#my dash is so dead it's tragic | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

helplesslypurple77 · 1 year ago

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AU Week: Detective AU(Dazai/Reader)

Summary:

“Remember Dazai.” You hiss in his ear, as the servant by the door rings the knocker for you. “As of now, I'm your wife.” “I know darling.” He says, giving you a reassuring pat on the back. Your stomach whirls to life, butterflies, leaping and bounding inside you. You don't know if you’ll survive the night, truly

Warnings: Smut~

Notes: I grew up with Nancy Drew, can you blame me? Also at some point the word count got away from me and i had to gloss over the actual mystery bits to get to the smut

then i also simplify the smut a little at the end but it got wayyyyyy to long

...

Even after so many years, the sight of dead bodies still made your stomach curl. You supposed it would never change, that disgusting stench of death, the quiet reverence that permeated the air as you stood before the body, the mangled body of a young woman, life cut much too short. And even though you loved your job, this was most definitely your least favorite part.

The grimy streets of London were as they usually were, dark and unpleasant. The streetlights scattered every ten feet did their best to cut through the blanket of fog that fell at dusk, hiding the surroundings from even the keenest eye. The rain fell in a mist, having been caught in the tail end of its fall. It always rained in London. You didn't mind, you actually liked the dreary atmosphere, as long as you weren't actually in the rain. You preferred to look upon it from inside a warm house.

“How tragic.” Dazai, your investigation partner says, reaching for another chip. He's holding a large bag of them, and as you eye them distastefully he crumples up the empty bag, tossing it into the garbage can. You take a deep, deep breath, letting it out through your nose in one big gust of air. Every day you come one step closer to simply ending it all.

Dazai Osamu is brilliant, that's obvious. Able to solve impossible cases with the barest bits of evidence, to track down serial killers and trick them into confessing. He’s so brilliant, you don't know why he even needs you to be his investigative partner, but he keeps you around, for some reason. You’ve never asked. Perhaps to field the questions he doesn't care to deal with. Or to foil his dumb antics. Or for comic relief.

“Let us investigate, my partner.” Dazai says, grandly swiping a magnifying glass out of his pocket. You take a deep, deep breath.

“Dazai, you shouldn't bring snacks to a crime scene.” You say, mostly for the benefit of the confused police officer standing in the back of the room.

“But that's so boring.” Dazai says loudly, attracting a few angry stares from the police officers scattered across the sight. You send them all small apologetic glances. It's smart to remain on good terms with these officers, because as soon as your small detective Agency loses the trust of the police, you lose cases, and when you lose cases, you can't pay rent.

The body is more gruesome up close, mangled in a totally unnecessary way. Her face is untouched, preserved perfectly in death, but her body is a mess. Her stomach is completely opened up, organs spilling onto the wet sidewalk, blood mixing with the pools of rainwater that run down the street, small red rivers, dashing away downtown. Why does it always rain, you’ll never know. But it always rains in London, that you could count on.

She’s dressed well, in a fine evening gown and sparkling jewels. Her handbag is lying a few feet away, strangely untouched. Dazai leans down, carefully inspecting her rain soaked face.

“Her jewelry is still on her.” You notice, probably stating the obvious. “You’d think the perp would have stolen it. Those are fine jewels.”

Dazai rolls his eyes in your direction. “Obviously, this was a crime of passion.” Dazai says, poking the dead woman's cheek curiously. He says the words like you should already know, and you fight back the urge to roll your eyes. Dazai can grate on the nerves, his assumption that everyone is as smart as him is egregiously wrong. You try not to let his tone affect you in any way.

“Is she wearing makeup?” Dazai directs this at you, and you lean down, carefully inspecting her face. This is one area that Dazai lacks, women's makeup and fashion.

“Yes, she’s obviously dressed for a social engagement. A date or a fancy dinner.” You say, stomach turning as you try your best to avoid the more disturbing area’s, like the stomach. You dislike this part immensely, looking at the dead bodies of people who were just like you once. It makes your thoughts turn dark, scary, and entirely unnecessary. You sigh.

“Wasn't there a ball this evening? A sponsored event I think.” You say, directing this at the police officers standing behind you. It's raining, and yet they stand there, scarily still. Their uniforms were wet with rain.

“A charity ball, sponsored by the Stonewall Corp, Ma’am.” The officer on the right, a handsome young man with a sad-looking face says. You shoot him a thankful smile, and watch as his cheeks flush a little. He’s cute, thin and pale with small eye bags under his gray blue eyes. If you weren't on a murder investigation and bogged down with unrequited feelings of love for your dumb(at least when it came to emotions) partner, you would flirt a little, maybe find the time to sneak off for some ‘fun time’ but alas that's highly inappropriate. Dazai coughs from next to you, still crouching near the body.

“Flirting at a murder scene is in bad taste.” He says, as if he was not just eating an entire bag of chips, in front of a dead body. You take a deep, deep breath, inhaling the smell of the wet london streets, and holding onto your patients with all your might. Dazai is a brilliant man, intelligent and kind but he was also tactless, rude, and a terrible flirt. And maybe it was because of your ill fated crush on him, but every time he criticizes you, every time you felt unwanted and useless, a deep well of sadness opened up in your heart, sucking at your soul and wringing out every ounce of self worth you possessed. It was tragic and pathetic and your patience was running thin. You had been feeling especially emotional and broken lately, and Dazai’s carefree attitude was grating at your nerves.

“Tell me oh so amazing detective, have you finished.” You say, tapping your foot insistently against the wet pavement. “Because I'm cold and wet and I want to go home.” You sound bratty and childish, but you can't bring yourself to care, not right now.

“Geez, cool your jets partner.” Dazai says, giving the body one last ounce over. “Fine, we can go. Hey you there.” He directs this part at the police officer standing behind him, an older gentleman who looks very, very tired.

“Send us an investigation into this woman.” Dazai continues. You shoot both police officers apologetic winces as Dazai pulls his brown coat closer around him, meandering away from the crime scene. You move to follow him.

“Wait Miss, let me walk you home.” It's the police officer from before, the handsome one with the gray eyes. He pulls out an umbrella, holding it over your head. You shoot him a grateful smile. It feels nice to be admired for ounce. He blushes, scratching the back of his head to hide it.

“It's dangerous this late at night.” He says, voice trailing off towards the end.

“No need.” Dazai jumps in, suddenly reappearing in between you and the cute officer rather rudely. The officer jumps back skittishly, giving a defeated little sigh as he tries to protest.

“At least take my umbrella Miss, it looks like it's going to rain.” He says, pressing the umbrella into your grateful hands. And with one last tip of his cap, he's gone.

“It always rains, it's london,” Dazai says, once again heading along the back street. You follow him, your heels clicking on the soaked pavement. The clicks echo about the empty street, accompanied by Dazai’s loud humming and truly unnecessary comments. You roll your eyes in Dazai’s direction.

“Would it kill you to be a little nicer? The police do their best, you know that.” You say, opening the umbrella with a click. The rain begins to come down in earnest, and Dazai ducks under the umbrella as well, crowding into you.

The two of you turn a corner, entering the shopping district. It's late, and most shops have already closed their doors. The only light comes from the street lights, casting rings of light onto the soaked pavement.

Dazai grumbles faintly, something you can't quite hear. You sigh.

“So, any ideas?” You say, extending a little bit of an olive branch. You really do appreciate your partner, and you love him as well, even though he can be childish and annoying. You value his time and intelligence greatly.

Dazai sighs out a great breath, as you turn the corner onto the street that houses your little detective office.

“Just a few things, we don't even know who she is yet.” He sounds tired, and a little depressed, and as the rain starts coming down harder than before the two of you sprint towards the office.

You lock the door behind you with a decisive click, you're not taking any chances. The office is dark, but you can make out the familiar shape of the secretaries desk, and the darkened typewriter. You make your way up the back stairs, Dazai on your heels and open the door to your warm apartment. You share it, to cut rent costs. It's also conveniently placed right above the office. There are two people already in the room, sitting by the fire.

Dr Yosano, one of the people you share the apartment with, is a very old friend of Dazai’s, and a great person to have around when one of you stumbled home, potentially very badly injured. She works as a doctor by day, and sometimes disappears at night. You don't ask her where she goes, she honestly scares you a little. But she’s a very kind woman, who’s known you for years now. She’s sitting across from the fireplace, a book in one hand and a glass of red wine in the other.

Atsushi is curled up in an armchair, textbooks and handwritten notes scattered out on the coffee table in front of him, little sighs gusting from his half parted lips. Atsushi is only eighteen, and studying to become a professor of literature one day. A good childhood friend of yours for many years, you considered him a little brother of sorts. You smile in Yosano’s direction, leaning down to press a kiss to Atsushi’s sleeping forehead gently. The poor boy overworks himself, always trying his best to keep up with some of the weirdos who go to his school. He’s a kind boy, good natured and handsome, and a bit oblivious. There's always a bunch of innocent college girls coming up to you, asking after him, yet he never notices.

“So, how was it?” Yosano says, her voice pitched low so as to not wake Atsushi. You sink onto the couch beside her, your skirts brushing against your tights. You're wearing darker colors, a dark navy blue and black striped walking suite. You love this particular outfit, and the dark colors match the dark weather. Your skirts rustle around your feet as you lean down, pulling off your black kitten heels. You take off your hat, placing it gently on the coffee table away from Atsushi’s notes.

“Gruesome. The body was mangled. Unnecessarily I might add.” You say, sinking back into the couch cushions with a sigh. Dazai hums behind you, hanging his brown coat on the rack.

“Obvious crime of passion. None of her jewelry was stolen. And her face was completely intact.” Dazai sighs, sinking into the armchair opposite Atsushi’s sleeping form. “She was coming from some sort of charity ball? High society and the like.” He scoffs, his opinion on the upper class as clear as ever. You close your eyes as you let your body sink back into the soft fabric of the couch. It's late, and you can feel sleep tugging at you, pulling at your limbs and urging you to fall deep under, into a quiet, peaceful, sleep. You wish to obey.

“Dazai? ‘M going to bed.” You murmur, taking a deep breath and slowly getting to your feet. You arch your back with a crack, and trudge towards the room you share with Yosano. He hums noncommittal in your direction, and Yosano sends you a small, tired goodnight.

☂☂☂

The next few days are filled with boring, boring interviews. Interviews with relatives of the poor girl, interviews with her slimy brother, and interviews with her weepy rich boyfriend. But you get a few good things out of it. One, Dazai solves the case. And two, you get a free vacation.

“She was going to attend this mansion party.” The boyfriend of the dead woman tells you, swiping at his nonstop tears with a soaking wet handkerchief. “At the digression of a billionaire.”

Her boyfriend is a rather ugly man, portly and balding but kind and sensitive. He hands you a small envelope sealed with a red wax seal.

“I just know she would have wanted you to have it. I'm entrusting it to you.” He says, bowing his head in thanks and standing up to leave.

The whole thing was a wash, a confusing mess of emotions and hidden words that you don't want to sort through, but as you and Dazai sit there, in the front office with that envelope in your hand.

“You know.” You start, sitting back against the hard wooden back of your chair, “I wonder if this is what it feels like to strike gold.”

Dazai spares you a small chuckle, before he stands up, stretching with a yawn. “Better get packing, partner.” He says, shooting you a smile. “We're going on a trip. And it looks like we're getting married.”

☂☂☂

“This place is huge.” You whisper in Dazai’s ear, gloved hand hooked in his elbow. You whisper the words, almost smacking him with the brim of your hat. You're wearing another walking suit, because it's raining, again, and you don't want to ruin your nicer dresses for this farce.

The dress is a pretty brown, trimmed in black lace and ribbon, and matches Dazai’s brown and white suit well, in a way that says ‘we’re married and get our clothes tailored by the same person’. Because as of now, as you step through the threshold of the massive ivy-covered mansion, you are married.

“Remember Dazai.” You hiss in his ear, as the servant by the door rings the knocker for you. “As of now, I'm your wife.”

“I know darling.” He says, giving you a reassuring pat on the back. Your stomach whirls to life, butterflies, leaping and bounding inside you. You don't know if you’ll survive the night, truly.

The door opens with a crack, an older man with hair as silver as a coin peeks out. His eyes are beady, suspicious and angry as he looks the two of you up and down. You try not to fidget, standing straight and tall like you’re supposed to be there.

“Mr and Ms Osamu Dazai? Your invitation.” The butler says, eyeing you suspiciously. You try not to fidget with your wedding ring, hidden under the pair of brown leather gloves you wear.

“Yes, here.” Dazai says, passing the invitation over. “I guess you were informed of the change?” He sounds as careless as ever, but in this situation, it actually works in his favor. He sounds just like a rich newlywed husband, taking his new wife on a fine vacation to the countryside. You clutch his arm tighter, nodding at the butler dismissively.

“I just really wanted to go, you know, and my darling Osamu managed to get an invite for me.” You giggle, playing up the young and in love. “Oh, you’re such a dear.” You simper, planting a lipstick kiss boldly on his cheek. His chest puffs up and he grins at you, sending the caretaker a side eye.

“Can you hurry it along? My wife is offly tired from the road.” Dazai says, and his voice portrays the air of someone who finds it very annoying to be doing something as tedious as checking identities. You reach up, adjusting the top hat that sits upon his head. The caretaker fixes the two of you with an unimpressed stare, but steps aside.

“Very well, i’ll show you to your room then.” He says, ushering the two of you inside. The door shuts with a slam behind you, and you're suddenly surrounded by eerie silence. The large hallway is empty, and cold with portraits lining the walls. Their grand portraits, of stern looking men and women, positioned so they are looking down upon each person that steps foot inside the mansion. You dislike each of them immediately, but a stern looking woman dressed in an unpleasant blue dress stands out to you. She seems to be watching you specifically, and you clutch Dazai’s arm tighter, turning away from the unpleasant painting.

The grand hall is big, arched ceilings support a large crystal chandelier that throws beams of light across every surface, be it the wooden paneled floor or the green wallpaper that lines the walls. The entire room is quiet, although faintly in the distance you can hear the sounds of a piano. You lean close to Dazai, whispering directly in his ear.

“This place is so spooky babe.” You stage whisper, eyeing the butler out of the corner of your eye.

“Don't be impolite darling.” Dazai stage whispers back. “Not everyone can have your suburb taste.”

“Welcome to the Crowley Estate, Mr and Ms Dazai. You’re our last guests to arrive.” The Butler says, leading you up a large twisting staircase, wrought iron handling and wooden steps. Your heels make loud noises in the mostly abandoned room. Every now and then you can catch the faint glimpse of a maid, dashing back and forth and then disappearing into one of the doors on the landing.

The Butler leads you down a hall, your footsteps vanishing into the carpeted floor. The doorknobs are silver, the many colored doors at odds with the green wallpaper. You eye them, taking note of any strange details.

“You guys are in room seven. Dinner is in thirty minutes. Do not be late.” The Butler says. And then he turns on his heel and leaves. You sigh.

“What a lovely man.” You say, turning the knob to room seven and stepping inside the room.

☂☂☂

The maid leads you and Dazai to the dining room twenty minutes later. You're still attached at the hip, and as you open the large doors with a creek, the panicked chatter in the room dies. There's a small circle of people in the room, gathered around something, obscuring it from your view. And because you’ve seen this exact scene go down a few to many times, you have a bad feeling you know exactly what happened.

Arm still hooked in Dazai’s, you walk forward, half dreading the sight you know you’ll see when you arrive. The half circle of eccentrically dressed people part like the red sea, and what you see in the middle makes you cringe.

The body of the butler, laying face down in the carpet with an axe buried deep in his back. You take a deep breath, and start your theatrics.

“Oh Hubby.” You say, turning dramatically and throwing yourself in your ‘husbands’ waiting arms. “It's a dead body baby. Oh that's so scary!” You say, your voice whiny and annoying even to your own ears.

Dazai pats you on the back reassuringly. “What is going on here? Can't you see, my wife is deeply disturbed by this?” He says, as you cry fakely into his jacket. “She has a very delicate constitution.” He informs the crowd of confused people that watch your theatrics. You clutch his shoulders, forcing real tears to ruin your makeup.

“Oh ‘Samu, our vacation is absolutely ruined!” You say, pulling away from his coat to stair beseechingly into his eyes. “And I was so looking forward to it. Whatever shall we do?”

Dazai puts on an admittedly convincing look, eyes suddenly glued to your lips. Your heart is in your throat, beating an unsteady rhythm as the two of you stand chest to chest, your matching wedding rings flashing in the lowlight. All you can see is his eyes, the strange expression that sits on his face, all you can hear is your heartbeat in your ears, all you can feel is him.

“Well.” Dazai starts, his voice all breathy and low. “I guess we’ll just have to make our own fun then darling.”

The world around you is gone. The other people in the room are simply gone. The dead body lying on the floor in a pool of blood is gone. All you can see is Dazai. His eyes lidded, locked on your lips. You pull your bottom lip into your mouth, chewing it lightly and he takes a breath in. And suddenly he’s moving closer. His eyes are still locked on your lips, and you feel your own eyes fall closed, your fingers notting in the fabric of his jacket and then—

Someone coughs, and you open your eyes, suddenly remembering that there is a dead body and six confused strangers in the room with you. You move away, flustered.

“Is this really the time?” A woman says. She's an older woman, maybe in her late fifties, dressed finely in a periwinkle blue dress and a silver animal fur of some kind. She hides her annoyed expression well, but you can still see it in her eyes. The other occupants of the room nod.

They are an odd group, all dressed in finery and dripping with money. Their wealth drips off them, and if you weren't busy throwing a kind of fit, you would cringe away from them. They give off the air of people who think they are very important, far more important than those ‘commoners’. But right now, you are those people. You take a deep breath, and continue on with the theatrics.

☂☂☂

“What a waste of time.” You say, closing the door behind the two of you. The minute the door shuts you sink down into a chair, the exhaustion clear in your body language.

Dazai chuckles to himself, hanging his brown coat on the coat hanger by the door.

“They're all annoying, but none of them are murderers.” He says, placing his hat on the coffee table and checking his watch.

You spent the rest of the evening in the room, deftly feilding the flying accusations that spun around the room, and doing your best to convince them that you’re a young and in love couple.

“You think they believed us?” You ask, turning your eyes on Dazai. He sinks down next to you, shooting you a wink.

“You were very convincing.” He says, siding closer to you on the couch. You tamp down the butterflies in your stomach, outwardly rolling your eyes. As much as you wish his flirting was only for you, you know that's to the contrary. Although for some reason, lately he’s really stopped his flirting. Maybe he finally got tired of being rejected. And it wasn't flirting, it was double suicide invitations. Somehow, even though the man annoys you to no end, the butterflies still whirl around your stomach, your palms become sweaty and your heart beats double time. You hate him, just because of what he’s reduced you to. But you know you love him.

Dazai stands with a groan, stretching his arms above his head. “Well my Darling wife.” He says, shooting you an exaggerated wink. “I'm off to bathe. Won't be long.” He says, yanking one of the fluffy towels that the maid had left and soldering off to the bathroom. You give a noncommittal hum in return, and when the door slams behind him you start the process of getting ready for bed.

First the outer jacket is taken off, folded and carefully placed in the dresser. Usually you would have a maid help you undress, but you were very suspicious of everyone in this house, be it staff or guests, and although it was hard you would rather just do it yourself. The outer skirt is taken off, then the thin layer of petticoats and the shaping pads and the pretty lace trimmed corset until you're left in just your silk and lace chemise. It was a pretty one, one of your favorites and unusually short, reaching about mid thigh. It was trimmed in layers of lace and the edges brushed your skin as you carefully picked up your pile of clothes, carrying them into the walk in closet. You're carefully placing them away when you hear the voices, people chattering just outside your room. You still, listening.

“Do you think those two are actually married?” someone, a man, speaks first. You freez, not making a sound as they continue their conversation. They can't see you, but they might be able to hear you.

“You think they are faking?” It's Margaret, the older woman from earlier, her haughty pompous voice full of disdain. She continues. “Then are they the perpetrators?”

