#but also st/eddie is great so

[mustlovesteve]

i wanted to be done writing fanfiction for a while after LATBG, just leisurely working on the sequel miniseries, but now i have Ideas about a S3 St/eddie AU that doesn't take away much from any platonic St/obin scenes...

#i think the best approach would be to have eddie completely uninvolved in the russia plot #he's just a customer who comes by to flirt with steve who is trying to be oblivious #and maybe this leads to steve catching onto what robin is saying in the bathroom a few seconds quicker at most #but he doesn't have his own revelation until later that night #i'd definitely want eddie to run into them when they're all bloodied up at the mall #maybe he's concerned because he was told they were both no-shows for work yet steve's car was in the lot #so he's just been loitering around the mall #anyway i read a lot of great S3 AUs but i just REALLY love st/obin and it feels Wrong to me when robin's scenes get intruded upon by eddie #like i love you eddie but go away #but also st/eddie is great so #man idk i'm just rambling it's christmas eve i think it's time for wine and movies #lukapost

[feralsteddie]

thinking about t4t steddie again ✌🏻😔

#steve harrington #steddie #eddie munson #this also goes with t4t st*ncy (censoring just so I don’t clog up the tag for them) #do you see my vision #if not I will explain it in great detail if you would like #pyreposting

[xstevex-world]

Having a lot of domestic Steddie thought and I need to know - what kind of dog do we think Steddie and their little family have? Because of course they have to a dog.

(Personally I think they have an absolutely huge dog, like their toddler could probably ride like a horse but they just treat it like a baby)

#I’ve been thinking about this for two days #they also a have a black cat that’s like a million years old #the cat’s immortal #so personally I think they’d have a Great Dane/pit bull mix #I think Eddie and steve would have the biggest soft spot for pit bulls d #Steddie #domestic steddie #Luci’s ST thoughts

[pynkhues]

Can we have a sneak preview of the next chapter of “I Might Be Great Tomorrow (but hopeless yesterday)”? 🙈 so excited for it!!!

“Okay, so, wait, you’re a bard?”

Eddie huffs, grabbing one of the light timber desks in their history classroom to shove up against another while Robin starts scattering tower candles fresh out of his backpack. Which is, y’know. Weird. In itself. Like, fuck, the only person he’s ever let go through his shit unsupervised was Nate (not for Henderson’s lack of trying, that’s for sure), and that’s because Nate’s his number two, and everyone in The Hellfire Club knows it. Still, desperate times call for desperate measures, he thinks, eyeballing Robin as she drops a candle in front of an open window.

“There? Seriously?” he says, reaching sideways to grab another desk. “I failed physics twice, and even I know that like - - airflow - - blows a flame out.”

For a second, Robin gawks, turning back to the window then back to him, before throwing a hand out in exasperation while snatching the candle with the other.

“Sorry that I’m not setting up your satanic death cult game’s night to standard. Way to avoid the question too, by the way.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, butting the desk up against the other with his hip and taking a step back to consider it. It should fit everyone, he thinks, counting the players in his head. With Will and now, apparently Robin in the room (for some reason? She insists she’s not playing) - - it’s the most members since Eddie’s sophomore year back when Rick was still DM. 

“What question?”

“That you’re a bard?”

“I’m a dungeon master, I was a bard.”

She blinks at him, squints a little, like she’s making an assessment, and Eddie squares his shoulders, used to the scrutiny, and strides back to the crappy cardboard box he lugs his shit around in. He grabs the heavy black sheet Garth’s cousin hooked them up with and throws it across the desks, coughing a little at the musty smell that billows out of it. He really should wash it or at least like. Air it out sometime.  

“Huh,” she says, and Eddie glances back up at her.

“What?”

“I don’t know,” she puts the candle on the top of the short bookshelf instead. “I always thought this stupid game was about delusional male fantasy, so you’d be a knight or a werewolf or something. Bard seems kinda…”

Robin makes a vague gesture with her hand, walking back to the box for more candles, and Eddie leans over the desks, smoothing out a few creases in the makeshift tablecloth.

“I am in a band.”

“No shit,” she snorts, rifling through the box. “And like. So am I, I get the whole music thing.”

Which - -

Eddie pulls a face, glancing back over his shoulder at her.

“Uh, okay, for the record, the fact that you’d equate Corroded Coffin with school band is insane,” he says, and Robin’s lip curls as she looks up at him from her crouch.

“Uh, okay, well, for the record, you’re an asshole,” she says. “And why do you have all this hair in here?”

And the thing is, before he can reply to tell her it’s a fur offcut for the theater of it all, not hair, he hears it.

The doors to the corridor opening and a flurry of sneakers squeaking on vinyl, of high, girlish laughter, of bubbling chatter, and he can pick it out instantly. Pick Chrissy out instantly, not quiet like she was on the phone last night (this morning?), hushed not to be heard, her voice a little hoarse with a fractured night’s sleep, soft in a way he doesn’t think he’ll ever be used to, talking about Dragonslayer and geminis - - and no. She’s not like that.

Right now, her voice is a flint spark of energy. The part of her that he thinks she can switch on and off, bright and easy, breezy, like she’d light every candle in this room with just a word or a thought, and that doesn’t even make sense, but his mouth is suddenly dry, his hands clammy, even as the girls pass the history classroom for the gym, and his gaze darts up as Robin rounds the table again with extra candles and he just really, really hopes she hasn’t noticed.

#it's been more than a year since i updated this fic and you must've sent me this ask around then #so *i* should be the monkey covering face emoji anon haha #anyway chapter 3 is incoming soon-ish #it's been 84 years BUT it's also been really fun to drop into this story world again #it's nice to write something ya-ish too #chrissy x eddie #i might be great tomorrow #stranger things #st fic

[cigarettesandharringrove]

eddie would 100% look at billy and steve & would immediately conclude ‘oh yeah they fuckin’

#harringrove #billy hargrove #steve harrington #q the groves #eddie my boy #eddie munson #also the fact they make a great couple he’d be like #you looking for a third? casual? #steve: sighs #billy: ur my weed dealer plz just give me my weed #anyways so #munharringrove #text post #my post #st: season 4 #st: season 3 vibe really

[uris-stanley]

controversial maybe but i do think the stancy resurrection was fitting with their characters and the plot but i don’t think it means they’re going to get together

#the worlds crazy again and nancys scared and jonathan is being weird and isnt their but Steve Is #so she falls back into it because it was always safe and easy to be with steve #and steve literally never got closure. he was in Love and nancy lied to him and cheated on him and they never talked it out #hes still hung up on that ofc Especially because he wants to be in love again but every girl falls short #robin and eddie and everyone also arent helping cause they keep talking abt how they obviously shld be together #so they both fall back together cause its easy and safe but. its not what they really want #they need to actually finally talk. they need to end their romantic relationship once and for all and get closure #itd be great if steves the one leading this too. if he sees it going too far and just. realises that this isnt right. nancy doesnt love him #and thats what all this has been. not building them to be endgame but giving them the opportunity to revisit and finally be okay #nancy needs to validate steve and his traits and reassure him there’s nothing wrong with him cause he’s probably insecure after their breaku #only then will he stop trying to throw himself into a relationship and just. exist. happily as steve harrington #(and then nancy relays the message to mike and he breaks up w el and byler canon baby) #st #stranger things #st4 #jancy is still going to be endgame beloveds #stranger things 4

[kermitscavern]

Alley Cats Cont'd

in which Steve is an annoying little matchmaker, but a damn good wingman

Find it on AO3!

Chrissy couldn’t have been more relieved when the bell for lunch rang. She didn’t think she’d survive another minute of statistics. She packed up as quickly as she could, Ms. Leslie continuing shrilly about the homework as people fled the classroom. She chirped a quick “thank you, Ms. L!” as she made her own escape, because really, people didn’t appreciate their teachers enough. 

She greeted Robin and Dustin as she sat down at what the Party had commandeered as “their” table, frowning at the empty place in front of Robin. “Are you going to grab something to eat, Rob?” She asked, picking at her own soggy burger bun. “I know the school lunch is pretty gross, but you’ll want your strength to get through American Lit.”

Robin shook her head. “Don’t worry, Steve’s bringing me something.”

“Steve? But h-“

“Hey Robin! Chrissy, Henderson.” Steve greeted in turn, plopping a brown paper bag in front of Robin as he sat down on her other side. “How’s it hangin’?”

“Steve! What are you doing here? You graduated?” Chrissy asked, leaning over to talk to him. 

“Yeah, but I bring Robin lunch sometimes. Besides, sometimes it’s nice to come back to the ole stomping ground, y’know?” He explained with an easy smile, laughing as Dustin slapped his hand away from where he was trying to steal a fry. 

“You miss this hellhole? Yeah, right.” Robin snorted, rifling through the bagged lunch. “No pudding cup? Really, Steve?” 

“How about, ‘Oh, thank you Steve! Thank you for taking time out of your day to make me a turkey sandwich and bring it to school for me, Steve! I appreciate you, Steve!” 

Robin rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. I appreciate you, dingus.” She said, unwrapping her sandwich and stuffing an impressive third in her mouth. 

Chrissy, still confused, but resolving to sit with the Party more, began to eat her own lunch as Dustin and Steve struck up a conversation around her. She jumped when Max slammed her lunch tray down, but when she looked up to say hello to her and Lucas, froze dead in her tracks. There, across the lunch room, she spotted Eddie laughing with Will and Mike as they headed over to the table. She ducked her head and went back to resolutely stuffing fries in her mouth, not making eye contact as she felt the blush creep up her neck. 

“Harrington! To what do we owe the pleasure?” She heard Eddie proclaim, heard the screech of his chair as he reclaimed his seat at the head of the table. 

She finally looked up and over at Steve as he snorted, leaning over the table and raising his voice to catch the group’s attention. “Well…” he began, the rest of the side conversation around the table petering out as everyone looked at him. “It’s Friday. Which is—shut it, Henderson—bowling night!” 

Robin whooped, clapping her hands, as the freshmen collectively groaned. As she scanned the table, everyone seemed to know what Steve was talking about. Chrissy was almost relieved to see Eddie looking just as confused as her. 

“Usually I just show up at their doors to whisk them away to Alley Cat’s, but seeing as you’re here and I came by to drop off Robin’s lunch anyway, I’d like to formally invite you to bowling night.” Steve grinned. “And you too, Cunningham. If you’re interested.” She could have sworn his eyes flicked to Eddie before returning to hers with a wink. 

“Yeah!” Chrissy squeaked. “Sounds fun!” She had never been bowling in her life, but what was the harm, right?

Eddie sounded like he choked. “Actually, I think I have plans-“ it sounded strained, even to her. 

“Oh yeah? What?” Steve challenged. 

Eddie cleared his throat. “Jonathan and his buddy… were gonna come by… partake in some devi-“

“Nope!” Steve interrupted. “Jonathan and Argyle are coming to bowling night. Just caught them in the hall. You should come too.” The look in his eye was bordering on maniacal. 

Eddie gulped. “Yeah. Okay. Must’ve gotten the days mixed up…” he chuckled awkwardly. “…I’ll be there.”

“Yeah, you must’ve… meet us in the parking lot after school.” Judging by the look on everyone else’s faces, they had no idea why Steve was being so downright conniving. Chrissy was just grateful, if a little infuriated, by his matchmaking.

#stranger things #stranger things fic #st fic #eddie munson x chrissy cunningham #Kermits creations #ao3 #stobin #they're so codependent I love it #also I liiiive for Eddie/Johnathan/argyle scenes they're such a great combo I need mOAR

[daisysgirl]

Legit never been so enamored with a character this much. I’m actually considering attempting to write some kind of fics or blurbs even though I’m pretty sure my writing is terrible so like maybe I should do art instead, but I would really love to just write out all these random ideas too so idk. Will see will see

#also like I love it but so many eddie fics are so thirsty I want more fluff #and maybe ace!eddie? #or ace!ocXeddie #anyway all that to say this is distracting me from what I actually need to be doing in life rn #it's great but also it's bad lol #eddie munson #eddie deserved better #st #daisy text

[jaegerisim]

Vent post y'all are gonna hate me for.

I viscerally hate how the Duffers treat most of their non white or queer characters and I hate even more viscerally, how y'all big byler blogs in your circle jerk of other 5 big byler blogs casually like to ignore many red flags the show has.

Y'all like to say: "tHe DufFeRs ArE gReAt WrIteRs" and it's like girl, who are you lying to??? They aren't top shit writers at all. The Duffers are pretty mid imo. Yeah, they run a good show that's fun to watch and theorize abt , but that doesn't mean they're good writers cuz they're not.

1. they completely side lined Will during s3 for the sake of their straight romances: lumax, jancy, mlvn, duzie and partly stobin (even if stobin wasn't endgame, thankfully, Steve's intentions were clearly wanting to date Robin and they gave it a lot of screen time). Will was sidelined bc he didn't fit the straight romance plotline bc they planned to make him gay or whatever. Now in s4 Will and his feelings have been used as mlvn toilet paper. Yes, we like to say this is build up for byler but canonically, Will's feelings have been used to clean the shit mlvn leaves behind.

2. Billy was sympathized a lot during the last 2 seasons. They gave him the sad backstoryTM in order for ppl to feel sorry for him. Billy's backstory is literally Jonathan's but whatever.

3. El's anger issues are constantly girlboss-ified. They down play her bullying situation and literally just use it for El to be a ''girlboss" without realizing how triggering that is. As someone who has lived bullying, seeing it be ignored by canon and fanon is super sad. The whole Rink-O' Mania experience must have been so traumatizing for her yet, everyone absolutely forgets abt it 🤷🏻‍♀️

4. Robin, Erica and Argyle are stereotypical characters. Robin is the quirky lesbian with social anxiety, Erica is the badass black woman and Argyle is the Latino stoner that sells weed to white kids and works as a pizza delivery guy.

5. Altho Argyle and Eddie both do drugs, (Eddie actually sells K-12 to a minor and nobody batted an eye. He has a huge fan base). Eddie is held in a pedestal bc "poor thing 🥺 he lives in a trailer with his uncle 🥺". Tell me a single fact you know abt Argyle that isn't "he smokes weed", "he is Jonathan's only friend", "drives a van" and "he works at a pizzeria". Exactly, Eddie is given a useless backstory and Argyle isn't.

6. Dustin stopped being important to the plot sometime around s2 and s3. He is only there to curse and be mildly funny. My guy needs to hangout with ppl his age cuz he only hangs out with seniors.

7. El needs to stop having so much "I'M THAT BITCH" screentime like I need in s5 for El's arc to not just be her becoming more powerful and falling in love with Mike. I need the Duffers to explore her trauma and problems.

8. Angela should have been run over by the van.

9. Patrick should have been given a backstory that isn't the basic "strict black parents that hit their kids cuz they are a disgrace". Patrick's backstory is actually racist af, fight w the wall.

10. As Lex already said, they didn't trigger tag the ep where Jason and his friends assault Lucas and Erica. Like wtf? Why was that necessary? Why did I have to see a black boy being held at gunpoint by some white guy?? Was it relevant to the plot?? I don't think so. And then I've got to see ppl online be like "Jason wasn't that bad. He was just mourning" like bitch you can stfu. This is what happens when you make the racist assholes conventionally attractive.

Also the fact that Lucas's arc is fulfilled by him fist-fighting Jason and "embracing his weirdness" aka accepting he is black. His arc was not fulfilled at all cuz that ending spoke so loud to me. It showed how little empathy ppl have towards the struggles poc ppl living in the Midwest have. Y'all circle jerks can only see racism when it's super obvious.

Furthermore, parents complained when ST showed "an excessive amount of smoking" yet nobody batted an eye when Billy tried to run over Lucas, when Erica (an 11 y.o ffs) was chased by white kids or when Lucas was held at gunpoint by Jason.

All of this happened while they focused on Max's guilt and mourning that, yeah, are important but certainly not less important than racism!!!

11. In s3, they gave us that whole Nancy vs The Bigots arc that was honestly just triggering and useless. It didn't help Nancy's character at all, quite the opposite it put unnecessary angst.

12. Lonnie being presented as an abuser just for him to never be spoken of again. Can we please get to explore the trauma he left the Byers's with?

13. The fact that both queer relationships are considered "sloppy seconds" is extremely sad. Both Vickie and Mike are rebounding from their failed relationship with Robin and Will. These 2 ships have caused more commotion than Jancy and Jopper together! (These last ships are technically sloppy seconds too but everybody forgets that. Shocker!!)

14. Last but not least, ppl blame Argyle for being the one to get Jonathan into smoking weed as if Jonathan probably wasn't the one looking for it. Let me tell you, that you only find weed if you look for it.

#P.S: I'm gonna pay attention to how many ppl send me hate bc of this or block me #stranger things #lucas sinclair #st vickie #robin buckley #jason stranger things #will byers #dustin henderson #eddie munson #argyle #jonathan byers #erica sinclair #byler #← target audience #byler target audience

[uglypastels]

Not Wholly Evil |X| pirate!Eddie au

a/n here it is. the final chapter. I am so excited to share it with you all, just as much as it pains me that it actually is coming to an end. I've worked on this story for almost a year, and it had been a risk I had no idea how it would play out, but seeing how much everyone has enjoyed this story and supported me in my little experiment really made all the days I say in front of my computer screaming worth it <3 thank you all so so much for trusting the process

Series Masterlist

word count: 14.3k

"semi dark fic" - READ the warnings:. (gun/sword)violence. blood. mention of severe wounds. minor character death. allusions to suicide. kidnapping. imprisonment. alcohol. open and deep sea. near-death experiences. hanging. men are pigs: implied mentions of past abusive experiences [of background characters]. malnourishment and weight loss. paranoia. mention of poisoning. abuse. manhandling. lying. prison. capital punishment.

there will be several mentions of other ST characters in this chapter, and some instances might not be the most favourable of portrayals, but this is not to indicate my opinion on them. I am simply intertwining universes. there is also a name spelled differently than in the shows and that's just for the sake of the setting.

Chapter 10: Lock and Key

“Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.” ― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

Everything went into chaos, happening so quickly that you genuinely got the sensation of being frozen in time and space, just letting everything around you go by, unable to intervene. Your mind could not work at that speed to understand everything that was happening, too far down into a shock to catch up. But when you finally did, you screamed. 

‘No, father, no.’ You tried to push yourself away from him, but his grip was too firm. Even if you had, the chances of getting past the barricade of armed bodies to Eddie was impossible. ‘You can’t do that!’ you trashed around in his arms like a wild fish out of water. 

All your father did was pull you closer, further away from Eddie, who you could just make out from between the uniforms and bayonets. The glimpses you got of his face showed a stoic expression. He wasn’t even trying to fight it. The last thing you saw before you were turned around and practically handed over to someone was the chains on his wrists. 

‘Take her away from here,’ your father told his closest guard, ‘she’s hysteric.’ And perhaps you were, as you kept screaming at them to let go of you. The pleas quieted down the further from the harbour you got, changing into silent sobs by the time you reached the gardens of your home.

‘It’s alright, miss,’ the guard tried to calm you as best as possible. ‘You’re safe now.’ 

The pearly white building towered over you as you entered its shadows, and as soon as you did, you saw almost the entirety of the house staff standing in the main hall, awaiting you. Their faces blurred with their welcoming greetings and sweet words of comfort. A woman took you from the guard, immediately guiding you up the stairs, mumbling something to him and shouting about to the rest of the people around. You could not place any name to her face, and having always been quite good with remembering people, you could only assume she had been a new addition to the staff since you had last been home. Looking over everyone around you, most of them must have been. 

That’s right. Your father had always been keen on replacing the staff but usually had been around to witness it, take in the new batch from the beginning, and, most importantly, say goodbye to the old ones.

You wanted to protest at every corner you turned up to your room, but the group of maids that had accumulated around you was like a forcefield, unbreakable. One of them opened the large double doors that led to your room. There was barely any time for you to sink in the feeling of being back in it after so many weeks as you were pushed through another pair of doors. There, a bath had already been prepared, the water steaming hot. You let yourself be dragged to the centre of the room and mechanically put your arms up for the ladies to take your dress off. Had they always been this rough? 

They mumbled about the state of your dress to one another as if you weren’t even there, and in their defence, you weren’t. Your mind was miles away, barely aware of what was going on. The only thing that pulled you back into the room was the gasp of the women as your dress fell to the floor. You looked down at where all their eyes had locked in on. 

‘Did they do this to you, miss?’ One of them asked, pointing in fear at the scar on your ribs. It had gotten much smaller over the weeks, but compared to the rest of you, you could imagine how grotesque it might look to people like them. 

‘Uhm, no,’ you mumbled, ‘I tripped. On our ship.’ You barely recognised your voice as you spoke, too tired to put any emotion into them. The women looked at each other hesitantly before continuing on with their tasks. 

 You just about felt the hot water burn as they got you into the bath or poured it over your head to wash your hair. The scrub of the cloths over your limbs did practically nothing. All you could do was stare out ahead of you at the hawk engraved into the wood panelling on the wall across from you and how you had always seen it as a sign of comfort but now noticed how angry its eye looked. Staring directly at you at all times. You lulled your head slowly, trying to get it to look away, but it just followed you around until someone grabbed you by the side to stop you from twisting. 

‘Sorry, miss. Just trying to get out this knot.’ One of them said as she combed out your hair, tugging your entire head back against the edge of the bath. 

You had not even realised how much grime came with being on a boat full of pirates for weeks. Even though you had tried to wash yourself regularly, there was never enough fresh water. By the time the ladies were done, the water had gone cold, and your whole body was red and sore from the scrubbing.  You could barely feel your fingertips, but your nails were perfect again. 

Trembling, you got out of the bath and quickly were wrapped up in linen to soak up the water. Like any other day, they began to put your undergarments on, preparing you for a dress that you could not even think about the weight of, but no matter how many layers they put on you, you were still shivering.

Someone, you had no idea who, pulled a blanket over your shoulders and put a large cup of lemon tea into your hands. It used to be your favourite, but the sips tasted bitter no matter how much sugar you poured. You stood in the middle of the room, holding the cup and felt all their eyes on you, drinking your tea with a shaky hand. No matter how you held it or steadied your arms, the porcelain clinked together louder and louder until it smashed onto the ground, the hot liquid pooling around you. Before you could apologise, someone was on their knees cleaning it up. 

‘I am so sorry,’ you cried out, tears already threatening to return despite it being only a few minutes since they had dried up. With water pouring over your face and hair in the bath, the tears would have been washed away, but now there was nowhere to hide them.

‘No worries, miss,’ one of the maids said. She looked you up and down, a corset in her hands, clearly seeing a mess of a woman in front of her. ‘We should get you ready; there is a meal waiting downstairs and I am sure you’re famished.’

‘I am alright, I just want to—’ you wanted to disappear. Get out of everyone’s sight. You wanted to lock yourself in your room or run away, just be anywhere but here, surrounded by these strangers. You wanted Eddie. Where was he now? He must have been dragged into the dungeons. 

You pushed back the next load of tears that were breaking through.

‘Miss, we must insist.’ The maid said, somewhat concerned, and hesitated. ‘The food will do you good.’ And yet, the idea of eating now made you feel quite ill to the stomach.

‘I would really just like to be alone now.’ If you had more energy, your statement might have come out more pointed, giving you more edge over the staff. You would have fought them until you’d slam the door behind the last one, but instead, you let yourself be trapped into a dress—a beautiful green garment that the women were not shy to praise as they put it on you—and sent you off to the dining room.

Once, you would have walked these halls alone,  with your head held high and letting the steps of your heels announce your presence in any room, but now the clicking against the marble floors made you wince and the presence of the maids and guards following you certainly did not help to put your mind at rest. 

The dining table was set, filled from one end to the other with dishes, but you could barely stomach a spoonful. The same happened at dinner. You could not think of eating these extensive meals knowing that Eddie was kept locked up somewhere, most likely not given anything to eat since he had been arrested. Your mind was whirring with ideas, but each and everyone was immediately halted when you saw that there was nowhere in the house you could go without onlookers. The chances of you being allowed into the dungeons and speaking to him were close to zero. 

Having eaten exactly two bites from your plate, you excused yourself back to your room, where people were ready to get you out of your dress and into your nightgown. Once done, one of the maids was prepared to blow all the candles out, but you quickly stopped her. 

‘Wait,’ you called, ‘could you leave one on, please.’ 

The woman nodded and left one of the candles in the holder burning before leaving the room. You sat down on the edge of the bed, trying to catch your breath, but the room felt so stuffy—a ridiculous thought considering the room was bigger than Eddie’s quarters, possibly the double of it. The candle only gave light to its nearest surroundings, letting the rest of the space, and you with it, be eaten up by the night. It was overwhelming, together with the hot air swallowing you whole. As your chest tightened, you ran to the window, pushing it open. You greeted the cool night air with a sigh. 

Nights at home were never quiet, but unlike in Saint Claire, it was not drunken brawls that kept the shores alive but the rustle of waves and the chirping cicadas. The streets buzzed with the sounds of nature, illuminated in silver by the moon, now an almost complete sphere. 

You had always loved the view of your room, but now it felt more like a cruel joke as you could look out at the harbour and the gates of Star Port. It was like a million pinpricks stabbing into you. The Hellfire was nowhere to be seen. You didn’t expect anything less. With Eddie arrested, it would have been mad of the crew to stay behind, risking their own capture. 

Still, the feeling you got at the sight of the empty harbour sank deep into your stomach, not helping with how you had felt before opening the blinds, and when you closed them again, the room seemed to have grown in size. Large, cold, empty, with you standing in the middle staring at your bed. Sitting on it, let alone sleeping, was impossible. The second you touched the mattress, you were scared you’d sink straight through the cotton, and the sheer size of it…

You lay there for hours, deciding whether to curl up and make yourself as small as possible or to spread your arms out in a poor attempt at taking up some of the space meant only for you. Every time you moved, your hand would grab for the sheets, hoping that one of those times, you would feel more than air. If you opened your eyes, you would see him sleeping peacefully by your side. 

Most of your pillows had met the ground as you threw them in frustration.  You had spent years in this bed, perfectly fine, and only several days with Eddie. So, why were you feeling this profound loss over his absence besides you? It wasn’t fair. 

Eventually, you managed to fall to sleep, quite literally, as pure exhaustion tipped you over and made your head finally hit down. There were no dreams, nightmares or memories to haunt you, as you were awoken before any of them could take shape. Firm knocks on the door announced your maids, and they filled the room in their designated corners. 

‘Good morning, miss.’ They said chirpily as they got you dressed and ready for another day. All you replied with throughout the entire process was a mumbled ‘’morning,’ which you hoped could be blamed for having only been awake for a few minutes.

‘Breakfast will be served soon,’ you heard. The mention of food again twisted at your guts, but an idea began to bloom in your mind.

‘Will my father be there?’ He seldom dined with you, leaving you to eat your meals in the company of the staff, but you assumed he would want to see you after all these weeks.

