#I'm not okay. 1986 (colorized)

[toomanyacorns]

#I'm not okay. 1986 (colorized) #my boys 🥺 #eddie munson #stranger things #steddie #stranger things s4 #steve harington #steddie fanart #steddie au #he brought Eddie flowers

[lovebugism]

oh my god,,,, gurl!!!! THE CUSTOMER'S ALWAYS RIGHT fic is sooo good 😫 my heart literally breaks every time I read this story. Thank you for blessing us with this masterpiece <3

THE CUSTOMER'S ALWAYS RIGHT | square one

summary: eddie makes a confession that's been weighing heavy on his heart. you realize that your future with him is haunted by ghosts from your past. pairing: virgin!eddie munson / f!reader word count: 16.3k warnings: hopper, steve, and robin being the reader defense squad, hints at reader's previously poor mental health, mentions of abusive and toxic relationships, a banshees of inisherin quote, b*lly h*rgrove because he needs a warning. (pretend any typos don't exist pls and thank u!) a/n: guess who's back, back again? ✨✨ i'd apologize for disappearing for a month, but then there'd be apologies in all my notes, so just know that i'm sorry every time i disappear unexpectedly, okay? 🥲 thanks for being so patient! please enjoy this long-awaited installment of tcar ily <3

( PREVIOUSLY ) | ( SERIES MASTERLIST ) | ( NEXT )

Eddie’s got a 1986 Van Halen tape in his boombox and a baby pink heart stitched into the fabric of his shirt. He’s the least metal he’s ever been, but he couldn’t be happier.

You keep your promise to him to patch up his torn Hellfire tee. If anything, you use the absentminded assurance as your excuse to see him again. The night you shared before, all but baring your scarred souls underneath glittering stars and streams of pale moonlight, hadn’t satiated your hunger for him. Eddie left you craving in a way you weren’t used to before — a yearning to be close to him that went beyond the boundaries of physical intimacy.

It was a simple sort of longing. It was a homesickness. A sense of nostalgia for a love you’d never felt before.

You wish you could wear Eddie’s adoration for you like a blanket, wrap yourself in the hand-stitched quilt of many colors and bundle it tighter around your shoulders when the cold comes. You want his softness to hold you in a way you’ve never been able to hold yourself.

You feel swaddled in it, succumbed and cloaked and at peace in all his tenderness. You’ve never been so at ease, so blissfully comforted by the presence of another human being. And Eddie feels all of that, every ounce of warmth you feel, because it pours out of you like rays of sunshine and bathes him in shades of gold.

He didn’t think you could get any softer than you had been that night at Skull Rock, until you were nestled in his unmade bed the next morning. You curled your legs underneath you as you weaved the needle and thread through the tear in his t-shirt, eyes squinted and tongue poking out the side of your mouth in an astute concentration. 

All of the sudden, you were marshmallow fluff and honey on toast — made of all things sickly sweet that made his stomach feel suddenly full. 

You finish mending the rip in record time and beam when he wears the heart-shaped stitching with pride. The rest of the day thereafter was spent in the tiny confines of his one hundred square-inch bedroom. From there, the both of you came to the silent understanding that you didn't want to spend another day apart.

The weekend had given you a limited sort of freedom, allowed you to pretend that you lived in a world with no responsibilities or anything other than Eddie Eddie Eddie, but adulthood made you no such promises. He had a side job to do to keep himself afloat, and you had a cat that thought it was the end of the world anytime you were gone for longer than a night. Both of those things together meant that the eve of parting was ultimately inevitable.

Every second you spent away from Eddie felt like you were grieving.

You mourned for him in the darkness of your apartment and tried to pretend you weren’t half a person in the cat food aisle at Melvald’s.

You tried to lessen the unbearable distance with phone calls, though it didn’t come nearly as close as feeling his fingers thrumming imaginary beats on your thigh or his heartbeat thudding against your ear. 

But his voice filled the emptiness of your one-bedroom apartment and the Eddie Munson shaped hole he’d left just behind your ribcage, and that was good enough for you.

When you weren’t with him, you were roaming around your apartment like some kind of ghost, with the phone tucked between your ear and shoulder and the rotary clutched in your free hand. 

You cook yourself dinner with him ranting about his day in your ear. You hold the receiver closer to Bowie and force him to hear her purr when she’s being exceptionally cute. He falls asleep some hours later to the sound of your soft snores, and you wake up the next morning to the sounds of his.

It was pathetic, truly.

You’d be gagging at how sweet it was if it wasn’t happening to you.

But it was.

Every ounce of this sticky sweet goodness was yours, and it tasted just like honey on your tongue. 

It was the honeymoon stage times a thousand, all rose-colored and reflecting light — your own personal utopia. It brought with it a heavenly sort of refuge, a bubble of peace you never wanted to pierce.

Eddie basks in the serenity of it all when he finally has you with him again. You’re in his lap, on his lips, and all over him, but it still isn’t quite close enough. He doesn’t think he’ll be satisfied until you’ve successfully melted with him and your limbs have entwined with his like tree roots, destined to remain that way for the next couple of centuries or so.

And it’s weird because he could hardly handle living in such a tiny trailer with Wayne, let alone stomach more than a couple hours with the guys from Hellfire all in one place. But you? You entered his life all at once and now he can’t remember what it was like without you.

He doesn’t particularly want to, if he’s being real honest.

It’s why he’s always less enthused about letting you leave when you’ve both got responsibilities dragging you apart. He begs you to stay with him a few hours more, pleads for you to stick around while he makes a quick deal or an emergency pick-up when Dustin Henderson calls and says he needs a ride. 

And you promise you’ll wait on him there, because he makes it virtually impossible to say no to his rosy pouted lips and chocolate syrup puppy dog eyes.

That’s when you run into Wayne for the first time, when Eddie’s out and you’re making breakfast for when he comes back.

French toast and scrambled eggs sizzle on the stove and warm the kitchen with all its cinnamon confections. It makes the man’s face screw up in confusion when he steps inside the trailer because he’s never known Eddie to cook a day in his life. And then his eyes find you — a young, pretty girl all alone in his kitchen with his nephew’s van gone from the drive.

“…Who the hell are you?” he wonders gruffly and pops a cigarette between his lips, totally unbothered.

He’s got no reason to be intimidated by the stranger in his trailer. He’s more confused than anything else, and he’s got this contorted look on his face like he’s blaming the exhaustion from the graveyard shift for his vision of you.

“Oh— my god,” you mumble through the mouthful of whipped cream you’d squeezed into your mouth moments prior. You fight to swallow it all down. “Uh. Hi. I’m, um… I’m Eddie’s... girlfriend?”

It sounds like you’re lying. 

In some ways, it feels like you are. 

You’ve been spending more time in his trailer than in your own home, but it’s not like either of you has motioned to make anything official just yet.

He eyes you with a tired and heavy gaze, eyes as dark and as infinite as Eddie’s. The man gives you a once-over and then chuckles lowly to himself as he tosses his corduroy jacket onto the back of the recliner and his tin lunchbox to the coffee table.

You shift awkwardly on the other side of the room. “…What is it?”

“When Eddie said he was talkin’ to a pretty girl on the phone every night, I thought he was lyin’,” he admits through hearty chuckles. 

It makes you laugh too. 

There’s little talking after the fact, besides you offering him some of the breakfast on the stove and him joking that you should come around more often.

You recount the story to Eddie when he returns, utterly mortified about the whole thing. You’re even more embarrassed when the boy finds amusement in your horror and starts to chuckle to himself — not exactly at you, but not with you either.

He laughs louder when you swat at him for it. You clamber on top of him, mattress squeaking mattress under your weight, as you demand him to stop through giggles of your own.

Somewhere down the line, both of you stop caring. 

Neither of you is quite sure where the conversation stopped and ended, only that when you started kissing, you couldn’t stop. 

They weren’t innocent little pecks, but they weren’t sloppy and full of tongue either. You press your lips together with the intent of being as close as you can to the other, like you haven’t spent every second you could together.

Neither of you will be satisfied until you’ve swallowed each other whole.

And you, you’ve got this ache for him. A swirling of want that’s constantly rippling in your belly for this boy. He’s just not usually under you when it’s happening — and now that he is, the crackling embers have burst into white and blue flames behind your sternum.

Your lips click each time you part, a lewd noise you never want to stop hearing. The sound of it gives you goosebumps, like a good song you’ve just heard on the radio. You wonder if Eddie can feel them as his hands start to creep up beneath your shirt and find purchase along your waist. 

You open his mouth with your own and sneak your tongue inside just as you roll your hips over his lap.

It’s the most forthcoming either of you had been in your three-day stint of nonstop talking. Even when you were over at the trailer, totally alone and pressed underneath him, it was otherwise completely innocent. You just make out like a couple of teenagers until one of you wants to make a food run or offers to roll a joint. 

And you like that. You like that he doesn’t expect anything from you, but it does get a little agonizing when you’ve tried every attempt to give yourself to him and he just won’t take it.

Like usual, Eddie tenses when he feels you grinding on top of him — partly because he feels a tingle at the base of his spine when he gets instantly half-hard, but mostly because he knows there’s nothing he can do about it.

He keeps preaching to himself it’s not the right time, it’s not the right time, it’s not the right time — but he’s got no idea when it’ll ever be the right time, if it’ll ever be the right time, or if he’ll know it when it comes.

Because he’s had you to himself for days now — no Wayne, no responsibilities, no pressure — with his tongue rutting against yours and your hands fidgeting with the metal buttons of his jeans, and it still doesn’t feel good enough. Eddie doesn’t feel good enough.

He’s not sure if he ever will.

And it’s not you. God, it’s the farthest thing from you. As far as Eddie’s concerned, he’s never had more fun with anyone else. He’s never laughed harder with anyone else. He’s never felt as comfortable with anyone as he’s starting to feel around you. So he’s not entirely sure why he finds the rest of it so hard. 

Eddie wants you so bad that the ache of all his yearning is palpable. It’s like the weight of it is what’s keeping him from you — unstoppable force, immovable object, blah, blah, blah. 

Either way, it leaves him entirely unable to take things further with you, however much he wants to. There’s something in his way and it’s him. 

Your heartache is his own when he has to pull away from you.

“You okay?” you ask him with wide eyes and swollen lips, always so concerned for him.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m good,” he’s quick to assure you. He’s still breathless when he fidgets beneath you, trying to prop himself up on his headboard without rubbing his half-hard cock against your thigh.

When he succeeds, he musters a smile that shakes at the edges. “It’s just… you know, not everything… It doesn’t have to be about sex, you know?”

He makes himself as soft as possible for you when he says this. He gets rid of all the usual teasing lilts that tend to lurk on his tongue as the words spill from his mouth. The last thing he wants to do is hurt your feelings or, in some roundabout way, make you think you’re the problem. 

He just wants you to know that that isn’t why he’s been wanting to spend so much time with you. There was never an ulterior motive with him other than all the adoration he holds in his hands and his mouth for you.

The strike of hurt that flashes across your face is obvious to only Eddie, who’s spent enough time mapping out your features to know what twitches are ones of discontent. The slight frown that dips between your brows when they scrunch together for half a second comes like a stroke of lightning. It’s a brief flash of purple in the sky that leaves so quickly that it makes you wonder if it was ever there at all.

You fidget on his lap, not resting as comfortably upon him as you had been just moments before. “Oh…” you murmur through soft, jutted-out lips. “Sorry. I, I didn’t—”

“No, it’s not— that’s not what I—” he tries to assure over your insecure stammers, but succeeds only in tripping over himself in return. He cuts himself off with a breathy laugh, shaking his head while his fingers fidget on your hips. “That’s just not what this is about for me, you know? I just… I wanna spend time with you.”

It’s easily the softest thing he’s ever said to you — to anybody, for the matter — and the marshmallow sweetness of it all wraps around you like wisps of pink cotton candy.

Your apprehensiveness twists into something lighter, a pair of twinkling eyes and a bashful smile.

“Oh,” you hum again, obviously more pleased than before. “That’s nice…”

“No one’s ever said that to you before, have they?” Eddie asks you.

He tries to muster a crooked smirk as the words leave his mouth, but he’s got a feeling he already knows the answer. Hearing you affirm his suspicions will do nothing more than make him angry at all the assholes that had you before him, at everyone who taught you that you were good for sex and hardly a thing else. 

It makes him wish that he’d gotten to know you sooner. Maybe then you’d understand that he’d be happy just holding you like this and never doing anything more.

You don’t answer him verbally, just shake your head with your lips pursed softly to the side. You look more innocent than anything he’s ever seen before, even with your lipstick smeared on your chin. 

He’s still not quite sure how someone could be so reckless with such a fragile thing — to watch you break and not spend the rest of time grieving to know that you’ll never be quite the same again. 

There’s a primal instinct that swims in him then, an urge to keep you in his arms and locked in the confines of his trailer forever and ever. He wants to keep the wolves of Hawkins, Indiana from ever getting a whiff of you again. It’d be more than they deserved, anyway.

“God, you have got to get better boyfriends, sweetheart,” Eddie tells you with a playful lilt in his voice despite the anger simmering in his belly.

“Isn’t that what you are?” you giggle.

His world stops.

“Huh?”

You tense at his tenseness. Only when he’s gaping at you does the weight of your words dawn on you. “…Huh?”

The awkward moment goes as quickly as it arrives, chased out by the fit of laughter the two of you are quickly thrown into. Your entwining chuckles rise like smoke in his tiny bedroom and then settle back over you like a fuzzy blanket.

“Are you asking me to be your boyfriend, babe?” Eddie teases.

“Of course not,” you scoff. “Babe.”

“Oh, right, of course not. That would be way too crazy considering we’ve spent, like, every day together and have made each other come… what is it now? Twice?”

“Three times for me,” you correct with you a smile. “You need to catch up, Eddie Spaghetti.”

“Another time?” he offers with a scrunched nose.

“Whenever you want.”

Eddie is grateful for your lack of urgency, even more so for the kiss you press to the tip of his nose. 

You peck him on the lips after — once, twice, and then a thiiird, drawn out time — before moving on to his chin and jaw and neck. Whatever part of him you can reach (which is just about everywhere, considering the vantage point you’ve got sitting on his lap), you sprinkle a kiss to it.

It’s an innocent sort of affection, the kind that makes him wonder how it ever came to be in the first place. What evolutionary measures led to this, to you pressing your lips to his skin to show how much you care about him? Eddie doesn’t really want to know the answer, he’s just grateful that it happened in the first place.

You’re so good at it, loving on him. You’re always so kind and so gentle in your way and it makes him feel guilty. There’s a lingering feeling of undeservedness that settles something heavy at the base of his stomach. How could he ever expect you to be so open with him when he hasn’t done the same for you?

A heavy sigh rattles in his deflating chest. 

“I gotta tell you something, sweetheart,” he cautions when your lips smack against the thrumming pulse below the left side of his jaw. “Something you’re not gonna like…”

A billion things run through your head all at once. When you part from him, he can see the rollercoaster of emotions each one of them puts you through.

Your first instinct is that he’s got some kind of partner he’s kept hidden from you until now. It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve gone steady with a guy who’s then told you about some other girlfriend he had — or, god forbid, a wife. 

But then you realize that you surely would’ve had some sort of inkling if that were the case. There’s no way Eddie would’ve been able to spend every second of his day with you — and then another several hours on the phone when you had to leave — without someone else coming along to burst your bubble. 

And so far, there haven’t been any angry wives, just the occasionally confused Uncle Wayne.

Then you start thinking he’s about to tell you he wants an open relationship. The you’re great, but I’m just not ready to settle down yet spiel that you’ve heard a thousand times before. Usually when people say that, they mean that they just don’t want to settle down with you.

You’ll become some douchebag’s fuck toy for a month or more until the girl next door comes around. He gets her knocked up in record time, his family forces him to marry her, and they begin their cushy lives together in the center of some cul-de-sac — really settle down, as it were.

You’re not sure if you could take that from Eddie. You could grin and bear if it you had to, take whatever attention he’s willing to give you because who cares if he’s giving it to someone else on the side? You’re just not sure how long you’d last like that.

And then you start to worry that he’s just going to break up with you entirely — it’s not you, it’s blah, I’ll always care about blah, please don’t tell anyone about how we blah-ed. That whole talk. 

All the rest of your worries stop mattering so much because you’ve only just called him your boyfriend. And here he goes, about to end it all before it can really even start. That’d be just your luck, you figure.

“Did I do something wrong?” you caution after a few moments of heavy silence.

Eddie’s bleeding heart wrenches at your words, at how sad they sound spilling from your mouth, and how you immediately think that it’s got something to do with you. 

He shakes his head feverishly in response. “No. No, it’s not you. You’re… you’re perfect.”

“Okay…” you concede quietly, voice trembling with a lingering disbelief.

“I just… I haven’t been totally honest with you, you know?” the boy admits before his glimmering chocolate eyes fly open and he corrects himself quickly. “And I haven’t lied to you or anything. Not— Not exactly. I just… I wanna be honest with you… As your boyfriend and all.”

You can tell by the sudden weight in his voice that he’s serious. But the fine coat of glowing rose that splotches Eddie’s cheeks after calling himself your boyfriend for the first time makes you melt. 

You smile to yourself and start to trace the heart you’d stitched into his t-shirt with your finger.

“Yeah. I mean, we are about to spend our two minutes anniversary together and everything.”

“Exactly,” the boy huffs out a laugh. It lacks its usual jest, though, because of the ice-cold anxiety that drenches him from head to toe and makes his hands and feet go numb.

His fingers tremble where the rest on your waist, trying and failing to find a comfortable position there because, right about now, Eddie feels the most awkward he’s ever felt.

“I just want you to know that I… I’ve never done this before,” he confesses quietly and with his eyes squeezed shut. He prays that he doesn’t have to be any less vague than that.

Your face twists in confusion — your brows furrow and your nose twitches and your head tilts to the side like a puppy. And then you’re laughing, a soft little thing of a giggle that normally makes his heart sing, though now he can only feel it breaking.

“What…?” he tries to scoff out his own chuckle. “Why are you laughing?”

“Because you’ve already told me that, dummy. That you’ve never felt this way before…” you answer, reciting his own words back to him. You haven’t yet forgotten how he’d looked at you as you said them, pale skin made silk under the moonlight while he sparkled beneath the beams of it and his love for you. 

“No, it’s… it’s more than that,” he corrects. “I’ve never even had a girlfriend before you. Or anything really.”

You still don’t seem to understand. You just look on at him with uncertainty. 

A quiet “okay?” tumbles from your mouth entwined with a nervous giggle, because you don’t understand what’s got him so somber. He’s never dated anyone, you’ve fucked half of Hawkins — these are just facts that went unsaid before now. 

And maybe it’s because you’ve never been with a virgin before, but the thought that Eddie might be one hasn’t seemed to cross your mind at all. 

It’s that exact thought that scares him. 

Because if it hasn’t already, maybe it’s because you’re avoiding it altogether. And why would he ever be the exception?

He opts to bite the bullet and hopes that his heart doesn’t get broken after.

“I’m a virgin. Okay? I’m a complete, total, proper adult virgin,” he blurts with a brazenness he’d previously lacked when it came to all this. “And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before now, but I didn’t, because I liked you and I was scared. So if you wanna yell at me or if you wanna break up with me before our five-minute anniversary, I totally get it, but I should probably let you know that it’ll rip my little virgin heart to shreds, so…”

Eddie ends his nervous ramble with a trembling, lopsided smile that does little to ease the leaden tension he’s just manufactured in the four walls of his bedroom.

He can’t seem to gauge your reaction after the fact, which is strange because he always knows what you’re thinking. 

He knows when you’re laughing with him and not at him. You scrunch your nose and giggle when he tells you a funny joke, then tilt your head back and cackle when he trips over the punchline. 

He knows the exact moment when something’s started to bother you — when you get real quiet in your bubble of reserved stillness and your eyes start to glaze over. To anyone else, it might just look like a person who’s keeping to themselves. Eddie’s starting to learn that usually means trouble when it comes to you.

He knows the difference between your gentle sort of sadness and when you’re damn near inconsolable. When you cried at the end of Stand By Me, you smiled at him with a glassy tear-filled gaze, then rolled your eyes when he tried to comfort you. The tears only spilled over when you laughed because Eddie pretended you’d hurt him when you’d shoved him away. 

But when you’re really upset about something, you don’t show him at all — you fight to keep it all to yourself until you’ve squished the problem into a tiny enough ball that you can forget about all of it.

This is something different.

There’s too much crossing your mind all at once for him to get a good read of you.

You just gape at him, like you’re trying to figure out if he’s joking or not, and then fighting to understand what it means when you realize he’s being serious. 

And just when you’ve started to wrap your head around it all, when your brain remembers how to make words again and you realize you haven’t said anything in several agonizing seconds, a foreign voice sounds from down the hallway.

Not foreign in that it was unfamiliar exactly, just foreign in that you and Eddie had spent so much time alone that you were starting to forget that there was an entire world outside of yourselves. A great big world, filled with a great many people, some of whom were your friends who tended to get pretty worried about you.

“Edward Wayne— why the hell is the Chief in my driveway?” his uncle curses from the living room, sounding like he’s speaking through a cigarette in his mouth.

Eddie himself is immediately freaking the fuck out because he figures he must’ve gotten tipped off again. He tries to calculate the quickest way to get you off of him and to all of his cubby holes full of miscellaneous drugs so he can flush them down the toilet before Jim Hopper busts the door down.

And even though you’re not the drug dealer who’s had cops on their ass since they were fifteen in this equation, you look a whole lot more terrified than Eddie does.

Your eyes go wide and the whites of them swim with terror as you launch yourself off of his lap. You don’t spare another glance back at him, not even when you nearly trip over yourself when you shove your sneakers on your feet and shuffle out of the room. He’s forced to follow behind you like a confused puppy as you bound through the trailer at lightning speed. 

The haste of your movements startles even Wayne, who halts mid-puff of his cig when you’re in and out of the living room before he can blink. The opening squeak of the screen door and metal slamming against metal is the only thing that punctuates your exit.

“Would it kill you to answer your damn phone every once in a while?” the powerful timbre of Jim Hopper’s angry voice, of which only the man himself could pull off, is muffled until Eddie cautiously slinks onto the porch behind you. 

He finds the chief standing beside the Cruiser he’s parked sideways. The door of it is still flung open. A distant beeping sounds from the ignition. 