The man coughs lightly before he speaks again. “I don't know, but I do know that when my wife and I were newlyweds we simply could not keep our hands off each other if you know what I mean.” You blush, still hiding in the closet.

“I suppose you're right.” Margaret says, and you hear something hitting the outside wall. She might be leaning against it. “Well it seems like the husband is taking a bath. Maybe they don't get along that well after all.”

They continue their chatting, walking down the hallway and soon Margarets door slams, and you can hear their conversation through the wall. They think you can hear them, you suppose. A plan forming in your head, you carefully finish putting the clothes away. The walls are thin, very thin. Earlier you heard Margaret through the right walls, loudly complaining to the maid for the thousandth time. It would be so easy to fake it, to moan just loud enough that she can hear, and so can your other neighbors. You smile to yourself, trying to calm your racing heart and the embarrassment lighting your face. Just in time, you hear the sound of the bathroom door opening.

You exit the closet in a rush, and turn on Dazai, advancing on him much like a predator. He smiles at you, with not a clue.

“I was waiting for you.” You say, purposely pitching your voice a little higher than the purr you would usually use to seduce men. You need the snoopers on the other side of the wall to hear you. Or hear you enough that their suspicions are eased and they leave the room in a hurry. Dazai eyes you, confused. You're upon him now, and you slip your bare hand into his, trying your best to caress the skin, to seduce him with touch. Still gripping his hand, you pull him towards the bed. He stumbles after you, his face still pulled into one of confusion.

“What are you doing?” Dazai asks you, a strange light in his eyes as you stop before the large bed. His eyes are locked on you, his hair still damp from the bath, droplets dripping down his neck and soaking the fabric of his complimentary bathrobe. The air in the room has changed, it's charged with electricity as he looks at you, his eyes jumping from the low lace collar of your chemise to your exposed thighs, to your lips. You smile, small and seductive. Maybe you're doing too much, it's not like the people on the other side of the wall can see you, but you can't help the faint hope that maybe he wants you, that maybe he loves you. You banish any thoughts like that from your mind and gently push him onto the bed.

His back hits the fabric with a sound, a soft sound that you know the snoopers on the other side of the wall can't hear. He props himself up, still watching you. You hear a creak near the door, and you sigh. More suspicions are flying it seems. Time to up your act a little.

“What are you…” Dazai tries, trailing off as you climb onto the bed, crawling forward on all fours, doing your best to employ all the seduction techniques you know. You don't stop until you're on top of his prone form, and then as you sit down, plopping yourself directly on his lap. He hisses, gripping your waist with a question on his lips and arousal in his eyes.

“Name, what are you doing?” He hisses, his voice urgent but low. You ignore him, slowly grinding down on his lap, and the hardness you find there. His protests die on his lips as you move, back and forth along the length you can feel beneath the fabric. Dazai grips your hips in a slight protest, hands trembling against your skin as you lift your chemise over your head. His eyes run to your boobs, his dick twitching against your bare pussy. You whimper a little as you grind harder, the stimulation ruining your sanity. But you must hold on, this is only an act.

“Why are you protesting babe?” You say, a little too loudly for the benefit of the watchers. “Are you too tired?” You grind down a little harder, and Dazai bites his lip. Hard.

You lean down, pretending to kiss his neck as you speak. Your voice is a whisper, a caress, your body still singing with arousal. “They're suspicious. They're watching.” You whisper, moving your hips back and forth, back and forth. It's all the words it takes. It seems Dazai’s brain isn't completely fried by arousal, because understanding flashes through his brain, followed by something you can't quite place. It almost looks like disappointment. You banish the thoughts, for it's impossible and only going to upset you later.

“You're quite needy today darling.” Dazai says, his voice heavy and deep. You do have to give him credit, it sounds oftly realistic and makes more heat pool in your gut. You bite back a whimper, fingers tracing the line of his bathrobe against his chest.

“I don't want that nasty body to ruin our vacation.” You pout, trying to conceal the obvious arousal in your voice. But you can't conceal your body's reaction, the wetness that spreads on his bathrobe. But, based on the hardness pressed against you, he can't control that either. It feels good to have at least this on him, it proves he's attracted to you in some way. It's a small consolation, but a consolation indeed. He chuckles beneath you, as you grip the ties of his bathrobe, pulling them undone and running your hands over the soft skin of his chest. He’s surprisingly built, with a faint abbs and a v-line running below the only part of his body still covered in soft white bathrobe. You giggle, running your hands along his body.

“You’ve been working out huh, baby.” You smirk. Dazai nods, hands tangled in the sheet as you grind down lightly, pussy leaving streaks behind on the fabric.

“Wanted to impress you.” He gets out, his voice sounding surprisingly wrecked. His face looks almost open, losing some of the guards he usually has in place around people, and if you didn't know he was making this up, you would totally be fooled. You have to congratulate him.

You grip his wrist, pulling his hand away from the sheet and bringing to you boob, giving him a permission of sorts to touch you. You want him to, in this case now and normally, and you wish he would take, take you however he wanted. You whimper as the rough pads of his finger come in contact with your sensitive nipple. If you strain your ears, you can faintly hear a commotion next door, what sounds like hushed conversation and the sound of footsteps, but the horny haze that surrounds your brain makes it hard to compute. You just need to control yourself until you hear them leaving, then you can go masturbate in the bath or something.

Dazai’s hand moves from your boob, once again gripping your hips and moving you, to simulate sex. You just close your eyes and let him, letting your moans leak out of your mouth and into the open air. You hope he thinks they're fake. You can hear faint little pants and grunts from him, and every so often he bites his lip red, his eyes locked on you and you grind. The expression on his face is something you don't think you’ll ever forget. Eyes locked on your face, dark with arousal and something that looks like amazement or disbelief, flushed cheeks and bitten lips, parted slightly with little pants into the already stuffy air of the bedroom. You know you don't look much better, face flushed, lips releasing moans into the air. You don't know if you will be able to hold on much longer.

And then, the sound you're waiting for. The next door slams loudly. “Oh, I must go downstairs.” Margaret exclaims loudly, and the sound of three sets of footsteps hurrying away is prelude to the end of this charade. You stop moving, still panting and quivering above him.

“They're gone.” You say, voice still full of arousal. Dazai staring at you. All this time, his eyes have never left you, your body, your eyes, your mouth. Their such a deep brown, the pupils dilated to almost black. There's a light in them, a light of disappointment, a light of desire. You don't know what to do from here.

Neither of you move, just frozen on the bed, you on top of him. It feels as if a spell might be broken, as if you are Cinderella and the moment you make a move to get up, the spell will break and the status quo will be back. The normal everyday you, and the Dazai that doesn't love you. You take a deep, deep breath, and prepare to move.

Dazai’s hands anchor you in place, his eyes narrowing slightly as you try to move off him. You frown. He grips your thighs, big hands anchoring you in place.

“Dazai…” You say, the word still full of arousal but tinged in confusion. He seems to be making a decision, weighing the pros and cons and as you sense his hands loosening around your waist you fall backwards. You spread your legs, fingers playing with your boobs and decide to take a leap of faith.

“Dazai.” You start, your voice certain. “I want you too fuck me.”

The effect is immediate. The emotions at war in Dazai’s dark eyes vanish, and suddenly he's upon you, gripping your waist and pulling you toward him, toward his dick. The bathrobe falls off, landing without a sound on the blanket and all you see is skin, pale skin, and dark eyes. They dont leave you as he lines up his hard dick inside you, pushing the head past your walls. The effect is immediate, you arch off the bed with a moan. Dazai smirks.

“You look so pretty like this.” He says, hands still slowly pulling you down on his cock. “You feel what you’ve done to me baby?”

His voice is rough as he slowly pushes in, hands gripping you so tight you're sure they’ll bruise. You whimper, hands gripping into the fabric beneath you as he bottoms out and starts to move. Your back arches off the bed with a moan, and as he sets a pace, fast and rough and oh so delicious, you grip his shoulders.

“Oh god Osamu.” You practically shriek the words, nails scratching his back. “Oh god i love you.”

You almost regret the words, but as he sucks possessive little marks into your neck, he murmurs the words into your skin.

“I love you too.” Dazai says, the words to tender and full of sincerity you nearly break. And then, he hits that spot inside you and you come with a scream.

☂☂☂

The atmosphere when you and Dazai enter the dining room the next morning, Dazai glowing and you limping and covered in hickeys, is one of many different emotions.

The maids are giggling, and even the butlers and some of the people at the large table are muffling laughter behind hands and napkins. Margaret sticks her nose in the air, as haughty as before.

And even though you have your work cut out for you, dealing with all these people and finding the killer, you find you are starting to anticipate the prospect. Dazai’s hand is still wrapped around your waist, supporting you as you walk around the table and you know he’ll be able to support you like this for a long time. It feels nice.

“What are you thinking about?” Dazai says, pressing a kiss to your cheek. You giggle.

“Oh nothing.” you say, taking a seat beside him. “Nothing at all.”

...

End Notes: been dealing with a nasty headache lately. Annoying as fuck. Btw i also did a little bit of research on the clothes but i am by NO means a fashion history expert. I just have google and sometimes that's wrong. Tried my best though.

on a totally unrelated note…Junko posing is coming back on tik tok and im terrified.

its lowkey fun though…

#bungou stray dogs #mariannacrxss #bsd smut #bsd x reader #bungou stray dogs x reader #dazai smut #dazai x reader #dazai osamu #bsd dazai #helplesslypurple77

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aprilmayverse · 3 months ago

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mayverse dash simulator

💅 pinkprlncesses Follow

🧟‍♀️ samuraishattered Follow op this is an incredibly fucked up and insensitive way to post about this. six people are dead. four of them are literal children. imagine losing a loved one and people are fucking memeing about it with supernatural. grow up. learn some fucking respect for the dead. this isn't just some quirky little fandom story like sharpie bath or whatever. these are real kids who had hopes and dreams and families and loved ones and now they are dead.

💅 pinkprlncesses Follow was it ever really that deep

🦴 trudycryme Follow New video about June July and Dysnomia Badmann's murders on the way! Special surprise at the end so stay tuned ;) Sponsored by Tender Lender <3

🦴 trudycryme Follow No fucking way

🩰 blood-and-books Follow wait, has anyone noticed that the accomplice in the bluecorp case and that 13 year old who killed her gfs parents and 2 random boys are half-sisters??

🍭 mera-duras-left-eyebrow Follow WAIT AND THEIR OLDEST SISTER HAD LINKS W/ BLUECORP TOO WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN

🪷 helloroses Follow does anyone remember how fucked up april may's career was. i rewatched pint-sized princesses after the news got out about her execution and like i know it was the 90s but what the fuck was going on there. it feels like a crime to watch it

🪷 helloroses Follow it's the same with her modelling career, why was she, a teenage girl, doing so many photoshoots where she was barely clothed. why did ad campaigns need all this

🦢 evilwomanenjoyer Follow why are we defending june july in 2018. she killed people. she murdered people. you are the same people who defend joe darke and dahlia hawthorne and matt engarde and fucking redd white. she took lives. where am i.

🐜 what-is-a-username420 Follow please learn about nuance and use your brain

🦢 evilwomanenjoyer Follow nuance is for fictional characters like pious priestess or whoever the fuck. not for real life situations like this.

🐜 what-is-a-username420 Follow sometimes im like "the reading comprehension on this site isnt THAT bad" and then i read shit like "nuance is for fiction not for real life"

🦴 trudycryme Follow I am truly, truly sorry for attempting to film those teenagers corpses and for breaking into the victims childhood home in an attempt to interview his family 2 days after the murder, I understand why I was wrong and I'm going to try my best to refrain from doing stuff like that next time lol. To further this, I'm starting a new merch collection and donating 20% of profits to JAVCV (Japanifornian Association for Victims of Violent Crime), buy it before the sale ends on March 4th!

🧟‍♀️ samuraishattered Follow not to be harsh but i hope you die

🌈 godsstrongestfujo Follow i think april may was a genuinely a bad person like she was just this rich woman who both did the modelling campaign + assisted in the murder to get money from her sugar daddy. shes not as innocent as yall make her out to be she just has pretty privelege

🍁 diskhorse-divorce Follow 1. she was not rich. she, her single mother, and sister were homeless for years. she had to be a child star and teen model to provide for herself and her family. they lived in a trailer at some point 2. she was very obviously being threatened by white. the courts said it was a lie because of fucking misogyny and white's power over her. 3. even if she did do it out of her own free will she still got executed over a crime where the death penalty at age 23 was not justified. 4. why are you calling a thirteen year old a bad person for doing an ad campaign where she was being heavily sexualised and exploited and stolen from you fucking weirdo

🩰 angelfawns Follow april may was such a tragic girl and an icon and so beautiful omg. she looked SO good during the summer 2008 ad campaign for bluecorp too. hold on i need to change my pfp

🐦‍⬛ proud-edgelord Follow if my parents named me teylhoure i wouldve killed myself too

#meta

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skriblee-ksk · 3 months ago

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“A party in Halloween Town? I’d be a fool to deny!”

Cameo of @the-rini-rush’s Carla!!

“It’s shocking I wasn’t chosen as the bride, but It’s alright. A heroine who fights for devotion seems to be my thing nowadays.”

Set to Home Screen: May the best suitor win.

Home Transition:

1: I didn’t bring an offering for the fountain. Not like I need good luck either way, I can fulfill my wishes all on my own.

2: I’m not sure how tight the security is at the Boogie Man’s Palace. I’m confident in my acting, but… Hm, I’ll scope it and then decide.

3: Yuuki looks quite dashing in their suit. Not exactly my definition of prince charming, but they could be a good candidate… I think I’d like to doll them up sometimes.

4: As much as I’d like to go into the graveyard and look for anything spooky, it’d be disrespectful to disrupt it without gifts on hand. Are flowers a little basic?

Home, after Login: Hmm, I quite like the properties of this outfit. Don’t I seem like a ghost? Be careful with your words, or I might haunt you forever…! Ha!

Tap Home:

1: The Esqueleto’s are quite considerate to invite me to their party. If I see them, I’ll be sure to thank them.

2: I seem more upbeat than usual? Well, I won’t deny it to you. A place where both the living and dead reside. Isn’t that exciting?

3: We must go to the Boutique, darling! Their dresses are quite glamorous, in a strange way.

4: Carla’s here too? Oh, and we’re rivals? Alright, let’s see who’s able to win Yuuki’s heart! Although… I’m not sure if her head’s completely in the game with Constance around…

5: Being the special girl picked from a large crowd is wholly romantic, don’t you agree? If I’m not chosen, then well… I always have other chances to get my dream anyway.

Groovification: “I have some flowery lines prepared. And if that doesn’t suit Yuuki, I have a few others.”

Tap Home Groovy: I’m not sure which attitude to put on when I’ll woo Yuuki. Probably nothing too straightforward, right? Don’t want to scare them off.

Home Transition Groovy: I wouldn’t mind living in a place like this. Dark and spooky… Oh, but what if I get bored of it because I experience it so often? It’d make me miserable!

Event by @theolivetree123!!

More under cut!!

putting my daughter kalmia up for sale for love <3333

I didn’t think i could get the groovy out before the end of the due date bc i’m pretty busy these days so it’s included this time!!

doodle of kamiyuuki:

idk like the general timeframe (book-wise) this event is in, but I think Yuuki and Kalmia would’ve met, perchance?? (She officially gets acquainted with Yuu like basically right after book 3 ends)

I don’t know how Yuuki feels about going home either, but!!! Either way!!! Kalmia would have went on that whole spiel and would’ve tried getting closer to Yuu, and then accidentally ended up becoming pretty closed due to forced (?) proximity. tragic (?)

Anyway. CONGRATS ON 150+ FOLLOWERS!!! 🎉🫶🙏🏻 Ur art is so wonderful (and so are ur characters) so it’s only natural!!! I hope I continue to see them more!! Literally so happy to be moots with u. I found you in the candy crush event and I was literally so flabbergasted when u fb. ANYWAY. Congrats once again!!! I hope u have fun w this event!!!

Taglist (ask to be added!!): @kathxrat-01 @distant-velleity @scint1llat3 @elenauaurs @boopshoops

@lumdays @venaue @jewelulu @thehollowwriter

#skribleedoodlz #welcometohalloweentown!#corpsebrideraffle!#twst stuff #twst kalmia #twst fan event #i think i mayyyyy have a slight bias towards kalmia currently #it okay. perchance #you can’t just say perchance #kalmia von viradin

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roach-works · 8 months ago

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Hi!!!! I recently read When the Wolf Comes Home and I loved the premise the where the fic was heading. I know it hasn't been updated since 2017 so I was wondering if there was any intention of finishing it? I know it's possible you've moved on from that fandom and that is totally fine! If you are, would it be possible to share where you wanted to take the fic? Thank you, I absolutely loved your writing!!!

im a little stuck on that one because yeah i do sometimes noodle a little more on it and i had a pretty solid plot for the first year, after which i was going to be Very Firmly Done because so many rewrites attempt to take on the whole seven year span and founder on the complexity. but the problem is im really ambivalent and undecided on how much i want to participate in harry potter fandom at this late date, with JKR going mask-off nazi sympathizer. it's a weird situation where you can't argue for death of the author when the author is annoyingly alive and arguing that you should be dead.

im deeply reluctant to denounce people still participating in a fandom that i myself found incredibly fun and rewarding for, yknow, several decades of my life, and i don't think i'm better than them, just fortunate to be more interested in other projects.

but ambivalence towards the fandom and deep resentment towards the creator aren't really a productive headspace to actually write in, and i also don't want to finally work through my own doubts, finish another chapter, and then get my head torn off by people who are certain that i'm supporting JKR's toxic fuckwittery.

all in all it's easier and more rewarding to play with other fandoms and work on my many original projects.

where the fic was going:

as far as i remember, in When The Wolf Comes Home, draco was going to get his dad to hire lupin as his defense against the dark arts tutor and rent out the shrieking shack for the man to work out of, thus circumventing the curse on the DADA position and giving draco a werewolf mentor and independent bolt-hole.

quirrelmort was going to continue trying to figure out how to use or dispose of draco on his way to get the philosopher stone, a side-plot draco knew almost nothing about. draco would continue to try to maneuver harry into quirrel's way and snape out of his way, with indifferent success. harry and ron, lacking any voice of reason to temper their enthusiastic partnership of 'baby griffindors looking cool in front of their first real friend ever', would continue to believe that draco, the saddest wet puppy, was an evil monster and the cause of all their misfortunes. draco would continue to be the most mentally and emotionally unstable kid in the castle, taking all the heat off neville, who would end up looking fairly cool and collected by comparison. rita skeeter would feature somewhere in there, hired by narcissa to write little puff pieces on how tragic and brave draco was being about going to school with such a tragic disability.

remus lupin would end up with a full schedule tutoring DADA students about to take their NEWTs and OWLs and make a bunch of money. with lucius as his patron and PR agent, he would be accepted in hogsmeade as a dashing and heroic warlock who had been off having reams of secret agent adventures as dumbledore's key man in the muggle world. remus would not really know what to do with this but eat as much as possible and smile gamely when lucius showed him off to people.

eventually towards the end of the year quirrel would get rid of draco by orchestrating a fight between ron and draco where ron cut his fist on draco's teeth. this would count as a bite and draco would get thrown in azkaban and belatedly realize that he had completely and totally forgotten about sirius black's whole Saddest Wet Dog situation. sirius would do his best to take care of his tiny insane werepuppy cousin until the malfoys and longbottoms and weasleys combined to lever draco back out, using ron's ashamed testimony. draco would immediately turn around and reveal scabbers. the malfoys would end up looking like champions of truth and justice and the weasleys would, unfortunately, have to just stand there and smile gamely for the cameras.

while all this was happening harry would go after quirrel with hermione and neville and take him down. dumbledore would show up at the end, when voldemort was defeated and sirius was exonerated and several deep family feuds had been laid aside, to dispense twinkling paternal wisdom.

draco would kick him in the fork.

THE END.

