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powderblueblood · 4 months

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HELLFIRE & ICE — eddie munson x f!oc as enemies to star-crossed lovers

CHAPTER NINE — EDDIE the OBVIOUS and the LADY SPHINX

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summary: a tense dinner at rick lipton's place reveals some part of al munson's reason for returning to hawkins. your saturday morning detention is tense, and you and eddie both get more than you bargained for when you crash hellfire club to profile them for the school newspaper. content warnings: MINORS DNI AS ALWAYS warnings for smut, cunnilingus, dick-fondling, p in v, reference to drug usage, slight perv!eddie, silly teenagers having silly teenage fights that actually aren't so silly (kinda antagonistic ronance version!), reference to childhood physical abuse, al munson jumpscare, lacy's dad jumpscare, both lacy's real first name and surname is used in this chapter. no description of body type. just descriptions of a good time eye emoji eye emoji word count: 16.4k

Dear Lord,

Grant me the serenity to accept the shit I cannot change, the courage to change the shit I can, and the wisdom to seize a damn fine opportunity when I see one.

Amen.

When Al Munson cooks a spaghetti dinner, you know he means business.

Once a line cook with aspirations higher than diner fumes, always a line cook with aspirations higher than diner fumes.

He learned to cook on the grill, but perfected it in the joint. During one of his stints, a homecoming tour of the state of Kentucky, he fell in with this web of wiseguys who made him stagiaire in their makeshift kitchen, slicing ghostly slivers of garlic with a razorblade.

Al’s insisted on the method ever since. Even now, hunkered over in Rick Lipton’s kitchen, preparing a meal for which Eddie’s already lost his appetite.

Eddie had already given up on the whole there are a bunch of knives right there suggestion, knowing his father loves few things like he loves performing his whole Kiss the Cook bit. He plays it to the hilt, an exercise in tart, rich, floral smarm that beats out the complex flavoring of his tomato gravy by a country fucking mile. Down to that bullshit Serenity Prayer.

“Courage to change the shit you can? Man, you can barely change your underwear!” Rick heartily chuckles, heaping pasta onto his plate. The way the noodles slide against each other, thick and glistening like worms full of nefarious promise, makes Eddie want to ralph.

He hadn’t had much of an appetite for anything since he’d visited the nurse’s office.

He felt weird. Strung out. Guilty. And angry. Guilty like, what got into me, why’d I do that and angry like, why’d I leave you just standing there like that, and why’d you let me.

“C’mon, kid, you look famished,” Al pulls that anger-inducing Cheshire Cat face, placing a solely ornamental leaf of basil on top of the dish Rick passes. This fucking asshole. These fucking assholes. In cahoots together. “Wayne’s Hungry Man dinners ain’t hittin’ the way they used to, huh?”

Al’s smile doesn’t slice through the tension of the room nearly as clean as he wants it to. Eddie feels Wayne stiffen at his right elbow, sees Rick divert his eyes from across the table.

“Well, Dad,” Eddie says, forcibly stabbing and winding his fork through the spaghetti, “You know what coulda solved that?”

“What’s that, huh?”

“You staying out of lockup for longer than the duration of an MC5 song.”

Al doesn’t falter. Eddie bets he could open-palm slap him and that shiteater of a grin wouldn’t slide from his face.

“I’m here now, ain’t I?” his father clicks his tongue, digging right into his own dish, “You really gotta learn to live in the moment, kid.”

Eddie’s spaghetti-filled mouth starts to form around the indignant words, I’m not a kid! but Al beats him to the punch. Quite literally.

“Though, judgin’ by those scuffs on your knuckles, looks like you did somethin’ without thinkin’ it the whole way through first. Huh?” Al slurps his pasta noisily, and Eddie feels Wayne tense even more, if that’s possible. “Who’s the lucky guy?”

The sense memory of silver flashes colliding with Billy Hargrove’s face in the parking lot, the sense memory of you and your vicelike grip trying to pull him off before he killed him. The sense memory of bile blowing through his veins, stumbling upon those lowlifes talk to you like that. Rage blackout. Yadda yadda.

According to rumor, Hargrove was lucky that Eddie didn’t cave his entire cheek in. He still couldn’t totally see out of his right eye, the swelling was that gathered and insistent.

Eddie lets the question droop in the air, before eventually mumbling, “S’nothing. Just– shit at school.”

Wayne had been the first one to ask him, obviously, catching sight of his bandaged hand when he came upon Eddie staring a hole into–you guessed it–yet another Murder, She Wrote rerun, following your encounter on the examination table.

Eddie had given it the brush off so Wayne had given it the brush off. He was no stranger to his nephew bearing busted knuckles, even if it did make the old man’s blood chill every time he saw it. Those interactions always reeked of you poor kid, like Eddie was the perpetual victim. Got under Eddie’s skin a little.

But Al asks him like he knows something. And Rick won’t look at Eddie.

“This wouldn’t have anything to do with your lovely new neighbor, would it?” Other shoe, meet short, hard drop.

Eddie’s grip tightens around his fork, and in the back of his mind, he summons the spirit of the sharpest tongue he knows.

“Who?” He’s this close to prank calling people using his Lacy impression, that’s how good it’s gotten.

Al cradles his cheek against his palm. His eyes, the eyes that might as well have been scooped out and shoved into Eddie’s skull, they’re such iris perfect replicas, search his son for cracks in his composure. Al stabs, stabs, stabs aimlessly into his dinner.

“You’re a lot of things, Eddie Munson,” he says, “but you ain’t dumb.”

“Truly do not know what you’re yakkin’ about. Can I eat?”

“Come on, Eddie boy! You out there getting into scuffles over that little gold-plated piece’ah something?”

“Can I eat?”

“A little forbidden flame, maybe, two’ah you?”

“Can I eat?”

“Can’t say I blame ya. If I were… twenty years younger.... Or maybe she likes ‘em a little more mature. Think I got a shot?” Al’s teeth are starting to grit, spittle starting to fly. Frenzied in the way he’s trying to eek a reaction out of his kid. “Huh? Eddie?”

Al’s lecherous suggestion of you toed the line of too much for the Munson men, it seems. Eddie and Wayne’s voices overlap.

“Maybe we leave that girl out of this, Al–” “–can I eat, or what?”

SLAM! Al’s fist comes into direct contact with the hardwood of Rick’s dining room table, plates and cutlery and glasses clattering nervously. Rick jumps a little, groaning under his breath. Wayne drags a hand over his eyes.

“You can answer the goddamn question! Shit!”

Eddie, for his part, should probably feel a little scared, his dad raring up on him like that. Instead, he just lets his wound-up fork sag in a pile of spaghetti and leans back in his seat. The thing with Al Munson is this– his bark has always been way bigger than his bite. Especially when he’s as coked up as he is right now.

Ever since he’d roared into Rick’s driveway in that eyesore of a muscle car (alright, it was a little cool– but in, like, a lame Dukes of Hazzard kinda way), Al had been operating in sharp angles and backed-up nostrils.

Shit, Eddie would be shocked if there wasn’t residue on that razor blade he used to slice the garlic. That stupid, reckless, peacocking-as-a-father motherfucker.

He folds his arms, waiting for Al’s tone to pitch on down, for the tremor in his hand to act up, for him to say–

“Sorry. Sorry,” pressed through a line of grit teeth, “I just… Hmm.” It’s like Al is actively trying to plaster the mask of his charming grin back on his face but it keeps slipping out of his fingers. “She’s a real dime. Smart as hell too, huh? Shame about–”

“Al, what’re you gettin’ at with all this?” Wayne asks, and thank god he does. Eddie doesn’t know how much more dancing around the subject he can take, but he won’t be the one to bend first. “What did you bring us up here for? And don’t–” the eldest of all Munson holds a hand up, “--say you just wanted to get together. I don’t buy it. Eddie sure doesn’t buy it. And if Lipton here buys it, he’s a fool.”

Al shrinks, a snot-nosed kid under the magnifying glass his big brother holds to him. “Wayne–”

“You bring us up here to make us part of that goddamn stupid high school feud with that girl’s father? You really spin out that far?”

It’s not often that Wayne speaks up, but when he does, boy. Can that man dress a situation down.

Al falters. Wayne has that ability to knock him out at the knees, and Eddie makes a mental note to ask him how he does that.

“Listen. Alright. It’s not– alright,” Al clenches his hands in fists, a flex in and a flex out. A gesture Eddie notices, because he does it too. As if he’s trying to grasp the last threads of trust from them. “With that girl’s old man permanently benched so to speak, there’s an opportunity for another batter to step up. Okay? Jail sentences get doled out like Halloween candy–who knows that better than me, right?--but life goes on. There is… an opportunity here. Work still needs to get done. Work that I could’ve– that I can do.”

Eddie knows that his dad doesn’t realize he’s saying a lot of nothing, because Al’s always saying a lot of nothing. Vague promises with no real end to them. What catches him this time around is the glint in his eye, hidden behind the drug-induced one, and the glint of a gaudy ring on his finger. A green gem stamped in the middle, like a cat’s harvested eyeball. Huh.

“... let me make good on this, boys. For once. Let me take care of y’all.” Al huffs a faux-humble breath, glancing toward Rick for some kind of illustrative reassurance. “Y’know, seeing how it screwed up that little girl, seeing her big, upstanding daddy go to jail and all, I really–,” a swallow, for dramatic measure. Gunning for Best Actor here. “--felt it. Made me think, Eddie, of all the times when you were just a squirt… Made me wanna do right by you, is all.”

“How much of that doin’ right have you got up your nose, Dad?” Eddie sneers, putting two and two together. Of course this is what he’s back for; not to sell, couldn’t possibly be that simple in the convoluted world of Al Munson, but to supply. To get a suit fitted, pretend to be the big man. “Try before you buy isn’t exactly the most cost-effective policy.”

“Jesus, why, why have you got to make this so hard on me, kid?” Al is just about wringing his hands right now, scaling the apex of his desperation. “You have an in! You have the in!”

The in, of course, being Eddie’s connection to you, and by proxy, your dad. Al’s like a bloodhound that way, sniffing out the few good things that Eddie has going for him from miles off and tearing them right from his hands and acting like he’s doing Eddie a favor by making him his man on the inside.

“This whole town could be ours if you would just–”

That does it. Eddie leaps from the table, chair clattering to Rick’s warped wooden floor.

“I don’t want this whole town, are you fucking crazy?!” he yells, spittle flying, “And–and I certainly don’t want it if it’s anything to do with you!”

What the hell would make Al think that Eddie would hitch his wagon (which, granted, ain’t in too great a shape–he’s barely passing any classes, thanks to a pickup in business he guesses he can thank his dad for) to the living sunk cost fallacy that his father is? What the hell does Al Munson want with that kind of fantasy, one where he’s king bastard of the Hawkins cockwalk when he can’t even stick within county limits for more than a couple of weeks?

Well, Eddie actually has a pretty good idea, one that occurs to him like a lightning strike as Al struggles to keep his temper level. Let Eddie look like the tantrum-throwing brat.

Yeah. Exactly.

He’d wind Eddie into whatever scheme he was cooking up and ditch it, half-baked, leaving Eddie in a kitchen with all the smoke alarms going off. Elbow deep in an unsalvageable mess, because Al could never follow through on anything.

He’d have Eddie exploit your relationship for a couple of instances of, “That’s my boy.” Because Al still thought that trick worked; making him believe he’s loved, valuable, wringing every last drop of loyalty out of him because a boy needs his father… and a father needs his boy, y’know!

Fuck that.

“We should split.” It’s Wayne who says it, batting away the apologetic glance both the Munson men get from Rick– like he’s Al’s keeper or something, managing his moods. Like he isn’t raking in a cash cow from Al’s great Ray Doevski replacement theory.

“No, c’mon–” Al half-heartedly protests, like he could still save the evening but can’t really be bothered.

Wayne follows Eddie’s furious stalk out the door, tearing a cigarette from a soft pack as he hauls into the passenger side of the van.

Eddie, a tightening ball of rage, whacks the steering wheel with one good thump. He’d been stupid enough to entertain Al these past couple of days– out of confusion more than anything else. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, as it were.

“The in,” Eddie mockingly mumbles as the van roars to life and he peels out against scattering gravel.

Wayne has his cigarette pinched between his thumb and index and lets that settle for a beat or two.

“You wanna talk about it?”

Fists flexing around the wheel, Eddie knows very well he’s been caught red-handed. There’s no way Wayne had gone this long without suspecting anything, even after he’d specifically warned him. More of a suggestion, actually; Wayne knows that Eddie will do whatever he wants, regardless.

Unfortunately, he’s like his father that way.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Eddie says, a shoulder shrug, a mirthless lilt in his tone. “She…”

Again, Wayne stays silent. Waiting for Eddie to tell on himself, like he always does.

“She doesn’t deserve to be in the middle of this,” Eddie arrives at, voice a little choked. “Whatever Dad’s planning on doing–”

“Neither do you,” Wayne reminds him. This is where Wayne and his stoicism pulls Eddie up short. Neither do you, and the only way you avoid the blowback is if you two avoid each other. But at that same time, Wayne always knows where Eddie’s heart is at. Knows that his heart is too big not to follow.

Even if Wayne hasn’t seen you two together, laughing ‘til you’re stupid like the kids that you are, can’t he see…

“Why can’t this be easy?” Eddie asks, his voice small. Echoes of a littler him, one that Wayne would pick up in the truck after school. Head hanging, backpack trailing, kicking pebbles and cursing the world.

Instead, through a sage swirl of smoke, Wayne’s hard stare seems to peel back some. He’s always known where Eddie’s heart is at. Eddie’s starting to think he wishes he knew less.

—

Jesus Christ, are you ever sick of learning your lesson. Of reflecting on what you’ve done.

It’s exhausting, and more to the point, pointless, and even more than that, boring.

Truth is, you’re beginning to second-guess your adoration of brilliant thinkers. Those motherfuckers knew too much, and in the past week, you’ve found yourself yearning for the days where you got by on knowing nothing but the good stuff! The juicy gossip, where the best parties were at, what lipstick could not stand up to what nail polish! When intellectualism was a bedtime story you’d read to yourself under the fucking covers and you didn’t have to decode the labyrinth of your own stupid feelings!

Sure, you felt like a husk most of the time, but you’d take that over this graceless stumbling shit!

You should be allowed to smash the windows out of Billy Hargrove’s car and no one should be able to say boo about it! God!

Instead, however, you’ve been caught up in an as-yet-unprecedented display of seething and sulking. People are still whispering about you, natch, glancing at your belly like you would’ve if that heinous spawnous prank was played on anyone else. At the very least, they still have the good sense to flinch when you match their stare.

Billy Hargrove’s two week suspension means you don’t have to worry about seeing his ugly face, but it also comes with the two week guarantee of not seeing Eddie.

And the probable delay of your Hellfire article. Which is paramount. Obviously.

Speaking of Eddie, there’s too much speaking of Eddie to do.

You keep replaying the sneak attack from Al Munson in your head, him sliding his aviators down his nose to get a look at you.

“What are you doing here?”

“Payin’ my respects. Your father, shit. Shame what happened to him. He was– well. I was gonna say he was a ‘good man’, but that sounds kinda funny, don’t it?”

It wasn’t about Eddie, except it was about Eddie, because every stupid thing is about Eddie.

Especially the fact that you’re sitting in your college-going beau’s chariot, about to slink into Saturday detention. If it weren’t for him…

“Lacy?” a voice calls from the driver’s seat. “You alright?”

You snap to, rearranging your face into something definitive and sharp and pleasing to the eye. Because you’re fine! You’d said as much when he snuck you into the basement of his parent’s house–why wasn’t he back in school yet–and said as much when he squirmed against you, asking you if you were okay in that weighted way that really meant can I put it in yet.

You’d gotten on all fours because it allowed you to roll your eyes when he was all, oh, woah! sliding it in from the back.

You’d reached around and teased your clit to attempt a climax. Trying to imitate that clumsy rhythm from the nurse’s office. It didn’t quite stick–paled in comparison, like a Simon and Garfunkel tribute act made up of people that didn’t secretly want to fuck each other.

And then he gave you a ride this morning. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to bore yourself out of misbehavior– but you’d told him that you had newspaper business to attend to.

“I’m fine,” you brightly declare for the fourth and final time, reaching over to squeeze his shoulder. It was a weird gesture, but the shine had buffed off. He’s cute and all, but you two had gone to see Paris, Texas at the Hawk and he didn’t get it.

