#sunglass replacement lenses

[sublimeoptics]

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[starrynyxa]

every single day i am plagued by Expenses

[texasflycaster]

Fuse Sunglass Lens Replacement for Smith Optics

It’s About Time! I have all these wasted lenses sitting around in very good frames, and now maybe I can put the wonderful Smith Optics frames back into service! There is no way anyone can match Smith lenses, but Smith themselves. That is just how it goes. But, their frames are also part of what makes SMITH so great. Now I have a chance to bring back some great frames from the great beyond, a…

[it-may-be-dull-but-im-determined]

As it's also totally valid if you do happen to prefer contact lenses though, you don't have to actually buy those via your optician either - once you have your prescription and have trialled a lens brand you know works for you, there are plenty of much cheaper generics out there that you can brand match online (I use Everclears via VisionDirect in the UK) and then double checked they were safe with my optician next time I had an appt.

can we talk about how literally 64% of people wear glasses, and yet we NEVER see them in movies/tv unless it's on some nerdy or uncool character? why do we adhere to such a weird beauty standard that subconsciously makes us feel bad for,, not being able to see???

[reglaze4u]

Reglaze Sunglasses

Discover the art of reglazing sunglasses to breathe new life into your favorite shades. Whether it's updating your prescription or opting for trendier lenses, reglazing offers a cost-effective and eco-friendly solution. Explore how reglaze sunglasses services can transform your eyewear, providing a stylish and sustainable way to shield your eyes from the sun. Don't let your old sunglasses gather dust—reglaze them and step out in style today. https://www.reglazespecs.com/

[replacementlenses]

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[laurfilijames]

Under His Kutte

Pairing: Jax Teller x female reader

Words: 3.2k

Warnings: Rated E, 18+. Swearing. Sending a nude photo. Fingering. Unprotected intercourse.

Summary: When Jax forgets his kutte at your house, you make good use of it.

A/N: I am such a slut for this man especially when he wears a hat, and particularly when it's backwards. I stared at this photo for too long and needed to write about it, and with the help from @ramadiiiisme, this happened. Bonus action of The Hat™️ at the end 🫠

---

The same flustered excitement you felt in your stomach every time you saw Jax stirred up again despite having only said goodbye to him a few hours ago, the benefits of him having accidentally left his kutte behind continuing to grace you.

You placed it back on the sofa where he had carelessly discarded it last night, pretending as though you hadn’t seen it there as soon as you walked out of your bedroom earlier that morning, his rush to leave after being woken up by a phone call from Chibs making him forget his most treasured item of clothing.

You sat on the barstool at the kitchen island, sipping from a cup of coffee you had been nursing, smiling into the mug when you heard your door open and Jax strut through it as confidently and comfortably as usual.

“I left my kutte,” he explained, getting right to the point while glancing around your living room quickly, lifting up the blanket and a pillow off of the loveseat before spinning on the spot to begin his search of the sofa.

“Oh, did you? I hadn’t noticed,” you lied, your cheeks feeling a flush that was partly from the heat of the coffee but mostly from the sight of Jax. He had his Reaper Crew hat on backwards, sunglasses still on, and the sunshine had kissed the skin on his face to tint it with a healthy pink that was the same whenever he was fucking you.

Finally locating it, Jax held up his vest with a smile before shrugging it on and walking over to you, his smile bright and playful, and you knew his eyes held the same sparkle behind the black lenses that covered them that you could never forget.

He leaned down and kissed you, bracing his arms on either side of your body to land on the countertop and cage you in, forcing your body to arch back into it as he delved his tongue deep inside your mouth.

You hummed when he peeled himself away from you, your eyes feeling heavy with lust as you watched him lick his lips.

“Did you forget it on purpose?” you teased, slipping your hands beneath the leather panels to feel the warmth radiating off his body through his layers of faded shirts.

He chuckled, his hands reaching up to cup your face while he nudged your legs apart with his, standing close to you where he was able to grind his hips against you.

“You’d like to think that, wouldn’t you?”

You giggled when he grinned at you before capturing your lips again, pressing his bulge into your core to make you moan into his mouth, the fervor of your kiss growing with each pass of your tongues.

“Fuck!” he hissed, backing away from you but still holding your face in his hands. “I gotta go.”

You breathed out a disappointed sigh, tilting your head to the side as you watched him step away and try to collect himself, hoping he’d convince himself to stay for a hard and fast fuck.

His phone rang in his pocket, and he dug to answer it immediately, a hint of impatience in his voice. “Yeah, I’ll be right there. I said I’ll be right there…Five minutes! Jesus Christ.”

Jax flipped it shut and shook his head as he replaced it back in his pocket, closing the distance between you again with another smile on his face as soon as he looked at you.

“I’ll see you later.” he spoke sweetly, his tone completely different from the one he had just used to whatever poor soul had called him.

You nodded, smiling again as he kissed you once, then again, chuckling when he finally found the strength to stop and back away from you.

He stormed through to the front door in a few long strides, giving you one last grin as he shut the door behind him, and you grinned to yourself as you picked up your phone and sent him the photo you had taken just after he had called you to say he was stopping by.

You listened for the roar of his Harley to start up, feeling giddy as you waited to see if he checked his phone before taking off.

Standing, you walked over to the window, seeing him sitting on his bike looking at his phone with a huge smile on his face.

Your phone rang, his name and number lighting up the screen, and you answered through a smile so big it hurt your cheeks, “Did you forget something else?”

“Are you kidding me?” he asked, his amusement clear in his voice. “Jesus fucking Christ, how am I going to focus on anything now?”

“It’s just a little something to get you back here.”

“Like I need the help,” he said pointedly, starting his bike where it purred loudly through both the phone and the walls of your house.

“I’ll be back to deal with you soon,” he both promised and threatened, making heat surge through your body like wildfire.

“See you later, Teller.”

You hung up, tucking your lip between your teeth to stave off your smile as you looked at the photo you had sent again, feeling more than satisfied with the reaction it had gotten out of him.

You wore nothing but his kutte, your body that he had already made tired and sore from a sleepless night on full display under his leather, the bare skin on your chest bearing the claiming marks left by his mouth.

He took off quickly, his engine rumbling so loud it vibrated the house and sent a shiver down your spine, and you hoped whatever it was he was going to do was done quickly so he could get back to you soon.

You did everything you could think of to occupy yourself; laundry, dishes, even baked muffins and whipped up a casserole, knowing Jax would be hungry when he got there, or if he wasn’t, that he would be made hungry from all the things you did whenever you were together.

The impatience you felt was beginning to outgrow your arousal, the desperation in wanting to have your hands on him and his on you becoming too much to stand any longer.

Not two minutes later did you hear the distant grumble of his Harley tearing through your neighbourhood, your body conditioned over time to respond to that sound and awaken a neediness and desire that never seemed to be sated.

Even though you expected it, you still jumped when Jax barrelled through the door with a hungry and desperate look on his face as he stared you down while kicking off his white sneakers, his grin sly and crooked.

“Why the fuck aren’t you naked yet?” he panted, crossing the room to get to where you stood waiting for him.

“Isn’t half the fun undressing me?”

“Yeah, but when I’ve been staring at that pic you sent me all day, I kinda want to get to the point,” he explained, his eyebrows lifting upward while he tugged his jeans down to the floor.

He still had his ball cap on, worn with the bill of it facing forward this time, the shade casting on his face making his blue eyes glow like flames in the shadow.

Jax slipped his kutte off, placing it carefully on the back of the sofa as if making a point that he knew where it was or would be needing it again soon, and stepped toward you, tipping his head and giving you a piercing look.

“Now, get naked.”

You obeyed with a grin, crossing your arms to grab at the hem of his ‘SAMCRO’ t-shirt, pulling it over your head where you had the satisfaction of hearing Jax’s breath hitch when your tits became exposed, and tossed it on the floor beside you.

Remaining in your panties, you went to assist him with his clothes, only to have him grip your wrists, his long fingers wrapping around them securely.

“That’s not naked, sweetheart.”

You glared at him as he released you, making a point to slowly hook your thumbs in the waist of them and inch by torturous inch, crept them down your hips.

“Jesus Christ,” he huffed impatiently, even though he was still smiling.

A furious look flashed in his eyes when you pulled them back up to their rightful place, challenging what he would do, and you gasped in equal shock and fear when he grabbed onto your thong and tore them roughly down your thighs.

He crashed against your lips, kissing you with a demand that reminded you that he wasn’t playing games, your body flinching when his fingers trailed along your hip and to your soaked pussy.

Spreading your legs further apart, you moaned into his mouth, rocking on his hand as he drove two fingers inside you, hooking them to massage your g-spot.

Within minutes he had you on the edge, fucking you with his fingers until you were a whimpering mess ready to completely fall apart, but he stopped his movements and withdrew his hand from you, smirking at you with a smugness that managed to turn you on even more.

“Fuck, Jax,” you hissed, your breathing sharp as an untamed feeling ran through your veins.

“Hang on, darlin’” he drawled, his tone all-too happy considering what he just did to you.

He took off his hat and then tore his shirts off his torso, leaving him in his boxers that did nothing to disguise how large and hard he was, and had he not tugged them off himself, you were seconds away from doing it for him, your need for him increasing to the highest point when his cock sprang free.

“Put the hat back on,” you requested, your voice so lusty it was almost unrecognizable.

You squirmed in place, seeing the surprise in his features as he did as you asked and placed it back over his messy, blond tresses that crept out wildly from under it, his expression turned cocky in knowing how horny you were.

A half-satisfied smile pulled at your lips when he stood up against you, wrapping his arms behind your back where his hands carded up and down, returning your smile.

You leaned back slightly, reaching up to grip the bill of it to spin it around, facing it backwards just as he had worn it earlier.

“Happy now?” he chuckled.

You nodded, “Mhm. Are you?”

“Fuck, no!” he admitted jokingly through another laugh, reaching over for his kutte that he hadn’t for a second forgotten about you wearing earlier.

Guiding each of your arms through it, he brought it up to rest on your shoulders, holding onto the edges of its opening as his thumbs moved to rub your nipples until they hardened, making you shiver while a breathy whine passed your lips.

“You’re perfect,” he whispered, his mouth so close to you that his lips grazed your parted ones when he spoke.

You let your eyes close, waiting for him to give you the pleasure he was never selfish with, holding your breath until you felt his lips press onto your neck and down over your chest, his hands falling to your waist and then your hip, smoothing over the curve of your bum where he squeezed your flesh and gave it a playful slap.

Your giggle was swallowed when he kissed you, and you felt his own laugh shake through his chest when you brought your hands up to it, sliding them up to cradle his neck and let your fingers dance where his hair brushed along his bare shoulders.

In a swift motion that caught you off-guard, Jax lifted you into his arms, allowing you to wrap your legs around his waist where he backed you up against the wall, thudding against the drywall as he pressed his body hard into yours.

Your nails raked across his shoulders and upper back, roaming to tangle in his hair that wasn’t trapped beneath his hat, and when he lined his cock up to your spread pussy and guided himself inside, you pulled at the strands that were woven between your fingers, his reaction to both sensations reverberating in your mouth.

Jax unleashed all his power on you, holding you up while slamming into you aggressively, the photos that hung on your wall rattling and banging with his barbaric movements.

Doing the best you could to move with him, you humped up and down in an effort to rub your clit on the coarse, wheat coloured pubes above his cock, feeling your climax begin to build again where it had been left teetering on the edge.

You caught Jax staring at your exposed tits, his vest having opened to put them fully on display where they bounced to the enthusiasm of his thrusts and your erratic rocking, his pupils blown out wide with lust.

“You look so fucking good, baby,” he growled, taking one last look at the erotic scene before meeting his mouth with yours, his kiss sloppy and rough.

A sweat started to break out on both of your bodies, your skin able to slip and glide on his easier with the harder you worked, the hair at the base of his neck damp when you moved your fingers along it.

Jax was always completely enamoured when he fucked you, but for some reason with you wearing his kutte today, he found himself in even more of a state, destroying you with reckless abandon to create the whimpering mess before him that he craved to see, the sounds he pulled from you the sweetest ones he'd ever heard. He was convinced it had something to do with the way his Vice President patch kept swaying beside your right breast as your chest shook in time to his ruthless pace, or the way the worn, faded, black leather and the white on all the labels that had turned dingey over time looked against your supple skin, and the thought of fucking you in it when it ranked him as President one day instead had him ready to explode.

The sense of pride he felt when it came to his club and displaying its logos was something he never took lightly, and seeing them on you intensified it even more, making it seem like no one else could wear them as well as you.

He became almost possessive, wanting to claim you and prove to you all the things he never vocalized all while knowing without hesitation that everything under that piece of leather was his and his only.

He kissed you roughly, not caring that the scruff on his face was turning your skin raw or that his teeth had knocked against yours more than once in his frenzy to get enough of you, feeling your pussy get wetter with every drive of his dick inside it.

“Fucking turn around!” he spat through gritted teeth, giving the order despite forcing you to do it anyway. He dropped your legs and had you spun around and planted against the wall in a matter of seconds, his hand wrapped around the back of your neck to guide you forward, pushing you down so you hinged at your waist and were bent over.

His other hand gripped at your ass to spread your cheeks apart, his cock finding your open cunt without needing any help, slamming into you so hard you had to brace yourself on the wall to stop your face from hitting it.

“God, I’m gonna - fuck! - I’m gonna cum, Jax!” you wailed, your ability to speak properly taken away when he reached around you and started rubbing your clit.

“Yeah?” he huffed, mesmerized in the sight of his glistening cock pumping in and out of you. “You gonna cream all over me, you fucking slut?”

The way he barked that name made you shiver, your mouth filling with saliva to a point you couldn't even contain it anymore, feeling it drool out as your jaw went slack and your climax billowed its way to the surface.

Exhilaration took over you, your moans and cries of approval of how hard Jax was fucking you making him increase his fervor, creating a domino effect of you growing louder and his own moans to sound out and intoxicate you further, the mix of everything so dizzying that it was impossible to imagine a better high.