#time traveling baby werewolves #writing #fic

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robotic-rin · 1 year ago

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Psychosomatic Freedom (To Your Head)

(Beetlejuice x Reader)

Summary: Renting out the spare bedroom in the Maitland/Deetz mansion was wacky enough when you found out you’d be living with real life ghosts, but things only got more intense when a certain demon was thrown into the mix as well. Not only does he pride himself on annoying you whenever you’re busy, but he chooses to do so in ways that make you regrettably very horny for him. You do well at keeping your flustered reactions under control when you’re around him, but please try to remember that he WILL appear if you say his name three times, no matter the context or intent.

Word Count: 13,840

Rating: Explicit

Warnings/Tags: horny demon escapades, a dash of praise kink, even smaller dash of humiliation kink if you squint, beetlejuice being a bastard but he also whimpers, hurt/comfort, emotionally vulnerable handjobs, afab reader (no gendered terms are used aside from beej referring to reader’s “tits” bc of him being the way that he is), tried to limit my use of (y/n) but it is in there, monster fangs/tongues, overuse of bj’s mood ring hair, beetlejuice is so annoying that he loops back around into being majorly fuckable

Author’s Note: it’s finally happened. i’ve been meaning to write this fic for years, and i finally gathered the willpower to write it all out. i don’t know if i properly followed the post-musical summoning rules but tbh i just wrote this bc i wanna fuck beetlejuice and i didn’t do a lot of lore checking, apologies. i hope y’all enjoy regardless, this demon needs to be dommed so bad and i was more than happy to provide the scenario. anyways, you know the drill: if you’re good with all the tags and are 18+, please enjoy!

You can’t clearly remember the moment you realized that taking up residence in the Maitland/Deetz household was going to be more than you bargained for. The living family was eccentric enough, let alone the fact that they were currently cohabiting with a friendly ghost family. You had to be willing to accept a lot of zany things very quickly when you went in to sign the paperwork to rent out the mansion’s spare bedroom, and you’d say that you’ve taken everything in stride so far, all things considered. Charles and Delia Deetz were nice enough and stayed out of your business just as you did with theirs. They had been a bit strapped for cash after their investment in a gated neighborhood fell through, and it seemed as though they were happy enough to make some money off of renting out their guest bedroom to a sane person who mostly kept to themself. It was a win for everyone, so you got along just fine. Their daughter, Lydia Deetz, was less into staying out of your way, but she wasn’t rude about it by any means. She seemed to just be an eccentric teen who was curious about the person living in her house, and you’d gladly indulge her out-of-the-box conversation topics about the newest death metal bands and join her for an occult ritual or two. Classic teen stuff.

Of course, sharing a house with a living family was one thing, but adding a ghost family to the mix definitely livened things up (ironically). Adam and Barbara Maitland, also known as the previous owners of the house who had suffered a tragic premature death, were not what you expected from real life ghosts. It’s hard to say what you did expect when that bombshell was dropped on you, but it definitely wasn’t two polite suburban Millennials that felt more like a caricature of a couple you’d meet at a vegan farmers’ market than restless spirits haunting their old house. It was a wild day when you met them, assuming that Lydia was having a bit of fun with you when she’d ominously warned you that their house was haunted. But no, she was certainly not, as the couple took your moving-in day as their chance to formally introduce themselves. You didn’t actually believe that they were truly dead until Adam walked through a wall for you days later. Despite being slightly bummed that they didn’t look like the classic ghost with little wispy tails for feet, you were also a bit relieved that, although ghosts definitively exist, they can be just as friendly and unremarkable as any human. Not to say it as a knock against them, you actually found yourself hanging out with the Maitlands more than anyone else in the house. Against all odds, they were the most normal and down-to-earth ones in the whole household, and you were grateful to have them as housemates.

You got to hear all about how they got to the living arrangement they had now, and if you weren’t already rooming with ghosts, you’d have considered it too unbelievable to be true. But you’re glad to hear how well everyone seems to be doing with this new living arrangement, especially Lydia, who it seems had a really rough time of it right after her mom died. All things considered, you were beginning to really enjoy living in such a crazy house with such colorful personalities around you, all unique but living in harmony. Well. At least until he showed up.

You’d been warned that he does this from time to time. Part of their story told how he went from full-on antagonist to the weird uncle of the family, now popping in whenever he felt like it, often unannounced. He always claimed it was just to check in on his favorite mixed-life family, but in reality, it was mostly just to bother everybody.

As long as you live and die, you’ll never forget the first time he’d made one of his surprise visits after you’d moved in. You’d been sitting alone at the long dining room table, minding your own business as you typed away at important work on your laptop, fully lost in your task. Important files for your work lined your screen, all perfectly organized and sorted through after a long day’s work. But then, with no warning, your laptop’s display had changed to a blue screen, causing your eyes to widen in horror as you realized that it had fully died on you and probably lost all of your progress. You felt yourself choke out a horrible sound of despair, before a hand seemingly appeared from nowhere and pulled the blue screen back as though furling up a classroom projector screen, revealing your undisturbed desktop behind it.

“Woah, that was almost a really expensive mistake,” a gruff but playful voice laughed, coming from right next to you. “I forget how touchy technology can be when it comes to spirit energy. My bad, heh.”

You had whipped your head to the side to see a disheveled-looking man with bright green hair dressed in a black-and-white striped suit that looked like it needed to be washed and dry cleaned about 10 years ago. He was grimy, but almost purposefully grimy. Like it was part of his aesthetic. You’d seen some wild happenings in this house, but the sudden materialization of this random weird guy in the dining room was the first to leave you speechless.

“W-what…how…you just….” If first impressions truly were everything, he’d surely always think of you as the pinnacle of eloquence.

The stranger grinned at your reaction, obviously a bit pleased with himself. “No words, huh? Wouldn’t be the first time, I do tend to inspire that reaction in people. My undeniable charms aside, who are you? Some long-lost Deetz cousin visiting from WhoTheFuckKnowsVille or something?”

You finally regained enough of your speech abilities to respond just in time. “Uh, no. Just…renting the spare bedroom. No relation.” There was a moment of silence as he looked at you inquisitively, before you remembered your manners. “Um, I’m (Y/N). Am I right to assume that you’re Beetlejuice?” Hey, why do I need to have manners after he almost just fried my laptop? Your bitter thoughts go unfortunately unanswered.

He looked positively elated at your words, his dark eyes visibly lighting up as he sidled up next to you in your chair, ignoring the fact that it was clearly only made for one person. “Oh, wonderful! I get to skip the charades part with you. You’re already my new favorite person just for that, you don’t know how much I hate playing guessing games when the answer hasn’t changed in hundreds of years. But yes, that’s my name, don’t wear it out. Unless you want to see me. Then all you gotta do is say it three times in a row, and I’m there, baby. Morning or night, rain or shine.” Boy, this guy talks a lot.

You nodded slowly, still bewildered. “Ah, alright. Sounds good. Did you…need anything?” You couldn’t, for the life of you, get an idea of what Beetlejuice would be doing here.

He huffed noncommittally. “Well, usually I come around to see everyone here, since the Netherworld gets reeeaaaalllly boring. But lately, Lydia’s gone so much at school, and my old flames Adam and Barbara don’t always have time for lil ol’ me anymore…” He made a pitiful little face and rested his head on your shoulder, acting like a kicked dog. Despite his bad manners and lack of personal space, you felt a piece of yourself feel bad for the demon. Looking back, that was your first mistake.

“Hey, don’t be upset. I know we just met, but if you come by and nobody’s here, I could always…hang out? For a bit?” And that was mistake number two.

His full demeanor shifted in an instant, as though you’d activated a switch on him that could never be turned off. “Really? You’d spend time? With me?” For a demon, he did have very effective puppy dog eyes. If you weren’t locked in on what you said before, you had to be now, looking him in the eye as he turned his full body towards you, inches from your face.

“Sure, I’m usually just hanging out around the house getting work done anyway. I could use a little company sometimes.” It felt more like you were talking yourself into this decision rather than him.

“Oh friend, you won’t regret it! We’ll have such a nice time together, I can just feel it. Don’t ask where, heh.” He pulled out a small business card from thin air and slid it smoothly between your fingers. “And remember babes, you want me, you just call my name. I wouldn’t keep someone as smokin’ as you waiting. Not like I have a choice.” Snickering to himself, he’d disappeared in a flash, leaving you with your head spinning as you wondered exactly what you’d agreed to.

As time passed, you found that you didn’t even need to call his name for Beetlejuice to show up in the middle of your day and start pestering you. Eventually, it got to a point where, even when the other members of the family were around, he’d still choose to hang around you over them at times. After a good while, you got to a point where you nearly forgot that calling his name three times would summon him due to how often he popped in of his own volition with no warning at all. And somehow, he only ever seemed to do this on days where you had something that really needed to get done, never just on a day where you were already lazing about on the couch and eating snacks. No, instead, he acted like a bored cat with no sense of responsibility whose only goal was to distract you, and it’s a goal that he prided himself in succeeding at through various methods. Turning your pencil into a baby sandworm, making the keys on your laptop keyboard detach and float away, grabbing whatever you’re working on and zipping it up in a pocket dimension for a few minutes. One time, he straight up ate an important stack of papers from your desk whole because you weren’t looking when he told you he was about to do a cool trick. Anything to rile you up and steal your attention for a bit.

You find yourself in another situation like that on today of all days, when you’re swamped in assignments and don’t have a moment to spare. You can already feel his unseen eyes watching you as you sit hunched over your large desk-vanity, checking out what you’re up to before he acts. You’ve developed almost a sixth sense for detecting him when he’s invisible at this point, but somehow knowing that he’s secretly here just makes your heart race faster. There’s no feeling quite like trying to predict the first move of a master scarer while he’s in the room, but you quickly decide to put a stop to it today.

“I know you’re there, Beetlejuice,” you say, clear and stern. It would really emphasize how serious and non-playful you’re feeling today, if not for the way the corners of your mouth turn upwards of their own accord. Fight though you might, your body always gives away how much you enjoy the little games you two play. You allow your eyes to slowly wander away from your glowing laptop screen to stare at the large mirror in front of you, hoping to catch a glimpse of his figure lurking behind you and catch him before he can put whatever plan he has into action. Just as you’re scanning the reflection for anything that seems off, your vision is engulfed by a sharp toothy grin manifesting in front of you from within the mirror.

“Boo.”

He can barely get the first syllable out uninterrupted before you’re screaming and jumping back so far that you nearly fall backwards out of your chair, only catching your balance at the last moment. You turn your fiery gaze up to his smug face, still sticking halfway out of your mirror.

“You rat bastard!” You’re panting so hard that you can’t even think of a clever insult for him outside of playground swears, which only seem to egg him on.

He flutters his eyelashes innocently. “Aww, you liked it that much? Well, I hope it was as good for you as it was for me. There’s plenty more where that came from, heh.” He sticks a long, snake-like striped tongue out of his mouth as if to cheekily punctuate his statement.

Despite yourself, you feel your face beginning to flush at his suggestive behavior and turn your back on the mirror to conceal your expression. You don’t want to admit it, but over the past few months, you had developed an issue even bigger than the simple annoyance of a demon constantly pestering you: you found yourself feeling really attracted to Beetlejuice’s stupid face and mannerisms. Even though he was insufferable, he was also undeniably cute and charismatic in a strange way, and he always managed to get you riled up in more ways than one through his teasing. This would only make you all the more bothered by his antics, which in turn would make him want to press your buttons even more. It was a vicious cycle that only ever ended up in you feeling a unique mix of irritated and hot under the collar after he left. Why, why was I cursed with attraction to this rude little gremlin man? He’s gross, and crude, and annoying…and yet.

You wrinkle your nose to dismiss your thoughts, still looking away from Beetlejuice. “So did you come just to make sure I don’t get these assignments turned in on time, or what?”

“Or…what.” Out of the corner of your eye, you see him slide out of the mirror like a long snake, coming back up to full height standing next to your chair. “You know how lonely I get in the stupid Netherworld, so checking up on my faaaavorite little breather is a great way to fill my social meter.” He gets a little too close to your ear, stretching out that “favorite” into almost a growl, and you practically stop breathing trying to minimize the shiver that overtakes your body. Fuck this guy’s stupid sexy voice.

Hoping he didn’t notice your reaction, you turn your body to face him and stand up from your chair defiantly, face to face with his usual shit-eating grin. “What, you just don’t talk to anybody else in this house anymore? It feels like you only ever visit me nowadays, and I really have no idea what I’ve done to be cursed with the privilege of being your favorite human.”

Beetlejuice looks up thoughtfully, as though truly trying to figure out how this relationship came to be, bringing his face closer still to yours. “Well, you are the only person who’s ever voluntarily offered to spend quality time with me.” The answer is so earnest and straightforward, it steals the next witty retort from your lips and you just gawk at him, inches away. His eyes quickly dart down. “Hm, plus, you do have the best tits I’ve seen in a few centuries.” There it is.

You roll your eyes and groan, gently pushing his face away from you with your entire hand, only for him to lick a long stripe down your palm with his tongue. “Ugh, you are so gross!” You relent and move to wipe your hand on your shirt instead.

“Only for you, babes,” he coos with half-lidded eyes.

“That is demonstrably false.”

“Ok fine, how about: especially for you?”

“Well, it’s closer to the truth at least.” You fold your arms and cock your head. “What did you wanna do, then?”

“Oh, you should know better than to give me so much control here, (Y/N). There’s a lotta things I’d like to do with you.” He runs his tongue over fanged teeth teasingly, causing your heart to race once again. Beetlejuice really is a demon without a doubt, because he’s perfectly created my own personal hell. He must be some kind of divine punishment for my wrongdoings. A sexy demon who flirts with me endlessly, and I have to just be normal about it because there’s no way he’s serious. Maybe I burned down orphanages in a past life to deserve this.

“Yeah, you’re right. You’d probably turn me inside out or something fucked up if you got the freedom of choice. I’ll pick, then.” You quickly scan your brain for the quickest, most painless way to get him out of your hair. “How about a game?”

His face lights up with mischief. “Twister?”

“No,” you respond flatly.

“Spin the bottle?”

“No.”

“Hungry Hungry Hippos?”

“N-what? How is that even-“

“Oh, it’s not a euphemism, I just genuinely like that one.”

You sigh in defeat. “Ok, no to all of those. I was thinking more along the lines of The Quiet Game. You sit over there and be quiet, and I sit over here and get my work done, and if you stay quiet the whole time, we can watch a movie or something afterwards.” You say all of this knowing very well that it’s a pipe dream. Even if he were to be totally silent, Beetlejuice would have no problem finding new and inventive ways to torment you. He’s quite talented at that, as both of you are keenly aware.

Upon hearing your proposal, Beetlejuice furrows his brow and wrinkles his nose in a way similar to a petulant child about to throw a tantrum. “The Quiet Game? Are you serious, I-hmph, well, I can tell when I’m not wanted! I don’t need your pity games, I have plenty of exciting and important work things to do myself, like…um. Well, I’d have to check my dossier, but I’m sure there’s plenty of ‘em!” He spins away from you dramatically, drooping his shoulders to appear more pathetic. It works, unfortunately.

Your gaze softens slightly as you take a step towards him. “Beej, c’mon, it’s not that I don’t wanna hang out, I just really need to finish-“

“Yeah, yeah, human work, I know it.” He whirls around to poke at your chest accusingly. “Well, don’t let me be a roadblock to you, Professor Workaholic. I’ll remove myself from your esteemed presence. Just don’t come crawling back to me when you’ve worked yourself to death! I’ll be too busy. Filing shit. Or whatever.” His voice warbles at the end, and you’re not entirely sure if he’s doing it on purpose or not. He’s not the easiest guy to read, though you do think you catch a flash of purple streaking its way through his otherwise green hair. Without giving you time to respond, Beetlejuice pulls out a pair of scissors and snips a long hole in reality, stepping through it with one last pitiful look at you before flipping you off and stitching it up behind him, causing it to blip out of existence.

Just like that, he’s gone, and you quickly realize that you may not have wanted this outcome as much as you’d thought. He’s a bit abrasive, but he’s not wrong. A break would’ve been good for me, and spending time with him is always…a lot, but never boring. We always have fun together. You groan to yourself, frustrated that your brain has decided to come around only after Beetlejuice had already dipped. Damn, I shouldn’t have let him leave.

Seeing no point in taking a break on your own, you sigh, sit back down, and attempt to keep trucking through your work. It’s mind-numbingly dull, and you keep finding your brain wandering off to thoughts of Beetlejuice. His poor little demon schtick really does work, I can’t stand to think about how sad he looked as he was leaving. His big, expressive eyes…how cute and proud of himself he looked after successfully scaring me earlier…his pointy tongue running across those sharp fangs. Fuck… You find yourself blushing at the mere memory of that last one, your conscious mind pleading that you stop finding it as sexy as you do. But try as you may, there’s no changing the fact that Beetlejuice’s playful antics paired with his handsome face have spelled your doom. You’re down bad, worked up, and all alone. Well, looks like this work won’t be getting done because of Beetlejuice even without him here. Fuck it.

Giving in to your body’s demands, you stand up from the desk chair and head over to your bed, taking your pants off on the way and tossing them haphazardly into a corner to start gathering wrinkles. You have bigger things on your mind at the moment; specifically, imagining what Beetlejuice’s long tongue might feel like dragging across your skin. Feeling goosebumps beginning to rise already, you recline onto the bed and slip your hand into your underwear, wasting no time as you begin rubbing slow circles into your clit. You’re almost embarrassed at the fact that you’re already fairly wet just from thinking about him, but then again, it’s not really that surprising. Ok, yeah, this is exactly what I needed. Well, maybe not exactly. If it was perfect, he’d really be here fucking me. The mere idea of that causes your fingers to speed up their ministrations, attempting to replicate the pleasure your mind is imagining in real time. You’ve been here before, touching yourself at the thought of having sex with that demon, but it’s starting to happen more often than you’d care to admit.

Ignoring your inner voice of shame, you focus your whole energy on getting yourself off, your hips twitching involuntarily as you continue. You’re audibly panting at this point, chasing your release at a fast pace. No need for slow pleasantries, this is just about me relieving some tension. Once I’m done, maybe I’ll actually be able to focus on something besides him. Maybe.

After a short while, you can quickly feel your release approaching as you continue to think of him. You’re so close, you can tell that you’re starting to lose yourself. You imagine his big brown eyes looking up at you, expression clouded with lust. “Mm, Beetlejuice…” His pointed fangs scraping your inner thighs… “Beetlejuice…” His lewd face as you suck his cock... “Beetlejuice!”

“Well, well, well, look who decided to come crawling ba-“

Pulled from the brink, you practically jump straight up in the air from where you lay in bed as you hear a familiar voice, too authentic to be fantasy. You snap your head up to see Beetlejuice standing at the foot of your bed, eyes wider than you’ve ever seen them and streaks of hot pink just starting to tint his hair.

You quickly regain your senses and pull up the covers. “B-BEETLEJUICE?! WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”

Beetlejuice, however, is not as fast on the recovery. “I…you…” Slack-jawed and speechless, he stutters out a few syllables that somewhat resemble words before shaking his head as if to clear his brain. “H-hang on, you’re the one who summoned me!”

“What? Don’t be ridiculous, I…” Your world suddenly comes crashing down on you with the weight of a thousand bricks. “…did. Oh, God, I did…” Your face begins to turn red hot, the obvious implications of this scenario making you want to pass away on the spot. Nope, not even death would help me get out of this one.

You can practically see the gears in Beetlejuice’s head turning, albeit slowly. “You…you summoned me? You called out my name three times. While…” The sudden lightbulb moment is very visible as his hand moves to cover his mouth and dozens more streaks of neon pink suddenly overtake his hair, his face darkening to match. For a moment, you worry that you’ve broken him, only for the demon to finally meet your gaze with a goofy grin that only spreads wider by the moment. “You like me, don’t you?”

“Obviously, dipshit!” You grab a decorative pillow from next to you and toss it at his head, which he easily dodges. You can only think to react with righteous indignation, despite the fact that this situation really is entirely your fault. Probably a defense mechanism to shield yourself from the fact that you’d really love to melt into a puddle on the floor right now.