He didn’t get how much you clowned on him for not getting it afterwards either. You hadn’t been able to get it out of your head, the way he shrugged away from you at the diner as you ribbed him for his plodding misunderstanding of Harry Dean Stanton.

Coldly, you thought of the trade-off that you and Eddie had agreed on. Repo Man for Paris, Texas once it came out. You had to pretend you liked Repo Man a lot less than you actually did to swing that one, because Eddie wasn’t keen to lock in to some movie about a dude crying in the desert or whatever unless you angled in the fact that you owe me for making me sit through all that machismo.

“You love machismo. You wanted to nail that sweaty little punker, I saw you squeezin’ your knees together.”

“For Emilio Estevez? Please. I had my eye on the old guy. ‘Ordinary fuckin’ people, I hate ‘em’--that kind of shit really does it for me, Munson, you know that.”

“That why you’ve been entertaining the pleasure of my company for so long?”

“Down, dog.”

Anyway. Fuck.

“Listen, Lacy, I gotta tell you s–”

“Can’t right now! I’m already late and Fred is gonna have my head,” you chime, all saccharine, climbing out of the car. “Call me!” You pray that he doesn’t.

Slam. What an extraordinary waste of time.

As instructed, you make your way to the gym, which you think is a little weird. Detention usually denotes writing pointless, go-nowhere laments on how sorry you are for being such a bad kid, right? Think on your sins, yadda yadda yadda.

Typically enough, no one’s here on time. Everyone’s late. You’re perched on the bleachers like an asshole, sitting alone like an asshole. That’s the goddamn ticket, isn’t it? You’re alone in all of this. You always have been.

Like, for example. The Al Munson walk-on role into the surrealist tragi-comedy that is your fucking life. You can’t tell that to anybody. Not Eddie, naturally, not your mom, not Nancy because then you’d have to explain the continued and complicated Eddie of it all, not Ronnie because just because. And the ickiness of it hangs off your every move, and you can’t shake it, and no one can share it.

You’re beginning to wonder if that’s true of all the parts of you. The ickiness. It’s all a little heavy, isn’t it?

As if on cue, hearing ickiness called by name on the wind, Mr Kaminsky pushes open the gym’s double doors.

“Oh, what the fuck.”

“Had to see it for myself.” Your loathed History teacher says, full of glee.

“Sir, if this is some kind of elaborate courting ritual, I have to say, you’re not my type.”

“Careful up there, Doevski. There’s more detentions where this came from.”

“Freak accident. I can’t be caged.”

“Well, let me enjoy the exception to the rule!” Kaminsky claps, and you jerk at the echo.

You sigh so hard you almost unlatch something. “What elaborate torture have you got planned for me today? Want me to run laps or something? Because these shoes aren’t built for that.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Lacy,” the teacher digs, “We’re still waiting on your comrades.”

“I’m late, I’m late, I know I’m late!” a familiar voice comes skidding right up behind Kaminsky, baseball hat askew, mud stains on the knees of her overalls. “Some goddamn lunatic tried to run me and my bike off the road–”

“Ronnie?”

“Hey, Lacy!” she calls brightly and breathlessly, slamming herself down on the bleachers beside you.

“Ron, what’re you–”

An unmistakable heel-click rounds its way into the gym, and in walks Nancy Wheeler with her face all pinched like a porcelain doll. She receives your big ol’ center-piece-missing jigsaw puzzle of a look with a knowingly arched eyebrow.

“You’re late, Wheeler,” Kaminsky tries, but Nancy’s already consulting her wristwatch.

“Detention starts at nine sharp, right?” she says, impenetrable as always. “It’s 8:58.”

“Then can I have my admission of lateness struck from the record, actually?” Ronnie asks and Kaminsky shoots her a withering one, consulting his clipboard.

“Alright, we got one more. Give it the goddamn two minutes, but then I’m bumping her to suspension. You wanna count it, Wheeler?” he scoffs. Wow, so he’s like a round the clock douchebag. To everybody.

At what you only can assume is 8:59, the mismatched gangle of Robin Buckley comes slinking over the waxed floor, looking half-awake and pissed off–more pissed off, you might argue, now that she registers her company. She perches on the furthest end of the bleachers, pointedly away from the loose gaggle of you, Ronnie and Nancy.

You shoot Ronnie a look like, what’s the sitch there? Thought you two were getting all bosomy.

Ronnie just shrugs.

“Alright!” Kaminsky claps the clipboard again, “So, this is a fun group. Bunch of smart girls who got caught doing idiot stuff. We’re gonna make you pay for that today. Sound good?”

The whole bad bunch of you just stare at him, slit-eyed.

Your collective punishment, as it turns out, comes in the form of scraping old, disgusting, errant gum and other mystery sticky bullshit from the bottom of the bleachers.

“Stupid is as stupid does,” Kaminsky sagely says, handing you each a tiny chisel from the art room, “And I understand that some of you are violent offenders,” that’s a pointed look at you and Ronnie, by the way, “but please. Don’t use this opportunity to take another girl’s eye out. Your community college acceptance is riding on it.”

Motherfucker. Everyone knows Ronnie Ecker is in the running for valedictorian.

He leaves the four of you to your own devices, promising to check up on you all in a solid forty-five.

“How many times you think he can beat off in forty-five minutes?” Ronnie immediately asks as the teacher disappears through the door.

“Depends. Is he doing it in the shameful privacy of his three-door rust bucket or the clandestine confines of the AV room?” you question.

Nancy makes a gagging sound but adds, “And is he using his imagination or Ms Kelley’s yearbook picture?”

Nasty Wheeler! That girl has truly endeared herself to you.

Robin, however, doesn’t weigh in at all. She just sort of glares and angles herself onto the nearest bleacher rung to start scraping the age-old mastication from the wood. Tension in the air.

“Buckley’s got the right idea,” you say, twirling the chisel in your fingers, “Sooner we get started, sooner we get the grossness over with…”

Ronnie sticks close by you, which is nice. You always like having her in proximity. Nancy, who’s nothing but work ethic in everything she does, starts furiously working on a corner a little ways away from you both– and Robin.

It doesn’t take long, maybe fifteen minutes of silent, resigned scraping, for you to get bored. And disgusted.

“At what point do we get to do the whole prison thing of what are you in for?” you say, sitting up and letting the blood rush back to your head.

“Well, yours goes without saying,” Ronnie chuckles, “going all batter on Hargrove’s car like that. Did you actually bust a window?”

“Just swung it around,” you say, driving your heel into the bench, “I may have inherited the felony misdemeanor gene, but I didn’t inherit getting caught. What about you?”

Ronnie flicks another gum wad off with her chisel, “Actually, you might wanna ask Wheeler about that.”

Your brow furrows. “Nance?” your voice rings down to the lower rungs, “Ronnie here says you were implicated in her detention-getting.”

“Yeah, um. Well, I heard about everything when you went–”

“--totally awesome psycho–”

“--in the parking lot and… I just. I wanted to clean up all that shit. From your locker. And then Nicole came by, smacking her stupid gum, and it kind of got ugly.”

Nicole. The irony of it, Nicole, gnashing out shittalk about you and Eddie in order to impress whatever unfortunate member of the wrestling squad she’d dug her press-ons into this week. Nicole, who’d already invaded Eddie’s territory, much to her apparent shame.

What a majorette of a bitch.

You would’ve given anything to be ringside for this, her versus Nancy.

“You toed up to Nicole Summers?” a little pause, your voice goes smaller, “For me?”

Nancy sits up, her perm clouding around her. She points her chisel Ecker-ward.

“Ronnie was the one who smacked all her books out of her hand.”

Ronnie pffts. “Like she hasn’t done that to me a million times. Eye for an eye.”

“Nicole wouldn’t even go near her on account of that one time she bit that one kid for catcalling her.”

“Oh, stop,” Ronnie’s gathering a blush, batting her hand all coquettish.

“Wait, that was real?” you say, eyes darting between them, “I thought that was just some freak rumor we came up with.”

Rabid Ecker was one of the less clever nicknames your group of crown ghouls had come up with, so it obviously didn’t stick too long.

“We?” Nancy scoffs, not mean.

“The royal ‘we’,” Robin Buckley drawls from her prostrate position on the bleachers. That sounds mean, the bite in her voice.

Your hackles can’t help but rise at that cold snap in her tone. Does she have a fucking problem, or something?

“And why are you here, Robin?” you call, hands knitting in your lap.

“I was with these bozos,” she says, a note-faithful mockery of your pointed voice, “For some godforsaken reason… and now I really wish I wasn’t.”

“Why’s that?” you press.

Nancy’s whole upper half tenses. “Robin–”

Robin’s chisel clatters on the bench, a toss made out of frustration. She looks to the three of you with pursed lips before letting loose.

“Steve found out,” Robin says, “About the pregnancy test thing. In like, the worst way he could possibly find out, which is so goddamn unfair, unfair in the first place because of Nancy not telling him–like, I get it, your choice or whatever but you guys have been together for, like, a really significant period of time and you know how he feels about you–”

You and Ronnie can’t even get a breath in before Nancy rises from her seat, fingernails digging into tiny little fists at her side. She’s all spit and fury, she’s on Robin.

“Oh yeah, the worst way he could find out, Robin, the worst way which is that you blabbed to him!” Nancy yells, ricocheting around the gym, “‘Oh, I couldn’t help it, he asked me what was wrong and it all just came out–’ Give me a break! I mean, are you really that co-dependent that no one can tell you anything in confidence without you running to tell Steve?”

Robin’s face seizes in a snarl. “Are you really that stupid that you forgot to use protection with your long term boyfriend?”

“What is your problem?” Nancy’s voice whistles through her teeth, sheer exasperation, “How is this any of your business?”

“Should we stop this?” Ronnie whispers, with no intention of moving.

You shake your head in tiny, tiny increments, gossip monger past getting the best of you. “I kinda wanna see where this goes.”

“He is my friend, Nancy! And you broke his heart, dumping him right after– after–!”

Both your and Ronnie’s mouths drop into an ‘o’. You’re kind of disappointed–a big Wheeler-Harrington bust up and you weren’t first on the call list?!

“Jesus, Robin!” Nancy spits, perm flying, stomping towards Robin, “Get a personality! Sublimating yourself onto Steve Harrington isn’t doing you any favors!”

“Why, Nancy? I thought you loved him.” What confusing wording.

“I–”

Okay, these two girls are walking right into shit you can’t take back territory. You and Ronnie rush the bleachers, breaking the negative space between them both.

“Ladies! Break it up!”

“You heard Kaminsky! We’re all holding chisels, this could get ugly fast!”

You look to Nancy and her eyes are glistening. Reddening with the heat of anger and frustration. Robin’s jaw has hardened into a tough clinch, arms bound around her chest. Ronnie, she just lingers awkwardly, not quite knowing where to look. Your hand goes out to Nancy’s elbow, and she jerks away from you at first.

“Let’s go. Come on.”

“We’re supposed to be chiseling,” Nancy seethes. Your eyes roll, no patience for this go-nowhere brat routine, and you lead her to the other end of the bleachers anyway. Saying something like, we’ll take one end, Ronnie and Robin take the other, we’ll get this shit cleared in no time.

Nancy starts working furiously, but that’s kind of not what you had in mind here.

“You broke up with Steve?” you ask, point blank. Like she’d ask you.

She keeps chiseling for a few heavy, angry seconds. “I wasn’t gonna tell him, you know. I wasn’t gonna tell him, and we were gonna be fine. He could have lived without knowing. And then–fucking Buckley– and he had all these questions.”

“Like what?”

“Like why didn’t I tell him. And why was I so put out by the idea. Like, why didn’t I want to have his hypothetical baby at age seventeen… stupid shit like that.”

“He’s sensitive.”

“He’s a moron.”

“Don’t say things you don’t mean,” as if you didn’t have irrefutable proof in her favor. But that was the old Steve Harrington, wasn’t it? He’s meant to be some soft-hearted do-gooder dream boy now, right?

“No, Lacy, he’s a moron,” Nancy hisses, spit flying again; you’ve never seen her like this. Blue eyes bold and frightening with conviction. “Why should I have to tell Steve about something like that if it’s just a big nothing? If I was never even actually pregnant or whatever? Why can’t I just have that to forget about myself? Why do I owe him part of every single goddamn decision I make about my life?”

This is a bigger conversation, isn’t it? What you’d once regarded as poor Nancy and her perfect boyfriend, boo-fucking-hoo is now poor Nancy and her perfect boyfriend, stifled by his redemption.

“At least if he was still an asshole, I wouldn’t feel bad about breaking up with him. After all this.”

“Now it’s just like you’ve kicked a puppy.”

“Exactly.”

“What total bullshit.”

Nancy shoots the tiniest smile up at you, a stiff little nod bobbing her neck forward.

There’s a long beat as your focus reframes around Nancy. All the two of you wanted were lives of your own. Existences not indebted to anybody, good or bad. Shit.

“I’m the sublimator, by the way. I know that,” Nancy whispers, great big eyeballs glittering at you, “It’s easy to… fold into someone like Steve when, y’know… you’re not exactly likeable on your own. I just. I wanted to hurt her. She doesn’t deserve it. But I wanted to.”

Her chisel gestures towards Robin, working alongside Ronnie in relative silence that Ronnie awkwardly tries to puncture.

You understand that. Wanting to hurt people after you feel like they’ve breached your trust. Even accidentally. And doing it. And the ugliness of the shame after, you’re familiar with that too.

You reach forward and brush a little lint off her collar. “Thanks for getting in trouble for me, by the way. With that stupid prank and everything.”

“What are you talking about?” she scoffs softly, “You covered for me. And you didn’t have to.”

“Hey,” you hold out your pinkie finger. It’s the least you can do. “Promise is a promise, right?”

—

The members of Hellfire Club gather in an awkward row, standing under the odd, warm glow of the drama room lights like a police lineup of suspects least likely to score a date to homecoming. Sorry, Ronnie.

“What do you think,” you say, swiveling your focus to Jonathan, who’s standing there twice as awkwardly with his camera slung around his neck, “Should we take ‘em outside, make ‘em do Abbey Road?”

In the middle of it all sits the man who can’t help but be of the hour, what with the throne and the glowering and the gravitational pull. Eddie, slumped into that wild set piece left over from god knows what drama club production of, like, Henry VI or Pirates of Penzance or whatever, is so beyond unhappy with what’s unfolding in front of him.

Good.

Ronnie clearly hadn’t even fluffed him into the idea. Which she offered to do, when you’d hitched a ride home on the back of her bike after the tension of Saturday detention dissipated. You’d firmly nixed the idea, the sneak attack being the whole point of this thing.

You’d also learned that a two week suspension was no way no how going to keep Eddie from sneaking in and running this Hellfire session, which meant your article wouldn’t be delayed after all.

So, nah. Good ol’ Ronnie, she just let you stalk in there with your notebook and your pen and your glasses and your Pentax-wielding Jonathan Byers, ready to entirely fuck up Eddie’s day, which gave him no opportunity to protest or call for embargo. Because if he did, it’d raise eyebrows of suspicion and everyone would be like, I thought you two were weird trailer park friends? Is something going on? Something emotionally incoherent and ambiguously erotic? Should we tell everyone? Should we call the Mayor?

“Capital idea,” Eddie says, not exactly to you, but to those in general attendance like he’s playing to the cheap seats, “Maybe I can mow them down in my van and save them from this torture.”

Your smile tightens and Eddie matches your expression, both your mouths straining against your skulls. Wisecracks will not save him. He should know that by now.

“Let’s get a couple of the maestro while I excavate the disciples’ brains,” come the instructions and a swift pat to Jonathan’s shoulder. He flashes you a bewildered kind of look.

“Wh– how do you… want him?”

Incredible phrasing. You glance at Eddie, but not really at him–not enough that he can register and sucker your gaze in. Bathed under the dramatic glow like he was born to sprawl all cock-kneed on a throne like that.

“Exsanguinated and hung on a meat hook, preferably,” you say to Jonathan, “But, I trust you. Do whatever.”

As you gather the rest of the Hellfire denizens at the end of the table to interview them talking head style, Jonathan Byers slinks towards Eddie.

Eddie shifts uncomfortably, less equipped to keep up that fuck you stormcloud persona when he’s at the other end of a focusing lens. Plus, Byers always kind of gave him the creeps. Not to be a dick, but. Here we are.

