#i'm thinking like... so many exposed arms and chests

[kindahoping4forever]

Tumblr's very own @cal-puddies is attending the show tonight so please feel free to join me in manifesting some good old-fashioned slutty stage behavior tonight 😏

[chiscaralight]

he's usually insanely rough with you! it's completely normal that after spending a couple of hours (or maybe the whole night) with him, you're covered in incidents of his violent sexual attraction. hickeys and bruises all over your neck and chest, the shaping of his fingers dented into your hips, the soreness between your thighs, and the limp in your step you're trying so desperately to hide. you enjoy it. you're used to it. which is why it takes you by surprise when he tells you he has something different in mind.

"i wanna go slow this time."

how vague. that could have so many meanings and your mind is already racing to find an answer. but you understand what he means when his lips latch onto yours.

the kiss is hot, passionate, but most importantly: slow. the way he's running his fingers on the exposed skin of your thigh, how he licks into your mouth so his tongue can dance with yours. it's all so slow. it feels weird, almost wrong, because the mouth that's full of dirty and corrupting words is awfully quiet now. no harsh nicknames, no mocking tone. just his breaths mixing with yours as he lays you down on your back.

the way he's thrusting into you now is deep and once again, slow. like he's scared he'll break you. your fingers are intertwined with his beside your legs while your legs hang loosely from his waist. hooded eyes are gazing into your own and you swear you see the ghost of a genuine smile on his lips, not the sadistic smirk he usually dons when you're under him like this. your whimpers are clouding his senses as he nudges that spot with the tip of his cock. your free arm is hooking around his neck to pull him down closer and you warn him about your orgasm.

"you don't need to ask. cum whenever you feel like."

so you do. you can barely feel his lips pressing kisses along the side of your neck and face as you squeeze down on his hand. your voice is quiet, almost muffled when you call out to him after. he hums, arms tightening and drawing you closer to the warmth of his body.

slow wasn't the word to have used. of course, he enjoys seeing you cock-drunk, tears rolling down your face as he pounds into you. but this, this is another galaxy of pleasure to him. because no matter how much he tries to convince himself, deep down, he knows that what's happening to him, these feelings are because of you. he can feel it in the tips of his fingers when he touches you. in the front of his brain when he thinks about you. and in his heart when you're close to him like this. you are making this man soft.

GENSHIN IMPACT: CHILDE, scaramouche. KAEYA. alhaitham. SHIKANOIN HEIZOU

HONKAI STAR RAIL: AVENTURINE. welt yang. blade. JIAOQIU. boothill. dr ratio. SAMPO

JUJUTSU KAISEN: geto. GOJO. SUKUNA

+ your favs!!

a/n: felt bad that i havent posted anything in what seems like forever so here's a small one😭plumber childe is coming soon tho, and I'm starting the gamer scara one soon too!

[thinkinonsense]

first sleepover with worst!logan *mdni

the two of you hadn't been together very long before you invited logan to stay over; and to say he was hesitant would be an understatement.

"i'm not sure, princess..." he mumbles, getting up from the couch to leave again.

"c'mon lo..." you purr, stopping him by crawling into his lap. "it's getting late anyways."

this was the latest he had been over; almost three am. you weren't sure why he was so insistent on leaving, during the day he would hang around your apartment for hours but when night falls, he's eager to go. none of it made sense to you but to logan, it was crystal.

to start, he didn't want you to get too attached. logan couldn't have a sweet young girl like yourself get wrapped up in his twisted ways. from the moment first saw you in your silky, tiny nightgown he knew he wouldn't last a whole night alone with you.

"ain't gotta worry about me, sweetheart." he said, tucking a strand of lose hair behind your ear. "i can take care of myself out there."

you look up at him with these sad pouty lips that remind logan of one of the many times he's been shot in his lifetime. he loathed how soft you're making him; smoothing ever sharp edge of him until you've molded him into your perfect mate.

"pretty please, logan." you whine, wrapping both arms around his neck. the begging was only making it worse for him.

"i don't want to have to do this, doll face." he sighed, hands unknowingly traveling to your hips and playing with this silk.

"then stay here with me."

logan didn't think he was this weak. the old him would've just barked in your face and stormed out of the apartment already; but instead he's being dragged into your bedroom. the only part of your apartment that logan has never seen. well, technically he's peeked in once or twice but he's never been inside. everything about the room reminded him of you. soft pastels plastered everywhere and cute little decorations littered about.

what really got him was your bed. baby blue sheets with matching pillows and a decorative heart pillow front and center. if wade saw him sitting in this girly bed, logan would never hear the end of it. but for her? he would lay here until he died.

"whatcha think?" you ask him with a small smile.

"looks just like you; pretty and vibrant." he says, one hand on your jaw to pull you into a quick kiss.

logan stripped himself of his shirt before climbing in next to you. both of you laid on your sides with one of logan's arms wrapped firmly around your abdomen in the quiet bedroom. time passes and logan thinks he's finally got himself under control; falling asleep peacefully for once.

"mmm... lo..." you groan softly from your slumber.

logan wasn't an idiot, he knew what has happening. it wasn't easy but he tried to block you out, ignoring your sweet cries for him which had become manageable until you began squirming against him; your volume increasing little by little.

finally, he had to put an end to this torture. both large hands placed on your waist tightly and almost harshly to stop your movements, ultimately awakening you.

"lo, what are you-"

"can't even behave while sleeping, huh?" his voice was hot against your ear. logan's right hand travels up the nightgown to paw at your chest in a way that made your eyes roll back. his left hand travels south, exposing the thin matching material underneath your nightgown which sends your head flying back against his shoulder. the movement exposes your neck to him, biting and licking as he pleases.

"s-s-sorry for... for w-waking you up-p." you apologize, moving against his lower hand.

"no need to apologize, dollface." logan chuckles darkly at the eagerness and candor in your voice. "this is a much better sleepover than i imagined."

[yanderenightmare]

TW: NSFW, yandere, f!reader, bondage, abuse, punishment, intense spanking/whipping-ish

gn reader

“Please- plea- m’so- sorry-” You sob, voice cracking on its own blubbering. Chest full of panic – heaving for a fix but achieving little less than spurring even more hysteria.

“Haah…” He sighs. Casually fixing your bonds tighter around your wrists, hoisting them a little higher above your head until you were properly stretched up on your tippy-toes.

Shivering in just your undies in anxious wait of his anger.

Stroking your back while holding your belly in a steady hand, he thinks he’s never felt fear quite like it, but unfortunately, “Y’broke the rules, Sunshine… and now yer’ gettin’ punished.”

He unbuckles his belt. Your eardrums burn at the crisp sound, so much spiked blood rushing about, making you go dizzy. 

You think you might pass out.

“What did I say the rules were, hm? ‘You remember ‘em?” He mumbles in a steady tone, speaking awfully softly with his lips pressed against your temple. Waiting for your answer.

You give a sob and a pitiful nod, and he hums in return, rubbing calm circles into your shivering, goose-fleshed skin.

“Recite them for me.” He requests, nose rubbing your hairline as you shiver from his touch.

Voice unsteady, filtered through tears and a hopeless sense of terror – chin tipped up, needing to gasp for breaths. “N-no fighting, no- no arguing, no run- running-”

“Mh…” He hums, taking in the scent of your shampoo with a sniff of your crown, placing a kiss there as though in kudos – or as a small mercy before getting started. “And you managed to do all three in one night. ‘You feel proud, hm? ‘You feel accomplished? Hm? Was it worth it?”

You whimper under the interrogation, feeling smaller and smaller by the second – so exposed where you are, practically hanging from the ceiling like dead meat. Stripped of everything that might’ve protected you – or that would have at least cushioned the coming onslaught of pain you knew to dread.

“Nah… it’s written all over your body. Goosebumps and cold sweat, shaking from tits to toes. You regret it, don’t you?” He murmured, winding his belt around his fist once, then twice, leaving a looped tail. “Mh, maybe you’ll think twice about it next time... or maybe you’ll finally learn your place.”

He finished with a soft bite to the chub of your cheek, then grabbed your chin just as gently, holding your face up to look at him as he sidestepped to your front. Leaning his forehead against yours, he stroked your jaw with his thumb – lips hovering just short of yours.

“I'm gonna hurt you, Sweetie.” He purred, stroking your asscheek with the cool leather in his grip – in such gross contrast to what you knew he planned on using it for. “I promised I would, and now I will…”

He kissed your lips then – slowly, sweetly – suffocatingly so as you cried – tasting your tears and doing a terrible job at withholding his grin as you felt it pull giddily at the corner of his mouth.

He licked his lips once he pulled away, walking a circle around you like a shark.

“How many hits do you deserve?” He mused. “I guess one for each rule you broke is fair, but it seems a little scant…”

He stopped behind you, placing a chaste kiss on your arm before nuzzling around it.

“Should we say thirty?” He offered, and your eyes immediately widened.

Shaking your head furiously, prayers already coming out in splutters. “No- please-”

“No? Too many?” He pouted, not bothering to mask his glee now. “Okay, okay, calm down, baby. Breathe.” He soothed with no effort. “I think…”

There was a pause – a hum of thought as he wrapped his arms around your front and swayed you back against his chest in a hug.

“Ugh fuck, I'm no good makin’ rules on the fly…” He feigned - sinking his jaw into the grove of your armpit before cuddling the soft flesh with his chin-stubble.

He sucked his teeth in a further display of thought before releasing an exasperated sigh.

“I really didn’t think you’d break ‘em, y’know? I thought you’d be a good pet…”

You trembled, eyes looking down at the belt held between his big hands – whimpering at the sight of him simply playing with it – psyching you out like a true sadist.

“But you just had to disappoint me, didn’t you?”

You bit your lip to stop a sob.

“Had to be difficult… and now I gotta make difficult decisions…”

He slinked off you, leaving you to wobble – toes barely grazing the cold basement floor.

You try your best to prepare yourself for the next events, but the more you brace yourself the more tense you get and the harder you cry. “Please- I’ll be good- promise- m’real- really sorry-” 

“I know, baby. I know~ I am, too.” He coos, kissing your spine while rubbing circles into your sides – feeling your ribs rattle with sniffles, struggling for air through your panic. “I wanna make sure we never have to be sorry again.”

He wraps an arm around the front of your hips, steadying you while stroking the loop of his belt over your plump cheeks – tentatively teasing the soft flesh with what was soon to come.

He licked his lips at the promise – already imagining the flawless flesh blooming with his marks.

“I think thirty is fair.”

“No- no please- please, don’t-” You thrash – but do so little more than in place.

“Don’t squirm.” He interrupts, his hand curling into your hip with blunt nails denting the fine skin, keeping you still, pushing your side snugly against his front – holding you intimately while gruffing out eerie murmurs still much too softly for what he was saying. “Remember, it’s another ten hits if you fight me and another ten if you argue.”

At least he doesn’t make you count....

You wouldn’t have been able to even under threat – too busy wailing.

Each hit like the lash of a whip, smacking you fast, one on top of the other. It’s enough to make you throw up after half of it – though it's mostly just water and acid.

He takes pity enough to allow you a small break. Wringing off his wife-beater and wiping your mouth with it – also brushing some of the sweat off your brow before kissing your forehead. 

“Halfway there, Sweetie- you’re doing so good~”  He whispered soothingly, holding your cheeks to pick your face up from hanging – looking into the hopeless look of your opium-blown eyes – so lost he didn’t know if you could even hear him.

He acts as though he’s sorry after, but the boner he’s got nudged against you doesn’t lie – desperately dry-humping your thigh for some sort of relief.

His breaths are tight and hot, puffed against your arm where he now mouths wet kisses. “Good-” He swallows thickly, brows tight-knit, voice thick with lust. “Good pet.”

You hadn’t noticed he was done. And the relief doesn’t register either. There isn’t much comfort in it to grasp, not with the pain still so numbingly intense that you can’t feel anything but the raw sting. 

He drops the belt to the floor and struggles his fly open, shoving the trousers down along with his boxers, stepping out of the heap in a rush – all the while sucking sloppy kisses on your shoulder and nape, mumbling praise. “Y’were so good- so good fo’me- gonna reward yah- my good fuckin’ baby- gonna make yah feel so fuckin’ good now-”

The flesh of your ass burns with welts and split skin, ugly marks already lining the once-pretty color with horrid shades of bruise-dark. Your throat’s ripped raw from all the wailing – only weeping harder when he takes your hips and sways you back to meet his fat erection.

He shamelessly rubs himself between your cheeks – frenzied with his mouth gaping, releasing a filthy shuddering moan while leering at the beautiful sight of his handiwork – feeling so proud he was blushing just from sheer sadistic enjoyment – even letting slip a breathy laugh now.

He hung his tongue out and let his drool drip onto the shaft, then placed another kiss between your shoulder blades. Gliding his tip down and, with the help of a hand, pushed it between your cheeks until it caught your entrance. 

A rugged groan blew hotly down your spine, and another cry was ripped from your chest as he sunk inside without a single spare second to waste.

He laid his face to rest against your back, nudging up inside you slowly with both arms wrapping around you like before – holding you snugly before he began the intimate pace, fucking only the deepest coziest parts of you.

“I love you, Sunshine- you’re mine- only one I give two shits about- rest can just fuck off for all I care- as long as I have you- right here… forever.”

♡ BNHA – Bakugou, Shoto, Kirishima, Dabi, Hawks, Aizawa, Overhaul ♡ JJK – Sukuna, Nanami, Geto, Gojo, Naoya, Toji ♡ HQ – Iwaizumi, Matsukawa, Sakusa, Miya twins, Suna ♡ CSM – Aki ♡ BLLK – Reo, Isagi, Kunigami ♡ DS – Doma, Sanemi

♡ FEM x M INSERT masterlist ♡ GN x M INSERT masterlist

[zaephix]

macaron of my eye / / zayne . . .

being the birthday boy came with its perks, like gifts and cake, blessings, and even being able to get away with stealing a few birthday sweets and kisses.

warnings: f!reader, canon divergence (story is diff from the bday story), jealous!zayne, fluff, suggestive

w/c: 1.2k

author's note: happy birthday to the one fictional man who set my standards higher than heaven <3

"nuh-uh, nope!"

zayne didn't even get the chance to land the slightest touch on one of the many macarons you ended up baking before you promptly slapped his hand away.

"i know it's nearly your birthday but this doesn't mean you can just have your way when you see fit, doctor."

he slowly retracts his wandering hand and you resist the urge to giggle at the sight of his dejected face. these past few days you'd been busy planning for zayne's special day. decorations, sweets, gifts, cake, more sweets... it took some work but you had just about everything checked out and ready to go.

...except for the surprisingly clingy man before you.

he doesn't know why, but he's been feeling irked ever since you visited the hospital a few days ago. it was common to see you heading over to zayne's office after your shift was over, but he'd never actually see you stop and talk to his coworkers. it bothered him, clearly.

you and greyson would talk in hushed whispers oftentimes these days, sneaking glances over in his direction everytime he'd pass by. he brushed it off but it would never leave the back of his mind.

not to mention the fact that you'd barely respond to his calls and texts. he'd taken the next few days leading up to his birthday off, and you seemed excited, so why the change of energy?

he found his answer 20 minutes ago.

"you know, i'd maybe let you eat some if you didn't just come into my apartment unannounced and..." you glance over him, "so gloomy..."

zayne sighs, leaning on the countertop of your kitchen while watching you work ever so diligently.

he supposed you had a point.

after his 4th missed call or so he decided to see you himself, knocking on your door before picking up the key under your plant vase in front of your door and seeing himself in... and as you can tell, without your permission.

"i'm... sorry," he starts slowly. "but don't you think you're at fault for ignoring me?"

you turn back around after putting in the final batch of macarons, smiling. "awh. poor little doctor zayne. so helpless and in need of attention."

he turns his head to the side a little and shakes his head lightly, smiling all the while. "yes..."

"poor little me," a sudden mischiecious glint appears in his eyes, "without my hunter to keep me company. she keeps sneaking off and planning surprises behind my back."

"and yet... someone ruined it!"

"i suppose were both feeling quite woeful today."

"hmph," you turn around with your hands crossed. "don't even ask for a bite. i know you'll be begging sooner or later!"

he stands up and comes closer to your turned form, "not even a nibble?"

"not even!"

"then... i'll just have to improvise, no?"

"what are you talking abou-?"

unbeknownest to you, zayne's favorite sweet was not just macarons.

no, they were something else entirely.

he hums as he rests his arms atop your waist, leaning down exceptionally slowly. your neck heats up, even moreso than when you were stuck baking in the kitchen for hours on end.

his breath fans against your ear, soft chuckles echoing from his chest onto the plain of your back. "this."

he moves the hair cascading down your back to your side, holding it in place as he softly latches his lips onto your exposed skin. your own breath hitches in your chest as you gasp at the contact.

his lips felt cold, but not in a bad way. cold, like the first breeze of autumn after the end of summer. he moves his way up the side of your neck with painfully slow strides. he inhales deeply, taking in the sweet scent of the various flavours of cake attached to you.

and as you exhale steadily, you wonder what encouraged him to reveal this side of himself.

"zayne..."

soft carresses of his lips lingered on your skin—and you found yourself hoping your own lips to be their next victim. never once did his grip on you falter or grow stronger, yet they kept you firmly in place, anticipating his every move.

soon enough he'd completed his trail across your jaw, and you turn your neck to face him. he opens his eyes to find yours and detaches himself, dark and hazy. god, you felt pathetic...

"did you get my answer yet?"

you don't reply, looking from his eyes to his lips again once more, and leaned in.

ding!

you jolted away from him and cursed yourself for putting the macarons in the oven on high so that they'd get done faster. with how everything was going along just about now, you wouldn't even give a damn if they burned or not if you could just continue for a moment more.

"ah... they're ready."

you grab your mittens and open the oven door, letting it cool down while all the steam came out and then finally grabbing it. you set them down on your counter with a proud smile.

"look, this might just be my best batch yet!"

"you really are something..."

zayne gives you a wistful smile and looks over your shoulder, nodding in approval. "you truly outdid yourself this time. they look amazing."

"and?"

"...they also smell nice."

you roll your eyes, "no silly, what's my reward?"

he pretends to think, "hm, i don't know. what should your reward be?"

a noise goes off, your alarm set for 12 am to give zayne a birthday call ringing from your phone. you glance at it and then look back at him,

"...i might just have an idea."

and he reads your mind, dipping in to kiss you without a second thought. afterall, what better way to start his birthday than a kiss?

you sway in his arms, a hand rested atop his cheek and the other on the side of his neck. he smiles into the kiss and pulls you closer, gently moving your bodies in synchronization.

you were sure you could hear his phone vibrating, no doubt on the fact that it was probably one of his colleuges calling to wish him a happy birthday. but you both knew that could wait.

he kisses you slowly and passionately, arms enveloping around you with ease. you're almost left out of breath before you pull away for a split second, until he pulls you back in again. it feels almost desperate, with how he's leaving little to no room for movement and just focusing on your presence. on your lips.

soon enough, you pull away, opting to lean your forehead against his.

"so, birthday boy, did you like your first gift?"

"i thought this was supposed to be someone's reward?"

you giggled, "i changed my mind. this was more important."

he smiles for what felt like the umpteenth time today, sighing peacefully. "does this mean i finally get to try your delicious sweets?"

"what do you mean finally? i tasted the cream inside your mouth! you stole one while i was putting the rest in the oven!"

"hm?"

"don't play dumb, i know exactly how it-!"

and he silences your fusses with one last kiss, and you couldn't help but give in to it.

[amathslutsguidetofandom]

Big, Strong Man

PAIRINGS: James "Bucky" Barnes x Girlfriend!Reader

WARNINGS: GYM FLUFF, swearing

WORD COUNT: 528

*not proof-read*

ENJOY!

“Bucky, that’s insane I can’t fucking do that,” you chastise your boyfriend as you point at the weights he’s putting onto the leg press. “James, that’s almost 200 pounds,” you whine and grab his elbow, trying to stop him from adding more weights.

Two months ago, you told your man that you wanted to go with him to the gym. He asked you why, because he already loves you the way you were. You smiled at his statement and assured him that you were not feeling insecure, but was looking for something to do as a couple.

And you were not a newbie to the gym; however, you weren’t as frequent as your 6’2 man.

“Doll, s’fine. I believe in you,” he rubs your exposed arms, as he sneakily glances at the cleavage your sports bra exhibits. You flick his cap and snap at him, “eyes up here, Barnes.” He chuckles at your smirk and gestures you to sit at the machine.

You knew that going to the gym with Bucky was going to be fun, but what you didn’t except was that the man was going to be pushing you to your limits and making you break PR’s all the time.

You sit at the machine and follow Bucky’s instructions on how to place your feet. “Ok so shoulder-width wide and point your toes out. You feelin’ okay, babe?” He wipes some sweat off your forehead with his thumb, before combing some of your loose hairs back.

“Fine,” you reply with a smile, “how many reps?” Bucky looks at the machine then back at you, “since we’re going heavy this time, I’d say seven. But, if you can’t then stop darlin’. I don’t want you injured.”

You smile and adjust your headphones to cover your ears. Giving a thumbs up to your boyfriend, who stands in your line of view, music starts blasting into your ears and you start pushing with your quads.

At the end of the set, you don’t even know how many times you pushed, your puffing and groaning when you set the machine to the start position.

You drop your legs, and they start quaking. The music pauses and Bucky signals to remove one of the covered ears. When you do, Bucky’s slapping your shoulders and cheering, “babe, that was fifteen. You did fifteen reps!”

You’re in shock, “what!” Bucky nods, he tells you how he was counting, and didn’t want to stop when you passed seven. You slap Bucky’s arm playfully before giving him a glare, “fuckin hell, Buck. What if it dropped, I could’ve been crushed!”

Bucky shakes his head, “no you wouldn’t.” He gives you one of his cheeky smiles, that he only reserves for you.

You narrow your eyes playfully at him and dip your hip before crossing your arms, “yeah? Why?”

Bucky copies your stance and walks to you until you are toe to toe, he wraps his metal arm around your waist and pulls you close. He nudges his nose to yours, and you place your palms on his clothed, insanely sweaty and muscular, chest.

“Cuz you got a big, strong man to save you, doll,” he pecks your lips.

🎀🎀🎀

Whoops, looks like I dropped something (this fic). 🤭🤭🤭

This is dedicated to the lovely gentleman who helped with the leg press machine today at the gym, what can I say. I'm just a girl 🎀

Lemme know what you lovelies think!!!

Till' then,

Stay Coquette-y,

Anya 🫶🏽🕊️🎀

[bunnyreaper]

you don't have much of a choice, forced to marry john mactavish to keep yourself safe. luckily, he will look after you, even on your wedding night.

(18+/MDNI, historical wedding night fun)

the door closing behind you has you trapped in the room, the situation. your only comfort is that you know john mactavish to be a thoroughly decent man, despite the swirling rumours of his scottish barbarism and foul highlander ways. 

you sit before the mirror, staring back at the beautiful hair and makeup done for you by the ladies of the castle in preparation for your nuptials, as john makes his way over to you. he gently, hesitantly, rests his rough, large hands on the exposed parts of your shoulders, and his new ring sparkles in the soft candlelight.

"john." you sigh your new husband's name, your eyes fluttering shut as relief floods through you at his touch. the night will bring with it challenges, but you can't think of a better man in all the highlands to be wed to.

"i know, bonnie. i wish it were nae under such circumstances." he whispers, expression soft as he squeezes you gently, forcing the tension out of your shoulders. he leans down, pressing the gentlest of kisses to the top of your head. "we can take it slow, we've go' all night." 

"i know, thank you." you bring your hand up to hold his, your matching ring so close to its counterpart. you squeeze back his hand in the hopes of offering some semblance of comfort in return. whilst john is a warrior, physically and mentally strong, but you've at least seen him vulnerable enough to know there's something eating at him too--and your instincts cry out at you to soothe him too. "it's not... for lack of wanting you. i want you very much. i'd just hoped we could ease into it." 

once more, he brushes the top of his lips across your head, before he slowly coaxes you to your feet. his fingers trail from your bare shoulders, down the silky material of your sleeves until they come to grasp at your waist. 

"we will. ill take care of ye." he whispers, voice beyond soft. 

you wish you could tell him you'll take care of him, too, but the tightening of your chest makes it tricky to usher forth even a whisper. you turn in your newly-wed husband's embrace, embracing his thick, muscular arms and rubbing them soothingly. 

it's you who initiates the kiss, the first one since you said your vows, and were tied together in matrimony. it's soft and gentle and sweet, at least at first. as your lips tremble against john's, and his grip around you tightens, the embers within you roar to life--hot like the coals in your chamber's fireplace. 

the passion that rips through you both consumes you--sensual, tender touches yet tinged with overwhelming need. one kiss turns to another, turns to desperately gripping at each other's finery until it falls away, revealing parts of yourself previously unseen to the other. 

you'd seen your now-husband shirtless many a time, seen the celtic knots inked into his biceps, his clan motto on his chest--but in the dim light and knowing you get to touch him freely, you start to take on a new appreciation. 

his hands touch reverently across each new piece of skin you bare to him, or he bares to himself, as he tears away your clothes like the hazard they are. it's not long before he has you completely revealed to him, and he kisses you breathless in response to the overwhelming love and lust inside him. 

he maneuvers you to the bed, laying you down with such care before climbing atop. when his hard cock brushes against the top of your mound, you cry out in both pleasure and trepidation.

johnny must easily sense your discomfort, as he pulls away from you with a concerned, caring look in his eyes, along with a reassuring smile on his lips. "dinnae worry, i'm nervous too." his knuckles brush softly over your cheek.  

"you are?" you ask, voice soft as you stare up at him. 

"aye." he nods, his smile turning a little awkward, a little bashful. while you've seen him burdened and raw, you've never seen him nervous. "ive no' been wit' a woman properly before." 

his admission stuns you. john mactavish is a gorgeous man inside and out, respected in his clan, and yet has a reputation for being good with the ladies. it never bothered you, as you knew truly he was loyal to his core, but such a confession from him takes you entirely by surprise.

"not from lack of opportunity, surely." you try your best to be light-hearted, to put him at ease. your own nerves, trepidation and inexperience with the act were a given--but john's could be perceived by others, and likely to him, as a threat to his masculinity. 

he trusted you with it regardless. 

he huffs out a laugh at your gentle teasing, dipping down to press a few kisses to your neck.

"appreciate yer kind words. but ah, i ken i wanted to save myself, only give tha' part of me to ma wife." the words cause something to surge through him, his hips bucking as the head of his cock nudges against your clit and sends you both reeling. your eyes flutter shut for a moment, and when they reopen, the look in john's eyes is completely feral. 

he pins you with a look you couldn't turn away from if you tried, and his hand gripping your chin leaves no room for debate. "marriage of convenience or no', you are ma wife." 

his wife.

the words alone make you shiver and quake, but your husband takes the opportunity to roam his hands down your body, lower and lower until thick fingertips find your aching clit. 

you're completely transfixed as your eyes drop down, watching the way his rough hand works against your softness, pulling pleasure from your body that aches for release. 

hot, open-mouthed kisses start to accompany his touches, working their way down your body until his mouth is hovering just inches away from your slit--taunting you with what's to come. 

you squirm wildly, trying to chase the wet heat of your husband's mouth and to finally have it on your clit, but he simply smirks, remains steadfast and steadies you with a firm grip. 