Beetlejuice, on the other hand, seems far more elated about this than you’d ever expected, practically jumping around for joy. “You do! You really do like me! And it’s gotta be a lot, considering the fact that you like me enough to call out my name when you masturbate, heh. Do you do that often, or did I just do really well at seducing you today?” He strikes a mock sexy pose as if to prove his point.

Despite the added embarrassment of him calling you out so easily, you sit up straighter and raise an eyebrow inquisitively. “You’re…not mad?”

Beetlejuice looks practically bewildered at the very notion. “Me? Mad? Why would I be mad? I’ve been flirting with you so hard that I was offering to drop your panties since the day we met, and you think I’d be mad to see that you wanted it to happen just as bad as I did? Wow, you humans really are funny sometimes.”

“Wait, you were being serious? I thought you acted like that with everyone.”

He opens his mouth to defend himself, closes it after a moment of silence, and then moves to coyly rub his neck instead. “Ok, yeah, when you put it like that, I can see where the confusion comes in here. But yes, I meant everything I said! And I mean everything, babes.” He waggles his eyebrows for ridiculous punctuation.

You blink up at him in shock. No fucking way this is happening. No way is this demon freely admitting that he wants to have sex with me right back, no jokes anywhere to be seen. This must be a dream.

But Beetlejuice is still standing at the end of your bed, real as ever, and beginning to look more than a little bit antsy. “So, um…you gonna invite me to join you, or just make me watch? ‘Cuz to be honest, I, uh, wouldn’t hate either outcome here, so long as I can stay.”

You have a decision to make. You could say his name three times right now to banish him and never speak of this incident again as long as you both shall live and die, or you could finally get to live out the fantasies that have been plaguing you ceaselessly as of late. In the end, it isn’t even really a choice when the best answer is so easily clear.

Your eyes flick up to meet his. “Come here. On your knees.”

Beetlejuice’s face lights up at this command. “Oho, you don’t have to ask me twice!” With that, he practically dives to the floor at your bedside, looking up at you expectantly.

You smile slightly, turning to face Beetlejuice and slide your lower torso out from under the sheets to hang your legs off the side of the bed. Before he can say something lewd, you move to cup his face with your hands. Immediately, he seems taken aback at your gentle action from the stunned, blinking look on his face. Smiling softly, you begin rubbing his beard with your thumbs in a way that makes his eyes roll back into his head a bit. Boy, is he touch-starved. Let’s fix that.

Without another word, you lean in and bring your lips to his, giving him a fairly sweet kiss that he absolutely melts into. You never would’ve expected it of a demon, but Beetlejuice really does have the softest lips you’ve ever kissed, and returns the energy you give him tenfold. It’s pretty cute how much a simple kiss seems to affect him, and you aren’t complaining as you feel his sharp teeth scrape your lips, either. You part your lips a bit to allow his tongue entrance, and he accepts the invitation immediately. His inhumanly long tongue slips in your mouth, wrapping around and rubbing against your tongue almost like a tentacle or other complex appendage. You scrunch up your face at the intrusion, not bad, but strange how it feels as though it’s investigating your mouth of its own accord, prodding and rubbing at you. It’s definitely different from kissing a regular human, but it’s pretty hot, so you’re not complaining by any means. After a few moments, you feel the need to break away and come up for air, panting for breath while Beetlejuice just kneels there in front of you motionless, like he’s just had a particularly amazing out-of-body experience.

After getting a good amount of air into your lungs, you give a small fond smile at his flustered demeanor. “Oh, Beetlejuice, I’m sorry I was so dismissive of you earlier,” you soothe, moving one hand to stroke his neon hair. “You were really just looking out for me, weren’t you?”

He audibly gulps. “Y-yeah…”

“Aw, you really are sweet. I shouldn’t have been so mean to you, baby.”

The more affectionate words you say, the less composed he is as he speaks, made clear by his bright red face and dopey grin. “Heh, s’okay…I kinda like it when you’re mean to me…” Beetlejuice averts his gaze and sinks his face into your hand as he says this. His words are so muffled that they’re almost unintelligible, but you manage to make them out just fine.

“Oh? You do? You really like it when I’m mean to you?” He nods his head quickly, still looking down in embarrassment. Well, this is already going better than I could’ve ever hoped. “Hm, I think I can do that for you. How about you show me how good that tongue really feels, to start off?” You spread your legs suggestively, his head at the perfect level.

Beetlejuice bites his lip in anticipation, his shyness melting away as he’s reminded of getting you off. “Oh yeah, I’ll show you, alright. You have no idea what you’re in for, babes. I’m well-known for my skills in this field, you’ll have the time of y-mmph!” His blathering is interrupted by you grabbing the black tie that hangs around his neck and tugging him closer to you with a swift motion, drawing a whimper from the demon.

“Can’t talk and eat pussy at the same time.”

“Mm, y-you underestimate my abilities…” Beetlejuice always has to have the last word, but he at least doesn’t waste any more time. Tentatively, he slides both of his clawed hands up from your knees to your inner thighs, spreading your legs a bit more to allow more room for his head to fit between them. Your underwear is still on, albeit completely soaked through, which he seems to note with a quiet smug look up at you. In one swift move, he hooks two clawed fingers from each hand around the narrowest strip of the fabric on the sides of your thighs and pulls the garment down slowly, never once breaking eye contact. You’re filled with a nerve-wracking sensation of nakedness as he does this, not just physically, but on a deeper level too. You never realized how deeply revealing it is to have someone watching your expression so shamelessly, gauging your exact reaction as he undresses you. It makes you feel transparent and fully see-through, like a ghost.

Finally, Beetlejuice slips your underwear off of your body fully, twirling it around one of his fingers in pride before pulling back and slingshotting it away with reckless abandon. Returning his head to rest right between your thighs, where there is nothing blocking him from his goal now. You half-expect a stupid remark now that he’s finally right where he’s been aching to be, but he takes you by surprise by just staring at your body in silent reverence for a moment. It’s almost eerie to hear such a long silence from Beetlejuice, who’s made it his full-time career to annoy you up to this point, but it’s kind of flattering at the same time. After a few beats, he seems to shake himself out of his own stupor and looks up at you with a more familiar lopsided smirk.

Before either of you can say anything, he seems to remember that he was given a job to do and begins to unfurl that tongue that you’ve been daydreaming so much about. At full length, it’s about a foot long, forked and striped, always looking like it’s moving of its own accord like a dark slimy tentacle. You’ve seen him loll it out before, so you know good and well what it looks like, but that was always when Beetlejuice was trying to entertain you by acting silly or creepy. In a situation like this, however, it was almost enough to make you feel faint. Consequences be damned, this is the best decision I’ve ever made.

Ever a creature of impatience, Beetlejuice leans down to lick a long, slow stripe starting at the bottom of your pussy and working his way to the top, right up the middle. As soon as he makes contact, you feel as though an electric shock has shot through your lower abdomen. The first thing that your mind registers is how surprisingly cold his tongue is. Sometimes you forget that he’s not a living human and doesn’t have the natural warmth that you’ve come to expect from people. Instead, his body has a natural chilliness to it, and you’ve wondered before if that’s a demon trait or just a Beetlejuice-specific quirk. Either way, the feeling of his long, cold tongue on your pussy is delightfully shocking enough to excite you even more than you could’ve ever expected. He gives another long lick and your hips buck in time without any input from your conscious mind, and you cover your mouth to stifle a moan. Is it just because I was already close, or is Beetlejuice’s tongue actually just the best thing I’ve ever felt in my life?

You don’t get much time to consider this, however, as Beetlejuice notices your full-body reaction, chuckles darkly, and quickly dives back in for more. This time, he’s in it to prove himself, pushing more of his long tongue out to efficiently swirl all around your pussy, going at a speed that would be impossible for a normal human with a normal-length tongue. It’s practically chaotic, but it feels so all-consumingly good that you throw your head back, overwhelmed by the sensation. You reach to grab at his hair, which only seems to spurn him on to move faster, his tongue practically spasming as it writhes against you. It brushes over your inner thighs, your entrance, your clit, practically all of the above at once because of its length, and it’s starting to bring you back to your precipice at an alarming rate.

“F-fuck, Beej…don’t stop, whatever you do, please...” You pull at his hair with more force, putting some power behind your command and drawing a needy whine from the demon. To his credit, he doesn’t stop, and seems to be doing his best to speed up his already-fast work.

If his expression is anything to go by, Beetlejuice seems to take a deep pride in how greatly he’s affecting you in such little time, and he whimpers out little words in between his ministrations. “You-“ He laps at your clit with his pointed tip. “Taste-“ He teases your entrance with the broad side of his tongue. “Delicious…” He draws most of his tongue back into his mouth, only to learn forward to suck on your clit with his whole mouth, his beard tickling your inner thighs as he does.

You’re beyond the point of words, but your thighs tighten around his head to wordlessly show him how close you are. You close your eyes to find a moment’s reprieve from the overstimulation, but when you reopen them, you inadvertently lock eyes with Beetlejuice as he continues to suckle at your clit. You’re blown away by the intense way he looks up at you; his eyelashes are obscuring his eyes in a way that makes him look absolutely beautiful, and weirdly enough, almost sweet and innocent at this angle. This is the moment when you distantly realize you’ve fully lost your mind, but you don’t have long to come to terms with your newfound insanity as your orgasm builds at an exponential rate. Suppressing a lewd sound, you grab fistfuls of his hair, grappling for any sort of leverage as your hips begin to buck against his face and your orgasm is suddenly crashing down on you with the force of a tidal wave. You lean down and wrap your arms around him for fear that you may topple over, still keeping the same tight grip on his hair, which causes his head to pull back forcefully and his face to turn upwards. Your nails dig into his scalp as you ride out the pleasure, eventually releasing his hair when you collapse against his form, your arms draping over his back and chest pressed to his head, feeling boneless and overwhelmingly good. You lean against him for a good few moments, trying to catch your breath and sit back up at the same time.

Beetlejuice stirs slightly beneath you. “No need to rush. I’m doing great right where I am right now. Really, take your time.” You raise an eyebrow, only to quickly realize that your chest is, in fact, pressed directly up against his face. You snort, but remain still for the moment. The only movements in your body are the intense thumps of your heart and the gentle stroking of your hands in Beetlejuice’s hair. After what feels like minutes, you finally pull away from him and prop yourself upright to survey the situation. Specifically, you take in eyefuls of the demon trembling below you, who is looking up at you with a hazy Cheshire grin, licking his lips and very obviously straining against his pants.

You grin salaciously down at where Beetlejuice kneels, reveling in how much you’ve already affected him. “Aw, I bet you’ve been so horny this whole time and still ate me out first without a word. What a good boy.”

His eyes widen. “Fuck, babes…” Beetlejuice openly palms at his clothed dick, making you start to feel warmth between your legs yet again. “S-say that again.”

“That’s not how you ask for something.”

His eyes dart downward as he lets out a shaky sound beneath you, then slowly tilts his head up to meet your gaze. “Please.” The way he whines out the plea is enough to get you a little bit drunk on power. Jesus Christ, this man is gonna be the death of me.

“That’s my good boy.” You hold back a shiver at his immediate and audible reaction. “You really must have wanted this for awhile, the way you’re doing everything I tell you to do so well.”

Beetlejuice moans softly, making no effort to stifle it. “W-well, you did summon me, doll. It’s my job now to make sure you’re totally happy with my work. So, whaddaya say…satisfied with my professional work ethic yet?” He sticks the tip of his tongue out teasingly, eyes lidded.

You giggle at his antics, just as present during sex as they are always. If anything, you’re impressed with his restraint since, so far, he hasn’t pulled any wild reality-bending nonsense to fuck with you while he’s…well, fucking you. “Oh, absolutely. I’d give you a five star review on LinkedIn, no doubt about it.”

He snickers, smiling so wide that his fangs are easily visible. “Hell yeah.”

Looking at him fondly, you move your right hand to untangle itself from his hair and move to scratch at his beard, which Beetlejuice leans into appreciatively. “But y’know, I’m not selfish. You seem a little worked up there, huh? I’d never leave my favorite demon to deal with that all by himself, especially after how good you were to me.” Your hand moves down from his beard, coming to rest on his chest. “How’s about it then, bug boy? You want my hands on your cock?”

Beetlejuice’s big brown eyes are as wide as saucers, and his hair is so vibrantly hot pink that you’re sure it would be blinding in better lighting. “Yes. Please. Oh God, (Y/N), I need you so bad. If you don’t touch me, I’m gonna die and go to whatever’s after the Netherworld, I’m serious.”

“Well, I definitely don’t want that!” You sigh fondly at his dramatics, then pat the space on the bed next to you. “Come on up, I want you right here with me. And lose some of those clothes on the trip up, you’re making me feel underdressed for the occasion.”

“Y-yeah, I can do that.” He wasn’t lying, you really don’t have to ask him twice. He immediately begins shrugging off his iconic striped jacket and slips his suspenders from his shoulders, leaving only his partially-unbuttoned undershirt and tie on below it. He crawls up onto the bed and sits back next to you, mirroring your posture with an air that’s much more shy. Once he’s up, he unbuttons his striped pants and pulls them down enough for his growing erection to be free of their confines, though still trapped in his underwear (also striped, points for staying true to theme). You’d have expected Beetlejuice to be overly confident and full of himself in a situation like this, but now that you’re both in it, this reality-bending, all-powerful demon looks…small. Nervous. Averting your gaze. You feel a need to reassure him overtake you.

“Hey, Beetlejuice? You alright? I know I talk big, but…we don’t have to do anything that you’re not comfortable with.” You rest a comforting hand on his shoulder.

Beetlejuice snaps his head up towards you with a wary expression. “No, it’s not that I…I mean, it’s just that…even though I say it, I’ve never…really…” He pauses his jumbled words to collect his thoughts. “It’s different…to have attention on yourself…I guess.” He sighs in frustration and looks away. “Ugh, this is ridiculous. I do want this, I swear I do. I’m just being…stupid.”

“Hey, this isn’t stupid. I’m serious, don’t say that.” You never would’ve expected this level of self-doubt and anxiety from the demon that literally held everybody else in this house captive during a temper tantrum once, but it just goes to show you can’t judge a book by its war crimes. “What can I do to make it better?”

Beetlejuice looks back to you with a vulnerable expression that you wouldn’t have thought him capable of. “Just…keep doing what you normally do, I guess. Like I said, the problem here is me.” He’s quiet for a contemplative moment. “Ugh, I can’t believe I’m going to say this out loud, so if you ever tell anybody, I’ll feed you alive to a sandworm. For real.”

“I won’t, I promise.” You cross your heart for good measure, making his eyes soften their wary gaze.

“Ok, the thing is, most people have never really…liked me. I know, I couldn’t believe it either, heh. But it’s true, everyone that’s ever summoned me has just used me up for my power and hated me the whole time while doing it. Even if I tried to roll over and do whatever it took to appeal to them, it never worked, so I figured, might as well just do whatever I want if they’ll hate me either way. So that’s what I’ve done, and it made me kinda…not like me, either. I mean, my own mother thought I was a disappointment, so that’s pretty pathetic, right? The closest I got to a friendship was when Lydia summoned me, but I went and messed that up, too. But…” He pushes his forehead against your shoulder so he won’t have to look you in the eye, purple quickly overtaking his hair. “You seemed to like being around me, right? At least a little bit? And I guess I just didn’t want you to see all of me and decide you…didn’t like it, like everyone else. It’s one thing if I do something for you, but I guess it’s…weirdly scarier to let you do things for me. If you do, it’s like I’m not being…useful, or something. See, you can see how ridiculous this sounds, so that’s why it’s just a me being dumb problem.”

You stay quiet for a moment, taking in Beetlejuice’s first words from vulnerable standpoint with you. You don’t want to say the wrong thing and make him regret ever opening up, so you ponder all of the occasions that you’ve spent time with him and bring your hands up to pet his head reassuringly. He can get on my nerves, but for all of his button pushing, I always look forward to his company. He’s silly, and fun, and even unexpectedly sweet at times. “Well…I can agree that it’s a you being wrong problem, at least. Because I do love being around you, Beetlejuice. And I’m sorry that people have made you feel less-than in the past, but I think they’re idiots for missing out on the fun of getting to know you. You don’t need to be “useful” to keep me from leaving, I want to do nice things for you too, no conditions attached. I like you. I want you. You’re perfect as you are.” You press a tender kiss to his forehead.

If Beetlejuice disagrees, he doesn’t say. Instead, he pushes his face into the crook of your neck, trembling enough that you can feel it against your body. “I love you.”

You try to hide how taken aback you are by his words, electing to wrap your arms around him to conceal it. “I love you too.” And the two of you stay just like that for an impossible to determine amount of time, just holding each other gently. You feel wetness against your neck but say nothing and silently hope that you’re doing this right. He loves me. He really said it himself.

After some time, Beetlejuice pulls back and you can finally look at that cute face you’re so fond of again. His expression is sheepish and his hair painted in a gradient of light pink to magenta, tinges of purple confined to the tips of his hair at this point. “Sorry, I ruined the mood there. Not a lotta guys can have a breakdown with their pants down, but as you can see, I am a man of many talents.” His voice is soft, but sounding steadier and more comfortable than it did a few moments before.

You chuckle softly. “Hey, you didn’t ruin anything. I still had no plans of using you for myself only to leave you high and dry.”

“Heh, you mean it?”

“Of course, I mean, as long as you’re up for it.”

“Oh hell yeah, I can bare my soul and still be horny. I can multitask.” A familiar grin lights up his face at the sound of your laughter, his usual personality returning to him bit by bit.

“Good, I still had a lot of things I wanted to do with you. But seriously, if you change your mind at any point, please just tell me. I want you to be comfortable and enjoy yourself, so if you’re not ready, that’s ok.” Part of you realizes that he’s an all-powerful demon who could easily put a stop to anything at a moment’s notice if he felt like it, but another part told you to be extra kind and considerate with him. You want him to know that although he could forcibly end anything he disliked with his powers, he didn’t have to feel the need to use force. You would always respect the power of his words just as much.

He raises his eyebrows. “Heh, look at you, caring about me ‘n’ shit. That works for me, but what, are you plannin’ on tying me up and blindfolding me? Some real kinky shibari shit?”

You pretend to think about it, tapping your chin. “Hm, maybe not this time.” You begin kissing along Beetlejuice’s jawline, stubble scratching at your face as you do. You take the moment to scooch the two of you away from the edge and closer to the center of the bed, with him sitting up against your pillows. Once he’s comfortable, you crawl over to straddle his lap, causing him to groan out a beautiful sound below you. You finally remove your top, ridding yourself of your last piece of clothing before getting to work on him.

“Nice,” Beetlejuice half-whispers, having been watching you slowly peel your shirt off as though he were studying for a test.

“Hey, sounds like I might’ve secured myself that five star review too.”

“Oh fuck yeah, by tits alone. Don’t get me started on everything else, they haven’t even invented a grading scale that goes that high yet.”

You giggle, leaning down to softly kiss his lips and scratch at his beard. Beetlejuice immediately melts to your touch and tilts his head up, giving you easy access to begin trailing downward slowly with your kisses. You move to place kisses along his neck, drinking in the soft sounds that are forming in his throat and causing your lips to vibrate ever so slightly from the rumbles beneath them. Taking your sweet time, you kiss down to just above his collarbone and begin loosening his tie to get at him better. Once it’s wide enough, you slip it overtop his head and let it fall onto the sheets, then you unbutton the last few buttons of his undershirt so that that can slide off of his shoulders as well. Mimicking him from earlier, you chuck the shirt away haphazardly with a satisfied grin.

“Hey, watch the suit, doll,” he quips, with absolutely no bite behind the words. If anything, he just seems a bit breathless. I didn’t think he needed to breathe. Is he just doing that to egg me on?

“I’d rather watch what’s under it, thanks.” You scrunch up your nose playfully and return to your barrage of kisses, happy to now have his bare torso to work with.

“Wow. I’d normally roll my eyes at that, but I’m actually kinda flattered that you’re using lines that are so dumb, they sound like they came from me.”

