#that probably ate up a lot of space without me thinking about it

[pen-papers]

oh thats why my black and white mode mspaint wasnt working.

(The second one is a portable harddrive so that's a temp one-but i tried moving my programs over to my SSD boot and it won't let me! ah the agonizing wonders of program organization. I've never been good at this = ~ = )

welp- in the mean time i'm going to invest into a classic pc tower- thinking the Optiplex, but honestly i'm not that tech savy.

[halaboyz]

spice and everything nice, seonghwa

ceo! ateez seonghwa x gn, employee! reader fluff wc: 11.4k warnings: rather detailed description of food and eating, ALL OVER THE PLACE ! not my best work but my best efforts though a/n: rrAAAAHHH i think this is my first time trying this trope?? lmao anw its inspired by a lot of scenes in kdrama 'dreaming of a freaking fairytale'! giving lots of my gratitude to my one and only ducky 4 deciding with me (which... ended up with spin the wheel) @ricsang !! ilysm <3

"I'm sorry, but you're going to have to move out as soon as... tomorrow morning." Your landlord drops the bomb, and leaves you without a second glance, leaving you with a piece of dismissal paper and a list of your unpaid dues.

You gawk, closing the door behind you helplessly as your eyes wander around your flat, eye twitching at the sudden— is it really sudden— news with your head still hazy from the sunlight.

Sighing, your fingers quickly call your friend, your one and only, already placing a default smile on your face, although he won't see it. "My lovely, most gorgeous, kindest, prettie—,"

"What the fuck do you want so early in the morning?" Wooyoung growls through the line, and you hear his bed sheets as he probably twists and turns from his bed.

"Clear your lawn." Your default smile drops, "I'm moving in your lawn for a few days. I'll be there by lunch,"

You don't even wait for his answer before you drop the call, finally washing up to start and clean up the flat you've been living in for years, and been leeching off for months already.

"I cannot, for the life of me, absolutely believe you." Wooyoung stares at you in bewilderment, movers working behind you as they drop your boxed things in his lawn.

"I cannot absolutely believe how broke I am too, thank you very much. Do you have food? I'm starving. I spent my last on the moving company," You comfortably made your way through his house, immediately going to the kitchen and found his mom's kimchi lying in the counter.

"Don't touch anything, I'll just make you lunch," Wooyoung sighs, while you hop into the high chair, watching Wooyoung move around his territory. "Come on, y/n, just ask your family for some money. They're your family, of course they'll need to help with your masters fees. You've been LOA for what, almost a year now!"

"Look, Mr. Right," You take a gulp of water, "My family is not like yours, all mighty and well that you even have a house of your own while you take your masters, no dues, no bills." You state as a matter of fact, but take no offense of his opinions, picking on the nuts he provided you snack on while he cooks. "My family's already struggling as they are."

"So why take masters? Why not just go and work already?"

"Because they wanted it, too. I helped start my masters with some fees with my part time job, which unfortunately fired me because I ate one of their expired food, and then lived far away so they wouldn't worry much about me." You explained, and he sighs. He's sad he can't do anything to help you lighten your burden, which is why he lets you stay in his house with him.

Of course you had conscience. You insisted to stay in his lawn because you had a tent and a sleeping bag, but Wooyoung was a loyal friend after all. After a little more insisting from Wooyoung and his mom which he called for help, you and Wooyoung had finally agreed until you've found yourself some decent job.

"Don't your company have some free space?" You pout, looking through your laptop's screen for a whole hour now trying to find a job.

"Even if there was, I can't get you in there," Wooyoung sing sung, scrolling through his phone on your bed, lying in his tummy.

"Why? They're that strict?" You squint, facing him.

"The CEO himself handles who goes in and out of his company. Directly. Don't know what goes in that cold head of his," He shrugs, and faces you. "But it doesn't hurt to try. Your degree lines up with mine so they could consider you without a doubt. You also have a high GWA so,"

You nod, knowing there's nothing going to hurt when you try. You've been handing over a hundred resumes for hundreds of companies, what's one more, right?

"Oh my god," You barge into Wooyoung's room one evening, and thankfully he was only lying in his bed, "I got scheduled for an interview at your company tomorrow!"

"For real?" Wooyoung shoots up as he looks at the email on your phone, "It's real..." Wooyoung whispers, and stifles a chuckle. "Be at your fucking best tomorrow, you're getting head on with a fucking bull."

Well, Wooyoung mentioned a bull. But he didn't say that bull was the CEO himself, Park Seonghwa.

Park Seonghwa, consistently chosen as number one for consecutive years already as continuously rising businessman in the fashion industry by different newsletters and publications such as Vogue, GQ, Esquire, Arena Homme, of the many.

He sits in front of you all elegant and mighty, while you sit there almost wanting out with how he gazes at you. You feel so small in front of him, and feel like Wooyoung just dumped you into a hell hole.

But thinking of your situation, this wasn't a time where you feed your ego away to the birds. It was a desperate time, not only for you but also for your family. So you set your embarrassment aside, heading face on with the bull, as Wooyoung adviced.

"You're applying for?" It was like elegance and superiority was oozing out of his lips when he talked. Having a one on one interview with one of the living legends of the fashion industry was making you shake to your toes, goosebumps all over your body.

"Either marketing strategy or marketing secretary, if I may, sir." You confidently reply, straightening your back. Right. It was a time to be arrogant of your skills.

"Without experience, at that," Seonghwa scoffs, and tosses your file to the table. You almost swoon at how he sounds, but quickly shake your head to reality. "You may leave."

"I am quite the ambitious person, sir. And I have my experience. As an intern, you'll see it by the third page," You ignore his last order, sitting still in your chair.

"Which has been five years, and if I may add, at an already closed, blacklisted company," You didn't get to think about that. which almost crumbles your confidence down. but you stand your guard. "Leave."

"Let me prove my skills for a week. Just a week. Whatever tasks you give me, let me prove it." From all the companies that has accepted your almost empty resume that only consisted of academic achievements but zero experiences, you were quite— desperate by a lot.

Seonghwa scoffs again, crosses his legs and leans back to his chair.

"A day." Seonghwa offers, smirking. "Attract ten investors tomorrow, within the day and I'll even accept you to be my direct secretary." Seeing your dumbfounded face was something he found funny, because it was a funny offer, after all. "It's a take it or leave it offer. That's so much time I can offer to a candidate only,"

"We have a deal, then." When he hears your determined voice, he internally scoffs. You keep throwing him out of his zone, being the first one to do that. He raises an eyebrow in interest, letting him know for the last time that you had agreed to his offer for tomorrow.

"Was that a bad idea?" You almost cry to Wooyoung, thinking you're only walking right into the trap of embarrassing yourself.

"I don't want to pop your bubble but... absolutely." Wooyoung gives you a wry smile, patting your shoulder. "The company's been having a hard time getting new investors for a few months now, I think it's due to less and less creatives coming out. That's also why his secretary suddenly quit and signed with a rival company. Thinks it's the start of the downfall of Park Enchante."

You dramatically fall on your knees, losing all hope for yourself.

"I can't believe I just said those to the Park Seonghwa..." You almost whisper, "...who you didn't tell me is your CEO!" You point out when you suddenly remember, jumping to strangle him.

"I didn't get to?" He slyly tries to get out of your room in a hurry, but you immediately grab his jacket.

"You don't understand! He's a living legend! Did you know he's the youngest CEO who has established his own brand? Do you have any idea how much he's earned just a month after he established his company? How lovely his first works were? My god! I could go on and on!"

"It's not my fault that you didn't know his company name!" He struggles out of your reach, trying to calm you down. "And I'm not down bad for fashion like you are! I'm just someone who works at the company! Also, why apply for marketing, you literally have a god-given talent at styling and creating!" Wooyoung blurts out, and it makes you pout.

"I don't draw and sew shit anymore, Woo." You roll your eyes, plopping to the couch. "It's been years, come on now, let it go! I'm majoring in marketing now so goodbye creatives,"

"y/n, you were so good at that, you were even thinking of starting of making your own brand! Why didn't you push through with it anyway,"

"I didn't think I would earn from it anyway. And starting it would cost so much. Don't worry about it, hands were rusty anyway. I wasn't confident with my own works, too." The atmosphere glooms and you take responsibility for it, clapping and taking a sharp breath. "Anyway! Better be ready for tomorrow. You should go rest, I'll be readying files for tomorrow."

"You got the files?"

"Easily. With permission from your great CEO, the temp secretary gave all out to me at once." You sigh, "Now if you'll excuse me, I have 10 clients to meet tomorrow,"

"Holy shit, I can't get used to these big ass revolving doors," You whisper, and determinedly let out a huff as you admire the big Park Enchante blaring on top of the doors. "I'm getting you in my resume." You nod in commitment, patting your chest to cheer yourself up. But before you even take a step in, three consecutive cars rush in the front of the company, and you stop to see in curiosity.

People rush out of the two cars behind, one opening the car door of the first car.

There he was, so elegant and flashy, coming out of the car with his sunglasses on. Another held an umbrella up for him but he immediately takes it with him, shooting the butler a small smile.

It was the first time you see him smile. You never see him smile. In person (from yesterday's experience), online, whatever paper you see him on, he never smiles. Always that poker face, sleek, straightened-back, poised and just pure... elegance.

"Wow. He's so handsome," You curse through gritted teeth, unconsciously holding your breath as you watch him make his way inside. "He couldn't have seen me, right?" That was a surge of shame running down your veins.

It was rich coming from you that you even had the guts to apply to a company like this.

He wouldn't mind if you wouldn't show up for your deal, right?

"Right." You nod, heels turning around as you make up your mind not to show, gripping your coat and stepping away from the big doors.

Before you're stopped by closed, long, black umbrella.

"May I ask where you're going?" Seonghwa, the almighty himself, now without his sunglasses presents by your side, holding the umbrella up to your waist to stop you.

"Hi." You awkwardly chuckle, "I uh, umm," You think of an excuse, sighing. "Going for coffee. Before going in," You smile in default.

"Ah. Five minutes before supposed time in," He checks his watch, and then at you. "I do not condone late comers. And, coffee's provided in the lobby. Why go for a mile walk if you can get it here,"

"Ha. I didn't know that."

"You're pulling back from the deal." He stated as a matter of fact, taking the umbrella down.

"Why would I for a once in a lifetime offer," You chuckle, shaking your hand in front of him. "I need money to save my life, why would I," Being sarcastic doesn't even go through him.

"Get ready in ten. I'm coming with,"

"What?" You blurted out, face contorted into something... desperate. When Seonghwa turns around to look you in the eye once again. He raises his brow at your reaction, and you immediately fall into a default smile once again. "I mean, you're the CEO. Why would you need to come with,"

"I don't think you've heard," He sighs, confidently stepping towards you. "I'm in a quite desperate situation right now. And I can't quite trust an unskilled candidate employee to go alone with my files."

You inhale sharply as you fight the urge to roll your eyes, stepping towards him as well.

"I'll prove my skills, then." You confidently crane your neck, facing him head on with another challenge. "I'll get employed, get my skillful ass paid, and get out of your company. I'll bet you'll beg on your knees to not let me resign?" You shrug, waiting for his rebut.

He chuckles incredulously, tucking his hands in his pockets. And then he nods, taking your statement seriously.

"I'll be waiting for that day,"

And it wasn't even half the meeting for the first client to see how skillful you were. The way you communicated, the way how you had managed to study all about his company through the files he had provided, and how easily you gave your beautiful smile.

Oh that beautiful smile is what scammed him in this deal in the first place. Although he knew it was sarcastic and far from the real one, he liked it. How you showed confidence, how you were ambitious, how honest you were, how you showed no fear of the high figure in front of you.

It was fresh to see in the industry.

Before he even shoots back to reality, you were done with your first client in thirty minutes. Hopping back to the seat two tables away to observe you after the client has gone, Seonghwa swiftly turns his gaze toward you.

"How was it? Did you fail already?" Seonghwa blinks, but you just open the file folder to present to him, falling flat at the table, signed.

"Promptly, the successful second client meeting will be in another ten minutes, at the hotel next door. Let's get moving, my dear CEO." You smiled, closing the folder and waving it at him.

It wasn't even long before you had finished eight more clients. Seonghwa had stayed silent, only tailing on you and continuously giving you additional information you asked for.

While talking with your last client, your eyes moved to him as he rest his elbow on the armrest of the couch he was sitting on. His eyelids were falling with his chin in his palm, legs crossed. It looked very uncomfortable, making you quicken the pace of the last meeting.

"Thank you very much. We'll contact you once again for future meetings and appointments. I appreciate you coming in person." You bid your farewell, watching him thank and smile at you, shaking hands before going his own way.

When he's out of sight, you made your way quietly two tables away where Seonghwa sat solemnly, sitting in front of him. When he feels it was too... quiet, his eyes finally open to see you sitting in front of him, reading more files he had handed out.

"Ten over ten clients signed. What do you think about that?" You arrogantly shook non-existent dust on your shoulders, leaning back on the chair.

Seonghwa chuckles, scooting to a more proper posture. "You're hired from the first client itself. Saw how you do, saw your potential. Nine more clients were a bonus. Quite impressive, I have to give you that."

"You're beautiful when you smile. Why don't you do it more often?" You scoff, making him squint his eyes at you. "Thank you, sir." You smile, that always default smile. Seonghwa still likes it, though. "I'll treat dinner, follow me. You must be tired." You offer to your huge CEO, gaining ego and confidence now.

"Follow where? We're already at a hotel, we can just eat here." Seonghwa looks around, confused. "And I think you've come to grow a little comfortable with me too much, secretary."

"One, you think my wallet can handle a five-star hotel restaurant?"

"Then you can let me pay for dinner." You shush him sharply, glaring.

"Two, its beyond working hours. You wanted to go with me so I'm giving you the chance of being treated by a broke person. You wanted to go with me so it is not my fault that I can't keep being polite and straight up sucking up all day with you." You ramble, reasoning your hunger for it. When he raises his brow, you press your lips to a thin line. "...Sir."

He scoffs, until he lets you lead the way on where to eat. You lead him to a small grilling house near your neighborhood, coming in like it's already your home.

"Oh, you're with someone new today? Where's Wooyoung?" The owner welcomed you, leading you to a free table.

"Please don't tell him I dined here tonight," You scrunch your nose, patting Seonghwa to let him sit. "We'll take Set B, with a plus of two beers," You smile, and watch the owner hop away after winking at you.

He hesitates, seeing how molds were forming at the corner of the walls.

"Humble setting." Seonghwa mumbles, still looking around in awe. His face scrunches when he sees cobwebs in his side of wall, flinching.

"What, you want to switch?" You chuckle, looking at him in disbelief.

"Yes, please." Seonghwa immediately stands up and almost pushes you out of your seat, making you scoff in disbelief.

"This is the best grilling house in town. Haven't you at least heard of it? This ambience makes the food even better and here you are scrunching your beautiful face."

"I've never been to such... humble place," Seonghwa doesn't even look at you. He keeps looking around, as if he was there to scan the place for more cobwebs or worse. "Can't we eat at a more proper place?"

Just at the right timing, the tray was set rather angrily in the table, which made the both of you two jump. The owner scowls at Seonghwa, taking what he said as an insult.

"I think i might just prefer the loud one than a classy one," The owner rolls her eyes before leaving, eyes still glaring at Seonghwa as she does.

You chuckle as you notice Seonghwa stunned in his seat, looking like a kid who just got scolded.

"I'm betting my everything you'll love the food here." You ready your chopsticks, and with your other hand, start grilling the pork and beef. You expertly moved both hands simultaneously, the other mixing the sizzling stir-fried squid while Seonghwa watched you in awe, for the nth time today.

He just finds you interesting.

When finished, you put a mouthful on top of his rice and urged him to take a bite, giddy on your toes to see how he would react.

"Go ahead," You nod, waiting for him. He looks at you and the food suspiciously, and then around. God just please let it be edible. Seonghwa thinks, before finally picking up his spoon and letting the weird thing in his mouth.

You watch him as his suspicious eyes turned into wide ones, urgently taking another sweep of food. You chuckle, smiling proudly and taking your own portion. You began to eat quietly, only observing how the both of you finished in thirty minutes when you and Wooyoung usually finish the set in an hour and a half.

"Looks like you were hungry." You smile, looking at him finish his last bite.

"I mean, wow," He wipes his mouth elegantly with the tissue, tapping his tummy. "That was the most I've eaten for months," He was unlike the CEO who has been uptight and poised the whole time, but rather a kid who had just discovered his now new favorite food and restaurant.

He looks around and finds the owner still glaring at him but did he care? No. He raises two thumbs up and mouths a wow, pointing at a squeaky clean tray and grill. The owner only lets out a scoff, shaking her head.

"It looks like it's your first time eating like this, what life were you living?" You embarrassingly whisper, pushing his hands down.

"It is." Seonghwa mumbles, gulping down the glass of beer. "You see, I've always gone to fine hotels and restaurants and I didn't have the leisure to go around small towns so,"

You coo in disappointment, "You're just in the tip of the iceberg, then," You chuckle. "Let me pour you a glass. To thank you for employing me," You offer the can of beer, waiting for him to offer his own glass. When he does, he gets the can and waits for you to offer yours.

"To my new secretary," He raises his glass, and you smile.

"To my new CEO,"

"God..." You mumble, getting the hair out of your face as sunlight hits you. "My head fucking hurts..."

You grumble, throwing the comfortable sheets over your head and cuddling the warm pillow beside you.

Wait, sunlight?

And a warm pillow beside you? For all you know, your bed in Wooyoung's house only fitted your own body. And there was only a little window that sunlight doesn't even touch your bed.

This wasn't Wooyoung's house. You open one eye to inspect, your eyebrows meeting the first thing in the morning.

"Oh my god." You whisper, hand flying to your mouth to shut the fuck up.

It wasn't a warm pillow. It was a body.

Scratch that, your new boss' body.

You did not just sleep in one bed with your boss. You were still in denial when you slowly took the sheets off of you, sneaking out of bed.

You take a glance to make make sure if it was indeed your boss, taking the sheets that covered his face too.

You gasp, confirming it when his face becomes clear, sleeping sweetly and tightly. You mock cry, hitting your head as you get your purse and your shoes, tippy toeing out of the pension he owned. At least you were both still fully clothed.

You just pray to the gods no one saw you.

You remember getting hellbent drunk with beers last night, calling a designated driver to drive the both of you home with Seonghwa's car. Apparently, you had asked the driver to wait for you while you walked an almost sleepwalking, drunk Seonghwa to his flat and to his room, but he only had a waiting time of thirty minutes so when you didn't show up, he parked the car and left.

When you got to his flat, you threw him to his bed as he cradled his own blanket. His bed looked so comfortable and you swore that you were just going to try lying on it for five minutes.

That five minutes turned into the whole night.

"Where the hell did you stay?!" Wooyoung welcomes you, hitting your shoulder. "What happened? Did you get the job? Why do you have a bedhair? Where did you sleep?"

"I got the job! I have ten minutes to get ready so I'll answer all your questions later. Wait for me!"

It was one whole hell of a story to tell when Wooyoung's the recipient. He keeps on talking backin the middle, talk shit about his boss and how proud he is of you for finally landing a job- the direct secretary of the CEO at that.

"Good morning, sir." You shamelessly greet, handing him a cup of coffee while you tailed him to his huge office.

"Well aren't you very polite now," Seonghwa takes a seat in his office chair, leaning his head back and eyebrows met in between due to the aching head he had after waking up with an alarm.

"I have to keep my job now, don't I?" You smile, the default one you always held. "Would you prefer a hot coffee? I can make you one right now," You offer, heading to the side of the coffee maker in his office to make one for him.

"I drank too much last night I don't remember a thing. Did you get home safe?" Seonghwa's voice was laced with worry, watching your back.

You chuckle nervously, slightly trembling as you make your way to him with his cup of coffee. Careful not to spill it, you put it on his desk.

"Of course I did! Haha!" You reply, clapping even. "I had so much fun, I didn't even get drunk so I was able to go home," When you see Seonghwa nod, you internally sigh in relief. Clasping your hands, you smile again. "Please give me something to do now, dear CEO. This is the day I've been waiting for,"

"Oh yeah?" Seonghwa held a devious smile, standing up from his seat and walking up to a tall shelf of files and files and files. He picks, one, two, three, four, five thick documents and hands them to you all at once, making you stumble on your feet. "I need reports of these documents by tonight. And if ever I need you, I'm ringing this bell. Have you introduced yourself to everybody? Make sure you're getting along with everyone. With your attitude, I think you're going to need it." Seonghwa taps the top document in your hands, making his way to his seat back again.

He feigns ignorance by raising his brows, as if asking you what had you stunned on your place.

"I think I'll do just fine, Mr. Park. Shouldn't take advice from yours truly now, should I?" You smile, difficulty making your way out of his office.

After settling on your large table, you sat comfortably on your seat.

"Wow. Okay, this is really happening." You whisper, in awe of your own table, own nameplate, and the pile of work you're about to do. "I'm doing it. I'm working," You whisper in disbelief, internally screaming and punching the air continuously for about a minute before slapping yourself back to reality, starting your work.

In the other side of the window, Seonghwa watched you in amazement, chuckling. Such a peculiar attitude you had, it kept him in his toes.

"Done!" Not even three hours in, you had barged in his office, putting his files back to his table.

"That's a day's worth of work of a secretary. What do you mean you're done?" Seonghwa had his CEO mode on, making you politely smile. He began to run through the files, analyzing your work.

Peculiar, and good at work.

"That's a day's worth? What secretaries have you been having?" You furrow your brows, skeptic. "I'm just naturally good at work. I told you, you won't regret hiring me. Is there something more I should do?" You smile, waiting for him to finish scanning your work.

"Incredible. You may now go home," Seonghwa nods in acknowledgement, and you crane your neck. "What?"

"...That's it?"

"Well, I don't have any more meetings schedules today, don't I?" Seonghwa confirms, setting the files in the side with a sigh. When you nod, he nods as well. "There's your answer. You can now go home."

"It's not even twelve noon, though?" You question, taking a double look at your watch. "Give me work worth of my pay, I'll feel guilty if you let me do that alone," You demand, even offered your hand to him.

He chuckles, "That's what good workers get. Early leaves." Seonghwa just looks at you with a smile, but you only pout, looking at your offered hands. You still wait for him, and he finally looks around. "I really don't have anything else for you to do though..."

"Then we can't do anything about that," You disappointingly lower your hands, finally bidding goodbye and thanking him for today. "You can call my phone number if you need anything. Please make sure I have a lot to do tomorrow," You chuckle, heading to the door. You hear him chuckle before you closed the doors behind you, heading to the marketing department. "Woo!"

"Oh, you're here," Wooyoung exclaims, side-hugging you and leading you to his table. He was about to leave for lunch break. "What do you mean you're done?"

"He said he gave me a day's worth of work. And he really didn't ring the bell so no one disturbed me so," You explained, bored. "I really don't have anything to do now."

"You can help me with mine," Wooyoung slyly offers, making you squint your eyes.

"No thanks. This is a blessing, I guess," You take a bite of your lunch, while Wooyoung delves into his. He looked more in a rush than you, since he still had work to do. "Can I ask you something?"

"Aren't you already asking?" Wooyoung's childish remark makes you roll your eyes.

"What time does Seonghwa usually leave work?"

"For what, you're going to tail him?"

"Wooyoung," You grunt, slapping his arm.

"I don't know. You should ask the security. We all leave before him. I've never seen him leave work before us unless he's been out since noon for meetings and events and such,"

You nod, finally letting Wooyoung eat in peace. After you're both done, you let Wooyoung get back by himself to his department as you head to the entrance security, asking around. Only to find out that he usually leaves late at night, from nine to even midnight.

You pout, checking your phone. He hasn't really texted you anything he needed or called you for something, and it's just two in the afternoon.

"Maybe he's just cutting me some slack since it's my first day. I should just take it," You breathe out, heading out of the office with your things.

You were wrong. It's been two whole weeks and you've constantly been getting early leaves because you finish early. And Seonghwa has not been giving you more work unless needed- but still, you were able to complete and finish it earlier than expected.

"I can't keep doing this," You pout. "Another early leave? Aren't there more works to do? Reports? Client appointments to make? You're just going to make me leave again? Can't you just make me clean your whole office? Make you coffee? Anything?" You ramble, feeling guilty.

"That's not a secretary's work," He snorts, standing up. He stretches his upper body and you can't seem to tear your eyes off of him while he does so, reminiscing how warm he felt that one morning. You shake your head to reality when you realize he's working towards you, holding your shoulders.

"Come on, I have four more hours before my shift ends!" You protest, but he only twists your body to face the door, and leave you out of it.

"Your work's done, y/n. Thank you for today, I'll see you tomorrow." He softly smiles, and you're out of the door. You face him, almost pleading. He softly shoos you away, and the door is closed.

You throw a simple tantrum outside his door, feeling bored two minutes after your work was done. And just like clockwork, whenever you're done for work, you come to the marketing department to cause chaos in Wooyoung's table while he worked.

You even fell asleep beside him.

Meanwhile Seonghwa, an hour after shooing you, peeked outside to see if you've gone home, and seeing you gone, he chuckles to himself. If you were going to go home anyway, why were you even giving him an earful?

"God, you're so adaptive. You sleep anywhere," Wooyoung shakes you awake, and he's standing up with his things. "Should we go home? It's nearing dinner,"

"Oh..." You stretch, checking your watch. "You go ahead, I'll check on my boss first and see if he needs anything," You pat his arms, "I'll text you," When Wooyoung nods, you give yourself another stretch before heading to the elevators, bumping into hundreds of workers about to go home. At the highest level, there were three or four workers left that were already fixing their things.

"Excuse me, hi." You stop one of them, "Has Mr. Park eaten?"

"I don't think he has," They ponder, "I don't think I saw him gone out of his office after the last meeting before you left. That's it."

After thanking them and letting them go their way, you peek at the big windows to see Seonghwa still working, the brightness of the computer screen blaring at his face.

"He's so handsome," You admire for a minute, before going your way.

Seonghwa scratches his eyes as he heaves a deep breath, standing up from his seat after a while. He walks around, stretching here and there, and then standing up before the glass windows to see the view outside. The city was now in its rush hour, lights living up. Seonghwa almost jumps when he hears a knock, head whipping towards the door.

"y/n?" He squints, confirms it was you when you smile and make your way in. "What are you still doing here? I thought you left?"

"I didn't. I was too guilty to do so," You chuckle, getting the rolling tray table to the side. "I was waiting for you to call or text but I get nothing. What a work," You shake your head, and you reveal a plastic of lunchbox. "I was told you never left your office. So I'm guessing breakfast was what you last ate. Apart from that, hundreds of coffee and your unbelievably expensive chocolate candies you have in your refrigerator,"

Seonghwa almost hops at the sight of food, getting his chair and ready to dig in. It was a scrumptious meal, making Seonghwa exclaim in happiness.

"This is from that restaurant, isn't it?" Seonghwa says in between bites, gulping down the food. You chuckle, nodding. "I missed it. Thank you for bringing it for me," Seeing Seonghwa eat so deliciously makes you smile, admiring him once more. "How about you, have you eaten?"

"I did, before getting here. With Wooyoung," You reply, roaming around his table. You see countless of drawings of clothing styles paired together, one catching your eye. You crane your neck, thinking about something about the clothes. "I think it would be better with nets topped with it..." You whisper, and Seonghwa whips his head to you.

"What was that?" Seonghwa asks, and only did you realize what you were doing.

"Nothing." You smile, showing him the papers. "Beautiful, Seonghwa. I think you're doing great," You place the papers down neatly, careful not to ruin it in any way.

