#so you're welcome for that i guess
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Wilbur: Yeah, I'm- I'm- I'm glad that I've actually done something right, Phil. Normally- normally on SMPs I'm- I'm always a bit of a- you know, a bit of a- a bit of a- a bit of a um, what's the word... uh... what's the word for like a-
Phil: Homosexual?
Wilbur: NO????
Bonus:
#Wilbur Soot#Philza#Wilbur#QSMP#Tntduo#I suppose#Phil#Happy early Pride I guess#The audio for both their streams sucked so I went ahead and fixed the audio and added both their POVs to this clip#~ You're welcome ~#Was going to do a longer transcript but how the hell do you even transcribe that laugh / noise Wilbur made LMAO#The image is Smajor's resub message compressed to make it easier to read#Edited
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#23 - Kiss
Masterlist
Previous
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Let me know your thoughts in the reblogs <3
â Buy me coffee â
#the awaited PDA is finally happening âšđ Woohoo! That scratched my own itch so well#there are so many things I can point out in this update. you should start by zooming in on every expression on the speech bubbles#my favs are Dan Isu and Ran. they're so silly. Supportive Rak <3 Hatz wishes he's in Agni's place. Khun is conflicted. Viole getting ideas#Endo is regretting her prank (she expected Agr to have a small fight. alas that backfires spectacularly) but she also had seen this coming#there's actually one easter egg detail on the first page second panel. I will explain it on the next update. But you're welcome to guess#funnies aside Agni meant it that he want Grace to have someone else to rely on. He didn't want to be the last string that kept Grace sanity#that's why he was desperate to find their missing friends and travelled to the past (tho he also missed them just as much but won't admit)#(more comments on ao3 bc tag limit) anyway with this posted. now I will take my hiatus to plan ahead~ the story will continue after newyear#tower of god#tog#two sides of the same coin comic#my comic#my art#the 25th baam#the 25th bam#jue viole grace#khun a.a#khun aguero agnis#khunbam#koonbaam#shibisu#ship leesoo#hatz#rak wraithraiser#endorsi jahad#anaak jahad#khun ran#edin dan#novick#gyetang
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so what if kevin's a rich boy slut? his mother would endorse. maybe even encourage
#kayleigh day would literally laugh at the string of boys he has left in his wake ok#she would high five him and tell him she's still winning he needs to do better#so what if im writing a fic tagged kevin/everyone#you're gonna have to guess who he ends up with#but if you know me well enough you'll know who it is#aftg#kevin day#i say 'im writing' but you all know that means im thinking very hard about it#you're welcome to ask about it it helps me plan but i won't spoil anything
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Cruel Summer Epilogue - Part One
Masterlist - Part One - Part Two
pairing: Eddie Munson x fem!reader
warnings: sexual content (18+) minors DNI (you guys they go the fuck off idk what to tell you, gird your loins), pregnancy, mentions of sickness and vomiting, traumatic flashbacks, angst, swearing (please let me know if I missed anything, there's a lot going on here)
word count:Â 23k (oof)
a/n: tumblr is really gonna make me split this thing up more than I already was going to â oh well, it doesn't matter because it's here! Forgive me for how I had to lay this out, and for everything that follows, because part two is going to be nothing but complete rabid bunnyfucking...
Melvaldâs is slow today.Â
Of course, thatâs nothing out of the ordinary. Melvaldâs is always slow. You donât think there has ever been such a thing as a morning or afternoon rush within these cluttered walls, and youâre fine with that.Â
You have to be, because itâs not like you have a lot of other options left in Hawkins.Â
After everything went back to normal again â as normal as normal can be, considering the circumstances â you didnât dare go back to ask for your job at Bennyâs. You tell yourself itâs because youâve got too much self-respect for that (and certainly not because youâre quite sure theyâll laugh you out of the building if you tried) so now you stock shelves at Melvaldâs.
The hours are long and the pay is crap, but your commute is a quick ten-minute walk, and thatâs more than you can ask for. Because you never got your car back after you went sailing out the front doors at Bennyâs with the singular purpose of finding Eddie, getting out of town, and never coming back â a purpose you mostly succeeded in.Â
Mostly.
You found Eddie, but you never managed to get around to getting out of town. You did eventually end up coming back, though only to discover that while you were away your trusty little Toyota Corolla had been towed.
Figures.Â
Funny how you canât just leave a vehicle sitting unclaimed in a private lot for over a month and expect there to be no consequences.Â
By the time you got around to finding your car, you ended up having to sell the damn thing just to cover the impound fees, and you quickly learned that despite what all those sappy greeting cards like to say, you can put a price on your memories. Hundreds of hours of carpooling trips to and from school and the arcade and movies and innumerable Corroded Coffin gigs, all the jam sessions and make-out sessions and âyou gotta hear this songâ sessions that resulted in blown out speakers and deeply existential conversations and fights about nothing and everything. All the time and people, friends and lovers and emotions permeating itâs dingy cloth seats and hard plastic siding was whisked away in the blink of an eye.Â
Your bittersweet adolescence, gone in exchange for a measly four thousand dollars. Somehow, youâre never going to forgive yourself for letting it go like that.Â
And yet, for as sad as you were to part with and old friend, it wasnât all bad, because even with most of that blood money sent off to the Roane County municipality, you still had a little left over.Â
Enough to get the van towed out of the ditch and back into working order, at least. It wasnât pretty, and it needed more work than any of you could really wrap your heads around just to bring it back to its previous semi-shitty condition, but it was alive and that was all that mattered.Â
If selling your car meant that Eddie didnât have to lose anything else, then you were happy to let it go.
Anyway, you like your walk to work. Itâs short enough that it doesnât give you time to think about anything that isnât immediately in front of you. It doesnât remind you of anything you might be mourning from back in the good old days, and it means, if need be, you can get home as fast as humanly possible.
Unlike at Bennyâs, nobody at Melvaldâs gives you shit if you have to go sailing out the front doors and across the parking lot to rescue Eddie from his demons.
That mile-and-back commute does not, however, keep you safe from the perils of being late for work. Not in the cold blue light of morning, when Eddie snakes his arms around you and holds you hostage, leaving sleepy, sloven kisses down the stretch of your neck and sending shivers up the length of your spine as he begs you for five more minutes, and five more minutes after that.Â
You find that you have a hard time arguing with him on mornings like that when the only thing that can chase away the lingering sting of bad dreams and worse memories is to lay pressed together in a heap of tangled limbs, listening to the muted thump thump thumping of his beating heart and feeling the steady rise and fall of his chest as he breathes.
Youâre spending a lot of mornings like that lately, laying in as late as you possibly can before slinking into work a cool twenty minutes late. And if anyone on Melvaldâs barebones staff cares about that, you havenât heard about it. Even if you did, the feeling would not be mutual.
Who gives a shit where you decide to spend your mornings? Mornings are for people who never came so close to losing everything, so whatâs the harm in five more minutes?Â
Plenty, it turns out, when you finally manage to extract yourself from that tangled mess of limbs and are hit with a wave of nausea like a speeding train the moment you sit up. You were late to work this morning, sure, though not because you couldnât stop indulging Eddie in five more minutes, it was because you couldnât stop your insides from turning into outsides and spent almost a full half hour with your head in the toilet.
You mostly donât wanna talk about that.Â
If you have to, you chalk it up to the bizarre sickness you canât seem to shake. You just canât stomach much of anything these days, except for herbal tea, and that is only consumed against your will, because herbal tea is gross, despite how itâs the only thing that abates your nausea.Â
Well, you thought it did.Â
Joyce Byers is on an extended smoke break, so youâre alone in the store when it hits you.Â
One minute, youâre sitting behind the cash wrap, absently flipping through Cosmopolitan Magazine with a steadily cooling cup of stagnant bog water at your elbow, and then someone hits the ejector button. The next thing you know, youâre sprinting for the bathroom with a harsh squeak of Chucks on linoleum.
You barely make it to the stall in time to send your prayers to that eternal porcelain god.
Zero to sixty in half a second, just like this morning and every other morning this week.Â
By the time you come slinking in again from the employeeâs bathroom, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand, Joyce is still not back from her fifteen-going-on thirty minute break. There are no customers, no coworkers, just you and the lingering air of your spectacular Regan MacNeil impression â getting better and better every day â because itâs just another boring Thursday afternoon, and Melvaldâs is always slow.Â
Your insides cramp with the threat of sustained illness as you slide in behind the cash register, ready to resume the spell of your boredom, then, you find yourself face to face with a pharmaceutical ad you donât remember seeing when you last flipped the page.Â
You stare down at the image of a beautiful woman with her face stretched into a wide, open mouth smile, which is manic enough that you could easily mistake her for screaming rather than laughing.Â
You begin to feel a cold, creeping dread raising the hair on your neck and arms as you read the copy.Â
âMorning sickness? Not me!âÂ
Jesus Christ, you think with no small amount of disgust, Somebody got paid a million dollars to write this â and yet all it takes is those four measly little words.
They fall into place one right after the other, each with a hollow boom that sends shockwaves radiating out across the expanse of your body with goosebumps. A previously darkened part of your brain slowly begins switching on as the phrase is fed through its internal processor over and over until something starts to come into focus.
A question you havenât yet asked yourself, and the answer youâve been subconsciously dodging, like lightning in the storm of your sudden onset illness.
Morning sickness? Not me⊠surely not meâŠ
Still, you immediately begin counting the weeks on your fingers and think yourself in circles, trying desperately to remember when you had your last period. Last week? Last month? You donât remember. Youâve never been the type of person to keep regular track of something like that, though only because you never needed to.Â
You were a virgin until you met Eddie and now you canât seem to recall when you had your last period.
It takes you too long to remember, and when you do, you donât believe it, so you count it out three times just to be certain and swallow hard against the sick feeling roiling in your esophagus.
January⊠February⊠March⊠March? No, that canât be rightâŠÂ
You rustle a piece of scratch paper from the register to draw it out so you can visualize it, and when the data still doesnât change, you get up to go and find the calendar in the employeeâs locker room just to be certain that it really is â June.Â
According to your math, you havenât had a period since March, and according to the calendar, that was two months ago.Â
Holy Shit.
If you were thinking rationally, you might understand how two months could pass without a person noticing, especially when theyâve been living their life by the second.Â
But youâre not thinking rationally, and if you were being honest, you havenât been since last Spring.Â
Time stopped for you in the other place, when Eddieâs heart stopped down on the wrong side of the world, and ever since you slipped back through, it hasnât really started back up again in a way you can wrap your head around. You live your life by the days of the week, so how were you supposed to know something was amiss when your only basis of passing time is âitâs Thursday again,â?Â
Something heavy settles in the pit of your stomach and you feel like you could be sick again as the facts begin to present themselves in neat little lines.Â
You and Eddie are living together now.Â
After everything that happened, when the dust finally settled on the Forest Hills trailer park, the folks from the Hawkins Lab came out from their fortress like feudal lords in lab coats. They took samples, corded things off with a mountain of red tape, performed test upon test upon test on the ruined contents of the trailer, and after all was said and done, it was deemed âuninhabitableâ.Â
Which meant the Munsons were out of house and home. Wayne, it turns out, could get temporary housing through the Plant, but only so long as he was actively working. Someone was going to have to be the steward of Eddieâs recovery once he got out of the hospital (and that was shaping up to be a full time job in and of itself) but if Wayne took any time off to take care of him, he was going to lose his bid for company housing. Without it, he would have to move the pair of them back into the extended stay rooms in the Motel 6 out on the interstate, which he could only afford to pay for if he was earning a steady paycheck â such are the perils of selling your soul to the company store.Â
So, Eddie came to live with you in your icebox of a basement apartment, which seemed like the most practical, level headed idea until you were left alone and the reality of your sudden and total privacy settled in. It didnât take long for the both of you to completely lose your minds in a haze of traumatic aftermath and unchecked hormones.
To you, it was the greatest idea anyone had ever had in the history of mankind â to your neighbors, Eddie moving in has been a catastrophic turn for the worse.Â
Because at the end of the day youâre just a couple of horny kids, sharing four hundred square feet of space, most of which just so happens to be taken up by a queen sized bed.Â
There have been noise complaints abound, but honestly, what did anyone expect to happen?Â
And what did you expect to happen when all either of you seem to do outside of basic human function is fuck like bunny rabbits?Â
You bury your face in your hands and choke on a horrified moan as you wrack your brain trying to think if, in fourteen months of domestic bliss, you ever once remembered to use protection..
The answer is a resounding no.
Who has time for condoms when youâre busy living your life to the fullest? Whatâs the saying? Wrap it before you tap it? Not me! You both almost died, remember? Live a little!Â
At least thatâs been the logic for fourteen fucking months.Â
Jesus wept.Â
In the silence of the store, in between the waning notes of royalty-free Muzak and the gentle murmur of outside traffic, you can hear the tick, tick, ticking of the overhead clock. Wretched time, quietly counting down the seconds as potential disaster comes hurtling toward you like an atomic bomb.
Your stomach is cramping again as you move out from behind the cash wrap and stagger over to aisle three on stiff legsâ
Oh my God Oh my God Oh my God Oh my GodÂ
â where you drop to balance on the balls of your feet and come face to face with the little white and purple boxes hanging there â pregnancy tests.Â
You think back to the way youâd so casually racked them the day before and cannot believe it never once crossed your mind.Â
Morning sickness.Â
Except you arenât just sick in the morning, are you? Youâre sick all the time, any hour of the day⊠so itâs probably not that, right? You probably just contracted some weird parasite at the lake or from a bad burger and now itâs wreaking havoc in your guts, right?Â
Right! a condescending voice tells you, Itâs called a fetus.Â
Your mind outright rejects the notion, but now that the idea is there, the hint of nagging possibility will not be dismissed. So you sit there, eyeing the vaguely feminine graphic design, promising quick results in big bold letters.
Ten minutes or less.Â
You nibble your thumb and reach for the box before thinking better and stopping short. Â
Do you really want to know? And what are the consequences if you decide you donât?Â
Maybe nothing.Â
Maybe big ones. Big round baby-belly-shaped ones.Â
You abuse your lower lip between your teeth and glance reflexively at your watch, which you discover is not there, but youâre too pressed to notice as you twist around to find the clock on the wall â half past one, and still no sign of Joyce.Â
You turn back to the promise on the box burning itself into your retinas â ten minutes or less â and count the months again.Â
The math doesnât change. Youâre definitely late, which means you are definitelyâÂ
Shut up! Donât say it, donât jinx it!Â
Then again maybe notâŠitâs a fifty-fifty chance, either you are or you arenât. The answer lies in front of you, readily available in ten minutes or less.Â
âŠSo, whatâs ten minutes?Â
Joyce is still on a smoke break, so there is no one to cover for you, but what can possibly happen to an unmanned store in ten minutes? In Hawkins? On a Thursday?
Melvaldâs is always slow â what are the odds youâre going to be hit with the first rush in the history of itâs time as a brick and mortar staple if you decide to pop back into the bathroom for a moment?Â
Ten minutes more like.
You tell yourself it doesnât mean anything as you snatch the box off the shelf and wobble back out of the aisle on stiff legs.Â
Back to the employeeâs restroom to take a pregnancy test â the reality of that information is profoundly disturbing.Â
Youâve never taken a test before â never had to â but you distinctly remember instances back in High school where youâd been enlisted to stand guard outside of a bathroom stall while Carol Perkins and Tina Burton took âjust in caseâ tests.Â
You just want to sate a curiosity â just in case. Whatâs the harm in taking a test?Â
Itâs ten measly minutes.Â
When Joyce finally comes back in, itâs been fourty-five minutes since she originally left, and youâre a vibrating ball of nervous energy. You sit, bouncing your knee erratically, fidgeting with the ring with the dark stone sitting snug on your finger â a promise, given, returned, and given again, pulling your t-shirt up and asking for five more minutes⊠just five more minutes â and she greets you with a tight-lipped smile.
You hardly wait for her to get through the door before youâre rounding the counter.
âI donât feel well,â You say in a garbled rush, snatching your bag from where youâve had it strategically stashed at your feet since you slunk back out from the restroom a second time, âDâyou think itâll be okay if I head out?â
She blinks back at you, and for a very brief moment, youâre terrified that for the first time since you started here, someone is finally going to give a shit about you leaving.
