#we had a guy come over and he was basically like yeah the wiring is just fucked and it's not good but im not gonna fix it so

[miraclemaya]

not in terms of speed because duh core country but man whoever wired this house's internet fucked up so badly because in terms of consistency my uncle's home in rural northern indian had wifi that had issues once a month this fucking house the wifi breaks down like every week and you have to restart the router like six times for it to be fixed it's insane

[undead-cypress]

Some more shitposts and Jpn new game + notes

I THINK (because it's not like I have a script nor am I particularly observant) this miiiiight be the first instance of a personal pronoun? 自分 is a pretty impersonal one though, which makes sense in this context because this is the scene announcing Will's entry into the tournament. The dialogue choices here are, in response to (paraphrased because I don't remember it exactly) "Entry to the tournament? With this runt?"

> It's me who's entering

> not a runt

> don't answer a question with another question

I picked "not a runt" because it is endlessly amusing to me how obviously Will was supposed to be even younger. We're not a baby :((( not born three weeks ago :((((

(please ignore how, in my blazed out state, took me several minutes to try to type in "Jingles" - long story - on the PS4 while still forgetting to add the " to シ so now I'm stuck with "Shingles" for a mc name. Oops. The Japanese PS4 keyboard mapping is NUTS. You know how they put the English keys in alphabetical order?? When you're wired to use QWERTY?? It's kinda like that. It's hard when you're high.)

In other pronoun stuff, all the street vendors (not shop keepers though) refer to the MC as お兄さん, even though they're all universally WAY older. It's more of an informal way to show deference to a potential customer, a rank thing rather than an age or family thing.

Brigitta's pronouns for her dog are basically it/it's 😂. Mostly because she refuses to give it a name, so she refers to the dog as コレ, コイツ, etc

I think it's funny this is Strohl's default mode. I never noticed until now, when one of the ranked events had him going up to the landlord guy like this and for a second I wondered if we're supposed to interpret it as "we saw you across the street and we hate your vibes". But nah that's just his normal. Nobody else's idle pose has clenched fists, this is excellent. I've said it before but his line deliveries are a bit more aggro/seething in Japanese and maybe that's why I'm noticing.

Also, Rangief calls him Leon-bocchama. While "bocchama" translates to "young lord" it's pretty rare and embarrassing to call anyone over the age of eh.... 14 that. It does make the sub theme of Strohl's ranked episodes of coming to age as an adult come through a bit more when Rangief drops it at the end. Also it's funny. The English version places more emphasis on worthiness and responsibility rather than the growing up aspect, which I think is fine tbh because that IS the main thing. Age hierarchies matter less in the anglosphere and it would just be kind of baffling without explanation on why East Asia is obsessed with age hierarchies. And just hierarchies in general.

(it's Confucius's "trickle down ethics"'s fault)

Oh yeah the "my kind of strange" line everyone keeps screenshotting is less interesting in Japanese, it was something like "we'll get along well".

Fabienne is much more forceful sounding in Japanese and her tone was pretty scary at times. In English she comes off as more tired, but in Japanese it sounds much more like she's kind, yes, but she will beat you down with a stick with no hesitation if she must.

Bardon doesn't have an equivalent accent in Japanese and I'm not immediately picking up anything special about the way he talks. Aww. He does still sound very much like a hapless goober though.

Gloddel is even hammier, if that was possible. My god, this is what every middle schooler going through anime phase wishes they sound like.

Neuras has an accent though! He's very much still a wacky scamp.

I kept joking that Hulkenberg is horse coded so my friend made her a horse in miitopia. Then the Mind Horse (draw a horse without using references) challenge started trending again on Bluesky, and people wanted to see my mind horse. Unfortunately my mind horse is just a regular lookin horse and not very funny, so I drew Hulkenhorse instead

You're welcome?

[mingis-orangejuice]

Asking the L&Ds boys "What are we?" Part 3: Rafayel

Summary: MC and her boy have been in a sort of situation-ship but MC wants to know why they haven't officially called her their girlfriend

a/n: This ended up being much longer than I thought so I'm making it into 4 parts (one for each boy) Here's Rafayel's part. I'm still writing Sylus' part, so it might take a little longer to come out

Genres/Warnings: angst, fluff, kinda slow burn, a little suggestive

Word count: 1114

Other parts: 1, 2, 4

Under the dazzling lights of an enormous banquet hall, you stand alone awkwardly looking at your phone. It was another one of Rafayel’s art shows. While you love to support him and his art, after going to about 4 different events in one week it gets old. Thomas was really running Rafayel rampant these past few weeks to get him to sell as much as possible before he goes off on one of his random solo trips. And even tho Rafayel hates these types of events he knew it would be good for his image and his wallet (not that he needs it) 

Why did Rafayel have to leave you by yourself? You hated going to big fancy events the only plus side of coming to these was getting to spend time with your boyfriend… wait was he your boyfriend? You guys never actually had that conversation but he gets pretty boyfriend-y when you guys are alone he calls you every night before bed to tell you goodnight, takes you on expensive overnight trips and gets all pouty if you don’t stay the night, but he also still calls you Miss bodyguard but sometimes calls you his muse. What does that even mean? Was he just playing with you or was there something more? 

You were thinking so hard about this that your facial expression looked pretty intense. You didn't even notice that most people at the event were actively avoiding you since you looked like you were ready to explode.

“Hey babe,” a voice from behind you snapped you out of your deep thought. Your expression changed to one of confusion and disgust at the random man who felt that it was ok to call you babe “Are you here alone? I can show you around. I know everything about these art pieces.”

You looked at him, now with a blank expression “Really?” you questioned sarcasm heavily coating your voice. Where is Rafayel? Why is he taking so long to come back? Thomas said he’d only be gone for a few minutes, but it's been over half an hour and now some creep is trying to talk to you.

“Yeah, I'm close personal friends with the artist, I’m actually his inspiration for most of his work, I’m basically an artist too he should be giving me half the profits from these since I’m such an integral part of his work, but I let him keep all of it since we’re such good friends” He steps closer to you as he spouts his nonsense. You, looking rightfully annoyed with him step back but this guy doesn’t get the hint and keeps stepping closer “What d’ you say, babe? Wanna spend the rest of the night with a real artist?  He continues to advance towards you while you step back even further, in your mission to get away from this creep you didn't notice one of the wires running along the floor that connected to one of the lights illuminating an art piece. You tripped backwards. Luckily a firm pair of arms was there to catch you before you hit the floor.

You look up to see who your saviour is. And to your surprise, it was none other than Rafayel. “For a bodyguard, you’re very clumsy” he chucked while steadying you.

“It’s not my fault,” you say preparing to defend yourself.

“I know, it was his” Rafayel points to the creep that had been pursuing you. “What do you think you’re doing pestering MY muse? She clearly doesn't like you can’t you take a hint or is that head of yours just full of fish tank pebbles”

“Just who do you think you are, if you hadn’t come in and ruined everything she woulda gone home with me” The creep angrily stepped towards you and Rafayel. He looks towards you trying to grab your wrist “Babe tell this guy to fuck off so we can get back to our conversation alright.”

Rafayel quickly swats his hand away “Why would she go home with a loser who pretends to be an artist just to get in her pants, when she can have this real artist who gets to be in her pants every night?” Rafayel says with a shit-eating grin. 

“Raf!” You lightly slap his chest a little amused and a bit embarrassed that he would say something like that out loud.

“Yeah, whatever she’s ugly anyway” The creep tries to leave, but Rafayel signals to some of the staff to grab that guy and remove him from the event. As the staff are holding the creep by the arms Rafayel brings his face close to his. “You’re lucky I’m only having them throw you out of the venue for talking about my muse like that.”

Later once the event was over, you and Rafayel were sitting in his living room, he was sketching some new ideas for paintings, and you were absent mindlessly playing on your phone, the questions from earlier still buzzing through your head. While lost in thought Rafayel lays his head on your shoulder. This makes your heart skip a beat and breaks you out of your trance.

“What are we ?” you suddenly ask slightly turning your head to where Rafalye was leaning.

“What?” he lifts his head off your shoulder to look at you confused.

You took a deep breath before starting, scared of confrontation, but you just had to know “When we were at your art show you kept calling me your muse, and apart from that you also act like my boyfriend most days, but you’ve never said that you were and you’ve also never called me your girlfriend. So I’ll ask again, what are we?”

“What, I thought it was obvious?” he said with a little smile. He takes both your hands into his and looks into your eyes

“Well, it's not obvious to me, so?” you wanted to look away from his gaze but you were afraid if you did you wouldn’t have the courage to look back at him again.

“You’re my muse,” he said excitedly, smile growing even bigger.

“I knew it, that's all I am to you just some inspiration for your art ” You sigh and get up to leave but he holds tighter to your hands

Is that what you think a muse is ?” He laughed softly. “To me a muse not only inspires my art but is my art, everything I do is for my muse. My muse consumes my every waking thought, I need her to be around me at all times to even function properly. You’re more than just a girlfriend to me, you’re my most precious muse.”

[theanxiousghostartist]

TMAGP 32 Spoilers!

Reactions and theories

(Sorry, this is a day late, y'all. I got busy and couldn't listen last night 😭)

Reactions:

Alice, what are you doing? Are you looking to stop Freddie? ...are you looking for Colin?

All alone? Where's Celia?

Gwen, you don't sound like the boss 😭

Aww, she's looking for Sam.

Yeah, I kinda expected that.

I agree with Alice here, Trevor seemed useless 😭

Gwen does have a point though.

Noriss!!!

For my notes lol: Kyla Barber from Liverpool - environmental health officer (the corruption perhaps?); emergency contact - Violet Weaver; Doctors - (physical) Dr. Mika Volkova; (mental) Dr. Allen Cielo, Jozef Block (ooo, maybe Spiral then)

Alchemy????!!!!

No birds??? Canaries???

Notes again: Mann Island Developments

Ok, so she was marked. "Home" was capitalized.

This reminds me of the tree guy from s1

So she became the land??

The statuc as she gets angrier is such a cool detail!

Ok, so the land took her and Became her, using her as its vessel?

Celia!!!!

The plan seems pretty soild, but I'm suspicious of Celia's intentions with Sam.

A hand??? Colin??????????

Celia you saw teeth in your keyboard????

Is Freddie having trouble "digesting" Colin??

Gwen, babes, you're going to need help 😭

What email did you find Gwen???

Luke!!!

He's abroad?

Yeah! Let out your feelings!! Go Alice!!

Why do I feel like something bad has happened to Luke????

Theories:

The casement this episode reminded me of the guy from S1 who had killed his wife and turned into a tree that later connected to Newton's experiments with his dog. In this casement, Kyla seemed to have taken over (?) by the land and used as its vessel. This also reminds me of the Custodian of the Hilltop Centre, who seemed to have Become Hilltop Road itself. Based on this casement, I'm wondering if this is what was starting to happen with Colin. Freddie was trying to use him as its vessel, and when he resisted, it ate him. Gwen saw a hand pop in and out of her PC screen and Celia found teeth in her keyboard, this leads me to believe that Freddie is having trouble "digesting" Colin, which would also be the reason Gwen and Alice found his hand in the server with wires coming out of it. Matter cannot be created (unless Freddie has access to quantum physics and extremely fast/high powered energy/particles), so Freddie is struggling to reinvent his mass (aka the particles it stripped from him when it ate him). I think that this will go on for a while until we hear his voice in the 'puter, when everything will be finalized. Then, is when Freddie will start trying to create its body. However, I think it will need more victims and will go after whoever it assigned itself to (who will probably be the new IT person, whether the Team likes it or not).

I'm having trouble hearing the Freddie buzzes this season, but according to the comments, when Celia talked about Sam "leaving," it buzzed. This is basically confirming to me that she pushed him in.

Also, IDK why, but I feel like something really bad happened to Luke. He's traveling abroad, which could mean Vampyres or Werewolves as we saw in TMA. It would be very cruel to have Alice's only outside (unaffected) connection dead and force her into the horror completely (like S2 Jon). I know there are also some theories that Alice will be the next to die (mirroring Tim), but I think that she will be one of the last to do so. Wouldn't it be more cruel to have her watch everyone she cares about die or leave or betray her so she can't get an escape from the horrors?

Well, what about Teddy? If my theories are correct, he is either Becoming, working for Starkwell, or both. So, not really much of an escape. He IS the horrors.

Anyway, really good episode. I absolutely loved the casement. The writing was absolutely beautiful!

See y'all next week (hopefully on time too lol)!

[narrans]

My Borrowed Son | 25 | Where Were You...

Chapter Twenty-Five | Where Were You…

Kit walked briskly through the walls, heart refusing to calm as it thundered against her ribs. Her thoughts dwelled on everything that had just happened. She was completely consumed with nothing else and relied completely on muscle memory as she traversed the beams leading back home.

What was that all about?

That kid thinks he’s a human! That Borrower kid thinks he’s a human.

He called out for her as if she was his mom.

What’s his deal?

That guy Kers was right.

This is insane.

That kid is a pet, and he doesn’t even know it. There’s no way that human woman treats him like her actual son.

Humans don’t see Borrowers as anything other than pets!

“Where were you?”

Kit stopped dead in her tracks and realized she was just outside of her home, and her brother Finnick was waiting outside for her. He was casually leaned up against the front entrance. He didn’t even try to hide the fact he was waiting for her.

Kit huffed and tried pushing past her brother, but he easily stepped in front of her and blocked the doorway.

“You went, didn’t you?” asked Finnick. The eldest Borrower brother suspected his sister would do something foolish, but he was too late to catch her or stop her from doing anything. He had tailed Kers to make sure he wasn’t going immediately to the human woman and doubled back once he was done. There was just this looming, instinctual feeling that Finnick couldn’t shake.

When he talked to his parents, they said she hadn’t come down for dinner, but she had responded when they asked if she was there.

This was hours ago.

He went to her room, hoping beyond hope that Kit didn’t do something ridiculous, and knocked on her door. The lack of response said it all. The eldest brother ducked outside and saw her window wide open and her belay thread hanging there in a challenging taunt.

With only one idea of where she went after all of these hours, Finnick knew there was nothing to be done except to wait and see what happened. There was no way he could get there in time, if he could even find out where the Borrower kid was staying down below in the human world and then find his sister on top of that.

Kit had this bad habit of doing what she thought was right regardless of the consequences, and now was one of those times.

Finnick could only hope that she was successful.

Sadly, seeing his sister storming up in a daze in absent minded frustration, Finnick knew she had failed.

This led them to their moment now as he blocked her way into their home.

“Well?” he prompted. His sister clenched her jaw and jerked her head away.

“Well what? Good for you! You caught me. Yeah, I went. Happy?” she grumbled under her breath. “Going to go tell mom and dad? Wake up the whole house so we can start moving?”

Finnick sighed and shook his head.

“No. I’ll save that privilege for you,” replied Finnick. “And the fact you don’t have him here with you means that Kers guy was telling the truth.”

“Yeah, so why don’t you rub it in my face more?” growled Kit as she tried to push past her brother. “Now, move!”

“Not before you tell me what happened. What was he like? Did he say anything?” asked Finnick. Kit folded her arms indignantly. She was shaking, though her brother couldn’t identify the sole reason as to why. Fear? Nerves? Frustration? Anger?

It didn’t matter because she decided to answer his question.

“He doesn’t know what he is, Fin. He thinks he’s human. You should’ve heard him crying out for his mom – that human. It was the weirdest thing I’ve ever see. He was living in some kind of weird doll house with wires and water all hooked up to it. It basically looked like a small human house with screens and tech all over the place. It was so weird.”

Finnick listened to his sister’s words and considered them carefully. It sounded impossible for a Borrower to slip so easily into living like a human; that is, if they lived like a Borrower at all.

Kers had said something about thinking this kid had spent most of his life living with this human. Did the human capture Parker’s parents? Did she take him away from them? Or was this actually a compassionate human taking care of an orphaned Borrower child?

Finnick sighed and stepped to the side, allowing his sister inside.

“Let’s just hope nothing comes of it. You need to tell mom and dad sometime tomorrow, and you and I will be going out first thing to make sure he doesn’t help the human tear down the house to try and find us,” said Finnick. “And if you don’t fess up, I’ll tell them in the worst way possible.”

“Goodie two shoes,” grumbled Kit under her breath as she pushed past Finnick.

The eldest Borrower child knew the family was in quite the precarious situation, but fretting in the middle of the night wasn’t going to solve the issue and they could only prepare for a reaction if anything came of it.

Who knew?