He’s still got on the pressed khakis of his uniform — complete with the golden badge pinned to his chest, darkened sunglasses on the bridge of his nose, and flat-brimmed hat on his head. Even with the majority of his face covered, it does little to hide the anger that radiates off of him like a hot stove eye.

You remain on the porch, shifting your weight on your feet at the top of the steps. “Okay, Hopper, just listen to me for a second—”

“Three days!” he shouts over you, not deterred by your composed nature. “I have been calling you… for three days! Seventy-two hours. No answer!”

Eddie decides to speak up from behind you despite his better judgment. “Yeah, uh, that was kinda my fault,” he confesses with an awkward laugh. “Wouldn’t let her hang up the phone—”

“I’ll deal with you in a second,” Jim interjects firmly and without thinking. He goes back to berating you with an admirable finesse. “Buckley wanted my head on a pike when I wouldn’t file a missing person’s report in the first twenty-four hours, but seventy-two? She was gonna kill me!”

Rather than argue with him, like every fiber of your being so desperately wants to, you make the difficult choice to concede with a heavy sigh. Because you don’t doubt that Robin was on his ass the second she realized you weren’t answering your phone or at your apartment when she and Steve dropped by.

She did tend to be on the overprotective side, after all, which obviously paired well with her melodramatic disposition.

“I’m sorry, okay? I’ve just been… busy.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard the one before,” the man answers bitterly.

“It’s different, Hopper!”

“I’ve heard the one before, too!”

Eddie can only assume that the both of you are communicating telepathically, what with the way your synchronized glares seem to say a thousand words (probably every curse imaginable, if he had to guess) without your mouths ever moving once. 

He stands on the outskirts of it all, feeling a bit stuck in the thorniness of such a tense silence, like any slight movement might cut him.

Jim moves slowly, akin to a creeping snake, as his hands raise to remove the glasses from his face. Their lack reveals the ice-cold glare that was previously hiding beneath them.

“Get in the car—” 

“—No,” you reject just as the direction leaves his mouth because you knew it was coming.

Jim inhales sharply and smacks his lips against his teeth, like a father whose child is most ardently testing his patience. He plants his work boot in the gravel and his hand on his hips. His steel gaze goes far off for a moment before flitting back to you again.

“…Get in the car or I put you in handcuffs.”

Your breath hitches at the threat. You squint over at him. “You wouldn’t.”

Jim smiles at you, but it’s more threatening than anything else. “We both know that I would.”

Eddie’s eyes flit between the both of you. He can tell that Hopper’s serious and that you’re trying to decide whether or not to call his bluff, with your arms crossed defensively over your chest and lips pursed in a tight line.

You ultimately decide not to. Because Hopper has, in fact, done that before. And even though the circumstances are very, very different, you wouldn’t put it past him to do it again. So you all but stomp your foot like a protesting child and spin on your heel to storm back inside the trailer.

Eddie’s nervous gaze flits between your disappearing form and the storm cloud of a police chief standing in his driveway. When their eyes lock, he realizes he should probably say something. He cocks his thumb over his shoulder and stammers, “I should— I should probably…”

He doesn’t finish his sentence. He catches the front door before it shuts and slithers through the crack of it to follow in behind you.

“Wait, was he— was he being serious about that?” Eddie wonders once you’re back in his bedroom.

It feels a lot less cozy than it did minutes before, less like the bubble of refuge that you thought nobody could pierce and more like a lonely space that feels entirely too empty. You pluck your things scattered around his room, and it starts to feel less and less like home with parts of you gone from it.

“I don’t know,” you answer within a sigh as you collect your cardigan from the back of his desk chair and shrug the thing back over your shoulders again.

“But it’s happened before?”

“Yeah. Once. When I was…” you confess quietly, then trail off. You get your bag from his nightstand and haphazardly shove your scrunchie, sunglasses, and chapstick into the bottom of it. “…When I was in a bad way— it doesn’t matter now.”

Eddie so desperately wants to pry.

He’d wanted to make a joke before, about the handcuffs — something less than tasteful about them and you and Hopper and some good ol’ freaky deaky that you'd scold him for after. But he decides not to now because you sound so strangely solemn about the whole thing, as though it was a story you buried deep with the intent of never bringing it up again.

“You don’t have to go with him if you don’t want to, you know that, right?”

“Of course, I do,” you scoff at his worries, not nearly as threatened by Jim as the rest of Hawkins. You move to stand in front of him in the center of his room and meet his furrowed brows with a soft grin. “He’s not gonna do anything, he’s just pissed. He’ll berate me on the drive back to my apartment and then it’ll be like nothing ever happened.”

That seems to please Eddie well enough, though he’s still a bit disheartened at your leaving.

“I guess we couldn’t keep spending time together like this, huh?” he teases lightly, like the realization of it doesn’t make his chest ache. “Sorta forgot about the rest of the world… whatever that is.”

“It was fun while it lasted,” you tell him with a shrug and a whimsical sigh.

“Wait for me, will ya?” he jokes, if only to make you laugh and to feel like he’s stuck in some sickly sweet ending of a romcom for a couple moments more. 

You roll your eyes at his dramatics but let him wrap you in his arms anyway. His hands find purchase on your elbows, thumbs rubbing soothingly along the outsides of them. “How about a kiss, then?” he offers when the urge to feel you because too great to bear. “For our ten-minute anniversary and all?”

“You never have to ask me, Eds,” you assure with a laugh. You rise to the tips of your toes and he meets you halfway. 

Home is in your mouth. It’s warm and cozy and safe there. It’s easily the most familiar place he’s ever known, with your bottom lip nestled between his own. He feels homesick when you part from him. 

“You’re not mad at me?” he wonders quietly, feeling a bit like a cowering child from where he stands in front ahead of you — eased only when you shake your head almost immediately in response.

“No. I couldn’t be even if I wanted to, I think.”

“Okay. That’s… That’s good.”

“We can talk about it later, if you want. After I get lurch off my ass.”

He tries not to smile too wide, but it’s hard not to beam every time he looks at you. “Yeah. Sure. I’ll… I’ll see you around, I guess?” he stumbles over himself, having forgotten how to say goodbye to you. 

It’s equally as hard for you too, it seems, because you nod at him and turn to leave and then realize once you’re halfway down the hallway that you might not survive if you don’t kiss him again. 

So you turn and rush back, catching Eddie with his back turned and spinning him around so you can peck him again. You feel his cheeks heat beneath your palm and his sigh against your cupid’s bow and his lips melt against your own.

You etch each tingling sensation into the edges of your mind in the hope that you won’t drive yourself completely insane when you inevitably start to miss him like crazy. 

You focus on that and on him when you find Hopper and his stupid proud dad smirk. It’s the only reason you don’t punch him in the jaw and tuck and roll out of the Cruiser when the silence becomes so slowly insufferable.

You’re starting to think Jim left the radio off on purpose. You’ve never known the guy not to drive around without the strumming of an old-school folk song to accompany him. You figure it must be some sort of intimidation tactic, to make you so uncomfortable that you break. You’re a lot closer to that than either of you realize.

You spare a glance over at the man next to you. He hasn’t looked at you once since you get in the car. He’s got one hand at three o’clock on the steering wheel and the other with its elbow propped up on the door as he scratches at the stubble on his jaw. 

He’s too at ease not to be bothered. This is obviously some kind of front he’s putting on to conceal his inner irritation.

You give on the lecture you’d been trying to prepare yourself for and exhale sharply through your nose. Your fingers fidget on your thighs as you kick your restless feet up on the console. 

“Get your feet off the dash,” Jim scolds without missing a beat. 

You huff and obey. “Okay, this is crazy— can’t you just yell at me already?”

He barely wastes a second.

“I cannot believe you right now!” he seethes through gritted teeth, stewing in a dad-like sort of anger.

“It was three days, Hopper!”

“You know what happened the last time no one heard from you for three days?” he shouts back. 

You tip your head back against the seat and groan. You should’ve known he was going to play that card. 

He waves an accusatory finger between the both of you. “You and me— we had a deal, remember? You let me check in on you. You agreed to that. You visit your little high school friends, and I see you at work, so I can make sure you’re not off somewhere killing yourself.”

Hopper becomes a casualty to the tense silence he created then, when you don’t retort with some comeback of your own and force him to feel every ounce of pressure from the leaden quiet. 

He sighs a great big, too loud sigh and shifts in his seat. His softening gaze flits between you and the road. “I didn’t… I didn’t mean it like that, okay? I just meant it, you know, figuratively. I wasn’t… trying to be mean.”

“When have you ever cared about being mean?” you monotone.

“I don’t,” he assures. “I’m just not trying to hurt your feelings, alright? Jeez…”

You try not to take too much pride in the man’s half-apology, though you’d be lying if you said it wasn’t a little bit rewarding.

Jim Hopper’s practically an iceberg. He only melts for his kid, Joyce Boyers, and you, apparently. 

It’s why he’s always so damn protective over you. He’s developed this sort of deep-rooted urge to keep you safe after watching you make every wrong decision a human being could possibly make. And when you mess up, because you do mess up, he feels like it’s partially his fault — that, if he’d done more, he could’ve kept you safer. 

It makes you feel like a burden most of the time, but you know it’s above yourself and mostly out of your control.

You’d known of each other for a while before you really met, because a troublemaker and police chief in such a small town are bound to. But somewhere down the line, he found you in a valley of mourning for someone that was still alive and you found him in a black hole of grief for someone who wasn’t. The empty and infinite voids within you both were stitched slowly together all over again. 

Jim Hopper was the dad you never had. You were the daughter he couldn’t.

And you thought something might change after he adopted El. You figured he might forget about you because it wasn’t like it was his job to watch after you or anything. Playing pretend always felt nice, but you knew it wasn’t real. 

It was to Jim, though, who’d developed a similar adoration for you as the one he had for Sara. He hasn’t been able to forget about you in the same way he hasn’t been able to forget about her. 

Every night, after he’s scrubbed the day off his body and washed it all down with a lukewarm beer, he lays on his pull-out bed in the small living room of his cabin and goes through a checklist in his head. 

He makes sure that he’s checked on El and reminds himself to wake up early to make her breakfast the next morning before he brings Joyce coffee at Melvald’s — Joyce. She always comes next on his list, always right after El, and then you. 

He forces himself to calm down when his blood pressure inevitably spikes at the thought of not having heard from you all day. He reminds himself that he saw you at work on his lunch break and that he’ll see you again tomorrow.

Jim hums to himself as he settles more comfortably into his springy cot, deciding that he’ll try a new wine he can’t pronounce when he sees you at Enzo’s the next day and that he’ll drink it while he rambles about Joyce or El’s new boyfriend.

He drifts to sleep with thoughts of Sara.

You’re as ingrained into his mind as every other person he’s grown to love.

He stopped worrying about never getting you out a long time ago. Like a tomato sauce stain on a dress shirt, he knows he’ll never get you out of his head. He knows even more so that he doesn’t want to — no matter how much you annoy him or how angry you make him when you don’t answer his calls.

“Sorry…” you murmur and swallow down whatever mundane argument you could’ve spewed then, at the result of his sudden warmth. You turn to gaze out the window and trace the edges of the puffy white clouds with your eyes. “I wasn’t thinking about that — the… deal, or whatever… Honestly, I was a little too busy being happier than I think I’ve ever been in my life, so…”

You don’t see the dramatic eye roll he gives you in response, but you can’t miss the hearty groan that spills from his mouth. 

“What?” you laugh in response. “Have you never been a kid in love before?”

It’s almost jarring how he goes from huffy to concerned in a fraction of a second. His head snaps over to you, jaw clenched and eyes suddenly stern and swimming with a lingering fear. 

“Love?” he repeats like he must’ve heard you wrong. “Love— That’s— That’s what this is?”

You shrug. “I don’t know… Maybe…”

His eyes flutter shut for a moment. “Please don’t tell me you’ve said that to each other yet. This guy was just a crush four days ago.”

“No, Hopper. We haven’t. I mean, he literally just told me he was a virgin, so I don’t think we’re even close to—”

“A virgin?” Jim echoes, voice high-pitched and giddy. He beams at you from beneath his bushy mustache and slaps you a little too hard on your arm when he laughs. “Shit, teacup. Are you runnin’ out of options over there or somethin’?”

You twist your body to hit him back harder with your right hand. “It’s not funny, Hopper,” you scold. “He’s nice.”

“You said that about Hargrove once—”

“This is different,” you monotone before the words have the chance to leave his mouth.

“Yeah? How do you know?”

The question stumps you for a moment because you don’t know — you can’t.

You’d never admit it out loud, but Hopper was right; you’re still not quite sure how you ever could’ve thought that Billy Hargrove was a good guy, but you did. You felt a similar feeling of elation with him as you do now with Eddie, an otherworldly sort of happiness that makes you feel like you’re the only person it’s ever happened to.

And here you are now, sometime later and reveling in the aftermath, still gluing pieces of your shattered heart together.

You treat love like a drug. You use and use and use until it stops being a fun thing and becomes a crutch you can’t live without. That’s always when it starts to hurt you, but you’re in too deep to stop craving it.

And you know it’s bound to happen all over again, but you have to believe Eddie’s different or else you might as well fall into the deep pit of despair you’ve been trying this whole time to crawl out of. 

He makes you happy, really really happy, and you’d rather gamble that he hurts you than give it all without even trying.

“I… don’t,” you conclude after a few moments.

Jim seems surprised by your admission, shooting you an incredulous look with his untamed brows raised to his hairline.

You meet his look with a wavering grin. “But he makes me really happy, Hop. Like… It feels like it should be illegal or something. He makes me feel so good my heart hurts. There’s like this—”

“Ugh,” the man grumbles in disgust, sullen all over again.

“I didn’t mean it like that, you weirdo,” you chide.

A grin twitches beneath his mustache in response. “I know you didn’t… ‘Cause Munson’s a virgin.”

“Oh my god!” you groan. “I didn’t even mean to tell you that, okay? Leave him alone— and a swear to god, Hopper, if you make fun of him—”

“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with it, alright? I mean, he’s got the expert around to show him the ropes— ow!” You cut off his stupid joke and accompanying sardonic grin with a fist to his shoulder.

Steve and Robin tend to be quite the formidable duo.

They’ve barely got a brain cell to rub together between them, but there’s still something strangely intimidating about them when they’re both angry. It feels a bit like they’re your I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed parents, and you’re the scolded child taking your lashings in the form of a lecture.

It’s what you feel like now, sitting across from them in your designated booth at Benny’s Burgers — the one by the window in the corner. It’s far enough away from the bustle of the entrance but close enough still to gossip about the assholes you used to know from high school when they walk through the door. 

“You scare the shit out of us when you go AWOL like that, you know?” Steve confesses, still soft even though you know there’s a more upset part of himself he keeps hidden for now.

His chocolate gaze flits between you and the pile of fries in the middle of the table that the three of you share. He finds the one covered in the most salt and pops it into his mouth.

“AWOL?” you echo with a distant laugh when you realize how much he sounds like Hopper. “It was three days.”

“Yeah, and you fell off the face of the earth,” Robin retorts, half-muffled through the hearty gulp of strawberry milkshake starting to melt in her mouth.

“You guys are acting like I went halfway across the country,” you scoff. “I was with Eddie. At his trailer.”

“Exactly!”

Steve’s face contorts mid-bite. “Wait, you were with him? The freak?”

It makes you roll your eyes. He’d been too busy hopelessly flirting with the waitress at the counter to hear the entire recounting of your absence to Robin, though it was more of you gushing about it than anything else.

“Yep,” you answer.

“You skipped out on movie night to be with… Eddie Munson?” he reiterates for himself, as though there was any correlation between watching the same three movies while gorging on greasy junk food with your best friends and falling more in love with a guy you were already head over heels for as he tried to explain away the unopened box of condoms collecting dust underneath his bed.

Both are equally fun in their own ways, but totally totally different.

“How did you survive without me, Steven?” you joke back in response.

“He didn’t,” Robin quips.

“So… what? You guys just went on some kinda bender? I don’t get it. Did you just fuck the entire time or something?”

“Well, contrary to popular belief, I can actually spend time with someone and not fuck them—”

“Okay, that’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“And to answer your question — no, we didn’t fuck,” you confess, then elaborate more slowly, a tad bit awkwardly. “Because he told me today that… he is a… virgin.”

Your words seem to settle over each of them differently. Robin stills with her lips wrapped around the candy-cane striped straw then furrows her brows, as though their meaning hits her a few seconds after the fact.

Steve, meanwhile, goes entirely agape in an amazed sort of shock. His eyes go wide, his brows fly up and hide beneath the bangs that hang down over his forehead, and his jaw falls open. And then he starts to smile, a subtle hint of a grin on the corners of his pink lips, like he finds it funny.

“I knew it,” he murmurs to himself.

“…Why are you smiling like that?”

His smirk widens. “That freak said he screwed Vicki Carmichael senior year. I knew he was lying.”

“And why do you look so proud of yourself, exactly?” Robin asks him.

“Because now I feel less bad about never fucking her,” the boy explains like it’s obvious. He set his elbows on the table and gestures wildly with his hands. “I always thought the freak one-upped me because she, like, never gave me the time of day after Hargrove came along, you know? But… It’s good to know that I’m still king.”

His delighted grin is met with confused looks from both you and Robin, who look upon him with twisted eyebrows and squinted eyes. 

“Are you not aware of how strange everything that comes out of your mouth is?” you ask him, only partly joking.

“At least that settles why he wouldn’t let you give him a blow job,” the brunette girl concludes with a shrug as she slouches against the booth. “Poor guy was probably shitting bricks about it.”

You realize then that it does make sense, why he’d always been so adamant about your pleasure and never his own. Why he always touched you like you were some fragile thing he might break, and like everything was new to him. Because it was new to him. All of it.

And even though it baffles you to no end how he went his entire life without someone wanting to jump his bones (because truth be told, you’re doing a terrible job at hiding your want to do just that), the fact still remains — Eddie Munson is a virgin. 

He’s a virgin with an acute infatuation for the local slut, both of you freaks in your own right. 

It just adds more intricacy to a puzzle that already feels so complicated.

“I’ve never been with a virgin before,” you admit quietly, mostly to yourself, as you train your gaze on the straw wrapper you curl around your finger. “It’s different… Scary.”

“Why?” Robin wonders aloud.

“I don’t know. I just— I don’t know what to do now.”

“Just do what you always do,” Steve tells you like it’s that simple. He folds his arms on the table and leans in closer to you. “Experience is good. Okay? Experience is key.”

“No, it’s not that. I think I’m just… I’m scared I’m gonna treat him the way, you know, that I was treated. And I don’t wanna… I don’t wanna do that to him.”

You’re not sure when the shift started, when you stopped being a person to people. You only know that you were something less than that. Somewhere between junior and senior year, you become a plaything that anyone could do anything they wanted to with, and you were too starved for physical affection to tell them otherwise. 

You liked the attention. You liked feeling loved, even if it was only for a minute and a half, and all you had to show for it was a pool of cooling come on your belly.

Eddie’s the fragile thing now that you were then. 

He was a delicate little thing that can break so easily, something you could split in half if you wanted to. 

You don’t. 

You want so desperately to be kind, but you’re scared you won’t know how to, because no one’s ever been kind to you.

Steve reaches across the table for you, taking a wild stab at an attempt for affection after several months of being scared to touch you — he did enough of that, he thought, and he’d hurt you. But he can see the lingering ache hiding in your glazed-over eyes and feels an overwhelming urge to quell your worry. 

Five warm fingers wrap around your wrist, not too tight or too strong, just enough to stop you from cutting circulation off to the tip of your pointer finger and to remind you that he’s still there.

“Trust me,” he tells you with a sudden soft swimming in his caramel-colored eyes and a smile playing on his lips. “You couldn’t do that to anybody. Not even if you wanted to.”  

Your heart nearly stops at his words, at the sheer kindness of them, and at the way he holds you in the soft way you’re used to only Eddie holding you. Your eyes go wide when they flit up to him and then start to sting with the weight of unshed tears. 

You’re quick to blink them away though, while you playfully shrug him off and joke — “stop being so nice before I get the wrong idea, Harrington” — because it’s easier than accepting his tenderness.

Robin takes one look at his fond gaze, all gooey and dripping with honey, and then at your rolling eyes and accompanying shy grin, and groans at the softness of it all. She slides out from the confines of the booth and grumbles something about getting a refill on her milkshake.

“Some fries too, while you’re up?” Steve offers with a hopeful grin.

He’s met with the girl’s signature scowl.

“Please,” you finish for him.

Robin grins. “Anything for you,” she croons, if only to make the boy pout, before skipping off to the counter.

She leans her elbows upon the red wooden laminate top and smiles that same sickly sweet smile for Benny by the grill — no doubt trying to get her refills for free. 

Even though the bearded man seems unimpressed with her presence, you know that he’ll give them to her free of charge. He’s always had a soft spot for her, one of the only people in town who could rival his wit.

The door dings open, a familiar and high-pitched chime that often becomes more frequent as the evening progresses. This time it lets in a foreign, bitter breeze when the door swings open and closed again.

You can feel the chill from a distance — it resembles the crispness of autumn despite being comfortably settled in the middle of March. It nearly takes your breath away, prickles your skin and makes you grimace back a shiver. 

When your eyes leave Steve, a difficult feat considering he’s doing an alarmingly good impression of a walrus by sticking fries in his upper lip, you find that it wasn’t abnormally cold air at all. It was a Peter Parker spider sense form of anxiety that had felt like a bucket of ice water had been poured over you.

Billy Hargrove used to turn heads when he walked into a room. 

Now he just sucks all the air out of it.

And it’s not like you haven’t seen him since the break up; for a while, the asshole was painted on the backs of your eyelids — he all but haunted your consciousness. You’ll see him around town on occasion, in his sunglasses and jean jacket and too-tight denim pants, while he struts around Main Street with his new girlfriend (otherwise known as, his flavors of the month).

You think this is the first time you’ve been in the same room as him since your split, though. It feels like it must be with the way your throat starts to tighten and you forget how to breathe. 

All at once, you’re scrambling for an exit. It’s like Billy’s a fire and his smoke is rapidly filling your lungs. Your legs start to tremble when your adrenaline spike. Your brain tells you to get out as quickly as you can before he burns you.

Steve notices the look of fear flood your features like a dark storm cloud. You were laughing just seconds before the door opened, equal parts with him and at him, but now you just looked terrified — like a child who’s just spotted a boogeyman in her closet.

