#little Trailer cameo!

[purlturtle]

Untitled Post-Apocalyptic Fic, part 5

(part 1) (part 2) (part 3) (part 4)

“Ingenious,” Helena commented, doing her best not to flinch at every flash of lightning, every crackle of thunder. She nodded towards the water bag in Myka’s hands that was filling rapidly with the rain water pouring down the tarpaulin.

“Thanks,” Myka said dryly. “Can you twist the nozzle open on the filter? The bag should be full enough by now; the pressure will push the water through and into the bag.” She, in turn, nudged her knee against the water bag attached underneath the filter.

Helena complied, and indeed water began to trickle, then stream, into the bag. “Safe water, in the middle of the Badlands, miles from any well,” she marveled.

“Yup.” Myka shifted her weight, grabbed the bag more securely.

There was another bolt of lightning chased by thunder. Helena gritted her teeth. “It’s right above us,” she remarked. “Any chance that it’ll blow over soon?”

Myka weighed her head. “We haven’t had a storm in a while. Could be it’ll be quick, could be it’s picked up a lot of momentum on the prairies. Hard to tell.” She cast Helena a sidelong glance. “We’re safe here.”

Helena bit her lips together so as not to mutter, “Says you.”

They were in a U-shaped cove up in the hills, miles from the road. Probably used to be a whirlpool on the side of a stream, millennia ago, Helena reckoned – now it was half-covered by the angled tarpaulin, which Myka had not tightened all the way at the lower end, so that water was pooling in the slack – and pouring into the filter’s bag.

Helena had to admit that it was reasonably dry underneath the tarpaulin, but she would most certainly have preferred a stout roof over their heads, for a storm as violent as this. The tarpaulin was the flimsiest she’d ever seen in her life.

“Second bag,” Myka said with a curt gesture.

Helena held it out and, at Myka’s nod, switched the now-full bag of filtered water against this empty counterpart. Soon they’d have two gallons of filtered water and another half-gallon of unfiltered. Thirsty as she’d been all day, that fact should be cheerful – but it was hard to feel cheer when thunder rattled one’s brain.

“When did you learn that your shifting included any item attached to that animal’s body?” she asked Myka, if only to distract herself. That was how they had acquired the tarpaulin, and the tent, and the bedrolls – Myka had shifted into what had clearly been a pack horse, after instructing Helena to take everything off of her once she did.

“Happenstance,” Myka replied, “and then trial and error.” She glanced at Helena and shrugged. “I hope you like club sandwiches. They’ve been eighty, ninety percent of my nutrition as of late.”

Helena, who had heard the term but didn’t remember what specific kind of sandwich it signified, simply nodded, in the assumption that Myka had a shifting-related source of said sandwiches. “Yes, of course.” When Christina had been an infant, before Charles had found it within himself to take his sister and her bastard in, Helena had subsisted on the scraps of eel pie shops. Anything with the word “club” in its name could not be bad.

Another crack of thunder sounded, loud and sharp and right overhead. Helena looked out into the darkness beyond their little haven, and saw nothing but night; she was glad that the pack horse’s panniers had also held some fire wood. When she turned back to the flickering fire, Myka had shifted into a dog – lying on its side next to the fire, tail wagging, a small square pack of plastic on its multi-colored rump. Helena dutifully picked it up and looked aside as the dog began to blur again. Not just attached, then, she mused, but simply on the animal. She knew these packs; Artie had eaten (and offered her) sandwiches out of these often.

A small woof made her turn around again; Myka was still – no, again – in dog shape, this time with an apple and two small plastic bottles of water on its side. Again the tail wagged; again Helena picked up the bounty. Again the blur; this time Helena simply closed her eyes, until she heard another woof: another box of sandwiches, for which she was glad: her stomach was growling, and the idea of sharing that one pack had not appealed.

[ar-mage-ddon]

happy birthday to my favorite keykid!!! yesterday!!! i'm a little late!!!

[buildoblivion]

let’s fucking do this ☔️

[d4cluvtrain]

Oh hi Leon.

[wordswhisperinthedark]

GOD. ACROSS THE SPIDERVERSE.

[acmeoop]

Early Toontown Chase (1988)

Storyboards from Who Framed Roger Rabbit by Harald Siepermann and Hans Bacher

[teamfortresstwo]

Still clinging on to the hope that TMP is going to be non-eye coded. I hope it’s like web or spiral or fuck if it’s corruption or lonely that’s be great!

[iluvloganhowlett]

DATING HUGH JACKMAN HCS ࣪𖤐

sfw headcannons of what i imagine it like to date hugh jackman!

warnings: tbh none j a lot of fluff

- hugh is literally the biggest gentleman there is; he’s big on holding open doors, pulling out chairs, opening car doors, paying for dinner, all that stuff

- u def hang around set with him and the rest of the cast

^^ i feel like bc of this, u and ryan would probably end up becoming pretty good friends considering how close him and hugh are

- he does everything in his power to try and make you laugh. it literally brings him sm joy js to even hear a little giggle come out of your mouth

- he’s always talking about u in interviews

^^ stg the host will try and talk ab the show and he’s all “oh yeah y/n gets me lunch everyday on set and brings it to my trailer”

- he’s a big teddy bear.

- i j know this man is the biggest cuddler there is man

- he’s so big on physical touch

- somehow, he manages to snatch tiny props from the set and bring them home to you, talking about some “baby i got you something from on set”

- idk how i thought of this but i feel like he’d sometimes pull pranks on you at home by randomly switching to his american accent mid convo / mid sentence

^^ then he’d end up laughing really hard at the shocked look on your face

- he’d do everything in his power to get you a small cameo or role in any of his movies just to have an excuse to be around you more

- he’d also try to get you invited to interviews

- like i said earlier, he’s a gentleman; he’d fs buy you anything and everything you want

^^ lit as soon as you even look at something in a store a certain way, he’ll either buy it online when you’re home or he’ll sneak away and bring it to the register without you knowing

- the first thing he’d do in the morning is kiss you no matter where it may be; your neck, lips, shoulders, collarbone, back even. he’d j do it

- to focus on you instead of hugh, you find him acting to be adorable and hot at the same time

^^ you’d def gush over how he acts when he makes a mistake, or even the shift from in character to out of character when the director yells cut

alr chat that’s it but i love hugh😯

taglist!!

@velvrei @spazwayy @oatmilkriver @sseleniaa @mei-simp @wittyjasontodd @wolverinesangel @realsimpbitchshit @pickuptruck01 @keigohawks @thereallchristine @zeeader @pink-jello-fish @twinky-wink @malfoys-demigod

[j4gm]

SPOILERS!!! REFERENCES AND EASTER EGGS IN F&C ep. 1: FIONNA CAMPBELL

Here's a bunch of stuff I spotted. Feel free to add more.

During the anime girl hero dream Fionna mentions Hans Brinker, a character from a novel which introduced speed skating to the United States.

The BMO style alarm clock has BMO's voice.

The ducks that steal Marshall Lee's money look like one-headed versions of the two-headed duck from the original Adventure Time title sequence.

Cheers is a real sitcom. Simon previously sang its theme song in the episode Simon & Marcy, and now it seems to have manifested in the human AU due to his connection with it.

Fionna says "stop acting crazy" to Cake with the same meter as Marceline said "stop acting crazy" to Ice King in the episode I Remember You.

We all spotted this in the trailer but there's a Magic Man hat in this shot. Magic Man's hat was most recently seen being worn by Betty.

The Betty statue also suggests that Simon's psyche has significant influence over this world. The fountain includes frogs, a symbol of change that was previously also used in Temple of Mars. And Fionna mentions the statue underwent renovation twelve years ago, which is the same amount of time that's passed in the prime universe since Betty's amalgamation with GOLB.

It would seem Mrs. Abadeer runs a vacuum cleaner company as well as being Fionna's landlady. And Queenie runs an accounting business as well as the tour bus.

The stickers on Marshall Lee's guitar case are all references to real life punk rock bands. X-Ray Pex = X-Ray Spex, Daikini Kill = Bikini Kill, PM might be a reference to AM as in the Arctic Monkeys. I'm not sure what Las Crudas and Dark Eyes are references to. Perhaps someone more familiar with punk rock can let me know?

In case you were wondering, the credits confirm that this is human genderswapped Fern. It's a bit more obvious now that we can see all her green clothes and backpack, and given what she said about her dreams being super messed up. I'm not gonna go through the rest of the cameo characters in this episode because most of them are pretty obvious or already got figured out when the trailer dropped. That said, if anyone knows who the bus driver is meant to be please let me know.

The sword in the window of this games shop looks very similar to Fionna's sword from the original comic series.

The latte that Gumball - ahem I mean Gary - makes in this scene features PB's swan.

Okay one more cameo mention because I feel like it might become significant later. This is Ice Queen.

Fionna and Cake are dreaming about their apartment block in the credits of this episode, but it has a roof like the Tree Fort and the same little boat with a telescope and parasol.

Episode 2 to follow!

[hiitsm]

Transient Connection: A Meeting of Worlds

You meet a beautiful woman at your workplace, who isn't a professional actress like you.

Fluff

Note: I'm not very well-versed in the acting world, so it's not described in great detail.

Request here

-

You just stepped out of the small makeup trailer, ready to shoot a brief scene. However, you didn't know who you would be acting with. You were aware that a character would be making a cameo, but no one had informed you which character or which actor or actress would be playing the role. This lack of information left you feeling annoyed, as you needed to know for your preparations.

You practically sprint to your manager’s trailer and burst inside. "Valentina, I love you, but please tell me how I’m supposed to prepare without knowing some important key information," you say, your voice a bit raised, though unintentionally.

You’re just a little nervous. This is your first big movie, your first major role, and hopefully, your first big breakthrough. While you’re not entirely unknown as an actress, having played roles in small series, you've never been the lead. This is different, and you want everything to be perfect.

"It wasn’t finalized until just a little while ago. She almost got cold feet and didn’t want to do it anymore," your manager Valentina says, her attention focused on her managerial tasks. Valentina is more like a best friend to you, and her multitasking nature is something you've grown accustomed to.

"That's just great," you say, rolling your eyes sarcastically. The last thing you want is to play this role with an unprofessional actress who would rather not be there. You believe that someone who is fully committed deserves the role. But maybe that's just your selfishness talking.

"I think she’s a professional football player. Everyone on this set loves her, really," Valentina says, wiggling her eyebrows at you.

You walk over and playfully smack her arm. "Why would they hire a professional football player? Doesn’t she just want to play football?" you sigh heavily, worried. The last thing you want is for this to go badly because they chose a football player instead of an actual actress.

"Just have some faith in the writers and everyone else who thought this was a good idea. And be nice and kind, just like your mother taught you," Valentina says, pointing at you accusingly.

"I’m always nice and kind. And since when do you talk about my mother? You don’t like her," you retort, taking a bite of your banana to fill your stomach before heading on set for a few hours.

"We both don’t like your mother," Valentina adds, raising her eyebrows. "But she did teach you manners, so use them." With that, Valentina hops out of the van, and you follow right behind her.

"We will first have a reading with her and her manager, getting to meet them now," Valentina tells you, almost running, which is unusual for her. You think maybe the two of you will be late, because Valentina never runs.

"I did hear that she’s very pretty," Valentina turns her head towards you, waggling her eyebrows even more.

"Of course she is, Val. She's a professional football player," you reply, shrugging your shoulders a little. "Maybe she has a nice manager," you tease, and before you can add anything else, Valentina shoves you while you're running, almost causing you to trip.

"Ah, there are the two of you. We were already wondering where you were," you hear a man's voice say.

You find yourself staring into a pair of beautifully greenish eyes.

That's not a man, you think.

Momentarily lost in their captivating gaze.

Where did the man's voice go?

Her eyes are stunning, and you can't seem to look away. Lost in your thoughts and dreams, you only snap back to reality when the man's voice returns.

"Hello, my name is Joseph, and this is Alexia," he says, indicating the woman with the enchanting eyes.

Ah, there's the man. Her manager.

Valentine nudges you slightly, bringing you out of your trance. You extend your hand for Alexia to shake, then Joseph's. "Hi, my name is y/n," you say a little sheepishly, feeling completely out of character. But as soon as you notice, you push the feeling aside, eager to make a good impression.

