#white collar fan fic

[bluebellsinburbank]

✊🏽 Protecting

Even now, after everything, Peter didn't use words so much. Peter was subtle. Too subtle sometimes even for Neal to notice. But he did, because Peter might not talk about the way he felt, but he showed it.

It was in the way Peter acted - not around Neal exactly, but around the people around Neal. A shift from easy to alert, from acting like it was just the two of them, to acting as if it were the two of them against the whole world.

The first times Peter had done it, Neal didn't pay much attention. He was far too preoccupied. Neal remembered it now though; the way Peter had immediately stepped in front of Neal, reached his arm out, curled his fingers around Neal's wrist. Never in ways that restrained him or excluded him, rather ways that warmed him even if he didn't know why at the time.

Peter had made himself Neal's shield.

Wherever they went, whether proving he wasn't dead or - eventually - back on cases with the team, Peter put himself between Neal and the world. Between Neal and Diana's incandescent grief-stricken fury, Jones's quieter but no less intense grief.

Peter never stopped them from coming closer - not the few Neal considered family - but he made it clear who's side he was on. He let them yell and cry and even send Neal away until they were ready to acknowledge what he'd done, but he'd never once let Neal think that he was alone.

In retrospect, it was so painfully obvious; a truth Neal should never have forgotten.

Peter stood in front of him, shoulders tense and gun drawn; the only thing between Neal and a criminal who really didn't appreciate Neal waltzing in and announcing all the reasons his supposed lost masterpiece was really an awful forgery.

The criminal wasn't even all that dangerous, just a little skittish and quick on the draw. Their team would be there in moments. But Peter hadn't even hesitated, throwing Neal behind him, standing tall and shielding Neal from view.

And Neal understood. He stayed exactly where Peter had put him, one hand curled into the back of Peter's jacket.

It didn't matter that Jones and Diana were already there, already securing the criminal and reading him his rights. Peter needed to do this. And Neal needed it too.

Peter had been protecting him all this time. Protecting him from the worst of the fallout from his betrayal of them all, protecting him from random criminals, protecting him from the crushing weight of his own guilt ridden loneliness.

Perhaps part of it was Peter making up for the one time he couldn't protect Neal - the time Peter still couldn't forgive himself for, lie though it was. But the truth of it was this was who Peter was. Peter was a father; a protector through and through. And, from the minute he had decided Neal was worthy of his love, that had become his self-appointed place. Standing between Neal and any-and-everything that might hurt him.

Because Peter loved Neal like he was his own, and he showed it every day by protecting him.

He'd done it before Neal had faked his death and he'd undoubtedly still be doing it when Neal was old and grey and hiding from other residents in the care home because they knew Neal had stolen their pudding.

And so, Neal stayed put, waiting until Peter had decided it was safe. Then, he pulled Peter into a hug, smiling into his shoulder. "Thank you."

For protecting me, for loving me.

Peter's held him tight, maybe not knowing exactly what Neal was thanking him for but inherently understanding just the same. "Always."

#thank you for the ask! #I think I may have gotten a little carried away #Ficlet not drabble #white collar fan fic

[emenerd]

Why is everyone neal caffrey? Why? why did this catch on? like the fuck i do not get it

like i know it started as a fanfic trope cause the guy who plays neal caffrey was for some reason a popular dick grayson fancast at one point and that turned into people writing fics where dick was undercover and his undercover id was caffrey, and i think that took off when spyral was happening, but it has breached containment. I’ve seen tim is caffrey, jason is caffrey, damian is caffrey (????), (havent seen the tag with bruce, duke, cass, or steph or so on, but i honestly wouldn’t be surprised at this point). And now its jumped fandoms! I just saw a tag for percy jackson as caffrey? Like why? I do not understand? Why did this catch on? I know ive seen it for other random characters in other fandoms but im blanking on which ones (peter parker was one i think) at least the leverage/white collar crossovers are add multiple points of contact and just have the characters run into each other. like what you like and all, but why?

#rant #i am just tired of this #filling up space in the tags #i think this may be #Pet Peeves #i could just start filtering white collar as i grow more and more uncomfortable with the show as i learn more about it tbh #ive never watched the show so i cant speak to it #but the way people write neal and peter interacting makes me uncomfortable with unacknowledged power dynamics and general assholishness from #the person with more power #i know fandom can warp things pretty easily #im a dc fan a titans (new teen and fab five line ups mostly) fan and a dick grayson fan on tumblr ive seen weirdass fannon #but it seems to be prevalent in a lot of wc crossover fic ive read and it is uncomfy for me #also i just find the prevalence of this fic trope weird

[the-mumbo]

The failure of man is that there are only two Magic Mike/White Collar fan fics

#fan fic stuff #magic mike #white collar #crossover

[itsfirecat]

Summary:

Jason groaned. The urge to scream was strong and growing stronger by the minute.

“What’s it going to take to get you to drop that ridiculous notion? I don’t have a crush on Red Hood.” He glanced up at the rest of the team, before burying his face in the mattress and mumbling “I can barely stand the guy on a good day, he’s an asshole”.

The silence that followed from both Diana and Jones was possibly louder than any verbal reaction could have been. Jason could feel the weight of their stares on his back. Shit. He hadn’t meant for them to be able to hear him. The mattress was supposed to have swallowed up any sound.

-----------------

SO I know I haven't really shared any of my ff here before, but I wanted to share my first fill for YOTP!

Hopefully I remember that this is a place I can share fics too XD.

#YOTP #year of the otp #year of the otp 2023 #DC #white collar #White Collar x DC #White Collar DC crossover #Jason Todd #Roy Harper #Roy Harper/Jason Todd #Shenanigans #Identity Shenanigans #fan fic writing #Crossover #dc comics #Fake Dating #ao3fic #ao3 author

[heartofwritiing]

We could make such a pretty picture

Paring: musicianbur x photographer!reader

Summary: you are lovejoy’s tour photographer and wilbur likes to tease you.

authors note: this is so rushed and unedited mostly just my stream of consciousness that popped into my head while i finish up the zombur fic! its almost done!!

warnings: fluff, short, flirting, a little suggestive maybe, i use a cringey (?) line idk take it as you will lmao, unedited!

“Make sure you get my good side darling.”

Before every show backstage, Wilbur would always tell you to quote: “get my good side” whatever that meant. It was impossible to get his bad side. Every angle Wilbur Soot always looked ethereal, and that had nothing to do with your photography skills.

You would gaze up at him from the pits, readily pointing your camera to capture any shot of him playing his heart out to the screaming fans behind you. Rightfully so, you couldn’t deny how good he looked up on that stage.

Skin glistened with sweat, hair sticking to his forehead, and the light eyeliner slightly smudged in the corners of his eyes. His lips pulled up in a smirk as he flipped his hair in a certain way when a beat dropped. It was undeniable now, that he was doing this on purpose. He was goddamn attractive and he knew it.

After the show you would always sit in one of the green room chairs, keeping to yourself and letting the excitement of the after-show buzz from the band fill the room. You were scrolling through the photos, admiring your work on a picture of Ash with the lightning just right when you felt a presence creep up behind you.

“That ones quiet good,” Wilbur’s voice made you jump out of your skin, and he laughed at your startled state.

“Thanks,” you replied, returning to scrolling through your pictures but Wilbur stayed right by your shoulder. Sounds of his bandmates laughter filled the space, he couldn’t care to jump into their conversation. Too entranced by your photography. Wilbur had never truly seen your work before. Of course there was pictures the band used for the instagram account, but those were taken by their previous photographer.

You were new, and Wilbur had briefly seen your work before. Only two shows into the tour, you didn’t have the time to sit with the lead singer and exhibit your entire portfolio to hkm. But seeing how you captured his presence on stage so well, with the white strobe light hitting him at just the right angle, caused his interest to be peaked even further. It made him want to get to know you better.

“you know, we make such a pretty picture,” you can hear the deviousness in his voice and the underlying meaning behind his own lyrics he was using towards you. It warms your cheeks and you avoid his eyes that are burning into the side of your face.

You cleared your throat and repositioned yourself in your seat. “whatever you say, its all you up there on that stage,”

The next night, standing once more in the pits, camera ready as the first chords of 'Portrait of a Blank Slate' blasted through the venue speakers, and screams exploded around you. As the color lights switch from dark blue to deep red, Wilbur saunters to the microphone and begins singing the first lyrics.

You lift your camera up to your face and look through the viewfinder to be met with an up-close Wilbur, who is pressing his lips right into the microphone. A smirk pulled the corner of his mouth when he peeked open his eye to catch you pointing your camera at him. Cheeky bastard.

As he sang the next few lyrics, his hands lift up to the top part of his shirt where it was unbuttoned. Running his index finger from from his collar down to his chest, he sang; ‘shes an artist, paints across my chest,’ while sending you a quick wink.

Your mouth parted in utter shock and felt your heart beating in your ears. How does this man do this to you? You hadn’t even known him that long, but he was making you feel dizzy with the slightest little actions. You quickly shook away any thoughts popping into your mind and took a couple more photos of him. The last one was of him leaning back while strumming the next chords, then you moved on to capture more of the other band members. You just had to force yourself away from him before you got carried away.

That same night later on the tour bus, you were going through your photos again. One in particular caught your eye, it was of Wilbur with the red lights behind him casting him in a dark glow, and his guitar lifted into the air while he threw his head back. Infamous rockstar pose, you decide to call it. You chose a couple more to post to your professional instagram account, tagging the band members each in their respective photos.

About an hour later a notification came up on your phone that a mutual had commented on your photo. You checked it and immediately felt butterflies fluttering in your stomach at the words on your screen.

@/WilburSoot: Told you we make such a pretty picture ;)

taglist: @trashcanduck @merakiwi @addxms @ax-y10 @scenefaez @highstonedcat

if you want to be added or removed from the taglist let me know!

#fanfiction #wilbur soot x reader #musicianbur #musicianbur x reader #wilbur soot x fem!reader #cc!wilbur soot x reader #cc!wilbur soot x fem!reader #wilbur soot fanfic #ahh this is cringy ik ik 🫣 #might delete later

[sanrio-gyal]

The cultural significance of

Akatsuki amvs to “calling all the monsters” or “pokerface”

the Kakuhida and Sasodei “anything you can do” I can do better animatics.

“Akatsuki funny pictures” with the songs hamster dance, witch doctor, and boom boom boom boom.

The yaoi, seme, uke, lemon discourse. The “ukes” randomly ending up in skirts and dresses

The various mpreg Akatsuki fanfics. The Akatsuki fan children.

Kisaita, Sasodei, Kakuhida and tobizet amvs with the “warning yaoi. Don’t like don’t watch.” Or “warning boy x boy. Please no flames”

The Akatsuki cat fics.

Them literally being the tumblr sexy men.

The random “glomps” and Japanese words throughout fanfics.

The skinny black jeans and converse fits in every fanfic.

The Akatsuki high school fics where they were all bad boys and wore hoodies with the cloud on it.

The rock band aus.

The random ocs that somehow always got with Itachi.

The Akatsuki cosplay videos on yt and the awkward cosplays posted on deviantart.

The Akatsuki forums.

The Akatsuki members having to share one bed while traveling.

The end notes where the author would argue with the Akatsuki members.

Naruto joining the Akatsuki. The various fanfics and artwork that had an obsession with collars.

The time where people were confused about Deidara and Konan’s gender, sasori was drawn with white hair, and people thought Tobi was a teenager.

The ships sasori x zetsu, konan x Hidan, Madara x Deidara, Tobi x Zetsu, Itachi x Deidara.

The fangirls and ocs harassing the members and konan being a fujoshi.

The Akatsuki dress up flash games.

Sigh….what a time to be alive

#the 2000s fandom was so fun #early internet culture #akatsuki #deidara #sasori #konan #hidan #kisame #kakuzu #sasodei #kisaita #Kakuhida

[shopcat]

otay here is every single outfit item steve harrington wears in all four seasons of stranger things including specific brands

8 months combined work an autism diagnosis and 16 hours straight of finishing touches and formatting this post let's go babycakes

billy, edd*ssy, rpf fans dni, pr0ship/fic dni

– NOTES 📌 ★ human error cannot be overcame by one autism boy's realness but i tried my best and everything listed is either 100% accurate and confirmed or is as best as i can do. if it's not listed i just don't know! ★ so while i would say i tried VERY hard for a long time, there is a disclaimer that i just cannot know bc i'm not a professional lol </3 ★ therefore: this is not in any way "complete" or fully sourced, mostly due to the nature of vintage clothing being hard to source even if it's in your hands and i just had pictures, but that's okay because this is mainly a visual reference resource i made for art and not pedantism 😭 ★ feel free to message me if you have any (100% sourced please...) corrections or additional finds!! ★ EVERY item is vintage and dated give or take, '80 - '95 with a few things sitting even older. if you use this post to try and source any of the items for personal/cosplay use this is important to remember for screen accuracy's sake (but not entirely necessary either lol. for example you could definitely just cop any old similar cut of his plain sweaters, etc. but things like the leather jacket or vest would be more accurate as genuine vintage! whereas i recommend getting new shoes just for them being in good condition if anything... go with ur gut!!) ★ heavy on formatting for clarity and organisation, if you need a plain text version contact me! ★ in appearance order: 23 complete outfits, minus what he wore to barb's funeral because...? well duh ★ YES I'M CRAZY!!!!!

– WATCH ⌚

he wears a watch on his left wrist with every single outfit (including in the upside down)

season 1 ➜ season 2: Russian Soviet military style wristband, 16-18mm chestnut brown leather with light stitching, sterling silver detailing and white clock-face season 3 ➜ season 4: a Hamilton CLD (most likely) dress watch, 16-18mm walnut brown leather wristband, gold detailing and white clock-face

1. BLUE LONG-SLEEVED BLUE STRIPED POLO [season 1, episode 1] ★ light blue H R Robinson's long-sleeved polo with blue stripes, tucked ★ khaki trousers ★ navy canvas and brown leather Tommy Hilfiger belt with brass buckle ★ black socks ★ mahogany brown leather loafers with suede laces ★ yellow canvas duffle bag with white straps

2. GREEN SWEATSHIRT [season 1, episode 2] ★ green raglan mixed fabric sweatshirt ★ Levi's dark wash jeans ★ no belt ★ black Adidas Original Superstar's

3. YELLOW POLO [season 1, episode 3] ★ yellow and grey striped Le Tigre polo ★ Levi's grey jeans ★ no belt ★ black Harrington jacket with silver detailing ☆ slash pockets with silver buttons ★ black Nike Classic Cortez's

4. BLUE LONG-SLEEVED MAROON STRIPED POLO [season 1, episode 4] ★ light blue H R Robinson's long-sleeved polo with maroon rugby stripes ★ Levi's black jeans ★ no belt ★ red Nike Bruin's

5. GREEN LONG-SLEEVED POLO [season 1, episode 5] ★ forest green long-sleeved polo with dark green rugby stripes ★ Levi's 501 light wash jeans ★ black Harrington jacket with silver detailing ☆ slash pockets with silver buttons ★ red Nike Bruin's

6. GREEN SWEATSHIRT 2.0 [season 1, episodes 6 ➜ 8] ★ green raglan mixed fabric sweatshirt ★ Levi's 501 light wash jeans ★ black Harrington jacket with silver detailing ☆ slash pockets with silver buttons ★ red Nike Bruin's ★ Louisville Slugger driven with industrial nails

7. CHRISTMAS SWEATER [season 1, episode 8] ★ green Eddie Bauer Christmas sweater ★ maroon polo collar only ★ khaki trousers

8. MAROON LONG-SLEEVED POLO [season 2, episode 1] ★ maroon Brook's Brothers long-sleeved polo with blue rugby stripes ★ Levi's 501 light wash jeans ★ Ray-Ban 1983 Wayfarer sunglasses ★ blue Harrington jacket ★ original design Nike Classic Cortez's

9. PUFFER VEST AND POLO [season 2, episode 2] ★ dark blue long-sleeved rugby striped polo ★ Levi's 501 light wash jeans ★ navy puffer vest with matte plastic shank buttons

10. RISKY BUSINESS HALLOWEEN COSTUME [season 2, episode 2] ★ black tweed suit jacket ★ black fitted cotton tee-shirt ★ Levi's 501 light wash jeans ★ Ray-Ban 1983 Wayfarer sunglasses ★ original design Nike Classic Cortez's

11. GYM UNIFORM [season 2, episodes 3 ➜ 4] ★ cotton tee-shirt, printed with "Hawkin's Phys Ed" green gym shorts with triangular seam cutouts ★ green and orange hem-striped tube socks ★ solid blue Nike Classic Cortez's

12. MEMBER'S ONLY JACKET [season 2, episodes 5 ➜ 6, 8 ➜ 9] ★ navy blue long sleeved cotton tee-shirt with white varsity sleeve stripes, tucked [1] ★ Levi's 501 light wash jeans ★ silver-grey Member's Only racer jacket [2] ★ brown leather belt with rounded end brass buckle ★ Ray-Ban 1983 Wayfarer sunglasses tucked in jacket breast pocket when not in use ★ grey backpack with black straps ★ original design Nike Classic Cortez's ★ Louisville Slugger driven with industrial nails ★ yellow rubber dishwashing gloves ★ a solid yellow, striped rainbow and red and white comic book speech bubble band-aid post-fight ★ grey gardening gloves in tunnels ★ yellow swim goggles in tunnels ★ red paisley bandana in tunnels

1: definitely was a practical, keeping-warm choice and i'm sure the intention was to have the ensemble pass as a plain, short sleeved tee but a fun little thing anyway:

2: steve wears a technically-modern version of the classic Member's Only but the differences are entirely cosmetic and superficial, like zipper lengths and metal colouring. the fit is the same! notably, he wears the silver-grey model and not the standard grey.