Thank God Melvaldâs is always slow.Â
âOh. Sure, Honey. Thatâsââ Joyce begins, brows tweaked together in confusion as you rush past her.
Youâre out the door and headed up the street before she can finish asking if youâre alright.Â
You donât think you could stand to answer that question right now, and she couldnât help you even if you did.Â
You need a quiet place to sit and think. You need to be swaddled in a blanket of cloying familiarity while you watch the rest of your world come crumbling down. You need⊠Eddie? Â
No, a voice answers, startling you almost as much as what youâd learned in those previous ten minutes. You donât need Eddie. Not right now, at least.
Right now, what you need is for it to be like it used to be. You need an adult, you need to go home, but you don't live there anymore, and your parents havenât lived in Hawkins since the Summer of 1985. You can't even call them, because if you do, theyâre just going to come down here and try to take you away again, like they did when you got out of the hospital.
You canât have a repeat of that mess. You canât leave Eddie, but you also canât face him just yet. You need to be sure before you can go home, and before that, you need to get as far away from Melvaldâs as you possibly can.
You briefly consider calling Wayne, just to try and get the closest thing you can to fatherly advice, but what is he going to do for you? What is anyone supposed to do for you right now besides tell you that you ought to have known better?Â
You donât need to be told what you already know. You need a second opinion, and you cannot get that sitting at home, socked in to four hundred square feet of domestic bliss with the ghost that haunts those walls.
But there is nowhere else you can go ⊠not unless you want to make that long hike up Cornwallis and bang on the Hendersonâs door like itâs the good old days and youâre there to babysit.Â
Youâre not about to submit yourself to the abject humiliation of Dustin (or, God forbid, Claudia Henderson) finding out, because you canât just go closing yourself up in their hall bathroom for ten minutes (or less) with no explanation. You'd have to tell them what was wrong, why you couldn't use your own bathroom, and you're not ready for that kind of drama.
You can just picture the look Dustin would give you, admonishing you with a terse utterance of your name and a heaping helping of as much paternal disdain as a fifteen year old boy can manage.Â
âWhy werenât you using protection?â He would demand, ââ thatâs the first thing they teach us in health class,â followed very quickly by a not so gentle reminder that âthey hand out condoms at school like candy!âÂ
As if you didnât know that. As if you (and everyone you knew) didnât used to come home with those shiny little packages lining the inside of your bookbag like legal contraband. For the duration of your tenure at Hawkins High, you lived in the surety that you could open any drawer in your bedroom and be sure to find a condom there.
Not that you needed one.Â
You were a virgin until you met Eddie, but none of that is any of Dustinâs business, and beyond the fact that youâre not in school anymore, youâre not going to go all the way up to his house just to take a pregnancy test.
You donât need to, the soiled plastic applicator youâd hidden way down at the bottom of the wastebasket back in Melvaldâs employee bathroom has already told you everything you need to know.
Suddenly, all you want to do is go home, crawl into bed and pull the covers over your head. You want to go back to the days of everyone telling you âyouâre just a kid,â and you want to revel in the frustration of it.
More than anything, you want to smack yourself in the face for ever daring to suggest you were âgrown upâ enough for anything.
Youâre just a kid. Eddie is just a kid. How could this have happened? Why on Earth didn't anybody stop you?
You just want to go home, but you canât go home. Not yet, so you walk. One foot in front of the other, aimlessly without really seeing, and the next thing you know, youâre sitting at the warped, termite infested picnic bench in the woods behind Hawkins High, and you have no memory of getting there.
You know you should be more concerned about that.
Your shift is technically over at three, and you really should try to get home sometime around then (just so Eddie doesn't start to worry) but time was fake before you slipped back into the eternal dark of November â83, and now you have no use for it at all, especially when you're so patently avoiding going home.
It seems like just yesterday you were sprinting out into the parking lot at Bennyâs, ready to throw caution and everything you ever thought was important to the wind to go and save the jerk whoâd so spectacularly broken your heart the previous summer â fifty-four Saturdays ago, your subconscious unhelpfully informs you. Â Â
Itâs a wonder youâd actually convinced yourself that anything of what followed that week could be the scariest thing youâd ever have to endure. Turns out, giant man eating bats and interdimensional wizards are nothing compared to realizing your period is two months late.Â
You trace your thumb across the faded carvings in the tabletop and linger over your inscribed initials x E.M. â you did that, in the summer between your Sophomore and Junior year, in the first weeks of your official attachment to Eddie.
It felt like such an important gesture back then, but you had no idea what important looked like in those days.
You think back to those stupid kids who pledged to stand together against the world without knowing what that really meant, or just how viciously people could hate, and your heart throbs.
After everything that happened, Munson Mania in Hawkins has never been worse.Â
The good people of Roane County had already done all the mental gymnastics to decide that Eddie killed Chrissy. It fit perfectly in their narrative about him, and it would be too much work to untangle the mess they made coming to that conclusion, no matter what the second coming of Jim Hopper said. Guilty or not, they whisper among themselves, point fingers, hurl insults, and shout accusations.Â
Freak. Murderer. Psycho killer â quâest-ce que câest? â Barbed wire candy-grams for the town pariah, hurled like molotov cocktails, even in the light of the truth. The murky, inconclusive truth.
You had to learn how to adapt very quickly to the ramped-up prejudices of all these nice God-fearing people, because for a while there, Eddie couldnât even walk down the street without fear of being reminded that everyone in this town thinks heâd be better off dead. The bolder of the good people of Hawkins have no shame about telling him so, either.Â
Now, Eddie stays mostly out of sight of all your neighbors and you take care of everything that has to be done.
You go out, do all the shopping, work to pay the bills, keep your life support afloat and you bend yourself painfully out of shape to be his shield. You provide the bread and butter and all the love he could ever possibly need. You smother him in it, keep him well fed and swaddled in affection so that he never has to feel the cold touch of its absence.Â
You're everything to him. Friend, lover, caretaker â you wish there was room for just a little bit of help in that, but Eddie doesn't have friends anymore.
He just has you.
Anyway, how are you supposed to explain to Adam and Jeff and Gareth that the Eddie lurking in the shadows of your basement apartment isnât the Eddie they remember? What would they say if they knew he canât make his fingers work well enough to play the guitar anymore, or that he can barely even look at his D&D books without breaking into a cold sweat?Â
You know what theyâd say â theyâd want to know why. Theyâd want to know what the hell happened, because when theyâd tried to visit Eddie in the hospital, they got one look at him before making a bullshit excuse about needing to leave, and he didnât want to see them again after that.Â
So now, when they call (and they so seldom call, these days) you tell them he's fine, and you hold them at bay, because it's your job to protect Eddie, no matter what. If that includes keeping all his friends in the dark, then so be it. Â
If you canât get around to explaining what happened to Eddie, and what is so terribly wrong with him, you canât even imagine trying to break the news that youâre pregnant.
Christ, how are you supposed to tell people when you can barely conceptualize it yourself?
How are you supposed to tell Eddie?
He can barely hear that youâre going to be working late or picking up a shift, because it means heâs going to have to stretch his imagination to find ways to occupy his time without you. It means a change in his routine, and routine is all he has besides bad habits and nightmares. Â
And now youâre just supposed to add a whole other person to that? One who canât take care of themself or tell you whatâs wrong or when they need something or when theyâre on the brink of death or⊠or or orâŠ?Â
Your stomach is in knots again, because having a baby is suddenly starting to sound just like having a whole other Eddie to take care of, and you can hardly manage one of him.Â
You have no idea how he is going to react to hearing that your tight little twosome is about to expand.
Eddie doesnât have a lot of things that are strictly his, and when it comes to those things he is not exactly the sharing type.Â
Heâll go blue in the face arguing he doesnât get jealous, then turn around and have a conniption when you stay on the shore of Lovers Lake with Dustin and send him out in the boat with the others⊠dot dot dot - dash dash dash - dot dot dotâŠ
You bite back the cloying scent of mildew suddenly filling your sinuses and dig shallow crescent moons into your palms until you feel your feet touch back down on Earth. Then, all the hideous questions youâve been successfully holding at bay all afternoon come flooding in like the tide.Â
What if Eddie doesnât want this? What if this is one of those cataclysmic deal breakers and you lose him forever⊠again?Â
And why does this all suddenly feel like your fault?Â
In an instant, youâre once more brimming with that irrational anger, because if this is anyoneâs fault, itâs his. Heâs the one who always wants five more minutes, who pulls you back into bed and paws at your clothes and does all the little things he knows you canât resist and takes and takes and takes.Â
Heâs the one who did all the work â what did Carol and Tina used to call it? The good olâ pump and dump?Â
How many mornings have ended with Eddie taking those five minutes more, then rolling over to go back to sleep while you run around trying to clean up the evidence and pull yourself back into shape?
Heâs the master behind this little ritual, youâre just the vessel â and what is the vessel for if not to carry the seed? Â
You need to walk, you need to think. You need to talk to Eddie.
You take the long way home, going past the haunts of your youth and all the places you donât go anymore. All the places youâll never go again â all the places that donât exist like your childhood home, the Starcourt Mall, Bennyâs Diner, and the cozy little double wide on the far end of town, and you think about how Hawkins is a ghost town that doesnât know its dead.Â
You walk, and you think about Eddie, like you always do.
You think about how bad those first few months were, about his nightmares and how he could barely stand to shut his eyes, let alone sleep because of the monsters waiting for him beyond the hypnotic pull of his circadian rhythms. You think about how in the beginning, sometimes he didnât even have to close his eyes to become trapped down there in the dark again.Â
You think about how hard youâve worked to get him to where he is now, all the blood, sweat, and tears it has taken to curb the itch for all the bad habits that got infinitely worse in his attempt to soothe all the things that hurt. Everything you had to do to center your world around his needs, his worries, his recovery, to make him feel safe. Itâs taken a long time, with a lot of set backs, and a lot of bad days, but you tell yourself that youâre happy to have them at all.Â
Recovery is a road, not a destination, or at least thatâs what Eddieâs physical therapists liked to say before he quit on them â if all you have to worry about is making sure the rent is paid and the pantry is stocked and the door is barred against the monsters out there, youâre fine with that.Â
Nevermind your nightmares and all the little things you have to do to cope.
Youâre only the one who had to sit there and lie to Eddie that everything was going to be okay while his lips turned blue and his eyes went dark. Youâre the one who had to stand at a basin in the hospital and try to scrub his blood out of your clothes, your skin, your hair and lock your knees to stay upright while you did everything you could to try and keep your shit together.
Youâre the one who had to sit at his bedside and tune yourself in to the new normal of monitored heartbeats and machines forcing compressed air into collapsed lungs, feeling so incredibly helpless to do anything but wonder how you ever told such a hideous lie.Â
Everything is gonna be okay⊠you wish you could make yourself believe that.Â
On your really bad days, that helpless feeling comes roaring back so powerfully you feel like youâre going to collapse in on yourself like a dying star. It's those days that you canât pull yourself away from Eddie no matter what, where you need those five minutes just as badly as he does, because youâre the one who sat there and told him he was going to be okay and then watched him die. Â
And then, when the feeling passes, you pull yourself up, straighten yourself out, and you go to work, because the only thing that matters is Eddie. Â
Heâs the only thing you can count on when the world gets too loud, the memories of that other place get too close, and you begin to feel yourself slipping away. Heâs the only thing keeping you grounded, even if he doesnât know it, and youâre suddenly so worried that introducing a third element to your duet will blur those lines again.Â
You think about all your progress, how on your best days it almost feels like things are back to good, and you think about how all of that hard work is about to become extremely fucking secondary to the little parasite nestled in your womb â not a baby so much as a tapeworm.
The notion causes your insides to stir with anxiety.
How could you have been so careless?
And why would you or anyone expect anything else to happen when youâre just a couple of stupid kids playing house and sharing a studio apartment, which is getting smaller by the moment.Â
Kids having kids.Â
You should have known better.Â
Because time isnât real, the sun is starting to set by the time you finally make your way home, well past three o'clock.
Past Melvaldâs and ten minutes down the street to the concrete stone steps and into the recessed well containing the red door, marked with a tarnished silver six. You can still see the faintest outline of the other two sixes someone recently graffitied on either side of the metal placard â just in case anyone happened to forget who lives here â and suddenly you think you can hear the distant tones of Iron Maiden playing somewhere beyond. Â
Let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human numberâŠÂ
It is not the first time youâve had the misfortune of living in Apartment 666, and as you fumble with your keys and glare at the lingering shadow of permanent marker on paint, you are certain it wonât be the last.Â
Funny how you never used to hate Hawkins before.Â
Now, youâre painted red with the feeling as you plunge the key into the lock and twist it hard enough that someday youâre certain the blade is going to snap off (and then what are you going to do?) Today, however, is not that day.Â
As you turn the key you hear the rotor shift over with a satisfying THUNK. You twist the handle, push the door, and nothing happens.Â
You groan to stop yourself from screaming, because despite what you think, the door is not out to get you.Â
Youâre just having a very bad day.Â
The humidity the humidity signaling the inevitable heatwaves of the Indiana summer causes your front door to swell and stick, and you have to give it a firm kick to force it open. You know this, despite how you may have forgotten under the weight of everything else currently on your mind.Â
And yet, today, when the door sticks, it feels personal.Â
You grit your teeth and shut your eyes against it as you put your foot in the door and give it one more solid push. It swings inward, taking you with it and sending you staggering across the threshold and into the apartment.Â
The door swings shut behind you with a loud THUMP, and all goes quiet inside your head.Â
Just like that, youâre home.Â
A singular room made up of kitchen, dining, living, and bed area, all squeezed into four hundred square feet of what the landlord had originally referred to as âcozy livingâ, when it was just you and your broken heart.
Now, itâs a chaotic mish-mash of all your things and what you could salvage of Eddieâs before someone went and burned what was left of the Munson residence to a smoking husk.Â
When you get in, he is sitting on the unmade bed wearing the same sweat-stained t-shirt and pair of ratty pants heâs been in for the last three days. His hair is greasy and hanging limply around his face, which is lined in the shadow of a patchy stubble. You try to think back to the last time you remember him showering, shaving, brushing his teeth, doing anything but laying in bed watching television.
You arenât shocked when the memory fails to arrive.Â
Donât be unkind, that gentle voice comes again. You stamp it out before it can finish. Itâs hard to be kind when all you have to cling to is the way things used to be.Â
Eddie used to have hobbies and interests and friends. Now, he only watches television and reads the TV guide until heâs got it memorized and waits for you to get home so he can use you to chase his demons away.
Eddieâs depressed and youâre pregnant â itâs not much to go on, competition-wise, but the poison of your mood is inclined to suggest that you got the short end of the stick on that one, considering itâs his depression that got you that way. Â
Nothing gives such an instant boost of dopamine like an orgasm, after all.Â
The apartment is a mess. There are dirty clothes and dishes everywhere, mixed in with piles of the clean you have yet to put away. Socks and underwear hang draped off the backs of the two rickety dining chairs from where youâd washed them in the sink and lay them to dry six days ago. The bedsheets are pushed down and hanging off the mattress, exposing half a dozen Hostess wrappers sitting on the rumpled, stained top sheet.Â
And there sits Eddie in the middle of it all with a hand down his pants and a lit cigarette pinched between his lips.Â
Your blood flash freezes and boils.Â
Heâs supposed to be quitting. That same gentle â nagging â voice whines from the back of your mind. And he promised he wouldnât smoke inside.Â
You have to clench your teeth until your ears start ringing to shut that little voice up.Â
âHey!â Eddie yelps the moment you appear, leaping up and waving his arms around to try and disperse the smoke as he kicks the evidence of his afternoon indulgence off of the mattress and steps down with a hard thump â heâs limping ever so slightly as he crosses the room to you, âHi! Shit⊠um⊠this isnât what it looks like,â
Which is a bald faced lie â it is exactly what it looks like, and suddenly you canât stop the mental tally of all the things you asked him to do today, and all the things that remain undone.Â
It makes your skin itch, then as he gets closer, you see the holes in his socks â holes in his neck and ribs where heâd nearly been eaten alive â and you remember too late that youâd promised to pick him up a new pack of crew socks on your way home from work. You forgot.Â
Part of you supposes that makes you even, and you stuff it down with everything else youâre not presently available to feel.Â
You decide you donât care.Â
You donât care that heâs smoking again even though heâs still not fully recovered from his collapsed lung, or that he gave up on physical therapy because it was too hard, or that he never does anything he says heâs going to and still always expects you to give him five more minutes.