Valentine talks all three of your heads off, explaining a little bit to each of you as you walk to get the reading done. Alexia is walking beside you, and when you glance down at her hands, you notice they shake a little. You assume it's from nerves, and an urge to help her feel more at ease washes over you.

"Have you ever done something like this before?" you ask her softly. She blushes a little, quickly becoming shy. "No, this is all new for me," she says, with a hint of irritation.

You realize she probably doesn't want to be here, she just wants to play football. "You want to be back on the football field again soon?" you inquire quietly, careful not to overstep.

"Si, but we're in America right now, and my favorite football field is in Barcelona," she replies, her confidence growing at the mention of Barcelona.

"I love Barcelona. When I'm off, I love to go there," you share with a smile, watching as her eyes light up. You decide quickly that you want to see her eyes like that more often.

"Barcelona is great. I'm glad you like it already," she responds, wearing a huge smile, visibly more at ease.

"We both flew in only a few hours ago, so we are both a little bit jet-lagged. We have a strict schedule, in four hours, we need to get on the plane again because she has an important match in two days," Joseph tells Valentine.

You almost feel sad hearing this. You only have a few hours with her. But you can't dwell on it, right? You're a professional actress playing a scene with a professional football player who is now dabbling in acting. It's only professional to play the scene and part ways again after.

"The two of you can prepare for you seen there" Valentine's points to the secluded beach. It was be a beach scene anyway. Just a small talk scene. But you still notice that Alexia is appearing very anxious so you will still try and do you best to ease her nerves.

"The two of you can prepare for your scene over there," Valentine says, pointing to the secluded beach. It was going to be a beach scene anyway, just a small talk scene. However, you still notice that Alexia appears very anxious, so you resolve to do your best to ease her nerves.

The two of you walk over to the beach and start a small conversation. "So, if you're a professional footballer, what brings you to acting today?" you ask, hoping your tone sounds as kind as you intend.

"Just for the brand," she replies curtly, but you sense there's more she wants to say, though the words don't come out.

"That's nice," you respond, unsure of what else to add.

"I just want to play football, but this is part of it too," she says, her gaze shifting to the waves crashing onto the shore.

"I understand that a little bit. I love to act, but I don't love the interviews and all the promotion stuff that comes with it," you admit a bit shyly. This woman makes you feel shy, which is unusual for you.

"Yeah, I feel the same," she says, finally meeting your eyes again and giving you a big smile.

As you arrive at the beach, you initially wanted to offer her some acting tips, but you realize she's doing really well. The only issue is that she's a bit shy and awkward. However, with the preparation time you have, you know it's going to be okay.

The two of you were feeling at ease in each other's company, chatting about everything and nothing, and laughing a lot. She made you feel special, a different kind of special. After a while, Alexia received a phone call. You could only see a lion emoji as the caller ID, no name.

"Lo siento, that's my best friend," she said as she picked up the FaceTime call.

"Hola Ale, have you made a move on her yet?" you heard through the phone, and Alexia's cheeks turned bright red. "I mean, you love that show and you always tell me how good she looks," her best friend added, unaware that you were sitting right beside her.

"No, sí, no, ella está sentada a mi lado, idiota," she responded, switching to Spanish in her embarrassment.

"Well, just to let you know, she just picked up all her stuff from your apartment. I just wanted to tell you. Have fun!" And with that, the phone call ended abruptly.

There was a moment of silence between you two—comfortable for you, but maybe not for Alexia. You tried to break the silence without crossing any boundaries. "So, who picked up stuff from your apartment?" you asked quietly, hoping not to be too direct.

"My ex-girlfriend," she replied softly, and you noticed she wasn't ready to discuss it further. The silence settled in again. After a little while, you saw a tear streaming down the right side of her face. "Is this okay?" you asked, moving your finger toward her cheek to wipe it away.

"Sí," she said, looking out toward the shore. "Lo siento, she just hurt me a lot," she whispered, barely audible.

"It's okay to let yourself feel your feelings," you said gently.

"But I don't want to feel so sad anymore," she whispered again.

"You know what usually helps me feel a bit better?" you asked, and she shook her head softly. "Dancing on the beach. Come on."

You put a random song on your phone and started to dance. Alexia looked up at you with wide eyes, then a bright smile spread across her face as she watched you dancing so silly, so freely, so uncaring of what anyone might think.

"Come on," you encouraged, holding out your hand for her to grab. She finally took it, and both of you ignored the tingling sensation that passed between you. But you both felt it.

You didn't let go of her hand, and the two of you danced freely to the music. You were laughing and smiling, feeling an unburdened joy. It was wonderful to see her eyes light up and her smile brighten the world around you. Hearing her laugh was like music itself, a melody of pure happiness. Watching her, so beautiful and full of life, you felt an incredible connection growing between you.

"Are you guys done?" you hear behind you. It's Valentina, and you give her an annoyed look. She smirks at you, clearly aware that you've caught feelings for the blonde professional footballer rather quickly.

"Just a second, we'll be right there," you say, gently pushing her away from the beach.

"Hurry up!" she playfully screams back at you. You roll your eyes, but when you turn around again, you're greeted by a breathtaking sunset you hadn't noticed before due to your dancing.

Alexia stands there, bathed in the warm glow, looking stunning. You wish you could do something, wish you had the courage to ask her to spend more time together. But you also know she's heartbroken, so you decide to give her the space she probably needs.

"The sunset looks beautiful," she tells you.

"Yes, it does. Do you want a picture?" you ask, and she nods excitedly.

It's a beautiful moment, and you secretly hope she'll share it on social media so you can see it again, maybe a thousand times more.

"Gracias," she says, grateful for the offer.

"Now, we should go shoot our scene." She grabs your arm and pulls you with her, and you follow, feeling a mix of excitement and nervousness.

-

Maybe a part 2 in the works if y'all want to?

[chaoticladyfire]

Things I screamed about in ATSV (spoilers)

-Got to rewatch the film so I’m just going to add the colours changing to warmer tones when Gwen hugs her father. Not even ten minutes in and I was already crying.

-Realised that we missed the Gwen-Vulture fight BUT got to see Jessica Drew enter the scene like a bad ass in her bad ass bike and hearing the audience collectively say ‘me too’ when Gwen asked if Jessica could adopt her. 

-Screaming OSCAR ISAAC when Miguel spoke

-Lyla. Just Lyla.

- ‘Do you say anything other than no?’ ‘No-YES!’ more of miguel and jessica pls

-The Spot’s introduction. I didn’t see any promotional stuff, teasers or even trailers before watching this film so I had no idea who or what the The Spot was which was great because he really went from villain of the week to villain of the movie. And they clearly had a great time choreographing the fight scenes with him

-Miles’ heating up the beef patty while the spot and the convenience store man argue

-Miles patting the spot’s with a ‘good cow’ text

-Gwen and Miles both having to deepen their voices to avoid being recognised by their respective cop dads

-Miles saying that he can get two cakes when the counsellor says you can’t have your cake and eat it too and then bringing two cakes for his father’s party and neither of them saying what he wanted to convey. 

-Rio and Jeff scolding an annoyed miles but instantly smiling when a relative hugs them what an universal experience 

-Gwen teasing Miles for drawing her in his notebook almost obsessively but also breaking the biggest rule to spend time with him knowing the consequences. 

-As they went to talk, my friend leaned over and said ‘yeah I bet they will talk’ and when they only talked he groaned very loudly at which point I had to remind him Miles was only 15 

-Watching Jeff talk to Spiderman about his son not knowing his son is spiderman

-The DJ increasing the volume when Miles’ parents started scolding him in the middle of the party (the real mvp of the movie actually) 

-JK Simmons cameo that no one seems to be talking about??? Embarrassingly enough I had to literally scream into my friend’s ear for most of the people to realise it was indeed JK Simmons

-Just the entire Mumbattan scene. It was so exciting to see my city be represented like that, still a bit cliched in my opinion but not like Slumdog so obviously they have updated their views. Everything from the traffic gag to Pav’s rant about chai tea had the theatre howling. Also the detail of the thought boxes (?) and sounds being written in Hindi 

-Screaming DANIEL KALUUYA

-My friend and I are huge fans of the UK punk scene (her for the ideologies and myself for the music and fashion) so Hobie was a dream come true. He was already super cool with his guitar and mohawk costume but when he revealed his face it was just so amazing

-Gayatri is every indian’s dream girl with her modern shirt-flannel and jeans combo mixed with bangles and piercings I really wish we get to see more of her in the next movie. Anyway there was a lot of wolf-whistling and hooting for her and Pav

-Also Pavitr literally means pure I don’t know if they did that on purpose or not but I love it

-His pet name being Pav cured my soul

-’This is the most emotional I have seen him’ and Captain Singh has no emotions at all

-I want to see how they came up with so many spider designs because each was so unique and immediately endearing. My friend who is also a big dinosaur fan screamed DINOSAUR 

-Kind of obsessed with how detailed Ben Reilly’s arms are they did not need to go that hard with it

-Tom Holland’s Spider-Man being referred to as ‘the little nerd’ by Miguel

-When everyone was making puns about the Spot my friend leaned over and said ‘i wonder which hole the spot prefers’ it is a miracle we are still friends actually

-The Donald Grover cameo!!!

-Peter B Parker having a cute little baby with the love of his life is what he deserves

-Miguel O Hara is one step away from becoming a Batman-Spiderman 

-Hobie’s admiration for Mayday being the avatar of chaos Spider-baby

-Screaming ANDY SAMBERG

-I think they saw the appreciation for the art style in the previous film and then trebled it for this film and I cannot thank them enough for it

-Peter complaining about how Miguel breaks the Spiderman tradition of being funny and witty and Miguel being the first anomaly 

-Every scene with the Spot is very unnerving because as I said, you watch him transform from this joker to a literal void of vengeance and it is every bit of terrifying

-Miguel is a man suffering from the destruction of an entire universe because of his selfish actions and forcing that anomaly narrative on a fifteen year old boy who became a spiderman on accident and doesn’t want his father to die because of that. Unlike the Spot, who isn’t even human anymore, Miguel is drowning in grief and guilt and trying to ignore it by holding the weight of the spider-verse on his shoulder. I hated him so much for making a boy go through that but then I just couldn’t in the end. 

-Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire cameo!!! Hopefully we’ll get a fun Tom Holland one too in the next movie.

-’Let me guess, he died?’ being a therapist for Spider Men must be a fairly boring job after a few patients.

-I just loved the absolute of wrongness of the scene where Miles returns ‘home’. The rain and darkness. I didn’t really think about Rio asking Miles what happened to his hair because I thought she was referring to the rain (although of course she wouldn’t ask him why his hair was wet when it was obviously raining outside) but realised something was wrong when he didn’t know about comic con but she did because in the first film there’s a joke about Peter B Parker explaining the concept to Miles. 

- This movie is not good for my father related issues

-The glaring neon welcome sign when the gang end up in Earth 42

-How did Uncle Aaron get even scarier? 

-Miles being the Prowler is honestly a great twist I saw it coming but still felt the shock of the reveal

-Prowler Miles having an accented voice meaning his father probably died when he was young and he only had his mom growing up

-Can’t wait for the original spider team to return for the third film seeing as they brought back Spider-Man Noir and Spider Ham and Peni Parker

-Screaming WHAT when the ‘to be continued’ appeared because that cliffhanger is absolutely destructive. All that adrenaline and excitement just popped. I’m still oscillating between being impressed and being disappointed. 

I probably skipped over a lot of other scenes because these were the most memorable and I only watched the film once (unfortunate) but I can’t wait for the movie to hit streaming services and watch it again and again for all the other details I missed. Ill probably keep adding things as I remember

[powderblueblood]

HELLFIRE & ICE — eddie munson x f!oc as enemies to star-crossed lovers

CHAPTER FIVE — CHEERLEADERS MAKE BAD NEIGHBORS

PREVIOUS | MASTERLIST | NEXT

summary: after you get kicked off the cheerleading squad by an enraged tina, you're stranded in a rainstorm of biblical proprtions- and the only safe haven is eddie munson's trailer. fuck. content warnings: MINORS DNI I'M NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU HERE- male masturbation, sexualized language, some mild objectification, cursing, smoking, drinking, drug mention, reader backstory (i do it for the plot the plot the plot), steve harrington cameo, reader is a pretentious bitch word count: 10.1k

Dear reader, Joan Didion said something because Joan Didion is always saying something. Particularly to me. She comes at me hard, smacking me in the back of the head with perfect clarity and I have not gotten around to not resenting her for it yet. 