Seonghwa takes your compliment to heart, making him stop munching. He smiles, genuinely. To hear a compliment when he's struggling the most and is not very confident in his own work makes him choke up, but he endures it.

He doesn't know whether it felt more genuine because you were more genuine than you sounded before, always sarcastic and work-driven. Or if it was how you used his name so freely and comfortably that it seemed more genuine to him.

Nevertheless, he liked it.

"You're done? You must've been very hungry," You question, peeking at the almost clean lunchbox. "Stop overworking and digesting too much coffee. Neither is good for your body," You help Seonghwa clean the table up, earning silence.

"Wait for me, I'll drive you home." Seonghwa quickly picks his things up, shutting the computer down.

"What? Your driver?"

"It's beyond working hours," He chuckles, "And I always go home late. I can drive myself home,"

"So the rumors were true," You gasp, feeling a bit sad about his situation. "But don't worry taking me home, it's just one bus away,"

"No, let me. You've been waiting for me and even brought me dinner, I owe you." He insists, taking his bag. "Let's go"

You quietly follow him to the parking, thinking about how hardworking this man was already. He deserved his spot, he deserved everything with all the work he's been doing. What he doesn't deserve was this inevitable situation, wherein all creatives were in a slump.

"Please," You realize Seonghwa had been holding the passenger's seat for you, and you look at him in question. "What, you're planning to sit at the back? Make me your driver? Your boss?"

"No- I mean, I can just-"

"Just sit," Seonghwa urges, pulling you closer and pushing you inside. You grow uncomfortable at the situation, uneasy at your seat. "Want me to buckle your seatbelt as well?"

"No, I can do it myself," You quickly buckle your own seatbelt, watching Seonghwa close your door and jog to his seat. "You know, I can drive you rather,"

"You can?"

"...If I had a driver's license, that is." You shyly giggle, looking outside.

Seonghwa almost pulls you in to pinch your cheeks, but he stops himself. He finds you so cute when you giggled, finding it hard to hold himself. He busies himself with the GPS, getting your attention.

"Input your address now, it's getting late,"

"Ah, right," You scoot closer to the GPS, putting in Wooyoung's address and smiling. "Thank you," You say, before he starts the car and whispers a shy 'weicome.'

You quickly send Wooyoung a short message informing him of your whereabouts.

"You live close by," Seonghwa starts a small talk. "I live just down the street,"

You look at Seonghwa to react, but god the way his sleeves are pulled up and how his vest hugged his figure so perfectly made him look so ethereal.

"...here," You hear Seonghwa's voice zoom back in to reality, making you jump in your seat. "We're here."

"Sorry, I was zoning out," You apologize, looking around and indeed was outside Wooyoung's house.

"I figured," Seonghwa laughs, "I was just babbling around," He looks around as well, seeing how all the lights inside are blaring. "You must be living with someone? Or you just really leave all lights on?"

"Ah. Yes, I live with Wooyoung," Seonghwa's eyebrows furrow, looking at you rummaging your phone to send a text. "Thank you very much for driving me home, please do go home safely. I can't ask you to send me a text when you're home, that'll be too... much for a secretary, wouldn't it?" You chuckle, hopping out of the car.

After thanking him again, Seonghwa urges you to go inside before he speeds off, watching you go inside safely. He peeks inside, using his height as a plus to see up the gates. Wooyoung welcomes you outside and you jump right in his arms, and he sighs.

Right. Living together in one roof, dinners and breaks together. he might have just gotten his heart broken a bit with the information.

Seonghwa gets home safely and loosens his tie, plopping on his couch with a thud.

He looks at his high ceiling, stares. It still brings him to a smile thinking about your effort a while ago, stretching his arms and resting it in his forehead.

He likes you. Of course, as a secretary. Nothing more. Should be nothing more.

But when he sleeps tightly while thinking of you, the sleep he's been wanting for a few years now, so peaceful and deep, he rethinks again. Maybe, just maybe, a little more than just a secretary.

"Good morning!" You welcome, handing him his usual morning coffee. "You slept in today? That's a first," You chuckle, tailing him to head to his office.

"That's a first for me too," He mumbles, steps quick as he's late for about an hour already.

"Why are you in such a rush? You're the president here, no one's going to scold you," You try to keep up, almost tripping on your own feet. He doesn't even give you a glance since he step foot inside, making you pout.

"I've got tons of work to do, you're my secretary. I think you should know that," He sighs defeatedly, which makes you shut your mouth. He makes his way elegantly through his office, immediately opening his computer and getting to work.

After seeing him in his office, you quietly do your own work in your table, stealing glances only here and there inside the office. When you hear a beep from your machine, you jolt up and run to his office.

"Hi, sorry. I need you to do more reports, here are the files." He stretches out more documents, and you quickly hug it to your chest. You wait for a minute or two for him to even glance at you, but to no avail. You awkwardly make your way out of the office, getting to work.

When it's lunch time, you finally stand up to stretch your body and leave for lunch, intentionally dragging work to be able to stay longer. You peek inside to see Seonghwa still in his place, drawing different designs and looking at his computer.

"Woo," You say, taking a bite of your food, "Your boss is so complicated, do you know that?"

"Why? Did something happen?"

"One day he acts close, the second day he's so distant. Or is it just because he's late today? Catching up with lots of work?" You crane your neck, clicking your tongue.

He scoffs, putting his spoon down.

"Hey, y/n. Did you know that you've been spending more time with him than me these past weeks?" He puts on a smirk, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Hey! That's because it's literally my work?" You protest, taking the last bite. "Also, all this time I've been getting off work early, I go home and rest!"

"That doesn't count, I'm not home." Wooyoung shakes his head. "If you weren't home though, you're waiting for him to finish work. You don't think I know that? You sneak out after having dinner with me, saying you need some air and then come back almost midnight,"

"That's... because!"

"Don't try explaining, I understand. Our president's very likeable. Handsome and successful. He just has his bad days," Wooyoung states as a matter-of-fact, nodding.

"What, like being late in his own company?" You roll your eyes, pushing your tray.

"He's never late. Maybe that's why,"

"What's wrong with being late? There was a time I was never late too!"

"Why are you getting mad at me, I'm literally just stating facts here and trying to console you!" Wooyoung and you have been unconsciously raising your voices, making you apologize around immediately.

You meet Seonghwa's eyes in the entrance, making you jump as if a deer caught in headlights. You don't even know but you feel guilty, looking right at him with apologetic eyes.

He just ignores and turns his back on you, going his own way. You quickly grab your things and drink Wooyoung's water, glaring at him as you try and catch up with Seonghwa.

"Weren't you going to go grab lunch?" You ask, feet busy.

"I was. I didn't like the menu," Seonghwa replies, rushing back to his office.

"Should I get you lunch outside?"

"There's no need."

"I insist. I still have ten minutes for my break. I can get you something you want. There's a lot of restaurant near anyway,"

"y/n, there's no need. I'll just continue my work,"

"Still, you should eat."

"I said there's no need, y/n." His voice wasn't loud, but stern and strong. Just like you viewed him before you worked for him. His look was cold, as if you had just touched a sensitive button for him.

You felt small at that moment, shuffling your hands in awkwardness and shame. You may have felt too comfortable with your boss in such a little time.

"Alright, sorry." You mumble, eyes falling down in an instant and politely apologizing. You step back to reach for the door handle and invite yourself out.

Seonghwa beats himself up right when the door closes but wakes himself up immediately. He's got no time for anything else but his work. He has to work.

So when he glances outside the windows to look at you, he brainwashes himself that he did nothing to be apologetic to you and proceeds to work.

"Here are the last reports, is there anything more I can do?" You confirm, and only with a shake of a head he shoos you off. You politely, once again, bid your farewell and immediately take your leave, heading straight to Wooyoung.

It was the first time you had finished work right before designated off work time, Wooyoung already preparing to go home.

"Why do you look so down?"

"Nothing," You smile, tailing him home. Wooyoung doesn't press on it, changing to a different topic. You stop when you realize you're in front of the restaurant you always eaten dinner.

"I think I'm gonna pass, Woo. I can accompany you eat though,"

Wooyoung ended up only ordering a take out, feeling sorry with the thought of eating alone in front of you if you weren't going to eat. He doesn't ask any more, you were probably going to tell him if you can't handle it yourself.

"I'll take a walk around first, Woo. Clear my head," Your feet ends up in front of your company, hand holding a plastic of food. "What the hell am I even doing here,"

You sigh, heading inside and to his office sneakily. You hesitate whether to bother him again and make him eat dinner, because he may skip both lunch and dinner at this point.

When you peek inside the windows, he was focused on his work, holding a paper up to see if any new ideas will pop up if he stretched it out through the light. Again, you sigh, leaving the company all at once when you realize that you might step beyond the boundary once again.

Seonghwa groans in frustration as he sets the paper down, no new ideas popping up. He decides to call it a night and starts packing up, turning the computer off.

When he turns the knob and felt it heavy, he turns to look at the plastic left hanging on it.

You skipped lunch so please eat dinner. I'm saying this with the sense of responsibility as your secretary. Don't overwork and sleep tight. y/n.

He read the note and left him with a smile, taking the plastic with him as he goes home and eats it deliciously. To be honest, he was quite expecting you to be waiting for him once again like how you did last night. But after his burst out, he realizes that maybe it was too much that he was even expecting that from you.

The food was great, it would've been better if you were there, though.

This continues on for the rest of the week. Leaving food in his door, Seonghwa expecting to see food once he leaves work, Seonghwa and you only talking when you need it for work. That's it.

You don't cross the boundary once more, doing your best with your work until your first paycheck.

"A million?!" You blink rapidly to see if you were only dreaming, looking at your bank account with previously only a dollar and sixty-seven centavos.

"A million?!" Wooyoung exclaims when he hears you, rushing to your phone. "What the fuck?! You're a millionaire within a month?!"

"What the fuck! Must've been an honest mistake, I got to text Seonghwa,"

"Keep it! God-given blessing, duh!" You roll your eyes at Wooyoung, immediately asking Seonghwa to call you once his schedule is free. "You and your reasons, you just want to talk to him!"

"Well, who doesn't?!" Clearly, yes, you're only making up reasons to gain just a minute of extra attention from Seonghwa, and you don't put effort into denying that. "Shush!" You shut Wooyoung off when you read Seonghwa's message that he's free now, immediately dialing his number.

"Hi. You know what, could you please go to the office now? I'll be waiting. Sorry if this is sudden," Seonghwa initiates, and you hear a sigh. "I just have one more document to do and then I'm free,"

"If you have something to do, it's fine. I'll be there tomorrow anyway. It's nothing to rush."

"It's okay, I have something to confirm too and I need it tonight. Only if it's not a hassle though,"

"I'll be there in twenty."

You know softly and peek inside, seeing Seonghwa solemnly napping in his desk, head over arms. Papers were scattered around his table, two empty cups of coffee at the side, monitor still blaring. You walk quietly, making your way to admire his face a little longer.

You smile, wanting to trace his sharp features, craning your neck to get a better view. Your eyes follow his eyes, nose, lips, and then the table.

What the fuck.

Your eyes widen at the realization, stunned in place. At the same time, your nervous, heavy breathing wakes Seonghwa up, opening his eyes and blushing when he realizes how close you were.

"Why are these here?!" You exclaim, snatching three, four, five papers from the table. Seonghwa sighs when you finally got space between the both of you, taking a minute or two to calm himself down before he answered you.

"I was finding the invitation for tomorrow night's event, saw those on your drawer." Seonghwa explains, while you gawk at your drawings. When you were bored, you tried mix and matching different styles of clothes, designing them, and drawing them to life. "Did you make these?" He leans back in his chair, swiveling to your side.

"Ye- No? I don't know? I mean," You ramble, shaking your head. You take a deep breath, thinking how to excuse yourself out of the situation.

There was no way out.

"Look, I just made those when I was bored. It's shit." You wave your hand off, hiding the papers behind your back. "Let me go get the invitation and I'll be off," Before you take a step away, Seonghwa stands up in his place and walks toward you.

When he's a step away in front of you, he stops, tucking his hands in his pockets and stares down at you.

"Were you initially planning on applying for designs?"

"No." Your quick reply makes him squint his eyes, waiting for you to continue. "Where would I get the confidence for that?" You scoff, "I told you, I needed money to continue my masters, I have a degree in business marketing. Why would I apply for something not in my field?"

"Because you don't need a degree for that. All I need is creativity and originality."

"Just let me off, sir. I told you, these were made during breaks, you don't need to put much thought on it,"

"Now I'm a sir?" Seonghwa scoffs, taking a step closer and leaning to meet you eye level. "If those were made during breaks, what more could you do if you're paid to do it? Something you really love doing, getting paid, seeing your works being brought to life, and getting credited for it,"

You gulp, realizing that Ha, Seonghwa isn't dumb to connect the dots. With the way you denied your works, bragged your unrelated degree and how you avoided the topic, for sure it was something you'd keep in the dungeon because you didn't realize you'd be much closer step to one of your unrealistic dreams.

You were just a broke college student taking a LOA because of a crisis in financial status two months ago, who knew you'd be working in one of the biggest fashion brands in the world? When you thought you've had let go of your useless talent and dream long ago already?

"I'll get these," Seonghwa reaches for the papers you hid behind your back with a smirk while you had your guard down, showing it to you. "Let's get you home."

You stayed quiet the whole ride, thinking of what Seonghwa had said. Were your works really just acknowledged by the one and only? Works that, for you, even made half-heartedly? Should you have applied for creatives than marketing? Should you have never even hidden your talent and skills?

If you hadn't, then where would you be now? What would you be now?

"We're here." Seonghwa turns on the hazard, removing his seatbelt to take a good look at you.

"Ah," You mumble, removing your own. "Thank you." You were about to open the door when he stops you, tugging your sleeve.

"I mean what I said with your works." He starts, "I have a spot open in the creatives in case you want to, but no pressure." You nod quietly, mumbling another thank you. You open the door and leave, standing safely beside and waiting for him to drive off.

Before he does, he rolls the windows down and smiles at you softly.

"Meet me tomorrow at the entrance of Lotte Mall at eight in the morning if you have the slightest interest in it," You nod once again, pushing through a smile before he asks you to leave first.

You open the gates to the house, seeing the lights still on, Wooyoung must still be waiting for you.

"Hey," You call softly, landing in the couch. Wooyoung was preparing hot tea for you, asking you to wait for a second. When he skedaddles to the living room with the tea, he immediately notices your expression.

"How did the salary talk go?"

"Oh, went south," You chuckle, taking a sip of the tea that warmed your insides. "I didn't even get to bring it up,"

"What happened?! Are you fired?!" He exaggerates, slamming the table. You chuckle, calming him down.

"No, but he found my drawings I did during break and long story short, said he has a spot open in the creatives." Wooyoung's shoulders drop when he realizes that you, Seonghwa, and him had messed with a sensitive spot of yours, making you think of countless possibilities.

But at the end of the rainbow, he thinks that this might be a good shot at rekindling your dreams.

"y/n... Don't you think it's worth the try?" He takes your hand and caresses it, "Park Enchante is literally offering you a spot because the president liked your work! It's a great steppingstone, a large one at that!" Wooyoung tries to be optimistic, at the same time realistic. "You've always been the talented one, y/n. Don't you think you didn't have to dig up that dream you once buried because Seonghwa already did it for you?"

You stayed quiet all this time, but tears were already forming in your eyes and in no time, flowing.

Seonghwa dug up your dream for you, Wooyoung rekindled it, and it was now up to you to keep the dream going.

"Are we waiting for someone, sir? The tailor for your suit should be inside," His driver holds the umbrella up for him, already been standing outside the entrance of the mall for a good five minutes or so.

"Just one more minute," He looks at his watch, which read 8:13, and around. You hadn't given him any text, but he waits in case. He sighs when the clock ticks another minute, ready to go in when he hears quick heavy steps, revealing a fresh-from-a-run you.

"I'm here! I'm here..." You catch your breath, holding your arm up high while your other assisted your body to your knees.

Seonghwa's smile grows big, and his driver takes a double look because he hadn't seen his boss smile like that the past 5 years he's been working under him.

"You can leave now, y/n will stay with me," He smiles brightly at the driver, patting his shoulder as he walks closer to you.

"Lotte mall is such a long ride from home, why would you pick this one amongst all the other?!" You're still catching your breath, holding yourself from hitting him.

"Let's head inside, it's much warmer there and we could get you a drink." Seonghwa lends you a helping hand, stretching his arm out for you to hold on to. "My favorite tailor is here, that's why I picked this one," He leads you to a shop after resting for a while, proudly pointing at it.

As you head inside, you see various of designs of suits and blouses and shirts and different kinds of clothing for men that god, you just want to try and match different things and style it your own way and everything.

He watches you be in awe as your eyes roam around, seeing your eyes sparkle just like how his did when he first step foot in this shop.

"Your suit's ready sir, this way please."

"Wait for me here, I'll get out once I'm done," You only nod at him and roam around the shop while waiting for him, styles catching your eye.

"Seonghwa definitely fits this shop," You mumble, a smile on your lips.

"I'm ready," You hear Seonghwa from behind, and you turn to look at him.

God. He's so beautiful.

He presented with a simple suit, but with a turtleneck inside, necktie loosely worn, vest tightly hugging his figure and coat only hanging on his broad shoulders. He had loose, leather trousers that fit just perfectly the style of the top, making you gawk. (for reference: that one golden hour concept photo outfit)

It was such a simple outfit for someone like him, but Seonghwa radiated so much charisma, elegance and of course, superiority.

When you realize you were staring too much, which made Seonghwa almost twirl in his place in shyness, you smile smugly.

"Nice. Screams so much like you," You bluntly compliment, but Seonghwa knew better that you meant so much more. He knows that eyes will never lie, speaking as someone who speaks with various fashionistas every single chance he gets.

"Thank you," He mumbles, fighting his own demons to smile so wide. "Now, it's your turn."

"My turn? My turn for what?" You question, but he only pushes you out of the shop after loudly thanking the tailors once again. "For what, pres?"

"Your outfit." You both stand outside a humungous branch of Park Enchante, lights shining brightly to welcome you.

"For what?! Look, my bank account can't handle a single thread in your store, what the hell am I even here for? I know you just paid me a million, which I have a question for another time, but here?! And for what?!"

"Don't worry about that," Seonghwa shakes his hand in front of you, urging you to come in with him. You had no choice but to tail him, a habit you built for the past two months.

"This, this this..." Seonghwa was literally picking everything his eyes land on, making you try this and that and playing dress up with you. "No, no, no. Skip that," And of course, a lot getting rejected.

"Seonghwa, may this be the last one or I swear to the heavens I am passing out inside this fitting room right then and now," When you open the door, it takes Seonghwa a minute or two before he claps slowly, and loudly.

"That!" He points, "That's your outfit," He proudly stands up to walk closer and take a good look at you, swirling you around. He smiles proudly and sighs, pushing your shoulders to a well-lit full body mirror. "You look amazing," He sweetly smiles, making you feel all giddy inside. "I'll be at the counter. You don't need to change back to your clothes," He pats your shoulder and leaves, making you take a good look at yourself.

He was right. You looked amazing. The outfit was literally made for you. You smile as your hands roam around it, admiring it.

"Right." You mumble, patting at yourself. "Amazing."

"Let's go?" Seonghwa asks, carrying the paper bags which consisted of both his and your clothes from a while ago.

"Shouldn't I go change? What's this for anyway?"

"For tonight." He explains, shaking his head when you try to get the paper bags from him.

"And why do I get one as well?"

"Because you're coming with?" He rhetorically answers, as if you should've known.

"For your information, my dear CEO, the event for tonight will be private, consisting of directives of Park Enchante only. No outsiders allowed," You explain, "Now I'm going to change back to my clothes because there is no way I'm getting this just because you're the owner,"

"I'm the owner, I could do what I want." He stretches his arm up high, making it impossible for you to reach the paper bags. "And I'm the CEO. I could invite who I want. Now let's get going because one, I'm hungry, two, we'll be running late for the event if we don't eat now and go for the event."

"Oh my god, what am I even doing here," You quietly stand in one corner, seeing Seonghwa mingle with other directives in the small hall.

The event was meant for a small, formal gathering for a supposedly, announcement that will be made by the CEO himself. But an hour in, Seonghwa still hasn't made any move to pronounce anything.

"Hey," Seonghwa pulls you to a table, handing you a drink. "You look stunned." He chuckles.

"Of course I will be," You say through gritted teeth, smiling sarcastically. "What the hell am I even supposed to do here?"

"You're the star of the event, actually."

"The what?" You dramatically sigh, having enough of his bullshit. Fine he looked gorgeous, with his hair done immaculately and his outfit god made for him, but you were done with his surprises.

He pulls out a paper and a pen, softly smiling at you. You realize that he wasn't joking, making you furrow your brows.

"What's this?" Before you focus on the paper, he takes your shoulder and makes you look at him. He notices a stray hair and tucks it behind your ear, smiling once again.

"There is absolutely no pressure in this, y/n. If you don't agree, this gathering will just be a gathering. We'll act like nothing happened and you'll continue to be my secretary for as long as you want, get paid as much as you want."

You see where this is going, making you sigh.

"But if you agree, I will stand up for you among these people to announce that I have seen one of the best works I have seen my entire life, coming to collaborate with Park Enchante to produce the best works in the industry. How does that sound?"

You stare right at him, as if he just said the most ridiculous ment in the whole of your existence. You had not seen this part coming. You thought it would only be a you and Seonghwa talk, but he had other plans.

At the same time, although you have already decided only this morning, being questioned like this wasn't part of your plan. You still had your doubts, your insecurities, your overthinking to even come up with a final answer.

And as if Seonghwa read your mind, "I'll be here to help you. We can help each other grow, and I can offer you the free of contract. You can stop whenever you like, and I will support whatever decision you make."

You stayed quiet, tears forming once again. Before it even falls, Seonghwa had already wiped them off your eyes, and pulled you in for a hug.

"You can leave if you want. We will forget this ever happened." Seonghwa's words made you shake your head, pulling back to face him. When you smile, the heaviness on your chest leaves.

"Are you sure this is without pressure? You just told me I'm the star of the event," You squint your eyes at him, making him chuckle.

"Okay, maybe with a bit of pressure. With your talent, I don't want it to either go to waste or to be of another brand's hands," The thought made him shiver, as you let out a hearty laugh.

With a breath, you pick the pen up and sign both copies of paper, making Seonghwa exclaim exaggeratedly and punch the air, earning a lot of weird stares.

"Yes! Finally, everyone!" He shouts, holding the paper in his hand and leaving the other copy in the table. He gives you a tight hug before leaving to the stage, tapping the mic to finally announce you as an official creative and still secretary.

While everyone is still in doubt, Seonghwa goes on a rave about how amazing your works he discovered are, emphasizing that you only did it on your breaks.

Embarrassed, you hang your head low and apologized for the commotion he's causing, glaring at him and mouthing for him to come down.

Making his way to you, he was stopped by a few directives for a small talk about the announcement and honestly, you couldn't care less about what others say. Seonghwa believes in you, the Park himself in Park Enchante. What could others hold against you?

You sigh in relief as the other copy of paper you signed caught your attention, scanning through the pages of paper until you're in the last.

This contract is only for the purposes of having an agreement, but the client is of free-employment role.

The client's status will be (1) Direct Secretary of the President of Park Enchante; (2) Creative Fashion Designer and Stylist of Park Enchante.

And optionally, (3) To be Park Enchante's President's personal company for as long as the client wants.

The client's assistance over the last two months has been much appreciated by Park Enchante's president. The president owes the client tremendous gratitude since the president recognized and valued even the modest efforts the client made over the previous two months.

By signing this page additionally, the client grants Park Enchante's president into their personal life in return for their services.

You scoff at the amount of ridicule the 'contract' was oozing of, but at the same time, it made your heart skip a beat.

"Ridiculously childish," You mumble, yet the smile can't be wiped off your face.

"Oh, you read it," Seonghwa's smile falters a bit, seeing how you reacted to it. "You don't have to mind that, you know,"

"Isn't this abuse of power?" You shake your head, waving the paper in front of him.

"Hey, it says there optionally," Seonghwa pouts, "As long as you signed the first page as our creatives, everything's good," Yet he can't help feel his heart break a bit at the thought that slipped his mind- Wooyoung. "It's my company, my contract, I can alter it as much as I want," Seonghwa mumbles like a little kid talking back.

You scoff at his words, "Ah, so you don't want it signed?" You raise your eyebrows, a smile playing at the corner of your lips. "I was more than willing to let you in my personal life though," You shake your head, clicking your tongue. "What do I do with this copy, then? It's already signed,"

You see the process of Seonghwa getting bewildered, to his eyes shining bright as it beamed at you, realizing what you had just said as his smile grows wider than it already was a while ago.

"Really?" Despite the excitement and the shock, his voice was sweet and soft. Delicate, as he steps closer to you and cups your cheeks.

"Really, Seonghwa." You mumble, smiling at him. You stretch your hand out to ask for the other copy, but he only pulls it and engulfs you in a warm, tight hug.

"I've been holding my feelings off for so long," He whispers, breath hitting your neck, "Now we're even bonded through paper,"

"I will stay to company you to my deathbed, Seonghwa." You chuckle, still finding it ridiculous at how you find the contract still ridiculously sweet at the same time. "But please, do not ever do that again. If you're going to ask me out, ask me out like how a normal person will,"

"What's a Seonghwa if it wasn't for my self-made ideas?"

permanent taglist: @sunlightwoo

[abibliophobiaa]

Begin Again: Chapter 4/4

Summary: The year is 1988. After the loss of a beloved family member, you find yourself inheriting an old coffee shop. The quiet bartender at the Hideout across the street just so happens to catch your eye.

(20k words; eddie munson x afab!reader; sunshine!reader x grumpy!eddie vibes)

Note: Tumblr ate my formatting, so AO3 is probably best. 🙃

Warnings: Vignette style (sorta); Eddie’s post S4 trauma; panic attacks; nightmares; family member loss; grief; alcohol use; nightmares; suicidal ideation; smut 18+ only.

AO3 | MASTERLIST | PREVIOUS CH

*

Winter 1988/1989

*

He leaves you alone in the coffee shop.

The smell of the coffee brewing grows sour, your stomach churning with the dread seeping into your veins with every throb of your heart.

Your four walls, your space, now empty without him there to fill it.

You never realized how much sound he’s brought into your life, how much color, how much of his light.

And in a moment, Chance had thrown a shade over it. Squashed it just as it had really started to grow.

Chance’s words roll around in your head.

Chrissy. Fred. Patrick. Jason.

Chrissy. Fred. Patrick. Jason.

Names without faces, people you’ve never met, people you’ll never meet.

Because they’re dead.

All of them.

Gone.

He says it’s Eddie.

It’s not Eddie.

There’s no reality you could ever find yourself in where you believe the lie that Eddie’s done something like this.

Not this man, not the one who consumes fantasy literature like it’s a lifeblood, who talks DnD with his youngest friends animatedly and conjures up new ideas for sprawling campaigns full of high stakes and grandeur, who flips Max upside down in his arms when he greets her until her laughter shakes deep within her bones and a smile lights up her whole face, the man who drinks out of a Garfield mug when he visits his Uncle, who listens to ABBA and Blondie with you and his friends even when he claims to hate it.

Not this man.

Never this man.

But now you need to find Eddie, tell him everything’s okay, that you don’t think he did it.

You know he thinks you do.

Could see it in the way he looked at you, in the way he flinched from your touch.

The title of murderer.

The weight of it.

You can only imagine how crushing that is, how hard it’s been to keep those accusations to himself all this time, to carry it on his back each and every day.

