebag that uses women as accessories. And that’s just a silent agreement they’ve both come to on their own terms.

But now here they are, talking like it’s 1984 all over again and they’re strangers who hate each other’s guts.

“No. I’m not gonna hurt her. Because we’re just friends, Eddie.”

The boy just shakes his head. He scrunches his nose like he’s wincing, then laughs — a big, dramatic laugh that fills the tiny break room. He begins to pace, waving an accusatory ringed finger Steve’s way. “No, see… That’s the thing. I don’t think King Steve is capable of being ‘just friends’ with a pretty girl.”

Steve rolls his eyes with a heavy huff. He comes to the conclusion that Eddie’s just projecting and that there’s no use in arguing his case. He shoves a black VHS tape into its designated sleeve and slots it in with the rest of them, muttering under his breath, “I’m not King Steve anymore…”

“What?”

“I said, I’m not King Steve anymore!” he yells, a bit louder than he intended to.

He drives a tape onto the pile with an unexpected aggression. It hits the wall with a resounding thud. His arms flail wildly at his sides when he turns to face Eddie again. “God, you guys act like people can’t change! I’m not the asshole I used to be, alright? Jeez…”

Eddie exhales sharply through his nose in the place of any real reply. Deep down, he knows all that. He knows it’s all true because he would’ve never befriended him otherwise. Steve Harrington — the king, the rich kid, the douchebag — turned out to be a pretty damn good guy.

And maybe if Eddie didn’t love you so much, he’d be able to wrap his head around all that.

But does. So he can’t.

He saw you two together the night before, sharing a cigarette behind The Groove — albeit a little too close for his liking — and suddenly, it was junior year all over again.

You’re stressed out about the ACT and college acceptance rates, none of your clothes quite fit you, and you’re trying out bold things with your makeup that don’t quite fit you either. You grin wildly up at Eddie through the vibrant lipstick smeared on your lips, laughing at his half-hearted attempt to cheer you up.

And Steve is a senior, standing on the other side of the hallway — with his pretty clothes and prettier hair — and he lets all of his friends laugh at you. They make fun of your un-styled hair and the way your shirt makes your boobs look, and Steve doesn’t find any of it particularly funny but he lets them mock you anyway.

Eddie sees you together and forgets about the man Steve is now. All he sees is a boy who never stuck up for you, for either of you, who let his best friends make your lives hell because his reputation mattered more.

And it wasn’t like it was his job to defend you, because it wasn’t. Not really. It’s just that you would’ve done it for him, if the roles were reversed. Eddie, too. Neither of you would’ve let a lamb be led to the slaughter quite like that. It was the Hellfire motto, after all — to protect the little sheep from the creeping wolves.

That’s where the difference lies. It’s where the mistrust settles deep and where the root of all of Eddie’s worries lingers.

But Steve has done more to prove himself than Eddie likes to give him credit for.

He takes care of a bunch of kids like it’s his job. He runs Robin to and from school most days out of the week, on time each morning — which, for a guy who showed up late every day for four years, was definitely saying something. He even comes to Eddie’s shows when he’s not too busy working the graveyard shift, never minding that he sticks out in his collared shirt and slacks — a pretty boy amidst a crowd of freaks.

Fuck. Steve Harrington was a pretty alright dude.

But you’re better than alright. You’re better than good. Better than perfect.

If you got your heart broken, Eddie thinks he’d feel all of it times a thousand.

Steve’s been through his own kind of heartbreak, though. He’s slapped a bandaid over his own bleeding heart, and it’s made him soft. The good kind of soft — the kind where he sees a bug on its back and has to flip it over because it hurts too much to let it suffer. Eddie knows he’ll be that kind to you. Kinder, even.

“Yeah, you better hope so, Harrington,” the boy concludes with a slow nod of his wild head. He steals a chicken tender from the styrofoam box it sits in, like it’s some kind of power move, and waves it at him like a condemnatory point. “I hear you do anything — anything — to her… And your ass is grass.”

Eddie takes a hearty bite from the strip, then tosses it back into the container again. He spins on the ragged heel of his sneaker and stalks out of the break room, punctuating his absence with the slam of the door. The ancient thing gets lodged and doesn’t quite shut all the way, so he has to double back and shut it fully.

Steve is left dumbfounded, in more ways than one.

“…He just ate my chicken,” he mumbles to himself with a frown settled deep between his brows. But there’s a lingering tension in Eddie’s storming out — a tangible fog within his words that settles something heavy in the Family Video breakroom that doubles as storage.

It feels almost like a blessing.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Won't escape my attention...

The more time you spend with Steve, the more confident you get.

You visit him at work more often, caring less and less about bothering anybody when you realize they all wanted you there. You let yourself ramble in front of him, too, not stopping yourself nearly as often as you used to. Steve guesses you started to believe him somewhere around the millionth time he promised he liked hearing you talk.

You turn to glitter in his presence, becoming more unapologetically yourself and glowing with it — with all the things that used to make you insecure, things that King Steve would’ve made fun of you for some time ago. Everything you were scared made you too different, is why he liked you in the first place.

And Steve gets to watch it all play out right before his eyes. You inch slowly out of the protective shell you’ve built around yourself and bloom like springtime flowers. He’s grateful he gets to witness it, even more that you feel comfortable enough to do it all in front of him.

You’re hardly as timid as you usually are when you saunter into Family Video. Rather than tiptoeing in and apologizing for intruding, you burst through the front door with a beam and a high-pitched squeal. You’re as bright as every star in the galaxy combined; even dressed head-to-toe in black, you’re more blinding than the sun.

Eddie’s leather jacket, either stolen or unenthusiastically lent from the boy himself, swallows your upper half. You wear a piece of Metallica merchandise beneath it. The thing is cut up to your ribcage. The jagged edges in the fabric, likely from a dull pair of kitchen scissors, tells him the chop was intentional.

A leather skirt clings effortlessly onto you, revealing the pudge of your stomach and the curves of your hips. The thing is donned with two spiked belts and several chains hanging loosely at your waist.

Steve is dozing at the counter with his chin propped on his first when you walk in. He’s half-asleep until he sees you. The shot of espresso that walks in makes him instantly forget how tired he is.

“Guess what?” you ask with wide, sparkling eyes as you skip to the counter with your hands behind your back.

Steve always hated that question. Usually, it came from Dustin or Robin — or, god forbid, both of them — followed by a “No, seriously. Guess.” It left him with no choice but to humor them until they ultimately caved and told him something he couldn’t have guessed in a million years.

He isn’t so annoyed now, though. In fact, he smiles. “What?” he replies.

You pull your bottom lip between your teeth, as though in a futile attempt to conceal the wide grin on your face, and take your hands from behind your back. You flash him the cassette tape you hold in the palm of them, a blue and yellow thing with the angled Def Leppard logo printed on the cover.

“No way!” Steve finds himself exclaiming like he’s the number one fan of the rock and roll band. He isn’t; never has been, really. But he is a fan of you. All of his excitement, all of his bright and shining smiles — they’re all for you.

“They came in last night— when I was off, of course— and I opened this morning and there was a whole damn tower of these tapes! I’m the one who does the tape towers, okay? Plus, I’ve been doggin’ my manager for weeks about the things, so I can’t believe they came in and no one told me, you know?”

Steve gets lost in your rambling right along with you, nodding because he never wants you to stop talking. His twinkling gaze follows you back and forth as you pace in front of the counter. You gesticulate wildly with your hands, nearly elbowing a customer when they get too close to the line of fire.