He turns in the booth to find what haunted thing has just caught your eye and finds that it’s worse than any monster you could conjure up. It’s Billy fucking Hargrove, with his pretty hair and his pretty smile and his pretty girl under his arm.

His presence filled targeted, almost. Like he chose to come to this diner, on this day and at this time just to fuck with the group of you.

“Don’t even look at him,” Steve advises when he turns back to you. “Look at me, okay? He’s not even worth it. That asshole doesn’t deserve to ruin our day.”

And you try to listen to him. You try really, really hard to let him change that subject to the cold fries or Robin taking too long or a combination of the two, but you can’t focus on him. You’re already so overwhelmed at the sight of Billy that you can’t focus on anything else but him. 

You settle on the fact that you might just have to drag Steve and Robin out by their wrists because you can’t sit in this booth any longer, and you definitely aren’t hungry anymore.

And that’s when he spots you.

Your eyes lock and you freeze, immediately averting your gaze but catching the sudden sparkle in his own as he grins a sly, sadistic grin.

“No way,” you hear him say with a laugh under his breath. The sound of his voice makes you tense. You hadn’t realized how at peace you’d been all this time without having to hear it. Now it feels like so many little needles piercing your skin.

“Fancy seeing you guys here,” he greets after he’s made a b-line for your booth and dragged Vicki Carmichael along with him. He smiles with all of his pearly whites while he smacks pungent wintergreen gum between them. 

When he slides into the booth beside you, he does so without invitation, and forces Vicki to slink in next to Steve.

And like it wasn’t already awkward enough, you know Vicki — like, know her, know her. There was a drunken makeout at a Halloween party in ’82. Then a one night stand with her brother before he left for college in ’83. And then her Tom Selleck clone of a father at a sleepover for her eighteenth birthday in ’85. 

You’re not exactly proud of it, but you’ve gotten a rather hefty taste of her family tree, and the fact that both of you know it makes it that much more uncomfortable.

“We’re kinda busy here, Hargrove,” Steve tells him when he notices how comfortable he’s making himself in your booth.

“Ooh… Is this a little date?” Billy teases with a grin.

Steve’s face falls. “…No.”

“Oh, right,” he nods, though the sardonic lilt in his voice tells you that he already knew the answer. He crosses his arms on the tabletop and turns to look at you with eyes bluer than any ocean. They flicker up and down your form. Suddenly, you feel self-conscious in your baggy jean and tank top duo.

“You’ve been seeing that guy, haven’t you? What’s his name again? The, uh— the freak?”

“His name is Eddie,” Steve answers for you, defending him because you can’t find the words to.

“That’s it,” Billy snaps his fingers, then points. He nudges you with his shoulder. The familiar feel of his jean jacket against your skin makes you wince. “God, you must be runnin’ out of steam over there, huh? I mean… the freak? Seriously? You couldn’t do any better than that?”

The jokes were tolerable coming from Jim and Steve and Robin — they weren’t funny by any means, but you could stomach them because you knew they were jokes. But this? This was just to hurt you. And it works too easily because Billy knows exactly how to break you. He knows all the wires to cut and buttons to push because the puzzle of shattering your psyche is one he memorized long ago.

“He’s actually a really nice guy,” you manage through a tight throat, still staring at your fidgeting hands.

“Well, that’s good,” he hums like you need his approval. “It’s about time, right?”

You huff and choose to entertain him despite your better judgment. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He only shrugs. “I don’t know... Just, you know, that found a guy willing to settle for you. That’s all.”

“Settle?” you repeat, trying to laugh despite how tiny your voice sounds.

“You know what I mean, c’mon,” the blonde boy chuckles. “Sluts are fun and all, but they’re not the kinda girls you wanna settle down with. Steve knows what I mean.”

“No, I don’t,” Steve monotones quickly and without thinking, gaze hardened and jaw clenched. “And you need to leave.”

“I”m hungry, Billy,” Vicki whines, feeling every ounce of the tension surrounding her — like syrup or quicksand. She slides her permed bangs from her eyes and tucks a rogue strawberry strand behind her ear in a nervous tick. “Can’t we just get something to eat?”

“Alright, alright. I know when I’m not wanted,” Billy chuckles.

You grumble bitterly under your breath. “Apparently not…”

“I’ll see you around, Harrington,” Billy singsongs with a grin that wreaks of insincerity while his girlfriend slides out from the booth. He turns to look at you and squints. “Don’t be a stranger, alright? Matter of fact, point Munson my way, and I’ll give him a few pointers.”

You’re uncowed by his offer and angered by his mention of Eddie. Your eyes are stern and unwavering as you meet his gaze for the first time since he sat down beside you. 

“I think you could learn a thing or two from him, actually,” you retort, words sounding sweeter than the venom lingering behind them.

Billy’s grin only widens, impressed by your arguing. “Ooh… I forgot about the mouth you had on you, sweetheart.”

The use of the nickname makes you cringe. It doesn’t sound nearly as fulfilling as it does when it comes from Eddie. Now, it just sounds artificial — degrading.

He leans in close to you like he’s about to tell you a secret and splays his arm along the back of the booth behind you. The nicotine on his breath makes you grimace; it’s intoxicating when it comes from Eddie, disgusting from the boy sitting next to you. 

His eyes are bluer so up close, darker than you remember them being, and you notice he’s trimmed his usual stubble to a patchy mustache. He looks like the grown-up version of the boy you used to know, visually more mature but still the same in his way.

“When he gets bored of you — because, let’s be serious, he will get bored of you — you know where to find me,” Billy murmurs to you, a cynical smirk on the edges of his lips. “I’ll make sure you stay nice and broken in for the next dozen guys that want a taste—”

Steve can’t hear a word from where he sits across the booth, but he’s fuming with fists clenched under the table anyway. He hates how close Billy is to you, more so how uncomfortable you look with the proximity and how his words make you flinch. 

“Alright, you need to leave,” he blurts. “Now.”

Before the blonde could respond with a quip of his own, Robin all but teleports to the head of the table. She’s standing in front of the four of you suddenly, carrying a basket of fries and a strawberry milkshake and wearing a frown on her face.

“You’re in my seat, dickwad,” she monotones, even though she hadn’t been sitting next to you before. She’s not the least bit threatened by the Californian douchebag.

Billy smiles up at her anyway. “I was wondering where the third musketeer was! Still a carpet muncher, Buckley?”

“Happily.”

“What do ya say me and you head up to Lover’s Lake later?” the boy offers despite his date shifting awkwardly a few feet away. It’s a joke, for reasons that are more than obvious, and that’s what makes it so unbearably unfunny. 

He slinks out from the booth. The lack of his warmth is strangely comforting and you’re able to breathe for the first time in five minutes. He stretches his back out when he stands to his full height in front of Robin, then shrugs with his hands splayed on his hips.

“Maybe you just need some good dick. I mean… we’re gonna die anyway, right?”

“I’d rather,” she quips with a rouge-tinted smile.

The way it makes him laugh is startling. He finds a strange humor in being rejected — in most things, really. You still haven’t forgotten the cackles that left his bloodied mouth when Steve delivered blow after blow to the boy’s face in the middle of his living room, like it was all a fun game to him.

That was, of course, before Billy got the upper hand and nearly killed Steve that night. He laughed about it that too, until Max knocked him out with a baseball bat.

He’s got the same grin on his face now as he did then when he turns to look at you. A pink and pretty smirk, just wide enough to reveal the dimple in his left cheek. It’s nothing short of taunting, like he’s mocking you without having to say anything at all.

“Don’t be a stranger, alright?” Billy repeats. He keeps smacking his gum between his teeth and winks at you before spinning on the heel of his boot. He guides Vicki with him to the counter with a hand on the back pocket of her jeans.

Even when Robin slides in next to you and effectively pierces the bubble of tension that had already started to shrink with Billy’s leaving, you still find it hard to breathe. You have to keep reminding yourself, forcing oxygen in and out with wobbling breaths through your nose, or else you just stop altogether.

The other two move on rather quickly, having no trouble finding their voices again after he’s gone. Their words are muffled, though, like they’re underwater.

“I forgot what an asshole he was,” Robin grumbles.

“Well, I didn’t,” Steve retorts, eyes scanning the basket of fries for the most strategic pick of the bunch. “I can still barely breathe through my nose.”

“That’s because you didn’t go to a doctor, dingus.”

“Because I didn’t need a doctor, Robin.”

“Yeah, because being concussed three times in two years is so healthy—”

Your eyes act like magnets as they stay locked on Billy’s form. He leans in closer to Vicki to tell her something, then pats her once on the ass before walking towards the exit again. The door dings when he swings it open. Through the window, you catch him pulling out a red and white pack of cigarettes — the same brand of Marlboro Reds he’s been smoking since he was in middle school.

“You okay?” you hear Steve say, but it sounds too far away for you to realize he’s talking to you.

Robin nudges you with her shoulder to jog you from your stupor. You blink hard once and then turn to her with wide eyes. “What?”

“You doing alright over there?” the girl wonders.

“Yeah,” your answer is too quick and too high-pitched to be true. “Fine.”

“Like, fine as in you’re actually fine, or fine as in, if I leave you alone for too long, I’m gonna find you living under a bridge like a troll?”

You roll your eyes at her. “Fine as in, if someone bums me a cigarette, I’ll be good as new.”

Steve huffs when you hold out the palm of your hand toward him. He’s the only one of you who smokes recreationally enough to carry a lighter and pack of cigs with him. You swear he only keeps it with him because the weight of them makes him feel cool. You’re grateful for them now, though, and for the escape they unexpectedly provide you.

His fingers are warm when they brush your hand. The metal zippo he drops in the center of it is far colder and carries a comforting sort of weight to it. He thumbs a cigarette from the pack for you, and you take it with a sardonic smile and a sickly sweet “thank you, Stevie.” 

Robin gets out of the booth to let you slide out of it.

The door chimes again, this time over your head when you open it. 

Fresh, spring air nearly knocks you on your ass when it hits you for the first time. You realize then, that you’d forgotten to tell yourself to breathe and now your vision’s all swimmy. The cool breeze tries its hardest to quell your swelling anger, but you’re still at a simmering boil. Fists clenched over the lighter and cig duo in your palm and your sneakers slapping angrily against the cracked pavement.

That’s what signals your arrival, the raging stomps that echo in the alleyway Billy takes his smoke break in. 

The boy takes a puff of his cigarette and smirks on the exhale at the sight of you. All he needs is one glance to see how angry he’s made you. It’s an innocent, childlike sort of rage that’s got you all scrunched face and red — a heartbroken girl on a war path.

“I knew you couldn’t resist me, sweetheart,” he taunts with his signature sarcastic smile. He holds his arms at his sides, like he’s waiting for some kind of embrace from you. “You used to be like that all the time — all over me, you know? Clingy.”

“You know what you used to be?” you ask him once you’ve planted yourself a few feet away from him, fists shaking at your sides in a nearly overwhelming mixture of rage and apprehension.

“What’s that?”

“Nice! You used to be nice! Or do you not remember that?” you wonder rhetorically. Your anger fades slowly, an ebbing tide, as a reminiscent sadness eclipses your fury — a flood of blue in all your red. 

The sharp frown between your brows crumbles and so does your clenched jaw as your harsh features crumple like a balled-up piece of paper. You look upon the man that broke your heart with all the shattered pieces of it.

“You used to let me sleep over at your place when I was too scared to sleep alone at mine, and you’d bring me food when I told you I hadn’t eaten all day, and you’d take me on drives when you knew I hadn’t left my apartment in days,” you ramble in a single breath, gesticulating wildly with your hands — waving them at him and at you and the still air between. They fall hopelessly to your sides. 

“You used to be so sweet, Billy…” you conclude with a wavering breath. Your chest trembles on the inhale as you straighten out your shoulders and lift your chin, trying your best not to look as defeated as you feel. “And you know what you are now?”

Billy grins that stupid grin at you, the one that almost looks kind. Almost. It’s still soft in all its insincerity, like a parent entertaining their kid that’s gone on some meaningless tangent.

“No, sweetheart,” he answers after a beat. “What am I?”

“Not nice.”

He scoffs out a laugh.

“You used to tell me, all the time, how scared you were about ending up like you’re dad—” he tenses at the mention of the man, of his own monster in his own closet. “—He’d beat you black and blue every night, and I’d bandage all your cuts and put makeup on you when you begged, so you could go out and pretend like everything was normal. And you know what? You’re just like him!”

Billy doesn’t cower when you walk closer to him. He’s got no reason to be afraid of you, but your words hit him in a place far deeper than a thousand bloodied fists.

“What he did to you, is exactly what you do to me… Or do you know see that?” you don’t wait for a sarcastic reply, mostly because you wouldn’t see the indicators of it through the tears that blur your vision. “You’re not punching me, but it feels like you are. You break me over and over and over and I have to pretend like everything’s just normal and that we—”

“Real mature of you. To bring out the dad-card,” he interjects, if only to stop your ramblings so that he might not have to hear the truth that comes with them.

“You used to he nice,” you repeat, you agonize, you deflate. “Or… Or did you never use to be?”

The shell of your mind answers for you, paints itself with all the memories you’ve been trying like hell to forget for the past six months. It’s easier to pretend the bad things aren’t real than unravel all the reasons why they were bad to begin with, you find.

The negative memories come together like renaissance paintings — dark and gloomy and blotted with too realistic tears and spatters of blood. The oil stains the backs of your eyelids, destined to remain there forever like paintings in museum that’ll stand the test of time if you nurse them well enough.

You hadn’t yet been able to forget the screams and the cracks of fists colliding with bone. They tend to keep you up at night, even when you squeeze your eyes shut and beg for your memory to be wiped away completely. 

Billy crouches over Steve’s chest and pummels wholehearted punches to the boy’s face, never tiring in their force, even well after the boy goes limp underneath him. You beg for him to stop while trying like hell to shield Max from the sight of it all. 

For a while, you’d blamed yourself for it — for Max being there in the first place and for Steve’s cuts and bruises. 

You’d taken the girl and sought refuge in the Harrington home after witnessing a rather heated fight between Billy and his father. There was a sudden urge within you to take her far away from it before it ended how it always did — in weeping cuts and salty tears and insincere apologies when the cops were called.

But you made it worse anyway. 

For Max, for Steve. 

And you apologized profusely for it after, cried to the boy in his bathroom while you nursed his cuts like you were the one who put them there. 

When he told you it wasn’t your fault, you didn’t believe him. Not until now. Not until you realized that Billy had always been angry — always raging with an ocean of fear and grief and violence.

When he fought with his sister, you thought it was normal, that that’s just what siblings did. But the way she cried to you after couldn’t have been normal. Neither could the unearthly fury that washed over Billy like a riptide when he found out you and Max had sought safety in Steve The Hair Harrington — angered that it was Steve and that he couldn’t be that for the both of you.

And then there was the fights. The yelling and screaming and crying fights that felt like the end of the world every single time. The kind of fights you shouldn’t be having when you’re eighteen. You thought that maybe there was some normalcy in the cheating and the secrecy and Billy’s accompanying assholery because that was all you’d ever known.

Or maybe because you had to tell yourself that was normal in relationships because you didn’t want your’s to end. Billy was the first guy to give a damn about you in ways that went beyond just sex. How were you supposed to just give that up?

But then there’s Eddie — Eddie The Freak Munson, who was really just sunshine wrapped up in leather jackets and wild hair and chunky rings and metal music. He makes you happy. The sort of happy that makes you suspicious because something bad has to counteract all the goodness he makes you feel. 

Maybe that’s what this was. 

Seeing Billy after having wrapped yourself in a blanket of Eddie’s warmth made you see somehow more clearly. He loves on you so much that it’s made a mockery of everything else. 

Whatever you had with Billy wasn’t normal, it was a goddamn shit show. He loved you when it was convenient and then had you believing it was the real thing, that you wouldn’t find it anywhere else, when you tried to leave him. 

It was a lie, all of it.

The realization makes you falter.

“Oh, god…” you sigh, voice fragile like cracking glass. “Maybe you never used to be…”

For the first time ever, you see Billy’s grin shake. The edges of it flitter, like he’s fighting to keep the corners quirked up. And his eyes have gone a lighter shade of blue, the way they always did when he blinked back angry tears as he talked about his father.

It isn’t rage glassing his eyes now. It’s something sadder, but still as real — something you never got from him in the two years you were together.

He tries, still, to cover it all up. He smacks his lips against his teeth, sympathetically. “Sorry it took you this long to figure that out.”

The laugh you exhale then is heavy with sadness. Your smile is far away and so is your gaze as you stumble back from him. You turn your head to the edge of the alley where mom’s with strollers and people in fancy suits bustle on the sidewalk and keep your eyes on the strangers that whiz by you’ll probably never see again. 

“This is… This is pointless,” you murmur. His lean form is blurry through the burning tears you blink away. “Every time I see you, it’s just more bullshit so let’s just— let’s just leave each other alone, okay?”

Billy takes a puff from his cigarette. When he sighs, white smoke billows from his plump, pink lips. “That’s a shame… I was just thinking that you were the most interesting you’d ever been.”

The ebbing tide that had just left you rushes back in a bubbling scarlet wave. His words don’t make you sad anymore, they just make you angry all over again because you know you don’t deserve them. And you’re not entirely sure why he’s chosen you to antagonize out of all the other girls who’d made the mistake of falling for him, but you’re too far past the point of not caring to ask.

“Bother me again and I tell Chief Hopper,” you threaten even though you don’t feel very threatening just now. “I know you’re not scared of me, but you’d be stupid to be scared of him.”

“Why’s that?” he wonders before sticking the half-gone stick between his lips again.

“Because he runs Hawkins. And he fucking hates you—” for what you did to me, you almost say. You swallow the words down like bile before they have the chance to spew out. “And… And be nice to Vicki. Okay? She’s too good for you. Don’t do to her what you did to me.”

Your plea for another is the last thing you say to Billy before you turn away from him. You wouldn’t be upset if it was the last thing you ever said to him. You’re grateful for the resounding silence that follows. It’s nothing but the sound of your receding footsteps and the soles of his shoes scrapping the concrete as he snuffs out his cigarette. 

There is no snarky remark or insincere plea — just two people who used to love each other that have no idea to exist together anymore. 

When you step outside the brick confines of the alleyway, you feel as though a fraying string that had always connected the both of you had been finally cut.

It allows you to take a deep breath in for the first time in months. A lungful of fresh air that cleanses you, body and mind.

And when you catch Steve and Robin idling at the corner and doing a terrible job of pretending like they hadn’t just been eavesdropping, you don’t get upset or angry with them — you don’t feel much of anything, really.

You just hand the boy his lighter and unused cigarette and let them comfort you on the drive back to your apartment.

A misery sandwich. That’s what Robin calls the three of you and the heaping pile you lay in. 

Your queen-sized bed is in no way meant to accomodate three moderately sized adults, but you make it work anyway, like you always do.

Steve lays on his back, legs crossed and hands tucked under his head. Robin is on her stomach on the other end of the mattress, arms wrapped around the pillow she smushes the side of her face into. You lay between the both of them — on the both of them. Sprawled out sideways, you’ve got your head on propped up on Steve’s ribcage and your legs thrown over Robin’s thighs. 

The awkward position is the most comfortable you’ve ever been.

“I can’t believe that asshole had the nerve to show up to the diner on our day,” the boy rants. “And then sit in our booth, I mean— who does he think he is?”

Robin’s response is mostly muffled by the pillow. “I thought he left, like, forever ago.” 

“Maybe he just couldn’t stay away. It’s Hawkins, shit attracts shit, right?” Steve answers with a shrug that jostles your head slightly. It doesn’t little to knock you from your stupor, though, where you’ve been stuck for the better part of the day. You pick at the skin around your nails with little regard for how red and raging it's gone.

He notices this and thumps you on your temple — hard enough for you to feel it, gentle enough that it doesn’t hurt you. 

You turn your chin to your shoulder to look over at him. He tilts his own head to stare down at you, honey-tinted gaze somehow stern and soft at the same time. “If he bothers you again, I’ll kill him.”

You’re instantly warmed by his protective disposition. You know that he cares about you, even though you like to joke that he doesn’t. Steve hurt you once, made a promise to himself to make it up to you, and then just never left you alone. 

You’re grateful for it. 

You’re not sure who’d be the butt of every joke if he wasn’t around.

“Good to know,” you answer, nodding against his side and trying to hide the smile he gives you. You fail. “You think if he breaks your nose again, it’ll pop back into place?”

His face falls. “You’re real sweet, you know that?”

You open your mouth to respond, something along the lines of “I’m always sweet. You of all people should know that, Stevie,” before a knock sounds at the front door. It comes in the several rhythmic raps that Eddie is known to give when he’s got a tune stuck in his head. 

Apparently now, it’s the chorus to “Why Can’t This Be Love?” The Van Halen song he said he couldn’t stand before you.

Robin huffs at the sound of the muffled taps. She frowns like a child. “Who the hell…?”

“It’s just Eddie,” you affirm through a half-hearted grunt as you rise from your comfy position.

That brightens the two of them up almost immediately. Her and Steve share a look you can’t place as they grin at one another. Then they turn back to you with identical mischievous twinkles in their eyes. “Your boyfriend is here,” the former of the two singsongs.

You roll your eyes, but make no move to correct her. 

When you stand from the bed and make the short journey towards the door, you hear the patter of their feet following close behind you. 

“Gonna go all the way tonight?” Steve teases and jabs you on the shoulder. “Do you want us to leave?”

“No, nothing is happening. And yes, I think you should leave,” you monotone playfully.

Robin rushes past you suddenly and grabs the brass door handle before you’re able. She swings it open without thinking twice about it. Her sudden appearance, coupled with the fact that it isn’t you, startles the man on the other side of the door.

Eddie’s umber eyes go wide, brows raising and disappearing beneath his fluffy bangs, as his head jerks back.

“Eddie Munson,” the girl full-names the stranger she’s never spoken a word to before now. She leans against the doorway and effectively blocks the boy’s view of you. Steve, who squeezes himself in beside her, doesn’t make it any easier. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“You too, Buckley…” he wavers, trying to peer past them for any sight of you.

“Perfect timing, Eds,” you call out from behind them. “They were just about to leave.”

He’s relieved at the sound of your voice — even more so at your appearance when the two in front of you step off to the side to toe on their sneakers. 

You don’t look much different than when he saw you last. You’ve put on some makeup that’s started to smudge after the long day and changed your baggy sweatshirt for a more fitted tank top and boxers, but other than that you’re still the same. Still familiar and comforting in your way, a home away from home.