‘I assume so,’ the woman brushing your hair said. You nodded curtly, as much as possible, when someone held on to your head. The prospect of speaking to your father face to face brought a new energy into your step. 

You walked out of that room determined and with your head held high, only to be disturbed by footsteps parallel to yours. Two pairs. At first, you thought it was a coincidence, and they just happened to be walking there, too, but they followed you down the hallway, around all the corners. By the time you reached the dining room doors, you had grown tired of it.

‘I am quite capable of walking on my own, thank you,’ you said, coming to an abrupt stop, making the two men behind you  ‘have done it all my life, in fact.’

‘Yes, of course, miss,’ said one of the guards who you bumped into at your sudden halt. ‘It is just—’

‘Just what?’ You crossed your arms.

‘Well, your father—’ he stopped speaking at the sight of your unimpressed, somewhat annoyed expression. He cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable with the confrontation. ‘We are here to protect you.’

‘From what exactly?’ This was ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.

‘From any danger, miss.’

‘I was not aware this house was so full of threats.’ You rolled your eyes. ‘I appreciate the efforts, gentlemen, but I doubt you will be needed.’

‘But your father, miss.’ The other man tried to argue, but you were not having any of it.

‘I will not be patrolled in my own home!’ You shouted, pushing the doors to the dining room open. Your father sat at the opposite end of the large table, fork mid-air to his mouth. ‘Father, this is absurd.’

‘I think it is perfectly reasonable to want to protect my daughter. What is absurd,’ much to your annoyance, he spoke in his usual collected and cool-toned manner. He waited to continue speaking until you sat at the table. ‘Is you being held hostage for weeks at the hands of some barbarians.’

‘They are not barbarians, Father,’ you ignored the hands that spooned food onto your plate. ‘They took rather good care of me, actually.’ You bit your cheek, trying not to think of the days you spent in a cage. But even considering that, you were aware of your fortune with the circumstances you had been put under. Many more people had encountered enemies at sea, and few had been able to return home and live to tell the tale… or the preferred version of events, at least. 

‘Is that why you look so sick and frail?’ he spoke bluntly, taking you back. ‘Because of how well they treated you?’

‘They did their best with what they had,’ you believed. It was your choice to starve yourself for the first days on board, refusing to eat anything they gave you. And you could hardly expect a feast such as you held in front of you now, every day in the middle of the deep waters. Even on board the Red Tail, the meals had been somewhat shoddy. ‘I just do not think that…’ you stopped yourself from using his name. ‘That man deserves to be in prison.’

‘Of course not.’ Your father took a bite. ‘He will be hanged for his crimes.’

‘W-what?’ Your fork clattered onto the ground. ‘Father, you cannot— I know he had tried to take money from you but—’ Murder and high treason. That is what he was arrested for. Had your father somehow found out about the Red Tail? But how could he… there were no survivors. 

No survivors. He killed them all. He had— 

‘Do you know who that man is?’ Something in your father’s voice sounded sharper, more pointed. 

‘I thought so,’ you hesitated. Yes, you had spent your days and most tender moments with him, but what did you know about Eddie Munson?

‘Then you should understand the severity of this situation.’ Only if you were to believe hearsay and talk of the people on the streets that shaped this image of a blood-thirsty monster that roamed the seven seas, killing everything in his path. It is what you believed him to be yourself until not very long ago until practically every fibre in your body had been proven wrong.

Or at least, God, you hoped you had been wrong.

Your father sighed, ‘I know it is difficult, after all you must have spent a lot of time with them on that ship, and I do not know what lies they had fed you, but these are serious matters that begun long before any of this and need to finally be taken care of.’

‘Well, explain it to me because I would like to know what is happening.’ 

At this, he scoffed. ‘All you need to know is that man is a dangerous criminal and should be treated as such.’ But then, what about everything Eddie had told you? What about all the pieces you had managed to gather of the crumbs he and everyone else left you? There was more to it all, and maybe you did not understand yet, but you would.

‘When?’ you plucked at your food on the plate, defeated, ‘when is the hanging?’

‘In four days.’ If you had been well enough to eat, you would have choked. You had barely come to terms with returning home, if at all, and now this. Prisoners were usually held for weeks before a date was set for an execution. They were clearly adamant about taking care of him quickly. 

For the sake of everyone else, you ate a bit of your breakfast, each bite sticking uncomfortably heavy in your throat.  After that, you got up without saying another word. The two guards who had walked in with you were on high alert again, ready to follow you, but stopped to look nervously at the governor when you glared at them. 

‘Let her go,’ he waved them off, ‘but keep an eye on her.’

You huffed out a breath and walked away. 

The rest of the day you spent walking around the town, mainly the alley of the market that led to one of the entrances to the dungeons. You had no idea why you were there, considering there was nothing you could do. Besides the fact you could clearly see the new set of guards appointed to follow you around the streets, they seemed utterly futile, considering all eyes in the street were on you. Every person there was highly aware of your presence. 

You used to walk around the market nearly daily, making polite chats with the salesmen as you bought fresh fruit to later eat at the shore or in the garden. Most people knew that you had decided to join the Red Tail on their voyage primarily because of your enthusiasm to finally leave the island and go on an adventure.

It must have taken quite some time, they would say in some form or another, to convince your father.

I can be quite persuasive when I have to be; you remember how proud you had felt. After months of begging everyone around you to let you go, promising them that you would be safe and careful and not get in the way of anyone, finally, they let you go. Under Admiral Carver’s watch, you spent weeks enjoying the breeze and the waves, awaiting what the rest of the world would bring.

The ship sailed for four weeks to another naval post. You did not know their exact business, nor did you care, as you now had a whole new land to explore. The city was larger and nothing like home. The people looked different and spoke an entirely different language, but you still managed to get around and on the market behind your house. It had been excellent and eye-opening, only making you more eager to see what else to discover. But unfortunately, there was only so little time, and before you knew it, you had to return home. You remember the last day. It had been raining, but it did not stop anyone from loading the new supplies. Somehow it seemed like much more needed to be brought on board for this half of the journey than the first. 

What’s in those barrels, you asked, but no one ever replied. They barely ever did. It wasn’t your place to ask questions in these matters. You were simply a passenger on the ship, verging on stowaway, spending your days in the quiet of your own room for the most part until…

It was the middle of the day, and the sun burned above you brightly, yet you shivered. You had always known to trust your father’s judgement and his decisions, but there was no possible way in which this was right. That this was how it would end.

The alleyway practically screamed at you for you to go and run in and get him out of there, but with so many people watching, it would be hopeless. The guards would get you before you had even reached the stairs. You would have to wait.

‘It’s good to see you again, miss.’ A voice pulled you out of your thoughts. It took you a few slow blinks to realise who it was.

‘Oh, you too, Mr Bowman.’ you smiled towards the merchant as he smiled at you through his bushy beard. He was sitting next to his table of… you were not sure what to call them. The man was quite the eccentric, and you had barely ever seen him actually make a sale on any of his products, but you doubted he was there for business anyway. ‘Have I missed much in the past months?’ You could always count on him for good stories about the townsfolk. The man had all his senses on sharp, constantly vigilant of everything around him. 

‘I think your return is the biggest news we’ve had in a while.’ He scratched his beard, ‘That, and well, the upcoming execution, of course.’

‘People already know?’ You blinked, not having expected that to be public knowledge yet. Then again, it is an event like no other. Preparations have to be made.

‘Edward the Banished gets arrested, and you expect people not to know?’ He laughed almost mockingly as he usually did, but you looked at him blankly.

‘The Banished?’ you had heard much about Eddie, but this name was new to your ears. 

‘Yes, ridiculous name, if you ask me,’ he waved it off, ‘Pure sensationalism as it rolls smoother on the tongue than deserter or runagate, quisling, traitor—’

‘I understand,’ you stopped him nervously. ‘But how did he get this name? What did he do?’

‘HA!’ he startled you with volume. ‘What didn’t he do, you should ask.’ This caused many of the other merchants around you to weigh in on the subject. 

‘I heard he abducted the governor’s daughter.’

‘That’s her. She’s right here.’

‘Oh. Well, he had attempted to assassinate the king of England!’

‘The Prince, you blockhead. And he did kill him!’

‘He has burned entire islands down. All over a game of cards.’

‘Stole an entire fleet and handed it over to the Spanish, just like that.’

‘He drinks the blood of his enemies!’

‘Sold his soul to the devil!’

Everyone looked at the old man that shouted this out. You were afraid to ask more questions, so let the others do this for you. ‘What do you mean, he sold his soul?’ 

‘He did! Did all those things to offer himself to Satan and do his dirty deeds here on earth. He is cursed to sail the seas in his wicked ship with the unrighteous crew for all eternity.’

‘Well, that eternity won’t last much longer.’ Someone commented, resulting in a chuckle around the street. Most of the people laughed, but you stayed quiet, your mind going back to Eddie, his body covered in unexplainable scars. The wind suddenly grew stronger.

‘I’m telling you,’ the man continued, ‘we won’t get rid of him yet! Not until Hell freezes over!’

‘Someone give the man a hat; he’s had too much sun,’ Mr Bowman called, rich coming from him, whose balding head was burning bright red. He then turned to you, shrugging as the rest had clearly proven his point. ‘And that is why I do not mess around with pirates, deary, no matter how charming they may seem.’

‘Excuse me?’ were the first words coming out of your mouth in the last few minutes, and you quickly regretted having them form into another question. 

‘I saw you two yesterday at the arrest.’ Of course, he had. Nothing around here ever escaped this man. He looked proud of himself for having witnessed the events. ‘It was quite dramatic, seeing lovers have to be broken apart like that.’

‘I think you might have had too much sun today,’ you tried to sound casual as you laughed it off. 

‘I am not here to judge,’ he said, putting his hands up in surrender, ‘simply to advise.’ 

‘Thank you, Mr Bowman.’ You smiled politely, ready to escape the conversation. You had been used to him often throwing around false and farfetched accusations, and even listening to this conversation, you knew it was nothing if not complete nonsense, just gossip gone too far along the years. So now that he had actually been correct, it stunned you, even maybe scared you. What would the people around you think if they knew what happened between you and Eddie? How would they react if they knew how you felt about his death sentence? You would be deemed mad. 

Of course, the not-so-inconspicuous guards followed you back to your room, where you stayed for the rest of the day until it was time for dinner. Your father did not join you this time. As hunger finally struck you, fighting nausea caused by the stress of the last few days, you ate everything served to you. 

On the ship, you had thought that once you came back, you wouldn't be able to stop eating all the things you had been missing for months, but nothing tasted as good as you remembered. In fact, nothing was as good as you remembered. The food was bland, the flowers not as vibrant, and the people not as joyous. Once, you had heard laughter and chatter, but it seemed like the streets grew cold and silent, leaving you alone to your thoughts. 

After your meal, you walked out of the room but turned left instead of taking the right towards your room. People immediately caught on. 

‘Miss? Where are you going?’ A guard called out.

‘Oh,’ you attempted to sound like you had not expected this exact conversation when you moved, ‘just thought of going on a stroll. The night air does me rather well.’ You grinned in a way you hoped would come off naive. 

‘I do not think that’s a good idea.’ The guard said. ‘I would suggest that you return to your room,’ he spoke in a tone telling you that it was not a suggestion at all. Not in the slightest.

‘Am I on house arrest?’

‘See it more as a curfew.’ 

You scoffed at the idea, or more that you had very little choice but to obey. There was a moment in which you stared up at the guard, switching between expressions to get him to crack and let you go, but to your disappointment, he cocked his head toward your room. 

How were you ever supposed to get to Eddie if they constantly watched you? The question kept you up another whole night and the next day. Just for the sake of it, since they so desperately needed to be with you at all times, you decided to sit in the library for about four hours with no book in sight, just staring out the window, letting them stare at you. At a certain point, you had caught one man actually yawning.

‘I am absolutely certain that there are at least fifty things that would be more  productive for you to do then this,’ you broke the deafening, maddening silence, still looking out the window. You had counted all the leaves on the tree branch that kept hitting the pane in the breeze and had recollected every corridor and door in the house. In the reflection of the glass, you could see the guards glance nervously at each other, and with a smile, you turned to face them. ‘You can just go. I won’t tell anyone.’ But they stood their ground. With a groan, you sank back down into the chair. 

It would take much longer for them to break, so much more time that you—that  Eddie—did not possess. Three days left before the execution. Three days left for you to take the chance and do something. Save him. There were a million ideas, one worse after the other, with so many risks and problems that it could eventually end in your own hanging. 

You shut your door at the end of the day, and it must have sounded through the entire house. Another day gone, and you had gotten nowhere. You could see the shadows of their feet come through the gap underneath your door, and they would be there the next morning when you awoke. Sleep deprived from tossing and turning as long as the sun was down. The bed still felt too big for comfort. At one point, they had run into the room at the sound of muffled screams, just for you to pull your head out of your pillow to yell at them to get out. 

You walked towards the dining room for breakfast, this time wearing a rose gold dress, surprised not to be followed by a parade of footsteps but halted at the sound of voices coming from inside the hall. 

‘I think it is safe to say that she does not require any supervision, sir.’ one of the guards said. You never bothered to learn their names, too frustrated to care, but you learned to recognise their voices from the amount of squabbling you had done. 

‘Is that so?’ your father munched away. 

‘She does nothing but mope around all day, quite harmless, I’d say… uhh, sir.’ The other added. 

Mope? You did not mope, if only because they sucked your life out with their constant “supervision”. As much as you wanted to burst into the room, you composed yourself and listened on. 

‘Does she seem well, in the head, I mean?’ Your father asked, but they did not reply. Not verbally, at least; you could imagine them looking at each other in the way they did, and just the idea made you clench your fists until they turned pale.

‘She’s stubborn, a bit immature, a bit aggressive.’ One of them chose his words carefully and slowly.

‘So that’s a no, I take it,’ your father concluded. You took this as your opportunity to announce yourself with a few loud steps, moving back a few paces to repeat them with exaggeration. 

‘Good evening, father,’ you said as you took your seat, not giving him or the other man any more of your attention. The guards glanced at you nervously before leaving the room.

‘Terrorised the guards, I see?’ he asked.

‘No more than they did me,’ you replied in the same emotionless tone as you ate.

‘I just wanted what’s best for you. It had been a tumultuous time, and you had gone through quite– ’

‘Is that a reason to… to lock me up and have me followed around like some kind of—’ You were at a loss for words, so instead, opted for a frustrated groan and stuffing your face with a forkful of lamb. 

‘Well, you’ve proved me wrong. Clearly, you can still care for yourself.’ he wiped his mouth with a napkin and stood up. ‘I’ll make them let you be from now on,’ and with that, he walked away. You couldn’t suppress the smile that rose to your lips once the doors closed behind him, immediately knowing the first place you were heading to with your newfound “freedom”. 

The kitchen. 

Well, that is not exactly the first thing. You had to wait for all the dishes to be cleared from the dining room, so you wandered around the corridors and then headed down the stairs as quietly as possible to not raise any attention to yourself. 

As suspected, the kitchen was empty. Most of the food on the plates still untouched. Quietly, you grabbed a basket and began picking things out here and there, those that would go unnoticed by anyone walking in to grab a midnight snack. The only thing that might have caught someone’s attention by going missing was one of the larger bottles of rum stacked on a shelf. 

You placed a napkin over the basket's content and grabbed one of the staff member’s hoods to cover yourself up with before heading outside. It would help against the cold night air and hopefully make you a bit less noticeable, as the grey hood did not stand out as much as your extravagant dress. As you took the first steps out into the garden, the idea came to you that maybe that was another idea of them trying to keep you inside these walls. After all, while you had always had nice clothing, it did not compare to the dresses you’ve worn since your return. It could be seen as a welcome home gift, but it was undeniable that the dress you wore now could be spotted from miles away.

You pulled the cloak tighter over yourself.

Besides a few men who were too drunk to notice or care who you were, the streets were also empty. The men standing at the prison doors were half asleep, and either way, you were not too anxious about them as they were usually more preoccupied with keeping people in than out. You slipped through the shadows into the alley and only dared to breathe once inside. The steps leading further into the building were uneven, especially in the dark. The only light was half-burned-up torches lining the path. A crinkly small corridor that eventually led to a crooked staircase. You could barely keep yourself up straight, almost tripping over your feet. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, where the dungeon's entrance stood, took almost longer than the walk to the building across town as you held onto the cold wall, doing your best not to fall.

Now, you could only pray that the final door was not locked. The handle wiggled and creaked open. 

You hesitated. What would await you inside? This whole trek had been based on your intuition that he would be put in one of the isolated cells, away from the petty criminals. But what if they kept him somewhere else? What if they had done something to him and… well, there was only one way to find out.

As you stepped into the caved-out room and almost instantaneously, never before had you felt such a cold fall over you. Maybe it was due to the thick walls absorbing all sound or how the slit-like windows below the ceiling only let through the tiniest slivers of moonlight, obstructing any of the day’s heat from entering the room. Or maybe it was the sight of him in the pale torchlight that chilled you to the bone. 

He was seated on the ground, framed by a cell jagged from rock and steel bars. The moonlight managed to just about frame his face, exhausted and fragile. His eyes were closed in pretend sleep. You could tell that much as his brows furrowed at the sound of your footsteps. You tried to call out to him, but your throat was stuck. But you didn’t need to say anything. He called your name in a weak voice, in a hesitant manner, as if he was making sure that what he saw was real. If you were really there. 

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked in disbelief.

What were you doing here?  You had been asking yourself this the entire walk up to the cells, trying to find a reason why it meant so much to you to see him again, to help him, and yet you still could not come up with anything. There was no response besides holding up the basket with a weak smile and saying, ‘I thought you would like some dinner.’ 

Eddie sat straight, pulling himself up by one of the cell bars. As you walked up to his cell and sat down on the ground beside him, you could feel his eyes on you. Pure disbelief at your presence, the food. You held the meat out to him, but he did not move. 

‘It is not poisoned,’ you smiled sheepishly, ‘if that is what you’re wondering.’ Even when you handed him the food to eat. He did so slowly, apprehensively at first, still unable to look away from you. Perfectly understandable. You had barely gotten used to this. How the beading and frame of the dress poked at you from every angle. Your feet hurt, and your hair had been pulled into an intricate hairstyle, causing you to walk around with a headache for hours. Not that it was anything to compare to Eddie’s circumstances. He sat in his cell, too small to stretch his body out in, with no bed, just the cold hard ground. They had removed his jacket and belt, leaving him to sit out the cold of the night in just his shirt. You also noticed a new bruise forming on his jaw, which certainly had not been there when you last saw him. All this to break him down, yet the way he looked at you—you could have sworn you were still lying together in his bed, far away from all this. 

He glanced down at your dress, how it pooled around you, almost leaking through the cell barriers up to him in all its opulence. ‘How the tables have turners, haven’t they, princess,’ he chuckled, and you had never thought to be so happy from hearing such a simple sound. The nickname felt deliberately chosen at this time, too. You pulled at the edges of your dress, collecting it closer to you.

‘I know, I look ridiculous.’ 

‘I think the word you’re looking for is beautiful,’ he said between bites, but you ignored the compliment, knowing that if you let it get to you, it would come together with a shower of tears. As he kept on eating his food, you sighed, letting your side hit the wall as you leaned up to him. You handed him more of the food that you had brought him and the rum, then let him finish in silence. His mere presence beside you already was more than enough. The sound of his deep calm breaths was enough to put you to rest, and it pleased you that the sea had not left him just yet. He still smelled of it. That fresh sea salt air was simply stuck in his hair. You refrained from combing your fingers through it.

This was already so far from what you had expected things to go like. You had thought that once you came home, even with his request for a hefty payment, he would still be welcomed as a hero. That you could make things work and somehow, maybe, naively, be together. Even now, you thought that if he saw you here, you would have some kind of moment of clarity where everything became crystal clear and easy to understand. That you would know exactly what to do, and it would be glorious. You thought he would be happy to see you. Never had you imagined him asking you again, ‘What are you doing here? Really.’

‘I wanted to see you,’ you said, but he could read past all your layers. ‘And… over the past few days, I have heard things. About you. Things that I can hardly believe to be true and yet are seen as such by the majority of people, so I hoped you could clear some things up for me.’

‘You don’t believe your own people but would believe me?’ He took a swig of the rum, already handing it back to you, but you declined, giving it back.

‘I have given you my trust more times than I should have, and so far, it has not led me down any dark paths, but I can only hope that you will not break that bond now.’ After all that you had been through? Was he in any position to do so? ‘So I hope you will tell me what really happened. I—I remember you, years ago, meeting with my father and Carver. You were in the military, right?’

Eddie let his head roll back, hitting the wall behind him with a shallow thud. ‘You remember me?’ 

‘It came to me during the storm. A memory of you walking with them in the garden. For the longest time, I could not make sense if it had been real or if my mind playing tricks on me, but I realised now what it was.  You looked different, but it was you, wasn’t it? You were like them?’ 

‘Turns out, maybe I still am, and more than you’d think,’  he sighed, ‘or less, depending on how you look at it.’ He took another sip of the drink. 

‘Will you tell me, please?’ You pleaded, eagerly awaiting the answers to what you had been trying to figure out long before you had returned home. Eddie looked apprehensive. 

‘What good will it do?’ He turned his head in your direction, still leaning against the wall. You moved over to be closer to him, your legs almost touching. 

‘Perhaps nothing, but—’ you sighed, ‘All my life, I’ve been protected. I’ve had everything handed to me without any trouble. I had spend most of my years never further away than these shores and always under someone’s watch. I had never had the space to make risks or mistakes. There was no such thing as danger. Even now, I had been under constant watch. No one will answer my questions or even listen to me because they want to protect me. Because they think I’m fragile and cannot handle it.’ 

At this, Eddie scoffed. ‘If anything, they cannot handle you, darling.’ 

‘Meanwhile, you,’ you smiled, ignoring the heat burning over your cheeks, ‘Well, perhaps not all your methods were ideal, but you never treated me like I was made of glass. You pushed me, and it actually, for once, made me feel alive and like I am worth being in the room with.’

Eddie reached for your hand. ‘You’re worth so much more than that,’ he mumbled against your knuckled as he kissed them. He held on to you as he began talking slowly, choosing his words wisely. ‘I had joined the navy younger than anyone should have—my parents couldn’t afford me, so I had to make myself useful quickly, and that felt at least somewhat commendable, no matter how it would end. 

‘Started right at the bottom, but I wanted to prove myself. I followed orders, did everything what was asked of me, and more, and I moved through the ranks. As I gained more of a position, I got more of an insight into the men I was working for and with.’ 

As he spoke, you watched his eyes pale, haze over with memories. The dam he had built around them had broken up, flooding out, and he could not stop it anymore.  He wanted to continue, but he hesitated, glancing your way, but you encouraged him to go on with a nod of the head. Even then, he scratched at his face nervously and took a deep breath. 

‘We would find ourselves everywhere around the world, and a certain power comes with wearing a uniform. It is universal, one that everyone understands and is willing to abuse. It was easy to see yourself as better than the poor locals, to excuse yourself from the import taxes and all the bureaucracy around the travel. I had done it myself, flashing a grin with the mindset of superiority.’ He hid his face in his hands, groaning. You reached out for his arm. 

‘Hey, it’s okay,’ you hushed, but was it really?

‘When you get that taste of power when it hits right, it is hard to let go. It had never sat well with me; every time I got away from a port without paying for my ship, I stayed up entire nights as the guilt ate away from me, but it had been what everyone else was doing, and you don’t want to fall behind. It had become a pressure to boast your power over those who did not have any. 

‘And this power…. it turned darker as simple actions of business turned to abuse. Swindling merchants of their products, conning drunks with games, and stealing their money. Taking advantage of… everyone. It had become a sport to them.

‘I was aware of it, but it had somehow never seemed that serious—it happened so gradually—until one day I saw one of the commanders with this girl…’ his breath hitched. You squeezed his hand to remind him that you were there, that you were listening. ‘She was just a child, and when I saw what he—I lost control of myself, lashed out at him. It had been stupid trying to argue with someone that outranked me. There was no one I could tell that would do anything about it, not when they were all just as bad.

‘Then Carver came up to me one day. Said that together we could make a change.’ Eddie’s jaw clenched. ‘I should have known better. He had always been too close with the rest of them, but we planned on making a change.

‘But on the day we were about to tell your father about everything that happened on our voyages—the day we saw each other in the garden, in fact,’ he squeezed your hand back. ‘We never got the chance because I was sent away.’ Something in you caught your breath, making him smile lightly. 

‘There had been talk of a war, and so I was sent out with a fleet to take charge. Carver had promised me he would take care of everything in my absence, but—’

‘He didn’t,’ you finished the sentence for him.

‘In a way, he did. Of course, it was all a hoax. He had needed an excuse to get rid of me. It took me three months to get back, having found no signs of possible ambushes, and when I did, I returned to the news that Hargrove, the commander I had attacked, had been found dead that same evening I left. And there was the missing gold and the rumours of a coup, among other things. Somehow, he had convinced everyone I had gone above and beyond in betraying our country, but the murder charges hit the heaviest. They thought I had killed one of our own.

‘The only people on my side had been those on the ship with me, and they had given up all they had by giving me their trust. They were marked as traitors just for standing up against the accusations. I  already had lost everything I had to lose and could not stand by it, so I left. I took my ship and my crew, and we sailed off. 

Bowman’s words rang through your mind as Eddie said this. Deserter. Runagate. Quisling. Traitor. You still wanted to ask him so much, but you let him speak before interrupting. 

‘The sea was a liberation. We were free to do whatever we wanted, so we did, but I always felt like I was tied back to this place. Like…’ he laughed, ‘like a rope was hanging around my neck, dragging me back here. At first, I thought it was guilt, so I did my best to reprimand everything they had done. I wanted to do something for all those men and women we had hurt, give them some form of protection against those uniforms. 

‘But no matter what I did, who I helped, that feeling did not stop. In a way, it grew worse. I got angry and felt like the only thing that would help me was revenge; I stayed up most nights thinking of unimaginable things. I got lost in the darkness of it. If it wasn’t for Harrington, I don’t know what would have become of me.’

‘Harrington?’ You could see how that would happen, but the mention of him somehow startled you. It's another piece of the story that made it feel so real.

‘He had been in a similar position as me. His commanding officer had been asking him to do all these dirty jobs until he had had enough. It had only been a couple of days since he had given up his post when we met one night at a tavern. He wouldn't have joined us if it had not been for a game of cards. Neither would have Robin.’

You had no idea how long you had sat there, just enough for your body to grow cold and stiff on the ground, but you could not care less about any of that, too focused on his story. As he mentioned Steve and Robin, his smile reached his eyes for the first time since you had arrived, revitalising you, knowing that there was still something in his life that left fond memories behind. You leaned forward, resting your chin on your hand as you listened on. 