"please." a whine rips from your throat, as you've never felt such need before in your life. you thought you'd felt riled up watching john fight, work the horses, chop wood--but seeing him between your legs ready to eat you like a man starved drove you completely wild.

as a dutiful husband, he couldn't deny you any longer, lips settling against your most sensitive spot, pressing tender kisses to you. 

it feels too good, and yet still not enough. your fingers thread in his hair, try to tug him in deeper. "please john, I just need you... inside." 

he seems to ignore your pleading, mouth sinking back into your folds and immediately sending jolts of pleasure throughout your body. then he pulls away for a moment, staring at your pretty lips in awe before he growls. "the lady consents, but i willnae sink my cock in ye until ye weeping for me too."

[oakparchment]

Best Friends With Benefits

Lisa x Rosé x Male Reader

Length: 8045 words

Tags: double blowjob, double handjob, dirty talk, anal sex, strip tease, clothed sex, spit kink, hair-pulling, feet play, creampie, cum swapping

Summary: you find out that Chaelisa know each other a bit too well to just be platonic besties.

AO3

Chapter 1 - Tell me your 𝓯𝓪𝓷𝓽𝓪𝓼𝓲𝓮𝓼

"Do you ever get horny during idol work? Like what do you do when you get wet on set?" You opened up the conversation with a bold question. Worrying that you had jumped the gun and made them feel uncomfortable, you held you breath whilst waiting for a response. Your worries were waved away when Lisa glanced over at Rosé, whose lips had turned upwards on one side. Lisa stifled a giggle. "Are you kidding? We're only human. Some of the outfits I see the other members in gets me riled up and I have to rub one out in the bathroom, or if there’s no time then work is work and we just gotta wait until our schedule is over. But we always deal with it, eventually.”

Lisa sipped on her wine, her eyes never breaking contact with you as she did so. Sitting in Rosé’s apartment, you felt a little tense before the two idols. Mirroring Lisa’s actions, you drank from your glass, hoping a slight buzz might help relieve your nervousness.

Rosé offered a related experience "One time, we were at the recording studio and everyone else had clocked off. I could tell it was one of those days for Lisa, and she was desperate to go home so she could… y'know, relax. Instead, I left the mic recording, dragged us into the booth, and locked the door. I finger fucked the life out of her and that was the day where she squirted in our own recording booth." The nature of the story was already so slutty, but the way Rosé spoke it with her Aussie accent made you want to explore her mouth and hear her whisper into your ear.

Lisa sat up from where her elbow was leaning against Rosé's couch. She had a super crop top on, the ones that only cover your arms and shoulders, whilst her bralette was worn below it. This left a small window of exposed skin on her chest, including the slight curves you could see from her tits, as well as her tight abs. "We obviously weren't right up against the mic, so when we listened back to it you can mostly only hear distant moans and muffled wet sounds. Still exported the audio and took it home though."

"I'd love to hear it." You blurted out without thinking, though there was no regret.

"Maybe we can show you the recording... but the live version sounds better." From your peripherals, Rosé's coy smile turned into a wide eyed expression at what her best friend had just said. Lisa knew how to deliver lines.

You were glad you initially steered the conversation in this direction, because they had taken the reigns and driven it full force.

"Well, this TMI got way out of hand, though I don't think you're complaining." Rosé looked down at your bulge and then up at you. "Are there any fantasies you've had about us?"

"Or have you just jerked off to our pictures?" chimed in Lisa. "It's okay, you can answer honestly... Sometimes when I'm alone and porn isn't doing it for me, I scroll through my Rosie wank bank and get off to her. It usually works".

"Lisa!" Rosé's blush was accompanied by a mischievous smile. "Wait... Only usually?"

"Relax, when it's not enough I whip out one of our recordings."

You can't help but notice that Lisa said recordings, plural.

"You watch them without me? said Rosé whilst pouting her lips.

"Sorry babe, you know I can't help myself sometimes."

At this point you're at full mast and could listen to them talk about these things forever, but without wanting to fade into the background, you speak up. "Okay, the thought of that is unbelievably hot and I have so many questions.” You paused to think momentarily. “Why don't we play a little game, I'll tell you about one of my fantasies if you tell me one of yours".

Rosé raises her eyebrows. "So you do fantasize about us?"

"The secret's out, I guess." You said in a playful way, knowing full well that no one in this room thought that was a secret.

"Okay, we'll take you up on this game, since there's two of us and one of you, we'll start." Rosé looks over to Lisa after saying this.

Lisa claps her hands together. "Well seeing as you mentioned that their were three of us... I want to be eaten out and fucked at the same time."

The fact that Lisa said this with the implication being Rosé and yourself made you audibly groan. This might be a lot more wild than you initially thought.

"You really dived into the deep end huh Lili." Rosé spoke aloud the thought you had.

"Mine might seem a bit tame in comparison, but I've kinda got a thing for legs." As you say this, your eyes trail over to Rosé. Unlike Lisa, she was in full comfy mode, wearing a tight blue top that to your delight exposed her toned midriff. Below that were her slim legs, which in her high waisted sweatpants looked particularly long. Rosé was watching you scan her legs, and noticed when your focus didn't stop at her ankles but kept venturing further down to her bare feet. You quickly looked up to her face hoping she wasn't overly observant, but she returned your gaze with a knowing look.

"You like my legs? I'm sure there's something we can do about that." she said whilst shuffling closer to you on the tiled floor, stretching her legs out teasingly so that they were within arms reach of you. "I suppose it's my turn then. Hmm..." Rosé tilted her face to one side and looked up as she gave it a moment of thought. "I'd like to take a guy's load and share it with another girl."

You could barely believe the words that were coming out of their mouths. Rosé had already pointed out the bulge in your pants a few minutes ago, and had now decided to do something about it. Having already moved closer, Rosé lifted her leg and placed a foot on your hardness. It would be ignorant of you to think that idols would always have perfectly prim and pristine bodies from head to toe, but in Rosé's case this seemed to be true. 

Lisa bit her lip and crossed her legs over as she watched her friend make her advances.  Rosé simply looked at you whilst gently biting the inside of her cheek. With her arms leaning behind her on the floor for support, she started to add more pressure and move her sole up and down your crotch, giving you a footjob through your pants.

Getting impatient, Lisa, who at this point was clearly trying to tighten her legs together to get some kind of friction, quickly decided that wasn't enough and instead reached for the buttons on her shorts and started to take them off, but not in typical fashion. Lalisa stood up and turned around, her body line turning into an incredible figure that you wished you could burn into your memory. At the centre of this artistic sculpture was her luscious ass, which was only highlighted more as she bent over and looked back at you with those unmistakable fuck-me eyes. She then peeled her tight shorts down, using her hands to guide them along. She glided her hands across her legs at the same time, like she was a present you’ve always wanted unwrapping itself in front of you. Once her shorts had hit the tiles, you imagined what it would be like taking her in this position, and all the kinds of things you wanted to do to her ass.

Her little routine wasn’t over though. On the way up, in one fluid motion her hand trailed up along the inside of her thigh, leading to her panties that she rubbed from her ass all the way to her clit. She shivered at the first real physical stimulation felt since this little session started. The simple act of stripping off her own shorts was striking. She certainly lived up to her main dancer mantle.

Your cock twitched achingly at Lisa’s strip tease. In response, Rosé found the head of your manhood through the fabric and, to the best of her ability, curled her toes around it. “Whilst this is fun, there’s only so much of your cock that I can feel through your clothes, and I want it in me, not in your pants.”

“You mean in us.” said Lisa as she kneeled down next to Rosé.

“Sorry babe, you’re right” and one of your untold fantasies unfolded before your eyes, as Rosé leaned in to Lisa’s lips and pressed them across her own. Lisa met Rosé's tongue with no resistance, letting it slip into her mouth and explore within her. The realisation that this seemed so natural to them showed that it was clearly nothing new, all the while Rosé continued massaging you.

You gently caressed her foot, before begrudgingly removing it from your crotch. The strain of your cock through your pants was starting to hurt a little from how turned on you were. You stood up and closed the short distance to where they were still locked on to each other, mouth on mouth. You wondered how familiar they were with getting each other’s lips wet. Lisa was caressing her hands through Rosé's hair, who in return had her hands fondling Lisa’s cute tits. Apparently, the answer to your previous thought was, very much so.

When Rosé pinched her best friend’s nipple, Lisa let out a moan in her throat that reverberated into Rosé's mouth, letting her know that her actions were appreciated.

Rosé briefly opened her eyes, and saw your hard tent was now at eye level next to them. She pulled her tongue out of Lisa’s mouth and gave her a quick peck on the lips before turning to unzip your pants.

Lisa wrapped her arms around Rosé's waist and leant her head on her shoulders, watching as Rosé finally pulled your cock free. “Mmm, did all of our foreplay and teasing get you this hard? Just for us?” She said with a foxy little smile, knowing full well that you were hard as a rock the moment the topic of fantasies came up.

And with that she grabbed the base of your cock and started pumping up and down. The first jerk alone was enough to cause pre cum to leak out onto your head, which Rosé- observant as ever, quickly noticed and used it to start lubing up your rod. “Mmm c’mon Lisa, don’t pretend you’re shy.”

Lisa was seemingly preoccupied, as she had adjusted her head on Rosé's shoulder so that she was now sucking her neck, and the hands which were around her waist now pulled her towards her own body. Lisa was seemingly grinding her pussy against Rosé's hipbone. It wasn't a move that you had ever seen before, but it was hot nonetheless.

Rosé, who was unfazed by this, gathered her hand that was intertwined with Lisa’s and slid them both together over your cock, forming a hand cradle. What followed was a double handed jerk off, as the two girls of your dreams slid their hands together over the full length of your cock, from base to head, down and back up, their hands still laced over each other as well as over your cock. You revelled in the experience, thinking about how much more there was to come. You quickly stripped off your shirt, and looked down to the pleasing rendition before you.

Both sets of eyes were now looking up at you with hungry expressions. Rosé unclasped her hand and moved her mouth towards your balls, sucking them into the warmth of her mouth. Lisa continued pumping your cock, moving her hand down towards the lower half. You anticipated why she might do this, until your cock head was resting on the wetness of her laid out tongue.

“You know, Rosé's spit is still probably in my mouth.” She said, then quickly took in half the length of your cock inside her mouth. The thought of Blackpink’s shared fluids in each other and on your cock had you throbbing in Lisa’s mouth. Just to make sure, Rosé took a pause from sucking on your balls. After Lisa had bobbed up and down your shaft a couple times, Rosé interrupted her by placing a hand around her neck, gently choking the girl and causing her to stop the brief yet blissful blowjob. Confused as to why Rosé had pulled her best friend off of your cock, your confusion was quickly replaced with a look of awe as she pulled Lisa’s mouth open. The younger girl instinctively laid her tongue out and looked up at Rosé with puppy dog eyes. And then Rosé spat. in. her. mouth. Lisa grinned in return then returned to take the length of your cock down her throat, gagging ever so slightly when she reached the base. When her pretty pink lips pulled away from your cock, you were connected by a trail of spit and pre cum.

“There, now our spit is definitely mixed together all over your cock.”

Lisa wasn’t swimming, yet a new wave of liquid had started to leak under her from Rosé's ministrations. She moved her black panties to the side and started rubbing her clit, whilst returning to give you head.

You felt her slide her tongue along your frenulum and shaft whilst encasing you between her lips. Rosé massaged your balls with one hand and used her other to wrap it around the base of your shaft. Their teamwork and rhythm was undeniable. Whether it was through years of training and performing together, or experience in getting their partners off- each other or different people (or both), the pleasure you were feeling far succeeded your expectations. Lisa would skilfully envelop your shaft with her mouth, bobbing up and down. When she slurped down further, Rosé gave the base of your shaft two quick jerks. On Lisa’s every upwards motion, Rosé used the extra length available on your cock to give you a slower pump in a twisting motion, whilst Lisa sucked hard on your head. They continued doing this again and again, all the while Rosé continued to massage your balls with her free hand, and their eye contact fucked you on a whole other level.

Lisa moaned onto your cock, and gazing past her slutty little face, you saw she was still getting herself off. Two small pools of liquid had formed on the floor, one beneath Lisa’s pussy; her leaked juices made you wonder what she tasted like. The other was the puddle of spit below your cock and their mouths, which had transpired from the increasingly sloppy blowjob.

You felt a familiar rising wave. Wanting to prolong this dream-like situation, you stepped back to pull away, at which Lisa looked at you with pouty lips and an expression of neediness, whilst Rosé spoke up.

“You were about to cum weren’t you, I could feel it in your balls.” she said with a devious smile. “Lisa’s mouth does feel good doesn’t it.” After which she turned and licked up along Lisa’s cheek playfully, and turned back to look at you with her mouth open in a smile and her tongue lifted up to to the top of her teeth.

“That felt like heaven and then some.” You explained. “But I don’t want to cum just yet.”

“It’s all good, I’ve got an idea” Rosé grabbed Lisa’s hand again and stood up, motioning for Lisa to follow suit.

Noticing the girly mess she had made on the floor, Lisa started an apology to her best friend. “My bad Chae, I leaked on your floor a little.” Considering she hadn’t cum yet, ‘a little’ seemed like an understatement. This girl was dripping.

Rosé replied with even more fantasy fuel. “Don’t worry Lili, you get cum on my bed sheets all the time, these floors are easy to clean in comparison.” And with that you all moved into Rosé's bedroom, hopefully on your way to ruin her bed sheets anyway.

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

Chapter 2 - 𝓕𝓪𝓷𝓽𝓪𝓼𝓲𝓮𝓼 fulfilled

Apart from a hoodie that was lying on the floor, Rosé's bedroom was about as photogenic as her. An observation of clean and cute was as far as your quick scan of the area allowed before the girls drew your attention again.

Amazingly, Rosé was still fully clothed. Lisa- desperate to continue, quickly undid Rosé's shorts and dropped them to the floor, but not without giving Rosé's ass cheek a playful bite. “Lisa-yah!” yelped Rosé, with her eyes wide open and mouth agape in a similarly playful expression.

“Can’t help myself Rosie, I’m just extra horny today, don’t know why.”

“Lili I think we know why.” She said, giving you a coy look. “Why’re you just standing in the doorway Y/N?” “It’s okay, you can come into my room, it’s not the only thing of mine you’re gonna be coming in anyway.” Your cock twitched at her comment, causing Rosé to smirk as she knew the effect her words had on you.

“I want to see all of you Rosé.” You looked at her shirt and panties, then at Lisa, indicating with your eyes. Lisa understood and stood behind her best friend. Returning the favour from earlier, she cupped her perky little tits through her white top and started to pinch her nipples.

“Mmm, naughty Rosie isn’t wearing a bra.” said Lisa as she placed her head over Rosé's shoulder and looked into her eyes.

Rosé returned eye contact and replied “Well yeah I’m just at home, you walk around here with far less clothes than an absent bra sometimes.” She then proceeded to reach behind her, and although Rosé's body was currently blocking you from seeing it, you could take a good guess as to what she had dipped her fingers into given the surprisingly loud wet sound that emanated.

In what is half soft purring and half actual words, Lisa responds “Me walking around your house naked? You shouldn’t say such slanderous things Rosie.” You find it both humorous and an extreme turn on that Lisa is saying this whilst her fellow group members’ fingers are buried deep in her dripping pussy.

Even though you were meant to be cooling off, you can’t help but stroke your cock to the image before you. Ever so slowly, you pumped your shaft as Lisa lifted Rosé's shirt over her head, forcing the girl to pull her fingers out so that she could hold her arms up. As she did this, you managed to catch 2 of her fingers glistening in the air against the sunlight that shimmered through the curtains. Seeing Lisa’s wetness sparkle on Rosé's fingers was not a fantasy you thought you had, but it is a memorable moment for sure. With her top now removed, you drink in the sight of Rosé's tits. They aren’t huge, but they’re shapely and match her frame well. Subconsciously, you increased the pace of your stroking in appreciation, which doesn't go unnoticed by Rosé who bites on her lip as she watches you jerk off to her. “Better than getting off to pictures of us over the internet?” She toys.

Before you can think of a good reply, Lisa spins her around so that Rosé's ass is facing you. She gives you a quick glance, then starts to peel her chingu's panties off using just her teeth. Apparently Lisa took stripping classes at YG because she sure knew how to put on a show.

Rosé bent her knees slightly and leaned forward on the bed, knowing the angles that made her ass look good. Before you is a cute bubble butt, definitely not as big as Lisa’s, but round and firm. You wonder how it’s possible for them to look so damn good, but then remember that as idols, half of their work is training, dancing, and performing, and to look visual as fuck whilst doing it. What most of the public doesn’t necessarily realise though, is how mouth drooling they look even under their clothes. With no safety shorts to impede your view, Rosé looked gorgeous. Being nude, this is the most leggy you’ve ever seen her, and in her bent over position, her pussy shined back at you. Even from this small distance, you could see that she had a very neat innie that made you want to dive in. Turning back around to face you made her clean shaven mound apparent. 

You walked forward from your spot at the doorframe. Lisa was still wearing her bralette and super crop top, and her panties were so soaked that a wet line started to drip down her thigh. Eyeing what remained of her outfit, you came to a decision: “That crop top stays on, everything else needs to go.”

“If that’s what you want, daddy.” She said in a sultry yet innocent tone that practically makes you melt.

Rosé kneeled down behind Lisa, and took off her panties. There’s no show this time, but no complaints are to be heard either, as Rosé immediately dived into her best friends pussy, enabling moans to echo through the room.

You waste no time and unhook Lisa’s bralette. With just her super crop on to shape her shoulders, it laid just over her chest without covering her tits, which jiggled pleasantly as she had taken over stroking your cock, the rest of her now butt-naked. It was like an X rated dance practice outfit. You transfer Lisa’s moans into your own mouth as you moved in for a kiss. She welcomed your tongue into herself, and once again with unbeatable rhythm, she matched the pace of her handjob with the rate at which she sucked and licked at your tongue. You could only imagine that Rosé was somehow tongue-fucking her pussy to a similar beat.

“Alright, time for that idea I had” perks up Rosé. She directed Lisa to get on the bed- face down, ass up, whilst you stood at the edge, leaving enough room for Rosé to take her place in front of you. It looked to be a king size bed, which you have a not so slight suspicion is due to the fact that Lisa spends a lot of time in here as well. Rosé kneeled on her knees, facing Lisa, and continued her oral session. Feeling a little confused as to why she wanted you here, you begin to realise what Rosé's idea was. She lifted up the lower half of her legs into the air and fluttered her toes at you, behind which rested both her thighs held tightly together, and above that thigh gap was of course the beautiful folds of her pussy.

Rosé's a queen, yet she knows how to serve. Before you was an elegant three course meal of your very own Rosé banquet.

“There’s lube in that bedside drawer, bottom shelf.” said Rosé as she lifted up her head from Lisa’s cunt, gesturing towards the mahogany drawer with pussy juice dripping deliciously around her mouth. “Or you can borrow some of Lisa.” She said with a wink and a lick of her lips before burying her face back down into her meal, allowing Lisa’s increasingly louder moans to continue.

As hot as Rosé's latter suggestion sounded, you didn't want to interrupt, as Lisa has been chasing that orgasm since the start of the night. You moved over to where the bedside table was and opened the bottom drawer. The contents were a bit more intense than you were expecting. You spotted a few dildos and vibrators, the two most noticeable of which were a rabbit vibrator (the ones that have an extra nub shaped like rabbit ears to stimulate the clit), and a long double ended dildo that was half black, half pink. Apparently even in their sex lives they remained on brand.

Other items included a roll of condoms and the bottle of lube you were initially looking for- but quickly became of less interest, as you saw a pair of handcuffs, and at the bottom, a small set of Polaroid pictures. They had the typical dreamy summer vibes that Polaroids produced, but upon looking at the images more closely you noticed they were of not just Rosé, or even just Chalisa, but all the Blackpink members. In most of the pics the subjects were framed as either nude or close to it, in a satisfyingly tasteful way, despite the fact that you could tell they were taken either pre, mid, or post sex. You suddenly felt a bit of guilt, as if you were intruding on these intimate moments that were only meant for them. But when Lisa’s squeals tuned you back in, you glanced over at Rosé who had paused to give you her trademark bedroom eyes and wiggled her butt and feet in the air despite the items you were holding. She didn’t mind you seeing her intimate drawer but she did mind that you weren’t fucking her right now.

“Do I need this?” you asked her dutifully, whilst holding up one of the condom packets.

“Nah, remember what I said earlier? I want you to finish in me, not in some latex. Don’t worry, we’re both on the pill.”

Lisa, despite her sounds of exasperation, managed to chime in “Chae loves cum too much to not be on the pill.”

Rosé didn’t even respond, and instead just returned her tongue and fingers to Lisa’s folds.

“If you think there’s a lot going on in that drawer, just wait until you see what Jennie and Jisoo have.” Lisa’s statement left a lasting impression.

Returning back to the bed, you planted yourself on the ground behind Rosé. If she’s offering everything in front of you, you weren't gonna turn her down. Already knowing in which order you’ll fuck Rosé's bits, you pour some of the lube over your cock and then some over the soles and along the insides of her feet, which she already had hovered in the air for you, squeezed together. You quickly grabbed a pillow and placed them under her knees to hopefully help alleviate some of the roughness of the floor.

With your cock lined up, you started thrusting between her soles. To add more stimulation you pushed them together, tightening the hole that formed between them. She started to move her legs slightly back and forth to match your thrusts. Like the rest of her body, her feet were pretty and clean, and it’s a unique visual to see your cock pumping between them. Further up on the bed, the rapid squelching sounds coming from between Rosé's face and Lisa’s legs announced her approaching orgasm.

“Fuck yes Rosie, fuck fuck fuck.” Screamed Lisa as her cunt trembled around Rosé's fingers and mouth. The older girl continued her movements, only slowly subsiding once Lisa stopped shaking. Lisa allowed the last waves of her orgasm to ride through her. “You eat me out so good Chae.” She said before flipping onto her back, head towards Rosé and lying still in an effort to catch her breath.

Throughout all this you continued to fuck Rosé’s feet. After a couple dozen thrusts, you realised that you were both too worked up to keep the foot job going, and that this was generally better served as foreplay or when everyone wasn't ridiculously horny.

Your thought process was reinforced when you placed her legs back down and noticed her pussy leaking some cream. Not a clear, dripping wetness like Lisa, but a small trail of creamy white. Rosé got up and pushed you down to a seated position on the edge of her bed. Straddling you, she says "I'm sorry, I know you want to fuck my legs, but my pussy is literally creaming for your cock right now so it'll have to wait for another day."

The fact that Rosé basically invited you to come fuck her again after today was more than enough reason for you to accept her apology. “Lili, guide his cock for me.”

Lisa, who had seemingly recovered enough from her orgasm, got up off the bed with her tongue between her teeth and a devilish smile. You wondered what she was thinking about. Taking her spot behind Rosé, you felt a warm hand wrap itself around the base of your cock, as it aimed your head towards her best friends opening. You were aching to be inside Rosé’s flower, and she was aching to have your stem inside of her.

Once she felt your tip teasing her entrance, Rosé allowed her weight to fall down until her pussy lips met Lisa’s hand. The top half of your cock was buried inside Blackpink’s main vocalist, whilst the main dancer had her fingers curled around the bottom half. The moment is so cathartic that you had to strain yourself from not nutting then and there. Rosé continued to push downwards against Lisa’s hand, signalling that she wanted more. Instead of letting go completely, Lisa unfurled her fingers one at a time to allow for Rosé's pussy to swallow more of your cock, until she’s only holding the very base with the O shape of her curled thumb and index finger. Rosé bottoms out, meaning Lisa’s hand is now laying flat against your pubic area, with your cock jutting out between her fingers. She flips her hand over so that her palm is facing upwards. Rosé had now taken your full length, her creamy walls feeling like bliss. You attest being able to push through her unbelievable tightness on the first thrust to her determination, and that she was visibly creamy from all the action that had happened tonight before any attention was given to her pussy.

Rosé started to lift upwards, and then down again, finding a rhythm, but her pussy was not alone in this endeavour. Every time Rosé flexed and relaxed her hips and legs to sink down on your cock and then up again, Lisa matched this by keeping her hand in the same position as before. Palm up, her middle and ring fingers encasing either side of your cock. By matching the pace of the ride, she always kept her hand just under Rosé’s pussy. In doing this, she was not only giving you a two finger handjob, but she was also curling her fingers up to rub her best friends lips and clit, all the whilst Rosé continued to ride the soul out of you.

The sounds of squelching and yours and Rosé’s moaning filled the room. The subtle bouncing of her tits every time she dropped from the summit was adorable. Seeing you eye fuck her tits, Rosé flicked her hair so that you could get better access. You moved in and took her left nipple in your mouth, whilst cupping her other boob. The hardness of her nipples became even more evident as your swirled your tongue around one and pinched the other. As her pussy continuously clamped you, up and down, You felt Rosé’s hands on the back of your head, pulling you closer. Her fingers ran through your hair and massaged your scalp as you alternated between sucking on her tits. Rosé fully took the length of your cock inside of her and switched to a back and forth grinding motion.

With her mouth free and Rosé’s ass in front of her, Lisa determined there was an obvious move to make.

“Lisa-yah!” Rosé suddenly yelped. “ I thought this was meant to be your fantasy.

Lisa pauses her ministrations to reply. "Turns out I wanted to be on the giving end as well." Curious as to what was happening, you unlatched from Rosé’s tits and looked behind her slim waist. Lisa had halted her finger work from the two of you and was instead spreading her best friends ass, tongue deep inside Rosé’s tight little asshole.

Continuing with her grinding, you yourself almost yelp as Rosé clenched her pussy walls tighter on your cock, her velvety insides hugging you closer.

“Rosé…” You groan, feeling yourself getting closer. Leaning over, she whispers into your ear. "Don’t be a stranger, you can call me by my real name.”

This was a small added intimacy that you were more than happy to abide by. "Do you like having my cock inside you... Park Chaeyoung?" You say in a deep playful tone, but it's followed quickly by a moan as she squeezes her cunt around your cock even harder upon hearing you call her by her real name.

Lisa interjects - "You just squeezed his cock didn't you Chae? Holy fuck you must be tight right now, some of your cream leaked out when you did.” From behind Chaeyoung's ass you can see Lisa eye fucking the creamy pussy in front of her, before looking up at you and saying "I love when she squeezes herself around my fingers or tongue, makes me feel like a good girl.”

“Or a bad girl, depending on how you look at it" you say, in which Lisa responds with a coy smile and sticks her tongue out playfully, which to your delight she sticks back in to her chingu's awaiting ass. "Lisa, I love you, but good girls don't tongue fuck each others assholes" she says whilst trying to hold in a moan. Lisa pulls out "well I can stop if you'd like" she says, tilting her head down and pouting her lips in a teasing way that she knew would drive Chaeyoung crazy, but without even turning around, Chaeyoung rests her hand on Lisa's head and pulls her back into her ass, "don't you dare stop, I'm close". Seeing as she looked you dead in the eyes during those words you took it she wasn't just talking to Lisa. This time you take the reigns and start bucking your hips up into her. Chaeyoung lets out the moan she was holding a moment ago, the loudest of the night so far.