His smile is a tired one and it wobbles at the edges. “Oh, shit, am I— am I interrupting something?”

“No,” you’re quick to reassure him. “You’re saving me, actually.”

“Oh, give me a break,” Steve scoffs. “You love us.” 

The boy pulls you into a hug before he leaves, and it’s not the rarest thing in the world, but embraces like this do tend to be few and far between. He whispers  “use protection” in your ear and then a sharp “ow!” when you jab him in the ribs.

He and Robin smile kindly at Eddie when they walk by him and out the door, but waste barely a second before turning back around and grinning wildly at you. Steve flashes you a thumbs up while she mouths a cartoonish ‘good luck’ — like it’s the first time you and Eddie had ever been alone together. Like they were just on your ass about having been with him this whole time.

You usher Eddie and shut the door behind them. A quiet sort of peace settles on the apartment like a weighted blanket. The boy revels in every bit of its warmth.

Exhaustion drips from him like syrup. He’s sticky with it. His eyes have lost their usual twinkle, weighed down now with the burden of his fatigue. His face has lost most of its color, leaving a pale sheath of monotoned skin, and his hair is wilder than normal, with an unintentional sort of ruggedness to his curls.

It’s what being without you has done to him.

“You okay?” you ask him softly. It almost makes him want to cry.

“Yeah,” he answers anyway and idles in the spot where your kitchen meets your living room. “Just had a pretty shitty day. Wanted to spend time with you.”

“Me too… About the wanting to spend time with you part— and the shitty day part, too, I guess.”

Eddie smiles at your rambling, but purses it to the side to conceal it from you. “And since it is just about our…” he trails off and bends his elbow to check the watch on his wrist. “…Twelve hour anniversary, I picked us up some takeout.”

He sets the plastic bag on the counter. The red logo of Oriental Jade on the side of it makes your stomach roll with a distant hunger. You hadn’t realized how starved you were feeling after you abandoned your early dinner at Benny’s. It makes you more grateful for Eddie, who always seems to be on the same wavelength as you without even trying.

“Keep this up and we’ll be married before we hit hour twenty-four,” you joke as you rifle through the cartons — chow mein, sweet and sour chicken, dumplings, the works.

Eddie settles in next to you, propping his elbows on the countertop. “Well, I’m pretty sure the courthouse opens at nine, so… What were you thinking for the honeymoon? Hawaii? Bora Bora?”

“How about a cabin in the woods where no one can find us?”

“Hmm… Spooky. Sexy. I’m into it.”

You settle in the living room and eat on the couch while She Ra re-runs play on the television. You try to teach Eddie how to use chopsticks, though he can only work them with his non-dominant hand and all the wrong finger placements. You think it’s cute to watch him fumble with them, and you giggle about it until you’re scolding him for trying to feed Bowie some noodles. He laughs as you swat at him.

When all the containers are fully scrapped clean and tossed in the recycling bin, you migrate to the bedroom — which is perhaps too raunchy a phrase to use when the two of you only bury yourselves under the covers to talk shit.

Eddie drags out the chunky box fan you use when the air conditioner goes out in the summer — because it always goes out in the summer — and props it on the chest at the foot of your bed so the covers will billow around the both of you. “And it’s perfect because we can stay in the fort forever and not get hot,” he tells you, all giddy about it like he's a kid again.

“What if I get cold?” you retort.

Without missing a beat, he answers, “Well, lucky enough for you, I know several ways I can warm you up, sweetheart.”

He ditches his leather jacket and strips down to his boxers and settles in beside you underneath the blankets. The two of you lay shoulder to shoulder while you trace absentminded patterns on the palm of his hand and tell him about your day.

You make sure to leave out all the re-traumatizing-Billy-Hargrove bits, though. You focus mainly on the tense drive with Hopper and the small fight you’d had with Steve on the drive to the diner later that afternoon about the lyrics to Love My Way (both of you had been wrong).

Eddie tries his hardest to focus on your story and your fleeting touches, but he’s too far in his own head. You tell him all these things but he can’t stop thinking about himself — about whether or not you might’ve brought him up somewhere in between. 

He wouldn’t have blamed you, if you had. Steve and Robin are your closest friends and, for whatever reason, so is Chief Hopper, you’re bound to bring him up eventually. He was just hoping it would’ve been in a better capacity. Maybe about how kind he was or what a god he was in bed — not how he could only be one of those things because he’d never been anything in bed.

“It doesn’t make things weird between us, does it?” he wonders out of the blue.

You halt mid-sentence and turn to him with furrowed brows. “What?”

Eddie realizes then, that the first half of the conversation with you had only happened in his head. He prays that it’s too dark beneath the covers for you to see how red his cheeks get. “Just… What we talked about this morning. About me… you know…” He finds it hard to say the words. Or any of them at all.

“Why would it make things weird?”

“I don’t know. Because I wasn’t… totally honest with you, I guess? I feel a little bad about it, you know?”

“It’s okay,” you assure and turn on your side to be closer to him. Eddie stays on his back, more than happy to let you cuddle further into him. “I guess I do wish you’d said something before, though.”

His chest tightens. “I’m sorry. I just… I didn’t know how to—”

“I’m not saying it to make you feel bad!” you interject quickly when you catch the spiral of regret he was about to twist himself into. You curl tighter into his side, tossing a leg over his thigh and wrapping your hand around his bicep in an effort to melt with him. When he turns to face you, your noses nearly brush.

 “That’s not how I meant it. I just meant that, if I’d known before, I wouldn’t have… I would’ve taken things slower. I wouldn’t have been so, you know, so all over you.”

He hates how apologetic you sound. Like there was ever an ounce of him that would want to take back what happened that night at his trailer or a part of him that might hate how much you love on him.

“I liked it. I do like it.”

“Maybe we can just start over,” you offer. “Pretend like none of that ever happened.”

Eddie knows there’s no way in hell he’ll be able to forget about a single damn thing — not his cum stained jeans and how you looked so pretty washing them for him, not the feel of your tits in his mouth or you wrapped around his fingers, not how you made him blow his load all over his fist just by talking to him. 

He goes along with it anyway, though, just for you.

“Okay...” he nods slowly, then squints over at you. “You’re still my girlfriend, though, right?”

“Of course I am,” you giggle.

He grins proudly to himself. “Well then… Hope it’s not too early to have our first kiss then?”

It makes you roll your eyes because it’s such an Eddie Munson way of asking to kiss you. You told him earlier the day that he never had to ask you — in fact, you’d prefer it if he’d just kiss you out of the blue and take your breath away without you ever knowing it was coming. But there was something foreign and sweet in his little reassurances.

“Kiss me silly, Eddie Spaghetti,” you beam. He twists on his side to press tiny pecks to your smile.

It’s rather strange, you find, to kiss someone this way without the intention of it ever becoming something more. You kiss him just to kiss him — just to map the outline of his cupid’s bow and memorize the pattern of his tongue. Just to feel him, as much of him as your mouth will allow you to.

With one arm curled under his head and the other cradling your jaw, when his watch alarms — high-pitched beepbeepbeeps in quick succession — it’s sudden and close to your ear. 

Your lips click in protest when they part. His are pink and swollen and glossy with your spit. He smiles with them. “Happy twelve hour anniversary, sweetheart.”

“How long are you gonna make that stupid joke?” you laugh like your heart isn’t swelling so much you’re scared it might burst entirely.

“Uh, I was thinking… forever. Yeah. That sounds about right,” he concludes after a moment of feigned thought. He turns his watch off again and you swear you see him set for another twelve hours from now.

“Forever?” you echo.

“Uh-huh. Forever—” he presses his lips to yours once. “—And ever—” Twice. “—And ever.”

Eddie kisses you until you’re flat on your back and surrendering to each of his tiny little pecks. You twist your hands in his hair and let him love on you a little while more. You giggle when his mouth trails from your lips to your chin to your jaw to your neck. Please don’t get bored of me, you beg silently within your laughter.

I don’t think I could even if I wanted to, he answers with each kiss his sprinkles to your starved skin. How could I, when you’re the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me?

#published by bug #eddie munson x reader #stranger things x reader #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson smut #eddie munson #eddie munson fanfic #stranger things #eddie munson fic #virgin!eddie munson x reader #virgin!eddie munson

[jaidens]

Young Maverick Mitchell x reader fic where it starts out super angsty and it ends really sweet between mav and the reader

then i think about summer, all the beautiful times watched you laughin' from the passenger side

pairing [s] : pete ‘ maverick ’ mitchell x feminine!reader

warning [s] : mentions of : goose, fighting, arguments. | it all gets better, swear.

a/n [s] : requests are open.

The night felt fresh on your mind, even months later. Pete storming into your small house, the sound of slamming doors and boots slapping the floor. You're in the small kitchen making dinner for you and your boyfriend. The radio playing the top hits of 1986, The Bangles filling the small house with a ‘Manic Monday’. Pete was still your Pete, but he was different. Ever since that fateful day of Nick Bradshaw’s death, he was different.

Sleeping in, coming home late. The smell of booze and cigarettes that ejected from him whenever he would get home before a shower. You had mentioned it, but the man would shrug it off as nothing. You decidedly chose not to press in hopes things would go back to the way they were. Pete’s eyes had bags of darkness underneath and his eyes were a blood-shot red that night.

“Pete,” You said. “I’m making your favorite. Alfredo with extra sauce.” Pete doesn't find your eyes at all, staring down at the ground as he opens the refrigerator and takes a bottle of beer from it. You take the pot over to the table and set it down on a towel. You scoop some onto his plate and there isn't a thankful word in any way from him.

“Pete, honey. We have to talk about this. This isn't healthy. The drinking is getting out of hand. I won't stand back and watch someone I love practically kill themselves.” As you press, Pete gets visibly more tight into himself. His shoulders are practically touching his ears as he clenches his fists into balls of rage. You're staring at him, waiting and anticipating a response from him. All you hear is silence, contradictory to how he usually was. “You need to stop. This isn't okay.”

“You don't control me. I'm a grown adult, and I can do whatever I please. Go and leave me the fuck alone!” Pete is enraged as he storms up and out of the house, and all you hear is the sound of his bike revving away and speeding down the road.

Pete left you sitting at the dinner table, eating your food you made it silence as his was losing its warmth into the air. You can't bear to stare at the picture on the wall of you and him. It was a simple photo that Goose had taken, but the memories and the emotional ties that held it to your soul entwined with laces of sadness.

You hadn't seen him for five months, seventeen days, and twenty-two hours. You're sitting in The Hard Deck with some of your close friends from college. You catch a glimpse of him. The short, dark-headed man in his flight suit grabbed two beers and walked away. “Isn’t that Pete? Oh hell no.” Your friend Katelyn says, grabbing her purse and wrapping the small jacket she brought into a ball.

The drink in your hand suddenly felt heavy as you set it down against the table. As soon as your eyes click together, you want to disappear and shrink away. He hurt you; but those soft green eyes drag you dangerously into the hole further in. The bubbly feeling in you starts to boil and you take back the drink you have and gain that liquid courage. Who said you would need it?

Here comes Pete Mitchell, walking over to you while holding that eye contact with you. He comes into your vision and he looks better, healthier and happier. His eyes are the color you fell in love with, and he looks much more normal that what he had originally looked like. “Pete.” Your voice wavers as you say that name.

The name burns your tongue. Your friends are still standing near you, one of them being encaptured with a random guy who complimented her. “Can we.. talk?” Pete asks you, gulping when Katelyn stares him down. With the extra feet she had on him, it wasn't hard for him to not be scared.

“Sure, we can talk. Do you wanna, go outside? Like old times.” You follow him out to the door, the sounds of the bar immediately quietening as the door shuts behind you two. Pete stops on his tracks, turns, and you're looking at him. The silence is uncomfortably long before either one of you speaks.

“Are you stationed here again?” You ask quietly as you sit down on one of the many benches. Pete nods and sits down next to you, twirling a pen around his fingers. “I’m stationed for the next couple of months. Made another admiral mad again.”

You and him hold a small and relaxed conversation. Somehow pushing through the uncomfortableness after months of estrangement. The quietness of the night looks over both of you. His knee touches yours, and you can't tell if it's purposely or not. However it enlightens those fireworks once again.

Your hand opens and sits against your leg, giving an opening to him. His hand almost unconsciously slides into yours and holds it softly. You turn your head and Pete is staring at you. The magnetic pull in-between you and him pulls you closer to him, head slightly turning.

His lips touch yours softly, baring sliding over them. His hand goes behind your neck and pulls you close in, as your lips play closely together. “Pete... I missed you.” You tell him as you stare into his eyes once more underneath the gorgeous moonlit night.

“Me too. I'm never leaving you again.” Pete tells you. Hugging you tightly into his arms. Whatever roads you took that led you back to him, you thank your lucky stars.

#pete mitchell x y/n #pete mitchell x reader #pete maverick mitchell #pete mitchell #pete maverick mitchell angst #maverick x you #maverick x reader #top gun maverick #top gun x reader #top gun fanfiction #top gun 1986 #pete mitchell x fem!reader #pete mitchell x you #pete mitchell angst #top gun angst

[nancys4gf]

I have a request for Jonathan, him and the reader always have been friends so reader is at his house like 90% of the time and will absolutely loves them since he was little. Maybe you could write something about like pre season 1 where it's just cute fluff of Jonathan watching reader and will, like will is siting in the reader's lap while drawing or Jonathan seeing them take a nap together on he couch and he is just painfully in love with the reader and then it cuts to that scene with Jonathan and argyle where they talk about nancy and maybe Jonathan reveals that he's actually always been in love with the reader (to argyle I mean, reader probably is in Hawkins) and it's just angst about Jonathan being insecure , like he just thinks that the reader will never see him as more than a best friend.

I don't know if any of that makes sense I suck at explaining myself, but yeah I hope you like the concept <3

back to the old house | jonathan byers

— and you never knew how much i really liked you, because i never even told you. The Smiths, Back To The Old House.

summary: you and jonathan had been best friends for years. he wishes you could be more. he'll never tell you. part two

pairing: jonathan byers x non gender specific reader (they/them pronouns)

warnings: lil angst

note: i love jonathan requests, keep them coming!! i love this!! i'm currently writing a series about being jonathan's best friend and being part of the byers' family, i just love this concept so much <3 also, i wasn't sure if you wanted an angsty ending or a happy one, but i couldn't help myself and i ended up writing a part two, here's the link! i hope you enjoy it and that i managed to capture your idea :D thank u for requesting!!

̟ ̇.˚︵‿୨♡୧‿︵˚.✩

october 14th, 1982

“it’s us,” will explained with a huge grin, as he pointed at the people in the drawing. “you, jonathan, and me.”

“will,” you whispered, gazing at the crayon-colored figures. “it’s beautiful, i love it. you’re so talented.”

you hugged the little boy and planted a kiss on the top of his head, making him scrunch his nose. jonathan held the drawing in his hands with a huge smile on his face. 

“yeah, bud, it’s great.”

“can you stay? for a movie night?” will held your hand, wiggling it from side to side. 

“of course. but only if jonathan doesn’t make us watch star wars again.”

“hey!” he protested. “it’s a great movie.”

“you watch it once, it’s great. you watch it twice, yeah, still great. you watch it three times, okay, it’s good. but six times? it’s a bit excessive.”

“actually, will, something is wrong with your drawing,” jonathan started, and his brother stared at him with an expression of complete panic. jonathan pointed at you with an accusing finger, “they’re missing their horns and fangs.”

after hanging will’s drawing on the fridge, he picked the movie, and you and jonathan made popcorn, bickering about whether to make it salty or sweet. will settled the discussion, choosing sweet. (which he knew was your favorite). the three of you built a fort on the couch, gathering all the pillows and blankets you could find. cuddled up with your boys, you had everything you could ever ask for. 

jonathan had been so engrossed in the movie he didn’t notice you and will had fallen asleep, laying your heads against one another, his brother's tiny legs over your lap. jonathan smiled fondly, watching the way sleep tainted your features with peacefulness and ease. 

he made sure not to make any noise as he got up and turned off the tv. then, he adjusted the blanket over you and kissed each of your heads. spending the cold autumn night with the people he loved the most, jonathan byers felt like the luckiest boy in the world.

— ❀ —

march 20th, 1986.

“okay, come on, man. what, are you gonna be moping around all break or what?” argyle complained. 

“i’m not moping.” jonathan mumbled. 

“you’re moping.”

“really?”

“mopey dick.”

“wow, wow, that’s clever.” he said sarcastically. 

“okay, seriously, what’s up with you, man?”

“nothing.”

“you wanna talk about it?” argyle insisted. 

“there’s nothing to talk about.”

“well then,” he exhaled, defeated. “let’s talk about what we’re going to do during break. i was thinking about trying to break the record for the world's largest pizza. we could invite your sister’s boyfriend too. what was his name? mick? michelin? anyway, is that friend of yours coming over? the one back in hawkins?”

“no.” jonathan replied sharply, hammering in a nail with particular aggressiveness. argyle narrowed his eyes, suspecting he had chanced upon his friend’ source of irritation. 

“why not? aren’t you buddy buddies ever since you like, came out of the womb?”

“because i didn’t ask them to.” jonathan raised his voice, still attacking the nail.

“jeez, man. i didn’t realize it was such a sore subject,” argyle raised his hands defensively. “just call and ask them, dude.”

“i’m sure they have plans already,” he shrugged.

“did you guys have a fight?”

“no! no, it’s just…” jonathan stopped, but argyle leaned in, sensing he was close to cracking the mystery. 

“just what?”

“i keep imagining them coming to visit, and there’s nothing i want more. but, part of me also feels this intense relief that i won’t see them.”

“what kind of person doesn’t want to see their best friend?” argyle asked, offended.

“the kind who's in love with them.”

argyle blinked and opened his mouth slowly, but no sound came from it. jonathan sighed and covered his face with his hands, laying his head on the table.

“how long?” argyle asked. “dude, for how long?”

“ever since i can remember.” 

“dude.” he paused. “that was so, cheesy. you’re not mopey dick anymore, you’re like, mr. darcy or something.”

jonathan banged his head against the table.

“woah! there’s no need for that, man.” argyle lifted his friends’ head. “look, what’s the big deal? maybe they feel the same way.”

jonathan scoffed. “please.”

“what! haven’t they ever done something that made you think they like you back?”

jonathan shook his head. sure, you were always affectionate, sweet and loving, but that was just you. you loved him, he was your best friend. you just didn’t love him the way he hopelessly wished you did. 

“they can never find out,” he raised his head, staring at his friend with tired eyes. “it’ll ruin everything.”

“so you’d rather mope around for the rest of your life, ignoring your feelings?”

jonathan stayed quiet for a moment. of course he didn’t want that. but the worst thing he could possibly think of was living a life without you in it. he’d willingly live an eternity in hell if it meant he could still have you by his side.

“i can’t lose them.” was all he said. “i can’t.”

#jonathan byers #jonathan byers x reader #jonathan byers fluff #jonathan byers angst #jonathan byers imagines #stranger things imagines #stranger things au #stranger things fluff #stranger things angst #argyle #charlie heaton #stranger things 4 #requests

[kurtie4life96]

What about angst prompt 13 for Robin Buckley x reader?

Run Away // R.B. x Reader

Summary: Reader accepts her fate and takes off, Robin goes after her.

CW: angst, fluff, hurt/comfort, depression, shame, mentions of death

The starry sky was lit up in a beautiful fashion, in early Spring, 1986. Being with your friends on such a cold night normally was quite comforting, but this time was different. This time, the sky felt devastating, horrifying even, the fear of the unknown written into the black of the night.

You sighed as you peered through the blinds of the window, an endless pit of fear in your chest as your friends chatted, debated amongst themselves about how they were going to defeat another monster from a different world that lie under Hawkins.

"I'll be right back," you turned around to face your friends, walking towards the chair Robin had seated herself in to grab your sweater that lay on the armrest.

"Where are you going?" Robin asked, making the rest of the room go silent, waiting for your response.

"I'm just going to the bathroom, geez," you answered her, slipping your arms through your sweater and zipping it up.

"Why are you putting on a sweater to go to the bathroom?" She questioned you again, studying your face. The rest of the room continued to stay quiet.

"Just cold, Robin. I'll be right back."

"Okay." She accepted your reponse, a slight tone of disbelief in her voice.

Your friends began to chatter amongst themselves again, as you slipped away into the hallway. You put your hand on the bathroom door handle, stopping to glance at Robin again. She was silent, still staring at you.

You huffed and opened the door, shutting it behind you. You slammed your hands on the counter, taking in shaky breaths as you brought your head up to look at yourself in the mirror, the dim, yellow light illuminating your features.

You laughed a bit, sounding half crazed as you looked into your own glossy eyes.

"You're next," you announced to yourself. Your own words sent shivers down your spine.

As if you spoke it into existence, you heard the grandfather clock chime again. That god damn, evil chime.

Your terror-stricken eyes hesitantly looked over to the left, the clock suddenly appearing on the wall next to you as the once yellow light went a shade of cold blue.

Hyperventilating and petrified, you stared at it. You didn't know how long, but it felt like an eternity.

You eventually forced yourself to shut your eyes tight, turning to face the mirror again, hoping, praying, willing the clock to be gone from your sight.

After screwing your eyes shut for some time, you shot them open to look at yourself in the mirror again, the room back to the same color as it was before. You looked to your left again. The clock was gone.

You stared at yourself, watching yourself breathing heavily, tears stinging your eyes, as you repeated to yourself once more, this time fear and realization in your voice.

"You're next."

You threw the door open in a hasty manner, gasping for air as you ran down the hallway and out the front door, tears streaming down your face. You heard the voices of all your friends, asking what's wrong, asking you where you're going, yelling at you to stop running, but you tuned them all out as you sprinted down the street for what felt like miles.

You couldn't let your friends watch you be crumpled into nothing, your limbs snapping, your eyes gouged out, their cries when they realized it was too late.

You weren't going to traumatize them any further.

Once your lungs were unbearably on fire, your legs cramped and threatening to give out on you, you set your sights on a dimly lit alleyway.

Panting out of exhaustion and fear, you walked clumsily towards it, letting your back hit the cold brick wall against it, and sliding down until you sat on the concrete, cradling your legs close to you.

You quietly sobbed as you faced the reality that you were never going to see your family or friends again, the reality that your body would waste away in the Upside Down with the others, the reality that you never told Robin how you feel, the reality that Vecna was coming for you.