Byers, to Eddie’s complete and utter horror, clears his throat and attempts to scrounge up some semblance of conversation. But, of course, it’s Jonathan Byers so it’s not fucking small talk. Any other day of the week, Eddie could get behind the notion of eschewing such how about this weather we’ve been having type social norms but Byers decides to jump in with–

“So you guys are…” he trails, leading the witness. Snap goes his little aperture. That’s unfair. Means he caught Eddie’s immediate facial reaction which, hands up, he has never been good at hiding.

“Neighbors,” Eddie supplies in a rush, twisting on his throne again. “She can… hear me yelling about DnD from my trailer. S’why she’s here. To shut me up, I guess.”

Byers adjusts his stance, capturing Eddie from a lower angle– a little more badass looking, he hopes. Frame the fucking curls, for god’s sake.

“Gotcha journalism,” Byers quips. Byers quips.

Eddie’s mouth relaxes and he huffs out a little, “Exactly.”

Byers shifts yet again, clearly covering all wondrous angles with his dinky little thirty-five millimetre whatever the fuck.

It’s not that this whole sneak attack article for the Streak thing is getting under Eddie’s skin– Eddie didn’t even have a chance to acknowledge it getting under his skin. You just breezed in here and started sticking bamboo spikes under his fingernails, like the little warmongtrix you are.

And now you’re sitting at the end of the game table, ruby red end of your fountain pen pointing at Gareth, noting down everything he says without even the slightest hint of condescension. These dorks are looking at you in awe and fear, save for Ronnie who just looks smug, and you’re listening to them. Really listening to them. Your face fixed with that hard little glare that tells him you’re recording the minutiae of their answers.

Eddie digs the pad of his thumb into his lip. Why would you want to do this? Why aren’t you avoiding him at all human cost? What is your angle here?

“She’s cool, y’know.” Click, goes Byer’s camera again. “Lacy.”

Eddie’s voice comes out distant, his focus tugging away from you super, super slowly.

“I heard you blew it with her.”

Byers, caught off guard, lowers his lens. “She told you about that?”

Eddie shrugs, like it’s nothing. It’d be easier to pretend like the idea of you and Byers hanging out was nothing if Byers and Eddie weren’t both classified outsiders.

“Well, uh,” Byers fiddles with something on his camera, shrugging in turn, “It was weird, talking to Lacy back then. You know. She was kind of–”

“She’s different now.” Eddie answers too fast, springing to a defense that didn’t call for him. He sits up a little bit straighter, spine iron-rodding, and tries to recover. “I mean. She’s retired the whole icy Swatch rat bit. She’s not, like– pretending to be something.”

Jonathan gets this look on his face. One last click of the camera.

“I wouldn’t know. I blew it, remember?” But you didn’t, man.

Little does he know.

“Are we done?” Eddie says, launching himself from his chair and slapping palms on the table. His DM screen shakes. Byers steps back with a flared little danger zone! look tossed your way. “We’ve already lost–”

“--fifteen minutes of glorious game time?” you drawl, crossing a final ‘t’ in your notes. “Of course. My apologies. Tight schedule?”

Your eyebrow arches as you flash your eyes up at him. His jaw flares. You– you’re good. You’re vicious and you’re good.

“Theee tightest,” Eddie grits through the falsest of grins and jerks his head, waves flying and the rest of his little Hellfire sheepies following in motion to take their seats.

Ronnie takes her time, mumbling under her breath, “You sure this is a good idea?”

And she was right, with what she’d said before. You are using this as an excuse to get in his face–bolstered only by the fact that he had now gotten in your pants, and you weren’t letting him slink off that easy. Especially with the workplace cameo appearance from Al Munson that you had just been forced to live through.

You’d been looking over your shoulder ever since, expecting to see him leering at you over those sickening aviator sunglasses.

“Oh, I’m positive,” you assure her, turning to Jonathan. “I need, like, one or two shots of them playing then you can take off.”

“Waiwaiwaiwaiwaiwaiwait,” Eddie interrupts, an arm raising over his head to signal halt, “Okay, so first, you storm the castle with your little camera boy without my approval, now you think you’re going to stay for the game?” His ire is genuine. “It’s Hellfire Club, Lacy. Members only. We don’t need bleacher bunnies.”

“Oh, come on, Munson!” you lilt, situating yourself on an abandoned desk, away from the game table. “The people want to know how the Satanic sausage is made.”

“The people being?”

“Your critics and fans. What is this all for, if not to piss off Hawkins’ Presbyterian and garner a whole new legion of Hellfire acolytes, huh?”

“We don’t need any help from the press on that front.”

“Really?” You drag out your single-word answer, using the seconds to count the minimal amount of players in the room. Not even Ronnie could boast 100% attendance, with her marching band obligations clashing with Hellfire sessions. Eddie glares at you. Yeah, yeah.

“A–actually, Eddie… I think it’d be… pretty cool,” Gareth says, waver slowly fading out of his voice. “I mean, if we’re in the school paper, my Mom’ll be less suspicious that we’re like–”

“--doing k-bombs in the drama room…” you mutter, loud enough that only Jonathan can hear.

“--and stuff.”

Eddie exhales so hard his nostrils flare, his shoulders tense, he’s about to shit.

“And who else would like to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Gareth the Treacherous here?” he snarls, looking pointedly around the table, “Jeff? Dougie? Cyrus? Ecker?”

The dorks erupt in yapping agreement, totally swinging for Gareth’s angle.

“Shut up!” Eddie barks, throwing himself back onto his throne. Ringed fingers pinch the bridge of his nose. “Fine. But this, in the business, is what they call a mutiny. Don’t come cryin’ to me when you’re all gettin’ swirlies with half of the Weekly Streak stuffed in your goddamn mouths.”

That’s creative. He really could have had a fruitful career as a bully if he wasn’t so gooey in the middle.

“Munson, I promise you can ride circles around me on a motorbike on live TV if this all goes to shit.”

You make a fluttering hand motion that reads proceed, which he, naturally, hates. He stares at you, like white light white heat searing through stares at you. And then his eyes shut. He takes a deep breath.

What follows is… exactly what you should have expected, actually.

Eddie Munson transports the present-and-correct party of adventurers back into the eye of their campaign. Their mission? Infiltrate a cult of royal knights that have been bewitched by a high priest who is forcing them to sacrifice the kingdom’s innocents in order to fuel his dastardly arcane magic. The plot is… involved. You’d done a light touch of research on how exactly the dragons and the dungeons all worked, so to speak, but it didn’t really seep into the membrane. It’s something you could only really engage with if you saw it in action– you’d have to rely on Eddie and company to fill in the blanks that the extensive lore left. Like, how exactly did these mythical dice come into play? How does a character sheet set you up for success, or failure? What the fuck is a skill check and why does it read so complicated?

And fill in they… kind of did.

Aside from the technical aspects, you find yourself suckered into the story. Quite literally, gripping your seat as Ronnie’s character–a highly capable bard, from what you understand–attempts to escape the hateful royal sect and find her way back to her party. They’d taken her hostage, and she’s managed to escape her chains but they’re ruthless, on her like dogs. Eddie illustrates every sweaty, panicky movement as they close in on her, and your fine, painted fingernails are dug into every word.

Eddie weaves these stories like gossamer– both in the sense of delicate intricacy and destructive nature of that big red monster thing from Looney Tunes. Each plot twist is created to elicit a sense of true foreboding, embellishing how effective his storytelling is. It forces each and every person at the table to face fear head on, dig deep and use what they were given in order to prevail, even if they’re shaking in their boots while doing it– shit, this is good, you should be writing this down.

Blindly, you sketch the word gossamer into your journal, not tearing your eyes away from the table. You barely notice the flash going off to your immediate right– Jonathan Byers’ lens pointed right at you.

“Uh–” you start, Jonathan reaching to grab his jacket from behind you as the game goes on.

“I’m headin’ out– gotta pick Will up from…” he trails off, but you fill in the blank. Nancy had mentioned that Mike was hosting his friends for a DnD session tonight too, and the party naturally included the most junior Byers. You nod, checking the time– Jesus, where had the last three hours gone?

“Tell Nancy I said hey, if you see her,” you say, “and thank you.”

Jonathan shrinks into himself, bashful. “Don’t worry about it.” A beat. “I still want that Echo & the Bunnymen, though.”

Your face peels into a grin that says don’t worry, I”m good for it! and you wave him off. The Hellfire party don’t even notice his leaving, except for Eddie who, being judge, jury and executioner, notices everything.

“...and on that sweltering note, germies and Eckermen, we must bid each other good eventide. Until next time.”

An operatic groan of disapproval goes up from the players, and you realize this must be a regular thing. Eddie always leaving them wanting more. Tease.

“I know, I know, if you had it your way, you’d be locked in here, pissing in buckets and the show would go on all night,” Eddie jeers, rising from his seat to start collecting his stuff, “but I wouldn’t inflict that on the janitorial staff. ‘kay? Scat. Outta my sight.”

With great indignation that swiftly turns into backslaps of appreciation, the Hellfire Club moves out of the drama room one by one. You stay put, and Eddie avoids your eyes completely.

Folding shit back into that madly overstuffed DM folder, he throws a strained-casual, “Need a ride?” to Ronnie, the last straggler.

She shakes her head, smile barely contained. “Uh-uh! Two wheeled my way here and I’ll two wheel my way back– you, uh, have fun though.”

“Bye, Ronnie,” you call after her, voice properly piercing through the air for the first time in hours. Eddie reacts like he’d completely forgotten you were there. Which, impossible. It’s also impossible for him to keep up the whole punk-ass overlord act when it’s just the two of you. As it is now.

Alone, together. Again.

There’s a charge between you, as if that even needs pointing out. Like the electric fences surrounding McCorkle’s farm.

You and the wagonful of your one-time buddies, Carol and Tommy and Tina et al, used to drive out there more than a little under the influence. Your favorite trespassing activity was reaching out for the electric fence, hooking your fingers around it to feel the darting shock permeating your skin.

“What the fuck are you doing? Can’t that, like, fry your brain?” Carol’d ask you, slugging back the last of her beer as Tommy and Steve Harrington attempted to tip a cow in the background somewhere.

“Try it, Care,” you’d giggled, half drunk and half coursing with adrenaline, half alive and half dead, “It feels weird. It feels good!”

You’d woken up the next morning in your plush bedroom in Loch Nora, two little blisters on your fingers, smarting from all that pleasure seeking. Did you regret it? Or did it just make you want to do it again?

Eddie still doesn’t look at you as he speaks from the opposite end of the table.

“Get everything you need?”

“No,” you answer, short. “Missing my key interview.”

Now he looks. Now he has the nerve to. And irises lock on irises, Eddie frozen in place. He knows he’s not getting out of this.

What’s more, you don’t think he really wants to.

“Pretty controversial subject matter,” he says, tone a whole shade softer than the commanding voice of God he’d used through the duration of the session. A little higher. Nervous. “What with the panic, and all.”

“Me and controversy are bedfellows,” your shoulder darts up, “I’m the big spoon.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” you nod; your tone is as marble-solid as ever, eyes trained and undarting, “Like when I implied the Tigers were straddling a generation-defining line of bold faced failure. I got in a lot of trouble for that.”

The corners of Eddie’s mouth twitch a little. “Define ‘a lot of trouble’ by your standards.”

“They made me print a retraction!” You’re genuinely incensed by the memory, hitching forward in your seat, “I mean, how insane? ‘Bad for school spirit,’ they said. Like I’m some kind of pep exorcist.”

Eddie tongue folds in between his teeth and he turns his head a split second too late. You can see him biting back a snicker, or something, and point to Lacy and yadda yadda yadda—but you smile, and the tension feels like it’s waning. Thank god, because it is suffocating you. You take your in and up you get, moving to the seat closest to his right-hand side.

“Can we get started?” The fountain pen is uncapped, the notebook cracked, your legs crossing. Eddie sinks back into the throne, his face warming up under the yellow stage lights.

“Okay. Hit me with your best shot.” Fire away.

You’re quick with it. “Why this?”

“Really? That’s your first question?” Eddie looks bemused.

“It’s the least rudimentary of all the Ws,” you explain nice and plainly, plucking up fingers to illustrate your points, “People know who you are–against their will, mostly. People can glean what the game is–or will, once I put a fine point on the… everything that just happened there. What people don’t get is why. Why indulge yourself in this?”

His fingers knit together in his lap, nearly shy.

“Because it’s fun.”

“Nope, too vague.”

“Vague?”

You physically knock the notion with a waving hand, leaning closer over the table, errant miniatures and spare pencils still scattered there.

“Basketball is fun. Chess club is fun. Throwing rocks into a rusted can of SpaghettiOs is fun if you can make a case for it. Too vague. Didn’t come here for the everyman answer.”

“What did you come here for?” That’s loaded. The way he’s daring himself to look at you is loaded. How soft his voice turns is loaded.

“The Munson answer.” It hangs in the air like someone dropped off the gallows. “Dig for me.”

A long, metastasizing beat. Resistance is futile, as it is and ever will be with you. Eddie hitches his arms across his chest, hiding a smile in the heel of his palm. Flattery works with him. Even if you'd never call this flattery.

“Escape,” he eventually tells you.

“Go on,” you press.

“There is this… insatiability when it comes to fantasy. To stories like this, the kind with big, thriving worldscapes. Reading ‘em, even writing ‘em– it’s good, but it isn’t enough sometimes. Sometimes you want to wrap yourself up in the reality of elsewhere. Travel to a world where things are different.”

“But not idyllic.”

Eddie’s eyebrows pull together.

“No. If these campaigns were just… the bad guys are defeated by a mighty sword that you and you alone always happen to have on you, that’s not a campaign. That’s a circle jerk.”

“The idea is to be challenged. To fight for something.”

“Right. To adventure. Beat the odds.”

“And you can’t do that alone.”

“Well, you can. I think that’s called, like, writing a book.”

“Ohh-kay, Eddie…”

“No, no, no, I mean,” Eddie shakes his head, planting his elbows on the table top, “Where’s the fun in that? Where’s the thrill of the unknown? Of not knowing what the other characters are gonna do, or what sick twist the dastardly, brilliant DM is gonna pull out next?”

He’s on one now, so you don’t stop him. Eddie’s eye takes on that mercurial shine, the same one he had while he was cruise directing the campaign. You wonder when he got like this—got bit by the God complex bug. Here, he could dare people to defy him when he’d been the defiant one his whole life.

You think about a littler him, yearning for escape.

“It also doesn’t work if everyone wants to be a hero. Too many heroes spoil the stew, okay, so you need to find other, y’know, likeminded weirdos who fall into different alignments. Those alignments only work when they’re played off other characters. Your merry band of outlaws or pirates or underdogs or whoever. You work together, or you betray each other, or you come back together because of some mighty sworn oath and you see your mission through. It’s not about winning or losing, y’know? Whatever happens out there,” he gestures to beyond the barricade of the drama room doors, “doesn’t matter. Whether life’s beating the shit out of them or not, my little acolytes, as you call ‘em, sit at this table and they’re part of something bigger. Something thrilling. Magical. Alchemic. They’re part of–”

“--a team.” You think about a littler him, yearning for people to escape with.

Eddie flaps his ever-animated hands. “Not my phrasing. But.”

“That thread runs through it all,” you say, drawing a line down the center of your notes with the inactive end of your pen, “Teamwork. Belonging. Victory– an escape from the mundane to victory, especially when you can’t find it elsewhere.”

Eddie’s chin rests on the back of his hand as he squints at you. “Sounding a little sportsmanlike there, Lacy.”

“And?”

“Thought you weren’t pulling for the everyman answer.”

“A hook’s a hook’s a hook,” you quirk your eyebrows, “–and, when you put it that way—”

“When you put it that way.”

“—what really makes you any different from, say, the Tigers?”

“Besides the cult of personality surrounding all jocks–”

“As if you don’t court your own little cult of personality—“

“—we actually win our campaigns.”

You start to retort, then stop. Letting that sink in.

“Oh. Oh, that’s good,” you say, sketching it down.

“I foresee letters to the editor in your future,” Eddie says, and he’s smug about it. Anything to aggregate the status quo, no matter what the blowback might be.

No one in their right mind here behaves like him. He just… does whatever he wants.

You find yourself wanting to touch the fence.

And maybe it’s that you stare at him a beat or so too long, but Eddie shifts his gaze down to the wood grain, flexing his hand. Scabs still marring his knuckles and all.

“It wasn’t broken or anything, then?” you ask, gesturing to his hand.

Eddie looks back up with a drag. You can feel what’s coming.

“Oh no, it was shattered,” he tells you, eyes-wide earnest and lying through his teeth, “My bones just heal super fast. My mom, she ate a shit ton of canned spinach when I was in ute.”