“Yeah, your Beetlejuice-isms are contagious.” Without his suit, you can better admire that his stomach and arms are a good mix of soft and round and chubby but also pretty strong, giving him a really cute body that you’re getting a bit sick of not having your hands on. Immediately moving to rectify the situation, you pepper kisses and lightly suckle along Beetlejuice’s collarbone. You relish in the heavy rise and fall of his chest under you before moving downward to flick your tongue across his nipple. You’re immediately rewarded with a high-pitched gasp as he arches his back slightly, sending you the cutest pleading look right after. You’re unsure if he’s aware of how strong that kind of positive reinforcement is, but he’ll probably figure it out quickly since you’re already dragging your tongue across his nipple again, bringing one hand up to brace yourself against his bicep and trailing the other down his stomach with one slow, featherlight touch.

Beetlejuice snorts out a giggle between his more lewd sounds and covers his stomach protectively. “H-hey, careful now, I’m ticklish…and add that to the list of things you are not allowed to share with anyone, ever, under any circumstances.”

You chuckle. “I promise.” He looks utterly unconvinced but just pouts his lip wordlessly in embarrassment. I’m really not sure if he knows how cute he is and uses it to his advantage or if this just comes naturally to him. Either option is pretty scary. You move your hand back farther down still to finally graze the top of his clothed dick, fingertips dancing lightly against his strained underwear as you move to fully suck on his other nipple.

“Ughh, you’re such a tease,” he chokes out, moving to cover his face with one hand.

You frown. “Hey, don’t hide from me. It’s not fair if you get to look me in the eye while eating my pussy if I can’t do the same for you when I’m being a cocktease.” Begrudgingly, he grumbles something unintelligible and moves his arm out of his face, looking down at you with faux irritation, causing your smile to only widen. “Wow, your face is almost brighter than your hair right now. Wonder what made that happen.” As you speak, you drag your fingers down his shaft with even more pressure, causing him to make a choked sound. Your hips move to grind down on the thigh that you’re currently sitting astride before you can even think twice about it, the quick friction making you bite your lip to hold in a gasp.

“B-babes, I’m begging ya.” Beetlejuice looks unspeakably horny below you, but you can’t quite resist the thrill of making him work for it.

“Huh, that’s weird, cuz I didn’t hear actually any begging at all, Beetlejuice. But that is a good idea, maybe you should try it.”

“Ohhh, pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease-”

You bark out a laugh at his immediate and visibly desperate response. If he had any pride before, it seems it had vanished the moment that you first touched him. Taking pity, you finally remove his bottoms completely, feeling quiet satisfaction when his cock is freed and you get to see just how hard he really is. It stands fully erect and leaking precum, matching the color of his flushed face perfectly.

“Y’know, when you actually put in the effort, you’re pretty good at playing nice,” you coo, dragging a single finger up his length from bottom to top.

Beetlejuice represses a shiver and instead lets out a low growl. “Careful, I can still flip you over and rail you into the bed ‘til you can’t speak if I feel like it.”

“Not that a little power struggle with you doesn’t sound awesome, but I have a feeling you won’t do that tonight. Like you said, you want me to be mean to you.” You punctuate your sentence by grabbing his twitching dick and lightly squeezing, enough to make him squirm. “You want to see what I’ll do to you if I have control.” As if challenging him to say otherwise, you begin slowly pumping his cock, looking him directly in the eye as you run your hand up and down his shaft.

Beetlejuice breaks eye contact first, unable to hold your intense gaze as he’s slowly pleasured. “M-maybe, but I still have a good memory. Next time I’m in a more dominating kind of mood, you’ll b-be sorry y-mmph!” Whatever he was about to say is quickly silenced by you running your thumb over the slit of his cock and then immediately picking up the pace of your strokes, causing Beetlejuice to descend into a cacophony of moans that he isn’t even attempting to keep at a reasonable volume level.

You pause your ministrations. “Shh, Beej, other people live here! You want Charles to know you’re getting your shit rocked all the way from his home office? Or the Maitlands in the attic?”

He tilts his head to lean further back into your soft pillows, looking as though he’s truly considering his position on the idea. “Mm, well, my brain is telling me you want to hear a no, but my humiliation kink is just giving me a resounding yes.” This little shit.

You sigh and shake your head, only to catch something you’d forgotten on the bed not long ago out of the corner of your eye. Immediately, you’re struck with a wondrous idea. You grab Beetlejuice’s black tie from where it had been strewn across the bed and ball it up in your hand. Beetlejuice watches you carefully with a confused expression, tilting his head at your handiwork. Once finished, your eyes glisten with a mischief usually more common to his face.

“Open.” With a single word, you cause Beetlejuice’s entire expression to shift into one of shock, but certainly not in a bad way. Surprisingly, he doesn’t say a word, only shoots you what you can only describe as a proud, horny grin and opens his mouth wide, saliva practically dripping from his lips and fangs. This turns you on way more than expected, and you find yourself mentally debating with yourself on whether it’s sexy in a gross way or gross in a sexy way, before ultimately coming back to your senses and stuffing the tie into his mouth as a gag before you could think on this any further.

Beetlejuice adjusts the tie with his tongue to properly fit. He tries to speak, but the only thing that ends up coming out is something like, “Mm fhh dmmm.”

You giggle at his attempt. “Well, if you need to tell me anything important, I think you’ll need to take that out first.” He narrows his eyes in a look that very clearly communicates yeah, no shit. But he doesn’t make any attempt to remove it, so it must not have been very important. Satisfied with your new setup, you return your hand to his cock, pumping as slowly as you had been in the beginning to get him started.

Beetlejuice, however, is not having it. He nearly knocks you off of where you’re straddling him by violently bucking his hips up into your hand. You carefully reposition your naked body as he finds a way to smirk at you through his gag, because of course he can do that. If he can’t make noise, he can easily find another way to make his impatience crystal clear to you.

“I’m sure you think you’re funny, but the more time you spend playing bull-rider, the less likely I am to let you cum anytime soon.” Your words immediately cause his hips to twitch upwards, but he seems to keep himself under better control this time. Of course, knowing Beetlejuice, he’ll probably do it again within the minute if he thinks it’ll push your buttons and/or result in you possibly edging him. You decide to cut him off at the pass by grabbing his dick and vigorously jacking him off without any warning. His eyes practically bug out of his head in surprise before high-pitched moans and squeals start to pour out of him, significantly quieted by the gag in his mouth but still plenty audible enough for you to enjoy. And enjoy you do, keeping up your brutal pace as he squirms deliciously under your touch. Not content to be the only one taken by surprise, he grabs at your chest and begins squeezing with reckless abandon, rolling your nipples under his clawed fingers as he lets out a stifled cry. Between focusing on giving the handjob of your life, drinking in Beej’s reactions, and having your nipples roughly played with, you don’t even realize that you’re rocking your naked pussy against his thigh until you can feel your own arousal rising again.

Though you’re certain you could reach another orgasm if you just keep at it, you decide to slow down so your brain doesn’t fizzle out and forget to focus on making your demon happy. Instead, you lift your body up to bring your face right up to his, slowing your hand motions. Before anything else can happen, you spare yourself a moment to really look at Beetlejuice’s face from slightly below, and what you see in his eyes makes you almost cum untouched. He’s desperately close, almost lost in the sensations you’ve wrapped him in, but still anchored tight to you by gaze alone. If he wasn’t gagged, he would almost certainly be begging again, if he could get any coherent words in between his moans. As it stands, he looks like he’d give you anything in the world right now as long as you keep looking at him and keep touching him. And you’re happy to oblige.

“Gonna cum, Beej? You look preeeetty close.”

He cries out a muffled sound at your words, his hips practically shaking as he wordlessly begs for more, his pleading eyes inches away from your own, scanning your expression for any sign of acquiescence. Fun as it may be to play with him, I shouldn’t toy with him too much for right now. Wouldn’t really be fair after how well he’s treated me.

“Alright.” With a single word, you cease the cruel slow strokes that you’d been teasing him with and swiftly return to the frenzied, messy pumping of his cock that made him arch his back and practically scream beneath his gag. You’re relentless this time, keeping up the sloppy pace while you bring your free hand up to cup his cheek. You would’ve tilted his head to make him look at you, but he’s already been locked onto you since the beginning and you don’t think you’d be able to make him look away now if you tried. You feel dizzy and it’s intoxicating. “Cum for me, Beetlejuice.”

With a moan that almost renders his gag useless and the distant unexplained sound of fabric ripping, Beetlejuice cums hard, coating your hand and belly as you’re leaned over him in a fluid that resembles human semen way more than you actually expected. After fully finishing, he collapses back for a moment, removing the gag from his mouth himself and catching his metaphorical breath. You allow your own worked-up body to lay more comfortably against his chest while he comes down from everything.

“Ok, don’t be mad, I think I may have ripped up your mattress a little bit.” He opens one eye to peek out at you, as though actually expecting you to be angry with him. Sure enough, you look at where his hands were gripping the sheets on either side of him and see distinct, deep claw marks raking down the surface of the bed.

You hum noncommittally to yourself. “Well, I can’t really be mad about something that boosts my ego like that.” Instead you look down at the mess that’s been made of you and consider what to do about it.

Beetlejuice’s eyes follow yours down. “It does glow in the dark, if you were wondering.” His lips twitch upwards, looking quite proud of his fun fact.

“No fuckin’ way.”

“Oh?” Beetlejuice offers a smug smile, then dims the dull lights of your room with his powers until they’ve fully shut off. Sure enough, your entire stomach, hand, and part of your bed is glowing a fluorescent green, his signature shade. He flashes a proud smile at the sight of it. “Told ya so!”

“Ok, color me impressed.” You swipe some of the liquid from your stomach with a finger, studying it inquisitively. “Hey BJ, are you radioactive? If I taste this, will I die?”

Beetlejuice’s face flushes so badly, you can even make it out in this poor lighting. “Uh, no, but I might…”

“Oh, awesome.” You stick the finger of glowing cum in your mouth, relishing the taste of your favorite demon. It’s not too different from a human’s, but it does have a faint taste of sweetness, almost like green apple candy or something. It was certainly fitting for him. “Hey, bring those lights back up, I’m dying to see your mood ring hair unlock new shrimp colors when you see me licking up your cum.”

Wordlessly, Beetlejuice brings back enough light to see each other well in. You’re a bit disappointed to not see any new colors yet undiscovered by man in his hair, but in reality, you may have maxed out the hot pink’s vibrancy today. What you are surprised to see, however, is Beetlejuice’s dick already hardening again as you take another lick of his cum from your palm.

You blink in surprise. “Woah, how are you already getting horny again that fast? Do you have some kind of penis-based superpower that you’ve somehow never mentioned despite you being yourself?”

Beetlejuice lowly chuckles to himself, making shivers run down your back at the tone. “Eh, sort of? See, demons aren’t like humans in that we can all go multiple rounds, regardless of equipment, no problemo. We very often have enormously high libidos that a delicate little breather like you could never hope to keep up with, but hey, you’ve never been one to back down from a challenge.” He raises and lowers his eyebrows like a suggestive idiot.

You absentmindedly play with the tufts of hair behind his ears. “Well, you got me there. I’m down for another round if you are. I’ve wanted to ride you for months now, so the spirit is certainly willing.”

“Fuck yeah I am! I’m beyond willing! As long you know that I’ve got the stamina of a cheetah and can totally outlast you on this.”

“I’m pretty sure cheetahs are known for their great speed but awful stamina.”

“I’m pretty sure I don’t give a shit.”

You give an involuntary snort-laugh at his quick retort, causing the demon to beam at you with unmistakable adoration, gently pushing some loose hair out of your face. It’s almost off-putting to see such an unashamedly wholesome expression plastered across the face of a supernatural being that has spent his existence being feared by so many, but you’d be lying if you said it didn’t also bring you joy unlike any other to be lucky enough to see him like this. So many people didn’t deserve to, and you aren’t exactly sure what you did to become worthy of the privilege, but you won’t question it.

“Here, allow me to level the playing field,” Beetlejuice says, snapping his fingers. You whip your head around the room, but nothing appears to have changed.

“Uh, what exactly did you do?”

“Oh, nothing. I just soundproofed the room for a little bit. I wanna hear you scream, babes.” His eyes narrow at you as his arms engulf you in a light embrace, pulling you closer. His claws come up to rest on your shoulders, the pinpricks pressing against your skin and threatening to break it.

You raise a teasing eyebrow. “You…couldn’t have done that from the beginning?”

“I like the thrill of possibly getting caught, sue me! But hey, if this is what it takes to get you loud, well, I’ll make the sacrifices that I gotta.”

“You really wanna hear me that bad, huh?” Beetlejuice shakes his head so hard it looks as though it should be making a cartoonish sound effect. “Well, I’d honestly love to hear you without that gag too, so I guess we’re in the same boat.” You lift yourself back up to better straddle his naked body again, hovering just above his erect cock and flashing him a sly smile. “Now fuck me, demon boy.”

Beetlejuice’s eyes widen. “Oho, with pleasure.” More than happy to comply, he grabs onto your hips with his clawed hands and gently but firmly maneuvers you down to line up with the head of his dick.

Slowly, you sink down onto him, causing the demon to whine softly below you. After a moment, you’ve fully lowered yourself down and sheathed him inside of you, a full but not at all uncomfortable fit. You give it a moment of stillness to adjust before rocking your hips a bit, feeling his dick twitch inside of your cunt as you do. He immediately reacts by moaning loudly and snapping his hips up against you like a man possessed.

“Fuck, Beej…” You groan at almost a growl pitch, the feeling of him moving inside you almost too much at once.

“Mm…could do better…that sound was only maybe a three outta ten. I’ll have to-mmph-up my game.” God, it is just like this guy to make pleasuring me into a game. I guess I’m not complaining, though. As if on cue with your thoughts, Beetlejuice grabs your back just below the shoulder blades to quickly pull you in close to his chest, his claws applying enough force to definitely leave some red marks in their wake but not enough to hurt badly. The sudden dig of his claws only causes you to start rocking your hips at a faster pace, making it plainly obvious how much you enjoy him handling you so roughly.

“Y-you can try, but I doubt you’ll be able to hear me over yourself soon.”

Beetlejuice responds with silence, which you’ve learned usually means he’s planning to do something that he doesn’t want you to know about. From where you’re pressed against his upper chest, you can’t quite see his face either unless you craned your neck to look up towards him. You don’t slow down your speed, but do feel a sense of horny dread wash over you at his continued silence. Suddenly and without warning, you feel sharp fangs sink into the vulnerable back of your neck where your shoulder connects. It’s so unexpected and hurts so good that you erupt into a chorus of shuddering gasps, unable to even form sentences as Beetlejuice keeps biting and sucking at your neck. His claws keep your squirming body in place as he continues his barrage, and you feel him smiling wider and wider into your skin the more noisy that you get. It’s so good, so overwhelmingly good, having him inside of you while also using those fangs that you love so much on you at the same time. You’re struck with the realization that you can’t let him play you like a fiddle so well without fighting back. Before you can think twice, you turn your face into the crook of his neck right above his collarbone and bite down on the skin even harder than he’s biting at you. You may not have fangs, but you are determined nonetheless.

“Jesus FUCK, (Y/N)!” Beetlejuice is forced to pause his bites to yelp a few similar exclamations. “Ohoho, you’re lucky I’m a demon freak who doesn’t mind being ripped a new collarbone, cuz wow.”

An apology half-forms in your mouth before you realize that that was probably his weird way of complimenting you rather than sarcasm. “Well, m-maybe now, after this, you’ll get to go through what I went through every time you flashed your stupid teeth in public.”

Beetlejuice pulls his head back so his face is in your view again, and you slow your rocking against him just a bit out of curiosity. He’s sporting a growing smile that looks practically delighted.

“Hold up, were you really that into my fangs from all the way back when? You had it that bad?”

You flush at his wording of a situation that you, personally, do not find as humorous as he seems to. “Hey, it’s not like it was just that. It was…all of you, I guess. Every little thing you did turned me on basically all the time, and, as you can imagine, it was a living nightmare.” You realize that that doesn’t exactly make you sound less like a pervert, but it also doesn’t help that his cock is still twitching inside of you and you can’t exactly think straight at the moment.

“Wow, so every time I was around you, you were just being a grade A horndog!” Beetlejuice cackles at his own joke. He is the only one laughing. “Aww, looks like we’re more alike than we thought! Cuz, I mean, you were doing the exact same thing to me all the time, so. Fair’s fair.”

You groan. “Oh my God, you were literally going through the exact same thing? We could’ve fucked ages ago and put ourselves out of that misery!”

He snorts. “Hey, it’s fine. Y’know what? I’m glad it turned out just how it did. Honest.” Your starry-eyed demon lifts a claw to gently cup your jawline.

You put your own hand on top of his. “Yeah, same here.”

Beetlejuice grins, then his face immediately shifts. “All right, I’ve done a lot of talking and now I’m gonna make you cum so hard that you have visions of the Netherworld. Boobs in my mouth, please.”

“HA!” You practically double over at his sudden mood shift, wiping a tear from your eye. “I’ll hold you to that, big guy.”

Before you can even start rocking, Beetlejuice takes things into his own hands and starts thrusting up into you at a fairly speedy pace. He’s holding your hips to keep you balanced, as well as maneuvering them to drive himself into you better. The angle that he’s hitting you at is already starting to make you see stars, and you roll your hips to meet him in time. Apparently, he was not kidding about the boobs in his mouth request, as he leans his head forward to latch onto your left nipple, sucking and ever-so-slightly grazing it with his sharp teeth. To make matters worse, he grabs the other with his claw and begins rolling his thumb over it, all while keeping his eyes locked onto yours, just as he did the last time his mouth was on you. It’s all so good, you can already feel your orgasm building again.

“Oh, don’t stop, Beej, that’s so good…” You’re nearly at the precipice again, focusing your energy on getting up and over. The image in front of you is certainly helping get you there, as Beetlejuice is truly giving it all he has at the moment. His expression shows that he’s right on the edge as well, as you focus on his beautiful brown eyes looking up at you with unmistakable love and lust. “Mm, Beetlejuice…” His long tongue wrapping itself around your nipple… “Beetlejuice…” His cock hitting that perfect spot inside of you... “B-!”

Suddenly, you find two hands clamped over your mouth with surprising force. “Don’t.” The word comes out as a snarl next to your ear, taking you by surprise and sending a shiver down your whole frame. Before you can recover, an erratic snap of his hips sends you hurtling over the edge, an orgasm so intense that it makes your ears ring and your other senses dull for the duration. You moan loudly against his hand, which hasn’t yet moved and doesn’t do much to muffle your sounds of pleasure. Moments later, Beetlejuice moves to grab onto your hips and presses deep into you, holding you in place above him and filling you up with more of his otherworldly cum, all the while letting out gasping moans of his own like a man drowning. After filling you to his satisfaction, his arms fall limply to his side and you slump against him, both dazed and overstimulated. You catch your breath while Beetlejuice seems to be going through a factory reset, his eyes wide open and blinking harshly.

After gathering himself, he finally speaks. “Babes, I love you, but you really gotta get this name thing down if you don’t want me to suddenly poof away when I’m balls-deep inside of ya.”

You look at him sheepishly. “Heh, yeah, sorry. Good save though!” You finally lift yourself off of his dick, rolling your body haphazardly off of him to lay down at his side more comfortably.

He snorts. “Yeah, I bet you enjoyed me putting a stop to that. I’m thinking next time, I act like that from the start and we’ll see whose better at bossing who around.”

You begin lightly tracing patterns on his chest, resting your head on his bicep. “Oh yeah? And what if I wasn’t finished bossing you around yet?”

“Well, then you can peg me about it the next time!”

You giggle at his response while simultaneously filing it away for another day. Smiling into his bare skin, you feel your heartbeat begin to stabilize after quite a long period of elevation. Beetlejuice is still chilly to the touch, but in a way that unexpectedly comforts you, like a soft pillow after being flipped over in the middle of the night.