To live near to those who might whisper behind your back, question how you’re free, ponder your innocence.

You decide to close up early, dismissing your customers as nicely as possible, feigning issues with your machines. A patron grumbles that they were working moments ago, but you only offer them free coffees for their next visit and wave as they all bustle down the street.

It’s likely not the most professional thing you’ve done, but it’s necessary, your fingers removing your apron from around your hips before moving to go snatch your keys from behind the counter.

The front door locks with a click behind you, eyes flashing across the parking lot to find Eddie’s van missing. He’s likely skipped work, and you understand why he would, but all it does is curl the guilt further in your gut.

That you hadn’t done more, said more, chased after him—something.

You run upstairs to your apartment, grabbing your things and rummaging about, trying to make it look some semblance of normal before you grab your pocketbook in hand and rush over to your wall phone, dialing one of the first numbers in your phone book.

Max picks up on ring number two.

Your breath shudders out as you ask, “Is Eddie there?”

“He was, but not anymore,” she says honestly. You can hear her shuffle around on the other end, a huff filling the line. “He looked upset. Did something happen?

“He heard Chance and I talking.”

“Okay, and? Chance is a dick, we all know this, so what did he do?”

“He told me about March. Of eighty six.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah,” you tell her, quickly adding, “but I don’t believe him.”

You hear her huff once more, followed by the rustle of something in the distance. “Good, because whatever he told you isn’t true. He doesn’t know half of what really happened, and I doubt he ever looked into it. Which, you’d think we would have since the idiot works for the police.”

“So you know where Eddie might be?”

“He’s at Steve’s,” she says simply, like she knows, and of course she does.

He’s her brother. Minus the blood and title, of course, but her brother all the same. “I’ll be ready in ten minutes.”

“For what?”

“You’re picking me up,” she states plainly, and you almost laugh.

Almost.

But she sounds serious, and you’ve seen Maxine angry and you don’t want to be in the line of fire on the receiving end if she ever explodes.

“I’m picking you up,” you agree, swallowing thickly. “Hey, Max?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

“Just…I know you’re my boss, but don’t hurt him, okay?”

“Gosh, Max—no. I…I lo—really care about him.”

“So I’ll see you in fifteen?” She says, as if she knows the exact distance between yours and the Munson’s.

And you suppose she does after all this time.

You nod, even though she can’t see you, and say, “I’ll see you in fifteen minutes.”

You’re there in twelve, the roads zooming on by as you turn and weave through the pathways that are almost second nature now. Muscle memory, because of all the time you’ve spent with them. With his family, who has, in a way, sort of become yours as well.

She’s there as she said she would be, sitting on the front step to the little home, hair billowing around her in the wind.

She drops down into your passenger seat without a word. The sound of her buckle sliding into place greets your ears, her dirty shoes kicking out before her, that delicate profile of hers set into a firm look.

“I heard what you said, you know?” She says after some time.

It’s quiet, a little lilting, her lips curling a bit at the edges. You know that look. It’s the same look she’s given Eddie after catching him in a state of disarray after a night spent making out with you like the two of you are teenagers all over again, and not twenty-three year olds with careers and rent to pay.

“What do you mean?” It’s a trap. You know it is, but you’ll give in just this once.

“I heard you start to say you love him,” she teases, tongue sticking out slightly.

It’s the truth.

It’s not a hard thing to do—falling for Eddie Munson, that is.

And still, your heart thunders away at the thought of it. For years you’ve spent trying to never form lasting connections with others. You’re in and out of places quicker than you can, never getting too close, never making those lasting ties.

And now you’ve gone and tied yourself to him, a single strand, an invisible string that tethers you to him.

It’s terrifying, and still there’s this sense of peace that fills your blood. Cool it before it can sizzle and burn.

“You definitely said it,” she says once more, as if you didn’t hear her the first time.

But you did. You said the words and you heard her, but she’s not the first person you want to say them to.

The person who deserves them the most is currently hiding out at Steve Harrington’s home, likely reliving the pain of the events of two years ago, exposed like a nerve by someone who only wants the worst for you.

You suppose you can’t fault Chance, either. You saw the pain in his eyes. The grief over the loss of his friends.

Three.

Three in a lifetime is already too much, but three in one week is a tragedy.

There’s no denying that fact.

‘He doesn’t know half of it…’

Max’s words swirl in your mind. Over and over again on an endless loop.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you say, but there’s a slow smirk sliding across your lips, fingers curling around the steering wheel as you peel out of the Munson’s driveway, heading in the direction of Steve Harrington’s family home.

It’s on the way that Max starts to talk, warning you in a sense, of what you’re about to hear.

“It’s…a lot to take in,” she says, and there’s a seriousness in her tone unfamiliar to you.

She’s usually always meddling with the kids, the rowdier and more hot headed one of the bunch. You’ve seen her interact with her friends, always just as fiery and explosive as her friends. You’ve seen her get angry with Eddie till her face turns red. But there’s always this sense of ease that accompanies it.

A laugh at the end of a snide remark, a smirk, a gentle tilt of the lips.

It’s not present this time, and an uneasiness settles into your blood.

“Just…when they tell you, promise me you’ll keep an open mind. You’re going to hear things that sound impossible, and that’s because honestly even we thought they were, but it’s…the truth. It’s the truth that the media swallowed up, the truth the government hid. But it doesn’t make it not real—it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. And it’s crap because the world moved on, and yet we were left to deal with it.”

She means your friends.

You know that.

The fact that this ‘they’ she speaks of telling you this tale is the same group of kids that you’ve grown to know, your friends you’ve flourished with all these months, the man you’re falling in love with.

“Max, I just want to know the truth. So whatever you all say, I’m here to listen. I want to know. It’s important that I know,” you tell her seriously, pulling into the driveway to the sprawling home.

Your head slams against the headrest of your driver’s seat, hands coming up to cup over your eyes. Your breath draws right in your lungs, eyes burning from the prick of tears. A new fear dawns, unwanted and unbidden.

You voice it, a quiet strain of your voice that comes out as a broken sob. A fearful questioning of, “What if he doesn’t want to see me? What if he hates me?”

“He couldn’t,” she tells you, voice stern.

“What if he does, though? You didn’t see the way he looked at me. He was there, but he wasn’t. It’s like he went away in his mind and he didn’t want me there.”

She chuckles. “Have you seen the way that idiot looks at you? It’s honestly disgusting. All puppy dog eyes and goo.” You break out into a watery laugh and, satisfied, she continues, “Look—Chance’s friends…well, not Chrissy, but Chance’s friends are assholes. I’m not saying they got what they deserved, because no one deserves to die. But they were terrible to him. He probably saw Chance and saw you and thought he’d turned you against him. Just like they turned the whole town against him in eighty six.”

There are no words that come to mind after what she says. After the truth she reveals. You’re not sure of what it even means, and yet you think of your customers in your early days or the shop opening. The way some, however rarely, would look at him and mutter amongst themselves when he happened to stop by. You remember the woman at the supermarket with her blonde hair and haunting eyes. The depth of her warning as she stood beside you on line at the register, telling you Eddie wasn’t a good man, telling him he should have never come back.

You think of the fact Eddie moved out of his own childhood home to make room for Max. But you also recall how much freer he is when he’s out of town. His smiles come easier, he seems lighter…brighter, without the weight of the world resting on his shoulders.

The pieces start to slide into place, a push here, a click there. You think of your puzzle he’d brought you both for your first date, now finished and tucked away. How the image became clearer and clearer with each passing moment.

It’s the same now.

That clarity that takes shape.

The reasons why Eddie’s open in some regards, and keeps others very close to his chest. The evasions he’s had to create in his backstory with you, to protect you from the truth of it all.

To protect you from the danger of it, if what Max claims is true.

“Are you ready?” Max’s voice stirs you from your silent reverie. A quiet beckon. A soft lilt that drags you from your thoughts.

You’re not.

There’s nothing that can ever prepare you for what you are about to hear, and yet you twist the key in the ignition all the same. You tug your keys free and toss them into your pocketbook, opening your car door without another word. Max tips her head over the roof of your vehicle, looking to you for reassurance…or merely to see how you’re doing—you’re not really sure. But you dip your head all the same, shutting the door into place, fingers trailing along metal and window, heart racing in your chest at what you are about to enter into.

The walk to the front door is harrowing. You don’t really know what to expect. Max gives you a warning, sure, but nothing compares to reality. Especially not as you knock on the front door and Robin is there to greet you. She offers a kind smile and a hug, her voice quiet as she mutters she’s happy you’re both there. Max glances over her shoulder as you enter the home, your eyes trailing the insides. You’ve been here multiple times, but it feels different now. There’s a whole world you’re not privy to—a world that Eddie’s been a part of, Max and Robin, Steve and the others. The world that those who warned you of this town only spoke of as if they were conspiracies. The gates of hell, satanic cults, gruesome deaths. The fact there are some truths there weighs heavily on your mind, hands shaking a bit as you enter the kitchen and Steve is there to greet you with a warm hug.

You wonder briefly if Charlotte knows. If she’s privy to the world outside of your own that your friends have dealt with. This unshakeable strength they all seem to hold. But you hug him all the same, heart hammering away against his as your arms come to wrap around his neck, his breath a comforting puff against your ear. He steps back momentarily to look at you, all long dark hair, wrinkles high against his forehead. He’s too young for those, but they linger all the same, written into his features alongside the pain you see so clearly there now. The pain of the unknown swirling in your gut, the unknown that has Max reaching across the space between you to curl her hand in your own, squeezing tight.

You squeeze her hand back and look at both your friends as they stand before you, merely basking in silence, all your minds a swirling mass of chaos. Robin speaks first, voice wobbly, words fast and disconcerting in your ears. “He’s…he’s not doing well, babe. He came here a wreck. He never intended for you to find out this way.”

You know that. You do.

It’s why you’ve always been respectful. It’s why you’ve always been weary of what Eddie wants, why you’ve made it a mission to always have an open heart and open mind toward him. And in a few moments Chance had thrown it all into the wind. Obliterated the safety net you were forging, the space you wanted Eddie to live in—to thrive in.

“Max…she warned you, right?” It’s Steve who asks next. The boy with the loud and boisterous personality, always a little piqued, and yet he’s serious now. Guarded toward his best friend. Your heart swells because Eddie has people like these; people who will defend him tooth and nail, even from you.

Even from the woman who has spent nearly every day with him for the past few months.

And still, you nod all the same, your hand still entwined with Max’s. “Max…she warned me.”

Steve and Robin pass one another a look, and you’re brought into the living room. It’s dark there, the lights dimmer than you remember, your friends settling down in different areas about the room. Steve and Robin to the couch. Max on the floor. There are two seats brought out into the living area, set there like they were expected to be there all along. Separated by a few inches sure, but placed there with intent. You glance down at the one, wondering if it’s meant for you, and catch the stiff nod from Steve as you eye the wood carefully.

You drop down into it and hear the slow slide of a door in the distance, the tall form of Eddie catching your eye.

He’s as beautiful as you saw him last. A picture of black, red and white before your eyes. His eyes dark, his shoulders hard, body lithe and lean. You think of those moments from early this morning, his arms around your waist, chest against your back. Lips at your ear as he whispered what you meant to him, as he kissed you like you were the most precious thing in his life. Unbreakable, like he meant to keep you. Like he meant to hold you safe for the rest of his days. You know he means it now, can see it in the way his eyes flicker as they meet yours, as water clouds those swirling depths of chocolate brown.

There’s love there.

It’s not lost on you as he scans the room and lands on yours, holding for a moment, whispering those unspoken words into the space between you.

Unmistakable and yours alone.

You will the same into your eyes as he settles down beside you, legs spread wide, cup of whatever he’s drinking poised at the ready in his hand.

He says nothing. Remains stoic as Steve and Robin straighten in their seats, cushions of the couch forgotten as their elbows lean onto thighs, ready to regale their tales of this world outside their own.

The part of you that’s grown to love him over these months wishes to reach out to him. You want to stretch your hand into the space between you and curl your fingers within his own. To comfort him in the way you know only you can—body, mind and soul. But he remains in the gap between you, separated by inches that feel like miles. There’s a moment, however brief, when his fingers twitch against his thigh and you wonder if he intends to reach across and touch you.

But he never does.

He never does, and you suppose you cannot be upset with him for that.

He’s hard lines, harsh beauty, and adamant walls.

Impenetrable.

Fierce.

You pray they don’t remain that way—that your months of progress don't reverse in a moment's time.

Steve glances about the room, between his best friend Robin beside him, down to where Max sits staring at Eddie on the floor, Eddie with his grim expression as his eyes meet hers, and then lastly on you when he exhales and says, “What we’re about to tell you, you can’t tell anyone. It stays a secret, it stays within the group.”

“It stays within the party,” Max adds, shifting away from Eddie’s stare enough to look at you. “It’ll mean you’re part of it.”

“One of the family.” Robin laughs weakly, passing you a sympathetic smile. “Part of our dysfunctional family.”

Your eyes shift amongst them with a swallow, and then slide briefly to Eddie’s. There’s…there's something there. A softness, a quiet whisper behind his gaze, but you don’t know what it means. Can’t decipher the meaning behind how he looks at you; you just know it curls deep within the pit of your belly, makes you warm, reminds you it’ll be okay.

Everything will be okay.

“I’ll take it with me to the grave,” you tell Steve.

His hand cards through those long strands of dark hair and he stands up from the couch, walking across the room to tend to the fire churning in the fireplace. Once he’s happy with the flames sparking and dancing within, his hand comes to rest on the ledge, his other hand resting on his hip as he glances down at a dirty spot on the carpet.

“I guess we’ll start from the beginning then…”

And it begins.

*

They start from the beginning. With the missing boy Will. With Will, who you know and works at your shop. Kind, sweet Will with the world on his shoulders and nothing but love inside his heart.

Steve recounts the loss of Barbara Holland, a friend of Nancy’s. You learn about the gate that opened in Hawkins to another world. This Upside Down that sounds as harrowing as it truly is.

You learn early on that El has superpowers. She has psionic capabilities, can lift things with her mind, step into alternate dimensions when she goes away in her mind.

El, with her dark hair and bright soul. That innocence that always seems to burn bright behind her gaze.

El, who you learn has fought monsters bigger than her.

Steve walks you through that first encounter with the Upside Down, the demogorgon he faced, his words careful as he explains the appearance to you. A standing, hulking monster, with endless rows of teeth, intent to bring death to those that encounter it.

You’re told about their next encounters.

Max moves to town with her family. Her crappy step-father, her late step-brother, and her late mother move in and immediately she’s thrown into this world she’s never planned for. Apparently Dustin finds some sort of tadpole creature that eventually grows into a demodog. Another monster like the one Steve explained earlier, but this time there are multiple, and they move in what seem to be packs. You learn about Will’s possession by the Mind Flayer, the loss of their friend Bob, their first experience with the ‘hive mind.’

“It all sort of…works in tandem,” Max clarifies. “All tied to one power source.”

El closes the gate this time, they tell you, and for a while it seems everything is okay again. They start to heal, the kids begin to go back to their normal lives, Steve and Robin start working at the Starcourt Mall.

“That parking lot that’s still empty?” It’s your first question in a while, you’ve simply been taking in everything they have to say, trying to be respectful of their experience.

“Yes,” Robin says, frowning as Max glances down at her shoelaces.

Eddie watches the younger girl like a hawk. His face is tight and drawn as Max says, “My brother didn’t die in a fire.”

It’s July and the kids are on summer break. All is well in Hawkins. They’re having fun, being kids, living for the first time in a long time. And then there’s the issue of Billy. Billy, who has always been rough around the edges. Not a good person at all, from what you’ve been told, but he had been alive and had been well one day, and then the next it was like he was different.

Max recalls him being a lot of blank stares in his room, a lot more standoffish. But there becomes this issue around Hawkins, of people becoming aggressive, something to do with kitchen chemicals? And a girl at the pool Billy worked at had gone missing.

Heather, Max explains.

As this is all going on, Steve and Robin explain their encounters with Russian code and their involvement with a secret organization taking place quite literally inside the belly of the mall.

There’s a Mind Flayer building an army, some gigantic beast of a thing, that towers over the building. The same thing that had put itself inside of Will, the same thing that also puts itself inside of Billy.

Your head spins with it all, from the explanation of how Robin and Steve were tortured for information inside the Russian base, to Max and the other kids fighting this monster inside of their friend Hopper’s home. There’s the battle at the Starcourt Mall, when they’re all later reunited, where Max watched her brother die after laying his life down to protect her and her friends.

It’s overwhelming.

Your chest aches, and you’re grateful when Eddie calls the meeting to a halt, catching the glittery tears on Max’s cheeks that she tries to swipe away when no one is looking.

Eddie slips out of the room with the younger girl in tow. There’s a brief moment he makes eye contact with you, his mouth working slowly like he anticipates saying something before thinking better of it.

It’s been only hours and yet you feel like he’s been gone longer, the sting of the emotional distance between you two burning deep in your chest.

*

“Babe, don’t take it personally, okay?” Robin runs a hand up and down your arm, pouring you a glass of something strong and full of ice.

Your face pinches as you take a sip, throat burning from the harsh bite of whatever she’s put into the concoction. “What is this? Battery acid?”

“Very likely,” Steve muses from the doorway, coming to loop an arm around your shoulders. You lean into his side, seeking out the comfort of a friend in the moment. His fingers curl around your skin, giving you a squeeze. “They went for a walk. Eddie said they’ll be back in five. The next part…it’s Eddie’s bit. It’s what happened back in March and…it’s a lot. He’s never really shared it outside of the group. He wanted to tell you before…you know, before Chance. He told me he wanted to. He was finally ready.”

Your heart clenches at the thought. Here Eddie was, ready to open up to you fully and bare his soul to you, and Chance came along to throw a wrench into the whole thing. Robbed Eddie of the opportunity that was meant for him all along.

“I just…a whole world underneath Hawkins?” Your throat swells around the words, around the reality of what you’ve been told the past few hours.

Before you came here, you heard all these ludicrous rumors about the happenings of the small town you were running to. To know they’re fact, to know they’ve been hidden behind lies and government workings—it’s a crazy reality to swallow. A world where monsters exist and walk the earth, a world where gates to new dimensions exist.

It’s your world now.

“And El—having powers?”

Robin comes forward to join you on your other side, sliding a hand into the center of your back. “I felt the same when I found out.”

You feel the need to sit. To really soak in the words swirling around in your brain like little specks of confetti twirling to the ground. Dozens of strands of thoughts in an endless funnel of wind and disarray. But you lean into the warmth of your friends instead, relishing in their closeness, when the glass door to the outside slides open and Eddie and Max reappear.

She’s a little red in the face. Bitten and kissed by the wind, but the rims around her eyes catch your attention next. The telltale sign she’s been crying, paired with that of her sleeve dragging along the bottom of her nose, bumping her glasses that always sit a little too loosely on her face.

Eddie’s dark eyes scan your face, like he’s shocked you’re still there, and you pass him a weak smile. There’s the barest of twitches in his face, and most would miss it, but he offers you that.

A slight smile.

You’ll take it.

“Are we good to keep going?” Robin asks, glancing about the room.

“Yeah, we’re good,” Eddie says, and it’s the first time you’ve heard him speak in hours. It jolts you, drawing a wince out of him.

Robin turns back to you, eying your drink in your hand as the others head back into the living area. “You might want to keep that close.”

She’s not wrong.

Eddie’s fingers toy with the silver of his rings, twirling them round and round low against his knuckles. “So, uh, it’s March…of eighty six and, you know, I’m still the Freak around town. So you can imagine I’m just a tad confused when Chrissy Cunningham, the Queen of Hawkins High, comes to me for a deal.” His eyes flash to yours, a grimace pulling at his mouth. “Used to deal. Don’t anymore, but—I, ah, yeah, sorry sweetheart. But Chrissy is not herself. I didn’t really know her much, but she’s just perpetually happy. I mean, I guess she had to be. Cheerleading captain, about to be valedictorian, friends with everyone. So I meet her in the woods behind the school and she looks scared as shit. Like—maybe I should have paid more attention to it, maybe that was my mistake, but…she asks me for ketamine.”

You train your eyes on Eddie as he speaks. He’s a shadow before you, hollows of his features glowing from the orange hue spilling from the mouth of the fireplace. He’s all long limbs spread out, legs before him, slender and spidery, bent as his back rests against the wooden chair. His hands rest against his thighs, where he continues to twirl the metal around his digits, head bent low and mind seemingly back in the forest that day in eighty six.

“I…brought her back to my trailer that night and I couldn't find the ketamine. So I leave her in the damn living room and when I come back she’s just standing there. Blank face, nothing behind her eyes, just gone. And I’m yelling at her over and over and over again, but whatever this thing is that’s pulling at her just…she never hears me. I wonder if she did, even now. Like if she knew I was trying to save her and—” He pauses as your hand curls around his kneecap, and you worry for a moment he’s going to push you away, to reject this comfort, but his hand slides over your own and squeezes lightly.

He doesn’t let go.

What he explains next has your throat closing around the truth of it. Chance’s words swirl in your ears. The fact Jason Carver, fueled by jealousy over being cuckolded by Eddie Munson, killed his girlfriend. But the reality is that much more horrifying. Because Eddie recounts the moments with ultra clarity, the memory of them burned into his retinas for the rest of his life, of the girl levitating above the ground. The way her body stretched across the ceiling as her bones snapped one by one in her body, before she died right before his eyes.

“We all met…that next day,” Max says with a bitter laugh, gesturing between Eddie and the rest of the group, including herself.

So they were bound by the untimely death of Chrissy, Steve explains, recalling how they all went looking for Eddie with Dustin’s help, because Max had seen flickering lights coming from Eddie’s trailer and disrupting her own, just before he had run.

A sign of the Upside Down. Their first sign that Eddie had been innocent in all of it.

“Held a glass bottle to my throat,” Steve laughs as he explains those tense few moments of their ‘friendship.’

“You kind of deserved it. Jabbed me right in the ribs with that oar,” Eddie says, but there’s a lightness to his tone reserved for his loved ones. “His name was Vecna. This…thing, this person, responsible for cursing Chrissy. And…Fred, Patrick, and Max.”

Your eyes flicker up to Max at Eddie’s admission, blue eyes flashing with your own. “Max.”

“The asshole cursed me,” she says simply. “So what happened to Chrissy, what happened to Fred, we knew was likely coming my way. And it did—but we found a solution.”

“Thank goodness for that Walkman,” Robin exhales. “We found that music could bring people out of Vecna’s…soupy mind trance. Happy memories, favorite moments, your favorite song.”

“The song you could listen to over and over again on repeat…” You mutter the words out, feeling your eyes burn at the memory of Eddie asking you for yours so many weeks ago in your apartment.

“What’s your favorite song? If you had to pick one, what would it be? The one you can play over and over again and never get bored of?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says softly, the words meant only for you. Your stomach twists painfully. “That one.”

Proof he cared, even then.

It’s a race against a clock.

It’s not long before Eddie’s a suspect in the murders he never committed, and it’s paired with the looming threat over Max’s life. One night in particular, Robin tells you, Jason Carver and his friends find Eddie at the boathouse and come with weapons in hand. You know their intention, from the way Eddie’s breath catches, was never to merely talk about the situation.

Hunt the Freak, he tells you bitterly, recalling those moments out on Lover’s Lake, just before Patrick suffered the same fate as Chrissy.

Two.

Eddie watches two people die that week.

You shudder out a breath as they tell you about the Upside Down. As Steve tugs the neck of his sweater down enough to show you the lines around his throat, and then slips up the side of his sweater enough to show you the scarring on his side that looks like a splash of sun against his skin. It reminds you of the ones that litter Eddie’s arms, the smaller ones on his face and neck, the ridges of his abdomen you barely felt before he pulled away from you.

“We’re, like, the most screwed up blood brothers to exist,” Steve says bitterly, his shirt dropping down into place. “Matching scars and all.”

“Demobats,” Robin explains, shuddering at the end. “Scary little shitheads.”

It paints a picture for you—clearer now than ever before.

Fills the gaps in your understanding over these nine months.

Yet another memory flashing behind your eyes of Eddie in your kitchen. Of wings and claws and the sound of skittering against your window. The choked breath from Eddie’s lungs that suddenly stopped working. The panic attack he suffers in your kitchen.

You think you start to grasp an understanding as they talk about how a plan began to form. They gathered a bunch of weapons with the intention of using Max and Eddie and Dustin to create distractions for Vecna. To give enough time for the others to try and kill him. But even the best laid plans go to hell—and it’s proven correct in both aspects.

Eddie and Max, to make things simpler, both die that night.

Max, with her limbs broken and mangled, blood dripping from her eyes. And Eddie, with his flesh torn into over and over again, countless rows of teeth sinking into skin, taking pieces of him, ripping him into ribbons, robbing him of life.

It chokes you. Chokes Eddie as Steve explains the parts of the story Eddie’s mouth can’t work around. The gaps are still too raw to fill in by himself. You don’t blame him.

You press the heel of your palm into your eyes, feeling Eddie’s fingers tighten around your own, the severity in his gaze making the room come crashing around you.

“Eddie never…he never murdered any of those people,” Max says, but you know that.

You’ve known that.

In the end, Eddie spends a few weeks in the hospital.

Max spends months there.

His name is cleared relatively swiftly. Steve is a bit cagey as to how they manage to get Eddie’s name pulled from any further headlines, but you know it’s because there was nothing to hold together a case against him.

Jason is suddenly the blame for the events that occurred, and laid to rest on that March day.

It’s a lot to process.

The room feels heavy with it, thick in a way that reminds you of honey. Sticky, yet missing all that sweetness.

Steve suggests you all stay for the night. Get some rest. Recount the stories in the morning.

It’s been hours and every inch of your body aches from work and your eyes feel tired, burning with the unshed tears lingering on your lash line.

Steve lets you borrow some of his things, an oversized sweatshirt, some pants you need to roll up multiple times, and leads you and Eddie down the hall of the second story to the home, pausing in front of a bedroom.

“It’s a guest room,” he says, gesturing inside. “We’ll talk more in the morning. Goodnight, you two.”

It’s normal for you to expect mirth or a deeper scheme behind Steve’s eyes. The sense of teasing there that you’ve grown to know and love, and yet standing before that bedroom in the lonely hall has you unsure of where to look, Steve only whistles and shifts awkwardly before leaving you to your solitude. Neither of you speaks for a time, bodies shifting in the darkness, not touching and awkward.

This morning you had been curled as tight as two could be, your spine to his chest, your thighs to his, those strong arms of his wrapped around your waist, his chin over your shoulder, lips to your ear.

“I’ve never felt this way about anyone before,” he whispered.

Your heart stuttered. Faltered from the weight of what he was saying. Your fingers slid up to curl into his hair, his face leaning into your touch. “I’ve never felt this way about anyone before either, Eddie.”

It was the truth then, it’s still the truth now, and yet there’s a chasm that grows wider by the second in that hallway, and for fear of watching it grow anymore, you take the initiative and push past the man to slip inside the guest room.

Neither of you speaks as you move about the room and take in your surroundings. There’s a simple dresser in one corner, a lamp on a stand that sits in another, and there’s only one bed.

One.

It’s a thought that might have thrilled you some other time, and now it only fills you with a maelstrom of emotions. In the past few hours your conversations have been reduced to sparing words, your touches to brushes of fingers. And now there’s a silence that screams between you, those murky depths curling and lapping at your ankles.

You drop your borrowed clothes onto the bed, glancing over your shoulder to where Eddie stands awkwardly in the doorway. The fullness of his form is outlined in golden light emanating from the hall, those dark eyes of his searching.