“And she was all like ‘I can’t control when they come in,’ And I was like ‘well, you can’t control when I come in either, I’ll be taking a long lunch now, thank you’—” you recount, albeit at a slightly louder volume that shocks anyone who doesn’t know you. People shoot you lingering side eyes from over the aisles.

Steve doesn’t care. He’s even happier that you don’t seem to either. You feel comfortable enough with him now to stop caring about the rest. When you stop yourself, you do it because you’ve said everything you need to say, not because you feel like you’ve annoyed him in some way.

“Anyway,” you conclude with a sigh. “I wanted to run it to you personally because, besides Eddie, you’re the only person I know who cares as much as I do.”

You smile sweetly at him, peering at him through your lashes, so suddenly timid — no longer the boisterous girl lighting up the whole room. Steve notices that you do that a lot, go from loud and sunny to shy and glimmering. Eddie does it too, sometimes, but it’s not nearly as cute.

“My wallet’s in my locker,” he tells you when you hand him the tape. He cocks his thumb over his shoulder with his free hand. “Let me go grab it. I’ll be, like, two seconds—”

You reach over the counter and take him by the arm, wrapping chipped maroon nails around the crook of his elbow to keep him from straying too far. Shock coats his features at the suddenness of your touch and the way it makes him buzz.

You scoff. “Are you serious? I’m not gonna make you pay, you weirdo.”

“No?”

“Of course not! It’s a gift.”

“Well, gee, Punchy. Considered me flattered,” he concedes with a faltering smile.

You laugh at his half-hearted attempt to be charming.

He rests his crossed arms on the counter and leans over the top of it in an effort to be the slightest bit closer to you. He gazes up at you with honey eyes and raised brows and a big, dumb smile. “And, you know, flattery... it goes a long way with me.”

You arch an un-manicured brow at him. “Does it, now?”

“Yep. So much so, I’m willing to break a few rules and let you pick out a couple of movies. On the house.”

It’s dumb and it’s sweet and so terribly innocent. He wants to give you so much than that but he’s got about eighteen dollars to his name, so all he can do is offer you a few measly VHS tapes. It has you beaming like he just offered you the world.

“Steve Harrington,” you scold playfully. “I didn’t know you were so naughty.”

He falters. His resolve slips and, for no more than half a second, his brain forgets how to work.

He’s not quite sure how you manage to do that to him all the damn time. You make his brain shortcircuit and his belly quiver and his vision swim. He’s known you for a while now, long enough that the lovesickness should’ve well worn off.

Steve’s worried that there’s no cure for you, that he’s in it for the long haul now — upset stomachs, heart palpitations, and all.

“Well, I’m full of surprises,” he shrugs and sways on his feet. “What’s your poison, Punchy? Molly Ringwald? Robert Downey Jr.? The John Hughes type?”

You can tell he’s joking. You squint over at him and rest your elbows on the counter top your face-to-face.

The wintergreen mint on his breath makes your head swim.

Your rouge-tined lips are so close he can taste them — he wants to, desperately so.

You don’t miss the way his gaze flits to your mouth, lingering there for no longer than a blink.

“Try Night of the Living Dead,” you challenge.

“That is so dreadfully on brand for you,” he manages to reply without much stuttering. He’s surprised he’s able to get any words out at all, with the way his heart feels like it’s about to beat out of his chest.

“I’m nothing if not predictable.”

Steve doesn’t respond as he leaves the counter to get what you asked for. Silence is easier than saying that you’re the most surprising thing he’s ever met in his life.

When he returns, he brings the entire film franchise with him. All three movies are stacked in his arms and he scans the backs of them, hoping Keith won’t notice that they’re being rented free of charge.

“Have you ever seen them?” you wonder.

He shakes his head. “No. I saw one of them at a drive-in a long time ago, but I wasn’t exactly paying attention, if you know what I mean—” he answers with a soft laugh, quick to cut himself off. It was supposed to be a dumb joke, but both of you know what he was insinuating and it makes everything awkward.

Robin would’ve slapped him on the back of the head if she were around to hear it.

He would’ve deserved it.

“Well, you missed out,” you scold, not quite meeting his gaze. “They’re actually pretty good.”

“I’ll try and watch ‘em sometime then.”

“Tonight?” you offer suddenly.

Steve furrows his brows. “…Huh?”

“I mean, like— I don’t know… I thought maybe we could watch them tonight,” you stammer with your eyes turned down toward the counter, where you draw invisible patterns onto the granite with the tip of your finger. “Like, together… if you want.”

Steve is momentarily speechless. He’s spent weeks plotting how he was going to ask you out. It would come to him in waves. He’d feel like he’d concocted the most perfect, foolproof plan right before realizing there was no way in hell he could ever go through with it — all in the same fleeting thought.

But here you are, biting the bullet for the both of you.

He’s grateful. He thinks he’s dreaming.

“That sounds…” Steve trails off with the mindless nod of his head. “Yeah. No. Totally. That sounds… really cool.”

A wide smile pulls at the edges of your lips. You purse your mouth to the side in attempts to conceal it. “Cool,” you murmur all cool-ly, like his affirmation isn’t heaven to your ears.

“Uh, not to sound like a total douchebag or whatever, but my dad— he’s got this theater room and everything, and my parents are almost never home,” Steve rambles as he puts all three movies into a paper bag. Then his eyes go wide and his face glows cherry red. “Not like that! I didn’t mean it like— That sounded really weird… I’m sorry—”

You giggle at him, at the way he can pretend to be so suave, and then reveal all the marshmallow fluff he tries to keep hidden a moment later. “It’s okay, Steve. I got what you meant.”

He writes his address on a yellow sticky note with the Family Video logo printed in green at the very top. His handwriting is boyish and sloppy, the sign of a boy who never did care much about school. Some letters are connected, others far apart; some written too big, while others are too small. You find it endearing, but Steve knows it’s just because his hand was shaking something fierce.

He leaves his number written at the very bottom. Just for good measure.

“No funny business, alright, Harrington?” you joke, waving a ringed finger at him as you walk backward out of the store, heading back to your own job.

Steve bites back a smile. Once upon a time, he was all funny business. No girl was ever going to invite King Steve over and not expect some heavy petting. And he wants so badly to kiss you — fuck, he wants to kiss you all the time — but the want to spend innocent time with you eclipses all of those boyish feelings.

He yearns to be close to you. Like magnets. Or a moon and the ocean’s tide.

“No funny business,” he promises.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

You keep your distance with a system of touch.

It isn’t until you arrive at the front gates of the Harrington home you realize you’ve never been in the suburbs of Hawkins before.

You grew up on the very outskirts of town, where there were more trees than people or houses. The block was half rundown already and horribly secluded. The only interesting thing about it was the winding trail through the woods that led to the anterior of Forest Hills trailer park.

That’s where you spent the bulk of your time, practically living with Eddie and Wayne in their one-bedroom trailer, until you felt guilty enough to go back home for a day or two. Your parents would inevitably remind you why you ran off in the first place, and then the cycle would start all over again.

It was all just far enough away from Hawkins that you could pretend like the town’s bullshit didn’t exist. The freak from the wrong side of the tracks didn’t belong on Maple Street or Fairview Road or Laurel Avenue. That was for people who could afford new shoes every school year, who could go clothes shopping and not feel guilty about cutting into their food money, who were set up with trust funds before they were even born.

But here you are now, on Fairview Road, seven o’clock sharp, and standing in front of the biggest house you’d ever seen.

You ring the doorbell and flinch when it’s louder than expected. The chime is light and jaunty. You wonder if it’s been programmed for the change in season.