Jax chuckled behind you, the sound maniacal and deliciously twisted. “That’s it, fuck…”

You let go, accepting the way his body threw you into a trembling orgasm, clenching hard around his cock as he proceeded to pound you mercilessly, hearing his grunts and growls increase in volume and consistency as he honed in on his own end.

He couldn’t look away, watching your combined milky spend leak out of you as he continued to fuck you, your ass cheeks shaking along to his irregular thrusts, the Reaper patch spread out across your back as you took every blow he gave you a sight he would never tire of.

His hand was soaked when he removed it from between your legs, bringing his fingers to his mouth where he sucked them clean, keeping his dick buried inside you until he couldn't anymore.

You closed your eyes as you worked at steadying your breath, your fingers continuing to grip the wall even as you slowly began to straighten your body, feeling full and close to him despite him having slipped from you.

Sweaty handprints temporarily stained the paint when you opened your heavy lids again, smiling at the tingling afterglow that filled your veins, that smile growing bigger when you felt Jax press his lips to your dewy neck where he kissed your sensitive skin with gratitude. You were spun around again, gentler this time, his sweet smile matching yours as he brought his hands up to cup your cheeks, your hands wrapping around his damp back to help support you as you stood on unreliable legs.

He was heavenly in his post-fuck glow, small beads of sweat dancing just below the edge of his hat, his skin tinged with a pinkish blush from his efforts, his pulse hammering in his neck. His lips looked more inviting than usual, plump and moist, and when his tongue licked across them before dipping to capture yours, you swore your own pulse ceased in its duties.

The way he looked at you when he pulled away after kissing you slowly was curious, a softness and devotion reflecting in his cerulean blues that made your heart beat faster after having just managed to regulate it.

“You look like you've got something to say, Jax,” you breathed, wondering if there would ever be a day that he would say what he felt.

He shrugged, his thumbs stroking your heated face as he tilted his head, looking between your bodies at yours clad in nothing but his kutte, seeing his cum dripping down your thigh.

“I think I'll be leaving this here more often.”

You both laughed as he kissed you again, shuffling forward to push you against the wall where he was able to press his lips to yours as much as he wanted to.

---

Comments and reblogs are the lifeline of fanfic, so if you enjoyed reading this story, please consider sharing your thoughts with me and others! 💗

Taglist: @sotwk @dailydragon08 @sunnys-day @thedreadandthefugitivemind @glassgulls @littlenosoul @glitterypirateduck @momia2910 @maggotzombie @rmwarn90 @paintlavillered @stealfromthedevil @kmc1989 @rhoorl

[ms-demeanor]

So I have vision insurance again which means I was able to go to the optometrist and get glasses through insurance for the first time in 11 years (instead of paying out of pocket and getting glasses from zenni) and here are my notes:

It's *NOT GREAT* that Luxotica is mentioned by name on the insurance card printout

I know everything got more expensive in the last ten years, but frames also got a lot more expensive and for some reason there was a huge gap in prices - my insurance covered $130 for frames and the office had a bunch of frames for $70 and a bunch of frames for $150 but basically no frames between those two price points.

When you say "I can't afford to go over the allowance" on XYZ thing they are not even *considering* the cost of progressive bifocals. So I was like "no coating, cheap frames, no extras" and then they were like "okay so the progressive bifocal is going to be over a hundred dollars more" and I was like "how much is the bifocal with a line" and they were like "oh that's only $15 but we don't consider that appropriate for your age, we recommend this other kind of lens" and it doesn't matter what you consider age appropriate for me, I can't afford that so we're not doing that.

The seventy dollar frames are all kind of trash. Super thin, super bendy, and not in a good "flexible fit" way but more in a "if you fall asleep in these you will wake up with broken glasses" way.

They wrote down my reading prescription wrong? For the last ten years I've been slowly creeping up from +.25 to my current +2.50; they told me it had increased but the printout said +.75 so either my prescription has been wrong for a while or they missed the 2 at the front of that number and my glasses are going to show up with a low magnification. (I noticed after I'd left the office but before the glasses arrived).

Given all of that, with insurance: $25 for a pair of glasses, which included the office copay.

So then of course I went to zenni and ordered glasses anyway because I've been wearing the same frame design for seven years and want another pair that look exactly like that.

Progressive bifocals WERE the most expensive part of the order, and because my prescription is stronger they are getting progressively more expensive - initially the upgrade to bifocal cost something like $30 for a lower magnification, now they're $85 for the stronger prescription.

And that's it, that's the expensive part. Fifteen dollar frames, five dollar anti-reflective coating, total for bifocals was around a hundred dollars; I got a pair of single-vision sunglasses for under $20.

Part of the reason I decided to spend more at zenni than at my optometrist's office was because I was able to get good, sturdy frames that I know fit my face and will survive mosh pits and me falling asleep on them without cracking. In order to get the same thing at the optometrist's office I would have had to pay thirty dollars more for lenses as well as forty more for frames so I would have walked out of there paying more for a pair of glasses with frames that I wasn't super excited about (there was a pair that was *okay* but not great that were similar in construction to my current frames but more bulky and square) than I did for glasses that I know I like and a pair of sunglasses.

I did end up paying less out of pocket for the visit than I would have without the insurance, and $15 for a pair of back-up glasses isn't bad. But it was all-in-all a frustrating experience.

However: I've been wearing the same pair of glasses for three years and the anti-reflective coating is worn away in some places and they're so scratched that they're impossible to actually clean in some places and large bastard looked through them last week and was like "OH! No wonder you can't tell when you need to clean your windshield! You don't get to drive at night until those are replaced" so no matter what glasses I'm wearing next week they're going to be an improvement.

[amirasainz]

Omg I've literally just read all of the works you have put up. LITERALLY LOVE ALL OF THEM. Could you write on where baby sainz has a panic attack while in the paddock because of the paparazzi and carlos gets mad and Alex, Rebecca, and Kika try to help her afterwards while the drivers take action.

Hi loves! This request was so hard to write. I hope I did good. Please send me some requests and enjoy reading. (The title got inspired by the Weeknd "Happy House". A great song) -XoXo

Happy House

Amira stood frozen in the center of the paddock, her senses assaulted by the relentless barrage of flashing cameras. The paparazzi had descended upon her like a swarm of locusts, their lenses hungry for every detail of her life. She had seen this happen to her brother, the other drivers, even the glamorous partners of the racing world. But never to her.

Her heart raced, and she fought to maintain composure. The tight circle of photographers closed in, their shouts echoing in her ears. She squinted behind her sunglasses, trying to locate a familiar face among the chaos. Her trusted members were nowhere to be seen, lost in the sea of flashing lights.

Amira’s breaths came in shallow gasps. Panic threatened to overwhelm her. She attempted to break free from the paparazzi’s grip, but their collective force held her captive. Tears welled up, blurring her vision. The questions hurled at her were like daggers, each one piercing deeper into her vulnerability.

Then, a voice cut through the chaos—a lifeline. “Hey, everybody, take at least seven huge steps away from her!” The male voice was authoritative, commanding. Amira’s blurred gaze fell upon her savior, but she couldn’t make out his features. He gently took her arm, leading her away from the suffocating crowd. Her dam broke, and tears streamed down her face, a mix of relief and exhaustion.

In that moment, the stranger became her hero, shielding her from the paparazzi storm. Amira wondered who he was, but gratitude overwhelmed any other thought. She clung to his arm, seeking solace in the unexpected sanctuary he provided. The world outside might still be chaotic, but within the circle of his protection, she found a brief respite—a chance to breathe.

“Shhhh, you’re alright, pequeño Sainz,” said the soothing voice of Sergio “Checo” Pérez. The two of them had interacted quite often already, because sometimes it was easier for Amira to speak Spanish with someone. And Checo had to listen to all the yapping from Max about her. And let it be known that Max could talk for hours about her.

He gently started to steer her away from the prying eyes of the public before he stopped them gently again. “Make sure that all these monsters are banned from the team garages ,” Checo ordered a Red Bull employee. “And someone inform her brother!”

“Vamonos,” he ordered Amira softly. They had to walk quite slowly because her legs wouldn’t stop shaking. Thankfully, after walking for about 5 minutes, Carlos ran towards them. At the sight of her big brother, she let out a big sob.

“Ohhh, Amira. Estás bien. Nadie puede hacerte daño ahora. No dejaré que nadie te toque,” Carlos whispered while he hugged her tight. Picking her up gently, he brought their little group to the Ferrari garage. At their entrance, the happy smiles from Rebecca, Kika, and Alexandra faded, replaced by concern and relief.

Carlos reluctantly released his grip on Amira, allowing her to be enveloped by the comforting embrace of the girls. Their whispered reassurances—“It’s okay, little dove,” “Deep breaths,” and “You did so well”—echoed in the air, soothing her frayed nerves. They settled her into a plush chair, each taking their place around her. Rebecca knelt in front of Amira, holding her trembling hands. Kika sat on her left, guiding her through calming breaths. Alexandra, on her right, gently stroked her hair.

As the girls tended to their princess, Carlos turned to Checo, his voice edged with urgency. “What happened?” he demanded, his eyes searching for answers. Checo’s calm demeanor contrasted with the tension radiating from Carlos. “I don’t know, mate,” Checo replied evenly. “One moment, I’m walking out from the media pen; the next, I see her surrounded by a horde of paparazzi.”

Carlos ran a hand over his face, his concern etched deep. He lowered his voice to a whisper, not wanting to alarm Amira further. “Thank you, Checo. Truly.” After a brief pause, he inquired, “Are those idiots still here?” Checo nodded in confirmation. Carlos’s resolve hardened. “Tell the others what happened. We’re meeting in ten minutes at the entrance. We’ll handle this ourselves—no FIA, no teams. And most importantly, no cameras.” The protective brother in him had awakened, ready to shield Amira from the storm that raged beyond the garage walls.

Carlos gently approached his sister, relieved that her breathing was now under control. Tears still streamed down her cheeks, but the panic had subsided. Rebecca, seeing Carlos’s arrival, made space for him. He took her place, cupping Amira’s chin with one hand. "Look at me, hermanita,” he ordered softly. When Amira finally met his gaze, he reassured her, “Those idiots will never come close to you again. I promise you on my life. Aunque sea lo último que haga en mi vida.” His vow hung in the air, a shield against the world.

After a small nod from Amira, Carlos stood up, pressing a kiss to her hair. He instructed the girls to remain where they were. Unseen by anyone else, the wags exchanged glances—hesitation and unease etched in their eyes.

At the entrance, Carlos found a gathering of drivers. Some, like Nico and Kevin, surprised him. Nico explained, “I have a wife and a baby daughter. I want to make sure that nothing like that can ever happen again.”The others murmured their agreement. Before Carlos could outline the plan, Lance interrupted. “I’m sorry, but Lewis, did you seriously bring Roscoe here? I mean no offense, but he isn’t exactly—” Before Lance could finish, Roscoe growled, catching everyone off guard.

“Boys, attention!” Carlos commanded. “Now our plan looks like this…”

And if the media asked the next day why so many drivers had cracked knuckles or bruised eyes, they’d be met with smirks. Sometimes, actions spoke louder than words.

[philokaliist]

'A Glimpse Of Serpents'

Clarisse La Rue x DaughterOfMedusa!Reader

A/N:Love,love,LOVE the concept of this but Idk how to feel abt how this turned out

Clarisse finds out her girlfriend's heritage and the fact that she inherited her mother's petrifying gaze

In the golden glow of a summer afternoon at Camp Half-Blood, Clarisse La Rue strolled through the training grounds, her armor glinting in the sunlight.

As Clarisse neared the archery range, she spotted her girlfriend,you,leaning against a tree.You,the daughter of Medusa,always wore sunglasses – a necessary shield against the curse that lived within your gaze.Clarisse greeted you with a warm smile, but something in the atmosphere around them felt off.

The sunlight caught the lenses of your sunglasses, and in a fleeting moment, Clarisse saw a reflection that sent a chill down her spine. It wasn't just a normal reflection; it was a glimpse of something unimaginable. In that fraction of a second, Clarisse saw the twisted, serpentine eyes of yours, eyes that mirrored the cursed heritage passed down from Medusa herself.

Clarisse looked at you,eyes wide for a moment,but then a scowl forming on her face as she decided to question you - to confirm if what she just witnessed was right. "What's with the shades all the time? We're in camp,not some fancy set." she grumbled.

You hesitated for a moment,then sighed,deciding to tell her "Clarisse, there's something I need to tell you, but you have to promise not to freak out.Please."

Clarisse scoffed, "Just spill it already."

Taking a deep breath,you removed your sunglasses - not meeting Clarisse's gaze,you revealed eyes that mirrored the unsettling gaze of your mother, Medusa. Clarisse recoiled, her anger momentarily replaced by shock.

"What the hell!?" Clarisse's voice trembled with a mixture of disbelief and betrayal.

You nodded solemnly, "I didn't want you to find out like this,but I didn't know how to tell you."

Clarisse's fists clenched, her expression hardening. "You've been keeping this from me? Are you trying to turn me into stone or something!?" she was furious now,and it was showing - both from her face and her tone.

You pleaded, "No, Clarisse, I love you. I wear the sunglasses to avoid accidentally turning anyone to stone. I've been trying to protect you."

Clarisse's anger flared up, "Protect me?!Protect me!!? By keeping such a major secret? You think I can't handle it?!"

You stammered "I was scared, okay? I thought you'd hate me!"

Clarisse glared at you, the hurt evident in her eyes. "You could have trusted me.But instead,you lied to my face!!"

You gasp,panic setting in,stumbling backwards. "Clarisse, please don't..."

But it was too late. Clarisse snapped, her temper boiling over. "Get away from me! I can't believe I trusted you."

You winced,devastated, turned around and fled deep into the forest. Clarisse, seething with anger and confusion,stood alone near the archery range.As you ran,your tears mingled with the constant muttering of "monster, monster, monster" echoing through the trees.

Clarisse was still grappling with the revelation and the harsh words she had just hurled at the person she loved. Deep down, she knew you weren't a monster, but the shock had ignited a volatile reaction. As the echoes of your footsteps faded, Clarisse was left with the weight of her own regret, realizing that the trust they had built might be shattered.