‘I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.’

Joan Didion probably did not have to stay on nodding terms with a girl she used to be in order to score a cheerleading scholarship because her family blitzed her college fund on ill-chosen legal advice. 

But she’s got a point.  

You remember that day with perfect clarity. 

Middle school had been a lesson in elocution, thanks to your then-best friend Phoebe’s older sister Casey. Phoebe was a relic of your former life– a bookish indoor kid with Coke bottle glasses, a slight stammer and a distinct lack of style. Despite this, you loved Phoebe and she loved you. But more than that, more than anything, you loved that Phoebe had an older sister. 

A cool older sister. 

Casey was popular in the best way, which is to say that she wasn’t showy about it but she wasn’t humble either. By recognizing the power of being hot and likeable, she knew nothing could ever touch her. 

You wanted to be just like that. 

You remember the first time Casey told you you’ve got potential. Her hand-me-downs were a little too big for Phoebe, because Casey had boobs and Phoebe’s hadn’t come in yet. Even as a pre-teen, you knew an opportunity when you saw it. Can I try that top? And you did, flipping your hair and adjusting yourself in the mirror just like you’d watched Casey do a hundred times, sitting on her bedroom floor and soaking up her knowledge while Phoebe moaned and sulked about being bored. 

Check you out, hot stuff, Casey had smirked, but not in a way where you felt stupid. You’ve got potential.

The shirt didn’t feel entirely right on you, but the way Casey regarded you did. 

Fast forward– your first day of freshman year. You were in the parking lot, stepping out of the passenger side of Casey’s car. Phoebe slid out of the back seat, shoulders slumped forward. You were dressed in an outfit that you and Casey spent hours agonizing over the night before–first impressions are everything, girl–while, again, Phoebe looked on glaring. 

Come meet some of the crew, Casey said, pointedly to you and not to Phoebe. 

Hey– I thought were were going to find our homerooms together, Phoebe protested, grabbing you by the elbow. She knew she wasn’t invited. And she didn’t care– she’d never cared for Casey and her ‘airhead ways’, as she so derisively called them. 

Yeah, girl! you affirmed, a note-perfect impression of her older sister. Phoebe’s big eyes flared with disbelief. You’d spent junior high carefully studying Casey’s every movement, absorbing and adopting her behaviors as your own. Stella Adler would have loved your ass. Don’t worry about it. I’ll catch up with you later, ‘kay?

Make a move, freshman! Casey yelled, and you came trotting after her. There would be no catching up later, and you knew that. You bit back the sinking in your stomach with a Bonne Bell-glossed smile. 

Look, I love my sister, Casey murmured, but I’m glad that you’re my little freshman experiment, ‘kay? You are way more fun that Phoebs and her goddamn library card. 

You nodded, wordlessly grateful. Way more fun. The older girl confiding in you like this made you feel warm, included, grown-up. But not quite so grown-up that you remembered to watch where you were going– the laces of your left Chuck Taylor All-Stars came undone, sending you tripping– tripping–

Oof! Right into the muscular arms of Steve Harrington. Steve Harrington and his autumn colored eyes, his swathe of hair that seemed to grow more voluminous the more girls he flirted with, his shock of grown-up cologne and his perfect, perfect, perfect smile.

But it wasn’t just Steve Harrington. It was also all the surrounding popular kids that had already made a name for themselves coming up alongside you in middle school–Tina, Carol and her boyfriend Tommy Hagan–mingling with the older kids. 

You okay? Steve asked, his voice all breathy and cute the way boys voices are when they’re halfway making fun of you. 

Uh-huh, you nodded, lashes fluttering like crazy as you wracked your brain for something smart to say. 

Let me help you out here.

Then Steve did something you never thought possible, something right out of your daydreams. He got down on one knee and started to re-tie your shoe. 

Better watch yourself, Lacy, he said, tightening the bunny ears, gazing right up at you, Wiping out on the first day is not a good look.

Lacy. Lacy. Your heartbeat quickened at the nickname, hammering like hummingbird wings. It was the greatest thing you’d ever heard– it makes you feel fresh. New. Seen for the first time. Seen by Steve Harrington for the first time. 

Can you blame me? you said before you knew you were saying it; a common occurrence with you, You’re just too easy to fall for, Harrington. 

You drawled out too easy like you’re making fun of him, which of course you weren’t, because he’s Steve Harrington and you would never– but it earned some warm guffaws from the surrounding kids and a little ugh, please, from Tommy Hagan. 

Hagan’s something else. Hagan’s hated you since day dot, and you him. You remember his merciless teasing of some kid during Nancy Wheeler’s thirteenth birthday party, the last boy-girl party of your middle school careers, goading that they were too chicken to go into the closet with you for Seven Minutes in Heaven.

Steve grinned at you, eyebrows quirking upward. A fizzing feeling ran through your sternum and you felt like you might faint. Casey threw an arm around your shoulder, a magnet for attention. Well, it looks like some of you already know my little Lacy! You guys better be fuckin’ cool to her, okay, or else you’ve got me to answer to. 

You smiled up at her, the older sister you’d always prayed for, and she looked impressed with you. That’s all you wanted. That’s all you craved. That, and for Steve Harrington and everybody else to never quit calling you Lacy. 

And they didn’t.

Everything you’d gleaned from Casey equipped you to cruise through freshman year with no speedbumps, no checkpoints– you knew exactly how to wear your hair, how to flirt, how not to flirt, what not to eat, who not to be seen with… and even better than that, these people really took a shine to you. The girls especially.

Hawkins isn’t kind to teenage girls. It’s heavy with passive-aggressive Midwestern sensibility, with all the backwards, misogynistic attitude that comes along with that. It’s not overt, it’s insidious. It makes sense that these girls were scared. Few women make it out of here, and look at the ones that don’t. Their mothers. Your mother.

But what was even scarier was to want something more. To strive for better and be met with the begrudgery of your attempt. To think about life outside the snowglobe of this wicked little town. 

That's the thing with wanting. It doesn’t leave you alone. It gnaws at you while you zone out in the cafeteria, churning around with the half fat yogurt in your stomach. It finds you in the middle of the night, awake on the floor of your friend Carol’s room after an evening of pounding secret wine coolers and picking apart the rest of the Hawkins student body for their flaws and faults, looking around at your friends and thinking, 

God, I fucking hate these people. God, I’ve got to get out.

And you were working on it. Like a motherfucker, you were working on it– perfect grades, perfect attendance, the perfect extracurriculars in an excruciating balancing act with your demanding social life. Keep your record spotless and you could fly the coop to any college you wanted.

One such extracurricular was–is cheerleading. And god, you were great. You’re a flyer, one of the shining, pretty faces responsible for revving up the Hawkins Tigers and their adoring fans. Given your propensity for perfectionism, it’s an obvious position for you. Tina, the reigning captain of the cheer squad, had even taken you under her wing and spit shined up your back handsprings when you tried out as a freshman. Tina had a prior career as a child gymnast, making her a shoo-in for the title come senior year. And here she is now, hollering you all into formation. 

It’s Thursday, and it’s still the week from hell. You had almost forgot about cheer practice, but here you are, in your green and white and gold, ponytail too tight and bruise fading out. The tension between you and Tina casts a thick haze over the gym, the other, less-clued-in members of the squad not exactly knowing where to look. 

It probably wasn’t fair, outing Tina and her indiscretion with Hagan like that. But you felt like a cornered animal. It was all you could do, after all of them subtly chipping away at you for weeks when you’d done nothing but be there for them. Wiped their tears. 

Bought their crabs lotion, in Tina’s case. 

“Sloppy, Lacy! Again!” She’s drilling you like you’ve never been drilled before. Each twist and flip you perform, she finds something wrong with it– and you can’t even tell her she’s wrong. You have gotten sloppy, because your head’s not in the game. While cheerleading was a social and athletic high at one time, it wasn’t high on your list of priorities right now. Dismounting your bases and tugging your ponytail ever tighter over your skull, you stalk towards her. 

“Alright, Tina!” you yell, bubbling over with frustration. “How about you just drop the Russian gym coach bit and tell me what I’m doing wrong? Or is yelling at me all you got?” 

She does her best attempt at a withering glare. You can’t help but think it looks like something she learned from you. “How about I show you instead?”

Tina shoulder checks you, hard, and calls to one of the underclassmen. A mousy sophomore with sandy bangs and blazing Bambi eyes. This kid looks terrified, and knowing Tina’s reputation, she should be. “Cunningham! You’re up!”

Chrissy Cunningham. Right. Heir to the throne of Hawkins High. You don’t think you’ve heard her speak more than a couple of words and most of those have been in response to her Aryan meathead boyfriend, Jason Carver. 

But for what Cunningham lacks in vocal force, she makes up for in aerodynamics. This girl makes a basket toss look like ballet, ponytail pirouetting as she lands in the bases’ arms. Every move, faultless. She’s locked in. 

“That is what I want. What I don’t want, Lacy, is a flyer that looks like she’s losing control of her rectum mid-toss,” Tina hollers. “We all know how crucial this weekend is. Not just for us, but for the Tigers, too. Right? So that means the last thing we need is dead weight dragging us down.” She locks her laserlike stare on you. “Right?”

The squad mumbles in the affirmative. Chrissy Cunningham visibly gulps.

And you? A knife slices right through you, cold and exacting. You almost gag, trying to swallow through your thickening throat. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” 

“You tell me, Lace. You’re the one that knows everything.”

You don’t waste a second of time trying to counter-argue, because you can’t be sure it won’t end in your limbs flailing, trying to smash Tina’s head against the waxed floorboards of the gym. Instead, you grab your bag. You give the squad a grimacing nod and head to heave the double doors open. 

The sound of your sneakers squeaking against the linoleum floor makes you want to tear your shoes off and throw them through a window, just to watch the glass shatter.

You really never thought of yourself as a violent person, not until– everything happened. 

But now, god, now you just want to punch and tear and rip everything apart. This slow burn of your social status, your friends, your tether to reality as you know it slipping away is torturous. You’d rather burn it all up than let it swallow you whole. 

Standing on the front steps of the school, your eyes automatically dart to the parking lot. 

It’s not there. He’s not there.

And why would he be? you think, starting in the direction of the trailer park. You hadn’t spoken to him since that day in the record store, leaving him hanging with his hands behind his back and his mouth in that grin.

There was a reason for that. Call it post-high clarity or something else, but you knew right then you needed to focus the fuck up. Quit acting out because of your daddy’s mistakes and prove all of these shitheels wrong once and for all. 

Blend in. Stop causing trouble. Fall in line and study hard and cheer harder and get the hell out of dodge once you get your hands on that high school diploma. By whatever means necessary. Those means really did not include hanging out with Eddie Munson for even a second longer than you already had. 

–which is a nice thought and all, but Tina really shit all over that one with this shedding the dead weight move. 

The clouds above you carry the most pathetic of pathetic fallacies, gray and pregnant with rain that starts to hit you square on the crown of your head in fat, heavy drops. You’re still fifteen minutes from the trailer park, at least, and you don’t have a raincoat. You don’t have an umbrella. And you don’t fucking care.

You stomp up the dirt drive leading into Forest Hills, the pleats of your green skirt heavy with water, your cheerleader’s cardigan weighing down your shoulders. Your white knee-high socks are flecked with mud and getting dirtier with every sloppy step. And the rain, the relentless relentless rain, is streaming into your eyes, streaming mascara with it. 

You gasp against the cold of the downpour as you approach your trailer– and a glowing yellow light catches in your peripheral vision. His bedroom, the one you can see into from your bedroom. Though you try not to look. And sometimes you fail. 

You don’t see much, when you do look. It’s mostly his hunching figure, bent over his guitar or some binder or book or map or figurine. But he always seems calmer, the frenetic energy he wears around like chainmail finally falling to the floor. Watching him like that makes you want to breathe a sigh of relief right along with him, just to see if you’d feel similarly. Calmer. 