“Right, the calcium—”

“Nah. Rare botulism side effect,” he shrugs like, whaddaya gonna do!

Dumbass.

“Rare Botulism Side Effect is a good album title.”

“I’ll tell the guys.”

Silence falls again, and if you reach around, there’s something close to normalcy in there. Among the spikes and confusion.

“Um,” Eddie’s face contorts into a tiny cringe, “I found out what the… what the prank was, by the way. I obviously wasn’t here to witness the whole masterpiece theater of it all but– but Ronnie told me.”

A tight and ugly feeling constricts your chest. You look away, nodding through a grimace. You’d opened your locker with the practiced caution of someone diffusing a bomb since that whole incident, which sucks as someone who derives real joy from slamming metal doors.

“Pretty creative bit, huh?” is all you offer.

“Almost too creative for Hargrove,” Eddie counters, uprighting a fallen miniature with one finger.

“Are you trying to say I was being hysteric, jumping on his car?” It sounds like you’re offended, but.

“No,” Eddie meets you right where you’re at with this sparkle framing his stare, “I’m saying it was probably a collaborative effort. You could go seek even more batshit revenge, if you wanted to.”

“And would you be there to stop me before I cut Carol Perkins’ breaks?”

You can see Eddie biting his tongue between his teeth oh-so-lightly… Saliva catching in the low light. It’s warm in here. Stuffy.

“Prob–”

“I miss you.”

You cut him off in such a harsh, unforgiving way that Eddie feels his words rammed back down his throat. He blinks a couple of times, tempted to shake his head to make sure he heard you right. But there you are, your sight line running clean through him. You couldn’t be talking to anybody else.

“You do?” His voice is so small that his lips barely move. His lips, teased by his tongue, wetting them.

“Don’t act brand new. Everything’s harder without you. You have to know that.”

He gets snagged on the angles in your voice. By without you, he can only imagine you mean since he started giving you the cold shoulder and you started hitching rides in that college dork’s Ford Cortina. And by everything, he can only imagine…

“Lace…”

This is hard. This is horrible. This is uncomfortable and risky and as exposed as you have ever been, but it’s necessary.

“I can’t stand the tension of not being around you,” you say, breath feeling harsher as it speeds past your molars, “And I can’t stand the tension when I’m with you either, with you and wanting to–... so what do I do, Eddie?”

You focus on him, adjusting as if you were looking through the viewfinder of Jonathan’s Pentax. Eddie’s face, bewildered and angelic, with his parted mouth and his honorific glow of the stage lights haloing the frizz in his hair. He looks like something you want to commit to memory, as if to say see?! How could you deny this?

You rise from your seat, ever the investigator, and bear over him with hands on the table. Cards on the table, too. A genuine question smarts in your mouth, too sour candy you have to spit out.

“What do I do, Eddie?”

Eddie inhales with a sharp touch as you stand up, inspecting, demanding. He goes to tell you I don’t know… in the meekest of tones but the arch in your eyebrows says don’t you goddamn dare. You terrify him, and you make him dig.

“Forget it. Forget about all of it,” he breathes, almost tasting your perfume, “We can reset. Blank slate. Pretend like we don’t know each other. Pretend like none of this ever happened. It’d be better. Safer. Easy. Right? We could totally do that. We’ve fooled everybody so far. Even ourselves, into thinking this was… we could...”

“Fuck you,” you say in a soft rush.

Eddie only realizes that you’re both smiling when you kiss him. It’s clumsy at first, teeth knocking and everything, your hands winding around his collar and your frigid fingertips finding his neck. The shock of your skin on his, the matchstick crack of your mouth on his propels Eddie onto his motherfucking feet. He leans over you, knocking you into the table as your tongue works its way deep into his mouth.

You give him an, “Mm,” and if feels like an ascent to heaven.

Sparkles in the static makes the stuffiness evaporate, makes the room come alive. Your legs part to invite him closer to you, your hands faster and more insistent than his are. You pull at the hem of his Hellfire shirt and yank your head back, a string of saliva married between your mouths.

Fingers are more bold than they were in the nurse’s office, weaving the leather out of Eddie’s belt buckle. A deep ridge etches between Eddie’s eyebrows and his hands are propped in a mid-air surrender. Your eyes, your everything fucking eyes, are weighted with want. And challenge. Because you always do have to get one up on him.

“Reset this.” You tug at his zipper. “Tell me to stop.”

“Lacy…” Eddie whispers, watching you pull at the waistband of his boxers with his mouth agape. He’d dreamt about this. Thought about this. His cock about jumps into your hand like you’re Snow White and it’s a goddamned hummingbird. Pen marks on your fingers. “Jesus, y–...”

Eddie’s arms angle up behind his head, like a strung-up marionette, fabric of his shirt ghosting against his nipples in the stretch. This only makes him angle his hips further into you, eyelids flickering and his blood breaking the speed limit on its descent. Fuck, and then you fucking touch him– fingertips along the length of him, featherlight and goading.

Eddie’s groan is broken, half-caught in his nose. You’re looking at him like he’s a bad puppy, like you’re teaching him a lesson in scolding masking adoration. You’re beautiful and he wants to tell you so, but it all comes out in a whimper. Your hand closes around his cock, thumb brushing rii-iii-iight along the ridge of his head.

“Tell me to stop,” you echo yourself, and you’re fascinated that it comes out sounding like you know what you’re doing. You don’t. You’ve never been thrust into a net of feeling like this, never had anyone look at you the way Eddie is now– like he’d throw himself on a bed of open flames for you, so long as you kept touching him. It’s drunkard-making. It’s a full headrush. The gradual glisten of his reddening head looks delicious to you.

“Tell me to s–”

Grip tightens around him and Eddie moans from right in his sternum, his arms dropping to cradle around your head. He can’t believe he’s doing this, he can’t believe he’s fucking doing this but–

“Stop,” he gasps, fingers winding in your hair. His entire spinal cord is begging him to buck into your hand, your mouth, your anything, but he steels himself. “Stopstopstop, Lacy. Fuck– fuck.”

Your eyes widen, cheek in his palm. “Really?” Said in the most painful, the most misread did I do something? lilted tone. Your hand doesn’t exactly go slack right away.

“Yeah. Yes,” Eddie murmurs, eyes screwing closed and opening again, the most manual effort ever put behind a blink. “I c–I didn’t do this right, the first time. This is stupid. This is so stupid.”

And so your hands go, and you feel the anchor of your heart slowly dropping… But Eddie drops his face right down to yours.

“You deserve… so much more than giving me a handy on school property,” he tells you, and feels almost coherent about it. “Hot as it is. Right out of my… nastiest dreams as it is.”

Oh. Oh. The corners of your mouth pick up as Eddie presses his forehead to yours, just about evening out his breathing.

“Had a premonition about this, didja?” The pressure of his face on yours, his breath on yours, his skin on yours. It’s nice.

“Came to me in a vision,” he grins, crooked. Slides his thumbs along your cheeks and kisses you, slowly and noisily. “I’m a prognosticator.” Tongue half in, half out your mouth. Your heartbeat sinks between your legs. In a good way. “Been known to prognosticate.”

“Five dollar vocab word,” you mumble into his mouth, can’t help but push your body against him like a cat begging for attention. Eddie’s lips latch to the space right below your ear, a place where his mouth makes you feel like cymbals are clashing in your stomach.

“Come home with me,” he says, the note of pleading in his voice making your legs go numb. His nose and his lips dragging against the side of your neck, begging you to focus on the details and not the bigger picture. “Please.” A swallow. A beat. A ragged whisper. “... I missed you. Too. Y’know?”

“I do…” you sigh into his curls, readjusting his boxers, “actually need a ride… so.”

—

The van ride back to Forest Hills is tight with a tension that makes you both laugh, your mouth still buzzing from the kiss Eddie’d laid on you right before he’d helped you into the passenger seat. Even after he’d insisted you not touch him from the drama room to the parking lot, insisted because, “This thing,” he’d gestured to his crotch, his hard-on painfully zipped into submission, “this thing is gonna get me hauled over by the cops!”

“Don’t laugh!” you scold, mouth straining around the gleaming smile you’re suppressing, body all giddy. Voice ringing clear and high even over the cranked radio. Sabbath, naturally, Vol. 4. Wheels of Confusion sounds like treacle to you, mixed in with his laugh.

“I’m no-oo-oht!” Eddie says, syllables punctuated with chuckles, “I just– I am expressly escorting you back to my place! To, like, have sex with me!” His hands beat against the wheel, teeth sunk into that pretty bottom lip, giddy-upping so hard he actually does swerve the van a little.

“Woah!” you yelp, “Eddie, the road! You should’ve let me drive, you’re feral!”

Eddie moon eyes at you, reaching over to pinch your chin. “Lace, please don’t get all sore about this, but I will never trust you behind the wheel of this van. She’s a delicate piece of machinery and you would drive her like it’s the demolition derby.”

Narrowed eyes and all, you kind of have to concede. You’ve never been the best behind the wheel, a road rageaholic, and if you were to add feeling as frisky as you do now on top of that sundae… you press Eddie’s DM binder into your lap a little harder. Down, girl. He doesn’t help, thumb stroking your chin and everything.

“This is suh-rreal.”

“Stop zooming out so hard or I’m not gonna have sex with you!” You’re kidding. You’re so completely kidding. If he doesn’t touch you someplace lower than your neck soon, you’re going to disintegrate.

But Eddie pauses. “Like, you don’t. Have to.” Panicky, freezy. Hastily pulling on his good guy hat. “You don’t– by the way. It’s whatever you want. Call timeout at any time. I know I’ve been kinda–”

“Eddie.”

“...you still want to though, right?”

The giggling dies down as you edge closer and closer to your respective trailers, darkness washed over them like a swathe of dark blue paint. The lights in both trailers are out. Nobody home. Wayne, something about the weekend, something about overtime. Your mom… who knew. She’d been moving around in shadows more so than usual lately.

Everything out there is dimmed, except you two. Eddie doesn’t waste a second once the motor shuts off and the radio is silenced; he slams the driver door shut but the teensiest knot of hesitation tightens in your stomach before he reaches the passenger door.

And then he reaches the passenger door, gathering you out of it and pushing you up against the side of the van. Snapping you out of it instantaneously using the bare force of his mouth against yours.

“Eddie…” mumbled, your lips barely unstuck.

“Sorry. Shit, sorry. I just really like kissing you.”

Something pops in your chest; he’s… Jesus, he’s so sweet. Coal-eyed and excitable and lovely, kissing you with nothing left to spare.

“Hey. Redirect,” you shiver, his fingertips pressing into your waist. “Come to my place.”

Eddie casts a wide glance back toward your double-wide. The forbidden castle. “Your… y–are you sure?”

“Sure that my bedsheets are cleaner than yours, yes.”

He murmurs, “Bedsheets,” with a darkened gaze and a grunt. Bedsheets. You wanted him in your bedsheets. “Get your key. Get your key. Get your key before me and my dick have a shared brain hemorrhage.”

That new lock doesn’t stick at all, thank god.

Eddie, ordinarily, would nosily register all of his surroundings– he had an extremely barebones idea of your place, cast mostly in darkness like this, from that first night he’d driven you back from the fallout at Harrington’s. But he’s too busy nosily exploring your throat with his tongue, recording and archiving every breathy sound you make as you tug him toward your bedroom.

Cardboard boxes still trip you up a couple times. Did you ever unpack, or what?

You break from his heady kiss, vision doubling, taking in a lungful of air as you push Eddie through the door. Spine flattens against it as it shuts, the noise drawing a little bit of sobriety into the room. You reach to hit the floor lamp on and your bedroom is illuminated in a soft, orange glow, a scarf thrown over the bulb to diffuse light. A half-effort to make you forget where you were sometimes. It works; the edges of everything softens, which is such a contrast to the definitive presence that he is.

Eddie’s chest is heaving. He attempts to get his bearings but he can barely get his eyes off of you, squirming ever-so-slightly, ever-so-sexily against the door. Like you’d captured him.

Lips swollen, watching you watch him from the door, he turns a little shy and turns to look at the ephemera around him instead.

He’s standing in your bedroom.

You’re far more cluttered than he expected you to be.

He expected pressed sheets and a pristine dressing table, like a prison cell designed by a set dresser from Dynasty.

Well, that’s wrong, actually. He expected that of the Lacy people thought you were.

On the walls are a couple of tear-outs from the Rolling Stones he’d helped you liberate from your porch in Loch Nora, a mission you’d bought him breakfast for but didn’t have to. But mostly, every surface in the room is covered in piles. Piles of books, records, tapes, pens, jewelry, nail polish. And the clothes. They hung from everywhere, bursting out of your tiny closet space like bodies trying to escape.

It’s confused in here; feels like someone who has unearthed parts of herself that she hasn’t been able to organize yet. Eddie wants to comb through it like a collector at a rarities market, he thinks, running a finger along the spine of a porcelain cat that sits on your dresser.

“Place is filthy, cheerleader.”

“You’d know about mess, freak.”

The only really neat, clear space is, fortunate for tonight’s entertainment purposes, the bed.

As he’s sliding his jacket (jackets, plural) off, Eddie’s eye travels to the window.

“Did you fix your blinds?” he asks, pivoting back and forth on his heel.

“My blinds?” you parrot. The blinds that had been broken when you moved in. The ones that sure were shuttered now. You’d made a point to fix them with whatever was left out of your first paycheck from the Bookstore. “How’d you know about my blinds?”

He could’ve lied, if he caught himself quicker. If he didn’t straighten up his back like someone had snapped him to attention. “Uuh.”

It dawns on you like a flashlight in the eyeballs. “Were you… watching me, Munson?”

Not spying, mind. Not peeping. Watching. Eddie sinks down to sit on the edge of your bed, because whether or not he’s ever going to get to be here again kind of hangs in the balance right now.

“That. Dep…ends. What do you,” Please don’t kick him out. Please don’t kick him out. Look at the line of your fucking body as you round on him, staring him down like you want him for dinner. Christ, he hopes you want him for dinner.

Eddie swallows roughly, tone bumpy, face a dime store Halloween mask of nonchalance. Paper thin. “What do you think about that?”

Fact is, he’d subsisted on a couple of very guilty glimpses of you. Catching sight of the lines of your bare back and taught shoulders would keep him in jerk-off material for a week, just thinking about kneading out your knots and undoing your bra clasp with his teeth.

Eddie felt positively Victorian about it. Maybe you’d flash an ankle at him next and he’d be institutionalized for hysterics.

You look at him with the same pinpoint as you did earlier. Like you’re studying him. And then you edge closer, closer, nudging his knees apart. Echoes of the nurse’s office.

But this isn’t the goddamn nurse’s office. You’re not straining to adapt to the element of surprise. You know that the breath Eddie takes, shuddering and wondrous as you tilt his chin up to look at you, is a sound you want on repeat for as long as you can bear to hear sounds.

“They’ve blinded men for that, y’know? Before.”

Eddie can’t answer. Just let out a huh! as your fingers trace his jaw, thumb brushes his lip. His hands squeeze the curve of your ass, fingers beg into your thighs as he watches you, dumbstruck. His tongue unconsciously presses to the tip of your thumb and he hears your breath hitch.

A sustained shock travels up your neck.

“I mean, was it worth it?”

“Was it w… Lacy.” Eddie’s hands have breached the hem of your skirt and with a groan, his face burrows into the silken fabric of your shirt, like he’s trying to nudge it off with his nose or his mouth. Fingers are working mindlessly to loosen some article of clothing from your body and it makes you feel buzzy and trancelike. “Don’t ask stupid questions. I might have fuckin’ carpal tunnel because of you.”

Jesus. He makes you feel so…

Desired. Needed. You’ve never felt that way before, and you don’t quite know how to navigate it. So your buttons start coming undone with the work of one hand, the other shoving Eddie by the shoulder to lean back on your bed.

Eddie, here, among all your things. Disparate in your shabby little dollhouse, looking at you like you just swallowed the sun.

Your shirt comes off, and Eddie, in a game of match point, tugs his off too. Pause comes over the both of you. You’d seen him shirtless before; shower-bare in his trailer when the first security breach happened, a crack in the containment whatever you were pretending your relationship to each other was–affable enemies, irritated acquaintances. He’d looked at you like an animal cornered, tendons tense under his tattooed skin and you’d wanted to drag a finger or two down the center of his chest.

You didn’t, though. You’d sniped, asked where the cigarettes were.