And he probably still expects you to let him fuck you later on, even after all that.Â
You donât care you donât care you donât care.Â
And after a moment, youâre surprised to find that you really donât, (you do, you really fucking do) youâre just trying to see where the cigarette went when he less-than-subtly flicked it away.
The last thing you need to end your shitty day is to have the apartment burn down. Â
Eddie mistakes your silence for anger, as he always does, and you watch him begin to fidget as he waits for you to speak.Â
You donât, because you donât have anything to say, but also because heâs not wrong. You are angry.
Youâre standing there, clenching your teeth and fists and doing everything in your power to swallow the urge to yell at him, or to nit pick all the things that are out of place in your apartment â no, not just yours anymore. He lives here, too â this is his home now.
âWhereâve you been?â Eddie asks when the tense silence becomes too much. âI was starting to get worried,âÂ
He reaches for you and you surprise yourself by letting him pull you into a tight hug that feels a tad too much like itâs meant to try and distract you from everything he evidently decided was less important than smoking cigarettes, eating Twinkies, and playing with himself.Â
Youâre mad as hell, and if you were paying any attention you would realize that the emotion is getting stronger by the moment, but you lean into him and snake your arms around Eddieâs midsection. You bury your face in his shirt and sigh against him as you chase the comfort of his embrace, waiting for the world to fall away and the cocoon of his safety to envelope you.Â
Once upon a time, all you needed was a good Eddie hug to chase your worries away. Now, under his touch, all you can think is how he reeks of nicotine and smoke and days old deodorant and everything else that comes with unwashed boy.
But you have to remind yourself that you donât care, because he says he was getting worried.Â
âYou were?â you ask, and your voice sounds odd against your ears.Â
âYeah,â he shifts back and holds you to the spot, like he needs to get a good look at you to make sure youâre still you and that nothing has changed in the few hours itâs been since you left that morning â he worries so much these days. âI went to get you from work when you didnât come home,â He says. âBut you werenât there.âÂ
It sounds strangely accusatory, and you arenât exactly sure what to do with that as a solid lump begins to form in the back of your throat.Â
He rubs his hands up and down your arms in a soothing gesture, like heâs attempting to create friction in slow motion. Itâs something heâs always done that has been comforting in the past, but right now it is only making a sore spot where heâs rubbing the skin raw.Â
You look from his attempt at gentle, reverent contact to where he is carefully watching you, and feel your brows creep toward one another as that irrational anger begins to rise in the pit of your belly.
This is all his fault, and part of you seems to think he knows that, even if he doesnât know.Â
âOkay, I can see that youâre madâŠâ Eddie starts, doing his utmost to remain as diplomatic as possible so as not to set you off but also to accept no responsibility, â⊠are you mad?âÂ
You donât answer. You donât even look at him, instead you crane your neck trying to see around him to find that goddamn cigarette before it can catch and send everything up in smoke⊠literally.Â
You feel Eddieâs fingers flex on your biceps.
âDonât be mad. I was gonna get around to it, I swear, but then you didnât come home from work and⊠and I was worried! I didnât know where you were,â .Â
Anger subsides â if only briefly â and you get almost all the way around to feeling guilty about that until you clock the cigarette butt smoldering on the yellowing linoleum in front of the kitchen sink, and then Eddie finishes his sentence.Â
â...And I didnât know if you were gonna be home for dinner,âÂ
He flinches when your head snaps around and you finally level him with a poisonous look.Â
âSo you smoked half a pack of camels and ate a box of Twinkies?â you scoff.Â
You want to ask where he even got those, but then you remember. He went to Melvaldâs looking for you, and when he didnât find you there, he must have figured he deserved a treat for braving the big, scary world.Â
He gets a treat and you get to watch your world crumble â you could spit fire.Â
Eddieâs mouth falls open like heâs going to say something to defend himself, but then he just laughs. You can tell itâs out of nerves rather than humor, the way he always does when heâs caught red handed and doesnât know what to say to get himself out of trouble.Â
You would punch him if you werenât half certain he would break into a thousand pieces if you did. Even then youâre not so sure youâd feel worse about breaking your boyfriend or having to vacuum him up off the floor after.Â
âI was worried!â Eddie insists when you turn away and throw your keys into the dish with a thunderous crash.
âYou said that already.â You snap, storming across the tiny living space and stooping to pinch the half burned stock of cinders and throw it into the sink with a hiss.Â
You almost wish that he would have just given you that kicked puppy look, then you could have at least felt bad about biting his head off. But no, he had to go and get irreverent on you.Â
Hi honey, welcome home! I know I said I would clean up and do some house work and stop smoking so I donât get lung cancer by the time Iâm thirty and die, but you see, I canât be fucked to care about anything but myself! But remember, itâs not my fault, Iâm depressed!
Youâd spent so much time worrying about what you were going to say to him, how you were going to break the news, but as you step out of your shoes and drop your bag onto itâs designated doorside hook, you decide that if he canât be fucked than neither can you.
Those little pink lines say differently.Â
You suddenly feel ready to burst.Â
You cross to the bed, snatch up one of the pillows and press it to your face, then you scream as loud and long as you can. When youâre satisfied that your lungs are completely flattened, you lean forward and drop down onto the mattress with a muffled THUMP, and let the tide take you out.Â
Itâs just one more thing that douses you in a fresh layer of red. Because your first foray into real adulthood didnât begin with moving in together, or engaging in excessive amounts of sex just because you could, or even the unexpected addition to your lives â it began with the waterbed Eddie had insisted upon.Â
After he was discharged from the hospital, you learned very quickly that your mattress was too soft for his broken body, and the nice, âsensibly pricedâ one youâd gone out and tried to replace it with had ended up being too firm.Â
After all that talk and research and careful consideration, all the work you put into trying to make him comfortable in his new home, in this new situation, and the mattress was too goddamn firm.Â
Then came the waterbed, and Eddieâs first full night of sleep since leaving the hospital, and you didnât dream of sending the damned thing back, no matter how badly you hated it.Â
You still hate it as you lie there, coasting on the waves and stewing in all the ugly thoughts and feelings and emotions that you are meant to be safe from inside the vacuum chamber of your apartment.Â
For a time, all you hear is the muffled sloshing of the trussed up waterballoon and the gentle murmuring of informercials playing on the half muted television. Then, you hear the slow thump of footsteps approaching and feel the mattress dip and slosh beside you.Â
Your guts heave and for a brief, yet terrifying moment, the nausea returns.Â
â...Dâyou wanna talk about it?â Eddie asks tentatively from somewhere not nearly close enough.Â
âNo.â You say, knowing well enough that this is not a conversation you can keep putting off.Â
âOkayâŠâ he says, sucks his teeth, then tries again, âDâyou wanna hear about my day?â
âNo.â You insist.Â
âGreat. So today, I got up at a reasonable hour and totally didnât sleep in until two-thirty again. I did everything you asked me to and ate a healthy, full balanced meal and only watched, like, half an hour of tv â donât worry, just PBS, Babe, only the really boring, educational shit. But I swear on my life, this whole place was spotless ⊠and then out of no where â WHAM! Youâll never guess what happened.âÂ
He pauses for effect, and waits for you to play along, to rise to his prompting like you normally do, but heâs sorely mistaken if he thinks youâre in the mood for games. You wire your jaw shut and leave him waiting for you to answer. When you donât, Eddie repeats himself,
âYouâll never guess what happened.âÂ
Finally, he prods you sharply under the armpit with two fingers, and you flinch, curling into yourself with the kind of high yelp that can only come from being tickled.Â
âAsk me what happened.â he prompts when you uncover your face to glare at him.Â
You tell yourself you wonât, but youâve never been able to resist him, even when youâre mad. Especially when youâre mad, and especially with the way heâs leaning over and looking at you, all soft eyes and long lashes. Because in spite of the smoking and the lying and everything else, every part of you loves every part of him, even when you want to punch him in the face.Â
âWhat happened.â You mutter reluctantly, not a question so much as a submission â Eddie smiles.Â
Itâs a half hearted thing that doesnât reach his eyes, but you know what itâs meant to convey â Good Girl. Your heart skips a beat and you kick yourself for still being so stupid for him, even after all this time. Youâre supposed to be mad at him.Â
He shrugs.Â
âKiller Klowns,â He says, and you roll your eyes.
â...you gotta be kidding.â
You turn away to bury your face back in the pillow, and Eddie keeps on talking and talking and talking, because thatâs all he does anymore â try to talk himself out of trouble. Funny, the way he never seems to remember how that never works for him.Â
âBaby? Baby â hand to GodâŠâ he says, pausing again. You just lie there and wait for him to finish, â...They were from Outer Space.â
And when his joking fails to garner any sort of joy, the sentiment goes out of him in an almost tangible wave. For a moment, thereâs nothing but measured silence as the refrigerator kicks on and vibrates gently against his guitar, hidden from sight and collecting dust.Â
In the interval of time between your release from the hospital and Eddieâs homecoming, you went looking for what could be saved in the wreckage of the Munson trailer. Thankfully, you knew where to look for what was most precious, like the family photos and heirlooms. You rescued what you could and replaced what you couldnât, but there are some things that are too precious to ever replace.
Things like Eddieâs guitar.
When the world came tumbling down in those last few moments of whatever the hell happened at the end there, Sweetheart had taken brutal damage, and that was before someone burned the place down. She was barely clinging to life when you finally unearthed her from the rubble â all but one of her strings had snapped, the heat of the fire had caused her resin to bubble and warp, and without its protective layer, someone had been able to stomp her body nearly to oblivion.Â
The violence of it broke your heart, and youâre not ashamed to admit youâd kneeled over her carcass and wept when you found her.
It made you physically sick to have to return her to Eddie in such a state, but there was only so much you could do without taking time and money you couldnât spare to get her out to the Guitar Center in Indianapolis.Â
Sheâd once been his prized possession, the focal point of his bedroom put on proud display, the only other woman in his life, now, sheâs just some forgotten thing tucked into the space between the refrigerator and the wall, hidden from sight and collecting dust.Â
Somehow thatâs worse than any of it.Â
Eddie told you it was because the apartment was so small and she fit so perfectly in that alcove, but you know itâs because after all that happened, he canât stand to look at her.Â
The refrigerator vibrates against her twisted body, and slowly, the room begins to fill with the muted buzz of a low E.
âIâm sorry, Sweetheart.â Eddie sighs, and it takes you a moment to realize heâs talking to you.
You feel the mattress dip as his hand comes down to rest at the side of your hip, caging you in beneath him, âIâm just trying to make you feel better⊠honest.âÂ
You heave a weighted sigh and roll over onto your back, throwing your arms over your eyes and baring down until you see spots and colors and stars. He settles down over you, and when you feel his weight come down to rest on your belly, your heart briefly palpitates.Â
You have to stifle the urge to tell him to be careful, because he doesnât know. How could he know? You havenât told him.Â
âIâm sorry,â He says again, and you canât help yourself.Â
âYouâre always sorry when you get caught, but you always do it again.â You bite.Â
You feel the corner of his mouth twitch against you and for a long time you both just lie there, wondering how the hell you got here.Â
You like to think that under normal circumstances you might not stick around for so much bullshit, but unfortunately for you, your life never got back to normal after you put it on hold to go looking for the jerk last spring, and now youâre committed to him, warts and all.Â
And the pair of you have always existed outside the bounds of ânormal circumstancesâ anyway.Â
It occurs to you now that this is exactly why youâd been so leery about coming straight home. Youâd needed time to prepare before facing Eddie, to be certain before having to explain yourself, because itâs your job to protect him, but how are you supposed to protect him from himself, especially when heâs hell bent on following this path of self destruction to the end of the line?
But youâre still not certain, and youâre starting to think you really need to take another testâŠ
âWhereâd you go earlier?â Eddie mumbles dejectedly - you feel his voice rumble in the pit of your stomach and it sends the faintest stirrings of something you absolutely do not want to be feeling down through your central cortex â arousal.Â
âNowhere.â You say, distantly feeling your lips move and the vibration of your voice, but not hearing yourself speak.Â
Before you realize what youâre doing, you shift your lower body, ever so subtly trying to move your hips up in search of a little friction.
Stop that, you silly bitch. You are not going to give him a pity fuck just because you feel bad about making him feel bad.Â
You sigh.Â
âI just needed to walk a little⊠stretch my legs⊠guess I lost track of time,â and then, âSorry,âÂ
Eddie says something, and you are vaguely aware of responding â him asking if everything is okay and you dismissing the question, building up another layer of that lie and reassuring him that everything is fineâŠ
At least, you think thatâs what you said, you canât be certain because his voice is still buzzing down through your belly and stirring that raunchy little pot, and youâre still fighting tooth and nail to stop your hips from squirming. Â
You know if you donât do something, youâre absolutely going to end up giving him a pity fuck, and thatâs exactly how you ended up in the situation youâre in now. Because when Eddie calls, you come running, no matter what.Â
I should tell him.Â
You try to take another one of those deep, steadying breaths to banish the skittery tightness forming in your chest, and you choke on it.
Something begins to press in at the back of your eyes, welling up and crowding them in your sockets. Your vision blurs and before you realize what is about to happen, your lashes flood with hot, stinging tears.
You begin to cry.Â
Goddammit. It really has just been a very shitty day.Â
You uncover your eyes long enough to mask the motion of wiping away the wetness streaming across your cheeks by checking your watch, and you see that it is not there. A bright burst of panic sparks in your chest sending adrenaline shooting down to the tips of your fingers and toes before you remember how youâd removed it to wash your hands after being sick in the employee bathroom at Melvaldâs.Â
Before your life came grinding to a halt in ten minutes or less.
I should tell him.Â
You imagine â you hope â your watch is still sitting there on the edge of the sink. And then you remember that it doesnât matter if it is, because time stopped in November of 1983.Â
Time isnât real, itâs just another Thursday.Â
You heave another one of those measured breaths â this one a little wetter and shakier than the last â and drop your arms to come down gently over Eddieâs shoulders.Â
You sniffle and sigh, and he immediately twists over to look up at you.Â
You look down and meet wide brown eyes â sad eyes â duller than theyâve been in months, red rimmed and ringed in dark circles like bruises. Heâs so pale, his full lips are dry and cracked and raw from where you know heâs been biting at them.Â
Eddieâs brows come together to form a deep crease of worry and suddenly your face is bracketed in his hands, brushing at the wetness you canât manage to stem and apologizing endlessly for everything heâs ever done wrong.Â
He doesnât know what he did to hurt you, but heâs sorry for it. Sorry, sorry, always so incredibly sorry â how many times can someone say something before it loses all meaning?Â
Sorry doesnât mean shit coming from Eddie â yes it does, donât be unkind.
Heâs depressed, and youâre pregnant, and now youâre crying about it and heâs desperate to take the blame for it.Â
To his credit, Eddie hauls himself up to meet you and pulls you into his arms, crushing you against him as you go to pieces. You can feel the uncertainty radiating off of him.Â
He wants to know why youâre crying, so you should just get it over with and tell him, right? You canât make the words come out, and now that youâve started crying, you canât stop.Â
He deserves to know, but itâs your job to protect him, and so long as you keep this secret to yourself, heâs still safe from the harm it might cause. Everything is still okay, you just have to keep holding that door.  Â
It takes what feels like a very long time before you calm down, and even after you do, you just lay there facing each other, feeling Eddieâs eyes boring holes into your forehead.Â
You have to tell him.Â
âAre you mad?â Eddie asks before you can get the chance, reaching across to thumb away one last stray tear from the hollow beneath your eye â the lump in your throat threatens to swell again.
Tell him now.
You swallow hard and try not to choke on it. Â
âYes,â you say honestly, âBut not at you ⊠not really,âÂ
The corner of his mouth twitches again as he tries and fails to smile.
âWho do you need me to beat up?â Eddie asks in his best approximation of something he might have said once upon a time. It doesnât hit quite the way it used to, and despite the shy smile that quirks up at the corner of your lips, you feel a sharp stab of grief for the person you lost on the other side of the world.