Eventually, Clarisse found you sitting by the lake alone, staring at your reflection with a mixture of self-loathing and fear. The raw vulnerability in that moment softened Clarisse's anger. She approached you with a gentleness that hadn't been there before.

As you looked up,tear-stained eyes meeting Clarisse's amidst the shadows of the ancient trees as you cried harder and spoke,your eyes still hidden behind the sunglasses. "You don't understand,Clarisse!You can't understand!I'm a monster.My mother's curse runs through me.I never asked to be born a monster!I didn't...I really didn't..." your words seemed to catch in your throat as you sobbed.

Clarisse sighed,still obviously upset - but she spoke in a calmer tone,attempting to calm you down.She kneeled besides you and spoke "Look,sorry for how I acted back there.It just..I was disappointed and sad - sad that you didn't tell me,sad that you lied to me...but I'm not running away from you.I would never run away from you." Clarisse spoke softly, her voice a contrast to the anger from before. "We're in this together,no matter what.But you've got to trust me,even with the parts you consider ugly."

Clarisse gently reached for her girlfriend's hand, her expression softening. "I know I can be a handful, but I'm not going anywhere.We face things together, good and bad. Trust me, okay?" She offered a small, reassuring smile, hoping to mend the moment and strengthen your connection as you embraced,hugging eachother tightly.

A/N:This was kinda fun to write but I mean - it's something? Anyways finished my hw 💀

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[luveline]

𝐢𝐟 𝐢𝐭 𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐬 | 𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐞 𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧

You don’t mean to make an enemy of Eddie Munson — he’s handsome, and talented, but he’s the biggest jerk you’ve ever met. Eddie thinks you’re infuriatingly pretty, emphasis on the infuriating. Too bad you just can’t seem to leave each other alone. [13k]

fem!reader, enemies-to-lovers, rival rockstars, mutual pining (and hatred), slight miscommunication, angst, hurt-comfort, eddie has mixed intentions, kissing / heavy petting, hickeys, sexual tension, eventual hate-fucking, some misogyny (not eddie), TW readers bandmate is a bully, TW drugs/alc/smoking, disclaimer: I can’t play an instrument

𓆩❤︎𓆪

Indianapolis International Airport, Indiana, Late 1988.

There's a really sweet-looking boy sitting in the chair across from you. The airport is blotted out by both your headphones —huge chunky cans, the best you could afford— and your sunglasses. He's a shade of sepia from the lenses, dark hair darker still where it's tucked into the hood of his hoodie. 

There's no way he could possibly know you're staring at him while you're facing your lap, scribbling lyrics for a song that'll never get made with your body curled inwards, and yet he looks up from the novel in his. He smiles, his cheeks pulled up, and he looks younger. He isn't old by any means but something about his smile is transformative. 

You don't mean to give yourself away. You smile back just a little. 

He says something. You push your headphones around your neck and break the seal, soft 70's rock replaced by the sounds of the airport, footsteps and clicking and children laughing somewhere behind you. 

"I'm sorry," you say, covering the cans of your headphones to cut their weak buzzing, "what did you say?" 

"I said you have good taste."

He nods toward your guitar case patterned in overlapping band stickers. 

You notice his own case on the seat next to him. It's more conspicuous than your own with only one sticker, a band you've never heard of. 

"I wish I could say the same, but I don't know who that is, 'Corroded Coffin'?" you ask, purely curious. 

He sits forward, a picture of casual confidence as he drops his face into his palm, elbow digging into the ripped jeans covering his knee. "I'm offended, sweetheart. They're only the best sound to come out of Indiana in the last ten years." 

"The Stacey's?" you offer, scandalised by his suggestion. "Doorway to Cooperstown? The Cats?" 

He blinks at you. "You know the scene." 

"It's my scene," you say.

You don't mean to sound pretentious, and hopefully you don't, but music is your life. 

"It's mine, too," he says. He leans forward and scrubs a hand through his hair, scratching absentmindedly. "Where are you going? Must be pretty important to tear you away." 

"New York. I'm– I'm a techie for Godless. I will be, once I get there." You sound smug and nervous at the same time.

"Holy shit," he says. He smiles a gorgeous, awful kind of smile, like you've been friends for years, and your good news is his. "No fucking way. Go you." 

Godless have been compared to loads of bands but the one you favour is a heavier, feminine The Clash. It's an emerging sound, punk rock stolen, repurposed, and remade. Reborn by girlhood rage. You love their sound (though you have some notes), you love their statement, and you're probably the happiest you've ever been knowing you'll be behind the scenes of a new era of music. 

"And you're taking her?" he asks, gesturing to your guitar case. 

Inside is a beat up old bass guitar you got for nothing. You're self-taught, you're good, but you don't have any disillusions on what you'll be doing on tour. 

"She's worthless," you say, "mostly taking her for company." You reuse his pronouns, though you aren't the type to assign personality to your instruments. "What about you, uh–" 

"Eddie," he says, taking his guitar case into two fine hands. Your eyes snag on his ragtag assortment of rings, and he leans over the neck of the case to retake your gaze. "This… is Sweetheart." 

— 

Hotel Edison, New York, Early 1990.

"We have to go. Why are you guys never ready when I tell you to be?"

You panic slightly. "I need a minute." 

"Ananya, could you find, like, a modicum of patience? Fucking annoying." 

Sharp, Morgan's unhappiness sounds over the droning drill of your shitty hair dryer. You shift where you're kneeling in front of the floor length mirror to check she isn't talking to you — unusual, but not impossible that her hostility would be aimed at someone who isn't Ananya. 

Ananya stands in the middle of the hotel room, thick eyebrows pulled into a familiar scowl.

"Get it together," she says disdainfully, like Morgan's nothing more than a mild inconvenience. 

You wish you had her confidence when it comes to Morgan's tantrums. You stand up, clad in nothing more than underwear and a pair of black stockings, your t-shirt in one hand and the hairdryer still humming in the other. You turn it off and let it drop to the floor, worried you're just another rockstar cliche as you take in the state of your room. Your suitcase is open and your clothes are all over the place, laid flat in an attempt to dry your rain-soaked clothes. Your underwear dangle from the lampshade, a mix of pretty lingerie you've yet to wear and full-shaped panties that had made Morgan laugh for a minute, no pauses. 

"I can see why you're so desperate," she'd barbed. 

You slip your shirt over your head in case you have to act as a human shield. It's honestly not the worst thing they've had you involved in this year. 

"You're not wearing that, are you?" Morgan asks. 

She's a fascinating creature in that she isn't always talking with thinly veiled passive aggression. You genuinely believe she's looking out for you sometimes, or believe that she believes it, at least. She doesn't say it with malice, simply asks. 

She's multi-faceted. 

"No," you say, though you'd been meaning to. 

"Good, skirts really aren't your thing. You look blocky. I have a pair of flares in my bag, wear them." 

And Morgan — Morgan's the lead singer of Godless. You don't really have a choice. 

You find the pants she'd instructed you to wear and half tuck your shirt, scrabbling for your shoes as Ananya starts lamenting the time, sat on the small table by the TV.

"They have to wait for us, babe, that's the whole point," Morgan says, fussing over her eye make-up. 

"No, they don't. And we really don't need the attention right now." 

"That's dramatic." 

Ananya leans forward and clicks on the TV with a perfect finger. The screen buzzes to life. She clicks through the channels until she gets to the local news station, and then she slumps over the frame on her elbow. 

You giggle behind your hand. Onscreen, images of Morgan are blown up and slated, your bandmate sloppy drunk on the steps of Covey Gold. They've caught you red-handed in the background pretending you aren't with her, but luckily Morgan's too obsessed with herself to notice. 

"I really don't see the issue," she says breezily, slipping into her tiny heels one foot at a time. "I look sick." 

She looks stunning, easily, but that's not the problem. 

"You have a fucking snow trail," Ananya says. 

Unfortunately, Morgan's left nostril is crusted with coke. 

"It's punk rock!" Morgan's moved onto earrings now, and she's jutting her tiny pointed chin toward the door. "Hello? We're late." 

You don't roll your eyes, but you could. You slip your shoes onto your feet and tuck the laces inside without tying them while the news anchor on TV continues to relay current events. 

"Fletcher isn't the only rockstar making a mess in New York City this week. Members of up and coming heavy metal band Corroded Coffin were sanctioned by Flume Venues Tuesday night for damaging twenty six thousand dollars worth of equipment when their lead guitarist kicked over an amp and caused a quote unquote 'domino effect.'" The anchor laughs. "Their PR has certainly felt some corrosion." 

You look up at the joke and are just in time to catch a picture splayed across the screen of the band. You're so close that their faces are made up of red, blue, and green, more colour than photo. Your skin glows with the image. Your eyes widen, perplexed. 

"Do we know those guys?" you ask. 

Morgan grabs your hand and drags you up. "They know us," she says. "That's what matters." 

Ananya turns off the TV. 

You're thrilled at being included in the 'us'. You've been an unofficial official member of Godless for four months now. Each one feels more unreal than the first, and each one brings a solidity. In Ananya's words, you're on 'probation, given you can keep up', but you look at her now, her hopeless expression as she closes your room door behind you, and know she's not hoisting you off the stage anytime soon. She'd have to deal with the world's tallest toddler alone. 

Your tour manager and assorted personnel meet you in the hotel's lobby, furious and panicky at your being late. Morgan spouts the same spiel as you get shepherded into cars idling outside of the hotel.

"We're the talent. What were you gonna do, throw the gig without us?"

You're both embarrassed by her and impressed. Morgan is pretty and talented and extremely loud — she's not afraid to stick up for herself, even when she's (nearly always) wrong. She sees each hurdle in her life as an unfair disadvantage. Insanity, in your opinion, considering nearly all of those hurdles have been jumped by means of a favour, rather than any expended effort on her part. 

Her bad attitude aside, she's a good singer. She's gorgeous, exactly the kind of face that obliterates mainstream reluctance. 

She sits between you and Ananya and kicks her feet out over the console, boots between your driver and your tour manager, Angel.

"You guys can't be late like this. You have half the time you need for sound check now, you realise?" 

"I don't need practice," Morgan says. 

"It's not practice, Morgan, it's–" 

Morgan laughs and bursts into song. She does it whenever she doesn't want to listen to Angel, and she sings an apt tune: Angel by Aerosmith. You look out the window rather than watch, eyes snagging on the wet New York streets and taxis and people, so many people despite the weather, black umbrellas like inverse stars lining the sidewalks. 

Morgan has a great voice, raw when she wants it to be and full of life when she doesn't. You can't hear Angel's venue instructions under it and are barely paying attention as a lanyard gets tossed into your lap. It sounds stupid, and a few months ago you wouldn't believe it, but you get used to the motions. Ferried from one place to another, all anybody cares about is technicalities, politics, public image, and how you look on stage. All you care about is the music. Your bass guitar in your hands, that familiar weight, the strings as your pick slides across them, and the sea of the crowd. Its waves and ripples, hands and eyes and mouths like poppies, red-pink tongues and black throats at the centre as they scream. When you throw your pick people want to catch it. They fight over it. You throw a few. There's always more in a box in some poor techies bag.

The cushy car you're in pulls up and parks outside of the venue's main entrance. You climb onto a wet curb and shield the top of your hand with your head, dirty rain splashing down in fat, sparse drops that chill your scalp. Morgan blitzes inside and Ananya tags behind her. You go slower, eyes following down the sidewalk where, in a couple of hours, fans will wait to see you, shivering in the cold. 

— 

Every breath Gareth takes sucks in Eddie's short sleeved t-shirt. Eddie scowls at the top of his bandmate's head and tries to shift away. 

"Seriously, man? There's a whole fucking couch," Eddie grouches. 

Gareth sits up with bleary eyes furrowed into a scowl of his own. He's pale and missing his glasses, giving him the appearance of a concerned zombie.

"Shithead." 

Eddie has a lot of emotions he wants to express and none he feels he can properly articulate. The injustice of his current situation, for one, is a burning irritant. How the fuck can you get grounded by your manager? And why did his warden have to be the most boring member of the band? Sorry Gareth. 

"Can't you sleep in your bed?" Eddie asks. 

"You'll sneak out." 

Eddie will sneak out. He's a fledgling rockstar in New York. Suddenly, there are a hundred colourful boozy doors wide open to him, and he intends on haunting the threshold of each one accordingly. 

But you kick one amp and boom, you're the antichrist. 

"You know this is stupid." 

Gareth rubs his eyes. "I mean, do I know that?" He reaches behind the couch armrest for the two-litre bottle of soda stashed there, and he talks as he brings the lip to his mouth. "You've been a real pissant lately, Munson." 

"You're a pissant, pissant," Eddie says, really scowling now. 

Gareth kicks him across the sofa. Eddie kicks back, foot jamming into the side of Gareth's knees. Soda spills in a shoot over the carpet. Gareth is a know-it-all with a predisposition for being as unpleasant as he can possibly be at all times, in Eddie's opinion, and Eddie knows the second the soda lands what he's going to say. 

"Nice going, hotshot. This is why you're fucking grounded." 

Eddie's halfway across the sofa when the door opens, an unimpressed Jamison standing with the light behind him. He flicks on the main switch and glares, brown skin golden in the resulting yellow light. 

"What are you losers doing?" 

"I prefer the term 'freak'," Gareth says, glare softening. "I'm fending off Munson's advances, what does it look like? No means no, asshole." 

"You're disgusting," Eddie says. 

"You look disgusting," Jamison echoes. "I don't know who forgot to tell you, but they invented running water a century ago. Go shower. I'll watch baby boy." 

Eddie thinks Jamison is hot in the freaky way — Jamison is conventionally attractive, and Eddie would let him get freaky if he asked. He has a perfect complexion, the most attractive of the band by far, medium brown skin and a broad-shouldered frame. He's the eye-candy, literally; they'd admitted him into the fold based one parts on his talent, two parts his image. 