Calm is not how you feel right now, wiping the rain from your face as you dig in your bag for your keys. Once, twice, thrice they slip out of your hands, and on the fourth try, you finally get them in the door. And then– the key strains in the lock. Come on. This door has always been unnecessarily sticky, but this wasn’t really the time– you push and you push the silver key to the left with no give. 

Was your mom in there? Had she left her key in the door by accident before she went on another overnighter with Prince Valium? “Mom! Mom!” you yell, hammering on the door. No dice. You pull at the key again, and pull and pull and– 

Snap.

You shudder, a full body shake that’s only partially down to the rainwater that’s soaked you right to the bone marrow. The key has snapped off in the lock, leaving you standing there with a useless silver nub. 

“Fuck!” you holler, “Fuckfuckfuckfuck fuck! Fucking–shit!” 

Your fists go straight to the side of the trailer, banging one after the other against the metallic veneer. You don’t care that it hurts your knuckles, you want it to dent or crack or something, you want to not feel so impotent and fucking useless, but here you are! 

“Hey! Asshole!”

Your head whips around, heavy, sodden ponytail smacking you in the face. 

Eddie Munson is leaning out his bedroom window, barely visible through the downpour. 

“Keep it down! You’re in a residential goddamn area!” He’s not smiling that shiteating smile. He’s not even grinning. He’s just glowering at you, which is the look you’re most accustomed to seeing him wear. Even so, it feels– it feels– it makes you feel worse. 

“Fuck you!” you scream across to him, “Who died and made you the fucking neighborhood watch?!”

“Go inside, you lunatic!”

“My fucking– my key broke off, dickhead!” 

That makes his brow loosen a little bit. You just stand there, gasping in the rain. And then he disappears from the window–

–only to fling open the front door of his trailer. 

“Come on,” he grumbles, massaging the space between his eyebrows like he can’t believe what he’s fucking doing. 

“No.” 

“What? Cut the shit, Lacy, come inside.” 

“No! I don’t want to!” 

Munson’s face opens up in an expression of sheer incredulity– and you partially can’t believe yourself either. What is it about him that just makes you shove and shove and shove, unable to let him win– or in this case, unable to let him help? 

“Fine! Fucking drown out there for all I care!” The trailer door slams.

Your teeth have started to chatter, and your options from here on out are… walk or hitch your way back to town and drag your sodden ass somewhere there’s a phone where you then call your mom and pray she’ll pick up (she won’t) and tell her about the lock and try to tell her about the cheerleading squad and pray she’ll understand how upset you are (she won’t) and how much of an awful spiral this whole year has become and it’s not even Christmas yet and–

The trailer door swings back open. 

Eddie Munson comes stalking out into the rain, white Reeboks splattering mud everywhere. He’s wearing that shirt from his Dungeons and Dragons club, the one with the big fucking smug Satan splayed across it and you wonder, did he model that after himself? 

“What’s your fucking problem?” he asks, point blank. It feels like he’s aiming something at you. 

“I’m having a shitty fucking day!” you scream in response, making that dog belonging to that red headed kid sister of Billy Hargrove’s yap somewhere in the distance. “And I keep telling you, I don’t need your fucking–”

“Help? Right!” he scoffs, loud and indignant, crossing his arms across his chest. The fabric of the ringer tee is changing color before your eyes, clinging to him. “You don’t need my help yet you always take it, you don’t wanna be seen with me yet you end up at my lunch table, in my van, smoking my weed– you know, it may shock you but I’m not exactly thrilled to be seen with you either, Lacy! I mean, playing chauffeur to a grade A certified bitch that wouldn’t give me the time of day unless she was desperate? Who stood by and let her shitty friends, who aren’t even her friends anymore, make mine and my friends’ life a living hell for how many years? What kind of an asshole does that make me? How pathetic is that?” 

The way he spits the word bitch– it was different from the way he said it in the record store. There, it felt like a come-on. A compliment. Here, it feels like a curse. But oh, he doesn’t stop there! You are rooted to the spot, an unmoving target for his justified rage. 

“You can’t even play ignorant, y’know, because I’ve seen you. You’re smarter than them. You know how godawful those people are–Harrington, Carver, Carol, fucking Hagan worst of all–and you just let ‘em run. Because you needed that status, you needed to be the most evil fucking twat at the twat table, and for what? They left you, Lacy! They all left you!” 

You’re not sure at what point in his speech you started sobbing but at its crescendo, you yelp. It’s a high, pathetic sound you wish you could stuff back inside your throat and hopefully choke yourself with. See, you know all these things. You’ve told them to yourself in your most honest moments, of which there are not many, but having Eddie Munson lay them out for you in the pouring rain– it’s horrible. You’re horrible. 

Eddie’s arms move from where they were bound on his chest. Okay, that was an outburst, sure, but he didn’t mean to make you cry. And you’re like, really crying. He can’t stand it when girls cry, and you, in particular–you, having never displayed much emotion beyond bemusement and annoyance and mild disgust toward him–is especially frightening. 

And then you let out this scream. It comes right from the center of your chest, rumbling and primal and visceral and real. It’s a real noise, not one you put careful, curative thought into, tuning it just right before you let it out. Because in this instance, he’s right! You’ve worked so hard, and for what! For fucking nothing! For it to blow up in your face! So you let out another howl– and it feels so, so good. A feeling of satisfaction, more than a feeling of relief–

–so Eddie screams too. God, that feels fantastic.

His is heavier than yours, obviously, because he’s a guy and he probably screams as a hobby in whatever metal band he supposedly plays in. But you like that sound. You like the way it seems to ring off the exteriors of the trailer, ricocheting around like a pinball in its machine. 

A couple more painful sobs escape you, and Eddie’s taking tentative steps toward you, like you’re a snarling animal he’s trying to coax. 

In ways, you are, but that’s because you feel hunted. You have to blink, through tears and through rain, but you see that his shirt is so soaked that it’s see-through. You can see a vague suggestion of a tattoo on his chest. You see that he’s fighting a smile. 

This is so stupid. This is so ridiculous, that you could make a noise like that and completely short circuit the white hot anger he was spewing at you. 

“Come inside,” he breathes, a little less than a foot of space between you, “You lunatic.”

Your head, so heavy on your neck, so heavy from crying, so heavy from carrying your spiteful brain around, falls against his chest. 

“Uhh…” Eddie mumbles, hands hovering behind your back, not sure if he’s supposed to embrace you or if you’re about to rip his heart out of his chest. Either could be true. 

You know what you’d prefer. 

You’re positive he doesn’t here you exhale into his chest, into the mouth of the cartoon Satan, into the thrum of his jumping heartbeat. Sorry. I’m really… I’m so sorry.

“Hey,” he murmurs, “hey. Shit.” His hand finally rests in between your shoulder blades. You let him guide you inside, and he even picks up the book bag you had thrown in the mud. You reach, try to grab it from him, but he yanks it out of your grasp. Half teasing, half assuring you that it’s okay.

A squeaky, squelching silence settles between you two as you stand in his doorway. You’re creating a puddle near some old work boots. You wonder if they’re his– you’ve never seen him not wear those Reeboks. 

“So… welcome,” he cringes, emitting a pitchy, awkward laugh. You follow him through to the kitchenette, which is identical to your kitchenette, except every surface is not covered in legal correspondence or empty wine bottles or too-expensive tchotchkes. The light in here seems dimmer, warmer. There’s a distinct aroma of stale cigarette smoke and old coffee, which you breathe in deep. “Sorry for the mess–”

“It’s fine. It’s good mess,” you say, a little distant. You peer around the place like you’re in a gallery. 

“Good mess?” he queries, crossing to the kitchen sink where he attempts to wring his shirt out by hand– still wearing it. 

“Lived-in mess,” you say. What you mean is, it doesn’t look like a mausoleum of a life someone left behind. A storage locker. A haphazard sarcophagus. Before you moved to the trailer, your house was so clean– that was a whole other problem. The same tchotchkes that are scattered on your counter were kept behind glass, only touched when your mother polished them, the only housework she ever did. You stare at a collection of trucker hats nailed along the living room wall, the shelf of novelty mugs that accompanies them. 

“Living in mess? What is that, like living in filth? You better start showing this fine abode some respect before–”

“Lived. In. Munson, I said, lived in if you would just listen– it’s good, it’s fine. It’s n-nice.” 

It’s warm in the trailer, you can tell, but you’re shivering. You bear down in your body, jaw all set so your teeth don’t start chattering again, but he hears it in your voice. 

“Uh-oh,” he says, somehow not at all betraying any signs of being out in the freezing rain except for being entirely soaked. You bet his skin is still running hot, like you felt through his shirt, like you felt grabbing his wrist. “Star cheerleader’s coming down with a case of hypothermia. Right before the big game!” 

He slaps his hands to his cheeks in mock horror. 

“I’m–” you’re about to tell him a couple things; one, that you’re fine which would be stupid, because you are so clearly not fine; two, you’re not the star cheerleader anymore; and a third, forgotten thing. “--cold,” is what you settle on. It sounds small, vulnerable.

Eddie holds his breath for a second. You sound so delicate. Hard, terrible you.

“No, sure, of course you are,” he fumbles. The way his wet hair has flattened to his skull makes him look younger– exposing a nervous boy behind the metalhead posturing. “You can– take a shower. If you want. To warm up.” 

Take a shower. In Eddie Munson’s trailer. Your eyelids flutter closed, taking on their own vibrations from the wracking of your body. This is a hell of my own making. “Yes. Sure. Thank you.”

“I can also,” he starts, crossing the kitchen again and knocking something over on his way– it just clatters to the floor, whatever it was, and he lets it, like he’s used to leaving crashing sounds in his wake. “I can take your clothes if you want. Put ‘em in the washer.” 

You hesitate a beat, then follow him down a hallway. 

“I probably have something you can wear,” he says. There’s a note in his tone that’s high and nervous. “You’re for sure gonna hate it, but hey– beats freezing to death.” 

“Just barely,” you murmur. 

“Huh?”

“This, uh– this is dry-clean only,” you correct yourself, gesturing to the uniform. 

He rolls his eyes. “Of course. Only the best for the pom-pom shakers.” 

He ducks into a room that must be his bedroom, but you don’t follow him. Instead, you linger in the hallway, near the dingy bathroom, staring at the corn themed wall calendar. Going into his bedroom feels too personal– too intimate, as if preparing to take a shower in Eddie Munson’s trailer only to change into his clothes isn’t intimate. 

“I figured,” he says, emerging from the bedroom with clothes and a towel in hand, “since you like all that rinky-dinky-tinkly garbage, you wouldn’t hate wearing a Stooges shirt.” 

“I–” the shirt is soft under your wrinkled fingers, as are the boxers he passes off to you. Boxers. You hold them up between your forefinger and thumb, stepping into the bathroom. “These are clean, right?”

Eddie stares at you for a second– then leans his head into the bathroom and shakes his sopping locks at you, just like a dog. You let out a shriek that he thinks almost sounds like an involuntary giggle. I’ll take it.

“No comment!” And he slams the door on you. 

Then you’re standing. In Eddie Munson’s trailer. In Eddie Munson’s bathroom. Holding his old Stooges shirt and his boxers, with mascara running down your face. 

You pinch yourself, hard, just in case. 

The shower heats up quick–quicker than yours, you notice–and you rest your head against the tile as the steam swirls up around you. This is so weird. This is so fucking weird, and you can’t scrub away the weirdness fast enough. There’s not enough Irish Spring in the world. You reach into the shower caddy to replace the bottle and notice something familiar– wait, that’s–

Wait. 

Do you and Eddie Munson use the same brand of shampoo? 

You had to switch from your favorite to the best that the Big Buy had to offer, given the change in your personal means, and this was the top score in terms of quality. Eddie Munson apparently agrees– but better yet, you realize as a grin spreads across your face, Munson uses women’s shampoo. 

It’s nice to have a fresh piece of arsenal to aim at him once you get out of the shower. 

Toweling off and changing, you do give the boxers a wary sniff before you put them on– but luckily, they smell like generic detergent and aren’t stiff in any way. So you slide them on.