13. RED SWEATER [season two, episode 9] ★ red woollen, knit crewneck sweater

14. SCOOPS AHOY UNIFORM [season 3, episodes 1 ➜ 8] ★ royal blue uniform shirt with sailor's flap collar and attached red neckerchief ☆ white double striped hemming ☆ semi-cropped, box cut with a slightly fitted waistline inset for shape ☆ red and white striped tee-style dickey piece [3] ☆ embroidery patch of an ice cream cone on the right sleeve ★ royal blue uniform shorts ☆ white double striped hemming ☆ white pocket detailing and innards ★ red Scoops Ahoy nametag ★ dixie cup style costume sailor's hat ★ white nylon belt with a chrome box buckle, detachable red tool pocket ★ white apron ★ white tube socks ★ silver Style Auto Carrera design jacket [4] ★ navy blue Adidas Gazelle's with aftermarket blue laces [5] ★ red and white striped undershirt ★ blood splattering on collar post-fight

3: assumedly the red striped dickey piece and undershirt are one in the same. behind the scenes footage shows both, and occasionally joe seems to not be wearing the undershirt... ? 😭 usually sailor style shirts and costumes use a dickey piece for convenience as it ties in more uniformly than just a tee-shirt sitting underneath it's like schrodinger's striped shirt here

4: the same jacket he wears in season 4! notably, the tag is left blank, most likely because it isn't a statement piece unlike in season 4. note the ring pull collar, black pocket button detailing and the visible black zipper that points towards the Carrera design:

5: missing the Gazelle gold lettering, either faded due to them being vintage or purposefully removed for screen

15. COCA-COLA COMMERCIAL [season 3, set post-episode 2, pre-episode 3] ★ white windbreaker with red elastic cuffs and accent detailing ★ white cotton fitted tee-shirt, tucked ★ Levi's 501 light wash jeans ★ brown leather belt with rounded end brass buckle ★ black Nike Bruin's

16. MARTY MCFLY VEST [season 3, episode 8] ★ dark wash and red denim two-tone Guess Jeans sleeveless vest ★ fitted white cotton tee-shirt with blue and yellow varsity striped sleeves, tucked ★ Levi's 501 dark wash jeans ★ brown leather belt with rounded end brass buckle ★ black Nike Bruin's

17. WHITE HENLEY [season 4, episode 1] ★ white long sleeved cotton henley ☆ silver pop buttons ☆ two matching decorative zips on the sleeves ☆ fitted hem ★ Levi's 501 light wash jeans ★ brown leather belt with rounded end brass buckle ★ Family Video name tag [6] ★ green Family Video vest

6: to me the sticker he put on it looks like a simple gold star, but it could also be the "Be Kind, Rewind" slogan with a smiley face design, or some sort of assistant manager/ask me anything-type sticker!

18. PURPLE POLO [season 4, episode 2] ★ purple criquet Arthur Stripe polo, tucked ★ Levi's 501 dark wash jeans ★ brown leather belt with rounded end brass buckle ★ Family Video name tag ★ green Family Video vest ★ silver Style Auto Carrera design jacket ★ red Nike Bruin's

19. STYLE AUTO JACKET AND POLO [season 4, episodes 3 ➜ 4] ★ navy polo with a white horizontal band stripe and white sleeve hemming, tucked ☆ fitted, or potentially a size too small ☆ yellow shadow striping ★ white cotton tee-shirt ★ Levi's 501 light wash jeans ★ brown leather belt with rounded end brass buckle ★ silver Style Auto Carrera design jacket [7] ★ red Nike Bruin's

7: the original Style Auto patch has been removed for licensing/circulation issues, or, the jacket is just potentially not the actual name brand version and instead an adopted design therefore brandless. or it fell off i don't know. the plastic insert on his breast (haha) now reads a custom generic 80's label:

20. YELLOW SWEATER [season 4, episode 5] ★ yellow crewneck raglan cotton sweater ☆ fitted cuffs and hem ★ grey cotton chinos [8] ☆ elastic waistband with drawstring ☆ printed blue patterned cuff hem ★ white socks ★ red Nike Bruin's

8: for some reason the Quiksilver x Stranger Thing's "The Steve" pants are actually an almost… 95%? exact recreation of the pants he wears in-show. and like, despite being listed as a collab with the wardrobe dep this is the first time i've seen any sort of replica clothing for something like a random character's pants but it's cool! there may be a little variation in the exact patterning but even to my super perfectionist eye they do seem identical/highly similar :). i belieeeeve what would have happened is the wardrobe made the pants, and Quiksilver received the design to then streamline for their own version. the Quiksilver version has printed pocket linings including the welt of the back pocket, whilst the on screen version are unprinted except for the hem.

21. EDDIE'S BATTLE JACKET [season 4, episodes 7 ➜ 8] ★ Levi's light wash trucker blanket-lined jacket ☆ sleeveless, distressed ☆ hand stitched Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Motörhead and Leviathan Cross patches ☆ hand stitched Dio, The Last in Line's album cover tee-shirt on back panel ☆ Judas Priest, W.A.S.P., Accept and Mercyful Fate pins personally i would omit wasp/mötorhead in recreations/art/etc but that's just me... ★ grey cotton chinos ☆ elastic waistband with drawstring ☆ printed blue patterned cuff hem ★ barefoot (lol) ★ torn cotton cloth wrap field bandage

22. WAR ZONE OUTFIT [season 4, episodes 8 ➜ 9] ★ type A-2 brown leather flight jacket ☆ custom patches ☆ second-hand in-show ★ camo print cotton tee-shirt ★ long cargo pants ★ M-1955 marine's flak jacket ★ vintage Vietnam jungle boots ★ wooden axe, Molotov cocktails

23. BLUE HENLEY [season 4, episode 9] ★ blue cotton henley ★ white cotton tee-shirt ★ Levi's 501 jeans ★ brown leather belt with rounded end brass buckle ★ blue Nike All Court's

that's all folks!!!

for any shoes or jeans that are off screen/unseen, i would make a safe bet for them being whatever he seems to be wearing the most that season. like he wears the cortez's for the entirety of season 2 even at the halloween party (he is insane) except for in gym so it'd be safe to assume every other shoe would be that one, for example.

★ bonus eddie section: Shot brand black leather jacket with DIY silver chain on the broken sleeve zipper, screenprinted Hellfire Club baseball pattern tee-shirt with the Daydream fontface, texturised. he wears a Casio F-91W digital watch (which he wears... upside down...) and, of course, white Reebok EX-O Fit Hi sneakers

please don't leave inappropriate, weird or sexual comments on this post! they're just jeans 😭

#🍦 #sts #okay i'm done making these types of posts forever

[bettyfrommars]

Ring of Fire

a biker Steve au

Part 1 || I went down, and the flames went higher

18+ONLY || afab!Reader, eventual smut, alcohol consumption, allusions to dirty deeds, smoking, allusions to sex with someone other than reader (not cheating), allusions to violence/fighting, bloody knuckles, eventual breaking & entering, biker!Eddie, biker!Hopper, reader and Steve are in their early 30's. Please read warning for each part.

masterlist playlist

Summary || You haven't set eyes on Steve Harrington since the 8th grade, but you have no problem recognizing him almost 20 years later when he steps back into your life. A lot has changed in Hawkeye, the town you grew up in, but a lot has stayed the same.

word count: 5k

A/N || This is my version of Hawkins, a town called Hawkeye, and it is a desert town surrounded by tumbleweeds, agriculture, and junkyards. Even though Steve is a biker and a mechanic, I try to maintain his "essence". I plan for this to be a shorter series, like 3 or 4 parts, but those are always famous last words from this lyin', cheatin' mouth. This is a niche fic, and for the ten people who will appreciate it, I love you.

The bell on the door dinged to let you know you had a customer, but you didn’t look up right away, you were too busy trying to figure out why your till was a few bucks short for the day.  Donna would not be happy.  Heavy foot falls made it to the counter and then the person in question cleared his throat.

“Ten on pump 2 and a pack of reds, please,” the voice was deep and scratchy, like he was recovering from a sore throat.

You closed the cash register and glanced up for the first time.

The sight made you inhale a sharp breath and hold it.  The man had on a thick motorcycle jacket zipped up halfway over a white tee, atop blue jeans that were a dark denim wash, faded over time, with a tattered hole in one knee.  There were tattoos scattered over his flesh, peeking from his collar, and down his hands.  Letters on his knuckles spelled something that you couldn't quite make out, and he had a luscious mop of maple syrup hair on his head that looked like it had once been gelled into place but lost the fight hours ago.  He raked a big hand through it slowly, pausing halfway through the movement, and tucked his chin to pin you with an anticipatory stare. 

The last person you every expected to see again was Steve Harrington.

He pushed his wayfarer sunglasses up to reveal hazel eyes that were just as sad as they were electric. Swiping the tip of his tongue over his top lip, he repeated himself.  “Pump 2?”

You gave a flustered wave of your hand.  “Yes, of course,” turning to pull a soft pack from the wall behind you.  “Matches?”

He shook his head, and then, “just a sec,” before sauntering over to the aisle on the other side of the potato chips.  

Tossing a back of Magnum condoms on the counter next to his smokes, he dug his wallet out of his back pocket and said a polite, “those too, please.” The wallet was as worn as his jeans and connected by a chain to one of his belt loops.  

The cash register made loud click-clack noises as you punched in the numbers and gave him the total.  You weren’t expecting to see the wad of bills that fanned, but then he handed you what you needed.

“You new here?” He asked as you passed him his change, rolling a piece of bright green gum from the inside of his cheek to start chewing it again.

You stumbled over the question.  “New to this store or Hawkeye?”

A smirk lifted up one side of his mouth.  “Both, I guess?”

He was well aware that you were new to the corner gas n’ sip because he’d been a regular customer for years, and he definitely would have remembered you. 

Definitely.

Yet, something about you felt very familiar. 

“I grew up here,” your delivery was dry.  

Steve tilted his head back to assess you down the bridge of his nose and frowned like he didn’t believe you.  You noticed that his hands were rough and stained with evidence that he did some vocation of hard labor for a living.   

You decided to humor him with a clue.  “I left Hawkeye right before my freshman year.  My hair was different back then, and my mom drove a big, white Buick LeSabre—-”

With an unblinking stare, he blurted your name, repeating it a few times in disbelief as the memory seized him. 

There you were, the one who’d haunted his middle school dreams.  The first notable crush he ever had, standing a few feet in front of him 

“Shitttt,” he continued, scooping his purchases up in one hand, huffing out a breath.  He searched your face, and you watched the light in his eyes intensify. “You were a year older than me, right?  I remember you were always so bossy on the playground.”

You sealed your lips over a chuckle.  “Well, someone had to keep you and Eddie from dismantling the playground equipment to sell to the salvage yard.”

Steve chomped down on his lip in a smile, his hip finding the edge of the counter, trying to get closer to you.  “Copper,” he corrected with a one-eyed squint.  “We wanted to dismantle the lampposts.  Copper wiring could earn a pretty penny back then.”

“You’re still good with your hands I see,” gesturing to his calloused digits, the moons of his cuticles stained from motor oil, knuckles slashed with white scarring.

He flexed his right hand into a fist and then opened it again, deliberate and slow, watching you as he did so.  “I do alright.”

He was leaning over the counter at that point, elbow resting next to the cash register,  hip jutting out behind him, holding his mouth as if he were about to say something—-

“...and then, do you know what Ned said to me? Nothing, that’s what. Three days and I barely get two words out of him.  Before you go, there are two crates that need to be put away in the back—-”

56 year old Donna, your boss, approached the front desk from the back room, buzzing with conversation.  She stopped short when she saw Steve there, and tucked some silver, permed hair behind her ear.  

“Oh, hey Steven,” she greeted.  

“Donna,” he gave a twitch of a smile, standing to full height again, slipping his wallet into his back pocket.  “I was just catching up with an old friend.”

Donna had on bright pink lipstick and heart-shaped, baby blue clip-on earrings.  “You know Steve?”

“You could say that,” you stared at him as you said it.  “I’ve tried to put it behind me.“

Steve ran his tongue over the ridge of his teeth at that, and you could see that the left incisor was gold.  

Donna crowded in behind you, trying to get to the styrofoam container with her food inside that was on a stool just below the rack of caffeine pills.  It was leftover burger and fries from the diner across the street and the smell had been making your mouth water.  

“How’s Eddie?” Donna asked, and it was obvious she was talking to Steve. “Haven’t seen him drop by here in a while.”

Steve pulled his sunglasses out of his nest of hair and slid them back down to his nose before giving you one final look.  You backed up against the cigarette display to watch him go.

“He’s been busy,” Steve gnawed his gum, addressing your boss.  “Business at the garage has picked up since the only other mechanic in town split.  I work there part time when I’m not—” he swallowed back whatever he was initially about to say.  “---when I’m not doing other things.”

Donna shoved the corner of her sesame seed bun burger in her mouth, chewed it and kept talking.  “I saw Robin yesterday.  Her and Ratchet back together?”

In the past few days of your employment, you were learning that Donna was a pillar of gossip in the community, and she wasn’t afraid to ask the tough questions.  

Steve scratched the stubble on his chin, possibly contemplating how much he should share.  “I think they have an understanding,” he chimed diplomatically, stealing another glance in your direction. 

“Say hi to Wayne for me,” Donna added as Steve pushed his way out the mostly glass door.  He waved over his shoulder in response, nodding that he would.  

You shimmied further along behind the counter, pretending to organize the pens, so that you could follow where Steve was going, see what he was driving.  

To your surprise, he pumped gas into a hulking, coal black motorcycle with ape-hanger handlebars and blue ghost flames on the tank.  You were staring with your mouth slightly agape when Donna’s voice broke your concentration.

“Don’t even think about it,” she said, cheek of food again.  “That boy is adorable, but he’s bad news.”

“Why?” The question was out of your mouth before you were cognitively aware of it.   

She thumbed ketchup from the corner of her mouth.  “You ever heard of the Coffin Kings?” 

Your gaze flicked to the side, catching Steve as he kicked a leg over to straddle the bike.  “I don’t think—it doesn’t ring a bell.”

You were lying; of course you’d heard of the Coffin Kings.  How could you forget the horde of long-haired bikers who cruised through town when you were a kid, a few of them stopping by to pick Eddie and Steve up from school on occasion.  Eddie’s uncle Wayne was one of the original members, and most of the teachers kept their manners around the boys for that reason alone.  Sure, Steve got detention for carving his initials into one of the school desks, but little did you know that it was only because he knew you would be in there too.  

Steve revved the bike to life until it was growling, idling in place with his back to you while he strapped his bare bones helmet on.  

“How do you know him?” Donna asked, not afraid to be pushy. 

“Well, I—” you thought about the specifics of that question.  “I don’t know him at all anymore, really.  We were just kids. It’s been a long time.”

“You want my advice?” Donna wiped her mouth with a tissue from a nearby Kleenex box.  

You didn’t, but you knew you couldn’t stop her from giving it to you.

“If you’re looking for a bad boy type, his friend Eddie is a much better catch.  Runs his own business, works hard, stays out of trouble.  Steve? Well, let’s say Stevie is just—-”

You turned to her as Steve hit the main road and shot into the distance.  “He’s what?”

You waited while she rolled her lips together, wetting them thoughtfully, turning her gaze to the ceiling.

“He’s a nice kid, but he’s trouble,” she sighed.  “He’s not the type you’d want to get serious with, if you know what I mean.”

Coincidentally, you did know what that meant.  You were a bit of a connoisseur when it came to trouble; not only could you sniff it out, but it flocked to you like seagulls on a parking lot french fry.  

But what Donna didn’t know was that you were no angel.

You scoffed at her suggestion.  “I’m not looking for a relationship any time soon.  I plan to stay single for a while.”

Donna dumped the rest of her dinner in the trash under the cash register.  “In that case, you and Steve have more in common than I thought.”

—-----

Steve had the rest of the evening off, he should’ve gone straight home to have a beer in his boxers in front of the TV and try to pass out early. He’d been slinging wrenches at Munson’s Garage that day, a double shift to help Eddie out, and his hand was throbbing so hard he had to take it off the throttle and shake it out. 

But also, who was he kidding?  He hadn’t slept more than a few hours that whole week. He needed a distraction, he needed people, he needed to forget his gut-wrenching loneliness for a while.  

He revved the throttle, shooting himself faster along the empty highway, passing nothing but flat alfalfa fields and the odd farmhouse every mile or so.  The low, desert hills rolled like sleeping giants on the horizon as dusk descended.

The Blue Light Tavern was housed in a brick building built in the 40’s, located between the truck stop and the Rosebud Motel, about a mile or so from the center of town.  The only way anyone passing by would even know it was a tavern was due to the neon Pabst and Jameson signs in the two tiny front windows.  There were already two motorcycles out front when Steve pulled up, and he found a spot at the end.  

The bartender that night was Angie, and she greeted him by name when he strolled in.  He asked for a beer, picked some songs on the jukebox, and started a game of pool with a fellow MC member, cigarettes bobbing from their lips as they played.  

That's when you walked in. 

He took a drink from his pint glass, pausing it there, watching you scan the room before making your way quietly to one of the stools at the far end of the bar, on the corner, closest to the door, as if you might have to make a run for it.  You were in the same clothes you’d had on at the gas n’ sip, but now you wore a zip-up black hoodie, hugging it around your ribs as if you were cold.  

The guy Steve was playing pool with was known as Big Jim around Hawkeye. Head of hair slicked back with generous sideburns down to his jaw, and a white scar making a thin indentation from the corner of his mouth to his ear.  He wore a long sleeve red and black flannel under his Coffin Kings kutte with the name Hopper patched on one side.     

Hopper said something to Steve and he appeared to ignore him, but finally blinked a few times.  “What did you say?”

Hopper held his pool cue across his lap as he sat on one of the tall swivel chairs against the wall, long legs braced wide.  “It’s your move, Romeo,” he drawled, plucking his smoke from the ashtray to take a drag. .

Steve suddenly got very confused, frowning when he turned to his friend.  How could Hop know he was interested in you? 

Hop gestured to the green felt under the Budweiser chandelier with his chin, exhaling, framing his lips to make an “O” with the smoke.  “Your turn, pipsqueak.”

“Right,” Steve huffed, shaking his head as he pushed off the wall.  