“You can take the bathroom,” you tell him, “I’ll tell you when I’m done and you can come out.”

He’s seen you in nothing but a pair of jeans before, yet somehow changing around him feels more intimate. Especially with the disquiet between you two. So there’s no protests on his part as he reaches into the side dresser, as if he’s done this before, and snatches a pair of pants and a shirt from within. He opens his mouth to speak and you feel your soul soar for a moment, before he’s snapping it shut again and slipping inside.

When the door clicks shut, you let out a shaky breath and change in silence.

*

Eddie knocks on the bathroom door moments later, your voice beckoning him out when you’re finally and fully dressed again. You’re moving about and folding your original clothes up onto the dresser when he moves to go sit down on the bed and you maneuver around him to get ready for sleep.

He watches you in silence as you wash your face and brush your teeth, wiping down the countertops after, a habit from working at Sunshine Coffee for so long now. You know why you’re really doing it, though. It’s a temporary distraction from the deeper issue at hand: the rift between the two of you.

Sighing, you slip back into the bedroom and walk around to the opposite side of the bed closest to the lamp and slide underneath the covers. Eddie watches, still upright, as you turn onto your side and reach over, asking if you can shut the light.

“Uh…yeah, yeah that’s fine,” he says softly from behind you, and the room drowns in darkness.

You pinch your eyes shut to try and get some rest, chest aching, heart clanging like a damn cymbal, but your mind only spins. You’re certain you’ll find no rest tonight, only the dizzying free fall of your wandering thoughts.

That is, until the bed dips beside you and you feel Eddie pull back the covers, sliding down against the mattress to rest a head on the pillow beside you. You feel his hand accidentally brush your hip and from behind you a following, “Sorry,” that spills through his lips.

You laugh, because it just feels so silly.

You’re not mad at him, but there’s still this disturbance hanging in the air. The worry to push him beyond his boundaries, beyond what he feels comfortable with now after sharing his past with you. If he wants to remain in silence, you want him to remain in silence. You want whatever he wants—whatever he needs at the moment.

“What’s that?” Eddie asks, his voice tight.

“Nothing…I just—nothing.”

He doesn’t speak for a bit. Only settles down far enough on the other side of the bed you can feel the heat radiating from him, but not even the ghost of touch from his form.

A beat of silence passes.

And then—

“Sweetheart, I hate this.”

Your head nuzzles further into your pillow, voice a little shaky as you whisper back, “What do you mean?”

“I left earlier because I thought the worst. I thought—I thought you believed him. Wouldn’t be the first time someone was turned against me,” he says a little breathlessly. Jason. Jason did that. And the ramifications of it are still present to this day; you’ve seen it first hand. “That was dumb as shit for me to think. I…I wanted to tell you. I was going to, he just beat me to it first. Should have come from me, should have been sooner, should have—”

“Eddie, it’s okay.”

“It’s not, though.”

“Seriously it’s—”

“I’m sorry. I’m really really sorry,” he says, and you shatter.

Eyes flush against your cheeks, lashes dancing along the topmost points of your cheekbones, you mutter, “There’s nothing for you to apologize for. At all. I need you to understand that.”

“Then why aren’t you talking to me? You’re all the way on the other side of the bed. You won’t even look at me.”

“Because I know how hard tonight was and I didnt want to push you. Eddie, what you told me tonight…it’s important and it’s huge and the fact you’ve trusted me with it means everything to me. But I also want you to take the time you need. Process what you’re feeling and all of that.”

“You’re doing that thing again.”

“What thing?”

“Where you’re too nice,” he says. “I just want to hold you.”

“Then hold me, Eddie. You never need permission to hold me,” you whisper back, sighing as his arm comes to loop around your waist and tug you flush against his chest. “I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?”

Your fingers drag slowly around his bare forearm, feeling gooseflesh pimple the surface of his skin. “For what happened. For what Chance did. For eighty six. For all the people who have been unkind to you. I wish they could all see what I see.”

You roll over then, seeking his face in the dark. His eyes are molten honey, soft in a way that has your fingers seeking the warmth of his chest over his tee shirt, feeling the divots and lines of his abdomen against fingertips. He’s lean and lithe and perfectly yours, with a heart that melts yours.

He just never sees it that way. But you suppose that’s what loving someone means. It's choosing them, even when they don’t choose themselves. It’s the good and bad days, not just the ones that are bright shades of orange, pinks and reds behind rose-colored glasses. It’s standing by them no matter the circumstances, supporting them fully. It’s the whole hearted acceptance that resides in your heart for him.

For who he was, who he is now, and who he will be.

“I’m happy you know now,” he says, rubbing a thumb along the bump of your chin affectionately. “I’m tired of being nervous. I’m tired of the constant looking over my shoulder and running. It’s been almost three years.”

“It takes time, Eddie.”

Your fingers reach up to cup the curve of his jaw, dancing along the scarring there. It still kills you to know he’d been broken and on the brink of death in the middle of this other world that resides beneath your own.

That he had been inches from death and still held on, only to find the world outside just as cruel as the one that nearly killed him.

“What you’ve been through—what you’ve all been through,” you start, exhaling as his forehead drops closer to your own, pressing there to linger. “It changes you. There’s no way it couldn’t. And yet you’re all still living, you’re all still loving and showing your past that it can’t rule you. You’re so brave. I don’t think you’re running anymore.”

“I don’t want to,” his fingers slide down along the slope of your face, the line of your throat, skipping along your collarbone. “You’re the first person I’ve opened up to in a long time. I’m afraid I’m going to fuck it up.”

“You’re the first person I’ve opened up to in a long time.” His hand slides down the slope of your shoulder, along your bicep. “We’re bound to make mistakes. But we get to make them together. It’s a learning process.”

“I’ve never been good at that,” he teases, chuckling lightly.

“It might be a steep learning curve, but I think we’ve got it.”

His fingers trail down your forearm, before tangling in the space between the two of you on the mattress. He lifts your hand and brings the center of your palm to his lips, presses a kiss to the center there, eyes lingering on your face.

“We’re good?” He asks against your skin, his eyes practically molten in the night.

“Yeah, we’re good.”

He sighs in relief, biting softly at the skin at the heel of your palm, earning a laugh from you. You’re about to protest when his face pushes into your collar bone and he practically drapes himself over you, his long limbs tangling with your own.

“What would your friends think knowing you’re basically a koala bear in bed?”

“I’ll deny it,” he mumbles against your skin, the outline of his smile making your stomach tumble.

Your fingers come to curl in the tangle of his dark mass of hair at the back of his head and hold him as close as he can possibly be to your frame. “I’m glad you stopped running, Eddie. I don’t think we’d have met if you didn’t. And I’m really glad we met. Really, really glad.”

His head lifts at your words, those dark eyes of his searching your face in the barely lit room. He brushes the bump of your chin again with his thumb, resting it in the dip below your lip. His eyes flicker southward, and you lean forward a bit, just as he presses his mouth to yours, silencing all other thoughts from your mind.

There’s only this moment, this bedroom sequestered away from the world, these hands holding you, this boy kissing you, whispering how much he cares for you, and your hearts full to the brim because the world lies ahead and it’s yours for the taking.

There is no more running.

*

The next morning dawns bright for a winter day.

The first official day, really.

It’s all pearlescent skies, overcast, pale clouds stretched in what looks like a blanket across it. It looks like it’ll snow, the news forecasting a foot of it just before the holidays.

It’s how you wake up beside Eddie that next morning. His arms slung low about your hips, his breath at your ear, the curtains parted enough to allow you the view of the backyard.

Your fingers dance along the tops of his hands, along the hair along his forearm.

Today feels different somehow.

Your relationship has taken a new turn. A hurdle overcome. Now there’s only a blank canvas—open spaces to fill with new memories.

Eddie also sleeps easily. The few times you’ve slept beside him he’s either not slept at all and waited for the sun to rise and you to head off to work to finally allow himself rest once the night bled into day, or has fallen asleep and woken up in the throes of a nightmare or tossed and turned in his restlessness.

Now his chest rises and falls steadily at your back, his mind quieting enough for him to do so. You shift slowly, gently enough so as to not wake him, onto your side to look up at him. He’s all smooth edges now. The wrinkle between his brows is gone, face unmarked by any thoughts warring in his mind, those pillowy lips of his parted slightly. He looks younger than his twenty three years. Your fingers trail up to touch his cheek, fingertips running along smooth pale skin, earning a sigh from the man.

A hand at your back presses you closer to him, a little ‘oof’ spilling from your lips as your face meets his chest and his head comes to rest at the top of yours.

“What day is it?” He mumbles against your head.

“Saturday. We’re both off.”

“Oh,” he hums thoughtfully. “So we have the day to do nothing.”

“No, we have the day to go shopping. You haven’t gotten any Christmas presents and we have four days until the big day,” you remind him. “We’re spending it at the Wheeler’s, remember?”

You’d anticipated spending the holidays with Eddie at the very least. Your own family was traveling to Florida to seek out warmer weather instead of the bitter cold of Hawkins. Had brushed off your invitation with a simple, “Next time, honey.”

Nancy’s invitation came later. She’d cornered you at a get together over at Steve’s and said she’d really like you to come. That her house was more than large enough and that her parents were looking to have everyone get together. The more the merrier.

You were over the moon about it. Your first real “family” holiday season.

He only groans.

“It’ll be fun. We’ll spend the whole day together wrapping gifts and watching movies.”

“With Max.” He says it like he doesn’t enjoy her company, but you know he doesn’t mean it.

“Yes, with Max. She has shopping to do as well.”

He huffs out a laugh that warms your skin. “We have vastly different ideas of fun.” He pushes back just enough to drop a kiss to your forehead, before shifting up onto his elbows. “We should probably head downstairs soon. I hear them moving around in the kitchen. They’ll be looking for us.” He leans down to press his lips into the curve of your neck, sighing. “Just wanna stay here instead.”

For emphasis, he drops back down and hugs you tight, resting his head against your collar bone.

In the end, you win out, managing to extricate Eddie long enough to dress and ready for the new day. In the kitchen, Steve stands over the stove, working up some breakfast, while Max and Robin sit at the kitchen table, faces impassive as the two of you slip back into the room. When they notice the way his hand brushes your back as he slides a chair out and you move to take a seat, the mild discomfort fizzles and conversation resumes.

“Did you two sleep well last night?” Steve asks, waving his spatula like a sword for emphasis. “It’s almost ten.”

“Like a baby, Harrington.”

You snort at Eddie’s words, thanking Max as she hands you and Eddie steaming cups of coffee just as she knows you like them. You thank her, smiling warmly.

“You two kiss and make up? Because I’m not about to spend the day with you two pouring at each other non stop,” Max asks, nonplussed.

You choke a little on your coffee.

Eddie’s face hardens.

“Red.”

“What?”

She shrugs, biting into a strawberry as Steve starts shoveling breakfast onto everyone’s plates.

Your chest warms.

*

In the end you manage to get all the shopping you need to do finished.

It’s not without its struggles, however.

Max and Eddie separate are two different storms.

Max with her fiery, sometimes explosive energy. Not to mention that deadpan that endears you to her, her open opinions, the brashness in which she lives her life.

And then there’s Eddie. Charismatic and explosive like her, all frenetic energy as he moves in and out of stores, looking for the perfect gifts for those he cares about most.

She urges him to hurry up, he barks back at her to let him think.

It’s a constant back and forth that has you both amused and frightened, because you’re never quite sure if they’re seconds away from fighting in the mall. Onlookers question if the two of them are okay, to which you mutter back “siblings” and they nod in understanding, like they know exactly what that implies.

And later, as the three of you return to his dimly lit apartment, illuminated only by the Christmas tree the two of you lovingly decorated together, you bask in the warmth of their familial bond. The way the two of them curl up together on the couch watching The Grinch Who Stole Christmas as you work on putting together something to eat for dinner. Every so often you glance over your shoulder, catching the way Eddie’s arm curls around the younger teen, how she seeks out his warmth.

It dawns on you—the depth of this moment. These two souls are so willingly open to allow you into their lives. Into their hearts. It’s taken time, months really, and the fact they trust you wholeheartedly now is not lost on you. You’ve never had a close family. Always absent, leaving you to your own devices.

You understand Max and Eddie are a family now, bound by unexplainable trauma, and yet they are family all the same. And in a way, though you wouldn’t voice it to them right now, watching them from afar like this…them allowing you into the safety of this moment…it almost feels like family for you, too.

This overwhelming sense of belonging that curls around your insides, makes them warm, brings a wave of tears to your eyes. Eddie catches the glitter on your lashes, untangling himself from Max just as you dip your head into your shoulder, ladle spinning through your freshly made sauce, trying to hide yourself from his sight.

“Hey, hey. Don’t you hide from me,” he urges, tapping at your cheek, earning a watery laugh from you.

“‘M fine,” you mumble, sniffling noisily. The tears recede and lift your gaze to his to prove it to him, but Eddie remains at your side, curling an arm around your hip to drag you close. “Really, I promise.”

He presses his forehead into your cheek. “Let me see that smile.” You snort as his lips smack a kiss there, loud enough to draw Max’s attention.

You hear her scoff, her drawl of distaste, but there’s a smile on her face all the same.

“Just feeling really happy is all,” you reassure him, a smile sliding onto your face.

He slides a hand down your arm and curls his fingers into your own, squeezing your tangled digits. “I know what you mean.”

The three of you eat your chicken parmigiana in comfortable silence, Eddie only groaning every so often in enthusiasm over the fact he’s being fed. You snort, knowing very early on in your friendship that the best way to Eddie Munson’s heart was through his stomach.

Later, it’s Max and you sitting at the kitchen table wrapping gifts as you walk Eddie through baking a tray of cookies. You’ve already successfully wrapped the gifts you all got for Wayne, as well as the smaller gifts for the kids and your friends. Eddie had told you he’s terrible at wrapping gifts, at which you had told him it’s not about the wrapping but the fact love was put into the package. But he reassures you all the same he’ll be better put to use doing something else. So you’d set him up with some baking supplies in his small kitchen, and gathered things for you and Max to get started with.

“Small round circles,” you tell him, watching his fingers hesitantly roll dough within his palms, now bare from their usual rings.

“He’s really got the easier job,” Max grumbles.

She’s been…struggling, to say the least. Every so often she curses under her breath when a tab of tape gets stuck to her fingers instead of the package, or she doesn’t have enough paper to cover a box because she underestimated. You try to assist her as much as she’ll allow, but she reassures you over and over again she’s fine (she’s not) and that she doesn’t need help (she does).

“Why is that, Red?” Eddie asks, the line of flour on his cheek a slash of white against his face.

And there on the table, in a mess of crinkly red paper and endless tabs of tape keeping things positioned in place, lies one of Lucas’ gifts.

She holds it up with an uneasy laugh and Eddie tries to hide his own chuckles into the lip of his coffee cup.

It’s not perfect, no, but this moment is.

*

The Wheeler’s truly go all out for the holidays. Upon entering their home, Eddie’s palm in your own, your eyes are drawn to the endless holiday decorations. Their tree is dressed to the nines, all wide and fluffy branches, glowing lights, endless ornaments that twinkle against green branches.

There are lights twined around all the railways and banisters, illuminating the room in a pale glow. There are centerpieces on all their tables, little candles with tiny wreaths around the bases, the smell of pine filling your nostrils as you take a turn about the place.

Karen Wheeler is there in a flurry, ready to take your jackets. “I hope the drive wasn’t too bad, sweetie,” she says to Eddie, brushing the snow from his shoulders.

It’s been snowing all afternoon. A few inches now blanket the streets of Hawkins, and though it did provide for a harder drive, you find that it only adds to your experience in town with the people you love. A true white holiday season.

Last year you’d been somewhere tropical, in a bathing suit on the beach, sipping a margarita funded by your parents. Now Karen moves about you and helps you slip out of your jacket, coming around front to look at you, a giant smile blooming across her face.

“You’re a doll! Eddie, she’s so beautiful.” She turns to him, then glances your way. “Come on in. Be a dear and help me with the table, would you? Nancy, your friend is here!”

It’s not long before you’re put to work, setting up table placements, smiling and waving every time another arrival comes through the front door.

Dinner is warm and bright. Full of laughter, full of quiet conversation and guests asking to pass the pasta, a roll, the chicken. It’s memories told about the kids through the years, Hopper regaling you with moments that make El flush deep scarlet in embarrassment. It’s Max leaning into Eddie when she grows a little morose, and him curling an arm around her shoulder to whisper against her ear because he knows what she’s feeling. It’s Wayne crying later when Eddie gives him a new mug that says “World’s Best Dad” and Max rushing over to tackle you and Eddie when you give her the tickets to a concert she’d been talking about taking Lucas to.

All around the room people pass around gifts, room full, hearts fuller.

Charlotte and Steve slip away after a while to go kiss beneath the mistletoe, Nancy and Jonathan hold one another close on the couch, Robin and Vickie glance lovingly at one another as Vickie holds a new sweater up to her chest.

The kids thank Karen for their new socks, knitted hats, and warm mittens.

You smile as Eddie slides your new necklace around your neck, a locket with a picture of the two of you on one side, and a picture of him on the other, just so you’ll always have him close.

He kisses you and tells you his thanks over the new cassette tapes and guitar strings you'd gotten him, the new fantasy books he’s been meaning to read, and a couple of things for his new campaigns he’s been dreaming up.

“Hey, Eddie,” you tell him, as people retreat to the dessert table and dining area, leaving the living room mostly unattended.

He brushes your hair back into place and trails his finger over the locket. “Yeah, sweetheart.”

“I have another gift for you—and before you get upset, it’s little. It’s…well, here.” You slide the little pouch into his hand, the drawstrings pulled tight.

Tentative fingers move to open the little bag, dropping the item inside into his open palm. His head tilts to the side, shifting the key with a fingertip. “What’s this?”

“It’s a key. To my apartment. So you always know you’re welcome. And also because…all my life I’ve been running from reality. Bouncing between place to place so I don’t have to really get to know people. Trying to protect my heart because I didn’t want to get hurt. Never really allowing anyone to get all that close. Until I came here…and met you.”

“I’m not understanding.”

You shift closer to him where you sit on the floor, your knee brushing his own as you lift the key and dangle it in the air between you two. “I thought about it. About the shop, about the friends I’ve made here, and how I feel about you and I want to stay. I’m going to stay in Hawkins.”

Home.

You’re finally home.

And the slow smile that starts to spread across Eddie’s lips as he finally understands is all you need to see to know you’ve made the right choice.

His eyes shine with the reflection of Christmas tree lights, and swim with affection for you.

Home.

You’re staying here in Hawkins, staying with him, choosing this.

So if his voice wobbles a little, you say nothing of it, because he’s glowing. “That’s…that’s the best gift you could have given me.”

You curl the key into both your hands and squeeze tight, the imprint of it cool against your skin.

But it’s the easiest decision you’ve made in a long time.

“Merry Christmas, Eddie.”

*

Hawkins feels even more like home the next afternoon.

It comes unexpectedly, as most things do, with the door blowing open from the cold winter air, bringing Eddie along with it. His head is bent down, looking at something within his jacket. You’re worried he’s hurt from the way he’s cradling his side, but what you find instead makes you pause.

Hidden within the side of his jacket is a silvery ball of fur, with a tiny button nose, two dark eyes, and a set of ears that look funny on its small head.

“Eddie, what is that?” You ask, already knowing your answer, but wanting to hear your boyfriend fess up all the same.

He tucks it closer to his side and mutters, “Nothing.” The kitten gives a tiny meow and Eddie melts, his dark eyes growing softer by the moment as one of those ringed fingers comes to rub along the furry head.

You take a step closer, glancing into his jacket to see the little one. It peers out curiously, leaning into Eddie’s side as if it knows that he’s his protector already. “It’s not nothing because it looks like a kitten. A living, breathing kitten.”

Eddie rubs the tiny head again. “That’s because itisakitten.”

“What was that?”

“It is a kitten,” he says simply, pulling the jacket away to hold the baby in front of him.

“Why is there a kitten in my apartment?” You step closer, stroking a finger along one of the too-big ears. The kitten purrs and leans into the touch.

He rubs a thumb along the tiny little spine and says, “Well, you see, I was walking over here from work and I heard this tiny little thing meowing by the dumpster. And I had to pick it up. It was calling my name.”

You pause in your gentle stroking, and the kitten's eyes pop open. “It was saying Eddie?”

He nods, and you move to rub underneath its chin. “Yes, so clearly, you should have heard it.”

“Eddie…” you warn, just as a tiny, sandpaper tongue drags along your fingertip.

You melt a little bit, and Eddie takes note.

“My apartment doesn’t allow pets. But this apartment is yours. Fully and completely yours.”

“Eddie no.” And as much as your mind screams no, the kitten stares at you and your resolve crumbles all the more.

“Look at it. How can you deny this face?” He holds the kitten up beside his face.

And you know he’s talking about denying the kitten, but the look on Eddie’s face is just as hard to say no to. All pouty lips, bit doe eyes, lashes batting at you obnoxiously.

So it really should come as no surprise to you when the two of you spend the next day at the vet with the kitten (a boy, they tell you) and then the pet store after (Eddie tells you he needs toys, though you tell him food is more important) with a very giddy Eddie who spends way more money than he really needs to to spoil his new “son.”

Later that evening, after you’ve all eaten (kitten included) you sit around on the floor as Eddie rolls a ball toward the little one and grins widely as it pats a tiny little paw against the surface until the bell inside jingles.

You’ve been like this for hours, taking turns showing the little one new things, figuring out which toys he likes best, getting him used to the two of you and his new home.

“It is really cute,” you say as it comes to curl up in Eddie’s lap, sound asleep.

“He’s really cute,” Eddie agrees, running a gentle hand along its back.

“What do we name him?”

“He was chewing on my buttons in the car. How about Chewbacca? Get it?”

You laugh, incredulous. “Chewbacca? Eddie, this is our son.”

He snorts at that. But you suppose this is your fur-child now. Both of yours.

“Yes, I understand that, and I happen to think Chewbacca is a wonderful name,” he says plainly, not quite getting the issue here.

“He doesn’t even look like Chewbacca. He’s silver.” You rub at the little head, leaning over to kiss the tiny nose.

“How about Chewy for short? Chewbacca is his full government name, though. Chewbacca Munson.”

“What if I wanted him to have my last name?”

“We can hyphen.”

“Wow, I’m surprised you compromised that quickly.”

He shrugs, leaning over to kiss you on the temple. “It doesn’t slip my mind you’re keeping him here. Thank you for indulging a childhood wish of mine to have a pet.”

You snort, but your grin is megawatt. “You’re lucky I l—like you so much.”

*

Your friends are inside, the sound of music and chatter drifting from the opened patio door. The countdown to the new year is set to start soon, but you’re staring up at the sky, Eddie’s arms low around your waist, his chin against your shoulder as the two of you stargaze. He reminds you of the constellations he’s already shown you, then starts to point out the newer ones you’re not familiar with.

You’ve been like this for a while now. Him holding you close, keeping you warm, your breaths curling in the winter air. There’s a whole party happening just feet away, and yet you’re exactly where you want to be the most.

“They’re going to be looking for us soon,” you whisper, though you find you don’t really care.

A particularly loud laugh echoes from inside, the outline of Steve and Charlotte’s forms illuminated across from you as Robin tells them a story with a wide smile on her pretty features.

She waves and you wave back, returning your eyes to the stars, to the boy who you’d believe hung them if he told you so.

“Hey, sweetheart?” His voice is quiet. Timid.

You turn around in his arms to face him, his lips a little chapped from the cold, that too-big jacket of his becoming your blanket as he cradles you in the circle of his arms.

“Yeah?”

“There was something I wanted to talk to you about. Something kind of serious,” he says, and you feel your lips tug southward. At the furrow of your brows, he shakes his head, cupping the side of your cheek with his hand. “Wait—maybe not the best wording. I, uh, it’s serious in a good way.”

“In a good way…” you repeat slowly, chewing idly at your bottom lip.

Now his brow furrows, one hand coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “I’m not…I’m messing this up. Okay, I’m going to just come out and say it…”

“You’re worrying me,” you mutter, a little breathless, hand coming to rest over his hand comfortingly.

“I…”

“Hey lovebirds, wanna stop sucking face? The countdown starts in five minutes!” Steve shouts outside, Charlotte shushing him with a hand on his shoulder. Her giggly apology reaches your ears and the two of you turn to find them staring your way.

“Can we get some privacy?” Eddie calls back, face pinching in his frustration.

“Come on, Stevie. Leave them alone,” Charlotte agrees, tugging at his arm. “We’ll catch up later. Sorry, guys.”

The patio door slides shut once more and you’re left alone with your favorite boy. He huffs out a sigh, sliding his arms back around your form, breathing a cloud between the two of you.

You’re not expecting him to just blurt out his next sentence. Not expecting the words at all, and yet they’re the same words you’ve been holding to yourself for safe keeping, for that perfect moment like this one. The moment where it’s the two of you, overwhelmed in one another, hidden away in a stolen moment captured in time.

Because it’s New Years Eve and Eddie’s just said, “I’m in love with you.”

Because it’s New Year’s Eve and your tears prick, voice a broken sob as you whisper back, “I’m in love with you, too.”

It’s New Year’s Eve and you’re spending it with the person you want to go make countless memories with in the next three hundred and sixty five days. You want all his days, good and bad. To brave the storms should they come, to chase away his nightmares, to rejoice in the happy times. You want to wake to him in the morning and kiss him goodnight before bed. You want to dance in the kitchen as you cook together, to taste his sugar sweet lips on those days you try something new to bake. You want those new adventures, dinners with Wayne and Max, play time with Chewbacca. You want the game nights with your friends, to listen to him play Dungeons and Dragons with the kids, to go on that camping trip Steve, Robin and the others talked about come summer time.

You wanted it all, want it all, with the boy standing before you with all the love in the world behind his eyes.

“I’m in love with you,” you repeat, just as the sound of the countdown spills from inside.

Ten…

He curls a hand around your face once more.

Nine…

You brush at the hair near his shoulders, feeling him warm beneath your skin.

Eight…

He tugs you closer, always closer.

Seven…

You slide your hands into his jacket, hands resting against his back.

Six…

He tells you he’s in love with you once more.

Five…

You press your forehead to his, smiling up at him.

Four…

He glances down at you through those dark lashes.

Three…

You feel his breath dance along your bottom lip.

Two…

You wish him a Happy New Year.

One…

He kisses you as party poppers explode showers of confetti inside. Kisses you as shouts fill your ears. Kisses you until butterflies dance to life in your belly, until fireworks dance behind your eyes, and the rest of the world falls away.

It all dissolves around you, and you’re just standing there in the arms of the man you love.

Nothing else matters.

All that matters is this moment, this boy, this love.

*

It starts, you suppose, in the car ride. The atmosphere has a new heaviness, a thrill that boils in the cabin. Your fingers slide through Eddie’s, toying with the rings resting cool from the winter air against your thigh. You’re not sure what possesses you. Not sure if it’s the happiness from the evening, the weight of his confession, the way your heart feels full to burst—but it has you feeling bolder, has you slowly trailing your fingers along your opposite thigh. A slow path, a gentle up and down, over and over again.

His eyes flash to yours, linger briefly on your exposed flesh, the warmth of your skin. You catch the way his tongue dips to his lip, the pinch of his teeth against skin, before flashing back to the road. You’re almost home, only minutes now, but you’re itching for touch. For his touch in particular, warm against your skin, along the outline of your leg muscle, inside your thigh, at your center where you want him most.

