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#all of which I could go much more in depth about but I will spare everyone

gay-dorito-dust · 2 months

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How’d they react to you calling them bro or dude whilst in a pre-established relationship…(platonic/romantic)

Dick: he’s insulted.

Gutted.

He will try to give you the silent treatment for such a shameful thing but ultimately fails as he ends up being the one pawing at you for attention.

‘Do you still like me? Or did you just run out of cute nicknames to call me?’ He’d say one night as your both cuddling in bed together. ‘If it’s the later then I can help you find something, just please spare me and don’t call me dude or bro anymore.’

He’d rather you call him Richard-wait, no he hates that even more because to him you’re not meant to use his fully name, only cutesy nicknames that’d make a grown man sick to his stomach. Nothing else would suffice other than Dickie bird, handsome, babe, hunk, honeybun or anything that wasn’t his name.

He’s go mad or would act delusional and say that everything was fine when everyone could tell that it wasn’t. People who know him have personally came to you and begged you to stop calling him dude/bro because he kept talking their ears off about how his beloved partner is torturing him, which ends up torturing them even more upon hearing about his relationship issues.

Dick would even consult Hayley on what he did wrong, only for Hayley to look at him with those big, big eyes of hers. This was not her level of expertise unfortunately. (Head empty, no thoughts. She can’t do her abc’s guys it’s a real tragedy.)

Jason: ‘I just had my tongue down your throat just now and you had to go and ruin the mood by calling me bro. What the fuck.’ - Jason at some point.

It’s a whole mood killer for him to be honest.

He’s calling you things like chipmunk or sweetheart but here you were calling him dude and bro. He knows for a fact that he’s well and truly out of the friend zone because the shit you’ve done together isn’t platonic in any sort of way.

Thinks Roy had set you up to call him dude or bro behind his back. (He hasn’t)

Jason is petty and will get his own back by referring you as ‘just a really good friend’, ‘buddy o’ mine’ or even worse than both of those; ‘chum.’ 💀

When you go low, Jason was more then willing to go to the depths of fucking hell to the point it had become a game to see who’d call out just how stupid this all was, and at the both of you for ever thinking that this was an excellent idea in the first place.

You’ll probs get punished…I’m just going to leave it there and let your minds guess what that ‘punishment’ was exactly.

Damian:

As much as Damian hates it when you call him Dami, he hates it when you call him dude or bro even more, if that’s even possible.

Damian hates it when you call him dude or bro. He’s not your dude or bro, he’s your partner and he expects no less then darling, my heart or my beloved.

So you calling him dude or bro is more than enough reason for him to give you the silent treatment.

‘Until you learn that I am your partner, I won’t want to be anywhere near you if you’re going to keep calling me your bro or dude. It is a disservice to who I actually am to you.’ He says with a huff and beckons Titus to follow, only for the Great Dane to be left confused as to why his human parents were at a disagreement over something silly.

Also Titus, Ace, Jerry, Alfred the cat, Goliath and BatCow are children of divorce because I said so.

So it’s bests that you apologise while you still can because Damian can hold a grudge unlike any other. Even if you didn’t, you’d still crack first before Damian and quickly put an end to calling him dude/bro.

He just thinks being called a dude/bro when in a pre-established relationship is an insult.

He can take a joke but not when it’s aimed at his relationship. He’s well and truly devoted to his relationship -if we’re to completely ignore the whole being Robin thing- that it might as well be an insult towards him too at this point.

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gremlingottoosilly · 4 months

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Horsin' around (Centaurus!Konig x fem!Reader)

Konig is exiled from his people. You are exiled from yours. Together, you make about 6 legs and a perfect pair. Tags and CW: Size kink (duh), Centaurus!Konig(horse cocks), Konig is awkward, slight dub-con, power imbalance, belly bulge, praise kink, monster fucking. Thanks @kneelingshadowsalome for the prompt! AO3| Word count: 3016

Centaurus are not wild animals. You keep repeating it to yourself as you come deeper and deeper into the forest. You keep mumbling it to yourself as you feel the eyes watching you. judging you. Centaurus are not wild animals even if sometimes they behave like one. Not like you’re any different, any better – you’re a human, invading the sacred forests. You’re a human who is dumb enough to go foraging into the depths of their territory. Centaurus are not wild animals, but you don’t feel that repeating the same sentence over and over makes it sound any more convincing. You feel the danger in the air – with each step you take, with each fallen tree you’re stepping over. With every attempt to simply run ending up not working, you know you got lost. Long abandoned the basket you came with – you don’t recognize a single berry that grows here, not a mushroom or even some edible plant pieces to be found. This place is devoid of animals, of flowers – like something just snatched it all away. Ate it all, maybe. You don’t want to think what kind of creature could cause a migration like this. You don’t need to think though. Because the creature finds you first.

You yelp in a mix of surprise and horror when the arrow flies right in front of you, the skill of the archer is high enough to make the arrow cut down a few bits of hair in front of your eyes. If you were a mere millimeter closer, you’d be dead. If he wanted you dead, you’d be dead. This much is obvious. You freeze in place, not daring to move an inch when you hear it. Loud, not even bothering to conceal the sound of it – the creature was confident enough that the prey wouldn’t run. Not the creature, you correct yourself immediately. Centaurs are not animals, they are closer to humans than a lot of other monster types – with their strength and warrior culture, you’d say that they are even more humans than citizens of the village who forced you out.

The centaur doesn’t even bother to hide himself from you, concealing the sounds of heavy hooves on the ground or evading the branches that crunched against his body. This is exactly what made you surprised when you understood that instead of a rough, but mostly handsome face that most centaurus tend to have, you’re met with a black hood which only spared two holes for the icy-blue eyes staring back at you.

Is he a grim reaper? An executioner for other centaurus? Would that mean you don’t have to worry unless your lower part resembles a horse?

You take a quick look at your bottom half. Not a horse.

Centaur reapers the gesture, looking at his bottom half too. Definitely a horse.

You decide to speak first, hoping to find words that would work just fine to be your last.

— I am really sorry for intru…

— This is not the sacrifice season yet.

Ah, well.

The people from your village believe the centaurs to be sacred – despite them being monsters they knew a lot about, they were still given sacrifices. Food, some farm animals, especially fatty pieces of meat, and fancy jewels along with some weapons. Centaurus kept the worst predators at bay, herding the wolves to be their pets and sometimes driving deer and rabbits away to the village. They kept you protected from werewolves and orcs – with a meager payment of never touching the sacred grounds.

You just stepped into the deepest, most protected part of the forest. You wonder if you would deserve a peaceful death.

— It’s not. I…I made a mistake.

No, you wanted to be here. When the village decided to drive you out, you thought that foraging in the part of the forest, untouched by humans, would be the most profitable thing. Centaurus won’t take berries anyway, right? But they might just take your life.

— A mistake?

He tilts his hooded head to the side. It’s such a boyish expression, that you almost let go of a nervous giggle. Perhaps, you were going crazy…but the centaur seemed a bit nervous. As seasoned as he looked – with battle scars covering his body and a bit of silver mixed with his ginger fur on the horse part – he seemed almost awkward standing here. Tapping one of his hooved legs like a nervous child. Squeezing the bow in his hands with vigor that made you scared he will just snap it in half.

— I just wanted to take some food.

— Is there a hunger?

— No.

— Humans aren’t allowed in these parts. Why would you go if not out of despair?

You gulp.

— I…am not allowed back.

— Why?

Because you’re a forest witch who will doom them all, according to the village of a horse people worshippers. Because you’re a monster in disguise who keeps straling babies, according to the village that uses the best pieces of food to feed the horse people who can take of themselves just fine, instead of feeding it to the orphaned children. Because you’re a whore who refuses to accept the new type of sacrifices – the virgins of the village as a breeding material for the Centaurus, according to the village filled with people who would gladly push a poor virgin out in the forest once she turned of age, so she could be mauled by horse people.

— We had…mutual disagreement.

You stare at the mighty body of the centaur. You fight the urge to get your hands down his torso, play with its short hairs, and…you were always a bit of a horse girl. Wondering if he is strong enough to lift you up and get you somewhere safe, somewhere far far away from here.

Centaur has this weird, almost boyish tone. Deep and yet, sounds just a bit deranged. Unhinged. Like he is going to maul you any second – and judging by the bow and arrow still in his hands, he might not be wrong. You lick your lips. He stares at them – or at least you think he is. Hood only reveals his eyes and you can already get lost in them. Cold, like the northern sea, Like the snow outside. You thought all mythical creatures were supposed to be warm-blooded.

— You’re exiled then.

He isn’t asking. Centaurus are omnipotent and wise, they should know about human affairs more than humans themselves. You made them into sort of gods – you shouldn’t be surprised that this guy knows way more than he should. Somehow, you still feel safer around him than other humans – and maybe, it’s more of a you problem. Maybe, you ended up eating some of the weird berries and it’s just your hallucinations before you die.

— I am.

He takes a step back. He is big – all of them are, you suppose, but, somehow, he is bigger than he should be. Giant, muscular torso on top of an already muscular and big horse part – he can pick you up, throw you, and break you with one finger, probably. No, definitely. You don’t want to give him a reason to, so you just stay in place. Hoping he wouldn’t deem your trespassing as a matter worthy of a torturous death.

— My name is König, human. Repeat, ja?

The name feels weird on your tongue. Rude, sharp. You don’t want to call him wrong and receive his wrath, so you try your best to repeat this.

— Ko-nig. Ja?

You tilt your head to the side, a curious little bird. Centaur – König, König, König – squints his eyes like he is smiling. You made the god smile. The horse god. The horseman. Just…man. If you don’t look down, where you already see something giant and heavy standing between his horse legs, you could forget that he isn’t a man at all.

Suddenly, you feel light. Suddenly, you feel your legs dangling in the air as you were picked up and bumped into the broad chest. Suddenly, you feel hands everywhere. On your ass, under it, touching your chest, your stomach, trying to get to the best position so you would stop moving constantly and trying to get out. You don’t want to fight him because you’re already in the air and falling right now could result in a broken neck – but you don’t want to be suspended in the air either. You whimper, pathetic sound escaping your lips as you feel calloused hands pressing on your mound. Traveling down your stomach and touching, squeezing, petting your delicate parts.

You spend so much time without a gentle hand or a soft touch, you can feel yourself dripping on the fingers of a centaur. Embarrassing, yes – but you know that if he were to proceed, you wouldn’t really resist.

And oh, he proceeds.

— They finally send us proper sacrifices.

He mumbles it into your hair, taking in your smell. You’re nice for a human – not scared of him too much, not trying to ran away or fight. Humans are usually just annoying insects under his hooves, but König can feel your face growing on him. Your body, too. Too weird for other Centaurus, never being able to find a proper mate who could take his lack of social awareness, he found himself mounting a human. His tribe would call him pathetic. His tribe would laugh.

Then again, he is the first to get such a delicate little gift. Who is laughing now?

You aren’t crying in his hands, and he is a bit surprised. You smell like a proper mate, like a good bitch in heat just for him – yet, you’re not falling on your knees to present your dripping cunt. You’re just trying to whimper to ask him to be gentler, and he is happy to oblige. Calm enough to listen to you. Ripping your pants apart because this is such a useless piece of clothing – concealing your rich smell from him.

König doesn’t waste any time when he dips his finger across your swollen folds. Playing with the slick running down his wrist, smiling as you are closing your eyes and pressing your head in his chest. He is strong enough to keep you suspended in the air without a care in the world. Weak human, he would have to spend so much time preparing you for him – taking his cock would be a task no sacrifice ever competed before.

König stares at your dripping pussy that is already clenching around nothing just because his fingers are pressing on the hood of your little clit, and he knows you’d be the perfect wife for him. Taking him properly as his mate, moaning as his cum fills you up. he can’t wait – knows that he should, preparing you properly. His hooves are beating the ground in impatience as his fingers slide in and out of your pussy. You spread your legs, moaning louder. Such a filthy whore for him.

— Relax, human. Be a good mate.

— This isn’t what I wa…

— Quiet. Such a good…good girl, Schatz. Will bring me strong children.

— We can’t have sex. It’s im…impossible.

You whimper, trying to squeeze your legs, to shut his hand. You only moan louder, knowing that you would accept everything he gives you, and ask for more.

You don’t want to imagine his cock entering you over and over, forcing its way past your walls and making you round and soft with his children. It’s a foreign concept – centaurus shouldn’t mate with humans, it should be physically impossible. Yet, you almost want to try. A breeding mare, made for one and only.

König gets you on…something. It isn’t exactly a natural thing – a pile of stones and trees, perfect height for you to lay your back on, with some soft leaves and animal skins to rest comfortably. His hands support you on the perfect height and you immediately know what he construction is. A mating stand. Probably for other centaurus – but you feel almost fine laying on it too. Almost normal. Your muscles sting as you try to rest your legs and then spread them wide enough for König to stay between them. He is a big guy, after all. He turns you around, on your tummy. Ass in the air, you don’t like not seeing him. The heavy musk fills your nostrils, making you suddenly aware of what is about to happen – you’re wet, spread enough on his fingers, calloused fingertips scrubbing your gummy walls from the inside. He is fingering you with ease, but it doesn’t feel like a man with experience – he is touching and probing like he doesn’t know what he is doing and, honestly, you kinda like it. He is exploring your body with his and you moan, not caring that you sound like a whore. Humans have already abandoned you as part of society – you might as well just take it. — I will prepare you.

— It won’t fit… — It will, Schatzen. You’ll get used to it. — What if I break?

— I will be careful. Trust me, ja?

Even his fingers are a bit much when he enters your body with a third digit. One, two, three – you are about to burst when he is massaging your G-spot, when he is smiling in your hair and gets you so aroused just on it alone. You’re about to cum when he slowly extracts his fingers, deeming your sloppy cunt as explored enough. Your walls are clenching around nothing, a beautiful display of desire – maybe, it was the right call that humanity abandoned you. König looks at the perfect centraius whore on display and he can’t wait to claim you. To make you his.

He is exiled from other centaurus.

You are exiled from humans.

What a beautiful fucking pair.

He enters your body slowly deliberately. Regrets it immediately – you are wonderful. Too perfect to be this slow, being soft with you is torture. Your walls accept him with a stretch, like a warm glove around his cock. Slowly shifting, softening, straddling his cock with each inch he buries in the depth of your warm, weeping cunt. He can’t touch you, as unfortunate as this is – dumb horse body is making it impossible, even looking at you is hard enough on his neck. He wants to mount you properly, but you’re simply too fucking small. Wants to touch your hair, to whisper some encouragement that human women would probably love to hear – but he can only breath heavily and enter you, one painful centimeter after the other.

— T…too much, too much, please, I can’t, it’s… You whimper, you cry, it breaks his damned heart because you don’t deserve this. You need to be treated with care, with softness and yet, he can’t give you that. He wants so much to just put you in his arms and hug you, but that would be impossible. König will give you all the coddling in the world after you’re done. After he is sure that you received all the possible breeding and seed he could gave you.

— Quiet, human. It would be nice soon.

— It’s not…

— Touch yourself, please, bitte. I can’t…can’t touch you. But you will feel better.

Your hand goes between your legs, playing with yourself. Spreading your folds around his cock even more, fingers sliding past your clit. Touching the little button and hoping it would be enough to make you aroused – and it is. Your cunt is a mess of your own juices mixed with König’s pre cum, and you already know that you won’t be walking the next couple days.

König bottoms with a deep sigh, and you feel him in your stomach. Bulging with his giant cockhead, making the outline of his cock visible – you touch it with shock, not understanding how your organs are even in place.

He starts moving and you finally feel it – the burning pleasure setting fire in the pit of your stomach. the excess liquid pouring from your damp cunt, moans spreading from your lips. You never felt this way with a human before – then again, no human cock would ever be able to compete with König. He can reach the parts of your body that you never knew existed, and the mix of pheromones and musk is making you dizzy. Light-headed. You don’t even need to touch yourself more to feel the height of your orgasm, building in as rapidly as König’s thrusts.

In, forcing its way to hit your cervix gently, massaging the sore spots of your tight pussy.

Out, grazing over your inner walls, touching all the buttons.

In again, filling you up with his pre-cum. Moaning loud enough for the whole forest to hear.

Out, dragging you back with him, as you’re still impaled on his cock.

— S…so perfect for me. Scheisse, so pretty… He can’t touch you and it breaks his heart. König goes to praise you instead – words feel awkward on his tongue, but he knows you need to heart it. He wants you to hear it, wants you to fee wanted, entitled. Soft. He smiles when you whimper and moan, milking him for his orgasm. Your cunt is made for him and he wants to spend every waking moment buried inside of it. Gods, you are a perfect sacrifice.

He is coming embarrassingly fast, pumping his giant cock even deeper into your pussy. Filling you up with hot cum that can’t even stay inside of your cunt. Leaking everywhere, you two are making a mess – you breath heavily, not understanding what is right and wrong anymore. Only knowing, remembering the shape of his cock. Pushing in and out, forcing its way in. God, you feel full. And ridiculous. And so, so perfect with his cock slowly starting to pump you again. And again. Konig came embarrassingly fast, but only because this is just the first orgasm in a row. Forcing its way inside, you are overstimulated already – but you will take him, of course, obviously. You have to.

König is going to enjoy breeding a new clan out of you.

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meanbossart · 3 months

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How did your DU drow react when he got told he had to kill his spouse? and then when he went to wake up Astarion and get tied up? I think I just wanna know how your DU drow mentally/emotionally is doing during and after that part, and when talking to Astarion afterward, I'm a sucker for hearing about those deep kinds of moments (hopefully that makes sense?) Also, how did your DU react when you met Kressa Bonedaughter and learned all about what was done to him (again, I know none of the companions really comment on literally something horrible being told such a shame, honestly) but how would you say or think that Astarion and Shadowheart might have reacted hearing that info? Again, thank you for all your art and for answering these questions! PS: (I really don't care if your answer is super long; I WILL EAT IT UP)

Sooo for the first question, I wanna preface by saying that I personally don't think their relationship was that in depth yet, at that point. Yes, DU drow enjoyed Astarion's company and relied on him in a similar way which he relied on Shadowheart. And also yes, Astarion saw DU drow as the first person who ever took him and his agency seriously - but I think feelings were still in their infancy. DU drow's mind was a mess through and through; he drank constantly to keep his urge at bay, he kept his distance from everyone most of the time, and when he did seek out comfort in either Shadowheart or Astarion (the non-sexual kind, they didn't really fuck at all), it was a kind of primal instinct and desperate longing for companionship - if you asked him if he was in love with anyone, however, he would have said no.

Similarly, while I think Astarion's act 2 confession is sincere, I also think that he's being sincere when he says that he doesn't know what you are yet. You're not really a lover, but you aren't a victim, either; what you are is a person who he would rather not have to murder eventually, and as someone who has had their empathy squeezed out throughout the course of two centuries, that's meaningful enough. He may fantasize about the best case scenario for you two - but he has no expectations that whatever this is will last. But it is nice, for the time being.

So the "murder your darling" scene, rather than a proof of love and trust, is to me the turning point where:

A) DU drow has to come to terms with the fact that he doesn't have as much control over the Urge as he thought, and B) When Astarion snaps out of his care-free, just-go-with-the-flow nature around his plan and this relationship. They both realize they bit off more than they could chew and are now caught in each other's crossfire.

Which is to say that I don't read Astarion's words of comfort to him as entirely honest - specially when you compare it to certain dialogue deliveries later in the game. I think he's still, to a degree, telling you what you need to hear so that you hold out for just a bit longer and kill Cazador. You probably can't be together forever as he idly fantasized about once or twice, when he let his mind wander - but god damn it, he needs to at least be free, and it seems like you have bloodlust to spare to make that happen.

Meanwhile, DU drow finally comes to confront the fact that he is not in control. Doesn't matter how hard he tries or how much he drinks, the urge will do to him as it will, and when it wishes. It stops being fun and it gets scary, from that moment on.

But here's who did stop it: Astarion. Where alcohol fell short and his willpower failed, Astarion stepped in.

So, more interesting than the scene itself to me, is how from that point on DU drow would have no choice but put his trust entirely on the vampire to control him. He ties him up, he keeps an eye on him, he has full spoken-word permission to kill him if necessary - he is forced to be as vulnerable at humanly possible under his hand, every night. Regardless of whether or not DU drow realizes that Astarion is doing it for his own reasons, he doesnt care, because Astarion has now become his rock and his bondage - hell, if Astarion does have a reason to keep him alive that's all the better; someone else might just slit DU drow's throat and be done with the concern altogether.

And so, it's only from that point on that DU drow truly starts to see Astarion as an equal, and even a partner. He's thinking that, if his whole life has to be like this, at least he has someone who can handle it.

Astarion, meanwhile, I believe only comes to truly consider (and wish for) DU drow's freedom after he's free from Cazador - and after he bestows that freedom upon his siblings and the other spawn. That's when he finally understands the length of DU drow's devotion to him and the value of freewill as a concept- and how he wants it for both of them, instead of being content with his own.

Not to mention... I think in Astarion's mind he was 100% not going to survive Cazador LOL so when he succeeds he's like "oh shit I guess anything is fucking possible huh. Yeah fuck it lets go fight your dad, also I've decided I want you for realsies, now."

Anyways, can you believe I thought this was gonna be a short ask. Here have a doodle I made while thinking about all this bullshit:

As for Kressa, I got an ask about that before but I can't find it now LOL to summarize; he was pissed, angered, and in a far more personal level embarrassed to have had his dirty laundry aired (AKA, victimized) in that way in front of the others - but this isn't something he would have expressed outwardly, and I think both Shadowheart and Astarion would have known better than to inquire him about it. It's not really something he would have sought out comfort for in anyone, so, I think the subject died as soon as Kressa did. In this case, their lack of commentary was completely appropriate - If they had reached out in any way (which would have been, in my opinion, completely out of character) DU drow would have shut them out with a quickness.

#I'm a little drunk so I hope this is coherent LOL #THANK YOU FOR THE ASK #ENJOY THE ELF BASED ESSAY #DU drow lore #sketch #bg3 spoilers #ask

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heliads · 11 months

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i don't want to keep secrets just to keep you

Ever since you were a kid, your older brother Charles Leclerc has made you promise that you'd never date one of his teammates. Carlos Sainz, however, may be a fiercer test of your willpower than any of you imagined.

masterlist

Charles Leclerc is going to be late to the first race of the season, and it’s so his fault. He’s usually so distracted in trying to make sure that you’re going to be on time that he forgets to check in with himself. That’s why you’re currently watching him scramble around the hotel room, desperately shoving stuff in his pockets and trying to regain some semblance of dignity.

“It’s only Bahrain,” you tease him, “how are you this behind already?”

Charles shoots you an infuriated glare, halfway through trying to tug both shoes on at once. “I’m sure this is your fault somehow.”

You roll your eyes. “I trust you to find a reason for that to make sense.”

You’re not fazed by his irritation. Charles is your elder brother of exactly one year, two months, and three weeks, which is, in his decided opinion, more than enough to give him an advantage over you in age and responsibility. Charles has taken it upon himself to watch out for you and Arthur in every way possible, including when either of you visit him at the racetrack.

However, Charles really only has enough room in his brain to worry about one person. In micromanaging you, he’s forgotten to get himself ready in time, thus causing the chaos before you now. You’re not the one to stress this morning, as you won’t be shooting around a track at ungodly speeds, so it’s well within your rights to sit back and laugh as Charles trips over himself in an attempt to still make it to the paddock on time.

First race and he’s already behind schedule. If only he could use some of that nervous energy to actually be on time the first attempt. He’ll still make it to the race with enough time to spare, but you wouldn’t know that from the way Charles is buzzing behind the wheel, tapping his fingers and mumbling swears whenever the cars in front of him dare to dip below the speed limit.

Eventually, you find yourself in the Ferrari section of the paddock, guided to Charles’ assigned room so he can drop off a bag and grab whatever he needs before heading out again. He adjusts his shirt collar in the mirror, fixing his hair much to your joking derision, and finally declares himself ready to go.

At last, Charles turns to you in the depths of the Ferrari complex, placing his hands on your shoulders like a sports coach about to deliver some life-changing advice. “Y/N, before we go out there, I need you to remember a promise. You swore this to me years ago and I need your word that it isn’t going to change.”

You groan loudly. “Charles, I thought you’d forgotten about that.”

Charles temporarily breaks his stress grip on your shoulders to swat you on the bicep with his right hand. “Absolutely not, are you mad? I want you to promise again. I need to hear it.”

You stare at him. He stares back. “You’re insane,” you tell him.

“Say it,” he replies.

Unfortunately, you kind of knew this was coming. Charles made you promise something like this for the first time back when he was still getting the hang of karting. You’d done something silly like hold hands with one of his friends from his karting team when you were a kid and Charles had flown off the handle. That’s when he’d first come up with the teammate pledge. If you wanted to be there at the race, you had to swear you’d never go out with any of his driving partners, past or present.

It’s a promise he’d made you continually repeat all throughout Formulas Three and Two, but it’s been a while since you were able to make it to a race due to various life interferences, so you thought he’d forgotten about it or something. It appears that’s far from the case, though. Leave it to Charles to remember something like this.

When it becomes increasingly apparent that neither of you will be going anywhere unless you say the words Charles is yearning to hear, you sigh and give in. “Fine. I solemnly swear that I’m not going to date any of your teammates. I won’t even look at them. I’ll run the second anyone with a Ferrari shirt enters the room.”

Charles rolls his eyes. “Be serious.”

“I am serious!” You protest. “You’re being ridiculous. I’m not going to seduce any of your coworkers.”

Charles gives you a pronounced glare. “I’m quoting you on that.”

Your brother looks as if he’d like nothing more than to lecture you for a little longer on the importance of keeping this promise, but luckily, you’re saved by someone rapping on the door. Charles gives you a cautionary look before calling to the visitor that they can come in.

And what a visitor it is. All thoughts of the previous dispute are erased from your head in a matter of moments. Seeing as you’ve been away from the races for so long, you’ve never gotten a chance to actually meet Charles’ teammate at Ferrari. You’ve seen photos, of course, and certainly stared at them for longer than Charles would approve of, if he ever knew, but something about Carlos Sainz is even better in person.