—--------

You waited outside, staring up at the Pabst neon that was missing the “b”, trying to work up the nerve to go in.  The Blue Light Tavern had been around so long, you remembered it from the rare occasions when your dad met up with his buddies, back when it was called The Hideaway.  Before the accident, back when you were a kid and considered Hawkeye your home.  

You were officially a resident once more, but you weren’t sure if you’d feel at home anywhere ever.  You weren’t sure if you’d ever feel safe again.  You weren’t sure you’d ever feel again.

When you finally opened the door, smoke billowed out, and the low-lit, grimey ambiance felt like a familiar friend.  You weren’t in the mood to drink, necessarily, you just didn’t want to sit at your apartment alone.  There weren’t many public places open in Hawkeye after 9, so you’d just been walking around aimlessly for the past hour.  Your tiny rental above the Gas n’ Sip was empty but for a mattress, two kitchen chairs, and five or six boxes you still needed to unpack. It all felt too dismal and overwhelming to tackle after your first full day at your new job.  

“What’ll it be darlin’?” The brunette bartender asked, using a white rag to wipe down the bar in front of you.  There was ice melting in a tumbler, a few used toothpicks, and a sticky ring on the woodgrain.  She scooped it all out of the way and then stared at you with a hand on her ample hips.

You were flustered and said the first thing that came to mind.  “Can you make a gin and tonic?”

“I think I can handle that,” she winked, moving out of the way to grab a glass.  You could hear the billiard balls clacking together over the music of Bringin' on the Heartache by Def Leppard , but there was a jukebox and a length of partition in the way, so you couldn’t see who was at the table. Including you, there were only a handful of customers that night; one surly man with a long gray beard at the bar, a couple at a table looking up at the mounted Zenith TV on the wall playing a muted episode of the Twilight Zone, and another two were throwing darts at a well worn target.  

Angie placed a white cocktail napkin before setting your drink down.  “Someone bought you this,” she had tiny veins of red around the cracks of her bare lips, as if she’d been wearing lipstick earlier.

“Someone?” Disbelief came first, and then it made you paranoid.  The last thing you wanted was to get hit on by—-

“It was him,” Angie gestured down the end of the bar to where Steve caught your eye and bucked his chin at you.  

The universe really did have a sense of humor.

—-----

A few minutes later, once he finished his game and let Hopper win just to move things along, he sauntered over to put his booted foot up on the bottom rung of the stool next to you. His white tee had a V-neck, exposing a tuft of chest hair.  “Are you following me?”

You swished your drink with a red stir stick, and then sucked it clean.  “I won’t let this freebie go to my head, Harrington.  I bet you buy drinks for all the new women in town.”

He gripped a fresh cigarette between pursed lips and lit the end, looking up at you from under his furrowed, James Dean brow.  “Yeah, but you’re not new.”

“Shhh it’s a secret,” you snipped two fingers in the air like a pair of scissors and he grinned at that, offering his pack of reds for you to take one. One of his ears was pierced, and a small silver hoop curved there.  

“Since when do you smoke?”

“I don’t,” you answered flatly, leaning over so that he could light the end for you with his plastic blue Bic, inhaling so that your cheeks hollowed.  

“You want to read my palm again?”

“Again?” You exhaled smoke to the side.

Steve straddled the stool and got comfortable with his elbows on the bar.  “You read my palm once when we were kids,” he straightened his arm, locking his elbow, so that his palm was open in front of you.  “I think you said my love life would be troubled, but I’d live a long life.  And then you made some crack about how I’d let the right one get away.”

You huffed a laugh and chomped onto your bottom lip to keep from smiling too big, staring at his strong fingers as they wiggled in front of you, veins popping strong in his forearm. 

“I can’t believe you remember that.” Tilting your head to the side, you took another sip of your drink, cringing a little at the strength of the alcohol; it was a glass of gin with a splash of tonic.  But maybe Angie’s heavy hand was a blessing that night.  

The gold in his tooth flashed like lightning in a storm. “I remember everything,” his voice was soft and deep, and you had to look away before he turned you into a brainless, lovesick zombie from his vampiric-strength powers of persuasion. 

Clearing your throat, you squirmed a bit under the weight of his stare.  “My palmistry days are behind me. I’m out of practice.”

He slid his hand back, but slowly, hoping you might want to touch it or grab it or—-

“But I am curious—”

Fingers flexed flat again as an invitation.

“---what does it say on your knuckles?”

“Oh these?” He made two fists and twisted them to read it himself as if he wasn’t sure, and then put both palms flat and slid them back in your direction, fingers splayed.  

Murmuring aloud as you spelled it out, you realized that the right knuckles spelled LOVE and the left ones said PAIN in thick, capital lettering.  

“My turn,” he pulled back his shoulders, taking another drag, squinting, before resting his cigarette butt back in the ashtray.

“Your turn for what?”

“Questions. What is that key around your neck for?”

You slapped a hand over the metal piece dangling from a chain, not realizing it had escaped the confines of your shirt collar, fingering it thoughtfully as you thought about what type of story you should make up.  

You could tell him the truth, but you weren’t sure you were emotionally equipped to answer any further questions.  You made a fist around the key and started massaging it with your thumb, when another hulking biker with a thick mustache cupped a meaty hand onto Steve’s shoulder.

“Bones just paged, we gotta meet them at the junkyard on ,” the big man shifted his kind, blue eyes to you, blinking with a nod of his head to acknowledge your presence, and offer his silent apologies all at once.  

Steve stood without argument, clearly duty bound, but his attention remained on you. He motioned Hopper ahead, and then he idled there, internally stumbling over his words.

“Any chance you’ll be here again tomorrow night?” He flicked the spark on his lighter a few times as he spoke out of nervous habit.

You tucked the metal key into your shirt.  “I work the late shift at the gas station tomorrow.” 

His mood seemed to lift slightly at knowing where you would be.  

“Taz,” Hopper hummed from the door where he braced it open with his broad back, offering a blast of fresh air to the nicotine saturated walls. Taz was Steve’s nickname in the club, but that was just one more thing you had yet to learn about him. He adjusted the collar of his leather jacket, gave your bicep a tender squeeze as he went by, and leaned down to whisper, “it’s good to see you,” at the shell of your ear, giving you goosebumps.  

Once he was gone, the tavern suddenly felt emptier, the sound of George Thorogood singing about drinking alone pounding much louder as you stared down at the glass in your hand.  

You finished your drink and then you made the trek back home, hugging yourself against the crisp night breeze, wondering how you would occupy your time for the next couple hours before you found sleep.

—------

The roar of their two engines cut through the dry June night like a knife, affording no illumination but their headlights and the moon.  Steve had replaced his leather jacket with his own MC leather that said TAZ on the front from one of his saddlebags, bare flesh of his arms exposed to show the scattering of tattoos there as he gripped the handlebars.  Both riders wore clear safety glasses to protect their eyes from the wind and the kamikazee bugs.  

Snipes Junkyard loomed menacingly in the expanse of desert, shrouded in cobalt night.  Heaps of twisted metal wreckage, smashed cars all piled on top of each other, and a high fence made of corrugated metal with curls of razor wire along the top ridge.  

There was a group of bikes parked out front when they arrived and two of the Coffin Kings Prospects, Riot and Krebs, guarded the gate to the place.  

Both new arrivals put their helmets on the end of their handlebars and tucked their safety glasses into their front pocket as they approached.

“What are we walking into?” Hopper asked, and Riot was already shaking his head in answer.

“The underground tunnels were breached,” he said, tucking a strand of curly black hair behind his ear.  “Crater isn’t happy.”

Crater was a Hawkeye native who got his nickname because of the chicken pock scars that covered his cheeks and jaw. He was also President of one of the other MC’s in town called the Skull Crushers.

When tensions were high among the gangs, there was always a good chance someone would pull a gun or start punching, so Steve and Hopper shared a weary look, bracing themselves before entering.

—------

Just as you were about to step up onto your block, you caught sight of someone coming out of the mini mart that you lived above.  A side door led up a flight of narrow stairs, and the top room was all yours; it was the size of a tin can, but it was shelter and you were grateful.  

Through the soft glow of the front window, you saw Donna’s husband Ned behind the counter with his half-moon reading spectacles on and a novel open in front of him.  Which reminded  you to make sure you brought some material to entertain you on your shift the next night.  

Somewhere not too far off in the distance, a group of coyotes yipped their excited whines.

The person who’d just come out paused on the sidewalk to light a smoke, and you sank around the corner of the building to watch the guy in the jeans, leather, and thick boots stroll over to put some gas in the tank of his Harley. Bulkier than the one Steve rode, this one was glossy obsidian with chrome pipes and a sissy bar in back, as if he usually had a rider with him.  His hair was unruly, long and dark, and once you caught a glimpse of his profile from the dim beam above the pumps, you knew right away that it was Eddie Munson.  

You thought about getting his attention to say hello, but then realized that your social battery was tapped for the day.  The cigarette dangled from his mouth when he took off, and you waited until he was down the street before darting to the stairs of your apartment.

—-----

A few hours later, Steve’s left hand with the PAIN held a black payphone receiver to his ear while the other hand rolled the numbers on the rotary dial.  His knuckles were freshly spit and bleeding, since one of the Skull Crushers had come at him during a misunderstanding at the meet earlier, and he was forced to lay the guy out.  He felt wired, like rest had somehow become his enemy, something he ran from as it tracked him ruthlessly.  

A woman who went by the name Lorelei picked up on the second ring.  

“It’s me,” he coughed and tasted that familiar copper tang. “It’s Steve.  Are you busy?”

It was almost 4 in the morning, but Steve had been a regular customer for a few months and, also, she didn’t mind his company.  He wasn’t like her other customers; he didn’t want the typical things from her.  

His hand haphazardly bandaged with a red handkerchief; he hugged it to his chest when he knocked at the door of room 8 at the Rosebud Motel.  When it opened, Lorelei stood there with a silk, periwinkle kimono wrapped snug around her curves, and motioned him in. There were two lamps on in the room, both of their shades were draped with floral scarves, and a candle burned on the nightstand, smelling of essential oils, bergamot and lavender.   She didn’t live at the Rosebud, but she did stay a few nights in a row there when she was working.  

Steve's relationship history thus far had been a blur of endless disconnect, a series of hit and runs that left his heart empty and his eyes vacant.  It was easy for a guy in a motorcycle club to get laid; their parties were always crawling with eager pussy.  But after a certain age, that wasn’t what he craved anymore. He often worried that the parental dynamic he’d witnessed growing up, or lack thereof, had fucked him up to the point that he would never be able to have a normal relationship with a girl he liked.  

A while ago he’d given up on love, figured that he was broken. But he still had urges, and making them transactional helped him to disengage further.  

“What are you in the mood for?” Lorelei hooked a finger into his belt loop and pulled him closer, searching his face.  “Same as last time, hmm?”

Steve lowered his head, internal exhaustion making him dizzy.  He held her arm, thumbing the delicate material of her robe.  “Not tonight,” he swallowed thickly.  “Just the stuff that…comes after.”

Nodding that she understood, she cupped his chin so he would look at her. “Will three hours be enough?” One look at him told her what he needed was 24 at the least, but three was all she had to give.

Over the years, Steve had come to realize that his insomnia was somehow cured when he could sleep next to someone.  To roll over and have them there, to hold them.  Alone, his mind raced, and nightmares plagued the inside of his eyelids. With Lorelei, they mostly slept side by side, and the weight and familiarity of her was somehow enough to calm his nervous system down to a reasonable level.

“Come,” she sat him on the edge of the bed and knelt to unlace his boots.  He wrestled to pull his wallet out of his back pocket, ready to pluck some bills out, but she put her hand up to stop him.

“After, okay? I trust you,” she whispered, tugging off the first boot by the heel, rubbing the ball of his foot a little before moving to the next shoe.  

Steve’s head bobbed on his neck, and then he rolled it back to center, eyes heavy.   

He always refused to undress fully, and Lorelei suspected it had something to do with how vulnerable it made him feel, but she never asked questions.  He scooted up to find the pillow with his head, and by the time she crawled in next to him and put her hand on his thigh, he was out.  

-------

Thank you to my darling readers who love biker Steve!

#Steve Harrington #Steve Harrington series #Steve Harrington fic #Stranger Things fic #biker!steve #biker!steve harrington #Ring of Fire

[sp00kywrites]

Hear me out- i'm cooking here some idea! Like- what if Sun wukong, Macaque (separatedly) met an Reader who is an Goddess of the Moon, like, not like Chang'e but mostly THE Protector! One of the elements, like, they met her when she was humming a tune while sitting on a little moon shape floaty thing (The Design might be inspired of Moonlight Cookie From Cookie run Ovenbreak/Kingdom! So you get an idea of how to do it <33) Some Headcanons??? I'll gladly love to read it! It can be Some fluff or something about them both having a crush on The Reader (bro's gonna go wild if they found out Reader is lesbi-) (jk,jk, just an nerd joke from the moonlight x sea fairy story)

Just an fan of Moonlight Cookie here! Love your fics <33

Stay healthy and keep yourself all good

-This dumb nerd

I LOVE COOKIE RUN TO!

This is my first,and (probably will always be) my favorite request ♡♡♡

MACAQUE X MOON GODDESS! READER

Maybe a bit OOC

_____________________

MEETING!

Macaque never thought he'd stumble into a moon goddess but here he is!

After a fight with wukong, in wich macaque barely got away, he fled to a usually empty lake surrounded by woods .

He didn't expect the isolated area to be occupied by a women with almost glowing skin and a ethereal dress to be sitting elegantly on a Cresent moon like platform that floated 5 inches away from the water of the lake and gave off a white glow.

The woman hummed a soft tune that would put thousands of children to sleep. Though it was very quiet macaque would've been able to hear it from a mile away, he almost fell asleep as he felt the insomnia he's been plagued with for years slip away.

His black claws gripped onto the bark of a tree as he watched the lady for, he doesn't even know how long at this point.

Maybe his grip was to strong as the wood eventually let out a booming Crack and fell forward, right into the lake. The water splashed over the woman sitting in a Cresent moon.

HEADCANONS!!

I won't lie that man fled as soon as the wood gave out, faster then sonic i swear. Yet he found himself coming back to the same lake, to hear the same humming tune that you sung.

After awhile, I'd say 4 weeks, you'd finally introduce yourself. And boy did that shock the raven haired monkey as he thought he was being rather sneaky.

It takes a while for him to warm up to you but patience is perfection! And trust me eventually he did, and soon that friendship blossomed into something else.

He thought of you every night, everything about you intoxicated the guy. Your humming, your face, your eyes, and even how quiet you spoke.

He knew he had it bad but couldn't convince himself to confess, so what does he do? He ghosts you

For a pretty long times (cough 8 days) until you finally take actiona and burst into his dojo, your moon staff in hand, and demanded a explanation on why he was avoiding you.

After a long while of bickering he accidentally slips out a confession, you paused completely when you heard the words come out your mouth.

Oddly enough..you didn't mind it

MEETING!

Ya'll know how in the books he was described to be a light weight drinker? Yeah it was true. And he's a man of bad luck to run into the same moon goddess that he treated so rudely in the past.

He was stumbling threw a forest, god knows how he got there, and ran into a glowing woman that sat sleepily on a Cresent moon. And when I say ran in I mean it, he ran full force into you by accident of course.

By the time you got up and held him by his collar the man was knocked out, he wanted to smack him over the skull buttt that wouldn't be very "elegant" for you (definitely not because you knew he was THE sun wukong)

So you dragged him to FFF mountain, all the way into the shame shack and threw him on his bed. But sadly this powerful demon had, in his sleep, gripped onto your flowing gown and pulled you onto the bed with him.

No matter how hard you wiggled or squirmed you were stuck being wukongs brand new stuffed toy for the night.

______________

He was out like a rock, you had to summon your staff and hit him a couple of times before he even opened a eye.

But oh boy when he did you screamed louder then any siren could in all 7 seas. Not from fear, but from hangover shock.

You scoffed at his girlish scream and turned your nose up to his lazy apology. As you went to the door the great sage folded over on the ground, and started breathing heavy? Was he gagging? Why- OH CRAP

I don't think I need to say what happened next, it ended with him bent over a toilet and you helping him up. You don't know how or why but you stayed for a good 6 hours just listening to the obviously touch deprived monkey, you could tell by how he clinged on your arm, ramble on and laugh at his antics in the past. Tha antics that caused alot of trouble to the moon you protected.

Turns out the great sage has some overpowering charm as you found yourself showing up to his house again

And again

And again

Until you memorized flower fruit mountain like it was the back of your hand.

The lonely great sage found himself growing fonder and fonder of you each day, he wondered why his heart beat so much, why his palm went sweaty or why he felt hot around you.

Until it hit him the day you cooked him a peach pie.

He had hearts in his eyes as he held your wrist, catching the steaming pie with his tail he looked you in the eye and said with much confidence.

"I love you!"

"I like woman-"

(JK)

(JK)

You stared with shock as the monkey man confessed his feelings, and as hard as a asteroid hitting the moon your lips crashed with his.

#x reader #lmk x reader #macaque x reader #sun wukong x reader

[bluebellsinburbank]

For emoji prompts 🧠

🧠 - Traumatic event

"Peter..."

It wasn't a goodbye. It should have been a goodbye. It would have been so much simpler. Just running as he always had; back to Kate, back to the life he'd lived before Peter showed him what else he was capable of. But it was Kate - his Kate - and he loved her. Loved her so much he'd thrown away everything just to be with her again.

He didn't hear the explosion, not at first. Peter's patient face lit up in orange, a wall of heat slammed into him. Then he heard it, the rush of furious air, the scream of breaking glass and metal. The scream of his own voice, unrecognisable even to him.

Neal stumbled forward, running towards the fire. Kate.

Arms wrapped around him, Peter's voice indistinguishable in his ears. There was only the sharp whine of fear.

No.

Kate couldn't be. She couldn't- She wouldn't leave him. Not this time. They were going to be together again and it was going to be better. He was going to be better.

But the fire. Oh God, the fire. How could anyone survive?

His knees collapsed, realisation he didn't want spreading through him.