“Can we flip?” The demon’s sudden request paired with his big eyes meeting yours takes you out of your musings.

“You want to lay on me? Sure, c’mere.” You move to your back, patting your chest for him to lay on. He doesn’t hesitate, snuggling his head into a cozy position on your chest, his left cheek pressing up against your collarbone and his tussled pastel pink hair barely reaching up to tickle your neck. He’s in the perfect spot for you to drape your arms across his frame protectively, your hands coming up to gently rest on his shoulder and the side of his face. Your hands are tired and still, but even in a passive state, you find them needing to touch Beetlejuice without asking for your input. Even if it’s just the comforting brush of your fingers against his jawline, you can’t resist the ache to be close to him.

Beetlejuice leans into your touch. “Mm…you feel so nice…” He tilts his head so that his ear is pressed against your chest and practically melts against you. “Heh, I’ll never get used to that sound. Never thought I’d get to hear it so close, but it’s even better like this.” Your heartbeat instinctively quickens just a bit at his comment, and you feel Beetlejuice’s lips curl up in a smile. “Cute how I can change the tempo at will like that. Like the best radio in the world, babes.”

You blow air from your nose and kiss his head from above, mostly just getting his hair in the kiss from the angle you’re at. “I like your chilliness, you like my heartbeat…I’m starting to think this may work out for us after all!”

The demon snorts, repositioning his head to your shoulder so he can look you in the eye better. “Y’know, I really thought my awesome cock and subsequent use of it would be the thing that made you think that, but whatever seals the deal for ya, doll!”

“That too.” You sigh and close your eyes. “So, what are we gonna tell the others?”

“Uh, you got so horny after I annoyed you one day that you fucked me about it?”

“Beetlejuice, we are not telling people that.”

“Sorry, that you fucked me and you fucked me good. Better?” Your raised eyebrow is enough of an answer on its own. “Hm, and I thought you were a fan of honesty. Well, suit yourself. We can think of something more PG later, it’s not like we have to tell anyone tonight.”

“Well, I guess you are right on that front. I’ll think of a nice and polite way to bring it up at the family dinner table later.”

“Yeah, plus it’ll be a shitshow either way. They’re all gonna say that you’re too good for me, which yeah, fair.”

You brush some loose hairs out of his face reassuringly. “They can think whatever they wanna think. Doesn’t make ‘em right.” You kiss his lips gently, with the soft whisper of a promise at the edge of your own lips guiding your touch. “I love you, Beetlejuice.”

Beetlejuice looks so utterly overwhelmed by emotion after you speak that he can only think to immediately bury his face against you silently. He’s holding so tight to you, as though you could disappear at any moment if his grip slackens. Like you’re his lifeline. After multiple moments of heavy breathing directly against your skin, he manages to barely choke out a response. “Ditto.”

You can’t help but chuckle at the demon, rubbing circles into his back as a comfort. “Just rest now, baby. You did great.”

Beetlejuice looks up at you in relief. “Oh God, thanks for saying that. I’ve been drowsy since we stopped, I just didn’t wanna leave you alone.” Never would’ve guessed him as the most considerate type, but he sure loves to prove me wrong.

“No worries Beej, I’ll be right here next to you. I’m not going anywhere. You can sleep.”

With those last affirmations, Beetlejuice’s eyes almost immediately droop shut as he begins snoring lightly, asleep at an impressive speed for a demon or human. It’s pretty cute how tired he must’ve been before you told him to rest, you didn’t even know for sure if demons wanted and/or needed sleep til now. Yet here he is, making deep contented rumblings from the back of his throat, his head and torso acting like a soft weighted blanket on top of you. The presence of him sleeping soundly on you is deeply comforting, both physically and emotionally. This demon, who’s lived a million lifetimes and dealt with more shit than I could imagine in both the world of the living and dead, trusts me enough to fall asleep on me. He trusted me enough to talk to me about his feelings during sex. Beetlejuice, of all people. Even if I told someone as understanding as one of the Maitlands about that, I don’t think they’d really believe me. Or even really get it.

You reach one arm down to pull a sheet up over the both of you sloppily, just to have something covering you both. Human instincts for avoiding being preyed on by demons in the night always persist, despite your unique situation. As you adjust you pillow to make yourself comfortable for the night, you run your fingers through Beetlejuice’s hair, which is now settling back into its default green without any more external stimuli. You wonder bemusedly if it ever changes color in his sleep, then feel a peaceful rush of happiness when you realize that you’ll have ample time and opportunity to find out the answer. Overtaken by a quiet joy, you quickly lean your head over to kiss him goodnight on the forehead, trying everything in your power to somehow physically materialize this feeling of affection for Beetlejuice that is so strong and all-consuming, just so you could hold it so close that nothing bad would ever happen to it. In lieu of that impossibility, you hold Beetlejuice tighter in your arms instead, with the same goal in your mind.

Author’s Note: this took me an indefensible amount of time to write and if i look at it for another second i’ll go crazy so please take it and look at it with your own eyeballs so that mine can rest. on the fun side, can you tell that characters who always flirt with others by making bold sexual references but end up actually being really flustered and submissive when the other person finally reciprocates are my favorites? anyways i wanna pick this guy up by the scruff of his neck like a kitten, he is so special to me. originally this fic was supposed to be way less emotional but sometimes you’re writing and a character decides to have a breakdown halfway through a scene and you just gotta deal with that curveball when it’s coming at you. but i’m pretty happy with how it turned out, and i hope you guys enjoyed it too. thanks for reading! edit: hey you, want some more? i finally made a sequel lol (x)

#beetlejuice x reader #musical!beetlejuice x reader #musical beetlejuice x reader #beetlejuice x you #beetlejuice x gn!reader #beetlejuice musical #alex brightman #beetlejuice #reader insert #smut #hello beetlejuice community #beetlejuice more like. babygirl #fun fact: i literally boarded a plane and flew to nyc for the very final showing of beetlejuice on broadway bc i am a WH*RE #worth every penny man. alex brightman is unbeatable #my fics

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hyunin · 3 months ago

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hiiii everyone, this blog hit 1k followers the other day 🥹 tysm to anyone that has followed me here over the years! i'm sure at least a third of my followers are dead blogs from my suju (🤮) era in 2013 before i returned to gifmaking tumblr in 2020, but so many of you joined me once i returned and i'm so thankful for everyone that has reblogged my content and chatted with me and followed me up until this point! 🫶 i wanted to write some fun lil messages for my mutuals and pals below the cut, as well as shout out some people i don't necessarily speak to but like having on my dash also 💗 if u aren't mentioned on here and we're mutuals that doesn't mean i dislike u it just means i'm stupid and missed you 😭 before i get into the messages i also want to ask anyone who can to consider commissioning me for a gifset or writing by donating at least €10 to this fundraiser and sending me a screenshot of your donation! more info on that via this post. thank u so much again everyone!!! 🥳 (edit: i don't think half the mentions in this post are working so please check to see if you were mentioned even if you weren't notified!)

@redvelvetcult hi ele 🫶 i know we don't speak as often anymore but i'm always so happy to see u around and i love you <3 thank u for running yangjeongin with me even if it has been in spirit for 99% of its run LKJSDLFKJSJLKFD still wouldn't be the same without u @bataranqs hi kid! this is going to sound so lame but it's been rly fun watching u grow up over the years through awoo9, every time u use our weird ass humor it's so much funnier coming from u. thank u for hyping up everything we all do, especially my writing!! i really appreciate it and u @anyujins iwin...whew....LLKSJDKLFJLSKF i'm rly happy that we're a lot closer now than when we were last time i made one of these posts. i think we are anyway?? i forgor...but either way ilysm, thank u for your support when i've been going insane over the years and it would appear both of the stories of our love lives that we've been following for so long will have a tragic ending. LJKSDFJLKSLK but i hope we can be friends for many more moments of insanity to come and that we have more good news than bad news to share w each other soon. in the meantime it's always rly fun to talk to u and i am glad i have u in my life @miyawaki ver. i appreciate u v much if only bc u are a major provider of quality shitposts on my dash, u also being into kpop and giffing is a bonus. u are also so funny even if u are also MEAN!!!! it's funny most of the time. and u have also supported me a lot in ur own ver way over the years, and i can always count on u to give me feedback on giffing and such. i'm so happy for u that u are going to uni again and i hope u have so much fun but also don't forget about us 🔫 🫶 @seulggi gfx queen minya! u deserve a shoutout if ONLY bc u are carrying the gfx side of kpop tumblr on ur back fr. and i love seeing what u make on my dash. but u are also an awoo9er so i will give u a long AWOOOOOOOOO of appreciation ❣️ @meongppangz RI omg idk what account is best to tag u on so i tag u here. i rmr the last one of these i made i was like 'hope to talk more under better circumstances' and now we talk nearly every day LJSDFLKSDF i love that for us. thank u crazy person gc for bringing us together fr....love that we can bond over loving ggs and also hating collecting pcs and any other random shit of the day skz is doing. and giffing ofc. talking to u always makes me happy so i hope we continue talking and being friends for a long time to come 🫶 ily. also i'm going through my follow list for this in order of oldest blogs first and i just discovered y'all were one of the first skz blogs i followed. how cute @curiosityjams hi drea, we haven't spoken ages but i wanted to shout u out individually as well because i still enjoy seeing u on my dash and i still consider us friends 🫶 fellow eunbi stan...i will never forget waiting for the 2020 election results w you LMAO abt to do it all again soon...but i hope you're well and hope good things continue coming to u 🙇‍♀️ @hyunjinz agnes, backbone of stayblr that u are, i love u!! i know we don't Personally speak much at all i still feel like u are a dear friend of mine. you were one of the first ppl to support my skz content and i think you're that for a lot of people on stayblr and i think that is so sweet of u and also important for the community. u are so brave for going through the tags all the time and reblogging everything i do not have that kind of energy but i'm so glad u do!! i miss ur gifs but i'm happy that you're still around even when you don't gif. we're some of the last remaining pre-kingdom era skz ccs left 😱 so i will always appreciate ur company here <3 @innielove hi vi, i just want to say i love that u are giffing skz again. i've probably missed a lot of ur sets bc i'm bad at checking tags and dash but when i DO see them i'm like omg vi's gifs r really looking better than ever. thank u for returning to us 🫶 u have also actually been on stayblr for a long time so i'm always happy to see some of the oldies (can u believe we are oldies now...) back on the dash 😌

@kazuhas MS KALE it always makes me happy to see u on my dash here. ur gifs are so lovely and so are u!! i know we mainly know each other from off cc tumblr 🫣 but i wanted to give u a shoutout among all of my other tumblr beloveds bc ily. it's what u deserve @seo-changbinnies marie...another fellow stayblr hag at this point...u are still one of the funniest people on this site i swear. and i'm so glad u are still here and making gifs and blessing us w your funny tags. i hope u always stay just as insane, i love u for that <3 @seungs HI MIAAA we don't talk that much anymore but i wanted u to know that i still always love seeing u and your gifs on my dash 🫶 @felixies luna, legend of stayblr that u are 🙇‍♀️ i think ur work largely goes unappreciated by the fandom but u are an icon for keeping createskz running for all these years despite everything going on in ur life. tysm for your service 🫡 @huiracha marie huiracha...this is how i refer to u in my head btw. like 'huiracha' is ur last name. LKJSDFKLSKLD we have barely spoken but i want to give u your own shoutout just for surviving and continuing to gif on stayblr as long as u have. veterans' discount fr @hyunsung hi mona 🫶 we haven't spoken in a while either omg but i am still always excited to see u on my dash when u gif something or reblog something from me i'm like omg that's my friend mona :D SDKJFSJKLDF so thank u and i hope you're doing well 🙏 @hyunpic VILMA HYUNPIC...u know i am so glad we are better pals now. u are so funny and fun to talk to but also the sweetest ever!! thank u for always listening to me and being kind to me and also making me laugh. every time i feel like an rper named their hyunjin character something dumb i am glad i get to report it to u. some things only u will understand and appreciate. LKJSDKLJFSKLJFKLFD @sungtaro eri <3 we don't talk much anymore and maybe we NEVER HAVE??? but i have always felt like u are a dear friend and beloved mutual. i love seeing u on dash even if we don't have too many groups in common anymore. ur content is always lovely and so are u so we will always be pals as far as i am concerned 🫶 @exocean hi mo!! i must admit i don't have much to say but i wanted to mention you individually because you are so sweet and i love seeing u around and u deserve to know it <3 @hyumjim i don't even know what to say (positive) u know i am so glad ur squirmy wormy tag on one of my hyunjin sets brought us together. idr if we have ever properly spoken like via dm but bc u follow me on all my accounts i feel Seen by u....nd u haven't unfollowed me yet so god bless u. i always enjoy seeing ur thoughts and the posts u put on my dash whether they be a funny text post or someone's hot take getting dismantled or something Thought Provoking. my dash is definitely a better place because of u so thank uu 🫶

@wolfchans lau the Actual backbone of stayblr tysm for ur service fr. without u providing files for us i genuinely believe most of stayblr would be lost. not only do u do that but u are also genuinely very kind and make great content so i appreciate u so much!! thank u for making stayblr (and my dash) a better place @hyunebear hi adri i gotta admit i didn't even realize u were back on tumblr until i was going through my following and saw that u posted recently akljsdflkjdsf goes to show how much i'm on my dash...but i wanted to mention you individually even though it's been so long because you have genuinely touched my heart a lot and i will never forget ur compliments 🙏 ok maybe i did forget some of them word for word. but i will never forget how sweet u were to me. how about that. so thank you and i hope to see u around more!! i probably have to be on my dash more for that tho huh... @romanceuntold hi jen 🫶 i miss u on stayblr i'm ngl but i'm also still glad to see u on my dash through all your phases. you are such a warm and kind person and another person who i will never forget being so sweet to me. thank you and i hope you're doing well ❣️ @wearehappiness sidrah <3 the fact that we were both on stayblr but met properly on pc ig first is still so silly to me. me intending to wait on ur mail to get to me then being like 'stayblr perk i'll send ur mail rn' after i found out u were here LKJSDLKFLJKSF but you are suuuuch a sweet person who makes lovely gifs too. i miss ur gifs also!! and just you in general. wishing u the best in life always 💗 @mybodyfails hi oli 🫶 another person who has been soooo sweet to me, i'm so glad i got to help w leeknoween and i still have all the freebies u sent me from it preserved safely in my freebie photocard binder 😌 you are always lovely to talk to whenever we do, and thank u for reading my fic too despite zombies not being ur thing i appreciate u!! @strayklds / @facethesuns em i just think it's so funny that we like didn't speak before i invited u to the gif streaming server and i just did that on a whim bc u passed the vibe check and now i feel like we are good friends. despite still rarely speaking KSLDFLSDLKF but i love that for us and love ur gifs and seeing u around always 💞 @neohyune hi fae <3 i know us speaking is like a very recent development but i also wanted to mention u individually to thank u for your help 🙏 i need to write more of my fic tbh...but i Will be checking our conversation again for Notes. you also seem like a very sweet person so i would love to talk to u more in the future also 💕 @linoyes another very recent friendship (yes i am calling it that already) in my life, but thank u for your generosity, let's meet that fundraising goal together 💪 i hope we're also able to talk more outside of this context too. i just have a feeling i will have a lot more to say about u once i make another one of these!!

i'm ngl i don't know how many of you actually follow me here and i don't have time to check everyone's username individually so i'm just going to list a bunch of blogs i follow who may or may not follow me JKLSDFLKSDF but y'all make my dash a better place, thank u for all u do! 🫶 feel free to talk to me anytime too

@dazzlingkai @theseulgis @joytual @anyujin @cchuu @cherry-heartss @boynextdoors @hyunchans @ambivartence @minzbins @everglowz @chogiwow @ttathinker @minhosblr @minho-knows @yang-innie @leegahyun @bu99erfly

#*ccarly #please post i'm begging tumblr .#OK I'M EDITING IT BECAUSE IT PSOTED THANK FAWK.#thank u everyone.#i don't think half of the @s in this are working i am at my limit . but whatever.#if we're mutuals pls check this even if u didn't get a notif for it 😭

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spctrsgf · 2 years ago

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the attack

summary: marc was no stranger to a rough fight. but what happens when one fight is a bit too much?

word count: 1.4k

warnings: language, descriptions of blood/wounds/death, marc has a panic attack, angstier than i wanted tbh but

a/n: this was supposed to be fluffy but it turned out so dark i'm sorry idk what happened

another a/n: i want to note that everyone's panic attacks look different, and i tried to factor in what ive seen from moon knight and my own experience with panic attacks to write marc's

He had to get home.

He had to get home, and fast.

His hand came to rest on the bricks of a building beside him as he heaved in a breath, instantly regretting it as sharp pain sliced across his abdomen. With bleary eyes, he looked up to meet the window of a car that held Steven. “Mate, you’re not looking great–” Marc waved him off. “I’m fine, Steven. I just have to-” he shoved himself off the wall with a grunt of effort. “Get home.”

“Please just call y/n.”

“No,” Marc huffed, his patience and energy to argue with Steven wearing painfully thin. “I’m fine.”

“Really?” Jake snorted from a window to his right. “Doesn’t look like it.”

“Fuck off, both of you.”

“Please, Marc-“ Steven tried to placate.

“I can do this by myself.”

“I’m not sure that's a good-”

“Steven!” Marc yelled, exasperated and tired. “Stop.”

The man’s only response was to duck his head with a solemn glare.

“Spector—“

The said man whirled on the window. “You too, Jake.”

Jake went to say more, but instead decided to put his tongue back in his mouth and prepare to take control instead.

Marc’s jaw clenched in short victory, and he moved his focus to walking. Only two more buildings. He told himself. His eyes darted every which way in a sort of frantic habit, shoulders tense in his vulnerability. Shoulders tense in the knowledge that if he were to be attacked right now, he wouldn’t make it out alive.

Deep down, he knows that Steven is right. He should call you. He’s aware that you won’t judge his strained words, won’t do anything but get to him as fast as possible. You’ll leave the engine running in your beat up Honda, dash over to where he’d since crumpled onto the ground, toss his arm over your shoulder and haul him into the car and then to your shared apartment, careful to avoid his bloody limbs from touching anything. You’ll patch him up and put him back on his feet, just like you always do.

But– something holds him back tonight. Maybe it’s the blood from the cut that seems to be too deep, something that the suit should have protected him from. Maybe it’s Khonsu’s lying words that ‘it’ll be a quick one tonight, worm.’ Maybe it’s the fact that he let the man’s words get to him, let them crawl under his skin and make a permanent home in his brain.

Marc Ssspector.

He shook his head, trying to stop the memories before they started.

I heard about your childhood. Tragic, really.

He was nearly there now, maybe a building or two away.

Your brother’s death must’ve cut you deep, knowing that it was your fault.

He swallowed down his panic.

And then what? Your brother dead, your mother abusive, your father nothing but a shell of a man.

His hands started to shake. Not good, not good, he told himself, he cannot be having a panic attack right now.

No wonder Khonsu wanted you. How easy it must’ve been to take a trainwreck like you in, to make you do all of his dirty work.

Marc’s breaths became labored as he tried to shove down his pain, both wound and the sharp ended words.

But did Khonsu ever really want you at all?

Marc’s eyes fell to his feet in frustration and in shame.

Did Layla ever really want you at all?

All he had to do was move his right foot up and forward. Why was it so hard?

Did y/n ever want you at all?

His vision swam with tears as he let them fall down his face, angry and sad and panicked.

Does anyone ever really want you at all?

He fell to his knees, letting out a yelp of pain.

It was at this moment he realized he might be dying.

He’d done it twice, and he could do it again. It seemed probable. At the moment, being free of his mind and his pain was sounding increasingly appealing. No more guilt, no more trauma, no more Khonsu, no more people taking his heart and shattering it on the floor.

But as he feels his head go light and his vision rim with white, the only thing he can think of is you. You and your bright smile and perfect eyes and the way you got him, the way you were always there for him and his alters. Steven and Jake too met the front of his mind as he thanked whatever was out there that brought him such amazing people to surround himself with.