It's not a fair thought to have. Heâs still here, part of him at least, and heâs fighting to get back to you with everything heâs got.Â
You know heâs trying, and it immediately floods you with guilt. About biting his head off, about lying, about going missing long enough to leave him wondering what the hell could have happened to you.Â
That was selfish of you, but youâre not going to apologize for it, because above everything else he said he was going to do, he promised to take better care of himself.
You suppose that makes you even.Â
The silence that follows is unbearably weighted, like a sopping wet blanket â like the air in the other place â and you have to make yourself look at him to make sure you havenât gone suddenly deaf, and to make sure heâs still there.
When you look, youâre not surprised to find that Eddie is looking too, like heâs had the same thought and itâs struck him with a bolt of blinding fear. You both do that a lot now, go checking to make sure the other is still there, even when youâre laying pressed against each other like this.Â
Heâs giving you that strange hard look youâve come to know very well. Itâs the same look he had on his face every time you caught him staring at you over the course of that long, terrible week last spring â the one he gives you when he knows something is wrong, but he is too afraid to ask on the off chance that heâs right about it. Itâs the way his face looks all the time, now, ever since he got out of the hospital. Â
Are we okay? He wants to ask, Do you still love me?
Because no matter how many times you tell him, it never seems to settle in. He always needs to hear it one more time.Â
He always needs five more minutes.Â
Just five minutes more more more more more â
Well, what about what you need? Youâre the one watching your life fall apart, youâre the one whoâs pregnant.
Then again, how do you know you havenât been hallucinating the whole thing? You do have to tell him, but you really ought to take another test, just to be really, really sure before you share your findings with the class. Â
A false positive isnât unheard of. Whatâs the harm in a second opinion? You wonât know until you know.
Eddie follows when you sit up, and quickly takes your hands back from where youâve begun scrubbing them furiously against your face, trying to rid yourself of the cloying miasma of salt drying tacky on your skin.Â
âDonât do that,â he tells you, and you donât even bother asking him why.Â
He does it because you would have done it to him.Â
Thatâs how he operates now, relying heavily on what he knows you would do moment to moment, because heâs still that lost in the reeds. Itâs the only way he knows how to take care of himself anymore: what would you do for him in any given situation?
The next thing you know, youâve got your arms around his neck, squeezing him as tight as you dare, as tight as you think he needs to be held just to remember that heâs still here, and you wish like hell he would just pick up what you were putting down already. You wish he would know exactly what is going on with you without even asking, like he used to.
But you know he canât, his mind is too clouded for the kind of clairvoyance lovers share anymore.
Eddieâs head thumps forward to rest atop your shoulder and strong arms â less strong than they used to be â squeeze you tight enough around the midsection to cause something in your back to pop. You donât care. Itâs grounding and itâs what youâve needed all afternoon.Â
You go chasing the feeling as you breathe in another two-count and exhale on three, twisting your head to bury your nose into the crook of his neck.
He stinks like days old sweat and your perfume.Â
âIâm sorry I was mean,â you say into the filthy curtain of his hair, and youâre suddenly reminded of how youâd stood together like that in the dark of his bedroom a lifetime ago, counting down the moments you had to spare before you slipped back into the other place for the last time.
âSâokay,â Eddie slurs, and you feel the guilt of it throb painfully in your chest as you nuzzle against him, trying to slip beneath the surface and occupy the space beneath his skin.Â
Itâs the only way heâll ever feel close enough without being inside of you â the gentle rumbling of your prior arousal begins to stir again, and you have to remind yourself that youâre not doing that.
âI love you,âÂ
He makes a soft sound and you feel his fingers flex against you, digging needily into your skin and pulling you up into his lap.
âSay that again,â he says, holding you against him. Â
The fibers of his well worn t-shirt make the beginnings of a friction burn against your cheek as you shift to compensate for this new position â itâs hard to stay tucked against him now that youâre sitting above him, harder still not to sit right down and press the seam of your pussy against the bulge you can feel forming in his sweatpants.Â
For the sake of your own self preservation â why? Itâs not like he can get you more pregnant than you already are â you sit back on his thighs and bring your hands up to grace the curve of his throat. Eddie tilts his head back to follow and gaze up at you through his lashes.Â
âSay it again,â he says, and days old stubble scratches the ridge of your knuckles as you stroke the side of his face.
âI love you,â you say thickly, for all the times you said it and he didnât believe you, and all the times he needed to hear it and you kept it to yourself.
You listen as Eddie breathes out a shaky, charcoally sigh. His eyes slide shut and he lets his head drop forward to thump against your sternum. For half a blessed second, everything feels exactly like it should. Not like it used to, but as right as it possibly can be after everything thatâs happened.Â
Itâs just you and Eddie.Â
You and Eddie and the sea monkey growing inside of you.
Just like that, your brief moment of perfect peace begins to crack. You curl your arms around his neck in defiance of it and squeeze him a little tighter and do everything you can to hold it in place.Â
Heâll be okay if you just hold him tight enough. Everything will be okay â nothing bad can happen when youâre together.Â
Except for all the bad that happened at Rickâs Place and Loverâs Lake and on the other side of the world and⊠shut up shut up shUT UP!
Everything is going to be fine. Â
Youâll tell Eddie your secret, and heâll tell you that everything will be alright. Youâll figure it out, like you always do, and youâll be happy to have whatever you end up with.  Â
You press your lips into the crown of his head, and he makes a soft sound beneath you.Â
You tell yourself you ought t0 do it now. Donât make a big deal out of it, but tell him and get it over with all the same so you donât have to worry about it anymore.Â
Eddie will help you â you donât know how, but he will. Heâs the only one who can help you, so just tell him.Â
âAre you hungry?â You ask.
Coward.
He shakes his head and breathes a deeply melancholic sigh into your collar. Of course he isnât, heâs full of sugar and coffee and nicotine, heâs not going to be hungry until next week.Â
Still, you know heâs going to crash hard and be sick in the morning if you donât make him eat something besides processed pound cake. Heâs not hungry, but heâll eat if youâre eating â the thought of food makes your insides clench and heave.Â
âAre you?â He asks, shifting back so he can look at you again â in another life you watch him retreat to the stove at Rick Liptonâs place.Â
âI made dinner,â that Eddie says, and youâre thrust into a memory of sitting with your heads bowed together over a flaking linoleum table, a sticky pot of Spaghetti-oâs and a hundred and one unsaid things between you â your stomach roils with nausea.Â
âNo, Iâm good.â you tell this Eddie, your Eddie.Â
That Eddie was your Eddie too, and sometimes you miss him so badly you can hardly breathe.Â
You shift further back on his knees so you can look at him, really look at him, and tell him â you have to tell him â and you take his hands in yours.Â
âEddie, listen â thereâs something we need to talk aboutâŠâ You start, and feel him tense beneath you.Â
You know what heâs thinking, more bad news. Heâs about to lose something else, and you donât have the heart to quell those fears just yet. If you get stuck trying to make it all better before it even begins, youâll never get the words out.
You have to tell him.Â
Deep breath in â the words sit on your tongue like burning coals, and yet you continue to fail to spit them out â just say it.
Two measly little words and it will be over.Â
Iâm pregnant. Â
Say it, say it now ⊠for the love of God, say anything. Â
Itâs only when you turn Eddieâs hands up to see his palms that you are saved from your sudden onset muteness as a spot of bright blood drying tacky in the creases of his hand makes itself known.
âOh, my God!â You gasp, wondering how in the hell you didnât see that before, âWhat happened?â Â
âNothing.â He mumbles, jerking his arm back to try and hide the wounded extremity. âItâs just a splinter.âÂ
You can feel your face pulling into a frown, even if you arenât conscious of intentionally emoting, and you reach after him.Â
âLet me see,â you say â Eddie says, because youâre out in the woods with two broken fingers that need setting and a black eye courtesy of Jason Carver, âBaby, let me seeâŠâÂ
To his credit, Eddie doesnât put up as much of a fight as you did back then, though only because you think after all this time he doesnât have much fight left, and gives you his hand when you reach for it back in the here and now.Â
Fingers in his, you turn his palm up again to scrutinize his shoddy work and feel your heart stutter. Â
Heâs dug a needlessly ugly crater into the calloused meat between his forefinger and thumb. Sticky, semi-coagulated blood is still oozing up in a ring around the faint shadow marring his flesh, and for half a second youâre afraid heâd gone and done something stupid like try to extract the foreign agent with a pair of scissors.Â
When you look, youâre semi-relieved to see that it is only a pair of worn needle nose pliers balancing precariously on the bedside table. Still, you bite the pulpy mass youâve spent the day chewing into the inside of your cheek until you taste blood to stop yourself from saying anything about it.
Eddie has always been such a boy, blundering through life and bashing his skull against problems because someone once told him to âuse his headâ. He always makes everything harder than it needs to be, and then wonders why he doesnât feel any better by the end of it.
âI couldnât find the tweezers,â he explains sheepishly.
You look up at him and gaze into those big sweet doe eyes â pretty eyes. Sad eyes.Â
âTheyâre in the drawer ââ You remind him, taking gentle hold of his face in one hand and squeezing, ââwhere they belong,â and then you push up to stand over him, âIâll get them.â
You turn for the bathroom and donât let go of his hand until the pull of distance demands it â his fingers slip from your grasp, and you blink back the beating of heavy wings and gnashing teeth, wrenching you out of his touch and into the dark of your mindâs eye.   Â
Across the room and into the little bathroom, you shut the door behind you.Â
You click the lock.Â
You donât know why you do that, except maybe because youâve been doing it all day, and youâre desperate for a moment to yourself in this four hundred square foot box of self pity. You tell yourself you only need a moment, but suddenly you canât imagine that naĂŻve girl who had been so ready to never have to bother with something like personal space and boundaries again.
What a foolish little thing she was.  Â
Young love doesnât have the foresight for things like the shock of falling into the toilet at three oâclock in the morning because Eddieâs never lived with someone who doesnât take a piss standing up and youâve never had to navigate sharing a bathroom with someone who does.Â
The learning curb has been steep.Â
You drop the toilet seat with a loud clacking thump and you upend the grocery bag of prenatal contraband youâd smuggled out of Melvaldâs.Â
Part of you hopes Eddie didnât see you grab your bag off the hook, but you suppose if he did, youâll have to explain that behavior later, though at that point, you imagine heâll have a lot more on his mind than wondering why you need to bring your purse with you to the bathroom.Â
You drop your jeans, pee on the stick, and gnaw your fingers to the bone as you witness a little more of your life flash before your eyes with every passing second until you count out ten minutes ⊠or less, as the packaging so boldly promised.
And when you receive your second opinion, you decide you could stand to get a third, so you lean over the bathroom sink, guzzle as much tap water as you can stomach and you do it all over again.
Colors and shapes and stars explode across your vision in a kaleidoscopic dance as you dig the heels of your palms into the jelly of your eye sockets and you wait ⊠wait⊠wait to see what will happen next.Â
There you sit, wringing your hands, bouncing your knees, and you wait ten minutes and ten minutes more until you get your results in thin pink lines and bright blue tabs and little green plus signs.
Positive results, which meansâŠÂ
âShit.â You hiss â the plastic casing creaks and begins to tremble in your hands, âFuck!â
A sharp rap on the door sends you leaping damn near out of your skin and the test goes clattering to the floor.Â
The action is followed by a cautious utterance of your name, muffled by layers of wood vinyl and hollow core.Â
Your heart lurchesâ along the bottom of the bathroom door, you can see the subtle shadow of idling movement. You forgot about Eddie, and you wonder with a start just how long he has been standing there, waiting for you.Â
For ten minutes or less, you imagine. You have to swallow the urge to tell him to go away.
âAre you okay?â He asks, and you suddenly feel ready to burst into tears again â goddamn hormones.
You glance down at the strip of plastic casing and cardboard bullshit, at the two pink lines standing boldly against the soiled backdrop and grinning wickedly at you for all the smart decisions you didnât make over the course of the last fourteen months of domestic bliss.
The answer rockets to the front of your mind.
No. Youâre not okay. Youâre pregnant.
You swallow hard to try and banish the cobwebs blooming in your throat, and when they thicken, you swallow again.Â
Eddie is speaking before you can decide how to answer him.Â
â⊠are you feeling sick again?âÂ
You just manage catch to catch the burst of bitter laughter before it can come bleating out of you, and you shake your head for no one in particular.
âYeah â I mean no.â You say unevenly, âIâm okay, Iâm justââ Pregnant. ââfeeling a little bit off.âÂ
You know between the vagueness of the answer and the discovery of a locked door between you, Eddieâs mind is bound to be spinning out with worry.Â
He worries so much about everything these days â just wait until he finds out about the baby, thatâll really give him something to worry about.Â
You listen to him shifting his weight from one socked foot to the other on the carpet, to the soft thump that follows and has you picturing him resting his forehead on the door jamb.Â
You brace your hands on your knees and push up to stare at your reflection, eyes heavy and ringed with exhaustion, about to get so much worse when youâve got a tiny helpless creature screaming its lungs out at you in the inability to communicate.
You hear the tentative rasping of your name eke out from behind the door, and watch the handle jiggle in the mirror.Â
All you want is to go to bed, sleep this weirdness off, and wake up tomorrow to find that everything has gone back to normal.Â
Not the normal of this morningâs blissful ignorance, but the normal of days past. Of school days and homework and gossip and when the only thing you had to worry about not getting caught sneaking out of class just to steal five minutes behind the bleachers with Eddie.
The salad days.
You just want things the way they were â Eddie the way he used to be and you the way you used to be, sitting tucked away together in his bedroom at the old place, before anything went wrong and it was just you and your dreams for the future.Â
More than anything, though, you wish you could buck up the courage to tell Eddie youâre pregnant so you can drop this suffering in silence bullshit.Â
You carefully wrap everything back in that same plastic bag you never want to see again and stash it in the cabinet beneath the sink, tucked in behind all your forgotten bottles of shampoo and cleaning supplies, where no one will accidently find them.Â
Then, you push up on creaky legs and address the elephant in the other room. You donât unlock the door. Â
âIâm gonna shower,â you watch your reflection say, it is a hollow, robotic sound, and Eddie doesnât answer right away. You can hear him just outside the door.
Thinking. Worrying.Â
Pouting more like.Â
And you know heâs going to ask before he even says it.Â
ââŠDâyou want some company?â
Bingo.
Never has a sentence embodied a more desperate plea to be let in â he may as well have been scratching at the door and whining like a dog whoâs been locked out.Â
Let me in let me in let me in please let me in.Â
You clench your teeth and blink back another wave of those pervasive tears pressing at the backs of your eyes as a strange, misplaced resentment wells suddenly in you.
Itâs a startling feeling.
Not the same as the cheap, petty anger youâd felt before but a black and violent thing that does not belong to you. It has no business existing inside of you, and yet here it is, telling you that you canât stand it. You canât stand how much Eddie needs you all the time. You give him everything you have and he always needs more.Â
Just five more minutes, please just give me five more minutes. Donât leave me, just love me, let me in, let me in Please please please.
Itâs not his fault. You tell the violent feeling. Heâs depressed. He doesnât have hobbies anymoreâŠ
He doesnât have anything anymore â it bites back, he just has you.Â
You shake your head in melancholic defiance of these conflicting feelings.
He needs me. You insist.
Heâs using you up. It responds. Heâs smothering you.
And you hate the feeling for being right. All he does is take and take and take, and youâre nothing if not a fool for giving him everything he needs and then some. You love Eddie more than anything, more than everything, but if he doesnât stop taking, thereâs not going to be anything left for you⊠for thisâÂ
ââBaby?â Eddie calls faintly, startling you again.Â
You have to take a moment longer than is probably necessary to calm yourself enough to decide whether or not you can stomach his âcompanyâ right now.Â
âNo,â you sigh, âI just wanna wash the day off.â
You imagine the pang of fear lancing through his chest as an invisible box is ticked off: the second sign of trouble.
Locked door. His alarm bells are ringing. Canât get to you. Youâre trapped trapped trapped. Let me in let me in let me in let me â
There is the scratching of the chewed edge of his thumbnail digging into the painted wood, peeling it â probably causing another splinter â and you have to bite your tongue to keep from telling him to stop doing that, because youâre not going to get your security deposit back.Â
Who cares about security deposits or contraception or personal space, you both almost died, remember? Live a little!