Even Peter's arms, holding him safe and tight, didn't comfort at all. Kate was gone. A ball of fire burned where he'd last seen her sweet face. There was no reason why, no clue who'd dared hurt one of the only bright points in his life, but he knew one thing. It should have been him.

Kate was dead and it should have been him.

#I'm more of a fluff person but I hope this came out okay #Thank you for the prompt anon #white collar fan fic #I have one more ask to answer and I'll post that tomorrow I definitely have not forgotten #Messing around with the season one finale because I cannot deal with the series finale

[gennemi]

Hiii

This is my first time requesting, so sorry if it's too long. I've been thinking about a one shot about Mihawk, in which the reader is the daughter of a Navy Admiral and this man really hates pirates and even repudiates the warlords sea. Then the reader's father decides to take his daughter to a marine party in order to find her a respectable husband and being able to get her engaged. But the unexpected happens, reader feels very attracted to Mihawk and he feels the same, and I imagine they dance and they flirt, sexual tension in the air.

My inspiration was basically the song my oh my by Camila Cabello, I feel like it goes a bit with Mihawk and I would like it to go with that style . Anyway, I hope the request is not a problem, have a good day or night😊

𝑴𝒚 𝑶𝒉 𝑴𝒚 (𝑫𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒖𝒍𝒆 𝑴𝒊𝒉𝒂𝒘𝒌 𝒙 𝑭𝒆𝒎! 𝑹𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒆𝒓)

A/N: When I tell you I loved this! I loved it!!! I loved writing it! (With the help of one of my good friends! He's also a one piece fan! And wanted to help me a bit!) I put all my dedication into this!! It was so cute! Almost makes me want to turn this into a small multi chapter fic! I hope you love this Lovely! Thank you for requesting this cute ask! ✨❤

Warnings: none! Fluff! Both reader and Mihawk pinining for each other, them flirting with each other!

Based on this song:

My Oh My

Let me know if the link doesn't work! ❤

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She was getting ready for some marine party that her dad is wanting to take her to. She sighed, not being too big on parties, considering some of the parties the marines host are boring. She hoped that something would happen while there, to make it less boring. But she doubted there would be. “Y/N you ready to leave?” She heard her dad, she let out another sigh, she was not looking forward to this. Especially since she knows her dads true reasons for wanting her to attend these parties. He wants her to ‘Find a husband.’ In his words. She walked out her room to be face to face with her father. “Come on Y/N you will love it! Now let's get going!” Her dad spoke, she had no choice but to follow.

At the party, she stayed in one corner of the room. Refusing to dance with any man, she just wanted to leave this party. 'Damn you dad, for dragging me to this….’ She cursed her dad in her head, until she noticed a man that caught her eye. He was standing not too far away from her, his golden, hawk-like eyes observing his surroundings. As if he was judging. On top of his black hair, he sported a wide-brimmed black hat, decorated with a large plume, he wore a long, open black coat, with what looked to be red velvet inside, with no shirt? The coat also had red, flower-patterned sleeves and collar, with white pants, and black boots. He also seemed to have a large sword on his back, and a cross around his neck. That man was none other than Dracule Mihawk, one of The Seven Warlords of the Sea.

His golden eyes continued to look around, a frown etched upon his form. Until his eyes met hers. She quickly looked away, a blush adorning her face. Not realizing said man was approaching her. “Hello M’lady, couldn’t help but notice you staring at me. Was there something that interested you?” He mused, suddenly now beside her, causing her to look up at the taller man. Seeing him up close, caused the blush on her face to worsen. He was a gorgeous man. She feels attracted to him already, but she knew how her father felt about pirates let alone the Warlords. She knew who Mihawk was, well more of the lines she's heard things about the said man. Just never met him till now. He somehow also felt attracted to her as well, she was beautiful.

He put one of his larger hands out. “May I have the pleasure to dance with such beauty as yourself~?” He offered, looking into her eyes, with those golden eyes of his. She glanced around quietly and quickly for her father, checking for him. Although seeing her eyes glance around as if looking for someone, he still stared at her with patience. Her beautiful e/c eyes then landed back on his. “I would like that.” she finally answered softly, gently placing her smaller hand in his bigger hand. Having received an answer, he gently led her to the dance floor before he pulled her close to him. Their bodies touched as he put his other hand on her waist while she put her other hand on his broad shoulder. The two started to dance around to the music that was playing. The sexual tension between the two was already in the air, as they danced. He looked down at her, she was absolutely ravishing. The two continued to dance, as if it was only them. No one else, but them. He noticed though, that she seemed to still be on the lookout for someone.

“Relax M’lady, you seem tense.~” He spoke in a flirty tone, causing her to look back at him with cheeks slightly flushed. “Well it's not every day a girl sees a sexy man who has no problems showing what's beneath the shirt.~” She retorted with a slight smirk. Hawkeye's lips twitched upward slightly in response. 

She's been flirted with before multiple times. Sometimes, she's had to flirt back to get rid of the guy who obviously didn't love her for her. She wanted someone that saw/loved her for her, not just to get into her pants, hence why she always refused to even get married. Because most of the men only saw her for her body, not for her. But the man that was dancing around with her, twirling her around, flirting with her. Seemed different, promising even. It was making her heart race in her chest, almost like it was about to beat out of her chest. This man was drop dead gorgeous. 

He twirled the smaller girl around, then brought her back to him. She felt like she was on cloud 9 just from the dance, plus the close proximity of the two. The tension was high in the air between the two as they graced over the floor. Unconsciously, their breaths came out in sync. The music was the only thing besides each other's breathing that they could hear around them. They were so wrapped up with each other, they forgot about everyone else there. To them it was only them, no one else. But them.

Soon though, the song that was playing slowly came to an end. He dipped her, as the two remained looking into each other's eyes. He brought her back up gently. “I enjoyed that dance.~” He said with a flirtatious smirk on his handsome face. He brought her smaller hand up to his lips giving it a light kiss. “I hope to see you again.~” He purred, as he continued to look at her with his Hawk-like golden eyes. “Me too.~” she cooed back, blushing at his beautiful eyes.

After the party, she sat in her room. All she could think of is that beautiful man, she was hoping to see him again….Who knows? Could it be fate for them to meet again?

#gennemi writes #one piece #dracule mihawk #dracule mihawk x reader #op mihawk #hawkeye mihawk #mihawk x reader #one piece mihawk

[spacecowboyhotch]

Boy Meets Cat, Boy Meets Girl

pairing: steven grant x f!reader

prompt: kid fic or pet fic

contents: the feelings that come w/ temporarily losing a pet, meetcute, flirting

wc: 1,334

an: another promotional fic for @moonknight-events! steven is just…one of the sweetest, cutest men ever. written w/ the Marc’s girls server in mind, iykyk!

DISCLAIMER: as a event runner i will not be entered in the drawing for prizes. this is promotional only.

SP BINGO 2024 | moonknight masterlist

She’s sitting on the steps one day outside the museum after Steven’s shift. He almost walks right past her, bumbling down the steps with a soft hum. It’s been a long day of being yelled at atop getting sleep that just isn’t restful. He’s exhausted. He’s unobservant.

He’s nearly past her when he hears it— a loud, scratchy meow that catches his attention. Steven stops in his tracks, blinking rapidly.

Had he just heard a cat? On the museum steps? Sleep deprivation really was getting to him, wasn’t it?

He turns towards the sound, sure that there will be nothing there, that he is just hearing things. But there she is, perched on the museum steps as if she owns the place. She looks like a little heap of snow— her fur is fluffy and a stark white color that contrasts with her dark eyes and pink nose. He lets out a little sound of surprise, and then she meows back as if she’s answering him.

He laughs, a bright and cheery sound. “Well, hello there little one. Lost are we?”

She meows again, this time a little softer and if Steven wasn’t mistaken, a little sadder. He softens, taking a few cautious steps toward her so as not to spook her. When she does seem skittish, staying in place despite him closing the gap he simply sits beside her on the steps.

“Do you have a name, little one? Can I look at your collar? Promise I’ll be gentle,” He says, reaching his hand out to her.

She leans forward on her front paws, sniffing at the back of his hand before giving out a soft purr. She bumps his hand with the top of her head, nuzzling.

Steven takes this opportunity to reach under her chin, scratching gently before he leans in to peer at her collar.

“Iris— what a pretty name for a pretty cat.”

Another meow as Iris bulldozes her way into his lap. Steven gives her a series of pats, setting off several purrs that he feels vibrating through her spine. She's so fluffy, so soft. He could pet her for all his days. It’s nice to have this companionship, even if it’s just a cat. Hell, it beats talking to the statuer at the fountain in the park and Iris hasn’t spoken a word.

You know for a moment there, I wondered if you were the goddess Bastet,” He whispers playfully, like he’s keeping a big secret. Iris simply meows, using her paws to slip down and lay across Steven’s thighs. “Aren’t you cold? Is that a silly question given your fur coat?”

Steven lets himself sit, idly petting Iris as he watches the sun slowly disappear behind the London skyline. He’s completely charmed with this cat, with the peaceful feeling her company brings. Part of him selfishly thinks about taking her home and keeping her as his own. But, he knows if he’s this fond of her in a short period of time her owner is probably grief-stricken to be without her. He’ll take her home for the night and use his off day to pursue leads on her owner. Perhaps Marc could help with the tracking. For tonight though, he has some company and the idea has Steven rising to his feet, Iris in tow.

“How’s about we head on home and watch a movie? Are you a fan of Meerkat Manor? Or will seeing them scurry about get you revved up?” He whispers, ignoring the weird glances he’s getting from passersby.

As expected, Iris simply gives out a soft meow, snuggling further into Steven’s hold. He grins, raising a hand to pet her head as he rounds the corner, effectively running into someone.

“Iris! There you are. Oh my god, thank you. Thank you,” You gasp, reaching out to squeeze his arm.

If Steven thought he was charmed by Iris, he must come up with a word that holds more meaning at the sight of you. Your cheeks are tear-stained, eyes a mixture of happiness and guilt. Your brows are pinched together, and he has the urge to reach up and smooth out the wrinkle between them. The urge to soothe you. Even during the short walk, Steven had imagined his reluctance to give Iris back to her owner, but that’s all melted away now that you’re right in front of him. So, so beautiful.

“You’re Iris’ mum?”

“Yes. Fuck, thank you so much. I can’t– I don’t know what I would’ve done without her. I owe you.”

“Ah, don’t worry about it. I simply stumbled upon her outside the museum after work. I was gonna start looking for her owner tomorrow, imagined it was too late. But look at you, as diligent as ever.”

“The museum? What were you doing there?” You ask Iris before looking up at the man to whom you practically owe your life again. He’s very handsome, a little tired-looking but his eyes are warm, and his hair is fluffy curls. She’s everything to me,” You explain, squeezing Iris to your cheek, doing some nuzzling of your own.

Iris has clearly learned her affectionate manners from you.

Steven’s mind quickly wanders, wondering what it would feel like to be on the receiving end of your affection. He bats the thought away, flushing. “I can imagine, she’s a little charmer. Plopped herself right in my lap.”

“I’m surprised she got this close to you, she’s incredibly picky. She must sense that you’re a lovely person.”

“Well–I– I’m glad to live up to Iris’ standards. She seems to have good taste. Animals sort of choose their owners don’t they?”

“Thanks,” You murmur shyly, feeling your own cheeks fill with warmth. “I know that folks can say being a pet parent is cringy, but I really am lucky to be her mom. She has such an energy to her.”

“Warm. Calm,” Steven supplies, reaching out to pet Iris’ head, if only for the last time. She nuzzles into his hand and he smiles.

Your eyes track his hand, still a little surprised at how easily Iris is letting him pet her. She had hated almost every person you’d brought back to your apartment except a handful of friends. But, any romantic prospects had quickly made themselves scarce given your mean, overprotective cat.

“Exactly.”

“Well Miss Iris, I guess we won’t be getting to watch Meerkat Manor after all will we? Perhaps your mum could show.”

“Meerkat Manor?”

“It follows a little family of meerkats through the desert. Their struggles, their connections, their enemies. All sorts of things.”

“I’ve always been a fan of animal docs.”

“Yeah? I could recommend you loads of them.”

“I would really like that. I don’t think I got your name?”

“Steven.”

“Steven,” You repeat softly before giving him your name. “It’s really lovely to meet you. This is bold of me but…maybe we could see each other again?

Steven’s mouth drops open, eyes wide in surprise. “Really?”

“I told you I owe you and well– Iris seems to like you a lot. Maybe I could make you dinner as repayment and we could watch some meerkats live their lives.”

“I– yeah. Yeah, alright, I would love to.”

You and Steven quickly exchange contacts. He gives Iris a few more pets before rocking back and forth on his heels.

“I’ll call you tomorrow. Sound alright?” He asks, voice hopeful.

“Sounds great,” You confirm.

You shift Iris into the crook of your elbow, and to Steven’s surprise, wrap him in a one-armed hug as you whisper him a soft thanks. His response is delayed but he hugs you back, surrounded by your warmth and soft scent. After a few beats you pull away, giving him a smile as the two of you exchange temporary goodbyes. Steven makes his way back to his flat with a wide grin, grateful that Iris had brought the two of you together. Cat in arms, butterflies in stomach you walk home feeling much the same.

moonknight taglist: @ninebluehearts, @rmoonstoner, @hotchs-bitch,  @later-gators12, @foreverinwanderlustt-blog, @aleeb , @eyelessfaces, @marc-spectorr, @missdictatorme, @toracainz, @mccn-bcys, @campingwiththecharmings, @whatthefishh

#as promised from the poll…yes it’s a little early mostly bc i need something to distract me #steven grant x reader #steven grant x f!reader #steven grant fanfiction #steven grant fluff #moonknight fanfiction #moonknightevents #arson writes

[scrypticmetal]

Late Night (springtrap x Gn! Reader) {fluff fic}

You’d finally made it to the driveway, hands gripping the steering wheel so tight your knuckles were turning white. You didn’t have the patience to deal with anyone right not. Nothing to springtrap personally, you just knew you should have taken the day off. Glancing at the clock that read 11:45, “just a couple more minutes” you muttered to yourself, hands sliding down the wheel as you loosened your iron grip.

You tried focusing on your breathing but it just wasn’t working. It’s not like you could sleep on the job either, despite being too exausted to properly function, you were completely restless. You hadn’t gotten a good nights rest in days.

A couple minutes passed, and you finally got out of the car, walking into the building and clocking in.

The halls filled with the sound of your crisp footsteps clacking against the dusty linoleum floor. Cold rough hands grabbed at your shoulders and you nearly jumped out of your own skin, yelping and dipping out of the grasp. You were met with springtrap’s gravelly laugh as you stood there red faced with embarrassment, “… I wasn’t expecting you to be up and walking so early”

“I’m not early, you’re late.” he crossed his arms.

“No it’s..” you checked your phone to see the clock at 12:09… when did all that time pass? “Oh..”

“Whatever that’s unimportant.” He grabs you by the collar of your shirt and drags you with him, “My neck has been KILLING me, I believe something got lodged in there. I don’t even understand HOW something could have gotten lodged in there” He starts droning on

You liked hearing him talk. Lucky for you, he liked hearing himself talk too… but you didn’t mind. The two of you walked into the makeshift workshop. He sat on the chair next to the big iron table, leaning on his elbow leaning his head to the right.

“It’s right in the middle left here” he pointed with his left hand.

“I’ll see what I can do… that’s a finicky spot, you know that” you stood between his legs and clicked the flashlight on, holding it in your mouth. (You keep telling yourself to invest in a headlamp but you keep forgetting to actually buy it…)

You used a narrow metal rod to poke at his insides, trying to see what was lodged in there. Probably not the best thing to use, but there isn’t necessarily a correct tool for this kind of thing..

Finally, you found the blockage; his collarbone had somehow completely snapped in half and had splintered into several different mechanical crevices.

“Great” you laughed dryly. This could take the whole night. “How the hell did the bone suddenly start splintering like this?”

He just looked at you and shrugged on his right side. He’s soooo helpful as usual.

What the hell does he do when you’re not here to warrant the need for these extremely hands-on repairs? You took the needle nose pliers out of the toolbox and started at pulling the bone fragments out.

You hadn’t realized how close you really were to him, but he sure did. Your lower thighs pressed into his inner thighs. Your pressed button-up shirt wrinkled as your chest was flushed up against his own.

“You’re uncharacteristically quiet” springtrap chimed.

“…it’s been a long week” you replied dryly, putting the flashlight back into your mouth after responding.

He just hummed on response.

He’d really rather not bother you about whatever was troubling you, but this mood shift was starting to make him uncomfortable. You’re always so nice and so quick with conversation. Seeing you like this was a little jarring. The only noise in the cramped workshop was the half-working AC unit. Despite the fan going overdrive, you were still breaking a sweat in this late summer Utah heat.

After a couple more bone fragments were removed, his shoulder was starting to feel better. But he didn’t say anything about it, he just let you continue with your work. Springtrap didn’t want to admit how much he loved the closeness that came with his repairs. Could you blame him? He spent 30 years contactless both socially and physically. He refuses to admit it to both you and himself, but he’s desperate for any kind of human interaction.

His focus stayed on the warmth of your body radiating against his cold metallic body. The sensation was faint, given almost all his nerve endings were completely shot, but the sensation was still there.

You weren’t even halfway done when your eyes started to give out on you, heavy with exhaustion. You stumbled backwards and springtrap caught you by the lower waist.

“How do you manage to trip over nothing” he laughed.

Putting your palms on both of his shoulders to stabilize yourself.

“Sorry, I’m just really tired I guess” you mumbled. It took so much energy to speak but you have to remind yourself people can’t just read your thoughts.

The air was thick with one-sided tension yet, you failed to even notice. Your breathing was labored by your body working overdrive to keep yourself upright and ‘functioning’.

Springtrap stared down at you, he could tell you really weren’t all there today when you came in, but you were just about passing out on him… LITERALLY.

“You should rest” he phrased it as a suggestion but said it as an order.

“…mmbut your neck” you rose your drooped head up to look at him.

He stared back into your sleep deprived half-lidded eyes. You looked like a kicked puppy, he found it adorable.