He can play piano, guitar, bass guitar, violin, all that shit. He's a musician, and he's better than Eddie at everything but the guitar. 

Nobody's better than Eddie on guitar. At least, not anybody running in his circles. 

"I can't shower, I'm watching him." 

"I'll watch him," Jamison says, like this is extremely obvious and Gareth is an idiot. 

Eddie pulls a couch cushion over his face and drags himself onto his back, whining into the fabric unhappily. "This is fucking bullshit," he mutters

"This is due diligence," Gareth says. Eddie feels his weight lift off the couch and lets his legs slide into the empty space. 

"This is fucking bullshit," he repeats. 

There's a silence. He sulks. Gareth collects toiletries and the bathroom door clicks open and closed. The shower spray begins to sputter, and then the pillow is being tugged out of Eddie's hands and tossed aside. 

"Jame," he protests. 

"Shut up." Jamison stares down at Eddie. "Are you done being a child?" 

"I already told you, it was an accident. Yeah, I kicked the amp, because my fucking string snapped and nobody would listen to me. I didn't know it was gonna actually move." 

"If we go out, can you behave?" Jamison asks quietly. 

Eddie sits up ramrod straight. "Absolutely… Why? What's so important?" 

"Jeff's asleep, I'm bored, and-" He shrugs offhandedly. "If you got 'em, flaunt 'em?" 

Jamison holds up a silver pair of car keys. They clink together, the sound music to Eddie's ears. 

—

So you and Eddie meet for the second time like this. 

“Does it have to be this loud?” you shout over the music, pleading gaze on Ananya, who shrugs. 

She looks better after a show, even drunk. Her lipstick is a pink-red with a darker but incomprehensible outline, leaving her looking kissed sick. Her dark eyebrows are ruffled and thick, their minimal gel sweated off. She has the most heartbreaking expression about her, and you think it isn’t truly fair, how she can look so pretty and be so talented at the same time. A tragedy that other people have time for both. You feel as though you barely have the time for one.

Despite the volume, you love the sound. This is your sound. Small town hatred in a big room — begging to get out and the music proof enough that you did. It’s passionate and anxious, a two-chord progression that’s boggling simplistic but drawing you in anyhow. Wrinkled noses and bored eyes say it’s not to everyone’s taste, but you’d hazard a guess that whoever plugged it into the stereo isn’t the kind of person who worries about public opinion. If Godless worked more on your choices, this is how you’d sound.  

“Whose house are we in?” you ask. 

“Babe,” Ananya says, “seriously, there’s a whole room of people who want to answer you. Go bother someone.” Else. Go bother someone else. 

She dismisses you with little more than that, slinking into the kitchen with a toss of her thick hair. The red of her corset top darkens to a bloodier shade in the mood lighting. She looks as though she’s bleeding out from the back. 

You aren’t sure Ananya’s right. You aren’t, in the eyes of the people here, anything impressive. A techie who’s been filling in isn’t anything new, no, you’re only impressive if you get to stay, if you play better than anybody else. You’re never gonna prove that under Morgan’s thumb, and you’ll never prove it without her. 

I need a bump, you think. Morgan’s coke nose flashes in your mind and you change your mind. I need something to drink. Something fucking cold, but if Ananya thinks you’ve followed her into the kitchen she’ll throw a pissy fit in front of everybody. 

The room is a gaudy yellow, a tobacco stained fingerprint over the lampshade with whorls of dirt in lines, darker patches where shadier reconciliation plays; in one corner, a bag of coke, another something worse. This had been a surprise with age rather than location, the commonplace of cocaine and the bravado of its sufferers from high school and up. You’d die for some of that cocky confidence now, numb gums and a sullen credit card. 

I need to get paid. 

The heat of a cigarette tip kisses your shoulder. In your ear, the sound of someone taking a long, slow drag, crackling paper. You turn into it slowly, looking up slower, right into the skinny face of your missing-in-action bandmate. 

“What’s up?” Morgan asks, blowing her smoke in your face. Your eyes burn. 

She’s placing the cigarette between your lips before you can answer. Whether she believes she’s tormenting you or throwing you a life raft, you’re grateful for it, sucking in a blistering breath and wincing as it floods your nose. 

You blow it away from her. 

“Ashtray?” you ask, pinching the cig between two fingers. 

“The floor’s fine.”

You raise your eyebrows, unsurprised at her cavalier suggestion and flick it still smouldering into your cupped palm. The door is perpetually open, guests flicking in and out like the froth of a cresting wave, a rushing entrance and a sluggish recession. 

“Can you get me a bag?” you ask her. 

“I’m not your daddy,” she murmurs.

“Bored already?”

“I have to be bored?”

To bother bothering you? Yes, Morgan would have to be bored. Bored or wasted, and she doesn’t seem inebriated. You place the cig between your teeth and lean your head back to look at the ceiling rather than give her the attentive watching she desires, the roof of your mouth an uncomfortable heat.

You remove it, blow all your smoke skyward, and drop your head. “How are you gonna fuck with me tonight?” you ask plainly. 

You find you aren’t asking Morgan. 

In her place stands a much taller, much more handsome face, big eyes set into pale skin. You don't recognise him at first. He wears the uniform well, in company with every other guy in the room, a crumpled shirt you imagine discarded and re-discarded on different floors. Ripped, dark jeans. He could be wearing nothing at all and the air of intimidation surrounding him would survive — there's something behind his eyes that alarms you, a knife's edge. Sweetness bordering cruelty. 

"I don't know yet," he says. An insipid smile takes his lips from corner to corner as he eases the cig from your hand. "I'm sure we can think of something… together. Sweetheart." 

Boys don't always give you the time of day, not the nice ones, and he doesn't look very nice. He looks like he's trying to calculate what he can get out of you. You're thinking you'll pay just about anything if he can get you a bump of something fun. 

He sees your look too, his lips poised to mention it, but you've just realised where you know him from. 

"I saw you on TV."

"Yeah? In Madison Square Garden?" 

"In court." You give him your best doe eyes, a soft, sweet look, far from mastered and yet effective where it counts. "How much did you have to pay for all the stuff you broke?" 

His smile shutters, realigns. A split-second and enough to let you know his cool gaze is nothing more than a parlour trick.

"You look familiar," he says. 

You hum. "Rollerboy paid, huh?" 

He glares, the idea that his record label might pay for the damages he'd caused laughable and undoubtedly correct. You aren't trying to make enemies, aren't attempting to play someone you're not — you're meek mannered, mollycoddled, too naive to be in the industry for very long. You can see it on his face, exactly what he's thinking, and it's easy to see because everybody else is thinking it too. Even you. 

Before you can repair the offence you've caused, he's dropping your stolen cigarette on the ground and grinding out the flame. 

"Nice to meet you," he says slowly. 

You stare straight ahead and listen to him leave. Smoke tickles your nose. When you look down, the cigarette is smouldering. You squat down, pick up the flattened bud, and drive it into the floor until your fingers are black with soot. 

You wrap those same ashy fingers around the neck of a bottle of coke and try not to be too pissy about it. Fucking rockstars and their fucking egos. He did something embarrassing, and you're the villain? 

You feel bad halfway through your coke. Maybe he'd had nice intentions, but how could you know? You'd talked for all of two minutes. And even if he was bad news, he likely wouldn't have been any worse than half the jerks here. 

He'd have had a handsome face to look up into while said intentions were being acted out, at least.

You frown more. Wishing you'd been nicer to him because you're bored enough to want to get laid isn't strictly kind. Human, maybe. 

The feeling worsens when his appearance garners a small crowd. He sits in a nest of dirty couch cushions and a cloud of smoke, the smell of green strong enough to irritate you from here, telling a story with frenetic hands, and despite the cool look he'd given you earlier, he's making a show of it. Cussing, giggling, blunt between his lips as he ushers for a zippo. A pretty girl with surfer curls relights it, an act of flirting in the way she pulls her shoulders in. 

He takes the blunt from between his lips and blows the smoke so it misses her completely. 

"Thanks, sweetheart," he says, voice rough as hewn stone. 

You kick one shoe behind the other and squeeze your tired thighs together. You get this feeling like a matchstick, red powdered head flicking against gritty scratchpad but failing to strike. Something is familiar about the way he speaks, his sticky inflection. 

Or you're lying to yourself, and you just like the way he talks 

The way he would've spoken, thick fingers braceleting your wrists as he forces your hands into the pillow behind your head, the weight of his body on top of yours, the snugness of a knee between your soft thighs. Your hotel light would've kissed his left side, dividing his curls into strands, the individuals glowing like silver thread as they danced over your cheek and temple, as his breath warmed your lips, as he closed the distance. 

Joan, you could hit him.

"That's an unfortunate hand. Are you sober?"

Cheeks full of heat at being caught in a fantasy, you lift your eyes and meet light, almond brown eyes almost entirely shielded by darker eyebrows. A man stands in front of you, a comfortable gap between his nondescript skate shoes and your worn boots. He's tall and pretty and surprising: he's smiling at you like you're something worth smiling at. 

"I'm–" You brandish the bottle as if that might explain it but harshly set it aside. "No, not sober. I mean, not willingly. Coke's were out here, so…" 

"Oh, right," he says, nodding knowledgeably. "Right, I was sorry to hear about that." 

You lick your lips. "'Bout what?" 

"They banned beautiful women from the kitchen," he says. "Hadn't you heard?" 

"No, that one passed me by." 

"I'm Jamison," he says, holding out his free hand. 

You take it. You tell him your name. 

—

Morgan is crying. Big heaping sobs that she attempts to talk through, creating this ringing whining sound that fills you top to toe with anxiety. You lean back in your hotel bed, wondering what it is in the world that could've happened to her as a kid to make her this unsatisfied now. Ananya blows on her freshly painted nails though they've been dry for hours, knee to knee with you atop the squishy hotel sheets. 

"I can't fucking do this," Morgan cries, tears dripping down her bare skinned cheeks. 

The three of you have been sworn off of makeup, junk food, and unapproved wash products for the next four to five hours. You're happy for this to continue until the end of time. Morgan, less so. 

You're trying to decipher exactly why she's crying, feeling a confusion you'd liken to the first modern day archaeologist that laid eyes on ancient hieroglyphics. All these symbols and colours and stories. No clear translation. 

If Ananya were an archaeologist, she's the kind who got to see the Rosetta stone. Morgan's moods make sense to her, and while she often doesn't empathise with her, she at least knows what to say to appease the worst of it. 

"It'll be alright, Morgs," she says, her faux sympathy unconvincing.

You feel a little sorry for Morgan and clear your throat. "And you're not by yourself. We're here." 

"Fucking amazing help you've been," Morgan says. Her voice does a theatrical peak, pure hysterics. 

It irks you how good she looks. You think that, maybe, if you could make your problems pretty the way that she does, you'd be a lot happier overall. You've often lamented that you suffer the kind of unhappiness that makes people uncomfortable and unwilling. You cry ugly, and always alone, hands over your mouth to smother the sounds, and that's when you do cry. Mostly, you bounce around inside yourself and feel very afraid that this feeling is forever. 

But, you think presently, that isn't Morgan's fault. Not all of it. 

Morgan throws her hands out at you and Ananya and spins on her heel, through the bathroom and into her own separate room. 

"At least the backdrop of her breakdown is nice," you murmur, hugging the pillow against your stomach, heels digging into the mattress to keep your knees up. 

Ananya snorts and flicks to the next page of her magazine. "Right?" She stretches her naked legs out over your sheets. You know she's decided to ruin your bed with her after-waxing oils rather than her own. "Better here than back home." 

"Why's she so upset?" you ask. 

Already, your thoughts are starting to drift. You take another peek at the phone across the room and will it into ringing. 

"She draws them on everyday anyway," Ananya says agreeably. 

You summarise that Morgan's eyebrows are the root of the problem. You don't blame her for wanting to look perfect tomorrow night. Your stomach is a weight every time you think about it, solid as petrified wood. This will be your first TV appearance that isn't a recorded concert, a mid-show performance for the Prover Music Awards, and it should further cement your place in the band. If you look good and people like you, public favour might be enough to keep you around. If they don't, there'll be a couple hundred different audience members with industry links. If you play well, and you're certain you will, you might finally prove to Morgan, Ananya, and the rest of the management team that you're worth choosing. 

You want it badly. You want lots of things, and being a real part of Godless could hand them all to you on a studded platter. Recognition of your talent, further experience, the chance to perform and be supported, to be adored, and the money isn't something you'll pretend you don't think about. A rockstar's salary is hardly stable, but a lack of stability is almost always supplemented by the amount. Wouldn't that be nice? To buy your own bass, to buy whatever you liked. To go out and have spa treatments like the one you'd had just this morning whenever you please. To get to feel beautiful and limp as this all the time. More than anything, you want the validation, the poster that comes with it. 

If Godless decides to keep you, it's a huge, blinking, neon-lit sign that says you're good enough. 

They chose me, and you're stupid for letting me go. 

They chose me. I'm something worth something. You didn't see it, but it's there in me. 

The subtext isn't important. 

You're scared shitless at the reality of performing tonight, knowing any fuck up could follow you, or worse ruin your hopefully budding career in rock for the rest of time. You have this body and this name, and if you want to keep your life you have to be good. It has your fingers itching for your piece-of-shit bass guitar where you know she's hiding under the bed. You should be practising, but this entire week has been practising. The dress rehearsal went well, and you'll give yourself a pass for having certain distractions. 

Morgan warbles. You glance at the phone. 

"Waiting for someone?" Ananya asks. She misses nothing. 

You both wince as Morgan screams and throws something across her bedroom, the eventual clattering smash indicative of a fragile target. 

"Think room service will send up a sedative?" she asks. 

Room service won't send a sedative, nor will they send the single hashbrown Morgan is apparently craving. You're starting to panic when the solution practically jumps at you. 

"Morgan," you say gently, standing in the doorway of her room with a tentative smile, "can't offer you something, can I?" 

You hold up your little pouch. Morgan doesn't know you well, but she knows it's where you keep anything interesting. She should know, she pilfers it of anything truly exciting within the day. 