This is all one big case of making up for lost time.

You’ve been looking at him so long, bra strap slipping off your shoulder, that Eddie leans forward. As if to come get you.

Remember me? I’m real. You can touch me. Touch me, please.

His warm arms pull you to him, pull you onto the bed, pull you against his lips. It’s gentler there; not as furtive. It says, hi, I’m here. Your arms, tugging him closer as he eases you beneath him say, good, I’ve been waiting. Eddie brushes his nose against yours, you laid down with your hair fanned out on the plush comforter.

Both your pulses must have stuttered at the same time.

His smile is serene but you can feel his forearms trembling. “I feel like I’m gonna have a heart attack.”

“Don’t,” you tell him, very quietly while his hand nervously tries to find the zipper on your skirt, “I just got you back.”

Your hips lift to help him and you’re wiggling the thing off and you’re wiggling your tights off and he’s thrashing his jeans off only to land back between your parted legs with bouncing recoil from the mattress. Laughter biting in one another’s mouths. The nerves are teeming off him in waves and it makes you want to kiss him all over.

The feeling housed in your body is different; not jittery, but struck somehow. This doesn’t feel like the way it usually feels, the way it does when you disappear into spare rooms at parties or the shadow of Skull Rock or hitch your leg up against the center console of someone’s shitty car. It doesn’t feel rote, like you’re doing it to stack up experience points– that is a Dungeons and Dragons term you found particularly interesting. How many bad tongue kisses had you accepted just to feel like you’re progressing, instead of waiting for someone who wants to taste you like Eddie does?

Your bodies caged together, you feel the eager, hard, tragically clothed line of him rub against your center. Eddie manages to free your bra clasp on the first try, which you almost goadingly applaud him for–but he cuts you short with a bewitched stare, his lovely, hot mouth laving over your nipple as he slips the fabric away. It tears the first real moan from you, your back arching into his kneading fingers as his tongue curves over your tightening bud.

Eddie can’t believe what he’s hearing. He can barely see straight, but he’s trying to commit every second of this to a glorious Technicolor memory, sound and image capturing working overtime. The sound that comes from your beautiful, balmy mouth sounds fresh out the packet–like you’d never made it for anyone before. The look of suppressed surprise on your face confirms as much and Eddie feels like he might explode.

He, too, has no idea what he’s doing but he can’t help his hips from jerking into you as he plays on. Playing with your nipples, remembering that making them glisten with his spit will make you whimper, and so will kissing the center of your sternum. He’s watching wide-eyed and fascinated as your brow furrows and your legs tighten around him. He’s a wonderful student, when he wants to be.

Eddie is throbbing, and there’s too much cotton and lace between you.

There’s also this other thing, and it comes out of him like word upchuck as you try to tease his boxers down around his hips using only your feet.

“I oughta tell you,” Eddie whispers, voice all raspy, all boyish with his hair tickling your collarbone, “I’m, uh. I’m not good at this.”

“At what?” He’s got one hand roaming over your chest, the other making indents in the meat of your thigh. It feels like he’s holding your breath right in his hands.

A new shade of pink rises high in Eddie’s already straining cheeks. He really doesn’t want to have to use his words to spell it out. “Thiii-iiss.”

Oh. A rivulet of cold realization runs through you. Nicole. Cass. Girls daring themselves to get near to him. Experience points. The great freak experiment project.

“This isn’t that.” Your hands hold his chin, perhaps a little roughly, to make sure he’s listening. And Eddie is, breath baited. You press your forehead to his like he pressed his forehead to yours. “It’s not.”

He’s really about to ask you, what is it, then? but that feels like something you can work out later. Eddie lets you tug at his lips and you let him tug at your panties, arching up so you can wiggle them down your legs. His eyes cast to the downy hair at your mound, and it’d usually occur to you to apologize for your unshaven legs, as if it mattered.

But the way he regards you doesn’t call for that; it calls for you to open up for him. Spread.

A rough pad of a finger runs along your slit, feeling the generous drip that’s gathered, and Eddie moans as your breath hitches into an animalistic, “hahh!”-- he’s edging down your body to bury his face there. He wants to feel you, smell you, taste you. You tense at the sudden contact of his palms pressing your thighs open, his nose against your clit and he feels it. A jolt of worry passes through him. Did you not want that? “Sorry–”

“Don’t– no, Eddie, don’t stop,” you strain, laugh a little, “You just… surprised me. Keep– keep surprising me. Please.”

Shockwaves break through you as he gingerly offers his tongue. And more, and more, until he’s lapping at you with a vigor and no real direction. You dig against him, made speechless by the building ache in your core.

In your fantasies, you hadn’t anticipated him being so giving–so eager to please and explore. Like all things, this moment projected itself in your head with the hard edges of some imagined cockiness, Eddie telling you to spread your legs and you, nymphlike and fluid and still somehow holding all the indiscriminate ‘power’, doing so.

But this? This is soft and messy and spitty and real. Eddie is drooling and babbling into your pussy with the uncalculated effect of someone who has improvised his whole life and it’s tearing you at the seams. A satisfying little rip, every keen movement he makes.

You know when you’re close to climax, that familiar feeling of your cunt suckling at nothing, but it doesn’t feel as jagged as the first time he brought you there. Urgently, you tug at his hair, claw at his shoulders, begging for his attention.

“Eddie,” you gasp and his hands flex around your thighs at the sound of his name in your mouth. It’s yours, he wants to tell you, rutting heedlessly into the mattress from his position between your legs, keep it! Please! “Eddie, Eddie– come here, come to me.”

Your velveteen voice summons him, his face glistening from the exploration of you. Embarrassment threatens to ping at you, but it flames into want, seeing how wet and obscene he looks. That’s all from you?

Eddie does as he’s told, heart pounding– and the sensation of fabric dragging against the raw tip of his cock nearly makes him pass out.

“Fuck! Fuck, you–” he stammers as your hand pulls his heavy length free, balls tightening under your firm touch, “N-not fuck you, obvi-ously, but–hunh–okay, kinda fuck you…”

Eddie’s lips fold against yours as he attempts, with shuddering arms, to brace himself over you. He whines at your dexterity, swiping his head against your entrance. The wetness from him, the wetness from you– the sheer impact of sensation slices clean through him. It’s not a tactic, you’re not teasing; you’re angling to get him inside you. You need to get him inside you, your entire body is begging for it.

“Baby, please, please, I’m not gonna last–”

“Who said you had to?” you ask, voice a drop of dark syrup. Just for him. “Who said you had to?”

The earnestness in your eyes gives Eddie pause– for all of a pulsating second.

“I want you… inside. Don’t you want to feel me?” you ask with real conviction, thumb swiping over his moistened head in a way that makes his vision go galactic.

Eddie yanks your hand away, kissing roughly it, nailing it beside your head as he tries to ease into you.

“Want? It’s all I want–fuck, it’s all I fucking think about, Lacy–huhh–”

His first attempt results in a gasp of pain– the sting, the stretch, it’s a little much a little fast. The sharpness has you wincing and has Eddie searching your face with an arrested kind of guilt.

“Y–shit, baby, are you–”

“I’m okay,” you recover, hand steadying on his flushed cheek. “Just–slower. Ease it in. You’re– you’re pretty remarkable, Eddie.”

“Remarkable?” he mumbles against your cheek, focused and slowly lining his head against your entrance. “Really?”

“Prodigiou—ss, uhh–fuck!” Whispered swears come streaming from you as he sinks right into the velvety constraints of your cunt.

Your eyes roll right back, mouth tipping open and the grip of you arresting around him makes him cry out into your chest.

Eddie’s cock is long and heavy and thick, constricted to the point where you can nearly feel every ridge of him. It hurts, the stretch of him aches, but it’s delicious–pinned and sweetly painful.

“Prodigious–is a five dollar–fuckin’--vocab word–” he strains, lifting his hips ever so slightly– you’re clutched onto him so tight that you move with him. Eddie open-mouth groans against your neck. “Lacy, Jesus, you’re so tight–you feel so good–how the fuck do you feel so good? Who invented you?!”

There’s a tinge of a giggle in your moaning, which doesn’t let up. Eddie’s voice rings out like a church bell, making one slow stroke inside you, then another. Then another, then another, picking up speed, groans chorusing into the hollow of your neck around the lewd sound of his flesh slapping against yours. The sound alone brings you close to cumming. “Oh, pleasepleaseplease, fuck, Lace, I’m g– fuck, I’m–”

The way Eddie’s hands are carving permanent marks into your hips, the way his movements are halting, you get the idea that… “You holding out on me?” you ask him, short of breath around your panting but demanding still, “Don’t you dare–don’t you dare.”

“Lacy, uhh– please, ’mgonnafucking–”

“Cum for me? Are you?”

Your fingers tug at his curls so you can look at him as his face tenses. Eddie’s hair is flattened across his head, face glimmering with exertion. You drag your lips against his forehead, the salty flavor of sweat breaking across your tastebuds.

“For you, for you, shit, only for you–only for you, only fucking ever–fuck–”

His dark eyes have been blown out since he pulled you to the mattress, eyelids flickering over his irises as he pistons into you with speed that hurts but you love it.

You barely hear yourself beginning a prayer of dirty little succors, but there it is, easing him through his orgasm as he shudders a load between your legs. “You feel like nothing on this fucking earth, you know that, you’re so good for me...” The tension breaks with one final rasping cry, his expression dissolving into a softness as he exhales a lungful, neck stretching to lean into your touch.

A couple of half-cracked dry sobs escape him.

Looking up at you, cradled against your shoulder, Eddie’s cursing himself for every second he’s wasted not doing this with you.

And you, looking down, are stroking his damp curls from his forehead and cursing yourself. You’re going to burn the world down for this boy.

“Lacy. You–”

And then, y’know, the fucking front door of the trailer clicks.

Little too much deja vu for your liking these days!

Immediately, you seize upwards, jolting a confused Eddie with you– which breaks your heart, in a way, seeing him darty-eyed and shocked out of his bliss so fast.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck.” These are not like your prior ‘fucks’, he can register through the haze of his post-nut state. These are bad fucks. So he responds in turn, “Fuck?”

“My mom!” You hiss, naked and scrambling. Panic crests on you like a wave, a wave that should have been an orgasm mind fucking you, and your fingernails tear at the comforter beneath you.

“Under, under, gogogo!”

Because if there’s one thing your mother, in all her former-center-of-attention glory, loves to do? It’s enter a room uninvited.

Case in fucking point–

“Lacy?” A perfunctory knuckle rap from the other side of the door, just as you manage to hide Eddie by shoving him behind you and tenting the comforter around you both. You’re praying to anything with a little more gusto than God that it works. And then, enter your mother and her cloud of Shalimar.

Soon as she opens the door, you can tell something is terribly off.

She’s smiling, face as serene as the Virgin Mary. Usually she’s got a sharpened dagger of a glare, just for you. Two of you haven’t been spending much quality time lately, see.

“Lacy! What–” your mom’s brow knits, but it’s a look of amusement. Which freaks you out. She’s looking at your just-fucked-by-Eddie-Munson hair, isn’t she? The mascara that’s surely streaking down your face? Does she know? Can she sense he’s in this very room? “--what are you doing?”

“Napping. Crying. What does it look like?” you snap, hiking the comforter up a little further and begging that she doesn’t notice Eddie’s incriminating clothes strewn across the floor.

Eddie, for his part, is not breathing. He’s crouched behind your bare ass, a position he’s in no rush to get out of, arms caged around your thighs like a petrified child. This is almost funny–or would be, if he wasn’t scared shitless of everything your mom would definitely do to him if she discovered him buck ass naked in your bed.

Dreamily, Eddie reminds himself that he’s buck ass naked, in your bed. He smiles into one of your cheeks and considers how biteable it is.

“Well. Wrap it up,” your mom says, tone still light, and you twinge at the irony. At least you’re on the pill. “I have a surprise.”

Slam. Door shuts. Your lamp wobbles with the force of it and Eddie emerges from behind you, like a freshly-fucked groundhog.

“She sounds happy,” he mumbles, arms sliding up around your waist.

You want to kiss the mirth out his mouth but you have to shove him back behind you first– cue your mom, doubling back through the door. Jesus!

“What was that?”

“Nothing!” you say, shortly and breathily because Eddie nips at your fucking ass cheek back there. “Just–you sound happy, mom!”

She shakes her head at you, a smile curving her tulip colored lips, like a mom from a detergent commercial. Y’know, were it not for the whole Italian widow getup she’s alway sporting.

“Get on with it already.”

You count to a full five before you even let out a breath, snapping your attention back to reality and the fact that Eddie Munson is very naked in your very bed.

“You gotta get out of here,” you tell him, and you want to kill yourself about it.

The both of you balance on your knees. Eddie tugs you into him with shining, begging eyes. Standing almost at full attention again, already.

“Jesus, that thing’s impressive.”

Eddie’s fingers wind around the hair at the nape of your neck. Despite the brief jolt of fear from your little interruption just now, he’s all romance–totally suckered, rose-colored glasses, the whole bit. Thoughts not exactly creating a straight line just yet, but he doesn’t care. He’s had his hands all over you for the better part of an evening now, and he doesn’t want to let up just yet. It might kill him. It might kill him.

There’s no unringing this bell between the two of you, and he knows that.

And you knew it first, because you know everything first.

“You sure?” he hums into your sweet lips, “You absolutely positive? Because I could be real, real quiet…”

Eddie’s also thrilled by the fact that he seems to know instinctively what to do to turn you on.

“What if I don’t want you to be real, real quiet?”

You kiss him back, sighing and sliding a single finger down the length of his cock.

“Lace…” he whimpers to you, his commandant fantasy of being dominant in the bedroom officially, officially escorted out back and shot. He wants to please you too badly. Be the jester in your court that makes you cackle and makes you cum.

“Lacy!” a shrill yell comes from the hall. Your eyes snap open, Eddie’s dancing with amusement and yours heaving with alarm.

“Fuck, okay, go! Window!”

Another scramble, you tossing jeans and socks and the rest of Eddie’s uniform at him while you clean yourself off, try to pull a robe around yourself. A stray thought occurs to you as you watch him trip over himself, ripping the hole in his jeans a little further–you hate what he wears, but you love it on him. And off him. And…

You yank up those blinds and unlatch the window with a faint smile. Nothing about you two makes any conceivable sense–

Eddie starts out the window, shirt barely pulled down his torso and his shoes in his hands, then turns to hook you to him by the elbow. Smiling with the full blush of his mouth, he kisses you. Firm and knowing and whole.

–except that. That makes sense.

The pad of his finger clears a lock of rumpled hair from your forehead.

“To be continued?” Eddie searches your face, with those crazy dark brimming universes of eyes.

Your heart is leaping in your ribcage. You nod sharply, gleaming back at him.

“I’m comin’ back for you, Lacy Doevksi,” he tells you with all the brazen confidence he can muster. “And I am gonna go down on you until I drown. On pain of death, I swear it.”

“Go!” you command, and regret it as soon as he drops out of your bedroom window. Eddie starts a cant toward his trailer across the way.

“Faster!” you hiss, just as an excuse to watch him.

He pivots mid-jog, hair swinging wildly, his hand grabbing at his crotch.

“You try runnin’ with a hard on! Witch!”

It’s far, far, far too quiet once he’s escaped through the front door of his trailer.

It's not fair, you think. You should be basking in some kind of afterglow, sharing a stupid cliché cigarette, you feel like you should be... celebrating this.

You shouldn't have to keep running away from each other.

The warmth the two of you had created, through mere physical friction or just how much you… you like each other, rapidly dissipated into a chill as you advance through your bedroom door, to deal with the other thing.

Surprise, you thought, What kind of goddamn surprise could mother o'mine have for me? Did she boost a bank? Did she win the Indiana Sweepstakes? I don’t want to know about any g–

“Lorelei.”

The universe has a way of shoving you back in place when you get ahead of yourself.

You don’t just stop in your tracks, you’re repelled a half-step backwards. The centrifugal force urging you away, telling you there’s an immediate threat in the heart of your home.

No one uses that name anymore. Not even him. Not since you were fourteen.

“Daddy.”

Your father sits at the shabby dinette that you and your mother don’t even share meals at, sits there in the suit he was sentenced in. A rich navy pinstripe, chosen because gray would have been too flashy and black would admit defeat. “Of course!” your mother had said, marveling at his ingenuity. But the pantomime of his defense was wearing real thin on you; whispering at school had started growing louder and louder and you were finding more and more chips in the porcelain of your father’s worldly facade.