Steve answers no more than a couple seconds later. He swings both French doors open, arms spreading wide like the smile on his face.

He’s traded in his slacks for comfier jeans and his vest for a form-fitting sweatshirt he’s bunched at the elbows. You realize, then, that you’ve never seen him without the forest green Family Video jacket. It makes him look naked, almost, like a totally different person — no longer the dork who works a measly nine-to-five with his best friend and visits the freak next door on the off chance his manager won’t dock his pay for it.

The vest had humbled him to a certain extent. Now he just looks cool. Like the boy people would either praise or avoid like the plague, for fear of getting in King Steve’s path — just a little bit more mature looking now, with his chiseled jaw and scruffy chin.

It makes you feel a little stupid from where you stand on the porch ahead of him, wearing the same thing he’d seen you in earlier that day. He’s got no idea you spent the past couple of hours agonizing over what to wear. For the sake of not seeming crazy overzealous, you opted not to dress up. Now you’re scared he thinks you just didn’t care enough to.

But you do care. So goddamn much that’s it scary.

You never had to worry about what you wore or what you looked like before you left the house, about what you had too much of and what you lacked. Now, it’s all you can think about.

If Steve notices anything at all, he doesn’t show it. He just keeps on smiling at you, too happy to see you to care about what you’re wearing. He’s just glad that you showed up.

Truth be told, he had a six-pack and Robin’s number on speed dial on the off chance you canceled on him. He was preparing himself to wallow in self-pity and spend the rest of the night ranting to his best friend about the bleeding heart he had for you. Because, as far as he was concerned, you were far too good to be true.

You were beautiful and funny and kind and perfect. You treat him like you’ve known him for years, like he didn’t spend so many of them avoiding you in attempts to keep some measly title that didn’t mean shit. You were too perfect. Sometimes, Steve gets scared that he just made you up.

But whether you’re a dream come true or the real thing, you’re standing on his front porch anyway, with a smile and a bottle of grocery store wine.

He saves the beer in his fridge and the wallowing for another day.

Steve escorts you through his lavish living room and to the downstairs area that’s got a movie screen hanging on the walls and a couple of leather couches sitting in front of it. The coffee table in front of them holds a myriad of glass bowls — popcorn, various candies, and more popcorn.

“You planning on throwin’ a party down here, Harrington?” you tease with a soft chuckle, trying to conceal how your heart’s about to burst at the mere sight of it all.

“Well, I just— I didn’t know what you liked, and I didn’t— I wanted to make sure you had something to eat, you know,” the boy stammers out. He brings the palm of his hand to rub at the back of his neck. “So I just… I got… everything.”

“It’s a good thing a like everything then, huh?” you smile at him as you pluck a Red Vine from its dedicated bowl. You rip off an inch or two with your teeth and then talk as you chew: “I hope you’re prepared for all of this shit get eaten, Harrington. I can get quite ravenous.”

Steve nods to himself and tries not to smile too big. “Sounds entertaining… Maybe I’ll just watch you instead of the movie.”

It was supposed to be a joke.

But then you settled down next to him on the couch, keeping a respectful distance but sharing the same fuzzy blanket, and he has to physically force himself to drag his gaze away from you.

He was right about what he said before, you were far more entertaining than the black and white film projected ahead of him — grabbing handfuls of popcorn at a time and quoting the movie through the mouthful.

It’s a tad bit barbaric, the faintest bit off-putting, and otherworldly levels of endearing. It leaves him virtually unable to take his eyes off of you.

He didn’t think you could get more beautiful, but you keep on proving him wrong.

He’s starting to realize he doesn’t know shit.

You’re slowly coming to the same understanding.

You’ve heard stories about Steve. Usually from gossiping cheerleaders standing in circles at their lockers or whispering in the back of a classroom. Doomed as the freak and all but banished from the inner society of Hawkins High, you became an observer. You were so invisible that people sometimes didn’t realize they were talking right over you, sharing secrets they wouldn’t want someone else to get a hold of.

But apparently you were the exception. Because you weren’t a someone to them.

They talked about how kind he was, how well endowed, how they were meant to go on some stupid date but missed their reservation because Steve got a little too handsy beforehand, and how they spent the rest of the night with their hands shoved down each other’s pants at Lover’s Lake.

You were seeing, firsthand, how much he’d changed. How he made his promise of no funny business and how he was sticking to it — no teasing you about the whole thing with a knowing smirk and flirtatious honey eyes, no urging to close this distance between you, no tiny touches on your arm or thigh in the hopes of heavier petting.

He spends the entirety of the first movie perfectly respectful. Just like you’d asked him to be.

And it was nice, knowing that you weren’t wasting your evening with some asshole who was only spending time with you in the hopes of you putting out later. But it leaves you the faintest bit empty. Hungry. You long for his touch like a missed meal. Starving and feeling it all.

It’s not even heavy petting you want, you just want to feel him next to you — to press yourself into his side and to warm yourself with him like a blanket.

But you weren’t a pretty cheerleader or a girl dripping in expensive clothes and daddy’s money. You were the weirdo, the freak, the loudmouth nerd, Punchy — all names you wore proudly, like lit-up signs or steel armor.

Until now.

Now you think if you weren’t Punchy, if were you someone different, then maybe he’d want to touch you more.

The first hour and thirty-seven minutes of your favorite movie are strangely agonizing.

Your hands itch with the desire to touch the boy next to you, and they busy themselves with the bowls of candy and savory junk food splayed out on the table in front of you. It’s mindless more than it is anything. You’re absentminded binging does nothing more than half-distract you from the thoughts raging rivers in your skull.

You don’t even realize you’re doing it until your hand falls into an empty bowl of popcorn and finds nothing but kernels at the bottom of it.

It makes Steve laugh, thinking you were just too into the movie to notice — having no idea it was him taking up all your brain power.

He leaves to fix more snacks for you while you slip the second VHS into the movie player. He returns with a bowl of freshly popped popcorn and two beers after the wine bottle has been sufficiently emptied. When he plops down next to you again, it’s in the same spot he’d been sitting in all night — a couple of excruciating inches away.

Under the guise of sharing the popcorn in his lap, you make the too bold decision to slither in at his side. It’s innocent at first — your thighs just barely graze and your elbows bump when you dip your hands into the bowl. And it’s still innocent some thirty minutes later, when you find yourself resting your head on his shoulder with your legs curled up behind you.

Steve tenses when he feels your temple pressed against him, but only for a moment before he relaxes again. It makes him all suddenly warm and self-aware of every movement he makes. He tries not to breathe too heavy or shift too often, for fear it might jostle you too much. He doesn’t want to stop feeling you against him like this, even if it’s got his skin prickling with a searing form of anxiety.

“Don’t tell me you’re falling asleep,” he jokes.

“Of course not. It’s way too riveting,” you scoff, even though he can feel you cuddling further into him. Your cheek rubs against the soft cotton of his sweatshirt when you look up at him. He turns his head to peer down at you and his nose nearly grazes your forehead.

He finds you with a certain glint in your eye. It’s borderline playful, like it so often is, but coated with a sweetness that drips over him like honey. “You like it so far?” you wonder.

“Yeah,” the boy nods quickly. He couldn’t tell you what had happened the past two-and-a-half films, but he could tell you how your jaw tenses when you chew and how your smile curls just before you laugh out loud and how your eyes widen every time you quote the movie. “It’s really good. I like it.”

You beam at him before turning back to the projector again. You shift to get more comfortable against him. “Good.”