‘Either way, I had fallen into a deep, dark pit, and Steve pulled me out. He showed me what I was doing did no good for anyone but them. It was eating me alive, killing me from the inside.’

‘But you still killed them all.’ The words left your mouth sooner than you could think them through. Knowing his reason behind it all made you understand, but it did not lessen the impact of the deed. 

Hearing you say that, Eddie quickly turned his entire body to you, pulling himself as close to you as possible, almost pushing himself through the bars. His eyes were full of an intensity that burned through your soul.

‘I am not trying to make excuses. I did what I did—I led my crew towards the Red Tail and let them sink that ship, but not for myself. That is what Harrington made me realise. I did not need to see them die, but they needed to pay for everything they had done. For ruining all those people’s lives. You must understand that?’ 

He didn’t need to see them die. Moments flashed before you of your very first seconds on the Hellfire. Of Eddie walking up to you, the words he spoke in front of you. 

– Carver? Where is that pesky little bilge rat? 

– Bled out on the ship. 

– Shame. Would have like to have seen that. ‘You weren’t even there.’ you whispered.

‘It wasn’t about me.’ He shook his head. ‘Besides, if I had been the one to kill them, it would have only satisfied them. To see me become what they had told the world I already was. All I wanted was for them to be gone. Just gone. 

‘None of this,’ his eyes darted over your face. ‘Was meant to happen to you. My men were simply looking for the things in the office that had already been stolen. But then they saw you under that table, they couldn’t leave you. You were innocent.’ His hand reached out to brush over your cheek. Only at his touch did you realise that you had started to cry as he wiped down your tears. ‘And to you, I am truly sorry for everything I put you through.’ 

 You had nothing to reply with but a kiss, pulling him close to you. The steel bars of the cell caused an awkward distance between you, yet you never felt closer. It was as if now, you finally, truly, knew who it was you were touching. The kiss had been brief, but the silence that followed stretched on. The two of you sat there, sinking away from reality, but the questions you still had kept you grounded. Just as Eddie had said, a noose dragging you back. 

‘Eddie,’ you called him carefully. ‘What about the letter?’ 

‘What letter, princess.’ His hand kept rubbing over your tear-stained cheek. 

‘You know which one I mean,’ you pulled back slightly to be able to look properly at him. ‘Who was it for?’ 

He laughed, the saddest laugh you had ever heard come from him, and it pained you from within. ‘What does all this matter? I will be dead soon. The less there is left of me here, the better.’

 You watched him pull himself up again to sit, tap his knuckles on his knee. His answer had angered you. ‘Because…’ you took a deep breath, taking the leap you had been too afraid to take. ‘it just gives me that much less time to know the man I have fallen in love with.’ You wanted to keep as much of him as possible. That is what you could do by listening. To give him that voice in his own story. 

Eddie fell silent. His mouth opened to speak, but no voice came out for several tries. He searched for the right words until he finally blinked slowly and looked up at the ceiling. His jaw clenched once again, in the way that he sucked in a deep breath. As he released it, he said: ‘Her name was Christina.’

‘Your wife?’ Again, you thought of what he had told you earlier. I  already had lost everything I had to lose. He must have had people who cared for him before all this had happened.

‘Fiancée,’ he corrected, not that it mattered to either of you. ‘We had known each other our whole lives, having grown up on the same streets. We kept each other strong with this promise that one-day things would get better. That we would escape from all the burdens and create our own paradise. She was the reason I—’ he couldn’t speak of it out loud, and you didn’t need him to. You didn’t tell him to continue the story when he eventually did. 

‘Foolishly, I had not told her anything of what went on. I told her things would finally be good for us when I returned. We would leave and never turn back. I thought I was protecting her by keeping it all from her, but it was the final nail in my coffin.

 ‘She had been the first person I saw after my return, and I could sense that something was wrong.  Then the guards knocked on the door, and she opened it like she had been expecting them. 

‘I could only assume it was Carver. That he told her what he told everyone else. She wouldn’t look at me, touch me, speak to me. No matter how hard I tried to prove myself, he had poisoned her with his words. In the end, she only saw me as a monster.’ 

The last word stung you in your chest, knowing how often you had used that exact word to describe him yourself. How often have you called him a monster or even worse?  But his openness triggered more memories to come up. Your conversations with the crew of the Red Tail. Their stories and lives. 

‘Christina…’ you mumbled the name with familiarity. ‘That was… that was the name of the admiral’s wife.’

‘It does not come to me as a surprise,’ he chuckled that sad laugh again. He had clearly expected to hear those words eventually. You looked at him, feeling the sting in the corners of your eyes. The tears were coming right back, but he quickly wiped those too. ‘Please, don’t. I do not need your pity. I have told you everything there is to know about me, and that is all I could or ever will ask of you again.’

‘I don’t—’ you wanted to speak, but he quickly went on. As he held your face in his hands, his thumb brushed over your lips, 

‘And I will cherish these moments, every second I spent with you, until my last breath. I will think of you as the sun sets, I promise you.’

‘What—what are you talking about?’ your voice choked between sobs. 

‘I never expected you to come here,’ he kissed you, passing all the feelings he had voiced earlier over to you with the touch of his lips, ‘but don’t come here again.’

‘What? No!’ You pushed yourself away. This wasn’t the plan. You were going to help him. You were going to get him out of here. As you got up to your feet, so did he, reaching for your hand again.

‘Listen to me.’ he gritted his teeth in desperation. ‘There is no way out of here, and it will only get worse for me.’ As he said so, your eyes flashed back to the bruise on his pale skin. ‘I do not want you to see me like that. Let this be where we say our goodbyes.’ He held your hand, finger over your knuckles, soothingly. You hated that he was comforting you at this moment.

‘No,’ you whimpered, head shaking. You turned your hand around in his to grab onto his fingers. One of his skull rings slowly began to slide off, and so you stopped before it dropped.

‘Please,’ he squeezed your hand.

‘No!’ you shouted, not caring if the guards outside could hear you. They might storm inside any second now and drag you out, they could try, but you wouldn’t let them. ‘I won’t let you die.’

‘It’s okay.’ He said. With every sentence he spoke, a new piece of the puzzle had been allotted to its place, but the final picture still blurred before your mind. It only seemed like even more gaps needed to be filled in, but it was slowly coming together, and when it did… You wanted to cry out. 

Eddie held you as best as he could through his restraints, the faintest smile painted over his lips. 

‘You knew, didn’t you?’ you stood there, defeated. ‘That if you would come back here with me, that this would happen. You knew you would be arrested and hanged.’

‘At least now I truly deserve it.’ All the crimes he committed at sea trying to help others, what he had let happen to the Red Tail. ‘So, please, just go. I promise, it will be alright.’ 

You wanted to scream at him. Hit him, punch him, and much more for all of this. You wanted him to hurt as much as you did as he told you to leave, but in reality, you doubted anything you could do to him would match even half of the pain you felt as you stood there. You wanted him to hurt, but all you could do was take one last step forward and pull him in to kiss you. 

When you left, you could still feel him on your lips. That feeling let you move step by step out onto the street. Everything else felt not quite right, not quite real. You walked mindlessly across the empty market, barely aware of your surroundings, until you suddenly stood in front of your room door. You dropped the empty basket at your side and practically floated onto the bed.

It was late; you had no idea what time exactly, but too late for anyone to help you get out of that corset. You lay on the bed, now unable to get up, unwilling to move even if you could, staring up at the ceiling. Maybe you never stopped staring or fell into a slumber, but the next morning you still lay on your back, barely changing position over the early morning hours.

 You sat in your room, looking at the tide coming and going, pushing the sand and the rocks through the hours. The hours blurred; days became night, and the moon turned into the sun. The following two days passed, and you spend them in silent disbelief and confusion, just fighting to not return to the prison cell.

There must be something you could do. People you could convince or pay or bribe in any other way to not let the execution take place. Help him escape. 

This could not be the end.

But Eddie had made his final wish clear. You were not to see him again, and what could you do when no one would listen to you? When everyone on the island had his mind set on what Eddie was? You were paralysed with helplessness, and no matter what you tried to do or what to think about, it just would not go away. It grew inside you, impossible to ever leave you again, and you were slowly making peace with that. Your own price to pay for not being able to do anything for him when he truly needed it.

Even when you arrived at the square, which was filling up with an audience hours before the event, were you trying to look for escape routes, but the more people arrived, the more challenging a wall they created to penetrate. You would never be able to run through it, but you thought of it. Holding his hand, never looking back.

The sun that afternoon was flaming hot, burning through all the layers of your dress that pinned into your ribs as you sat down. The governing families got the best seats on the raised platform in the house, with plush chairs to wait on while everything was prepared. There was only the cool breeze of your fan to cool you down, but it did nothing on your nerves. They burned within just as much as the sun's rays. 

You had not been sure if coming was a good choice or if you were prepared to witness Eddie’s death, but your absence would surely be questioned and… and you could not pass on the ever last possibility of seeing him. The dubiety ran through you with a threat of tears.

But more and more people came around to see, and you traced each face to find someone who could help you. Someone on your side. A familiar ally, but no luck. They were all prepared to see a man die tonight. The mumbling amongst them turned into chatter, and the conversations of local gossip turned to absolute mudslinging.

‘I heard he has killed over a thousand men with his bare hands.’

‘Well, I heard he had planned on taking over the army in order to become the next king!’

‘And I heard—’

‘I heard—’

I heard… One thing after the other, each one worse than the last. Could they not see this? All of it nothing but hearsay. They were putting a man on death row for things overheard at the market. Of course, no one would listen if you were to say this. 

The sky slowly turned a warm orange, glowing on the buildings like a soft fire. The bell in the church tower struck seven times, half through instinct and half through custom, people’s heads turned in one direction. All but yours because as they all looked at the procession—the court man carrying a large scroll of parchment, followed by the executioner, who pulled the chains that were locked around Eddie’s wrists and the two guardsmen behind him, weapons at the ready—you stared ahead at the gallows. The rope hanging on it looked short and could only mean one thing. 

A slow and painful death.

The clanking of the shackles echoed through the entire square with each step Eddie took. He was barely visible through the crowd, but the length of the executioner in front of him ensured everyone could follow the death march.

Eddie looked ill—pale and fragile. His steps were shaking, not improved at all by the heavy chains that pulled him forward. He stumbled around up the stairs to the gallow. You could see his eyes look up in fearful amazement at the construction of the gibbet. His Adam’s apple choked up and down, and then his eyes caught sight of you. 

Everything began to move at a slowed-down pace. 

He must not have expected you to come or hoped you wouldn’t because the brave and confident facade cracked for the tiniest moment. The sadness dominated his features for a glimpse of time, but it was all you could see. Too occupied by his view, he had missed his call to step up. The hangman shouted something from underneath his black hood, kicking Eddie forward. You flinched as Eddie kept his balance not to fall to the floor. You couldn’t do this. You could not watch this go down, but you did not want to leave him behind. Not ever. This could not be the end.

The court man stepped forward, unscrolling his parchment as he cleared his throat. It was enough for the people below, standing on the pavement, in the shadows of the buildings, on the balconies, to quiet down and listen as he read: 

‘On this day,’ his voice carried through the entire square, ‘we bear witness to the punishment of Edward Munson, pirate, for his admitted crimes of theft, perjury, extortion, abduction, desertion, high treason and murder, sentencing him to death as decided by the governing council. 

‘He shall hang here for God to give his final judgement and remain a reminder for any wrong-doers and sinners to come!’

You glanced at your father, who sat by untouched. Was Eddie’s body here to stay forever? You could not imagine having to walk around this town every day just to see his body be taken by the elements. 

The sun was nearly at the horizon, shining bright at all of you, its heat still heating your skin. 

The people cheered as the rope was put around Eddie’s neck, who waved to them as if they were not cheering on his demise. One hand pulling the other up, making the chain between them clink. A smile pulled at the corner of his lips, and it astonished you to see that he managed to stay his entertaining self even now. Always playing a role for the other man. Here to entertain. To provoke. To distract.

But the smile faded, body stiffened as the noose was pulled taut.

‘That’s a bit tight,’ Eddie commented, and in response to that, the hooded man pulled it even tighter. It dug into his skin. He looked down at where the floor would soon disappear from underneath him, then up at the sky and with a slight choke, he spoke out his final words, embellished by the last spark of his life: 

‘To reign is worth ambition though in hell: Better to reign in hell, then serve in heaven.’

People gasped, mumbling amongst each other once more until hushed to silence by the hangman walking up to the lever that would set everything into motion. As Eddie took his final breath, everyone held theirs in anticipation. Your hands were shaking; every breath you took felt like a betrayal to him and like a stab in your lungs. Your fan moved faster, the small gushes of wind barely doing anything to cool down your face. This could not be the end. Not this. Not now. It couldn’t be—

The arm was pulled, and it was as if it had removed the ground from underneath your feet; that’s how deep the drop in your stomach was as you saw Eddie fall. It was as much as you could bear seeing before you turned around, hiding your face in your hands, hiding your tears from everyone else. 

When hanging a person, two types of noose could be used. With the longer drop, the fall's impact would cause the neck to break and bring instant death. The shorter rope prolongs the act of dying as the rope digs into their throat, cutting off their air. During this, the square is filled with the sound of choked gasps, encouraged by the hundreds of onlookers. 

If you had been one of them, down there on the ground, with easy access to the podium, you would have stormed it. Cut the rope loose. But you sat on the balcony, surrounded by your father and the other gentlemen and guards, unable to move anywhere. So you could only hope that there would be someone to do what you wanted to do. That someone would show up and save him like you wish you could. But when no one came, and his strangled groans became more sporadic, you had had enough. You couldn’t do this. You could not sit by and watch or even listen to what was happening before you. 

Your father’s call of your name was muffled by the public, and your own internal screams as you ran out. Arms reached for you, but you pushed past them all. As soon as you were out of everyone’s sight, the tears started to flow, and they would not stop no matter how far you ran. And you wanted to run as far away as possible, as far away as your legs could take you. Off this island, away from these people. Yet, you eventually carried yourself back to the square. Each step made you dizzy through the corridors and down the stairs, but you could not stand still. 

You had thought you were faster, but as soon as you pushed the heavy doors open and saw the stream of people walking away, the truth sank into your bones. You pushed your way past the crowd back to the open marketplace. As soon as it was done, people lost interest and continued with their evenings as if nothing had happened, ready for whatever next was to come eventually. By the time you reached the foot of the gallow, there was practically no one else around you. 

The sun was saying its goodbyes, and his body was a dark shadow across the obscuring sky, hanging limp, still swinging from side to side but with every second coming closer to its final halt. Something about the movements looked so serene that you could not come to terms with that this was really it. Just like that… he was gone, but it happened so quickly, so easily. Too quickly. 

You stood in front of him as the last people left, and the sun disappeared at the end of the world until the real darkness fell upon you, and your tears finally dried out until your throat screamed for water and air, and you could barely stand up straight.

This could not be the end.

And you were one of the first people to hear of it. 

First, there was the prickling of the fire in the reading room, the flipping of the pages as you stared ahead at the words of the book, making yourself seem present in the room as your father sat by. Then there were the rushed footsteps in the hallway. The hushed whispers of hesitance behind the closed door as the men contemplated what to do. A creak of the door as they walked inside towards your father and leaned in to whisper so you would not hear what they had to say.

But the room was so quiet, you heard it quite clearly.

‘Sir, there is an…a problem.’

‘What is the matter?’ Your father, as always, did not find much need to express himself largely, but at the guard's response, his eyes grew wide, and for a moment, the glow of the fire seemed that much cooler.

‘The body…. It’s gone, sir.’

‘What do you mean,’ he composed himself quickly, ‘he is gone? How can that be?’ 

The guards never looked so small. ‘We do not know sir, but he is. It is like he has disappeared into thin air.’

‘Absurd,’ your father got up, and so did you. Before you got to say a word or take a step forward, he quickly stopped you. ‘You stay here.’

‘Absolutely not.’ Was all you replied as you rushed out of the room ahead of anyone else. 

You had already made your peace with never stepping a foot inside the town square ever again, not if you would have to be reminded of that afternoon, of everything that happened in the last months, but as you walked back up to it, you could not have been happier that you had returned. 

Only the rope left was where his body had hung and where it had meant to hang for days to come. Its perfectly knotted noose swayed like he had the last time you saw him. 

Everyone else was right behind you, but just before they reached the platform with you, you noticed something in the corner of your eye. A shine against the moonlight on the wooden beams. You could just barely reach it, but with a stretch of the arm, your fingertips just about managed to get a grip on it. Before you could look at it, you heard your father shout orders at the guards, making them search everywhere in the nearby surroundings. Maybe whoever had taken the body was still somewhere nearby. 

Whoever took it… was that what happened? Before you could look around for more signs that could clarify the situation, you were called to return back home. It would do little good to argue now, so you followed the guard tasked with escorting you to your room. Only when he closed your door and you sat down at your drawing desk that you opened your fist to reveal what it was you had found beneath the rope.

The pair of hollowed-out eyes of the skull ring stared back at you. There was no possible way for you to know what this meant if it even meant something, but you couldn’t help but smile. The ring was loose on your finger, but you kept it on. 

This could not be the end of Captain Eddie Munson. 

It wasn’t. 

For most people, he lived on as a ghost story, and as you had learned from a very young age, dead men tell no tales. The living pass their stories around, mouth to mouth, page to page. Blurring the truth with their urgency for clarity, they try to make sense of things they cannot understand. Secrets become myths and legends that barely resemble the truth. 

In most cases, it takes years, decades, if not centuries, but here, on this small island, the conversations on the street already trickled with gossip and rumours the following morning.

I did not want to believe it, but it must be true, what they say. He did sell his soul to the devil! And it came to retrieve his body. 

I told you! It is useless to try and kill the unkillable! No, did you not hear what he had said? “Better to reign in hell!” But he is the devil incarnate!

Well, I’m surprised they caught him in the first place! Why he must be a ghost. The lot of them on that wicked ship. All cursed, and now he will return to haunt us for the rest of our lives! 

Who was to say out of all of them what happened on that square once darkness fell? No one was there to see it or tell the truth, as all who could had long left the island. 

They left at night, days after everything went down after the search for Eddie’s missing body had been called off, “officially” said to have been stolen but never confirmed. Those who knew what happened to it stayed in hiding until it was safe to come out until all suspicions were blurred with the gossip and basically forgotten. Quietly, they ran to the harbour, unseen by anyone, swift as the wind. 

Unnoticed by anyone…but you.

Like most of the nights, unable to fall asleep, you had been looking out your window out at the harbour and the sea. The ships that calmly stood anchored there and the waves that pushed against them. Slowly, they put you to sleep, and so at first, you thought it was just a blur of your tired gaze, the dark spot in the far distance. It wasn’t a ship. And there, on the shore, there were no people preparing a boat. Not this late… 

You rubbed your eyes, trying to better understand what they were doing. Packing in a hurry, throwing things into the bottom of the rowboat. As you watched, you told yourself that it was just the exhaustion speaking, that you were fooling yourself with this hope, but you could not let the chance pass you by.

You left your room without bothering to put anything on over your nightgown. Quietly to not gain any attention, but still as quickly as you could manage. Who knew how much time you had left before they would leave? Then once out of the house, you ran as fast as you could. The past few days, it felt like it had been all you had been doing, running to and from things, running after something without even knowing what you were looking for, but now you knew. You ran until your lungs began to burn from the warm and dry air. Until your feet were ready to give in and until you reached the sandy beach. 

As much as you wanted to scream and shout, you kept quiet. You walked carefully up to the two figures at the shore until they noticed you next to them. It happened when you were only a few feet away; they heard the scuffle of your feet or your shaky breath and pulled their guns out. They were ready to shoot, but the second they needed to notice you in the dark saved your life. That is when you locked eyes with the man in front of you.

‘Eddie?’ you cried. Before he could say anything, you took the final few steps and closed the gap between you, pressing your lips against his. Just to know it was real. Just to make sure you had not gone completely mad. You pressed yourself against every inch of him that you could. 

With the need for air, you pulled back, and instinctually, your palm met the side of his face. ‘How? I saw you—’ You both breathed heavily, chests raising drastically as he turned back to face you with a smile and press his lips against yours again. Like the last pieces of the puzzle, his hands fit on your body perfectly. 

Then he pulled you apart, with his hands on your face, wiping away the tears that had formed along the way. ‘I know,’ he whispered, but the words were so close you could feel them. You could feel him. Just the feeling of his fingertips on your cheeks assured you that this was real and that it was really him. ‘And I’m so sorry.’

‘But why?’ You were trembling in his arms. 

‘I had realised very early on that the only way to truly escape this place was to die,’ he smiled the smile you thought you would never see again, ‘but, well, I was not ready for that just yet.’

‘But I saw you— I watched it all happen there—how did you—’ his being broke you. You could not stop staring at the man in front of you. At all the little knicks and cracks in his skin. The fading bruises, the scars, and the long red gash along his neck that proved everything that much more. 

‘I told you everything would be alright, didn’t I?’ And he never broke his promise. But still, as the truth settled in around you, it opened up a space for a new kind of hurt. 

‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why let me believe that you were gone?’

‘It was the one thing that actually killed me, believe me,’ he pushed the loose hair out of your face, ‘but I needed you to believe it like anyone else. If you believed it—it would make everything so much easier.’

You wanted to ask him what on earth that was supposed to mean, but that is when you remembered the boat at his side. And when you noticed Steve waiting impatiently behind him, the oar already in his hand.

 ‘You’re leaving.’ It wasn’t a question. Of course, he was. He couldn’t hide here forever. Out there, in the waters, he would be genuinely free. 

‘It’s all for the best, and with me gone for good, you could live on; move on,’ he said somberly. 

‘Do you think I could forget about you that easily?’ Your fist had clamped onto the material of his shirt. ‘Do you really think I think so little of you? That I had not spend every minute of the past days mourning you? Missing you?’ and now you had him… just to lose him again.

‘But it would all pass. You can find someone else, someone better, and be happy.’ He looked down at your hand to see the ring you had kept on your finger for the past few days. He kissed his ring and then looked back up at you. ‘Let me go, darling.’

‘No,’ you shook your head, much like you had in the dungeon, but this time, you were more adamant this time than ever. ‘I won’t let you. Not this time.’ 

He mumbled your name, trying to argue, but you were ready with a rebuttal before he even said anything.

‘I do not want to spend another day without you. Not if I know you are somewhere out there—’ you had been looking at the ring too, but then looked at him again as an idea formed in your brain. ‘Take me with you.’

‘I can’t do that,’ his smile was airy and light but filled with regret. ‘You belong here.’

‘No, I don’t. Remember what I told you when I came to see you?’ You pleaded with him. ‘Do you remember?’ You pushed the words out when he didn’t say anything. 

‘Yes.’ 

‘So, please, don’t leave me. Not again.’ At this point, you punched every word into his chest weakly as you began to cry again, and he let you. Then, when you were finally done, he held you, telling Steve off when he tried to put this to an end, even though he was right. There wasn’t much time left. The sun would come up soon again, and people would awake and see you, and it would all have been for nothing.

‘I wish I could give you the world, darling,’ he said, ‘I call you a princess, but we both know you should be treated as a queen and get anything you ask for, but I can’t do that for you. I am not the man you should be with.’ He kissed the top of your head. ‘Please, forgive me.’ And with that, he let you go. 

You had let him do many things in the past, but not this time.

‘Well, I don’t forgive you.’ He had already turned around to get to the boat, but you just stepped past him, stunning him and poor Steve, as you got in. ‘If you wanted the easy way out, Munson, you should have thought twice about who to kidnap.’ 

The two men looked bewildered momentarily, too stunned to respond, but Steve was the first to respond. ‘She’s right,’ and he followed you in. The boat rocked from side to side. You sighed as you looked at Eddie as he stood in the sand. 

‘I’m not scared, Eddie.’ you reached out your hand to him. ‘I want this.’ You wanted him. You wanted this life with him. You wanted to travel the world and have a life of adventures. You wanted to be free.

Eddie looked at you, still in apparent shock at your sudden assertion. You might have thought you had changed so much, but he still saw the same stubborn woman as that cursed day when you were hauled aboard his ship. On the contrary, he had been the one that changed, and he realised that as he cursed himself there on that beach. He knew he might come to regret this, but he thought he had regretted most of his choices, most of what he had done in the past months, and yet, he could not have been happier with where his life had led him, as it all led him to you. So, he took your hand and pulled himself into the boat.

You dropped the weights that had kept you anchored and made your way out into the sea where the Hellfire lay by patiently, waiting for her Captain and his Princess—despite what their titles actually may be—to return home.

The End.

thank you so much for reading!! if you want more of where this came from, check out my masterlist.

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#eddie munson #eddie munson fanfiction #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson series #eddie munson au #pirate!eddie #pirate!eddie munson #pirate!au #au #eddie munson angst #eddie munson imagine #fanfiction #enemies to lovers #slow burn #pirates

[kyloxox]

Eddie The Freak Munson (Eddie Munson x Henderson!Reader)

Summary: Eddie becomes your new dealer. You don’t like him or the fact that he’s friends with your half brother or the fact that he’s started dealing for Chrissy Cunningham. But you still can’t get enough of him.

Warnings: NSFW, drugs, pot, drug dealing, oral(m&f), unprotected sex, car sex, this is really off with the canon st plot line so just ignore it<3 also we save Eddie from being considered a murder so go us and our pussy power!

Part two

“Hey.” You turn your head to see Eddie Munson walking towards you.

“Hi.” You reply. The man slams the metal lunch box he is holding on the hood of your car as he stops in front of you.

“How are you doing tonight, m’lady.” 

“Fine, yourself?”

“I’m doing a drug deal, with Y/n Henderson. I’m doing great.” You throw him a sarcastic smile. 

“The only reason I’m here is cause my guy ran and skipped town. You’re not my first choice trust me.”

“Ouch.” Eddie says as he pretend like you stabbed him in the heart. You cross your arms over your chest and roll your eyes. 

“How much can I get for 15?” You ask.

“Usually I do 20 for half ounce but I’m gonna gonna give you the pretty girl discount.” 

“Oh gee I bet you just say that to all the girls.” You smirk he hands you the bag and you hand him the cash. “Thanks, I’ll let you know if I need more.”

“I look forward to it, sweetheart.” 

You get into your car and lock the doors. You watch Eddie get into his own car and then hear loud music, leaving the parking lot in a haste. You don’t even realize you’re flustered from him before you’re alone in silence. Eddie Munson, freaking you out and getting you nervous? God you had not smoked in 2 weeks you must be going insane. You really hoped you would be able to find another dealer before you ran out again but secretly you knew that wouldn't be the last. 

-

“Fuck Ed-Eddie go faster.” You whine into the air as you gripped Eddie’s shoulder harder. His long fingers move at a sloppy and quick pace.