You feel the first little brush of his fingers as they slip free from yours, the tantalizing trail of them, along the thigh nearest to him. A gentle drag of skin against skin, venturing higher every time. His fingertips tease the hem of your ruched satin dress, now bunched near your hip, leaving only inches between where he lingers now and your clothed center. There is a question in his eyes, a pass of chocolate brown eyes in the night as he looks your way, and you dip your head, understanding his meaning.

His fingers start a new exploration, a curious slide along your inner thigh, a gentle sweep that leaves gooseflesh in its wake. It’s unfamiliar to him and you, and yet it elicits a soft sigh from your lips, head falling back against the headrest. Taking this as all the coaxing he needs, he pushes up higher, halting at the edge of your panties. There is a brief moment where he pauses, and you wonder if he’s about to freeze up and end this before you’ve even had a chance to begin the night, but he dissuades those fears when he shifts and presses his middle finger against the spot of slick already forming against the gray material.

He curses, his eyes sliding up to the ceiling in a silent prayer, hand tightening in a white knuckle grip against the steering wheel. “Wanna touch you.”

“Then touch me, Eddie,” you breathe out, shuddering as he pushes the material to the side and slides a finger through your folds, dragging in a curious line.

It's a wonky, unpracticed pattern that he tries once…then twice, and pulls back.

“Show me. Show me what you like.”

It sounds choked.

A little gasp, a soft plea.

Understanding what he means, you reach down to join him, dragging a line down your center, swirling in the pool of slick at your entrance before circling the bead of your clit. His eyes dart from the road to where your finger starts to move in small circles, toes already curling within your heels.

He watches like that for a few moments. Captures the way your chest rises and falls with each sweep of your finger, the heaviness of your breath, the shudder of each pass of air through lungs. And it doesn’t take long before he’s replacing your fingers with his own, following the same path you’d taken. Dragging those thicker digits from your entrance up to your clit, starting the slow slide of his fingers along hot flesh, murmuring, “You look so pretty. So fuckin’ pretty, baby.”

Your answer is a hum, a broken whisper of, “Right there, Eddie. Just like that.”

You’re already close.

You feel the beginnings of your orgasm beckoning, dragged closer by your own ministrations, and swifter now with Eddie’s fuller fingers, your hand coming out to grab at his thigh. You can’t help the whine that spills from you as that heat coils higher in your belly, the rubber band pulling taut, ready to snap as he moves faster under your guidance.

Your fingers dig down where they rest against his flesh. His eyes sweep back over to you, molten and dark in the moonlight, stuttering along where he’s touching you in a way he’s never done so before. He looks at you like you’re the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, mesmerized by the way you look in this moment. It’s terrifying and exciting, eyes shut against the feeling. Flames lick at you as he pulls into the back of your coffee shop and parks the van. You barely register the click of his key pulling from the ignition before his mouth is on yours, face crashing into you from over the center console. You’re immediately moaning into his mouth and driving your hips up further into his hand to seek more friction as the rubber band snaps and sweet release spills into your system.

“Oh shit,” he breathes against your lips, brushing kiss after kiss along your face as your hips fall back against the seat, your eyes heavy as you try to catch your breath, looking up at him with a little laugh. “Was that good? I—”

You silence him with a kiss, whispering, “Inside,” against his skin.

He barely has a moment to lock the door before you’re grasping his hand and rushing him up the stairs, humming as the door locks close behind the two of you and you’re finally and blessedly alone. You both toe off your shoes as you maneuver your way over to the bed, connected at the mouth, hands reaching to grab at clothes, a clash of lips, tongues and teeth.

“Chewy, stay in your room. Your parents are busy!” Eddie scolds, the kitten in question already sound asleep in his little makeshift bed.

You giggle airily as the backs of your thighs hit your mattress, back falling into plush comforters as he crawls over you, walking you backward up the bed until your head rests upon your mountain of pillows.

“Say it again?” He asks, marking a path down your cheek, along your neck, pulling a whimper from you as he sucks a hickey into your collarbone.

“I’m in love with you, Eddie.”

He’s kissing you again, your head swimming with the ecstasy of the moment. It’s slower this time. Not like in the car where it’s a frantic, wild thing. There’s all the time now in the world to taste, tease and explore. His tongue sweeping low against your lip, sliding along yours, licking into your mouth with slow, languid kisses.

He moans into your mouth, a sweet thing you swallow as his body slides closer to yours, the beat of his heart a tattoo against your sternum. A frantic flutter you slide your palm up between the two of you to feel, tethering yourself to this moment—to this man.

His guitar string callused fingers drag a familiar path along your thigh, sliding your dress up higher over your hips, baring you to him once more. His fingers come to slide between your folds, still puffy from your orgasm, making you shudder and mewl against his skin. Hips move upward at the sensation, seeking friction, seeking him.

In your impatience, you fist both sides of your dress in your hands, Eddie’s hands falling away from you long enough to let you sit up and pull the material up and over your body. You feel bared to him, already nearly naked against your mattress because the dress had called for no bra lines, and a forearm moves to drape across your chest.

“Hey, hey,” Eddie coos, cupping the side of your cheek. “You’re so beautiful. There’s no need to hide with me. I love you. I love you so much, sweetheart.”

Your arm drops away and he replaces it with his lips.

This part he knows.

This part he’s practiced on you already.

One hand comes up to knead one breast, while he pastes wet kiss after wet kiss to the other, tongue laving over your flesh, sucking into supple skin until you’re bucking up against his clothed thigh, rubbing your center against the fullness of it—seeking something, anything, to satisfy the need swirling in your gut.

“Come here,” you nearly beg, curling your fingers in the hair at the back of his head, tugging him back upward to your lips. You kiss him soundly, mewling as his thigh shifts and his hips roll forward, the hardness of him rubbing just right against your core, robbing you of all air. “Missed you.”

“I’m right here,” he chuckles, fingers dancing along your thigh. “Not going anywhere.”

“Want to touch you, Eds. But only if you’re ready.”

He leans back onto his haunches above you, hair a wild mess, chest rising and falling swiftly. He looks beautiful like this, just as he always does, all dark eyes and swirling heat living in them. They’re blown out now in his desire, in a way you’ve not seen him before. Heat flares at the thought it’s meant only for you, reserved only for you at this moment, just as his fingers reach for the hem of his shirt and hesitate.

“I can shut the light,” you whisper, hand coming to smooth up and down his thigh.

You want him to be comfortable. Fully at ease in a moment you know is already nerve wracking for him. It’s his first time with you, but it’s also his first time baring himself fully to another human after what transpired two years ago. His eyes shift to the left, to a faraway spot on the wall, like he’s mulling it over.

You stretch your arm out toward your lamp when a hand curls around your wrist like a bracelet. Eddie’s voice breaks into the silence with a soft, “No, leave it.”

He reaches behind his back and tugs the shirt up and over himself, slipping it off to toss it into the far corner somewhere. He waits. Waits for you to scream and run, to push him away you’re sure, what with the way his mouth settles into a firm line, his hands shaking where they rest at his thighs.

You’re familiar with his scars. At least the ones on his face, his neck, the spattering of them along his arms. The ones that litter his torso break your heart all over again for the boy on the floor of the Upside Down. The boy who had been close to death, and lived to tell the tale. The boy with the biggest heart you’ve ever known.

You lift yourself up to sit, hand coming up to hover over his abdomen, gaze flashing up to his momentarily. “Can I?”

He dips his head once, releasing a shaky exhale as your fingers trail along the first scar along his abdominal muscles, then further up along the two smaller ones to your left.

“Do they hurt?” You feel his stomach jolt as you drift back southward again, the softness of his abdomen dancing beneath your fingertips. “Don’t wanna hurt you.”

“No, not anymore. Not for a while now,” he manages to get out, watching your fingers where they linger against him, one of his hands sliding along the crown of your head comfortingly.

His left side, just over his heart, is the worst. A ridge of patchwork done by the plastic surgeons at the hospital, all puckered flesh, hills, bumps and divots. The demobats had tried to take him from you, tried to rob you of ever knowing this man, and your eyes water as you curl your palm over his ribcage, catching the soft shudder of his breath as his eyes fall closed.

You love him.

You love him fully and completely. Even in this body he resents, because it houses his soul. And it’s his soul you long for, want to entwine yourself to, want to cherish for as long as he’ll allow you. Even in this body that he rejects because it no longer looks as it used to, because it’s this body that has held you, has loved you, respected you.

It’s him.

You’ve never loved another person like this before, this feeling of fullness that makes your head swim. It drives you to lean forward, brushing a kiss over his heart, feeling him warm beneath your touch. His hand comes up to curl against the back of your head, your head turning so your ear rests over his sternum, arms looping around his back.

“You’re beautiful,” you whisper, as those ringed fingers curl around your chin and tip your head enough for him to kiss you sweetly.

When you pull away, you hear the first whimper fall from him. A choked garble that threatens to cleave you in two. Tears slide down his cheeks, along the bump of his cheek, salty tracks you brush away with your hands.

“I’m crying during sex and we haven’t even had sex yet,” he says pitifully, sniffling loudly.

“It’s okay,” you whisper, thumbing at his scarred cheek. “It’s okay. If you want to stop, we stop. We don’t have to do this now.”

“I want to. I really want to.”

After that it’s a swirl of movement. You slide your underwear down and kick them off as he moves to clamber off the bed, fumbling with his belt buckle and struggling in the process. You jump up to help him, his hands falling to his sides, as you unhook the belt and tug it free from his jeans, letting it fall to the floor with a clatter. You toy with the button on his jeans next, earning a sharp hiss from him as the zipper slides down and you accidentally brush him beneath his boxers, heart thudding when you find him hot and hard already. Swallowing, you watch as he wiggles the jeans down his thighs and stands there in nothing more than a pair of boxers, leaning across the space to kiss you once more.

You can feel the way he trembles, nervousness bubbling as he lowers you back against the mattress, elbows on either side of your head so he can cradle you. Your fingers trail along the hem of his boxers, eliciting a sigh from him, before they slip further within and wrap around silky hot flesh. He’s thick, thicker than anyone you’ve been with. You wonder for a moment if he’ll fit as you drag your thumb along his slit, collecting the bead of precum there. The curse he lets out has you slowly moving your palm up and down his length, watching him pinch his bottom lip between his teeth, shuddering above you.

His eyes flash open then, head shaking as he reaches to grip your hand where it rests against the base of him. “Wait, wait, wait. I’m gonna blow if you do that. I’m already scared I’m only going to last ten seconds. That’ll have me tapped out in five, baby.”

You snort as he leans forward to brush a kiss against your breast, your hand falling away from him to curl instead in the comforter beneath you. Emboldened, Eddie reaches down and slides his boxers off, kicking them into one of the various piles strewn about your floor now. He pops out stiff and ready, your eyes barely having time to take in the sight of him before he’s kneeling back down onto the bed, stealing a soft kiss that has you feeling warm like honey, all sticky sweet and languid.

“Do you have a condom? I didn’t think to bring one. I wasn’t…I didn’t know we’d be doing this, not that I’m sad about it. I’m actually really happy and—”

“I’m on the pill,” you explain, and the furrow between his brows softens, head slowly nodding. “But I have some right here.”

You reach over into your bedside table and he reaches over to pull a foil from the box. You watch him open it with shaky hands, chuckling to himself as it almost falls out of the packaging.

You reach out to see if he needs assistance sliding it on, muttering as you watch him roll the condom down himself. “I got them at the store the other day.”

“Oh—well that’s good. Safety first and all of that,” he says, chuckling nervously. You shift a bit beneath him, moving up further, making room for both your bodies, as his hand marks a slow path along your ribcage. “This is where my experience stops.”

“It’s okay,” you reassure him. “I’ve got you. Just remember we have nothing but time.”

“Okay,” he says, voice a little wobbly as he lowers himself against you, grabbing himself in hand. “Are you ready?”

“I’ve been ready since we were in the car,” you laugh, making him smile as he slowly drags himself up and down through your slick, bumping your clit in a way that has your eyes clamping shut, voice hitching in a whine. “Eddie.”

He understands your breathy plea, sliding lower until his tip rests at your entrance, full and warm as he presses in slowly. You both shudder out a moan, your fingers coming up to grip his shoulder at the slight burn of the unexpected fullness of him.

He’s babbling your name into your throat, gasping at the feel of you fluttering around him, muttering how much he loves you into your neck. And you’re rolling your hips up further into him, wanting to be full of him, wanting to be as close as you’ve ever been until he’s cursing against your skin and burying himself to the hilt.

“Oh, hell. Okay. I’m inside of you.”

You snort, shoving playfully at his side as you adjust to him. “That’s typically how this works.”

He swallows thickly, hips rocking shallowly against yours. “Can I move?”

“Yeah, hon. Please.”

He starts off uneasily. Moving a little too swiftly against you as his human instinct takes its time to kick in. You grip at his shoulder, trying to steady him, gasping into his neck at the still delicious drag of him along your walls.

“Hey, Eddie,” you whimper, and his eyes pop open to look down at you.

“Oh no. Baby, I’m not hurting you, am I?” He stills inside you, hands coming to rest on either side of your face, those dark eyes round with fear.

“No…no. I just wanted to say go slow,” you whisper, mewling into his mouth as he does exactly that. Pulls back gently and rolls his hips forward in a way that has your eyes rolling back a bit, shuddering out a breath. “Y-yeah. Like that—just like that.”

“Is this good? Want it to be good for you, because—” He groans into your shoulder as your hips rise up from the bed to meet him, hands sliding up and over his back, thigh curling around his hip to keep him closer. “Shit. You feel so good. Like you were…like you were made for me.”

“You are.” You whine as he palms your breast, kissing the corner of your mouth, rocking against you in a way that has you seeing stars. If he kept going, if he kept hitting that spot over and over again—“Doing so good, Eddie. Making me feel so good, so full of you—mmmm—”

But it’s all over soon after your praises fill the room. You clamp your nails down as his shoulder as his hips move more erratically, sweat on his forehead pooling, his teeth pinching at his lip as his eyes slam shut.

“I’m close. I’m so close, I’m sorry baby—”

“It’s okay. It’s okay. Just let go, I got you.”

His thrusting grows erratic as his chest falls forward and presses you down into the mattress. You feel him give one more final snap of his hips before he comes to a halt, trembling against your form with a curse. He’s gasping as he spasms inside, riding out the aftershocks of his orgasm.

He remains against you like that for a moment, panting heavily against your skin, pasting kiss after kiss into your sternum before he finally pulls out of you with a low whine.

You gasp out a breath and slide a palm over your racing heart, watching him walk over to your bathroom to discard the condom. When he returns, he loops an arm over your waist, fingers wandering against your belly, the curve of your hip, the tops of your thighs.

You shudder out a breath as he grazes your center, asking, “What are you doing?”

“You didn’t…finish, right?”

He leans down to press the softest of kisses to your lips, the answering shake of your head all he needs before he runs a finger along your slit, a gentle drag from your entrance before following the pattern against your sensitive clit you showed him in the car.

“Eddie…” Your heel shifts to press against the mattress, thigh falling open, baring yourself fully to him. “It’s okay. Really.”

“Wanna kiss you there, sweetheart.”

You chuckle heartily at his brazenness as he starts dropping kiss after kiss along your breasts, down the line of your sternum, across your belly where he sucks a little hickey into the skin below your belly button until your chuckling against his smiling mouth, his hand coming up to curl with yours resting by your hip. He gives you a little squeeze and laces your fingers with his as he starts kissing along the tops of your hip bones, the span of skin between them that makes you gasp against your pillow, head rolling back.

He doesn’t stop the slow torture there. You’re not sure where he’s learned this, but you’re silently thanking them with a plea as his lips mark a scorching path along the insides of your thighs, his other hand curling around the meat of your leg to open you further to him, nose tickling your sensitive flesh until you’re shifting your hips against the mattress, earning a nip against the inside of your thigh.

“Eddie, please,” you whimper, breath robbed from your lungs as he finally slides the flat of his tongue from your center up to your clit, drawing a tentative circle there.

“Tell me what to do. What you like. Wanna make it good.”

“To the left. And just like that, keep doing that.”

You’re a shaking mess as his ringed hand leaves yours and joins his tongue, prodding where you want him most, and you practically cry out your “yes” as he slips a finger inside.

“Like that, like that,” you babble, hand dropping down to rest at his full head of curls. When his second finger eases in, you feel your walls clamp down around him, his answering chuckle vibrating against your sensitive flesh. “If you curl your fingers like that—ah, yeah, just like that—”

You break off into a sob as he mimics your ‘come hither’ motion, his fingers moving in tandem with his tongue in a way that has your legs shaking on either side of his head, fingers twisting tight into his curls. You’re afraid you’ve hurt him at first, whipping your hand back, but he reaches up and slides it back into place, pressing your open palm against his hair so you can tug as you teeter closer and closer toward the edge.

“I’m so close, Eddie. You’re doing so good,” you pant, white flashing behind your eyes as he crooks those fingers against the part of you that has the flame flickering in your gut burning brighter and brighter, coil growing tighter as his tongue works you, his own sighs after a particularly hard tug of his hair against your center vibrating down to the tips of your toes.

The flames dance higher.

Burn brighter.

Become all consuming as tears prick in the corner of your eyes.

Because it’s Eddie.

Eddie Munson, the man who walked into your coffee shop all those months ago. The man with the quiet soul and loud mind. The man who cracked into a smile at your silly factoids and your ridiculous jokes. The man who had first been your friend and became so much more. Who tended to you when you were sick, helped make your house a home, created a little family with you by adding Chewy into the mix.

The man who became a safe place to land. A shoulder to rest your head. A door to walk into at the end of the day, to seek shelter from a storm with, to love endlessly and be loved in return.

It’s him, and in a way you think it’s always been him.

You snap with a low keen, trembling as your orgasm rushes over you, Eddie’s head peeking up just enough to watch it roll over you as his fingers continue their gentle slide.

You writhe beneath him as pleasure hits a peak and settles back into a low simmer, his head coming up to kiss you on the lips when he finally pulls out and joins you near your pillow. Your hand comes up to rest at the back of his neck, holding him to you, your mouths moving slowly over one another, tongues licking into mouths, neither one of you wanting to part from the other.

You’re not sure how long you lay like that in the circle of his embrace, his arm around your waist, your bare chests pressed to one another, ankles tangled beneath bedsheets. All you know is you hate to see him go as he slips out from the bed once more, sliding on his discarded boxers, into your bathroom. You hear the water run momentarily before shutting off, his frame reappearing with a washcloth in hand.

He helps you clean in silence. His fingers gentle along your still sensitive flesh, punctuating each slide of damp cloth with a kiss against your temple, before tossing it into the heap of clothing strewn about your floor. After that is a slide of hands as he helps you up and off of your bed, slipping his sweater over your head and letting it fall into place at your thighs. Your fingers skirt his side, along his bare chest, as he leads you into your bathroom and the two of you get ready for bed in silence.

He’s just been inside you, wholly and fully, but all you can think of is how these moments are your favorites. The ones only you’re privy to. The way Eddie slides lotion over his scars to maintain the elasticity of his skin, the care he takes in washing his face thanks to Steve’s incessant urging, the snap of his hair tie as he pulls his hair away from his face.

You stand before him as you brush, his larger form swallowing yours, fingers coming to toy with the hairs at the nape of your neck, thumb brushing lightly against skin. And as you spit into the sink and flush water down the drain, he spins you in his arms and presses your backside against the counter, drawing you to your tippy toes as he kisses you soundly, swallowing your sigh of happiness.

“Ready for bed?” You ask, running your hands down his chest, curling along his sides.

And he is. You find as much as the two of you slip back into your blankets, him drawing you close to his chest, pressing a kiss to the slope of your shoulder. You barely have a chance to whisper goodnight before he’s shutting his eyes and slipping off into a deep sleep.

You bury yourself closer to him and follow him into rest.

*

Eddie’s sure he’s dead.

Has to be.

It’s the only explanation for the way he wakes with you resting against his chest, your mouth slightly parted, little sighs filling the air.

He has to be dead, because last night Eddie Munson was Hawkin’s resident twenty-three year old virgin, and now he’s no longer a virgin and in bed with the love of his life.

Only he’s not dead. He feels the throb of his heart in his ribcage, the sound of it rattling in his ears thanks to your otherwise silent apartment.

Last night feels like a wispy dream he made up in his mind. Your hands in his hair, your body closer than ever before to his, the way you gasped and moaned in his ear. The feeling of you wrapped around him, hips rising to meet him, driving him further and further over the edge. He pictures the look on your face in utter bliss, watching you writhe for him, bringing you to that peak and watching it rush over you, leaving you shaking in his arms with him as your anchor.

All his life he’d thought himself unworthy of love. His father hadn’t been around much—always in and out of jail, and when he was around his way of showing love was teaching him how to shotgun a beer and hot wire a car. His mother, god he loved his mother, but when his father fell deeper and deeper into his poor habits, she retreated to other things to fill her heart.

Wayne had been the one to give him a home, to give him shelter, to let him know what a family looked like. A real family, at least. And then there was Max. The rough and tumble girl from across the street, with a personality that matched the fiery hue of her hair. She showed him what it was like to love someone like your own kin. Like blood. To want to cover them, protect them from the world, keep them safe.

And then there was you. The girl who had walked into his life and changed the course of it. For two years he retreated into his shadows. Craved the darkness they provided, the safety of drawing away from others. Hiding, because it seemed easier than facing the world. For a while, he was content with his core group; the same kids who had been with him during the worst week of his life, stood by him when he needed it the most, loved him when he lay broken and battered in the hospital. When the town turned on him, even after he’d been exonerated, they were there to protect his name. To try and fight back the rumors that threatened to swallow him whole. They never saw him as a murderer, never saw him as anything but Eddie Munson, loved him beyond the whispers of those who wanted to see him fall.

Loved him beyond those who wanted to run him out of town, wanted to believe the lie that he had the heart to kill all those kids, wanted to put a blame on the fact half of Hawkins had been ripped apart and sunk into the hell that lingered beneath.

You walked in and changed all of that.

Loved him despite his shadows, coaxed him out of them, wanted to see the parts of him he desired to keep hidden. You called to him, a gentle whisper, those small gestures that slowly broke away at the walls he erected to keep others out. You were patient, a constant beam of light in his world, a gentle smile on the days where he hated himself more than words could ever say.

You loved him in the light.

Loved him proudly in public, despite the way people might have looked onward in stores. Loved him even after knowing what he had gone through in eighty six, loved him despite the scar ravaged body that lingered beneath his clothes.

You’d given him a home to place his heart within. A roof to keep it covered. Your hands are there to cradle it and hold it close. And he trusts you. Whole heartedly trusts you.

Smiles against the crown of your head as he recalls telling you he loved you the night before, the way tears like stars glittered on your lower lashes, the choked hiccup of your breath as you whispered back in a broken voice you loved him, too.

“Are you awake?” You mumble beside him, humming softly as your arms come to stretch above you. He aches at the feel of your chest pressing further into his, cock stirring to life at your hip when you lean over and kiss him soundly. “Oh, good morning to you too.”

“Shut up,” he laughs, feeling his cheeks warm. Only you’re pressing further into him, hips flush against him, making him shudder. “Too early.”

“Is it?” You practically simper the words and his chest tightens further, gasping at the feel of your fingers along his chest, down his abdomen, dancing along the thatch of hair at the base of him before curling your palm around him fully. “We have no plans, it’s just us…”

He reaches down to grab your hand, already missing the heat of you around him, and presses a kiss to the inside of your wrist. Sighing, he leans up onto his elbows and stares down at your face. Beautiful, even freshly washed for bed, you’re so beautiful it stirs an ache deep within his chest.

“I love you,” he whispers. “I love you so much.”

You lean up and brush your lips against his. Tentative at first, and then coaxing as you slip your tongue along his, breaking apart long enough to rasp out, “I love you, too.”

Soon it’s a flurry of movement. He slips out of his boxers, kicks them down around his ankles, and moves to shift between your thighs. He remembers you’re on the pill and grabs himself in hand, feeling you beckon him forward with a swivel of your hips as he dips himself to the slick already pooling at your center. This time, as he sheathes himself fully, he languishes in the mutual gasp that fills the spaces between the two of you. Nearly chokes on a sob as he rolls his hips forward and back and feels you shifting to meet him thrust for thrust. You chase your end together, a slow ebb and flow, a quiet that wraps around your hearts save for your mingling breaths and moans.

You mewl into his skin that you love him.

To keep going.

Right there, you gasp out, when he hits that spot that has your eyes rolling back in your skull. Hits it over and over again as you start to shake beneath him, your impending orgasm drawing closer and closer.

It’s not like last night. The nervous, awkward feeling of exploring new lovers for the first time. Today he relishes the feeling of you around him, of rocking his hips into yours, of drawing out your pleasure, watching your face pinch, listening to your sounds. He wants to memorize every one. Every look that passes along your features as he moves against you, pushing your head further and further into your pillow.

With every movement he tries to show you his love. Tries to kiss you in a way that pours every bit of him into you.

He wants you to know that you’re it, this is it, this moment and this girl.

He’s done running.

He’s found home.

He’s found you.

Today feels like making love. Up until this moment he thought it was a cheesy thing people said about sex. But now he knows it’s real, feels the severity of it as he holds you in his arms, safe and sound from the rest of the world.

“Fuck, I don’t think I’ll ever get over how beautiful you are.”

You only gasp his name in reply. Hands come to slide up along his back as he picks up his pace. Rolls his hips down into yours, hitting that spongy part of you that has your thighs trembling where they curl around his hips.

His forehead drops against yours, your eyes coming up to meet him as he tells you he loves you over and over again, hand curling tight with yours against the pillow beneath your head.

Forever.

For the first time, he wants that.

You shatter around him. Walls clamping down as you practically sob his name.

He’s not long after, moaning low and heavy into your skin, heart pounding in his ears. You whimper and writhe against him, as he slows in you, coming down from his own high.

He flops down onto his back and feels you shift beside him in the bed, coming to rest along his chest, hand trailing along his abdomen.

“Better?” He laughs, curling his arm beneath your head.

“Last night was perfect. Stop that.”

“Yes…yes it was. But this was better, no?”

You level him with a stare and he bursts out into laughter, waking Chewy who scampers over to hop in the bed with the two of you.

Your little family.

“Happy New Year, Eddie,” you whisper, reaching across to lace your fingers with his. “I have a feeling it’ll be a good one.”

“Happy New Year, sweetheart.”

*

Spring, 1991

*

“Baby showers are so weird,” Steve mutters, bringing the lip of his beer bottle to his mouth to take a sip.

The two of them stand near the door leading to the patio, glancing out to where Steve’s wife, Charlotte, sits in a circle of her closest friends who are all ‘oohing’ and ‘ahhing’ over the dozens of new little girl outfits she’s received.

Steve continues, “Bunch of girls sitting around opening gifts for someone who isn’t even here yet.”

“Also kind of weird because it’s sort of like a ‘congratulations, your dick works’ celebration.”

“You two are disgusting,” Robin says. “Neanderthals. Babe, you live with this man?”

You’re at Robin’s side, wearing that dress that flutters around your thighs when you walk, looking pretty as ever. You still rob him of his breath even after the past two years.

“That I do,” you laugh, kissing him as you brush by to go grab more desserts from the countertop. “Have fun, boys!”

The two of you slip back out from where you came, Steve waiting until the door slides shut fully when he asks, “So when are you going to ask her? That ring has been burning a hole in your closet for weeks now.”

“Soon…” he says, watching as you walk around with a tray filled with cookies in your arms, passing them out to greedy guests. “I’m just waiting for the perfect moment.”

*

His first attempt has him sweating. Literal sweat dripping from his pores as the two of you sit at that too-ritzy restaurant Steve suggested you try. It’s not his scene, and it’s not yours. You prefer eating indoors, within the comfort of your now shared apartment, with Chewy always nearby to beg for table scraps (you always yell at him not to give him people food, but he’s quick to remind you he’s a growing boy).