You turn away from the stranger in the mirror and face the door, forcing yourself to sound chipper as you make empty promises about the future to the foreign shell of the person you have to remind yourself you love.Â
âIâll be out in a jiffy,â you call unevenly, ââŠjust let me rinse off, okay?âÂ
There is a long moment of disappointed silence before Eddie finally responds.Â
â...MmâkayâŠâÂ
Fading footsteps thrum a gentle beat as you step out of your abused and crinkled jeans. Oddly, you feel like youâve spent more time out of them today than in them, and that might almost be funny if it werenât for the circumstances.
There is a moment of peace as you continue undressing, then the rapid thump thump thump of returning steps. A sharp knock summons another one of those long-suffering sighs whooshing up from the deepest recesses of your body.
âWhat do you need, Eds?â You ask a little too harshly, pinching your eyes toward the bridge of your nose with your forefinger and thumb.Â
You tell yourself youâre not angry with him, youâre just tired and uncertain and scared of that uncertainty.Â
âTweezers.â
Oh. Right.Â
Theyâre in the drawer, neatly tucked away and exactly where they belong. Just where you said theyâd be.Â
You crack the door as far as you dare and donât look at your boyfriend when you take his palm in your hand, despite the holes you can feel him boring into the top of your head.Â
Donât shut me out â please â oh, God, please let me in! he begs you with only a few short breaths as you pluck the thick spur of plywood from his hand and douse it in rubbing alcohol for good measure.Â
Eddie hisses and bends to kiss you on the cheek. You let him do it, then shut the door in his face.Â
If he didnât know there was something wrong before, heâs bound to be crawling out of his skin with it now.Â
You donât care, and you feel terrible about it as you lean over the tub to pull the pin and turn the water on.Â
The shower head roars to life, and as it fills the room with noise and steam, you can barely hear yourself think â thank God.
You stand under the stream and let the water run hot on you until it goes cold, and even then you linger and accept the beating it gives you.Â
Eyes shut, senses dulled, body pinging with goosebumps, you feel your muscles begin to loosen and relax. The outside world goes swirling down the drain, and you finally let your hand creep up to touch your belly. You splay your fingers over the expanse of skin and hold it there, feeling for something, anything, some sign of the life lurking there among your guts. When you donât feel anything â why would you feel anything when the baby is not even a baby yet â you try your hand at rubbing the spot, back and forth, like youâve seen people do to their fake pregnant bellies in the movies.Â
The results are middling beneath pruning fingers and the shower head is pinging ice at you now, stabbing you in the scalp, so you decide with no small amount of disappointment that itâs time to get out.Â
Just as you expected, Eddie is waiting for you when you flick off the bathroom light and re-emerge into the bedroom/living room/kitchen combo.
Youâre almost surprised to find that the room has been more or less straightened. Itâs not clean, by any stretch of the word, but trash, clothes, and all manner of discarded knick-knacks have been removed from the floor and stashed in other strategic places. The bedsheets have been tidied in the best approximation Eddie can manage for making a bed, though you canât say it looks much different than it did before. He couldnât do it right before he had his guts ripped out, and time and practice has had no effect on that inefficiency.Â
Heâs sitting there on the bed, trying to look casual with his long legs stretched out, ankles crossed, arms crossed, fingers crossed, and you give him a weak smile as you enter, holding your towel and heading for the chest of drawers on your side of the bed. You stop short when you notice the clothes heâs laid out for you: an oversized Houston Oilers t-shirt youâd thrifted for him before he came to stay and a soft pair of shorts â how unbearably sweet.Â
âFeel better?â He asks hopefully, boyishly, as you step into the shorts.Â
You nod, and you canât even call it a lie, because getting the muck of the world out of your skin and hair has made enough of an impact to improve your headspace exponentially.
At least you donât feel like youâre about to start screaming anymore â Jefferson Starship is happy enough to do that for you, howling to the elusive Jane, still playing that same old game she never can win.Â
Eddieâs put on the mixtape you made him in the summer of â84, which youâre not certain heâs ever heard the end of â if only because he canât make it through Dancing Queen without saying something snide about ABBA and disco as a whole â but heâs trying to make it better.
You tell yourself that, in spite of everything else, you have to give him credit for that as you slip the t-shirt over your head and walk your towel back to the bathroom.Â
And if heâs trying, then youâre a fool for not trying too, so you do your best to put a happy look on your face when you reemerge and jerk your thumb over your shoulder.
âOkay, your turn.â
His mouth drops open, but you donât let him protest.Â
âGo on â git.â You say, affecting a thick southern drawl to try and lighten the mood.Â
Eddie just frowns at you.
âIf you wanted me to shower you shoulda let me join you,â He grouses.Â
You stick him to the spot with a pointed look.
âIf Iâd let you join me, we wouldnât be getting clean in there, and you know it.â You press, âI mean it, Eds. You smell like a garbage truck. Whenâs the last time you showered?âÂ
He snorts and does his best to make the jab to his ego look like feigned hurt feelings, but you can see the edges of his mask flickering. Not even near death had been enough to dampen that ego of his.Â
Itâs a bizarre thing to witness what is left of the Eddie from before fighting for real estate with what has grown into the Eddie here and now. If you could capture it in an image, youâd hang it on the wall and call it âthe duality of man,â, but that wouldnât help you to get Eddie into the shower any more than your attempt at gentle coaxing.Â
You have to resist the urge to offer some sort of trade off, because there are scant few things that motivate Eddie these days that donât end with you opening your legs for him. And you have to remind yourself, once more for the people in the back, thatâs exactly how you wound up in your silly little predicament.Â
Back when you were in high school and still strangers to one another, there had been a wildly circulated rumor that Eddie would trade weed for head ⊠funny how that has circled back to reflect you and your recent penchant for sexual bargaining chips â if you take a twenty minute shower, Iâll go down on you when you get out.
You donât wonder how your shitty old friends would react to learning about that development in your behavior, because you rarely ever think about Carol and Tina these days.Â
You do wonder how youâre going to get Eddie to stop giving you that sulky look while holding your ground. Â
He needs to shower (on his own), and you need a little more time to yourself.Â
You hate to press the issue, because it makes you feel too much like his mother â and you cannot even begin to unpack the Oedipal concept of that dynamic â but you absolutely cannot spend another moment pressed against his side and breathing shallowly under a cloying musk of days old body odor.Â
âIâm fine,â He insists, crossing his arms and still trying to pretend like he isnât bothered by your indictment of his personal hygiene.Â
âNo, youâre not.â You say, âYou have to take better care of yourself. I know you donât think itâs gonna make any difference, but I promise you it will. Youâll feel better.âÂ
Eddie offers you one of those half hearted smiles, and quirks his brow.
âYou always say that.âÂ
âYeah, so what? Iâm always right. Do it for me, okay?â
It takes him a minute more of contemplative pouting, but eventually he relents, because for as soft as you are for him, heâll do anything for you, even if it means bruising his ego a little.Â
He slaps his hands on the bed and pushes up in the fading glimmer of a gesture he might have made back in the old days â your heart throbs painfully in your chest as you watch him flicker in and out of frame â then makes a show of stretching his arms high over his head.Â
You watch as he comes to immediately regret the motion when his bad side hitches and he quickly remembers his limited range of movement.Â
Eddie pretends like it doesnât hurt as he makes his way across the room.
âOkay,â he says softly, pausing to kiss you on the cheek as he passes, âBut only âcause yer so damn purty,âÂ
The affectation of the southern drawl youâd used before sounds much better on Eddie, and you lean fondly in to the press of his lips, not even bothering to be annoyed when he takes a cheeky handful of your backside.Â
You feel your insides burn with what the touch suggests, and for half a mindless second, you tell yourself that maybe you could stand to follow him in there. Just to help him wash, of course, get the spots he canât reach⊠nothing elseâŠ
Then, your rationality comes snapping back into place when Eddie strikes you hard on the ass with an open palm.Â
You yelp in alarm more than pain and jump. Even after every time he has done that before, you never expect him to do it, and your face is burning as you turn to watch him go, disgustingly pleased with himself and snickering.
âWash your hair,â you call, knowing it will add at least another five minutes to his shower, and your coveted alone time. âAnd brush your teeth.âÂ
Eddie acknowledges you with a dismissive wave and something grumbled under his breath as he disappears into the bathroom, leaving the door cracked in a stark contrast to the way youâd shut him out when you slipped away into the next and only other room.Â
Therein lies the ultimate problem of your living situation. You keep trying to build a barrier, brick by brick, because you need your space, but Eddie needs it too, so every brick you put up he takes right back down. Â
You feel a muted pang of guilt over that which dissipates the moment you hear the shower hiss on. Then, and only then, do you breathe a sigh of relief you didnât realize you were holding.Â
Your time begins now.Â
Because you absolutely cannot abide the state of the bed, even after Eddieâs futile attempts to pull it into shape, you spend the full duration of Jefferson Starshipâs regression back into the days of Airplane attempting to wrestle the top sheet into position as Jane fades into White Rabbit.Â
Then, as the first strummed notes of More than Words begins to play, you brave the tide and pull the blankets over your head, curling in on yourself protectively. In the dark, the wet sloshing of the mattress is so much worse, so much weirder, and you try not to think about how womblike your cocoon suddenly is.Â
You didnât want the waterbed. You wanted a normal mattress to try and live your normal lives, but Eddie already wasnât sleeping because of his nightmares, and you couldnât stand to see him in any further pain, not when it was because of something you could so easily remedy.
Sure, it was a real kick in the teeth to have to send five hundred dollars you couldnât afford down the drain on a mattress, but thankfully the retailer would accept an exchange on a product of equal or lesser value (emphasis on lesser) and thatâs how youâd gone and found Eddie in some back corner of the store, starfished and riding the surf of the floor model waterbed like a blissed out Goldilocks.
The stuff of your nightmares. Â
âBabe, itâll be so cool,â heâd told you when he was trying with everything in his power to convince you to say yes.
Heâd spouted some bullshit statistic heâd skimmed in a pamphlet at physical therapy about the benefits of hydrotherapy, and youâd informed him that sleeping on a giant water balloon was not hydrotherapy. But you were just so glad he was getting excited about something, and because mattress shopping is an exercise in twentieth century torture, you took it home for a tentative trial.Â
Fourteen months later, here you lay, trying to relax, trying to sink into a quiet, thoughtless meditation, but you canât stop your mind from spinning.
Because you hate this fucking waterbed.Â
You hate the way it lists back and forth when you climb into it, and when Eddie slinks in after you and startles you awake with the sudden lurch of blaring panic, like stepping off a curb in your dreams.Â
You hate the leaks it springs, you hate the crinkling duct tape patches that poke you through the sheets when you roll over.Â
You hate how it holds the cold in the winter and radiates heat in the summer.Â
But you donât hate how happy it made Eddie to see it delivered, or how youâd lay awake giggling together that first night. You love the childlike glee youâd shared that night, taking turns bouncing each other on the creaking tide and whispering back and forth like kids having a sleepover.Â
Of course, that giddy episode of play was the only prelude to what was perhaps the worst nightâs sleep youâd ever had, but youâre almost happy to ignore that.  Â
In a turn of events which you pretend not to be shocked by, Eddieâs shower lasts nearly twenty-five minutes. By the time he shuts off the water and re-emerges, scrubbed pink, clean shaven, and reeking of peppermint, youâve let the gentle rocking of the bed lull you into a sleepy stupor.Â
âHow was it?â you ask, regardless of what you already know.
You donât ask him how long he actually spent washing and how long he just stood there under the tap (you also donât ask if he allotted any of that time to jerking off in the distant hope that heâll be satisfied enough to leave you alone) because the subtle change in his posture is all the evidence you need to know you were right.Â
Like always.Â
He looks over at you and smiles that same goofy smile that made you fall in love with him back in high school, and his brows come down.Â
âCold.â He says, âYou used up all the hot water,â
Oh, whoops. He levels you with a sidelong glance which you imagine is meant to make you feel guilty for not letting him share the hot water with you, but somehow you canât manage to get around to feeling that way.Â
Heâs clean, thatâs all you care about. Â
You canât help but stare as he drops his towel in a wet heap and stands comfortably naked, pulling open drawers and looking for a pair of boxers and a clean shirt â wonder of wonder, miracle of miraclesâŠ
âSorry,â you hum, watching with rapt, unblinking attention.
Eddie turns at the sound of your apology, and it takes a moment too long for your gaze to snap up when he comes to face you. You smile innocently, but heâs already smirking at you.Â
âAre you?â he asks, â...or are you just enjoying the show?â
You tilt your head down to press your shoulder to your ear.Â
âMaybe,âÂ
He rolls his eyes and steps into the faded blue plaid boxer shorts.
âMaybe, she says â move over, will ya?âÂ
You hold the blankets up for him to slide beneath. Pulling the shirt over his head, he settles in beside you and you sit together in silence, listening to the distant sounds of your mixtape playing as you wait for the bed to stop sloshing.Â
You know deep down he secretly hates it too, but heâs too proud to admit when heâs wrong, especially after campaigning so hard for it. You donât care, youâre in this for the long game â youâre gonna make him say it before you do.
You curl your arm around his back and immediately go to work knotting your fingers in the tangles of his hair, tugging gently at the damp baby hairs curling at the nape of his neck and making a mental note to help him comb it out before you fall asleep.Â
Eddie rests his head atop yours with a contented sigh and you feel the poke of his tongue in his cheek as he swipes it over his teeth.Â
âSo, are you ever gonna tell me about your shitty day?â
âWho said I had a shitty day?â You ask. Â
He breathes an easy chuckle out through his nose and you hear it rattle all the way down in his lungs.Â
âYou and that attitude of yours,â
 Before you can say anything in defense of your self, the next track begins to play, bringing with it the iconic intro to Dancing Queen. And because Eddie cannot abide ABBA, he is on his feet in an instant.Â
The prelude to a great disappointment begins to well in your chest, because unlike Eddie, you do in fact remember being young and sweet, only seventeen, and you cherish those days â the earliest days of your entanglement with the town pariah, before youâd finished dancing around each other.Â
âEddie donâtââ You whine, but heâs already thumping across the room to the stereo sitting precariously balanced in your rickety bookcase.Â
When he reaches the unit, he makes the executive decision that you can neither dance nor jive, and you will not be having the time of your life. He begins agitatedly punching buttons, and the song cuts out.
The track skips, and the next thing you know, your blood is thrumming along to the beat of a crunchy baseline, and Steve Perry is crooning you make me weak, and wanna die⊠and you know exactly what is coming next.Â
The main event. The lovinâ, the touchinâ, the squeezinâ... your insides squirm with an unhelpful reminder of your deep dark secret, and you muster every shred of self control you have.Â
You will not be having sex tonight, no matter how good Eddie looks naked, no matter what he does to try and sway you, and no matter how much Steve Perry insists heâs tearinâ you apartâŠÂ
You cross your arms and breathe out hard through your nose with wavering determination as Eddie turns back to you, once again disgustingly pleased with himself.Â
âThatâs better,â He says, crossing back to the bed in two long-legged strides and throwing himself down beside you.
The mattress jumps and rolls, and your muscles tense as you do everything you can to stay upright and sulking.
âWhy do you hate fun?â you ask as Eddie crawls over top of you on his hands and knees.
âHate fun?â he echoes, like he cannot believe you would accuse him of such a thing.
âYou know I love that song.â
 âYeah, but, Sweetheart, this is a great song! Itâs the best song on the list,â
Never mind the fact that he skipped three tracks to get there. You set your teeth and try not to take offense to his criticism of your taste in music because youâve long since agreed to disagree. Â
âThis is a sex song.â You correct, resisting the asking fingers heâs begun to drum along your tightly crossed arms.
When you fail to open up for him, Eddie rolls his head to the side and looks up at you through his lashes in that very specific way he knows drives you just a little bit crazy. Â
âItâs your tape, Babygirl,â he says evenly, âIâm just a humble disc jockey.âÂ
You snort out your displeasure with the statement, but you canât deny it. Because you had indeed hidden Lovinâ Touchinâ Squeezinâ among the tracks on your Summer Fling mixtape back in the summer of â84 in the raunchy little hope that it would inspire Eddie to do just that to you, and you know that he knows that as well as you do.
So, whose fault is it really when he slips his hands up under your shirt and starts kissing your neck?
You curse yourself for being so unbearably hot for him back in the day, and for the way that, after two long years, nothing has changed.