Pumping with all the energy you have in you, you buck your hips up into the girl, relentlessly pounding her pussy with your rod. You keep a rigid hold of her waist, minimising her movements to allow Lisa to continue her tongue work.

“Unghf, yes, yes, keep fucking me Y/N, I’m so close, treat me like your little cum hungry slut. My pussy needs your cum. My pussy needs your cum like my asshole needs my best friends tongue. FUCK” she squeals, as you deliver the words “milk the cum out of my cock with your pussy, Chaeyoung” and with the most satisfying O face you’ve ever seen, her eyes rolls back and her pussy cinches around your cock tighter than it has all night. Her creamy walls start to ripple around your manhood, and when her facial expression alone was enough to send you over the edge, you thrust balls deep one more time and then plummet over. Her cunt milks you for load after load, as white as the flashing of your vision. The culminating overload of realising that you really are in  Rosé‘s apartment, fucking her and Lisa, and the waves of your climax has you in pure, absolute bliss.

With your cock still inside her, Chaeyoung wraps her arms around your neck, nuzzling her head into your shoulder. She’s clearly gone into a state of lazy post-sex dreamy mode, and you don’t blame her. Holding on to you tight like she doesn’t want to ever let go, you wrap one arm around her smooth waist, and explore the ridges of her spine and ribs with the other hand.

“Don’t let that cream go to waste Lili” mumbles Chaeyoung from your neck. “Remember what I said about wanting to share cum?”

“Leave it to me Rosie” and with that Lisa gently lifted Chaeyoung’s ass until your cock slipped out of her pussy, the both of you wincing slightly from the post-nut sensitivity.

The gentlest little moans emanated from Chaeyoung as Lisa started lapping up the dripping creampie, no, YOUR dripping creampie from her best friend's pussy. You didn’t have the view to see it, but the sight of Lisa’s eyes peaking over Chaeyoung’s ass as she licked up the combined cream of your cum and her fellow group member was more than enough. “I know you’re both puckered out right now, but after tasting all this cum I’m getting sopping wet again and I’m gonna have to go for round two.” Some of her words were a little unclear, as she spoke without trying to let any cum fall out. You smiled at Lisa’s request as she dived back in. Once her mouth was full of the contents of Chaeyoung’s pussy, she gathered the cum from your sensitive cock using three fingers and licked that up too. She then sat back on her knees and waited like a good girl.

Chaeyoung pushed up off of you and swayed over to Lisa. You watched as the two sloppily made out, transferring creamy white substances into each other’s mouths. Lisa stuck her tongue out, looking first at her best friend and then making direct eye contact with you. Chaeyoung’s creamy cum, your hot load, and the girls’ spit coating her mouth and smooth pink tongue, forming multiple trails between her top and bottom lips as she opened her mouth wide. 

Chaeyoung wrapped her luscious lips around Lisa's tongue, bobbing up and down like a pseudo-blowjob. Once Lisa’s jaw got tired, she pushed down on Chaeyoung’s shoulders to get her on a lower elevation. Lisa then loomed over Chaeyoung’s mouth from a distance and let what remained of her creamy  reservoir out of her mouth. Like a thick bubbling waterfall, the cum travelled through the air down into Lake Chaeyoung’s awaiting mouth.

Before today, the most you had seen of Chaeyoung and Lisa was the occasional outfit that showed off a little extra, or them twerking on stage, yet here you were watching them savour and play with your cum in each other’s holes.

It was filthy, it was slutty, and it was pure fucking fantasy fuel.

“Tur around, get on the beb with your asshup” Chaeyoung could only half enunciate the words in trying to contain all the cum in her mouth, though she wasn’t fully succeeding as some was dribbling out the corner of her mouth and down onto her perky little tits. Regardless, Lisa got the memo, as for the second time that night, she quickly planted herself face down, ass up on the bed. In this position, her ass had never looked better, and you could already feel yourself returning to hardness. You wondered just how much time Lisa spent in this position.

Just when you thought the cum tales might be over, Chaeyoung scooched over in prime position to eat her best friend’s ass. Instead of swallowing the cum, she spat some of it out and proceeded to make out with Lisa’s asshole. Cum. And. Spit. Dripped. Everywhere. Lisa was moaning into the bed sheets, and as if there wasn’t enough, her pussy started leaking out again. Chaeyoung was alternating between finger fucking and tongue fucking all the natural lube into her Lisa's asshole. Once she seemed satisfied, she wiggled under Lisa into a sixty-nine position, and sucked her pussy folds into her mouth. 

After watching the two eat each other out for a bit, Lisa turned her head around and faced you. “C’mon Y/N, you can’t tell me that after all that you’re not hard again, Chae didn’t lube up my ass with cum-lube for nothing.” She said whilst shaking her ass in the air. Suffice to say you were at full mast again, so you took your place behind Lisa’s ass. She giggled as you tapped your cock on her cheeks, admiring the shape and firmness of it.

“Oh my god Lalisa Manoban keep rubbing that, fuck yes.” You couldn’t see Chaeyoung’s pussy from here but it made you smile knowing these two knew how to get each other off so good.

Holding your cock by the base, you pushed just the head into Lisa’s asshole. “Ugh, yeah keep going deeper, I can take it all.” You didn’t doubt her, especially with how slick and wet it was, but you wanted to see if you could make her beg for it. Once your whole tip was inside her ass, you pulled out, rubbed it along the length of her pussy that Chaeyoung wasn’t occupying with her mouth, then pushed just the head back in. After repeating this a few times Lisa quipped “Y/N please I need you to pound my ass, stop teasing me.” She tried to twerk it back into you but her best friend had her arms locked around her waist, preventing Lisa from getting much movement.

Chaeyoung’s sparkling eyes from below caught your attention. You couldn’t see her mouth but could tell she was smiling. Teasing Lisa when her pussy juices were literally leaking down her leg got Chaeyoung off just as much as it did for you.

You put the tip back into her asshole. “Tell me how bad you want it Lisa.”

“I’m fucking aching for your cock Y/N. You know my ass will make you feel good, lay your pipe in me however you want, just put it in please. Please.” That last word came out like a gentle little cry. And so without remorse you thrusted the full length of your cock into Lalisa’s tight asshole. Lisa screamed in delight as you pumped away, rearranging her guts. Her ass cheeks clapped rhythmically every time your hips rammed into her from behind. You were reminded that Lisa got her wish from earlier, as loud slurping sounds came from where Chaeyoung’s mouth connected to Lisa’s pussy, which was dripping like a faulty faucet.

You took a healthy handful of Lisa’s ass cheek and squeezed, taking a moment to appreciate that you were indeed fucking the Lisa Manoban’s ass. You gave her a good couple spanks just for good measure. This was clearly up Lisa’s alley, as she said “mmm fuck yes Y/N, rough fuck me from behind like the slut I am.” With your cock filling her up, all of the cum lube from before had started to drip out of her ass and run down her cheeks, until it made its way through her pussy folds. Chaeyoung was there at the end of the stream, ready to lap it all up.

“She likes having her hair pulled whilst your inside of her.”

“Chaengie, stop exposing me!” quipped Lisa, as if she wasn’t already fully exposed, her pussy eaten and her ass spread open. 

You leaned forward and bunched up Lisa’s hair in your hand. Pulling her head back as you pounded her back end, making sure to deliver more spanks as she shivered in pleasure.

It didn’t take long before Lisa moaned between gasps of air “I’m gonna… cum… already. Don’t stop fucking that hole Y/N… keep sucking my clit… right there Cha- OH” 

Lisa came like an unhinged sprinkler, her body rippling and coiling in all the right places, and Chaeyoung had to close her eyes as Lisa started to gush and squirt all over her pretty little face.

You kept fucking Lisa throughout her orgasm, but she eventually pulled forwards slightly from over stimulation. You pulled your cock out of her ass, promising to yourself in your head that you’d return to that tight cavern one day.

Noticing your hard on floating in the air, Chaeyoung wiped her hand across her face like she had just been submerged in a pool, except instead of water it was Lisa’s squirty cum. With her hand now slick with girl juice, she reached up and started to pump your cock. Evidently, these two were fans of using cum as lube. But like fuck, you were too after tonight.

“Chaeyoung, shift down towards the edge more.” As she complied, you gently pulled Lisa along so that her pussy lined up with Chaeyoung’s mouth. Her head was now hanging off of the bed slightly, exactly where you wanted it. You placed your thumb on Chaeyoung’s lips and swiped it across them. They returned to their position with a slight bounce.  Without even needing to say the words, she opened her mouth wide, her tongue looked as inviting as ever. Using Lisa’s ass as a handhold, you bent your knees until Chaeyoung’s mouth was on fucking level, and in one thrust you glided along her tongue until you hit her throat. As expected, Chaeyoung’s throat shared similar properties with her pussy: incredibly tight and the perfect sleeve for your cock. You revelled in the feeling of her warm tongue and throat massaging your rod. Each thrust was a delight. Damn these two idols knew how to take dick.

Even though you had already cum once, you knew you wouldn’t last long throatfucking Chaeyoung like this, so after a few more savouring thrusts you pulled out. “Hey, where are you going..?” Chaeyoung asked, as if her food was being taken away mid meal.

You answered her question with an action, slowly pushing the full length of your member into Lisa’s glorious pussy, which was accompanied by a gentle moan. You continued alternating between Chaeyoung’s upside down mouth and Lisa’s cunt, one slow thrust at a time. It was hard to tell which was more slippery.

“Making it last and still fucking us both at the same time? Don’t worry Y/N, this isn’t the last time we’re doing this, I can tell you that right now.” Lisa’s words reassured you, as did her pussy wrapped around your cock.

“Where do you want my 2nd load?”

“Your call Lisa, he already came insid-“ The end of her sentence was cut short, as you had just pulled out of Lisa and stuffed Chaeyoung’s mouth full again.

“My mouth is a bit dry Y/N, why don’t you quench my thirst?”

“You’ll have to turn around then Lisa, get your sexy little mouth over here, I’ve been close for a while now.”

She quickly hopped off from on top of Chaeyoung and swivelled around to face you (but she returned to lying on top of Chaeyoung anyway). You tapped on Lisa’s open tongue with your cock, and then watched it disappear as you thrust your hips forward.

“I like watching my best friend swallow your cock Y/N. She wants your cum. Are you gonna give it to her? Please cum down her throat, she's a dirty fucking cum whore babe, let it all out babe, nut in her, please.”

Chaeyoung’s accent as she pleaded for you to cum down Lisa’s throat sent you spiralling. She was a main vocalist in more than just singing. You thrust deep into Lisa's mouth one last time before groaning loudly. Hot spurts of cum coated Lisa’s mouth pipe, who greedily swallowed it all down. She wasn’t lying when she said she was thirsty.

You pulled out of Lisa’s mouth after your cock stopped twitching, now feeling well and truly spent.

"You really swallowed it all huh?" Chaeyoung noted.

"It's only fair, you got his creampie earlier."

You collapsed onto the bed next to Chaeyoung, whilst they casually discussed  your cum and the places it went.

Lisa looked over to face you with a sly grin. "You should come over again sometime, maybe we'll give you that audio recording."

“Come over again? Does that mean you’re kicking me out now?”

Lisa shook her head apologetically. That’s not what she meant.

Chaeyoung's hand stretched out behind her to find its place interlocked with yours, as if to make sure you weren’t going anywhere. "No, stay with us… tonight. But after that you should come over again, but only for the recording, no other reason." She teased in a sleepy voice.

"Really, no other reason?" You responded.

"Hmm, none that I can think off." She gently squeezed your hand, reassuring you of all the reasons that went unspoken.

A/N: How do people churn out smuts this long whilst still retaining some level of quality? I feel like I just submitted an assignment. Grade my paper and leave me feedback! Also, writing Rosé's name with the tilde above the e every time isn't worth it.

[going-to-ikea-for-the-fries]

I'm thinking of Merman!Gaz smut tonight, so... have a little drabble:

Breeding? || Merman!Gaz (for Mermay 2024)

cw: smut (cunnilingus), dubcon elements (reader is willing).

Merman!Gaz who's actually part sea horse so he has a dorsal fin, ears that are fin-shaped, and no caudal fin, but a straight, thin and curled tail instead.

Merman!Gaz who loves people watching and has learned plenty about humans... and even does it enough to have picked up on some Englsh.

Merman!Gaz who sees you at the beach, not one of those fine sand and great for sunbathing ones, but one that's mostly rocky gravel and a jagged coastal line.

Merman!Gaz who approaches the rocks you're sitting on and peaks his head over them to catch your eye, happy that the beach is mostly devoid of people due to how gloomy and cloudy the sky is.

Merman!Gaz who startles you and smiles when he notices you jumping, but then your eyes shine like the stars and you look at him with such curiosity as you carefully approach with a "Hi...?".

Merman!Gaz who's, unfortunately, more curious about the parts of your body hidden under your shorts than you as a human, and whose human-like hands start pawing at your thighs, webbed fingers massaging your exposed skin.

Merman!Gaz who wraps his muscular arms around your hip and drags you as close as he can get you to the edge of the rocks, your toes dangling over the water, and legs being sprinkled by the crashing waves.

Merman!Gaz who presses his face against your clothed cunt, burying his nose against the gusset of your denim shorts, taking a deep sniff of you thanks to his powerful nose, that sends excitement coursing through his body, and heat rising up to his face.

Merman!Gaz who realizes how beautiful you look with your eyes wide and your whole body stiffened in surprise... but notes how your hands don't push to fight him off.

Merman!Gaz who tries to rip your clothes off you, not knowing what "Careful!" means when you say it, which makes him look at you with knitted brows and the biggest, softest brown eyes, only for you to relent and help him.

Merman!Gaz who, as soon as he sets eyes on your exposed cunt, feels his heart racing in his chest and immediately buries his face back where it belongs.

Merman!Gaz who licks stripes up your cunt, savouring the taste and the warmth of your core, the wetness so different to the salty ocean, and revels on how your moans sound even more lovely than some of the mating songs he hears from whales and other mammals.

Merman!Gaz whose fins start brightening in color, turning bright orange rather than its muted shade of terracotta, and whose tail wraps around one of your feet, as he sucks on your clit and hears you mewl and moan.

Merman!Gaz who smiles when he feels a rush of liquid rush against his plump lips and down his chin, watching how you go limp and sigh fondly, having peaked against his mouth... and clicks his tongue and smacks his lips, pleased with himself.

Merman!Gaz who continues at it over and over, his tongue diving into your winking hole, and feels your heels dig into the expanse of his back as his arms keep holding his torso above the water so he can remain buried in your cunt.

Merman!Gaz who after you're overstimulated, uses his strong arms to pull himself up onto the rocks atop you and whose lips crash onto yours in a deep, languid kiss, like he's seen so many humans share, noticing your eyes rolling and the fucked out look on your face.

Merman!Gaz who vanishes under the water while you're struggling to catch your breath, catching the way as you jump up, startled, when you noticed he's gone, seemingly distraught that he'd just leave like that.

Merman!Gaz who, weeks later, is lowkey confused as to why his brood pouch didn't swell and he's not releasing any babies, he's pretty sure you two mated?

Part 2:

[miupow]

ᴄʀᴀᴠɪɴɢ ʏᴏᴜ ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 ★ ᴄ.ʏᴊ

❝Your blood sucking boyfriend needs you bad, and he doesn't care how late it is.❞

PAIRING: vampire!choi yeonjun x fem!reader RATING: NSFW, MDNI! WARNINGS: smut, established relationship, vampire au, soft dom!yeonjun, soft sex, blood mention/blood sucking, vampire venom mention (kind of works like an aphrodisiac?), breast/nipple play, vaginal fingering, begging, dirty talk, like the smallest hint of anal (f. rec), praise kink, sickly sweet pet names WORDS: 1.3k A/N: this is a repost from my old account! originally written for my halloween event.

TAGLIST: @wintertxt, @boba-beom, @wolfytae-exe, @takemehye, @naomiarai , @mapofthemazeinthemirror , @bunnie-hq , @doumachi, @numxra, @soobinsbuns, @taegimood, @jeniihss, @soobabby, @hhoneylix

You're just on the verge of falling asleep when you feel strong arms wrap tight around your waist, the bed dipping to accommodate your boyfriend sliding into bed behind you. His bare chest presses up snug against your back, skin cold as ice, and you shiver when he leans his head down to press chaste kisses against your shoulder.

“I’m hungry,” Yeonjun whines in your ear, voice breathy and tight— you can feel his sharp canines graze your skin as he talks, his hips bump up against the swell of your ass; you can feel the weight of his cock through your thin nightgown like there was nothing but skin, stiff and twitching… so it was going to be one of those nights. “Need you bad, baby..” 

“But Jjunie, I was sleeping,” You whine back, petulant, trying to ignore the heat collecting in your belly. Your boyfriend always had such terrible timing.

“Mmm, don’t care~” Yeonjun coos, drags his teeth across your shoulder again, this time letting it catch on the strap of your nightgown, drag it down your arm. The side of your gown falls, exposing one of your tits, and Yeonjun is quick to cup it in his palm, pinch your nipple in between his index finger and thumb. “I'm starving, need you now… I can hear your heartbeat, my princess, I know you need me too~~”

He tugs hard on your nipple, makes your breath hitch, hips grind down, heart skip— he heard it, you could tell, with how he chuckles smugly into the crook of your neck.  “Smells so good..” he moans, nose burrowing further, begging for you to bear your neck to him— you do so without a fight, relish in the way he sucks in a breath, inhales your scent deeply. “Always taste so good, too… Please, just a bite…” 

You grit your teeth, prepared for the bite, but it never comes— instead Yeonjun licks a fat stripe up your neck with the flat of his tongue, nasty and lewd and leaving a wet trail that stings in the cool air. He finishes just under your ear, and you can nearly hear his smirk as he ghosts his canines across your skin, pretty pouty lips sucking a dark purple bruise. You gasp, bare more of your neck, twist in Yeonjun's strong embrace; your hips rock harder, faster together, sheer fabric of your nightgown wet with Yeonjun's precum and slowly riding up your thighs from the friction.

“Touch me,” you beg in a whisper, drenched panties sticking to your core. Yeonjun chuckles deep in his chest.

“Let me feed,” he twists your nipple one last time, letting go to trail his hand slow down your stomach to meet the lacy hem of your gown. He always knew exactly what card to play to get you to give in. 

“Fuck, fine, okay, just make it quick--” you plead, mostly for your own sanity— you could feel Yeonjun grin against your neck, hardly giving you any time to prepare before he bore his sharp fangs into you. 

“shit!” you hiss from the pain; no matter how many times you let Yeonjun feed from you, you don’t think you’ll ever get used to the sting and the burn from his bites. He's quick to apologize, his fingers finally coming to rest on your covered clit. He rubs a few gentle circles, fast and precise, sending jolts of pleasure through your body, and finally, finally the searing pain of his teeth is drowned out by the euphoria of his venom.  

You feel hot, burning, Yeonjun's cold tongue and breath doing nothing to cool you down— he licks up your blood in fat, broad swipes, wet and messy as he groans in your ear. “So good~” he pants hard, hips bucking, long index finger leaving your clit to trail down your soaked slit. “shit, you’re so wet for me…” 

You're dizzy, lightheaded, foggy brain unable to keep up with all of the pleasure; your hips flutter wildly, legs spread wide to give Yeonjun the most access. “Want you,” you garble, pussy soaked and clenching around nothing.  

Yeonjun momentarily pulls off of your neck, entranced by the way your blood pools around the puncture marks. You immediately whine pathetically for him, squirming, dazed and craving his lips back on your skin. “You want me, baby?” he teases, gentle fingers continuing to stroke your folds. “Want me how?”

His fingertip catches the hem of your panties, and you keen high in your throat— you can hardly speak, let alone string a sentence together, pretty little head empty and full of only Yeonjun… you want to cry out for him, watery, but all you manage is a pathetic, choked “Jjunie, your fingers, want your fingers, please—!” 

Your face burns, but Yeonjun is just as desperate as you are— he tugs your panties down your thighs in one swift motion, leaving them bunched around your knees to stuff your cunt full with two bony fingers— you let out a sob at the intrusion, head lolling back just enough for yeonjun to continue getting his fill. You welcome the feeling of his lips and tongue, shaking and whimpering as he begins to scissor you open to the rhythm of his suckles on your neck. 

“Mmm, ahh— Yeonjun!” you beg, but you’re not sure what for— Yeonjun's fingertips rub your sweet spot with perfect precision, his thumb coming up to rub tight, slick circles on your clit; you spread your legs wider, keen for more; your boyfriend gives it to you with a snicker, slides in a third finger alongside the others. “Please, please—“ 

“Please what?” Yeonjun goads, finishing his work on your neck with a lavish flick of his tongue. His fingers pump your pussy with vigor, nasty wet noises spilling from your  drenched folds— he curses with a moan, grabs again at your tit with his free hand, tweaking and tugging at your sensitive bud. “God, you’re so perfect f’me, perfect girl… feed me so well, so delicious~”

Your bite had stopped bleeding, healed over with a few sweet kitten licks from your lover, but his venom still coursed through your veins, set your skin on fire, belly taught and aching cunt begging for release— you were still under his thrall, perfect little doll for him to play with after he’s gotten his meal. The pace of Yeonjun's fingers were brutal against your sweet spot, palm of his hand sending hot sparks through your clit with every rock of your hips… His leaking, throbbing cock, nestled between your cheeks, fat cockhead sliding thick and heavy against your asshole with every sloppy thrust— Yeonjun kisses your earlobe, bites down gently, whispers so sweet and fond, “C'mon baby, please what? i haven’t gotten you stupid on my fingers now, have i?”

“I’m gonna cum!” you wail in response, pussy fluttering around his digits, clit pulsating, your hips wild caught in between his hand and his hips; Yeonjun coos, twists and bends his fingers just the way you like it, the heat coiled tightly in your belly threatening to snap. “Please, gonna cum, wanna cum, let me cum!”

“Nasty girl, creaming all over my fingers after i suck her dry,” Yeonjun giggles, cock twitching hard against your fluttering asshole. “Go ahead, princess, make a fuckin’ mess.” 

His free hand leaves your sore tit to pinch hard at your clit, long fingers fucking you open and playing with you just so perfect and right— you cum with a sharp cry, stretched out walls spasming, clamping down on yeonjun’s digits, swollen lips fluttering as you completely drench his hands in your release— Yeonjun talks you through it with sickly sweet “good girl”s and “good job”s, sticky fingers working your pretty abused hole despite just how hard you were clamping down, forcing them out— “So tight,” he groans brokenly in your ear, “Gotta fuck you now~” 

“I said be quick—“ you retort, voiced fried, bratty despite letting Yeonjun manhandle you with ease— he towers over you on the bed, hips knocking, fat cock brushing against your folds and making you whimper… Yeonjun grabs your thighs in his hands, folds you in half with dizzying strength and ease; grin wolfish, eyes dark, sharp teeth catching the moonlight— 

“Oh baby, we’re just beginning.” 

[luveline]

𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐠𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐭 | 𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐞 𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧

Best friends since middle school, you tell Eddie everything, which is why he's so surprised to find out you've been keeping a secret —you’re hearing a voice whenever you're home alone. He’s always had a thing for the fantastical but he can't believe in ghosts, and the longer you insist on it, the more worried he becomes. This would be bad enough if Eddie didn’t have a secret too, and it threatens to change everything between you. [22k] 

fem!reader, best friends to lovers slow-burn, mutual pining, eddie is infatuated with you, idiots in love, paranormal activity/au, heavy hurt/comfort, angst, fluff and affection, wayne is uncle of the year every year, ghost-hunting

cw assumed auditory hallucinations, talk of mental health, surrounding worry and circumstances, mentioned mental illness stigma, recreational drug use mention, prescription drugs, grief

my endless gratitude and thank yous to @h-ness1944 and @mrcylvsu for their sensitivity beta reads and for answering my questions so many moons ago, I'm very, very thankful for all that hard work, and all the time and energy you both spent!

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

Eddie's desk fan is on the fritz. It twists back and forth with a weak metallic clicking sound that promises eventual electrocution but for now provides momentary relief. Even the nights have been hell lately. No matter how many windows he and Wayne open, the air at home stays thick with humidity. 

Sweat shines on his brow and collar. He refuses to tie his hair back, and each hour it grows more and more uncomfortable. 

"Are you sure you don't wanna come and lie up here?" he asks, shifting reluctantly to peer over the side of the bed. 

You're laying on the floor of his room, just as sweaty but half as unhappy. You've abandoned a book to your left, having declared the weather too much to concentrate through. 

"Our body heat will mingle." 

"The fan is really helping," he argues lightly. "If you die on my floor Wayne won't ever let it go. Just come up here." 

You mumble something he doesn't hear and pull your shirt from your chest. You attempt to fan yourself with the thin, clinging fabric. It doesn't work, but it does expose the soft hill of your abdomen to his guilty eyes. His mouth dries up. 

"It's getting late," he says. He's not trying to get rid of you, promise, but now he's thinking about your body heat mingling and why it wouldn't be such a bad thing, and he doesn't want to. "I'll drive you home, yeah?" 

"In a minute," you agree, looking as if you have no intention of moving. 

You turn your face to the side, eyes closed, lashes skimming the delicate skin of your under eye. Eddie sits up and rakes his greasy hair away from his face. He'll drop you home, take a cold shower for purely heat related reasons, and hopefully sleep through the night. It's a very unlikely outcome, but a man can dream. 

"Come on. We'll roll the windows down and go really fast." 

"Eddie," you chastise. 

"Moderately fast." 

His sleeveless tank top gets caught as he leans down to try and flick you. Eddie can only ever forgive his fourteen year old self for maiming perfectly good vintage in times like these. A completely unnecessary culling of an entire wardrobe's worth of sleeves, but when the weather gets bad for a few heady weeks every summer, he remembers the reasoning behind it. 

He's stripped of all his clunky jewellery for now, adorned only in the dark ink of his multiplying tattoos. His most recent addition is an artist's rendition of the Eye of Sauron, blinking up at him from beneath his volley of bats. Still sick, he thinks to himself smugly. 

You've pulled yourself into a sitting position with your arms crossed over the bed, your hand stretched out to touch his plaid pyjama bottoms. You're in a nearly matching pair; when Eddie called you to hang out earlier you'd turned him down, citing a reluctance to change. He'd promised to pick you up in his own pyjamas, and you've been lying on his floor since then.

You're the laziest kids this side of the Wabash river, Wayne'd said, looking over your limp bodies with a smile. 

The other side, too, Eddie popped back. Will you put those chicken wings in the oven for us, please?

Eddie's not a monster, the wings were pre-prepared. Any other day he'd correct his uncle, say, hey, we haven't been kids for years, but the heat makes him feel gross and sometimes you just want your dad to make you dinner. (Sometimes Eddie's just lazy, also.)

"Eds?" you murmur. 

He lets his hands fall away from his hair where he'd been scratching mindlessly and turns to you. He's lethargic, feels like he's turning his head through molasses. "What, sweetheart?" 