This—the candles on the table, the multiple forks and spoons he’s not sure what to do with, the intricately folded napkins. He feels so out of place.

But the plan is as follows for the evening: the music will change to something soft and romantic just as the waiter walks out with your glasses of champagne and dessert. He’s requested a little note to be written in scrawling letters, set to read “will you marry me?” As you’re reading (and hopefully crying) he plans on dropping onto one knee and popping the ring box open.

It’s foolproof, Steve and Robin have reassured him only about fifty times now.

He just knows it needs to be perfect.

You deserve nothing less.

However, nothing ever goes quite as planned. You’re holding his hand, talking about the shop, when a table near you starts to shift. A trio of men start singing, actually singing, to the woman staring up wide-eyed at them, clearly enjoying a moment she’s been dreaming about. She’s a hysterical crying mess, Eddie’s horrified, and you look ready to sink into the ground from second hand embarrassment as one of the men steps forward and asks her to marry him in front of the whole room.

“Shit,” Eddie curses, and you pry your attention away long enough from the now frantically kissing couple to look over to him.

“What was that?”

“Oh, nothing, sweetheart,” he says, glancing up to where the waiter is standing with a tray holding your dessert and glasses.

He’s waiting for him, he realizes, to give the go ahead.

But now his head is spinning, because he’s definitely not singing to you, he’s not prepared any fancy speeches or grand gestures, and definitely won’t be topping that display.

He just wanted to get down on one knee and let the words pour out of him in the moment.

The plan comes to a halt even further when you huff out, “I understand the whole public engagement idea, but I don’t think that’s for me. I feel like…I don’t know, I’d want it to be more intimate. Just you and me. Us.”

It’s like a record scratch in his ears, lungs relieved of all air as he tugs on his collar because he’s choking now too.

Is the room getting hotter?

The waiter glances over and Eddie shakes his head stiffly, reassuring you he’s fine when your hand reaches out to cup his forearm.

“Check,” Eddie mouths to the man when you’re not looking.

So no, it didn't happen that day.

*

The second attempt fares worse than the first. You’re cooking beside him in the kitchen and he’s about to get down on one knee when the phone blares from the far wall.

The two of you stand close to the receiver when the familiar voice of Dustin fills Eddie’s ears, grating and frantic, like he’s recently run a marathon or something.

“Dustin Henderson, resident butthead, what do you want?” Eddie drawls, earning a soft shove from you where you stand beside him.

“Aren’t you twenty-five?”

“Some things never change,” he says, and he can practically hear the kids' eyes rolling in his skull on the other end. “Is someone dying, because I was kind of in the middle of something.”

“That’s disgusting and you should be ashamed of yourself,” Dustin groans.

“Not that kind of thing, you perv.”

“Look, I need help not being single and miserable…”

“That doesn’t sound like someone dying.”

“It might be soon if I don’t fix things with Suzie.”

“Okay, so how do you suppose—”

“Not from you! You’re not romantic,” Dustin continues, leaving Eddie a spluttering mess because he was, in fact, about to be romantic. Probably the most romantic he’s ever been in his life. So fuck him, he thinks. “I need your girlfriend.”

It didn't happen that day either.

*

The third attempt has you in the hospital, Eddie nearly wearing a hole into the ground as he asks the doctors a million and one questions. Is she going to be okay? What kind of medicine can she take? How long will she need to be on crutches for? Do they have to amputate? (He knows that one is a little dramatic, and he’s only asking because his brain is practically shaking in his skull, but he has to know).

You were taking a walk through your favorite park, following along a trail you’ve walked many times now, his sights set on the little lake in the middle of it that is viewable from a small bridge that sits beneath a canopy of leaves.

The only different thing about that day was the way you stepped funny and rolled your ankle, falling to the ground clutching at the offended limb with tears in your eyes. He’d been a mess, an absolute mess even though you told him over and over again you were okay, that it’s likely nothing serious, even though you were the one hurt in the first place.

But he drives like a bat out of hell to the hospital, only to sit in a waiting room for hours, before you’re taken for x-rays.

You have a broken ankle, and his heart aches when they cover your limb in a cast.

That afternoon it’s all dinner in bed and cuddling with Chewy and him as he props your foot up on a mountain of pillows, refusing to let you lift a finger for anything.

Not even the remote, he tells you when you grumble that you’re fine.

Definitely not the right time to propose, he decides, and shelves it for another.

*

He finds you a few days later sitting on the floor with your injured ankle resting in front of you and your palm upturned. He catches the sight of the velvet box next, the way your eyes behold the box like you’ve never seen anything like it before in your life.

“Oh no,” he cries out, rushing over to where you sit on the ground. “No, no, no. I had it all planned out. Well not planned out; I’ve had to change the plans a few times now, actually. But I wanted to make it special, take you somewhere or do something we like to do and ask you—”

“Eddie.”

It’s ruined.

The whole thing is ruined. He presses the heel of his palm to his forehead and groans.

“Eddie,” you try again, and he lifts his head to see you turning to look at him.

There are tears in your eyes, but you don’t seem sad. He’s just ruined your proposal and you’re not upset?

“Eddie, ask me now.”

He feels himself stumble a bit. Stutters out, “W-what?”

“Ask me now.”

You swallow thickly, handing him the ring box as he settles down on the ground in front of you. Chewy pokes his head up from the top of the couch, tail swishing at his two humans.

“A few years ago a new girl moved to town. There’s this idiot that works across the street from her shop at the bar, and he’s kind of a dick to her at first. You can laugh, it’s true. But it’s funny because she’s never deterred by it. She starts writing these little facts on his cups, and these corny little jokes that make her laugh and make it really hard for him not to laugh too because she’s just so pretty. They become friends…sort of. You see, he doesn’t really like to let many people in, and here she is with this big personality. Everyone falls in love with her, I mean—how wouldn’t they. Except for him. Or so he thinks.”

You’ve moved closer, your knees against his, one of his hands in your lap, curled in your own.

“He starts helping out with her apartment and realizes the more he hangs out with her, the more he likes her. He starts to feel less like a monster, and more like someone capable of love. She peels back those little layers and is so patient with it, never pushes him, always puts his feelings first. And then, he realizes he’d be a complete dingus to not tell her he likes her. And then the most surprising thing happens.”

You’re laughing through your tears, but laughing all the same and asking, “What is that?”

“They fall in love. Him for the first time ever, and he realizes…he wants that person every day for the rest of his life.”

He pops the box open and watches your hand come up to press against your lips, taking in the single diamond on a slender gold band.

“I love you so much, sweetheart. Every day more than the one that came before it. And I want that, I want this…us, for the rest of my life,” he says thickly, trying to hold back his own tears. “If you say yes, of course.”

“Yes, Eddie, yes,” you whisper, holding out your hand so he can slide it onto your ring finger.

It’s a perfect fit.

Then again, you’ve always been.

*

Eddie Munson marries the girl of his dreams six months later.

It’s a small ceremony, surrounded by your closest friends in the Wheeler’s backyard. You share personal vows with one another, words that encompass the years you’ve known one another, the love you share, the dreams for the future.

He promises to love you for the rest of his life as Steve—newly officiated for this occasion—instructs him to slide your wedding band onto your finger. And you do the same, standing there in a pretty white dress, your own words falling around him and filling his heart as you push the solid gold ring onto his own hand.

You dance under twinkling lights the kids have twined around the trees, hearts full to burst.

Wayne tells him he’s proud to call him son and wishes you well as you part for the night, Max joining soon after to hug the two of you and remind you she’ll be by the apartment often to check up on Chewy (her favorite and only nephew).

You slip into your hotel room in a flurry of kisses, a sea of white tulle around you, your hands in his suit and his working on undoing the line of buttons down your back.

You fall into one another as you always do, his lips against yours, bodies burning, sighs mingling into one as he slides home for the first time with his new wife.

He holds you close, one arm low around your back, the backs of his knuckles against your cheek. Tells you he loves you as the two of you creep closer and closer to mutual bliss.

Later, after you’re both cleaned up and spent, he tucks you close to his chest and hums the song you danced to at your wedding.

He’s happy.

Happier than he’s ever been in his life.

“Fun fact: Becoming your husband made this the best day of my life.”

You press your head further into his chest, finger toying with the new ring on his finger. “Fun fact: Becoming your wife is mine.”

*

Tag List: @clinicallyonline17, @sidthedollface2, @lazywillow6748, @idkidknemore, @blue-eyed-lion , @emma77645 , @bambipowerblueaddition , @aysheashea , @lezzy-bennet @yeehawbitchs

[im-am-not-a-weenie]

The gang with a reader who gets taken by the O’Driscolls. Also, I am very excited to find someone who writes for Red Dead! I love your writings! 💖

Omg thank you, getting this request made me so happy lol sorry it took A while to finally get to life’s been crazy I’m just gonna do how they react to the news and how they save you (only happy endings for our cowboys) if you want a more detailed version I’d be happy to write it 🤠

Not beta read

🍓The gang when the reader gets taken by the O’Driscolls🍓

Arthur,John,Sean,Hosea,Dutch

GN reader

See end for a/n

🍓Arthur Morgan

As soon as he hears the news he immediately thinks it’s his fault. How could he let someone get to you 

He starts to assume the worst “what if I’m too late.” or “it’s my fault I shouldn’t have left them alone.”

His next reaction is to go out and get you, not thinking about the consequences or what could happen to him. He just needs you to be ok

Hosea has to step in and be the voice of reason “you couldn’t have known Arthur, I know you love them but we can’t just go in there guns a-blazing we need a plan”

After they get you back the first thing Arthur does is hug you, being gentle just in case you were hurt.

“Arthur baby it’s ok I’m not gonna break.” “I know doll, just let me hold you for awhile.”

And you let him. You find yourself cradling his head in your hands and wiping away a few tears (ok it’s a lot of tears but you’re crying to)

“It’s ok Arthur I’m back I’m not going anywhere.” “Damn right you’re not you aren’t leaving without me every again”

And you’re ok with that

🍓John Marston

John doesn’t know what to do at first. He sits there in shock for a couple of minutes.

He probably would’ve stayed there longer is Arthur hadn’t snapped him outta it

“Hold what exactly happened” “I’m sorry John it was a job gone bad, we didn’t know they were waitin for us we were ambushed.” “Are they?” “Alive yes, we’ll get them back John I promise”

And get you back they did

I don’t think the others have seen John so focused on a job

“John you should probably get some sleep, and when was the last time you ate.” “I’m fine Dutch.” “Ok son, don’t worry we’ll get them back”

When they do get you back you can’t pull John off of you, literally like for the next three days they have to pull it off of you

Everyone just got tired of it and just decided leave him be, not that you mind

Everyone else might not know it but John has always been a cuddle bug it just took a traumatic event to show it publicly (but that’s neither here nor there)

“John, sweetheart I’m not going anywhere.” “And you won’t be for like….the rest of your life”

🍓Sean McGuire

Sean is heartbroken all he says and First is “oh” and walks off it’s not that he doesn’t care but it’s that he needs to process

Arthur fines him starring of into space with a lost look in his eyes, he and the rest of the boys have never seen Sean so effected by anything

The one who was always smiling and laughing and probably the loudest was a broken mess on the ground

“What happened out there Arthur.” “honestly I couldn’t tell ya Sean, we were walkin in town they said they needed to grab something from the store and all I heard was the scream before they got ‘em.“

“We’ll get her back Sean.” “We better, them O’Driscolls are going to feel all the pain they’ve felt and more”

They find you passed out, gaged, and tied up in a chair in the corner

You think you’re dreaming at first, the voice bringing you back to conciseness couldn’t be your Sean you struggle to try to open you’re eyes

You felt a hand on your face caressing your cheek you jerk trying to get it off

“Don’t fucking touch me you dirty bastard” “shhh, lass it’s ok it me you don’t have to fight anymore” “Sean?”

He holds you the hold ride back and them some. Trying to help you with the aftermath and trauma you most likely gained (unless ur built different) every time he gets up you hold on tighter

“What’s wrong?” “What if they take me again Sean? “Don’t worry love, you’ll never be taken away from me I promise”

And that a promise you can trust

🍓Hosea matthews

His calm and collected demeanor is gone, well not totally he still wants to get you out as soon as possible but also as safely

He goes into action mood, he moves so fast no one else has time to question or process

“Hosea let’s just think about this more a moment.” “I did think about it Dutch and getting them sooner is better than later.” “Now let’s just-“ “damnit Dutch I’m going to get them now it’s up to you if you wanna come with me or stay here”

The whole gang pitches in on this one because no one dares to say no to angry Hosea or get in his way

The gang works quick and quietly Hosea is all rage until he finally sees your face you only had a few bruises but he will worry that at camp he just wants to get you home

As soon as you have your arms around him you’re sobbing and pulling closer or as closer as you can possibly get

He’ll hold you close too and gives you what you need he rubbed circles on your back and tries to calm you don’t be let’s be honest he’s crying too

“Shh it’s alright love, I got you…that’s right deep breaths, can you do that for me baby c’mon breath with me” putting your hand in his chest so you can match his breaths

As You start to calm you can hear his praises “There you go love that’s it”

you look up to meet his eyes

“Hi.” “Hi love.” “Thanks for coming to get me.” “My dear i’d fallow you too the ends of the earth.”

🍓Dutch van der linde

The news hits Dutch the hardest

He starts to panic, he can’t lose someone to the O’Driscolls again

He starts pacing and muttering as he’s walking back and forth he starts to fidget with his hands

The gang hasn’t seen their leader like this it makes the rest of the group nervous too

 “Dutch if you keep that up you’ll start to run yourself into the ground.” “Huh?”

He hasn’t noticed the pacing what felt like seconds was actually minutes. 30 to be exact he decides it’s time to do something. Time for a great Dutch van der Linde speech

“All right gang as you know a tragedy that has struck today, we can sit here and think about the worse OR we can go out there and show those O’Driscolls what happens when they mess with us”

Of course everyone was with Dutch

When they found you the first thing Dutch did was grab you and lift you up in an tight embrace spinning you around

“Dutch baby.” “Yes dear?” “I can’t breath”

He immediately let you go well not totally but he let up a bit

You reach up to cradle his face in you hand to which he immediately lent into the touch . You wipe a tear from his face telling him how you’ll never leave him again to which his response is

“And I you”

🍓Hey everyone I’m so sorry if this absolutely sucked lol but I tried it’s been awhile since I posted or wrote anything but I wanted to put something out again sorry but this was not beta read so I apologize for the grammar and spelling errors, also thanks for all of the well wishes and I hope to start posting regularly again and finish everyone’s requests love you all-Rhys🍓

[agaypanic]

i request Benny Weir helping the female reader face her fear of small spaces or heights

Too High (Benny Weir X Reader)

Masterlist

Request Something!

Summary: Benny tries to help you get over your fear of heights, but it doesn’t go as planned.

A/N: sorry for not posting anything in a fat minute, i lowkey dont feel like a person sometimes teehee

***

When your boyfriend Benny asked you about your biggest fear, you thought he was simply curious. You told him that when you were little, you fell out of an old friend’s treehouse and broke your arm. That gave you two months in a cast and a couple of years of avoiding being in a space more than fifteen feet off the ground.

After answering, you thought nothing of the question, quickly moving on to a more interesting topic. But Benny still seemed to think about what you had shared with him. He felt a sudden need to try to fix the little problem you had.

Which brings you to now, a few weeks later.

“Can I open my eyes now, Benny?” You asked, blinded by both his and your hands as he guided you somewhere outside. You figured you were in Benny’s backyard, but you wouldn’t know for sure until he’d let you see where you were.

“Just a few more steps.” He said, pushing you forward. Eventually, he stopped you, and you staggered a bit from him abruptly pulling at your shoulders. “Okay, now!”

You opened your eyes, immediately having to squint because of the bright sun shining through the trees. But when your vision focused, you became confused.

Benny must have seen the look on your face. “I thought we could have a picnic!”

“In a treehouse?” You looked at your boyfriend, trying to show that you were less than pleased with the idea without hurting his feelings. “Benny, do you know anything about me? That thing is so high up, there’s no way I-”

“Just hear me out!” He pleaded, gently pulling you closer to the ladder set against the tree. “It’s like exposure therapy. Be up in a treehouse, where your fear of heights started, for a couple minutes to get you used to heights again.”

“I don’t know, Bens…”

“You can go up first.” He said to ease your mind, although you would’ve been more relaxed if he said you could have your little picnic on the ground. “If you slip off the ladder, I can catch you. Plus, if I go up first, you’ll probably just leave.”

“No, I wouldn’t!” You said with a jokingly offended tone, and Benny raised his eyebrows at you. “Okay, maybe I would.”

After a bit more convincing, involving many comforting words and even more kisses, you agreed to at least try to go up into the treehouse. As soon as you got off the ground, Benny was right under you, holding the ladder to keep it steady even though it was already nailed to the tree. 

After getting halfway up the ladder, you started feeling a bit nervous and clammy. You took longer breaks between each rung, having an almost iron grip.

“You got it, babe!” Benny said from below. “Just don’t look down.”

Of course, after that, you looked down. 

The ground felt like it was stretching farther and farther away, and you started to feel a little dizzy. And then a lot more dizzy until suddenly, you let go of the ladder, and the world went black.

***

Instead of waking up on the ground, you woke up in the treehouse. Your back was a bit sore, but you supposed you were fine otherwise. “Hey.” Benny smiled at you with relief, grabbing some water for you. “How’re you feeling?”

“Okay, I think.” You responded, slowly sitting up and grabbing the cup from him. “How did I get up here? Last time I checked, when you fall, you go down instead of up.”

“I carried you up,” Benny answered, shrugging like it was nothing.

You raised a brow at him. Not completely convinced. “By yourself?”

He sighed. “Okay, I may have used some magic. But, I got you up here, didn’t I?”

You nodded, grabbing one of the sandwiches from the bundle of food Benny had spread out of the picnic blanket covering the wooden floor. “Very true.” As the two of you ate, you looked around. When peeking out the windows, you couldn’t see the ground. Just branches from other trees and the sky. If you ignored the fact that you were twenty feet in the air, being up in the treehouse with Benny actually felt nice and peaceful.

But there was something that the two of you hadn’t considered.

“So…” You started, gaining Benny’s attention. “How am I getting down?”

***

Benny Weir Taglist: @batmandallyboy

[2af-afterdark]

do u have any dark hcs for whb? and please go wild with it

You sure? You absolutely positive? I have quite a few that cover various topics so... general content warning. I just... do not have the head space to list them all, but assume that this will cover sexual themes, eating things, violence, and the like.

I admit that... these are more of a... dark au sort of thing than actual headcanons. I do think whb has some potentially dark content, but I am just going wild here and throwing out the whole fucking mess in my head. It's not everything, but it's a start.

If you click the read more, that's on you:

Devils have been making deals with humans for millennia and not all of those deals are fair. In fact, I would argue that very few of them are far. Devils don't lie about their end of the deal, but they can sure as hell twist what the truth is. Think about old school fae and their carefully worded deals.

That said, since all things in the human world originate from Hell... that must include tragedies. I think that some tragedies are the result of devil interference, whispering to humans to do awful things. Note: not all terrible things are the result of devils. Humans are just... fucked up like that.

Consent is... optional for a lot of devils. Since devils are honest with themselves, that includes their desires. I think many devils just sort of... don't think of non/dubcon as that big of an issue. Some of them definitely buy into that "isn't it a compliment" mentality.

Cannibalism! Okay, technically it's only cannibalism if a devil eats another devil (and I'm sure some do out of curiosity or because it's a delicacy) but I mean to say that devils definitely eat angels and humans. Heck, there are probably restaurants that specialize in human meat and serve it without a second thought.

On that same note, at least one of the Avisos devils is going to feed MC some questionable meat without telling them what they ate. They would probably learn what they were fed later when another devil either slips and says something, or when someone like Glasyalabolas wants to fuck with them.

Listen... you've seen some of the kinks already in this game. I have no doubt that some devils have far worse or more gross kinks. I will not elaborate because... the thought of some of them makes me sick. Not all of them are gross as much as they are... strange. Point is, I think the devils probably cover the gambit of kinks.

For our yandere lovers... a devil will get far crazier than any human ever could, to the point that it isn't sexy or fun anymore. Some yandere will surely want the best for you, but others will literally break and mold you into their ideal, some are quick to sawing off body parts, some will use punishments more than any kindness, some will beat and torment you just for the fun of it.

Making a deal for immortality? Worst possible move. I don't think many devils can make that deal, but the ones that can? You should be worried about them. Immortality makes you the perfect punching bag and toy. After all, if you never specified that you want eternal youth or to live a happy life, you are at the devil's mercy.

Devils can very easily snap a human in two. Literally. They have so much more strength than a human that it is not a contest.

Psychologically tormenting other living creatures is just a fun little game. Like "who can make someone commit suicide first" is a game that devil school children play.

Angels are just as bad as devils, but humans are brainwashed to think they are better and moral, which is somehow worse.

Angels are a little murder happy when it comes to humans who do not follow God, but they also try not to have too much interaction with humans because...

Angels see humans and devils as a lesser life form. Think... humans are basically ants to angels. They think themselves so above it all but also are aware that humans are an important part of the ecosystem. Doesn't stop them from crush humans under their heels or seeing them as pests though.

Angels picked up this attitude from God. God probably didn't see humans as anything more than cute pets or entertaining wildlife. Solomon was the one exception and, like, that's the angel equivalent of a very illegal kink I will not be naming. Yet the angels blame Solomon for tempting God...

Angels are also cannibals! They prefer devil meat though.

Since angels and devils cannot have children within their own species now that God and Lilith are missing, they will have to start breeding with other species. Again... consent is optional. I actually think Devils are slightly better is this department, but only "better" in the sense that devils are least see humans as a sentient and sapient species in the same sense as they and probably lean more into dubcon (instead of straight noncon). Also, they will at least like the children both from those unions. Angels though? Neither humans nor devils are on the same level as them when it comes to sentience or sapience, so... everything they so is disgusting in their own minds. And those kids? Those poor kids will be absolutely looked down upon, even if the angels thought it was necessary.

Genocide! But that's just canon. I mean... fuck. Angels committing genocide is just canon.

That's all I'm gonna say for now. It's a good start. Remember, some of these are more dark au than actual headcanons I actively hold... some of them are actual headcanons though.

[nobody-for-sure]

Language Barrier

Since there might still be some confusion: friendship levels dictate which words can be understood at any given time (which obviously increases by level). As a result, depending on the words used and the complexity of the discussion, characters of middle levels may be able to understand everything or almost nothing in a sentence.

Chapter 16

(~2.6k words, see chapter list here)

You have to take a moment to reassure yourself that all those yandere fanfictions were way out of character, because otherwise you'd be running for the hills already.

"What do you mean, I can't leave?" you ask slowly. Already, you're getting a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach.

"Just what I said," the yaksha responds blandly. "You saw, didn't you?"

It takes you a minute to figure out what he's referring to, but then it hits you. Ah. The cliff from before. "Do you mean the whole mountain is like that?"

He gives a single nod, and you grimace. In that case, you did see. Certainly, no one's getting up or down by foot; it was far too steep for that. Furthermore, a portion of the side of the mountain appeared to be delicately concave. You doubt anyone - much less you - could climb it. (In fact, given which nation you're in... you're starting to wonder if it was deliberately built that way. Perhaps this is intended to be a place only certain people can access?)

While you're wondering about this, Xiao reaffirms your initial realization. "If you can't use the thing, you can't leave. That's the only way."

"But- you don't use the waypoi- the thing, right?"

"No, I don't."

"So we can still leave that way, can't we?"

Xiao looks you in the eye and raises an eyebrow. "Can you?"

You pause. It feels like a trick question somehow, but Xiao's not really the roundabout type. "Well, uh... you can, right?"

"If you think I can take you with me, think again."

You feel like he's just pulled the rug out from underneath you. "What??? Why not?" But he's teleported with the traveler before, right?

"Your ikvuru is too kravxw."

"My what is too what?!" A note of panic creeps into your voice, now that your last hope is crumbling in front of you.

In response, the adeptus gives you a discerning look. "Qpog down," he says. His voice is not especially gentle, but it lacks the same harshness as sometimes. He purses his lips. "...I can't say it any vupsqyw. Think about it. You are far more pejvubas than me... even if you can't ipuuvj udypyxe your vubas. No one can ipywou uxopesyroq such poyxroxwfew poxruqupu ikvuru without ugruetuwrag, which is what you're asking me to do." He pauses. "Do you get it?"

Not even a little bit, you want to say, but you run his words through your head again. There's room for interpretation, for sure. The situation must be a lot more complicated than you expected, since he presumably explained the easiest way possible, and you still only caught half of it. But his end message is clear: one way or another, it seems what you're asking simply can't be done.

Is it because you're the Divine Creator?

"Think about it." Who would be capable of moving an all-powerful being through space-time on a whim?

"No one," you say slowly, uncertainly echoing the words you caught. "No one can do it."

Xiao nods once. "Ipxgocu. That's why the things were made."

Your shoulders slump. Welp. That's that, then. There's no way I'm making it down that alive. Looks like my dumb ass is finally going to suffer the consequences of my actions-

Your stomach suddenly gurgles unceremoniously.

-by starving to death on this mountaintop, probably. You grimace. Between the teleportation, the hilichurl encounter, and your time with Xiao, the sun has all but vanished from the sky. The last time you ate was around midday. By now, you probably would've eaten dinner with the others at the inn, but...

"Oh shit, the others." Your mind suddenly jumps back to your poor stranded escort squad back at the inn. You initially planned to send them a message once you got down the mountain, but now... "Xiao, at the inn - uh, the place I came from - there's some people who were with me. Can you please go and tell them what happened and apologize for me?" you say in a rush. "They-"

The yaksha vanishes in a flash of teal light before you have a chance to describe your companions. ...Well, you're grateful that he understood the urgency of the situation, at least. You gnaw at your lip, imagining their reaction to you suddenly up and disappearing. Fuck. Sorry, guys. I didn't think I wouldn't be able to teleport back OR get down. Have they stayed put at the inn, or did they spread out to search for you? What does one do when the person they're guarding literally vanishes into thin air?

Well, panic, probably.

You slide down against the cave wall, internally cringing and apologizing again. You're fairly confident Xiao will be able to find them if anyone can, but between this and the Mondstadt incident, you really need to stop disappearing on people who are trying to help you.

Well, this is the last time, I swear, you resolve. I will not randomly go off somewhere again without at least telling somebody I'm with where I'm going.

...Probably.

You flick a pebble at the wall across from you. It bounces off a jagged edge, skittering across the floor and landing by your foot. You stare at it for a moment before picking it up and repeating the motion.

You're bored.

It's hard to say how long it's been since Xiao left. The last ray of sunlight disappeared shortly after he did, and the minutes crawl by in the darkness of the cave. You don't risk dragging yourself over to the entrance to see if you can catch a glimpse of the moon, though. If there are any more enemies nearby, you're fucked. You could call for the yaksha again, of course, but the two of you are on questionable terms as-is, so you'd hate to incur his wrath unnecessarily.

If you could handle the enemies, that would be another story. But, for whatever reason, whatever powers you apparently have don't seem to work like they're supposed to. Exhibit A: the waypoint. Which could be the fault of the waypoint and not you, but you have your doubts. Especially since...

"Wind," you say, willing a gust of air to sweep through the tunnel. "I mean, anemo. Air. Breeze. Come on, work with me here." You sweep your arm like a catalyst user, but nothing happens except an unhappy grumble from your stomach.