He peers inside the room and a smile instantly crosses his face at the sight of you. “You must be Charles’ sister, Y/N. I’ve wanted to meet you for a while.”

You grin back at him without even thinking of it. “It was the same with me. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Carlos reaches out to shake your hand, and it might just be your imagination, but you swear he holds it perhaps a little longer than he would Arthur’s or Enzo’s. “Only good things, I hope. If not, I hope to convince you otherwise.”

Charles coughs pointedly from beside the two of you, causing Carlos to drop your hand in a flash. “Are you here for a reason, mate, other than to talk to my sister?”

Carlos nods a little too quickly. “Yes, yes. You’re late, cabrón. PR’s been tearing hospitality apart looking for you. We were supposed to head out twenty minutes ago.”

Charles swears under his breath. “You should have told me that at the start, you asshole. Save whatever that was for later, we have to get out there.”

Charles exasperatedly rushes to the table behind him to grab his phone and a fresh Ferrari cap out of his bag. While he’s distracted, Carlos winks at you, whispering something about how he hadn’t minded the delay. Charles can’t hear it, but he must be able to tell from the expression on your face that something is happening.

“Out of my room,” Charles tells Carlos, “we need to get going. Y/N, you remember how to get to hospitality, right? You can meet up with Arthur and the others.”

You nod and he heads to the door, his teammate already shepherded out into the hall by the sheer force of Charles’ indignant stress. Your brother doubles back a moment later, leaning back into the room to give you one last vexed look.

“You promised,” Charles urges you, raising his finger in warning before hurrying out at last.

You’ve never had a problem keeping the teammate promise before. That being said, you think you might have to fight to maintain your word a little harder than you had before. Carlos is– well, his eyes, his hair, the way that red shirt looks against his skin–

Promises!

You’ll never make one again. Silently, you send up a prayer to anyone inclined to listen. You really don’t want to disappoint your brother, but you might need all the moral strength you can get.

You dutifully make your way to Ferrari hospitality as told, and you make it approximately six minutes through listening to your brother’s friends talk about the strategy and the track and the tire compounds before you cave and ask them what you really want to know. And what about his teammate? What’s Carlos like?

They’re not as paranoid as Charles, so they don’t suspect you. You listen carefully, quietly, to how Carlos has really been improving as of late, how he’s been nothing but a gentleman to all of them, what they wouldn’t give to see him more often than just around the paddock.

In short, it’s everything you’d want to hear. When the lights go out and the cars start streaking around the first corner, you realize that the red flash of engine and machinery you’re watching isn’t your brother, but Carlos instead. And, when the Spaniard ends up on the podium, your heart leaps as if it was someone you had known all your life up there, laughing and shouting and spraying champagne.

He still smells sweet when he visits you later. Carlos should know better. So should you. You smile and congratulate him and he thanks you, says that he knew you were watching the whole time and that’s why the race went so well. He waits until your smile is so warm that you could hardly speak and then he asks you to get a drink or two with him later. Just to talk, you know. Unless, of course, you wanted more.

More is exactly what you want with Carlos, but you’re still here in this room with him because you’re here to cheer on your brother, and your brother is the one who’ll be watching you like a hawk until the end of the night. Alright, Carlos says when you admit this to him, You know, I didn’t take you for someone who just wanted to follow the rules.

He’s going to get you killed. You’re delighted with every bit of him. You tell him as much when you give him your phone number. Carlos grins, presses a kiss to your forehead, and tells you when and where he’ll pick you up. You can still feel the ghost of his lips on your skin even after he leaves, even after your brother takes his place and starts rambling about every lap. You don’t hear a word. All you can think about is the new contact in your phone, the one who texts you as you’re leaving the building:

You looked beautiful today, by the way. In case I forgot to tell you.

So you do have a death wish, then. So does he. You text Carlos all throughout that night and the next, making sure that you are able to tell him how imperative that this remains secret from Charles even as you fall endlessly through compliments and charm and glory.

You meet up with him relatively soon afterwards, even though to you, it feels like centuries have passed since that first meeting. You are absolutely terrified walking to meet him for the first time, certain that it won’t be half of what you imagined. There is a moment of fear, and then you round the corner and he’s there, holding out flowers for you, and the burden of Atlas himself falls from your shoulders.

And– it’s good. Fuck, it’s good. You wouldn’t be able to live with yourself if it wasn’t, but this is something unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before. You want to call it love from the first date alone, but you manage to wait a little longer, pushing off the declaration until a few weeks have gone by and he’s kissing you in the shadows of buildings, always running the razor-fine line of being adventurous and getting caught.

This, you decide, one room down from your brother, Carlos’ hands on your waist, is why you would break the rules. It is all worth stealing; every word, every touch, every moment. You never want it to stop, which of course, means that it must.

You have three glorious months before your golden paradise comes crashing down around you. As time goes on, the two of you feel more and more certain that you won’t get caught. How could you, after all? How could Charles possibly guess? You sneak out of hospitality to meet with Carlos, and he laughs and calls you his little rebel, and everything makes sense in a way it never has before. You trust him to keep you out of trouble even as you drag him further into it. There is no way you could possibly be seen.

And then, when you’re in Carlos’ room and he’s kissing you to say hello and I missed you and you look lovely today, just as always, the door opens. You thought it was locked. You might not even have checked.

It is enough, though. Enough that your brother would be able to walk in and see. Enough that you would feel a terrible fear run like ice water through your veins. Enough for you to know that there would be no chance that he’d let this happen, that Charles would do anything but hate you forever for this.

The look on your brother’s face alone convinces you of that. You’ve had arguments before, in the past, both of you doing things to mess with each other, but never in your life have you ever seen Charles as angry as he is right now. Fury does not even come close to the war radiating from his eyes.

Carlos puts his hands up, tries to step in front of you to deflect some of the blame. “Charles, look, this is my fault. I–”

Charles cuts him off. Carlos usually doesn’t back down to anyone, but you think a raging bull would step aside if Charles was in his path right now. “Don’t. I don’t want to hear it. Y/N, I asked one thing of you. What is this?”

You feel like your heart has stopped beating. A thousand thoughts whir in your head, excuses, pleas for forgiveness, apologies, but nothing comes out. Charles lunges forward, grabbing your arm, pulling you out of the room. Carlos tries to stop the two of you from leaving, but Charles looks him dead in the eyes and tells Carlos he’ll move if he knows what’s good for him. You nod once, mumble that it’s okay, and Carlos steps away at last, watching with a haunted stare as you disappear down the hall.

Charles slams the door of his driver’s room closed behind you. His hands are balled into fists at his sides, breathing heavy as he tries and fails to get himself under control. “I made you promise this a hundred times, Y/N. Don’t date my fucking teammates.”

You’ve never been scared of your brother, but today– Today, you are. You shrink away from him, trying to think of anything to say to make this end. “I’m sorry, Charles. So, so sorry.”

“You’re not,” Charles spits. “If you were, you never would have done this in the first place. I want so little from you, and you can’t even do this?”

Hot tears threaten to choke you out, but when you finally manage to get your breath back, the sadness starts to creep away, replaced instead by embittered fury. Who is he to speak to you like this? No brother should treat his family with the hatred he throws at you now.

“You never should have asked me that in the first place. I can do what I want, I’m an adult.”

Charles scoffs. “You’re not acting like one right now. There are so many other men in the world, but no, you had to go behind my back like this. You’ll stay away from him, you understand?”

You feel like screaming. “Stop trying to police what I do! You can’t tell me what to do with my life, you��re not my father!”

“I know!” Charles says, furious, “I know, none of us are. He’s not here anymore, it’s just me trying to look out for you and you won’t even let me do that. Every time I try to do something, you find a way to get around it. God, you make knowing you so damned difficult.”

The room becomes icily silent. Charles’ eyes are wide and scared. You don’t think he meant to say that, but he did, and there is no going back from it now.

“Alright, then,” you reply as calmly as you can, “I’ll fix that for you, then. You don’t have to handle me anymore.”

Charles sucks in a breath. “Wait, Y/N–”

You don’t let him finish, already to the door before he can even complete the last syllable of your name. It slams behind you, making you flinch. You don’t know what you’d say if you saw him again, but you still walk slowly to the elevator, then wait five minutes by the button, just in case he comes after you. He doesn’t. The hall is dark and cold, just like the streets outside when you finally gather up the last pitiful scraps of your pride and leave.

You don’t go to any more races after that. You stay at home and go about your normal business and pretend that nothing is the matter even though everything is. You don’t answer when Charles texts you later, or when he calls, or when the attempts to reach you eventually fall away to nothingness. Carlos tries to contact you as well, but you doubt he wants to stay with you after that explosion with Charles, so you do him a favor and ignore him too.

He’ll thank you for it later, maybe, if he even remembers you at all. Formula One drivers are a big deal around the world. You wouldn’t be surprised if Carlos forgets you over a supermodel or twelve, even if it would stab you through the heart to see a paparazzi photo of him with any other girl.

You don’t talk to anyone, actually, no one except your friends, and they know enough to not ask a single question. You don’t see any of your family, certain that they’d be on Charles’ side. You don’t want any more lectures, so it’s easier to just pretend like it’s just you against the world. That’s what you tell yourself, at least. You have been known to lie before.

You last a few months before your facade starts to crack. No matter how well luck runs in your favor, how many new friends you make, nothing compares to what you’d had before. You find yourself staying up at night just waiting for a call so you can ignore it, or wake from a dream in which someone was there, talking to you, when you’d never dare so much as look at them now.

It’s not enough. Of course it isn’t. You had everything you could have possibly wanted— boyfriend and brother, both Ferrari drivers, your family happy that you were showing up to more races and the love of your life thrilled to see you each and every time— so how could none of that ever be enough? It never will be. You could spend a thousand lifetimes in this terrible empty resolution and still not be satisfied, not when you remember how you used to have it all not so long ago.

You’re not sure how long you could have lasted like this. Perhaps you could have stuck to it forever, a grudge grown inside you like the roots of an evergreen, but it would have choked you out before long. Something intervenes, though. Someone, to be specific. Someone like your other brother, the younger one.

Arthur calls you. Frames it under the guise of wanting advice for an upcoming trip, but he finds a way to sneak discussion of Charles in there when your guard is down. He says Charles regrets it. You don’t believe him until an envelope shows up on your doorstep four days later containing plane tickets to the city of the next Formula One race. Addressed from your estranged brother. Including a note that says, Sorry. And, C.L.

Nothing more. The paper practically tears from the weight of you folding it and unfolding it in your hands. It seems to have aged centuries by the time you get off of the plane, stepping down in foreign territory both in terms of the new stamp you’ll get to add to your passport and the uneasy feeling resting in your chest when Charles texts you the number of the hotel room he bought you and his as well. Just in case, you know, you maybe wanted to talk.

You take the flight and you go to the hotel and you bring all of your suitcases and misguided hopes to sit along with you. It’s dark out when you finally manage to get up the courage to lock your door and go to Charles’ room instead. He gets back from media duties around this time, you’re sure he would be there if you just knocked. If you just tried.

The problem is how to make it last. You stand in front of his door, shaking, and then you raise your hand and rap once against the wood. It’s quiet enough that you could leave if he didn’t hear you, having done your job of attempting to reach him.

Charles hears you, though. The unhappy thought occurs to you that he’s probably been waiting for this and dreading it just as much as you. Your knuckles have barely left the smooth surface of the door before you hear the sound of footsteps on carpet, and then he’s undoing the latch and your brother is there again.

You hover for a moment, not sure what to do. Is he mad still? Couldn’t be, if he went to the expense of flying you out here. Does he expect you to apologize?

Instead of anything like that, Charles surges forward, wrapping an arm around your shoulders. He hasn’t hugged you like this in a while, even before the fight. It’s like you’re kids again, and Charles has just won a karting round and he’s still small enough that having his sister there isn’t an embarrassment but a source of pride.

Something hot spikes through your throat, but you swallow it back and hug him, too. This is your brother. Even after a fight, he’s your family. The two of you have been trying your hardest to forget that, but he is.

Charles disengages himself soon enough to gesture you into the room. You take a careful seat on one of the available chairs and Charles sinks down onto a sofa, head propped up on hands on knees.

“I’m not sorry,” you blurt out. It’s stupid, you probably should have at least said something to clear the air before starting with that, but you want him to know what he’s getting himself into.

Even weeks after the incident, when the anger burned off and you just felt sad and alone, you still never felt regret for dating Carlos. You loved him. Still do, actually. You would have done it all over again if given the chance. If your temporary surrender with Charles is based on the lie that you’ll repent for having the audacity to fall in love, it would never last long anyway. Better to get it over with now.

Charles chuckles. “Yes, I had guessed that. Joris told me I was being stupid.”

You snort in disbelief before you can stop yourself. “You told Joris?”

Charles shrugs wildly. “Who else was I supposed to complain to, Carlos? Both Arthur and Enzo told me it was my fault and I wanted someone to agree with me.”

You fold your arms across your chest. “Maybe you should have taken that as a sign that I was right and you weren’t.”

Charles groans, but he’s not mad. Not anymore. Neither of you are, actually. “Well, that’s why you’re here, obviously. I was– I was stupid. I can’t control you. You’re not a kid anymore. Just, Y/N– Carlos?”

He says the last part in a desperate plea, practically beseeching you to come to your senses. You laugh, unable to stay serious when Charles looks so horrified. “Let me live, Charles. He was worth it.”

“I assumed,” Charles says darkly, then, “Does this mean I get to date one of your friends? If you say no, you are a hypocrite.”

You roll your eyes. “They wouldn’t want you. I’ve warned them off of drivers.”

Charles protests that, but weakly. The two of you are giggling like nothing had happened, which, although infinitely preferable to fighting, confuses you more than anything. Is this it, then? Is the fight over? So many months of separation, and it’s done without hardly even being debated?

You eye your brother cautiously once his laughter subsides. “You’re really okay with it, then? I mean, you were so mad when you found out.”

Charles winces at the memory. “I was caught by surprise. I was angry, yes, but it shouldn’t have been that much. I knew I fucked up when you left. I told myself that it was more important that you come back.”

It’s what you had felt as well. After your father died– well, there are only so many of us. You learn that family is worth more than argument. Charles has been quick to forgive ever since then. It is easy to be lonely when you are far from home and there is nobody left who knows you.

You nod, accepting this. If Charles has made his peace, then– well, you would be lying if you said you had come to this race just to see your brother. “And– Carlos, is he–”

“I don’t know,” Charles answers evenly. “I haven’t seen a lot of him. I have no idea if he is angry or unhappy or anything. We’re nice on camera because PR makes us, but we’ve avoided each other a lot.”

Your face must betray your apprehension, because Charles waves a hand at you. “Don’t worry about it, though. I’m sure he still thinks you’re sweet. He did tell me off for a long time when you left. He would not have done that if it was nothing. If you want to see him again, I am sure he would be okay with it.”

You laugh bitterly. “It’s been months, Charles. I don’t know if he even wants to look at me anymore, let alone date me again.”

Charles shakes his head. “What do you lose by going? Besides, now that I am invested in it, I want this to pay off. I did not spend money for your flight over here just for you to get ghosted.”

You toss a pillow at his head. Charles deflects it with ease and points towards his door. “He is out there, target him and not me! Now go already, I want to stop moping around. Maman says it is terrible for the constitution.”

You laugh and head for the door, pausing slightly over the threshold when you realize that you actually have no idea where Carlos is at all. You could, of course, just wait until the next day when you can see him at Ferrari hospitality, but you do not want to waste another moment when you’ve already gone so long without him.

A voice over your shoulder quells your worrying. “He’s in room 519.”

You shoot Charles a grateful smile. “Thank you.”

He nods, and you’re off, barely stopping long enough to close the door behind you before hurrying down the corridor once more.

You’re already on the fifth floor, which makes sense; Ferrari puts their drivers somewhat close to each other so they can help each other back if they’ve gotten a little too hammered after a long night out. You take two turns and then you’re there, 519. The end of the line. Your own personal fate.

You thought you would be more afraid to face Charles than Carlos, but for some reason now you feel as if you can hardly move at all. You have to force your hand to form a fist and rap against the wood, but your heart is hammering in your chest all the while.

For a brief, terrible moment, you entertain the notion that Carlos will not come to the door but someone else, a woman perhaps, halfway undressed or something horrendous like that. Instead, it’s him, just him, and you feel like your heart might burst out of your chest.

Carlos looks at you, dark eyes wide. He hasn’t seen you since the fight, and you were so afraid of everything that you didn’t respond to a single message or call. Still, you are standing in front of him now, so surely that must count for something.

“I forgave him,” you say, voice echoing in the stillness between you, “Charles.”

Carlos lets out this slow breath, and you’re debating whether it’s laced with disappointment or indifference or maybe something else, something better, the thoughts racing through your head at record time right up until he kisses you. And then– well, then you don’t have to worry anymore. You know. You know everything.

“I was waiting,” he murmurs against the top of your head, unwilling to pull away more than a centimeter or two even for a lack of breath, “I thought you might have thought we weren’t worth the risk.”

You shake your head indignantly. “No, never. I was scared, that’s all. I’m sorry.”

Carlos leans away just slightly, enough that you can see the playful smile on his face as he traces the curve of your cheekbone. “My little rulebreaker, scared? Couldn’t be.”

You laugh, let him pull you into his room and shut the door. No one in the world needs to know the thousand ways you make it up to each other, how you make a new promise to him as a crescent moon snakes further up the sky: you will never let a single thing get in between the two of you again. The stars soften, dawn colors the morning sky, and you, you have happiness beyond compare.

f1 tag list: @j-brielmalfoy

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dailyadventureprompts · 5 months

Text

Homebrew Mechanic: Battles of Attrition

I think we can all agree that there’s something a little wonky with how d&d’s combat system changes between the early and mid/late game. Heroes go from being rightfully cautious about danger to being outright banal about it, confident that their accumulated power will be enough to dispatch all but the most outstanding foes. The traditional solution is to put them up against stronger enemies but in my experience these mismatched encounters are a failing proposition: combat just gets more swingy and there’s only so many high level threats I can throw at them in a short period of time before it begins to strain credulity.

While a lot of folks (Especially the OSR crowd) have taken the stance that 5e is broken because of how much it empowers players, I think the real fault lays with the lack of systems that exist to provide challenge outside of anything related to the damage based tug-of-war that is combat. I think a lot of those systems were part of the non existent “exploration” pillar of the game before Hasbro realized they could make easy money selling the game in its unfinished state and gutted it along with the development team.

Thankfully, I and other homebrewers are around to do what the megacorporations cant, namely have some original thoughts and try and figure out a way to add challenge back to the game without resenting those playing it for having fun.

TLDR: Trying to make our games challenging by upping damage numbers in combat is a losing proposition, in no small part because that part of the game is DESIGNED around the heroes winning. Instead, we up the overall difficulty by making them temporarily weaker with systems like sickness, stress, exhaustion, & item degradation. All of which I have details and guidelines on below the cut.

First and foremost let me state some of my goals for these “attrition systems”, so we can all be on the same page. Whenever I make homebrew rules I try for something that’s going to require little to no paperwork on behalf of the players and can be seamlessly implemented into my DMing style. It’s not about realism, it’s not about punishing players, this is a way for me to add mechanical depth without bogging down the machine entirely.

Attrition should be largely non-permanent. The 5e audience invests a lot in their characters both emotionally and mechanically, so it won’t do to pile on debilitating debuff after debuff to the point of making a character useless.

There should be an inverse relationship between the severity of the affliction and how long it lasts. Think in term of encounters, days, or weeks, (with the understanding that an attrition that goes on for long enough becomes a questhook in itself)

The exception to this rule is if someone hits 0 hitpoints. I’m outspoken in my stance that characters should only die when it’s alternatively appropriate, but the dm is at liberty to inflict thematically devastating setbacks in the unlikely event that the party DOES suffer losses in the damage tug of war.

We want to be sparing with how much attrition we throw at the party at once, so as to not create a “death spiral” where failures compound upon one another and make getting through the adventure impossible.

In most cases suffering Attrition should be something the party is able to avoid by being fast/lucky/cautious/clever or whatever else the encounter requires. It’s there to add weight and consequence to their actions, and as a factor for DMs to build scenarios around.

Exhaustion: Unlike a lot of the other changes made in Oned&d, I actually quite like the overhaul of “each point of exhaustion is a cumulative -1 to all d20 rolls and spell dc, beyond 10 is death” as it allows us to play with exhaustion far more readily as an attrition.

Every night you don’t rest in a haven (a safe comfortable place) you need to make a con save or take a point of exhaustion, with the ruggedness of the environment determining the DC. Characters with the survival skill or natural explorer feat don’t have to make this roll. Only rest in a haven removes exhaustion at the rate of one point per night (though spaces like a luxury inn or a peaceful glade watched over by friendly fey may restore more)

Hitting 0 hp and then being healed gives you a point of exhaustion. Nothing’s going to tire you out like getting magically defibulated so now everyone can stop complaining about healing word spam.

Poison: For our purposes, the “poisoned” condition as written is too severe. Disadvantage on all attacks and ability checks is downright punishing for anything other than a single battle. Instead we’re going to make it work like charmed, where there’s a baseline effect for the purposes of resistance, but the status of each poison is dependant on the source.

Poison falls in the “ short term big effect” side of attrition, specifically undermining a player’s ability to do most things since most effects end on a successful save or at the end of an encounter. Long lasting poisons should have more minor effects than the default poisoned condition, only applying to a few types of rolls or having a bane-like effect that makes judging the odds just a little bit more difficult.

This makes poison great to use for dungeons and short-ranging exploration where the party is likely to face multiple encounters in one day.

Diseases: 4e aced the design of these maladies by treating them as a contained skill challenge with their own CR with various stages: stage 0: you were cured, stage 1: you suffered the initial effect, stage 2 or 3: you suffered a severe effect, with the final stage (3-4) being some effect that made the disease permanent. When you got a disease it was usually stage 1, and you (usually) saved for it at the start of each day. Beating the DC by 5 or more meant you went down a stage (closer to 0), where as simply succeeding meant it stayed as bad as it was. Failing meant you got sicker, meaning a character could bounce up and down in wellness as an adventure went on.

Diseases are best for longterm adventures, and often undermine one particular aspect of a character ( healing, actions assosiated with a particular stat). Counterpoint to poisons, diseases should start out fairly gentle and then get worse the longer they’re left alone, leading to eventually devastating effects.

Curses: While borrowing the mechanics of diseases, I’d have curses be specifically weirder in their effects. The sort of thing that can make up the central hook or b-plot of a whole adventure. This should also mean that curses are the hardest for the party to stumble into, but also the hardest to shake.

Item Degradation: Detailed in a previous post HERE, the long and short of it is that item degradation is a form of player driven attrition that gently curbs their overall power level. If they go too hard, use their best items recklessly, get involved in needless fights, then they’re going to be in worse shape by the time they reach the final challenge. This was supposed be the idea behind HP/limited class abilities per day, but attrition systems cover that better IMO.

Stress: The psychological counterpoint to exhaustion, I’ve already talked about Stress HERE. I tend to only use stress in horror themed adventures and campaigns, as it builds upon 5e’s optional “madness” system which fits the theme when gothic terrors and eldritch abominations but less so with the game’s usual heroic fare.

Hunger & Supply: I made a super lightweight system based off this idea of “depletion die” for potions and other consumables, check it out, it’s lightweight and fantastic. Using this kind of system gives us another avenue to challenge our party, lengthening or shortening their lifeline as they lose supplies and seek out new caches.

Thinking environmentally: Part of the fantasy of being an adventurer is travelling to dangerous places and living to tell the tale. We’re denying our party that fantasy if we don’t follow through on the threat the idea of these places imply. You should risk sickness if you go into a swamp, sewer, or jungle, thirst should be a factor in desert exploration, just like freezing is for mountain and winter expeditions. That’s to say nothing of magical hazards; cursed landscapes that drain your will to live dead marshes style, alchemical smog in a steampunk industrial zone, fading into nothingness as you approach the edge of existence.

Figure out the natural hazards, make your party aware of the danger, and then build your adventure around the fact that they’ll need to save against the hazard each time they take a long rest.. Do they take a detour if it means having a safe place to camp? Is there a resource they need to manage along the way? Could encounters expose them to further dangers or make their current exposure worse? Keeping these ideas in mind especially when you’re planning a wilderness exploration adventure should give you lots of ideas to fill up those encounter tables.

Adding insult to injury: Giving enemies the ability to inflict attrition in various forms makes otherwise trivial enemies a credible threat even to a seasoned adventuring party. As an example, A party might breeze through a fight with some monstrous spiders ( or even ONE regular sized spider, if you can imagine) , but that spider encounter doesn’t need to be the most dangerous thing ever if their next encounter is a navigation challenge fording a river and a few of the heroes are still groggy thanks to the slow acting poison in their systems.

In this way you can use attrition based battles to soften your party up for greater challenges, long after their HP totals and healing ability have outpaced the damage a single trap/encounter can do.

Artist

#homebrew mechanic #d&d mechanics #attrition #combat

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lovebugism · 1 year

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i need more of “the customer is always right” before i wither away and die <3 the anticipation of IT happening is quite literally killing me ilysm

THE CUSTOMER'S ALWAYS RIGHT | b-minus

summary: eddie munson takes the unconquerable english midterm that's forced him to repeat senior year two times. dustin henderson gets a pep talk. uncle wayne gives his nephew a warning. you cook your eddie spaghetti some spaghetti. (17k)

pairing: virgin!eddie munson / f!reader

tags: idiots in love, experienced!reader, domestic bliss, staying the night, eddie munson tries to get used to being loved TW probable typos, swearing, discussions of being poor, talks of insecurities, kissing, heavy petting, oral sex (m!receiving) 18+ only!!

a/n: hi. hello. me again. you probably don't remember me because it's been almost TWO MONTHS. i'm really sorry about that btw this semester of college was sent from the actual depths of hell. please take this sixth installment of tcar and find it in your heart to forgive me <3 ily all xoxo

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˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗

“Okay, this is officially the last time I let you drive me anywhere,” Eddie gripes from the passenger seat of your too tiny car as one excruciatingly happy ABBA song bleeds into another.