Springtrap didn’t bother to answer your weak protest, instead, picking you up by your waist and setting you down on his lap. The sharp holes in the legs of the suit scratched at the fabric on the underside of your legs; your jeans being your only armor against the sharp metal. But regardless of the sharp edges of his suit poking at your skin, you were kinda comfortable.

It wasn’t… uncommon that repairs often gotten accidentally intimate, but it wasn’t accidental this time. Your body twitched trying to go stiff but your muscles refused to hold.

Springtrap’s rough hand glided up your forearm to the pliers in your hand. He pried the pliers from your wimpy grasp, placing them on the table behind him; then snaked his hand up to the flashlight in your mouth. A thin line of saliva dribbled from your mouth onto the edge flashlight. He hummed in amusement and held the edge of the flashlight up to your chin, beckoning for you to look back up at him. You wanted to squirm under the feeling of your own cold saliva on your chin.

The two of you locked eyes once again, at this point you had no energy to fight back on this. This rotted husk of a man was strangely the best comfort you had. You reached both hands out, one of grab the hand that held the flashlight, the other gently holding his wrist. Your hand slid up, pressing your thumb against Springtrap’s palm.

You guided his hand to your cheek. The suit was rough and raggedy, but you failed to care. His hand was huge in comparison to your face; half of his hand rested on your neck, and his index and thumb engulfed your cheek. He rubbed his thumb back and forth methodically.

You caved into your exhaustion, slumping over his shoulder, stuffing your face in the crook of your arm for cushioning. His arms wrapped around you. Springtrap gives surprisingly good hugs; his grip is tight and constraining but in a comforting way. He brushed the hair out of your face and trailed his left hand down to the small of your back. Springtrap traced his index finger along your spine while his right arm held you close.

At this point, your vision was spinning from exhaustion, legs twitching as you tried to keep yourself awake.

“Springs?” You mumbled

You could feel him shift to look over at you. “Hmm?” his voice rattled through his metal chest in a low rumble.

You went to say something else but you knocked out before you could say anything.

Springtrap awaited your response but eventually realized you were out.

He listened intently to your breathing, watching your chest rise and fall with each breath. His ears twitched everytime you mumbled in your sleep. He hated how soft you made him feel. He burried his face into the crook of your neck, hugging you tighter.

#fnaf #five nights at freddy's #william afton #springtrap #fnaf headcanons #springtrap x reader #william afton x reader #fnaf 3 #self insert #oneshot

[raisedbythetv89]

I just started watching White Collar for the first time and a realization about most male written and directed media smacked me DIRECTLY in the face which is that SO MUCH media written by a for men is genuinely just male nerd self insert, non-canon compliant, AU fan fiction??????

Like them writing and creating stories is just “ok so these guys are soooo smooth and well dressed and women just flock to them at every turn and they can get away with anything and everyone believes and supports them when they do mess up and everyone thinks they’re sooooo brilliant”

This media isn’t just portraying women “for the male gaze” it’s EVERYTHING. Everything in these stories is supporting and uplifting mens’ delusions about who they are, how they’re perceived, and how they should expect to be treated. Which is incredibly ironic because anytime media portrays women or the world in the female gaze in a more “in my ideal world things would be like this” instead of portraying us as nothing but weak, broken, unloved, traumatized, victims OR one dimensional sex symbols with no needs or emotions they’re screaming, crying, throwing up about how stupid and unrealistic the story is….

This explains SO MUCH about how male characters are handled in shows like Veronica Mars and Buffy. Even though they’re shows staring women all the “good guys” get the delusional self insert, y/n, AU fan fic treatment (Buffy still wants Angel in season 3 and Riley in season 6 even after everything they did and Xander is CONSTANTLY forgiven for all the atrocious shit he says and does and is wanted by all women besides Buffy. Veronica forgiving Duncan and getting back together with him and even CONSIDERING Piz could truly only be born from men being delusional AS FUCK. Writing how they want men to be treated by women rather than being based in reality and the woman having even an ounce of self respect.)

Which is why the “bad boys”, Logan and Spike are such better characters. They’re so much more realistic, they get held accountable by the women in their lives, have better growth and are just way more appealing and attractive because they’re not the walking embodiment of what MEN want men to be treated and act like.

Oh god this feels like such cursed knowledge to have like it’s important to see this media for what it really is but now watching it feels that much yuckier like finding the porn of someone you DO NOT LIKE but like their emotional porn “this is what life would be like in my fantasies” and they’re the fantasies of the grossest men alive 😭😭😭😭😭

Also it shows their emotional maturity like all of these things are what 13 year old boys fantasize about not actual mature, grown men….

Also just realized this is why the Star Wars sequels were so hated. It wasn’t just Rey being powerful and loved by her found family and Kylo. It was that the movies showed the reality of men like Kylo. They destroyed the male fantasy Darth Vader created. They aren’t super cool, powerful badasses. They’re extremely sad, broken, temper tantrum throwing lost little boys who just want love and acceptance but have lost the ability to accept it because of the dark side (aka the patriarchy) which is the reality and that made me SOOOOO ANGRY lololololololol and this is why Joss Whedon THOUGHT making Spike into a sad pathetic mama’s boy of a poet would make the audience not like him because that DOES work on misogynistic men who enjoy the male gaze but does NOT work and only humanizes and makes Spike even more complex and lovable to the female gaze 💀💀💀💀 oh good lord

#cursed knowledge #veronica mars #btvs #buffy summers #logan echolls #spike btvs #female gaze #fuck the male gaze bro it’s so gross 😭 #meta #anti angel #anti bangel #anti biley #anti riley finn #this is the root of why we love bad boys in most media #but of course they try and frame it as women being broken and wrong #men are truly so pathetic and gross #fuck you rob thomas #fuck joss whedon #ben solo #reylo #rey skywalker #kylo ren

[broken-glass-puppet]

Ok so can i request Cod men being down bad for The dilf male reader? I'm sure they all got daddy issues so- it's can be a full fic or just a headcanon I'm ok with anything

We all in this account have daddy issues, any ways (it's a bit SPICY soooooo)

Captain price

He's DOWN BAD like us

He's polite and a gentleman but seeing you with your kids/taking care of kids just makes his heart melt, he loves seeing you being like a father figure to children

You are taller than him and that TURNS HIM ON A LOT, look, my man is a pillow princess and no I don't care what everyone says, HE IS

will flirt with you just so hear you chuckle with that deep sexy voice of yours, call him "sweetheart" "babe" "big guy" and he is in love

Imagine if price flirted and you are just like "oh yeah? Wanna say that again big boy?" Getting really close to him

Simon 'ghost' Riley

At first he doesn't admit he is attracted to you BUT god damn you look good in a plain white t-shirt with shorts doing breakfast

If you are in the military he will stare at your butt, thighs and chest plus you are older than him and that is attractive to him

If you aren't in the military, you two probably meet at a cafe or pub, and when he discovers you have or take care of children he thinks it's adorable

His childhood was SHIT, so seeing you worrying about those kids, his heart started to feel warm

Hug him, press your chest against his face while you stroke his head while whispering "good boy Simon" or praise in general

Jhon 'soap' McTavish

Puppy, a total puppy

He's energetic but also serious and smart, and not many people give him credit by that so, after a mission you went and ruffled his hair and slid your hand to the back of his neck "good job out there McTavish, keep being a good boy ey?" You smiled softly

He falled right there, he nodded giving you puppy eyes

One time in particular he was like putting his harness in his thighs and he was having problem so you grabbed his waist and helped him "stay still" you finished and brushed his sides and smiled "good boy Jhonny"

PRAISE KINK

everytime you touch him, he melts

Gaz

He likes looking at you, he thinks your age your height and size is attractive, he is a big guy fan

In one of the missions he has a injured leg and you carried him to the HQ in BRIDE STYLE IN FRONT OF EVERYONE

And when you are patching his wounds and he whimpers from the pain "shhh you are doing so good gaz, such a good boy" and he almost fainted

He loves playing with your hands, they are bigger than his own and they are rough but gentle at the same time and he LOVES IT

He's in his middles 30's so you are older than him and he is so turned on when he sees you doing traditional dad things, you in an apron? Bedroom, you wearing a suit? Bedroom, you in a swimsuit? Y'all know what I mean

Alejandro Vargas

He thinks of you as a friend, even as a brother from another mother but when he sees you in your uniform, he had to control himself to not grabb your pecs and take you there in front of everyone

When he wants your attention will grab your belt and pull you closer, smirking at your flustered face

Once you too started, fooling around, he will grab your body, arm, waist, ass, pecs, everything

Once he sees you playing with kids or animals he almost grabbed you to take things to the couch wink wink

He's shorter than you and when he wants to look at you he grabs your collar and pulse your face closer

Rudy (MY MAN <3)

Flustered, blushed even

He likes you for you, your height, size and age its a plus but one things he loves even more than your personality is

Your arms

You are like a giant teddy bear, when no one is looking he will pull you for a hug, excuse it's he had a rough time in a mission

Nah

He wants to feel your GIANT ARMS AROUND HIM

You would break him like a twig and he will be thankful

"here's the reports for you [redacted]" You smiled and patted his head "thank you Rudy, you are so good" and he is so flustered

Thank y'all for the cod requests

Fell free to send more :D

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[storiesbyrhi]

Siouxsie and the Soulmates

Eddie Munson x Witch!Reader More Eddie fics here

12,968 words

Warnings: Drug use; reference to canon-typical violence; canon-typical trauma; extensive discussion and depiction of scars; no beta

Synopsis: When you roll into Forest Hills Trailer Park, a white cat and daisy lines following you, Eddie Munson is just a little bit obsessed. A soulmate story featuring Eddie back from the Upside Down, a lot of witchy magic, and even more soft love.

Includes the ‘soulmate find what the other has lost’ trope. Post S4, but canon-divergent: Eddie survived, the gang stopped Vecna and saved the day; everything is ‘normal’ in Hawkins.

Author's Note: If you read the sneak peek, some of that section has changed so don’t skip it. Includes Eddie has all the gnarly scars, including facial scarring, for reference click here and here. We love a girl who tries to be mysterious but falls head over heels for Eddie Spaghetti.

There was something really… freaky… about the newest resident of Forest Hills Trailer Park. Eddie Munson was absolutely convinced she was a wizard, witch, whatever. He had no tangible proof. But the circumstantial evidence, your honour, was overwhelming.

Firstly, your small, black VW Bug appeared silently overnight, pulling a small trailer home in what seemed like an impossible feat of automobile engineering. You set up next to the Mayfield’s home, cordoning off your rectangular plot with a black plastic picket fence hammered into the ground. It was short, reaching only your knees, but it laid claim to the land in a way that kept unwanted guests away from the garden.

Secondly, that garden. The trailer sat at the back of the plot, with green grass surrounding it that hadn’t existed before you arrived. Pots of plants framed the land, their flowers and fruit spilling out as if they had been growing in their positions for months. Bees and butterflies had come to Forest Hills, making home in your established greenery.

Thirdly, nobody had seen you. Sometimes the black Bug was there. Sometimes it wasn’t. A few long-term residents of the park had taken it upon themselves to step over the pickets and knock on the trailer door. They received no answer, although the lights inside were on.

Eddie would watch your place as soon as he rolled in, driving his van slowly. He’d sneak looks through the blinds of his trailer and take too long to hang the laundry around the back, close to where he could eavesdrop on the locals gossiping about the mystery of it all.

…

It was near the witching hour, 3:00 am, when Eddie shot up in bed one night, drenched in sweat. The scratching in his nightmare transitioned into real life and he looked around for the source of the sound. Small, frantic scratching. Unfamiliar, persistent scratching.

He followed the noise outside his bedroom and to the door that led to a makeshift deck. He’d only begun to crack it open when a snow white cat darted through, her scratching replaced with happy meows.

“Hi there,” Eddie said to the cat, squatting down and holding a hand out for the creature to smell. The cat rubbed her face on his hand, welcoming any and all pats. “Where’d you come from, huh?”

The cat wore a red glittery collar holding a small tag printed with her name. Siouxsie seemed to be a big Eddie fan; the feeling was mutual. The pair was so engaged in their purring and patting that Eddie didn’t notice you arrive.

“Jesus!” he screamed when he clocked you out the corner of his eyes. He fell backward, spilling through the open bathroom door behind him.

Startled, Siouxsie went running outside. You watched her leap from the deck and cross the gravel road, disappearing under your trailer. Turning back to Eddie, you waited for him to get to his feet. He wore blue and white checked cotton boxer shorts and nothing else.

“What were you doing with my cat?” you asked him, only briefly making eye contact before letting your gaze travel to his sketchy tattoos and D.I.Y. pick necklace. The scars… You couldn’t begin to guess what had caused them, but that was the thing: you usually wouldn’t have to guess at all.

“Uh… She woke me up. Tried to break in,” he answered, his voice cracking with sleep and nerves. And, oh fuck, was he nervous. “Guess she’s a… cat burglar?”

Eddie looked at you, the way that lights from the park backlit you like an angel. You were in a black dress that fell around your feet. The hem was ratty from where it dragged behind you wherever you went. Bracelets and rings and necklaces adorned your body, and your nails were painted Barbie pink.

“She woke you?”

“Yeah… The scratching…” Eddie went to explain, but couldn’t describe how the sound was in his head, then was real. Your expression filled him with dismay; had he said something wrong? It was the joke. He shouldn’t have made the joke. The joke was bad.

He stood still and silent, watching you look him up and down. Suddenly aware of his near nakedness, he blushed hard and felt weird. Nobody had seen his scars like that.

“You just moved here,” he said, needing the quiet to be filled. You cocked your head to the side, taking his sentence as a statement and not a question. He knew the answer. “I’m Eddie,” he introduced, holding a hand out. He looked down at his arm, confused as to why he was being so formal, operating on autopilot.

Eddie watched your hand take his, gently shake and not let go. You said your name, followed by, “Siouxsie likes you. Put a bowl of salt next to your bed to stop the nightmares.”

You were gone then. In the morning, he couldn’t remember watching you walk back to your trailer.

Jesus fucking Christ. You were definitely a witch. And he was obsessed.

…

“What d’ya mean she’s a witch?” Wayne Munson replied, sighing at his nephew’s manic bouncing-off-the-walls energy. He’d just woken up and was getting ready for his night shift at the plant, but Eddie had been waiting all day to talk to him.

“Like, she knows shit she shouldn’t. She can probably see through Siouxsie or something-”

“Who’s Siouxsie?”

“Her cat. She woke me up trying to break in,” Eddie said. “And you should see what she looks like. She’s way too fucking pretty to be here. Like, Arwen pretty,”

“Let me get this straight. A pretty girl has a cat, so she’s a witch?” Wayne asked, picking up his keys. “Thought you didn’t judge a book by its cover?”

“You’re not even listening,” Eddie grumbled. “How’d she get all those plants to grow that fast? Seriously! Look.”

Eddie took his uncle by the shoulders and led him to the door, opening it. Wayne looked across the park’s road at your trailer.

“Ed, buddy, they’re in planters. Planters can be moved. Think maybe you need to cut back on the dope? Less time with your head in the clouds?” Wayne was poking fun, knowing exactly how to annoy Eddie.

Consider Eddie annoyed.

“She’s a witch,”

“Guess you better go ask her to marry you then, huh? Make an honest man out of you. Don’t forget to take the trash out. It’s Thursday. See ya later, bud,” Wayne called, leaving the trailer and making his way to his truck.

Eddie winced at how loud their conversation was. He was sure you could hear everything. As he watched Wayne drive away, he took the chance to steal a look at your trailer.

Siouxsie was sitting in one of the garden beds, looking back at him. Instinctively, Eddie began to wave, before he caught himself. Slapping his hand to his face, he quickly retreated back into his trailer before anyone saw him waving to a goddamn cat and added that to the qualities that made him a certified freak.

…

On Sunday, Eddie found a necklace that didn’t belong to him sitting on his bedside table. He woke up, squinting in the too-early morning light, and reached for his watch. He felt the cool metal before he saw it. As if it had given him an electric shock, his hand jerked back from it and he sat up.

Bedside lamp on, he looked at it. The silver chain, the crescent moon. There was no doubt that it belonged to you. He’d seen it hanging from your neck Thursday morning.

Were you in his room? While he slept? He would have heard you, surely. There would be some other trace of you. The clothes and books scattered around hadn’t been displaced. It was like the necklace had just appeared.

However the fuck it got there, Eddie Munson wasn’t about to waste the opportunity. He pulled on the cleanest clothes he could find and headed out the door.

As soon as he stepped over the black plastic pickets, he felt it. A sudden drop in temperature. A quietness. The air smelt honeysuckle sweet and it felt just a touch harder to breathe, like how it does when the humidity rises.

The grass was cool under Eddie’s bare feet; as he knocked on your door, he wriggled his toes and smiled to himself. You might not answer, he thought. You hadn’t to anyone else. It would be okay if you didn’t. The feeling of the grass was a good enough experience to justify the trip.

Eddie was a split second away from turning around and leaving when you opened the door.

“Did you find my necklace?” you asked, expression open and inquisitive.

Was that what you slept in? Silk and lace, all light and flowy but tight around your curvy belly and thighs. Your hair was messy, bed hair, and when you punctuated your sentence with a yawn, Eddie’s entire body began to shake. It took all his willpower to keep fucking still.

“What?”

“My necklace. I’ve lost it. Did you find it?”

The necklace was burning a hole through his pocket, not immediately observable.

“How did you know?”

You smiled kindly, still overtly amused at his confusion though. When you held your hand out, Eddie had no choice but to give it up.

“Where was it?”

How was he meant to tell you that without sounding insane? While he hesitated, tried to come up with a lie, he felt Siouxsie curl around his legs. He looked down and beamed at her.

“Hi,” Eddie greeted the cat, crouching and holding his hand out to her like he had before. She bypassed the outreached hand to come closer, rub herself against his legs.

“Was it in your bedroom?” you asked.

How did you know that? Eddie wanted to ask if you’d been in his room. Somehow, he knew you hadn’t been. At least, not in the physical form human being sense. Could you astral project? Instead of asking anything, Eddie continued to pat the cat. 