Your sobbing came to a halt after a good while, sniffling and staring into the night sky, wondering what could have been. You hugged yourself tighter as an attempt to warm up, your nose and cheeks flushed from the chilly air, and from crying.

Memories ran through your head of your friends and family, Robin being the one that stuck out the most. When you accidentally bumped into her at school, dropping your papers everywhere, her laughing, picking them up and introducing herself. All the times you passed notes to each other in class, making fun of the teachers. When she gave you your first free ice cream cone at Scoops Ahoy. All the sleepovers you had, her resting her head on your shoulder as she fell asleep watching a scary movie, you smiling to yourself at the sweet contact. Her smile, her laugh, her clothes, her different hair styles, everything her.

A sad smile spread across your face as you waited patiently for your fate, reminiscing in all of the good- no- great times you had with everyone, feeling a small sense of gratefulness, despite the inevitable.

You didn't know how much time had passed, lost in thought, when you heard a familiar voice.

"What could you possibly be smiling about?"

Your eyes shot open, Robin standing above you, her arms crossed, an angry look on her face.

"Robin," you began to explain, "you shouldn't be here, please go away-"

"I thought I lost you," she snapped, a crack in her voice as she lowered herself to the ground to face you.

"I don't want you to see me when it happens, please, you should go-"

She pulled you into a tight hug, holding onto you for dear life, clutching the fabric of your sweater.

You sniffled, and hesitated for a moment, before you hugged her back, wetting her shoulder with your tears.

She pulled back from you, anger still written on her face, as you looked at her with sorry eyes.

Robin stared at you for a few moments, not knowing what to do with herself, before she grabbed your face with her hand harshly, squishing your cold cheeks together in frustration.

"Don't ever leave my sight again," she demanded, emphasizing each word.

You stayed quiet, your heart heavy with guilt.

"Did you hear me?" She exclaimed, squeezing your face a little harder.

You nodded quickly, choking back a sob.

She released you, sighing, her breath shaky.

"Good."

You both sat in silence for a moment, staring at the cold, concrete ground.

"Robin?" You whispered.

She glanced back at you, a look of relief and sorrow in her eyes.

"What?"

"I'm sorry."

With a deep exhale, her body began to relax, taking your hands into hers.

"It's okay." She assured you.

She reached a hand into her coat pocket, pulling out a Walkman. You looked at her with confusion.

She held it up to your face, smiling, "This will help you. If you listen to your favorite song, it'll help you."

You gave her a questioning look as she slid the headphones onto your ears.

"How do you know what my favorite song is?" You asked.

Robin looked at you affectionately.

"How could I not?"

She slid a cassette into it, and clicked play.

You both breathlessly laughed as your favorite song began to boom through the headphones.

She took a moment to smooth your hair that had been plastered to your face, then rubbed your cheek with her thumb gingerly.

She took in a deep breath before moving one headphone back from your ear so you could hear her speak. She held the side of your face and pressed her forehead to yours. You felt her breath on your lips.

"I love you," she admitted softly, "I'm sorry, but I had to say it, ya know?"

"I understand, Robin," you replied, your heart threatening to leap out of your chest with joy, "I love you too."

She exhaled a chuckle of relief, ghosting her lips against yours, before you gently kissed each other, softly, yet passionate, as if you'd both been waiting to do it your whole lives, her lips soft and warm against yours.

Robin pulled pack, pulling a walkie-talkie out of her back pocket.

"Better alert the others, let 'em know your safe."

Whether you lived or died, you felt that at least, you'd experienced love.

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

#robin buckley x reader #robin buckley angst #robin buckley #robin buckley fluff #robin buckley fanfic #stranger things fic #robin buckley imagine #robin buckley x you #robin buckley x f!reader #robin buckley x y/n #angst #fluff #hurt/comfort

[moonchildreads]

small town

Chapter 14 - Missing You

IN THIS CHAPTER: The meaning of flowers, homemade cake, and Maureen and Margaret become friends [6.0k]

WARNINGS: angst, discussions about dead parents (car accident/unspecified terminal illness), survivor's guilt, unprocessed grief - please heed my warnings. i'm currently grieving someone and this is very raw, proceed only if it won't hurt you

A/N: shout out to @duquesademiel and @justahappycloud for teaching me that it is okay to write as a form of therapy, and i'm sorry i keep sending you the sad bits of this fic only. i love you and i can't believe i get to call you my friends. also, big thank you to @boomhauer for letting me use her chosen name for eddie's dad - i admire you greatly and everyone should go and read disjointed as a thank you. we're so very lucky we have you in this fandom <3

masterlist - prev - next | playlist

You had so much hope for a brighter day Why were you my flower plucked away?

Sunday, May 11th - 1986

“What on Earth are you doing?”

Mother’s Day had always been a weird day for Dottie. When she was a toddler, it was just another calm and quiet Sunday, albeit one where her Dad wanted more cuddles than usual, which, quite frankly, already were a lot. Still, she enjoyed the extra attention and he loved holding his little girl in his arms while she took a nap on his chest so there were no complaints to be heard from either side. When she was in kindergarten, her class spent an entire Friday making gifts for their Moms. Dottie came back home with a hopeful smile and gave her paper mache and macaroni flower to her Dad, asking if he could send it all the way up to Heaven for her. James had neer been happier about the fact that they now had separate bedrooms so she wouldn’t hear him sob clutching her handcraft to his chest while she slept. When she was around 8, she asked her Dad why couldn’t they simply celebrate Mother’s Day like everyone else in her class.

Margaret’s physical absence in her daughter’s life wasn’t an unusual topic in their home; in fact, a lot of teachers commented on it as Dottie grew up, praising James for keeping her memory alive and normalizing a sad situation so his kid wouldn’t suffer. James wasn’t sure why telling his daughter that she had been so very much loved by her dead parent was worthy of being praised, but as a single dad in the ‘70s, he took whatever kind words he could get. He made sure that Dottie understood she had a Mom, that she didn’t suddenly appear from thin air one day to change James’ life forever, that she’d been wanted and dreamed of by both parents. Margaret’s face was in countless pictures around their home, they stayed in her old bedroom whenever they visited her side of the family in Pennsylvania, they talked about what she’d say or what she’d do at all times. Margaret Burke was a constant presence in their lives despite her untimely death, and the fact that they celebrated that every day except during Mother’s Day didn’t feel right to her daughter.

That’s how Dottie found herself establishing little traditions that were still in place that Sunday afternoon when she opened her front door to find one of her best friends holding a small bouquet tied together with a big silver ribbon. Dressed in an all-black ensemble as he usually did, the lilac and white flowers sprinkled with greenery were the only pop of color in the foggy drizzly afternoon. Eddie was smiling wide despite the ugly weather, his dimples perfectly on display for the world to appreciate.

“Hey! This is for you,” Eddie thrust the flowers forward. “Actually, they are for your Mom but… yeah.”

“You bought my Mom flowers?” Dottie said, disbelief present in her tone as her fingers brushed against his chunky rings when she accepted the bouquet, skin bristling at the contact.

“Yeah, you like ‘em? The purple ones are rosemary and the white ones are, uh, bellflowers? The lady at the shop said there are, like, a million white flowers that look like bells so I picked the prettiest ones,” he dropped his backpack on the armchair in the living room and followed her to the kitchen.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you pick these?”

“Well, I kinda… borrowed your flower book?” he admitted, leaning on the kitchen island to watch her fill a glass vase and start arranging the flowers. “The one you and Jeff were talking about at lunch? It’s in my bag.”

“Wait, what? When did you grab it? I didn’t even notice it was gone.”

“Yesterday, when you left me alone in your room to go get snacks. D’you have any more of those strawberries? They were so good.”

“Yes, but you can’t eat them. We need them for the cake,” Dottie cut a few long stems until she was happy with how her vase looked and tied the silver ribbon that the bouquet had been bound with around the glass. “So if you stole my book, what do these mean?”

“I didn’t steal it, I was gonna give it back!” he said, faking being offended at her accusation before he dropped the act and stared down at his hands. “The, um- the rosemary is remembrance. The bell flowers are gratitude.”

“Gratitude? For my Mom?” she searched for his eyes with her own but he kept looking at his rings.

“Just wanted to thank her, y’know,” he looked up at her after a pause. “For giving me you.”

“Shit, Ed, you can’t say things like that without a warning, you’re gonna make me cry!” she fanned her face with her hand, voice playful but eyes full of very real tears. “Thank you, you’re… thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” he smiled shyly, reaching across the island to grab a flower out of the vase and bump her nose with it.

She giggled, taking the long stem from his fingers and setting it behind her right ear before turning around towards the counter where baking supplies were neatly laid out. She picked up two envelopes: one was the now familiar soft pink rectangle she had been carrying in her backpack all week but the other one was unassuming plain white. She slid the white one across the ceramic countertop; Eddie opened it to find a Garfield themed Mother’s Day card, the orange cat grinning on the front of the glossy paper. A pen entered his line of vision and he looked up to see Dottie nervously staring at him.

“I got you your own card,” she explained, clicking the pen and offering it to him. “Thought maybe you’d like to join my little ritual later.”

“Ritual?”

“I write down the things I want to say to my Mom and then I burn the card. It’s dumb, you know I don’t really believe in, like, the afterlife or whatever but… Dunno. Feels like the words reach her if I burn it.”

“No, I get it,” he reassured her. “So I can write whatever I want?”

“Yeah! I mostly just update mine on how everything’s going. About my Dad, and school, stuff like that. Like leaving a message on her answering machine.”

“Okay, I can do that,” he smiled. “I’ll join your ritual.”

“Yeah? Okay, cool! I’ll… I’ll get started on the cake while you do that then.”

Happy to have a task to focus on instead of staring at him for an hour, Dottie opened a bottom drawer and took out a dark green apron with a tiny lemon pattern, quickly tying it behind her back with a thin bow. Eddie watched her move around her kitchen with ease, measuring ingredients and lining up a cake pan with parchment paper like she’d done it a thousand times. He supposed she’d had; kids with hard childhoods always knew their way around ovens and knives. It was simply a matter of survival: sometimes you were hungry and there weren’t any adults around even if the grownups in your life weren’t neglectful, like Wayne or James. Eddie looked down at Garfield’s large face printed on the paper and began spilling everything that was rattling inside his brain through his pen. He wrote, and wrote, and wrote until the left side of the opened card was full and had no more space to write on, so he continued writing on the backside.

He told his Mom about Wayne while Dottie mixed flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and salt. He promised her he’d graduate this year while hearing the sounds of two eggs being cracked, the overwhelming sweetness of vanilla extract filling the air. He confided that he didn’t feel as lonely as before anymore, that he thought he finally had great friends, a club that looked up to him, a band that made him proud. He asked her not to worry about him anymore when Dottie poured the batter into a round pan and offered him the spoon to lick. And thus, Eddie wrote to her Mom about the girl he had a growing crush on, how he felt like he didn’t have to hide anything from her because she understood him in ways that other people had never understood, and how desperately he hoped she would look at him in the same way he saw her. If he had lifted his head up when he was putting the card back into the envelope, he would have seen Dottie sneaking glances at him while she cut strawberries and realized that he didn’t have to hope for anything anymore; Dottie already looked at him with stars in her eyes even if he didn’t think he was worthy of it yet.

With the cake baking in the oven for the next 30 minutes, all the strawberries cut in half, and the homemade jam finishing its 48 hour setting period in the fridge, both teens sat down on cushy stools at the kitchen island to finish the half-done homework they had abandoned on Saturday after it got dark. They could hear James pottering about upstairs, cleaning the bathroom while listening to the radio. He was singing along to West End Girls by the Pet Shop Boys - “the latest #1 on the Billboard Hot 100” the announcer had said. James didn’t really like the Pet Shop Boys, but he had heard it so much on the radio during the last couple of months that he couldn’t be blamed for knowing the lyrics by heart at that point.

“You done?” Eddie asked, gathering his stuff and shoving everything into his backpack.

“Yeah- yeah, I’m done,” Dottie said, moving to clear her stuff too. “Cake should be done in five, I think.”

“What’s next?”

“Wanna whip the cream while I do the glaze?”

“Sure. You’re gonna have to guide me though,” his face lit up in a mischievous smile. “And I’m gonna need one of those cute little aprons you’ve been hiding from me too.”

“You get plain dark blue,” she said, going through the drawer. “Or… I can offer you a “Kiss the Cook” apron with a big red heart on it?”

“Princess, you already know which one I want,” he batted his eyelashes at her. “Besides, it matches my scrunchie!”

Dottie tried to contain her giggles with no success when he tied his hair up into a bun with the red scrunchie that had found permanent residence in the depths of her empty fruit bowl, twirling around to show off his new hairdo. He bowed his head so she could slip the apron around his neck, leaving the tying up to him and fetching the ingredients for their next tasks. She separated them into two small piles, his ingredients to the right, hers to the left.

“To make whipped cream you put heavy cream in this,” she slid a bowl in front of him. “And you use the mixer to whisk it until it gets a bit bubbly. Then, you add the sugar and the vanilla extract, and you mix until it’s not runny anymore.”

“How much of everything?” he asked, pushing his sleeves to his elbows.

“One tablespoon of sugar and one teaspoon of vanilla extract.”

“The tablespoon is the big one, right?”

“Yes, chef,” she said, juicing a lemon for her glaze.

They worked together in relative silence, the loud sounds of the mixer drowning any words they could say. Eddie found out that he could draw on the cream when it got a bit more stiff, and quickly proceeded to spend the next few minutes drawing penis shape after penis shape into the mixture. He thought it was hilarious until Dottie unplugged the electric appliance, shaking her head at his antics. He got the cake out of the oven while she finished up her glaze, concentrating on not burning her concoction heating up on the stovetop.

“Do you always bake a cake for Mother’s Day?”

“Pretty much, yeah. It was my Mom’s favorite cake, it’s her recipe, so... Dunno, it feels nice. And I get to eat cake in the end so everything works out.”

“Y’know, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone make lemon glaze since I lived with my Grandma for three months,” he said, fanning the cake with a takeaway menu to cool it down.

“That sounds fun. How old were you?”

“Eight. Stayed with her the whole summer. She made awful lemon bars, I mean that shit tasted like fuckin’ cardboard,” Dottie snorted at his horrified expression. “But she made the best apple pie I’ve ever had. I think I gained like 10 pounds that summer.”

“Just from apple pie?” she asked, adding the last bit of the lemon juice to the pot.

“And ice cream,” he smiled. “Best summer of my life.”

“Eddie?” she said softly. “Can I ask you something kind of personal?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“How old were you when you moved in with Wayne?”

“After that summer. Actually,” he snorted bitterly. “The only reason I got to stay with my Grandma all those months was because my Dad got himself locked up and didn’t think it was important to mention he had a kid.”

“What?”

“They found out I existed when the school year started. A teacher asked me about my summer and called Social Services. When they came to see me, they said my Grandma was too old to raise me, so Wayne asked for custody. Been living with him since then.”

“What happened to your Dad?” she turned off the heat and turned to look at him.

“He’s still in prison. Won’t get out until I’m in my thirties as far as I know. He’s an asshole so… I don’t really care about him, and Wayne doesn’t either. Never went to visit him. Shit, I don’t think he even knows where they’ve got him, and that’s his little brother.”

“I mean, you just said he was an asshole so…”

“Yeah, I did,” he let out a wry chuckle.

“What’s his name? It isn’t Edward, right?”

“No, my Mom chose Edward. His name’s Wyatt.”

“Ah, that sucks,” she shook her head, moving past him to cut the cake in half to start assembling. He looked at her questioningly. “Wayne and Wyatt? ‘Cause you like alliteration?”

“Doesn’t ruin it for me. Actually, you might like this - you know what other two names start with the same letter?” he leaned onto the counter next to her. She was still wearing a sprig of rosemary in her hair.

“Bilbo and Baggins?” she joked.

“Maureen and Margaret.”

Dottie stopped cutting, knife halfway into the soft vanilla sponge, and stared at him. Eddie was looking at the two envelopes laying side by side next to the flower vase, right hand twirling the rings on his left hand. She remembered a conversation she’d had with Ms. Kelly early on in February after the excitement of being the new kid had died down and everyone had forgotten about her, going back to their cliques and usual groups of friends without sparing a single glance at her. If you want others to open up to you, you have to be open with them too, Ms. Kelly had said, in that gentle voice she always talked to troubled students with.

As much as Eddie wore his heart on his sleeve, he wasn’t keen on talking about his past. He rarely offered up pieces of important information about his childhood, choosing to only share the inconsequential parts instead. Everything else was locked up tight in his chest, just like Dottie did with her deepest memories. She wondered if the reason he was being candid with her now was because she’d let him peek behind her curtains first on Friday night at Lover’s Lake. A key exchanged for a key.

“Your mom’s name was Maureen?” Dottie asked, resuming her cutting.

“Yeah. Wayne says everyone called her Mo.”

“That’s a pretty name,” she smiled. “Mo and Maggie. Maybe they would’ve been friends.”

“Yeah. That would’ve been nice. We could have introduced them.”

“I don’t know if I’d be in Hawkins if my Mom was still here, though,” she said, sliding a big spatula under the first layer of cake to move it to a different plate. “Don’t think we would have moved out of New York.”

“Dunno if I’d be here either,” Eddie admitted, watching her spread the whipped cream he had made on the cake. “My Mom wasn’t from Hawkins. I don’t really know where she was from, I asked but Wayne doesn’t know either so… Said she didn’t like talking about it ‘cause her parents kicked her out when they found out she was pregnant.”

“That’s actually so wretched.”

“I know, right? Like, I know my Dad was always a fucking asshole but it wasn’t her fault, she was barely 17.”

“How did she meet your Dad then? If she wasn’t from Hawkins.”

“As far as I know, she worked at a diner my Dad stopped at on his route. Wayne got him a job as a trucker when he turned 18. So he met my Mom there, dated her for like, three months at the most, and then I showed up to ruin everything,” Dottie scoffed at him but he continued. “She dropped out of high school, he brought her to Hawkins and I was born here. They got married when she turned 18 a few months later. Actually, my Grandma kinda forced them to get married. She really liked my Mom and didn’t want people to treat her like shit ‘cause she had a bastard child.”

“God, people sucked back then.”

“It was the ‘60s, The Beatles were the biggest band in the world, everything sucked back then.”

“Say that again and I’ll kill you in your sleep,” she deadpanned and he let out a huge snort, enjoying how easy it was to rile her up. “You were saying, though.”

“Nah, it’s just… If they were married, it didn’t look like I was an unhappy accident, y’know?” Eddie got a bit more serious. “Anyway, Wyatt didn’t really want to be a dad. He would get in his truck and leave for days, and then when he came back he treated my Mom like shit. I don’t remember much but my Grandma told me once that he used to hit her a lot. I mean, I was his own personal punching bag so that shouldn’t surprise me as much as it does but still.”

“Jesus Christ,” she breathed out.

“It’s been ages since I’ve seen him and my Mom died when I was three, that’s why I don’t really remember anything,” he said, but he did. He remembered everything about Wyatt Munson; every hit, every insult, every scream. He cleared his throat. “After that, my Dad quit his job and started working at Brimborn before it closed down.”

“Brimborn… That’s the abandoned warehouse on Cherry Lane, right?”

“Cherry Oak Drive.”

“There’s like three different roads with “cherry” in their names in Hawkins, it’s so dumb.”

“Nobody said we were very original around here,” he chuckled.

Dottie moved around the kitchen to go find the strawberry jam she’d made a few days prior and found him still staring at the cards when she turned. He wasn’t crying at the memories, he didn’t even look sad. Just… resigned. Like he’d gotten used to things being shit all the time so it was a waste of time to get upset about them anymore. She left the jar on the counter and wrapped her arms around Eddie’s waist, her chest colliding with his back, her face buried between his shoulder blades.

“I’m so happy Wayne was there for you. He’s a great man.”

“Yeah,” he said, voice uncharacteristically soft, hands curling around hers. “Sometimes… sometimes I used to wish he was my real Dad, y’know?”

“He is.”

They stayed like that in the middle of Dottie’s kitchen, a million different things running through their heads: the dead mothers that shared the first letter of their names, the men that had raised them, and the people who had cared for them along the way. There was love to be found here in this kitchen, they both knew it. Only time would tell what it could turn into - what it would turn into - but for now, this friendship that only seemed to grow stronger every day was more than they had dreamed of when they first met in that dark props room thanks to the one and only Dustin Henderson. Maybe a Thank You note was in order.

Eddie thought it was very fitting that there wasn’t a bit of sunshine to be found as they stepped out into the backyard to begin what Dottie kept calling her “little ritual”. He held their envelopes carefully, one on each hand, while he watched her shove bits of craft paper and small branches into an empty bucket of paint, a box of matches resting on the floor next to her sneakers. She grabbed one and lit it on fire, throwing it into the can that had been scrubbed clean of any traces of paint ages ago and was now used as a regular bucket of water to douse the embers whenever James felt like using the grill. Wordlessly, she took her envelope from him and knelt in front of the can with her eyes closed, pressing the paper to her chest for a few seconds before lifting it up to her lips for a quick kiss, letting it fall onto the flames. She watched how the fire consumed her written words for a moment and went back to stand next to her friend.

She didn’t give him any indications as to what to do, simply choosing to let her hands fall in front of her, right hand twirling the ring on her left middle finger, eyes never leaving the flames. Eddie took her solemn silence as permission to approach the metallic can, kneeling on one knee and dropping his card inside. It was a strange feeling, he reckoned, to be sharing such an intimate and private moment with Dottie, and yet knowing that his words would never be read by her or any other person. Whatever he’d said in his letter was between him and the wind that he hoped would reach his Mom’s ears. I guess that’s the point of the ritual, he thought, moving back to his spot next to the pensive girl.

“It’s my fault,” she mumbled, gaze still stuck to the orange dancing in front of them and yet so far away from what she was actually seeing. “It’s my fault she’s dead.”

He turned to look at her, eyebrows meeting in the middle. Eddie had never seen her look so defeated. He wondered how he’d never noticed it before: the weight of the guilt she was carrying on her shoulders, the deep seated shame in the pit of her stomach that felt all too familiar to him, the vacant space within her eyes. It was like looking into a mirror that he’d been trying to ignore for so long. He reached out to her, his right hand wrapping around her left, rings brushing against each other’s, and squeezed tightly.