He shouldn’t have expected anything less. You’re made of the same stuff you listen to — sunshine and melted ice cream and summer breezes. You match the blue skies above you as you belt the lyrics to the song you seem to know by heart.

The sight makes Eddie grin to himself, still beaming no matter how hard he rolls his eyes.

This was the only good thing about the breaks of his van going haywire and having to bum a ride to school from you — getting to see more of you in your element.

As much as he loved having you in his passenger seat, bobbing your head to whatever rock song he’d popped into the cassette player, there was something entirely different about seeing you in the driver’s seat.

This car was your safe space, spotted with stickers on the console and polaroids on the speedometer, where you could sing any damn ABBA song you wanted to because it was your own little bubble where nothing could touch you.

Eddie’s grateful you let him see it, all these parts of you that you reveal slowly to him like so many tiny rays of sunshine.

It’s even better to witness with a full stomach, which was maybe the second good thing about driving with you. You picked him up with time to spare to get breakfast — to take the long route to school and watch the rising sun sparkle over Lover’s Lake. There was no reason to speed through town like a maniac because he wasn’t in a rush. Today might be the first time all year he’s not five minutes late to first period.

He tells you to sing louder when you get all shy and hyperaware of his gaze, feeding you bits of your breakfast — but only on the instrumental parts so you don’t miss your favorites. The boy props his arm on the center console and folds down the wrapper of your greasy, plain biscuit with his thumb so it doesn’t get in the way of your bite. He doesn’t even complain when you try to sing through the mouthful.

He figures that this is what love is. A part of it, at least. That stupid, philosophical feeling people have been trying to describe for ages is sitting right beside him — with crumbs sticking to the corners of her mouth as she mixes up the words to the Dancing Queen chorus.

Love isn’t butterflies or tight chests — it’s this. It’s letting a person listen to music you hate because you know they love it and not caring that they’re singing horrifically off-key.

And it’s not like Eddie’s in love with you or anything. He’s just got a lot of adoration for you. It’s the kind of innocent affection that makes him love ABBA and think you’re one of the best damn singers he’s ever heard in his life — even though neither would be particularly true if he didn’t care about you so much.

It’s sort of like the love he’s got for Dustin, to still care about the little shrimp even when he’s annoying him to no end. But, at the same time, it’s not like that at all. Because Dustin Henderson isn’t the prettiest girl he’s ever seen. Dustin Henderson doesn’t make him feel like his heart is being trampled by an entire stampede of zoo animals.

No one quite makes Eddie feel the way you do. But even if he was in love with you, he’s got no way of knowing the difference — between loving and being in love. The only thing he’s really sure of is that he doesn’t know a damn thing. And that the sick feeling in his stomach he gets every time he looks at you can’t possibly be normal.

“Oh, stop being such a baby,” you retort. Your words come slurred and slightly muffled through the bite of biscuit in your cheek. “I know you secretly like it.”

“Of course I do!” he shouts over the catchy bass guitar and your subsequent laughter. “It’s just not the kinda shit I wanna listen to right before I take the biggest test of my life.”

It’s true. The past two times he’s been forced to take Ms. O’Donnell’s impossible midterm exam, he's listened to the exact same song — ‘Ride the Lightning,’ Metallica. It’s the only song that gives him enough of an adrenaline rush to gather the confidence to fail the same test. Twice.

Eddie Munson is a creature of habit. Today marks the third anniversary of the dreaded day that makes or breaks his high school career, but instead of spending it with Metallica, he’s spending it with you. He wants to believe you’re a good luck charm or some kind of lucky omen, but he’s terrified of getting his hopes up.

Expect the worst, and you’ll never be disappointed. That’s what Uncle Wayne always said.

“I think ‘When I Kissed the Teacher’ has plenty of useful advice, Eddie Spaghetti.”

The boy turns to you with a bemused wide-eyed gaze. “If you’re suggesting I makeout with Ms. O’Donnell to pass her class, I’m gonna hurl— like actually hurl. And I will deliberately do it all over the floor of your car.”

“Would you rather repeat your senior year? Again?”

“Yes,” he answers without missing a beat and with a very enthusiastic nod that makes his wild curls sway around his face. “I would rather be a senior for the rest of my life than kiss Ms. O’Donnell.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you won’t have to, right? Because you’re totally gonna ace this thing.”

This is what you’ve been doing for over a week now — twisting everything negative into something more overtly positive. You meet Eddie’s pessimism and self-doubt with a sort of hopefulness he lost somewhere between the first and second time he got held back.

You force him to study in the gentlest way possible because you’re never anything but soft with him. You make him pretty little flashcards and flip through them with him on the opposite side of his bed, obviously more enthusiastic about the whole thing than he is. You give him sympathetic pecks on his cheek when he gets a question wrong and kiss him totally breathless when he gets the odd one right.

Eddie would be lying if he said the incentive didn’t help at least a little bit.

There is no hint of impatience or sign of hubris that makes him feel stupid. You just teach him to be kinder to himself with tiny little reminders that you’re doing all this right along with him.

“Considering I’ve failed it twice already, I highly doubt that, sweetheart,” he counters, and he’s kidding — mostly. He says it with a teasing lilt and a twinkle in his squinted eyes, but you know that’s his way of covering up that he’s totally serious.

He really doesn’t think he can do it, pass this stupid exam. He’s got absolutely no faith in himself — but that’s okay, because you’ve got all the faith in him in the world.

“Well, that’s because you didn’t have me to help you study,” you argue, just before accepting the last piece of biscuit he plucks from the parchment and offers to you.

You speak through the mouthful. “But now you do! And we’ve been going over this all week and—” You cut yourself off to swallow the dry pastry. “—And you totally got this. You’re gonna blow ‘em outta the park, Eddie Spaghetti. I can feel it.”

Your optimism makes him smile even though he doesn’t really feel like smiling. He lolls his head against the seat to look at you, finds you with a pretty grin and tiny biscuit crumbs on the corners of your mouth, and has the sudden urge to tell you that he loves you.

It comes out of nowhere. It bubbles up all at once like vomit and startles him with its unexpectedness. The sudden and unfamiliar feeling makes him feel sick, like he just went upside down on a rollercoaster. Whoever said love felt like butterflies was a liar because it feels a whole lot more like getting punched in the stomach.

The words rise from his throat like bile and linger on the edge of his tongue. Eddie forces himself to swallow them back down again. The unsaid ‘Holy fuck, I love the shit outta you’ tastes far more bitter going down.

“What do I get if I ace it then, huh?” he wonders after an awkward blink of silence.

“Uh, I don’t know,” you shrug. “Your diploma.”

“I meant as a reward, dummy.”

“I feel like graduating high school is enough of a reward.”

“I just think I should be compensated for a job well done, is all,” he proposes with a lopsided grin. The teasing nature of his words drips from his mouth like honey.

You glance at him once, eyes wide and dumbfounded, then back to the road. “Eddie Munson…” you scold in a lighthearted lilt. “Get your head outta the gutter. It’s not even eight o’clock.”

That sort of thing wouldn’t have bothered you before. Any other time, you would’ve been all too happy to pull over and jerk him off in a barren parking lot, relieve all his pent-up stress about the exam in the form of a quick handjob. But you’ve been quite obviously keeping your hands to yourself since he told you he was a virgin.

You were serious about what you said before, about starting over, and Eddie learned that very quickly. You take to giving him tiny little pecks on the cheek and holding his sweaty hand in yours and hardly anything else — like you’re a couple of kids going steady.

Eddie likes it, though, the comforting nature of your unhurried disposition. He just hates the ache it leaves him with.

“It’s all I’m gonna be thinking about,” he confesses with a scrunched nose. “Just so ya know.”

“As long as it helps you pass,” you respond with the shake of your head.

“As long as it helps me pass…” Eddie echoes, quieter.

“Just think about the biggest kiss I’m gonna give you when I see you again,” you tell him, flashing him a beam as you slow at a stop sign. You trap your smile between your teeth and flash him a glance that can only be described as whimsical — full of shy smiles and fluttering lashes and sparkling eyes. “‘Cause I’m gonna kiss you absolutely stupid, Eddie Munson.”

A rose-colored hue sprinkles along the apples of his cheeks. He never thought a threat could sound so appealing.

“Cool…” is the only thing he could think to mutter in the moment, too busy trying not to smile too wide. He turns his glowing cheeks towards his lap and purses his smile towards his fiddling fingers. “But, uh, I have Hellfire after school, so… Maybe tomorrow?”

You meet his disappointed glance with a shrug. “You could come over after if you want?”

He wants to. He always wants to.

“It’ll probably be late.”

“Then just stay over.”

Your offer comes effortlessly but strikes a deep feeling of complexity within him. Eddie doesn’t know why it makes him so suddenly nervous, only that it makes his palms sweat almost instantly.

The two of you haven’t crossed that threshold yet — of sharing a bed to sleep. He’d catch you dozing on occasion, slouched against his headboard with your head on his shoulder, and he’d wake you. Not because it made him uncomfortable, but because he didn’t want your neck to ache.

You’d rouse with a groggy apology — “I should probably leave before Bowie starves to death and I drool all over your shoulder,” you’d tell him.

And it’s not like Eddie wanted you to leave, but he was more than happy to sleep alone. What if he snores obnoxiously loud or he does something gross in his sleep? If you got instantly turned off by some sleeping habit he didn’t even know he had, he thinks it might destroy him.

Eddie can’t control the front he puts up around everyone when he’s sleeping. And for a boy who’s still trying to impress a pretty girl, that’s a very frightening thought.

“Uh, okay… Are you— Are you sure?” he stammers.

His apprehension confuses you. The offer hadn’t felt like that big of a deal to you. “I mean… yeah? We practically did it over the phone last week. It’ll be just like that — but, you know, in person.”

“Right… Okay.”

“I can make us dinner, and we can watch a movie or something,” you propose and grin at the daydream of it all. You wouldn’t have to miss Eddie if he was beside you all night. You wouldn’t have to drift off to thoughts of him either, because he’d be right there. “Bowie would be stoked if you stayed over. She’s practically obsessed with you.”

The thought makes Eddie smile to himself. His heart swells at the idea that other parts of your life have already started to accept him. It makes him feel all warm and fuzzy in his leather jacket and ripped jeans and chunky metal rings.

“Her mom is too, right?” he asks you, mostly playful. He smirks all smug, but his cinnamon-tinted gaze gleams with sincerity.

“Oh, obviously,” you scoff without a second thought. “Have you seen her? She can’t get enough of you…” Your teasing lilt and soft smile fades as you squint at him. “Don’t tell her I told you that, though.”

Eddie pinches his thumb and forefinger together, zipping them across his lips, then rolling down the window to toss the imaginary lock out of it.

Wind whips through the small car with vigor, making a wild halo of Eddie’s already less-than-tamed hair. The intrusion forces you to squint, even more so when you laugh.

The sound of your giggling is like glitter or sunbeams. It’s as bright as yellow and soft like summer rain. It makes him smile, too, because that’s all he wanted to do in the first place — make you laugh. It’s all he ever wants to do.

Eddie cranks the lever to roll the window back up again as you tell him: “And, you know, if you stayed over, then I could give you that reward we were talking about.”

You’ve successfully stooped to his level now: head stuck in the very depths of the gutter. Most of your thoughts are innocent, cooking for him and holding him while you slept. Others, not so much.

“And that would be…” he trails off with raised brows.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” you squint at him as you turn the steering wheel to pull into the bustling parking lot of Hawkins High.

The place is as wretched as it always was. It hasn’t changed a bit, just sort of deteriorated with time. The nameplate on top of the building has started to grey and the tiger mural painted on the bricks is fading, but it’s still the same. The familiarity of it all hits you with an ice-cold pang of nostalgia.

“I would,” Eddie nods a very vigorous nod, all innocent and wide-eyed, as you park on the far side of the lot. “I would very much like to know.”

You lean across the console to press a swift kiss to his cheek. “You’ll find out later,” you assure him, lingering just ahead of his face. Closer by an inch or two and the tips of your noses would nudge against one another.

“Have mercy…” Eddie murmurs to himself, eyes and limbs suddenly heavy under the weight of his desire for you.

You made him promise he’d stay sober for the exam — no drinking the night before, no smoking while he got ready. Before now, he’d been perfectly clearheaded. Then you go and look at him with that look, and he’s instantly drunk on you.

He tries to close the distance between you but succeeds only in brushing your noses together before a loud honk blares from ahead of you. It sends the two of you jerking away from each other almost instantly, heads whipping toward the direction of the too loud beep.

It comes from Steve Harrington’s maroon Beemer that he’d parked just ahead of your Volvo. Him and his friends file out one by one — Robin from the passenger, Dustin Henderson from the back, and then Steve from the driver’s side.

The former two are beaming, far too happy for it to be so early. Steve looks more like a victim to the morning as he leans against his open car door. His smile looks like a wince and he props his wrist on the door, throwing his fingers up in the place of an actual wave. Dustin and Robin are far more enthusiastic with their gestures.

You and Eddie wave a tad bit awkwardly back at them.

“Look at him,” the boy says, trying and failing to hold back his laughter. “King Steve. Carpooling his kids like a real mom.”

“I’m pretty sure he’s a babysitter first and a human being second,” you joke, then more seriously tell him: “You don’t have to come over if you don’t want to, you know?”

“I know,” he nods. “But I want to.”

“Okay… I just— I don’t want it to seem like I’m trying to, you know, force you or something—”

“It didn’t.”

“—I was just saying it could be nice, you know? But I feel like it sounded like I was being a little pushy.”

“You weren’t.”

“And I don’t want you to be, like, scared to say no to me or something, you know? It wouldn’t hurt my feelings or anything, okay? I promise,” you ramble, partly lying because you know it would hurt a little, but you’d never tell him that. “The ball is totally in your court, so… Whatever you want to do, it’s completely—”

Your nervous blathering is brought to an unexpected halt when Eddie brings his hands to your face. He cups your cheeks in his palms, brushing his thumbs along the apples of them. The sleeves of his leather jacket tickle your chin. He sprayed his wrist with cologne this morning, you can tell; the musky cedarwood and tobacco are more prominent now.

The boy laughs softly when the suddenness of his action makes your eyes go wide, chuckling louder when he squeezes your cheeks and makes your lips pout softly.

“I wanna come over, okay?” Eddie assures through his laughter. “And you’re never annoying me when you ask. I promise. I’ll probably say yes to just about anything when it’s coming from you, sweetheart.”

“And you’re not just saying that?” you press, words slightly muffled with the way Eddie’s holding your face.

“I’m not just saying that,” he echoes more confidently. He shakes his head at you, then moves your jaw back and forth with his palms so he’s shaking yours too. You jerk away from him with a grin.

“I’ll see you later?” he asks you while he collects his things from the floor, which is just the little tin box he carries everywhere. He swears it has everything he needs in it. You assume it’s just a dull pencil and a couple of baggies of weed he plans to sell between lunch shifts.

“Yeah,” you answer with a smile.

He clicks the handle to open the car door, then kicks it open the rest of the way. He rolls his head back and puckers his lips for a kiss. You happily oblige him, meeting him halfway but turning at the last second so his mouth meets your cheek.

“Kids are watching,” you joke at his surprise.

And even though he’d only pecked your jaw, it makes Robin and Steve roll their eyes. “Gag me with a spoon,” the girl gripes as she walks past the hood of your car.

Dustin follows behind her, too preoccupied to care. He’s got an anticipatory grin on his face that reveals the blue and green braces on his teeth. The composition notebook in his hands has the Hellfire logo drawn in red and yellow sharpie on the front of it.

You’ve never met the kid, but he’s exactly how you’d expected him to be.

You heard a lot about him — from Steve mostly, but from Eddie too. Robin has the occasional story about the boy from whenever he visits Family Video. They all call him little shit most of the time, shrimp on occasion, and Dusty Bun when he’s done something particularly sweet.

It’s all from a lighthearted place, though. You figure it must be because Steve Harrington is waking up at seven in the morning to take some fourteen-year-old to school. And Eddie’s even worse — the second Dustin calls asking for a ride, he’s hopping in his van without a second thought.

The boy barely lets Eddie get out of the car before he starts bombarding him with questions about the latest D&D campaign. He prattles on and on about it while they walk towards the school, pointing adamantly at the notebook in his hands. You imagine it’s full of conspiracies and potential ways to beat the Cult of Vecna.

He’s so invested he doesn’t even care when Robin slips the cap from his hand and flips it backwards.

“Have the best day ever, kiddos!” you shout through your rolled-down car window.

You get a half-hearted wave from Dustin, but he doesn’t even glance at you when he does it. Eddie blows a dramatic kiss your way, but Robin rivals his sweetness with a middle finger and a rouge-tinted smile.

The bell chimes overhead, high-pitched and too familiar. The parking lot empties slowly, and the mindless muddled chatter fades too.

Steve saunters to your car after everyone else heads inside. He folds his arms along the passenger door as he leans down to look at you.

His hair is un-styled, but in a cool sort of way that only he can pull off. Chestnut strands fall down over his forehead while others are pushed back from where he’s ran his fingers through them. His jaw is dusted with a fine layer of stubble that sprinkles a shadow of a mustache on his cupid’s bow.

You’re both wearing the elements of your uniforms.

He’s got on a pair of faded jeans and the mandatory collared shirt, even though he swears Keith only makes him abide by the dress code. You’re wearing the all black get-up required of all Enzo’s waitresses. The flowy blouse and a-line skirt are now wrinkled from the drive over. You’re only missing your floral apron and Steve his forest green vest.

“How long until your shift starts?” he asks you, voice deep and gruff with the morning.

Your eyes flit down to the flashing clock on your dashboard, then back up to him. “I don’t have to go in until eleven today, but I was gonna see if I could pick up an extra shift.”

He nods and juts out his lips as he turns to squint down the parking lot. He looks back at you with a more hopeful gaze. “Wanna go fuck around at Family Video instead?”

And, of course, by “fuck around,” he means popping popcorn and playing some terrible, terrible slasher film on the television behind the counter that has more boobs and blood than actual plot.

You’ll stop for junk food on the way like you always do and spend the bulk of the movie tossing gummy bears and M&Ms into Steve’s mouth. You’ll waste hours talking about nothing, but it’ll feel like only minutes have gone by when it’s time for your shift.

“Are you kidding?” you scoff like it’s not the best idea you’ve heard all morning. Or maybe second best because Eddie’s proposal of a reward is still swirling around in the confines of your mind. “Of course I do.”

˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗

By sunset, Eddie Munson’s got a B-minus on his midterm, a crowd of kids singing his praises, and a date with the hottest woman on the planet. Life, as it turns out, was really starting to look up for the local freak.

“Best… campaign… ever!” Dustin shouts. He’s still so boyishly excited about the whole thing that he has to take in deep breaths before he says each word.

The emphatic exclamation echoes through the dim, empty hallway of Hawkins High. The rest of the school had left some time ago; all that’s left now are the scraps — the basketball douchebags, the theater geeks, the D&D nerds.

The Hellfire Club gets the entire west wing to themselves, and the unusual vacancy allows them to saunter down the corridor’s length like they own the damn place.

They don’t have to look over their shoulders for assholes that might trip them or stuff them into lockers. Still bubbling with the after-effects of such an utterly sadistic campaign, they feel like they’re on top of their own little world.

Eddie Munson hasn’t felt this good in a long, long time.

He spins on the heel of his worn-out sneaker and walks backwards ahead of his friends so he can examine each of their faces. He’d unleashed the whole Vecna lives twist that he’d been keeping in his metaphorical back pocket for some time now.

You were the one that gave him the idea, sprung it out of nowhere during a smoke session so many months ago. It feels like it’s been forever now. That was back when you were just his customer, and he was just your dealer — when all you needed was a little free weed, and Eddie just needed to pass a test.

You both somehow ended up with far more than either of you bargained for, but he’s not complaining. He hopes you aren’t either.

Dustin had sort of predicted Vecna’s resurgence. He’d scribbled it down in his journal with all the rest of his endless conspiracies. Well, actually, he suspected that Kas was still a villain and hadn’t slain Vecna like they thought — which wasn’t exactly right, but it was still pretty damn close. Eddie’s never met someone who cared so much about one of his campaigns.

So, needless to say, the curly-haired boy is beaming. His green-blue braces and pearly whites are on full display, partially from excitement but mostly because he was sort of right — in a vague, roundabout way.

Mike had been enthusiastic about it too, but that was before he had to suffer through his best friend’s endless boasts. His brown eyes roll damn near to the back of his skull as he huffs, angled jaw clenching from gritted teeth.

“Well, when you spend eight hours coming up with, like, a thousand different theories, one of them is gonna be right,” he’d finally groused.

Dustin only smiled at the lankier boy, totally unfazed by his grumbling. “It’s not my fault you have exactly zero work ethic. You’re just mad you lost.”

“Yeah, because staying up all night writing in your diary makes you a real winner.”

“For the last time, Mike, it’s not a diary!”

Lucas was too far away to join in on the bickering. The boy had been distant for a while now, actually. Eddie joked that he must’ve been upset about missing basketball practice with Carver and the rest of his goons, but Lucas hadn’t laughed as loud as he’d hoped. He only chuckled under his breath, shook his head, and said it was just girl troubles.

Gareth, meanwhile, is still grumbling about Vecna killing his ranger. Even though Dustin’s bard brought them all back with a resurrection spell in the end, he doesn’t like to lose. Eddie doesn’t blame him, but he’d be lying if he said the angry scrunch contorting his best friend’s features wasn’t hilarious.

Jeff had lost his druid too, but he was a much better sport about the whole thing. He usually is, especially compared to the rest of the club. He’s perhaps the only one who doesn’t treat every loss like the end of the world.

“Well, thank you, Ser Dustin,” Eddie responds in a fanciful sort of accent, bending at the waist in a gracious brow. “But I cannot take all the credit, I’m afraid.”

Dustin’s brows pinch together. “What do you mean?”

“He means that his girlfriend helped him put it together,” Jeff lisps.

“No way!” the boy gapes, totally dumbfounded. “The girl from this morning? In the car? She’s… She’s into Dungeons and Dragons?”

“Not really. No,” Eddie shrugs right before flashing a shit-eating grin. “But she is into me, so…”

The less-than-humble brag makes Gareth groan. His sandy curls fall back as he tilts his head toward the ceiling, ocean eyes rolling and then fluttering closed. “If I have to hear about your stupid girlfriend one more time…” he’d griped after the first few times Eddie managed to bring you up in every conversation — about a million of them ago now.

His annoyance doesn’t lessen Dustin’s confusion. “I don’t get it…”

“Gareth's just mad because he’s in love with Eddie’s girlfriend,” Jeff clarifies once more, feigning pity as he pats the boy on the shoulder.

“All I’m saying is, I would’ve tried a little harder to get her attention if I knew she was into freaks,” Gareth grieves, a little forlorn and distantly heartbroken, but shrugging it off like he isn’t all that affected by it.

You were a bit like Steve The Hair Harrington in that way. A little like Vicki Carmichael or, god forbid, Billy Hargrove. You’ve garnered a sort of popularity that’s made you into a sideshow attraction that everyone wants to ride — literally.

You’re popular in a much, much different way than Steve or Vicki or Billy. It’s left you acutely fetishized in an extreme sort of fashion, an object of desire for many in disgusting, lurid ways.

It seems Gareth didn’t go unscathed with his lust for you either.

Well, too little too fucking late if Eddie had anything to say about it. But he would never, because that’s his best friend, so he decides to scoff and tell him: “Like she’d be into you anyway.”

“Oh, please. I’m a total catch.”

“Is there anyone she isn’t into?” Jeff chuckles, too kind of heart to realize the mercilessness in his words. “Isn’t that, like, her whole thing.”

A sharp pang of anger strikes like lightning in Eddie’s chest. It’s ice-cold and red hot, a burst of adrenaline that feels like fight or flight. His hands curl into fists before he even realizes it. If it had been anyone else and not one of his best friends, he imagines he might’ve swung before he even thought about what he was doing.

Before the words to defend you spill like venom from his mouth, another beats him to the punch.

“Hey,” Lucas scolds from a little ways behind the group, making them all turn to look at him. His brows are furrowed slightly, but the rest of his face is contorted in an unreadable way. His hands are tucked deep into the pockets of the puke-green letterman he wears over his Hellfire tee. “Leave her alone.”

“How do you…” Eddie starts, then squints past the group, gaze zeroing in on the boy. “Since when do you know my girlfriend, Sinclair?”

“She’s friends with Max. And she’s, like, really nice. So maybe we shouldn’t talk about her like that.”

The boy with the wild hair grins something wilder. His gaze is stern but no less playful when he turns back to Jeff. “You heard the kid. Leave my girlfriend alone, Jeffy.”

When the phrase leaves his mouth, for perhaps the billionth time that day, he realizes how often he must say it. My girlfriend, he says. My girlfriend, my girlfriend — because he can’t get enough of how it sounds.

With a grin on his face and his dream girl on his mind, Eddie spins on his heel again to swing open the double doors of the high school’s exit. The chill smacks him in the face almost immediately.

It’s the strange knick of time in early spring where the days are warm, but the nights are so, so cold. This one isn’t any different. A bitter breeze pounds at his chest, ruffles through his curls, and pierces the fabric of his jacket. Eddie’s body mourns the sudden loss of warmth almost immediately.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Dustin continues to whinge, even though the rest of them have more than moved on. “Does— Does everyone know her but me? Mike, do you know who she is?”

The boy perks up at the mention of his name. He tends to get a little reserved unless he’s bickering or talking bout his girlfriend. The kid’s a complete and utter wreck when he’s been away from her for too long. Eddie used to make fun of him for it. Not so much anymore.

Mike runs a hand through his lengthy raven hair, then scratches at the back of his neck. His eyes squint and his nose scrunches. “Uh… not really? I mean, I think she knows El because she knows Hopper, but… I don’t know… No?”

Dustin’s face falls flat at his answer. Or lack thereof.

“Wow. Very enlightening, Mike, as always. Thank you,” he deadpans, then turns back to Eddie. His features go from deadpanned to hopeful: eyes wide, brows raised, lips quirked. “So when are we gonna get to meet her? Do you think she’d do a campaign with us? Holy shit— she could be the fairy! You know, of the Firethorns! I mean, you did just say the campaign was feeling a little empty—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Take it down a few notches, alright, Dusty Bun?” Eddie chuckles as he slumps a heavy arm around the boy’s shoulders.