âCan I make a request?â
He hums out an easy laugh.
âNope, sorry. Weâre only playing mood music for the rest of the night.â Eddie says, and you tilt your head dutifully back when he nudges your jawline with his nose, âUnless you were gonna ask for Dio, âcause you always gotta remember to leave room for Ronnieââ
âIf you try to put on Holy Diver again Iâm leaving.â
He giggles then â actually giggles â and this time when he kisses you, you feel the press of his tongue on your throbbing pulse point.
You tell yourself this is as far as youâre going to go. You can stand to let him suck a bruise into your neck if thatâs what it takes to make him happy but youâre not going to have sex, even if youâre suddenly squirming beneath him to alleviate the thrumming between your thighs.  Â
With everything you still have to talk about, you canât afford to let Eddie distract you like that.
Of course, you already know what heâs going to say, the question heâll ask you â what do you want to do?Â
You donât want him to ask you that. You want him to tell you what to do. You want him to have all the answers and put your mind at ease because youâve been driving yourself crazy asking yourself that question all goddamn day.
What do you want to do? What are you going to do? How far are you willing to let this go?Â
Are you prepared to go all the way with Eddie Munson? Youâd asked yourself that once in a situation not so dissimilar to the one you currently find yourself in.
Of course, that time had been significant, because it had been the first time, and even now you remember that cold November afternoon so vividly. You should have been in school, but instead, you were parked outside a record store an hour outside of Hawkins, laying in the back of a van beneath the boy you so desperately loved and letting him send you to pieces with a kiss.
It wasnât a chaste, pretty kiss like you see in the movies â at least no decent kind of movie â it was a heavy, dirty thing, with tongue and teeth and gasping breath. He held your hands pinned above your head, and you lay there rutting up against him in desperate search of something that only your animal brain could explain.Â
The natural progression of things, the way of the world and of girls and boys since time immemorial.
You might have briefly entertained the thought of having his baby back then, in the murky heat of the moment. In hindsight, youâre fairly certain that was just latent Darwinism reminding you that you are a mammal and that your only true purpose on this Earth is to breed â so breed, Baby.
And then your rational human mind prevailed, and asked you that terrible question: are you ready for this?
Youâd thought youâd been scared of what the question meant then, but the virginal fear of the thing lurking between a boyâs legs â between your legs back then, prodding you through Eddieâs jeans and asking for a respectful permission you could not help but deny â holds no candle to the uncertain, impending future, which you no longer bother planning for.
Pledging your undying love as a horny teen fresh out of a very close brush with death is one thing, but tethering yourself to something and someone indefinitely?
Are you ready to commit to that with Eddie Munson?
Are you prepared to love him and take care of him on good days and bad, no matter what? Through night terrors and fugue episodes and days and days and so many hard days of wishing he would just snap out of it and come back to his old self?
Are you prepared to have his baby?Â
âGround control to Major Tom.â Eddie calls distantly, and you feel a gentle tapping at the center of your forehead, âCan you hear me, Major Tom?â
He guides you gently from the mire of your existential thoughts and fears, and you blink back at him as he waits expectantly for an answer to whatever it was heâd just said.
âHmm? Oh â sorry, Eds,â you say absently, reaching up to cup his cheek in your hand, âWhat were you saying?â
He glares at you, but the effect is ruined by the shy twitch of his lips, quirking at the corners despite his best efforts to play mad at you. Heâs still on his hands and knees, a mere inch of distance between your noses as he glowers at you in mock offense â how dare you not be fully engaged in the first steps of this stunning foreplay.
Oh please, as if you donât do this every goddamn night.Â
âOnly that I need you so bad right now,â he says, âBut itâs not so easy getting that message to Mars. I guess NASAâs not really in the business of passing love notes.â
You scoff and roll your eyes, hooking a finger in the collar of his t-shirt. The lingering effects of the shower waft up in a puff of clean air when you release the fabric, and even through the haze of shampoo and toothpaste, you can smell the bitter undertone of all the cigarettes he smoked today.   Â
âYou need me so bad every night.â You remind him.Â
He grins and you feel his teeth when he tips forward.  Â
âCanât help it.â Eddie says against your lips, attempting to resume the stilted progress of his foreplay by ducking his head to press a less than chaste kiss to the space beneath your ear â flicking tongue, scrape of teeth â his voice reverberates against the drum and you shiver, âItâs Kafkaesque.â
You snort and wonder as he snakes his hands up under your shirt and takes your breasts in hand if that was meant to impress you.Â
âPavlovian.â
âWhatâs that, Sweet Girl?â He asks, changing direction without missing a beat.
Eddie rocks back on the balls of his feet, and lifts your thighs over his, pulling you down the mattress a tick â your head thumps against the headboard. Ouch.  Â
He helps you sit up straight with an apologetic hand, boring holes into you with those big dark eyes ïżœïżœ pretty eyes.Â
Hungry eyes Eric Carmen might have told you, were you listening to the radio and not Journeyâs endless waning call of ânah nah nah-nah nah,â. Â
âYou mean Pavlovian,â you tell him, bracing your hands on his shoulders when he hugs you by the waist and pulls you into his lap. Â
âHow do you know what I mean?â he asks as you settle into this new position.Â
You drum your fingers along his collarbones and tilt your head, smiling coquettishly as you innocently prepare to bore him to death.Â
âBecause Pavlov trained dogs to drool at the sound of a bell by ringing one every time he fed them,â you say, âand Kafkaesque suggests that youâre trapped in an authoritarian situation that you canât escape, so I donât think that really applies ⊠unless youâre trying to tell me something about our relationship.âÂ
Eddie hums out a low, performative moan, deep from the back of his throat. Itâs not so performative a sound, however, that you canât feel the hard length of something prodding into the crook of your thigh.Â
âI love it when you talk dirty,â he says, baring his teeth at you in a wolfish grin that looks almost like something the old Eddie would have done.Â
Eddie before the trauma and surgeries and blood transfusion on blood transfusion on blood transfusion.Â
You roll your eyes and trail your fingers down down down his abdomen until youâve reached the less-than-subtle tent in his threadbare boxers. He draws in a sharp intake of breath when you skim your fingers over the tip of his bulge before taking an immodest palmful of his dick.Â
Once upon a time you would have wilted at the thought of doing something like that, but time and practice and the way Eddieâs eyes slide shut as he nods his encouragement has turned a gesture like that into something as casual as late night television.Â
He rolls his hips forward and you already feel a bead of heady wetness blooming in the fabric of his boxers when you swipe a cheeky thumb over his tip.
His breath hitches, and Eddie has to clear his throat to keep his voice steady as you begin to work him in your fist.Â
âGo on,â He says, and youâre nothing if not happy to oblige.  Â
âYou ⊠getting a hard-on âŠevery night at bedtime⊠is PavlovianâŠâ You say, stroking him in a measured up and down.Â
Big smile, front teeth poking out, cheeks indenting with an elusive dimple, Eddie shakes his head, pulling you forward to press bodily against him, and sandwiching your hand indecently between you. He doesnât stop moving his hips.Â
âYouâre so smart,â he rasps, and you detect the faintest hint of a quaver in his voice when you make a ring with your index finger and thumb, encircling the broad flare of him through the fabric and squeezing.
His mouth falls open on a heavy breath, and you close it right back up with a finger on his chin.Â
Still moving in short lazy thrusts, he sighs against you and kisses the line of your jaw, teasing your head back once more with a gentle nudge and exposing the taught columns of your throat to him.
âItâs so fucking sexy.â
You fail to suppress a snort and are almost shocked when it doesnât immediately kill the mood.
âIs it really that sexy or are you just horny?â
âWho says it canât be both?â Eddie says, âYouâre smart and sexy⊠and Iâm super fucking hot for you right now,â
And because he absolutely cannot help himself when he is reminded of even the faintest hint of a song, suddenly heâs singing under his breath. Â
ââhot-blooded, check it and seeââ Eddieâs Foreigner impression plays against the waning backdrop of Journey turning over to Pat Benatar, insisting We Belong from the competing stereo.
Itâs entirely too much, and you burst into a fit of undainty laughter.
âDonât laugh, this is important.â He says, grinning, ââ I got a fever of a hundred and three,â
When you donât stop, Eddie kisses you, and even under the seal of his lips, you canât manage to stifle your giggling.
Of course, now you remember why itâs more fun to fool around and have sex every night than it is to be sensible adults who keep their hands to themselves. Because thatâs how you get the old Eddie back â fun Eddie â the one who made you lose your mind and fall in love with him that first Tuesday night at the Hideout a hundred Tuesdays ago.Â
Even then, youâd loved him so bad you could have screamed. And you did scream, you recall. Youâd screamed yourself hoarse even as Corroded Coffin got booed off stage because you were their biggest fan â their words, not yours â even if their name was stupid and made you giggle behind their backs.Â
So what if you only ever see that version of Eddie anymore when youâve got his cock in your fist? As if to punctuate the thought, he stammers over the next lyric and gasps out a breathy moan when you give him three quick jerks.
He laughs. Â
âNaughty,âÂ
You giggle along and part his lips with a cheeky swipe of your tongue, happily swallowing every little sound he makes under your touch and feeling your insides begin to quiver in turn.
Youâll keep jerking him off because itâs fun to watch him steadily go to pieces, but youâre not having sex tonight â so, why do you have to keep reminding yourself of that?
âBabe,â Eddie says, lips clicking wetly as you part, âItâs not funny, itâs a serious medical condition â you donât have to read my mind, to know whatâs on my mind â Man, those lyrics are stunning.â
âSheer poetry.â You say, nodding and his eyes light up.
âRight? Guyâs an artist,â
Youâre still giggling when you feel the scrape of Eddieâs teeth along the tender veins lining your neck, pinching just a little too sharply on your jugular.
It sends a bolt of adrenaline shooting down like sparks to sting the tips of your fingers and toes, and suddenly itâs not nearly as funny or sexy as it was a moment ago.
You gasp. Fight or flight kicks in â you freeze.
Your heart hammers in your chest, your hearing whites out, â your hands are trembling as you struggle to unwind the soiled bandage tied tight around your broken fingers. You press it to the ugly wound in Eddieâs throat, spurting blood as he tries and fails to breathe through it â he coughs and gasps against the pain it causes him and chokes on your name in a way that makes you never want to hear him say it again⊠help me, it pleads, donât let me die, make it stopâŠ
You breathe out harshly and shake your head against the intrusive image of blood turned nearly black in the dark of that place. Your hands come up to brace firmly against Eddieâs shoulders, fingers trembling as you dig them into the muscle there, and you shove him without really meaning to.
âStopââ You gasp.
Itâs okay, youâre okay, You tell yourself, the same way you tell Eddie every night he thrashes awake in a blinding terror, Youâre here. Youâre safe, youâre home â just breathe.Â
âSorryââ He says immediately, âToo much?â
But you can barely hear him over the roaring in your ears. Â
You focus on what you can see â the walls of your shared bedroom/dining room/living room, all your collective things illuminated in the amber glow of the flickering table lamp sitting across the room.
And you focus on Eddie, drying curls backlit and flyaway, framing his face â his handsome face â not spattered in blood and twisted in agony, but freshly scrubbed and tweaked in alarm and a less than subtle hint of concern.Â
Youâre okay, but more importantly, heâs okay, heâs here with you, and nothing bad can happen when youâre together â but youâd been together while he lay there bleeding to death, hadnât you?Â
âAre you okay?â he asks, all traces of teasing gone from his tone.Â
Itâs amazing how quickly he can shut it off when the mood shifts. Your sweet boy.Â
âIâm okay,â
âWhat happened?â
âNothing,â you say, âI just â I didnât expect you to do that.âÂ
Itâs bizarre that the motion triggered you like that, especially since youâre not the one who had your throat cut down there.
Down there.Â
â...do you wanna stop?â
You fight to suppress a shiver and the urge to immediately agree â yes, you should stop, especially since you have no intention of letting this go any further than heavy petting, but you donât want to be a killjoy.
You shake your head to try and disperse any lingering memory of that night â that eternal night â and absently pet the side of your paramourâs face.
âNo,â You say, âNo, we donât have to stop.â But youâre painfully aware of the lack of enthusiasm in your tone.
Eddieâs brows furrow over his eyes, and you can tell he doesnât believe you, so you tilt forward to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth.Â
âLetâs keep going,â you say.
You kiss him, attempting to rekindle what has already begun to die out, and when he doesnât reciprocate, when you try to kiss him again and he leans back, you feel your insides seize with disappointment.Â
âIâm fine, Eddie,â you say, and he pulls a face.
âLiar,â
âI am. I promise.âÂ
You watch disbelief shadow his face and the muscle in his jaw flex. You can tell heâs getting impatient, not for the starting and stopping, but because he knows youâre not telling him something.
Isnât that the understatement of the century?
After a moment, Eddie drops his head and sighs your name dejectedly, you try not to flinch or hear it forced out on a burbling bloody timber begging you to make it stop. He slumps onto his hip beside you and he walks two cheeky fingers up the length of your thigh before resting a hand at the top and giving you a gentle squeeze.
ââwe donât have to do this.â He says, âWe can just go to bed.âÂ
You wish that were true.Â
You rock back into the pillows and force yourself to smile, feeling your cheeks pull as your insides go tight and twisty.Â
Sure, you could just go to bed with a chaste kiss and a âsee you in the morning,â and wake up in a few hours to find Eddie on his third cup of coffee, watching late-night television and chain smoking. Or, and far more likely, you can wake up to him thrashing and screaming beside you through the endless circadian reruns of his death and spend the rest of the night trying to calm him down. Â
No actually, you canât just go to bed. You have to do something to help him relax, so that heâs too tired to do anything but sleep through the night.
And the best way to do that, you have found, is to get him off. As it turns out you can only therapy fuck your boyfriend for so long â approximately fourteen months â before it starts to have consequences, like unplanned pregnancies and his being unable to sleep without you getting him off first.
Your hesitation to answer speaks volumes, and Eddie finally shakes his head.
âLetâs just go to bed,â
âNo,â you press, pawing at the front of his shirt and hating how whiny you sound as you say it, âI want to keep going.âÂ
âDonât just say that because you think itâs what I want to hear,â he says a little too harshly.
âIâm not.â
âYou have to tell me if somethingâs wrong, Sweetheart. Iâm not a mind reader, I canât help you if you donât talk to me.â
Itâs startling to hear, like the clanging of a bell. He knows something is up, and while he may not know what it is, Eddieâs not nearly as stupid as he pretends to be, and youâre a bad liar.
So, quit beating around the bush and tell him already.  Â
You donât know why, but youâre committed to denying it now, so you wire your jaw shut and shake your head.Â
âIâm fine, you just startled me. I didnât expect you to do that,â
Eddie gives you that hard look again, and you do your best not to wilt under it.Â
âAndâŠ?âÂ
ââŠAnd Iâmââ Pregnant. ââ a little tiredâŠâ Pussy. ââŠand my head hurts.â Stupid.Â
Oldest clichĂ© in the book â not tonight honey, I have a headache. Â
When he still doesnât let up, you throw your hands up in a lopsided shrug and catch his face to bracket on the way down, as if thatâs going to do anything to soften the blow of rejection youâre trying so desperately to avoid.
Suddenly, it feels a lot like youâre the one about to receive it, and you hate how desperate that makes you feel. What are you fighting so hard for? Youâre not having sex tonight, remember?
âI found out I have to go in on Saturday to do inventory,â you fib, pulling your shoulders up and fully committing to the bullshit subterfuge, âThatâs why Iâve been cranky⊠sorry, I should have just told you.â
And then, Eddieâs shoulders drop and he relaxes under the blissful satisfaction of the truth. It makes you feel grimy,Â
âAh-ha,â he says, âMelvaldâs workinâ you to the bone, huh?â
You nod.
âOne box of Kotex at a time.â More like one box of neatly packaged pregnancy tests â results in ten minutes or less!Â
Eddie's features soften, and he dips his head to brush his lips across the slope of your shoulder.Â
âMy Babyâs just tired, huh?â He hums against you, âPoor Baby...âÂ
You suppress a flinch and silently wish he would stop saying things like that.Â
âYeah.â You say dejectedly, âAnyway, there you go. My shitty boring day. Stocking shelves, live in technicolor,âÂ
Eddie hums thoughtfully and you watch as he begins a steady descent down your body. Â
âThatâs hot. Think we could get it on pay-per-view?â
You push up on your elbows just as he slides down to come face-to-face with your midriff, and you clear your throat.Â
âWhere do you think youâre going?â You say, as he slips a cheeky finger beneath the band of your shorts.Â
He pauses to give you a sly look.