"Don't be stupid," she scathes. "My eyes will be bloodshot. You know smoking doesn't agree with me." 

You hold in a comment on how she'd literally been smoking out of the window last night. 

"It's a brownie. It's a couple days old, but… perfectly edible." You offer her the pouch, dropping it at the end of the bed among her things. 

She picks at the brownie, timid princess bites that make you want to roll your eyes. You often think the worst thing about Morgan is that you love her, or you could love her more, if only she felt the same way. She isn't all evil and she never will be, she's just a person. But she takes shit out on you and makes your life harder than it needs to be, so even her most endearing moments fall short. 

"This tastes awful." 

You laugh and kneel down at her dresser to start putting her thrown jewellery box back together. "It wasn't that nice when I got it," you lie. 

You clean her room. Morgan never wants to do anything she knows can be done for her, and you know she won't bother here, not when room service will spend the hour it takes themselves. You think of some poor service worker squaring away the impossible amount of stockings and garters for a sad $3.45 an hour and the task suddenly becomes much more enjoyable. 

Morgan doesn't say thank you. You don't insult her intelligence by thinking she isn't aware of what you're doing. She sniffles and blows her nose daintily with a balsam tissue. 

"I saw you talking to that guy from Corroded Coffin." 

You brush off your knees as you stand. "Which one?" 

"Eddie. The rhythm guitarist." 

"The loud one." 

"He's kind of hot. If he calls, you should go out with him." 

"That's not–" who I'm waiting for. You squint at her. "Morgan, that would be terrible." 

"Can you get me something from the minibar?" 

You kick open her minibar and grab a cold can of seltzer. She slides onto her back and accepts it, pressing it to her eyes with a relaxed smile. Eyebrows forgotten, it seems. 

"That would be perfect. He can be the cat to your mouse." 

"Your definition of perfect–" You cut yourself off again when she starts to laugh. You don't believe it to be genuine. 

She lounges in bed for an hour until she's high, reappearing in you and Ananya's suite with a dizzying smile. You don't mind high Morgan. She's smoked enough in her time to bypass the dizzying, giggly kind of stoner. This Morgan is relaxed, almost easygoing. She sits at the end of your bed and watches you pluck out a bass line proposal for one of their current works in progress, head bobbing. 

An hour again and the stylists appear to spray you down with smells and oils and make up, and soon you've been strapped into a short shining dress with a cowl neck, dark black stockings that shine like oil, and heels you can't really walk in. You complain about them politely enough that Mel, the man in charge of your 'costuming', swaps them out for shorter ones. 

"This fucking corset is a nightmare," Morgan grumbles. 

"Sorry, love, that's all we've got." 

The commute is over in a blink. You arrive outside of the venue for the Awards, staring up at its imposing silhouette against the skyline, a dark building in the strange blue night. The sun is unseen but light illuminates the wet streets in blinding patches, so white they glow violet behind your eyes. 

There's a modest red carpet where you thankfully don't have to pose for many photos. After all, besides being a temporary member of the stage, you aren't truly in Godless. Most casual fans (the majority of their fan base) only know the faces in the magazines and on TV, and you have yet to be in either until tonight. 

After a bundle of shy and regretfully nerve-wracking photos, you're drawn inside the building and away from all the flashing hubbub. You sit in your seats, short rows divided by the occasional table for drinks, and you try not to sink into the carpeted floor. It smells insanely like nothing at all. No bleach, no air conditioning cleanliness. Every now and then another guest walks past your row and you get a whiff of perfume. 

A familiar scent pricks your attention. 

You look up, slightly over your shoulder, and your eyes meet familiar sticky brown. 

He drops down in the seat next to you, and you think, No way. 

He holds up the placard that had been under his thigh. His name is typed in clear blocked letters. 

It's a strange humiliation to have been read for filth like that. You're you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me expression can be pretty telling, evidently. 

"Hey, sweetheart." 

Matchstick against the box. You tilt your head and try to place him for the tenth time. 

"Have we met before?" you ask. 

He actually grins like this is the best thing you could've said. "You met my friend," he says, pointing down the aisle. 

Jamison stands talking to a woman who is admittedly gorgeous, and, to your sinking horror, much prettier than you. They kiss each other on the cheek and it's the kind of over friendly to make you sick. 

Eddie pouts at you. "Better luck next time, sweet thing." He throws one leg over another. "You look different. New haircut?" 

"You look exactly the same," you say. 

It's surprising how untouched he is. Sure, he's had some makeup applied and his hairs been tousled into life, but his outfit is remarkable in its simplicity. Surely rockstars can wear suits too? He looks neat and dark and tidy, but he also looks effortless. It's irritating.

This phenomena is not self contained, you find, as his bandmates sit down the row with their managerial chaperones and one date. Jamison sits right at the very end. He doesn't look at you. 

You avert your eyes and wonder if it's possible to die from embarrassment. 

The venue gets increasingly busy as the bigger names and bands flood inside. Soon, you're sitting amongst legends, people who pretty much spearheaded late 80s glam rock, punk, grunge. People you've only ever seen on TV. And it isn't restricted to alternative sound, there are pop stars and their supermodel girlfriends shaking hands and kissing cheeks in the row behind, while producers with names big enough to make your mouth dry up clap each other on the shoulders in front. 

"You'll catch flies." 

You turn to Eddie. He doesn't sound entirely cruel. He doesn't sound like much of anything. You could almost believe him to be a friend. 

There's a smudge of eyeliner on his cheek. 

"You have–" You point at your own cheek, a mirror. 

His lightness fades. "Nice." 

"No, seriously, you have something. Make up, on your cheek. I have a wipe if you want it." 

He scrubs at his cheek ineffectually. 

You're reaching out to help before you can stop yourself, witnessing your own actions with a strange out-of-body horror as you wipe the small black line gently. It spreads, and you panic and dab at it until it's an unfortunate grey shadow. 

"Let me get the wet wipe," you say. You'd been holding your breath, awkwardness stiff between you, and it sounds too much like a laugh. 

Eddie flinches away from your touch and covers his cheek. "I got it," he says stonily. 

He leaves, stepping over his bandmates feet like stepping stones, earning a cacophony of protests and disparagments. 

Dick, you think. Again, that had been a little bit your fault. Not all of it, he seems to be in a perpetual bad mood that can't be your doing, but you can understand why he might think you were laughing at him, and the defensiveness that comes with it. When he comes back you'll apologise. 

Or that's what you tell yourself. The lights go down, the curtains open, and the venue erupts with applause. By the time Eddie takes his seat again you're too afraid of disturbing the quiet. 

After half an hour you're ushered backstage. You have to move in front of Eddie and the rest of Corroded Coffin as you go. 

He looks up at you in silence. Head tipped back, face barely lit by the lights while you stand in between his legs. His lips part and he's all rockstar, his brown eyes and their edging of straight dark lashes, his pink, pretty lips. He has a distinct line to his nose, a cupid's bow perfectly shaped. His maker must have looked at him and known somebody, somewhere, would want to kiss him right there. His lips twitch. 

"Can I help you?" he whispers. 

You stammer a response that won't form and Morgan shoves you. 

"Fucking move," she says. 

His expression flickers. 

"Sorry," you say, unsure of who you're talking to. "Sorry." You sound pathetic. A kicked puppy. 

You keep your eyes on the floor until you're in the aisle, where a new set of nerves tries to swallow you whole.

—

Eddie knows exactly who you are, and he hates himself for it. He remembers you, the first you, shy and sweet and so excited, sitting pretty in Indianapolis International Airport with your guitar and your huge leaky headphones pounding death metal. While fame has broadened the amount of people who want to sleep with him, it hasn't changed his type, and you'd been a ringer, right there in the middle. 

You'd been pretty and maybe you knew it, maybe you didn't, it didn't matter — what he liked most was the way your hands had moved as you spoke, hummingbird thrumming, an energy he'd seen in himself and every other musician desperate for a chance. He loved the passion and your eyelashes and the way you'd smiled as you'd waited for your plane, the two of you destined for New York, where you both seem to have looped back now. Only, he'd been cursed with remembering your every detail, and you either didn't remember him or don't care. Both sting, but he likes the second better. He'll take purposeful cruelty over the casual any day. 

Like your thumb pressed to his cheek. The heat, and then your laugh. 

"The fuck is this?" Gareth asks, leaning over the space between their two chairs. 

Eddie looks up at you on stage and shrugs. While bands made up completely of women aren't new, they aren't as common as bands made up of men, obviously. He likes it, likes your sound, though it's not the kind of thing Corroded Coffin would ever play, and he won't join in on Gareth's doubt. Even if you are, like, a magnanimous shithead. You're good. 

"She's hot," he furthers. 

"Jesus, Gareth." 

"What? She's fucking hot." 

He has to squint to see you from this distance, and he can't truly make out many details. Gareth's not wrong. You're pretty, and out of the three members of the band you're the only one who actually looks like they're having a good time. 

The lead singer trails around the stage pulling Blond Ambition poses. She can sing well, she has a strong voice that does whatever it is she bends it into, but her propensity to drop the guitar slung around her neck to grab at the microphone stand like it's escaping isn't helping anything. 

The girl on drums is arguably given a pass, fighting to keep up with the pace, sweat sticking her thick hair to her neck in glossy spirals and her huge eyes set in concentration. Her messy lipstick sparkles under the stage lights, a party pink that pops against her brown skin. 

He thinks you might be trying to cover up the lead singer's sloppy playing. You're good, sure, but it's not the easiest to tell when it's ragtag and rough like this. Only because he's watching does he notice your pick slipping between strings to the floor, and your willingness to strum with the sides of your fingertips. He likes that. The dedication is hot. 

"I've never seen a girl on drums who didn't look like a guy," Gareth says. "She's killer. Think I can get her number?" 

Eddie groans. "No, you fucking loser." 

"I was just asking." 

You bounce around and Eddie shifts in his seat, annoyed that he'd assumed you were the one Gareth was talking about. 

He claps for you when the song is over and hates how you return to your seat during the break, back in your cute dress and beaming, practically dripping in deodorant and post-show adrenaline. 

You apologise again as you step over him, and if there's one thing he doesn't want from you it's a sorry. Twice now you've spoken to him in the last week and twice you've made fun of him like some plaything under your thumb. Eddie isn't in the habit of being under anyone's anything. Apologies feel like salt in the wound, even though he knows you aren't saying sorry for the stuff that's pissing him off.

"What the fuck was that?" Lead girl asks you, sounding about as uptight as she looks as she climbs over your leg. "What were you doing?" 

"Morgan, I don't know if you noticed, but you didn't play half of the song," you say defensively, the skirt of your gem-encrusted dress glancing off of his thigh. The gems are tiny, like pinprick stars in country night skies. They shine purple, green, orange. 

Morgan holds her hand up for an attendant. When one approaches, she says, "Appletini," and nothing else, waving dismissively. She pulls at her stockings and doesn't notice the ladder she makes near the calf. "You're here to play what you're given." 

"I did." 

"And only that." 

Your silence speaks volumes. What he'd thought to be an edge in Godless' sound may have been an improvisation, something Eddie personally applauds. 

"Christ," Morgan says, "you're more trouble than you're worth. I hope you know that." 

Eddie believes the sting of her barb to be in the presentation rather than the words themselves, though what she'd said is hardly kind. She looks away from you as she says it, like she's giving instruction far below her station. Factual, concise. 

You barely wince. The lights dim, and he watches you contend with how you're feeling from the corner of his eye.

Eddie isn't evil. You may have gotten off on the wrong foot, and he's definitely holding his resentment at being forgotten tight to his chest, but nobody deserves to get shit on like that. You'd played well, you'd had a great time, and that should be commended. What's worse, your lack of a reaction tells him this is a common occurrence. 

"I'm gonna go to the bathroom," you say. 

Morgan waves you away like she had the waitress. You stand, and you say, "Excuse me," to every person you pass. Eddie put his hand on the back of his chair to follow you up toward the back of the room where the sign for the bathrooms glows green. 

He sets his eyes back on the stage and begs himself to stay sitting. Corroded Coffin's nomination for best up and comer has already passed, a loss, and there's no reason he can't nip to the bathroom himself. There's also no reason he should go after you. 

Fuck it, he thinks. 

What could go wrong? What could go wrong, outside of the women's bathroom, where he has so obviously followed you, where he waits for you like some creeper trying to paw one off on you. He can't hear anything but the running tap. For a moment he thinks you haven't come here to collect yourself after all, you'd needed to pee, which makes his situation that much awkwarder. 

Stuck between indecision, he leans against the wall between the women's and men's and digs for a cigarette. His pockets are empty, a precaution for exactly this moment. You can't smoke in the Prover Theatre, pissant.

You appear and blitz past him. 

"Hey," he says before you can go too far, "d'you have a card?"

You turn on your heel. Hands already in your purse, you dig out an unopened box of cigarettes and offer it to him. You don't look as though you've been crying or anything like it, but you don't look him head on, so he keeps his theory. 

Eddie peels the plastic off of your box and slaps the end against his chest for good measure. 

"I don't think you can smoke in here," you say finally. Your voice is tired. 

He raises his eyebrows and peers down into the box, pulling a cigarette free and sliding it between his lips. He holds out his hand for a lighter and you give it to him, already waiting with it between two fingers. 

He lights it, inhales sharply, and passes you back your carton and lighter with a clouded, "Thanks." 

"Yeah." 

He's surprised when you don't move. You stand there and watch him smoke, whorls of pearly smoke dissecting the air between you, spider-webs over your pert face. You're waiting for what he doesn't know, so he'll give you something. He's nice. 

"She's a piece of work." 

You shift uneasily. 

"I'm not the feds," he says, pulling the cig from his lips to talk unfettered.

"Forgive me for wondering if you have my best interests at heart." 

He beams at you, really smiles, startled and enamoured by your sharp tongue. "Now why wouldn't I?" 

You don't say anything, only pull at the neckline of your dress in what's likely a nervous habit. He gets a flash of the top of your chest and looks away. He thinks you're beautiful in a rather understated way, and he doesn't not want to see what it is you're showing, but he knows you don't actually mean to be so forward. He might be an asshole, but he's not like that. 