They fit snugly– naturally, given he’s all sinewy and you have hips. He is really sinewy, now that you think about it. 

His wrist wasn’t bony, but it was active. Tendons flexing under the thin, soaked layer of his shirt. You wonder, absently, was that a tattoo you saw. What is it. What does it look like. Is it shitty. It’s his, so it’s probably shitty, but I want to see it. Does he have any more. 

You shiver, slipping the Stooges t-shirt on, and blame your hardening nipples on the cold.

The cheer outfit is another problem. You emerge from the bathroom, clutching the still-sodden uniform with Eddie’s– Munson’s towel thrown over your shoulder. 

“Do you have, like, a garbage bag or something?” you ask, eyes rising to look at him where he stands in the doorframe of his room. He’s still in his soaked clothes. 

He takes a second to answer you, and when he does, his voice is all thick. Avoiding eye contact. 

“Suuure,” and he disappears and reappears with a plastic bag, quick as a blink. 

“Thanks.” You dump the uniform, sneakers and all, into the bag and make for the door. 

“Hey, it’s still raining–” his voice follows you, as if you hadn’t heard the raindrop gunshots hitting the trailer roof. 

“Yup,” you say, popping the ‘p’. You yank Munson’s door open and fling the garbage bag outside. It lands squarely between your trailer and his. 

Munson appears over your shoulder, looking out at the garbage bag. His face is twisted in confusion, concern, curiosity. 

“I got kicked off,” you explain, plain as biscuits. 

“Off the pom pom squad?” he whispers, eyes flaring in surprise that you think might actually be real. You’re looking at his lashes again, fanning around the almost-perfect circles of his eye sockets. 

“The very same.”

“Escándalo. What happened?”

“How about you go and shower first,” you suggest, poking a finger into his chest. He makes a little breathy noise, a little ‘unh’, that you don’t… hate. “Can’t have the star dork of the make believe board game club catch his death, can we?” 

“Anything happens to me and you’re the prime suspect, babe,” he grins and snaps the towel off your shoulder. 

“Hey!”

“This is the last clean one. What am I, a fuckin’ Rockefeller?”

-

Christ, he wants to jerk off into this towel but he knows that’s weird. That’s perverted. That’s fucked up. That’s everything everyone says about him and that’s everything you make him feel. 

So he strips, turns the hot water to scalding and furiously rubs one out down the drain. One, because he feels bizarre about leaving you alone among all of his things for too long and two, because hot water is in short supply. 

And three, because he’s achingly rock hard at the sight of you in his boxers, tossing your cheerleading outfit into the mud and the wet. 

The metaphors. The implications. The feeling of your forehead against his chest. The stab of your finger in his sternum. 

He cums jaggedly, almost silently, with his mouth rammed against his forearm. 

If you heard him– God, you’d be so nasty about it. God, he’d never live it down. God, he’d love to know what you’d say.

He makes damn quick work of sudsing up and rinsing down, wrapping a towel around his waist– only to run into you as he’s coming out of the bathroom. 

You stare. You stare at him, and Eddie’s mouth goes dry, and all the blood drains away from his brain. Again.

“Stare much?” he sneers, but only just about. Because his first instinct is to drop the towel and give you an eyeful. See what you’d do– hopefully something with your mouth. God, he hopes it’d be something with your mouth. 

“Where are your smokes?” you snap back. “I know you have some.”

“Kitchen. There’s probably–,” he needs you to stop looking at him like that; like you’re going to snap his neck, “--kitchen.”

Eddie slams his bedroom door and smacks his face with three quick strikes. “Come on, man! Get it together!” 

Because it’s go time. 

He has to formulate some kind of plan. 

He hadn’t exactly thought ahead when he invited you inside–or, demanded you come inside–and since you now had no place to go and Wayne had specifically told him not to go near you and your boobs were stretching out his dad’s old Stooges t-shirt…

Christ. 

He’s entirely, massively, completely at a loss. Eddie paces around the room like an animal in panic, grabbing a Scorpion shirt and some worn flannel pants as he goes. 

“Like, I’m supposed to go out there and do what? Ask her to hang out? Fucking paint her nails, read Cosmo? Study?! Jesus!” he angrily mumbles to his reflection, tearing the towel away and tugging his t-shirt over his sopping hair. “Hey, Lacy, you wanna beer? Who am I, Steve fucking Harrington? Jesus, Jesus, Jesus Christ, dude!”

“Munson. Are you talking to me in there?” He hears your voice from a minute distance away– see, that’s the thing about trailers. Small space, thin walls, and Eddie Munson’s voice travels at super speed. 

He stops, seizing, cringing, shoulders hitching up to his ears. 

That was not enough time to formulate a plan. 

Eddie, jankily tugging his pants on, sweeps out to the kitchenette area like something is chasing him and stops dead when he sees you. You haven’t trashed the place. You haven’t even tried to stick your head in the oven, two things he was kind of concerned about given the way you were wailing outside. 

You’re standing in the middle of the room with your hip cocked out, smoking a stolen cigarette and studying his uncle’s trucker hat collection. 

All the air in the room seems to orbit around you like a tornado in slow motion. 

How is it that you make an old shirt and boxers look like a skirt set? How is it that you can be sobbing your lungs out one minute, then the picture of poise and sophistication the next? 

All that air and none left for Eddie to take a breath.

“Hey, Lacy,” he strains, “you wanna beer?” 

“What,” you purr– like, he’s so sure that you actually purr, “You mean you’re all out of Sancerre?”

He does not know what the hell that is, but he can only assume it’s some rich people bullshit– and he’s relieved. You’re mocking him. At least that’s some tether to normalcy. She’s baa-aack. 

Eddie rolls his eyes, not entirely meaning it, but if he beams right at you he’s going to give the game away. 

“Think fast!” He tosses a can of the cheapest beer available at the Big Buy your way and you just about catch it, hands above your head and the cigarette dangling out of your mouth like Keith Richards. 

“God, Munson,” you mumble around the filter, “What kept you off the basketball team?” 

“Half a brain and a big dick,” he smirks, cracking the pull top and snatching the soft pack of cigarettes you’d left on the countertop. You cross from the living room, propping yourself up on the counter stool in a fluid movement that can only be described as feline. 

“Well, we sure can account for one of those things,” you say, ashing with your right hand and tapping at your temple with your left. 

“And the other?” Eddie asks, voice dropping a mocking octave. 

“I’d sooner drink arsenic than find out.”

He raises his beer can to you. “In that case, cheers!”

Your mouth twists around a smile and Eddie can see you’re fighting hard to keep it at bay. And that you’re losing. You tip your beer to your lips and he braces his elbows on the counter, looking around for a lighter. He spots a Bic, but the trigger won’t light it– just sparks, no flame. 

“That thing’s dead,” you say, “I lit this off the toaster.” 

“Oh! Right,” Eddie goes to turn, but something chilly snaps to his forearm. Your fingers. Damn. What is it with you? Circulation thing or what?

“Don’t do that,” you shake your head. “I don’t trust you not to burn the whole trailer down.”

“This is my trailer, y’know.”

“Yeah, and I’m in it. So burn it down on your own time.”

You motion for him to light his cigarette off the half-burned length of yours and Eddie tentatively places the filter between his lips. You prop yourself up on the stool, ass raised from the seat, leaning toward him. He leans in too and you cup that little hand with the perfectly painted fingers around the cigarettes. Like you’re whispering a secret. You look down, focusing on making fire, but Eddie’s eyes follow the tiny crease of your brow, the slope of your nose. The little wipe of mascara still underneath your eye. 

Tips touch and Eddie inhales just as you do. The cherried ends of the smokes glow orange and you pull back and Eddie just stays there a moment, frozen with the now-lit ember hanging out of his mouth. 

You pull back and inhale that smoke like one of those chicks from those black and white movies Wayne is always watching. You exhale all daintily, in one perfect clouding stream. You’re all– you’re so–... 

“Fucked,” you groan, shoving the heels of your palms into your eyes. “I am so fucked.” 

Eddie finally tugs the cigarette from his mouth, filter gone a little soft with the low-level salivating he’d been doing. “Oh. The cheerleader shit?”

“Yes, Munson. The cheerleader shit.” 

“What happened, anyway?” He resumes the position of being elbow-up on the countertop, which incidentally brings him a little bit closer to you. Incidentally. “You crack some skulls this time?”

“Huh,” you chuckle emptily, “Almost. Um, Tina more or less took me out at the knees. Which, I understand of course. If I were her, I would have obliterated me, but–” 

“You’re not her, and it doesn’t feel awesome to be on the other end of obliterated,” Eddie nods, giving you a squint-eyed pout of mock-sympathy. “Poor Lacy. Getting shitkicked by the consequences of her own actions.”

Thunk! You punch him in the shoulder, which hurts and he gasps, but it’s so funny and categorically unladylike coming from you. These little peals of violence that keep coming off you are a seemingly bottomless source of amusement for him. 

She’s so funny-looking when she’s mad. 

“Fuck off!” you bark, as if reading him like a goddamn horoscope, but there’s a glimmer to your narrowed stare. “I got replaced by a sophomore, as if I needed an insult topping on that injury shitshake.” 

“Oh, she Old Yeller’d your ass!” Eddie gasps again, chuckling heartily, “Took you out back and–” He mimes blowing your brains right out, nailing you right through the forehead. You stare at him square, unimpressed. “Who usurped ya?”

“Chrissy Cunningham.”

Oh. Well, isn’t that interesting. Eddie’s lips flatten into a straight line and he makes a little mmh sound. And you pick up on that immediately, being that you’re annoyingly perceptive. 

“Munson! Come on!” 

“What? Whaaat? I didn’t say anything!”

“That’s a child.”

“That is a sophomore and you said so yourself. Besides…” he trails off, pointedly crushing the butt of his cigarette into the ashtray until it’s oversquished. “...we have history.”

If his cigarette extinguishing was pointed, yours is needle sharp with the way you crush it into the ashtray right next to the remnants of his. 

“Go on,” you hum, just like you did in the van that last night. I really wanna know. It’s conspiratorial and intoxicating and makes it feel like you’re on his side, which you know he’s not but it’s so, so tasty to think that for a second you might be. 

Is this how you make everyone feel? Lull ‘em into a false sense of security? Hoard your ammo and go apeshit later? 

Eddie draws back, nearly congratulating himself for doing so. “That’s for me to know, and you to die ignorant.” 

The way your lips pop open is almost too good, your little doll face turning to a mask of betrayal too quick for you to hide it. Too quick for you to be all like fine! Keep it to yourself! You’re both totally irrelevant anyway! or whatever other bitchy retort you’re bound to come up with. 

“Wow. Well, if that holds any water, Carver’ll shit,” you start, sipping on your beer, “His little virgin Mary deflowered by the devil’s first alternate.” 

“Hey, I never said–!” Fuck. Fuck! How do you do that! Eddie pinches his lips together as you smirk over the rim of the beer can, all stuck under your gaze. Fly in the spider’s web. 

“A-ha,” you say, irritatingly smoothly. “So nothing happened. She’s just spank bank material.” 

“Didn’t– say that either,” Eddie mumbles, mind going annoyingly blank under your rapid fire tearing and the inebriating way you’re delivering it. He hates this and he has no intention of telling you to stop. The duality of man. 

“Didn’t not say that, though.” 

“You oughta be a lawyer,” he tells you, swigging deep, “the way you find a loophole in everything.”

“The way you want me to get you off, you mean.” 

You come out with that, something so incendiary, oh-so-casually and slip off your seat. She can’t just do that. You’re padding around the living room again, bare footed and small-looking, but Eddie’s staring at you like you’re a hand grenade with the pin missing that also has the secret to everlasting life inside. Terrified. Fascinated. 

A little stiff.

“What?” he breathes, but doesn’t really want you to answer the question. 

And you don’t, you just keep looking around the living room with your arms crossed over your chest. “You need money to be a lawyer, Munson. To go to law school. To go to any school. And I don’t have that. And I foolishly figured getting a cheerleading scholarship would be a cinch of a backup plan, and now I can’t do that either.”

“What are you looking for?” he asks, finally willing his dick down and his legs to work, rounding into the living room with you. 