Maybe this Parker kid would think all of it was a bad dream and brush off seeing his sister.

~~~~~^*^*^*^*^~~~~~

Continue

Previous

Beginning

[forgottenfinn]

hii so i’m crazy so here’s will wood songs as taz characters cause i have basically only listened to will wood for the past two months and i can make anything whatever i want forever

also. i am a taako guy at my core so i can relate anything to him so sorry it’s taako all the way down

its like. a lot of taako and lucretia.

ww is just so taako coded idk what you want

this is so nothing

________________

tomcat disposables:

the twins -

the whole food imagery and the hope for peace and stability

“One night one flung light through this place

So I run for cover, over, under, left the rind out on the plate

Little heart racing and praying, "Something, keep me safe"

I think it saw my face

Okay, one hungry day”

being about the light of creation / the hunger during the stolen century

“i’ll make it through again, i have before, come on now, what’s one more?”

which is lup dying and being used to it after so many years dying

“Just like I'd always imagined it

More than I could eat

My dreams were finally reality

My struggles had a happy ending

They must want to be friends

My stomach starts to turn

With thirst, why does it hurt?

My just dessert is served, dig in”

taako realizing that lucretia was behind it all, the place where he found a home was lying to him. also idk something glamour springs

also lup dying just as she was about to successfully secure her relic

“I held on so tight

For so long, it's just not right

Let a sigh out as I close my eyes

Was that all there was to this?

What's for the best?”

lup dying after they Finally got to stay in a world, also her skeleton being described as just resting against the wall like it was relaxed

________________

becoming the lastnames:

i can and will make becoming the last names about whoever the fuck i want, however,

taako (& kravitz) -

“I'm not sure yet myself, but I learned from a good father

Yeah, I mean, sure, they messed me up, but I think that's just the gig”

being about davenport

“And marriage always scared me, but I'd like to have a last love

And love can last a pretty good long while, yeah, I've seen it around”

duh, barry and lup OBVIOUSLY

something something taako seeing lup fall in love after everything they went through together and that’s great but him never seeing that for himself

“But what do I know 'bout forever when so far I've been so fleeting?”

everyone was just talking dust, etc etc

“Babe, my frontal lobe's done growing, this might just be how I'm wired

But now we're kissing before brushing, smile with our whole faces

If you want a hyphen last name, I guess I don't mind the cadence”

it’s just. hold my hand. trust.

“Cause I've made more mistakes than simple empty moments

Whoa-oh, each one as out of character as you know I tend to be”

you’re gonna look me in the eyes and say that is not a taako thing. come on.

“If we grow old together, will you talk to my headstone?

That is, assuming that I die first (which is fair) and assuming I don't leave”

kravitz already being dead and taako having a habit of running away

________________

cicada days:

taako and lucretia -

“She said, "It just feels inhumane to lose this much"

"'Cause when you leave you know you takе more than your love"

lucretia losing her family, also her making taako forget lup

“Let all my red flags fade to white, yeah, I give up

Don't let me leave, I'll only take more than I gave

Okay, I'll pack my stuff

Here at the end of days, my god, what have I done?

Christ, now it feels damn inhumane to get all I've dreamed of”

lucretia after the day of story and song, feeling like none of them care about her anymore because of what she did. but ultimately, the world was safe, her family was safe, even tho the way she wanted to go about it was wrong and would have killed them all, and her having to come to terms with what she did to everyone, taako and davenport especially

taako after glamour springs, seeing the people he thought he killed after achieving his dream of being famous. something something sazed letting taako believe it was his fault

________________

euthanasia:

lucretia -

i actually think about this a lot LMAO

“I was right there

While you fought tooth and nail

Gasping in the gas mask thrashing till you disappeared

Say you're not scared, that you know it's cause I cared and

Say you know I love you, and that hope was just not there”

magnus walking in while she’s feeding the story to the void fish, her saying she loves all of them, and she’s gonna fix everything

“Over the rainbow, can I stop by and say hello and

Sorry I would take it back if I could but I know

To love one from too far to call

Is not to love at all, to whom is it I talk?”

her visiting them in their respective areas, just to make sure they were okay

________________

that’s enough, let get you home:

barry bluejeans -

“Haunt my bedroom at night and say "Let's get you home"

liches <3

“They say "Grow up, be a man, 'cause until then

You're nothing but a short-haired girl"

sorry trans barry will always be real to me

“So come on, William, grow up, be a man

'Cause until then they're gonna treat you

Like you're just a little girl

But come and Braille-palm-read, hold my hands and you'll see that

It's me who cries mercy while your fingers curl

And, oh, are you at all like me?

Do you know what I mean?

Or am I too close to see?

Someone, anyone?”

DO YOU GET IT.

________________

um, it’s kind of a lot:

taako -

“But I never been afraid of no one breaking my heart

It's not like I'm 'bout to fall and cut my throat on the shards”

taako not really. seeing falling in love as an option for him

“Hold me like a tourniquet, and I'll you, like an iron maiden

I've grown used to fear

But no, not to you yet, my dear”

something about kravitz being so just. sweet and endearing and that just scaring the shit out of taako. kravitz will hold him gently and help him, he’ll hold kravtiz like he will leave him

taako is always very much the quote of, everything i let go of has claw marks on it

“Oh, I love you so much it scares me half to death

I'm not used to this

How did it happen, baby?”

my taakitz :(

“And I'm afraid you'll notice all my flaws

I'm afraid you already have, obviously

And I'm afraid I'll come on too strong

Hold you too tight and scare you too”

post wonderland.

“I'll twist my words: a clever turn of phrase

Sorry, darling, please excuse my

Constant need to self-aggrandize

Coddling my narcissism

M.A.D. come ride my A-bomb

While I beg you to say I'm okay

So here's one last lyric to sum up these

Thoughts I struggled to come up with

To make me sound deep and smart and

Then I promise I'll shut up

Wait, let me think

Hold on, I got this

Anything but "I'm in love with you"

ARE WE KIDDING.

________________

half decade hangover:

taako and lucretia -

“Wonder how I didn't die

This is not my life. I'm no survivor, I only happened to survive”

taako post glamour springs after he got some reason didn’t test the food first

lucretia being alone after she erases their memories, technically alive but. why

“Cause I was drunk when I made my bed

Now with a half-decade hangover I lay down in it

What have I done? Don't know what I've said

It's a half-decade hangover, either this, in jail, or dead

It's a half-decade hangover, Jesus Christ my aching head”

taako having to deal with the aftermath of glamour springs. specifically “either this (adventuring with thb), in jail (cause of glamour springs), or dead (yeah.)”

also him with angus after being a dick to him or any other person he lashed out at

lucretia having to deal with what she had done, watching her family be a shell of themselves and then once they’re back, dealing with the backlash from it

“Sober, but so much still hangs over

Please believe me when I say I poured my whole past down the drain

Say that a second chance is a chance I can take

But I can't make amends for things I don't remember

I can only say I'm sorry and occasionally pray

Guess you'll just have to take my word that I've changed

After one thousand eight hundred twenty five days”

then not being able to remember half of the shit that they did, lucretia not being able to ask for forgiveness till so so much later. also she can’t fix what she did

________________

vampire reference in a minor key:

kravitz -

i mean, duh. the whole vibe of the song is so kravitz

“If you need me, I'll be in my coffin

You could come knocking, and I'll raise hell for you”

this man arguing with his literal GODDESS cause the guy he likes has a fucking weird family

“Hold my hands, we'll dance the 12-step on my grave

I'd kill the man I am for one more chance to be yours, babe

No, I ain't begging, I'm just saying, it's an option

Don't let the latest be the last nail in my coffin”

TRUSTTTT

________________

the main character:

taako -

i mean. come on. you saw that coming

“So, God forbid I'm seen just as an average human being

I mean, imagine if protagonists just died in the first scene

I'm the gap between a tragedy and comedy

Don't come at me

I'm the main character, and you have to like me”

i think justin listened to this song and went. yk what. i can work with that. (ik taz came out before incase i make it, hush)

“you’re about to kill americas favorite wizard.”

“I loot plot armor from NPCs

Well, they are to me

Trite, tropes, traits, traumas, trinkets, and treats, it's all XP”

taako stealing from Literally everyone all of the time

________________

against the kitchen floor:

taako -

it’s literally called against the Kitchen floor. what do you want from me.

“I don't owe you my heart

And I don't owe you my body

But you should know that I'm sorry

For being careless with you”

listen. me and mars love to play little barbie’s with these characters but like. do you understand. do you see the vision. taako being someone who has a lot of casual sex and is like no yeah i’m so cool and normal about this and he’s Not cause he’s a Liar but like.

the wanted to be wanted thing even if it’s not. good.

something soemthing sazed etc etc

“I swear, I'm really trying

Get it together, Will, know and do better

It just don't come natural to me to think that you'd want me for mе

I swear, I'm really trying

Oh, I'm sorry, I promise, I'm doing my best

I just haven't learned how to be human as you are yet”

him having to learn what a normal and healthy relationship looks like with kravitz and being kind of off put when kravitz actually likes him for real

“I've lived more lives than enough, I haven't died quite as much

But I'm not a real person, just the shit you can't make up, and”

stolen century, duh

“I swear, I'm really trying

I'm just as exposed if I take off my clothes

When we make the closest thing to love that I'm capable of

And I don't know why you would care

But I'm really trying”

something about his glamour thing after wonderland

“I'm catatonic in your arms

Crying, "How did I cause so much harm?"

I'm down pounding my head against the kitchen floor

Apologizing for my life and ever entering yours

Don't say "I'm sorry, but this can't go on"

I know you've got scars of your own

But hide my knives before you go

I'll either live or die alone”

him with sazed after glamour springs

“ promise, I honestly wanna prove improvement's possible

I swear, I'm so fucking sorry

I'm not a good person, I'm barely a person at all

But someday I'll be perfect, and I'll make up for it all”

“taakos not a hero.” yeah.

________________

sex, drugs, rock’n’roll:

taako -

“So this is what I choose to do

With my redeeming quality

That thing that came from the same place as my

Instability”

i know it means mental instability, and like yeah that too, but his home/money instability. learning how to be a wizard and how to cook so that he would have somewhere to stay

“It's not a gift if you pay for it

And I don't want no charity

I spent all my years to end up right here, and now

I really think I'd rather leave”

post glamour springs

“And I hate proving that

I'm still human after all”

“i’m a fully realized creation! fuck!” etc etc

________________

white noise:

lucretia -

“But If you listen closely I swear, to God I swear

You can hear the ocean if you hold it up to your ear, here:

White noise

If you listen close between the waves

White noise

You can hear the ocean through your wake

White noise

If you listen close between the waves

White noise

You can hear the ocean through your wake”

just this whole songs meaning is very lucretia to me. the quiet isn’t boring. there’s more to lucretia than even she sees if you care to notice

[chipthekeeper]

got ahold of the quote book my coworker (on vacation) keeps to record all the ridiculous shit we say in the office, here's a taste:

"i wonder if we've been burping at the same time while you were away"

"i've got space catboy!" "two-thirds of that interests me"

"welcome to marketing. fuck you"

"i've been lusting over this chicken tender"

"the website feels like a ball of yarn but the yarn is barbed wire"

"oh the places you'll went"

"just me and my gay little flip flops"

"the pod in podcast is for feet stuff"

*hears an airplane* "that better be an asteroid"

"oh you have dumb ideas? PhD"

"kids can get stuck anywhere..........don't write that down"

"people have no respect for people who don't want to do anything"

"you're not american if you don't give up some of your basic needs"

"he asked if i was hard of hearing" "you should have told him he's hard of talking"

"sometimes death is the only rest we get"

"cookie dough has always been edible, bitch!"

"i thought i had a great immune system. turns out i just had never been sneezed on in the face"

"do you want the short version or the long version?" "i mean, we're here til 4"

"i have a boner for collaboration"

"i don't wanna be a tiktok cat"

"suck it, i'm her dad now"

"you smell like my knees hurt"

"in the end, it's all just feet stuff"

"this is our narcissism button"

"you gotta be careful who you make landmine jokes to....because of woke"

"you guys have no whimsy"

"can you do a podcast from the beyond?" "yeah, it's called a seance"

"do you want me to go get that person from the hallway who wanted to talk to you?" "No but here's my bat"

"i wish i had the memory of a kid who wants something"

"are you looking at banjos again?"

"i need a leafblower for people"

"just taking hits off my bong and they're not going down right"

"damn, then you have to come in here and deal with the metaphorical cuts on your butt"

[feeling-pushy]

The Three Amigos

Recently added a new character to my "Creature Apocalypse" story. A friend for both Montanha and the old Rosie (and also future lover for Montanha >.>) anyways I hope you guys like it! Fallow me on my BlueSky Account to know more about the characters I've mentioned!

“And where did you say you learned this?” asked Rosie as she watched her older friend fiddle with some sticks and a looped wire.

“Wikihow. I googled a bunch of stuff, before the internet went out and screen shot a bunch of how-to's.” Montanha explains as he finishes setting up his little trap. Two sticks were staked into the earth, parallel to each other. One stick was bigger than the other and had a hole in it so a bit of wire could be threaded through and tied around it. The rest of the wire was looped around on itself and resting on the smaller of the two sticks. It was made in a way that if a small animal, like a rabbit, were to hop threw the loop, the loop itself would tighten and hopefully kill it.

Sitting back to admire his handiwork before looking back at Rosie with a grin. “If this one ends up working I can make a bunch more and hopefully we can get a bunch of meat.”

“Ugh, I would kill for some meat!’ says Rosie with an exaggerated groan, ‘I’m so sick of dried foods and foraged shit. I want proteeeiiinnn!”

“Yeah, yeah, I hear yah. Come on, let’s go set up one more test trap and then you promised me that you’d help me practice my bow and arrowing.”

“Oh right, I did promise that. Yeah, you could definitely use the practice.” Rosie says with a smug grin as Montanha rolls his eyes. Getting up, Montanha and Rosie move about a hundred yards to the east before Montanha sets his backpack down and starts rummaging threw it. After a minute he pulls out some bright neon orange rope, “got this from that Home Depot we broke into last week.” He said with a proud smile.

“So resourceful.”

“Shush.” He says, pulling out his phone again to look at some step-by-step guides. Slowly he weaves the rope together into a net. He then takes the slack and hands it to Rosie. “Can you go climb that tree for me and find a good branch to loop this on please? Put it on one of those bottom branches, nothing too weak but I need it to have at least enough give so I can make a trigger for the trap.”

Rosie takes the rope, “You got it Monty my man.”

“You know I hate being called Monty.” He complains, Rosie just smiles at him before climbing a nearby tree. She was like a little squirrel, buck teeth and all, Montanha thought to himself as she scurried up there. She tested a few branches before she found one that seemed strong enough for the purpose of their trap, throwing the rope back to Montanha before scurrying back down. “Alrighty! Branch secured!”

“Thanks.” Montanha takes the other end of the rope from Rosie and begins rigging up the trap. Fortunately, he was tall enough to reach up at the branch with some minimal effort, pulling it down some and holding it in place with the trigger, so that when it tripped it was snap back up to its original position and if they were lucky, the animal that set it off would be inside the net. Sitting back with a satisfied smile, Montanha looked to Rosie, “Alright, hopefully we catch something big with this one.’ He then gets up and dusts some dirt off his jeans, ‘Now let’s go practice some archery.”

“Alright my man!” she said with a grin as the two of them went to go find a nice little clearing, about a hundred yards away from the traps, so as to not scare off potential prey. Rosie and Montanha stand in a clearing surrounded by towering trees. Together the two had taken a nearby rotted log and rolled it over to lean against another tree, Montanha then carved a ring around the middle. Making them a makeshift target to use.

Rosie, with her bow in hand, takes a few steps ahead of Montanha, who holds the bow uncertainly, his tall frame dwarfing the slender weapon. “Alright, big guy, let's go over the basics again. Grip the bow firmly but not too tight, try not to crush it. Then you knock the arrow onto the string before pulling back.” She says as she demonstrates, pulling back with a smooth, practiced motion.

“Alright...” Montanha draws the arrow back as Rosie instructed him to do. It should’ve been easy enough for him strength wise, but for some reason, he always struggled with pulling the string back. Not only that, but he found he was having trouble keeping the arrow from wobbling up and down in his hand. For some reason he just couldn’t keep his hands steady, “Stupid fuckin- ugh!” He growls frustrated after wrestling with it for a few moments.

Rosie watches Montanha's struggle, “Whoa, calm down Paul Bunyan. No need to get frustrated, just adjust your grip a little, you’re still squeezing it too hard.’ Rosie steps over to him, she makes him relax his draw before helping Montanha adjust the grip on the bow, gently guiding them to the right place, ‘Ok better, now try drawing again, but focus on keeping your arm steady as you draw back.” She says stepping back.

With the new hand positioning and advice, Montanha had a much easier time drawing the bow back, though still not as fluid as Rosie, it was still an improvement. “There you go, that's better. Now, the arrow. Slide it onto the arrow’s rest, nock it properly. Make sure it's aligned with your sight.” Montanha nods and tries again. This time he had a better grip on the arrow and kept it straight, he looked over to her expectantly, “like this?” Rosie nods approvingly, a grin spreading across her face, “Much better! You've got the hang of it big guy. Now, hold that position steady, and release when you feel confident. Remember to keep your focus on the target, not the arrow.”

She demonstrates this with her own bow, drawing back the arrow and with a single slow breath, releasing her shot. The arrow struck the center of the makeshift target, and Rosie, with a smug grin, turned to Montanha, “Think you can handle that big guy?” She challenges a little. Rolling his eyes playfully, Montanha took his turn, looking at the target, and once he felt like he was in a good spot, letting the arrow go. However, his shot went wide, missing the bullseye by a wide margin, “shit...”

“Nice try, Mr. Zombie Apocalypse Expert. Maybe you should stick to your axe.” she teases.

“Alright Katniss Everdeen, not everyone can be as naturally gifted as you apparently.” he quips, hand on his hip. Rosie laughs but relents, “Alright, alright once more, with feeling.” she goes over the steps of aiming and releasing the bow one more time with him. Showing him how he needs to plant his feet and to relax his shoulders. With this guidance, Montanha releases a slow breath before letting the arrow fly. This time, it hit the outer most ring of the target.

“Daryl Dixon, eat your heart out.”

“Whatever, Charlie Matheson.”

“You cannot wound me with names of characters I don’t even know. Just like you wouldn't be able to wound me with that arrow.” she sticks her tongue out at him after she says that. Montanha rolls his eyes at Rosie's antics and goes to pull the arrow out of the target. “At least I'm getting closer to the target. I'll be putting dinner on the table before we know it!”

“Yeah! Maybe we'll get a turtle...or a fish or something.”

“Shut up!’ he aims the arrow again and fires, still hitting around the outer rim ‘I meant to do that.” He says a bit sheepishly, “Oh I'm sure you did Apollo...”

The two continued to practice their archery for a while, both playfully going back and forth on the teasing, Montanha especially getting on her when she slipped up on a shot and hers hit a nearby tree a couple of feet away from the target, which annoyed her. Not like he had much room to make fun, when more than half of his shots ended up going wide or embedding themselves into the dirt in front of him.

He did manage to hit a bullseye once and Rosie was actually quite proud of him, “There yah go Montanha! I’ll make an expert out of you yet!” she says beaming up at him. Montanha turns to her with a smile, “Thanks Rosie… Hey, you wanna go check on the snares?” At the mention of the traps, Rosie brightens up. “Do you think we caught anything by now?”

Montanha shrugs, “I hope so. Besides, we should start heading back to camp anyway.” He says, noting that the sun was starting to make it’s way down from the sky, which meant it would soon be evening. “Great!” she says, already running to grab the arrows and kick over the makeshift target. Once the two of them packed up, they set out to check their traps.

The first trap they checked was the small snare trap and it was unfortunately empty. Rosie sighed but then perked up again as they headed for their second, bigger trap, the net they'd made with bright orange rope had the potential to catch something rather large after all. “Maybe we caught something big to eat! Like a fox or maybe even a boar! Whatever it is I hope it's made of meat.” Rosie says with her trademark optimism.

Montanha wouldn't have minded some meat as well, though with their luck they probably be lucky if they caught a fox of some kind. However as they got closer to the net, they did hear the sounds of something struggling, and though they couldn’t yet see it behind the shrubbery, it was safe to assume they’d caught something.

Rosie, eyes shining, ran forward towards the trap, crossing the brush line before him, “Montanha, we got something! We got... uhhh.” her cheers suddenly stopped and Montanha, feeling a small bit paranoid, hurried over faster to see what it was. As soon as he was within sight of the trap, Montanha looks up at the net to see that there wasn't an animal in the net but a young man around Montanha's age.

“Oh god, don't hurt me! Or turn me into the main course!” the young man cried as he struggled in the net, clearly panicked. Both blinked stunned at the sight. They had not expected to see something like this. “ ... Think that’s a Creature?” Montanha says, asking the most obvious question.

It wasn't the most ridiculous question to ask, though. It was better to be cautious these days than to trust something at face value. For all he knew it could be a Creature and whether this was a trap it set up or if it was genuinely caught, wouldn’t really make that much of a difference in the end. Still, Montanha couldn't help but feel a bit bad for the guy, who clearly looked scared, he felt the need to help the poor guy out. Though he refrained from doing so at the moment.

Rosie thought on it for a moment, but then she smirked “No, I don’t think a Creature would be dumb enough to get caught in a trap like this.’ Looking up at the guy in the tree, she leaned on her bow like a prop and looked up at him with a smirk playing on her lips, ‘How's it going, buddy? Come here often?” she teases.

“Ha! Real funny kid, really funny. You right about one thing though, I'm not a Creature. I'm just a guy trying to survive this end of days bullshit like you both are. So... Would you mind letting me down... Well unless you two are Creatures. You’re not Creatures are you..?” he hesitantly asks.

“What would be more embarrassing for yah? If you got caught by people, or Creatures?” Rosie asks, still smirking at the absurdity of the scene. The auburn fellow did not look nearly as amused as her, “Both kinda suck right now, but I'd rather chance it on the ground.”

“Would you prefer the safe way or the fast way? Cause both can be arranged.” Rosie provokes, but before the guy can retort though, Montanha raises his arms, “Alright, alright, everyone calm down. Look, we're sorry you got trapped in our net.”

“Our brightly colored orange net-“ Montanha looks over at Rosie “Shush.’ he looks back up at the man hanging in the net, ‘We're not Creatures and we can prove it... And I'm sure you can prove it as well. So why don't we get you down and we can get past this? Hm?” the young man nods hesitantly, “Yeah, alright.”

With the confirmation, Montanha asks Rosie to untie the rope holding the net, which she does. Once the net released, Montanha caught the man before he can hit the ground, the guy looked a bit surprised to be caught but looked out at Montanha with a small smile, “Thanks...”