It's quiet here in the foyer, like standing outside the doors of the movie theatre. You can hear the announcement of a new category, the roaring applause. The hallway and the bathrooms feel cordoned off from it in a strange way, an uncanny energy that has him on internal tenterhooks. 

"You always let her treat you like that?"

"Like what?" 

He steps toward you because the distance feels unnecessary. "Like that. Like you're a dog." 

"Fuck you, I do not." 

He pouts, the taste of smoke thick on his tongue. 

"What would you know?" you ask.

"Besides hearing it all fucking night, nothing. You must like that shit." 

Your eyes go wide. He hadn't meant to say it. There's a light behind them now, some life, something to cover up that shitty wounded despondency you'd been wearing. Your hands bunch in the soft skirt of your dress, shaking. He's touched a nerve. 

"I must like it," you quote, strained.

"Woof. Do you do any tricks, or is it just the one?" 

He doesn't mean for it to happen this way, he wants it on the record. He's a dick, he's a loser, whatever, he hadn't meant to argue but he will. And, you know, there may be a slight possibility that he isn't as sure in himself as he appears, and that there are nerves he keeps too close to the surface, too. 

"You can teach me one of yours, if you want," you offer, voice tight with annoyance, "I'm thinking smug asshole picks easy target, but I'm open to other options." 

That's funny. He takes another step toward you, another, your cigarette between his lips smouldering at the tip as he inhales through his smirk. 

"Yeah, like what?" he asks, smoke licking your cheeks as he breathes out. 

"How you get your head through the door might be a good place to start." 

He waits for you to explain, knowing the silence will force you to fill it. 

"You know, considering you're in the exact same place as me, only one of us performed tonight and it isn't the one acting like God's gift." 

"You think they invited you to play because you're good?" he asks, feigning an earnest tone.

"I know exactly why they didn't ask you." You hike the strap of your purse higher up your shoulder, chin lifted in a snooty superiority that makes his heart pound. "Wannabe rookie who had too much smoke blown up his ass and thinks he's somebody. But you're not," you say. "You're a child. They've seen a hundred guys just like you in the Indiana circuit."

"You're a jumped up fucking groupie that got lucky," he says.

The light behind your eyes dims. He takes that last step, the step that's gonna put you shoe to shoe. 

He should stop now, he would, but suddenly his anger is real, this isn't strictly fun anymore. He says what he knows is gonna hurt you. 

"You're a stand-in, a temp who's already overstayed her welcome." He flicks the tower of ash between your heels. You follow it down, watch as it settles into the fibres of the carpeting. "You're a burnout waiting to happen." 

Your breathing is loud in his ears. Slightly too fast. 

"You don't know anything," you murmur. 

"If it barks like a dog, and it heels like a dog," he says, pausing, words coming out thick and slow, "it's a dog."

Your face flares with hurt. You're gone before he can say anything else. 

He's glad for it. Honestly, he's not sure what else he would've said, and later, he'll regret this, regret blowing up at you, regret following you out here and making you feel worse when he'd wanted the opposite. But tonight he's lit up from the inside out, your words a reverberation. A hundred guys just like you.

"Yeah, right," he says to himself, scoffing with a surety he doesn't feel. 

—

Donington Park, England, August 1990

"I'd be a little more excited if I knew they weren't desperate this year," Jamison's saying, "that's all." 

"They're hardly desperate." 

"Last time they had KISS, Iron Maiden, Megadeth." Jamison sighs and falls back into the couch, muttering about the stale smell before continuing, "and this year, what do they have? Poison? Thunder? Who cares." 

Eddie thinks he might actually have an opponent for biggest ego right now. 

"You know they put Godless bigger on the poster," Jeff says with a bright smile. 

"Can we not talk about them for one fucking day?" Eddie pleads. 

He's a little disappointed at the lineup too, but that doesn't make this entire festival a bust. Monster of Rock may not be the most prestigious event they've ever attended but it's still impressive to be asked to play here, and this is only Corroded Coffin's third festival. Eddie's a smug bastard and even he knows Jamison sounds like a bitch. Besides that, he's so, so tired of talking about Godless. 

"They finally stopped stringing that poor girl along. What was her name?" Jeff asks, clicking his fingers. "Eddie, you know, the one who said she didn't know you in the magazines?"

"What?" Eddie asked. "They cut her?" 

Jamison sits up, eyes lit with mirth. "What's it matter to you, heartthrob?" 

"It doesn't." 

He's not being truthful. His bandmates are all unkind, and none extend the generosity of pretending they believe him. 

"Nah, she's not cut, she's official. Writing credits on the new album and everything, 'cordin to Rolling Stone." 

"You have it?" Eddie asks.

Jeff laughs at him but digs it out of his suitcase, brandishing it all rolled up. 

"Shit better not be sticky," Eddie mutters under his breath. 

"... Skip the interview with Kim Gordon." 

Eddie gags and flicks through the pages until he finds the article on you, or rather the column. 

"All female rock band Godless finally welcomed a new bass player this month after the departure of Millyanna Richardson in '89. Y/N L/N, 24, had been with the band for almost a year under a 'touring only' basis, though she performed live with remaining members Morgan Fletcher and Ananya Roy at the Prover Music Awards in early June. Fans have praised her talent and finesse, and are looking forward to her contributions to the band's next album expected this December. Hopefully she has thicker skin than her predecessor, who branded the band's inner politics as 'gruesome' and 'unlivable'."

There's a grainy photograph of you and your bandmates at the Prover Theatre overtop. You look exactly as you had that night, pretty and glitzy. He scowls at your printed face.

He can't fucking stand you, let it be known, and he thinks your frontman is the most spoilt brat he's ever seen. He hadn't seen the article, but he'd heard via word of mouth that you'd both had something to say about him. His approximation goes as follows: 

Interviewer: …and you guys will be performing at the Monster of Rock music festival in England this August, right? Any faces you're excited to see? 

Morgan: I think I'm better than everyone despite being in a mildly popular band that didn't qualify as hard rock until, like, three months ago, and I totally shit on our bass player for trying to make the change by the way, so I'm not excited to see anyone besides myself in the mirror. 

Interviewer: How sophisticated and mature of you. And you, Y/N, are you excited to see anyone? Photos from the Prover Music Awards show you were sitting beside Corroded Coffin's Eddie Munson, did you two hit it off? 

Y/N: Who was that, the guitarist? I'm so sorry, I don't really remember getting a chance to talk to him, but I'm excited for the opportunity to meet more people in the scene right now and to get to play for a new audience. Also I suck and I want Eddie sooooo bad. 

"I wish I were asleep." Gareth squints at the ceiling. "Asleep or back home."

"Miss mommy?" Jamison asks him. 

"And Cindy." 

"Oh, god," Eddie groans, "I don't want to hear it, seriously." 

"She always had smooth legs, you know?" Gareth says. "Always shiny, soft. Fuck, I miss her legs. Girls on the road never shave their legs." 

"Do you shave your legs?" Eddie asks. 

"Fuck off, Teddy, you know you like it better when they shave." 

"Do I know that?" Eddie asks. 

He turns to Jamison, giving him a much-used 'make him stop' expression. Eyebrows raised, lips parted. When Jamison says nothing, and Gareth starts to talk about hair removal in other places, Eddie scrubs his eyes with both hands and stands up. 

He's a guy. He has guy thoughts. Yeah, he thinks about girls, and their legs, and everything else, but he also thinks about them as actual people, something Gareth hasn't quite grasped yet. 

"Remember why Cindy said she didn't wanna come with you?" Eddie asks. 

"Because she was jealous of my success." 

Eddie snorts and shrugs on his jacket where he'd left it thrown over the ratty couch. "Because she was going to beauty school," Eddie corrects. "I'm going out." 

"We're miles away from anything interesting," Jeff says, magazine crinkling in his hands. 

"I'm sure I'll find something," he says, and doesn't add that it should be easy. 

What counts as interesting has taken a sharp turn since arriving in Donington. Which isn't to say it's boring, exactly, there's a rich culture Eddie isn't familiar with, and a fucking castle, but he's so used to loud dives and backroom parties that this has been a stark change. Wending had said to think of it like a vacation to get his head screwed on tight. Paula had said to think of it like a punishment, which had been funny at the time. Now he's wondering if she was serious. 

He knows there'd been a convenience store somewhere down the road from the hotel. Or rather, the bed and breakfast, a strange cottage situation where the hosts keep an eye on you under the guise of making your dinner. Eddie's first world problems continue. 

He could get weed, possibly. He doesn't know where from, but he knows someone who knows someone who must know someone, right? 

Then he starts debating with himself about if he should smoke just to escape boredom. That sounds like a terrible idea, life isn't even bad right now, he's just hungry, and— 

Eddie turns the corner, wet sidewalk dark as pitch under his feet, and spots the back of your head as you disappear inside of the convenience store. The corner shop, as Wending had informed. Eddie doesn't understand because it isn't on a corner, but he has bigger fish to fry. He considers waiting for you to leave. What are the chances you'll walk back this way? Pretty likely. 

Don't be a bitch, he tells himself. 

Light rain spots his neck as he hurries inside, the bell above the door ringing to announce his entrance. He's confused as soon as he looks up, because in front of him is an aisle, and to either side is an aisle, and he can't make out where the cashier is. He takes a tentative step in, eyes tracking muddy footprints down the way to the drinks fridge humming loudly at the back of the room. 

Claustrophobic, he makes his way through the aisle and stops in front of the drinks. Because luck isn't ever his friend, you're standing toward the leftmost part, where a second fridge hums, filled to bursting with canned beer and litre bottles of cider. Eddie isn't sure it's really you until you turn to the left slightly and reach out for a colourful glass bottle. He should walk away. He doesn't like you, he has no business watching you, but there's something so sweet about it. 

You in the humming chill, a coat pulled tightly around you, your chin hidden by the multicolour of a yarn scarf. You turn the bottle in your hand delicately and blink slow as you read the ingredients. Your hair is frizzy from the wind, flyaways surrounding your face in a little wave. His fingers twitch. 

You keep the bottle and pick up a second, nails clinking against glass. Your movement pulls like you're moving through jello, and Eddie turns to the fridge in front of him hurriedly. 

He can feel your gaze on the side of his face. 

He picks up a couple of drinks without thinking, his face burning with heat. When he chances a glance your way, you've moved. He stares at the rainbow of drinks and the gaps where you've taken what you wanted. 

He leaves some time between your departure and follows the way you must've gone down an aisle of more alcohol that's unrefrigerated and pet food, wondering how they organise here, and is confronted with you again at the end. 

It's a snug building. You're blocking the way past where you're standing in front of the cashier's desk, a plexiglass shielded cube decked out in hanging sweets and cigarettes. 

"Do you have Newports?" you ask mildly. 

"Sorry." 

"That's okay, uh, I'll just take a carton of whatever you think is best?" 

The cashier retrieves a light blue box of cigarettes. "Lambert and Butler blues," he says. "Total, sixteen fifty six, and I'll need to see some ID." 

You pull your passport from an already opened purse and offer it to him. While the cashier's checking it over, you peek at Eddie, and you don't smile but you don't not smile, a formal quirk of the lips. 

"You're American?" the cashier asks. 

"I'm visiting for the festival," you say. 

Apparently having passed his test, the cashier hands your passport back and accepts your card. 

"Are you paying together?" he asks, nodding at Eddie. 

Eddie grins unconsciously, worse when you say quickly, "Oh, no, we're not together." 

"Your brevity wounds me," Eddie says.

You snort with a similar geniality. "You don't need me to pay for you, do you? I heard you're rich now." 

There has been an improvement in Eddie's finances lately. Your album breaking into the Billboard top 100 does that. 

"I thought you didn't know who I was?" 

"I thought that was kinder than what I really would've said." 

He hates how your snark makes him smile. You're not looking at him, waiting for your change with your eyes forward as the cashier clicks a couple of buttons on the till. 

"What were you really gonna say?" 

The cashier hands over your change. You slip it into your purse, put your purse in the pocket of your coat, and slide your hand through the weak blue handles of your plastic bag.

"Thank you," you say sincerely. You take a step like you're going to leave, but you pause, and you look Eddie in the eye and say, "I would've said you were mean." 

His jaw drops. You look hurt, and you leave with a discomforting frown. 

He puts the drinks he's carrying down on the cashier's desk and says, "I'll be right back," before following you out.

You've pulled your hood up to defend against the thickening rain, walking with your face angled down. Eddie beats along the wet pathway. 

"Hey! Hey, wait, wait a second, princess." 

"You can't be serious." 

"I'm so serious," he says. 

He weaves in front of you and stops. You look cold as he feels with his red-tipped nose and stiff fingers, your arms drawn together over your chest. You look pretty and he's so sick of thinking it and not saying it. 

"You're hot when you're mad." 

You glare at him. "I wish I could say the same." 

"Hey, hey, okay, we had a spat, but we got off on the wrong foot, you know?" 

"I thought that too," you say. 

He smiles. "See, we're– you're fucking with me. Nice." 

You start laughing, edging around him. He moves in front and you shrug, stepping off of the sidewalk and into the leaf litter clogging the gutter. 

"Don't be stupid," he says, hands held up in surrender "get back on the sidewalk." You keep walking. "Come on, don't get hit by a car. That would really put a damper on the festival." 

You take a step further into the road, the kind that would make a collision unavoidable. He checks both ways for cars and sees none, knowing you're fucking with him and hating it anyway. The two of you are locked into a stand off, grey skies above you and wet ground underneath, your face partially occluded by your scarf and your hood and the dribbling rain. If he listens, he can hear the small sounds of the festival preparations a half a mile away, guitars hooked up up an insane array of speakers and the pounding of a beat through the floor. 

You start walking again. He follows, treading backwards to keep your attention. 

"Seriously, come on." 

"No." 

"No?" he asks. 

"No. I don't have to listen to you." 

"You're being stupid." 

"Eddie, I truly, honestly, don't care." 

"Sure." The sound of tires on the road draws his eye. A car appears behind you, approaching fast. "It's your funeral."