“Don’t call me that. We talked about this; that name is reserved for Suzie and Suzie only—”

“Didn’t you guys break up?” Mike wonders with a sort of blandness to his tone that only he could pull off.

“Shut up, Mike,” Dustin bites in response.

It was still a bit of a sore subject for the boy who’d just lost the so-called love of his life.

Suzie was a girl he met at summer camp about a year ago. Things were going pretty well until they weren’t. Something about her family being uber-religious and not approving of Dustin’s more agonistic disposition.

She broke up with him over Cerebro and hasn’t been on the channel since. It was cold. Ice cold.

Dustin still hikes up to Weathertop every now and then with nothing but a packed lunch and the hope that she’ll answer. She hasn’t yet.

And Eddie can make a mockery of just about anything — it’s practically a superpower at this point — but he knows when to leave well enough alone. Even the most innocent question can send the boy into a spiral of despair. Even now, he gets so suddenly weighed down by the burden of his sadness; lips turning downward and the insides of his brows curling slightly.

Eddie smiles a sad sort of smile down at the boy, but he’s too busy moping to see it. He pulls him closer with one leather-clad arm and uses the other to pat the boy on the chest. Their feet stumble less than gracefully over one another.

“Yeah, you’re never gonna meet her…” Eddie says in a mournful sigh.

Dustin blinks up at him, confused and even more hurt than before. “What? Why not?”

“Because she’d obviously like you more than me,” he scoffs like it’s obvious. “And I can’t have anyone taking my girl, Henderson.”

That confuses him even more. He was more prepared for one of Eddie’s stupid quips than something short of a compliment. It takes him by surprise at first, leaves him gaping for a moment, before rolling his eyes. “Shut up…”

“I’m serious!” Eddie chuckles, all loud and boisterous. The sound echoes through the vacant lot, made somehow emptier by the cold.

He stops walking suddenly and makes Dustin stop walking too. He takes the boy a tad bit roughly by the shoulders and looks down at him like it’s the first time he’s seeing him.

“I mean, look at you! What’s not to like, huh? You got their hair, the smarts, the personality—”

“And Eddie’s only got one of those things, so you definitely win,” Gareth quips from a few feet behind them.

“Exactly! Suzie was an idiot to let you go, Henderson.”

Dustin winces when Eddie jabs him in the chest. His saddened gaze flits to the pavement for a moment, then back up again. His eyes are brighter now, but still a bit melancholy — sort of like the streetlamp that flickers across the way. A light that’s going out but grasping for reasons to stay burning.

“You think so?”

“I know so, Dusty Bun,” Eddie grins — smiling wider when the kid’s beam falls flat again. He wraps his arm around Dustin’s punier frame. It’s supposed to be a hug, but it looks more like a headlock. “Never change, Dustin Henderson. Never change…”

˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗

Eddie hasn’t been to a sleepover since he was ten.

Fifth grade. Franklin Kowalski’s place in the suburbs. Trampoline in the front yard, pool in the back, and an assortment of soft drinks in a fridge in the garage. Maybe he remembers it so vividly because it's perhaps one of the more traumatizing experiences a prepubescent boy growing out a buzzcut could go through.

He knew he didn’t belong there — not in the good part of town with a bunch of boys in brand-new tennis shoes. Eddie Munson was trailer park trash, through and through. He wasn’t used to new clothes or two-story houses or underground pools. But he didn’t care where he came from. And neither did Franklin. Not at first, anyway.

The other kids were nice enough to him. They offered him their swim goggles when Eddie didn’t have his own and made sure he wasn’t left out of any of their conversations. It was all in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way, though. Their kindness was manufactured, a mask for pre-teen boy cruelty.

See, they only gave him their goggles so they could laugh when they got tangled in his curls. They only included him in conversation so he could be the punch line to each of their jokes.

All of it went over Eddie’s head. He was too innocent to realize he wasn’t being treated nicely, he was being taunted. He laughed along with each of their inside jokes because he wanted so desperately to be included, having no idea it was himself he was laughing at.

It took him until two o’clock the next morning to understand. He woke up all alone in the living room and found that everyone else had migrated upstairs without him. They were still awake, still laughing — and Eddie was forgotten in the dark.

He nearly cried when he called Wayne. He wasn’t sure if his tears were from anger or from sadness, but they stung all the same.

He punched the numbers on the keypad with a clenched jaw to keep from sobbing out loud. His gaze was still blurry with unshed tears. It made it dreadfully hard to see, and what little light spilled from the television — which had turned to static after midnight — didn’t help either.

“It’s three A.M., Eds. You sick?” his uncle gruffed into the landline.

“A little,” Eddie half-lied. He twirled the curly wire around his fingertip until it turned purple. He prayed he didn’t sound as sad as he felt. “Everyone else is asleep… ‘M scared I’m gonna puke everywhere.”

Wayne was there barely fifteen minutes later. He drove his rusted pick-up to the suburbs, found his nephew waiting on the curb, and didn’t ask questions on the drive back to Forest Hills.

Eddie hasn’t been to a sleepover since.

He’s got a feeling this one will be different, though. Because pre-teen boys are a hell of a different kind and you’re… you.

He’s pretty sure you couldn’t be mean to him even if you wanted to be. You’re nice, far nicer than he deserves. You’re lovely and sweet and decent — every synonym of the damn word in a thousand different languages. It still floors him that it would ever occur to you to be kind to him.

Eddie doesn’t feel all that worthy of your sunshine. He happily basks in your golden rays anyway. Maybe it’s because he’s selfish. Or maybe it’s because he’s so damn pale — in both the literal and figurative sense.

Eddie packs his overnight bag without a hint of methodology.

He isn’t totally sure of what to bring as he rifles through his disorganized drawers, so he ends up packing bits of everything.

He does the sniff test for each of his crumpled-up t-shirts. The one’s that smell the freshest get stuffed to the bottom of his bag. He can’t be sure of how many he’s shoved down there now — three or four, maybe five. It makes it harder for his pants to fit, two of the pajama variety and two of denim.

He grabs multiples of everything, just to be on the safe side. It takes only minutes for his backpack to fill up. He nearly breaks the zipper trying to fasten it, and still, he worries he hasn’t brought enough.

The bag sits upright on his mattress as Eddie bends down to grab the box of condoms that’s been idling under his bed for a year. The cardboard is coated with a fine layer of dust and time. He holds it between his ringed fingers, debating whether or not to finally break the seal and bring a few — just to be on the safe side. That’s when Wayne walks in.

The man isn’t looking at him. He’s too busy wiping his oil-stained palms on an already-stained rag, but his presence is sudden enough to freak Eddie out. The boy jumps like he’s been caught red-handed, scrabbles for a hiding place almost immediately, making the box sputter out of his grip. The thing falls to the ground with a dramatic thud.

He kicks it back under his bed again.

Wayne’s eyes finally flit up to his nephew’s at all the commotion. His bushy grey brows furrow when he finds him standing upright, hands behind his back, totally not suspicious at all. Raising a teenage boy has taught the man not to comment on what doesn’t concern him, so he keeps on swiping his fingers between the fabric of the grimy rag.

“I finished looking at your van,” he says, accent deep and husky and not of Indiana origin. “Turns out that noise you were hearin’ was a damn rock in the break line.”

Eddie scoffs, then eyes a stick of deodorant sitting on his dresser. “Wow,” he marvels as he swipes the thing from its place. He stuffs it into the side pocket of his bag. “A measly pebble coulda killed me, huh?”

“Should be good to go now, though.”

“Sweet,” the boy nods.

Eddie squints as his eyes flit around his room, head darting in either direction to make sure he’s got everything. Wayne watches him with an identical squint. “Where you runnin’ off to now? You just got home, what, fifteen minutes ago?”

“Uh… I’m gonna go see a friend,” Eddie answers, voice trembling and slightly far away. He unzips his bag again to make sure it’s sufficiently filled. He does a little mental checklist: shirts, pants, PJs, shoes— how the hell is he supposed to fit shoes in here?

You’ve only got one pair of shoes, Munson, he reminds himself. Where the hell do you think you’re going, anyway? A nature walk?

“Oh, right,” his uncle nods. A smile plays on the edges of his lips, but it weirdly still looks like he’s frowning. “The friend.”

“Yeah— Well, she’s my… She’s my girlfriend, so…”

The admission makes Eddie blush in a way he isn’t typically used to. He can’t count the number of times he must say it in a day, but something about saying it in front of Wayne feels different — real.

He turns his glowing cheeks down to his bag and makes difficult work of zipping it back up again.

Wayne doesn’t bother to hide his excitement. The bright emotion is almost unfamiliar. “Well, shit,” the man’s chuckle sounds from the depths of his chest. “Look at you, Eds. My nephew’s finally got his first girlfriend.”

The boy rolls his chocolate eyes. He jerks under the pressure of the shoulder clap Wayne gives him. It’s equal parts annoying and embarrassing — to be talked to like a child in this way. Maybe because most children have long had their first girlfriends by now, and it took Eddie all of twenty agonizing years.

“We were gonna hang out at her place since I passed my English test and everything...”

The excitement washes from Wayne’s tired eyes. They widen, as though in shock, and reveal more of the glassy whites of them. He just blinks at him for a moment, like his words are still processing. “You… You passed?”

“Yep. Got a B,” Eddie nods, a tad bit sheepishly. He finds it hard to meet his uncle’s mystified gaze. “Well, a B-minus, but… Turns out, I might actually graduate this year.”

Wayne seems to experience every emotion at once. He’s surprised, of course — it makes sense. Eddie spent two years failing the damn thing, after all. Then he’s proud, overjoyed that there’s a chance his nephew might finally grow up. He’s distantly saddened by the exact same thought.

The man swallows thickly, as though to down each emotion. He nods and tries his best to smile. “Damn. Good job, kid. I’m… I’m prouda you.”

Eddie isn’t sure whether to take the praise or cower from it. At a loss, he opts to deflect entirely.

“Yeah, well, she— the friend helped me study and everything, so… I feel like we should probably be thanking her, you know?” he half-jokes as he swings the pack over his shoulder. His winces under the weight of it. “I probably wouldn’t have passed if she didn’t force me to read that stupid book. I mean, it’s 1986; who cares about the roaring twenties and blinking green lights—”

“Hm…” his uncle grunts. It isn’t an acknowledging grunt, though. It’s more of a bemused sort of grunt. And he’s got this quizzical twist to his features that makes Eddie confused too.

“…What is it?”

Wayne only shrugs, trying to act like it was nothing, but can’t help but to ask: “You’re real serious about this girl, aren’t ya?”

Eddie, feeling a bit weighed down by such a heavy question, shifts on his feet.

“Uh… A little bit, I guess. Yeah,” he stammers in the place of an honest answer. If he were being totally truthful, he would’ve said something like, “As serious as a goddamn heart attack.” But that might’ve actually given Uncle Wayne one, so he doesn’t answer with all that.

The man seems to hear all the words Eddie doesn’t say, though. He always does. Eddie figures that’s what happens when you raise a kid for fifteen years — you get attuned to their every thought like a superpower or something.

It doesn’t make it any less annoying, though. Eddie’s never been able to keep a single damn secret from Wayne because he’s a total mind reader. It’s entirely possible Wayne knew Eddie was in love before he did.

“Just be careful, alright?” the man advises. He looks genuinely concerned, eyes glinting and brows pinched, like you’re a treacherous road or poison ivy.

The misplaced cautiousness makes Eddie breathe out a soft laugh. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“C’mon, Eds. Don’t play dumb,” Wayne tells him with a gruff chuckle — not totally unkind, just a Munson sort of curt. “You know what I’m talkin’ about. I didn’t even know her real name until you started bringing her around, 'cause all the kids at the shop call her the—”

“Don’t,” Eddie interjects sharply.

The bitterness in his tone is foreign. It contains the sort of venom he’s more like to spit at Jason Carver or Mike Wheeler if he’s being particularly dickish. Never at Wayne.

But that dormant urge to defend you rises like a sleeping dragon that just got poked in the belly. The words rise like bile in his throat and spew out before he can think to stop them.

Uncle Wayne is a weathered man. He’s seen a lot of the world, too much of it, but nothing’s ever quite taken him aback like this. He’s never seen his nephew’s chocolate button eyes hardened into something so cold.

Eddie gets all hyperaware of the heart on his sleeve and starts to crack under the pressure of it. He deflates, stern features crumbling into something softer.

“It’s different, okay?” he assures with his chin brought down to his chest — brows raised and wide eyes twinkling. It’s the same thing you’d said to Hopper not too long ago. Eddie hopes you met the words as wholeheartedly as he does now.

“And even if I explained all the reasons why it’s different, you still wouldn’t get it.”

His melodramatic tone makes Wayne scoff. “What? ‘Cause you don’t think I’ve ever been a kid in love before?”

“No,” Eddie shrugs playfully. “‘Cause you’re old.”

The foreign tension ebbs all at once with a pair of laughs. One is gruff, a couple of sharp exhales more than anything else. The other is a lighter, far more boyish giggle.

“I’m just trying to look out for you, alright?” Wayne tells him once the laughter fades.

“Yeah, I know. You always do,” Eddie lilts with a disposition that might make it seem like he’s displeased by his uncle’s constant pestering. In reality, he knows it’s saved him from a world of shit.

Like that time he wanted to get tacos from a new food truck that gave the whole town food poisoning. Or when he’d wanted to ask Tina Burton, the most popular girl in school, on a date his sophomore year.

It was Wayne that saved him the embarrassment from either. It’s like he can smell bullshit or something.

“But this is, like, the first good thing that’s happened to me since Ride the Lightning came out… So, I’d kinda like to enjoy this whole thing while it lasts,” Eddie winces like it’s a joke, but he means it more than anything.

Wayne nods understandingly. “Will do, kid. But first girlfriends are always hard, okay? Remember that. Try not to let it hurt you too much, Eds.”

His uncle claps him once, then twice, on his shoulder before swiping away the grime he’d accidentally spotted there. Eddie lets him, too far away to shrug him off. He doesn’t even move when Wayne walks out of his room.

He knows his uncle means well, but something about his cynical words makes his chest burn. It’s like he’s betting on his relationship with you not working out or something.

And Eddie knows he isn’t wrong. First girlfriends are hard. He’s heard enough shit from his friends to know that. Hell, Mike and Dustin have spent all year complaining about how complicated relationships are.

But it’s different.

Because they’re just a couple of kids and their girlfriends aren’t you.

Whatever form you come in, lover or executioner, Eddie’s more than ready to receive you.

˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗

You’ve never cooked for anyone other than yourself. And maybe Bowie.

That’s not to say you were a stranger to dining in company. Binging on takeout with Robin and Steve was routine. You’re pretty sure Benny at the diner has made more dinners for the three of you than you’ve ever made for yourselves — combined.

But it was different, to make something for someone with your own hands. It took a relative amount of care, an acute sort of attentiveness that only felt deserved for someone really special.

And Eddie was really special and then some.

There isn’t a word that encapsulates all the special he is. It makes you feel a bit guilty sometimes. You wish you were smarter so you could think of a big enough word to describe how much he means to you. But since you aren’t, you stick to making him homemade spaghetti and hope you can pour enough love into it that he feels all of yours.

Eddie arrives at your apartment before you’re ready for him.

You’d wanted to do more with your appearance by the time he came around — with your hair and your makeup and your clothes. Not because you ever had to, but because you thought Eddie deserved a girl who took extra care of herself in that way.

You got a shower in before you started cooking, but that was it. Your hair is unstyled and air-drying; your face bare and glistening in all its naked glory.

Clad in nothing but a hilariously oversized t-shirt and a pair of fluffy socks, you look more ready for bed than date night.

The knock at your door sends you into a momentary whirlwind. You scramble like someone’s seconds away from catching you naked — like there are four different fires in every direction and you don’t know which one to put out first. The panic is elaborate and fleeting, a bucket of ice-cold water on bare skin.

You figure that’s another part of caring about someone. You make them spaghetti because you love them and get nervous when things aren’t perfect. Love is all things stressful and homemade.

Eddie knocks on your door with several rhythmic raps. They’re evenly timed and spaced out. You recognize the bass line to ‘Crazy Train’ almost immediately. Da-da… Da-da, da-da, da-da. He must’ve been listening to it on the way over.

“Uh, come in!” you waver after an awkward beat. You’re yelling a little because you’re still standing at the stove, stirring the pot of noodles.

The door clicks once when it opens, then again when it shuts. The wall that separates the kitchen conceals your view of him, but you can hear Eddie’s shuffling in the living room from where you are because he’s never done anything quietly in his life.

Eddie toes off his sneakers before he heads into your apartment. You never asked him to do it, so it always confused you as to why. He’d told you, when you asked, that he knows he’s not the cleanest and that he cares too much about your space to make a mess of it.

He tells you he can’t take care of you in the way he would like — that if he had it his way, you’d never have to work at Enzo’s again; that he wishes he was rich enough so you never had to wait on snobby stay-at-home moms or misogynistic businessmen. But since he isn’t a rockstar yet and The Hideout pays their busboy’s fuck all, Eddie figures the least he can do is not leave shoe prints on your carpet.

It’s boyish and strangely profound and so, so sweet.

He drops his backpack and leaves his sneakers by the doormat like he always does. They fit neatly between the wall and the roughly textured rectangle that reads ‘glad you’re here’ on the front of it. One is upright, the other falls to its side.

Bowie blinks at him from where she idles on her perch, green eyes wide and pupils set in narrow slits. “Hey, pretty girl,” Eddie greets in a quiet coo, scooping her up in his arms. Despite her round belly, the calico weighs no more than a feather.

She meows once after being so suddenly plucked from her flower petal spot but settles into him instantly. He scratches at her chin to make her purr and revels in the soft buzzing sound she makes. Eddie waltzes into the kitchen with her, cradling her against his chest like a newborn baby.

You look over your shoulder and smile at the sight of them — at your two favorite beings on the planet, so obviously taken with one another. Bowie lolls in Eddie’s arm like he’s made of clouds and cotton candy. Her blinks are slow and lazy, her purrs audible to even you. She’s only this affectionate for him. You can’t even blame her.

“Smells good in here,” the boy compliments trying his best not to blush at the wide smile you give him. He’s still not used to being looked at so tenderly.

Failing to feel deserving of it all, he averts his chocolate gaze and flushed cheeks to the counter, where he plops Bowie down beside her half-empty food bowl.

You could only get her to eat so much of it before she got annoyed with you. Now she laps happily at the chunk of cat food like it’s the first time she’s ever tasted its goodness.

“Thanks,” you respond with a slight tremble to the edge of your voice. You turn back to the pot of spaghetti you’ve been stirring for close to ten minutes, eyeing the mixture of noodles and sauce and beef with intent because you need it all to be perfect. “I probably should’ve asked what you liked before you left this morning, but I only know how to make spaghetti, so… I made spaghetti.”

You look back at him, flashing the boy a nervous tight-lipped smile. It makes him grin, too, as he makes the terribly short trek over to you.

“Well, I actually love spaghetti,” he confesses, and it isn’t totally a lie. He just stopped caring for it around the millionth time Wayne made it because it’s one of the only things he knows how to cook too.

Eddie lingers at your side, hip pressing into the counter, radiating warmth like a sun stuck in human form. You can’t tell if he’s toasty in his leather jacket or if you’re just cozy in the honey-coated tenderness you have for him. You don’t even realize you’re smiling at him when he scrunches his nose at you.

“You should be careful, sweetheart. I’m kinda starting to think we’re soulmates.”

“That’s crazy,” you marvel, wide-eyed. “I was thinking the same thing.”

“Wow… We really were made for each other, huh?” he huffs with a similar sarcasm.

You try to keep the joke going, but it’s hard not to smile when you feel his hands creep around your sides. His fingers are soft on your waist, featherlight and a little unsure as he slithers along your back. The affection feels foreign on your skin. You bite back a shiver.

“Looks like way,” you affirm with a nod, tilting your head back so you can meet him halfway when he leans down to peck you.

It’s a soft and swift little thing, a brief brush of the lips that doesn’t mean anything but also the entire world. He kisses you just to kiss you — because he likes the feel of you or because it’s the sort of thing he can do now as your boyfriend. Either way, you revel in the unfamiliarity.

“Did the, uh… Did the test go okay?” you ask once he parts from you. You try not to sound like you’ve been agonizing over it all day and more like the thought had only just crossed your mind.

Eddie bites back a smile as he turns to walk to the opposite side of the counter. He makes sure any traces of the smirk have washed away when he hops onto the edge of it. The forlorn look he gives you is manufactured, all pinched browed and gloomy eyed.

“Um, no…” he fibs. “I, uh— I failed it again.”

You eye him from over your shoulder and notice how he shifts on his weight, looking down at the tile rather than up at you. It doesn’t cross your mind once that he might be joking. You just hope the flash of disappointment on your features was too quick for him to catch.

“That’s okay,” you assure and cover your chagrin with a smile. You shake your head and shrug. “We just try again, right? Not the end of the world.”

A grin tugs slow at Eddie’s lips. It’s bemused slightly and still sort of sad. He can’t believe how supportive you are of him even after he’s just told you outright that he’s failed — still loving even when he’s not good enough.

He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulls out a packet of stapled-together papers. It’s perhaps the first piece of schoolwork given to him that wasn’t immediately thrown away. He’d folded it twice in half, then tucked it safely away with the intent to show you later. He unfolds it again to marvel at it once more.

The letter grade is written in red and circled twice. Ms. O’Donnell’s fancy cursive is scribbled just beside it — “Finally! Good job, Eddie! I’m very proud of you!” Even though the boy has never been particularly fond of the woman, her compliment makes his chest swell.

“Oh, shit…” he murmurs under his breath, but loud enough for you to hear.

“Hm?” you hum back in response. You don’t look at him, though, more focused on not burning yourself as you pull a tray of golden brown garlic bread out of the oven.

“I read it wrong…” he answers, feigning surprise. “This isn’t an F. It’s a B.”

The pan clatters to the stove when you spin around the face him. Your eyes are wide and your brows are raised, each of your features agape with shock. You’re not entirely sure how he could’ve misread it, but you’re prepared to celebrate with him anyway.

Eddie flashes you a pink, lopsided smile as he flips the creased paper around. He puts the grade on display for you with a knowing, mischievous glint in his cinnamon eyes. He’s too pretty and you’re too proud of him — you can’t even care that he was tricking you.

“Oh, my god, Eddie!” you shout with a bubbly laugh, all but launching yourself at him. You have to stand on the tips of your toes to reach where he sits on the counter. The bottom of your stomach digs into the granite as your arms wrap around his neck.

You don’t realize until you’ve locked him in this embrace that you’ve still got your oven mitt on.

Eddie bends awkwardly to reciprocate the hug, meeting you halfway so you’re not doing all the work.

One hand keeps hold of his midterm, but the palm of his free one spreads wide and warm along your back. The tops of your chests collide, soft and snug. They press together in such a way that it confuses him how he could’ve gone so long without feeling you like this — even in the most innocent way.

His chin settles along your clothed collarbone. With his nose digging into the cotton of your t-shirt, he inhales to find your warm floral scent. Eddies sighs and relaxes against you without thinking. He doesn’t know if anyone’s ever hugged him like this before.

“I’m so proud of you!” you praise, chin bopping on his shoulder. “I knew you could do it.”

Eddie chuckles softly at the severity of your hug, so full of intent — louder when you peck him on his cheek and then the rest of his face when you realize you can’t just kiss him once. His stubble is rough against the plush of your lips as you press them to his jaw and chin and nose and mouth.

He tries to kiss you back, but he’s smiling too wide.

He’s almost certain no one’s ever gotten this much loving over a B-minus.

“It’s ‘cause of you,” Eddie insists.

“No, it’s because you’re smart.”

“Mm, I don’t think that’s it,” he retorts with the shake of his head, too damn stubborn to take a compliment.

His chin pulls closer to his neck when he parts from you. Your noses are barely inches apart, lips so close he can taste them. He could kiss you if he wanted, but he doesn’t want to stop looking at you.

“I’m pretty sure I only passed because I was thinking about you the whole time...”

His words trail off. He’s got a crooked smirk on his lips like he’s only teasing, but brings his ear to his shoulder and gazes at you that way — so full of love and mischief. You think he might actually be sincere.

“Eddie Munson…” you scold at his suggestive tone.

A smile dances on the corners of your lips as you pull back from him completely. You finally slip the mitten off your hand as you return to the stove, clicking the knob on the back panel until it turns off again.

“I just hope you’ve been thinking about that reward,” the boy lilts as he slips off the counter. He grins and walks until he’s leaning on the refrigerator beside you. He’s no more than a couple of feet away, but he somehow feels much closer than that. “If I’m not mistaken, I believe we agreed that I’d get something if I passed…”

Eddie’s only teasing. He doesn’t actually want anything. Spending time with you now is enough. Making you blush was just a bonus.

He’d be lying if he said it didn’t cross his mind, though, far more times than he’d like to admit.

And truth be told, you had thought about it, too. But that makes it sound too simple. It plagued you, really. First, it was the “oh god, what if he doesn’t pass,” and then the “what the hell am I supposed to do when he does?”

A passing grade isn’t usually that big of a deal. You’ve certainly never received anything from one. But passing a test after failing it the first two times and having to suffer two more agonizing years of school because of it certainly deserved to be celebrated.

Eddie was strange, though. He wasn’t materialistic or overtly enthusiastic about anything other than music and D&D. Maybe if you had more money, you could’ve gotten him a cassette or a new Dungeon Master’s manual. But thanks to Enzo’s salary, you’re lucky if you’re able to pay bills on time. And it sucks because Eddie deserves nice things, and not just for passing some stupid test.

You hate that you don’t have anything other than spaghetti and adoration to give him.

It’s not fair to either of you.

You’d lamented to Steve about all this over gummy bears and buttered popcorn as Slumber Party Massacre played on the tiny television above the counter. The film was ripe with blood and random nudity, but you hadn’t fully paid attention to a single scene. You don’t think Steve had either because he was too busy trying to fuse two different halves of gummy bears together.