Exhibit B. You lean back against the wall again. You thought maybe if Xiao couldn't teleport with you, maybe you'd be able to teleport yourself in the same way, but it seems that's not going to happen. "That's why the things were made", he said. Are you not actually able to wield the elements, despite being the Divine Creator? Is your golden blood just for show? You already can't understand the language - not really, anyway. And after spending some more time here, it's as you thought before: even if you did manage to learn the language of Teyvat, you'd never be able to speak it. You can already imagine your vocal chords weeping after a single sentence.

Will you only ever be able to interact with this world through (formerly) playable characters?

You sigh, which turns into a shiver. Without the sun, and this high up in the mountains, it's understandably a bit chilly. Maybe you should give your powers another shot.

You sweep your arm half-heartedly. "Pyro-" The cave is suddenly bathed in warm light, and you excitedly sit up straight. Was that me? Did I do that?!

...But no, it's no doing of your own. A small wrapped parcel falls at your feet. "Here," Xiao says bluntly. His face is illuminated by the soft glow of a torch, which he's holding stiffly out, indicating for you to take it. His brow is furrowed slightly, but in this lighting it's hard to tell if he's irritated or if that's merely his neutral face. You take the torch quickly, just in case.

"Did-" you start, but he disappears before you can get any further. You slump a bit at being brushed off, but your attention switches to the abandoned parcel before you can dwell on it too much. It seems to have been wrapped in a haste, tied with a very elaborate-looking bow made of slightly frayed twine. Should I open it?

But then again, it might not even be for you in the first place. After all, the torch was the only thing Xiao specifically handed you. It's entirely possible the package is his, and he just dropped it on accident. If so, you're definitely better off not messing with it.

You eye the fancy bow some more. ...Not exactly Xiao's style, though.

Cautiously, you use your free hand to pull the package towards you. The contents shift - there's multiple things inside. You pull the end of the twine, and the wrapping falls open.

A sweet, smokey aroma fills the cave, and you inhale agressively. Food. Eagerly, you push back the edges and peer inside. Ham, bacon, and sausage are stuffed into the package, along with a pair of chopsticks and a single sprig of mint for decoration. One slice of ham has some kind of sauce drizzled on in the shape of a messy six-pointed star.

Your eyes widen. Die Heilige Sinfonie!

There's no doubt about it. It's Fischl's special dish: identical to the cold cut platter, except it's freshly made and piping hot.

You beam. He found them.

With impeccable timing, the adeptus reappears, holding a flask of water and a thick bundle of fabric in his arms. He barely spares you a glance before setting them down a few feet away and vanishing again immediately. You blink: it's a sleeping bag, along with a small pillow and an extra blanket.

Xiao is a puzzle. You know there's something he's hiding, and his initial cold reaction is admittedly concerning... but despite that, he actually seems quite willing to help you, even if he's being a bit prickly about it. He reminds you a bit of a cat, and you stifle a laugh with a bite of ham.

Thank you, Xiao.

You get about halfway through the meal before he returns again, this time with arms full of tinder. He dumps it all off to the side of the cave before squatting down and starting to build a campfire. "I hungulg the thing," he states.

Damn, he's efficient. Not only did he find your companions as you asked, but he's also anticipated your other needs and acted preemptively, AND he's had spare time to take a look at the problematic waypoint already. All feats made easier by teleportation no doubt, but impressive nonetheless. For someone who spends a lot of time by himself, he's better at taking care of someone than you expected.

"...So...?"

"...Things aren't looking good for you."

"Ah, fuck. It's broken, isn't it?"

He eyes you, and you belatedly realize it's the first time you've sworn out loud. Not very Creator-like of you. Perhaps he didn't understand that word, though, because he continues normally. "No, the thing is fine. Which means the qupfavs is you."

You pale when your mind fills in the blank, but his gaze merely shifts back to his work, completely unfazed. "If you used the thing to get here, you should be able to get back, too. I have no uepg what you did kravb."

You swallow your food. "I don't know, either." It was the exact same thing both times, wasn't it?

He sighs deeply and holds his hand out to you for the torch, taking it to light the now-built campfire. "We'll see bavvaqax. For now, eat. Then sleep." He summons his polearm and strolls toward the cave entrance. "I will be here." He speaks in a matter-of-fact tone, but it's comforting to hear, knowing how diligent he is. The vigilant yaksha truly lives up to his moniker.

It makes you all the more aware of your shortcomings.

"Hey, Xiao." The yaksha turns his head slightly in acknowledgement, but keeps his gaze fixed on the horizon as he takes his place guarding the entrance. You take it as a sign to continue. "I've been thinking. I'm... the Creator, right?" It feels weird to say out loud, especially since no one's been able to confirm it verbally to you yet. "Why can't I leave the same way as you?" Why can't I teleport anywhere in Teyvat at the drop of a hat? Why can't I levitate chunks of rocks and build myself a staircase to get down from this stupid mountain? Why can't I summon even the slightest breeze? "Why can't I do anything?"

He exhales through his nose. "Why could you?"

It's not the answer you expected. "What do you mean?"

He shifts his posture without looking back. "Why would you be able to do that if you haven't learned how?"

...Huh. That... somehow did not occur to you before. In your defense, you'd kind of assumed if you were an all-powerful being, you'd just naturally be able to do cool stuff by wanting it to happen. Apparently not. But then again, most of your assumptions so far have been wrong, so it's no surprise if what he says is true.

If anything, you think it might actually be good news. Now that you think of it, you have a vague recollection of the Traveler being instructed by Paimon, too. Maybe your situation isn't as hopeless as you thought it might be. "In that case, you can teach me, right? Then I can do it."

For a few moments, the adeptus does not respond. In fact, he gives no sign at all that he even heard what you said, merely staring off into the distance without moving. You can't see the expression on his face when he finally sighs.

"No. I can't." His words ring with such a sense of finality that you can't bring yourself to say anything else on the matter. In silence, you finish your (hot) cold cut platter and climb into your sleeping bag while he continues guarding the entrance.

Given your circumstances, you don't expect to fall asleep quickly. But you must feel safe, because it's not long before your eyelids start to feel heavy, and you begin to nod off. You were traveling the whole day, after all.

As you teeter on the edge of consciousness, you think you hear Xiao say something. But the words are distant and quiet, and you can't tell if you heard right, or if it was just wishful thinking in the first place. Or perhaps you're already asleep after all. Regardless, the words stick in the back of your mind.

"Also... I never said I wasn't happy to see you again."

Dread curdles in your stomach at the familiar scene. Your friends and loved ones are gathered before you again, but this is isn't right. This isn't real.

It's a dream, you repeat to yourself, trying to subconsciously block out what you know comes next. A dream. But acknowledging that fact doesn't make it disappear. You are helpless to escape the inevitable, no matter how much you wish it.

No. Not again. I don't want to see this again.

A light breeze ruffles your hair, as if answering your plea. You stiffen at the unusual sensation. This isn't a part of the dream you know.

But the wind brushes your cheek softly, sweeping away a lone tear. Slowly, you begin to relax. And then, one by one... the people fade. The scenery changes, and you're left standing in a field of flowers with nothing but the sound of a distant flute for company.

Ah, is your last thought before you sink deeper into the realm of unconsciousness, it's you.

[staytinyville]

Beomgyu

PLEASE REFER TO MASTERLIST TO GET FULL TAROT READING EXPERIENCE

↣ Summary: You’re the glue who keeps the boys all together. And maybe the one who fancies Beomgyu  just a bit more than the others. 

↣ Characters/Pairing: Choi Beomgyu x gn!reader

↣ Genre: fluff

↣ AU/Trope info: 6th member!au, idol!au

↣ Word Count: 1.085k

↣ Warnings: None

↣ A/N: Beomgyu is chaotic but we are here for him. I will be honest some self insert was shoved in here and idk maybe that’s not how Beomgyu acts but it is how I am. I share the same MBTI as him and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people get overwhelmed with him and tend to lash out. I get that a lot of the time and it does make me upset. But that’s just what I think. Maybe it’s not how he is and is quite content. I hope he is. 

TEMPERANCE

Balance, Moderation, Patience, Purpose

This card shows that you have balance, patience and moderation in your life. Your energy has been running free but now it is time to bring it back into you. You must get a hold on it once more.

You are the kind of person who understands what it's like to be open minded with what others have to say. And because of this now is the time to use it if you are dealing with two different sides of a story.

You are also at a point where you would need to act with a calm and even mind. Be sure you stay calm even in a time of stress. Because what you show others, they might just show back.

XVI TEMPERANCE

You could remember the first time you had ever met all the boys. They were chaotic and had their own feelings towards each other that weren’t the best. However over time you got them to loosen up and now they couldn’t live without each other.

You were their mediator–the one who made sure all their fights were resolved and there were no hard feelings. Sometimes arguments were harder to fix than others, but you always wanted them to make up. Mostly because you guys all lived together so it was best to fix your problems than let them fester in your own personal space.

While fights were few and far between, there were still those petty ones that only lasted for one conversation before they were back to poking fun at each other. In these cases, most of the time they were between Beomgyu and Yeonjun. You loved both of them but they clashed so much. You had no idea why but it probably had to do with the fact that Beomgyu was a chaotic boy and Yeonjun had thin patience.

They still loved each other though and that was all you tried to care about.

“I told you it had my name on it!” You squeezed your eyes shut at the sound of Yeonjun’s annoyed voice.

“No it didn't!” Beomgyu retorted back. “Look!”

“Beomgyu! It's right there.” Yeonjun retorted.

“How do you expect me to see it when you wrote it in the same color!?” You got up when Beomgyu shouted.

“Guys!” You told them pointedly walking into the kitchen. “Stop screaming.”

“(Y/N)—”

“But (Y/N)—”

“Stop.” You raised a finger, watching as they both began to pout. “What happened?” You asked them.

“He ate my yogurt.” Yeonjun told you.

“I did.” Beomgyu admitted. “But I didn't see his name on it.”

You held your hand out for the cup, trying to find where it was that Yeonjun had put his name. While you did find it, Beomgyu had been right to say that it was hard to see. He had used a red marker on a red label.

While you knew Beomgyu should've thought for a moment that if he didn’t buy it, it wasn’t meant for him. However there were occasions the boys would buy things and share with the others so the possibility of eating something meant for all of them was there this time it wasn’t the case.

“Yeonjun, you did write it in the same color.” You told the boy, handing him the cup. “Soobin could've eaten it.”

“You're just taking his side.” Yeonjun pouted.

“Yeonjun, don't argue with me.” You told him with a stern look. “It wasn't intentional. Beomgyu will buy you another yogurt.” You looked over at the other boy who avoided your stare.

Yeonjun watched as you waited for Beomgyu to look up at you and acknowledge your agreement. While they all knew about how you babied the boy a bit too much, they also knew you were the only one who he listened to.

You had always known how to settle arguments and how to make them all get along. You were someone who held them all together. The shoulder they needed to lean on. Especially when Beomgyu overwhelmed them.

While Soobin was the leader of all 6 of you, it was clear you were the motherly type. You always worried about them–telling them to be careful when they left the house, asking where they were going just in case something happened. You weren’t over bearing but it did bring them happiness to know that someone was at the dorm making sure they were healthy boys.

It also assured their parents.

“Fine.” Yeonjun sighed. “I'm sorry for yelling at you.” He told Beomgyu .

“I'm sorry for eating your yogurt.” The boy said back.

“Good!” You grinned. “Now hug!”

They looked at you with sneers on their faces. “Too much.” You rolled your eyes. “I want a hug though!” You held your arms out waiting for the large boys to cuddle you.

Yeonjun scoffed but wrapped his arms around your middle before kissing the top of your head. “Love you.” He told you before leaving the kitchen.

“Love you too.” You called with a smile.

When you turned around, your breath was nearly knocked out of you as Beomgyu was crouched down and rubbing his cheek into your chest. “Hi, Gyu.” You giggled, messaging his scalp.

“Can we cuddle?” He asked shyly.

“Are you okay?” You asked him, pulling his face to look at you.

“Yeah, I just feel tired.” He sighed, his cheeks squished between your hands.

You smiled softly, nodding your head. You knew what it was like to suddenly feel anxious over being scolded, especially when being yelled at. Beomgyu was a soft boy who got sad easily. So maybe that's why you paid a bit more attention to him than others. You knew his personality was a bit too much for others which led to being scolded a lot and that made him shrink in on himself.

He just needed someone with patience and luckily you had a lot of that.

“Let's go watch some dramas.” You smiled at him.

He grinned widely before skipping off to your room. You shared it with Soobin but seeing as he was currently out, Beomgyu took the time to cuddle with you in a sacred space. He grabbed your laptop and started to set it up before you made your way into bed and huddled up at the headboard.

Like a small child, Beomgyu enjoyed being the small spoon so he laid his head on your shoulder and placed a leg over your waist. For a large man he was extra cuddly but that was okay, if he wanted to be babied you would do that for him.

“I love you, (Y/N).” He spoke up, cheek squished against you.

“I love you too, Beomgyu.” You chuckled, kissing the top of his head.

“More than the others?” He grinned, looking up at you.

“Don’t ask me that.” You lightly swatted at his head.

“Sorry.” He cackled. “But seriously?” He added, going back to squishing against you.

“No, I don't love you more than the others. I love you all equally.” You admitted. “But maybe I just like babying you a bit more.” You smiled softly.

“I'm the best.” He giggled quietly.

“No, you just need someone watching you 24/7.” You laughed.

“I do not.” He gasped.

“Hush now, lay on my chest.”

Tags : @cultofdionysusnet , @sandsofire , @k-vanity

[albywritesfiction]

Alby's Notes (#9)

Hello everyone! It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it? 😅

Well, time for us to take a seat and talk, ‘cause I’ve got some news for y’all. Dunno if this is going to be good or bad news to you guys, so I’m just calling it news

1. I’m not going to be very active on Tumblr, at least for the foreseeable future.

It has honestly been rather challenging for me to juggle acads, orch, personal stuff, writing, and managing this blog all together, so for the sake of my sanity, I’ve made the tough decision to take a few steps back from posting content here.

2. I’ll be closing the ask box for a while.

Since I haven’t been able to answer asks for a month or two, I now have a backlog of asks to go through. The number of asks I have in my inbox is rather overwhelming to me, to be honest 😅 And some of them are similar to others that have been sent previously, which I feel bad about because it’s like, wasted time, y'know, like, you wouldn't have needed to ask a similar question if i had answered the first one 😓

And some similar questions I haven’t been able to answer because they’re questions that I need time (and the brainpower honestly) to answer. 😓

So until I’ve cleared out my Tumblr inbox, I’ll be closing the ask box.

3. I’ll be shifting more towards using Discord

I’ve made a Discord server while I’ve been slowly chipping away at Chapter 1 Part 3 :) Special thanks to my lil bro @system-operations for being my guinea pig as I worked on and tested out the server 🤭

So, part of the reason why it’s been difficult for me to do stuff on Tumblr is because my access to it is rather limited now due to personal stuff; it’s nothing bad, don’t worry, and it’s not because I’ve been doing anything shady or illegal (I think it’d be the shock of the century to people who know me if they ever heard that I did something like that 😅). It’s just personal stuff 😅

I also think that part of why I’ve been overwhelmed with Tumblr stuff is because of the similar asks that start to pile up the longer that I’m unable to answer them, which is why I’ve set up some forum channels in the server where people can send questions and feedback and you guys can see what questions have been asked and which ones have been answered, especially without needing to wonder if I received your questions and answered them or not.

But the main purpose of this server is to provide a lil space where you guys can hang out and maybe interact with each other and with me :3 I’ve got a few things planned for server activities:

Game Night: We would play some of the games in Discord Activities and some other online browser games like Red Flags and Cards Against Humanity

Watch Party: We would watch some animes that are available on Youtube (such as Campfire Cooking in Another World [10/10 great anime in my opinion we stan wholesomeness in this household]) and Starkid musicals (the Hatchetfield trilogy is fire y’all), and probably some other Youtube stuff

Study With Me: Just popping into a voice channel and playing some music while I study helps me quite a lot apparently, so if that works for any of you who might join the server, it’s a-okay if you wanna join in :3

But of course, participation in these activities is very much optional! It’s okay if you’d prefer to lurk, I’m a lurker myself in most of the other servers I’ve joined 😅

However, I do want to make it very clear now that this will be an 18+ server, as it will not only be for ATE but also for the other IF projects that I have planned, some of which will contain content that is not suitable for minors. So just to be sure, I’ve decided to restrict the server to those 18 and above. Please, for any underage followers that I may have, do not lie about your age if you join because I will have to remove you from the server. You have been warned.

4. Now, going back to the Tumblr asks...

So now that I’ve laid out the stuff with Discord, you might be wondering what’s gonna happen with the Tumblr asks after I’ve answered the stuff in my inbox. Well, here’s what I’m planning to do:

Step 1: Compile all Tumblr asks into a Google doc 

Step 2: Add any Discord asks into same Google doc

Step 3: Share the Google doc for public viewing

Step 4: Re-open Tumblr ask box

Step 5: Update the Google doc as I receive asks, even if I’m unable to answer the questions immediately

This way, everyone can see the asks, whether or not you’ve got Discord or Tumblr, and the search for the asks is gonna be a lot more efficient! 

So long, Tumblr search, hellooo my old buddy ctrl/cmd+f!

5. And what about the Tumblr blog in general?

It’s still gonna be here, and I’m still going to post about significant updates to ATE! It’s just gonna be quieter once I’m done answering all the asks that are currently in my ask box.

So, yeah! That’s my novella of news 😅 I’ll be sharing the link for the Discord server in the next post so the link and the stuff I’ve said about it aren’t buried in the wall of text you just read/skimmed through. 😅

Thank you all so much for all the love and support you’ve had for ATE, and I hope you all have a great day/night ahead!

[nogacheloveka-blog]

The Bad Sanses somehow ended up in the Backrooms. №5

next 6 prev 4

This is the translation of the another post from Russian to English. I understand English, but it is very difficult for me to write in English, so I asked chat GPT to help me. I have corrected some parts, but there still may be mistakes.

Wow, this is probably the longest and most productive time for me. I don't force myself to do any of this at all. The plot just comes to me, and I am filled with happiness as I embody it. But I think I will still slow down the pace and post the plot development a little less often, so as not to feel bad when I don't feel like drawing.

I'm trying to experiment with the glow of the eyes. It seems to me that it turned out very ok =)

Error got a little carried away with knitting. But it killed two birds with one stone: he no longer needs to constantly tie Cross and Dust with threads, the effect now works without his participation. Thanks to the generosity of the Destroyer, Dust now has a cozy corner of personal safety under his hood.

The Bad Guys found a sewing kit at Kitty's place, so they were able to mend their clothes a little and not look like tramps (well, more than they do now). There were also a lot of sweets and other food in the kitchen, which now fills the inventory of Horror, Cross, and Killer. They managed to find out the properties of some food:

Almond Water Restores 15 HP and sanity. *you can never have too much

Greasy Marshmallow Restores -25 HP. *sometimes there is too much *makes your skin smooth and elastic *follow the recommendations

Fortunately, the recommendations were found in the notebook with some details:

I once saw how one idiot ate 50 of them on a bet and turned into a pile of marshmallow and fat. A terrible sight. Smelled like at Willy Wonka's factory. But wow, this thing is almost like chocolate when melted. Sometimes I'm ready to kill for such a treat. Recommendations: - Melt the marshmallow. - Do not melt more than 30 at a time. - The interval between marshmallow intakes is 40 minutes. - Cook it with Almond Water. - Make sure you are safe during use - its smell attracts dangerous entities.

This food looks dangerous, but they are not in a situation to turn up their noses. And the note about chocolate excited at least half of them.

As soon as Error finished making a knitted doll for Kitty, they all left her house. As the notes said, she moved them back to the halls of IKEA. From there, they found an exit to some underground corridors resembling catacombs. The air there was humid, and condensation had formed in some places.

The local architecture resembled a labyrinth with orange wallpaper and a smelly carpet. The corridors twisted haphazardly, and there were many more doors and stairs than they expected. Some of the doors had signs. Most of them said "Service Rooms", "Storage Rooms", and they found various things in them: cleaning supplies (Dust took some of them without any explanation), mops, knives (Killer took a couple, he didn't need any explanation), rusty muskets, wet gunpowder, bundles of wires, dolls, coins of different countries and denominations, boxes of rotten canned food.

There were also "Room 402", "13", "10". These doors led to living rooms, as if from hotels and inns, but some abandoned ones, with broken and rotten furniture. Nothing interesting.

Finally, the corridors became wider, branched out, and there were rooms with several passages, communications ran along the walls, in which, judging by the sound, water was flowing somewhere. They were both warm and extremely hot.

Finally, in one of the corridors where they decided to stop, Killer found a balloon, which he carried around like something funny. Around the corner, he found another one and a bunch of scattered confetti. There was also a disturbing graffiti on the wall. But the Bad Guys were no longer surprised by anything, having traveled for about a week and a half through constantly changing space. They stopped for a break in this remarkable place.

However, those who decided to flip through the notebook, Dust and Cross, were a little scared, distracting Nightmare from his conversation with the Destroyer with a flash of negativity.

Party people Very dangerous. Do not touch the balloons, poppers, and confetti. RUN WITHOUT LOOKING BACK. Do not let them corner you, and if you see signs of their presence, pray that they don't find you. Smart creatures, constantly hacking our databases and editing texts (be careful with "=)"). Recommendations: - Correct/delete pages created/edited by Partygoers - Run if you see or hear one of them. - Inform others, especially operatives [illegible], about any observations of 'party rooms'. Prohibitions: - Follow the balloons, party sounds, and confetti. - Make tactile contact with the Partygoers

They tried to calm down by the fact that the author of the notebook clearly sometimes exaggerated by calling things "lethally dangerous " and Error said that most things in this place work on them "not as they should have ". But in the main moments, the former owner of the notes was right, wasn't he?

Despite this, the short break went quite normally, no one bothered them.

Nightmare belongs to Jokublog Killer belongs to RahafWabas Dust belongs to Ask-DustTale Horror belongs to Sour-Apple-Studios Error belongs to CrayonQueen Cross belongs to JakeiArtwork

[goth-mami-writer]

JJK one-shot below⬇️⬇️

Soooo. I don't usually post the body of my fics here, but this is one I worked on for a babe of mine. @short-honey-badger

Toji × OC (FemOC is his neighbor) "Dirty Dishes"

Mera used the key under his mat to sneak into his apartment that afternoon after she trotted up their conjoined steps. His Doordash order had been sitting since she'd ran down to the main office to grab her mail. He probably got hung up on the phone again in the car and she knew that he hated cold rice.

She let herself into his apartment, moving aside the empty boxes of takeout by the door that were now stacked into a tower where his trash can was overflowing. Toji was great at what he did, putting bounties on sorcerers and hunting them down, so it made sense that he never had time to clean. But her nose crinkled in disgust every time she was in here. 

On her own accord or not. 

She moved the take out boxes to the side and set the lukewarm rice bowl in the microwave only to find another bowl of cereal that clearly had been sitting for days due to the chunky cornflakes liquefied to the bottom. 

“Are you fucking-? Why is a bowl of cereal-” Mera spat before the smell hit her dead on as it wafted from the microwave, “Oh my GOD!!!” 

She moved the bowl of cereal and didn't care if he came back to find her in his apartment or not, this was no way to live. 

She and Toji would sometimes chat in hallways as they passed each other on the way home. He was always somewhat…civil. He did grunt and roll his eyes a lot but it was something she found friendly. But there wasn't anything else that she could call a close relationship. Besides one incident where she was locked out of her apartment in which Toji spent the entire night with a hairpin and a lockpick to help her back inside. The entire time, she balled herself up by the doorstep, hating her day already without this shit happening but Toji found sympathy and picked the lock before it looked like she might start crying. 

Everything after that night seemed to be somewhat unsaid and unspoken though Mera seemed not to mind. However, Toji picked up on it right away. There were glances and feelings shared between them, though he'd never be the first to admit it. 

She began washing some of his dirty dishes in the sink as she heated up his order of fried rice and then began clearing the trash away from his door. After she began tidying his small breakfast table so he'd at least have a space to eat his rice, she didn't notice the door opening. Toji's face sneered in defense as he crept inside, not knowing who had snuck into his apartment. He didn't think the door was broken into so he wondered who the hell knew about his key. 

He held his short spear over his head, entering the kitchen ready to strike down what he thought to be a very crafty yet unlucky intruder until he saw Mera standing nonchalant at his table. 

“Jesus!” He said after losing a breath, huffing out in relief, “Courtesy text would be nice, dickface! Coulda killed your ass!” 

“Courtesy text?” She scoffed turning around, wondering if he'd even say thank you for all the work that was indeed a courtesy, “Fucker, I've found you on my couch eating my leftovers!” 

“You offered them to me!” 

“Yeah! Like 12 hours before and you left me on read!” 

He rolled his eyes with his nose crimped in defeat before he asked if she ate his Doordash and she presented the now warm take out bowl, explaining that it was just left on his doorstep to get cold and he tossed down the short spear onto the counter top before nearly scooting her aside to begin digging in. 

He placed a hefty spoonful of fried rice in his mouth before asking,

“So ugh…what are you doing?” 

He watched as she began gathering her small cinch bag that she'd brought in, and she asked, not quite understanding what he meant, 

“Ugh… leaving?” 

“Nah- I mean-” Toji said amid a mouthful as he leaned over the counter with his elbows planted on the granite as they spoke, 

“Like what are you doing coming in here and being all nice and shit. Ya ain't my old lady?” 

“Well, I mean- you helped me get my door unlocked. I figured… why not help you out a little?” 

Toji found a curious look on his face that slowly grew into a grin that was painted maliciously across his lips. His scarred mouth curved up, snickering under his breath as he stood straight up to further the point he was about to make. 

Mera narrowed her eyes to his changed demeanor, one that seemed ready for a challenge. He leaned himself infront of the counter where she stood waiting for him to explain the shitty grin he was holding and he said lowly with a rumble in his throat, 

“Helping me out a little…would've been throwing my food in the door or setting it on the counter then dipping. You came in and did this whole song and dance in my nasty ass kitchen. So I'm just wondering….why?” 

Mera face blushed and Toji noticed with an entertained smirk beginning to grow as he knew the answer already just by the demure look on her face now, 

“What are you sweetenin me up for, Mer?”  

“I.. am..not.” Mera grumbled with her mouth tight, trying not to let him see the truth even as it slowly became written across her telling expression. 

“You're not?” Toji teased, now only an inch from her face, peering down to her from his immense height. 

“No-” 

“So-” Toji said after a swipe of his tongue across his bottom lip almost daringly, “If I kissed you on your smart-ass mouth, It’d just be another stupid Tuesday, huh?” 

Meras's heart pounded in her chest with a rhythm she swore the tenants three floors down could hear if they listened. Toji smiled widely with a deviousness, knowing she'd never admit it to his face. But hell, he didn't need a word after a little flustered blush like that. He reached in the front pocket of his sweat pants and presented something swinging in his grip. 

“Went down to the main office, by the way.” He said as he revealed a keyring with two new metal keys jingling from a metal loop, 

“Got you some extra keys so your forgetful ass doesn't get locked out at midnight again.” 

Her face changed away from the flattered redness into complete shock. She never assumed that he'd be the one to actually help her besides that favor of unlocking her door but he actually thought of her this way and it was endearing. Her smile grew a little more sweet instead of frazzled and she reached forward for the keys, 

“Thank you, I appreci-” 

Toji's hand closed around the keys, stopping her mid sentence from retrieving them and she moved her eyes to his. He evilly smiled again but this time with hidden intention. He remained completely silent as his arm moved up, holding the keys just out of her reach and stepped that one inch closer to put them chest to chest now.  