By the third movie, you’re somehow even closer.

Truth be told, Day of the Dead wasn’t your favorite in the trilogy, so it left your mind wandering to far off places — namely, the pretty boy sitting beside you. He goes to put the tape into the projector, feeling immediately cold without pressing into his side, and when he returns he tries his best not to beg you to cuddle against him again.

“My shoulder’s gettin’ real cold over here,” he tries to joke.

You see right through his beckoning, though. It makes you happy to know he wants it just as much as you do.

“Just say you wanna be next to me, Harrington,” you tease like you aren’t happily obliging him. You snuggle into his shoulder and rest your head against him while your arms curl around his bicep.

“I wanna be next to you,” he repeats, a playful smile on his lips though his gaze softens with sincerity. “Is that so bad?”

You shake your head against him in reply. Suddenly as mushy as the boy beside you, you turn to look up at him. “Not unless it’s bad that I wanna be next to you, too…”

“Nah. It’s not bad,” he assures in something short of a whisper. “Guess I’m just glad I’m not the only one that’s so far gone.”

He doesn’t elaborate on what he means by that. He doesn’t have to.

Perhaps it’s the admission that this boy is so far gone for you that gives you a sudden burst of confidence. Maybe it’s the comforting feeling of being seen, of knowing you’re no longer alone in your similar far gone-ness. Each feels like rays of sunshine to your skin and has you pressing your lips to his wanting ones without much thought.

The plump pink of his mouth are magnets for yours. They meet and lock together with little effort, almost destined to do it. It’s a soft, meager, and lingering little peck that sucks you both in a little too easily. It’s hard to pull away from him, but when you do, your lips click in protest.

Then there’s a look, then a deafening silence that says more words than either of you were capable of forming in that moment. His amber eyes dart between both of yours, asking a question without saying a goddamn thing. One that you answer with your own softening gaze.

And it’s almost better than the kiss itself, the swirling feeling in the pits of your stomach, the knowing of what’s about to happen.

A silent plea and a blink later and his lips are on yours again.

It’s an awkward mess of yearning mouths and tangled limbs as the both of you fight to find purchase on one another. Your fingers knot in the collar of his sweatshirt, pulling him impossibly closer, while his grip the bare skin of your waist from where your shirt had ridden up. His touch makes you buzz, like a static shock or a bolt of lightning.

Steve makes several observations when he feels you melt into him like honey on toast. He notices how you press yourself into him, like you won’t be satisfied until you’ve swallowed him whole, and how it has you kissing him like you’re scared he’ll pull away — like you’ll open your eyes and he won’t be real.

You’re as domineering against his mouth as you are in real life, still as all-consuming and overpowering as the girl he’s gotten so familiar with.

He doesn’t realize how you’ve settled so intently on top of him until his back meets the pillowy cushion of the leather couch. You don’t either, until he exhales a sharp gasp against your cupid’s bow. Then you part from him, for the first time in several minutes, breathing in the oxygen your lungs had just begun to scream for.

Steve finds you with kiss-bitten lips and glassy eyes that look upon him with a softness that he didn’t know existed until now. He smirks with his own swollen and pinker mouth like he isn’t glowing red beneath you.

“I thought you said no funny business,” he manages to tease through bated breaths.

You don’t bother to make up excuses for yourself. You’re already on top of him, all over him — you’ve already kissed him like you would’ve died if you hadn’t. Now, you’re straddling him, caging him between your legs and under your torso. You’ve settled on top of him with a comforting weightiness, like you’re building a home in the familiarity you’ve sought in him.

“I lied,” you mutter with a lazy shrug. A sly smile pulls slowly at your lips until you’re all but beaming sunbeams down at him. He revels in your warmth. “’S not my fault you’re so damn cute.”

It’s easier to blame it on him for all the reasons you’re attached to him like a magnet to his metal, your moth to his flame. You part his lips with your mouth, rut your tongue against his own, reveling in the foreign familiarity of it all, and then blame him for the way you can’t seem to stop any of it.

Steve doesn’t seem to mind, though. The way his hands find purchase on your hips, petting the warmed skin there and sometimes squeezing to pull you further down onto him, tells you that he has a similar yearning to melt with you. He lets you kiss him all slow, allows you to taste all of him, and doesn’t rush you in your process. It’s comforting, tender. Free.

He’s not used to being on his back like this. Usually, he’s the one taking control. It’s his mouth that does all the work. So, it’s strange to be under you and to have you above him. But it’s more pleasant in an even stranger way not to be rushed — not to have to do all the work. His mouth opens so obediently for you and finds an effortless rhythm with your lips and your tongue.

It’s the easiest thing he’s ever done in his life, kissing you.

He delights in every ounce of the warmth and unfamiliarity you press to his mouth, and tries to shove down feelings of unworthiness that simmer in his chest while you do so.

You don’t part until your mouths are numb and tingling with it.

Your lips are more vibrant in their color, aflame and swollen from being so ardently kissed and sucked and bitten. Neither of you mind making out like a couple of teenagers. It’s comforting to know that things won’t go further than a couple soft touches on burning skin. It was never supposed to be anything more than that, anyway. It was just about being close to each other.

You’ve almost succeeded in your effort to melt into the boy beneath you, when you hear the distant sound of a door opening and closing again. Muffled voices follow — unknown to you but obviously familiar to him.

You part from him without thinking, like you’re a couple of kids again who’ll get in trouble if your parents ever found out what you were doing down here. Steve groans at the loss of you and in annoyance at the sound of his parents. His heavy eyes fall shut and his head leans back to the couch cushions as he fights to swallow down all of his anger.

His parents never really come around these days. They’ve got a bigger home in the city, closer to his dad’s work, and they choose to stay there most days of the week — month.

They used to make excuses for why they left their only son behind. It’s five minutes from your dad’s firm. There’s more opportunity for your mom’s real estate business. Oh, don’t be so selfish, Steven, you’ll finally have the place to yourself. It’s a win-win for all of us.

Steve didn’t want their excuses. It was actually easier with them gone.

But they come around every now and again, whenever it’s most convenient for them, and treat their arrival like something that needs to be celebrated. Like they aren’t supposed to be with their child in the fucking first place. And they somehow manage to pick the most inconvenient times for him, like they know he’s in a bind and want to see him struggle to get out of it.

Usually, it’s when he’s in between paychecks — when they want to take him out to some fancy dinner he could barely afford anyway, but especially when he’s hardly making it until payday. Now, it’s when he’s got the prettiest girl he’s ever seen on top of him, and he’s all hot and half-hard. Steve doesn’t want to let them ruin the moment, as good as they are at it.

“It’s okay. They won’t come in here,” he assures when he feels you tense at the unexpected company. “My mom will go to the bedroom and my dad will go to his office. We’re good, I promise.”

You figure he’s right. The voices grow more and more distant. Heeled shoes click up and up the stairs while heavy stomps head the opposite way. But you’ve already been so woefully knocked out of your stupor that you’re scared it’s too late.

Your lips are numb and the credits are rolling and you’re on top of this beautiful boy and you have no idea how you got there.

It’s almost frightening, the way Steve had consumed you mind, body, and soul by just existing next to you. You become dreadfully hyperaware of the whole thing — of who you are, who he is, and what you’re doing. You lose all your softness and turn to ice, hardening and shrinking back into yourself.

“I should—” you start before clearing your throat when the words come out heavier than expected. “I should head out anyway.”

“Oh,” is all Steve can say. “Right.”