“Your wish is my command sweetheart.” Ed replies before he curls his fingers inside you at a heavenly angle. You’re truly in heaven. You’re fucked out in the backseat of his van, your legs spread like a whore. You don’t know how you ended up here, but you always do with Eddie.

After your first deal with him you couldn’t bother finding someone else. He was easy to contact and get shit from. You just stuck with him. And now after about your 3rd time meeting with him your primal needs over took you as you ended up in the backseat of his car after talking to him for hours about pointless shit.  

“God you feel so fucking good on my fingers. Such a dirty girl letting the freak finger her in the bad of a van.” It seemed like since the last two weeks of the summer, ever dealing session you had with Eddie ended with him either finger banging you or sucking him off. And if you were being honest you couldn’t complain. To much surprise, Eddie was a god with his fingers and had a huge dick. And you couldn't get yourself to stop seeing him or buying his pot. 

-

You watched as Dustin sat with his friends at a random lunch table. You were always protective over him as he was used to being lightly bullied and seen as a nerd. But he did have his friends who cared for him a lot so you figured he would be fine in high school. 

That was until you saw Dustin walking to your car wearing a Hellfire Club shirt that you knew all too well. Dustin was a good kid but who knows what he would do to impress someone like Eddie. To show his worth. Fuck Dustin needs to stop befriending 18 plus year olds. 

“What the hell are you wearing?” You questioned as he walked into your car. 

“Oh it’s this D&D club at school! Isn't that cool that there is one?”

“Yeah super cool.” You grit through your teeth, he seemed so excited you didn't wanna kill his buzz.

“And the like president of the club is like this super cool guy who hasn't graduated for years, he’s like a triple senior. His name is Eddie Munson. Have you heard of him?”

“Being a senior for 3 years in a row isn't cool, Dust.” You say as calm as you can. “And yes I have heard of him. Pretty sure he’s been a senior almost every year I've attended there.”

“I know, I know. But he’s really nice, he kind of recruited me, Mike and Lucas. Isn’t that cool? We have older friends now.”

“That’s great Dustin. Just leave don’t turn into one of those guys.”

“I would never.” Dustin says with a smile and you just smile back, gripping the steering wheel.

-

Now you believe Eddie’s doing it on purpose. Without even realizing how much it annoyed you. Causing a scene every lunch period with your brother and his friends. Being loud and rambunctious with your brother and his friends in the hallways. And you wanna just ignore it and walk away but you can’t. Your eyes are glued to his form. Especially when he’s with your brother.

Eddie is sweet to him. He’s sweet to all of them. And it makes your heart throb as well as wanting to rot.

You couldn’t handle it anymore. The thought of Dustin becoming a mini Eddie was haunting your every waking thought. At lunch you saw Munson sitting with his usual friends. You walked past the table, making eye contact with Eddie. This was your signature move to him to show that you wanted to speak. He excused himself from his friends and followed you into the hallway. When he was outside the lunchroom he looked around for you but couldn't find you. Out of nowhere you grabbed his arm and pulled him into the dark hallway next to the cafeteria. 

“What the hell are you doing with my brother, Munson?”

“Henderson, or should I start calling you y/n, since your little bro has been downgraded to Henderson.” 

“We are not on a first name basis Munson.” You grit through your teeth.

“What are you talking about. I am on a first name basis with all my best customers.”

“Shut up. Stop trying to indoctrinate and recruit my brother for your little cult.”

“I kinda like it yknow? Haven’t stared at me like that in public in a long time right sweetheart? Bet you love staring at me and my beautiful face.”

“Shut up. What I want is for you to not turn him into a triple senior, drug selling freak like you. Got it? Slow down in trying to build up your freak show.”

“Slow down? Slow down? That’s not what you were telling me last week at our last meetup, now was it sweetheart. What was it? As I recall you kept telling me ‘Ed, Ed faster, faster.’”He says mimicking your voice and face.

“I told you to never mention that in public! Especially around your weird friends.”

“What are you worried you might also be considered a freak?”

“Shut up, you know I don’t mean that. You’re a practically normal person.” You smile at him sinisterly. “Back off my brother. Don’t need him turned into your drug mull.”

“You know I never thought about that. Using my freshmen as drugs mulls. Maybe Dustin could deliver your drugs for me. I mean it is much more practical.”

“Oh please you would miss your little back seat adventures with me too much.” You move closer to him so he can smell the perfume on your body and his breath slightly hitches as you place one of your arms on his forearm, “Wouldn’t you?” He looks around almost at defeat. “Bye Munson.” You say before rubbing his forearm up and down. You can feel the goosebumps form. You turn to walk away but Eddie grabs your hand too quickly. He pulls you into him and you fall into his chest.

“You know, you shouldn’t tease me.” He says moving a piece of hair out of your face.

“What are you gonna do about it Munson.” You rip away from him body. “Be nice to my brother or else.” You say stomping away. 

“Still got our deal tomorrow at 8?” He says cockily and you flip him the bird as you walk away. You both know that gesture means yes. 

-

You pulled into the trailer that belonged to Eddie. You walk up and knocked on the door. It takes Eddie a few minutes to open the door and when he does he has a cocky smile on his face. 

“Hey Munson.” You say as he moves away from the door to allow you in. 

“Hey Y/n.” He playfully replies. Even though he’s been calling you by your first name for months now it still leaves butterflies in your stomach. 

“You know I skipped out on another client to be here.” Eddie boasts as you turn to see him.

“Oh and who's that?” You say crossing your arms over your chest.

“None other than queen of Hawkins herself! Chrissy Cunningham.” He nearly yells and you laugh at his surge of energy.

“Chrissy Cunningham is doing drugs. Yeah right.” You shake your head.

“Yeah she asked for like some harder stuff.” He says shifting through the drawers on a nearby cabinet. 

“You’re gonna deal that poor girl cocaine?” 

“Yeah she probably needs it dealing with that psycho boyfriend of hers.” He says standing up before handing you the usual amount of pot he gives you.“Alright 20 for half ounce today.” You furrow your eyebrows. 

“20? It’s been 15 for the past 3 months.” He shrugs it off but you're still pissed, and you know he didn’t charge that cheerleader this much. “How much did you charge her for.”

“Who?” 

“Cunningham.”

“15.” 

“Then why is it 20 for me when you're offering her 15. God you are just trying to piss me off this week. First my brother and now this?” You glare at him.

“Y/n its 5 dollars I think you can afford it.” You stay silent at his comment. You feel stupid arguing about this with him but it is bothering you. Why is she getting the discounted rate? What’s so special about her? Eddie is way too smart to not put together the pieces either. 

“This isn't about the discounted rate now is it?” He says in an animated voice, almost mocking you, “Is my precious y/n jealous of the other girls I deal to.” He says moving his hand to your chin to caress it.  “Ugh you wish.” You say pushing away his hand. You don’t move away from him though, his body is sticking straight up to yours. His hand with his rings start to caress your thighs, running the slim limbs up and down the soft plush of them. He moves his head to the side of your neck so his breathe is tickling your skin. You gulp as goosebumps form on your body. 

“Cmon you know you are the only one I give my very very special deal to.” You look at him with the most dazed expression he’s ever seen on you. Your lips are parted and your eyes are dilated. You don't even know how his light touches have such a colossal effect on you but they do. It's the worst. It’s hell. But god you want him so bad.

One of his hands moves down to your waist and his other one reaches up to hold your face. You're not one for light touches you want to be touched with fire and passion not shy lightness. You move your arms to wrap around Eddie’s and smash his lips into yours. He kisses you back greedily.

“God I hate you Munson.” He chuckles at your words and starting to walk you back until you reach the hallway his bedroom is in. He grabs your hand and guides you into his room. 

“M’lady deserves to be worshiped in a real bed.” He says in a loud obnoxious voice as he gestures you towards his twin bed. You roll your eyes but smile slightly rolling your tongue over your teeth. You go to sit on the bed and Eddie follows quickly behind you. He lays you on your back as he hovers above you. 

“Shut up and fuck me, Munson.” He tilts his head above you. You grab onto his hair and pull him into you, kissing him with a force. His hands move to your waist and begin to dig into your skin. You know there are gonna be marks of his rings on your plush skin tomorrow. 

You’re desperate for him. You grab onto his vest and jacket and slowly push it off his body as your kissing continues you. You sit up to pull your shirt off and he follows your lead. You also unclip your bra and toss it across the room. The minute your tits are exposed, Eddie’s greedy fingers move up from your waist to your already stiff nipples. They’re sensitive. The nimble tips of his fingers begin to circle the bud before he breaks the kiss he has with you. He moves his head down so he can attach his mouth to your left nipple. You throw your head back as his tongue flicks your bud around his mouth. 

“Fuck Ed-” You say craning your neck to look down at him. His eyes flick up at you as he notices you staring at him. The sight in front of you is enough to make you come. Eddie looking up at you with doe eyes while sucking on your tit is a sinful sight but you're grateful you’re seeing it. His eyes are mesmerizing. Large soft brown orbs focusing on you and your pleasure. You see him move his hand that was on your right tit, to readjust his jeans and the hard on that is begging to be touching. You lightly tug his hair as a sign to let him know to release your nipple. 

You move from underneath him and he then rests on his back, watching you like he’s in a haze not knowing what your next move may be. Your hand moves down to the strain in his pants, lightly petting it. He groans at the friction that is placed on his aching cock. You play with the button of his jeans until it’s undone and your fingers play with the zipper. Once it’s down you move your cold hand to touch the bulge in his boxers. This time he lets out a louder moan as you’re closer and closer to touching him raw. 

“Please touch me, just touch me.” You turn your head to him and pout. You grab the top of his jeans and pull them down past his legs. You then do the same thing with his boxers, however as his dick springs out you don’t touch it. You just let it stand there, throbbing and ready for someone to give it attention. Eddie has the back of his hand resting against his forehead and his other hand twitches, debating either he should touch it himself or not. “Please y/n, just do anything.” You move closer to his large member and place your tongue on the base. You slowly drag your tongue up it until you reach the head. You then place your mouth around his aching head and start bobbing your head. With what you can't fit into your mouth you jerk off with your hand. 

Now it’s Eddie’s turn to throw his head back against the pillows. He involuntarily lifts his hips up but cradles your head after as a form of apology. He lets out little whines and groans as his dick is starting to hit the back of your throat. You start to suck in your cheeks and Eddie grabs the sheets. 

“Y/n, y/n please I’m not ready to come yet.” You bob your head a few more times before you pop him out of your mouth. You jerk him off a few more times before you move up to where he’s sitting on the bed. He pulls you into his mouth for another hot and wet kiss before he breaks it again. He is now the one playing with the zipper of your pants, unzipping it at an antagonizing pace. You loose patience as you start to quickly pull down your pants until you’re left in your cotton panties with a little pink bow in the front. Eddie’s fingers start to play with you above the fabric. He looks down at your covered cunt then back to you, who was already looking at him. His fingers slowly circle your clit. He moves his hand from the fabric to your stomach and starts to slide them beneath the cotton. His raw cold fingers lightly touch your clit but your body is jerking up at the touch. He then moves them further down to collect the wetness that has been pooling in your pants since you entered his trailer. He moves his mouth to your ear.

“Tell me how much you want your pussy licked sweetheart.” God you couldn’t speak. No man you've ever been with was like this. No one was as perfect as Eddie. “Awe I guess she doesn't want me to suck on her little clit.” His words catch you by surprise but you then act on his words.

“No, no Eddie. Please, please, please lick me. I need it. I need you.” You beg against his neck. You feel him grin and then begins to move down onto the bed where you were minutes ago. His lips are centimeters away from your pussy and his fingers start to move the fabric to the side. He dips his tongue into the mess of your cunt. Immediately the tip of his tongue touches your clit and you’re moaning out while grabbing onto his hair for stability. He’s drooling against your cunt at the taste that is exploding on his tongue. 

“Fuck you taste so good.” He mumbles against your cunt. You groan happily as he continues his tasting of your cunt. His tongue moves between flicking your clit over and over again and giving it long licks. With each lick to your clit your body spasms with pleasure, building up a knot in your stomach that you’re certain with burst at any second. He then moves his right hand that has the rings on them up to your sopping entrance and starts to slide his pointer and middle finger in. The coldness of the metal sends shocks through your body. starts roughly fucking you on his fingers and your body is in heaven. You know you're gonna come soon and you grip Eddie’s forearm to signal to him that you are. He doesn’t stop his movements, this only encourages him to pound into your cunt faster and faster until the twig gets tighter and tighter before you grip his hair and lift your hips up with a jolt and you moan out loudly. 

Eddie pulls back and he looks to see his good work. Your chest is heaving up and down as you try to recover from the intense orgasm you just experienced. Eddie looks proud of himself as he moves back up to you with a cocky smile and his hand of your waist, already trying to be more of his fix. 

“You look so hot when you come on my fingers. Every time, it’s priceless.” You shake your head at him playfully. You know he's giving you a few more minutes to cool down but you don’t need it. You just need him. You connect his lips with yours again. He starts to move so he is hovering above you again. You feel his hard cock against your leg, silently begging you to let him fuck you. 

“Please Eddie, please fuck me.” You moan against his lips and he nods his head hastily.

He lines himself up with your entrance. He slowly pushes himself in causing both of you to gasp. He grabs onto your waist for stability as he continues to push himself until he’s bottoming out. Once he’s fully in you he starts to move his body with a slow rhythm as you wrap your legs around his torso. 

“Ed-Ed.” You manage to strangle out against the feeling of pure pleasure that is running through your body. He follows your lead by also letting out a spring of curses and your name in quiet pants. 

“Such a slut. You like getting fucked in an old dirty trailer don’t you?”

“Fuck Ed, yes” He also adds as he begins to pick up the pace of his fucking. You look at him. His face is fucked out as his eyes are closed in pleasure. His hair is a little sweaty as his hair sticks to his forehead. And he’s still wearing his stupid club shirt. He’s truly never looked hotter.

“You like getting fucked by the school freak don’t you.” You turn to him and shake your head.

“You’re not a freak ok Munson?” He grins at your loss to the battle.

“You think I want any other girl than you? Could never forget about this pussy. Could never get me to stop fucking your pretty pussy sweetheart.” His words are flustering your mind, sending you further and further down a pit of pleasure. How can this man be real? And fucking you so good?

He’s hitting every right stop inside of you until the knot of pleasure begins to slowly untie again. His pace don’t let up when he’s growing closer though. They don’t become sloppy or disorganized, they become stronger and faster. Like he’s trying to get himself and you closer to orgasm faster than anticipated and it feels so good. You then feel yourself clench around him, coming from the insane pleasure.

“God gonna come, where do you want me to come.” He says in response to the tight clench of your cunt. 

“Chest.” You’re barely able to get out after coming down the waves of your high. He pulls out suddenly and then starts jerking himself off at a quick pace. He still his moments and then throws his head back as you feel a warm sticky substance drip onto your tits. Eddie stays where he is on his knees for a second to catch his breath. He then takes off his shirt and starts to clean you off.

“Charming.” You snicker at his t-shirt being the item he decided to clean you off with. 

#eddie munson #eddie munson smut #eddie munson x reader #stranger things #stranger things imagine #stranger things 4 #stranger things fanfiction #fan fiction

[abibliophobiaa]

talking in your sleep

chapter one - burnin’ for you

- eddie munson x afab!reader; 80s summer camp slasher au.

masterlist

🏕️🛶

warnings: (20k words) overall this fic will be dark in tone, though this chapter is mostly light and fluffy; r has a father for the sake of a future conflict, though they are not named; thriller; possession; alcohol and recreational marijuana use; allusions to sex; oral (f receiving); allusion to oral (m receiving); 18+, minors dni.

additionally— while this is technically an au, the upside down does exist here. the original core st crew has experienced the events of seasons 1-3, but in a different capacity that will become clear through the narrative. also a loose loose loose adaption of s4 with a slasher flair

🏕️🛶

There are rumors that Hawkins is cursed. 

That there’s a gateway to hell in the town’s epicenter—paved by the blood of innocents. 

That there’s a whole world roaming beneath, teeming with monsters who have gaping maws full of endless rows of teeth that walk on twos and fours, screeching bats, and swirling shadow beasts. 

But they’re rumors all the same. 

Hushes in hallways, within the four walls of homes, by conspiracy theorists trying to strike up their next controversial story. 

Stories told around campfires to wide eyed children, fear struck grave and true behind their gazes, or by those wishing to warn others to stay away, to reconsider coming—to turn back while they still have time. 

Those same rumors fueled by the terrible murder of the Creel family, a haunting story of a girl who disappeared and was never found again, the impossibility of the zombie boy who was gone from this world one day and alive the next, the devastating fire that burned down the Starcourt Mall and took the lives of many. 

Tragedies. All of them. Twisted to fit a narrative. Because Hawkins is safe. Inconspicuous. Boring. 

Nothing strange happens there. 

Nothing, that is, until the summer of 1986. 

 ——

 “Hello campers,” you call out through the megaphone. “Welcome to Camp Firefly for the summer season of 1986. Dustin—please stop pulling on Max’s hair. Max, don’t kick Mike in the shins! Oh, Juliet, honey, please don’t eat the gl—”

The megaphone is snatched from your fingers by none other than Steve Harrington. All long limbs and debonair stature. Dark hair gleams in the sunlight, broad shoulders shifting as he raises the megaphone to his lips and shouts, “Okay, listen up shitheads. Unpacking starts now. In one hour, we’ll be meeting in the mess hall for our welcome dinner. Be there or be square.”

You open your mouth to argue, to yell at him for breaking up your speech, but a pair of arms winds around your waist. Eddie’s form thumps into yours, his tall and gangly body having just rushed out of his parked van to hastily barrel into you. Four weeks; you’d gone four weeks without seeing him, and it had felt like years. Sighing, you lean into his embrace. Steve shakes his head beside the both of you, continuing on with the welcoming speech for the rest of the campers who are paying attention. 

You, on the other hand, find yourself preoccupied with the boy insistent upon sliding his palms into the back pockets of your shorts, pulling you flush against him until your noses brush.

A giggle rises from your throat, your face warming. “Eddie,” you gasp out when a hand squeezes on your flesh. There’s a thwack of your hand against his shoulders, arms loosely around his neck, though there’s no true anger to be found there. Only the prickling nervous anticipation over being seen. You drop down into a hushed whisper, “Not in front of the kids!”

“I’ll have you know, my campers know cooties are real. I’d like to think I’m a great teacher.” His forehead presses insistently into yours, breath warm against your bottom lip. He’s so close now you can smell the mint on his tongue, masking the hint of the cigarette he likely smoked minutes ago beneath. “But I myself happen to be up to date on my cootie shots…”

Another thwack to his abdomen this time, but all it does is have him closing the space between you, ignoring the overly exaggerated gagging sounds of his friend Steve to your left. It’s a long, drawn out press of your lips. Weeks of yearning and wishes, pent up desire, pouring out into the spaces between you. A hum spills from you, unwarranted and yet welcomed by Eddie’s firmer embrace. 

Those arms around you that drag you close pull you in tighter, insistent on keeping you near. A part of you wants to remain there. Forever, if he would allow it. But you have too much to do. Between welcoming the returning campers, assisting new campers, and making sure all the counselors are in position for their job duties, your schedule is packed. 

Full to the brim in your father’s absence. 

“As much as I would absolutely love to spend the afternoon doing this, I need to get to work,” you say, sighing breathlessly as your boyfriend separates from you. His nose nudges your cheek, palms brushing along the curve of your jaw. You kiss him once more, grinning. Lowering your voice so no one else can hear, you add, “Meet me in my cabin in fifteen minutes.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, sweetheart,” he says, pressing a final, lingering kiss to your lips, bowing at the waist. He backs away slowly, finger dragging a slow ‘x’ across his heart. You practically glow with it, heart thundering away behind your ribcage.  

Steve wrinkles his nose beside you and you tip your head to the sky, ignoring him. Eddie’s form is already retreating to your cabin, broad back swathed in a dark tee shifting as he moves throughout the gaggle of children rushing around him like the parting of the sea. 

All around you children giggle. Cars and buses alike weave in and out of the makeshift gravel parking lot. Parents press kisses to their babies' brows and wish their little ones a wonderful month of excitement to come. Wistful gazes meet yours in passing. Friends reunite after months without, hands curling around hands, skipping back to their prospective bunk beds. Girls with friendship bracelets bleached by the sun and time, and boys with their fake swords made of sticks they retrieved in the woods rush along, sights set on their unknown destinations. Your nostrils are filled with the smell of sunblock and the food cooking in the mess hall, the lingering remnants of your boyfriend’s cheap cologne, and the perfume you’d dabbed onto your pulse points earlier that morning for the curly headed metalhead. 

You smile to yourself, letting the summer sun warm your cheeks, and think, It’s going to be a good summer.

 ——

 A fan blows in the distance, but it does little to lower the heat in the room. Does little to chill your sweat slick skin, shirt long pushed high on your chest, moisture pooling in the hollow of your throat, along the dip between your breasts. Your thighs lay splayed out around a narrow pair of hips resting against where you crave him most, fingers dragging lines along the slope of his stomach, the trail of hair leading to the part of him seeking your attention, straining through the sun-faded pair of green shorts adorning his legs, lightened from years of use. 

“Missed you,” Eddie drawls, lips gliding along the soft of your stomach.

Shivers ripple in their wake, toes curling within the tube socks around your calves, lined with that glaring green stripe that mirrors the green accents on your white Camp Firefly shirt. You rip your hand from his abdomen and curl your fingers around his bicep, gasping into open air as he tugs the cup of your bra down and his tongue lathes over a sensitive nipple.

Somewhere against your thigh you can feel him hot and hard and ready—eager and insistent. The wooden beams of the cabin above you blur around the edges as fingers dip down into the waistband of your shorts, teasing at the slickness he finds there. 

“E-Ed,” you rasp, clutching tighter, fingernails digging crescents into his skin at the softest prodding of his middle finger against your center. “Mmm—more.”

That finger dips into the well of slick pooling. Swirls around and around until you’re writhing beneath him, chest rising and falling against his as he leans over to hover above your form, watching the utter bliss sliding over your features. 

“Sweetheart,” he says lowly, voice seemingly dropping an octave. His mouth roams over the curve of your hip bone, nipping at delicate flesh until your stomach clenches and you yelp. “Pretty sure you’re not in uniform.”

He’s right. You’re meant to be wearing the standard white shirt with green lettering or ‘Camp Firefly’ across the front and that silly pair of matching green shorts. But you hadn’t had a chance to change your shorts before the kids started pouring in—before Eddie managed to get you alone. 

He tuts, and with his other hand, Eddie slowly works the button on your jean shorts free, the zipper following suit. The denim brushes along your thighs as he lowers them down your legs, tossing them into the far corner of the room, toying with lace, wet with your want. 

“New?” he murmurs, dipping his middle finger inside you, dragging it in a slow circle that has you clutching at the bed sheets beneath you. At your nod, he grins. “Is this all for me, sweetheart? Should go away on tour more often.”

Eddie’s careful as always as he slides down further toward the foot of the bed, shorts and shirt rumpling. A shudder of breath passes from you as he hikes both your thighs over his shoulders, the balls of your feet resting against the span of his back, as those fingers of his palm at the dough of your thigh. Warm breath skitters across your bare skin, replaced by his mouth a moment later. Warm presses that start at your ankle, dragging up up and up until you’re whimpering, pleading, begging for him without coherent words. Words fail you when he’s like this, intent and amorous, wanting nothing more than to draw out your pleasure, bring you to a peak, have you gasping beneath him in your release, holding you close as you float back to earth with him. 

“Please don’t. Missed you too much,” you nearly beg, eyes rolling back into your skull as he tugs the flimsy fabric aside, nearly ripping it in his haste, and parts you with his tongue. Every other word, every statement, the thoughts you might have shared—they all flutter away into the wind, replaced only by this mouth, these fingers, and this man. “Missed you too much. Oh gosh, just like that, please don’t stop Eddie—”

His answer is the curling of his fingers within you. The blinding white light that dances behind your closed eyes as he licks and teases at your center, coaxing you further along that invisible peak. It burns within your gut, a spark fanned into flame, holding bright into a steady inferno, ready to burst behind your eyelids when a knock sounds at the door, shaking you both from your fantastical reverie. 

Head rolling back into your pillow with a groan, you cry out forcibly, “Who is it?”

“Chrissy…your roommate.” It’s a hesitant voice that greets you. Soft and quiet, but impossibly sweet. The groan that threatens to spill from your lips is swallowed immediately. 

“I totally forgot…” you whisper to Eddie, referring to the girl standing at your doorstep. 

In all your years past, you shared with your father. Now, as the manager for the summer, and Chrissy being the newest addition to camp, you had specifically set her up in your cabin so she could gain a grip on things swiftly in her first summer here at Camp Firefly. Head slumping back against your pillow, you dress in haste, brushing your fingers against your hair and under your eyes to make sure you look presentable, and then walk over to the front door. 

Eddie clears his throat. “Should I head out?” 

You huff a sad sigh, not wanting to see him go. Not after you just got him back. “Rain check?” At his nod, you rush back across the room and press a lingering kiss against his lips. “I’m so happy you’re here. With me.” 

“Me too,” he practically purrs, curling a finger in your belt loop, dropping a final kiss at the center of your forehead. Skin warms under his touch. “Now go—Chrissy’s waiting.” 

There’s a swift crack of his palm against your ass that has you throbbing down to your core, a mock gasp rounding your lips as you turn your head over your shoulder to playfully admonish him. But without the capabilities of doing anything about it, you instead open the door to reveal your beautiful new roommate. 

To say you don’t know Chrissy Cunningham is a lie. Point blank. Everyone at Hawkins High knows her. Recently graduated, incredibly smart, overachiever, and class president. Girlfriend to Jason Carver, and captain of the cheerleading squad. Basically, high school royalty. She’s perfection in a dainty blonde package, with her whimsical laughter and bright eyes, and you can’t help but smile as she pulls you into a hug and excitedly bounces on the balls of her feet. 

It reminds you of your first summer here as a camper. Wide-eyed wonder, with all the hope in the world to go along with it, taking in all the sights, the people, the things. Years later, Camp Firefly still holds that incomparable charm. But it’s different now; especially as a counselor, in charge of making sure all these children have fun, are fed, enriched, and remain alive for the four weeks they’re in your care. 

Though you don’t press them about it, Chrissy and Eddie are technically late. Most of the staff arrives days prior to the campers arriving to run through protocols, to ensure everyone has their proper safety training, the kayaks are checked over for damage, the craft rooms are stocked, meals are decided for the summer session, lifeguard duty is handled, and the like. But this is Eddie’s third summer, and he knows these woods by heart. Chrissy, on the other hand, is a late addition requested by her boyfriend, Jason. You’d been reluctant at first, but another sports coordinator wouldn’t be the worst thing, so you’d added her to the staff list. 