“Come on-” He purred daringly with a wink, “I know ya ain't that damn short.” 

Mera lost a breath, knowing exactly what he was trying to do and she moved, becoming fearless for a moment to match his cocky, teasing attitude that lit her aflame. She stood on her tippy toes, becoming only a breath away from his lips as her fingers reached upward but suddenly as she met his gaze, those keys were the least of her worries. 

Toji felt his smile trembling now with pride and as if he dared her with a glint of his dark gaze, Mera closed her own eyes as they met at the lips. Toji kissed her deeply, holding his free hand to her waist to pull her in with a tender roughness by the small belt loop on her hip. 

Mera eased back down to her resting height away from propping up on her toes and Toji ducked his head down to keep them joined in a kiss that seemed to be climbing. As he tasted her lips, becoming a little caught up in the way she lapped against his mouth bravely now, he tossed the house keys to the tile to free both his hands. 

He placed Mera onto the counter, still wrapped warmly in a deep, sensual kiss and she locked her ankles behind his waist. After a tender bite to her lip, both of them breathed heavily as they shared a glance, knowing they wanted more of each other. 

Toji kissed her again, moving with more intention as he cupped her jaw in his calloused hands that were rough against her skin. His tongue flicked across her lips, tempting her to give him more and softly she moaned beneath her breath and Toji grinned widely to hear her enjoy it.

They parted with heavy, chugging breaths heaving away from their mouths. Toji swallowed in a gulp, feeling the need to fix his waistband after a kiss like that, and he did so slyly. Mera fanned her red face with her hand only for a moment as she gained a breath, stepping down from being sat atop his kitchen island. He reached into the floor, properly handing over her keys, and he asked after clearing his throat, knowing she probably wanted to be nonchalant about what just happened, 

“What ugh- what are you doing later on?” 

“Like-? Tonight?” Mera asked just to be clear, and Toji remarked smartly in a scoff, 

“Yeah, dipstick. I don't mean next week?” 

She rolled her eyes, trying not to let herself laugh at his replies too much knowing it'd just feed into his ego. Her work needed her to cover a shift that night but she'd be home around the normal time. Toji nodded putting his hands into the pocket of his sweatshirt with a shrug, 

“I was askin’ cause…I dunno..I'm not doing anything later and yanno..if you-” 

He stopped mid sentence knowing that his face was warming up with every word further, not to mention he was stuttering. Mera giggled and closed the gap between them to say, hoping he wouldn't mind her finishing his thinking, 

“I don't care if we hang out. But..why don't you come up to my place? Not that I don't love yanno, week old ramen and a mountain of beer cans-” 

“I didn't exactly invite you in here, asshole. So cut me a fucking break.” He mentioned watching Mera start for the door after checking her watch with a chuckle. 

“Hey-” Toji said, hoping to stop her before she left. 

Mera turned, waiting for him to speak with her hand holding the doorknob. Toji gave a short glance to the floor, knowing these words were gonna roll off his tongue like lava but they needed to be said. He shifted his weight uncomfortably and said in a grumble, 

“Thank you…for..coming in here. Cleaning and shit.” 

Mera nodded with a low snicker, knowing that was probably the best she was going to get in terms of a sincere thank-you and she opened his door, mentioning with a wink of her own before leaving, 

‘Don't mention it. Just…thank me later I guess.” 

“Easy there.” Toji said with a wide smile, loving that she was getting a little more spunk. 

She closed the door, knowing she needed to hurry and get ready for her shift at work, but her face was still brightly lit. She would've expected the kiss before the ‘Thank You.’ In a way, she hoped maybe his apartment would stay on the messier side. It seemed to give her a good excuse to sneak in for more time alone with him. But the real thing that was giving her butterflies was thinking of what was going to happen later that night. 

[elkkiel]

33: What words make me feel the best about myself

34: What I find attractive in women

35: What I find attractive in men

36: Where I would like to live

37: One of my insecurities

39: My favorite ice cream flavor

42: The last thing I ate

44: A random fact about anything

Shatters my beloved!!!!! Hello several days later lol

ask game :3

33: What words make me feel the best about myself

oh that's a toughie; not sure how to interpret this one 😅 I enjoy sentiments related to work/actions being appreciated, or affirmations about ability and being wanted. That's genuinely the best I've got lol

34: What I find attractive in women

Thighs. Next question.

(shy girls are pretty cute :3 not in an insecurity kind of way, more so soft-spoken and kind. makes it that much sweeter when they open up and get loud/excited about something)

35: What I find attractive in men

Thighs. Next question.

(DEFINITELY emotional maturity and being secure in their masculinity. I find it's so much more pleasant to talk to men who dgaf about how they're perceived (as in, idc if liking this thing makes me "gay"/feminine/etc. I like what I like). There are less barriers and you can relate to each other better like that

36: Where I would like to live

I've answered this a few times, but if I had to pick an actual different geographic location? I've heard Amsterdam is chill. That, or somewhere in Denmark would be nice. Walkable cities are very appealing to me in general

37: One of my insecurities

Definitely being awkward in conversation, both irl and online. I have a hard time gauging how a conversation should flow, when it's polite to stop talking/move on/etc, and even just how to end a conversation without being rude. I'm someone who "scripts" and rehearses a lot of interactions to the point where it can feel like picking dialogue options with an npc lol. So it's tough when I have to do improv on the spot. (and I'm pretty sure that's the reason I can't make friends. maybe? who fuckin knows)

39: Favourite ice cream flavour

Once again arching my back and wiggling my hips for a scoop of good quality pistachio. There's also mint chip (lots of mint), real strawberry, and probably almond now that I think about it

42: The last thing I ate

Peanut butter and raspberry jam sammich. I go through food obsession phases where all I make/want to eat is that one food, and I'm right on the end of my current PBJ cycle. It's always either that or grilled cheese with ketchup lol

44: A random fact about anything

The spacing between lines in a paragraph is called leading, which is a term derived from old printing press typography. Strips of lead were placed between rows of lead type (sort of letter stamps) to create consistent spacing. A lot of typographic terms from old print methods are still used today in digital typesetting, and I think that is very neat!

[jpitha]

Just a Little Further 5

Part 1 2 3 4

Dinner was amazing, as always. It really helped to give a sense of family to the crew that we all ate together whenever we could. There was a real effort to make dinner a whole crew affair and you could tell that Fer'resi and Mitchel really go all out for dinner.

As much as they tried, I could tell everyone was worried about me. "I'm sorry I scared you." I said, after we all sat down. "If I knew that was going to happen, I wouldn't have touched the directory stone, honest!"

A few tight smiles across the table. Fer'resi was the only one who didn't look worried for me. He looked... jealous? "It really is amazing that it happened Melody." He took a bite of food. "I think you're the first human to ever touch a directory stone. I know that you never really used them, and any of your ships that have an addressing module have a K'laxi one with K'laxi addresses in them. I wonder if it happens when any human touches it..." He trailed off.

"But, what does that mean?" Omar asks. Omar works with FarReach on the laser batteries and also the printer - he boasts he can make anything with FarReaches help, it's pretty neat!

Fer'resi shrugged. "Without any more humans touching any other directory stones, we have no idea. This one is clearly special, maybe it would have happened to anyone who touched it."

I took another sip of my coffee, it was my own supply and it was divine. "But, what about what Captain Q'ari said? She said you said I shouted in an unknown language?"

Gene nodded here. "It was super weird. It was like you were chanting or something. We recorded it, but FarReach and Far'resi both agree it's nothing known."

"I even tried working back from the phonemes to see if we could find something shared." FarReach said. "But other than the fact that it's pronounceable by humans and presumably K'laxi, that's all we know so far. For all we know, you were shouting the terms and conditions that we had to agree to use to use the Warp Gates!" FarReach chuckled at his own joke.

As dinner wound down and Chef Fer'resi brought out some treats and nuts to chew on, Captain Q'ari stood. "Okay. Now that we've eaten and talked about what happened yesterday-" This was my first indication that it's been a day since we were on the Gate asteroid. "-It's time to discuss next steps. Commander Perinem, if you would?"

Fer'resi stood from the table and walked to the head. Behind him a screen appeared with the tablet one side, and a listing of symbols on the other. "As I had mentioned previously, we have never come across a table with so many addresses before. These-" He clicked a remote and 15 of them were highlighted. "-represent every single address that is known to us currently. They're all here on this one table. Literally centuries of work finding and deciphering the various tables we've come across in space and they're all right here." He shook his head and smiled wryly. He clicked again and the rest lit up. "Which means that these other 35 addresses - or I should say, probable addresses - represent some other points in space unknown to us. At this point, I can only recommend starting from the top and entering them into the addressing module and see where they go. We could be methodical about it. Enter one, explore, come back here, enter another, explore, come back here and so on."

There was a murmur from everyone at the table. "But this means that this mission suddenly got a whole lot longer." That was Ava Williams, who works in environmental systems. She makes sure we have air to breath and water to drink and that our waste is processed safely.

Fer'resi nodded. "Yes. If we were to continue on without a break, I estimate that going to all thirty five addresses would take 5 years or so."

Upset noises from the table.

"But, that doesn't mean we have to do them all at once." Captain Q'ari said. "We've gone from figuring that we'd have two or three addresses to explore at most to thirty five. We've officially moved beyond our original scope. Let me tell you all here, we are not going to be gone five years. We will continue with our original plan of two or three addresses and then home. Then, another exploration team can be sent out to try the others. There is no reason to expect that we'll have to try them all."

"Additionally," Fer'resi added. "Most of them I suspect will be empty systems. You notice that I've said that we K'laxi have found 15 addresses. Yet, other than K'lax we only have two colony planets. We have 5 other Starbases not counting the Joint Human/K'laxi Starbase Picaresque which means than 6 of the addresses known to us go to empty systems. It's entirely likely that the majority of addresses we have here also go to empty systems. We could visit quiet a few quickly if that's the case."

Kieran asks "So then, where should we go first?"

Captain Q'ari replies. "As Fer'resi mentioned, unless someone has a better plan, we were just going to go to the first address on the list and work our way dow-"

"No." I said, interrupting. "Start with W̷̮̱̿͝ï̵̠̜͛̀l̶̜̞͛̇Ð̵̼͕̾̇§̷̯̩̈́̔ ̷̰͚̅̋ð̴̧̞͐̕£̴̞̻̐͘ ̶͇͍̀̈́ß̵̤͇̉͗ê̵͍̦̑̈'̶̯̭̓̕m̸͉̖̂̒å̷͎̍̃ͅŗ̸͖̋͛å̷͇̘͋͆."

Everyone stopped and turned as one to look at me. I blushed a deep crimson red.

Mei'la was the first to recover. "Uh, what was that?"

"I don't know! I just know that's the one we should start with."

"O-Okay." Captain Q'ari said. "Can you tell us why?"

"Um..." I wracked my brain. "It's the one that... feels right."

"So wait." Gene looked at the list and then back at me. "You can read them?"

"No? Er Yes? Er I don't know?" I was starting to get a headache.

"Okay then," Fer'resi said kindly. "Which one is W̷̮̱̿͝ï̵̠̜͛̀-- er the one you said?"

"5th one down."

They all stared at the entry. "I mean, maybe because we've been told to look at that one... " Mitchel says cautiously "But it does look a little different than the others. Is the text like, bolder? More prominent?"

There were murmurs of agreement.

"Fascinating." Fer'resi said, looking at it closer. "I do believe you are correct.

Captain Q'ari shrugged. "It's as good of an option as any. Maybe even better than any. Does anyone have an objection to taking Melody's suggestion."

Nobody had an objection.

"Then it's settled. Tomorrow morning, we'll put that address into the addressing module and activate the Gate.

****

The next day, after breakfast we all gathered on the Command Deck. With there being only 12 of us, there was room, though it was tight. FarReach said that they would watch the systems so that everyone could see the gate activate.

"Lieutenant Mullen." Captain Q'ari's uniform was pressed, fresh and sharp. I think she brushed her fur until it shone too. "Has your address been entered into the addressing module?"

Hah. My Address.

"Yes Captain. The entry for W̷̮̱̿͝ï̵̠̜͛̀l̶̜̞͛̇Ð̵̼͕̾̇§̷̯̩̈́̔ ̷̰͚̅̋ð̴̧̞͐̕£̴̞̻̐͘ ̶͇͍̀̈́ß̵̤͇̉͗ê̵͍̦̑̈'̶̯̭̓̕m̸͉̖̂̒å̷͎̍̃ͅŗ̸͖̋͛å̷͇̘͋͆." has been input." Funny. The more I say it, the easier it is to say. I'm still not sure what the words mean though.

"FarReach, are we ready to depart?"

"Yes Captain. All systems are green. We can leave at your command"

"Lieutenant Mullen. Activate the Gate."

Like I did the first time we arrived, I sent the hello ping to the gate. This time, with an address entered into the module, the Gate reacted differently.

The ring out in space that was attached to the asteroid started to glow. Dim at first but with a blue almost like Cherenkov radiation it started to grow in intensity. Growing almost painfully bright, the blue increased in intensity until there was a flash and a sensation of almost like being on a dinghy in heavy seas. a feeling of up and then down and..

"The gate has responded and is active. We may traverse." I said, more calmly than I felt.

Captain Q'ari nodded. "Proceed best speed, FarReach. Traverse the gate."

As we approached, it was almost like the Gate got further from us the closer we got to it. I knew it was some kind of optical illusion and our reports about Gate traversal and our own experience said it happens, but every time it's still weird to see.

We touched the gate and...

A rumble and tinkle of debris

"Hard contact!" Gene shouts, peering at his station. "We've entered a debris field."

"It's pretty messy out here" FarReach addd. "Nothing too large. I don't think we'll be damaged so long as we go slow."

"Proceed best speed then FarReach" Captain Q'ari says, stoically. "Release point defense array to destroy any debris that gets too close."

From his station on the Command Deck, Omar confirms. "Point defense aye. Free and tracking."

"Lieutenant Mullen, any contact?"

I'm scanning the area but it appears like there's nothing. "Negative contact. Active scanning with friendly K'laxi and Human signals, no reply."

As we proceed along at a very slow pace, the amount of noise from the debris field lessens until FarReach says "We have traversed the debris field. Recommend we stop and get our bearings."

Captain Q'ari nods. "Agreed. All stop relative to Gate." There is a little feeling of movement as thrusters fire and then it dissipates. "Commander Desmen. Tell us where we are please."

Um'reli Desmen is a short K'laxi with fiery red fur. She's our navigator and is extremely skilled. She's served on many K'alxi ships and this is her first tour with a joint crew.

"Aye Captain. Scanning stars for known pulsars and magnetars, one moment."

While she works, we all busy ourselves with other tasks, though I'm pretty sure we're just really waiting for word about where we are. The Captain says we can order a beverage if we want. I request some coffee and Q'ari gets tea, but everyone else abstains.

After about a half an hour Um'reli speaks up, visibly distressed. "Captain. I think I have our location narrowed down. I apologize for the delay, I ran the numbers 3 times to make sure they were correct."

"That's all right Commander. Where are we?"

She gulps. She doesn't want to say.

"Captain. As near as I can tell, we've traversed the diameter of the Milky Way. We're about 95,000 light years from home."

My head gets light. Ninety Five Thousand Light-Years from home. If we could train a camera on Earth, the light we'd just be getting now would be from before the last Ice Age. The first ever recorded houses would be busily being built.

Captain Q'ari stares at her, mouth open slightly. "Commander, are you sure?"

She nods. "Yes Captain. Within my ability to be able to measure, and confirmed with sighting of 4 known pulsars and 2 magnetars for triangulation. We're on the other side of the Milky Way."

She blinks "FarReach. Can we link home?"

A pause.

A longer pause.

"Captain Q'ari, I'm not sure. I know the coordinates of The Joint Human/K'laxi Starbase Picaresque but I don't know if we have the power to make a link that deep. It's never been attempted. I'm going to conservatively say no, that's too far to link. If we get into a bind or it's an emergency, I'd be willing to try it, but for now... I think we're stuck traveling the Gates."

Just then, my station lights up. "Contact. We're being pinged." I say, shakily.

Part 6

[burningfieldof-clover]

quick song inspired echo x reader blurb

HECKIN FLUFFY LOVE FOR OUR PRECIOUS BOY

🎧 little do you know - alex and sierra 🎧

This was probably the longest hyperspace jump the Marauder has ever made. While light speed travel was typically smooth, you found it a little difficult to actually sleep. Your shift was coming up soon. Echo's was before you. If you both had already completed your shifts, you'd both be curled up and sleeping soundly.

You and Echo always fell asleep facing each other holding hands between you, foreheads pressed together. You both shared your thoughts and feelings, dreams, passions.

Why didn't you just join him on his shift? What a long day it was. Common sense was not a gift at this time. Swinging your legs over the side of the bunk and being careful not to hit the one above you, your feet touched the ground and started to lead you to the cockpit.

Soft footfalls made a slight sound as you walked. You readjusted Echo's shirt that covered your torso. He really loved the way it looked on you, covered and accentuated your curves. His blacks were the same equivalent to of a boyfriend's hoodie.

"Hey Echo," you spoke up as you entered the room so you didn't startle him. He spun the chair around to meet your eyes with a smile. You leaned down and pressed a kiss to his forehead before sitting in the copilot's chair. The two of you looked out at the view, the rushing stars and blues of the stretched out space.

"Couldn't sleep?" Echo asked.

You shook your head. "It's just not the same without you there."

Echo audibly smirked. "You're insatiable."

It was your turn to chuckle. You pulled a ration bar out from a hiding place under the control panel. You broke it in half and passed one half to Echo. "You keep me warm. I feel safe."

As he bit into the bar he nodded. He agreed.

You leaned back and planted your feet on the control panel causing your body to nearly bend in half, your knees almost brought to your chin. In silence, you both ate and continued to watch out the window.

Echo loved the way your eyes glittered and reflected the view. You had a childlike wonder when gazing upon the magics of the universe. He loved you so much.

It was quiet for minutes. You tilted your head to look at him. He was cozied into the chair the best he could. "Hey Echo?" He looked over at your command. "Do you think we'll stay like this forever?"

"However long forever is, I'll be with you, no matter where we are or what we do."

You smiled as your gaze fell downward. Forever for Echo wasn't as long as it was for you.

"What if we ran away?" you asked him.

The confident look he was displaying seconds ago turned to confusion. What were you implying? "Cyar'ika?"

You chuckled uneasily. "I want to explore the galaxy with you. I want to visit all the places you have been and I want to see the skies you've witnessed. I want to learn your history."

With a longing look, he took his turn to glance downward. "I've thought about it."

You twisted your body to sit on your knees sideways, facing him without turning the chair. Your hands were placed on the panel between the both of you. "What? Like, really really?"

Echo nodded. "I imagine us getting our own shuttle. Something compact enough to stay under radars. The spare room isn't filled with weapons and armor." He looked up at the stars again, raising his arms to gesture to the unknown. "I have so much to show you. I want our hearts to be filled with accomplishments."

"Oh, Echo," you muttered out with a sigh. You leaned back to sit on your feet. "How long is forever?"

He looked over at you again. He spun the chair ninety degrees to look at you full on. "Forever is a long time."

"But, how long?"

You watched the emotions cycle on his face. He was putting a lot of thought into this. When he found his answer, he locked eyes with yours. "Until the sun dies. I'll love you until the sun dies, and that will be our forever."

The small phrase made tears form in your eyes. The beauty of the man before you was ethereal. Infinite. "There are thousands of suns, Echo," you whispered.

"Then we will chase every sunset, we'll follow each star until every sun in this universe has faded out. All of eternity, and then some."

You stood up on the chair, used the center panel as a step, and sat yourself on Echo's lap, straddling his legs. You pressed a tender kiss to his lips, and his hand trailed up your back to grasp your neck as he put passion into your connection. The kissing was calm, heavy, sensual and intimate. Your hands caressed his face.

Echo pressed his forehead against yours. This was a constant sign of connection in your relationship. You closed your eyes and performed the same action, but you occasionally pressed a quick and soft kiss to his mouth. Your hands landed on both sides of his head, holding him where his ears hid beneath his cybernetics. His hand fell to your hip.

You started to feel the peace that his presence always granted you. Wordlessly you both decided to share your shifts watching over the ship and it's travels as it rushed through space.

Echo's hand started to move up and down your ribs on your side. You took this chance to wrap your arms around his neck and embrace him tightly against you.

"Until the sun dies," you whispered.

"Until the sun dies," he repeated.

So lay your head on me 'Cause little do you know I I love you 'til the sun dies

[apamates]

Realm of the elderlings ask meme thing

Thanks for tagging me @khutsydoh !! I love thinking about my favorite wet dog of a man

Favourite Rote book: Fool's Errand

Why: I'm a romantic at heart, ngl. The domestic bliss, walks on the beach, late night talks sipping brandy by the fireplace, the Fool reading everything Fitz had written (!!!!! I can't think too much about that one without wanting to explode), Fitz getting every surface of his house lovingly carved by the Fool... Just the truly incredible way Fitz described that bubble of happiness and feeling whole (even if he was still forged!!!) just because the Fool was there with him and Nighteyes. I love it when a character is the most repressed being ever and the love still bursts through because it's just that strong.

After every awful thing that happened in Ass Quest, I definitely think Fitz deserved a time away from the Farseers to rest and find himself outside of all the roles he had to perform for the crown. Though, 15 years in nearly complete isolation except for Hap and Starling are a strech, he really was running away from life like the Fool said. Him coming back to Buckkeep and facing all the people from his childhood as an adult felt so amazing to read. I personally feel a lot for Fitz and his complicated relationships with his family. For him to meet Chade honestly and make him see how much he hurt him was !!!! Him hating Dutiful at first just bc he saw so much of himself as a kid in him and tbf Dutiful is a tangible reminder of all the trauma from his teenager years, so Fitz having to process all that was exquisite too.

Funniest mission ever to have to find a teenager that's unknowingly horny for a cat, but the Fool and Fitz can turn it into a secret identity rom com and I ate it up!!! Happiest book of the trilogy for me and it's because Fitz was happy to be near the Fool.

Top three favourite characters: Beloved in all their facets, Patience, Ronica

Top three least favourite characters: Regal, the Satrap, Civil

Favourite ship of the floating kind: Ophelia bc she's an agent of chaos

Top 3 ships of the people kind: Fitzloved, Althea and Jek (Robin Hobb really missed so much potential), Patience and Lacey

Would you rather be witted or skilled: Skilled

If you were witted, what animal would you bond with: Probably my cat bc we already spend nearly every hour of the day together.

Would you rather live in the Outislands, the Mountain Kingdom, the Six duchies, Bingtown, the Rain wilds, Kelsingra, Jamailia, the Pirate isles or Mercenia/Fool's homeland?: I haven't read the Fitz and The Fool trilogy so idk if I'd like Kelsingra but the Six Duchies seem like the better option just because I hate stuffy society and the cold, which rules out all others.

How were you introduced to the books: I love Chihayafuru and a wonderful artist I followed for that fandom posts about ROTE. I got the sense I would love to suffer about it and asked about the right order to read the books, thank you @leafykat !!!

Share a quote you love:

As I entered to set the pack on my table, the wolf was sprawled before the fire drying his damp fur and the Fool was stepping around him to set a kettle on the hook. I blinked my eyes, and for an instant I was back in the Fool’s hut in the Mountains, healing from my old injury while he stood between the world and me that I might rest. Then as now he created reality around himself, bringing order and peace to a small island of warm firelight and the simple smell of hearth bread cooking. He swung his pale eyes to meet mine, the gold of them mirroring the firelight. Light ran up his cheekbones and dwindled as it merged with his hair. I gave my head a small shake. “In the space of a sundown, you show me the wide world from a horse’s back, and the soul of the world within my own walls.” “Oh, my friend,” he said quietly. No more than that needed to be said. We are whole. - Fool's Errand

Sometimes a family is just two guys and their matchmaker wolf y'know

Tagging: @yevrosima-the-third @mistninja @leafykat

[thorraborinn]

I know you've written about the Gullveig/Freyja theory but I keep seeing the equation of Angrboða with the witch whose heart Loki ate according to Voluspa hin Skama and both of them being equated with Gullveig. I want to know where this idea comes from. I mostly see it on FB in the Norse Gods Discussion Group and a couple Lokean groups {although, not as much anymore}. I honestly think this is just too much of a leap in logic. I know Genevieve Gornichec put Angrboða as Gullveig in her book, but I'm not sure if she equated them with the heart eating thing. I didn't read it.

I'm asking because I've been looking for good fiction about Norse mythology but keep running into the idea that Loki is an abusive husband but also that killed his mistress and ate her heart, which kinda doesn't make sense to me because why wouldn't he have just slept with her if he wanted more children or whatever.

I'm going to stick to Greek or Egyptian mythology based fiction like ENNEAD for now, whilst looking for good Norse ones.

The first author that I know of to describe Gullveig/Heiðr, Angrboða, and the heart into a single figure is the 19th century Swedish author Viktor Rydberg (he also included Aurboða and Hyrrokkin in this complex). Rydberg was convinced that there was a single original epic narrative that was shared by all the Germanic-speaking peoples, and that myths, legends, and folklore of Germanic Europe was made up of the decayed, corrupted fragments of it. He also believed that he knew how to put it back together, sometimes even borrowing from non-Germanic narratives.

In order to make that make sense, a lot of his work is very preoccupied with merging different figures together, because he can't really allow any loose ends. His work is also characterized by a fairly strict polarity between the gods (unambiguously good) and their enemies (unambiguously bad) which, to be fair, was not uncommon among scholars in his day. He had some things to say that were important for the 19th century, but his work should not be taken seriously today.

He does still have a small but very prolific following among modern heathens including the authors of the so-called "Asatru Edda" and whoever runs www.germanicmythology.com.

I'm not sure if more recent Lokean/Rökkratrú theorizing about Gullveig/Heiðr and Angrboða is related to Viktor Rydberg or not. I could imagine that the sort of Þursatrú/Nordic Satanism types might have some things in common with the Rydberg-inspired heathens, taking the same black-and-white, hardline good-vs-evil view, but siding with the opposing team, and being favorable toward the Gullveig/Angrboða/Aurboða/Hyrrokkin complex; and then this could filter into other Lokean or Rökkatrú spaces. To me, the burnt heart seems to point to Rydberg. I don't think that Völuspá in skamma gives an impression that the heart that Loki eats belongs to Angrboða. Rydberg only came to that conclusion by inserting Völuspá into the context of Völuspá in skamma, so that Angrboða is mentioned as the mother of Fenrir, then is burnt (as Gullveig), then the burnt heart is eaten before she's resurrected. I find this pretty unintuitive, and unlikely to be thought of twice independently of each other, but I could be wrong.

On the other hand, sometimes ideas just go into circulation without anyone knowing where they come from, not thinking to question it. It's possibly that Rydberg was the ultimate origin of this, but that nobody spreading the idea knows it.

There are also a lot of heathens who worship Angrboða, but since she's only mentioned by name once in all of Norse mythology (twice if you count Snorri, but it seems like he's working from Völuspá in skamma, so it's probably just the first reference again), it seems natural to look for traces of her elsewhere. Merging her with other figures like Gullveig/Heiðr might be a way of adapting other lore so that their goddess has more written about her.

As an aside, if a figure from Völuspá is to be identified with Angrboða, I would expect it to be the unnamed in aldna í Járnviði, whose children are "Fenrir's kind."

I'm not really very familiar with Lokean groups or even really Facebook heathenry in general anymore, so it's very possible I'm missing some things. I don't really know anything about Norse mythology-inspired fiction.