“Okay, you just passed a test you failed two times in a row,” you tell the boy, painting him a picture of your dilemma. “Your girlfriend wants to do something nice for you, but she’s boring and poor. What would you want?”

“A blowjob,” Steve answers without missing a beat. His brows scrunch together like the answer was far easier than you made it out to be. He shrugs and squishes the strawberry head of one gummy bear onto the blue raspberry bottom of another. “Obviously.”

You didn’t think the answer was so obvious. Especially not when you’re trying to take things slow. It wasn’t an easy feat either — not with Eddie at your place, looking at you with that look. His features drip with honey as rose petal spill from his mouth. It’s like he’s trying to tease you.

He’s got no idea he’s quite literally dealing with the master of teasing.

“We’ll see how tonight goes,” you tell him, flashing him an arched brow and a knowing smirk as you drag two of your fancy, ten-dollar porcelain plates from the cabinet. “Only if you’re good for me, yeah?”

Eddie quite literally forgets how to speak.

Like, if you’d asked him a question, the only thing that would spill out would be unintelligible murmurs of made-up words.

His brain turns to mush with the look you give him — a two can play at this game kind of smirk that makes his mind melt. And your words are so effortless, so smooth, like you know just what to say and exactly how to say it to work him like a wind-up toy.

He’s in way over his head. The realization makes his breath hitch.

All he can do is nod like an idiot and let you fix him a plate of your “finest batch of spaghetti.” That’s what you call it, and he figures you must be right because you lay an entire three-course meal out in front of him. Well, it isn’t quite that extensive, but it feels that way.

Plates of pasta, a bowl of salad, and stacks of garlic bread decorate your small square dining table. Eddie almost feels like he’s at Enzo’s, even though there’s never been a world where he’s been able to afford Enzo’s.

You wine and dine him like the finest of them. Even though it’s nothing more than homemade spaghetti and apple juice in wine glasses, it makes him feel special — the kind of special people spend hundreds of dollars to feel. But he gets you for free and fuck, he doesn’t deserve any of it.

He got so damn lucky with you.

He’s done trying to figure out why. He just wants to be more grateful for it.

Once he’s pleasantly full on a home-cooked meal, you usher him to the bathroom. There’s a bag full of stuff waiting there for him — toothbrush, toothpaste, body wash — all the essential shit that he’d forgotten all about. It makes his chest ache.

It’s less so that you knew he’d forget and more so that you thought about him at all.

Eddie imagines you getting off work, still in your Enzo’s-appropriate skirt and blouse uniform, scanning the aisles of Bradley’s Big Buy for things you think Eddie might need.

It’s mundane, but so beautiful still — to be remembered in the most minuscule of ways.

“—I didn’t know what to get you, and I couldn’t afford a lot, so I just got you that 3-in-1 stuff,” you ramble as you pull the dark green bottle out of the brown paper bag on the counter. You wave it mindlessly in your hand. “I don’t know, it was affordable, and you seem like the kind of guy who might use this sort of stuff, so—”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Eddie chuckles, trying to act like he doesn’t have an off-brand bottle of the stuff sitting in his shower back at the trailer.

“I don’t know,” you answer with a giggle of your own. You shrug and sit the thing back down. “You don’t have to use it if you don’t want. I just wanted you to have some stuff here so it could, you know, feel more like home…”

Your words strike something profound in Eddie’s chest, a lightning strike or a punch to the stomach. In that moment, he comes to the realization that home isn’t a place. It’s not four walls or the little trinkets that fill it. The people that make you feel all warm and cozy inside, the people that make you feel like you have a place in the world — that’s home.

It’s Wayne and it’s Hellfire and it’s you.

So it’s easy for Eddie to feel at home in your little apartment, and not just because you bought a bunch of stuff to make it that way.

He’s warmed by the hot shower and the thought that you’re waiting for him in your bedroom down the hall. The idea that he gets this night and so many others you with makes him feel all giddy — like he’s ten years old again and no sleepover has ever traumatized him.

Eddie uses everything you bought, still a little dizzied that it’s for him, but opts to use your vanilla body wash. It’s sweet smelling, with hints of deep musk and high lavender.

The scent of it on his own skin makes him feel like you’re on him and all over him. He has to flip the hot water to freezing before he steps out of the shower. Because, sure, he’s been less than shy about how much he likes you, but walking into your room with a hard-on is a bit more forward than he’s used to.

Eddie finds you waiting for him in your bed. You’re idling at the very center of it, knees up to your chest and back against the headboard, like you’ve been waiting for his return to get truly comfortable there.

You smile when you see him again. It’s that same grin you always look at him with, as though every time you see him is the first time.

He brings an air of cleanliness in with him. He's dressed in fresh pajamas, curls damp and still drying. Steam radiates off his skin along with the scent of freshly baked cookies and flower petals. It’s familiar to you because it’s yours, but it’s different on Eddie in a way you can’t describe.

“You smell good,” you compliment as he maneuvers through the velvet darkness of your bedroom. The black night is evaded only by your dim yellow lamp and the streams of orange that filter through your curtains from the streetlamps outside.

Eddie scoffs as he climbs onto your queen-sized bed. “Did I smell bad before?”

“No. You just smell sweet now. Like a milkshake.”

You shift to make room for him, pulling back your green gingham comforter so he can slip in beside you. Even though you’ve given him ample room to sit down, there isn’t any hint of distance between you. You keep yourself intently pressed to his side despite the several inches of space next to you.

Eddie hopes you never realize there’s a whole world of other places you could be than right next to him. He doesn’t ever want to see a day where you’re separated by more than an inch or two.

“A milkshake, huh?” he echos as he leans back against the slatted headboard and all your pillows. You twist until you’re practically on your side — hip digging into the mattress, shoulder propped along the cushions, chest pressed against his arm.

“Yeah. Like whipped cream or… vanilla cake…” you trail off, quickly losing interest in describing the scent of him when you’re staring the pretty boy in the face.

One half of him is bathed in shades of golden orange, the other half coated in a deep, deep navy. Eddie’s eyes are somehow darker than any night sky. They swim with their own galaxies and stars that twinkle back at you.

He looks at you and all words lose meaning.

“Yeah, I’m totally stealing your soap before I leave,” he jokes.

You shake your head at him, but smile anyway. “Thanks for letting me know, Eddie Spaghetti.”

Just like all the times before, neither of you realize you’re kissing until you already are. The gravitational pull that brings the two of you together is effortless and natural. You’re like the moon and Eddie’s like the tide — you drag him to you without trying and he bends to your every whim.

Kissing him is easy. It’s like breathing. You don’t ever have to think about it, you just do it.

You press your lips against the rosy plush of his, and it’s like taking a deep breath of fresh air. It’s an atmosphere kissed by the sun and the trees and the morning dew. It fills your lungs with a new life, makes it impossible to quit kissing him.

But when his tongue swipes against your bottom lip, when his mouth pries yours open to slip the pink muscle inside — that feels like getting the breath knocked out of you. The rough pattern of his tongue slides against your own, and you have to remind yourself to breathe.

Your lungs stop working, your chest aches, and there’s nothing you can do about it but let the moment pass.

Eddie keeps kissing you soft, though, coaxing fresh air back into your burning lungs. He helps you breathe normally again.

You move together like entwining summer breezes. Your thigh swipes against his lap and his hands find your hips to help guide you the rest of the way over. He’s halfway lying down now and you’re looming like an unconquerable mountain above him. Your back arches like a cat’s and your palms cradle his jaw while your tongue makes uncharted territory of his mouth.

The warmth lingering between your thighs presses into his lower stomach. It makes his grip on you tighten, hands pulling your hips further against him until he hears you moan.

The pressure of your clothed pussy against the pudge of his stomach brings you a distant pleasure. What really does you in is the thought of what little separates you — just the fabric of your cotton underwear and Eddie’s faded grey Tatcher Tire t-shirt.

But it’s hard to be indulgent when you’re so stuck in your head. Your mouth moves with Eddie’s on autopilot while your mind travels elsewhere. Because this isn’t supposed to be about you — it’s supposed to be about Eddie. You want to make him feel good for a change, but you have no idea how to go about it.

The foreignness is strange. It leaves you fumbling like you’ve never done any of this before.

In a way, you haven’t. Eddie is different from any guy you’ve ever been with. Not just because he cares about you, but because you’re practically the only girl he’s ever cared about in this way.

He’s a blank slate and you’re scribbled all over.

You don’t want to taint the pristine image he’s painted of you.

“Hey, Eds,” you murmur. The words are halfway spoken against his mouth because you don’t pull away in time to say them clearly.

Your tongue darts out to feel how numb your spit-slicked lips have gotten after being kissed so ardently. You know they’re probably swollen and more vibrant in their color now. Eddie’s a lot of the same, mouth rosy and obviously kissed.

“Hm?” the boy hums back.

“Do you wanna… Do you wanna do something else?” you ask him, all slow because you don’t want to say the wrong thing. His brows furrow beneath the thin curtain of his curly bangs. The silent question eggs you on. “Would it be okay if I gave you a blowjob?”

Eddie’s eyes widen for a moment. He swears he goes blind because he doesn’t typically see white when he blinks. The question isn’t the weirdest for a guy in this predicament — with a pretty girl on his lap with his spit staining her mouth. It just catches him a little off guard.

“Would it be…” he tries to echo but trails off with a breathy laugh. You say it like it wouldn’t be perfect — to have you between his legs with your warm mouth on his cock, looking effortlessly beautiful while you swallow him whole.

“Yeah… Yeah, I think that… I’d be a total idiot to say no,” he manages to stammer out, though words have long lost meaning by now.

The sight of his glazed-over eyes, warmed cheeks, and pink mouth makes you smile. He always looks at you like you’re the most amazing thing he’s ever seen — like you're the infiniteness of space or a deep, deep ocean — something profound he desperately wants to discover.

“I feel like you deserve it, right?” you squint down at him, partially teasing. “For a job well done, you know?”

Eddie nods until he finds the words to respond. “Yeah… Right. Totally.”

“Do you wanna lie down? Or would you rather me get on my knees?” you ask him.

Eddie swears he’s dreaming. He isn’t quite sure how you manage to say something so sinful with such sincerity.

“It might be comfortable to stay like this, but most guys like the visual of girls on their knees better so…”

There is no seductive lilt to your voice, no mischievous teasing to rile him up. It’s just a question of how he wants you, and it’s a very dizzying thought. Knowing he can have you however he wants makes his stomach all whirly and his vision start to swim like he just spun around ten times.

Eddie just blinks at you. His chocolate eyes and heavy lids flutter slowly like he’s trying to look at you through a layer of honey.

It takes him a second to answer because he doesn’t know what he wants — he rarely ever does, but now especially. How is a boy who wants you in every way imaginable supposed to pick only one?

“Uh, can you—” he starts before the words get caught in his throat. He grunts out a cough to clear it. “Could you, um… get on your, uh— your knees? Please?”

You smile at how politely he phrases it. You don’t think anyone’s ever said please when asking you for a blowjob before.

Eddie fidgets awkwardly beneath you, and you’re not entirely sure why. You’re the one that just offered yourself up on a platter, totally and unequivocally happy to do whatever he wants. He’s not the one that should be embarrassed.

You nod down at him, still grinning like an idiot. “Sure. You can stay sitting if you want. Whatever you wanna do.”

“Okay…” Eddie mumbles in response.

He watches you with wide, inquisitive eyes as you maneuver off his lap and onto the rug beside your bed. When he swings his legs over the edge of it, you settle intently between them. His cock twitches at the sight of you below him, blinking up at him with sparkling eyes that almost look like they’re begging.

Your palms settle on his clothed thighs as your knees press into the woolen rug beneath you. Your chest warms when you’re finally level with his concealed cock. It makes your heart go silly, the sheer thought of what you’re about to do. You don’t think you’ve ever been this excited to suck dick before.

You wait patiently for him to make the first move — then you realize he doesn’t know how because he’s never had to before. Instead, he’s waiting for you to tell him what to do. With button eyes intently focused on your form and hands anxiously gripping the edge of the bed, he’s entirely prepared to move however you want him to.

“Take off your shirt, Eds,” you guide gently.

He listens to you without thinking twice. His fidgeting fingers reach for the fraying hem of his shirt to yank it up and over his head. He has to tug harder when the neck gets caught around his chin.

It isn’t the first time he’s been shirtless in front of you. Between changing and heated kisses, he’s had ample opportunity to get over his lingering insecurities.

For a while there, he found himself comparing his body to all your other more prominent escapades — the Billy Hargroves and the Steve Harringtons. The overtly masculine types with bodies that scream, ‘I peaked in high school.’

Eddie doesn’t look like them. He isn’t as toned or as thin. He’s got pudge on his belly and sparse hair on his sternum in the place of defined abs and pecks covered in layers of chest hair. He doesn’t look at all like those basketball douchebags that could easily model for whatever magazine basketball douchebags read — if they even know how to, that is.

But you don’t seem to care. You love on him anyway.

Even now, your eyes rake over his bare upper half with a gaze that isn’t anything short of hungry. You reach for his face to pull him down for a ravenous kiss that does little to quell your appetite. Your fingers tangle in the drying strands of his hair in the same way your tongues do.

Eddie’s patient hands curl around the insides of your elbow as he keeps his lips obediently parted for you. He sighs into each of your eager kisses, more than content to let you swallow him whole.

You move down to his jaw and then to his neck. You nose his curls out of the way to sprinkle wet pecks to the warm skin there. You somehow manage to take your time and move with haste all at once — loving on all the places that need loving, but not lingering in one place for too long because there are too many of them to count.

The tip of your nose trails down his milky torso in time with your craving kisses. You press a final one between his ribcage, tongue darting out briefly just so you can hear his breath tremble before pulling away entirely.

Eddie’s hands remain on each of your arms as your fingers curl around the hem of his plaid pajama pants. It makes his grip unknowingly tighten.

“Wait,” he blurts with his eyes squeezed shut. You tense almost instantly. “Can you— I mean, can we, just… you know…” he trails off, voice tight like he’s holding his breath. It’s probably because he is.

“What?” you pry with wide eyes and the sick feeling like you’ve done something horribly wrong. “Is this… Is this not okay? We don’t have to, like, do any of this if you don’t want. It was just a suggestion, Eds. We can just—”

“No!” he exclaims, eyes flying open to find your panicked ones. He shakes his wild head so vigorously down at you it makes his curls sway. He both wants to quell your worry and plead for you not to stop. “That’s not it. I— I want to, okay? I do. I really… really do. I just… You’re so far away like this…”

His words drip with a soft sincerity, his honeyed eyes even more so.

Your alarm curls into a gentle smile at his reassurance.

You haven’t had many firsts in a long, long time. Your first kiss was on the playground of Hawkins Middle. Your first handjob was in the locker room of the community pool not too long after. Your first time having sex was on a towel in the grass beside Tina Burton’s pool after her birthday party when everyone else had gone to bed.

All your stereotypical firsts happened lifetimes ago, but you’ve had a billion more with Eddie.

You can say with more confidence than you’ve ever had in your life that this is the first time a guy’s turned down a blowjob because you were too far away on your knees.

“What?” the boy wavers at your silence. Your accompanying smile is somehow more frightening.

“Nothing,” you assure. Your brows pinch together as you smile up at him. “I just… I really don’t think we can be any closer than your dick in my mouth, Eds.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. His cheeks go rosy at your quip. “You know what I mean…”

“Yeah,” you answer softly. “I know what you mean.”

You rise again, this time planting yourself on his thigh. Your knees settle on either side of his leg and dig into the mattress below you, on top of him all over again. The position is a familiar one. The only thing different is a few months’ time and a lack of Fast Times playing in the background.

Eddie tilts his chin to peer up at you. It’s easier this way, he realizes, to be below you and at your mercy rather than above you. Sometimes he thinks you were made to be on top of him like this.

“How about this,” you lilt with a raised brow. “I can just jerk you off—”

“Sounds perfect,” Eddie nods.

A giggle bubbles from your lips. “Let me finish, you weirdo. I can jerk you off, and you can just tell me when you’re about to finish.”

“Okay,” he answers right before his brows furrow. “Uh… why?”

“So you can come in my mouth,” you shrug like it’s obvious.

Your words knock the wind from Eddie’s lungs — it’s like you’ve punched him square in the stomach. Staring up at you through drooping eyelids, he swallows thickly, then nods. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s sounds… Yeah…”

You breathe out a laugh and lean closer to press a kiss to the tip of his nose. You couldn’t help yourself — he’s too damn adorable. Your fingers curl back around the hem of his pants and boxers, dragging them both down in one fell swoop to free his half-hard cock. You tuck the tops of them under his balls.

You’ve seen a lot of dicks in your time — long ones, short ones, thick ones, skinny ones — you could make a damn nursery rhyme of the variety you’ve seen. Eddie’s doesn’t particularly stand out.

It’s middling in length and in girth, not big but not too small either, with a width that won’t hurt to take but will stretch you out nonetheless.

His cock is pale and a faint strawberry red at the tip. It’s the same rosy color his cheeks get when he blushes. There’s a vein that trails up from his balls and splits like a forking river up to his bulbous head. The bush at his pubic bone is fitting for a metalhead, but it looks like he’s taken a trimmer to the chestnut hair there sometime in the past month or so.

His dick isn’t ugly and it isn’t special, but it’s perfect anyway because it’s his.

“You’ve got a really pretty cock, Eds,” you praise in a low whisper.

He thinks you must be trying to talk dirty, but your gaze gets all shy — quirked brow, curled lip, twinkled eye — like you must really mean it. You seal your compliment with a soft, lingering peck.

“Can dicks be pretty?” he asks you, the question muffled against your mouth.

“Not usually,” you blurt before you realize.

Most guys are gross. They don’t shave because they don’t think they have to. Sometimes they smell bad, too, because they never really learned how to wash themselves. Either that, or they taste overtly of soap because they shoved a whole bar of the stuff down their pants right before.

Boys tend to care less about the situation their cocks are in. Only a handful you’ve been with really knew how to take care of themselves — Eddie for one, Steve for another, and Billy Hargrove on occasion.

“But your’s definitely is,” you promise.

“Um… thanks?” He doesn’t mean for it to come out like a question; he just never thought that exact string of words would ever be spoken to him.

It’s a little bit surreal to receive a compliment on a part of you that most people wouldn’t typically notice — like your shoulders or lips or thighs. Eddie’s almost sure you’ve complimented each of those at some point or another.

You kiss him again, both because he makes it insanely hard not to and because you know that’s the only way to get him out of his head. He’ll never get hard if he’s worried about getting hard. So you keep kissing him, letting him focus on the pattern of your tastebuds and the curves of your cupid’s bow, while you happily do all the work.

Your fingertips trail up and down the underside of his cock. Your caresses are featherlight and meticulous along his warm, stiffening skin, all but coaxing him hard.

When his cock is totally stiff and standing at attention at his stomach, you part from Eddie to bring your palm to your mouth. You spit a glob of saliva onto the center of it and let the added lubricant help your fist glide along his dick.

A stifled groan rumbles in Eddie’s throat as your fingers wrap fully around him. You’re only touching his cock, but it feels like you’ve embraced every inch of them.

The pleasure feels like static, like he’s just rubbed his socks along the carpet and he’s sizzling with the newfound electricity. He feels it in the tips of his toes and in the strands of his hair.

“Um, just to, uh… save myself the embarrassment,” Eddie cautions shakily. His voice is a few octaves higher than normal and audibly fragile. “I should probably urge you to lower your expectations—” He has to stifle a whine when you squeeze the base of his cock. “—Just a little bit.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I’m probably gonna come, like, really, really quickly,” he tells you and tries his best to laugh. It’s as shaky as the smile he gives you because you haven’t stopped touching him, even despite his warning.

Your fist squeezes his cock, then rises again. You pause momentarily to swipe your thumb over his leaking tip before sliding back down again. It’s a slow and methodical cycle that’s going to make him burst far quicker than he’d like.

“That’s okay,” you assure with the shake of your head, brows furrowed because you don’t know why that’s such a band thing. You shrug. “Just means there’s more time for me to make you do it again.”

Eddie huffs out a sigh as his cock twitches in your fist, growing somehow harder at your words.

Your unhurried pace hastens in a way that’s still obviously disciplined. Your hand moves faster until you hear his breath start to race and see his milky white chest splotch with red. Then, when his rapid pants begin to tremble, your pace goes back to normal.

You push him to the very edge of the cliff and then pull him backward before he falls.

It’d be agonizing if it didn’t feel so damn good.

His eyes have long fluttered shut by now. You miss his chocolate syrup irises, but the look of pure serenity on his face is the kind of beautiful most people pay to see. His agape mouth, bared neck, rosy cheeks, and long lashes that tickle the apples of them deserve to be hung in the Louvre.

It’s a sort of heavenly that everyone needs to admire in their lifetime, but one that belongs to only you. The sheer thought of someone else having him this way makes you angry, sparks raging orange embers just behind your sternum.

Eddie grows quiet. Suspiciously so. He isn’t moaning as much as he was before, and his chest is totally still, as though he were holding his breath. You feel his gentle grip on the outsides of your thighs start to harden. You figure the added tension helps him stay hushed. It’s less so accidental and more like he’s trying not to make noise.

“Let me hear you, Eds,” you urge in a whisper. “It’s okay. Go ahead and whine for me.”

The assurance barely spills from your mouth before he’s moaning for you. It’s a long, drawn-out whine that travels from his chest to his throat and out of his mouth, concluding in a fragile sigh.

The sound makes you double your efforts. You want him to make that noise again — you never want him to stop making that noise for you. So you squeeze harder, rise faster, and pay more attention to his rapidly reddening tip.

You’re not entirely sure what Eddie likes the most. Most guys moan louder when you do something they like, but he seems to like all of it, so you don’t pay extra attention to one place. You keep jerking his cock, faster still, even when the muscles of your forearm start to burn.

“Fuck—” the boy sighs in a heavy moan, then cuts himself off with a pitiful whine.

He tries to lift his head and open his eyes to look at you, but he doesn’t have the strength to anymore. His head lolls back again when the pleasure begins to crescendo.

Sufficiently stupid, he can’t even find the words to warn you. “I’m— I’m close, sweetheart,” he slurs lowly. “I’m… Fuck… Fuck, I’m gonna…”

He doesn’t finish his sentence. His face screws up, nose scrunching and brows furrowing, as the feeling becomes almost unbearable. It’s all the warning you need.

Your fist holds onto the base of his cock as you dismantle his thigh and settle on the rug again. You don’t think twice before darting forward to lick the dribbles of pearly-white pre-come spilling from his reddened tip.

You wrap your lips around him totally, cheeks hollowing as you suck him there like he’s a piece of candy.

And Eddie dies. He passes away on the spot.

It’s the only way he can describe the feeling.

The crescendo of pleasure — that’s the life flashing before his eyes. The brief moment of numbness is the infinite void of death. The burst of ecstasy that spits from his cock in one, two, three loads is heaven.

It just has to be.

There can’t be a higher pleasure than the feeling of your mouth on his cock and the way you moan around him when his come spills on your tongue.

Eddie whines something pitiful. He loses all the previous inhibition that kept him so quiet he was too scared to breathe. One hand twists in the sheets while the other settles on the back of your hand, not pulling or tugging, just resting there as his hips buck off the mattress. He can’t tell if he’s running away from the intensity of his pleasure or if he never wants it to stop.

You don’t seem to mind that he doesn’t know.

You let his hips jerk wildly even when the tip of his cock hits the back of your throat and makes you gag. It does take everything in you not to laugh, however, when Eddie murmurs a fragile “sorry” through his cries.

And when his fingers knot in your hair, you don’t mind that either. You let him halfway fuck your mouth, even though you’re pretty sure he’s too far gone to notice that he’s fucking your mouth.

You don’t stop until he’s shuddering. Only when you’re sure he has nothing left to give you do you finally pull away from him. You leave a delicate kiss to the tip of his softening cock, no longer the angry red color it was moments ago. Eddie’s stomach clenches at the feeling of blatant sensitivity. His face scrunches as another feeble cry gets trapped in his throat.

You snap his boxers and pants back into place on his waist and rise.

“How was that for your first blowjob?” you ask him, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand.

Eddie just shakes his head in response. He flops back against the mattress, the springs bouncing under his weight, and tries to find the words to answer you.

He doesn’t know how to tell you that he just saw Heaven and Hell at the same time and that you were both God and the Devil. There isn’t any string of words in any language that could explain the otherworldly pleasure you gave him with nothing more than your hand and mouth, so he decides to stay quiet.

With his eyes still closed, he can hear you laughing quietly at him while you slither in at his side. You lie beside him on your stomach. When you’re finally in reach again, he peeks his eyes open and reaches for you, pulling you toward him for a searing kiss.

You think it might be the first time he’s ever done so without asking awkwardly first — as though there was a world where you would ever turn him down. He seems to understand that now, the way he kisses you without thinking twice about it.

His tongue swipes into your mouth. The both of you moan when he tastes the salty tang lingering there. Eddie doesn’t even realize that it’s him he’s tasting at first — that the heady bitter-sweetness on your tongue is his come.

It’s less so that he’s tasting himself, and more so that his taste is in your mouth at all, that makes him exhale a moan against you. The heavy breath of it fans against your cupid’s bow.

“Oh,” you hum through labored pants when you part again. “It was that good, huh?”

“Better,” he answers with a crooked smirk on his swollen pink mouth. He’s finally able to open his eyes and see more than a blur when his high starts to subside. “That was fucking… I mean, that was… fuck…”

His speechlessness makes you giggle. Your gaze stays locked on his profile when he turns to look up at the ceiling.

“That was exactly what I wanted. And, like, I didn’t even know I wanted it, you know?” he rambles. “How did you— How did you know? How do you always know?”

You’re not entirely sure what he means by that, and honestly, neither is he.

You just always know what he needs. You buy him a toothbrush because you know he’ll forget his, and when you touch him, you know exactly what he likes — even though he doesn’t even know what he likes.

It’s like you’re another half of him, and not in the stupid soulmate way everyone always thinks they’ve found. You’re an identical part of him that no one else can fit. He’s only whole with you — like a sandwich cut into triangles or halves of an orange.