You stare down at him, chest still pressed against his, nose nearly touching the tip of his own. “I just— I have to open tomorrow and everything, so—”

“No. Yeah. Yeah, I— I get it.”

You make tricky work of untangling yourselves.

His legs twist with yours when you both try to rise from the couch at the same time. Then your ring gets stuck in the fabric of his shirt, but not before his belt buckle gets somehow caught in yours. It’s like fate is protesting the imminent parting, but neither of you are paying attention to the signs.

He walks you to your car and chuckles under his breath as you scurry to the front door.

You’re not-so-distantly terrified of running into his parents. They probably wouldn’t mind that he’s sneaking around with a girl, surely that they’re used to, but you’re almost certain they’re not used to girls like you. Girls with wild hair and leather skirts and chunky boots and too bold makeup.

You’re not the girl next door. You’re the girl parents warn their sons about. “Leave that girl alone,” they say. “She’s nothing but trouble.”

You tell him all of this on the short trek to your half-broken-down car when you catch him laughing at you about the whole thing. You say it in jest, lighthearted and trying to make a joke of it. But there’s an underlying melancholia to your tone that reveals every truth you’re trying to evade.

“They don’t care enough about me to give a shit about a girl I’m with, I promise,” he confesses with a laugh that sounds more like a sad scoff than anything else. His chocolate eyes turn gold beneath the yellow street light. He smirks at you. “Besides, I don’t know if I told you this or not, but my middle name is actually trouble, so… I think we might be a match made in heaven.”

You roll your eyes at his attempts to flirt with you, though his lack of finesse makes you smile. “You’re an idiot, Steve Actually Trouble Harrington.”

“You really know how to say goodbye, don’t ya?” he grins when you reach the curb where your tin can car sits.

“Yeah, I’m pro,” you shrug with a teasing glint in your eye, then you beam. “I’ll see you around, ‘kay?”

“Totally,” he nods, suddenly forlorn at having to leave you like he hadn’t just spent the past four hours with you.

Themetallic click of your car door opening sounds much louder in the emptiness of the suburbs. You glance at the boy right before you sink into the driver’s seat, feeling your heart swell with something short of yearning — anticipation.

You weren’t actually a professional at saying goodbye, you find, because you’re realizing how hard it is to leave him.

“Steve!” he hears you shout from across the lawn when he’s halfway up the drive.

He turns around, expecting to hear you tease him some more or tell him you were having car troubles. Neither would’ve shocked him. You’ve got a smart mouth and a shittier car. But you keep on surprising him, all but launching yourself into him before kissing him harder than he’s ever been kissed before.

Steve tenses against you at first, then relaxes again in record time. He sighs in the comfort of having your body pressed so intently into his and your arms wrapped around his neck to pull him somehow closer.

You feel the breath of his exhale fan against your cupid’s bow. It makes you smile, and he feels the expression contort against his lips. His hands rise to the widest part of your hips without thinking. It’s all muscle memory now.

And even though he’s spent the better part of an hour kissing you, this one is so obviously different. This wasn’t just to pass the time. This was more than just to feel him — it was to tell him something. He hears every word you don��t say, but rather press like a stamp to his mouth.

He’s breathless when you pull away. You meet his flushed face with a mischievous grin.

“What was that for?” he wonders breathlessly, but doesn’t waver with his hold on you. He quickly notices that yours doesn’t either.

You shrug in response. “‘Cause you’re pretty.”

“Yeah, well…” he tries to play off like he’s not blushing like crazy. “You’re pretty too.”

Your beam ebbs into a teasing, tightlipped smirk. “Stop flirting with me, Steve Harrington.”

You shove him away with a rougher hand than you realize before you walk away from him. Steve rubs at the ache in his chest with the palm of his hand.

Your playful teasing and your lingering kiss is the only thing Steve has to remember you by when you turn on your chunky heeled boot and head off down the driveway again. He’s frozen, mesmerized by the sight of you and reeling at how you manage to drive him crazy without trying.

Your eyes find him again just before you duck into your car, and you see him still looking at you — mouth agape and eyes wide like you’re some kind of rare find. You figure you must be, in some way. Girls like you aren’t supposed to like guys like him. Vice Versa. Tale as old as time.

The boy stays locked in his stupor until the sprinkles whir on. The spurts of freezing cold water spray all over him and his pretty hair and expensive sweatshirt and his vintage jeans. “Shit!” you hear him swear as he rushes for cover on his front porch.

He’s quickly soaked and freezing cold, but he smiles anyway when he hears the sound of your giggling behind him. It’s as animated as your personality and spills from your mouth like so many rays of sunshine, just a little too loud for the quiet midnight suburbs.

It’s perfect, he realizes. You’re perfect.

#published by bug #steve harrington x reader #stranger things x reader #stranger things imagine #steve harrington imagine #steve harrington smut #steve harrington fic #steve harrington x you #steve harrington x y/n #steve harrington #st oneshots #stevie oneshot #punchy x steve

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theamazingmaddyas · 6 months ago

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Apollo Cabin Camper headcanons

Lee was an avid writer, and was planning to go for a Creative Writing before he, you know, kicked the bucket. Michael and Will ended up posthumously publishing his diary as a fiction story (because monsters and all) so that he could have his dream of being a published author. Nico brought Lee a copy in the Underworld.

Michael would only ever call his younger siblings his "little siblings" despite the fact that most of them passed him in height at like 9 or 10.

Will has Michael and Lee's names tattooed on his wrist in their handwriting, as well as a quote from one of Lee's poems on his forearm.

Kayla's known she was a demigod since she was really young, since her father had to explain why she has no mother. Darren could see through the mist, and would just shoot the monsters that came because of Kayla's stronger sent.

Kayla was brought to camp by Hedge when he was in Toronto in TLO (is this a common hc? I feel like it should be)

Austin could play any instrument, except the kazoo. For some reason, he sucked at playing the kazoo.

Jerry's accent was so strong his first summer at camp no one could understand him except for the other internationals.

Yan would hide in the armory with their book so that they didn't have to do sword-fighting or archery practice

Gracie would make rainbow loom bracelets for literally everyone. Even though she came to camp after the Battle of Manhattan and the Battle of the Labrynth, she still made bracelets for her deceased siblings based on Will, Kayla, and Austin's description of them.

Will was protective of the chariot in TLH not because he cared about it, but because Michael cared about it

Lee was born in Connecticut, but lived practically his whole life in NYC, and Michael was from Maine.

The cabin has a world map with push pins indicating where everyone is from. Every camper has also signed the wall around it on the day they were claimed, so there's well over a thousand names by the time PJO takes place.

Cabin 7 has a music room in it's basement, that has every single instrument you can imagine. (Austin is banned from playing the kazoo of course)

The only way the cabin can be cleaned is if It's A Hard Knock Life (Broadway version) (and the reprise as well) are playing. The youngest kid sings at Molly, and they play rock paper scissor to figure out who jumps in the laundry basket like Annie (one time Michael accidently fell asleep and was brought to the laundry room by the harpies. He did not let Lee hear the end of it) (The same thing almost happened to Gracie, but Will found her before the harpies could)

It's tradition that the last day of camp the younger campers write a song for their counselor and play it before bed. There's a binder of all the lyrics of every song dated back to the 1940s on the shelf, when the tradition was started

I'm not even sorry about how many there are, I'm just a tad bit obsessed with Cabin 7 (as indicative of my ao3 fics dedicated to them all)

(Octavian's a legacy and I'm only 150 pages into my reread of Son of Neptune, I can't remember if there are any canon Apollo kids barring Octavian's ancestors.)