Years of being friends lends an easy affection. His pet names are purely platonic. Or they used to be. Either way, you aren't perturbed.

"Can I sleep over?" 

He usually says yes to that question immediately. But again, the thought of your sweaty body curled into his with your hands breaching a friendly gap to curl over his waist like they tend to do fills his stomach with dread. 

His little crush is making him a bad friend, he decides. He will always, first and foremost, be your friend. 

"Of course you can." He rubs his mouth. Feigning casualness. "How come?" 

You peel out of your fatigue and get on your knees. The extra height is all you need to finally grab his legs, smiling sheepishly. Eddie won't judge you for almost anything and you know that, so it's gotta be outlandish. 

"I think…" You tap his kneecap. "Okay, laugh at me if you need to, but I'm pretty sure my house is haunted." 

"Like, by a ghost?" 

"What else?" you ask, laughing good-naturedly.

"Why do you think it's haunted, superstar?" 

You drop your face onto his thigh, giving him a disjointed hug. He hugs you back for as long as the heat will allow it, a handful of stolen seconds with his hand over your back.

"I swear, sometimes, I can hear someone talking."

That's… scarier than he imagined. "Shit, I thought you were gonna say a coat fell off the hanger, or the light in your bathroom started flickering again." 

"It has," you admit, your mouth pressed to his thigh. "But it's just the bulb." 

He pushes you off of him, your voice sending vibrations through places he'd prefer it didn't, and you fall back with a half-hearted stab at melodrama. 

"Oof," you say, straight-faced. 

"You really think it's a ghost?" he asks. 

"No. I don't know. I won't believe in ghosts until I see one, and I haven't seen one, but if it were a ghost, this is the type of behaviour I'd expect from it. So I guess I do. Does that make sense?" 

"Sure." He doesn't know. "What does it say?" 

"Here's the bit where you won't believe me." 

You smile at him from your spot on the floor. Your hand curls out, like a tight budded flower coming to bloom. 

"She asks about you," you say quietly. "It's pretty much all she says." 

"Who?" 

"The ghost." 

"She's a she?" 

"Sounds kind of like one." 

"Come sit up here with me." 

Eddie knows his voice has gone hard and weird, but he can't help it. He understands that he doesn't understand anything, that the world is large and works in mysterious ways, but he wouldn't forgive himself if he took this lightly. You sound so convinced — it makes him feel ill. 

Because Eddie doesn't believe in ghosts. 

You climb up onto the bed in front of him and he doesn't take your hand. He should. You won’t meet his eyes, a sign that you're slightly embarrassed. It's not what he meant to do. 

"What does she say?” he probes.

You go teasing and shiny, a glimmer in your eye. "I know you don't believe me, Eddie." 

"Who says I don't believe you? I just need you to explain." 

"She says…" You laugh. "Okay, she says stuff like, 'Eddie is okay?'" 

Eddie stares at you. 

"I was going to tell you–" 

"When?" he demands. 

"I'm telling you right now!" 

"How long have you been hearing voices?" 

You climb up on knees to wrap your arms around his head. "You think I'm delusional," you say, a loving murmur in his ear. 

He grabs your waist. Unsurprisingly, hugging you doesn't make him nearly as electric as he'd worried. It feels the same as it always has, like hugging his best friend. Loving the smell of your hair is new, but everything else stays the same. 

"I don't think you’re delusional, I don't, I just– if I told you the same thing." 

You pull away, and his hand comes to rest atop the curve of your hip. "I'd believe you," you say. 

"I believe that you believe there's someone talking to you about me. Uh… if it is a ghost haunting your house, why's she talking about me?" 

You take his hands off of your waist, squeezing his fingers together in your palms. "Don't know. I tried asking but she never answers, and last night…" 

Eddie stands up.

"Where are you going?" 

"We gotta let Wayne know you're staying and he's about to fall asleep, and I want a cigarette, and you need something to drink." 

"I don't want a beer." 

"No," he says. When he says to drink, he really means something cold to sip on. He's hoping to grab you back from… whatever it is you're going. "Soda, apple juice, drink what you want." 

He fiddles with the drawstrings on his pants, waiting for you to join him at the doorway. You stay sitting on his bed. He doesn't know what your face means. 

"Hey, you still have to tell me about it. I want to know, swear to god. We have all night." He holds out his hand. Wiggles his fingers at you. "I'll let you paint my nails again too, like a real girls night." 

That grabs your attention. You slide off of the bed and take his hand, shrieking as he yanks you ten miles an hour down the skinny hallway and into the living room. Wayne's got the sofa bed out already, his padded roll-up mattress laid out over the springs and a sheet stretched corner to corner. 

"Hey, kids," he says, fluffing one of his pillows. He chucks it at the top of the mattress. "Home time?" 

"Can I stay over, Mr. Munson?" you ask. 

Wayne rolls his eyes. You once spent eight days here with no breaks sometime in the summer of 1987 and he hadn't batted an eye. Eddie made sure it was truly alright with Wayne, of course, and you'd done your share of housework. Point is, both Munson's find  your asking to stay unnecessary. 

"I'll make pancakes in the morning," you add. 

"Oh, in that case." Wayne throws his blanket out over the bed and sits on top of it. "By all means, kid, stay over. Tell your guardian." 

"Can't. In Santa Barbara." 

"Ah, then I have to insist you stay," he says, laying down with a huff. 

Eddie passes him the TV remote. "She's a big girl, Wayne." You're well past the age of parental supervision. 

Wayne answers with a grumbling sound that means, hey, you can keep talking to me but there's no guarantee I'll answer. 

"I won't be annoying, promise," you say. 

Wayne grunts again. 

"That's old man talk for I know you won't," Eddie translates. 

You nod, glad to have permission, and meander into the kitchen. "Can I–" 

"Yes!" Eddie and Wayne call simultaneously. 

Wayne laughs to himself in that pleased gruff way he's good at and tucks his arms behind his head. He's wearing one of Eddie's t-shirts. They've been the same size since Eddie was seventeen, something both Munson's utilise when laundry day is approaching but not quite upon them. 

"Lighter?" 

Wayne scrunches his eyes in displeasure. "By the sink."

"Thanks." For some reason, Eddie doesn't leave. He stays standing by the TV, listening to the voice of a late-night talk show chuckle through a joke about some scandal. 

When Eddie was younger, he'd get into bed beside Wayne and watch TV until his eyes hurt. Too young to have stopped needing comfort and too old to know how to ask for it, he'd drift down the snug hallway into the living room and Wayne would usually be asleep or almost there. Eddie would stand by the TV hesitantly, and if he was sleeping Wayne must've been able to feel it, a new parents instinct or something, because he'd soon wake, and if he wasn't he'd look at Eddie like he'd been waiting for him. Like Eddie was running late. 

His teenage years were almost solely defined by bad dreams and TV with Wayne. On the good nights, Eddie would go back to bed. On the bad nights, heartache would swallow him whole. Well, almost whole. His cheek would rest on Wayne's shoulder as the night went on. Miraculous and ordinary at once. That's the only bit of him that didn't hurt. 

Pain emaciates the good from his memory, but it can't erase the comfort of watching TV with someone who loved him when they didn't have to. 

Wayne pretends to chop Eddie in the stomach. Eddie laughs and dodges out of his path. 

"Gotta be faster than that," Eddie taunts. 

"Don't chain smoke," Wayne says. 

"We won't be up long." Eddie's lying. He can't imagine that either of you will be getting an early night tonight considering the nature of your confession. What he means is, you won't be keeping Wayne up, and Eddie won't smoke more than what's wise. 

Wayne hums. 

You're in the kitchen screwing the lid back on a gallon of apple juice, your cup a quarter filled. You're like that. Won't ever take more than you need.

"One for me?" he asks. 

"I figured now all your taste buds are dead, you wouldn't want any." 

"Ha-ha," he says. The kitchen is unusually clean. "Shit, stop cleaning my house. Good god." 

You pull one of his jackets off of the seat of one of the kitchen table's chairs and shake it out. "So I can sleep here, eat here, but cleaning is where you draw the line. I like it." 

Eddie grabs the lighter from beside the sink in one hand and your wrist in the other, pulling you away from the table before you can start organising their mail and through the back door. 

It's still sticky-hot out and the steps are warm to the touch as the two of you sit down hip to hip. He pulls the stiff pack of cigarettes from his pants pocket and hands them to you. Your hand is already waiting. You peel off the plastic and tap the pack against your chest. You like doing it, arguing that it makes you feel like you're Chelsea Marino in Glory Days, all dark smiles and indulgent self-loathing. 

You open the pack, tug out a lone cigarette, and pass it to him. 

"You're like a pez dispenser," Eddie says, putting the butt of the cigarette between his lips.

"You little freak." 

He laughs and almost drops his cig. Wayne's heavy zippo struggles to light, low on gas. 

"Loser can't even light a cigarette." 

"Who put two dimes in you?" he asks, thrilled by your negging. 

He takes a sharp inhale as the end of the cigarette finally lights, the heat tickling his throat until it burns the way he needs it to. 

"Somebody must've," you say. 

"Reckon we can tip you upside down and get something to eat?" he asks through an exhale of smoke, tapping ash into the small egg cup to his left that's been serving as an ashtray for as long as he's been smoking. It used to be yellow. Every now and again he washes it and sees the old chicken paint underneath. "Too late for cooking." 

"Are you hungry?" you ask genuinely. "I told you we should've had more than just wings."

"It was too hot to eat hot stuff. It's still too hot. Tomorrow, we should go to Bradley's and get stuff for sandwiches." 

Eddie waits for your answer. "I'm sick of PB and J, Eds," or "Yes! And a pitcher for sweet tea, my captain." You don't say anything, your face turned up to the sky and your eyes closed, soaking in the heat. 

He has half a mind to go get a spray bottle and douse you before you collapse. 

"What's going on with you?" he asks. 

"I'm just thinking." 

"Think out loud. Don't be fucking selfish." 

"I'm not sure you wanna hear it." 

He puts his cigarette in the eggcup ashtray half-smoked, ribbons of white curling up into the shimmering summer heat. Any other time he'd lounge back and let the nicotine course through his system, a momentary relief against the winding tightness that comes with being so hot, and so worried about you. 

"If I ask you how you've been feeling lately, could you answer me?" he asks. "Without assuming I don't believe you. Don't get mad, just tell me." 

You drop your shoulder against his. "I feel fine, I think. You know me, I– I worry too much, and work is overwhelming. If you took me to a doctor, he'd probably prescribe me ambien and a week in a dark room, but. I really don't think I'm making this up." 

"I don't think you'd know," he says. Isn't that the deal? If you're having a hallucination of some kind, it would likely sound and feel real enough to trick you in some capacity.

"Trust me," you say. Your hair brushes against the top of his damp arm. He can't smell good, but you don't say a thing about it.

"I do." Eddie turns his head to take another drag. He blows the smoke as far from you as he can manage. "Tell me about last night," he says, eyes on the weather worn plating of the trailer. "What happened?" 

If you're not messing with him, your ghost has been talking to you for a while now. Something happened last night to scare you in a way you hadn't been before.

He fights his rising nausea with a final drag on his cigarette. You stop leaning on him, hands back in your lap as you tell the story. 

"I was listening to the stereo real loud while I did laundry. I don't know if I was trying to, you know, block it out if she started talking, I'm not stupid, I– I know it could be all in my head. I don't think it is, but I'm not stupid. I went down to the basement to swap the load out in the dryer, and while I was down there…" 

You look like you don't know how to explain it. Eddie bites his cheek. 

"She wrote me something," you say finally. "In my notebook, the one you got me for Christmas. She said hello." 

"I could've written it," he says. "I don't remember, maybe I left you a message in it knowing you'd find it." 

"Did you come in and take it off the shelf, too?" you ask gently. "Eddie, I know your handwriting. I'm not making this up."

He sighs, rubs his face with both hands, the smell of smoke and salt ingrained in the lines of his palms. He gives himself a long five seconds scrubbing at his stubbly jaw and wishing it was colder, then he shoots up onto his feet and pulls open the door. 

"Early night," he says decisively. "If you're still sure there's a ghost in the morning, I'll come over. See if she'll talk to me too. How does that sound?" 

You hold your hand out. Eddie takes it, hoisting you up.

"It sounds like you need a better strategy for getting girls to go to bed with you." 

"It's working, isn't it?" 

"Loser." 

— 

You wake up to Eddie tapping your shoulder. 

"Come on, sweetheart," he says quietly, his voice rough as hewn stone. "I made you pancakes." 

It's as if you're submerged at the bottom of a shallow pool. Sound and heat and sunlight reach you, but it's dull. It takes you a second to understand what Eddie's saying, and why his thumb is rubbing into your shoulder. 

"Come on," he says again, "'fore they get cold." 

You blink. Blink blink blink. Your throat hurts and you have a bad taste in your mouth. Your eyes feel like somebody flicked sand at you while you slept, gritty and dry. You kick the thin blanket away from you, a long day of writhing in the heat yesterday having turned you to sludge, your limbs limp and uncooperative. 

Eddie's frowning at you when you look up. 

"Want me to get you a rag?" he asks. 

"No, I'll wash my face." Your words string together like toffee melted between them and hardened again while you weren't looking. "Oh," you murmur, wincing as you set your feet on the ground. "My back really hurts. Did you push me out of bed last night?" 

"You slept like a log. Same position all night." He reaches for you, but his hand wavers. He must change his mind. 

Eddie leaves the door wide open as he leaves. The radio is on, and a song he secretly loves but won't admit to wars with the sound of sizzling oil. If you strain, you can hear him humming. You get closer and dip into the bathroom, the door open so you can listen to Eddie sing the chorus. 

Dance with me, I want to be your partner, can't you see? The music is just starting. 

He doesn't sing well, really. It's a light, high-pitched rendition. He isn't trying. He feels comfortable enough around you to be unapologetically mediocre, and it's somehow sweeter than if he had a voice like Larry Hoppen. 

You wash your face with handfuls of cold water, your lips tasting of salt as it drips down your nose to your neck, rogue rivulets of run-off seeping into your rolled sleeves. 

The heat broke overnight. A light rain patters soundlessly against the windows, and the back door has been propped open in the kitchen to let in the smell of fresh churned earth. Petrichor. 

You pat your tacky face dry. Eddie turns to the sound, and you nod at Wayne's empty seat.

"Where's your uncle?" you ask. 

"He wanted to get epoxy and a fresh roll of duct tape in case we spring another leak. The rain was pretty bad last night, I think he's worried it'll rot the ceiling. I don't know. Don't worry, I made him something first." 

You sit down and let Eddie serve you a stack of pancakes. The ones on the very top are piping hot. You slather them in butter and maple syrup as he sits down next to you, a plate of his own in hand. 

"How's your back?" he asks. He's being too soft with you. 

"I saw a ghost, Eds, I'm not dying." You slice down the pancakes with the side of your fork, attempting to act unbothered. "Worst case scenario, I'm schizophrenic."

Eddie sits down in the chair next to yours. It's a small table but there's ample room. His proximity is a choice. "Worst case scenario, you're being targeted by an evil demon, but schizophrenia could also be really bad," he says. "S'why I'm worried." 

"Eddie." You put down your fork, swallowing a half-chewed mouthful roughly. "Hey. If it's my head, I'll go to the doctor and I'll let them take care of it and everything will be fine." You have no way of knowing if what you're saying is true. Mental illness isn't easy. You're just saying what you think he needs to hear without outright lying. "I'll take the meds and you'll be there for me. But I'm fine. And you're being weird." 

"You're trying to piss me off." 

A little. Pissed is better than anxious. You'd rather give him something to glare at than a reason to twist himself into knots. "You're easily riled," you jest. 

His eyebrows rise. He eats his pancakes and you your own, the wrinkled knees of your pyjamas rubbing against one another as he jigs his leg along to the song on the radio. The rain starts to worsen, fat droplets slapping the screen door like the thwack of a bullet. From your seat, you can see the sky dark with grey clouds, the sun a long forgotten foe. The humidity has been cut in half, which is to say bad but not unbearable. Last night, if you'd been awake to feel it, the rain would've been warm in your palm. Getting up to close the door now, you nudge the ajar screen wide with your foot, letting some of the rain lash your arms and face. 

You sigh at the chilly coldness of each blessed drop. 

"Heatwave from hell is finally over."

"Thank fuck for that. Let's hope it's miserably cold for weeks," Eddie says.

It's mid September —summer has said goodbye with one last fierce kiss. By October, you'll be wrapping yourselves up in throw blankets on the couch on the porch, or hiding inside with Wayne's special pasta (buttered noodles and green pesto for the 'brave') watching slashers on Eddie's blurry TV. The humidity will be nothing but a gross memory. 

You wash your plates and Eddie lets you shower first. You have your own shampoo in the corner, and a rose scented body wash Eddie buys but doesn't use (but it isn't for you, idiot, why would he buy you something so expensive? He got it by mistake). You could draw the cracks in their shower tiles with your eyes closed, and the condensation that clings to the cold water pipe, that's how many times you've been in here. You finish quickly, dry quicker, and pull fresh clothes over your still-clammy skin. 

You tap Eddie in. He's somehow even faster than you were, and you swap places in his room. While he's changing, you dry the bathroom walls with a towel as soon as he's out, knowing the small room has a propensity for dampness. 

"Stop cleaning my fucking house," he says when you traipse back into his room, his head hanging upside down as he towel dries his curls. 

You forgo your usual explanations and tell the truth. "I know you're perfectly capable. I like helping, that's all." 

"I know. Ugh, you suck. Do you have any deodorant?" 

You grin and pull your deodorant out of your bag, a new-ish stick of Teen Spirit. Eddie sees it and sighs, obviously unprepared to smell like Pink Crush for the rest of the day. "I have like, half an inch left of Caribbean Cool. Coconut?" you offer. 

He goes with the coconut scent. The wall of privacy between you has eroded to a scrap of paper after so long living in each other's laps, but you feel guilty for looking at him, the shifting muscle beneath the skin of his arms and chest stealing your focus. If Eddie were to see you without your shirt, you doubt he'd find himself anywhere near as distracted. He'd look if you let him because that's the way he is, unaffected by simple intimacies, but when you tell him to face the door it doesn’t aggrieve him. Most of the time he’s already averted his eyes. 

"Gotta add that to the list of shit we need. Have you seen my shoes?" 

"Your white sneakers are in the hallway. One of your converse is under the bed, but it's hard to say about the other." You swallow a sudden lump. "Are we going shirtless?" 

Eddie does not go shirtless. He pulls a shirt on that thankfully has sleeves, and then a zip up hoodie under his leather jacket. You didn't think to bring a coat yourself due to the extreme baking temperature of the day before. You're lucky you had clean clothes here, considering you hadn't intended to spend the night. Or, not lucky, loved. One of the Munson’s has washed what you’ve left behind.

You have a momentary lapse as Eddie puts his shoes on, trekking into the bathroom to look in the mirror. It's no secret that you aren't pretty. You can make a good effort, and you keep it classy, stay clean, but you aren't pretty, not by your own opinion. 

Eddie knows everything about you (nearly). He knows you don't think much of yourself. And a younger version of him had comforted you as earnestly as an awkward teenage boy could manage, but these days he goes for the root of the problem. He still tells you that you're pretty occasionally, or rather, "Looking good, babe," but not today. 

"Hey." Eddie looks you up and down. "What's wrong?" 

"I look stupid." You glance at your legs. Why does everything look so weird on you?

He hooks his arm through yours and starts to drag you down the hallway to the front door, sideways like two crabs. "No." 

"Yeah, I do, and people are gonna think I do, too." 

"Who cares what other people think?" And there's grown-up Eddie's rhetoric, Who gives a fuck what other people think? 

"Me," you say. 

You understand exactly what it is he's trying to do: free you from the anxiety of overthinking. It doesn't work as often as you wish it would, but he gives it a good go. 

"No, you don't. We don't care what other people think because it doesn't affect us." He doesn't make light, exactly, but his eyes are bright and his smile is sweet as he opens the front door and gestures for you to go down first. Rain and wind are quick to kiss at your naked arms. 

"What if they all think I'm some sort of slob?" 

"Then they'd be wrong. It's okay for people to be wrong about us. That's their problem." More familiar argument. It actually does make you feel better, despite hearing it a hundred times before. "People are wrong all the time." 

Eddie follows you down the first step and turns away to lock the door. 

"Like you and my ghost," you say, trying to steer the conversation from your moment of weakness and into happy territory again. "You don't think she's real." 

"Baby, I'd love it if you proved me wrong with that one." He jogs down the rest of the steps, knowing it’ll give you a conniption, the wet metal a death trap waiting to happen. “Go! Get in the van!”

You scramble across the grass and the curved pathway to the drive where the van is parked and yank open the passenger door with all your strength. The handle is notorious for sticking shut. When nothing happens, Eddie curses up a storm as he clambers into the driver's seat and over the console to force it open, giving it a good old-fashioned kick from the inside. It flies into your waiting hands and you rush up the step into the front of the van away from the rain that’s growing heavier and heavier by the hour. 

“Well, glad I didn’t waste time letting it dry,” Eddie says, wringing his hair out over his lap. It only drips two or three drops, but it’s funny all the same. The top of his head shines like a dark halo. “About the ghost. Do you really believe in them?”

“You asked me last night–”

“I know, but last night you said you wouldn’t believe in one unless you saw it, and then proceeded to talk about it like it was real.”

“I’m agnostic about ghosts.”

“Oh, yeah?” he asks. He sticks the key in the ignition and turns it until the engine groans to life. The van was old when he got it. Now it’s super old. 

“No. What’s agnostic mean?” you ask. 

“We’ll buy a dictionary.”

“I kind of believe in ghosts. I believe in my ghost. If I ever see one, I’ll believe in all the ghosts. Shit, I sound stupid.”

“No, you don’t– you don’t! It’s okay to not know, I wasn’t trying to interrogate you about your personal beliefs.” He is a very responsible driver these days. He keeps his eyes on the road. His hand, however, strays to your arm. “You’re not stupid, superstar.”

“Don’t,” you plead. Superstar is a nickname that stuck despite your vehement disagreement with its origin and further usage. “It makes you sound like an old dad and I’m the son who just got benched at little league. Again.”

You stand as much as your seatbelt will allow and dig out the purse from the butt pocket of your jeans. “I’ll get gas.”

“Way too personal for our relationship.”

Bad, overused joke. 

Eddie doesn’t want you to pay for gas, the same way he doesn’t want you paying for takeout or birthday presents. He hates ‘handouts’ —it took you a while to convince him that gas money isn’t a handout, it’s you trying to keep things fair. You know how it feels to need the money and not want to ask for it, so you put him in a position where he never has to ask. 

Things are easier now. You’re not in high school anymore. Work doesn’t pay as well as you want it to, but it’s enough to get by, especially while you’re living in your childhood home with only partial bills to pay. Eddie isn’t hurting for money either. That’s something to be grateful for. 

Eddie pulls into the gas station. He won’t let you pump while the wind is whipping, but you sprint into the gas station and trawl the fridge for the biggest drinks, sticking two cans of iced tea under your arm. The cold immediately eats into your naked skin. You jog to the counter to pay. 

“Pump two, please,” you say, putting your cans down.

“Twelve dollars.”

You frown. Eddie only put ten dollars on the pump. Well, deducting your two cans of iced tea at 99 cents each, ten dollars and two cents. What an asshole.

You hold out a twenty dollar bill with a smile, and look out the window as you wait for your change. The rain is too heavy to see him, but you imagine Eddie drumming the wheel of the van with both hands. You shiver out a thanks as your change hits your palm, dropping it into your purse with your best receipts. There’s one for bowling (a triple defeat, Eddie a secret master), one for two whole frozen cheesecakes you’d eaten in bed a month ago with double-sized dessert spoons, a couple for Hawk theatre; Back to the Future II, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Ghostbusters II (‘89 was a great year for sequels). All your best memories printed on thermal paper. 

“Holy shit I’m so cold,” you squeak, prying open the door without the aid of Eddie’s kick. 

“You’re soaked, you fool. You want to go home first for a sweater?”

You close the door behind you and drop the iced tea into the console, grimacing at the great clang they make. Your seatbelt snaps into place around your soft middle, and without ceremony you’re back on the road for your original mission. 

“No sweaters, Bradley’s. Stupid to double back.” You look at him from the corner of your eye. “I think we should get frozen pizza and extra toppings to put on them. And fries, obviously, and dessert.” The ghost won’t care. Probably. 

“You forgot the side salad.”

“Forgot,” you say, laughing. “Why yes I did.”

“Dessert,” Eddie says, his turn now to make some decisions. “I want a slurpee real bad right now, so I’m thinking we buy a bag of ice for your food processor and get some syrup.”

“We could go get slurpees,” you say encouragingly. If that’s what he wants, why not?

“We have shit to do,” he says, smiling so much his dimples peek out. “Ghosts to convene with, notebooks to analyse. Feasts to prepare.” He looks deeply speculative. You assume he’s thinking about the maybe-ghost, but he says, “Why are we getting frozen pizza? They have those pre-packaged ones now that are basically fresh.”

“They taste the same.”

“Liar, the bottom of the frozen ones go soggy and the cheese burns on the crust. You know that I’m right, don’t give me dish.”

“Aren’t you always?”

Eddie has a horrible tendency to be right about things. Maybe that's why you hadn't told him about the ghost for so long, because you'd wanted to handle it yourself without his explanatory assurances. You’re the worrier and he’s the one who always sets it straight.

What if I make a fool of myself? you've asked him once.

I’ll make one of myself, too. 

What if they fire me? 

We’ll get you a new job with me cleaning up after idiots.

What if it never goes away?

It will. 

What if body snatchers get us while we’re sleeping?

That one made him smile. The fondest upturn of a pretty mouth, not an expression you often see. Then they get us, he’d said, whispering across the pillows, face only partially visible in the struggling light of the TV. It’ll be awesome. Me and you. No brains, no worries. Just lettuce heads forever. 

You watch him beating along to a song you aren’t privy to against the wheel. He hadn’t seemed to mind the idea of losing his mind with you back then. He doesn’t believe you now, but that’s because he hasn’t heard her voice. The whistling wind warping itself into coherent syllables. Reaching for you, a dark slice of sound. 

Eddie… has… a secret…

You look at your lap, tamping down a shudder at the sensation of ice riding your spine. 

Don’t we all?

—

Eddie feels you’ve been overly relaxed about the situation at hand. He doesn’t want to back you into a box and declare a health crisis, but he’s been thinking up possible illnesses while you weigh the pros and cons of pizza toppings in case he has to take you to see someone. He’s not sure how gas lines work but he’s sure a quick phone call to the Munson landline could clear it up for him. Perhaps the most effective test of all for carbon monoxide poisoning would be to subject himself to the same circumstances. He’ll spend a few days at home with you and see how he feels afterward. If push comes to shove he’ll light a match and see what catches. 

On the inside, Eddie’s panicking about your mental health and, admittedly, the slim reality of a supernatural presence. On the outside, he’s playing along with your unconcerned dinner plans and aimless chatter. If you want to pretend that today is the same as any other day, he's prepared to let you. He won’t do the same, but he won’t discourage you, either. 