“No problem.’ Montanha says setting him down, he gives the guy a friendly smile ‘There you go. Sorry about all that, and sorry about my friend here. She's actually pretty insufferable...” Rosie, annoyed, elbows him roughly, which only made Montanha chuckle. The young man shrugs a bit with a smirk “Hey, it's fine. I'm just glad you guys aren't Creatures or... Desperate cannibals or something.”

Rosie’s eyes go a bit wide, “Yo, that be kinda fucked up though. Who would even resort to such a thing??” Montanha shrugged at her question, but is more focused on the new guy, “So what's your name? I'm Montanha and this is Rosie.” he says as he gestures to both himself and her. Rosie gives him an upwards nod as she looked at him.

“I'm Asher, you can call me Ash for short though.”

“Sup Ash Ketchum!” Rosie quips with a sly grin, Asher merely crosses his arms and smiles “Not much Rosie O'Donnell.” He shoots back. A big grin spreads across Rosie’s face “Oh, I like this one.’ looks at Montanha, ‘Can we keep him Dad?” Montanha rolls his eyes “What, is he a puppy?”

“Aww, come on, Uncle Monty! I've been really good and I got all A's on my last report card!”

“Stop.’ He says, shooting a look at Rosie before looking back at Asher, ‘Do you have a place to stay right now? We got some food if you wanna crash with us tonight. The least we can do after trapping yah after all.” Montanha offers. Asher eyes softened at this, “I don't have a place, so I think I'd like that.”

“Great, come with us then.” Montanha says as he and Rosie then lead the new guy to their camp. They start to hike to the camp which wasn’t too far thankfully.

As they walk, Rosie saddles herself up next to Asher and Montanha could see she was flashing him her signature rat-tooth grin, which Montanha knew meant she was about to try to get something from him. “So Bear Grills, you don't happen to have any meat on yah, do you?”

“I don't...” he says, Rosie throws her head back “Baaallllsss. Not even some jerky? I’ll settle for jerky.” Asher shakes his head, “ ’fraid not.”

“Baaaaalllllllllllllssss!”

Asher feels a bit bad about that, but then he remembers something and suddenly he slyly smiles, “buuutttt, I may know where I can get you guys some.”

Both perked up at that.

“Seriously?? Spill!!” Rosie says grabbing the guy by the arms and giving him a small shake, he gives a chuckle, “Haha alright! Alrighty! Do either of you have any experience bow hunting?” he asks. At this question, Rosie’s chest puffs out a bit in pride, “I'm you're girl.”

“Great!’ Asher then looks up at Montanha, ‘What about you big guy? Did you do any hunting before the world went I Am Legend on us?”

Montanha looks a bit flustered at the question, “No, I wasn't really- wait.’ He stops when the second part of his question finally registered with him, he turns to look at Asher with a grin spreading on his face, ‘you know I Am Legend??”

“Oh no, here we go...” Rosie says with a slight eye roll.

Asher, on the other hand, seems to become equally excited as he grins up at Montanha, “Of course I know I Am Legend! I loved that movie! But I kinda wish they went with the alternate ending a bit more.”

“Seriously!!! Like the alternate ending is so much more thought-provoking!’ he exclaims, the volume of his voice, which he usually kept low to be disarming, quickly going up in his excitement, ‘Letting the zombie lady go and watching them take her back in and Robert seeing that this was their world now is just so much better than the generic girl showing up to the resistance group with the cure bullshit that almost every other movie does!!”

Asher didn’t seemed to be too effected by the sudden change of volume as he matched his excitement, “Right?! And it gives the movie so much more depth!”

“Oh and the part when his dog dies??”

“God yeah that part always makes me cry!”

“And honestly people give so much shit for the CGI looking bad, but like honestly for the time it’s not so bad-!”

“Hey nerds! Hunting?” Rosie asks cutting off their geeking out. Asher gives an apologetic grin as he flushed a bit in embarrassment, ”Oh-right! Ok, Montanha I know you said you didn't hunt too much, but do you think you could still be able to help us as much as you can?”

“Yeah, I should be able to.” He says nodding. “Yeah, don't worry, he's still learning, but my man here is a beast when it comes to lifting shit!” she says, patting Montanha's torso, like a used car salesman might pat the hood of a car. Asher grins at that, “Great! Follow me but watch your footing. I saw a group of deer moving through the woods a ways back. They'll probably be around here by now.” He says before leading the two of them in a new direction.

Eagerly, the two of them followed Asher as he led them through the woods. Both Asher and Rosie treaded silently, already entering a sort of hunting mode. Montanha trailed behind them and tried to stay quiet like them, but he lacked the instinct and he was the loudest out of the three. Which is why he decided to hang back some ways to not ruin their stealth.

After a few more yards Asher, stopped both Rosie and Montanha with a hand and gestured to a pack of deer grazing in a clearing just up ahead. Asher brought the two of them in close, whispering quietly as he shared the plan with the two of them “Ok, what I need you to do Rosie, is to use your bow and go for that older buck over there with the gray fur. Montanha, once the buck is down and the rest of the herd runs, we're gonna need your help to haul it back. Then we’ll all be able to eat like kings.”

Montanha and Rosie both nod as Rosie pulls out her bow. She nocks in an arrow and draws the string back. Her face is flat as her eyes taken in the environment around her and examined the deer. She draws a couple of deep controlled breaths in... and out, in...

She lets the arrow fly on the exhale.

The arrow wizzes threw the air like a dart and hits the deer dead in the side, piercing the heart and making it go down. The other deer, startled, immediately flee the area leaving the elder buck behind. “Nice! You got it!’ Asher says standing up and gestures for them to follow ‘Come on, let's make sure it's down.

Rosie jumps up with a cheer and starts making her way through the brush. Montanha followed the two, his face awashed with awe. Even after seeing her do that a dozen times, Montanha still couldn't help but be impressed by her skill, watching her take down that deer had been quite the sight. She truly was something else. Hopefully one day he could be at her level, but for now he was happy she was around to help him learn those skills and make these crucial kills.

Once they make it down there, Asher and Rosie check the deer. It was down, but not quite out as it let out shallow breaths and looked at the three of them with wild-eyed fear. Rosie hums as she sees this, “I guess the wind was a bit stronger than I thought, sorry about that old fella.” she says to the deer as she crouches down. “Montanha, hand me the knife please.” She asks holding out a hand for it.

Montanha’s stomach starts to churn, knowing what she's going to do next. He’d seen her do it a couple of times before, but he still swallows a bit dryly, as he hands the knife over. Once she has it, he turns his head to look away from what happens next. Asher see's Montanha’s reaction to this, and becomes a bit sympathetic, seeing that despite the size, this guy seemed like the gentle type of soul. Something that was probably hard to be in this more cutthroat world they now lived in.

 Asher then looks over at the deer and starts stroking its neck in a calming manner, “Shhhh...it's ok old man...I'm sorry we have to do this.” He says soothingly, no doubt the deer was scared, but he did seem to calm down a bit as Asher continues to gently stroke his neck, its eyes relaxing and loosing some of that wild fear. Asher looks at Rosie and nods as she pushes the knife into the deer's chest.

Even as she does this however, Asher keeps on stroking the deer softly and hushing it calmly as the old buck finally slips away with a final exhale, “There we go.” Asher coos gently. Once the deed was done, Rosie slashed at the neck and turned the creature more downhill to help speed up the blood draining process. It didn't take too long for all the blood to gush out, and once it was drained, Rosie stood up and looked at Montanha, “alright big fella, you're up!”

Montanha nods as he now stoops down himself, bending his knees and hooking his arms underneath the carcass. Getting a good hold on the deer, in one fluid motion he lifted the body up with ease and hoisted it over his shoulder with only a small grunt of effort. Asher was a bit taken aback by the ease with which he did that, “Uh. Do you need any help with it at all, Montanha? That buck can't be light.” He says eyes kinda wide.

“No, it's fine. I got it.” Montanha said rather nonchalantly, there wasn’t even any strain in his voice as he said this, looking at Asher with a bright smile. The deer was heavy sure, but it wasn't anything he couldn’t manage.

“Alright, if you're sure. Damn, you gotta tell me your work out regiment. Maybe I won't be so lanky! Haha.” Asher jokes. Still, his face flushed a bit, most likely due to the now cooling evening air, Montanha thought. He chuckled, “It ain’t nothing special, comes with being the size of a literal mountain. Truthfully if I wanted too I could probably carry both you and this deer, if you’re willing to get thrown over the other shoulder.” Montanha jokes.

“Yeah he once had to do that for me after I twisted my ankle after a hunt!” Rosie adds.

“Haha wow. Uh, I’ll have to take you up on that next time I twist an ankle!” He jokes again with an even redder face. This cold evening air must really be getting to him, Montanha thought. “Well then lets get going before it gets too cold out here.” Montanha says as the three of them head back towards the camp.

Once they reached the camp Asher, wanting to be a polite guest, begins skinning the buck while Rosie started the kindling and Montanha begin gathering up the logs to start a fire. “So, where did yall come from before all this started?” Asher asks.

Rosie stoking the fire is the one to answer the question, “Oh well, the two of us used to work together back before the world ended, just like a shitty minimum wage job, yah know? And well, on the day that it happened Montanha had this like 'bad feeling’ after he saw some strange stuff happen outside and in the store. So he makes this whole big scene as he jumps on the PA system and tells everyone to evacuate the store! And boy you should’ve seen our manager,  she was piisssseedd! She and Montanha start like bickering at the front of the store over the whole thing. And I was kinda freaking out at that point, cause I’m worried about my parents and I wanted to go home. So Montanha offered to take me back, and we ended up having to walk like half the damn day to get there cause everyone was already out of the city by that point. But he walks me all the way there and then well...’ she pauses and her face gets a bit sad, ‘well long story short we realized there was no going home. So we've just kinda been traveling together ever since.”

Montanha nods, “Yeah it's just been us.”

“I see... I was just ditching school when it all happened. Right there in the middle of town, the Creatures started attacking and I had to run back to the trailer park where my dad and older brother were. My brother didn't make it... And I don't know what happened to my dad, I can only hope he’s ok out there. But either way, I've been traveling alone ever since.” Asher says his head low and not meeting their eyes as he continues to field dress the deer.

Montanha and Rosie share a look as he says that, Montanha especially looking sympathetic as he looks at Asher, “That must've been tough...”

Rosie nods, “Yeah, I don't think I could've traveled by myself... Montanha is the only person that keeps me going some days.” She admits, looking back at Montanha as she does. Asher, setting the deer's hide aside sighs “It was rough a lot... But I'm at least glad I made a couple new friends today, even if just for today.”

At his words Montanha and Rosie share yet another look with each other. Montanha’s sad eyes already said enough for Rosie, who after a moment of silent debate, meets his sad eyes with a small nod and a smile. Once he got the silent confirmation, Montanha addressed Asher, “You know, if you want too, you can always travel with us for a while.’ Montanha offered, ‘As long as you can tolerate having to put up with this one…’ Rosie shot him another look, ‘but we got decent supplies, and there should be enough for a third person.”

Asher looks up at that, his eyes lighting up a little as he laughs a bit “Well, as long as you two are willing to put up with my dumbass, then I accept!”

Both Montanha and Rosie light up as well, “Well, you're in luck! This is a pack of fools. Now we can be the three amigos of stupid.” Rosie says as she grins.

Asher chuckles again, “Three amigos huh? Yeah I can work with that…”

“Alrighty! Now lets celebrate with some good ol’ deer meat! I need meat now!!” Rosie yells.

“Calm down you clown, we’ll cook some meat soon.” Montanha says rolling his eyes.

“Who are you calling a clown Sasquatch??”

“Ok beaver girl.”

“Boy I’m about to put your ass in the fire if you call me a beaver girl again” Rosie threatens. Montanha just laughs, not at all taking that threat seriously. Asher watches these two have their verbal tussle and for the first time in a long time, the cold and heavy feeling that has been sitting in his chest since the day he lost his family, starts to lighten a little.

[kamenstranger]

Review: The Bullet Train (1975) AKA Shinkansen Daibakuha.

I went back and forth on if I wanted to do this as a bluesky post or a review. I tend to prefer only using tumblr for longer more detailed reviews like Ultra Seven, Black Sun, and Minus One.

But this ended up longer than 300 characters so… here we are.

The basic premise is a train gets wired with a bomb and if the train dips below 80kmph it'll go off. Guy makes demands, cops try to figure out who/how many are involved, things continue to unfold from there. Sound familiar?

Bullet Train is a curious watch in the modern era, mainly in how clichéd it comes off. I don't mean that as an insult, merely an observation. In much the same way Whale's Frankenstein popularized and even originated many tropes of the mad scientist archetype, Bullet Train will be familiar thanks to all the various parodies and homages over the years, even if through more indirect ones i.e. parodies of "Speed." The premise, various plot points and twists; they're all likely to be things you've seen referenced, if not done in other thrillers. That's not a deal breaker per se, but chances are you're going to know some if not most of the twists and contrivances sprung upon the audience due to that pop culture osmosis. You can read a synopsis and immediately have a surface level idea of the film. This leaves The Bullet Train with a bit of an uphill battle when there are so many others that have done similar things. But I think with the right mindset and framing, there's plenty of merits to the film today.

The most obvious of course is the astonishing effects. I was about 40ish minutes into the film wondering as what point they would make more prominent use of the miniatures. There were clearly some used for an explosion scene involving a steam engine, and I was aware there had been a massive 80 foot long model built. But I hadn't realized how much footage was the scale model, and only occasionally inter-cut with wide shots of a real train. Even today the scale stuff looks incredible. The composites and rear projection on the other hand… yeah, they're rough, but that's expected.

The special effects were handled by Shozo Konishi; former TsuPro and Ultraman/Seven designer, Toru Narita; and Gunji Seisakusho. Narita is of course the most well know of the group, but it was Konishi who I see credited for acquiring one of the most advanced pieces of equipment at the time, a snorkel camera, allowing for very up close shots of the models. Star Wars would more famously make use of this 2 years later.

The other big draw is that the film is directed by Junya Sato. He had been doing films at Toei since the early 60s, and in the 70s he started to get bigger pictures, notably 1973's Golgo 13. But it was here when Sato truly entered Block Buster territory and would open up opportunities like The Go Masters and Silk Road. Sato wrote the screenplay along with Ryūnosuke Ono, who you may know as one of the writers on the Crying Freeman OVA series. The result is something that even today feels a bit more unique than you might expect given all the other familiarizes.

One thing that might come as a surprise is that unlike many films following in the same wheelhouse, we don't actually spend all that much time on the train. It's hard to knock them for that given the locked in nature of a rail. Outside a sequence about needing to slow the train down and just missing another train during a rail switch, they kinda spend most of the train's dramatic bits in the first 45 minutes, at least until the last quarter. There are occasional cuts to passengers getting more restless, and the most un-pregnant woman I've ever seen going into labor. But there's little that threatens the speed of the train, which is the far more exciting element. In fact, they actually use one twice, that being the brakes engaging if an external door is opened. You're simply more limited than say a bus in terms of what can stop the movement, so the Train is used as more of a bookend set piece with sporadic check ins.

Instead, the film is primarily a procedural drama about the police solving the case and learning details about the antagonists. We also have a lot of conflict with The National Railway in how disastrous the Police operations are throughout, as well as internal conflict regarding the safety of the passengers vs. cutting their losses. Sophisticated might be too strong a word given the film is still an Action Thriller full of contrivances, but it's certainly less schlocky than other films within the same genre. Think of something more than Airport, but less than The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3. Bullet Train wants to have nuance and a tiny bit of social critiquing.

This is most true with our primary antagonist, Tetsuo Okita (Ken Takakura) who is by far the best part of the movie. It's never tiring seeing him plan, adapt, and escape multiple times throughout the film. The script treats the character incredibly sympathetically, to the point where you're kinda rooting for him. Part of that is how great Ken Takakura is in the role. Ironically outside Japan the film gets hailed as a Sonny Chiba movie, it even appeared in a compilation by BCI Eclipse. Chiba's great as always and he has a starring role, but make no mistake, Takakura is top billed for a reason. He brings a lot of complexity to Okita, his experience playing a wide range of Yakuza no doubt being a great boon to that end.

Aside from Takakura's performance, there are some elements delving into Japan's economic and environmental disasters of the 70s, the exploitation of rural areas, and allusions to the Zengakuren (which Okita is implied to have been affiliated.) Some of that is likely to missed given the lack of relevance nowadays, but for those aware of the movements and political turmoil of the mid 60s followed by the mid 70s burnout, I think you'll have a better appreciation for what the film is doing with Okita's character.

Conversely, where the film feels most antiquated in a detrimental sense is the heavy reliance on flashbacks and narration to fill in character details. The problem isn't even so much the flashbacks on a base level, but sometimes their placement and their execution feels disconnected from the rest of the film, if not dated even at the time. Rather than appreciating the nuance it's giving to our antagonists and their plight, I'm thinking about how weird the pacing is, how Okita reminiscing about his comrades often lacks the emotional impact it's looking for by just a tiny bit. It wasn't unusual in this era for films made in Japan to be finished just three-four days before release, so it wouldn't shock me if this was a compromise. That being said… I was more invested in these characters than the last movie I watched. Which is kinda depressing, but makes sense the more I think about it.

Something I'm more down on is the run time. The JPN cut of The Bullet Train is surprisingly long, really fucking long. Two and half hours. That's longer than The Shining. By the hour and fifty minute mark, I was starting to notice. If it was 2 hrs. even, maybe 2:15, I think it'd be easier to swallow. For what it's worth, it's hard to imagine the film without its many methodical shots of Okita running through his tasks… but they probably could've shaved a bit off. I've heard there was an even longer 2:40 cut just before release, and if that's true, it's impressive they were able to cut a good 10 minutes out.

All the same, the run time does make it slightly difficult to recommend to just anyone, even Toku fans. I mean this is barely under the umbrella of what I typically cover here. There's plenty of reasons to still watch it of course: The incredible cast, stunning special effects, and being a notable entry in a directors career-- run time be damned. If you're in the right mind set and have an interest in branching outside the typical Kaiju/Kyodai/Kaizo Ningen fare, then I highly suggest it. Maybe even look into the Sanrizuka Struggle to help contextualize the film. For everyone else, the film might come off as a victim of its own formula being so well known and done to death as to instill contempt, not helped by being a tad long in the tooth. But I'd still give it a fair shot if the opportunity arises.

A word of warning, the film is streaming on Tubi, but unfortunately they only have the dubbed version and it looks like garbage. It's not just a bad transfer, it's pixelated as shit. I'm not convinced they didn't badly rip a DVD or possibly a Youtube vid and just shove it on there, which they have done before. Although this one is really weird because it has a Shoreline Entertainment logo, and I can't find any info on them ever being a distributor for any release. All this skeeviness is actually why this is yet another review free of screen grabs, as I watched the very nice Bluray from Discotek and can't rip those.

Tubi also made a shitty Al poster, but I repeat myself. Check out the mysterious third rail, the dropping of "The" from the title, "Sony" Chiba, and the completely wrong train that isn't even a Shinkansen. How embarrassing. Why didn't they just use an official Poster? Unless of course they're not supposed to have it and think Toei might notice. That place is worse than Kissasian while pretending to be legit, I swear.

Speaking of posters, I want to point out the Bluray by Discotek, which brilliantly uses the second release poster "Super Express 109" as the slip cover, and the original "Shinkansen Big Explosion" poster for the case. Love when releases do that. Sadly, committing to a purchase is your best bet if you simply want to check out the film, at least until Mubi or some other niche service picks it up. You can't even rent it digitally. But it is a damn nice release with both versions of the film in gorgeous 2k, new subs, plus a 24 minute interview with Sato. For the UK, Eureka Entertainment did a release with the same transfer and a ton more special features including commentary and several more interviews. So get out there and check out some classic Japanese thriller.

Hopefully you enjoyed taking a look at something different as much as I did. Doing these smaller quicker reviews is nice, and I'm going to see if I can get more done while still doing the deep dives. I've got a few things still in the works, so we'll see what next time brings. Might even do another book review. As always, you can find me on BlueSky and my Ko-Fi here.

[jarmes]

Harry Anderson’s Father (Homestuck: Beyond Canon Fanfic)

I gaze out upon the festering shithole of a world that lies behind the black hole. At first glance, it is identical to the victory world I left. But, with my heightened senses, I am acutely able to sense the inherent bullshittery that permeates through this planet like a cancer. The planet isn’t real, not completely. It exists as a shitty doodle on the back of reality, something that should not exist but still persists. This world is a hypothetical. It is the universe that would have existed, if I didn’t push John Egbert to restore canon to a functioning state.

Years ago, I briefly existed in this universe. The moment I realized what it was, I did the only sensible thing and killed myself so I didn’t have to spend another second in what was for all intents and purposes a terrible piece of fanfiction. That was a mistake. If I had stayed, I could have stopped the Muse from creating lackluster muppet baby players and sending them to kill me.

This world needs to be destroyed. Not just blown up, but fully erased. Its existence is a stain that makes everything I have built terrible by association. This abomination of a world is so bad it got my comic canceled. 

I pull the lever and release the Tumor. I’m not surprised when it doesn’t fall from my battleship, down to the non-canon version of Earth C and obliterate it. That would be boring.

I march out onto the deck of my battleship. A teenager is standing on the edge, ripping apart the wires in the bombing mechanism’s control panel. He has white hair, with that trademark Lalonde curl and Jake’s bad teeth. John and Roxy’s kid. I don’t know his name, nor do I care to know.

> Be Harry Anderson Egbert

You watch as that Dirk Strider, that terrifying and handsome son of a bitch, marches towards you. He draws his badass katana and you raise your pathetic garden sheers. Your hands tremble as you sense the incredible goddamn menace emanating off the literal God you have decided to fuck with.

HARRY: you’re that guy my mom told me about. the one with the stupid shades.

DIRK: It is a shame that the kids these days do not understand how kickass ironic anime shades are.

HARRY: how do they stay on your face? double-sided tape?

DIRK: There are more important things to discuss than the intricacies of my clothing. Such as, your attempt at disarming my weapon.

HARRY: i’m not going to let you blow up my world and kill everyone.

DIRK: That isn’t really your choice.

Dirk Strider moves so fast you can’t process it. One second, he’s twenty feet away, the next, he has his katana held against your throat. You feel a drop of cold sweat drip down your neck and split apart as it touches the edge of Dirk’s blade.

DIRK: I’m going to explain something very simple to you. You are not a real human being.

DIRK: You are a shadow of a person from a world that should not exist. You canonically do not exist.

DIRK: People who exist get to foil the big bad’s plans. People who exist occasionally get to impact the plot.