#cabin 7 #apollo cabin #trials of apollo #michael yew #will solace #lee fletcher #jerry (percy jackson)#yan (percy jackson)#gracie (percy jackson #apollo #percy jackson and the olympians #heroes of olympus #the sun and the star #austin lake #kayla knowles #octavian (percy jackson)

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deadbeat-motel · 7 months ago

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ᕼᑌᔕK ᗩᑎᗪ ᑎIᖴᖴTY ᖇEᗪEᔕIGᑎ

Deadbeat father with his baby-leashed daughter.

I believe these are the last of the designs that will try to follow the original design as best as it can because looking at my sketches right now, Alastor, Cherri Bomb, and Pentious (and Crymini) goes a different direction than their counterparts.

You know how this works, thoughts below:

My issues with their Original designs:

Niffty:

Man, I only have two things to critique about this one since she's also a solid design:

What is the purpose of the scarf? It comes out of nowhere for the design, what is the connection/purpose of having it? Genuinely asking since it does bother me a bit.

She barely is a bug, there is no feature in the design that gives us any idea that she might be a bug (Or even an alien since apparently Cyclops are just a normal sinner type in this hell). Looking at the Wiki, I think the only reason for the alien aspect is that it came from a song? Either way, she doesn't showcase any of either in her design.

Husk:

GOD THE WINGS. DEAR GOD THE WINGS. IT'S SO UGLY AND CLUTTERED AND THE PATTERNS BARELY MAKE ANY SENSE. It's so awful ewwww. Every scene that didn't have them closed looked extremely rushed and ugly. It could've benefitted from just copying how actual feathered wing patterns naturally are.

His eyebrows are not a problem for me (It's my favourite part of him) but the unnecessary two black stripes are.

He's probably supposed to be a tuxedo cat, but he legitamately looks like the cat in the hat with his entire face being white.

The thought process for these two:

Niffty:

Personally was not into the whole Cyclops thing, especially when there are no hellborns (that I can recall at least) in Helluva Boss that posess a singular eye. She's got 2 eyes now because.... reasons.

The mismatched eyes was my solution to removing the Cyclops sinners of this world. Plus it's a neat little character detail that her insecurity of some kind of eye defect manifests as this odd eye shape.

Her hair is a bit neater because as much as I enjoyed how her original hair looks, It's kind of silly to think a person who's obsessed with cleanliness would have such an unkempt haircut? (Specifically talking about that scene kid-esque bangs she has.)

While I kept the maid aspect with her clothes, I made it a lot more flowery so that it reads more like a child's outfit mimicing a maid's.

I gave her one fucked up antennae since in the rewrite ill be doing, she's very easily lost and thus became homeless, drifting to any place that would allow her to stay for a little while long until they kick her out.

Bug wings and the spurs on her arms and legs are just to sell the bug aspect a bit more.

Hopefully, it was clear enough. But her arms are made of two arms conjoined together to create a singular arm.

Admittedly, I did not choose a specific bug for Niffty. Insects are not something I'm interested in and I got lazy with this aspect.

Husk:

MADE HIM A LOT FATTER AHAHAHAHHA. Husk feels like he could've ended up as a bara if Vivzie's twinkif-y ray didn't hit him.

Specific fluff areas as well as a red mustache make him look older and do more to make you understand he's much more aged than the rest of the cast.

Genuinely enjoyed the hair that they gave Husk in his flashback, it looked handsome on him. Why Vivzie didn't put that in his actual redesign is beyond me, but here it is on him now

Since his wings barely play any role in the story, I shrunk it and de-cluttered the poor thing.

The red suspenders are there to simply put a pop of color on his already muted colors.

Despite the running joke that Vivzie's characters all have a bowtie, kept it on Husk since I think it would be cute that he probably keeps it on because Niffty made it herself for him.

This is just personal, but I wanted to give him an actual cat's pattern because I saw Husk from the headcanon voices video and thought that he was a sloth for some reason.

#deadbeat motel redesign #hazbin hotel criticism #hazbin hotel redesign #deadbeat motel niffty #deadbeat motel husk #hazbin hotel critical #vivziepop critical

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jongsigf · 27 days ago

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Mr A-List | Park Jongseong

"Never liked him, Never will." You always thought to yourself when you so much heard his voice. The school heartthrob who had a reputation for being 'Mr A-List'. Everything about him was disgustingly perfect. Except his mouth. You just wanted to shove all those arrogant and cocky remarks down his throat.

THEMES: Teenage crack, Enemies to lovers

WARNING(S): Pet names, name calling, arguments, some fluff, (Maybe cursing), mentions of passing away, Smoking

WORD COUNT | 3.9k <

[Author's Note]: Hi everyone!!! This is my first oneshot so please show some love <3333 And Enjoy!

Park Jongseong. He goes by many names. Jongseong, Jay, Jongsaeng... But the most popular. 'Mr A-List'.

You absolutely despised him. Besides his good grades, he had a loud mouth. A cocky, arrogant bastard who had nothing better to do but brag to your face about being 'so much better'. Talking to him was like talking to a yapping seagull. Won't shut up and won't let you live in peace for more than ten minutes.

Your locker door slams shut as you let out a heavy sigh walking to your first class of the day. Your shoulders slumped as your books rested in one arm, your feet treading along the mostly empty hallway.

As usual your head was in the clouds, zoning out into your own thoughts, blurring out everything around you, humming a song you were obsessed with recently and whispering the lyrics under your breath when your shoe slipped on the floor. Luckily you caught yourself on your heels, but not so much your books.

You groan as the books slipped to the floor into a spilled pile. "It's too early for this." you sigh and crouch down on your knees to pick them up when you hear an annoyingly familiar voice.

"Finally realised you were below me huh cupcake?" You raised your head with a glare, eyeing the owner of the voice. Mr A-List. He had his signature smug smirk as he had both hands stuffed into his pockets with his shirt unbuttoned, showing off his black tank top tucked into his pants, buckled with a leather belt and his loose neck tie reaching his belly button.

"Not in the mood to hear it Jay" You muttered loudly enough for him to hear as you just picked up your books and got back up on your feet. "Why don't you talk your bragging ass to your books."

"Not as fun as bragging to you princess." His smirk widened as if that pet name was supposed to make you feel any better. If anything, you were even more pissed. What a great way to start a Monday morning.

You just shook your head, rolling your eyes as you walked past him, your skirt bouncing and swaying behind you as you muttered to yourself, cursing at Jay.

"Hey now, don't leave like that" He jogged up behind you, easily catching up, ending up beside you, matching your pace. You rolled your eyes again, not bothering to even spare him a glance. "I don't want to talk to you."

"Aww why not? You wound me princess." He feigned innocence, sticking out his bottom lip in a pout. "Because, you annoy me." You didn't hesitate to answer back.

"Why? because you know I'm better than you?" He kept his tone innocent but he was obviously making fun of you for having lower grades then him.

"I'm late for class. Goodbye" You treaded off as Jay just paused in his tracks watching you walk off with a grin..

This was your daily routine, having to deal with his stupid bragging and 'superior' behaviour like he was your King. Ever since he had come to the school two years ago, he had stolen your spot as rank 1. You used to be the smartest in your entire grade, but he came in and not even one month later he quickly replaced you and ever since he always manages to get higher. You constantly argue with the teachers, insisting they marked your papers wrong but they would just brush you off saying they checked multiple times and you had no choice but to leave it unless you wanted detention for always nagging your teachers. Jay was loved by EVERYONE, except you. Teachers saw him as the star student and special kid. All the girls swooned over him while guys wanted to be him. Jay knew very well you disliked him and took it to his advantage to pick on you.