“Your, like… stereo, or record player, or something,” you murmur, smoothing down his boxers over your hips. “It’s too quiet in here.”

Eddie blinks. What should really happen is he should say, no, stay out here in the silence, you insolent wench. Think on your crimes. Reflect. Repent. Stop being such a bossy little ballbreaker and give my balls a break.

��Room. Uh– it’s in my room,” is what he says instead. 

“‘kay,” is all you say with a little shrug of your shoulder, grabbing your can from the counter and padding down the hallway toward that same bedroom. His bedroom. Eddie Munson’s bedroom with his bed and his shit in it. “Let’s go.”

How irregular does your heartbeat have to get before you classify it as a cardiac event?

-

There’s only so many times you can flagellate yourself with the ol’ what the fuck are you doing thing before it becomes redundant.

Songs get overplayed, nail polish color gets overused, trends die. Things become redundant all the time, and you discard them. 

The notion of what the fuck are you doing in Eddie Munson’s trailer in Eddie Munson’s boxers walking towards Eddie Munson’s bedroom has become redundant because you simply are doing all those things. Not much point in questioning them. The chips have fallen. 

An eerie calm had come over you when he was in the shower and you were staring at all of these trucker hats on the wall– if the insanity is temporary, you might as well lean into it. You can’t go anywhere else. You’re trapped. Might as well get comfortable.

“God, this place is filthy, Munson.” You, with your arms still bound across your chest, toe a discarded t-shirt out of your path as you move into the bedroom with that same reserved interest of a gallery-goer. The place is cluttered, posters and flyers and doodles torn out of notebooks tacked up on the wall in total disarray. Every surface area is covered in what could be organized chaos, but knowing Munson the little that you do, you doubt it. 

To test the theory, you ask, “Where are your records? Tapes, anything?”

But he’s just lingering in the doorway, chewing on the end of a lock of hair. Watching you stand in the middle of the room with astronaut eyes, unblinking. It’s kind of– sweet, in a deeply unnerving way. He looks like a kid. 

Your brow furrows, grimace turning your lips into a point.

“Fine. Ogle me like a goddamn lobotomy patient, then.”

You resume your perusing of his things, when you spot the most precious piece of hardware hanging by the mirror. A marbled black and red body fashioned into nasty spikes. You reach out to give the strings an aimless thrum but your wrist is rapidly snatched away. 

“Nuh-uh. That’s where I draw the line,” Munson says, shuffling you away from the guitar like a security guard. A flash of something as your calves hit his mattress– him shepherding you toward your own bed, you drunk out of your gourd. “Siddown.”

And you sit, bouncing against the sinking mattress on impact. Rubbing at the spot on your wrist that his fingers had been squeezing. Staring up at him glowering down at you. “Ow.”

And Munson, it turns out, knows where everything is in his nuclear fallout of a room. He shoves a shoebox of tapes into your hands and nudges a bigger milk crate full of records nearer to you with his foot. 

“Knock yourself out,” he huffs, flinging himself face-down on the mattress next to you. You jerk; always the court jester, this guy. “Not that you’re gonna find anything you want to listen to.” 

A scoff flies out of your mouth before you’ve got a chance to suppress it– he’s gotta know, right? He’s gotta know he can’t just say shit like that to you without you fully activating that I can do anything you can do better–backwards–bleeding–in heels chip in your brain. You’ll show him. There’s nothing that matters to you more in the world right now than showing him. 

Though, rattling through his box of tapes, each one bearing a different variation of hot chick and the Devil artwork, you’ve got your work cut out for you. W.A.S.P. Mercyful Fate. Dirty Rotten Imbeciles. Witchfinder General. Some band that’s literally just called Loudness, for Chrissake. As you flick and flick, hope wavering, one catches your eye. There’s a jump in your throat. Scrawled letterhead against a draped satin background. A photo of something you always figured was a headless marble statue, though you could never be sure. 

“Why do you have this?”

No response from the corpse of Munson, presumably smothered by his own comforter.

“Hey!” you tap the back of his skull with the plastic casing. One eye appears, glaring up at you from the mattress. Rattle rattle goes the Cocteau Twins tape as you shake it in its case. “Thought this was haunted doll music.” 

“Ow.” Munson slowly raises himself onto his elbows, looking like he’s about to start kicking his legs in the air behind him. Twirling his hair around his finger. A grin is edging onto his lips, lips he’s pulling strands of hair away from. 

“Sometimes the five finger discount chooses you.” 

A feeling akin to heat spreads rights across your breastbone. You want to pry, secretly. You want an explanation. Why would you take that? Do you like me, or something? But asking speaks it into existence, and the insanity is temporary, and you’re so waiting for dawn to break on it so you can resume some hobbled together semblance of a normal existence. 

One that doesn’t include Eddie Munson stealing tapes that make you feel ticklish in order to, I don’t know, listen to them on his own so he can feel ticklish too. 

He hadn’t listened to it, for the record. Not all the way through, at least. 

He’d gotten as far as track two and had to switch it off, ejecting it out of the tape deck of his van with such speed that he was sure it’d shoot clean through the doors in the back. Too close, too real. That had veered a little out of the lane of objectifying you as someone whose crotch he maybe wanted to bury his face in and a little into the lane of you being like, a person. With feelings. 

The events of tonight aren’t helping that case. He hoped that lying face down for as long as he possibly could might let them just unfold around him, like he’d roll over and you’d just be gone, no evidence left behind except for your hair in the drain. 

But you demand attention. Eddie might be obvious, but you demand attention. His attention, at least. 

He grabs the tape from you. “We’re not listenin’ to that bullshit. Try again.”

“Fine!” you snap, but there’s this irritating bemusement dancing around your face. 

You lean forward from your spot on the mattress and tug the milk crate between your calves. Now, this is more your lane– in here, Munson’s got the classics. Or as close to the classics as he will deign to recognise. Zeppelin, Sabbath, Alice Cooper, Blue Öyster Cult– the combination of which you have something borderline mean to say about, but you’ll leave that ‘til later. You dig around, and then.

And then. Hello there, handsome.

In your hands are twelve inches of beauty, belonging to a grisly-voiced Tom Waits. Blue Valentine. Straight to the record player with this old bastard.

“People give this record too much shit,” you remark, and Eddie watches you as you tentatively lift a sock off the turntable. Yeah, he’ll cop to it, he doesn’t take such good care of some of his gear, but sometimes his brain behaves like a police scanner. Lotta channels operating at once. Anyway. Doesn’t matter. He’s watching you lift the needle onto the vinyl right now. “People say that this is a mediocre addition to the oeuvre, but what is mediocre about this–!”

Rousing strings seep from the stereo speakers– it’s Waits’ cover of Somewhere from West Side Story. Eddie knows it within the first half a second because, and now he’ll never admit it since he knows you like it so much, he has played this album to death. 

Somewhere around the halfway mark of Christmas Card For a Hooker in Minneapolis, the record will skip because it's scratched. Or well-loved, if you ask Eddie. 

“Fucking Robert Christgau thinks he’s being funny, doing this, y’know,” you sneer, examining the record sleeve as if you hadn’t seen it thirty thousand times before. Your copy had been lost in the move, among a number of your little sonic secrets. The records you’d keep to listen to by yourself, lying on your bedroom floor. “As if the whole core of Tom Waits’ whole thing isn’t heartache, the sentimentality of what-if. What if we could, what if life wasn’t garbage. That’s sentimentality, right there. It’s West Side Story, I mean, c'mon. Tom Waits is singing to us with his heart on his sleeve, but Christgau wants to suddenly be pedantic, turn around and be like, it’s a vaudeville act! because Waits sometimes also wears his dick on his sleeve.”

It’s a tirade you’ve often repeated to yourself, in your diary or alone in your room, pretending like you’re on a panel, pretending like you’re Susan Sontag and people actually give a shit what you actually have to say. You can’t exactly figure why you’ve said it again now. Maybe because you always found the strings on this song too much to bear without emoting, and you’re already vulnerable and tired. 

Munson, for his part, has flipped over onto his back on the mattress. “Who?” he drones.

“Robert Christgau,” you say, momentarily distracted by the way his shirt has rucked up around his belly. No six pack. Some meat there. Tendons, like you’d noticed before. “Just one of the most seminal rock writers of our time.”

You have a well-thumbed copy of his Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies somewhere in a still-unpacked box.

Munson has a happy trail that curls like brushstrokes.

“You fucking trifler,” you grumble.

His face takes on that terrible look that he’d given you in the record store, all enraptured and cloudy at the corners of his eyes. Looking at you from where he leans on his elbows, one knee propped up, rocking back and forth ever so slightly. You want to shove it back down. 

And see what he’ll do about that. 

“How do you know all this shit?” he asks. Eddie can’t help this. He can’t help that he keeps changing his channel about you (again, police scanner) because one second you’ll be such a massive pain in the ass, then the next, you’ll say something so clever that it’ll make him want to vomit. 

“I like music,” you say, flatly. You give it to him straight, because you suddenly feel searched. You clutch Waitsy’s printed face to your chest in an effort of self-defense. “And I like… words. Kind of makes sense that I would enjoy music journalism, if you’re not totally stupid.” 

“I’m only a little stupid.” 

“Debatable.” 

“Wait, but I mean–” and he’s gearing up, because Eddie is about to ask you a real question. Something that’s been on his mind, the more ice shavings he can tear off of you. Considering you, all three dimensions of you– four, if you add in how much you like to punch him and stuff. “You’re like, incredibly smart, right.”

“Yes.”

“Like, perfect grades.”

“Almost. Save Kaminsky, because he can’t teach for shit and he can’t grade for piss.”

“And you’re a cheerleader… like, an important one?”

“Artist formerly known as, but yes.”

“And you’re on the newspaper.” 

“Very perceptive, aren't we.”

“You’re also popular– or, yeah, were. You party and stuff. You’re always hanging out with those assholes who don’t do half the shit that you do.”

 “Are you closing in on a point here, Munson?”

“How?” he nearly whispers, tone close to dreamy. “You’ve gotta have like, body doubles running around or something because no human person could possibly have that much time in the day. How the fuck did you do all that and also be running around ready to cite, like, an issue of the New Yorker from 1975, and not go completely insane?”

How do you know I’m not completely insane. Because, if he had ever witnessed how Jekyll and Hyde you could get, smacking the shit out of yourself with your hairbrush before you could turn on and be Lacy the cheerleader, Lacy the hot chick, Lacy the playground bitch, he would think you are totally insane. 

You answer him half-straight this time. 

“Diet pills.”

This makes him sit up, and makes you take a couple of steps back towards the bed. You flop down, tossing the Blue Valentine sleeve to the side. 

“Diet pills,” he repeats. 

“Oohhh, yes,” you nod, drawing the shape of the cylindrical pills on his comforter with your finger. You don’t really want to look up at him. “Rainbow diet pills. Soon as I hit my menses, I started lifting them from my mom.” 

“Isn’t that stuff illegal?” Eddie murmurs out of the corner of his mouth, mimicking your criss-cross applesauce seating position. “It’s basically speed, right?”

“Said the drug dealer,” a snort bursts from you. You’ve moved your fidgeting, starting to braid your half-damp hair. “And it is. It’s fully speed. I was doing baby Valley of the Dolls at age thirteen.”

“That is fucked up, Lacy.” 

“Yeah. Well. I'm a little fucked up, or haven't you heard?” 

“There’s been rumblings.” Eddie watches your fingers work, weaving locks of hair, one over the other. He’s never braided his hair. He wonders what it might look like. You come to the end and twist it around your finger, at a loss for a hair tie. He sticks a finger under his leather and silver bracelet, digging out an elastic he keeps handy, just in case. There are a lot of times that Eddie needs to yank his hair out of his face just to focus. “Here.” 

You mouth a silent thanks and wind the elastic around the tuft of hair. Tom Waits whines away about rain washing memories from the sidewalks and you feel weirdly… at ease. You’ve shared a couple of rainbow diet pills with Nicole and Carol (Tina doesn’t mess with amphetamines, a consummate athlete), but you’ve never had anyone ask you how you’ve managed to be the person you’re pretending to be. 

To put the clues together about your impossible do-it-all identity.