You cut through one of the home aisles toward the front of the store with a heavy basket on your elbow, Eddie hot on your heels. He grabs a pocket dictionary from the display to his left and hurries to keep up with you. 

You’re shivering. “I really didn’t think it would rain,” you say. 

Eddie looks past the registers to the glass doors at the front of the store where rain pelts with a force bordering on stormy weather. If it gets much worse than this, he'll insist you both go back to Munson headquarters and hunker up to wait it out. 

“The weather,” Eddie mumbles, unlike himself. “Are we expecting a storm? Maybe we should grab a cart and get some basics. Crate of water.”

“Okay, we can do that. Are you worried?”

“Kind of.”

He meets your eyes. He loves your eyes. He knows you don’t. You're not insecure in a way he feels he can fix —if he can fix any of it. It’s like you dissociate, for lack of a better word, from the things you can’t love. You don’t look in the mirror, won’t let him take photographs of you. You don’t say it. You call yourself stupid, weird, silly. Never ugly. 

But he knows. 

And now this whole ghost business. Eddie needs to think of something he can say to you that will inspire a better level of honesty going forward. 

“How long have you been speaking to the ghost?” he asks. 

You grin at a conveniently abandoned shopping cart at the end of the aisle and slide toward it on squealing shoes. You look around broadly for an owner, and when they don’t appear you place your basket in the stomach of it. The only thing remaining from whoever used it beforehand is a small tray of four cupcakes. 

“Four. One for you, three for me,” you say, ignoring his question with a smug giggle. 

Eddie loves you in a way not many people can love someone else, the kind of love that takes years of patience and acceptance and sweetness to take root, kind of love you only feel after seeing someone at their best, worst, and weirdest — memories come thick and fast whenever he thinks about the sheer years you’ve spent together, seeds of affection long germinated and rearing to grow. You, throwing up behind a Denny’s with sick in your hair, crying so hard you couldn’t catch your breath, and when you could, asking him if he wouldn’t mind buying you a new t-shirt to wear in the car as though you were some dastardly imposition, and not his sick best friend. You, on top of the world, surrounded by people who loved you with a birthday cake in front of you, eyes brighter than the blinking flames of each dripping candle. You, in pyjamas too tight, too loose, old or brand new with your hair up, down, washed, and greasy, your lips chapped, bruised then healed, parted against one of his pillows as you slept, as you yawned, as you laughed, talked. No matter what you’re wearing, saying or doing, you, in his bed, completely at home. 

Eddie has a thousand images of you in his head and they all fight to play again, like a VHS on constant rewind, or a movie with duplicated film, double, triple exposed. Before even an inkling of a crush had ever come around, he loved you. That's why it doesn’t really matter that he can’t kiss you. He can’t imagine loving you more than this. 

Sometimes, sometimes… you put your leg over his and your thigh spreads out across the top of his, and he has to beg himself not to want to touch you. He wonders if you’d mind. Eddie thinks about asking so often it turns into its own fantasy. He knows what cadence his voice would take, the exact grit and warmth, his hand waiting on your knee and aching to inch downward. 

You pull him from his sickly introspection with a poke. Your fingernail dents his shirt precisely atop a small beauty mark. He doesn’t know if you know what you’re doing, if you’ve seen his naked chest enough times to realise that there’s a mole right there an inch shy of his belly button, if you’d ever looked at him in so much detail. 

“Transmission incoming,” you say, your fingers flattening over his abdomen, your palm hovering apart. Like the pole of an opposite magnet, it refuses to connect. “Chirp. Houston, we’ve been attempting to connect with Astronaut Munson. He is unresponsive. Let us know when you make contact again.” You smile at him ruefully. “Damn moon keeps dropping signal.”

“Sorry… Astronaut Munson? Do they call astronauts astronauts? I thought it was commander.”

“I don’t know, Eddie, I haven’t brushed up on NASA related job titles lately.” Your deadpan wanes, replaced with a genuine concern. “Are you okay? You really did get lost.”

“I’m just thinking about, you know– Your ghost,” he lies. The ghost should be his highest concern, and for the most part it is, but he’d let his attention get pulled along by other things.

That’s the thing about love. It feels much more important in the moment than anything else, even when it shouldn’t. 

“You’re super worried about the ghost.”

“It is an uber worrying ghost.”

“‘Cause she talks?” you ask.

“Well, yeah. Most of the time you just get, like, blurs on night vision cameras or the general malignant presence of the thing. Not words.” Not questions concerning your best friend. 

“Casper talks and he’s gorgeous,” you say. “A true sweetheart.”

“Doesn’t Casper have to protect Lucy from his evil ghost uncles?”

“Who the fuck is Lucy?”

“The girl. Lucy and Johnny.”

“Bonnie?”

“Oh. That sounds right. But her name doesn’t matter,” Eddie insists. “My point was that the bad ghosts outweigh the good three to one. That’s more than half, you realise.”

“His name is Casper the Friendly Ghost,” you say, shrugging. Eddie hopes you know where it is in the store you’re going to. He hasn’t looked away from your face for the last twenty minutes.  “It’s in the name.”

“But your ghost isn’t Casper,” Eddie says.

“No. My ghost isn’t Casper, but she hasn’t tried to kill me. She would have written something threatening in my notebook or knocked all the books off of my shelf if she were evil.”

Eddie frowns. You’ve steered him around the store like you’ve never been here before, changing your mind after turns to go down the opposite aisle, murmuring about bottled water. He reaches for your hand on the shopping cart rail and can’t resist squeezing it as he pulls it away. 

“I got it,” he says. 

He swears that your expression flickers. Worry breaking through the closed shutters of your blasé. 

You’re not so chatty as you follow him toward the back of Bradley’s where they keep the big jugs of water. He grabs one, thinks back to the bad weather and grabs another. It’s unlikely that you’ll need them, but Eddie would rather be safe than sorry. “Do you have a lamp?” he asks. “An oil lamp? Or a flashlight?”

“I have a flashlight,” you confirm. “Is it really so bad? Uh, I don’t wanna ask again, but I– maybe I could–” 

Eddie wants to pull your face into his chest. He thinks about it. Would he have hugged you like that a year ago, before the butterflies and the late nights daring to think of the dough of your thighs or the column of your throat when you tip your head back? He might’ve. It would mean something different, but he might’ve. 

He throws an arm around your shoulder and gives you a good shake. “What is wrong with you? If it gets any worse, you’re staying with me. I’m only asking about a flashlight in case we have one of those worst case scenarios and get stuck in your haunted house. I refuse to die like the jocks in a b-rated horror.”

“The jocks or the whore? Isn’t it the girl who sleeps around that gets murdered in the dark?” you ask. 

“Super unfair. I sleep around, do I deserve to die?” he asks, dropping his arm. 

You mime stabbing him in the gut. Everyone's so violent. 

Eddie is amazingly unharmed as he gets you to the register. You try to fight him on who’s paying, but you’re an idiot who insisted on getting gas. It’s the leverage he needs to win. Out of Bradley’s and back into the rain with grocery bags double bagged, you run for the van and thrust the spoils of your shopping trip in the passenger seat footwell. Eddie opens the side door to lug the water jugs inside and you take the cart back to the front of the store against his wishes.

He waits for you to be in arms reach and gets back in the van. You’re soaked to the bone. He’s cold in three layers, so you must be freezing. He shrugs off his sopping wet leather jacket and then the zip hoodie underneath, draping the zip hoodie over your lap and chest and then rushing to put his leather jacket on again.

“Thank you, good sir,” you laugh.

He’s already fiddling with the air conditioning. Heat bursts from the left vent but not the right, leaving you in a cold bubble. “Shit, I’m sorry, the right vent’s still busted. Ol’ Beauville keeps letting us down.”

“Don’t hate on the Beauville!” you scold through chattering teeth. 

“You're dying,” he says. “Hold on, I’m gonna do ninety.”

“Do not speed!” 

You get to the road outside of your place without any hydroplaning. You live on a regular American street in a two-story semi-detached house not too far from Hawkins High school with your guardian, who isn’t home very often. It has three bedrooms, one bathroom, and a lot of white walls. You often lament that the house doesn’t really feel like your own, and punctuate with a giddy laugh he doesn’t understand but adores nonetheless. 

Eddie parks his van on the long gravel driveway as close to the house as he can get it and ushers you inside with your keys. You’re cold enough to listen without complaint. 

He puts the groceries in the kitchen on the countertops and kicks off his shoes, intending on putting them away when he’s sure you aren’t in any danger of hypothermia. He kicks off his shoes by the door, locks it tight, and starts up the carpeted stairs to your room. 

He’s not surprised to find you half-naked, but overfamiliar, affectionate friendship doesn’t necessarily mean you like being seen. He averts his gaze from your naked legs and tries desperately to think about anything but underwear. The more he tries not to think about them, the worse it gets. 

“Hey,” he says, covering his eyes so you know he isn’t perving, “our horror flick just got dirty.”

“Yikes,” you say. “Don’t look.”

“I’m not, I’m not. You could’ve closed the door. You know, spare me a guilty conscience.” Then, because he just can’t help himself, “When did you start wearing fancy panties?”

“Fuck off, Eddie,” you laugh. 

“Do I have to make the switch to tighty whities?”

“Our underwear choices do not concern one another.” You trek toward him. He peeks through two spread fingers and finds you thankfully reclothed in dry sweatpants and a sweater soft with age. “I thought tighty whities hurt your–” You raise your eyebrows. 

He regrets being honest with you when you were teenagers. A little secrecy might help repaint him in your mind as less of a huge loser. You could possibly find him attractive if you weren't privy to the numerous embarrassments that make up his life, he thinks. 

He chokes on his own tongue and dies right there in your bedroom. “Why do you remember shit like that?”

“Same reason you keep a heat pack in your room in case I get all crampy,” you say.

You give him one of your sick smiles —you have to know what you’re doing, you have to— and drape your arms over his shoulders, nearly knocking him down with the sudden addition of your weight. He, stunned, plants a foot behind himself so you don’t both trip and fall on your asses. 

The plane of your back beckons beneath your sweater. What he’d give to slip a hand under the hem to explore the ridge of your shoulder blade with his fingertips. 

A quiet ensues. Your hug turns from a joking attempt to push him around a bit to a real one. He steel-arms your waist, tightening them around you three times in quick succession, nose buried in your hair to steal a deep breath. 

“This where the ghost talks to you?” he asks, looking over your head into the chaos of your room. It’s not dirty, but it isn’t tidy, either. 

You sigh too much like a moan for his sanity and stand up tall, your hands trailing down his chest unthinkingly as you follow his gaze. “Yeah. I don’t know if we’ll hear her over the rain. It has to be really quiet.”

“What are you doing? Experiments?” he asks. He sounds as distracted by it all as he feels. 

“No. Something I noticed, is all.”

“I don’t get why you didn’t tell me the first time it happened,” he confesses, voice dropping to a murmur. 

“Um… remember senior year, you kept missing class because you had all those doctors appointments?” You smile sheepishly. “‘N’ you didn’t tell me about it until after you knew you were okay?”

During his first senior year, Eddie found a small cyst in his arm. Small compared to other cysts, large in his arm. He worried it was malicious, or rather Wayne worried and Eddie didn’t know what he thought about it until after they’d cut it out. It had been a thankfully speedy affair in a doctors office they couldn’t afford. Eddie didn’t tell you about it until he’d been all stitched up and tested — he tried, but then he would imagine the look on your face when he did, and it made him feel like his intestines had learned to jump rope. 

He still remembers when he finally told you, the split second between, “a tumour,” and “but it’s not cancer.” The relief on your face. The shock of upset tears it caused. 

“I guess I was trying to be good to you,” you say, shrugging and starting down the stairs.

Eddie follows. “If something like that happened again to me, god forbid,” —he dips into a melodramatic voice, scared of the sombre mood that’s descended— “I wouldn’t keep it to myself. I’d make it your problem instantly.” 

Every now and then, Wayne will lean over the back of Eddie’s chair at the breakfast table and grab an arm, feeling for a tiny bump that hasn’t come back. You’d done the same in your own way: you wrote ‘check for lesions :D’ on a piece of paper and taped it to his bedroom doorway. It fell off ages ago, but he occasionally gets déjà vu as he leaves the room. And as he walks down the hallway, he’ll roll up his sleeve and check that there's nothing there.

Eddie didn’t tell you senior year. A lingering abandonment issue, maybe, ‘cause Dad didn’t stay when things got hard, who cares? He doesn’t think about that shit anymore. Figures the mark it left was enough. But these days, he’d tell you if he found a lump in his arm, or a ghost in his room. Your scribbled note made sure of that. 

"Are you listening to me?" he asks. 

"You'd make it my problem," you provide. "Tell me something I don't know." 

He grabs you by the shoulders at the bottom of the stairs and blows into your ear. 

With the lights on and the radio at a low volume, the rain outside doesn't seem nearly as imposing. The kitchen is small with a long strip light above that gives the room a near clinical white cast, the countertops shining clean, not a plate in the sink. It's evident how much time you don't spend here. No photos on the fridge, no salt or pepper shakers on the table. Where Eddie and Wayne have their insane mug collection made up of states and hours and way too much money in some cases, you have four black coffee mugs in a tower stack by the seldom used machine. Where they have a corkboard of photographs, Polaroids and printouts from Walmart off of rinky-dink digital cameras, you have one photo on the wall, a professionally done portrait of you from the day you graduated and Eddie, unfortunately, did not. 

Eddie's grad pictures are much less robotic. Too much eyeliner but just enough you, he has his arm thrown over your shoulders in the back of a grungy restaurant, his smile blisteringly bright. He might as well have written 'Thank Fuck' across his forehead. There's another one of him and Hellfire Club at the time, blurry with the flash making him pale as snow. You and Wayne had been trying to make the camera focus, twin scowls on your faces. Eddie's expression was one of pure joy. 

He tried to make up for your shitty grad pics by celebrating your first job with a pack of Polaroids. You'd looked adorably strange in the uniform, so young but so done with his shit, eighteen and exhausted. He keeps one in his room in the bottom of the box with all his rings and chains. If you ever found it, he'd think about drowning himself. 

Your appointment with a ghost waits until after dinner. You pull your frozen pizzas out of their boxes and put them in the oven (you don't preheat, which Eddie thinks is a questionable choice, but he'd help you get away with murder). While they defrost and start to cook, you slice and dice your extra toppings on the wooden chopping board beside the stovetop. He stands there with his hands washed and nothing to do. Just watches you cut up jalapeños for him and thinks about how he's going to take care of you if the ghost doesn't speak up. Does he tell your guardian? You're an adult. All your healthcare would be private and confidential. Could he tell Wayne? Would that be a betrayal? 

"Check the pizzas?" You scrape the seeds out of a jalapeño, eyes pinched in concentration. 

Eddie doesn't know if he can eat. You aren't as out of it as you were at the store, but you aren't fully present. A song you love plays on the radio and it's like you don't hear it. 

He pulls the pizzas from the oven. He makes a smiley face out of pepperoni and jalapeños, earning half as big a smile as he thought he would from you in response. 

Together, you clean the small mess you made. The pizzas brown. When they're done you take them out, cut them up, plate them, and carry them up to your room on a tray with a two litre bottle of sprite and two plastic cups. Eddie changes into a pair of his pyjama pants that you keep at the bottom of your dresser before he sits on your bed, wide-eyed when he sees how many slices you've managed in his absence. 

"Nobody's gonna take it away from you," he teases lightly. 

"Can't be too careful 'round you," you say, dropping a crust onto his plate. It's his favourite part. 

"Thought you wanted fries?" 

"And I thought you wanted a side salad." 

"I wanted snow cone syrup," he says, shrugging. 

He considers offering to go make you some fries anyway, but he takes a big bite of pizza and it tastes so good he forgets about it. Eddie doesn't know nothing about nothing, but if he had a say, he'd make it so that he and you could spend the rest of your lives doing this, meaningless jabbering over greasy food. It's not a good idea —you need vegetables that aren't on pizza, and fresh grains, and who knows what else to stay healthy— but Eddie's never claimed he had them. He wants this. 

He gets it most of the time, but he's selfish. He wants it every night. He loves Wayne but he wants to come home to you, or to have you come home to him, in a space that you decorated, a life that you made. He wants a dog and a pet fish and, in five years or ten or never, a baby if it's what you want too. A front door lined with three pairs of shoes. 

He also wants a limousine that takes him from place to place and a room full of thousand dollar guitars. A man can dream. 

The first port of call for any dream is making sure you're okay. Let the ghostly stakeout begin. 

Sated and sick at once, Eddie puts your empty tray on the dresser and goes to turn on the TV. "She won't talk if the TV's on," you interrupt.

"Ugh. Any chance she likes the stereo?" 

You slouch down where you'd been sitting and shake your head. Your jaw goes soft, eyes softer when you smile. "It's not all bad. She doesn't care how loud you turn a page." 

Eddie can't be with you every second of the day, the same way you can't be with him. There are shifts to take, shifts to cover, dungeons to pilfer and dragons to slay. You have your job, your other friends (none as handsome as he is), your hobbies. How often are you home alone, talking to ghosts? 

He stands by your bookshelf, eyes skipping over the titles in slight disinterest. 

"Hey," he asks, "where's your notebook? I wanna see her handwriting." 

"I left it on the top shelf." 

Eddie stares. There are a few other notebooks and sketchbooks aligned here, but not the one you'd described. 

"You sure?" he asks. 

"I left it right there,” you say with a yawn.

Eddie looks at you from over his shoulder. You’re tired. He figures he can see the notebook later, and offer you some remedial comfort now. Anything to wipe the frown off of your face. 

He grabs a book off of your shelf at random and cracks it open. You love being read to. You'd beg and beg him growing up, and he'd almost always oblige. 

"Can I read aloud, or does she hate that too?" he asks, turning away from your shelf. 

"I've never tried it." 

"I'll do it quietly?" 

"Sure," you say, a tired but pleased smile on your lips. "I've read that one before." 

"Should I get a different one?" 

"No, it's good. It's the one I told you about with the demons who eat stars." 

"The dirty one?" he asks, dropping like a stone near the top of your bed, the blankets under his hip warm from the residual heat of the pizza plates.

"It's not dirty. There's one scene toward the end where they get handsy, no graphic detail."

"And by no graphic detail, you mean…" 

"No graphic detail," you repeat. It's awful how funny you find each other. 

"Not even, like… hand stuff?" 

"Do you want there to be hand stuff?" 

"With the demons?" 

You devolve into giggles, the kind that start slow and thicken into a giddy sort of breathlessness, your head supported by the headboard. Eddie looks up at you in awe.

"I could be into that," Eddie furthers, stretching your laughter as long as it will go. "Are they the kind that look like people but with extra arms or wings or something?" 

"You'd like that, huh? Extra arms?" 

"I wouldn't be opposed to extra arms."

"Gross," you cheer through another wave of laughter. "I don't wanna think about it." 

Eddie looks to the book's first page and tamps down a grimace. You don't wanna think about him in that sort of position. 

Eddie, excluding any extra appendages, thinks of you like that more than he should. Never when you're near, not if he can help it, but at night when the hot shower water beating down against his back can be shaped into the vague sensation of a body behind him, he thinks of your chest. Your hands. Or in the early mornings, when he's writhed into a contortionist’s ball and the streaking sunlight through the curtains is kissing his abdomen, he imagines it's your leg thrown across his hip, with your face turned into his chest. 

Fuck, it kills him, because he knows what the real thing feels like. He's had you clinging to his waist on colder nights, and he's been under your hands. Tipsy, free with your touches, he's felt the breadth of your palms cupping his cheeks. 

You're pretty, you'd told him, as you love to tell him when you've been drinking, but you need a haircut. 

He never would've let you kiss him in that state, but he kids himself into thinking you wanted to. It was only booze doing what booze does. 

"Read to me, serf," you demand. 

Eddie clears his throat. 

"The enemy is close," Eddie reads, "and the lane is overrun. Sympathy for the second kind had felt natural to Mellissa once, but now that she sees the sharp angling of their shoulders in the dawn light, she aches with hatred…"

The novel isn't bad. It isn't Eddie's favourite; the tone falls flat, and the main character's actions aren't fed by any particular emotion. Its first arc is formulaic, and soon the hero's forced to answer the call. You evidently find his rehashing tedious, as your head tips toward his head, and you wriggle your way down to his shoulder amicably. 

"Don't fall asleep," he says. 

"It's your whispering." 

"I don't want to disturb the ghost." 

"Okay." You start to pick at your nails, little scratches against the cuticle. "I won't fall asleep." 

— 

Your snores aren't gentle. You're a human being and Eddie doesn't expect you to breathe like a princess, but the wheeze is concerning. 

He waits for you to settle down, easing your head onto the pillow. Your airway clears, and your snoring quietens to the same ambient level as the rain hitting the window outside. He feels your head for a temperature carefully. Back of his hand, fingers curled in so his ring can't startle you, he tries to gauge if you're running a fever. 

It isn't normal for you to cat nap in the middle of the day, but the sun is occluded by dark clouds and the rain blots out what's left, leaving the bedroom in darkness, and you'd been warm and fed and Eddie had been doing something monotonous. It makes sense that you'd drifted off. Eddie wishes he felt tired too, so he could slide down under the sheets with you and curl a hand around your wrist. 

He lies on his back, arms crossed over his chest, straining his ears for the sound of a voice. 

I swear, sometimes, I can hear someone talking.

You have a vent in your room, and perhaps a couple of late nights after your shifts had you mistaking a groaning foundation or the wind for a whisper. That's a thing, right? People hear something in the wind. Fatigue has your mind playing tricks on you. Eddie should go to the library and see if they have anything to do with sleep deprivation. 

It's no fun listening for ghosts. Eddie's shoulders and upper back begin to feel tense. The feeling travels lower, a snaking ache that wraps around each vertebrae. Even his tailbone hurts. 

He shifts onto his side and stares at your closed eyes. He blows a breath at you to watch your lashes flutter like tufts of grass in the breeze. 

Your breaths are like a metronome. He syncs his to yours for kicks, just listening. When you're both asleep, does your breath sync on its own? How do your bodies react to each other? Eddie has woken up to your arms around him or your body halfway across the bed, leg falling out from under the covers. You're irregular, where he has a tendency to grab at you while he's knocked out. He doesn't wrap his arms around you so much as hold you in his hands. His fingers curl in the hem of your t-shirts or bracelet your bicep. If he falls asleep with an arm above your head, he'll occasionally wake to find his hand at the top of it, your hair mussed. 

He must be stroking it in his sleep. 

Or maybe you're frizzy. 

No shame in frizziness. Eddie's frizzy more often than not. Curly hair is hard to take care of and he has a lot of it. God knows it was worse before he started seeing that hairdresser in the city who makes magic happen with her thinning shears. 

Your lips part. 

Thunder cracks outside. 

Eddie lifts his head to look out of the window in surprise. Summer days have come to pass and sunset comes earlier in the day, fractals of light bouncing between the violent rain. In an hour or two, it will be pitch black outside. 

He should call Wayne and see what's happening. How he is, and if he thinks Eddie should come home and bring you, too. 

Eddie clambers off of the bed, careful not to wake you. He slides across your hardwood floor and takes the empty dinner tray with him down the spongy carpeting of your stairs, back to hardwood in the hallway, and finally onto the freezing cold linoleum of your kitchen. 

He locates the source of chill quickly. The window in front of the sink has unlatched. It's the thing you call him over for most; when you want to hang out you go to Eddie's, when the window won't close Eddie comes here. 

His shirt hikes as he leans against the sink, his abdomen pressed to the cold countertop as he yanks the window and twists the handle the wrong way, goosebumps climbing his arms. It groans in resistance, but Eddie knows from experience that it’ll stay closed for a while. 

He takes the liberty of turning your thermostat up as he waits for Wayne to answer the phone, coiled cord pulled taut.

Wayne isn't too bothered by the weather, "It's not a hurricane. A storm, sure– you'll be fine. But by all means, come home if you're scared."

"I'm not scared, jerk, I'm concerned." 

He winds the cord around his arm, leaning in when Wayne's voice is hard to hear like it'll make a difference. 

"...might go out," Wayne's saying, "call me, or call around Roger's… get back to… warm." 

"Where the fuck are you? I can't hear a thing you're saying." 

"Don't cuss at me. I'm with Roger, that's why I said to call Roger if I don't answer, he has that new pool table…" Anything Wayne says after that is garbled, like he has a hand pressed over his mouth.  

“I thought Roger had a broken leg?” Eddie says. “How’s he getting around?”

“He hops. I left money in the bread bin for you, did you see it?”

“No, I didn’t see it. Wayne, we’ve talked about this before, I’m working. I appreciate it, I do, but I don’t need you giving me money.”

Whatever Wayne says at first gets eaten by static. Eddie doesn’t know if it’s your phone or the Munson’s. He doesn’t need to hear what Wayne’s saying to get the general gist of it. “…water bill..”

This again? Eddie paid the water bill. He thought he’d be allowed to do that, considering he uses the majority of the water, but it’s been a great point of contention between them.

“I’m sorry!” he says. “If I knew it would bother you so bad I wouldn’t have done it. But I don’t want it back, I’m not a kid anymore, half the time you don’t let me pay for groceries–”

“This might shock you, son, but I’ve been paying for you to eat for a decade. I ever complained? No, ‘cause it’s my job, and I don’t want you thinking any…” the words scratch out. Eddie guesses what he’s saying. 

The broken phone is starting to irritate him. 

He holds in his argument. Call it respect, love, whatever you want. “I’m not saying that! Listen,” —Eddie laughs to himself, words wrought with it like bubbles— “you’re senile.”

“You weasel–” The phone gives up. Whooshing air is all Eddie hears. 

"I can't deal with this. I love you, I'll see you tomorrow, okay?" Eddie asks, rubbing the space between his eyebrows. 

"Yeah, love you too, kid. Eddie–" 

He doesn't catch the end of Wayne's sentence. The line goes dead. He pulls the shiny receiver from his ear and frowns at it. 

Wayne was probably just telling Roger and the guys what Eddie was up to. Or what he thinks Eddie's up to, at least. Eddie told him via note that you wanted help rearranging your bedroom furniture. A small lie, but he didn't want to expose you to any outward judgement until he's sure himself what's going on. 

Eddie hangs the phone on the hook. He grabs your plates, throwing the meagre leftovers in the trash and dumping the plates in the sink. He turns on the hot faucet and grabs a sponge and the dish soap and gets to work cleaning. It takes him all of five minutes, and he's oh so smug about being a decent person that he doesn't notice the chill. 

He dries the plates and puts them in the cabinet across the room with his back to the sink. The dishes clatter together loudly, like a gunshot in the silence. He winces internally and tries to be gentler closing the cabinet door.

The hum of the kitchen light catches his attention. He looks up, unsurprised to find a bug crawling inside of the plastic covering that shields the long bulb. A moth, Eddie thinks, it's fuzz silhouetted in shadow. He doesn't really like moths, but he also doesn't wanna watch one die. 

The rain seems worse when he turns off the light. Your kitchen faces out into the backyard, and through the night Eddie can see the house that's behind yours with its porch lights on. It turns the rain to quicksilver, and provides just enough illumination for Eddie to look up at the kitchen light and know what he's doing. 