“She knew she was sick while she was pregnant and delayed her treatment for me. I killed her.”

“Dot, you know that’s not right.”

“Isn’t it? She knew it was me or her, and she chose me,” she held on tighter to his hand. “Sometimes… god, sometimes I wish she’d chosen herself instead. And it’s not that I want to be dead, I swear it’s not about that, but… it wasn’t fair. Not to her, not to my Dad. And it wasn’t fair to me either.”

“It’s my fault my Mom’s dead,” Eddie said, moving his fingers to intertwine with hers. She turned to him, both sets of wet brown eyes finding each others’ in the backyard. “It was the last day of preschool before the Winter holidays and I wanted pizza, so she went out to go get it. A drunk guy ran her over. She never saw it coming. My Dad wasn’t even in town. She died alone on the side of the road and with a fucking 2x1 pizza coupon in her coat pocket.”

“Eddie, you couldn’t have known. That wasn’t your fault-”

“It wasn’t yours either but you’re still gonna blame yourself for the rest of your life, aren���t you?” his lower lip trembled and they both squeezed tighter. The skin stretching over their knuckles was as white as the bellflowers in the kitchen. “They were adults, they made their own choices but you’re always gonna think about what you could have done differently, even if you didn’t know how to wipe your own ass yet.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” she insisted. “That drunk asshole should be to blame, not you.”

“It wasn’t your fault either,” he said, matching her intensity. “You didn’t make her sick, that just happens sometimes and it’s no one’s fault.”

“It is! It’s my fault she didn’t get the treatment she should have gotten!”

“And it’s my fault my Mom was out there that night because I wanted pizza,” he lifted the hand that wasn’t holding onto hers and cupped the side of her face, thumb brushing away an angry tear. “If you’re not gonna stop blaming yourself, then I won’t stop either. You can’t have it both ways, Dot. Either we both move on, or we stay here together because fuck if I know who else to talk about this shit with.”

“It’s not fair,” she pouted, head falling forward until it hit his chest, his hand sliding into her hair.

“No, it’s not,” he agreed, taking a deep breath.

There was nothing else to be said, nothing left to clarify or explain. There were no words to soothe the pain, because it was so embedded into who they were as people that no amount of comfort would ever patch up the wounds that had healed badly and left deep scars that would never completely disappear. Margaret and Maureen were no longer there, and Eddie and Dottie had to move on. They weren’t sure how, and by God if they hadn’t tried  to do so all these years, but it felt a lot easier to forgive yourself when someone else was walking down that road with you.

Dottie sobbed quietly against Eddie’s chest, head bowed with his right hand tangling into her curls, cupping the back of her head. Eddie let his own tears fall, his cheek pressed onto her crown, thumb brushing the exposed skin behind her ear. In the silence filled with paper and wood crackling inside the paint bucket, they thought about how much they longed for something they couldn’t even remember having, and how their rusty padlocks were starting to fall limp at their feet. How even when their brains were miles away from their bodies, they still anchored each other down, hearts beating in sync and hands holding hands, Eddie’s thick mood ring on his right hand clashing against Dottie’s only dainty band; her Mom’s engagement ring glinting on her left middle finger.

Suddenly, she startled him by laughing softly through her tears, bringing their joined hands between their chests. He peered at her face curiously, waiting for her to speak.

“She would have fucking loved you,” she said, looking up at him with a big smile and shining eyes.

“Yeah?” he smiled back.

“I told my Auntie Rachel about you, and she said that she wants to meet you. That you remind her of my Mom.”

“I do?”

“It’s because she was the glue. She was the one that introduced everyone in the group, they are all friends because of her. And that’s what you do for us with Hellfire. You’re our glue.”

“You know,” he stopped his sentence to chuckle. “Wayne said something like that about you too.”

“Yeah?”

“He said that you boss me around like my Mom did with him,” he laughed. “And that you always tidy up his coffee table like she did.”

“That’s so embarrassing,” she laughed with him.

“I think Wayne likes you more than he likes me,” he whispered conspiratorially. “But I know my Mom would have loved you too.”

“Eddie? If I wanted to get a tattoo to honor my Mom-”

“I’m taking you to get it when you turn 21. It’ll be your birthday present, I promise. Just… wait until you’re 21 so I can take you to a nice shop, because mine look really awesome but it’s honestly a miracle I’m not dead,” she snorted loudly. “I’m serious! I don’t think the guy washed his hands since he came back from Vietnam.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll wait. But you gotta promise we’ll still be friends in three years.”

“Oh, princess, I’m a ride or die. No getting rid of me now, sorry.”

“Good. Didn’t want to get rid of you anyways.”

While Dottie was inside setting up the TV to watch The Wizard of Oz, Eddie excused himself to the backyard for a smoke. He ran through everything that had happened between them that week, starting with their argument about his moldy ceiling all the way until the last ten minutes when she was still buried in his arms. Being vulnerable wasn’t something that came easy to Eddie; he was way too used to covering everything up in leather and sarcasm, but now that he’d started shedding the layers, it was surprisingly liberating to keep going, especially when he kept being rewarded by Dottie letting down her barriers too. He was so lost in his own thoughts that he didn’t realize James had slipped out into the backyard too and was walking towards him, glancing at the pile of ashes at the bottom of the metallic can.

“She got you to join her ritual?” James asked, coming to a stop next to the younger man who was smoking under the patio roof.

“It was interesting. I enjoyed it,” he said, the right corner of his lips twitching upwards into a soft smile. He offered his pack of cigs to James, who shook his head, hands in his pockets.

“No, thank you. Haven’t smoked in years.”

“I should probably stop smoking but it’s hard when my Uncle does it too.”

“I know what you mean, my parents are smokers,” James said, nodding. “I only stopped because Maggie got pregnant and she hated the smell on my clothes. Said it made her want to throw up.”

“Dot hates it too,” Eddie chuckled. “She’s always wrinkling her nose when we smoke near her.”

“She does it to my mother too, don’t take it personal.”

Eddie didn’t really know what else to say so he stayed quiet, busying himself with his cigarette. He knew Dottie hated the fact that he and Donny smoked, but despite that, she’d never told them to not do it. Instead, she moved around them to stand next to Gareth or Jeff, away from the wind that blew the smoke into her space until they were done indulging in their vices. She had never complained about the smell either; the only time they’d heard her say anything negative about it was when she said that her Grandma liked smoking inside her kitchen while sitting next to an opened window and that the smoke made her cough, so Eddie tried not to smoke in the van when he was driving her around. He tapped the butt to the sole of his boot and saved it in the little cardboard box, fully intending on throwing it in the trash when he came back inside when James cleared his throat.

“Eddie, do you mind if we have a talk? Man to man,” he said, his tone friendly but firm.

“Y-yeah, of course. Is there a problem, sir?” Eddie’s palms were sweating. He had seen this coming but didn’t think it would happen so soon.

“No, actually I wanted to thank you,” James began. “Dottie told me what you did for her on Friday, that was… very thoughtful of you.”

“Oh,” he was surprised. “I… You don’t have to thank me. I don’t know if she told you but… I haven’t been a very good friend lately and I wanted to apologize to her. That’s all.”

“Well, either way, thank you. Proms and school dances are… a touchy subject for her, you know? Not a lot of good memories. Just- thank you for making her senior prom special.”

“Of course,” Eddie said, scratching the skin under his watch. “We’ll make sure she has a good prom. And if- if you want us to bring her back at, like, a certain hour, we- we can totally do that too. We’ll look out for her.”

“I know,” the older man smiled at him, noticing how nervous he looked. Eddie might be almost 20 but he was still a little boy trying to impress the father of the girl he liked; James supposed he’d looked the same when he’d started dating Maggie. “You’re good kids, all of you. And Dottie’s never really had good friends before so… if she’s happy, I’m happy.”

“I’m glad. That’s she’s happy, I mean,” he hurried to say. “Not that she had bad friends before. That part sucks, she’s… she’s great and I’m glad I- glad we got to meet her and… stuff.”

“You all mean a lot to her, but you… You’re very important to her. You know that, don’t you, Eddie?” James said, and Eddie felt very much like he was being tested.

“She’s important to me too, sir.”

James smiled, satisfied with the boy’s answer. He understood now the glee his father-in-law felt whenever he made him squirm, it was very enjoyable. It was in good faith though, Roger had never outright disrespected him, and James didn’t intend on doing it to Eddie either, but he supposed it was his God given right to mess with the kid a little bit as the father of a teenage daughter. Maybe one day Eddie would understand it too.

“Everything alright?” Dottie said, popping her head out of the kitchen backdoor and looking at the two men standing on the grass with curiosity.

“Yeah, just two guys having a manly talk. You know, about sports and stuff,” James said.

“You only watch sports when the Olympics are on.”

“I also watch the Super Bowl,” he argued.

“You never watch the rest of the season, what’s the point?”

“It’s fun,” he said, turning to Eddie. “Right, Ed?”

“Only reason I watch is because Wayne makes the best spicy wings in Hawkins,” he grinned. “Sorry, sir.”

“You two are missing out,” James shook his head, jesting. “Gonna watch The Wizard of Oz?”

“Yeah, wanna join?”

“Nah, I’m gonna go lay down for a bit. I’ll take a piece of cake though.”

Later that day, when they were hanging out on the couch stuffing their faces full with vanilla sponge and strawberry jam while watching Judy Garland and her merry gang of new friends walk down the yellow brick road, Dottie eyed Eddie suspiciously until he turned to her, whipped cream staining his upper lip.

“Okay, spill.”

“Wha’?” he asked, cheeks full of cake.

“What were you and my Dad talking about outside?”

“Manly stuff,” he swallowed quickly. “Can’t tell you. If you knew, I’d have to kill you, it’s the law.”

“You’re such an idiot,” she giggled, stealing a strawberry from his plate.

He gasped in horror but still let her do it, because she was important to him and he’d do anything to keep that smile on her face, including tearing down the walls he’d carefully built around himself all throughout his life. And hopefully, by shedding that weight, she’d be able to get rid of hers too, and Mo and Maggie could be proud of them for finally moving on.

taglist (comment below or shoot me a dm if you want to be added!): @munsonology @kurdtbean

#bunny writes #small town fic #eddie munson x female character #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson fic #eddie munson x oc #eddie munson #eddie munson x ofc #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson angst #stranger things 4 #joseph quinn #baby's first fic

[my-dark-lord]

Hi! I wanted to ask, is there a way to read more about your ocs in hellaverse? I just kinda like other people ocs very much lol

Hey! I'm so sorry this is running so late, Nonny, I meant to reply sooner than this but I tend to get distracted super easily. I've got the ADHD pretty bad and in my past life I was the goldfish that made scientists think they all had five second memories.

At any rate, I have quite a few Hellaverse OCs! A lot of fankids and then quite a few surrounding Ozzie or Valentino. I've been working more with the ones that deal with Val, lately, which are mostly Darío, Ostello, and Anya!

The main OCs I have are Ostello, Anya, Darío, Ozzie's Parents (Abstemiounessa and Valore), Archangel Uriel, Leviathan, Magpie, Vick, and then a few others that I don't do much with. I also have fankids but that may be for another time.

I literally just reworked Ostello's bio and took it from 364 words to 1,101 words and updated a lot of information that had become wrong as I wrote him. Anya recently got upgraded from OC that I didn't really do anything with to OC that I'm using a lot more.

They're all on my RP blog, @e-m-p-error, though a lot of them need a little reworking. For now, I can share Ostello and Anya's info here! I've been working on them most recently. Ostello is Valentino's ex-husband and Anya is his Personal Assistant!

It's under a cut for length. Ostello's info is LONG. All art by me.

Anya

Human Name: Anya Kazlow

Name In Hell: Anya

Nicknames: Annie Baby, Yaya

Faceclaim: My/Friend’s Art

Original Universe: Mainverse

Age: 30 (When He Died); 37 Years Dead

Birthday: April 30th, 1956 (Taurus)

Deathday: December 5th, 1986

Height: 6'8"

Gender: Cis Female

Pronouns: She/Her

Sexuality: Bisexual Bimantic, Ambigamous

Species: Gorgon Sinner

Snake Color: Red and White

Eye Color: Pale red sclera, bright green irises

Occupation: Valentino’s Personal Assistant

Headcanon Masterlist

When Anya was alive, she worked in a veterinarian’s office that saw a lot of exotic pets owned by bad people. There were all kinds of things that she had to overlook in her line of work, including humans that had bullet wounds or other such injuries. She doubled as a nurse when she had to, and learned how to take care of human and animal injuries alike. Always having been nurturing and gentle, she was well-loved by the Russian mafia in her town in Belarus and ended up getting married to a lower-ranking member after tending to him for one summer.

She was shot on their wedding day when a rival cell infiltrated the wedding and killed as many of the people there as they could. She died holding her lover’s hand, and vowing revenge. This never came to fruition.

Meeting Valentino not long after she fell, Anya was hired on to be his PA after she ended up gentling him through an injury that he obtained in a turf war. She happened to be there at the time, and he decided having a medically minded personal assistant would be a good idea. She sold her soul to him, and being an important member of his team, she was given the golden tooth that Angel Dust and Val both had. She is in love with Valentino, but he only sees her as a friend. She’s mostly okay with this because it’s worth it just to be near him. It is her job to handle most things that Vox doesn’t handle for him. This can be anything from cast lists to work schedules to bartending if he needs someone to cover a shift. If Val needs it done, she’ll do it.

Her snakes are Frog Eating Rat Snakes, and because of this, they have bacteria in their mouths. If she bites you, it is an immediate, violent, and disgusting case of leprosy that can kill in minutes. She has only ever bitten three people, and she usually doesn’t, but she will absolutely do it if it is necessary.

Anya is very nosy and always likes to be up on the latest gossip and whatever juicy things are going on around Val. She will pry into his business while she takes care of him while he’s drunk so she is abreast of the latest drama.

Ostello 

Human Name: Oscar Lawrence

Name In Hell: Ostello

Nicknames: Tello, Baby (Valentino Exclusive), Broadway (@strangeandun-muse-ual’s Vox Exclusive)

Faceclaim: My Art/Al Pacino

Original Universe: Mainverse

Birthday: January 21st, 1899

Human Deathday: May 3rd, 1944

Demon Deathday: February 9th, 1980 (Assassinated by Val with a Holy spear)

Age: 45 (When He Died As A Human); 36 Years Dead (When Killed By Val); 80 Years Dead (In Heaven)

Gender: Cis Male

Sexuality: Homosexual Homoromantic Ambigamous

Species: Badger Sinner

Height: 6'8"

Relation: Valentino’s Ex-Husband (Widowed)

Occupation: Overlord, Pop-Jazz Singer, Arms Dealer

Headcanon Masterlist

When he was alive, his name was Oscar Lawrence. Oscar was the son of Ruth and Samuel Lawrence, their only child. Marty was his father’s best friend, his right-hand man in the fire department, and his wife’s affair partner. Oscar knew about the affair for approximately a year before his father died on Christmas day when he was ten years old. A year after his father’s death, Marty was his stepfather, and while he never held any express animosity toward him, he never called Marty his father. His mother and Marty had two kids together who were twelve and fourteen years younger than he was, and he was never particularly close to his half-siblings.

At seventeen, he had dropped out of school and gone to work in a club in Omaha. He was discovered singing one of the numbers from a nightly show while cleaning by his boss, who loved his sound and gave him his own attempt at playing a show one Saturday night. For starters, he did a few covers of things that he had heard and ended the night on a song he’d written himself. His lyrics were filled with a longing he became known for, a desire for something he could never have. It became something that was so Oscar Lawrence to long, to pine so genuinely and openly that it was impossible to separate from him. So much of his music was about barely scraping his fingertips against the thing he longed for, and nobody could ever quite get out of him what it was.

When he was twenty, he met Olivia, his wife-to-be. She fell for him, hard and fast, and he never felt much. But it was a suspicious thing for a man his age not to have a wife, and he liked Olivia enough to live with her. Oscar was rarely home, out touring and recording a lot, but at twenty-one their daughter, Gertrude “Gertie” Rose Lawrence was born. He rarely saw her, and when he was home, he was usually sad and drunk. Gertie doesn’t remember much of her dad, but his biggest sin with her was neglect. He never rose his hand against her or her mother, and he was never particularly cruel.

However, he did cheat on his wife. Often while he was on tour, he could sleep with any woman that wanted him in ways he found impossible to do with his wife at home. Like many singers of his time, he also had a stage presence on the silver screen. Much like he found many temporary replacements for his wife, he found a semi-permanent replacement for his daughter as a mentor to Shirley Temple.

If there was something as Oscar Lawrence as pure, unadulterated longing, it was a desire to run from what he did have with that same desperation.

His biggest sin in life was that he was gay in a time when that was very highly frowned upon, and it was a well-kept secret. Nobody knew about it, and he never once acted on it while he was alive.

When he died in 1944, it was a slow, painful, and disorienting death alone in a hospital half a country away from his family. His wife and daughter flew out to see him just in time to say goodbye, and he couldn’t recall who they were. He died of acute liver failure that had progressed under the radar of his manager who had been busy working him through the holidays.

Olivia sued the company for negligence that led to her husband’s death, and she and Gertie continued to never want for anything but the man whom they owed their cushy lives to. Neither could say they knew him before he died, and after they would know him even less.

Oscar sort of expected to fall into Hell, and when he did, he was unsurprised. For a few months, he just tooled around, feeling out his new abilities and appearance as a badger. He discovered early on that he had pyrokinesis and it was something of a novelty for a while.

One night while walking the streets and experimenting with it in the lonely hours of the morning, he gave a fireball too much juice and shot an Overlord on her way back from a big deal. He didn’t expect it, and it led to a huge fight between the two of them in which Ostello accidentally became the victor. It was a hard fight and when her gun was knocked from her hands, he managed to grab it in the ensuing wrestling for it. Unbeknownst to him, it was loaded with holy bullets, and ended in her demise.

Her attendants, who had scattered during the fight, came to him to tell him that he was now in charge of her territory as long as nobody else took it, and he took the responsibility fairly seriously. This didn’t stop him from pursuing a musical career on top of the weapons dealing, of course, but it was somethingi that he did want to do to the best of his ability.

Ostello, as he eventually renamed himself, became a rather beloved fixture of the Pentagram. He was hard to upset and treated his workers with dignity and respect. They were paid well, especially those who gathered holy metals during the Extermination, and he never went so far as to treat any of them cruelly.

He worked with Alastor to produce radio shows and sang live several times for him. When Vox eventually came around, Ostello left Alastor’s employ to work under a label that Vox owned. He performed for him there, with concerts and other such things, until the day he was killed. His music is still fairly popular and played in several Voxtech buildings.

In 1972, he met Valentino, and in two months married the moth. He was a devoted husband who wanted nothing more than to make his wife happy, and he spent the next eight years absolutely enamored by him. However, Valentino had never really been in love with him, and in 1980 used a holy spearhead pilfered from Ostello’s own armory to kill him.

Due to his love for Valentino driving him to be a much, much happier and better person, when he died he was reincarnated in Heaven. He dislikes Heaven very much because he misses Valentino and was reunited with Olivia. He does not know that Gertie is in Hell. He has been watching Valentino in Hell for years and is abreast with the latest things going on in his life at all times.

#Hazbin Hotel #Hazbin Hotel OCs #Hazbin Hotel Original Characters #Hellaverse OCs #Demon OC #Angel OC

[cyberhades]

Love Hurts Sometimes ੈ♡˳ Steve Harrington x Fem! Reader

Warning: fluf stuff, some bad words and discussion.

Summary: after breaking up and months without talking with each other, Steve wants to prove to you that he loves you more than anything.

Today was July 3, 1986.

It had been exactly five months since you and Steve had broken up. The reason was something grotesque, maybe even quite silly and idiotic but it was enough to end any relationship.

— Robin, I don't know what to do, I really don't. I just wish I could have her in my arms again... — he lay down on the blonde's bed huffing and pressing a pillow against his face.

— You can start by admitting your mistake, asshole — she lay down beside him. — And change too, change is very important!

— Change what? It won't do any good to change anything, the shit is already done!

— Dude, you might not have acted the way you did in the first place, how about that? — Robin was realistic and adored him, but she would spare no effort to defend you at that difficult moment. — You had already broke with Nancy and yet you continued to pay attention to her, studying with her, going to her house. You didn't even realize that it took you away from Y/N!

— So what? Nancy is already with another guy, what we had passed! It's over! It's fucking over! — he still said, indignantly.

— Independent, Steve! What you had with Nancy can't be erased, and continuing to have that much contact with her would make anyone insecure!

— Okay, but so what? Everything that has happened has already happened, Y/N has distanced herself from me and now I'm the person she probably least likes in all Hawkins! — he was distressed, the more the months passed the more he became desperate.

— You could be the person she likes the least because of you. Steve, this is all your fault! — Robin yelled at him. — Does it cost you at least to assume that?

— All right, Robin! I'm an idiot, I'm an asshole, I'm a scoundrel, and I've always been a terrible boyfriend for Y/N! — he assumed as he felt an overwhelming urge to cry.

— Well, that's the first step. Now the second step is for you to be ashamed of yourself and go there to do what I know you're dying to do!

— And what would that be, huh? — he arched an eyebrow.

— You know, you little shit...

[...]

You were finishing your shift, which had been the afternoon shift at the arcade where you worked. You always chose the night shift because it was the busiest, but you would like to take that night off to visit the Hellfire and see your friends in a fierce battle since Dustin had invited you.

You changed your uniform for white shorts, a rainbow shirt and your black all star with some white scribbles. You would walk home as usual listening to some good music with the tape Max made especially for you.

It was around six pm and it was starting to get dark. With that, the city was left with the vibrant colors of the night lights. Nothing very different from the usual, but it was always a glimpse of that scenario.

When you were checking to see if you had packed everything in your bag outside the arcade, you saw a car approaching the parking lot. And let's face it, you could recognize that car anywhere regardless of the light.

You rolled your eyes in pure indifference and kept walking towards the sidewalk as if it didn't affect you. After all, Hawkins was a small town and everyone had the right to come and go, right?

As you turned around on the sidewalk, walking in the opposite direction of his car, you heard the door slam open and footsteps rushing towards you.

— Y/N! Wait! — you hadn't heard that voice in months and your heart was in tatters. That voice that had always said that he loved you and that he would take care of you forever, today sounded like the voice of a stranger.