"What do you get out of this?" 

He bites his top lip, shaking his head from one side to the other. "Out of what?" 

"Tormenting me." 

"Tormenting you? Sweetheart, we hardly know each other." 

"Exactly!" You almost trip over your own shoes. "Exactly, you don't know me, but you thought you could say all those things–" 

"You started it." 

You laugh again and Eddie would be pissed but the car is still coming, headlights beaming through the light downpour. He huffs and grabs your wrist, tugging you up onto the sidewalk with his second hand on your waist. He doesn't mean to rag you about, feeling especially apologetic when your face knocks into his chin. The car spins close and validates his concern. You have enough sense to realise what's happened, watching over your shoulder as the car beeps and whizzes past. Still, you yank your arm out of his. 

"Don't touch me," you say quietly. 

He dips his head to force you to meet his eyes. "Next time I'll let you get hit by a car. Great idea." 

"I wasn't going to get hit by the fucking car." 

You're infuriating. 

Infuriating, and yet he feels bad for pulling you around. He lowers his voice, softens his tone. "Sorry," he says. "I don't know why this happens, everytime I see you, I…" 

You look intensely uncomfortable. "I have one of those faces, I guess." You shrug away from his reach. "Try to play well tomorrow? I don't want to go on to a dead crowd." 

His mouth snaps closed. "If you need me to warm them up for you, just say that." 

—

You go to watch Eddie's set because you're awful. You want it to suck. You want Corroded Coffin to bomb it and you want it to be his fault, anything to wipe that pretty smile off of his face, smother the electricity of his bouncing steps as he bounds from one side of the stage to the other. He's entranced by the crowd — it's hard not to be. Ananya had told you on the plane that UK festival audiences are a different kind of enthusiastic, eager and loud, and it's obvious now that she was right, and that Corroded Coffin had more than a few loyalists in the sea of people. 

The barrier bends under the force of it, thousands of warm bodies throwing themselves against one another despite the terrible weather, mud to the shins and sliding. You've never seen so many people happy to be covered in dirt. 

Neither Morgan nor Ananya had wanted to join you so you stick to the shadows with your lanyard pass. You refuse to think about why you've dressed the way you have, a black, stiff corset type top to cinch your chest, exposing the soft hills of your breasts, and the flare pants Morgan had insisted make your thighs acceptable. You're bedecked in pretty jewellery and your hair looks perfect, and it's all for your show, you swear, all for your set straight after his. 

Eddie's dripping with sweat and rain at this point, darker curls wet and slick and sweet around his face. His brows are furrowed like he's in pain, and his thumb has split on the strings, blood like cherry juice running down the body of his guitar, a Warlock NJ Series electric with a red and black tortoise shell design. It shines like mother-of-pearl. 

You're impressed by him, and worse, there's a heat stirring in your abdomen you despise. He's attractive, you've always thought him pretty, but on stage he's something else entirely. The passion transforms him, makes him a different person. No trace of agitating smugness about him. 

And he's good. You're not a critic, an expert, and your opinion hardly matters, but if he's this good now you'd love to see him at Hammet's age, at Hanneman's. He could be one of the greats. 

You're riddled with jealousy. Bass and rhythm guitar are not the same, and they're comparable in some ways, incomparable in others, but you know you're not like he is. You want to be the next Entwistle, the next Ian Hill, but practising You've Got Another Thing Comin' until your fingers bleed is never going to give you what Eddie plainly has. 

You hide your bandaid covered fingers in your back pockets and shake your head. You can pinpoint the moment Eddie notices you on the side stage despite the small audience they've attained. His neck snaps to the side, and his eyes bore into yours for a split-second. 

You could pretend you aren't here. If he ever calls you out on it, you could lie. You want me so bad you're seeing me places, Munson. 

You don't do that. 

You wave. 

You've never been the prettiest girl. You know you aren't model material, people aren't shy about letting you know that, and so, you're practised in the art of quiet flirtation. Your wrist straight, you wiggle your fingers sweetly, a face of fresh make up and your sweetest smile, like he's a guy across the bar and you're trying to get a ride in his passenger seat. 

For a split-second you adore him. It's the meanest thing you can do. 

You aren't expecting him to fuck up. His hand slips down the neck and that's it, one missed second of sound. He throws himself back into it and doesn't look your way again, a storm of emotions clouding his handsome face. 

Not what you'd meant to do, and yet. There's a cruel satisfaction in knowing you'd had any sort of power over him.

There's a ten minute gap between sets, twenty because of the shitty weather. Morgan and Ananya are nowhere to be seen as Corroded Coffin pour off of the stage and down the short stairwell where you're waiting, picking at your clear nail polish absentminded. You don't look up, and the resulting quiet makes you think they've all left. 

A wooden board creaks. 

You look up. 

"Hey, you–" 

Eddie takes your shoulder into his warm, big hand and pushes you back. You wobble and rush to correct your posture, hand clamping around the crook of his elbow. Even though he's soaked through, wet to the skin, his hand is a blistering heat. 

Your shoulders collide with the wall under the stairwell. It's a snug fit, dark and out of view. 

"What gives?" you seethe, pushing at his chest. 

"You fucking–" Eddie tucks a lock of wet hair behind his ear, and his hand stays at that height, hovering between you. "What's wrong with you?" 

"What's wrong with me?" 

"You want to mess with me, is that it?" 

His hand takes to your face, index finger following the line of your cheek, his thumb along your jaw. He isn't kind. He isn't cruel. He's touching you, just touching you, and your mouth is bone dry at the sensation, the stuttering beat of your heart. 

"I don't want to do anything to you, Munson." 

"We both know that's not true." You've never heard his voice like this. It's scratchy– pleading. It's a desperation. 

He's breathing hard. Your proximity means you feel each one as it comes, heat fanning over your lips. You look to his, find them parted, the barest hint of pearly teeth between pink dewy skin. They look soft. 

You lift your chin. 

I dare you. 

His hand slides down. He presses his thumb into your bottom lip and inclines his head. You close your eyes, fine stands of his hair drawing lines of wetness against your face as he boxes you in. 

"Are you going to–" 

"Shut up," he says, crushing his lips to yours. 

It his nose you feel more than anything, the force of it as he moves in, bridge sliding down your own. His hands, and how they tighten, fisted in the slope of your shoulder and clutching at the underside of your jaw like you might slip away. His touch brings you in, his hips force you back, wedging your spine tight to the panelled wall behind you. 

You let him kiss you, let his lips work over yours, let him take what it is he wants. Your fingers slide softly up the chilled leather of his jacket, coveting the wet mess of his hair. You weave your fingers into it, their tips pressed to his roots, and pull him away. 

You steal the gap between you and try to take control. You don't know how to kiss like he is, you don't know where all that meanness comes from. You force his hand from your face and nip at his bottom lip, imprecise, stammering pecks that reveal too much. 

Eddie inhales hard, pulls the breath from your mouth. 

"Don't play games," he says. 

He presses a firm, hard kiss all lopsided into your lips and pulls away, yanking your hand from his hair and setting it against the line of his waist. 

"You like games," you argue. 

He tilts your head to one side a millimetre at a time, tilting his own to follow you. A teasing light burns behind his eyes, a playful flare of his lashes that worries and excites at once. 

His thumb haunts the column of your throat, pressing, releasing, pressing again. Never enough to hurt. 

"Stay still." 

You stay still. You aren't expecting him to weave the other way, the hot and unapologetic scratch of his teeth against your pulse. You laugh at the feeling, find it gets all clogged up when he starts to bite. The hand that isn't anchoring your head roams down your shoulder, your back, falling into the small of it as though it were made to be there. His fingers spread and pull and your pelvis pushes hard into his own. 

"Is that a–" You cough on your murmuring, chastened by his thumb outside your windpipe. "S'that a micronta quartz in your pocket, or are you just," —you hiss as his hickeying turns brutal, hand pawing ar his waist uselessly— "happy– Happy to see me?" 

Your shuddering makes him smile. He lets your bruised skin slip from between his lips only to scandalise you further, kissing and nipping, licking a humiliating stretch until he's under your ear, speaking into it. 

"I'm never happy to see you," he murmurs, hand turned, the back of his index knuckle stroking a tender back and forth. His forehead kisses your temple. "You should know that by now." 

A picture of composure but you know what you feel. You roll your hips to revel in his subtle groan. 

"You want me to mark up the other side?" he asks. 

His question sounds so genuine, you almost say yes. He laughs at your silence and kisses wherever he can reach, crescent moons, spit-damp and branding. 

He pauses to speak into the corner of your mouth. "Mess me up again during a set and I won't be this nice." 

"You're not nice," you say, lashes skimming the skin under your brows as he stands at full height, widening the gap between you to a safe distance again. 

"Exactly…" Eddie squeezes your cheek until it aches. His eyes are unreadable. "Have a good set, sweetheart." 

Unreadable turns smug. He pats your panging cheek, gaze dancing over the sore stretch of your neck, and turns without a second glance. 

You press the heel of your palm to the cold wall behind you and blink. Once. Twice. In that moment you hate him more than you've ever hated him, hate him like you've never hated anyone, because his retreating figure is unaffected, and you're dizzy with the lingering press of his lips.

You have to hand it to him. He's good at the game. 

You'll have to be better. 

𓆩❤︎𓆪

I wrote the bulk of this really quickly so please forgive any major errors I missed during editing, I’ll go back again in future and make more corrections! Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed, and if you did please consider reblogging or telling me what you thought, I promise it makes a big difference <3 I was super nervous about this one and I still am lol

[p-jinx]

Restuffed The Freak™

He now glass micro beads for the body so he is HEFTY and silky poly fill for the head

Added is also a hair wire foam roller (the kind you leave in over night) twisted into a T shape to help support his noggin (its not doing Great but its better than the full flop he had going on so whatever)

All his clothes had been found and ordered on etsy along with the safety eyes, hes also got pjs and shoes that I filled with upholstery foam so they stay on his legs/feet(?)

I painted his eyebrows on with citadel miniature paint

His voice box is also out and in my night stand and I replaced it with Pipis (small electric blue pom-poms) so that he doesn’t scream in the night when I roll over onto him

He has a small powerful "earth magnet" in his head sewn to the bridge of his nose so I can magnetize glasses to his face, a pinch of super glue holds the proper side down to ensure consistent magnetics) I made a pair of foam dealmakers and, also swapped the lenses in some 20in doll sunglasses as well, if I wanna see his peepers whilst he has glasses on

I plan on making felt deal makers when my local craft store finally restocks to replace the foam ones, they have some rough edges but work fine for now

He feels like he weighs around 2ish lbs with the collective weight of his filling

Pretty happy with his outcome actually, got him for my birthday about two(?) years ago from my bestie and he's been accumulating upgrades slowly

Maybe when I move and have space to work I'll make him a NEO suit that I can velcro/snap clasp his body into, I'll need to get some minky fabric and willpower to do the work though. And. Lots of poly fill ( ;•_•)

[lessi-lover]

can you write a 500 word blurb with "my glasses are stylish!" with alessia russo? love you, thanks! x

stylish II a.russo x reader

never done a word challenge but actually really loved. so thank you the anon that requested it. love you lots too. 🫶🏻

★ sunglasses II a.russo x reader

"-babe they look cool. i swear." the blonde tried to convince you, raising her glasses to rest on her forehead, before letting them fall over her eyes and cheekily pointing in your direction. "no you look so silly." you pleaded with the girl, chuckling as she continued to look at herself in the mirror.

she turned back at you, "you just don't appreciate my fashion sense," she teased. striking a pose, before almost toppling over herself, as you rushed to stable the clumsy striker. lifting her up off the floor, you dragged her over to the chair you were sitting on before, tugging her to sit on your lap.

"i appreciate good fashion sense, lessi!" you said, shaking your head with a smile. your arms wrapped around her waist, your chin resting on her shoulder, in an effort to coax the blonde out of her stubborn mood.

"baby, why?" she mumbled sadly, her head falling forward to hit against your chest, her much more muscular body crashing into yours. "i love you a lot lessi. but those.. "you gestured towards her glasses, "are definitely a statement." alessia giggled, her gaze meeting yours in the mirror. "a statement of style!" she corrected, looking at you over the lenses, and winking.

and if you hadn't know the english girl better, you would have said she was drunk. "oh god no. come on, baby." you groaned, placing the blondes glasses back on the display and tugging her out of the store and onto the open street.

trudging through the cold weather, you sighed as the striker frowned, a pout already beginning to tug at her lips. "lessi!" you teased with a guilty smile, softly poking at her pink cheeks.

lugging the series of shopping bags, your felt your chest heave at the weight of your expenses, the layers of clothing you had put on only making it harder to walk properly.

you watched as her scowl deepened, the striker doing her absolute best to ignore your wandering hands, though you watched as she physically struggled to keep her eyes off you.

instead the blonde busied herself with trying to let herself meet with anything other than your eyes. yourself moving your head to rest softly against her shoulder, as her hand instinctively fell to your lower back, your own arm wrapping tightly around her waist.

no matter how hard alessia would try to stop herself from falling into your trap, she couldn't ever hold back when you made any action to ask for her love.

"love, you know the girls would take the mick out of you if you wore them out." you defended, lightly poking her stomach with your elbow. you waited for your girlfriend's frown to fade and instead to be replaced by your favourite sight of her smile, but it never came.

"alessia you can't seriously be upset." you questioned, your arm falling from her waist to your side when she still didn't reply. her frown now falling deeper as you called her by her first name

."you stopped walking on the pathway, the blonde almost tripping over her own feet at the abrupt stop, as you once again steadied her. "always did have two left feet, baby." you giggled, as she glared down at you, her arms folding over her chest.

grabbing both her hands, you tugged her closer, sweetly kissing her pout away. "i'm sorry, love. i didn't mean to hurt your feelings." you spoke sincerely, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear, patiently waiting for her to respond.

you pecked the corner of her lips, as your thumb traced the curve of her jaw. "forgive me?" you questioned, with a hopeful grin. "fine. but only because i love you." she admitted begrudgingly. "but you owe me morning cuddles big time!" she countered, her pinky finger lifting in the air, before you clasped it with your own.