He drags a chair to the middle of the room and steps onto it. It's disturbingly slippery. Thankfully, Eddie doesn't plan on doing any acrobatics. He reaches up to the warm plastic light covering and feels along for the ridges to pry it off. One ridge clicks off, and another. He leans precariously toward the other side and feels for the third and forth ridge when thunder rumbles outside, and somewhere in the distance lightning flashes. 

Eddie flinches but doesn't fall. "Fuck," he mumbles. Pussy. 

The plastic falls into his hands and Eddie climbs off of the chair as quickly as he can. It's too hot to handle, banging against the kitchen table as he chucks it down. He'd turned off the light thinking the plastic would cool down fast, and he’d been proven very wrong.

"Shit," he mumbles some more. Your neighbour's porch light turns off, leaving him in total darkness. 

Eddie’s hand aches from his mild burn. It's like whenever he has to wash the frying pan at home, he forgets that while cold water might cool the pan itself, the slim piece of metal that connects the dish to the handle stays hot. He's burned himself so many times on that fucker– 

Lightning flashes again. 

There's someone standing in your yard. 

The second he notices the figure, it lunges left.

Eddie stands frozen on the spot, unsure if he should approach the window to get a better look, or if he should move backward and away from the potential harm. 

He takes a step forward. Mind in a numb state of thoughtlessness, he walks to your sink and stands there silently, looking into the grass and trees for any hint of irregular movement. 

Tree branches rail in the wind and rain. Eddie leans further forward. 

A third flash of lighting comes, and it must have struck close by, as the light it gives off is long and bright. He gets a clear look at the yard and the image of his own reflection in the glass. No dark figure in the tall grass toward the fence, no heinous murderer trying the back door. 

It’s dark again. Eddie puts a hand over the racing pulse of his heart. Fuck, he thinks. I’m seeing things. He’s on edge ‘cause of your fucking ghost, and it’s not your fault but he wonders if maybe loving you is making him tired. He regrets it as soon as he thinks it, what does that even mean? He’s loved you for years. It has never felt like a chore. But… tired. He’s tired. Pining for someone you already have, just not in the way that you want, is exhausting. It’s not your fault and it doesn’t change the fact that he’s exhausted. Today has been a long day. 

He scrubs his eyes with his palms until they burn and lifts his head. 

There’s a girl on the other side of the glass. 

Eddie startles, startles again when he realises she’s not on the other side at all, she’s behind him, outfitted in white like an apparition, like an angel. She’s inside the house, ten feet away in the doorway. 

His neck cracks with the force of his turn. 

“Sorry,” you say, taking a step back into the hall. “I thought you heard me.”

“Oh, shit.” 

You’ve turned the light on in the hall. Eddie turns back to the window and sees your reflection again, no angels and no apparitions. You’re just a girl. 

He half turns and gets stuck like that, hand braced against his eyes, torso pitching forward. “Shit,” he mutters. 

“Are you okay?”

Eddie laughs. “You surprised me. I’m fine,” he assures you, though he takes his time standing at full height. How can such a small scare feel like a marathon? “Creep, who fucking does that?”

“You were totally spaced, dude, don’t blame me,” you say, holding your hands up in mock surrender. 

“I do blame you. I hope you feel blamed. Fucking fuck, that got me.”

“I wasn’t being quiet. I yelled. You didn’t hear me?”

He can’t stop the dubiety that warps his face. “No? What’s your definition of yelling? ‘Eddie?’” he imitates you, tossing his own name into the dark kitchen. “Unbelievable.”

“What were you looking at?” you ask, nodding at the window. 

“Lightning.”

“That why you’re in the dark? Or have I interrupted something?”

“‘M moonlighting as a serial killer.” He grins at you. “Got me.”

You lean against the wall next to the light switch and turn it on, exposing the chair shy of his leg and the plastic cover from your light on the table.

“What the–”

“I’m doing a good deed. Or, I was. There was a moth at one point." 

You help Eddie clip the light back into place. He climbs back on the chair and you hug his legs to make sure he doesn’t fall either way, arms encircling his thighs and your face pressed comfortably to his stomach. Your cheek flush with the naked stretch of his stomach, his shirt hiked up as he struggles to finish what he started, he explains the moth, who, for lack of an escape, has probably found a home in your curtains or your coat rack. You laugh at his softness.

Back upstairs, you won’t let him read to you again, and the ghost monitoring continues on. Eventually, you both get bored and turn on the TV. Eddie forgets his fright, you forget your haunted house, and the night ends. You fall asleep against his shoulder, drool leaking from the corner of your mouth. He pushes you gently down into your pillow, and goes to brush his teeth with a snort. 

Eddie wakes in the morning with a crick in his neck. He feels better, having slept. All his monstrous yearning has fizzled out overnight, and he’s glad to find that the damp circle of dribble under your cheek isn’t cute, it’s gross. (Okay, it’s a little cute. He’s only human.) 

The window brags an end to the extreme weather. Rain nor shine reaches through your drapes; the morning looks mundane. He kicks your shin ‘by accident’ and waits for you to rouse, keeping a safe distance. He doesn’t wanna get his morning breath all over you. That would be inhumane. 

“Ouch,” you croak.

“It wasn’t that hard.” His voice is as rough as yours. 

“Not your kick,” you moan. “My throat.”

“You’ve been drooling again.”

You cover your face sluggishly and your pinky must feel the wet spot staining your pillow. 

“It’s embarrassing.” You dig your heels in at the bottom of the bed and pull your head off of the pillow so you can grab it and throw it out of view. Once it’s bashed against your mirror with a concerning glass sound, you pull the blankets over your face and sigh. “I’ll be here forever, if you need me.”

“Could be worse,” he says lightly. “Imagine waking up with a stiffy.”

“Did you–?” you ask, like you’re terrified to know but couldn’t not inquire. 

“No, but I have. You know I have.”

“True. That is… unfortunately awkward.”

“‘Xactly. Don’t feel weird about your spit.”

You don’t feel as bad as you pretend. Sure, it’s embarrassing. So is puking in your lap at the movies, or ripping your pants climbing over the fence into the woods by Forest Hills, or getting fired after two weeks from the Palace Arcade because the manager didn’t like your ‘general demeanour and/or presence’, all of which he’s done and you’ve been a witness to. He thinks you might be impervious to humiliation as long as you’re together. 

Eddie pulls the blankets over his head, pleased that the morning light reaches you even here. You’re curled on your side underneath them, bleary eyes meeting his from across the small stretch of mattress. You hadn’t touched him once while you slept. 

“I don’t remember falling asleep,” you say quietly. 

“We watched Poltergeist. You fell asleep with twenty minutes left.”

“Can you blame me? Snore.”

“You wanted to watch it.”

“It’s the only movie I own that has a ghost.”

You share a silent look. Eddie tries to keep a straight face and ultimately fails, his laugh roaring. You join in, half reluctant and half delirious in your fatigue. Your sleep-swollen eyes close like you can’t keep them open anymore. 

He stays under the sheets stealing looks at you for as long as he can, despite the building, smothering warmth. The day passes with much of the same. 

—

When you first started working at Leaven, Eddie called you a traitor. He said you’d made it impossible for him to show his face in Bradley’s. He’d been joking — the prices at Leaven are ridiculous, and completely out of the average joe’s budget. Bradley’s remains your go to for everything. He’s come around these days — he likes the fancy soups and admits Leaven’s has the best fresh fruit.

Despite the rich old women who frequent and make your workdays… less than ideal, you like working at Leaven. Your days consist almost exclusively of stacking shelves, but occasionally they chuck you on checkout and you get to sit in a padded chair for ten hours. You’re basically living the American dream. 

Working here has introduced a special brand of monotony to your life. It’s very, very quiet, and that’s how you like it. But there’s something to be said for noise, for Eddie and Wayne’s noise specifically. You like going there after work to shock your body back into the real world. Here’s sound. Here’s life. Here’s love. 

You’re scanning a bag of ‘holistic’ lemons when you notice Eddie lingering toward the front of the store a mere twenty feet away. You don’t wave at him, lest your customer think they aren’t the sparkling apple of your eye and report you to the manager, but you nod jerkily, hoping he takes it for ‘I see you’. He smiles and points his thumb toward the store’s cafe.

When your arms are numb from another twenty minutes of scanning and typing in coupon codes for people who don’t need coupons, you shut down your register and lock it all tight. You take your lunch break early, and thankfully there’s nobody in the cafe to yell at you for being unprofessional. 

You waltz over to Eddie sitting at the back next to the huge glass windows and prop your lunch bag against the coke bottle he’s opened. “Hello, handsome,” you say. 

“Hey, beautiful.”

“You want half of a turkey sandwich?”

He beams at you, kicking your chair out so you can sit. “Nooo, I brought you a hot dog.”

“Oh, gross. Give it to me right now.”

You know he made it at home before he’s even pulled the foil wrapped package from his bag. Eddie makes the best hot dogs ever. Fancy brioche buns, caramelised onions and a mixture of sauces on the world's worst meat. They make you queasy and they might be one of your favourite foods. You open it, delighting in its retained heat. 

His wrist is shiny. You put your hotdog down to grab his arm and bring it closer to your face. He’s wearing a simple tennis chain with black gems like a rich girl. “What is this?” you murmur, pleased to see him wearing something nice. 

“You like that? It was thirty four dollars from a magazine.”

 “I love it. What’s the occasion?”

“My mom’s birthday.” He fishes his own hotdog from his bag and slaps it down in front of yours. You take a huge bite, and can’t answer him when he asks, “Is that really weird, buying myself something when it’s a day about her?”

You steal a swig of his coke and wince the entire time. “Sorry.” You cough. “No, that’s not weird, Eddie. Wanting to buy yourself something nice is a good way of dealing with a shitty day. A day that makes you feel shitty,” you amend. 

“Maybe I should’ve got her a big bouquet of flowers or something.”

“You can still get her flowers.”

“Yeah.”

You take another bite of your hot dog and slip away to get a bottle of water from the cafe. You feel like an asshole for not hugging him. When you return Eddie’s already polished off his hot dog, and has moved onto one half of your turkey sandwich. 

“Are you gonna be weird about it if I hug you?” you ask him genuinely. 

“No.” He puts down the sandwich. “I don’t know. Maybe. I want one, though.”

You wipe your hands in a napkin showfully before approaching his chair. You slide a knee next to his thigh and wrap your arms around his head, a hand between his shoulder blades and the other pulling his face to your chest. You have to slouch. It's not entirely comfortable but it doesn't feel awkward, so you take the win. 

"I'm sorry, Eddie," you say quietly. You think about kissing his head. 

"Me too." 

There's a moment in there where you feel a nasty emotion brewing, sadness and much worse. You know that the gutted pain aching through you right now is nothing compared to what Eddie feels. That loss. 

It must feel so, so heavy. 

You pet his neck affectionately. Your nose dips into his hair, the tip touching his scalp. Your hands come up, like trying to hold water as it trickles between your fingers, Eddie's slipping. You grapple to keep him with you. 

"I love you," you say honestly. He's your best friend.

Eddie pats your back. "I love you too, loser." 

"You're my best friend." 

I would fucking think so, he'd say. 

"You're mine," he says. 

You smile and give him a good squeeze. When you pull away he doesn't look as odd as he had, relaxing against the hard-backed wood of the cafe chair as he tucks his hair behind his ear. He holds your gaze without any weight to it. You sit in your own uncomfortable chair and lean forward to compensate for the space between you, like two slanting trees in the wind, parallel but untouching.

"It's a really nice bracelet," you say. 

"She'd like it, I think." 

You don't know anything about Eddie's mom. She isn't someone he's ever been able to talk about with you. You can't remember the photographs you'd seen once upon a time, but you remember having the distinct thought that Eddie looked more like her than his dad or his uncle Wayne. She'd been beautiful, and her life couldn't be more starkly mourned. 

"I'm sure she would. It's pretty." 

His mouth wobbles. You're horrified for a moment, thinking he might burst into tears, but it's laughter he's chasing, and his little giggle is like a beam of sunlight. "Sorry," he says. Laughter doesn't seem like a good enough word to describe the sounds he's making, such understated, small curls of sound. Fleeting, golden. "She would've liked you, too. She would've loved you." 

"That's a good thing?" you check, cautious that he might be on the precipice of a nervous breakdown. 

"Yeah, that's a good thing. Is it ever bad? To be loved?" he asks.

He's teasing, but it feels like he's asking you something else.  

"You could be a stalker, with that logic." 

And there you go, ruining a moment with a shitty joke because you're too much of a coward to ask questions when you don't know the answer. 

Eddie grabs his coke, tipping his head back as he says, "Who says I'm not a stalker already?" 

Funny how the subtext of a conversation can contain magnitudes for one party and not the other. You worry you're in love with your best friend. He sips at coke and threatens perversion. 

"You're definitely a stalker. You couldn't wait a couple hours to see me tonight?" 

"I didn't realise I would be seeing you tonight," Eddie says, lifting his brows. 

"Oh. I asked, didn't I?" 

Eddie shakes his head. "Are you sure? I don't remember you asking, babe, I'm supposed to go play at Gareth's." 

Babe is his funniest pet name, in your opinion. It doesn't suit you, or him, but it feels good anyhow. Like you're a babe, supermodel pretty for TV or magazine spreads, long legs and not a single wrinkle that isn't marring the paper itself. 

"Bummer for me," you say lightly. "What are you doing, Dio tributes again?" 

"Don't say tributes like that, like we're out sacrificing goats in studded jackets." 

"That's a good image." You laugh. "That's funny." 

"I don't know. He wanted to try something he wrote. Invited Jeff and Jamison. Band's back together." 

"I'll get out my t-shirts." 

You have all the corny classics; I'm with the band; I'm with the guitarist; a Corroded Coffin faux tour shirt, different Hawkins locations written in typeset sharpie on the back. When you made it, Eddie had been wearing the t-shirt and the ink leaked through. He had 'Lover's Lake, Nov 18' between his shoulder blades and 'The Hideout, May 22' over his tailbone for a week. By day three the words had become illegible but you'd known them anyway, in the same way you knew the dots between the letters H and I were freckles rather than ink spots. You've always looked at him more than you should. 

"I could cancel." 

You and Eddie experience the natural ups and downs of friendship, or rather the ebb and flow. You know you come back together eventually if you get too far apart, and there hasn't been a time since you met him where you were worried about the permanence of your relationship. You're human, and you get insecure about it anyway, but then he says stuff like that and you're confronted with how close you are. He puts you first. He has other friends, other healthy friendships and a life outside of you, but you still get to be a huge and important part of the majority, and that is more than enough. (It should be more than enough. Some days it is.) 

"Now why would you do a thing like that?" you ask, sarcastic but soft. "You know they sound shit without you." 

"I don't like knowing you're alone." 

"I'm not lonely," you say. Truth or lie. 

"That's not what I said." Eddie's eyes narrow.

"It's stupid to worry about me, I always lock the doors. I lock the windows, even the ones upstairs. I don't think I'm gonna fall victim to a home invasion anytime soon." 

"I don't think many people think they're gonna be in home invasions until their homes actually get invaded. And it's not really what I'm worried about." 

"Do you ever think that we worry too much?" 

"Yes. We worry constantly. It's, like, our parasitic relationship with each other." 

"Like a tapeworm," you agree solemnly. 

"Exactly. I'm your tapeworm. And I'm worried about you."

"Can tapeworms worry?" you ask. 

Eddie kicks you mildly. "I don't know? I don't think tapeworms have a level of consciousness beyond what's needed for them to survive. They probably think about eating and parasitizing and that's it. Don't make me ask, please." 

You take a pull of your drink to prolong the inevitable. "Ask about what?"

"Your ghost." 

"Ah."

Eddie waits. 

You sigh again. "Look, I don't even know if she is a ghost, I probably just imagined it." 

He pulls himself forward and there's the weight you'd be waiting for, sternness marked into his face one feature at a time. "Liar." 

"What?" 

"You're lying. You don't think you imagined it." He looks you up and down. “You think I don't know when you're lying?" 

"I'm not lying," you lie. 

"You are. I know you are," he says, smiling despite the point he's making. "I know what you look like when you do." 

"What do I look like?" 

"I can't tell you, you might change it, and then I won't know when I'm supposed to look out for you 'cause you never tell me anything." 

"I don't want to talk about the ghost." 

"Why not?" 

"Because you don't believe me," you say too loudly. 

Eddie reaches across the table but doesn't touch your hand. He puts his palm down and leans ever forward, says, "Hey, I do." 

"No, you don't, you think there's something happening to me." 

"What would you think, if it were me?" he asks, frustration seeping in. "Try and see it from how I'm seeing it." 

"If it were you'd I'd believe you because you needed me to." 

You cringe at yourself and veer back into your chair, shoving your hands between your thighs and clamping your legs closed. Your fingers turn numb. 

Eddie doesn't look shocked, exactly. Surprised that you're talking to him unkindly, sure, and concerned. 

This whole situation is ill-fated, you know that. What good can come of a ghost? Hooks from the past. "I never should have told you," you say quietly. 

"Did you tell me?" Eddie asks, speaking with an anger that forms each word like a cut, clean and hurting. "You won't tell me anything. You tell me she talks to you, that she asks you about me. But you won't say what she says, exactly, and you have nothing to show for it. Your notebook conveniently disappeared. I can’t hear her."

He thinks you're making it up. 

Fuck. He thinks you're making it up. Eddie thinks you're lying to him, and while it hurts like a sharp kick to the solar plexus, a flooring, winding pain, it's the embarrassment that has tears glowing along your last line. If he really believes you'd make something up like this for attention, what does he think of you? That you're some silly leech clinging to him through bad lies? That you're bored? That this is a game you're playing with him? 

Your heart beats hard enough that you can feel it in your chest. Your hands shake with anger and hurt at once, your leg bouncing under the table in an attempt to keep the rush of it at bay. You look at Eddie with your lips parted, trying to say what you mean and not what you feel. You want to say something scathing, and you don't want to be cruel, and these are two facts existing at the same time. 

Eddie has other ideas. He sees your eyes turn glassy, he must, because his anger drains and he turns sorry and soft. It reminds you of a different moment like a film cell played overtop, of a younger, remorseful him. The expression he makes when he's just popped you in the mouth wrestling, or burned behind your ear with the hair iron. An accident. 

"I'm sorry," he says. Sheepish, gentle, sincere, embarrassed, too many threads of emotion to summarise with one word. "Sweetheart, I'm sorry. Don't cry." 

"Fuck off," you mumble, looking down at your bouncing leg. You push your hand against it, forcing it to lay still. 

"I didn't mean it." 

"Stop, Eddie." 

"I'm just hurt you're not telling me everything and I'm acting like an asshole 'cause I'm a big baby," he says, two shades from frantic. 

A tear rolls down your cheek. You thought for sure you'd escaped them, but it had already welled, and with nowhere to go it races down your cheek. You paw at it and hope he won't see it. 

He does. 

Eddie's chair screeches across the floor as he stands up. You know he'll hug you before he's touched you. Same way you know he's freaking out on the inside, allergic to girl tears.  

His hands take to your shoulders, hesitating there, and one slides behind your neck so his forearm presses against both shoulder blades. His lips ghost warmly over your forehead as he leans in. His other hand meanders, braceleting the top of your arm and running downward before swiftly changing paths to flatten out against the small of your back. 

"I'm sorry," he mumbles, rubbing your back.

His tender hug exacerbates the hurt, like an exsanguination. You cry as quietly as you can manage and Eddie feels it under his hands, the two of you condensed at the back of an empty room. You forget where you are, what you're wearing, what you've been fighting about. What he said. You realise how badly you'd needed him to comfort you lately, and hate yourself for giving in.

He shushes you so quietly you think you might have imagined it. 

Or maybe it was your ghost. 

"I'm sorry," he says, his breath kissing your scalp. "I'm a dick." 

"It's fine," you say. You despise yourself for how weak you sound. 

"It's not fine." 

"I wanted to stay because it's getting worse," you tell him. You don't mean to. 

"Okay. Okay. Then you'll stay. It's no biggie." 

"It's worse," you say, turning your face into his chest. 

You're shaking hard. Eddie can't make it stop no matter how tightly he holds you. 

"I'm sorry," he says again. 

He doesn't have to be. If he was acting out, fine. If he does or doesn't believe you, fine. You don't need him to see ghosts, or apologise that he can't. 

"I just didn't want to do it by myself," you confess, at the very pit of pathetic. You hope he won't hear. Your growing panic about the ghost is a secret you hadn’t meant to tell.

Eddie pulls away. He looks down at you, and if he wanted to he could kiss you, his lips are that close, but he widens the distance. He takes your face into his hands, calluses rough against your tacky cheeks. 

"You think I'm gonna let you? I know I'm fucking it up royally right now, I know I'm an asshole, but I'm not fucking going anywhere, okay? Don't worry. Don't worry about it." He drops his hands to your shoulders. "I'm your parasite, right? Do you know how hard it is to get rid of a parasite? Sometimes they have to pull them out, and they're excruciatingly long, it's a process you don't wanna go through–" 

You laugh wetly. Eddie promptly stops talking about parasites. 

"Forgive me?" he asks. 

You nod on automatic. Of course you do. 

"I swear she's real," you say, rubbing your forehead with the meat of your thumb. You think she’s real, but the truth is that you just don’t know. You amend quickly, "I swear I'm not lying. I am hearing someone… even if she's not real." 

Eddie frowns. "I know. I believe you." 

That's when the real trouble begins.

—

Eddie wants to hold your hand desperately. You're wearing your nicest dress, split hem sewn with infinite care, and your dress shoes with the tiny heels. He doesn't get to see you like this very often, and he wishes it were a better occasion. 

You've had your hair down at the hair stylists in the city, you're wearing concealer. You've done everything you can to look presentable. You look beautiful. He hopes you know that, at least. 

You heave a sigh. You're as anxious as Eddie is to get this over with. 

“You remember Hawk?” he asks you. 

“Jack 'Hawk'?” you ask. 

“Yeah, Hawk.”

“He’d come around for green?” you ask. 

“Yeah, that’s the one. Alright. So, when you were on vacation last summer, Hawk knocked on the door, I answered. I’m straight, right? Haven’t sold anything in years, no plans on selling again. But Jack barrels up the steps and starts going on like I promised him something. I said, dude, I don't deal anymore, and could you possibly shut the fuck up? Wayne’s inside making milkshakes. Blender on, couldn’t hear us but I’m sweating bullets.

“Jack, fucker, starts begging.” Eddie leans into your shoulder, hushed. “He’s saying c’mon Munson, I know you got some, don’t you have a personal stash? I’m desperate.” He picks a piece of hair off of your sleeve. “I didn’t, obviously, and I told him that but he’s not listening to me, he’s getting all wild-eyed and fucking wound like he needs the hard shit. I’m just trying to get rid of him at that point, I don’t know if he was tweaking but he looked like he was going to hit me and I wasn’t interested in fighting.” He laughs, encouraging a smile from you. “Wayne’s inside making milkshakes. Full fat with vanilla extract– I’m not about to take a trip to Hawkins General.”

“What did you do?” you ask. 

“I said to him, even if I did you wouldn’t be getting anything, asshole, and pushed him toward the steps, you know? It felt good, standing up for myself.” 

“And he left?”

“No, he fucking hit me straight in the dick. Can you imagine that? Junk shot on my own front door.”

You gasp with giggly indignation, hanging on his every word now. Eddie knows he’s taken you out of your head, even if it’s temporary.

“He hit you in the dick,” —you whisper ‘dick’ like it’s insidious within these four walls— “‘cause he wanted pot? You should’ve pushed him off of the porch.”

“I would’ve but he fucking winded me.” He starts laughing again, your giggles contagious though you try to smother them with your hand. “It’s funny now, but it wasn’t funny at the time.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“He was five foot one. I’ve never felt that humble in my life, I told Wayne I was coming down with something and had the worst afternoon nap ever. Didn’t even get my milkshake.”

“No,” you mumble sympathetically. Your eyes widen. “Eds, I’m sorry, that’s not funny. He assaulted you–”

Eddie waves his hand at you. “He got in a cheap shot. I was fine. I’ll still have kids.”

You snort, “Thanks for the information.”

“I got him back for it, anyway.”

He pretends like that’s the end of that, like the story doesn’t go on and he has nothing to tell you. You wait raptly for him to explain but he gloats, knowing you're hooked. 

You elbow him. 

“What?” he asks. “Oh, you wanna know how I got revenge? You’re evil.”

“Less shame and more story,” you say. 

“Alright. Are you ready? Here’s where it gets complicated.

“I’m at The Hideout listening to that new band that blazed through here a couple of months ago, Board Growth, or something? They’re incredible, the booze is cold, I’m tipsy and Gareth owes me anyway, I’m putting it all on his tab and he, seemingly, isn’t noticing. It’s great. Better if you hadn’t been on vacation again, what the fuck, but it’s good. 

“And there he is. It’s the fucking Hawk. He’s looking down his nose at these young girls smooth-talking them. Or, he’s trying to smooth talk them, but it’s like watching a worm flirt with a praying mantis, okay, we all know who’s gonna lose.” Eddie’s knee rests against yours, your hand is on his thigh, he’s losing the thread of his story fast under the smell of your perfume and hair oil. “I knock back the rest of my drink, slick my hair like I’m James Dean and, in all my drunken intelligence, decide that this is the perfect moment for me to get him back.”

“I wasn’t on vacation.”

“What?”

“I only went once.” You’d gone for two days with some old friends. He remembers now, and rushes to fix the story.

“Why didn’t you come, then?” he asks, flipping the script. “You’re such a flake.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know when this was.”

“Stop bailing on me and ruining my stories,” he says, teasing. 

“Okay, you’re hopped up on liquid courage and about to hit Jack in the dick,” you prompt. 

“Right! I stroll up to Hawk and he’s instantly wriggly like the worm of a guy he is, and I say, hey Hawk, how’s it hanging? 

“Maybe he’s just that stupid or maybe he thinks I’m putting out the olive branch but he actually starts telling me how he’s doing, and I’m looking at these girls as if to say, can you believe this guy? I cut him off, and I’m a loser, I’m not half as cool as I think I am but again I’m slightly incredibly inebriated. I’m making bad decisions.”

“Where’s your cafeteria bravado?” you ask.

“It’s worse than that. Imagine me at my most insufferable. I smile at the girls and I lean into Jack’s space, I’m laughing, I feel bad about what I’m gonna say before I’ve said it but I say it anyways. I lean right into his ear and tell him at full volume how sorry I was to hear about his recent bout of syphilis. I’m just so glad they caught it in time, man,” he says, imitating a past self. 

You open your mouth. “And,’ Eddie says, jumping to finish, “so happy you could keep most of it, buddy.”

“Eddie…”

“I’m a bad person.”

“No,” you mumble, hiding your smile on his shoulder, your forehead a hair’s width from his chin. You’d laugh a storm any other day to make him feel good, whether you think he’s funny or not, but today all you can manage is a hand on his leg. “You’re not a bad person, he deserved it… fucking hit you…”

The story isn’t true. 

He made it up. Right here right now. He just spent five good minutes of your lives spinning an outrageously awful story with poor jokes and one glaring plot hole, for what? 