“Why not compromise. Wear charcoal,” you’d said, leaning against the kitchen counter in Loch Nora, drinking orange juice from your parents’ wedding crystal as the movers taped up your boxes, “You can plead guilty and still look smug about it.”

Your father had smacked the flute from your hand and it shattered in forty thousand pieces on the ground. You didn’t move, didn’t breathe, because you knew if you did, you’d be next.

Navy it was. And navy it is. He sits at that dinette like he’s expecting white jacket service. You swear even more gray has started glimmering through his hair. Flashy.

“Should I ask how you’re here?” you say, stiff and scared. Your mother, standing at your father’s shoulder, tuts and sighs. Can’t you just enjoy this? she silently bemoans.

“Good behavior,” Ray smiles, “Can’t say the same for you. Can I, Lorelei?”

“Principal Higgins called,” your mom chimes in, “Or rather, that odious little secretary called. You think you could get a Saturday detention and they just wouldn’t tell us?”

“That’s why he’s here?” You laugh a little, inwardly. “With all due respect, Daddy, that’s a terrible reason to break out of prison.”

To your surprise, your father chuckles too. Makes your blood run cold, obviously.

“Y’know, I really didn’t anticipate this for my homecoming, I gotta tell you,” he says, shifting in his seat and plucking a cigarillo from his jacket pocket. “I mean, honestly. I thought, a nice bottle of Beaujolais–”

“We’re fresh out,” you gesture to your cringing mother.

“--a dinner at, Christ, Enzo’s, since that’s where our budget is at now,” his lighter flicks and ignites the end, “But no. I have to sit here and cross-examine my daughter about… fraternizing with the lowest of criminal elements.”

The lack of self awareness here is off the fucking charts. It makes your blood pressure spike.

“Take a seat, Lacy,” your father so gallantly gestures to the vinyl backed kitchen chair in front of him, “and tell me all about Eddie Munson.”

Chair drags aggressively against the linoleum. You sit, and swear that the next time you’re caught off guard by anyone’s father, it’d better be God himself.

This bit is getting old.

author's notes: so i'm not fucking around when i say i need to hear everyone's thoughts on what just happened immediately. i really do think that happenings-wise, this was my favourite chapter to write thus far. felt cathartic, from the al munson to the hellfire article of it all. anyway. onto the good stuff - like i feel like everyone who reads this series will have clocked this but of course i lifted the garlic slicing right out of goodfellas. i just think it's a perfect al munson attribute to have - al munson kicking out the jams instead of picking up his kid i know that's right - our dukes of hazzard ref is a tribute to my own personal al munson fancast - not that paris, texas but this paris, texas. (and you know when lacy eventually gets eddie to watch it he CRIES. they both cry) - i should probably put the repo man trailer in here as well - speaking of another fancast! the manager of forest hills trailer park is, of course, to me, in my heart, carl rodd. - the best song off of abbey road by the beatles, fight with the wall - SHOULD WE CALL THE MAYOR - lacy promising eddie that he can ride circles around her on a motor bike is a reference to hunter s thompson being ambushed on canadian television by one of the hells angels he wrote about in his book. dude rolls onto set on his hog. it's crazy. - eddie is kinda gossamer coded - cow tipping? at mccorkle's? anybody? our love is god - god wheels of confusion is kinda horny sounding huh i think that this might be the shortest references recap so far in the series?? one of them anyway. probably because i wrote 4k words of FILTH. anyway, thank you all so much for continuing to read this fucking thing. we're almost at the end of this part of the story which is wild to me. now let me get on your ass and remind you that REBLOGGING FICS IS ESSENTIAL TO YOUR FIC WRITERS HEALTH. SO ARE COMMENTS AND SO ARE ASKS so send those pls :) love you hellcats. be well, cats

#published by powder #hellfire & ice #in progress #e. munson by powder #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x f!reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x oc #stranger things fic #eddie munson fic

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kalims · 2 years

Text

‎˃ ᵕ ˂ . . "are you a fool? don't fall in love with me."

high school, wise fool,

to be straightforward. a remake of high school otome au :D

parts. one , two , three , remake

characters. epel, riddle, jade, ace, deuce, leona, jamil, malleus, floyd, neige, silver, and mysterious character.

cw. not proofread, yandere in the end. silver lowkey being main guy.

includes. gn!reader.

note. pretend we are smart cause we still are in this remake. this was kinda rushed cause I was struggling to fit all of them in the 3 paragraph limit I set for myself.

・ㅤyouㅤㅤ— a surprisingly gifted child whom acquired a scholarship granted by headmaster crowley himself, just before an honorary recommendation from your loving father figure; crewel. nearly all professors had taken a certain liking to you though even if they didn't crewel would've been sure to 'discipline' their minds to see what an angel you are because no way anyone would hate, you. his lovely, lovely child. now everyone is weirdly being nice to you just because they're scared of him.

・ㅤepel felmierㅤㅤ— your childhood friend who can see through you anytime, it doesn't matter if you're a good or horrible liar. epel will find out anyways despite all the odds against him just because of the fact on how well he knows you. well,, it's a given since he's been by your side the whole time you grew up. if there's anything epel has over the multitude of people equipped with brilliance, or money.. it's the thousands of memories you've both made and he's certainly not gonna lose to some losers who don't know the first thing about you!

epel was your first man! the one who was there to wipe your tears when your ex carelessly played with your heart, the one who screamed with you when there's a jumpscare on the screen, and the one who laughs with you on random occasions you both catch sight of each other and honestly start dying after the other breaks into a snort. he might be unseen as a 'real' man in everyone else's eyes but he was yours, and he's gonna commit to that title till he dies.

out of everyone epel is the one particularly iffed by the decreasing time both of you spend together. he can't tell if you entering school with him was the best or worst ever because the tides of time are pulling you apart! next thing you know he's barging in your room to demand you spend time with him and personally claimed a day he called "epel day" and you can't really say no to his face, right?

ㅤ

・ㅤriddle roseheartsㅤㅤ— the terrifying student council president that might as well call his presence terrorizing because he's just eating and everyone would be quaking in their boots, even the lunch lady. your first encounter with him wasn't all that pleasant cause the moment your classmate burst into the classroom and yelled, "code:rosehearts!" was the moment the class went to chaos. everyone was hastily fixing their appearances, fast cleaning, sitting properly—oh my god someone just jumped out the window. midst your confusion (since you were a transfer) his eyes immediately zeroed on the hamburger on your hand. and you hear a whisper, "it's a tuesday." what?

okay so apparently eating hamburgers on tuesdays was banned and you were sent to the red room somewhere in heartslabyul. whatever the red room was, but apparently it's a discipline area or whatever. it was just a room you were made to stay in for like half an hour till' you were discharged. it wasn't that bad, but from now on you officially started hating on the prez for his poor judgment skills cause hello? couldn't you get a pass? you became an absolute migraine to riddle and now he hates you too because can you stop putting cheese in his tarts?! enough with this blasphemy! now riddle is trying to screw up your life too.

you learn that he's just actually really lonely so you swallowed up your pride and sat next to him in lunch since you noticed he looked quite.. sad eating, whereas he was alone. riddle only raised a brow and looked you over judgmentally. (lesson learned; don't tell him that you pity him because he's gonna start denying he ever looked sad with a red face, but strange.. he looks heated over your explanation for another reason other than anger..)

ㅤ

・ㅤjade leechㅤㅤ— your ex a year back. jade leech was one of the most random relationship you ever had in your life, once. you saw him in class, and the smile he had was somehow.. charming. mischievous, polite, and cunning. not the most ideal traits someone would look for a man but you'd admit you would have a thing for anyone who would treat you right. and he did! though to this day you're still not sure why he approached you in the first place but one thing led to another and now you've started dating.

everything was perfect. (keyword: perfect) you were content, and at some point gave a future with him some thought. the assumption that you were one of the rare people that saw first hand the more 'innocent' sides of jade leech got you wondering right now, the times where he looks like a little, happy kid watching his mushrooms or the remarks that genuinely got you flustered. you wonder why it all ended in the first place.

he cradled your heart in his hands and dropped it to sink under the water without turning back once. there was no explanation, just a simple; "let's break up." and it was all gone, just tears left. so when you were just at the climax of picking yourself up why in the hell is he standing in front of you right now wearing the same smile that enchanted you?! you hate the way your heart aches when he still remembers the things you told him since forever and you swear to ignore his existence even when he's awfully intent on messing with you again.

ㅤ

・ㅤace trapollaㅤㅤ— your roommate who would be more suited to classify as a demon, ace is one of the most annoying people you've ever met in your life and you simultaneously want to slap and smack him in the face because he's too laid back ninety percent of the time. you both, sorta disliked each other at first. him not liking you because you whacked him with a broom in dead of the night after overtime practice (but you don't blame yourself because it was totally justified!) and you to him because he started insulting your entire being.

anyways he's the worst roommates ever. there was clearly your name highlighted in bold colors on the tupperware of your favorite snack in the fridge then you find it completely empty the next day, sometimes he even has the audacity to place a sticky note containing "thanks for the snack loser :P" which in turn made you stick another note on the fridge, "fuck you" as a response. now it's some kind of ritual for the two of you to paste derogatory, lowkey playful messages to each other on the fridge. whoever comes over is gonna be concerned with the amount of sticky notes in the fridge.

he moans about how he's one of the 'talented' froshes in the basketball club which you actually can't deny because he's a first year being considered to be a regular on the team and some of the third years are still in the benches! actually, some of them hate him for it and for once you join him on complaining about them cause it wasn't even his fault? though his statement; "they're just bad at it and jealous of me" was concerning but eh.. it's ace, what else would you expect?

ㅤ

・ㅤdeuce spadeㅤㅤ— suprise suprise! turns out ace and you weren't the only ones who was going to be roomed in one dorm. here enters: deuce spade, your second roomie who is a hundred times better than ace. compared to the latter, deuce is a gift sent by god. he cleans up his messes, even insists on cleaning some of yours even when you try to talk him out of it. okay so apparently he still had trauma from when his mother whooped his ass when he didn't clean the house when it was an order. a mommas boy indeed.

unfortunately to the abrupt appearance of a new roomie (no thanks to crowley since he didn't even tell you.) ace and you had used the spare room as a dump for your stuff so it was full of random things like the the electric guitar you don't even use anymore. so you declared that all three of you will be cleaning it out, deuce wasn't originally in the plan but he offered to pitch in so.. the cleaning was full of sweat, heavy lifting which you left to deuce because damn. he can lift those without much effort compared to your arms.

deuce has a concerning obsession with eggs cause whenever it was his time to cook breakfast he always cooks a variety of eggs. you do like eggs but the taste is starting to make you nauseous from how many times you've eaten it for days straight. unlike ace who would attempt to kick you out of your room when you trespass even when he does it freely to yours, deuce even welcomes you in. and you don't know why ace is tagging along with you on your trips to deuce's room. (also deuce joins in on the sticky notes but ace says his notes are that of a boomer because all he puts is the grocery list)

ㅤ

・ㅤleona kingscholarㅤㅤ— the dude who you accidentally stepped and literally tripped on right after, who knew the dirt on the floor tasted so bad? when you said you were hungry you didn't mean this! leona peeked an eye open and when it landed on you, you were now his self proclaimed slave. or to word it better, working for him as repayment for stepping on him and dirtying his clothes. which got you flabbergasted because is it not already dirty from the grass and dirt he's sleeping on? does this dude not know what a bed is?

you only actually learn his name through epel since he never told you when you pointed at leona blabbering about he's the guy that practically enslaved you for stepping on him (which you'd emphasize on accident) and epel looked absolutely horrified when he frivolously whispered; "that's leona kingscholar!" to you but the guy still somehow heard it because he made a gesture for you to follow him. from now on starts the demise of your life.

you might as well call yourselves two peas in a pod because he always had you following around and doing tasks he can't be bothered to do. making you run off to his club room to grab a spare ball since he wanted to practice.. or running around looking for his lost shoelace, in short it was a nightmare! you're not sure why the hell he made you wear his jersey for a game and making you sit in his team area, place thing... for the period of the game. apparently it was so he can go back to you much faster when he wins this (he actually said that like he's sure he would) and the crowd goes silent when he tilts his head to you and asks if he was good.

ㅤ

・ㅤjamil viperㅤㅤ— technically he was just ace's teammate to you. suprise, suprise! ace did make it into the regular team and now it's customary for you to attend his games, practice or not because he threatened that if you didn't he'd eat all the food you'd try to hide. you only know of jamil's existence after he had dropped an exhausted ace off your dorm just after he had also taken him to the nurse's office. you don't know if you hallucinated or not but there was definitely a bitter kind of look on jamil's face when you fretted over ace.

huh. since then you've been thanking jamil endlessly for taking the time to take care of ace (and admittedly throwing shade lowkey about ace's careless nature) apparently he had taken a nasty fall for his agressive play. jamil himself seems quite.. shy about your praises, probably having not been used to being openly grateful for his actions. you don't know why you're being so thankful to the extent that you had been learning how to make a decent bowl of curry for him..

though jamil's pokerface twitched a little when he sampled your 'first ever experiment' "it.. could use some work." he coughs and you wonder if he knows that you can see his hand impatiently shaking to gulp down the water. since then he's helped you hone your curry skills to the max and there's one thing you can say. he was an absolute god in cooking, for that you cried praises savoring the dishes you were given the luxury to eat. you've grown a lot closer than before and this time he looks particularly at peace when he's the one suffering the injury and now being the subject of your worry. perhaps this is one thing he'd like to have for himself.

ㅤ

・ㅤmalleus draconiaㅤㅤ— a stranger you've met by the woods, your parent would be recoiling violently if they found out you went against their firm words to not wander anywhere. especially forests! but you won't give up the beautiful spot you've found within the premises of the forest, just a perfect place for yourself. calm and serene are your favorite words. apparently it was an old building owned by the school, crowley wouldn't certainly mind if you used the place for yourself.. right?

the place was a bit dusty, old with a sense of ancient familiarity with it. a certain charm of the old place you supposed. nevertheless you've taken residence in the porch whenever there's just some things you don't wanna deal with. you were scared out of your wits when you heard a creak of the floorboard and several other signs that there was... something inside the house as you are.

here enters the 'thing' that scared you to death, a mysterious man with misty green eyes. he refuses to state his name when you've already given yours, seemingly quite delighted at your ignorance towards his existence. tsunotaro (the nickname you'd given him since he insisted you have whatever) was there when epel didn't understand you sometimes. he listens quietly, you'd mistake his silence to be bad but it's a habit so that he could hear your voice easier.

ㅤ

・ㅤfloyd leechㅤㅤ— the unbearing brother of your ex, ever since you and jade broke up you never really heard from him again. so you assumed it was because of the fragile relationship you had with his brother and eventually let it go. since you found out jade was also in NRC, you assumed the worst and that his two friends would be here as well. floyd in particular kinda terrified you sometimes but he's a good guy... usually! albiet his habit for violence to solve a problem.

speaking of violence he never had a problem offering his fist to you, which you'd mistaken as a fist bump but it was actually a sign of 'friendship' and it meant that if you ever needed someone to be taken care of.. floyd will gladly spare some of his gracious strength to pound them into oblivion! violence aside. he looked ecstatic by your presence, not at all affected by the fact that you were separated for like a year. save for a pout and a, "shrimpy, where were you?" then he went back to being all affectionate like in the past, you weren't sure if it was appropriate since he is your ex's brother but eh.. you aren't with jade anymore and floyd was a dear friend so..!

besides all that he still keeps the promise of protecting you ever since a year ago, which is kind of weird since jade (as your boyfriend) should've been the one to make that kind of oath. which is evident from the way he scares away all the bullies that might pick at you for being only able to enter the college through academic means. one thing that everyone knows how to calm down floyd though, is that your mere presence sends him into a flowery mood which explains why you're always getting dragged around somewhere.

ㅤ

・ㅤneige leblancheㅤㅤ— the celebrity happy-go-lucky boy from the rival school of NRC; royal sword academy. you can say this at the very least, you were just a small, teensy tiny little fan of neige! it's not your fault he's so genuinely adorable! moving into a new environment meant discovering new favorite artists and you just so happen to enjoy neige's music from time to time. so you can admit you really didn't expect to meet neige through VDC.. since you're only the manager you only expected a glance or two but.. talking live with him makes your heart race!!

the descriptions of him online honestly doesn't do him justice at all! 'bright and cute' neige isn't just a handsome face, they should see the events he held to donate to charity and your inner fan came out and decided it was time to tell neige how awesome he was without filter. it is admittedly embarrassing that our mouth run off without your consent but the boy himself looked awfully frustrated by your genuine words.

it seems like neige really had taken a liking to you after the little rant but hey, you're glad he didn't find you weird at all! a dream come true.. neige finds himself thinking of you every quarter of the day, bursting into a deep flush but he can't tell if it's by the thought of your kindness (oddly enough) or the fact that he caught himself in the act. either way.. even he notices that there's lots of other people parading for your love.. it's selfish of him to think so but no person can ever live up to you!