âDown unda,â Eddie says, grinning and effecting a thick Australian accent.Â
Oh no, absolutely not. Jerking him off is one thing, but if you let him go down on you, itâll be a one-way ticket to Stupidtown, and youâll absolutely end up letting him fuck you.Â
Youâre determined not to let that happen, so you pull your knees up and cross your ankles over his back, squeezing tightly. Eddie makes a put-out sound when you cage him in and he finds he can go no further.Â
âYou got a passport, Crocodile Dundee?â You deadpan, quirking an unimpressed brow.
âJeez, canât a guy worship at his altar in peace?â he says, trying to wriggle free and butter you up in the same breath, âThe goddess? My inspiration?âÂ
You roll your eyes but you donât let him go when he begins to squirm in earnest.Â
It is an effort in futility.Â
Back in the day, you spent many an afternoon sitting around the trailer watching professional wrestling, and those sessions typically ended with you in a headlock after boldly claiming you could beat Eddie in a fight. To his credit, he always at least let you try before flipping you ass over tea kettle and holding you pinned to the carpet until you said âuncleâ. In those days, you never stood a chance, but that was then, and unlike Eddie, you actually bothered to go to your physical therapy sessions and still have full functional use of your body.Â
Youâre not trying to hurt him, so you arenât putting nearly enough pressure on his ribs to really hold him, but heâs out of breath before youâve even broken a sweat.
âRelease me, Foul Temptress.â He demands, struggling against you and the vice you have on him.Â
You cross your arms and make a show of leisurely checking your nails.Â
âSay uncle.â You say innocently.Â
âYouâre evil,â Â
âNo, Iâm winning.â
When he stops moving long enough to glare back at you, you push out your lower lip in a feigned pout.Â
âHad enough yet?â
You watch the muscles in Eddieâs jaw flex as he contemplates all the biting retorts he could possibly hit you with before evidently decides against retaliation.Â
He sighs and goes slack against you, forehead dropping to knock against your belly, and you once again have to resist the sudden and bizarre urge to tell him to be careful.
He doesnât know, how could he know when you havenât told him yet?Â
Of course, itâs only lost in this brief but looming thought that you momentarily let your guard down, and Eddie finds his ace in the hole.
He presses his nose to the tender softness of your belly and makes a gentle, needy sound, and your thighs involuntarily tremble.Â
You unhook your ankles and let your feet drop to the bed on either side of his hips with two solid thumps that sends you rocking back and forth on a sloshing tide.
You donât know when he started to work your T-shirt up, but suddenly your flesh is exposed to him and those damn lips.Â
He doesnât kiss you, so much as part his lips and breathe out, a long, quivering breath that has your throat closing up and your knees edging open far enough to let him drop and lay with his stomach pressed flat to your pubic bone.Â
âI just wanna be good to you,â he says, muffled against your stomach, searching hands skittering up up up over your thighs and into the open legs of your shorts to grace the supple curve of your hip. âWish I had something nice to say ⊠to make it all betterâŠâ
He brushes his lips over the spot just beneath your navel and you feel something flutter there.Â
You canât be sure if itâs just the phantom sensation of your secret crying out to be known, or the way youâve noticed how heâs begun rocking his hips into the mattress. He still has a hard on, after all, and he knows how much you like to watch him get himself off like that. It causes your breath to hitch in your throat, but you manage catch Eddieâs hands before he can get your shorts off.
Under the looming threat of complete and total mental blackout, you muster your courage, and try once more to pick up where you left off.Â
âI â I have something to tell you ⊠actually,â you say tentatively, worrying your lower lip and trying not to get caught on the slow, purposeful canting of his hips.
It piques his interest enough to stir him from where heâs tucked himself between your legs and turn curious eyes up at you, blown dark with needy expectation.Â
âOh, yeah?â His voice is a deep and husky rasp that sends a bolt of want like lightning down to the thrumming apex of your thighs. âSomething nice?â
You swallow hard and, despite your subtle hesitation, lift your hips off the mattress to assist him this time as he slides your shorts down and discards them over his shoulder.Â
They land softly over top of the lamp, plunging you into a sudden and deeply muted semi-darkness â mood lighting, something inside you suggests and you have to force yourself to watch Eddie work to keep from rolling your eyes.
Youâre not going to have sex with him⊠but that doesnât mean youâre not just a little curious to see what he has in mind.Â
You know exactly what he has in mind, Stupid.
You forgot to make him eat dinner so now heâs just going to have to make due.
âI donât know if itâs necessarily nice, but itâs something.â You breathe, watching transfixed as he eases your knees open as far as they will go, exposing the thin, damp fabric of your panties to the air.
He hums, a gentle rumble in the hollow of his throat that sends goosebumps flash freezing across your arms and legs when it catches on the end.Â
Distantly, you see his hips jump as he catches on a fold in the sheets, and you throb in wanting commiseration.  Â
â⊠good or bad?â He rasps, punching a breath out from your already flattening lungs as he skims the junction of at the crook of your thigh with the tip of his nose and moves lower ⊠lower.Â
âOh⊠good.â You say, voice an embarrassing octave higher than normal, âItâs good⊠hhmmaybe. I...uh... I-I havenât decided yet.â
Teeth in the elastic of your panties, a sharp tug pulls his lower lip down before it snaps back into place, and he groans.
You fail to suppress a shiver as Eddie eases your legs up over his shoulders, still working his hips against the mattress at an agonizing pace. Suddenly all you want is to be the bed, laying beneath him as he rocks steadily into you, using you to chase his release, just like he does most nights.Â
It briefly occurs to you that if youâre having that thought, it means youâre steadily approaching the point of no return. If you had any sense at all, youâd pump the breaks while you still can, but then you can feel the smooth plane of his face nuzzling the flesh of your inner thigh. You feel the press of his lips, and your tongue goes fat and useless in your mouth. Under the gentle prelude to the way he begins to press slow, reverent kisses along the expanse of your scar, you forget how to breathe, let alone do something so pointless as speak.Â
The scar is the only physical thing you carry from that day you slipped through to the other side of the world. Itâs a jagged, ugly thing that extends from your knee to your bikini line because while the initial wound had been expansive, the surgeon who attended to you that night last spring knew fuck all about fuck all and somehow managed to make it worse. Youâre lucky, because most of your trauma is invisible, but you shouldnât be thinking about that right now, you should be thinking about something normal, something sexy as Eddie continues with those soft, open-mouthed kisses, leaving cooling wet crescents over the length of the raised puckered skin, higher, higherâŠ
And whatâs sexy about scars and surgeons and the lingering evidence of eighty-four stitches?
Nothing, absolutely nothing, but it doesnât stop you from reaching down to hook your fingers in the fabric of his t-shirt. You tug and pinch and gather material until youâve made a little progress, trying to undress him while heâs busy grinding his cock into the bed, but youâre having a hard time getting it done from this angle.
Thankfully, the reverence of your touch does not go unnoticed â Eddie ceases his ministrations to push up on his knees and help you. Flushed and sweating, he reaches back and takes a fist full of the fabric, pulling the shirt over his head and discarding it in one swift movement.Â
And then, just like that, you can see all the punishment he took trying to save you, down there on the wrong side of the world. All his scars and the evidence of just how close you came to losing him. Your heart thumps solidly against your ribs â yours is ugly, but his are worse, and you donât think youâll ever get used to seeing what those nasty little fuckers did to him. You keep that strictly to yourself, however, because Eddie already hates the way he looks bad enough without the burden of your opinion. He doesnât need to know how they make you feel.Â
You reach for him, suddenly desperate to touch him, and he takes you by the hand. He holds you firmly in his smoldering, blackened gaze, and you watch as he presses your index and middle fingers together. Then, he slides the compressed digits into the dark wet heat of his mouth and sucks on them until youâre flushed so hot your face has started to burn.
On the surface of your brain, the feeling of his tongue slipping up between your fingers, edging them open and flicking at the soft nook of flesh at the valley of their connection is unbearably gross, but that message doesnât seem to make it down to the places where it matters. Nobody tells your animal brain that it isnât the sexiest thing youâve ever seen in your life. Your fingers go sliding out with a sickly wet slurp, and you shiver.
âSave these for me,â he says, âFor later,â
Later? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Whatâs going to happen later? You find, as he slides down the length of your body, that you donât actually care.Â
What happens in an hour or ten minutes (or less) is none of your goddamn concern when Eddie is busy parting your legs in a mirror image of the way heâd just parted your fingers.
You find you donât have the capacity to wonder any further than that when he slips back down to prop your legs over your shoulders and hook his fingers in the dampened gusset of your panties. You breathe out a long, wanton noise that something in the back of your mind tells you is whorish when you feel the first puff of air fanning your bare pussy.
That damning something in the back of your mind suggests you should be embarrassed about that, but you canât manage to feel anything but heated as he eases your underwear down your legs and banishes them to some far corner of the apartment.
Eddie kisses the nook at the highest point of your thigh, directly to the right of where heâs begun to trace the faintest ghost of a touch over your entrance, and suddenly all you can hear is your own heart pounding in your ears. He applies a whisper of pressure and dips into you up to the first knuckle, and you lay there, barely able to take it, wringing the sheets in your fists, telling yourself that at any moment cooler heads will prevail and youâll put a stop to this.
Stupidtown looms on the horizon, and heâs barely even touched you.
Then, on top of everything heâs doing to you, Eddie has the audacity to try and get you talking again.
âYou were saying?⊠âsomething good, maybeâ ⊠butâŠ?â he says, stretching the word lyrically in a way you havenât heard him do in a long, long time.Â
You donât get the chance to revel in that before the question is followed by the sharp pinch of flesh between teeth as he bites you, just beneath your scar. Hard enough to bruise, but not enough to break the skin. You yelp and jump against him, but he holds you firmly to the spot so you canât escape, then he soothes the offended flesh with the wide flat press of his tongue before sucking it in past his lips â it burns, and you canât stand how much you like it.
âHey, g-go easy with that, will you?â You try to tell him, âEasyâŠâ but then he uses two fingers to spread your pussy open wide, exposing you to the air.
You trail off into a long, high whine, which turns sharp and loud when he flicks the blunt edge of his nail over your painfully neglected clit. The bundle of nerves screams, and your hips buck up hard enough to break the seal of the bruise heâd been busy sucking into your thigh.Â
When he presses his thumb flat to that howling little bitch, you blow right past the point of no return.Â
âOh, fuck! â Eddie!â you gasp, and when he smiles you can feel his teeth as he gives you one last gentle nip for good measure.Â
âAsk me nicely,â He growls, and you lose your goddamn mind.Â
Never mind all of your bullshit principles. Never mind tests or little pink lines and blue tabs and green plus signs â you need him to fuck you, and you need him to do it now. Â
âPlease,â you cry, âPlease, please, pleaseââ
âGood girl,â
#cruel summer fic#eddie munson x reader#eddie munson x you#eddie munson stranger things#eddie munson#eddie munson fanfic#joseph quinn eddie munson#tumblr really told me to fuck myself with this one didn't it?#well part two is going up anyway and it is ENTIRELY filthy smut so you're welcome i guess
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Etoiles upholding the french tradition of doing illegal things without anyone noticing
#qsmp#snailvid#etoiles#idk what happened to the sound but my computer is struggling so. im not uploading this again#etoiles is actually allowed to use dark metal for lore reasons soooo i guess protection 7 is fine. maybe#hi and welcome to another video that wont show up in the tag again. if you see this that means you're one of my like 3 followers who's on#tumblr when i post this
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IV and Vessel screams; from the Teeth of God Red Rocks ritual [05/12/2024]
Video taken by literallynoone1289 on tiktok
#sleep token#flashing#tw flashing#song: take me back to eden#vessel#vessel iv#iv sleep token#there's a brief hint of iii back there sorry dude that you're not in it more. fun as all hell to see you going off in the background though#vessel sleep token#did i used to tag things so much? no. but then i went tag diving for specific things and learned the hard way that it's better if you do#so if you find this in the tags a year from now through searching 'iv sleep token' you're welcome#and if not more fool me i guess lmao
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The Shower Incident
Stu x Billy x FEM!Reader
Tags: Sex toy, masturbation, voyeurism for a sec, dirty stuff happens in the shower obviously, dirty talk, degradation, praise, lots of kissing, marking, handjob, edging, begging, slight dacryphilia, mention of denial, mention of being tied up, mention of oral (fem receiving, and giving to a toy), mention of double penetration, mention of anal (fem and male receiving), open end, Sub!Reader, Dom!Billy, implied Switch!Stu but mostly Sub!Stu
Hiya babes!
I had this idea and it wouldn't leave me alone the entire day so I wrote it down and if I do say so myself: This shit is pretty hot.
I'm super glad my first public fic is with these two idiots because I love them to the moon and back and cannot get enough of them. I hope you enjoy this wild ride - I know I did. I wrote this in like an hour and then proofread it four times total, but English isn't my first language so if you see any mistakes feel free to (politely) let me know and I will fix it. Same as any tags I missed. Of course, non mistake related comments are also very welcomed. I hope you thouroughly enjoy this product of my brain rot! Let me know what ya think.
Stu and Billy had been away for a few days and you were needy. Wanting to be bent over and fucked hard and rough, four hands gripping at your body and manipulating you into whatever position they desire. They were supposed to come back in the evening so you wanted to take a shower before then.
That's when the idea struck.
You practically stumbled over your own feet to get to the closet and pull out the box of toys the three of you had accumulated over time.
You picked out your favorite dildo and quickly made your way to the bathroom. With the help of the suction cup the toy stuck to the shower wall. After cleaning yourself in record speed you bent over and pushed back onto the dildo. It filled you slowly and stretched you perfectly. Your wetness made the intrusion easy but the thickness of the toy still made you pause, and forced you to take a couple of deep breaths. Although it wasn't long before you were fucking yourself back onto it and completely loosing your mind in the process. Moaning their names and begging into the empty room.
At the same time Billy and Stu were on their way up to your shared apartment. The two of them decided to surprise you by coming home a couple hours early so you could eat dinner together and cuddle up in front of the TV.
When they came through the front door and weren't immediately met with your smiling face, kissing and hugging them in greeting, they were a bit perplexed.
That was until they heard the shower running.
And then they heard a litany of moans, accompanied by a loud slapping sound of skin against tile. They shared a look and ventured closer to the bathroom door which you had left open a crack in your hurry to fuck yourself.
The sight they find absolutely takes their breath away. The shower is on and water is hitting your back as you're bent over nothing, supporting yourself with your hands against the wall as you continuously slam your ass back onto the dildo stuck to the tile wall. They can see the toy glistening with your wetness and someone lets out a groan. You don't hear it and keep moving your hips with a clearly desperate and already fucked out sway to it.
They're both stuck in their spot, staring at the divine sight that is you. The way your body moves to get the perfect angle of the dildo, your thighs trembling with exertion and your hand aimlessly sliding against the wet wall, trying desperately to hold onto something. The way your pussy stretches to accommodate for the thickness of what they recognize as your favorite dildo. The one that you love sucking on when they both have you filled. Or that you love for them to fuck you with when they're getting your ass ready and you already need your pussy filled.
The dildo that's been in all of your holes to help pleasure, tease, edge and make you cum. They can't get enough of watching you throw yourself onto the dildo, making such loud and obscene noises.
What finally gets them to snap out of the trance your body has put them in is your next moan.
âBilly, please.â You interrupt yourself with another desperate whine. âFuck, please fuck me harder. I need you so bad. Oh my god, Stu.â You elongate the end of Stu's name with a loud moan that's closer to a sob if anything. With the way your hips tilted, Billy suspects you found the perfect angle to hit that special spot inside you. Next to him, Stu breathes out a small moan and looks at Billy with a plea in his eyes.
âGo.â
With the okay given, Stu bursts through the door and is on you in no time. He grabs your face in both hands and barely sees your eyes open in surprise before he has his mouth pressed to yours. Desperately making out with you while making sure you're still fucking yourself onto the dildo. He mumbles out praises between kisses, not able to stop himself from telling you how good you look.