This is hard. Making you cry, begging you to see what a doctor has to say, playing grown up in a grown ups body. Eddie thought you’d get to be kids forever. He never imagined what would come after school, and then suddenly it is after, and everything’s an ugly boring mess except for you (and Wayne, god bless), and now you’re sick. The waiting room you’re in, the road here, the look on your face when he told you what he wanted from you. It’s all… heartbreakingly monotonous.

One doctor's appointment, he whispered across pillows. Late and neither of you asleep. The sound of cicadas outside and Wayne’s deep snore a room away. 

You nodded and closed your eyes, and you didn’t say another word all night. 

What’s the worth in a made up story? What good will it do? You have to see the doctor eventually. Distraction, Eddie thinks pleadingly. Relief. He just wants to give you as much relief as he can from what’s happening with the only thing he feels he has —his quick mouth. 

He stares at your hand on his thigh. He wills himself to raise his own and put it on top of yours. He channels his thoughts, like this is telekinesis and not his own body, move. Move your hand, he says to himself. 

It's a millimetre out of his pocket when they call your name. 

You shoot up like a stalk and smile at the nurse who's come to collect you. You don't look jittery anymore, but there's a distinct doe in the headlights look about you as Eddie watches you trail down the hallway into the doctor's office. You look back at him three times, and each time is a whip.

As soon as the door closes, he bends forward in his chair and heaves a sickly sigh. His nausea has him coughing into his hand and praying he doesn't throw up here. If they want you to go somewhere today, like a pharmacy for temporary medication, or the emergency room for a CAT scan, he can't be covered in his own vomit. 

A child babbles across the room. Eddie peeks at her through his fingers. She's pale with dark hair, much like Eddie himself, and her mom is the same. The kid's mom doesn't look like Eddie's mom besides that, but seeing her here in a hospital makes it impossible not to think of her. She's been on his mind so much lately. Her birthday is at the end of the month, and it isn't the same —she'd been in hospital for three brutally short days— but you're being here is like peeling the scab off of a wound he thought healed years ago. 

Mom was everything. She was willowy and beautiful and tough as a board. She was smart, she knew everything; how to make microwave pizza taste gourmet, how to make whistles out of blades of grass, how to make a bad day feel brand new. 

He wished he could say that he has her every detail committed. The cruellest, most terrifying thing about the people we love is that they aren't permanent, not their life and not what they leave behind. Over time, his mom has turned from an aching spear of love to a dappling of sunlight through the branches of an old tree — scattered. Beautiful and impossible and a thousand pieces in his memory, slowly fading over time. 

There'll come a day where Eddie can't remember her. He knows that. He knows his frame of reference for who she was will reduce down to her photographs, and the nearly empty bottle of her perfume under his bed. 

Eddie is haunted by her absence everyday. 

There is no corporeal apparition of her at his shoulder, no cool chill running down his spine, but he's haunted all the same. It's why he won't accept your ghost. It's why he can't. He knows what it feels like to have someone with him who isn't really here, and he won't let you suffer through the same thing. He'll protect you from this, from her. 

Even if it means he has to take you to doctors offices an hour out of town. If he has to bargain for it, and make you cry at work, and– and fucking drive this wedge between you, he'll do it. 

He needs you to be okay. 

He can't think about his mom anymore. He loves her, he misses her, but if he thinks about her too much he won't be able to stand up. 

Eddie sits up, takes a lungful of air in, and waits. He senses you as you come back down the hall, grateful for your dry cheeks, and your small, small smile. Tiny but irrefutably there.

He stands up and holds out his hand. You don't take it, but you walk into his side so your hips are pressed together and he falls into step with you. 

"So…" he says. 

"She asked if I was getting enough sleep," you say, "and I told her I was. I explained everything to her like I promised I would, even– even… I told her everything. And um, she seemed very open." 

"Yeah?" 

"Yeah, she– OK." You frown. 

"Listen, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to. I know I practically forced you to come, but it's still your life, and you can have privacy from me–" 

"It's not that. I just don't want to cry in here." 

He puts his hand on your shoulder, his arm folded against your shoulder. You don't speak until you're out of the doctor's office and weaving through people as you walk toward the parking lot. 

"She thinks I'm having auditory hallucinations. And that it could be an initial symptom of schizophrenia, or something else. She said it usually starts around my age, and–" 

"Hey, it's okay," he says, though internally he feels as distressed as you're beginning to look, horrified by your crumpling chin and wringing hands. "It's okay. You don't have to say it if it's going to upset you." 

"It might not be anything," you say, shaking your head. "She said the human brain is complicated, and sometimes stuff like this just happens. She wants to, uh," —your voice twists up very high— "see me again after I've had some sleep to see if it's persisting." 

Eddie nods. He's fucking glad that the doctor took you seriously, grateful for her advice and her reluctance to misdiagnose you with something. It's not as though Eddie wants you to be experiencing hallucinations. But he thinks you are, and he needs help looking after you if that’s the case. 

"Did she prescribe anything?" he asks. 

"A week's worth of ambien. She didn't really want to, but I told her about, you know, you coming over to make sure I'm okay, and I know that was because of the gh–" You bite your lip. You're shaking like a leaf. "Well, she thought it was you making sure I'm not an insomniac. Which I'm not." 

"I'm really proud of you," he says quietly. "I know you don't want this to be happening. I get it, I promise. I don't want it either, but this is a good thing." 

He can see you regaining some composure. You smile a little, and you offer him your prescription paper. "You know it only costs seven dollars for seven ambien?" 

"I could get you some for free." 

Your laugh startles him. "No, I don't think so." 

"I'm not offering. Just saying. I know a guy." 

"No, you knew a guy who knows a guy who could get me something ridiculous, like a percocet." 

"I'd never give you anything like that." 

"I know." You come to a halt. The cloudy weather paints you in shadow. "I'm sorry this is happening." 

"You're what?" He doesn't let you answer moving to stand in front of you. "Why would you apologise for this?" 

"Because it's my head," you say stiffly. 

"You didn't want this to happen. And– and it might not be happening at all. You'll try the ambien, and you'll take care of yourself, and we'll go from there. I wasn't trying to scare you… I wish I could brush it off, you know? I wish I could believe that you…" He takes you in. Your skirt and jacket are swaying in the cold wind. You look one sharp shove from falling over. "I get that it isn't like me, to not believe in the fantasy–" 

You save him from his miserable attempt at placating you. 

"I know." 

He licks his lips. 

"I love you," Eddie says as he starts toward the van again. "Let's go fill your prescription, and then I'll get you whatever you want to eat."

"Boys are so weird about I love you," you say, following. The light behind your eyes makes your teasing worth it. "You say it like you chewed on it first. Struggled to get that one out, did you?" 

It's not your best insult. Neither of you are exactly on form. 

"Just so hard to say it to you." 

You take what you perceive to be an insult on the chin. Only Eddie knows there's a sliver of truth in what he's said. 

You generously let him help you into the passenger seat. He's hopeful that your mood's improved until that wretched frown worms its way across your pretty mouth once again. You wait for him to round the hood and start the van before you explain yourself. 

"There's a support group. For anybody who's, um, hearing voices. Schizophrenics, manic depressives…" 

"Is that something you want to go to?" 

"I don't know. Can I be honest with you?" 

"Yeah. Absolutely." 

"I don't know if I believe that it isn't real. I know that's the point. The definition of hallucination is, uh… an experience involving the apparent perception of something not present, and so… it makes sense. My ghost isn't there, even if I think she is, so I must be hallucinating, but Eddie," —you shrink in on yourself— "I have this feeling that won't go away." 

He loves you. You're terrified. 

He's already guessed what you're going to ask for.

"Can we try again? Please? I'll take the meds and I'll go to the support group, but in the meantime, could you please come back and just– just listen. Maybe it takes a while for her to talk to someone else." You scrub your face. "Fuck. I sound fucking crazy." 

Eddie squeezes the wheel. "Don't say that. Don't say it like you've done something wrong. You didn't do anything wrong." 

People say crazy but they mean sick. They ridicule what they can't understand. 

He doesn't understand, but he wants to. He says, "If you want me to, we'll try again. I'll come over." 

You look up from your palms. He notices almost habitually that they're smaller than his. When you were young teenagers there'd been a short period of time where you'd been the taller one, with bigger hands and a bigger smile. Lately, you've seemed small. 

"Really?" you ask hopefully. 

"You came here 'cause I asked you to. It was hard for you." He turns his eyes to the road and turns the key until the Beauville's engine is thrumming with life. "I'd do a lot of shit for you, superstar. Like, anything. If you need me to keep trying then I will. And you'll–" 

"I'll keep trying too," you promise. 

It's all he can ask for. 

— 

The sky is all kinds of grey. It stretches like a sheet from one corner of your eye to the other, darker toward each limit of your vision, a gradual decay into colourlessness toward the very top where the sun fights hardest to burst through an impossible expanse of clouds. They seem thick as marshmallo, but where they begin is hard to decipher. 

Your eyes feel sore. You imagine a hand reaching for you, hitting you, pressing its cold knuckles to each bruised eye socket to calm the raging ache behind them. You hadn't expected to feel this way. It isn't the first time you have, but to feel so intensely unreal while there's someone still with you is new. You lean your weight against the sill and let your arms swing from the open window ledge, knuckles scraping the scratchy brick of the house's exterior walls, instantly chilled by the weather. 

A black band of birds burst across the sky somewhere leftwards. The pitch and tumble with no discernible formation. They're too far to hear. You imagine the flap of wings, their buoyed cawing, screeching to one another as they swim between pylon cables and their brothers spread wings. 

"What kind of birds do you think they are?" Eddie asks. 

You feel his weight settle into the ottoman beside you. You'd dragged it to the window with tired arms. You haven't felt up to anything since you got home, though Eddie's promise should've restored a little hope. He's going to keep trying to meet your ghost. You'll have to hope you don't get worse before that. 

You know, starkly, that you aren't having auditory hallucinations. You know, starkly, that your ghost had written to you in your missing notebook. 

But maybe that's the nature of your hallucination. A night bent over the pocket dictionary had ended as this one begins, with the crushing realisation that you cannot trust what you know. To put it plainly, you're afraid that you're mentally unwell. Terrified of how it’s going to change your life, the people in it.

Eddie's afraid too. 

Your orange bottle of pills glares like a flame to your right where it stands waiting for you on the nightstand. Eddie's made up your bed for the two of you. He could sleep in the guest room, and he never has. 

"I don't know," you say hoarsely. Your voice sounds as you feel, like something has its hooks in you, and it's dragging you down, down… 

"They're too big to be pigeons." 

"They're too dark. They're crows," you guess, tracing an outlier as he skirts the crowd of his family and spirals up into the air. 

Like a party trick, you expect him to disappear, or explode, or rocket up into the cotton clouds and out of view. He slows as he falls, and then he dives back toward the main swarm of birds as they migrate toward the horizon. 

There's a feeling brewing in you that you don't like. 

If you can't trust your own perception. If real isn't real. If you need someone to sit beside you and distinguish real from fake, if… if you're sick. 

If you're sick, what does that mean? 

You search for something in the air to hold onto. 

Eddie hums softly, his hand pushing out into the static as he points toward the glowing clouds. "Sun's going down slow." 

You raise your hand and wrap it around his. It isn't enough. You force your fingers between the gaps of his, just a little longer, thicker, solid, and lock him in. He feels real. That's the key. As far as you know, hallucinations don't carry that far. Bugs crawling over your skin and through the strands of your hair, an itch you can't scratch, a drop of rain from a concrete ceiling, the brain can recreate these things. But the exact width of Eddie's palm or the feeling of his calluses against your loveline, your lifeline, and the heartbeat that bumps against the meat of your thumb when you focus, that's impossible. That's a level of precision the human brain can't find. 

Right? 

Eddie curls his thumb around yours. You can feel his gaze on your cheek like a breath blown between parted lips. You turn toward him, and you catalogue every little mar or mark, every fine hair. His wrinkles, his textured jaw. The strands of a fallen curl come apart near his eye, grown out bangs kissing the highest point of his cheek.

You're panicking. There's a thumping behind your eyes. 

"I don't know if you look right," you say. 

"I look very right. I'm extremely handsome," he says. 

You hold his hand out of the window, worried you'll drop it, and it'll fall. 

If Eddie were at home tucked into his double bed a mile away, she would've talked to you by now. Your breath shortens as the meaning behind that thought solidifies. 

She only comes when you're alone. Why do you think that is? 

She's not real. 

Is that how it works? Can hallucinations, auditory, visual, or otherwise, take place in the company of others? You know next to nothing. Maybe they aren’t so common with loved ones standing guard. 

You push your head out of the window again and look down at the flat, dying grass in the backyard, a yellowing carpet of bluegrass. Bluegrass is prominent because it can grow anywhere, like mould. With all the rain these past few days, the grass should've livened into a plush and solid green, like the lawns in the southern side of Hawkins where the rich people lavish in sprinklers and gardeners alike. It remains rumpled.

Eddie rubs the back of your hand. It's far from the closest you've ever been. There have been nights you spent unawares in his arms, waking with your face tucked into his neck, so embarrassed you couldn't look at him afterward. But it's the most intimate touch you've ever endured. The whorls of his fingerprint embossing itself into your hand, a quarter circle that doesn't cease. Time feels brief and unsteady. 

Eddie must realise you're having a bad moment. He shuffles closer to you, your arms twined, his hair tickling your shoulders. It snaps you back, in a way, with its softness. 

"Let's go to bed," he says when the sky's more charcoal than light. 

You're cold. You follow. You latch your hand in his and he doesn't say a word, closing and locking your window with one hand, pulling the sheets of your bed back deftly for you to climb in. You slide across to the outermost side and he follows, leaning over you to pull the sheets to your chin. 

He stays hovering there. 

He holds very still. 

"Everything's going to be okay," he whispers. 

"What if it isn't?" 

"It will be, you…" he trails off. He keeps your hand in his, but he plants his elbow on the other side of you, like a lover about to share sweet nothings, his face so, so close. "You'll be okay, no matter what happens." 

"I wish she'd told me more," you say. 

"The doctor?" He draws a small, careful line across your cheek with his index finger. "Sweetheart, we'll find out everything there is to find." 

"I want to know how scared I should be. Because this feels like torture." 

"You don't have to be scared." Eddie smiles, and as far as you can tell, though you're having trouble trusting yourself, it's one of his genuine smiles. "Why do you think I'm here, huh? It's not to watch as something bad happens." 

You lift your chin. He's too close to look at both eyes at once: you have to choose, and you can't. Your irises dance back and forth between them, shuddering in indecision. 

"You'll look after me," you say, not a question. 

He turns his hand, stroking down the length of your cheek with the backs of his fingers. They feel much softer than the undersides, the flat of his nails like silk. Your eyes burn as you free your hand from his, hoping he'll be kind with that one, too. 

"I'll look after you." 

You tuck your hands behind the trim of his waist and, knowing you shouldn't, let them feed into his shirt. You draw a shaking line through the downy soft blanketing the small of his back until your finger is skipping up the jutting bumps of his spine. It's like climbing a staircase by touch alone. You wonder if anyone else had ever done this to him, if they ever wanted to, and if he'd let them. 

Eddie releases a breath. Warmth feathers along your skin. 

His hand strokes down to your neck, resting at your collar. Half a second and his petting returns, the side of his thumb brushing your soft jawline tenderly. 

He must feel you swallow. His pupils travel down the whites of his eyes like the steady descent of the setting sun. 

"I can't," he says softly.

Can't what? you want to ask. You don't know if you should. You know the answer, but does he?

"You're not all here," he says, hand paused. He cups your cheek, holds you in place. You hadn't been moving. "But when you are, I could. I could."

"I don't know if I…" you drift off. How can you explain it to him? I don't know if I'll feel better any time soon. 

His eyes move sideways, as if the instruction for your reassurance lay somewhere in the apple of your cheek. 

You don't want him to kiss you if it's a fixative meant to soothe your rampant nerves. You want him to kiss you for a hundred reasons, but that's not one of them. You're not sure he wants to kiss you beyond that. 

He would, you realise. Kiss you, if he thought you wanted it badly enough. That's a lot of power to have over someone, more than you want over him, and you can't ask him to. You look away from his eyes and search upward, trembling hands and the starts of your forearms pressed to his back, hiking his shirt up one inch at a time. 

He sits up agonisingly slowly, in the same way the sky has fallen from light to dusk; inchingly, so as to escape notice, until suddenly you can't feel the emanating heat of his chest against yours anymore, and the only light inside of your room is a yellow band sliced by the ajar door. 

Your hands fall back. One under the sheets, one over. Eddie sits where you lay, his hands at the crook of your elbows. He gives symmetrical, superficial massages to each. 

The life has been sapped from you, as if it were tied to the sun sunk beyond the horizon. A brutal fatigue sets in. 

"You should take your ambien," he murmurs. 

"Okay." 

The eye tattooed on his arm seems to follow you as he reaches for your seven dollar bottle. He twists off the cap and shakes a single pill out for you, and you watch as the lines of his arms start to blur. 

You take your pill, lying firmly in the middle of your pillow, and wonder if now would be an appropriate time to burst into panicked tears.

"I'll look after you," Eddie repeats after a while. Or maybe he doesn't. The weight of the day and the helping kick of your medication pulls you under. He lays down next to you carefully, his hand searching under the covers for yours. 

And there, standing in the corner of the room, is your ghost. Real. Stunningly, terrifyingly real. 

You can’t open your mouth wide enough to warn him.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

end of part one! thank you so much for reading, I really hope that you enjoyed! this was my baby and such a labour of love in April and I’m so happy now to share it :D if you have the time, please consider reblogging, it means so much to me and I’d love to know your thoughts on the story so far <3<3

[fluffytriceratops]

𝐁𝐞𝐥𝐭 𝐊𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐬 - 𝐃𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨 [𝐛𝐚𝐲𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞]

notes: donnie reacting to y/n pulling him in for a kiss by his belt. mikey is next~ i have so many requests to write asdfkjghjhfg. but i'm excited hehe. 

click here to read leo's ver.

click here to read mikey's ver.

click here to read raph's ver.

warnings: mature language, nsfw mentions/sexual themes.

tags: @thelaundrybitch @turtle-babe83 @leosgirl82 @rheawritesforfun @s-s-ironnie @post-apocalyptic-daydream @mysticboombox @drowninghell @lec743 @raphielover  @raphslovemuffin80 @squirrelfurs @bibiz82 @pheradream-15 @kikithedreamerwriter

(if you wish to be tagged in my future tmnt related work, feel free to lemme know and i'll happily tag you!)

i love you all sm! i hope you have a lovely day/night! i'm sending all the virtual hugs to you!! <3

---

- immediately his eyebrows would raise. and he'd glance down at where your hands rested comfortably on his belt.

- he would gulp, taken aback by the move.

- hands raised, as he wouldn't be sure where to put them, too stunned in the moment to think straight.

- he'd be a flustered mess. stammering and continuously flicking his gaze from your face to your lips.

- if you smirked at him, you'd drive him absolutely nuts.

- he would let out a small groan at the feeling of your lips against his own. when you'd pull away, his hands would shoot to you and pull you against him again for more.

- he'd lick his lips after the kiss, voice caught in his throat.

- he wouldn't be able to take his eyes off of you.

- you'd tilt your head to the side and look up at him with a flirtatious grin. "what's up, donnie?"

- you'd fake innocence, and he'd see straight through it. causing his grip to tighten on you. and a low churr to escape his chest.

- "you.." he swallowed thickly. "you shouldn't have done that.."

- blinking up at him, you stop yourself from smirking as you replied. "why not?"

- "it's a dangerous game." he'd murmur, bending himself downwards closer to you. eyes continuing to jump from your own to your lips.

- "i like danger." you'd whisper, gripping him tightly, tempting him even further as you swiped your tongue across your lower lip.

- as predicted, donnie watched the movement with a hitch of his breath.

- "you sure?" he hummed, nipping at your jawline and neck.

- your head lolled back, giving him more access.

- you had to bite your tongue to stop yourself from moaning. "positive."

- all the while this was happening, he'd back you into a table (if you were in the lab/your room) or the wall.

- his arms would cage you between him, hands planted firmly on the wall or gripping the edge of the table. head tilted towards you as he traveled his mouth up from your exposed collar bone back to your lips.

- in all your haze, you wouldn't even notice your clothes had been removed.

- he'd fuck you into the wall. right where you stood.

- shaky legs, heavy pants and melodic moans would fill the room.

- music to both of your ears.

- and when you were done? he'd take you to a different spot and do it all over again.

- both you and donnie learned to love belt kisses. 

- but now you know it's only something you can do in private, when the others aren't around. because the outcome would definitely scar them~ 

[qpidkitea]

ENDUREMENT

FARLEIGH START X FEM! READER

PRÉCIS: Second part of Tranquility, where Farleigh talks about himself and his family. Hoping that you wouldn't judge and come with him to America to visit his mother.

WARNING: Angst, cursing, mentions of death, mentions of Oliver, kisses, happy ending. The reader is kind of an anchor for the family right now.

A/N: Big big biggg thanks to @darkeyesshine for the ideas for this fic. Thank you again!!

No one knew about your 'relationship' with Farleigh. You weren't even sure yourself you two were officially together, but you cared for him, likewise he cared for you. The two of you spent many nights at Saltburn sneaking into each other's rooms for nothing more than the comfort company and some shared kisses- not on the lips just yet, silently grateful that you two uncoincidentally chose rooms down the hall from each other. You don't even think that fucking freak. Oliver knew, and he knew everything.

You and Farleigh lie beneath the duvet in his room, your head resting on his naked chest, your arm laying across his stomach as he smokes a cigarette, being careful to blow the smoke in the air, attempting not to cause severe damage to your lungs, even though you're definitely sure you have already been exposed to secondhand smoke just from being near the Cattons. For the past two weeks, you have been staying in Farleigh's room during the night, but you made sure that in the day, you'd invite the Cattons to come and do the things they used to when Felix was here. It was fun while it lasted. Now Farleigh was planning to go back home to America permanently. Venetia was still severely depressed, but it wasn't like you could ask her to stop. You didn't know how Elspeth and James were feeling. They hid their emotions through careless eyes, moving on with the same normality as before.

You look up at Farleigh, who was just finishing his cigarette. You watch as he throws it out of the open window before he looks down at you with concern behind his eyes.

"What?" Staring wasn't the word to explain what you were doing, you were admiring. His beautiful brown skin was glistening in the scorching sun, and you swore you could almost mistake him for a Greek God. His brown curls settled perfectly around his face, he was perfect to you. Everything about him was perfect. You just hoped he may feel the same about you.

"Nothing. Just looking at you." Farleigh lets out a laugh, smiling so hard his cheeks expand, but that only made him look cuter. You sit up from laying on his chest, and move to sit Criss Cross on the end of his bed facing him. Farleigh sits up next, and you can't help but laugh when he turns to the side to stretch, seeing the back of his hair flattened.

"Oh, shut up! I'm fixing it." You're still laughing, and you swear you could almost pass out from laughter. Using one slender arm, Farleigh fluffs the hair at the back of his head. Your laughter dies down and you take a deep breath. Smiling again at him.

"Farleigh, is there anything on your mind before you depart for America next week?" You feel bad bringing this up when just a moment before you were laughing with him, but you didn’t want him leaving in a horrible mood. Farleigh runs a hand up and down his chest, nodding his head a bit. He moves to stretch his legs over you, socked feet laying in your lap. You scrunch your face up before pushing his feet to the side of you. Farleigh takes in a deep breath before beginning to speak.

"I have to get the fuck away from here. I can't stand it. They make me feel like an imbecile- not Venetia." You nod your head at his clarification, now understanding that he was talking about James and Elspeth. You knew James was funding Farleigh's mom- his own sister  - back in America, but you didn't know that Farleigh was receiving the backlash from his mother's actions. Unfortunately, you also know that Farleigh's mother was disowned from the family. You don't know why, but you know her name is completely off the will, and most likely they would withdraw from paying for college.

"He claims he doesn't care about my "Bloody American Feelings-" What the fuck does he even mean?" Farleigh looks at you with wide eyes, emphasizing his point. Farleigh was a very handsy talker, moving his arms around to explain his point. You stay silent, letting him get his rant off. You weren't related to the Cattons- just a friend of Farleigh's, Venetia's, and Felix's, who the Cattons let stay. This was your 3rd year staying in Saltburn.

"This place is too- much for me right now. I miss my mom, I miss my house, I never even wanted to really go to Oxford, I only went because Felix wanted me to- I don't fit in anywhere. A queer, needy person of color in the middle of England? Fucking England!" You pout slightly at his outburst, not liking him calling himself needy.

"You're not needy, Farleigh. Don't believe what Sir James says about you. He's a complete and utter fool. You can't expect someone who's been rich their whole life to understand anything from the perspective of someone who hasn't had everything handed to them." You look into his eyes as you say this, making sure he understands exactly what you are trying to say.

"Thank you. I know, I just- you're a problem for me. I want to get away from here, but I can't just leave you here. jus' can't let you go back home and forget about me, can I?" Farleigh grows this smug smirk on his face, taunting you almost.

"Oh, shut up! I'd be fine without you." At this, Farleigh quirks an eyebrow, his smirk dropping before he comes to his knees on the bed, crawling over to you over the expanse of the bed before leaning on top of you, his shadow blocking out any light.

"Live? Without me? Impossible. You need me. Who's gonna make you laugh in the late hours of the night, hm?" Farleigh tilts his head at the end of his question, his curls moving along with him. There's nothing but teasing behind his voice but it still makes you nervous none the less, playing your bashfulness off, you push him, making him fall backwards because of his unstable position.

"Okay! I'll miss you, I must admit, but as long as you just call me, we'll be fine" You cross your arms as Farleigh sits back upright, crossing his legs now, his long limbs folding across each other. It's weird, because he's quiet. He's looking down, facial expression blank, a bit of uncertainty in his movements, fiddling with the box of cigarettes in his lap.

"Do you want to come with me?"

"What?"

"Do you... want to come with me? To America." Fairleigh knew you lived alone, your very wealthy parents died a month before you went off to college, and you inherited all of their wealth. It would last you at least another 10 years, and by that time, you would already have a job, living on your own. This is part of the reason you had no problem going to Saltburn for the last three years. You had no family waiting for you to come home for the holidays.

"Are you sure you would want me to come?"

"I wouldn't be able to live my life with just a phone call every week." Farleigh looks up with a smile, his hair bouncing, looking as beautiful as ever.

"Okay. How long do you want me to stay?" Farleigh has surprise written all over his face, he never expected you to agree so quickly, to want you to come to such a place with him, where you know you won't have the finest things, or a great big house to live in.

"We'll come back before school starts again and go back in for all the breaks. I'll be able to finish college. They paid in full for tuition already." He smirks and pulls out a cigarette from the small cardboard box, putting it between his ring and middle finger, but not lighting it just yet.

"What about when school ends?" Would you stay in England? Or would you find a home in America to be with Farleigh, or possibly find a home together? You brush your thoughts off as wishful and look up from your lap at Farleigh with your head tilted, awaiting an answer.