Just as she steps back, you hear the gentle glide of your cabin window shifting upward. A white Reebok covered sneaker presses up to the ledge, drawing Chrissy’s curious gaze from where she stands at your back. Chest burning, you wiggle your fingers at him, his shoulders shrugging. 

“Hey, Chrissy,” Eddie says, grinning widely. She mutters a breathless ‘hi’ back. “I don’t usually make it a habit of sneaking through this window. In case you were wondering…”

He does. 

“I’ll be out of your hair in two seconds,” he adds, boosting himself up and over the windowsill and onto the grass below. At your slowly arching brow, he laughs, “I could have…used the door.”

“Could have used the door, yeah,” you agree, that increasingly familiar sticky fondness toward him bubbling up within you. “See you in the mess hall.”

He backs up as you say it, keeping his eyes on you, thumping against a tree and getting a bunch of leaves caught up in his wonderfully unruly hair. The tops of his cheeks stain red, visible in the slowly setting sun. Smitten—he’s so damn smitten, and he’ll try to hide it from everyone to keep up that metalhead slash dungeon master persona, but he’s absolutely terrible at it and you love it. 

“Bye, Eddie!” Chrissy says gleefully, just as Eddie starts to wave and brush at the leaves poking out haphazardly from dark curls. 

Grinning, you waltz over to the bedroom window, leaning your head out to look at your summer boy turned all year boy. 

“Bye, Eddie,” you drawl a little teasingly, affection dripping from you, sliding the wooden frame shut. 

He pouts and you wave, quick to once more mouth ‘rain check.’ Then, with his form finally retreating to his assigned cabin for the summer, you whirl around to face Chrissy. 

“Okay! Sorry about all of that. I’m the…well, I’m your manager this season. Fred Benson will be your assistant manager, should you need me and not be able to find me at any point. Welcome, we’re so happy to have you here. Now how about we get started on a tour of Camp Firefly?” 

 ——

 Camp Firefly sits on the outskirts of Hawkins. An outdoor oasis nestled deep within the woods, about an hour and a half from the rest of civilization, and home to many campers when the summer season arrives. Stomping grounds of the counselors who roam their wooden cabins, teaching, mentoring and playing with their bright faced youths. 

The sun sits, bright and golden, over the endless sea of emerald green trees. The barest hint of wildflowers and the lake water down the hill hits your nostrils, blown in by the two fans set up around the room to cool the humid summer air. Vaguely, you hear the cicadas bursting into life, the birdsong filtering through the trees kissing heaven, the rush of water in the distance. Beneath it all is the chatter of children, some of the earliest arrivals likely already pestering their counselors about the many activities they’ll be wanting to do, though the first event is always the welcome dinner in the mess hall. 

Gesturing for Chrissy to follow, you usher her out the front door and peer out over the front porch, extending your arms to show her the view from just outside your shared bedroom window. Through the lush foliage just outside your bedroom window, you can see the grassy hill, the sparkling blue water down further below, a long wooden dock that’s also home to a storage cabin full of water sports. Kayaks already bob in the water, their bright colors sparking joy. Vibrant yellows, greens, reds and blues—awaiting their eager pilots. The water gleams a gorgeous azure blue, reflecting a cloudless sky above. 

Your favorite part of every morning is seeing the kids. All their bright smiles, their shoes kicking dirt up as they skip, run, walk and mill about. Those first day jitters remind you of being a younger girl, still a camper, freshly out of school for the session with summer break standing before you and a summer of endless opportunity ahead. You recall your favorite counselors, the way they made you feel, how loved and special it was to spend every day playing, learning and growing. 

And now—now it’s your job. Now you’re in charge of protecting, teaching and encouraging the youth. It’s your job to make sure they never go one day without knowing just how valued, appreciated and loved they are. Seeing their smiling faces, their reception to your encouragement, the way they bloom when exposed to love? It makes all the early morning wake ups, makes every tear shed over a scraped knee or a sprained ankle, all the macaroni necklaces and family portraits, the food fights and arguments between campers, the competitions and music events worth it. 

Chrissy seems enraptured with the whole thing as you lead her down the pathway toward the fire pit in the center of camp. Her head turns everywhere you go, waving to little ones as they rush on by, introducing herself to parents, to the campers she’ll be working with for the next month. You watch her confidence spark to life, flourish, and expand with every minute that goes by beside you. Soon enough there’s that eager bounce to her step that catches your eye, the flick of her ponytail as she greets a new camper with a handshake and a cheery ‘hello,’ the way she starts repeating names of kids after they pass, if only so she can start to remember them all.

Trying. 

She’s trying, and it’s more than you could ask of her as a new addition to the roster and someone who hasn’t done this before. 

“Okay, so let’s start here,” you say, pointing to the fire pit in the center of the camp. On your far right is the ‘Welcome to Camp Firefly’ sign. Stopping in your footsteps, you wait until she’s at your side to proceed. “This is the heart of the camp. We host our campfires here. So that would mean anything from s’mores nights to scary story sessions or icebreaker games. We try to hold them for the kids once a week. Sometimes two, weather permitting. If you’re ever lost, look for the welcome sign.”

“Okay. If I’m ever lost, welcome sign.” She repeats the words slowly, head dipping. Her head whips right and left, peering out against her surroundings. “Got it. We have a lot of kids that come here, don’t we?” 

“We definitely get a good crowd. Mostly Hawkins and Christian Academy students,” you tell her, pulling out your whistle and blowing when you catch Lucas racing after Mike. “Boys! Slow the heck down. Wheeler, your shoelace is also untied! Are you trying to go to Nurse Mooney on day one?”

“Sorry!” They both cry out at the same time, heads bent low as they slow down long enough until they think they’re out of view, and then continue running as quickly as they came, both yours and Chrissy’s heads shaking in laughter. 

“So we passed our cabin, the lake. Over there is the mess hall. We’ll be meeting there at around six for the welcome dinner for the campers and counselors. It’s a good opportunity to meet some of the kids, catch up with friends, and all of that,” you tell her, pointing to the larger building. Pausing, you shift just a bit, where another wooden building looms, doors open to display a stray soccer ball and basketball here and there within. “Over there would be our gymnasium. Obviously we try to do most things outside, but on days it rains that’s our alternative. You’ll find a lot in storage for activities. Steve will show you around there. We also host dances there for the kids. We make a little pizza and ice cream party out of it. Snacks galore, all of that good stuff.” 

You lead her through the back of both buildings, coming up on a pathway that leads to a trail. “Down this trail right here are the girls and boys cabins. Kids are obviously kept separate, but you’ll find that the prank wars start almost immediately. I can always tell by all the shrieking,” you tell her, laughing to yourself at the fondness of the memories that flit through your mind, a kaleidoscope of color and splashes of joy. “Last year the kids got Eddie good. Shouted that Max had skinned her knee—he loves that kid, so he ran to see if she was okay—and he got a bucket of water tossed on him.”

“So we allow the prank wars?” 

“Yeah.” Your feet shift in the dirt. “They’re kids, they’re going to be rowdy, and we encourage it. Some of these kids have a rough go of it during the school year, and this is a sort of escape for them. It’s what I love most about Camp Firefly. Just watching them play, learn…explore. It’s really rewarding. I know it’s only four weeks, but you’ll miss these guys once they’re back on the buses and headed home with their families.”

“Makes you really appreciate the place. I, ah, know sometimes how hard people might have it at home and school, so this place probably means the world to them.” Chrissy stares up at the pathway. At the wooden cabins with their bright, colorful hammocks dancing in the wind on their porches. You wonder briefly what she’s thinking, but she only smiles softly to herself, saying, “Thanks again. For letting me work here.” 

 ——

 “Well look what the cat dragged in!” Dustin calls from beside Eddie, just as you and Chrissy finally wander into the mess hall. 

Eddie barely even has a chance to raise his hand in greeting when the curly haired brunette comes rushing forward into your awaiting arms. Another pair greets you next, long and gangly, with dark hair that definitely looks different than it did last summer. 

Will. 

“I was so excited when I saw you and El on the sign up list,” you tell him, rustling the hairs on his head. His head tips up, leaning into the weight of your hand atop. “So happy you’re all back from California. Did you get a new haircut? Maybe grow a few inches as well?” 

Will merely blushes, stepping back, shoulders brushing with Dustin’s. “Eddie said you’re manager this year,” Dustin starts, but Mike tosses a bread roll at his head and the boy is whirling on the heel and flipping his friend off. 

“Your crush is showing, dipshit,” Mike teases, voice bored and lofty. 

“Be nice,” El grumbles, waving your way. 

Chrissy shifts awkwardly at your side, taking in the numerous pairs of eyes also sitting at the table. From where you’re standing, looking over Dustin and Will’s heads, you can see Max, Lucas and his little sister Erica. All of which are bright eyed and happy to see you, practically bouncing with energy where they sit between Eddie and Steve. Some of the other counselors are at other tables, chatting with their kids and one another. Jason, Chance and Andy are rough housing in the distance with some of the older boys. And you can make out Jonathan and Argyle with Nancy and Robin at the table just beside the one Eddie and Steve sit at. 

Your heart swells over being reunited with everyone. Even if you’d seen them at school only a few weeks ago now. Tugging Chrissy to your side, you clear your throat, drawing the attention of the kids. “This is Chrissy. I’m sure some of you already knew that, but this is her first summer as a counselor.” 

Eyes all over turn to gauge the newest addition to Camp Firefly. Careful perusals, questioning stares, that all eventually melt into curiosity and hopefulness. Before long the kids are ready to bombard her with endless questions as soon as you two find spots to sit down on the mess hall benches. Asking her what it’s like on her first day at camp, if being a cheerleader is fun, what her favorite movies and colors are, what ice cream she likes, what she’d want to be if she woke up as an animal one day. Silly, simple icebreaker things. Small talk that has her loosening as time goes on, easing into a familiar banter that makes your muscles loosen, Eddie’s hand seeking your knee under the table.

“You’re doing well,” he reassures you, and you cover his palm with your own, because, as usual, he knows exactly what you need at the moment. And maybe you are—doing well, that is. It’s the first day of camp, everyone is happy, and things are running smoothly.

Releasing an exhale, you gesture for Chrissy to follow you toward the buffet line, full to the brim with various easily accessible meals. Chicken nuggets, pizza slices, macaroni and cheese, sandwiches, and the like. One thing you’ve always prided the camp in is the ability to go above and beyond making sure each camper’s needs are met—counselors, too. Together you load your plates, recounting the tour around camp, Chrissy regaling you with the names she’s already starting to learn. 

“The redhead is…Max, right?” she asks, and you nod, thinking of your favorite little redheaded youth. 

“That would be her. She’s a toughie, but she means well.” 

She’s also had a rough go as of late, though you don’t tell Chrissy that. Her step-brother, Billy, had been one of the many lost in the fire at Starcourt Mall. It had been a grave loss—all of those lives gone in an instant. It hadn’t mattered how terrible he’s been when alive, it still crushed her all the same. And with her having started high school this year, you can’t even begin to understand the hardships she’s been going through. As often as you could throughout the school year you’ve checked up on her, offered to spend time with her after class, to sit with her in the cafeteria during lunches, but she’s always pushed you aside. Brushed you off, away, out of sight. And you understand—you really do. Seeing her at camp, trying and open to the next four weeks, however, has your chest burning with hope. 

“Then there’s…Will and El. They’re step-siblings. Dustin, he’s Eddie and Steve’s friend. Erica and Lucas…siblings. And Mike.”

“You’re getting it.” You place your macaroni and cheese on your plate and toss on a bread roll, watching as Chrissy shovels a slice of pizza onto hers. “It’ll take some time. But it’s your first day. Trust me, you're doing great.”

 ——

 The welcome dinner passes as usual. Kids and counselors alike catch up and recall their memories from all the months spent apart. You prattle on with your kids and watch Eddie out of the corner of your eye as he talks with Dustin and Mike about whatever fantastical campaign he’s planning for their first DND session on the campgrounds. 

It splits your heart. Makes it swell three sizes. On your right, Chrissy and Erica are caught up in a duel. Whoever breaks first in a staring contest loses, prompted by none other than Lucas himself. Suggesting since it’s Chrissy’s first day, she’s in need of a little ‘initiation ceremony.’ 

You and Robin make light of Steve’s present dating life. Laughing when he expresses he’s not actually on the market because he’s interested in an older woman, but he won’t exactly tell you who. Although, when a certain Miss Mooney walks in, you can’t help but to notice the way his eyes catch her across the room. How he quite literally goes white as a sheet and gulps loud enough the two of you can hear him. 

And maybe your brow arches high on your forehead, and maybe he grumbles for you to mind your damn business, but Robin and you burst into giggles all the same, grinning bright for the boy with hearts quite literally dancing in his eyes for the newest nurse to work the medical cabin for the summer session. 

“Should I invite her over?” 

“Eddie, tell your girlfriend to stop—”

“My girlfriend does whatever she wants,” Eddie chuckles, leaning onto his elbows. “What are you doing now?” 

“Steve is hopelessly in love with Nurse Mooney,” you tease, wiggling your shoulders, grinning widely. 

“Who knows?” Robin bumps her shoulder against his. Steve lets out a sound that resembles a whimper and you can’t help but let out a little snort. Eddie elbows him roughly in the ribs, telling him to ‘look alive’ when Nurse Mooney walks by and settles down at a nearby table. “Maybe this will be the beginning of something beautiful?”

“Should I start singing?” you ask. 

“Summer Nights?” Robin winks, earning a loud groan. 

“On three. One, two—”

“You’re all the worst, okay?!” Steve grumbles, resting his head on the table. “I’m disowning all of you as my friends. I’m not even joking.” 

Summer is officially here. 

 ——

 The first few days of summer pass in the familiar Hawkins heat. Every morning you rise to the sound of your alarm clock and announce over the speakers it’s time for the kids to wake up. Immediately, you’re dressing and preparing yourself for the day. Bright white shirt, green lettering, green shorts. 

Chrissy rolls out of bed yawning and quiet, tiredness clinging to her form, slowly adjusting to the rigid schedule you try to maintain at Camp Firefly. Seven thirty rise, eight in the morning breakfast in the mess hall, and then groups are split into their respective activities for the day.

You merely observe on those initial days, taking in the energetic buzz that seems to linger over the air as counselor and camper alike get back into the groove of sleep away summer camp. Heat slicks your skin as you traipse through the forest floor, waving as you go. 

Steve and Chrissy teach archery one day, bows drawn back, kids lined up across a strip of targets set up far away in the distance. 

On another, you manage to pass the arts and crafts cabin, watching as Robin and Nancy cheer on campers for drawing their bright rainbows, caricatures of their families, replicas of their homes. 

One evening you stumble upon Jonathan and Argyle after a particularly eventful hike, wherein some of the kids came back with various herbs and mushrooms you weren’t exactly sure were safe and up to code. 

Another, you manage to find Eddie bent over, cheering on a little one as they strum carefully on an acoustic guitar, eliciting the proper chords he’d been trying to teach. 

At the lake, you wave and grin as campers paddle across the water in their brightly colored kayaks, cheering on their friends for making it across the way, high-fiving Jason and Andy when they happen to do something especially noteworthy. 

Your phone calls to your father are breezy. The children’s echoing laughter is a backdrop to your conversation. And he only praises you for the job well done, warming you from the inside out. 

I can do this, you think, hanging up the phone and glancing out the window to see a bunch of children running by with colorful pool floats, headed in the direction of the lake. I can actually do this.

Before long it’s the first Saturday of the summer in the mess hall. Which means the traditional food fight. The rules are simple enough. Every year, a kid is chosen from a hat, and they’re the instigator. The person who throws the first spoonful, handful, whatever they choose. But no one knows who that person is. Attack is imminent, and everyone around is a sitting duck, praying they make it out without a bowl full of mashed potato on their head (like last summer, when Erica had very excitedly tossed it right onto Steve Harrington’s perfectly coiffed hair). 

The room is quiet now. Camper and counselor alike seated at wooden tables, glancing about, trying to see who their betrayer will be. Friendship doesn’t matter on ‘Food Fight Day.’ It’s a tradition. Traditions, apparently, trump friendship. One could hear a pin drop, could cut the tension with a knife, trying to see if anyone drops their facade and gives a hint of what is to come. 

And for who. 

Across from you, there’s movement. A spoon rises from beneath the table, poised at the ready within Max’s hands. Your breath hitches as her eyes fall onto yours, spoon scooping up a helping of gravy. Stomach turning, you watch as kids snicker about the table. As Eddie nudges Steve with an elbow, pointing your way. 

“Max, please,” you start, holding up your hands in surrender, “you don’t have to do this.”

“Oh—” She releases her spoon and gravy splatters across your face. You blink once, trying to hold back your disgust and laughter. “But I do.”

After that, it’s a cacophony of joyous giggling in the hall as campters gather around the tables, hands inching closer to the endless rows of food across the tables, preparing themselves for war. Condiments, ranch, ketchups and mustards. Spaghetti noodles and pizza slices. Hamburgers and hotdog buns at the ready, drenched in whatever mystery sauce the children had soaked them in. 

There’s a moment, however brief, where the gravy drips down onto your cheek, glides down your skin, and dances along your upper lip. A moment where there’s a respite in the building of anticipation. Kids all glance around at one another, a silent conversation left to linger in the air. And then, with her spoon filled with macaroni and cheese at the ready, Erica Sinclair stands up on top of the table. 

And screams, “FOOD FIGHT!”

Battle cries echo around the mess hall, and the food fight commences. The air crackles and roars with excitement as fingers smash and push into their respective bowls, projectiles soaring through the air like torpedos and landing on their assigned targets. Casualties are in the midst, children in the way, those unsuspecting, ending up with splashes of red tomato sauce on their faces, crimson splatters like little flowers across their shirts. Lettuce flutters in the air, like confetti exploding into the atmosphere, falling down onto heads and shoulders and the floor. 

You’re running around the table with a handful of macaroni and cheese as Robin tosses a slice of cheese at the back of your head. A frisbee of yellow that lingers against your hair for a moment before falling to the ground. Dustin screams on your right, yelling he’s been hit as a spoonful of mayo hits him right in the eye, body falling to the ground into a dramatic heap. Max screams as Lucas pulls out a slingshot, shouting that he’s using an illegal weapon as he loads brussel sprouts onto the contraption and pulverizes Mike with the projectile.  

Dropping down onto your knees, you army crawl underneath the tables, avoiding oncoming ammunition and the shrieks of children as you make your way over to your target. Every year, without fail, it’s Steve “the Hair” Harrington. Doesn’t matter he wasn’t the chosen first target this year. It’s just as much of a tradition as the food fight in and of itself. And, out of the corner of your eye, you catch your comrade in food arms. Eddie crawls as well, hand covered in a ketchup, using his elbows to leverage himself across the floor. Nearly even gets hit with a potato bun from friendly fire (Argyle, who apologizes profusely when he realizes what he’s done). 

You meet with him in the center, ducking out of the way of a stray cube of cheese, shoulders bumping. “If I don’t make it,” you begin, but Eddie cuts you off. 

“You will make it, you will.” He’s shaking with laughter, covered from head to toe in a mess of various ingredients, but still as handsome as the first day you saw him at summer camp two seasons ago now. “Our target is about seven feet away. You take him from the left, and I’ll hit him from above. Do you hear me?” 

“I do.” You lean over and peck his cheek. “Also, I missed you.” 

“Eyes on the target,” he says, trying to maintain your foolish facade. His features crack, corners of his mouth twitching with his boisterous laughter. “But…I missed you too.” 

“Alright.” You nod, training your gaze ahead where Steve is currently defending himself from an onslaught of pickles. “I’m going in for the kill.” 

It happens in what feels like slow motion. It’s a perfect plan. A great one, really. One you and your friends have been plotting since before the summer season started. Get close enough, hit the target, and call it a game. But as you slide out from beneath your table and rush forward to an unsuspecting Steve Harrington, Chrissy Cunningham barrels through with a squeeze bottle of ketchup. You’re hit. Square in the chest. In your shock and distraction, Eddie fails to notice his comrade is down. Slips out from beneath his hiding space with his handful of ketchup, just as El appears holding aloft two mustard bottles.

You’ve both been caught. 

Steve saunters forward, throwing his arms up to deflect incoming projectiles, glancing down at the two of you. Eddie throws his hands up in the air in surrender, swallowing at the red streaks across your chest. Obliterated—you’ve been obliterated by the presently grinning Chrissy, her hair full of stray macaroni salad pieces, chest streaked with other unmentionable condiments and food items, a little piece of lettuce stuck in her shoelaces. 

“Well, well, well. You two really thought you were getting away with a repeat of last year. Surprising, coming from two of my best friends. But a little birdie told me what was to come, so I had time to collect some reinforcements.” He gestures to Chrissy and El, still standing before you determinedly. “Any last words?” 

You’ve prepared for this moment. Prepared for the chance you might be intercepted before you could take down the intended target. 

Eddie glances at you. You look back, head dipping. Eddie trains his eyes ahead, tipping his chin upward. “Look up, big boy.” 

Steve pauses, brows furrowing high on his forehead. “Look up?” He does, and out rushes none other than Robin and Nancy themselves, with a bucket of cold tomato sauce in hand. In his distraction, he doesn't see them coming. In his distraction, he fails to prepare himself for the two of them appearing from behind, pouring the contents over his head, drenching him from the fullness of his hair all the way down to his toes. 

Kids are shrieking in their delight all around you, but as Steve wipes eyes free of tomato sauce, you clasp your hand in Eddie’s. 

Because you know in that instant, you’ve won the war. 

 ——

 The key jangles in your pocket as the two of you stumble into the private showers. He’s everywhere. Fingers digging into your hips, lips against yours, pulling you close. Tugging you forward, craving nearness. Wanting to be close, and then even closer still. Always closer. 

As the children continue their food fight across the camp grounds, you slip into the shower facilities you know are typically vacant during the evening hours. Undisturbed, you close the door behind you, prying yourself away from Eddie’s wandering hands long enough to jimmy the sliding lock into place, grinning when the sound of metal signals peace and quiet once and for all. 

“You’re disgusting,” you chuckle, and he knows you don’t mean it. Not really. 

In a crowded room of thousands, you’d choose him every time. Even like this, with ketchup and mustard across his shirt. Mayo across his proud cheekbones. Macaroni in those dark curls you could spend the rest of your days toying with. He’s still everything you could ever hope for—and he looks at you like he thinks the same. Like even with your shirt covered in ketchup, streaks of red across your chest, the likely remnants of the cheese frisbee at the back of your head, and the rice clinging to that coagulated patch of mayo on the leg of your shorts, he would still think you’re the most beautiful woman he’s ever laid eyes on. 

Eyes that roam over your form even now. Dark in the growing moonlight. In here, where there’s nothing but quiet. The chaos of the campers long gone, leaving you alone in the sanctuary of togetherness. Tentative feet carry you closer, hands trailing the sides of Eddie’s right arm, running over the short sleeve that covers the wyvern tattoo you know rests high along his tricep, trailing lower still down to his wrist, his hand. With trembling fingers, you grip his palm in hand and raise it up, over your hips, over your sides, curling over your breast. Gasp into his opened mouth just millimeters from yours as his fingers knead the sensitive flesh, his husky voice whispering your name into the empty vestibule. 

In here, you are merely two people, still exploring the newness of your relationship. There are no responsibilities, no children calling your name, no one there to remind you of your job duties. Here you can lean in and press your mouth to his, swallow the groan that falls from his lips as your hips press flush against his, the growl that echoes as you glide your hand over the patch of hair above his waistband, trailing lower, and then lower still where you find him half-hard in his shorts already and curl your fingers around the fullness of him. 

“You’re kind of gross yourself,” he teases against your mouth, smirking into the skin of your lips as his palm slides down around your back and cups your rear, kneading the flesh until you yelp into him. “We smell like the mess hall.” 

The words are a bucket of ice water thrown onto you. A realization that, yes, you do smell absolutely putrid. A conglomerate of more things strewn about your bodies than you can count on one hand has now had time to sit and attract the summer humidity. Lingers in the air, even as your mouth moves slowly over his, drawing those lovely sounds from him you’ll never tire of. With a reluctant sigh, you part from his embrace, taking a step back to watch as he reaches down and tugs his shirt free from his form. There’s a new tattoo across his ribs. A coiling snake that curves up his side, black and white linework immediately drawing the eye to the forefront. Curiosity beckons you forward, fingers brushing along skin, along the lines, Eddie’s dark gaze following yours. 

“Got this while you were on tour?” you ask. 

“Figured it would be a surprise,” he says, smoothing a palm over the side of your face. “Do you like it?” 

“I do.” And it’s not a lie. Not as you brush along his ribcage, grinning to yourself as he tenses and twitches under your ministrations, teeth pressing into his bottom lip to keep quiet. 

Exhaling, you take a step back and tug your shirt off, rubbing at your bicep as his chocolate brown eyes run along your silhouette. Sensing your hesitance, he whispers, “You’re beautiful, you know that, right?”

“Never hurts when you remind me.” 

“You are.” 

It continues like that. He tugs his shorts off and kicks them into the far corner. You remove yours and place them on a towel rack. His socks become a pile on the floor with yours. His boxers are thrown haphazardly, and your underwear follow the same, becoming a heap alongside your bra. The water itself is luxuriously warm. The spray coasts along your skin, warming you from head to toe. With a hum, you turn around to face away from Eddie, letting the steady stream run along your face, washing you clean. A broad pair of arms circle low around your hips, his chin tucking over your shoulder, mouth at your ear. And you linger like that, with the steady flow of water washing away the remnants of your food fight, his body warm against yours, and the rest of the world fading into the background. For a moment, time slows. There’s nothing but you and Eddie, your private oasis, and the love shared between the two of you, full to the brim, threatening to burst at the seams. 

The two of you take turns cleaning one another. He glides a bar of soap gently over your skin, and you do the same for him. Shampoo is built into a lather and rubbed into scalp, mouths meet in the middle to kiss away the sting when suds manage their way in sensitive eyes, and hearts hammer faster as the bar is tossed out of the shower curtain and mouths become fervent, needy, persistent. 

Outside, campers and counselors alike are shrieking and giggling, but inside there’s only this moment. 

This man. 

“What are you—” It’s a question broken off into a huff of breath. A gasp as your knees hit the shower floor, eyes round as they seek his face. “You don’t have t—”

“I want to.” 

And soon, your oasis becomes your own symphony. A melody only the two of you know. Kisses along his thighs. The tender presses of your mouth over the sensitive flesh of his abdomen. Nips laid into skin, utterances of his praises. Pleas of ‘like that’ and ‘good girl’ as you finally take him into your mouth. Grunts and groans. Whimpers and moans. Fingers that cradle the back of your hand, but never push. It builds, grows, bursts behind his eyes. Hits a peak, reaches a crescendo, and those final lingering notes where he lifts you back to your feet, himself boneless and tired, eyes hazy as he leans down and captures his mouth with yours. 