“Well, to be fair, I did ask Steve what a guy would want in this sort of situation,” you admit with a scrunched nose. “I just sort of went with what he said.”

Eddie’s brows pinch together as he turns his head to peer at you again. He blinks at you for a moment, dumbfounded, then sputters. “Wait— You’re telling me I have Steve to thank for that blowjob? Like Steve-Steve? As in Steve The Hair Harrington?”

His dramatics makes you giggle. You hide your grin behind your palm.

“Hope that doesn’t change anything, Eddie Spaghetti.”

You meant it as a joke, as in, please don’t think of Steve every time I give you a blowjob from now on, but your words settle something heavy on the both of you.

Because you’ve had Steve The Hair Harrington, in more ways than most friends tend to have one another. You’ve had a lot of people like that. There are people in the world with parts of you that most only give away when they’ve found someone really, really special.

You learned about that too late. And now you feel a lot less special.

Eddie hears all your dreadful, no-good thoughts because they’re also his own.

He’s a virgin with the town slut, so he often feels like he’s drowning. It isn’t because of you, though. It’s never because of you. The number of people you’ve slept with doesn’t mean a damn thing to him; he just wants to measure up to them.

He wants to be the kind of man that sticks in your head after you’ve been with a thousand of them — the kind you can’t help but remember fondly because there hasn’t been another one like him.

He’s got no idea he’s already better than every person you’ve ever been with combined.

“No, sweetheart,” he assures with the shake of his head. The apple of his cheek rubs against the fabric of your comforter as he looks at you with eyes deeper than an infinite galaxy. His gaze holds all of its own stars, and each of them is named after you. “It doesn’t change a goddamn thing.”

#published by bug #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson smut #stranger things x reader #stranger things imagine #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x y/n #virgin!eddie munson #eddie munson fic #eddie munson fanfiction #st oneshots

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sunshine-and-moonshine · 1 year

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Cod Monster Au Facts and Snippets

Requested: Yes! [Would love to see more headcanons on ur monster au, if you have anymore to spare 💖💖💖]

Warnings: slight angst and mentions of death in Ghost’s, implied mental torture in Alejandro’s

A/N: Enjoy!

Ghost

As mentioned in the previous part, Ghost is a fairly new vampire, turned back around the 50’s or so

He’s not sure exactly WHEN it was for two reasons

1) because of how much time had passed

2) because he spent like twenty or so years in a coffin six feet under after someone found him lying in an alley with his throat ripped out (and the poison takes a WHILE to fully set in)

Digging himself out of that one was…..weird. And disorienting.

Part of him was a bit sad to have probably missed the rest of what was left of his family’s lives with no clue on any of the future generations

But at the same time, he always felt himself a burden, something that brought torment into the lives of everyone he knew

He thinks they’d be better off without him anyways

Until you convince him otherwise

“Tommy had a kid, probably had another one or two after I was gone.” Ghost grumbles quietly, wondering why he let you talk him into this. Whatever sucker cursed with sharing blood with him was probably better off without his interference. But at the same time…..he yearned to know what had become of the rest of his family. To set things right for being forced to leave them behind all those years ago. “He’d be about 80 or so now, I think.”

“That’s a good start.” You tell him, resting your hand on his. With you, he was sure that he could do this. Even if it hurt that everyone he knew, even Tommy’s little baby, were probably gone.

Soap

In love with snout rubs and kisses

But not opposed to belly rubs as well

He takes such pride in his skin, making sure it’s always clean and pristine, shiny and smooth

Once he’s gotten a bit more comfortable with you around his skin, he’ll be begging you to touch it all the time

Might even ask you to wear it (*coughinbedcough*)

Low key curious if there’s a way to turn you into a selkie

If not, he’ll try and find just about anything else to turn you into cause he doesn’t want to live the rest of his very long life without you

Can and will explain selkies in depth to you with little to no prompting

Which leads to him blabbering about his family as well

“I’m the best swimmer in my family!” Soap tells you one evening as you walk together in shallow water on the beach, his smile full of excitement.

“Oh?” You ask, your own smile full of amusement.

“Yeah! My eldest brother, Jack, is the slowest. But my dad is pretty fast. And my sister, Isla, is pretty slow too, but not as slow as Jack. And my littlest brother Luca is almost as fast as me but not quite, and my little brother Harris is almost as fast as him. And my older brother Leo is-” Soap continues, blabbering so fast that the words all seem to blend together. But at least he was happy!

König

BIG AND FUZZY

So so fluffy

Like a big giant reddish-brown cloud

I hope you’re okay with slobber cause once he’s transformed, he’ll be all over you

Licking anywhere he can reach

He’ll also be very whiny if you try to stop cuddle sessions for any reason, even if it’s a necessity like going to the bathroom

It’s all part of his territorial thing, needing you to smell like him

HATES scented soaps and lotions and stuff for this very reason, cause it washes away his scent so much faster

“Seriously?” You asked, your arms crossed over your chest, eyes narrowed.

The giant bipedal wolf in front of you at least had the decency to look a little bit ashamed, surrounded by all the shredded up bottles of scented soaps and shampoos and other washing material. His ears folded back, a low whine rising from his giant maw.

“You’re lucky you’re so cute.” You grumble, making him perk up a bit, a dopey look of joy rising onto his face as his tail starts to wag, slapping against the wall and knocking over various items from the shelves. “…..you’re cleaning that up.”

Alejandro

Alejandro likes to hang out in dreams a lot, even when he’s not making them sexual to feed off of someone

For you, he’ll always make your dreams good (when he’s not making them sexy anyways)

And while usually he doesn’t interfere in the dreams of others, he will not hesitate to give anyone who pisses him off nightmares

This includes people who get close to you

Nobody is safe on the off chance that they’re unkind to you

“Alejandro.”

“Yes, Mi Amor?” He asks, an innocent look on his face. One that means he is certainly not innocent.

“Why is my cousin in a mental hospital spouting about demons in his dreams?” Your brow twitches as you say this and Alejandro can’t help but find it cute.

“I don’t know! Maybe someone thought he was treating his family horribly and deserved to be taken down a notch or two.” Alejandro says, his smile growing mischievous, even when you flick his ear. “Ow.”

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beaulesbian · 2 months

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Thoughts and more thoughts about the potential of Rob Lucci after chapter 1111 - spoilers and theory

(disclaimer: this might be totally implausible and not at all what could happen, but it's something that's been on my mind since last chapter, so here are my thoughts on this. again, very long post ahead, I don't know how it keeps happening)

The way Oda allowed Lucci to feel during chapter 1111, is something I didn't expect to find so intriguing, and it points to how much depth really has each character in this story.

There is a subtle change of certain aspects of Rob Lucci's personality since the start of Egghead, and in the chapter 1111 even a bigger focus is on his reaction to meeting Mars Gorosei and asking for Kaku to be spared.

Given this swept away answer with seeing whom he's been serving all this time, there could come a realization that'd sort of wake him up. There's a potential to somewhat turn power of Cipher Pol agents from blindlessly following the World Government. To stop being the WG's shield.

It's very probable the story might deal with the reform or even collapse as a whole of the World Government - especially since the Gorosei are currently Luffy's main enemies. With that, the Cipher Poll intelligence could play a significant part of it as well, along with other moving pieces like the Revolutionary Army, Shanks, Luffy's fleet or even Morgans and his newspapers, and, of course, the Strawhats.

There's been comments of readers who only saw Lucci and Zoro's fight as one dimensional - one has to win, the other has to lose, and comparing points and skills without really diving into their respective characters - thankfully Oda knows those characters and knows how to make the story interesting and compelling. Where before I hoped we would get a follow up about the words directed at Zoro, instead Lucci was given more space for this chapter.

Where one would hope for Zoro to win and move to other parts of the island with the Strawhats, we instead stayed with Lucci and him witnessing Mars in his full on demon form - something that even Lucci was shocked to see.

Those two pages were such incredible moments for Lucci as a character who serves fully the Gorosei and the World Government in first place, yet! Yet! In the last part he's on the page, he's allowed and shown to be worried and caring for someone else than himself- after arcs and arcs where he appeared here and there just carrying out on orders and missions without seemingly caring about anyone to much depth before, he's given space to actually express the concern regarding Kaku.

Of course he's still this same of bloodthirsty killer, just like in Enies Lobby, (ch. 382),

both his immediate fight upon seeing Luffy on Egghead, and later against Zoro paints it clear what he's capable of.

Rob Lucci is regarded as one of the strongest assassin's in the Cipher Pol agency CP9 (and later with higher rank of CP0). Just reading his wikia to remember more moments, the section about his personality is mostly compiled of traits like cold-hearted, agressive, and especially taking the Wold Governments meaning of Justice into brutal heights, thinking all is allowed to accomplish his goals/missions/orders.

There's his past and how he has been trained by WG to do as they told him, or even go to length which he wasn't even ask to do, but knowing his position as assassin he did as he wanted.

By the end of Water 7 and leaving to Enies Lobby, where he preteded to be friends with Iceberg, Paulie and other shipwrights for 5 years, he didn't show any regrets leaving the place (contrary to Kaku, who seemed to really enjoy his work as shipwright and is sometimes shown really excited about new places and such)

Up until the chapter 1111 I mostly took him as someone really dutiful to follow orders through and through and not gave it much more thought beside that, but it's true that this already started to shift around chapter 1062, when we see Lucci, Kaku and Stussy on their way to Egghead Island:

"They want us to eliminate the most useful man in the world..."

"The last thing a man as keenly perceptive as you should be doing is looking for answers." (says Stussy, a double agent working for Vegapunk, lol).

I wouldn't call it distrust in WG, yet. At this point he was still adamant about following the mission to kill Vegapunk. But maybe it's more visible that he's thinking more about such orders and their consequences.

He fights Luffy immediately after setting foot on Egghead, calls it as it is in wanting to defeat Luffy and destroy his whole crew without any pretense (and maybe that honesty was why Luffy took his word for their brief cooperation in fighting Seraphim). ch. 1076

He says this honestly, yet after the Strawhats and Vegapunks are healing later on, Lucci still tries to attack Vegapunk, ch.1091

Once knowing Kizaru appeared too, Lucci returnes back to finish his mission, he strikes at Vegapunk again - unsuccessfuly because Stussy takes that attack, and Zoro pushes him from the lab and then keep him occupied until the latest chapter 1111.

And that is a big part of him, eyes always on the mission - get information to his bosses, to Navy/Saturn/Gorosei/Kizaru, and keep his enemies occupied or better yet - dead. This thinking was always present with him to this point in ch. 1111, and that is from where it could lead to even more nuance in his future decisions:

The first time seeing Mars in his demon form there's that blink-and-you-miss it expression of pure horror, hinting that even the highest ranking agents probably had no idea just what the true nature of the Gorosei looks like, and that a sight like that can pull this expression from Lucci:

After that brief shocked state, he goes back to immediately report all informations he has on Vegapunks, Strawhats, even their plan of escape, as well as mentioning the other Cipher Pol agents, trapped in the Lab:

then there's this panel, "well done. no further questions.":

which reminded me of very similar words Lucci said to Robin in Water 7, ch. 348: "you've fulfilled your role. good work."

Maybe it's not intended as parallel, but just that similarity of something he's been clearly hearing from his higher ups, that he added it to his own vocabulary.

But then there's this more surprising part of ch. 1111:

After his shock of seeing that monster in front of him, and after giving Mars all the informations, he still finds the strength to ask him to spare his partner's life, to save Kaku:

What he gets as an answer is along the lines of: "it might be difficult when everyone to us is like ants" and that's the last of Rob Lucci for this chapter.

Mars seem to share this same thinking like Saturn expressed before, while the navy guy heard that even the life of an CP0 agents isn't something Saturn (and Gorosei) would really be troubled over, if lost.

and hearing that from Mars could be an eyeopening moment for Lucci.

They're assassins and an intelligence agency of almost the highest standing among the World Governement, but even the lives of Kaku and such seem to mean nothing to the Gorosei.

The point of the current anime episode 1098 where Lucci & CP0 were just arriving on Egghead reminded me how he was asking Vegapunk about the missing Cipher Pol agents and their disappearances, ch. 1068:

It's not that he was only concerned about Kaku in the latest chapter, but since the end of Water 7 - and seeing how his crew cared for him to pay for his medical bills (cover story chapters 491 - 528, manga only, which is very interesting that the anime didn't adapt that cover story), I think he started to care more about "his own people" - the Cipher Pol agents in general - even to visit to their "hometown" while he was healing and defended that place (and the new young trainees) from the Marines who were sent to attack CP9 after their failure at Enies Lobby:

So the question is.. once Lucci saw just who he was serving all those years, the World Government and the Gorosei - and now seeing Mars in his bird monster form disregarding any care for any lives, even their own agents - will that be a tipping point for him?

He asked Mars to spare Kaku but got an answer that all of them, Cipher Pol agents even on the highest places, are still the same as insects in the eyes of the Gorosei

Could that be something that will help him make a certain change?

My possible theory of what he might do/what might happen (given that he still has the strength to walk after his fight with Zoro):

Find Kaku himself - he was trapped in the bubble like the other Seraphim - we don't know if anyone else un-trapped him in the meantime, and Lucci himself doesn't know about the bubble prison, given his flashback to Kaku is just him laying down, as he last remembers that from the Lab.

Sanji said to Kaku that Lucci abandoned him - something that Lucci kept taunting Zoro with during their fight - about the inability to sacrifice one from their team for the greater good. (It could mean that Kaku either wouldn't count on Lucci coming back, but it would work even better if it was shown Lucci actually coming back for Kaku

and they could go finish their side mission of rescuing the other Cipher Pol agents -

and that's another thing -

even during that brief panel of their rescue -they were thankful to Luffy! Despite their positions of agents of Government, which puts them always directly opposing pirates/Strawhats/Luffy, they appreciated and thanked Luffy for giving them food and saving them, ch. 1090

This together I feel could become a moment of all these agents realizing that Luffy isn't their real enemy - or wake up from their WG brainwashed thinking once they see just who is outside fighting: Gorosei in their monster forms vs. Luffy

I think that Rob Lucci stands there now as one of the few who could sway the Governments power to a tipping point from the inside.

Not precisely helping Luffy or Strawhats, but taking that power of the intelligence agency away from the WG and Marines.

It was shown in multiple pages how the Gorosei care more about the rank and position than any lives of their trained assassins, and think of them as something to be disgarded left and right.

Their intelligence agency and assassins act as a Shield to the WG, and the CP0 even carries that in their name: AEGIS, (a powerful shield from greek mythology).

If the other agents would follow Lucci in a different direction, he could be the one to take away that shield from the Gorosei, uncover one of the layers that act as their security, leaving them more exposed and vulnerable to future attacks (possibly from people like Dragon and Revolutionary army when the time comes for them to strike).

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h-c-u · 1 year

Text

No longer a secret pt 1

Summary: You're a reporter in a secret relationship with Toto, and he gives you some great advice.

Pairing: Toto Wolff x fem!reader

W/C: 3.3k

Rating: PG, age gap

TWs: none

A/N: This is written for that one specific friend that doesn't have Tumblr, but I guess if anyone finds it by the tags, you can read it too ;)

Series Masterlist | Masterlist | List of tags | Playlist for the series

- It's good to see you again Lewis! - you started your maybe 30th interview of the day. Even though you loved your job, you hated days like those with a passion. Not because they were intense, but because you preferred doing longer, more in-depth interviews, where you had the opportunity to get to know the other person better and dive deeper than "How do you feel about your placement?" or "What are your plans for the race?" because you knew that a diplomatic response for those type of questions was rehearsed and repeated dozens of times. But your network wanted you to tape those little snippets because your other interviews were so popular. Sure, more than once they had to be heavily edited per the request from the person interviewed, but you honestly didn't mind, because it was still good material, that you were proud of.

- It's good to see you too, Y/n, good to see you too. - he gave you a huge smile. Lewis was very easy to interview, especially after the longer interview you had with him last year, after which you occasionally talked and exchanged small birthday gifts... He was always trying to steer from obvious questions, because he was just so tired of them, and you happily obliged.

- Congratulations on placing so well in the qualis, but I have something else to ask you. Before the race, we were talking about your dogs, Roscoe and Coco. - he smiled again.

- We did, those little rascals... - he laughed quietly, suspecting where your next question might head.

- If they were to race against the others drivers’ pets, where do you think they'd land? - the question was definitely unusual, but you could just tell that he loved it, especially when he started listing all the dogs, cats, and even a few birds, considering all their advantages and disadvantages, with you making a comment from time to time. Technically those segments you did were supposed to be around 2 minutes per driver, but you didn't want to stop the conversation that flew so naturally, especially when you were building on his arguments or completely disagreeing with them. You suspected that this one will go to the network's YouTube channel as a special, and based on how much Lewis enjoyed his rant and theories, you suspected that it might do even better than the main interviews from today. And it was obviously the first time he was asked that, so people, especially the younger generation, might be interested and start to comment with their own predictions, which meant engagement.

At first, you didn't even notice that the wind picked up and gave you goosebumps, because you were so deeply invested in the conversation. Only when suddenly a wall of rain hit both of you, you swore in your head, regretting your choice of dress for today. Fortunately, it didn't become see-through, but it did nothing to keep you warm in the rain, and Lewis didn't even realize that something was wrong. He was still in his driver's suit... And honestly, you didn't want to interrupt the interview just because of a tiny bit of water. Ok, a bit more than a "tiny" amount, but still, it's not like you were going to melt, so you continued the conversation with a pleasant smile on your face, but you couldn't help the shiver that came over you after two minutes of being completely soaked.

In the corner of your eye, you saw someone getting close to both of you, but you didn't look straight at them, because you were in the middle of asking a question. Only when the person stepped in front of the camera, you turned your head and froze for a second, when you saw Toto Wolff with a spare jacket and an umbrella. You continued asking the question while he gently put the Mercedes-branded jacket over your shoulders, and gave a giant umbrella to Lewis to hold over the two of you since your hand was already busy holding the microphone. Without saying anything he left the frame and walked away, leaving you to continue the interview.

You couldn't help but smile for the rest of the conversation, which could, fortunately, be understood as you genuinely enjoying Hamilton's company, when in fact you were grinning from ear to ear, because that cheeky bastard gave you his jacket, and now you were completely surrounded by his scent, which tuned out the smell of burned rubber and hot metal, even though it was much more subtle.

You spent around 10 more minutes conducting the interview until there was a natural end to your conversation. You congratulated him again on doing so well and wished him good luck for the main race.

- Where do you pull those questions from, Y/n...? - Lewis laughed after the camera stopped rolling. - I always feel like we've been talking for less than a minute, and then I look at the clock... - you joined him in laughter, finally able to put your arms through the sleeves of a jacket that was way too big for you. At the same time, you turned the mic off and took a quick look at the camera screen.

- Yeah, we have over 20 minutes of footage, you're super easy to talk to, and I wish everyone was as open as you. - you gave him a smile. - But at least you made the last interview of the day actually enjoyable, so thank you for that. - he laughed, still holding the umbrella over you, while you were quickly packing your part of the gear. Your camerawoman was doing her job as quickly as you, and only after about 3 minutes you were both packed, with all gear protected from the rain. - I have a ride back, see you tomorrow. - you lied smoothly, but she didn't question you, so you both just waved each other goodbye, and she left the track.

- Thank you for that... - you pointed at the umbrella Hamilton was holding. - But I think I should return it to the rightful owner. Do you know where I might find him this late? - the question slipped easily from your tongue, even though you knew very well where Toto was because he was always there after any type of race. Although it wasn't something a regular reporter would know, so you felt obligated to ask, not to rouse any suspicion.

- Sure, he's still in the pit going through all the raw data from today... - you nodded, acknowledging what he said.

- Even after everyone left...? - you faked your disbelief.

- Yeah, he's like that during the season, nothing else matters. I mean, he's always like that, laser-focused... But he should really get a life. - Lewis chuckled as if he was in on a joke you didn’t know of, but you just smiled politely.

- That sounds... admirable. The dedication. - you clarified.

- True, true... I can walk with you if you want.

- Oh, that's not necessary. I'm sure Roscoe and Coco miss you. - you both laughed, and he passed you the umbrella.

- Yeah... Well... Can't wait for our next interview.

- Lewis Hamilton, are you offering me an exclusive? - you joked, and he laughed again.

- Maybe, maybe... Have your people contact my people and we might set something up. - this time you laughed, while he was walking away. - Take care, Y/n! - he waved you goodbye and started walking in the direction of the exit, while you headed toward the pit, from where most of the people were heading away. Few of them recognized you and gave you a small nod or a polite greeting, but when you finally got to the Mercedes station, you could count people in sight on one hand. You saw Toto from quite far away, but he was completely focused on the two monitors in front of him.

Since there was nowhere to knock, you just crossed the threshold and folded the umbrella. You got closer to him, and he finally realized you were there. You noticed him glancing behind you, making sure there was no one in sight, and when you were near him, he pulled you closer by the sides of his own jacket and gave you a short but sweet kiss; even sitting down, he was a bit taller than you. Admittingly, you wore flats today, and the chair was high, but still...

- Mein Schatzi decided to visit me, how lovely... - you couldn't help but smile, and even though you wanted nothing more than to get closer to him, you took a step back, and leaned on the side of his desk, so from far away it looked like you were just talking.

- I was actually hoping to catch a ride with you... - he raised his eyebrow

- Did you change your mind, love...? - he asked, and you sighed heavily.

- It's... complicated. - you finally replied, and he lowered his hand and put it on the inside of your knee so the small point of contact between you was hidden by the desk, but it still gave you comfort.

- Oh...? - he looked at you from behind his glasses, wanting to hear more.

- I'm seriously thinking about quitting my job, and I think today was the final push I needed.

- That sounds serious... - his thumb started gently stroking your naked skin.

- It does, doesn't it... - it was more a statement than a question. - I mean... I enjoy being a reporter, meeting all those amazing people, but I feel like being this type of a reporter... - you gestured around you. - ...isn't for me. It's too quick and too repetitive. It's shallow... - you sighed again and rubbed your forehead with your fingers. - And I know neither the sport nor the drivers are shallow. They’re deep, complicated, and nuanced, and I feel like the media flattens them down and cuts it all into digestible bites. It's not something I enjoy being a part of. And even though I have over 15 people interested in an actual interview with me, the network has scheduled only two. In a month. And it's just... - you groaned instead of finishing the sentence.

- Frustrating...? - he asked, and you nodded.

- Extremely frustrating. Because even if I resigned today, I'd still have to work for them for a month, and gods know what they'll want me to do... And after that - it's not like any network is searching for a full-time interviewer or looking for someone to fill a spot in the schedule. - you sighed again, slumping your shoulders. - Sorry for dumping it all on you, especially right now. - you added a bit quieter. You didn't even plan on talking about it with him when you were walking over, but it just... spilled.

- Don't apologize, Schatzi. - he gave you a small smile. - It's your life and I'm honored that you have decided to share it with me. - he pulled you a bit closer by your thigh, and you went. - Do you just want to vent, or are you seeking advice? - he asked, finally taking off his headphones, roughing up his hair with his hand, and giving you his undivided attention. Now even from the outside, this didn't look like a regular conversation, but no one was around... You appreciated that he asked because most guys would have started spewing possible solutions without taking what you truly wanted under consideration. But in this case, you could really use some counsel...

- Advice... - you said, your tone heavy.

- I think you should quit and go independent. - he stopped for a moment, letting the words sink in. - You are the best in long format, deep interviews, you don't shy from rough topics, and you can easily steer a conversation in such a way, that the other person just feels comfortable, even with complicated questions. And you enjoy making this type of content the most, no? - he made sure, and you nodded. - So objectively, I see two paths for you. Path number one - you go to any streaming network with a proposition of your show, and if they'll be interested - you could start taping interviews, but they will most likely have to be at a certain length and there might be some censorship required. Path number two requires much more work, especially in the beginning - you go completely independent and put your interviews online. - he went quiet, allowing you to process what he said. You never thought about putting your interviews online... You would have to hire a crew, editors, and someone to take care of HR, and PR... And at first, there wouldn't be a lot of money in it, only from minor sponsors and ad revenues, since you weren't exactly fond of putting the content behind a paywall. So, did you have enough savings to actually invest in something like that? Because it would have to be at least 10 interviews to get it going, so 3-4 months of paychecks for 10-12 people. A quick calculation told you that... somehow you could. It would be rough, but with sponsors... Yeah, you might be able to pull it off.

- I see those gears turning. Did I say something right...? - he smiled, and you immediately did the same.

- You did. You said something very right... In fact... - you took your phone out of your bag - I'm quitting right now... - you wanted to unlock it, but his hand covered the screen and stopped you from doing that. You looked at him confused.

- I know you wouldn't take money from me, but is there a chance I can offer you my lawyer? - he asked, but that didn't clear things up. - You've mentioned that your network booked you only two interviews in a month, and that... doesn't seem right. I'm just saying, let him look over your contract and if there is something that would allow you to quit on the spot, he'll find it. But sending your resignation right now might complicate things... - you carefully considered his offer... You knew he was right, but you were still hesitant to accept any actual help from him because your hyper-independence convinced you that if you did, nothing else you would do in your carrier or life would be of any value, because you didn't get it on your own.

- I will meet with him... - you said eventually. - Thank you. - you added, and the smile that bloomed on his face melted something in you. You just couldn't be in a bad mood with him nearby.

- It's nothing. - you wanted to budge in, but he beat you to it. - For me. For me, it's nothing, Schatzi. Can I kiss you now...? - he asked and when you nodded, he pulled you into his lap, finally kissing you properly.

- What the...? - you heard the familiar voice behind you, and you looked in that direction horrified. You managed to keep your relationship secret without slip-ups for so long, that you honestly thought all the things you did to avoid getting caught became second nature, but evidently, you became too comfortable.

- Fuck… - the swear left your mouth before you even realized it was forming. It's not like Lewis would blab about what he saw to everyone, but your first reaction was still fear.