– ✮ –

When Marc came to, he wasn’t in that boat he’d been on with Steven nor was he met with the dirty ground of the street outside his apartment building. No, he was in a bed, his bed. Which meant he was home, in his house. Which meant–

You came strolling in then, and he drank up the sight of you like a man who’d been starved of water. You were wearing one of your typical comfy Saturday outfits, when you’d sit on the couch and write or doodle while he watched some sport lazily, your head on his shoulder and his heart in your hands. Your eyes met his, and they all but softened as he watched you recognize that it was him. You were by his side in a second, holding him down by his shoulders as he tried to sit up. “Don’t do that, Marc, you’re still healing.”

The events hit him like a truck. Being hurt, the man, Steven telling him to call you, the attack, blacking out.

“How am I alive right now?” Was the only thing he could get out of his mouth as you sighed. “From what I know, Jake took over and called me. I managed to get you to the hospital because I didn’t think I’d be able to patch you up,” you sucked in a breath harshly, and Marc’s hand met yours with a squeeze of support, of sorry. “I was so scared, Marc. There was so much blood and even Jake was barely managing to get his words out–”

“Hey,” He winced, but still moved his hand to cup your jaw and grab your gaze. “I’m here now. I’m not going anywhere.”

You snorted. “Shoulda thought about that before you tried to walk home while bleeding out of your fucking abdomen.”

“I thought I could get home.”

“Yeah, good going on—“ you stopped abruptly, taking a deep breath and recentering your mindset. “I’m sorry, Marc. I’ve just been worried about you and everything that happened, and I couldn’t do anything about your wound and sitting in that waiting room— which felt like an asylum with how white it was— for what felt like years for the doctors to help you was the most anxiety inducing thing I’ve ever experienced. But it’s okay, you’re fine, I’m fine, everything is gonna be fine.”

Marc’s thumb brushed tenderly across your cheekbone to catch fallen tears, brows knit in worry. “You’re right, I’m here.”

“Please,” your voice was a whisper as you lent into his hand. “Please never do that to me again.”

“I won’t.”

“Please, I know it's hard to ask for help. I know real well from experience that it’s hard. But it’s worth it. It’s worth it not to watch you attached to whatever the fuck they put you on in the hospital, not to collapse onto the ground a block away in excruciating pain. Right?”

“Right.” Marc nodded.

“I love you.” You said those words as if you could lift any of his worries and insecurities and carry them into the sky above.

“I love you too.” His hand slid to cup the back of your neck, pulling you down to meet his smiling lips.

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hopepaigeturner · 5 months ago

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Hope's Review of S3: Creloise

Eloise Storyline…

For me it started well. Eloise started to realise how to be a true friend, and understand the privileges and flaws in her character. I HOLLERED at the screen when Cressida finally called Eloise out.

And then part 2 happens and it all got dropped like a dead fish. (see more below in my chat about Cressida).

It makes complete sense that Eloise went back to Pen. It was quite obvious. And I liked all the titbits and moments of build up to the reconciliation.

I do like that Eloise was protective of Colin and pushed Penelope to tell him. Was it done in the 100% best way? Perhaps not.

However, there seemed to be a complete 180 of Eloise with Cressida. No empathy. No sympathy. No understanding. “An absolute viper”, Hun, Pen sat in your drawing room for years and purposefully wrote about your sisters prospects to the point she was almost forced to marry Nigel Berbrooke. Where’s your empathy? Where's the Eloise that visited Cressida during calling hour to check if she was alright?

I like Eloise as a character and this season could have seen some real foundational growth. I had such hopes for her, for she is a character with such potential. But part 2 dashed my hopes…maybe next season?

I did like that she returned to wishing to change the world. I’m glad she’s leaving for Scotland and will hopefully be able to grow up a bit next season.

Cressida storyline.

For me it started so well. Cressida and Eloise’s friendship I thought was very good for both of them. Eloise called Cressida out. Cressida called Eloise out.

And then part 2…

They gave the set up, the screentime and background and then relegated Cressida to a simple antagonist.

Honestly, I feel that Cressida’s storyline suffers from the season being split in two.

For if you watched the season in continuity then you would see the overarching arc of a girl who had the potential to change, but instead descends into greater desperation and cruelty in an attempt to fight against the walls that are closing in on her. And the tragedy? Is that part 1 showed that Cressida could change if not for the stifling oppression bared down by her situation. Cressida did not have to be a mere antagonist; she could have been a tragic antagonist.

But with the series split, they literally ‘split’ Cressida. Part 1 Cressida showed a positive redemption arc for her. Then we had a break. And when we got back, we saw Cressida the antagonist, so I think her arc felt disjointed.

I also think that if one saw the overarching scenes, then the whole of Cressida's backstory scenes do have the purpose of setting up the blackmail plot. It would not be enough to just suddenly have Cressida find out about Whistledown. But again with the season split in two I feel that continuity was lost. With the ending we got, I'm not sure they needed that many scenes to set this plot point up.

Now, I must say that this does not excuse her behaviour. It does not mean Cressida's slate should be wiped clean. Even if she returns, she needs to actively make amends and apologise.

But the fact that she just gets carted off at the end of the season?

Hey? You know what would have been interesting? You know what would have been #girlboss and #feminisim? Eloise understanding that Cressida’s actions are wrong and harmful, yet having some actual empathy and understanding that Cressida is merely trying to save her freedom and future. The very things Eloise wishes to champion in women!!!! And so, helping Cressida escape. And Pen could show how she has overcome her past pain that festered in Whistledown and she will be the bigger person and use Whistledown to help Cressida. Or even use her wiles and Whistledown resourcefulness to mask Cressida's escape? Why not have Pen have this last word over Cressida? Why not show that Eloise is willing to actually do something for once?

You know what that’s called?

Gosh how they handled that infuriated me. The onyl reason I can think of to send Cressida away (as if she deserved her fate) is because they want her as a *shock* reveal in a future season.

In the meantime, I’m going to write a little plot for S4 that not only brings Cressida back in a productive way, but also showcases Sophie’s nature, and how Sophie is a BADASS + kicks Eloise up the butt for her character development. Oh, and links with the main plot. As the purple grape once said.

#two words #wasted #potential #the rage from this storyline #=#rage from reading #an offer from a gentleman #I'm ready to write some foefiction #hope's review of S3 #eloise bridgerton #cressida cowper #creloise

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tyrantisterror · 1 month ago

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At Sea Without a Map Pt. 4

The storm howls more furiously than ever, and as a particularly big wave smacks into the hull of your boat and sends your feet slipping on the slick surface of the deck, you thank your lucky stars that this vessel was built with firm railings.

"Listen, this has been great and all," you say with a rising panic in your voice, "But there's a fucking thunderstorm going on right now, and I know enough about the sea to know that screwing around during a storm is a good way to get dead, so get up on my boat and we can chat later!"

"I'll be fine!" the strange lady replies. "Look how easily I'm swimming! You're afraid of a little rain?"

You have noticed how easily she's swimming, and in the back of your mind you register that it doesn't really make sense. The water is raging around her, waves have dashed her in the face with enough force to topple a larger person, yet she remains in place as if it were little more than a light breeze. It'd be very impressive in any other situation, but right now it just seems foolish.

"It's been great talking with you," you tell the woman. "Really, you're the nicest person I've talked to since... well... that I can remember at all, really. Granted, you're the only person I've talked to since I found myself on this boat, and..." The absence of prior memories weighs upon you again. "And I can't really remember anyone before... but there must have been... there must have been..."

She looks at you with a sympathetic smile. "You're so nervous and confused," she says sweetly. "Take a swim with me, everything will make sense, I promise!"

But you shake your head. "No, dammit, there's a storm! Quit fucking around and get up here before we both die!" Then, in a moment of impulsiveness that, if it were pushed just a little father might have seen you fall in the drink, you reach over the rail and extend your hand to her. "Grab my hand and climb aboard, I don't want you to drown!"

A flash of genuine sympathy appears on her face, and she regards you with what can only be described as a deep, tragic level of pity. "You've made this awfully hard for me, you know," she says quietly.

Behind her, the violent seas churn and burst as something enormous rises from their depths. You see the massive coils of a great serpent tear through the skin of the water, wriggling and writhing as they force the stormy sea to break upon their scaly sides. As the woman comes closer, a riddle is answered for you: she withstood the waves because she was a much, much larger creature than you gave her credit for.

"If it's any consolation," she says with an apologetic smile, "I'm going to feel guilty about this. But a gal's gotta eat!"

You stagger back from the rail in terror just as a particularly large wave crashes against you ship. The tremendous force of the blow knocks you off your feat, but it also shakes loose a few planks from the deck - planks, you realize, that were hiding a secret compartment. As you look inside, you spy two very useful tools you had not known were at your disposal: a harpoon, and a large fishing net.

As a vast and terrible sea monster rises out of the waves to ensnare you, you consult your compass.

#At Sea Without a Map

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powderblueblood · 6 months ago

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a cat is only itself

eddie helps lacy process the death of a friend he didn't know she had. a/n: this ficlet is completely self-indulgent and an effort in processing grief. last night, i lost my young cat in a cruel and tragic accident. she would have turned 3 this week. i wanted to write something that would help me process all that happened that night and anchor my love for her. i do not know what to do with all the love i have for her, so i put some of it in here. this is for fran. i love you forever. cw: dead dove, extreme TW for pet death, animal suffering, description of animals in pain, strong language and implied driving under intoxication i guess, classic edlacy banter, angst, yearning. this takes place in that nebulous just friends part of the hellfire & ice timeline. but who knows. this is kind of flung out of time and space. no one is under any obligation to read this as i know the subject matter is heavy. it was heavy to write it. thank you if you do though. wc: 5.7k part of the hellfire & ice universe

The day she came began as unremarkably as the day she went.

Lacy’s boots were biting her–as in, chomping at her toes, due to them being both a touch too tight (doesn’t matter, too gorgeous to leave them behind in the thrift store) and her tights being a touch too thin. An unseasonal frost was creeping in and she’d elected to walk home and not get a backache in the library chairs while she waited for Eddie and Ronnie to finish up with another bottomless Hellfire session.

Rounding her part of the trailer park, she spied movement up by the raggedy chainlink fence. It seemed as if the equally raggedy Mayfield mutt was being bothered by something. A flash of iridescent eyes in her direction and Lacy saw that it was a little black kitten, no bigger than a cantaloupe, swiping at the dog’s nose. Her little eyes locked on Lacy’s little eyes, Lacy huffing out a steamy puff of laughter. That thing was so small, yet it was putting more anxiety on that Mayfield dog than SAT prep put on Nancy Wheeler.

A flash–the cat darted straight to her, circling and dodging around her ankles. Lacy tried to pick her head up, ignore the little bother, but, y’know. Kittens. There’s no saying no to them, especially if they’re uncharacteristically insistent.

Cats usually have a decent sense of boundaries, which is why Lacy was shocked that this little thing dashed into her trailer ahead of her. Tail up, making a beeline straight to her bedroom.

She hopped upon Lacy’s dinky excuse for a double bed, making a seat for herself on a cozy tartan scarf Lacy had earlier discarded when dressing for school.

“Hey… hey. You can’t be in here!” Lacy tried her best to shoo the cat out her open window, but there’s no moving her at all.

They spent the rest of the night just staring warily at one another, a Marianne Faithfull record spinning lowly in the background.

The next day, Lacy found flea shampoo in Melvald’s and washed the kitten in the bathroom sink in the dead of night. The little thing squirmed, a living sudball, biting but not harsh enough to break skin.

“Cat, don’t be a difficult child!” Lacy hissed to her, rinsing out the bubbles so her fur was clean and flea-free, “We’ll wake up Gloriana de Vil, and then she’ll have you for a coin purse. You wouldn’t like that, huh? No?" Her voice slid into babyfied territory, her usual reserve no match for this tiny creature. "No, my little thing?”

The cat, gleefully ruffled through a towel, woke up fresh and shiny the next morning in the crook behind Lacy’s knees.

And that same day, Lacy passed the junk shop on the way to the Bookstore. In the window, she spotted a little leather band with a diamante heart. Just about big enough for a collar.

Every night, the cat scratched on Lacy’s window, seemingly knowing when Gloriana’s Valium would hit and she’d be safe to snuggle in beside her new companion. In the morning, she would sit on Lacy’s dressing table to watch her get ready for school, or for work, or once, a matinee engagement at the Hawk with one Eddie Munson. They were showing Excalibur, and Eddie fucking begged.

Lacy had picked out these dangly earrings that the cat was fascinated by, jumping on her shoulder to bite at the swinging creatures. Lacy had been so preoccupied with humoring the cat that she hadn’t even noticed Eddie watching them through her open bedroom window– but the cat did. She scarpered out upon seeing him, diving into the hollow space under the Doevski trailer’s tiny porch.

She watched Eddie with shining green eyes, all that could be seen under the clapboard.

“Who’s the familiar?” Eddie asked, propping the van door open for Lacy.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” came the coy reply. “Come on, we’ll miss the previews.”

It’s not that Lacy kept the cat a secret on purpose. It’s just that… she loved what they shared. Just the two of them. She'd had so much dirty laundry aired, it was good to have something just her own.

—

The day she went begins as unremarkable as the day she came.

It’s a Saturday evening, a thick, hot greyness hanging over the sky. Lacy’s languishing in her bedroom on a rare day of doing next to nothing, because it’s too humid to even attempt. She has her window open, half expecting company but half not. Her fountain pen trails idly on the paper stock of her journal. Nothing much worth writing down when the air feels this sluggish.

Bang, bang, bang!

Someone’s door is getting a hammering.

Bang, bang!

Must be the Munson’s.

Little close, though.

She heaves herself off the carpet to go check it out, opening the door to a breathless young redhead. Max Mayfield, Hargrove’s stepsister.

“Can I–”

“That– that little black cat, with the collar? The heart collar? She’s yours, right?”

Oh, here we go. Lacy crosses her arms, bracing for the whole, your bitch cat scratched my dog bit. “Why?”

“She just… someone hit her with a car. Up the lot.” Max breathes hard through her nose. She’d run here. That strikes lacy, the pink bloom under her freckled cheeks. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Lacy’s neck suddenly feels very stiff. “Wh–what do you mean?”

“Come on. Come with me. Will you just come with me?”

Max’s sweaty hand links with Lacy’s paper dry palm and she drags her up the lot. This is the way I go to Ronnie’s place, Lacy idly thinks as her legs struggle to keep up with Max’s. Standing around with the bound arms of grown-ups raptured by impotence are Max Mayfield’s mother, that lady Nita who does Ronnie’s hair and Carl, the grizzled trailer park manager.

In the middle of the loose gravel and sprouting grass is the little black cat. She is on the ground, and she is gasping. Wheezing. Skinned at the side of her tiny face, teeth missing. The diamante heart she wears glitters against the loose gravel. The blood glitters against the diamante.

“Oh. Oh. Cat.” Lacy’s voice sounds as if it’s folded up in her throat. It feels that way. She doesn’t know what to do with her limbs. She doesn’t know where to step.

“Honey, I’m so sorry,” the Mayfield mom says.

“Some asshole just came roaring out of here, didn’t even… didn’t even stop,” Carl nods gravely.

“Nita’s cousin is a veterinary nurse. She’s on the way,” Max tells Lacy, level-headed and soberly. She is still holding her hand. Lacy notices the rough grey dog sitting close by. She stares at him, hazy-eyed, and he whines. His head drops to his two front paws and Lacy feels lightheaded.

“He tried to help,” Max says.

She feels her knees bend but does not register her brain telling her body to get on the ground. Cat is wheezing, wheezing, a high whine in her little cat throat that nearly makes Lacy echo it. She shouldn’t be out here. Who hit her? She shouldn’t be out here, she’s probably cold. She’s probably uncomfortable.

“Can I please take her home, please?” Lacy asks in about as level a voice as she can muster, which is not very.

“It’s best not to move her, hon. She’s very hurt.” Nita, in her bright shell suit, kneels beside her on the ground. A little speck of blood gets on the fluorescent lilac of her pant leg and Lacy’s breath shortens.

“She is… she’s very hurt,” she whispers, half-reaching for the little feline, half-recoiling, “Oh, Jesus. You’re very hurt. You’re very hurt, Cat. Poor Cat.”

Nita hugs her, which she doesn’t know how to respond to, except to stiffly thank her and vaguely gesture to her stained knee.

Nita’s cousin arrives in a shiny blue Sedan, and they help her safely move Cat back to Lacy’s trailer. She is nestled in a towel with a faded print of Minnie Mouse on it, and they put her up on the Formica table where Lacy and her mother never meet for a meal. A quick flash of fear that her blood might stain the tabletop is soon killed by the sound that poor Cat makes.

On the left side of her face, her beautiful green eye is reddened.

A hard tangy smell wedges itself deep in Lacy’s nose and she doesn’t blink for a long, long time.

Nita’s cousin, the veterinary nurse, a woman with a terrifically soothing voice who she thinks is called Stacie, checks the cat’s vitals. It’s very quickly assessed– too much damage. Spinal. Abdominal. That’s where all that blood is coming from. Paw crushed. She’s still making that terrible wheezing noise.

Rage against the dying of the light comes to mind and Lacy wants to hit herself. Not this. Not sentiment. Not now.

Cat hangs on til the bitter end.

“How old is she?” Max asks, her voice either very quiet or very far away. Lacy cannot tell.

“I don’t– I don’t know. I don’t know.” Lacy looks to the lovely, warm-voiced woman who could be called Stacie. “How old is she?”

“She's very little. Can’t even say she’s reached her first birthday, hon.”

Lacy feels sick, and sicker, and sicker. Tunnel vision shows her nothing but the cat, once with the highest trilling meow, sputtering.

Cat reaches her paw out to Lacy a final time, and she lets go.

Lacy tearfully exhales a noise she’s never heard herself make before, and asks everyone to please, please wait. Please.

They wrap Cat in the tartan scarf.

Max hovers near Lacy, her arms bound tight around her chest, as if shielding herself from the sadness seeping from the walls.

“Do you want me t–”

“Did you see who hit her?” Lacy asks Max. A clear and loaded question; she’s asking if it was Billy. Billy and that fucking weapon of mass compensation he calls a car.

For a split second, Max looks angry at the flash accusation, even though she knows the kind of putrid her stepbrother is. But she tamps it down; she’s a better woman than Lacy is, for a middle schooler.

“I didn’t recognize the car. Just… some fucking asshole,” Max swallows. “If I see him again, I’m putting sugar in his gas tank.”

Lacy just nods and makes some vague-mouthed attempt at a thanks for everything, Max, Stacie, Nita. Nita is hesitant to leave her alone, as is Max, but Stacie ushers them out. Leaves her number, just in case Lacy should need anything.

Lacy spends what feels like an eternity staring at the yellowed plastic of the phone nailed to the kitchen wall. She realizes she’s got no contact for the one person she wants to call. Her hand hovers over the scarf-wrapped cat like she’s trying to cast some kind of impotent spell, and she reaches for the open smokes on the table behind her. Lacy spends what feels like eternity under the awning-covered picnic table, chain smoking and sniffing sulfur from clouds that refuse to break.

—

The van’s lights finally flood the ground at her feet. Eddie emerges, slinging himself out of the van in that loose-limbed metal marionette way that he has. His Hellfire shirt cuts a stinging image in the dark.

He spots her immediately, in that way that makes her sometimes think he enters spaces accidentally looking for her.

Sometimes she does the same.

“Well, what have we got here? A little dark night of the soul with the Marlboro Ma–... Lace?”

Some sliver of moonlight cuts through the tear streaks in her makeup and stops him up short.

“Eddie,” Lacy croaks. Her throat is ashen, her eyes are ashen, her head is pounding.

“Hey, hey…” His voice tunes right down into an immediate soothe, arms hovering around her like they aren’t quite sure how to ring around her yet. “Oh, hey, hey, what the shit? What’s the matter?”

Her throat thickens. “Oh, this is stupid.”

That makes him put a firm grasp around her shoulders. He smells like excitable sweat and Mountain Dew– the Hellfire Club special. “What’s happened, sweetheart?”