And you return with equal fervor, happy to please, hopeless when it comes to the man. 

But there’s a knock at the door, and you know the food fight will have been finished by now. Accept the fact you can't stay hidden away from society forever. There’s a final brush of your lips over his, and the acceptance of responsibilities, but those memories of stolen moments remain all the same. Even as you dress in tandem. Even as you slip your shorts back on, your socks, your shoes. As he shakes his wet hair out, letting the curls fall as they will, his mouth roving over your shoulders, eliciting a peal of laughter from you. Even as you scrunch your nose when he blows a raspberry into your neck, if only so you'll smile at him. 

You bite your lip and ignore Robin’s curious gaze as the two of you slip out one after the other. As Steve tuts mockingly, appraising both your forms with weary eyes. Even as you slip back into your cabin after one final lingering kiss on the front steps, Eddie’s hands cradling your face, and your arms around his shoulders. And especially as Chrissy greets you in the doorway, her own blonde hair freshly washed, an oversized hoodie falling freely over her form. You dress quickly in the bathroom, tossing your dirty clothes into a hamper and pulling on a comfortable pair of shorts and a ratty old tee shirt that has one too many holes in it. Your feet slide into a pair of slippers and you walk back into the main room. You don’t question where she’s been, nor do you tease for the bruise you spot on her collarbone. And she doesn't prod or pry over the one that must have slipped away, left to linger on your neck. 

Instead you curl onto your sides, away from one another. She kicks her socks off at the foot of her bed, and you throw your slippers into a heap on the floor. You reach over and tug on the pull cord of the lamp. The room descends into darkness. There’s only the sounds of your breathing, the hammer of your heart, and the memories of kisses in dark shower stalls, Eddie’s mouth on yours, yours on his, and hands on bodies. 

You call Chrissy’s name hesitantly into the darkness of the room. Wanting to ask her about the day. Wondering if she enjoyed it, if she was enjoying her time thus far. But you’re only met with the sound of her quiet breathing. Gentle inhalations and exhalations of your reluctant roommate. 

Tomorrow—you’ll ask her tomorrow. 

 ——

 It’s not intentional—the way it all starts that second summer you share with Eddie. 

Eddie’s loud and boisterous. Rowdy. Charismatic, frenetic, energetic. He’s different, unique, atypical. Stands outside of societal norms and has no qualms about it. Lives in the spotlight, if only to keep those nearest to him safe. 

He’s also a worker at your father’s camp. Has been for two years now as a favor to his Uncle Wayne. For years, his uncle and your father work at the same power plant when your father isn’t directing the summer program at Camp Firefly. 

Eddie and you aren’t friends. Haven’t been. He’s the kind of person you pass in the hall. Maybe you wave, maybe you give him a smile, a curt nod. But you’re most certainly not friends. And over the summer you’re often on opposite sides of the camp. Eddie usually goes to the music and arts cabin, while you remain on the lake as a lifeguard or helping around wherever else help may be needed. 

It’s that second summer something changes. Eddie’s…well, he’s always been attractive. Dark hair, dark eyes, those tattoos lining his arms. He smiles more your way, interjects in your conversations with your friends, opens up more. You start to hang out. Alone. Away from the prying eyes of your friends, talking about everything and nothing. Learning, growing, enjoying merely sharing space with one another. 

And it’s one day, while you’re both assigned cleaning duty after your father had caught the two of you smoking on camp grounds that it really starts. The two of you sit in the gymnasium, mops and brushes in hand, sweeping and disinfecting the surfaces. It reeks of sweat and dirty tube socks, like teenagers and food thrown away and forgotten in the garbage, and yet nothing prevents the way your heart thumps a little swiftly, how you’re aware of every inch of your body around him, the way he regards you as you work. 

“Thanks,” he says out of the blue, wringing out the mop, draping it in the wheeling cart. 

Your brow arches and he drops down beside you, extending a hand to you. Passing over your brush, he scrubs at a particularly dirty patch you’ve been working at for the better part of ten minutes. 

“For, uh, taking the blame.” 

As your father had marched over to where you and Eddie had sat smoking in the woods earlier, you snatched the joint from Eddie’s fingers and stamped it out quickly. Kept it tucked away, though there had been no avoiding he’d seen it. It was inevitable. His face had grown severe, brows narrowed, wondering when his ‘little girl’ had taken up the habit. And you’d shrugged, pretended it meant nothing, unaffected. As a result, both of you were banished for the afternoon to cleaning duties, making sure the place was scrubbed from top to bottom. 

A punishment that felt a little like fate, if you were honest with yourself. 

“It’s no problem—”

“I just—you didn’t have to do that,” he says, tossing the brush into the bucket on his left. Drops down onto his knees, staining the green of his shorts darker in the sudsy puddle below. “I need this job, believe it or not, and my uncle would have killed me if I fucked things up with your dad.”

“Eddie, it’s fine. I…I wanted to,” you remind him. “I like spending time with you.” 

He glances down at the floor, hair spilling about his shoulders. For a moment, your lips part, afraid you might have said too much—might have made him uncomfortable. But his ringed fingers reach across and twine loosely around yours, testing the weight of them within his fingers, gauging your reaction. Dark, chocolate brown eyes rise to yours, your palm shifting his hand to face upward within your own. Gentle touches glide over the curve of his hand, the lines and creases there, the calluses from guitar strings. 

“This okay?” you ask, finally lacing your fingers with his to linger in the gap between the two of you. 

He nods, shifting closer. Closer and closer until your knees brush. “Yeah—yeah, it’s perfect.” 

He shifts closer again, head dipping a little. You’ve kissed other people before. Small things, never serious. A game of truth or dare around the campfire only after a couple beers, after a date once or twice, but never like this. Never with a boy you’d liked for the better part of the summer. Never someone like Eddie, who made butterflies erupt in your belly, made you feel all those silly emotions in all the movies you’d seen where a guy meets a girl and they fall in love. 

This is different. Feels different. There’s a weight and importance to it. A desire to get it right. So you shift closer, soaking the bottom of your shorts, but you don’t find it in yourself to care. Not when his nose brushes your cheek, not when you can feel his breath on your bottom lip, can smell the stick of gum he’d been chewing on, can nearly taste the cinnamon you’ll find there if you do. 

“This okay?” he asks this time, bringing his right palm up to curl around your cheek, warming your skin. 

It’s brief. It’s so brief after you nod. The softest caress of his mouth along yours, a whisper of skin touching skin, before your father’s gruff voice breaks the silence with a harsh reminder from the upstairs storage room, “Doesn't sound like a lot of work is getting done in here!”

Bodies jolt apart, cheeks burning hot, hearts burning brighter. 

But it marks a newness. A beginning that builds and grows as you explore the start of ‘togetherness’ those last days of summer at Camp Firefly. It’s kissing behind the gym when no one is around and he can sneak you away, it’s Eddie helping you out and into bedroom windows after hours, spending time together tangled under the stars. 

Later, in those last weeks of summer camp, it’s exploring hands in the dark, over clothes and under. It’s quiet whispers of ‘are you sure’ and eyes that bore into your soul, his mouth inches from yours. It’s your words of consent, it’s his reciprocation. It’s giving yourselves to one another on that last day of packing up camp. Standing before one another in your now abandoned cabin you generally share with your father. Eddie’s hands rest on your hips, and yours toy with the curls brushing his shoulders. Your noses dip together, mouths mingling in the center, bodies crushing in close. His hips press into yours and you feel him hot there, unbearably so. 

And you grow eager, fingers curling in the leather of his jacket, pushing it free from his shoulders, nails raking along the skin that lingers beneath his ratty old tee shirt. You tug that free and he helps you out of your shirt. An awkward gaggle of limbs and tear stained, giggle kissed cheeks. It’s a silent perusal of eyes as you slip off layers of clothing. Your bra, his pants, your underwear, and his boxers. They become heaps in the corners of the room as you touch each other, letting fingers rove in places you’d only ventured alone within the privacy of your bedrooms. It’s sharing that newfound intimacy with another person, for the both of you. 

And yeah, Camp Firefly might have been where it all begins, but it only just starts the summer of 1985. 

 ——

 Every summer, staff rotates the weekends some of the counselors get a night off. It’s always one day where everyone can take a night to relax. That day just so happens to be the first Saturday at camp wherein you’re able to stretch your legs in front of you, donning an oversized Camp Firefly hoodie with your name stitched over your heart, sandaled feet warming by the fire. 

The orange glow crackles and dances before your eyes. Sparks jolting onto the wood below, embers dimming as quickly as they come. Warmth heats your cheeks, draws you closer to the comfortable slumber you can’t wait to take advantage of later. For now, you reach over onto your left and slide your fingers over Eddie’s. His head turns your way, dark eyes clashing with yours as those ringed fingers lace with your own, giving you a quick squeeze. 

Robin and Steve sit nearby on a pair of chairs. Heads bent low, voices quiet in the midst of a private conversation. On their left are Argyle, Jonathan and Nancy. Argyle works on rolling a couple joints as the trio chats, his head bobbing often, silky hair catching and gleaming in the moonlight. Jason and Chrissy recount tales about their kids—Jason with the ones on the lake, teaching them to kayak, showing them proper swimming form and the like; whereas Chrissy explains how her kids learned how to play soccer with Steve’s help. 

Somewhere in the distance you can hear Fred practically fretting himself half to death. Questioning how it is all of you can be spending time away, while the rest of the staff lingers behind. And Chance promptly tells him to ‘shut the fuck up,’ just as he takes a sip of his own beer. 

With a sigh, your head leans back against the fabric of your chair, the can of beer in your hand already lukewarm. You’ve barely sipped any—mind still faraway, recalling the day, making note of what worked and what didn’t that week, trying to keep up with inventory, already planning on your phone call with your father. 

Noticing your daze, Eddie’s thumb brushes along the inside of your wrist. Warm and welcoming. Soothing in a way that has your head rolling a bit, fingers wanting nothing more than to push into those dark curls and remain there, the rest of those around you falling away, leaving you alone with your favorite guy. 

“I’ll still never get over it,” Andy drawls, leaning back against his chair. Tina shifts on his lap, a beer bottle hanging loosely in her hand. You arch a brow in curiosity, and maybe a bit of warning. “The Freak and the Princess. Who would have thought?”

You tense beside Eddie, and he tips his head up to Andy. “Seriously man, get fucked.”

“Testy, testy.” At your glower, he continues, "I'm just joking with you and our Princess here.” 

The man in question rises from his chair, nearly sending Tina falling to the floor in his haste. His fist thumps down on the shoddy radio perched on a wooden stump. “Pass the Dutchie” spills out, the joyful tune breaking up the hoots of owls, the frogs bellowing in the lake, and the gentle night song of grasshoppers. His zip up jacket shifts as he moves, dark hair unkempt still from spending most of the day in the hot sun, jumping in and out of the lake. 

“I think we need to liven this party up,” he says, tipping his head back, guzzling down the rest of his beer. Tina giggles airily from her chair, hair twirling around her index finger. Andy shoots a sly grin her way, brows waggling. You scoff, rolling your eyes. “Anyway, I heard this really interesting story recently.” 

“Oh?” Chance asks, looping an arm around Fred’s shoulder, dragging him nearer to the fire and shoving him down into a chair. “Come on Benson. It’s not going to kill you to enjoy one night out—”

“Actually it’s imperative that—”

“Benson,” Jason warns. “It’s one of our only days off. Give it a rest.”

“Jason,” Chrissy sighs, nudging his shin with her shoe. “Be nice.”

“Anyone got a light handy?” Argyle calls from the other side of the fire, finally done rolling. “Enjoy, brochachos. Some good shit we got today.”

He’s referring to his and Eddie’s side business, the two having become fast friends since he moved to Hawkins only a few months ago now from California with Jonathan and the rest of the Byers family. Your father definitely doesn’t know about it, and you intend to keep it that way. 

Fred’s already been threatened if he knows what’s good for him, and if he wants a chance at a second summer as assistant manager, he’ll shut his trap and avert his eyes. The slow hesitance of him presently reaching for his beer tab and popping his can open reassures you that the breath you’re holding can release into open air, lungs expelling gratefully. 

The joints are passed around the fire, split with those wanting to participate. 

“Sweetheart?” Eddie asks, quietly so no one hears. You find you prefer it that way—the fondness of the nickname from his lips like a secret meant only for your ears.

Normally you’d say yes, having spent many nights at Lover’s Lake in the early weeks of your relationship smoking by the water, basking in the newness of your romance, talking about life and the twinkling constellations above. But at your hesitation and the soft shake of your head ‘no,’ Eddie lights his own, his thumb grazing the inside of your wrist once more. 

The group descends into a semblance of quiet, broken up by the exhales of smoke into the air, the scent swirling in your nostrils. Andy drops back down into his chair, done with his gallant twirl in a slow circle, garnering the attention of his mostly involuntary crowd. 

“Have any of you heard of…the realm that lives beneath Hawkins?” 

Your group lets out a round of frustrated sighs and groans, all of you having heard the tales told by the investigative programs, your bored neighbors. Hawkins, your gateway to hell town, harbinger of death and blah blah blah bullshit. For years, it’s been idle chatter, told by those looking for controversy. Conspiracies. 

But there are realities to every story. Newspaper articles conveying the events that happened, television programs documenting the tragedies that befall every town. Tragedies. Unfortunate circumstances that led to lives lost. And yet there are those who would dig up those graves for a sordid story. For their own entertainment. 

“Monsters that crawl on twos and fours—”

“With claws and rows and rows of teeth,” Steve finishes, rolling his eyes, sighing exasperatedly. “We’ve all heard the stories, Andy.” 

“Yeah, but what about the stories where they literally strip the flesh from a human body?” He whirls his face closer to you and Eddie and you jolt in your chair. “Rows of teeth that can skin a human. Made to be an apex predator.”

“Andy,” Nancy warns with the roll of her eyes. 

“Have you heard the story of Henry Creel, though? The guy who killed his family in 1959?” he asks. The group settles into an eerie silence, bodies shifting around the fire to attention. “Mom and sister, bodies unrecognizable. Mangled. Dad’s locked away. In Pennhurst.”

“Andy…” you cry, breath hitching at the brutality of it. 

There were stories, yes. You’d heard of the Creel family. No one ever ventured to their abandoned home in the woods. No one dared. You weren’t one to believe in those stories. They were stories, after all. Stories people have been telling for decades, meant for entertainment and to elicit terror. 

“It’s that abandoned house in these very woods,” he says, opening another beer. “They say he died too. That he’s some sort of spirit now that haunts the halls of that home. That he feeds off of grief and guilt and trauma, claiming souls for him to open the gate beneath Hawkins. For every person he kills, he gets closer to literally making Hawkins hell on earth. I'm convinced the tragedies we keep hearing about…I think they’re part of some sort of ritual of his. He’s been getting stronger all this time, just waiting for the perfect moment.” 

“Andy, that’s absurd,” Robin splutters, glancing amongst Nancy, Steve and Jonathan. Each wears a look of varying degrees of concern. Steve’s brows knit together, Jonathan shifting wearily to look at Nancy, Nancy staring off into the distance. There’s no time to dawdle on what those expressions mean as Robin opens her mouth again, prattling, “You can’t honestly believe that a dead guy is doing all of this.”

“Just give it a rest, will you, man,” Steve adds, another roll of his eyes that’s so obvious you wonder if everyone just shuts up for a moment you'll hear it. “There’s no…other dimension of monsters and no dead dude sacrificing the souls of Hawkins to open some gates.”

Andy shrugs. “You scared, Harrington.”

“Horrified,” he drawls, and you snort. At that, his lips twitch. “Now can we move on since I’m shaking like a leaf out here in my terror?” 

“Yeah, dude, pretty sure you talking about dead people is killing our high,” Argyle agrees, passing off his joint to Jonathan. 

The song shifts to “Hungry Like the Wolf” and the conversation changes as well. To lighter topics now, things that don’t make nervous jitters crawl up your spine, don’t make you want to sleep with one eye open at night. Argyle is fully transitioning into life here in Hawkins, and plans on staying for the foreseeable future. Steve and Robin are working harder than ever at Family Video, with Steve being promoted to manager since Keith was moved to another location. Nancy and Jonathan plan on signing a lease to an apartment some time later this year, and when everyone turns to you and Eddie all you can do is express that you’re both doing well. Eddie’s just gotten off of a small, local tour, you’re planning on business college in the fall to eventually help your father run the camp permanently. 

It’s not before long that the gentle hum of music, the smell of the crackling fire mixed with the weed, the tang of beer on your tongue, and the quiet conversation lures you into a warm embrace. Eyes fluttering, you cup the bottom of your jaw within your palm, elbow propped up on the fabric of your camping chair. You doze off for minutes, maybe hours, you’re uncertain, before you feel the gentle glide of Eddie’s finger along the line of your temple, the top of your cheek. A low hum spills from your lips, and you wake to find the guys pouring water on the remnants of the fire, while others pack away the snacks and alcohol. The camping chairs are loaded into their respective bags and slung over shoulders, and it’s time to head to bed, the first staff part of the summer a success. 

Forest floor crackling and rustling beneath your feet, you follow beside Chrissy while Steve, Eddie and Jonathan chat with Argyle up ahead. Nancy and Robin have locked arms with one another, bodies swaying likely from alcohol and weed still buzzing in their system and you trail to your left where Chrissy is watching them and glancing your way every so often. Her teeth worry her bottom lip, like she wants to say something, like she doesn’t know exactly what that even may be. 

“Tonight was fun,” Chrissy says, body nearly brushing yours. You reach across your chest to cup your biceps, hugging yourself. There’s a pause. A momentary hesitation that has your skin prickling with awareness. “Did you have fun?”

“I did,” you admit, allowing yourself the unfamiliar comfort of her heat against you. 

This seems to be suitable for your cabin mate, light eyes darting to yours in the moonlight, crinkling around the edges in glee. Not a friendship, not just yet, but something. An olive branch. 

“Look—I know we didn’t—”

“Watch out, it’s Henry Creel coming to steal your soul!” 

A pair of hands clutch at your shoulders, jostling you wildly in a pair of unwanted arms. The shriek that spills with you slices the air, heads turning immediately to the source. Heart hammering, you’re hardly aware of your surroundings as Steve and Eddie barrel forward, shoving Andy away from you and threatening him to never put his hands on you again. Andy hits the ground with a loud thud, Eddie’s chest rising and falling rapidly in his exertion as he stares down at him. The man on the forest floor cackles, chest shaking with the throes of his entertainment, palms already visibly torn up from where he swiftly tried to break his fall. Vaguely you recognize Fred’s worried voice, trying to ease up the tension—and failing—thin and wobbly, as though at any moment your father will burst into the clearing and banish you all to your cabins. 

Eddie whirls around to rush by your side, but Chrissy’s already tugging you into the cradle of her arms, reassuring him that she’s got you. “You guys go finish up, I’ll take her back to the cabin,” Chrissy explains, running a hand over the back of your head. Your body shakes, heart still pounding away from the suddenness of his antagonizing. “Andy, do you have to be such an asshole all the time? Grow up!” 

His reply is the wiggle of his fingers and a mocking, drawn out ‘boo’ that has Eddie nearly lunging forward again to shove him back into the ground, before Steve draws him back and reminds him he needs the job, that Andy isn’t worth it, that Eddie will meet up at your cabin later.  

 ——

 The two of you dress in silence. The wood of your shared cabin creaks from ages of wear and tear as you mill about, shifting around one another, gathering your things. You manage a pair of shorts and a long tee shirt, one of the Corroded Coffin ones Eddie had made, and settle down at the foot of your bed with a pillow pressed tight to your chest. 

Chrissy does more or less the same. Brushes her hair at the small wooden vanity in the corner, washes off the little makeup she’s worn that evening, and hurried into the bathroom to brush her teeth. Upon return you’ve found she’s slipped on a pair of silky pajama shorts and a ratty old tee with the Hawkins High logo on it from when you both were still in high school.

It’s funny to think a month ago you walked across that graduation stage. Had collected your diploma, cheered on Eddie for finally receiving his after hard work and dedication to see it come to fruition, and started the beginning of a new season in your life. Endless opportunity awaited the both of you—all of you here at the camp, really. Recent graduates, those trying to figure out their path, trying to determine what they want to do. 

It’s funny to think Chrissy and some of the others on the basketball team had always been strangers to you. Coworkers during the summer, but otherwise people you generally avoided. Ignored. Head down, eyes ahead—it always worked best that way. Your eyes travel down to the neck of your shirt where it falls down a bit around your shoulder, skin still prickling from where Andy had grabbed at you. 

Chrissy catches the movement, brows knitting together on her forehead. “I don’t know why you just sit back and let him act like that toward you. He’s an asshole.”

“He’s an employee,” you remind her, toying with the frayed edge of your shorts. A string dances beneath your fingertip; you wind it around the first indent in your skin, twirling, tugging. “I’m…my dad left me in charge, but I’m not used to this. Any of this. It’s easy for you.”

“What do you mean?” She scoots closer to the edge of her bed. 

“You’re Chrissy Cunningham. People listen to you. At school, they’d part like the Red Sea for you,” you tell her coolly, shrugging. “It’s different for people like me.”

People who walk the halls for years at school, flying under the radar. No one knows you, no one talks to you—not really, at least. You never minded it. Hadn't then, and still do not now. It might have made it easier having someone in your corner, someone to take you under their wing, push you to fly. And sure you had your friends, a small circle, but you preferred the safety in solitude. 

Then there were those like Chrissy, Jason and their friends. Those who shone in the light. Shiny, sparkly things. The kinds of people others were drawn to. Those who people naturally gravitate towards, if only for a chance under the sun. A moment in the spotlight. And you know they’re not perfect. Everyone has their own stories to tell, struggles ahead of them, trials they’ve faced. 

But in high school, in life thus far where you’re either in or you’re out based on what those around you can see and perceive on the superficial exterior alone, you’ve always been out. 

And that’s all you know. 

“Look—it doesn’t matter regardless,” Chrissy says, pinching lip between her teeth, releasing it in a frustrated huff. “Has he always been like that toward you?”

There’s always been an antagonistic relationship between the two of you. Started back in sophomore year when you’d caught him cheating off of your test in math class, and had told your teacher. After that, and a failing grade on his part, he’d been nothing but persistent in reminding you you’d been the reason he’d failed that class and needed to remain in summer school that year. 

The downside also being that you were both still campers at sleep away camp by that point, and would argue over every little competition Camp Firefly hosted. And when he’d applied to be a counselor once old enough, you’d nearly begged your dad to not hire him, but couldn’t bring yourself to explain why. 

Seemed so silly at the time. Still does. Being unable to bring yourself to just plant your feet around him and take no shit from him. 

You grimace. “Yeah.”

“I wish you would say something then. People like that keep doing that because they think it’s okay. They see that you’re not going to say anything and they take advantage of it,” she says, shifting up and off of her bed and onto yours. “I, uh…my mom is kind of like an ‘Andy’ in my life. And for a really long time I just let her…talk to me like that. But no one should berate you, make you question yourself, wonder if you’re good enough.”

Her hand rests lightly against your bare kneecap. Your eyes trail there, and hers meet yours hesitantly, but you cover the weight of her skin with your own palm and feel the corners of your lips upturn. 

“You know, you’re different than I thought you would be,” you murmur thoughtfully, eyes darting up to light ones. Her head tips to her side and you continue, “I thought you might be…scary.” 

Your eyes pinch shut in embarrassment and she bubbles with side shaking laughter. “You thought I was scary? I thought you would be the scary one.” 

“Me?” Your finger presses to your sternum. 

“You were always so involved in school, good grades, on the yearbook committee, a scholarship student for your business school. And now you’re my boss, which is pretty awesome at nineteen years old,” she tells you, shoulder bumping against yours. 

“Just for the summer,” you remind her. “My dad is still the director, just managing from home.”

“Even so. Looks like we both misjudged one another.”

She nods. “Looks like it.”

With a sigh, you shift down onto your back, not minding at all when Chrissy arranges herself comfortably at your side, her arm slung over her waist, eyes trained on the wooden ceiling. The gentle inhalations and exhalations from both of you intermingle in the humid summer air, the gentle hum of your fan blowing a backdrop alongside the chirp of crickets and bellows of bullfrogs straying from the lake. 

“Hey…” Chrissy breaks the silence, and your head turns on the pillow to look at her. “If we’re going to be cabin mates for the next month or so, I think it would be nice if we were, you know, friends.” 

“I’d like that,” you admit, and it comes easily. 

Easy like breathing, what with the way she grins at you like you’ve ignited new hope within her soul. Mouth opening to speak, you’re interrupted by the swift raps of knuckles on a door, and without even asking her to, Chrissy hops up off the bed and flounces over to the door, hair swishing as she goes. 

The door opens and you really shouldn’t be surprised to see Eddie. Eddie’s standing there in a Metallica tank top, the sides cut for a larger hole, revealing the smattering of ink across his form. Heart clenching, you rise to your feet as Chrissy opens the door further and urges him into the open space, arms circling his waist as he draws you flush against his chest. A hand rests on the nape of your neck, the other rubbing a slow circle between your shoulder blades. 

Chrissy whistles a tune unfamiliar as she makes her way back to her bed, kicking her feet up on a pillow. Feeling your cheeks warm, you step back, mindful of your company. Circling your palm in his own, you drag him onto the front step of your cabin, taking in the glow of the moonlight up above. Wings of fireflies bat around you, their glowing bulbs flickering around the lamp hanging on the porch, a moonlit song only they know. 

“I wanted to check up on you,” he says once the screen door is shut behind him, palm coming to rest on your cheek. “He’s an asshole. That whole Henry Creel bullshit.”

“I’m okay,” you promise, leaning up to press your lips to his. “Don’t wanna talk about him.” 

“Think Chrissy will let me stay tonight?” he murmurs, forehead pressing to yours. His nose slides down the bridge of yours, prods at your cheek until your lips twitch into a smile. His teeth flash with his grin at that. “There she is.” 

“You're on duty,” you remind him, though the idea is tempting. 

Summer before being Eddie’s girlfriend was one thing, your first summer as his girlfriend is another. Separation feels daunting. The craving to be near is stronger now than ever before. 

“The little gremlins can survive one night with Steve.”

“Eddie…” He buries his face against your shoulder, swaying you left to right in his arms. “Thanks for coming. But I promise I’m fine. Plus, I think I actually made a new friend tonight.”

“You and Cunningham, hmm?” 

“She’s…she’s actually really nice.” 

“I’m glad.” His head shifts, lips pressing into your neck until you wriggle and writhe in his arms, earning a chuckle out of the man. “I’ll miss you. Maybe you’ll come visit me in my dreams.”