You turned to look at him and didn't know whether to cry, hit him or kiss him. He was beautiful as ever and he was still the most beautiful person you had ever seen in your entire life, it was impossible to hate him.

— My God! I have to confess that in my mind this seemed easier! — he commented, chuckling lightly. His nervousness was remarkable.

— What do you want, Steve? — you said firmly, you wouldn't allow yourself to cry. Not in front of him, at least.

— I came here because... because I can't accept that everything we've lived through is over. And I know that somewhere in your heart you can't accept it either!

— Regardless of whether I can accept it or not, it's over!

— And you think I don't blame myself!? — he said in a higher voice.

That made a silence settle between you two. You wanted to cry, he wanted to cry and the two of you just wanted to hug and say goodbye to everything that happened but the heartaches were inevitable.

— I blame myself, and I think about you from when I wake up until I go to sleep. I know I was an asshole and I admit it! But I can't live without you, I can't imagine a future without you! — he kept talking and you were already feeling a knot in your throat.

— Stop! Stop telling me all these things! I know you will hurt me again!

— Y/N, I promise you I won't hurt you again!

— Words aren't enough, I want to see actions, Steve! Fucking actions!

— If you give me that chance I'll change everything! I'll show you everything you want and I'll never hurt you again because I hurt myself even more when I lost you! — he knelt down and hugged your legs, he was crying just like you were.

The two were crying and arguing like two idiots in love. Because that's what you were from the beginning: two idiots in love who can't live without each other.

— Steve, I... — the knot in your throat from crying wouldn't let you complete the sentence.

— Please, Y/N, please... give me that chance and I'll do it differently! — he said still hugging your legs.

— I-I do not know...

The fear of getting hurt again was something else, it was something that was already consuming you.

Steve then stood up and brought a hand to your face, holding it affectionately and looking into your eyes. It had been a long time since you'd looked into his eyes.

— You're the love of my life, Y/N... — his voice was almost a whisper and he gently wiped the tears that were running down your cheeks.

— You are also the love of my life, Steve... — you smiled awkwardly. And he thought you looked beautiful even when crying and smiling like that. — Promise me this time it's forever?

You showed him the pinky finger, indicating that you were going to make pinky promises, as you always did.

— I promise you, my love. This time it's forever! — he showed the pinky finger too and you made the promise. — I will never be an asshole to the woman of my life again.

You hugged him tightly, missing him so much, knowing that he belonged to you and you belonged to him. Having those strong arms around you pulling you close made you feel safe. Steve's arms were the best place in the world.

— I love you so fucking much, Y/N... — he said as he started to stroke your hair gently.

— I love you so fucking much too, you idiot! — you laughed and moved a little away from him to look at that face you loved so much.

And then, while caressing his face, you pulled him closer and could envelop him in a kiss. Missed his kiss so much, his hands around you... missed him so much! Him and only him!

Steve's lips were soft and his tongue was skillful, he was always a great kisser. He brought his hands down, gripping your hips and then moving down to your thighs, where he took a swing and pulled you into his lap.

You held that silky hair of his and kissed him with passion and tenderness, wanting that moment to last forever.

When you parted, panting slightly, he smiled — that damn beautiful smile — and said:

— Thank you for agreeing to be my girlfriend again. I will make you the happiest woman in the world!

— I'm glad you're my boyfriend again! And I believe in you, Steve, I do.

Steve was the love of your life, there was no doubt that he was the man of your life.

[...]

#steve harrington x fem!reader #steve harrington imagine #steve harrington #steve harrington x you #steve harrington fluff

[austinsgirl]

Rather Die | Chapter 11

rating: pg-13, talks of pregnancy, language

word count: 1986

cross posted on wattpad

master list

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“And cut! That's a wrap! Thank you everyone!" Anna calls out as the movie just shot their last scene. A very wet, steamy, rain kiss.

Austin high fives Vic, playing it cool. Although, he'd love to hug her instead, or do more. He hasn't been able to get her out of his mind the past couple weeks since their hook up.

Regret has been killing him. He hates what he did to her, falling for Eliana's alluring ways. He wishes he hadn't fucked up. Victoria would be his if he didn't.

He can't help but to bask her sexual beauty at the moment. Her wet tee, clinging in all the right places.

Austin starts to head to his trailer to get those thoughts out of his head.

"Hey, Butler!" Vic calls out to him. "See you at you at the wrap party?"

He's surprised she'd ask him such a thing, as he knows she's been dying to get filming over with so they'd never have to see each other again. Well, at least for a while until promos start.

"Uh, yeah! I'll be there."

"Cool. See you then!"

"Why'd you ask if he was going?" Mila questions Victoria.

"I wanted to know if my night would be more entertaining. If he's there, I get to watch him suffer in jealousy one last time because he'll see me & Ashton together."

"You're crazy, Vic."

"I know. But he's made my life a living hell, so."

Little does she know, Austin's been keeping up on the asshole act to hide his true feelings towards her, and he now finds it as a turn on to see her get all worked up & frustrated. So, lately, making her life a living hell has really been a benefit for him.

At the wrap party, drinks are being had, music is blaring through the speakers. It's almost as if it was the cast party all over again, but this time it was a different club.

Austin sits in the corner, sipping on an old fashioned as he watches Victoria & Ashton dance the same way he & Victoria danced the night things fell apart.

"Hey handsome." Eliana comes up & sits next to him.

"What are you doing here, Eli?" he asks, annoyed.

"You know I'd never miss a good party. And I knew you'd be here."

"Yep. I'm here. Probably going to leave soon though."

"Awe why? The party just started."

"Yeah, well, I don't really enjoy watching the girl I like dance with her boyfriend, so."

"Victoria?"

"Yeah."

"You like her again? You're over me?"

"Honestly...I don't think I ever stopped liking her deep down. I really regret kissing you that night, you know."

"How could you regret kissing me? I'm the best you've ever had, Austin."

"Don't be so sure of yourself, Eliana."

"So, Im not the best you've ever had?"

"Bingo. Sorry."

"Let me prove it to you. I still want you, Austin."

"No thanks, I'm good."

Eliana leans in closer to him, staring to nibble on his ear how he likes. "Cmon, Aus. I know you want-

"No, Eliana. Stop." he cuts her off. "I told you we were over, like a million times. It's not happening. You showed me your true colors that day I saw you making out with that rando. Vic was right about you & I really wish I would have listened to her." Austin gets up & starts heading out.

"Wait! Austin! Please! One more chance!" Eliana calls out.

Austin just ignores her & continues on.

Victoria notices that he's leaving. She starts to feel accomplished, thinking she was making him jealous enough to leave, but then she spots Eliana. She knew instantly she was the reason why Austin left.

"Thanks for making Austin leave! I was trying to win him back!" Eliana yells at Vic over the loud music.

"Yeah, okay. I'm sure he left because of you, because he was tired of listening to your bullshit. He told you plenty of times you guys were done for." Victoria says.

"No, he didn't, but okay."

"He did, I was there, everytime you came to set begging him to take you back."

"You're so annoying." Eliana says, storming off.

"Guess you haven't met yourself then!" Vic shouts to her.

Ashton whispers into her ear, "Wanna get out of here?"

"I thought you'd never ask."

A few weeks have passed & Victoria feels like a huge weight has been lifted off her shoulders not having to deal with Austin or Eliana. She hasn't seen or spoken to them since the wrap party.

Victoria's been happy to put the past behind her & get a new start. She's been looking for more opportunities now that she's been done with filming, and has had some time off to herself & to enjoy her new official boyfriend.

Ashton took her on a date to Dave & Busters, a place where a part of their first date took place. While Victoria was in the bathroom, Ashton had one a little teddy bear holding a heart out of a crane machine. When she came back, he asked her to be his. It was a cheesy moment, but Vic absolutely loved it.

"Hey, are you gonna ever stop looking for jobs today?" Mila asks Victoria, as she's been sitting at the counter literally all day on her laptop.

"Um, yeah. I'm about to right now actually. I'm starting to feel nauseous from looking at the screen too much." Vic responds.

"Oof, yeah. You're looking kind of green. Let me know if you need anything."

"I will."

Before she knew it, Vic was running to the bathroom to throw up.

"Do you feel better now?" Mila asks as Vic comes out of the bathroom.

"Yeah, a little bit. I think I'll be fine."

A couple days later

"Fuck." Vic mutters to herself as she sits on the floor in front of the toilet.

She gets herself up from the floor and finds Mila in the kitchen making herself a bagel.

"Mila?.."

"Hey, what's up?"

"I, um...fuck." Vic starts to form tears in her eyes. "I think I might be pregnant."

"You what?" Mila responds with a full bite of her bagel in her mouth.

"I think I might be pregnant, which would be insane because I've always been told at my gyno check ups that I may not be able to conceive because of how fucked up my cycles are & practically being infertile." she rambles, being nervous.

"Okay, slow down. Why do you think you are?"

"I just threw up again, and it like came out of nowhere. I don't know what else it could be. I've been feeling fine, it's not a constant thing like if I had food poisoning."

"I have a couple tests in the bathroom if you want to use them. I had a pregnancy scare a few months ago and impulsively bought like three boxes."

"Okay, yeah, I'll do that. But if I am...I don't know who the father is. Like it could be Austin from our one time or Ashton's."

"Have you told Ashton about that time with Austin like I've been saying you should?"

"No, I havent. I just haven't been able to find the right way to tell him."

"Well, you need to. Especially if you're pregnant & he could possibly be the father, or if you're pregnant with another man's baby."

"I know, I know. And if I am...I think I want to keep it. Like it would be a miracle if I am with the amount of times I've been told it would be hard for me to get pregnant."

"I get that. And no matter what, I'm here for you every step of the way."

"Thanks, Mila. I appreciate it. I'm gonna go take those tests since I have to pee anyways."

"Okay. Do you want to look at them together?"

"Yeah. I cant do this alone."

"Okay. Go pee, and I'll be right there."

Victoria does her business & takes the tests.

"This is the longest three minutes of my life." Vic complains.

"Thirty more seconds." Mila says looking at her timer.

When the seconds were up, Victoria took a deep breath & closed her eyes before looking at the tests.

Both tests read positive.

"Shit." Vic says to herself.

Mila reads the tests herself, "Oh my god."

"Now I really have to tell Ashton, huh?"

"Mhm. You need to tell Austin too."

"Fuck. I do, because I'm gonna have to get a paternity test."

"Are you for sure it could be Austin's?"

"Well, when I looked up how long it takes for early symptoms to start, it lines up with that time. I have this gut feeling too that it's his."

"Why?"

"Because in the heat of the moment, and not being prepared, Austin & I didn't use protection, but me and Ashton have been. Just incase, even though it would be unlikely I could get pregnant. But here we are."

"Oh damn. Who are you telling first?"

"I don't know. Austin I guess. He'd be easier to tell. I don't know."

Suddenly, there's a knock on the door.

"I'll go see who it is." Mila says.

She goes out into the main part of the apartment and answers the door.

"Oh, hi Ash! I didn't know you were coming over."

"Hey, Mila. Yeah, I wanted to surprise Vic with some Starbucks. I got you one too. Where is she?" Ashton asks.

"Aw, that's so sweet! Thanks! She's in the bathroom. I'll let her know you're here."

Mila let's Ashton in and goes back to the bathroom.

"Hey, Ashton's here. I think that's who you're telling first."

"Oh god. No time to prepare, but okay."

"I'm here if you need me. You know that."

"I know."

They both walk out into the kitchen.

"Hey! There's my girl! How are you?" Ashton asks.

Tears start streaming down Victoria's face. "Um, can we talk?"

"Yeah, of course. What's wrong?"

They go into the living area & have a seat on the couch.

"I've been meaning to tell you this for awhile now, because you deserve to know, but I haven't been able to bring myself to tell you, but I really need to tell you now."

"What is it, Vic?"

"A few weeks ago, before we made it official, and while I was still filming....Austin & I, we....we hooked up. It was a total mistake, and it shouldn't have happened, but it did, and I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry it happened & I'm so sorry I didn't tell you sooner." Vic just sobs as she gets her words out.

"Hey, hey. It's okay. I'm glad you told me sooner than later. Things happen, and we weren't together yet. It's okay, really."

"But it's not..." she cries more, struggling to get the rest out. "I'm pregnant. And it could be his, or it could be yours."

Ashton covers his mouth in shock.

"I'm so sorry." Victoria says. "If you don't want anything to do with me, or the baby, I get it."

"Does Austin know?" he asks.

"No. I just found out right before you came."

"And you want to keep the baby? I mean, I'm sure you do, right? With your issues, I'm sure you're surprised this even happened."

"Yeah, I do. Whethers it's yours, or his. I just don't want this to change anything between us. I do really like you, Ash. Shit, I love you & I don't want to lose you over this."

"You're not going to lose me, Vic. I love you too. We'll get through this no matter what happens, alright?"

"Okay. Thank you for being so amazing, and understanding."

"Of course. Like I said, things happen. It's okay."

He reaches over & kisses the top of her head.

Now that the hard part is over, the next step is to tell Austin. We can only hope he'll take the news just as well as Ashton did.

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#austin butler #austin butler fanfiction #austin butler imagine #austin butler one shot #austin butler smut #austin imagine #austin butler rather die #rather die #elvis presley #elvis 2022 #elvis

[thenightling]

Fright Night (2021 comic)

I finally got the opportunity to read the 2021 Fright Night comics based on the original 1985 movie. It starts a lot like the Fright Night movie sequel. It's set in 1986. Much like in sequel movie Charlie is seeing a therapist and is broken up with Amy but unlike the sequel movie, Charlie still knows vampires are real but he has enough sense to pretend Jerry Dandridge was just a serial killer. Okay, first the good... The comics have a retro feel and the inner artwork resembles the 1990 Now Fright Night comics. These new comics are from American Mythology productions. So it actually does feel like a comic book from the mid to late 80s or early 90s. And it borrows a lot from Fright Night: Part 2 and the New Fright Night comics, right down to a group of vampires wanting to revive Jerry Dandridge and Evil Ed still being alive. There are even nods to Tom Holland's Peter Vincent one shot comic from a few years ago by bringing up the Peter Vincent fan club. And the variant cover art is excellent. The more common cover resembles a Now comic, while the variant is the more dynamic cover with Peter Vincent holding a cross and looking heroic. _________________ Now the bad: The interior artwork is not very good. It feels retro but it's also rough and sloppy. And Peter Vincent looks NOTHING like Roddy McDowall. I don't know if that's a copyright thing or what. In his illustration on the back of Tom Holland's Fright Night: Origins (Book one of the new three part Fright Night book series) Peter Vincent looks like Vincent Price, which I'm okay with. Peter Vincent is drawn with a goatee, which I don't really like and it's kind of distracting. He's also been given oddly dark skin. On some panels he even looks like a person of color, which I'd be fine with if the cover wasn't obviously a white man. The villain is a woman vampire like in Fright Night part 2 but instead of being Jerry Dandridge's bisexual sister, she's Jerry Dandridge's bisexual maker out to revive him from the dead. There were only two issues. I don't know if the comic has been quietly discontinued or not but if it had continued I am pretty certain Peter Vincent's very wholesome and innocent friend / assistant / college student that he's mentoring, Danny (female presenting but I could be mistaken)... is a dead character walking. She's a sweet heart, Peter loves her. Peter even says the dreaded "What would I do without you?" so I was like Oh, yeah, she's gonna die... Either that or end up Charlie's new romantic interest. The bullies Charlie is dealing with are very Stephen King. And by that I mean they have no motivation other than that they are jerks. I read what they say and do to Charlie and it's like "...Why?" They're targeting him for having survived a serial killer? Amy's grown out her hair and learned self-defense because she defends Charlie against his bullies. Um... Girl power. Except Amy was played by a very short, very scrawny, Amanda Bearse. And this "new and improved Amy" looks nothing like her. I only realized it was supposed to be Amy because Charlie said her name. And finally... the group of vampires needed an INVITATION to enter a MOVIE THEATER! Did these people even SEE the first Fright Night movie? They need an invitation to enter a HOME, not a business. Jerry Dandridge did not need an invitation to enter the night club where he enthralled Amy in the movie. Needing an invitation to enter the movie theatre is like a joke from What we do in the Shadows and completely took me out of the story. I've seen bad role players do that at inn settings. Vampires need an invitation to enter a HOME, not a public space! I'd really wanted to read this for nearly three years now and I'm sorry to say I can tell why it only had two issues. I'm kind of disappointed.

#Fright Night #Peter Vincent

[quaranmine]

okay so i'm a bit of a fashion history hobbyist and i know a bit! I will say that most people, depending on their amount of disposable income, are probably going to be wearing things years out of date, so using early 1980's styles wouldnt be that anachronistic. That all being said, as for late 1980's-early 1990's fashion, darker and muted colors start to be more popular compared to earlier years, as well as a slightly slimmer silhouette around the shoulders, though still fairly loose clothing, and patterns start becoming smaller though theres still plenty of them, but the 1980's/90's is full of a bunch of different popular styles, even more than most other earlier eras (there's some links here to the slow but steady androgenization of clothing due to more progressive politics/subcultures gaining traction, and black people's styles started to be co-opted a lot more by the white public, but these are different topics), so i might suggest looking up fashion magazines from 1985, 1986, and 1987? which, unless your characters are buying new clothing regularly (which is a totally valid character choice btw!) would be fairly reasonable. uhh i know i use fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu sometimes, and they might have a page going through the 1980's decade? ultimately though! you can never go wrong with a button up in 20th/21st century fashion! might be worth picking a celebrity who was active during the 1980's and seeing what they wear!

idk if any of this helps and you might have known this all already!!, but i thought some of this might be worth mentioning haha!

omg thanks!!! yeah you're totally right about characters/people holding onto clothes for years (stares at my closet that has clothes from like 10 years ago probably) lol. it's a good reminder to not get fixated on that. earlier in the story, when i referenced a specific car, i picked a 1978 model knowing that i definitely didn't want him to have a new car. i also tend to not include technology unless it was being sold for at least two years, to try and account for people not adopting it on the cutting edge. anyway, i do not think anybody in firewatch au is going to be on the forefront of trendy fashion lmao but i appreciate the tips so i can try to establish some realistic everyday looks that aren't just [insert 80s stereotype]

thank you for the sources! fashion/hair wasn't my only struggles but it was the more difficult one to nail down. i found it much easier to research technology, and also fairly easy to look at forest service policy history since there were so many sources following the 1988 fires. it's wild because i'm quite good at fashion within my own lifetime--like i can pick out the little differences between 2000s to now and construct a sort of "mental timeline" of how popular looks evolved, but as soon as you go back to before i was born i've got no concept of it beyond basic decades vibes sldjfsdlkfjsl

#quara asks #i appreciate ur help! #it doesnt come up much in the writing part of the story but whenever i do the art im like uhhhhhh

[kittycosmicc]

The Memories of the Past

Pairing: Eddie Munson x Fem Original Character

Summary: Andrea knew Eddie was her true love. Despite their recent rocky past, she came running the moment she heard Eddie was in trouble. She’d do anything for the man she considered the love of her life.

Relive their memories with them as they set out on their new future, scars and all.

Warnings: 18+ (for eventual smut); panic attacks; anxitey

1986

I wake up with a jolt. My legs have fallen asleep from being crossed in the chair as I slept.

The nurse standing beside his bed gives me a soft smile. "I'm sorry, dear. I tried my best not to wake you."

"Oh no, it's okay. I didn't exactly mean to fall asleep." I yawn as I stretch out my limps.

"You know, he will be okay if you need to go home to freshen up. I bet a good night sleep will do you some good."

I know she means well. The older woman is just looking out for me. She's been his night nurse while he's been here. I see her nearly every night. Though I didn't make eye contact with her the first week. I now know her face well.

I give her a small smile, "I had plans to leave for a bit later. Some friends are coming by to sit with him. I just didn't want to leave him alone."

I look over at the man laying in the bed. His dark curly hair splayed across the pillow. Where bandages once covered his face, there is the angry red color of the fresh scars forming.

Yeah, he'll definitely bitch about those. 

Damn, I miss his eyes. If only I could get a glance at those dark brown orbs again.

"Okay, sweetheart. That's all for now. I'll be back in about two hours for another check. If I don't see you then, I'll see you again tonight. Take care of yourself. And get some sleep." She tried to be stern.

I give her a small chuckle.

"You know better, don't you? I'm not leaving you, Munson." I grab his warm, calloused hand, "I fucking miss your voice. It's been far too long. Three long months without your smart mouth."

I lay by head near his waist. I know I should probably get up and move to the cot. Once the nurses realized I wasn't leaving his side, they had one set up near the window. But I can't leave his side. I can't leave this chair. I can't leave him like he left me.

Well, I guess he didn't actually leave me. But standing in our world, peering at him through the gate as he cut down my only way to get to him... he knew what he was doing. He knew I'd climb up after him in a heartbeat.

I can still hear Dustin yelling at him. Begging him to stop as I stood there with tear blurred eyes.

Don't.

I said it so quietly that I was almost afraid he didn't hear me. The pleading in his eyes for me to just stay hasn't left my brain.

"Drea?" I lift my head up to see Dustin standing in the doorway.

"Hey Dust." I give him a weak smile.

I'm so exhausted that I can't even put on a happy face for him. Though I know he's the one I don't have to fake a positive attitude with. Little dude had been with me through the entire experience. I wish I could take that pain away from him.

"I didn't mean to wake you. I was hoping to creep in." His voice at a whisper.

I glance over at the clock on the drab hospital wall.

4:00am.

"I thought you were going to wait until seven?" It comes out in a yawn.

He walks closer to me. I know he's waiting for a hug, I just can't seem to get my body moving to stand.

"Yeah, yeah. I was. I just..." he takes a deep breath, "I can't sleep anymore. Decent slumber just doesn't come anymore."

I finally muster up the energy to stand up. I sway slightly on my half numb legs.

"I'm sorry, dude. I know the feeling too well." I embrace him.

Wrapping my arms around him tightly. I feel him bury his head into my shoulder. I can't bring myself to pull away from him. I can't bring myself to break a hug I so desperately needed.

"How is he doing?" His voice is muffled as he talked into my shoulder.

I chuckled, "The usual. They don't think there's anything going on neurological. He just... doesn't seem to want to wake up."

He pulled away, hands still on my back, to look into my eyes, "You need sleep."

The laugh that escapes my lips surprise me. A laugh I haven't heard in many mouths. I swat him away, "Are you telling me I look as bad as I feel?"