It was friday evening and you were studying in the library. It was raining heavily outside, wind and thunder thrashing as you drained out the noise by focusing on your work. Thunderstorms were not your best friend, it felt like a phobia to you. You decided to wait it out before heading home.

About a few hours later you decided to head home after feeling exhausted. You packed up your things and walked out of the library, through the empty hallways.

As you got lost into your thoughts, the pearl bracelet you had recieved on your birthday had caught onto the spiral of your notebook and as you raised your hand to adjust your dangling earring the bracelet stretched which made it snap as the pearls spilled everywhere.

Your eyes widened as you stopped in your tracks looking down at the pearls in disbelief. You quickly got onto your knees and tried picking up as many as you could to save it. You chased them around, gathering as many as you could, a few had rolled into the open janitors closet and quickly followed the trail of pearls inside picking each one up.

You stood up searching if you had lost anymore, running your hand through your hair, moving your long strands out of your eyes. The door to the janitors closet was being held open by a broom which you hadn't noticed. As you were about to turn on your heel, you knocked the broom over causing the janitors door to slam shut from the strong wind.

You jumped from being startled as the room became darker then before. The only source of light coming from a small window in the corner of the room which was gushing in wind.

You tried pulling the door open but it was locked. You banged on the wood, hoping there'd be anyone outside to let you out, but there was barely any sound from the thick hard wood. You quickly gave up leaning your forehead on the door. You were exhausted, tired and not in any mood to deal with this kind of problem.

The janitors room was pretty small. A few metal shelves in rows which reached to the ceiling and only one single flutter shutter window which was open but no space to leave.

Just then, a scent of smoke reached your nostrils as you sniffed twice to figure out what it was before closing your mouth and nose coughing into your palm.

You noticed a smoke trail coming from behind one of the shelves. You took small, slow steps, peaking to see what it was when your eyes widened. Jay!?

Jay stood there, leaning against the shelf while holding a half-burnt cigarette bud between his fingers, gazing aimlessly at the plain wall infront of him as he has wired earphones plugging into his ears as he softly nodded his head at times.

"Jay?" You furrowed your eyebrows, about to approach him when you knocked over a metal tin as it clang on the floor making you flinch and startle Jay as he darted his head in your direction, his eyes immediately falling on you as his eyes widened in surprise.

You turned your gaze back to him. Your eyes lingering on his visibly shocked expression while also glancing at the the burning cigar in between his index and middle finger.

He knew exactly what you were looking at and quickly tried hiding the cigarette behind his leg as he pulled an earphone out. "What are you doing here?" He asked, almost sounding mad.

"I could ask you the same." You said back, matching his attitude.

He subtly glanced over his shoulder before looking back at you. "That's none of your business."

"Yeah? I wonder why Mr A-List is smoking. I thought you were too perfect. And why in the damn janitors closet at this time? Can't you go to a park or something?" You crosses you arms over your chest.

"Just leave me alone." He scoffed. "Get out"

"The door is locked. Did you not hear it slam shut?" You pointed over your shoulder with your thumb. Raising and eyebrow at the face he had not heard that loud slam.

"What!?" His eyes widened as he marches to the door trying to pull it open. Banging and slapping against it. Even trying to peak out the small translucent glass but barely anything was visible. "What the hell do we do now?" He turned back to you.

"Don't ask me, do I look like the janitor with the keys?" You furrowed your eyebrows again raising your shoulders and slumping them back down.

"You'd definitely fit one" He muttered loud enough as he moved away from the door.

"You're the one who came in here first." You scoffed watching him pull his earphones our and stuffing them into his pocket.

He just sighs, not knowing what to do next. "Come on Mr A-List, use that smart brain of yours." You said, a sarcastic hint to your words which was obvious.

He snapped his head in your direction with almost fire in his eyes. "Don't call me that." His words were sharp like a dart hitting a dart board. His sudden defensiveness made you confused and surprised. Usually he'd act all mighty and start bragging but here he was telling you not to call him that.

"Well that's new. What's up with you?" You eye him up and down as his entire body was stiffened.

"Nothing, just shut up" He went back to his corner and continued smoking his cigarette with a dark expression.

"Well we can't stay in here forever." You slightly lowered your tone but with the same attitude. You had never witnessed Jay like this. Smoking in a janitor closet and getting so frustrated at his 'labelled name' which was used by literally everyone at the school.

"Go ahead then Miss Know-it-all, how do we leave this obviously locked room?" He spoke, not even glancing at you as his tone dripped with sarcasm and attitude.

His grumpy side seemed to annoy you more than his cocky side. But he wasn't wrong. There was no way out like this.

"Just wait for the janitor, he'll come eventually." He said before being quiet and focusing on his cigarette, staring at the wall again.

You just decided to take a seat against the shelves. You still had the pearls in your hands you had gathered, you shoved them in your pocket and placed your books aside on the floor, hugging your knees as the thunder and rain kept rumbling outside. The wind breezing in through the small window making you shiver slightly. You laid your head on your knees, feeling your exhaustion kick in again as your eye lids became droopy. But the coldness of the room was not helping.

But just then Jay spoke up. "Oi, do you have your phone?"

You raised your head off your knees looking at him as your tired brain tool a few seconds to process his question before shaking your head. "I kept it in my locker. It distracts me while I'm studying."

"Shit, mines in my locker to." He groaned. His tone a bit softer now which was a quick contrast from like two seconds ago.

"Weren't you listenining to music just now?" You asked.

"It's an ipod." He stuck out the small ipod from his pocket before shoving it back in. You huffed turning away.

"How long are we gonna be in here for?" You asked. Hoping he knew when the janitor would come by.

"We're probably stuck here for the night. The janitor already clocked out." He responded, still not glancing at you.

You sighed in pain. You couldn't be stuck here all night. You were so exhausted you needed a good night's rest but nope, life had other plans.

It just kept getting chillier and chillier. You hesitantly spoke up. "Hey, could you close the window?"

Jay glanced at you before looking at the window and stepped towards it. He shoved his cooled down cigarette bud between the flutter shutters before attempting to close it. But it was stuck. The window was old, rusty and hard to move. He tried with all his strength but nothing. "It's not closing"

You sighed heavily leaning your head back against the shelf, hugging yourself closer from the cold as you rested your eyes. This didn't go unnoticed by Jay. He stayed quiet for a few moments before removing his shirt and placing it on you.

You opened your eyes feeling something drop on you as you saw Jay placing his shirt on you. Leaving him in just his black tank top. His muscular shoulders and arms on display as he unbotheredly went back to his spot a few feet away from you.

"Won't you get cold..?" You asked. Grateful for his thoughtfulness. "Don't worry about it." He said nonchalantly.

You didn't say anything else as you wrapped his shirt on you. The subtle scent of his cologne mixed with sweat and cigarettes which tickled your nose. It was gross but also comforting in a way.

But you weren't understanding his guy at all. He's always been cocky and arrogant, then suddenly he's so defensive about you calling him his own self-made nickname, then he becomes soft again and now he was being kind?

You didn't get him at all. And why was he smoking to? He was seen as so perfect by everyone. Yet here he was. Smoking in a janitors closet at 7pm on a Friday evening.

"Why were you smoking?" Your thoughts slipped out of your mouth. But kept a curious gaze on him. He was silent for a while. You thought he wouldn't reply so you went back to resting when you heard his voice.