And not react in disgust when he finds out you’re fallible. 

“Hey,” Eddie says. Something about hearing you rattle off, not sniping for once, saying something real… it eased the heartburn. It has loosened his tension around you, a little. He figures it’s his turn to say something real. “I’m sorry I called you evil.” 

Most evil twat at the twat table, you nearly correct. “You had grounds.”

“No, no, I didn’t. You–” this is actually harder for him to get out than he thought, “You’re trying. You’re trying really hard to make the best of a messed up situation, and maybe I should’ve seen that– but I didn’t, because it’s high school, and it’s dumb, and I’m trying too, and we’re all trying, just to survive this messed up microcosm of the world– and– and–" He huffs. It's you gazing at him this time. Eyes sparkling in the half-light cast by his bedside lamp. You're... really pretty. "Jesus, can you just forgive me so I can stop talking?”

“That’s a first,” you say. “Microcosm is a five dollar vocab word, Eddie.”

The way you say his name. “I’m a changed man.”

“Can you use adulation in a sentence next?” Your big grin is devastating.

He leans right into you, dastardly looking suddenly. “Is this provocation getting you hot, you psycho?”

Fingertips braced over your knees, your torso keening just the right amount of degrees to favor him, your stare making an unsubtle job of darting from Eddie’s lashes to his lips to his lashes to his lips… 

“Maybe.” A beat. A heavy beat. “What are you gonna do about it?” 

In any other world, with any other person, the wanting would completely make sense. Wanting him to say nothing more and just do, to plant a big, ringed hand either side of your hips and pull you into his lap. To crush his lips against yours. To dig his hands into your thighs, to wind your fingers into his hair. To feel the chill of silver traveling up, under the back of your borrowed shirt, to press down onto him and–

Hey Charlie, I almost went crazy-ayzy-ayzy-ayzy-ay–

Eddie doesn’t mean to, he really doesn’t mean to, but his head snaps away from you just as the record starts to skip. 

Then the door slams.

Fuck.

“Ed?”

Wayne.

He totally forgot to formulate that plan.

author's notes: ZOOWEE MAMA HOW WE FEELING ARE YOU STILL WITH ME longest chapter in the fic so far. thanks for keepin up. i love you, let's not waste any time, i don't think i've got a lot of notes for you this go around but i love you - there is nothing more secretly pretentious teenage girl than loving joan didion and susan sontag (i know this because i was her, i am her to this day in fragments) but particularly joan didion on keeping a notebook really sticks to one's ribs. this is not the last joan didion ref in this fic, sorry for being unbearable - stella adler, the mother of method acting - steve harrington being the originator of the nickname lacy is a tribute to him showing signs of being a goofy motherfucker from day dot. please see this post. it was always there, we just couldn't see it in freshman year because of all the hairspray - what's going on with tommy hagan? does anyone really care but me, probably not. but for those that are keeping tick on the timeline (don't)- he got held back senior year, hence why he did not graduate with steve and is in the same grade as eddie, lacy, carol, et al. - WICKED LITTLE TOWN!!!! - the stooges t-shirt is yet another flight of icarus pick; al wears a stooges shirt and i creamed because i love the stooges. let's listen to one of my favorites - loudness are a metal band from osaka, japan! they got signed to an american label in 1985, but how did eddie munson get that tape in hawkins, indiana in 1984? well, my theory is that eddie loves music and jerry from main street vinyl loves benzos. a trade's a trade's a trade. - reader, you are an 18y/o girl who thinks you're better than everyone. of course you're stealing lester bangs' opinions on blue oyster cult and making them your own - and shitting on robert christgau bc you've got a wetty for tom waits - also, here is tom waits' cover of somewhere! my theory on eddie being a tom waits fan-- of course he is, that man looks and sounds like billy goat gruff and is a storytella just like eddie is. he would especially be into his later stuff, like the megalithic orphans album. y'all remember this song from shrek 2 - rainbow diet pills were a real insane thing! this seems more accessible than adderall for the time period, which modern!lacy would certainly have been abusing - for the time that's in it, let me present tom waits' anti-christmas song, christmas card from a hooker in minneapolis my loves, if you've still stuck with me this far, i thank you greatly. i know i'm nutso but i'm having fun writing this fic. i would've been writing it if nobody was reading, but it's a billion times better now that you are. reblogs are always appreciated, and the inbox is always open to chat shit ♡

[covetyou]

🤭 reader is def borrowing condoms from Dieter (she spent so long debating with herself but she also really wanted Frankies dick). But would Dee be curious and follow to see who she's with? 👀 Maybe try to invite himself to join, or hang out outside the trailer? 🥵💦

Would this morally dubious clown follow someone to watch 'em do the nasty? I think we all know the answer here 😌

ao3 ⋆ main masterlist ⋆ series masterlist

pairing: Frankie Morales x fat contortionist f!reader (x Dieter Bravo) rating: Explicit (18+ only!) warnings: voyerism, jealousy, bi Dieter, protected PIV, recreational drug use/reference, Max Phillips makes another cameo word count: 1.2k summary: When the trailer's a-rockin', don't come a-knockin'.

A/N: Dieter's POV. takes place after for one night only and fools just wanna have fun.

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Bravo had evaded Max by the skin of his teeth - no sooner had his trailer door shut behind him, running around the back pulling his pants over his dick and balls, and Max was there in the clearing, shouting bloody murder for him before pounding on the door. Before any more inaccurate accusations and threats to his life could be made, Bravo the Clown had snuck away into the night, seething.

This was his night ruined.

The condoms were one thing, but this being a family friend show? Psh, his ass it was. He watched greased up men sliding against each other on the regular, and there was that married couple who practically eye fucked each other whenever they performed. Not to mention you, Sparkles, with your ass hanging out every show as you twisted and bulged and looked so damn sinful he'd had more than one back stage wank over the years. Nothing he did was any less family friendly than that and yet here he was, getting chased down by an angry mob of one simply for wanting to relax a little before a show. And maybe a bit during too.

And after, not forgetting the joint still clutched in his fingers. He'd have to find somewhere more discreet to smoke it now that he had Max hot on his ass, but first he needed a light. His was still on the floor of his trailer, because of you.

Maybe that's why he finds himself walking toward your trailer, it being your fault he's currently without a light after all. He knows you like those stupid little candles, a complete fire hazard in a place like this if you ask him - one knock and the whole polyester spectacle is going up in a cloud of sequins and smoke. It's not at all because he knows what you're doing in there, without him. Not at all. He respects you. He could absolutely, totally leave you to your privacy.

It's not his fault if he's concerned for your safety when he hears your incoherent screams from some way away. He's not going to knock of course, but it doesn't hurt to just check in through the window, does it? It's what any good friend would do. A little rocking trailer should never deter anyone from checking in on their friends.

Okay, so maybe it's rocking quite a bit by the time he gets there, sneaking under one window to get to another he knows is right by your bed. Your screaming and moaning is even louder here, right by the open window. He can hear a wet slapping noise too, and before he lets his imagination run wild, he pokes his head up to look in through the open window and straight at the spectacle in front of him.

And holy fuck, it doesn't disappoint.

You're getting absolutely rammed from behind, your thighs jiggling and shaking with each thrust from the man behind you. His face is pinched, staring right down to where he disappears into you over and over, and the rippling of your ass against his thighs. You're scrambling up and down and up again on your forearms as you try, and fail, to take the intensity of it, your voice rising an octave every time he buries himself in you, until he inevitably hits the factory reset and you make a deep, keening groan before starting all over again. Dieter knows that noise - he makes you make that noise. It's the noise you make when your toes curl and you're about to make a mess all over everything. Like right now, your toes curling over and over in a way he's never seen, because he's never seen it from this far away before.

And, fuck, this is jealousy, isn't it? That should be Dieter in there, fucking the ever living daylights out of you. Instead he's stood on the other side of the window looking in at a man that should be him, but is definitely younger and fitter than he is. Still, he doesn't see what this man has on him - messy hair, a little pooch of his belly just like Dieter, scruff on his jaw. Entirely unremarkable, if you ask -

Until that man pulls out fully, unveiling his cock before slamming it home once more.

Suddenly, he's jealous of both of you. Jealous of him for getting to fuck you - and in your trailer too. You'd only ever let him in there once, and it was maybe the most comfortable he'd ever been. And jealous of you for taking that monster of a cock that, quite frankly, should be too much for one person to take. You could take a hand (and a half, on a good day) of course, but fuck, had you never heard about sharing?

Dieter shared his condoms with you, and now you were keeping this all to yourself. What he wouldn't give to be in there, lying next to you as you got fucked to oblivion by this guy you seem to have picked straight from the crowd. He'd quiet your screams with his cock in your mouth, or let you suck on his balls while he waited his turning for a fucking. Even better, he'd lick your pretty cunt while that cock demolished your hole, just so he could taste both of you at once.

Still, the best he can do is watch the condom, his condom, on the man's cock as it slides in and out of you - the closest thing to being between the two of you he'll be - while listening to your screams as they hit a crescendo. Your tits swing beneath you, your belly rippling with the force of the fucking you're receiving. The mans fingers - the asshole - are digging into your plush hips, sinking into the fat there and holding on for dear life, likely leaving bruises that Dieter will have to see for days and try not to get hard about.

The man grunts and groans now, telling you how perfect you are and how hard he's going to come, because you're so, so, so perfect - Dieter fucking knows. He knew it first.

Then, you're coming. Shaking, and moaning, falling forward onto your mattress with your hips still held in the air, making a complete mess of your sheets in the process, screaming Frankie into the air, your trailer positively fucking rattling now as the man - fucking Frankie - finds it in himself to go even harder, battering your cervix so deliciously painfully that he knows your eyes are rolling in your head, even if he can't see them.

And it's over, and everything is still again, and the quiet feels so very loud as you sigh and giggle into fucking Frankie's mouth, and he pulls that massive cock, dripping, out of you and throws away his fucking condom.

His joint is crumpled in his hand, Bravo the Clown's search for a light fucking useless now, just as the symbol of his fucked night falls to the ground outside your trailer ready for you to find in the morning.

Family friendly his ass.

[calissarowan]

So the reboot trailer…

First off, I was so excited to see this, and secondly, the wizards were not in it. I’m becoming more and more convinced that they have been scrapped and I will have to have a long, disappointed cry. But onto happier, more cgi things! *activates nostalgic Winx music to write to*

Bloom on a bike, as happy as can be, wherever you are going, Bloom, please wait for me! (Personal reference, if anyone gets that, I will probably have a little squeak of joy.) I honestly like that she’s still got her bike, just like the original. Her top is cute, too, more OG Bloom than Nick Bloom, which I like.

Flora and Stella are fighting this guy, and already, I’m sad. He’s fine, I guess, but…he doesn’t have half the personality of Knut. Knut had overalls, and glasses, and a bunch of ghoulies, and this just feels very generic.

Bloom takes him out, but it doesn’t seem to have a dragon, just fire, and she’s just standing there, frozen, like Ogron whenever anything remotely dangerous happens. It lacks the drama of the OG, where she gets grabbed and unleashes a while dragon made of fire, which was badass and hit really hard.

Flora’s here. Which, I love her, but this is Bloom and Stella’s special time. Also, they were looking for Bloom. Looking for her. This is meant to be an accident. (Or meet cute, if you happen to ship.) The wings look weird, honestly, like they’re made of plastic on dolls, and Stella looks odd. Flora looks pretty, as always, I like the outfit, but do I love it as much as her original fairy form? No, not sure I do.

Just, let’s take a moment to note this other presumable base level fairy, shall we? She looks way more like the original, but the fact that she, also presumably a student at Alfea, looks so basic next to the Winx, gives me the feeling that the Winx are just going to be special and powerful for no real reason. Which…I don’t love, in the OG they were just normal people that wound up fighting evil, they’re not the chosen ones. (Except in my Halloween fanfic I’m writing where they unknowingly are, but that’s beside the point.) But this is a nice fairy form, and frankly, I’d love the Winx’s to look more like this, their forms are more detailed than Enchantix already.