DIRK: Unfortunately, you are a drama kid OC from someone’s Tumblr page who is just sentient enough to feel fear.

The sucker punch from John knocks Dirk flat on his ass.

What.

No.

I don’t get taken by surprise anymore. I’m omniscient and fairly close to omnipotent. It should be impossible for someone to get the jump on me, and yet, I have just been walloped by John Egbert. He appeared in front of me and punched me in the face, so hard that I feel my molars coming loose.

He got here using his Retcon powers. I can see the white outline hanging around his silhouette.

HARRY: dad?

JOHN: harry anderson! i’m so proud of you.

JOHN: military sabotage is basically the highest form of prank.

JOHN: i mean your mom would probably be mad about this, but i’m incredibly proud.

HARRY: dad, i’m trying to stop him from killing everyone i’ve ever met. can we please delay the father-son pep talk until after this is over?

JOHN: oh yeah i can do that.

John turns to face me. He’s wearing his God Tier outfit, which hasn’t grown in the two and a half decades he’s been wearing it and is two sizes too small. He looks like an idiot.

JOHN: hi dirk. can you please stop trying to kill my son.

JOHN: and also stop trying to destroy the world while you're at it.

DIRK: You know he isn’t real.

DIRK: His existence, like the existence of every other person on that planet, is paradoxical.

DIRK: You’re from this world, but you are at least a version of a character who existed in canon.

DIRK: Your son doesn’t have that going for him.

JOHN: i know.

The child looks up at his father with confusion. John doesn’t take his gaze off me.

JOHN: so what?

DIRK: What do you mean, so what?

DIRK: This entire universe is a non-canon abomination.

JOHN: i know but i don’t really care, you know?

DIRK: Of course you don’t care. You’re the version of John who abandoned the world and let it decay into a twisted shadow of canon.

DIRK: If you cared, you would have died fighting Lord English.

DIRK: Instead, you created this aberration.

DIRK: This is the universe of dog dicks, clowns sucking on titties, and Vriska 2: Electric Boogaloo.

JOHN: yeah, but it’s also the universe where my son exists.

JOHN: i don’t really get this canon stuff.

JOHN: i mean, everyone tells me that this world isn’t real.

JOHN: and for a long time, i believed that.

JOHN: i stopped spending time with Roxy or Harry Anderson or anyone else because i knew they weren’t real.

JOHN: but i think i was just depressed.

JOHN: i’m better now. i’m not hiding from the world anymore.

JOHN: harry anderson is my son and i love him.

John reaches over and grabs his son, pulling him into a hug. Harry Anderson tries to shove him away, but eventually relents and allows his father to hug him.

I decide I’ve had enough of this sappy horseshit and stab John Egbert in the throat. The blade goes in easily. Too easily. I jump back as John transforms into wind.

He reforms above Dirk and slams his hammer down, smashing a hole in the deck. The dice in the hammer's bubble bounce around. When they land, a dozen horses appear, summoned by magic, and trample Dirk Strider.

HARRY: dad? are you...cool?

I dash forward, slicing John across the chest. As my blade tears through his flesh, a sudden burst of wind knocks Dirk away. John flies forward and smashes his hammer down on Dirk’s skull.

I focus on the bouncing dice. I see in my mind what they must be and it becomes so. Eight dice land with the one facing up. The Pop-a-matic Vrillyhoo Hammer explodes in John’s hand, taking his arm with it. As John clutches his stump, his son attempts to stab me in the back. I easily sidestep him and knock his sheers away with my sword.

Harry’s fist surrounds with black tendrils as he punches me in the stomach. It hurts, more than I expected, but I’ve long since ascended beyond the point where pain affects me. I grab him by the throat and lift him up, crushing his throat with my bare hands. A stab through the skull would have killed him instantly, but it wouldn’t have been cruel enough. After all, I’m the villain. It behooves me to be menacing.

Harry Anderson Egbert scratches at the back of my hand with his fingernails, trying to tear away my iron grasp. He struggles to breathe. An ironic end, for the son of the Heir of Breath. His eyes roll back in his head as he falls unconscious.

A tornado erupts from John Egbert. The spinning blue wind tears the battleship to pieces. Canons and chunks of metal fall down towards Earth C as Drik loses his grip on Harry. John flies forward and slams his hammer into Dirk’s chest.

I get it now. My domination of the narration normally allows me control over the actions of others. Not complete, but enough to guide things towards the necessary outcome. Except, John Egbert hasn’t been bound by canon in years, not since he touched the Ultimate Weapon. I can’t control him.

He slams the hammer into me and my sword slips from my grasp and begins falling towards the planet. John isn’t a fighter. He doesn’t realize how strong he is. His wind is strong enough to tear apart planets and right now 100% of it is concentrated in crushing me into a fine red paste.

Of course, this is exactly what I planned for. John is so distracted on hurting me that he doesn’t pay attention to his son falling down from heaven, abandoned like Icarus after venturing close to the sun. He doesn’t pay attention to my katana as it stabs through the sky. The tornado holding me in place shoots it down like a rocket. I can’t control John, but I can control my sword. I guide it like a missile to its destination in Harry Anderson Egbert’s chest.

JOHN: harry anderson!

John takes his attention off me for the briefest of moments, giving me the time to stab my fingers into his chest. He screams as I grab hold of his heart. Magenta bolts of lightning flow from my hand into John Egbert’s body. The lightning saws through the metaphysical connection points, severing John’s soul from his body. As I tear him apart from the inside, a light breaks through his chest, so bright it would blind me if I wasn’t wearing my kickass anime shades. The light is shaped like a house. The Ultimate Weapon, the source of John’s bullshit retcon powers, hidden away within his body.

John transforms into wind. The wind dives after Harry Anderson as he falls from space. John reforms around his son and cradles him as he slowly descends down to the ground. They land in the middle of a field.

JOHN: it’s okay! it’s going to be okay!

John blubbers like a baby as he cradles the bloody soon-to-be corpse of his brat. The kid tries to say something, but he only gets out gurgles due to the sword in his lung. I decide to be nice and remove it. I appear behind John and, with a single movement, faster than the eye can see, draw the sword from Harry’s body and swing it, cleaving off John Egbert’s head.

Harry crashes down in the grass as John’s body falls over. I hold out my sword and skewer John’s head as it lands, the tip of my blade coming out of his eye. In another plane of existence, a grandfather clock’s pendulum swings between two judgments, Heroic and Just. I put my hand on the scale, forcing John’s death to be heroic.

As I wipe John’s blood from my sword using my cape, I feel the scissors stab me in the back. Damnit. I was distracted by controlling the clock and forgot about Harry. He’s injured, but has his teeth gritted in anger. He clutches a large pair of shears, made out of thin black tendrils. A weapon made out of pure Doom that pokes out of the heart symbol on my shirt, having gone through the black lump of coal that is my actual heart.

Harry Anderson is the Bard of Doom. He’s a destroyer, just like me, and Doom is his weapon. This terrible planet, the insurmountable odds, the hole in his chest, the death of his father, all of these things make him stronger. He concentrates the power of the Candy timeline into his tendrils.

The Doom spreads through my body. My flesh rots away, bit by bit. It feels just like it did when the Stardust consumed me. Before it’s too late, I cut my own head off.

Harry Anderson struggles to breath as he crawls towards his father’s corpse.

HARRY: this is stupid.

HARRY: you don’t talk for me for years and then the first time you actually try and give a shit about me you die.

HARRY: you’re a god. gods don’t die. get up.

HARRY: please.

DIRK: That isn’t going to happen.

I look down upon the injured child, my arms crossed. If it wasn’t such a cliche, I would call him pathetic. I can’t die, not really. I have long since transcended beyond a physical being. I exist as a disembodied consciousness existing outside of any universe, who interacts with others by puppeteering a physical form. It is trivial for me to conjure another body out of nothingness.

I raise my hand into the air. A large ball of energy appears above my palm, growing larger until it blocks out any light from the sun. The death ball I have summoned is made out of pure, concentrated destruction. It will tear apart the souls of this putrid rock and restore the purity it has taken from my canon. And it won’t take twenty goddamn episodes to do so.

I toss the death ball. Harry holds out his hands, firing all of the energy he can muster in a doomed attempt to hold back the ball. He thinks he’s the brave shonen protagonist fighting for his home, but he isn’t. He’s a crappy OC who should have never existed. This isn’t death. It’s a mercy.

Blue wind wraps around the ball of energy. It disappears, pulled out of reality by John’s retcon powers.

Fuck.

I turn around to see John’s corpse hovering five feet off the ground. His head is still gone, but in its place sits a skull made of wind wearing John’s glasses. The light from the Ultimate Weapon is brighter than it has ever been.

John punches himself in the chest. A thousand different copies of his arm appear around Dirk, pummeling his new body to a bloody pulp.

I swing my sword but an arm grabs it and retcons it out of existence.

I hold out my hands and fire my electricity. It begins ripping the Ultimate Weapon out of John’s chest but the lightning stops when another fist hits Dirk in the stomach. John holds his hand out and his wind flies into the portal on his chest.

None of this is happening. I refuse to let it happen and thus it does not. I’m the narrator. That’s why the fucking text is orange.

The wind spreads through the source code of canon, wiping the text color clean.

DIRK: What did you do?

DIRK: WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO?

The light from the Ultimate Weapon shines on Dirk. He screams as he is dragged in. He appears in an empty white box, where he will remain for a very long time. He pounds on the walls of his cage.

DIRK: LET ME OUT!

DIRK: LET ME OUT!

The thing that defeated Dirk Strider walks over to Harry Anderson Egbert. He waves his hand and his son’s wounds disappear, erased from ever having happened.

JOHN: my father died when I was young.

JOHN: it was really hard on me. i guess it’s gonna be pretty hard on you.

JOHN: and now i’m realizing how much must have sucked that he didn’t get to watch his son grow up.

John fades away into wind and disappears.

HARRY: dad?

No answer comes.

[themuseinthewoods]

Life is like a box of chocolates-Chapter six: different lives.

a Forrest Gump fic (cross posted on quotev) (the masterlist)

“Night time in the Army is a lonely time. We'd lay there in our bunks and I'd miss my mama. And I’d miss Cecelia Rose. And I'd miss Jenny.” Forrest’s hands toyed with the ribbon on the chocolate box in his lap, doing his very best to remember everything perfectly. “Turns out, Jenny had gotten into some trouble over some photos of her in her college sweater, and she was thrown out of school. But that wasn't a bad thing, because a man who owns a theater in Memphis, Tennessee, saw those photos and offered Jenny a job singing in a show.”

“The first chance I got, I took the bus up to Memphis to see her perform in that show. Her dream had come true. She was a folk singer…that night was the first time somebody told me to not be brave. Cecelia Rose told me that too. I think Cecelia was more scared a me leavin’ than I was.”

Forrest paused for a moment, trying to get his thoughts back.

“And just like that, she was gone. Now, they told us that Vietnam was gonna be very different from the United States of America. And except for all the beer cans and the barbecue, it was.” Cecelia remembered the first letter she had received from her brother describing the first interaction.

“Hey, I bet there's shrimp all in these waters. They tell me these Vietnams is good shrimpers.

You know, after we win this war, and we take over everything, we can get American shrimpers to come out here and shrimp these waters. We'll just shrimp all the time, man. So much shrimp, why, you wouldn't believe it?” Cecelia quickly learned that Bubba must have talked of nothing but shrimp. It felt like each letter she received included something Bubba had told Forrest about the shrimping business. However, she read with interest about his meeting with his officer, Lieutenant Dan.

“You must be my FNGs.” The shirtless blue eyed man spoke, coming out the tent, talking around a cigarette.

“Morning, sir!” 

“Get your hands down! Do not salute me. There's goddamn snipers all around this area who would love to grease an officer. I'm Lieutenant Dan Taylor. Welcome to Fourth Platoon. What's wrong with your lip?” CeeCee could almost picture the scene as she read Forrest’s letter. He had a way of describing things in simple understandable words that lit up the world bright as day for his younger sister.

“I was born with big gums, sir.” “Yeah, well, you better tuck that in. Gonna get that caught on a trip wire.” CeeCee had to do some research to see exactly what a tripwire was and she winced when she realized what the man was talking about.

“Where you boys from in the world?”

“Alabama, sir!”

“You twins?”

“No, we are not relations, sir.” Arisa had chuckled fondly, picturing Forrest’s confused face, knowing jokes like that went straight over his head

Look, it's pretty basic here. If you stick with me and learn from the guys who've been in country a while, you'll be all right. There is one item of GI gear that can be the difference between a live grunt and a dead grunt. Socks. Cushion sole, OD green. Try and keep your feet dry. When we're out humping, I want you boys to remember to change your socks whenever we stop. The Mekong will eat a grunt's feet right off his legs.” It was for good reason Ceecee never shared the exact contents of the letters with their mama or she may have tried to go and get her son back herself.

“Lieutenant Dan sure knew his stuff. I felt real lucky he was my lieutenant. He was from a long, great military tradition. Somebody in his family had fought and died in every single American war. I got to see a lot of the countryside. We would take these real long walks.

And we were always looking for this guy named Charlie.”

“It wasn't always fun. Lieutenant Dan was always getting these funny feelings about a rock, or a trail, or the road, so he'd tell us to get down, shut up... so we did. Now, I don't know much about anything, but I think some of America's best young men served in this war. There was Dallas, from Phoenix, Cleveland, he was from Detroit. And Tex was... Well, I don't remember where Tex come from.” CeeCee would write back to Forrest, telling him what life was like without him, how her next degree was coming along and the little bits of gossip Forrest always enjoyed.

“The good thing about Vietnam is there was always some place to go. And there was always something to do. One day, it started raining, and it didn't quit for four months. We'd been through every kind of rain there is: Little bitty stinging rain, and big old fat rain, rain that flew in sideways. And sometimes, rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath. Shoot, it even rained at night.” Cecelia had written back a three page letter explaining monsoons and weather patterns in the simplest way she could explain without confusing her brother or making him feel dumb.

“Hey, Forrest.”

“Hey, Bubba”.

“I'm gonna lean up against you. You just lean right back against me. This way, we don't have to sleep with our heads in the mud. You know why we a good partnership, Forrest? 'Cause we be watching out for one another, like brothers and stuff.” Forrest did know how to be a brother, he just wasn’t sure if he was exactly a good one.

“Hey, Forrest, there's something I've been thinking about. I got a very important question to ask you. How would you like to go into the shrimping business with me?”

“Okay.”

“Man, I tell you what, I got it all figured out, too. So many pounds of shrimp to pay off the boat, so many pounds for gas, we can just live right on the boat. We ain't got to pay no rent. I'll be the captain, we can just work it together, split everything right down the middle. Man, I'm telling you, 50-50. And, hey, Forrest, all the shrimp you can eat.”

“That's a fine idea.”

“Bubba did have a fine idea. I even wrote Jenny and Cecelia Rose and told them all about it. I sent them letters, not every day, but almost. I told them what I was doing and asked they what they was doing, and told her how I thought about them always, and how I was looking forward to getting a letter from her just as soon as she had the time. Cecelia always wrote me back. Her letters made everyone happy, she’d tell how proud she was, what was happening at school, what she was studyin’. I'd always let her know that I was okay. Then, I'd sign each letter, "Love, Forrest Gump." Cecelia Rose always sent her love back to me.”

The truth of the matter was that Cecelia Rose had become a bright point for the men in her brother unit. Even if she’d never met them, she would ask after each one, send her love and hugs to the boys. She even sent sentiments as such to Lieutenant Dan. Forrest never noticed but, because she could tell Forrest cared for those men, especially Bubba, and despite never meeting them, she grew to care for those boys too.

[bananabraces]

first date ever tomorrow!!

hii guys so alot happened today. like alot of big changes that seem calm now but will completely change the course of my life for years to come. soo one i finally align w my username, i got braces!!! they're actually really cute i got bubblegum pink and they didn't hurt much they only put wires on my bottom row of teeth bc they're gonna be doing extraction on the top teeth so they can't string them together yet yk but it was actually pretty painless. the feeling of the metal is really uncomfortable in my mouth though like the bite blocks they had to put i can VERY MUCH feel it's not like an actual inserted thing they just put some kind of solution or like glue where my back teeth touch so that they wouldn't grind against the brackets on my teeth and break them. so overall the braces experience thus far has been an 8/10 -2 points bc of the discomfort. i'm really excited for my teeth to start shifting though bc i've always had really crappy teeth ever since my permanent ones started coming in my overbite is 10mm long and just alot else is wrong w my teeth like in 5th grade i got called toothless by the whole grade almost bc it was so bad and it was like a known joke in my class that i had no teeth. and i have never been able to smile properly bc of like my jaw and it also looks recessed and sunken in cuz my bite and ive always put my hand over my mouth when i smile or laugh bc of this, so basically what i'm saying is it's always been a struggle with me as well as my family. i'm really really excited to have straight teeth. in a way it kind of makes me feel more connected to my dad and sam bc they got braces too. idk how to explain it.

but ANYWAYS that was like an entire entry on its own but that's not all the news (please ignore how my keyboard puts apostrophes on some words and not others it's bugging me too but i can't fix it rn so whatever). i am FINALLYYYY going on a date w and getting asked out by gp tomorrow after 11 months of waiting. it's so hard to summarize all our lore and just how badly i've wanted and wished for this but just know like i've had to sit through months of him dating someone else knowing i missed my chance and had to confess knowing we'd most likely just stay as friends no matter what i said and had to accept that unsent love letters countless diary entries a spotify playlist late night calls and conversations and endless yapping to my bsf is all it would ever be. but now it's not like that. and that's not why i'm nervous btw if i haven't said i'm nervous i am but not bc of that i'm really excited to date gp and get to know him as a bf i'm just a little scared for the actual date bc we haven't talked alot recently. it's been better these last 2 days and i've sent him stuff occasionally and we have a streak buttttt that's kinda all it's been this summer. but yk we saw eachother everyday for 1 year and were hecka close so i'm also looking forward to it and i doubt it'll be THAT bad. plus we're seeing my fav movie (eva it's all yours dw i just like it alot)!!! i was coraline for halloween 2022 and went to the museum and i've watched it countless times so. i think that'll make me more comfy in a way plus then i'll have alot more to discuss w him afterwards. he said he'd pay but i'm bringing a wallet full of money anyways bc i'm atleast offering to even if he says no and even then i'll probably ask to split it or pay for the food afterwards. anyways he's really so sweet and amazing and smart and handsome and funny and i'm reallyyyy excited to see him 🤗🤗 so hopefully it'll go good i think it will. and i'm gonna ask my dad and mom and bsf for some advice bc they have an honest view and my parents have experience w dating and eva w the actual guy having been 10 yr childhood bsfs. so yeah. i'm feeling alot better but goshhh BOYFRIEND. HES GONNA BE MY BKYFRIEND!!!! im gonna walk into school and be liek i have a real life living human br with human skin and lungs and life who breaths air and is also real and here and a bf my bf. like whay.

on the same noeeeeteeee im dividing ts so it's easier to read i'm SO excited for 8th grade. my clothes and stuff going in r sooo cute and ill have a bf and im joining sports and possibly riding the bus (some dyas) so itll be really sigma. also there's alot.of.stuff only 8th graders could do at my scuool so ill be like an ALPBQHA GRRR u know. sorry that was bad but like im not even j trying to be funny out school is the timberwilves. the halls in our school are marked by saying like "___ grade pack!" like 😅😅😅😆😆😆 no!!! actualy!!!! no!!!!!

anyways that's ittt just had to drop a lil update hopefully it ACTUALLY UOLOADS THIS TIME AND JF IT DOESNT IT ATLEAST SAVES TO MY DRAFTS. tmblr fix ur site. okayy bye chat thanks formlistening 💫

[birdsinmywalls]

The air left my lungs when I saw this post I am so ready.

“SCRIPT written in bold and red letters, “Read over it, practice the lines a few times, do whatever you need to do to prepare for Friday.” She kindly smiles.” Script and porn are not two things I would associate together lol

“but Eddie was never the greatest theater kid, and the lines wouldn’t stick,” he should be fine! Being a dungeon master has a lot of improv anyway!

“Shit. Eddie must’ve lost track of time while practically hacking up a lung in his hotboxed van.” The way you write always has me laughing. You have a great sense of humor

“A fluffer, honey. Someone to jack you off and get you ready for the scene.” excuse me?!

“No need to be embarrassed though, Eddie. Pretty soon, you’ll be shoving your cock down my throat, so.” She’s so nonchalant it’s great

“Eddie moans when you finally wrap your lips around his tip is the prettiest sound you think you’ve ever heard.” Guys don’t moan enough in porn in my personal opinion

“Jesus Christ, that wasn’t in the fucking script. Half of the shit Eddie’s doing isn’t in the fucking script, and it's making your head spin.” See! I knew it! Improv king in the house.

“and maybe it’s just your hazy, blissed-out state of mind, but you think you might like Eddie.” Get him girl!

“Eddie leans forward and grabs your robe that had been pushed to the side. He smiles as he holds it open for you,” a gentleman!

“Get his number for me. And leave it in my purse, please.” WOO!!

“Woah, wait. What do you mean not the ideal task?” girl what are you saying you both are starting to fumble the convo!

“I can help you— if you’d like.” OMG if she lied about the filming and made a fake script just to fuck him im going to lose my MIND

“Little asshole chewed through the wire, and I’ve been slow to replace it. Her name is Banshee.” BANSHEEE I LOVE THE NAME

“but anybody with common sense and a properly functioning dick knows just how fucking amazing you are. End of discussion.” Eddie is so sweet but also fuck that other guy because they are like basically coworkers can we not be nasty to the people we are going to work with? Where’s the common decency

“Friends that fuck on camera and look at each other the way you two do? Sure.” Nicki knows what’s up lol

“You tilt your head to blink up at him tiredly, “Will you come with me?” Progress!!

“Probably the one he wore to Wayne's wedding two years ago; he hopes he still fits.” Good for Wayne!! Love that guy lol

“Eddie lets his hand slink around your waist, dropping his head to nuzzle into your neck, brown eyes fluttering up to hold your gaze through the glass as he kisses your skin before playfully nipping at you” I know they spend all this time together and have already slept together but this moment seems like the turning point!

“So, I take it this is why you’re only doing solo content now?” Yes but also you suck chris so 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

“You take in a deep breath, arm squeezing around Eddie’s as you answer— since this guy can’t take a fucking hint, “Yeah, actually, it is. Just didn’t feel right.” You shrug.” Nice!! If you are changing your job for a guy he’s your boyfriend bestie

Awww I love how they get together in the end! And I love how love sick Eddie is the whole fic it’s just so sweet! Excellent fic as always! I’m so happy for these two!

Lights, Camera, Acción

credit for cute lil dividers: @cafekitsune

————

18+ — MINORS DNI

pairing: eddie munson x pornstar!reader

summary: eddie is short on rent this month and needs quick cash, luckily he stumbles upon an ad for casting in an adult film and finds himself shooting a porno with you

contains: strangers to lovers trope, drug and alcohol use, mentions of smoking, awkward situations, oral (f and m receiving), p in v (unprotected — be safe pls), mentions of people being judgemental of readers line of work, mentions of anal, slightly exhibitionism, lots of smut, a sliver of mechanic!eddie, and eddie being the charming loser he's always been <3

word count: 13.5k (i am so fucking sorry omg)

-masterlist-

Eddie might be way in over his head.