“Did the salt work?”

Eddie felt relief. That was an easier question and answer. “Could be a coincidence,” he replied, standing up and looking at you.

“Do you think it is?”

He was shaking his head because focusing on you again meant words were… hard… to… make.

You looked him up and down. “Mmm,” you agreed. “You could test it. Go without it. If you’re a sceptic.”

He wasn’t. Eddie really wasn’t. He didn’t know why he said what he said. He was freaking out.

“Thanks for bringing this back,” you said, and like Siouxsie knew it was a farewell, she jumped up and disappeared inside your trailer.

Eddie stood for a second at your closed door, confused and even more obsessed.

…

Eddie hadn’t seen you all week. He had, however, begun a page in his D&D journal dedicated to documenting occurrences he felt were out of the ordinary and therefore, had something to do with you.

He liked to imagine himself confidently knocking on your door, where you would invite him in. He’d present his evidence and draw his conclusion. You would smile, confess, kiss him and-

Stop, he thought.

But how could he go about his days as if nothing was different? A line of daisies had appeared, mapping a route from his door to your black picket fence. The moon was brighter, shining into his bedroom even when he covered the windows in heavy canvas Corroded Coffin banners. And every single cup of instant coffee or cheap tea tasted sweet before any sugar could be swirled through.

When Eddie woke again at 3:00 am Thursday morning, he thought maybe you’d cast a spell on him. The bowl of salt had rid his sleep of nightmares, but the dreams he was having were just as vivid and just as likely to make him sticky with sweat.

Eddie rolled out of bed and made his way to the kitchen. Two glasses of tap water later, he was standing still, listening.

Scratching. Scratching. A soft meow.

Siouxsie was back at the deck door. Eddie checked for you as he let the cat in. The park was quiet, the night warm, and an uneasy feeling settled in Eddie’s stomach.

“What brings you here?” he asked the cat, watching as she walked circles around the trailer, returning to him and meowing. She went into his room, jumped on the bed, and sniffed the sheets.

Before Siouxsie could settle into a little loaf of white bread, Eddie scooped her up. “Nah, man. You can’t stay here. Let’s get you home.”

When Eddie arrived at your door, his heart was racing. There were no lights on inside and the thought of waking you made him want to die just a little bit. He looked at his armful of cat and started to chew his lip.

“Fuuuuuck,” he said under his breath.

Eddie curled an arm around Siouxsie securely, then knocked on your door. No response. A second knock, louder. He waited, listened to the silence of the park. The abject silence.

Eddie couldn’t hear anything. No buzzing of generators. No trees in the breeze. No mosquitos or birds or people or anything at all. It was as if all the noise in the world had been sucked into a vacuum.

He was going to panic. Red lightening and It doesn’t hurt me, Do you wanna feel how it feels? Razor sharp teeth and empty lungs. Had Eddie been dumb? Had he tumbled into your garden, not seeing a monster in disguise? Maybe you were like Eleven though. You could be good, right? So good.

Jesus fucking Christ, he thought. At least he could hear his thoughts. His internal monologue. And the sound of… bells?

Eddie moved, his body naturally turning to face the noise.

It wasn’t bells. It was the bracelets on your wrist gently clinking against each other as you stepped over the pickets.

“Hi,” you greeted, your voice restoring the rest of the trailer park soundscape. The feeling in Eddie’s stomach was gone and everything seemed normal again. He could almost cry with relief.

“Hi,” he breathed out.

“She woke you again?”

“No… I was awake already,” he assured you, not wanting you to feel guilty.

You approached Eddie, stood in front of him and held your hands out for your cat. When you took Siouxsie, you hugged her close then looked back at Eddie.

In your short life, you had seen a lot. There had been beautiful people before, but none that made you feel the way Eddie did. You knew nothing about him, only spoken a handful of words, and yet, he made you want to scratch at his door like Siouxsie. Of course, you’d never. And judging by the Bambi-eyed expression on his face, you really wouldn’t have to.

“You have beautiful eyes,” you complimented Eddie.

He was taken aback, his mind cycling through the million and one things he thought were beautiful about you.

“And I’m sorry,” you continued. “I’ll talk to her. She’s just worried about you,”

“The cat? Is worried about me?”

“Yeah. She probably has the wrong Thursday though. She’s never been good at keeping track of the days.”

Eddie stared at you in absolute awe. Either you were a witch or you were a couple Crayola’s short of the rainbow. Both versions of you excited him.

“Does that mean there’s gonna be a Thursday where something bad happens?” he asked.

“Maybe. Maybe it’s already happened,” you answered with a shrug.

Eddie was processing, trying to work out if you were just taking the piss. He watched you step around him and open the trailer door. Siouxsie jumped from your arms and padded off to bed. You turned around and looked at Eddie again, smiled softly at him.

“Have you lost anything?”

“What?”

“Have you lost anything?” you repeated.

Eddie shook his head, his eyebrows pulled together in confusion. “Like you lost your necklace?” he asked, to which you nodded. “No. But… There’s these flowers growing…” His sentence trailed off when he realised he was now the one sounding unhinged.

You made a humming sound of approval. “I saw. Almost like a little fairy highway from your door to mine.”

God, there had to be something more than just obsessed because Eddie was dying.

“That’s… weird,” he told you, smiling wide.

“Anything else… weird?” you asked him.

He was sure you knew. Maybe it was a test. Maybe you wanted to know what he noticed. “Coffee tastes sweet. Moon’s brighter. I found a dime bag I didn’t know I had… but I don’t think that one was you,”

“It wasn’t,” you confirmed.

Did that mean the other things were you?

Eddie’s smile was full of wonder and warmth.

“If she comes to you again, she can stay the night, if you want her to,” you said then, turning to step up into your trailer. Before he could stop himself, Eddie was stepping after you. “Goodnight, Eddie.” Hanging from the doorframe, you leaned down to press a light kiss to his forehead.

Eddie’s mouth was too dry to make words come from it and too soon you had closed the door, leaving him alone in the wake of your leave.

…

Saturday morning was cold, frost threatening to burn the tips of leaves and fingers alike. When you woke alone, you realised Siouxsie had spent her second night with Eddie, leaving you no company but your thoughts.

You were young, still learning to master your thoughts. It was why you were in Hawkins, a town built on a pattern of fault lines and far enough away from everything you knew. Somewhere to learn independence, and maybe figure out exactly who you wanted to be. It had history, which meant the promise of earth magic and plenty of energy to work with.

All of that was made easy with Siouxsie at your side, and you already missed her comforting purr and shiny eyes. Maybe you shouldn’t have offered up your only friend to Eddie so easily. For a moment, you thought she had heard your lament, the unmistakable sound of her crying at the trailer door becoming louder.

Putting down your marmalade toast and tea brewed from hand rolled balls of fresh leaves, you opened the door. The cat rubbed her face against your bare legs, then moved across the green grass as if she was going to leave again.

“That all I get?” you asked her, looking up to see where she was trotting off to, lament unheeded.

Eddie was under the hood of his van, switching between kicking at it and mumbling to himself. You watched Siouxsie make a great leap from ground to van rooftop, where she sat staring at you.

Help him, she was saying. He lets me have all the blanket.

Eddie didn’t hear you approach; it was only when he took an exasperated step backwards, growling in frustration, that he saw you standing next to the van. You’d thrown a huge, forest green knitted jumper on. The sleeves were too long and the hem came to your knees. It warmed all of you, even with the cold and wet stones beneath your feet.

Eddie’s expression softened when he saw you. “Hi,” he said, his voice in stark contrast to how it was moments ago.

“Are you okay?” you asked, forgoing a greeting.

“Ah… Yeah. No. Yeah, I am, I mean. My van though… When it’s this cold it has trouble starting. Starter motor, I guess?” He looked back into the engine with no idea what he was doing. Wayne wasn’t home from his night shift, so Eddie had to fix it or else call in sick to work.

After last year, Eddie wasn’t sure what he was going to do. At some point he’d need to study and test for his HSC. Not, yet though. He wasn’t ready.

He didn’t have Hellfire to occupy his time and the other members of Corroded Coffin were still haunting the halls of Hawkins High. He knew he wasn’t really the mindless manual labour type, even Wayne calling him too pretty for it, so he went for what he knew – music.

Eddie was persistent in his approach to getting a job at the only decent record store in the town. He wrote a letter to the owner, demonstrating his musical knowledge and appreciation. He showed up day after day, talking to customers like he already worked there. He promised he’d never arrive at work high and he’d always be on time.

The cold snap causing the oil in his van’s engine to become thicker, therefore, was a fucking disaster. Increased friction. Starter motor working harder, or not working at all, Eddie was running out of options and looking distressed.

“You don’t got a spell that can just like, fix this, do you?” Eddie asked you, half joking and half hoping you really would.

“A spell?” you replied, raising an eyebrow and smirking at his audacity.

“Yeah, fuck, never mind.” Eddie felt dumb. Embarrassed, even.

“I have a car though. If you need a ride,” you offered, glancing up at Siouxsie. She climbed down the front windscreen, jumping from the van and heading back across the road to home, satisfied with your intervention.

“Yes! Holy shit, yes. Thank you!” Eddie exclaimed, jumping on the spot then hugging you. “Fuck. Sorry,” he quickly said, pulling away from you like you burned. He must have seen the confusion on your face. “I, uh, normally ask. Girls. Before I, you know… Touch… them…” Embarrassed, definitely.

“I guess that’s a good policy,” you said to him, shrugging. “I’ll get my keys.”

He had followed you across the road and stood patiently at the passenger door of your black Bug while you retrieved the keys. Eddie noted that you elected to not put on shoes or pants. You noted that he was slightly too tall to look comfortable in your car.

“Where to?” you asked him as you reversed out of your spot and headed for the park’s exit.

“Hawkins Records. It’s Downtown, I can give you directions,” Eddie replied. “You’re saving my ass here. I owe you big time.”

The ride was short, Eddie knew, but an opportunity nonetheless. Since his stunning revelation that after last year, he probably shouldn’t purposefully get involved in more supernatural shit (even if the supernatural shit was a super pretty probably-witch), he had decided to gather more intel. Make an informed decision about if you were dangerous or connected to the Upside Down.

“So, ah, why Hawkins? Surely plenty of other cooler places you could’ve moved to?” he asked, trying his best at sounding casual.

“Have you heard of scrying?” you replied, glancing over at him. Eddie shook his head. “Hold a crystal over a map, let it swing, and it will land of a place of significance.”

Eddie thought for a second. “I really can’t tell if you’re fucking with me,”

“I know you can’t. Next question,” you said, smirking. As if you wouldn’t be able to sense the interrogation begin.

“Do you know anyone here?”

“I know you,”

“Do you know about… all the shit that’s happened here?” Eddie asked.

“I know what the papers say. I know there are still people that think you’re… bad. And, I know, this town is steeped in trauma. I can feel it. It radiates off everything and everyone.”

Eddie was plunged into his memories; it felt like an ice bath.

“Do you want to ask me anything else?” you asked, turning the heat up in the car.

Eddie’s eyes were glassy as he watched you turn the dial. “How did your necklace get in my room?”

“I truly don’t know how that works,” you answered honestly.

“But you didn’t seem… surprised,” Eddie said.

“No. I mean… I can feel it. Can you?”

Could Eddie feel what? Was there some cosmic energy he couldn’t sense? A shift in fate’s plan? Or, was he just meant to be feeling the swelling obsession he was nurturing for you? Could you feel that? Did you know what was in his mind and heart?

“Did you make the flowers grow?”

“No.”

Eddie was dismayed by that. “But… they’re… because of you, or something?” He was getting desperate for any proof. He needed you to admit to something.

“Maybe, Eddie, what you see in me, you’re seeing all around you now too,” you said, although you could see he wasn’t placated by your words. A small sigh, and you offered, “If it makes you feel… comforted… Then, yes. It’s me.”

It didn’t comfort him. But your car smelt like pine needles and there was a peacock feather hanging from your rear view mirror. Your cat slept soundly at his feet during the night. You were in his dreams.

“You don’t have more questions,” you stated. “My turn then?”

Eddie’s face lit up with curiosity.

“How personal can I get?” you asked.

“I’m an open book, baby,” Eddie replied, his charm defence back on.

“You weren’t… here… when you got those scars, were you?”

The question threw him entirely. It wasn’t that it was about the scars; he had predicted that it would be one of the first things you wanted to know about him. It was the implication of your question.

You clocked his breathing hitch and a heaviness settle in his shoulders.

“You almost died,” you, again, stated rather than asked.

Eddie nodded. “Yeah. Last year.” He laughed then, not joyful but somewhat entertained by what he was about to say. “On a Thursday,”

“Hmm. She’s a very perceptive cat,” you told him. Eddie would have to come back to that one later. “Where were you?”

“How do you know I wasn’t here,”

“I would say something like ‘oh, you won’t believe me,’ but I think you would,” you started. “I can… read you. Anyone. Anybody. Literally, bodies. Your freckles and scars. Anything with a history on this mortal plane. But I can’t read your scars. Not those ones.”

He didn’t know what you meant, not with any certainty. His mind was ticking over at a million miles an hour while he tried to fill in the blanks, come up with explanations he could make himself understand. Maybe you really were like the superhero girl Eleven. Or maybe like the smallest Byers, touched by something and unable to ever shake clean of it. Or maybe he didn’t know anything about witches.

“They called it the Upside Down,” Eddie said, his voice shaky but measured. “It was like the normal world but… bad. It was… decomposing while alive. Had monsters. It was evil,”

“I have a lot of questions, Eddie,” you told him softly. “But not today.”

He looked over at you and almost imploded at your softness. Your knitted jumper and bare legs, unshaved and dotted with strawberry spots. Your specific brand of weirdness, and how it felt like kindness to be around.

“Can I ask you one more?” he ventured. “Are you jealous that Siouxsie loves me so much?”

You laughed, explained that she was prone to short bursts of heavy affection and that she would return to where she truly found safe haven. Eddie looked through your car mixed tapes, then you bid him a farewell as you approached Hawkins Records.

“Do you need me to pick you up after school?” you teased through your open window.

He flipped you the bird and you pretended to catch it like it was a kiss. He grinned.

…

It wasn’t until the sound of plastic to metal startled you, that you realised something was different. You were a few grams heavier than you were the night before. Bold of you, you thought to fate, taking Eddie’s pick from around your neck and holding the chain in your hand.

You weren’t so dumb as to call Eddie to you, but to that necklace… that could be done with minimal magical risk. Sitting at your alter, you centred yourself before creating a circle.

In front of you, true north, you placed a white candle as the gatekeeper. Clockwise, a bowl of salt to keep the nasties at bay, then a rhodozite to cleanse and magnify energy. To your left, a bunch of daisies freshly picked and a small jar of dirt in which one earthworm lived as it always had and always would, never growing, never aging, simply being.

Saying your prayers, you put Eddie’s necklace in the small silver bowl on your alter, followed by a bay leaf on which you wrote his name. Calling him to his lost thing, you lit a small red spell candle, letting it burn quickly. After lighting the bay leaf and watching it go up in flames and turn to ash, you breathed out and closed the circle.

Across town, as he put a display for the new INXS album up, Eddie suddenly brought his hand to his chest, feeling for the necklace he never took off. It was gone. Inside him though, was a strong sensation that he was being pulled. Back home to the trailer park. No. Not home. To you.

All day, Eddie was distracted. He barely bothered to even try and talk customers out of buying George Michael and into buying, “Fuck, man, even The Smiths are better than this.” As soon as his van had been put into park, he was crossing the road and banging on your door.

Inside, you had just begun cooking cranberry and dark chocolate muffins in anticipation of his arrival. When you opened the door, Eddie looked feral, breathless.

“Do you have it?” he asked, pupils dilated.

Leaning down, you put his necklace over his head and watched him hold the pick between his fingers. The mania subsided and he felt normal again.

“Would you like to come in?”

He nodded and followed you into the trailer you called home.

“Holy shit, this is like… What the fuck? This is some sort of… magic, right?” Eddie said, almost spinning on the spot as he tried to calculate how much square footage the trailer should have.

“What do you mean?” you asked playing dumb.

“It shouldn’t be this big in here.” He was looking around… it felt like the inside of your small trailer, the very one that your Bug pulled along, was as big as his own free standing one.

It opened into a small kitchen that was comparable to his, and a living space. Maybe it was the fact that instead of a couch and coffee table, you had a beanbag, a large cushion collection, and a table that looked like its legs got cut off about a foot from the top. Or maybe it was witchcraft.

Eddie invited himself to go through a door that led to your bedroom, again, comparable to his own in size. Through another door was a small bathroom. When he wandered back out, the confusion set deep on his face, you laughed.

“Surely, you’ve seen stranger things, Eddie Munson of Hawkins, Indiana?”

“I mean… Yeah, but… Fuck, I don’t know.” He sat himself down on the beanbag, his long legs folded in front of him. “You’re really a witch, huh?”

“You floated that idea by anyone?” you asked him, leaning with your back to the kitchen bench.

“I live with my uncle,” Eddie said, pointing outside and across the road to his home. “Said I was judging a book by its cover,”

“Are you?”

“No. I’m judging you by all the weird shit that’s happening. This,” and he pointed to the trailer below him. “This is a big one. Fuckin’ Mary Poppins trailer.”

You laughed at the analogy; it was good. Accurate.

“How does it make you feel?” you asked then, watching him carefully.

Eddie felt like he was on fire whenever you looked at him like that. He was scared you could see into his soul. Of course, you couldn’t, but there wasn’t a single thing about watching Eddie that wasn’t fun.

“Honestly?” he said, paused mostly to begin to stitch together a sentence rather than to hear your reply. “Like I could be doing something dumb,”

“Because I could be… from the Upside Down?” you asked.

He nodded slowly. “Yeah, but you’re not. That’s gone. Or, at least, the door got closed. Nailed shut. I hope. Doesn’t matter. You’re not from there,”

“I’m not, no. I have never heard of something like it before either,” you told him. He believed you, implicitly. “I don’t want anything from you, Eddie.”