He pauses, his eyes still locked onto me, "No, no! I was just... I just..."

"Dustin! It's okay. I know I look awful. I haven't showered. I probably smell." I say as I lift my arm and give a comical sniff of my pits.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize, little man," I reach out a ruffle is hair, "you know I have to mess with you. It's my duty until this fool wakes up."

We both look over at Eddie.

I clap my hands together gently, "Okay, so the nurse should be in here around six to check on him again. She'll probably bring someone to help move him into a different position. Prevents bed sore and shit."

"Yeah, yeah. I got it. You don't have to explain this every time, Dre. We'll be fine. I'll keep an eye on him. You have my word."

I give him a hesitant smile. I know he loves Eddie. I know he'll give me a call if anything happens while I'm gone. He has my number. We have walkies too.

He will be fine.

"I know. I appreciate you, Dustin Henderson. More than you will ever know." I force him in a hug and kiss the top of his head.

"Okay, okay! Go. You stink." He says, pushing me away.

We both laugh lightly, "I'll be back in a few hours. Thank you, kind sir."

I grab my bag before heading over to Eddie's bed.

"I love you, man. Wait til I get back if you decide to wake up, will ya?" I lean down to kiss his forehead.

As I head for the door, I turn to Dustin who has sat down in the chair.

"Farewell, good Knight." I say as I bow and give him a wave before heading into the halls of the hospital.

—————-

The drive home was silent. I can't bring myself to listen to any music. It doesn't feel right.

I try to open the from door as silently as possible. I know Wayne will be sleeping on the couch. He refuses to use my bed in case I ever decide to give the hospital chair a break one night.

As I softly close the door, I hear his sleepy grumble.

"News?" I turn around to see him rubbing his sleepy eyes.

"Nothing yet, old man. Dustin stopped by early and ordered me to bathe myself. That's your warning to not come near me." We both chuckle.

He stands anyway to embrace me, "Smoke?"

"Yes!"

"You do reek by the way." He couldn't hold the laugh back to get the words out fully.

As we step out into the cool air, I wrap my jacket around my body more. I take a long drag from my cigarette, letting the nicotine sink into my lungs.

"How long?"

I glance at him.

He doesn't need to ask the full question. He knows I've been counting the days in my head.

The days since I've seen those chocolate eyes.

The days since I've heard his voice.

"Three months. Two day. Five hours. Annnd," I glance at my watch, "Seventeen minutes."

Wayne nods, "You're going to have to stop doing that, kid. You gotta give yourself a break."

We both take long drags.

I know he's right. I know I need to stop obsessing over everything. I wish he knew I full truth. I wish he knew what we went through. I wish I could give him a full explanation as to why Eddie ended up hurt so badly.

But I can't bring him into that word. I can't tell him how much of a hero his nephew is. How he nearly sacrificed himself for a town who hates him.

"Yeah, I'm tired of smelling myself. Will you let me know if Dustin calls?" I throw my cigarette into the butt pail on my front porch. 

”Sure thing, kid."

The silence is killing me. Even the sound of the water coming out of the shower head isn't drowning out the thoughts.

I consider lighting up a blunt as I step out into the humid air of the bathroom. I consider cracking open a beer as I wrap the towel around my body.

You need to be sober in case Dustin calls, Andrea.

I rummage through my dresser to find some comfortable, yet "this will do in public" clothing.

This has been my routine every time I come home while Dustin stays with Eddie. Convincing myself to be prepared to slip in shoes and run out the door because I can't waste a moment if Eddie wakes when I'm not there.

Shit, please don't wake up while I'm not there.

I cuddle up to all of the pillows in my bed. In hindsight, I should have looked for a bigger apartment when I moved back to town. I should have got enough rooms so poor Wayne didn't have to, yet again, sleep on a couch. But I settled on what was available at the times. The amount of people who had to find new homes after the 'earthquake' outnumbered the amount of empty housing. A lot of people had to live with family. A lot of people had to move out of town. Promises of rebuilding what was lost.

The defeat of Vecna came at costs. Their were homes lost.

Businesses lost.

Lives lost.

The truth was, just as you stayed at Eddie's side, Lucas stayed at Max's. Her recovery was slow. Though her bones had healed, the doctors weren't sure if she'd ever regain her full sight back.

Fifty percent.

She told us it was better than nothing. But we all knew she was grieving. There's still hope. That's what they keep telling us.

My thoughts drift back to Eddie as my eyes grow heavy.

"Buying more time."

"Don't."

"Eddie!"

Tears streaming down his face. 'I love you.' He mouthed as he walks out of sight.

——————

There's a ringing in my ear as I slowly open my eyes. It takes me a second to process what's going on and where I am.

I jump up from my bed and run to the phone hanging on the wall in the hallway.

"Hello?!" I practically yell into the phone.

"Dre, it's Dus..."

"I'm on my way!"

I don't even let him finish before I'm running towards the front door, yelling at Wayne to get his ass moving out of the door.

#eddie munson #eddie stranger things #stranger things #eddie munson x fem!oc

[tsuki-sennin]

(For some stupid reason, Tumblr refuses to show my reaction to last week's episode of Donbros on search results. However, it can be freely read here for your entertainment! We now return to your regularly scheduled brain melting.)

The greatest union of all time is about to occur. I have no further preamble, let's just fuckin' get right into it!

Spoilers, I guess...

-We're still far beyond your comprehension, huh Sononi?

-Awwww, Sonoi do a paint :)

-You did it :)

-"When the hell did I do that?"

-Sonoza's so proud of you Haruka :)

-God, I'm gonna miss this OP soon.

-Let's not dwell too much on the future though!

-Miho is not a gamer.

-Tsuyoshi certainly has an

-Interesting sense of what someone'd be interested in.

-"Yo, whaddup?"

-"We need Juto knowledge."

-"What are they, some kinda Super Sentai!?"

-"Haha, you really been spending a lot of time with your wife huh buddy? :)"

-Y'know Tsubasa, when Naoki Shiina freed you, the Juto that copied you didn't instantly die.

-I think that might be how they resolve the Natsumi/Miho/Crane Lady situation.

-Ooooooooh, that's right! Somebody's lying here.

-"You guys are noobs anyway."

-Ah, looks like Jirou's going home yet again.

-"I miss my girlfriend. Wanna meet her, Tarou-san? And my dad?"

-Tarou :D

-"Rumi cute <3"

-RUMI GONE

-OKAY

-THIS JUST GOT REAL CREEPY OUT OF NOWHERE

-"Ohhhhhhh, this guy's crazy." -Tsuyoshi Kijino, the absolute last person on Earth who should be saying this about somebody else's love life.

-Oh, here we go

-This HumaGear-looking dude must be this week's Hitotsu-ki.

-I think I've gotten way better about identifying Sentai references, so let's see if I get this one.

-Okay, I'm 100% sure those robots on the folder are Bioman-colored. Lines up with his boss looking like Doctor Man. Incidentally Bioman was a series Haim Saban previously considered adapting all the way back in 1986, a good few years before the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. It, naturally, didn't get off the ground at all (neither did an idea from Stan Lee to adapt Sun Vulcan), but was the origin of the character Alpha-5.

-And after that, you had the simply titled and completely Saban-univolved "Dynaman", which was basically an Abridged-series style gag dub that aired on the USA Network and Nickelodeon from late '87 to early '88. I've never seen this parody before, but I assume that, since it's late 80s Nickelodeon and they renamed Emperor Aton to "Bernie Tanaka", it would've been riotously funny at the time.

-"Chief! Am I your little pogchamp?"

-"Huh? Oh, yeah sure, whatever man."

-Poor man just wants some praise. Must be a former gifted kid.

-Looks like Miho decided to go on.

-Here comes Sononi!

-Kill her.

-"I don't wanna stab my fiance!"

-"Do it, bitch boy!"

-Ooooooooh, girl bringin' out the shade.

-"In the name of my beloved Natsumi, the black dog will chomp down on the crane!"

-"Awwww, how cute! The doggo thinks he's gonna kill me!"

-Ah, right immortal. Don Clan has an annoying tendency to make their stuff TOO strong.

-I have to wonder just what goes through Momoko Arata's head whenever she's brought in for InuBro scenes.

-Ooooooh, Sononi. Having thoughts?

-Oh shit, Tsubasa's throwing down!

-Murasameeee!

-Thing I learned yesterday. Murasame is, naturally, a reference to Nanso Satomi Hakkenden, which was the name of a sword with the power to control the waters. It'd make sense he'd naturally gravitate towards somebody named Inuzuka.

-Ooooooooh, somebody's dead!

-Oooooooh, nooo!

-Sononiiiiii!

-Hello, Tarou!

-"Humans are delicate little creatures. Same things that make them laugh, make them cry. Something that you'd never get."

-Thank you, Crane Lady, for your... somewhat twisted affection for our kind.

-Ohhhhhh noo, here comes the wife guy.

-"Sononi. What the fuck, man?"

-Well, that's messed up.

-Ah, yep, Sonoi and Sonoza are here.

-"Get out, nerd!"

-YO WHAT THE FUCK GUYS?

-She's your homegirl! Your bestie! Your sister! The one woman who isn't either completely horrified and/or enraptured by your presence!

-"The dog man..."

-Oooooh, Tsuyoshi's about to kill someone.

-Genuinely.

-Ohhhhhh, she's becoming a hell of a lot like the Don Clan, huh?

-Sonoi, honey, I think you're projecting a little.

-Yeah, I knew you can't do it.

-You boys :)

-That's it, let your hearts make the decision.

-Inuzuka Tsubasa did wound somebody's heart.

-"What the fuck do I do...?"

-Oniga Parking Garage.

-It's time for a duel to the death.

-Kijino's having a serious fit.

-I guess their identities haven't registered yet to each other.

-Jesus Christ, this should be completely stupid and asinine, and yet...

-Sononiiiiii!

-And she's down!

-Even Kijino's horrified.

-Ah yep, praise man. Right on cue.

-Companion time!

-Avatar Change!

-Matsuri-da!

-LET'S FUCKING GO!

-Holy shit, Tarou

-He said a nice thing :)

-Sononi :(

-Oooooooh, I recognize this set up.

-It's identical to how Yuka died at the beginning of Faiz.

-C'mon girl, don't slip.

-Noooooooooo :(

-Nooooo

-KAITO YOU GOTTA HELP US MAN

-He's almost completely back at square one.

-Fuck, man...

-Hello, Auntie Yuriko.

-What's up, Haruka? I only mentioned you once the whole episode!

-Bedtime?

-Inuzuka Tsubasa! He was with us all along!

-Wanchan! Pupper!

-We're takin' it outta town!

-The sight of our next grand battle! Quite possibly our grandest contest of strength yet!

-S

-SONOGO AND SONOROKU

-Oh, everybody's together! Right after Tsubasa said he never wanted to see Sononi again.

-Two villages!

-A whole squad of assholes all ready to pound down!

#don! don! it's a full force peachy festival! #donbrothers #donbrothers spoilers #avataro sentai donbrothers

[upagainstthesunset]

I was going on about this last night and figured i might as well make a tumblr post about it.

In the early 90s DC made some character trading cards with info on the back. Ive long thought Metron's pic was very funny, and i think ive posted here about how he looks like hes annoyed, like its a drivers license photo from the DMV and he was ticked off!

But what got me thinking last night was who drew this? And why this style for his costume and chair?

Click "keep reading" below to find out...

[ID: The back of the Impel DC Metron card. It says Identikit along the left side and has a headshot of Metron unsmiling as well as a picture of Metron's Mobius Chair, which with the coloring of this image looks yellowish. The chair is geometrically shaped with the backrest looking like a hexagon. Other text on the card says:

Height: 6'1"

Weight: 190 lbs

Eyes: blue

Hair: black

First appearance: The New Gods #1 (February-March 1971)

Home planet: Unknown /END ID]

There are a few publications I'm going to refer to. New Gods 1989 by Mark Evanier et al, Superman 1986 #65 and #66 by Dan Jurgens, Superman: The Man of Steel #10 by Louise Simonson, and Who's Who from 1990.

First lets get the chair out of the way. Rick Hoberg is credit on card for the art, so we know who drew it. But where did he get his inspiration? Its very much not a typical design for the chair and adds in more angles than previous versions. I believe this is based off the Who's Who, which came late in the New Gods run, but before the Panic in the Sky event from the Superman titles. It's pretty much one for one with the card, just with more detail. The color from Who's Who even trends towards a more yellowy green.

[ID: Splash page featuring Metron sitting in the Mobius chair with his chest puffed out and leaning to one side thoughtfully. The chair is similar in shape to the one on the trading card. Planets float in the background and Darkseid's face can be seen. Light bursts in all directions from behind the top of the chair. /END ID]

--

But who drew the Who's Who? The following page only credits the artists from New Gods 1989 for the thumbnails on the page not pictured here, and from scans I don't see any other artists listed. However, the DC fan wiki does list Dan Jurgens as one of the artists. And wouldn't you know, he'd go on to draw Metron in Superman just a couple years later. I think when you see his work it's pretty definitive he did the Who's Who art.

[ID: Comics title page for "Head Man" featuring Metron in the Mobius Chair floating above a burned out city. He peers over the edge as hundreds of people leave the city on foot in a line. He narrates, "Warwold has visited Almerac - and annihilated a powerful and advanced society. I am Metron, and even I now recognize - that the universe as I know it is doomed." /END ID]

--

Okay so that takes care of the chair. Now time to turn our attention to that hilarious image of Metron's face, which was the impetus for this whole thing. He's just SO done ha ha. I would love to read a whole miniseries about him and his exploits with this art. Let's see what we can figure out.

As mentioned above, Rick Hoberg did the art for the card. That's an easy place to start, and whaddya know, he did art and cowrote with Evanier on New Gods! In fact, his first Metron issue #16 has a 1990 cover date. So all this is taking shape right around the early 90s, which lines up with the date of the card (91 on the copyright and 92 for release from what I can find from shoddy ebay listings).

But there are a couple interesting things here. First, Hoberg's art on the card and art in New Gods are worlds apart. I couldn't even tell it was the same artists. Here's an example.

[ID: Comic panel of Metron's face. He thinks, "I should not. Still, it would be an interesting experiment..." /END ID]

--

Um this does NOT look the same as the card. The forehead dot is orange and yeah that's about it. The similarities end there. And the art in New Gods consistently looks like this. So WHY was the card drawn the way it was?

To understand that, we have to look at the New Gods art that came before. Prior to Hoberg, Paris Cullins did pencils for New Gods. Take a look at the art and pay attention especially to the forehead cutout shape and the cheek shape.

[ID: Comic panel of Metron with hands folded near his mouth thinking, "It is difficult to say if I am witnessing the remnants of unparalleled heroism... Or a stubborn and stupid reflex peripherally affiliated with it." /END ID]

--

Alright, now this is lining up with what's on the card. What I assumed happened was Hoberg was tapped to do the card, possibly bc he was the current or upcoming artist, but it was early enough that he hadn't actually finalized his style for Metron. Alternate theory is that the card art was due while Cullins' issues were still on news stands, so it was better to go with the style currently in print. Either way, it's interesting that he didn't carry that style over to his pencils on New Gods at least for the costume.

You might think "well that solves that!" But we're not closing the book on this just yet. We have to go back to Panic in the Sky. Weird how it's all tied together right? This time we're looking at Jon Bogdanove's art in Superman: Man of Steel.

[ID: Cropped comic panel of Metron holding a mind control device and grinning maniacally. /END ID]

--

Interesting that even though Jurgens' art of sassy Metron and the blocky hexagon chair was featured in the most recent Who's Who, AND his art started off Metron's part in the Panic in the Sky story, Bogdanove followed what was established by Cullins. Was this an editorial decision? Did Bogdanove know about the Jurgens' direction for Panic in the Sky? Did he know about the Who's Who? Or maybe he just plain liked Cullins' take better? Guess we'll never know.

So in conclusion, comics art is a web of artists following each other's work and probably timing and editorial decisions about which design is most "correct" at any given time. Fascinating how just this one little trading card set in motion such a winding bit of research! Thanks for coming along with me on this deep dive, and I'll let you draw your own conclusions on why Metron looks so done in that card image!

#metron #new gods #fourth world #metronmeta #metron if i fits i sits #impel

[stellarsalad]

An Amateur Pop Music Historian's Top 15 Hit Songs Of Literally 1984: The List (Part Two)

Victory! It worked! And here, without further ado, is the rest of the list.

7: Joanna by Kool & The Gang (at 24). I'd like to thank the excellent mashup You Reposted In The Wrong Neighborhood for introducing me to this lovely song. Favorite part: Despite how good a musical Sweeney Todd is, this is better than all the songs in it of the same name.

6: Jump by Van Halen (at 6). Van Halen is, if I'm not mistaken, the first hair metal band. They are also by far the best. My favorite part... is, well, how epic this song sounds, and how well every part of it works! Okay, maybe not the lyrics, but who cares when the synths go as hard as they do here?

5: That's All by Genesis (at 52). This is the song that introduced me to Genesis, and I am so thankful for that. It's not my favorite song off their self-titled album (that honor goes to Home By The Sea) but this is still damn good. Favorite part: How great Tony Banks's keys sound on the song. He owns this song.

4: Magic by the Cars (at 97). This is my very favorite Cars song. You Might Think goes at a 10, and Magic's choice to stay at an 8 just lets every part of it SHINE more. My favorite part: Despite 'it's magic when I'm with you' becoming such a pop songwriting cliche, it works for me here, because my god, the Cars are so talented.

3: Wrapped Around Your Finger by the Police (at 85). And this is my very favorite Police song. The lyrics are surprisingly dark, but in a really intriguing way that makes wondering what the song is about fun. But... my favorite part of the song, I think, has to be how the song is emotionally resonant for love, or anger, or sadness, and I don't know if any other song can match all those extremes that well.

2: Dancing In The Dark by Bruce Springsteen (at 14). Bruce Springsteen, like Prince, is one of one and one of the best songwriters across all of music. And this is the song that introduced me to his work. It's a prominent high point on Born In The U.S.A., and my favorite part... I think has to be the fanfic title potential in the lyrics. Come on! It's so untapped!

And... yeah, I think this also holds the title of my favorite song of the year. Number one is...

1: Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper (at 17). 

I think my favorite part about this song is... everything. But I will especially remember where I first heard it, as I was headed homeward after an amazing month-long train trip around the US, aboard the last train home.

And the funny thing is, if I made a list for 1986, Cyndi Lauper and True Colors would be at number one there too. Thank you to greatest-show-ever Amphibia and its heartbreakingly good S2 finale of the same name for introducing me to it.

I enjoy listening to music alone, and so many songs are perfect for that mood. But Time After Time is one of a select few songs that make me feel less alone. 

So thank you, Ms. Lauper and your song, for that. And here's to 1984, an all-time great year for music, I think. I hope more will be as good - if not recent years, then years to come.

#1980s #pop music #80s music

[calyxaomphalos]

The Ghosts of Windy Ridge

Turn #94, three components

location #3 - WR Academy (2) neighbor #20! - Ghost of Mo! (3) item #9 - item that's exactly what I need

24 April 2022, Sunday Afternoon

The drive over to the Academy thankfully turned off Main Street before the church. This time of day, it's awful busy over there. As it was, I was thankful that it was a right turn up to the Academy. Inge kept up her patter about large hardware and for the most part, I just said a lot of "uh huh," and "that's interesting."

At the parking lot, we went our separate ways, Inge off to find Tina's lab, and I decided I would try the library again. My vague concept was that I'd try the school newspaper for the years in which Mo was actively substitute teaching. Articles would help me find associates and students who knew him. Maybe some off-hand comment or quote in an article might point me to Kamil, or at least to the name of the gallery. It'd be about 25 years to look through, essentially.

I found my way to the library which was packed with students as the end of term neared. Fortunately, the records I was after were kept in a less populated corner. The shelves of dark blue binders were as I remembered them. Before, I'd been looking at late 1986 through mid 1993, a timespan about half as long as what I was considering now.

Mo moved to Windy Ridge in 2003, and come to think of it, that must have been almost exactly ten years after the Quartzite Rockburst Society got disbanded and expelled from the Academy. Each binder was one quarter of a school year, with the summer binders being oddly slim in the sequence. I noted that two years after Mo's arrival, the binders change color from a dark, almost black blue to a more royal blue.

Maybe it made the most sense to start looking at the papers from when Mo died and work backwards. I ought to start at least two issues after Mo's death to make sure I capture any eulogies or obituaries which may have been published. Those are the kinds of things which might have information I could use.

I found a footnote in the final issue of the 2018/19 school year, published on a Tuesday exactly three years ago to the day, but then it was in the first issue of the 2019/20 school year, September of 2019, which had the full obituary article with letters from all around the local community, and Mo's past students and the like. I felt a pang of guilt. There should be a letter here from *me*.

"I'm sorry, Mo," I whispered to the open book in front of me.

"It's okay, Rennie," Mo's spirit said just next to my ear. "I'm having a hard time with that whole obituary thing, though."

I almost leapt out of my skin, but wanted to be mindful of all the other students with their noses down in various books and laptop computers. "Mo!" I whispered as loudly as I dared. "Oh my God! Where have you been? Who is Kamil? Am I in any real danger?"

"Calm down, Rennie. I've been coming to terms with being dead, OK? As for 'Kamil', you mean Kamal. Raj Kamal. You remember that asshole, right?"

The name rang a very dim bell. "The one who wrote that awful review of your software?"

"That fuckhead."

"Does he have any connection to the gallery people? The ones who bought those, um," I hesitated even now, even though Mo had seen me put the last few brush strokes on the canvases.

"Paintings, Rennie, paintings. Yeah. Raj's cousin, Salimi, she's the one who owns the gallery."

"How much do they know? What could they do to me? How can I avoid any or all of that?"

"Rennie, Rennie, Rennie! Always with the questions! So many complicated questions. It's so tiresome. I'm going to go, now, and go ponder death for a while longer. You let me know if you have any *real* problems, OK?"

I felt a stillness and knew I was alone again, save for all of the other students in the library. But Mo was gone. Off to ponder death, and I felt guilty about that, even though his death was not my fault at all. I'd told him, though. Made him confront the truth.

After a few minutes to collect myself, I did a bit more research around the library, looking for any documents which Mo himself may have written. I found what I needed, and more. It'd take a while to digest, though, so I arranged to check some of these materials out for a few days.

#the ghosts of windy ridge #writeblr #nanowrimo #over the mountain