Eddie’s been naked in front of groups of people before (the high school boy's locker room is a scary place to be, honestly), but never in those awful days of forced physical education was Eddie’s dick the center of everyone’s attention.

It’s weird, no doubt about it, standing at the front of a conference room with a table full of producers and writers and whatnot just… ogling Eddie’s naked frame.

“Can you lift your dick, please? So we can see your balls.”

Yeah. This is definitely going at the top of Eddie’s ‘weird things I’ve done for money’ list.

Still, Eddie reaches down and presses his dick up against his lower stomach to give his audience an unrestricted view of his balls.

Jesus.

“Okay, you can put your clothes back on.”

Honestly, Eddie wouldn’t be in this situation if it weren’t for Robert, the manager at Eddie’s job— well, old job. 

Robert had some kind of weird fucking vengeance out for Eddie. Maybe it was because Eddie came back high from, like, most of his lunch breaks, but should that really matter if Eddie still got the job done? How coherent do you have to be to organize music records by name? Not very fuckin’ much.

Robert disagreed, though, so he fired Eddie.

Robert was an asshole, though, and whenever Eddie would nicely warn him, ‘Hey, Rob, I’m gonna be out of town next Saturday,’ Robert would still fucking schedule him to close on that exact day! 

Good riddance.

Except now, Eddie’s short on rent for the month, which is why he’s found himself standing fully naked in a room full of adult filmmakers.

Eddie’s almost dropped out of this deal ten times by now. He wasn’t sure if he was keen on the idea of his bare, naked body being out for the entire world and future generations to see. But then Eddie thought about it, and, well, he’s got a pretty decent cock. It’s an average size, and it’s not weird looking or anything, and his balls don’t sag— and, like, isn’t his dick primarily the star of the show? Eddie Jr. could pass for a star, Eddie thinks, and so do the people looking at it right now. 

And he also really fucking needs the money, so. Porn it is.

Whatever.

Eddie could deal with it as long as he gets enough money to keep a roof over his head. Which reminds him— “Hey, uh, how much will I be getting paid, by the way?”

Eddie’s now fully clothed, car keys in hand, and ready to go now that he’s been dismissed, and he’s scratching the back of his neck as he waits for an answer.

One of the men at the table (Eddie thinks his name is Brian, but he’s not 100% sure) glances up at Eddie from the pile of papers he’d been sorting through, “Eight hundred for the booking and ten percent from the sales.”

Which, yeah, that covers Eddie’s rent. It also leaves a little bit of change in Eddie’s pocket, so “Sweet.” Eddie nods.

So, Eddie follows one of the assistants to her office, where she hands Eddie a file with the word SCRIPT written in bold and red letters, “Read over it, practice the lines a few times, do whatever you need to do to prepare for Friday.” She kindly smiles.

She’s sweet. Short, stout, and pretty, and she has these cute glasses that remind Eddie of a ladybug. Eddie takes the manila folder, bowing his head with a cheesy smile, “Thank you, Emily.” 

“So, will I be getting a costume? Do pornos still have those dramatic plots with, like, pirates and shit?” Eddie rambles as he cracks the folder open to take a gander.

Emily snorts, “Sure, but unfortunately, you’re not a pirate for this one,” Eddie glances at her and dramatically pouts, “You will be taking on the role of a neighbor. Pretty simple and easy, not much setup needed, but I’m sure you’ll see that when you read over the script.”

Eddie looked over the script as soon as he got in his van, and Emily was right: there’s not much setup at all. There’s a few cheesy lines, cliche porno shit that definitely gets skipped over, and then they go straight to fucking. Eddie tries to run his lines a few times, but then he fails miserably, so he ends up tossing the script in his passenger seat and making a mental note to look at it later.

How hard can it be?

Apparently pretty fucking hard.

It’s Friday, and Eddie’s a chaotic mess as he walks in through the doors of the film studio. He’d just spent the last 30 minutes in his van trying to practice his lines, but Eddie was never the greatest theater kid, and the lines wouldn’t stick, so he ended up smoking a joint to ease his nerves.

People are bustling around the room, calling out orders and setting up lights, mics, furniture— the whole mile. It’s an entire ordeal that Eddie has walked into, and for a second, Eddie forgets that he’s one of the actual stars when someone walks up to him and says, “You're the new talent?”

“Huh?”

“New talent. Are you the guy we’re filming today?”

Eddie glances around and catches a glimpse of a half-naked girl eyeing him from across the room as a lady fixes her hair for the cameraman. She’s pretty. Gorgeous, actually. Nice body and soft-looking skin that Eddie would like to sink his teeth into and leave pretty little marks.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I’m Eddie.”

“Good. You’re late.”

Shit. Eddie must’ve lost track of time while practically hacking up a lung in his hotboxed van.

The person drags Eddie to a vanity and nudges him toward the high chair, “You’ll get your hair and makeup done, then we should be rolling in about half an hour.” 

It’s jarring, really, seeing the amount of work that goes into the shitty raunchy films Eddie jacks off to, but it’s captivating nonetheless. Eddie can see the movement behind him through the vanity mirror, but he’s more focused on the pretty girl still posing for the camera. If that’s the girl Eddie will be working with, then this will be way easier than Eddie thought it would be because he’s already getting hard. Some might call it pathetic, but oh well.

“Hiya, hon! You the new talent?” A chirpy girl walks up behind Eddie, pearly white teeth and glossed lips working in tandem as she chews her gum and blows a quick bubble. She doesn’t wait for Eddie’s response as she digs her fingers into Eddie’s curly strands, tossing and gently pulling them about to see what she’s working with. 

Her name is Nicki. She’s friendly and very talkative; Eddie comes to learn, because for the majority of the time that she’s working on Eddie’s hair, her mouth is running nonstop. Eddie doesn’t mind, though; honestly, it helps to take his mind off of whatever the fuck he’s gotten himself into.

Emily, the assistant from earlier, walks up to the vanity, her cute ladybug glasses slipping down her nose as she steps into Eddie’s view— and Eddie is happy to see a familiar and kind face. “Will you be needing a fluffer?”

Eddie blinks, eyes fluttering when the hairstylist dusts his bangs over his lashes, “Uh— a what now?”

Nicki loudly pops her gum as she shakes a can of hairspray, “A fluffer, honey. Someone to jack you off and get you ready for the scene.” 

Eddie’s eyes widened for a split second, and he made the mistake of glancing over at the girl who was still modeling across the room. Her tits are out now, and they’re perfect, and she catches Eddie’s eyes for the second time, and it makes his already stiffened cock stir within his pants.

Eddie shakes his head as he looks back at Emily, his voice higher when he responds, “No, I uh… I think I’m good.”

Which, duh. Eddie's dick is practically breaking the seams of his jeans because of the pretty girl, and it’s only getting worse because now she’s walking toward him dressed in a white robe. “You must be Eddie.”

Eddie’s surprised you know his name, but then he figures, obviously, you must know his name given the fact that you’re about to let him swing his dick near you. “That’s me,” Eddie smiles, “You must be… I’m sorry nobody’s told me anything.” He awkwardly laughs.

You nod with a shrug and tell him your name, “Is this your first time filming?” You ask.

Eddie nods, “Is it that obvious?” He nervously asks. You shrug, “Most guys in the industry need more than a pair of tits to get that hard.” You nod towards Eddie’s crotch— and oh god. How embarrassing! She knows you were checking her out!

“No need to be embarrassed though, Eddie. Pretty soon, you’ll be shoving your cock down my throat, so.”

Eddie’s cock may have gotten harder from those words alone.

“A rookie? Seriously, Don?”

Your makeup is being done, so you don’t see how your manager rolls her eyes at you. “When I said I wanted someone fresh, I didn’t mean never-been-under-the-camera fresh.” 

The makeup artist finishes with your touch-ups, and you take the opportunity to turn to Don and glare at her, “He doesn’t know what he’s doing, Don.”

The older lady waves a dismissive hand, “He’ll do just fine, babe,” she deadpans. You shake your head, turning to look at the man of the hour. He’s attractive; you’ll give him that. Tall, pretty curly hair, sweet brown eyes, a panty-dropping voice. Sure, he’s attractive, okay. But he’s got no clue how to do this type of thing. Clearly— I mean, you’re literally watching him gaze down at the dildos that have been lined up for you as if he’s never seen one in his life— which you doubt. If he knew how to find an adult filmmaking studio, then he’s definitely seen some fucking dildos.

You suppress a laugh when he accidentally drops a glass dildo, turning back to your manager as you ignore his chorus of apologies to the staff, “My case in point.”

Don fails to hold back a laugh, “So he’s a little off the walls,” she shrugs, “He’s cute though. And his dick is nice. Trust me.”

And, well, she’s not wrong.

Don’s never been one to lie without reason, so unfortunately, Eddie’s cock is nice. Pretty, even. Which is weird because after some time being in this industry, the thrill of a nice-looking cock has gotten lost on you because they practically all look the same— just different shades of colors, really.

But Eddie’s cock is nice in the sense that it’s real. He’s not shot up with steroids to make it overly veiny and big or cleanly shaved or any of that superficial camera-ready shit. No, Eddie is natural. He’s got neatly trimmed curly hairs across his pelvis that smell like his body wash when you nuzzle your nose against it, and he’s big enough to wrap your hand around, but you know the second he pushes inside of you, it will be a nice stretch. He’s cut, and he has a slight curve to the left, and he’s so sensitive his cock jumps when you tap the pearly white drop that leaks from his tip. You giggle, shuffling forward on your knees as you stroke him.

You’re already done with the opening scene, finally. Eddie couldn’t remember any of his lines, so it took a lot longer than it should’ve, but you think it was worth it either way because the way Eddie moans when you finally wrap your lips around his tip is the prettiest sound you think you’ve ever heard.

“F-fuck,” He quietly curses, hips shifting as you swallow more of him. He sinks a slightly shaking hand into your hair, gently cupping your head as you work your mouth over him. Your eyes flutter to gaze up at him, and your stomach flutters at the cocky grin he gives you. “You’ve got such a good little mouth on you, sweetheart. Gonna let me fuck it?”

You hum and nod as best as you can with his cock in your mouth, and he hums, “Open up for me, baby.”

You shift on your knees, finding a comfortable position for the action before blinking up at Eddie, indicating you’re ready. Eddie’s hands are steady and certain as he cups both sides of your head, holding you still as he draws his cock out once before slowly thrusting in until your throat tightens around his tip.

He fills your mouth so perfectly, just enough to where you won’t get bored, but you also won’t get an overly aching jaw, and you can’t wait to feel him inside you. Can’t wait to feel how his cock twitches when he first nestles deep in your walls or how much better the sounds he makes will be.

It’s a nice feeling, having Eddie fuck your mouth, and you usually don’t care much for shots like this because most of the time, it’s either underwhelming or overwhelming, but Eddie fucks your throat in a sense that’s dirty yet so caring. He’s spewing out filthy praises, and you're drooling onto his balls, but he’s looking at you with these soft brown eyes and caressing you so gently you might quiver. Fuck, you really wanted to hate him.

Behind the camera, the director makes a motion for you to cut to the next action, but since your back is to them, Eddie is the one that sees it and gently coaxes you off from his cock, cooing when you let out the smallest whine that only he can hear. He smiles, thumb running beneath your swollen lip to catch the strings of spit and cum, “What? You liked having me down your throat, sweet girl?”

You mewl, pressing your chin into his palm as you nod.

"Yeah. Want it, please?" You whisper. God, you didn’t expect to be fucked out within the first scene. "Aw, maybe next time, princess. You can keep me warm as long as you'd like."

It’s almost embarrassing, how much you like the sound of that and how it makes your tummy flip, but you don’t have much time to think about it because Eddie’s ushering you up from the floor to climb onto the couch and straddle his lap. 

You’re both bare now, and when Eddie had first taken his shirt off, you wanted nothing more than to run your hands down his graffitied chest, but you were too busy sinking to your knees. But now you have the chance, and boy, do you fucking take it.

You marvel as you coast your hands across Eddie’s body, fingertips gliding through fields of inked stories and vast skin. His breath hitches when you graze over his nipples, and his hips shift beneath you, wet cock slipping against your sticky folds. You whimper, grinding down onto him, and he curses as he grabs ahold of your hips. “Y’like them?” He sweetly asks, referring to his tattoos.

"Yeah," you nod, grinding down harder to have his cock nestled between your folds, his ruddy tip nudging your clit. “I can tell you all about them if you want.”

You giggle at his timing, but before you can respond, a director speaks up from the side, “Less talking, please.”

Eddie glances over your shoulder and salutes the man, “Roger that, sir.”

You can’t help but snort at his actions, but you’re quickly hushed when Eddie reaches down to paint his cock between your folds before lining himself up, “Go ahead and sit on it, baby.” He whispers.

You listen, nuzzling your face against his shoulder as you wriggle yourself down the length of his cock.

And god, you love being fucking right. The stretch is so good, better than you had imagined it to be, and you can’t help the high-pitched moan that slips from your lips when Eddie thrusts up into you. 

"O-oh. Oh fuck," You whimper. You’re practically boneless as Eddie fucks you, your entire body just draped over him as his hands dig into your ass to help bounce you on his cock. “Jesus fucking— you feel so good,” He pants, and you mewl, cunt clenching around his cock as he drills up into you. “You gonna cum for me, hm? Be my best girl and cum for me. I know you’ll sound so pretty.” He whispers.

Before you know it, you’re moaning out and writhing in Eddie’s hold, juices dripping down his cock and forming a sticky mess in the patch of curls at his base as you cum.

“Let’s have a shot from the back.” 

Your body feels weightless as you and Eddie change positions so you’re on all fours. You’re blinking through a hazy fog, and it feels so good. Eddie’s hands send chills up your spine as they grip your waist and tug you towards him. 

“Oh, baby, you’re shaking,” Eddie hums, running his hands over the fat of your ass, thumbs digging into the skin to spread you open. You’re so wet you can hear the sticky noise of your folds parting, and Eddie groans as he watches your pussy clench around nothing. “You open up so well for me, sweet girl.” 

Jesus.

You don’t get much of a warning before you feel Eddie lapping and sucking at your cunt, devouring you until you’re nothing but a mess of moans and quivering limbs.

Jesus Christ, that wasn’t in the fucking script. Half of the shit Eddie’s doing isn’t in the fucking script, and it's making your head spin.

God, who is this man?

You whimper his name, reaching a shaky hand back to grapple at his hair, and Eddie nuzzles his face deeper into your cunt, nose nudging your ass in a way that makes your toes curl. He’s good. He’s really good, you’ll give him that.

You and Eddie go at it for about an hour, switching positions and pausing every now and then to get a good shot of your cunt wrapped around Eddie’s cock, or Eddie’s tongue lapping over your clit or tits.

And it's fun doing this with Eddie.

Eddie is like a breath of fresh air. Most guys in this industry are stuck up and make things annoyingly serious, and most girls are either bitchy or just want to get it over with, which you don’t blame them for. 

But Eddie makes things feel so normal— like you’re just two best friends getting filmed having sex— because he keeps whispering tiny jokes to make you giggle. He tells you how pretty you sound and look, and he’s so incredibly clueless because he keeps leaning in and asking things like, “Is this, like, a good angle for the camera?” and “Should I maybe kiss you more?” and “Is it okay if I stop fucking you for a second? Because I’m about to blow.”

And all you can do is breathlessly moan and nod because he’s plunging himself so deep into you that it almost hurts, but it’s so good.

You’re so fucked out you barely even register Eddie’s words when he tells you he’s about to cum, but your body immediately reacts when he pats your hip, indicating for you to get ready.

You scramble down from the couch, limbs weighted from pleasure as you settle on your knees, batting your lashes up at Eddie as he towers over you, stroking his wet cock. Eddie rests a hand on your head, fingers grasping your hair to keep you still as he gazes down at you. You’re impatient, so you can’t help but let yourself sneakily lick the tip of his cock, and he grins, “It’s coming, precious girl. Stick your tongue out for me.”

You shuffle closer, sticking your tongue out as you eagerly await the taste of Eddie on your tongue— and when you get it, god, you never want it to stop. Everything about it is perfect: the way his face twists up, the way he tastes, the pretty moans he lets out. You want it on repeat.

You might buy this film just to relive it.

You take every last drop Eddie has to give you with a happy hum; a little bit catches your lip, and Eddie swipes it with his thumb before bringing it to his mouth and suckling. You whine, frowning and causing Eddie to laugh, “You got most of it, sweetheart. Can’t be too greedy, can you?”

It’s like you’re both in your own world. Only talking to each other and enjoying each other's bodies because Eddie just… it’s weird, but he makes the room go away. He makes things feel less performative— and maybe it’s just your hazy, blissed-out state of mind, but you think you might like Eddie.

You’re snapped from your trance when the director yells cut, and then everyone’s springing into action to tear down the set because another crew will be using it next. Eddie helps you stand on your wobbly legs, “You alright?”

You nod, “Great. You did good, by the way.”

Eddie leans forward and grabs your robe that had been pushed to the side. He smiles as he holds it open for you, “Thank you. You did pretty awesome yourself.” He responds as you slink your arms through the sleeves.

You turn to Eddie as you close your robe and tie it shut. Your assistant, Emily, hands Eddie a robe for himself, and he thanks her, curtly bowing his head as he grabs the plush article. “So,” Eddie starts as he slips on the robe. You both start walking towards the dressing rooms as he speaks, “Think I could make a career for myself here?” He asks. 

You halt at that, turning to Eddie with a confused look, “Is that… is that not why you’re here?” You ask.

Eddie shakes his head as he ties his robe, “Nah, I got fired from my job. Needed some cash for rent this month.” He explains.

Is it selfish to say you’re disappointed to hear this? If Eddie had been wanting to join this industry, you would’ve had the opportunity to work with him again. But maybe it’s more selfish to say you’re happy he isn’t joining this industry. Eddie becoming an adult film star would mean half of the time, he’d be fucking other people, and unfortunately, that idea alone makes your gut twist with jealousy.

You nod, pursing your lips as you fiddle with your fingers, “Well… would you be interested in this type of thing?” You try your best to sound casual about it, and you think it works because Eddie only shrugs again with a short hum, “I don’t know. Wouldn’t be opposed to it, I guess.”

Before you can respond, Emily calls your name, “Don needs to speak with you in the other room about your next shoot.”

You turn back to Eddie and try to commit his pretty brown eyes to memory, “I guess I’ll see you around, Eddie.” You smile. Eddie smiles back and does somewhat of a dramatic bow, and you snort as you walk off.

You glance over your shoulder as you walk with Emily.

“Could you do me a favor?” You ask her. Emily nods, and you take one last glance at Eddie before he disappears into the dressing room. 

“Get his number for me. And leave it in my purse, please.”

A couple of weeks have passed since Eddie made his big debut in the film world.

Eddie made a pretty penny from that film, enough to pay his rent and have some play money on the side. Thankfully, Eddie doesn’t have to scramble for cash this month again because he got a job at the mechanic shop downtown. It’s a lot of labor and a lot of hours, but the pay is good, and nobody gives a shit if Eddie comes back from lunch smelling like a dispensary, so.

Suck that, Robert.

However, Eddie’s still thoroughly surprised to see you sitting in the shop office when he returns from a quick smoke break. “Woah, funny seeing you here. Car problems?” He questions. Eddie tries not to think about the fact that he’s seen you completely bare before. Tries not to think of how he’d spent over an hour in your guts last month or how you swallowed his load like it was nothing. Eddie fails miserably.

You shake your head as you stand up from the leather couch in the office, grabbing your purse as Eddie walks closer to you, “No, actually, Lola’s doing great.”

Eddie cocks his head, “Lola?”

You nod, “My car.” You gesture out towards the window where your car is parked. Eddie makes an understanding noise as he nods. 

“I was actually hoping to talk to you.” 

Eddie pauses at that, confusion settling over his body as he looks at you. You’re beautiful, kind, soft eyes with soft, pretty lips that Eddie thinks about kissing when he goes to bed. Eddie points to himself with raised eyebrows, “Me?”

You nod again, “Yeah, about like… my job and stuff.”

Oh.

Ohhhh.

“Oh, shit, yeah, um,” Eddie glances around the office and nods, “Yeah, we can step out and talk, like, in my van, maybe?” He offers. Not because he’s, like, ashamed to talk about porn or something, most people watch it! But a few of the guys that work here are downright dipshits, and Eddie won’t hesitate to punch one of them if they say some sly shit about you or your job. And, well, Eddie would like to keep his job, so.

You don’t take offense to it, though; you just nod with your pretty smile and tell Eddie to lead the way.

Eddie’s van smells like weed, cologne, and a hint of whatever he had for lunch.

“Sorry,” Eddie mumbles as he clears off the passenger seat that’s filled with bottles of different drinks, rolling papers, food wrappers, and things of the like. “She’s seen better days.” 

You smile nonetheless, thanking him when he steps away and holds the door open for you. You hop into the seat, glancing around as Eddie shuts your door and jogs to the driver's seat.

He gets in with a heavy sigh, hair unruly from the wind, brown eyes wide and excited when he looks at you. “Hey.” He huffs with a smile, and there’s a piece of hair in Eddie’s bangs that’s sticking straight up. “Hey.” You giggle, reaching out to fix the rebellious strand. Eddie softly thanks you, and you swear you see a hint of pink dust across his cheeks.

He shifts in his seat, rubbing his hands against his thighs as he sighs again, “So… what’s up?”

God, he’s so cute. So incredibly weird and awkward and cute. He looks handsome in his navy blue coveralls, grease stains smeared across his torso, and some sneaky smudges on his neck. “You’re very hard to get ahold of, you know?” You tease.

Eddie’s face twists in confusion, “Huh?”

You shrug, distracting yourself by poking around at his dashboard, sifting through the CDs and tapes he has lying about. Eddie doesn’t stop you; he only watches, and you give him a cheeky smile. “My assistant got your number, right? But then you, like, never answered my calls.” You shrug as you flip through more of his things. You hear Eddie mumble something about needing a new cord for his home phone before he asks louder, " So, how’d you find me?”

God, he must think you’re a stalker or something. You didn’t really think that through, honestly.

You hum, “Just asked around a bit. You’re a bit of a hot commodity around here, by the way. Heard you started a cult? What’s that about?” 

Eddie’s eyes widen at your words, and you laugh, “Oh god. Jesus, no, I didn’t start a cult. I just,” he groans as he pinches the bridge of his nose, “I was just weird in high school.”

“You’re still weird.”

Eddie’s face falters at your words, but you smile as you add, “I like it.”

Eddie blushes again, but he turns to look away this time, and you think he’s the cutest thing you’ve ever set your eyes upon. He turns back to you with a shy grin, “Did you come here just to flirt with me?” He teases, wrapping a strand of his hair around his finger to twirl in a shy manner. “Maybe… but I also have a question.” You respond.

Eddie nods, “Shoot.”

You take a deep breath as you shift in your seat, “Well, uh, I wanted to ask if you maybe…” You glance at Eddie, who's expectantly awaiting your question, and your stomach twists with nerves. Why are you so nervous to ask Eddie for something you’ve already done before?

“Well, I’m doing a shoot tomorrow,” you finally begin, “And I just found out the guy they paired me with is, like, a total asshole— I’ve worked with him before, he’s just… awful,” You explain. “So, I was just… I don’t know; I was just wondering— hoping— you’d be up for it, maybe? To take the guy's place, I mean.”

You finish rambling and glance at Eddie as his eyes widen, “Oh, um. Like— like, film with you again?”

Eddie could leap for joy right now.

Not only are you, like, the cutest, prettiest, kindest fucking human being to ever grace this earth, but you’re sitting in Eddie’s van, chewing on your lip and asking Eddie to fuck you for the cameras again.

Eddie must’ve done something incredibly right in his past life.

“Oh!” Eddie starts, “ Um… yeah, I’d love to!” What? Weird, take that back. “No, I mean, like, not in a weird way. I just— I’d rather not let the asshole do it if I can do it.”