“You’re such a sap, Munson.” Nose wrinkling, you reach up to comb at the curls tickling your cheek. “Who knew?” 

“There are exceptions to every rule.” 

You grin, heart fluttering away in your chest as he takes a step back and makes his way down the stairs leading to your cabin. There are three words that bubble on your lips, three words you’ve never shared with anyone before. And it’s fitting they form for this man, this person. 

But it’s not time. Not yet. So instead you lean your elbows onto the railing and blow him a kiss, snorting as he dramatically smacks it against his chest and falls backward into a heap on the forest floor below. 

“Go, shoo,” you tease, giggling as he rolls over and pushes himself onto all fours, shaking out his hair. 

“You wound me, sweetheart.”

Three words. 

Not now. 

“Goodnight, Ed.”

He grins. Waves. 

Three beautiful words. 

But you have all the time in the world anyway; there’s no rush. 

“Goodnight.” 

 ——

 It’s an accident that causes you to end up in Nurse Mooney’s cabin. She’s one of the newest additions to the camp. A highly educated individual, with years of nursing experience under her belt, and exceptional with the children. It’s one thing you’ve heard over and over again from the kids after every scape, fall, and tumble. There’s also the increasingly curious fact that Steve Harrington himself seems to be enamored with the woman, having been found already on more than one occasion visiting the medical cabin. 

You find yourself there presently. A hike with Jonathan and Argyle turned sour when a tree branch whipped you in the face, slicing at the sensitive flesh of your cheek. The kids had screamed, jolting on the spot when you hissed and pressed a hand to your bleeding skin, fingers pulling back soaked in scarlet red. Will had nearly passed out and Max cursed. Dustin called for Argyle, nearly blowing your eardrum in the process. And Mike and Lucas shoved you along the path back to camp, leaving El behind to help make sure her step-brother would make it back okay. 

Which is how you find yourself now, slipping into the cabin and calling out her name, only to find Steve himself sitting atop an examination table, smiling softly at the woman who presses a bandaid with numerous breakfast foods in a cartoonish style on them to his bloodied knee cap. The two whirl your way, Steve’s cheeks burning hot as you approach, while Nurse Mooney tips her head up to the sky before noticing your bloodied cheek, urging you forward with the wave of her hand. 

“What happened to you?” Steve breathes out, rushing over to tip your chin up with an index finger. “It’s not—”

“No, no. I got in a fight with a tree and it won. No need to worry Eddie,” you tell him, curling your fingers around his wrist and shoving it away gently from your face. “Seriously. Don’t worry him over this. He’s busy with the kids.”

Nurse Mooney shuffles about in the distance, setting up what you assume to be the things she’ll need to patch you up. Your eyes flicker upward to Steve’s, mirth bubbling in your gut. “Why are you here?”

“Mind your business,” he warns, voice dropping into a gravelly grumble. 

“It’s just curious.”

“She’s a good nurse.”

“I’m sure,” you tease, grinning widely. “She’s also really pretty, intelligent, talented and—”

“Shhh. Will you stop it? Next time you and Eddie want me to cover so you can canoodle in the woods I’ll just so happen to be busy.”

You pout. “No fun, Harrington.”

“You two will be having no fun if you keep it up.” He glances over his shoulder, earning a smile from the woman. “I don’t want to mess this one up, okay?”

The seriousness in his tone gives you pause. Swallowing, you nod. Steve’s love life has been a bit of an…interesting tale as of late. He chalks it up to losing his dating “mojo,” but you know Steve. Steve with his heart full of love ready to be given, an immeasurable kindness, and a tenacity that always surprises you. He’s also a wonderful friend, ‘mother’ to the children, and sacrificial for those he loves. Anyone Steve Harrington loves will be a lucky partner. The thought alone sobers you, mouth setting into a firm line. 

“Just…protect your heart, okay?” You wiggle his arm with your hand. His lips curl upward into a dopey grin. “I care about you, you know? Seeing as you’re in a semi-questionably romantic relationship with my boyfriend.” 

“Shut up,” he laughs, but there’s no malice there. “You look a mess.”

“You’re an idiot.”

But he’s grinning. A wide smile that makes your heart clench as he runs a hand down the side of your arm and waves Nurse Mooney goodbye. As soon as the screen door shuts, you’re ordered to jump up onto the examination table, wincing as Nurse Mooney leans forward to assess the damage to your cheek. She winces as you do, mouth turning downward, a soft exhale of breath falling from her softly parted lips. 

“Going to need some steri strips.” At your grimace, she continues, “It’ll need to be cleaned first. Tree really got you good, did it?” 

You laugh, but it only brings a new wave of pain to the wound. “Ouch, please don’t make me laugh.”

She works in silence. Gathering the things she needs on a rolling table, getting to work on cleaning out your wound, apologizing every time a blinding flash of pain hits. Once the wound has been washed, she pulls over a rolling chair and starts to apply the strips, brows drawn into a furrow, attention fully dedicated to your cheek. 

“So your first time working at a summer camp, huh?” 

“Yeah.”

“Are you enjoying it?” 

Her mouth twitches upward. “It’s different than what I’m used to, but I’m enjoying myself, yeah.”

“What were you doing before this?” you wonder out loud, gasping as her gloved finger accidentally brushes the sensitive flesh around your wound. 

“Sorry.” She exhales, grabbing another strip and pressing it into place. “I worked in trauma for two years.”

“So this is a lot slower?”

“Definitely. Scraped knees are a relief compared to some of the things I’ve seen at the hospital,” she admits, leaning back onto the chair and stripping her gloves off. “A walk in the park compared to car accidents, stab wounds and all of that.”

Stomach dropping, you swallow. “Well, we’re happy to have you. Now you can put bandaids on paper cuts for days on end.” You let out an uneasy laugh. 

“You’ll keep those on for ten days. Just to be safe. Shouldn’t leave a scar.”

“Thank you.” You hop off of the table, making your way over to the cabin door. “The kids love you. Everyone does…actually.”

“Glad I can be of help. And…try to keep away from low hanging branches, will you?”

“Will do.” 

 ——

 About a week after the campfire debacle, you find yourself sitting in the craft cabin with Robin and Nancy and some of the girls, fashioning friendship bracelets with colorful threads. Your fingers work meticulously, winding together the colors, bottom lip pinched between your teeth. 

Your table is presently occupied by Max Mayfield, her own eyes trained on her bracelet in front of her, though she’s been silent for some time now. Exhaling, you finish off the line you’re working on and cup the bottom of your jaw in your palm, watching as the younger girl continues with her crafting, paying you no attention. 

Outside, you can hear the gentle breeze rustling the leaves. The cicadas that sing their morning song. The laughter of children faraway on the lake. Within, you can hear Nancy praising her kids for making the “most beautiful macaroni art” and Robin exclaiming she’s never seen a more beautiful “caterpillar egg carton.” But Max remains quiet and stoic, focused on her task at hand, not uttering a word. 

“Do you think Eddie will like this?” you ask, trying to stir up conversation. 

Nimble fingers raise the red, white and black presently half made friendship bracelet in the air. Some of his favorite colors are thrown into one. Max lifts her head, eyes running over it appraisingly. Cold—though not directed at you—empty blue. She continues to work on hers. Green, blue, and white. 

“Do you ever just…feel like…” She stops herself. Screws her face into a grimace and adds a few more lines to her bracelet as you ruminate in silence. 

“Like…?”

“It sounds crazy.”

“You know you can always talk to me. Right, Max?” 

She swallows. “Do you ever just have a feeling that something bad is going to happen? I don’t know how to explain it, but I’ve been having these nightmares and I—” Another pause, her mouth setting into a firm line. 

Hesitantly, you reach across the table and slide your hand over her forearm. “You’re safe here. I can assure you that.”

“I know. I know,” she sighs, “it’s probably nothing.”

“Max, if it’s worrying you that much, do you want me to talk to your mom? Have her come pick you—”

“No. No, please don’t call my mom. Ever since Billy…and then Neil…”

You’ve heard the stories. The whispers around town by those who spewed rumor and vitriol for the game of it—for their own personal enjoyment. Had heard Neil Hargrove left her, abandoned her after his son had died, how they’d been left and moved into the trailer park. It’s how her and Eddie became so close. A brotherly figure to his “Red,” as he always affectionately calls her, even despite her grumbling that he annoys her. It’s all bark no bite, though. 

But you’ve also heard about her mom. About the hardships she’s been facing. About how Max has been struggling in school, with her relationships. It drives you up and out of your chair, shuffling to the other side of the wooden table to settle down on the bench beside her. 

“You know you can always come to me. For anything, right?” 

She nods, eyes downcast. 

“I won’t call your mom,” you promise her, hand resting against her shoulder. “But if you keep having these nightmares, or if they get worse, please tell one of us. Eddie, Steve, myself—anyone, okay?” 

“Okay,” she agrees. She waits a moment and lifts your bracelet between her fingers. “He’ll like it.”

“Think so?”

She wiggles her brows and shoulders, that fleeting grin of hers like sunshine piercing the clouds on a rainy day. “It’s coming from you, he’ll like it.”

You continue on in silence until the sun starts to set over Camp Firefly. You work on your bracelet for Eddie, and hers for Lucas (though she’ll never admit to that). It’s not until you hear the dinner bell from the mess hall that you extract yourselves from the tables, sliding away from the wooden benches with your colorful strands finally finished in hand. 

She walks ahead of you, footsteps eager, slipping into the open wooden doors and making her way over to her friends. Whereas you wander up behind the man you’ve been looking for, in quiet conversation with Dustin, and clap your hands over his eyes. Fingers curl around your wrists like bracelets, a low rumble of laughter shaking the shoulders pressing lightly against your hips. 

“Who is it?” you muse. 

“Gag me,” Mike groans, earning a harsh slap from El. 

“Hmm, I wonder. The options are so vast, you know?” 

Without another word, he’s climbing up and off the wooden bench, dragging you out of the mess hall with a quick nod in Steve’s direction. Once you’re outside, he rushes you around the back of the building and presses your back up against the wall, pinning you in place. 

“Oh, hey.” 

“Hey,” you murmur, mouth millimeters from his. 

He tastes like his usual cinnamon gum and a hint of smoke as he kisses you, lips soft and yielding beneath your own. It’s a gentle give and take, your fingers sliding beneath the fabric of his camp issued shirt, scratching along the hair disappearing beneath his green shorts. Breath fans along your lips, his body coming in closer, the fullness of high thigh between yours. 

“We can’t,” you whine, forehead dropping against his. 

“I know. I know.” 

Another kiss. Those lips drop lower, pressing to the hinge of your jaw. The curve beneath your ear, the side of your neck, until you’re giggling and squirming beneath him, clutching at the sides of his waist, panting for air. His palms glide along your hips, pausing at the strip of string hanging outside of the pocket. Curious, he snatches it free and lifts it in the air between the two of you. 

“You made this for me?” The corners of his mouth twitch gleefully. Dimple popping in his cheek. 

“No.” Your tennis shoe digs into the ground beneath you, forest floor crunching under your toes, head down, cheeks burning. 

“These are my favorite colors, though.” 

“Yeah well…uh…”

“Tie it on me,” he says abruptly, drawing your gaze to his left wrist he’s draped the bracelet over. 

“You really don’t have to wear it. It’s silly. I just spent the day in the craft cabin and I thought—” 

He smacks a kiss to your cheek, silencing you. “Please. Humor me.”

He draws you in closer with a hand circling your waist. You step into the cradle of his arms and grip the two ends of the bracelet, pulling them taut enough around his wrist where he’ll have some room, but it won’t slide off of him. Once satisfied, you fasten it and step back, admiring your work. Eddie wiggles his wrist in the air, admiring the red, white and black stitching. Eyes dart to yours. 

“I love it,” he says, swooping down to kiss you soundly. Until your lips tingle and your belly bursts to life with butterflies. “Come on. Before all the good food is gone.”

 ——

 He doesn’t know why…or really how…he ends up here. His feet crunch against gravel as he opens the door to his car, peering up at the building. 

Before him is a home. 

Set back against a driveway, stain glass windows caked in endless layers of dust. His heart pitter patters in his chest, unaware of what is to come. All he knows is there’s a sense of foreboding. A curiosity that he doesn’t wish to follow through with, and yet feels compelled all the same. 

The Creel house, where those murders heard only in newspapers happened. A family, here one moment in Hawkins and gone the next. Brutally murdered, bones broken, eyes ripped from skulls. 

Dead. 

Gone. 

Lives put to a halt. 

The voice in his mind calls his name again. Has been for some time now. Days, weeks, he’s not sure. But it’s a gentle caress in his mind all the same. A quiet whisper of ‘Andy’—a siren’s call that has him in its grasp. 

‘Andy’ as he brushes his fingers across dust dirtied shelves and bookcases in the home awash with moonlight, peering at various trinkets and once well-loved furnishings. The dust shifts and stirs around him. A halo of sparkling debris that flutters and flits around him as he peruses the interior of the home, taking in all it has to otter. Beautifully vaulted ceilings, sprawling staircases, lovely kitchen, dining room and sitting area. 

He tries to picture the home when they move in. Hopes settled on their shoulders, new keys tossed into their hands, ready to start anew as a family. Now, he stands in a barren wasteland. A place where everything comes to die. 

His feet carry him up the staircase, eyes roving the pictures on the walls, flashlight catching on the dust particles shifting as he moves. There’s a picture of what he assumes is the family hanging on the wall. A beautiful wife, doting father, a golden haired little girl, and a straight faced boy. Henry. His mind fills in the name, and now it settles on a face. Dark hair, severe blue eyes. 

He wonders how a boy, how a young boy like this, could ruin a whole family. How he could look at them, intent on killing, and follow through with it all. 

That compulsion to learn, the compulsion to simply be here, drives Andy further upward, pausing on a room. Inside he finds a wooden panel on the floor that doesn’t quite sit flush. It creaks and groans as he steps on it, edge popping upward. Curious, Andy sets his flashlight down onto the dusty floorboards and pushes up at the broken piece. Within lies a jar, covered like every other inch of this home in a thick layer of dirt and dust. Blowing out a breath, the dust swirls upward, revealing endless black widow spiders within. 

Fear chokes him. Causes him to stumble back, tossing the jar onto the bed above, clutching at his flashlight like it’s a lifeline. Shallow breaths puff in and out of his lungs. Gasps that rattle deep within. And then he sees it. The edge of a book, just above where the jar had been beneath the floorboards. A leather bound cover, smooth to the touch when he grows the nerve to pluck it out and brush along the edges, the binding. 

Etched into the corner is ‘Henry Creel.’ Crude in nature, no more than scratches in the front covering. His fingers brush along the letters, opening the first page to the doodles within. Images of spiders. Long limbs, cruel fangs, beady eyes. Smoky dark drawings, splashed with red streaks. On the next page are bunnies. Long ears, fluffy tails, wide eyes. But it’s the eyes that have his chest rising and falling faster. Eyes that should be bright and warm are crossed out with painted red x marks, slashes on a page, deep as blood. 

Gashes. 

Streaks of anger.

He swallows. Bile rises in his throat. 

He should leave the book. He knows he should. But he tucks it away in his backpack. Tucks it away to let it sit there for a rainy day as he clambers up to his feet, rushing back down the stairs from where he came, neatly stumbling on the bottom step in his haste. 

The front door beckons him forth. Glass panel gleaming in the moonlight, casting a glow along the far wall. Against the fall wall is a clock, a gorgeous grandfather clock that seems to call his name. 

Whispers to him. 

Sings to him. 

Urges him onward. 

He obeys the call, carried over by what feels like a tether, an invisible string. 

There’s a ringing in his ears. 

A probing at the base of his skull.

“Touch it…”

His fingers prickle in anticipation. Hover over the face, worn by years and broken now. 

Silenced by time. 

He hears a voice again. 

A phantom in his ear. A caress against his spine. 

A push. 

His toes brush the edge of the clock, fingers inching closer. 

Tugs the sleeve of his hoodie up around his hand and wipes the back of it across the face of the clock. Exposes the numbers and arms within. 

“What the…” His voice echoes in the home, drowned out by the beat of his heart, when the arms start to move. 

Slow, swirling circles. 

Arms that twirl around and around. Around and around and they don’t stop. 

He hears it then. 

The slow tick-tock. 

Tick-tock. 

Tick-tock. 

A clanging chime, a reverberating gong. 

Loud. 

It’s so damn loud. 

He staggers backwards, the floor shaking beneath him. 

Rattling, tearing, ripping. 

Red illuminates a crack that inches before the clock, the earth pulling at the seams. 

Opening. 

“What th—”

It’s a cry. Cut off and broken as a vine whips up and curls around his ankle. 

Tugs him. 

Drags him. 

He falls onto his stomach. Screams and claws at the ground. At the rug that betrays him, body sliding closer and closer to the rip. 

He screams for someone who never hears. Screams until the walls rattle, hands clutching for purchase on anything, nails skidding on wood. 

Begs for mercy. For death. For a savior. For the reaper. 

He screams until his throat rubs raw, until he’s pleading. 

Anything. 

A sacrifice. 

A deal with God. 

Or the devil. 

“I’ll do anything!”

And then, out of the ground, out of the opening to hell itself, a single word in a voice that sounds nothing of this world. 

The vine around his ankle slackens. 

“Andy…”

 ——

 Two weeks into camp, and everything is running smoothly. You’ve had no major issues, only minor squabbles sorted in your office between campers, and your counselors have been on their best behavior. Sure, there’s the occasional slip up here and there, but that’s to be expected. 

It’s on that second week you find yourself helping put chairs out around a campfire, a projection screen stretched wide across the lawn. All around you kids buzz with anticipation, eagerly looking on to catch a glimpse of what you’ll be playing. For the children it’s “Never Ending Story,” and for the counselors off duty for the night (being you, Chrissy, Steve, Eddie, Jason and Andy) you’ve decided on your own movie night within the gymnasium once you finish setting up for the counselors who are working that evening as a compromise. 

By popular demand it’s “Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter,” and though you hate the idea of playing a movie such as that while quite literally at a sleep away camp, there’s no arguing the decision once it’s made. 

“It’ll be fun,” your coworkers remind you when they let you know what they’ve decided on; however, you find it anything but. 

“Relax, baby,” Eddie coos, fingers curling around the widest part of your hips, tugging you close. The chair he’s holding drops with a clatter onto the forest floor, dark eyes boring into your own. “It’s a movie. It’ll be okay, I promise. And if you get really scared…well, you can always hold my hand.”

“Gonna be my knight in shining armor, huh?” you ask jovially, taking a step closer to him. “Chase away Jason for me?”

“I would run so far away from Jason with you,” he says, and you snort. “I’m not fucking with him. Are you kidding? We’re camp counselors, which makes us Jason’s prey. Our best bet is mad dashing through the woods holding hands.”

“I feel like that’s what you’re not meant to do in these movies. Look at Halloween.” 

At your pout, he continues, “The kids are going to have so much fun. It’s a night off for us. You’ve been working so hard and you deserve to relax a little bit. Want me to go grab you a bowl of M&Ms later? I’ll even take out the ones you don’t like.”

“You mean eat the ones I don’t like,” you tease, fingers sliding down his forearm, along his Wayne tattoo, newly added on the inside of his left bicep, and toy with the threads of the bracelet you made him tied around his left wrist.  

“It’s what any good boyfriend would do. Or at least I think. Haven’t really had much experience with it.”

“You’re doing great,” you reassure him, looping the thread of his bracelet around your index finger. “You kept it.”

“‘Course I did. A pretty girl made it for me. Gonna keep that forever.” His arms loop lower around your waist, edging along the lowest part of your spine, verging on slightly inappropriate with the kids coming down at any moment, but you don’t shove him away this time. 

Your breath mingles for a moment, lips inches apart, before Steve’s breaking you apart, uttering you’re on a time crunch and shouldn’t be canoodling. You don’t argue. In fact, the remainder of the setup moves swiftly. Bodies weave in and out of one another, prepping chairs and tables for snacks, as well as sticks for the campfire s’mores. As a tradition, movie nights are also party nights. Nights where the kids can have all the sugary treats they wish, and will never have to tell a soul about it. 

It’s not long before rows of chairs are set and readily available for campers and the multiple tables are full of various snacks, treats and offerings. Groups of children trickle out from their respective cabins all dressed in their comfiest clothes, some donning slippers, others with blankets tucked within their arms. Each gathers their movie snacks before choosing a seat. You, on the other hand, stand faraway in the back, watching as the kids treat each other with candor and kindness, offering open spaces to their fellow campers, eager anticipation for the movie buzzing in their sugar enhanced systems. 

“It’s a shame,” Andy says from behind you. Jolting on the spot, you whirl around, hand over your heart because you hadn’t seen him there. 

It’s a shame. 

Your mind hitches at his words, at the peculiarity of them given the tone of the evening, head shifting enough to eye him precariously through your lashes. “What is?”

He pauses. Stares off into space for a moment. Eyes on nothing in particular as Eddie works on setting up the projector with Steve, handing out hugs like they’re candies when little ones run up to thump against their thighs. A chuckle spills from him, head shaking. 

There’s a choke of breath at your side. The frantic brush of his fingers along a bicep, sweat slicking his brow. “I, ah, I’m not feeling well. Do you think I can just head to my cabin?”

You stiffen, head nodding. “Yeah, sure. Do you need to get checked out by Nurse Mooney?” 

“N-no,” he says, chest rising and falling rapidly. “I—I’ll be fine.”

Without another word, he’s rushing off toward the cabins, rubbing at the back of his neck with his head down. 

“What was that about?” Chrissy asks, appearing at your side in a pair of her camp shorts and a hoodie. She’s put french braids in her hair today, eyes bright in the moonlight. Even dressed down like this, she’s impossibly charming. 

“Has Andy been acting odd lately?” Your words are quiet. Slow. 

“Like odder than usual?” She laughs, but the look on your face has her pause. Lips turning downward, she probes, “What’s wrong?”

“He just seemed on edge all of a sudden. I mean he’s an asshole, but he’s always confident. This felt…different. He seemed nervous. Uncertain or worried about something.”

“I mean…maybe he has been? Yesterday Jason said while they were on lifeguard duty Andy just sort of stared off into space. Like he was there…but not.”

“That’s how he’d just been with me.” 

Frozen in space and time, looking out into nothingness, and then snapping into reality. What had he been looking at? 

“He’s probably just in his head about something. Or trying to sneak off with Tina again,” she says, scrunching her nose and looping her arm through yours. She hugs it tight to her body and you melt a little into her embrace. She gives a little wiggle, pulling you from your silent reverie. “Wanna go watch the movie now? Looks like the guys just finished setting up, so we can start heading to the gym. I’ll probably watch it through my fingers, though. I hate slashers.”

“Yeah,” you breathe out, still watching the space between the tree line where Andy had walked through. Can still picture the sweat on his brow, the furrow of them, the downturn of his lips that you’ve always been convinced are permanently set into a sneer. “Sure. Me too.”

 ——

 “So everything is going well?” 

“Amazingly, really,” you reassure him, glancing out of the office, capturing Chrissy’s gaze as she and Steve teach the kids proper form on archery. There’s a line of them, arms stretched back, arrows poised at the ready, waiting for Steve’s whistle to blare out. “Kids are great. Counselors are fine. No one has been seriously injured. Nothing has been destroyed—well, minus the one basketball that popped. But other than that, nothing to report here.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes,” you laugh airily, twining the phone cord around your fingertip. “I promise, dad. You just focus on getting better. How are you feeling?”

“Good,” he says gruffly, shifting where he must be laying on the couch, maybe the bed. “Femur is healing just fine, doc says.”

“I’m glad.” Your exhale is one of relief, shoulders slouching comfortably. 

“How’s my boy?” 

His boy. 

Eddie. 

You’d been worried when you first started dating. Especially after the weed mishap during one of those first few times you and Eddie had spent time together. But he’d always loved the guy, especially knowing Wayne for so long, and accepted him into the fold right away. It had been oddly seamless, and ever since he'd taken up calling Eddie ‘his boy.’ Your heart always burns with it, even now, knowing Eddie’s in the music cabin, likely strumming away on a guitar or teaching someone how to play an instrument. Knowing that Eddie’s loved by Wayne, but also by your own family. Fiercely, in a way that sometimes scares you, even. 

“He’s good,” you say softly, back pressing against the wall. “He’s really good.”

“I’m glad, honey. Never seen you light up like you do with that boy. He better be treating you right.”

“Always.” 

And it’s not a lie. Eddie’s been perfect in the past year. Ever respectful, kind, caring and affectionate. No squabbles, not even a minor tiff. Sometimes you question if that’s normal—if two people can get along so well there’s no reason for them to argue. Friends have commented it’s coming, to just wait. But you’ve yet to see it. You’ve seen him get angry, sure, but never directed at you. 

There’s a pause and a swallow on the other end, the smacking of lips after taking a gulp of whatever drink he’s likely got next to him. “Good. Good. I really miss you, hon. Just hope you know.”

“I miss you, too, dad.” There’s a crack at the end of your words, a choke around a muffled sob. Your nose wrinkles, eyes burning with unshed tears. “This was always our thing.”

“I’m not checking out just yet, baby girl. Just a surgery, and just this summer, you hear me?” At your watery laugh, he continues, “You’ll be home before you know it. Bet you grew another inch taller while you’ve been gone.”

“Dad,” you bemoan, rolling your eyes, dragging your forearm across moist lashes. “Two more weeks, and then you’ll see me every day for the rest of the summer. Bet you’ll even get sick of me.”

There’s an incredulous splutter at that. A guffaw that follows, your lips twitching upward. “Never, baby girl. Always and forever, right?” 

Always and forever. 

It’s what you have said ever since you were a little girl and mom had left. Ever since he sat you down on that couch in your old living room, spoke to you softly and gently—like one would speak to a baby doe—and explained all the reasons why it wasn’t your fault. All the reasons it would never be your fault. Ever since it had just been the two of you and dad had to learn how to be both roles in your life without any sort of warning. Ever since he tried his hardest, worked extra hours, and still managed to attend every school or extracurricular function you partook in, while also driving you around to friend’s houses, making sure you were fed and always had everything you’d ever need. Ever since you decided for the rest of your life, it was the two of you against the world. 

You’d never been left wanting for anything. 

Never gone without anything. 

Your best friend. Confidant. The first love of your life. 

Eddie might be the second; in fact, he is the second. 

But before that, it’s always been you and dad. 

Always and forever. 

Something no outside source, no distance, no circumstance could ever take away. You’d do anything for him. Make mountains move, try and part the sea, uproot heaven and hell. So you grin. And you press a hand to your heart, smiling to yourself. A secret thing, meant for him and you. Stolen away from the world. Precious. 

“Always and forever,” you promise. 

 ——

 Music blares from a shoddy speaker in the dimly lit cabin, illuminated by the sun rising through the trees, leaves swaying and shifting in the gentle breeze outside the softly parted window. The same crappy, hand-me-down, camp issued one that Andy needs to thump with the side of his fist every so often to keep the music playing. 