ㅤ

・ㅤsilverㅤㅤ— the ever softer gentleman that you had caught snoozing his life away in a grassy field. out of the goodness in your heart you gently shook him awake, knowing full well there's classes about to start at the moment and from the uniform he adores its clear he was a student like you. the first thing you thought of was, "stunning" and you had actually paused to register the rare, glistening colors in his irises. honestly it's not fair how much natural beauty this random man you just met had effortlessly..

you learn that silver is the whole package deal. where he is kind, he is also strong. he holds the type of persona that would fight the world for you, avenge you, and love you unconditionally. okay technically you're starting to get lost in your concerningly vast imagination including silver but you honesty can't stop daydreaming because he's like the epitome of a prince(ss) wait he could be anyone's type right now.

silver is kind, and frustratingly sweet. you think that maybe it's your love story blooming when he gingerly ties the stem of various flowers together and place it in your forehead. a craft he learned from when he was bored in his childhood. you feel like someone when he casts you the softest gaze you've ever seen in your life and it's breathtaking. since when did life move by so fast that you're comfortable napping amongst the vast green field together?

ㅤ

・ㅤmystery characterㅤㅤ— the one who witnesses, the one who knows the feelings of all these puny idiots towards you. the one who will remain a viewer to your story, and perhaps never make a debut for the main leading role, your love interest. if he can't get in your story, then he will drag you in his whether you like it or not. do you still remember him..? because he would have never forgotten your face since that day.

he refuses to let your story end with that silver haired buffoon who won't get half the luxuries you deserve.. this can't be.. you just can't have an ending where you're happy with someone that's not him...

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m0ther-of-p3arl · 8 months

Text

can't start the fire without a spark

(robert aeor high au p14)

masterpost

ROB AEOR JUMPSCARE!!! probs two more chapters after this, we are drawing to a CLOSE!!! big big chapter today, lots of things happening we're jumping allllll around pov-wise :D very very fun to write i hope you like!! ohhh and also with the addition of this chapter, rob aeor is now 60,000 words in its entirety!! pretty cooool :D

Karissa watches from the upstairs window as the same white camper van pulls up outside her house, screeching to a stop under the streetlight. It’s finished making its rounds, and she can almost see from here the essences of the people pushed into the back, bound and gagged and drugged. She smiles, fake and manufactured yet still slightly psychotic, nails drumming against her thigh as she pulls on her heels and heads out the door, eyes searching for signs of life.

or, shit is Going Down. buckle in, buttercups, because we are going for a RIDE.

(6949 words)

Karissa Major stands, poised and perfect, posture impeccable as she gazes out from her balcony. The chill of very early morning digs silkily into her skin, her very bones, and a smile stretches across her face at the knowledge that everything she’s worked for could come crashing down at any moment. It’s a manic thing, desperate and rough around the edges, nothing like the polished facsimile of human emotion she displays around others.

If this goes wrong, if any mistakes are made- her game is ruined, her life’s work is all for naught. Her eyes watch nervously (or, as close to nervous as Karissa Major can be) as an inconspicuous white camper van passes through the street. This is the final moment, and if anything deviates even slightly from her plan-

But it can’t, it won’t, and Karissa knows it won’t- she’s crafted everything obsessively, meticulously- all the details gone over with her crew at least twenty times, the plan burned into all their skulls. There’s almost no way any of them could forget it now, especially considering the consequences she has laid out if someone deviates from the plan. Karissa almost can’t wait for the day she’s strapped to the chair, wires attached to her brain, her manipulative siren magic the sole thing keeping the game going.

Third Life.

It’s Karissa’s dream to have that much power, it’s been her goal ever since she was very young- ever since she watched the life drain out of a woodmouse as she crushed its windpipe with her foot. Since Karissa’s childhood years, she’s had an idea, a spark in the back of her mind that- until recently- she simply hasn’t had the time to pursue. But her cult is really coming together, it’s gained a fair amount of members recently- and with all the funds now pouring in, Karissa finally has the money to begin developing the technology that would let her great imagination become a reality.

The technology that allows a siren’s power to be amplified by ten thousand and broadcast across many multiple people through a chip in their brain, strong enough to even wipe their memories and convince them so thoroughly that the world she’s put them in is the only one they’ve ever known. She has all the rules laid out for her game, all the plans- she’s spent countless sleepless nights developing them, deciding what combination would produce the most carnage and emotion from which she can feed.

Because Karissa’s new tech, though insanely high-quality and as perfect as she can get it, is not a perpetual energy machine. It needs something to feed it, something to keep it active and working. And what she’s found, through extensive study, is that the best way to power the mind-control mechanism is the consumption of the negative emotions of those being controlled.

Therefore, Karissa has decided that it has to be death, the game she will have the teenagers she preyed upon play. She has the perfect plot of land, close enough to her compound that the people within will be susceptible to her control, but not too close that the players will be able to see it outside the borders.

Of course, there won’t actually be any borders- that would be silly. Karissa will simply make the players believe that there are, and they will be physically incapable of crossing a certain point. It’s genius, this thing she’s concocted, and if it goes well, she can try and arrange one every couple of months for her and the other Watchers’ entertainment.

However, despite Third Life being a death game, the people inside won’t actually die. That would be ridiculous, completely unneeded carnage- and the loss of good players for later games. Well, wait- that’s a false statement. The players of the game will die, but they’ll be brought back to life. Just like the person with the flamethrower who Karissa had hunted through the woods so many years earlier.

She has been the prototype throughout all of this, she’s been the test subject, Karissa’s little guinea pig kept in a cage. Zombie, Their name is. Or, that’s what Karissa has named her, obviously. Their real name was something along the lines of- Cora? Cleo?

Karissa thinks it was probably Cleo.

But she’s Zombie now, they have been ever since they joined up at sixteen- a vulnerable young person, lost and alone. Of course, she was the perfect specimen- as is the typical coming-of-age ritual of traditional gorgon families, when she turned sixteen, she was banished from the home for a year to learn of life in the real world. Afterwards, it’s the custom that the child can either return home to learn the traditional ways or continue life in the outside world.

Zombie had found safety with the Watchers- but when they’d wanted to leave, to go back to their traditional gorgon roots, to return to their family…

Well, Karissa couldn’t let that happen, now could she?

And so she hunted down the teen in the woods and murdered her. They were brought back to life, of course. It’s been many years, and Zombie’s been broken and stitched back together thrice as many times since. She is, obviously, going to be one of the players in Karissa’s new game. It’s just fitting, isn’t it, that they take part in the experiment of a lifetime after they’ve helped oh so much with it.

Karissa’s thoughts eventually lead back to where she’s still stood on the balcony, outlined in stark black against the early morning sky. She shakes her head, laughing slightly under her breath, and turns with a swish of fabric, treading back inside on two-inch stiletto heels.

Her ride will be here soon, and it’s time to get ready for the time of her life.

Scott never did get back to Jimmy’s house.

They’re on him before he can think twice, figures in white hazmat suits descending upon him from trees and rooftops all around him, roughly grabbing and throwing him into the back of camper van. He doesn’t even have time to be confused before thick, rough rope wraps around his wrists and ankles, binding him to the wall. An oily wad of fabric is stuffed into his mouth, a strip of duct tape pressed over his mouth before he can scream.

And now he’s sitting here, half-conscious of others being piled in beside him, an arm or two pressing up against him, feet touching his. A red sweater, a black headband and green shirt, a boy covered in scars- defining features jumping out at him in bright flashes before they descend back into the numbing murk that surrounds him now.

It’s so hazy here, previously well-defined images turning to nothing but colors and shapes now through the fog in his mind. The sky is so dark here, and the ground is gray, fuzzy. Where’s the grass? Where’s Jimmy?

With his limited ability of thought, Scott sluggishly thinks that it must be the shock that’s rendered him so helpless, though a sharper part of him in the back of his mind wonders if maybe he’s been drugged somehow. The rag in his mouth does have a strange taste to it beyond the oil, a sweetness he can’t quite place. Scott’s not quite sure how much time passes from one thought to the next, each realization taking eons of time to nail down.

That’s why he doesn’t quite catalogue the tapping on his shoulder until someone’s head slams roughly into his bone, and Scott starts, eyes widening. If he wasn’t gagged, he would have yelped in surprise. He turns his head, and even fighting as hard as he can through the drug-induced blurriness, he’s only able to make out two bright yellow wings, bound alongside him. A shoulder presses into his own, and Scott’s almost certain he can hear someone crying as his eyes drip shut yet again. It’s too much work to keep them open, it would be so much simpler to just drift in and out of consciousness, the figure with yellow wings the only thing keeping him grounded to reality.

He wonders, in the back of this camper van from hell, if somehow it’s an angel.

Jimmy is frantic, his heart beating out of control, head throbbing insanely and his mouth filled with a disgustingly smooth texture- maybe cloth of some sort? He’s not really sure- it’s been a blur most of the time he’s been in the van. The drug (he’s sure he’s been drugged in some way) doesn’t seem to have affected him as strongly as everyone else. Maybe it’s something with him being an avian- the other avian here, a parrot, is looking around in the same frantic way that he is, and their eyes meet across the camper.

His eyes are filled with tears, waffle-colored hair swinging back and forth as he shakes his head vehemently, and Jimmy’s chest fills with an aching sadness. He’s sure he’s seen this boy at school, he’s fairly certain his name’s Grian. A traditional avian name, not like his own of Jimmy. Of course, it won’t be Grian’s true name- that’s a closely guarded secret, as well as one known instinctively.

Jimmy makes a vow that if he ever gets out of the hands of his captors, he’ll tell Scott his own true name- Solidarity. He’s been meaning to for a while, of course- but it’s hard to get up the courage, to gift someone with something of that capacity. The level of trust it takes to tell someone, especially a non-avian, your secret name- well, needless to say it’s almost unfathomable.

He’s not quite sure how long he sits in the truck, watching with bated breath as the van stops every few minutes, another figure bound and gagged thrown in with them- but none further that Jimmy recognizes. They all seem to be in the same drugged stupor, staring straight ahead with half-lidded eyes and offering no resistance to their white-suited captors. Again, he and Grian seem to be the only ones aware of the true weight and direness of their current situation.

Jimmy doesn’t really take note of anyone else in the van- sure, he’ll notice a detail here and there, but mostly he watches Grian and the gentle tears that slip down his face. All he can glean from the other avian’s slumped posture is an air of absolute hopelessness, one that threatens to spill over onto Jimmy and leech all the life from his soul as well.

Suddenly, Grian goes rigid, seemingly honing in on something Jimmy can’t quite see. His head shaking becomes even more vehement, and though the gag is never removed from his mouth, Grian’s voice cascades over him.

His tone is desperate and broken, his words streaming in a parade of syllables, a different tongue that makes no sense to Jimmy. Grian’s voice only switches back into something Jimmy’s familiar with when another captive is thrown into the van, a tall elf with scars carpeting almost every inch of his skin. Grian’s borderline begging, and as hard as Jimmy strains not to hear the words, they’re too sharp in his ear and he can’t push them away.

NO! Please, no, you promised, you PROMISED- you said that if I came, you wouldn’t take him, you said he would be SAFE! Please, I’ll do anything, anything, just let him go- I can’t let him go through this, I can’t, you have to understand, please! You promised me, you promised me- Scar, I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry, Scar- no, no no no, let him go, LET HIM GO-

One of the people in white suits punches Grian hard in the skull, seemingly fed up with his tortured screams. Grian’s head pitches forward, his eyes dulling to their normal beady black and voice tapering out pathetically as he falls unconscious.

Jimmy’s shaken- and not just because of the disembodied voice that everyone in the van could apparently hear. He’s mostly just confused about that. No, the thing that disturbs him most is the genuine fear coating Grian’s words, the desperate begging for them not to take the other boy- Scar, Jimmy remembers- and to leave him be.

That does not bode well for whatever’s going to happen to them all, and Jimmy shivers involuntarily, closing his eyes. He doesn’t open them again for several minutes until he feels the truck stop once more, the doors swinging wide and the white-suited people shoving in a new figure, right beside him.

Jimmy catches a glimpse of cyan out of the corner of his eye, and he just knows.

Scott’s here.

He looks the same as the rest of them, glazed-over eyes, seemingly undistressed. Jimmy has to get his attention. He needs to. But he’s bound, and Scott’s in no fit state to respond to the muffled grunts that happen to be the only sound Jimmy can make. He huffs, annoyed, and pushes his head back against the wall, fighting back an onslaught of tears.

Jimmy’s just a curious little bird.

It’s been. SO LONG. Since he heard her voice, since he heard those words. But here they are, loud as anything, biting and taking and angry- no, worse than that, almost dismissive. Jimmy nearly wilts under the pressure like a wildflower when summer comes, he nearly lets it get to him, the situation he’s in. No one can blame him if he does, after all- any normal person would have broken a thousand times over by now.

But as Jimmy hears the words again, instead of hopelessness, all they spark is anger. A deep, simmering rage, unlike anything he’s ever felt before, burns through his veins like a monsoon flood. Who are these people to kidnap him, his boyfriend, and so many more presumably innocent people? Why would he even allow himself to be tied up like this, rendered so vulnerable that anything could happen to him?

Jim’s anger goes deeper than even that. He’s always balked in the face of authority, whether it be Patty, the only mother he’s ever known, or these hooded figures who stole him away in the dead of night. Jimmy has never had a shred of rebellion inside him, he’s never even entertained the possibility of doing anything other than what the present person in charge wishes him to do.

It’s one of his biggest shortcomings as a person, he realizes- and even though it’s too late to do anything to change the predicament he’s in, there is a small act of uprising that he can commit. He and Scott are bound closely enough- so close, in fact, that their bodies are pressed together, the feathers on Jimmy’s wings resting gently on Scott’s back. Obviously, Jim can’t move his arms or legs- or wings. All his limbs are out of commission, really.

But the one thing they neglected to bind was his neck, and by extension, his head.

Jimmy headbuts Scott in the shoulder as hard as he can without arousing the suspicion of the guards, which is admittedly pretty lightly. He does it again, and again, and again, but no response is received for Jimmy’s efforts and Scott stares straight ahead, eyes blank of any thought or emotion- blank of any of the things that make him quintessentially Scott. The canary almost gives up, tears of frustration and hopelessness springing to his eyes.

He headbuts Scott once more, one final time, not giving a shit about what the guards will think this time. He puts all his strength into the motion, and slowly, miraculously, Scott turns towards him.

But it’s all for naught, because when their eyes meet, Scott looks just as zombified as ever. Jimmy doesn’t even think he recognizes him.

Scott’s head drops down, back into place, and Jimmy cries.

The van moves through the night, and finally hopeless, Jimmy cries.

Martyn doesn’t know where he is.

He has no idea what’s happened to him, has no idea what anyone could ever want with him- he’s just a good-for-nothing twenty-year-old pufferfish seafolk who’s spent most of his life doing- well, doing absolutely nothing, if he’s honest.

And now, he’s been kidnapped.

Martyn Littlewood, ultimate disappointment to his parents and everyone else in his measly little life, has been kidnapped.

It still doesn’t really sink in, the absolute danger he’s sure he must be in. He just feels numb, brain muted and fuzzy. He knows that he’s tied up, he’s aware that he’s in the back of a vehicle of some sort, and he knows that there are other prisoners here with him. But that’s it. Try as he might, the drugs that must be on the rag that has been stuffed into his mouth have absolutely ruined his brain, normally sharp thoughts nothing more than clumsy, cankered fumbling.

It’s really quite frustrating.

Especially because all Martyn has got going for him, the only thing that’s saved him from being the ultimate loser, is his mind. Though, one has to understand that he’s not smart, per se- he’s not good at math or writing essays or any of the things that make someone excel in school or get a good job or create the next big instant messaging app or whatever. Nah, Martyn’s just clever.

Clever and really funny.