"yes. yes. cuddles for my lessibear." you agreed, watching as her eyes lit up and her stern features softened. the blonde wrapped her arms around you and lifted you off your feet. shoving her face into your chest, her fingers starting to lightly graze your exposed skin.

you stayed in that position for a moment, the two of you standing in the middle of the street, yourself meeting a few confused glances over the strikers shoulder.

you felt your cheeks heat up, the tips of your ears burning from the attention you were receiving from your girlfriend. which wasn't actually uncommon but with the way your body was wrapped around her, you certainly felt conscious that this would make it to the media in series of a few hours. "okay less. can't breath." you choked out, the girl doing her best to squeeze all the air out of you.

"uh, huh. five more minutes. then my cuddles at home." she whispered, unbothered by the fact that you were having difficulty trying to let air enter and leave your lungs, as she continued to smooth down your hair.

"alright down girl." you ordered, patting her behind in warning. the blonde surrended, gently lifting you back to the safety of the ground, before sweetly kissing your cheek. you breathed out a contended sigh, shoulders dropping in relief. the girl now tangled your fingers together, swinging your arms back and fourth as you ventured further down the street.

"you're blushing. aren't you?" the arsenal striker giggled, her finger poking at your rosy cheeks. "no m'not." you defended, trying to cover your blatant adoration with your hands. "yes you are!" she teased, trying to tear your hands away from your face.

"i'm not blushing! it's from the cold!" you claimed, raising your hands to pretend to warm your layered skin. well you weren't entirely lying.

the blonde had now torn your hands away, bringing them to rest at her own sides, as she stared down lovingly at you. "stop it!" you groaned, frantically trying to wave around your restricted arms. "stop what?" she questioned, with a sly grin on her face.

"stop making me blush." you mumbled lowly. "stop what?" she repeated, her grip faltering as she lifted her hand to her ear. you scowled, a hand reaching upwards to push the teasing girl away. "it's cute baby. i love it when you blush." she said finally, kissing your neck affectionately.

"don't get too full of yourself." you glared, resting your head on her shoulder as she bent down to reach your height. "it means you've fallen for my charm." she smirked, her fingers digging into the side of your hip.

"something like that."

~

[kanasn0w]

im literally shaking buy him brown contacts please /j

(Drops random mii headcanon)

Cole loves the caves on Wuhu Island because it's the only place on the island where he can take off his sunglasses and not immediately be completely blinded by light.

Also adding to @kanasn0w here:

He tries to get spares but since they're medical purpose sunglasses, they're much trickier to get. HOWEVER, Nick does try to get as many as he can for him.

[eringobragh420]

💜 Pairing: Gunther x f!Reader 💜 Summary: Gunther’s girlfriend can’t stop admiring him. 🛑 Warnings: NSFW. Muscle worship, praise, unprotected p in v, dirty talk, sir kink, cum 18+ 💜 Notes: Kinklist found here. 💜 Taglist: In the comments. If you’d like to be added, please click here! 💜 Requested By: @eboni-napalm Please keep your Gunther requests coming!

Sicily was beautiful. Their villa beside the sea was beautiful. The sunsets and the restaurants and the people were all beautiful. But the only thing she could seem to admire, the only thing she wanted to photograph, was the beauty that was her boyfriend, Gunther. He’d struggled with his weight for a long time before discovering the most compatible diet and exercise plan. Since then, he’d never looked back—broadening his back and shoulders, toning his arms and thighs, hardening his chest and flattening his abdomen. As he became more and more comfortable in his own skin, it started to show in his wardrobe. Gone were the oversized t-shirts and sweatpants, replaced with tailored suits and more form-fitting clothing. He’d caught her staring on more than one occasion, usually choosing to point it out and poke fun at her until she was sure her cheeks would melt off, so since they’d arrived in Sicily, her gawking had become a lot stealthier. Or so she thought.

Take today for example. The couple relaxed on a set of sun loungers near the pool overlooking the sea, sharing a bottle of wine, enjoying the incredible views. Gunther, she suspected, was taking in his surroundings behind his dark sunglasses, seemingly paying her no mind. She slipped on her own sunglasses, laid back against the soft cushions, and though her head was pointed toward the water, her eyes were fixed to the left, on him. Always on him. He wore a white shirt today, a welcomed change from his usual darker shades, and the short sleeves hugged his biceps exquisitely, outlined his pecs and the hard plane of his abdomen. The black slacks he’d chosen were also form-fitting, hardly containing a soft bulge and his thick thighs. She licked her lips, rubbing her own thighs together, and she had no idea how noticeable her ogling had become until Gunther spoke up, not even looking in her direction.

“You know you don’t have to just stare,” he told her, sipping his wine. Her eyes widened behind shaded lenses. Finally he turned to her, grinning, adorable dimples on full display, and her heart fluttered. “You can admire me from over here.” She tilted her head, lips pursed, and the man collapsed into giggles before setting his wine glass on the small table nearby and curling his fingers.

“Oh, you want me to come over there?” she asked. “After you just made fun of me?” Gunther’s smile slowly faded and he tilted his own head, dipping his chin, firing his bright eyes at her, and yes, goddamn it, yes, she was gonna go over there after he just made fun of her.

She stood from her lounger and strolled over to her boyfriend in his. She gathered the loose skirt of her maxi dress in one hand, Gunther adjusting himself as he watched, and she smirked as she straddled his hips and lowered herself until her bare pussy settled on top of the growing lump in his pants. She made a show of lifting the dress to fan it out, and her boyfriend’s eyes descended, widening, and she instantly dropped the material, hiding the lewd scenery from both of them.

“You …” Gunther trailed off, shaking his head, pointing a finger at her.

“Me?” she questioned, brows rising. She grabbed his accusing hand with both of hers, purposefully lifting his finger to her lips. She pressed several soft kisses to the pad, which were followed by a long swipe of her hot, wet tongue from the base of his finger to the tip, and then she sucked the digit into her mouth. Gunther groaned, and it was half arousal, half surprise, and she grinned around his knuckle. “I just wanted to be … extra comfortable today,” she said. She pulled his middle finger into her mouth, gifting it the same treatment.

“And are you?” Gunther asked, eyes fixated on her lips and tongue as they bathed his hand. Her brows rose. “Comfortable,” he clarified.

She feigned consideration, cocking her head. “No, not really,” she replied. She released his hand, placing hers on his firm chest, and her hips leisurely began to rock against his stiffening dick. “You’ve been wearing all these … tight clothes recently,” she purred. “And your arms are just …” Gunther reached up to remove her sunglasses as she glanced down at his biceps, tossing them behind him, one hundred percent of his attention still zeroed in on her. Her hands drifted to his solid shoulders, the thin material of his shirt dampening from his own perspiration, on down to his arms. He watched as she bit her lip, his sharp eyes momentarily switching to her small, manicured hand while she tentatively wrapped her fingers around his bicep. He flexed the toned muscle, and her hips thrust against him, her juices soaking into his pants. “Sorry,” she breathed. “I just—”

“Do you want to kiss them?” Gunther interrupted, gently taking her chin between his fingers. Her blown pupils met his and she really thought he was going to start snickering because the man lived to embarrass her, but his eyes had been consumed by fire and filth. “You do, don’t you?” His smile was small and fleeting. He was rock solid between her legs, and her hips switched from a north-south direction to seductive circles, and it was Gunther’s turn to thrust. “Tell me what you want,” he said.

“I wanna kiss them,” the words tumbled out of her mouth, and she almost tried to catch them in the air so she could shove them back down her throat. Gunther’s brows lifted, his hand coming up to cup her cheek, pulling her down closer to him. “Sir,” she finished.

“That’s a good girl,” Gunther sighed, directing her to his arm. She licked her lips and when she was close enough, she kissed his solid bicep, licked, sucked, nipped. Gunther moaned, driving his hips into her, and she was reminded to move her own. Hot bursts of air ghosted over his skin as she panted, his hand sliding from her face so he could tangle it within her hair. “Tell me what else you want,” he whispered.

She lifted her head after a few moments of mouthing his muscle, their eyes meeting once more. As turned on as she was, she was still able to feel her heart swell with the love she had for her Ring General. “I want … I want you to know how beautiful you are,” she answered just as quietly. Gunther rolled his eyes, a smile growing, cheeks reddening, and he tried to lay his head back on the lounger, but it was her turn to grab his chin. “Don’t do that,” she drawled. He became serious all at once. “You’ve always been beautiful.” She moved across his chest, delighting in the subtle squirm of his body under hers. “Even when you thought you weren’t,” she went on, lips caressing the opposite bicep. The muscle contracted, and she whimpered. Gunther suddenly grabbed her face with both hands and brought it within an inch of his, and they were both out of breath despite a lack of exertion. He searched her face, ending on her eyes, and she melted in his embrace, mumbling, “Sir,” a millisecond before his skillful lips captured hers.

Her hands snuck under the tight white shirt that had started all of this and she lifted, revealing more delicious skin, and Gunther swallowed her moan greedily. He sat them up without warning, arm locking around her waist to keep her stable and in place. She completed her quest of removing his shirt, hands returning to his chest, only this time she added resistance. Because for a moment—just a quick second, I swear—she wanted to look at him, to admire him, as it were. And as she was regarding him with hungry eyes, he pinched the material of her dress between his fingers and deliberately pulled it down until her breasts popped out. She wasn’t even aware he’d done anything until he flicked her hardening nipples, her body quivering, and their eyes met, and hers were hooded, and his were infinite. Their lips collided, sparks igniting and flickering between them just as they had since the first time they’d kissed. She reached between them, and Gunther snatched her wrists, holding them up.

“No, no,” he admonished, shaking his head. Her heart pounded—had she done something wrong? “You have to make yourself cum first.”

She barely caught her jaw from falling into his lap, smiling instead, and resumed rolling her hips, having stopped … sometime. Gunther had that effect on her, always had. He held her wrists tightly, painfully, and the ferocity of her riding kicked into overdrive. He pressed their damp foreheads together. She bit her lip, and she tried—she tried her pretty hardest, anyway—not to avert her gaze from his debauched eyes, but his biceps were like magnets, drawing her attention to them.

“You want to kiss them again?” Gunther breathed. “Hmm?” She nodded, not trusting herself—or maybe she just didn’t remember how—to use her words. His lips grazed hers as he uttered, “You want to worship them?” She couldn’t stop her jaw this time, and her exhale echoed throughout the whole of Sicily, and her hips jerked almost violently. Just like that, her orgasm was easily within reach. “I want to hear you say it,” he continued, tone even lower than before. “Properly.”

With a one track mind and a direct map to the gold at the end of the rainbow, she knew the path of least resistance was the way to go. Her wrists were screaming, she thought maybe she’d have bruises the following day, but why did it feel so good? “I wanna kiss them,” she divulged, and then, much more hushed, “and I wanna worship them … sir.” For the cherry on top, her tongue snaked out of her mouth to lick at his lips. “My Ring General.”

Gunther smiled fondly at the monster he’d created, relinquishing his grip on her wrists. The wrists that had just moments ago been burning under his fingers now seemed to be completely pain free, as her eyes so slowly drifted to the muscle in question. Everything was suddenly in slow motion—Gunther making a fist, raising his arm and bending it at the elbow, bicep bulging. Her teeth clenched and her mouth watered, and a brief moment passed before she latched onto his arm like a vampire devouring their first victim. And it was only seconds after that that she came, scream muffled by the dense tissue in her mouth, and her eyes closed as she rode the waves of pleasure which wracked her body with tiny shudders.

She was still in the throes of her orgasm when Gunther reached between them once more to open his pants, unleashing his rock solid cock. She licked her lips, preparing to raise up and impale herself on that magnificent member, when Gunther effortlessly switched their positions, manhandling her like he knew she liked, and she giggled until he had her how he wanted her—on her hands and knees, bare ass poised, breasts swaying freely—and she arched her back, bucking against him. Wait … when did he take my dress off?

“I thought you might want to watch the pretty scenery while I fuck you,” Gunther told her, sliding the head of his cock along her weeping slit. 

It was a nice sentiment, but she could have been in a back alley somewhere for all the attention she paid once he entered her. She’d never been filled so completely before the Ring General, like his dick had been personally selected for her pussy by the universe itself. She collapsed to her elbows after only a few deep pumps, still stimulated from cumming only minutes beforehand, and Gunther wrapped her hair around his hand, yanking, and she grunted, reluctantly rising back to her hands.

“Please,” she whispered, “please, sir. I can’t …”

“Oh, yes, you can,” Gunther laughed, hand like a vice on her hip as his thrusts became almost savage. “You think I would be fucking you if you couldn’t? Hmm?”

“No, sir,” she whimpered, entire body jarred by his viscous pumps.

“Your Ring General?”

She came. Just like that, she was clenching around Gunther’s cock, quivering, and though there had been time between both orgasms, the intensity of this one made them seem like one long orgasm. There was just something … something about the way he said those two words that lit her world on fire and had her juices dripping down her thighs. 

“Such a sweet girl cumming for me again,” Gunther praised, and her smile alone could have powered a small country until the end of time, maybe even after that, but it was gone quickly as he continued fucking her. She wasn’t sure how much more her pussy could take. 

“Thank you, sir,” she breathed.

“My sweet girl,” he mumbled. “Worships her Ring General.”

“Fuck yes,” she purred.

“Where does my sweet girl want my cum?”

“I don’t care where you cum … I just wanna be able to watch.”

Gunther was silent after that, squeezing her hips and riding her like the world was going to end. He pulled out suddenly, repositioning her again, this time on her back. He lifted one of her legs so he could look at her pussy still drenched in her own cum while he jerked his glistening cock. A few rough strokes later and he was launching rope after rope of his thick, sticky sweetness across her stomach, the last few less powerful ones painting her pussy. She beamed as he hovered over her, his hands pressing into the cushions on either side of her head. 

“Never a moment’s peace with you,” he said.

She snickered. “That’s why you love me.”