I do like these outfits, they’re nice, and probably more appropriate for high school students than their adventure outfits from season one. I actually do like that they have their hair up, that’s a thing for me, because trust me, if I’m adventuring, first thing I’m doing is putting my hair back. It gets in my face when I’m eating breakfast, long, loose hair is a hazard in adventuring. Also, love Tecna’s little pose here. That’s cute. And also one of only two appearances for her in the trailer. She and Musa are tied for least relevant.

No. Just no. I’m sorry, I just…I hate this. I’m trying not to be negative, but this is just wrong. This is not Faragonda. Faragonda wears blue. And looks different. This just jars for me, but it’s not a bad design, I guess, so think what you like.

I just took this screenshot because the video paused on it and I thought it was funny. Looks like Bloom going back to Earth, and also, like high school, so maybe we’ll see more of her human life, which, I guess is cool? I don’t think I ever felt much pull for that. I want to see her at Alfea. But she looks so cute and dramatic, jumping out of a hole in the air! And I do like her outfit. It’s actually cute, and she has her flares again, and the pink isn’t excessive.

Stella has a sceptre! It’s not as kickass as her original, but she’s got one! Which I love, because I miss the old one. It vanished, then cameoed one last time to get eaten by Shiny. She’s still sticking with that outfit too, I see. Hooray…it’s not as bad as I keep looking at it, I guess, when you cut out the skirt, but still. And I kinda miss her fringe here. Also, her spell name is ‘Burning Sun’. I…I feel like it could have been more creative. Even ‘Rising Sun’ sounds better. Or ‘Solar Blaze’. I just like them better. Or bring back ‘Solar Wind’.

YES! YES, THIS IS WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT! Beautiful, beautiful women! And it looks like they’re not triplets in the reboot, because the skin tone redesigns I’ve seen so many people use are actually canon now, which honestly, I love. They look beautiful. If Riven x Darcy is a thing in this reboot, then lucky, lucky Riven. I like that the outfits aren’t too different from their originals, just redesigned a bit. It’s perfect, and I wish the Winx had stayed truer to their OG fairy forms. I think, for the first time, I get why people have posts saying that the Trix were their bisexual awakening, I get that with this picture.

Sorry for the dreadful quality, Sky just wasn’t feeling photogenic. We still have our guys! Tiny Riven up there if anyone can see…their ship is still the iconic red, and they now have hoverboards! Gotta be honest, I sort of miss the original uniforms. They were so impractical, but they were iconic and these look…well, cool, and I like that they’re sci-fi, but I miss the capes, I’m sorry. Even after watching Duman pick up and grab them by the capes, I miss them. (Also, it’s agreed now that if the wizards don’t show up, any background character or creature with pink hair is just Duman in disguise. This is canon now, who’s with me?)

We’re keeping, ‘Just Winx!’ Which I like, it’s a really cute scene. I like Bloom having a notebook, it’s cute, she feels like she should have one. I like characters that have a notebook or journal for all their thoughts and doodles.

Speaking of the notebook, it’s so cute! But I’m so scared this is all the Kiko we’re getting, and if it is, I mourn him even more than the wizards! He was so cute, and if Bloom doesn’t have a tiny, implausible bunny sidekick, I will be sad. Also, does Bloom have a smartwatch? Is that a good idea? What if the Trix can track her through it? I guess Tecna could prevent that. The details on her jeans are cute, I like them. And there’s that iconic hand pose! I don’t know what it’s for or why it exists, but I love it!

And that’s all from me for today on the reboot! So far, no wizards spotted, but I’ll survive somehow. We’ll see how they handle the Trix, only then will we know whether we can trust the reboot to handle the wizards. If the Trix get backstories and personality, then I will campaign for the wizards to be there. If not, if they’re cardboard soup, then I will protect the wizards from the madness as much as possible.

So what were your thoughts on the new trailer? Are you excited? Or clinging to the OG and refusing to acknowledge the reboot?

[funhouse-mirror-barbie]

I really don’t mean this to sound rude at all but like…

What is the point of having celebrity voice actors or guest-stars if it means you either:

1. Can never have another episode or plot line with that character

Or

2. Have to replace the celebrity voice actor with an actual voice actor for all future appearances???

It’s one thing if it’s like. A one time character or cameo. That sort of thing works for shows like Bob’s Burgers, which is extremely episodic, or if it’s for a character that is only relevant for one episode, and isn’t going to make future appearances.

But for characters that have plot-relevance, or that you want to showcase a lot…well…what’s the point?? It’s maybe ONE thing if you do have a really huge budget, but indie shows doing this seems really counter-intuitive.

What was really the point of having Norman Reedus voice Striker if they couldn’t afford to bring him back? Especially when Edward Bosco who has taken over the roll could have done an absolutely wonderful job with striker from the beginning?

I’m not asking this to say that Norman Reedus did a bad job. He’s a very talented actor, but the only reason to have him come on the show seems to be for clout? Which is really bizarre to me.

It reminds me of when Steven Universe had Nicki Minaj on the show as Sugilite. I LOVE Sugilite, and I think Nicki did a fantastic job voicing her, but I can’t help but wonder if we’d have gotten more of her if a voice actress had been hired to play her.

I’d like to see more of Bee, but the likelihood of her ever showing up again is very little, unless they get someone else to voice her.

Same thing with the new celebrity VAs they have slated for future HB episodes. And yes, it is very cool to have John Waters voice a character for you. But I wonder if he’ll ever be a part of the story or main cast, or if he’ll come in and we’ll just never see his character again.

It makes me think of when an animated movie comes out and all the trailers have long lists of A list celebrities who are in the movie, but don’t really showcase the story or animation.

HB having celebrity voice actors never feels like they chose the VA because they were the best person for the job. It comes off as getting celebrities to drum up hype and pull in more viewers. Which I mean. You can do! That’s fine.

But it may mean that we’ll either never see those characters in speaking rolls again, or that they’ll have to bring in a less expensive VA after the fact for all future appearances.

And if that’s the case then. Again, what’s the real point???

[ct-multifandom]

Miraculous s6 Trailers Breakdown

Before I get into it, if it calms anyone’s nerves, I think this poster is a case of questionable graphic design. The weird official render style makes the characters look different from normal, plus Chat, Carapace, and Rena are all squished to match Ladybug’s proportions on the poster. This is an interesting choice from the designer: making the smallest character in the group take up the entire height and corresponding width of the poster and then awkwardly smushing the others in next to her. That’s why Carapace looks more short and stout than usual, and why Chat and Rena are kinda elongated. It doesn’t help that they shrunk Rena to accommodate her fox ears.

I’m liking the little updates to the hero suits. I honestly wasn’t expecting to see change for anyone but Ladybug and Chat, so now I’m excited to see everyone else. I love the changes on Carapace. They took his old, pretty simple suit and added a lot of new textures like the chest plate and wrist guards, and they gave him fingerless gloves and neck speakers. This gives me hope that they’ll update other designs that get criticized for just being a bodysuit with a decal on it like Ryuko and Viperion’s into something more interesting.

Rena is very similar, but her ears are bigger and pointier, the flute has been redesigned, her palms are white now, she has big poppin’ eyeliner, and her tail seems to be dark. Some people noted that they seem to be making Alya’s skin look darker after accusations of whitewashing her, so I hope they’ll finally give Pegasus the same treatment.

I’ve seen people say LB and CN must’ve taken influence from their reverse selves for their current designs, and CN seems to have some PV nods like his new shirt collar. Ladybug’s design feels more mature and is probably a response to criticism of her looking too simple as a character with a fashion interest among other superheroes with more detailed designs.

I didn’t include the poster of Marinette’s outfit, but overall I like it. I agree with people saying the bow on her shirt feels extra, but I like her emonette jacket. Her tights under jorts remind me of Mylene’s outfit, making me wonder if there’s some character influence there, or if they’ll be changing Mylene’s clothes so they don’t look too similar.

First look at Alya! Yay! I love her new haircut. It reminds me of Haru from persona 5. She seems to be wearing the same shirt, which is lame. Maybe the rest of her outfit has changed, or maybe they’re not fixing what isn’t broke. It’s disappointing, though, that Adrien’s outfit looks the same. I can only dream that they’re leading up to a makeover scene where he realizes he’s allowed to pick out his own clothes now, but alas.

Here Adrien is jogging with a new character (?) who has a prosthetic leg. There’s no good look at their face and even this screenshot sucks. If this is the same scene as Marinette with binoculars, then we might be getting a rare moment of a new character being introduced through Adrien rather than Marinette, perhaps someone he knows from rich people stuff or whatever nebulous and dubiously canon sports he participates in.

This frame appears after a camera pan right from a modernized remodel of the school. Before, there were average city blocks around the school, so whatever this is might be part of an expanded campus built for Bustier’s utopian academy.

I think I’ve written in a post before that I hope ML does something to commemorate the Paris 2024 Olympics, so I’m thrilled to see an Olympian akuma in the trailer! Perhaps this character is a celebrity cameo, but idk anything about Team France and its stars. It’s possible this scenario will be a special episode as well, but maybe more like the plastic special than the world specials. I hope they have to beat her by competing in games like Penalteam but with less cheating. It’d be awesome if the other heroes helped represent events that fit their characters. An episode like that would be a fun and light way to introduce the new animation and hero designs without diving into deep overarching drama and lore.

Perhaps the character jogging with Adrien is connected to this episode since they have a prosthetic running leg and seem athletic.

Here’s our first look at Lila’s akumatization. Her mask thing is very pretty and soft looking compared to Gabriel’s sharp, geometric, simple one. It reminds me of a masquerade mask with all the swirls. Maybe there’s some visual symbolism here of Lila being a more complex butterfly user than Hawkmoth. We also see her shooting some sort of beam at CN from the mask, maybe separate from the akuma’s power. I hope they’ll revisit the somewhat-retconned bloodbending power we saw Hawkmoth use on Evillustrator and Pixelator and explore the full extent of the butterfly’s power over their akumas.

Tomoe? Astruc said he wants Kagami to fight her and take her down further down the road, and I believe she may be a bigger villain than they’re making her out to be now. Lila is great and all, but an adult threat who owns a tech megacorp and is one of the only surviving members of Gabriel’s creepy billionaire sentibaby cult seems like a scarier enemy than the pathological liar from class. We don’t know Lila’s deal yet, but I imagine her villain motives are probably something deeply personal. Meanwhile, Tomoe might be trying to reach some greater goal that Gabriel failed to achieve. Both she and Lila practically had all the fruits of his evil labor fall into their laps without lifting a finger, so they might have an interesting dynamic as rival villains or fake allies.

Okay this is from the London special. The synopsis says someone found Ladybug’s identity to take her down, and she and Bunnyx have to solve the mystery and reverse the events. This masked person looks like they may be the enemy, and their design is themed after the rabbit miraculous. People have been kinda assuming that it’s just Lila, but everyone in the audience knows she’s the next big villain right now, so it feels like a cop-out to frame this special as a mystery. It could still be her, and it’s just a mystery to the heroes, but what if the enemy is someone else? If they’re using the rabbit miraculous, Lila wouldn’t have access to it during season 5 unless she stole it somehow and gave it back unnoticed.

My theory is that the villain is Tomoe who got the miraculous from Gabriel. The trailer shows catbug looking in on Adrien and Kagami in their white rooms, so maybe during that time, Gabriel sent rabbit!Tomoe after Ladybug to ensure his victory in the upcoming finale, and maybe she has her own motives as well.

I recall Zag releasing concepts of some hero or spy characters from London a long time ago, and I thought they’d be for the London world special like Eagle and Lady Dragon, but maybe they’re for a different show or got scrapped in favor of focusing on the main miraculous plot (which honestly, good. Please focus on the existing characters)

Finally, poor Nooroo in Lila’s creepy catacomb bunker. I hope her jumpscare reaction at the end of s5 wasn’t just the sight of him. It would feel odd after the latest of Marinette’s hero friends were totally chill seeing kwamis for the first time. He’s in some bubble here. Maybe it’s stopping him from sharing things he’s not allowed to say, or maybe Lila is forcing him to stay put? I’m also curious about the angle and what that metal bar is a part of. Is Lila sitting under a table?

Anyway! TLDR I like the new designs overall and I’m excited to see everyone else. I’m also excited at the prospect of an Olympics episode and I think Tomoe may be the next big villain next to or even surpassing Lila.