Someone always did. His teachers wanted him to be more productive. His friends wanted him to be their larger-than-life Dungeon Master. His uncle wanted him to be the best he could be, which wasn’t a bad thing but came with its own set of expectations and let downs. Fuck, even his enemies still wanted him to show up outside their parties so they could buy from him.

“Except, maybe, your company,” you added, smiling at him and turning back to the batter you were stirring.

Eddie was blushing and therefore grateful you had turned away. He ran his hand through his hair, then looked around. Sitting under a window that framed his own trailer perfectly, was a record player and your beloved collection.

Eddie crawled over to them and sat cross legged, flicking through the stack, making little snorting and huffing sounds.

“You got something to say to me?” you asked, not turning around.

“Nope. No comments from me.”

Whitney Houston. The Cure. Fleetwood Mac. Depeche Mode. Prince. David Bowie. The Clash. Joan Jett & The Blackhearts. Alice Cooper. The Damned. Patti Smith. Bauhaus. Tom Waits. The Birthday Party. Brian Eno. And of course, Siouxsie and the Banshees.

“You gonna call me cliché, because people in glass houses, Eddie,” you told him, pointing the wooden spoon in your hand at him.

“No… A few surprises. But there is… a lot of black eyeliner in this collection. That’s all I’m saying. A lot of cats in the dark and then she is the darkness kind of thing,” he joked.

“You getting enough oxygen, all the way up there on your high horse?”

Eddie laughed, settling on Joan Jett. He’d always loved the cover of Crimson and Clover. He stood and came to see what you were doing. He ran his finger along the top of the mixing bowl, scooping up some of the batter and tasting it.

“Spicy,” he reviewed.

“Good spicy?”

“Yep. Like… Christmas spices. What’s it for?”

“Muffins,” you answered, handing him the wooden spoon to lick as you used a smaller one to divide the batter evenly into the muffin tray. “For you and your uncle.”

Eddie was quiet as he sucked on the spoon. Then, “Are we meant to bring you somethin’, like a housewarming gift?”

“I don’t know. Are you?” you asked, looking up at him.

He grinned then quickly leaned in and kissed your cheek. “Welcome to the neighbourhood.”

…

Stronger together, you knew how it went. Find a coven. Sisterhood (not cisterhood). Community. All that empowering jazz. At least without one, you had nobody to torment and tease you about how utterly infatuated with Eddie you were.

You could hear the ghosts of covens past. A boy? A mortal metalhead boy had you that ruffled. But, yeah. Yes, he fucking did. Maybe it was that he followed you like a lost puppy while you went hunting for special leaves and sticks. Maybe it was that he now brought over any vaguely interesting rock to ask if it was a crystal. Maybe it was that he was so easy to be around.

Eddie let you put thin braids in his hair and read his palm. He’d gotten all serious about it until you told him it wasn’t actually a specialty of yours. However, you could tell him the basics. The waves in his head line meant he was a progressive thinker. A life line with a clear arc told a story of a vibrant and energetic personality. His heart line was deep and curved.

“It means you invest in relationships. All or nothing. And that you express emotions willingly,” you’d told him, tracing the valleys of his palm. “See how your sun line is close to your fate line? That’s a strange one. It means that your public image is controlled by external forces. Things out of your control,”

“You mean like how the entire town seriously thought I was a cult leader that murdered teenagers in the name of Satan?”

“Yep. That’s it,”

“And it says that? On my hand?”

“I mean, if you believe it, yes,” you answered, never pushing him to feel or think anything other than what was coming naturally to him.

He studied his palm, looked at the lines you’d read. “But this isn’t your thing?”

“No. Not my area of expertise,”

“What is?” he asked.

“I gotta keep you coming over. Don’t want to ruin the mystique by telling you everything,” you said with a casual shrug and a smirk Eddie loved.

He held his hands out to you, you took them and let him thread your fingers through his.

“I’m not here for the mystique,”

“Anymore,” you clarified.

“Right. Anymore,” he agreed.

“Then, why are you here?”

It was an obvious question. Self-serving. You just wanted him to say it. However, as smitten as Eddie was with you, he was still a troublemaker. Someone who would not go quietly into the night, so to speak.

“The baked goods and Siouxsie,” Eddie said.

You pouted and pulled the saddest ever face. Eddie laughed, then yanked you by your hands towards him. He tipped backward, pulling you on top of him. Between the cushions and blankets, it was a soft landing. You let it happen, curling up to him and laying your head on his chest, listening to his steady heartbeat.

“I’m here for you,” Eddie whispered, resting one hand on your back and the other running soft lines through your hair.

You moved, putting your chin on his chest so you could look up at his face. “I’m here for you too.”

…

If you had been asked to place a bet on how long it would take Eddie Munson to kiss you, you would have gone home in debt. It had been a month since you had moved to Hawkins. A month of lost things and mushroom picking and late night reading. Still, Eddie hadn’t braved more than a kiss on the cheek.

There had been afternoons where you fell asleep spooned together on his bed and mornings where he’d woken too early, made his way over to your place to brew tea and cook pancakes. Still, no kiss.

Eddie was sometimes like a caged animal, sometimes like a lost pet. His moods and outlook on the world shifted often and wildly. It was hard to know exactly what was going on in his head, but you were sure he wanted you. Through all his trauma, he was a lover at heart.

The universe spoke to you as well. She said the same thing. One afternoon you took a cat nap on your bed, woke up feeling spaced out, dreamy, to Eddie staring at you.

“What? What’s wrong?” you mumbled, rubbing your eyes.

“How… How did you…” but he couldn’t form words. You looked around. You were in Eddie’s room, on his bed. “There’s no way… You didn’t have time…”

He’d walked into his room to collect the dirty dishes, got to the door to leave, stopped as he remembered the stash of water glasses on the other side of the bed, turned back around and you were there. Asleep on his bed. Appeared out of thin air.

For a moment, you just stared at each other.

“Is this real?” Eddie asked, putting his collection of dishes down and kneeling on the bed. You sat up and met his hug. “You feel real,”

“I’m real,” you reassured him.

“You don’t know what’s happened,” he stated, sensing that this wasn’t one of your secret little witchy things you did.

You shook your head and racked your brain for an explanation.

From the kitchen, Wayne yelled, “You forgot what you’re doing in there or what?”

“I’ll be right back,” Eddie said, picking up the dishes and taking them to where Wayne was waiting by the kitchen sink.

As soon as Eddie took his eyes off you, you blinked back to your own bed. It was instant. Painless. So fast that you took a second to realise you’d moved again.

Eddie ran back to his room to find it empty. He left through the door near his bedroom, Siouxsie’s entrance of choice, and walked to yours. You were already opening the door as he approached.

“Did you-” you went to ask.

“Yeah. You were just in my room. What the hell was that?”

No book nor muse could give you answers. There was only one place to turn. You dropped Eddie at work, then found a pay phone on a quiet street. Although you didn’t know if it was entirely possible, you didn’t want them to be able to use the line to find you.

“The universe is restoring things once broken,” the oldest witch you knew said.

“That doesn’t make sense. How does putting me in some boy’s bed restore something broken?”

“Edward. And he’s not some boy to you,”

“Jesus. How do you- Whatever. Am I meant to do anything? Is it going to happen again? Can I stop it?” you asked, not getting stuck on how she knew Eddie.

“Stop it?” she laughed. “Of course it could only be you that asks to stop the universe.”

You said nothing, slightly ashamed that you, even for a moment, thought you knew better than the universe.

“Listen to her. Use your gift. You know what it means.”

She hung up.

You banged your head on the glass door and groaned. Goddamn witches, you thought, everything’s gotta be so goddamn mysterious.

…

It didn’t happen again. Both you and Eddie waited for it, but nothing. When a week went by, you decided it was a one-off kind of thing.

“Maybe it means you should spend more time with me,” Eddie said from the beanbag in your trailer.

Looking up from where you were journaling, spread out on the cushions of your living room, you gave Eddie a look that so clearly said ‘we are together all the time.’ He chuckled and rolled onto the floor to be next to you.

“Your grimoire,” he said, poking the journal.

“Not everything I do is all magic and moonlight, Eddie. Just a normal journal.”

He made a small ‘hmm’ sound and picked up one of the black pens you were using. He positioned himself next to your free arm and began to draw bats to match his. You were going out of your mind; you had never been the type of girl to let anyone mark you in any way, shape, or form. But it was Eddie.

When you closed your journal with a definite snap, Eddie jumped a little. He dropped the pen.

“No. Keep going. I like it,” you told him, handing him a thicker sharpie to work with.

You laid on your back and let Eddie draw all up your arm. Eyes closed, it felt good. Soft. Intimate. When you could tell he was going back over the same lines, you opened your eyes for explanation.

“It will look dumb if you’re entirely covered,” he offered in a hushed tone.

There was a solution to every problem; you took a pen and marked the line on your thigh where your skirt’s hem sat. Then, you bunched the skirt up around your waist, revealing a lot of skin for Eddie to work with.

There was a simple pleasure in watching Eddie try not to look at your underwear but fail miserably. He could contain the grin on his face and you laughed at him.

“Draw me something,” you asked.

He blinked at you a few times, then did the only thing he could think of. In clear letters, at the top of your thigh, he wrote his name and circled it in a heart. He beamed up at you and you reached out to pat his hair.

“Good boy,” you praised, then wriggled down into the cushions and blankets. “More.”

Eddie wasn’t what the world would consider a sublime artist, but he knew his way around a dragon. His sketches were fantasy in nature, and they translated onto your skin remarkably well. As he covered you, he hummed happily, and you continued to play with his hair.

When Eddie ran out of space, he sat up and watched you wake from the totally blissed out altered state you were in.

“Hi,” Eddie whispered, waiting for you to inspect his work.

“I like them,” you told him. “Shame they’ll wash off,”

“I will do this anytime you want. Just say the word, I am here.”

You smiled, felt your skin flush red and your body react to being so close to him. You were all tingles and hot spots. And Eddie, well he was doing his best to angle himself in a way that would hide his own body’s reaction to your bare thighs and underwear. Keep your shit together, Munson, he yelled at himself from inside his skull. Now or never.

“Can I kiss you?”

“Yes. Please,” you replied, the whininess in your voice obvious to both of you.

Eddie grinned ear to ear, then leaned in and kissed you like it was something he did all day every day. His arm wrapped around you, pulling you into his lap. His hands began to roam, touching his drawings on your legs and the softness of your waist.

You wanted to touch him, hold him like he was holding you, but his scars were deep and he was covered in them. The singular time you’d spoken to him about them was when you’d given him a ride to work, all those mornings ago.

“Eddie,” you said his name into his mouth. He nodded but didn’t break the kiss. “Can I…” You gently placed your hand on his face, over where the scars began. It was those ones – on both cheeks and his left jawline– that made him most self-conscious.

Eddie’s grip on you stayed tight, but his gaze lowered and he licked his lips nervously. You waited for him to speak, not settling for anything less than explicit and voluntary consent.

“I want to tell you about it,” he said. He looked at you with an open expression. You kissed him again, deep and heavy.

“Tell me about it.”

…

Sleep between warm flannel sheets and velvet blankets. Holding cups of hot cocoa. Being kissed, gently, softly, all over. These were the things you wanted for Eddie.

He was a wonder before you knew about 1986. Knowing that he survived quite literal horrors, bitten and bleeding. On the cusp of death then expected to live knowing how it felt to be eaten alive. You wanted to worship at his feet for the rest of your life.

You were a firm believer that all trauma and pain were relative. What could seem like just a bad day to some, could send others to therapy. Yet, you were in awe of how kind and happy Eddie was. Even before the creatures in the Upside Down, the ostracising and villainising, the abandonment and the loneliness… Eddie could be half the person he was and you’d still think he was a miracle.

“You have magic in you,” you told Eddie.

Wrapped up in the softness of your bed, he was happy; it was his happy place. The light filtered in and broke against crystals, prisms of rainbow beams shooting across the space. It always smelled of muffins or incense or sage. Siouxsie was always thrilled to see him and you’d let him add a few vinyls to the stack.

“Magic, huh?”

“Yep,”

“Nah… That’s just like, your love, but in me,” he replied.

“Nope. You have a special brand of magic. It’s earth magic. I can feel it,”

“Can I do anything with this special earth magic?”

You thought on it, watched Eddie stretch and stopped yourself from cooing ‘oh big stretch’ at him like you did with Siouxsie.

“Well, I hear that boys with long hair and earth magic can ask people like me for almost anything, and they just say yes,”

“Oh really?” Eddie laughed. “What if I ask for… a kiss?”

“Your wish is my command,” you replied, wriggling closer to him and kissing him lazily.

“And here,” he said, pointing to the tip of his nose. You giggled and did what he said. “And here.” The top point of his right cheekbone.

It was the hesitation then that made you aware of what he wanted to ask for. The words got caught on their way out, stuck on a branch of self-consciousness.

“Maybe, here?” you asked, then planting a feather-light kiss on his right cheek, over the scar. Eddie nodded before your lips left his skin. “And here?” A kiss to his left cheek, where the scars ran deeper. His breathing hitched, but you could tell by the way he was pulling you closer that he was fine. More than fine.

“I’m gonna say it just one more time. And here?” you said, leaving a trail of open-mouthed kisses down his neck, over the bites.

Eddie’s final wall came down and you traced every line of his body. When the weight of letting you in, letting love touch the part of himself he hated, he cried. He tried his best to wipe the tears away quickly, but nothing got by you unnoticed.

A joke for him, to lighten the mood. You gasped, covered your mouth in faux shock. “Not the nipple!” you said in whispered outrage.

Eddie laughed and the joyful sound broke the tension. It all evaporated into the air, along with any hang-ups he was harbouring about his body, and about if making it out of the Upside Down was worth it at all.

When he had told you about what it was like there and how the scars were formed, he also told you about the pain. Not the pain in the moment, but in the healing.

Some doctors said it was like his skin had been poisoned; it rejected grafts and began to heal twisted, regardless of how perfectly the stitches were placed. Other doctors were more superstitious. They’d seen some fucked up things come through the emergency room doors. They said Eddie had been cursed. There was no medical explanation for why the scarring seemed to get worse the more they tried to heal them. There was no scientific reason for Eddie’s body to refuse medicine and food.  

“They still hurt you,” you stated, focussed on his arms, kissing the insides of his elbows.

Eddie nodded after a split second of confusion. “You never told me what you meant,” he said. “About how you can… read? Is that what you said? You can read scars?”

Since you met Eddie, your conversations had been peppered with information about each other. Things that warranted immediate interrogation. Things that probably did, but you each let slide. Then things of major interest you made notes to return to. You had wondered how long it would take Eddie to ask you about it.

“It’s my specialty. Some of us palm read. Some can conjure elements. Talk to the other side. See the future. Endless possibility,” you started. Eddie was listening intently. “Me. I got a bit of a weird one. Only useful in very specific contexts, but you know how it is,”

“No. I really don’t,” Eddie replied with a small laugh. He waited for you to continue.

“So, this freckle here,” you said pointing to the spot on his wrist that was darker than the others. “I can see you. You’re… four, maybe five? It’s summer. You’re walking home eating a popsicle. This freckle got darker that summer.”

Eddie brought his wrist closer, studied it.

“And that teeny tiny scar under your eye. As white and thin as one of Siouxsie’s whiskers. Guitar string snapped when you were seventeen. Sliced right across your face.”

Eddie’s mouth curved into a smile. “You can do that with anything?”

“Anything that…” It was hard to explain. “Changes your body in an unnatural way. Tattoos included,”

“Don’t judge me,” he quickly said.

“Sketchy home jobs. At least you made sure the needle was sanitised,”

“Mmmm. High pain tolerance and I’m smart. Total catch,” Eddie joked.

“You are, actually,” you told him, not letting him linger in self-deprecation. “And if I am being totally honest with you, Eddie Munson, I would like to formally catch you, if I may,”

“Formally?” he repeated, smiling widely and opening his arms in an invitation.

You climbed on top of him, straddling his lap. “Eddie. I love you. I like who I am around you… I tried to be all ‘mysterious witch rolls into town,’ ‘ohhhh leave her alone,’ but, I don’t know. I didn’t see you coming. But now you’re here. Under me. Around me all the time. And I don’t want you to go. I love you. I’m in love with you.”

Eddie was breathless, submerged in a sea of your devotion. But he couldn’t fucking help himself. “So, you admit you’re a witch?”

You huffed dramatically and rolled off him, pushing him away playfully.

“I’m sorry!” he yelled. “Come back! I love you too!”

Too late. You were up, off the bed. Eddie ran after you, chasing you until he had you pinned down on top of the piles of pillows in the living space. He tickled until you were begging him to stop, then he kissed you like it was the single reason he refused to die. Maybe it was.

…

“So, you’re saying if I smoked that, it would kill me?”

“Eddie…” you warned.

“I’m serious. Look at all this. We could make a lot of cash if we’re smart about this.”

You pushed him away from your kitchen bench. “Go back over to your fucking rollies and let me work,”

“So serious!” he teased, walking to the cushion thrown he’d built and plonking down.

You were dividing herbs, crystals, and other conduits into small hessian fabric bags. Some were for you, some were gifts, and some were for sale. Eddie, also involved in the distribution of earth magic, was rolling joints ready to sell to first timers. It was second nature to him, something he could do blindfolded, so while he worked, he watched you.

“Can you tell me everything is for?” he asked, making eye contact while his tongue ran along the edge of a paper.

“Well… this is one is for Lucy,” you said, holding up one of your small parcels. “There is angelica herb for the baby’s colic, and valerian to help Lucy sleep. But everything has a twofold purpose. The medicinal and the magical. Angelica helps to protect the home, and valerian is good for romantic energy,”

“Lucy as in, my boss’ wife?”

“Yep. I have a long list of Hawkins clients. Not all of them would own up to it… Like… Mrs Miles has requested fire agate.”

You took the crystal over for Eddie to inspect. “What’s it for? Help her be less of a bitch?”