A rough sound comes out of her nose. “You know that… you know that stupid cat that’s been coming around my trailer–”

“The cat you’ve been pretending not to have?” She should abhor how perceptive he is.

“Y… yes. She, w– well, someone hit her. With a car. It’s s– she didn’t make it–’

“Oh, holy shit.” Eddie wraps her up in his arms, her head pressing hard into the joint of his shoulder. Lacy’s eyes screw up harder, as if she could push them to the back of her skull.

“They just hit her, Eddie, and they kept going–”

“Holy shit.”

“And I didn’t– and, but, Max Mayfield, she came to get me and– it was just, I didn’t hear the door in time–”

“Come on. No, no. Come on, baby, inside. Up, up, atta girl.” Eddie about props her up, steering her right into his trailer. Lacy’s preset Wayne alarm goes off–is he here, doesn’t he hate me, I don’t want to die tonight too–but Eddie’s quick on the buzzer.

“Night shift, sweetheart. You’re safe. Siddown.”

“It’s so stupid.” She drops in slow motion onto the Munson’s sagging couch. It aches to move.

Eddie sinks in right beside her, leaving no room for a draught between them. He’s running warm, no doubt hopped up on caffeine and campaign mischief.

“Hey. Not stupid. Not stupid.” His voice is featherlight. He tucks the tiniest lock of hair behind her ear.

“I loved that little thing.”

“I know you did. Well–I didn’t have the privilege of knowing you did, really, but you… obviously did, Lace. Shit.”

“Fucking little bitch,” Lacy says, voice a roux of incredulity and betrayal. “I loved her.”

Eddie snorts and pulls her right close. She crumples up and sobs good, like the sounds she makes can’t quite fill the cavern this has created in her. Lacy sobs until her head can’t take it anymore, a wet spot and a streak of mascara left on Eddie’s Hellfire shirt.

But Eddie is sweet and patient, and strokes her hair and doesn’t comment on how ugly she probably sounds. Not at all.

After a little bit, he asks, “Lace. Where’d you find her?”

“Uh. She must be– must’ve been just a stray, you know, from around. I found her giving shit to the Mayfields’ dog.”

“Huh?” Eddie’s brow leaps.

“Yeah,” Lacy breathes, lowly and mirthfully.

“But how did you two…”

“I don’t know. She just locked eyes on me and ran right around my ankles. Right into the trailer before I could stop her and headed straight to my room. I flipped, of course, because of Gloriana but then she hopped up on my bed and did that kneading thing they do? With their nails?”

“The–” Eddie imitates it on her shoulder, his thicker fingers with his blunt nails no match for Cat’s talons. Lacy’s inclined to tell him to keep doing it, though.

“Yeah. Sniffing around. And I just watched her in the doorway. I didn't know what to do, so I tried to shoo her. But she didn’t give a shit. She just curled up in my– my tartan scarf and fell asleep. Like it was her place all along.”

The corners of his mouth press downward, an expression that makes her heart lurch.

“She didn’t wanna leave, huh? She wanted to stay with you.”

“She did. She did. Shit.”

—

“Times of strife call for special privileges.”

“Oh, Christ, the fine china.”

The Garfield mug filled with two thumbs of Bev’s finest fell-off-the-truck well whiskey and three cigarettes later, a slack-limbed Lacy rubs her face against Eddie’s shoulder.

Any other day, any other planet, that’d be cause for some considerable pants action but… it’s difficult. To see her like this. All shocked and scraped out.

“You want to hear a stupid conclusion I came to the other day?” Lacy says steewpid with empty-stomach drinking vitriol. “Just the other day.”

“You know I love stupid,” Eddie polishes off the last of his drink from his I Heart Nabraska (real spelling error) mug and pours them both another. “Hit me. Just not in the groin.”

“I didn’t understand what unconditional love meant before this goddamn cat.”

It checks out, Eddie thinks. Her parents and their affection with strings attached. Her old friends, worshiping a facade. No one really saw Lace at her worst and loved her anyway. At least, not until–

“No shit?” He blames his roughed up voice on the liquor.

“Mm. I expected nothing of her. Every time she left I thought, well, that’ll be it. I expected nothing. And I loved her all the same. Unconditional. No strings, no compromise.”

“No pretending.”

“No bullshit. Ride or die.”

“‘til the bloody end,” he raises his mug to cheers her, and Lacy winces. Eddie’s face crumples, apologetic. “Yeowch. Okay. I’m sorry.’

“No, it’s– I'm just pissed her little face got messed up so bad,” she sniffs. He gazes down at her and wants to poke the pudge of cheek that’s wedged against his shoulder. “I was gonna taxidermy her one day.”

“Really?” Eddie's voice comes out a little pitchy.

Lacy hops immediately on the defensive. “Yeah.”

There’s a lot of bizarro stuff Eddie can get down with, but the whole uncanny valley of the animals thing always weirded him out. “You were gonna stuff the cat? Give it, like marble eyes and shit?”

Lacy, on the other hand, sits up straight.

“Abso-fucking-lutely. We were going to grow old together, and either I was going to taxidermy her or she was going to eat my body when I died.”

The glassy eyes and indignation are additions to a long list of things that make Eddie feel a gold rush of serious affection for this girl. “Oh, honeybear, you are so creepy.”

“Well, everyone says that about cats!” Lacy yelps, wedging another cigarette between her lips. She rubs at her eyes too, the red rims looking stingy and painful now. “That if they’re left alone with a corpse, it’s like an all-you-can-eat, seconds at the breakfast bar type of deal. And everyone gets so goddamn squeamish about it too, I mean, come on, I'd rather she eat me than starve.”

“Warped. Digressive,” Eddie says, his mouth curling up.

“Spare me your five-cent words, I'm pragmatic.”

“You’d let your cat treat you like a church cookout and you’re calling that pragmatism?”

“Of course I would. She's my girl.” She flinches, head shaking. “Was.”

“Is,” Eddie insists. “You know, whole cat-eating-your-face thing… That’s basically a sacrifice to Bastet. Totally transcends mortality.”

She sinks back into the couch and instinctive motion has him throwing his arm up so she can tuck underneath it.

“Know what I called her?”

“This’ll be good.”

“Cat.”

“This’ll be bad.”

“Breakfast at Tiffany’s, you fucking neophyte. ‘If I could find a real life place that made me feel like Tiffany’s, I’d buy some furniture and give the cat a name’. Holly Golightly in that bare apartment.”

“I spy a parallel being drawn here, sweetheart.”

“Well, good fucking eye. No… um, I think I finally got what she meant when I moved into…” She gestures, hard, with her cigarette toward the door. Toward her own trailer across the way from the Munson’s abode.

“Mm.” Eddie shifts in his seat. It kind of bugs him sometimes, the idea that she might still look down her nose at the trailer park despite having adapted to it pretty fucking fluidly. Comes with being a chameleon, he guesses, but he wonders if there’s not part of her that’s still wrinkling her nose. “Not exactly the picture of refinement, yeah, yeah.”

“I don’t know,” she mumbles. She’s as close to undone as he’s ever seen her, her mascara caked and flaking under her eyes and her hair all a rumpled mess. Only time he’s ever seen her as close to the edge before this was the last night she’d stormed this trailer. “I don’t know if I've really found my Tiffany's. Maybe this is it.’

“Double-wide with a busted water heater? Should we also check for a gas leak, Doevski? You’re mental.”

“You’re being obtuse,” she says, suddenly pointed like a dart. A flash of his regular serving of Lace. “The Tiffany’s in question isn’t honest-to-god Tiffany’s–she says it's the quiet, the proud look about it. That’s what calms her down when she’s got the mean reds. And I…”

Eddie can feel that he’s wearing that infuriatingly bemused expression he tends to slide on when Lacy is mid-reveal of a profound thought. He can tell by the way she’s starting to glare at him.

“Shut up. Listen. I– I think about it like this. It's 6AM. The sun’s just cracking the sky. It’s quiet, you can barely hear the birds. There’s a hundred identical units across this lot, each one of them housing different lives. Carl in the management shack. Nita in the home hair salon. Granny Ecker and Ron. Everyone interconnected. Everyone… everyone looking out for each other, a little.”

Right. She’d mentioned how Nita and Max and them had rallied around her and poor Cat.

Still, Eddie can’t help a bad thing. He flips his hand in a flourish, gesturing to himself.

“Presenting the great exception.” For all this inter-connectedness she spoke, of, wasn’t nobody looking out for little old–

“Shut up, Eddie. You know half this park has your back by writ of being related to Wayne, you’re just too much of a contrarian woe-is-me to see it. And you’re a pain in the ass on top of that.”

He stifles an argument she would win with a pinched lemon sour face. “Noted. Go on.”

“Anyway,” she exasperatedly huffs, passing him the remaining half of her cigarette, “I sit… on my porch and I have my coffee. And I have my little cat. And I know you’re across the way, probably asleep. It's quiet. And there’s pride in that quiet. In that quiet, I've felt more at peace than I have my whole stupid flimsy life. I can't explain why. I'm a cynic, we know this. But it might be fucking… Tiffany's.”

Eddie’s fingers drum against the crown of Lacy’s head as he considers this. Framing this as some kind of surprise utopia. This skidmark on the outer edge of town. Except, she’d said it in a fashion that made him want to set an alarm for six in the morning.

“Buy some furniture and give the cat a name. Shit.”

“Shit.”

He finishes the last of the cigarette she’d passed to him and takes another sip of shitty, awful, rotgut whiskey.

“... we can find another cat, y’know,” he mutters tentatively, resting his chin on her head. “I’m kind of a–” Don’t you fucking say pussy magnet. Eddie. Don’t. “--a feline whisperer.”

But he’s got grounds, unfortunately. The feral cats around the lot take to following him around like he’s a bigger, hairier feral cat. This might have something to do with him carrying loose salami in his pockets as a younger man. That reputation never really goes away among the feral cat colonies.

“Those mean and scary strays,” Lacy mumbles into his chest.

“Not so mean and scary. Just used to having their boundaries up, is all. Can relate.”

“Can relate.”

“I could unscary one for you. There’s this one little dude, one eye, three and a half legs, I call him Snake Plissken and he–”

“Oh, Eddie,” she sighs; it makes his heart ka-chunk, “There is no other cat. There’s just Cat. She was perfect.”

“Well, she had hefty goddamn standards to meet if she made this much of an impression on you.” Eddie’s mouth twinges. “I’m real, real sorry, Lace.”

“I need to bury her.” The finality with which Lacy breathes it out makes them both sag further into the couch.

But Eddie doesn’t show a lick of hesitation.

“So let’s bury her. You got a spot?”

—

They pull up at Lover’s Lake.

Cat lies in Lacy’s lap, slowly stiffening and losing warmth. Lacy’s fingers stay crooked in the little space under her chin that she would tilt up, up, up for her to tickle. It makes her queasy to think about it too much, and to think about it too little makes her cry. She straddles the line between sick and sad and Eddie plays the radio real low in the truck. Some sad sack station. ‘Don’t Forget Me’, Harry Nilsson. Pathetic fallacy eeks out of the speakers, not used to playing anything this low and slow.

Lacy directs Eddie into the underbrush as they edge off Holland.

“Right over here.”

“This is a nice spot. Not too public.”

“The water. She’d like to see it.”

“The water… for your cat.”

“You know they can swim? Cats can swim. Everybody thinks they hate water, but they can swim.”

She notices that he doesn’t quite swallow that scoff in time and mutters, “Yeah, and they probably hate every second of swimming.”

“But they can do it.” She's driving a point home. It’s about subverting expectations. Stupid.

“Yeah! Yeah, they can swim,” Eddie says, half-way humoring her as he helps her out of the van with Cat, “and if you ask them, they hate every second of it."

“Stop being pedantic.”

“Stop trying to have something to say about everything!”

They both blink at the slight blow of Eddie’s exasperation. Everything feels a little weird and wired and raw right now. He pulls a shovel out of the back of the van, huffing through his nose.

“You’ll rue the day I don’t have something to say about everything,” Lacy winds up, indignant and stepping to him with that poor little thing cradled against her. Her eyes narrow and his index finger floats in her face. She can’t quite place where this is bubbling from, and nor can he.

“You’re staying overnight with me, okay?!” Eddie snaps. He means business. He’s got the finger out.

“Huh?” It comes out her mouth a garbled little protest.

“You’re not going home alone. There. Not tonight.” All he’s missing is a patented and that’s final! Flashes of a night spent curled against him attack Lacy’s frontal lobe.

Yes, is her immediate reaction. She wants that. That warmth he’s thrusting toward her, that security. That comfort. But, one problem.

“Wayne.”

“Wayne’s not back ‘til morning and also, who gives a good goddamn shit?” Eddie froths. “I don’t. My room, my mildew, my rules. Okay?”

She feels shaky in this, his insistence to tug the safety blanket around her. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

His shoulders sag. He nudges his sneaker against the hilt of the shovel. It’s very quiet out here, save for the crickets and the sounds of their heartbeats in their ears.

“Look at us,” Eddie smirks, his mouth twisting for facetiousness, “Fuckin’... Shitkicker Gothic out here. Let’s get this cat burial on the road.”

Lacy nods with a heavy head and starts into the underbrush. Eddie matches her step for step. They end up in a secluded spot deeper into the wooded area. Nature’s bay window looks out onto glittering Lover’s Lake. And if you look right up, the trees open up to a tiny patch of sky. Smattering of stars. Just enough for Cat.

“I don’t mean to be disgusting, Lace, but I really hope you’re not burying Cat at a hotspot for fingerbanging.”

Ambiance shattered. Almost. Lacy glares at him.

“No. People begin to exhibit signs of wigging-outery the closer they get to that weird house on the bank, so they never get past second base here. This is… a perfect boundary for her.”

“Ah,” Eddie nods, his chin resting on the shovel handle. “One paw in the world of lakeside makeouts and the other in the land of the working class criminal.” At Lacy’s puzzled head shake, he gestures to that dilapidated looking house across the way. “S’uh, Reefer Rick’s place. Really clean marker of the social divide you got here.”

“A fault line,” Lacy says. Yeah. That feels good.

“With a lovely view.” Eddie jerks his head toward the flat rocks at the water’s edge and sinks the shovel into the soft soil. “Go sit with her.”

Lacy does. Cat wrapped in her stiffness, her head hidden in the tartan shroud. Lacy’s heart aches, that she’ll never get to run her pinkie finger down the perfect slant of her tiny nose again. Not without feeling blood matted against the fur. It’s not fair. None of it. It was so close to real, this thing they had.

What's wrong with her that the bottom keeps falling out of good things like this?

“Is this your first?” Eddie gently calls over the soft shoveling of soil.

“Cat?”

“Death.”

Lacy doesn’t have to think on it. Any relatives other than her mom’s estranged sister were dead before she was cognizant of what it all meant. Her father didn't have any family to speak of. Not even a foster sibling or two he was still in contact with.

“Yes.” A beat. “Is this your first?”

“Death?” Eddie grimly parrots.

“Grave.”

“Why, yes.”

“Hopefully your last." She's arch.

“Ah, with your blessed presence in my life, Miss Doevski,” he says, “something tells me it won’t be.”

She smiles into her shoulder, down at Cat, across the water.

“Whenever you’re ready, sweetheart.”

There is no being ready. There is no way to easily unplug from the faux-reality of holding something once soft now rigid, the netherealm of not knowing whether your beloved is coming or going. Up, down, left, right. sideways. Maybe Lacy ought to toss Cat in the water and see if she’ll swim.

She joins Eddie at the neat little grave he’s dug and is hesitant.

Throat closing. Head pounding. Stomach tightening.

Shit. Fuck.

Nerves or bile or both rise and she can feel every nerve ending in her hands.

A clear of a throat that isn’t hers.

“May I?” Eddie’s holding his hands out. He takes Cat. Lacy watches his ringed fingers gently taper through the tuft of her furry side. Glistening blue-black in the moonlight. He might’ve mouthed the words, ‘Aw, soft,’ but she can’t be sure.

“Well, Cat,” and she can tell a classic Munson missive is about to kick off. Lacy knits her fingers together as if in prayer and looks down at her feet. Tries not to look at Eddie, with his insistent arms and undefeatable presence, cradling Cat. “It sucks that I never got to know you, but I understand you had some kind of third-wave, kill-all-men feminism thing going on which, practically I'm shit-scared of and conceptually I guess I respect.” He clears his throat again. “But I know that you were… loved, even if your presence wasn’t a whole to-do. I mean, damn.”

Eddie bends his head nearer Cat’s, affecting a stage whisper that makes Lacy roll her eyes. Affection. Affection. Affection.

“You lucked out, Cat. You picked a really good one here. I know it. She likes to play the shit that matters, the nice shit she does, close to the vest instead of showing off about it, but… ‘Deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised’. Aragorn. By the way.”

“Nerd.”

“Please shut up, I am not finished, you are being rude,” Eddie pokes in this clipped tone Lacy knows is supposed to be an impression of her. He drops it as soon as picks it up, everything about him softening. “She was lucky to have you, but you were luckier having had her.”

Oh. The breath shakes in her lungs. Oh.

A moment or two passes before Lacy realizes she’s been frozen. It’s time.

“You wanna–” Eddie softly suggests, “Or should I–”

“Oh, wait!” Her collar. Lacy’s nails unpick the leather strap, sliding it away from Cat’s throat. Eddie catches the shimmer of the diamante heart and shakes his head.

“Farewell, the fanciest cat Forest Hills has ever seen.”

With gentle and careful hands, Eddie lowers Cat into the dirt. Lacy might choke if she tries to speak, but then he catches her trembling, nerve-raw hand in hers.

“'I don’t like love as a command. As a search,'” it slips out of Lacy in a murmur, “'It must come to you, like a hungry cat at the door.'”

Eddie’s brow furrows, waiting for her to cite…

“Bukowski. By the way.”

“Nerd.”

Lacy sprinkles the first fistful of dirt over Cat’s prone, resting body. It really seems like that, in the dark bed of soil. Cool, restful. And in the heavy swathe of this night too.

Eddie only lets her hand go to cover the rest of the grave.

Once he’s done, he twists the shovel in the dirt. “You wanna mark it or anything? So you can come back?”

“I don’t know,” Lacy says. Is there a way to address the gap she feels between her and the resting place? Probably not yet. “Don’t know that it’ll really do anything for me.’

“You’ll know where to find her, though. If you need.”

“Oh, yeah. you don’t forget a spot like this.”

Eddie slings his arm over her hunched and shivering shoulders, shaking against a chill that doesn’t exist. He leans into the crown of her head–not quite a kiss, but an utterance.

“Gracefully done, Lace. She’d be proud.”

God, she hopes so.

Silly little cat.

They follow their track back to Eddie's van, arm in arm, the two-person funeral match plus one shovel. From up the embankment, a light flickers on. Some heavily obscured figure seems to wobble in silhouette, like it’s waving.

Eddie slides off a two-finger salute to the spectre.

“Friend of yours?” Lacy squints.

“That’s Rick. If you’re lucky, I’ll never have to introduce the two of you.”

Eddie helps Lacy into the passenger seat. She sits there, arms feeling weighted and empty.

“Eddie.” His name crackles in her mouth.

“No, no. Don’t mention i–”

“You were the only person I wanted to see. After it happened. You were the only one. I couldn’t call you at Hellfire or anything. I wouldn’t have wanted you to leave, but you… I just wanted to see you.”

Something about that statement makes her feel incredibly lonesome.

Until he takes her hand. Swallows hard and kisses it gentle.

“That is… an honor I don’t rightly deserve, Lace.”

“Bullshit.”

“Let’s not make, like, a whole thing of it.” Eddie inches out this pained smile that Lacy needs desperately to wipe off his face, somehow. To replace it with something that doesn’t look like it’s pinching him. He has to know. “I’m glad I could be here. For you. For Cat.”

“Me too, Eddie.”

#published by powder #hai brainrot #l. doevski by powder #e. munson by powder #eddie munson x oc #eddie munson fic #edlacy

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