"You look delicious. Fucking yourself so desperately, moaning our names like we're here with you. You that pent up, baby? It's been three days and you're so needy you start fucking yourself how you want us to fuck you, huh?â
âBut it's not the same, is it?â
Now Billy joins in as well. He already stripped out of his clothes, completely naked and palming at his erection while Stu kneels halfway under the spray of water, drenching his clothes. You mewl a negative, not trusting yourself with words. Afraid that if you pull away from Stu and open your mouth the only thing coming out would be pleas and their names.
âNo. Even though our good little slut is filled to the brim by a toy and is fucking herself just as fast as we do, she still can't quite get it right. Can you, doll?â
You make a non-committal noise and place your hands on Stu's shoulders, thankful to have something to hold on to. Billy is unsatisfied with your wordless answer and grabs Stu by his hair, pulling his head back to expose his long neck, stopping you from hiding in his kisses. Stu whines long and loud before staring back at you, desperation clear in his eyes.
âPlease baby, answer him.â
âAww. Would you look at that? At least one whore here remembers his manners.â
Billy leans down to press hungry kisses onto Stu's mouth. Both of them moaning into each other's mouth, making you want even more. You mewl and whine at the display in front of you. Billy pulls away from Stu's mouth with a grin that he then turns on you.
âYou better start using your words. Or he's gonna get all the attention and you can watch without touching yourself. And cumming will be completely off the table.â With that he attaches his mouth to Stu's neck, kissing up and down, sucking marks into the soft skin and biting. Which makes Stu let out the most beautiful array of whines and moans you've ever heard.
âPlease,â you manage to breathe out.
âPlease, what?â Billy still has his face in Stu's neck while answering, not letting his mouth detach for long. You whine and can't help yourself from slowing down your movements to gather your thoughts long enough to form a sentence.
âPlease, Billy. Please fuck me. Both of you. I need you so bad, please â Billy pulls away from Stu and grabs your jaw hard with his hand, turning your face in his direction. He gets close to you and smirks. âThere she is. That's the good little whore we've been waiting to fuck for three days.â He doesn't let you answer before attaching his lips to yours and making you moan into his mouth. He lets go of your jaw and grabs your shoulders instead, shoving you back onto the dildo, hard. You moaned into his mouth as he forces you to start fucking yourself again. Distantly, you hear Stu whine as he kneels in front of you and waits for his turn to be kissed again.
Once you have a steady rhythm going again, Billy pulls away. He looks at you with a grin and you could tell he has something planned.
âNow, I asked you a question. And you didn't answer. Instead, you made out with this little attention whore next to me.â A moan from Stu. âBut I want you to answer my question. I will not repeat it, and neither will Stu. You're gonna have to use your big girl brain and remember what I asked you. And you're not gonna stop fucking yourself on that dildo. If you slow down you don't get to cum. If you stop you get to watch, tied up and gagged as I fuck Stu into the mattress.â A whine from Stu. âBut if you keep going and answer me correctly,â his grin widens and he leans back slightly. âThen you get exactly what you want.â
You moan, frustrated that you don't immediately remember what he asked you. While you're desperately trying to remember the question and not slow down your hips, Billy starts helping Stu get his wet clothes off. He also shuts off the water which leaves your skin cooling down rapidly, goosebumps appearing on your skin and sending shivers down your spine.
Once he has all of Stu's clothes off, he kneels behind him and starts palming his dick. Slowly but firmly taking it in hand and stroking him up and down. Stu lets his head fall back onto Billy's shoulder and moans unabashedly at how good he feels. How good Billy is making him feel. The sight makes your concentration waver. Your mind is completely empty, safe for the two beautiful men in front of you. The way their hair sticks to their foreheads, Billy looking at you with hunger in his eyes and that feral edge. Stu squeezes his eyes shut as he softly starts thrusting into Billy's hand. Usually that would have earned him a slap to the thighs and a warning, but right now all Billy wanted was to tease you.
He takes pity on you as Stu grows closer and closer, holding onto Billy and you with one hand each.
âI'll give you a little hint, darling. How does the dildo feel?â Suddenly his words sprang back into your mind.
âEven though our good little slut is filled to the brim by a toy and is fucking herself just as fast as we do, she still can't quite get it right. Can you, doll?â
You immediately scramble for an answer.
âFuck, Billy.â
âGood start.â
You whine once more as your hips desperately try to keep up the pace Billy had set for you.
âI can't get it right,â you sob in frustration as your wetness drips down your legs. With the shower turned off you can be sure it was the juices of your pussy that are making such obscene noises and dripping slowly down your thighs.
Billy gives Stu's sensitive tip extra attention, making the tall man writhe in his place on Billy's lap. He moans as a blush spreads down his chest. âThat's right doll, you can't. But why? And you better hurry because if Stu cums before you answer, you're watching.â He chuckles at your frustrated groan and speeds up his hand on Stu's cock.
âI- oh my fuckin God. I can't get it right because-â Stu moans loud and desperate, getting closer each second. âBecause it's not hard enough.â Billy hums long, considering your answer. âYes. But why?â You groan again, this time louder and with more annoyance behind it. âCareful,â Billy spoke low and with warning.
With one last whine you focus all your concentration on your words and close your eyes. âI can't get it right because you fuck me so much harder and I can't fake that. I need your hands on my hips as you pull me into every thrust and I need you to speak to me, to call me names and to tell me I'm doing good. I need you to pound into me like I'm your personal toy and I can't fake that with a dildo, please. Please fuck me like I need you to. I'm begging you Billy, please.â
You prepare yourself to hear Billy ask you for another, better answer, but it didn't come. Instead you hear Stu's sob and whine as he is denied his orgasm. No doubt having been right on the edge. When you open your eyes again, Stu looks back at you with tired, teary eyes and his mouth hanging open. Billy on the other hand looks absolutely feral. His eyes have a certain glint in it that tells you that you are in for a ride.
He reaches out to touch your cheek and strokes his thumb over your skin. âThat's a good girl. And just in time too.â He softly pushes Stu to sit on the shower floor and keeps a leg behind his back to help him stay upright while he pulls on your shoulders to stop you from continuing to fuck yourself on your dildo. âNow, you have 5 minutes to help Stu get up and get both of your asses to the bedroom. I want you on the bed, legs spread and ready with Stu right between them. He gets to make you extra worked up with his mouth as a bit of revenge for his edge.â At that, Stu hums satisfied and lets out a chuckle.
âI'm gonna watch him edge you however often he sees fit, and then we're both going to fuck you. Nice and hard.â Billy grabs your jaw and pulls you in for a quick kiss before staring at you an inch away from your face. âBecause I know that's what our little whore craves. Isn't it?â You nod eagerly and correct yourself with a quick âYes sir,â before Billy can say anything.
As soon as Billy lets go of your jaw and nods his head towards the bathroom door, you're scrambling to help Stu on his feet, your own knees still wobbly.
Billy watches as the two of you slowly make your way to the bedroom with shaky legs, sees how wet your thighs are and how there's still more dripping out of your glistening pussy. He watches Stu grab your ass, squeezing the flesh beneath his finger in a way that is sure to be a promise of all the teasing that's to come. He truly can't wait to see Stu ruin you with his mouth before they fuck you until you can't remember your own name.
God, he loves the both of you so much.
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Please don't repost or reupload this fic anywhere else. It's mine and I'd love to keep it that way.
#this was supposed to be a quick ramble#and then it got horribly away from me#so you're welcome i guess?#anyways these two have me in a chokehold today and this idea just wouldn't leave me alone#Stu Macher x Reader#Billy Loomis x Reader#Stu Macher x Billy Loomis#Stu Macher x Billy Loomis x Reader#Fem!Reader#Slasher smut#Stu Macher smut#Billy Loomis smut#brain rot#someone take my phone away pls#if this is well received i'll make a second part with Stu more in focus#because he was a little more passive in this one#i just realized no one cums in this#oops???
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i call this post "dangai MLs deepthroating fruit in increasing orders of severity" you will soon see why
#you're welcome#xiao yuliang#ultimate note#bai yu#éé guardian#xia zhiguang#the spirealm#gao hanyu#s.c.i. mystery#yes i'm aware dmbj isn't a dangai don't @ me#xyl is so dainty! and then there'sâŠ#âŠwhatever gao hanyu is doing#demonstrating his capabilities i guess?
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no other night
Wille leans closer to Simon to speak right into his ear. âYou donât need to bend over backwards just because August is getting on everyoneâs nerves and canât sit still for ten fucking minutes.â Willeâs breath on his face is warm and smells like canned tropical fruits. Simon suppresses the shiver that runs down his spine. âYou know, thatâs quite literally what I have to do if I want to win,â Simon tells him. Their faces are so close and Simon canât help the way his gaze dips downwards before he fixes his eyes back on Willeâs. On the hazel eyes that are once again staring at him. Wille smiles, a small smirk playing on his lips. âI like you,â he says and how the hell is Simon supposed to respond to that?
the party ferry is finally ready to depart. @peakotp asked for it, i did my best to deliver.
đą get on board for an unforgettable trip from stockholm to helsinki here (T, 14.2K)
#this got so out of hand#you're welcome i guess?#i can probably navigate the ferry company's website in my sleep#young royals#young royals fic#young royals fanfic#yr fic
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The night of many truths (9034 words) by sburator Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Interview with the Vampire (TV 2022) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Armand/Daniel Molloy Characters: Daniel Molloy, Armand (Vampire Chronicles) Additional Tags: Daniel/Lestat if you squint, Devil's Minion Era (Vampire Chronicles), Post-Season/Series 02, Devil's Minion Era Happened (Interview with the Vampire TV 2022), But then Armand went right-click delete, Under-negotiated Kink, not very sane, not very safe, but very entirely consensual, Humiliation, Spanking, Blowjobs, Anal Sex, Blood Play, Blood Drinking, Toxic Yaoi Summary:
âYouâre not the only hole I get to fill, Armand; does that upset you? Your boy fucking around? With the one that got away, no less.â He pulls at those curls, chokes Armand and keeps him there, nose mashed against his pubesâhe doesnât need to breathe, heâll be fine, heâs fine and even if it hurts a bit itâs not enough. Nowhere near enough. âDo you want to know how he fucked me? He held me down and railed me until I couldn't think; he made me scream until I lost my voice, he fed on me until he came inside me so hard I could feel it at the back of my throat. Bet you wish you were there, huh?â
When he finally releases him, Armand crumbles. He falls on his hands, panting, face hidden under the inky spill of his hair. Theyâre at a stalemate, but the hunger bubbles underneath, lava just waiting to erupt. Daniel just wants to hurt him, he wants revenge as much as he knows it wonât solve anything; the pain is there, the scars may scab but theyâll remain etched on the skin just as they remain etched in his soul. And then Armand lifts one shaky hand and wraps his fingers around Danielâs ankle, prostrate at his feet, repentant, andâ
âBeg for it,â says Daniel. âBeg.â
#iwtv#devil's minion#daniel molloy#armand#fanfic#armandaniel#the thing you need to know about me is that I'm always writing#I may have come a little late in fandom and I'm sure the idea has been written before but it would not let me focus on anything else so-#you're welcome I guess?
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Apologies for no clips today, I'm busy with some work stuff. I'll see if I can post things later.
#Mod talk#Every time I'm busy for a work event something super interesting or important happens during streams I usually watch#so you're welcome in advance I guess#assuming it's a good thing#Usually I listen to streams if I cant watch and work but I cant even listen today
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Two worlds collided and they could never, ever tear us apart
#Tumblr didn't want you to have this - i am literally toggling between Mobile browser and the app bc nothing works right đ€Ș#But she is nothing if not a stubborn bitch who spent an absurd amount of time taking screenshots so dammit this is getting posted#5sos#5 seconds of summer#ashton irwin#ai ig#ashton#ai cover songs#Instagram#Ryan Fleming 2024#kh4f post#But anyways look at himmmmm đ„°đ„°đ„°đ„°#He is just so đđ„čđ©đ©đ»ââ€ïžâđâđšđŒđ€žđ»ââïžđ„Čđ°đ»ââïžđ«¶đ»đđ«đâ€ïžâđ„đ#You know?#And he has a proper garden now! I'll never be over it this is all I've ever wanted ohmygod đ€#Ash baby sir i have been manifesting this for you for nearly 4 years you're welcome#I will accept thanks in the form of smooches đ#Or more cover songs like this I guess#Or also purple shorts content đ€#I fear I've gotten off track...#Look at him!#Why i no can kiss
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I turned the slow-mo on and then snapped this right after the awkward shag convo.
"But Crystal's obviously going through a lot of stuff, and I'm a professional, so. . . nothing's gonna' happen."
And then if you look close, Charles gets this cute lil excited smile to himself.
Get it, loverboy!
#cryland#charles rowland#love this doofus so much#shipping#crystal palace#edwin payne#niko sasaki#cuz she was proxying the fans here#yes i have reached rewach in slowmo stage of fandom obsession#you're welcome for the content please don't judge me#text post#screenshot#slow motion#dbda#dead boy detectives#dead boy detective agency#shag#get it on#shag convo scene#i guess#idk
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if any of my american friends see this, I understand what you're going through and I care you
but jesus fucking christ is it annoying to watch every social media feed just. flooded with doomerism and whining... I know this is just a sub product of american global influence as a whole but it's just frustrating and tiring to have to be invested in one single country's politics cause they're gonna bite everyone's ass. this behavior isn't unique either, this happens after any election, it's just when it's other countries they do that in their segregated "side of the internet" and americans are the whole internet so that's literally all everyone is seeing right now
and I don't wanna say this, cause I get the panic, I really do, been there done there but guys.... you're not special. your fascistic government didn't become suddenly fascistic overnight and it certainly isn't a Unique brand of evil, it's as conservative as the rest of the world's major powers right now! you just didn't care about that as long as you had the illusion of personal safety. congrats! it's gone now. welcome to the real world, oh Regular White American who just suddenly realized they don't have as much say in the order of things as they thought they had! ! you're gonna be fiiiine. you're gonna be fucked over but you're gonna survive just like the rest of the world being fucked over by your stupid government (except for the people it had and continues to kill, obviously)
fuck, this sounds really evil and mean and everyone and their mother are already at each other's throats but ghrrrrrhh I just need to get this frustration out somewhere
#vent#i guess#there's also an even meaner part of me rn that's laughing and screaming 'oh you get it now? you finally get how it feels to be powerless#against an overwhelming conservative majority choosing your fate for you???'#welcome to the fucking club buckos!!#please i hope the people I'm talking about just scroll by#but I'm over here consoling people like 'hey dude the politics sucks even more where i live and I'm fine you're gonna be fine too'#and get hit with 'yeah it helps to hear about places that suck it makes me feel like theres hope for me v.v' like dude.#you thought usa was paradise where nothing could go wrong or smth???#or that any other place on earth with less personal freedom is inherently unlivable and can only be thought of as 'thank god I'm not there'#i get the sentiment. i really do but man being on the other end of 'glad I'm not *there*' is so fucking othering#and I'm not even from anywhere in the global south not even from places it's past personal freedom and straight into being KILLED#and it's not like I'm exempt from this sort of behavior either but MAN..... not even talking about how palestinians are treated rn#cause this has been called out ad nauseam by people way more well-worded than me#this was supposed to be a vent post or smth? i lost my track of thought. gonna hit post and go offline and delete this later
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I called the file "healthycopingmechinisms.png". Like an adult
#i create exclusively angsty bullshit you're welcome#<3#anyway that's the Roof Scene at the end of S1's arc + manga-based dialogue because. manga dialogue reigns supreme here#not the actual translation but. y'know#alice in borderland#my art#mine#aib#aib chishiya#chishiya#i guess i can tag#niragi#cause he's in there#fire#burning#also I KNOW he shouldn't have the card here but the urge to call it TEN OF HEARTS was there so
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youtube
Beep-boop! I'm hosting a MEP again, this time with a specific theme. Come join us and help spread the word! â°(*°âœÂ°*)⯠All info in video description.
#mmv#manga music video#mmv mep#manga edits#my videos#video#all mmv editors are welcome to apply!!! don't be shy!!! and don't worry if you're rusty that's what meps are for <3#and yes yes everyone and their mother have edited with this song but guess what: I HAVEN'T#so here we go
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