- So, is that like a thing with a capital T, or did it just happen because he didn't let you get soaked today...? - he asked, and you wanted nothing more than for the ground under you to open and swallow you whole. Preferably with the last five minutes of this timeline. You cautiously looked up, but Toto was giving you free hand in handling it. Personally, you knew that he wanted your relationship to go public because he wanted to show you off to the world, but he never insisted; he knew you weren't ready yet, and when it mattered - he was a very patient man.

- It's a thing with a capital T... - you finally answered on the exhale, and you could see Lewis getting nervous.

- Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, coooooool... - you honestly wanted to laugh. - It's a good thing then, that I didn't ask you on a date today. - he blurted out and as soon as the words left his mouth he was horrified. You saw that he wanted to start apologizing, but you beat him to it.

- Yeah, polyamory isn't for me, sorry... I'm more of an "all in" kinda gal. - you laughed, and the atmosphere relaxed a little.

- So how long has this been going on? - Lewis asked and you couldn't help but smile.

- Officially... Just over a year. But it took me more to actually wear her down. That sounds bad. - you couldn't blame him for sometimes not getting the message across exactly as he wanted, since he spoke fluently in six languages.

- I didn't want to start a relationship with someone this important as soon as I started doing interviews around the tracks, because I didn't want to be treated differently. And I wanted to avoid all the nasty rumors that I've slept my way to the best interviews. - you quickly jumped in to explain your situation in more detail.

- Well, anyone who would think that is an idiot and clearly has never seen any of your interviews. - he complimented your skills, and even though it technically was true, you still felt weird receiving compliments.

- Thank you, Lewis. - you gave him a soft smile.

- And honestly, it's impressive that you managed to keep it under wraps for so long. - he added. - Anyway, I came back because I realized I forgot my phone, I'm gonna leave you two lovebirds alone. - he laughed, zeroing in on his cell.

- Lewis...? Could please not tell anyone? - you asked, even though you suspected you didn't need to. - I mean, beside Roscoe and Coco... - he chuckled and gave both of you a huge smile.

- Your secret is safe with us. Take care guys! - and with that, he was gone, and Toto couldn't help but laugh.

- That went... well. - you playfully slapped his chest, pretending to scold him. - Oh come on Schatzi, from everyone who could possibly walk in on us, he's the best option. - he defended his reaction, and you knew he was right. - But... - he started, and you almost immediately knew what he was going to say next. - Since you won't be around the track that much anymore... - he continued, and you chuckled.

- I know, I know... But please let's wait until my separation from the network will be officially announced, ok...? After that, you can tell the whole world what a lucky man you are. - you gently cupped his cheek and run your thumb over it.

- Then I'll better call my lawyer and set up a meeting for tomorrow morning... - he brought your hand to his lips and placed soft kisses on your palm and every fingertip.

- Does that mean, we can go...? - you asked. You knew that if you didn't, he would have most likely stayed here for at least another hour or two, but he just couldn't say no to you. You also understood that he still needed to work. - How about you'll take your laptop and do your thing while I'll cook dinner, hmmm? - you proposed a compromise. Usually, you were against working from home, but during race season this rule was suspended, because otherwise, you would only be able to see him for a couple of minutes a day, and that was definitely not enough. Plus, you knew what you signed up for - he needed someone who understood that the team was his life and that it wouldn't change for a while.

- Sounds perfect... - you finally got down from his lap, and started to take the jacket off, since it stopped raining outside. - Keep it, you need it more than I do. - he gave you a soft smile and started turning everything off. It didn't take long before you were leaving the pit, and you reached for his hand to place it on your waist. He looked down at you, but didn't say anything, just smiled... And you knew everything will be all right.

Part 2

A/N 2: Please don't feel obligated/pressured to reblog, because I write mostly for myself. A comment would be much more appreciated :) Love, G.

#my writing #Toto Wolff fanfiction #Toto Wolff x reader #🖤#📏#No Longer a Secret by G.

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theetherealbloom · 1 year

Text

UNEVEN ODDS — CH. 2

Chapter Two: Roll Up Your Sleeves

Summary: The Reader is dragged into the Last of Us universe and has no choice but to watch the events unfold or will she be able to change what was already written?

Paring: Joel Miller x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Age-gap Romance, Violence, Angst, Fluff, Guns, PTSD, Depression, Anxiety, Swearing, Reader wants to sacrifice herself, Zombies, eventual SMUT, MY SCIENCE IS WONKY, probable plot holes, rusty writing

Word Count: 4.8k

A/N: Holy shit there are so many of you sjdfhgsk AHHHH thank you so much for all the notes and comments, I appreciate it! Here’s a little bit of info for you to understand a little bit of my thought process. In my outline, the reader is an Enneagram Type 9: The Peacekeeper. (This helps me add a little bit of depth to you so I don’t feel entirely lost when writing) if she seems “passive” or “complacent” it’s cause she wants everything to go smoothly and be without conflict. I’d like to believe there’s a little part of us that prefer to avoid tension, due to the fear of loss and separation from the people or things you love. I’ll go a little bit more in-depth about this in the story as it progresses. Hope you enjoy!

Song: evermore (feat. bon iver) by Taylor Swift

Previous Chapter -> Next Chapter | Series Masterlist

TLOU WORLD – 2023

BOSTON - NOON

You walk along the ruins of a long-abandoned Boston with an overpowering sense of dread. It feels like the build-up of a song in which you know the tune, the lyrics, and the beat. Strings of violins, drums, and bells ring and thump in your mind, unwanted and uncaring of how you feel. This curse of knowledge you never asked for but which you carry follows you as the four of you approach the Bostonian Museum. Creeper vines and Cordyceps grow on the sides of the building, marked by conspicuous veins and all-consuming every red brick of this once-beautiful structure.

The four of you stand outside the entrance of the museum. Cordyceps consume every part of the foundation, Ellie tilts her head to look up at it appalled, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” You stand next to Joe, using your hand to rub your right eye, and mumble, “Shit.”

“Well, there’s a way across from the top floor,” Tess says while moving to place her hands in the pockets of her pants. Ellie sarcastically replies, “Well, then I guess it’s fine.” Tess reassures her by adding, “We use to take it all the time.”

Ellie answers, “Okay.” Joel leaves your side and approaches a dry vein of the Cordyceps, removing the rifle he stole from the FEDRA guard, he crouches and touches a part of it to check if it was still active. He swings downward, hits the vein with the butt of the gun, and a puff of dust releases from the dead fungi, he stands to walk over to Tess, “It’s bone dry. It could mean they’re all finally dead in there.”

Tess nods, then they both kneel to prepare their flashlights and weapons, just in case. You and Ellie watch them both rummage through their backpacks, “Oh, man,” the kid mutters.

Joel whips out a flashlight and waves it at Ellie, “Marlene pack you one of these or just sandwiches?” She removes her backpack, “Yeah,” and pulls out her flashlight. Joel looks to you, “Catch, hummin’ bird.” That was the only warning he gave you before tossing you the flashlight, “Luckily, I have a spare.”

You’re short of breath as you hear the nickname he gave you. Miraculously, caught it with both hands, and without even thinking you wink, “Thanks, cowboy.” Thankfully, no one says anything about your quip directed at him.

“Okay, so… more ground rules.” Tess announces and turns to Ellie, “We’re gonna go slowly. If we come up against anything you get behind us and you stay there, okay?” The young girl nods and wears her backpack, “Yes.” Tess brings out her handgun and flashlight, positioning her hands in a way that she can use both. Ellie glances at the gun she’s holding, “I have a spare hand.”

Joel is unamused by what she is insinuating, dryly replies, “Congratulations.” He walks forward with determination, he pokes his head through the door to do an initial check before turning around to nod at the three of you to signal it’s clear. Reluctantly, you follow them inside, your mind has kicked into overdrive, trying to figure out a way to get past this with zero casualties. If you sacrifice yourself, would that change the ending? Would it buy Tess a little more time? This might be your grand attempt to do something right and kind without assurance, without the promise of an afterlife.

Flashlights dance and shine around the walls of the abandoned museum, you watch your step and try to calm the beating of your heart as you look at the artifacts left behind. You navigate through the hallways and come across a corpse of an infected deceased. Joel shines his flashlight on the fungi, “Yeah, cooked.” Tess exhales, “Finally, some fucking luck.” Ellie steps a little closer to investigate the remains of what was once human, Joel continues, “I guess we should’ve gone this way in the first place.”

You were so caught up in trying to ground yourself in the reality of all of this, that this is actually happening, that you forgot to at least warn them about the Clickers they were about to face in a couple of moments. Just as Ellie was about to turn a corner, you whisper loudly to her, “Ellie wait!”

Too fucking late. “Oh shit,” Ellie exclaims with wide eyes, and Joel makes a move to inspect what she found. A dead bruised, bloodied, young man slouched against the corner. Ellie’s eyes were full of shock, “What the fuck did that?”

Joel and Tess look at each other knowingly, and you finally decide to speak up, for her and theirs, “Whatever you’re about to say or hope for, don’t bother.” The three of them turn to look at you and you decide to continue in an audible whisper, “I wasn’t sure if I could or should warn you, but we need to stay quiet from now on.” You gather your courage to look directly at Joel with an unwavering stare, “It’s exactly what you suspect it is.”

“Are you saying an infected did that?” Ellie whispers to the three adults, and she resumes, “Because I’ve been attacked by one and it wasn’t like that.” Joel looks at you and he can see the way your face twists, your lips curled downwards, and your eyes show your remorse and guilt, he whispers to everyone, “Okay, from this point forward we are silent. Not quiet. Silent.” Ellie looks at him concerned and confused, “What?” But Joel shakes his head, “No. No questions. Just do it.”

This is it. You think to yourself as you will your feet to move, continuing, you follow Joel and Ellie up the stairs with Tess trailing behind. You remember when you could cover your eyes to the scary moments of the show, you could press pause, or fast forward, not needing to witness and feel the distress and panic.

The quiet creak of each floorboard of the steps as your boots land on the rotting wood, it groans all of your weight and dust falls from the ceiling. You all stop silently, waiting for any indication of an infected discovering that all of you were in the museum. After a moment, Joel looks back at you, a silent way of asking if it’s okay, you throw him a bone and give him a tiny spoiler, then you nod at him. And all four of you continue up the stairs.

As you make the first landing of the steps, you shine your flashlight to meet a horrifying view. Multiple corpses of people who were infected with Cordyceps lay on the wooden floors. It’s unspeakable and all-consuming, the silence overwhelms your system, there is a sudden tightness in your chest, and feel a part of your mask slip, your eyes shift and move to look at the pile of bodies. Organs and parts that were once human, were scooped out and transformed into fungi.

Your mouth opens silently, quivering as you do, and you lightly shake your head. Joel steps over the rotting fungi, just as you were about to grab Ellie and warn her about what she couldn’t see, you were too late. Again. A satisfying crunch could be heard throughout the building and you squeeze your eyes shut in fear for a moment then you reopen them. Joel whips around to look at Ellie with annoyance, the kid gives him an apologetic look.

Thankfully, you managed to make it up the steps with no more issues. Joel slowly opens the door to Independence Hall, and the wood gives a quiet creak. He quickly scans the area before deciding to nod at all of you, telling you it’s clear.

With your foresight and knowledge of events that had already happened in your time, you decide to act accordingly and give a hard shove to both Tess and Ellie inside the Hall and quickly follow after, gravity takes place and parts of the museum collapse, pieces of wood and cement block the doors. You were trapped.

Tess and Ellie push themselves off the ground, but you take a little longer to get up. You scraped your arms and hands, and the pain in your head came back. Joel quickly and quietly helps Ellie up then realizes you haven’t moved yet. He immediately makes his way to you, lightly shaking you to get up, you blink back the blurry black spots that are forming in your eyes and stand up with his help, both of his hands on the underside of your forearms.

You squint and slowly look up at him, and for what felt like a second, you see the worry that lines his face. Concern and need to protect you, even though you’re just a stranger. The moment doesn’t last long, you hear the familiar sound of screeching in the room adjacent to you. Flashlights shine in the direction of the noise and you hold your breath as all of you walk backward, keeping your eyes on the monster that emerges from the shadows. The twitchy movements are followed by the croaky noises of the infected, it tries to navigate, searching for its next prey. And on queue, the other Clicker screeches, indicating that there are two of them. This is no longer a museum, it’s a fucking horror house and all of you are in for the worst experience of your life.

You are now surrounded by predators, and prey, playing a twisted game of hide and seek. You press your back against the glass of the cabinet, Tess to your right, Ellie to your left, and Joel being the farthest left. He gestures to his eyes and ears, quietly mouthing, “They can’t see, but they can hear.”

The creature groans and croaks, clicking sounds from its throat. It’s right behind the glass, your eyes drift to the monster and see its jerky movements. You bring your eyes to look at Joel, he lifts his pointer finger to his lips, indicating to be incredibly still and silent. Fear is the darkness and the unknown, a hard-to-shake feeling, it overstays its welcome and leaves you panting.

Tess watches the monster make its way around the corner, limping and shaky. Ellie closes her eyes to try and control her breathing, and you get yourself ready for the fight you never wished for. ‘Why is it always so fucking dark?’ You wonder inside your head, The Clicker comes into view, and you hear an audible gasp come from Ellie. Shit.

The creature turns in your direction at full tilt, mouth wide open with its yellowing teeth, and gives the loudest high-pitch screech. Joel sprays bullets into the Clickers’ chest, but it fights back, he looks in your direction and yells out, “Run!”

The second clicker begins to sprint toward you and Tess shoots at it but the bullet misses. Tess grabs Ellie by the arm and drags her away, while you run with them. The four of you get separated, Tess trips and so do you and Ellie, she yells out to tell her, “Run… Run!”

Ellie crawls her under a table and finds her way out, while the Clicker runs after Tess. You are now at a crossroads, Joel is running at the other end of the exhibit while Tess heads in the opposite direction. You swiftly make a split-second decision and duck, right behind Ellie under the table, however, you do not crawl away, instead, you wait for the Clicker to run by you and quietly get up to follow after Tess. This is your chance to make things right, to ensure she doesn’t get bitten. Will this cost you your life?

You grab an ax hanging from the wall and run to the other side of the room, you hold it with both hands and feel the sweat coating your skin. You turn a corner and see Tess pinned up against the wall, the creature feasting on her neck, your heart drops to the bottom of your stomach, and you let out a scream, “No!”

The creature quickly turns and shrieks at you, angry for interrupting its meal, now it begins sprinting towards you, and the adrenaline pumps into your bloodstream and system. The anger starts to flare in your chest, the silence grows louder along with the ringing in your ears. You stand unwavering and with the courage that has been asleep for so long, it awakens at the right time.

Aiming directly at its head, you throw the axe with everything you have. It lands on a portion of its mushroom-infected face. Yet, it only slows the creature down a second, screaming and swinging its long mutated arms, and tries to locate you, but, it hears the commotion in the other room, loud pops of a revolver can be heard and you assume it’s Joel killing the other Clicker.

The abomination of what once was human turns and screeches at Joel and Ellie, it scampers towards them and you feel the pulse in your veins like a fighter, you fight the fear and let the rush take over, you sharply glance at the handgun Tess had dropped during the chaos and without hesitation, you pick it up and pray it still has some bullets in the chamber.

This was a skill you wished you never had to use. All those days in the range were just a precaution, the world is not kind to women, and you learned to protect yourself just in case. It meant only using a gun when you or the people you loved were in danger.

Using one hand, you swiftly remove the safety with your thumb, aim, and shoot at the head of the Clicker. With three loud pops and then a fourth one for good measure, the monster falls to its knees and on the ground.

Dead.

Blood oozes from the infected’s head, and you stand there watching the crimson splatter grow larger. Tess appears from the archway and takes in the vision before her. You turn to aim the gun at her, your fight instincts kick in, still high from the adrenaline, and you stand there breathing heavily.

Joel yells out your name. You blink once, then twice. A beat passes, and you don’t register Joel approaching you in a calm slow manner, his arm stretched out with his palm facing you, treating you as if you were a frightened animal, now he places his hand on top of yours, a touch so gentle you barely register it. Carefully and steadily he takes away the gun in your hand and turns the safety on before handing it to Tess, which she slowly takes, while you let it happen.

Your vision is blurry and tries to swallow away your guilt. You were too late. You couldn’t save her. Joel says your name again, he’s in front of you now, his frame covering and protecting Tess, but he has replaced the gun you once held, with his hand. Ellie watches the events unfold from the side, not wanting to create any more noise or movement. He squeezes your hand and whispers, “It’s okay… It’s okay.”

It’s not, but his voice brings you back anyway. You look to Tess, your eyes full of sorrow, and your voice quivers as you speak, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Tess nods knowingly, she swallows her pride and sadness to say, “It’s okay. You tried… um, thank you.”

Her words completely snap out of your trance, and you see the world a little clearer now. You nod back at her, then bring your eyes to Joel, who is still holding your hand. His eyes dance around, observing and taking note of every detail of your face. You’re the first to break the staring contest, realizing that Tess doesn’t have a lot of time. You step back away from him, dropping his hand, “We should get going.”

Joel turns to Tess, “You all right?” She nods, “Twisted ankle, but yeah.” She limps over to Ellie, “You all right?”

“Well, I didn’t shit my pants, so…” Ellie says and pulls up the sleeve of her jacket to reveal a bite from the infected. “You fucking kidding me?” she exclaims and turns to look at Joel, “I mean if it was going to happen to one of us.”

Tess stays silent at that, glancing at you to keep your mouth shut. You give a discreet nod in response, Tess calls out to Joel, “Hey. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Joel pushes the window up and opens, stepping out onto the roof, Ellie follows and you do too, leaving Tess for last, who plops down to rest her ankle, “Fuck.”Joel kneels and opens his pack to give Ellie a bandage, “Put this around your arm.” She takes it and says, “Thanks.” You watch as Ellie makes her way to a wooden plank, makeshift bridge, “Over there?” Joel glances over while continuing to fuss over Tess, “Yeah, I know it looks scary.”

“That was scary. This is wood.” Ellie states and proceeds to walk across the wood plank to get to the other building’s roof. Joel watches in disbelief and hollers, “Just wait there. Give us a minute.” He turns to look at you, “Can you go make sure she’s…” You only nod, knowing that Joel and Tess need to talk, you look at the wood plank they call a bridge and mumble to yourself, “If the way I die is falling from a high place, so be it.”

You walk across with no problem and catch up to Ellie, “Hey,” you say as you stand by her and take in the view. “What happened to you back there?” Ellie asks, the wind blowing strands of hair away from her face. You huff, “I don’t know. The adrenaline took over, I guess.”

You both stand in silence now, then you can hear the heavy footsteps of Joel walking up to the right of Ellie, she merely glances at him and then turns back to see the State House in the distance, glittering under the sunlight. “Is it everything you hoped for?” Joel asks her, Ellie blinks but answers him, “Jury’s still out. But, man you can’t deny that view.”

You hear Tess approaching from behind, eager to keep moving, “Come on, let’s get there before it’s dark.” She turns and then climbs a ladder down, letting out a groan of pain no one question or brings up. Joel nods at Ellie to follow Tess which he does, you look at Joel as Ellie climbs down. And you held his gaze for a moment, then look to his broken watch, before climbing down after the young kid.

Leaves crunch with every step you take, Tess lightly limping ahead, she turns to look at you, and you could only stare back. Tess looks straight ahead once more, and you can’t help but wonder about the violence of the dog days and what could get you through this. You see the State House from a distance, a hauntingly beautiful sight, creeper vines growing on the pillars and sides of the edifice.

The group decides to hide behind an abandoned car near the state house, and immediately could tell that something was very wrong, “Where the fuck are they?” Tess harshly states, Joel, shakes his head and decides to go check the truck parked outside by the steps of the ruined State House.

Joel walks over cautiously to the door of the truck, he swings it open to aim his rifle at it, only for the seats to be empty. Joel sees the blood splattered on the sides of the door, and turns to mouth at you all, “Stay back.” He rounds the side of the truck and notices a recently deceased, he continues to the back of the truck, swinging the giant blue metal doors, to confront no one.

You follow Ellie and Tess as she demands, “Joel, what the fuck is going on?” Joel shakes his head, “I don’t know.”

No longer wanting to play along, you look down to see a trail of blood up the steps and into the State House, you hear someone call your name, but say nothing as you walk up to the doors of the building. You push your way through, briskly walking to the center of the structure, and you take a good look at the multiple dead people scattered on the ground. You shake your head and close your eyes, “Fuck.”

You hear the three come in after you and they notice immediately what happened, Tess goes into a panic, “Okay. I mean there’s gotta be a fucking radio or something, right?” She proceeds to open the kit boxes that contain nothing but supplies, searching for anything that could help them win.

“Who killed them? FEDRA?” Ellie asks, and you reply, “No,” you nod to the man on the ground, Joel rolls him over with his boot and you continue, “One of them got bit. The healthy ones fought the sick ones. Everyone lost.”

Joel’s nostrils flared as he stared at you, “You knew? You knew and didn’t even bother to warn us that this was all for nothin’?” You raised your chin, “They were already dead hours before we got here.” His jaw clenched while you stood, fists clenched by your sides, and rolled your shoulders back, glaring at Joel.

Joel calls out to Tess, “Tess, what are you doing?” She ignores him and approaches Ellie, “Where did Marlene say that she was taking you?” Ellie responds unsure, “Uh, I don’t know. Just west.”

“Just west. Fuck. okay. Well, I mean, one of them’s gotta have a map on them, right?” Tess then goes to search one of the deceased Firefly’s pockets, “Joel, can you help me?”

“No.” He fumed, “Tess, it’s over. We are going home.”

“That’s not my fucking home!”

You let the exchange happen, while you move to one of the kits to retrieve a handgun, some ammo, and a small first-aid kit, and steal a backpack sitting on top of the chairs to shove all your supplies inside. Then, you hear Tess say the words you knew would happen, “I’m staying. I mean, our luck had to run out sooner or later.”

“Fuck.” Ellie whispers, “She’s infected.”

Tess sighs, and Joel’s eyes hardened and narrowed into slits, “Show me.” She takes a step forward and whispers his name, only for him to take a step back. Tess then steps back, anguish splashes across her face, then pulls the collar of her shirt and jacket, to reveal the growing infection on her neck, “Oops, right? And don’t bother taking it against her,” Tess gestures to you, “She did everything she could to save me, but I guess fate had already cut my string.”

Joel takes in a breath of disbelief while Tess looks to Ellie, “Take your bandage off.” Which she does to reveal no evidence of infection, just a new scar on her forearm to add to her collection. Tess makes her way to Ellie and holds her arm, “Look. Joel? This is real.” She drags Ellie closer to him, “Joel, she’s fucking real.” Her grip suddenly becomes twitchy and she wills her hand to stop shaking and hides it behind her back, she stares directly into the eyes of whom she once loved, “I need you to get her to Bill and Frank’s.”

Joel is shaking his head as he replies, “No.” But Tess continues to speak, “They’ll take her off your hands. They’ll handle it from here.”

“No… I can’t. They won’t take her. They’re not gonna take her.” He says and you watch each part you knew to unfold, Tess whispers to him, “They will because you’ll convince them. Yes, you will. I never ask you for anything. Not to feel the way I felt…”

“No.” He stubbornly states, but Tess lets the tears stream down her face and exclaims, “Now, you shut the fuck up because I don’t have time.”

He grants her request and listens, “This is your chance. You get her there. You keep her alive and you set everything right. All the shit we did.” Joel shakes his head as Tess begs, “Please say yes, Joel. Please.”

Despite the somber mood, a screech from one of the corpses has come to life and taken its revenge on the living, Ellie screams out, “Oh, fuck!” But your reaction time is faster this time, and you no longer hesitate as you walk towards the parasite, remove the safety of the gun and shoot it point blank in the head. Joel comes up behind you, and takes notice of what you’re staring at, the Cordyceps patch has awakened the rest of the infected and you hear the croaks and shrieks from outside of the State House.

Joel runs up to one of the doors to check how many are on the way, he shuts the door and locks it after making out the horde approaching. “How many?” Tess asks, Joel walks past her, “All of ‘em. Maybe a minute.”

Tess takes one of the rifles off of the floor and uses the butt of the gun to remove the lid on the fuel barrels. She pushes it to the floor, and the clear yellow liquid pours out of it and coats the floor. You help and do the same to the other barrel, knowing how this will end for Tess. “What are you doing?” Ellie asks, watching you and Tess scatter grenades on the ground, “Making sure they don’t follow you.”

Tess then approaches Joel, breathless and shaking, “Joel. Save who you can save.”

He clenches his jaw and his nostrils flared, angry, confused, upset, everyone he ever loved leaves or dies. He stares at her, soaking in her image as much as he can, and then he makes his decision. He quickly grabs Ellie by the arm and drags her away, her protests can be heard as it fades away around the corner, she punches his arm to try and break loose but he’s much stronger, “No! We’re not leaving her! Get off me, you fucker!”

Tess says your name and you turn to face her, “You weren’t lying? About the whole different universe thing?” You can only shake your head in response, hoping she can see your heart breaking into pieces.

Tess hums and gives you a small smile, “Take care of them for me, please? Especially Joel. Stubborn as a mule but you’ll learn to love him, just like I did.” You decide to grant the woman her dying wish, you nod and whisper, “Goodbye, Tess.”

You turn to run and didn’t look back, pushing out of the wooden doors, while tears stream down your face slightly obscuring your vision. But you manage to catch up with Joel and Ellie, as you did, the blast from the State House is sudden and loud. The smell of burning kerosine fills the air and you turn to look back at the raging fire, Joel turns and points his rifle at the area, ready to shoot just in case, only to hear screeching and the infected burning on the steps of the building.

You stare and one-half of your senses silently wish Tess would walk out, but you can no longer rewind, she’s gone. Ellie pants, trying to catch her breath, tears rimming her eyes and Joel lowers his rifle to turn away from the roaring flames. You and Ellie turn to watch his lone silhouette walk away from you both.