God, could Eddie sound any more pathetic?

Still, despite how dumb Eddie sounds, you smile and clasp your hands together, “Oh, are you sure? I know it’s last minute, and it’s not really the ideal task—” 

“Woah, wait. What do you mean not the ideal task?” 

Because literally, what do you mean? How could that not be the ideal task? And who made you think that fucking you isn’t the ideal task? If it’s that asshole you were supposed to work with, then Eddie has a few colorful things to say about and to him.

You shrug, fiddling with your fingers in your lap, “Nothing, I just know my job isn’t… you know, traditional or whatever. And you had only done it that one time because you needed it, so I get it if you’re, like, not in the mood to fuck on camera for a bunch of random people.” You ramble. Which, uh, no. You could not be further from the truth. Eddie would love to fuck you on camera for a bunch of random people. Hell, Eddie would love to fuck you under any consensual circumstance, if he’s being honest, so. Yeah, he’s pretty excited.

“No,” Eddie shakes his head, “No, I— I want to, really, I do.” Eddie nods.

Your unsure frown spreads into the prettiest smile before you reach across the center console to pull Eddie into the most bone-crushing, you-scented, chest-warming hug Eddie’s ever been given as you spew out a chorus of thank yous.

“I brought a copy of the script for you to look over so you’re not totally confused,” Eddie watches as you pull back to reach into your bag and pull out a manilla folder. “I usually like to color coordinate my scripts, so I did it for you too. The pink is me, and the red is you, and the specific actions they want us to do are in blue.” You point out. And Eddie thinks he might kiss you right now— you’re so fucking cute!

“Wow, thanks, um… I wish I were, like… good with these types of things, but I think you saw how majestic I am with scripts.” Eddie huffs out a laugh as he scratches the back of his neck. You smile, “I can help you— if you’d like.”

Oh, you’re trying to kill Eddie at this rate.

Eddie nods either way, even though he’s six feet underground and knocking at the fiery gates. “I would love that, actually. I finish work in about three hours if you’re free.”

Eddie definitely broke a handful of laws while driving home.

Since you offered to help Eddie with his lines, you both decided to meet at Eddie’s place. He gave you his address, told you how to get into the complex, and said see you later. Now, Eddie is ecstatic to see you, obviously, but Eddie can’t remember if his home looked normal or like a Walmart clearance aisle after black Friday, so he ran through multiple stop signs and red lights to get home before you showed up so he could clear things up.

He’s hustling through his apartment like a madman, picking up strewn clothes and cat toys before speeding through the few dishes he had in his sink. Honestly, Eddie’s apartment has seen worse days, so there’s not much cleaning he has to do, but he’s still stressed when he hears a knock on the door. 

Eddie doesn’t even like candles, but he lit one just in case there’s a smell he’s grown used to lingering about. Eddie just doesn’t want you to think he’s a slob. Because he isn’t. He just has an orchestrated chaotic lifestyle.

Eddie couldn’t be happier when he opened his door because there you were, beaming with a smile and a bag of takeout, and Eddie thought it wasn’t normal to be this soft for someone you’d basically just met.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” Eddie dramatically bows with an extended hand to show the entrance of his small, homey apartment. You smile as you walk in, taking in your surroundings.

It’s nothing extraordinary, honestly. Eddie’s home is really just vomit of everything Eddie likes: favorite colors, favorite movies, favorite game characters, etc. It’s like Eddie’s brain exploded and painted itself all over the place. Eddie had a girlfriend many moons ago, and she changed things around to become more coordinated, so now it’s less of a shit show and more of an abstract museum sort of thing.

Whatever. Doesn’t matter anyway because you’re gasping and picking up the little roommate Eddie has. 

“Who’s this?” You coo at the little creature. You’re looking down at the furball as you scratch behind her ear, “That,” Eddie sighs, “Is the reason why I didn’t get your calls.”

You look up at Eddie, confusion written across your face. Eddie points across the room to the wall where his home phone hangs, except the wire is broken. “Little asshole chewed through the wire, and I’ve been slow to replace it. Her name is Banshee.”

The cat meows at the mention of her name, wide eyes blinking up at Eddie as you coddle her. She’s a fluffy cat with a black coat decorated with two white spots: one on her back and the other just behind her ear.

You hum, “So technically,” You drag, “It’s your fault.” You tease. You coo as you press your cheek to the tiny kitten, gazing up at Eddie with these soft eyes, “I don’t think you can blame this cutie for your laziness.” 

Eddie rolls his eyes, wills away whatever power he has to not kiss you, and gently takes the takeout bag from your hands so you have less to carry. “Fine then. Ask her what happened to the laces of my work shoes, too, since she’s so innocent.”

Eddie’s home is so… Eddie.

He’s got music and horror movie posters framed along his walls, cute little scary figurines randomly placed within his bookshelves, and there’s an overall smell of Eddie’s musk and the sandalwood candle he has burning. It’s cozy, a nice space for one person who enjoys their alone time, and he let you choose a record to play from his extensive collection, and he has the world's cutest little cat, so it’s safe to say you could spend an eternity in Eddie’s world.

“Shit, that wasn’t my line,” Eddie stresses. You smile as Eddie tosses the packet onto his coffee table and falls back onto the couch, “We’re wasting our time here, princess. I dropped out of theater for a reason.” He grumbles.

You sigh, tilting your head against the couch cushion as you gaze at Eddie, “You’re thinking too hard about it.” You say. “It’s a porno, not a Grammy-nominated film.” You point out.

Eddie snorts before giving a short shrug, “For the record, I think you could land a Grammy, sweetheart.” 

You roll your eyes, “Yeah, right. You don’t need to suck up to me, Eddie, you’re already gonna fuck me tomorrow.” You jokingly say.

Eddie waves you off and shifts into a more comfortable position. “So,” He starts, “What’s the asshole guy's deal?” 

Banshee has hopped onto the couch and made her way into your lap, tiny paws kneading the material of your jeans as she settles. You gently pet her as you glance at Eddie and shrug, “Not sure, he’s just a total dick,” You grumble. “I worked with him once last year, and he, like, told me I wasn’t the best or whatever— which, okay, I can totally understand,” You ramble, “I don’t think I’m, like, some sex god. I don’t expect to be everyone or anyone’s best fuck, but still! It just… it didn’t make me feel good, the way he said it.” You windedly explain. You distract yourself with the cute animal in your lap as you finish your explanation, “So, I asked my manager never to pair us again, but—” You shrug.

Next to you, Eddie shifts once more and scoffs. “He’s a fucking shitfaced liar, princess.”

You snort, playfully rolling your eyes, “Eddie—” “No, I’m serious. He’s a liar. Anybody who even gets the chance to touch you is a lucky fucker, okay? If anything, he probably begged your manager to let him work with you again.”

“You’re just saying that. I don’t need you to try and make me feel better, and it was so long ago anyway.” “Yeah, but that’s the thing, I’m not.”

You frown as you gaze over at Eddie, watching as he sits straight and looks at you with a serious gaze in his eyes. “I don’t know what’s up with that guy, maybe he was dropped as a baby too many times, but anybody with common sense and a properly functioning dick knows just how fucking amazing you are. End of discussion.”

And well, it’s pathetic how your chest warms at his words, but it does. And as Eddie goes on to ramble about his hectic week at work, you can’t help but let your mind spin with Eddie’s kind words until nothing is in your mind but the echoes of Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.

Not many times has Eddie woken up with a girl in his home. Well, at least not a girl that he’s actually liked for more than a one-night stand or a shortly-lived fling.

After running the script for the last time, Eddie suggested putting on a movie and digging into the takeout you’d brought. The meal was delicious, and the movie you’d landed on was hilarious, but it’s hard to keep your eyes open on a full stomach, so when Eddie felt your head drop onto his shoulder, he couldn’t help but let his body sink into the couch and fall asleep too.

You’d woken up about an hour later and tried to make your escape quietly, but Eddie insisted you shouldn’t drive in such a sleepy state, so he let you make yourself comfy in his bed. Banshee, the little traitor, trotted right behind you and left Eddie on the couch to snuggle up beside you for the night.

You’re cute in the morning, Eddie thinks. You have an adorable little pout, and you yawn about 80 times until you’ve had a sip of coffee. 

It takes nearly a lifetime to drag you away from Banshee so you and Eddie can head to the studio because you adore the little asshole, and Banshee loves anything that’ll give her the time of day. You make Eddie promise to let you see her again, though, so you sadly say goodbye with a soft peck to the fluffy area between her eyes and let Eddie drag you to his van.

The car ride is nice; Eddie lets you mess around with the contents of his van and go through the stack of CDs he’s compiled over the years. You land on one of Eddie’s favorites, an old mixtape Wayne made in college that Eddie spent most of his high school blaring loud enough to blow out a speaker.

Today, you’re shooting in a house— a nice one that Eddie could only conjure up in his dreams—but he doesn’t have much time to dwell on it because he’s being dragged over to makeup and hair as soon as he steps in.

“You thinking of joining the industry?” Nicki asks as she works a nice-smelling mousse into Eddie’s hair.

Eddie had been busy watching you talk to one of the producers, but he finds the strength to tear his eyes away and gaze at Nicki through the vanity mirror. “No, not exactly. Just… doing a favor for a friend, I guess.”

Nicki raises an eyebrow, “A friend? Don’t act like I didn’t see you two come in together.”

Eddie’s face warms at that, the tips of his ears turning red as he stutters, “Huh?” 

Nicki looks at Eddie with a ‘Don’t bullshit me’ look.

“I mean, like, yeah, we had breakfast together–” “Mhm.”

Eddie huffs out a gentle laugh, “No, really, we’re friends.”

“Friends that fuck on camera and look at each other the way you two do? Sure.”

Eddie doesn’t ask what Nicki means by that because— well, he knows what Nicki means by that. He’s caught himself looking at you like you put the stars in the sky one too many times, and it’s almost embarrassing. Almost.

But can you blame Eddie? Can you really blame him when you’re the prettiest girl he’s ever seen, the softest smile, the greatest laugh, and the sweetest personality? It’s not Eddie’s fault that you’re perfect.

Eddie just thinks you’re neat. 

He thinks you’re amazing, actually, and it’s hard to remember his fucking lines when you’re standing under a steaming shower, wet body glistening and pebbled nipples practically begging for his mouth.

He’s butchering the script, that’s for sure, but he figures it’s not too bad since nobody’s corrected him. 

The scene starts with you taking a shower and Eddie being a peeping tom, which ultimately leads to Eddie sinking to his knees and licking into you until you’re a quivering, sticky mess on his tongue. Eddie would spend forever on his knees, between your legs, if he could because you taste heavenly and sound better than any song Eddie’s ever listened to, and that says something.

Your fingers thread through the wet strands of Eddie’s hair, and Eddie rapidly blinks when he gazes up at you, only to get an eyeful of his wispy bangs. You smile, petting back his bangs so he can see, and he hums, nudging his face further against you, his tongue teasing more, fingers curling deeper.

It doesn’t take long to make you cum, and the second you do, Eddie is standing up, shutting off the shower, and ushering you out into the expansive main bathroom. It’s almost as if it’s just Eddie and you in the room. No cameras, no directors or producers, or that weird pervy lighting guy that compliments you way too fucking much for Eddie’s liking. It’s just you and Eddie.

“Let’s do an over-the-counter shot next.”

Fuck. It’s not just you two, actually.

What a buzz kill.

Either way, Eddie finds himself pressing your wet, naked waist down against the sink, smiling when you squeal at the cold marble touching your skin. “Stick your ass out, baby, let me see that gorgeous ass.” 

You mewl as you follow Eddie’s instructions, tipping your hips back to present yourself to him and the cameras. You’re dripping. Swollen and wet and throbbing, and Eddie— god, Eddie feels like a fucking animal.

“Got such a pretty pussy, honey. All wet and ready for me, hm?” He teases, gently running his fingers through the sticky arousal between your legs. You shakily breathe as you nod your head, “Yeah. All for you. Please.”

Eddie steps forward, grabbing his cock and painting it between your swollen lips as he hooks his other arm across your shoulders, pulling you back to press against his chest. He presses a wet kiss to the skin of your cheek in front of your ear, voice dry and needy as he whispers in your ear, “You’re so fuckin’ pretty,” His eyes catch yours in the mirror as you keen. “Ask me to fuck you.”

You whimper out loud, wriggling your hips back into his as your hands grip the counter, “P-please fuck me. Please. Need it so bad, want your cock so bad I— o-oh.”

The slide to home base is fucking otherworldly. It was life-changing the first time, and it’s life-changing now, and if Eddie ever gets the chance to fuck you again, he knows it’ll be life-changing then.

You’re so warm, and you're sucking Eddie’s cock in so nicely, so sinfully, that Eddie almost makes a deal with the devil right then and there. Your chest is heaving by the time Eddie’s pelvis presses to your bum, his cock nestled deep into your pulsing cunt. Eddie leans forward, pressing his chest against your back as he loops an arm around your shoulders, holding you tight to him as he gives one slow thrust. He coos when your eyes flutter shut, and your jaw drops, a shaky hand reaching up to sink your nails into Eddie’s forearm.

“S-so deep,” You slur, wriggling your hips back against Eddie.

Eddie grunts, “Fuck. You feel so good, baby. Always so warm and ready for me, hm?” Eddie’s lips are wet against your jaw as he whispers into your ear, and you nod with a mewl.

Eddie works up the pace relatively fast in favor of the cameras, and at some point, he reaches down to grip the thick of your thigh and haul your leg up to rest on the counter so you’re spread open even more. The angle makes it easier for him to catch your spot, and it’s better for the camera to capture the sight of your soaking pussy wrapped around Eddie’s cock, dribbling onto both of your thighs and creating a sticky ring of arousal at the base of Eddie’s dick.

Eddie’s hand is wrapped around your throat when you begin twitching around him, mumbling promises of your climax, and Eddie doesn’t waste time in sinking his hand between your legs to help you reach the edge quicker. Your moans fall silent, eyes squeezed shut, and jaw dropped wide open as Eddie fucks you through your orgasm— and fuck, you feel so good. Squeezing and pulsing and dripping around Eddie’s thighs, throat vibrating beneath his palm when air comes back to you.

“There we go, baby. Get it all out, push it out, honey.” Eddie encourages you.

You’re shaking, trembling like a leaf in Eddie’s arms, and Eddie wants to spend forever tucked into your pussy, warm skin sticky against him, pretty little whines and mewls coating his brain in this cutesy pink fog that makes him want to fucking marry you.

Get you a home, give you his babies, maybe even get you a fucking dog and just live happily goddamn ever.

Jesus, Eddie’s a goner.

“F-fuck, I’m gonna cum.”

Eddie pulls out last second, jerking himself off between your cute ass cheeks until he’s spurting white ropes of cum up your back.

Eddie, ever the considerate man he is, pushes your hair out of the way to avoid getting any of his sticky release in it. You’re breathing heavily, pretty eyes glazed over as you glance back at Eddie, a shy glint in your eyes at the sight of your skin painted in his cum.

Eddie’s obsessed with you now, no doubt.

His ringed fingers slide through the sticky mess on your skin as he grips your ass cheeks, gently spreading them apart and humming when you arch your back, proudly swaying your ass in front of him. The sight makes Eddie dizzy; pools of cum dripping down your back to slink its way through your ass and over your sticky folds. “You’ve got such a cute little hole, baby.” Eddie compliments, taking his thumb and smearing his cum over the puckered muscle, softly laughing when you whine. 

He lightly slaps your ass then, reaching forward to gently grasp your face with his messy hands and pull you back to press a firm kiss over your lips. His thumb, the one that had smeared his cum over your tight hole, sinks between your moving lips, pushing into your mouth and onto your tongue as he whispers a small command to taste it, and you mewl.

“So good, princess—”

“Cut!”

You both jolt at the booming voice, getting rudely snapped out of the daze you’d fallen into. 

These fucking cameras.

You smile, dropping your cheek onto your shoulder as you bat your eyelashes up at Eddie from over your shoulder, “You’re a natural, Eddie, you know that?”

Eddie huffs a laugh, thanking the assistant when they bring you towels and robes.

“Well,” He breathes as he slinks the robe over his shoulders, watching as you do the same, “I’ve got the best coach.” He winks.

Now that you and Eddie have done two films together and basically had a sleepover, you’re practically inseparable.

It’s funny, really. Eddie thought maybe the fact that you’ve seen each other bare and had sex on camera might hinder the aspect of any friendly connection because, well, Eddie’s never done this before! He’s not a pornstar, so he’s not sure how the friendship/relationship aspect of it works, but luckily, it’s easier than most normal friendships Eddie’s had before.

You talk almost every night over the phone (Eddie finally fixed the wire), going over one another’s day and laughing at embarrassing or funny moments. You go on for hours until either one of you falls asleep, and it’s usually you since Eddie has the sleep schedule of a newborn baby who doesn’t know the difference between night and day. All the better for him, though, because he gets to poke fun at you the next day and tease you about how you sometimes snore.

And Eddie loves listening to you talk— could spend hours cuddled up with Banshee as he listens to you ramble on about whatever new show you’re watching or the latest gossip at work. It’s Eddie’s favorite part of his day, talking to you, so he kicks himself when he realizes he forgot to call you last night.

He’s getting ready for bed when he remembers, and he practically sprints to his phone on his nightstand and dials your number in less than thirty seconds. It takes you three rings to answer, and Eddie smiles at the sound of your voice, “Hello?”

“Hi, princess,” Eddie responds.

You gasp, “Eddie, hi! Oh, I was just about to call you! Where have you been?” You ask. Eddie groans, dropping back onto his mattress with spread arms. “Working. I’m so sorry I forgot to call. I just started a new schedule at the shop, and the hours are awful.”

Eddie can hear your frown when you respond, “Bummer. I’ve got a way to cheer you up, though.”

Eddie’s eyes are closed, and sleep is so heavy in his bones he feels like he’s sinking through the mattress, but he smiles as if it’s second nature when he responds, “Hit me.”

You cheer, and Eddie hears the rustling of grocery bags on your end as you speak, “My manager gave me a shit ton of holiday chocolates she had left over, and well, I was wondering if you’d like to drown yourself in sugar with me?” 

Eddie softly laughs, folding his arm to rest his hand on his tummy as he nods, forgetting you can’t see. “You didn’t even have to ask.”

The drive from your flat to Eddie’s is typically around twenty minutes, but with the benefit of it being nearly midnight and most normal people being in bed by now, you’re knocking on Eddie’s door in just a little under twelve minutes. 

Eddie opens the door to let you in and immediately just wants to kiss you. You’re dressed in an oversized sweatshirt, loose pajama pants with cute little ducks printed on them, and fluffy house slippers. You grin up at Eddie as you lift a bag full of candy, “I come bearing gifts!”

Eddie had been exhausted all day, but now that he’s had two handfuls of sugary treats, he’s ready to run a fucking marathon.

He’s sucking on a sour apple jawbreaker and watching some shitty romcom with Banshee curled in his lap when he feels your head softly drop onto his shoulder. He glances down at you and sees the soft flutter of your eyes, “Are you tired? You can take my bed.” He offers.

You tilt your head to blink up at him tiredly, “Will you come with me?”

And well, Eddie was originally going to take the couch, but you’re looking up at him with these cute, bleary eyes, and Eddie can’t even imagine saying no. So, he shuts his TV off, makes a mental note to clean up the candy wrappers sometime tomorrow, and lets you drag him off to his room.

Banshee decided to take advantage of the new space on the couch and sprawl out, so Eddie doesn’t have to worry about asking if you’re okay with her cuddling up on his bed like she usually does. 

Eddie doesn’t do this very often— sleep with other people in his bed, he means. And sure, he’s had partners before that would stay the night here and there, but he hasn’t had that in over a year now, so it’s safe to say that Eddie’s a little bit nervous.

He doesn’t know if you want to be close, but considering how cuddly you are on a daily basis, he’s not surprised when you press yourself into his side with a content sigh, snuggling deeper into the warm covers. He turns, shifting to wrap his arms around your frame, trying his best to ignore the fast beating of his heart in his chest— but that’s not the main issue. The bigger problem is— “Eddie? Are you hard?”

Shit.

God, this is awful. Nothing even remotely sexual happened, and Eddie’s popping a boner and practically stabbing your stomach. Fuck, you probably think he’s a perv now. Nice going.

“No.”

It falls silent for a moment, and Eddie can feel the quiver of your body as you giggle into his shoulder. He smiles, an embarrassed blush rising over her cheeks as he lifts a hand to palm at his eye, “I’m so fucking sorry.”

You turn in Eddie’s arm, pressing a hand to Eddie’s shoulder to lay him on his back. You stay lying by his side, body pressed to him, head resting on his shoulder. You nose at the curly strands of hair on Eddie’s neck, and your hand runs down his torso, fingertips dipping beneath the waistband of his sweats. “O-oh. No, you don’t need to, princess.” Eddie says, yet his voice is shaky and holds anticipation as you drag your nails through the coarse hair leading to his cock. 

“I want to. Please?” You ask. And you’re so good, so obedient, not touching Eddie’s cock until he swallows and nods his head yes. You wriggle, like a happy pup that got a treat, and your hand sinks lower, wrapping around the thick of Eddie’s cock.

Eddie’s breath hitches, sinking into the feeling of your warm hand stroking up his cock, your thumb running over his leaking tip. Eddie curses, hips twitching up into your hold, and you press a kiss to his jaw, and Eddie nearly bursts into stars.

You press another kiss to his jaw, soft and sweet, and Eddie slinks an arm around you, sinking his hands into your hair and shakily breathing. “You keep kissing me like that, and I’m gonna— fuck.”

And it’s so pathetic; you’ve only had your hand down his pants for less than five minutes, and Eddie’s quivering like a virgin having their first time. God, this is so embarrassing.

You kiss Eddie once more, “Wait, wait. Not yet.”

And then you shuffle away from Eddie, and he’s frowning because he feels cold without you snuggled against him. But then you’re sinking underneath the covers, and Eddie’s cursing, “W-what are you doing, honey?”

He lifts the covers just as you wriggle your way between his legs and hook your fingers over the band of his sweats. You peel his sweats away, mouth opening like a hungry lion when Eddie’s cock pops out. You push the front band of his sweats to catch just below his balls, and Eddie’s hips squirm from the pressure making you giggle when his cock twitches.

You loop your fingers around his cock, twisting up on a long stroke, “Did I ever tell you how pretty your cock is, Eddie?”

Jesus Christ.

Eddie breathes shakily through his nose, tummy quivering as your gaze flickers; he shakes his head no. Eddie sinks a hand to pet your hair back, smiling when you nuzzle into his touch, letting your lips brush against his tip, “You think it’s pretty, baby?” He asks.

You nod, letting your tongue loll out of your mouth to catch the pearl of pre-cum dripping from his tip. You don’t say anything else as you lean forward and wrap your mouth around him, languidly taking him as far as you want and sucking him for all he’s worth.

Eddie’s head drops back then, his entire body just losing strength to do anything as you slowly fuck your mouth over him. The blanket falls over you then, and Eddie curses, scrambling to push it back over your head so you don’t, like, suffocate on his cock.

And Eddie was already close before, so it doesn’t take long for him to start cursing and warning you that he’s gonna cum. Before he knows it, he’s emptying himself into the warm cavern of your mouth, soft mixes of curses and your name tumbling from his mouth as you happily take every last drop.

You pull off of him with a small pop, licking up the small remnants of cum that drool down his cock. Eddie feels weightless now; the effects of sugar are long gone now that you practically sucked his soul through his dick. You tuck Eddie back into his pants, and as if you couldn’t get any cuter, any sweeter, you press a gentle kiss to Eddie’s tummy right where the waistband sits.

Eddie’s got a loopy grin on his face when you crawl back up to snuggle back into his side, mumbling something about how you love licking his cock. Eddie nearly dies, by the way.