"Oh, I'm hoping that you'll stay with me in America? Pretty, pretty, pretty pleaseeeee." You laugh, knowing of the incoming dramatics about to come from Farleigh, and if on cue, he flops backwards on the bed, shaking his head about in a show of a tantrum. Swinging his arms behind his head, somehow throwing his cigarette across the cold wooden floors and huffing loudly. He rolls off the bed, landing on his feet before he comes to the side of the bed. You turn your body to him, and he's on his knees, his hands grabbing your own before he pleads dramatically.

"I'll do anything! Just come with me and stay. You'll love the fatty American cheeseburgers, I swear!" It's surprising how long Farleigh can hold up a good act, not once breaking his role to laugh or even cringe at himself.

"Anything, huh?" You lean forward and smile. Fairleigh's blonde and brown curls touch your forehead.

"Anything." It wasn't you who made the first move, but Farleigh. As he inches himself to your face, you lean in also, but it felt as if you weren't the one controlling your body. Your forehead tickles, and you want nothing but to back away and rub at your forehead to get rid of that itchy feeling, but your body won't let you. Slowly you two inched closer together until your lips finally touched, Farleigh sighs softly, like he was waiting for this moment, and you can't help but melt into the kiss.

To you- to the both of you, this confirms everything. Small stares at each other across the dining room table, the lingering touches at the bar, the matching costumes you two would often wear to parties. You couldn't believe it took this long for you to even just kiss, even after nights of sleeping in the same bed. Farleigh is the first one to pull back, and you can clearly see, etched on his face, is nothing but adornment.

"I can't believe I let myself wait three fucking years for that. Should've done it way sooner." You two bust out into laughter at his words, knowing that a new beginning would start for the both of you.

Farleigh ushers you to knock on the front door, but you slap his hand away from the small of your back, insisting on ringing the doorbell, the house was medium-sized, but it was a breath of fresh air for you, you grew sick of high ceilings and Renaissance walls. You could hear his mother's steps get louder as she approached the door. Heels- she was wearing heels. The doorknob twists in your view before the door opens towards Farleigh's mother. She wore a beautiful black pantsuit with red lipstick and red heels to match. She might've not been filthy rich, but she dressed like she was, even if it was inexpensive or not a designer brand. A white smile comes upon her face as she looks at you, and then at her son.

“Oh! You must be Y/N. Nice to meet you darling” You almost forgot she was English. Her accent was not as strong as yours, but you could tell her upbringing.

“nice to meet you Ms.-" You smile back at her, reaching out to shaker her hand, but she ignores it, instead pulling you in for a tight hug.

“please, call me Frederica, come in, come in, quite cold outside” She steps aside from the doorway, allowing you and Farleigh to enter. She winks at Farleigh, motioning her head towards you as he passes. Extending her two thumbs out at him. But you don't see that. She then pulls her son into a warm, tight embrace, kissing his cheek, some of her red lipstick transferring onto his face. Your heart warms as she tells Farleigh how much she missed him, and it nearly melts away as he responds, telling her the same thing.

She turns to you now, who's still standing in the middle of the living room. The woman motions her hand for you to sit on the couch, and you do. She smiles and sits next to you, and Farleigh almost screams in horror as he too comes to sit on the couch, only to notice the blue picture book sitting on the coffee table, undoubtedly filled with his most embarrassing baby photos. The woman next to you crosses her legs before turning to you and smiling.

“Farleigh is quite fond of you, talks about you all the time over the telephone." Farleigh turns away, pretending not to hear his mother as he looks at the white curtains hanging from the window. Tapping his foot on the carpeted floor. You smile and laugh slightly, imagining him ranting about you to his mother, who's never even met you.

"Really?" Your tone is teasing. Even if he wasn't looking your way, he could definitely hear you.

"Oh absolutely, almost every day, and now I know why. You're stunning. Now, let me show you some of his baby pictures." Farleigh whips his head over to look at his mother with wide eyes, his hair swinging wildly.

"Mother, no!"

[fairysluna]

hiii i saw that you've opened your requests, could i have “Go on, one more time. I know you can do it.” with Cregan? <3 or if you're already doing this, can you tag me in iiiiiit? (it is doing things to me)

MASTERLIST

hi, baby!! this is not so long, but i hope you like it either way! this is fully dedicated to you, ofc. Please enjoy it, ily🤍

PAIRING — Modern!Cregan Stark x Fem!Reader.

TW — porn w/o plot, husband!cregan, smut —breeding kink, p in v, praising, overstimulation, dirty talk, creampie, pregnancy talk—, established relationship, cursing. If something is missing let me know!

WORD COUNT — 831.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤenglish is not my first language.

You should've expected this when you told Cregan that you were ready to have a baby. The way his eyes lightened with illusion before they turned dark with raw desire should've given you a sign that this would happen.

“Come on, baby, keep those legs open for me…” he murmured against your ear. His hips would snap against yours over and over again, eager to fill you up once more. He had come at least three times, yet it wasn't enough, he had to make sure you were filled with him, that your womb would receive every single drop of his seed. He was too pussy drunk to even think about anything else besides breeding you; he was feral.

“S’too much… G-gods… I can't!” Whines left your lips, expressing the overstimulation you were receiving from him. You had lost count of the times you had fallen apart in his arms, spilling tears of pleasure and slight discomfort as his cock would touch the deepest part of you.

Both of your bodies were sweating and burning with desire. Your husband had lost his mind, fucking you restlessly and roughly against the matress, longing to feel your pussy clamping around him. His brain would create images of you round with his child, proudly carrying a part of him inside of you; it would drive him insane.

He was tired too. His pelvis was soaking with your many releases and his cheeks would be burning with a rouge tone. His hair was messy and wet with sweat, his lips swollen and parted - letting groans and gasps escape from them each time he would feel your walls squeezing him tight. Both of his hands were holding the back of your knees, your legs bent against your chest - your cunt fully exposed to him.

“Mmh… fuck- Baby, let me fill your pussy one more time…” He breathed out, heavily panting, almost whining. "Please."

“I- I can't…”

“Go on, one more time. I know you can do it,” he pleaded, fastening his pace.

Your nails would dig in the skin of his back, scratching it and making him hiss with the slight pinching pain. As a response, one of his hands let go of your thigh to travel down your body and play with your swollen clit. You almost screamed, feeling so sensitive and delicate.

“Can't wait to see you all nice and full of my cum…” He started, leaning towards your neck and hiding his face there. “I'm gonna brag that it was me the one that got you knocked up.”

“Cregan…” you cried out his name, and his hips twitched for a second. Gods, he was so needy for you.

“Fuck, baby… Everyone will know you're fucking mine.” His words were punctuated with his thrusts, and each time he went deeper and deeper. “You’re gonna look so perfect, so fucking beautiful…”

The idea was getting to your head, making your soft walls clench around his cock. Cregan whimpered some muffled words, feeling how your cunt would squeeze him so good - he knew you were almost there. He closed his eyes, fastening the movements of his fingers in your clit while his thrusts became sloppy and more desperate.

“Cum for me…” he whined, feeling how he was getting closer to the edge too. “Let me feel this pretty pussy milking my cock. Please, cum for me… p-please…”

The sudden heat that ran through your veins took you by surprise, and before you could know, his name escaped from your lips in a cry as a creamy ring formed in the base of his cock. Cregan followed you soon, his seed spilling deep inside of you while his hips moved, giving you every single drop of his spent. Your body quivered while he moaned, legs twitching while your pussy was fluttering around his leaking cock. Sobs and hiccups would leave your lips, and Cregan was quick to pepper kisses all over your face, whispering soft praises at you.

“Good job, baby, you were so good for me…” His nose was brushing against your cheeks, feeling the tears of pleasure that soaked your hot skin. “Taking all of my cum, so ready to be a mommy, huh?”

You felt his length twitch inside your walls when he uttered those words, followed by a husky curse that made you feel butterflies.

He slowly started to pull away, loving the way your stretched hole seemed to not want to let him go; you hissed for the discomfort that his absence brought. He looked down at your spreaded legs, noticing how drops of his seed leaked out of you. He hummed delightedly.

“Seven hells…” he breathed out before he glanced at you - his hand brushing your hair away from your face. “You're gonna be the best mommy, I know it…”

A tired smile was drawn on your lips. “I love you,” you murmured. Your eyes began to close as the exhaustion became evident in your body.

“I love you too, princess.”

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[niki-phoria]

SAY YOU LOVE ME TIL THE END OF THE WORLD

pairing: hyunsu x gn!reader genre: hurt comfort word count: 719

notes: set in s1, i'm in love with him i can't help it, hyunsu cries, reader cries, hyunsu needs a hug and he gets one !! still haven't finished s2 lol

you’re not exactly sure how you ended up like this. it all feels surreal - being locked inside of your apartment building; monsters coming to life; blood and carnage visible wherever you turn. part of you wishes it’s all a nightmare. that you’ll wake up, safe in hyunsu’s arms in his apartment, listening to the soundtrack of a random drama or your neighbours arguing next door. but it’s not. 

the stairwell is stuffy. you’re almost certain it hasn’t been cleaned in months - if ever. spiderwebs decorate the corners of the walls if you squint hard enough. 

hyunsu doesn’t react to your presence. not when the door closing behind you echoes throughout the dingy space. not when you begin to make your way down the steps. not even when you sit down near the bottom beside him so close that your knees brush against each other. 

with nothing better to do, you begin to study hyunsu’s features. his eye bags have gotten worse. his shoulders sag - likely from a combination of stress and exhaustion. the slight frown on his face has become familiar, a fact that makes your heart ache.

“are you okay?” your voice is little more than a whisper. the words are shaky and uncertain. you don’t know what to say. you don’t know what to do.

hyunsu’s gaze remains unwavering. you resist the urge to push him for answers, instead turning to face the wall alongside him. there are chips in the multiple layers of paint - a of many symptoms of a decrepit building. layers of dust coat the stairwell railing, some older than others. 

“i don’t know.” you’ve been sitting in silence for so long that hyunsu’s voice nearly startles you when he speaks. he takes a shaky breath before he continues, still staring into space. “i’m… scared. what if…” he pauses. tears sting at the corners of his eyes but he blinks them away before they can threaten to fall, though it does little to prevent the way his voice cracks. “what if i become a monster?”

“hyun…” you can’t help yourself. you react without thinking - all but throwing your arms around him as if the tighter you hold him the easier it will be to mend the pieces of his cracked heart back together. 

hyunsu tenses in your arms. his breath hitches in surprise; his eyes widen and his heart beats erratically in his chest. a few agonizing second pass before he reacts. hesitantly. slowly. but he reacts. 

shaky hands wrap around your waist. hyunsu lets his eyes flutter closed as he relaxes into your arms, burying his head into the crook of your neck. thick strands of his dark hair tickle the exposed skin of your neck. you can just barely feel a few stray tears slowly begin to seep into the fabric of your shirt. 

“that won’t happen.” your hands grip his hoodie tightly, almost like he’ll disappear if you let go. pulling away, you reach up to cup hyunsu’s cheek with your hand. “i promise. i won’t let that happen.” 

a beat of silence passes. deep brown eyes stare into your own. leaning in, you press a kiss against his cheek. you can just barely taste the saltiness of his tears. hyunsu closes his eyes, further relaxing against your touch. this time there’s no tension in his shoulders or tremble in his hands when he pulls you closer. 

you kiss him again - this time on the other side of his face. and again. and again. and again. 

his skin feels warm against your own, in contrast to the unrelentingly cold air surrounding you. winters in seoul have always been unforgiving, only made worse by the lack of heating in the lobby of the green home apartment building. 

your touch is gentle when you brush your thumb against his cheek. you don’t hesitate at all when you lean in, pressing your lips against his in a sweet kiss. “i love you,” you murmur. “please don’t ever forget that.”

hyunsu doesn’t respond. at least, not verbally. instead, he intertwines your fingers together, stroking his thumb against your knuckles and tracing the dips and valleys of your palm. it’s soft. so simple you almost don’t realize it’s there - but it is. and you do.

a promise is written against your skin. i love you too.

if you enjoyed this fic, please consider leaving a like, comment, feedback, or rebloging !! and if you want to support me, consider checking out my sweet home masterlist <3

[writingsbychlo]

UNDER THE MISTLETOE | epilogue

summary; a year later, your bond with azriel is still going just as strong. new years eve with your mate couldn't be sweeter.

word count; 3171

notes; I know this was highly anticipated, and I'm sorry it's so short, but it is just an epilogue, not a full fic! I hope this isn't too disappointing to anyone! <3

Staring out across the beautiful cityscape of Velaris, your eyes wandered across the twinkling lights of the town. From house to house, all over the city. The rainbow was lit up even more magnificently than usual tonight, celebrations so loud you could hear them from here if you strained your ear, cheers and singing and dancing, the revelry of happy people, finally celebrating in peace after so many years of darkness. 

Beyond them, snow-capped mountains glowed under the bright moonlight and the stars, the clear sky a lucky twist of fate, as though even the Heavens wanted to be here tonight, watching. Second to Starfall, New Year's was your favourite holiday. A chance for a fresh start, to reflect on everything, to make new plans or to wipe the slate clean. To watch fireworks explode in the cold night sky, glittering and beautiful. 

Taking a sip of Rhysand’s expensive champagne from the glass in your hand, you sighed happily. As you did, a pair of strong arms circled your waist, familiar hands smoothing over your stomach, and tugging you back into a firm chest. Warm lips fell to the crook of your neck as your head fell back on his shoulder, delicate kisses dotted along your shoulder. Dropping your free hand to clasp those around your body, you traced your fingers delicately over scarred skin, eyes slipped closed in his embrace. 

“Hello, my love.” His voice was a low murmur, deep in your ear and humming along your skin. 

“Hi, Azzy.”

Turning in his arms, you looped your hands carefully around his neck, his head bowing to meet your own as he finally stole a sweet, simple kiss for your lips. He tasted like whiskey and sugar, no doubt pumped full of candy Nyx forced him to try, the small boy having kept him hostage all night. Despite it, he’d never let you out of his sights, you’d barely been out here for ten minutes before Azriel had come to find you, following you like a puppy. 

Leaning in a little further, your tongue teased along his lower lip, and he let out a soft groan as he parted them. The kisses grew, his mouth sealing over your own, passion like it was the first kiss you’d ever shared all over again, not the thousandth. Tightening your hold on him, his wings fluttered, circling your body to close out the rest of the world as he hauled you in further, up against his chest. 

Your heart was thudding in time with his own, beating in sync like they had done for just over a year now. 

Only days ago, you’d celebrated your one-year anniversary, taking a few days up at the cabin and away from every, just the two of you, no clothes, and a lot of sleepless nights. The desperation might have died down, but the infatuation still remained as strong as ever. One look, one touch, one kiss was enough to drive you crazy. You were utterly at his mercy, him just as much at yours, and you truly hoped that the intensity between you both never faded. 

He pulled back with a sigh, one more final kiss left on your lips, before he was smiling, forehead on your own. “What are you doing out here, it’s cold.”

You couldn't hep but smirk at that, brows raising a little as you looked up at him. It certainly wasn’t the coldest you’d ever been, there wasn’t even a layer of goosebumps on your exposed skin. But, he had always been a worrier, and your mate bond only seemed to enhance that, even now. “Just… thinking, that’s all.”

“Good thoughts, I hope?” He leaned in, a peck to your lips before you could even respond, and you smiled, stealing another one when he pulled back. 

“Thoughts about us.” your nose bumped his as you leaned up. You tipped your head further, pecking the tip of his nose, and he smiled sweetly. His cheeks flushed with a little warmth, the same way they always did when you gave him this kind of attention, a happy sound escaping him at that affection. 

“Care to share any of these thoughts?”

“All in due time,” You whisper in response, and he merely grunts, “Just thinking about the future.”

“I do that a lot too.”

You knew as much, Azriel had a habit of telling you. When you’d get in bed at night, his head on your chest, all the weight of him grounding you to the mattress as you played with the soft, dark curls atop his head, he’d spill about his day. All the thoughts he’d had, the jokes Cassian had told him, the things that reminded him of you, and his plans. His ideas, even the goofy ones that he knew he wouldn't actually do. 

There wasn’t a thing he ever wanted to keep to himself, and you liked to soak up every part of him that you could. 

The music from inside could reach you, even out here, a band playing beautiful songs and together, the two of you began to sway. No talk was needed but your body moved with his, your feet staying planted as you danced together gently, wrapped in one another’s embrace. His face dipped down, burying into your neck again, and he sighed happily onto your skin. 

The moment was perfect… only broken when Azriel received a small shove. 

Untangling yourselves, he glanced around, gaze dropping to the ground, to see a moody toddler, arms crossed. “Uncle Az, you said we were going to colour in my book!”

Azriel gave you an exasperated look, pressing a final kiss to your cheek, before stepping back. Leaning down, he scooped Nyx up under his arms, lifting him up into his arms. The small boy’s wings batted angrily, portraying his emotions. He truly as a little lordling, always used to getting what he wanted, when he wanted it. 

“Alright, little bat. Come on.” Your mate sighed, adjusting the boy to sit on his hip and stepping towards the door. You watched them go, a small smile on your lips, and he turned back to look at you. “Don’t stay out here too long, love.”

You shook your head, offering your hand to him as you walked forward. His smile grew, and he took your fingers, linking them with his own and raising your clasped hands to kiss your knuckles. Leading you both inside, Nyx babbled on about the drawings he and Az would be colouring in, you were pointedly not invited at any stage of events as you made your way back to the ballroom, and Azriel rolled his eyes fondly when the youngster wasn’t looking. 

Stepping back into the bustle of the room, you glanced around, gasping happily when you spotted a familiar face and two heads of white hair in the crowd. 

Azriel only chuckled, releasing your hand and motioning for you to go, before dropping Nyx down and being led away by the hand. 

Darting through the people, Vivianne saw you just in time, a squeal on her lips as she opened her arms for you to fly into. The two of you collided gently, arms wrapping tightly around one another. 

You cupped her face, kissing both of her cheeks as she smiled, all but bouncing as you were reunited. You’d kept in touch all year, letters going back and forth so fast you could hardly keep up with them, but for one reason or another, you’d yet to have crossed paths again, life always getting in the way. Until now. 

“You’re here, you made it!”

Pulling back from her, Kallias grinned, laughing as he swept you up into a hug, your feet leaving the floor momentarily with his enthusiasm. 

“Oh, I missed you both, so much! I can’t believe it’s been a year, already.” For more than one reason, the time had flown, not just missing your friends or your time with Azriel, but so many things had taken place. “We cannot let so long go by again.”

Vivianne clutched your hands as her husband released you, her forehead coming to your own as she giggled. “We will make it our new resolutions to make it so. Besides, it should be an exciting year, we don’t want to miss a thing.”

You cocked a brow at her statement, but she didn’t expand, not as Mor was rushing over in excitement too, greeting both of them herself, and then Kallias was excusing himself as Rhysand and Helion beckoned him over. Vivianne linked her arm with your own, Mor on the other side, and turned to face you with a smirk as the blonde guided your trio through the room. 

Gathering in the kitchen, a private break away from all the noise, Mor set about preparing drinks, handing them out to you all. Vivianne smiled, cheers-ing with you both, and Mor took a heavy chug from her own as you sipped at yours. 

“Jeez, Mor! What did you put in this?” The burn of alcohol down your throat had the ice queen chuckling, putting her drink down and nudging it away from herself. 

“It’s New Year’s Eve, don’t be a buzzkill!” She chuckled, taking another gulp from her glass as though it were water. 

“I heard Mor is pouring, does that mean we’re getting fucked up?” Nesta slipped into the room, and the blonde cheered excitedly as someone matched her energy, Feyre and Elain following, arm in arm, as the youngest sister rolled her eyes. 

“Looks like Cassian will be carrying someone back home later, before the clock even strikes midnight.” Feyre tutted, but accepted a drink nonetheless as Mor poured them and began to distribute them. 

“What’s the point of having a great, big, hulking boyfriend if not to carry me home when I have fun?”

“Now that I can cheers to,” You grin, tapping your glass on her own, and she smirked. Elain laughed lightly, lifting herself onto the counter, and swinging her legs as she clutched her cup between both hands, wincing as she took that first sip. “Don’t worry, it burns your tastebuds right off after that first taste, now you won’t taste anything else for weeks.”

She giggled at Mor’s scoff, taking a sip, and the six of you gathered around into a tighter group as hushed discussion took over. 

Nesta made sure to fill everyone in on herself and Cassian. The two had no plans to truly settle down anytime soon, far too busy battling and playing with swords to even consider a child. They were going to travel some more this year, Nesta wanted to visit every Court, and while Cassian unfortunately couldn't visit them all, whether it was allergies or laws that kept him barred, he was happy to oblige for most Courts. The Winter Court became the first on her list, when Viv promised her a stay like no other, any time they wanted. 

The High Lord and Lady were battling that stage of ‘terrible twos’ with Nyx. He was bouncing like a ping-pong ball between loving mama or loving dada more, but never both. One was always the enemy. He was also jumping between desperate for a sibling, pleading and begging and fighting as he checked every Solstice box for a baby brother, and deciding if he ever saw another child in his life he’d throw a fit. Feyre had a perpetual headache, and Rhys was at the end of his tether, but both had never been happier,

Elain and Lucien were skipping between here and the human lands, repairing bonds as their bond grew ever stronger, giving Elain the perfect mixed life she’d always dreamt of. Mor and Emerie were moving into their own home, and bickering every single day on how to decorate. 

Then, there was you and Azriel.

Vivianne had chosen to avoid Mor’s attempt on everyone’s lives and had found herself something else to drink. Sipping through the straw coyly, she eyed you, and you waited. “So, you and your Az looked sweet, walking in with baby Nyx. Sweeter with your own baby on his hip, I’m sure.”

You sighed at her, raising your brows, even with the smile growing on your lips. “Not anytime soon.”

“And why not?” She pressed, her hands on her hips like your declaration had ruined her life. 

“Because… we’re taking things slow.” Stirring your drink, you stared happily into the swirling alcohol, smiling to yourself as you thought of your lover. “Took us long enough to get together, we figured we have time to savour every step.”

She rolled her eyes, but smiled in that sisterly way you loved so much. “Well, alright. I can allow that. Not too slowly, I hope.”

“You’re impatient!”

“I’m excited!” She clarified, and you grinned into the rim of your glass, taking a sip. 

“And, where exactly are your little icicles, hm? You and Kallias have been together longer than Az and I.”

Instead of sniping back, and utterly lovestruck, wondrous expression passed over her features. She smoothed a hand over her stomach, and your own flew to your mouth as you gasped. “Well…” She whispered, shrugging bashfully at the shriek you made. 

“You’re serious?” Discarding your drink to the nearest surface, you rushed to her, and she lifted her bulky winter sweater. You hadn't suspected a thing before, but now, as she revealed her stomach, you could see the slight bump forming. She took your wrist, lifting your hand, and your eyes watered as you looked between her face and your hand on her warm skin. “I can’t believe it!”

Everyone crowded in, then. A thousand questions were being fired at the elated new mother-to-be, who was happy to answer every single one, showing off the bump she was beginning to grow. 

Nyx would get that new playmate after all, taking a little of the weight off of Feyre and Rhys, with an heir to the Winter Court at last. Stepping back to let everyone else have their moment too, you leaned back on the counter, smiling at the love and excitement surrounding you at every turn. 

A tugging on the bond pulled your attention away, and a haze fell over everything as the feeling in your chest sharpened to full focus. Smiling to yourself, you rubbed absently at the spot where you could feel your love. Tugging back, the thread between you both vibrated contentedly, and you could feel his happy hum on your skin, the trace of phantom arms around your waist.

“Needy thing, your mate, isn’t he?” Feyre’s voice sliced through the bubble, and she was leaning on the counter beside you. “Do you think it’s an Illyrian thing?”

“Hmm.” You smirked, “Potentially. I can barely get a moment away before he’s pulling along the rope to find me.” You made sure the notion reached him, a warning burst reaching your chest, teasing and light, like a nip to the shell of your ear, and you shuddered. 

“Let’s go find our needy Illyrians, hm?” Her arm laced through your own, following the steps Nesta had not long taken. 

Hidden in the back of the room, Rhysand was spread across a couch, his son sleepily yawning in his lap as he tried to stay awake, while Azriel and Cassian both sat in the low-backed armchairs before the roaring fire. He never had to glance up to feel you coming, raising a hand to his shoulder at the same time you reached out to him, leaning over the chair from behind and kissing the top of his head. 

He pulled you around the chair and across his lap, nuzzling at your cheek as needy kisses trailed from your cheek to your mouth, and you grinned, turning to face him and rewarding him with a single kiss. He didn’t seem too satisfied with that, a glint in his eyes promising more was to come, but he let you adjust comfortably across him. 

“What did you ladies talk about?”

“I can’t tell you that, Az, or it wouldn't be girl talk, would it?” Your words had his eyes narrowing, calculated gaze fixed on you, “What did you boys talk about?”

“Can’t tell you that, baby, or it wouldn't be guy talk.” He retorted, and you scoffed, rolling your eyes at him. He pinched your jaw in his hand as a response, twisting your smushed face back to him and kissing you. He was smirking as he pulled back, leaning in close enough to share breath. “Kal and Viv, right?”

You caved to his charms, smiling as you shared the same space, wrapped up in him, “Mhm.”

He only smiled, nothing more needing to be said between the pair of you. 

“Viv asks when it’ll be us. Says we looked good walking in, hand in hand, Nyx on your hip.” Azriel’s eyes snapped open, straightening up as he put several inches between you both. Your hand smoothed up his chest, settling on his neck, trying to suppress your laughter. His pulse raced under your palm, your hand sliding behind his head and into his hair. “Relax, Azzy. I told her how we’re taking things slow, at our own pace.”

“But— But… I mean— It’s not like I’m opposed to it, but—” He sputtered over his words, and you kissed him silent, his shaky kisses returned with vigour, the trembling bond between you both settling steadily again. 

“We have things to do first, I’m in no rush to move through our milestones. I want you all to myself, for a little while longer.” You pulled him back in, kissing across his cheek, lips travelling to his ear, “And when I say that, I mean it.”

Despite it being whispered, Rhysand still hurled a mental stone at your walls, snickering to himself at your gasp as he eavesdropped on your private dig at him. Turning around, you glared, flipping him off mentally. He smirked, sipping his drink and patting his son between the wings as the small boy slumped asleep over his thighs. 

Turning away, you sealed yourself back into the haze with Azriel, his mouth travelling along your jaw, your head tipped back.

“Must we really wait until midnight before I can kiss you properly, Azzy?”

“I suppose, we could be early for once in our lives. Kiss me now, we’ll pretend it’s midnight.” He whispered, a lazy smile on his face when you looked at him. He was so beautiful, the man who owned your heart was like a work of art, watching you with such sweet love that it made you want to melt. 

“I love you, Azriel.” You whispered onto his lips, lessening the gap between you both, and a content sound rumbled free from his chest. 

“I love you, my dear. To another year, another decade, century, with you.”

“To forever, together.” You finalised, and he nodded, your eyes squeezing shut tighter as a flood of his emotions overwhelmed you from your words. 

“Forever sounds like a wonderful place to start.”