“It would take a whole lot more than agate for that. This is a positive stone. It helps manifest safety and security and that kind of thing. Depending on how you use it, it can help you be a little braver, and help reflect harm. But that isn’t what she’s using it for,”

“Oh?” Eddie quipped with a grin. “Do tell,”

“She didn’t tell me everything, but she did say it was for her husband. And this is a crystal that we use to fight cravings. Addictions. Less than healthy desires,”

“Oh shit. What do you reckon he’s into?”

“Probably something boring, like the bottle. I don’t know. I do hope it helps though,” you reply.

“Do they deserve your help?” Eddie asked sincerely.

“She’s not the nicest person I’ve met, but who I am to gatekeep magic? It’s bigger than me, you know? I… serve… it? In a way? I don’t know how to explain it.”

You went on to tell Eddie about moonstone and black obsidian, mistletoe and borage leaf.

“And I can’t smoke any of it,”

“Not any of this, no. I mean, you could try, but I think most would either do nothing or do harm. However…” You stood on tippy toes and pulled a jar off the top shelf.

Eddie was at your side quickly, taking the jar and shaking it. “This kind of looks like dope. What is it?”

“Mugwort,”

“That sounds super fucking witchy,” he said with a laugh.

“It’s smokable, but is pretty bitter. Some people say it tastes kind of floral but I don’t get that. It doesn’t give you a high while you’re awake, but it makes your dream suuuuper trippy,”

“People buy it?”

“Yeah,” you confirmed. “To help lucid dream, mostly.”

Sometimes, you worried that Eddie would get bored if you rambled on about the history of herbs and magic. You didn’t know, but sometimes he worried you would get bored if he rambled on about D&D and Metallica. The truth was not somewhere in the middle, but at the absolute extreme end of it being impossible to bore each other at all.

Eddie was listening, watching, waiting for you to continue.

“The Aztecs made it into incense, because they believed it to be sacred. Native Americans use it for purification. Ancient cultures from everywhere used it to ward off evil spirits. People like me believe it’s connected to lunar energy, which is very strong,”

“The moon?” Eddie asked with genuine curiosity.

“Yeah. Lunar energy is about cycles, things that repeat. We can’t be static; we need to move through life’s cycles, you know?”

He nodded despite not entirely understanding. “Soooooo, can I-”

“No. Maybe if your nightmares stop you can try some,”

“I don’t have the nightmares when I sleep with you,” Eddie argued.

“I know. But I won’t be able to live with the guilt if it fucks you up. So, it’s a hard no.”

Eddie accepted your ruling, shook the jar again and handed it back.

“Tell me more,” he said, once again becoming side tracked from his task by you and your magic.

…

It happened again. While you watched Eddie, who had not gone to sleep in your bed but was beside you when you woke, you thought about it.

The universe is restoring things once broken. Use your gift.

The universe had taken great effort in moving you to Eddie, all those weeks ago. Whatever you’d done between then and now, she wasn’t satisfied. She had moved Eddie to you. A clear message that there was something to be done for him.

He’s not broken, you said to yourself. But he was in pain. Maybe if your medium was scars and bodies, you could do more than just read them.

Eddie’s eyes began to flutter open, focus on you.

Maybe there was something you could do for him. It would take planning. Planning that he could not be privy to; you wouldn’t give him hope where there may be none.

“The fuck?” he mumbled, sleepiness slurring his words.

“Feels weird, doesn’t it?”

Eddie sat up and realised what had happened. He looked to you for an answer, but you had none, so all you could offer was a shrug.

“Alright… Well. Hi,” he grinned, moving over to kiss you.

“Hi,” you said into his mouth. “I think, if I take my eyes off you, you’ll go back,” you told him. “That’s what happened with me, right?”

Eddie nodded. “Guess we just have to stay in bed, staring at each other forever,”

“You’ve got to open the store. That’s why you slept at yours last night. Didn’t want to wake me early.”

The smile faded from his face and was replaced with a silly pout. “Fuck. Yeah. First time opening. Huge promotion, you know? Lots of responsibility,” he joked.

All you had to do was raise an eyebrow and Eddie knew what you were thinking. No more self-deprecation. It was good that he liked working at Hawkins Records. It was good the boss was teaching him how to open and close, how to balance the books and bank the cash. It wasn’t to be laughed at or be considered small.

“I love you,” he said then.

“I love you too. I’m gonna let you go now,”

“Fuck, does this hurt?”

“No, baby. If it did, I wouldn’t let it happen to you.”

Before he could reply, you leaned in and kissed him, then rolled over in bed, feeling the weight of his body disappear in an instant, leaving you alone in your trailer once again.

…

The trust in Eddie’s eyes was deep, unwavering. He was laid out in front of you, flat on the floor of your trailer. You’d made him as comfortable as possible. A faux fur blanket was beneath him and Siouxsie was cuddled into his side. Still, being stark naked in the middle of a pentagram of candles was a scary thing.

“Would you be more or less anxious if I, like, talk through this? You could just close your eyes and let your mind wander, or-”

“No. Talk me through it,” Eddie replied.

“Okay. Well, first we need to create our circle.”

Like you had countless times before, a gatekeeper white candle at true north, salt bowl, rhodozite, fresh flowers, and an immortal earthworm. Eddie found a spot on the ceiling to focus on and tried to slow his heart rate.

“You ready? I’m going to cover your scars with this,” you explained, holding up a jar of the homemade concoction. “It has a careful balance of four pain relievers – wormwood, yarrow, St Johns’ Wort, and willow bark. The plants all came from specific places and were grown at specific times. Then, we have chickweed, comfrey, and meadowsweet for healing,”

“It will make the scars go?” Eddie asked. You hadn’t told him what exactly you were doing, just that you wanted to try something.

“No. That would take a different kind of magic, one I don’t have. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with how you look, Eddie. I don’t want to change you. I just want to take your pain away. And I can.”

He nodded, went back to staring at the ceiling and patting Siouxsie.

“The plants were dried, then ground up. They’ve been steeping in chamomile oil for exactly thirty-three days,”

“You’ve been planning this for a while, huh?”

“Yep. This is… kind of the culmination of all my talents. An extension of them, maybe… Anyway. The oil is stabilised with some beeswax,”

“Then you put it all over me,”

“Yep. How’s it feel?” you asked.

“Uh, weird. Cold and warm? And… surprised I don’t have a raging hard on.”

You laughed. “It’s the circle. There’s intention here, and it’s not a sexual one,”

“Huh… I just don’t want you to get offended. Any other situation in which you were putting this gooey shit all over me with this much… attention, I would be creaming my jeans.”

Again, you laughed, shaking your hair and trying to pull yourself back into the right mindset. “Eddie, shut up. I need to focus,”

“Sorry, sorry. Go ahead.”

Eddie remained quiet while you wrapped his arms and legs in red twine. You had him sit up so you could wrap his torso and neck. When panic briefly flashed across his face, you kissed him.

“I’ve got you,” you whispered, continuing the twine up around his head so his cheeks, mouth and nose were covered. You checked he could breathe then laid him back down. “You need to stay still, as much as you can, for thirty-three minutes. I know it’s uncomfortable, but I promise this is gonna work.”

You placed a small black onyx over Eddie’s heart, for protection. Jade in his left hand and smoky quartz in his right. Lastly, gently sitting on his forehead, the master healer – brandberg amethyst.

It was the most still for the longest time Eddie could remember being. He thought it was going to take all his willpower, but it didn’t. Something was happening that he couldn’t describe. He felt awake and alert but far away and light. So light. Like he was floating. It felt as though his body was deep into a dish of edibles, but his mind was calm and on mum-friend duty. It was good.

When he felt the weight of the crystals lift, he opened his eyes. He watched you carefully put them into a bowl of salt water. Next to it was another bowl, one that held the smallest, cutest bonfire.

You began to pull the twine from his legs, feeding it into the fire slowly. When Eddie’s body was free, you extinguished the flames and poured the still-hot ashes into a small glass vial.

Lastly, you used a muslin cloth to wipe the potion from his skin, then closed the circle.

“Alright. You can shower now, and I’ll go bury this,” you told him, picking up the vial.

Eddie remained placid as he nodded and disappeared into your bathroom. Siouxsie took it upon herself to follow him and keep watch until both she and you knew the spell had worked and Eddie was safe.

When you came back in from the cold night, Eddie was sitting on the edge of your bed in pyjama pants. His scars had remained, but were perhaps a lighter shade of pink. They didn’t scream in angry red.

“How do you feel?” you asked him, coming to stand between his legs.

Eddie took hold of your hips and looked up at you. A tear slipped down his face, followed quickly by more. It was only once it was gone that Eddie realised how much pain there had been.

“I… I can’t… feel them. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t hurt anymore,” he cried, wrapping his arms around your waist and pulling himself into your belly, hiding his face against your warm body.

…

In numerology, four is a figure of stability, security, and dependability. So, when Eddie finally asked to have his tarot read, you calculated the days since you first met him. It had been four-hundred and forty-four days, a bit over a year, since you had found Siouxsie in the company of Eddie.

Of course, you thought.

Eddie had jumped at the chance to have you read his palm. Nearly weekly, he’d bring his empty mug to you so you could decipher the tea leaves. But his cards? It had been a hard no.

“Can I ask why?” you had said softly.

Eddie shrugged. “Feels like… everything is good right now. I don’t want anything to fuck it up. If I know too much about what’s coming, might do something stupid.”

It was simple logic and you respected his boundary. Sometimes, if the tea leaves said too much, you’d not speak of it all to Eddie.

Months later, when he asked for you to shuffle your deck, you asked him what had changed. Once again, he shrugged.

“Woke up feeling good?” he offered. You were sure it was the number four and the placement of the moon, but just nodded and retrieved the cards from the special place you kept them.

While you were in your bedroom, Eddie lit a joint and gave Siouxsie a little treat. He put Van Morrison’s Moondance record on; it was not his usual thing but it always made you happy, and Crazy Love fed the butterflies in his stomach.

You and Eddie sat opposite each other on the cushions in your living space. Over the sawed-off coffee table, you laid a deep purple silk cloth. When you asked if he wanted a simple three-card spread, or something more complex, he said he was all in.

Swapping the cards for the joint, you let Eddie shuffle while you inhaled deeply.

“We can stop at any time,” you reminded him as he put the deck on the table.

Eddie nodded and waited for further instruction.

“Okay, you’re going to shuffle them again, but this time I want you to think about something. It might be a general question you have or something you wanna know more about. It doesn’t have to be super specific, but try to focus in on a theme.”

He picked up the cards and did what you said. There was something about the image of Eddie sitting cross-legged surrounded by cushions, joint hanging from between his lips, shuffling tarot cards that made you feel a little bit feral with love. You needed to focus though; if he was ever going to let you do this again you needed to channel your energy into reading his.

Once Eddie placed the deck on the table, you pushed it along, spreading them in a line.

“You’re going to pick your cards now. Hold your hand out flat, like this, and see if you can feel anything. The right card might feel warm or like static. It’s okay if they don’t though. The first one is going to represent your preconceived ideas about the theme.”

Eddie held back a smirk as he moved his hand along the line of cards like you’d shown him. He felt a little bit silly, but he was a believer regardless. He knew your magic was real.

“This one,” he said, pushing a card out of the line. You moved it away from the rest.

“Again. This card will represent the present.”

He repeated the process for the unexpected, the near future, and the distant future. Once the five cards were drawn, you put the remaining deck aside. Eddie’s chosen cards were neatly arranged side by side on the table.

“You can turn your first card over.”

The Chariot.

“He looks cool,” Eddie commented.

“He is. This card is about having direction, control, and willpower. It would suggest, whatever it is your thinking about, that you have a sense of real, practical determination about it,” you said, watching Eddie for that flicker of recognition people got when the cards resonated with them.

“Can I tell you the thing?” he asked, to which you nodded. “Been thinking a bit about work. I think they’re gonna open up that second store I told you about. Their kid is nearly one. I don’t what they’re thinking about managers and who’s gonna run the record store, but…”

“But it could be you?” you finished for Eddie, because he felt like saying it out loud might jinx it.

“Yeah,”

“I think it could be too. And, this card is saying that you’ve been working hard and, you know, moving forward. The moons on his armour represent what is coming to be. It has a connection to the Divine will. So, it’s a good headspace to be in,”

“Okay. Yeah, cool. Next one?” Eddie asked. He was getting into it.

As soon as he saw the card, Eddie groaned.

“No! It’s not bad! The Death card is good. Metamorphosis. If we apply it to your theme, then you’re right. There is change happening at work, and it will bring new beginnings,” you told him. He raised his eyebrows. “Come on, Eddie. You know better than anyone that there’s more to dark imagery than like, actual death and doom,”

“Alright. I’ll trust you on that one,”

“Good; trust me. Next one is the unexpected… The Tower,” you read, then began to hum.

“What? Is this one bad? It’s upside down,”

“It is. That changes the meaning. See, the upright Tower means disaster. The lightning and fire, the people jumping or falling. It’s not normally a good omen, but yours is reversed. That symbolises disaster avoided, or just delayed.”

You were speaking slower and more considered, and Eddie clocked it immediately. “Just tell me,”

“Well, no, it’s just… if this is your unexpected thing, it means there probably will be something you have to overcome. The Tower is falling, and you can’t stop it, but seeing it reversed means that you’ll cope and survive and probably be better for it,”

“Right,” Eddie replied, thinking.

You weren’t entirely sure what it meant for Eddie’s future, but that’s the nature of the cards. It was certainly the nature of the unexpected position in the five-card spread.

“So next is the future?” Eddie said, then flipped the card.

“Yep,” you said, then laughed as The Fool was revealed.

“Great. So, I get a burning tower and now I’m a fucking clown?”

“This is a good card, Eddie! I promise. The Fool has a free spirit. He is taking his first steps out into the world. He’s happy and excited,”

“He sounds dumb,” Eddie said deadpan.

“A little. Innocent, definitely. See the cliff? He needs to be maybe just a little bit more aware of his surroundings, but he’ll have help. The dog is his warning sign,”

“We have a cat,”

“Firstly, we? Do we? Secondly, it could be a metaphor. It just means, take to the road light-hearted but heed the warning signs,”

“Alright. I can do that. Last one,”

“That was your near future. This is more long term.”

You held your breath as Eddie turned the card over. If it were up to you, Eddie’s future would be filled with comfort and ease, triumph and beauty. Alas, it wasn’t up to you, it was up to the universe. While you trusted her, she had dealt Eddie a pretty shit hand.

When The World sat face up on the table, you breathed out happily and wiped your eyes, unaware they had started to well with tears.

Eddie looked up at you. “Baby?” he asked concerned.

You sniffed back the tears and smiled at him. “It’s good. Really good. And it makes sense for today, too.”

Eddie grinned, picked up the card and studied it. “There’s a lot going on,”

“Yeah, um,” you started, composing yourself. “The World. Okay. At the heart of her is balance, in all things. But, not at the expense of progress. The World is eternal evolution in movement. And, uh,” you paused, giving Eddie a chance to reign you in if he wanted.

Eddie saw the sparkle in your eyes, the excitement and the innate need to just talk.

“Tell me everything,” he reassured you.

“Well, like, today, you know what today is? We’ve known each other for four-hundred and forty-four days, right, and see here, in the corners. These four guys, they represent Scorpio, Leo, Aquarius and Taurus, from the zodiac, and they in turn can represent so much, like the four corners of the universe, the four elements and seasons, and the four suits of Tarot, four compass points…”

“Everything is coming up fours, huh?”

You were beaming. “Yeah, and if you wanna get all hippie about it, if you pull The World it means there is wholeness in your future, Eddie. Like, alignment of you and everything around you. A sense that you’re connected to something bigger.”

Eddie laughed. “These are some big feelings to have about a job,”

“Maybe. But maybe that stability brings, you know, something more? Fulfillment and achievement. And, maybe the cards have branched away from just your main theme. They have waited a long time to tell you their story, so maybe they’re just peppering in other things too?”

“Ah, I see. So your cards are as tricky as you? Love a bit of mystery?”

“They do. I do,” you replied, looking back down at the table. “This is a really good reading, Eddie. How do you feel, ‘cause I feel… I’m so happy for you,”

“I feel like this is promising me a lot but if I have learnt anything in the past four million four thousand four hundred forty-four point four four days is that I can trust you, my little witch,” Eddie replied, smiling fondly and reaching across the table to boop you on the nose.

“I love you,”

“I love you too. You make me… so fucking happy,” Eddie said, his voice equal parts soft with love and rough with lust.

For a moment, a timeless moment, you and Eddie watched each other. The air was hazy with incense and smelt like choc chip cookies. Siouxsie had departed, off to chase leaves and make friends with mice, leaving the two of you alone.

You crawled around the table and sat in Eddie’s lap. Quickly, immediately, his hands were holding you, travelling under your shirt and up around your back. You buried your head in his neck, kissing over what used to be pain but now was perfect neutrality. His hair curled around your fingers and as you pulled, Eddie felt his scalp tingle and his entire body scream that it needed to be closer to you, closer than it was, closer than humanly possible.

The kissing was desperate, messy, unprecise. As you pulled away, Eddie brought a hand to your mouth to wipe away spit before it escaped. You sucked in his finger, holding it between your front teeth and not letting go. He grinned, all manic and beautiful.

“I need you… in like, so many ways,” he whispered.

“You’ve got me. In every single way, Eddie. Always.”

Lavender and lemon balm. Fairy circles and magic mushrooms. Serpentine and Australian opal. The Sun and the Moon and the stars and everything under and beyond them. Infinitely, Eddie and his sketchy tattoos and pick necklace and his scars. You were obsessed.

End Notes: I poured my soul into this one and it means a lot. I’m usually chill about reblogs but I would really appreciate your support and feedback for this one.

Find me on AO3 here. My Eddie Munson zine is now on sale here.

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Taglist of cool people that wanted to read this even before it was finished: @apolixyan @rgbsona @pink-hufflepuff @hocuspocuscrocus @nightless @httpsunflowers @draguta @moon1ightdreams @dreamlandcreations @veiellis @blackwood-asylum @lunarielevesque @pistachoz @munsonsmel0dy @fic-for-readers @wtvbabes

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