Most of the campers and counselors have already made their way to the mess hall for breakfast. He’s stayed behind, finishing up a morning run and not quite hungry at all. He hasn’t been in a couple days—figures it’s the giant dinner he had the night before. The cafeteria staff had made their signature baked macaroni and cheese. 

No one stops at just one bowl of that. 

He’s warm. Unbearably so. And it feels harsher than the weather outside. This tangible heat that crawls beneath his skin, skitters along like thousands of tiny spiders on his flesh—in his flesh. Fingers reach up to scratch at nothing; gouge scratches into tanned skin, darkened from hours spent sitting on the dock, watching children in the lake day in and day out. 

Ice water does the trick. If only for a moment. He gulps down his first cup and pours another, leaving the refrigerator and freezer door open, despite the fact he can hear the camp princess shouting at him from across the way if she knew what he was doing now with her father’s precious electric bill. 

Someone needs to show her a damn lesson, he thinks. 

“We can…”

The voice startles him. He whirls on the balls of his feet, neck straining toward the open closet, wondering where the voice came from. He calls out into nothingness and is greeted with silence. Long, lingering, languishing silence. 

The glass thuds into the bottom of the kitchenette sink. Shatters against the strainer at the bottom. Andy reaches forward to grasp the shards, wincing as blood pools along the inside of his thumb and index finger, gliding down the inside of his wrist. Trembling, he makes his way to the bathroom, catching the sight of himself in the mirror. 

Dark circles sink into his under eyes. Purple lines that tell a tale of a man who hasn’t slept in days. He cringes at the sight, nearly throws his fist into the glass to eradicate the image of his own self, and flips the knob on the sink. His blood spills down the drain, a fresh bandage put into place as he sits down on the toilet seat. 

Hot. 

He’s still so damn hot. Scalding. Burning. Reeling from it. Eyes dart to the bathroom shower, to the tub there. A thought surfaces, swift and unprovoked. Unprompted, and yet it feels right. The water runs, knob pushed as far as it can go into the cold setting. As it fills the tub, he walks back into the kitchenette and pulls the few ice trays from the freezer. They fall one by one into the tub, dipping below the surface momentarily, and then bobbing at the top. Tiny little blessings that chill his skin upon reaching in to touch—ease the brewing ache in his bones. 

In silence, he strips out of his clothes. Catches on the streaks of black along the inside of his elbows, the curves of his skin. Like ink or spider webs injected into his veins, staining them. He touches them in the mirror, chest rising and falling rapidly, tracing the lines. He can feel them pulse beneath, blood pumping through the darkness; part of him wonders if it’ll only spread this—if it’ll only progress whatever is spilling throughout his system. 

Nurse Mooney will know, he rationalizes, kicking his green shorts off into the corner of the bathroom. He bobs his head for a moment in front of the mirror, brushing his teeth and humming along to the song, trying to distract. 

To deflect. 

To pretend. 

The brush clatters into the cup holder, plastic skittering across the counter in his over exertion. He tosses his baseball hat onto the toilet seat, cards his fingers through his hair, strands falling in disarray about his head. Sinks down into the ice bath, expecting the familiar burn to settle in like the many times his coaches would have him do after a particularly grueling basketball game. Only this time it’s different; this time it feels like an inferno hitting water, creating steam. An instantaneous relief washes over him, eyes shutting against the yellowy lights flickering in the ceiling above. 

“Andy…”

Ice. Cold dread slides down his spine, curls around him, steals his breath. Arms press along the sides of the tub, fingers clutching the edges, knuckles straining white. He calls for Chance to no avail. Only silence greets him—silence and the taunting of the radio in the next room. 

“I will have you, yes I will have you. I will find a way, and I will have you...”

“Hello?” He cries, clutching the shower curtain, sliding it closed. As if that’ll do anything. As if it’ll protect him. His head drops against bent knees, hands on his ears. “Anyone?”

“Like a butterfly, a wild butterfly...”

“This isn’t fucking funny anymore!” 

His voice cracks. Strains. Swallows around the edges of the sob crawling up his throat. He rocks. Back and forth, back and forth, fingers digging into his ears. The chatter of his teeth is harsh enough he feels like it knocks his brain around within his skull. Eighteen. He’s fucking eighteen and he whimpers, a broken thing, a plea for his mom. The utterance of her name through his shuddering lips. Thin and tight, echoing in the four walls of the bathroom, falling on deaf ears.

It’s a prank. 

Some dumb prank one of the kids or the other counselors are playing on him. 

It has to be. 

Has to be. 

“I will collect you and capture you...”

“I’m going to kick the living shit out of you!” Andy screams. 

The radio grows silent. 

His heart pounds in his chest. 

Sweat prickles on his forehead, drips down the side of his face. 

Every inch of his body, the dark swirls on the inside of his elbows, his wrists…they seem to pulse. To elongate beneath his skin, little tendrils that ebb and flow, reaching for something. 

Reaching, reaching, reaching. 

And then. 

Like spiders crawling across his skin, a chill spreads along the back of his neck. The eerie, grating voice of that thing he heard only once before in the Creel house whispers, “Andy…”

——

——

If you made it all the way here, please let me know if you enjoyed. Thank you so, so much. Love, Luna 💌

#lunaloveseddie #Eddie munson x reader #Eddie munson x you #eddie munson x afab!reader #Eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson au

[lucybronzey]

HEAR ME OUT

reader is a character on st since season one and on season 4 she is Eddies love interest and the have like a sex scene to film and after they do it both reader and Joe have like a sexual tension and something like that

(i cant describe things i’m sorry, i hope you could understand)

author's note: i'm hearing you loud and clear sweetie hehe! i tried my best to get your idea and thoughts into one bubble so please forgive me if this wasn't what you wanted - i'm not really great at writing when it comes to intercourse or explicit stuff like that haha! i really tried 

pairing: joseph quinn x gn! reader

warnings: intercourse/smut, strong language, lowercase letters, consensual s*x, fluff

summary: joseph and y/n’s character have a shagging scene but in real life there’s more into their love life.

abbrevations: y/c/n - your character’s name

 you never thought you would actually start off your career with playing a beloved character in stranger things from season one until up the latest one. your character was the charismatic, enthuiastic and lovely cousin of the wheelers, (choose the first name you like for your character) wheeler. your show’s individual had lived through all the slander of upside down - the demogorgons, the mind flayer and now in season four - vecna. you had grown so much as a character and also as a person in real life. the stranger things team had given you chance to see the world and show what you love to do - enjoy your job and communicating with people.

on season four, there was a new character introduced - edward “eddie” “the freak” munson, an eccentric hawkins high school student and president of hawkins high's dungeons & dragons-themed "hellfire club" which your character was also part of. in the beginning, (y/c/n) thought it was some kind of a banter club that fancied some weird arse monsters and shite but the more you got into it, the more you started to like it. being part of that club, obviously, meant that you got to be friends with mike’s mates - dustin and lucas, and of course, eddie himself. the tension between you and eddie started to grow each year and you were pretty certain that your character had developed some other feelings towards him.

additionally, eddie and y/c/n had made it official in season four and they became love interests because the duffer brothers wanted eddie to have some fucking rest as well. they also wanted your character and joe’s role to have some intimate moments and then boom - they made you have a fucking sex scene! you had never done this before, ever during your acting career.

before the sex scene happened, you requested to have a chat with joseph himself. he nodded and you both went to his trailer. you both sat down and you took a very deep breath in and let out the heaviest sigh.

you groaned to yourself: “so, this scene…shall we talk about it?”

joe looked at you, nodding, and responding to you: “yeah, sure! i assume that’s your first time doing this kind of setting of performance?”

you crumpled your nose and look at the script. you weren’t really sure what to expect or to do. you tried your best to explain yourself and everything, not even noticing that joe was looking at you a bit worryingly. you stuttered a bit: “i guess it’s just about the consent between you and me. please forgive me if i talk shit because this is absolutely nervewrecking for me and i’m honestly losing my shit - i know it’s not like a proper shagging scene but it has to be portrayed as.”

he was looking at you in an awe, being absolutely mesmerised by your maturity. he added: “i’m definitely understanding when it comes to consent and i am giving mine to you only if you are okay with it.”

you nodded and gave your affirmation and consent to do it. your heart was throbbing way too fast and the butterflies in your stomach did not make the situation any better. but you were certain that you could feel safe and sound with and around joseph. you hugged him tenderly and told him that you were ready to make the performance happen. 

“it is what it is,” you thought to yourself. the whole world, including your parents in a different country, will be able to see your messy, but hot scene of having a shag with very handsome man who is joseph quinn. 

~~

after the sweaty and god-damn fucking sensual takes of you and joe’s character having an intercourse, you got an outstanding applause for it for some odd fucking reason. you were some sort of glad it was finished but part of you wanted more from it. you felt like there was actual sexual tension between you and joe, the one you have never felt before. your ex never really made you feel like that and you believe joe had pushed and pressed the button in you. 

you thanked everyone on the filming spot for being supportive and not judging, giving a little bow down and wave, you made back to your trailer where you had a refreshing shower. getting out of the shower cubicle, you organised and packed your stuff for tomorrow’s shooting. the need of having your trailer organised and cleaned for the next day was a must for you. you couldn’t handle arriving to a messy work place, it was an ick for you.

whilst you were putting your personal stuff into your handbag, you heard soft rhythm knock on your trailer’s door. 

“who is it?” you asked.

“it’s joe,” he responsed in a chuckle.

“oh, come in! the door is open!” you invited him, closing your handbag’s lock.

he popped in, closing the door and gasped a bit. then he said: “listen, i know it’s coming out of nowhere and i don’t believe it myself i’m going to say it, “ you turned to him and listened him, smiling, “but ever since we met on the first day around the reading table and after in the shooting complex, i have realised that i am yearning for you every day and i have come to the terms that i have fallen for you. i know, y/n, i will certainly understand if the feeling is not mutual but-”

you shushed him hastily, not letting him finish his sentence on purpose.

“joe, i’m going to stop you right there,” you responded abruptly, joe trying to mumble the last few words from his sentence but you put your index finger on his lips. “you have no idea how much i have wanted to hear this. it has been absolutely lifting to keep this in me as well and i couldn’t be more delighted to hear this coming from you!”

you swifted your finger away from his mouth and placed your own lips on his. it was all so sudden and you felt like you were entering the heaven itself. joe grabbed your waist and nudged you to the edge of the table where all the makeup products go. he slipped his tongue on yours and let it passionately swirl with your tongue. taking off his t-shirt, he unzipped your dress that you had only put on a few minutes ago. he broke the sensual make out session and studied the beautiful figure of yours before teasing your front upper of body.

“you are so beautiful, y/n,” he whispered. his tongue did wonders around the aroused nipples of yours. you felt that you had already become pretty wet down there and you sensed that you needed to feel him inside quicker than ever before.

you relinquished him from your torso and moaned his name. “joe, i want-, i need you inside me now!” 

the devoir of love, warmth and lush inside was skyrocketing. joe nodded, unzipping his trousers. but he wanted to make sure that you were actually okay with it. you gave your premission and also said that you were on an implant, so it was go-go!

he spat on his right hand to make his shaft more wetter before inserting it through your pudenda. you were metaphorically begging on your knees for him to slide inside you so you could be at ease but it felt like it was joe’s purpose to make you more eager and built up even more lust in you both. finally, he pushed his phallus in you and joe started to thrust slowly to needle you longer. he speeds up with every movement, you holding tightly onto his arm and trying to catch a breath.

joe holds your neck with one of his arm, the other helping to pull your waist to help the sexual movement to go on. he kisses you in between the hip thrusts, not letting you go and telling sweet nothings. 

“fuck, y/n, this feels so amazing!” he moans between the words and after each word, his breathing cresendos. he felt so caring at the same time while pounding harder inside you. the pleasure you felt was something you haven’t felt for ages and you craved for love making like that. with each hard pounding inside you started to reach the very high of you. you enjoyed every second and moment of this, so did joe.

joe looked at you and moved you closer to his body. you began to feel coming to your beginning of orgasm.

“joe, i’m about to co-” you moaned and screamed powerfully.

“hold on tight, princess,” he sped up even more, banging into you even harder, making your thighs go numb from the bliss. “i’m co-o-o-m-,”

you came a bit earlier than joe but his warm liquid was filling up your down part of body and the drops of his “cum” was dripping out from your “nether yee” part. his moans were ecstatic. your whole body was shaking from the hardcore shag and orgasm which felt so euphoric to you. joe helped you clean up the mess. the felicity in him never felt better and he was certain that he wanted to take this to new level with you. he assisted with zipping back your dress behind your back and gave little kisses on your shoulders. the affection from joe endured your mood and feelings.

you said: “i want this to last forever,” you glanced at yourself and joe in the mirror, his hands around your body, his face nuzzled on your neck.

“we can make it happen if you let me take this to next stage,” he placed tiny smooches on your cheek, neck and behind the ears.

you closed your eyes to take in this moment and gently stated: “i will absolutely love that, mister quinn.”

#mine #read #joseph quinn #joseph quinn x reader #joseph quinn oneshot #joseph quinn imagine #joseph quinn smut #eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson oneshot #eddie munson imagine #stranger things #ask

[thursdaygxrls]

nsfw headcanons with steve harrington, eddie munson, & jonathan byers

summary — just some nsfw headcanons (i literally just thought them up while going to sleep)

parings — steve harrington x fem!reader ; eddie munson x fem!reader ; jonathan byers x fem!reader

disclaimer — i do not own st or the st boys

warnings — smut. all kinds of smut. if you do not want to read smut, do not read this.

all nsfw under the cut!

steve harrington <3

i have absolutely no doubt in my mind that steve is a pleasure dom. season one steve may’ve had selfish tendencies in bed, but steve is thoroughly in it for your pleasure.

definitely loves giving head. like, loves it. i think he would like a blowjob here and there, but he definitely loves giving more than receiving, especially when you’re riding his face. he’ll cum in his pants from that but let’s move on

steve most definitely prefers to have sex in bed or in his car. maybe at skull rock, but that’s low key pushing it. for him, sex is an intimate thing that is shared between you and him in a place where you are both comfortable.

i also personally think his favorite position is any position where he is able to look at you, so mainly missionary. you on your back, your legs haphazardly wrapped around him while he clutches the headboard. sorry guys j imagining 😍😍

if i didn’t make it clear already, i think that with the right person (aka you), steve would take sex very seriously. it would be a romantic affair. your first time together would be very gentle. no matter how experienced you are, i feel like he would take great care with you.

this might be a good time to mention that he’s pretty vanilla. other than his pleasure dom tendencies, i don’t see him as the kinky type. he’ll most definitely try anything at least once, but he would most likely just want to stick to the good old-fashioned stuff.

i wanna suck his dick so bad. moving on!!

eddie munson <3

let me start with this: eddie is definitely a sub. at most a switch. he may seem like the type of guy to take control, but when all the sarcasm and bad-assery is put away for the day, he’s most definitely moaning ‘yes ma’am 😩’

pillow prince. pillow prince. pillow prince. of course, he’s concerned about your pleasure, but like … he’s horny.

definitely into some light bondage. would probably love it if his wrists were tied to his head posts while you sucked him off. his toes would be CURLEDDD.

he’s a titty sucker. it doesn’t matter how big they are, he wants them in his mouth. hear me out: you ride him while he sucks your tits. he’d love it.

i personally believe he prefers hand jobs over blowjobs. it’s something about the eye contact: your sweet smile as your hand pumps his cock. he’s cumming in 0.4 seconds.

most definitely into fucking in the woods or in his van. i feel like semi-public places are his favorite. he’s a thrill seeker for sure.

tug on his hair he’ll come quicker than you can say vecna

jonathan byers <3

as a disclaimer, all of these headcanons are for season 4 jonathan. he’s a greasy dweeb seasons 1-3, but now he’s a greasy stoner 😍

loves sloppy blowjobs. i can see him absolutely blown (lol) out of his mind, doesn’t know what to do with himself, shaking, toes sweating, fists clenched, knee deep in a wet, sloppy bj. he wouldn’t even be able to warn you before he’s cumming.

i really trying believe that he barely has any experience so anything you two do, paired with that fact that he’s high, is gonna be life changing for him.

loves when you ride him. it’s even better when you’re reverse cowgirl, because then he gets the perfect view of your ass. he loves anything where he has to put in as little effort as possible. that said, he would most definitely do doggy any time you’re not up for a ride.

if you’re not into weed, he’d totally respect that. if you are, though, my darling, you’re gonna be having a lot of high sex.

he’s probably going to want to have sex anywhere that is not his house, which means there is usually a car involved. while i do think he values privacy a lot, he just doesn’t feel comfortable having it at his house. made argyle let him borrow the pizza van to fuck in

honestly, i believe this man loves heated make out seshes and quickies the most. his hands under your shirt and your hands in his hair. a quick blowjob in the car before school.

never thought i’d want to fuck this man but here we are folks

#steve harrington #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington x you #steve harrington x fem!reader #steve harrington smut #steve harrington x reader smut #eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x fem!reader #eddie munson x reader smut #eddie munson smut #jonathan byers #jonathan byers x reader #jonathan byers x you #jonathan byers x fem!reader #jonathan byers x reader smut #jonathan byers smut #smut #stranger things #stranger things smut #1980s #1980s smut #thursday writes

[undreaming-fanfiction]

Someone is eager to see Mafia Mamma and that someone is me. So anyway.

When a twenty-two year old Steve Harrington gets the call, he isn't in the best spot in his life. Sure, he survived all the Upside Down crap, but his parents finally had enough of his so-called trauma ("the earthquake was bad, Steven, but you can't let that influence your life forever! It's like you're not even trying!"). He didn't get to college and his love life is abysmal, but hey, at least he does something useful now - he's training to be a paramedic and he lives in a small, old flat, regularly calling Robin and his gaggle of kids and hanging out with Eddie whenever possible. So maybe it's not the best spot in life, but it's his.

Well, apparently his great-uncle that his mother never really talked about died and asked that Steve takes over the family business in his will. Family business that is in Italy. Cool.

Look, Steve likes first aid, saving lives and all that, but, after the second shared joint with Eddie, admits he's curious. No one said it has to be forever, but maybe it would help him to try something else for a change. Eddie absolutely approves, squeezes Steve's shoulder, but - a little sadly, it seems to Steve - admits he's going to miss the only person who went through all the shit and stuck around. He even jokes he'll hide in Steve's suitcase and will go to Italy with him. "You know, somewhere far away from the Satanist rep. Well, Vatican is there so that's not ideal, but maybe with no murders and levitation this time, I'd just pass as the weird American?" And without thinking, Steve blurts out: "Come with me."

They land in Italy with almost nothing, Eddie with a beat up backpack and his guitar ("not even death or other fucked up dimensions will us part, Steve!"), Steve with a sports bag full of clothes and graduation pics of his kids plus Robin and Nancy, and his trusted hair spray. He really, really wanted to take his spiked bat, but apparently that would be a hazard on the plane. Go figure.

And of course, the "family business" is full of black suits, guns, rapid Italian threats and on top of that, the other families know that the old head of the family is gone and they smell the blood in the water. Especially when the new leader is barely an adult who looks more like a model than a criminal. And his friend who looks like a criminal? That one looks more like a petty thief or vandal than an actual mafia member. Now is their time to strike.

Turns out, that wasn't the best idea. Not when the doe-eyed metalhead grabs the nearest chair and smashes it repeatedly over the assailant's head while yelling "I-DID-NOT-SURVIVE-BEING-CHEWED-ON-TO-DIE-TO-A-FUCKING-BULLET-YOU-MOTHERFUCKER!" while the new boss reaches for the nearest lamp and, like a bloody ninja, renders three assassins unconscious, then setting down the bloodied rod (goodbye, lamp shade and light bulb) and tells his advisor that he wants a baseball bat, a hammer and a bunch of nails. For...reasons.

They gradually settle in. Steve excels in keeping his family in line by adopting his best mom pose, hands on hips, while sternly uttering "What did we say about excessive violence, Francesco? Hm? If you start there, what do you do when you need to escalate? Why do you start with the worst? And they call me dumb." When his bodyguard cocks his gun and asks who called him dumb and where do they live, Eddie snorts into his coffee. (also Steve later apologizes to Francesco for calling him dumb, but also adds that rules are made to be followed, especially those that save a lot of blood and pain)

As for Eddie, without the academic pressure he becomes and unstoppable language student. He's like a sponge, being semi-fluent while Steve struggles with basic phrases. They study together and Eddie begins feeling more confident, takes up more languages and slowly starts functioning as Steve's interpreter and teacher in one. Also a bit more, when they have to evade another assassination attempt and Steve finds himself laying on top of Eddie, on the ground where he pulled him to save him from a nasty punch, and no one comments on it when they get up a few seconds too late, their lips and faces red.

Eventually Steve becomes fluent as well and that's when Eddie experiences the best time of his life - when they walk together in a market, bodyguards giving them just a little bit of privacy, and someone spits on the ground behind them - "stupid American." But before Eddie can react, Steve throws a bitchy look at the offender and says in perfect Italian: "and you look like a poorly shaved goat, yet I'm not judging."

Eddie howls in laughter and nudges Steve's side. "Careful, Stevie. I might think you don't need a teacher anymore."

Steve wraps his arm around Eddie's waist. In here, surrounded by the bodyguards and his family, he can finally do that. "Maybe not. But I'll always need a boyfriend. Wanna apply?"

#steddie au #steddie drabble #steddie mafia au #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #stranger things drabble #the movie is an action comedy so of course mafia is a serious and cruel organization #but we deserve some silly AUs and you have one right here

[supercalime]

hellooo, fellow bucktommy shipper (and casual b*ddie enjoyer, if it weren't for the horrors...) here! i really liked your take on b*ddie st*ns and how they are now making super wild assumptions based on some latest interviews.

you know one thing that irks me? somehow nobody seems to talk about is the fact that in canon, buck isn't written to be in love with eddie at all. like, can we please talk about this??? because I'm all for Death Of The Author. OS can talk about ships all he wants but in the end, only the canon narrative matters to me personally. i've watched long-form content with endgame couples being set up in the pilot episodes who become canon many seasons later (bones, castle, grey's anatomy, the mentalist, etc.), and the entire point of such couples is to establish that, yes, they have been having romantic feelings all this time since day one. they do so very very obviously. there is zero subtlety or room for questioning.

one of the most common tropes is to give one or both characters (of the endgame couple) another love interest so that the endgame couple can be full of jealousy and pettiness every time that other love interest is mentioned or shown. having another love interests always endangers the original closeness of the endgame couple, and then the breakup propels the endgame couple forward in their relationship. the love interest is always used for comparisons, to make it abundantly clear that everybody else is lacking in some way. at no point in 911 did they do so with buck and eddie??? these dudes go through various romantic relationships, and never ever has it been any issue to the b*ddie dynamic. never was it talked about. never were hints dropped that one of them is jealous. even now, with bucktommy, eddie shows not a single ounce of jealously. on the other side, look at how they showed us buck being obviously jealous because eddie monopolized tommy's time even though buck wanted tommy time himself! buck couldn't stand the jealousy even a little bit, and he ended up literally hurting his bestie because of it. but whenever eddie is involved romantically and sexually with someone, there are zero signs that buck is bothered or threatened or jealous. they both seem super chill? they do not question at any point that them dating other people might hurt their relationship? logically, that must mean buck's never wanted to be romantically or sexually involved with eddie (and vice versa). at it's core, b*ddie has been written as a friendship. to this day, we have no canon proof for anything else.

i would not hate b*ddie to happen or anything. i do enjoy b*ddie fics (those that aren't super misogynist ♥). and i think it could be a great couple if done well! but as you said, even when buck thought eddie was hot... well, so what? that's literally just an objective observation. RG is handsome based on societal standards. chim and hen also immediately acknowledged that eddie was hot in 2x01, and both of them are Not At All romantically or sexually attracted to eddie either. nobody is questioning chim's or hen's sexuality based on the comments they made about eddie being hot. because nothing about this equals real romantic feelings or the desire to be in a relationship. the fandom understands that logic just fine with chim and hen. why not with buck, though? also, we have yet to see a reversed moment for eddie staring at buck and finding him hot. they had no problem to show eddie Immediately having a crush on ana flores when he first met her. this shows that eddie feels sexual attraction just fine. he was, however, never shown in canon to feel it for buck.

also interesting: even though buck found eddie hot when they first met, it did not trigger buck to seriously question his sexuality at any point in the past like, 5 years or so. in all those years of canon b*ddie friendship, the show has never used the plethora of opportunities to propel b*ddie into romantic or sexual territory. the show could have! but the show never did, so i refuse to let b*ddie st*ns or OS retcon this. if it's not in the canon material, it isn't canon. with tommy, it took only a couple of weeks and a handful of interactions for buck to reach a point of clarity about his sexuality. the most logical deduction imo is that buck simply clocked that eddie's hot (like everybody else, duh, he isn't special in that regard), and it's never meant anything deep.

my only real probem with this entire situation is how hardcore b*ddie st*ns are now using this as a justification to harass others even more (especially bucktommy shippers). i'd love to enjoy canon bucktommy and fanon b*ddie in peace! but the hate that b*ddie st*ns are spreading everywhere again (like with every new season and newly introduced love interest) is so overwhelming.

sorry for the long ass rant btw oopsie. feel free to ignore this. i just wanted to let it out and it seemed like you would understand. anyway, thanks for reading in case you got this far!

I’d never ignore a sensible take, anon! (I feel bad that you had to go anon but I understand. We know the drill by now, some stans are scary lol)

But like, ALL OF THIS!!!

Discourse like this is what takes away the enjoyment of media for me. It sucks that fandom experience can have two very extreme opposing sides, specially when it comes to two “competing” ships. You can kinda tell by how bucktommy shippers behave (I’m not trying to flex at all because I am one. A good majority of us has zero problem with b*ddie endgame even though we prefer the other. We like what we are getting and are happy to see this storyline play out) compared to b*ddie shippers (of course not all of them, I’m talking about the entitled ones. That clog comment sections, bother actors, go to the other ships tag to complain about it and say how their preferred ship is better, etc).

Im not immune to bad takes and bad fan behavior. Ive surely acted like these stans in other fandoms and i do regret it, so i hate seeing it happen again and again, no matter where i go.

Not to quote mean girls, but I wish we could all get along…

All that being said, whichever ship “wins”, it’s no one’s call but the writers and producers of the show. Someone told me that Tim writes for himself and doesn’t take outside factors (at least to an extent cause it’s impossible to not know the fan reaction) into consideration when it comes to where he wants the story to go.

#don’t apologize anon #im not a popular blog so getting a nice ask is always fun to read and respond to :) #lety rambles #ask #911 #bucktommy #tevan #firefly #firepilot #911 abc