"Helps me relax" He said said softly yet an unreadable expression on his face. "I do it almost everyday."

"Everyday??? That's terrible for you. Why on Earth would you do that?" You asked, shocked at how frequently he did it.

"I have my reasons" He said dryly. But you were too curious to respect his privacy.

"Tell me. You're always picking on me and saying you're so much better and now you're just quiet and acting distant." You said. Wanting to understand why he was acting like this. It was obvious something was going on. And no matter how much you hated this guy. You felt curious and wanted to help his situation as he seemed in a difficult position.

He hesitated. He didn't speak a word but you keep your eyes on him. Silently encouraging him to keep going. His lips slightly parted as he was about to speak, holding his breath for a moment but then closed his mouth and stayed silent and sighed.

You didn't want to be pushy with him, but you were the nosy type, especially now for his behaviour. "You can talk to me." You tried reassuring him.

"And how do I know you won't use it against me?" He asked, his voice almost trembling.

"Use it against you?" you scoffed. "I don't even know what it is." you replied, but more curious the more he spoke.

"It's just my family." He said sighing again.

"What about them..?" You kept questioning, but at the same time hoping you weren't being so pushy.

"It's diffcult to talk about..." He said again. It was clear he was holding back all his emotions. "I just wish it could be different."

For the first time you saw a hint of vulnerability in his eyes, the way his glossy eyes glistened in the dark. His body slumping against the shelf, his fist clenching and unclenching, conflicted to speak up or not.

"I have to agree with you on that one." You sighed. "My family isn't always the best either. Always pressuring me to do better in school." You found yourself opening up slightly to. You assumed maybe he had an argument with his parents or something like you do almost everyday.

"It's not like that." He said, his eyebrows furrowing more as you looked up at him confused. "Everyone gets to live their lives, go out with friends, and are liked for actually being themselves. While I'm stuck everyday working any part time job I can get to support my family."

You eyes slightly widen as you look at him in shock. "What do you mean 'work part time jobs to support your family?'"

"I'm not well off. I came to this school on a scholarship. You all call me 'Mr A-List' because i'm good at everything... I'm only good because I try to get another scholarship to college by doing everything I possibly can to achieve that." He spoke, his voice filled with emotion, like years of pain being spilled out. "My mom's dead, my dad can barely stand up from overworking. It's just me."

"I might be cocky and all that, only because I don't understand how to share my feelings. Knowing I was able to take your spot I felt good about myself. You're so smart, so pretty, liked by everyone, I thought I could be better than you and get a chance to get a scholarship." His words were sincere and deep from his heart. A small smile tugging at his lips when he talks about you as he gazes at the ground.

You stare at him with wide eyes, blush creeping onto your cheeks when he spoke good about you for the first time since you've met him. "Y-You.. think I'm all those things..?"

"Who wouldn't?" He breathed a chuckle. The small smile on his lips not erasing.

"I always assumed you hated me." Your voice soft with confusion and flattery. No guy had said such sweet things like that to your face.

"I never hated you... I just got quickly hooked on the idea of picking on you. I won't lie. It's cause you're cute when you're mad." You were turning more red by the second. Why was he being so nice all of a sudden?

"T-Thanks..." You didn't know what else to say to that. Was it a compliment or him just teasing you again. You shifted your gaze away from him as you felt your cheeks hot and red as you took in his words...

He glanced at you for the first time in a while. He bit in bottom lips like he was deciding something in his head before stepped closer to you and taking a seat on the floor with you, resting his arms on his bent up knees.

You glanced at him. This guy was full of surprises. Your eyes scanned his side profile. His jawline sharp and prominent. His eyelashes possibly longer than your own and perfect plump lips.

You felt the exhaustion from earlier kicked in again. Your eyelids becoming heavier as you got lost in your own thoughts from the silence. Jay was working hard for his family. You felt so much sympathy for him now that you saw him a new light.

Your eye lids continue to drop lower and lower with each blink as eventually you gave into your tiredness. Your head falling onto Jay's shoulder for support. He flinched slightly at the sudden action but didn't move you. He stared at your sleeping figure against him as he gently rested his head on yours, shuffling even closer so your could rest properly

The sun rays pricked through your eyelids as you blinked them open. You lazily scanned the room side to side as you were still in the same spot as last night. You felt your head against something warm and felt yourself resting on Jay's shoulder. You were surprised at yourself but didn't move away just yet. You liked the feeling of his warmth against you. Soft breathing noises from his nose as he was still peacefully asleep.

You gently lifted your head off his shoulder which caused his head to move off yours making him awake as he took a few moments to realise what was going on.

He realised you were both still inside the janitors closet and let out a small yawn, adjusting to the light.

"Good morning." You spoke gently, a grin on your lips as you kept a soft gaze on him. After last night you had gotten a whole new view on him. He wasn't just some jerk.

He ruffled his hair, shaking himself awake as a sigh left his lips, turning his gaze to you. His eyes still half lidded as he scanned the features of your face. "Do you always look this pretty in the morning?" His voice spoke with grogginess.

You scoffed with a smile turning your face away briefly, taken slightly aback by his sudden straightforward compliment.

"What? It was a compliment." He chuckled deeply.

"So sweet all of a sudden?" You responded, turning back to him. Resting your head against the shelf. Your shoulder brushing against his as you were still wearing his shirt on top as a blanket.

"I can be sweet to." He smirked.

"Yeah? How sweet?" Your grin widened. Both yours and his face subconciously growing closer.

"As sweet as those lips look." His words instantly brought heat to your cheeks as his eyes gazed down at your plump pink lips.

A comfortable silence filled the room as you both gazed at each other. His eyes locking between your eyes and lips as you couldn't take your eyes off his.

You felt him grow closer and closer. Your shoulders pressed up together as you were almost nose-to-nose.

Your lips slightly parted as you shuffled closer bit by bit. Wanting to close the distance between you both.

Suddenly the door burst open. Both you and Jay dart your heads to see the janitor, he was clearly surprised to see you both. "Oi, what are you kids doing in here?" You and Jay get up to your feet as you held his shirt close.

"You shouldn't be in here, wait till the principal hears about this, what are your names?" The janitor demanded but before you could respond. Jay grabbed you wrist as he ran out the closet dragging you behind.

You were stunned from the sudden action but your legs instantly caught up to match his pace. Just after a few moments later you slowed down panting as Jay stopped a few steps ahead.

He turned to you as you both stared at each other panting before bursting into laughter. You don't know why you found that so funny.

"I guess we're finally out of there." He huffed, slowing down his laughter.

"Finally, I hated it in there." You exhaled feeling great to be out of that closet.

Jay glanced down at you making your confused as you looked down your body to see if something was wrong. "What's wrong?"

He chuckle deeply for a moment. "Are you going to give my shirt back? Or do you plan on keeping it?" He grinned.

You realised, instantly pulling his shirt off. "Sorry, my bad, here."

He stepped forward taking it from you as his fingers grazed your hands. "Thanks." He smiled before suddenly leaning forward and pressing a kiss to your cheek and pulling back.

You stood frozen in shock, trying to process what on Earth he had just done.

He just grinned, throwing his shirt over his shoulder and walking away. You shook out of your trance, watching him walk off before quickly calling out to him. "Hey wait!" You jogged up trying to catch up with him. "You can't just walk away after that!"

He chuckled turning on his heel, walking backwards. "Catch me if you can then princess!" He laughed before turning back and running off as you kept trying to catch up, a smile creeping on your lips. "Hey! You can't run off like that Mr A-List!"

THE END

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