He thinks he’s in love with you, maybe.

You breathe in deep, draping an arm across Eddie’s tummy and slinking your leg between his, and you sigh all sleepy and cute as you say, “G’night, Eddie.”

Yeah. Eddie’s definitely in love with you.

Weeks go by as you and Eddie become thick as thieves.

You carry on with your nightly calls, obviously, but now there’s a healthy mix of one of you going to the other's home and crashing there for the night, then that bleeds into the next day where you just spend hours with each other doing fuck all.

Eddie just likes being around you. You don’t have to be doing anything particularly fun or sexual; no, Eddie just enjoys your company. And most times, you and Eddie will be doing your separate little activities— you reading or watching a movie while Eddie writes up new campaign ideas for Dustin— and you will reach out to twirl a strand of Eddie’s hair around your knuckle and gently tug or poke your finger into his cheek where his dimples reside and Eddie just melts.

Most of the time, you’re only doing it for your peace of mind (Eddie knows because you told him when he asked), but something tells him maybe you actually have something to say when you poke Eddie’s cheek for the third time.

He turns to you, brows raised and hiding beneath his bangs that so badly need a trim, “Yes, doll?”

You smile now that his attention is on you, and you shift, careful not to wake Banshee in your lap from your movements. Eddie thinks Banshee might like you more than she likes him, which is just downright traitorous, considering Eddie’s the one who feeds her and keeps a roof over her head. He doesn’t really blame the cat, though. 

“What are you doing on Saturday?” You ask.

Eddie hums, closing his notebook and leaning back into his couch, “This Saturday?”

You nod, and Eddie shrugs, lips pouting as he speaks, “Nothing, I’m pretty sure. Why?”

You sigh heavily, sinking into the couch as you gently pet Banshee behind her ear, “We have an event for work, and I was just wondering if you would maybe wanna tag along?”

Eddie’s head tips in interest, “Sure. Is it, like, fancy dress shit?” He asks. Eddie thinks he has a tux somewhere deep in the trenches of his closet. Probably the one he wore to Wayne's wedding two years ago; he hopes he still fits.

You shrug, “Eh, nothing too fancy schmancy. Slacks and a nice shirt will do,” You mindlessly watch the television, gently rubbing Banshee’s ear between your fingers. “That I can do, princess. But uh,” Eddie pauses, “You don’t seem too ecstatic about this.” He points out.

You shrug, glancing over at Eddie, and Eddie wants to kiss your pouty lips because you look adorable swallowed up in a throw blanket with sleepy eyes blinking up at him. “S’cause I’m not,” You huff, “I hate those ignorant assholes— don’t get me wrong, some of them are good friends of mine! But most of them are just…” You make a face and roll your eyes, and Eddie softly laughs. You let your head lazily turn to gaze at him, “Don says I have to go, though. So I figured I may as well drag someone I actually enjoy being around.” You softly smile.

Eddie’s heart flutters and grows three times the size of his body.

Saturday night comes quicker than most, and Eddie spends nearly an hour digging through his closet. By the time Eddie finds a nice enough shirt to pair with his neatly ironed (to Eddie’s standard, which is probably not very high) slacks, he’s running behind and starts to stress that he won’t pick you up on time, and he’s just totally made an ass of himself.

It’s five o’clock when Eddie gets to your flat, and when he knocks on your door, he’s out of breath because he smokes more than a godman grill, and he skipped every other step on the staircase to get there quicker. He’s thinking of a million ways to apologize for being late, and he thinks he has it right when you open the door, but then— “Oh. Hey Eds! You’re early!”

Eddie huffs, nearly doubling over in exhaustion because he seriously needs to quit smoking, “Wha– early?”

You hold the door open for Eddie to step in and nod. You’re in a white fluffy robe with house boots on, and your hair is tied back, so you have a clear canvas to work with for your makeup. “Yeah, it starts at seven.” 

And, oh, what the fuck? Here Eddie was stressing and thinking he’d completely ruined his chances with you because he decided to be an asshat and lose track of time on his video games, but in reality, he’s nearly two hours early?!

“Oh, but now you can help me pick a dress. Come on.”

No, Eddie has zero complaints, actually. He’s grateful that he’s timely challenged, he thinks as you drag him toward your room.

Eddie spends the next thirty minutes or so seated at the foot of your bed, judging whichever dresses you surprise him with from out of your closet.

It isn’t easy to give a solid answer because, well, you look good in all of them. And Eddie’s not even being biased because he’s got a sickening crush on you— no, you genuinely look amazing in every dress.

“Eddie, you’ve said yes to all of them.” You huff. “Because they all look good!” Eddie exclaims.

You frown, resting your hands on your hips and tilting your head at him. Eddie shrugs, “I don’t know why you’re upset with me when it’s technically your fault.” He points out, to which you roll your eyes and jokingly throw a dress at his face.

It takes a while for you to decide; by the time you’ve figured it out, there’s about forty minutes until the event begins.

The dress you landed on is evil, to say the least.

It’s a black puffy babydoll-style dress, except instead of a poofy top half, it’s tight fitting and pushes your chest up to sit nice and pretty, and the straps are thin, and Eddie thinks about the sound you’d make if he just reached out and teasingly snapped it against your skin. Wants to coo when you squirm and mewl and press yourself into him.

And the dress is so short, long enough to cover everything, but you wouldn’t have to bend over very far to flash a lucky person, and the sight of your thighs makes Eddie’s head spin.

He doesn’t know where the courage comes from because Eddie is anything but bold when it comes to people he has ridiculous crushes on, but Eddie couldn’t help himself, watching you bent over the sink as you do your last touch-ups to your makeup, the way your silky thighs rub against one another when you shift to get closer to the mirror— Eddie didn’t stand a chance.

He’s behind you before he knows it, and you’re smiling at him through the mirror, “Almost done, promise.” You say.

Eddie lets his hand slink around your waist, dropping his head to nuzzle into your neck, brown eyes fluttering up to hold your gaze through the glass as he kisses your skin before playfully nipping at you. You squeal, curling away from him, and he smiles as you push at him. “You’re cute,” Eddie softly says, and he grins, teeth digging into his bottom lip when you shy away from his gaze, “So pretty.” He adds.

Eddie turns you to face him as he presses you against the bathroom sink. He seeks your lips, but you pout and shake your head, “My lipgloss.” 

Eddie huffs out a laugh, shaking his head before pressing a kiss to the corner of your mouth, careful not to catch any of the sticky application before sinking to his knees, hands gentle and greedy as they caress your thighs.

Eddie leans forward to kiss the inside of your knee, “Gonna let me taste you, honey?” He hums, leaning in the press a kiss further up the inside of your thigh. Your breath hitches, legs subconsciously spreading wider to accommodate Eddie. Your nails dig into the countertop as you shakily breathe, “W-we’re gonna be late,” You weakly say as Eddie lets his tongue draw shapes in your skin. Eddie hums, sucking the fat of your thigh into his mouth before leaving with a pop, lips brushing against your hot skin as he says, “I’ll be quick. Promise.”

He doesn’t wait for your response as he coasts his hands up your thighs to loop his fingers around the band of your panties, dragging them down your legs and helping you step out of them. 

Eddie doesn’t waste time then; he kisses a sloppy wet trail up the inside of your thigh, fingers digging into the fat of your skin and helping you spread open for him so he can nuzzle his head beneath the fluffy tulle of your dress and begin his task of devouring you. You’re wet, dripping, and throbbing for Eddie’s tongue, and this is the third time that Eddie has found himself licking into you, and god, it never gets fucking old.

The sounds you make, the way you writhe, the tiny gasps you give, and then the way your cunt pulses around his tongue— it’s the pinnacle of Eddie’s night, he already knows. 

“E-Eddie— oh,” Your breathy whine makes Eddie stuff his face further into your pussy, nose brushing against your clit as he thrusts his tongue into you, your hands scrambling down to sink into Eddie’s hair and tug.

And it took Eddie longer than he’d like to admit to get his hair slicked into the neat bun he’s sporting, but with his tongue plunged deep inside of you and your pretty moans filling his ears, Eddie can’t seem to care that you’re definitely messing up his hard work.

Eddie could spend eternity here, down on his knees, under the dress of your skirt, lapping at your pussy like it’s the last meal he’ll ever have. And sure, Eddie makes this conclusion, like, every single time he finds himself between your legs, but can you blame him? You’re the sweetest thing he’s ever had the pleasure of dealing with.

You lift a leg to hook over Eddie’s shoulder, the heel of your foot pressing into his shoulder blade and pushing a moan from the depths of Eddie’s chest as he snuggles deeper into you, licking and sucking and nipping. 

“S-so close…” You whimper, thighs beginning to quiver on each side of Eddie’s head. He fixes his grip on your hips because Eddie wouldn’t dream of letting you fall in his presence, and you’re standing on your tiptoes when you fumble over the edge, crying out for Eddie as you soak his tongue.

Eddie’s moaning into you, fingers massaging and caressing the thick parts of your hips and thighs as he continues working you through your orgasm. You’re twitching and heavily breathing when Eddie parts his mouth from your slick folds, strings of arousal and spit snapping and falling to his chin. God, it makes Eddie ache in his pants.

He presses sweet and sticky kisses to the insides of your thighs, savoring every moment he has here, breathing you in, tasting you, feeling you, hearing you. He doesn’t doubt for a moment that he looks like a madman when he brings his head out from under your dress, and you giggle, pressing your hand to your lips.

Eddie wants to hear that noise on repeat. Put his headphones on and, like, clean his house or something. Let your giggles play on a constant loop until they’re engrained into the grooves of his brain so he never has to go a second without hearing them.

“What?” Eddie smiles, hands still under your dress and soothingly squeezing the shaky muscles of your thighs. Your eyes are glazed from pleasure, and you look warm as you speak, “I– your hair,” You laugh. You press the wispy curls of Eddie’s bangs back, “I’m so sorry. It looked so nice, and I messed it up.” You happily frown.

Eddie huffs out a laugh, pressing a kiss to your knee and shaking his head, “That’s okay,” He responds, reaching over for your panties to help you slip them back on. “It was for a good cause.” He winks.

Eddie doesn’t frequent fancy parties.

The fanciest event Eddie’s ever been to was a masquerade-themed dinner that he and Jeff snuck into because there were rumors of a big hit producer being there, which, big fucking shocker, they never found him since everyone was in a fucking mask. It was a waste of time, but at least they ate like kings that night.

Besides that, Eddie doesn’t go to fancy places— it’s just not his kind of scene. And it’s not like the event you’ve brought him to tonight is, like, Buckingham Palace tier, but everyone here looks like a million bucks and up, and Eddie’s not quite sure he’s up to that standard.

He would be more worried if you weren’t clinging to him like a koala bear and keeping him in light conversation.

You introduced Eddie to a few of your industry friends, and one or two of them even remembered Eddie from the films he’d done with you, which, Eddie doesn’t know why, but his head grew three times bigger in size from that. And for the most part, you keep to Eddie’s side, pointing out different people from across the room and telling him the lore behind them and whatnot as you share a plate of snacks.

And you love grapes, apparently, because Eddie’s had to get up and refill on them about three times now. “Do you want more?” Eddie asks when he realizes you’re almost done. You glance at him with a small smile as you nod, “I’ll get it this time, though. I want to try some of the cheese.”

So, Eddie nods and keeps an eye on you until the crowd obstructs his view. He busies himself with watching the room, tries to see if he can pick out anyone from any pornos he’s watched before he realizes that’s fucking weird and cringes at himself for being a perv. He finishes his glass of champagne, which Eddie isn’t a champagne guy, but it was either that or whiskey, and Eddie would rather not get shitfaced tonight.

And what’s taking you so long? You’ve been gone for a while now, and Eddie had first thought you maybe made a quick stop at the restrooms, but it’s been more than enough time, and he misses you (as fucking sappy as that is), so he gets up and makes his way to the food bar.

He’s got his empty flute in one hand and the other in his pocket, brown eyes softly scanning the room as he walks. And then he spots you, near the food where you said you’d be, with some guy talking to you, but something isn’t right. 

Eddie’s spent enough time with you now to be able to tell when you’re feeling uneasy just by the way you anxiously drag your nail against the length of your thumb, the way your eyes dart around, or the tense pull of your shoulders.

Your gaze lands on Eddie, and your eyes soften, and Eddie doesn’t even have to think twice before he walks over.

The man's back is facing Eddie, so he doesn’t see the curly-headed boy until he steps around and slinks an arm around your waist, pulling you close with a soft smile, “Been looking for you, sweets.” He presses a kiss to your forehead as you sink into him.

“Mm, just catching up with..a friend.” 

Eddie doesn’t miss the pause. He looks over to the man you’d been talking to, and you take a breath, “Eddie, this is Chris, a coworker.” You introduce the man. And Eddie remembers that name; he thinks he remembers seeing it on the script of the last film you and Eddie did together— the one where you’d asked Eddie to take over because the other guy was an asshole.

Chris reaches out a hand, “Chris. You must be a good friend of hers?”

Eddie doesn’t like that. Doesn’t like that he doesn’t refer to you by your name, or the smug grin on his face, or the sly tone in his voice when he says it. 

And Eddie doesn’t know why he does it, okay. He doesn’t know why the words fly out of his mouth or why he didn’t, like, think it through, but suddenly, Eddie’s introducing himself as your boyfriend. Which, Eddie is not your boyfriend. And you’re not his girlfriend.

Eddie would love to be your boyfriend, and he’d love for you to be his girlfriend, but— but you’re not. So, Eddie doesn’t know why he does it, but he does, and god, it’s comedic how the guy's face falls. Eddie can feel your gaze on him, and he panics a little because what if Eddie just crossed the line big time?

Chris’s gaze flickers to you, and his brows raise as you look at him, “So, I take it this is why you’re only doing solo content now?”

Which, fucking gross. That’s definitely none of this meathead guy's business! So what if you’re making solo content only? And why does he know, and why does he care? God, this guy’s a creep.

But also… why are you only doing solo content? Eddie can’t help but wonder. Did something happen? Was it this asshole's fault? Eddie will kill him if he has anything to do with it. You and Eddie have become so close; you tell each other everything about everything, so why didn’t you tell him about this? It’s not a big deal or whatever, but—

“Does it matter?” Shit, Eddie didn’t mean to say that out loud.

You’re both looking at Eddie in shock, and Eddie just blinks and waits for an answer.

You take in a deep breath, arm squeezing around Eddie’s as you answer— since this guy can’t take a fucking hint, “Yeah, actually, it is. Just didn’t feel right.” You shrug.

The guy nods, pursing his lips together, “Fair enough. Well, if that ever changes, you know where to find me.” He winks before turning around and leaving. Eddie cringes, and he almost steps forward to say something, to tell him to fuck off somewhere, but your grip tightens around his arms, and Eddie understands that you just want the conversation to be over.

Eddie’s quickly turning his attention to you, though, when you press yourself into his side, “Thank you.” You sweetly say.

Eddie nods, a warm hand reaching up to squeeze your hand that's resting over his bicep, “Don’t sweat it, princess. That guy’s a douche.” And you huff, nodding your head, “Yeah. You definitely scared him, though. It was pretty hot.”

Eddie tries not to let that get to his head. 

He fails.

The rest of the night goes well with fewer dickhead run-ins and more grapes, and Eddie is more than Elated when you say it’s time to go.

The ride home is pleasant, and you’ve been extra cuddly all night, so Eddie’s heart is practically the size of Texas when you bring his hand into your lap and slink your fingers together. You’re spending the night, so Eddie’s kind of excited to get in bed and snuggle until you both pass out— but then Eddie’s thrown in for a loop when you both get under his covers.

Banshee is busy in her bakery down at the foot of the bed, kneading little biscuits in preparation for her sleep, and you’re fresh-faced and wrapped in one of Eddie’s shirts when you look over at him with a teasing look, “So,” you start, “You’re my boyfriend.”

Eddie blinks at you, wishing the bed would just let him sink in and become one with the mattress. “Oh god,” He groans, pressing his hands to his face, “I’m sorry, it just came out! That guy was being a dick, and it was the first thing that I thought of, and— god, I’m sorry.” He drags his hands over his face and shoots you an empathetic look. “You can totally, like, kick me in the nuts.”

And Eddie kind of braces himself for you to chew him out or something; tell him he’s a weirdo, and he’ll never in a million years get to call himself your boyfriend because you’re way out of his league. But then you giggle. 

And it’s not the teasing ‘get a load of this loser’ giggle— no, it’s your sweet, kind, and adoring giggle.

“No, no. I was… I was wondering when you would ask, actually.”

Eddie’s never turned his head so fast. He thinks he imagined you saying it, like, maybe he drank too much champagne even though he literally only had less than two full glasses the entire night. “Huh? I– w-what do you mean?” Eddie gapes. “Like… like, ask you to be my girlfriend?”

And you’re so cute as you shyly nod, glancing at Eddie with this expectant gaze.

“Shit, well uh, I-I wanted to ask you in like a bigger way. Like flowers and shit because I… well, I really like you, and it’s what you deserve and—”

You cut Eddie off with a laugh and scoot closer to him, and if Eddie’s heart beats any faster, he might die. “Eddie,” You lowly and softly say, holding his gaze. Eddie nods, eyes darting down to your lips as he holds his breath. “Will you be my boyfriend?”

Shit, Eddie’s never said yes so quickly in his life.

————

a/n: HELLOOO! if you have made it to the end of this awfully long baby i am so thankful and appreciative of you, these two are my babies so I hope you enjoyed them as much as I've enjoyed my time with them <3 as always, thank u for reading and being here, i love and appreciate any feedback, ILYSM MWAH <3

————

cutie teeny taglist: @vol2eddie @paleidiot @hideoutside

[talkingpointsusa]

Michael Knowles comes out in defense of killing puppies

South Dakota’s governor and potential Trump running mate Kristi Noem admitted to shooting her own dog as well as a goat in her autobiography - one of our favorite imbeciles Michael Knowles is scarily OK with this. Considering that animal abuse is a bridge too far for really any rational human being, this really speaks to the character of these guys. Lets get into it.

04:51, Michael Knowles: "Three observations here. First one is, this probably was bad politics."

As usual, Michael Knowles is kind of getting thrown under the bus by the Daily Wire with this story. Michael Knowles tends to do the stories that Ben Shapiro doesn't seem to want to cover, which makes sense because he's basically a warmed over Ben Shapiro clone with less intelligent takes.

As for this being "bad politics", no kidding! When you admit to shooting a dog and a goat in your autobiography that's a really bad look. Anyway, Michael's position on this is that Kristi Noem did nothing wrong and that it's actually A-OK to shoot your dog.

06:34, Michael Knowles: "Now, I only somewhat jokingly tweeted. I said unpopular take here, I know everyone's raking Kristi Noem over the coals but this actually makes me like and respect her more."

Yeah, liking someone MORE for bragging about killing an animal in cold blood is....certainly a take from Michael here.

06:43, Michael Knowles: "And I'm a little bit joking here obviously because this totally politically backfired for her but what I'm getting at there is I want my politicians to be just tough as nails cold blooded killers."

You're a huge fan of the guy who throws shit-fits about people making fun of him, calm down. Seriously, Trump basically wants to ban people from making fun of him.

But man, Michael really thought this one through. “I like this politician better because she killed her dog. Really I just like sociopaths in general - they remind me of my coworker Matt you see.”

06:59, Michael Knowles: "We are going up against a political establishment right now that is throwing us in jail for disagreeing with them."

Wow Michael, I didn't know that you were broadcasting out of prison now. That sucks man.

Statements like that really show the absolute contempt that guys like Michael Knowles have for their audiences. How on earth can you as a listener of this show square the statement that the left is throwing conservatives in jail for disagreeing with them with the fact that the Daily Wire exists?!

07:02, Michael Knowles: "We're going up against a political establishment that is prosecuting, for the first time ever, former presidents, leaders of the opposition. That's throwing midwestern grannies into isolation and solitary confinement because they had the audacity to show up and take selfies in the Capitol rotunda on January 6th."

I already talked about the J6 "praying grandma" in a previous post and my opinion remains the same - her age is completely unimportant here. What is important is that she was illegally inside of a government building and was part of a mob that wanted to overturn a presidential election.

07:20, Michael Knowles: "The worst insurrection ever in America even though it was only months after an eight month insurrection that the Democrats led called BLM."

What?! It's official, Michael has absolutely zero idea what the word insurrection means. The BLM protestors weren't trying to overthrow the government which is the literal definition of an insurrection.

Anyway, time for more stuff about how killings animals is morally A-OK.

08:33, Michael Knowles: "My third point here is, yes it was politically dumb for Noem to admit this. Yes, her political calculation misfired. mixing metaphors. You get the point. But the third point is, Noem didn't do anything wrong. You might say it wasn't advisable. You might say there were better things she could have done. She could have given the dog up for adoption. She could have tried to train the dog. She could -- there is nothing wrong with a human being humanely killing an animal."

She absolutely did something wrong here because shooting a dog in the head because you feel that it's "untrainable" is completely sociopathic behavior. Also, did Michael miss the part about how she had to go back to her truck and get another shell to finish the goat that she shot off because the first shot didn't kill it?

Anyway, nobody is arguing that the method in which she put her dog down isn't "humane". It's the fact that Noem essentially killed a dog because it wasn't properly trained which was her responsibility as the owner. He's arguing a strawman - most likely because he realizes that shooting a perfectly healthy dog in the head for not being well trained is a pretty indefensible thing to do. Michael is really on an island of his own here too because I watched a Tim Pool video on this and his whole take was basically "This is kinda fucked up". When Tim Pool is ahead of you, you've got an issue.

Michael is anti animal abuse though - but not because of any of that pesky "animals are living beings" stuff.

09:55, Michael Knowles: "It would be one thing if Kristi Noem were torturing this dog like a serial killer or something. That would be wrong. And it would be wrong — it's wrong to mistreat animals, not because the animals have any rights -- animals don't have a rational soul."

Yeah, that's the kind of thing that you say when YOU don't have a rational soul. I guess we're ignoring the fact that animals can feel pain and the other fact that failed actor turned professional Ben Shapiro impressionist Michael Knowles is not the grand arbiter of what has a soul and what doesn't.

10:07, Michael Knowles: "The reason it's wrong, nevertheless, to mistreat animals is because it deadens our own humanity. CS Lewis writes about this extensively. If you are needlessly inflicting pain and suffering on some — suffering to the degree that an animal can suffer — on some poor creature, that's deadening your humanity."

"Suffering to the degree that an animal can suffer". God, I am honestly wondering if Michael Knowles should be placed on a watchlist now. At the very least he should be banned from your local pet store. On the bright side, he seems to directionally understand that hurting animals = bad so that's kind of a plus....I guess.

Not content with making freakish arguments about animals, Michael also complains about people calling him out on his freakish arguments about animals.

13:10, Michael Knowles: "The most histrionic, hysterical, reaction that I got to my joke about Kristi Noem's poor little pooch comes from Glenn Greenwald - the liberal left-wing journalist."