He wonders vaguely if his current situation has anything to do with that thing he’d signed up for last month, a flier on some lamp post somewhere advertising something called “Third Life” that was promising twenty thousand dollars to whoever participated. Martyn was the very first person to sign, to etch his name on the crisp lines- because for that kind of money, what wouldn’t he do? Even if he had no idea what this thing was (there had been no information given, not a single word that could’ve helped him to identify even remotely what this thing he’d just signed up for was.)

When he’d come back to the spot a week later, mainly just to check if there had been any updates or whatever, the paper was filled with signatures, cramming into every nook and cranny, not a singular unfilled spot on the paper. Twenty thousand dollars is a lot of money, after all. Most folks like him would kill for that kinda cash, and he’s been struggling enough recently that he’s not surprised in the slightest others have been as well.

Martyn wonders, if this is truly what Third Life is, if he’ll get his money at all.

Martyn wonders, marveling at the words that flit quickly in and out of his slogging brain, if it’ll even be worth it.

But it’s still and cold outside, no plausible or even remotely possible threats in sight. Karissa puffs a short sigh of relief out her lips, heels clacking along the cobbled path as she makes her way towards the van. It’s shining, gleaming brightly in the puddle of light cast down from the fluorescent street lamp, a stylized purple symbol painted on the side- a rectangle, cut off before two corners diagonal to each other, small individual squares taking up the place where the corners would have been.

If there had been any doubt before that she’d somehow mistaken the vehicle, it’s erased now as the symbol of the Watchers glares back at her from the side of her van. Her smile only grows.

Karissa swings open the door of the van and climbs into the shotgun seat, flashing a simpering smile at Zombie- who, at the current moment, is driving the car. Zombie shoots a quick, light glare back at her, and Karissa laughs, high-pitched and ringing, even in her own ears.

“Now, now, Zombie,” she admonishes, glancing back to where her other thirteen contestants (excluding Zombie, of course) are tied and drugged, white-suited cult members looking after them, “remember what happens when you don’t show the proper respect.”

Zombie flinches, and Karissa feels a jolt of twisted pride that she’s managed to make this person break so easily that they’re terrified by any mere allusion to possible punishment. She’s just disappointed that her son has gone and been so strong-willed; he would’ve been the perfect experiment- more so than he already is, of course.

It’s interesting, truly, to realize how the boy’s siren and gorgon traits have come out differently in combination with each other. Karissa wonders, was she to try the experiment again, have another kid- Karissa wonders if the results would be similar, or vastly different. She’s too old to bear a child by now, however, and there are some things that even one such as she will not force upon a person who does not want it.

“Zombie, stay en route to the compound. I’m going to go check in on the prisoners- make certain that Grian’s not having second thoughts about his task.” Zombie nods tersely, and Karissa pats their head condescendingly as she stands, moving smoothly through the vehicle until she’s standing aloof in the bare back compartment.

Thirteen different young adults, all drugged and tied and gagged, the perfect hamsters to run around Karissa’s proverbial maze. She smiles, a genuine expression for once, even if one of perverse satisfaction and power. Moving among her captives, Karissa takes in their appearances, the familiar yet unfamiliar face of one in particular catching her gaze. Karissa cocks her head to the side, confused, and sticks her hand roughly under their chin to tilt their head up so she can get a better look at them.

But instead of the drugged blankness she’s been expecting, Karissa is met with a glare full of pure venom. She startles, dropping their head in surprise, and scrutinizes the person further, eyes squinting as she stares them down. Straw-blond hair, golden canary wings… and the faint but unmistakable smell of rapport magic.

Ah. So unless she’s been poorly informed, this must be Jimmy.

Just as she’d instructed the guards a half-hour prior, Scott is hog-tied up right next to his lover, his snakes as limp and drooping as the rest of his limbs. But Jimmy seems alert, almost… aware. Karissa ruffles her eyebrows, flecks of dried foundation flaking off at the wrinkle. This shouldn’t be happening. But, no matter- if he’s awake, she might as well let him speak. The gag won’t do anything now, given how remote the area they’re traveling through is. Plus, it was only really needed for the administering of the drug.

Ripping the duct tape off his mouth, no consideration for the pain that might come afterwards, Karissa watches as he ejects the sopping wad of fabric out of his mouth and onto the floor, spitting out the last residue of the drug that had been soaked into the cloth with a look on his face that can only be known as disgust.

“Hello, Jimmy. My name is Karissa Major, and we are the Watchers. Welcome,” she spreads her arms, gesturing around the interior of the decrepit van, “to your new life.”

Two simple words spring from the young boy’s mouth, face contorted in a solid mask of hatred. Karissa’s eyes widen in delight. Oh, yes, he will be perfect.

Is that someone’s voice Scott can hear, through the daze of his own mind? It sounds like Jimmy. Scott wishes it was.

Everything’s better with Jimmy by his side.

“Fuck you,” Jimmy spits, lips curling up in a sneer. “You’re Scott’s mom, aren’t you? Why would you do this to me? To us? To your own son? What in all the world is wrong with you?!”

Jimmy hates the way that Karissa’s smile widens, as if he’s simply egging her on, playing into her little mind games and tricks. She doesn’t speak, just stands above and watches him as if he’s some haphazard experiment and she’s a twisted scientist waiting for results. So he screams it again, spit flying unbidden from his mouth, eyes squinted and angry, the rage building beneath him as he pulls at his bindings, tries to get as close to her face as he can.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!” he bellows, voice breaking in half. He pretends not to notice how, next to him, Scott stirs lightly, eyes blinking slightly open to stare at Jimmy blurily.

Karissa stares down at him, nothing even slightly akin to pity on her face.

“I noticed you seemed interested in Grian,” Karissa states, a cold hand covering Jimmy’s mouth when he tries to speak. “Are you wondering if maybe he could be a friend, a little ally for you in all this? A fellow avian to share your sorrows?”

Jimmy feels his eyes betraying him, drifting to gaze upon Grian’s unconscious form. He had been hoping that, he’s never met another tropical avian before. He’s been naively wondering, in the back of his skull if maybe, once they get out of here, he and Grian could go out for coffee, maybe hang out together sometime. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Jimmy’s always been a curious little bird.

But he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing that she’s correct. Karissa raises her eyebrows, as if impressed. It just makes the anger bubbling in Jimmy’s stomach increase tenfold, hatred marring his usually smooth face. Karissa keeps talking.

“Because you see, Jimmy dear- and I can tell you this because soon enough, you won’t remember anything at all and much less this conversation- Grian is not on your side. He’s on ours. He won’t have his memories, per se. I’m not stupid enough for that. He’d just throw everything away for that Scar boy.” Her head gestures to the elf slumped in the corner, and Jimmy realizes that must be Scar. A fitting name, really, when one notices the amount of long since healed over injuries covering his body.

“But, nonetheless, Grian is on our side. My side. He’ll follow our orders, keep things interesting so I can keep power. Think of it as a bit of a hazing ritual. If he succeeds, he gets to join the Watchers. If not…” Karissa lets the threat hang in midair, before presuming a cheery tone and finishing her sentence as if she was describing going to the fridge to grab a snack. “Well, if not, then we just do it all over again, don’t we?”

Jimmy feels his blood run cold. “What are you talking about? Take my memories? Grian is- he’ll be keeping what interesting? And what do you mean, do it all over again?”

Karissa hums gently, swiping a thumb over her perfectly manicured nails. “The game, darling. What you’re here for.”

“I didn’t- I’m not signed up for this, I know my rights, let me go.”

“Jimmy, dear! You really think you could do anything, even if you somehow manage to escape? You really are a misguided child, aren’t you. No, darling. We’re high in the Boatem Mountains by now, in an area so remote and unheard of that you’d never even be able to find out where we are, much less send for help. So, don’t worry your little head about escaping- because I’m afraid, at least for the moment, that you’re stuck with me.”

Jimmy feels all the air go out of him, replaced by a deep confusion. “How are we that far out of the city already?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know, darling. But I’m afraid that a magician never spills her secrets.” Karissa’s eyes are dark and cold, not a speck of humanity left within the cyan irises. Hard lines form around her mouth, and she sneers.

Jimmy has a sinking feeling that she’s telling the truth.

He’s not getting out of here anytime soon.

Karissa is surprised that Jimmy has so much fight in him. She’s watched him from afar, of course (she’s done the same with all her contestants), and he’s always seemed almost too soft, someone who can be hurt and broken easy as that. But then she’d come to the back of the van, and Jimmy had practically screamed in her face. It was an extreme whiplash from the kind of person Karissa had been expecting, but she can adapt.

It is, after all, the thing she’s best at. So she stuffs Jimmy’s gag back into his mouth once she bores of him and returns to the front of the van, not even bothering to buckle her seatbelt. “Zombie, drive quicker,” Karissa orders, arms crossed and staring straight ahead. For once, there’s not a trace of a smile, real or fake, painted across her all-too-perfect face.

“We’re already going twice the speed limit, ma’am,” Zombie replies, not even looking at her, hands clenched too tightly around the steering wheel. “I’d actually advise slowing down- if we speed up any more, we’ll get pulled over and rest assured they will find the people in the back, and even your siren magic won’t be able to convince them that it’s a normal thing to have thirteen drugged teenagers in the back of your van.”

Karissa huffs, rolling her eyes. “Fine. Do what you want. Just don’t get me caught, or I swear to god I’m tearing out all your stitches at the next possible opportunity.”

Predictably, Zombie flinches, memories of an enraged side of Karissa that only they see probably streaming through their mind. “I don’t doubt it, ma’am. I will try to the utmost of my ability not to get us caught.”

“Good girl,” Karissa purrs, reclining like a queen in her chair, “this is all going so well, I simply cannot wait for the games to begin.”

Zombie nods, eyes still straight on the road, and Karissa can see their throat bob as they do so, can feel the nervous tension bathing the air in a wash of sickly greens.

“Are you excited?” she asks, more as a form of sadistic manipulation than anything else. Zombie, of course, of course, isn’t excited. It’s a death game, she’ll lose all her memories, and worst of all, she’ll have to kill people. But if she says as much, she knows Karissa won’t hesitate to rip her throat out (and then stitch it back up, of course. It’s been done before.)

“Yes, ma’am, very excited.” Zombie spares a glance to the back of the van, something like guilt flashing across their face, so briefly that none but Karissa (master of manipulation) would have caught it.

“You’re lying to me,” she slithers back, voice smooth as honey yet twice as sharp. “Zombie, don’t you know what happens when you lie to Karissa? It doesn’t end well, does it.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Zombie says quickly, eyes darting nervously to Karissa’s enraged face. “Please don’t hurt me.” The plea in her tone is pitiful, voice withering away until it’s next to nothing, miniscule and timid.

Karissa scoffs, a hand reaching up to stroke Zombie’s sallow cheek. “You’re like a daughter to me, Zombie. Every child does bad things sometimes, and I think at heart, you’re still a child. You’ll always be a child to me. But remember, if you like to me like that ever again…”

She leaves the threat hanging in midair as her hand drifts down from Zombie’s face, their eyes turned resolutely back to the road, teeth clenched sharply. Karissa almost laughs, because it’s just all too easy, isn’t it. It’s just so simple to take advantage of this lost person, lightly masked threats all she needs to get Zombie in line. Honestly, she’s growing bored of it- bored of the complacency. She misses the days when Zombie would fight.

Maybe that’s part of the reason Karissa created the game, she muses, as she stares ahead at the sky lighting up with dawn beyond the trees. Zombie became boring- so Karissa created an environment so hostile that none could hope to survive. Even if somehow, all her players decide to be peace-loving idiots (and they won’t, Grian will make certain of that) then they’ll die by natural causes eventually- and probably sooner rather than later, one of them will feel the red haze clawing at their mind, begging them to turn on the others. And they will.

When that point is finally reached, Karissa will feel power. She will feel it beyond anything anyone else has ever known. She relishes in the thought, smile snaking sadistically behind her facade. In the corners of her vision, Zombie flinches.

Their hands grip the wheel of the car, the feeling of teeth grating together inside their mouth the only thing keeping them sane. Why are you doing this?

Zombie- or is it Cleo? Cleo Zombie? Zombie Cleo? They’re not sure anymore. But they like Cleo better, so they decide to stick with it. Her other self is not falling for this orchestrated distraction, however, this thought of property and names- the question springs back up, unbidden, and Cleo flinches at the sound of their harsh words inside her skull.

I said, why are you doing this?

Cleo’s knuckles are white now, white with the exertion of keeping her hands on the wheel when all she wants to do, all her other self wants her to do, is jump out of this van and never stop running. They decide to refer to their other self as Zombie, because they do have two names, and best to make use of both of them.

Zombie scoffs, and Cleo doesn’t even realize that their body had made the sound until Karissa’s smile appears in their peripheral vision, teeth too sharp and flawlessly white to be natural. Cleo flinches back, muttering stuttered apologies as Zombie hums disapprovingly inside their mind, head shaking sadly back and forth.

There used to be more of them, used to be more than just Zombie and Cleo. But their time at the cult, before they tried to leave under the thinly veiled excuse of getting back to their family, had taken a toll on all of them. When she’d come clean about the others in her mind, others who had sprung up when their father died, or when they were in an awful car crash. Sometimes, she’d even get a new person just from being super interested in something.

But Karissa had told them, hand on their shoulder and venom in her words, that they weren’t real, that Cleo was wrong- and one by one by one, all the people had drifted away. They’re still there- Cleo can be sure of that, and Zombie even more so- but they’ve all hidden themselves away, away from the pain and misery and everything else.

Zombie is the only one who’s stayed. And Cleo is forever grateful for them, because they make everything so much easier with their snarky quips and comments at Karissa, they make everything so much more bearable than if it had just been Cleo on her own.

Oy, little sheep, I appreciate the sentiment and all, but keep your eyes on the fucking road! Jesus Christ!

Cleo shakes herself, blinking the thoughts out of her eyes and out of her mind. Zombie reclines angrily in the back of their mind, and Cleo can feel that it’s still not happy that she’s agreed to this.

It’s not like she had any choice- Cleo hadn’t had any more choice than the people tied and drugged in the back of the van. Or at least, that is what they tell themself, frantically fabricating a panicked reasoning for why she’s doing this.

Cleo doesn’t want to get hurt again, and she doesn’t want Zombie to leave them. She doesn’t want Zombie to be forced out of their mind by Karissa’s prying talons, and they will do whatever it takes to keep their only friend safe with them.

Cleo exhales, calming the shaking of her hands. They’re okay. They’re fine. Cleo just needs to play the game, and then she can figure out a way to escape. They just need to be a part of the game, and then they can leave.

She tell herself this even when she knows she’s lying.

It’s the only way Zombie and her could ever keep going.

Scott feels the truck pull to a stop. He hears doors sliding open, and feels his body being lifted underneath him. The air is crisp and clear on his face, and he blinks as the tape is ripped off his mouth, his gag removed.

Immediately, his mind clears, and all the pieces click into place. He looks around frantically, eyes darting this way and that. He’s been slung over the shoulder of one of the white-suited cult members (because of course it’s Mother’s cult that’s kidnapping him, obviously that had been their plan from the start, and Scott curses himself for not realizing it sooner.)

He sees some of the people he’d half-noticed earlier, but his eyes flick over them quickly, not seeing what he’s looking for until the last person is carried out of the van, bright yellow feathers bound tightly to his back, eyes immediately meeting Scott’s, large and scared and pleading.

Joel is also here, Scott notices sadly, he’s been tied to the roof of the truck (as he’s much too big to fit inside). He’s being wrangled by at least ten employees, his eyes ablaze with anger, tail raised up protectively.

“Get off of me,” Scott hears him yell, “this is not what I signed up for, get off of me-”

He finally notices Scott, and his eyebrows raise in surprise. “S-scott? What are you doing here? And Jimmy? What’s going on-”

Before Joel can finish his sentence, the white suits jump on him, subduing him with a shot of something viscous and liquid-clear directly into the soft spot of the celestial’s neck. He howls, and drops to the floor, the last emotion on his face a potent hatred before he passes out.

Jimmy’s eyes lock to Scott’s again, fear apparent on his face. He must have no idea what’s going on, Scott realizes, and he feels such intense pain in his chest for his boyfriend.

“I’m sorry,” Scott whispers, guilt raking through his body like a hurricane of doubt. “This isn’t what I thought would happen.”Jimmy just shakes his head slowly, his gaze wrenched from Scott’s as he’s carried roughly inside the building. The sky shakes, and the world shakes, and everything comes crashing down because they got Jimmy. And, not for the first time, Scott doesn’t know what to do.

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