A/N: WELL that’s the end of Episode 2! Lowkey was fighting invisible demons to get this chapter edited and out bcs I wanted to improve on describing movement, anger, sorrow, etc. IT WAS EXTREMELY DIFFICULT T^T but I hope I didn’t disappoint ya’ll <3 ALSO YEP MHM TAGLIST! Send me an ask so I can add ya! It’ll stay open for a tiny period of time so send away :D

I’m proud of you for doing the right thing by trying to save Tess! Even though we all know you secretly admire Joel and would have chased after him to ensure his safety with Ellie. hehehehehe

Yes, the reader only knows everything up to Episode 3, meaning she has no clue about the rest of the show! She knows (most) parts of the video game but alas we know Television series like to change things so she’s lowkey fucked lol

I LIVE FOR YOUR COMMENTS ya’ll crack me up and have the best reactions. Thank you for your support and love. I’ll try and get the next chapter out soon!

-Grace

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writeyouin · 11 months

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Hi :D Can you do a Mirage x a fem reader were the reader has a crush on Mirage but she does not know how to tell him because he is a autobot and she is a human and is nervous of how he will react? (Sorry if this is cringe 😅) (fell free to add whatever you want if you want to :)

Mirage X Reader – A Knight in Metal Plating

A/N – So, this story turned a wee bit angsty. Still, I hope it’s to your liking.

Warnings – Minor attack on reader, which is thwarted by Mirage but does come off somewhat creepy.

Rating – T

New York City was large and somewhere you felt wholly out of your depth. The alleys seemed darker and more dangerous than those in other places, except apparently to the natives who were used to traversing the city quickly via said alleys. The streets were either far too loud and bustling with people, or eerily quiet in a manner that set off warning bells that something sinister might be lurking just out of sight in the shadows. Then, there were the con artists, thugs, and petty thieves who all managed to hide in plain sight.

Fortunately for you, there were also Autobots hiding in plain sight, and they could only be spotted by those who knew what they looked like when disguised as ordinary vehicles. Mirage, one of said Autobots, had taken to waiting outside your workspace so he could drive you home on late nights. He couldn’t understand how you felt unsafe after braving the fight against Galvatron’s forces, but he supported you in your plight anyway, vowing to do whatever he could to make you feel safe.

You smiled when you saw him, walking a little taller and prouder. Mirage was one of the few people who made you happy. He was sweet, kind, funny, and… you were totally in love with him. How could you not be? He had risked his life to save you, Noah, and Elena. Then, you had gone through the shock of witnessing what you believed was his death at the time.

You remembered that day all too well. You were stuck with Noah beneath Mirage’s chassis, and his optics had softened despite how much pain he was in. He didn’t care for his own life. Only of yours and Noah’s as he protected the two of you, breaking his body down to nothing more than spare parts which he gifted to Noah as armour.

After that, you were left in Bumblebee’s care, a final request by Mirage before he briefly shut down.

As far as you were concerned, Mirage was never allowed to scare you like that again, and you had told him so immediately after Noah managed to bring him back online.

You got to the car door and were about to greet Mirage when you heard a voice holler, “Hey baby, how about a ride in a real car.”

You turned shakily around hoping that the voice was addressing someone else, anyone else, even though you and the heckler were the only two people in the parking lot. Sure enough, the man was coming towards you. He looked a lot like Noah’s friend Reek, though he lacked the mischievous manner and kind eyes that Reek possessed.

This man was a stranger, a threat to you and he was suddenly only a few feet away. You backed up against Mirage, the cool steel of his door handle pressing against the small of your back. You felt a light indistinct rumble of his engine. The rumble was a message; he was there for you, and he was angry at the intruder.

The man stopped in front of you, humming appreciatively, “Or we could forget the car and you could ride me.”

“I- I have to go,” You stammered.

Even though Mirage was right there with you, you knew he wasn’t supposed to be seen and you didn’t want him to have to blow his cover for you.

“Go? But we’ve only just met. Where do you have to go that’s so important?”

“I’m- seeing someone.”

“No surprise someone so fine isn’t on the market. But whatever happens here, in this place, that’s just between you and me baby.”

You shivered at the malice in the man’s voice. There was no room for interpretation. Unless you or Mirage acted, he was going to take what he wanted from you.

He reached out to grab you, and you ducked out of the way, almost tripping over, though you managed to recover using Mirage’s front bonnet for support. Your harasser pursued you, but Mirage opened his front door hard, slamming into your assailant.

He grunted and fell to the floor, “What the fuck?!”

You didn’t wait for him to recover as you ran to the driver’s side of the car, getting in hurriedly and pulling the seatbelt over you.

“Want me to run him over?” Mirage asked you, revving his engines.

You shook your head curtly, the idea of any bloodshed making you nauseous.

“I just want to go home,” You whispered.

“Rodger that.”

You heard the screech of wheels as Mirage stayed on the spot, pumping his brakes to build-up the speed he would need for a dramatic take-off. He opened his passenger door again, hitting your attacker square in the face before leaving. If that guy wanted to harm his human, then he would have to deal with the consequences.

Once safe, Mirage waited a while for you to talk, but it soon became clear that you weren’t planning to.

“Are you okay?” He asked.

You shook your head, then realised you weren’t sure whether he could see you when you were inside his vehicle mode. “I- I wasn’t prepared for that… If you weren’t here-”

“I was here (Y/N),” Mirage said supportively.

“But if you weren’t-”

“No, don’t think like that. I’ll always be here for you.”

“You can’t always be where I need you, Mirage. It’s not fair on you. You have a life too.”

Mirage thought about his life before he met you. It was a lot of hiding, and no good conversation since Optimus never wanted him to do anything that drew attention to him or the other Autobots. Essentially, you were his escape from a life with the tight-asses. You gave him someone to talk to, and you laughed at his jokes. You went with him to new places, directing him on where to go, and despite the strange circumstances under which you met, you had never feared him, trusting him intimately in a way he never knew a human could.

Moreover, you had a huge crush on him. He had known for a long time, but for a while, he waited to see if you would make a move. He wanted you to, hoping that he could take the opportunity to brag about how great he was and then, when the moment was perfect, kiss you. Yet, the often-neglected mature part of his processor also held him back, for as enchanting as a relationship with you would be, there was always a chance that he and the others would have to leave Earth at some point; despite the quietness of the previous years, the war still waged on somewhere out there, and the Decepticons were no pushovers.

Suddenly feeling sorry for himself, Mirage made a quick U-Turn, cutting off several now furious drivers who beeped their horns at him and swore out of their windows in equal measure.

Your shoulder slammed hard against the door and you hissed in pain.

“Mirage, what’s going on?” You asked worriedly as you rubbed at the sore spot.

“We’re going to celebrate.”

“Celebrate?” You asked incredulously. “What do we have to celebrate?”

“The world is still here, we know each other. It’s a nice night, and you’re absolutely gorgeous.”

You flushed red like you always did when he complimented you offhandedly. You wanted to take it in your stride but it was difficult to when you knew that was just Mirage’s nature and there was likely no real desire behind his words.

“Okay, now you say something nice about me,” Mirage wheedled.

You couldn’t help smiling at his attempt to coax a compliment from you, “You’re my knight in metal plating.”

“And…?”

“And you’re totally smoking hot,” You laughed.

“And…?”

“And the second-best driver that I’ve ever met.”

“What?” Mirage sputtered. “Second? No way, I’ve got the wheels, the heels, and nobody can beat me in a race.”

“I’ve seen you race Bumblebee and lose. When you beat him around the warehouse, I will concede that you’re the best driver I’ve ever met but until then,” You tsked, “I’m afraid that you’re only second best.”

“I’ll show you second best.” Mirage pumped the accelerator, using his energon boosters to break any speed limit that human cars could set. Only a short while later, you and he were in the middle of nowhere, far outside the city on a relatively unused rural road.

Mirage opened his door for you, transforming immediately afterwards.

“Whew,” He stretched his arm across his chassis, “Alright, so this second-best business has to stop. I’m your hero, your top-notch bot, your número uno hombre.”

“If you say so,” You smiled, setting the pace for a leisurely walk through the woods. Although it was late at night and dark, you felt safer in the small wooded area than you did in the city. Old leaves crunched under your feet and Mirage kept himself to a slow walk so he wouldn’t overtake you.

He was glad to see you relaxing again, and even happier to see that he’d managed to bring your smile back. Yet somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that he could make you both equally ecstatic. It would be corny, oh man, would it be corny. All he would have to tell you was that he knew how to be your number one, and when you demanded to know how he would kiss you and reply that he was the only one who could take your breath away.

And yet, he couldn’t bear to do so. It was better for you to find mediocrity in your life rather than true happiness if it meant avoiding the difficulties of an inter-species relationship where you would constantly have to worry about the future. Mirage hoped you would see it the same way because there might one day come a time when you confessed your feelings for him, and if you did, he wouldn’t be able to hold back any longer. He would be yours forever more, and frankly, that terrified him.

Like you had said, he was your Knight in Metal Plating, but wasn’t the irony of knights that they often had to leave their loves when an important quest came along? Mirage didn’t ever want to leave you, but if he ever had to, he feared the tearful goodbye. He had promised to be there for you, but who would be there for him when you inevitably no longer needed him or found someone who you could spend your time with? Someone human moreover.

Frankly, Mirage didn’t know what he wanted as he walked by your side, stealing furtive glances in your direction. He wanted to be yours, yet contrarily for you to stay away from him. He wanted you to be with someone who could love you as you deserve to be loved, but to avoid that kind of spark-ache, he would rather see you alone. He wanted you to tell him how you felt, yet also remain silent. Ultimately, he just wished for you to stay in his life.

When it came to you, Mirage couldn’t make up his mind, but that was the curse of love; it was a fickle mistress of the heart.

#fanfiction #fanfic #reader insert #reader #transformers #maccadam #tf #mirage #mirage x reader #mirage x you #a knight in metal plating #transformers rise of the beasts #transformers: rise of the beasts #rise of the beasts

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mindstriker · 5 months

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top five things i am currently insane about in borderlands as usual:

a) timothy lawrence and the way that he's so commonly misinterpreted. i want to see an in-depth exploration of all the less "funny cute anxious bean" or whatever aspects of his personality. i want to see the remnants of jack still lingering in his personality and the way this makes other people uncomfortable sometimes. i want to see the fact that he's a resilient mf who survived being a vault hunter. i want a genuine exploration of the relationship (platonic or romantic) that he could have with moxxi, where they both simultaneously explore the people that they are underneath the literal mask/corporate image of themselves that they present. i want to see the crimson raiders send him to atlas for a new hand because rhys fucking OWES them after they saved his ass, and i want to see him have a conversation with zer0, one of the people who killed jack. i also want to see him accidentally scare the shit out of rhys on multiple occasions. I WANT TO SEE IT ACKNOWLEDGED THAT HE'S TERRIBLE AT ACTING LIKE JACK ON PURPOSE, but when he's not intentionally doing it? jesus, it catches you off guard. sometimes the things he says as himself sound like something that would naturally come out of jack's mouth.

b) katagawa jr. can i ever decide entirely whether or not i wanted him to be reworked into a more competent, long-standing antagonist that would EVENTUALLY be killed by rhys personally in a grand display of him killing a foil of himself/ a representation of the worst person that he could have become in order to protect the new future he built for himself and all the people working for him- OR an eventually slowly redeemed character who survived the vault hunter's attack only to be disgraced by Maliwan and forced to gain a new perspective on the world much the same way Rhys was when he was initially ousted to being a janitor at Hyperion before going to Pandora? no. i cannot decide which of these paths i like better, but i really want either of them to have happened.

c) pure unadulterated rage about what they did to vaughn's character post tftbl. that's it. no elaboration needed.

d) the lack of content about maya meeting and knowing about other sirens and getting to connect with them over their experiences. i want to see more about her personal horror encountering angel in bl2- realizing that this can be a siren's fate sometimes if they're unlucky or defeated, weaponized and used for their powers as a tool. i want to see her meet lilith, and bond with her over the weight on their shoulders- being a vault hunter and a siren all at once and being looked up to as a legend, a myth, and a saviour all at once. also why the fuck did they kill her off in bl3 it's so fucking awful she could've been an awesome returning character and instead of just having her return to athenas they could have done a whole arc about her begrudgingly returning to her place of origin despite complicated feelings about it because they're in danger.

e) TANNNNNNNNNNNISSSSS. i love patricia tannis. number one tannis fan over here. i just want to see more of her interacting with everyone in general, actually. sirens and eridian history are her favourite, let me see her talking lilith and maya into silly experiments for her own personal gain. making friends, slowly, as she connects with the crimson raiders more closely than she thought she would, with other scientific minds. like hammerlock! they have different realms of study, but i like to think they'd get along. have her wander begrudgingly into moxxi's bar (unpleasantly loud and busy, but needs must) and ask her for a favour because she needs someone persuasive to convince the vault hunters to spare a bit of eridium for a machine she's got in the works. more her please

#borderlands #rambling #borderlands 3 #timothy lawrence #maya the siren #borderlands 2 #patricia tannis #katagawa jr #vaughn the money man #rhys tftbl #bunch of other mfs i wont list them all #tales from the borderlands #etc.

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iwritenarrativesandstuff · 7 months

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Legato, Meryl, and Devotion

When first reading, I was struck by the similarities in these two scenes, especially since they are shown so closely together – one at the end of Volume 13, the other at the beginning of 14.

[ID: Two screenshots from Trigun Maximum. The first is from Volume 13. Legato rushes over to a prone Knives, who is practically torn in half. He cries as he desperately tries to gather his insides up with his hands. The second is from Volume 14. Meryl holds the hand of a prone Vash, still holding his gun, and leans her head against it, tears in her eyes. She says "It's okay... you don't have to carry everything on your own. We're in this fight together. Please never forget that." Livio, Milly, and a man from the Earth Federation are in the background. End ID.]

The Independent, severely wounded, is seen by the person who steadfastly and strongly believes in them, devoted to their ideals and persons. The devoted party begins to shed tears over the state of the person they believe in so strongly, while holding them in their hands.

Of course, there are significant differences in the reactions of said Independents to their allies. Knives essentially tells Legato "how dare you cry over me", while Vash, a little later, thanks Meryl for her bravery and steadfastness.

There's also a difference in the way Legato and Meryl react to the scenes as well - Legato, understandably, is the picture of desperation, livid at Vash, grasping at Knives' literal insides as if to try and piece him back together all by himself. Meryl, while no less distressed, reaches out in what is a tender gesture to hold his head and then his hands, and tells him they're in it together. And to me, these differing reactions go a long way in showing us the differences between the kind of devotion they have.

Firstly, the commonalities. Both Legato and Meryl do a lot on a very self-directed basis - they help of their own volition, and do an awful lot of instrumental behind the scenes work to support Knives and Vash, respectively. They both strongly believe in the vision that the one they assist has for the world, and they act accordingly.

But Legato's entire sense of being is based on his connection with Knives (through no fault of his own, really), and his understanding of Knives is based entirely off of the image he has constructed - as the one person who shares his sense of vengeful justice, the one person who could accomplish what Legato had been helpless to do. Meryl has a life and personhood outside Vash, and her understanding of him is a lot more in-depth and personal than simply his ideals - she knows what it means to him to hold a gun, and the weight of taking and sparing a life, something Meryl understands also. Knives and Legato do not ever get the chance to connect in this way.

What all this really leads to is Legato having to make assumptions about who Knives is as a person - and because their meeting was such a pivotal moment for Legato, anything that happens afterwards that doesn't fit the idealized image he constructed there becomes "wrong". When Knives does things that Legato does not understand (typically regarding Vash), Legato tries to remove the source of the "problem", regardless of Knives' actual wishes. Despite Legato's desire to know Knives more personally, he is unable to actually achieve this, and Legato is left to make his own judgements about what is "best" for Knives, which becomes horrifically distorted by his own need for approval and his jealousy. As I've said before, Legato's devotion is ultimately self-serving, and rather than accept that Knives' brother is very important to him, Legato instead takes this as a challenge - since he sees devotion as the height of strength, it does not make sense to him that Vash should have Knives' regard so easily, when he works against him and Legato does so much. To Legato, devotion is loyalty is love is power. It's all the same, tangled up in itself.

What this all leads to is Legato feeling compelled to prove his devotion over and over, and Knives becoming more dismissive as Legato grows more desperate; this paradoxically shoves a wedge even further between them and any understanding of the other's person they could've come to. Legato wants to be instrumental to Knives, but this is really an individual need Legato has - not a true desire to form a collective. Legato wants to be of sole importance to Knives, and Knives, as we know, is the master of self-isolation, going so far as to merge with others of his own kind, but still rejecting mutual understanding.

Meryl, on the other hand, is forced to reconcile hard with the image of the mysterious traveler and pacifist she knew with the horrors of July and the pain the actual person, Vash, walks with every day. Her understanding of this allows for her to share in his ideology while seeing him as a person with flaws that are not things she can simply "fix" - the flaws and wavering are a part of him, and always have been. Meryl's proof of devotion isn't to uphold Vash's image as flawless, nor is it to make decisions in his stead - it is simply her standing at his side and offering support - something that Vash eventually will come to accept (at least a little). It's a shared front that Meryl, Vash, and others like Livio, Milly and Luida put forward to face things head first - they're in it together.

Devotion is simply steadfastness to Meryl, and neither Vash nor Meryl have imposed a formal hierarchy on this - Meryl doesn't serve Vash, she assists him, and calls him out when need be. Devotion to the world he wishes to see. Loyalty and love and respect for his person. But Meryl's strength and power doesn't come from her devotion or from recognition by Vash, it comes from her own propensity to face down her fears. It comes from her.

I think there's a lot more that could be said on this topic, but for now, I'll leave it off here. Maybe on a re-read, I'll have something a bit more substantial to say.

#storyrambles #trigun #trimax #trigunbookclub #this is. so bad actually. but i need to get it out there i guess #trigun meta #legato bluesummers #meryl stryfe

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m4gp13 · 10 months

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Okay time to talk about Al's hero complex and Ethan's martyr complex more in-depth because I love it so much <3

Al's hero complex is pretty obvious. He thinks he's Katniss Everdeen fighting a valiant battle against the Capitol because no one told him he's not the main character. He sees himself and those who agree with him as the Heroes (tm) while any who oppose them are the Villains of Unrivalled Evil because obviously his people wouldn't be fighting them if they were anything less. Al definitely has the overwhelming optimistic approach of a heroic paragon who believes it's impossible for him to fail because he's the good guy and good guys always win (Ladies, Gentlemen and Assorted Genders I would now like to direct your attention to "heroes never die, right?"). Which is how he ended up getting the remainder of his army massacred because he wouldn't accept defeat and pushed them on for a last-ditch attempt at victory. He's willing to sacrifice his people for the greater good, and in this way he and Percy are like the inverse of "Villains will sacrifice the world to save their loved ones, heroes will sacrifice their loved ones to save the world."

Al was the most powerful child of Hecate and as such was chosen to lead the rest of her children into battle. For such a young guy, this probably gave him a sense of grandeur, importance and self-respect which translates well into him seeing himself as the hero of his story. He had Luke and his propaganda to look up to, Mt Othrys to run things from and the Princess Andromeda to help things along, as well as a swarm of younger demigods who saw him as a hero. Now I'm not saying it all got to his head but that is pretty much what I'm saying. There's also Hecate, who is a pretty loving mother all things considered and was helping and supporting Alabaster and her children all the way through the war. With her encouragement exacerbating Al's self-righteousness instead of giving him a reality check, his hero complex could only grow until it made the Al we see in Son of Magic. He has lost everything and has never been in a worse place but he is still so sure of himself and his own moral superiority.

Ethan's martyr complex is a little more subtle but it's there if you're looking. My guy sacrificed his eye to his mother and was A-Okay with the arrangement. He was asked, from a very young age, to go through a lot of short-term physical pain with the result of a long-term disability in order to make a change in the world, which he agreed to. So he already doesn't think too highly of himself which is a great start! His mother uses him as a vehicle for her goals and he is aware of this and consenting to it. He has already relegated his own life as a tool for someone else. And then there's the arena battle in the labyrinth where he was very quick to offer Percy his own head on a platter. He was thinking very pragmatically at the time. He didn't seem to care much about "holy shit I'm going to die" and was instead just thinking "If he kills me then I die but if he spares me then we'll both die 2-1=1 so if we go with the first option then that will be one less death" HE DOESN'T GIVE A FUCK. His own life is something he can step back from, view in the context of the bigger picture and figure out how detrimental the loss of it would be to everything else going on around him. And then to further prove my point the last thing he ever does in the series is actually martyr himself to stop Kronos from ruining his mother's plans. Way to make it easier for me buddy.

As for how he ended up like this, his mother is fucking Nemesis. A hero complex and a martyr complex run antiparallel to each other with the key difference being that a hero will do whatever it takes to succeed while a martyr is all too happy to throw their life away for The Cause. In the eyes of a young child desperate to please his mother who is known for harshly punishing the prideful and arrogant of the world, being a hero who desires personal success and glory would be far too egotistical, and in order to be a hero his mother would approve of, he must be entirely selfless about it. She would despise anything else.

#pjo #percy jackson #ethan nakamura #alabaster c torrington #alabaster torrington #the titan army #Ethan be like “self-esteem? I HARDLY KNOW EM!”#Q

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kindly-whisper-norbury · 2 years

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I love AO3. I really, truly do. But at the same time, it reminds me that fanfic had a very different feel back in the day… in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

We didn't so much promote our stories as we traded them like literary contraband, handing them out in the back alleys of newsboards and forums and LiveJournal to be gobbled up by the desperate, starving masses. Sometimes you wouldn't post them, you would simply mention that you had written them; and when someone asked to see your story you would send them an email with the creation copy-pasted within. Those of us who had our own Geocities or Angelfire websites would make elaborate pages for each story, setting the background and font color to match what we felt the fic evoked, and of course adding pictures that we had slapped together in Photoshop for flavor.

When FFnet came along, we eagerly thrust our creations into its algorithm, like birds shoving their babies out of the nest; then we held our breath and waited to see if anyone cared enough to make a comment before our stories slipped into the depths of the pit, never to be seen or read again. And the tingle we felt in our chests when someone did finally comment left us on a high for hours or even days.

There were annual fanfiction awards for some fandoms, and if you won any category at all you would wear that award proudly... a badge of honor to be displayed in your forum signature or FFnet profile. But really, the ultimate honor was when someone did fan art of your stories and posted it on DeviantArt or LJ, and you would hold on to that picture like a child clinging to a favorite teddy bear.

More often than not, the people you knew in real life weren't aware of what you did with your spare time, and you would have died of embarrassment if they ever found out. In general, you stayed in your lane, keeping other fandoms out of your business, except for the occasional crossover (which came with the added complication of having to choose which fandom to post them under on FFnet). We didn't have beta readers... hell, sometimes we didn't edit at all. Grammar and spelling mattered less than your passion for the subject, and research was conducted somewhat haphazardly, to the point where any anachronisms were shrugged off. Still, OOC characters were raked thoroughly across the coals; questioned and poked until the author explained why they had written them that way.

The tropes and cliches that people now cringe at were created then, embraced wholeheartedly. Mary Sues and self-inserts and songfics were everywhere… and we loved it. Authors would interrupt their own stories in the middle to add notes, sometimes presented as the characters themselves giving you information about what was going on in the story or what led the author to add this or that small detail.

We were afraid of being copyright claimed, we were afraid of being ridiculed, we were afraid of being sued by Anne Rice (even if we didn't write anything that took place in her universe). We felt rebellious, accomplished, and maybe a little guilty about what we wrote; but we wrote it because we loved it, and that was enough.

As I said, I really do love AO3… but there was just such a culture surrounding fanfic back then… a kinship and a sisterhood. I wish that those who have never gotten to experience it could have the chance to go back for a while, feel the way it felt… same as I wish my own kids could have experienced the freedom of summer vacation back when summer vacation meant freedom.

The world is just too fast now, the internet too loud; you have to run to catch up, scream to be heard... when sometimes all you want to do is whisper, "Hey… I wrote something… does anyone want to take a look?" and to have someone whisper back, "Yes! Send it to me and I'll print it out to read in bed tonight!"

#writing #writers #fanfiction #writers on tumblr #writeblr #ao3 #fanfic #the 1990s

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nymphacae · 2 months

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An Update

It's been a minute. I'll keep this as brief as I possibly can because this is really hard to talk about, but I'll still put this under 'read more' so you're not bombarded with personal shit on the dash.

The truth is, I lost my passion for art a while ago, and I've been struggling to get it back. It's hard when I'm so viciously repulsed by my own art that I get physically ill.

I have not been doing well, for multiple reasons I won't discuss in depth, I just never wanted to be open about it because the internet isn't exactly a great place to cast your woes. But after all this radio silence and worrying about people waiting on me, I'm stuck between wanting to be private and wanting to talk about what's been going on. When the thing is I can't talk about what's going on, really. It's all just too much.

My sense of reality, for one, has been VERY wobbly and I've been struggling with hallucinations, nightmares, and a severe paranoia that makes it very hard to interact with people. I have already made multiple attempts to take my life, one of which was nearly successful and debilitating. I'll spare the grittier details, but even this feels like a grossly-underwhelming overview of everything...I wish I could put this into some pretty-looking comic, or just present this in a more aesthetically-pleasing manner that isn't an ugly wall of text. But I can't, and this is all I have.

Truthfully, I'm scared to death to be this honest. This is already excruciating to type out. This isn't to summon a pity party, it's why I've held off talking about anything for so long - it's more just an explanation on the severity of the situation, and why things have been so stagnant.

I want to create art again, I think, but I'm trapped. I have ideas, but every time I so much as look at my art or I lift up a pencil, I end up getting sick. Being online at all results in panic attacks. I wish it wasn't this way, more than anything, but I've started to accept that this is probably just what I deserve. It's hard to explain.

I don't know...I don't have solutions or promises other than I'm still alive, somehow, and I'm probably working through it. I'm just sorry about the lack of development in anything, I wanted to do so much and it kills me that I haven't.

Blegh, this ended up being long. I'll wrap it up here, no point in saying much more since this is so gloomy. But, to my mutuals that I've seemed distant with because of all this: it is absolutely not your fault and I assure you that I've missed you, I've just been awful at maintaining contact during this time. You're all so amazing and talented and deserve all the support in the world. I hope you know that.

#i personally dont see any point rb'ing this since its just a stranger venting on the internet #ty to those who have been patient thus far...seeing your tags and reblogs sometimes....it really does make my day #i never want to gloss over the love and support ive received during this time

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