Brief aside but man I have such conflicting feelings about Glenn Greenwald these days. He kind of lost his leftist card when he started appearing on debate panels with Alex Jones to condescendingly argue that January 6th wasn't all that big a deal as well as him becoming besties with Tucker Carlson. Which by the way, as a journalism student, is absolutely tragic as Glenn's work on Snowden was one of the journalistic pieces that inspired me to take an interest in the subject in the first place. The reason that Glenn left the Intercept was literally because he threw a shit-fit about being asked to present evidence about unsubstantiated claims he was making about Joe Biden. I respect Glenn for the journalism that he's done, as a matter of fact I think a lot of that journalism was heroic - but what he has become now is really sad.

Reflections on Glenn Greenwald aside, I don't think Michael gets to claim that the tweet he made was a joke after spending ten minutes trying to lay out a logical case for why what he said was entirely correct. He's doing that thing that Matt Walsh does where he wraps his argument up in faux "sarcasm" so that when people call him on his shit he can retreat and go "It was just a joke, chill".

The Urban Dictionary has a great term for this called Schrodinger's Dipshit. They define this term as: "Someone who says something questionable, yet incredibly stupid, but defensively declares that they are joking if anyone calls them out for it." Sound familiar?

This move is kind of the Daily Wire house special and it's a cowardly move that you use when you're a grifter who refuses to stand by your words. Anyway, Michael takes Glenn's tweet to a hilariously dumb and somewhat homophobic place.

13:54, Michael Knowles: "This actually shows you a problem with our politics. Our culture, we don't have children anymore. Our culture, we don't make families anymore. Our culture, we don't pass down our cultural inheritance anymore."

This is why the Daily Wire is both hilarious and so so horrifyingly stupid.

What exactly is the point that Michael is trying to make here - leaving aside the buzzwords and the kind of subtle homophobia towards Glenn for being gay. Glenn Greenwald didn't fall out of the sky one day, his parents birthed him and presumably taught him their cultural values. Now, I know that Michael Knowles is a bit of a simp for the middle ages but I don't think he realizes that societies change and evolve.

14:22, Michael Knowles: "I mean, we're choosing not to propagate our civilization."

"Which is why Glenn Greenwald was mean to me in a tweet" - this is so fucking stupid, even by Michael Knowles standards.

I'm sure that Michael is fine with Glenn having kids via surrogacy with his unfortunately late partner.....right? Otherwise this wouldn't really make sense unless you just don't like gay people right Mikey?!

14:38, Michael Knowles: "We are a sterile culture increasingly and sterile people and sterile cultures confuse dogs for children."

WHAT?!

Putting aside the fact that I'm pretty sure that this comment was a homophobic potshot at Glenn Greenwald, Michael's point here is that since apparently our culture isn't entirely devoted to pumping out babies we are laboring under the delusion that dogs are children. I guess that's a conclusion you'd make if you can't comprehend having empathy for animals. Michael plays a clip of a CNN reporter saying that there's a special circle of Hell reserved for people who mistreat animals and apparently the Daily Wire has sunken low enough that saying that is a controversial statement there.

Anyway, lets see the other dumb crap that Michael is on about. The last story was kind of infuriating and the in-between is kind of boring. There's stuff about the protests at Columbia but that deserves its own post. Then, at the end, the show takes a turn for the weird, dumb, and unintentionally hilarious.

43:25, Michael Knowles: "How will you die?"

I'll be driven to insanity by Michael Knowles clips and die via slamming my head into a desk repeatedly while yelling expletives in Latin.

43:45, Michael Knowles: "There is a new app that can apparently predict that. This new app, I'm not even going to name it because it's bad for you and there are some warnings about it."

This app is called Life2vec and it is apparently freakishly accurate. Allegedly it has an almost 79% accuracy rate. It uses data from Statistics Denmark and samples information from around 6 million people who were between 35 and 65. I find this creepy as all hell but at the end of the day it's just a computer program going off numbers and data. The actual Life2Vec AI model is not available to the public and there are a surge of fraudulent websites claiming to be that AI, a fact which Michael doesn't seem to grasp throughout this segment. Instead, Michael takes this story in the most bizarre direction possible.

45:11, Michael Knowles: "People are warning now 'Don't try this app out' because there are a lot of copycat apps and they might hack your information and it's just not a good road to go down but even if there weren't copycat apps that were trying to steal your financial information you still shouldn't use this app."

That's easy enough since the app isn't actually available to the public.

45:22, Michael Knowles: "And the reason you shouldn't use this app is the same reason that the Bible tells you not to consult astrologers, OK? It's not -- a lot of people misunderstand why the Bible says don't consult astrologers. They think, in our modern scientific age, that it's because astrology's silly and not real. That's not why -- that's not why there's a commandment, 'Hey don't do this thing that's really silly and pointless'. The reason behind not consulting astrologers is because we don't want to compromise our free will."

Uh...I'm pretty sure it's because in Biblical times astrologers were viewed as false prophets but go off I guess. This you by the way? Michael posted this literally a couple days ago.

But maybe I'm wrong, maybe he went off against this AI that can predict political orientation too. Lets see what Michael had to say in that video.

02:05, Michael Knowles: "AI has it's algorithms, human beings have our guts. They are both wrong sometimes, they can both be used in unjust ways, but they are also both necessary tools for fulfilling our purposes and they're often pretty accurate whether we want to admit it or not."

So between a period of five days Michael went from "Well, AI has it's algorithms and it can be useful for fulfilling our purposes" to "PREDICTIVE AI IS EVIL AND CAN COMPROMISE OUR SOULS."

I guess that's kind of what happens when you lie on the internet for a living.

Conclusion:

Just....wow. Just when I thought that these guys couldn't get any lower here's Michael Knowles to prove me wrong. Here's Michael Knowles proving that morals and empathy aren't in the modern conservative lexicon. Here's Michael Knowles grabbing the shovel and digging the hole for himself down into the depths of the Earth.

Also, predictive AI is super useful...and evil...but also useful. Cheers and I'll see you in the next one.

Sources:

Original video:

“Ep. 1478 - Wars Rage, and One Dead Dog Dominates the News.” The Daily Wire.

Kristi Noem the dog killer:

Pengelly, Martin. “Trump VP Contender Kristi Noem Writes of Killing Dog – and Goat – in New Book.” The Guardian, 26 Apr. 2024.

AI death calculator:

“Life2vec “Death Calculator” Is Nearly 79 per Cent Accurate | Indy100.” Www.indy100.com

Perry, Alex. “AI Death Calculator? People Are Searching for Their “Death Date” with This Creepy (Fake) Bot.” Mashable, 30 Apr. 2024.

[clanwarrior-tumbly]

Could we get some headcanons for Sun, Moon, the Blob, and Monty meeting a zombie reader? They always try to keep themselves together(literally), have made the reference to Toy Story before, saying their arm was an advanced prosthetic to dissuade anyone from freaking out, and tend to blend in rather well(makeup skills for theatre class come in handy, am I right?). They're confident about themselves, and tend to be rather curious, but know when to back down and take caution.

Sun

“Oh hello, friend! You feeling okay?”

You just smile and nod, fixing your arm. “Yeah, just..a cold..and a loose prosthetic.” 

Speaking would normally be hard for a regular zombie, but you’ve done well in blending in with humans.

You basically fooled everybody at the Plex, walking in like it was no problem (you may be dead but you still wanna enjoy stuff!)

Still, though, Sun worries. He wants to take a vital-scan but ofc you decline that. The last thing he needs is a short-circuit bc you’d be registered as ‘dead” and confuse the poor guy.

When you tell him your favorite movie is Toy Story he seems to stop worrying about your cold entirely, rambling about how he loves it and was gonna put it on TV to watch with the kids today!

He invites you to join him and you just can’t say no.

When the scenes of Buzz losing his arm come up you’re able to quote them perfectly, amusing Sun.

Moon

Like Sun he worries when he notices you adjusting your arm several times,,every time you visit.

He takes a bio/vital scan and sees “DECEASED” pop up, which confuses him.

But he’s sure it’s just broken so he doesn’t worry about that too much.

Also like his daytime counterpart he loves Toy Story.

Though just the scenes with Sid’s mutant toys and them rebelling against their owner. 

The few creep factors of the movie are his favorites.

If he notices your arm coming loose he’ll remind you.

The last thing he wants is to deal with crying kids who get freaked out by you rather than him.

So you two just bond over being seen as “creepy”, becoming good friends.

Blob

Let’s say you were buried underground where the Pizzaplex was built and that’s how you gained free entry.

You’ve seen the burnt/charred remains of the old 80s-90s animatronics but they were somehow alive (and quite hostile), so you fled and found your way out, eventually heading home.

Weeks later you revisit the Plex, looking 10% more alive thanks to makeup kits you had at home and being confident enough to walk among the living.

Being a zombie means you were naturally drawn to your burial ground. But..there was one problem.

Those pieces of animatronics put themselves together as a giant blob of slimy endoskeleton wiring, with Funtime Freddy serving as the “head”.

He’s still aggressive until he notices you were holding an endo arm that fell off his body.

You’d get closer but don’t wanna anger him, so you just leave it on the ground and try leaving...only to trip and break your leg below the knee, quickly snapping your limb back in place.

However the Blob just...laughs? Not out of mockery or intimidation, but rather happiness as he takes his arm back.

You then smile, relieved that he found delight in discovering someone similar to them.

Monty

When you swing the golf club a bit too hard, your arm comes loose.

And the gator takes notice, asking if you need first aid.

You quickly tell him it’s a prosthetic and just snap it back into place, confusing him. Though he just leaves you be.

But he watches you from a distance in case it happens again.

Then a golf ball hits your lower jaw and dislocates it--as in he could see it literally hanging off of your head.

By the time he runs over to see if you needed EMS (again), your jaw is already back in place and you ask him what’s wrong.

“Y-Your jaw..it was...I know no human can just...!”

“Can just what?” You smile innocently, teasing him. But only lightly. You knew his temper and didn’t wanna get on his bad side.

He goes quiet, but then grumbles that Faz Ent wasn’t responsible for any injuries/dismemberment before leaving.

It’s not like anyone will believe him if he says a guest horribly dislocated their jaw and fixed it no problem

[moriihana]

we can't fix each other but we sure as hell can enable each other instead || twelve: the both of you are definitely at least a little unhinged

pairing: dabi x disabled!gn!reader

overview: you meet dabi pre-canon because your cat, nugget, literally won’t leave the guy alone. friendship, fluff and (eventual) angst ensue.

chapter summary: because you were incredibly bored, you tag along with dabi during his little outing with the high-end nomu. the two of you have fun and bicker like an old married couple. the usual.

content: fluff

word count: 2659

taglist: @iincandescenttt

AO3 link

← previous ; next →

“Hey, doll.” Dabi leaned against your bedroom doorframe, crossing his arms. “Got a moment to talk?”

You snorted, shifting Nugget off your lap. “No, can’t you see I’m totally swamped petting my questionably gay cat?” You joked. “‘course I have a moment. Especially since everyone’s off doin’ their own thing right now.”

He stepped in and shut the door, then strode across the room to sit next to you. “Y’know the Wing Hero, Hawks?”

“The one that looks like a playboy and talks so cockily it makes me want to shove barbed wire into my ears? Yeah, I know him. How come?”

“He approached me. Wants to join the League.”

You scoffed, “The number two hero wants to join the League of Villains, huh? Sounds like a load of bullshit.”

“Oh, it gets better, mouse.” Dabi drawled. “Obviously, I was suspicious—I might be insane, but I’m not stupid—so I found out where he lives and sent some thugs to scope out the place. Wanted to see if I could get any information. Lucky for us, his mother was there.” An unhinged grin spread across his face and pulled at his staples, a manic gleam in his eyes. “With a few threats, we were given everything and more.”

You sat up with a look of glee that rivalled Dabi’s. “Oooh, do tell! I love secrets.”

“Gladly.” Dabi looked down as Nugget climbed into his lap, making biscuits on his thigh. “You too, huh, ya lil stink? Makes sense, you nosy shit.” He chuckled at your scowl, “Just kiddin’, doll. Anyways, here’s the deal…”

You let out a hum once Dabi finished talking. “So, let me get this straight. You’re telling me that this abused little boy, who basically idolised Endeavour, was recruited by the HPSC and trained to be… what, a child soldier? After Endeavour arrested his father? And that’s Hawks? Sheesh, wonder how he’s gonna feel when he finds out what a massive shitlord Endeavour really is…” You snorted and straightened, interlocking your fingers and stretching your arms over your head. “Anyways, you’re telling me this now for a reason, right? We agreed that you didn’t need to tell me all of your little villainous escapades that I don’t accompany you on if it’s not anything super important, so I figure something’s come up now?”

“Bingo.” Dabi smirked. “I decided to humour Hawks—information of the ongoings in the HPSC is valuable to us, and since I already know he’s a double-crosser, it’ll be easy to filter our information well enough. He’s in the… initiation period, so to speak. Y’know Ujiko, the fuckin’ weird doctor guy you and I met? He gave me a new toy to play with—a High-End Nomu. The potential is incredible.” His tone took on an excited edge. “I want to send it up against Endeavour as a test.”

“Okay… and this has to do with Hawks… how, exactly? Not followin’ ya here, pretty boy.”

“I told Hawks I would let loose a Nomu at a warehouse by the coast to test its strength against some random hero. Which was initially the plan! But after seeing Hawks interacting with Endeavour this morning during the broadcast of the Hero Billboard Chart, I had a better idea. Why not have it fight Endeavour?”

You laughed, “I like the sound of that. I wanna watch shit go down, can I come with? Please let me come with, it’s so fucking boring around here I need to do something or I’ll die.”

“I wasn’t tellin’ you all this just to leave ya behind, doll. Of course I’m dragging you along. We should probably head out now, so we have plenty of time—Ujiko said he’d use that gross fuckin’ method to get us around, so we can just have him send us to the warehouse.” Dabi brushed off his pants and stood up.

“The one that makes you throw up to warp away? Eugh, it’s so disgusting. I hate that one!” You whined, but got up nonetheless. 

“Yeah, yeah. But without Kurogiri we’ve got no other option. You ready to go?” Once you confirmed, Dabi reached up to his collar and pressed down on the communicator he had fixed into it. “Ujiko, send Y/N and I to the warehouse.”

You immediately made your displeasure known as soon as the black liquid burst out of your mouth and enveloped your body.

Once the warp had finished and you were both in front of the warehouse where the Nomu was stored, you made exaggerated gagging sounds. “I fuckin’ hate that. Why can’t it be more pleasant…” 

“Sorry, doll.” Dabi shrugged, an amused smirk on his face. “You wanted to come with.”

“He should get a better goddamn way to warp…” you grumbled, rubbing the back of your neck with a scowl.

He gave you a pat on the shoulder, then pulled open the door to the warehouse. Dabi shoved his hands in his pockets, walking in slowly with you right behind. “The ones before didn’t really understand, but I expect more this time, High-End.”

The High-End Nomu was in a hunched over position. Its head turned towards the two of you and pupils appeared in its glowing eyes once Dabi spoke. “W-W-Won’t… l-let… won’t let you down…”

“Oh, it can talk?” You tilted your head, leaning to the side slightly. “Is it a High-End thing? Will it follow directions better?”

“Probably. I sure fuckin’ hope so, at least.” Dabi crouched down, resting his elbows on his knees. “You know your job?”

“F-Find… the stron-gest… and attack…” 

“Go on then.” Dabi grinned lopsidedly. He stood back up and watched as the Nomu took off from the warehouse to find Endeavour. He then looked at you. “Didja bring your phone?”

“Mmhm.” You pulled your phone out of your pocket and held it out to him. “Do your thing.”

Dabi hummed and pulled up the news pages for any updates. Once one came through, he tapped on it to watch the live footage of Endeavour fighting the Nomu. “Oh, it’s strong.”

“Looks like it, yeah.” You set your chin on his shoulder as you watched with him. “Bodes well for us, at least. And watching Endeavour get his ass beat is pretty damn satisfying.”

The amusement faded once Endeavour started to actually make a dent in the Nomu. When he used his Prominence Burn move, Dabi swore under his breath. He handed you your phone back, then pressed on the communicator again.

“Ujiko. We need to get closer to Endeavour.”

You groaned a quiet ‘not again,’ but tucked your phone into your back pocket. You glared at Dabi as the black liquid poured out of your mouth and wrapped around your body. Once you were dropped near Endeavour, you lightly shoved him. “Asshole,” you grumbled, pouting.

“You wanted to come.” Dabi simply winked and gave you a lazy smile.

“Startin’ to regret it right about now, pretty boy,” you teased gently. “Let’s go bully an old man, yeah?” You raised an eyebrow when he took your chin in his hand.

“When we get over there, stay by my side, follow my lead. I don’t want you getting hurt, doll. I’m serious. Do you understand?” He only dropped his hand when you gave him a soft ‘yes.’ “Good. C’mon.”

As you made your way out of the alley you were deposited into, Dabi placed his palm on the small of your back. He kept it there until you stopped in front of Endeavour and Hawks, at which point he curled it around your waist.

“Just a minute now,” Dabi drawled. “None of this is how we planned it, but that’s fine.” He gave a menacing smile when the heroes startled. “Well, Endeavour… should I say nice to meet you?”

You grinned and waved from next to him. “We didn’t think you’d be here. You’re really not lookin’ too good there, Number One!” You taunted.

Endeavour’s face contorted in anger as his eyes fixated on Dabi. “It’s you! The one who murdered Snatch!” 

“Sna—? Who?” As Dabi spoke, he tapped your hip twice. You took two steps forward and to the side so he could create a barrier of flames without burning you. “More importantly, let’s chat while we have the chance.”

“Take it easy, I’ll handle them,” Hawks said quickly as Endeavour tried and failed to get up. “I only have my tiny feathers left… but I can at least buy us some time.”

Dabi rolled his eyes and walked forwards. “C’mon, we’re only here to collect the Nomu. There’s no way we could actually win, right? Against the top two dudes, already beat up and bloodied?!” When he finished speaking, a feral grin pulled taut at his staples and he lunged forwards, igniting his forearms. 

You caught sight of something moving in the sky, and immediately reached out towards his back. “Dabi, get back!” You shrieked. 

Dabi extinguished his arms and jumped back beside you just in time to dodge the hero slamming into the ground in front of you. “Thanks, mouse.” 

“Don’t mention it,” you breathed out, relief palpable in your voice. The two of you watched the new arrival carefully, unsure of your next moves.

“I saw the news and came hopping! Endeavour! Hawks! You boys don’t get to have all the fun! And you two—you’re with the League? Your butts’re about to get kicked!” The hero grinned, looking at you. 

Dabi groaned. “Fuckin’ Mirko? Too bad… right when things were heating up, too.” He pressed the communicator. “Ujiko, get us out of here. Bye for now, Mr. Number One Hero. I’m sure we’ll get another chance to talk, but until then…” That feral grin made its way back onto Dabi’s face, this time splitting his skin as he shouted, “Just keep doing your thing and don’t go dying on me, ‘kay, Todoroki Enji?!”

Once you were safely back at the warehouse, you raised your hand to Dabi’s cheek, healing where his skin split. “You got a little too excited there, pretty boy.” Despite your unhappiness with the fact he hurt himself, your scolding was gentle. You shook your head with a fond smile and decided to let him off easy. “Why’d we come back here instead of going home?”

“Sorry, doll.” To his credit, Dabi did sound at least a little apologetic. He then shrugged, leaning against a support beam. “I had Ujiko plop us back here since I figured Hawks would come lookin’ for me after things didn’t go the way I initially said.”

“Ahh, I see. How long d’you think it’ll take the birdbrain to get over here?” You pulled out your phone, waving it. “We could play a game or some shit while we wait.”

“Who fuckin’ knows, so why the hell not. What kinda stupid games you got on here?” Dabi swiped your phone out of your hands, ignoring your brief indignant protest. You grumbled when you realised he wasn’t gonna give it back.

“Asshole…” you huffed, pouting as you rested your chin on his shoulder. “Let’s see… I downloaded that one game where one player holds the phone up to their forehead and has to guess the word as the other players give hints by acting it out—ah, yeah, that one right there! Charades! Toga wanted to play it one night with Twice and I. It wasn’t terrible, if not a little silly. Probably not your style.”

“Definitely not my style, doll,” Dabi snorted. “What else ya got?”

“Hell if I know. Toga’s always the one stealing my phone to download games. I don’t know why you people can’t use your own damn phones.”

“You charge your phone.”

“Well, start charging yours!” You reached around his arm for your phone, whining when Dabi held it out of reach. “Don’t be a brat, it’s not my fault you don’t remember to charge your phone! Gimmie!”

“Sorry, mouse. You’re the one who suggested to play a game,” Dabi drawled, grinning lazily.

“I didn’t think you would just take my phone!” You smacked him lightly on his shoulder, returning to pouting. “Can’t believe I love an overgrown child.”

“You’re the one pouting because you’re not getting your way.”

“I’m pouting because you took my phone and won’t give it back!”

Dabi chuckled and moved beside you, holding out your phone. “Fine, here ya go.”

You stuck your tongue out at him and shoved it into your back pocket. You opened your mouth to respond, but immediately stopped when Hawks walked in. Your grip on your cane tightened.

“None of that was according to plan,” Hawks spoke after he stopped in front of Dabi with an unamused expression.

“That so?” Dabi quipped back, raising an eyebrow.

A feather blade was held up to his neck faster than either of you could blink. You immediately bristled, but Dabi shook his head. “It’s alright, mouse,” he said, keeping his voice steady. You reluctantly settled down, glaring at the hero instead.

“How about some actual cooperation, Dabi?” Hawks narrowed his eyes, disregarding you for the moment.

“Hey, I thought you only had those baby feathers left?” Dabi tilted his head, taunting ever so slightly.

“You think I’d meet with a liar like you unarmed? It was supposed to be tomorrow. And not downtown, but at the factory by the water. You never mentioned bringing your little friend here, either.” Hawks’s expression darkened. “Plus, this Nomu was clearly a cut above the rest. You could’ve mentioned that beforehand.”

“That ‘friend’ is my partner, Y/N. You’d do well to remember their name, or I’ll brand it into you,” Dabi warned, then settled back into his laid back demeanour. “And I guess I just changed my mind. Didn’t I tell you I’d be testing the Nomu’s capabilities? But we’re both a little guilty. I asked you for someone kinda strong, but you brought the top dog himself! It wasn’t that much of a test.”

“I didn’t mean any offence, Dabi. No need to threaten me.” Hawks glanced at you, then turned his attention back to Dabi. “But I thought you’d be thrilled to inflict that kind of pain on him. Besides, you’re the one who broke our agreement.”

Dabi scoffed, “I’m s’posed to believe the number two hero, just like that? This was me testing how much I can trust you. And tell me, why zero casualties today?” He shifted his body sideways away from the blade. “Do you really sympathise with us? You came looking to cooperate, but you sure don’t act like it.”

You watched as Hawks’s face contorted in irritation, amusement bubbling up at his frustration.

“I gotta keep up appearances. A hero can’t go losing the public’s trust. The more faith they have in me, the juicer the intel I can get. That’s to your advantage. Try taking the long view here.” He lowered his blade as Dabi walked around him. “What I do, I do for the League’s sake, Dabi.”

“Fine… but you don’t get a face-to-face with the boss just yet. You’ll hear from us, Hawks.” Dabi looked over his shoulder at you. “C’mon, mouse.”

You smiled at that, straightening up. “Finally, I was getting bored here. See ya around, Number Two.” You manoeuvred around him with a wave, walking after Dabi.

Dabi stared out at the horizon as the sun rose, hands in his pockets. You were leaned against him with your eyes shut.

“Oh… oh! Right! That was Snatch!” 

You hummed and looked up at Dabi when he spoke. “That was the sand guy, right? He made that stupid comment about the families of the people we kill?” You frowned as blood trickled out from his scars, gently wiping it away as he responded. 

“Yeah, that one.” His voice was uncharacteristically soft. “I’ve thought about it so much that I’ve gone crazy.”

You gave a soft laugh at that. “At least you’ve got someone just as fuckin’ crazy by your side.”

“Yeah. At least I’ve got that.”